LITTLE MISS MUDBLOOD | draco malfoy

76 ; treasure

"Sixty minutes," she said flatly, and a moment paused between them before Y/N started crying, collapsing onto the floor with victory.

"Fuck!" she cried, laughing as she repeatedly hit her head on the stone floors. "I did it! I did it! We did it!"

"Damn right," Daphne grinned widely, jumping up and down with excitement. She fell onto the floor next to Y/N, smiling in her tear-stricken face as they latched onto each other, sobbing their stress away.

Y/N felt significantly lighter the next day as she stood at the judges' table with Cedric, Fleur, and Krum, a messy feeling of need lingering on her as they waited for Harry. Draco had . . . well, he thought the best way to wish her luck was to snog her face off an hour before, privately, in his room with the curtains drawn. She didn't know when she had agreed to that – probably when he had brought her up to his dorm so she could get a good and full nights' sleep, but it wasn't like she was complaining.

Quite the opposite, actually.

Harry was now sprinting toward them, looking like he had just woken up and forgot about the task – which he probably did.

"I'm . . . here . . ." he panted, skidding to a halt in the mud and accidentally splattering Fleur's robes. She gave him a dirty look.

"Where have you been?" said Percy, who was sitting where Mr. Crouch was supposed to be, and subbing in for him. "The task's about to start!"

"Now, now, Percy!" said Ludo Bagman, who was looking intensely relieved to see Harry. "Let him catch his breath!"

Dumbledore had smiled at Harry, but Karkaroff and Madame Maxime didn't look at all pleased to see him. . . . It was obvious that they had thought he wasn't going to turn up. If Y/N was being honest, she didn't either. She half-thought he was going to bail on them.

Ludo Bagman was now moving among the champions, spacing them along the bank at intervals of ten feet. Y/N stood in between Fleur and Cedric, her hands shaking as she pulled off her clothes to reveal a deep green swimming suit, which was two pieces and showed a lot more than necessary. She uncorked the potion with one hand and held her wand in the other, staring out into the lake, hoping and praying that her potion worked on humans . . . but still - she thanked Merlin that they allowed more than just a wand for the second task, or else she would've been in big trouble.

"Well, all our champions are ready for the second task, which will start on my whistle. They have precisely an hour to recover what has been taken from them. On the count of three, then. One . . . two . . . three!"

The whistle echoed shrilly in the cold, still air; the stands erupted with cheers and applause; without looking at the other champion, Y/N downed the potion and flung it with her stuff, shivering as she waded deeper and deeper into the water.

A shot of fire whisked through Y/N and she breathed in sharply – until all of a sudden it became much too suffocating to breath, like slime had filled the walls of her lungs. Then, sharply, she couldn't breath at all, and she did the only thing that made sense – she dove into the water, and with great courage and stupidity, breathed in.

The first breath of the freezing lake water felt like the breath of life. Grinning to herself, she felt herself grow stronger by the second, and she could practically feel her blood vessels dilate as new cells filled her body, to allow an aquatic alter-ego to take over. The icy water was no longer unbearable – on the contrary, she was quite warm, and a cozy feeling was now regulating throughout her body to keep her from developing hypothermia.

Y/N had now swam so far into the lake that she couldn't see the bottom. With the added strength from the potion, she breathed in the water and dived into its depths, her wand alight to let her see. She was so so glad she had been a swimmer before Hogwarts, for now she journeyed through the lake with ease, gazing around at the strange, dark, and foggy landscape before her.