𝐀𝐈𝐒𝐋𝐈𝐍𝐆 harry potter.

𝟒.𝟏𝟕 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐞𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐝 𝐭𝐚𝐬𝐤

Obedient to Sirius' wish of hearing about anything odd at Hogwarts, Harry and Y/n sent him a letter by brown owl that night, explaining all about Mr Crouch breaking into Snape's office, and Moody and Snape's conversation.

Then Harry turned his attention in earnest to the most urgent problem facing him: how to survive underwater for an hour on the twenty-fourth of February.

Ron quite liked the idea of using the Summoning Charm again – Harry had explained about aqualungs, and Ron couldn't see why Harry shouldn't Summon one from the nearest Muggle town.

Hermione squashed this plan by pointing out that, in the unlikely event that Harry managed to learn how to operate an aqualung within the set limit of an hour, he was sure to be disqualified for breaking the International Code of Wizarding Secrecy – it was too much to hope that no Muggles would spot an aqualung zooming across the countryside to Hogwarts.

'Of course, the ideal solution would be for you to Transfigure yourself into a submarine or something,' she said. 'If only we'd done human Transfiguration already! But I don't think we start that until sixth year, and it can go badly wrong if you don't know what you're doing ...'

'Yeah, I don't fancy walking around with a periscope sticking out of my head,' said Harry. 'I s'pose I could always attack someone in front of Moody, he might do it for me ...'

'I don't think he'd let you choose what you wanted to be turned into, though,' said Y/n seriously. 'No, I think your best chance is some sort of charm.'

So Harry, thinking that he would soon have had enough of the library to last him a lifetime, buried himself once more among the dusty volumes, looking for any spell that might enable a human to survive without oxygen.

Familiar flutterings of panic were starting to disturb Harry now, and he was finding it difficult to concentrate in lessons again. The lake, which Harry had always taken for granted as just another feature of the grounds, drew his eyes whenever he was near a classroom window, a great, iron-grey mass of chilly water, whose dark and icy depths were starting to seem as distant as the moon.

With two days left, Harry started to go off food again. The only good thing about breakfast on Monday was the return of the brown owl he had sent to Sirius. He pulled off the parchment, unrolled it, and saw the shortest letter Sirius had ever written to him.

Send date of next Hogsmeade weekend by return owl.

Harry turned the parchment over and looked at the back, hoping to see something else, but it was blank.

'Weekend after next,' whispered Y/n, who had read the note over Harry's shoulder. 'Here – take my quill and send this owl back straight away.'

'What's he want to know about the next Hogsmeade weekend for?' said Ron.

'Dunno,' said Harry dully. The momentary happiness that had flared inside him at the sight of the owl had died. 'Come on ... Care of Magical Creatures.'

Whether Hagrid was trying to make up for the Blast-Ended Skrewts, or because there were now only two Skrewts left, or because he was trying to prove he could do anything that Professor Grubbly-Plank could, Harry didn't know, but he had been continuing her lessons on unicorns ever since he'd returned to work. It turned out that Hagrid knew quite as much about unicorns as he did about monsters, though it was clear that he found their lack of poisonous fangs disappointing.

Today he had managed to capture two unicorn foals. Unlike full-grown unicorns, they were pure gold. Parvati and Lavender went into transports of delight at the sight of them, and even Pansy Parkinson had to work hard to conceal how much she liked them.