ღ chapter forty one
( to breathe underwater )
"YOU SAID YOU'D already worked out that egg clue!" Hermione insisted.
"Keep your voice down!" Harry fired back crossly. "I just need to— sort of fine-tune it, all right?"
He, Jules, Ron, and Hermione were sitting at the very back of the Charms class with a table to themselves. It had been a strange couple of weeks since the start of the term and they were beginning to creep closer to the ominously looming second task. They'd run into Ludo Bagman at Hogsmeade and talked to Hagrid with Dumbledore to convince him to stay. Hermione had even gotten into an amusing altercation with Rita Skeeter at the Three Broomsticks.
Theoretically, they were supposed to be practicing the opposite of the Summoning Charm today — the Banishing Charm — but they seemed to like talking to one another more. Owing to the potential for nasty accidents when objects kept flying across the room, Professor Flitwick had given each student a stack of cushions on which to practice, the theory being that these wouldn't hurt anyone if they went off target. It was a good theory, but it wasn't working very well.
Neville's aim was so poor that he kept accidentally sending much heavier things flying across the room — Professor Flitwick, for instance.
"Just forget the egg for a minute, all right?" Harry hissed as Professor Flitwick went whizzing resignedly past them, landing on top of a large cabinet. "I'm trying to tell you about Snape and Moody..."
This class was an ideal cover for a private conversation, as everyone was having far too much fun to pay them any attention. Harry had been recounting his adventures of the previous night in whispered installments for the last half hour. "Snape said Moody's searched his office as well?" Ron whispered, his eyes alight with interest as he Banished a cushion with a sweep of his wand (it soared into the air and knocked Parvati's hat off).
"What... d'you reckon Moody's here to keep an eye on Snape as well as Karkaroff?" Jules questioned, her head twinging ever so slightly.
"Well, I dunno if that's what Dumbledore asked him to do, but he's definitely doing it," Harry nodded, waving his wand without paying much attention, so that his cushion did an odd sort of belly flop off the desk. "Moody said Dumbledore only lets Snape stay here because he's giving him a second chance or something..."
"What?" Ron gasped, eyes widening, his next cushion spinning high into the air, ricocheting off the chandelier, and dropping heavily onto Flitwick's desk. "Harry... maybe Moody thinks Snape put your name in the Goblet of Fire!"
"Oh Ron," Hermione sighed, shaking her head skeptically, "we thought Snape was trying to kill Harry before, and it turned out he was saving Harry's life, remember?"
She Banished a cushion and it flew across the room and landed in the box they were all supposed to be aiming at. Snape definitely loathed both Harry and Jules, just as he'd loathed their fathers when they had been at school together. Snape loved taking points from the two, and had certainly never missed an opportunity to give them punishments, or even to suggest that he should be suspended from the school.
"I don't care what Moody says," Hermione went on. "Dumbledore's not stupid. He was right to trust Hagrid and Professor Lupin, even though loads of people wouldn't have given them jobs, so why shouldn't he be right about Snape, even if Snape is a bit —"
"— evil," Ron finished promptly. "Come on, Hermione, why are all these Dark wizard catchers searching his office, then?"
"Why has Mr. Crouch been pretending to be ill?" Hermione asked, ignoring Ron. "It's a bit funny, isn't it, that he can't manage to come to the Yule Ball, but he can get up here in the middle of the night when he wants to?"
"You just don't like Crouch because of that elf, Winky," Ron scoffed, sending a cushion soaring into the window.
"You just want to think Snape's up to something," Hermione retaliated, sending her cushion zooming neatly into the box. Jules flicked her wand only for her cushion to just barely miss the box.
"I just want to know what Snape did with his first chance, if he's on his second one," Harry nodded grimly, and his cushion, to their surprise, flew straight across the room to land neatly on top of Hermione's.
Obedient to Sirius's wish of hearing about anything odd at Hogwarts, Harry and Jules sent him a letter by owl that night, explaining all about Mr. Crouch breaking into Snape's office, and Moody and Snape's conversation. Then they turned their attention in earnest to the most urgent problem facing Harry: 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 Aqua-Lungs, 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 Aqua-Lung zooming across the countryside to Hogwarts.
"Of course, the ideal solution would be for you to Transfigure yourself into a submarine or something," Hermione 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," Harry laughed. "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," Hermione replied seriously. "No, I think your best chance is some sort of charm."
Jules attempted to ask Professor Mcgonagall to teach her human transfiguration in a pinch but was shot down immediately by the stern-faced professor over a cup of tea.
So Harry buried himself once more among the dusty volumes, looking for any spell that might enable a human to survive without oxygen. However, though Jules, Ron, and Hermione helped and searched through their lunchtimes, evenings, and whole weekends — though Harry asked Professor McGonagall for a note of permission to use the Restricted Section, and even asked the irritable, vulture-like librarian, Madam Pince, for help — they found nothing whatsoever that would enable Harry to spend an hour underwater and live to tell the tale.
The lake, which had just been another feature of the grounds, drew eyes whenever they were near a classroom window, a great, iron-gray mass of chilly water, whose dark and icy depths were starting to seem as distant as the moon. Just as it had before he faced the Horntail, time was slipping away as though somebody had bewitched the clocks to go extra fast. There was a week to go before February the twenty-fourth (there was still time) . . . there were five days to go (they were bound to find something soon) . . . three days to go (please let me find something . . . please) . . .
With two days left, Harry started to go off food again and Jules had to shove eggs at him that morning. The only good thing about breakfast on Monday was the return of the brown owl they had sent to Sirius. He pulled off the parchment, unrolled it, and saw the shortest letter Sirius had ever written to them. Send date of next Hogsmeade weekend by return owl.
Harry turned the parchment over and looked at the back, but it was blank. "Weekend after next," Jules whispered, who had read the note over Harry's shoulder. "Here — take my quill and send this owl back straight away."
Harry scribbled the dates down on the back of Sirius's letter, tied it onto the brown owl's leg, and they watched it take flight again.
"What's he want to know about the next Hogsmeade weekend for?" Ron asked.
"Dunno," Harry replied dully. "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, she didn't know, but Hagrid 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. "Easier ter spot than the adults," Hagrid told the class. "They turn silver when they're abou' two years old, an' they grow horns at aroun' four. Don' go pure white till they're full grown, 'round about seven. They're a bit more trustin' when they're babies . . . don' mind boys so much. . . . C'mon, move in a bit, yeh can pat 'em if yeh want . . . give 'em a few o' these sugar lumps."
They sat with Hermione and Ron in the library as the sun set outside, tearing feverishly through page after page of spells, hidden from one another by the massive piles of books on the desk in front of each of them. Their hearts gave a huge leap every time they saw the word "water" on a page, but more often than not it was merely "Take two pints of water, half a pound of shredded mandrake leaves, and a newt..."
"I don't reckon it can be done," Ron's voice mumbled flatly from the other side of the table. "There's nothing. Nothing. Closest was that thing to dry up puddles and ponds, that Drought Charm, but that was nowhere near powerful enough to drain the lake."
"There must be something," Hermione muttered, moving a candle closer to her. Her eyes were so tired she was poring over the tiny print of Olde and Forgotten Bewitchments and Charmes with her nose about an inch from the page. "They'd never have set a task that was undoable."
"They have," Ron giggled. "Harry, just go down to the lake tomorrow, right, stick your head in, yell at the merpeople to give back whatever they've nicked, and see if they chuck it out. Best you can do, mate."
"There's a way of doing it!" Hermione said crossly. "There just has to be!"
She seemed to be taking the library's lack of useful information on the subject as a personal insult; it had never failed her before. "I know what I should have done," Harry sighed, resting, facedown, on Saucy Tricks for Tricky Sorts. "I should've learned to be an Animagus like Sirius."
"Yeah, you could've turned into a goldfish any time you wanted!" Jules groaned.
"Or a frog," Harry yawned. He looked exhausted.
"Or you could just end up a spider or cockroach or something particulary tiny and squashable," Jules joked.
"It takes years to become an Animagus, and then you have to register yourself and everything," Hermione rattled on vaguely, now squinting down the index of Weird Wizarding Dilemmas and Their Solutions. "Professor McGonagall told us, remember . . . you've got to register yourself with the Improper Use of Magic Office . . . what animal you become, and your markings, so you can't abuse it. . . ."
"Hermione, we were joking," Harry mumbled wearily. "I know I haven't got a chance of turning into a frog by tomorrow morning. . . ."
"Oh this is no use," Hermione said, snapping shut Weird Wizarding Dilemmas.
"Who on earth wants to make their nose hair grow into ringlets?"
"I wouldn't mind," Fred Weasley's voice called out. "Be a talking point, wouldn't it?"
Jules, Harry, Ron, and Hermione looked up. Fred and George had just emerged from behind some bookshelves. "What're you two doing here?" Ron asked. "Looking for you," said George. "McGonagall wants you, Jules. And you, Hermione. And ickle Ronniekins here as well."
"Why?" Hermione squinted, looking surprised.
"Dunno . . . she was looking a bit grim, though," Fred mumbled.
"We're supposed to take you down to her office," George continued.
Jules gathered all of her stuff and placed into her bag to follow the twins, leaving Harry alone, feeling rather uneasy, her head pounding. She made it two steps into McGonagall's office before she found herself blankly facing a wand.
( AUTHOR NOTE )
hope u enjoyed <3