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EBONY HAD JOINED RON AND HERMIONE. Professor McGonagall wanted to talk to each one of them but they had no clue what it was about. They stand together, rather confused as their professor looks rather grim and moody.
"So, undoubtedly you know what the second task is?"
"Yes."
"No."
Ebony frowns and looks towards Hermione and Ron who had both answered 'yes'. She had no clue what was about to happen tomorrow, she didn't talk to Cedric enough to know.
"The second task takes place underwater in the Black lake." Professor McGonagall explains. "It will push the champions to survive underwater for an hour while they have to look for a treasure."
Sounds easy enough. According to Ebony, there's a lot of spells for underwater breathing and a lot of methods in the forbidden section of the library. There are a hundred ways to go at it.
"You will be the treasure." Professor McGonagall states.
"What?" Ron asks surprised.
"Excuse me?" Hermione asks, bewildered.
"You're kidding?" Asks Ebony who looks rather calm.
"I didn't want this either but it's tradition to have an important person to the champion be their treasure. Fleur will have to save her little sister, Victor will have to save Hermione, Harry has to save Ron and Cedric will have to save Ebony." Professor McGonagall explains.
"Question, Minnie." Ebony says. "What happens to us if they don't succeed?"
"Let's just hope they do."
'Hogwarts, place of safe'
'Place of Bullshit!'
Ebony is taken to a different room where she is presented with a dark potion. She feels incredibly annoyed but decides, for her sake, not to complain about it and just drink it.
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CEDRIC, FLEUR AND KRUM ARE BESIDES THE JUDGES' TABLE, watching Harry sprint towards them.
"I'm ... here ..." Harry pants, skidding to a halt in the mud and accidentally splattering Fleur's robes.
"Where have you been?" asks a bossy, disapproving voice. "The task's about to start!"
Harry looks around. Percy Weasley is sitting at the judges' table – Mr Crouch has failed to turn up again.
"Now, now, Percy!" Ludo Bagman says, who is looking intensely relieved to see Harry. "Let him catch his breath!"
Dumbledore smiles at Harry, but Karkaroff and Madame Maxime don't look at all pleased to see him ... it was obvious from the looks on their faces that they had thought he wasn't going to turn up.
Cedric had hoped to see Ebony before the task would begin. He wanted his 'good luck hug' but she was nowhere to be seen. Even when he had asked both Fred and George, neither of the two had seen her. He is a bit worried for her sake but decides not to dwell on it too much.
Bagman returns to the judges' table; he points his wand at his throat as he had done at the World Cup, says "Sonorus!" and his voice booms out across the dark water towards the stands.
"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 echoes shrilly in the cold, still air; the stands erupt with cheers and applause; Cedric dives into the rather cold water and casts a spell mid-air which allows him to breathe underwater perfectly fine. His skin is a greenish colour but he has a counter spell if needed.
Silence presses upon his ears as he soars over a strange, dark, foggy landscape. He can only see ten feet around him, so that as he speeds through the water new scenes seem to loom suddenly out of the oncoming darkness: forests of rippling, tangled black weed, wide plains of mud littered with dull, glimmering stones. He swims deeper and deeper, out towards the middle of the lake, his eyes widen, staring through the eerily grey-lit water around him to the shadows beyond, where the water becomes opaque.
Small fish flicker past him like silver darts. Once or twice he thought he saw something larger moving ahead of him, but when he got nearer, he discovered it to be nothing but a large, blackened log, or a dense clump of weed. Light-green weed stretched ahead of him as far as he could see, two feet deep, like a meadow of very overgrown grass.
He swam on for what felt like at least twenty minutes. He was passing over vast expanses of black mud now, which swirled murkily as he disturbed the water. Then, at long last, he hears a snatch of haunting mer-song.
An hour long you'll have to look,
And to recover what we took ...
Cedric starts to swim faster, he frowns when he sees a rather big rock in the distance emerge from the bottom of the lake. He doesn't waste time and swims past the rock towards the song that is being sung currently.
... your time's half-gone, so tarry not
Lest what you seek stays here to rot ...
A cluster of crude stone dwellings stained with algae loom suddenly out of the gloom on all sides. Cedric sees faces in the shadows, faces that resemble the mer-people he had read about in preparation for this task.
The merpeople have greyish skins and long, wild, dark green hair. Their eyes are yellow, as are their broken teeth, and they wear thick ropes of pebbles around their necks. They leer at Cedric as he swims past; one or two of them emerge from their caves to watch him better, their powerful, silver fishtails beating the water, spears clutched in their hands.
A whole crowd of merpeople are floating in front of the houses that lined what looked like a mer-version of a village square. A choir of merpeople are singing in the middle, calling the champions towards them, and behind them rose a crude sort of statue; a gigantic merperson hewn from a boulder. Four people are bound tightly to the tail of the stone merperson.
Ron is tied between Hermione and Ebony Black. There is also a girl who looks no older than eight, whose clouds of silvery hair made Cedric feel sure that she was Fleur Delacour's sister. All four of them appear to be in a very deep sleep. Their heads are lolling onto their shoulders, and fine streams of bubbles keep issuing from their mouths.
Cedric sees Harry struggle with getting Ron with him as he is stuck just like the others, on a line of seaweed. One that's apparently very thick and strong. The blond decides to swim forward, just when Harry notices his presence.
"Got lost!" Cedric mouths, looking panic-stricken. "Fleur and Krum're coming now!" He pulls a knife out of his pocket and cuts the seaweed from around Ebony. He grabs her arm and swims up quickly to the surface.
When he appears up on the surface, Ebony wakes up too. The ice cold water startles her for a moment but when she notices that she has been saved by her brother, she calms down. He helps her swim to the stands where everyone is standing on to watch and helps her get out of the water first.
A towel is immediately wrapped around Ebony and Cedric too when he climbs up on the stands. She looks around at the many people applauding as Krum comes up with Hermione. Ebony looks at her brother and hugs him tightly.
"You did it, Ced. I'm proud of you."
"Thanks for being my bait."
"I didn't really have a choice." Ebony replies, smirking.
"Ebs!" Fred and George yell, running over. "How was it underwater like that?"
"I don't remember any of it, you know."
Then, possibly the loudest applause of the day erupts. Ebony looks over and sees Harry turn up with both Ron and Fleur's sister. She sits down on one of the benches while Madame Pomfrey looks over her for a moment, luckily there's nothing wrong with her. Bagman's voice suddenly sounds very loudly:
"Ladies and gentlemen, we have reached our decision. Mer-chieftainess Murcus has told us exactly what happened at the bottom of the lake, and we have therefore decided to award marks out of fifty for each of the champions, as follows ...
"Miss Fleur Delacour, though she demonstrated excellent use of the Bubble-Head Charm, was attacked by Grindylows as she approached her goal, and failed to retrieve her hostage. We award her twenty-five points."
Applause from the stands.
"I deserved zero," says Fleur throatily, shaking her magnificent head.
"Mr Cedric Diggory, who also used the Bubble-Head Charm, was first to return with his hostage, though he returned one minute outside the time limit of an hour." Enormous cheers from the Hufflepuffs in the crowd; Ebony smirks at her brother. "We therefore award him forty-seven points."
"Mr Viktor Krum used an incomplete form of Transfiguration, which was nevertheless effective, and was second to return with his hostage. We award him forty points."
"Mr Harry Potter used Gillyweed to great effect," Bagman continues. "He returned last, and well outside the time limit of an hour. However, the Merchieftainess informs us that Mr Potter was first to reach the hostages, and that the delay in his return was due to his determination to return all hostages to safety, not merely his own."
"Most of the judges" – and here, Bagman gives Karkaroff a very nasty look – "feel that this shows moral fibre and merits full marks. However ... Mr Potter's score is forty-five points."
Ebony laughs and cheers loudly along with the Hufflepuffs. Now she knows that Cedric has gotten first place and she hugs her brother once again in a fit of happiness. Cedric chuckles and pats her back.
"Congrats."
"The third and final task will take place at dusk on the twenty-fourth of June," continues Bagman. "The champions will be notified of what is coming, precisely one month beforehand. Thank you all for your support of the champions."
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Written: 28/04/2023
Word Count: 1634