"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. Harry looked at Hermione, thinking... it was
true that Snape had saved his life once, but the odd thing was, Snape definitely
loathed him, just as he'd loathed Harry s father when they had been at school
together. Snape loved taking points from Harry, and had certainly never missed an
opportunity to give him punishments, or even to suggest that he should be
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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," said Ron promptly. "Come on, Hermione, why are all these Dark wizard
catchers searching his office, then?"
"Why has Mr. Crouch been pretending to be ill?" said Hermione, ignoring Ron.
"Its a bit funny, isn't it, that he cant 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," said Ron, sending a
cushion soaring into the window.
"You just want to think Snapes up to something," said Hermione, sending her
cushion zooming neatly into the box.
"I just want to know what Snape did with his first chance, if he's on his second
one," said Harry grimly, and his cushion, to his very great surprise, flew straight
across the room and landed neatly on top of Hermione's.
Obedient to Sirius's wish of hearing about anything odd at Hogwarts, Harry 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 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 Aqua-
Lung 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,"
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
Hermione seriously. "No, I think your best chance is some sort of charm."
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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. However, though he, Ron,
and Hermione 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.
Familiar flutterings of panic were starting to disturb Harry now, and he was
finding it difficult to concentrate in class 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-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 (he was 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. 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 Hermione, who had read the note over Harrys
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 watched it take flight again. What had he expected? Advice on how
to survive underwater? He had been so intent on telling Sirius all about Snape and
Moody he had completely forgotten to mention the eggs clue.
"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 didnt 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
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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. . . .
"You okay. Harry?" Hagrid muttered, moving aside slightly, while most of the
others swarmed around the baby unicorns.
"Yeah," said Harry. "Jus' nervous, eh?" said Hagrid.
"Bit," said Harry.
"Harry," said Hagrid, clapping a massive hand on his shoulder, so that Harry's
knees buckled under its weight, "I'd've bin worried before I saw yeh take on tha
Horntail, but I know now yeh can do anythin' yeh set yer mind ter. I'm not worried
at all. Yeh're goin ter be fine. Got yer clue worked out, haven' yeh?"
Harry nodded, but even as he did so, an insane urge to confess that he didn't have
any idea how to survive at the bottom of the lake for an hour came over him. He
looked up at Hagrid - perhaps he had to go into the lake sometimes, to deal with
the creatures in it? He looked after everything else on the grounds, after all-
"Yeh're goin' ter win," Hagrid growled, patting Harrys shoulder again, so that
Harry actually felt himself sink a couple of inches into the soft ground. "I know it.
I can feel it. Yeh're goin' ter win, Harry n
Harry just couldn't bring himself to wipe the happy, confident smile off Hagrid's
face. Pretending he was interested in the young unicorns, he forced a smile in
return, and moved forward to pat them with the others.
By the evening before the second task. Harry felt as though he were trapped in a
nightmare. He was fully aware that even if, by some miracle, he managed to find a
suitable spell, he'd have a real job mastering it overnight. How could he have let
this happen? Why hadn't he got to work on the egg's clue sooner? Why had he
ever let his mind wander in class - what if a teacher had once mentioned how to
breathe underwater?
He 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. Harry s heart gave a
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huge leap every time he 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," said Rons voice 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," said Ron. "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," said Harry, resting, face-down, on Saucy
Tri