"Harry isn't here yet?"
During the Final Four match, Bagman looked at his watch and asked worriedly.
"There is only one minute left before the game starts, Dumbledore, and the warriors of your school don't seem to be very willing to abide by the game time." Karkaroff said coldly.
"Don't worry, Professor Karkaroff, the competition hasn't officially started yet, has it?" Dumbledore responded calmly.
"But the other warriors are already ready, and now everyone is waiting for him alone!" Karkaroff said unwillingly.
Just then, Harry, Ron and Hermione came running over from the direction of the castle, panting.
Ron and Hermione ran towards the audience seats, while Harry ran straight to the lakeshore where the other warriors were, holding his knees with his hands and breathing heavily.
"I... I'm not late, am I?" Harry asked with a grunt.
"Where have you been?" A domineering voice suddenly sounded, "The competition is about to start!"
Harry turned his head while panting and saw Percy Weiss sitting at the referee's table, Mr. Crouch's seat - Mr. Crouch was unable to attend the competition, so Percy, a young assistant, made an exception and became a judge for the semi-finals.
Although Percy's voice and tone sounded somewhat arrogant and dissatisfied, it interrupted Karkaroff's subsequent targeting of Harry.
"All right, all right, Percy!" Ludo Bagman waved his hand and called to Percy. "Let him catch his breath!"
When he saw Harry, it seemed as if a stone in his heart fell to the ground. A smile first appeared at the corner of his mouth, but then he became a little worried.
He was worried that Harry rushed to the scene in such a hurry, maybe he was not prepared or did not take the game seriously enough...
In fact, Harry and the other two attached great importance to this game.
They specifically asked Fred and George for help yesterday and arranged a fireworks show for Snape that seemed particularly natural. They also used dung eggs to shower the Slytherin students' lounge, successfully attracting Snape's attention and even leading him from the underground to the eighth floor.
However, Snape has been against students for so many years, and his title of "score crusher" is not undeserved.
Although Snape did not catch Fred and George on the eighth floor of the castle, he quickly saw through his plan and realized that these two troublemakers must have other intentions for suddenly making such a big move today.
So he rushed down from the eighth floor and returned to his office at an extremely fast speed.
Fortunately, Harry, Ron and Hermione had found the Gillweed before he rushed down and left the potion storage room in time.
They thought that if they just took a piece of chinookweed from the potion collection, Snape wouldn't easily notice it.
However, Snape was mad for some reason that day. He came out of the potion storage room angrily, rushed up to a high place and blocked the doorway of the Gryffindor common room, muttering some incomprehensible words:
"Lacewings, boomslang skin, bicorn feet... I knew someone had been entering my storeroom during this period, and that person must be making Polyjuice Potion... It must be you, Potter..."
Since the matter concerned his own potion materials, Snape was surprisingly patient and waited outside the Gryffindor common room until dawn.
As a warrior, Harry did not dare to return to his common room. He could only wear the invisibility cloak and stay outside the door with Snape, enduring the cold and hunger, but he could not go back to the dormitory to get his supplies.
Because of this, Harry didn't arrive at the venue until less than a minute before the game started.
…
In the judges' booth, Dumbledore and Professor Hicks smiled at Harry, and although Percy looked a little unhappy, the expression in his eyes also showed some relief at Harry's arrival. But Karkaroff and Madam Maxime seemed very unhappy to see him... From the expressions on their faces, they obviously thought he would not show up.
It seemed inconvenient to pick on a fourteen-year-old child, so Ms. Maxime turned her attention to Dracula.
"Mr. Safety Officer, I think you should have understood that today's game is held in the water." She said, "We can't see the specific content of the game at all, and the warriors have little chance to send out distress signals... So I'm wondering, how can you find the right opportunity to rescue the warriors from danger?"
Dracula was suddenly mentioned and looked at Ms. Maxime with some surprise.
Then, he said nonchalantly, "It's not that I can't see it, it's just that I'm not ready yet."
"Prepare?"
"Indeed, if we can solve the problem with a little preparation, why make it so complicated?" Dracula said casually, "Look-"
A piece of old parchment flew out of Dracula's pocket. Dracula waved his hand and let the parchment go to the Black Lake.
Under Dracula's perspective of flowing light, countless magic nodes gathered together and continued to extend downwards to the Black Lake.
The title deed to Hogwarts was suddenly filled with eerie colors, which were the fragmented light from the depths of the Black Lake.
The parchment suddenly expanded and grew larger, gradually filling the entire arena amid the shocked and astonished gazes of the audience.
Then, Dracula waved his magic hand and placed the parchment on the side of the two stadiums where all spectators could easily see it, forming it into a huge projection, broadcasting what was happening under the Black Lake in real time.
"Do you still want to question me now, Ms. Maxime?" Dracula looked at her with a smile and said.
Madame Maxime and Karkaroff sighed deeply at the same time.
They felt that their chances of bringing down Hogwarts were becoming increasingly slim.
…
On the field, Ludo Bagman had joined the warriors and told them to line up on the shore, with each man ten feet apart.
Harry was last in line, next to Krum, who was shirtless in swimming trunks, with his wand out and ready.
"Well, Harry?" Bagman led Harry a few steps forward, away from Krum, and asked in a low voice, "Do you know what you are going to do?"
"Yes," panted Harry, clutching the stalk of sedge in his pocket.
This is his lifeline.
"Very good, I wish you success, Harry." Bagman squeezed Harry's shoulder vigorously and returned to the referee's table.
He pointed his wand at his throat, just like he had at the Quidditch World Cup final, and said, "Loud!" And his voice thundered across the dark lake into the stands.
"Everyone, listen up. Our warriors are in their positions. When I blow the whistle, the second task will begin. They have a full hour to take back what has been stolen from them. I'll count to three. One... two... three!"
A shrill whistle echoed in the cold, still air. The stands erupted in cheers and applause.
Krum first used a crude human body transformation to change his head into a giant shark, and then jumped into the Black Lake in February, wearing only swimming trunks, before spring had fully arrived.
"Oh? That's quite a clever human transformation. I didn't expect Mr. Krum's Transfiguration skills to be as good as his flying ability!" Bagman said admiringly. "I heard that students at Durmstrang are very resistant to cold and can swim in the water in the middle of winter, so there's nothing wrong with his decision to jump directly into the cold water."
Furong cast a bubble spell on herself, and then fell into the lake gracefully with her slender figure.
Harry looked at Cedric, who was helping him with the project, and saw that he had also chosen the Bubblehead Charm, but had also used Partial Transfiguration to make his hands and feet more suitable for swimming.
Harry didn't have time to watch what the other warriors were doing. He quickly took off his shoes and socks, took out the gillyweed from his pocket, put it in his mouth, and waded into the lake.
The lake had just melted in February and it was freezing cold. The skin on my legs felt burning as if it was on fire.
The further he walked, the deeper the water became, and his soaked robe fell heavily down. Now the water was up to his knees, and his feet, which were rapidly going numb, kept slipping on the mud and the slippery, sticky stones.
He chewed the gilly grass quickly and vigorously, which didn't feel good, tough and slippery, like octopus tentacles. He stopped in the waist-deep water, swallowed the gilly grass, and waited for a miracle to happen.
Then, quite suddenly, Harry felt as if an invisible pillow were pressing down on his mouth and nose. When he drew in a breath, his head was spinning. His lungs felt empty, and there was a sudden, sharp, stabbing pain in both sides of his neck—
Harry quickly grabbed his throat with both hands and felt two long and narrow cracks under his ears, opening and closing in the cold air... He had gills!
Without hesitation, he took the only reasonable action and dove into the water.
Taking the first sip of the cold lake water is like getting the oxygen needed for life.
His head stopped spinning, so he took another deep breath of lake water, feeling the water flowing smoothly through his gills, delivering oxygen to his brain.
He held his hands out in front of him and examined them. They looked greenish underwater and strange, and there were webs between his fingers and between his toes, as if his feet had suddenly become duck feet.
At the same time, the water was no longer freezing cold... On the contrary, he felt cool and comfortable, and his body became very light.
Harry continued paddling forward, and was pleasantly surprised to find that his webbed feet enabled him to move faster in the water than on land. He also discovered that he could see clearly without seeming to need to blink at all.
Soon he swam a long way out and then dived deep into the lake.
There seemed to be a cheer coming from the audience in the distance, and Harry raised the corners of his mouth in relief in the water.
…
In fact, those enthusiastic cheers and screams were not for Harry.
Apart from Harry, Krum, Fleur and Cedric, John, who was also a warrior, seemed particularly unhurried.
He stood lightly on the shore, picked up a green leaf in his hand and gently put it to his mouth.
“Woo-woo—”
A strange and melodious blowing sound came from John's mouth.
The next moment, the water of the Black Lake seemed to boil. Countless bubbles emerged from the water, and a large number of ripples appeared on the originally calm lake surface.
“Crash!”
There was a loud splash of water.
Along with splashes of water all over the sky, a large water monster that looked like a horse with broad-leaved cattails as its mane suddenly emerged from the lake, landed in front of John, and swayed quietly.
"That's... that's..." Bagman, the commentator, was so surprised that he couldn't speak clearly. "It looks like a water horse!"
Seeing John grabbing the "mane" of the horse-shaped water monster and stepping on its back, as if he was ready to ride such a powerful magical animal into the lake, the referee could no longer sit still.
"This is a 4X-level magical beast. There is no way the warriors will ride such a monster that destroys the balance to participate in the competition!" Karkaroff jumped up and protested loudly.
Ms. Maxim also stood up angrily.
"Isn't this a blatant use of external objects?" she said loudly, "I don't agree with him participating in the competition in this way!"
"John can tame the magical animals in the competition venue. Doesn't this count as his own strength?"
Professor Hicks also stood up and confronted the two headmasters of Beauxbatons and Durmstrang.
…
Harry had no idea what was happening in the referee's booth.
Under the reflection of the Hogwarts title deed, the audience saw that Harry had now begun to swim in a dark, hazy and strange scenery.
Harry's ears were filled with silence. He could see only ten feet in front of him, so with each stroke a new scene suddenly emerged from the darkness ahead: a rippled, tangled jungle of black waterweed, a wide expanse of smooth sand littered with glittering pebbles. He swam deeper and deeper, toward the center of the lake. His eyes were wide open, peering through the gray, treacherous water to the dark shapes in the distance, where the water was dark and hazy.
He looked far ahead, and saw a patch of green waterweed, two feet deep, like a very dense lawn. Harry stared ahead without blinking, trying to identify the shape in the shadows... At this moment, without any warning, his ankle was grabbed by something.
Harry twisted and turned to see a Grindylow - a water monster with horns on its head.
The Grindylow poked its head out from the weeds, its long nails gripping Harry's legs tightly, its long, pointed teeth bared in its mouth.
Following closely behind the water monster was an ugly brown-skinned mermaid... It was this mermaid who was driving the Grindylow water monster to attack Harry.
Harry quickly thrust his webbed hand inside his robes and felt for his wand.
But he had barely managed to grab his wand when two more Grindylows emerged from the weeds, seized Harry by his robes, and began to pull him under them.
"Relashio!"
…
…