Chương 227: Ch217- Second Task!

On the morning of February 24th, the lake looked like it wanted everyone dead. Ice skimmed the edges, the wind slapped anything that dared breathe, and Hogwarts had set up stands so close to the water Cassian half‑expected the squid to reach up and steal a few students out of spite. He tugged his coat tighter, his second coat, thank you very much, and took a long drink from the thermos warming his hands. Bathsheda flicked a few discreet runes under their bench, and the air turned pleasantly warm.

"Perfect," Cassian sighed, slipping under her arm. Five floating screens hovered over the lake, each one showing a different angle of the Champions milling near the platform. Crisp, steady visual feed, zero flicker. Cassian's handiwork. When Dumbledore and the other heads confessed they hadn't prepared anything for spectator visibility, he'd stared at them for a solid minute.

"So you were planning to let everyone sit here, staring at a frozen lake for an hour?" The stands were packed, five schools, bundled under cloaks, scarves, half-hearted warming charms, and youthful delusion. The bridge built for the Champions rose from the bank. The platform held five shapes, all tense, all watching the lake. The fog rolled low over the surface, thick and sluggish. Bagman stomped up to the edge of the platform, robes flapping, cheeks suspiciously pink from too much morning excitement.

"WELCOME, EVERYONE!" he boomed, voice magically amplified, unnecessarily loud.

"THE SECOND TASK BEGINS NOW!" The crowd cheered, and steam curled from their mouths. Cedric stood ready with his shoulders squared. Fleur tugged her plait tighter. Krum rolled his neck, staring so hard, he looked ready to fight the lake. Mingyu... was there. Amara gave the water a look that promised it better behaved or else. Bagman's voice cracked across the platform.

"Ten seconds!" The Champions stirred. Cedric raised his wand to his temple, muttered the charm. A neat bubble snapped into place around his head. Trust Diggory to make even panic look tidy. Krum hunched, jaw tightening. His skin rippled like something underneath wanted out. Then his mouth split forward, teeth stretching into rows, eyes darkening to cold black. Shark‑Head, fins, classic Durmstrang charm.

Amara pulled a wad of Gillyweed from a pouch, chewed with all the enthusiasm of someone swallowing sea‑sludge on a dare. The moment it hit her throat, her neck fluttered. Gills opened in thin slits, fingers already webbing. Fleur mirrored her. Her hair shifted first, light drifting through the strands as magic rolled along her skin. Then her ankles thinned and webbing began to creep between her fingers. Mingyu didn't bother with plants. He pressed his wand at his sternum. Bones creaked.

His arms lengthened, joints loosening into something fluid, fingers elongating. His face narrowed, jaw sharper, eyes turning sleek and pitch black. Cassian squinted, no idea what he was supposed to be. Bagman's cried out.

"Five!"

"One!" Bagman threw his arm down.

"GO!" The stands erupted, noise tumbling over itself as the crowd turned to the golden screens now tracking each Champion beneath the lake. Master Ji leaned back from the Judges' Table and tilted his head toward Cassian.

"Wonderful spell, Cassian. How do you do it?" Cassian tried not to look smug, he was.

"Illusion's my base form. You've seen me teach, half my lessons are visual theatre. I stitched a Protean Charm into a feedback rune. Champions wear it. Sends impressions back to me, I render them into illusions on the fly." Ekwensi turned, eyebrows raised. Maxime looked surprised. Even Dumbledore gave a half-interested glance, one brow up.

"This is Protean?" Cassian gave a small nod, still watching the flickering screens.

"Well, Baths did the rune bit. But yeah, basically." Bathsheda rolled her eyes.

"I just assisted. It's all him." Cassian tilted his cup toward her.

"Team effort. I'm the idiot who thought stitching Protean to illusion in real time was a good idea. She's the reason it hasn't exploded."

"Yet," she muttered. Karkaroff gave a sniff, clearly unimpressed.

"Bit dramatic, don't you think? All this... theatre."

"Please," Cassian muttered, still facing forward.

"You lot were planning to have everyone squint at ice for an hour. At least now they'll see someone drown." Kingsley smothered a cough. Dumbledore's mouth twitched behind his beard. On the screens, Amara had barely reached the trench line before the Grindylows surged out. They moved fast in the water, quicker than most creatures had a right to. This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report. She shifted mid-kick. Fur bloomed over skin.

Her limbs stretched, spine lengthened, tail unfurled. Gills stayed. So now everyone was watching a leopard. With gills. Underwater. Cassian nearly spat out his tea. Down in the lake, the Grindylows clearly hadn't expected it either. The moment she roared, their advance scattered. Arms jerked back, formation broke. Two of them outright swam the other way. Amara didn't give chase. She twisted round, kicked off the trench wall, and bolted deeper.

"Didn't expect Grindylows to be intimidated by a cat," Bathsheda muttered, chuckling.

"Wouldn't you?" Cassian said.

"Big cat. Underwater. Breathing through gills. That's biblical." Amara ducked through a reef-like tangle of lakeweed, paws grazing stone as she darted between rocky outcrops. On another screen, Krum was having a very similar problem with a very different approach. He'd headbutted a Grindylow. When the little creature screeched, dozens more burst out of the shadows. They swarmed Krum in a tight ring, tugging at him from every side. Krum thrashed hard, trying to shake them off.

The shark‑form gave him strength but not grace. He swung wide, missed half of them, and kicked the other half by accident. Grindylows clung harder, tiny hands gripping his gills, arms, even his hair. One bit him. Krum finally snapped. He shoved both hands forward, wrenched his head free, and blasted a pulse of water from his mouth, not a spell, a Durmstrang trick, pressure‑burst magic. The front wave scattered the small attackers, tumbling them into the dark. The rest fled.

Farther along the lakebed, Fleur drifted past a curtain of kelp. She passed a cluster of merpeople spear‑points. They followed her but didn't strike. Cassian tilted his head.

"She's singing." A soft vibration rolled through the water on the screen. Fleur's voice curled through it, gentle, coaxing, nothing like the sharp edge she had on land. The creatures eased back, their eyes lowering. Bathsheda murmured, "Veela charm still works underwater?"

"Apparently." Cassian took another drink.

"At this point she could charm a rock if she felt like it." On Mingyu's screen, the boy cut through the water in long, sleek strokes. His limbs moved strangely, joints flexible in a way that didn't belong to humans. Whatever he'd turned himself into wasn't pretty, but it moved fast. He slipped between rock pillars, hugged the shadows, and darted through a crumbling arch of lakebed stone. Merpeople approached him, then hesitated. His eyes glowed faint in the dark, slit‑thin from the spell.

He dipped his head at them. They let him pass. Cedric reached the hostages first. Five shapes floated in the carved stone alcove, bound by cords of water, drifting gently in the current. Cho. Beatrice. A boy from Fenghuang. Gabrielle. And Kenneth. All limp but unharmed. When they spotted Kenneth bobbing gently in the lake alcove, the Hogwarts stands went up like someone had cast Sonorus on a pack of wolves. Cheers, whistles, and shouts echoed across the water.

The twins were the loudest, one nearly fell over the rail laughing, the other waved a scarf like Kenneth had just won the Cup. Cedric didn't so much as glance at the others. He swam straight to Cho. One of the merfolk flinched as Cedric raised his wand. He pointed at the cords wrapping Cho and murmured something. Cho drifted into his arms, unconscious but unharmed. Fleur reached Gabrielle. Her hand trembled as she broke the bindings, hair billowing around her. She didn't speak.

Just grabbed Gabrielle and turned back toward the surface. Krum burst into the alcove like he was still trying to punch water. He spotted his hostage, and grabbed her without even casting. Ripped the cords straight off. Then Mingyu slid into view on the fourth screen. He swam straight for his cousin, grabbed him by the back of the robes, and pulled him in close. He turned toward the surface in a clean arc, fins cutting through the water. On Amara's screen, she arrived a second later, tail flicking behind her.

She scanned the alcove, spotted Kenneth, and shot forward. She hooked one arm around him, checking his face quickly, then looked up toward the trench roof. She then shifted her weight, planted her foot against the carved stone, and cast. A burst of magic erupted under her, a shockwave that kicked both her and Kenneth straight off the wall like they'd been fired out of a wand. They tore through the water in a streak of bubbles. Mingyu barely had time to grunt before the force clipped him in the shoulder.

He spun sideways, arms flailing, fish‑head snapping at nothing as Amara blasted past him without even looking back. Cedric was already halfway up, Cho floated beside him, tethered under his arm. Second on the rise, Amara carved through the water in a streak, Kenneth tucked neatly against her. Fleur followed after, Gabrielle shielded with one arm as she kicked hard. Behind them, Krum pulled ahead of Mingyu easily.

Shark form he'd taken made him glide through the current in long, sharp strokes, Beatrice safe against his chest. Mingyu tried to recover, snarling through rows of teeth, but the burst had taken more out of him than he wanted to admit. His strokes were heavy. Bagman's voice announced overhead.

"WE HAVE OUR FINISHERS!" The stands kicked up another roar. Teachers and Madam Pomfrey rushed the moment the Champions broke the surface. Cloaks flew, towels landed on shoulders, warming charms crackled along the platform. Pomfrey barked orders like she ran the school, which, in a medical sense, she absolutely did.

"Blankets, no, thicker than that! Diggory, sit before you fall." Fleur steadied herself before Pomfrey reached her, chin high, grip firm on Gabrielle's shoulder. Poppy sighed, turning to others.

"Mr Krum... Merlin's beard, what have they done to your gills? Hold still!" Bagman, of course, ignored all sense of triage and spun back toward the judges' table as if the task hadn't produced multiple near‑drownings. His voice went booming again.

"WELL! THAT WAS QUITE A SHOW! LET'S HAVE OUR SCORES FOR THE SECOND TASK!" Dumbledore rose slightly in his seat, hands folded.

"Each champion retrieved their hostage safely and demonstrated ingenuity underwater. Scores will reflect timing, approach, and adaptability." The crowd hushed. Even Bagman stopped bouncing. The board flickered overhead as the first total appeared... Cedric Diggory - 66 No one was surprised. Five bonus points for arriving first, and every judge stacked the rest close to full, except Karkaroff, of course.

Between his clean approach, steady spellwork, and the charm of looking like he'd just gone for a swim, Cedric had nailed it. Amara - 64 She'd come second, sure, but that score meant almost every judge had pushed her the rest of the way to full marks. There was no denying the spectacle, the gilled Animagus leopard was hard to beat, but she'd also bulldozed Mingyu out of the way on the return trip and left Kenneth looking Prince in Distress.

Fleur Delacour - 63 Her path was clean, elegant even, though she'd been slowed by the kelp and the merfolk patrols. Charm magic underwater earned her praise, though Maxime muttered something that sounded suspiciously like "reckless." Viktor Krum - 54 Even with the two-point bonus, it was barely enough to keep him from the bottom. Karkaroff had clearly thrown him a ten the moment he saw his face, but everyone else pulled the brakes hard.

His performance had been strong, sure, but sloppy, aggressive, and he tried to headbutt anything in the lake. Grindylows still clung to his cloak when he climbed out. Still, he edged ahead of Mingyu by a thread. Mingyu - 52 He came in last, and the judges made no effort to disguise their disgust. His form had been sleek, eerie, and efficient, but the lack of showmanship worked against him, and Amara knocking him off-course during the ascent hadn't helped.

Whatever edge he'd gained underwater disappeared in that last stretch. No protests were raised.