Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

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 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 Ron’s 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 Old 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 Tricks for Tricky Sorts. “I should’ve learned to be an Animagus like Sirius.”

An Animagus was a wizard who could transform into an animal.

“Yeah, you could’ve turned into a goldfish any time you wanted!” said Ron.

“Or a frog,” yawned Harry. He was exhausted.

“It takes years to become an Animagus, and then you have to register yourself and everything,” said Hermione 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, I was joking,” said Harry 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,” said Fred Weasley’s voice. “Be a talking point, wouldn’t it?”

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, Ron. And you, Hermione.”

“Why?” said Hermione, looking surprised.

“Dunno… she was looking a bit grim, though,” said Fred.

“We’re supposed to take you down to her office,” said George.

Ron and Hermione stared at Harry, who felt his stomach drop. Was Professor McGonagall about to tell Ron and Hermione off? Perhaps she’d noticed how much they were helping him, when he ought to be working out how to do the task alone?

“We’ll meet you back in the common room,” Hermione told Harry as she got up to go with Ron—both of them looked very anxious. “Bring as many of these books as you can, okay?”

“Right,” said Harry uneasily.

By eight o’clock Madam Pince had extinguished all the lamps and came to chivvy Harry out of the library. Staggering under the weight of as many books as he could carry, Harry returned to the Gryffindor common room, pulled a table into a corner, and continued to search. There was nothing in Madcap Magic for Wacky Warlocks… nothing in A Guide to Medieval Sorcery… not one mention of underwater exploits in An Anthology of Eighteenth Century Charms, or in Dreadful Denizens of the Deep, or Powers You Never Knew You Had and What to Do with Them Now You’ve Wised Up.