J. K. Rowling All rights reserved; no part of this publication may be reproduced or

‘Sonorus!’ 
and his voice boomed 
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 echoed shrilly in the cold, still air; the stands 
erupted with cheers and applause; without looking to see what 
the other champions were doing, Harry pulled off his shoes 
and socks, pulled the handful of Gillyweed out of his pocket, 
stuffed it into his mouth, and waded out into the lake. 
The lake was so cold he felt the skin on his legs searing as 
though this was fire, not icy water. His sodden robes weighed 
him down as he walked in deeper; now the water was over his 
knees, and his rapidly numbing feet were slipping over silt and 
flat, slimy stones. He was chewing the Gillyweed as hard and 
fast as he could; it felt unpleasantly slimy and rubbery, like 
octopus tentacles. Waist-deep in the freezing water he stopped, 
swallowed, and waited for something to happen. 

---

T
HE
S
ECOND
T
ASK
429 
He could hear laughter in the crowd, and knew he must 
look stupid, walking into the lake without showing any sign of 
magical power. The part of him that was still dry was covered 
in goosepimples; half-immersed in the icy water, a cruel breeze 
lifting his hair, Harry started to shiver violently. He avoided 
looking at the stands; the laughter was becoming louder, and 
there were catcalls and jeering from the Slytherins ... 
Then, quite suddenly, Harry felt as though an invisible pillow 
had been clapped over his mouth and nose. He tried to draw 
breath, but it made his head spin; his lungs were empty, and he 
suddenly felt a piercing pain on either side of his 
neck – 
Harry clapped his hands around his throat, and felt two 
large slits just below his ears, flapping in the cold air ... 
he had 
gills. 
Without pausing to think, he did the only thing that 
made sense – he flung himself forwards into the water. 
The first gulp of icy lake water felt like the breath of life. His 
head had stopped spinning; he took another great gulp of 
water and felt it pass smoothly through his gills, sending oxy-
gen back to his brain. He stretched out his hands in front of 
him and stared at them. They looked green and ghostly under 
the water, and they had become webbed. He twisted around 
and looked at his bare feet – they had become elongated and 
his toes were webbed, too; it looked as though he had sprouted 
flippers. 
The water didn’t feel icy any more, either ... on the contrary, 
he felt pleasantly cool, and very light ... Harry struck out once 
more, marvelling at how far and fast his flipper-like feet pro-
pelled him through the water, and noticing how clearly he 
could see, and how he no longer needed to blink. He had soon 
swum so far into the lake that he could no longer see the bot-
tom. He flipped over, and dived into its depths. 
Silence pressed upon his ears as he soared over a strange, 
dark, foggy landscape. He could only see ten feet around him, 
so that as he sped through the water new scenes seemed to 

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430 H
ARRY
P
OTTER
loom suddenly out of the oncoming darkness: forests of rip-
pling, tangled black weed, wide plains of mud littered with 
dull, glimmering stones. He swam deeper and deeper, out 
towards the middle of the lake, his eyes wide, staring through 
the eerily grey-lit water around him to the shadows beyond, 
where the water became opaque. 
Small fish flickered 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. There was no sign of 
any of the other champions, merpeople, Ron – nor, thankfully, 
the giant squid. 
Light-green weed stretched ahead of him as far as he could 
see, two feet deep, like a meadow of very overgrown grass. 
Harry was staring unblinkingly ahead of him, trying to discern 
shapes through the gloom ... and then, without warning, 
something grabbed hold of his ankle. 
Harry twisted his body around and saw a Grindylow, a 
small, horned water demon, poking out of the weeds, its long 
fingers clutched tightly around Harry’s leg, its pointed fangs 
bared – Harry stuck his webbed hand quickly inside his robes 
and fumbled for his wand – by the time he had grasped it, two 
more Grindylows had risen out of the weed, had seized hand-
fuls of Harry’s robes, and were attempting to drag him down.