Nico, Voldemort's Older Brother (Being Rewritten)

Selena XXI

The rest of the days leading up to the second task, passed quickly. Before we knew it, it was the day of the second task. Serena got called down to Minerva's office, she wouldn't tell me why. I cast the Mist over Nico, so he would look like me. I, then shapeshifted into looking like Nico.

I arrived at the edge of the lake, where the judges were sitting. I was the second to last one to arrive, Harry arrived after me.

"I'm . . . here . . ." Harry panted, skidding to a halt in the mud and accidentally splattering Fleur's robes.

"Where have you been?" said a bossy, disapproving voice. "The task's about to start!"

Percy Weasley was sitting at the judges' table — Mr. Crouch had failed to turn up again.

"Now, now, Percy!" said Ludo Bagman, who was looking intensely relieved to see Harry. "Let him catch his breath!"

Dumbledore smiled at Harry, but Karkaroff and Madame Maxime didn't look at all pleased to see him. . . . It was obvious from the looks on their faces that they had thought he wasn't going to turn up.

Harry bent over, hands on his knees, gasping for breath.

Ludo Bagman was now moving among the champions, spacing them along the bank at intervals of ten feet.

I was next to Krum.

Harry was on the very end of the line, the other side of Krum, who was wearing swimming trunks and was holding his wand ready.

"All right, Harry?" Bagman whispered as he moved Harry a few feet farther away from Krum. "Know what you're going to do?"

"Yeah," Harry panted, massaging his ribs.

Bagman gave Harry's shoulder a quick squeeze and returned to the judges' table; he pointed his wand at his throat as he had done at the World Cup, said, "Sonorus!" and his voice boomed out across the dark water toward 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, I pulled off my shoes and socks, then dove into the water.

I became a dolphin and swam through the cool, light water. I dove down to the bottom, seeing; forests of rippling, tangled black weed, wide plains of mud littered with dull, glimmering stones. I swam deeper and deeper, out toward the middle of the lake, my eyes wide, staring through the eerily gray-lit water around him to the shadows beyond, where the water became opaque.

Small fish flickered past me like silver darts. Once or twice I thought I saw something larger moving ahead of me, but when I got nearer, I 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, nor, the giant squid.

Light green weed stretched ahead of me as far as I could see, like a meadow of very overgrown grass.

I used echolocation to figure out where the merpeople lived. Of course, I could've used my ability as the Guardian of Magical Creatures to find them, but where's the fun in that?

A cluster of crude stone dwellings stained with algae loomed suddenly out of the gloom on all sides. Here and there at the dark windows, I saw faces.

The merpeople had grayish skin and long, wild, dark green hair. Their eyes were yellow, as were their broken teeth, and they wore thick ropes of pebbles around their necks. They bowed at me as I swam past; one or two of them emerged from their caves to watch me better, their powerful, silver fish tails beating the water, spears clutched in their hands.