MORALITY ⟶ Angelina Johnson [1]

Chapter Forty-Three

[Chapter Forty-Three]

The morning of the Second Task, Saros wished he could say that he had slept through the entire night peacefully, but he had been plagued by a mixture of nightmares. From the nightmares of the lethifold to his parents to the idea of the transfiguration going wrong during the task, he had tossed and turned the entire night. But when it was time to get up, Saros pushed himself to the edge of the bed and sat there for a few minutes, trying to become more awake and alert. However, as he glanced over, he saw that his prosthetic was still propped up by his bedside, leaving him even more confused.

So they hadn't taken that from him, but what was it that they did take? Rolling over to the end of his bed, Saros opened up his trunk and peered inside, but nothing seemed out of order. What would he miss the most that hadn't been taken from him? He truly didn't understand and he figured it was going to come as a full surprise when the time came. Placing on his prosthetic, he knew he had made a promise to Angelina the night before about eating a healthy breakfast so that he had enough energy to get through the task.

He didn't feel the least bit hungry but he knew he couldn't expect himself to get through the day without something in his stomach. Pushing himself up, he walked over to the washroom to brush his teeth and get dressed while the rest of his dormmates were asleep. As he was brushing his teeth, Saros stared at himself in the mirror, going over what he needed to do in order to enter the lake, while also reciting the song from the egg.

Come seek us where our voices sound,
We cannot sing above the ground,
And while you're searching ponder this;
We've taken what you'll sorely miss,
An hour long you'll have to look,
And to recover what we took,
But past an hour, the prospect's black,
Too late, it's gone, it won't come back.

"We've taken what you'll sorely miss," he repeated to himself with his mouth practically foaming before he spat into the sink. He gripped the sides of the sink while staring down at the drain before looking up again. "It never said it had to be a thing...it didn't have to be a thing!"

How he had managed to completely dismiss all options, Saros could have scolded himself, but it was suddenly making sense if they hadn't taken any of his personal belongings that he would miss, what about a person? Surely, there would be people he would miss if they were taken from him, but who had they taken from him? There were multiple prospects that continued to flash in his mind, but the only thing Saros could think of was the ending part of the clue that the egg had given him.

"But past an hour, the prospect's black, too late, it's gone, it won't come back."

He couldn't imagine that the Ministry would allow other people to be placed in danger for the sake of competition but the more Saros thought about it, he was nearly mangled by a dragon out in the arena for the sake of entertainment, who knew how far the competition would go. Leaving the dorms and heading directly out of the Common Room, Saros made his way out of the dungeon corridors and up the stairs in the direction of the Great Hall.