Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

Send date of next Hogsmeade weekend by return owl. 
Harry turned the parchment over and looked at the back, hoping to see something else, but it was 
blank. 
“Weekend after next,” whispered Hermione, who had read the note over Harrys shoulder. “Here 
- take my quill and send this owl back straight away.”
Harry scribbled the dates down on the back of Sirius’s letter, tied it onto the brown owl’s leg, 
and watched it take flight again. What had he expected? Advice on how to survive underwater? 
He had been so intent on telling Sirius all about Snape and Moody he had completely forgotten 
to mention the eggs clue. 
“What’s he want to know about the next Hogsmeade weekend for?” said Ron.
“Dunno,” said Harry dully. The momentary happiness that had flared inside him at the sight of 
the owl had died. “Come on… Care of Magical Creatures.” 
Whether Hagrid was trying to make up for the Blast-Ended Skrewts, or because there were now 
only two skrewts left, or because he was trying to prove he could do anything that Professor 
Grubbly-Plank could. Harry didnt know, but Hagrid had been continuing her lessons on unicorns 
ever since he’d returned to work. It turned out that Hagrid knew quite as much about unicorns as 
he did about monsters, though it was clear that he found their lack of poisonous fangs 
disappointing. 

---

Today he had managed to capture two unicorn foals. Unlike full-grown unicorns, they were pure 
gold. Parvati and Lavender went into transports of delight at the sight of them, and even Pansy 
Parkinson had to work hard to conceal how much she liked them. 
“Easier ter spot than the adults,” Hagrid told the class. “They turn silver when they’re abou’ two 
years old, an’ they grow horns at aroun four. Don’ go pure white till they’re full grown, ‘round 
about seven. They’re a bit more trustin when they’re babies… don mind boys so much… C’mon, 
move in a bit, yeh can pat ‘em if yeh want… give ‘em a few o’ these sugar lumps…
“You okay Harry?” Hagrid muttered, moving aside slightly, while most of the others swarmed 
around the baby unicorns. 
“Yeah,” said Harry.
“Jus’ nervous, eh?” said Hagrid. 
“Bit,” said Harry. 
“Harry,” said Hagrid, clapping a massive hand on his shoulder, so that Harry’s knees buckled 
under its weight, “I’d’ve bin worried before I saw yeh take on tha Horntail, but I know now yeh 
can do anythin’ yeh set yer mind ter. I’m not worried at all. Yeh’re goin ter be fine. Got yer clue 
worked out, haven’ yeh?” 
Harry nodded, but even as he did so, an insane urge to confess that he didn’t have any idea how 
to survive at the bottom of the lake for an hour came over him. He looked up at Hagrid - perhaps 
he had to go into the lake sometimes, to deal with the creatures in it? He looked after everything 
else on the grounds, after all- 
“Yeh’re goin’ ter win,” Hagrid growled, patting Harrys shoulder again, so that Harry actually felt 
himself sink a couple of inches into the soft ground. “I know it. I can feel it. Yeh’re goin’ ter 
win, Harry” 
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 Rons 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 Olde 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 Weasleys 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 Youve Wised Up. 
Crookshanks crawled into Harrys lap and curled up, purring deeply. The common room emptied 
slowly around Harry. People kept wishing him luck for the next morning in cheery, confident 
voices like Hagrid s, all of them apparently convinced that he was about to pull off another 
stunning performance like the one he had managed in the first task. Harry couldn’t answer them, 
he just nodded, feeling as though there were a golfball stuck in his throat. By ten to midnight, he 
was alone in the room with Crookshanks. He had searched all the remaining books, and Ron and 
Hermione had not come back. 
It’s over, he told himself. You can’t do it. You’ll just have to go down to the lake in the morning 
and tell the judges…
He imagined himself explaining that he couldn’t do the task. He pictured Bagman’s look of 
round-eyed surprise, Karkaroffs satisfied, yellow-toothed smile. He could almost hear Fleur 
Delacour saying “I knew it… ‘e is too young, ‘e is only a little boy.” He saw Malfoy flashing his 
POTTER STINKS badge at the front of the crowd, saw Hagrid s crestfallen, disbelieving face…
Forgetting that Crookshanks was on his lap. Harry stood up very suddenly; Crookshanks hissed 
angrily as he landed on the floor, gave Harry a disgusted look, and stalked away with his 
bottlebrush tail in the air, but Harry was already hurrying up the spiral staircase to his 

---

dormitory… He would grab the Invisibility Cloak and go back to the library, he’d stay there all 
night if he had to…
“Lumos,” Harry whispered fifteen minutes later as he opened the library door. 
Wand tip alight, he crept along the bookshelves, pulling down more books – books of hexes and 
charms, books on merpeople and water monsters, books on famous witches and wizards, on 
magical inventions, on anything at all that might include one passing reference to underwater 
survival. He carried them over to a table, then set to work, searching them by the narrow beam of 
his wand, occasionally checking his watch…
One in the morning… two in the morning… the only way he could keep going was to tell 
himself, over and over again, next book… in the next one… the next one…
The mermaid in the painting in the prefects’ bathroom was laughing. Harry was bobbing like a 
cork in bubbly water next to her rock, while she held his Firebolt over his head. 
“Come and get it!” she giggled maliciously. “Come on, jump!” 
“I can’t,” Harry panted, snatching at the Firebolt, and struggling not to sink. “Give it to me!” 
But she just poked him painfully in the side with the end of the broomstick, laughing at him. 
“That hurts - get off- ouch -” 
“Harry Potter must wake up, sir!” 
“Stop poking me -” 
“Dobby must poke Harry Potter, sir, he must wake up!” 
Harry opened his eyes. He was still in the library; the Invisibility Cloak had slipped off his head 
as he’d slept, and the side of his face was stuck to the pages of Where There’s a Wand, There’s a 
Way. He sat up, straightening his glasses, blinking in the bright daylight. 
“Harry Potter needs to hurry!” squeaked Dobby. “The second task starts in ten minutes, and 
Harry Potter -” 
“Ten minutes?” Harry croaked. “Ten - ten minutes?” 
He looked down at his watch. Dobby was right. It was twenty past nine. A large, dead weight 
seemed to fall through Harry’s chest into his stomach. 
“Hurry, Harry Potter!” squeaked Dobby, plucking at Harry’s sleeve. “You is supposed to be 
down by the lake with the other champions, sir!” 

---

“It’s too late, Dobby,” Harry said hopelessly. “I’m not doing the task, I don’t know how-” 
“Harry Potter will do the task!” squeaked the elf. “Dobby knew Harry had not found the right 
book, so Dobby did it for him!” 
“What?” said Harry. “But you don’t know what the second task is -” 
“Dobby knows, sir! Harry Potter has to go into the lake and find his Wheezy -”
“Find my what?” 
“- and take his Wheezy back from the merpeople!” 
“What’s a Wheezy?” 
“Your Wheezy, sir, your Wheezy-Wheezy who is giving Dobby his sweater!” Dobby plucked at 
the shrunken maroon sweater he was now wearing over his shorts. 
“What?” Harry gasped. “They’ve got… they’ve got Ron?” 
“The thing Harry Potter will miss most, sir!” squeaked Dobby. “‘But past an hour- ‘“ 
“- ‘the prospect’s black,’” Harry recited, staring, horror-struck, at the elf. “‘Too late, it’s gone, it 
won’t come back.’ Dobby - what’ve I got to do?” 
“You has to eat this, sir!” squeaked the elf, and he put his hand in the pocket of his shorts and 
drew out a ball of what looked like slimy, grayish-green rat tails. “Right before you go into the 
lake, sir - gillyweed!” 
“What’s it do?” said Harry, staring at the gillyweed.
“It will make Harry Potter breathe underwater, sir!” 
“Dobby,” said Harry frantically, “listen - are you sure about this?” 
He couldn’t quite forget that the last time Dobby had tried to “help” him, he had ended up with 
no bones in his right arm. 
“Dobby is quite sure, sir!” said the elf earnestly. “Dobby hears things, sir, he is a house-elf, he 
goes all over the castle as he lights the fires and mops the floors. Dobby heard Professor 
McGonagall and Professor Moody in the staffroom, talking about the next task… Dobby cannot 
let Harry Potter lose his Wheezy!” 
Harrys doubts vanished. Jumping to his feet he pulled off the Invisibility Cloak, stuffed it into his 
bag, grabbed the gillyweed, and put it into his pocket, then tore out of the library with Dobby at 
his heels. 

---

“Dobby is supposed to be in the kitchens, sir!” Dobby squealed as they burst into the corridor. 
“Dobby will be missed - good luck, Harry Potter, sir, good luck!” 
“See you later, Dobby!” Harry shouted, and he sprinted along the corridor and down the stairs, 
three at a time. 
The entrance hall contained a few last-minute stragglers, all leaving the Great Hall after 
breakfast and heading through the double oak doors to watch the second task. 
They stared as Harry flashed past, sending Colin and Dennis Creevey flying as he leapt down the 
stone steps and out onto the bright, chilly grounds. 
As he pounded down the lawn he saw that the seats that had encircled the dragons’ enclosure in 
November were now ranged along the opposite bank, rising in stands that were packed to the 
bursting point and reflected in the lake below. The excited babble of the crowd echoed strangely 
across the water as Harry ran flat-out around the other side of the lake toward the judges, who 
were sitting at another golddraped table at the water’s edge. Cedric, Fleur, and Krum were beside 
the judges’ table, watching Harry sprint toward them. 
“I’m… here…” Harry panted, skidding to a halt in the mud and accidentally splattering Fleurs 
robes. 
“Where have you been?” said a bossy, disapproving voice. “The task’s about to start!” 
Harry looked around. 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; he had a stitch in his side that felt as 
though he had a knife between his ribs, but there was no time to get rid of it; Ludo Bagman was 
now moving among the champions, spacing them along the bank at intervals of ten feet. Harry 
was on the very end of the line, next to 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, 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. 
It was so cold he felt the skin on his legs searing as though this were 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. 
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 goose 
pimples; 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 pressed 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 forward 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 oxygen 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 the toes were webbed too: 
It looked as though he had sprouted flippers. 
The water didn’t feel icy anymore either… on the contrary, he felt pleasantly cool and very 
light… Harry struck out once more, marveling at how far and fast his flipper-like feet propelled 
him through the vater, and noticing how clearly he could see, and how he no longer seemed to 
need to blink. He had soon swum so far into the lake that he could no longer see the bottom. 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 throuugh the water new scenes seemed to loom 
suddenly out of the incoming darkness: forests of rippling, tangled black weed, wide plains of 
mud littered with dull, glimmering stones. He swam deeper and deeper, out toward the middle of 
the lake, his eyes wide, staring through the eerily gray-lit water around him to the shadow 
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 weed, 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 handfuls of Harry’s robes, 
and were attempting to drag him down. 
“Relashio!” Harry shouted, except that no sound came out… A large bubble issued from his 
mouth, and his wand, instead of sending sparks at the grindylows, pelted them with what seemed 
to be a jet of boiling water, for where it struck them, angry red patches appeared on their green 
skin. Harry pulled his ankle out of the grindylows grip and swam, as fast as he could, 
occasionally sending more jets of hot water over his shoulder at random; every now and then he 
felt one of the grindylows snatch at his foot again, and he kicked out, hard; finally, he felt his 
foot connect with a horned skull, and looking back, saw the dazed grindylow floating away, 
cross-eyed, while its fellows shook their fists at Harry and sank back into the weed. 
Harry slowed down a little, slipped his wand back inside his robes, and looked around, listening 
again. He turned full circle in the water, the silence pressing harder than ever against his 
eardrums. He knew he must be even deeper in the lake now, but nothing was moving but the 
rippling weed.
“How are you getting on?” 
Harry thought he was having a heart attack. He whipped around and saw Moaning Myrtle 
floating hazily in front of him, gazing at him through her thick, pearly glasses. 
“Myrtle!” Harry tried to shout - but once again, nothing came out of his mouth but a very large 
bubble. Moaning Myrtle actually giggled. 
“You want to try over there!” she said, pointing. “I won’t come with you… I don’t like them 
much, they always chase me when I get too close…” 

---

Harry gave her the thumbs-up to show his thanks and set off once more, careful to swim a bit 
higher over the weed to avoid any more grindylows that might be lurking there. 
He swam on for what felt like at least twenty minutes. He was passing over vast expanses of 
black mud now, which swirled murkily as he disturbed the water. Then, at long last, he heard a 
snatch of haunting mersong.
“