J. Rowling - Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

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, Karkaroff’s 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!”

Harry’s 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 gold draped 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 Fleur’s 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.