Harry Potter: The Golden Viper

The sharp, piercing blast of the whistle cut through the cold morning air, and the stands erupted in cheers and applause.

Hermione's heart was filled with overwhelming concern for Harry and Ron's safety. She paid absolutely no attention to what the other champions were doing around her. She had also temporarily cast aside her own deeply private worry about whether she would be "utterly disgraced" if her performance was poor.

At this moment, only one thing mattered: she wanted nothing more than to bring her two best friends back to safety as quickly as possible.

Taking off her shoes and socks, Hermione took a deep breath. She grasped her wand as it slipped from her sleeve, and after a faint, shimmering bubble formed in the air and enclosed her head, Hermione exhaled heavily.

She took one final, lingering look at the pale sunlight filtering through the gathering clouds above. With a surge of determination that overcame her fear, Hermione leaped up from the platform.

The impact with the water's surface created a tremendous splash.

The sound echoed across the lake as a round of enthusiastic applause rose from the spectators, their cheers following her down into the depths.

Her field of vision suddenly darkened. The moment her athletic sportswear made contact with the water's surface, she felt the familiar tingle of magic coursing through the cloth as it underwent its transformation, shifting its material composition to become as form-fitting as a professional swimsuit, clinging to her body like a second skin.

Despite the urgency of her mission, Hermione felt a wave of gratitude as she remembered that Professor Watson's surveillance mirrors had remained above water.

The thought of appearing in this state in front of the entire crowd—not to mention the international wizarding community watching through magical broadcasts would have been mortifying beyond description.

The protective bubble surrounding her head was constantly distorted by the rippling waves and currents, creating an effect that made her vision somewhat unreliable and disorienting. Rather than fighting against this natural phenomenon, Hermione forced herself to remain calm and composed, allowing her body to sink naturally toward the lake bottom while she adjusted to her new aquatic environment.

When her feet finally made contact with the sandy bottom of the lake, she pointed her wand at her legs.

In a sensation like melting heat that seemed to radiate from her very bones through her muscles and skin. She watched as her two legs, pressed tightly together, began to merge and elongate. A magnificent fish tail emerged where her legs had been. The transformation extended up, wrapping around her hips and waist.

The new addition felt surprisingly natural, as if it had always been part of her body. With just a gentle, experimental flick of her newly formed tail fin, Hermione suddenly found herself rising several feet through the water column, floating effortlessly at mid-depth like a creature born to this aquatic land.

Everything was proceeding more smoothly than she had dared to hope!

The fact that no accidents, complications, or magical mishaps had occurred so far filled Hermione with a sense of cautious optimism, and she finally allowed herself a moment to survey her new surroundings and assess the challenges that lay ahead,

The visibility beneath the lake's surface was considerably worse than she had anticipated during her theoretical preparations. A few feet below the surface, she could still detect faint traces of natural light filtering down from above. However, the deeper reaches of the Black Lake seemed to have an ability to swallow light completely, creating impenetrable darkness that appeared to stretch on forever.

The enthusiastic cheering from the lakeside spectators had not diminished, but it seemed to come from another world, muffled and distorted by the water until it became an indistinct murmur.

What Hermione could clearly hear beneath the rippling blue waves was the constant "gurgling" sound of water moving through unseen passages and around hidden obstacles.

Each champion's diving platform was thirty feet apart. When she had first entered the water, Hermione could still vaguely hear the sounds of Cedric and Krum's entries on sides of her. But now, as minutes ticked by, these sounds had completely disappeared, leaving her truly alone and adding a sense of urgency to her anxious heart.

"Lumos!" Hermione called out softly.

The incantation felt different here, requiring slightly more concentration to achieve the desired effect. The light that emanated from her wand tip was ethereal resembling moonlight that had been weakened by passage through layers of thick, obscuring clouds.

While the lighting was certainly dim and somewhat feeble, it provided enough visibility to ensure that her surroundings were no longer shrouded in complete darkness.

From a purely logical standpoint, Harry and Ron were highly unlikely to be located anywhere near the shore, where the water was relatively shallow and easily accessible. Instead, they were almost certainly somewhere in the center of the lake, in the deepest and most challenging areas to reach.

This conclusion was based on her knowledge of the creatures who had taken them—the merpeople. These aquatic creatures were naturally adapted to deep water environments and would feel most comfortable in the lake's depths.

She remembered from the Christmas ball how Professor Dumbledore and Professor Watson had worked together to create that fantastic ice castle on the surface of the lake. During their dinner in the ice castle, a large group of merpeople had swum past beneath the ice which was clearly near their living area.

The decision to transform herself with a tail had been absolutely correct. Each movement of her powerful tail fin, no matter how clumsy or inexperienced, propelled her body forward through the water with remarkable efficiency, and she soon found herself moving away from the shore at a pace that would have been impossible for any human swimmer to maintain.

She swam around in a black, hazy, strange landscape. After diving deeper, even the sound of rippling waves grew distant.

Even with her wand's steady illumination, the visible scenery remained limited to approximately twenty feet in any direction. This meant that every time Hermione executed two powerful flicks of her tail fin, entirely new scenery would suddenly emerge from the impenetrable darkness ahead.

The underwater landscape was diverse and fascinating, despite its ominous appearance. Dense jungles of swaying, tangled black water plants swelled in the gentle current. Broad, flat stretches of muddy lake bottom extended in all directions, scattered with gleaming small stones.

She continued swimming deeper and deeper, always heading toward what she hoped was the center of the lake, straining her eyes wide in an effort to peer through the grayish, eerie water and penetrate the dark haziness that surrounded her on all sides.

This was now completely deep water territory, far from the crystal blue clarity of tropical seas where Muggles enjoyed their diving. Despite the murky appearance, the lake was still teeming with aquatic life of all descriptions.

Schools of small fish, gleaming like silver darts in her wandlight, passed by her sides in coordinated formations. Some of these creatures with excessive curiosity even tried to puncture the bubble around her head.

"Oh, go away!" Hermione exclaimed with irritation.

The little fish's persistent "attacks" were making her jumpy and paranoid about potential threats, causing her to flinch at every unexpected movement. She waved her wand in sweeping arcs, sending out jets of water to drive these creatures away.

By her best estimation, approximately twenty minutes had probably passed since the competition began. So far, the only significant obstacle she had encountered was her own emotional state—her overly eager mood and desperate urgency had caused her to forget the importance of maintaining a steady, sustainable swimming rhythm.

Her face, enclosed within the protective bubble, had become uncomfortably sweaty from the exertion and stress, and she now was forced to pause her progress to recover her strength and regulate her breathing.

But the moment she stopped moving, the surrounding terror immediately transformed from a vague, background concern into something concrete and overwhelming.

The green water plants swaying below her took on a more sinister appearance resembling grasping tentacles that seemed ready to wrap around her body and drag her down into the deeper, darker gullies at any moment.

Those seemingly ordinary dark crevices in the lake bed continuously released streams of bubbles, creating the unsettling impression that some enormous, predatory creature was lurking just out of sight, ready to launch a surprise attack the moment she let her guard down.

Her nerves were stretched to the breaking point when a large black shadow suddenly drifted past her peripheral vision. Before her rational mind could process what she was seeing and give an appropriate response, her body had already reacted with the quick reflexes of someone expecting mortal danger.

A silver light shot out from her wand tip, and the mysterious shadow immediately exploded into countless fragments under the force of her hastily cast spell.

Only when the debris shooting in all directions struck the Iron Armor Charm she had instinctively cast in front of herself did Hermione realize with a mixture of relief and embarrassment that her "attacker" had been nothing more than a large, dark piece of driftwood floating harmlessly through the water.

This incident gave her a reminder of how the isolation and sensory deprivation of the underwater environment was affecting her mental state. She couldn't stop moving again, or sooner or later the oppressive darkness and unnatural silence would drive her to complete paranoid madness.

This sobering realization came on Hermione with clarity, and she forced her tail fin to begin moving again with determination.

Whoosh!

After swimming forward for several more minutes, maintaining a steady pace that balanced speed with energy conservation, a sudden disturbance from the right front portion of her field of vision immediately put her on high alert.

She positioned her wand protectively in front of her body, holding it ready to cast either defensive or offensive spells as circumstances might require. Gently moving her tail fin in small motions, she managed to keep herself suspended in the water column at a constant depth while making her wand emit a brighter, more focused beam of light that could penetrate further into the surrounding darkness.

Splash!

The sound shattered the relative quiet of the deep water as a violent, boiling column of water suddenly erupted from the space directly ahead of her.

The displaced water created a pressure wave that Hermione could feel against her body, a clear indication that someone or something had just cast a powerful spell in her vicinity.

She quickly flicked her tail fin in a sharp evasive maneuver just in time to avoid the dangerous water column that passed inches from her position.

Someone ahead was in trouble!

This thought struck Hermione, but immediately afterward, she found herself caught in a moral dilemma. From a purely logical standpoint, she shouldn't involve herself in other people's difficulties or complications. The rescue of Harry and Ron was not only her primary objective but the most important thing in her entire world at this moment.

But if another person was genuinely in danger, could she simply swim past and ignore their plight?

After a few seconds of intense internal debate, Hermione made her decision. She would investigate the situation, at least enough to determine whether intervention was necessary. However, she would be cautious and strategic about it, not rushing recklessly into potential danger without proper investigation.

Holding her wand in front of her like a torch, she lowered herself to a deeper position in the water column where the darkness would provide better concealment. Then, carefully avoiding the direction from which the magical attack had originated, she began to make a wide, circular approach to the area of disturbance.

Splash!

Another spell cut through the murky lake water with tremendous force, its passage creating a trail of agitated bubbles and displaced sediment that rose toward the surface like an underwater tornado.

Hermione, who had been carefully moving along the lake bottom while navigating around the dark gullies and crevices, quickly sought cover behind a massive reef that rose from the lake bed like an underwater mountain.

The reef was ancient and its surface were pockmarked with holes and passages due to countless years of water erosion. Through these natural windows, she could observe the fierce magical battle taking place in the open water ahead while remaining safely concealed from the combatants.

Her initial assessment had been correct—someone was indeed in trouble. However, from her current view point, Hermione found it impossible to determine whether the figure was Cedric or Viktor.

The distance and poor visibility made identification difficult, but she could clearly see that the male student had adopted a transformation strategy similar to her own approach.

While she had chosen to alter her lower body to gain aquatic mobility, this champion had focused his transformation on his upper body, creating a change that was both impressive and somewhat terrifying to see.

Where a human head should have been, there was now a massive shark's head with rows of sharp teeth that gleamed menacingly in the dim underwater light.

The source of the champion's predicament became clear as Hermione observed the scene more carefully. His opponent was a kappa—a water demon that was covered in fish-like scales and its overall appearance was resembling a hairless monkey that had been adapted for aquatic life.

Most distinctive was the hollow depression in the top of its head, which according to folklore was the source of its supernatural strength.

In this aquatic environment, the kappa displayed exceptional agility and grace that put even the transformed champion at a severe disadvantage. It rapidly moved its long-webbed limbs, using a strange dog-paddle method to swim in the water, easily dodging the spells the champion shot at it.

Gradually, Hermione discerned that this shark-headed figure must be Krum rather than Cedric—she had attended physical education classes with Cedric and was familiar with his attack style.

Krum obviously wanted desperately to break free from the kappa, but his spells simply couldn't hit it. Every time he tried to break through in a certain direction, the kappa trapping him would immediately show strong aggressiveness, suddenly accelerating to Krum's front and waving its sharp-clawed arms to force him back.

Hermione began to frown with concentration, her mind picking up on subtle behavioral clues that didn't quite fit with her knowledge of kappa psychology and hunting patterns.

The creature's actions seemed oddly restrained and purposeful, as if it were following some kind of predetermined script rather than acting on natural predatory instincts.

The kappa appeared to be just toying with Krum, showing no real interest in causing him serious harm or dragging him to the depths as would be typical of such creatures. Instead, it seemed only focused on trapping him in this specific location, preventing his escape while avoiding any actions that might result in permanent injury or death.

This behavior was highly unusual and didn't conform to established kappa behavioral patterns at all, at least according to texts she had studied on the subject.

The only logical explanation that Hermione could think of was that these creatures had received specific instructions from the tournament organizers to serve as obstacles for the champions—designed to create difficulties, delays, and challenges without actually causing life-threatening harm.

The Triwizard Tournament had always been dangerous, but the organizers would never deliberately arrange for participants to be killed or seriously injured by the obstacles they encountered. The kappa's restrained behavior made perfect sense when viewed through this explanation.

This realization was both reassuring and tactically valuable. Hermione made a careful mental note that if she encountered similar creatures during her own journey, she should remember to flee immediately rather than become entangled in lengthy combat.

The kappa were clearly designed to be time-wasters rather than genuine threats, and any champion who allowed themselves to become trapped in long battles with these creatures would find their hour rapidly slipping away.

As for Krum's current predicament, she could only say that he was incredibly unlucky to encounter such an obstacle so early in his mission.

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