Stardust

Chapter 10

On the last Friday of October 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. As Stella and her friends pounded down the lawn she saw that the seats that had encircled the dragons' enclosure in October were now ranged along the opposite bank, rising in stands that were packed to the bursting point and reflected in the lake below. Soon, she had to say goodbye to her friends and meet with judges and other champions.

"You got this, okay?" Leigh said and hugged her.

"Of course, ma'am!" Stella answered and laughed. They all wished her luck and walked away, but not before Draco gave her a big speech about how she is amazing and how she got this, she is Slytherin after all. They all wondered where Lizzie was on such a big day, but Stella knew.

The excited babble of the crowd echoed strangely across the water as Stella 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. Harry, Fleur, and Krum were beside the judges' table, watching her sprint toward them. Someone would say she was late, but she thought she was just on time.

"I'm . . . here..." she said when she reached the table and glanced at Fleur who smiled briefly but looked down. Stella slowly moved towards her and gently touched her hand which made Fleur take it without thinking and squeeze it a little. Stella smiled and caressed the circles at the back of her hand.

Dumbledore smiled at Stella, but Karkaroff and Madame Maxime didn't look at all pleased to see her... It was obvious from the looks on their faces that they had thought he wasn't going to turn up. Stella took off her hoodie and jeans leaving herself in a swimming suit on this cold November morning. The champions lined up next to the water and waited for next instructions. Stella caught Neville's eyes in the crowd and smiled widely, she was now tightly gripping the gillyweed.

Bagman returned to the judges' table after talking a bit with Harry; he pointed his wand at his throat, 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, Stella stuffed the gillyweed into her mouth, and waded out into the lake. It was so cold she felt the skin on her legs searing as though this were fire, not icy water. Stella felt as though an invisible pillow had been pressed over her mouth and nose. She tried to draw breath, but it made her head spin; her lungs were empty, and she suddenly felt a piercing pain on either side of her neck — Stella clapped her hands around her throat and felt two large slits just below her ears, flapping in the cold air... she had gills. Without pausing to think, she did the only thing that made sense — she flung himself forward into the water.

The first gulp of icy lake water felt like the breath of life. Her head had stopped spinning; she took another great gulp of water and felt it pass smoothly through her gills, sending oxygen back to her brain. She stretched out her hands in front of her and stared at them. They looked green and ghostly under the water, and they had become webbed. She twisted around and looked at her bare feet — they had become elongated and the toes were webbed too: It looked as though she had sprouted flippers.

The water didn't feel icy anymore either... on the contrary, she felt pleasantly cool and very light... Stella struck out once more, marveling at how far and fast her flipper-like feet propelled her through the water, and noticing how clearly she could see, and how she no longer seemed to need to blink. She had soon swum so far into the lake that she could no longer see the bottom. She flipped over and dived into its depths.