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A worried Ludo Bagman headed toward us, but he didn't have time to reach us. The crowd in the bleachers began to rumble, watching the path to Hogwarts as a disheveled Potter in his school uniform ran headlong down it. At his side, the house-elf was bouncing merrily, trying to tell him something. He was terribly ridiculous, in a vest and green shorts, with an orange tie, and, like the cherry on the cake, in a bright red festive cone cap. The picture was so ridiculous that I couldn't help laughing, trying to remember, in my mind, if there were circumstances under which Dobby had been released. And how was it done? The headmaster still has the diary. But is it really important? Potter must have found a way to annoy my dead daddy.
Distracted for a moment from the events around, I did not notice how the out of breath Potter got to us, and Ludo Bagman clucked with concern around him. The house-elf managed to disappear, giving Harry some gillyweed. Well, it looks like the Hero of All England was not left without help.
After making sure Potter was ready, Bagman strode quickly to the judges' tribune, and stepping into his seat, put his wand to his throat, uttering: "Sonorus," his voice echoed around the room:
"Well, our contestants are ready for the second task. Let's start on my whistle. In one hour, they must find what has been taken from them. So on the count of three: one... two... three..."
Krum ran briskly into the lake, using his wand to begin the transfiguration of the upper half of his torso as he went. The final features were not yet clear, but the Bulgarian slipped his wand into the sheath on his leg and dove into the water. Fleur conjured up a Bubble-Head charm and dived in the same hurry. Potter didn't even undress much, just threw off his robe, boots, and socks, chewing on a handful of gillyweed along the way. The further he went, the more often there were chuckles from the audience and all sorts of murmurs. In front of the spectators, by the way, there were four large circles, as if made of water, on the surface of which one could see a semi-transparent picture of what was going on with the champions. Who was the cameraman?
I shook my head and noticed the transparent silhouette of a pixie-like creature flying briskly and silently nearby. I'm pretty sure it's Lady Greengrass's handiwork. Creating a small golem and enchanting those circles with an image might well have been her idea. Or someone else, but the implementation of the "cameraman" is definitely hers.
I shrugged, picked up six stones on the shore, and with constant transfiguration turned them into simple stone rings, began to enchant them as personal portkeys. Six, because I have a lot of space in my pocket, and they can come in handy. Personal, or should I say single, because it gives the most stable movement. While I was waving a wand over the resulting rings, causing with my alleged inaction the murmur and mockery of the crowd in my direction, I was pondering a simple question - why the principle of movement as in a portkey is not used as a spell? This is far from an apparation. It's a kind of "warp" movement, even the description is similar. Apparition creates a puncture in the space between its two points, stretching the wizard through the puncture. Portkey encloses the wizard in a kind of oval, separating him from the rest of the space and moving through it without encountering obstacles.
Harry was already up to his waist in water and scratching his neck with his fingers, he plunged into the water almost immediately, and the invisible golem dived in after him, showing on the screen Potter, incredibly surprised by his transformation. Now he had membranes between his fingers, and his feet were slightly elongated, turning into fins. The spectators in the bleachers gasped and turned their attention to me, still standing there in my clothes.
"What's Max Knight waiting for?" came the voice of Bagman, commenting with excitement on what was happening.
I leaned my wand against my throat and conjured Sonorus, distracted from the enchantment rings.
"We can't take anything but the wand with us," I looked at the judge's tribune. "So I am enchanting everything on the go. Accio - not my style."
It took me fifteen minutes to enchant correctly and competently. In the meantime, I glanced at the screens, watching the actions of the other champions. Bagman was heating up the atmosphere, admiring Krum's partial transfiguration skills, for the Bulgarian had turned part of himself into a shark, swimming rather briskly near the bottom and firing back at the grindylows that popped out of the seaweed now and then. Krum would have won, but what a misfortune - sharks have poor hearing, and it seems that he has not studied the map of the lake bottom in the library. In general, he does not know which way to swim.
Fleur managed to get caught in a tough grindilow trap, and they beat her up pretty bad, so to speak. These devils love to bite, drink blood, and simply mock the victim in every possible way. The poor Veela, it seems, did not learn the peculiarities of spells under water, for which she paid, being practically defenseless. And she wasn't much of a swimmer, either. She was a pretty smart girl, but in this particular situation, a joke from a past life came to my mind. A little blonde girl stands by the mirror, all saddened, and says: "What have I done? Oh, what have I done! I'm so stupid." But then she examined herself in the mirror, wiped away an invisible tear, and smiled: "Well, at least I'm beautiful."
On the other hand, Potter swam one of the best and how he got away from the grindylow! With sparks that turned into hot jets under the water. You'd think that was exactly what he was planning!