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?”

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<== попередня сторінка	\|	наступна сторінка ==>
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.	\|	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.

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