Chapter 83: First Expedition, and Guiding Growth (1/2)
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The link is also in the synopsis.
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[The chapter is edited by my Editor: Alan_Loo/AlanL]
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”I need to rethink my life choices,” sighed Quinn as he walked towards the Great Lake.
It was the start of January, and Quinn had just returned to Hogwarts after the Christmas break. The weather was the coldest of the year. Snow was falling almost constantly, and it covered the entire landscape around Hogwarts in white.
In that heavy snow, Quinn was out of the warmth of the castle. He was about to start his expedition to the landlocked, freshwater lake that served as a natural reserve for magical marine creatures.
”Why am I going swimming in January,” muttered Quinn to himself as he stomped his foot on the ground. Half a dome of the earth arose from underneath the white snow. ”Why couldn't it be April or later, or anytime that is warmer. Then, the water would feel nice.”
Quinn removed the many layers of clothes he was wearing and stuffed them into a small string bag with a minor expansion charm cast on it, leaving behind a pair of swimming trunks on his body. He tightened the string to squeeze shut the opening and stuck it to the inside surface of the dome.
With a tap, the half-dome closed itself to form a full-dome. Surrounding snow climbed the earth dome, covering it with white to camouflage it into the snowy surroundings.
”Haah~, this is cold,” Quinn breathed the chilly wind and exhaled icy mist. His skin was covered with goose pimples. However, Quinn wasn't shivering, nor were his teeth chattering due to the cold.
Despite not having cast heating charms on his body, Quinn was used to this level of cold because he had suffered worse in the Icy vault. Even though he used Blood magic in the vault, he could still feel an amount of chill, so this wasn't that big of a deal to Quinn.
”Let's do this!”
Quinn rubbed his hands to generate heat as he waded into the water.
”Oh yeah, now this cold,” he felt the cold water against his skin, searing as though it was fire and not icy water.
Quinn sucked in a sharp breath when he felt the chill from the water before his condition returned to normal as heating charms worked their charm to warm up his body.
The icy water wasn't cold enough to warrant the use of Blood magic. Blood magic was to deal with cold that could literally kill you within minutes.
As Quinn walked into the lake, water rose and the depth of the lake increased. Just when the water was at his chest level, a bubble appeared on the lower half of his face, forming a mask covering his nose, mouth, cheeks, jaw, and extended down to his neck.
For his first deepwater expedition, Quinn had cast a bubble-head charm that produced a bubble around the caster's face, giving them a continuous supply of oxygen and allowing them to breathe where they could not otherwise.
Submerging himself into the water, Quinn pushed himself off the stone floor and dove into the lake. The bubble-head charm did its work and Quinn was able to breathe normally.
Silence pressed upon his ears as he soared over a strange, dark, foggy landscape. He could only see ten feet around him so, as he swam through the water, new scenes seemed to loom suddenly out of the oncoming darkness; rippling forests, tangled black weed, wide plains of mud, littered with dull, glimmering stones. He swam deeper and deeper; out toward the middle of the lake. His eyes widened, and he stared through the eerily gray-lit water around him and the shadows beyond, where the water became opaque.
Small fish flickered past him like silver darts. Once or twice he thought he saw something larger moving ahead of him, but when Quinn got nearer, he discovered it to be nothing but a large, blackened log or a dense clump of weed. Light green weed stretched ahead of him as far as he could see, two feet deep, like a meadow of very overgrown grass.
Quinn was staring unblinkingly ahead of him, trying to discern shapes through the darkness... and then, without warning, something grabbed hold of his ankle.
He twisted his body around and saw a grindylow, a small pale-green skinned, horned water demon, poking out of the weed; its long fingers clutching tightly around Quinn's leg, its pointed fangs bared. Quinn sighed under his protective bubble, and a burst of magic from Quinn's foot blasted the tiny water demon away.
A small group of grindylows emerged from the weeds and tried to latch onto Quinn, but they crashed into an invisible shield before getting blasted off like the first one.
The tiny water demons didn't seem to understand the situation from watching their brethren getting blasted off, as more and more jumped out of the weeds, trying to latch onto Quinn. Their target stood still in his spot and continued to eject them far away from him, pelting them with magic as their green skins grew angry red patches.
Quinn didn't run away from the waves of grindylows and just kept shooting at them like it was some fun game, and the tiny suckers kept coming out of the weeds, trying to get their tiny claws on Quinn.
”Haha, this is fun! It's like a first-person shooter,” chuckled Quinn under his protection.
He continued to shoot at them for a couple of minutes before the grindylows understood what was happening and stopped attacking Quinn. They retreated back into the weeds and froze, peeking at him with their leafy green eyes.
Quinn swam away, and after swimming for a while, he turned full circle in the water, the silence pressing harder than ever against his eardrums. Quinn knew he must be even deeper in the lake now, but nothing was moving but the rippling weed.
'I am lost,' thought Quinn and decided to swim to the surface to gain a sense of his location.
Swimming up to the surface, Quinn saw he had swum further to the south and away from the castle. He had moved towards the Hogsmeade train station and the dock from where the first-year students boarded their boats to get to the castle.
”I need to swim westwards,” said Quinn, moving his hair out of his face. Quinn had observed the Kraken's tentacles, and he was able to deduce that the Kraken's main body hung out somewhere to the castle's west.
Quinn had given the giant squid being a Kraken theory a thought while he was home.
True giant squids (genus Architeuthis [1]) were deep-sea-dwelling creatures and can not live in freshwater, such as inland lochs in Scotland. It would not be able to stand the sunlight, pressure, salinity (or lack thereof) of the water, the space, or the lack of food. At one point during the books, it was fed bread, which it could not digest. Giant squids also had very tender skin that would break if touched, but the cephalopod giant living in the Great lake could push out children who fell into the lake.
This meant that the Hogwarts giant squid was of a magical species, and the Kraken was exactly the creature that would match the magical counterpart of the non-magical giant squid.
'Lucky that this one isn't a violent ship sinking monster but a semi-domesticated, peace-loving school pet that loves to chill,' thought Quinn as he dove back into the water and headed west.
This time around, Quinn swam a bit higher over the weed to avoid any more grindylows that might be lurking there. He swam on for what felt like at least thirty minutes. He passed over vast expanses of black mud now, which murkily swirled as he disturbed the water.
'Ugh, this is getting tiring,' thought Quinn. He started to feel tired. He had already been swimming for over fifty minutes.
'I need to learn magic that makes swimming easier, or at least I need to make some diving fins,' thought Quinn. Then, he stopped swimming for a second and looked at his feet; the next second, he conjured a pair of swimming fins on his feet. 'Alrighty, that was easy. Good job...'
Another ten minutes and Quinn finally caught a glimpse of the Kraken's tentacle. The giant and long tentacle laid on the lake's bottom floor and covered a large surface area.
He swam up to create some distance between him and the tentacle and slowly swam forward, watching as the tentacle got thicker and thicker.
'Merlin's beard... what I saw outside of the water was just the tip of the iceberg, wasn't it?'
As Quinn felt amazed by the side of the Kraken's tentacle. The end of said tentacle slowly rose and crept in the water, moving towards the tiny human who had gotten deep into its territory. And just when it got near Quinn, the tentacle sped up and moved in for the grab.
”WHAT! THE HE-!!”
Quinn, who was busy being amazed at the Kraken, suddenly was in the tip of the tentacle in his peripheral vision. The Kraken was trying to wrap its tentacle around him: it was trying to trap him.
On instinct, Quinn released a magic force field shield which covered him three hundred sixty (360) degrees.
At first, the tentacle wrapped gently around the shield, but the next second, Quinn felt a tremendous force exerted from the tentacle as it tried to tighten its wrap around Quinn's safeguard.
”...s-h-I-T!”
The force field shield strained as Quinn pushed more magic into the force field shield, trying desperately to maintain the structural integrity.
The Kraken, who had spotted a tiny human in its territory, wanted to grab him, but it was confused because something was stopping his tentacles from reaching him. It took the Kraken a few seconds to realize that the tiny human had magic around, so it stopped trying to reach the human.
What felt like an eternity of struggle to Quinn was just three measly seconds before the squeezing force vanished.
Quinn opened his tightly shut eyes with heavy breathing and he felt himself move. Afterwards, he saw that the tentacle wrapped around his shield was lifting him up.
'What is it doing? Where is it taking me?'
The tentacle took Quinn out of the water. The force field, which was still active, trapped the lake water inside the force field. From outside, it looked like the tentacle was holding a sphere of water with Quinn inside.
'I need to get away,' thought Quinn.
He immediately deactivated the force field, and immediately Quinn dropped down towards the water: the tentacle was holding on to the force field, so when Quinn released the magic, the water inside with Quinn slipped away from the tentacle's grasp.
Unfortunately for Quinn, the Kraken was one step ahead of him: another tentacle was waiting for him in the water.
The second tentacle rose from the lake's surface and captured Quinn in one of its suction cups. Because of the sheer size of the Kraken, the suction cups lining its tentacles were huge. Quinn was swallowed inside the suction cup; he was trapped to his neck inside the suction cup.
”Fu-! Argh!”
Quinn struggled against the Kraken's bounds.
He wanted to get out of here and was really tempted to use magic to tear through the Kraken's flesh. The only thing holding him back was because even though the Kraken had trapped him, it was only trapping him and not choking him out. Plus, the Kraken's reputation for decades was one of a friendly and peaceful creature.
The Kraken's tentacle moved in the air and stopped right over the lakeside. The suction cup holding Quinn released its hold and unceremoniously dropped him onto the ground like a sack of potatoes.
Quinn immediately stood up and vigilantly stared at the retreating tentacle. He was sure that the tentacle gave him a wave as it returned inside the water.