Harry and Jellyfish Lake

The guide wizards, Favio and Brad, led Harry, Hermione, Ron, Neville, and Ginny up the rocky path and over the hill that led to the enchanted Jellyfish Lake. They must find the horcrux before He Who Must Not Be Named called the end of liberty and forced their return to Blueridge for transportation to the next enchanted place.

  

The native Wizards insisted that the jellyfish would not sting, having evolved beyond the need to do so. Skeptical, the intrepid snorklers nervously donned the magic goggles and breathing devices and slid cautiously into the dark lake. The water felt uncommonly warm, heated as it was by the tropical sun. Yet beneath the surface it grew darker and almost viscous, and very deep. Looking down one could see only black.

Harry breathed easily through the device as his eyes scanned the water ahead and below him. At first all was dark except for small spit-eating fish. Then he saw it. About the size of a small cantaloupe, a pulsating jellyfish appeared just beneath him. Then two more. Then three. Turning his gaze forward he suddenly saw thousands of the creatures floating in the water ahead, like so many satellites roaming outer space. Clearly these jellyfish stood guard over some strange and haunted treasure. They appeared in all sizes, from tiny marble sized babies, to adults the size of melons. Soon Harry was surrounded by the jellies, which bounced off of him like soft tennis balls traveling in slow motion. He was truly relieved that  they did not sting.

Harry and his friends discovered that they could reach out and touch the creatures, cupping them in their hands and then letting them go with a slight swish, like spinning a softball pitch. The jelly would then twirl off into the murky water. This reminded Harry of an amusement park ride. “Do jellyfish get dizzy twirling like that?” he wondered.

By now the jellies were so thick that he could no longer avoid bumping into them. He tried to follow the wizards’ instructions about not beating the water with his finned feet, lest he squash or injure the jellies. Perhaps enraged they would find a way to sting...

Harry followed his friends and the wizard guides around the lake, learning that it was laden with 14 million of these jellified creatures. All of them beat rhythmically through the water and fearlessly approached Harry and the others from all angles. Harry wondered who was more fascinated with whom.

Then Brad, the South African wizard who seemed to be half fish, beckoned Harry and his friends to a different part of the lake. There they saw sea anemones attached to the coral. If a jellyfish would float too close, an anemone would grasp it in its tentacles and begin to chew it up. Population control, Palauan lake style.

Eventually they had made a full circle and returned to the dock and the rocky hill and the boat that had brought them to this marvelously enchanted lake. They had found not a single horcrux, so they must move on to the region of the giant clams where they would continue their quest.

And Dumbledore was nowhere to be found.