HOL Ravenclaw

It has been a bit of a crazy week here at camp, and today is especially hot! This morning you spent some time in the kitchen tent, since it was your team’s turn to cook. The teams are on a rotation for who helps cook lunches and dinners for the camp (which is probably a good thing because there are a LOT of campers here this year and they need all the help they can get!), and your team made grilled chicken and a delicious potato dish, with garlicky green beans on the side. It is so good, but the hot day paired with being in the hot kitchen all morning has made you and your teammates tired. You hope that whatever the afternoon activity is, it isn’t too strenuous.

You see the Camp Director moving to the front of the tent and tell the other campers at your table to hush so you can hear.

“Good afternoon campers,” he says with a flourish. “Due to the beautifully warm day we are having, our afternoon activity for today will be our first Free Swim of camp. This simply means that you are, well, free to swim! There will be no competition this afternoon, we will simply all go down to the lake and enjoy ourselves! But make sure you don’t stray out too far, we have all kinds of creatures in our wonderful lake and I’d simply hate for you to meet them without having had a proper introduction!”

Hooray! Everyone excitedly cleans up their dishes so they can go change and get ready to go swimming! You are daydreaming about how nice the cool water will feel on such a hot day, how refreshing it will be, when you suddenly have a thought of something unseen grabbing your leg, or the Giant Squid making a terrifying appearance! They wouldn’t let you all go swimming if it wasn’t safe, right?

Task: Create a graphic depicting your time swimming in the lake and post it below. This can include the lake itself, people swimming in it, your bathing suit, anything you may have come across on your swim, etc. Since this is a free swim, you have free range for this task. Be creative and have fun with it! Just remember that embedded graphics must be no larger than 600x600 pixels.

Alternatively, in 100 words or more, write about your time at the lake today. Did you go swimming? How was it? Did you come across anything strange or frightening? How was swimming in a lake compared to a swimming pool or other body of water?

This task is worth 10 beans, with 10 additional beans available if all Week Two activities are completed. Everything is due by 11:59 pm HOL time on August 31st.

Swimming at the Great Lake was very fun! I didn’t go further than my waist when swimming but I spent most of the time looking around the edge of the lake. I loved seeing the plants that grow around it and finding any creatures, magical or not, that were hanging around. Swimming in the lake was actually a lot harder than swimming in a pool. You wouldn’t think it, but a lake as big as the Great Lake has waves and currents. I am not a strong swimmer in general so trying to swim in the lake was super hard.

This afternoon at camp after a whole big tiring day of cooking, we were told we could go for a free swim. I was overjoyed at the opportunity to go take a dip and cool myself down, especially since I was sweating hard. It is not advisable to go for a swim directly when you are sweating, so I stood in the shade for a while beneath a tree, wiped my sweat off, then got into my purple bath suit and took a shower. I put a rubber swimming guard tube with a duck head, around my waist, all the while giggling at the thought of Arthur Weasley possibly asking me the function of a rubber duck. All the campers were gathered around the lake, some in bath suits and some in robes, and others wearing Muggle shorts. Some swam and some lay around chatting. I knew all of them by now so I waved and smiled to many. This camp had been a great place for socializing. I found my teammates swimming around and splashing in the lake, possibly trying to cool down after the heat of the meticulous cooking we had all done. I splashed right into the lake with a big jump at a spot close to where my team was having fun. We smiled and laughed. The currents in the lake were more challenging than the calm and quiet waters of a swimming pool and the blackness of the water made it difficult to see beneath the surface and I wouldn't know if it was a grindylow clutching at me or just a bunch of weed and algae grazing my feet so I was scared, but I managed to keep up with the black currents of the lake and to keep calm. We splashed water at each other, held little swimming races, and played competitions centered around how long each one of us could hold our breath underwater. I dived down into the lake a few times and met a whole school of plimpies and even saw a mermaid pass by with something like a long fish spear in her hand. She was greenish and scaly but swift and nimble and even gave me a glance. I was looking for the giant squid but failed to find him until a black tentacle pushed someone out of the water and propelled them into the air making them land with a splash at a spot far away from the spot where we had been prohibited to swim. The giant black tentacle disappeared soon after. We were also not allowed to touch the boats that were meant to carry first years, for fear of unintentional tampering. Overall, it was a very fun afternoon and I felt refreshed after swim time ended.

Today was my favourite day of Camp Hogwarts so far as we got a chance to spend the day in the lake. It was a great day for it as it was an unusually hot day for Scotland, so this was a great chance to cool down. We had several swimming races and games. Then we were allowed to take gilliweed and swim down to the mermaid village (with a professeur supervising of course to keep the grindelows away!) it was brilliant seeing all the plants and creatures that call the lake home.
Afterwards, we lounged at the edge of the lake or floated in the shallows. The giant squid even came and joined us for a while and gave some people a ride around.

It was quite lovely spending the time by the lake. I love swimming and the weather was just perfect. As soon as we arrived to the lake's shore, I threw my things to the ground and ran towards the water.

I swam around for quite a while before I got brave enough to venture into the deeper parts of the lake. When I looked down, the water wasn't blue anymore, but nearly pitch black.

I took a deep breath and went underwater. I opened my eyes and tried to see if I could spot any merpeople, but instead, a large shadow moved at the edge of my sight and I couldn't take it anymore.

I swam back to other people near the shore and paddled around before I took a rest on a large towel.