Triwizard Tales
The Rescue from the Depths.

By Clell65619

Previous Here There Be Dragons. The Ball The Rescue from the Depths. Lost in a Maze Voldemort Reborn. Survival and Aftermath Next

Part Three:  The Rescue from the Depths.

"Myrtle, please?"

"You don't have to ask me so politely Harry," the ghostly teenager said with a smirk.  "I could stare at you all day, every day."

"Lovely," Potter noted, wondering if this was how Susan and Daphne Greengrass felt when every perv in the castle stared at them.  He returned to the issue at hand, that being Cedric's rather cryptic suggestion that he take a bath with his egg.  Harry leaned back in the scented water and reached for the magical construct.  It seemed a pity to spoil the wonderful silence of the Prefect's bath with the screeching horror that escaped whenever he opened the egg, but there was nothing else for it.  Harry began fumbling with the latch, his hands slippery.

"The other one held the egg under the water," Myrtle said in an uncharacteristic bout of helpfulness.

Harry considered that for a moment, wondering if water would damage the egg and its clue. Then deciding that he did not know enough to guess what might happen, he held the egg under the water and opened it.  He was immediately rewarded with an unintelligible murmur coming from beneath the water.

That was... odd.  Well, at least the water muffled the screeching so that it was no longer painful.

"The other one stuck his head beneath the water," the ghost said helpfully.  "His bum stuck out of the water when he did." she giggled.

Harry sighed to himself and tried to ignore the pervy ghost.  Drawing a deep breath, he ducked his head beneath the water.  Immediately his consciousness was filled with singing.

Come seek us where our voices sound,
We cannot sing above the ground,
And while you're searching, ponder this:
We've taken what you'll sorely miss,
An hour long you'll have to look,
And to recover what we took,
But past an hour - the prospect's black
Too late, it's gone, it won't come back.


Harry surfaced and wiped the water and soapsuds from his eyes, while trying to ignore Myrtle’s giggling as he pondered what he had heard.  That little song was not ominous at all.  Something he valued was going to be taken from him and he had an hour to find it.  That much was clear at least.  If he did not find it in that hour, then it was gone, evidently forever.

Harry tried to think of things that he would miss enough to really care about...  He would miss his wand certainly, the same for his Firebolt, and then there was the photo album with pictures of his parents that Hagrid had made for him first year. Beyond those items, there were not too many things he was particularly attached to.  Logically, it had to be one of those things.

That thought gave Harry pause.  Was it a good idea to try and think logically about a magical competition?

Where would whatever was to be taken be hidden?  "Come seek us where our voices sound," the singers had said... "We cannot sing above the ground,"

Ok, look where the singers are... they could not sing above the ground...

Where their voices sound...  He had to submerge the egg under water, and be underwater himself to understand it...  Underwater!  Something he valued was going to be hidden underwater?  In the Black Lake perhaps?  Would the Squid have it?

"Fuck!" Harry exclaimed as he closed the egg and lay in on the floor outside the giant tub.  "I can't swim."

"Purhups Ah cahn ahsistah in thaht."

Harry sat bolt upright in the tub shocked to see a scaly head rising from the sudsy water, a pair of eyes with huge black irises stared at him unblinkingly.  Harry's mind raced.  His wand was with his clothing on the other side of the room.

"Be aht eahse hoomahn," the... watery voice said through the water, those unblinking eyes focused on him.  "Hyou are Hahrry Pahtah?"

The being's voice sounded remarkably like someone speaking while gargling, which Harry supposed was exactly what it was doing.  "I am," Harry admitted.

A scaly arm shot from under the surface of the water.  A scaly hand wrapped webbed fingers around Harry’s neck and pulled his head under.  "I am Clahcktahnk of the WahahahsTokkah," the being paused while observing Harry's expression indicating a total  lack of comprehension, and perhaps more than a little panic.  "Your people call us the Merfolk."

The being released Harry's head and he pushed himself to the surface so that he could breathe.  Wiping the water and suds from his eyes, Harry immediately looked to the animated mermaid in the stained glass window, who was currently blowing him a kiss.

"Merfolk?" He whispered incredulously.

Again, his head was pulled beneath the surface of the water.  "Yes, I know of the silly way your people have portrayed us, but we are in no way part mammal."

"What can I do for you Clahcktahnk?" Harry asked after  he surfaced again, sure that he was mangling the pronunciation of the unfamiliar name while wondering how the hell a mercreature had gotten into his bath. To preclude another dunking he stuck his head under the water under his own power.

"To the point then," the being nodded in a manner that Harry hoped was approvingly,  "We of the WahahahsTokkah know of your dealings with the dragons," the scaly being produced something that looked to be something like a magazine, but it appeared to be waterproof, and there was a picture of a horntail on it.  Was that... Kiska?  "Your next task will be in our realm, and we want in."

"So, if I get you what you want, you'll help me?"

The mercreature nodded again.

"What do you want?" Harry asked, dreading the answer.

Once again, the scaled arm shot from the water and pulled him under. "Only the rarest of treasures," the mercreature said before it explained in detail what it wanted.

Harry surfaced, sucking in the wonderful air while considering Clahcktahnk's words and nodding to himself.  He could do this.
 

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All three School heads, Ludo Bagman and Amelia Bones sat staring at the fourth slip of parchment that was still smoking from having been ejected out of the Goblet of Fire in preparation for the Second Task.

Amelia reached out hesitantly and picked up the offending scrap of parchment.  "I can't say I expected that," she rubbed her thumb over the name as if she expected it to rub off.  "Can we allow this?"

"Can we not?" Albus asked. "The magic of the Goblet has spoken.  We cannot stand in its way anymore than we could when young Harry was chosen."

"I'm no expert," Ludo added, "but I expect that the penalties associated with the tournament would extend to this task."

"I want to go on record as saying that this entire task is ill conceived,” Amelia said.  “If I had been involved in the planning, I never would have allowed this."

"Because your niece is involved with Potter..."

"Karkaroff, perhaps you've forgotten what I was doing fifteen years ago, but I haven't forgotten what you were doing," Amelia said dangerously.  "Every time you open your mouth, I feel more and more like I should be examining the evidence against you for crimes your pardon didn't cover."

"You forget yourself Madam!" The Headmaster of Durmstrang spat.

"Please?" Albus asked, "Can we have a single meeting without the threat of some among us coming to blows?"

"I agree," Olympe interjected, fighting to hide her grin.  "This point is moot.  The task is set, the participants are chosen.  We can do nothing but wait for the day and see how well our champions do."

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Harry approached the lake where the rest of the champions had gathered.  He was running a bit late, but that was unavoidable.  Sirius' gift, it turned out, was a major pain to put on, and ten minutes before he was supposed to be at the lake had been a bad time to figure that out.

Still he was ready.  Beside his new outfit, Sirius and Remus had come through in spades.  Harry's one regret was that he had not been able to test any of the gear beforehand.

Having never doubted that Sirius would help him, Harry was at first hesitant to approach Remus.  After all the man had been one of his professors, and while Remus' time at Hogwarts had not shown him to be a stickler for the rules, he had still been a teacher.  As it turned out that Harry had been worrying about nothing.  The prankster side of the unfortunate werewolf found Harry's plan to be hilarious and Remus made several suggestions that improved his original scheme.

Both of the Marauders agreed with the dragon, Harry did not understand showmanship, but he was willing to learn.

Cedric and Viktor stood, waiting for the signal to start, already in their swimsuits, clapping their arms around themselves in the February cold.  Fleur stood a bit apart from the others still bundled in her robes.

Harry approached the two men a bit out of breath from rushing, to catch his breath, he leaned forward, with both hands upon his knees.

"Alright there Harry?" Cedric asked.

"Yeah," Harry responded as he stood upright, shrugging out of his robes since the others were out of theirs.  Cedric's eyes bugged out.

"What the hell you wearing?" Viktor asked incredulously.

"This?" Harry asked with a grin while pulling the gloves onto his hands, "it's called a 'Dry Suit'.  Muggles make them for going into cold water."

Viktor raised an eyebrow,

"What?" Harry asked.  "I can't swim, I had to do something."

"I wish I had thought of such a thing," Fleur said joining the conversation.

"And it's just a coincidence that you're in Gryffindor colors?" Cedric snarked.

"Oh, am I?" Harry asked innocently.

"We three," Viktor said shaking his head, "we adults, we experienced.  We freezing like fools while young Harry warm and comfortable."

"Well, thanks Viktor, but I wouldn't go as far as comfortable," Harry said.  "I still can't swim; the suit isn't going to help with that."

"Oh yes," Fleur said sarcastically, "you fought and defeated your dragon, so we are supposed to believe that you are simply going to sit on the shore?  I made the mistake of thinking you were a 'leetle boy' once, never again."

"Well... yeah, I guess I've got some ideas," Harry admitted.  "But something is bothering me.  We're all decked out to go into the water so we all solved the egg, but I haven't figured out what they might have taken.  I checked all the things that I would miss and none of it is missing.  I have no idea what we're supposed to be after."

Both Fleur and Viktor shrugged, but Cedric looked concerned.  "I don't think it’s a thing we're after; I think it's a person.  I haven't seen Hermione anywhere today, and even if she wasn't going to be here for me, she would certainly be here for you."

Harry paled as the implications of that thought sunk in.  Where was Susan?  He looked to the lake... surely not.  Harry shot a glare at the judges table, where all of the arrogant prats, including Susan's aunt were sitting surrounded by comfortable warming charms.  If a single hair of either Susan's or Hermione's head were harmed...

Ludo Bagman was now moving among the champions, spacing them along the bank at intervals of ten feet. Harry was on the very end of the line, next to Viktor, who was now holding his wand at the ready.

“All right, Harry?” Bagman whispered as he moved Harry to his position. “Know what you’re going to do?”

“Yeah,” Harry nodded.

Bagman returned Harry’s nod and returned to the judges’ table; he pointed his wand at his throat and said, “Sonorus!” and his voice boomed out across the dark water toward the stands.

“Well, all our champions are ready for the second task, which will start on my whistle. They have precisely one hour to recover the treasure that has been taken from them. On the count of three, then. One… two… three!”

The whistle echoed shrilly in the cold, still air; the stands erupted with cheers and applause; without looking to see what the other champions were doing, Harry pulled the hood of the dry suit over his head and from the pouch on his belt, he produced a shrunken boat that he tossed into the lake.  Upon touching the water, the boat expanded to its full size.

Harry climbed into the boat and used his wand to raise the sail, and then with a flick, cast the wind charm that pushed him away from the shore and out into the middle of the lake.

It was only then he heard the noise from the crowd.  There was an even mixture of cheers and laughter and boos, from those who felt his use of tools was cheating.

That was OK, Harry decided; he had not wanted to play this stupid game in the first place.  His little boat moved cleanly through the water to the middle of the lake, and the boat suddenly stopped dead in the water.  That was his signal.

He lowered his mast, and then enlarged the last three of his boxes and started to follow Remus' directions.  Once the box to the front of the boat was secured, and he had just finished tying down the box designated for the rear a voice interrupted his toil.

"Where is Draco, Potter?"

Well, crap, Harry thought as he looked up to find Vinnie Crabbe and Greg Goyle on school brooms, both of them struggling to maintain a consistent hover maneuver, and failing rather badly, directly over his little boat.

"How should I know where your idiot boss is?" Harry asked.  "Get out of here, you're in my way."

From the distance, Bagman's amplified voice called out in outrage at the presence of the pair over the lake.

"Draco was saying he was going to be out here to see you lose Potter," Crabbe continued.  "Draco told us that his father said that you were supposed to be pulling your girlfriend out of the lake, and Draco wanted to be here to see the Bones bird's body pulled out of the water after you fail and she dies."

"Yeah?  Well fuck you two and Draco as well," Harry said as he pulled the welder's mask from the rearmost box, pulled it on over his face, and triggered Remus' contribution to his plan.

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As Cedric Diggory moved through the water using powerful strokes, his bubblehead and warming charms firmly in place, he wondered how he was supposed to find anything in the vast expanse of the Black Lake.

A few grindylows scuttled about in the waterweeds that lined the bottom of the lake, so Cedric concentrated on staying above the aquatic forest, but those same plants obscured his view of the lake bottom.  Was Hermione down here, somewhere?

If she got hurt, he would never forgive himself.

Then, without warning, to his left was a burst of light, blinding even through the water.  The light burned bright, not dimming in the slightest until several seconds after it started it faded away to nothing, returning Cedric to the murky darkness of the Black Lake.

What the hell was that?  He wondered.  One of the others was casting... something?  Potter, it had to be Potter.  After the show the boy had put on with the dragon, Cedric had no doubt in the slightest.  Blinking the spots from his eyes he turned to the direction the light had come from.

If nothing else, this should be interesting.

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Viktor Krum fought against the alien instincts to hunt and maintained his search pattern.

The partial self-transfiguration hurt like hell, but he had evaluated it as his best chance in the lake.  The professional athlete was no stranger to pain.

The strange field of vision was difficult to deal with, but he was learning.  His gills worked effortlessly so that was good.  Unlike Diggory and Delacour he had no time limit on his ability to breathe underwater, where they would each need to reapply their bubblehead charms twice if this task ran for its full hour.  And Potter... Potter...  Potter claimed not to be able to swim... which should have counted him out of this task, but the boy did not seem to be rolling over.  As Viktor had entered the water, he had seen Potter enlarge a shrunken boat.

What was the boy up to?

The lake flooded with a blinding light that sustained for several seconds.  The shark instincts tried to get Viktor to flee from the area, but no.  This had to be Potter's work.  Viktor just had to see what the boy was doing.  He turned and kicked into the direction of the light.

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She cut through the water with the grace she showed in everything she did.  Fleur Delacour was a most focused witch.

Embarrassed by her fourth place standing after the dragon task, and infuriated by the prank played on her by the Malfoy whelp, Fleur was a young woman with something to prove.

Her plan was simple.  She would head to the center of the lake and explore the bottom.  Her readings on the merfolk suggested that they preferred deep water and isolation from other sentients, so given that there was a giant squid frequenting the shallows of this lake, which made the most likely place for a village to be the center of the lake.

She was perhaps halfway there when the lake lit up with the light of the sun.

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From the judges table the sight of Harry making his way to the center of the lake in the small boat sparked some amusement.

"Does the boy think he's going to go fishing out there?" Karkaroff asked with a laugh.

"I heard him tell the others that he couldn't swim," Bagman said, all the while wishing to himself that he had not bet so much on the boy placing in this task.

"He should have just stayed on the shore and conceded," Olympe suggested.  "Potter may have gotten lucky against the Horntail, but in this competition he has to have more than just raw power.  He would also need to have skill."

"He was certainly skilled enough against that dragon, Olympe," Amelia noted.  "I wouldn't fancy my chances against one, how about you?"

"I am sure," Albus broke in trying yet again to head off the inevitable confrontation that came about any time these individuals came together, "that Harry has a plan."

"Who is that out there?" Bagman asked raising his Omnioculars to his eyes.  "There are two Hogwarts students over the lake on brooms."

Albus raised his own Omnis to his eyes as Bagman incanted 'Sonorus' and began to shout.  There were two boys wearing Slytherin robes hovering over Harry’s small boat.  Wonderful, the old man mused to himself.   What else could go wrong this year?  Harry was doing something on his small boat, seemingly ignoring the Slytherins.  There was a small flare of light from the boat, and Albus dropped his Omnis in surprise, only to discover that in doing so, he may have saved his sight.

A shaft of intense light rose from the surface of the lake like a solid column until it reached the cloud deck, where it feathered against the low February clouds.  Albus shielded his eyes and wondered what the hell had the boy done this time?

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As soon as Remus' light show died, Harry pulled the welder's mask from his face and moved to the center of the boat.

"We haf yor treashor!" Clahcktahnk called out as he surfaced next to the boat. "Evan prpaared, your light almast blinded us."

"Sorry," Harry said as he reached over the side to assist, pulling a sopping wet Susan Bones from the icy water.  As soon as the girl's head broke the surface she drew a deep ragged breath and started to regain consciousness.

"Bastards," Harry grumbled as he pulled the shivering girl into his arms trying to warm her.

"H'rry?" Sue mumbled.

"Yu haf yor treashor," Clahcktahnk rasped in the air, "wut of ouras?"

"Sorry," Harry repeated as he used his wand to tip the center box into the water.  "You asked for a case, I got you a pallet.  If you need more, contact me."

The leader of the mercreatures nodded.  "Wot uf those two?" he asked as he gestured toward the stunned forms of Crabbe and Goyle being held above the water by a pair of submerged mercreatures.

"I've got no room in the boat, could your people get them to shore?" Harry asked hopefully, guessing that his light show had knocked the pair off their brooms.

"Uf course... Our tanks Hahrry Pahtah." the Mercreature said as it submerged.

"What happened?" Susan asked her teeth chattering, “How did I get so wet?   So cold?"

"The bastards used you as the thing I'd miss the most," Harry said apologetically as he cast warming charms all over the girl.  "I'm sorry."

"You paid the merfolk?"

"Well, I can't swim." Harry said as he raised the mast and sail of the small boat.  "It was the only thing I could do," he admitted as he settled down next to the girl and pulled her close to share his body heat as best he could while casting the wind charm to return them to the shore and medical attention.

"What was I worth?" she asked, her teeth chattering in the cold.

"Everything I've got," Harry admitted before realizing what he had said.  Hoping she had not heard him, he continued.  "They wanted peanut butter."

"Peanut butter?"

"Yeah, the crunchy kind.  They call it the rarest of delicacies.  I got them a whole pallet."

"Oh," Susan said as she cuddled into him, wondering just what peanut butter might be.

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Fleur arrived at the source of the light and found a small village made up of stone structures on the lake bottom; the structures were dotted here and there by dark windows, the occasional face appearing through those windows as Fleur continued on her way to the village center.

Soon the dwellings became more numerous; there were gardens of waterweed around some of them, and she even saw what appeared to be a pet grindylow tethered to a stake outside one door. Mercreatures were emerging on all sides now, watching her eagerly, pointing at her as she swam by.   Fleur turned a corner and a very strange sight met her eyes.

A whole crowd of mercreatures were floating in front of the houses that lined what looked like an underwater version of a village square. A choir of the beings was singing in the middle of the open square, calling the champions toward them and behind them rose a huge statue; a gigantic mercreature roughly sculpted from a boulder.

And tied to the tail of the statue were three people.

Fleur recognized the Hogwarts student who had accompanied Viktor to the ball; she smiled to herself inside her bubblehead charm.  The Bulgarian was such a boy.  Next to the Chang girl was the mousy, bushy-haired girl who had accompanied Cedric... but she was one of Harry's confidantes was she not?  No, she was the one that Cedric would miss most.  The last was her own hostage.  The one they thought she would miss most.  She almost laughed.

All three of them appeared to be in a very deep sleep. Their heads were lolling onto their shoulders, and fine streams of bubbles continuously issuing from their mouths.  Only three.  That means that she had been beaten to the village, likely by Harry Potter.

She was not going to win this one, but that was fine.  Ever since Olympe had let slip who her hostage was, winning this one was not really her objective.  It would have been nice to beat that damned child to the prize, but it was not her real goal.

Fleur made her was toward the bound captives, half expecting the mercreatures to block her advance, but they did nothing. The ropes of weed tying the hostages to the statue were thick, slimy, and very strong. Not for the first time, the French Witch was pleased that she had heeded her mother's admonition to never go anywhere without a blade within easy access.  She reached for the charmed knife she had strapped to her left thigh.

Fleur checked each of the hostages in turn.  As far as she could tell, they were fine, so she passed down the line to her hostage.  She gathered a handful of the slick fibers and slowly sawed her knife back and forth, making sure the enchanted blade had time to work its magic until the strands parted.  She then turned and began retracing her path out of the village.

A seven-foot-tall mercreature with a long green beard and a necklace of what appeared to be sharks teeth tried to block her exit.  Your Hostage..." he said in a harsh, croaky voice.

Fleur laughed and shook her head inside of her bubblehead charm.  "I have what I came for."  She pushed past him on her way to the shore.

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Cedric was the next into the village, making his way to the remaining hostages.  Cho still floated unconscious, her hair fanning from her head like a halo... she must be here for Viktor... probably...  Next to Cho was Hermione... his hostage?  Or perhaps Harry's?  He spent a moment wondering who was ahead of him.

Finally, Cedric decided that it did not matter and he started trying to cast cutters on the weeds restraining Hermione.

There was a movement he caught out of the corner of his eye and he turned in time to see an enormous shark bite through the restraints holding Cho and then on a second pass gather the unconscious girl in its mouth and swim off... then he saw that rather than a tail, the shark had human legs.

Viktor.  Inside his bubblehead charm, Cedric breathed a sigh of relief before he realized that he was now behind the Bulgarian in the race for second place.  The weeds parted with his next cutter, so he grasped Hermione's robes with his left hand and began the long swim back to the shore.

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Viktor did what he considered to be a rather impressive turn flip to catch Cho after freeing her from her restraints and made his best speed back to the shore, more than a little surprised.  One of the gifts of the Shark transfiguration was an amazing sense of smell while in the water.  On top of Cedric Diggory’s scent, the water was rife with the scent of Fleur, so after passing Cedric that put him in second place.  He didn’t like second place, he never had.

Where was Potter? He wondered while he passed through the last of the stone structures.  He had been positive that the light flare had been Potter's doing, yet there was no hint of the boy's scent in the water.  A flash of bright color caught his eye.  Viktor paused for a moment to investigate the unexpected bit of red in the village of stone and green weed.  It was a merchild, playing with some kind of crockery that had a blue lid sealing the top... and the label was in English...

Viktor returned to his long swim to the shore with a pair of thoughts burning in his mind.  The first being, do not bite down, and the second, how very odd. He would have to remember to ask Cedric just what 'Jif’ might be...

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Harry ignored the assembled crowd as he half-led, half-carried Susan to Madam Pomfrey and her medical tent.

"What are you wearing Mr. Potter?" the school Healer asked incredulously.

"It doesn't matter, I'm fine, I never even got into the water," Harry answered.  "It's Susan that needs you, she's nearly frozen.  There are three more hostages out there slowly freezing to death, and the other three champions are in normal swimwear.  They’re going to need you as well."

Pomfrey pushed Susan onto one of the waiting beds muttering about insane old men and their stupid contests when a cheer went up from the crowd.  It must be the next champion to arrive.

"Harry," Susan said through chattering teeth.  "You should go out there; you should be with the others when they come out of the water."

"I'm not leaving you Susan,"

"I believe Miss Bones is correct Mr. Potter," Pomfrey said quietly.  "I was going to ask you to leave anyway, as I have to get Miss Bones out of her wet clothing to get her warmed up."

Harry's mind blanked for a moment when the image of what he imagined a naked Susan might look like flashed through his mind, and then a blush spread across his features.  "I'll be going outside then," he said edging toward the door.

"Make sure the others come directly here," Madam Pomfrey called as she closed the curtain around Susan's bed.

Harry stood outside the Healer's tent for a moment, the image of a naked Susan still consuming the majority of his attention, and then shaking his head, he made his way through the crowd to the shore of the Black Lake.  He arrived in time to see Fleur stop swimming and stand up to begin wading ashore.  Harry glanced around and spotted the robes that Fleur had removed prior to going into the water.  He picked them up and carried the robes to the shoreline.

"You beat me," Fleur observed as she emerged from the water and wrapped her robes around herself.  "So the light, that was you?"

"Um... yeah," Harry admitted feeling a bit guilty for how he had won, "sorry about that."

"Do not apologize, Harry Potter.  This contest is about winning, and you are doing just that,” She smiled.  "Viktor and Cedric will be embarrassed."

"Fleur..." Harry hesitated, "your hostage... didn't you find him?  Or Her?"

"Oh, I found him," she answered with a wide smile.  "I just didn't need him.  Raising her left fist, she showed the shock of fine white strands it was clutching.  "I have what I would miss most right here in my hand."

Harry's brow furrowed, was that... hair?  Fine white-blond hair?  What was the French girl telling him?

A sudden splashing out on the lake interrupted their conversation.  Perhaps twenty yards away a thrashing form surfaced, throwing itself back and forth as it became apparent that Viktor had returned and was reversing the partial transformation back to a fully human form.  Victor stooped to lift Cho Chang from the water, and as soon as her face was exposed to the air, the enchantment over the girl broke and she began to breathe with an all too familiar start.

Before Viktor could take his first step toward the shore, Cedric surfaced beside him with Hermione Granger in his arms.  The two young men looked at each other, then at the coughing shivering women in their arms, and then at their two fellow champions standing on the shore waiting for them.  Viktor issued an odd bark-like laugh, while Cedric moved to bump shoulders with the Bulgarian, then as one the pair made their way to shore.

Harry and Fleur were waiting with conjured blankets.  “Madam Pomfrey wants everyone to the Healer’s tent,” Harry said as soon as everyone was on the shore.

“Good idea,” Viktor agreed, “I will never be warm again.”

“Wait!” Dumbledore called from the Judge’s table.  “Miss Delacour, where is your hostage?”

“Hostage?” Fleur asked innocently, “what hostage?”

“The hostage you were tasked to rescue.”

“I’m not sure what you are talking about, Headmaster Dumbledore,” Fleur responded in a confused tone, “we were tasked with retrieving something that we would sorely miss… when I arrived at the underwater village I found two young girls, whom I had met socially once or twice and an insignificant nothing whom I despise.  There was certainly no person down there I would sorely miss.”

“So you just left Draco Malfoy down there in the dark?” the old man asked incredulously.

“Well, I certainly wasn’t the one who put him ‘down there in the dark’, as you put it, but no, I didn’t leave all of him.”

“What?” Dumbledore asked, horrified at what that statement might mean.

“It occurred to me that what I would truly sorely miss would be the opportunity to torture the horrible little insect, so I took advantage of the situation and took a souvenir…” Fleur lifted her left hand and allowed the shock of white blond hair to flutter away in the cold wind, strand by strand.  “If you will excuse us, Headmaster Dumbledore, it is very cold and we are very wet.”

The French girl turned and imperiously walked away toward the Healer’s tent.  The three male champions hesitated for a moment, then looked at each other, shrugged, and followed her.

Harry spent the several seconds of silence that passed between the champions by struggling not to laugh at the mental image of a scalped Draco Malfoy, until Viktor Krum broke the silence between them.
 

“Remind me,” he said shaking his head, “to never, ever, make Fleur angry with me.”

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Clahcktahnk of the WahahahsTokkah carefully equalized his swim bladder so that he could lounge comfortable among his favorite stand of Canadian Pondweed.  Using one of his clan’s ancestral spells, left over from that horrible time when his people fought a long and ultimately pointless war against the Veela clans, he created a small bubble, approximately the size of a human head.  This bubble tethered to his wrist by a simple linking charm.

The knowledge of the fact that his people were the origin of the human’s ‘bubble head charm’ amused Clahcktahnk to no end.  Inside his bubble, he carefully suspended one of the jars he had received from the Potter human.  The food of the gods could be exposed to water with no real harm, but doing so would limit the storage life of the wondrous mixture drastically.   Therefore, unless the entire jar was to be consumed in a single floating, his people only opened the jar inside one of the chained air bubbles.

As he brought a three-fingered scoop of the heavenly mixture to his mouth, Clahcktahnk reflected that his decision to approach the Potter human had turned out to be a good one.  His popularity among his people, having delivered to them so much of this almost unattainable delicacy, had risen like a bloated fish.  Life was, he admitted to himself as he worked to dislodge a mass of peanut butter from the roof of his mouth, good.

He raised a scaled brow ridge when he noticed a human being lowered nearly on top of him.  Carefully securing the tether of the bubble to a convenient rock, he moved to situate himself in an upright attitude to reflect that of an air breather, he took in his visitor.  The human was encased in a large full body suit of material similar to that Clahcktahnk recalled from the sails of human ships.  Heavy metal covering shod the visitor's feet, and a heavy metal sphere enclosed the human’s head, with small windows on the front and sides so that presumably the human could look out of the sphere.  Heavy lines extended from the visitor disappearing toward the surface leading the way for the bubbles that issued from the helmet in a constant stream.

The appearance of the visitor seemed somewhat familiar… it was not until he recalled stories told by some visiting saltwater cousins that Clahcktahnk made the association.  This was a human diving suit.  How very odd.

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Xeno Lovegood nodded to himself as he reached the lake bottom and found the leader of the Merfolk waiting for him.  As usual, his sources were perfectly accurate.  This was the place that the Mer-chieftain went to relax from his duties.

“Good Morning,” Xeno called, offering his best approximation of the tail-wag greeting of the Merfolk.  This was somewhat hampered by the bulk of his diving suit and by his generalized lack of a tail.  “I am Xeno Lovegood, Owner, Publisher, Crusading Editor and Chief Reporter for the Quibbler, News of the Magical World, the Gringotts’ Financial Review, The Daily Web, The Dark Lord’s Daily Planner, Riddle Me This, and the Beano.  I am here to investigate the charges of collusion between the Merfolk and the Boy Who Lived.”

Outside the diving suit, Clahcktahnk heard only an unintelligible muffled drone.  “What?” he asked.  “What do you want?”

Xeno could clearly see that the Mer-Chieftain was speaking, but he could not hear a thing over the sound of the air hissing into his helmet.  “What was that?” he asked.  “I can’t hear you.”

“What?” Clahcktahnk responded.

This exchange went on for slightly less than two hours.

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Clahcktahnk surfaced at the edge of the lake, wondering, not for the first time, just why he was bothering.  After the day before and his long exposure to the insane air breather he had almost forbid all interaction with the surface world, but then a rather intriguing note came drifting down attached to a most fetching stone.

There on the edge of the shore stood the human he suspected of being the man in the diving suit.  Now however rather than a heavy diving suit that smelled and tasted of canvas, metal and rubber, the human now had a black body stocking stretched over his ample frame with a black beret perched atop the man’s furless head.

“Ah ahm hyer hoomahn,"

“Oh good!” an unexpected voice chirped in an oddly cheery way.  A smaller human with long yellowish fur sprouting from its head appeared from behind the man.  A young female if Clahcktahnk was any judge, she was also dressed in a black body stocking and beret. “After how badly Daddy got on with you yesterday I wasn’t sure you would come.”

“Yass, ahm ahm hyere now…”

“So,” the small human continued as if Clahcktahnk had never spoken, “we much begin our conference in the only way known to magical kind that ensures communication between different cultures, and indeed different species.”

“Bhut Ah spek yor Engliss!” Clahcktahnk insisted.

“No,” yellow fur declared.  “The time for words is past.  To ensure complete understanding we must depend on that most expressive of all the arts.  I am speaking of course, of interpretive dance!”

From no apparent source, music filled the air and the pair of humans in black began to cavort in the oddest of ways.  It was, Clahcktahnk mused, like a shipwreck.  He did not want to see it, but somehow he just could not look away.

The dancing went on for 90 minutes before Yellow Fur declared an intermission, and appeared only seconds later with some sort of tray strapped around her neck, hanging to her waist.  From this box, she sold Clahcktahnk something called an ‘ice lolly’ that turned out to be surprisingly tasty.  Clahcktahnk surprised himself by discovering that he was really looking forward to the second act, and wondering about the possibility of obtaining season tickets.

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Crouch finished writing his main points for the lesson on the chalkboard and turned to find his classroom of seventh years studiously scribbling their notes of his lesson.

It was odd, the Death Eater thought, how satisfying teaching was, and it seemed that he was actually good at it.  Who knew?  There was something… fulfilling about having a room full of students hanging onto his every word.

Even his newest nemesis, the young Hope Gwinn was busily working on her notes instead of gazing at him in abject devotion.

This quiet period gave him a chance to contemplate, not for the first time, his assigned target.  Crouch had been tasked by the Dark Lord himself to shepherd Potter through the tournament, ensuring that the boy did well enough to make it to and win the third task, so that the waiting trap could deliver Potter to the Dark Lord in time for the ritual.

Crouch had hinted to Potter that flying might be the way around a dragon; instead, Potter had taken the dragon on and somehow won.  That made no sense at all.  Crouch had spent far too much time trying to understand how such a thing was even possible.

Then Crouch had actually sought out the Longbottom whelp and made sure the boy would have access to a book describing Gillyweed, only to have Potter display some insane level of power that had him retrieving his hostage without even entering the water.

None of it made a damned bit of sense, yet he had gotten a message from his master congratulating him on the success of his efforts.

Crouch’s musings came crashing to a halt when Hope Gwinn finished her notes and looked up catching his eye.  The girl blushed, and then purposefully closed both of her eyes.  Barty was horrified to find the words ‘I Love’ and ‘You’ written on her eyelids.

This year could not be over soon enough.

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"Calm down Draco," Narcissa Malfoy admonished her son.

"Father," Draco whined piteously, ignoring his mother while looking in his conjured mirror, "it won't grow back!  They've tried dozens of potions."

Lucius sighed.  The boy's hair had been the only topic of discussion for more than two hours. “Draco, the healers have assured me that your hair will grow back, eventually,” the man said for perhaps the fiftieth time in the last hour.  “You’ve got to learn some patience.  I’ve filed a complaint with the French over the girl’s actions, but there is nothing I can do about her second place finish in the task.”

“Father!” the boy whined yet again, still stroking his fingers through the few strands of hair that the Veela’s cursed blade had left on his head.

“In the meantime, I’ve had my agents scouring the world to find a way of disguising your disfigurement.  This is what they found.” Lucius silently congratulated himself on not mentioning that these were the best ways Bernie his office assistant had found in a local second hand shop with a budget in the range of approximately three galleons.

Draco turned away from the mirror to examine his father’s offerings.  When he saw his alternatives, a bit of his heart broke.

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