Parvati and Padma’s quiet moment together didn’t last long before a group of girls approached the lake, making a lot of noise as they came. When Parvati looked up, she instantly recognized that they weren’t going anywhere near her and Padma- but a second later, she realized that she might have to get involved. The first two were upper-year Slytherins- it really was interesting how that was where really all of the bullies left in the school could be found- and the last was Fleur Delacour, the Beauxbatons Champion, looking desperate.
Another second, and one of the leading girls had thrown something gold out onto the lake. When it struck the surface, it stopped cold, flipped open, and started wailing as it settled on the ice, a good twenty feet out on the lake.
“That’s her Golden Egg,” Padma observed.
Parvati nodded calmly. “It is.” She watched as the two Slytherins effortlessly dodged Fleur’s attempts to hurt them and ran away, only to take Fred and George’s well-aimed snowballs straight to the face.
Fleur evidently hadn’t been intending to play in the snow. She had her usual scarf on, now paired with the cloak that Hailey had helped her get from Madam Malkin’s shortly after Halloween, and she had her bag slung over her shoulder. The bag looked like it was heavy, filled with books… and it had a suspiciously egg-shaped hole in it, right at the end. Fleur kicked some snow aside and set it down carefully on the beach, before going down on her gloved hands and knees to crawl across the ice to retrieve her egg.
“Yikes,” Padma muttered. “Wouldn’t it be better for her to use a Summoning Charm?”
“Probably,” Parvati answered, watching as well. “She’s older than us too, so…” She paused. “Has Beauxbatons just not covered it yet?” She scowled. “Or are they using a different curriculum that doesn’t contain it?”
“Or,” Padma muttered, “since she knows it’s against school rules- both here and at Beauxbatons, apparently- to use magic outside of class, she’s probably left her wand in the carriage, and so doesn’t have that optio-!”
Padma broke off, and both sisters jumped to their feet, when Fleur reached her egg… and promptly fell through the ice with a small shriek of terror. The egg, still shrieking, vanished into the hole a second before Fleur’s head and shoulders leaped back out of it to gasp for air; she was, fortunately, still in the shallows.
They started running towards where Fleur had left her bag, which was also the closest point on the shore.
Then, just seconds after Fleur had started struggling to climb back out onto the ice, she gave a sudden lurch, screamed… and got dragged, backwards, back under the ice.
Padma froze up briefly, staring at the hole, but Parvati didn’t stop to think. She bolted straight out towards Fleur’s hole, straight across the ice.
Then the ice collapsed under her as well… but, just like how the snow hadn’t bothered her, that didn’t really bother her either. She crashed down below the ice layer, hardly noticing as it fragmented apart around her, got fully underwater, and shot further on.
Then, while she was still at least thirty feet away, she saw Fleur, and corrected her aim without even thinking. Fleur was being dragged by a Grindylow.
The spell to repel Grindylows crossed Parvati’s mind… But she was going to reach it much too fast for anyone but Hailey to get their wands out and cast the spell, nevermind the spell itself had a limited travel speed that was slower than she was moving, so she figured it was time to put her new strength to the test.
A fraction of a second after she made that decision, her fist collided with the side of the grindylow’s head at about the same speed as a speeding car, and with a not too dissimilar amount of energy behind it. She felt something crunch under the force of her blow and, praying it wasn’t her fingers, she wrapped around for another pass… but the grindylow, blood drifting lazily from a pretty big head wound, had already released Fleur, whose struggle was fading fast. Parvati recognized the symptoms- her muscles were seizing up from the cold, which was going to stop her crawl back across the seaweed far short of the hole in the ice.
She wasted no time in wrapping her arms around Fleur and thrusting them both to the surface, sending fragments of ice flying with the force of her exit. She hoisted Fleur up to make sure her mouth and nose were above the water, and was rewarded by a spluttering cough… before Fleur’s head dropped limply to the side.
She cursed, lifted Fleur entirely clear of the water, and strode straight through the ice back to shore. Some part of her mind noted that she was walking a few feet above the seafloor at first, but she didn’t really care about that.
Padma met her at the shore. “Is she okay?” she asked, while Parvati placed her gently on a clear patch of beach.
A sudden burst of burning heat right next to her heralded Angelina Johnson’s appearance by their side.
“She passed out once we broke the surface,” Parvati informed them both.
Padma winced, then reached straight up to Fleur’s jugular. “The hard part is that she’s not entirely human,” she grumbled, “so what we know won’t necessarily be applicable.”
“Thermus,” Angelina muttered, and scowled. “Body temperature thirty-nine and dropping,” she muttered.
“Dropping?” Padma scowled. “What’s her normal?”
“No idea,” Angelina answered. “Madam Pomfrey will know.” She paused. “She’s not breathing.” She pointed her wand, and muttered an incantation. Fleur took a sudden, ragged breath, and Angelina winced. “Her lungs have been paralyzed by the cold,” she hissed, pocketing her wand. “I’m taking her to Madam Pomfrey. Padma, tell Madame Maxime; Parvati, retrieve her egg and join us with it, please.” As she spoke, she shoved her arms underneath Fleur- and as soon as she finished speaking, both of them vanished in a flash of flames.
Parvati and Padma looked at each other, nodded, and split. Padma went running away- and Parvati dove back into the lake. This time, she did so consciously, without the desperation making her- but after the first time, she wanted to see how hard it was.
As it turned out, it really wasn’t that different from flying. She could feel the currents around her, and knew she could control them to propel herself; that was what she had done earlier, without thinking.
She didn’t, this time. Instead, she closed her eyes for a second to concentrate, then reopened them. She was going to do what she had learned to do for flying- just without using her wings.
That was, allow her instincts to take over.
And, as it turned out, her body knew how to swim- and fairly quickly, at that.
She located the egg by the singing coming out of it, closed it, and swam back to the long hole she’d made in the ice when she rushed back to the shore with Fleur. The water hardly even felt like water, so much as like air; she found she could breathe it quite naturally.
So, even though the egg slowed her down significantly, she swam normally back to the shore, surfaced, and walked out of the water again, before looking down at her clothes.
They were dry.
But, she realized, she knew exactly why they were dry; she had instinctively pushed the water out of them as she surfaced. She had done the same for Fleur’s clothes, without thinking.
“So.”
“Wagh!” She jumped, and looked… but it was only Hailey. “Oh, sorry,” she muttered. “I, uh, didn’t see you there.”
“Not surprised,” Hailey muttered, chuckling. “I just teleported here. But I take it you’ve got an affinity for water?”
She shrugged. “I… I don’t know. I can control the currents around me, and the cold isn’t bothering me, so…”
Hailey nodded. “So, affinity for water. Almost like…” She scowled. “If Phoenix-born are fire elementals, you’d have to be a water elemental.” She rubbed her chin. “I wonder how Padma’s going to turn out?”
“How- Why did I become…” She paused. “An elemental?” she finished.
Hailey shrugged. “No one knows why phoenix-born exist, nor how they come to be,” she told her. “All they know is that they are always female, though that’s being challenged by the existence of a male phoenix-born, and nobody has ever heard of another kind of elemental, either- which I expect is simply a matter of never encountering- or identifying- one before.”
“Really?”
She nodded. “Phoenix-born stand out, even in Equestria- but in a crowd of Equestrians, you don’t. If an Equestrian water elemental simply never swam, they’d never discover their powers… and never realize they were an elemental. Presumably, you won’t periodically burn up and rejuvenate the way Phoenix-born do, and so have something different as an elemental immortality device.”
“What?” Parvati asked, looking at her.
She shrugged. “Phoenix-born are immortal,” she answered. “We’re pretty sure that’s because fire is immortal. If you’re a water elemental… Well, water is immortal too, so if I’m right, there’s probably also a mechanism that grants you an indefinite lifespan.”
“But I-!” Parvati began. “I don’t want to be immortal.” She looked down at the egg in her hands.
Hailey put her hand on her shoulder. “Don’t worry. If it turns out you actually are immortal, I can help you bring your life to a gentle end when the time comes.”
“But what about you?”
“Me?” She shrugged. “If I ever want to die, all I have to do is turn into Harry and take a bullet to the head. Phoenix-born will instantly rejuvenate upon receiving a lethal blow, but then they’re vulnerable for the first two weeks after that, during which another lethal blow will actually kill them. And if you are immortal, we probably only have to put enough bullets between your eyes or something. Immortal is not the same thing as invulnerable, remember that. It’s merely the opportunity to outlive those around you, and keep your descendants happy any time they come to visit great-great-great-grandma.”
“B-But…” She shivered.
“You’re identical twins with Padma, right?”
She blinked. “Uh… Yeah?”
She nodded. “She’s most likely going to be magically very similar to you, then. Magic does grow differently, but twins- especially identical twins- often have either matching or complementary talents or powers. Anyways, you were taking that up to Fleur, right?”
By the time Parvati arrived in the Hospital Wing, Fleur’s bag slung over her shoulder and the egg secure in her hands, Fleur was stirring. Madam Pomfrey had her propped up on some pillows, and was trying to get her to drink what Parvati recognized as her pepper-up potion.
Finally, Fleur swallowed some- then promptly coughed and sputtered, eyes wide, for a second. Parvati flinched, stopping next to Angelina, even with the next bed in the row; the burning sensation as the potion went down her throat would not have been a pleasant surprise, especially when only barely awake.
“It’s a false awareness,” Angelina muttered to Parvati. “Madam Pomfrey is using a huge array of awareness spells to wake her up so she can take the potion.”
“Drink,” Madam Pomfrey commanded Fleur- who rather clumsily accepted the flask and proceeded to drink the potion inside. When she finished, Madam Pomfrey plucked the flask from her hand while she coughed and flopped back down on her pillows.
Fleur then proceeded to stare blankly at the ceiling, so Madam Pomfrey, after a quick check, turned to Parvati. “I understand you pulled her out of the lake?”
She nodded. “I- I did.”
“How did you dry her clothes?”
“I magically removed the water as I lifted her clear of the Lake,” Parvati told her.
Madam Pomfrey gazed at her for a few seconds.
“Er, I retrieved her things for her,” she muttered.
She sighed. “It’s a good thing you were there,” she muttered. “And Angelina. Had either of you not been there, she would’ve died.”
Parvati scowled. “It seemed a bit fast to me,” she muttered.
Madam Pomfrey nodded. “Humans run at a thirty seven degree core body temperature, but Veela are all the way up at fifty degrees. Fleur is only part Veela, so her baseline is about forty two- but just like Veela, she’s extremely vulnerable to extreme temperatures.” She sighed. “Ice swimming might be a doable sport for humans, but for her, it would be lethal, no matter how she trained.”
“Ice swimming?” Parvati asked, tilting her head.
She nodded. “Swimming in ice-cold water. You did some, from what Angelina tells me, to reach her.” She sighed. “And ice swimming is deadly for humans too, without proper training.” She looked at her. “Yet you’re…?”
She shrugged. “I must be immune to low temperatures or something,” she muttered. “Even low body temperatures. I was down to minus ten earlier, but it was comfortable and my body wasn’t slowing down or anything, so…” She shrugged again.
Madam Pomfrey sighed. “So, you can safely dive into an ice-cold lake with no preparation at all?”
Parvati tilted her head. “Eh. Too big of a thermal shock still seems like it’ll hurt me, so I wouldn’t be running outside to jump in the lake, no. Only after acclimating for a while.”
She shook her head, and turned away to cast a couple charms on Fleur again. “That’s coming along nicely,” she muttered.
“Hey, Madam Pomfrey?”
Parvati jumped, and looked up- but it was only Silversong, leaning in from another room. She was wearing one of the Physician’s Assistant badges Hailey had made for the volunteers that helped Madam Pomfrey in the Hospital Wing; the Student Instructor Program was great, but it couldn’t stop everything. There were still a fair number of injuries or whatever on an almost daily basis.
Madam Pomfrey looked up. “Hmm?”
“Silent Scream is awake and screaming in agony again,” Silver continued far too calmly.
Madam Pomfrey sighed. “Again,” she grumbled, and hurried over. “Silver, could you watch Fleur for me? If her core body temp doesn’t rise to at least forty in the next five minutes, give her some more Pepper-Up. Once she’s over forty-one and not shivering, she’ll be good to go, unless there’s something else.”
“She got a bit too cold?” Silver guessed.
Madam Pomfrey nodded. “Fell in the lake.”
“Alright,” Silver nodded. “Will do.” She stepped back to let Madam Pomfrey disappear into the next ward, before making her way over towards Fleur’s bed. “Hello, Fleur! Feeling okay?”
There was silence for a couple seconds. Fleur didn’t seem to have even realized she was there.
“Apparently not,” Silver continued, completely unperturbed, and looked up at Parvati. “Hello, Parvati, Angelina. How’s it been?”
“I didn’t know you volunteered up here,” Parvati muttered, eying the badge.
“Yup,” Silver answered. “Every weekend. Hailey does it every night, and I have no idea how she squeezes that into her already very full schedule.” She sighed. “She promised me that she wasn’t using time travel to make her day-to-day schedule line up, but I suppose time compression isn’t out of the question.”
“What…” Fleur muttered, still gazing unseeingly up at the ceiling. “My… My egg. Where is it?” She spoke slowly, like each word took an enormous effort.
“We have it here for you,” Parvati answered. “It’s, er, still a bit cold right now, but…”
“Underwater,” Fleur continued. “It was… Singing.”
“Singing?” Silver asked, tilting her head.
Parvati started to nod, before quickly stopping herself. Silver was another Champion, and she probably should be letting her figure it out on her own.
Silver rubbed her chin. “If it’s singing underwater, but screeching in air…” She scowled.
The silence drew on for a couple of minutes. “The only option then is Mermish,” Silver decided. “I thought I would have recognized Mermish right away, but I guess not.”
“Mermish?” Parvati asked curiously, tilting her head. She had to admit, she’d never heard that word before.
“Yeah, language of the merpeople,” Silver nodded. “Mermaids and all, you know. Means the second task is definitely underwater, and probably in that lake- there are mer in there, all the way at the bottom.” She glanced at Fleur. “It should be warmer come February, but you’ll still want to look into some powerful charms to keep yourself functioning in cold water.” She paused. “Speaking of which, it’s been five, and you’re still at only thirty eight.” She turned to the tray Madam Pomfrey had left on Fleur’s bedside cabinet, measured out some pepper-up potion, and held it out. “Here, Fleur. It won’t be comfortable to drink, but not drinking it will hurt a lot more.”
Fleur numbly accepted the flask and drank the potion, before coughing and holding the flask out. “Ow,” she complained- and Parvati saw the vaguely confused look leave her face. “I-In the lake?” she muttered, looking up at Silver.
“Most likely,” Silver nodded. “I’m sure we can find a bathtub or something to listen to the song in without exposing ourselves to stupidly cold temperatures. It’s probably got a few more details in the lyrics.”
Fleur scowled. “Um,” she muttered. “When- When I fell in the lake, there was…” She paused. “Something grabbed me. What was it?” She looked up.
“A Grindylow,” Parvati answered. “I took care of it.”