The whistle blew.
Fleur took a deep breath, and, for the first time ever, stuffed a whole hour’s worth of Gillyweed into her mouth. The most she and Madame Maxime had practiced with was ten minutes at a time- and the coldest they’d gotten with their thermal training was twelve degrees, before they’d run out of days before the Task. That was decently cool- but according to the temperature-sensing charm she’d cast as she had approached the lake, the surface was at a mere two degrees.
She knew her body could tolerate the cold better than it could just two months before- but she was certain that the shock would still hurt. She would have to take it slowly… But she couldn’t. She had to get far enough in before the gillyweed took effect, or she would be unable to breathe- or get started. And she had to get the gillyweed working as quickly as possible, since the timer had already started.
While she chewed the gillyweed, she stripped off her shoes- thank Merlin the snow had melted off of the beach some days before- and shed her cloak, dropping them on the beach.
It was taking longer to chew the larger wad of gillyweed. She had to chew it up properly; any unchewed gillyweed wouldn’t work, resulting in a shorter duration.
She took a deep breath through her nose, let it out, and started walking into the water. She clenched her muscles as the icy water reached them, forcing them to keep working, to stay warm for a few seconds longer. Still, though, the numbing pain was far stronger than it ever had been in that pool- and the walk to the depth she needed was much longer than it had been in the pool.
But the gillyweed was also taking forever to chew properly.
She waded in until she was waist-deep, then stopped. The gillyweed was getting close- but she was also getting close to too cold to stand. So she took a deep breath, and swept her robes off, undoing the snaps in one smooth motion.
Surprised I can still do a smooth motion right now.
She lifted the robe above the surface of the water, dried it with her wand, and used a banishing charm to send it back to the shore, where it joined her cloak with a soft flump. Finally, she holstered her wand in its loop on her hip, swallowed the Gillyweed, raised her hands into the air… and allowed herself to fall forwards, into the lake.
The water was freezing. She could feel her body seizing up. Her lungs wanted to move, but she resolutely held her breath. Even her heart was struggling-
Then, very suddenly, she was completely fine. She could feel her fingers and feet once again. Her heart was beating normally, and when she took a breath, her lungs didn’t move- and instead, water flowed smoothly out her gills.
She swept her arms down, and launched herself out towards the center of the lake.
She had a rescue to perform.
She hadn’t yet been able to discern exactly what had been taken, so she was still assuming it was her sister. Either that, or she figured she should be able to recognize it when she saw it.
Several times, she paused to use a quick directional charm- and a distance charm that she’d anchored on her robes shortly after putting them on over her wetsuit.
With the combination of those two spells, she knew exactly where she was in the lake.
She headed straight for the middle, the deepest part. From there, she would start the search pattern she and Madame Maxime had come up with until she found her goal.
She was not going to accept failure as an option.
Suddenly, something grabbed her ankle.
She whirled in the water, drawing her wand in a single motion.
It was a Grindylow. She could see more rising out of the weeds, reaching to pull her down.
“Relashio!”
Her voice was largely inaudible, being absorbed by the great big bubble that came from her mouth, but the spell didn’t need that. Boiling water shot from her wand, causing angry red patches to appear on their green skin. She yanked her foot free, and swam quickly away from them… Then they grabbed again. She whirled in the water again. “Relashio!”
Her aim wasn’t very good; she felt the jet of boiling water brush against her foot.
There were also five grindylows. She glanced around for a second… More were rising out of the weed to attack her.
She cursed, and gripped her wand tightly. “Relashio! Relashio! Relashio!”
The fight seemed to go on forever. She fought them, kicking, punching, and hitting them with the spell- but there were simply too many of them. They were wearing her down- and, she realized, she was losing, albeit slowly. She had lots of cuts from the fight- she couldn’t go on much longer, and there always seemed to be another one to take the place of any she managed to strike or curse off of her.
This wasn’t working. She needed to-
Hangon. Curse?
“Confringo!” She paused, briefly, when her blasting spell had very, very little effect. Should have expected that this far underwater. “Stupefy!”
That one worked. When the bolt of red light struck a grindylow, it instantly went limp and started drifting away on the current. This was no longer dealing with wildlife, but a wizards’ duel, and the Grindylows were nothing other than ignorant opponents that had left their wands in the bathroom.
“Stupefy! Stupefy! Stupefy!”
Now she had the upper hand. She continued to fight, and curse- and there weren’t enough of them to keep up with her.
Finally, she got the last one off, and shot away from them, across the lake.
A minute later, she paused, used her location spells along with a timekeeping charm, cursed, turned ninety degrees, and resumed swimming. That fight must have gone on for much longer than it felt like.
She was almost out of time.
Then… She heard a distant voice. No, voices- it was the same song as in her egg. No, a different song, with similar lyrics.
She veered towards it, and swam at full speed.
It seemed to take forever to locate her goal. It appeared to be in the middle of a village of merpeople- but ever since she passed the first hut, she had a strange feeling that she was in danger.
And, she saw, there was someone already there, gleaming silver hair floating in the water like quicksilver. The royal blue stripes that she knew were in this girl’s hair were completely invisible in the gloom.
Then she saw what the goal was. There was a giant statue of a merperson in the middle of the square, and it looked like there were two people left tied to the statue’s tail. A glance to the side showed a third person, also with the vividly-colored hair of the Equestrian students, floating a few inches off the seafloor not far from the silver-haired Champion- Silversong, was it?
She focused on the statue’s tail. One of the remaining hostages had hair like a bonfire, moving almost exactly like a fire in the currents.
The other was…
“Gabrielle!” she gasped, and shot forwards.
Silver looked. Fleur recognized the shimmer of the Bubblehead Charm, though it seemed she’d cast it very tightly over only her mouth and nose. “You okay?” she asked.
“Yes,” she answered shortly, before tapping Gabrelle’s bindings with her wand to slice them.
“Oh, no,” Silver muttered, looking past her.
Fleur looked. Her wetsuit was ripped and tattered around her legs- and, she realized, there was a thin trail of blood still seeping from the wounds. Then she looked back up at Silver for an explanation.
“The Mer are carnivores,” Silver continued. “They’re like sharks. Where there’s blood in the water…” She sighed, and pointed her wand at Fleur’s leg. A moment later, the persistent stinging that had followed her from the Grindylow battle faded away. “They’re restraining themselves for us, but if any of them lose control, they’re vicious.”
Right at that moment, Fleur felt a sudden burning sensation on the sides of her neck.
She let out a gasp, raising her wand again, and timed her bubblehead charm. She coughed twice, then sighed. “That ran out too fast,” she grumbled, before casting her body heat charm.
Then she heard a distant yelling, and turned to look- before yanking herself quickly downwards, out of the path of some kind of missile.
CRUNCH.
She looked up.
“Ouch,” Silver muttered. “That had to hurt.”
There was the fifth Champion, Harry Potter… now drifting, unconscious, in the currents, the broken fragments of a broomstick floating around him.
“What in the-?” Fleur began.
Silver glanced at her. “He was using a bubble-head charm,” she answered. “Shot past here three times already, using that broom as some kind of rocket. Problem is, brooms can’t stop underwater, so he had to either dismount and lose the broom or crash into something.”
A couple of girls with hair like waterfalls suddenly shot out of nowhere, and stopped next to Harry. They looked identical- and Fleur realized she’d seen them when she had been walking to the Lake for the task, sitting next to the judge’s table with their cloaks removed. She didn’t know who they were, though.
“That looked like it hurt,” one of them muttered, and brandished her wand at Harry. “Oh, yeah, he’s out for the count. Definitely failed the task.”
“Definitely,” the other agreed. “I suppose that means we need to take James up too, don’t we?”
The first nodded. “Yup.” She pointed her wand at the statue’s tail, and the bindings around the fire-haired boy snapped. The boy floated quickly right up to them. “Think you can take care of them, Parvati?”
The other one nodded. “Yeah. Be careful, sis- that could turn ugly.” She pointed past Fleur and Silver, to something that neither of them could see.
The first looked. “I’m watching too, sis,” she agreed.
Fleur watched as the second one- Parvati?- grabbed both Harry and the fire-haired boy around the shoulders, then shot off into the distance, angled upwards.
“Who are you?” Fleur asked.
“Padma,” the remaining girl answered, then sighed. “We’re the safety patrol- if we have to help you, you’re automatically disqualified.” She glanced up at them. “Now that you’ve healed her wounds, you’re both going to want to get out of here, fast. Some of the Mer over there have lost control, but the others are restraining them- I don’t know how long that’s going to last.”
Silver and Fleur looked at one another.
“We’re allowed to help each other, right?” Silver asked.
Padma blinked. “Uh- Yes. But you’re competing against one another, aren’t you?”
“Doesn’t matter,” Silver answered, and brandished her wand through the water.
A second later, a set of plastic flippers appeared in the water- just like the ones Silver was wearing. “Here, Fleur.” She handed them to her.
Fleur stared at her for a second, then accepted them and put them on, before grabbing Gabrielle. “To the Surface!” she cried, while Silver grabbed the other Equestrian girl off the bottom of the lake and charged after her.
Silver was faster than her. Rather predictable, with the drag of the Bubblehead Charm in addition to Gabrielle’s dead weight.
But when Silver caught up, she didn’t race ahead. Instead, she positioned herself underneath Gabrielle’s other shoulder, and helped pull her towards the surface.
“W-What?” Fleur asked, staring at her as they swam upwards.
“She doesn’t know how to swim, does she?”
“Er-!” Fleur paused. “N-No, she doesn’t.”
“Then you’re going to need all the help you can get to keep her head above the water while we calm her down.”
Fleur winced, then drew her wand to check Gabrielle’s body temperature. It was also way low… But she was still alive, in some kind of stasis, and her own body temperature had just hit normal. So, she cast the rest of her magic into a similar body temperature spell for Gabrielle. It wasn’t going to be able to heat her up as quickly, and possibly not even all the way… But it would still help.
It was a long way to the surface. When they reached it, Gabrielle was just a few degrees below normal.
Her bubblehead charm shattered instantly when she broke the surface, and she took a deep breath of the frigid air. “Okay,” she muttered, looking around to find the shore.
Then, she heard Gabrielle let out a small, panicked scream.
“G-Gabrielle!” she gasped. “Calm down! We’ve got you!”
Silver’s hostage brushed her brilliant red hair out of her face, then swam around Silver to lift Gabrielle a little higher. “Calm down there,” she told her. “We’re not going to let you sink.”
Fleur blinked. “H-How are you so much higher in the water?”
The girl, whose head and shoulders were above the water instead of just her head, grinned. “Because I’m an Aethr,” she answered. “We’re naturally buoyant. Hailey said something about an artificial mass component to the stasis spell to offset that kind of thing.”
Silver chuckled. “Naturally buoyant,” she mused. “More like naturally light.”
“Same difference,” the girl giggled. “Makes diving a pain. But anyways, we’ve got you, and we’re not going to let you sink.” She hugged Gabrielle tightly.
Fleur watched nervously- but it seemed to be working. Gabrielle was calming down, clutching at her living life raft.
She looked at Silver. “What’s her name?” she muttered.
Silver smiled. “That’s Ginny,” she answered.
“Here, how about-!” Ginny began. “How about I teach you how to float on your own, so you can be certain you won’t sink?”
Gabrielle only stared at Ginny.
Ginny smiled. “Okay. Take a deep breath, then breathe while keeping your lungs full.” There was a pause. “Yup, just like that. Now, if you lay on your back while doing that…”
There were several seconds of silence- and by the end of it, Ginny had completely let go of Gabrielle, who was floating in the calm water, face up.
“D-Don’t leave me!” Gabrielle squeaked.
“Don’t worry, we’re not leaving you,” Ginny told her, taking her hand. “Now, if you move your hands above your head above the water, then lay them back in the water and gently push back down…”
“Like this?” Gabrielle muttered.
“Yup, just like that. If you do that, you can propel yourself across the surface to reach the shore. And if you’re ever under water, you can propel yourself to the surface by raising your arms against your body, then reaching them out to push back down, then start doing this to reach the shore.”
“Not the best swimming lesson,” Silver observed calmly, “but I suppose it works. Now, let’s get back to shore.”
Ginny grinned. “Here, I’ll pull you, Gabrielle,” she said, and positioned herself underneath Gabrielle. She hooked her hands underneath her shoulders… and started moving.
Fleur gasped, as she and Silver swam after them at full speed. “How-!” she managed. “How’s she swimming so fast?”
Silver chuckled. “She’s an Aethr,” she answered. “I bet she’s using some of the biggest, most efficient ‘flippers’ in the world.”
Fleur glanced at her. She could almost hear the quotes, and could definitely hear the amusement in her voice. “Really?” she asked.
“By the way, those flippers I gave you are made of magic,” Silver told her. “They’ll dissolve once we get to the shallows.”
Silver was right. Once she was sure Ginny had pulled Gabrielle to safety, and after she had watched them walk out onto the shore to meet Madam Pomfrey, Fleur adjusted her path back to where she’d gone in. Exactly as Silver promised, the flippers dissolved right about when the water got shallow enough for her to walk to shore.
As she walked out of the water, she used a drying charm to dry her wetsuit off- speaking of which, she noticed, Silver’s spell down at the statue seemed to have repaired it as well.
“Um, why did you come over here?”
She looked. It was one of the two water-haired girls, walking out of the water like it wasn’t even there; even her clothes were dry.
“Because I left my clothes here,” she answered, picking up her robe and slinging it back around her shoulders, while tucking the large, aquamarine feather she’d plucked out of the water into an inside pocket. She did up the snaps, then picked up her cloak and swept that around her shoulders as well, before pulling her scarf out of a pocket and wrapping it around her neck. It was all cold- but she knew her body heat charm would last long enough to fix that.
And if whatever ‘flippers’ Ginny had been using left feathers in the water… The feather was at least six inches long- and didn’t look like a primary feather, so it was either whatever she was doing or some truly enormous bird.
“Nice work down there.”
She jumped at the unfamiliar voice, and looked.
It was… It was the youngest judge, with the gleaming black hair- the one that could easily be an Equestrian… but also could easily be British.
“Uh,” she muttered.
The girl smiled at her. “I didn’t realize Grindylows hunted in packs of twenty, but you handled them pretty well. Most of the other Champions would’ve required rescue if they ran into that, I’m pretty sure.”
“If… If you’re a judge…”
She shrugged. “I know how to be impartial, even with family and friends,” she told her. “Fairly important, that- two of them are Champions.” She sighed exasperatedly. “Not that Harry is worth much more than the entertainment value of his spectacular performance on the First Task, of course.”
“Um-!” She glanced at the water-haired girl.
“Harry is okay,” the judge- she couldn’t remember her name- continued carelessly. “He managed to give himself a pretty big concussion, but that’s nothing Madam Pomfrey can’t fix.” She giggled. “Should be fun to see exactly how he’ll mess up the Third Task. Oh, and I’m Hailey, by the way.” She held out her hand.
Fleur took it, shaking it gingerly. “F-Fleur,” she muttered.
“Where’s Sadarina?” the water-haired girl asked.
Hailey looked at her, and grinned. “Oh, so you’ve noticed, have you?” She chuckled. “She’s been taking care of a bunch of business for me- and she’s getting the Papa Tango right now, so she can travel to Equestria to work there. It should speed things up at least a little.”
Fleur looked at Hailey. “What is this ‘papa tango’?” she asked.
Hailey returned her gaze with a calculating expression. “The Papa Tango…” She trailed off. “Yeah, it would be safe. Not sure how fair it would be for the Tournament, though.” Then she scowled. “Though, maybe that…” She rubbed her chin, evidently thinking hard, for a few seconds. “Huh. Do you know where my office is?”