"Hello, Luce," A smooth voice purred right beside them.
Lucifer and Ron turned in unison to find Eve standing there, accompanied by a petite, dark-haired girl who was nervously clutching the collar of her heavy winter cloak. "May we sit here?"
"Of course," Lucifer said, his tense features softening into a polite, effortless smile as he gestured to the empty space on the wooden bench. They slid in next to him, bringing with them scent of sweet vanilla and cold crisp air.
"This is Elena. Here, this is Lucifer," Eve introduced, her eyes dancing with amusement.
"Nice to meet you, Elena," Lucifer's deep, velvet tone resonated perfectly, carrying that distinct, aristocratic cadence which seemed to belong to another world entirely.
The simple greeting caused Elena to instantly press her hands to her face, dissolving into a helpless giggle fit, her cheeks flushing a bright pink.
Lucifer blinked, entirely perplexed by the reaction. "What? What did I say?"
"Nothing, it's how you said it," Eve smiled, nudging him playfully with her shoulder. "She is not used to hearing your unique accent. It's a bit... overwhelming for a Beauxbatons girl."
"Oh." He muttered, genuinely not knowing what to say to that, his mind already drifting back to his primary anxiety.
"Eet ees very nice to meet you as well, Lucifer," Elena managed to squeak out, her accent incredibly thick, her English far more 'fractured' and strained than Fleur Delacour's.
Lucifer offered a tight, distracted smile before his eyes began aggressively sweeping the crowded stands yet again. The churning weight in his stomach was growing heavier by the second. "Where the hell is Hermione?"
Eve tilted her head, looking down at the lakeside where the Champions were stripping down to their swimming gear. "Maybe she is that child Harry's hostage?" she suggested it casually.
The words struck Lucifer like a physical blow. He felt an instant, burning surge of stupidity flare in his chest. How the fuck did I not consider that?' Suddenly, a dark, haunting phrase he had heard in Golden Egg's lore echoed violently in his ears: But past an hour, the prospect's black. Too late, it's gone, it won't come back.
His eyes widened into dinner plates. The realization ripped through him like an electric current. He stood up so fast his bench groaned, immediately marching down wooden steps of the stands, pushing past startled students, his eyes locked onto Harry Potter.
"Morningstar!" Percy Weasley's pompous, shrill voice barked from the edge of the barrier. "Back to the stands at once! The task is about to begin, and civilians are not permitted on the docks!"
Without even breaking his stride or glancing back, Lucifer fluidly raised his arm and gave Percy the middle finger, walking right past spluttering Ministry official. He marched straight down the creaking wooden pier, stopping a mere foot away from his Gryffindor friend.
"You bring Hermione back safe and on time, Potter. You understand me?" Lucifer's voice wasn't a shout, but it possessed a lethal, chilling clarity that sliced cleanly through the roaring wind and chatter of the crowd.
Every single Champion paused, staring at him. He stepped closer, towering over messy-haired boy, his eyes boring into Harry's soul. "You bring Hermione back to me before the hour is up, or so help me, I will skin 'you alive."
Harry grew visibly shaken, his breath hitching as he looked into terrifyingly cold depth of Lucifer's gaze. He swallowed hard, nodding rapidly. "O-of course. I will. I promise." Under that sort of gift, he truly had no choice but to agree.
Lucifer held his stare for a fraction of a second longer, ensuring the terror was thoroughly instilled, before turning on his heel and sweeping back up to the stands. He slid back into his seat, entire muscular frame rigid, his jaw clenched so tightly the muscle ticked.
"Well, all of our Champions are ready for the Second Task," Albus Dumbledore's magically magnified voice boomed across the lake, echoing off distant mountains. "Which will start on my whistle. They have precisely one hour to recover what has been taken from them. On the count of three, then. One... Two... Three!"
The sharp, shrill blast of silver whistle pierced the freezing morning air.
The entire stadium around Lucifer erupted into a deafening roar of cheers, stomping feet, and thunderous applause. Down below, he watched Harry stuff a slimy, grayish handful of Gillyweed into his mouth which he told him before and he sat anxiously, fearing for Hermione's safety.
Their friend violently plunge into the dark water. Lucifer's hands were feeling uncharacteristically clammy.
The only things down there that could keep the hostages would be the Merpeople... and that's not counting any vicious magical creatures like Kappas or Grindylows, Lucifer thought, his mind racing through dark variables. 'I'm sure Dumbledore thinks he can trust the Merpeople, but they are savage, primitive beasts. They are going to follow the rules of the task to a literal T. They won't give back a single hostage once that hour passes.'
In the Wizarding world, humans romantically idealized them as graceful sirens. But Lucifer knew the grim truth. The entities dwelling in the Black Lake were an acquired taste, to put it kindly, grotesque, grey-skinned creatures with sharp, yellowish teeth and wild, matted green hair. He had never 'felt' this sickeningly nervous in his entire life.
Minutes ticked away like dropping blood. Fifty agonizing minutes passed before the surface broke. Cedric Diggory erupted from the water, dragging Cho Chang with him. A massive section of the crowd went wild, officials rushing over with thick blankets to haul them onto the wooden platforms.
Lucifer stood up, fueled by restless energy, and rest of the crowd surged forward with him, edging their way closer to the very brink of the lake.
His heart rate spiked, hammering violently against his ribs as Viktor Krum surfaced two minutes later, his head partially transfigured into a shark, dragging a Durmstrang boy.
'Where is he?' Lucifer's knuckles turned white as he gripped the railing. Where the fuck is he?
Finally, at the fifty-seven-minute mark, the dark water churned violently, and Harry's head broke the surface, gasping for air, his arm wrapped tightly around Hermione Granger.
Lucifer didn't wait, he leaped over the barrier, sprinting down the wooden dock with predatory speed. As Harry struggled to reach the edge, he bent down, grabbed Hermione's trembling hand, and hauled her entirely out of the freezing water in one powerful, effortless motion.
He instantly pulled her soaking, shivering body flush against his chest, wrapping his arms around her in a fierce, protective hug. "I'm so glad you're okay! I'm so glad you're safe!"
"Lucifer... Lucifer, of course I'm okay," Hermione sputtered, her teeth chattering violently against his shoulder, breath hot against his neck.
But her comforting words were instantly swallowed by a piercing, raw scream of absolute agony. A few feet away, Fleur Delacour was being dragged out of the water by Ministry officials, having been forced to turn back by a swarm of Grindylows.
"No! Gabrielle! She is still down zere!" Fleur shrieked, her voice cracking into a desperate, jagged sob as she fought like a wild animal against the wizards holding her back. "I 'ave to save my seester! Let me go! She will drown!"
Lucifer looked over at Fleur's hysterical face, then back to Hermione, who was currently being wrapped in a heavy, steaming towel by a medic.
"Not to worry! Not to worry at all!" Ludo Bagman's voice boomed cheerfully over the noise, entirely dismissive of the French girl's terror. "The Merchieftain will undoubtedly bring the little girl back safely any moment now!"
'Naive, arrogant fool,' Lucifer thought, a cold, dangerous fury instantly replacing his anxiety. Without a single word of warning, he tore away from the crowd, rushed toward the very edge of the wooden dock, and dove headfirst into the pitch-black water. Behind him, a chorus of screams and panicked yells erupted from teachers and students, commanding him to get back, but sound was instantly cut off as the freezing, murky abyss swallowed him whole.
Floating in the freezing dark, Lucifer didn't waste time struggling for breath. He focused entirely on magic surging like liquid fire through his veins. Closing his eyes, he parted his lips and let out a whispered sequence of words in an old, forgotten tongue.
When he snapped his eyes open, his pupils dilated completely, his vision slicing through the impenetrable, muddy Blackness of the lake which very much lived up to its name, as if it were clear glass.
He kicked his legs, diving deeper into the freezing depths. A pack of horned, sickly-green Grindylows darted out from a bed of writhing tallows, their spindly fingers outstretched to claw at his flesh. Lucifer didn't even slow down. With a brutal, wordless slash of his wand, a jet of boiling, pressurized water erupted from the tip, tearing through the creatures, blowing their fragile bodies apart into floating, severed limbs and green bile.
Swimming deeper, he pushed past the thermal layers until eerie, stone-carved structures of Mer-village materialized in the dim green light. There was absolutely no sign of Gabrielle Delacour at central square where the hostages had been tied.
His eyes darted to the periphery, spotting a group of five large, heavily armed mermen swimming aggressively toward a jagged underwater cavern, dragging a small, petrified form with them. The floating strands of long, silver-blonde hair were unmistakable.
Lucifer kicked hard, cutting through the water like a torpedo, intercepting them right outside cavern mouth. "Hey!" he roared, magic in his voice forcing the sound waves to travel clearly through the dense water.
The five mermen spun around instantly, their webbed hands tightening around heavy, ancient stone tridents. Their feline, amber eyes glared at him with primal hostility, their sharp teeth bared in an underwater hiss.
"You are supposed to return her back to the surface after the hour!" Lucifer shouted, floating roughly sixty feet away, his wand locked onto the lead merman.
"The hour has struck. The human was abandoned," The lead merman hissed back, his voice a gargling, clicking sequence of harsh sounds that Lucifer's comprehension translated perfectly. "Our task is clear. If the human is not retrieved in an hour, they belong to the deep. They are ours."
"I can't let you do that," Lucifer said, his tone dropping into a deadly, flat resonance, "Let her go, now."
"Return to the surface, land-walker, or you will not return at all," The mermen threatened, raising their spears in unison, their powerful tails thrashing as they began to close the distance.
Lucifer had absolutely no intention of wasting another second trying to reason with primitive beasts that chose to interpret a school tournament as a license for child slaughter, they clearly didn't care.
"Diffindo," he roared in his mind.
A searing, invisible blade of highly concentrated force sliced through the water. It struck the lead merman directly across the torso. The spell was so violently overpowered that it didn't just cut him; it completely sheared the creature cleanly in half. A massive, erupting cloud of thick, dark purple blood exploded into water, the upper and lower halves of merman drifting apart in a gruesome, floating display of trailing intestines and severed spine.

The remaining 'four' mermen let out a collective, clicking screech of absolute rage, dispersing outward to flank him. Lucifer seized the opening, swimming forward at maximum speed toward the drifting, unconscious body of Gabrielle. He was barely six feet away from her, when the four remaining Mermen swarmed him from all sides, their 'Tridents' thrusting forward with lethal intent.
Lucifer's eyes snapped open, glowing a fierce, blinding, demonic red.
With a single, aggressive blink, a violent, crushing kinetic shockwave detonated outward from his body in a perfect three hundred and sixty degree radius. The force of pressure compressed the water into a solid ring of impact. The Mermen were violently blown backward, their bones shattering audibly under the pressure.
However, Lucifer hadn't foreseen the underwater physics; the expanding shockwave caught Gabrielle's small body as well, blasting her away from him, sending her tumbling deeper into the dark cavern.
Thinking with lightning speed, he aimed his wand at her retreating form. "Accio Gabrielle's robes!"
He knew the 'Summoning Charm' was strictly designed for inanimate objects, but his quick wits paid off. The spell latched onto the heavy fabric of her school uniform. The magical tug dragged her small body backward through the water, reeling her directly toward him. She came with her clothes, otherwise that'd have been an awkward conversation above the surface.
"Argh!" Lucifer screamed, a burst of bubbles escaping his mouth as a jagged, agonizing pain ripped through his torso just as his 'fingers' wrapped around Gabrielle's collar.
He whipped his head to the left. One of the surviving Mermen, driven by a suicidal frenzy, had managed to close the distance through blood cloud, driving three rusted, jagged prongs of its Ancient stone Trident deep into Lucifer's left flank. The stone barbs tore through his flesh, ripping a jagged hole into his abdomen.
Before he could react, another Merman blindsided him from below. The creature thrust its weapon upward, stabbing him three more times in rapid, brutal succession, once deep into his thigh, a second time tearing cleanly through meat of his shoulder, and a third time carving a deep, bloody trench along his right ribcage.
The immediate scent and metallic, coppery taste of his own blood filled Lucifer's nose and mouth, clouding his vision in a hazy red mist. The pain didn't weaken him; it drove into a state of absolute wrath.
Abandoning all finesse, he lunged forward like a striking viper, grabbed the nearest merman by its greasy green hair, yanked its head back with 'bone-snapping' noise and slammed his fist directly into its face. The punch shattered the creature's lower jaw, leaving it unhinged and dangling in a gory mess.
Lucifer leaned in close, his eyes flaring into two beams of intense, blinding red heat. He fired his laser vision directly into the cavern of the creature's broken jaw, burning straight down its throat. The immense heat instantly boiled the trapped water and tissue inside.
BOOM.'
The buildup of pressure detonated entirely inside the merman's skull. The creature's head split apart like a dropped melon, sending a horrific spray of grey skin, yellow teeth, brain matter, and bone 'fragments' blasting outward into the water. Nothing remained but a ragged neck stump trailing thick ribbons of dark purple blood.
The remaining two mermen, witnessing the 'terrifying' butcher, let out panicked screeches, turned their tails, and attempted to swim away into the murky trenches.
But Lucifer was finished being merciful. He pursued them like a predator of the deep. With two rapid, vicious thrusts of his hands, he generated a pair of "localized vacuum" spheres right in front of them. The sudden violent shift in water pressure caused the two mermen to implode, their ribcages collapsing inward with a sickening, wet crunch, bodies turning into twisted, mangled lumps of meat that sank rapidly to the lakebed.
With the immediate threat annihilated, Lucifer wrapped a powerful, iron grip around Gabrielle's waist. He could 'feel' the dragging weight of his injuries, the blood pouring freely from his side and leg, blooming into a massive crimson cloud around him, and sucking back into skin from where it was released, and healing itself.
He knew he wouldn't be able to swim efficiently while holding her with his body leaking life.
With a grunt of willpower, he positioned Gabrielle directly above him. Gathering ounce of his strength, Lucifer thrust his arms violently downward, casting a powerful, continuous 'Propulsion Charm' beneath her feet. The spell launched the unconscious girl upward like a rocket, sending her soaring straight toward the distant surface of the lake.
Lucifer followed behind her at a slower, agonizingly deliberate pace, his arms pushing through the heavy water as he began his ascent from the murky depths.
He was only 'twenty feet' away from the barrier of daylight when a sudden, violent jerk stopped him dead in his tracks. Two webbed, powerful hands clamped around his ankles like iron cuffs, dragging him violently backward down into the dark.
The sudden, brutal snapping motion jarred his arm, causing his 'fingers' to slip. His wand tumbled from his grasp, drifting uselessly down into the dark abyss below.
Instead of panicking, he twisted his body around in the water, his eyes flaring into that terrifying, demonic crimson once again, thrust both of his hands downward toward the two Mermen who had 'followed' the trail of disturbance all the way from village.
Instead of blasting them away, Lucifer clenched his fingers, exerting a precise, crushing grip on the very water surrounding their necks. He didn't use a spell; he manipulated the pressure itself, completely compressing water columns around their throats, instantly cutting off their gills from absorbing oxygen.
The two creatures began to thrash violently, their eyes bulging as they suffocated in their own environment. Lucifer's face contorted into a mask of pure sadistic delight. Slowly, deliberately, he closed his open hands into two tight, iron fists.
'SNAP!'
The sudden, synchronized compression of water snapped necks of both Mermen simultaneously, the distinct muffled crack of fracturing vertebrae echoing through the water. Their bodies went instantly limp, hands releasing his ankles as they drifted aimlessly into the current.
With the 'final' pursuers dealt with, the massive adrenaline rush that had sustained his body began to rapidly recede, leaving behind the agonizing, burning reality of his wounds. Every muscle in his torso screamed in protest as he forced himself to swim the remaining distance, vision blurring at the edges, the light above dancing mockingly.
He refused to faint, let these pathetic creatures see him break. With one 'final, explosive' burst, Lucifer's hand pushed through the final barrier breaking the surface of the Black Lake. He dragged his upper body onto the edge of the wooden floating dock.
Instantly, a chaotic chorus of horrified screams, gasps, and frantic shouting erupted from the shore. The teachers and ministry officials were running down the pier in a panic, Fleur Delacour was weeping joyfully as someone dragged a safe Gabrielle out of the water right beside him.
Lucifer didn't care about any of them. He dragged his under the process of reverting bloody torso further onto the wood, his breath coming in ragged, painful gasps, a thick trail of dark blood 'viciously' entering back throughout the cuts.

Through his blurry, swimming vision, he looked up. A 'familiar' form was already dropping to her knees right in front of him. A pair of warm, trembling hands clamped onto his shoulders, and the very last thing his focused mind locked onto was the "tear-streaked" face and wild, bushy brown hair of Hermione Granger leaning over him.
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