Author's note: Guys, please… if you can spare some power stones, I'd really appreciate it.
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The surface of the Great Lake burst open in a spray of water and Harry leaped out like a dolphin breaking through the sea. The moment he surfaced, a thunder of cheers rolled over him while the commentator's excited voice echoed across the arena.
But he cared little for the noise and, midair, waved his wand and executed a Bubble-Head Charm, and a thin layer of magic formed a sphere around his head from chin up.
At the same time he turned his body, head down and fins up, and dove straight back into the water. The whole stunt lasted only a second above the surface before he was swallowed by the cold depths again.
Another minute later he was once again in the depths of the lake and just as he wanted to catch his breath the corner of his eyes caught another shark, twice as big as him, rushing toward him, jaws opened wide to tear him in two.
Not this time. He grinned and flicked his wand, the chant already forming on his tongue, and fired a blasting hex. This time it came out as a bolt of lightning rather than a slow beam boiling the water, and it slammed into the shark's face in a heartbeat.
Boom!
With a muffled explosion the predator's face was torn apart and blood clouded the water. Perhaps that had been a bit too much, but he quickly reminded himself that if not the shark, it would have been his blood filling the lake then pushed the thought aside.
He glanced at the gadget on his wrist and bolted forward, blasting two more sharks along the way and leaving a red trail behind him until, after a while, no more sharks came to attack.
Without realizing it, his actions gave him a brief window to breathe, because the sharks gathering behind him were drawn to the blood and began devouring the injured of their own kind instead of following him.
Meanwhile, elsewhere.
"Aaaaa!"
A shriek of a young girl echoed through the waters before a similar sound of something massive ramming into solid magic followed. Fleur Delacour opened her eyes to see a familiar sight, a shield in front of her and a monster jerking its head before swimming away.
"That's the third time, Miss Delacour. A few more and you will not have any points left to spare."
Fleur turned to the voice and saw the Hogwarts alchemy professor inside a bubble of water, his hand inside his coat pocket as though he were standing on grass casually giving her a raised eyebrow.
"I thank you, Monsieur." She gave him a quick nod of thanks, checked her wrist, and hurriedly swam off in one direction. Her feet were changed to fins, clearly transfiguration, so at least she was not moving at a crawl.
Looking at her graceful back swimming away, Mavrick focused his magical sense elsewhere and let out a sigh before disappearing from the spot.
It was not only Fleur, basically every single candidate had to be saved once or twice or even more by now, and some now only had two or three chances left before they were disqualified. Perhaps adding sharks into the scenario was a bit too much for these kids.
---
"Look at Mr. Potter go, ladies and gentlemen! What a brilliant maneuver! Leaping out of the lake and casting a Bubble-Head Charm before diving straight back down. That kind of speed is remarkable. And with that, the youngest Hogwarts champion has removed his only weakness, that is having to chant spells aloud under water. And Merlin's majestic beard, would you look at that speed! If I did not know any better, I would say he was a real merman out there!"
The announcer spoke in open astonishment as the crowd erupted in cheers, many pointing at the large screens showing Harry's fast movements underwater. With a hex here and a hex there he was sending the dangerous sharks that were coming at him to their deaths with ease.
"Durmstrang champion Mr. Krum is not bad either. He may not be as flashy as Mr. Potter, but his quick nonverbal casting is just as effective. If you ask me, the first two champions most likely to reach the target are those two—"
His words were cut off when the audience suddenly buzzed with a collective gasp at what was showing on one of the screens.
"Ah… how unfortunate for Miss Fleur Delacour." He continued. "That is the third time the security team has had to intervene. One has to wonder if the Beauxbatons champion will have any points left by the time she finds her companions."
The five large displays above the stands showed the champions navigating the murky waters of the lake, switching views whenever something interesting happened around them.
Though the audience could not see the champions' actions directly, it did not remove the thrill from the game. The thunderous chanting had not stopped once, with the occasional gasp whenever a champion got too close to danger, and cheers after their impressive moves.
---
Harry slowed down a little and looked around, glancing between the gadget on his wrist and his surroundings. His wand had not returned to its holder since he retrieved it at the beginning, and he slowly turned a full circle in the water, looking for something, anything, while the silence pressed harder and harder against his eardrums.
The pointer had stopped, well, pointing. The arrow shape had turned into a circle, so he had no idea where to go, left or right or up or down. Everywhere he looked there were only tall strands of lake plants waving in the water, with no sign of anyone but himself.
"You're here too?"
He almost had a heart attack and instinctively whipped around, the magic of a spell already glowing on the tip of his wand, and barely stopped himself from firing it. It was Cedric, his head covered in a bubble-head just like him.
"Bloody hell, Cedric... I almost blasted your head off."
Cedric chuckled and gave a small shrug, then swam a little closer to him. "I believe you. I saw the trail you left behind. Didn't take you for the brutal sort."
Harry shrugged back, "It was either me or them. But never mind that. Is your wrist gadget showing the same thing as mine?"
Cedric gave it a glance and then nodded. "Pretty much... actually, I was here a while ago and have been scouting while invisible when I saw you."
"Invisible..." Harry murmured back and almost popped the bubble around his head by smacking it. "Ah... why didn't I think of that."
The pretty boy chuckled again, then added more seriously, "How about it? There's only twenty minutes left now, so let's cooperate."
"Cooperate?" Harry tilted his head slightly. "Isn't that like... against the rules?"
"What rules?" Cedric replied. "Haven't you realized by now that if it was not said explicitly, then anything we do will not be against the rules?"
Harry's eyes lit up hearing that and he gave a thoughtful nod. That... made sense. "So how do we cooperate?"
"I've searched there and there and saw nothing. Only that side and that side are left. You go over there, and I'll take this side. If either of us finds where the hostages are we will send a hex over, then you come to me or I come to you..."
"Sounds simple enough." Harry said after a moment of thought. He did not think Cedric would betray him, and he had no intention of not giving the signal if he ended up in the right direction either. "I'll go this way then..."
Cedric gave him a thumbs-up, cast a Disillusionment Charm on him again, and set off in the other direction.
Harry, seeing it, murmured, "right," then did the same and turned invisible, and soon the spot became empty.
He swam on for what felt like five more minutes, growing increasingly anxious as everything around him looked the same. The wrist gadget had not changed either and he was beginning to think it had gone broken, when finally he spotted something other than tall weeds ahead.
Or rather, he heard something. It was faint and haunting, but familiar. A mer-song drifted through the water, the same eerie melody he had heard from the golden egg.
"An hour long you'll have to look,
And to recover what we took …"
That had to be it. His eyes lit up and he immediately fired a blasting hex straight up into the water above his head, then swam faster. Soon the endless sea of lake plants came to an end, opening into a clearing where a large rock rose out of the water ahead.
"… your time's half gone, so tarry not
Lest what you seek stays here to rot. …"
It had paintings of merpeople on it. They were carrying spears and chasing what looked like the giant squid. He swam past the rock, still following the mer-song, when a group of old stone structures, like houses and stained with algae, suddenly rose out of the dark water around him.
His swimming has slowed considerably now. It was both fascinating and creepy, plus, what if Hermione and Ron were somewhere in there? Hopefully he would not have to start searching inside. He swallowed a dry mouthful at the thought.
Here and there at the dark windows he saw faces… faces that looked nothing like the mermaids he had seen in books or even in the painting inside the prefects' bathroom. Those showed beautiful mermaids, but what he saw here was anything but.
They had grayish skin and long, wild, dark green hair. Their eyes were yellow, and so were their broken teeth, and thick ropes of pebbles hung around their necks. They glared at him as he swam past, and one or two of them came out of their houses, or whatever those places were, rising a little higher to watch him more closely, spears clutched in their hands.
But their disturbing looks and the way they tried to intimidate him only slowed him for a moment before he moved on. After all, he, the Boy Who Lived, had faced far uglier, creepier, and more dangerous things.
He sped on, looking around, and soon his surroundings became even more crowded and… strange. There were gardens of weeds around some of the house like structures, and he even saw a grindylow tied to a stake outside one door.
Merpeople, yes, not just females but males as well, only even uglier, were emerging on all sides now, observing him eagerly, pointing at him and talking behind their hands to one another.
And just as he sped around a corner, an even stranger sight met his eyes, and subsequently, his eyes lit up with triumph.
There he saw a whole crowd of merpeople floating in front of rows of houses that formed what looked like a mer-version of a village square.
In the middle, a group of them sang their eerie song, which also seemed to be the very source of the melody he had been hearing since the beginning. And behind them stood six huge stone statues of different mermen, seemingly carved from massive boulders.
The statues were spaced apart, and two seemingly unconscious people were bound tightly to the tail of each stone merperson, and beneath them, inscribed in magical golden letters, were names, one of which, of course, was his.
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Author's Note:
🔥 Drop those Power Stones! 🔥
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