Harry frowned in the stands as the second task was announced. Fleur, the very pretty Beauxbaton champion, was not going to do well in this task.
In the first task, her dress had caught fire when she walked in front of the dragon she'd lulled to sleep. She hadn't panicked at all, and her rather weak water spell had put out the fire, revealing that underneath she had not been burned at all. There had also been a little bit in the paper after the wand-weighing mentioning that the veela hair in her wand had come from her grandmother.
Veela were affiliated with fire and air. Water didn't get along with either of those elements very well at the best of times, and this was not the best of times, as someone precious to her was tied up somewhere at the bottom of the lake. That would make her panic as well as put her in an element that naturally stifled her even more than it would her competition.
"Any idea who's down there?" Harry asked Umi and Luna who were seated with him.
"Chang," Umi answered flatly. "She's Cedric's girlfriend. Long time girlfriend too."
"Olaf is down there for Viktor," Luna added softly. "We were having a picnic in one of the courtyards when Headmaster Dumbledore and Headmaster Kakaroff came for him, deciding that a brother was better than Hermione, who Viktor had asked to the ball."
Harry chuckled. "Yes, well, Mr Krum doesn't really know Miss Granger that well yet," he pointed out. "What about for the Beauxbaton champion?"
"I think I heard rumours about her little sister," Umi supplied.
Harry's face went completely blank. Very not good. There had better be a contingency plan for if a champion failed to retrieve their hostage, or this stupid tournament would be the beginning of an international incident. He'd had a chance to talk to Fleur at the Yule Ball. Her father was the French equivalent to Madam Bones, Department Head for Magical Law Enforcement in the British Ministry of Magic. You don't go around upsetting those kinds of people, especially if they've got the balls to marry the daughter of a veela on top of being such an important and powerful person in his own right.
Fleur came up after half an hour, crying about grindylows and her sister. Viktor came up with his brother almost exactly on the hour mark. Cedric was up half an hour after that, and then Dumbledore was by the side of the lake with his bum in the air and his face in the water for five minutes before what could only be mermaids brought a little girl up to the surface.
Well, at least they did have a way of getting the un-rescued people up top-side again.
Even better, Dumbledore had looked right daft for a good while to make it happen. Harry grinned, knowing his brother had peeked in on that sight as well. It wasn't that they had anything against Dumbledore, apart from stupidly leaving them on the doorstep in October and even though he'd done exactly that he hadn't seemed to realise that there were two of them. The man may have been great once, but he was a fool these days.
~oOo~
Watching the champions run the maze had been almost as boring as watching the surface of the lake while they'd been under it, and that was saying a lot, because that had been damn boring until Harry had decided to treat it like something he'd really wanted to do, and finding the gentle slap of water against the shore soothing as he thought of other things.
Now, with the maze, some unpleasant looking monsters could just be seen moving about in certain parts, but the champions really couldn't. They weren't supposed to be able to just jump and take a guess at which direction they needed to go, so the walls of the hedge maze were quite high.
Eventually, it was Fleur who appeared outside of the maze with the cup in her hand and a bloody gash on one arm, her blue dress torn, and weeping.
It was in the papers the very next day that Fleur had been forcefully used in a ritual that granted Voldemort a body once more. After she had been an unwilling blood donor, the git had raped her. She would be spending time with medi-witches constantly for the next week to make sure she did not become pregnant and to help heal the psychological damage as well as the physical.
Furthermore, because it had happened to a French citizen on British soil, it couldn't be swept under the rug and ignored, hopefully.
