Christina waved good-bye to confused Harry, Ron, and Hermione and the door closed behind them.

"I want'd to talk to yeh abou those natur'r powers of yers." Christina was taken aback, she had never really spoken to Hagrid one-on-one and especially not about her secret abilities. "Can yeh help me with a problem? There's a lil' baby centaur, jus' beyon' the lake tha' was crushed by a rock slide-"

"Oh! Yes, of course I can help" As they left the cabin and headed toward the Forbidden Forest Christina was still feeling off about this encounter. On the way to the centaur Hagrid said he was impressed with Christina's wand work during the first task and that the dragons were even more menacing than he'd originally thought. Finally, they reached the baby centaur who was, indeed, crushed by a massive rock slide, however Christina was sure that the baby centaur was dead.

"Oh, um, I'm sorry Hagrid but I think he's-"

"No, I know, can' you help him, tho?" Christina was baffled. Hagrid wanted her to bring a baby centaur back from the dead? She had no abilities like that whatsoever, well, once she revived a fly, but it flew into her potion and drowned seconds later. However, the look on Hagrid's face was so hopeful, she decided to give it a try anyways. She lifted all the rocks off of the centaur and sat next to the it. She let the energy build up in her body, which took a great deal of concentration but she'd done it many times before with Fred. Soon after her whole body began to glow a bright yellow light, her eyes now glowing bright yellow and her hair floating in the air, as if underwater. She placed her hand on the centaur and released this energy back into the centaur. The centaurs eyes then burst open and it screamed a blood-curdling scream

"Yeh did it, Christineh!" but the centaur then galloped off as fast as it could and hit right into a tree. It laid on the ground twitching when its chest cavity exploded open and blood spattered the foot of the tree.

"Oh my God!" she yelled as she backed as far away from the centaur as possible, clutching her own heart. She was now breathing fast and Hagrid went forward to the baby centaur to take a look. He peered over it and turned it chest down to the ground so the he just looked like he was sleeping. Meanwhile, Christina's world was crashing down. She had brought a small centaur back to life only to have its last moments be in excruciating pain and have it's heart explode. She fell to her knees, still clutching her heart, feeling as though her own would explode. This only caused Christina to breath harder and Hagrid turned around and looked more fearful than she was.

"Christineh, yer...look!" and he pointed around her and she looked to her left and right. The loose gravel on the ground was now levitating slowly upward around her and she looked down at her hands, she was glowing red now. From what Christina could deduce (not having a manual on her abilities) yellow meant that she had lots of power surging through her, but red meant there was emotion behind that power and that she was even deadlier in this state.

This only frustrated her more and she went to stand up and run away but when she placed her hands on the ground to help herself up the second she touched it, it was as though a lightning bolt had surged through the ground and left cracks running through it. Hagrid leapt back, now holding his umbrella wand for protection. Christina put up her hands.

"Im sorry! I'm so sorry, Hagrid!" she said and flew up into the sky leaving a streak of red behind her. She was alarmingly fast with this red power coursing through her veins, she felt almost. . . sinister. She powered her way through the castle and sent herself in the Room of Requirement but was travelling so fast that when she returned back to her human form she smacked into the wall and felt her skull crack.

"Christina?" It was Fred. She turned around and Fred too was very surprised at her appearance. This made Christina increasingly upset and she shoved her head in her hands and felt blood begin to boil. Fred walked over to her and tried to pry her hands away from her but when he touched her he grabbed his hands back instinctively

"Ow!" he hissed, soothing the wound. Christina looked up and saw him nursing a burnt hand and then looked down at her own hands and body. There were cracks all along her body and within them were red lines that seemed to be lava, she was literally an erupting volcano.

"Can I do anything right?!" she shouted and remembered the pool of water in front of her and jumped in, knowing this would instantly stop her powers from working. She bolted up and hit the ceiling by accident, and then closed her eyes and fell into the giant pit of water. The effects were instantaneous, the cooling of the molten lava from her skin felt wonderful and she was now at the bottom of the pool, power-free. She opened her eyes, however, and saw blackness. Then she tried to swim and realized she couldn't move at all, in fact, there was no water on her. Her body had become a cast iron suit and she was inside, stuck, and running out of air. She tried to wriggle free, hoping that Fred would come get her but even if he noticed she was not moving he couldn't life a cast-iron outline of a 5"6 person. . . she really was going to drown. . .

Just then she realized she, herself, was not wet, and so her powers weren't off. She made an incision in the rock around her waist knowing that the second water touched her she could no longer use her natural power. So she made several incisions so that she could wriggle free once water got in. After several cuts later she took in last breath and pushed at the cuts. The one at her waist gave way and she kicked her legs free, the water engulfing her. The cast-iron outline now turned upside down and her head was underwater but she was still in the iron. She could hear the water pressing on her ears and her lungs seized begging for air. She forcefully moved her neck to the side and the incision at her collarbone gave way and her head was free. She now just had a ring of iron around her neck but could do nothing to lift herself or it from her. She saw an outline of Fred coming down just before she blacked out.

Christina opened her eyes and was greeted with the warmth of the sun and the internal jolt of disorientation. How long as she'd been asleep for it to be daytime? She lifted her head and looked around. Fred was in the bed next to her covered in orange paste and was sleeping. On the bedside table was a massive hunk of iron that was cut in half. She tried lifting it but it was incredibly heavy and as she touched it, all of what happened suddenly came rushing to her and she went to get up when Madame Pomfrey came bustling over.

"You are lucky to be alive, Ms. Bataskill!" she chastised. Madame Pomfrey pushed Christina's chest back down and forced her to lie there. "I understand that the second task is only a few weeks away but that does not mean you should jump in the Black Lake testing spells at night!" Christina was confused for a moment and then deduced that Fred did not want to divulge where he and Christina practiced.

"I know, I'm just worried-"

"Look at poor Mr. Weasley! He has second degree burns all over his body trying to rescue you! We had to knock him out just to stave off the pain!" she looked over at Fred who indeed looked much worse than she did.

"Is he going to be okay?"

"With a few more hours of rest he'll be fine. But let this be the last time you boil the water you swim in!" she said and went off in a huff. Every time Christina met with Madame Pomfrey she seemed to be in a worse mood and even busier. Once Madame Pomfrey was out of the room and in her office she got up and brought a chair to Fred's bedside and looked at him. The orange paste smelled awful, but not as awful as she felt. She had severely burned him and almost drowned. 'What is wrong with me?' she thought. She stayed by Fred's side for another hour, contemplating what to say when he awoke when she decided to write him a 'Get Well Soon!' card. She got up from her bed and walked outside the Hospital wing and walked directly into Cedric Diggory.

"Oh sor-Ced!" she said brushing herself off. He backed up and said hello back. "I was actually just coming to visit you! Heard you were in the hospital wing. What happened?"

"Who told you I was in the hospital wing?"

"Oh, do, do you know what time it is? It's almost three o'clock." Cedric said slowly.

"What! Jeez, okay. Did people visit me while I was in there?" she asked shyly.

"I think your friends did, Harry, Ron, and Hermione. I knew because, well, I overheard some Slytherins making jokes and-"

"I get it. Well at least my sleep was restful. . ." she said rolling her eyes.

"Sorry. . . oh, I got you this" he pulled out a small rock from his pocket that looked like a finger.

"It's shaped like a broom! Well, sort of, I saw it the other day and well, this seemed like a better time than any and-"

"Cedric. You are too cute, thank you!" she said and hugged him. "You wouldn't happen to have any spare parchment with you would you? Or a quill I could borrow?"

Fred didn't awake until it was almost seven o'clock and once he did, Christina alerted Madame Pomfrey and removed all the paste from him. His body had no scars or lesions, she was pleased. When he returned from the private area where Madame Pomfrey was cleaning him he took one look at her and rushed over.

"You're okay!"

"I'm okay? Of course I'm okay, it's you I've been worrying about!"

"Me? I've always been a little orange. . ." he said and Christina started to cry. "What're you crying for!" he said and hugged her.

"I thought you'd wake up and hate me" she said through tears.

"Hate you? Are you mad? I got like this because I love you!" he said while embracing her, rocking her back and forth consoling her. Christina could not have been more grateful and Madame Pomfrey let him leave right after she was done cleaning him off. They made their way to dinner, Fred holding onto his 'Get Well Soon' card and were greeted with George getting up and hugging his brother as well as Harry and Hermione doing the same to Christina.

"We were so worried! They said you drowned!" Hermione said sitting back down.

"Yeah well, don't get angry by Black Lake" she said. Ron moved forward and leaned in,

"What did Hagrid want?" he whispered.

"Oh nothing. There was a rock crushing a centaur, I removed the rock"

"Oh" said Ron hoping for a better story. Christina was in no way going to tell Ron the story, she hadn't even told Fred. That night by the fire she was curled up with Fred, thankful for both of their lives.

"You know, what happened last night, that could be the answer to the second task" said Fred quietly.

"You're right, I very could just kill myself before the task starts. You could make a killing off the bets!"

"No, you said you could do some of your special magic while you were in there, couldn't you then use that iron suit as a sort of boat? Let it guide you through underwater?" Christina considered this but shook her head.

"I could do that but I don't have enough air and can't see under the water. Although, I could wear quartz goggles so that they wouldn't turn into iron. . . but that still leaves the oxygen-"

"A plant! If you had a plant in there with you it could produce oxygen!" She couldn't think of a retort, it didn't seem fool-proof, but it seemed possible. They vowed to try it the next night in the Room of Requirement.

In charms the next day she, Harry, Ron, and Hermione were sitting at the very back of the Charms class with a table to themselves. They were supposed to be practicing the opposite of the Summoning Charm today — the Banishing Charm. A charm Christina had already mastered and used during the first task. Owing to the potential for nasty accidents when objects kept flying across the room, Professor Flitwick had given each student a stack of cushions on which to practice, the theory being that these wouldn't hurt anyone if they went off target. It was a good theory, but it wasn't working very well. Neville's aim was so poor that he kept accidentally sending much heavier things flying across the room — Professor Flitwick, for instance.

Harry had apparently had a run in the night previous with Professor Snape and Professor Moody. Professor Flitwick went whizzing resignedly past them, landing on top of a large cabinet. "I'm trying to tell you about Snape and Moody. . . ." This class was an ideal cover for a private conversation, as everyone was having far too much fun to pay them any attention. Harry had been recounting his adventures of the previous night in whispered installments for the last half hour. Harry saw Crouch on the map in Snape's office and was stopped by Moody and lost the Marauder's Map to him as well.

"Snape said Moody's searched his office as well?" Ron whispered, his eyes alight with interest as he Banished a cushion with a sweep of his wand (it soared into the air and knocked Parvati's hat off). "What . . . d'you reckon Moody's here to keep an eye on Snape as well as Karkaroff?"

"Well, I dunno if that's what Dumbledore asked him to do, but he's definitely doing it," said Harry, waving his wand without paying much attention, so that his cushion did an odd sort of belly flop off the desk. "Moody said Dumbledore only lets Snape stay here because he's giving him a second chance or something. . . ."

"What?" said Ron, his eyes widening, his next cushion spinning high into the air, ricocheting off the chandelier, and dropping heavily onto Flitwick's desk. "Harry . . . maybe Moody thinks Snape put your name in the Goblet of Fire!"

"Oh Ron," said Hermione, shaking her head sceptically, "we thought Snape was trying to kill Harry before, and it turned out he was saving Harry's life, remember?" She Banished a cushion and it flew across the room and landed in the box they were all supposed to be aiming at.

"I don't care what Moody says," Hermione went on. "Dumbledore's not stupid. He was right to trust Hagrid and Professor Lupin, even though loads of people wouldn't have given them jobs, so why shouldn't he be right about Snape, even if Snape is a bit —"

"— evil," said Ron promptly. "Come on, Hermione, why are all these Dark wizard catchers searching his office, then?"

"Why has Mr. Crouch been pretending to be ill?" said Hermione, ignoring Ron. "It's a bit funny, isn't it, that he can't manage to come to the Yule Ball, but he can get up here in the middle of the night when he wants to?"

"You just don't like Crouch because of that elf, Winky," said Ron, sending a cushion soaring into the window.

"You just want to think Snape's up to something," said Hermione, sending her cushion zooming neatly into the box.

"I just want to know what Snape did with his first chance, if he's on his second one," said Christina grimly, and her cushion flew straight across the room and landed neatly on top of Hermione's.

Harry sent Sirius a letter by brown owl that night about the ordeal, explaining all about Mr. Crouch breaking into Snape's office, and Moody and Snape's conversation. Then Christina and Fred left for the Room of Requirement. The above-ground pool ready and Fred now having the fore-knowledge to use a lifting charm to get Christina out if she couldn't, they were ready. Quartz goggles on and small tentacula tied to her foot, the only problem Christina was having was getting that level of power to surge through her again.

"You gotta get mad!" Fred shouted from afar. But she was trying her best, she reached the dangerous red level but was dripping in molten lava,

"What makes you upset?" she didn't respond. What made her upset? Well other than ruining her one and definitely only olive branch with Hagrid, the guilt she felt that she hadn't told Harry about the task, the overwhelming sense of impending doom-

"It's working!" shouted Fred and she looked down and sure enough there were rivers of red running down her body. She flew up into the pool and the cooling effects happened again. She laid down at the bottom of the pool and opened her eyes, she could see! Although, somewhat blurry, she could make out the numbers Fred was drawing on the ceiling as instructed. She then took a breath and wasn't sure if the plant was working but she didn't feel light-headed. She used her powers to move the iron-cast around and she hit the side of the tank. It was working! She then went to lift herself up from the water and she turned to look at Fred who, though she couldn't hear, but was clapping and cheering. She set herself on the ground and began choking, the plant hadn't worked. She shed the iron from herself and Fred grabbed her in a huge hug.

"It worked!" he said clasping his arms around her tightly.

"Yeah! Well, mostly, I couldn't breath at the last second" she said sadly.

"Oh, well, we can look into a better plant." he said, still beaming.

Familiar flutterings of panic were starting to disturb Christina now, and she was finding it difficult to concentrate in class again. The lake, which Christina had always taken for granted as just another feature of the grounds, drew her eyes whenever she was near a classroom window, a great, iron-gray mass of chilly water, whose dark and icy depths were starting to seem as distant as the moon. Just as it had before she faced the dragon, time was slipping away as though somebody had bewitched the clocks to go extrafast. There was a week to go before February the twenty-fourth and they had solved the problem of Christina not exposing her powers to a massive group of unsuspecting viewers. Fred and George had made this thing called 'Instant Darkness Powder' and it was in the shape of a rock but when you threw it, it exploded and it encases the room around you in complete darkness. If Christina used a diffindo charm to create an invisible barrier around herself, she could use the instant darkness powder, turned molten hot, and then jumped in the lake. Although time was still not on her side, and she still couldn't breath in the iron suit . . . five days to go (she was bound to find a better plant soon) . . . three days to go (please let me find something . . . please) . . . With two days left, Christina started to go off food again.

At breakfast with only two days left Harry had received a return letter from Sirius, no doubt with the answer to this task, she thought bitterly. But the note was just as short as it was unhelpful, "Send date for next Hogsmeade trip by owl"

"Weekend after next," whispered Hermione, who had read the note over Harry's shoulder. "Here — take my quill and send this owl back straight away." Harry scribbled the dates down on the back of Sirius's letter, tied it onto the brown owl's leg, and watched it take flight again.

"What's he want to know about the next Hogsmeade weekend for?" said Ron. "Dunno," said Harry dully. "Come on . . . Care of Magical Creatures."

Whether Hagrid was trying to make up for the Blast-Ended Skrewts, or because there were now only two skrewts left, or because he was trying to prove he could do anything that Professor Grubbly-Plank could, Christina didn't know, but Hagrid had been continuing her lessons on unicorns ever since he'd returned to work. It turned out that Hagrid knew quite as much about unicorns as he did about monsters, though it was clear that he found their lack of poisonous fangs disappointing. Today he had managed to capture two unicorn foals. Unlike full-grown unicorns, they were pure gold. Parvati and Lavender went into transports of delight at the sight of them, and even Pansy Parkinson had to work hard to conceal how much she liked them.

"Easier ter spot than the adults," Hagrid told the class. "They turn silver when they're abou' two years old, an' they grow horns at aroun' four. Don' go pure white till they're full grown, 'round about seven. They're a bit more trustin' when they're babies . . . don' mind boys so much. . . . C'mon, move in a bit, yeh can pat 'em if yeh want . . . give 'em a few o' these sugar lumps. . . ."

Christina was starting to get desperate and the evening before the second task, she resorted to her last hope. Cedric. She found him in an open classroom, casting bubbles with his wand all around the room. She knocked on the door and then had a realization, bubbles, air-pockets, scuba!

"Hey Christina" Christina had forgotten she knocked on the door and was now staring dumb-founded at Cedric Diggory.

"Hey! Yeah, um, good-luck tomorrow! I meant to tell you that earlier but, uh . . . couldn't find you"

"Oh. . .thanks! Good luck to you too-" but Christina was already out the door and running over to the Gryffindor common room to find Fred.

"We can make a submarine!" she said in a hushed tone so only Fred could hear. He put down his quill and looked at her, not understanding.

"I can make a funnel from the top of my head to the air above the lake!" then Fred understood and stood up

"That's brilliant! Let's-"

"Mr. Weasley!" Professor McGonagall had walked in and went up to Christina and Fred. "I'm afraid I must ask you to follow me, Mr. Weasley."

"But, I'm trying to help her with-" she put up a hand to silence him. "Mr. Weasley, follow me." she said gravely.

"I'll see you later tonight!" he said as McGonagall grabbed his arm and led him out of the common room. Christina waved him goodbye and went to the Room of Requirement, practicing her technique until it was perfect. She left the Room of Requirement around midnight in hopes of catching Fred before he went to bed but came back to a deserted room, she shrugged, assuming he went off to bed, and did the same herself