A/N Thank you to all the reviews! Here's another chapter, and I've nearly finished this book, so when I do I'll update quicker. School tomorrow :( Please R&R xxx :)

Chapter Twenty-Five

The Build-Up

On Wednesday afternoon, when Amara and Harry were in the library (Ron refused to come down and Hermione was with Jesse) Harry finally seemed like he wanted to talk about what was on his mind.

"I've decided to do his clue," said Harry.

"Really? That's good," said Amara.

"He said - I'm going to tell you what he said now - that I should take it for a bath, and use the prefect bathroom."

"That's it?" Amara said, they're voices were low because Madam Pince was close by. "Take it for a bath?"

"I know," said Harry. "That's why I need your help with it."

"I'm not going for a bath with you Harry," said Amara.

"That's - no!" Harry said, trying not to laugh in the library. "It's just, what am I meant to do when I'm in the bath? Make it echo around the room?"

"I don't think so," said Amara. "I mean... That would annoy everyone and make people know you're somewhere you're not allowed. Maybe you actually have to have a bath with it."

"What - take it under water?" Harry said.

"Why not?" Amara said. "Maybe the wailing is some kind of creepy language and water helps us understand it."

"It's not aliens Amara," Harry said, shaking his head.

"Could be," said Amara. They were soon joined by Ron, who was refusing to do his Transfiguration homework without Amara's help.

"It's not hard," said Amara.

"Just because you're a whizz in Transfiguration doesn't mean we all are," said Ron. "It's hard."

Amara rolled her eyes. "Harry did it without my help."

"And you checked it over to make sure there were no mistakes!"

"After he'd done it," said Amara. "What have you got?"

He hadn't got much, in fact, he'd written a paragraph that seemed to have been taken from their textbook.

"Wow," said Amara. "You do need help, want to come back to the common room Harry?"

"No thanks," said Harry. "I still need to do this."

Harry decided to do his bath on Thursday evening so that nobody was around. Amara and Ron stood outside the portrait hole when most of the people had gone to bed. When they opened it they felt a brush of air where Harry walked past them under his Invisibility Cloak. Ron didn't know what he was doing and Hermione had already gone to bed.

"Are we waiting for him to come back?" Ron asked as they settled back down on the sofa.

"Nah," Amara yawned. "He'll probably be out for a while."

"Who's going to be out for a while?"

Ethan was standing next to their sofa, with Eddie, both of them grinning like lunatics.

"Nose out E," said Amara. "And why are you up so late?"

"What are you up to?" said Ethan. "And it's my birthday. Thanks for the present, by the way."

"I said, nose out," said Amara. "And just because it's your birthday doesn't me you can do whatever the hell you want to do, now, what are you guys up too?"

"I'm not telling you if you're not," said Ethan.

Amara glared at him.

"Go to bed," she said.

"Fine," said Ethan, still grinning. He and Eddie, who was strangely silent, skipped off up to their dormitory.

"They're up to something," said Amara, frowning.

"No point asking," said Ron yawning. "He's got your characteristics."

Amara couldn't help but think about what her brother was up to.

"Leave them alone Amara," Ron told her. "He's thirteen and doing what he wants to do."

"That doesn't make it any better," said Amara.

Ron shrugged. "Suit yourself."

-OOOOO-

The next day Amara was buzzing to get the news from Harry about his egg adventures. Luckily they had Charms that day, so it was an easy lesson to explain it in. They had moved on from Summoning charms and were now doing the opposite, the banishing Charm. Professor Flitwick had set them to practice it for the lesson, which meant there was a lot of noise indeed. Everyone was having far too much fun trying to banish their cushions into a box on the teachers desk. However, Neville's poor aim meant that he was making much heavier things fly around the classroom, particularly Professor Flitwick. He kept whizzing by them every now and then whilst Neville apologised. Amara loved the charm and her stack of cushions was slowly decreasing as all of them went into the box. Hermione was at the same stage as her, but Harry and Ron were not concentrating very well and kept flinging them off into weird directions.

Harry had just started to recount his adventures from the night before.

"I went into the Prefects bathroom to work on the egg – you were right Amara, it did work under water! I could hear the whole thing! It was some sort of song, and I think it comes from the lake – where the merpeople are. That's why I could only hear it underwater because it was in mermish. The song was weird too – "Come seek us where our voices sound, we cannot speak above the ground …" anyway, I saw Myrtle in there as well, and she helped a little before she went off sobbing – "

He stopped as Professor Flitwick came around. Harry flicked his wand and his cushion flew across the room and smacked on the window; Ron's flopped off the desk and Amara and Hermione's went straight into the box. Once he'd gone, Harry returned to his story.

"I was planning to go back to Gryffindor Tower. But I was checking the map to see if anyone was about and guess who I saw stalking around Snape's office? Bartemius Crouch! And –"

"You said you'd already worked out that egg clue!" said Hermione indignantly when he'd finished. Amara rolled her eyes.

"Keep your voice down!" said Harry crossly. "I just need to —sort of fine-tune it, all right?"

There was really no point, as everyone was enjoying themselves already and didn't care about what they were up to.

"Just forget the egg for a minute, all right?" Harry hissed as Professor Flitwick went whizzing resignedly past them, landing on top of a large cabinet. "I'm trying to tell you about Snape and Moody. . . ."

"Well I decided to go investigate him, to see what he was up to, but before I could my leg got trapped in the trick staircase. The egg slipped out and the map fell too, and of course this led Filch to come to it. He thought it was Peeves stealing the egg, but then Snape came along and said someone was in his office. He looked livid too, and demanded Filch to go help him find the person. And then guess who turned up? Moody. And Moody can see through my cloak, so he was the only one who knew I was there. Snape didn't want Moody knowing someone had been in his office, but he found out anyway. He wanted to know if anything interesting was in Snape's office that someone could look for. But Snape told him he'd already checked. Moody already ransacked his office because Dumbledore said he could!" He paused, checking no one was over hearing them.

"And then he said to Snape he should go to bed, but said he'd dropped something (the map). So I had to motion to him that it was mine but Snape had already seen it. He obviously put the egg and the map together and knew it was me around under my cloak. But luckily Moody saved me and managed to shoo them away. He liked my map and was alarmed when I told him Crouch was on it. He asked to borrow it –" Harry looked slightly pained. "But I said yes, because, really, he'd helped me out. So I could walk off free, but why is Crouch feigning illness when he's here at the castle?"

"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 whooshed off the desk and hit 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. Amara shook her head at both boys' poor aim. "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.

"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?"

"I'm interested in Mr Crouch," said Amara. "Why's he been pretending he's ill but he's here? Maybe he has a twin brother of the same name?"

"Don't be stupid," Hermione said. "It doesn't make sense, he couldn't come to the Yule Ball but he was here in the middle of the night?"

"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 Harry grimly, and his cushion went straight into the box.

"And I want to know how Crouch got into the castle in the first place," said Amara.

-OOOOO-

There was a more pressing worry that Amara, Harry, Ron and Hermione needed to sort out before investigating Crouch: how Harry was going to breathe underwater for an hour to retrieve something 'he'd sorely miss' in the depths of the lake.

Ron liked the idea of the Summoning Charm and using it to get Aqua-Lungs from the nearest Muggle village. Hermione had squashed the plan by saying Harry wouldn't be able to operate them and the fact that Muggles would see an Aqua-Lung zooming across the countryside, meaning Harry could get disqualified. Amara then said they could transfigure something into an Aqua-Lung, which both Harry and Ron liked the idea of, but Hermione said it as too difficult as they hadn't done that yet in Transfiguration. Ron and Amara both became sniffy because Hermione had shot down their ideas in seconds without giving any ideas of her own.

"Of course, the ideal solution would be for you to Transfigure yourself into a submarine or something," Hermione said. "If only we'd done human Transfiguration already! But I don't think we start that until sixth year, and it can go badly wrong if you don't know what you're doing. . . ."

"Yeah, I don't fancy walking around with a periscope sticking out of my head," said Harry. "I s'pose I could always attack some- one in front of Moody; he might do it for me. . . ."

"I don't think he'd let you choose what you wanted to be turned into, though," said Hermione seriously. "No, I think your best chance is some sort of charm."

Amara didn't know any, so they all headed back to library, which was starting to feel homely now they'd been there the majority of the year. They did everything they could to find out how Harry could survive underwater for an hour – they checked every lunchtime, after dinner and whole weekends, asked Professor McGonagall for a permission form to use the Restricted Section and even asked the horrible Madam Pince for ideas. Nothing worked, however, and they all started to feel panicky once again. Amara stopped meeting up with Cedric so she could focus on helping Harry, and Hermione didn't see Jesse as much as she had been.

Time was slipping away as if it were sand going through fingers. No matter what they tried, nothing was helping them find the answer. Amara found a few charms that could have worked, but they were so advanced even Hermione couldn't produce them.

"There's no point in using these," Amara had said, a week before the second task. "You won't be able to master it in time. There must be something simpler."

When there was only two days left, the only thing that cheered them up was the brown owl that Harry had sent Sirius a letter by came back. It was carrying a reply and Amara was hoping for ideas in it about the second task.

When Harry opened it he looked excited, then confused, then irritated.

Amara read the paper next to him.

Send date of next Hogsmeade weekend by return owl.

That was it, and Amara was a little disappointed. Harry must have forgotten to mention the second task, and now it was too late.

"Weekend after next," whispered Hermione, who had read the note over Harry's shoulder too. "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 they all 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."

Care of Magical Creatures had been rather interesting since Hagrid had come back to work. There were only two skrewts left, and Hagrid had seemingly abandoned hope that their class would do anything for them and instead was caring for them himself. He had carried on Professor Grubbly-Plank's lessons on the unicorns and had proven he knew a fair bit about them. It seemed that he didn't only know about monsters, but about interesting creatures as well. Hagrid was putting in a lot of enthusiasm for the unicorns, but he still seemed sad that they didn't have poisonous fangs.

That day, he had somehow managed to get hold of two unicorn foals. They were very impressive – they, instead of pure white, they were pure gold and very beautiful. Lavender and Parvati squealed a lot over them, Amara could see why, but even Pansy Parkinson tried to conceal how much she actually 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. . . .

"You okay, Harry?" Hagrid muttered, but Amara moved out of earshot as Harry moved towards Hagrid. She swarmed around the baby unicorns with Ron and Hermione (Ron seemed rather taken by the unicorns himself and wanted to give them a sugar cube) and the rest of the class. They managed to distract her a little as she could pat them and feed them the sugar, but the heavy feeling in her stomach never seemed to go away.

-OOOOO-

By the evening before the second task, Amara was in a frenzy. Harry had nothing to help in breathe underwater – the closest they had got was trying to make a periscope so he could breathe along the surface of the water, and that didn't really help.

Amara couldn't believe where the time had gone. They'd had ages to prepare, why hadn't they done it before? Why did Amara not push Harry to do the egg in the Christmas holidays? Cedric must've cracked what he was going to do by now, and considering he was in sixth year and knew a lot more magic. But what about Krum and Fleur? Had they managed to crack the egg's clue? Maybe that was why Krum had started swimming in the lake on the day of the Hogsmeade trip …

They sat together in the library, trying to get anything out of the huge piles of books they shared. Amara's stomach gave a little jolt every time something to do with being underwater was written on the page. Nothing was there to help them, and it seemed luck was not on their side. The sun was setting outside and Amara's frenzy turned to panic. What would happen if Harry couldn't do it?

"I don't reckon it can be done," said Ron flatly from next to Amara on the table. "There's nothing. Nothing. Closest was that thing to dry up puddles and ponds, that Drought Charm, but that was nowhere near powerful enough to drain the lake."

"There must be something," Hermione muttered, moving a candle closer to her. Her eyes were so tired she was poring over the tiny print of Olde and Forgotten Bewitchments and Charmes with her nose about an inch from the page. "They'd never have set a task that was undoable."

"They have," said Ron. "Harry, just go down to the lake tomorrow, right, stick your head in, yell at the merpeople to give back whatever they've nicked, and see if they chuck it out. Best you can do, mate."

"There's a way of doing it!" Hermione said crossly. "There just has to be!"

"I agree with Ron," Amara said, stifling a yawn. "Maybe use the summoning charm to get it from underwater … unless it's going to be tied up or something … maybe you should've bought a submarine?"

Hermione was still rather cross, as though the library's lack of knowledge and useful information was a personal insult.

"I know what I should have done," said Harry, resting, face-down, on Saucy Tricks for Tricky Sorts. "I should've learned to be an Animagus like Sirius."

"Yeah, you could've turned into a goldfish any time you wanted!" said Ron.

"Or a frog," yawned Harry.

"I don't think Saucy Tricks for Tricky Sorts is going to help you with that," Amara pointed out, tugging the book out from under Harry and flicking through it.

"It takes years to become an Animagus, and then you have to register yourself and everything," said Hermione, not listening to Amara and now squinting down the index of Weird Wizarding Dilemmas and Their Solutions. "Professor McGonagall told us, remember . . . you've got to register yourself with the Improper Use of Magic Office . . . what animal you become, and your markings, so you can't abuse it. . . ."

"Hermione, I was joking," said Harry wearily. "I know I haven't got a chance of turning into a frog by tomorrow morning. . . ."

"Oh this is no use," Hermione said, snapping shut Weird Wizarding Dilemmas. "Who on earth wants to make their nose hair grow into ringlets?"

"I wouldn't mind," said Fred's voice and Amara rubbed her eyes in annoyance. "Be a talking point, wouldn't it?"

Fred and George had just emerged from behind some bookshelves.

"What're you two doing here?" Ron asked.

"How do you know where the library is?" Amara added.

"That's insulting," said George. "But we're looking for you, McGonagall wants you Amara, and you Ron."

"Huh?" Amara said, still rather sleepy. "Why?"

"Dunno . . . she was looking a bit grim, though," said Fred.

"We're supposed to take you down to her office," said George. Amara, Ron and Hermione stared at Harry.

"Right," said Amara, waking herself up. "Hermione – Harry, you guys keep looking, and take loads of these books back to the common room so when we get back we can look though them too. Hopefully she won't need us long."

"Why does she need just you two?" said Hermione.

"Maybe she thinks we've done something," said Ron.

"We're just going to have to find out," said Amara. She was trying her best to not look or notice Fred standing with his twin.

"Bye," they both said and they exited the library, leaving a very confused Hermione and Harry returning to their books.

"McGonagall didn't say anything to you right?" Amara asked George.

"No," Fred replied to her instead. "She just asked us to find you."

"Right," said Amara rather uneasily. She fell back to talk to Ron.

"She's not telling us off is she?" said Ron. "For helping?"

"She would've got Hermione to come too, wouldn't she?" said Amara.

"Guess so," said Ron. "This is weird."

"Very," said Amara. "C'mon, we're nearly there."

When they entered Professor McGonagall's office, they found Chloe Fawley and a little girl no more than eight years old already there. The little girl had lots of silvery blonde hair and it was fairly obvious that it was Fleur's sister. Madame Maxime was with her.

"Right," Professor McGonagall said briskly as they entered. Fred and George had left them at the door. "Now, you've been asked to come here because of the second task."

Amara's stomach jolted.

"But that's not until tomorrow," she said.

"I know," said Professor McGonagall. "But their task – if you don't already know –" She seemed to look at Ron and Amara. "Is for them to fetch something that they'd sorely miss down in the lake. You four are the people they'd each miss if something happened."

Amara was stunned. Cedric would sorely miss her? And Harry would sorely miss Ron? That one was true … but maybe the teachers had just guessed? But where had the little girl come from? Surely she hadn't travelled all the way from France just to do this? Chloe was looking rather bored and the girl was looking rather frightened. She was wearing some rather posh robes for a girl her age but she seemed quite comfortable in them.

"Once Professor Dumbledore arrives we shall put you all into an enchanted sleep. You'll be put into the lake so that the champions can come fetch you. Don't worry," she added, mainly to the little girl. "You will be asleep, so no harm will come to you when you are down there. You will awake when you break the surface of the water."

They went into silence.

"This is Gabrielle Delacour," said Chloe, breaking the silence. "She's Fleur's sister."

Gabrielle Delacour smiled and nodded at them, but retreated into Madame Maxime more.

Professor Dumbledore arrived rather shortly.

"Ah," he beamed at them, clapping his hands. "We're all here. Now, as you have heard from Professor McGonagall, you are here to participate in the Second task as the person each champion will sorely miss. For Mr Krum, Miss Fawley; Miss Delacour, Miss Delacour, her sister; for Mr Diggory, Miss Matthews and lastly, for Mr Potter, Mr Weasley. If you all accept, I shall put the charm on you shortly."

Ron and Amara looked at each other. They weren't going back to the common room tonight. Harry and Hermione would panic, and what if they didn't find something? At least they wouldn't be stuck down in the depths of the lake … hopefully Harry didn't take the song too seriously …

"Miss Fawley – Miss Delacour, do you two accept?"

Chloe shrugged and nodded, whilst Gabrielle clung onto Madame Maxime. She nodded too.

"Miss Matthews and Mr Weasley?"

"Okay," said Amara.

"Sure," said Ron.

"Good, good, now if you all sit on these chairs, I'll put the charm on each of you."

Amara sat at the end and watched as Gabrielle and Chloe both got put into a deep sleep. It was very eerie and Amara tried to relax, but she didn't really like the idea of it.

"See you tomorrow," Ron grinned before he too got put under the spell.

"Relax, Miss Matthews," said Dumbledore. "It doesn't hurt."

Amara nodded and closed her eyes, the last thing she heard was Dumbledore muttering a spell under his breath.