Author's Note:
The Houses Competition (or THC) Round 6
House: Slytherin
Class: Ancient Runes
Category: Standard (up to 3,000 words)
Prompt: [Location] The Black Lake, [Object] Wizard Swimwear
Word Count: 2,356
Disclaimers/triggers: In this tale, I reserve the right to invent some delightful headcanons about wizarding swimwear. It may not be canon-compliant, but I'd like to think it fits into the general whimsical nature of the Wizarding World.
Beta Love: Thanks to Ebenbild and Charlie for looking over my story!
The Summer Swimwear Spectacle
"Hello and welcome to the 103rd annual Sensational Summer Swimwear Competition! I'm your host, Lee Jordan, and even though it's not quite as epic as a good game of Quidditch, today's contestants are shaping up to be simply sizzling!" Lee's amplified voice echoed across the Black Lake, where a large floating stadium had been erected.
"Ron, are you sure you're going to do this, mate?" Harry hissed at the wall of the tall, striped tent with the word R. Weasley lettered in gold on the outside.
"Ready as I'll ever be, Harry," Ron replied, his voice quivering with nervousness.
"Oi, get away from the tents! Contestants are not to be interfered with in any way!" A judging official snapped at Harry. He sheepishly backed away, fleeing as quickly as he could back to the stadium.
The seats were filled to capacity and Cooling Charms were in high demand as the summer sun blasted down upon the crowd. Harry climbed the wooden steps and sidled his way back to where Hermione and Ginny sat waving golden flags with the letter W emblazoned in black. This was a welcome reprieve from the dark days that had followed Harry and his friends out of the war. Ever since the Final Battle at Hogwarts, the Wizarding economy had been in shambles. Everything from a declining enrollment rate to the flight of muggleborn wizarding families to other countries out of fear that Voldemort and his allies hadn't truly been vanquished had made things even worse. Hogwarts had been in trouble for some time, and even donations from wealthy patrons weren't enough to keep up with the maintenance and costs of running the school.
"Harry, where have you been? They're about to start!" Hermione admonished as Harry sank down into his seat.
"Sorry, loo," Harry muttered back, taking up his flag and shaking it back and forth as Lee continued with his announcements.
"Today's event is sponsored primarily by the ever-funny, peerless Weasley Wizard Wheezes! Make sure to buy yourself a joke or three at the Snacks and Shenanigans Stand!" Lee crowed into the megaphone. "Remember, all proceeds go towards castle renovations and preservation, as well as ensuring that every student can attend Hogwarts and receive an education in magic free of charge!"
The fundraiser had been, oddly, Ron's idea. He'd been working with George at the joke shop, and after running a few large campaigns to promote new products, he'd set his eye on giving back to the wizarding community. While the Sensational Summer Swimwear Competition was technically a hallowed wizarding event, it had fallen out of favor at the turn of the century. Ron aimed to bring it back, but with a modern twist and plenty of Quidditch-level excitement. Harry knew how acutely Ron had suffered from growing up in a family that didn't have enough money to afford his own wand for school. It had been Ron with his friendly disposition that had convinced most of Hogsmeade to donate money towards the venture, even going so far as to get Gringotts to provide funds for an apprenticeship scholarship to be auctioned off as part of the fund-raising raffle. Hundreds of Hogwarts alumni had flooded to the Black Lake along with their families.
"First, we welcome onto the stage the amazingly unique…Luna Lovegood!" Lee cried out.
Harry goggled as a flash of blue, green, and gold smoke erupted on the stage which was set up like a catwalk over the Black Lake. Large water lilies floated around the edges, their flowers glowing with some obscure charm that Harry suspected was one of Professor Sprout's inventions. With a huge wave of motion, the smoke was ceremoniously pushed aside by two massive feathery-looking fans. Luna stood wearing something that Harry was certain must have been made out of the same material as the Headmaster's old pink bunny slippers. The plummy pink monstrosity covered her from neck to hip and was as round as a plum. Upon her head, Luna wore something that made Harry think of one of those old diving outfits, complete with sequin earrings attached to the metal webbing on either side of the helmet. She waved both of her fans on both sides of her body in a variety of artistic ways as she danced up and down the stage. The crowd had been stunned into silence by her appearance, but broke into cheers as she pirouetted as though she were light as air. They moved with a silvery tinkling sound that made Harry realize that they weren't feathers at all but tiny little scales of some sort. He couldn't see her smile under the helmet, but the way she moved with such grace and poise, he knew she was probably having the time of her life. Her dance ended with her back at the middle of the stage, where she dropped down into a split and her fans lay flat across the stage floor.
Everyone cheered at the performance and Luna stood to take her place at the far end of the stage on a thinner platform that curved along the back of the main stage area.
Next, Oliver Wood flew onto stage with his broom, his swimsuit obviously styled after a quidditch outfit but with significantly less coverage in the upper body, showing off his muscular physique. There were a number of hoots and whistles as he jumped off his broom into a somersault, broom held in one hand. His goggles had little lightning bolts on them, and he wore some sort of body glitter that made him look like he was glowing slightly. He opened one hand and spoke a few words and the little snitch in his hand grew to the size of a beach ball, but its tiny wings remained the same. He tossed it into the crowd and it hovered sluggishly as people batted it around and cried in delight.
Eventually, it returned to his side and followed him as he went to stand next to Luna.
Next, Hannah Abbot appeared wearing a swimsuit that seemed to have been modeled off of aquatic plants. After her, a very snooty-looking Draco Malfoy posed in a swimming outfit that reminded Harry of a seahorse, complete with a long, finned tail that really moved with him as he pranced up and down the stage. After him, Lavender Brown appeared in an avant garde swimsuit with a fitted bodice, small skirt tied around her waist. One of her shoulders was bare. The other shoulder was adorned with a multicolored long, shimmering cape that floated and spun around her like a rainbow streamer as she danced.
"And finally, our last contestant!" Lee's voice became even more bombastic than usual. "I present…the one, the only, our king, RON WEASLEY!"
Everyone went wild. Ginny and Hermione stood to cheer and Harry followed, honestly curious about what his friend was going to wear to set himself apart from the others. Ron had been extremely secretive about his design, and Harry had been increasingly miffed about being kept in the dark.
As if someone had listened in on his thoughts, a shadow began to blot out the sunlight. Immediately a large number of wizarding fireworks began to go off, and the audience ooh'd, ahh'd, and laughed uproariously as they saw a firework outline of a kneazle jump into the air fizzing with fright after a firework cucumber sparkled into view behind it. Finally, starlight fizzled down to the ground and the light suddenly came back full force, leading to everyone squinting at the sudden brightness. There, standing in a crown adorned with jester tassels stood Ron wearing his swimsuit.
Harry did a double-take. Ron was wearing his joke shop in swimsuit form. Various products and packages had been sewn and magicked together into an odd, yet form-fitting swimsuit that seemed to be modeled off of the old style swimsuits from the early twentieth century, as it included a tank top and shorts down to the knees.
"Oh Merlin, he did not use Dad's vintage Muggle swimsuit for the base!" Ginny cried out in disbelief.
Ron grinned widely and waved, pulling a string at his wrist. His bowtie began to spin and spark, and his hat rose up into the air and burst into confetti. Then, he strutted up and down, pulling samples from his pockets and tossing them to the crowd in the stadium.
"That's some rather shameless advertisement if I ever saw it," Harry muttered.
"But look, they really love him," Hermione commented as Ginny whistled obnoxiously to embarrass her brother.
Ron seemed completely unperturbed, though, and took his place next to where Lavender stood.
"Let's give a warm round of applause for our contestants! And now," Lee said, as the applause died down, "the obstacle course!"
Flitwick appeared on a broom in the air behind the stage, his wand raised at attention. With a whispered incantation, the stadium began to shake just a little, as a series of swimming lanes made of lily pads, obstacles, and hoops rose from the Black Lake. The hoops were golden and ringed with seaweed. At the end, a large banner with the words "Finish Line" printed upon it floated at the far end.
"Now, just to reiterate the rules of the obstacle course, nobody is allowed to go out of bounds, and contestants must be more than halfway submerged at all times, except for briefly when traveling through hoops," Lee announced. "That means no flying, Wood! No punching, kicking, or Unforgivable spells. Other than that, anything goes! First to the finish line wins the grand prize!"
A chuckle ran through the crowd. All of the swimmers turned and faced their individual lane. Harry began to wonder just how half of them were going to make it into the water, much less to the finish line with how ostentatious their swimwear appeared to be, but none of the contestants batted an eye as Flitwick pointed his wand and let out a shower of sparks to start the race.
Each of the contestants leapt from the platform, and Harry noticed immediately that each swimmer was moving differently in the water. Luna's round suit pushed water out like an octopus' siphon, propelling her along as she used the scaled fans to maneuver. She picked up speed and used the fans to launch through the first hoop in a spinning leap that looked surprisingly graceful. Lavender's long cape folded magically into a propeller that pushed her through the water at increasing speeds.
Draco's swimwear had leathery ankle garments that unfurled into watery wings and the tail fin expanded and rose up his back just like a seahorse. Harry had to suppress the instinct to laugh at the ridiculousness of it, but he had to admit that Draco was nearly catching up with Ron and Hannah, who were tied for first place. Oliver was behind Draco, somehow having retrofitted his broom to ride underwater without damage. Bubbles sprayed from the back of the broom, and Harry could tell that the broom wasn't used to the resistance from being submerged, or Oliver would probably have been the clear winner. Hannah's lily pads had increased in size in the water and she was swimming along like a massive goldfish. Ron, on the other hand, was using some novelty buzzers attached to his feet and ankles to churn the water around him until they functioned like a magical outboard motor.
The first hint of disaster came when Lavender's cape got caught on one of the hoops. She vaulted into the air at a strange angle, crashing into Luna. Luckily, the puffiness of her suit cushioned the blow, but it did expel a huge amount of bubbles, which flew right into Draco's face, causing him to careen into the side of his lane until he was hopelessly tangled in a heap of sea grass. A number of grindylows with disgusted faces as they looked over his pathetic webbed gloves began to close in on him just as Oliver's broom finally gave up the ghost and sputtered then let out a burst of magical exhaust, skipping him at an angle until he collided with Draco and scattered the grindylows Then Hannah's lily pad charm appeared to go haywire, causing the lily pads to grow absurdly large, getting stuck on several of the poles until she was hanging suspended between them. Finally, Ron's buzzers finally exhausted themselves, leading to Ron doggy-paddling with an increasingly panicked look on his face as his joke shop accoutrements began to weigh on him more than buoy him along.
But in the end, Ron emerged soggy but victorious at the finish line. Luna, who had somehow righted herself, was second, and Lavender a rather dizzy third. Oliver and Draco crossed the finish line at the same time, tying for fourth, while Hannah required help from Flitwick to escape her failed fashion statement.
"Weasley is our king once again! Let's all give a hurrah for Ron Wesley, shall we? And, of course, another hurrah for all of our excellent contestants!" Lee crowed through the megaphone, and the crowd went wild.
In the end, while a few backsides and senses of pride were bruised, nobody was any worse for wear, and a great time was had by all as children came up to take photos with the contestants, followed by a delicious luncheon on the lawn.
"You sure worked up an appetite," Harry remarked as Ron loaded his plate with thirds.
"Oh, you know," Ron said with a cheeky grin, the crown sat upon his head in a jaunty manner, "I've got to start training immediately for next year's competition if I want to keep my title."
As the sun set and a glittering sea of stars emerged across the darkening sky, Harry was certain he hadn't cheered or laughed quite so hard in years, and it was obvious to all that the fundraiser had been a roaring success. He turned to his friends as they trudged back to Hogsmeade, their bellies as full as their hearts, and knew that these fond memories would stay with him always.