I don't own Harry Potter.

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And no, I'm not bothering with Fleur's accent.


The Treasure Hunter.

Harry took a deep breath when he broke the surface close to the stupid observation pier the Tournament had set up for the audience - if he needed any further proof of just how stupid this whole thing was, he had it in spades now since the organisers had just thought keeping people on a floating pier and staring into a lake was entertaining rather than give them anything that could show them what was actually going on - and he glanced at his two 'hostages', Ginny Weasley and a little girl who resembled a younger Fleur Delacour, making him suspect she was the older French girl's sister or cousin.

Both girls were gasping for air and shivering. Ginny turned to him. "H-Harry?" The redhead's teeth were chattering.

Harry was too tired to acknowledge the redhead or the blonde for that matter - he was extremely tired after the long swim down to the merpeople village at the bottom of the lake and the swim back up and the double rescue of the two girls. "C'mon, we need to get to the pier," he whispered, taking the blonde in his grasp, thanking his lucky stars he had managed to persuade the Patil family to pull the twins out of Hogwarts so they didn't have to suffer through with this, "Help me with her. I don't know if she can swim."

"Who is she?" Ginny asked.

Harry sighed. "I honestly don't know. I think she's Fleur's hostage, but she didn't come, and there were signs she was going to be waking up so I took both of you and headed back for the surface, but the gillyweed was wearing off. How come you were down there?"

"Down where? And where the hell are we?" Ginny demanded while she tugged on the little girl before she looked around again, and her eyes widened in realisation. "Hold on…is this the Second Task?"

Harry could see Ginny had been left in the dark as well as the cold on this one. "This is the Second Task, yes. You were my hostage. The Second Task is traditionally meant for the Champions to rescue something important to them."

"Important?" Ginny turned to him, a smile on her face. "You mean I'm important to you?"

Harry closed his eyes. Why did the stupid girl have to think about that? Deciding not to bother with the silly girl's crush over him, Harry decided to think about the Task. Thanks to questioning Bagman, it had been so easy for Harry to discover what was in the Lake, what horrors the organisers were going to shove down the Champion's throats while they tried to save their hostages and learning how to deal with them when he could, and he had practiced all of that under controlled conditions and exercises in the Room of Requirement. He was not going to play some stupid game with the Tournament, and he had been practicing his moves ever since the day he'd discovered what the Second Task was going to be.

Stealing the gillyweed was relatively easy. It had been one of the things he had nicked from the apothecary in Hogsmeade after he'd decided he'd had enough of Voldemort driving him crazy through the horcrux in his scar, but when Snape's magic was torn out Harry had used the confusion to steal several other potion ingredients from the storeroom. Not many, but some. While he had been there, Harry had noticed how some of the ingredients such as boomslang skin and Bicorn horn and lacewing flies and fluxweed were missing from the stockroom, but since he knew Barty Crouch Junior was using poly juice potion to disguise himself as Professor Moody he didn't bother looking into the mystery any further than that. And truthfully, with Crouch dead and Voldemort gone as well, there was nothing to worry himself about.

All he had needed to do from there was to get used to gillyweed. He had learnt quickly that the weed wore off the more energy you used and he had learnt to take extra bits with him into the water. He was glad he had, but ultimately it wasn't necessary. Sure, it had been a nasty, hectic fight when he had been trying to get Fleur's hostage away from the merpeople but he'd only just managed it. Granted, he had needed to use some of the gorier spells in his repertoire, but it had been more than enough to make the merpeople back off. He'd learnt the hard way the softly-softly approach was not going to work, and besides he had made the merpeople back off with nasty, he knew that if Dumbledore publicised it, then he would likely become hated for what he had done, the 'dark' approach, but it was worth it. The merpeople had been planning on harming him and the girls, as far as he was concerned, that made them fair game.

Besides, he'd been on a time limit and he had seen the little blonde girl starting to wake up. Harry had no idea what had happened to Fleur, but he wasn't going to leave a little girl awake and drowning at the bottom of a lake where she shouldn't belong.

A point he was going to shove down the throats of the organisers, of Madame Maxime, Dumbledore, and Bagman, and they didn't like it too fucking bad. He had managed to get through on just the one strand of the sickly green spaghetti-like plant, but he'd had a close call at the final leg of the trip back up to the surface of the lake.

Harry turned to the blonde. "Are you alright? Can you swim, sweetie 'cause we need all the help we can get to get out of the water?"

The girl babbled a little bit in French, but her teeth were chattering like Ginny's had been a moment before. Harry sighed and shook his head. "Never mind."

"If she's Delacour's then why did you help her?" Ginny asked with a bit of bite in her voice.

Harry wasn't in the mood for Ginny's attitude. "She could have drowned at the bottom of the lake," he said shortly before he sent her a dark look that made both girls shiver. "I wasn't going to leave her to die."

Call it a saving people thing or not, but Harry had the experience of what it felt like to be put in a situation where you were going to die. He would never forget the way the Dursleys casually dropped him on a bonfire. The whole incident had been one of the reasons why Harry refused, utterly refused to have anything to do with Halloween, never mind fires and fireworks.

Ignoring Ginny and the blonde, Harry swam to the pier and let himself be pulled up out of the water with relief. He let himself be examined by the nurse, ignoring her fussing over him while he struggled to get his strength back.

Bagman's expression was surprised when he caught sight of the little blonde girl even as Fleur Delacour was screaming desperately while she was being held back, "Gabrielle! Gabrielle!"

After Ginny was taken away from Harry, Bagman approached with the jovial smile of a born if ridiculous showman. The act was beginning to grate.

"Well done, Harry! Well done! Even though she wasn't his hostage, our youngest Champion wanted the extra points-AAAAARRRGGGGHHHH!" Bagman suddenly screamed when Harry, tired and fed up by the idiot, banished him in the Lake.

"Mr Potter!" Pomfrey gasped, amazed and horrified by the use of magic. She could tell the boy was tired, but it was also apparent he was not very happy.

"Harry!" Dumbledore protested as he stormed over, but he found himself similarly pushed into the lake. This time Harry didn't bother using his magic, but his physical strength.

"Mr Potter!" McGonagall yelled.

"No, they deserve it. Fleur Delacour's sister was waking up on the bottom of the lake. If she had, and I hadn't got her out of there, she would be dead by now!. She would have drowned because you cared more for spectacle than a child's life! Who's bright idea was it to put a kid in the bottom of a lake, anyway?!" Harry pressed his wand to his throat to amplify his voice. Everyone gasped while the judges who weren't stupid enough to storm over to him looked awkward in the suddenly tense atmosphere. Harry turned away and headed away from the edge, hopefully as far from Dumbledore and everyone else while ignoring Pomfrey who continued to fuss over him.

After Pomfrey was gone, Harry cast a warming spell over himself. Harry lifted his gaze when he heard Fleur's desperate voice beside him.

"You saved her even though she was not your hostage!" The blonde girl was gazing at him with such utter gratitude and relief.

"I couldn't let her die. I was in a similar mess a long time ago don't forget. Placed in a dangerous situation, totally hopeless, nobody around to stop it; but in your sister's case, I was there. What happened to you, anyway?"

Fleur's expression turned white as she recalled the story of what happened with his burns. Of course, now it made sense, why he'd help Gabrielle in the first place. Only she was thankful that he had saved her little sister's life, and now she thought about it there were similarities. "I was attacked by Grindylows at the bottom of the lake," the French witch replied with a scowl. "I'd used a bubble-head charm, a bit stupid now I come to think about it, and by the time I realised it I'd used too much air and I was trapped. The Tournament's safety system pulled me out of the lake."

"Safety system? Oh yeah, you mean the thing the Judges keep in place to portkey out anyone who is in trouble?" Harry replied, remembering the brief lecture Dumbledore and the other Judges had given him and the Champions in one of the meetings before this tedious mess about the safety system which would be tied into the Champions' life signs and a portkey would be sent through to portkey them out. He didn't think a lot of Dumbledore, but he was relieved the Judges weren't stupid enough to leave anything to chance.

"Yes, the same. I had wondered if it actually existed given how much of a bastard your headmaster is," Fleur said quietly.

"You don't like Dumbledore that much," Harry observed.

"Why should I? Not only did the man leave an innocent child to be burned by filthy muggles without bothering to check on his wellbeing especially after being attacked by a dangerous wizard, but he also allowed Grindelwald to run around Europe unchecked," Fleur's scowl was a picture to behold.

Harry didn't have an answer for that. He could tell and even guess that Fleur's views and feelings towards Dumbledore were shared by a vast majority of people in Europe; from what he'd heard, Grindelwald hadn't really focused any of his attacks on Britain which made him wonder if that Dark Lord had been the one who'd feared Dumbledore. Voldemort didn't seem like the type to be frightened of anyone.

"Is your sister okay?" Harry asked in concern.

Fleur sent him a toothy smile which immediately put him on high alert. "Oui, but she would probably be hugging the life out of you for some time. She worships you, Harry; always has. She was really angry when she learnt about the truth of your past, and she was all set to come into Hogwarts, fireballs blazing and sent to burn Dumbledore into ash. But my parents stopped her."

"Oh dear, they should have let her," Harry chuckled as he viewed the pint-sized little blonde Veela entering Hogwarts and setting everything alight. "Has she told you how she ended up on the bottom of the lake? I can't imagine any kid would want that."

Fleur's smile faded - he wondered if he wasn't the only one mentally viewing Dumbledore being spit-roasted alive like that - but the mood change concerned him. He had met dozens of people whose moods shifted and changed at the drop of a hat. "Oh, she has. Madame Maxime," she spat the name so ferociously that Harry actually flinched, "called Gabrielle to her office, and she took her into Hogwarts where they met Dumbledore and I believe your Head of House."

Harry scowled at the mention of McGonagall. He would not be surprised if the old bag hadn't done a thing to stop this. "Let me guess, Dumbledore made her fall asleep just like that?"

"Yes, but your Head of House was protesting the nature of the selection," Fleur said dubiously; after all, she had seen in Hogwarts and what she'd learnt so far, Minerva McGonagall was not proactive in stopping Dumbledore's schemes.

"Was she, well it didn't work?" Harry turned away for a moment before he turned back to the French witch. "Anyway, I'm off."

Fleur blinked at him in surprise. "We need to wait for our scores."

"Why would it matter? In the next task, Bagman will brag about them. I'm tired, I'm hungry and I have been checked out. But if your sister wants to meet me, she can come into the castle whenever she wants but for today I'm too tired," Harry told her as he stood up and he moved off, absently casting a notice-me-not charm on himself. He didn't want anyone realising he was leaving and stopping him before he actually left and he walked back up to the castle.


Author's note - I hope you've enjoyed this.