The night before the second task, while FitzSkimmons were basking in each other's naked glory doing naked husband and wives things, Professor McGonagall, Dumbledore, Gabrielle Delacour, the Durmstrang chick Krum had taken to the Yule Ball, and Cho Chang were standing and sitting in Professor McGonagall's office, waiting for Ronna Weasley to arrive.
Professor McGonagall had told the twins to send Ronna Weasley down over an hour ago, and still the elder of the two redheaded females hadn't arrived. The stern Gryffindor Head of House had been a little worried that Potter and Granger would insist upon coming with Weasley, making things much more difficult, but never in her wildest dreams had she imagined that Weasley would simply refuse to come entirely. When she'd told the twins to go tell Weasley that she needed to see her, they had told her that they didn't know where the three were, but she'd just told them to go find their sister, that's why she was telling them to do it instead of going and telling Weasley herself, something that had apparently been a mistake, as what she'd expected to take fifteen minutes or less was now over an hour.
Finally, though, when Weasley still hadn't shown up, Professor McGonagall admitted to herself that she was going to have to go find the girl herself, and excused herself from the assembly in her office and headed up to Gryffindor Tower for the second time in as many years, a new record for her as a professor (as opposed to when she'd been a student living in Gryffindor Tower, and was there every day). But upon entering Gryffindor Tower, she didn't see the trio anywhere in the common room. As it was only a little after eight pm, the common room was still crowded, but the infamous trio that had caused her so many problems over the past three and a half years were no where to be seen.
Her next guess was that they were in the library helping Potter study up for the second task, but before she traipsed all the way down there just to not find them and have to come back here, and since it was already past eight o'clock when Madam Pince kicked everyone out of her library, and so the trio should at least be on their way back to the Gryffindor common room, she decided it would be best to ask around a bit to see if anyone had seen the trio and knew where they were. Of course, as soon as she'd opened the portrait door and everyone had seen it was her, and not another one of them, they had all stopped and stared at her, so it was very easy to ask everyone at once if any of them had seen Potter, Weasley, and Granger. But it quickly became apparent that none of them had since supper in the Great Hall, even those that had spent some time in the library that evening.
Spotting the younger female Weasley, Professor McGonagall made a quick, on the fly decision, and asked her to come with her instead, since it didn't seem like she would be finding Ronna Weasley in time. Wherever the three were holed away studying for the second task so that Potter could make up for the large point loss he'd suffered in the first task, she wasn't going to be able to find them quickly enough. Anyway, she still had a Weasley girl, so that should make Mrs Weasley happy enough, and perhaps even happier.
~FSK~
Wednesday morning, FitzSkimmons awoke at their normal early hour.
As they knew it could possibly be their last time to do so if the second task went badly — at least until after the task was over, since they weren't actually competing and therefore had practically zero chance of actually getting hurt, let alone kicking the bucket and pinin' for the fjords — they enjoyed each other thoroughly, until finally their stomachs called a halt to the love making, demanding to be fed. It had also been getting near the time they would have had to quit anyway in order to be able to eat before Dumbledore sent everyone wherever it was they were going for the second task that started at 9:30, so they quickly dressed in their hexa-QuadWizard Tournament outfits and headed down to the Great Hall to join everyone else in breakfasting.
At nine o'clock, they saw the three champions head out of the Hall presumably towards the task, but they remained seated eating, waiting for Dumbledore to tell everyone where they were supposed to be going, so they could just follow the crowds to the task. But not two minutes later, Professor McGonagall approached with clear intent to wreck their plans.
Striding up to where Fitz sat contentedly eating a sausage as Daisy and Simmons argued over when they got back whether they should send Captain Spy Witch (that is, Steve Rogers, Natasha Romanov, and Wanda Maximoff) a first anniversary gift when no one was supposed to know they were together, the older woman demanded, "Potter! You have to get down to the lake for the second task!"
"Oh, so that's where it is," replied Fitz, casually looking backwards over his shoulder at their Head of House. "We were waiting for Dumbledore to tell everyone where to go so we'd know where it was taking place. But the task doesn't start until 9:30, so unless it's on the other side of the lake, we've got plenty of time to get down there before it starts. But, I mean, it clearly can't be too far a walk, since the champions just left and Dumbledore hasn't sent everyone else down their yet."
"The champions have to be there early to get their instructions!" exclaimed McGonagall loudly, causing most of the heads in the vicinity to turn and look at the yelling. "And what do you mean you didn't know where the task was?! It was clearly said in the clue in your egg!"
"Which we never opened or even looked at," Simmons replied calmly. "Last we checked, the egg's in a crevice in a rock on the other side of the lake, where we stuck it immediately after the first task so we wouldn't be tempted to look at it — I'm a rather curious one, and Harry loves engineering and how things are built and put together, and Ronna's just nosy. But point being, if we hadn't got rid of it, one of us probably would have eventually opened it."
"You were supposed to open it!" shouted McGonagall, the few heads remaining that aren't already turned towards them doing so now.
"In case we didn't make it clear to you in the first task — which I really don't know how could be possible, we were very blunt — we don't care about this stupid tournament. We aren't trying, and we aren't going to try. Ever. And obviously you all wanted us to open the egg, so we made sure to do the exact opposite of that, even going so far as to hide it where no one could ever find it."
"But you don't know what you're supposed to do for the second task!" shrieked McGonagall.
"Exactly — you're finally getting the picture," answered Fitz.
But McGonagall clearly hadn't begun getting the picture, as she exclaimed, "You can't win the tournament if you can't do the task! You're disgracing Gryffindor House and Hogwarts by not trying!"
At that, Simmons had had enough of the adults' bullshit. Jumping up, she growled, "The disgrace of Hogwarts is the fact that it's headmaster couldn't protect students who didn't enter their names into the Goblet of Fire from having their names come out anyway! That's what's a bloody disgrace! Harry didn't ask to be in this stupid tournament, he didn't want to be in this stupid tournament, he didn't consent to be in this tournament! But because your headmaster couldn't keep someone from entering his name against his will, he now has to compete anyway! Which means the last bloody thing you can say is how he has to compete, and to accuse him of disgracing a single damn anything because he's chosen to compete in a different way than you want him to! That's what's a fucking disgrace here!"
And with that she stormed out of the Great Hall, Fitz and Daisy running after her to catch up.
Once out on the grounds, and Daisy had thrown her arms around her wife in a tight hug of support and Fitz had complemented her performance as well, the three of them wandered around the grounds away from the soon descending crowds, until exactly one minute before 9:30 when they arrived by the lake where the champions were gathered.
"Where have you been? The task's about to start!" demanded a highly grating, bossy voice that could only mean that Percy was filling in for Mr Crouch again just like he'd done at the Yule Ball meal. FitzSkimmons were right on the verge of asking where Mr Crouch was, before suddenly suffering from an acute attack of no curiosity.
"Task starts at 9:30, we're here before that, so eff off, prat," Daisy retorted to Ronna's older brother.
All four of the judges looked at Daisy in shock, as did Percy. Karkaroff also had a look that made it obvious that he'd hoped Fitz wouldn't show up at all, though Madame Maxine didn't have such a look, which made Simmons wonder if Fleur hadn't convinced her headmaster that Harry et al weren't actually a threat to win the tournament, and the half-giant should focus all her enmity on Diggory and Krum.
But Bagman quickly composed himself and said, "Well, then, let's line up and get ready to go!"
FitzSkimmons watched the three champions head towards the water to line up on the bank, and followed their example, so as to appease whatever magic was required to be appeased to make sure that Fitz didn't lose Harry's magic with however the binding magical contract actually worked. Bagman quickly shuffled between them all making sure they were spread far enough apart, before reaching FitzSkimmons and moving Fitz a few feet further away from Krum.
"All right, Harry?" he whispered to them. "Know what you're going to do?"
"Yep," replied Fitz, because he did in fact know exactly what they were going to do, even if it didn't involve going into the lake for whatever reason the three champions were clearly planning on doing so.
Less than a minute later, the shrill whistle signaling the start of the second task echoed through the air. As the other three champions rushed into the water, Fitz casually strolled the few feet down to the water's edge. Since the task clearly had something to do with the lake, he dipped his finger into the water as security against the magical contract he'd been illegally entered into, before turning back to where Daisy and Simmons had sat down in the clover.
"Absurdly frigid — we're not going in there," he pronounced definitively as he walked back over to his wives and sat down in the very tight hole they made for him.
But they hadn't been sitting there for more than five minutes when McGonagall came striding towards them from the stands around the other side of the lake, looking as irate as ever — she really looked like she'd need to take up meditation or yoga or running or something that year, to calm her old self down a bit before she gave herself a heart attack from all that pent-up anger.
"What are you doing!?" she shouted at Fitz.
"The second task, ma'am," Fitz answered politely, but also like he was talking to a complete moron who'd misplaced the few brain cells they did have. "Recovering what was stolen from us by someone, apparently, according to what Bagman said to the crowd right before he sent us off."
"What Harry means to say is, we're looking for what they took from us in the clover here along the bank," clarified Simmons. "The three champions clearly believe that whatever was taken from them was hidden in the lake, but given our three and half years of experience in the wizarding world, we think that might have been a false trail set by whoever stole the objects to begin with."
"So we've decided that it's actually more likely that whoever they are hid whatever they stole from us here in this patch of clover we're sitting in. We haven't found anything yet, but we're sure by the end of an hour we'll find something," finished Daisy, before adding under her breath for just her spouses, "Especially if they took a four-leaf clover from us."
McGonagall looked like she might explode, her head blow clean off her neck, or perhaps simply burst into flames like Ghost Rider, but she kept it inside long enough to shout, "In the lake! The merpeople have them at the bottom of the lake in their mercity! You have to go into the lake to find them!"
"Sorry — our swimsuits and wetsuits are in a store a few hundred miles away, probably," answered Simmons. "We could go buy them if you like, but I doubt we'll be back in the now less than an hour Bagman said we have. Especially since we'd have to try them on and everything to make sure they fit, and we thought we could swim through a lake in them."
All three of them had also spotted the minor problem that they had no clue how to breath underwater for as long as it would take to find a mercity somewhere on the bottom of the likely rather deep Black Lake, but since Simmons and Daisy didn't have sexy one-piece swimsuits to wear for it anyway, and of course they had no intention of actually doing the second task at all, they didn't see any reason to mention this minor detail. McGonagall meanwhile proceeded to mouth at them wordlessly, too many thoughts going through her mind at once to shriek any of them.
Taking advantage of her temporary speechlessness, Fitz looked over at the judges' table where the judges were chatting away merrily paying no attention to the lake whatsoever, since there was absolutely nothing to pay attention to other than slight ripples caused by the chilly wind, and shouted, "Bagman! A teacher's over here trying to give us help on completing this task! Didn't Crouch say we're not permitted to accept help from our teachers? The one rule of this tournament?"
As Bagman turned to look at the disturbance, albeit from his favorite champion, McGonagall gave Fitz a scathing look, before stalking off for being called out on her blatant violation of the only rule the tournament had.
Problem gone, before Bagman could actually say anything to them, Fitz called out again, "Never mind — problem solved!"
~FSK~
The next forty minutes went by uneventfully, albeit very boringly.
There was nothing but a slightly rippling lake in front of them to watch, and they couldn't make out like horny thirty year olds since there were people around who could see them, and would probably ask them to stop. The judges, that is — they figured the crowd across the lake, if they could see from that far away, would probably be more than happy to watch them make out, as there sure as hell wasn't anything else to watch. All three of them wondered how the students were standing this after what had obviously been a much more exciting to watch first task, since there had actually been something to watch besides grass grow and waves lightly ripple from the cold February breeze. But this task there was absolutely nothing, and so FitzSkimmons wiled away the time chatting.
About fifty minutes after the task had started, they spotted Fleur break through the water, and swim up to them. When she got close enough to stand up and splash through the shallows, and especially as she climbed out of the water onto the bank, they saw her face and arms were covered in many cuts and scratches, and her silvery one-piece swimsuit had several tears in it, though fortunately none in any unideal places.
"What happened?" Simmons asked in concern.
"It was ze grindylows," replied Fleur. "Zey attacked me, and clearly zey came out on top, so I came back 'ere. I'm pretty sure I was close to ze mercity where whatever zey took is, but I failed, and now whatever zey took is gone forever. Eet was supposed to be something I'll sorely miss, zough I didn't see anything gone zis morning when I woke up, so I 'ave no idea what it might be."
"Sorry to hear that," said Daisy. "But go get dry and cleaned up by Madam Pomfrey, and come back and join us until the other two get back."
Once she was out of earshot, Fitz turned to the other two and said quietly, "Something she'll sorely miss? But that presumably means something similar was taken from all of us. But I haven't seen anything missing from our rooms, and none of the adults here presumably even know where we are, let alone be capable of actually getting into our room to steal any of our stuff with the extra locking charms you throw up when we're not there."
"Bagman just said they took something from us, not that we'd actually miss it," said Daisy. "But he was talking to the crowd, so…. Although I would have thought he'd want to amp it up for the crowd given how boring watching this task would actually be."
Simmons just kind of shook her head. "I certainly don't know what they could have stolen from us, and clearly neither did Fleur, but maybe Diggory or Krum will return in time with their's, and we'll have a better idea. But for us at least, Harry has enough money that we can replace pretty much anything they stole since we have nothing of sentimental value here with us, so we should be okay. And if whatever they stole from Fleur and destroyed is important enough to her, maybe she'd let Harry buy a replacement for it if it's not something sentimentally valuable that can't be replaced."
"Shame there's no court in the wizarding world we could sue the judges and tournament organizers in for theft and destruction of private property," sighed Daisy.
A few minutes later Fleur returned wrapped in a blanket, steam trickling lightly out of her ears from whatever Madam Pomfrey had given her to warm her up.
" 'Ow much time is left?" she asked.
"Five minutes until an hour," answered Fitz, glancing down at his watch. "Unless Krum or Diggory hurry, looks like everyone is going to lose whatever they took. Also, Fleur, we have no idea what of ours they took either, as we didn't see anything missing this morning either, and the judges shouldn't have had any way of getting to our stuff, anyway. Though I just had a thought — I wonder what happens to the object if you've got it but the hour expires while you're still below water, or not back here on land, whichever counts as completing the task."
"Some kind of spell that makes it waterproof until 10:30, and then the water basically just automatically destroys it as soon as the spell ends?" offered Simmons. "Seems like the kind of spell that could exist, though wouldn't be effective against anything that was already waterproof or otherwise not affected by water."
As none of them had any definitive answers, they just relaxed back into the grass to watch the lake, and see who arrived first.
"Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one…and zero," counted down Fitz as he looked at Harry's watch.
"Did you actually set that to the time the whistle went off?" asked Daisy. "They couldn't have started at exactly 9:30 by our watches since we showed up with less than a minute to spare, and it took Bagman a lot longer than a minute to actually get started."
"I was looking at the time when the whistle actually went off," replied Fitz slightly defensively. "Come on — you know me better than that."
"Okay, okay, sorry," said Daisy apologetically, raising her hands in surrender.
But before either of them could say anything more, Simmons exclaimed, "Look! Someone's broke the water!"
It wasn't long before they could see that it was Diggory, the Hogwarts champion.
But a second later, Fleur shrieked, "That's a girl!"
As FitzSkimmons turned to her in confusion, she continued hysterically, "The clue! 'After an hour it's gone'! If whatever they took from me is a person as well they'll die!"
The French girl leapt up from where they were sitting, clearly intending on rushing back into the water to go try to find her hostage, but something had struck FitzSkimmons.
Leaping up as well, Fitz grabbed one of the veela's arms to keep her from rushing into the water, as Daisy grabbed her other arm, and he shouted, "Fleur, Fleur! They're safe! It's already past an hour and that girl's still alive!"
Simmons meanwhile had hurried over to Diggory. In a hushed, but urgent whisper, she asked, "Diggory — Are they safe down there?"
But it was the oriental girl who actually answered her. "They're fine! They're fine. We were all put in a bewitched sleep by Dumbledore, and don't reawaken until we are back above the water — Ginny is fine."
Simmons threw a thumbs up sign back at her husband and wife to let them know the kidnap victims were still safe, before suddenly comprehending the last thing the girl had said, and snapped her head back in surprise.
"Ginny? As in Ginevra Weasley? She was our hostage?" she exclaimed in surprise. "Why on earth her?" Then she quickly shook her head to clear those thoughts out for a later time, and said, "No, no, it was Fleur's hostage that we were concerned about — Fleur started going hysterical as soon as she saw you and found out that what the judges stole were living people instead of objects like the clue implied. And then something about it being lost forever — it was hard to understand what she was trying to say. But the three of us all saw that it was already past an hour when you came up, which meant that unless the hour was based on when Diggory found you and not when you made it back up to the surface, her hostage will still be completely safe even if she can't go get her hostage."
Meanwhile back at Fleur, upon seeing the thumbs up sign from Simmons, Fitz turned back to the French girl and said calmingly, lightly stroking the French girl's arm soothingly, "Your hostage is safe. It's okay you didn't rescue them in an hour, they're still alive and nothing bad will happen to them. You're okay, you're okay."
Fleur's breathing finally started calming back down, and soon Simmons walked back over to them and repeated everything Diggory's hostage had told her, except the part about their hostage being Ginevra — she wanted to be able to observe Fitz and Daisy's initial reactions upon seeing that Ronna's sister had been kidnapped as their hostage, to see where their thoughts went with it — calming Fleur down even further.
A few minutes later, Krum surfaced as well, pulling the Durmstrang girl up with him. Just as Fleur, Diggory, and Diggory's hostage had before them, Krum and his hostage headed over to Madam Pomfrey to be warmed up, while Dumbledore went to the water's edge to talk to a mermaid, presumably about returning Fleur and Harry's hostages. Once Dumbledore had returned to the other judges and all the champions and two surfaced hostages were warmer, Bagman stood up to announce the scores of the second task.
Fleur was given twenty-five points for a good charm but failing to rescue her hostage, Diggory forty-seven points for being one minute past the time limit, Krum forty for an incomplete transfiguration and returning later than Diggory, and FitzSkimmons zero points for failing to find their hostage in the clover on the lake bank. After announcing the points, Bagman informed everyone that the final task would be on the twenty-fourth of June, but that the champions would be informed of what the task was a month before that.
Then as he dismissed everyone, the merpeople broke the water carrying up Fleur and Harry's hostages — a girl who looked like a younger version of Fleur, and Ginevra Weasley. Fleur immediately rushed over to who was clearly her younger sister to wrap her in a tight hug, as Simmons turned to watch Fitz and Daisy stare at Ginevra in shock and confusion at her being their hostage.
"Her?" Fitz whispered into Simmons' ear. "Why?"
Simmons merely shrugged. She had thought it exceptionally odd herself as well, but had no explanation for it yet, so she wasn't going to say anything more until they could discuss it in private.
Seeing that Ginevra had spotted them, Daisy quickly looked over at the other two and said, "I think it's our cue to disappear."
FitzSimmons looked to where their wife was subtly nodding.
"Yep — we're out," said Fitz seeing the redhead start moving towards them, clearly less than pleased that her celebrity crush hadn't come to rescue her again like he had at the end of her first year. As they turned as one and started quickly walking back up to the castle hoping to blend in with the crowds that were moving up towards the castle for lunch, he continued, "She's unhealthily obsessed with Harry, at least in the books. Total fangirl."
Fortunately they were able to quickly blend in with the crowd, and once they reached the Entrance Hall disappear up the Great Staircase to their hidden passageway that led to their room, wanting to wait until the crowds thinned out before they headed back down for lunch. And up in their common room a few minutes later, Daisy flopped onto the center cushion of the couch.
"Good thing we didn't go down there and discover that they had four humans kidnapped and held hostage underwater," she growled as FitzSimmons sat down on either side of her. "If we had discovered them under the knowledge that if we didn't rescue them in under an hour, as the clue said according to Fleur, every single judge and possibly all the other adults who might have known about it would have been cursed into hell before they could have explained that they were lying their asses off in the clue."
"But why didn't Diggory and Krum?" asked Fitz. "They only brought their hostages up, and didn't try to rescue the other hostages that weren't theirs. I didn't take either of them to be that heartless, even to win."
"Maybe they interpreted the clue differently? Or were told that the clue wasn't real by someone?" suggested Simmons. "Or perhaps the merpeople wouldn't let you take more than your own, and fought Krum and Diggory when they did try to rescue the other hostages. Although it seems like Diggory didn't know it at Christmas when he offered us a clue, or, like you Fitz, I think he would have been a bit more urgent."
"I think we need to find out what the clue actually was, word for word," said Daisy. "And maybe that will answer some of these questions for us. Along with how on earth Ginevra was our hostage. But what exactly have we heard about the objects — or human beings, as it turned out — that were kidnapped?"
"Well, Bagman said we had an hour to recover what was taken from us. And McGonagall told us that what had been stolen from us was in the mercity," said Fitz.
"And Fleur said it was supposed to be something she would sorely miss, and if she didn't get it in time it would be lost forever — I believe her quote of the clue was 'After an hour it's gone', although whether that's an exact quote depends on how well she memorized the clue, to repeat it perfectly mid-panic," added Simmons. "Although that part of the clue was clearly a lie — something Diggory and Krum somehow seemed to know, so maybe that wasn't actually quoting the clue, or she mistranslated the clue or something. It could have been written in ancient, or foreign runes. It was underwater-based, so maybe Atlantis actually existed here, and they had to translate ancient Atlantean runes — would make sense for the tournament, and a reason why anyone not sixth or seventh year could struggle if they hadn't studied Atlantean runes yet."
"Yeah, we really need to get the exact clue, and find out whether all three clues were identical or not," said Daisy. "Shouldn't be too hard now that the task is over — don't see any reason the three wouldn't give us the full details of the clue now that the second task is done, and can't affect the tournament at all."
"But the one part of the clue that does still theoretically hold up at the moment is that the person they kidnapped was supposed to be someone we'd sorely miss, and beyond simply being decent human beings and missing anyone who was brutally murdered for sport like it was Ancient Roman coliseum days — or modern horror movies with clowns that Fitz can't watch," said Simmons, with a teasing smile at her husband on the last part. "Which means they apparently thought that Ginevra Weasley is someone we would miss above and beyond missing anyone not named Snape or Grant Ward. Which forces us to ask the question, have they finally started considering all of us the fourth campion, or do they still only consider Harry the champion? Because if it's all of us now, then it makes sense that Ginevra be picked for Ronna, being her younger sister and all — like Fleur's sister. But if they still only consider Harry to be the champion, and think Ginevra means something special to Harry, I can't think of a good explanation for that — or any explanation that I like, I should say. Because from the three books before this one, and everything that has occurred with us this year, Ginevra doesn't mean anything more than any other person in this castle to Harry, who's the champion here that this should all be based on."
"The girl clearly has some kind of celebrity obsession with Harry, including the valentine in both second years," said Fitz. "But I certainly can't remember any point where Harry ever showed the slightest interest in her in the three books, or even really had any actual interactions with her. So unless something drastically changed in the fourth book, that we somehow changed from happening, there would be no reason for Harry to care, beyond the fact that she's a kidnap victim in the process of being murdered in this horror game that the supposedly safe tournament has turned into — from Harry's perspective under the water not knowing that they were all safe, of course."
"But even if we changed something this year, the adults' actions should all be based on three books and our version of this year, not the book version of this year," countered Simmons.
"Unless something happened over the summer in the book before we got here," pointed out Daisy. "We don't start at the beginning of the books, ever I don't think, so it's possible in the two months between the end of third year and the start of fourth year that Harry and Ginevra madly fell in love despite never having had anything to do with each other before — which would just make this very poor writing, and a complete lack of understanding proper character development."
"No, because we get our characters' memories of the summer, remember?" said Simmons. "Anyway, I haven't seen Ginevra try to make any contact with Harry since we did arrive in this world, that would at all support that theory, either."
"Oh, yeah, right," said Daisy. "Forgot about our memories."
"Which leaves us with, they grabbed her because being Ronna's sister made her the only person any of the three of us might care about, they grabbed her purely randomly which is unlikely, they took her for some reason connected to her instead of Harry who's actually the champion, or something entirely different that we haven't thought of," said Fitz.
There were several seconds of quiet as all three of them thought over what Fitz had said, until Daisy finally succinctly summed up what they were all thinking.
"Yeah — but until we learn something more, I don't think we're going to figure this out, no matter how smart you two are."
~FSK~
That evening at supper, once they had finished eating, FitzSkimmons found the three champions and asked them to take a quick walk with them.
Once they were outside and away from any ears that could possibly be prying, Simmons asked, "Now that the second task is over, would any of you three be willing to tell us exactly what the clue for the second task was? Because it seems like there was some difference in interpretation between you three, and we're trying to figure out how they picked our hostage, as it doesn't seem to match with any of yours."
"Of course!" exclaimed Fleur. "Zough I'm not sure I can give it word for word to you guys."
"I haff it written down in my room," said Krum.
Five minutes later they had swung by the Durmstrang ship, and Krum handed Simmons the slip of parchment he'd written the clue down on.
" 'Come seek us where our voices sound; We cannot sing above the ground. And while you're searching, ponder this: We've taken what you'll sorely miss. An hour long you'll have to look; And to recover what we took. But past an hour — the prospect's black; Too late, it's gone, it won't come back'," Simmons read out. Handing the note to Fitz, she looked up and asked, "Krum, Diggory, how did you know the clue wasn't real? That it didn't actually mean whatever — or whoever as it turned out when you got down there — that had been stolen wasn't going to be destroyed at the end of an hour. Because that was how Fleur read it, and from reading that, how we would have read it, too."
"Dumbledore said that no one would die in this tournament," answered Diggory. "There were dragon trainers there to make sure nothing actually bad happened in the first task, and I just assumed there must be something similar for the second task. I'll admit it was quite the shock to see the four hostages through the murky water, and I did very briefly panic from the shock of it, but then I guess I just trusted that Dumbledore wouldn't kill anyone for the sake of the tournament. Honestly, I really wasn't thinking much at all about anything like that at the moment, I was just trying to get my hostage back to the surface first to win — which now that I say it out loud, makes me sound like a bad person."
"Karkaroff is very imposing if you haven't noticed," grunted Krum. "He would have killed me if he found out I spent any time making sure the other competitors' hostages were safe. I went with self-preservation, and I guess like Diggory, I still knew in the back of my mind that Karkaroff wouldn't kill another school's student if it wouldn't help him win, which allowing them to die after an hour wouldn't in this case."
"Okay, that makes sense," said Simmons. "Yeah, I'm pretty sure if we'd known the clue, and saw the hostages down there, we would have thought the same as Fleur and immediately rescued them all, tournament task be damned — they could come up with an alternate second task that didn't involve potentially killing innocent students, to allow you three to actually compete for points. But I really do understand where you guys came from, as well. And Diggory, no, it doesn't make you a bad person. You just read the situation differently than we would have, and Fleur did when she saw you bring your hostage up. Plus, we have backstory of people who look like they're in danger usually being in danger, so our first thought will always go to saving them. We're used to people actually being in mortal danger, and not in simulated danger for a twisted horror game, so our first thought naturally leaps to worse case scenario — hope for the best, plan for the worst.
"But thank you for the clue, Krum, we really appreciate, and good job to all of you in the task today — yes, even you, Fleur. You might have ended up on the wrong side of a bevy of grindylows, but you still did well, and certainly much better than us sitting in the clover on the bank."
The six of them soon parted ways, FitzSkimmons continuing on with their walk and discussion of the clue.
"So the clue definitely said that the person they kidnapped was supposed to be someone we'd sorely miss," said Daisy when they were alone again.
"Which gets us absolutely nowhere closer to figuring out why they kidnapped Ginevra," continued Fitz. "Because I'm not sure we've even spoken a word to her since we — well, actually since we arrived, have we? Because we showed up on The Burrow couch the night before we came here, and I don't remember saying anything to her that night, and certainly not since we came to Hogwarts."
"No, I don't think we have," answered Simmons. "And while I get the professors assuming we would talk to her more during all the hours we aren't around any professors, since we don't have any of the same classes with her being a grade younger, but you would have thought it might have dawned on one of them that they couldn't remember us speaking to her a single time in the Great Hall, or in a hallway or courtyard between classes, or on Hogsmeade days before we left the castle, or anything."
"So we don't know why, but what is our actual level of caring here?" asked Daisy. "We find it odd, and that it may — probably even, I think we can safely guess with the knowledge we've discovered so far — have more to do with her than us, but do we feel like it's any threat to our remaining four months here?"
"Not that I can think of, no," answered Simmons. "And certainly nothing we can't handle when the time comes. I just don't like unknowns, even in a fake world that resets every year anyway."
"I know you don't sweetie, but none of us like wasting time or brain power on things that aren't going to affect our magical vacation," replied Daisy. "We've got better ways to spend our time — and right now I'm referring to this hike, not sex or snogging!" she quickly added when she saw her wife open her mouth to scold her, before adding teasingly, "Not that we couldn't find a rock or tree to hide behind and kiss for a while as we're hiking."
She narrowly ducked out of the way of the slap sent her way.