The lake looked cold and Bree was wishing that she had gone with a dry suit instead of a wet suit. At least she was better off then her competition. Krum was wearing swimming trunks, which would offer little protection from the cold, Fleur and Cedric were wearing their robes, which would cause drag, and Harry was… where was Harry anyway? Oh there he was, skidding to a halt in the mud and accidentally splattering Fleur's robes. Ha.

"Where have you been?" said a bossy, disapproving voice. "The task's about to start!"

Percy Weasley was sitting at the judges' table - Mr. Crouch had failed to turn up again.

Bree rolled her eyes and looked at the Doctor. He was pretending to be an ambassador again and Dumbledore had conjured up chairs for him and his "aides." She looked at the crowd and wondered if Fred and Lee had found George yet.

"Now, now, Percy!" said Ludo Bagman, who was looking intensely relieved to see Harry.

"Let him catch his breath!"

Dumbledore smiled at Harry, but Karkaroff and Madame Maxime didn't look at all pleased to see him… It was obvious from the looks on their faces that they had thought he wasn't going to turn up.

Harry bent over, hands on his knees, gasping for breath

Ludo Bagman was now moving among the champions, spacing them along the bank at intervals of ten feet.

He returned to the judges' table. pointed his wand at his throat as he had done at the World Cup, said, "Sonorus!" and his voice boomed out across the dark water toward the stands.

"Well, all our champions are ready for the second task, which will start on my whistle. They have precisely an hour to recover what has been taken from them. On the count of three, then. One… two… three!"

The whistle echoed shrilly in the cold, still air; the stands erupted with cheers and applause. Bree walked into the water, not paying attention to the other champions as she just wanted to get it over with. She shivered as the water soaked into her wetsuit and touched her skin. An idea popped into her head and she cast a warming charm on herself. Better. She was waist deep in the water so she cast the bubble-head charm and went under. She didn't swim. No, even Olympic swimmers were slow compared to marine animals, so Bree had decided to move like a marine animal. More specifically; a squid.

When a squid wants to move fast it uses a jet of water to propel itself. Aguamenti was a spell wizards used to create a jet of water. Bree had originally practiced the spell in order to prepare for the dragons, well she did until she got the coffee creamer idea. Now Bree was using the spell to propel her self forward like a squid. A squid with pyromaniac-like tendencies and a penchant for destruction. But still, no one else had ever come up with the idea, so there.

So, she was off. It was quiet under the and she could only see ten feet around herself, so that as she sped through the water new scenes seemed to loom suddenly out of the incoming darkness: forests of rippling, tangled black weed, wide plains of mud littered with dull, glimmering stones. She swam down, not to deep though, she didn't want to risk what might lurk in the weeds. She was pretty sure she saw things moving in there.

After about half an hour, Bree heard mer-song.

"An hour long you'll have to look,

And to recover what we took…

your time's half gone, so tarry not

Lest what you seek stays here to rot…"

"Creepy." Bree muttered, swimming toward the mer-song.

A cluster of crude stone dwellings stained with algae loomed suddenly out of the gloom on all sides. Here and there in the dark windows, Bree saw faces.

The merpeople had grayish skin and long, wild, dark green hair. Their eyes were yellow, as were their broken teeth, and they wore thick ropes of pebbles around their necks. They leered at Bree as she swam past. One or two of them emerged from their caves to watch her better, their powerful, silver fish tails beating the water, spears clutched in their hands.

Bree sped on, staring around, and soon the dwellings became more numerous. There were gardens of weed around some of them, and she even saw a pet grindylow tied to a stake outside one door.

A whole crowd of merpeople was floating in front of the houses that lined what looked like a mer-version of a village square. A choir of merpeople was singing in the middle, calling the champions toward them, and behind them rose a crude sort of statue; a gigantic merperson hewn from a boulder. Five people were bound tightly to the tail of the stone merperson.

Ron, Hermione, Cho Chang, George, and a girl who looked no older than eight were all in a very deep sleep. Their heads were lolling onto their shoulders, and fine streams of bubbles kept issuing from their mouths.

Harry was hacking at the rope that secured Ron with a sharp rock. Harry had somehow managed to get fins and gills. As she moved toward the hostages Bree saw a seven-foot-tall merman with a long green beard and a choker of shark fangs. She wondered were he has gotten the shark fangs, considering that he lived in a lake. She asked him.

"There's a passage that connects to the sea. I traded with our cousins from the ocean." he answered.

"Oh. It looks nice." Bree commented.

The merman nodded. "Shouldn't you be…?" he gestured toward the hostages.

"Right. Bye." she waved and went over to George. Harry had just freed Ron and was about to start hacking at the ropes that help Hermione.

At once, several pairs of strong gray hands seized him. Half a dozen mermen were pulling him away from Hermione, shaking their green-haired heads, and laughing.

"You take your own hostage," one of them said to him. "Leave the others…"

Bree watched bemusedly as Harry tried to argue with the mermen. All that came out when he spoke were bubbles, but the mermen appeared to be able to understand him anyway, or maybe they could lip-read…

Bree turned her attention toward the ropes holding George as Cedric swam over. She cut the ropes with diffindo, grabbed George by the arm, and left, Cedric following not long after.

Cedric and Bree surfaced at roughly the same time. George and Cho had woken up as soon as their heads were above water. Dumbledore stood beaming from the bank as the four swam nearer. Ludo Bagman was looking a bit worried. Percy, who looked very white and somehow much younger than usual, came splashing out to meet them.

Meanwhile Madame Maxime was trying to restrain Fleur Delacour, who was quite hysterical, fighting tooth and nail to return to the water.

Percy seized George and was dragging him back to the bank. Even if he was kind of a jerk, at least he cared about his family. That was something.

The Doctor helped Bree onto the bank. An hour of being near-weightless underwater made gravity feel a lot more powerful.

Madam Pomfrey grabbed Bree and wrapped her in a blanket, and forced a measure of very hot potion down her throat. Then she repeated the process with the others. Krum and Hermione came up a few minutes later and got the same treatment. There was no sign of Harry. Harry wasn't coming up. What had happened? He had been there first to arrive in the mer-village. Everyone was watching the water, waiting, but Bree wasn't the kind of person who waited. She shrugged off the blanket and went back in before anyone could stop her.

She found Harry struggling through the water. He was dragging Ron by the collar and had Fleur's sister under one arm. Merpeople were rising with him, swirling around him with ease, watching him struggle through the water. Harry's gills and fins disappeared, so it was less struggling and more drowning.

Bree grabbed Harry and used a jet of water to propel him, the little girl, and the sack of dead weight to the surface.

Harry was desperately gulping in air. All around them, wild, green-haired heads were emerging out of the water with him, but they were smiling at him.

The crowd in the stands was making a great deal of noise; shouting and screaming, they all seemed to be on their feet. Ron and the little girl were awake. The girl looked scared and confused, but Ron merely expelled a great spout of water, blinked in the bright light, turned to Harry, and said, "Wet, this, isn't it?" Then he spotted Fleur's sister. "What did you bring her for?"

"Fleur didn't turn up, I couldn't leave her," Harry panted.

"Harry, you prat," said Ron, "you didn't take that song thing seriously, did you? Dumbledore wouldn't have let any of us drown!"

"The song said -"

"It was only to make sure you got back inside the time limit!" said Ron. "I hope you didn't waste time down there acting the hero!"

"Should have left you at the bottom of the lake. Betcha be singing a different tune then." Bree said.

"Where's George?" Ron asked.

"On shore." Bree answered.

"So why are you here?" Ron responded.

"To keep Harry from drowning." Bree snapped back, resisting the urge to dunk Ron's head under water.

"C'mon," Harry said trying to diffuse the situation., "help me with her, I don't think she can swim very well."

They pulled Fleur's sister through the water, back toward the bank where the judges stood watching, twenty merpeople accompanying them like a guard of honor, singing their horrible screechy songs.

Ludo Bagman stood beaming along with Dumbledore, and Percy was back in "rescue sibling" mode. It was kind of sweet, really.

Madame Maxime was still trying to restrain Fleur.

"Gabrielle! Gabrielle! Is she alive? Is she 'urt?"

"She's fine!" Harry tried to tell her, but he was so exhausted he could hardly talk, let alone shout.

Percy grabbed Ron and pulled to him to the shore. ("Gerroff, Percy, I'm all right!"); Dumbledore and Bagman were pulling Harry upright. Fleur had broken free of Madame Maxime and was hugging her sister. The Doctor was helping Bree up, again.

"It was ze grindylows… zey attacked me… oh Gabrielle, I thought… I thought…"

"Come here, you," said Madam Pomfrey. She seized Harry and pulled him over to Hermione and the others, wrapped him so tightly in a blanket.

"Harry, well done!" Hermione cried. "You did it, you found out how all by yourself!"

"Well -" said Harry. He noticed Karkaroff watching him. He was the only judge who had not left the table; the only judge not showing signs of pleasure and relief that Harry, Ron, and Fleur's sister had got back safely. "Yeah, that's right," said Harry, raising his voice slightly so that Karkaroff could hear him.

"You haff a water beetle in your hair, Herm-own-ninny," said Krum. Harry had the impression that Krum was drawing her attention back onto himself; perhaps to remind her that he had just rescued her from the lake, but Hermione brushed away the beetle impatiently and said, "You're well outside the time limit, though, Harry… Did it take you ages to find us?"

"He was the first one there." Bree stated.

Dumbledore was crouching at the water's edge, deep in conversation with what seemed to be the chief merperson, a particularly wild and ferocious-looking female. He was making the same sort of screechy noises that the merpeople made when they were above water; clearly, Dumbledore could speak Mermish. Finally he straightened up, turned to his fellow judges, and said, "A conference before we give the marks, I think."

The judges went into a huddle. Madam Pomfrey had gone to rescue Ron from Percy's clutches; she led him over to Harry and the others, gave him a blanket and some Pepperup Potion, then went to fetch Fleur and her sister. Fleur had many cuts on her face and arms and her robes were torn, but she didn't seem to care, nor would she allow Madam Pomfrey to clean them.

"Look after Gabrielle," she told her, and then she turned to Harry. "You saved 'er," she said breathlessly. "Even though she was not your 'ostage."

"Yeah," said Harry, who was now heartily wishing he'd left all three girls tied to the statue.

Fleur bent down, kissed Harry twice on each cheek then said to Ron and Bree. "And you two-you 'elped"

"Yeah," said Ron, looking extremely hopeful, "yeah, a bit -"

Fleur swooped down on him too and kissed him. Hermione looked simply furious. Fleur turned and hugged Bree. Bree stiffened slightly.

Just then, Ludo Bagman's magically magnified voice boomed out beside them, making them all jump, and causing the crowd in the stands to go very quiet.

"Ladies and gentlemen, we have reached our decision. Merchieftainess Murcus has told us exactly what happened at the bottom of the lake, and we have therefore decided to award marks out of fifty for each of the champions, as follows…

"Fleur Delacour, though she demonstrated excellent use of the Bubble-Head Charm, was attacked by grindylows as she approached her goal, and failed to retrieve her hostage. We award her twenty-five points."

Applause from the stands.

"I deserved zero," said Fleur throatily, shaking her head.

"Cedric Diggory who also used the Bubble-Head Charm, was one of the first to return with his hostage, though he returned one minute outside the time limit of an hour."

Enormous cheers from the Hufflepuffs in the crowd. Cho gave Cedric a glowing look.

"We therefore award him forty-seven points."

"Bree Smith used the Bubble-Head Charm and returned at the same time as Cedric, however, when it appeared that her follow champion was in distress she returned to the water to aid him. The judges feel that she has show great moral fiber and therefore we award her fifty points." The Doctor grinned and Amy and Rory cheered.

"Viktor Krum used an incomplete form of Transfiguration, which was nevertheless effective, and was second to return with his hostage. We award him forty points."

Karkaroff clapped particularly hard, looking very superior.

"Harry Potter used gillyweed to great effect," Bagman continued. "He returned last, and well outside the time limit of an hour. However, the Merchieftainess informs us that Mr. Potter was first to reach the hostages, and that the delay in his return was due to his determination to return all hostages to safety, not merely his own."

Ron and Hermione both gave Harry half-exasperated, half-commiserating looks.

"Most of the judges," and here, Bagman gave another Karkaroff a nasty look, "feel that this shows moral fiber and merits full marks. However… Mr. Potter's score is forty-five points."

"There you go, Harry!" Ron shouted over the noise. "You weren't being thick after all - you were showing moral fiber!"

Fleur was clapping very hard too, but Krum didn't look happy at all. He attempted to engage Hermione in conversation again, but she was too busy cheering Harry to listen.

"The third and final task will take place at dusk on the twenty-fourth of June," continued Bagman. "The champions will be notified of what is coming precisely one month beforehand. Thank you all for your support of the champions."

Madam Pomfrey began herding the champions and hostages back to the castle to get into dry clothes.


Gryffindor was having a party. Again. Bree managed to slip away and was currently in the TARDIS.

"Congratulations!" the Doctor exclaimed.

"Yeah you did great. It was really boring to watch though. Just an hour of staring at a lake." Amy said.

"Yeah well, I had to be in the lake for and hour. My hands got all pruny." Bree replied.

"Well I hope the next one's better than this one." Amy stated.

"Me too. Let's go do something fun." Bree suggested.

"Like what?" Rory asked.

"Does New New Orleans have Mardi Gras?" Bree asked.

"Of course." the Doctor answered.

Bree grinned. "Well then-allons-y!" she exclaimed.


As you probably know I asked you readers to suggest characters from other fandoms that Bree might be related to. I also asked for job suggestions for oc relatives.

TKDgirl101 suggested Donna Noble as a relative.

For jobs Auctor suggested machinist in a submarine, spy just like Michael Weston from "burn notice", jail guardian, comedian, convenience store night clerk, cop, and black ops.

Sci-fi fan 82 suggested taxidermist and neurosurgeon/mad scientist. Taxidermy always makes me think of this one episode of criminal minds… *shudder*

ccsakura21 suggest a crossover with Young Justice, which I was already considering. Obviously I need to start wearing a foil hat.

More suggestions are welcome, especially suggestions for relatives that could realistically be related to Bree. I'm not just going to have her somehow be related to characters like Ichigo Kurosaki or Superman. I might crossover with those fandoms though.