A/N: Well, this can be for your sake. I started writing this chapter on 9-8-17. Let's see when it gets posted. I am sorry for however long it takes. Sometimes, I just hit a block or am unhappy with a development, but don't know how to write it better.

A/N: Well, that was actually not bad. I mean, to be honest, not the best that I want this to be, but I can't think of better ways. If anyone sees an inconsistency or spelling or grammar error, PM me. I'm more likely to see it. I actually finished this on 9/29, but didn't want to publish it due to… unhappiness?

Harry had spent the rest of the holidays at Longbottom Manor. He went with Neville and Augusta to visit Frank and Alice. Sometimes, it would seem as if they were perfectly lucid, but then would slip back. The lucid moments were becoming more and more frequent, which was a good sign.

They always tried to veer away from the topic of the other Potters, knowing that the topic would most likely make Alice and Frank upset. Alice after all was Harry's godmother.

Harry was always thankful that the two of them had moments of lucidity. While Frank was still deemed unfit for Wizengamot duties and Augusta held the seat for him and Neville in regency, he was still able to give his mother a piece of his mind when Neville came in looking meek and scared. And don't even get started on Alice. While Augusta may listen to Frank because he is her child, she also ended up getting a mouthful from Alice. Harry is pretty sure that because of those two, Neville grew up quite well.

Harry didn't feel like going back home, and was thankful that he didn't. The Potter had hosted their annual party, except according to some, this year, there were quite a few people asking after him. Being at the Longbottoms' and Delacours' allowed him to be away from that.

Coming back to school was very strange for a number of reasons. Susan and Hannah's families had their own holiday plans, so this was his first time seeing the two of them since the start of the holidays. It was still a little tense, but they both seem to have had fun. They had gone skiing in the Alps. Conversation quickly started in the train ride, and Daphne soon joined the four of them.

There wasn't much fanfare to coming back to Hogwarts. He saw Fleur fairly often, but for some reason, after the ball, it seemed that they talked even less. He felt some slight discomfort and perhaps even disappointment. He didn't really know what to think of it, but just kept doing his work. He still spent every other night going to the Room of Requirement to practice. He would also being the golden egg with him. After a few weeks of listening to the shrieking, he absentmindedly wished that the Room would help him in his endeavor.

Harry sat back for 10 minutes and went back to practicing before he realized that in the far corner of the room, there was a pool where there wasn't before. Curious, he stepped towards it.

Thinking back, the only thing he could imagine was that the Room responded to his fleeting wish. He brought the egg over and dunked it. Then, he brought it back up and opened it, just for it the shriek in his face.

"Bloody hell!"

Harry quickly dropped the egg in surprise and pain, and as it fell into the pool, he froze it in anger. After a few moments, he sighed and unfroze the pool, before realizing that the egg didn't seem to be shrieking anymore. Harry carefully lowered his face into the pool, still suspicious of the egg.

"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're sorely miss,

An hour long you'll have to look,

And to recover what we took,

But past an hour's the prospect's black,

Too late, it's gone, it won't come back."

As Harry rose up from the pool of water, he cursed.

"Shit."

Harry went back in the pool to listen a few more times. Once he had it memorized he sat, thinking, before pacing.

'I don't have many worldly possessions. My robes, trunk, a couple of other trinkets. The map. Thomas has the cloak, which would be the most valuable thing. I mean, do they even know about the map? I don't think so. They can't exactly take away the Room either. What would they take? Think, this is just another Ravenclaw door riddle. Think. Think. What would Susan and Hannah say? Well, Susan would probably say that she would miss me or Hannah as a joke. And Hannah-'

Harry's thoughts ground to a halt.

'They would miss me. What would I miss? Rather, who would I miss? Who would miss a thing rather than a person? They're going to take prisoners. Hostages. Whatever. Where our voices sound. Underwater. The Black Lake.'

Harry's mind was working at lightning speed, trying to wrap his head around this.

"They're insane." he finally concluded. "If I thought they had common sense, then they might have chosen any old item that was easy for each champion to identify which was theirs. Personal items that posed no risk. But no, knowing them, they'll give the dumb riddle and then think that, of course they can't just lie about the damn Task, the riddle has to be 100% accurate."

"Ok, so where do we start?"

In the next few weeks, it became evident that all of the champions of the champions had figured out the clue as well. Cedric had come up to Harry about a week after he himself had figured it out to give him a hint, Cedric being a Hufflepuff and all. To his surprise, Harry told him that he had already figured it out. During their talk, however, something worried Harry.

"Yea, to my surprise, Professor Moody gave me a hint. I never thought that he would do that. He doesn't really know me personally and I'm not a stand out student in his class like I've heard you are."

That was still a bit of a sore subject with Harry. Moody was always giving him a hard time. He was the first to resist the Imperius, and was forced to demonstrate for the rest of the class until he could fully withstand its effects. But this, this was suspicious. Why would Moody give Cedric a hint and not him? Moody seemed to favor Harry in that weird way of his. He kept mulling over it, but couldn't come up with an answer.

A month before the Task was to start, all four of the champions were seen by the Lake, brushing on their swimming. Harry tried and tried to think of a way to use his powers underwater, but ice floated. Of course, Harry could just force the ice under the surface. His original idea had been to have an ever elongating tunnel of ice take him to the bottom of the lake to search. That way he wouldn't have to worry about swimming, nor about staying underwater for an hour. As he did not have a foolproof plan to use his elemental powers, he spent half the time swimming with the others.

Word had spread, and soon, there was almost a crowd by the Black Lake. Krum would have attracted enough by himself, but having Cedric and Fleur there as well in their swimsuits caused them to garner a lot of attention. Harry received some, but not as much as the other kids, and he had to admit, seeing Fleur in a swimsuit was quite nice.

Luckily, unlike any of the other champions, Harry didn't have to worry about the cold. It was one of the few advantages he had. After all, how effective could he be if he got shivers just from conjuring his own ice?

It was at the end of one of these swimming sessions that Thomas waved him over. He looked a little sheepish at even being there, so Harry heard him out.

"What do you want Thomas?"

"I, er, I was just wondering where you went for the holidays. Mom was asking about you."

"Is that why you're here? For Lily?"

Thomas may be thick, but even he picked up on the first name use.

"No, I was also wondering. I saw you leave, and you never came back, and then some people started asking about you."

"So is that why? So you'll have answers for them?"

"No, stop! Look, I know we've had our differences-"

"Understatement."

Thomas grit his teeth, but continued. "-but, I just, I want to apologize."

"For what? Being you?"

He cringed, but continued. "Yes, for that, for everything. I was terrible to you, despite you saving my life every year."

"But look, for the sake of family, I want to try to get to know you. I know I fell back onto old habits when you got chosen, but, it was just the ridiculousness of the thing. It was always me getting into trouble, and this year, it's you, and you get to be in the tournament? I was just mad. But, for family, can we try to get to know each other?"

Harry let Thomas finish before turning away and leaving with a parting shot.

"You, Lily, and James are not my family."

Harry came across a solution quite by accident. He was trying his tunnel strategy again when, to try to stabilize it, he spread tendrils of ice from it to the banks. He was feeling around with the tendrils when it occurred to him, he felt the tendrils. He knew where they were, despite not being able to see them. He turned the tunnel back into water and then sat down.

He closed his eyes and made a tendril, and found, he could follow its movements.

Opening his eyes, he grinned. This could work

The next few weeks were hard. His reserves, while growing faster than ever before ever since the Awakening, still could be depleted quite easily by certain exercises, and this was one of them.

At the end of the first week, Harry had 20 different orbs of ice circling around him, all doing different actions. Some of them orbited each other as well as him, like pulsars, while others went along is a zigzag pattern, while others spun and so forth. While they each had their own pattern, they all loosely orbited him. Focusing on one was hard enough. But, for Harry to focus on each of them was difficult. While all of this work was strictly necessary for the Second Task, he decided that this kind of elemental manipulation was the next step he had to take. To be honest, getting two to do different things was the hardest step. It's so easy to make all of the ice do the same thing, like indiscriminately circle around him, or to make a shape or to all fly towards a target. This however was much harder.

By the end of the third week, Harry was confident that he had a plan figured out. He stopped showing up to the lake because he didn't know exactly where the hostages would be held. Susan, Hannah, and the others had been worried about how hard he been working, but now they were worried that he wasn't practicing anymore. They kept asking him, Neville and Hannah especially, if he was sure he was ready. It finally came to a head when on the day before the Second Task, Neville asked, "But are you sure?" and Harry yelled, "YES NEVILLE!" He had accidentally started channeling, and the sudden change of his body startled them. He stopped and apologized

"Sorry. I know it doesn't seem like it, but I am just as worried as you are."

"It's ok Harry, we understand," Susan said.

And in a way, he supposed they could. They had been subject to a lot of harassment ever since he had been outed. Which was something else. He figured that it was Voldemort that was behind his being in the tournament, but how and why? How would he know? He only ever revealed his powers to Voldemort's diary, which shouldn't have gone back to old snakeface. He purposefully never used his powers in front of Pettigrew, causing him to escape, but Harry's secret was safe. And does that mean the dragon was an accident? Or was it orchestrated in order to out him? For now, he let it rest until he got more information. He was about to keep speaking when McGonagall came into the library, where they five of them had been studying.

"Miss Greengrass, the Headmaster would like to speak to you."

The other four had a grim expression on their faces. Harry had told them the clue and also what he thought of it, and they had agreed with his reasoning. They figured Daphne would be the one chosen, seeing as Harry was not the most sociable person (understatement), and Daphne had been his Yule Ball date.

Daphne started to pack her things and just said one thing to him.

"Don't let me drown Potter."

McGonagall gave Harry an evaluating look, before leaving with Daphne, presumably either to Dumbledore's office or to get the other hostages.

As she went out of sight, it was a few minutes later when Susan spoke up. "Say, Harry couldn't you have just given her one now discretely?"

The next couple of minutes were spent cursing until Harry calmed down enough to just head to Ravenclaw tower and wait for the Task to start.

Breakfast was quite an affair, but with wizards being wizards, they still didn't seem to be able to connect the dots between "missing people" and "dawn of second task". Harry just sighed and looked around. From the whispers at Gryffindor and his own table, he deduced that someone from those houses had been taken. Looking around, he noticed Granger and Chang missing. Cedric and Krum themselves seem to have made the connection, and were looking grim. It seems that they had no anticipated people being taken. Then Fleur looked the worst out of all of them. She couldn't focus on her food, and kept giving the Great Hall doors a glance, as if hoping someone would walk through them. Harry decided to walk over.

"Eat. I don't know who was taken, but you'll need your energy to be able to rescue them."

Fleur was startled at his voice, but then turned to listen and dejectedly nodded. Slowly, but surely, she started to eat her breakfast.

"Who is it?"

"Gabby. She was visiting with my family, but my parents told me that she disappeared last night."

Harry just had to wonder what Dumbledore was playing at. Not asking permission, it's like he was asking for an international incident.

"I know water isn't really your strong suit, but you can do it. I know you can."

Fleur looked up and nodded, resolute.

Once breakfast was over, Dumbledore headed to the podium and spoke, magically amplified.

"If everyone could please head over towards the Black Lake, further instructions will be made there.

When Harry got there, the spectators had already started filing into the stands that had been moved from the First Task. Harry saw that the judges were heading towards a table a bit further down the bank, so he decided to go there.

When all four of them had gathered, Ludo spoke up.

"May I have your attention? Now, last night, each of the champions had something, or rather, someone stolen from them. They'll have one hour to retrieve that person from the lake. Each of their methods will be judged when they arise from the lake. We will begin in 5 minutes."

Harry breathed. He looked around, and Krum's and Cedric's anxiousness had turned to anger. Neither of them seemed very happy at the revelation of hostages, and based on their expressions, they both knew who had been taken. Daphne had been with him when she was taken, and Fleur knew her sister was missing.

When there were 2 minutes remaining, he saw Thomas beckon him over. He looked worried.

"Look, ok, you don't consider us family. And I know you don't particularly like Hermione, but I think she's Krum's hostage, and just if, he can't get her."

Harry sighed. "Fine. But I'm not doing this for you."

"I know. And I know you probably don't want to know, but I figured that I should warn you."

Harry followed where Thomas's finger was pointing, and some of his anger flared up. Thomas seemed to sense this.

"Thank you Thomas, for the warning."

Harry made his way over to the other champions where he waited. He made sure he had gillyweed in his pocket as backup. He was the only champion not in swimwear, instead opting to go a tee shirt and a pair of jeans.

When the whistle blew, he was also the only one not jumping in the water. Some of the Slytherins started to ridicule him as he just sat down, but then, he started channeling and instantly, there were some 100 odd orbs of ice in the air.

Harry unclenched a fist that he had unknowingly made and they sped off towards the depth of the ocean. Each ball was inch in diameter, so as to prevent buoyant forces from keeping too much of his attention. He had each orb orbiting an invisible center so as to prevent missing anything. He didn't even hear the crowd anymore, he had to concentrate that much. There was so much in the lake, the merpeople, the kelp, the squid, grindylows, and who knew what else. This was Hogwarts, Merlin only knew what was in the Black Lake.

Twenty minutes had passed, and people were starting to murmur, even some of Harry's strongest supporters.

"Susan, what is he doing?" Neville asked. While he had helped Harry, Susan and Hannah knew most of the details.

"He's connected to each of those orbs he sent out, and he's using that as a malleable net. He's essentially using them to map out the lake. If an orb finds something, it spreads some ice to see if it's human. If not then it rejoins the net. He has to keep the rest of the "net" moving so as to not lose time."

"And if he finds one, then what happens?"

"Watch and you'll find out."

As if on cue, Harry stood up.

'Bingo.'

He had all of the orbs gather around the one that had found the hostages to act as a sort of guide. Now that they weren't actively doing anything, he could concentrate and took a moment to ready himself. He breathed in, and then thrust forward.

In an instant, the entire top part of the lake near the bank was frozen, with a hole leading down. You could faintly see some ice under the surface before it got too deep.

He formed a block behind and before running for the opening and diving in. He willed the block behind him to follow him to push him to his destination faster. He had instantly built a tunnel of ice that was completely transparent and anchored into the ground. He had tendrils coming off the bottom that had dug into the ground, so all he had to do was focus on was the ice itself, and not keeping it down. He thought of this as he thought of the problems of keeping a tunnel of ice under water while he searched. But, if he separated the two processes, it became simpler.

As he finally reached the destination, he expanded the tunnel into a room and cast a tempus. It had been 30 minutes total now since they started. This is where it got tricky. He had to find a way to either exit his tunnel and grab the hostage, or grab the hostage and bring them in. He decided to go with the later.

Harry created a saw blade of ice that cut through the rope of seaweed binding Daphne to the statue near the merpeople village. He then had an ice tendril form around her leg and brought her into a make shift airlock. It was quite possibly the weirdest thing he had ever done with his ice, making an airlock underwater. Once her face was exposed to air, she woke up with a gasp.

"Harry!"

"Daphne. As you can see, you've been rescued."

"You prat," she said lightly slapping him.

"Come on, let's go."

This time, he had to use the block to get up, but it only took them five minutes.

"And the first to come back with their person is Mr. Potter!"

Madam Pomfrey bustled around the two, making sure they were okay. She made sure that Daphne especially had a towel and a hot drink.

"Wow, so you managed to do an underwater task without even getting wet."

Harry turned around and hugged Susan and Hannah.

"Hahaha! Yes, it worked. I almost didn't expect it to."

"What?" Daphne asked, her expression promising pain if she didn't like what she heard.

"I had a plan B Daphne, don't worry," he waved off her concerns showing her the gillyweed. At that, Daphne seemed a little more pleased, but most thoughts ground to a halt as someone helped a coughing Fleur Delacour up.

"No! I must go back. Let go of me you idiots!"

She was trying to fight them off, but she couldn't. She locked eyes with Harry and went towards him.

"Harry! Please. My sister…"

She didn't finish the thought. All of them had heard the riddle. And Harry couldn't stand the sight of her like this.

Harry, luckily having kept his constructs intact went back into his tunnel, urging the ice to move him faster. When he got to the room again, he noticed that above him, Granger and Chang were no longer there.

He had started to do the same thing as he did with Daphne when he saw something in his vision. A trident had impaled itself in his room. He quickly froze the area around it and refroze the cracks in the ice. He looked towards the source, a merman trying to tell him something. He was pointing towards Gabby and shaking his head.

"You don't understand! Her sister can't get here!"

But, without going into the water, which Harry decided he was not going to do, he decided to finish this the easy way. He froze a column of water around Gabby and then proceeded to drag her down to the airlock. The merpeople started to try to break the column, but seeing that it was too thick, tried to break the walls of the room.

Harry quickly brought her out of the "airlock" and when she woke up, she started to babble in French.

"Harry? What are you doing here? Where is Fleur, I thought she would be the one to be rescuing me. Where am I?"

"Gabby, I need you to just hold on for one second."

He laid down with her by his side in the tunnel, and motioned for the block to take them back up. The merpeople gave up, and left to go back to their own village.

When he finally popped out of the tunnel, Fleur and her parents were waiting for them.

"Gabby!"

The family started to huddle around her.

"It's okay, Harry saved me. The merpeople didn't seem that happy, but he got me out."

"Why were you even taken?"

Harry let the family talk amongst themselves. It wasn't his place, and Dumbledore had started to speak.

"Attention. Now, as Mr. Potter was the first one back with his hostage, well within the hour time limit with a time of 35 minutes, he has been awarded 45 points, for efficient use of magic, and for also thinking of a backup in gillyweed. Points were taken off for a lack of demonstration of knowledge of other magic."

Harry shrugged. He could live with that. With his previous score, that put him at a nice 88 points.

"Mr. Krum was the next one back, with 5 minutes of the allotted time remaining. He made use of a self-transfiguration and for that, we have awarded him 40 points."

That put Krum at 80 points.

Cedric ended up at 77, and Fleur had unfortunately ended up at 65.

At this point, Bagman took over speaking.

"The third and final task will start at dusk on the 24th of June. The champions will be notified of what is coming precisely one month before the task."

Harry made to leave to be with his friends, but a hand stopped him. When he turned around, it was Fleur.

"Harry, I… Thank you. For what you did. I know now that they wouldn't have let Gabrielle die, but I was just so worried, and then I saw you go back into lake so quickly I. I just didn't know what to do."

"One of the few times the magical world makes sense. And you know me, my saving people thing."

"Harry?"

"Hrmmm?"

"Shut up."

With that, Fleur practically smashed her face against his. For a moment, the whole world froze. Nothing else mattered. Only the feeling of the girl in front of him mattered, and they both melted into the kiss. The whole world seemed to have gone silent.

After what seemed like ages, when they finally did break apart, the two of them realized that everyone around them had indeed gone silent. Susan and Hannah had sad smiles on their face, as if they knew it was coming. Malfoy was fuming, as was most of the male population. Everyone was shocked. While he didn't regret the kiss in the slightest, Fleur really had bad timing.

"We'll talk about this later, I have to go deal with the fallout, ok?"

"Ok," she said, kissing him on the cheek.

It was time to face the music.