Something that looked strangely akin to a river surrounded by trees stretched out beneath him. It didn't make sense; how could there be a river within a lake, or, for that matter, trees within a lake? His curiosity caught unawares like a mischievous kitten spotted chasing its neighbour's pet bird, Cedric swam down through the water with long, powerful strokes of his arms. Finding the merpeople's den was really just a matter of trial and error, and something that looked like a river transposed underwater seemed like the sort of unusual formations that would be a good place to start looking.
Sure enough, he soon passed trees that were almost certainly alive and flourishing and reached what definitely appeared to be a river. The water within its bounds was a darker colour than water surrounding him and had its own separate current, moving much faster than the water around him. He knew he had to press on, but decided to allow himself a few minutes of delay. Who knew whether he would ever get a chance to return to this strange underwater phenomenon, or whether some basic knowledge of it might prove useful later on? Moving his wand in the familiar gesture, he levitated a stick towards the strange river, dipping it in before moving it out again to examine its effects. It was, to his intense interest, well and truly intact; he was more than used to viewing all unknown substances as potentially dangerous until proven otherwise, and the fact that nothing had happened to the stick made it that much more likely that it was, simply put, a natural phenomenon. Letting the stick fall back into the water, he watched it float away downstream. On a whim, he decided to follow it; he really had no idea of where the merpeople could be, except that they lived at the bottommost part of the lake and that they liked living in defendable places. They were, after all, frequently exposed to sharks, the Giant Squid, and other dangerous creatures. If they knew about this river and knew, or thought, that it was in fact harmless, they might have made a settlement nearby.
He followed the river down a slight slope for approximately twenty minutes, constantly surveying the area around him for signs of predators, merpeople, or other interesting landmarks, until it petered out into a small lake with long wiry reeds poking out of its shallows. A lake with plants inside a lake with trees, he noted. I wonder if it has its own distinct ecosystem, too?
Movement off to his right caught his eye, and he forced himself not to tighten his grip – while it would make him feel better, it would also make his wandwork less fluid and so less precise – as he watched it out of the corner of his eye, not wanting to draw its attention to the fact that he had noticed it. A shape sped back to cover, and he recognised it in passing as a merchild.
Finally, he thought, reorienting himself to face the structure it had disappeared into. The proof that he had reached them made him uneasy, but he would have to face them eventually; he might as well resolve himself to the task now.
In front of him stood a gigantic rock set into the lakebed that, upon closer scrutiny, could be seen to have a small entryway blocked off by a wooden door. Large spikes had been driven into the earth near the entrance, and three merpeople stood guard outside like silent watchmen.
"Not here," one of them said. "Not here…"
"How do I know you aren't lying to me as part of the challenge?" For all of his feigned bravado, the shakiness of his voice elucidated exactly how nervous he was. Merpeople weren't the kind of magical creatures that humans readily associated with, and he didn't want to anger this group when they had a home ground advantage. But if he left and later found out they had just been trying to deter the champions…
The other two merpeople expelled a quick, aggressive series of high-pitched sounds in an obvious threat.
"Our young are hidden here while you champions search," the first one finally told him, hesitating frequently as if to find the right words to convey her message. "This area is not part of your event."
"I'll go," Cedric promised. "But can you give me any direction as to where the hostages are first?"
"You're supposed to find them yourself…"
"The rules didn't specify that," Cedric reasoned. "Besides, I've already found some of you on my own."
Amusement lit up her eyes, and she pointed one gaunt hand in a random direction. "It's several hundred metres that way. Keep going straight until you find a dead tree, and then turn right. There will be a pier…"
"We shouldn't…" the second merperson interrupted. "Albus Dumbledore…"
"Ceorl," she replied, "he would not care… It is the Ministry with their many rules who would."
"Thank you; I wish you the best," Cedric said gratefully, before turning and swimming off in the direction she'd indicated.
The journey was long but, ultimately, uneventful. The tree was easy to find; its bare, cracking grey bark reflected the light emanating from his wand. As he swung around to his right, he spotted a merperson in the distance and headed off in its direction.
Cedric's nerves returned as he neared the site. The number of merpeople around him was steadily growing. While he had known he wouldn't be able to successfully take on three of them, he had fooled himself into a false sense of possible victory; this just showed him how utterly defenceless he would be if they decided to attack him. Still, he swam steadily through the group of merpeople, trying to ignore their unsettling presence. He knew that they wouldn't attack him, after all, however eerie they were; although merpeople were known for luring stray swimmers and sailors underwater and into a watery grave, Dumbledore had allowed this particular group to migrate to Hogwarts after their ocean home was targeted in a Ministry raid on the condition that they refrain from attacking anyone on school grounds. They, knowing that the punishment for infringement would be a swift death for those involved and banishment for any deemed complicit by association, complied. A few of the merchildren had been known to come above water and flirt with students from a distance, but the sole time one of them had tried to pull the student below had been immediately stopped by the merchild's parents.
Despite knowing that it was safe, and that the Bubblehead Charm could protect him from their drowning tactics indefinitely, swimming towards a group of such creatures went against all of his instincts. He had been taught from a young age that you swim away from merpeople, not towards them, and yet here he was, rapidly approaching them as if they were long lost friends he couldn't wait to embrace.
Admittedly, he'd known when he put his name in that goblet that being chosen would mean facing a string of increasingly difficult life-threatening encounters, so he didn't exactly have any grounds for complaint. The merpeople were, objectively, much less threatening than the dragon, and were no doubt less dangerous than whatever he would face in the third task.
He spotted a raised platform ahead and a little to his left, and adjusted his path so that he was swimming towards it. Four poles rose up out of the bottom of the lake, three of them with a limp person tied to it. The idea of human hostages surprised him, but the shock didn't last long. While he certainly hadn't expected it in a modern Triwizard Tournament, the idea did have precedent in its historic iterations. It was practically a requirement for fantasy adventure books and plays, after all; someone the hero cares for is endangered, and he alone can save them. In the previous tournaments, the endangered individual was usually the champion's betrothed or intended. Now, he supposed they'd gone for the closest approximation they could find.
Ron Weasley; a young blonde girl; Cho Chang. There was no doubt in his mind who had been brought down for him to find, and he swam directly toward his girlfriend while contemplating what the scene told him about the other champions' progress.
Weasley and the girl were obviously here for Potter and Fleur respectively – he'd always disbelieved the rumours that Potter and Weasley were together, thinking them to be merely the result of the legion of envious or vengeful dissenters that they had both somehow seemed to accumulate over the years, but apparently he was wrong – so that meant Krum had already been there. Cedric had been sure he'd seen the Bulgarian Seeker heading off in the wrong direction somewhere behind him at one stage, but he supposed he'd caught up and overtaken the Hufflepuff while he was fighting off the death eels or, more likely, negotiating with the merpeople hiding near the strange river. It didn't really bother him; if Krum had gotten ahead sometime, fair play to him. Besides, placing second would be an admirable feat, and there was still a chance he could overtake the burly young man on the way back up. It really was all a matter of who came across what when, so nothing was truly definite until the last person exited the lake.
Pulling Cho's cold hands as far apart as the rope would allow so as to create more room for error, he carefully cast the Severing Charm. The hidden benefit of the Bubblehead Charm was, in his opinion, that it didn't restrict speech, so he still had his full arsenal of spells at his disposal. He hadn't stuck around at the start long enough to pay attention to what the others had done, but he'd caught the scent of gillyweed just before jumping in. Cedric hadn't considered that particular plant himself; the Bubblehead Charm had come to mind almost immediately, and there had been no need to look for alternatives after that. It was, he supposed, a good tactic when you considered the incidental benefit of creating webbing between your toes and fingers, but it didn't do anything about the speech issue. As a relatively strong swimmer, he'd rather retain his speech than gain a swimming advantage, so he couldn't say he regretted his decision not to explore that option.
Its tension broken, the rope started to pull away from Cho's hands, leaving them unencumbered. He untangled her hands before sinking down to cut the rope binding her feet. The polyester floated languidly where it had been released. With her thus freed, he swam around the pole and wrapped her arms around his waist, casting charms to reduce her weight and secure her to him so he could decrease the impact on his swimming speed and mobility. Thus prepared, he kicked off the rock floor, heading straight up. The way he saw it, it didn't really matter whether or not they emerged near the entry point; it might be a slightly longer journey this way, but it would help him get his bearings, and would hopefully decrease the number of obstacles he would encounter.
Sure enough, the path upwards was fairly clear. He did come across some sea creatures lured by curiosity at whether the strange bubble was a threat or good to eat or just some previously encountered bit of floating debris, but they were unused to magic and so easy to scare off. Guilt darkened his mood. It wasn't their fault he was disturbing their usual activities, or that they felt impelled to investigate it; it was, however, his fault that they might now see humans as predators to be feared.
The sight of the lightening water above and around him diverted his thoughts, and he propelled himself forward with increased intensity, feeling reinvigorated at the sight of the home stretch. Finally, his head broke the water, and he waited for the water to stream down the side of the bubble before taking stock of his location. He wasn't as far away from the jetty as he'd thought, although he was now in a completely different spot than he'd started. It seemed he'd gone around in a loop underwater to get to the pier. As he started to dip back underwater, setting out for the entrance, he heard a cry from the shoreline. He let the memory of his fellow housemates' proud faces and supportive words spur him on those last ten metres, before removing the charm that fastened Cho to his back and pulling her, spluttering, from the water.
A/N: Thanks again to everyone who has followed, favourited or reviewed this, and to my lovely brother for beta reading this.
Sorry that this chapter is late; our phone lines are down again, so I had to wait until I got to uni to upload it. To anyone who's still without power or running water or has been isolated by the NSW storm, or has been affected by the earthquake in Nepal, my thoughts and prayers are with you. Everyone, please stay safe; getting around a few days earlier or getting there half an hour sooner isn't worth the risk.
Onto lighter topics: Can anybody guess (without looking it up) the origins of Ceorl's name? It's not an obscure text, but he is a minor character.
To the guest reviewer: Thanks for your review. It seems like most people were, which was nice to see because I'd been worried that it would be too obvious and so would just seem like unnecessary tension.
To adenoide: Thanks for your reviews. The Maxime thing will be addressed again once the rest of the champions are back. While wizarding Britain's definitely extremely prejudiced and I too interpreted France as being much more open-minded, that doesn't mean that individual French people aren't bigoted. Given how vehemently Maxime denies that she's a half-giant, I don't think it's much of a stretch to say that she might also be prejudiced against other 'half-breeds'. And, no, Harry brought back Hermione; Karkaroff recognised Hermione's hair and so assumed that Krum was back, only to find out that it was in fact Harry. And yeah! I guess Karkaroff has a score to pick and Maxime wants to prove that she's a good Headmistress, while Dumbledore's just sitting there ruminating on Muggle lollies.