The night before the second task FitzSimmons were studying in the library when the twins walked up to them.
"McGonagall wants you, Hermione," George started.
"She was looking a bit grim," Fred continued.
"We're supposed to take you down to her office," George added.
"And she specifically said that Harry wasn't allowed to come," Fred finished.
"Uh, okay, thanks?" Simmons replied in confusion, before continuing, "Um, yeah — we'll, uh…we'll get right on that. We know the way to her office, we don't need you to lead us — we've been there a time or two."
Apparently having no desire to waste even more of their precious time running errands for McGonagall who apparently couldn't be bothered to come get Hermione on her own, the twins happily left FitzSimmons sitting there, to go do whatever they did with their evenings. Once they had disappeared out of the library, Simmons turned to her husband.
"Assuming this has anything to do with the task tomorrow, we don't want to have anything to do with it," she said. "And where in her brain does she think that I would come alone?"
"I have no clue, but she's wrong whatever she's thinking or more likely not thinking," Fitz agreed. "But maybe if we don't go, we'll finally get disqualified like we want. I highly doubt it, but miracles have occurred in the past — even if not in this world when it comes to the adults since our arrival."
Not wanting Professor McGonagall to come find Hermione herself when they didn't show, FitzSimmons quickly packed up their books and parchment and headed up to Gryffindor Tower and then down to their private dorm, to finish up their studying for the night there where the deputy headmistress couldn't reach them.
Meanwhile in Professor McGonagall's office, five people were waiting. Professor McGonagall, of course, along with Dumbledore; Fleur's best friend and one of the few people who weren't jealous of Fleur, even when she'd lost out to Fleur in being selected by the Goblet back on Halloween night; Victor Krum's best friend and quidditch teammate at Durmstrang, who had also entered himself into the Goblet and been beaten out by his schoolmate; and Sara's sixth year boyfriend also in Gryffindor, who hadn't tried entering the tournament as he was also underaged, and hadn't been around during the short window that underage students had been able to enter thanks to FitzSimmons' experimentation. But these five were all anxiously waiting for the fourth and final student to arrive, the three students having no idea yet what they were actually doing there.
When fifteen minutes had passed since she'd sent the twins to find Granger and send her there, McGonagall got up with a huff and stalked out into the hallway to go find the brilliant, but most troublesome girl herself. Of course, a search of the library, the Gryffindor common room, and the fourth year Gryffindor girls dorm turned up nothing as FitzSimmons were in none of those places, and Professor McGonagall had never even heard of or read about the extra dorms below the common room that hadn't been used in centuries, since the times when the wizarding world had been booming. And everyone she asked could only say that they thought that they might have seen the couple pass through, but weren't sure, they hadn't been paying attention. And the fourth year girls kept it to themselves that Hermione had never slept in their dorm in four years as whatever the couple was doing the pair seemed very happy so they weren't about to mess that up for the couple, and McGonagall wasn't looking closely enough when she was up in their dorm to notice that there was one fewer trunk there than there should have been.
On her way back down through the common room, however, she spotted Ronald Weasley playing wizards chess with Dean Thomas, and made an on the fly decision. After all, Mrs Weasley had been denied housing Harry Potter for the past three summers, surely having her son be the thing that Harry Potter rescued in the second task would appease her a little bit, right?
So she walked over to Ron and said, "Weasley, I need you to come with me."
Downstairs five minutes later, Dumbledore informed all four hostages, "You four are whom the champions' clues refer to when they say that the mermaids have 'taken what you'll sorely miss'. Unlike the clues' warning to the champions that if they don't rescue you within an hour you won't come back, however, you will be perfectly safe. I will be putting you all into a bewitched sleep that will keep you quite safe and that you will only awaken from when you are back above the water regardless of whether that is in under an hour, or over. If your champion is unable to rescue you, once the hour is over and all of the champions are back at the surface, the mermaids will swim you back up to the surface where you will reawaken then."
Then before any of them could question his using them like this without their permission to terrorize the champions when they came upon human hostages when they could very reasonably only be expecting inanimate objects to have been taken from them, Dumbledore waved his wand and cast the spell, freezing them all in enchanted sleep.
~FS~
FitzSimmons awoke at their normal time the following morning, which meant that they were in and out of breakfast by 0800.
But none of the professors tried to keep them from leaving the Great Hall, as thanks to Hagrid they all believed that Harry Potter knew exactly where to go for the second task, and Mr Bagman had already told Harry the time of the second task on the evening after the first task when he had given Harry his golden egg that he had accidentally forgot to go get from the judges after the task was called. In reality, however, FitzSimmons of course had absolutely no clue where the second task was going to be taking place, so after spending an hour hiking around the grounds and enjoying a random Wednesday off from school, as 0900 rolled around they finished their meander and walked back up to the courtyard where they hid themselves in the shadows assuming that the task was probably outside like the first one had been, and therefore all of the crowds would have to pass through there on their way to wherever the task was and they would just be able to follow the crowds to the task. And even if the task was inside, they should still be able to hear that many people shuffling through the entrance hall to whatever part of the castle the task was in, and head inside to follow them then.
But their guess that the task was being held outside proved true, as shortly after they had arrived and blended in with the shadows, Sara and Fleur both came walking out of the great oak doors. FitzSimmons let them pass by and get fifty meters or so on down the grassy slopes of the castle grounds before stepping out from their hiding place and surreptitiously following behind them. As they neared the Black Lake FitzSimmons spotted the stands that had been imprisoning the dragons during the first task now erected on one side of the lake, and a gold-draped table right at the water's edge on the other side that the five judges were already sitting at waiting. They also saw Krum walk off of the Durmstrang ship and over to judges' table, which by now was clearly the location of the start of the second task. Sara and Fleur finished their walk at the table as well a few minutes later, and FitzSimmons joined them all a minute after that. Then everyone just silently stood around boredly waiting for another fifteen minutes until the stands across the lake had filled up with the students streaming down from the castle, and the clock tick-tocked its way around to 0930.
FitzSimmons did have a brief psychic conversation upon noticing that Mr Couch was absent yet again and that Percy Weasley had replaced him yet again just as the redhead had at the Yule Ball. And now they actually were minorly concerned that something might be wrong with the older gentleman, as this was a part of the tournament that needed the judges to be there, but there wasn't anything that they could do about it, and the four other judges could obviously see that one of their number was missing from their presence, and could look into it themselves to make sure that nothing bad was going on, they being the responsible adults and all literally in charge of the tournament, which also included being in charge of the judges for the tournament.
When the clock did finally hit the appropriate half-hour, Mr Bagman motioned to FitzSimmons and the other three competitors to get ready for the task and down to the water's edge. The three true champions all immediately ditched their robes that they had been wearing to protect themselves from the cold February weather, revealing the bathing suits that they all had on underneath, knowing ahead of time from the egg clue that they were going to be going into the lake for the second task. Victor Krum had on deep blood-red swim trunks that matched the Durmstrang robes, while Fleur and Sara were both wearing one-piece swimsuits.
Sara's was a swirly bright blue and green pattern that she had clearly bought in a muggle store, as nothing in the wizarding world was that artistic, not even the art that FitzSimmons had run across so far in their three and a half years there, most of it looking like it was painted sometime in the medieval ages, and not necessarily during the closer half. Also, given the long, fully-covering and then some robes that they always saw wizards wearing any time that they were outside of the privacy of somewhere like a House common room, and even then only a few brave and generally older souls ditched the wizards robes for normal t-shirts and jeans, any modern muggle swimsuit, one-piece or bikini, seemed about as unlikely to exist in the wizarding world as black tie gala dresses, turn-of-the-century bathing outfits seeming more like their style if they ever went swimming at all.
Fleur's one-piece was also clearly from the muggle world — though possibly including some magical enhancements in the bust area, like her swimsuit had a stout push-up underwire bra built into it to hold her breasts up as full as they would go, but with no visible signs in the suit material to indicate that it was anything but a standard spandex swimsuit with normal built-in pads for modesty — but unlike Sara's bright and colorful one-piece, Fleur's was a glistening pearly silver-blue that matched perfectly with her silvery-blonde hair and pale skin.
The veela had clearly chosen it to highlight her fuller feminine figure, her full breasts straining the spandex material, and a sizable cleavage visible above the suit's lower neckline that was clearly designed more for playing around in, sunbathing, and showing off, than any actual hardcore swimming for exercise, racing, or water sports like surfing large waves. Sara, on the other hand, who had breasts several cup sizes smaller than the French woman, had no visible cleavage showing at her neckline, but rather had a smooth curve down the front of her torso, the spandex peaking at the center of her mounds before flowing back down over a smooth, tight stomach.
FitzSimmons, meanwhile, were both wearing winter athletic gear that they didn't take anything off from, having not known that morning what exactly they might have to do for the second task in order to avoid doing whatever the second task was, and wanting to cover all of their bases, well-rounded clothes that they could do practically anything in being the obvious choice — except for swimming in a freezing-cold lake, which there was no way in hell they were doing ever.
Once the three champions were down to the clothes that they would actually be competing in and all five competitors were walking down to where the dry land met the wet lake, Mr Bagman quickly bustled about lining all of the champions up along the shore ten feet apart.
FitzSimmons were surprised that none of the other judges even commented about, let alone tried to stop Simmons from being there, but as it was the two foreign judges were confident that Harry Potter was so far back that he couldn't hope to catch their champions, and anyway, they could deduct large amounts of points for having help if he did do well in this task; Dumbledore knew better than to try to challenge a Harry Potter that he was protecting at all costs; Mr Bagman had a very important bet riding on Harry winning the tournament, so he wanted Harry to have all the help that the boy could get; and Percy Weasley, while always a stickler for the rules, both wanted Harry to win as well as he knew that would make his mother very happy, and as just the substitute judge who saw all of the real judges not saying a word about Granger's presence, didn't consider himself to have the authority to say anything — apparently it was allowed somehow, perhaps because of Harry's distinct age disadvantage.
As he lined everyone up Mr Bagman shuffled FitzSimmons to the far end of the lineup, and then ten feet further on, before whispering quietly to Fitz, "All right, Harry? Know what you're going to do?"
"Absolutely," Fitz answered confidently, as he did in fact know exactly what they were going to do, even if he highly doubted that it was going to be particularly useful in completing the second task, whatever exactly that turned out to be, and doubted even more that it was something that the judges or McGonagall would be happy about them doing for the second task — but the judges and McGonagall and all of the other adults still hadn't released FitzSimmons from their enslavement, so fuck the adults.
Pleased by Fitz's answer, Mr Bagman gave Fitz's shoulder a quick squeeze before returning to the judges' table where he magically magnified his voice to address the crowd across the lake.
"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!"
A shrill whistle echoed across the still lake, the stands erupted in applause, and the three champions quickly cast the charm of their choice upon themselves before diving headfirst into the freezing cold lake. At the same time — sticking to the plan that they had come up with upon seeing that the task had something to do with the Black Lake, as they had walked behind the two female champions from the castle down to the second task twenty minutes earlier — FitzSimmons took off at a dead sprint around the edge of the lake, quickly blasting through the small, sparse undergrowth separating them from the actual trail that led around the perimeter of the lake. As they sprinted Simmons briefly thought about how thankful she was that she had put a sports bra on that morning just in case whatever they did have to do for the second task involved any kind of extended high-impact activity — as it turned out that it did— instead of one of the normal underwire bras that she wore most days around the castle, or even a bralette of some kind that would have had even less support than an underwire bra for her breasts that tried to bounce with every step she ran, kept snug in the present by the fact that she had chosen to wear a sports bra that morning, a neon yellow one, though the color was of no significance to the support it provided her bouncing boobs.
Meanwhile the judges were too shocked at Harry Potter not diving straight into the lake with the three champions — since that's where everyone's kidnap victims were being held hostage — that they didn't even think about trying to yell at the pair until the duo was already out of obvious earshot. As for FitzSimmons sprinting their shapely bums off, if the judges did ever yell at them for 'running away' from the task, they never heard it, and were far enough away by that point that even if they had heard yelling at them, they would have completely ignored it and easily pretended later like they hadn't heard anything, that they were already too far away to hear anything.
But once they were far enough away that they were confident that they wouldn't be chased after or accidentally hear anything possibly yelled at them, FitzSimmons slowed down to a normal running pace as they continued their jaunt around the edge of the lake, both simultaneously looking over at the other because of something that Mr Bagman had said to the crowds in his announcements.
" 'What was taken from us'?" Fitz panted out once he'd caught his breath enough from the early sprinting to talk. "Not from our secret dorm, they didn't."
"I didn't see anything missing this morning, either," Simmons panted back. "But if they did, and it gets damaged and they don't replace it, we will either find the wizarding world's court system and sue everyone we can for every penny they have for stealing and destroying our property, or use our Shield connections to sue them in the British court system and force the wizards to give us everything they own or be exposed to the entire world on the twenty-four hour news cycle, probably creating a worldwide mass panic riot that the Salem Witch trials couldn't hold a floating candle to, as this is nearly two decades before aliens descend on New York. Or skip all that and jump straight to convincing Director Fury that the wizards are a threat to all of humanity and have him rain hellfire down on this castle and just wipe them all out of existence for condoning wanton slavery, theft, and destruction of personal property."
"Bit extreme on that last one, isn't it?" Fitz asked with a raised eyebrow and a slight chuckle as they continued their run around the lake.
"I'm about to the point where I think extreme is the only thing they'll ever understand," Simmons answered with a wry smile. "And no, I'm not actually serious about doing it, one of the first two will suffice just fine, but there's definitely been days when I've wondered if it's the only way to whip the wizarding world into a better place. Anyway, we'd never convince Fury to actually do it, no matter how much he believes that we're time traveling witches from the future."
"Witches — definitely," Fitz smirked back. "I'll be expecting my boobs to come in any time now."
"Oh, shut up — you know what I mean," Simmons retorted with a roll of her eyes. "Anyway, you don't want to actually have to have them all the time, you just want to play with mine or have your own that you can make magically appear and disappear at will so that you can enjoy them during sex and when you're bored, but not actually have to live with them."
"True, true," Fitz agreed. "Though you said 'magically' appear and disappear — think there's really any spells or potions that could do that to some extent? There are definitely body modification spells and potions that we've ran across or heard about, including most of upper-level Transfiguration, if I'm not mistaken."
"Polyjuice potion should work," Simmons answered thoughtfully, her brain immediately jumping into overdrive to solve the problem handed to her, even if this was the 'problem'. "Though it requires you turning into a specific other female, not a female version of you, so that has its psychological drawbacks that you have to consider, and even more so with our own personal battles with Leopold and LMDs. And like I said, it is fully female, not still a male just with breasts added on like you're thinking of — or vice-versa if a female took Polyjuice of a male. But like you said, human transfiguration is NEWT studies, so it seems like it should be possible to transfigure your pecks into actual breasts, but I haven't looked in-depth enough into it yet to know for sure — and there is always the question of whether transfiguration of that sort includes all of the nerve endings required to actually make it work like you're thinking, and therefore worth doing at all. Because boobs without real, proper sensitivity and feeling would just be a complete annoyance, or at least only good for visual if that was someone's thing. And the same goes for any other kind of potential sexual-based transfigurations, they'd only really be worth anything if they had at least minimal amount of realistic feeling. That all being said, though, for all I know there's an entire kinky sex-related branch of magic that deals with growing anatomically incorrect sex organs for the bedroom, and they have all kinds of potions and spells and other sex toys for the adventurous witch and wizard, we just obviously haven't run across any of it being students at a school — we only have a very select view of the wizarding world from where we currently stand, for good reason."
Unbeknownst to FitzSimmons there also happened to be the metamorphmagi, but FitzSimmons had never run across any such wizards or the term in any of their magical studies, given metamorphmagi's extreme rarity and thus little reason in wizards' eyes to ever bother writing anything about them in any books. But these select witches and wizards could change any part of their body to be anything that they wanted it to be (human or animal based), which not only gave such witch or wizard the ability to grow breasts or a penis or a vagina at will, but also far more morally questionable things including multiple sex organs at once and animal genitalia, not just animal noses for supper time entertainment. But as such an ability was purely hereditary and not capable of being learnt or brewed, it would not have been of any use for FitzSimmons even if they had heard of such wizards, as they were not metamorphmagi themselves. Though Simmons would have been endlessly intrigued by the ability as a biochemist with extensive research in biology and medical anatomy over her years in the lab and field, and both of them would have been highly jealous given all of the possible uses for changing one's body at will, both in the spy world, and in less professional and more personal, intimate endeavors.
But even stuck with just spell and potion based possibilities for temporarily changing one's body, Fitz chuckled, "Don't tempt me into even more research, Jemma. But if we don't get off this topic for the moment, the part of anatomy that I do have as a guy is going to start trying to come alive, and we don't want that while we're still out in public where someone could possibly see us, even if they shouldn't."
This made Simmons actually laugh out loud, before she replied, "Okay, okay, we can table this discussion for later when we're alone and already horny — although that may just lead to us figuring out how to do things we might not otherwise have any interest learning. But anything you'd rather chat about instead as we finish up our run?"
As they changed topics to more mundane subjects that didn't cause erections, FitzSimmons continued running around the entire perimeter of the lake until they finally started nearing where the stands were erected on the opposite side from where they had started. Not wanting to risk any adults in the stands seeing them and trying to return them to the second task, they cut off through the thankfully non-forbidden woods on that side of the lake, looping wide around the stands and eventually making it around to the back of the castle. Then they carefully snuck around the side of the castle away from the lake until they reached the courtyard and the great oak doors into the castle, and slipped inside undetected. From there they headed straight up through the castle to their private dorm room, to hide and have fun of the adult kind until it was time for lunch.
By which point the second task would have been over for a good hour, and their lives would be free again until the third and final task of this accursed tournament.
~FS~
Five minutes before the end of an hour Sara broke the surface of the water with her boyfriend in tow, the first champion to return successfully.
Because five minutes before Sara surfaced, Fleur had returned unsuccessful and all scratched up by the lake's grindylows. The veela had lacerations all across her arms, legs, and face, and a few cuts through the stomach of her swimsuit as well (though thankfully nothing revealing), but she herself was completely okay, just disappointed that she hadn't been able to perform better in the task. As for her gorgeous, but now torn one-piece, it was beyond the ability of repair of the normal world, though thankfully with a little magic it would live to see another day, just like its wearer.
But when Sara surfaced and Fleur saw that what Sara had rescued from the bottom of the lake was not in fact a what at all like the clue and Mr Bagman had both said, but rather a who, she became quite hysterical that her sorely missed property that had been stolen from her was a person on top of that act of theft, and began fighting tooth and nail against her headmistress's restraint to get back into the water in order to try to save the life of whoever they had kidnapped 'for' her. Seeing that all of the adults around (including the headmistress of Beauxbatons) were too cruel and evil to do it themselves, Sara's boyfriend quickly hurried over to Fleur and assured the veela that her hostage was completely safe and would be brought back up momentarily completely unharmed, calming Fleur down slightly.
As Sara and her boyfriend were then shuffled off to Pomfrey to be wrapped up still soaking wet in blankets and given a pepper-up potion instead of the matron casting a simple drying and warming spell on them to actually make sure that they didn't get hypothermia, Fleur continued watching the lake anxiously for Krum and Harry Potter's returns so that her own kidnap victim would finally be freed. And eight minutes after Sara had returned, three minutes past the hour that they were 'supposed' to have, Krum did return with his hostage, leaving only Harry Potter left to surface.
But as Fitz and his girl were absolutely nowhere to be seen, to the best of any of the judges' knowledges he had never even entered the lake, and it was past the hour that he had been told (through the egg clue) that he had to rescue his hostage (even if they had all conveniently ignored that for Krum minutes earlier), the two foreign headmaster judges forced Dumbledore to go ahead and tell the mermaids to bring the two un-rescued hostages up from the bottom, and give out the scores to the champions, a non-present Harry Potter included. Sara earned the full fifty possible points for rescuing her hostage first and under the time limit, Krum got forty for a successful rescue but three minutes over the time limit, Fleur got twenty-five for a good spell but failing to rescue her hostage, and Harry Potter got a big fat zero for running away from the task. Even Mr Bagman didn't try to give Harry five points this time, just going along with everyone else's zeros since he knew that winning the tournament was only affected by the scores of the first two tasks, not directly dependent upon them, and a five point difference wasn't going to affect how early Harry was allowed to start in the third task, especially since the times were going to be bullshited anyway so that Harry wasn't set to start two hours after all of the other champions, and quite possibly after one of them had already won (a certain professor's planned interference not taken into account).
Right as the judges finished giving out the points the mermaids brought Fleur's classmate and Ron Weasley up to the surface, where they both awoke from their enchanted sleeps. Ron immediately looked around for Harry, furious that he had been left at the bottom of the lake — Harry and his girl were the bloody smartest students in every single one of their classes (even he had to admit that obvious fact), so how the bloody hell could Harry fail to rescue him?! But as he looked around to demand an answer from the Boy-Who-Lived-and-had-abandoned-him-at-the-bottom-of-the-lake-and-was-still-a-liar-for-claiming-that-he-hadn't-entered-his-name-into-the-goblet, he couldn't find Harry anywhere. Mr Bagman was over talking to Krum and the Gryffindor girl, and Fleur was hugging her hostage not a dozen feet from where Ron was standing, but Harry most certainly was not anywhere around like he should have been. And then everyone was suddenly heading back up to the castle to get out of the cold and soon have lunch after an hour of nothing but staring at the surface of the lake while they froze their bums off sitting in the stands twiddling their thumbs, so he had no choice but to follow along with everyone and find Harry to yell at later.
A chance which came an hour later as he was finishing up a nice, long lunch, and he spotted FitzSimmons walking into the Great Hall to have lunch themselves. So as they sat down in their normal spot at the far back corner of the Gryffindor table, he got up and stormed over to them, demanding an explanation.
"Sorely miss, my arse!" he angrily shouted at them as soon as he was close enough not to risk Professor McGonagall swooping in and taking points away from him for disrupting the Great Hall.
"What on earth are you talking about, Ron?" Simmons asked in genuine bewilderment.
Nothing had been stolen from their dorm room for the task — sorely missed, mediocrely missed, or even just barely missed — because they had thoroughly checked as soon as they had returned to their flat during the middle of the second task to make sure that none of their property had been stolen. And anyway, even if something had've been stolen from them, how would Ron know about it? As a spectator in the stands on the other side of the lake, all he should know is what Mr Bagman had said to the crowd right before the start of the second task, that the competitors had to retrieve something that had been taken from them in under an hour, right? And why would he care if they lost something they would miss, sorely or otherwise, since he was still busy hating them at the moment? It made absolutely no sense to her, or to her husband sitting next to her who was just as confused as she was by the redhead's outburst. Angry at them again for not trying in the second task and 'wasting' their opportunity at fame and fortune, or 'embarrassing' Gryffindor or Hogwarts in general, sure, but not mad at them for not retrieving their stolen property from presumably somewhere in the lake.
"You were supposed to rescue what you would most sorely miss — that's what the clue said!" Ron shouted back at them. "You didn't even try to come rescue me, Harry! Yeah, that's right, I talked to Dean and Seamus — they told me all about how you ran away and were never seen again! You didn't even have the decency to be at the lake whenever the mermaids brought me back up to the surface after the task was over!"
"Wait, wait, hold up, hold up — let me get this straight. You were what had been taken from us?" Fitz asked in clarification and even greater confusion than before.
"Yeah, that's what I just said!" Ron shouted furiously. "Who'd you think the clue meant?!"
"Ron, we never even looked at the egg to try to find the clue, because we don't care about this tournament," Simmons answered patiently. "We told you that before and after the first task. But if it makes you feel any better, we had no clue that we were supposed to rescue you. In fact, literally the only two things that we knew about the second task until you just told us all that, was that something, a 'what' not a 'who', was taken from us, and then that it was presumably hidden in the Black Lake given the fact that that's where everything was set up for the second task and where the champions looked like they were going to head right before the task actually started — and we only found those two things out this morning right before the task started. But as there was no way that the judges could have actually stolen anything of ours, and we would have sued their arses off if they had because theft is still theft even when it takes place under slavery, so we weren't at all concerned about finding whatever they had taken and hidden in the lake that couldn't have possibly actually been ours. We had absolutely no clue that it was you. If we had, we would have started cursing the judges until they brought you back safely, since they were the ones who put you down there, and therefore it was their responsibility to bring you back unharmed, not ours as slaves. Because we had nothing to do with you being down there — If you want to yell at someone, go yell at them."
This didn't, however, seem to make Ron feel any better, as rather than apologize for his wrongful outburst towards them and then go yell at the adults actually responsible, he instead changed tack at the speed of light to something that FitzSimmons did more expect out of the redhead based on previous experiences with him.
"You're a disgrace to this school and especially Gryffindor not trying, you know that! You have been given an opportunity most of us would kill for, and you're just wasting it away like some entitled hero who's already so famous that he doesn't think he needs to do anything else to keep that fame! And you may be rich, but a thousand galleons means a lot to most people!"
"You mean it means a lot to you," Fitz replied coolly. "And if Gryffindor and Hogwarts means so much to you, then support Sara. She's Gryffindor, she's Hogwarts, and she's the real school champion, who is actually trying to win. I'm a slave, forced to compete against my will so as not to lose my magic. If I could give my spot in the tournament to you I would do so without hesitation, but that is impossible, so I'm stuck doing what I have to in order to survive and not die. So pull your thick head out of your jealous arse and leave us alone until you've learnt some manners — we don't want your negativity, laziness, or abuse in our lives. Now scram before we call Professor McGonagall down here and tell her that you're harassing us, yet again. Oh, and look at that, here comes Mr Bagman right now."
For sure enough, the judge in question was walking straight towards them from the door to the entrance hall.
Ron turned and looked, before immediately making a beeline in the opposite direction, not wanting to risk a champion telling a judge that they were being harassed by him, as certainly in his mind the four champions were the kings of the world whom the adults would bow to every whim of, and while he hated Harry Potter's guts for everything at the moment, he still didn't want to lose points or get detention because Harry told Mr Bagman that he had been yelling at Harry.
In reality FitzSimmons had absolutely no plans on actually trying to get Ron in any kind of trouble as they were more than capable of handling his petulance and bitchiness on their own, but they did want to be rid of the annoyance, and said judge was walking straight towards them, so it seemed an opportune threat to imply that they might carry through with. They did however did wonder what Mr Bagman had to say to them this time, and if he was going to tell them their score and give them the clue for the third task like he had for the second task the evening after the first task. And correct they were.
"Hello, Harry," he greeted them in a much more subdued tone than all of the previous times that he had spoken to them. "I'm afraid I have to deliver the bad news that you scored zero points in this morning's task. However, the good news is — and I'm really not supposed to tell you this until a month before the third task, but I don't think anyone will really mind — you are still completely in the running for winning this tournament. Now, I know that may seem like an extreme long shot with how far behind the competition you are, but the third task will be a race against time, first person to finish winning the tournament. Of course, starting order and times are based on the points of the first two tasks, so you will be starting a ways behind the other three, but if you can do really well, which I've heard you're an amazingly smart wizard which will really help you here, you can still win this thing. And speaking of winning, the third task will start at dusk on the twenty-fourth of June, but you and the rest of the champions will be notified of exactly what is coming one month beforehand."
"Thank you, Mr Bagman," Fitz replied politely. "Glad to hear we're still in the running. We'll really work hard to do well in this one."
They of course had no intentions of doing any such thing, but they were well versed in the art of telling people what they wanted to hear, and at the moment, that was exactly what they needed to tell Mr Bagman, so that's what Fitz told him. And it definitely seemed to make Mr Bagman happy, as he left with a bit more spring in his step than he had arrived with, after giving Fitz a hearty goodbye and good luck.
An hour later FitzSimmons left the Great Hall and headed back up to their dorm room to study for the rest of the afternoon, as it was too cold to spend any more time outside than they already had that morning.
But before Simmons could pull out their books for the classes that they would have had that day had it not been for the stupid tournament, Fitz asked, "Are we still going to solve the egg clue like we planned? I mean, Mr Bagman basically told us, and all the crowd, what the clue was right before the task."
"He did, but what he said sounded like they stole Harry's Firebolt, not taken a human being hostage, which is what Ron told us they actually did. So I want to know what that clue actually said," Simmons answered her husband. "It's also got me thinking about last night when the twins told us that Professor McGonagall wanted to see me, and just me, in her office — was I supposed to be the kidnap victim of Harry Potter, and she just picked Ron instead when I never showed up?"
"Oh — never thought about that," Fitz replied. "Okay, yeah, we should definitely figure out what was really going on with the second task."
A couple minutes later they were standing in the lowest dorm room, staring at the golden egg sitting ever so innocently on the mantle above the fireplace.
"Well, Mr Bagman said at Christmas to open the egg underwater," Fitz said. "Fill up the sink in the bathroom and see what happens?"
"Sounds good to me," Simmons answered, before lifting the egg down from the mantle and carrying it into the attached bathroom.
Once there Simmons set the egg in the sink and Fitz turned on the tap, until the egg was mostly covered in water and the sink was about to overflow. Nothing happened. So Simmons ran her fingers over the egg until she found the crack that ran all the way around it, and opened it like Mr Bagman had said to. A gurgling sound came up from the water, but if it was speech, or even some form of morse code, it couldn't be understood.
"Gee, what a great hint," Fitz said sarcastically.
"Shush, you," Simmons retorted with a roll of her eyes at her husband. "It's not the wailing Sara's egg made when opened out of water, so the water clearly does something. Which maybe means we're supposed to listen to it underwater as well, especially since the three champions all dove into the water when the task started."
Then she immediately lowered her ear to the water.
Smiling, she said, "I was right."
"Surprise, surprise," Fitz muttered, but secretly (and not so secretly normally) very proud of his amazing, super-intelligent, beautiful wife.
He then also lowered his ear to the water next to her, restraining himself from leaning forward the inch and kissing her instead of listening to the noises coming out of the egg. Which turned out to be an eerie song.
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 let it play through a second time so that Fitz could hear the whole thing himself before straightening back up, a move that Fitz mirrored a moment later.
Simmons was the first to speak. "I certainly would have been expecting an inanimate object had I heard this clue. Something that I'll 'sorely miss' that 'won't come back' if I don't find it in under an hour is a broomstick or wizards chess set, not kidnapping and murder. I mean, breaking and entering a dorm room, theft, and destruction of personal property is evil enough, and grounds to send the judges to Azkaban for at least a couple of years if there were any kind of justice at all in this world, but at least it's not kidnapping and murder like they actually did — or implied that they would do if someone interpreted this like they meant it. So I guess conspiracy to commit murder, or something like that."
"And why?" Fitz added. "There was absolutely no reason for them to kidnap anyone, or threaten to kill them if not rescued in time. In fact, there was no justifiable reason for them to steal anything, period — 'Come seek us where our voices sound; We cannot sing above the ground. An hour long you'll have to look; And find what you must to complete the second task. But past an hour, and you'll start losing points. Or not get any at all, depending on how we make up the scoring as we go.' There you go — no stolen property, no kidnapping, no terrorizing students into thinking that you're going to murder someone — but the task remains exactly the same as it was."
"Well, that doesn't rhyme like theirs does, but what you're saying is right," Simmons replied. "They could have written the clue and done the entire task simply saying that you have to retrieve something where the voices live, and you have an hour if you want to get the maximum amount of points possible — or any points at all, though I'm guessing given that this is a student tournament, they still gave out some points even if someone returned after the hour. But speaking of which, who are the 'us' that the rhyme refers to? They're obviously in the Black Lake, since that is where the task was, but what actually is the answer to the clue?"
"You're the biologist, not me," Fitz answered with a shrug. "What lives in the lake that can talk underwater but not above? And how were the champions supposed to know that it did mean the lake, or even to open the egg underwater in the first place? Mr Bagman told us, but based on the one wailing scream we heard when Sara opened hers that night, I'm not sure we would have ever guessed it was supposed to be opened underwater."
"That I don't have an answer for," Simmons mused thoughtfully. "But it says they cannot sing above the ground, which means either in the dirt or underwater, as there is nothing else 'below the ground'. And in all our readings on magical creatures, I can't think of a single being that can talk that lives in the ground, which only leaves water."
"And only mermaids at that, right?" Fitz said. "I mean, I can't remember Nessie or the giant squid being said that they can speak, or sing as the rhyme says, in what is implied at least to be a tongue that the students can understand — so English, or perchance it's somehow heard in the hearer's native tongue, so English, French, and Bulgarian in this case. Like an inverse of the TARDIS or Babel Fish."
Simmons nodded her head. "Mermaids sounds right to me — I can't think of anything else that can speak in the human tongue that lives underwater. Which I think wraps up the clue, as after the first sentence it's all just lies about stealing private property that they had no reason to steal, or claim that they were going to steal and then kidnap people instead, which makes them even more vile human beings than mere thieves."
"You know, I wonder how the three champions interpreted the clue," Fitz said. "I mean, none of them turned around and jabbed their wand in the judges' throats and demanded that they hand over the hostages or be tortured until they do when the whistle sounded, like we would have done had we known that they'd kidnapped people, but then again, if the judges thought that kidnapping was acceptable in the first place, then maybe the other champions were all raised the same way and have never been taught that it is wrong and evil to kidnap people. Unlikely, but it's impossible to know what to think in this world sometimes."
"No clue — but we're off all afternoon, we can go ask them," Simmons replied.
Fifteen minutes later they found Sara in the library studying.
"Sara, what did you think the clue for the second task meant when you figured it out? Like, were they going to steal your broomstick, or kidnap your best friend?" Simmons asked after they had exchanged greetings and sat down across from the sixth year.
"Broomstick, and it was quite the shock when I got down to the merecity and saw four students tied to the statue, including my boyfriend who was clearly what I would 'sorely miss'. But there was a task going on, so I had to do what we'd been told to do, and I guess I just subconsciously trusted that the tournament organizers knew what they were doing and wouldn't let anyone get hurt. And they did bring both your and Fleur's hostages back up soon after I returned, so there wasn't anything to do for it then anyway," Sara answered. "And speaking of Fleur, she definitely thought the same as I did, because she absolutely freaked when she saw my boyfriend come up with me, and she tried to jump back into the water in a panic to go rescue whoever of hers they had taken, before my boyfriend hurried over to tell her that her person would be fine. Not sure about Krum, he rescued his person, but he doesn't exactly show or say what he's ever thinking, if you know what I mean."
"Okay, that makes sense," Simmons replied with a nod. "We had already been planning to solve the clue this afternoon for fun once the task was over, but we absolutely had to when the redhead came up to us at lunch and yelled at us claiming to have been what they took from us. And we had already thought from what Mr Bagman said right before the task that they had stolen some inanimate object from each of the champions that had to be retrieved, and then when we actually heard the clue fifteen minutes ago when we finally looked at our own egg, we certainly thought that it still sounded like an object, not a person. But we just wondered what everyone else thought from the clue, and why no one threatened to hurt the judges if they didn't immediately turn over the kidnap victims as soon as the task started."
"Uhh…honestly don't think that ever would have occurred to me even if I had thought that it meant a person," Sara said in slight bewilderment.
"We're from a different world where immediate action is taken against evil," Simmons replied.
Sara just kind of nodding, like everyone else having always thought the pair a bit odd, before asking, "Speaking of the task, and you saying that you didn't solve the clue until afterwards, what did you two do as the rest of us dove into the water?"
"And as soon as the whistle blew, we took off in a sprint towards the path that goes around the lake, before running the whole path and then around to the back of the castle, before finally sneaking back up to our dorm," Fitz answered. "We showed up and 'started' the task, thereby 'competing' in the second task as required, and technically, since the task was to search for who they kidnapped, we did search along the entire outside edge of the lake, and up in our dorm room, so we did the task even without trying — we just did a really bad job of it."
"Yeah, well, I guess you technically did," Sara chuckled lightly. "Doubt any of the judges saw it that way, they certainly didn't grade you like you tried even badly, and they gave Fleur half-credit for her spell, even though she didn't even reach the merecity before having to return — attacked by the grindylows."
"Oh, I'm sure they didn't," Simmons laughed in agreement. "But despite our repeated best efforts to tank this tournament, Mr Bagman told us that we're somehow still in the running to win. We obviously won't, because we aren't going to try any more than we did in the first two tasks, but that's what he told us at lunch."
The three of them chatted for a little while longer before FitzSimmons finally bid Sara adieu, and headed back up to their dorm room to do some studying of their own.