The Bad Touch Trio and the Goblet of Hilarity
The Second Challenge (Oh yeah, I almost forgot about the Triwizard tournament!)
~.
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.
Cedric Diggory's head burst through the surface of the warm bath water. Bubbly suds fizzled in his ears and ran down his closed eyes lids, cold air caused a rash of goose pimples to erupt on his chilly skin. He shook his head ridding himself of the suds, opened his corn blue eyes and lifted the now closed golden egg up from the water. He examined the golden surface with a great sigh.
"Did it work?" Sam Winchester asked from the other side of the large bath. He pulled the draw string tighter on his blue board shorts, staring at Cedric excitedly. His dark blue eyes focused on the egg. "It worked right?"
Cedric, dressed similarly in only slightly small boarding shorts, nodded with a confused smile. Earlier that week the littlest Winchester had come racing towards the Hufflepuff table with a stack of old books. He'd mentioned something about the egg and research.
Cedric couldn't have been more happy to find someone able enough to find something about the egg, which had baffled everyone, including Cedric himself. Of course, Cedric would have never thought that a mere second year would be the one to help him but beggars can't be choosers and Sam Winchester was, after all, a genius.
"Yes, yes it worked."
"Why do you look like that then?"
Cedric shrugged as he settled the egg in his lap. He explained the song to Sam whose eyes narrowed just so, tilting his head in thought very much like Cedric's house mate, Castiel Singer.
"Merpeople." Sam said. "Which pretty much explains the whole 'we cannot sing above the ground' part. That was obvious. So whats the problem?"
"The problem Samuel," Cedric chuckled at the face Sam had made. Apparently no one used his full name. "is that something I will sorely miss will be taken by the merpeople...and where is the location of these merpeople?"
"The Black Lake?"
"Where else..." He lifted a sudsy hand and rubbed his chin, light stubble where he'd missed shaving. "Which means..?"
"What...?" Sam's eyes widened, mouth gaping just so. "Crap! This means that you're gonna have to find it...in the lake! How are you going to stand being in the lake for an hour?"
"I don't know."
"What the heck kind of a challenge is that I mean, first dragons and now being submerged in a lake for an hour, you aren't fish you guys can't breath under water!"
"My sentiments exactly. So, as the muggle saying goes, back to the drawing board?"
Sam shook his head, cut mid rant about crazy magical Europeans and their lack of self preservation earning himself a look from Cedric who decided to keep mum about Sam's older brother Dean who'd been the Quodpot(1) captain of the Kansas City School of Magic's(2) team (a game similar to quidditch but infinitely more dangerous.) He climbed out of the bath and rounded towards Cedric's side, helping the seventh year climb out with the egg. He hefted it and held it to his chest.
"You're just lucky I'm good at research." Sam said.
"More then lucky my friend, down right blessed." Cedric mussed Sam's wet head and headed towards the changing stalls. "Wonder what the item will be."
"Dunno," Sam said from the stall beside him. "But it's gotta be important."
Later, they would realize, important was the understatement of the century...
~.~
Detention, an old acquaintance. Gillian drew in a tired breath as she stared up at the dark dank dungeon ceiling. She wished it had been detention with Snape, at least her head of house seemed to have a sense of humor towards the various reasons for her detentions (pranks against Gryffindor's mostly). But detention with Professor Crowley had always been torturous and boring-it was like study hall, nothing but silence and homework.
Who the heck wants to be stuck doing homework?
She scribbled into her notebook (homework for Professor Crowley's class was not done by parchment, it was a composition notebook he assigned thank God...) twitching her nose and narrowing her eyes, trying to remember as much about windigo from her Defense lesson as she could. Dean whats-his-name made mention of his father going up against windigo and Leon had said something about it being formerly human who turned bad or something...
Okay, Gillian obviously needed to start paying attention in class.
She raised her eyes and stared at Professor Crowley who had his legs resting on Professor Snape's desk almost disturbing a tall stack of parchment rolls. Gillian wondered how Crowley got Snape to let him use the potions classroom for detention then again...it was pretty smart on his part. This was possibly, the one room Gillian wouldn't destroy due to boredom. She wished she could say it was because she respected her head of house, but no...no it had more to do with horrifying clarity that Snape knew where she slept and could possibly make it look like an accident (she was not over reacting. He had actually told her as much after her first prank.)
Muttering a curse Gillian threw her pen (Crowley hated quills and ink, his class required work done by muggle ball point pens) into her notebook and closed it with a huff, she had maybe another ten minutes before detention was done, she might as well just wait it out.
She lasted all but ten seconds before boredom settled in. There was nothing to do but look at her professor or finish her homework-neither prospect appealing in the least. Professor Crowley seemed to be examining his nails and her homework was most assuredly wrong.
"Beilschmidt?"
Her head lifted, red eyes focused on the Defense teacher. Conversation would be a sure fire way to end the long torturous minutes left of her detention. She was almost grateful.
"Yes sir?"
"Your brother, the American Auror, I hear is making quite a name for himself."
Gillian nodded. Yeah, of course Gilbert was making an awesome name for himself.
He'd graduated from the Ohio School of Magical Education(3) with top scores (the only guy to ever pass finals in almost all his classes without studying a thing.)
On top of that he was Quodpot captain for the Ohio Owls and had only turned down a professional long term sports career in order to go into Auror training and passed with flying colors (anything dealing with defensive spells and strategy and Gilbert is happy as a clam.)
All in all her brother was the best most awesome guy in the world. Of course he was making a name for himself.
But what did it have to do with Crowley asking questions?
"Did you know that your darling brother has decided to oversee the proceedings of the tournament?"
From across the grounds tucked into his favorite corner of the library, Ludwig Beilschmidt felt a sudden unholy terror creep slowly up his spine towards his head, his heart beat with sudden acceleration as his muscles tensed preparing for the inevitable attack-all of this was associated with his sibling. The other sibling, the one Ludwig liked to pretend existed only in his nightmares during certain holidays when he would visit.
Ludwig looked up from his long forgotten book to stare at the letter he'd ignored during supper. He remembered Germouser staring at the letter with the utmost unease the cat had even hissed, because the letter itself had not been from home it had been from him. So Ludwig, being the good little brother he was, tucked the letter addressed to Gillian and himself into his pocket and ignored it until now. Until that feeling. He reached forward, took the letter in his hand and prayed before pulling at the wax sign and reading the messy scrawl.
Make room for your awesome big brother! I'm coming to your school to see the tournament or rather there might be something fishy going on so they decided to send me. The best!
I know you're both very excited to show me off to all of your little British friends and can't wait till I arrive. I should be due in about a week. I have to finish a case and then I'm off to the land of horrible cooking.
By the way, brother, I requested to share my living quarters with you. This way when I'm not on the job I can try my best to make you awesome (but not as awesome as me!) See your soon!
Your loving
Awesome
big brother, Gilbert
Ludwig, understandably, fainted.
~.~.~
1: A variant of Quidditch, Quodpot was invented in the eighteenth century by Abraham Peasegood, and is the most popular wizarding game in the United States.
Centred around the explosive properties of the ball, known as the Quod, a game of Quodpot is played between two teams with eleven players each. The players attempt to get the Quod into the pot at the end of the pitch before it explodes. When the Quod is safely in the pot - which contains a solution to stop the Quod from exploding - the scorer's team gets a point and a new Quod is brought into play. Any player in possession of the Quod when it explodes must leave the field of play.
Quodpot is immensely popular in North America and South America, but is considered a minority sport in Europe, where the majority of wizards remain faithful to Quidditch.
2: The Kansas City school of Magic where Dean and Sam attended. The Kansas City School of Magic is split into two campuses. Where Dean and Sam attend is regularly referred to the Green Campus which educates grades 6-8 while the other campus, called the Main Campus hosts grades 9-12. The students attend classes for six hours before returning home for the day, mon-fri. More to be explained in later chapters.
3: Ohio School of Magical Education is where Gilbert, Gillian, Ludwig and the rest of the Hetalia characters (plus Leon Kennedy and Chris and Claire Redfeild) attended school which runs similarly to the The Kansas City school of Magic, minus the two campuses. The school's mascot is the Owl.
Muse: Short! Sorry but this was kind of to get the story back on track with the tournament (which is in the title). I also wanted some more Cedric here because this idea started with Cedric Diggory in my head and in the messages with Black Rose-plus I really wanted to add more of Sam which turned out pretty good. This is basically filler anyway, until I get the ball rolling on the second task. On the Cas chapter-its nearly completed which makes me pretty excited!
And yes! Gilbert the eldest Beilschmidt will be here. So we will have both Prussia's genderbend and not quite. Poor Ludwig, poor poor Luddy. Next chapter should be up in about a week or so. I'll try my best to update as soon as possible. Review no flames please.
See you next chapter!