Disclaimer – I do not own Harry Potter.


"How can you do this? How can you serve him?!" Sirius demands when Peter brings in his food.

"What would be the point in resisting? He'd kill me."

"Not if you succeeded!" Sirius tells him, Peter shakes his head.

"No one can stop him, he's too powerful."

"Dumbledore is more powerful than Voldemort will ever be. Besides, he's weak now, just snap his bloody neck!"

"He won't be like that for long," Peter explains before wincing like he perhaps shouldn't have said that. Sirius frowns.

"What are you talking about, Wormy?" Peter flinches away slightly at the name, "What? Don't like the reminder that you were once my friend?" Peter scoffs.

"I was not. The only person who ever showed up on your radar was James."

"That's not true!"

"It is! Even Harry means next to nothing to you! Not compared to him!"

"HARRY IS EVERYTHING TO ME!"

"AND WHERE WAS THAT CARE WHEN YOU RAN OFF TO KILL ME INSTEAD OF STAYING AROUND TO LOOK AFTER HIM?!" Peter stops shouting, "You were supposed to look after him." Peter shakes himself off, kicking Sirius' dinner over to him and heading to the door, "Maybe if you had they wouldn't have assumed you ran off, and help might be coming for you." Sirius looks mildly horrified as Peter shuts the door.

"YOU DON'T KNOW ANYTHING, YOU'RE NOTHING BUT A TRAITOROUS RAT!" Sirius kicks his dinner against a wall, pacing around the cellar and yanking at his hair, shaking his head. It's not true, it's not true, it wasn't my fault, it was his it was all his!

He wishes he could pretend he was trying to convince someone else, but no one else is here.

He's alone.


"All right, tell me again?" Remus requests.

"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 recover what we took,

But past an hour — the prospect's black,

Too late, it's gone, it won't come back," Harry recites, Remus frowns.

"All right so, obviously the Mer-people in the Black Lake will something you care about and be keeping it under the water. You'll have an hour to look, or it'll be gone forever."

"How am I supposed to hold my breath for an hour?" Remus waves a hand dismissively.

"That's the easy part, there's plenty of things you can use."

"Like Gillyweed?" Neville asks, Remus nods.

"Could always, um, borrow some from Snape?" Seamus suggests, Remus raises an eyebrow at him.

"Professor Snape, Seamus."

"I love how that's his problem with that," Ginny comments, even Hermione laughs at that.

"I'll just order some," Remus tells them, "It will get here in plenty of time."

"So if that's the easy part, what's the hard part?" Ron asks.

"He has to find whatever it is they've taken," Remus replies.

"That lake is too big to search in an hour," Dean adds.

"Plus, we don't know if the merpeople will try to stop you or not," Hermione reminds Harry.

"Even if they don't, there's plenty of other creatures down there that will," Neville says. Harry purses his lips for a moment, thinking.

"…Do we know everything that is down there?" Harry asks slowly, everyone seems confused.

"We do," Remus replies.

"Then let's make a list, we'll go through different ways I can defend against them, distract them, win their favour, whatever it takes."

"There's still the matter of having no idea where to look," Hermione points out, Harry nods.

"I know, I know, but it's a start."

"All right then," Remus says, "Your biggest problem will be the Giant Squid-"

"Wait, there's actually a Giant Squid in the lake?" Ginny asks, Remus nods, "I thought Fred and George were just trying to scare me."

"It's fine, it doesn't attack people, but it likes playing. It just doesn't understand that people are fragile and also need to breath."

"How the blasted hell am I supposed to defend against a Giant Squid?" Remus scrunches his nose.

"Don't take after you Father?"

"What did he do?"

"Flew into it's tenta…oh…oh that's it!" Remus says, "Take your broom! Fly through the water, with your skills you can dodge around whatever comes up, and it'll give you more speed than those swimming!"

"Do brooms work in water?" Harry asks, Remus shrugs.

"Only one way to find out."


"REMUS LUPIN!" Remus looks down to see McGonagall standing with her hands on her hips at the door to the Great Hall.

"Lunch Break," Remus announces to Harry who resurfaces from the water. Hermione unsteadily flies her broom over to him.

"How are we going to drain the water out of here?" Remus smirks, he then breaks a window and sends the water into the sky before fixing the window.

"It's going to rain later." Everyone lands their brooms on the ground before Remus turns to look at Minerva and the students behind her waiting to come in for lunch, "Well you did say I could use the Great Hall to train Harry." McGonagall just shakes her head and walks to her seat.

"Are you two trying to annoy each other?" Harry asks Remus who chuckles.

"Well, we weren't, but what a brilliant idea." The students watch as he walks over to the Teacher's table as well.

"Whoops."


"Right," Ron begins as he and Hermione sit in the Common Room, "I thought we could start by watching what he does," He suggests, holding up the Marauders' Map.

"Just watch him? For how long?" Ron shrugs.

"All night?"

"It does seem like the sort of obsessive and unhealthy thing that Harry would do," Hermione admits, "And he does tend to find pieces of the puzzle that way." They both look at the unopened map for a moment.

"…Or, we could pay Ginny to do it and instead go to sleep?" Ron suggests, Hermione nods.

"I'll go get her." She goes up to the girls' dorm, Ron thinks it's a testament to how stressed the whole tournament has left her that she agreed to the idea at all. She comes back down with Ginny a moment later.

"You stand relieved," Ginny tells Ron, he smiles, handing the map over. Ginny sits in a comfy chair in a corner of the room and opens it.

"How'd you get her to agree?" Ron asks Hermione, she smirks deviously.

"Told her Harry asked if she could do it." Ron laughs, Hermione does too, "Good night Ronald."

"Night Mione."

Ginny opens the map, looking over it in an attempt to spot Moody. She finds him in his office with Crouch, Ginny frowns.

"Wonder what they're talking about." Then she grins, "Why wonder about what you can know?"


Ginny sneaks through the castle, quickly finding her way to the DADA classroom and sneaking up the stairs to the office. She stands outside, head against the door to listen closely, but hears nothing. She checks the map again, but both are still inside. Closing the map, she knocks on the door.

"It's open," a gruff voice calls. Ginny steels herself and opens the door, walking inside calmly, "What can I do for you, Weasley?" Ginny looks around, but finds no one else in the room, "Miss Weasley?" Ginny's eyes snap to that of her teacher.

"Sorry Sir, I was just wondering…well we were talking earlier about the second task. Professor Moony wasn't sure if the merpeople would be trying to stop the Champions saving what's been taken or not, I was wondering if you knew anything more about them that could tell us? It is, after all, your area of expertise. Merpeople are Clasified XXXXX Creatures, are they not?" Ginny asks, Moody clears his throat as he turns to face her.

"XXXX," he corrects, she nods, though she had already known it, "I'm afraid I don't know if they'll work against Potter or not, but I wouldn't worry. I presume Lupin's got a strategy for him? Heard about the Great Hall flooding." Ginny smirks, nodding.

"Yeah, he's got a plan." Moody nods.

"Then we just have to make sure everything goes according to it." Ginny smiles.

"Of course. Thank you, Professor."

She leaves, hurrying back to Gryffindor tower and sneaking into the boys' dormitory, shaking Harry awake.

"Harry!" She whispers, he groans as he lifts his head and blarily blinks at her, "I need to borrow your cloak."

"'S'in the trunk," he tells her before flopping back onto the bed. She searches through his trunk in the dark, finding the cloak and leaving once more.

Checking the map, she finds that both Moody and Crouch are still, supposedly, in the office. She puts the cloak on and hurries back down, settling into a corner of the DADA classroom to wait.


It's two hours later that she jolts awake at the sound of the door closing. Looking up, she sees Moody leaving the room, only on the map it says he's Crouch. She stays entirely still until he's out of sight, only then heading up to his office.

Once inside, she takes off the cloak, consulting the map again, and moving until she is apparently standing right in front of Moody. All she sees is a trunk. She sighs.

"I've come this far." She tries to open the trunk, but can't, "Alohamora!" it opens, she grins. It opens up strangely, getting smaller and more boxes come up until it finally stops. Casting her wand light down, she sees something at the bottom, "Professor Moody?"

"Didn't your mother ever tell you not to snoop through other people's things?!" Ginny gasps, spinning around and seeing her Professor before her, he flicks his tongue out, wetting his lips in a rather odd fashion, "I suppose you'll just had to learn that lesson the hard way. Expelliarmus!" He grabs her wand from the air before locking eyes with her once more, she does the only thing she can think of.

"HEL-!"

"STUPEFY!"

And her world goes black.