The Second Task was held by the lake on a bright, cold morning in February. Harry sat with Pansy and Blaise toward the top of the stands, trying to figure out which of them could perform the best warming charm.

"Harry's was strong," Blaise was explaining. "But mine lasted longer."

"But Pansy's actually covered all of me," Harry disagreed. "Yours left my toes freezing and my ankles hot. Not the best of options."

"Harry," Blaise said, "Yours made me feel like I was having a hot flash."

"There is no reason for us to still be arguing this," Pansy interrupted. "Mine was clearly the best."

The two boys grumbled but eventually agreed and let her cast her warming charm on both of them.

"So, what do they have to do, anyway?" Blaise peered out toward the lake, where the Champions' tent stood, leaning slightly in the wind.

"Not sure," Pansy answered. "I heard from Lisa that Susan in Hufflepuff said that Diggory had a puzzle to solve. It was in the egg they had to get from the dragons. She said the screeching was awful."

"Hermione said that Krum was researching ways to survive underwater for long periods of time," Harry said. "I think they have to go into the lake. Maybe they have to fight some kind of underwater creature?"

"Maybe they have to fight the giant squid," Blaise suggested. "Though I don't know how that'd work. They'd have to get it mad first."

"That's boring," Pansy said, wrinkling her nose. "If the only skills involved in this tournament are battling giant monsters, this is going to get old, fast. We might as well have had a Gryffindor as our champion; they go in for that kind of thing."

The three of them settled down, Pansy leaning against Blaise's side, and watched as Dumbledore and the other four judges took their places near the edge of the water. Bagman tapped his throat with his wand and began to shout:

"Welcome, welcome," His voice bounced off the stands and rippled on the water. The three Champions stood at the bank, wands at the ready. "To the second task of the Triwizard Tournament!"

The crowd clapped and cheered. "Our champions are ready for the second task, which will start on my whistle!" Bagman turned in a wide circle for the crowd and ostentatiously held up something that flashed in the morning light; presumably it was the whistle. "They have precisely an hour to recover what has been taken from them. On the count of three then!"

Harry and his friends leaned forward expectantly with the rest of the crowd as Bagman counted down, paused for just the barest of seconds, and blew the whistle. Each of the three champions sprang to action in an instant, brandishing their wands at themselves and wading into the water in the same movement.

"So they've got to go down in the lake and find something that got stolen from them," Pansy said, cocking her head to the side. "How likely is it that they would actually take a person?"

"A person?" Harry asked. "You mean, steal their best friend or something and drop them in the lake? Would they do that?"

"Yeah." Blaise shrugged. "Why not?"

Harry peered down at Krum, the last champion still above the water. He was currently half a shark and waist deep. He hurled himself beneath the surface and soon even his fin had disappeared.

"And Krum, the last of the champions to finish his preparations, is on his way!" Bagman boomed. "You don't see transfigurations like that everyday, do you folks?"

"Hey, Harry, budge up." It was Dudley, holding a Hogwarts flag and a bag of Ice Mice. Harry moved over to make room for him, consequently shoving Pansy and Blaise closer together. They didn't seem to mind.

"Have you seen Hermione?" Dudley asked, settling down in his seat. "We can't find her anywhere."

Harry glanced at Blaise and Pansy, who shrugged as one. Suddenly he felt like rooting for Durmstrang.

Barely fifteen minutes into Bagman's monologue on the weaknesses and strengths of each Champion, the water began to ripple.

"Could it be, folks?" Bagman roared, leaning forward as eagerly as anyone. "Has one of our Champions returned with their prize already?"

Three heads broke the surface. One of them was struggling fiercely.

"Who is it?" Harry asked, squinting.

"I can't-"

"The hair is too long to be anyone but Delacour," Pansy said, peering down at the lake as the two figures dragged the third toward the dock. "Are those merpeople?"

"What are they doing to her?" Dudley asked. The rest of the crowd chattered around them, clearly of the same mind.

"Never fear, folks!" Bagman boomed jovially. "As a precaution to safeguard against accidents and temptation, the merpeople of the Great Lake were enlisted to keep an eye on our Champions!"

Delacour was shouting and struggling to escape even as the merpeople hefted her onto the dock. She wasn't getting very far; it seemed like she was injured.

"Gabrielle! Non, ma soeur! Gabrielle! Je ne peux pas l'abandonner!"

Two witches took her from the merpeople and carried her off to a medical tent, still screaming for Gabrielle. Professor Dumbledore stepped forward and began screeching at the merpeople. It was an awful sound.

"I guess you were right about them taking people," Harry muttered, glancing over at the tent, which clearly had silencing charms on it, as Delacour's shouts had vanished the moment they stepped through the flap.

Blaise shrugged. "Yeah. Also, the screeching in the egg you mentioned makes sense now, Pansy. It was Mermish."

The merpeople screeched back, and Dumbledore straightened up to speak with Bagman and the other judges.

"It's supposed to sound quite beautiful underwater," Pansy said doubtfully. Harry made a face, and turned to note that Dudley's expression was similar. They grinned at each other.

"It sounded like Mum's singing," Dudley confirmed, and the grin dropped off his face a moment later. "Or how she used to sound, anyway."

Harry's response died on his lips. He followed Dudley's lead and turned back to the lake to listen to Bagman's relay of Delacour's failure quietly.

"Grindylow." Pansy shook her head. "How embarrassing."

"Do you think Hermione's alright down there?" Harry asked. "Krum was kind of toothy last time we saw him. Knowing her, she'd take one look at him and send him back."

Pansy and Blaise laughed, but Dudley looked alarmed. "Hermione's in the lake?"

"I think so," Harry explained. "It makes sense, doesn't it? Have you seen her lately?"

Dudley's eyes widened. "Not since last night! McGonagall called her to her office and I went to bed before she got back! She's really in the lake, isn't she? Bloody hell! Do you think Ron knows?"

"Weasley and his brood are all over there," Pansy said as Harry shrugged. She pointed to the middle of the crowd, about four stands away. "I'm not sure how they managed, as there were quite enough of them already, but I think they've multiplied."

Harry peered over and saw the mass of flaming red hair where Pansy had indicated. It did look like more than Ron, Ginny and the twins. There had to be at least three or four more of them than usual. Harry shook his head and turned back around in his seat. He'd asked Dudley once, how many siblings Ron had. Dudley had paused, furrowed his brow, and eventually shrugged and declared, "A lot."

Now that the brief bit of entertainment that had come of Delacour's dramatic exit from the lake was over, Dumbledore went about extracting information about Krum and Diggory's progress from the merpeople. Bagman relayed the information to the crowd, peppered with commentary on which of them was more likely to find and rescue their prize first.

"He hopes it's Diggory," Blaise said as Bagman made a particularly biased remark that provoked a spate of boos and hisses from the Durmstrang supporters in the crowd.

Harry frowned. "Wait, I thought you bet on Diggory?" he asked. "Wouldn't he want Krum to win instead?"

"You think I'm the only one who placed bets with him?" Blaise asked, grinning like a satisfied cat. "He's been offering insane odds on Krum ever since the First Task, trying to get people to bet on him to win. That way, if Diggory wins, he'll be able to pay me."

Dudley screwed up his face. "What if Krum wins?"

"Then he only has to deal with paying back a lot of smaller debts, instead of one huge one involving Blaise's mother," Pansy cut in, and leaned on Blaise's arm sporting her own cheshire grin. "But what he doesn't realize is that I bought out about half the bets from Hogwarts, and placed my own. If he doesn't owe the Zabinis, he'll owe the Parkinsons."

Blaise and Pansy cackled together, clearly thrilled with themselves.

Dudley stared at them, open mouthed. Harry grinned in spite of himself. "That's evil and brilliant," he said. "And your parents just give you money for this sort of thing?"

Pansy shrugged. "Daddy likes it when I take an interest in his hobbies. Buying up the bets was his idea."

"Mum likes to see me putting my mind to use," Blaise agreed. "She always says never to regret the revenge you could have taken."

Harry looked at Dudley, who just shook his head. "You Slytherins," he said. Harry shrugged and nodded. Who was he to deny it?

Snape's Parseltongue lessons were still moving slowly. It was like he needed to take time to process new concepts. It would take several weeks after Harry had introduced him to something for Snape to begin using it regularly. Admittedly, when he started working the concept in he was flawless, but it did take him a while to process initially.

In the meantime, though, Harry had managed to develop acceptable skill in those subjects Snape was tutoring him in, so he wasn't about to complain. Or mention how suspicious it was that Snape was bad at languages, except for when he wasn't.

Harry was on the way to a Parseltongue lesson right now, and essentially late. He'd been caught up in the hallway by Moody, wanting to clarify something in the essay Harry had turned in that morning, but he would have still been on time if he hadn't forgotten his Map and been unable to avoid Peeves on the way down to the dungeons.

It wouldn't make a difference to Snape, though. More often than not, Parseltongue lessons these days were coupled with Harry's own lessons, and when Harry was late, Snape tended to start the duel (mental or magical) as he walked in the door instead of letting Harry gather himself and set his things down first. There was no time for excuses that way, either.

Harry therefore approached Snape's office door cautiously, bracing himself for attack from any direction as he pushed open the door and tossed his bag on the nearest table.

None came, and Harry narrowed his eyes. This was unusual. He gripped his wand and ventured further into the office, closing the door behind him, vigilant for attack from any direction and noting that Moody would be proud of his caution.

Snape did not appear to be in his office. Harry knew Snape's style, and this length of time before an attack was not part of it. Snape wouldn't wait for an enemy to get his bearings in an unusual situation, and he would chastise Harry for doing so, too.

Harry considered calling out for all of half a second, but calling attention to his apparent advantage would be the height of stupidity. Snape would have his head for even considering it.

He circled the room twice, confirmed as best he could that Snape was actually absent, and turned his attention to the door to Snape's private potions lab. The office door wouldn't have been unlocked for Harry if Snape wasn't actually present, so it stood to reason that he was waiting in there.

Harry cast a nonverbal silencing spell on the lock, then an Alohomora. The door clicked open noiselessly, and opened about half an inch. Harry crept toward it, wand at the ready, still braced for a duel.

What he heard instead was voices. In the plural. Harry paused, rethinking his evaluation of the situation. It was entirely possible that Snape had just had an unexpected visitor and went into the back room to deal with them, and had expected Harry to wait in the office. It was entirely possible that he was not a devious mastermind whose every move was part of a wider, tangled plot at all times.

Harry scoffed silently to himself at that last thought.

He listened at the door, trying to get an idea of what was going on inside and how many people were there. All he could see currently was a shelf of ingredients and an stack of empty cauldrons on the floor in the corner.

"But you must listen; it's getting darker, Severus." This from an urgent, unfamiliar voice, standing in the centre of the room, from the sound of it. "It hasn't been this clear since before he fell. What-"

"I have noticed, Karkaroff." Snape now, sounding impatient. "What do you want me to tell you? You have seen the signs as clearly as I have."

Harry wasn't following this conversation at all.

"Severus, I don't know-"

"Igor, bite your tongue."

"But Severus, I-"

There was a flurry of movement out of Harry's view, and Harry leapt away and positioned himself in front of the exit. Snape flung the door open and gestured for Karkaroff to leave first.

Karkaroff looked ready to have a stroke when he set eyes on Harry. Snape was not surprised to see him in the slightest, and ushered the headmaster of Durmstrang past Harry, who had stepped away from the door.

"Can I help you, Mr. Potter?" Snape asked blandly as he opened the door to allow a still white Karkaroff exit.

Harry looked between the two and nodded. "I had a question about our Potions assignment, sir. I don't quite understand what you want us to write in the section about boomslang venom."

Snape nodded dismissively at a chair in front of his desk, and Harry sat down to wait as Karkaroff made a hasty exit.

Snape closed the door firmly behind him, and set up the usual privacy wards before turning around and sending a blasting charm at Harry, who barely deflected it in time.

"Today you will learn to creatively counter elemental curses," Snape hissed. Harry summoned a cauldron to block the next couple spells and sent back a few curses of his own for good measure.

"Yes, sir," Harry said, and tensed as he felt Snape break through the first layer of his Occlumency defences. He decided to keep the Mark he'd seen on Karkaroff's arm as he left the potion's lab to himself, and began constructing a layer of decoy shields to protect it. He knew what it meant. Karkaroff had been a Death Eater, and he was worried about something to do with his Mark. Snape only seemed annoyed by his concern, though. Harry blocked a curse and responded, still building his shields. It was as good a bit of information to protect as any other.

"Are you sick of it yet, Hermione?" Harry asked behind his book. He was sitting next to her at the usual table in the library, mostly for the view. Krum was sitting at a nearby table, and would sometimes glance up from his books and check that Hermione was still there. Hermione always smiled, and sometimes gave him a small wave.

Two tables down, Ron would glare darkly and usually rip the parchment he was writing on, a mistake which would require at least another full minute of muttered curses and wand waving to fix.

Whenever Ron was distracted by his ripped parchment, Finnegan and Thomas, who were sitting with him, would look up and catch the eye of someone at Hermione's table, usually Dudley or Neville, and they would all spend a moment in shared (but silent) snickers.

Hermione would usually roll her eyes at this point, and Krum would study on obliviously until he next felt the need to look up at Hermione.

And this, Harry reflected, did not even include the group of girls lurking in the Invisibility Section behind Krum, staring at him and glaring daggers at Hermione on a schedule all their own. He only knew they were there because of a chance encounter half an hour ago, when he'd been looking for a reference text for his History of Magic essay and came upon them unwittingly.

"Am I sick of Ron being a child, do you mean?" she asked, flipping cursorily through a book and setting it aside. "Yes. He knows that when he apologises, I'll forgive him for what he said. He doesn't need to sulk over there and glare at Viktor. He's not the one at fault here."

Harry made a sceptical face. Neville caught it and apparently understood, shaking his head and shrugging. It seemed that neither of them was exactly sure if Hermione knew what had Ron sitting at a different table, glaring at Krum.

Either way, Harry wasn't about to tell her. Krum looked up again, and Harry waited for Hermione to play her part in the pantomime before speaking again.

"I don't live in Gryffindor with the rest of you, so you'll have to fill me in here," he began. "But… what did Ron say to you?"

Hermione pressed her lips together, and her jaw tightened. "He was upset that I went to the Yule Ball with Viktor," she said.

"Yes, but that was in December," Harry interrupted. Hermione gave him a quelling look.

"I know, but when I was the person Viktor had to pull out of the lake, Ron decided it was time to… state his grievances."

"He mostly just sulked about it in the dorm room before," Dudley added helpfully. "He never actually mentioned anything to Hermione until Friday."

"He claimed I was 'fraternizing with the enemy'," Hermione said, sounding faintly scandalized. "Though whose enemy Viktor is meant to be, I don't know. Ron spent most of the First Task rooting for Fleur Delacour. He doesn't even particularly like Cedric."

Harry rested his chin on his fist and grinned at Neville and Dudley. "The enemy, eh?"

Hermione rolled her eyes. She was getting a lot of practice at that today. "Yes. He also called me a traitor to Hogwarts and Great Britain in general, and…" She paused. Harry swivelled his head to look at her. Her face was a strange mix of emotion. "…and he also called me a harlot."

Harry sat up in his chair and felt his mouth fall open. "That prick!" He glared over at Ron, who was currently still in the cursing at his parchment phase of the cycle and didn't notice.

Hermione's face darkened for a moment. "He did. And the thing is, I mean, I know he was upset, and I know what he meant was awful, but…"

The strange expression was back, and Harry realized she was restraining incredulity. "Who calls someone a harlot?"

Neville leaned in confidingly. "She laughed in his face," he shared. "Ron got really embarrassed and stomped back up to our dorm."

Harry shook his head slowly and looked back over at Ron, who was staring fiercely at his parchment. Hermione shrugged, embarrassed, and bent over her books.

Moments later, Krum glanced up again.