Harry Potter:Diamond Heart.

Harry abruptly lost the ability to breath and staggered towards the edge, tucking his wand back into the waist band of the shorts he was wearing.

Next to him Krum was undergoing a similar process, his head halfway between human and shark. Harry took a moment to admire the rather advanced piece of transfiguration before leaping resignedly into the water himself.

It was even colder than he had anticipated, but he could breathe again.

A few tentative inhales reassured him that his piece of self-transfiguration was working as intended, even if seeing his chest undulate in such a fashion was every bit as weird as the comforting rush of water into his lungs.

A temporary sticking charm fixed his glasses more firmly upon his nose and he began to win down towards the bottom of the lake and out into its centre where Salazar remembered the Merpeople to be.

He passed over long light-green weeds that rose up at least several metres from the lake bed. Harry stayed well above the plants; he remembered from last year that Grindylows like to ambush their prey from such places and he was fairly sure he'd glimpsed the occasional tentacle and horn amongst the weeds.

Nobody in their right mind would risk swimming through there when the open water was so much obviously safer.

Eventually the green weeds gave way to thick-looking, black mud and Harry was sure, as he passed the sunken wreckage of a ship, that he glimpsed the giant squid. It's bulbous form was lying in the gap between the two halves of the broken vessel, with its tentacles trailing out across the lake bed. Harry thought it looked rather harmless, but he wasn't particularly eager to win his bet with Viktor.

A pale figure appeared in the distance, drifting at a slower pace than Harry in the same direction he was headed. He drew his wand. Most spells still worked underwater, albeit slower and so sometimes less effectively. Transfiguration, fortunately, was not affected in the slightest.

'Myrtle,' he burbled into the water.

'Harry,' he voice was unaffected by the medium. 'You look better now, much happier, are you searching for the Merpeople too?'

He nodded, unsure if the ghostly girl would actually be able to understand him if he spoke.

'Cedric was too, they're that way,' she waved one arm in the direction Salazar had suggested. 'Good luck.' It seemed she had no intent on accompanying him, so Harry smiled and waved his thanks before swimming on.

The mud had turned to rock. Dark, grey columns loomed up over the lake bed, monolithic, and decidedly unnatural looking. Listening hard he caught faint snatches of Merpeople singing, but couldn't make out the words. Either way, he was definitely close.

The columns grew smaller as the song grew louder. Harry could understand it now. Half the time was gone, and if the other half slipped by then Katie would not be leaving the lake.

I won't let that happen. She must have known what she had been risking by agreeing to be his hostage. Understanding had been implicit in Professor Mcgonagall's vehement response to his laughter. For that, Harry decided, he could forgive her. He would have failed without her help. He doubted that they'd be back to holding hands anytime soon, though.

There was a loud explosion from in front of him and a wave of pressurised water made his ears pop.

Shaking his head to throw off the sensation Harry peered suspiciously around him. He wasn't sure if that had been an offensive spell cast in his direction, but he did know that Cedric must be around somewhere. Nowhere in the rules of the task did it say that he champions couldn't eliminate their rivals themselves.

Cautiously he continued swimming forwards, drawing his wand as he did. Floating above him, lying very still, too still to be conscious or alive, was the original Hogwarts champion, scattering away beneath him were a horde of very battered looking Grindylows.

One of them must have somehow punctured the bubble.

The remnants of Cedric's Bubble-Head Charm still clung to his nose and mouth, but the stream of air rising above him was a clear indicator that it would not last much longer.

Clearly he had reduced the effects of the compression bursting, but apparently not enough to do much more than to temporarily save his life from the explosion, as he was now on the verge of drowning.

'Homenum revelio,' he said into the water. The words came out in a garbled mess, but Cedric's body lit up red and, in the distance, Harry glimpsed two more red figures. One far off to his right and the other closer and directly in front of him.

He was alive. Harry swam closer and tried to wrap an arm around the unconscious Hufflepuff only to find he had a great deal more width than normal.

Cho Chang was strapped to his side, but she was out for the count too.

Harry mulled things over, but the quickly approaching red dot on his right, and the oddly still one in front of him urged him to hurry. One of his rivals had already reached the village and been caught leaving and it seemed another might have found it too.

A weakly powered blasting curse sent both Cho and Cedric shooting up through the water. They'd be noticed, and likely rescued, as soon as they burst out of the water.

His conscience appeased, Harry swiftly swam on towards the source of the singing. He was sure he could see the outline of buildings in the distance.

The village of the Merpeople was empty, the stone and seaweed dwellings were silent, but a crowd of them had gathered around the ring of standing stones that had been raised just beyond the edge of their huts.

Harry swam quickly, but warily through the village. Merpeople were intelligent, but not overly friendly if what Salazar had told him was true.

In fact what Salazar had really told him was that Godric had needed to be healed by Helga after being impaled by tridents, twice. Negotiations of mutual co-existence with the aquatic creatures had been slow to start and Slytherin, who had told Godric not to just dive down and try to reason with them, had found the results rather amusing.

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