Adult-FanFiction.org : Harry Potter

Shiloe	By : Sablesilverrain Category: Harry Potter > Threesomes/Moresomes Views: 47105 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 7
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, the Potterverse, or anything you recognize here. I make no money from this either, sadly. I'm terribly poor. -.-

Chapter List
- 55
- 56
- 57
Review replies: http://www2.adult-fanfiction.org/forum/index.php/topic/26930-shiloe-review-replies/page-5
Also, I do not own the parts you recognize here. JK Rowling does. I just tweaked them a bit, and I do not gain monetarily from adding them here. (I wish I did, that would rock!)

Harry sat down next to Ron, looking around curiously. “Where’s ‘Mione?” He asked, buttering a piece of toast. The second task, like the first, had ruined his appetite.
Ron shrugged, not pausing in his eating. “Dunno. McGonagall asked to see her last night. I haven’t seen her since.”
Harry frowned, then he remembered: Hermione had gone with Krum to the Yule Ball. ‘They’re taking our dates.’ He realized. Which meant that Luna had, of course, been right: Harry had to rescue her. He reached into his pocket, feeling for the gillyweed he’d brought with him.
“Mr. Potter?”
Harry jumped, noticing the McGonagall was right beside him. “Uh, yeah?”
“If you’ll come with me, please.”
Harry followed her out to the lake.
Ludo Bagman arranged the champions into a line at the edge of the lake, each spaced roughly ten feet apart. Harry glanced over at Viktor Krum standing next to him, and smiled.
Krum nodded in acknowledgment.
Harry listened halfheartedly as Bagman made his speech and blew his whistle, signaling the start of the task.
Harry quickly removed his shoes, socks and robe, stuck his wand into his pocket, and waded into the lake. He did his best to ignore the biting cold of the water, shoving the gillyweed into his mouth and chewing.
‘You might want to dive soon. You know, if you like breathing.’ Shiloe drawled.
Harry dove just as a burning pain erupted on both sides of his neck.
‘Congratulations, you’ve grown gills.’ Shiloe told him in amusement.
Harry began swimming, noting that his hands and feet were now webbed, enabling him to swim with much more ease than before. ‘This isn’t so bad.’ Harry thought, starting to enjoy himself. ‘It’s just a race. I can do this!’
‘I’m sure getting there first is the least of your worries. Keep your eyes peeled for obstacles.’ Shiloe advised.
‘Obstacles? What kind of obstacles?’ Harry asked.
‘I’m sure I don’t know. But keep your eyes peeled anyway.’ Shiloe replied, taking in everything Harry was seeing and hearing. He pushed his ability to speak to animals to the forefront, hoping that would help Harry to hear anything coming. It was a long shot, considering he didn’t even know if he could talk to grindylows, merpeople, and the like, but it was better than nothing.
Harry kept swimming, scanning the foggy water constantly, looking for anything meant to slow him down. Something slid across the back of his leg and twined around his ankle. Harry spun around as fast as the water would allow, freezing when he heard: “I will bite you, human!”
He looked at his ankle, seeing a small blue sea serpent wrapped around him, poised to strike. “Wait!”
The sea serpent raised its head, looking up at Harry curiously. “You speak?” It asked.
Harry realized either Parseltongue worked underwater, or Shiloe’s ability was helping him out, and nodded. “Yes. I need to find my mate.” He flushed, but knew that was the only way to describe Luna that a snake would understand. “The merpeople have her, and I’m supposed to retrieve her, or they’ll keep her forever.” He explained.
The serpent cocked its head. “The merpeople do not live in this direction. My family does. I thought you were here to collect my eggs. The merpeople are that way.” The snake told him, using its head to point downward and in the opposite direction Harry had been going.
“Oh, I didn’t know. Thank you. I’ll go that way, then.” He said, as the snake unwrapped itself from around his ankle and nodded.
“Good luck in retrieving your mate, human.” The serpent said, heading off in the opposite direction it had pointed Harry to.
Harry waved and headed toward the merpeople. He swam until he began thinking that maybe the snake had deliberately mislead him, when he heard, distantly, the merpeople singing.
“An hour long you’ll have to look,
And to recover what we took.
Your time’s half gone, so tarry not,
Lest what you seek stays here to rot.”
He hurried toward the singing and had to stop for a moment, staring at the merpeople when he found them. They were NOT what he had been expecting. They didn’t look like the ones in the picture in the Prefect’s bathroom.
The merpeople had grayish skin and long, wild, dark green hair. Their eyes were yellow, as were their broken teeth, and they wore thick ropes of pebbles around their necks. They leered at Harry as he swam past; one or two of them emerged from their caves to watch him better, their powerful, silver fish tails beating the water, spears clutched in their hands.
Harry sped on, staring around, and soon the dwellings became more numerous; there were gardens of weed around some of them, and he even saw a pet grindylow tied to a stake outside one door.
Merpeople were emerging on all sides now, watching him eagerly, pointing at his webbed hands and gills, talking behind their hands to one another. Harry sped around a corner and a very strange sight met his eyes.
A whole crowd of merpeople was floating in front of the houses that lined what looked like a mer-version of a village square. A choir of merpeople was singing in the middle, calling the champions toward them, and behind them rose a crude sort of statue; a gigantic merperson hewn from a boulder. Four people were bound tightly to the tail of the stone merperson.
Luna was tied between Hermione and Cho Chang. There was also a girl who looked no older than eight, whose clouds of silvery hair made Harry feel sure that she was Fleur Delacour’s sister. All four of them appeared to be in a very deep sleep. Their heads were lolling onto their shoulders, and fine streams of bubbles kept issuing from their mouths.
Harry sped toward the hostages, half expecting the merpeople to lower their spears and charge at him, but they did nothing. The ropes of weed tying the hostages to the statue were thick, slimy, and very strong.
He looked around. Many of the merpeople surrounding them were carrying spears. He swam swiftly toward a seven-foot-tall merman with a long green beard and a choker of shark fangs and tried to mime a request to borrow the spear. The merman laughed and shook his head.
“We do not help,” he said in a harsh, croaky voice.
“Come ON!” Harry said fiercely (but only bubbles issued from his mouth, making Shiloe sigh; apparently he COULDN’T speak to them), and he tried to pull the spear away from the merman, but the merman yanked it back, still shaking his head and laughing.
Harry swirled around, staring about. Something sharp… anything…
There were rocks littering the lake bottom. He dived and snatched up a particularly jagged one and returned to the statue.
He began to hack at the ropes binding Luna, and after several minutes’ hard work, they broke apart. Luna floated, unconscious, a few inches above the lake bottom, drifting a little in the ebb of the water.
Harry looked around. There was no sign of any of the other champions. What were they playing at? Why didn’t they hurry up?
He turned back to Hermione, raised the jagged rock, and began to hack at her bindings too.
At once, several pairs of strong gray hands seized him. Half a dozen mermen were pulling him away from Hermione, shaking their green-haired heads, and laughing.
“You take your own hostage,” one of them said to him. “Leave the others.”
“No way!” said Harry furiously—but only two large bubbles came out.
“Your task is to retrieve your own hostage. Leave the others.”
“She’s my friend!” Harry yelled, gesturing toward Hermione, an enormous silver bubble emerging soundlessly from his lips. “And I don’t want them to die either!”
Cho’s head was on Hermione’s shoulder; the small silver-haired girl was ghostly green and pale. Harry struggled to fight off the mermen, but they laughed harder than ever, holding him back.
Harry looked wildly around. Where were the other champions?
Would he have time to take Luna to the surface and come back down for Hermione and the others? Would he be able to find them again? He looked down at his watch to see how much time was left, but it had stopped working.
But then the merpeople around him pointed excitedly over his head.
Harry looked up and saw Cedric swimming toward them.
There was an enormous bubble around his head, which made his features look oddly wide and stretched.
“Got lost!” he mouthed, looking panic-stricken. “Fleur and Krum’re coming now!”
Feeling enormously relieved, Harry watched Cedric pull a knife out of his pocket and cut Cho free. He pulled her upward and out of sight.
Harry looked around, waiting. Where were Fleur and Viktor?
Time was getting short, and according to the song, the hostages would be lost after an hour.
The merpeople started screeching animatedly. Those holding Harry loosened their grip, staring behind them. Harry turned and saw something monstrous cutting through the water toward them: a human body in swimming trunks with the head of a shark. It was Krum. He appeared to have transfigured himself, but badly.
The shark-man swam straight to Hermione and began snapping and biting at her ropes; the trouble was that Krum’s new teeth were positioned very awkwardly for biting anything smaller than a dolphin, and Harry was quite sure that if Krum wasn’t careful, he was going to rip Hermione in half. Darting forward, Harry hit Krum hard on the shoulder and held up the jagged stone. Krum seized it and began to cut Hermione free. Within seconds, he had done it; he grabbed Hermione around the waist, and without a backward glance, began to rise rapidly with her toward the surface.
Now what? Harry thought desperately. If he could be sure that Fleur was coming… But still no sign. There was nothing to be done except…
He snatched up the stone, which Krum had dropped, but the mermen now closed in around Luna and the little girl, shaking their heads at him. Harry pulled out his wand.
“Get out of the way!”
Only bubbles flew out of his mouth, but he had the distinct impression that the mermen had understood him, because they suddenly stopped laughing. Their yellowish eyes were fixed upon Harry’s wand, and they looked scared. There might be a lot more of them than there were of him, but Harry could tell, by the looks on their faces, that they knew no more magic than the giant squid did.
“You’ve got until three!” Harry shouted; a great stream of bubbles burst from him, but he held up three fingers to make sure they got the message. “One...” (he put down a finger) “two…” (he put down a second one)—
They scattered. Harry darted forward and began to hack at the ropes binding the small girl to the statue, and at last she was free.
He seized the little girl around the waist, grabbed the neck of Luna’s robes, and kicked off from the bottom.
‘For the love of Merlin, tuck the little girl under your arm! If you keep one arm free, you at least won’t drown! You’re running out of time!’ Shiloe screeched, aware that Harry didn’t really know how to swim strongly enough to get back up with his hands full.
Harry shifted the blond girl and began swimming again, using his freed hand and both feet to get to the surface as quickly as he could.
After what seemed like hours, but could only have been a matter of minutes, he saw light appearing above him, and just in time, as his neck began to burn again; the gills were disappearing.
He called up every last bit of strength he had and broke through the surface, gasping for air as he crowd cheered madly.
‘Of course, he’d speak the one language I can’t, when it’s proven I needed to know it.’ Shiloe commented wryly, and Harry looked over to see Dumbledore speaking mermish to the chief merperson.
Harry laughed nearly hysterically as Poppy hurried over and bustled him and Luna, who had just woken up, out of the water, wrapping them in thick blankets and forcing a pepper-up potion down Harry’s throat.
Luna smiled at Harry. “I knew you’d rescue me. But… Why did you bring her?” She asked, looking pointedly at the little girl. “You didn’t need to. Dumbledore wouldn’t have let her die down there, silly.”
Harry flushed. “How was I supposed to know that?!” He asked.
Luna giggled. “Harry, you’re so cute!” She said, kissing him on the cheek for emphasis.
Finally Dumbledore straightened up, turned to his fellow judges, and said, “A conference before we give the marks, I think.”
Fleur hurried over to Harry and grabbed him into a hug, leaving Luna staring at Harry with a raised eyebrow.
“You saved ‘er!” She was saying, “My little sister, Gabrielle, you SAVED ‘er. Even though she was not your ‘ostage! Thank you!”
Harry blushed. “Um, yeah. You’re welcome.” He said, patting her back awkwardly.
Luna cleared her throat with a small smile as Fleur released Harry.
Just then, Ludo Bagman’s magically magnified voice boomed out beside them, making them all jump, and causing the crowd in the stands to go very quiet.
“Ladies and gentlemen, we have reached our decision. Merchieftainess Murcus has told us exactly what happened at the bottom of the lake, and we have therefore decided to award marks out of fifty for each of the champions, as follows…
“Fleur Delacour, though she demonstrated excellent use of the
Bubble-Head Charm, was attacked by grindylows as she approached her goal, and failed to retrieve her hostage. We award her twenty-five points.”
Applause from the stands.
“I deserved zero,” said Fleur throatily, shaking her magnificent head.
“Cedric Diggory, who also used the Bubble-Head Charm, was first to return with his hostage, though he returned one minute outside the time limit of an hour.” Enormous cheers from the Hufflepuffs in the crowd; Harry saw Cho give Cedric a glowing look.
“We therefore award him forty-seven points.”
Harry’s heart sank. If Cedric had been outside the time limit, he most certainly had been.
“Viktor Krum used an incomplete form of Transfiguration, which was nevertheless effective, and was second to return with his hostage. We award him forty points.”
Karkaroff clapped particularly hard, looking very superior.
“Harry Potter used gillyweed to great effect,” Bagman continued.
“He returned last, and well outside the time limit of an hour. However, the Merchieftainess informs us that Mr. Potter was first to reach the hostages, and that the delay in his return was due to his determination to return all hostages to safety, not merely his own.”
Luna and Hermione both gave Harry half-exasperated, half-commiserating looks, though Luna was smiling faintly, still.
“Most of the judges,” and here, Bagman gave Karkaroff a very nasty look, “feel that this shows moral fiber and merits full marks. However… Mr. Potter’s score is forty-five points.”
Harry’s stomach leapt—he was now tying for first place with Cedric.
“Oh, good, Harry!” Luna said excitedly. “Almost full marks!”
Harry just sighed and shook his head. “I can’t believe it.”
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Shiloe