"Hey guys," Colin Creevey said, clearing his throat loudly. The people in the Gryffindor Common Room turned to look at him expectantly. "I need Lee Jordan and one of Harry's friends to go see Professor McGonagall."
" 'One of Harry's friends'?" Hermione repeated. "She didn't say which?"
Colin shrugged. "I don't think it matters. Since she just needed someone and the Second Task is tomorrow, maybe it's for that."
"The egg did say something about a treasure," Harry agreed. "So…which of you wants to be my treasure?"
"Not it," Neville called immediately. "I know Dumbledore would never intentionally let anything happen to us, but things tend to go wrong whenever you're involved."
"You say 'wrong' I say 'more interesting'," Harry demurred. "What about you two?" he asked his other two close Gryffindor friends.
"You're not taking this task nearly seriously enough for me to put my life in your hands," Hermione said frankly.
"Sorry, mate," Ron apologized. "I really want to watch the Task and these things are always less enjoyable to witness when you actually take part in it."
"So what am I supposed to do?" Harry demanded. "Luna can't do it because she's a judge and my three best friends can't be bothered."
"I'll do it," Ginny offered.
Harry turned to her, surprised. "Really? But I thought you didn't think much of my 'hero' abilities."
Ginny gave him a small smile. "I've always had faith in your saving-people abilities, I just wish you'd be more heroic about it and not keep copping-out."
Harry shrugged. "Yeah, well, what works works, you know?"
Ginny rolled her eyes. "One day you'll do something epic; you'll simply have no other choice."
"Probably," Harry agreed. "But not until I absolutely have to."
"Hey Ron, shouldn't you be more concerned that Ginny's going to risk her life for Harry?" Neville asked.
"Why should I be?" Ron countered. "Harry's already made it clear that he's not looking to date right now so he can spend more time on his insanity."
"Most people would say 'studies'," Hermione noted.
"Yeah, but this is Harry so no one would believe him," Ron pointed out.
"True, but what I actually meant was Harry still doesn't seem to be taking this very seriously so shouldn't you be worried about your sister's safety if not necessarily her virtue?" Neville questioned.
"I'm not the one who doesn't have faith in Harry's saving-people thing," Ron responded. "That's you and Hermione."
"Tell you what; if it makes you feel any better Neville I'll give Ginny my favorite good-luck rock," Harry offered, pulling an ordinary-looking brown rock out of his pocket.
"You really don't have to," Ginny told him.
"I know, but I want to. Besides, this way you know at the very least I'll be trying to get my rock back," Harry said seriously. "Please take it."
Ginny sighed. "Fine." She took the rock from Harry's outstretched hand and slipped it into her own pocket.
"Excellent," Harry beamed. "Keep it with you during the task; you never know when something might go horribly wrong and you'll need a little extra luck."
"What about you, Lee?" Fred asked.
"Are you going to refuse to go because we're not being 'serious' enough?" George continued.
Lee scoffed. "Are you kidding me? If you were acting serious, I'd start to worry. Besides, you guys really want the prize money for your store, so I think I'm reasonably safe. One thing, though."
"What?" Fred asked.
"If you turn me into a canary during the course of 'rescuing' me, then we will no longer be speaking," Lee warned.
"As if we would be so unoriginal," George replied, sounding mildly affronted.
"Good," Lee said vehemently before turning to Ginny. "Now, shall we go?"
----
"All right, Harry?" Bagman whispered right before the Second Task was to begin. "Know what you're going to do?" he sounded doubtful and Harry didn't blame him. Unlike all of the other contestants who were dressed in swimming-wear – except for George but he only half-counted as a contestant anyway – Harry was sweatpants and a sweatshirt. Well, it was cold so why wear less clothing than he needed to?
"Would it make a difference if I didn't?" Harry asked innocently.
"Well, no, technically," Bagman said, looking deeply uneasy. "But just the same, I-"
"Don't worry, I have a plan," Harry promised. "It wouldn't do to look stupid in front of the press," he added, indicating Rita Skeeter and her photographer, who were sitting near the front of the bleachers.
Looking far more relieved than he should have – even if Harry knew why, the man couldn't act to save his life – Bagman pointed his wand at his throat and muttered a quick, "Sonorus. Well, all our champions are ready for the second task, which will start on my whistle. They have precisely an hour to recover what has been taken from them. On the count of three, then. One…two…three!"
Fred popped something into his mouth while Fleur and Cedric cast what appeared to be Bubble-Head Charms on themselves while Viktor transfigured his head into something rather shark-like and then the four of them quickly took to the water.
"Aren't you going to go in, as well?" George asked conversationally, pulling a mirror out of his pocket and glancing at it.
"Aren't you?" Harry shot back.
George shook his head. "Nah, George has this part covered. I'm just here as moral support until he reaches Lee. What about you, though? You don't have anyone else to go down to get your hostage and – perfectly safe or not – that IS my little sister you're NOT trying to rescue, after all."
"If she heard you implying she needed saving, she would probably hex you," Harry pointed out.
"I know," George agreed. "But seeing as how she's currently at the bottom of the lake and probably unconscious, I think I'm relatively safe."
"For now," Harry agreed. "But not for long."
Sure enough, not five minutes later a dripping wet and barely conscious Ginny appeared a few feet away from Harry.
"What did you DO?" George demanded. "Not only did you not go down there yourself but you didn't even take your wand out. How is she up here?"
Harry smirked. "I would tell you, but then-"
"You'd have to kill me?" George supplied.
Harry shook his head. "No, that's a little drastic, but I would be very put-out if I had to tell you and then explain it to the judges later."
"Speaking of, they seem to be waving you over," George noted.
Harry glanced at the judges, who did appear to be very keen on speaking with him. "I'll go see what they want after checking on Ginny." Walking over to his 'hostage', Harry handed her a towel. "That wasn't so bad, was it?"
"How long did it take you to get to me?" Ginny asked, accepting the proffered towel gratefully. "And why aren't you wet? If you have a spell to dry people off, the least you could do is use it on me since I was the only one who was actually willing to put my life in your hands."
Harry rolled his eyes. "You would have been fine…It only took ten minutes because I – as you probably expected – totally used a cop-out. I didn't even go in the water. If you want to know what I did, you can come with me when I explain it to the judges."
"Alright," Ginny agreed, following him over to where the judges were seated.
"Well done, Harry, you got your hostage back in a little over ten minutes," Bagman congratulated him, beaming.
"Yes, it was very impressive," Crouch concurred diplomatically. "But seeing as how you did not venture into the water nor take out your wand at all, we would ask you to explain your actions so we can decide whether or not what you did is within the rules or not."
"Well, yesterday Colin came to my friends and I and said that one of them needed to go see Professor McGonagall. They figured it must be for today and Ron, Hermione, and Neville either didn't think I was taking this seriously enough for them to put themselves in any danger or wanted to watch the Task so they refused and Ginny graciously agreed to go in place of them," Harry explained.
"Ah, I was wondering why Mr. Weasley, Miss Granger, or Mr. Longbottom were not the hostage as you spend the most time with them," Dumbledore remarked.
Harry shrugged. "If Colin had said it had to be one of them then I'm sure one of them would have agreed to do it eventually, but since you weren't more specific another friend of mine stepped forward instead."
"So I'm a 'friend' now?" Ginny murmured. "I was just an acquaintance a couple of weeks ago."
"Well, you agreed to be my hostage when none of my so-called 'best friends' could be bothered," Harry pointed out. "If there was still any doubt, that firmly cements your 'friend' status."
"Good to know," Ginny told him.
"I think it's quite telling when one's own closest friends do not have enough faith in him to even agree to participate in a Task where Albus Dumbledore himself is on hand to make sure that nothing goes wrong," Karkaroff remarked idly.
"Truly, eet ees rather unusual, especially considering 'ow zhey did not even know what ze Task was," Madame Maxime agreed. "But never mind zhat, tell us what you did."
"I gave Ginny a good-luck rock as my horribly unsupportive friends were concerned I would somehow mess up rescuing her and as luck would have it, that rock turned out to be a time-activated Portkey," Harry continued. "Go figure, huh?"
"Now, that's how you get these things done," Lockhart said approvingly.
"I don't know," Luna said slowly. "I'll have to give him points for creativity but take away point for a lack of overall effort."
"Surely this is cheating," Karkaroff protested. "He used a bloody Portkey!"
"There's nothing in the rulebooks again Portkeys," Crouch replied. "And trust me, I would know."
Karkaroff looked like he wanted to say something else, but he stopped when he saw George walk purposely towards the edge of the water. He pointed his wand at the lake and shouted, "ACCIO FRED WEASLEY!"
" 'E cannot summon ze 'ostage," Madame Maxime scoffed. "Silly boy."
"That's the name of the champion," Dumbledore corrected her, his eyes trained on the water.
For a minute, it seemed like nothing was happening. Then Fred shot out of the water and crashed into his brother. He was holding Lee Jordan.
Harry ran over to them. "What did you do? Madame Maxime said you couldn't summon your hostages and I figured that that would be the case but even if it wasn't, that would be a little too much of a cop-out for even me."
"You can't," George agreed as Fred started gasping for air and dived back into the water. "But George ate some Gillyweed, swam down to where the hostages were, free Lee, and then tapped on a two-way mirror we have until he got my attention. Once that happened, I summoned HIM and so even though Lee couldn't be summoned, he was pulled along for the ride. Of course, Gillyweed lasts an hour or so so George is stuck in the lake until then."
"Oh give it up," Harry told him. "I know that you're really George."
"No I'm not," George denied.
"Then why did you summon FRED Weasley?" Harry challenged, knowing he had won.
"Because if I didn't Karkaroff would be on our case again about how the two of us competing is 'cheating' or something stupid like that and he legally changed his name so he IS Fred Weasley," George countered.
"…Touché," Harry said at last.
An hour later, and all the champions had returned with their hostages. Cedric returned in the middle of George's victory dance after time had been called and Fred's Gillyweed had worn off at that time as well so he had emerged from the lake with Cedric and Cho. Fleur made it back ten minutes after Cedric did and Viktor arrived fifteen minutes after that with Parvati. Harry wondered at Fleur's success as he vaguely recalled that he had initially rescued Gabrielle as she had been forced to turn back but he supposed that just because she had been attacked or whatever originally was no reason for the exact same thing to have happened a second time.
The scores were posted as:
Harry Potter 8, 5, 10, 10, 10, 7, 10.
Fred Weasleys 8, 5,10, 10, 9, 10, 10.
Cedric Diggory 7, 5, 9, 9, 9, 9, 9.
Fleur Delacour 9, 5, 8, 9, 8, 8, 7.
Viktor Krum 6, 10, 7, 8, 8, 8, 8.
from Madame Maxime, Karkaroff, Dumbledore, Crouch, Bagman, Luna, and Lockhart respectively.
That brought the point totals up to 121 for Harry, 121 for Fred, 113 for Cedric, 111 for Fleur, and 95 for Viktor.
No one was as blatant about their biases as Karkaroff, but Harry got the feeling that only Dumbledore and possibly Crouch had been fair. Luna wasn't exactly trying to cheat, he was sure, but since he and the twins were the only ones to fall within the one hour time limit, shouldn't they get the highest scores by default? Clearly, Karkaroff, Madame Maxime, and Luna did not think so.
"So Viktor," Harry said to him. "Why Parvati? I mean, no offense to her, she's great, but I know that you had liked Hermione before Ron asked her to the Yule Ball so you can't really have known Parvati for longer than three months. And even if you had, look at Fleur: she went to the Ball with Roger Davies and even though they didn't have the best time, I don't think (or at least she didn't), her treasure didn't even have to be a fellow student as they were willing to import her hostage from France."
"True," Viktor agreed. "But I am not particularly close vith any of the other members of the Durmstrang delegation and my friends and family did not particularly vant to make the trip from either Durmstrang or Bulgaria."
"That makes sense," Harry nodded. "France is right across the channel from Great Britain, after all; it's a much shorter trip."
"I was right: it was so much better watching the Task than having to be unconscious underwater in FEBRUARY," Ron announced as he, Hermione, and Neville finally made their way to Harry. "Although we really couldn't see much until the Champions were done."
"And I was right about Harry not taking this seriously," Hermione noted.
"I took it plenty seriously!" Harry insisted. "And what's more, I finished the Task in ten minutes!"
"But if the Portkey hadn't worked, would you have had a backup plan?" Neville asked seriously.
"Well…no," Harry admitted. "I did practice with creating Portkeys, though!"
"And you wonder why we didn't want to do this," Hermione said, shaking her head at him.
"At least Ginny still likes me," Harry said, crossing his arms.
"I was bribed with chocolate," Ginny said by way of explanation as she unwrapped another Hershey bar. "I've never tried Muggle candy before."
"You're missing out," Hermione told her. "Muggle candy might not be as exciting as its wizarding counterpart, but at least you'll never have it try and escape, turn you into a bird, or taste like vomit."
Neville gave her a confused look. "Aren't your parents dentists? That means that they wouldn't really be big candy people, right? Or did I misunderstand what those are?"
"I think you understand fine," Luna said, coming up behind them. "But you have to realize that as the daughter of a dentist, Hermione is honor-bound to advocate the Rotfang conspiracy."
"Luna," Hermione objected half-heartedly.
"So once again you give me a crappy score," Harry noted. "This time I even scored lower than the guy who finished twenty-five minutes late!"
Luna shrugged at him. "I told you that I was going to have to take points off for lack of effort. If I wasn't giving you extra points for finishing within the time limit, you would have gotten a five."
"Why aren't you ever this harsh on the other champions?" Harry demanded.
"Because they actually put some work into their solutions," Luna responded. "Even Fred had to swim all the way to the bottom of the lake before George summoned him." With that, she began making her way back to the judge's platform.
"You know, I'm starting to suspect I would have been better off asking Snape to be my representative!" Harry called after her.
"Possibly," she called back. "But ten-to-one he would have made you wear the uniform."