The Dark Lake Trial Pt3
"Move, quickly," Sirius said as he hurried the Ministry workers who had been sent to retrieve the champions, since there was no other way to call them back or communicate with them beneath the water.
Meanwhile, Dumbledore had a deep frown on his face, as his usual method of calling the lake's merpeople didn't seem to be working. Every so often, he would cast a bright spell toward the lake, which was how those creatures were usually called.
But no one was coming to the surface.
Madame Maxime looked like a complete bundle of nerves, staring at the screens showing her students while tightly clutching a handkerchief that at this point was barely still in one piece, as the enormous woman had nearly torn it apart each time a shadow got too close to them.
Karkaroff, for his part, only seemed concerned about Viktor, watching as he advanced through the water with his body half-transformed into a shark.
Meanwhile, Sirius kept glancing at the screens showing the champions every so often, feeling a growing sense of urgency.
"Gentlemen, perhaps we're mistaken and what we saw was something else entirely. Several minutes have already passed and nothing else strange has appeared. It could simply be an illusion caused by being at the bottom of the lake," Ludo said, trying to calm the other judges. "We may be about to cancel the trial over a misunderstanding. Everything we set up will go to waste," he added.
Just as Sirius was about to say something, a section of the lake near them suddenly began to churn violently, and a large amount of water turned red almost instantly.
"What?" Sirius's eyes widened as the water thrashed.
Then, for a brief moment, someone broke through the surface from that spot. It was one of the workers who had just gone in to retrieve the champions, his wand raised above his head, most likely using a spell to propel himself upward quickly.
But before anyone could do anything to help him, as if something had grabbed him in an instant, he was dragged back under at incredible speed, managing to let out only the faintest muffled scream through the water.
At once, Sirius drew his wand and cast a spell directly to save the man.
The man was yanked back out of the water and thrown toward them. But the moment he emerged and collapsed onto the shore, everyone's eyes widened in shock, while panicked screams erupted from the stands as they saw that the man no longer had the lower half of his body, blood and organs spilling onto the shore as he choked on his own blood, his eyes wide with terror before he finally let out his last breath.
All of the judges fell silent.
Though only for a moment.
And they realized this was neither imagination nor one of Sirius's exaggerations.
"Go get Professor Wanda Maximoff right now," Sirius ordered one of the Ministry workers.
The man nodded quickly, staring at his dead companion for a moment before rushing off at full speed.
…
Several minutes had passed since Harry had run into Myrtle, and now he continued moving through the water, still keeping an eye on his surroundings, though after not finding anything for a while, he seemed to relax slightly.
Then he seemed to spot something in the distance, so he increased his speed in that direction.
The closer he got, the more Harry's frown deepened.
What he was looking at were submerged houses, like some kind of underwater village.
But strangely enough, there was no one there.
Harry could see spears lying on the ground, and some of the houses looked like they had been destroyed, which confused him, since this place didn't look all that ancient. He couldn't help but move closer to one of the ruined houses to examine it, and his expression turned into pure confusion, because it looked as though the house had been torn apart in a single bite by something enormous.
Harry swam for a while through the ruined houses, glancing around as he moved until he reached what looked like some kind of central square in the village, most likely belonging to the merpeople or tritons.
Now desolate and empty, there was a statue of a mermaid standing in the middle of the square.
Or at least, Harry thought it was.
Because the upper half of it had also been bitten clean off.
Harry figured that if this was some kind of setup meant to create atmosphere, then it was definitely pretty damn creepy.
His eyes landed on the chests lined up in a row directly beneath the statue, each one marked with the name of a champion, all of them wrapped in metal chains and heavy locks.
Harry moved toward his own, but then he felt movement in the water, something shifting between the houses. So he turned around, but saw nothing there.
So he simply turned back toward the chests and raised his wand to cast a spell at the chains.
But the moment he lifted his wand, it glowed for an instant.
Then his eyes flashed red as images appeared directly in his mind.
It was the same sensation as when he had seen those visions inside the crystal sphere during Divination class.
There, he saw someone floating lifelessly in the waters of the Dark Lake, while the lake around her turned completely red with blood. The body floated face-up, allowing him to see the person's face perfectly. Platinum blonde hair. Pale skin. Eyes closed.
Even like that, she still looked beautiful.
Blood drifted from her mouth, mixing with the blood that had completely soaked her swimsuit in red.
Then, two grotesque hands formed from the blood surrounding her grabbed Fleur's body.
And she opened her eyes.
Her gaze met Harry's, as if she were begging him for help.
And in the very next instant, she was dragged down into the darkness of the water.
Harry snapped back to reality and brought a hand to his head for a moment, as if trying to process what he had just seen, his face filled with both shock and panic.
"Fleur," he said, turning back in the direction he had come from, his eyes full of urgency and glowing red as he looked in every direction, searching rapidly.
And without even touching his chest, Harry's body turned into something like red mist and shot off in one direction at a speed even faster than his amphibious form.
Not long after Harry vanished, a man with a shark's head appeared, stopping for a moment to stare at the red mist disappearing rapidly through the water.
Which made him frown in confusion, feeling as though he had seen that before.
It was Viktor Krum in a partial transformation.
One that had earned him quite a bit of mockery from a certain demoness, but which now proved to be genuinely useful, since it seemed he had arrived first, judging by the fact that all the other chests were still closed.
Viktor swam toward his chest and opened his mouth to bite through the chain.
But before he could do it, a dark shadow settled over him while the water around him began to ripple.
So Viktor slowly lifted his gaze.
And the very first thing he saw was a massive eye staring directly at him, as he was swallowed by the darkness of that shadow.
Viktor's eyes flew open, while something icy crawled down his spine…
Even underwater.