The Other Potter

The Second Task

The day after the Yule Ball I take my golden egg into the common room and find a seat by the fire pit. I place it in front of me and glare at it, as if that will give me the answers that way.

"You have to open it for it to work." Cedric says, finding me.

"All I hear is screeching." 

"That, my love, is because it's in mermish." He says, pulling me into his side.

"Mermish you say?" I ask, playing with his right hand.

"Mhm. You have to open the egg underwater and it will tell you all you need to know."

"How did you figure this out?" I ask, twisting his wedding band around his finger. He shrugs.

"Moody."

"Well, it seems I will be taking a bath tonight. Apparently my bath last night wasn't good enough." I say and he laughs.

"Would you like help?" He asks. I look at him with raised eyebrows. "I'm just saying, if it's taking a second go-"

"Shut up." I say with a slight laugh, standing and taking the egg with me.

For the first time ever I use the Room of Requirement to not make me sad. Instead I have the coolest bathroom ever appear with a pool sized bath tub and more than fifty taps. Okay, so it's a replica of the prefects bathroom-which I have never been in of course-but it still looks cool. I tread in the water for a few minutes, looking at the golden bane of my existence before gathering it and diving as far down as possible, opening it as I go.

Come seek us where our voices sound,
We cannot sing above the ground,
And while you're searching ponder this;
We've taken what you'll sorely miss,
An hour long you'll have to look,
And to recover what we took,
But past an hour, the prospect's black,
Too late, it's gone, it won't come back

I swim back to the surface and sit on a near by ledge, placing the egg on the tile again.

"Come seek us where our voices sound-Ced already told me this is mermish, so Black Lake. I've got to find what I'll sorely miss...in the Black Lake...with only an hour to search...how the ever loving fuck am I supposed to do that?" I vent viciously. I get out and dress, grab the egg, and go back to the common room.

"Where've you been?" Talia asks.

"Getting my death sentence." I say, tossing her the egg. She looks at me with a raised eyebrow. I recite the clue to her and her jaw drops. "I can't breathe in water!"

"No shit." She says, putting the egg on the table. "Is there some Mya Magic that could work?"

"Yeah, but it's considered dark magic and we have to tell the judges what we used, so it would just get me arrested." I say bitterly. Mya Magic is what Talia calls my doing spells calling for a twin's blood.

"So...library?"

"Yeah." I say in tired exasperation.

Two days later and my friends, Harry and his friends, and I are all going through the library trying to find something.

"What about self-transfiguration?" Jacob says, reading out of a book. We look at him like he's lost a few braincells. "No? Okay."

"What about that charm Dumbledore used when you lot had to clean the Chamber of Secrets last year?" Harry asks.

"Thanks for the reminder about that." Talia says bitterly.

"Do you know I still get nightmares about dark tunnels and large venomous teeth?" Brooks asks.