Chapter 61: Ready?!
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As much as he might've liked to show off his muscles, taking the wetsuit off would risk him finding himself impaled upon the spear of a merman, which wouldn't be good.
It left more to the imagination as well, Loki had said, which would make the fangirls fantasise all the more about him. Harry wasn't convinced.
He glanced to the other champions, who had chosen to wear simple swimwear rather than a wetsuit like his. For a moment, he was surprised that the clothes were so ordinary.
Wizarding clothing was decidedly odd, even if he did like how it was acceptable to wear capes, and he had expected something like… He wasn't quite sure what he had expected. Waterproof robes? Giant Squid replica suits?
Those thoughts only carried his focus for a moment before he moved on to staring at Fleur's behind. He was torn from that as Dumbledore said, "Champions, at the ready!"
Now Cedric, Fleur, and Krum began to prepare, waving their wands over themselves. Harry did nothing.
"Three!" Dumbledore began to count.
Harry turned and walked away from the lake, back towards the crowd.
Dumbledore gave no pause. "Two!"
With a wave at the crowd, Harry turned back towards the lake, now standing about ten metres from it.
As Dumbledore began to yell, "One!" Harry was already sprinting at the water.
A cannon roared, and a moment later four champions hit the water; three slipped below the surface. Harry stayed atop.
The roaring cheers of the crowd faded to nothing as he focused on the task at hand. To run on water, a human would need to run roughly around thirty metres per second - around three times as fast as the world record - or have very large feet.
Harry didn't have large feet, no matter how many people claimed it had a correlation to the size of one's genitals, and also couldn't run at thirty metres per second without collapsing from exhaustion.
What he could do, however, was run at speeds still far exceeding those of humans, whilst also holding charms that would decrease his weight, and freezing the water under his feet.
He wouldn't be replicating Jesus any time soon, but that didn't matter. This way made him look more as though he was actually in a hurry to rescue Daphne.
'Now,' Loki suddenly said, shattering Harry's concentration like a pane of glass. That did not matter, however. Loki had been sending out his magical senses.
A whole village of mermen would not go unnoticed, especially with the magic moving through water, and that was where Harry expected to find his hostage.
Harry let himself fall forward gracefully, and speared through the water like a...spear. The splash would hopefully conceal the brief moment he had emerged to cast a bubblehead charm.
He had already applied his waterproofing charms, so the next time he entered he did not emerge once again. Instead, he kicked downwards, into the murky darkness.
Once he was deep enough that his vision was severely limited, Harry turned his wand upon himself. "Videre Noxus." A brief pain flashed through his eyes before being cooled by Loki and a blindness descended upon Harry. After half a minute, Harry could see once again.
Everything was illuminated in the signature green glow of night-vision.
What appeared to be a village sat below him. Mermen were dotted all about, wielding spears of unidentifiable materials.
They were most certainly not the beautiful creations of myth, with flowing hair and pretty features and the tail of a fish.
No, these creatures were all covered in ugly, blue scales. Their yellow eyes shone up at Harry, almost haunting, and his plan of using an illusion suddenly faded.
He would simply have to go in, and if they attempted to attack him, kill everything. He was perfectly capable of it, he knew, but Dumbledore would likely disapprove.
Harry didn't want the man to poke his nose in once again. So down he sank, ready to draw his sword from his holster and spit out a spell as the first sign of any attack.
None came. The mermen simply watched him. From windows of shacks built out of stone, mermaids and children joined them, staring with eyes of eerie yellow.
Harry did his best not to be paranoid, but it was hard with what must've been a hundred pairs of eyes staring into him.
'We're in water,' said Loki, 'which means even you'll sense them before they attack.'
Calming himself, Harry continued to the village's centre. Four girls floated in the water, each with hair a different colour and attached to rocks with rope. Harry recognised Hermione and Daphne.
The Asian girl he recognised as Cedric's date, and the final one, a child with white-blonde hair, could've only been a relative of Fleur's.
For a brief moment, Harry contemplated taking a different hostage, either for a joke, or to gain the gratitude of a few Veelas. He rapidly decided upon only taking Daphne; once again, not wanting to antagonise Dumbledore was at the forefront of his mind.
Harry swam over to Daphne, cautious of any merman assailants, and cut the rope without a word, grabbing Daphne around the waist.
He eyed the mermen once more, and then kicked upwards, towards the surface. But he did not break it, of course - that would be nowhere near dramatic enough.
Instead, he swam towards the starting point underwater. From the fact that Daphne wasn't dead yet, he assumed she was under some kind of enchanted sleep, so did not tamper with it.
When he was around ten metres from the pier from which he had originally jumped, he gathered his power.
He muttered a powerful explosive spell, and heat and force suddenly erupted underneath him. He was shot up in the air, still holding Daphne tight, and arced through the air.
The pier shook underfoot as he landed upon it, and the crowd burst into cheers. At least this time Harry hadn't killed everything and forgotten what he was meant to retrieve.
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