Hogwarts Reimagined

A/N: So I went into it a bit more on AO3 because I hate having to put author's notes in the body like I do here so I usually just Don't. Basically my mental health fell apart early on in this year and it's taken a while to get it back on track. I did a brief stint in grippy sock jail and picked up a bunch of extra shit to do to keep my mind busy, which has sort of kept the Rest of me busy and thus no writing has got done. Writing is getting done now because I am actively avoiding doing something else because I hate sewing even though I know I need that shirt finished for Friday. Thankyou all for your patience, and I'm sorry this took so damn long. 

With that, the champions followed Ludo Bagman out of the tent, huddling together for protection against the cold wind that had picked up outside. They made their way down the pebbly shore to the boardwalk that had been constructed, stretching out into the lake for a good fifty metres or so. Judges, faculty and various Ministry officials were seated in two large towers built either side of the widened platform at the end of the boardwalk; and there were three more towers built in a vaguely circular formation a little further in than the two occupied by officials, presumably for the use of guests who had paid for their tickets while the general student body were seated in the row of stands that stretched to either side of the Champions’ tent along the lakeshore.

The crowd roared as they caught sight of the champions and Rhiannon averted her eyes as many raised their wands and let off sparks or magical fireworks that spelled out the champions’ names, the schools they came from or the countries those schools represented. She would need all of her enhanced senses underwater and didn’t want the spell-recording to announce to the crowd that she had been using sensory jinxes before, so she had removed them in the changing room and now she almost dropped her towel as she rushed to cover her ears.

Beside Rhiannon, Fleur took a deep breath and a wave of calming magical energy washed out of her as she let the breath out again, flowing over all four of the champions before fizzling out. Viktor, on Rhiannon’s other side, hunched his shoulders and made a dissatisfied sort of noise. “Not that I do not appreciate the intention, but please – give me a warning before you leak magic. I have not yet adjusted to feeling it without seeing it happen, and it is rather startling,” he remarked in a brittle tone, prickly in the way that Rhiannon knew to be anxiety.

Fleur grimaced and hugged her arms to her chest, feathers prickling along her arms as she did so. “I am sorry, it was not – I did not mean to, I was just trying to calm myself – I am sorry,” she replied in a rush, trying to smooth her feathers back into her arms as she did so.

Viktor shook his head and swapped places with Rhiannon so he could rest his arm around Fleur’s shoulders in a comforting sort of manner. “I understand. I am not really upset, it merely startled me,” he reassured her. “Let us go and get this over with. You are the woman who put a Hungarian Horntail to sleep single-handed – anything in that lake should be frightened of you.”

Fleur grinned, her sharp canines curving up over her upper lip as she did so and her eyes more yellow than brown, her natural glamours fading as they always did in times of stress. “You know, I think you might be right,” she replied, her tone genuinely bolstered but still brittle around the edges.

Fleur set her chin high and the four of them continued along the boardwalk again. Soon they reached the end, where the judges were seated in the lower section of the tower directly across from them. The position was elevated enough that the champions had to look up to see them, and Rhiannon raised a hand to the ribbon in her hair to remind herself – she was somebody’s knight, not just the judges’ gladiator.

The mutter of an indistinct incantation drifted down to Rhiannon’s ears, and she had just a moment’s warning to cover her ears as Ludo Bagman’s magically amplified voice boomed out across the lakeshore. “CHAMPIONS!” he bellowed, totally oblivious to their pained grimaces. “The Second Task will begin forthwith. Take your places on the circles before you – Fleur Delacour furthest left, then Rhiannon Black, Cedric Diggory and Viktor Krum last, as that is the current ranking. You will all enter the lake when the starting shot is fired in... precisely a minute from now.”

Cedric and Rhiannon exchanged a wry look as the crowd murmured in a dissatisfied sort of way – the Hogwarts crowd had begun to accept Rhiannon as champion alongside Cedric, but for her to be ranked before him was still a sore point to many of them. And she hadn’t expected them to use the correct name – her name was Rhiannon Black only informally, as the adoption was still proceeding through the infinite bureaucracy of the Ministry courts, it was frankly surprising that they weren’t using her entire fully legal name at all, but it still pricked at Rhiannon a little to hear the wrong name – it was like a rejection of the family she had found for herself.

A buzzer sounded and Rhiannon flinched, stepping off her circle for just a moment – but a moment was enough, as a heavy directionless force surged through her small frame and sent her reeling back into her circle, hissing and wheezing for breath and trembling in terror.

“Ah, ah – no early starters, there’s ten seconds to go!” Bagman admonished in his crowing sort of way, and it took everything Rhiannon had not to simply flip him the single-fingered gesture that was universal in rudeness across magical and nonmagical society alike.

Distantly Rhiannon recalled the time she and her brother had blundered into a farmer’s fence on one of their full moon wanders, how it had set Luna and Ginny to hysterics as she and Dudley skittered about the hillside like their tails had been lit afire – an electric shock outside of the starting circles, easily as strong as it had been in the cattle fence. A dirty trick, but... “Thanks, ya p-p-p-pricks,” she hissed under her breath, a vicious smile curling up one side of her mouth. If nothing else – they’d given her a very physical reminder of what she was fighting this for.

After what felt like an age had passed, the buzzer blared out across the lake again and Rhiannon felt the humming pressure of the static field dissipate. A tense murmur rose from the crowd as the champions stayed put, sharing glances and adjusting their grips on their wands rather than trying to race eachother from the platform. “On three?” Cedric inquired, his free hand betraying his nerves as it drifted to the hilt of the knife at his hip.

Viktor grinned, more like a bird of prey than ever and his wand sparking blue at the tip. “No. On four. They are already seeing this as a gesture of defiance, why not make sure they know it?”

Fleur cackled, pointed teeth glinting in the sunlight as she threw her head back and the feathers around her face fanned out a little, almost like a tiny threat display. “Then we will give them a show – one to teach them that our families are off limits,” she said decisively.

Four. Three, languages overlapping as the champions murmured under their breaths. Two, the grey noon light glinting on the loch’s surface. One.

Magic surged around the champions as they dove from the platform, not quite as one but near enough to be impressive. The magic around them all flared so strongly it set Rhiannon’s hair prickling even as it welled up inside of her, freezing her veins and itching to be released. It was a relief to cast the converted Bubble-Head Charm, and by the time it had taken effect the blaze of power had subsided enough that Rhiannon could concentrate.

Beside her, Fleur had cast the same charm while Cedric contorted and groaned as his extremities sprouted fins and his internal organs shifted under the effects of Gillyweed. And to Rhiannon’s other side Viktor underwent the most dramatic transformation of all of them. His very body flickered and twisted in biologic indecision as Viktor exerted his magic and his will upon it, until it solidified into such a mixture of shapes that Rhiannon wasn’t sure whether to be horrified or impressed. Viktor had transformed his body from the shoulders up into that of a shark’s, the lines between human and shark anatomy blurring together in his torso as he kept the use of his human hands but modified them with a distinct fin along the outer side of his forearms and webbing between his fingers. The key feature of the mixed shapes was a distinctly reflective dark stripe that ran the length of his body – the lateral line, a feature of many aquatic species and the reason for Viktor’s choice of transformation, as it would allow him to navigate underwater perhaps even better than his sighted companions, whose vision was already obscured by the murk and weeds.

Deciding that impressed was the better course of action given that Viktor had managed to get two vastly different sets of biology to mesh neatly without any immediate dangers to his health, Rhiannon set about pulling her own fins on. Already she could hear the same melody as from the clue egg echoing weirdly throughout the underwater forest, and even in this alien environment the wolf in her yearned to run towards it. But wolves didn’t do well alone, and the same instincts that urged her to run reminded her that she had friends to protect at her side.

“Fleur? F-fleur, y’alright?” Rhiannon stammered, her voice echoing strangely inside the bubble that provided her with air. Fleur was a bright spot in the deep green of the loch, the sparse light reflecting on her pale hair and feathers as she flailed and twisted beneath the surface. Her skin prickling with fear, Rhiannon dove after her friend, kicking strongly until she reached the panicked Veela. She had to duck under a sweeping wing, then swam in close and caught hold of Fleur’s wrist. “Hey – hey! Slow down, breathe – y’ cast the charm, use it,” she told the older girl firmly.

Fleur’s pulse fluttered in Rhiannon’s grasp and the ridge in her throat bobbed as she swallowed, but her breathing steadied and she managed to still her frantic flapping even if she didn’t seem able to fold her wings away entirely. “Thank-you, Rhiannon. It – I knew it would be difficult. But seeing the rest of you, I keep expecting it to feel like flying - but it is nothing like that at all, and the pressure on my skin – I am so completely out of place down here,” she replied, her voice shaking.

Rhiannon nodded, loosening her grip on Fleur’s wrist as she did so. It sounded almost like sensory overload to her – but then she realised, that had to be a new level of awful for someone who didn’t experience it often. “I hear you – I’m put together for running, not diving. Le-le-le- let’s get our friends and get outta here,”

To the side and below them, Viktor stiffened and cocked his Transfigured head to one side in the water, and Rhiannon caught a trace of the sound moments after he had – the mer-song again, the words more distinct this time though she could not pinpoint where it was coming from – though she was not quite so badly affected as Fleur, the alien environment of the lake was still disorienting and her enhanced senses weren’t helping as much as she had hoped. Viktor, on the other hand, was having no such problems and he pointed the way – south, Rhiannon guessed after a few moments of trying to get her bearings, and down. A long way down.

Once Fleur had oriented herself well enough to let go of Rhiannon’s hand and put her fins on, Cedric joined them and together the four champions dove deeper. Below the surface the loch seemed an oppressive haze of grey murk, any features in it growing fainter as they descended until even Rhiannon, with her excellent night vision, was unsettled.

Suddenly, Fleur yelped and one of her wings crashed into Rhiannon’s side – but as Rhiannon whirled to see what had happened, her friend was already plummeting into the darkness below. The werewolf didn’t hesitate, and with Cedric and Viktor to either side she plunged after Fleur, already extending her wand with a wordless yell.

As they dove, something unseen pressed in on all sides and even Rhiannon couldn’t see what, but it smothered them and slowed their progress to a crawl. “Missiculum champions – wandlight! Now!” Cedric ordered them sharply, his voice cracking with panic.

Something heavy and solid, almost like a steel cable given life, wrapped itself around Rhiannon’s chest and squeezed, her ribs groaning under the pressure – she knew that sensation, though it felt like a lifetime ago. Sulks in the sun... “L-lumos solem!” Rhiannon cried, gasping with relief as the slick vine let go like she’d stung it. “Well, you d-d-do-don’t get much darker ‘n damper than down here,” she muttered, squinting out into the writhing field of recoiling tendrils. Fleur was floating unhindered now some metres below, Rhiannon’s spell had radiated out far enough to repel the vines that caught her – but that wasn’t the only danger. Hidden before by the vines, countless pairs of eyes reflecting in the harsh wandlight turned on the champions as the real danger was revealed.

There were too many creatures to take them all in individually, but Rhiannon assessed the swarm with a hunter’s eye. They were a mixture of greenish shades, small and bulbous, vaguely humanoid in shape but with seven tentacles in place of legs and two hands with three knotty fingers each, the third shorter than the rest and opposable like a human thumb – Rhiannon recognised them almost instantly and bared her own sharp teeth in a snarl as the creatures closed in.

“Ah, fucking grindylows,” Cedric swore, firing off a blast of reddish light at one that was getting too close. “Both ends are awful, don’t let ‘em get hold of you – break their hands if they get ‘em on you, but it’s the tentacles you really want to watch – don’t let them touch you, they’ve a nasty sting.”

Rhiannon grimaced. Alone in a tank, the grindylow Remus had showed her last year hadn’t seemed all that threatening even as he cautioned against their sting and their locking fingers – they were small, physically fragile, she had foolishly thought only an errant child could be at risk. It had been a useful demonstration, but hardly enough preparation for what they faced now – grindylows in their natural environment, all swarming together – now Rhiannon understood how they posed a threat to anyone who crossed their paths.

“Misssss-si-si-Missiculum, Fleur, jus’ keep a Shield Charm up an’ we’ll get t’ you!” Rhiannon called down to her friend.

The pause was slightly too long for comfort, and Rhiannon was beginning to panic when Fleur finally replied, her voice high and sharp with fear. “I can not just keep the Shield charm up, I need the light to keep these weeds off me!”

Rhiannon swore and shook her head, lashing out with the Severing charm at a grindylow that was reaching for her with it’s nasty little grab-hands. She remembered too late that the Severing charm worked pretty much like throwing a knife, and just like a real knife, that didn’t work very well underwater. It did little more than scratch the grindylow and she swore again, kicking upwards out of its reach. Between the vines and the grindylow swarm, the champions were very effectively separated and Fleur was sinking fast.

“Missiculum Viktor – c-c-can y’ clear some space, then follow me after Fleur?” Rhiannon called. “And relashio, fuckers,” she muttered, flinging a blast of superheated water at a pair of grindylows diving after Fleur.

Viktor, with his shark’s head, was unable to respond, but as Rhiannon looked up she caught the high-pitched whine of Transfiguration magic as Viktor altered his shape yet again – this time his entire body was replaced with that of the shark’s, the upper fin of its tail long and trailing behind, the purpose of which was immediately made clear as shark-Viktor whirled in the water and struck into the grindylow swarm with a deadly efficiency.

Satisfied Viktor had the swarm handled, Rhiannon refocused her efforts on Fleur and dove again, her wand extended out ahead with the tip lit to clear the vines. She tried not to think of all the books she had read that cautioned against diving too deep too quickly, and squinted into the grey-black mire in search of – there, a brief flare of gold rayed out into the water before it was replaced by a dimmer blue haze. Fleur was still fighting down there.

Something brushed against Rhiannon’s elbow and she whirled around, her wand-tip already flaring red before she recognised Cedric and let the spell die out – a mistake, as something grabbed her wrist on the other side. The bones in her wrist crunched and ground together and Rhiannon bit back a scream as she tried vainly to shake off the grindylow that had grabbed her and was now reaching out with its horrible prickling tentacles – what to cast, what to cast... Anything was better than nothing, and Rhiannon lashed out with a wordless Severing charm again.

At this close a range, even the water could not dampen the spell’s effect enough and Rhiannon’s panic turned to revulsion as her spell bit into the grindylow’s throat, exposing the severed organs and turning the water cloudy with its’ blood. It was dead in an instant, but those awful locking fingers were still clamped around her wrist and, shaking, Rhiannon had to break each one to get free. By the time she had, more were closing in – it seemed the cloud of blood only served to enrage them further.

“Help me!” Fleur’s voice was high with panic and frighteningly laboured, even carried to them by magic as it was. “The water pressure, the vines – something is not right, I can’t hold on down here-”

“Depulso,” Rhiannon hissed, her wand cutting through the water as she pushed the grindylows back, then lit the tip again before the vines had a chance to crowd in. Fleur was in trouble – where the hell was Viktor? They only had so much time and right now, Fleur had even less than the rest of them.

Just as Rhiannon thought that, the shadows shifted above them and the enormous sinuous shark that was their friend dove through the water towards them. There was a terrifying moment where Rhiannon wondered if Viktor had somehow lost himself in the transformation, if they would have to fight him too – but he cut straight through the swarm of grindylows above them and cleared the rest with a sweep of that enormous trailing fin before the transfiguration melted away and Viktor returned to the half-shape he had begun the task with.

“I am never questioning Transfiguration’s uses in real life again,” Cedric muttered, and with a sideways glance at Rhiannon he dove after Fleur with Viktor trailing behind.

Rhiannon paused only for a moment longer to mend her crushed wrist with a muttered episkey before following them both, eyes fixed on the spell-flares far below them. They were growing slower, further apart – Fleur was wearing out, and as they drew nearer Rhiannon could feel the tangible haze of pain and terror that radiated from below them, growing stronger and stronger as they drew nearer.

At last, they reached Fleur. She was in rough shape – her wings were extended and slowing her badly, with grindylows latched on all over and raised welts where more had grabbed and stung her, and by the way she was moving Rhiannon guessed Fleur had been right – there was something about the water pressure that was affecting her worse than the others. Every sweep of her wand looked pained, bruises bloomed under her skin in places no grindylow had touched, her wings were crumpled and torn and she held her free arm awkwardly against her chest. This close, the radiating pain set Rhiannon’s teeth on edge and she drew her knife, lunging into the swarm that surrounded her friend without a second thought.

Only minutes before, Rhiannon had felt revulsion at the sight of the grindylow she had killed – not exactly by accident, but she certainly hadn’t set out with that in mind. Now... they were in the way and Fleur was still sinking, her wings limp and more bruises rising along her thin arms. There was no time for ideals of nonviolence, and the champions set about breaking up the swarm with ruthless efficiency, each fixed on reaching Fleur before she ran out of fight.

Still, no matter how many grindylows the champions cut aside, the swarm seemed endless and panic began to claw and writhe in Rhiannon’s chest, the bubble charm that gave her breath suddenly claustrophobic. She kept fighting mechanically, but she was beginning to lose hope – until something struck the grindylows in a radial blast, something that threw them out past Rhiannon and Viktor and Cedric as they fought to reach Fleur. That gave Rhiannon hope for a second – until that same blast struck her, sending her and her companions reeling in the water. Sheer agony, crushing and stinging and aching, everything that Fleur’s tormented nervous system felt was thrown out in a raw wave of psychic force, driven by total disorientation and a searing electric sensation under all of it that was intimately, recently familiar to Rhiannon and she watched in horror as in that moment Fleur’s charm winked out and her body began to jerk and twist in the dark water.

For a moment, none of them knew what to do, racked by the unfiltered agony that Fleur was still radiating everywhere. But Rhiannon was used to pain, and she was used to fear. She sheathed her knife, lit her wand again and struck out for Fleur, still terrified and unsure what to do – only that she had to get Fleur out of the water. “Missssss-mi-mi-missiculum Vik-k-k-k-t-t-Viktor, Cedric – I’ll get us out’ve here, you light your wands an’ follow after, it’ll be easier t’ join you again if you’re closer – we can’t get split up again, not n-n-n-now we know what’s down here,” she told them, mustering what little authority she could – and taking some comfort that if Fleur was still leaking magic, she was still alive in there.

“Ascendo!” Rhiannon incanted, seizing Fleur around the waist as her spell rocketed them both upwards. Her joints and lungs ached as the pressure around them relaxed and she shut her eyes against the dizzyingly bright sunlight as her spell spat them both out on the surface of the water. The crowd began to murmur but Rhiannon paid them no mind – all her attention was on Fleur, whose leaking magic had faded as she went frighteningly still in Rhiannon’s arms.

“Sonorus,” Rhiannon whispered, bracing herself against the pain it would cause to her sensitive ears as she ran the words over in her head. “MEDIC! GET ME A MEDIC!” she bellowed, her voice echoing over the lake surface. Satisfied she’d been heard as the stands stirred and muttered, she released the amplifying spell and paddled frantically for the jetty where they’d started the task, the white-robed figures of healers hurrying there from their positions on the lakeshore.

“There’s vines in there – they pulled her deeper an’ I th-th-think the pressure was hurtin’ her somehow – even before she got mobbed by the grindylows, but after that – it w’s all over, we couldn’ get t’ her fast enough an’ I think she had a seizure, it’s – it was bad down there,” Rhiannon babbled, only calming when Madam Pomfrey took her by the shoulders and shook her gently – not that that helped her dizziness at all.

“Hey. Hey, no – look at me. Breathe,” Madam Pomfrey told Rhiannon firmly. “We’ve got your friend now, you’ve done the right thing and we’ll take care of Miss Delacour from here. You’re in rough shape too, you came up too damn fast – I’m calling a bloody intermission on medical grounds, come here – missiculum champions, if you came up with Rhiannon I want you at the starting deck too and I don’t care what the judges say, they are giving me ten minutes or I’ll take them before the Wizengamot.”

There was no arguing with Madam Pomfrey on the warpath, and all Rhiannon could do was sag in the nurse’s grip as she was pulled unresisting from the water, exhausted and fighting unconsciousness as the ache in her joints intensified sharply. Stupid, stupid – Viktor had gone over decompression sickness with them as soon as they had learned the task would involve diving. But as a warm glow of magic slowly seeped into her muscles, Rhiannon could only grin weakly – as far as she knew Fleur was still alive, and she would risk decompression sickness any day for that.