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His Precious Friend by Bingblot
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His Precious Friend

Bingblot

Disclaimer: All things HP belong to JKR; I am borrowing her world (and fixing her mistakes) just for fun.

Author's Note: This is the sequel to "The Only Girl", my AU fic of Harry and Hermione going to the Yule Ball together.

This time, it's the 2nd Task, the way it might have gone. (I'm sure you can all guess what the main change will be…) And because it never made sense to me that Hermione found no mention of the Bubble-head Charm or that she didn't manage to find out about Gillyweed-because, honestly, Neville might be good at Herbology but Hermione's the cleverest witch and best student of their year! She would have found out about them, I'm convinced. It makes no sense that she doesn't-and is, in my opinion, JKR being silly again.

For my very dear Amethyst_J, because she started this whole AU idea with her drabble prompt that's grown into this monster-fic. ;-)

His Precious Friend

Part 1

An hour.

He had to spend an hour under water to get back something precious that they would take from him.

He decided that he'd much rather face the Hungarian Horntail again, blind-folded.

An hour under water?! How on earth was he supposed to do that without drowning in the process? He wondered gloomily whether this task was when previous Champions had died.

An hour…

He pulled Ron and Hermione aside in the Common Room the next day. "I need your help," he whispered urgently to both of them.

Ron and Hermione's friendship hadn't fully recovered yet from their fight the night of the Yule Ball and they had scrupulously avoided talking to each other, usually communicating through Harry who was beginning to feel something like a bouncing ball going back and forth between the two of them. But on hearing Harry's explanation of the clue in the egg, they both forgot their disagreement in favor of joining with Harry in his worry.

Ron looked a bit ill. "An hour underwater?" he croaked. "You've got to be kidding me. You can't go without air for that long!"

Hermione looked a little pale and tense but was more hopeful. "There must be some sort of charm or spell that will allow you to breathe underwater. There's got to be something. They wouldn't assign an impossible task. They can't. They wouldn't," she repeated, almost as if she were trying to convince herself of that.

Harry looked at Hermione with something very like desperation. "Do you remember reading anything about a spell that will allow you to breathe underwater?"

"Erm- no…," she admitted reluctantly but then hastened to add, "But I'm sure there's something out there! It's not like I've read every book in the library or anything."

Ron made a disbelieving noise. "You haven't?"

Hermione ignored Ron to continue, "And I wasn't exactly paying attention to any sort of spell that would allow a person to breathe underwater so it may have slipped past me. It'll be okay, Harry, we just need to do some research and I'm sure we'll find something."

She smiled bravely at him and Harry returned the smile automatically, feeling better. Of course, Hermione was right. They wouldn't assign an impossible task. And just seeing Hermione's smile made him feel as if he could do this…

She had a pretty smile, he thought, wondering (again) what she would do if he ever kissed her…

He stopped short. Not again…

He had tried to convince himself that all his new, uncomfortable thoughts about Hermione, about kissing Hermione, had just been a product of the romantic atmosphere at the Yule Ball and the way she'd looked all dressed-up and her hair smoothed out. It had just been the circumstance and the situation. Of course he would think about kissing Hermione when every other couple around them at the Yule Ball had been snogging… That was all it was. It would go away in the common light of common day, he was sure of it.

Only it was back. Had never really gone away. He couldn't help it; it seemed like once he'd noticed that Hermione was pretty, he found himself noticing all the other little things about her he'd seen but never really thought about until now. He found himself noticing the way she bit her lower lip sometimes in class when she was concentrating very hard and how the action made her lower lip seem more full and more- more- well, kissable was the only word he could think of. He found himself noticing the way she would absently brush her quill across her lips and all he could do was think, irrationally, that he really, really envied her quill. He found himself noticing all the times she touched him, naturally, out of habit, a hand on his arm, her arm brushing his as she sat down beside him, and wondering if it was a sign that she liked him too…

He mentally shook his head to clear it of his unwanted thoughts about Hermione; he needed to concentrate now, needed to start researching ways to breathe underwater.

He could do this.

Right?

Harry shoved his hands into his hair, tugging at it a little in frustration. The three of them were surrounded by books in one corner of the library and had gotten nowhere.

"Oh, for a pair of Aqualungs," he muttered to himself, wondering idly if he could disqualify himself from the Tournament if he bashed his head onto the table hard enough but then decided against it. He didn't want to die-and at any rate, he would just need to show up for the Second Task and he would drown without the need to do any violence on himself, he thought with rather morbid humor.

"What are Aqualungs?" Ron asked.

"They're a Muggle thing; people use them during the summers to allow them to swim underwater for long periods of time."

Ron thought about this and then looked delighted. "But that's perfect! Why not just use a Summoning Charm to Summon one from the nearest Muggle town?"

Hermione snorted. "That won't work. It'd probably take him at least an hour just to figure out how to use the aqualungs and then he'd be out of time anyway. Besides, he'd be breaking the International Code of Wizarding Secrecy and would probably be disqualified for that."

"Hermione's right," Harry added gloomily. "I think it's too much to hope that no Muggles would spot an aqualung zooming across the countryside to Hogwarts."

Ron looked deflated. "Well, it was worth a suggestion," he said in a disgruntled tone.

"Of course, the ideal solution would be for you to Transfigure yourself into a submarine or something," Hermione sighed. "If only we'd done human Transfiguration already! But I don't think we start that until sixth year, and it can go badly wrong if you don't know what you're doing."

"Yeah, I don't fancy walking around with a periscope sticking out of my head." He paused and then added, in a lame attempt at humor because he didn't like to see how pale and worried Hermione looked, "I s'pose I could always attack someone in front of Moody, he might do it for me…"

Hermione gave him a rather wan smile but answered seriously, "I don't think he'd let you choose what you wanted to be turned into, though. No, I think your best chance is some sort of charm."

Harry sighed. "Yeah." He paused and then added, glumly, "I wish I could become an Animagus, a frog would be nice."

"You know you don't get to choose your own Animagus form," Hermione reminded him mildly.

"I know. Besides, it took my dad and Sirius the better part of 3 years to figure out how to do it and I don't have that kind of time."

"Trying to become an Animagus is awfully dangerous to do without proper supervision and training; your dad and Sirius were being reckless and they lucked out," Hermione said in a slightly disapproving tone.

"Oh, don't be such a wet-blanket, Hermione," Ron grumbled. "How cool is it that the Marauders managed to become unregistered Animagi on their own? That was bloody wicked!"

Harry interceded before Hermione could retort. "Yeah but that doesn't matter at the moment. I need to find out how to breathe underwater."

Hermione threw Ron an irritated glance before she bent back over the heavy book open in front of her, skimming through the pages so quickly Harry wondered how she didn't get dizzy. "There's got to be something…" she muttered.

"There had better be," Harry sighed.

There has got to be something became something of their motto over the next few weeks as they spent every free hour in the library, frantically researching spells until Harry felt that he could happily go the rest of his life without ever opening up another book having to do with water and it would be too soon.

Hermione sat up straight in her chair. "Hey, I think I found something," she announced.

Harry got out of his chair to bend over the page Hermione was reading, skimming it over her shoulder, resolutely ignoring how close he was to her and that he could feel the warmth from her body through his shirt.

"The Bubble-head Charm is a charm to create a bubble of air around an object, usually a person's head or their entire body, which enables them to breathe the oxygen within the bubble for a limited time," Hermione read quickly aloud.

"That- that sounds perfect," Harry breathed, feeling a smile break out on his face for the first time in what felt like months. "We found it!" He grinned up at Ron and put an impulsive arm around Hermione for a quick half-hug of jubilation.

"No, wait."

Those two words killed his excitement in a moment and he deflated. Hermione was still skimming through the fine-print explanation about the Bubble-head Charm before looking up at Harry.

"It's a N.E.W.T. level Charm and very difficult to master even at an advanced level. I don't think I could do it."

She paused and Harry filled in what he knew she was thinking but would never say aloud. "And I'm not that advanced in Charms."

Hermione didn't respond other than to put her hand on his arm briefly before she turned back to her book, saying energetically, "Well, there's got to be more than one way to get through the Task. They wouldn't assign a Task that requires all the Champions to use the same Charm or it wouldn't be a proper test of the Champions' abilities. We'll just find the other ones. There's still time."

There's still time…

The sentence started to echo in Harry's mind as the days passed, then weeks, and February 24th loomed ever closer, while the lake started to look more and more forbidding by the day.

He was beginning to have nightmares about being swallowed up by the cold, grey mass of water while something precious to him (once it was his Firebolt, another time it was the book of pictures of his parents which Hagrid had given him at the end of his first year, usually it was some unidentified object that he simply knew in his dream meant a lot to him and he needed to get it back) was snatched away and he could only watch helplessly as it disappeared from sight.

For once, Valentine's Day passed unnoticed-although that was more because he was beginning to go through the days in a bit of a daze, distracted in class and unable to tear his mind away from the thought that he had 10 days (9 days… 8 days…) left to find a way to breathe underwater or he'd lose.

In his nightmares, he would be floundering around in the cold waters of the lake while something precious to him drifted ever further away with all of Hogwarts laughing at him and when he would turn to Hermione, she would look at him with disappointment in her eyes, saying, "You failed, Harry," before turning to Viktor Krum and walking away with Krum-and that somehow made him feel worse than even the idea of losing the Tournament or being humiliated in front of the entire school along with Beauxbatons and Durmstrang.

Harry's earlier idea of getting out of the Tournament by banging his head on the table in the library was looking more attractive by the hour as he let his head fall forward with a light thump to rest his forehead on the open book he'd been staring at for the last two hours.

"There must be something," Hermione muttered for what seemed to be the thousandth time that day, moving a candle closer to her. Her eyes were so tired she was poring over the tiny print of Olde and Forgotten Bewitchments and Charmes with her nose about an inch from the page. "They'd never have set a task that was undoable."

Harry glanced at Hermione, feeling guilt claw at his insides. If he was having nightmares and not sleeping well, he knew Hermione was doing little better. She looked as if she hadn't gotten a proper night's sleep in two months, which was close to being the case. There were dark shadows under her eyes and she was pale, exhausted, a frown furrowing her brows as she tried to read. For a moment, he wished desperately that they were alone so he could do something, say something, to tell her how grateful he was for her help, how much it meant to him that she was working so hard to help him, that she hadn't given up yet. But he couldn't, not with Ron there, and he settled for resting his hand on her shoulder for a moment. She glanced at him, trying to smile encouragingly but only managed a wan twitch of her lips. He didn't say anything, just smiled slightly, thanking her with his eyes, and knew she understood as her own eyes brightened and she gave him her first real smile in weeks.

"This is impossible," Ron burst out in frustration, interrupting the silence. "Harry, just go down to the lake, stick your head in and yell at the merpeople to give back whatever they've nicked and see if they chuck it out. Best you can do, mate."

"And then the merpeople will laugh at me to say nothing of everyone else," Harry responded sardonically.

"There's a way of doing it!" Hermione insisted. "There just has to be!"

"Yeah," Harry sighed glumly. "I need to be a fish; I need gills."

"Gills…" Hermione repeated slowly, thoughtfully.

And then she proceeded to shock both Ron and Harry by leaping up out of her seat, exclaiming, "Harry, that's it! You're brilliant!", giving Harry a quick hug and then rushing out of their section of the library.

"She's lost it. Mental, completely mental," Ron said, shaking his head a little, as if in pity for Hermione's lost sanity.

Harry stared after where Hermione had disappeared into the stacks, feeling a small tentative flare of hope inside him.

Hermione reappeared in a moment with a book called…

"Magical Mediterranean Water-Plants and their Properties?" Ron said disbelievingly. "You have gone mental. What--"

Hermione ignored him as she quickly opened the book up to a page about a third of the way inside it. "Gillyweed," she read aloud from the page. "Gillyweed, when eaten by a human, causes the human to develop gills and webbed feet and fingers, in short, become a human-shaped fish, for a limited time."

She looked up from the book to smile at Harry. "I remember reading about this doing research for a Herbology paper last year, I think. It had slipped my mind entirely; I've been looking for a spell. I didn't even think of a magical plant that might help, until you said you needed gills and I remembered reading something about a plant that gave a person gills."

Harry could have kissed Hermione out of relief and very nearly did, except he glanced at Ron and knew he couldn't. If he was ever going to kiss Hermione, he didn't want to do it in front of Ron. Instead, he gave her a quick hug before taking the book from her and reading through the entry on Gillyweed for himself, wanting to find out everything about this plant he'd never heard of. It sounded- perfect, was just what he needed, and all he needed to do was eat it. No complicated or advanced spell-work needed. Thank God for Hermione.

"Wait," Ron spoke up. "Where are we going to get this Gillyweed? Do they sell it?"

Harry turned automatically to Hermione, who was biting her lip now, her smile gone. "I'm not sure where we could get it. I know it's not in Hogsmeade anywhere. They probably have it in some stores in Diagon Alley…"

"I can't get to Diagon Alley! The perfect solution-and I can't use it because we don't know where we can bloody find it!" Harry burst out, his frustration exploding after his momentary relief only to run into yet another obstacle.

Hermione flinched and he saw a flicker of hurt cross her face and promptly felt like the world's biggest prat. "I'm sorry," he sighed, putting the book down and putting a hand on her arm. "I shouldn't have shouted. Thanks for finding out about this. It's the closest we've come to a solution."

"It's okay, Harry. I'll try to find some Gillyweed in the next three days. Why don't you and Ron keep looking through these books and see if anything else comes up, just in case?"

"Right," Harry agreed. He glanced at his watch to see it was approaching midnight. "It's late. We should sleep now and start looking tomorrow."

Ron yawned, as if on cue. "Best idea I've heard all night, mate," he said with a tired smile.

Hermione looked as if she wanted to get back to searching right away but Harry stopped her. "You should sleep," he told her quietly, closing the books they had taken out of the shelves. "You look tired. We can't get anything done this late at night anyway."

"Hurry it up. Let's go," Ron urged them impatiently and they hurriedly put away the last of the books and followed Ron out of the library.

That night he dreamed that he managed to get through the Second Task and when he was wading out of the lake, clutching his Firebolt in one hand and what was left of the gillyweed (that looked like seaweed) in the other, Hermione flew at him, throwing her arms around him in a hug while everyone at Hogwarts looked on and cheered for him. "Harry, you did it!" He saw her jubilant smile and knew she was happy for him, proud of him, and he felt himself grin widely. It felt good to be a champion…

He awoke with a pleasant sense of hope, even anticipation. Surely it couldn't be too hard to find some Gillyweed, could it?

In the next two days, that thought came back to haunt him as Hermione's mood deteriorated into snappishness at her continuing to run into obstacles to getting Gillyweed. First it was that Gillyweed was only found in one spot in the Mediterranean so it wasn't that common and wasn't used for too many other purposes other than to allow people to swim underwater so it was only sold in a very limited number of stores in Diagon Alley and not always in stock either. She had asked Professor Sprout if she knew of any places to find Gillyweed but Professor Sprout had only been able to name the stores in Diagon Alley.

Harry and Ron were still spending their time in the library and coming up with a whole lot of nothing as far as other ways to survive an hour underwater that didn't involve transfiguring himself into some sort of fish. Harry was beginning to have wild thoughts of trying to use the Summoning Charm again and going into the Lake and simply yelling underwater, "Accio whatever-the-merpeople-took!"

Hermione joined them there that evening and one look at her face told Harry that she still hadn't found any way of getting Gillyweed. But she looked so tired and so disappointed that he didn't say anything as she sat down at the table he was sitting at.

"I went to talk to Dobby and asked him on the off-chance that he might know and he said he would look, anything to help Harry Potter," she said tiredly.

Hermione pulled a book called Weird Wizarding Dilemmas toward her, beginning to flip through it and then snapped it shut in irritation. "This is ridiculous! Who on earth wants to make their nose hair grow into ringlets?"

"I wouldn't mind," they heard Fred Weasley's voice say. "Be a talking point, wouldn't it?"

They all looked up to see Fred and George emerge from behind some bookshelves.

"What're you two doing here?" Ron asked.

"Looking for Hermione. McGonagall wants to see you in her office," George told Hermione.

"Why?" asked Hermione, a surprised expression on her face.

"Dunno… she was looking a bit grim, though," Fred answered.

"We're supposed to take you down to her office," George inserted.

Hermione met Harry's eyes for a moment, dismay in her expression, and Harry felt his stomach clench. Was Professor McGonagall going to tell Hermione off for having tried so hard to help him find out how to do the task when he was supposed to do it alone?

He shrugged a little, feigning a calm he was very far from feeling. "Go on then. Ron and I will meet you in the Common Room later."

"Bring as many of these books as you can, OK?"

"Right," Harry answered, trying to smile.

At eight o'clock, Madam Pince ordered both Harry and Ron out of the library and they both gathered up as many books as they could carry and staggered over to the Gryffindor Common Room, where they set up a sort of camp in one corner, surrounded by the books.

The Common Room emptied out slowly as everyone went to bed.

Ron yawned loudly and Harry glanced up at him. "You can go to sleep if you want to," he relented.

Ron tried to look alert, blinking rapidly. "No, 's okay," he said.

Harry shot him a pointed look and Ron gave in. "Alright, then. Good luck."

"Yeah."

Ron vanished upstairs, leaving Harry alone.

He imagined having to go down to the lake tomorrow morning and telling the judges that he couldn't do the task, pictured Bagman's look of surprise, Karkaroff's satisfied smile, Dumbledore's unspoken but no doubt visible disappointment. He could almost hear Fleur Delacour saying, "I knew it… 'e is too young, 'e is only a little boy,"; pictured Malfoy smirking and flashing his Potter Stinks badge. He saw Hermione's crest-fallen face, the disappointment in her eyes, before she turned away from him…

Argh! He couldn't keep on thinking like this! Harry stood up suddenly, forgetting that Crookshanks was on his lap. Crookshanks hissed angrily as he landed on the floor and gave Harry an annoyed look as he stalked away, tail held high but Harry had no time to apologize to Crookshanks and flew up to his dormitory, grabbing his Invisibility Cloak and hurried to the library, determined to spend the entire night there if necessary. There had to be something in some book they had missed…

To be continued…