𝙛𝙤𝙤𝙡𝙨 (𝖽𝗋𝖺𝖼𝗈 𝗆𝖺𝗅𝖿𝗈𝗒 𝗑 𝗋𝖾𝖺𝖽𝖾𝗋)

chapter twelve

Slowly and carefully, I descended the staircase in front of the Great Hall. My blue dress robes were limiting my movement slightly, which was irritating.

"You look lovely."

The voice caught my attention and I looked up. For a moment, I had forgotten that Draco had said yes to going to the ball with me, but now he stood in front of me, holding out his hand for me to grab.

"Thank you," I said as I stepped down next to him. "Again, I'm sorry about this. I needed a dance partner and you were the easiest person to go with."

"It's no problem, just don't kill my feet," he answered with a laugh.

I chuckled. "No promises."

Together, we walked into the Great Hall, the first people inside along the other Champions and their dates. More people were allowed in, but they gathered around us, leaving a wide enough circle for us to begin the dance.

The music started, and I focused all of my willpower onto my feet to make sure they went in the proper places. Draco winced each time I stepped on his foot, and I whispered quick apologies.

Even though the dance didn't last any longer than five minutes, Draco and I fell into a rhythm, and it got to a point where I wasn't stepping on his feet at all. With every spin and synchronised steps, we fell more and more into a pattern.

Soon, I took my eyes off of my feet and looked up instead. I faced Draco immediately, the two of us staring into each other's eyes for less than a second before looking away again. As we continued dancing, though, I couldn't seem to get his eyes out of my mind. They were a silvery-grey, and it felt almost like they could see straight through me if I wasn't careful.

I looked around, noticing that the Great Hall was filled with pairs dancing with one another. The ball had started without us noticing. I informed Draco, and we made our way to the side of the room.

"I am so sorry," I said as soon as we stopped moving.

"It's okay, Y/n. My feet don't hurt that badly." Draco paused, thinking. "Star's at that table by the tree," he said, gesturing to the side of the room where the Slytherin table usually sat at.

"Thank you," I responded, "and thanks again for helping me tonight."

~~~

"Hey, Potter, wait up!"

I stopped in the middle of the crowded hallway and turned around, instantly regretting that choice as a group of students walked straight into me. I moved to the side of the hall and looked around for the source of the voice.

A boy with brown hair and Hufflepuff robes appeared next to me.

"Cedric Diggory, right?"

"Yeah, that's me. This is going to sound odd, but you know the golden egg you took from the dragon?"

I nodded.

"It has a clue in it," he said quietly, his voice suddenly dropping like the fate of the world depended on these words. "I'm not sure what it is yet. You need to open the egg underwater. Do you want to work together to decipher it later?"

"Sure."

"Okay, that's great. I have to get to class now, but I'll talk to you later!" Cedric ran off after that, leaving me alone in the crowded hallway. I joined the herd of students and made my way to Potions in the dungeons.

~~~

Tying up my hair to keep it out of my face, I slipped into the bathtub in my dormitory's bathroom. I grabbed the golden egg and pulled it under the water, opening it quickly.

Its song began immediately. "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."

A shiver ran down my spine, chilling me to my core. What did that message mean? The lyrics rang through my head again and again, to the point where i had it memorised.

I hopped out of the tub and, after quickly drying myself, dressed and ran out of my dormitory. I checked the clock: seven o'clock in the evening. Dinner would still be open, meaning that there is a chance of Cedric still being there. I dashed into the Great Hall and scoped the room for a sight of the Hufflepuff. He met my eyes and stood up, walking towards me as soon as he left his seat.

"Did you open the egg?" he asked, taking a bite of an apple he must have grabbed from the table.

"I did. Have you heard it yet?"

"Yeah. I wrote down the lines." He pulled a crumpled piece of paper from his pocket and shoved it into my hands. "My notes are on there. The first two lines, 'Come seek us where our voices sound, we cannot sing above the ground', make it sound outlandish, you know?"

I nodded, having felt the same. "Maybe it has to deal with the merfolk in the Black Lake? I see them all of the time through the windows in the Slytherin common room and they always look like they're singing."

"Wait, you guys have windows that look out to the Black Lake?"

"Yeah."

"That's cool. Anyway, the merfolk makes a lot of sense. What about the rest of it?"

"It sounded like they would be taking something of ours and we would have an hour to search for it."

"Maybe they're going to take one something that means a lot to us? It also said that if we didn't find it in time, it would disappear," he added.

"So, to summarize what we think, the merfolk are going to take something we truly love and then give us an hour to save it?"

"Yeah, that sounds right." He took another bite of his apple as I returned his paper.

"Can you give the message to Harry? He hasn't been talking to me lately but I still want to help him," I said.

Cedric nodded, and we split paths. I returned to the Slytherin Housing area.

Using the password to enter, I took a deep breath and observed the common room. I had seen this room millions of times, passing through it at least twice every day. I took a moment now to appreciate its beauty.

The walls were stone, grey and cold, with green and silver tapestries hanging on each wall. The temperature was well made up for by the everblazing fire that sat in the fireplace, its flame constantly casting tall shadows on the floor and walls from the furniture in the room. There were a couple of couches and loveseats gathered around the center of the room by the fire, with a table in the middle. Larger tables, usually used for homework or snacking, were placed around the room, six chairs at each.

One table sat right next to the giant window on the wall opposing the entrance. It covered the majority of the wall, leaving only five feet of stone that surrounded the twenty-feet tall window. At first glance, only colours were seen: different greens around the floor, seaweed, and shades of blue that was the water. Upon further inspection, creatures, like Grindylows and the merfolk could sometimes be seen swimming through the cold water. Occasionally, the Giant Squid, Bubbles, as we had nicknamed it, would pass the window. He was huge, probably large enough to cover the whole window if he wanted to. Bubbles was also bright blue, making him hard to see in the water if you didn't know what to look for.

I smiled softly, wondering why the Slytherins had such a bad reputation. Surely, if students from the other Houses saw what beauty we had simply in our common room, they would love to be with the snakes.