did Trelawney mean?" Deanna pondered to her best friend. Arabella was walking beside her with the same glum and confused expression. It was raining at Hogwarts, and it seemed that the weather had begun to personify Bella's mood; miserable. In fact, it was almost as if the weather knew of her misery, and they just wanted her to suffer further. She concluded that they were succeeding (whoever they were, anyway).

"I'm not entirely sure, Deanna. But I know that it's not good - after the serious death threats from Zoe, the prediction of my future being dangerous doesn't exactly sound promising, does it?" The redhead sighed, fiddling with her Ravenclaw scarf. The winter air was always cold on her neck.

"But Trelawney is bloody mad. I wouldn't listen to her anyway; Zoe is in Hogwarts, so if she wanted to kill you she would've done it by now." Deanna pushed her glasses further up her nose.

"Yes, but she's spending a lot of her time in the hospital wing getting treatment for the burns tha-- that Viktor and I gave her. And I did just spend a whole day away from the castle, hiding from her. She may have planned to-- injure me, uh, that night. Besides, I left the same night that I found out Zoe's plan. She hasn't had chance to advance on me yet."

Deanna stayed silent, and swallowed hard. Arabella was in danger; she hated the thought of her friend being in such a situation. And it was all because of their revengeful werewolf roommate.

Suddenly, as the brunette looked around her, Bella was no longer present at her side.

"Shush," Viktor ordered to the startled redhead, his finger placed upon her lips. "Bella, it's me." The girl had been pulled into a secluded corridor by her lover, much to her own surprise. Upon meeting Viktor's brown eyes, she felt her heartbeat slow. "Diggory was right - the dragon egg will reveal the clue for the Second Task. He's already done it himself. We just need to use the bathroom to put it in water."

Subtly, Viktor removed the Chinese Fireball egg from his bag. It was a scarlet red, decorated with delicate flakes of gold; similar to the markings of the dragon itself. If it wasn't the product of such an aggressive creature, Arabella may have thought that it was beautiful. "C'mon, Vik. We have to get to the bathroom before anyone else does."

●

Within seconds of running hastily through the Hogwarts corridors, the boys' lavatory door was locked tightly, and the taps began pouring warm water into the grand golden bath.

"Tell me what the egg shows once it's in the water." Arabella demanded to Viktor, whom had already changed into swimwear. "I'll write it down or something, so we can discuss it from there." She said, pulling a notepad and magic quill from her school bag.

With the dragon egg in hand, Viktor submerged underwater.

"Come and seek us where our voices sound, we cannot sing above the ground. And while you're searching, ponder this: we'll take what you'll sorely miss. An hour long you'll have to look, and to recover what we took."

He arose to the surface again, panting and sputtering the water from his mouth. "We'll take what you sorely miss? What could that mean?"

Bella stood back in alarm. "Wha-- um, what would you miss the most if it was took from you?"

Viktor paused a moment. "You."

Without chance to react, Bella was pulled into the bath. Laughing in surprise, she gasped at her soaked Ravenclaw uniform, scowling at the eighteen-year-old who had forced her into the water. Viktor cupped her blushing cheeks in his large hands, swiping familiar strands of wet, red hair from her pale complexion.

Their foreheads touched gently and, leaning into a smile, they kissed. His lips were soft against her lips, which were dry and cold-bitten. Arabella's arms coiled around his neck, bringing him closer, as Viktor's fingers snaked up her spine. Her white uniform shirt came up and over her head, inhaling sharply as the warm water spat against her bare skin.

The Bulgarian's lips moved to her collarbone, placing delicate kisses along her throat before reaching the hollow of her flesh. Bella gasped in pleasure, simultaneously blushing at her exposure. She giggled as Viktor's hands travelled to her waist, his fingers tracing the faint freckles on her torso, with his mouth still present on her décolletage.

Momentarily, his lips grazed at the flesh between her covered breasts. Arabella immediately shied from Viktor's romantic hold, but he drew her in closer and resumed placing small pecks along her skin. "Viktor, no." She protested, pushing him away and wrapping her arms around herself like a blanket. "Sorry, it's just-- it makes me feel uncomfortable."

"Oh, uh, that's ok. I'm sorry, Bella. You should've told me."

The redhead chuckled as she climbed from the bath, wringing the water from her soaked uniform. "I did," she laughed again, shaking her head. "It doesn't matter, though."

Viktor clambered from the bath, violently swishing like a dog to release the water from his short hair. He carefully placed a hand on Bella's forearm, and when she didn't resist, gently wrapped his fingers around her wrist. "Really, I am sorry."

With her free arm, she punched the Seeker playfully on the shoulder, before handing him a bunch of clothes. "Lucky for us, I bought spare clothes. I predicted we would get a little drenched." She laughed when he did. "Get dressed."

Viktor gazed at his girlfriend in perplexity. "What for?"

"We'll go to the library to get some books on breathing underwater. It's obviously going to be an underwater task; why else would the dragon egg only reveal the clue once submerged?" She sighed. "What else did the egg say?"

"Something about seeking, and, um, singing. It also said that I will only have an hour for the Second Task. I think I have to look for something that is important to me." Replied Viktor.

"Singing," Bella repeated, eyes wides in realisation. "Singing underwater? That's definitely the merpeople." Then her blood ran cold. "A-a-and they are going to take something important . . . you said the most important thing to you would be me." She shook her head in disbelief. "I-I don't understand."

"The library will have the answer."

●

"Ah, here," Bella spoke, removing a large and dusty book from the library shelf. Opening the contents and flicking rapidly through the pages, she stopped with her finger placed on a single page. "Transfiguration is our most reliable method, providing you can perform it correctly. Besides, I think you will look kind of intimidating if you transformed into an underwater creature . . . something like a shark, for example. Surely you want to intimidate your competitors."

Viktor was reluctant. While he trusted his girlfriend and somewhat agreed with her, he didn't always trust her ideas; sometimes the thinking behind it was far too complex. "What about the Bubble-Head Charm? Isn't that safer?"

"Fleur Delacour is already doing that - you will need to be more memorable."

"But transforming into a shark, Bella?"

The redhead set the book down on the table, with an unintentional force that made it slam with a loud bang upon impact. "What's more memorable than a big, obvious shark in a Durmstrang jersey?"

Arabella was abruptly frightened by a sudden cold touch grasping her wrist. Upon seeing Erin's concerned eyes staring into her own, she glanced at Viktor with a reassuring nod before following the brunette to a separate table - she knew that was what her roommate had wanted.

Bella didn't need to ask; the subject of the conversation was inevitably Zoe. "I asked Madam Pomfrey last night, and she said that Zoe should be out of the hospital wing completely by the spring. She's been in and out for a while now - magical treatment is a long process, apparently - but, um, she'll be free to attend lessons again come the Easter holiday. That means she'll have the chance to kill you, or injure you, whenever she wants."

Arabella was hardly surprised, yet the thought of her psychopathic roommate (and the burn scars etched into her skin) still made her bones shiver. "We have to be allowed to go home for the holidays. I can't be stuck in the castle like that - not when Zoe is there!" She frowned. "Why are you helping me, anyway?"

Erin mirrored the same solemn expression. "Like I told you before: as much as I hate you, I would never want to kill you. So I don't want my best friend to kill you, either."

Wow sorry for the long ass wait on this chapter 😅 the Christmas holidays started & it just got busier each day lmao

Things are getting dramatic in this chapter though ahhh !! I feel like the plot is starting to get a little repetitive or boring, so I'm going to try to progress it a bit more in the following chapters.

+ don't worry about the whole revengeful Zoe thing; she will not end up hurting Bella because they will find a solution to avoid the danger okok (& then something may or may not happen to Zoe that means she is no longer a threat hmm 🤔)