Not what they came here to practice, but still good.

They can combine both things - like Anathema can swim away from Ellie, and if Ellie captures her, she gets a kiss.

Strong motivation.

Anathema can be quite slippery. It's excellent practice, really, and can fill their training hours up through the day before the Task.

Ellie will be as prepared as she can be, then.

She has to be there about two hours before lunch. The crowd's already gathering, and the judges seem to be setting up some kind of viewing screen.

Also, Anathema's nowhere in evidence - hasn't been since shortly after breakfast.

That's... worrisome.

She checks with Professor Reynolds quickly before her start time.

"I haven't seen her, no."

"Can you look? I have to go report..."

"I will."

"Okay." Off to the task.

This one is again announced with enthusiasm! They'll be entering at the same time, and given a one hour limit - they can still complete the task after that, but they'll begin losing points fairly quickly. The audience will be able to watch them navigate through the lake on the view screens - this will also allow any rescues that need to be done.

The premise of the task is that someone precious has been taken from each Champion and is being held in the selkie village below. The Task is for each Champion to rescue their hostage, bringing them back to the surface.

...Ellie suddenly has a very good idea of where Anathema went. She may have to kill whoever came up with this idea.

They're told not to cast any preparatory magic until the start time (indicated by a loud cracking sound), allowed to strip their robes, told to spread out - fairly far from each other - and then Bagman casts a spell, creating an echoing 'pop.'

Victor Krum immediately begins transfiguring his head into a shark's, while Cedric Diggory casts the Bubble-Head Charm on himself as he's wading into the lake. Both boys wore diving suits under their robes.

Elodie drinks a potion as she shrugs out her robes, and does a long arcing dive into the lake. Sunlight glints off new scales growing to encase her legs.

Ellie casts her own set of charms, much like Cedric, and hurries into the depths.

It is very dark and very cold down here! Fortunately, Ellie's warmth and sight charms are more than up to the task - especially given practice in an actually pitch black Chamber of Secrets. The sight charms that don't just increase perception of ambient light are a bit trippy, and very, very effective -

Including at things like 'spotting the angry grindylows swarming from the plants coating the lake bed.'

(Not quite as effective at spotting the selkie village, but the books made it sound like selkies like to live fairly deeply and there's odd ridges and turns here limiting her line of sight.)

Ellie spreads a mass slowing charm across the grindylows and tries to kick a little higher to get around the ridges.

That does slow down the grindylows! They're still fairly quick, but not going to imminently catch her - but they're screeching, she can just barely hear it, and it's apparently disturbing other groups going by the rustling.

There's tall patches of dark green kelp rising out of the underwater forest, odd streamers spreading from them - she'll have to navigate carefully if she wants to avoid touching any, though she doesn't actually recognize the species. The grindylows seem to be avoiding the giant kelp.

She can see - a bit in the distance - a gap between the giant kelp, the bottom edges of it lined with carved standing stones. She'll have to go a bit out of her way to get through that, though.

Best not to agitate the kelp, yeah, especially if the natives are wary of it.

Ellie tries to make for the standing stones, hexing the grindylows as she goes.

She can get there, though the kelp sometimes sways dangerously close to her - but the grindylows do seem to be rapidly becoming wary of her. Angrier, but wary now. There's a straight shot through the forest - there's a few other batches of giant kelp farther in, and more intermittent standing stones seem to mark a trail preventing them from closing in on the passageway. The water feels oddly fresh, and the light filters in oddly.

Must be getting closer.

Probably she'll see some of the selkies soon.

She indeed does - they seem to be keeping low, and they're immensely hard to see, almost but not quite like they're disillusioned. Still - there's a glimpse of buildings on that ridge over there...

The selkies appear to have spotted her, but aren't moving to attack yet.

If they don't bother her, she won't bother them. Not that she won't stay on alert.

She'll try heading to the center of town to search for Anathema.

There's a tall pillar in the middle, with green-brown ropes around it - there's three humans tied to the post above the level of the roofs, hair floating in the water. One's Cho Chang - one of Ellie's Quidditch teammates who seems close to Cedric - and a second looks a lot like a tiny Elodie. There's a stir catty-corner in the village to Ellie - it looks like Cedric's approaching the pillar, and will probably reach it just after Ellie.

Anathema's the third. She looks unconscious.