LUMOS - Fred Weasley

seventeen

Ava had put on her swimsuit under some denim overalls. After joining Harry, she led him to the Prefects bathroom. They were both hidden under the invisibility cloak to avoid Filch since it was past curfew. Ava had the Marauders map in her hand whilst Harry had the egg in his arms. When they reached the statue of Boris the Bewildered, a lost-looking wizard with his gloves on the wrong hands, Ava located the right door leaned close to it and muttered the password, "Pinefresh," just as Cedric had told her. The door creaked open. They slipped inside, bolted the door behind them, and pulled off the Invisibility Cloak, looking around. Her immediate reaction was that it would be worth becoming a prefect just to be able to use this bathroom. She could even meet Cedric up here. It was softly lit by a splendid candle-filled chandelier, and everything was made of white marble, including what looked like an empty, rectangular swimming pool sunk into the middle of the floor. About a hundred golden taps stood all around the pool's edges, each with a differently coloured jewel set into its handle. There was also a diving board. Long white linen curtains hung at the windows; a large pile of fluffy white towels sat in a corner, and there was a single golden framed painting on the wall.

Whilst Harry was putting his things away in the corner, Ava knelt to open the few taps. One tap gushed pink and blue bubbles the size of footballs; another poured ice-white foam so thick that Ava thought it would have supported her weight if she'd cared to test it; a third sent heavily perfumed purple clouds hovering over the surface of the water. A sweet scent of vanilla and peach wafted through the air with a few notes iris: Ava's perfume. She took off her overalls and placed them on top of Harry's stuff. After Harry turned off all the taps they both slid in the water. The golden egg was on the edge of the bath waiting to be opened. It was so deep that her feet barely touched the bottom, they did a couple of lengths, splashed each other and wrestled before swimming back to the side and treading water, staring at the egg.

"Cedric told me to put it in the water," she said as she lifted it in her slippery hands.

" Still don't know how you got him to tell you all that," he chuckled.

"Just take the bloody egg," she rolled her eyes whilst handing it to him.

Harry lowered the egg beneath the foamy surface and opened it . . . and this time, it did not wail. A gurgling song was coming out of it, a song whose words couldn't distinguish through the water.

"You need to put your head under too," she ordered.

Harry took a great breath and slid under the surface, Ava following his actions — and now, sitting on the marble bottom of the bubble-filled bath,  a chorus of eerie voices singing from the open egg could be heard:

"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."