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When I finished creating the portkeys, I put these rings in the buttoned inner pocket of my coat.
"Unfortunately," spoke the unstoppable Bagman for the umpteenth time. "Mademoiselle Delacour, the Beauxbatons champion, is eliminated and can no longer take part in this task."
About seven hundred feet from the shore, two wizards jumped into the water from one of the four boats on the lake I hadn't noticed earlier, and not a minute later, they were back on board, holding a slightly bloodied and cut Fleur under their arms. Two other boats were sailing in different directions, and I think they were preparing to evacuate the champions at any moment. The other, a fourth boat, was floating back and forth, too, but it looked like they were just waiting for me to stay above me on the surface.
I cast a Cat's Eye spell on myself for better underwater vision and went into battle transgression, soaring into the sky with black smoke and with great speed rushing to the place where the city of mermaids is located under water.
"Incredible!" Bagman's voice, amplified by the spell, came after me. "A complete transgression at such a young age! Look at the speed!"
The invisible golem kept up, and I bet the viewers could see a pretty impressive flight of the black blob on the round screen, with my features showing at times.
In a dozen seconds and a half, I reached the right spot and headed into the water without a second's hesitation.
"Is this an underwater transgression?" even here, about a mile from the shore, I heard Bagman's voice. Why am I surprised, though? Above the surface of the water, the sound travels much farther.
Moving in transgression underwater was even more disorienting than in normal space because if on the surface there is a sky, earth, trees there grow up, as well as the general direction of architecture, then underwater... Everything is different underwater, and the floating fish does not have to be positioned horizontally to the surface at all. The sight here was a little out of balance, but I found a reference point - the dark part of the hemisphere of the view is directed downwards, and the light part is directed towards the surface. However, this will not work at great depths due to the lack of light, but Black Lake is not Baikal. Here the maximum depth is about two hundred meters, and the water is fairly clear.
Diving pretty fast, using the magic equivalent of an echo sounder along the way, I reached the bottom almost at the very city of mermaids. While the wizards were more or less used to the black smoke of transgression, the poor mermaids began to worry for their well-being when they saw me, hiding in stone huts covered in silt and algae. Although, natural curiosity forced them to look out of all the cracks and watch. Mermaids and newts themselves were not beauties from the movies but a fish-headed mix of man and dolphin. They had their own agriculture at the bottom, tamed devils and other living creatures, whole farms of different types of algae, and they had no problems with tools. In general, a fairly intelligent race.
I quickly reached the square in the middle of the mermaid town, in the center of which stood a huge monument to a newt with a spear. All four of the abductees were tied with seaweed to its soaring tail, and several mermaids and newts with spears were floating around, singing a song from the egg. In fact, I heard it quite a while ago, for the acoustic vibrations of space are perfectly transmitted both from the transgression - making the wizard's voice sound loud and clear, and inward - allowing the wizard to hear.
At the sight of me as a blob of smoke, the water dwellers showed concern, but the most important mermaid with a crown of coral calmed everyone down with a couple of sounds. She seemed familiar with this method of moving wizards.
I made my way to Hermione unhindered, took one of the self-made portkey rings out of my breast pocket, and materialized a hand with it, putting it on the girl's finger. It fit perfectly. I took out my wand and pointed it at the ring.
"Vectis Portus," I uttered the command to activate the artifact contactless, and the girl disappeared, taking some water with her.
I headed toward the small veela, but a pair of mermaids tried to block my path.
"Only one."
"They won't come for her. I'm taking her," I answered briefly, but I didn't seem to convince the mermaids. They tried to grab me, but it was a foolish and useless idea. Then they simply surrounded Gabrielle, preventing me from putting the ring on the girl.
"I'm not leaving her here," I decided to do the Potter trick with extra points for "moral character."
Again the words didn't work, so I pointed my wand at the mermaids, making its tip glow, a sign of Reducto's initial activation. Underwater, it creates a low-frequency vibration, and when fully activated, it causes a directional shockwave. Of course, I would not activate it, but although mermaids are endowed with intelligence, they do not shine with it, more obeying instincts. Here I played on a low-frequency vibration that causes fear, and on the fear of the wizard - they perfectly understand the dangers of the wand.
The mermaids reluctantly parted, and I put a smaller ring on Gabrielle's finger, sending her to the shore as well.