Team: Chudley Cannons
Position: Chaser #3
Mandatory Prompt: K-pop song - Dinosaur by AKMU. Theme - believing in the unbelievable even when nobody else does.
Optional Prompts: (emotion) frustration, (word) belittle, (character) Louis Weasley
Word Count: 1,730 words
Louis didn't know when his fascination started. He had loved dinosaurs when he was a young kid that was the action figures he wanted to play with compared with his older sisters' interest in dolls and teddy bears. The magical world was never interested in dinosaurs so he always made his parents and aunts and uncles go into the muggle world in order to get his presents for him.
As he got older his obsession expanded more into mythological creatures. This was thanks mainly to his Aunt Luna and her twins. They would regularly travel to find these creatures that everyone else said didn't exist and bring back souvenirs and stories of their adventures.
These two interests naturally combined as he grew older, and he started looking into muggle animals that no one believed in. It started with Bigfoot. Louis would spend his weekends at his grandparents searching the woods that surrounded their house convinced that was were he was hiding. He stopped searching for him after a nasty prank was played on him by his cousin Fred.
There was a solid summer when the El Chupacabra gave him nightmares every night until his Aunt Luna gave him a protection amulet. The Feejee Mermaid fascinated him for a week, but that quickly waned as he knew mermaids were real. It was the same with other muggle mythical creatures. Were ghosts real? Duh, a bunch lived in Hogwarts. Vampires? Yes, he's even met one or two before though they tend to keep to themselves. Goblins? They run the bank. Just go shopping and you'll see them. Werewolves? Teddy was a half werewolf and he was the coolest person he knew.
It was the Loch Ness Monster that really grabbed a hold of him, and wouldn't let him go. Louis wasn't sure why. Maybe because some theories thought she was a dinosaur. Maybe because she lived in the sea and he lived right next to one. So instead of going exploring maybe once a month, he could look out everyday from his own house. He loved the sea. The forest? Not so much.
He read books on Nessie, set out a muggle recording camera outside numerous times in an attempt to catch her when he couldn't be there himself. He cut out pictures and articles and put them on his wall. When he got into drawing, Nessie was his favorite subject. On family trips he begged his parents to always go somewhere near the water, convinced that maybe he could catch sight of her over there. If someone new asked about his interests, Nessie was the first thing out of his mouth.
At first his parents supported his new "hobby" just like all the others. They bought the books he wanted, let him put up the articles and pictures on his walls, bought him the video camera, and went along on the trips to help him search for Nessie. His sisters teased him, like always, but they weren't malicious about it.
Years passed and things changed. He didn't understand what they wanted from him. Was he supposed to abandoned his hobbies and interests when he got to Hogwarts? Only want to talk about house points, house pride, magic, homework, and Quidditch like all of the other students? He wasn't sure, but he did know when their tolerant support stopped.
It was when he was eleven after his acceptance letter from Hogwarts came. His mother had gone to Beauxbatons Academy of Magic, but Victoire had wanted to go to Hogwarts and that had decided it for the rest of them. Their parents didn't want to them to be split up. Even though that was where Louis had wanted to go. The Academy had a wonderful view of the Bay of Biscay. Some years later Louis wondered if it was because they knew he had wanted to be by the open ocean to continue his Nessie watch that they had invented the didn't want to be split up excuse. After all, Dominique had wanted to go to Hogwarts ever since she learned about the moving staircases since she's really into architecture. An acceptable interest apparently.
So, Louis was moping and spending as much time outside as he could before he spent most of the year in a castle closed off to any large body of water. The only thing interesting in the Hogwarts Black Lake was the Giant Squid, and even then, he was super boring. All he did was laze around the lake and stopped kids from drowning Louis knew despite older students trying to create spooky horror stories about him eating annoying firsties.
Louis was on one of the big flat stones that covered the edge of their cottage before it fell into a sharp cliff. He was expressly forbidden from climbing on them, but after losing the big blow out about where he was going to go to school, Louis didn't feel much like following his parent's rules. It was hot and humid, but the sea was calm with barely any ripples in the gently rolling waves.
His knees were pulled up, and his elbow was resting on them with his fist propping up his pouting face. His eyes were on the horizon, unfocused, his thoughts not even on finding Nessie when he saw her for the first time. At first the vague shape didn't register in his mind, but then he blinked and suddenly he realized what he was seeing.
Nessie was huge just like he knew she would be. She looked very similar to the sauropod dinosaurs with a long neck held elegantly above the water. Fins started from her forehead and ran down her spine. Louis couldn't see a tail. Nessie looked so big above the water, Louis had to wonder just how far down in the water she went. He wished he could see her legs. He wondered did she have scales? Fur? Feathers? He could see she was darker in color, maybe a grayish blueish color though she was far and his vision could be biased since she was in the water. Were there gills on her neck? What was she doing?
Without realizing it, Louis had stood up and walked forward as he tried to get a good look at her. He watched as she snatched a fish out of the water, tossed it up in the air, and before she swallowed it, Louis had fallen off the huge stone.
"Ahhh!" he screamed, throwing his hands backwards in an attempt to catch ahold of something in order to stop his fall.
Louis's head smacked hard against a sharp corner. The shock stopped his screams. His vision went wavy. He could feel blood trickling down his face. His head throbbed. His hands stung. One of his shoes fell off.
In one second air was whipping his across his cheeks and in the next, salt water was suffocating him. Louis was normally a very competent swimmer, but with the shock of hitting the water from a very high height he flailed opening his eyes and swallowing water in the exact opposite actions that he should have done.
Louis tried to swim up, but he wasn't even sure if it was up. His clothes were weighing him down. His breathing quick and panicked. His lungs burned.
He was just accepting his death thinking at least he had gotten to see Nessie before he died when she was right in front of him.
The massive creature swam ridiculously fast. One second he registered she was there in front of him Louis Weasley and in the next he was held gently in her jaws breaking the water's barrier and breathing fresh air.
He gasped and flailed on instinct, torn between festination and terror. Then he was laid gently on the beach, and the massive sea creature was once again gone in the ocean. Louis coughed and spat out water onto the sand. He tried to look out into the sea. He wanted to see her again, tell her thank you for saving his life, but then his family was upon him.
"Oh, Louis, my darling, what happened to you? Are you alright?" his mother spoke in rapid French. His dad was muttering spells in to get the salt water out of his lungs. His sisters hung back, clutching each other's hands.
Louis vomited up water again and again until he laid exhausted in the sand. His dad picked him up and carried him into the house while his mom ordered his sisters to get the family first aid kit.
"What happened?" his mom demanded again. "Louis don't lie to me. Were you on top of the cliff?"
"Mom, Dad! I saw her! I saw Nessie!" he exclaimed excitedly.
Immediately, his parents' faces changed from concern to shock to frustration.
"Don't tell me you almost died because of your bloody imaginary monster," his dad snapped.
His mom pressed a little too hard on his head wound, and he flinched away even as he stared in shock at his dad. He had never called Nessie imaginary before.
"She isn't imaginary!" Louis exclaimed. "I saw her and when I fell, she saved me!"
All four of his family scoffed at him.
"Don't be ridiculous," Victoire said.
"Maybe he has a concussion," Dominque suggested.
Louis glared at them. "I don't! I know what I saw."
"Louis," his dad said. His voice was low in the usual you are about to be punished voice.
"She's real!" Louis protested. "She saved me!"
"No more imaginary monsters," his mom said. "We humored you, but this is too much. I don't want to hear any more of this."
"You are grounded for the rest of summer for being out of bounds, and I want you to throw all of this monster stuff away," his dad said as he finished cleaning up the rest of Louis's wounds.
Louis tried to protest but they wouldn't hear another word from him. They treated him with contempt, frustration. His sisters even called him crazy. Louis had never before been so mad at his family. He had never felt more belittled.
But no matter what, Louis knew what he saw and experienced. He knew Nessie was real. He knew she saved his life. And Louis never stopped telling people about it. No one ever believed him, but that didn't matter. Because Louis did.