Disclaimers: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by J.K. Rowling, various publishers including, but not limited to, Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros. Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.
Author's Notes: Aaaand I'm back with more Hugo/Lily; my next-gen OTP. I love this pairing, but I recognise that not many people feel the same about it. I don't mind though, I write them for my own pleasure, and nonetheless now I'm super excited about sharing my story. This is a kind of a retelling of "The Little Mermaid". I hope you'll like it as much as I enjoyed writing it. This will have 11 shortish chapters, updates will be frequent and close by. The whole story was beta-read by the lovely Alice Helena. Thank you, my love. Enjoy, and if you do, don't forget to let me know - I mean, if you like this pairing too, it looks like I'm the only one writing it, so you better let me know.. ;)
Warnings: Cousin Incest. Sexual Content. Underwater Blowjob. Merpeople Dynamics. Mates.
Prologue
A deceptively glorious Sunday morning in May.
Lily closed her eyes and sighed. The warm breeze caressed her cheeks, and the inches of skin she had strategically exposed to the sun. A small smile of delight painted her face as she felt the radiant heat stroke her nose and her knees.
"Ooh! Lily's grinning again!" giggled Alice somewhere at her left. "She's thinking about that boy she won't talk about…"
Susan chuckled, her legs shifting indelicately under Lily's head as her hands pulled a bit more forcefully at the lock she was stubbornly trying to braid. She loved to braid Lily's hair, just as much as Lily hated it. She always looked like a Gorgon afterwards, with crimson snakes spurting out of her head. "Come on, Lily, tell us about the boy you like…" she added to the tease.
Lily didn't even open her eyes. "I'm not grinning, I'm smiling," she pointed out, "and I was just enjoying the sun." She cracked an eye open to look up at Susan, still busy braiding. "And the quiet," she added meaningfully.
"Bo-ring," sing-songed Alice.
Lily glanced at her and rolled her eyes. "Not as boring as you are. Studying Transfiguration on Sunday morning…" She shook her head.
Alice looked back at her. "I bet one Galleon that you've already finished your homework," she replied sharply, "otherwise, knowing you, you'd be in the library now, hunched over all the tomes you managed to put on your table."
Lily sat up slowly, ignoring Susan's protestations about her hair. "Knowing me?" she asked with a pout in her voice. "You talk as if I spend tons of hours studying."
Alice looked cheekily at her. "You do. You're just like your cousin."
"Which one?" asked Lily nonchalantly, brushing some grass from her skirt. "I have nine, remember?"
"Well, not Fred," chuckled Susan as she rummaged her pockets for an elastic band, two fingers firmly pinched on her lock.
"Rose," replied Alice, "all prim and studious. Little Miss Perfect." She grinned at Lily, tugging some of her blonde hair behind her ear.
Lily snorted in a very un-prim like manner. She loved Rose with all her heart, but she recognised the teasing in being compared to her under those circumstances. "Except, I'm not Head Girl," she pointed out, "and I'm not taking thirteen N.E.W.T.s, like she was." She turned to glare at Susan as her friend tugged her hair and added, "And I want to play Quidditch professionally, not become Minister for Magic."
Alice giggled. "Then your other cousin. You know, the fit one who is still at Hogwarts and who spends all his time with you…"
"Hugo!"
"Exactly, Hugo," said Alice with a vigorous nod. "See? Even Becky knows who we're talking about and she just got here."
Becky O'Donnell was gasping loudly, trying to catch her breath, with her hands on her knees as she stopped in front of Lily, her round face all red for the run up the hill.
Lily chuckled. "No, I'm Lily," she told her. "I know we have the same hair, but Hugo is the very tall one with the long nose. Oh, and he's also a boy."
Becky glared at her as best as she could from behind her tumbled hair. "No!" she gasped. "Hugo! Mark Goldstein! Fighting!"
"Breathe, Becky," sighed Susan, finally trapping Lily's braid into a tight band, "use some verbs."
Becky gulped down some more air. "Hugo and Mark are fighting near the cliff," he finally gasped, "for you, Lily!"
Lily's lips parted in surprise. "Me?" she asked in a murmur. "Why?"
Becky threw her hands in the air. "I don't know!" she told her impatiently. "Something about what you did last Hogsmeade weekend with Mark."
Susan and Alice seemed to perk their ears up. "Oooh, what did you do?" asked Alice.
"Something naughty?" giggled Susan.
Lily pushed her hands on the ground to stand up and glared at them both. "No, we didn't do anything, only got a Butterbeer at the Three Broomsticks while we were trying to study," she replied curtly.
Alice snorted, as if she had expected something like that from Lily. Trying to study while she was sitting in the Three Broomsticks with a boy… Except that was exactly why she had met him there, to study. He had asked her to help him and she had agreed, and that was all.
"You need to come now!" insisted Becky. "They're firing hexes like they are firing insults." She shifted her weight on her feet as if she was ready to run all the way back down from where she had just come right at that instant.
Lily nodded slowly not quite managing to fathom why Hugo and Mark would be fighting over her. Quidditch maybe, but Lily? "Oh Merlin!" she sighed. "Okay. Let's go."
All three girls jumped up and screeched in excitement. Alice snapped her book close, and Susan started babbling about how she really wanted two wizards fighting for her, too, at least once in her life.
Lily did her best to ignore their silly comments – "Whoever wins is going to get a kiss, right Lily?", "Do you think I can console the loser?", "Who do you think is better-looking? Hugo or Mark?" – and hurried down the steep hill that led to the cliffs overlooking the lake.
She tried to think of all the reasons why her cousin would start a fight – Lily had the distinct feeling that Hugo was the one to blame there, and she didn't even know why – with a boy she had only agreed to go to Hogsmeade to for a couple of hours, before she met her friends in Honeydukes.
She remembered Hugo being a bit disappointed when she had told him that she was going to the Three Broomsticks with Mark. They were supposed to go to Spintwitches Sporting Needs that weekend, to buy her new arm-length gloves with the money she had gotten for her birthday. Hugo had been not-so-unusually excited about new Quidditch gloves that weren't even for him, but Lily just hadn't understood how into those pieces of equipment he actually was until he had snapped at her that if she preferred to spend an afternoon with Mark instead of listening to very interesting trivia facts about gloves, it was perfectly fine with him.
Then he had screamed at her during all their Quidditch trainings, and she had felt the urge to send a Bludger his way more than once, luckily she was not a Beater, otherwise she might just have acted on her desire. And to top that, he had bossed her around at all the Prefects meetings that week, and paired her with the most annoying people for patrol. In those moments Lily couldn't help thinking that he was a far meaner Head Boy than Scorpius Malfoy had ever been – although that was partly because of Rose's good influence on her boyfriend.
Lily endured the rough treatment because she was sure that Hugo was just stressed out about his N.E.W.T.s. They all were after all. Lily cried herself to sleep when she remembered that she had to scrape at least an A in Potions.
"There!" Becky's finger shot right in front of Lily's nose and pointed at two small figures sending hexes in each other's direction and calling each other names in-between. A small crowd had already gathered around them and more students seemed to hurry to take a look at the show.
If possible, Susan and Alice screeched even more excitedly than before as they ran the last few feet towards them.
As the girls neared the scene, Mark cried a Full-Body Bind Curse, but Hugo jumped to his left and the crowd gasped and cheered, nodding in approval as Hugo pointed his wand to him and hissed a "Densaugeo."
Mark ducked quickly and the spell almost hit a first year straight in the face. A few people gasped again, some went to check on the little girl who stepped back with a scared face. Mary Breen, the Head Girl, looked furiously from the Ravenclaw young man to the Head Boy as she shouted at them to stop.
They didn't even seem to notice that she was there.
"Bloody sodding hell," Lily heard Mary mutter under her breath as she hurried past. The Head Girl gasped softly as she noticed Lily. "Oh Lily!" she sighed, apparently relieved that she was there. "Stop them before I call Professor McGonagall and ask her to expel them."
Lily glanced at her, nodding and trying not to look as lost as she felt. She had no idea what to do to stop them, but probably the best thing she could do was letting them know that she was there and that if they had any problems with her – or about her – they could all talk like ordinary people instead of hexing their brains off.
"Go, Lily!" cheered Alice in her ear, while Susan murmured a "So exciting!" near her.
She tried to focus on channelling her mother's expression when she was angry and furrowed her brow in a hard scowl as she stepped in front of the crowd and between the two young men, hands on her hips, just like Grandma Molly did when Uncle Charlie left mud all over her kitchen floor.
"Hey!" she cried, her head going from Hugo to Mark. "What the hell is going here?" She could feel the eyes of all the students there trained on her and she felt her cheeks become hotter as she spoke in front of all those people.
Hugo looked at her, surprised as if he hadn't expected that interruption, least of all from her. His blue eyes widened for a moment before he pressed his lips together in a thin line. "Stand back, Lily," he said darkly, "I'll take care of him."
She looked back at him a bit irritated that he would talk to her like that. "No, no, no," she told him, "you're not going to 'take care' of anybody. Put down your wand." She turned to look at Mark. "Both of you."
Mark smirked at her from behind his long, brown locks. "Whatever you say, baby," he replied, lowering his wand.
Lily glared at him. "Don't call me baby," she hissed, "I'm not your baby."
He flashed her a smile. "But I thought you were, after last weekend," he told her, causing some girls in the crowd to murmur and giggle at her back.
She blushed crimson, her eyes sending sparks in his direction. "We just had a Butterbeer at the Three Broomsticks," she snapped, "because you said you needed help with your Transfiguration essay, that's why I brought mine, remember?"
"And do you remember what happened next?" he asked her, winking.
She felt as if her face was on fire. "Yes," she spat, "I left when you kept dropping your quill to look under my skirt."
"You pig!" snarled Hugo suddenly. He muttered under his breath and a spell flew near Lily's ear and hit the grass at Mark's feet.
"Hugo!" snapped Lily, stepping back.
He didn't look at her, his wand was still pointed towards Mark. "He said that you kissed him, Lily," he grunted, "he said that you let him put a hand under your top."
There were more voices and gasps raising from the crowd and Lily turned to glare at the people there, before sending daggers towards Mark, who was still smirking. "You vermin," she hissed, before turning towards Hugo and taking a deep, calming breath. "But there's no need to fight for that." She raised a hand and took a step towards Hugo. "And I want to be the one to take care of him." She took another step and then another. "Alright?" she asked gently as she stood in front of him. Honestly, if Hugo took away from her the pleasure of hexing Mark silly, she would hex Hugo in retaliation.
He darkened, his wand was still pointed to Mark and he still refused to look at Lily, but she could see a faint blush creeping up his neck.
"Please, Hugo," she said, smiling up at him.
He sighed and lowered his wand, looking down at her. "Alright," he agreed, as she placed a hand on his arm. "I won't touch him until you say—"
"Wingardium Leviosa," chuckled Mark behind her.
There was a rustling of fabric, and then Lily shivered as some cold air brushed against her knickers, until finally she heard the resounding laughter coming from Mark as he told her what a nice sight she was.
There was more laughter and whistles coming from the boys in the crowd, while most of the girls were gasping and screeching and calling Mark names.
Lily just whined as she tried to push down her skirt to cover herself. She was probably going to have some steam coming out of her ears soon, because if her face was on fire before, now she felt as if she could compete with the sun. She almost didn't notice as Hugo sidestepped her and started to fire hexes at Mark, while Mark responded without hesitation.
She didn't pay them any attention as she tried to keep her skirt down and find her wand in her pocket at the same time. She could still feel some people looking at her, but luckily most of the students were staring intently at the two boys running around and dodging spells.
"Finite Incantatem!" She pointed the wand at her own skirt and it finally went down all around her legs again.
"Are you okay?" asked Susan, hurrying at her side with Becky and Alice.
"Merlin, what an idiot!" muttered Becky under her breath.
"I hope your cousin hexes his arse," gritted Alice through her teeth, "I'll do that too!"
"Oh no," snapped Lily, glaring at Mark. "I want to be the one to do that! Bloody hell, what a vermin, I'm going to… I'm going to…" She growled and threw her hands up in the air. "I don't even know what I'm going to do to him, but I'll do something!"
"Lily!"
She could feel Becky try to grab her arm to keep her there, but she wriggled free and walked towards Hugo and Mark, wand still in her hand and a furious expression over her face.
She came to stand between the two boys again, dodging spells in the meantime. "Now, stop this right—"
"Stand back, Lily!" snapped Hugo as he pushed her away.
"Hey! Don't push me!" she snapped back. "And you stop firing hexes!" She looked at them with a disgruntled expression. "I'm a Prefect, and I'm going to take away points if you don't stop, no matter if you're the Head Boy and a fellow Prefect!"
Mark laughed at her, and sent innocuous sparkles at her feet. She started though, and jumped back near the edge of the cliff.
"Lily! Be careful!" cried the Head Girl.
She stepped away from the border and finally raised her wand. "Stop it!" she shouted. "Stop it right now! You're acting like children! Both of you!"
A spell hissed near her ear and she jumped out of its way, bumping into Hugo as she did.
"Lily, stand back!" he repeated for the third time. His arm wound around her shoulders and he pushed her behind him as he hissed a "Ducklifors!"
She stared as the spell brushed against Mark's left arm and some feathers sprouted from it.
Mark stared at it too. "You're going to pay for this," he hissed. "Entomorphis!"
Hugo ducked, and seemed to look even more furious for the fact that Mark was using one of Uncle George's hexes against him. "Engorgio Skullus! Let's see if we can do something for your microscopic brain!" he snarled.
"Reducio!" snapped back Mark as he stepped left. The spell hit a tree behind Hugo and the poor plant was miniaturised in a matter of seconds.
"Hey!" snapped Lily, stepping once again between the two boys. "That's dangerous! There are people here! Stop it, right this—"
Everybody probably knew that she wanted to say "instant", nobody got to hear that though, because at that moment two, or maybe three, spells hit her right in the chest. She didn't even know what kind of spells they had fired. What she did know, was that she tried to gasp for air, but suddenly she couldn't breathe. She took a few steps back, and her hands went to her throat as little cuts opened behind her ears. Suddenly, her legs felt cold, and the ground seemed to have become slippery.
Then she was slipping back and off the cliff.
The last thing she saw was Hugo's terrified face as he stretched a hand and tried to grab her wrist.
Then came the impact with the water.
Then nothing.