"Harry Potter and Mermaid's Tear"
A Harry Potter ™ fanfic by Sarah Stalcup
Prologue: Escape
CRASH!
The booming undulation of thunder spilled over the castle grounds, illuminating the sky with its electric blue hues, blots of lightning licking the saturated clouds as they ripped open, heavy, fat lobs of water falling to the ground.
With the sky groaning and the winds howling incessantly, one could easily mistake the prominent school for an eerie, malicious prison. And yet, some still sought refuge in its unnaturally cool dwellings.
Footsteps pattered along the slick grassy knolls, bits of green sticking onto worn and tired feet, nearly slipping, falling. Struggling against the beating maelstrom, using her arms to shield her eyes from the icy drops of rain, the figure trudged forth, breaths coming out in ragged gasps, chest heaving sporadically. Hair clung to her face, speckled with grime and sodden with rainwater as it streamed along her skin, dripping off the slender curve of her chin. Goosebumps formed on her barely clothed body, a worn, threadbare cloak pitifully draped over her pale form.
A sudden gale nearly overturned the girl, almost sent her spiraling backwards into the rocky cliffs she had appeared from, to be impaled upon the vicious rocks that lay below along the beaches unforgiving surface. Planting her feet steadily, teeth bared and gritting one another, the survivor treaded forth, working her way towards her seemingly insurmountable goal.
Almost there…please…I must…Arms pumping back and forth, legs wobbling from exhaustion, the girl seemed unaccustomed to walking, for she never broke into a mere jog, pacing herself at a slow lumber, feet padding noisily on the muddy, slippery school grounds.
A sudden crack of livid, white lightning struck an enormous tree next to the young girl, its scorching bark cracking, collapsing on itself, leaning to one side, like a giant monster swaggering in defeat. The towering object began to plummet, its trunk groaning in discontent, resisting an inevitable fall, when a brutal buffet finally tipped the scales, sending the behemoth of a tree downwards onto the ambling girl.
The girl had no time to yell out for help, although her screams would she surely be taken by the whirling blasts of air. She simply gasped out in surprise, clasping her cupped hands over her mouth, pewter gray eyes dilated in fear. Instinct kicked in at the last moment as she ultimately attempted to dodged the subsiding plant, but her foot caught on an errant rock blocking her path, and as her arms went flailing, the girl's body landed onto the miring lawn with a ferocious bump. Moments flashed before her wide eyes, as the branches and leaves seemed to be assaulting her, flying into her face like massive birds of prey itching to claw her face to rags. She was too horrified to notice that her ankle was dripping with blood from the jagged rock.
But in an instant, the terrifying moment passed, the thunder seemed to be dampened, and even the sky did not appear so gray. As the trembling figure looked up, her hands outstretched in front of her while the skin of her back felt the mud and rocks, she saw with disbelief that the plunging tree was hanging in midair like a bird flying against the wind. It was as if some sort of force field had been created around her, just in the nick of time.
And then the tree did something else: It began to slide.
Sliding to her right side, in fact, but around her as if it were traveling in an orbit around her body, which was by now shivering and trembling like an erratic metronome. The tree rounded a corner, slumping beside the girl, saved by this apparent miracle or twist of luck, dirt still caked on her paralyzed face, infused with fear and stark white from alarm. It crashed onto the ground with a terrible noise, and then lay still.
Gazing up at her clenched hands, still hanging over her, she slowly brought them down to her sides, edging away from the monstrous tree as if it could still leap out and tear her head off like a nefarious dragon.
As she climbed to her clumsy feet, still shaken by her strange and wondrous evasion of death, she barely registered the person stalking behind her, hands raised, preparing to strike.
And she soon fell back onto the ground, after a massive pair of fists had crashed onto her face like a wooden club, the world around her turning inky black.