A/N: Back again. Sorry it took so long. Life has a way of running away with us, I think.

Now, shoutouts. I would normally have put this in a reply, but as the people asking the questions was a guest, I have to put it here.

To the first guest who reviewed on 04/09/16, thank you very much for your sentiments. For my sources for Leviathans, look up Leviathan: the Tempest. There's a TVTropes page and info on the first edition on RPGnet wiki. And there is going to be that pairing, but not in great detail and only in little bits before the epilogue.

To the second guest, hence 'technical' character death and thank you. I've tried to get it out as quickly as I could.

Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter or Leviathan: the Tempest. Life is both cruel and wonderful. Quadratic equations are complicated. These are truths.


When Harry awoke, he was not sure at first whether or not he had done so. He wondered if perhaps he was still dreaming, as surely it had to have been one. After all, you don't get kidnapped by your headmaster, used in a ritual whose magic grates on your skin like broken glass. You especially didn't have that same headmaster break your leg deliberately and then take you to the infirmary, only to tell the nurse that you had fallen off of a stair. And you most certainly don't fall from a 5th story window and down a cliff into a lake, transform into a sea-serpent-come-water-dragon and devour a giant squid alive.

That pleasant illusion of humanity shattered swiftly under the sudden realisation of reality, that the cold water against his grey, leathery skin was too physical, too there to be a dream. The shreds of rubbery flesh that he could feel trailing from his jaws were all too real. When he opened his eyes, the darkness of the water lasted but a second before senses that he wasn't sure he could name showed him the rocky, uneven surface of the lake bottom upon which he rested.

Gigantic sea anemones as tall as a man reached out lazy arms towards the faint glimmers of light filtering down from the surface, lying in wait, he thought, for some passing fish to come within reach of their colorless pseudopodia. Long, sinuous eel-like creatures wound about the stones which littered the floor, searching for morsels of food within the cracks and crevices. Further off, a small school of what looked like fish with long, spindly legs - Harry remembered that they were called plimpies - bounded their way across the lakebed, looking for all the world as if they were on the moon.

None of the creatures had disturbed him and none came near him nor the hollowed-out carcass of the giant squid that he had fallen asleep wound around. Little remained of it save the outer mantle.

For a moment, Harry pitied the creature and felt almost sorry for it, before the memory of how exquisite its taste had been drove the thought from his mind, along with the hunger that once again roiled in his stomach despite his enormous meal. The corpse now looked unappetising though, its flesh torn into strands and mingling with the silty mud that drifted on the currents of the lake.

The thought of food brought to mind the delicious - if rich - breakfasts that were served daily in the Great Hall above, bringing Harry's mind back to the school above, as well as Hermione - who he had no doubt would be worried sick over him - and the Headmaster, who he now knew beyond a shadow of doubt had ulterior motives to do with him. It was merely luck that his transformation had erased the mental block that Dumbledore had placed with his obliviation - he recalled Alden mentioning something about a leviathan's first full transformation ('apotheosis', the scholar had called it) often healing or erasing injuries and maladies from beforehand. He was only luck that the obliviation had not taken full hold.

His resentment for Dumbledore now burning like an ember in his chest, Harry unwound himself from the squid and began to make his way upwards, heading for the light.

He passed a number of odd creatures on his way up but none stranger than the sight that awaited him as he rose above a great shelf of rock protruding from the sheer side of the lake. There, on the edge of the abyss that plunged into the darkness below, was a group of perhaps three dozen merpeople, all with their heads downturned and holding different items - fish and small, crude stone idols were common - in their hands, as if offering them up. In front of the group was a merman with empty hands, his pale, bone-white skin and scales contrasting with the dull grey-green of the rest. At the sight of Harry-the-leviathan rising from the deep, the pale merman - some kind of priest, Harry realised - raised his arms and cried out to him, an oddly melodic note in his voice.

"O great one, scion of the line of our creator, we beg your magnanimousness in allowing us to remain here and to serve you as your most humble disciples. Please, we beg that you allow us to reside within your domain and to be your chosen people, O great one, of the line of the Shattered Gods. We ask you to accept our offerings as a sign of our continued faith in your line."

Harry realised that the pale merman was, if merpeople aged anything like humans, a teenager at best. He was shaking and, although he did not know how, Harry could sense that the young merman, as well as the rest of the merpeople, were terrified. Of him.

All of a sudden, Harry felt uncomfortably like his bullying cousin. He had spent the last night killing and devouring the Giant Squid, a creature which, as far as anyone could remember, had been nothing but helpful to the students of Hogwarts. Not human, thankfully (and that thought disturbed Harry, as he did not know whether or not he would have gone after a human the night before, given the chance), but a creature who had done no harm beyond what it needed to to survive. Something cold and unpleasant twisted deep in Harry's stomach at the sight of the petrified merpeople.

Even though a large part of him rebelled at the thought - the part that had always kind of liked the way that everyone in the Wizarding World looked up to him - The wizard-turned-leviathan bowed his own head to the merpeople-tribe. Instinctively knowing how, he reached out with a gentle tendril of thought to the pale priest. He could feel the young merman's fear, but also a degree of shock at his actions. Gently entering his mind, Harry sent an impression of calm and mean-no-harm, along with the words "Do not bow to me. I do not want to frighten you."

The merman jerked where he floated in the water and Harry could feel the storm of panicked half-thoughts through the mental link he had created. Had he done something wrong? What did the Great one mean? Would he simply destroy them? What was going on?

Linked to those thoughts were countless memories of the young merman's elders telling him of their creator, the creature known as Cseag. Telling him of how they were created to be the ancient leviathan's servants, slaves and cult in one. Telling him of how, should any of Cseag's race come to the Black Lake, it was the duty of his family and, thus, his duty to see that the community in the Black Lake endured, no matter the price. Telling him of the horrors and abuses that had been visited upon them by their creator and what they could expect should another Leviathan come to the Black Lake.

Sick to his stomach at some of the things that the young merman had been told, Harry did his best to project an air of calm and benevolence through the link.

"I mean no harm to you, nor do I want you to be my slaves," he projected, "I'm going to go back up to the castle. Please, just carry on however you did before."

So saying, he severed the psychic link and thrashed his body from side-to-side, forcing himself upwards in the water and away from the mer-tribe who were looking after him in confusion and tentative relief.


A/N: I apologise for the fact that the chapter is so short this time, but I've had a lot going on and so I thought I'd bring out teh next chapter now rataher than waiting another couple of weeks. I have by no means abandoned this story and fully intend to continue it.