Author's Note: I'll bet you didn't see this one coming, eh?
Song: The Little Mermaid - "Under the Sea"
~I don't own Harry Potter or anything affiliated with it or the Walt Disney company or junk. D'aw.
Harry threw himself underwater and immediately all noise around him extinguished like it hadn't even been there in the first place. He looked around, and found that due to the effect of the gillyweed, his eyes didn't even sting. He tested out his newly acquired fins by jolting forward, feeling like some sort of weird humanfish. He could see no sign of any of the other champions.
It was strange. Yes, he was nervous, and yes, he had absolutely no idea where to go – but the wonderful freedom that he now felt through the ability to swim like this made much of his worry leak out of him and into the surrounding waters. He decided to pick the direction he was facing and go straight.
Okay, Ron was somewhere in this lake. If he had to hide his best friend, where would he put him?
Oh, who was he kidding. That was absolutely ridiculous.
He began to swim as fast as he could without overexerting himself, which was somewhat hard seeing as he could barely see ten feet in front of him. He was looking around for a sign of something – one of the Giant Squid's tentacles, an underwater monument, anything – there were mermaids in the lake, too, right? Hrm...
Just as he was about to get tangled up in a huge forest of seaweed, he felt something scratch the back of his leg, and tried to turn around but in a way that he wouldn't lose track of the direction he was heading in.
A grindylow was grabbing onto the back of his pant leg, a devilish sort of expression on it. Harry wracked his brain for everything that Lupin had taught him last year and he sent a spell at it before it released him and he darted away as fast as he could, free of the water demon.
And before too long, he heard the same sort of strange song that had come out of the egg when it was underwater, a flowing tune that seemed to be leading him in the right – or possibly even wrong – direction. Ignoring the idea that it could be intended as a distraction, he swam towards it.
He met with a series of long, waving pieces of seaweed that tickled his skin as he touched it, but not in an unpleasant way as it would have felt if he hadn't had the gillyweed. Only hesitating slightly, he brushed some of the pieces aside, and looked in the direction of where the music was coming from.
There were at least twenty mermaids and mermen floating around what Harry made out to be four people who were tied by one leg to a rock, and he almost started forward when he realized that one of these looked like Ron. There had to be some trick, didn't there? Maybe the merpeople would attack him with those dangerous and very sharp spears they were holding, ehh...
He decided to survey the environment. Lots of fish were floating around, ignored by the merpeople whose silvery tails appeared to be waving slightly. But two of these merpeople in particular appeared to be having what looked like a vehement argument about something he couldn't hear. Just as one – apparently a girl – started to swim away, her argument partner followed her closer to where Harry was concealed, so he could hear their conversation.
"Ariel, listen to me! The human world, it's a mess. Life under this lake is better than anything they got up there!"
Harry saw the girl shake her head before the older one began to sing.
"The seaweed is always greener in somebody else's lake! You dream about going up there – but that is a big mistake! Just look at the world around you, right here on the Black Lake's floor! Such wonderful things surround you – what more is you lookin' for?"
"But-"
"Under the sea, under the sea!" the first one sang. "Darling it's better down where it's wetter, take it from me! Up on the shore they work all day, out in the sun they slave away! While we devotin' full time to floatin' under the sea!"
Harry felt movement beside him and jumped violently, swinging his head around and for the first time tearing his gaze from the singing underwater inhabitants. Cedric had swam up beside him with a large bubble around his head and made a sort of hello motion that Harry's dumbstruck brain could hardly contemplate.
Cedric seemed to mouth, "What's going on?"
Harry shook his head in bewilderment but pointed through the brush of seaweed concealing them. Cedric turned to watch, as well.
"Down here all the fish is happy as off through the waves they roll, but fish on the land ain't happy, they sad 'cause they in their bowl!"
Another merman swam up next to the singer. "But fish in the bowl is lucky," he reasoned, "They in for a worser fate! One day when the boss get hungry, guess who's gon' be on the plate?"
Harry admittedly got a little angry as he saw Cedric start to sort of dance along to the catchy tune. In fact, he almost thought he could hear Cedric's voice start to sing along from inside the bubble around his head.
"Under the sea," Cedric sang, nodding his head. "Under the sea!"
"Nobody beat us, fry us and eat us in fricassee!"
All of a sudden, Cedric pushed Harry out of the way and swam through the seaweed.
"You what the land folks love to cook!" Cedric said, and the merfolk welcomed him merrily, indicating towards the four humans tied to the rock. Squinting, Harry thought he could make out Cho Chang.
"Under the sea we off the hook!" the merman said, "We got no troubles, life is the bubbles! Under the sea!"
"Under the sea!" the entire underwater colony seemed to chorus at once.
"Under the sea!"
"Under the sea!"
"Since life is sweet here, we got the beat here, naturally!"
"Even the sturgeon an' the ray, they get the urge 'n' start to play! We got the spirit, you got to hear it, under the sea!"
Harry felt another force swim past him as Cedric pulled Cho Chang up to the surface. He looked around and tried to scream at what appeared to be a shark before he realized the muscular build of its human body belonged to Viktor Krum.
Krum stopped without noticing Harry and too began to watch the musical display that now increased in a level of excitement.
All the underwater critters that lived in the lake seemed to appear out of nowhere as they participated in what the merman was trying to say.
"The newt play the flute, the carp play the harp, the plaice play the bass, and they soundin' sharp. The bass play the brass, the chub play the tub – the fluke is the duke of soul!"
"Yeah!" Viktor Krum's very deep voice came out of the shark's mouth in this exclamation.
"The ray he can play the lings on the strings, the trout rockin' out, the blackfish she sings-"
The mermaid gave an exasperated sigh, though she too appeared to be liking the musical number.
"The smelt and the sprat, they know where it's at - and oh that blowfish BLOW!"
All the merpeople began to swim around the now two remaining people tied to the rock, Ron and what Harry assumed to be Fleur Delacour's sister.
Slowly, he began to push through the seaweed, mustering up all his Gryffindor courage to swim through the barrage of mermaids and their spears towards his best friend.
"Under the sea!" he ducked through two mermaids, "Under the sea!" and swam up next to Ron, hastily looking for something to break the seaweed holding him with.
"Where the sardine begin the beguine, it's music to me!"
He picked up a rock and began to hack through the seaweed until Ron was free. However...
"What do they got, a lot of sand? We got a hot crustacean band!"
Fleur hadn't arrived to pick up her sister...
"Each little clam here know how to jam here, under the sea!"
But refusing to think about what might happen to this little girl if her sister didn't arrive, Harry moved toward her, too, keeping an eye on Ron in the process.
"Each little slug here, cutting a rug here, under the sea!"
A merman tried to stop him, but, tired of all this nonsense around him, he pulled out his wand and pointed it at the water dweller before cutting the girl's seaweed, too. He grabbed each by an arm and began kicking toward the surface with all his might.
"Each little snail here know how to wail here, that's why it's hotter under the water, ya we in luck here, down in the muck here, under the sea!"
As he finally met with the surface and made sure that his two partners did too, he felt his gils start to vanish and heard the music stop immediately before he shook the hair out of his eyes and started to pull them each toward the shore where the entirety of the school stood, watching.
Next to him, Harry heard Ron start coughing and knew instantly that he was awake, too. Without looking at his best friend, Harry heard Ron's voice say, "I heard that the musical number would be the biggest distraction, how did you deal with that?"
It was two years later and he was with Dumbledore in a murky, dimly lit and very wet cave somewhere unknown. He was helping feed Dumbledore whole gobletfuls of a potion that could very well kill the old man and it didn't make Harry feel any better to know that unknown terrors might exist in the apparently black waters around the tiny rock he struggled to keep his footing against.
He brushed sweaty hair out of his eyes with his arm before dunking the goblet into the potion that Voldemort had surely laid out as a trap, silently cursing Voldemort for being too prepared against intruders and verbally reassuring Dumbledore that everything was going to be okay as long as Harry continued to do this thing against his will.
As he once again brought the goblet to his headmaster's mouth, he poured the liquid in before Dumbledore started choking, asking for water.
"Water...," Harry murmered, shifted the goblet to his left hand and holding his wand in his right. "Aguamenti!" Nothing happened. "Aguamenti! No - dammit, come on, aguamenti! AGUAMENTI!"
He clapped his hand to his forehead, straining his mind, and glanced down at his parched headmaster before an invisible Muggle lightbulb seemed to Ding! above his head and he jolted to the surface. He was probably going to regret this soon, but he shook his head violently and pushed his hand into the water, holding the goblet.
Success. The water no longer vanished from the goblet, and Harry started to pull himself back up the rock to where Dumbledore was doubled over before he stumbled and looked behind him only to see a raisin-y white hand holding onto his leg.
Thinking he was going to be sick he hastily shot a spell at it before continuing to push himself toward Dumbledore, but the Inferi had other plans. They began to emerge from the water right before his eyes and before he could fight back, they grabbed hold of him and began to carry him back to the water.
In his shock, Harry was hardly even fighting back. He was pulling his limbs with as much force as he could muster, but the zombies had incredible strength for creatures that have been dead for longer than he could probably imagine. He felt his already damp skin make contact with the icy temperature of the water, and he shivered and shut his eyes tightly, still clinging onto the goblet and his wand for the biggest support he could get.
All of a sudden, he was underwater, and something he could never expect, an unbelievable sound, made him open his stinging eyes with surprise.
He could only see a few feet in front of him, but what he did see almost made him release the objects he was holding.
There was an Inferi in the center of a circle of them who was singing.
"Under the sea...under the sea!"it yelled, and even underwater it's voice spread to all the listening ears, including Harry's own.
"Darling it's better, down where it's wetter, take it from me! Up on the shore they work day, out in the sun they slave away, while we devotin' full time to floatin', under the sea!"
Harry hardly even noticed that he was about to pass out from holding his breath too long as a great orange color erupted around him like a volcano and a strong, definitely alive hand grabbed the back of his shirt and pulled him out of the water. Coughing and spluttering and hardly being able to see through his drenched glasses, he saw a blurry form of Albus Dumbledore pulling him to shore, holding a great wall of fire steady that kept the Inferi at bay.
Dumbledore's voice was extremely faint when it spoke. "May I ask what it is you saw down there, Harry?"
Harry was dumbfounded. "I, uh...couldn't tell you if I knew."
Author's Note: The second part was pretty pointless, but you've already read it so I guess it's too late. HAHAHA.
That scene is so much more emotional now that we know that he was imagining Ariana's death. But now we can all think of it a little happier knowing that the Inferi were doing a spectacular rendition of Under the Sea that we just didn't get to see in the books because of copyright issues. I hope that makes its way onto Pottermore.
PLEASE REVIEW PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE BEG BEG BEG I NEED THEM TO LIVE THEY'RE LIKE MY VERSION OF REMUS'S CHOCOLATE-