Author's notes:
Disclaimer: Her books are out, her movies are done: why couldn't we have a bit of fun with Harry Potter too! Unless she planned on a sequel… woot!
Now that the OWLs were over, the remaining days of school were like free periods for the students to chat, organize summer activities or to vanish from sight, in pairs, the time of an afternoon. Harry spent the next few days with a grouchy old man who could whine about how everything was better when he was younger, which could include quite a long period. From the way the streets were cobbled to how woman dressed today, pausing for a note about how the dogs were way bigger, meaner and thus more useful in his time when you had to run after your dinner in the woods after two weeks of eating plants buried in twelve inches of snow...
Harry never had a family and never got to know his grandparents. He understood now what a blessing it was. The senile old man brought him to shops that didn't existed anymore and refused giving him the list of materials, wanting to 'keep it a surprise'. He insisted on Harry following him around though, and made quite a show to ask for an introduction to every shopkeepers.
'Here, here! Come and see the Great Alchemist, the line for a portrait with the star starts here and for the autographs, here! No kids allowed!' Harry thought for himself. Harry never figured the genius to be such pain in the ass. Maybe he wasn't isolated because he chose to be. Who knows: maybe his clearing was an important city, many hundreds years ago, but they all moved away!
Harry bit his tongue and used up for about two years of diplomacy, remembering he did this for a friend. He genuinely worried for Lazuli. The volatile nature of the dragon combined with the power of an Über Nightmare might be enough that it would dare attack the immortal in her stronghold. She was strong, but not battle oriented.
Until now, the material Flamel gathered were rather strange. Nothing seemed to connect with anything else but Harry remembered it was the kind of puzzle you probably solved by melting all the pieces together, or something.
Harry's dimensional bag now held: a bloc of fine sandstone, a roll of whiter than white Egyptian papyrus, ten pound of volcanic stone -still hot-, ten tail feathers of hawks from the same family, a jack-in-the-box, a vial of ever-frosting water, two full cookie jars and one inkwell full of squid ink.
"Great!" Flamel said, finally leaving the latest shop. "All that's missing is the base material and we'll be ready to start the fun part!"
Harry blinked twice.
"You mean that from all the junk we gathered… we haven't got the base material yet?" Harry asked, dumbfounded.
"Hey! Don't call it 'junk'! You need to believe in magic for it to work, you know!" Flamel said, waving a finger.
Harry had a hundred comeback pushing on his tongue, begging to be released and he settled for the most productive one.
"Where is located the base material, then?"
"In the Caribbean Sea."
Harry blinked quadra… quadutri… four times.
"I'll push some levers and get an international portkey," Harry sighed.
"You do that. I'll get myself an ice cream."
Harry went to the ministry building and passed checkpoints at lightning speed. He went directly to the International Affairs. He had no intentions to fill paperwork in five copies and wait two weeks for a few hours under the sun. International portkeys worked mostly like regular ones, with jumps. There were waypoints all around the world to act as relay in long distance travel. They explained it as: "The further we have to get you, the higher we need to 'throw' you. If the throw get too high, you'll leave the planet's gravity. We aren't providing space suits."
There were four relays to the Caribbean and one of them was underwater: hold your breath! Harry took his portkey with him, in the form of a black pearl. Harry found Flamel polishing a bowl of ice cream with a satisfied smile.
"We didn't have that kind of ice cream back in my days! The closest we had was to crush strawberries in white snow! We didn't have refined white sugar back then either!"
"So many things you're missing by keeping away from people," Harry sighed, shaking his head. "I know I wouldn't want to spend eternity protecting it."
Nicholas opened his mouth and was about to let out a sharp reply but something stopped him. Was it the memory of his projects while working on the stone of eternal life? All those things he longed to do, the places he dreamed to see? The people he wanted to meet, all long-dead now?
"You will learn with time, Mr. Potter, that the more you have, the more afraid you are to lose it. It may be wealth, health, friends or lifetime, it doesn't matter. To me, life is more important than anything."
Harry nodded in understanding, and acknowledged the ancient's man wisdom.
"If the time spent on this Earth is more important than filling it with emotions, experiences and memories, I have nothing more to say to you, Master Alchemist Flamel. On the other hand, someone of your caliber could open a fantastic business in Diagon Alley and would never know a boring day in his life."
"Even after being introduced to all the shopkeepers?" smirked the elder man. "I do not wish to be asked for a Philosopher's stone every seconds of every day!"
"That's why obliviation spells exist. As a Ministry employee, I have the authority to spread them around like candy bars," Harry said, shrugging.
"I fear it's a bit too late for that!" laughed the elder.
"Why do you think I always took so long paying up when we left the stores?" asked Harry, faking surprise. "Do you think I would allow your peace to be threatened?"
Nicholas froze in surprise for a second and erupted in laughter.
"Let's go fetch the last material, my boy! Traveling with you is definitely entertaining!"
British clothing was a pain on a Southern island, even summers British clothing! Harry closed the door leading outside barely two seconds after opening it.
"Let's stop by the souvenir shop first," Harry said, leading an amused alchemist along. "We'll get nice, light souvenir shirts and shorts. Let's go with swimming clothes while we're at it! And shoes better adapted for the climate."
"You know that those are tourist traps who charge trice the price…"
"Don't care," interrupted Harry.
Mr. Flamel laughed again. Harry saw the man change almost as the minutes passed. He even lost some wrinkles.
"If I didn't know better, I'd say you did this on purpose so that I'd buy you a new set of clothes!"
"There is a saying about an old monkey and new tricks…"
"Yeah. Can't teach them any, they know them all!" Harry countered, choosing one of the most colorful, blindingly flashing tourist get-up he could find. "This looks fine," Harry said. "At least, I won't be mistaken for anything else than a tourist."
"You mean you didn't choose this so that the locals would see you as an nonthreatening kid in vacation with his grandpa? That with this peacock-on-potion-fumes vest, you won't be underestimated? Shocking."
Harry smirked a bit. The old man really knew the old tricks. The Apparition point was indeed in a touristic spot, making strange people going in or out a common occurrence. Harry hired a guide nearby, a boy two or three years younger than himself. He had a broken English composed of the usual words needed when on vacation, like: restaurants, toilets, hospital, police… Thankfully, Harry had to use words like: rental boat, tool shop, diving gears and solar cream. The boy smiled and nodded a lot seeing the potential profits in those two pale-faced outsiders.
An hour later, Harry had some shallow diving material delivered to a small marina and his skin felt cool under the generous layer of cream he put on it. The vegetation was lush everywhere and the décor, a natural paradise. It was hard to remember they were here for work. It was even harder to admit you'd have to leave when you'd be done…
The first problem came when the boat loaner, a thin moka-colored man in his thirties, explained the small boat came with a crew of four people, and that this was not negotiable. Looking around, Harry realized they fell in with that kind of crowd. The worst kind of tourist trap. The kind you might lose all your belonging before being thrown overboard with a lead vest. Harry hid his loathing for the human trash, smiling a false, carnivorous smile, and agreed.
Harry stayed close to Nicholas after they left the shore, despite the crew's call to come and see rare fishes in the boat's wake. When Nicholas said they would be at the right place to start diving, Harry signaled the captain to stop. The boat slowed down and Harry leaned against the railing, his arms crossed and head slightly tilted to one side.
"So," he called loudly, "How are we going to play this?"
The men looked a bit nervously at each others, gathering in front of Harry. The captain came behind them, no smile on his face this time.
"You give us your money, credit cards and any valuables on you. You do that and you live. You don't do that and we kill you, taking it anyway. Then we drop you right here, in open water, where your body will be eat by sharks," he menaced. It was a nice try, but Harry couldn't help but to snort. Amateurs.
"Right. You are right, but only on one thing. I do have two choices. Either I kill you all the old fashion way…. He drawled, taking a small dagger from god-knew-where, "Or I spare myself the trouble of cleaning blood and I incapacitate you with this, making sure you lose any memory from ever meeting us," he finished, pulling his wand from another blind spot. "If you all kneel down, I'll choose the second solution even if it would be a lot less satisfying."
If the crew was nervous until now, they were dancing from one foot to the other now. This was not going as planned at all. On top of that, there were the rumors about other… businesses… which vanished without leaving a trace after they left with peculiar strangers. Still, it was a teen and an old man. What could go wrong?
One of the crew mate decided to be brave and jumped on Harry with a steel pipe raised over his head. He'd hit from the end of his reach, he thought, to prevent Harry from using his dagger. The two remaining sailors ran after, barely a second behind. The captain slowly walked forward, letting his underling face the danger first.
Harry would have laughed if it didn't mean losing the perfect timing they offered him. They practically lined themselves like practice dummies! Harry jumped forward, well inside the first crew mate's personal space and stuck his dagger in him to the hilt, using the grip as a pivot to rotate on himself, keeping the momentum going. The hit was so violent though, and the man such a lightweight that it lifted him off the ground a bit and shoved him to the side. The two other men were not expecting to face Harry so close, so soon.
Harry's execution was flawless and he found himself very stable on his feet. He used the remaining of his momentum to jump again and landed in a crouch, before sweeping the first man's leg from under him. Not the gentle one that just send you on your back either. Harry caught the man in the side of the knees so violently it bent inward with a sickening pop and crashed in the other, making that one bend outward. His shout may have reached the shore, even if it was over twenty miles away.
The third decided a full body tackle to immobilize the twister teen was in order. He jumped on him, football style. Harry put his sweeping feet down, held his dagger stabbing style, caught the man deep in the shoulder using his own momentum and used it like a judo grab to throw him over his shoulder. He twisted the dagger in the wound doing so on top of applying the pressure needed to lift the man off his feet. When he smashed on the deck, he was already unconscious from the pain.
The captain took a small pistol out. Harry pulled his dagger free and threw it with deadly accuracy. It caught the man's wrist, jolting the aim away from him and messing with the man's ability to control his finger. The gun fell overboard from the jelly-limp hand of the captain. Harry walked to him, pulled the dagger out in a swift move, causing a spray of blood on the deck. The captain fell on his knees, holding his bleeding wrist. Harry wordlessly hit the side of his head with the dagger's pommel.
The monk-trained teen made sure the rest of the crew members were either unconscious before pulling his wand and casting stupifix around. He used whatever medical knowledge he had in order to prevent internal bleeding. They would survive, he guessed, and the memory might serve as a lesson. He cast more paralysis spell on them, some of them being useful to stabilize someone in an emergency. It might help the wound to close by itself too. Harry finally turned toward Nicholas.
The old man was looking at him with wide eyes, his mouth open wide in horror. He was clearly in shock. Harry approached him to shake him up but the older man tried to crawl past the railing. Harry didn't want him to accidentally fall in the water, so he stopped and put his hands up. Realizing he had a bleeding dagger in one, he probably failed to look nonthreatening. Harry took his time to clean the dagger and made it disappear somewhere in his clothing. Turning back toward Flamel, the man had a hand over his chest, breathing deeply and threw him covert looks.
"I remember why I stayed alone in the woods, now," he said harshly. "I can tell you one thing that hasn't changed since my days: the world is as violent as it ever was! People are simply more hypocrite about it!"
Harry looked away, feeling unease creep on. Oh yeah, it was his first time with actual humans. He breathed deeply, containing his own shock the best he could, licking his dry lips and combing his long hair with one hand. As Harry's own silence grew, Flamel frowned and looked at him.
"Are you all right, Harry?" he asked. It would just feel wrong to call him 'Mister Potter' right now.
"My… skills were honed in order to fight Nightmares, as magic seems to affect them very limitedly. I never… this… I'm almost sixteen but never had to… even magical duel…"
Nicholas was the one to cross the distance between them and hesitated on how to show his support. He ended up putting a hand on Harry's shoulder. The boy was young but as tall as he was. He was smart, strong and very charismatic, but he was also innocent. He was a trained warrior who never saw a bloody battlefield before.
"Harry, I must admit that I fear death, and I loathe any lost of life. I disagree with murder and violence. Still, when faced with it, like we were, right here and now, and after overcoming the shock, I can see that you did the right thing. You protected the ones here in good faith and put those pirates out of commission, sparring their lives. Back in my days… back in my days… One would not be so merciful. The whole society might be hypocrite but as an individual, you are civilized. I think I'm babbling now, boy, help me out."
Harry smiled and nodded. He palmed his face to wipe tears discreetly and huffed.
"Thank you, sir. I needed this. The world will never cease to be a hard place to live. I'm better to get used to it, as I often put myself in this kind of situations. Now that we're not in danger to get stabbed in the back or left alone in deep water, why not do what we came to do?!" he said, more or less in control.
Flamel smiled shyly and nodded. They unpacked the diving gear in silence. They didn't need the air reserve as they would use the bubble-head spell. The palms for the hands and feet would allow them a lot more freedom in their movement though. They dove without ceremony, wands out, and swam down. It was frightening at first to see the bottom fifty meters down, as it triggered the natural fear to fall down. The light was like a perpetual twilight, making the decision to use lighting charms a hard one. Sometimes, the sun caught the small waves over their heads and sent veils of lights, washing the bottom with colors Harry never saw outside a pencils box.
"What are we looking for, exactly?" Harry asked, his voice distorted by the passage from air to water and back to air again.
"Corals," stated Flamel, progressing at a slow pace.
"Corals. I thought we were looking for something a bit more uncommon," Harry said, enjoying the sensation of freedom diving gave.
"We are fifty meters down in water, at least twenty miles off the coast of a Pacific island. How much more uncommon do you want it? An ancient cave with rare magical creature dancing around a glowing gem on a pedestal?" Flamel snorted, a feat underwater.
"Well, not really, but…okay. What kind of coral are we looking for?"
"A magical one, in an underwater cave protected by a water sprite."
Harry, who was a bit further ahead, stopped swimming and turned around to look at him.
"What?" Flamel said, smirking. "There's no gem or pedestal, and I think it's not glowing. Maybe."
Harry sighed and kept on looking around for a cave.
"Any sign I should be looking for particularly?" Harry asked.
"The biggest, thickest and more colorful concentration of coral around. The sprite lives in a cave with a dimensional door. Technically, everything is in this plane, only the door is a dimensional abnormality. It is so to protect the living flora over its home," explained Flamel. "We're going to convince the sprite to come with us, bringing its coral with it."
"Its coral? You'll have to explain that a bit if you want me to understand," scolded Harry. It was not the time to make a mistake. His legs pushed him along over a thick coral bed, looking for the coolest looking formation.
The alchemist's lips thinned, as if thinking of the best words to explain a foreign concept.
"You'll have to understand that sprites are the physical representations of natural magical phenomenon, or concept. A water sprite can be found in unlimited kinds, like a human growing in a different environment from another. It is the magical life of the coral, of the vegetation, of the mass of water surrounding it with an independent mind unlike the one corresponding to a human brain. At the same time, it is a natural occurrence that lives a parallel life to that of humans since it is shaped by our culture, our belief. They are not alien to us, there are… correspondences."
Harry swam in deep theoretical water now and felt dizzy simply looking at its expenses. He practically felt his brain stretch to encompass the concept.
"The water sprite is magical, with a corporeal incarnation but it needs a physical anchor with a deep magical mass. That way, no matter how much it weakens, it will never die unless the anchor is destroyed and believe me, you'll have an easiest time wrestling a dragon with your dagger!" chuckled Flamel.
"So… we need the sprite and its coral. The coral will be the base material and the sprite will keep it alive and whole as long as it exist, which may be even longer than the lifespan of a dryad."
"You got it! But you seem to forget that your dryad friend is a nature sprite too. Simply, she's a vegetation type instead of a water or fire type."
Harry nodded, digesting all this.
"What about the environment? Corals like this live in warm, salted water. Underwater, might I add. How will it live in a northern forest, iced over many months a year?" Harry wondered.
"Harry, you're thinking as if it was human! It is not, remember. This is a water sprite and its needs are not of warmth or light but of energy. Is there water at Hogwarts?"
"There's the lake…" Harry hesitated.
"Is there magical energy?" Flamel quickly asked.
"A confluence of Ley lines," Harry sighed. He started to understand.
"It will not adapt: it will simple become part of its new environment, if it agree."
"How will we lure it out of its home to meet with us?" Harry asked.
"With the vial of magical water and a cookie jar," stated Flamel firmly.
Harry knew better than to ask by now. The coral bed under them was magnificent, truly worthy of a magical being. Harry shrugged and gathered the lures. He tied it to a line and let it dangle over the coral bed at Flamel's instruction.
"And now we wait. This bring back memories! Once I went sprite fishing with Merlin himself with nothing more than a unicorn's tears and a ham. The sprite we got was about this big but the rope snapped and it got away…"
They had to refresh their bubblehead charms twice and Harry's fingers were all wrinkled.
"Should we keep quiet not to scare it or talk to have it notice us? Should we call it, maybe?" Harry asked, his arms way tired and his legs cramping.
Flamel hummed thoughtfully but had no time to answer. There was a tug on the rope and it slipped painfully between Harry's hands for a few feet before stopping. Harry gripped it firmly and was pulled seven more feet before it stopped. The end of the rope vanished in mid-air over the seafloor, deep in corals.
"Ha! It bit! What are you waiting for, Harry! Roll it in!"
"How?! I have nothing to stand on!" snarled Harry.
"Oh, yeah, that's right. How did I do it again?" wondered Flamel, looking up.
"Aguamanti!" yelled the newbie fisherman, pouring power, focus and emotions in the spell. Harry shot up like a rocket, fighting with his wand to keep it down. It didn't took long that something, with a hand in the cookie jar, appeared from between corals. Harry stopped and simply hauled the rope, pulling his catch up at the same time as going back down. The action\reaction concept was a reality when your feet had no ground under them.
Harry looked at what he caught and sighed. It was just. his. luck.
It… she looked like the little mermaid, rated M. She had long, purple flowing hair, a long fish tail that ended as vaporous as a butterfly's wing. The slim upper body had the shape of a Victoria's secret model, minus the underwear. Morgana's knows she should have some on as she looked like the poster child of back pain due to over-developed mammary glands.
Yes, her boobs were huge and she was a looker, munching on a cookie with her big, emerald eyes staring at him. Harry turned toward Flamel.
"Does all natural sprite have green eyes?"
Flamel was taken aback at the sudden question and thought about it.
"Now that you mention it, they do! Do you happen to have some sprite blood in you?" teased the alchemist.
The water sprite looked at them curiously, never stopping to pop ginger and chocolate cookies in her mouth. Why should she escape? They had cookies.
"Is this for me?" the mermaid asked with a voice too clear to belong underwater. She held the vial of magical water in one hand. Harry patted his pocket uselessly, knowing very well it was the one he had on him.
Harry looked at Flamel who looked away, his cheek flushed. He waved in his direction vaguely, never looking at him. Right, he was on his own.
"We thought it would be rude to come asking for something empty handed. We tried to catch your attention with the cookies," Harry replied smoothly. It wasn't his first time having to deal with a naked, drooling drop dead gorgeous sprite.
The mermaid smiled, delighted. She took the cork of the vial off and downed it, not missing a drop of it. Harry understood better. The cookies looked untouched because she willed the water not to moist them. The content of the vial didn't escape because she willed the water around to keep it in until she wanted it to part and swallow it. Even saying she ordered water around was partly wrong. She was that water, on a primordial level. To her, it's not so much to order it than flexing a mystical muscle unconsciously.
"Aaaaah! That was refreshing! It sure get hot here, sometimes! Come! I'll get you through the door! I haven't have a visitor in centuries! Bring the cookies, I'll provide something to drink!" she said, swimming down to the coral. There was a shimmering and a haze stayed over the coral. It was a no-brainer that this was the portal-door.
The teen turned to Nicholas Flamel, who was swimming back to the boat quickly for someone his age.
"It's all up to you, Harry! I'm a married man! Good luck!"
"Huh?!" could only reply Harry, dumbfounded.
Once I started with the sprites, it was hard to stop! Hope you enjoyed!