Chapter 34: The Grim

"So this is obviously about merpeople." I say. "Does the Black Lake home any of them?" I ask.

"Yes." Hermione says. "The biggest clan of merpeople in Britain live in the lake." She looks over the words of the song. "We've taken what you'll sorely miss. A person?"

"Probably right." I say. "So we've got an hour to save our hostage?"

"And we lose them if we don't do it in the hour?" Harry says.

"Barzúl." I curse.

"What is that word?" Fleur looks at me. "It's not English, nor French. You seem to curse with it a lot."

"Eh, It's Dwarven." The truth.

"You speak Dwarven?" Viktor asks.

"Just a few words." I forgot there is a magical race of Dwarfs. "How are you guys going to last an hour underwater? I can grow gills."

"You can?" Hermione says.

"Sure, I almost died when I learnt how to, nearly suffocated." I chuckle.

"Do ve lose our hostage if we do not pass?" Viktor asks.

I shake my head. "I doubt it. They said they made this whole thing more safe. But it won't make the water not drown you."

"A bubble head charm perhaps?" Fleur says.

"Transfiguration." Viktor says. "You transfigure yourself gills. We should be able to as well."

"You'd need it to link to your lungs and filter the oxygen from the water." I shake my head. "Just gills wouldn't cut it."

"Polyjuice a merperson?" Harry says with a laugh.

"Polyjuice?" I say. "Now there's an idea."

"Don't be ridiculous." Hermione says. "It doesn't work on non-humans."

"Ah, you are so right and so wrong." I laugh. "Whilst merpeople are not human, I am." I grin at them.

"Vill it vork?" Viktor asks.

"What?" Harry asks.

I morph into a copy of Viktor. "Viktor Krum, Adds gills and take a hair."

"He does this for each of us and ve haf ourselves some gills." He slaps me on the back.

"You'll need to practice using them." I remind them. "Where would we get a potion such as polyjuice?" I ask innocently.

"I think we can figure something out." Harry grins and looks at Hermione.

"We can have it ready by late January." She says. "So that should give you a month or so to practice."

"The breathing part isn't too hard." I say. "I can add webbed hands and feet too, to save you transfiguring yourselves."

"Are you sure polyjuice works when you are changed?" Fleur asks me. "It could just turn us into you."

I shrug. "If it doesn't, I'm sure we can think of something in the month before the task, but thanks to Viktor, we have all this time to prepare for an underwater task."

He nods. "I must get back to my mentor now. Thank you for the morph idea." He jogs away.

"Oui, I must also go." She pulls me into a hug and walks away.

Barking sounds from a short way away. A large black dog runs over to us.

"Padfoot!" Harry gasps. "What are you doing here?"

The dog jumps about barking for a bit, then looks at me. If I was just a mage sight user, I'd know this wasn't a dog, but I already know it's not a dog.

"This is Padfoot." Harry says simply. I bend my knees to crouch down.

"How do I put this delicately." I pause for a moment. "This isn't a dog."

"Padfoot's" eye widen, he looks at Harry. Hermione casts concealment spells around us, pretty amazing work.

"You might as well come Mr. Dog." I say, grinning at him. "These two didn't seem shocked by the news, so they already know you it seems." I stand up again.

Harry shrugs, The dogs spins on the spot and a second later I'm staring down the business end of Sirius Black's wand.

"Zack Jackson." I grin, holding my hand out. "Nice to meet'ya."

He pockets his wand and starts laughing.

"I like you already." He grins at me. "Sirius Black." He strikes a pose.

"Why are you here?" Harry asks him, unable to hold the question any longer. "I said not to come, it's dangerous. I've seen the dementors floating about the forest."

Sirius pulls him into a hug.

"It'll be fine. Nobody will know it's me." He turns and looks at me. "Except you. How did you know?"

I tap the side of my nose with my finger and grin.

"You're not the only one with a good nose."

He lets out a bark of laughter.

"Not an animagus though." I admit to him as I turn into a carbon copy of him. "It's a bit more than that."

He spins to Harry. "This is the other metamorph?"

"Yep."

"Amazing." He says, looking over me closely. "Not a descendant of the Blacks are you? Historically more metamorphs have been in the Black line that any other."

"I'm very well acquainted with the current Blacks metamorph." I smile my mile wide grin.

"Nymphadora?" His eyes widen. "She's an Auror isn't she?" He spins around, clearly forgetting the concealment charms.

"Wouldn't call her that to her face. I won't tell anyone, it's fine." Freya pops onto my shoulder and sings, calming Sirius.

"What if they take it from your mind?" He pales. "What if they take it from your minds?" He points at Harry and Hermione.

"Take it from our minds? What?" Harry asks.

"You don't think Aurors would do that, do you?" I ask Sirius.

"Do what?" Hermione asks, clearly worried.

"I've never thought of telling you before." Sirius sighs. "There is a form of magic that allows wizards, or witches, to see into the minds of others. It's called legilimency. You-know-who was said to have been one of the best in the art. Skilled practitioners don't even need to use a wand, they just need eye contact. As a child of Black, I was taught occlumency when I was 6 years old. I picked up a tiny bit of legilimency, It's illegal unless used under official capacity. I'd take a few minutes, but I could see surface emotions, useless." He sighs and sits on a rock.

"Can't be too hard to stop." I grin.

Sirius looks at me like I'm mad.

"Hell, if I can suppress the veela allure, I can probably block out legilimency." It's actually a lot different, the allure is a magical pheromone. Legilimency is a probe of magic.

"No one can suppress veela allure." Sirius says.

I smirk at him. "No one until me. This is going to be hard for you, but I need you to use it on me, it's the only way I can see how it works."

"I can't." He says, shaking his head. "I don't know how to hold it back, I'll end up going through all you memories."

I wave him off. "If you can even get anything, you will be above Merlin. It doesn't work on me."

It takes a bit more coercion, but he eventually sits opposite me and stares me in the eye.

I see the tendril of magic extend from his eyes, wild and untrained, clearly it's hard to do. I tap my hand with my wand, putting a fluxline into it, simplest way to scan the probe.

"Keeping pushing it." I tell him, moving my hand around the link.

"Gah!" He almost blinks, I must have sent the data into his head by mistake.

"Sorry, I fixed it." I say.

The probe reaches my eye, I can see Sirius is in deep concentration. He seems to have noticed the link reaching my eyes, the probe begins to fill out as he pushes. I have a matt film in my eyes, I wouldn't want to mirror it back at him, that'd be cruel.

"Alright, you can stop." I say after a few minutes. He falls backwards onto the grass, panting for air.

"What were those numbers?" He says after getting his breath back. "Are you a … robot or something?"

"Ah, sorry about that." I run my fingers through my hair. "The numbers were only supposed to go into my head, I must have blocked the stream a bit."

His eye widen a fraction. "You were having those numbers batter into your head for a solid 5 minutes?"

I shrug. "It was like reading words to me. The good news is that I can block it easily." I pick up two pebbles from the shoreline and start inscribing runes into them.

"How is he doing that?" I hear Sirius whisper. "Nobody can scribe runes like that!"

"Until him, evidently." I hear Harry say, clearly amused.

"Alright." I say after a few minutes. I hand Harry and Hermione a stone each. "These will vibrate when someone is attempting it on you, so break eye contact immediately. It will begin to use your own magic to create a mental shield for you." I scratch my chin. "It's a pretty efficient formula, but I wouldn't stubbornly maintain eye contact." I lay back on the grass and close my eyes.

"You ok?" I hear Sirius say.

"Eh. I marked a place to make a hole on the stones. They will only word as necklaces and need skin contact. Although if you put a metal chain through them it will act like a contact."

I hear them squabble over who is the most adept at boring holes for a couple of minutes.

"I'd prefer if you didn't split those stones." I call out with a smile. The sun is quite pleasant and it's not too cold for December, despite being in Scotland. "They're probably worth more than your weight in gold."

"I can't even see the runes on these, did you do anything?" Sirius calls over to me.

"Yep, one of your should conjure some string or something to act as a temporary necklace." Harry is put on cord duty whilst Sirius bores the holes. "How are things with Ron by the way?"

Hermione scoffs at this and sits beside me.

"He had the audacity to ask for an apology." She says. "This was after he turned the school on Harry." She sounds cross. Should I do something? "Are you alright? You've barely moved a muscle not on your face for 15 minutes."

I open one eye and see her frowning at me.

"A bit tired, might kip here tonight."

"We're done." Sirius says. "Two make shift occlumency necklaces. Unique."

"We have time to pop into Gringotts." I say, pushing myself up unsteadily. "I'd offer for you to come Mr. Black, but we don't have any polyjuice."

"It'd take the whole day to sneak out anyway." He says.

"We could ask that phoenix. She doesn't seem busy." I say, pointing at Freya.

"I'll be the lovable pet dog." He changes into Padfoot.

"Why Gringotts?" Hermione asks me.

"Not that I'd ever spend anyone else's cash for them, but I think the Ancient and Noble House of Potter can afford a couple of chains for those runestones." I grin at Harry. "Maybe a spot of ice-cream for you amazing metamorph pal." Harry laughs and nods. Freya lands on my shoulder. "Grab onto a part of me, Above the waist though Hermione." I wink at her, she slaps my arm and grab onto me. We burn away, reappearing outside the Leaky Cauldron.

"If anyone asks, We are allowed to be here." Harry says. "Any trouble and grab onto Zack again." We enter Diagon Alley and head for the bank.

"Much more quiet without the school shoppers running around." I muse.

As we enter Gringotts, some of the guards look at Padfoot or Freya.

Harry approaches the counter.

"I'd like to enter my vault." He passes his key to the goblin, who verifies the and calls Hookclaw to take us down. It turns out that Harry had a couple of enchanted chains in his vault. They stopped people from being able to take the necklaces or break them. There was also a concealment charm weaved into them.

"Don't hand these over to any Unspeakables." I tell them with a laugh.

A/N: Until Peter surfaces, Sirius will still be a fugitive sadly. Enjoy.