Chapter Two:
There It Is
Haelyra Potter
II.
Grangemouth was Scotland's largest container port, and lied at the centre of Scotland's industrial heartland, situated midway between Glasgow and Edinburgh. Haelyra Potter sat at the end of the docks, jeans rolled up to knees, feet in the dark waters, toes dancing in the waves that lapped at her soles. There was only a little bag beside her, battered leather warn thin in places, comprising nothing but a few spare sets of clothes, a potions kit, some charm books, a spare wand, and some pebbles she could transfigure to the right coin for the right land.
And, of course, a letter. As old as her satchel, as frayed as it too, re-read lovingly over the years. Haelyra knew that letter off by heart. As she could trace the pendant contained within it on the palm of her hand blindly.
"Are you sure you want to do this, Lyra?"
Haelyra, Lyra to her friends, blinked away the light morning sun being etched over by cloud cover, and turned her head to the only other occupant of the strip of dock.
Hermione Granger dug down deep in her Weasley sweater, skin blistered in the wind-rush, hair a crows' nest upon her head, cold and tired and looking lost near the water's edge.
Lyra couldn't really understand that, feeling lost near water. In truth, here, next to the ocean, it was the only time Lyra ever truly felt…
Whole.
In the end, everybody, every soul, every bird and mammal and lizard, came from the sea. In every vein runs the same salt in their blood, the same salt of the ocean, in their sweat and in their tears. Intrinsically, they were all tied to the deep, and everyone, Haelyra thought, would go back to it eventually, whether that was by sail or to watch it, to play on the beaches and the crags, to walk across a shore or to crab in a rockpool. In one way or another, everybody, at least once, goes back to whence they came.
Haelyra Potter is simply doing that.
Going home.
"Of course I'm sure. I have to do this."
Haelyra doesn't have to, but she wants to, and yet she can't truly explain why. Not in a manner Hermione would understand, and not one that would stop the age-old arguments of have you really thought this through from spewing forth.
She also thinks it is poetic, in a way, a silly, tragic way. Lily Evans, Haelyra's mother, had appeared on these very docks, sodden, bruised, dazed, pregnant, nearly twenty-one years ago after a charms Mastery accident had seen the young Witch go missing for two years. It had also seen Lily Evans on these docks every Sunday, waiting on this very strip of wood and plank and barnacle, for-…
Well, Sirius had told her for a storm.
That was her mother, a woman who chased storms Sirius had said that one late November night before he was murdered. Just like you, he had finished.
The storm never came, however. Her mother died not fifteen months after her birth. All she left behind was a letter, a pendant, a love for the sea, and an adoption certificate. Haelyra Velaryon became Haelyra Potter, and James, the man who had adopted the child with no father, no father her mother was willing to give the name, place, or face to in a world where Pureblood pedigree was held up like Jesus was to the Muggles, had paid the price underneath Tom Riddles wand.
And here she was, Haelyra, twenty years later, waiting for her own storm.
A ship.
An aptly named ship Haelyra couldn't pass up on joining. If she was going to sail the world, as was her plan, she was going to do it on The Tempest. Given… She would be only be a navigational officer cadet, low the on rung on the Deck and Technical crew, but she would be on the sea all the same.
That's what she wanted.
That's what she needed.
That's what she had spent the last four years studying and learning for at the Muggle school Academy of Marine Education and Technology after walking out the Black Lake that early morning in December what felt like a life-time ago.
This was it. The time had come. She was going to... Well, go.
Simply go.
Haelyra turned back to the sea, to the waves and the currents and the swells, and she thought… She thought she had never felt more… Happier.
Maybe she looked it too, by the way Hermione sighed, trudged as close as she dared to the end of the dock, and, too, turned to face the sea.
"I'll miss you; you know. We all will."
Haelyra kicked her legs faster in the water, and imagined it was herself creating the waves out on the break waters, one small kick rolling to something bigger, stronger, better.
"I know. I'll miss you lot too, but… I feel…"
"Trapped here?"
Hermione chuckled at the glance Haelyra shot her.
"No need to look at me like that. We can all see it. You're only ever grin when you're on the sea or in the sky. I just-… I wish I could follow you there too."
Haelyra swallowed around the lump in her throat, as stiff and sharp as coral. This moment was good, happy and sad too.
Bitter, in a way.
Children grow up, they move on, they go their own way, but that didn't mean they had to grow apart.
Hermione had her Transfiguration Mastery. Ron would have his Auror training, the very reason he couldn't be there that morning. Haelyra would have her ships and sea. That didn't mean they wouldn't be friends any more. It was just a part of growing up into the terrible things called Adults.
"You were never any good on a broom, 'Mione, and you get awfully sea sick. This… This isn't it; you know? I'll be back. I'll visit. I'm scheduled to dock at Cape Town in five months. You can come visit me there… Safe and sound on your precious solid ground."
The stress pulling Hermione's smile tight and taut on her face lessoned, eased as a brook would ease around a bend, and maybe this moment didn't have to be bitter at all. Maybe it could just be something new.
Strange, and scary, and superbly different.
For the first time in her whole life, Haelyra Potter was going her own way. It was her choice. This was-
Special.
"You can bet on it. I'll be waiting for you on the docks. And talking about waiting…"
Hermione peered curiously over the edge of the docks, eyeing the dark waters, searching for a shadow or a flicker of movement.
She wouldn't find any.
Cetus was good at only being seen when he wanted to be seen.
"Is that… Is it here?"
Almost as if summoned by his name, Haelyra felt the brush of tight scale, slick and cold and knobbed like limpet shells, against the bottom of her foot, tickling the tender skin, almost as if the creature below was saying I'm here, I'm here, I'm here!
"Cetus? Yes. He's hiding underneath the dock in the shallows. He's going to follow the ship when we sail. I think he's looking forward to getting his teeth into some deep-water fish, and having enough room to spread his wings fully. He's grown… Big in the last few months."
And he would grow bigger yet. Water Dragons typically didn't finish growing until their fifteenth year of life, and Cetus was only four, nearly five this December.
Another reason Haelyra needed to be out at sea.
Cetus needed room to flourish, he needed to, just like Haelyra, find… Space.
Space to breathe, space to grow, space to be.
Funnily, she thought, that was never going to be on land.
Her bathtub at Grimmauld Place had worked as a temporary home for the first month after his hatching, the Black Lake for the first two years, and this dock for the last three, but now... Space, like time, was constricting and forever running out.
Hermione Scoffed and pulled away from the edge.
"I still can't believe you found that bloody egg on the banks of the Black Lake. Water Dragons were meant to be extinct for millennia. What were you doing out there so early anyway?"
Screaming into the waters?
Fighting off a panic attack?
Trying to stave off the nightmares?
Planning on running away?
All of the above?
And then Haelyra had stumbled out of those waters, soaking, bruised, hoarse, and she had tumbled right across a little, cracked egg nestled and knotted in a bale of seaweed, scarred as Haelyra was scarred.
Lost as Haelyra was lost.
She didn't know what possessed her to pick it up and take it home. She knew even less why she had put it in her sink and sang bloody songs to it at night, when the nightmares were buzzing in her head. It was supposed to be dead. Petrified.
And it had hatched three months later.
Cetus, small, worm-like then, left wing slightly misshapen, had squawked bubbles at her as he pressed a pale belly to the porcelain, sea-foam-slit eyes blinking up at her in a mismatched rhythm, and Haelyra had never looked back.
"I was just out for a swim when I found him."
Hermione wound her arms tighter against herself.
"Only you would find a defunct fossilized creature and somehow revive it in your bathroom sink. I'm still surprised the Romanian Reservation didn't take him away."
Bang.
Hermione jumped a foot in the air as the planks beneath her feet were struck, groaning, bending dangerously, barely landing on her feet to stumble away further from the edge.
Haelyra chuckled and shushed into the waters between her legs.
"Oi! None of that. Be good."
The waters below rolled as Cetus's tail dipped back down from thunking the docks above.
It was only a little tap. A playful brush. If he really wanted to hit the docks with his spiked tail, the whole thing would have crumbled into the sea below. He was a cheeky bastard on the best of days, and down right territorial of Haelyra on every other.
Hermione blustered, but Haelyra shrugged.
"By then he was bonded to me somehow. Charlie said, from what they understand of Water Dragons, as little as that is, if they had of tried to take him away he would have died from it. I could have become seriously ill too. Our magic has… Linked. It was best for everyone if he stayed with me."
And I wouldn't have let them take him away either.
That, nevertheless, did not need to be said.
Just as Hermione knew how territorial Cetus was of Haelyra, she knew how much Haelyra loved her Dragon.
Brazenness and all.
"Yeah, well…"
Hermione peered between the cracks of the dock wearily but determined.
"You look after her out there, do you hear me?"
Thunk.
This time, the lash against the bottom of the docks sounded eerily like a duh.
"There it is."
Haelyra said as she eyed the horizon, spotting a small smear across the meeting of the sea and sky, a thumb of black so far out.
The Tempest.
Hermione had to squint to see the smudge, but Haelyra was already pulling her feet out the water, shushing as Cetus squirmed below, whipping the water at her absence, reaching for her tatty trainers at her hip before sweeping up her hoary dreads to knot on top of her head. The seashells tied in her hair clattered and jingled, and she would miss that sound when she took them out on the ship, forced into uniform and conformity.
She'd put them back in once she hit Cape Town on a month's leave before setting out to sea again.
Hermione finally unfurled herself, brushing palms onto the legs of her own jeans, suddenly, Haelyra could see, unsure what to do with herself.
"So… There it is."
Haelyra grinned, crossed the short distance between them when she had her constricting shoes on her feet, and swept her friend into a bone-crushing hug. Hermione stiffened before loosening in her grip, arms coming up to return the embrace, pale chin digging into the slope of Haelyra's neck.
"I'll be back. I'm not going forever."
Hermione's grip tightened.
"I know. Five months. Just five months."
She sounded as if she were trying to convince herself of it, that five months could be, and would be, like five minutes.
"I swear to Morgana, Haelyra, if your not there on the docks in Cape Town in five months, I'll hunt you down myself and Cetus won't stop me."
Haelyra chuckled.
"He'll likely help you."
Slowly, gently, unsure when the next time she would get to hug her friend would be exactly, Haelyra pulled away, bent down, plucked up her bag, and slung it over her shoulder.
"You take care of yourself, alright?"
Haelyra grinned toothily.
"You too, and try not to kill Ron while I'm gone. He means well."
Soon enough, Hermione was grinning along too, despite the wetness to her lashes that stubbornly refused to fall.
The same salt ran through the both of them, as it did the sea. They would never be far apart.
They were too connected for something as silly as distance to separate them.
When Haelyra finally managed to board the ship, The Tempest, her new home for the next nearly half a year, she stayed on the top deck for a long while, pressed against the railing, hand clutching bag strap, watching the gap between the ship and shore grow to a huge gulf, watching Hermione and Scotland and all Haelyra had ever known before grow smaller, and smaller, and smaller.
She had a strange thought then, just one. It felt a little like dying, to be watching those things shrink away right before her eyes, like the departed no longer visible to others, yet somehow still existing only on a different shore. And yet the world opened up too, the ocean grew, and it felt a little like coming back to life again, a whole knew world at her fingertips, a whole new future, a whole new life.
When the Tempest cleared the harbour, and the engines roared below in the pit of its pipes and wires, Haraella leaned over the railing, watching the elegant bow cut cleanly through the increasing choppy waves, gliding, dancing. She took a deep breath, saw the hint of a shadow under the water at her side, Cetus swimming happily along the prow, and she felt the air in her chest expand, her heart thumping so strongly she feared if she looked down she might see it bursting from her chest.
She faced the wind that pinkened her cheeks, licked at the salt crusting on her lips, stares and stares at the blue, the skies above darkening under cloud cover, and she smiled.
This, Haelyra thought… This is what freedom felt like.
"Hey! Newbie! Get down into the lower decks and get changed! Your first shift starts in half hour!"
Haelyra pushed away from the railing, still grinning, still bright-lilac eyed, still high on the rush of self-determination, and made for the door descending into the lower decks.
This was it.
This was life.
This was-
This was also two hours before the biggest freak storm to ever batter Scotland's coast reached them out on open sea, where, trying to save a Cabin Crew boy from a blown-out port window, Haelyra was thrown out overboard into a raging ocean that swallowed her down into the coldly furious depths.
Maybe, with her distinctive brand of luck, joining a ship called The Tempest wasn't the best of ideas she had ever had.
Next Chapter: Haelyra is left scrambling on a ship trying to survive a monstrous hurricane that no one saw coming, gets hammered and churned and knocked out into a violent sea, and wakes up on a strange, strange shore besides her bag and an agitated roaring Cetus, with a boiling sun beating down upon her… And a small crowd gathered around them speaking what sounds like gibberish. When the old maps said here be dragons, she didn't think they meant it quite so literally.
A.N: So it's been a life-time since I've updated this fic, and only a little less since I updated any of my other fics lol, but I am alive. Surprise. I've recently joined a Master's course at my Uni, and it's taking a toll on my spare time lol, so I hope you guys can understand and forgive me a little for my lack of updates. But here we are now, and hopefully a new update will be coming soon as I have most of next chapter written up already.
In the meantime, we got the casting list for House of the Dragon, and even a trailer! I'm so excited for it. I'm still edgy about Matt Smith as Daeron, I love the actor but... Well, we see, but Steve Toussaint as Corys Velaryon? Bitch… Bitch, sign me the fuck up! I loved him in Before We Die, loved him more in Shooting Dogs, and him and John Boyega in Red, White and Blue blew my little, tiny mind. I'm so excited to see what he does with the role, and hope my own inconsequential rendition of Corys Velaryon will be half as good. Unfortunately, House of the Dragon isn't out yet, so my story will likely take some liberties this show will not take, but I hope you all enjoy this for what it is anyway. Some fun to hold us over for the show lol.
Thank you to everyone who has followed, favourited and reviewed. I hope you guys liked this chapter, and are looking forward to the next. If you have a spare moment, please drop a few words over in the review box. They keep the muses fed. Until next time, stay beautiful! ~AlwaysEatTheRude21