~ Waterbound ~
2. Echo of the Waterfall
Twenty minutes earlier, Little Whinging
'Not even half an hour left,' Harry Potter thought to himself as he sat on the heap of ill-fitting boards he had to call his bed, watching the digital clock intently.
It used to be a tradition of his, to wait until midnight, when the 30th of July gave way to the 31st, but that year was different.
It was only last Christmas that Harry had found out that he was in fact born at eight o'clock in the evening of the 31st. And in honour of that discovery, the soon-to-be-sixteen-year-old boy sat, twenty hours later than he had every year, and waited for the clock to strike the true anniversary of his birth. Because that made more sense, right?
There was however little cheer that the boy found in cutting his wait short, even if staying awake only until eight easily beat the wait until midnight in his mind. And including the fact that it was taxing to remain awake anytime past dinner or non-dinner after a day filled with chores.
No.
Even the little gifts Harry had received throughout the day did little to cheer him up, however thoughtful and loving the gifts and the letters accompanying them were. For there were much darker thoughts on his mind that day. Ones that were hard to get rid of, when he was staring at their source.
'Born as the seventh month dies...' the young wizard could not help but repeat in his head, over and over again.
Because that was the crux of the problem, wasn't it? Being the one born on the 31st of July and in the evening on the top of that.
Because it was that that had most likely differentiated Harry Potter from Neville - 'Gran said I was born so early she isn't sure if my birthday isn't actually the 30th' - Longbottom, when he had made his choice on who to go after that October night. Even if Harry did not think of that fact recently and not when he had heard that accursed prophecy.
As far as Harry knew, if Voldemort was anything, other than crazy, it was obsessed with details. If he had heard of two children born on the prophesized day, he would have researched both options, wouldn't he? And simple things such as birthdate and the time were information that could be looked up if one knew where to look. With how far and wide Voldemort's influence had been spread during his last reign, was it so much of a stretch to think he had had people in Saint Mungo's as well?
Thoughts like that helped little, but being alone as he was there was little he could do to banish it from his mind.
'Even Dursleys would be a welcome distraction by now.' a helpless chuckle escaped the boy.
But even that respite he was not to get. For it was a rare day in the Dursley residence, the day Harry Potter was left in it all by his lonesome. But Petunia Dursley could not afford to leave her unpaid gardener to not tend to her garden for even a day - nevermind three - when the competition was about to start, could she? It mattered little that she went on to spend all her weekend with her husband, or that Dudley was to be away most of the 31st because of a boxing training.
Be her reasoning whatever it was, Harry Potter stayed in the house alone and with free reign of the house.
It was an irony that the one day Harry could make himself meals worthy a king, or at least a growing boy, the food tasted like ashes when it hit his tongue.
A cruel, cruel irony.
At least he could replenish his stocks some - never with anything expensive or fresh - in the horrible eventuality that was no one coming for him, as they had promised. An eventuality that seemed more and more likely by the passing hour. After all middle of the summer would have been his birthday, right? Why had no one come yet? Especially as he mentioned in one of his letters that no one would even be there to try and keep him from leaving.
"Does no one care?" the at-other-times-brave Gryffindor could not help but ask the empty room, even as the time ticked closer and closer to the eight o'clock he was waiting for.
But no one answered.
And so Harry waited and waited and waited.
That is until he did not.
...
"Given the tone of the alarm, someone had just come into their creature inheritance." Lucius Malfoy explained as his wand swept over the map that anchored The Net. "The fact it continues to beep and the urgency of it means that the creature is in danger from their transformation. That means they either changed shape which does not agree with their current environment or that are in an environment which is directly harmful to them in their new form."
...
When he had come to he realised that he had fallen from the bed. Why had he fallen from the bed? It must have been the pain for sure. Or was it only after he fell from his bed that the pain started?
His legs felt as if someone was breaking them. His neck felt as if someone was clawing it apart. His eyes were burning. Even his hands were not spared, feeling like someone was trying to tear his fingernails off.
'Why does everything hurt so bad?'
And all of a sudden, the external pain was not the problem, because as he was starting to realise whatever it was that was happening, the most pressing problem was that he couldn't breathe. He couldn't breathe. WHY COULDN'T HE BREATHE?
He was trying to. So so hard. To the point where his lungs simply should have cooperated, shouldn't they?
But it was to no avail.
He needed help, but where to get it?
'Was that the sound of the door opening?'
Did the Dursleys return? Was it a burglar? Was it a wizard? Weren't Remus and the others supposed to pick him up on his birthday? Maybe they could help him. He only hoped Sirius hadn't decided to tag along, he didn't like the risk of him being caught. Especially when he had almost lost him back at the Ministry. But even Sirius would be welcome if it only meant that the sound of the front door hadn't been a figment of his imagination.
Why was the door so far away? His legs felt so very heavy as Harry tried to drag himself closer to the one source of salvation, the feeling worse for the fact that the skin on them was rubbed raw by the dragging motion. But surely, if he could just get there, then surely someone would come for him.
Someone... Anyone...
"Please."
...
The moment he opened the front door of Privet Drive 4, Dudley Dursley knew there was something wrong about his home.
There was nothing wrong that he could see per se. It was more of an oppressive atmosphere. As if the air was being pushed out of his lungs without nothing physical pressing him down.
It took a moment for him to realise he could hear a noise as well. One he could easily pinpoint to its source.
The upstairs bedrooms.
And given the current almost empty state of the house, it had to be one bedroom in particular.
He didn't lock his cousin in his room, did he? Even if his mother hadn't been adamant he let Harry keep the garden speckless and his father's arguments against that he wouldn't have. But he had been doing that for so long before that summer, maybe he did it without realising it?
Taking the keys from the hall table - just in case - the youngest Dursley ascended the stairs.
With each step, the noise got louder, but not overly so, as if the source of the noise was not as strong anymore. Even then it, however, did not take him long to realise what it was that he had heard.
Thumps on the wood.
Weaker and weaker with each hit, until they were more of a scratchy noise than a hit at times.
And in addition to that, a strange breathy noise.
"Potter?" Dudley asked, even as he took the handle only for his nerves-sweaty palms slipping on it the first try. He thought he heard his cousin's voice for a moment, but why wasn't he answering?
The sounds had gotten noticeably quieter since he had first heard them. What was happening?
Finally, the door opens.
The sound of the palm hitting the doorstep rather than the door was deafening, shocking in its loudness.
The sight of what has become of Harry Potter's body was even more so.
But what shocks Dudley more than anything else is the moment he realises the source of that the strange breathy noise he had earlier was the sound of his cousin choking. Why was he choking?
"Ha-Harry?"
As one weak arm tried to reach out to him, the entire posture tilts sideways and exposes Harry's throat... and holy shit were those gills?
Dudley had never been of the bravest, however, there was something that made him stay, rather than run as would have otherwise been his first course of action. That screamed over his sense of self-preservation and pushed him towards the preservation of someone else's life.
That one moment where his cousin's eyes seemed to dim as hope turned to the defeat of realisation of who it was that had opened the door. The realisation that Harry honestly thought he was going to leave him there to die because that would certainly be the case, were he to leave the boy there.
Dudley knew he was many things.
Some he could be proud of.
The Smeltings Academy attendee. Junior Heavyweight Inter-School Boxing Champion of the Southeast.
Some much less so.
The rebel. The vandal. The bully.
He wasn't very proud of those anymore, which was why he tried hard to erase those monickers ever since the eye-opening experience the previous summer.
Those... Dementor things.
Even if he could not erase the wrongs of the past, he was not going to be the one who stood by and watched his cousin die. He was no murderer. And that was what he would always feel like if he did not at least try to do something.
And so he turned around and ran.
...
There was something nerve-wracking on listening to Lucius Malfoy systematically going through the counties of England one by one. Severus Snape couldn't imagine what it was like for the man. Being the one in charge of solving the situation.
...
It was fortunate that the bathroom was only a short distance across the corridor. And it was yet more fortunate that the bathroom upstairs had a bath rather than the shower cubicle the one downstairs had.
'Cold or hot? Cold or hot? Ah, cold. Didn't Piers mention years back that he accidentally killed his pet fish by putting it into water that was too hot? Dear God, why are you making me think of my cousin as a fish?'
Running the water and putting the stopper in the bathtub later, Dudley ran back to the only other person in the house.
How to move him though? There was no way he could attempt the fireman carry - 'No legs to hold onto, oh my God.' - so dragging him, it was.
Wrapping his arms under his cousin's from behind seemed easier said than done, when said cousin seemed unresponsive by that time, only small hiccoughing attempts at drawing breath betraying his will to stay alive.
Then there was, of course, the tail.
"Why did you have to grow a freaking tail, Potter?" the youngest Dursley cursed as he dragged his out-of-it cousin across the floor and into the bathroom, where the bathtub was about quarter-full and continuing to fill. While it did not seem like much, something was better than nothing, Dudley surmised.
He needn't have worried about the water level, it turned out, as the biggest hurdle was yet to be overcome - getting Harry into the water. By the time he managed to lift the non-human enough to get him into the bath itself, there was enough water for Harry to have his entire upper half submerged, tail still hanging out.
'Thank you, boxing training.' Dudley thought to himself distantly, being more focused on the still form of his cousin.
He only hoped that he had done enough.
...
The water surrounded him whole - or at least as much of a whole as could fit into the bathtub. Never had he been so grateful to find himself in water.
...
The alarm stopped.
Everything went still and silent.
And then the alarm was sounded anew. Yet not the same.
It was less urgent than before. Longer stretches of time passed between one beep and the next.
"What happened?"
...
It was strange to see a motion similar to that of the first intake of breath of a drowning person done beneath water. But in a sense, Dudley figured, that was exactly what that whole experience must have felt like for Harry. Like drowning above the water.
'Only with the of gills. Not important those, not at all.'
After the few scary seconds where nothing had happened, it was a relief to see his cousin's at-first-panicked expression change into one that could almost be called serene. As if he hadn't been in mortal peril only moments before and instead was simply enjoying the feeling of the water surrounding him.
Finally, after what seemed like eternity Harry's eyes opened.
"Thank you," he said and Dudley could answer him with only a bark of a laugh. His mind was too scrambled right that moment to try to figure out how speech could be heard from under the water.
He had enough trouble not fainting from the adrenaline crash as it were.
...
In the silence of the evening, a person appeared with a crack in the dark alleyway connected to Magnolia Crescent.
The man did not stay long. As soon as he appeared, he already let his legs guide him towards his goal: 4 Privet Drive. There was no time to spare.
Assuming it was one Harry Potter whose distress The Net had picked up there could have been other measures put into place to keep watch of the boy. Yet Severus Snape did not think it was someone of the so-called Light, who had eased the new creature's transition.
He knew what the Light did to those whom they thought Dark.
A year and a month, here comes the second chapter... Sorry about that. At least the chapter is longer than the first by way of apology for leaving it on chapter one for so long.
Also two notes about this chapter.
1, I know I actually use the midnight countdown in some of my other fics, but I decided to veer off here.
2, I'm quite sure that the door to Harry's room opened inwards in the movie, but for the sake of this story, let's pretend opposite, okay?
Next chapter should hopefully arrive sometime in September, as I plan to devote time to other fics, including the STILL-UNPUBLISHED B-day story for this year -_- ... *sigh* I have two ideas for it being worked on, so I might as well ask:
WHICH WOULD YOU LIKE TO SEE MORE ATM? "Cinderella AU, ABO Cedric/Harry" or "mostly canon George/Harry with ghost! matchmaker Fred"?
I gave up the idea of doing the one-shot anyway, so it'd both be maybe 4-10 chapter deal.
Thank you for any and all responses regarding this chapter or the B-day story!
See ya~ ( "-.-)/