Thanks to all of my reviewers!
A/N: In case you were wondering, there are 14 people with Harry and Rose, including them. 7 girls, 7 boys. Also, I'm guessing that Bill's 21, Charlie's 20. Percy is currently 19. And in book 5, it is 1995. Look on Nearly Headless Nick's deathday party banner in book 2 and figure out what year it was then.
The Unicorn and the Stag
Chapter 22
Ginny and Hermione were the last to join Rose on the beach.
"I swear the look on his face when he opened his trunk."
"It was classic!"
The girls had spent some time to take revenge for the twins' dropping the smoke bomb into their room at the Leaky Cauldron. They had slipped a fake dragon's egg into their trunk that would sit still for fifteen seconds after a prearranged person saw it. It would then burst into a fake Hungarian Horntail and nearly swipe their head (or heads) off, then disappear into a huge cloud of black slime.
"It took them forever to clean up the slime!"
The girls laughed and stopped walking. They had reached the beach. It looked like half of Hogwarts had invaded the beach. The towels and umbrellas were spread out all over the beach, and the girls were giggling and shrieking at the boys, who had apparently decided to come out. Several couples had started some Muggle game Ginny didn't recognize. Every girl had climbed onto her boyfriend's shoulders and had them run around so she could knock other girls off their girlfriends. Harry and Ron sat and watched, the only boys left out. Hermione grabbed Ginny's hand and dragged her over to where they were sitting.
"Ron! Come on, I want to play!"
She dragged him out to the water and jumped on his shoulders. She looked back at Ginny and Harry.
"Come on! It's really fun!"
She ducked as Parvati made a lunge for her back. Ginny looked at Harry.
"Do you want to try?"
He smiled.
"Sure."
She grabbed his hand and they ran down to the water. They played for two hours before nearly drowning Rose and Bill. They emerged from the water a minute later, Rose shrieking.
"There are dolphins down there! They pushed us back up!"
The girls started begging her to teach them how to turn into a dolphin.
"All right, I'll tell you! Shut your eyes, sit still, and picture a dolphin you want to turn into. Don't think about anything but the dolphin."
Ginny dutifully did so. To her surprise, she felt her legs elongating and sticking together. Her arms got shorter and her fingers disappeared. She felt her mouth stretch out and dozens of teeth grow in. When she opened her eyes, she was underwater. Seven other dolphins surrounded her.
*Kick your feet,* Rose's voice told everyone.
They did so. Suddenly, they were moving out to deeper water with surprising speed.
*This is awesome!* Ginny surprised herself. She hadn't known she could do this telepathy thing.
*Where are the dolphins you saw?*
*Over there. Use your sonar; the dolphin part of you knows how.*
Ginny looked through her memories, trying to find out how to echolocate. She suddenly heard a series of squeaks and squeals from her own mouth and the others. She heard, rather than saw, a pod of about thirty dolphins playing near the ocean floor. The girls swam down to join them.
The dolphins welcomed them joyfully, or so it seemed. They suddenly started ramming Rose with their snouts. Surprisingly, Rose pushed them back.
*It's a game,* she explained. *Kind of like when little kids push each other and play fight.*
Ginny suddenly understood. She punched the closest dolphin playfully with her snout. It clicked and squealed at her and whacked her back.
*They can talk!*
*Yes. Try a little harder and you can understand. You can speak it too. Listen.*
Rose opened her snout and made a series of clicks and whistles. Ginny understood it to mean "Hello. Where are you from?" The dolphins spoke back.
"We are from the Great Forest."
"The Great Forest?" Ginny tentatively asked.
"It's a kelp forest nearby. Dolphins love kelp; they must really like it there." She turned to the one that had spoken. "Could you lead us there? We are from a different part of the waters, we don't know much about this area." The dolphin made a movement that translated into yes. The pod turned and began to swim quickly out to sea. The girls followed. Unfortunately, the dolphins weren't dolphins.
*~*~*
Back at the beach, the boys were starting to worry. Well, not all the boys. Just Bill and Harry.
"Seriously, Ron. I'm getting a bad feeling about the girls," Harry said desperately as having that tingly feeling inside his skull again. The last time he'd felt that, Voldemort had been attacking his sister.
"I've got the same feeling, Ron. Something's up," Bill told him. "Why don't we go and get them?"
"No way!" Ron said. "They can take care of themselves. They're the all- powerful Gold witches, aren't they?" Ron was in an exceptionally bad mood. The twins had been picking on him, and he had a stomach full of seawater which he kept hurling up.
"Ron! Gold witches can't perform magic when they're in a non-human shape! I don't like the way this feels!"
"Ron! Your sister's out there, and your girlfriend too! Show a little caring for them!"
He stared at Harry. "Fine. I'll go get them. Just swim out a few miles and drag them back by the tails!"
Bill sighed. "Honestly, Ron, you never listen, do you?" He waded into the water until he was about up to his waist. He then changed quickly into a harbor porpoise. He stuck his head out of the water and whistled. Harry followed, and looked expectantly at Ron.
"But what about the others?"
*They'll come.*
*You can do tel.*
*Yes! Get in the water!*
He did so. Abruptly, he made the transformation into harbor porpoise. Harry looked around. The others were doing the same.
*Let's go find the girls.*
They swam towards the kelp forest, barely visible in the distance.
*~*~*
They were right. The girls were in big trouble.
Rose was desperately trying to persuade the girls to morph back into human shape. But they refused.
*We'll be safer if we swim.*
The "dolphins" had turned out not to be dolphins at all. They had changed into sharks in the middle of the kelp forest.
*Death Eaters. Without a doubt.*
*Think about what thirty sharks would do to seven girls.*
*We can't do magic in this shape. If we go human, we can get back to shore.*
*What if the Death Eaters eat us before we're fully human?*
*They won't* Rose assured her. Liar, she thought. We've got about a fifty- fifty chance.
*On the count of three, if you want to change, do it. Picture yourself standing on the beach. One.two.three!*
Rose focused all her thoughts into herself lying on the beach. She felt the dolphin parts of her change back into human. But when she opened her eyes, she wasn't on the shore.
*Rose,* Parvati said nervously. *It didn't work.*
*Okay, okay. I can see what's happened here. You can't leave unless you Apparate.*
*We can't Apparate.*
*I can. The Bernards can. Everybody grab one of our hands.*
Everyone made a rush for the hand of one of the twenty-year-olds.
*Alex. Ally. On the count of five.*
The Death Eaters started swimming towards them.
*One.*
Twenty feet.
*Two.*
Ten feet.
*Oh, shit. FIVE!*
They disappeared. But not before a shark found its teeth in Rose's flesh.
*~*~*
Harry and the boys found the remains of the sharks five minutes later.
*Ugh,* Harry said.
The sharks had apparently gone into a feeding frenzy.
*These aren't sharks,* Bill said. *They're Death Eaters.*
*Death Eater Animagi? Uh oh.*
*I think it's just transfiguration.*
*Well, what happened to the girls?*
*Rose and her friends must have Apparated with them. You can take passengers for Apparating.*
*Then we came out here for nothing?*
*I still have a bad feeling,* Harry said nervously. In fact, the feeling was getting worse.
*Me, too,* Bill said.
*Let's get back to the mansion.*
*Sure. Fred and George got their Apparating licenses in July. So they'll take some people and I'll take some people. You two. On the count of three. One.two.three.*
They Disapparated.
*~*~*
Back at the mansion, Rose was having trouble walking.
"Rose, are you all right?" Hermione asked.
"I'm fine. Just a little cut." She was being half truthful. It was just a cut.
"A cut? Let me see it." Hermione grabbed her right arm to look at it. "Whoa! This isn't just a little cut!"
"It is a cut," Rose mumbled. She had to admit, it wasn't little. One of the sharks had dug his teeth into her shoulder and pulled his jaw back. This resulted in Rose ending up with a patch of skin the size of her hand being pulled of her shoulder and getting a shark tooth stuck in her flesh. She had been covering it up with the towel she'd grabbed off the beach.
"Rosie, I swear, you'd say you were all right if you belonged in Saint Mungo's," Alex said.
"We should know, after the semis of the World Cup when we were 18," Ally added.
"She broke both her arms and still caught the Snitch. Afterward, she said she was 'fine.'"
"Shut up, Bernard."
She caught the slight wobble in her voice. Apparently, so did everyone else.
"Told you you weren't all right."
"I told you to shut up, Bernard," she mumbled. She heard a splashing and turned around. Seven harbor porpoises were beaching themselves on the sand and turning into the boys. They ran up the beach to where the girls were standing. Rose sat down. She just felt tired all of a sudden.
"What happened?" Bill said.
"Death Eater in the form of a shark pulled off Rose's shoulder," Hermione said. "She's got a space the size of her hand missing and there's a tooth embedded in the muscle."
"Let me take a look." He gasped when he saw the size and depth of the wound. "For God's sake Rosie, this isn't just a little cut! How long have you had this?"
"About ten minutes."
Come on, you need to get inside."
Bill's arms picking her up off the sand was the last thing she remembered before she blacked out.
A/N: In case you were wondering, there are 14 people with Harry and Rose, including them. 7 girls, 7 boys. Also, I'm guessing that Bill's 21, Charlie's 20. Percy is currently 19. And in book 5, it is 1995. Look on Nearly Headless Nick's deathday party banner in book 2 and figure out what year it was then.
The Unicorn and the Stag
Chapter 22
Ginny and Hermione were the last to join Rose on the beach.
"I swear the look on his face when he opened his trunk."
"It was classic!"
The girls had spent some time to take revenge for the twins' dropping the smoke bomb into their room at the Leaky Cauldron. They had slipped a fake dragon's egg into their trunk that would sit still for fifteen seconds after a prearranged person saw it. It would then burst into a fake Hungarian Horntail and nearly swipe their head (or heads) off, then disappear into a huge cloud of black slime.
"It took them forever to clean up the slime!"
The girls laughed and stopped walking. They had reached the beach. It looked like half of Hogwarts had invaded the beach. The towels and umbrellas were spread out all over the beach, and the girls were giggling and shrieking at the boys, who had apparently decided to come out. Several couples had started some Muggle game Ginny didn't recognize. Every girl had climbed onto her boyfriend's shoulders and had them run around so she could knock other girls off their girlfriends. Harry and Ron sat and watched, the only boys left out. Hermione grabbed Ginny's hand and dragged her over to where they were sitting.
"Ron! Come on, I want to play!"
She dragged him out to the water and jumped on his shoulders. She looked back at Ginny and Harry.
"Come on! It's really fun!"
She ducked as Parvati made a lunge for her back. Ginny looked at Harry.
"Do you want to try?"
He smiled.
"Sure."
She grabbed his hand and they ran down to the water. They played for two hours before nearly drowning Rose and Bill. They emerged from the water a minute later, Rose shrieking.
"There are dolphins down there! They pushed us back up!"
The girls started begging her to teach them how to turn into a dolphin.
"All right, I'll tell you! Shut your eyes, sit still, and picture a dolphin you want to turn into. Don't think about anything but the dolphin."
Ginny dutifully did so. To her surprise, she felt her legs elongating and sticking together. Her arms got shorter and her fingers disappeared. She felt her mouth stretch out and dozens of teeth grow in. When she opened her eyes, she was underwater. Seven other dolphins surrounded her.
*Kick your feet,* Rose's voice told everyone.
They did so. Suddenly, they were moving out to deeper water with surprising speed.
*This is awesome!* Ginny surprised herself. She hadn't known she could do this telepathy thing.
*Where are the dolphins you saw?*
*Over there. Use your sonar; the dolphin part of you knows how.*
Ginny looked through her memories, trying to find out how to echolocate. She suddenly heard a series of squeaks and squeals from her own mouth and the others. She heard, rather than saw, a pod of about thirty dolphins playing near the ocean floor. The girls swam down to join them.
The dolphins welcomed them joyfully, or so it seemed. They suddenly started ramming Rose with their snouts. Surprisingly, Rose pushed them back.
*It's a game,* she explained. *Kind of like when little kids push each other and play fight.*
Ginny suddenly understood. She punched the closest dolphin playfully with her snout. It clicked and squealed at her and whacked her back.
*They can talk!*
*Yes. Try a little harder and you can understand. You can speak it too. Listen.*
Rose opened her snout and made a series of clicks and whistles. Ginny understood it to mean "Hello. Where are you from?" The dolphins spoke back.
"We are from the Great Forest."
"The Great Forest?" Ginny tentatively asked.
"It's a kelp forest nearby. Dolphins love kelp; they must really like it there." She turned to the one that had spoken. "Could you lead us there? We are from a different part of the waters, we don't know much about this area." The dolphin made a movement that translated into yes. The pod turned and began to swim quickly out to sea. The girls followed. Unfortunately, the dolphins weren't dolphins.
*~*~*
Back at the beach, the boys were starting to worry. Well, not all the boys. Just Bill and Harry.
"Seriously, Ron. I'm getting a bad feeling about the girls," Harry said desperately as having that tingly feeling inside his skull again. The last time he'd felt that, Voldemort had been attacking his sister.
"I've got the same feeling, Ron. Something's up," Bill told him. "Why don't we go and get them?"
"No way!" Ron said. "They can take care of themselves. They're the all- powerful Gold witches, aren't they?" Ron was in an exceptionally bad mood. The twins had been picking on him, and he had a stomach full of seawater which he kept hurling up.
"Ron! Gold witches can't perform magic when they're in a non-human shape! I don't like the way this feels!"
"Ron! Your sister's out there, and your girlfriend too! Show a little caring for them!"
He stared at Harry. "Fine. I'll go get them. Just swim out a few miles and drag them back by the tails!"
Bill sighed. "Honestly, Ron, you never listen, do you?" He waded into the water until he was about up to his waist. He then changed quickly into a harbor porpoise. He stuck his head out of the water and whistled. Harry followed, and looked expectantly at Ron.
"But what about the others?"
*They'll come.*
*You can do tel.*
*Yes! Get in the water!*
He did so. Abruptly, he made the transformation into harbor porpoise. Harry looked around. The others were doing the same.
*Let's go find the girls.*
They swam towards the kelp forest, barely visible in the distance.
*~*~*
They were right. The girls were in big trouble.
Rose was desperately trying to persuade the girls to morph back into human shape. But they refused.
*We'll be safer if we swim.*
The "dolphins" had turned out not to be dolphins at all. They had changed into sharks in the middle of the kelp forest.
*Death Eaters. Without a doubt.*
*Think about what thirty sharks would do to seven girls.*
*We can't do magic in this shape. If we go human, we can get back to shore.*
*What if the Death Eaters eat us before we're fully human?*
*They won't* Rose assured her. Liar, she thought. We've got about a fifty- fifty chance.
*On the count of three, if you want to change, do it. Picture yourself standing on the beach. One.two.three!*
Rose focused all her thoughts into herself lying on the beach. She felt the dolphin parts of her change back into human. But when she opened her eyes, she wasn't on the shore.
*Rose,* Parvati said nervously. *It didn't work.*
*Okay, okay. I can see what's happened here. You can't leave unless you Apparate.*
*We can't Apparate.*
*I can. The Bernards can. Everybody grab one of our hands.*
Everyone made a rush for the hand of one of the twenty-year-olds.
*Alex. Ally. On the count of five.*
The Death Eaters started swimming towards them.
*One.*
Twenty feet.
*Two.*
Ten feet.
*Oh, shit. FIVE!*
They disappeared. But not before a shark found its teeth in Rose's flesh.
*~*~*
Harry and the boys found the remains of the sharks five minutes later.
*Ugh,* Harry said.
The sharks had apparently gone into a feeding frenzy.
*These aren't sharks,* Bill said. *They're Death Eaters.*
*Death Eater Animagi? Uh oh.*
*I think it's just transfiguration.*
*Well, what happened to the girls?*
*Rose and her friends must have Apparated with them. You can take passengers for Apparating.*
*Then we came out here for nothing?*
*I still have a bad feeling,* Harry said nervously. In fact, the feeling was getting worse.
*Me, too,* Bill said.
*Let's get back to the mansion.*
*Sure. Fred and George got their Apparating licenses in July. So they'll take some people and I'll take some people. You two. On the count of three. One.two.three.*
They Disapparated.
*~*~*
Back at the mansion, Rose was having trouble walking.
"Rose, are you all right?" Hermione asked.
"I'm fine. Just a little cut." She was being half truthful. It was just a cut.
"A cut? Let me see it." Hermione grabbed her right arm to look at it. "Whoa! This isn't just a little cut!"
"It is a cut," Rose mumbled. She had to admit, it wasn't little. One of the sharks had dug his teeth into her shoulder and pulled his jaw back. This resulted in Rose ending up with a patch of skin the size of her hand being pulled of her shoulder and getting a shark tooth stuck in her flesh. She had been covering it up with the towel she'd grabbed off the beach.
"Rosie, I swear, you'd say you were all right if you belonged in Saint Mungo's," Alex said.
"We should know, after the semis of the World Cup when we were 18," Ally added.
"She broke both her arms and still caught the Snitch. Afterward, she said she was 'fine.'"
"Shut up, Bernard."
She caught the slight wobble in her voice. Apparently, so did everyone else.
"Told you you weren't all right."
"I told you to shut up, Bernard," she mumbled. She heard a splashing and turned around. Seven harbor porpoises were beaching themselves on the sand and turning into the boys. They ran up the beach to where the girls were standing. Rose sat down. She just felt tired all of a sudden.
"What happened?" Bill said.
"Death Eater in the form of a shark pulled off Rose's shoulder," Hermione said. "She's got a space the size of her hand missing and there's a tooth embedded in the muscle."
"Let me take a look." He gasped when he saw the size and depth of the wound. "For God's sake Rosie, this isn't just a little cut! How long have you had this?"
"About ten minutes."
Come on, you need to get inside."
Bill's arms picking her up off the sand was the last thing she remembered before she blacked out.