He woke up to sharp pain everywhere and immediately wished he was back asleep. His chest was agonising and his throat felt like it was on fire. An awful screeching noise split his ears, then skeletal hands wrapped around his arms and dragged him upright. A moment later he was throwing up bile everywhere, all over the thing that was supporting him.
His actions were met by more screeching and babbling and it wasn't until long after his vomiting had subsided into a feeling of damp exhaustion that the noise became words. Someone was singing a soothing song in a strange, foreign language and rubbing his back soothingly.
He blinked his eyes, realising he was in a strange, damp room. Water dripped from the ceiling and splashed against a floor coated in fluffy weeds. The stink of bile barely covered the tangy ripe smell of underwater mud and the person behind him was...
A mermaid.
Her tail was spectacular, glittering green scales covered a thick, sinuous tail and long, delicate fins dotted down the length of her slightly paler front. She wore a shirt of small, shiny stones that had been knotted together with course looking rope and her green hair hung in damp locks around her face. Her eyes were huge in her face, suggesting that she was the thing he'd seen just before he lost consciousness.
'You almost died. Wizards are not meant to be down this deep.' She told him, her voice sounding scratchy in the dry air.
He tried to reply, but ended up coughing instead.
'Don't speak just yet, our healers think they might have damaged your throat when you breathed in water.' She instructed gently. 'Here, this is a potion for you.'
Gellert really didn't want to see anything liquid again but he complied anyway, drinking down one of the worst potions he'd ever drunk. It seemed to work as his throat was instantly soothed and his pounding headache lessened slightly. He glanced around the room again, taking in the golden glowing weeds which draped down from the ceiling and lit the wooden room they were in. The floor was flat but the walls curved out oddly and the window was circular. If he was at the bottom of the fjord he guessed that this was a ship, preserved by the merpeople as a home.
'Your Kelpie is outside.' She told him gently as he tried to stand and look out of the window. 'He's why we rescued you; there's not many surface dwellers that can earn enough loyalty from a Kelpie to tempt it away from a Mervillage.'
'Kelpie.' He managed to croak.
'Yes, your Kelpie. He rushed off you get you as soon as you cut yourself, I imagine he would have come for you sooner if the Merpoles hadn't been riding him.'
A moment later, a very familiar head popped through the invisible barrier that held the water out of the room. Gellert jumped up, staggering across the room on wobbly legs to throw his arms around the beast's neck.
Kelpie's breath stank of fish and his coat was freezing, dripping with the water he'd just emerged from but Gellert couldn't care less. Kelpie was home, comforting in his familiarity. The little breathless huffs as his breathing changed from gills to nostrils, the way he bobbed his head down to check his pockets for treats.
'He's been checking on you since we got you here. If he could climb through that window, he would.' She made a screeching noise that might have been a laugh, then shooed Kelpie away again so that he could drink a whole selection of awful potions.
Eventually, he realised that he had no idea how long he'd been unconscious for and he asked. Apparently it hadn't been as long as it sounded - only six hours which meant that unless Alice had said something, they probably hadn't even realised he was missing yet. The bad news was that he wouldn't be well enough to get to the surface for several days yet.
That meant that whatever story Alice told everyone would be what everyone had to believe, unless he could somehow get a message up to the surface. His request was unsurprisingly met with denial. Merpeople were hunted by many wizards for their scales and hair and this hidden colony had no intention of revealing themselves to someone who hadn't been vouched for by a Kelpie.
Perhaps, he suggested, he could put a message in one of the old bottles they used for potions and it could be swum to somewhere where, when released, it fetched up against the beach used by first years for duelling practice.
This idea was quickly agreed upon, allowing him to stumble upon the next hurdle. Hermione's natural wandless magic was awe inspiring and allowed her to conjure things as complex as a quill and parchment with ease. His own however, whilst excellent in its own right, still struggled under the limitation of what he perceived as possible. He didn't believe he was able to wandlessly conjure a quill, so he couldn't.
Fortunately, it also turned out that wandlessly attempting to conjure parchment, ink and quill was exactly what his exhausted lungs and body needed to recover. Three hours of sitting in frustrating silence as he attempted to conjure what he needed left him feeling physically much better. By the time the mermaid, whose name he absolutely could not pronounce, returned with another round of potions he felt well enough to eat the meal she provided.
The fish was very, very fresh and apparently only stunned because within moments of receiving it, it wriggled out of his hands and started flopping across the floor and towards the freedom of the door. Perhaps, with any other young wizard it might have gotten away, but even if Gellert couldn't conjure a parchment, he knew he could hunt animals.
Green flashed brightly, flaring from his fingertips with a whoosh, as if something large had passed overhead. The fish stilled and he reached down to pick it up.
'I've seen surface dwellers eat them raw before.' The mermaid advised him. He grimaced and looked down at the fish in his hands.
It was large and silver-brown with delicate blue and black flecks along it's back, but at least the flesh was firm. Reluctantly, he sliced the tail off with a wandless severing charm and dug his fingers into the cool, slippery flesh.
'You know, I think I've had enough freshly hunted meals for a lifetime.' He said, inspecting the chunk. Before he could think better of it, he shut his eyes and shoved it in his mouth, swallowing it with absolutely minimal chewing. It was actually very good, he decided, even if it made him feel like a caveman. The fish was firm and moist, mildly flavoured and very delicate and he realised that if it wasn't literally gouged from the carcass, it would have been delicious in any household. Assuming, that is, that one could get it this fresh.
He ate his fill rapidly after that and was about to give his leftovers to Kelpie when he noticed the blood dripping from the severed tail. It was gruesome, but he realised he had a method of writing that was much more achievable.
He tore off a piece of his shirt and stretched it out between his fingers on the floor, then he plucked a long, soft rib bone and dipped it into the congealing pool of blood, managing to scratch out a short message.
"Stuck at bottom. Gellert." He rolled the piece of shirt up and packed it into the bottle, plugging the top with a densely packed wad of shirt. By tomorrow's duelling lesson, people would know not to believe Alice's story.