"Making a delivery… across the sea? No, 'bringing it across the sea.'" Shanks pressed his hands together, turning the tips of his fingers white with the pressure and exhaled. For several days he'd had the song ready; Roger had checked it over and confirmed it. Shanks knew his soulmates language, knew how to sing it to her, he'd translated his favorite song, the first she'd ever sung back to him. It was ready, he was ready, but his nerves seemed to disagree. Feet shuffling Shanks kicked at the sand under his feet and made an aggravated noise. He was being a wimp, chickening out on something so… huge. Shanks grabbed his hair, tugging it, and groaned loudly unafraid that anyone would see his moment of weakness.

The captain had stopped them at a spring island in the middle of a fall Brew-fest festival. Roger and Rouge had been equally giddy as they rushed off the ship, arm in arm ready to try all the foods, drinks, and activities. Truthfully the crew hadn't been able to tell who had been more excited about it, Roger, Rouge, or Rayleigh. The entire group had split into separate directions once off the Oro Jackson. Buggy had broken away quickly, no doubt to take advantage despite being underage, and Shanks intended to do the same… once he'd done what he'd been putting off for weeks.

Today was his perfect chance. He'd found a private beach, the sun was up, his soulmate had been cheerfully humming all morning, so she was in a good mood. He knew the exact words he needed to say, Shanks was ready.

"Just do it." He told himself and shook out his hands. Righting his stances, staring out at the ocean waves, hearing the distant music of the festival, Shanks opened his mouth and hoped for the best. If she were his, she'd be happy about the effort he'd put in, glad to finally communicate. He'd finally find her and her island, they'd be together, and he'd show her everything that Roger was currently showing Rouge.

"Yohohoho, yohohoho."

A whole world away, Holly followed behind Ron and his family with her trunk clicking along behind her. She had already done the goodbyes, the first she'd ever given with an actual family, and a place to miss while away for the year. Molly had kissed her forehead goodbye, and Arthur had hugged her tighter than she'd ever been hugged before. Both of them had bid her farewell with one final warning about Sirius Black, one more to add to her collection since the man escaped a month previously. Holly had nodded along, but hadn't actually promised to stay away from the man as Molly and Arthur wanted her too.

The summer had been an eventful one starting with her kidnapping, though she'd given permission for that. Holly had met a living Mummy whom with she now had a pen-pal. Discovered she had a thing for redheads. And watched a man die in front of her. One would think, as Hermione did, that she'd be terribly bothered by the latter. Except for the fact that Pettigrew was not actually the first person Holly had seen die; this one wasn't even directly her fault, the dog did it!

Really, from the Pettigrew incident, Holly had learned a bit about her parents. She'd gained new information, and even more questions about the night her parents died, and she became the girl-who-lived. Such as the fact that it hadn't been an accident that Voldemort died, it had been planned, because why else would they need to go into hiding? So as Molly and Arthur had her promising not to hunt down Black, Holly knew she was already planning on doing exactly that - if only to learn the real truth. This was about her past, and her future, Holly needed to know the what happened, there was no way around it.

Outside the heap of new information; Ginny had a brand new problem for her squib councilor. The Weasley's now knew that Arthur and Molly were a lot less loose with laws than earlier assumed. And George's had a new obsession with learning the truth - he'd be an excellent accomplice to her plans Holly decided - she had also gained a pet. The dog had been named Padfoot at George and Fred's insistence, and he was recovering slowly. He'd gained back some weight hiding the ribs all but stabbing out at them when Holly found him. They'd shaved him free of the knots and had a proper vet help them with the mange and fleas. His fur was steadily growing back revealing black fuzz, darker than the chocolate color he'd possessed before after being covered in filth. And his limp had faded after they healed the crack in his left back leg bone. So physically, Padfoot was doing well, but mentally… he was… off.

The Weasley's didn't notice it because as purebloods, they'd only ever see the highly intelligent crups before. Holly, who'd grown up running from bulldog and hearing her aunt Marge endlessly going on about raising them, quickly realized Padfoot was different. He was a muggle breed, a Wolf-hound mixed with a touch of Labrador the vet had said, but he didn't act like, for lack of a better word, normal. Padfoot had intense nightmares every single night, ones that would wake him up and send him into howling fits or into a flight that had him careening outside into the brambles by the property line. His fits could only be calmed by Holly or Ginny, for when he was like that, he didn't respond to anyone else.

During the day, Padfoot had a blankness in his eyes and mind. Sometimes it took quite a few calls of his name to get him to respond to it, and he'd turn to look at Holly as if he had no idea where he was. When not doing this, he attached himself to Holly, following her everywhere he went and had him growling at every perceived danger his mind came up with, such as a leaf, the breeze, the sun, Fred on occasion.

Percy was convinced he was her familiar, a stupid one, but one none the less. This had severely angered Hedwig, who had taken serious offense and had turned on Percy in revenge for his comment. Despite that, Molly and Arthur had agreed, or perhaps they just didn't want to deal with Padfoot's nightmares when Holly was at school, so they'd personally contacted McGonagall and gotten permission for the dog to go to Hogwarts. Therefore, as Holly boarded the Hogwarts express, four paws padded along behind her as Padfoot's long tail weakly swished.

The one bright side to all this Holly decided was that Padfoot got on amazingly with Hermione's new pet cat, better perhaps than even Ron did. Holly personally had no idea what she'd do if the pets didn't, considering she and Hermione shared a dorm room.

Boarding the train behind her best friends, Holly watched as Hermione rearranged her cat carrier and turned to shot Padfoot a look. "He's the weirdest dog ever." She commented already aware of the circumstance in which they found him. Ron and Holly had alerted her to the Pettigrew incident when they'd gone shopping for their school supplies. Something Holly only barely had permission to do considering the Sirius problem.

"Yohohoho, yohohoho." Holly's eyes crinkled as her soulmate's voice picked up in her head, he'd been quiet lately, and she wasn't used to the silence. She was glad to hear from him again.

"He's not weird, that furball is weird." Ron snarked, he was very much not a cat person the girls realized. Then again, he might have also been bothered by the fact that Holly and Hermione both had pets now, and his turned into a fat man who was potentially a mass murderer. Holly had personally offered Ron a replacement in an owl they'd seen at the shop, but he'd refused.

"He is weird, and so is Crookshanks." Holly took a more neutral stance, which basically was that both animals were beyond bizarre from a muggle-raised standpoint. Hermione's cat was a highly intelligent miniature lion, and her dog was as daft as a doorknob with what had to be PTSD if he were human. "But their still good pets." She reached down and ruffled Padfoot's ears causing him to yip and dance a bit in place before his attention wandered almost instantly to the floor and a scent he had caught. He circled the ground with his ears pointed toward her, and she rolled her eyes, walking down the corridors as her soulmate reach the first lyric of the song. The words she didn't and might not even know the meaning of; the words Hermione and Ron had long learned despite it being another language and, it was not her soulmates language that slipped from his lips.

"Gather up all of the crew, it's time to ship out binks brew-"

Holly tripped over her own two feet. Her hand helplessly reached out, catching nothing but air as she attempted to stall her fall. Arms windmilling Holly screeched and collided right into Ron, tangling together they crashed to the floor. Hermione watched this all with a perplexed expression. Flat on her stomach with her arms out, Holly stared forward, nose to nose with Padfoot, who was giving her a clear expression that said, 'now why did you go an do that for?'

And her soulmate sang the next line in heavily accented English.

"Pen," she gasped out, "I need a- 'Mione! quill!" Holly scrambled, tangling herself further with Ron, who had only just tried to get back to his feet as she hurled herself at her trunk and wrenched it open. Beside them, a compartment door opened, and Pansy Parkinson stuck her head out, to immediately roll her eyes at the chaos as Holly hurled her clothes to the side, desperately looking for a quill and ink. Why didn't she just have a pen, that would be so much easier!

"Why am I not surprised. It's the Gryffindorks." She sneered at them, and Ron blushed bright red in embarrassment, that tripled as one of Holly's undergarments hit his face. Pansy scoffed and slammed the door on them as Holly gave a triumphant scream and slammed a parchment down in the middle of the floor to furiously start writing.

"Holly!" Ron tossed the fabric away from him, and Hermione caught it rushing it back into Holly's trunk, both covering for her, and Padfoot gave a very human-sounding snicker.

"Shush!" she slapped at Ron when he got too close and focused her attention on the song in her head, the song her soulmate was singing. In English.

"What is going on, Holly?" Hermione asked, closing Holly's trunk.

"He's singing in English." She pressed the parchment she found to the floor and cursed every god that existed that she didn't have an actual pen. Instead, Holly was left with a quill and ink, and with extreme chicken scratch she hurriedly wrote the song as he sang it. The ink went everywhere, it brushed her nose, coated her hands, and went all over the parchment. But most of the song Holly was able to write, most of it.

"What?!"

"In English?" Hermione knelt beside her in the train corridors as Padfoot stared at the paper as well, seemingly just as curious as Hermione was. While Ron finally wrestled himself to his feet. "' Say so long to port's renown.'" Hermione read as Holly wrote, then it clicked, "oh, oh! Bink's sake! The song he's always singing, oh, this is brilliant!"

Hermione flopped onto the ground beside her, set aside the cat carrier and her own trunk, and rushed to pull out one of her many journals to rewrite Holly's chicken-scratch. Working Hermione began jotting down out the words they did now and started to compare words to see which words she could translate right there.

"Uh… confused?" Ron leaned against the wall as the train shoved into motion, he sighed as it did. He had a feeling they weren't going to be moving from the hallway any time soon, and they didn't have a compartment if there were any available in the first place.

"It's Holly' soulmate, he's translated his language into English. How did he do that!? I've been trying for years. Oh, but this is amazing, if we know what some of his words mean then we can translate our songs into his language and we can give him hints about how to find you!" She, of course, had been doing the very same for years, which is why she knew her soulmate was dark-haired, dark-eyed, and went to Durmstrang. She was clever with her hints, unlike Ron, who didn't bother, convinced fate would present her to him when he was ready. Hermione didn't understand that point of view, they knew Ron's soulmate went to Hogwarts, and he wasn't even a bit curious?

"That's great… are we going to find somewhere to sit?"

"No!" Holly said as the song ended, "I need him to- oh! Yohohoho Yohohoho. Gather… uhh… up all the crew?" She sang loudly in the middle of the hallway urging her soulmate to sing the song again. She shot a look at the words she had so far and attempted to stitch them together with the language he spoke so he'd fill in the missing spots for her. It was a mess, really, but it was her only chance.

Ron and Hermione exchanged a look as she did this. At the girl who in their first year couldn't sing at all, who even the year previous refused to sing in public unless it was with people she knew well, as that same girl sang out loud where anyone could hear her. The pair smiled fondly as Holly connected to her soulmate.

Sitting on the beach, Shanks didn't disappoint. He'd managed to get through the entire song without his soulmate joining him, and natural anxiety had him worry that perhaps he'd gotten the words wrong. That was until Shanks finished petering off, and she responded. Singing louder than he'd ever heard her sing before, putting every effort into the words, and royally destroying any sense of coherency to Bink's sake, she mixed his common, with her language. It was a demand for him to do it again, and Shanks' grinned utterly fondly over it.

She was adorable, and he was half in love with her already. All Shanks wanted to do was to bask in the chaos of what she was doing. To take in the moment and just remember every botched note and confused word. He wanted to memorize the way each translated word she sang sounded just a touch different than what he'd done. As she showed him how it was supposed to sound even as she buttered his own language.

Shanks laughed, checked his journal, and joined in.

"Day and night to our delight, The voyage never ends." They sang together. One standing on the beach with his eyes closed listening, the other furiously writing with ink-stained hands until they were both singing entirely in Holly's language.

"Can we get off the floor now?" Ron asked after Holly had the entire song written down, once in her own chicken scratch and four times in Hermione's careful printing. The girls sat knee to knee in the corridor, their heads together as they pieced together the words that were the same and tried to translate the language.

"We should pick a song to try and translate next," Hermione suggested ignoring Ron entirely, "something easy, but a hint to where you are?"

"Not the school song," Holly figured, "it'll be impossible to translate the houses without more of his words. Unless we translate most of it. If we work with him to translate the rest… maybe?"

"But without being able to show him what the words mean, that'll be difficult, not impossible, of course, but difficult none the less."

"I want to try." Holly grinned at her friend, and Ron sighed, opening his trunk to fish out the lunch Molly had made him and Holly, enough for them and Hermione. He slowly opened the sandwich then offered a bite to Padfoot, who had taken to napping at his side.

"Logical," Hermione tapped the papers, "the grammar to his language is so confusing!"

"That might just be English, actually."

"Oh! You're right, perhaps there are different rules to the language, like Japanese?"

"I can't speak Japanese…"

"Well, neither can I, but I heard it's relatively easy to learn with enough effort."

"That's every language, 'Mione." Ron drawled when he choked on his sandwich as the train slammed on the breaks, lurching violently, the three of them and everyone else on board were thrown to the side. Flopped on top of each other for the second time that day; the group, which not included Hermione, groaned. The lights shut down a split second later, plunging them into blackness, the only light came from the sun hidden by the thick rain clouds overhead.

Struggling in the dark, the pair righted themselves.

"What the bloody-"

"Ouch! Ron, that's my hand!"

"Lumos." Hermione's wand lit up, quickly followed by Ron's and Holly's as they each took their feet. Nearby heads poked out of compartments as the students looked out to see what had happened. Closest to where they sat, Pansy joined that number, her eyes narrowed upon seeing they were still directly outside her compartment.

"I thought I told you Gryffindorks to get lost." Pansy snarked, causing Holly to make a face of perplexed confusion, that was not a magical saying. But the thought passed when the temperature abruptly plummeted. In seconds Holly found she could physically see her breath, a moment after that, ice started to crawl up the windows closest to them, and all the hair on Holly's arms stood on end. At her feet, Padfoot whimpered and shoved into her knees, nearly sending her to the ground again.

"What?" Hermione exhaled as the three of them and Pansy, all stared glanced down the corridors looking for a cause.

Toward the front of the train, it appeared. A shadow slid in, a form floating above the ground as if caught by the wind when no wind existed. A shiver raced down Holly's spawn as some innate instinct deep within her screamed out in warning. Then it's hooded head turned towards them and took in a long rattling breath.

"Oh, Circe…" Pansy breathed in, "get in, right now!"

Its body followed its head, and it started forward, floating, gliding towards them. Holly needed no further prompting; she scrambled for Pansy's door dragging a frantic struggling Padfoot with her. She abandoned her trunk completely and hurled herself into the seat beside two Slytherin's. Ron and Hermione were a bare step behind, and they, with Pansy, flung the door closed.

The two Slytherin's inside the compartment spoke as one:

"What is it-"

"Pansy, what?"

"Barricade it!" Pansy screeched with full-on panic racing through her brain. Trunks were rushed forward, thrown on top of each other, and one of the Slytherins spelled the door to lock it before the pair turned to Pansy in question.

"Pansy!?" demanded one of the snakes, a boy with dark skin and piercing eyes.

"Dementor- there is a bloody Dementor on the train." Ron gasped for breath as the creature floated in front of the door. The six in the compartment shrank back silenced immediately as it rattled out a breath. Its hand reached down toward the handle achingly slowly, and the Slytherin's spell locking the door snapped as the door started to open.

Holly scarcely realized what was happening as Pansy pressed into Ron frantic to get away from the door, as Ron's hands automatically came around her purely because she was there. Padfoot was crying, cowering in front of her, but his hackles were on end despite his terror. Hermione's Lumos extinguished as clawing despair reached into their hearts, and they were plunged into pitch-black darkness. Tthe door slowly opened, pushing aside the trunks as if they weighed less than air.

"Yoho-hoho." Holly desperately sang, her voice shook like nothing before, and the door opened, revealing the creature.

Someone was screaming-

"Yoho… ho…" the dementor fixed its attention on her, and it inhaled-

"Please, not Holly- Please! Take me instead, anyone but Holly-" everything went black.

Shanks at the same moment felt higher than the moon as he left the beach to join in the festivities, and hopefully avoid being caught by Rayleigh; when he stopped. Her voice, shaking and terrified echoed in his head like a warning. No louder than a whisper, the start of Bink's sake began and stopped dead, as if she'd been cut off by force. Something in his chest froze, something beyond his own emotions, something almost supernatural. And he knew deep down it was a warning.

His hands were shaking as he opened his mouth and sang the next line, as he waited.

Nothing answered him.

"No, no… no no no no." His mind was on repeat, on the terror in her tone as she sang the line.

"Yohohoho," he insisted, and no one answered. "Answer me!" It wasn't even in song, just a desperate cry.

But she didn't.

And Shanks learned then for the first time how helpless he could be.

Consciousness came to Holly slowly.

There were fogged voices speaking above her, a gloom to her being that she couldn't explain. There was a cold nose pressed into her palm, and someone's hand at her back. But all this was muted, it was distant to her mind. Holly felt raw, felt like she was actively being dragged back toward unconsciousness- she just wanted to stay asleep, to never wake up again. It was like her cupboard; the Dursley's were outside speaking calmly, and her body was a mess of bloodied wounds, and he was-

"Yo… ho… ho… ho-" he cut off, rasping as if he'd been singing for hours non-stop, and as Holly listened, he repeated the line, again and again. The drag on her consciousness slipped, and voices cut through to her.

"Is she going to be okay?"

"She almost lost her soul, Weasley, of course she's not."

"Yo… hoho… ho."

"Shut up Zabini, how dare you-"

"Ron, calm down. Holly will be fine… she just… needs some rest."

"And a healer."

"Zabini-"

"I'm not messing around Weasley, Potter is not 'okay.' She needs medical treatment, and she needs it now. I can't believe we have no proper precautions against this sort of thing."

"Precautions against a dementor? Blaise, I'm exactly Dumbledore's fan, but you can't exactly blame him for not expecting this."

"Yoho-… ho… ho."

A dog whimpered, and the nose pressed closer into her hands.

"It's beyond the dementor Daph. We have no way of getting to the school, no way of calling for help. We're left with what? The seventh years to help? They're too busy consoling the first years and other students, eight of which passed out on top of Potter."

"There was that professor-"

"Oh yeah, 'have some chocolate, I'll be right back.' Super helpful that one."

"At least he knows more then Lockheart!"

"Everyone knows chocolate helps against dementors, that's not a stamp of his skill!"

"Well… you- I… shut up Zabini!"

"Oh, very articulate."

"Blaise… stop."

"Yo… ho… ho… ho."

Holly forced her eyes open and hissed as the light made her brain scream in pain. She clammed her eyes closed again as the compartment freaked.

"HOLLY?!"

"Are you alright? Can you hear us?"

"Don't crowd her, she just regained consciousness you Gryffin-morons."

"Light," she whimpered. It immediately got darker, allowing Holly to open her eyes and accept her glasses, which Hermione handed her. This allowed Holly to see that she was surrounded by concerned faces. Three Slytherin's, Ron, Hermione, and Padfoot were all watching her as if she were made of china. Pansy, the boy she had to assume was Blaise Zabini after hearing the conversation, and a blonde were all trying very hard not to look concerned, but Holly could see right through them.

"What… happened?" Holly managed to ask rubbing at her chest and the excruciating pain burning at her heart.

"A dementor got on the train," Hermione began, "it was looking for Black… but it was oddly focused on you."

"Bloody thing almost sucked out your soul," Ron added, "we saw…" he cut off and swallowed, "we saw it leave your mouth and…"

"Yoho… ho-… ho."

"-And then the dog charged it," Zabini finished, "that thing is definitely your familiar; otherwise, it's the stupidest beast in the world." Padfoot, as if to prove a point, allowed his tongue to loll out of his mouth, which just screamed moron. The Slytherin's scoffed and sat back, allowing Holly to realize she'd been placed on the floor under a pillow and blanket, neither of which she recognized.

"That would be mine," The blonde commented, "I'd appreciate if you got off them before more of your stink gets on them." She held a hand out, and scoffed as if she really didn't care, as if she hadn't been endlessly worried when Holly dropped at the dementor's feet. As if she hadn't almost seen the girl-who-lived, a child her own age nearly kissed by a rogue dementor out of Azkaban. As if she hadn't given Holly the pillow and blanket she'd had since she'd been an infant just so Holly's head wasn't against the floor.

"Sorry…" Holly reached under her and handed the items back so she could sit crossed-legged on the floor.

"Whatever."

"Sorry again, but who are you?"

Fury crossed the girl's face before she snarked: "Daphne Greengrass, I assure you it's not a pleasure."

"Never mind her," Zabini interrupted before Ron could snap again, he leaned forward and held out a chocolate bar… for some reason. Holly gave him a confused look, and he scowled. "It seems I am finding myself proven wrong, someone doesn't know, and of course it's Potter," he shook his head, "eat, it'll help before Pomfrey checks on you."

"She doesn't need-"

"Yes, she bloody well does-"

"Yo… ho ho… ho."

Holly took the chocolate and sank her teeth into it, shockingly she instantly felt better, and quickly she began to wolf the candy down while Hermione explained why the chocolate worked against dementors and what a dementor actually was. She also added in explaining that the chocolate had come from the random appearance of their new defense professor, a man named Lupin. The man had apparently sent the dementor away with a powerful light spell before he'd taken one look at the group of them, then had left. And he hadn't returned.

While Holly was listening, her concern wasn't actually on the professor that would no doubt try to kill her that yer. But instead, on her soulmate's tone and the rasp as he sang the same line again and again. She couldn't remember what happened before she passed out, but Holly had a feeling she might have sung to him. Which meant he very well might think something awful had happened to her, which it had.

"Yohohoho." She sang with a cracking voice causing Hermione to give her an uncertain look.

"Holly?"

Holly waved her off and rubbed her eyes, "he's singing in my head, has been since I woke up. Just letting him know I'm fine." He probably had been since she'd passed out, which meant he'd been singing for hours without her responding. Holly felt guilt rush up even as the compartment fell silent as the group took in her words.

"You… are a moron, he would have no idea anything is wrong," Greengrass stated before singing something quickly under her breath that none of them missed.

Zabini smirked and sang louder, uncaring if the Gryffindor's heard him, "If you're not the one~."

"Then why does my soul feel glad, today~" Pansy finished scowling over the fact that she wanted to do the exact same as Holly. As she did, Ron shot her a look, his brows punching together but kept his own mouth shut just as Hermione did.

In another world, Shanks pressed his hands to his eyes as he sat in complete darkness on the beach and rubbed at the tear tracks that had long since dried.

"Thank Poseidon." Shanks rasped, his throat burned as he finally allowed it to rest, and suddenly he understood the day he'd found that homeless man. That man who'd knelt in the middle of the street, mouth moving, but absolutely no sound coming out. As he choked and bled, but he didn't stop. Shanks had been too young to understand that the man's soulmate had died and that all the man could do was sing on alone after that. And Shanks prayed the gods would not be so cruel as to do that to him or to the people he loved.