Selkies and Sparrows
Summary: When Jack Sparrow sailed into Port Royal that sunny day, it was his intention to commandeer one of those ships, pick up a crew in Tortuga, raid, pillage, plunder and otherwise pilfer his weaselly black guts out. What he ended up with was a young Selkie who used to go by the name of Harry Potter, but is currently in hiding from his friends, his enemies, and, most importantly, his destiny.
Parings: Jack Sparrow/Harry Potter (in other words, Slash. Non-slash people, ye be warned.)
Disclaimer: Harry Potter isn't mine and neither, sad to say, is Pirates of the Caribbean, in any shape, form or manner except the one with does anyone actually read these?
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"I've been watching you from a distance,
The distance sees through your disguise,
All I want from you is your hurting."
Evanescence, 'Give unto me'
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In the Name of Rum
-
My Jack, he repeated, clutching onto the memory of his Alpha like a lifeline, a protection against the seductive influence of the Sea. Unwillingly, the Sea retreated from his mind, pushed back by his returning mental shields. Occulumency barriers built to withstand the Dark Lord rose around his mind in an impenetrable barrier, made stronger by the anchoring strains flowing through them like a tracery of spider webs. My Jack, they said, holding the Sea at bay.
-
Wolf moved almost on autopilot, swimming under the docks and around to a small beach. For the first time in months, his mind was free of the narcotic influence of the Sea, the boundaries between where he ended and the oceans began no longer blurred. For the first time in months, his mind was clear and rational, thoughts and logic no longer tangled and smothered. For the first time in months, he could recognise that he was not the Sea, that he existed as an individual rather than merely a part of the whole.
He felt trapped within his own mind, and he hated it.
Were he to try and survive in the Sea as he was now, he would surely die without Her protection. He could not hunt; he had no territory; he could not defend himself from predators. Without his connection to the Sea, he was nothing but a common Monk seal. He snorted at the irony of it; how many times had he wished to be just that? How many times had he lied to his friends, told them that 'nothing but a common Monk seal' was all that he was?
He wondered it they saw through him in the end. Would they have been able to? Did they have the knowledge, or the instinct to notice that he wasn't what he said he was?
He frowned, dark green eyes narrowing.
Did they?
He… couldn't remember.
-
In a ramshackle hut on the banks of a misty river, a dark skinned woman scowled as she angrily threw the chipped mirror aside.
"So close," she growled, picking up a tangled knot of herbs and plants and prying them almost viciously apart. For a brief second she entertained thoughts of doing the same to the boy, but knew she would never act on her fantasies. As naïve and trusting as her cousin to the north was, should she break the bargain the two of them had agreed on, she would not receive a second chance.
She cast the now shredded leaves over a wide basin of sea water, her disgruntlement at having to use such methods to practice her art all but faded over so many years. Her mercurial nature however remained as strong as ever; evidenced as her anger and frustration changed to a mischievous, almost sadistic pleasure as she read the leaves.
"But then again, little Mortal sea wolf, then again…"
-
Wolf – and how that name jarred, now that he knew he had a different one – had reached the beach, and was now hauled out on the hot sand. Beyond those actions, he was at a loss for how to continue. He had tried searching his memories for some mention of his friends or his past – a name, a face, anything – but he had nothing. It was as if all his memories of his personal life had been destroyed, leaving only dry facts behind. He could remember the incantations to countless spells, but not who taught them. He could remember how to cast them, but not when he had learnt them. He could remember that Dementors affected him particularly badly because of his past, but not what in his past.
He could not remember who his friends were, what his family was like, where he lived. He tried to focus on an image of his mother – reasoning that mothers leave such an impression on their children, he must have some memory of her – but saw only meaningless green light.
He had tried to call up his magic, to push it through familiar channels and release his Animagus form. Instead of answering his command, his magic stirred just beyond his senses, taunting him with the promise of his memories and his identity. He tried again, calling louder within his mind. This time, his magic surged, but where it should come from within him, spilling out from his core, it battered against his Occulumency barriers from outside them and was halted. He extended his senses as far as he could, trying to reach his magic, but what he found there chilled him.
The Sea had taken it, wrapping itself so completely around his core during the months he'd allowed it free access to himself that when he had banished it's influence, it had taken his magical core with it. Most likely, it also had his memories, given how it had tried to suppress his thoughts when it fought for control.
He didn't even know that was possible – it shouldn't be possible without dieing a painful death. Then again, he had feeling these sorts of things happened quite often around him. For some reason he got an image a facing down a monster with a toothpick and a hat. Was that a memory? Maybe it was normal for him, before all of this happened.
But whether or not he knew where or how his magic and memories had been taken, it didn't change the fact that he was a seal with no way of changing back to human. He frowned slightly as a fragment of knowledge came to the forefront of his mind. When he was researching Selkies, he'd read that they could shed their skins to take human form. He hadn't paid attention to it at the time – why should he? He could just change out of his Animagus form all together – and so had no idea how it would work, but maybe…
Change, he commanded, imagining the feeling of magic flowing through him, and hoping it worked. If it didn't, then he'd feel like an idiot for nothing. Change. He ignored the emptiness, the lack of resistance that told him his magic was not obeying, and simply willed it to happen. Change. He shifted slightly on the sand as a strange itchy feeling began to spread along his skin, hoping that was a good sign and not an outbreak of plague or something similar. Change.
And then he could focus on nothing but the pain as a dam somewhere inside him burst. He couldn't have stopped the change now even if he had tried, if he had been able to concentrate beyond the pain of his bones snapping and realigning, of being agonizingly flayed so a new skin could grow in place of his seal skin, of muscles and ligaments forcing themselves into existence.
Let us in, a voice whispered, calming, soothing, promising blessed relief from the pain. It was countered by an animalistic growl from his mental walls; My Jack.
But we can help, the voice called from outside his mind.
Fuck off, he snarled at the Sea through the haze of pain and the red veil of blood clouding his vision. He lashed out wildly with his mind, and the Sea's voice and presence disappeared from his consciousness. He was left alone to thrash in the leathery constraints of his seal skin, with only the pain to keep him company. You better be worth this, Jack, he thought.
He didn't know how much later it was that he lay there, panting and practically suffocating in the stifling skin. He gathered what little strength he had in his protesting muscles, feeling along the inside of the skin and practically ripping it open when he found the slit in the stomach. The first thing he did when he struggled out of the whole bloody mess was to throw up – violently – on the sand.
"God," he gasped, voice harsh and scratchy from disuse. "I am never doing that again." As he held himself up precariously on foreign hands and knees, he could have sworn he heard the sea laughing at him.
-
After a rough sea water bath to remove the blood coating him and his seal skin, he felt a lot more human and a lot less like a reanimated corpse. He spent a while staring at the murky reflection of his face in a nearby rock-pool, trying to see if it brought up any memories. Unfortunately, all he could see of it was that he looked… human. Although, even in the rock-pool mirror his reflection was clear enough to look wrong. It looked too soft, too young and innocent. A memory flashed through his mind, not an image or a scene of his past, but a memory of how things should have been.
He was a soldier. He was all hard edges and weathered features. He was an adult, not some child who looked like his voice hadn't even broken. He didn't want to be this Selkie boy, he wanted to be the Harry he'd trained so hard to become, he –
"Harry?"
He tried it out, rolling the word around his tongue. "Harry…" He broke out into a grin. "My name is Harry," he announced proudly.
"Well then, Mr. Harry," someone said behind him, making Harry whirl around in surprise and stare at the naval soldier. "Would you care to explain you presence here, and perhaps the whereabouts of your clothes?" Harry blinked in bewilderment, before his brain clicked and he remembered that he was now human, and humans wore clothes. His blush could almost rival the soldier's crimson coat in colour.
"I, uh," he stammered, trying vainly to force his blush down. "I lost them," he invented, looking up at the uniformed man with as pitiful an expression as he could. If he was stuck in the body of a 'little-boy-lost' character, he might as well use whatever weapons it offered him.
Harry could have hugged the man as, with a sigh, he took off scarlet coat and handed it over. "Wear that for now, while I take you back to explain your situation at the fort," he said, turning slightly to give Harry his privacy as he put the coat on.
Harry held looked over the coat – more like a jacket, he thought unhappily - with a criticising eye. By his reckoning, while the tails at the back of the coat would cover him fine, the front was way too short. "Better than nothing," he mumbled to himself disgruntledly as he shrugged it on, wedging his seal skin between two rocks while the man's head was turned to hide it and keep it safe. He didn't particularly want to explain why he had it – for all he know, seals were worshipped as deities here and killing one was treasonous or something. He doubted it, but knowing his luck, nothing good would happen if the skin was found.
"If you wouldn't mind?" the naval soldier prompted with a slightly impatient tone. Harry nodded and scrambled up, standing next to the man and checking surreptitiously how far down the coat-jacket reached. He was happily surprised that it covered everything (as long as he didn't decide to do acrobatics down the street), but that raised the question – was the soldier really tall, or was his quasi-Animagus form really short?
Harry glanced up at the soldier now striding down the street ahead of him, easily a foot taller than he was. He swallowed nervously. Don't let me be short, he prayed silently, but he doubted anyone would listen. Such is life. He was distracted from his thoughts as his bare feet registered something warm and… soft… Don't think about it, don't think about it, oh please don't think about it.
Harry stopped suddenly at an intersection of two streets. There was nothing important about them, nothing in the dirty, narrow streets to separate them from any other dirty, narrow street in the port. Even so, Harry could have sworn he felt something.
The soldier made an impatient sound. Harry mumbled an apology and caught up with him, glancing over his shoulder uncertainly. He stopped again only a few paces later, whipping his head around to stare wildly in all directions.
"What the hell?" His eyes widened as the feeling – a strange, mental pulse now that it was strong enough to identify – happened again. "Mental… Occulumency!" he muttered, ignoring the soldier who was now looking at him with a mixture of irritation and that expression reserved for dealing with madmen and really weird people.
The third (fourth?) time, Harry turned his focus onto his Occulumency barriers, closing his eyes to concentrate better. Without the distractions of the outside world, he felt the pulse so clearly he could make out the words –
My Jack. My Jack. My Jack.
"Jack!" he yelped, his happiness at finally finding someone he knew overriding all sense of caution. His feet carried him without him having to command them, following some unknown directions as he all but flew back down the street to the intersection, and onwards down another path. He briefly spared a thought to be thankful the soldier – now shouting after him through the crowd – was so much taller than him. It not only avoided an embarrassing situation with the jacket, but also that he could get through smaller spaces and so lose his one-man entourage. He only hoped the guy didn't need his coat back too badly.
The constant chant in his head – myJackmyJackmyJack – tapered off, leaving him standing in front of what appeared to be a blacksmith. Grinning, he stepped inside, announcing his presence with an exuberant "Jack!"
The pirate Captain edged out of the shadows wearing a vaguely quizzical expression. His hands were still chained, one raised and clutching a hammer, the other dangling from it by the handcuffs.
"Who in Rum's name are you?"
-
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A/N: Four days! You see that? Four days!
This, loyal readers, is my peace offering for making you wait so long for the last one. But still, four days! Not even a week! And it's a decent length this time! And, better still, we have a Human Harry! Well, humanish.
Oh, and if anyone didn't catch it, I edited the last chapter because some of you were confused about the boy on the docks being Harry. That boy, who is now a girl, is just an incidental character. Sorry about that.
Thank you to Ore no Naruto (First again! Wow!), Serpent91, keske (How would a bouncer react to a seal, I wonder…), Devious Ava, Feramore (Pretty much yeah – there's only so much change that Harry can account for), kagedfox, Kayjay Dee, Zeroow, Fisi Mtima, the-dreamer4, SaphirePhoenix (Nooo! You mustn't anger the Rum!), Ie-maru, Wolven Spirits, Fate, Firehedgehog, Lady Prince, KingofLoosePages (If 'forever' were two months, then I'd laugh at all those evil people who want to 'live forever'), I-Y-T-Y, venusserenade, Dream's Abyss, Kin Pandun, HoshitheHorse, Kiseki no Tenshi, lady sakura cosmos, Nobody'sNobody, handadeath, Miz Valeer, Crydwyn, Kanika Keket, Silvermane1, drakonka, Fleetfoot, magma, Simply Bulisen (Ack! Jack/Norington BAD IMAGES. –whimper- you gave me nightmares…)
