Harry POV

"Welcome back to Hogwarts to those of you who have returned and welcome to Hogwarts to our newest additions." Professor McGonagall's muffled voice sounded through the thick wooden doors of the Great Hall. Ron and Hermione were waiting beside me, and although they were excited, I could tell that they were a bit sad.

Usually the person to greet the students, was professor Dumbledore, and though it had been two years since his death, hearing someone other than Dumbledore welcome everyone for the first time was a bit saddening.

A hush fell everyone around us as the sorting of the first years finished and McGonagall began speaking again.

"Now, due to the circumstances of last year, the staff as well as myself have decided, that all students who should have graduated last year, will be repeating their seventh years as eighth years." While I couldn't hear anything, I could imagine how the hall would break out into excited whispers. A high pitched ringing sound of what I assumed was a teaspoon against a wine glass rang loud enough for us to hear it. We all seemed to hold our breath as McGonagall continued. "Now it is my pleasure to welcome back to Hogwarts, the eighth years."

With that, the doors to the Great Hall swung open, and everyone, myself included began walking forward, splitting into our original house tables. As I walked, I looked around, and to my amazement, the damage done last year was completely gone. The Great Hall looked exactly the same- as if the war had never happened. The enchanted ceiling was showing a cloudless star filled night sky and first years were easily spotted amongst the students.

"This makes me feel like a first year again," Whispered Hermione from beside me. And looking around, I realized everyone was staring at us and I couldn't help but agree with her. After everyone had sat down, McGonagall once again grabbed everyone's attention.

"The eighth years will not be staying in their respective houses. Instead, a different room has been arranged for them. Due to this, it would be appreciated if all eighth years would please stay behind after the feast. As always, all students are banned from the Forbidden Forest and items such as puking pasties from Wizard Wheezes are banned. A full list is in Mr Filch's office. That is all. Let the feast begin!" At this, the plates filled with food and the hall broke into loud chatter as people filled their plates and ate happily.

I smiled at the familiar surroundings. Ron was inhaling the mountain of food he already had on his plate. Hermione had an annoyed, yet fond expression plastered on her face beside said person. The familiar sound of laughter and chatter wrapped around him as he ate, savoring the moment. Home. He thought.

The atmosphere surrounding him was shattered when Peeves came flying through the closed doors of the Great Hall screaming bloody murder. The whole hall became deadly silent in a second. Peeves never interrupted the feast. In fact, he never even entered the Great Hall.

"AHHHHHHHHHHH!" He flew around a bit hysterically before flying straight to McGonagall, clutching his arm as if his life depended on it. He looked like he'd seen a ghost, only...not one of the regular ones. The entire hall seemed to be stuck on whether to laugh or stay quiet at the situation. What could've scared Peeves enough for him to interrupt the feast? Let alone ask a teacher for help.

"SCARY! FIRE! ICE! LOCKET! GIRLS! BURNING! FROZEN! TURN INTO FIRE! NO! TURN INTO ICE! ANGRY! DIDN'T MEAN TO! JUST PRANK! I'M SORRY!" He screamed hysterically. He seemed to be unable to come up with anything coherent, just keywords.

"I gotta give it to them. Whoever did this just became my favorite person in the world." Snickered Ron across from me.

"Ronald!" Hissed Hermione, "Whoever did this is powerful and could be dangerous. They may have even broken in!" Ron rolled his eyes at her.

"Yeah right! Someone breaking into Hogwarts." He snorted at her.

"I don't know Ron," Came Neville's hushed voice. "I mean, Peeves wasn't even scared of V-V-Vol- of You-Know-Who." Despite the fact that Voldemort had died, and having hundred of people witness it, old habits really died hard. That and the fact that people were still scared.

"Yeah, I sti-"

Ron was cut off by a thunderous, "PEEVES!" Courtesy of McGonagall. Still clutching his arm, peeves slowed down and floated over to McGonagall. "Now, what happened." She demanded. The hall was once again swallowed in silence, and just as Peeves opened his mouth, a shout loud enough to be heard clearly though the doors was heard. Everyone's head simultaneously turned to the doors, eagerly listening for more.

"WHAT!" A different voice was heard this time. "You did it to!"

"I was trying to stop you!" replied the original voice.

"No you weren't!"

"Yes I was!" Peeves had started to tremble.

"GUYS!" An entirely new voice sounded.

"Well I was trying to get my locket back!"

"That's besides the point!"

The new voice was entirely ignored as the other two continued. It was then that I realized that they had an accent that I couldn't quite place.

"Then what is your point?"

"STOP!" the newest voice was obviously trying to break up the fight. Again, some were at loss on whether to be curious about the situation or wary. I noticed that some of the older students had their wands out and were gripping them tightly under the table and he realized that with every word, the voices were getting closer.
"No! Rikki, Stop! You're going to burn everything! No-Emma! Don't start to! Ugh! You guys are impossible!" The other two named Rikki and Emma were ignoring the third and were still arguing. "I said, Break. It. Up!" Everyone, myself included, jumped as the doors suddenly flew open. The force must've been great, because they opened so hard, that they slammed against the wall.

"Wind?" Whispered Hermione. I looked at her. whispering out the corner of her mouth, she clarified, "didn't you feel that? The gust that came in after the doors opened. Somehow, wind was enough to open those doors." I realized that she was right. What I had assumed was a gust from the doors opening, was actually from behind the doors. Then, I realized that, standing at the entrance of the Great Hall, were three girls who couldn't have been older than seventeen. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed that Ron had turned the colour of his hair, from his face, all the way to the tip of his ears. I also noticed that a lot of the guys had also turned varying shades of red. Curiously, I turned my attention back to the girls before I felt my face flush as well.

I realized for the first time, that the three standing there were wearing nothing but muggle pajamas. While Ron wouldn't recognize the clothing and see it as weird, he, and any other male would be able to see how much skin they exposed. There were two blondes, and a brunette. While one blonde had straight hair, the other blonde's hair was a lighter shade and was curly.

The two blonde's clothes weren't so bad, they wearing boy shorts and tank tops that had ridden up their bodies noticeably high. It was the brunette that caught most of the guys attention. She was standing slightly behind them obviously trying to split them apart. She was wearing nothing but a silky night gown that reached about two thirds up her thighs.

He heard Hermione gasp. "Look her hair!" Turning back, I carefully studied the trio, trying to spot what was so special about their hair. Then, too my surprise, I saw that the curly blonde's hair, had flames flickering at the tips and the flames were quickly taking over her hair. They were licking up her hair and if the other two noticed, they didn't say anything. Soon, her head was surrounded in flames that looked suspiciously like her hair, only they were floating lazily around, like she was in water.

"Cool it Rikki!" Cried the brunette, before she brought her hand down in a swinging motion, and wind came howling into the hall. When it stopped, he half expected the girl now identified as 'Rikki', to be bald, but instead, her hair had only returned to it's original form. I thought that was amazing, but nothing could've prepare me for what happened next.

"See, this is what I'm talking about." Said the other blonde, who he assumed was Emma. Rikki's eyes flashed, before she went up in flames.

Cleo POV

Entering the tunnel wasn't so bad. The entire tunnel was made of moon pool rock, so Rikki could create continuous flashes of blue light, allowing us to see, but then we hit a dead end. Emma, The tunnel had widened a bit around the size of the underwater entrance to the moon pool back on Mako, so the two of us could try to asses the situation side by side. Then I noticed something. Looking closer, I could see that the rock looked like it had been purposely put there, much like what we had done on Mako. Tapping Emma on her shoulder, I pointed to the edges of the circular dead end and she nodded her head. Then, swimming back a bit, she twisted her body slightly, before bringing her tail hard onto the boulder. Her tail immediately became black with a slight tinge of red to it, black indicating hurt, and red indicating shock, then letting out a surprised shout.

Acting quickly, I covered her nose and mouth to prevent her from breathing in. Using my hands, I quickly forced apart the water around us, giving us a pocket of air to breath in for a few minutes.

"Hey, are you alright Em?" Came Rikki's voice who I realized had joined us, popping her head into the pocket of air I was holding up.

"Yeah, just, it was like punching a brick wall. And it's not easy to hurt a mermaid tail." she frowned. "If tails could get bruises, I bet mine would be blue by now."

"Well... It's pretty close." I tried to joke, looking down at her tail, it was still black, but slowly fading away.

"Well how are we going to get this thing out of the way?" asked Rikki, before producing another five second long flash of blue light.

"Just leave it to me." I winked before dipping down under and letting go of the air pocket. I raised my right hand in the familiar, claw like shape, I slowly pushed the rock out of position. Looking back at Emma and Rikki, I smiled triumphantly before holding out my hand to them. Emma grabbed it before grabbing Rikki's hand and we swum out, but not before I pushed the rock back in place.

I tried to regain my bearings. While the tunnel was made of moon pool rock, wherever we were wasn't. And it certainly wasn't the sea. I couldn't sense the feeling that the sea gave me when I was in it. There was something else there, but it wasn't the sea. From what light we had, I could see that we were quite far down, but we weren't so deep that I couldn't tell which way was up. Pointing toward the surface, and still keeping a firm grip on Emma's hand, we slowly began the descent upwards.

Suddenly, A giant tentacle swung towards us. I screamed and panicked, ripping my hand away form Emma's, noticing that my air supply was low-I could see the bubbles I had produced floating up. I heard similar distorted sounds, and could see flashes of their panicked, white-blue tails. Another tail swung at me from the side and I swum up, grabbing Emma and Rikki's hand in the process.

What the hell is this thing? I wondered. Whatever it was, it was attacking us, and we needed to get out of here. I looked back to the pale faces of my friends and quickly pointed up, mouthing, 'No matter what,' before once again gesturing upwards. They nodded, before we were forced to split once more as another tentacle swung upwards. I swum as fast as I could to the surface. I could feel the pressure decreasing, as I got higher and higher.

I noticed Emma was to my right quite far away and swimming with all her might. If I was a normal person, the only thing visible would be bubbles, but I could clearly make out her determined, yet terrified expression. Right now, we didn't care if anyone was out there, we just wanted to get away from that thing. Then I broke the surface. Only, I didn't realize that swimming from possibly a hundred meters below the surface at a speed faster than a cheater could run straight up into the air would make us fly so high.

When I broke the surface, I noticed that Emma was already a few meters up above me and was looking around for a solution. We were still rising up at a break neck speed and even though we were sooner or later going to slow down and start falling, I couldn't help but notice the view. It was sunset, and there was a castle. A huge castle, that was somehow beautiful, despite how old it looked.

"Cleo!" I snapped out of my day dream and into reality. "We're falling!" Emma screamed in panic.

"Oh yeah! No shit!" I yelled right back. She looked at me disapprovingly. "Sorry, but, it's not easy to be nice when you're a hundred meters above the ground and still going up with no way to soften your landing when you start to fall! Even if we try to aim back into the lake, we're going to break a few bones, even with them being thicker in our transformations!"

"That's it! we need to slide into something." She brightened. Completely lost, I looked at her in bewilderment.

"What are you on about!" I cried. I could already see her and feel me slowing down. If we went just a bit higher, I could touch a cloud.

"Watch!" she shouted back. Raising her hand pointing somewhere below her, she furrowed her eyebrows and concentrated. Then, about thirty meters below us, what looked like the beginning of an ice sculptor began to form, from top to bottom. Then, I realized, that it looked just like a water slide, only, it had a lot more twists and turns than your average water slide. It was only then, that I realized how high we were. I could just make out the bottom, which was a large, circular tub about the size of your average swimming pool. It was probably a lot deeper than it looked from up here. "Now it's your turn!" She shouted at me.

"Me? What am I supposed to do!" I cried.

"It's a water slide made of ice Cleo! The ice I make is colder then the ice in the Antarctic! Unless you want to literally skin yourself sliding down something that cold and dry, I suggest you add water! not to mention, landing in a pool three meters deep filled with nothing, is going to hurt no matter what!"

"Well how was I supposed to know that?" I huffed. She rolled her eyes and opened her mouth to retort. "All right! I got it!" I cut her off before she could say anything. Turning my palm into water, I pulled more and more water from it, producing more and more. I carefully aimed it at the beginning of the slide and increased the flow. I let the water gush down, filling the pool at the bottom. "By the way, why are there so many twists and turns and ups and downs?" It honestly looked a bit terrifying.

"Well, If I just made it a normal slide, It would be just as bad as falling right back down into the lake. The ups and downs and twists help to slow us on the way down." she chirped brightly.

"What if we get stuck?" I looked back at it nervously. When no answer came I looked around. "Emma?" I couldn't see her anywhere. Then I heard it.

"'-n't worry! all the ups and downs are at the start and then there are a lot of twists and turns at the bottom half with only a few ups and downs. Wish me luck!"

I looked down. Is she already on? No, I couldn't see her. I looked up, just in time to see her dive through the clouds, hands in front of her as if she were swimming.

"Keep that water flowing!" She shouted over her shoulder. Luckily, I had been subconsciously doing just that. Bursting through the cloud line was amazing. If the sunset was beautiful before, it was amazing up here. The cold of the clouds didn't seem to affect me, rather, it felt like room temperature. If I had been human, it probably would have felt like an ice cold shower and my ears would have popped by now. I giggled, the perks of being a mermaid.

Twisting my body into a diving position like Emma, I prepared to go through the clouds once more.

AN: Sorry for the wait guys. I'm writing the next chapter right now :D Hope you enjoyed it! sorry if it feels like I'm favoring h2o a bit more than HP, it's just that, since they're the ones that came, I have to explain more on their side because HP is pretty straightforward ^^