A/N: So I had this chapter written almost two months ago, and had planned to proofread it no later than a couple of weeks ago. But, since I last posted:
1. Recently, I was one of the first to find the victim of a fatal hit-and-run. I pulled over and got out of my car to see if I could help. I saw things I can't unsee and have had to wrestle with being so unexpectedly confronted with violent, senseless death. I had only been going out to get ice cream with my sister.
2. My husband's mental health has been really low, and he's taken on a new schedule that has him home only one full day a week. Supporting him, running our house, working, and keeping myself sane in between is taking everything I have.
Thankfully I have a lot of wonderful people in my life helping me cope with both, but I haven't exactly had the energy to write anything serious recently. But I'm finally finding a bit of equilibrium again, and was able to proofread and post this. The next chapter is also just waiting on a proofread, so if all goes well, I'll post that next month. Thanks to everyone who's still hanging in here with me, waiting patiently for updates! I love reading your comments.
Last chapter summary: Neville struggled to maintain control over the DA as they formulated a plan to rescue Ginny and make contact with Harry. With the help of Susan Bones, Neville was able to shadow Professor Braeburn and learn how to unlock the door to Harry's classroom. While doing so, he overheard Professor Braeburn talking with Amycus Carrow about bringing Ginny up to the classroom, hoping she would reveal the identities of her co-conspirators if she were forced to watch Harry tortured.
My apologies if there are grammar and spelling errors. I was anxious to get all of you wonderful people an update, and didn't have this chapter beta'd. Last chapter was all Neville; this one's all Harry.
Harry yanked his hand back out from underneath a rock ledge in the Great Tank, his swear rippling through the water. He put his fingers in his mouth, sucking on them in reflex, then pulled them away to examine his fingers gingerly. The lobster hadn't broken his skin, but his flesh and bones definitely felt bruised.
Teaches me to stick my hands into dark places.
If he was being honest, he probably wouldn't have been dumb enough to do it if he weren't such an odd combination of stressed, bored, and frustrated. Stressed, because he kept seeing in his mind Ginny's note lying abandoned and out of reach, and imagining her cut down by a cruel curse. Bored, because the last time he'd "done" anything other than kill fish and crabs had been two days ago, when he'd been dragged out for the Care of Magical Creatures class. And frustrated, because no matter how many times he examined the contents of his oversized fish tank, he couldn't figure out anything that would enable him to write a message to Neville.
The only thing he could think to do at all was to find something he could file down into a sharp point, and use it to either scratch messages onto the glass or crab shells. His options for tools, though, were limited. There were no loose rocks, fish bones were too fragile, and crab claws were more likely to break than to sharpen. Thus had begun his quest to catch himself a lobster, with his impatience rising enough that he'd tried to drag one out from under the rocks with his bare hand and paid the price.
Dratted thing.
Harry sunk over the high swell of rocks, letting his tail rest on the narrow ridge against the tank's wall off to the left and keeping his torso angled down, looming over the crevice where the lobster had disappeared. Maybe he could just wait the annoying thing out.
The rough rock scratched against his skin and scales.
A minute passed. He clicked his nails over the rock, the points catching in the small divots and pits.
He did not have the patience for this. Which was ironic, because he had literally nothing but time.
His eyes flicked over to his tapping fingers, and a pensive hum reverberated in his chest. He kept forgetting he had claws. He doubted they'd be sharp enough to scratch the glass, but maybe they could score a crab shell?
He was officially an idiot for not thinking to try that first.
Harry shot off the rocks and kicked up a good cloud of sand from the bottom of the Great Tank, exposing the crabs that liked to hide within. The usual mad dash to escape him ensued, with some of the crustaceans leaping over the floor and others flying up into the water on their tiny little flipper-like fins. Harry swooped one of these up with ease, avoiding its frantically snapping claws and carrying it over to the edge of the tank's rocky slopes. There he let his body settle again, holding the flailing crab in front of him, a slowly wavering bass note pulsing from his chest as he considered the creature.
Slowly, Harry placed one of his claws on the crab's upper shell and dragged it down. He heard the slight scritch of it, but the shell was not so easily marred. Harry tried again, applying considerably more pressure. This time, a faint, pale line appeared.
Finally, progress!
A chime made the water ring and echo. Harry stiffened, clenching the crab. It was the same sound he'd heard before he was dragged out by that magical fishing hook two days ago.
Not again!
Harry abandoned his catch and darted over to the wall next to the tunnel which led to the cylindrical tank. He didn't go through, though - rather, he turned his tail to the wall and settled on his belly on the rocks next to it, digging his hands into a deep groove there.
He waited tensely for perhaps half a minute, before the chiming came again. Harry gritted his teeth, and sure enough, that sharp, digging pain in his gums appeared from nowhere and tried to drag him back.
Harry only clenched his muscles and pushed his tongue against the sensation of the mouth-wound, and fought with everything he had not to be dragged backward to the tunnel opening. Undoubtedly, the invisible hook would drag him up to the top of the tank again, there to be subjected to who-knew-what. Well, they shouldn't have given Harry this much space to hide in if they had wanted easy access to him this often. He'd make them get in here with him, and then he'd show them what a terrible idea it was to get anywhere near him.
The pressure in his mouth was strong, and painful enough that Harry felt a trembling warble of notes come from his chest. But he held on, refusing to budge even a little, and he'd gotten enough leverage early that the invisible hook was going to have a really hard time ripping him away from the rocks. The chiming sound repeated every fifteen seconds or so, like a reprimand.
Harry battled the spell for what felt like several minutes, grunting and whimpering and straining, before the pain and pressure vanished.
Harry heard his own surprised chirp and reflexively loosened his grip.
The magic came back.
Harry hastily latched back onto the groove in the rocks, just barely catching it before he was yanked away. He kicked as hard as he could to regain the short distance he'd lost and managed to dig his hands in deeply again, instead of clinging on by his fingertips. The chiming had resumed again, dinging against his ears like someone bashing him in the head with a tinkling bell.
The battle ended faster this time. Harry didn't repeat the same mistake and maintained his hard grip, anticipating the pain's return at any second. But minutes passed, and it didn't come.
Had they given up?
No. They wanted Harry for something. They weren't going to just stand for him staying hidden in the depths of the tank.
Sure enough, a moment later something in the water changed. Harry wasn't quite sure how he knew - it could have been a subtle sound, or even a change in the way the water brushed against his skin. But he was suddenly, absolutely sure that someone had entered the tank.
They are going to regret that.
After all… that professor had said it himself, hadn't he?
Never let a siren get its claws in you.
A dangerous, thrumming bass note pulsed from his chest in a steady rhythm, like a war drum. Sound coiled in Harry's throat, ready to be weaponized in song.
Sirens are ambush predators, and will try to kill using mersong first.
Harry forced the sound bubbling inside into silence. The water felt unnaturally still without it, but if Harry wanted to have any hope of winning this fight, he had to be smart about it. That professor had seemed to be some sort of expert on sirens, and certainly had proved he knew enough about the dangers they posed to deafen himself any time he might be susceptible to mersong. And it was almost certainly the professor trying to get Harry out of the tank. So, Harry had to do the unexpected. He wouldn't attack with mersong first.
He'd lie in wait, and make the professor come to him.
And then he'd pounce.
It was hard to keep himself quiet as he waited, he found. Every fiber of his being, every shred of magic he possessed, was pressing at the confines of his skin, begging to be released. He allowed the murderous beat to exist only in his head, pounding, increasing his anticipation.
He sensed the wizards drawing nearer. The subtle signs he'd detected earlier became more obvious in the echoes of sound being distorted by the water, until he was sure they were just on the other side of the tunnel. He pushed himself flush to the rocks underneath him, even his tail, ready to push off and fly at the intruders as soon as they dared to show themselves on his side of the tunnel.
They'd know he was in here. They'd be stupid not to realize what they were so clumsily swimming into. But would their safety precautions be enough when they were in Harry's stronghold?
He heard them, in the tunnel. Their faint grunts as they dragged themselves by hand through its twists, the hardly-there click of their wands against rock. Two of them, Harry thought, listening intently.
The noises paused, and Harry imagined he could hear them breathing through bubble-head charms.
Then a disc of light pushed out of the tunnel's entrance, bright and transparent and blue. Harry waited a second longer until the shield was followed by a hand and a head, and then he launched forward.
It was the professor. His eyes landed on Harry just as he began to move, and he swung his shield around just in time. Harry's claws hit it and skittered off, deflected, and Harry twisted and shot himself up and over the edge of it. Braeburn's shield was widely cast, though, and he only had to flick his hand to keep up with Harry's movement and keep Harry at bay.
Another face appeared in the tunnel entrance, also hidden by a shield. It was the man Harry had seen talking to Snape and the Shovel-faced woman, and Harry had an instant hatred for him.
Harry's corkscrewed around the rim of the tunnel entrance, trying to get at the gaps between the two shields before the wizards could close them. With their sides protected by the tunnel itself, though, Harry was getting frustrated despite how fast and maneuverable he was.
The two men weren't making any progress, either, having to pour all their energy into maintaining their defenses instead of going on an offense. They must have realized this as well, because they pulled back into the tunnel further - enough that one shield was enough to cover both of them. Harry hissed and darted to the side, out of their view, and then flicked his tail to circle over the top of the entrance. He hovered there, tail pointed upward, ready to descend on them like a massive spider the moment they dared peek out of the tunnel again.
A figure shot from the tunnel far faster than a human could swim. Harry's tensed muscles launched him after it, overtaking it with just a ripple of his tail, claws reaching out to dig into the flesh past the edge of the shield.
Before he could, a wash of magic slammed into the base of Harry's tail like a bludgeon. Harry's body seized up and then went lax, drifting off-course in the water. He twitched, fighting to regain control, when another bludgeon of magic slammed into him, more powerful than the first. His muscles loosened even further, and a frustrated whine slipped from his chest. A third, and now Harry felt his mind fog over, his left eye slipping closed in a mockery of sleep, his ability to process his surroundings dulling.
He didn't understand what he was being hit with.
Another came, and the fog seemed to thicken. Harry's body was floating limply, now, his arms splayed in odd positions, his tail twisted loosely and trailing over the sand at the tank's floor. He felt it, heard movement around him, and what little awareness he had left screamed at him to wake up, wake up, because the sense of danger his mind had fallen asleep with was not gone. But his struggle to return to full awareness was doomed. Before he could even fully formulate the idea to stir his muscles and open his closed eye, another blast of magic sent him right back into sleep's grip.
He was grabbed.
He was moving.
More magic, pushing him under.
The tinkling chime rang in his ears.
Still moving, and more magic, making him ache with its strength.
Things digging into the muscles of his arms, dragging him.
No, he had to…
A wand, aiming at his face, and a flash of red, and the ache was all-encompassing.
That chime was all he could hear.
Fog. Sleep. Magic. Hurt. Moving. Chiming.
Fish went past, and rocks, and endless water. Slowly, way too slowly.
Harry stirred his tail. Swim.
A hard point against his gills, painful, and magic impacting every single bone he had.
Chiming, chiming, chiming.
The noises changed. Something hard underneath him. The chiming had stopped. Things wrapping over his chest and hips and tail and tightening, making the aches in his bones worse. Bright unfiltered light above, and voices that sounded monotone and loud.
He had to move, had to sing, had to wake up.
This time, Harry was allowed to crawl back to full consciousness. He found himself in the same room where he'd been dragged before, and once again in the narrow "interaction tank." This time, though, the tank was deeper, and Harry was fully submerged, on his back, but strapped down to the tank's floor with thick woven straps.
Harry thrashed in the bonds and let out an enraged, caterwauling scream that sounded something like a gurgling fire alarm. The straps held him fast, though, and he only succeeded in making the water around him slosh around within the tank's confines, not even violently enough to splash over the edges.
The professor and the smashed-faced man were talking nearby, behind Harry's head, and he couldn't crane his neck far enough around to see them.
"Make sure those things work," an unfamiliar voice was saying, hoarse and dry, like October wind through dead leaves in a graveyard. "Because I will not do that again."
"We won't have to," the professor said, irritatingly familiar and vibrant. "And soon enough, I hope he will come when called so we needn't resort to such distressing methods as these."
The other man scoffed at that. "It's a monster, Artemius, not a crup."
Harry hissed at them, even though he couldn't see them. He was not an it, and he certainly wasn't going to be trained!
"Even dementors can respond to a kind of reason, Amycus," the professor - Artemius - replied to the other man.
Amycus scoffed once again, and moved away toward the door. Harry was finally able to see him when the man turned. His eyes were empty and void. "You have your own kind of lunacy, man. I'll give you an hour; then I'll bring the girl."
Girl? Ginny?!
Artemius tsked, annoyed. "If you must."
Amycus left.
"I'm going to have a word with the headmaster about what a sufficient stock of veritaserum looks like after this," Artemius grumbled from behind Harry's head. Harry heard the sound of tools tinkling against each other, and his fins stood on end, pressing against the straps holding him down. Why was he here?
The professor appeared at Harry's side, a large tray hovering at his elbow holding a rack of empty vials. Harry could just barely glimpse indistinct pieces of shining metal over the tray's lip, but he was held too low to really see what they were. He bared his teeth at the professor and hissed once again, jerking against the straps.
The professor stood over him, frowning down into Harry's face, his eyes duller than they'd been in class the other day. Somehow, the expression of displeasure didn't feel like it was aimed at Harry.
"Barbarians, they are," Artemius muttered to himself, still looking at Harry. "Pain is sometimes an unfortunate side effect of necessary measures, yes, and it is true that you would likely kill me, given the chance." The professor brought his hand to hover over the water, as if he was going to reach in and touch Harry's skin. Harry tensed, a warning thrumming in bass from his chest.
"But you cannot be punished for that. It is in your simple nature to act on your violent instincts." The professor's hand withdrew, and Harry's sound quieted to a low hum in the water. "It is not your fault that you are violent, for you cannot be any other way. It is the nature of a predator. What is not nature is humanity. It is too complex for the rest of the world, and that complexity inevitably causes pain to the rest of nature. You do not deserve to be hurt as a means to an end in wizards' games." The professor sighed, eyes softening. "I would stop it if I could, you know. I do hope you have sharp enough instincts to understand that it is not I who means you harm."
That was rich. Harry's body ached as if he'd been slammed from all sides by bludgeoning curses cast by Dumbledore himself. Now that he had his senses back, he understood that they'd been stunners. He'd never been hit by more than one or two before, though, as a single one was almost always enough to knock a wizard out. Not so with sirens, it seemed. It had taken three before Harry had even "slept," and even then, Harry had woken himself up again as soon as they stopped re-stunning him.
"I merely want to learn," the professor went on, turning as he did to his tray of tools. "We know so little about you, you know. For instance, will the sound of my voice be reassuring to you? Sirens are quite vocal, so I hope that, even if you cannot understand my words, you can understand human tone. Or come to understand it, in time."
"Wow, you fell for the propaganda hard," Harry spat, knowing the man wouldn't understand him. How ironic, that the man thought that Harry was the one trapped in ignorance.
Artemius lifted what looked to be a pair of tweezers from his tray and side-stepped down to the base of Harry's tail.
"Don't you dare," Harry yelled, thrashing as the tweezers came down towards him.
"I know it's upsetting," Artemius said in a soothing tone, though he didn't look away from Harry's glinting scales. "I promise this won't hurt too much. Just a few samples, that's all."
It did hurt. Harry yelled, sending small waves through the water, as the tweezers dug harshly into his scaled skin and scraped and twisted until a gap was pried open. Then a tug, making Harry yell again, and then a harsher yank, and the scale was ripped free. A shriek of pain rang from Harry's chest even as he gritted his teeth to try to hold his pain in.
Artemius dropped the bloody scale into an open vial and capped it with a cork, then set it back on the rack with deft hands.
"I'm sorry, I know, I know, that hurt," he murmured. "And here I just was telling you how much I don't want to hurt you. I probably seem like quite the hypocrite, don't I? But I promise, this is for a good cause, and I won't do any more than is necessary."
Artemius dipped a hand toward his tray, and lifted it up again with something dark and sticky clinging to his finger. He reached back into the water, aiming for the spot he'd ripped the scale out.
"Get away from me!" Harry shouted, and felt the magic in the sound after it left him. But just like in the class, the magic wasn't able to go any further than the lip of the tank, held back by a ward of some kind.
The finger and it's unknown substance touched the hot, pulsing spot of pain on Harry's tail, and Harry hissed, twisting in his confines. The professor made a few wordless shushing noises and rubbed the substance over the small wound, ignoring Harry's obvious protests.
"Don't want that getting infected," Artemius said, in a quietly reasonable tone that only made Harry hate the man more. "Now, that's the worst over, don't you worry. Some hair, some blood, some mucus, and we'll be all set."
Mucus?
Harry couldn't do anything more than spit and hiss as the professor fussed around the tank. He set up an IV in Harry's immobilized arm, attached to a small, wax-sealed vial stuck to the edge of the tank. It slowly began to fill, drip-by-drip, with crimson blood while Artemius moved on to his other tasks. He used several swabs to scrape Harry's skin in multiple places: his tail, his stomach, the skin at the edge of his tender gills, and his neck. Each one went into its own, quickly-sealed vial, which the professor labeled with hastily-written bits of parchment. Then the Professor took a pair of scissors and reached for Harry's head. Harry let the hand get close and then snapped his teeth toward it. The professor drew back with a muffled gasp, and then chuckled nervously.
"Ah, that was rather foolish of me, wasn't it? The completely wrong angle. You know better, Artemius."
The professor shifted back to just behind Harry's head. A hand out of Harry's sight pushed down against Harry's forehead in an effort to keep his head still. Harry thrashed and snapped his teeth, though he couldn't get his mouth anywhere near close enough to actually bite. His skin slipped underneath the professor's, and he jerked his head free to the side. The hand came down again, this time on the side of Harry's head, and got a grip on Harry's hair. It also scrunched the delicate fin on the side of his head to the point where it felt like the fine bones there would break, and Harry's face screwed up with pain while his chest whined.
"There, there, hold still, silly creature," the professor murmured. "This doesn't have to hurt at all, and it'll be over in just… a… moment… There."
The professor withdrew quickly, holding a small lock of Harry's greenish-black hair. It went into another vial just like the rest of the 'samples'.
"Bastard," Harry spat at the professor's back. His body was shaking.
"Shhh, almost over now," the professor crooned in return idly as he labeled the vial of hair. He turned when he was done and smiled at Harry. "I'll get you an octopus or two when we're done, how's that?"
Absurdly, the tone reminded Harry of Aunt Petunia trying to placate Dudley when he'd deemed the mountains of gifts bestowed upon him at his birthday insufficient.
"I am not going to be alright just from you giving me two bites of food!" Harry said, bucking up against the straps once again to prove his (unheard) point.
Artemius tsked, reaching into the water above Harry's arm. "Calm down, it's alright. I'm trying to help you, silly thing."
"Sure you are, you crazy fish-napping moron. That's absolutely why you stunned me so many times than my bloody bones are throbbing and why you ripped out a part of my skin. How did you think that wasn't going to hurt, you stupid - "
While Harry ranted, the professor pulled the IV needle from Harry's arm and set both the tube and the vial of blood it had collected aside on the tray. He scooped up another fingerful of the sticky substance he'd used before, and reached back into the water to smear it over the small needle prick wound.
"Oh yeah, make sure the tiny hole you made stays clean," Harry spat. "Don't want the dumb siren dying from some weird underwater parasite or something, oh no, that would be terrible, because then you wouldn't be able to drag him up and poke and prod him and tell Voldemort how well your bloody research is going; wouldn't want that - "
"Hush now," Artemius interrupted, having moved on to let the rest of the blood gathered in the IV tube drip into the vial. "You're only going to wear yourself out with all that hissing and screeching. You're alright, see? No harm done."
"That scale was very precious to me," Harry retorted, even though speech was useless and he wasn't sure why he even bothered. "And what do you think you're doing with my blood and hair? Planning on polyjuicing into me and coming for a swim?"
"You have gotten much more vocal since the other day," the professor mused obliviously, attaching a label to the blood sample and then sending the tray over to the workbench with a wave of his wand. "Were you feeling shy with so many people before, or are you just more settled in now?"
"I hope you know I'm not going to fall for that trick you pulled earlier again," Harry went on, deciding two could play at ignoring each other. "Clever, I suppose, taking the risk of jetting out into the open water so that the creepy one could stun me, but I won't fall for it again. You got lucky I didn't quite get you today, but I wouldn't advise chancing it again. That violent nature and all that rot you said, you know."
Artemius chuckled, as if Harry's murderous threats and dangerous thrums were cute.
"I'm going to have to find a name for you, aren't I?" the professor mused aloud.
"Don't you bloody dare!" Harry spat. "I am not some pet!"
"Hm, you're quite feisty, aren't you?" the professor continued, oblivious. "It should be a strong name, like a storm over the sea. Poseidon?"
"It's Harry. Potter, you ninny!" Harry hissed. "I know you know it, so don't even try - "
"Mm, you're right, Poseidon is far too popularized nowadays," Artemius sighed. "Besides, the deity himself was rather unpleasant, don't you think? We could go with Neptune instead, but that's more associated with the cosmos now than the sea."
"I don't need another name, and good luck getting everyone else to forget who I am! It's not even worth trying!"
"How about Calder?" Artemius mused, eyes widening at the idea. "Etymologically speaking, it's not very close to your natural home, but you're a Scottish siren now, so it suits just as well. 'Rough waters'… yes, I think I like that quite well."
"In your dreams." The words shot like spears from Harry's mouth, but had no way of hitting their mark.
"Very well, Calder," Artemius said brightly, giving the edge of the tank a pat. "Well, we're almost done, I promise. Just one more thing, and then you'll have another visitor… who's far less pleasant." The professor's expression soured significantly at that, and he turned away to the worktable.
"Like you're such a ray of sunshine," Harry muttered. But his worry was overtaking him again. Hadn't that other man, the one with the dead eyes, said he'd be back? With a girl? Was it Ginny? Why? And why did Artemius seem so irritated by it?
"Don't worry, I won't leave you alone with the brute, Calder," the professor rambled from across the room. "Goodness knows the man shouldn't be trusted with so much as the lowliest mutt, let alone you."
He returned, holding two pieces of finely crafted, silvery metal in his hands. Each was made of two half-circle shapes joined along the edges, and Harry's stomach dropped. They were cuffs, and he had a sinking suspicion they were meant to be permanent.
The low pulse of warning flared to life in Harry's chest once again, and he struggled against his restraints.
"Shh, it's alright, Calder," the professor soothed. "They won't hurt you, I promise, and they'll be far better than getting dragged up here by that spell or by being stunned."
"Stay away from me!" Harry yelled desperately as the professor reached into the tank with one of the cuffs. Ultimately he couldn't do anything, though, as the wizard clicked the cuff around Harry's wrist, even simpler than attaching a leash to a dog's collar. The metal cylinder shrunk to fit flush against Harry's skin without squeezing, and he felt the tingle of wizard magic brushing against his own, like oil and water. The matching cuff was attached to Harry's other wrist just as easily.
"I hate you," Harry seethed as the professor walked back to the work table. His claws scrabbled against the hard bottom of the tank, trapped there, and his tail yanked futilely at its bonds.
"Alright, you can have a bit of a rest," Artemius said, sounding satisfied. "Deafenti."
A moment later, Harry felt the magic covering the top of the tank dissipate. The straps wound around him vanished not a second afterward, and he pushed himself up frantically before they could close around him again. The air scratched at his chest and shoulders and face, but the water was deep enough this time that his gills could stay mostly submerged.
He looked around and found Artemius standing at the edge of the classroom, far out of Harry's reach. Harry scowled at him, hatred pulsing audibly in his body, but it would be pointless to try to hurt the man like this.
Harry crawled over the top of his own tail once again until he was able to submerge back into the main tank. He swam as far down as he could - the metal grate had been drawn shut, preventing him from escaping entirely. He circled the perimeter of the tank on his back, facing upward to stay alert to the professor coming for him again.
The magic sealing the tank came back, and a second later, Artemius's face appeared over the edge.
"Piss off!" Harry shouted up through the water.
Instead, two tiny creatures fell into the tank with little splashes. Harry's eyes locked onto them immediately, and saw the promised baby octopuses.
"I'm not going to like you just because you're happy to let me kill octopus babies!" Harry shouted up at the professor.
"Go ahead and eat your treats and settle yourself, Calder," the professor replied obliviously. "You've got a few minutes still."
Harry swore at him, and the professor disappeared, humming to himself.
The man was an absolute idiot.
Harry turned his attention to the grate keeping him trapped within easy human reach. He swam to the center of it, where the metal bars linked in barely-visible joins, held together by magic. Harry wrapped his hands around the edge of one wedge and pulled as hard as he could, his body contorting in the water in an effort to gain more leverage. He kept at it until his hands slipped off the metal, which hadn't budged a millimeter.
He could hear Artemius up above, and the static-y noise of a wizarding wireless playing opera music. The professor was humming along with it, unconcerned that Harry was doing his best to break free.
Well, perhaps Harry was the idiot. The professor was confident in the tank's ability to keep Harry exactly where he wanted him, and Harry was the one bruising himself trying to get out anyway.
Harry refused to touch the "treats," though. He wouldn't give the insufferable wizard the satisfaction. It wasn't long before both of the tiny creatures made their getaways through the grate into the greater tank.
Harry examined the cuffs on his wrists. Both were steely silver and thin - thinner than he would expect from a restraint. They had rounded edges, and no visible opening mechanism or join. There were no rings like Harry would have expected from manacles, and instead looked almost ornamental. They were decorated with fine etchings of angled lines. Harry peered closer at them, and thought that perhaps they were runes.
Attempts to pry the cuffs off only resulted in Harry's claws scratching his own skin. He hissed at the pain, and switched tactics to jamming the tip of a claw into where he thought the join had been when the professor had closed the things over his wrists. His claw only slipped off the metal, without leaving so much as a scratch.
Harry stopped his efforts when he heard distorted voices from above. The dead-eyed man had returned - his vocal tones were barely audible through the depth of the water. Artemius's were easier to here, and then…someone else. Female, Harry thought, though it was difficult to place without being sure of who to expect. Could it be Ginny?
Harry hesitantly swam closer to the surface, and rose past the point where the classroom's floor hid him from easy view. Above floor level the walls of the tank were the same translucent, dragon-proof glass that the rest of the tank was built from, and the water level was about knee-height for the professor, though the lip of the tank reached to his waist.
Just inside the room with the door standing open behind them were both the dead-eyed man and the shovel-faced woman. And between them, bruised and pale, was Ginny.
Harry called her name, and her head shot up, her eyes wide.
"Harry!" she yelled.
The shovel-faced woman cackled. "Foolish girl. This will be fun."
"Get the siren up where the girl can get a good look at him," Dead-eyes said, and Harry realized the professor was standing at the back of the room, frowning with his arms crossed. The opera music had been turned off.
"I really think this is most unprofessional," Artemius complained.
"Your many complaints have been heard and ignored," Shovel-face snapped. "Just do it."
Artemius sighed and withdrew his wand. He traced a pattern silently in the air, and Harry felt the magic in the cuffs come to life. He chirped in surprise as they suddenly yanked his arms upward, straight out of the tank and into the open air until he was hanging by his wrists from the ceiling. He thrashed in a blind panic as water ran in streams out of his body and air knifed between his ribs, suffocating him painfully.
Then saltwater, laced with more magic, was crawling up into his nose and mouth, and Harry was breathing again. His thrashing stilled, though the sensation of water tainted with foreign magic creeping through his body was markedly uncomfortable. Even if it kept him alive, Harry really hated this spell that allowed his captors to take him wherever they wished.
"I'm sorry, Calder," Artemius was murmuring from the side of the tank, lips pursed. "This isn't because you did anything wrong."
"Let Harry go!" Ginny yelled, pulling against the arms holding her.
"Whatever they want, Ginny, don't tell them!" Harry yelled, even though his own air-exposed ears only heard staccato mersong. He thrashed again, trying to break free and help her. His tail, long enough to dangle in the water, scooped up waves that reached just high enough to splash over the edges of the tank and soak the stones below.
Ginny had tears in her eyes, which were fixed on him. Shovel-face moved behind her and held her by both arms, while Dead-eyes began advancing towards Harry.
"I think you're going to tell us those names, girl," he said, eyes fixed on Harry's stretched-out body.
Wait. Harry was past the usual boundary of the wards, and none of the wizards seemed to have deafened themselves. Anticipation hummed in his gills, and he could already feel his magic reaching out, using the soft sound as a vehicle to explore the air around him.
It ran into a magical barrier extending upward from the edge of the tank.
Drat.
Harry let his magic continue to unfurl, though, probing for a weak spot.
"What are you doing?" Ginny asked the adults in a shaking voice. "Harry has nothing to do with this. Leave him alone."
Dead-eyes met Harry's eyes, and for the first time, Harry saw an emotion there: anticipation.
Harry had no other warning.
"Crucio."
Harry's screams ripped the air apart. The pain of the air drilling into him, and the ache of his strained bones, had been nothing compared to this. This was like magic had taken hold of each and every one of his cells and was shredding them, one by one and all at once, breaking the fabric of his being down until he would simply dissolve into atoms.
In the midst of the agony, Harry felt his shoulders dislocate as his thrashing weight, unsupported by water, threw them out of joint. He screamed even louder, his tail splashing in the water below madly.
Stop, stop, stop stop stop stopstopstopstop-
He was sobbing in between screams, little pearls falling from his dry eyes and splashing into the water around him with the rapidity of raindrops.
"Stop! Stop, Harry! Stop, you monsters!"
"Stop it! Stop, that's enough, you could permanently injure - I need to - "
Someone else was laughing.
The room went suddenly dark.
Harry's screams were the only thing for a breath, and then even his pain disappeared.
"What - "
Someone else shouted, either in pain or surprise. Harry sobbed where he hung, his shoulders on fire with his weight pulling on them, the rest of him feeling shredded and burned. More shouting seeped into his awareness, though the individual words were lost on him.
He heard his name, though.
"Get Harry too! We need to -"
"Crucio!"
No one screamed, so the curse had been blindly aimed.
"Get moving! Go! Go!"
"I've lost the girl!"
"No! I won't!"
The darkness began to dissipate, though it was still thick closer to the floor. Harry's blurred eyes found figures moving within. Shovel-face, on the ground, groping for her wand. Dead-eyes, stumbling in the rough direction of the door. The professor, crouched against the back wall with his hands over his head. And in the doorway, Ginny, fighting being dragged out of the room by two boys. They were escaping, and Harry was still here, in pain, being left behind again.
"Harry!" Ginny sobbed. "Get Harry too, they hurt him!"
"We can't; he'd die, we need to go - "
The darkness was rapidly dissolving, and Dead-eyes had raised his wand toward the students in the door. The taller of the two was Seamus, Harry realized. The other was a sixth-year he recognized, but didn't know the name of.
"Run," Harry croaked at Ginny. No one heard.
"Get them!" Shovel-face yelled, still without her own wand.
"Crucio!" Dead-eyes snarled.
Seamus and the other boy yanked on Ginny's arms and pulled her out of the doorway. The curse splashed harmlessly against the stone wall beyond. The Gryffindors' footsteps were quick and loud, but faded quickly as they ran.
"Run," Harry whispered, eyes still powdered with tears of pain, his heart thumping wildly from adrenaline he couldn't act on. "Go and live."
Dead-eyes hurtled out of the room after the runaways, while Shovel-face finally found her wand and scrambled clumsily to follow.
I can't do the same.
The room was left abandoned.
