This fanfic is based on Choice of Games: The Sea Eternal. All mysterious merepeople references, including history, memories (and loss thereof) can be found in said text-based app game. (Or... story where YOU choose what the character does, and is therefor not irritated by his/her/it's choices. Including gender and sexual preference.)
WARNING: Cuteness and Fluff. This is NOTHING like my usual Dark works. And I have NO clue about pairings, if there even will be any, or how this ends.
Ayla is mine, but every other person and setting is stole from elsewhere.
Bon Voyage~
It was a beautiful day as the three professors flew across the deep blue ocean waves, making quick speed. The sun shone from a clear sky, and there was not a seagull in sight this far out.
In the far off distance a whale broke the surface in a playful splash of water.
"Albus, are you sure this is the right place?"
McGonnigal was a formidable witch, whom somehow managed to look prime and proper, even whilst riding very sensibly on a broom.
"He's been gone for 8 years. It's clearly a mistake," Severus muttered as he stared across the bright blue ocean, finding not a single hint of land anywhere in sight.
"I'm sure. It has to be some kind of spell or ward, hiding the place."
Dumbledore, on the other hand, was not the kind of wizard that you could ever envisioning riding a broom.
This was not, mind you, because he didn't like it. Quite the contrary, he was very much found of riding a broom. But it was an unfortunate fact of life that once one reaches a certain age -usually the age where one's face is covered in genial wrinkles, and your long, flowing hair and beard turns white with the wisdom of age- riding a broom makes you look, for lack of a better word, foolish.
Or perhaps that was the periwinkle blue robe with images of small twinkling stars on it. The one that blended almost perfectly with the vast, deep blue ocean beneath them.
Both the robe and the sea sparkled in the bright sunshine.
They had long passed the school of colorful fish that thrived in the coral reefs.
They'd even passed the playful dolphins, frolicking in the warm summer sea.
The hot sun bore down on the three magic users, and the fresh breeze provided every bit as cooling as any spell.
"Then get on with dispelling it! I don't have time for tracking down spoiled brats who refuse to stay put wherever the hell you placed them," was the dour potion-master's grumpy reply.
He could be grumpy because wearing heavy, black robes in the middle of summer, in the far reaches of the Atlantic, on a sunny summer day was anything but pleasant... but a far more likely reason was because they were tracking down the accursed son of his long dead enemy. And had been, for far too long.
A child he had some very conflicting feeling for.
And some very heavy debts to pay.
"I think..." Dumbledore waved his wand and muttered a new string of words that sounded half like latin, half like something made up.
"No, no..." he said, sounding disappointed.
"But what if I...?" he tried again, "A little help here, Minnie,"
"For Merlin's sake, Albus!" the stern woman exclaimed. "We've been here for hours! If there was an island her, I think we'd know!"
Snape snorted derisively.
"Clearly your spell misfired. The only way that brat is here is if the trice-damned Potter-spawn it at the bottom of the ocean," he sneered.
-Edited to here- (?)
Just as he said that, a sperm whale broke through the surface, before diving back down. Leaving behind only that strangely eerie and ominous sounding sound that whales sometimes let out.
"Bottom of the ocean..." Dumbledore muttered, "That's it!"
"For Merlin's sake!" Snape bit out, "Have you finally gone mad?!"
"Much as I don't want to question your reasoning, I must agree with Severus on this one," McGonnigal said hesitantly.
"No, no! I remember something a friend of mine said. It was a long time ago, of course, but she was quite instant it was true, even if everyone else claimed it was only a legend. A bedtime story, really. About where the merepeople came from, back when they were still young, before they started traveling the world. Although, apparently, many stayed behind too. And the wales were a very important part of that!"
"What are you talking about? What friend? What story?"
"A mermaid! Oh, she had the loveliest..."
"Yes, yes, yes!" Snape snapped, "Just get to the point!
"Of course, Severus," he said. His eyes twinkling like the glittering sun on the ocean waves.
"This is the story...of the great City of Glass."
Six years ago...
A small foam-filled flake shaped to resemble a nibbled-on cheese was currently floating in the middle of the vast sea of the coast of England. On it, a very small child was perched, his feet dipped in the water to cool down in the hot afternoon sun.
The boy's green eyes were filled with tears, and his small, chubby hands were clinging to the sides of this improvised craft, as it was being tossed about by the playful waves.
The boy had not eaten nor slept for a full day now, and his skin was starting to show that strange tone between a tan and a sunburn that indicated that pretty soon he would be in a world of pain.
In addition to all of this, he had no way of knowing what direction land even was, much less how to reach it!
He was, in other words, perfectly miserable.
'Maybe this is my punishment for sneaking out and playing in the ocean, even tho Aunt Petunia told me I wasn't allowed! Freaks don't deserve to play in the sea. Freaks don't deserve to have fun. That's what aunt and uncle always say. Maybe they're right!' he thought, and the thought brought a feeling of despair to swell in his chest, and glittering tears to his deep green eyes...
"Are you crying? Why are you crying?" a curious voice said.
Harry startled and made the small floaty-toy he was sitting on wobble precariously on the ocean waves as he scrambled backwards, making the whole thing spin a bit to the right.
What was that?! Who could possibly speak to him out here, so far from land and boats and people?!
"Hey, human! Look at me when I'm talking!" an childish female voice said, making Harry scramble to turn himself in the direction of the voice.
"W...who are you? How did you swim all the way here?!" Harry said, letting out a slight gasp of surprise as he saw a girl swimming alongside his improvised barge.
Her hair was long and blond and absolutely drenched. Her skin had a blue tinge to it, as if she'd spent far too much time in the cold sea-water than could possibly be healthy, and she was not wearing any clothes at all as far as he could see. Not that he could see her legs under all that water, but still...
She was also incredibly beautiful. Almost like one of those pictures of princesses in the storybooks the teacher sometimes read to them during storytime.
"I'm Ayla," she declared, "Who are you?"
"Harry. My name's Harry," he said awkwardly, unused to speak to other children as he were.
He looked around as if Dudley could show up any minute, before he caught himself.
His cousin wasn't here now. He couldn't scare away this girl!
A small light in his otherwise gloomy predicament.
Maybe she'd even be his friend! She looked about his age. Which he was almost certain was five. He'd counted! ...even if that was a few days ago -he wasn't sure how many- so he was even older than five now!
Just like this girl. His very first potential friend.
The thought brought a smile to his face, and the girl, assuming he was smiling at her, grinned right back at him. Her teeth were razor sharp, just like a shark!
He gasped again at this new strangeness, but he still crawled closer on his cheese-imitation barge to get a better look at her.
Who was this girl?!
Present time
Severus Snape was not a happy camper.
There were days when he cursed his bad life decisions that lead him to, on one side being tied to a ruthless Master that was quickly slipping deeper and deeper into insanity, and on the other side, a bumbling old fool who seemed to slip deeper and deeper into his own brand of madness.
Case to point; They were currently diving into one of the deepest parts of the ocean, to find the trice-cursed spawn of his childhood bully and the love of his life, with nothing more than a bubblehead charm and lumos to guide them. And their lumos was doing jack shit, considering that the visibility of the ocean resembled a foggy crystal ball on a good day, and you'd be lucky to see more than ten feet away -provided it was near the surface on a sunny day.
It certainly didn't help that robes were quite possibly the worst thing one could swim in, which had forced him to forgo his pride and dignity and transfigure it into a swimsuit. He refused to wear the muggle bathing trunks, and had gone with the full-body version that the wizarding world was found of using instead.
Dumbledore looked a fool in his glittering gold-star covered, periwinkle blue speedo. The horrible vision made him want to burn his eyes out with acid.
At least Minerva went with the female version of the same, modest style as he himself had. In a tasty dark green and black pattern of Scottish plaid.
Still... it was not a sight he had ever wanted to see.
At this point Severus was unsure if they were even swimming down or up -everything looked the same in this deep, dark abyss. And he was almost surprised he was able to keep the bumbling old fool and his pet cat within view -murky as it was. But he couldn't risk loosing sight of them either, so he did his best to stay close.
Which is why he let out an ear-piercing scream of surprise when he felt something wet and slimy curl around his feet, and sinking what felt like tiny little claws into his exposed leg.
"Severus? What in Merlin's- Aaaah! Diffindo! Diffindo!" the stern transfiguration professor was not one to loose her head easily, but her increasingly desperate-sounding spellcasting did nothing to sooth his own nerves.
Something clamped down on his head, and Dumbledore's voice shouting off spells faded into the background as he felt a foreign entity attempting to take control of his mind.
"No!" he gritted out, sweat pouring from his forehead and being absorbed into the water as soon as it left the bubblehead.
He would not, could not, afford to let something take over his mind!
Severus clamped down on his occulmancy shields with all his might, and expelled the foreign force from his mind, but his reprieve lasted only seconds, before another force clamped down on him again. Quickly followed by another. And another.
Far in the background he heard a sound that sounded like the world's most absurd cricket.*
He wasn't sure how long he'd managed to hold out, and he seemed to have lost hold of his wand in the process. It was proboably floating somewhere nearby, but he clutched his head with both hands and focused on locking out any intruders.
Just as he was about to pass out, he thought he heard voices. But that was just absurd, wasn't it?
A large, luminescent creature rushed past him, and all he could catch before the darkness overtook him, was some kind of large fishtail nearly hitting his nose.
And then his vision blurred, and Severus Snape's vision went black...
