Daughter of Poseidon, the Girl Who Lived

16. A fisherman tells me to get it together

Harriet grabbed my wrist and we ran out of the compartment with Severus right behind us. The train had stopped at what seemed to be the middle of nowhere. Outside were the creatures that had attacked us when we arrived at Camp Half Blood.

"Those guys again?! What are they?"

"Erinyes, or Furies if that's easier." Harriet sounded frightened. "They're spirits of vengeance. They usually serve my uncle Hades. I don't know why they've targeted me."

"That doesn't matter now!" Severus was holding a pitch black sword in his hand. "Drag your weapons!"

The three furies attacked us and we each tried hold back towards one of them. I heard Severus asking "Megaera" what in Hades name was going on. The problem with swords fighting, simply because you have a sword doesn't mean you automatically become a good swordsman. Harriet and Severus had years of combat training and could hold up against a fury quite well. I only had a sword and my instincts. My lack of experience quickly became evident to my fury opponent. She hit me across the face with her whip and knocked me out of the way.

I watched as Harriet tried to defend herself against two furies who grabbed her arms and disappeared. Her trident tsunami fell to the ground. I struggled to get up on my feet. Severus went off on a rant in a series of very colourful nono words that I cannot repeat for the sake of our younger audience. Younger, as in below eighteen, and gods forbid those under thirteen years read such words.

The remaining fury, "Megaera" as Severus had called her, laughed and backed away from his black sword. She picked up Harriet's trident and with all her strength snapped it in half.

"She won't be needing this anymore!" she laughed and disappeared in a flash like her sisters.

I looked around. As if that would make them appear again with Harriet. That's pathetic, and I know that. But that's exactly how I felt there. I hadn't been able to hold off one fury, and that allowed them to overpower Harriet and take her. I knew she could have fought down her fury had she been given enough time, but because of my inexperience, she hadn't. I turned to Severus once he was done spewing out swear words.

"What now? Where did they take her?!"

Severus took a moment to catch his breath before he answered.

"I don't know, Draco," he said. "I think they're somewhere in the underworld, but I don't know where in the underworld or why."

The muggles around us seemed to be confused about what happened. Like, what hit the train? Why did we stop? Is there a problem with the train? Are we stuck here?

"So what do we do?" I asked.

Severus simply turned around and walked back inside the train. I decided it was best to just follow him. He grabbed our luggage in our compartment and went through it. I started to question him when he handed me my Nimbus 2001.

"We fly to the nearest city and figure it out from there," he explained.

Well, why not?

The nearest city turned out to be Boston, Massachusetts. We landed near the docks and went into a Starbucks. Severus went to the front desk to order some snack for us. I looked out the window, my mind slowly drifting into space. I wondered what was happening to Harriet right now. Was she alright? What was the furies doing to her?

"Is this seat taken?"

I looked up at the guy who asked me. He appeared to have been fishing, judging by the fishing rod in his hand. His hair was a black mess under the hat, and the dark beard seemed to need some attention. As if he had been neglecting to it for the last week. His green eyes met mine.

"Well?" he asked.

I gestured for him to sit.

"Any luck with fishing?"

"No, this city doesn't really work as a fishing place. You have better luck in Florida. My favorite place however would be Long Island."

"Mhmm? Well, I don't know much about fishing."

"I sea... Long Island isn't actually a better place for fishing than Florida, necessarily. It is my favorite place because there I can invite my kids to come along."

"Your kids live at Long Island?"

Only at this point I started to pay attention to the conversation. The guy had those sun-crinkles that you would see on someone prone to smiling, but right now he looked somewhat distressed. He was absentmindedly looking out the windows.

"No, they don't, technically. They merely spend the summers there."

"Oh."

Something was familiar with the fisherman. I could have sworn I had seen his face before.

"Is something bothering you, young boy?" Fisherman raised an eyebrow.

"Um, I'm sorry I-" well what are you supposed to say when your classmate was hurt or maybe even killed because of you? "I've messed up. And now she's gone."

"She?"

"My, friend?" Was she my friend, though? Harriet had made it very clear that she did not want to be friends with me when we started our first year. "My classmate. We were looking for- something, then we were attacked and, they took her."

"And you think you're to blame for that, Draco?"

"I-" I stopped myself. I hadn't told Fisherman my name. He seemed unbothered and just repeated the question.

"Do you blame yourself?"

"I, don't know," I said. "Maybe if I had been better?"

"I sea..." Was that an intended pun? "So what will you do now?"

"I-I don't know, it seems like we'll have to find our goal without her." Severus had told me on our way from Sally to the train station that demigods many times don't return fully numbered from their quests. The children of the gods most often didn't reach adulthood. And our quest still had to be finished. "It's very important that we find the object we're looking for. Not that I like to exaggerate, but I'm afraid it could cause a war otherwise."

Fisherman didn't react to my statement about war.

"I don't sea my kids that often you know," he said slowly. "Draco, if you think you did something wrong, it should be corrected. If my kids were in danger I would probably want them to be safe before anything else."

A thought occurred to me. Was this...?

"I-I don't know... this stolen artefact is very important. I don't think I want to know what would happen if it fell in the wrong hands."

"What's more important, though? A valuable tool, or a life?" Fisherman got up from his seat. "Maybe it would be a good idea to put aside the unknown facts and look at the current situation." His gaze bore into mine. "Go and help her, Draco."

When Severus came with our food, the man had already left.