the gentle moon / george weasley

too late, it's gone, it won't come back.

August, Angelina, George, Fred, and Lee were all standing in their swimming gear in the prefects' bathroom together. They were all standing on the edge of the bath. It was softly lit by a splendid candle-filled chandelier, and everything was made of white marble, including what looked like an empty, rectangular swimming pool sunk into the middle of the floor. About a hundred golden taps stood all around the pool's edges, each with a differently colored jewel set into its handle. There was also a diving board.

"I might have to use that..." Lee smiled, eyeing the diving board.

"After." August laughed. The four friends watched her step into the bath. August had the heavy egg under one arm and her other was holding the railing as she stepped further and further until her body was fully submerged with just her head above the surface. She looked down at the egg beneath the foamy surface and opened it . . . and this time, it did not wail. A gurgling song was coming out of it, a song whose words she couldn't distinguish through the water.

August looked at all her friends and then took a great breath and slid under the surface — and now, sitting on the marble bottom of the bubble-filled bath, she heard a chorus of eerie voices singing to her from the open egg in her hands:

"Come seek us where our voices sound,

We cannot sing above the ground,

And while you're searching ponder this:

We've taken what you'll sorely miss,

An hour-long you'll have to look,

And to recover what we took,

But past an hour — the prospect's black,

Too late, it's gone, it won't come back."

August let herself float back upward and broke the bubbly surface, shaking her hair out of his eyes. Her eyes were wide.

"What?" George asked

"Fuck..." August sighed, "Merpeople."

"WHAT?" Lee yelled. Fred's hand covered his mouth.

"Shut up!" Fred hissed, "We're not supposed to be in here."

"The second task is to go and find the merpeople in the lake and . . . and . . ."

"And what?" Angelina asked

"How the hell am I supposed to breathe?!" August yelled, "They live at the very bottom, how the fuck am I supposed to get down there?!"

"Guess it's time to practice." Fred and George smiled and then jumped into the bath, pulling her under.

Lee and Angelina looked at each other and ran to the diving board, pushing each other while they slipped on the tile.

August came back to the surface, laughing

"I got soap up my nose..." She sounded like someone was holding her nose shut.

"I got soap in my eyes." Fred came up from under the water, his face up at the ceiling, rubbing his eyes.

"How do you even know if it's merpeople?" George asked, they were at breakfast the next morning. Fred and George were stuffing their faces, but also keeping an eye on the nervous girl between them, both occasionally peering over her shoulder to see what she was reading.