Under the Sea

Chapter Four

The castle spent nearly a month mourning the death of Queen Athena, and in that month Harry and Ariel had filled five shelves of their hidden grotto with human objects while hiding their new hobby from the king and the other princesses.

"Ariel, that's a fork," Harry said one morning as they began their collection onto the sixth shelf. Harry had lost some of his enthusiasm of the collection but Ariel was the only member of the family who didn't hate him. He didn't want to mess that up in any way, so he stayed with her; teaching her the names of the objects she found and the correct way to use them.

"Oh!" Ariel gazed at it in wonder. "What do you do with it?"

"Eat with it."

For Poseidon's sake, the Dursleys may not have let him use a fork to eat with but they still ate in the same room as him. That's how he knew what it was for.

"Really?" Ariel continued to stare at it as Harry shook his head. Honestly, his sister was a moron at times. Then he stopped just as soon as the word sister entered his head. Harry had never had a sister, and at times he wished he had. Now that he had a sister, he wouldn't trade her for the world.

"Harry, you okay?" Ariel stared at her little brother. She hadn't forgotten the week her mother died, though many members of the royal council kept trying to play it off as if her mother was simply on vacation. One of the swordfish guards actually muttered about her mother going to join the humans while Ariel was around and in earshot. But she remembered another thing from that week, the time Harry had tried to run away. It worried her that he could possibly try it again.

"Yeah," Harry quickly smiled and brushed his hair over his scar. He still liked it but people muttered whenever they saw it. Harry didn't like the mutters and so didn't want to draw attention to himself—well more than he got anyway.

"Come on! Daddy's going to get worried and then he'll send the governess out for us," Ariel rolled her eyes at the word 'governess' and Harry couldn't help but roll his eyes as well. Their governess was weird and her sidekick was creepy! As Harry swam out of the grotto, something caught his eye as it gleamed off of the walls due to the position of the sun.

"What is it?" Ariel asked as Harry swam down to get it. Harry looked at it in interest, not answering Ariel at first. There was a man and a woman in the picture, two complete strangers and yet Harry somehow felt as if he knew them. The man had hair that stuck out like Harry's did and the woman's eyes were the same shape as his.

"Harry?"

"Nothing," Harry responded to Ariel's question. "It's nothing."

000

"What's this?"

"It's another fork, Ariel," Harry sighed the following week and resisted the urge to roll his eyes once more. It seemed that almost every time Ariel found a human object, she forgot what it was called.

"Oh, right. I knew that!"

"Sure you did," Harry chuckled.

"I did so!"

"Did not!"

"Did so!"

"Did not!"

"Did so!"

"Did so!"

"Did not!"

"HA!"

"Oh Harry!" Ariel groaned as her little brother turned over from his laughter. "Honestly you can be so immature."

"This from the girl a month older than me?"

"At least I am older," Ariel muttered but Harry pretended not to hear her. Another object had caught his attention, and it seemed to be another photo of the same man and woman.

"You have the attention of a seahorse," Ariel teased but swam up to see what was in her little brother's hands. She grew silence at seeing the woman in the picture. "She, she looks like mom."

Harry looked at Ariel quickly, as if he was concerned that she was going to run off this time. "You don't think Athena would join the humans, would you?"

"It's just, that woman looks like her," Ariel reiterated her argument. "I wonder what her name is. Maybe she was a mermaid too! But she fell in love with a human and she found a way to earn those weird shaped fins."

"Legs," Harry corrected her in an absentminded tone. "And you're rambling."

No, the woman was more beautiful than Athena had been despite the photo being only in black and white. Yet Harry did not utter that around Ariel, for he knew what her mother meant to her. What she had meant to him.

"Look!" Ariel gasped, pointing to a shadow crossing the ocean's surface. "Let's go!"

"Wait! Your father said we're not allowed to the surface!"

"What Daddy doesn't know won't get us in trouble," Ariel shot back. "Are you a mer-man or a guppy?"

"Shut it," Harry grumbled but followed Ariel up to the surface anyway. Gulping in breaths of the salty air, he swam slowly to the vessel, keeping Ariel behind him in case they needed to get away quickly.

"Are you sure about this?" a snarky voice broke the silence of the ocean. "Does he really think the Potter brat just decided to become a mermaid?"

"The headmaster is rarely wrong Severus," a severe yet feminine sounding voice retorted, hiding the gasp Ariel had emitted from hearing Harry's last name. "Albus is convinced that young Harry belongs at Hogwarts when he turns eleven."

"Yet he sends us to make sure the brat gets to the castle six years ahead of schedule? Minerva, you know just as well as I do that our schedules do not allow for much time sitting in a boat looking for wayward children just because the Headmaster asks us to."

"Severus, the staff of Hogwarts is honor-bound to assist the Headmaster in whatever he needs to be assisted in without question. You will do well to remember it."

Harry exchanged eye contact with Ariel, nervously trying to determine whether or not they should leave. However, the people on the boat started to speak once more and Harry became still. He even tried to keep his breathing quiet in order to prevent the adults from finding him.

"Do you really think this will be successful?" the man asked.

"If young Harry has been turned into a meremaid, he will still have any curiosity he inherited from James and Lily," the woman replied.

"Who are James and Lily?" Ariel whispered as softly as she could.

"No clue," Harry whispered back. "Ariel, get out of here."

"Not without you."

It was Harry's rotten luck that got them discovered. You see, the two humans had a fishing net draped out of their boat to try to catch fish (Harry could only assume) and just as he was getting ready to leave, he found himself entangled in it.

"HARRY!" Ariel shouted as the two humans lifted Harry up in the net.

"Why it's Harry Potter!" the woman exclaimed. However, then she looked over the side of the boat where Ariel was still as could be from fright. "Severus, what did Albus say about witnesses?"

"Obliviate them, I believe," the man stated. Ariel didn't like the man; his hair was dirty as if he hadn't had a bath in ages. However, her brief moment of paralysis was enough for the man to draw a stick from his pocket and point it at her.

"Severus, would you do it?" the woman asked. "I'm a little busy."

Ariel could see that she was building a container of some kind and putting Harry into it. Harry was at least giving a good fight.

"Obliviate," the man said in almost a lazy manner and Ariel stared at the boat in confusion. Why was she up at the surface when her father forbade it from happening? Turning around, she dove underwater, not hearing Harry's shouts for her.

After all, she had no idea the importance the boy had recently held in her heart. He was just a stranger and she had a family who needed her.

"What an interesting thing-a-bob," she muttered as she dove down to collect a fork that had drifted out of her grotto.