Chapter Text
Water splashed along underneath the pier everyone was standing on. Harry couldn’t take his eyes off the water. Those whipping waves waggled at him like mocking tongues, but these tongues wanted to drown him. Again he wracked his brain for how he got into this mess. He didn’t want to do this stupid competition, but here he was.
Someone thought it’d be funny to have him in the Tri-wizard Tournament and put his name in. It was picked so now he was forced to face dragons, merpeople and Merlin knows what else. He wasn’t even sure what to do for this task!
“Master.” Harry turned towards the whisper and smiled when he saw Dobby poking his head out from under the pier. “Dobby got you some Gillyweed! Eat it and you’ll win. Good luck, master!” The sweet house elf whispered as he tossed a goopy wriggly mass of things that looked like black noodles.
Harry just barely caught the handful of mushy dark noodle like weeds, “Thank you, Dobby.” A very grateful Harry whispered, but the elf was long gone. Before he could think about his strange weedy solution he noticed that everyone went quiet and that Dumbledore was standing up to make an announcement.
“It’s time for the second round of the Tri-Wizard Tournament! Our brave participants must traverse deep in the water and find the person important to them in one hour. They must be quick and careful. Everyone get ready! … Go!”
Harry saw Victor and the others drive into the water so he shoved the Gillyweed into his mouth. Apparently, no one cared that he started gagging on the nasty weed, but everyone thought he was taking too long, especially for Ginny. Ginny reached over and shoved Harry.
“Good luck, Harry!” Harry barely heard the yell as he struggled under the water’s surface.
It wasn’t until his body started to change and he started breathing that he calmed down. He gave his subtle fishy features a once over before zipping up out of the water to do a flip. The sounds of people cheering followed him back under water and he finally swam off to complete the task.
Deeper and deeper … Darker and darker. Perhaps too deep and too dark. It was definitely too far away to get to the surface or any help and Harry instantly knew he’d need it the second he felt pain. It was the same pain he felt when his fishy features sprouted, which could only mean one thing. The necessary underwater features were reversing.
As the gills sank back in his skin Harry started to panic. Now his air loving lungs were fully in control and Harry had no control. The boy thrashed desperately to reach the surface, but there wasn’t enough time. That strain and pressure on his lungs became too much. His own body betrayed him and forced him to breathe.
Instead of the usual fresh air, water rushed into his lungs. Harry struggled until his vision started going. He was positive he was dead until he suddenly felt all the water rush out and his eyes snapped open.
For a split second he wanted to panic, but the sounds of cheering above him hit his ears. Before he could ponder how he could be back near the pier his lungs reminded him he needed air and ignored the strange extra weight he felt as he rushed up.
“You did it, Harry!”
Harry heard the screams of excitement, but it made no sense. It wasn’t until he was helped out of the water he realized something. As someone wrapped a blanket around him he noticed two ropes around his waist. The extra weight he felt were the two people, Ron and a girl, who were tied to the other ends. Even as those people were freed, woken from whatever spell they were under and the girl started thanking him too he was left completely confused.
“Harry, did you hear that?! You got first place!” Ron exclaimed as he and Ginny hugged Harry.
“Oh … ok … so … Ron, do you remember anything?” Harry asked as he tried to understand what happened.
“Nah. Thank heavens for that sleeping spell! Look! There’s Victor with Hermione! Wait until the jerk hears you beat him!” Ron snickered as a shaken Victor came to the surface. The redhead laughed even more at the look of shock on Victor’s face when he was told he got second place.
“Yeah … Funny.” Harry not even fully registering Ron’s amusement or the happy cheers or Hermione’s congratulations. Even when Ron’s laughter got louder as Cedric and Fleur resurfaced, Harry just focused on trying to remember what happened. Blackness was the only thing he could remember.
“Thank you for saving Gabrielle!” Harry suddenly felt warm arms around him and noticed Fleur was hugging him. Apparently, the girl he saved from the water was Fleur’s sister.
That’s one question answered … Only about a hundred more to go. Those questions rattled around in his mind and he barely heard anything else until he heard a noise. Harry looked towards the noise. To his surprise they were now in the Great Hall and the noise was Ron asking something.
‘What?” Harry asked as he looked over the food in a daze.
“I said, did you see any pretty mermaids?” Ron asked eagerly with his mouth still full of food.
Hermione cringed, “Ron, don’t talk with your mouth full.”
The redhead rolled his eyes and swallowed, “So?”
“They were a bit scared of me.” Harry muttered, but suddenly raised an eyebrow at his own words. (How did I know that?) He thought and his eyes fell to his hand that was holding his cup, which was full of juice. For a split second he saw his hand turn completely black and in his panic he recoiled so hard that he threw the cup sending the contents splashing up into the air as he fell off the bench.
“Bloody hell!” Several kids yelled as they were sprinkled with juice.
Ron huffed trying to wipe the sticky juice off him, “What was that-“ He blinked when noticed Harry wasn’t next to him. “Harry?” A second later he saw Hermione stand up and look across the table and he turned to see Harry on the floor. “What are you doing on the floor? You ok, Harry?”
Harry tore his eyes away to look at his friends, who were staring at him, “I think …” His eyes flickered back to his hand, which looked completely normal. “Yeah … Sorry. I think I’m just tired.” He said as he stood up and sat back on the bench to finish his meal.
Every now then he would look at his hand trying to figure out if what he saw was his imagination or a memory. Those thoughts distracted him all the way until he was in bed where he laid there until he finally drifted into a restless sleep. It was in those underwater images that did convince him that something definitely happened, but he still wasn’t sure what it was.
Among his dreams were flickers of the underwater creatures. It was the same look of terror on each of them as he swam passed, but why? That’s when his dream showed sleeping people tied down under the water. As he swam closer the merpeople bolted, but he didn’t care and swam up to one rope. His arm was reaching out revealing that it was completely black with webbing between his fingers and, the most terrifying part, very sharp black talons at the tip of his fingers.
Just as the dream showed the talons slashing the rope Harry woke up in a panic, “What? … Did I have … What?” Harry gasped as he looked his arms over frantically.
In the end he found nothing unusual beyond being drenched in sweat. Unfortunately, now he was too scared to go back to sleep. After glancing around in the dark room he pondered what to do.
It was clearly too early to get ready for classes since no one was awake, but there was no way he could sleep. As a possible solution he decided to take a shower to get rid of the uncomfortable sweat. He hoped it’d help him fall asleep so he reached over to get his glasses. At least, he tried to. Once his arm started stretching a sharp pain went through the ribs of that side of his body and it made him immediately recoil.
After the pain went down a little Harry tried again. This time he went much slower and it wasn’t as bad, but the pain still went up as his hand got closer to his glasses. Sadly, the pain spread to both sides of his ribs as Harry put his glasses on and pushed himself into an upright position. When a few moments passed and the pain didn’t go away he rightfully became worried.
While being as quiet as possible he moved to the bathroom. Just getting to the bathroom wasn’t easy and it wasn’t just because of the darkness, but also because the pain was now all over his body. Granted, his ribs still hurt the most, but he was definitely sore all over and he was starting to really worry.
“I really hope no one will need to pee.” Harry whispered after he shut the bathroom door and locked it. The charmed lights turned on and he shuffled painfully over to the mirrors as fast as he could. The problem was obvious once he looked in the mirror.
Bruises were poking out from under the collar of his pajama shirt and his lightning bolt scar was almost invisible against the deep bruise that surrounded it. That immediately prompted Harry to pull off both his pajama shirt and pants so he could see what was going on. What was revealed was terrifying.
There were large bruises all over his body. The worst were the deep dark bruises in the shape of long straight lines that filled the spots between each rib revealing why that hurt the most. The second most painful place was his back, but he had absolutely no idea what caused these injuries. Unfortunately, the surprises continued as Harry examined each of the bruises to figure out an answer. As he looked he noticed a disturbing pattern. Save for the rib bruises the only places the bruises appeared were only on his scars.
For most Harry’s age that might not be a big deal since there would only be so many scars. After all, kids are adventurous and injuries happen, but there is a big difference between ‘wild child’ number of scars and ‘that kid is constantly being beaten and abused’ number of scars. It can be hard to tell sometimes, but there is no fine line here. Harry’s relatives made sure he fell into the abused number of scars category with a lot of belt lashes, random burns and a sprinkle of other scars. Many of the scars were on his back and all were perfectly lined with bruises.
“I … I can’t think.” Harry gasped as the aches and pains made it hard to think let alone wrap his mind around what was happening.
Well it was a bathroom so there was the perfect relaxing solution just feet away. Obviously, it was the shower and that's where Harry went. Just the thought of some warm water running over his body made him relax already, but that wasn’t quite how things went.
Once the warm water hit his skin Harry opened his mouth in a silent scream and threw himself away from the spray of water. He even ended up crashing to the slippery tiled floor because he threw himself so hard, but still landing on the hard tile didn’t hurt anywhere near as bad as being in the water. After sobbing silently for a minute he looked at his body and discovered why he was in even more pain than before.
The warm water quite possibly revealed why his scars were bruised. There were hundreds of fine red lines marking his scars. With a little inspection those lines, which did not appear on his ribs, were basically paper cuts! He just couldn’t see them until the hot water made them red enough to see over the deep bruises.
Despite the pain Harry still wanted to feel the water. The young wizard clawed his way back to the shower and turned the temperature down so get under the spray without being overcome with agony. It was that stream of Icy cold water that finally gave Harry some relief.
Finally, after a few peaceful minutes Harry turned off the water and just stood there breathing deeply. He wanted to figure out what he should do now. Cold showers aren’t a good way to feel sleepy so he didn’t want to go back to bed. Right now he just wanted to warm up so he just decided to get dressed and curl up by the fire in the common room.
Once he collected his chilled senses he slowly picked up his pajamas. This time he didn’t bother putting the pajamas on. Maybe his modesty was as numb as his chilled body right now because he calmly walked through the dark dorm as naked as can be, tossed the pajamas he was carrying onto his bed and slowly got his school uniform on. By the time he dressed and went to lay down in front of the fire his body started to ache again.
“Stupid glasses.” Harry grumbled as he realized that he never took off his glasses even in the shower and there were drops all over the lenses. He just sighed and pulled off his glasses. As he used his robes to clean his glasses he zoned out on the fire.
Of course, his mind wandered to his strange dreams as his fingers absentmindedly rubbed the fabric in circles against the glass lenses. As he tried to recall every detail of the sensations from his dreams something happened. By the time he brought his glasses to his face he was shocked to see that a patch of glimmering black skin was on his right palm.
“How-“ Harry jumped as the black patch broke apart and disappeared under his skin. “What’s happening to me?” He whispered as he let his fingertips graze the spot where the patch was and stared at it for a long time.