Disclaimer: I am not J.K. Rowling.

9. IN THE MAW OF THE KRAKEN

It wasn't wise, Harry knew, to ingest unfamiliar herbs proffered by magical creatures, but nevertheless he partook of the merman's gillyweed without hesitation. Merfolk did not often welcome visitors, and to seek out the company of surface-dwellers was unheard of. The invitation, once turned down, might never be extended again.

So they dove together, Harry and the merman, into an alien world haunted by distant music. Resplendent columns of golden light danced through the deeps, to the rhythm of the waves. Plants swayed to the water's rocking, their leaves unfurling like banners towards the sun. Fish grazed in the lush forest of greenery, and darted at the surface, hunting insects, while shellfish scuttled in the sand and amongst the rocks.

With the gillyweed fortifying him, the boy moved with a fluid grace that he had never known atop a broom. Harry trailed the half-fish, half-man at a distance, marvelling at the majestic waterscape. The lake was far deeper than Harry had ever realized. The sense of space, of freedom, made him giddy, and the pressure of the water, the soothing cold of glacial melt, the sunlight glimmering through the vast green forests of seaweed, all these things played on Harry's memories, lulling him into a sense of safety and tranquillity. The world above, with its petty human dramas, was a dream already half-forgotten.

They soared like dolphins through the echoing chasms of space, diving ever deeper, and Harry found himself adapting more and more to the influence of the gillyweed. He navigated as much by the sound of the objects around him as by their sight. The subtle vibrations functioned as an extension of his body, allowing him to feel his way even in near darkness. Ahead of him, the glowing green stones woven into the algae-green hair of the merman swirled through the gloom.

As they neared the western end of the lake, the gentle sway of the water grew more turbulent, and Harry tasted the tang of salt, bespeaking an outlet to the sea. He remembered blood lapped by waves on the gravel shore of Azkaban, and his speed lapsed for a moment as he contemplated whether he was as foolish now as he was then.

When he turned to look for the merman again, Harry found the creature nearer than he had supposed, grinning at him with too many rows of pointed triangular teeth.

"We're leaving the loch?" Harry asked. To his shock, he found his own voice had taken on the same ringing, bell-like tone as the merman's.

The merman nodded gravely. "The queen hath summoned thee to her chambers."

Harry closed his eyes for a moment, contemplating. Undoubtedly, he thought, with a giddy swoop of excitement and fear. Every bit as foolish.

"Lead on, then," he answered.

They swam on, out of the loch and into the briny sea, and dove ever deeper, until the sun was only a memory, and the pressure of the water was crushing. Harry gratefully accepted another, larger dose of gillyweed. The idea of running out was too frightful to contemplate. Apparation would be the only possible escape.

Harry now relied entirely on the herb's augmentation of his senses to feel his way through the stygian darkness. Far from the sun, the life forms around them became sparser. Yet, as they swam on, life did reveal itself, in curious forms that Harry could not begin to identify. Gone were the silvery fins and tails, replaced by suckered tentacles and rippling sails. Gone were the leafy green plants, replaced by bone white and blood red anemones and corals. And everywhere was the ghostly flickering radiance of bioluminescence. The darkness teemed with alien languages, spoken in silence.

For a time they approached a seamount in the distance, and it was there that they drew to a stop at last, before a narrow, rocky entrance from which ethereal blue-green light streamed like a beacon. Inside, Harry could sense one large soul, presumably the queen, and many tiny ones, too small to be intelligent creatures. It was not what he had expected. There were no guards, no companions, no grand palace under the sea. A lonely cave in the midst of a bare abyssal plain—this was the castle of their queen.

The merman gestured for Harry to enter, but did not accompany him. Harry swam alone through a winding tunnel, his eyes adjusting painfully to the light, which grew brighter and brighter, until he reached a large, open chamber where the souls were arrayed. There was a moment before his eyes could adjust, and he then he took in the sight before him.

The room was roughly spherical, and the walls had been smoothed by centuries or perhaps millennia of deposited nacre. The hard, pearly substance was brilliantly iridescent, in shades of cobalt, viridian, and ultramarine, reflecting the blue-green glow from many thousands of translucent, gelatinous orbs that were stacked in the bottom half of the chamber. Each orb was about the size of a fist, and inside them were tiny, half-formed creatures. They were eggs, Harry realized.

In the centre of the chamber sat the merqueen, naked and regal, atop a throne of living coral. Her skin was mottled brown and white, and her scalp was covered with long, translucent, glowing tentacles like those of a jelly. Her eyes were the flat, white, slotted apertures of a nautilus, and in place of lips, she had the hooked black beak of a squid. Harry had not expected her to be beautiful, and she was not, but that was not why he shuddered. It was her horrible likeness to Echidna that filled Harry with dread.

Like the goddess, she was roughly human from the waist up, but from the waist down, she was nothing like it. Instead of the scaly tail of a fish, she had the eight boneless, suckered arms of an octopus. Each arm was the size of a human leg, and they shifted colours rapidly, from white to blue to red to purple and on and on, signalling in a language that Harry could not fathom.

"Hail, spawn of hags," called a voice like the tinkling of chimes, as the squid-beak moved. Harry felt a cold finger of ice move down his spine at the sound of that angel's voice issuing forth from such a Tartarean abomination. He suppressed this reaction, however, focusing on her human-sized soul to remind himself that she was not Echidna, not a terrifying goddess, but only a bizarre anomaly of evolution and magic.

"Why do you call me that?" he asked. "I have no hag blood, I assure you."

It was difficult to gauge the expressions of such an inhuman face, but Harry thought that the merqueen looked amused. "We know every creature by the scent of its blood," she explained. Her words were slow and halting, as though she was not much accustomed to speaking English, or to speaking at all. Her octopus legs rippled in a phantasmagorical kaleidoscope of colours as she spoke, and Harry found himself wondering how long she had been guarding these eggs down here, alone, in the dark, at the bottom of the sea.

"Why did you summon me?" Harry asked, his eyes roaming over the piles of eggs, trying to identify what sort of creatures they would someday become. Were they merfolk?

"We require of thee a service."

"If you need a wizard, you should ask Dumbledore," Harry replied cautiously. "I'm only a first-year. I don't even have a wand."

The merqueen reached out languidly with her human arm and touched the back of Harry's left hand with a long, pointed nail like the spine of a sea urchin. Harry's hand spasmed with a sudden, bone-deep ache, as he felt the skeletal coral embedded in his flesh throb.

"Promises made with the sea are not lightly sworn, nor lightly broken," she said. "Wouldst thou forswear the gift granted thee in good faith?"

Harry's head swam as the pain expanded, radiating up his arm to the shoulder. He tried to reach out with his magic to bat her hand away, but the power that he tried to shape and direct was wicked away by her claw like water into a dry sponge. He was at her mercy, utterly, in all ways but one. With a great effort of will in defiance of the pain, Harry grasped for the nearest of the tiny souls and snuffed it out like a feeble candle flame in a gust of wind.

The merqueen withdrew her arm, and Harry's magic returned to his control once more. He backed away several metres and held his power at the ready, prepared to restrain her in an instant. But she did not attack. Instead, with no expression on her alien face, she snatched up the egg whose nascent life Harry had ended and ate it with two savage clicks of her sharp beak. Harry shuddered.

"Whatever words I said, whatever promise I made, wasn't made to you. It was a promise to the sea, if it was a promise to anything." Harry spoke as plainly as he could, and did not bother to hide his newfound hostility.

"And the sea it is who will claim forfeit, shouldst thou fail to repay thy boon."

Harry paused, thinking. "If I do this service for you, that's it. It's done and paid."

The merqueen inclined her head regally. "One who stands at the door of life and death hath the power to close it. Somewhere in the lands whose rain floweth into our sea, one who doth not belong in this world hath concealed itself. Hunters draw near, and we fear for our brood should the waters grow turbid. The ancient one hideth from our eyes, but not from thine. Find it. Close the door on it."

"Ancient one?" Harry questioned sharply.

"A wounded thing whose aeon hath ended long since."

"But what is it? A wizard? A merman? A bloody centaur? What?"

"It goeth in many guises, and many seemings. Light as air, quick as silver, passing between the worlds like the shadow of wings."

Harry stared at the merqueen blankly. Was this supposed to make sense to him? Was she referring to magical properties, or just speaking in metaphors? Did she even know herself? Somehow, he knew that demanding answers to these questions would only lead to more questions.

"Where should I look for it?" he asked instead.

"We swim in the shadows of waves, but the hag-kin swimmeth in the shadows of souls. Look there for the bloated one, who gorgeth upon life to escape its rightful death."

"Bloated," Harry repeated in shock. "A bloated soul?" He briefly relived the memory a gargantuan soul descending upon a human sacrifice in the bowels of Azkaban. His heart was thumping in his chest faster than it had when she had held his magic at her mercy. "Do you mean a—a god?"

There was a long moment in which she seemed to be thinking. "We know not of the gods of men," she chimed finally.

"I see," Harry said, mostly to himself. "I will search for this—ancient one. I promise you that. But I can't promise I'll find it. Don't blame me if I can't find it or if I can't kill it. I couldn't kill the last one I fought."

"We shall not blame thee, hag-fry. Yet the sea shall have its due."

Harry clenched his teeth, frustrated. How was he supposed to negotiate with this inhuman agent of an even less human force of nature? "Is there anything else you can tell me that will help? Anything?"

Her glowing, gelatinous ribbons of mock-hair flexed and drew close to the merqueen, wrapping her in a protective embrace.

"Hurry," she chimed with the voice of a bell. "Hurry."

Notes: This is a bit shorter than my usual chapters, but I thought I should just go ahead and post this rather than making you wait another month or however long the next scene will take to write. I have no idea when I will post the next chapter, but rest assured that I do intend to finish the story. All the faves and follows in my absence have been really gratifying. Leave some words in the box if you feel like it. :)