A/N: I live! Maybe it's not the fic update you wanted, maybe it's not even the fic update you needed right now, but it's the fic update that's happening right now. And really, isn't a fic update that happens better than one which doesn't? The good news for those sorry souls hoping for an update to Shadow of Angmar is that this was written because I've actually returned to writing, and SoA is back on the menu, boys. I'm still battling the hump that has caused me so many problems, but I'm hoping to push through it.

What Shall We Do With the Drunken Wizard

A dolorous call rolled across the ever-moving waves. "Eeeaaaaaaaaaaa…"

Upon the prow of a white ship, skimming gracefully across the deep waters, stood Harry, his eyes closed in fervent concentration as his voice ululated over the deck, much to the chagrin of the Elves crewing it. "... aaaaaaaaaannnnnnnnnnn…"

Wind creaked in the rigging as Harry's mournful call continued, driving away the seabirds which had been following the ship since it had left harbor just two days earlier.

"...nnnnnnd what shall we do with the drunken sailor! What shall we do with the drunken sailor? What shall we do with the drunken sailor, earl-eye in the morning?"

Harry was bored. The sea, contrary to all the stories he'd both heard and read, was clearly experiencing a great shortage of nubile sirens waiting to lure an unsuspecting, or in Harry's case cautiously hopeful, men to a sexy, if watery, doom.

"Drop 'im in a pensieve with Gellert and Albus, drop 'im in a pensieve with Gellert and Albus. Drop 'im in a pensieve with Gellert and Albus, earl-eye in the morning!"

There hadn't been any pirates. The only company he'd had for the last two days had been seagulls. Well, seagulls and a boat full of Elves but they didn't really count. They had a tendency to amble about the boat with far-off expressions. Like farts in a trance. Even Tauriel had somehow been entranced by the raucous cries of the ever present seagulls.

"Send 'im down to Knockturn for a curséd butt-plug, send 'im down to Knockturn for a curséd butt-plug. Send 'im down to Knockturn for a curséd butt-plug, earl-eye in the morning!"

He'd done everything he could to keep himself amused. He really had. He'd tried turning one of the seagulls into a canon but something about the transfiguration simply didn't want to stick. He'd ended up with a very vocal feathery piece of ordnance that filled the air with guano every time he tried to fire it. After the second attempt the experiments had been discontinued, but before he could revert the transfiguration fully, the seacannongull had sprouted a dozen tiny little wings which, through frantic and sustained effort had managed to bear the… creature?... aloft and away with deceptive speed.

He could still hear it occasionally. Its characteristic 'GwaaKOOM' call carried across the waves remarkably well.

"'Ave 'im bring a Malfoy to a Weasley Christmas, 'ave 'im bring a Malfoy to a Weasley Christmas. 'Ave 'im bring a Malfoy to a Weasley Christmas, earl-eye in the morning!"

He cast his sharp eyes from horizon to horizon, in a desperate search for something more exciting than gentle waves and stoned Elves. It was empty, from the distant coast, to the unending sea. Nothing more interesting than an occasional flying fish. With an absent-minded roll of his hand, Harry directed a few of their number across the bows of the boat. If one happened to be aimed directly as Glorfindel, then it was certainly not Harry's doing.

Despite that, he felt an undefinable sense of disappointment when the graceful Elf Lord shifted just enough to allow the first clear passage across the decks. Really, that was the story of his life in microcosm. Or it would be, if the flying fish had been his penis, and Glorfindel had been a collection of nubile maidens. Maybe he was stretching that metaphor a little far.

"Pack 'im off to Mordor with a crew o' pansies, pack 'im off to Mordor with a crew o' pansies. Pack 'im off to Mordor with a crew o' pansies, earl-eye in the morning!"

Really, the only positive in the whole situation was that the Elvish ship was bloody fast. Harry had never been sailing. He'd been on the occasional boat, briefly, but even then he could count those excursions on the fingers on an old-auror's hand. The little boats that transported Hogwarts newest victims across the lake simply didn't compare. It was like comparing a pony to an abraxan. An ugly pony with only two legs.

Thanks to the almost magical Elf boat, the journey could only be another day, two at the outside. Never had Harry so missed the modern conveniences of the Wizarding world.

"Make 'im use the Ring as 'is own Prince Albert, make 'im us"—

There was a flag on the horizon. Harry's bright eyes narrowed as he tried to make out any details. It looked like it was black. That was certainly a good start. "Sail ho!" he shouted down to the Elves below. That was what he was mean to say, right?

In moments one of the sailor Elves had joined him at the top of the mast. He stared out into the distance with the kind of earnest focus only Elves seemed able to conjure. "Corsairs!" he said with consternation.

Harry's reaction held no consternation at all. "Finally!" he said in relief. "Some in-flight entertainment."

The Elves below bustled about at they tried to steer their boat out of danger, but Harry was having none of it. The boat soon found itself rocketing across the surf before a powerful wind that, curiously, was somehow also blowing the pirates directly towards them. Harry ignored the pointed looks Tauriel was sending his way as the rest of the Elves readied themselves for the inevitable combat.

The inevitable combat would prove to be perfectly evitable. As soon as he could make out individual figures on the pirate ship, and it certainly was a pirate ship, slaves, cutlaces, poor hygiene, the whole shebang, Harry Apparated over to the middle of its deck.

It took his new shipmates a few seconds to realise that he'd arrived, and when they did it was a slow realisation. They did that thing that Harry had long ago grown accustomed to where they did the old maneuver of: glance, ignore, glance again and double-take, nudge friend and repeat.

By the time enough of them realised what it was that was happening, Harry had already taken up station leaning against the main mast and picking his nails. In his old body that looked vaguely threatening; in his new body it was merely confusing. The drumming that had kept the oar-slaves in time faltered, then stopped.

"I just want to say," said Harry as the men around him looked at each-other clearly unsure of what to do. "I'm glad you showed up when you did. I was going to end up completely Lovegood if I had to put up with all that Elvish 'listen to the music of the sea' shit for much longer."

At that point they clearly managed to drum up enough brain-cells between them to realise that they were probably meant to be doing the old pirate stand-by of issuing blood-curdling war-cries and trying to kill anyone nearby who wasn't a pirate. They issued their blood curdling war-cries, and drew a motley collection of edged weapons and launched themselves at Harry.

That particular plan didn't go well for them when Harry simply disapparated, and many of their number found themselves being stabbed, hacked or impaled by their shipmates. Amid the groans and shouts of their wounded compatriots the remaining pirates looked around frantically for their foe.

Harry was leaning casually against the device that he liked to insist on calling the steering wheel. It was something he'd picked up when he'd discovered just how much it annoyed sailors. Sadly, however, it didn't really translate properly into Elvish and merely left them puzzled.

He'd taken the opportunity afforded by the confusion following his departure to transfigure himself a proper pirate look. He'd gone for the Edward Teach look, but even he'd admit he didn't really pull it off.

The problem, as it always seemed to be, was his child-like look. He'd gone for fearsome and dangerous looking. Instead, he just looked like one of those children with parents that were into the whole Halloween thing entirely too much. Even the completely authentic fuses woven into his hair just looked like bits of string. It was enough to drive a man to drink.

He swigged at his hip-flask before spitting it out immediately. Grog tasted like utter shit. Why would have thought?

One of the men below said something, and Harry had no idea what it was. It wasn't hard to work out that it was meant to be threatening, but as it sounded to Harry more like the man had an unfortunate throat infection, the effect was rather lost. The thumb being drawn slowly across the throat was blissfully familiar, however.

It was time to have an actual fight. Over recent days and weeks, Harry could very nearly feel his combat reflexes atrophying. Perhaps he'd try holding back a bit, if only so that he could make sure he hadn't lost his edge if it came to a real fight.

He wasn't stupid, though, so he quickly applied some more boring protection spells over his clothes that would be sure to turn aside anything sharp enough to hurt. Then he dove off the aftcastle into the crowd below.

For the first time since his arrival, he felt alive again. Steel flashed by as he moved through the crowd of pirates with an unnatural agility. Every man he passed, he flicked in the side with his wand, as cast whatever spell came to mind.

There were a few of his bread and butter in there, of course. Blasting hexes, slicing curses, eye-melting jinxes, knee-reversal hexes were all nice and useful, but he liked to consider himself more like an artist than an engineer. One man was turned into a massive spider, while another found that every hair on his body, including the ones in and around important orifices, had suddenly been replaced with fire ants. Others found themselves shedding their skins and metamorphosing into huge butterflies, or experiencing 113x normal gravity and falling instantly through the deck.

Truly, magic was a wonderful thing.

Then one of the men found the one minor flaw in Harry's protections and punched him in the head. He was a big man, and Harry most definitely was not. It sent him tumbling over the decks until he ended up in a tangle of limbs slumped against the edge of the boat.

As he stood up, he could already feel the absolute shiner he was going to have as a result of that particular bastard. He held one hand up. "Can I just say something," he said a little unnecessarily. He wasn't even convinced they could understand him, but they at least seemed to understand his raised hand, and they had the good grace to pause as he pushed himself upright. Perhaps it was time to stop playing with his food. "mglw'nafhu Cthulhu fhtagni!"

For a moment, it seemed as if nothing had happened, then, a great number of things happened simultaneously. The spell, creatively interpreted to be the magical command to 'Dream of dead Cthulhu" was one of Harry's own personal creations, though it had been sadly banned by the International Confederation of Wizards for reasons that he didn't really understand.

Dozens of eyes sprouted from every surface, and spun madly as they fixed on everyone who remained standing. The cries of fear were soon stifled by their horror when the eyes opened wide to reveal ranks of sharp teeth. Then, each eye-maw rose into the air at the end of a long serpentine appendage which lunged at the pirates.

Many tried to jump overboard, but the twisting limbs captured them, entwining their limbs as uncountable beaks grew along their length and started snapping at the helpless victims. The screaming started again as a few of them found themselves being pulled apart by the horrifying strength of the craw-tentacles. They were the lucky ones, though.

Other parts of the deck, beneath the feet of the remaining pirates, became a thick gelatinous mire filled with unknowable organs. The men sunk quickly into the living fen, and soon found themselves being digested by alien fluids. With unnatural speed, they were reduced to little more than muddled bones, suspended amid the impossible tubes and organs of Harry's newest creation. It then started to submerge, as a great undulating dorsal sprouted from its back.

Satisfied with a job well done, Harry apparated back to the Elven ship, appearing next to Tauriel and Glorfindel who were looking on with wide eyes. There was a distinct smell of vomit on the ship that Harry was sure hadn't been there before.

The boat-abomination surfaced maybe a hundred meters from the Elvish ship, and the Elvish sailors cried out in terror. It wouldn't be much good if his new pet caused his shipmates to lose their minds. He jumped up onto the pointy-bit at the front of the ship and amplified his voice.

"Look, it's fine," he said as placatingly as he could manage. "It's just Howard. There's nothing to worry about."

He jumped down and cancelled the voice amplification charm as he turned to Tauriel and Glorfindel who still wore expressions of unremitting horror as they watched Howard heave through the rolling waves to their left.

"So, are we there yet?"