The creatures had terrorized the coastal towns, his own included, for as long as he could remember.

They'd taken his parents, and so many other people's families too in an endless war of land and sea, staining the morning tide crimson.

It always started the same - the beautiful, haunting siren song that drifted in like a thick fog, winded its way through the streets, crept into your head and stole your soul away in the night. People tried to block their ears, with anything available, but it whispered in either way, as soft as a lover's kiss.

Anyone who was stupid enough to be out after dark was instantly caught, and getting stuck out at sea was unthinkable, and sometimes they came at day too.

It drifted along now, like a collar and leash, as he clamped his hands over his ears, desperate not to hear and die. His throat felt thick, his muscles rigid as it pervaded his senses either way.

He knew the Dursleys didn't like him, resented having him, but he never thought they'd go as far as set it up that he would be stuck outside like this.. He felt sick, his body electric with terror.

He'd been sent to work in the caves at the end of the beach, just like he did so very often for his Uncle's mining company, only this time, he'd stayed too late in the darkness, knowing he needed to get his work done if he wanted to avoid trouble.

Now he was in even bigger trouble, as he scrambled up the slippery rocks at the cave's entrance, struggling for purchase as the tide rolled in. It was already up to his waist, and tearing along the beach.

He wondered if he could still get out, dart across the waves, he wasn't a bad swimmer, or if he'd just get hurled against the rocky pier by the power of the ocean. Probably the latter.

He suddenly had the terrible certainty that he was going to drown, and he swallowed thickly - wondering if he could maybe even find somewhere high enough upon these slippery rocks to cling to.

Then the song started, and he clung tighter, the waves starting to crash against him with a greater speed.

He didn't...fear death, but that didn't mean he necessarily welcomed it. He was eight year's old, he had so much more to live for then-heads. There were heads in the water, starting to surround him, watching him.

His posture went rigid, even paler them before, and he was already cold in the water.

"Well, well," a voice murmured, like liquid velvet, "we don't normally get one's as young as you. You're all skin and bone."

Harry's head whipped around, his jaw clenched.
It was the first time he'd ever seen one of them - this one had dark hair and even darker eyes, and skin pale and ethereal like slices of the moon. Harry also caught a glimpse of handsome scarlet scales in the water, then more firmly as the creature pulled itself to rest on the rocks too, right in front of him. It was male.

"I'll give you blood poisoning," Harry said, immediately, not even thinking about it. "I honestly taste horrible. All sorts of infections. And skin and bone like you said, no fat, you don't want me. Really."

It blinked, slowly, head tilting to one side, humming.

"Interesting," it said, after a moment. "You're immune to my song. What's your name?"
Harry stared, trying not to flinch as another wave crashed down over him and the slippery rock, coughing.

"Harry."

"Pleasure to meet you, Harry," it purred. "You can call me Tom." It circled him once more, studying him with those unnerving, dark eyes. "And you seem to be in rather a predicament, don't you? How long do you think, Harry, until the tide smashes you against the rocks like a brained fish?"
It reached out, running fingers over his trembling muscles. "You're tired already." The tone was mockingly sympathetic, and Harry hated it, snarling.

What he hated even more was how easily Tom manipulated the waters, seeming largely unbothered by the currents, overpowering them, resting against the rock once more.

"But you could help me get to shore."

"I could," the other agreed, but Harry couldn't help but be uneasily aware of more and more heads surfacing in the water around them, with hungry eyes. He swallowed. "I could also find myself a truly lovely meal..."

A hand ghosted across his cheek, and the next second it had disappeared, reappearing right next to him, cold, wet skin and scales against his back as the waves continued to crash down.

"You could just slip away," it whispered, against his ear. "You clearly don't have all that much left to you if a little thing like is left alone on these rocks. Where's your clan?"

"Dead. Your people killed them." He jutted his chin up, wishing he could shove the creature away, but daring not to let go of the rocks for toppling straight into the churning waters around him.

"Hmm, poor thing," the creature murmured, and though there was nothing in the tone to directly indicate it, Harry was certain he was being mocked again. Its fingers stroked through his wet hair, and the next second, 'Tom' was in front of him again, a smirk upon his lips. "What do I get, Harry, if I help you to the shore?"

"I-I don't-" Harry began, confused. He didn't have a clue what the creature wanted, or why it didn't just kill him when he was so obviously easy pickings.

"Tell you what," Tom interrupted, smirk broadening. "Why don't we make a deal. You're how old...seven? Eight?"

"Eight," Harry said warily, not sure if he should be curious or just more unnerved. The next wave loosened his grip, and he would have crashed against the rocks if not for the arms suddenly around him, cradling his spluttering, sodden form.

The merfolk around them swam and circled a little closer, and the quiet music still rung in his ears. It was something ungodly, unearthly, deadly and the most beautiful sound he'd ever heard all the same. Part of him wondered if he wasn't dead already.

"Well, I'm sure it's evident to you by now that you are dead without my generous assistance," Tom murmured, voice never going above that soft silkiness. "I could drag you under any second-" as if to prove it, the creature dunked his head harshly under the water, holding it just below the surface for a moment or two before he resurfaced, "-or just let you smash against the rocks."

"What do you want?" Harry bit out, eyes tight. "I don't have any gold."

"Ten years."

"Sorry, what?" Harry's brow furrowed.

"My deal is ten years. I'll help you out, and you get ten years to live on the surface. Then you're mine."

"What do you mean, then I'm yours?" Harry's eyes widened, as he twisted against the grip holding him close. The creature just swam out a little more, away from the immediate danger of the rocks.

"Then it means I will come for you. And your current existence will cease."

What, was this type of sick thing about fattening up - or in this case, letting him get a bit bigger - the food source, or something?

But he didn't have to come back. It wasn't like Tom could leave the water, he could just...disappear. And at the moment he was dead anyway, so if such a thing was inevitable, he might as well live a little longer. He didn't know. But he didn't want to die like this, here and now.

"Twenty years?" he tried, hopefully.

"Ten. Or no deal."
Harry's brow furrowed, and he wondered if he should be concerned about the insistence on that number in particular. He swallowed, and the creature let it's grip slip a little, and the other creatures immediately surged forwards like he was a piece of dropped fish food.

"Ten!" he yelled. "I'll go with ten - just, just get me out of here."

He was spun around again, and Tom's eyes were gleaming in the darkness of the evening. He was surprised when the creature pressed a sharp kiss to his forehead, giving him a flash of pearly, razor sharp teeth, followed by a throbbing headache.

"What did you just-?"
The other creatures around them had immediately backed off, watching them both with cold eyes.

"You can call it a little insurance, that's all. Take a deep breath now."

"Why-?"
He was underwater, and Harry immediately panicked that Tom had gone against his word, struggling and thrashing, trying to break the surface again. The creature's grip just tightened further, almost bruising against his arms, and water was rushing through his ears and he had to squeeze his eyes shut and - and - he was coughing and the wind was whipping through his hair again with a salty spring, and there was solid land beneath him.

His head whipped around again, to see Tom retreating back into the waters, as he himself clambered more firmly up the beach from the smaller waves chasing his ankles.

"Run along now, little human," the creature purred. "I'll be seeing you."
Then he was gone.

They called him the Boy Who Lived now. They said he could get rid of the creatures, the threat, the sirens, that drew people to the coast and drowned them, because he was the boy deaf to siren song.

He wasn't sure he believed he could end them.
He knew, in his heart, that the creatures slaughtered and fed on the hearts of so many couldn't possibly be good, but that didn't stop the melody from washing in and out of his mind like the waves lapping the shore. That didn't stop him from remembering that Tom had helped him, when he could have simply killed him.

He didn't know.
Tom had also made that deal.

The Dursleys had been shocked and outraged when he was found outside the door next morning, shivering and wet, but very much alive still.

They said he was a freak of nature, so rotten that even the mermaids and merfolk didn't want him.

But he hadn't been home for a very long time now though; he'd joined Hogwarts Navy training when he was eleven, and, it was there that he met Albus Dumbledore.

Upon hearing his story and name, and his reasoning for wanting to join the academy, the old man had immediately taken a keen interest in him.

It was only year's later that he found out why.

"What the hell do you mean I'm going to become one of them? That I'm chosen?" he demanded, bewildered. He was fifteen, and sitting in a chair in the Admiral's office.

"Only certain people can become one of them...those that are immune to their song. That's about one person in a hundred. These people are also the only people who can actually kill the creatures too," Dumbledore explained, quietly. "They're typically marked in some way at a young age, claimed by the one that intends to turn them and take them."

"But I met one," Harry said, somewhere between horror and something else. "He let me go-" the deal. Ten years. The words haunted him some more at every birthday, but that was ridiculous. Tom couldn't exactly come out of the water and drag him down into the deep...could he?

Dumbledore watched his expression carefully.

"There's a certain age needed, for the process, a short few years between the ages of eighteen and twenty one, in which you will have the capacity to both kill the creatures, but also become one, if the one with such intention finds you - and believe me, if you've been marked, you will be hunted."

"But surely I could just stay on land between that age and I'd be fine?"

"Yes, but they're petty creatures, and if you spite the deal, they will never stop hunting you until the end of your days."

"Well, so long as I'm not on sea-" he stopped. He loved the sea, now he wondered if that was a symptom, but the fact remained. More so, he'd been in training since he was eleven, what else was there for him? He swallowed.

"You'll be bonded by now. It's any water that you're near, that the creature can appear in. He can't come out, and a glass of water for example isn't very substantial, and it is literally only in the sea. But you'd be able to hear its voice, and so would everyone around you. If it sings..."

"People will dunk their heads into the water source, and, if it's big enough, they'll drown," Harry finished, going cold. "People will drown wherever they go."

He felt like the footing, everything he'd been relying on, had been yanked out from beneath his feet.

"What do I do? How do you know all of this?"

"I had a...friend," Dumbledore replied, eyes growing distant, sorrowful. "He was my first mate. Gellert, he was called. Gellert Grindelwald. He'd been marked too, and in a similar situation."

"What happened?"
Harry had a bad feeling.

"He made the change," Dumbledore bit out. "He'd always rather liked the idea of immortality, of power and ownership over the seas. You've got to understand, Harry, this has been going on for years...this endless war between sea and land, with millions of casualties on our side." Harry was pretty sure he had brain freeze, and Dumbledore was studying him carefully. "Your mother, Lily, was marked too."

Harry's head snapped up at that, eyes wide.
"Is she-?" Was she one of them now?

"She didn't want to make the change. It would mean living past all of her friends, and she would never have been able to have you, to have children, due to certain anatomical changes. There was also the matter of what the creatures feed on, and what they do, which as you can imagine, she found objectionable."

"I'm sensing a but," Harry bit out, mind prickling with all of the new knowledge, the sheer enormity of the whole thing. How had he never known before? He'd just been told that his parents were murdered!

"Your father, James, was murdered when you were just a child," Dumbledore said. "He was a Captain of his own ship, the Marauder, and the sirens, the merfolk, whichever you wish to call the creatures, attacked the boat, and picked off everyone in it. Including your father. It was supposed to be his last mission, but he never got home to your mother, who was pregnant with you at the time."

"And what happened to her?"

"She had a child to protect, and it was clear to her too that everyone around her was in danger - whether they were in her close proximity to be drowned or not. She didn't want to raise a child in that environment. So she went out to sea, and they took her, and she starved, guiding sailors away from ships."

"I could do that."

"You could also get out your deal by killing the one who gave it to you. You can't live as human whilst the creature survives."

Harry went quiet at that, before standing up.
"Thank you for your honesty, sir."

His path was set.

Harry graduated at seventeen, and soon became Captain of his own ship Green Lightning. He travelled for several years, largely successful in his endeavours and tasks, fighting against the creatures...but conditions only continued to get worse.

There was just more rumours of ships disappearing, of coastal towns wiped out and sailors going missing. And he himself, now nineteen, could no longer afford to keep a crew when they all just sank to watery graves.

The deaths of his first mates, Ron and Hermione, hit him the hardest. He should never have let them come with him. He'd said that at the beginning, but they wouldn't listen.

And everywhere he was followed by that beautiful song which pervaded both his dreams and nightmares.

On land, there were talks of sacrifice, that maybe a select group of humans offered for both turning and eating a year would appease the relentless hunt, and save the majority. It wasn't the worst fate they said, for the creatures themselves were so breathtaking. Harry snorted at the irony of the description, and thought the so called 'solution' was horrific.

It had already been shown that the sirens, the mer-creatures, took whatever they wanted without care for human opinion.

He should have expected human faction to ally with them too, in love of blood, and of the sea, and entranced by the beauty of the creatures. He assumed there was more than one of them, at least.

These humans called themselves the Death Eaters, believing they escaped the kisses of the siren in their cult, and of its song in its deadly quality, by serving the creatures instead.

He should have expected that Green Lightning would be attacked too one day - not by sirens alone. He was becoming one of the most well known sailor's in Dumbledore's Army, fighting against the mer-creatures, taming the seas, alone because he could allow no one with him but those also immune.

They called his ship the 'siren ship' now, and he hated it.

The battle was bloody, and his only consolation as his ship was torn to pieces, everything flying, people throwing themselves into the dangerous waters to avoid the flames, was that at least he was causing due damage on The Dark Mark too.

There was chaos everywhere, shrieking, a vicious struggle to find wood and land and anything of substance as that song came, inevitably.

He managed to crawl onto driftwood with some other members of his dwindling crew, wishing he could block out the sounds of pleasure which turned to screams and blood in the water.

And then he was being hauled up out of the water, onboard, in a quick movement and dusted down, even as he thrashed and struggled instinctively.

If these were good guys, he didn't want them in danger - if they were bad, this couldn't mean anything good.

He was fighting, immediately, catching a glimpse of a female, the Captain evidently, with dark black curls and dark eyes, lips scarlet. He had a bad feeling at the resemblance to memories long ago, managed to fight free, killed one - couldn't believe he was actually leaping off the boat, and the next second everything went black.

Tom Riddle waited with a smug sense of satisfaction as his prize was brought to him; not that his petty little followers knew of the boy's truth.

If they knew they could use him so much more, he was sure they wouldn't have set him up as a mere offering.

This was how his lovely 'Death Eaters' worked, they targeted a naval ship, overtook it, and then set it on another under promise of death to the captured ship should it fail. Both ships went down, and his human pets picked up whatever loot they could, and whoever managed to survive the assault to bring them here, to the Siren port.

He stayed under the water, watching, head only surfacing in the shadows.

He'd been tracking this one for a long time now. He'd grown up well, and he knew he'd made a good investment, and had done so since he saw those pretty green eyes.

Of course, it was inconvenient when the boy continued to defeat and slaughter about a third of his kin under the delusion banner of the sea-dog, Dumbledore, but he did rather enjoy seeing the boy fight for his life.

It brought back such nice memories of their first meeting, of the boy's ruthless desire to cling to life.

He'd enjoy taming that spirit very much; after all, even with the whole ocean to rule after he killed Grindelwald, his creator, he needed something to do.

Harry's hands were bound, as were his ankle, and his beautiful Captain, Bellatrix, tugged the boy over the water. Harry's eyes had widened with the most delicious horror, as he realised his position.

"No! You can't do this," he thrashed. "Shoot me, hang me but don't put me in the water!"
There was blood spilt, no doubt to draw him and his kin like bait, like an offering, and he smiled with some amusement, before emerging into view.

Harry went rigid at the sight of him, and it was almost a shame that he'd so put the boy off walking on beaches, like he'd often see him do as a child in that small village, and then he was struggling even harder.

"You'll continue to bless our ship and fortunes, my lord?" Bellatrix asked, breathlessly. She'd no doubt drown herself if he only asked her, and he gave her a smile in response.

"Of course, love," he purred. "Do we not have a deal?"
She nodded, smirking back at him, and then, without any further warning, she shoved Harry forward so he crashed into the waters with a noise of absolute panic.

He couldn't swim, tied as he was, but he nonetheless struggled towards the surface, gasping for air.

Tom was on him in a second, diving, catching a foot and yanking him under, under and away, whilst the boy thrashed and tried to hold his breath and claw him.

It was amusing how those so strong on land could be so helpless like writhing fish when placed in water.

When the boy was about to expire, he let him bob up some distance away, coughing all over again as he broke the surface.

He was seriously tempted to spend the entire day drowning the boy, and saving him, in a vicious cycle. He'd always loved drowning, there was something about, the frantic desperation, the struggles that grew weaker with time, blue skin and lips.

"Hello Harry. I must say, you've grown up very well. I take it you remember me?"
Even without him holding on, the boy kept going under, then breaking the surface again, restrained against swimming.

"You bastard, you can't do this-"

"Oh but we had a deal, and you've had three years extra already."

He grinned, tugging the boy out into even deeper waters, before untying him smoothly. Harry stared at him, wide-eyed, treading water, eyes moving frantically for any sign of land, and he smiled, back pleasantly. There was nowhere to go for miles around, he'd made sure of it.

"Take your time, Harry Potter. This part's always my favourite."

"Didn't anyone ever tell you it's rude to play with your food?" Harry spat in response, lunging for his throat. He dived, lazily, and the boy immediately let go. He caught hold of his foot again, amused, holding him just beneath the surface.

Bad manners, but ever so fun.
It would be over by the time the sun went down.