[From Samhain to the Solstice]: Harmonies Unconquerable, goblin Harry, gen, 1/5
Title: Harmonies Unconquerable (1/5)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Rating: PG-13
Content Notes: Violence, goblin Harry, present tense, angst, major AU, drama, gore
Pairings: None, gen
Wordcount: This part 5400
Summary: The second half of goblin-raised Harry’s fourth year and the first half of his fifth year at Hogwarts. Voldemort would probably like it if he had Harry’s attention all to himself, but let’s face it, Harry has a Tournament to ruin, insults to get revenge for, the Argent Ocean to research, more goblin and human magic to learn, interfering humans to handle, and a godfather to keep in line. Voldemort will have to wait his turn.
Author’s Notes: This is another in my series of fics that includes, so far, “Music Beneath the Mountains,” “In Their Own Secret Tongues He Spoke,” and “The Dragon-Headed Door,”and “More Marvellous-Cunning Than Mortal Man’s Pondering.” Don’t try to start with this one, or you’ll be seriously confused. The title is a slightly changed line from Tolkien’s poem “The Horns of Ylmir,” which is quoted below. The section titles also come from this poem.
Harmonies Unconquerable
Twas Ylmir, Lord of Waters, with all-stilling hand that made
Unconquerable harmonies, that the roaring sea obeyed,
That its waters poured off and Earth heaved her glistening shoulders again
Naked up into the airs and cloudrifts and sea-going rain…
Hand That Made
“Mr. Potter, I wanted to invite you to my office.”
Harry halts on the stairs and looks up at Dumbledore. He has a slightly frazzled look on his face and his hands clenched, his eyes darting around. Harry sighs. It seems as though he perhaps told Blackeye about Dumbledore’s problems too late. If she’s been tending to him for almost a month and this is what’s happening, then Dumbledore probably needs more help than she can give him.
But then Harry chides himself. That’s not having faith in a Healer who can do incredible things. And a deadly insult, besides.
“No, thanks.”
Dumbledore’s eyes stop darting and come to settle on him, almost staring. “Excuse me?”
“No, thanks,” Harry repeats, more slowly this time. “I don’t want to come to your office.”
Dumbledore leans forwards. Harry watches him, but doesn’t move. Dumbledore ends up with his nose a few centimeters away from Harry’s. Harry contemplates cutting it off, as he would if another goblin did that, but Blackeye wouldn’t like it very much if Harry harmed her patient.
“It was not a question,” Dumbledore whispers.
“No, it was an invitation. That’s why I said thank you. But I’m also free to say no.”
Dumbledore just seems so bewildered that Harry feels sorry for him. He sighs and pats the man’s shoulder. “I think you need to talk to Blackeye some more. You aren’t getting the kind of sleep you need, and I know she would want-”
“It’s because of you and your precious goblin Healer that I’m like this!” Dumbledore shouts, waving his hands around.
Harry is glad that it’s early in the morning and they’re in the middle of a staircase that’s fairly far away from the towers, even if Dumbledore is keeping him from his exercise routine. That means they’re not in front of witnesses and he doesn’t have to kill the man right away to defend Blackeye’s honor as a Healer.
He fixes his sternest, most patient gaze on Dumbledore and says, “What do you mean?”
“She’s haunting me at every turn!” Dumbledore hisses, bending close to Harry again. His nose needs cleaning, Harry notes. There are a lot of hairs there. Blackeye must not have noticed yet, or she would have done something about them. “She tells me to go to sleep, to eat full meals, to spend more time meditating! And she wants me to talk about my past!”
“But those are the things you need to take good care of yourself, sir. Do you mean you weren’t sleeping or eating full meals before?”
“Of course I was!”
“Then why are you so upset now?”
“I am the Headmaster of Hogwarts and the Chief Warlock! I cannot be ordered about like a disobedient schoolboy!”
“She’s ordering you about as a patient, though, not a schoolboy. She would have handed you over to someone else if she thought you were deficient in your education. She’s a Healer, not a teacher.”
Harry has to admit to himself that Blackeye probably does think that Dumbledore is deficient in his education, like almost all humans. But it wouldn’t be polite to say it aloud.
Dumbledore utters a short scream and stomps off in the direction of his office. Harry looks after him with some pity. He must have been even worse off than Harry thought, or he wouldn’t be reacting to eating and sleeping like this. He wasn’t taking good care of himself at all.
And now Harry needs to go write Blackeye a letter about how Dumbledore needs to clean inside his nose, because he would find himself on the sharp edge of an axe if Blackeye found out that he knew and didn’t tell her. The fact that she would heal him afterwards isn’t that much comfort.
*
Someone clears his throat loudly when Harry is studying in the library with Ginny and Luna.
Harry looks up. It’s Igor Karkaroff, he sees, the Headmaster of Durmstrang. Harry nods to him. He thinks the man is ridiculous for not heeding the warning Harry sent him that he would do his very best to disrupt the Tri-Wizard Tournament and not taking the Durmstrang students out of it while he still could, but Harry doesn’t have anything against him personally. “Hello. Did you need something?”
“I was wondering,” Karkaroff says slowly, as if he doesn’t speak English well, “what is under the lake.”
“Oh.” Harry thinks about it. He hasn’t spent a lot of time around the lake or the merpeople there, because they don’t have any close alliances with the goblins. Beings that live under the water and can’t find an easy way into underground lakes like small fish don’t, generally. But he’s sure there’s a village down there, because he’s seen some of them surface sometimes. “A merfolk village, I think. And a lot of mud. And the Giant Squid, of course.”
Karkaroff stares at him. Harry stares back. “That’s all I know personally,” he adds. “If you want to know from someone who probably spends a lot of time around the merfolk, you could talk to Hagrid. I think he probably knows all the fish in the lake, and the Squid.”
“No,” Karkaroff says, and clears his throat again. Maybe he has a cold instead. “I mean that I am wondering what will be under the lake.”
Harry shakes his head. “Sorry, I don’t know that much about the seasonal fluctuations.”
Karkaroff utters a short scream and stomps out of the library. Harry looks back at Ginny and Luna and shrugs. “What do you think that was about?”
“Well, perhaps he has Mermish ancestry that he’s worried about, and wants to make sure that the goblins won’t make war on him if they declare war on the merfolk for some reason,” Luna offers.
Harry nods. That makes more sense than Karkaroff just thinking Harry would know what was under the lake when he’s a goblin, not a merperson. He’ll write to Toothsplitter and ask her to inquire around about the likelihood of war with the merfolk. Maybe he can reassure Karkaroff that they’re currently at peace.
*
“Mr. Potter.”
Harry is coming out of Charms when Crouch comes to find him. Harry lets his hands rest lightly on his daggers. He is ins a blood feud with the man, after all. Crouch so far hasn’t shown any sign of pursuing it the way he really should, but Harry wants to be ready.
Crouch’s smile is fixed and waxy. “Do you have a few minutes?”
Normally Harry would say no, but his next class is Potions, and honestly, he doesn’t mind being a few minutes late to it. Maybe that will finally be the insult that will cause Snape to duel him. Harry would like to take care of that particular problem permanently.
“Sure,” he says, and leans against the wall next to him. “Are you going to cancel the Tournament now?”
“Wh-no. I am here to ask you to reconsider your actions against the Tournament and your commitment to disrupt its tasks.”
Harry shakes his head. “No. Is that all? I probably should get to Potions, then.” He’s sad that the delay hasn’t lasted longer. Snape is going to overlook this one.
“But I need you to reconsider it!”
“You had your chance to avoid this when I first declared the blood feud,” Harry reminds him, with a bored sigh. He keeps walking, and Crouch patters along next to him. Humans are so boring most of the time. Their looks of incomprehension about simple things can be funny, but Harry gets tired of them, too. “A weregild or a duel is all it would have taken. And you were rude and said you didn’t duel children. So we’re in a blood feud.”
Crouch looks a few seconds away from hyperventilating. Harry eyes him critically, but honestly, someone a goblin has declared a blood feud with is someone whom a goblin Healer is unlikely to treat, unless he’s literally bleeding to death in front of her. So Harry doesn’t need to tell Blackeye about Crouch.
“I am going to make you pay for this,” Crouch finally whispered.
Harry smiled. “Are we going to duel?”
Crouch spins around to face him. “You know what?” he asks, spots of color standing out on his cheeks. “Yes. Yes, you little brat, we are. I demand satisfaction. We will meet at noon on Saturday of this week, here on the Hogwarts grounds, near the lake, and duel.”
Normally, Crouch wouldn’t have the privilege of setting both time and place, as the human who should have delivered a weregild or accepted a duel already, but Harry is happy to waive a few of his privileges. “All right. I’ll be there.”
Crouch lifts his head and stalks off. At least he doesn’t stomp, the way Karkaroff and Dumbledore did. Harry keeps smiling all the way to class.
Snape takes points from Ravenclaw for the smile, but he doesn’t offer to duel Harry, and in the end, Harry is relieved. He already has one to prepare for. Two would be doable, but he wants to give his full attention to destroying both the man who put his godfather in prison without a trial, and the professor who keeps threatening and bullying Harry’s friends and other people who don’t deserve it.
My Heart Beneath His Spell
“Thanks for coming, Sirius.”
“I wouldn’t miss it. How often do I get to attend a duel for my honor?”
Harry grins at Sirius as they walk across the Hogwarts grounds towards the lake. The snow crunches crisply under their feet, and Harry wonders if Crouch will try to use that to his advantage somehow. He supposes it depends on the kind of training Crouch has in fighting on uncertain terrain, and the kind of Transfiguration and Charms he might practice.
It’s his first official duel. Harry smiles even more widely as excitement zips up his spine.
“Do you think he’ll show?”
Harry snorts as they slow to a stop beside the lake. “Well, we’re early. And besides, if he doesn’t, then I get to tell everyone he’s a coward.”
“I thought you thought that anyway.” Sirius lounges on air and looks around with a smug smile, but also a wistful one, as though he’s remembering things that he can never have again.
“Yes, but this time I would get to say it’s official. You don’t go around saying that most of the time about someone you declared a blood feud on, you know. You just try your best to destroy them.”
Sirius sighs. “I don’t think I’ll ever understand goblin culture.”
Harry pats his elbow. “You don’t have to. You’re not a goblin-oh, Sirius, there was something I was meaning to ask you.”
“Sure.” Sirius looks at him expectantly, though he also eyes the school as if he expects Crouch to emerge soon.
“Where did you get that bruise on your neck? I have to know if I need to duel the person who gave it to you, too.”
Sirius blushes so bright red that that tells Harry the answer even before his hand moves defensively to cover the bruise. “I-it doesn’t hurt, or I would have healed it by now,” Sirius says, trying to make his voice fierce.
Harry grins. “I would still have had to duel someone if they’d hurt you and you didn’t take revenge, but if it’s from someone you’re having sex with, then that’s all right.”
Sirius blushes brightly enough to hide the bruise this time, and shakes his head. “You’re an unnerving person.”
“Thank you,” Harry says, beaming. That’s something most warrior goblins don’t hear until they’re seventy-five, at least.
Sirius rolls his eyes, but then turns his head and whistles sharply. “It looks like Crouch thought he should bring an entourage to this.”
Harry turns lightly on his toes, and sees Crouch striding down from the castle with Professor Moody close to him, and Ludo Bagman, and then the other judges of the Tri-Wizard Tournament. Behind them are some students who are probably just curious about where the group of school heads are all going together, and a few professors, Snape among them.
Harry hopes Snape takes a lesson from what he’s about to do, and yet, he also doesn’t. That might keep the man from dueling Harry himself.
Crouch comes to a halt beside the lake and sneers at Harry for a moment. Then he says, “We must agree on the stakes for the duel.”
Harry blinks. “Like a wager?”
Crouch’s look turns condescending. “Of course. What do you get if you win, and what do you pay if you lose?”
“Your life, in both cases.” Harry is puzzled. He thought it was understood that of course this is a deadly duel, what with a blood feud hanging in the balance.
Crouch moves a step backwards, staring at him, and Madame Maxime makes a little clucking sound. “You do not need to do that, Mr. Potter,” she says, her voice accented, although not as heavily as Karkaroff’s. “You can simply scar him, or bleed him, or take some of his money.”
“I offered him the chance for a weregild, and he passed it up. And he put my godfather in prison without a trial for twelve years. That’s an insult too great to be answered with any amount of scarring and bleeding.”
Crouch swallows loudly. “I accepted the duel under the impression that it would be to incapacitation.”
“Well, it is. Just the kind that makes sure you can’t be a nuisance again.”
Sirius is making sharp choking noises behind him. Harry ignores that. Unlike the others, Sirius is just overwhelmed with gratitude that someone would fight to the death for his honor. Harry can understand that.
Crouch looks on the edge of gibbering. Harry stares at him. How has been in a blood feud with this man for half a year and yet Crouch hasn’t looked up anything about what it means? How has he survived this long?
“Mr. Crouch is human, and not goblin.” That’s Dumbledore stepping forwards and trying to make it sound reasonable. “He would not want to fight to the death.”
“Of course not.” Crouch is nodding haughtily now. “I wouldn’t want to kill Mr. Potter and deprive the magical world of its hero.”
“Well, I have a basilisk-fang dagger. I might kill you.”
Harry is trying to be reasonable, too, but that just makes everyone except Sirius leap back from him in a wide circle. Harry frowns. He knows that some of them knew.
He catches Luna’s eye-she’s among the students who’ve wandered down from the castle-and she waves at him, then shrugs. She doesn’t have any more answers than he does.
“I will not fight a child armed with a basilisk-fang dagger,” Crouch says in a high-pitched voice.
“Do you want me to take an Aging Potion?” Harry offers.
Crouch turns and runs up the path back to the castle. Harry rolls his eyes and puts his daggers away. It seems he’ll have to continue with his pursuit of the blood feud by destroying the Tournament, which means nothing has changed and Crouch shouldn’t have asked for a duel in the first place.
The confused crowd drifts away. Harry sighs and turns to Sirius while Luna comes up to stand beside him. “Sorry, Sirius. I reckon you won’t get to see me fight for your honor after all.”
“That’s perfectly all right, Harry.” Sirius ruffles his hair. “Truth be told, it would probably have been an unfair fight. Look how much of a coward Crouch is. I know you want to gain honor by defeating honorable enemies, not ones who run away at the least little reminder of reality.”
Harry beams at his godfather. Sirius might say that he doesn’t understand goblin culture, but the most important things, he obviously gets.
Subtly, Magic
“Karkaroff!” Harry calls, when he sees the Durmstrang Headmaster walking down the corridor ahead of him. “I wanted to tell you that there’s no war planned between the merfolk and the goblins.”
Karkaroff turns around. Harry thought he would look relieved, since he’s been mentioning the lake in louder and louder tones lately, as if trying to hint something to Harry. Then again, so has Madame Maxime, and Harry is sure she has no merfolk heritage. Merfolk and giants really don’t get along.
However, Karkaroff is frowning. “What are you on about, little boy?”
The stones grumble under Harry’s feet, ready to open and trap Karkaroff like they trapped Snape last year if that’s what Harry wants. Harry quiets them with a little movement of his boot. Karkaroff hasn’t done anything wrong. Probably merfolk don’t see references to size as an insult, since their young are born tiny.
“You keep talking about the lake, and what’s under it. I knew that you were probably worried about a war between the merfolk and the goblins. I just wanted to let you know that my people aren’t planning any attack on yours, so you don’t have to worry about that.”
Karkaroff makes a small whistling sound in his throat. “You think I have merfolk heritage?”
“Well, yes. It’s hard to see, so I thought it might be several generations back. But I think it’s good that you still feel so strongly connected to your people.”
Karkaroff turns and wanders away, looking dazed. Harry smiles a little. He hopes that Karkaroff doesn’t think he’s going to go around blurting anything about merfolk heritage to anyone. Harry is good at keeping secrets.
And knowing that Karkaroff feels such a strong connection to a non-human culture makes Harry like him, just a little.
*
“Um, Harry? Can I talk to you?”
Harry blinks and looks up. Terry Boot is standing in front of his bed in the Ravenclaw fourth-year boys’ room, blushing so brightly that Harry is reminded of Sirius and his face on the day Harry didn’t fight a duel for him. “Sure.” Harry shrugs and puts Toothsplitter’s letter aside. He’s keeping up his lessons on the Argent Ocean, but he’s already read this one several times to absorb the complexities, and putting it off for another hour won’t make a difference. “What is it?”
“I-there’s this girl I like,” Terry blurts. “I want to impress her, but I don’t know how.”
“Is she a goblin?” That’s the only reason Harry can imagine Terry approaching him.
“N-no. I just-I don’t have a lot of wealth or power, but I thought I could impress her by showing how well objects obey me.”
Harry frowns a little at him. “You can show her how to listen to them, but you can’t talk about them obeying you. It’s a partnership.” His bed shifts beneath him in agreement. “So you can show off to her, but only if they agree.”
“Can you think of something that will look impressive?”
“Hm.” Harry tilts his head. “Is she a warrior, or a smith, or a healer, or a teacher, or-”
“She’s another student, Harry.”
“But she has to have some ambition, right? She wants to be something? What does she want to be? That’s really the only kind of advice I can offer,” Harry adds, when Terry looks at him uncomprehendingly. “I don’t know any goblin girl who doesn’t want to be something.”
“I hope she wants to be my girlfriend.”
They look at each other across what feels like a gulf to Harry, and finally he nods and says, “Well, I can tell you how to ask the seeds of ancient flowers to bloom and rise through the stone. She might like that.” He adds it a little doubtfully. He knows Luna would, but that’s because she loves plants of all kinds, not because she’s a human girl. And Ginny probably would, but that’s because she’s picking up intently on Harry’s lessons about listening, and practicing with plants.
Terry smiles. “I think she would like that.”
Harry just hopes she does. There’s so much about being human he doesn’t know, and he is curious to learn more, but it also seems that a lot of humans are cowards and unaware of most of the world around them. That’s a price Harry won’t pay just to understand them better.
The Great Grey Waters Heaving
Harry was vaguely aware that the Second Task was coming up, but he didn’t manage to learn what it was about this time, unlike with the dragons, where he knew. That’s all right. He goes to bed on the evening before convinced that he’ll get enough clues in the morning.
He does, when he walks into the Great Hall and Ginny immediately runs up to him, waving her arms.
“They took Luna!”
Harry’s daggers are in his hands before he can think about it. “Who took her?” he demands softly. Whoever it is, they’re going to bloody regret it.
Ginny stops, panting so hard that she can’t catch her breath. Harry conjures a glass of water for her, and Ginny takes it and gulps it, then goes on rapidly. “I saw Luna going up to the Headmaster’s office last night, and I was worried, because she didn’t seem like she would have a reason to go up there, so I followed her. And I listened at the door. I couldn’t really hear, but the door told me what it was hearing.” She stops and bites her lip as if she thinks Harry might disapprove of that.
Harry smiles at her. “That’s wonderful that you’ve come so far. What did they say about Luna?’
“They said that all the Champions would have to go retrieve someone who was lost. Someone precious to them. And they talked about the lake-”
Harry feels his eyes widen. That was what Karkaroff was trying to get across to him! Harry feels like a fool. Then again, Karkaroff was probably bound by his Mermish heritage not to talk about it in clearer terms.
“They’re underneath the lake,” Ginny whispers, leaning towards him. “Luna and the Chang girl Diggory is dating and Hermione Granger Krum went to the Yule Ball with. The door wasn’t as sure about the hostage they have for Delacour. Someone related to her, I think. I didn’t recognize the name.”
She straightens up and looks a little desperately at him. “I tried to find you last night to tell you, but the Ravenclaw door asked a riddle I could answer and it wouldn’t let me in. And the stones…I tried, but I couldn’t get them to carry a comprehensible message to you.”
“It’s all right, Ginny,” Harry says, patting her shoulder. He was out of Hogwarts last night, meeting Toothsplitter in a tunnel that runs to the Argent Ocean so that he could continue with his practice. The stones wouldn’t know how to reach him if someone who’s not very skilled in speaking told him to find him in his bed. Stones are very literal sometimes. If he wasn’t in his bed, it wouldn’t occur to them to look elsewhere.
“No, it’s not! They have her!”
“But we’re going to get her back,” Harry says confidently, and walks out of the Great Hall and towards the lake. Some people are hurrying after him, although Harry knows that it isn’t the official start of the Task yet. That doesn’t matter, though. He doesn’t want Luna to be under the water for longer than necessary.
And he still has to disrupt the Task.
He marches to the edge of the lake and kneels down to listen to the sighing of the snow along the edge. It takes him a while to pick apart its language from the rumble of the earth and the swish of the water; he’s still not as good at listening to different forms of water as he is stones, metal, and objects that people make. But in the end, he has it, and only a few curious people are standing around him. The rest probably went back into Hogwarts when they didn’t see him doing anything they thought was interesting.
The snow perks up when Harry asks it politely, “Can you please tell me where my friend is under the water?” He could have asked himself, but the lake feels hostile. Maybe it was charmed to feel that way, or maybe it’s because there are merfolk who don’t like goblins living in it.
The snow reaches down to the water, which is cold enough and kin enough to the snow to want to answer its questions. The answer comes back. Luna is tied with a rope to a statue of some kind under the water, and there are bubbles floating from her mouth.
The water regards that detail as important because the air is disrupting its currents, but Harry is relieved. Luna is alive.
If she was dead…
Harry shakes his head as he stands up. He would have to bathe Hogwarts in blood and vengeance, and he doesn’t want to do that. There are younger students who would be traumatized.
He stands in one place for a long moment, his eyes closed, and then he begins to sing.
The song is a variation on some of the ones that he and Toothsplitter have been practicing with the Argent Ocean. Unlike the Argent Ocean, the lake is not a sea of molten silver mixed with water and the powers of goblins’ enemies, but it is still the dwelling of an enemy, and Harry needs to understand and soothe their hatred.
His song is a clumsy, faltering thing. Harry sighs in his head as he sings it, the skittering low notes and the dancing high ones. The one thing he most regrets about not being born a goblin in body is the lack of a real goblin voice.
He will just have to do the best he can to make up for it in other ways.
He has barely finished singing when the waters heave, and a woman’s head peeks out. She’s wearing shells woven into her shining green hair, and her bright yellow eyes peer hard at him. Her scaled, clawed hands rest on the snowy shore with no sign of discomfort, but then again, she’s used to swimming through much colder water.
Harry bows at once. This is a queen among her kind, and he’s surprised and impressed. There are very few merfolk who are at her level of enemies slain and waters cleft and captured and journeys made, and he never expected to attract their level of attention.
The woman sings to him in Mermish, but unfortunately, it sounds like screeching above the water. Harry shakes his head at her regretfully, casts a Bubble-Head Charm on himself, and thrusts his head underneath the surface.
The queen floats down to his level and repeats herself in a lovely, ringing tone.
“The children are here, your Headmasters brought them down,
They have spells on them to make sure they don’t drown.
Champions have an hour to descend and find them,
Battle our soldiers, and cut the ropes that bind them.
You ask us to violate our honor by setting them free.
I grieve for your own grief, but this cannot be.”
Harry nods. He can see how, once honor is involved, the merfolk would decide that it wouldn’t be wise of them to break the contract. But he begins another song, and this time, he twines it with images of merfolk swimming beside carefully chosen goblins, making an alliance, and the fact that he’s in a blood feud with one of the men who’s running the Tournament, and at war with another.
The queen’s eyes widen as he sings more of it, and implies images of friendship and how they drew one of his friends into this conflict, against all honor, when she isn’t a goblin and never did anything to them. Then the queen begins to hum, her voice skittering at last into the noise of glass baubles floating in water.
“Honor violated must be replaced by that unbroken.
Your feud was created before our word was spoken.
I shall bring up your friend, and the other three.
They are all part of the same contract, and shall go free.”
Harry bows again, deeply, to her from the shore, and draws himself back so that he’s sitting on it, where he dissipates the Bubble-Head Charm from around his face. The queen whirls and dives down into the water. Harry sees her shape vanishing murkily before he loses sight of her altogether, the lake, which was calmed by her presence, closing in again and radiating more hostility at him.
“What was that about?” Ginny asks anxiously.
Harry starts. Of course. She probably didn’t understand a word, since she didn’t have her head under the water and doesn’t know the songs to calm the Argent Ocean. “Sorry, Ginny, I didn’t mean to leave you out. Luna and the others were under the water as part of a contract that the Tournament judges had with the merfolk. They didn’t want to break the contract because it would violate their honor, but I told them their queen I had the prior claim on the Tournament judges’ honor because of my blood feud and the war against Dumbledore. She’s going to get them now.”
“Wow.” Ginny peers at the lake again. “That was their queen?”
Harry laughs. “Yeah. Why do you sound so surprised? Have you seen a lot of queens to compare her to?”
“No. Just-she looked rough and wild. More like a warrior queen than a beautiful one.” Ginny hesitates. “More like someone I would want to be.”
“She is a warrior queen, but also a water-cleaving one. Merfolk royalty has to make long journeys underwater, and create temporary waterways across the land, from one lake or sea to another, to show that they have mastery of the land, too. She’s done a lot.”
Ginny hugs her knees and smiles. Harry grins. If Ginny turns out to be the girl Terry likes, then Harry can at least tell Terry that Ginny definitely wants to be a warrior.
The hostages come floating to the surface of the lake a few minutes later, the torn ropes trialing behind them. Harry recasts the Bubble-Head Charm and ducks his head under the water to thank the queen with a warbling song twisting together images of friendship and thanks like kelp. He owes them a debt.
The queen lays a hand across his and nods to the mighty-tailed warriors floating behind her, who grip spears and nets and watch Harry closely.
“My warriors wished to see the one who convinced me
To be sure that he had not wrongly menaced me.
They wish someday to test your strength against theirs,
A friendly duel that both teaches and spares.”
Harry nods to the warriors. He has other duels to consider right now, but he would be happy to come underwater and meet them. Or perhaps their queen, or other royalty if they have them, can construct a way to the rivers in the Realm of Song.
The warriors nod back, and finally relax. They swim down into the depths of the lake, and Harry withdraws his head from the water to find Ginny rubbing life back into Luna’s limbs and a few professors conjuring warm towels for the other hostages-Chang, Granger, and a little silver-haired girl who’s probably part-Veela. Harry politely averts his eyes from her unbound hair.
He notices the judges, then, standing around on the lakeshore and staring at them helplessly. Crouch is purple in the face, Bagman is pale, Dumbledore has his hands over his eyes, Madame Maxime’s face is impossible to read, and Karkaroff is just staring around.
Harry smiles at Karkaroff. “You’ll be happy to know that there isn’t a possibly of war between the merfolk and the goblins. Just a friendly duel so that I can show the warriors of the queen what I might have done if I’d actually gone under the water.”
Karkaroff utters a little shriek and stomps off.
Harry frowns thoughtfully. Is that part of the man’s merfolk heritage? He does it so often.
On the other hand, Dumbledore does it, too. Harry is pretty sure Dumbledore doesn’t have merfolk heritage.
Another thing for me to learn, Harry thinks, and goes over to make sure that Luna is all right. Good thing this is a school.
Part Two.
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Rating: PG-13
Content Notes: Violence, goblin Harry, present tense, angst, major AU, drama, gore
Pairings: None, gen
Wordcount: This part 5400
Summary: The second half of goblin-raised Harry’s fourth year and the first half of his fifth year at Hogwarts. Voldemort would probably like it if he had Harry’s attention all to himself, but let’s face it, Harry has a Tournament to ruin, insults to get revenge for, the Argent Ocean to research, more goblin and human magic to learn, interfering humans to handle, and a godfather to keep in line. Voldemort will have to wait his turn.
Author’s Notes: This is another in my series of fics that includes, so far, “Music Beneath the Mountains,” “In Their Own Secret Tongues He Spoke,” and “The Dragon-Headed Door,”and “More Marvellous-Cunning Than Mortal Man’s Pondering.” Don’t try to start with this one, or you’ll be seriously confused. The title is a slightly changed line from Tolkien’s poem “The Horns of Ylmir,” which is quoted below. The section titles also come from this poem.
Harmonies Unconquerable
Twas Ylmir, Lord of Waters, with all-stilling hand that made
Unconquerable harmonies, that the roaring sea obeyed,
That its waters poured off and Earth heaved her glistening shoulders again
Naked up into the airs and cloudrifts and sea-going rain…
Hand That Made
“Mr. Potter, I wanted to invite you to my office.”
Harry halts on the stairs and looks up at Dumbledore. He has a slightly frazzled look on his face and his hands clenched, his eyes darting around. Harry sighs. It seems as though he perhaps told Blackeye about Dumbledore’s problems too late. If she’s been tending to him for almost a month and this is what’s happening, then Dumbledore probably needs more help than she can give him.
But then Harry chides himself. That’s not having faith in a Healer who can do incredible things. And a deadly insult, besides.
“No, thanks.”
Dumbledore’s eyes stop darting and come to settle on him, almost staring. “Excuse me?”
“No, thanks,” Harry repeats, more slowly this time. “I don’t want to come to your office.”
Dumbledore leans forwards. Harry watches him, but doesn’t move. Dumbledore ends up with his nose a few centimeters away from Harry’s. Harry contemplates cutting it off, as he would if another goblin did that, but Blackeye wouldn’t like it very much if Harry harmed her patient.
“It was not a question,” Dumbledore whispers.
“No, it was an invitation. That’s why I said thank you. But I’m also free to say no.”
Dumbledore just seems so bewildered that Harry feels sorry for him. He sighs and pats the man’s shoulder. “I think you need to talk to Blackeye some more. You aren’t getting the kind of sleep you need, and I know she would want-”
“It’s because of you and your precious goblin Healer that I’m like this!” Dumbledore shouts, waving his hands around.
Harry is glad that it’s early in the morning and they’re in the middle of a staircase that’s fairly far away from the towers, even if Dumbledore is keeping him from his exercise routine. That means they’re not in front of witnesses and he doesn’t have to kill the man right away to defend Blackeye’s honor as a Healer.
He fixes his sternest, most patient gaze on Dumbledore and says, “What do you mean?”
“She’s haunting me at every turn!” Dumbledore hisses, bending close to Harry again. His nose needs cleaning, Harry notes. There are a lot of hairs there. Blackeye must not have noticed yet, or she would have done something about them. “She tells me to go to sleep, to eat full meals, to spend more time meditating! And she wants me to talk about my past!”
“But those are the things you need to take good care of yourself, sir. Do you mean you weren’t sleeping or eating full meals before?”
“Of course I was!”
“Then why are you so upset now?”
“I am the Headmaster of Hogwarts and the Chief Warlock! I cannot be ordered about like a disobedient schoolboy!”
“She’s ordering you about as a patient, though, not a schoolboy. She would have handed you over to someone else if she thought you were deficient in your education. She’s a Healer, not a teacher.”
Harry has to admit to himself that Blackeye probably does think that Dumbledore is deficient in his education, like almost all humans. But it wouldn’t be polite to say it aloud.
Dumbledore utters a short scream and stomps off in the direction of his office. Harry looks after him with some pity. He must have been even worse off than Harry thought, or he wouldn’t be reacting to eating and sleeping like this. He wasn’t taking good care of himself at all.
And now Harry needs to go write Blackeye a letter about how Dumbledore needs to clean inside his nose, because he would find himself on the sharp edge of an axe if Blackeye found out that he knew and didn’t tell her. The fact that she would heal him afterwards isn’t that much comfort.
*
Someone clears his throat loudly when Harry is studying in the library with Ginny and Luna.
Harry looks up. It’s Igor Karkaroff, he sees, the Headmaster of Durmstrang. Harry nods to him. He thinks the man is ridiculous for not heeding the warning Harry sent him that he would do his very best to disrupt the Tri-Wizard Tournament and not taking the Durmstrang students out of it while he still could, but Harry doesn’t have anything against him personally. “Hello. Did you need something?”
“I was wondering,” Karkaroff says slowly, as if he doesn’t speak English well, “what is under the lake.”
“Oh.” Harry thinks about it. He hasn’t spent a lot of time around the lake or the merpeople there, because they don’t have any close alliances with the goblins. Beings that live under the water and can’t find an easy way into underground lakes like small fish don’t, generally. But he’s sure there’s a village down there, because he’s seen some of them surface sometimes. “A merfolk village, I think. And a lot of mud. And the Giant Squid, of course.”
Karkaroff stares at him. Harry stares back. “That’s all I know personally,” he adds. “If you want to know from someone who probably spends a lot of time around the merfolk, you could talk to Hagrid. I think he probably knows all the fish in the lake, and the Squid.”
“No,” Karkaroff says, and clears his throat again. Maybe he has a cold instead. “I mean that I am wondering what will be under the lake.”
Harry shakes his head. “Sorry, I don’t know that much about the seasonal fluctuations.”
Karkaroff utters a short scream and stomps out of the library. Harry looks back at Ginny and Luna and shrugs. “What do you think that was about?”
“Well, perhaps he has Mermish ancestry that he’s worried about, and wants to make sure that the goblins won’t make war on him if they declare war on the merfolk for some reason,” Luna offers.
Harry nods. That makes more sense than Karkaroff just thinking Harry would know what was under the lake when he’s a goblin, not a merperson. He’ll write to Toothsplitter and ask her to inquire around about the likelihood of war with the merfolk. Maybe he can reassure Karkaroff that they’re currently at peace.
*
“Mr. Potter.”
Harry is coming out of Charms when Crouch comes to find him. Harry lets his hands rest lightly on his daggers. He is ins a blood feud with the man, after all. Crouch so far hasn’t shown any sign of pursuing it the way he really should, but Harry wants to be ready.
Crouch’s smile is fixed and waxy. “Do you have a few minutes?”
Normally Harry would say no, but his next class is Potions, and honestly, he doesn’t mind being a few minutes late to it. Maybe that will finally be the insult that will cause Snape to duel him. Harry would like to take care of that particular problem permanently.
“Sure,” he says, and leans against the wall next to him. “Are you going to cancel the Tournament now?”
“Wh-no. I am here to ask you to reconsider your actions against the Tournament and your commitment to disrupt its tasks.”
Harry shakes his head. “No. Is that all? I probably should get to Potions, then.” He’s sad that the delay hasn’t lasted longer. Snape is going to overlook this one.
“But I need you to reconsider it!”
“You had your chance to avoid this when I first declared the blood feud,” Harry reminds him, with a bored sigh. He keeps walking, and Crouch patters along next to him. Humans are so boring most of the time. Their looks of incomprehension about simple things can be funny, but Harry gets tired of them, too. “A weregild or a duel is all it would have taken. And you were rude and said you didn’t duel children. So we’re in a blood feud.”
Crouch looks a few seconds away from hyperventilating. Harry eyes him critically, but honestly, someone a goblin has declared a blood feud with is someone whom a goblin Healer is unlikely to treat, unless he’s literally bleeding to death in front of her. So Harry doesn’t need to tell Blackeye about Crouch.
“I am going to make you pay for this,” Crouch finally whispered.
Harry smiled. “Are we going to duel?”
Crouch spins around to face him. “You know what?” he asks, spots of color standing out on his cheeks. “Yes. Yes, you little brat, we are. I demand satisfaction. We will meet at noon on Saturday of this week, here on the Hogwarts grounds, near the lake, and duel.”
Normally, Crouch wouldn’t have the privilege of setting both time and place, as the human who should have delivered a weregild or accepted a duel already, but Harry is happy to waive a few of his privileges. “All right. I’ll be there.”
Crouch lifts his head and stalks off. At least he doesn’t stomp, the way Karkaroff and Dumbledore did. Harry keeps smiling all the way to class.
Snape takes points from Ravenclaw for the smile, but he doesn’t offer to duel Harry, and in the end, Harry is relieved. He already has one to prepare for. Two would be doable, but he wants to give his full attention to destroying both the man who put his godfather in prison without a trial, and the professor who keeps threatening and bullying Harry’s friends and other people who don’t deserve it.
My Heart Beneath His Spell
“Thanks for coming, Sirius.”
“I wouldn’t miss it. How often do I get to attend a duel for my honor?”
Harry grins at Sirius as they walk across the Hogwarts grounds towards the lake. The snow crunches crisply under their feet, and Harry wonders if Crouch will try to use that to his advantage somehow. He supposes it depends on the kind of training Crouch has in fighting on uncertain terrain, and the kind of Transfiguration and Charms he might practice.
It’s his first official duel. Harry smiles even more widely as excitement zips up his spine.
“Do you think he’ll show?”
Harry snorts as they slow to a stop beside the lake. “Well, we’re early. And besides, if he doesn’t, then I get to tell everyone he’s a coward.”
“I thought you thought that anyway.” Sirius lounges on air and looks around with a smug smile, but also a wistful one, as though he’s remembering things that he can never have again.
“Yes, but this time I would get to say it’s official. You don’t go around saying that most of the time about someone you declared a blood feud on, you know. You just try your best to destroy them.”
Sirius sighs. “I don’t think I’ll ever understand goblin culture.”
Harry pats his elbow. “You don’t have to. You’re not a goblin-oh, Sirius, there was something I was meaning to ask you.”
“Sure.” Sirius looks at him expectantly, though he also eyes the school as if he expects Crouch to emerge soon.
“Where did you get that bruise on your neck? I have to know if I need to duel the person who gave it to you, too.”
Sirius blushes so bright red that that tells Harry the answer even before his hand moves defensively to cover the bruise. “I-it doesn’t hurt, or I would have healed it by now,” Sirius says, trying to make his voice fierce.
Harry grins. “I would still have had to duel someone if they’d hurt you and you didn’t take revenge, but if it’s from someone you’re having sex with, then that’s all right.”
Sirius blushes brightly enough to hide the bruise this time, and shakes his head. “You’re an unnerving person.”
“Thank you,” Harry says, beaming. That’s something most warrior goblins don’t hear until they’re seventy-five, at least.
Sirius rolls his eyes, but then turns his head and whistles sharply. “It looks like Crouch thought he should bring an entourage to this.”
Harry turns lightly on his toes, and sees Crouch striding down from the castle with Professor Moody close to him, and Ludo Bagman, and then the other judges of the Tri-Wizard Tournament. Behind them are some students who are probably just curious about where the group of school heads are all going together, and a few professors, Snape among them.
Harry hopes Snape takes a lesson from what he’s about to do, and yet, he also doesn’t. That might keep the man from dueling Harry himself.
Crouch comes to a halt beside the lake and sneers at Harry for a moment. Then he says, “We must agree on the stakes for the duel.”
Harry blinks. “Like a wager?”
Crouch’s look turns condescending. “Of course. What do you get if you win, and what do you pay if you lose?”
“Your life, in both cases.” Harry is puzzled. He thought it was understood that of course this is a deadly duel, what with a blood feud hanging in the balance.
Crouch moves a step backwards, staring at him, and Madame Maxime makes a little clucking sound. “You do not need to do that, Mr. Potter,” she says, her voice accented, although not as heavily as Karkaroff’s. “You can simply scar him, or bleed him, or take some of his money.”
“I offered him the chance for a weregild, and he passed it up. And he put my godfather in prison without a trial for twelve years. That’s an insult too great to be answered with any amount of scarring and bleeding.”
Crouch swallows loudly. “I accepted the duel under the impression that it would be to incapacitation.”
“Well, it is. Just the kind that makes sure you can’t be a nuisance again.”
Sirius is making sharp choking noises behind him. Harry ignores that. Unlike the others, Sirius is just overwhelmed with gratitude that someone would fight to the death for his honor. Harry can understand that.
Crouch looks on the edge of gibbering. Harry stares at him. How has been in a blood feud with this man for half a year and yet Crouch hasn’t looked up anything about what it means? How has he survived this long?
“Mr. Crouch is human, and not goblin.” That’s Dumbledore stepping forwards and trying to make it sound reasonable. “He would not want to fight to the death.”
“Of course not.” Crouch is nodding haughtily now. “I wouldn’t want to kill Mr. Potter and deprive the magical world of its hero.”
“Well, I have a basilisk-fang dagger. I might kill you.”
Harry is trying to be reasonable, too, but that just makes everyone except Sirius leap back from him in a wide circle. Harry frowns. He knows that some of them knew.
He catches Luna’s eye-she’s among the students who’ve wandered down from the castle-and she waves at him, then shrugs. She doesn’t have any more answers than he does.
“I will not fight a child armed with a basilisk-fang dagger,” Crouch says in a high-pitched voice.
“Do you want me to take an Aging Potion?” Harry offers.
Crouch turns and runs up the path back to the castle. Harry rolls his eyes and puts his daggers away. It seems he’ll have to continue with his pursuit of the blood feud by destroying the Tournament, which means nothing has changed and Crouch shouldn’t have asked for a duel in the first place.
The confused crowd drifts away. Harry sighs and turns to Sirius while Luna comes up to stand beside him. “Sorry, Sirius. I reckon you won’t get to see me fight for your honor after all.”
“That’s perfectly all right, Harry.” Sirius ruffles his hair. “Truth be told, it would probably have been an unfair fight. Look how much of a coward Crouch is. I know you want to gain honor by defeating honorable enemies, not ones who run away at the least little reminder of reality.”
Harry beams at his godfather. Sirius might say that he doesn’t understand goblin culture, but the most important things, he obviously gets.
Subtly, Magic
“Karkaroff!” Harry calls, when he sees the Durmstrang Headmaster walking down the corridor ahead of him. “I wanted to tell you that there’s no war planned between the merfolk and the goblins.”
Karkaroff turns around. Harry thought he would look relieved, since he’s been mentioning the lake in louder and louder tones lately, as if trying to hint something to Harry. Then again, so has Madame Maxime, and Harry is sure she has no merfolk heritage. Merfolk and giants really don’t get along.
However, Karkaroff is frowning. “What are you on about, little boy?”
The stones grumble under Harry’s feet, ready to open and trap Karkaroff like they trapped Snape last year if that’s what Harry wants. Harry quiets them with a little movement of his boot. Karkaroff hasn’t done anything wrong. Probably merfolk don’t see references to size as an insult, since their young are born tiny.
“You keep talking about the lake, and what’s under it. I knew that you were probably worried about a war between the merfolk and the goblins. I just wanted to let you know that my people aren’t planning any attack on yours, so you don’t have to worry about that.”
Karkaroff makes a small whistling sound in his throat. “You think I have merfolk heritage?”
“Well, yes. It’s hard to see, so I thought it might be several generations back. But I think it’s good that you still feel so strongly connected to your people.”
Karkaroff turns and wanders away, looking dazed. Harry smiles a little. He hopes that Karkaroff doesn’t think he’s going to go around blurting anything about merfolk heritage to anyone. Harry is good at keeping secrets.
And knowing that Karkaroff feels such a strong connection to a non-human culture makes Harry like him, just a little.
*
“Um, Harry? Can I talk to you?”
Harry blinks and looks up. Terry Boot is standing in front of his bed in the Ravenclaw fourth-year boys’ room, blushing so brightly that Harry is reminded of Sirius and his face on the day Harry didn’t fight a duel for him. “Sure.” Harry shrugs and puts Toothsplitter’s letter aside. He’s keeping up his lessons on the Argent Ocean, but he’s already read this one several times to absorb the complexities, and putting it off for another hour won’t make a difference. “What is it?”
“I-there’s this girl I like,” Terry blurts. “I want to impress her, but I don’t know how.”
“Is she a goblin?” That’s the only reason Harry can imagine Terry approaching him.
“N-no. I just-I don’t have a lot of wealth or power, but I thought I could impress her by showing how well objects obey me.”
Harry frowns a little at him. “You can show her how to listen to them, but you can’t talk about them obeying you. It’s a partnership.” His bed shifts beneath him in agreement. “So you can show off to her, but only if they agree.”
“Can you think of something that will look impressive?”
“Hm.” Harry tilts his head. “Is she a warrior, or a smith, or a healer, or a teacher, or-”
“She’s another student, Harry.”
“But she has to have some ambition, right? She wants to be something? What does she want to be? That’s really the only kind of advice I can offer,” Harry adds, when Terry looks at him uncomprehendingly. “I don’t know any goblin girl who doesn’t want to be something.”
“I hope she wants to be my girlfriend.”
They look at each other across what feels like a gulf to Harry, and finally he nods and says, “Well, I can tell you how to ask the seeds of ancient flowers to bloom and rise through the stone. She might like that.” He adds it a little doubtfully. He knows Luna would, but that’s because she loves plants of all kinds, not because she’s a human girl. And Ginny probably would, but that’s because she’s picking up intently on Harry’s lessons about listening, and practicing with plants.
Terry smiles. “I think she would like that.”
Harry just hopes she does. There’s so much about being human he doesn’t know, and he is curious to learn more, but it also seems that a lot of humans are cowards and unaware of most of the world around them. That’s a price Harry won’t pay just to understand them better.
The Great Grey Waters Heaving
Harry was vaguely aware that the Second Task was coming up, but he didn’t manage to learn what it was about this time, unlike with the dragons, where he knew. That’s all right. He goes to bed on the evening before convinced that he’ll get enough clues in the morning.
He does, when he walks into the Great Hall and Ginny immediately runs up to him, waving her arms.
“They took Luna!”
Harry’s daggers are in his hands before he can think about it. “Who took her?” he demands softly. Whoever it is, they’re going to bloody regret it.
Ginny stops, panting so hard that she can’t catch her breath. Harry conjures a glass of water for her, and Ginny takes it and gulps it, then goes on rapidly. “I saw Luna going up to the Headmaster’s office last night, and I was worried, because she didn’t seem like she would have a reason to go up there, so I followed her. And I listened at the door. I couldn’t really hear, but the door told me what it was hearing.” She stops and bites her lip as if she thinks Harry might disapprove of that.
Harry smiles at her. “That’s wonderful that you’ve come so far. What did they say about Luna?’
“They said that all the Champions would have to go retrieve someone who was lost. Someone precious to them. And they talked about the lake-”
Harry feels his eyes widen. That was what Karkaroff was trying to get across to him! Harry feels like a fool. Then again, Karkaroff was probably bound by his Mermish heritage not to talk about it in clearer terms.
“They’re underneath the lake,” Ginny whispers, leaning towards him. “Luna and the Chang girl Diggory is dating and Hermione Granger Krum went to the Yule Ball with. The door wasn’t as sure about the hostage they have for Delacour. Someone related to her, I think. I didn’t recognize the name.”
She straightens up and looks a little desperately at him. “I tried to find you last night to tell you, but the Ravenclaw door asked a riddle I could answer and it wouldn’t let me in. And the stones…I tried, but I couldn’t get them to carry a comprehensible message to you.”
“It’s all right, Ginny,” Harry says, patting her shoulder. He was out of Hogwarts last night, meeting Toothsplitter in a tunnel that runs to the Argent Ocean so that he could continue with his practice. The stones wouldn’t know how to reach him if someone who’s not very skilled in speaking told him to find him in his bed. Stones are very literal sometimes. If he wasn’t in his bed, it wouldn’t occur to them to look elsewhere.
“No, it’s not! They have her!”
“But we’re going to get her back,” Harry says confidently, and walks out of the Great Hall and towards the lake. Some people are hurrying after him, although Harry knows that it isn’t the official start of the Task yet. That doesn’t matter, though. He doesn’t want Luna to be under the water for longer than necessary.
And he still has to disrupt the Task.
He marches to the edge of the lake and kneels down to listen to the sighing of the snow along the edge. It takes him a while to pick apart its language from the rumble of the earth and the swish of the water; he’s still not as good at listening to different forms of water as he is stones, metal, and objects that people make. But in the end, he has it, and only a few curious people are standing around him. The rest probably went back into Hogwarts when they didn’t see him doing anything they thought was interesting.
The snow perks up when Harry asks it politely, “Can you please tell me where my friend is under the water?” He could have asked himself, but the lake feels hostile. Maybe it was charmed to feel that way, or maybe it’s because there are merfolk who don’t like goblins living in it.
The snow reaches down to the water, which is cold enough and kin enough to the snow to want to answer its questions. The answer comes back. Luna is tied with a rope to a statue of some kind under the water, and there are bubbles floating from her mouth.
The water regards that detail as important because the air is disrupting its currents, but Harry is relieved. Luna is alive.
If she was dead…
Harry shakes his head as he stands up. He would have to bathe Hogwarts in blood and vengeance, and he doesn’t want to do that. There are younger students who would be traumatized.
He stands in one place for a long moment, his eyes closed, and then he begins to sing.
The song is a variation on some of the ones that he and Toothsplitter have been practicing with the Argent Ocean. Unlike the Argent Ocean, the lake is not a sea of molten silver mixed with water and the powers of goblins’ enemies, but it is still the dwelling of an enemy, and Harry needs to understand and soothe their hatred.
His song is a clumsy, faltering thing. Harry sighs in his head as he sings it, the skittering low notes and the dancing high ones. The one thing he most regrets about not being born a goblin in body is the lack of a real goblin voice.
He will just have to do the best he can to make up for it in other ways.
He has barely finished singing when the waters heave, and a woman’s head peeks out. She’s wearing shells woven into her shining green hair, and her bright yellow eyes peer hard at him. Her scaled, clawed hands rest on the snowy shore with no sign of discomfort, but then again, she’s used to swimming through much colder water.
Harry bows at once. This is a queen among her kind, and he’s surprised and impressed. There are very few merfolk who are at her level of enemies slain and waters cleft and captured and journeys made, and he never expected to attract their level of attention.
The woman sings to him in Mermish, but unfortunately, it sounds like screeching above the water. Harry shakes his head at her regretfully, casts a Bubble-Head Charm on himself, and thrusts his head underneath the surface.
The queen floats down to his level and repeats herself in a lovely, ringing tone.
“The children are here, your Headmasters brought them down,
They have spells on them to make sure they don’t drown.
Champions have an hour to descend and find them,
Battle our soldiers, and cut the ropes that bind them.
You ask us to violate our honor by setting them free.
I grieve for your own grief, but this cannot be.”
Harry nods. He can see how, once honor is involved, the merfolk would decide that it wouldn’t be wise of them to break the contract. But he begins another song, and this time, he twines it with images of merfolk swimming beside carefully chosen goblins, making an alliance, and the fact that he’s in a blood feud with one of the men who’s running the Tournament, and at war with another.
The queen’s eyes widen as he sings more of it, and implies images of friendship and how they drew one of his friends into this conflict, against all honor, when she isn’t a goblin and never did anything to them. Then the queen begins to hum, her voice skittering at last into the noise of glass baubles floating in water.
“Honor violated must be replaced by that unbroken.
Your feud was created before our word was spoken.
I shall bring up your friend, and the other three.
They are all part of the same contract, and shall go free.”
Harry bows again, deeply, to her from the shore, and draws himself back so that he’s sitting on it, where he dissipates the Bubble-Head Charm from around his face. The queen whirls and dives down into the water. Harry sees her shape vanishing murkily before he loses sight of her altogether, the lake, which was calmed by her presence, closing in again and radiating more hostility at him.
“What was that about?” Ginny asks anxiously.
Harry starts. Of course. She probably didn’t understand a word, since she didn’t have her head under the water and doesn’t know the songs to calm the Argent Ocean. “Sorry, Ginny, I didn’t mean to leave you out. Luna and the others were under the water as part of a contract that the Tournament judges had with the merfolk. They didn’t want to break the contract because it would violate their honor, but I told them their queen I had the prior claim on the Tournament judges’ honor because of my blood feud and the war against Dumbledore. She’s going to get them now.”
“Wow.” Ginny peers at the lake again. “That was their queen?”
Harry laughs. “Yeah. Why do you sound so surprised? Have you seen a lot of queens to compare her to?”
“No. Just-she looked rough and wild. More like a warrior queen than a beautiful one.” Ginny hesitates. “More like someone I would want to be.”
“She is a warrior queen, but also a water-cleaving one. Merfolk royalty has to make long journeys underwater, and create temporary waterways across the land, from one lake or sea to another, to show that they have mastery of the land, too. She’s done a lot.”
Ginny hugs her knees and smiles. Harry grins. If Ginny turns out to be the girl Terry likes, then Harry can at least tell Terry that Ginny definitely wants to be a warrior.
The hostages come floating to the surface of the lake a few minutes later, the torn ropes trialing behind them. Harry recasts the Bubble-Head Charm and ducks his head under the water to thank the queen with a warbling song twisting together images of friendship and thanks like kelp. He owes them a debt.
The queen lays a hand across his and nods to the mighty-tailed warriors floating behind her, who grip spears and nets and watch Harry closely.
“My warriors wished to see the one who convinced me
To be sure that he had not wrongly menaced me.
They wish someday to test your strength against theirs,
A friendly duel that both teaches and spares.”
Harry nods to the warriors. He has other duels to consider right now, but he would be happy to come underwater and meet them. Or perhaps their queen, or other royalty if they have them, can construct a way to the rivers in the Realm of Song.
The warriors nod back, and finally relax. They swim down into the depths of the lake, and Harry withdraws his head from the water to find Ginny rubbing life back into Luna’s limbs and a few professors conjuring warm towels for the other hostages-Chang, Granger, and a little silver-haired girl who’s probably part-Veela. Harry politely averts his eyes from her unbound hair.
He notices the judges, then, standing around on the lakeshore and staring at them helplessly. Crouch is purple in the face, Bagman is pale, Dumbledore has his hands over his eyes, Madame Maxime’s face is impossible to read, and Karkaroff is just staring around.
Harry smiles at Karkaroff. “You’ll be happy to know that there isn’t a possibly of war between the merfolk and the goblins. Just a friendly duel so that I can show the warriors of the queen what I might have done if I’d actually gone under the water.”
Karkaroff utters a little shriek and stomps off.
Harry frowns thoughtfully. Is that part of the man’s merfolk heritage? He does it so often.
On the other hand, Dumbledore does it, too. Harry is pretty sure Dumbledore doesn’t have merfolk heritage.
Another thing for me to learn, Harry thinks, and goes over to make sure that Luna is all right. Good thing this is a school.
Part Two.