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Throwing rocks in the lake was boring, but certainly better of an occupation than obediently standing with her parents, greeting their oh-so-beloved guests so that later on they could gossip the hell out of their attire. She could already hear her mom's demeaning voice in her head as she would gently chuckle, "oh aren't these from last year's fashion?"
And of course all of her friends were on the other side of the country for this weekend.
Pansy huffed and absently threw away one more rock, experimenting with the size and weight while not caring about the fish swimming in the lake in a frenzy thanks to the sudden and continued assaults.
"Stupid business and boring people."
She hugged her knees to her chest, not caring about her fancy dress getting dirty on the dewy grass. At least the countryside was silent – it was so much better than sitting in silence eating a dish she hated while her parents would offer her up for bidding to the elite bachelors of wizarding Britain who were by, at least, ten year her seniors. It was easier to feign fatigue and go outside. So, in the end, she did appreciate the lake's tranquillity.
Anyway, where was he?
With a grimace, she continued scaring the fish away, because what else could she really do with her life right now? Nobody was here for her. Not even him.
Then came a sudden oh and a glug, and the surface of the water broke right in front of Pansy. She jumped a little, but with recognising the emerging blue face, she sighed and slumped back on the ground, "And what could you possibly want now, fishboy?" she asked, entirely at ease, sounding bored, but internally, glad for his company.
"Hey Princess," the creature – merman, siren or whatever – swam closer to the bank, his enormous, translucent and glistening tail lifting above water as he laid his hands on the shore, watching Pansy eagerly with his emerald eyes, "What got you so under the water?" he asked with an accent that made Pansy cringe whenever hearing it.
But she told him and he listened. The fishboy was a good listener, he knew when to shut up, he knew when to just nod or when to express his exasperated snorts and ohs. He was easy to converse with and even though he never really spoke. Pansy never dared to confess it even to herself, but she liked their friendship. To be truthful, she valued it more than any friendships she had on the land.
Fishboy was that otherworldly and figurative shoulder she could count on whenever they were in their holiday home, the one who could always calm her with his very presence and the one who seemed to genuinely like Pansy – not like the Greengrasses or not like Miss petty-prissy Bullstrode.
He liked her for her sassiness and sharp tongue. He didn't mind when she lashed out or started screaming with him for absolutely no reason – he was uncaring and playful, an underwater rogue, nothing like the prim princess Pansy was raised to be.
Their relationship (or the something that was going on between them) which most resembled a friendship, in the end, wasn't forced at all, – he just appeared when she needed him and he, most of the time, asked for human food for his services. He loved steak – which was probably a heavenly experience for the merman in itself compared to the raw fish and urchins he oftentimes nibbled on, because yes, he couldn't cook up a four-course meal sub-marine.
Anyway, the elves were always happy to comply to Pansy's wishes.
The first time they met, Pansy was ten years old.
Her friends insisted on going to the lake, and they marvelled at the nature's beauty, untouched by human hands. The water was clear, the sky was blue and they were happy to be together, disinterested in family obligations, business and politics.
Draco Malfoy, one of her crueller and more spoilt friends, thought it would be a top-notch plan to push her into the lake with her frilled, heavy dress that weighted more than a stone. So he did so, with the help of the other boys.
Pansy didn't even have the time to grab onto something, the water pulled her down and the scream got stuck in her throat. She was frightened, feeling the weight of the five layers of her dress, pulling her down down and down, not being able to do anything else just watch as the surface swam father farther and farther away.
The corset restrained her lungs, the bubbles of oxygen quickly flew upwards – that's how she knew which way she should swim if she were able to –, but most importantly, it swam away from her. Her magical power cackled in distress and caused ripples in the water and her limbs trembled, but still, in lack of proper training, she was unable to do anything.
When her eyes became so heavy and they went down to being already halfway closed, she felt an errant current run along her tremendous skirt and clawed hands gripping her tiny waist. At first, she was scared, not knowing what was happening.
Then, her lungs filled up with oxygen once again and she was sitting on top of the water's unmoving surface with her skirt pooling, face lifted toward the sky. That's how the screaming adults found her and how her friends saw her next time, half dead, but still, somehow escaping from the liquid graveyard. Soon she was known as the Water Princess in British wizarding society. They believed she was reborn under the ripples of their deep deep lake.
At first, she believed in it, too. She naively thought that it was her magic that saved her that day, that she was powerful enough to move water and control it however she wished.
Three days later, she encountered fishboy.
"What kind of creature are you?" she asked immediately, trying to keep her trembling hands hidden and the panic out of her voice. When he – well, she supposed he was a he – lifted his shining tail with a cheeky smirk curved on his lips, Pansy involuntarily stepped backwards. Her gulp of fright was audible to the creature. "Are you a fishboy?"
"Yes exactly!" he laughed sheepishly and soon swam closer with friendliness literally radiating off of his scales, "Hey there, suicidal girl! I was the one who saved you! I came for my prize for saving the Water Princess," he mocked with smiling eyes and Pansy shot him a furious glance, "Some roasted meat would suffice."
So they started bickering, with naïve little Pansy trying to prove her point to fishboy and failing miserably. And with him leaving the coast with the smile of the victors and with two bloody steaks in his webbed, blue hands.
As it turned out, the cocky bastard came back in every weekend, sometimes meeting with Pansy, sometimes not. She started her studies in Hogwarts, so they mostly saw each other during the holidays, but his playfulness always managed to cheer Pansy up, even when the times turned dark, he was her light.
They had a strange friendship, with fishboy being the baiter and prim princess Pansy – ironically – being the fish that got caught on the hook. It was always like that, unchanging and permanent. And it was good that way.
For the most part, they spoke. But it was mostly Pansy that did the speaking, anyway. She complained, she told stories and she asked questions about fishboy and his life under the deep, dark waters of the Parkinson's lake.
"They say mermaid lures the pirate into the waters," she opened up with a book, Fantastic Beasts, laid in her lap. He just hummed idly, playing with the ripples his clawed fingers caused on the water's surface. "Then, why aren't you doing this? Trying to lure me into the water?"
Fishboy looked up from in between the thick black lashes of his piercing emerald eyes and lazily answered with the words sweetly rolling on his tongue, "Well, are you a pirate?"
She scrunched up her nose in disgust. Pirates were dirty – or so she'd heard from the stories, "No"
"Then?" he asked cheekily.
"I'm the girl. You should be the girl and I, the pirate. The man. That's how the story goes. You should have lured me down a long time ago to do whatever, but instead, you saved me. You made me believe I was really powerful and I was foolish." She said, coal eyes meeting emerald, "You should have lured me into the bottomless waters long ago," she continued arguing.
"But in this case, you're the princess and I merely am a fishboy, nothing else. I didn't want to lure you in and that's it," he said with finality in his voice, the edge of irritation clearly there, but it went ignored by Pansy.
Prim princess Pansy didn't understand that time.
"There's no story like this," she complained and he chuckled darkly, his eyes sparkling with bitter mirth.
"Well, it's time for it to get written."
As the years ran by, Water Princess Pansy of the Parkinson family became a proper beauty – the kind of proper beauty that took away the people's breaths. They would admire her like one would a painted masterpiece with its untouchable grace and long, ethereal, the blackest of black hair. She grew into her features, the harsh lines of her face melted away and her body looked delicate and soft instead of the harsh skinniness she sported in her youth.
So with that came another thing – more bachelors after her inheritance and her ripeness, hoping to relive their wasted youthful years.
But she didn't want to just marry away – she was what? Seventeen? Pansy didn't feel ready for an actual marriage with wedding and children and finances and a husband. The thought of a husband was the most frightening to her.
"Frankly, it's so much more interesting in here than the balls in London," introducing herself during the balls was always an utter bore – meaningless chit-chats with plastered smiles and so much make-up that it caused harsh, red rashes on her skin. "I hate those blubbering idiots."
"You hate nearly everyone," fishboy quipped cheekily, splashing a few drops of water on her naked calves. Pansy shot him a dirty look – he didn't even pretend to be affected. Interestingly, it was the first time when Pansy noticed that his features remained unchanging throughout the years.
"Fishboy, how old are you exactly?" she squinted at him.
"Why are you so curious suddenly?" he avoided answering expertly. He lazily swam a few circles in front of Pansy, his huge tail causing enough splatter to properly water the greens in two meters of land. That also involved Pansy, naturally.
She spluttered, but with a single spell, got the water out of the four-layer of her frilly skirt.
"Just asking," she snorted, pulling the wetness out of her hair with twirling motions of her wand. "You didn't age as I did. It's strange, and I learned at Hogwarts that sirens are aging faster the humans. Twice as fast, actually."
"Well, who said I was a siren?" he shot back. He idly twirled his black hair with his spider-like fingers, showing off what obviously was not a feature of typical sirens.
"Then?" she prompted.
"Do you remember the day when you asked me about some fairy tales? When you wished to be lured underwater, Princess?" She nodded firmly, holding his pricing, emerald gaze as he gave her a shark-like smile, showing off all of his sharpened teeth – or were those fangs? "Should I present you the sequel, Princess?" Pansy nodded eagerly, not having any idea where he was going with this mysterious behaviour. "I was once a pirate. You know, the dirty pirate, cussing and drinking with an equally as crude of a crew, killing people and hunting for treasures. It was fun I guess, might have been adventurous."
It was hard to imagine him as a human, even harder to see him something as volatile as a pirate. They were terrible, those people. She had seen some formal documents in Hogwarts' library of those times when pirating was a trend – so many crimes and misgivings listed under a couple of names.
"Were you hanged?" she asked, with brows knotted together in confusion.
To that, he laughed, boisterously and in such a way that seemed to even resonate the water around him and even Pansy's guts seemed to tremble from the enticing, but indeed very dangerous sound. It was like a cautioning sign – the kind that a predator would give off to the unfortunate prey and with all honesty Pansy didn't know what to think of it.
"I didn't make it to get hanged, Princess," he purred. "I became a cursed pirate long before that, dragged into the depth by some red terror of a siren — I lived long ago, you know. And when one is so utterly drunk, young and miserable, they are an easy prey to those foul creatures. It's such a disappointing death, yes?" he asked with a faint smile and head tilted to the side.
"How long ago?" she asked, not wanting to hear the story of how he had been coaxed under the deadly tides by sweet promises and by undoubtedly numerous honey-like kisses.
"Was the eighteenth century not long ago for you?" he cocked a brow as she did the basic maths in her head. More than one hundred and fifty years, uh huh.
"So the thriving of pirating, yes?" she asked after a minute of calmness, eager to find a new world behind those emerald eyes. "Can you tell me more about it? Was life easier that time?" Would I be married off to old geezers if I lived during that time?
His gaze said everything: not because I would have rescued you.
"I cannot tell you anything specific Princess, there's hardly something I remember. I know I was a pirate because of those flashes of memories and this," he said, showing her his left forearm where the burnt brand of outlaws faintly showed, interrupting the route of his bluish scales. "When I woke up next time I was in the middle of the ocean with a colony of sirens."
"So you are a siren," Pansy grinned up at him victoriously, not missing his mistake he made while deeply embedded in his nostalgia. "Why do you not age though?"
"Don't you just die to know?" he teased, flicking some more of the water on her. "But let me tell you something they do not teach in Hogwarts – not because it's a secret, but because no one cared enough to ask our species about it. There are different kinds of sirens – the fast aging ones are the typical ones you can find in every sea and ocean. They are dumb to put it simply.
"But also, there are the ones who are humans-turned-sirens," he said, his gaze not letting go of her coal eyes, "We are born from the emotions we feel during the time we drowned and of which we never can get rid of. In my situation, it was misery — and the universe thought that my kind of sirens are the ones who should live forever. Well, rather until our second death comes, you know, predators like great white sharks, krakens or humans can do a work on our numbers. Funny isn't it?"
"That's cruel, I think," Pansy mused as she was occupying herself with drawing little patterns in the sand, just to avoid directly looking at him. He did say humans, hah. "So you have been alone ever since? Being lonely?"
"Nope," fishboy said, emphasizing on the end of the word with a popping sound. "The red terror of siren, the one who lured me into the water, you remember? She tried to help me, seeing she had just wanted to eat me, she didn't exactly count on me turning to a sea creature. In the end, she was nice I guess," he shrugged as if he had been oblivious to the morbidity of his words. "People wanted to capture her as she was unafraid of them. It ended ugly. She died on the land, dried out and tortured, and with an anchor stabbed through her, just to be stylish, claimed the sailors. Her name was Ginny."
"I'm sorry," Pansy said, partly because she was not ready to say anything else. She didn't know what to think about the whole, twisted tale that happened in the world she couldn't decipher: underwater.
"You shouldn't be," was all he said as an answer. "It was a long time ago."
Three days after fishboy started actually participating in their conversations, Mr. Parkinson declared that his daughter was to be wedded to Antonin Dolohov. The words of the Parkinson patriarch were to be considered law in his household, the absolute and unchangeable, and therefore, Pansy couldn't do a thing to escape from her impending marriage. Everything had been arranged by the time Pansy met this mysterious bachelor who was fifteen years her senior, with a foul mouth and an even fouler temper but with enough money to promise her a convenient life.
They underwent the ceremony on the first day of September, in the Parkinson's holiday home, right next to her beloved lake.
Married life did her nothing good.
Being Mrs. Dolohov was exhausting, throwing balls left and right, smiling at people she hated and pretending that everything was okay and keeping up the damned façade just to cause herself less of a trouble.
When her mother had asked – really one of her strangest life experiences – whether she was okay, Pansy felt compelled to say that yes, in fact, she was well, yes, Antonin was the best husband she could have ever wished for and she enjoyed the life in London.
It was easier to tell lies through letters, when her mother couldn't see her welling tears or the bruises that formed irregular patterns on her fair skin. There were blues, purples, greens and reds all over her body, even in places where it was hard to hide. She needed to use more make-up and rice-powder than ever which worsened her situation: there were even blisters on her forearms and they frankly looked disgusting.
She sometimes wondered how Dolohov was still able to touch her. He had seen the varying colours on her skin, the ugly blisters and had heard her scream bloody murder at him if he were to touch her one more time, but he persisted and still demanded her to be committed to her marriage vow.
He was cheating on her left and right, bedding her three times a week and hitting her every day. It was not how she imagined marriage life, not at all, but really, proper Princess Pansy Dolohov what could have done for her own cause?
Not much, right?
So she did the only thing she could in such a big city of London without being on the receiving end of her husband's anger.
She took long walks along the Thames.
It was calming really. All she did was pleading to the river to send fishboy over there. She called out to him through the waves and her magic that throbbed with misery every time she was outside. She knew she couldn't bear it much longer – marriage did a number on her, the kind of number that threatened to end bad.
"Help me Harry, I cannot escape by myself," she kept saying it to the gentle waves, looking down in the murky water from the docks. "Just please, save me once more."
She didn't care if she was loud. That was hardly anyone outside in this particularly rainy day. The muggle servants and vile house elves of the Dolohov's thought she was already eccentric, if not half-crazed, what for it if more people repeated the same mantra?
"I cannot help you," came the sudden answer to her pleading.
For a moment she didn't know if that was her fishboy himself or her mind had pulled a cruel trick with her, but her initial reaction was still the same: she sobbed with relief. Her knees gave out and her hands gripped the edge of the wooden docks as she stared down into the waves hoping against hope that he was really there.
"You're truly here," she breathed.
Her fierce saviour, the pirate-turned-siren partly emerged from the murky water, only enough to be able to speak with her. This time he didn't flaunt his tail carelessly – he was well aware of the dangers the central provided for mythical creatures. It took only one bystander and he would be done.
"Princess," he said, the tone he chose this time was not even near to being amused or cheeky. It was easy to notice how different Pansy looked from before, broken and vulnerable, with red rashes on her face and bruises on her entire forearm, nothing like the beauty he bid goodbye to back near the Parkinson lake. "You called me."
She let her tears flow down her cheeks, falling in the Thames as she cried. She was hardly able to maintain an eye contact with his familiar emerald eyes – she was not allowed to look Dolohov in the eyes. She was always slapped if she disgraced him that way. Hard.
"Save me from here, take me away," she pleaded to her beloved ally, sniffing and crying, trembling and quivering in front of the siren. "I don't care how, just please, please help me escape. I need to be rescued," she took a long, dragging breath while trying to calm her frantically beating heart. "Turn me into one of your kind."
There it was, truly out of her mouth.
If her ghost-like appearance and destroyed confidence, her whole personality, abused soul and held back wits didn't take him surprise, then her single wish most definitely did.
"You've thought about it," he said in shock, flicking his tail absently underwater. His piercing gaze took its time to run over her once more – he wasn't sure that death would be her saviour. "But I'm not willing to do it."
"You need to! Please! I… forgetting about this life worths it!" she continued, the maelstrom of craze appearing in her coal irises, "I want to forget! I don't care about living in the water or eating only raw fish for an eternity. Just please, Harry, once you helped me. Years ago. Many years ago, you could do it. Now you should be able to do this too!"
Harry, hah.
She called him Harry, and frankly, it did show how desperate she really was. But still, taking away her life was still something wrong, and it came with the kind of action and risqué factor Harry was not nearly ready to take.
"It'd come with me killing you... Drowning you, Princess. It would be slow. And I cannot do that, Princess. Not just like this," he reasoned, tried really, but by that time Pansy was wailing in misery, clutching her throbbing head while her whole body was shaking, realizing that her saviour, her only hope and only way out was slipping away from the grasp of her fingers.
It looked more like a panic attack than hysterics.
"Be the bad pirate you once were and forget about our friendship. Please, I'm… begging you," she more like screamed than said it to Harry. He knew he needed to calm her enough so that she could listen to reason so he swam closer, his webbed, spidery fingers reaching out from the cold waves of the Thames to touch her.
She flinched back from the contact.
"I'm… here it's okay, nothing will…" the confused siren tried again, blabbing and rambling, not knowing how to handle the quivering mess that was the woman he protected more than anything in all of his lives.
"Why did you save me so many years ago?" she murmured again, her forehead laying on the wooden docks as she felt powerless against the world. The universe fucking won in its twisted game and she was ready to give up.
"I was just… it was easy. The right thing to do," he ended up saying, unable to look at the shattered woman. He felt responsible for her even though he couldn't have done a single thing to sabotage her marriage.
"Why?" she asked once more.
"I don't know," he confessed truthfully. "Why do I need a reason for saving a life?"
"Then you shouldn't ask me why I want to forget and continue living," Pansy said in mockery, looking up only to come to face to face with his piercing, expressing, emerald eyes. "You said I'm the Princess. What if I command you to drown me? What if I jump on my own free will?" she mused absently, "People are for serving the royals, you know," she reasoned with a kind of quiet acceptance. "He would only continue with raping me. Hitting me. Cheating on me. I would lead a miserable life Harry. I already am," she breathed out with her empty eyes comically widening up with realization. "There's nothing left for me. Save me, turn me and I can escape. Please."
He nodded once. She was desperate enough to run for her death.
"Do not hate me for this," he said slowly as he lifted her inside the water with her weighty, five-layered skirt that seemed to immediately pull her down, down and down.
He didn't let her go just as much as she wasn't willing to let go of him either as he slowly guided them to the bottom of the river, near the thick seaweed, letting her expensive heels sink into the mud.
This time, Pansy didn't panic under the pressure of the water. She didn't try to grab onto something to avoid her inevitable destiny – she seemed entirely calmed, glad to have the siren by her side. His emerald eyes shined down on her and she couldn't resist sending back a smile to him.
"I'm sorry," he felt compelled to tell her.
With that slightly bitter, but still grateful smile on her lips, she let her heavy eyes slid close while her thick, black hair swam around them and to Harry, she looked like an ethereal beauty with her skirt flowing in every direction of the current, seaweed tangled in the layers and with the white of her corset already being tainted.
Even without realizing, his tail twisted around her gentle form to give her some kind of protection. However, he couldn't exactly shield her entirely from all the bad and cruel, he knew that well enough – she immediately started coughing, her oxygen flowing upwards in bubbles and hands clutching his clawed ones with desperation and maybe, with fear too. The minutes ticked by slowly and felt like they stretched longer as life seemed to swim farther, farther and farther away from Pansy's empty, coal eyes.
It seemed that in the very end, it was, surprisingly, the prim and proper princess that lured the rough siren back into the water.