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Beneath The Skin	By : AislingSiobhan Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male Views: 4075 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: Harry Potter is property of JK Rowling, Bloomsbury, Warner Bros, et all. I make no money from this and I own nothing, don’t sue.

Chapter List
- 1-Beneath The Skin
- 1
A reviewer for Butterfly suggested Dolohov/Harry, when I asked for a Death Eater to pair him with in this story. I can’t remember their name, but I’m sure they know who they are. This is for you! :D Also. Life is shit. Those exams back in March? A lot harder than I thought, and I did a lot worse than I thought. Failed two, but have to repeat all four, wtf kind of a system is that!?

“Beneath The Skin”

Disclaimer:  Harry Potter is property of JK Rowling, Bloomsbury, Warner Bros, et all. I make no money from this and I own nothing, don’t sue.

Summary:  [Dolohov/HP] After a chance meeting with a pod of Selkies, Harry wonders if there is something different about him. When he goes looking, and finds his answer, he realizes that he can never stay in the Wizarding World, as a human, because neither chains of steel nor chains of love can keep his kind from the sea.

Warnings: Slash. Antonin Dolohov/HP. Creature!Harry. Mild sex stuff, hints mostly. AU. Typos. Underage.

Rating:  NC-17.

A/N: It probably won’t be necessary, but basic background info on Selkies might be useful to know. And an open mind…

XXX

Words: 10,350

Chapter 1

February 24^th 1995. Hogwarts.

The water didn’t feel as cold anymore. The gills in his neck flapped lightly, water passing in and back out again, and Harry kicked his webbed feet harder, gliding easily through the Black Lake.

It was beautiful, he thought, as he swam. He could only see about ten meters ahead of himself, or behind, or around. So every time he moved forward, more and more became exposed to him, opening him up to new sights and sounds and feelings as he moved by.

He and Cedric were the only ones in the lake at the moment, having tied for first in the lead, but Harry knew that the other Champions would follow soon. He had to hurry, to find the Merpeople and Ron, and get out of the water. He had an hour till the Task was over, and less than an hour until the Gillyweed wore off and he was left to drown.

Harry swam on.

Light-green seaweed spread out ahead of him, taller than he was and reaching out as far as Harry’s eyes could see. Everything else was dark and gloomy, shimmering lightly underwater. He squinted, his green eyes uncovered by his glasses and instead under a temporary seeing-spell Professor McGonagall had cast on him. There were shapes in the weeds, something horned was moving within them, and another, and another. Harry scrambled backwards, arms flailing in the water, moving too fast and too hard and resulting in him doing a strange awkward looking summersault. When he had righted himself, a Grindylow was watching him. It was a strange looking creature, a horned water demon, and they were usually aggressive and vicious, but this one just stared passively at him, only moving to make room for his companions as more and more Grindylows appeared from between the strands of weeds.

“Hello?” Harry asked softly. Bubbles came from his mouth, but not words. Instead of a word, he made a high-pitched bark. It sounded like Padfoot whining when he didn’t get his way, and at the sound of it the Grindylows became excited. They growled and yipped, writhing back and forth in the water furiously.

“Sorry! Sorry!” Harry apologized hurriedly, because he certainly didn’t want them to attack him now, when they had been so passive before. He seemed to bark again, which was weird, because the Gillyweed wasn’t supposed to turn him into an underwater creature; it was just meant to give him the ability to swim and breathe underwater.

Harry couldn’t understand what they were saying, but when something else began to bark, his head snapped around immediately, searching out this new sound in the relative darkness.

There was a seal, swimming towards him. It was rather large, with dark brown spots across its back, and sharp teeth that were bared as it swam.

“There are seals in the lake?” Harry questioned, with a frown on his face. He bobbed in the water, moving his legs lightly to keep himself in place. He didn’t seem to require effort to keep afloat, but Harry supposed that maybe that had something to do with the webbed feet.

“We are not seals,” the seal barked back at him. It had barked, Harry realised. It had made noises, like a dog, or a seal, but Harry had understood it as if the creature was speaking English. He thought back to the incident during the Duelling Club, with the snake, and wondered if this was another language he was born just knowing.

“What are you?” Harry moved towards the seal. He stopped, moving back quickly, when two more seals appeared behind the first. “What do you want?” He worried for a minute that the seals had been sent to distract him while the other Champions won, or perhaps they were part of the Task and Harry had to defeat them as well as kidnap his friend back from the Merpeople.

“We want to know where you came from, Pup.” The leopard seal told him.

The second and third arrivals appeared to be female. They were both pale shades of grey, without spots. Both were smaller than the first, wider around the waist and hips, and one was obviously pregnant. It was the pregnant one that spoke.

“We are what you are, Pup.”

Her voice was softer than the male and Harry’s own, still a high-pitched barking, but lighter somehow, more alluring. Harry thought, that maybe, they could be Veela because when the seal spoke Harry found himself drifting towards her, seeking comfort from her. And then, like a bucket of cold water had been poured across him, he understood that she couldn’t be a Veela, at least not in the way the girls at the Quidditch World Cup had been, because Harry wasn’t attracted to her, he didn’t want to throw himself at her feet like Ron had to Fleur, he didn’t want her as a mate. He wanted her to be his Mother.

“And what am I?” Harry’s voice trembled as he spoke. His hands shook, and if it wasn’t for the fact that two Grindylow had just attached themselves to his legs, Harry might have tried to swim away before they could answer him.

“Podless, abandoned,” the previously silent female told him, whispering against his ear, her wet, black nose brushing against his skin comfortingly. “You can be one of us now, Pup, one of our pod. I am without pup, without a Bull, I would care for you. I will be your cow.”

“Change,” the male told him with a sharp nod. They had obviously already decided that Harry was going to go with them. “Change now, Pup, and follow us.” He turned then, his tail wriggling behind him as he began to swim away, his mate and the unmated female turned to follow him. The Grindylows let Harry go, but the boy stayed where he was.

“Change into what?” Harry questioned softly. He wanted to follow them. There was a longing inside of him, a pang in his chest that urged him to go after them, to stay in the water (despite his brain telling him that he would probably drown if he did), but he didn’t know how to change. He couldn’t change.

“You have no skin,” the mate-less female breathed out. Harry thought that if she were human, she might be crying. She didn’t come back to comfort him, and the male didn’t speak again, but the pregnant one seemed to curl up around her stomach, as if protecting her own child from ‘skinless-ness’.

“What?” Harry was confused, very confused. The leopard seal looked as if he were about to answer but then a scream rang out through the water and all three vanished, swimming frantically away, until Harry could almost pretend they had never been there at all.

The Grindylows were excited again. Within the seaweed something struggled and screamed, not close enough to Harry to be a threat, but they were close enough that the Grindylow took off towards it yipping loudly as they swam. Harry listened to her scream again, knowing that it was Fleur trapped by the Grindylow, but he didn’t go to save her. He swam, instead, further down into the lake, searching once more for the Merpeople who had stolen his treasure.

When he had found Ron, Cho Chang was gone, but Hermione and Gabrielle Delacour were still tied up. Several Merpeople swam around them, lazily, in circles, each of them eyeing Harry warily.

“Why are you here skin-shifter?” One mermaid growled at him, her face screwed up and tinted green.

Harry didn’t understand her, so instead he pointed at Ron and then down at the Hogwarts crest on his sodden robes. The Merpeople seemed confused and uneasy; glancing at his crest several times before they would let him passed them to free Ron.

“It is not often your kind let their young among humans. Where are your parents? Is your Cow captured by humans?”

Harry ignored their growling, slinking passed them to tug at the ropes that kept Ron secured to the ground, which stopped him floating away. Harry gave a bark of pleasure once he had freed Ron, and the Merpeople fell silent to listen to him. Harry didn’t say anything else, though he was quick to pull Ron into his arms and kick his legs, desperately. He swam as hard as he could away from the Merpeople, who still growled after him, strange choked off words and vicious sounding snarls leaving their mouths in words of concern that he couldn’t understand. Harry didn’t wait to see if Fleur had gotten freed, or would come to rescue her sister, and he didn’t wait for Krum to find Hermione. He got as far away from the Merpeople as possible, as quickly as possible, skirting around the weeds that hid the Grindylow just in case, though he kept a hopeful eye out for the seals, hoping desperately that they would come back for him.

What if he had skin? Would they come for him if he had skin? He glanced at the back of the hand that wasn’t holding Ron, eyeing the pale flesh that covered it, and wondered to himself how was it that he didn’t have skin when he could feel it, two layers of it, covering every single inch of him?

XXX

March 6^th 1995. Hogsmeade.

Harry had spent the past week in the library. Hermione seemed to be very proud of him, for coming second in the Second Task, and for his sudden urge to study for what she believed to be in preparation for the final Task of the Tournament. But actually, Harry spent most of his time in the magical creatures section of the library, searching through book after book for anything that would explain what had happened to him or what he was. He had cross-referenced seals with cows, bulls with water, barking with skinning, and briefly he had considered that he might be a Kelpie, but no one had tried to drown him, and Kelpie’s didn’t need skins to change shape. They just needed water and hunger, and Harry had taken a second trip to the prefect’s bathroom, tricking the password out of Cedric, and starving and butt-naked, he had jumped into the water but hadn’t changed.

So Harry had gone back to the library, ignored all the texts about those that shifted into different animals, and focused wholly on seals. Those that took the shape of seals in the water and humans on land were called Selkies. If their skins were stolen or destroyed, they could never change shape, like Harry, who was skinless and stuck as a human. But it was hereditary, Harry had read, passed down from parent to child to grandchild. He couldn’t have just become a Selkie.

He had asked Hermione to make him a hereditary potion, told her he was curious about his grandparents. Really he had wanted to know if he had been adopted, or if one of his parents wasn’t really his parents, because as far as he knew neither his mother nor father had had the overwhelming urge to live underwater, or at least no one had ever told him that they had.

Both James and Lily had turned out to be his parents, but his mother’s mother, strangely, had had no surname. Above Lily’s name had been the names ‘David Evans’ and Rosalie’, no surname. It was unusual, and then Hermione had mentioned that perhaps she had been part-Fae or Vampire because they were known for only having one name, or perhaps she had been disowned, but that wouldn’t have magically erased the name of a Muggle. Harry had asked what a Fae was. Hermione had looked at him curiously, but told him that the Fae were a race of creatures, older than humans, more beautiful than Veela, and native to Germany, Ireland or Scandinavia. Nymphs, Dryads, Fairies, and Selkies were all considered to be part of the Fae. But because Rosalie was dead, there was no way of telling what she had been, or hadn’t been, and so Harry had written to Sirius. Sirius had written back, asking Harry to meet him at the very edge of Hogsmeade on his next weekend visit, and that was what Harry was doing now.

He had managed to loose Hermione and Ron outside of The Three Broomsticks, and hidden under his invisibility cloak, he made his way passed Dervish and Bangs to the scruffy stray black dog that waited patiently for him. His pockets were filled with food that Dobby had brought him from the kitchens in Hogwarts, and Padfoot’s tail began to wag happily at the smell of cooked meat that wafted his way from the hidden Harry. When they were both out of sight of any potential observers, Harry pulled his cloak off and shoved it under his t-shirt.

“Hey Padfoot,” he whispered. Sirius gave a loud bark, leaning sideways to nudge against his godson. Harry smiled down at him, feeling immediately guilty for wishing that Sirius could turn into a seal instead of a Grim. “We need to talk.”

“Follow me,” the man whispered voice hoarse from disuse. He was tall and thin, with dark hair and a scruffy beard. Grey eyes darted around frantically, and he led the way into the cave that Padfoot had brought Harry to, keeping an eye out for anyone who might be following them.

“What did you want to talk about, pup?” Sirius asked, after eating four of the chicken and ham sandwiches Harry had brought him, as well as three frankfurters.

“Why do you call me that?” Harry asked, instead of what he originally wanted to ask.

“Well,” Sirius started, running a shaky hand through his messy hair. “Your mother started calling you that when you were a baby. You made these strange huffing noises whenever she gave you a bath, and from the first time you made them, she called you her pup. I thought, you know, it was because of Padfoot, or even Moony, so I started calling you that too. The others always called you Prongslet, until Remus was your teacher, but for me, pup just stuck.”

“Was my mum a magical creature by any chance?” Harry crossed his arms over his chest, allowing his body to slide down the wall until he was sitting on the ground beside his godfather.

Sirius jumped, turning his head towards Harry so fast his neck clicked. The man paused, mid-chew, nearly spitting his food out as he asked, “what? Why?”

“Was she? It’s just, something happened during the second task and I looked it up in the library and Hermione made a hereditary potion and I think she was. Was she? I don’t have anyone else to ask.”

“She was. I don’t know what, Lily never told me. All I know is for six years her and James were like cats and dogs, James chasing her everywhere and Lily running away. Then she turns seventeen over the summer, comes back to school, and her and James are like this,” Sirius told him softly, before holding up his hands, his middle and pointer finger crossed.

“When you were born, she told James that one day you might leave them. I always thought, you know, your mum meant you’d get married and move out and have kids, or even that You-Know-Who might win, but, well. I asked your dad about it one day when we were alone with you. He said that Lily’s parents came to her on her birthday, told her what her mother was, what she was, and told her that she was going to leave them whether she wanted to or not because there was no fighting it.”

Harry looked at him eagerly. He could guess how his mother felt learning this, because once he had realised it was all Harry could do to keep himself out of the Lake. He wanted to be in the water, he wanted to go home, but he couldn’t without his skin.

“She must have fought very hard,” Sirius continued, “because James said whatever it was they gave Lily, Lily gave right back, went to Hogwarts and married your father. After the wedding, James was given a cloak from Lily’s parents, a strange looking thing, it looked more like a fishing jacket than any cloak I’ve ever seen, but Muggles are odd. Lily burnt it. That was that.”

“When I was a baby,” Harry began hesitantly. He didn’t want to give too much away. What if Sirius knew they had taken his skin, what if Sirius had helped to trap him? “When I was a baby, did mum ever give me anything, like a blanket or something?”

“Well,” Sirius said, rubbing at his chin thoughtfully. “You had this little furry thing. Absolutely filthy, it was. Lily never took it away from you, you slept with it, you took it outside with you, went on play dates with it. And then of course your parents went into hiding, but, well, never thought much of it at the time, but the Headmaster had it then. He had borrowed that invisibility cloak, told your father he wanted to study it, but he had your blanket as well. I sort of assumed that maybe it was valuable, werewolf pelt, demiguise hair, something like that.”

“Selkie skin,” Harry whispered. He kept his eyes fixed on his godfather’s grey ones.

The man mouthed the words, eyebrows furrowing before they shot up into his hairline. “Are you saying… are you saying your mother was a Selkie?”

“My grandmother was. I don’t know if she chose to be with my grandfather or if she was captured or tricked, but they took mum’s skin from her. That’s obviously what they offered her back, what they sent to my dad after the wedding. Humans keep the Selkie female’s skin to make her stay with them.”

“Lily burnt it. Not your father. She chose to stay.” Sirius told him again, as if trying to prove a point.

“But I want to leave. And I can’t. Someone has my skin, and the pod won’t take my without a skin.” Harry’s arms came up to hug his chest, and he curled his legs towards himself, looking small and vulnerable and Sirius felt something stick in his throat.

“Dumbledore…? The furry blanket?” He seemed to think about it for a moment. “It would make sense, why her parents had it. If Lily had turned into a seal around Muggles that would have been bad. The same thing goes for you, pup. Those Muggles you live with don’t seem to be the open minded type, kiddo. But, well, it would be safer for you if you left. You’ll probably find the skin in the Headmaster’s office or in Gringotts. If you write to Gringotts, sign it in blood, they’ll mail it to you if it’s there. Though, where will you go?” Sirius reached out for him, hands shaking, and placed them lightly on either side of Harry’s face.

“Somewhere with lots of water. And more Selkie. I want a pod, I want a cow, Sirius.”

“Cow?” The elder Wizard repeated, looking confused.

“A mother. A Selkie in the Black Lake said she’d be my mother, but I didn’t have a skin.”

“Well the Black Lake is an option, its cold enough, and Selkie are native to colder waters. But it is really close to Hogwarts, and I doubt the Headmaster wants you to swim away from the war. He would have given you your skin back by now if he wanted you to have the option, right? How about, Ireland? There are lots of cold water lakes in Ireland, plenty of rivers too. Or Germany, there’s a whole community of Fae over there. Could even go as far north as Iceland, but that is rather far away. Mind you,” Sirius said, and Harry knew he was only joking, “the waters around Azkaban are fairly arctic all year round too, and no one would ever think to look for you there.”

Harry laughed softly, going along with Sirius’ attempt at humour. But he thought about it later that night, curled up in his bed, and later that week as he stood beside the Lake, with his skin in one hand and the letter from Gringotts in the other. Hogwarts was too close to those that wanted to trap him. Now that he had his skin, he didn’t ever want to lose it again. No one would take it from him. Maybe, he would be like his mother, and find a human mate and choose to stay with them, but no one would ever force him to stay on land again. He needed the water. The salt of the sea, and the chill of the lake and the feeling of family around him, surrounded by Selkie and real seal and fish. He didn’t need humans and he didn’t need land. But he couldn’t stay in this lake. It wasn’t safe.

The skin in his hand was furry, matted in places and dirty. It was a dark grey colour, and there was the faintest hint of brown around the edges, probably where his flippers would meet his body. Harry shook it out, wrapped it around his neck like a cape, and wondered how he was supposed to make it fit. But he didn’t have to make it do anything. The moment it touched his bare back, for his clothes had already been discarded, the skin simply fit around him, became a part of him. Before he knew it, Harry was in the water, tail splashing and flippers drawing him further and further into the lake. He barked, head under water, and several barks echoed back to him.

But it wasn’t safe here. Not for him. Not after the way Dumbledore had been eyeing him once the parcel from Gringotts had arrived, never mind whatever the Merpeople had told him after the Second Task. The elder Wizard was bound to know. Harry had to swim as far away as possible before the sun rose and the humans realised he was gone. Maybe he’d get lucky, and they’d blame Voldemort.

If he was really lucky, if he swam far enough, what began with the Lake would end with a sea. There might even be Selkie there, Harry told himself as he began to swim.

XXX

March 18^th 1995. Azkaban.

He wasn’t expecting anything to change. He wouldn’t have been surprised if today was just as monotonous as every other day had been for the previous fourteen years. With the exception of the Dementors focusing on someone in particular, nothing exciting ever happened in Azkaban. Well, Sirius Black had escaped. That was exciting. But Antonin Dolohov didn’t know anything about that. Sirius Black hadn’t shared his floor, or the one above. The way he heard it, Black might have betrayed an Auror, but he had only murdered Muggles, and that wasn’t all that bad in the scheme of things.

All he knew was that today, the Dementors had left him alone. Instead, somebody on the floor above him was screaming as if their hearts were being ripped out through their nostrils. It was a sound he would have appreciated had he been the one to inflict such pain. As it was, the sound only made him tremble. Because that person’s screams wouldn’t entertain the Dementors for long: they never did. Then they’d change floors, change prisoners; they’d come for him. He had screamed himself hoarse in the first few years of his imprisonment, arrested after the fall of the Dark Lord, only moments before Igor Karkaroff had tried to sell him out. He couldn’t talk properly now, not that he had much cause for talking. But one day, when the Dark Lord returned for him, Antonin would resent not being able to properly voice his appreciation for his Lord’s mercy.

He happened to be peering out of the tiny window in his cell, when he noticed something interesting. The first really interesting thing to happen to him in years.

He was on the second most top floor. Those like the Lestranges and Crouch Jr, the real degenerates, those who had harmed an Auror or a family member of an Auror (the ones the Courts went particularly hard on), were on the top floor. They never saw human guards. All Dementors, all the time, unless someone came to visit. But that had only happened once, when Barty’s mother had visited and dropped dead days after.

His floor was comprised solely of Death Eaters, those who had actually confessed at their trials, those that were considered to be loyal to the bitter end. The Dementors visited them often enough too, but at least they had windows and the smallest bit of natural light, and wind, and the drops of rain that squeezed through and onto his tongue if he held his face close enough to the arrow slits during a storm. It was filthy and demeaning, but it was better than feeling like his throat was on fire from the thirst, while he whispered as loudly as he could, in vain, for water.

That was what he was doing now. He was lapping at the rain water that blew into his cell. Antonin kept his eyes wide open, watching the droplets carefully for the first sign that they might be turning to ice: the first warning that the Dementors were on their way.

Instead, he saw the strangest thing. There was a boy standing just at the edge of the island. Azkaban was surrounded on all sides by water, freezing, frigid water that no one would ever want to stand or swim in. Sirius had swam in his animagus form, Padfoot’s shaggy fur keeping him semi-warm, but a human would likely catch pneumonia within the first few minutes of being submerged. And yet this boy, naked as the day he was born save for a strange looking cape, was making his way back into the water, one step at a time, unhurried and unconcerned that a guard might notice him. Antonin watched him, eyed the pale skin and dark hair as well as he could through the arrow slit, until the boy was neck deep. He wasn’t shivering, he wasn’t shaking, but he was looking up towards the prison as if he knew that someone was staring.

The rain began to freeze on Antonin’s face, causing the man to flinch away from the window. It was stupid, to ignore the Dementors, because if he didn’t try and prepare himself if would be worse, but he wanted to watch the boy, he wanted to look at something beautiful for the first time in fourteen years. By the time he had put his eyes back to the arrow slit, the boy had vanished, the water around where he had stood was still and no air bubbles breached the surface.

XXX

July 31^st 1995. Azkaban.

He was sick.

It didn’t take being a genius to work that much out.

He was very sick.

Today was the first day in what felt like forever that Antonin Dolohov had stepped foot outside of Azkaban prison. He snorted softly; it was the most noise he could make. He couldn’t walk, couldn’t talk, hell, he could barely lift his head to take in the rare sight of the sun burning brightly above him even in the presence of so many Dementors. Two of the prison guards had frog marched him out of his cell, through the building and outside, to where he was now, just by the water’s edge. He was laid on the sand and gravel, and he looked up, not at the sun, but at his own cell window, the same window where he had pressed his face to the slit and stared avidly at the pale teenage boy that appeared once a week as a human, and once a week as something else, something animal. He imagined that he was the boy, enjoying himself in the sand, with the frigid water washing up against his side, with no guards watching him, waiting for him to die.

Prisoners only went outside to die.

That was how sick he was. But he was ok with that, he told himself, ignoring how bitter he felt. It wasn’t supposed to end this way. The Dark Lord was supposed to rise again and save him, the Dark Lord should have never fallen in the first place, he corrected himself, and if he had to, Antonin should have gone down with him in a blaze of glory, not brought so low by fucking pneumonia of all things.

The guards walked away from him, not too far, not that he was in any fit condition for escaping mind you. They walked to the corner of the building, just out of sight, but well within hearing range, and they began to chat loudly among themselves. Mostly about Antonin’s imminent death.

Harry watched from the water, small and furry, his black nose twitching with every deep chuckle a guard released. It was cruel to laugh about death, crueller still to watch it happen and do nothing. Surely, they could bring a Healer here? But it was a Death Eater, and a criminal, and a prisoner, and it would be a terrible waste of taxes and time to try and save him. He didn’t deserve to be saved. Harry had heard it all before, eavesdropping on the guards two other times as they stood and laughed and nudged each other, pointing at two other prisoners who had died in the months since Harry had found his way to Azkaban’s shore.

It was the last place anyone would look for him. But it was so hard to live there. He was so alone; none of the Selkie had chosen to follow him not even the one who had promised to be his Cow. He wasn’t cold, not until he got out of the water, but he was hungry. There was only so many fish he could catch in water that turned solid when the Dementors came too close. Not as hungry as he had been some nights at the Dursleys when they had sent him to bed without lunch or dinner for ‘misbehaving’, but hungrier than he had been since Hogwarts, since before he knew what it was like to be fed. And this man, this pale, trembling man who was dying, he looked so hungry as well. Hungrier than Harry.

Lonelier than Harry.

Harry had noticed him, watching obsessively out of the window. Once, on the wind, Harry had thought he heard the man begging “don’t go, please don’t leave”, but he was so far away and the wind was so loud, Harry might have imagined it either. And yet, he was there every day, every night, with his eyes to the window, even when Harry didn’t come out of the water and there was no chance of the human seeing him, the man still waited.

It was nice, to have someone interested in him. Not because they wanted something from him, or expected him to do anything, but just because. The man just liked to look at him, perhaps he wanted to talk to Harry too, but he didn’t expect anything, didn’t believe it would ever happen, but he kept an eye out every day regardless. Harry probably shouldn’t have felt such pity, such regret at this man’s death, but he was a kind person and no one deserved to be simply thrown out to die while people mocked and jeered from the side-lines.

And he was so lonely. Would it be so bad to have one friend here? Even for a few moments, before the man died? Harry could make his death better, easier; he could give the man some comfort, hold his hand or talk softly to him as he passed. Harry was still considering it, trying to decide if it would be safe or not. The guards couldn’t see him, but they would probably hear him from where they were standing. The guards had never noticed him before, when he chose to walk along the shore, or around the perimeter of the building, but he had never come out of the water while a prisoner was loose either. Perhaps there were wards to monitor the prisoners, and Harry would be picked up on that ward accidentally, when there was no way of monitoring him alone?

“Please,” someone rasped. It was almost silent, the barest of sounds, forced like razorblades from a throat that was so thirsty, from a mouth so dry and lips so cracked, that the word itself caused pain. “Please,” they said again.

Harry turned, pulling himself from his thoughts, and found the Death Eater with his head turned towards the sea. One arm was stretched out, fingers splayed, and dark eyes were watching him with something close to desperation.

Oh fuck it, Harry thought. He could always swim away if the guards noticed him.

He crawled out of the water. His skin fell off around him, peeling back as if he were undressing layers of clothes, until it hung loosely around his neck. It was still furry, with patches of brown around the edges, but Harry had noticed the older he got, the more time that passed, the more his fur moulted. Eventually, his skin would be as Sirius had described his mother’s; leathery, tough, it would be an adult Selkie’s skin, and he would no longer be a pup.

Green eyes held Antonin’s brown ones, which watched him avidly but disbelievingly, as if Harry were something out of a dream made real. When Harry touched the man’s hand, the fingers closed tightly, holding onto Harry with more strength that the boy would have credited the man still having.

“Stay with me,” Antonin breathed, his voice trailing off as harsh coughs racked his body.

Harry allowed the man to continue holding his hand. With his free hand he managed to get his skin off of his neck, and he spread it across the Death Eater’s shivering form. “I’ll stay,” Harry said softly back, his lips quirking into a small smile. “It’s my birthday, you know. I’m fifteen now!” He grinned, widely, and the elder man actually flinched back.

“So young?” It was a rasp again, and Harry had to lean down so that his ear was pressed to the man’s mouth because otherwise he couldn’t hear properly. “So beautiful and so young. This is my punishment for wanting you as I do, I suppose.”

“Death isn’t a punishment for anything. Death just is. What is a punishment is their treatment of you, how cruel they are, how heartless. It is unnecessary.” Harry glared in the direction of the guards who couldn’t see them, though he imagined that they would all flinch back in fear from the force of his glare.

“My name is Antonin,” the man told him, breathing against his cheek. “Will you think of me sometimes, think well of me?” He began to cough again, and Harry drew back sharply to avoid spittle. “Stay with me, please, don’t-” He bit his bottom lip to stop himself from talking. He shouldn’t die like this, his death was supposed to be glorious, or happy at least surrounded by a family that loved him in his old age. And instead, he was alone, no children, no wife or husband, and dying in a proverbial gutter like a rat. The only person who would know what had happened to him would be this boy, this beautiful and kind boy, who he was tainting with his very breath. Antonin couldn’t bring himself to let go of Harry’s hand though, but he resolved himself not to seem so pathetic again at least.

“I’m Harry. I’m not going anywhere.” Harry moved closer, shifting down the sand a little so that he could lay his head on the man’s shoulder. The Azkaban uniform was scratchy and rough, so Harry wiggled down a little further, so his head rested on the man’s Selkie-skin covered chest. The skin was made to fit Harry, and so it was too short to cover the man, but it went from collarbone to knee stretched out, and it made Antonin feel warmer than he had since arriving at the island.

With his free hand, after a struggle to find the strength to move it, Antonin brushed against the skin, marvelling at its softness. “What are you?” He breathed into Harry’s hair.

Harry peered up at the man through his fringe, ignoring how it fell over his face at this angle. Green eyes glanced across his pale features, his long, twisted nose that must have been broken several times and never fixed properly, at the dark eyes that stared down at him with an intensity that made Harry shiver, and then over to the broad shoulders and chest he rested against. Harry felt it again, that instinctive knowing, like when he had thought the female Selkie might have been his mate but then knew he wanted her to be his mother. Except this time, he did want a mate. Not a father. But a human mate.

Harry shuddered at the thought. The man was older than him, but handsome. He was a prisoner, and a human, and even if Harry freed him and they escaped, Harry would end up the prisoner then. Forced to live as a human once again for someone else’s needs and desires, without his skin, without a pod (not that he had one now, but he could make one if he took a Selkie mate), would this man be worth all of that?

Antonin’s hand was on his face now, rubbing lightly across Harry’s smooth cheek. The elder man looked less pale, and he had stopped trembling, but everywhere that Harry touched him sparks of magic danced beneath his skin, burning and warming him, making him feel alive. He didn’t know what Harry was doing, but by Merlin he wished the boy would never stop. “What are you?” He asked again.

Reaching a decision, Harry concentrated on how much he didn’t want this man to die. How wasteful it would be, how hurtful and unfair. “Yours,” Harry whispered, rising up onto his knees so that he could lean over the Death Eater. When Harry kissed him, something exploded within him, burning in his chest and hands and stomach, and Antonin rose off of his back, buoyed by Harry’s magic, and gripped the boy tightly, fusing their mouths together. Dolohov didn’t remember losing consciousness, but when he opened his eyes he found that Harry wasn’t in front of him still, wasn’t just pulling back from their first kiss, but instead that the two guards who had brought him outside were now dragging him back into his cell, legs trailing across the ground, as each of them carried his weight along.

“Miraculous recovery,” one hissed at him, shoving him into the cell.

The other turned the key in the lock, looking rather put out that they hadn’t gotten the chance to kick his corpse into the sea. “There are better people a miracle could have been wasted on.” His lip curled, before they both turned and walked away.

Antonin Dolohov raised a hand to his mouth, pressed his fingers to his lips that still tingled from the feeling of Harry on them. “Mine,” he murmured, before moving to the arrow slit to press his eyes against the gap.

Harry wasn’t there. Instead, sitting in the very place where Harry had kissed him, was a small grey and brown seal, staring up at his window as if knowing that he was looking.

Antonin pressed his hand against his chest, to the bare skin at the v of his collarbones where the cape had pressed against him, warm on bare skin and soft on the outside where his hand had caressed it. There Harry was, wearing the cape now, shifting into animal form, soft and warm and as enticing as he was as a human. Despite what Harry’s answer had been, Dolohov was able to figure it out for himself regardless.

“You are a Selkie,” he told the seal on the beach. Harry couldn’t hear him, he could barely hear himself, but the seal raised its head and gave a soft bark before turning and slipping back into the water. Antonin watched, hands pressed against the stone as if he could push hard enough to simply pass through and be with Harry again, and he continued to watch even after the teenage Selkie was long gone from his sight.

XXX

January 13^th 1996. Azkaban.

Lord Voldemort had not expected Harry Potter to simply disappear from the world. He had waited with his servant, Wormtail, at his father’s old house until the end of the Tri-Wizard Tournament. His other servant, Bartemius, had promised him Harry Potter as the winner. The boy was supposed to arrive, unsuspecting a trap, and revive the Dark Lord. Instead, a blond haired teenager in Hufflepuff colours had arrived, unconscious, with one hand on the Portkey and the other gripping his wand tightly. Someone had used a sticking charm on the boy’s chest, and Wormtail inched over to pull away the piece of parchment stuck to him.

“Read it out loud,” the Dark Lord had ordered, his borrowed body held tightly by Wormtail, wrapped in a black cloak.

“Harry Potter has vanished. No one has been able to find him. But the friend of an enemy is an enemy right? –B.” Wormtail rolled up the parchment, tucking it into his pocket for his Lord’s perusal later. “What shall I do, my Lord?”

“Tie him up.” Voldemort had instructed. “Begin the ritual.”

And so the Dark Lord returned to power, and Cedric Diggory returned to Hogwarts two pints of blood lighter and dead.

He had planned and waited, he had even sent his Death Eaters out to search for Potter, wary that it was a trap of some kind. But no sign of the boy existed, and the papers had begun to speculate that the child had run from Dumbledore, rather than Voldemort himself. Lord Voldemort had not given up the search for the prophecy child, not yet, but it was on the back burner because the time for planning and waiting had come to an end, and his most loyal had been patient enough. He couldn’t, in good conscious, keep them waiting any longer.

Azkaban had been rather easy to break into. Lord Voldemort reasoned that the real difficulty would arise when attempting to break out, but they had done that easily enough as well. The Dementors remembered their alliance with the Dark Lord from the first war he had waged, and all of them kept away from the prison, hovering high above the water instead, out of the way. The guards were easily subdued, for there was only a handful compared to the army the Dark Lord had brought with him.

The prisoners who had been let out of their cells stumbled warily onto the sand, crossing the gravel, and some even dipped their bare feet into the freezing water just to feel it on their feet, wet and clean and real. Freedom. It was a symbol of freedom, no matter how cold, and they savoured the water, the air, the sand crunching beneath their toes. The others kept their distance, wrinkling their noses at the smell and state of their compatriots, but the Dark Lord approached each one in turn and pulled them into a quick, tight hug, thanking each one for their loyalty, for their service to his cause. Their cause.

“My Lord, please wait?” Antonin finally rasped out, just as the first Portkey to Malfoy Manor activated. It wasn’t his one; he was taking the Portkey with Voldemort, Lucius and the Lestranges, the last one to leave. “Please?”

Voldemort chuckled, commenting on Dolohov’s strange attachment to his place of imprisonment. They watched him, smirking, but Antonin didn’t return to the prison. He walked, instead, until he was waist deep in the water, shivering from the cold.

“Are you there?” He asked, voice almost silent, and he knew that there was no chance Harry would hear him if the boy hadn’t already been sitting underwater watching them. That was unlikely though. Harry had been hesitant to leave the water with only two guards standing out of sight. Here, now, there was at least fifty Death Eaters well within reach of the water, and only ten of them were wandless. “If you’re there, please, come out. No one will hurt you. You can come with us; surely you don’t want to stay here alone forever?” He paused, waiting, hoping, and then continued a little louder, sounding a lot more desperate, “Are you there?”

Something brushed against his leg, something soft and cold poked at his ankle, and Antonin crouched down to run his hands through Harry’s fur. “Stay with me?”

The Selkie gave a soft bark, but didn’t appear above water. When Antonin reached down to grab him, there was nothing there, no one swimming around his ankles, no soft nose brushing his bare skin. The boy was gone. Antonin trudged back to the shore alone, keeping his face down and hands clenched at his sides. Once he was beside the Portkey he held one hand out so that the fingers were against the rope and he waited.

“Dolohov?” Lucius asked, wondering if the man was insane as Bellatrix appeared to be.

Voldemort eyed him speculatively, before glancing over at the water that lapped the shore lightly but otherwise remained still. “What lives in the waters off Azkaban, Antonin?”

“A Selkie pup, my Lord. He turned fifteen in July. He saved my life that day.” He would say nothing further, not even in response to Bellatrix’s teasing, half-mad comments. Antonin stood in silence, ignoring the remarks, and Voldemort’s thoughtful gaze, and kept his free hand pressed to his lips until the Portkey activated.

He dreamed that night about the day Harry had saved his life and of the kiss they had shared. In his dreams he had been a free man, and that kiss had led to so much more than it had in reality. He had not ended up back in a cell, and he had not left Harry alone in the waters by Azkaban. Instead, Harry came into his arms, and Antonin came into Harry’s body, and they lay together, holding one another in this borrowed bed at Malfoy Manor, and in his dreams he was warm and happy and loved. And when he woke, he pressed his fingers to his mouth, reliving the feel of Harry’s against them, before allowing his hand to slip beneath his sleeping pants so he could relive his dream of other things Harry’s mouth had done.

XXX

August 1^st 1997. Ministry has fallen.

“My Lord?” Antonin whispered, voice cracking slightly as he spoke. He waited in the doorway of what used to be Lucius’ office, before Lord Voldemort took it for himself.

The man waved him in, and pointed at a chair, without looking up once. When Voldemort finally looked at him, Antonin was sitting patiently in a chair opposite the Dark Lord’s on the other side of the desk, his hands crossed in his lap. Voldemort glanced back down at the book he had been reading from, a small grin on his pale lips. He ran his hand through his dark hair, before trailing them lightly down his sharp nose. “Perhaps it is a good thing Potter went missing. Severus recently informed me that the result of my resurrection could have been a lot different, in my detriment, had I used the boy’s blood while his mother’s protection still existed within him. This book has mentioned, once or twice,” Voldemort gave a snort at that, remembering the numerous references the book had made, “that using Selkie blood in any potion is a very bad idea.”

He handed the book across the desk, still open on the page that Voldemort had been reading, and Antonin took it from him. Dolohov looked at the pictures of women naked but for cloaks of fur and leather, Selkies hidden behind their skins in human form. There was one of a man, smaller than the women and the men on the second page, slight and petit and beautiful, with the annotation ‘submissive’ written beneath him. Antonin trailed his finger over the picture’s face, imagining it was Harry in his place, leaning into his touch, smiling up at him and him alone.

“Was that what your Selkie looked like, my friend? Or was he more like those?” Voldemort pointed at the submissive first, and then at the males entitled ‘Bull’.

“The first, my Lord.”

“Describe him.” When Antonin merely look up at him in confusion, the elder Wizard waved his hand and smiled, “indulge me, my friend.”

Antonin couldn’t remember the Dark Lord being in better spirits since before the meeting at Hogwarts in 1958 when Dumbledore turned him down for Defence Professor. Dolohov and a handful of others had waited at the Hogs Head to congratulate the man who none of them had believed would be refused, and instead had ended up having to console him and avoid his anger. But this, talking of Harry, was making the man smile and laugh and forgive Antonin’s hesitance instantly.

“He was beautiful. He was small though, and young. He turned fifteen that summer, so he’d be about seventeen now. Harry was his name,” Antonin said, ignoring the way the Dark Lord perked up at that. But he continued, giving it no thought. “He had dark hair and green eyes, he was pale, but his fur was grey all over except for these little brown patches at the base of his tail and flippers, and a small white patch on his forehead. When he spoke, it was like wind-chimes, soft and musical, beautiful, and I wanted to do nothing but listen to him forever. He kissed me, you know, the day he saved my life. And when I asked him what he was, he told me that he was mine. And he kissed me.” His fingers were pressed to his lips again, tracing them lightly under Voldemort’s curious gaze.

“What day did he save your life?”

“I- I don’t know, my Lord. The days blurred together, but I think, I’m almost certain it was July. It was the summer for sure, because the nights weren’t as cold, and he first appeared when there was still ice in the air and that was months before I got sick.”

“July? Do you not think it to be coincidental that Harry Potter disappears, and a boy whose birthday is in July, his fifteen birthday in fact just as Potter’s would have been, appears at Azkaban with a strange marking on his forehead and grey eyes and dark hair, also named Harry? Would it not occur to you that they could be one and the same?”

“My Lord?” Antonin swallowed heavily. His throat was starting to hurt again, and he pressed a hand to it as he fought to swallow the saliva that was building in his mouth.

Voldemort handed him a glass of water, and the man drank it gratefully. “Oh of course you wouldn’t have known the boy ran away. But, well, were you informed that we captured Sirius Black? He tells me, most reluctantly however, that he and Harry had a very interesting conversation the week before the boy disappeared. They spoke, can you believe, about the boy’s Selkie grandmother, on his Mudblood mother’s side, though I suppose this would make her less of a Mudblood than we thought, hmm?”

Antonin didn’t know what to say, he couldn’t guess what he was expected to say, so he said nothing. Lord Voldemort watched him for a moment, holding his hand out until Antonin passed him back the book.

“It says here that submissive are males that are capable of acting the same way as women, bearing children, taken by humans against their wills and trapped without a skin. Some are loyal to human mates, and some escape to the sea. His mother was loyal. I wonder what he will be. Impregnate him and he will stay for the child’s sake.”

“You wish for me to force myself on him?” Dolohov looked understandably horrified at the thought of harming the boy who had saved his life, of harming Harry who he had come to believe he was in love with.

“Of course not, that would only inspire the boy to escape from you once the child was old enough to abandon. But, if he said he was yours, it means he has chosen you as a mate. He will give you a chance to prove yourself the better option than the sea. Be warned though, if you bring him here and then let him leave again, he cannot return to the same human for seven years.” Dolohov nodded, rising from his seat as Voldemort waved him towards the door. “Go and get him, bring him here and he will be safe, I promise you. However, if he will not come, take him as far away as possible, my friend, and never let me see him again.”

“Yes, my Lord. Thank you, my Lord.” Antonin bowed as he walked out of the door, closing it softly behind him.

The Ministry had fallen that morning. More than half of the Order of the Phoenix were dead or imprisoned in Malfoy’s dungeons awaiting Azkaban, and the others were on the run. There was no one left who would imprison Harry, for Antonin would not use force to keep the boy with him. But perhaps? Yes, he thought to himself, he could do that instead. Sirius Black’s freedom and safety would be enough to entice Harry Potter home, if Antonin’s love alone was not enough.

XXX

August 10^th 1997. Azkaban.

“Are you there?”

It had taken a few days to convince Lucius to release Black into his custody, not to mention he had to get a house together, and some funds and a way to convince Harry that his skin would be safe at their home.

Antonin, with Voldemort’s help, had gotten the goblins to unfreeze his account, and he had purchased a modest sized cottage that boarded a forest on one side and on the other had a rather large manmade lake. There were fish and seaweed within the lake, and while it wasn’t quite the sea, Antonin hoped it would be a good enough gesture. Harry couldn’t live as a human forever if he kept his skin, but Selkie would never allow another to guard it for them. Perhaps Harry could hide it in the lake, swim there, for that wouldn’t really be leaving him, would it? Not if he was still on Antonin’s property, within their home? And he could have the best of both worlds, a human lover and a Selkie heart, and Antonin would never have to spend seven years without him.

Black lived there now, shaven and cleaned up and looking much healthier than he had in a long, long time. He was looking forward to seeing Harry as well, but for other reasons unlike Antonin’s own which revolved around thoughts that a godfather would rather not know about their godson.

And all that was left now was to find Harry Potter.

“Are you there?” He asked again, standing waist deep in the water in the shade of his old cell.

No body answered him, and Antonin cursed himself for hoping that Harry might have waited two years for him to come back. For all he knew Harry had left immediately after the Death Eaters had Portkeyed away. The boy had probably known who they were, who Voldemort was, and had been too afraid to leave the water, but not because he didn’t want Antonin.

“Harry please? It’s safe now. The Dark Lord has won, and there will be no more war, no more death and you’ll be safe. I’ll keep you safe, and when we have pups I’ll protect them as well. The Dark Lord has given his permission for you to live with me, to be mine like I am yours. He doesn’t want to hurt you, I swear it Harry. He has even protected Sirius Black. Black lives with me now, in the home I wish to share with you. Black is looking forward to seeing you again.”

Bubbles broke the surface of the water, and seconds later a head of dark hair poked up, forehead, eyes and nose above the surface, and Antonin waded further into the water to get closer to the boy. The water was up passed his neck when they were within touching distance, and Antonin flailed slightly to keep his mouth and nose in the air. “Harry,” he breathed, reaching out a trembling hand to cup the boy’s cheek under the water.

Harry rose up higher, floating easily in the water, so that his face was level with Dolohov’s own. “Why did you come back?”

“You told me you were mine. I’ve come to make you mine.”

Harry thought about it, like he had thought about it every day since he had first kissed this man. The sea was his home, but it was a lonely home, especially since he had been afraid to migrate in case Antonin ever came back for him. Sirius and Antonin would be at his new home, and the man had spoken about pups as if it was a guarantee, as if there would be pups and a family of his own. No one else had promised him that.

But to give up the sea? To give up his skin to a human, like his mother had, to burn or destroy or imprison it and himself by association?

“You cannot have my skin.” Harry told the man firmly.

“There is a lake on our property. It is rather large. Would it suffice in place of the sea?” He stroked Harry’s cheek, firmer this time, enjoying the way the boy pushed his face against his hand. “You could hide your skin yourself, use it when you wished, and hide it again later. If you stayed on the property, surely you wouldn’t feel the urge to leave and never come back?”

Harry considered it. Then he thought of something Hagrid had told him the first time they went to Diagon Alley. Gringotts was the safest place beside Hogwarts that anyone knew of. Surely, if Harry wanted to keep his skin safe on his terms, he could put it into his vault? For now, he would hide his skin at the lake, if it was a suitable lake, just until he could determine who could and could not enter his vault. If it was safe, that was where his skin would stay, once more in the same place his mother had hidden it for him years ago. If he needed it then, it would be there, and he could escape to the sea if the need arose. But he would not destroy it, because it was a part of him, a necessary part, and unlike his mother, he had no pup or husband to keep him tied down as a human. Maybe in the future, but right now, he would try this life again and keep his skin for a day when he truly needed it.

“I’m old enough to mate,” Harry whispered, pressing forward in the water until he was chest to chest with the Death Eater.

Their mouths met then, and it was furious and desperate and hungry. Teeth clashed and lips bruised, and Antonin clung desperately to the teenager in his arms, trailing his hands across the boys back and waist and groin that was already achingly hard. The harder Harry kissed him, the closer Harry got to him, the harder it was for Antonin to keep his head above the water. It was difficult to breath with the boy fused to his mouth; they only broke apart briefly so that Harry could pull at the buttons of Dolohov’s trousers. Naked skin pressed against his clothed body, Harry’s skin floating loose around his neck, and Antonin’s trousers sliding off of his legs and into the water. Harry pulled at the shirt the elder Wizard was wearing, kissing hungrily again.

They sank together, mouths joined and hands exploring, and hips thrusting desperately against one another. Bubbles escaped from Antonin’s mouth as his eyes snapped open wide. They were over two feet under water, Harry having pulled them out further into the sea as they kissed, and for a moment Antonin panicked. The boy was trying to drown him! The boy had betrayed him! And then Harry let out a high pitched whine, spreading his legs and arching his groin up into Antonin’s own, offering himself for the taking.

Selkie’s mated underwater.

Selkie’s had sex underwater, Antonin reminded himself, taking a mental deep breath. He tried to calm his heartbeat and fought the urge not to breathe in seawater. A spell kept him from drowning, but it wouldn’t last long enough to do to Harry what he wanted or intended to do.

Briefly, he wondered if his house elf would know to draw a bath the way it knew to have tea ready before a guest even arrived. Then, he held Harry tightly to him, the boy’s legs around his waist, hard cock pressed against his stomach with his own bobbing against Harry’s arse with each wave. Their mouths met again, deep, dizzying kissed exchanged between the two new lovers, and Antonin apparated them both away with a crack.

They landed together with a splash, in the full bath, in the master bathroom, with Harry spread out willingly beneath him. Just waiting to be taken. So Antonin took him.

The End

Thank you for reading! Please leave a review? Cause it’s been a really, really shitty last couple of days!

A reviewer for Butterfly suggested Dolohov/Harry, when I asked for a Death Eater to pair him with in this story. I can’t remember their name, but I’m sure they know who they are. This is for you! :D Also. Life is shit. Those exams back in March? A lot harder than I thought, and I did a lot worse than I thought. Failed two, but have to repeat all four, wtf kind of a system is that!?

“Beneath The Skin”

Disclaimer:  Harry Potter is property of JK Rowling, Bloomsbury, Warner Bros, et all. I make no money from this and I own nothing, don’t sue.

Summary:  [Dolohov/HP] After a chance meeting with a pod of Selkies, Harry wonders if there is something different about him. When he goes looking, and finds his answer, he realizes that he can never stay in the Wizarding World, as a human, because neither chains of steel nor chains of love can keep his kind from the sea.

Warnings: Slash. Antonin Dolohov/HP. Creature!Harry. Mild sex stuff, hints mostly. AU. Typos. Underage.

Rating:  NC-17.

A/N: It probably won’t be necessary, but basic background info on Selkies might be useful to know. And an open mind…

XXX

Words: 10,350

Chapter 1

February 24^th 1995. Hogwarts.

The water didn’t feel as cold anymore. The gills in his neck flapped lightly, water passing in and back out again, and Harry kicked his webbed feet harder, gliding easily through the Black Lake.

It was beautiful, he thought, as he swam. He could only see about ten meters ahead of himself, or behind, or around. So every time he moved forward, more and more became exposed to him, opening him up to new sights and sounds and feelings as he moved by.

He and Cedric were the only ones in the lake at the moment, having tied for first in the lead, but Harry knew that the other Champions would follow soon. He had to hurry, to find the Merpeople and Ron, and get out of the water. He had an hour till the Task was over, and less than an hour until the Gillyweed wore off and he was left to drown.

Harry swam on.

Light-green seaweed spread out ahead of him, taller than he was and reaching out as far as Harry’s eyes could see. Everything else was dark and gloomy, shimmering lightly underwater. He squinted, his green eyes uncovered by his glasses and instead under a temporary seeing-spell Professor McGonagall had cast on him. There were shapes in the weeds, something horned was moving within them, and another, and another. Harry scrambled backwards, arms flailing in the water, moving too fast and too hard and resulting in him doing a strange awkward looking summersault. When he had righted himself, a Grindylow was watching him. It was a strange looking creature, a horned water demon, and they were usually aggressive and vicious, but this one just stared passively at him, only moving to make room for his companions as more and more Grindylows appeared from between the strands of weeds.

“Hello?” Harry asked softly. Bubbles came from his mouth, but not words. Instead of a word, he made a high-pitched bark. It sounded like Padfoot whining when he didn’t get his way, and at the sound of it the Grindylows became excited. They growled and yipped, writhing back and forth in the water furiously.

“Sorry! Sorry!” Harry apologized hurriedly, because he certainly didn’t want them to attack him now, when they had been so passive before. He seemed to bark again, which was weird, because the Gillyweed wasn’t supposed to turn him into an underwater creature; it was just meant to give him the ability to swim and breathe underwater.

Harry couldn’t understand what they were saying, but when something else began to bark, his head snapped around immediately, searching out this new sound in the relative darkness.

There was a seal, swimming towards him. It was rather large, with dark brown spots across its back, and sharp teeth that were bared as it swam.

“There are seals in the lake?” Harry questioned, with a frown on his face. He bobbed in the water, moving his legs lightly to keep himself in place. He didn’t seem to require effort to keep afloat, but Harry supposed that maybe that had something to do with the webbed feet.

“We are not seals,” the seal barked back at him. It had barked, Harry realised. It had made noises, like a dog, or a seal, but Harry had understood it as if the creature was speaking English. He thought back to the incident during the Duelling Club, with the snake, and wondered if this was another language he was born just knowing.

“What are you?” Harry moved towards the seal. He stopped, moving back quickly, when two more seals appeared behind the first. “What do you want?” He worried for a minute that the seals had been sent to distract him while the other Champions won, or perhaps they were part of the Task and Harry had to defeat them as well as kidnap his friend back from the Merpeople.

“We want to know where you came from, Pup.” The leopard seal told him.

The second and third arrivals appeared to be female. They were both pale shades of grey, without spots. Both were smaller than the first, wider around the waist and hips, and one was obviously pregnant. It was the pregnant one that spoke.

“We are what you are, Pup.”

Her voice was softer than the male and Harry’s own, still a high-pitched barking, but lighter somehow, more alluring. Harry thought, that maybe, they could be Veela because when the seal spoke Harry found himself drifting towards her, seeking comfort from her. And then, like a bucket of cold water had been poured across him, he understood that she couldn’t be a Veela, at least not in the way the girls at the Quidditch World Cup had been, because Harry wasn’t attracted to her, he didn’t want to throw himself at her feet like Ron had to Fleur, he didn’t want her as a mate. He wanted her to be his Mother.

“And what am I?” Harry’s voice trembled as he spoke. His hands shook, and if it wasn’t for the fact that two Grindylow had just attached themselves to his legs, Harry might have tried to swim away before they could answer him.

“Podless, abandoned,” the previously silent female told him, whispering against his ear, her wet, black nose brushing against his skin comfortingly. “You can be one of us now, Pup, one of our pod. I am without pup, without a Bull, I would care for you. I will be your cow.”

“Change,” the male told him with a sharp nod. They had obviously already decided that Harry was going to go with them. “Change now, Pup, and follow us.” He turned then, his tail wriggling behind him as he began to swim away, his mate and the unmated female turned to follow him. The Grindylows let Harry go, but the boy stayed where he was.

“Change into what?” Harry questioned softly. He wanted to follow them. There was a longing inside of him, a pang in his chest that urged him to go after them, to stay in the water (despite his brain telling him that he would probably drown if he did), but he didn’t know how to change. He couldn’t change.

“You have no skin,” the mate-less female breathed out. Harry thought that if she were human, she might be crying. She didn’t come back to comfort him, and the male didn’t speak again, but the pregnant one seemed to curl up around her stomach, as if protecting her own child from ‘skinless-ness’.

“What?” Harry was confused, very confused. The leopard seal looked as if he were about to answer but then a scream rang out through the water and all three vanished, swimming frantically away, until Harry could almost pretend they had never been there at all.

The Grindylows were excited again. Within the seaweed something struggled and screamed, not close enough to Harry to be a threat, but they were close enough that the Grindylow took off towards it yipping loudly as they swam. Harry listened to her scream again, knowing that it was Fleur trapped by the Grindylow, but he didn’t go to save her. He swam, instead, further down into the lake, searching once more for the Merpeople who had stolen his treasure.

When he had found Ron, Cho Chang was gone, but Hermione and Gabrielle Delacour were still tied up. Several Merpeople swam around them, lazily, in circles, each of them eyeing Harry warily.

“Why are you here skin-shifter?” One mermaid growled at him, her face screwed up and tinted green.

Harry didn’t understand her, so instead he pointed at Ron and then down at the Hogwarts crest on his sodden robes. The Merpeople seemed confused and uneasy; glancing at his crest several times before they would let him passed them to free Ron.

“It is not often your kind let their young among humans. Where are your parents? Is your Cow captured by humans?”

Harry ignored their growling, slinking passed them to tug at the ropes that kept Ron secured to the ground, which stopped him floating away. Harry gave a bark of pleasure once he had freed Ron, and the Merpeople fell silent to listen to him. Harry didn’t say anything else, though he was quick to pull Ron into his arms and kick his legs, desperately. He swam as hard as he could away from the Merpeople, who still growled after him, strange choked off words and vicious sounding snarls leaving their mouths in words of concern that he couldn’t understand. Harry didn’t wait to see if Fleur had gotten freed, or would come to rescue her sister, and he didn’t wait for Krum to find Hermione. He got as far away from the Merpeople as possible, as quickly as possible, skirting around the weeds that hid the Grindylow just in case, though he kept a hopeful eye out for the seals, hoping desperately that they would come back for him.

What if he had skin? Would they come for him if he had skin? He glanced at the back of the hand that wasn’t holding Ron, eyeing the pale flesh that covered it, and wondered to himself how was it that he didn’t have skin when he could feel it, two layers of it, covering every single inch of him?

XXX

March 6^th 1995. Hogsmeade.

Harry had spent the past week in the library. Hermione seemed to be very proud of him, for coming second in the Second Task, and for his sudden urge to study for what she believed to be in preparation for the final Task of the Tournament. But actually, Harry spent most of his time in the magical creatures section of the library, searching through book after book for anything that would explain what had happened to him or what he was. He had cross-referenced seals with cows, bulls with water, barking with skinning, and briefly he had considered that he might be a Kelpie, but no one had tried to drown him, and Kelpie’s didn’t need skins to change shape. They just needed water and hunger, and Harry had taken a second trip to the prefect’s bathroom, tricking the password out of Cedric, and starving and butt-naked, he had jumped into the water but hadn’t changed.

So Harry had gone back to the library, ignored all the texts about those that shifted into different animals, and focused wholly on seals. Those that took the shape of seals in the water and humans on land were called Selkies. If their skins were stolen or destroyed, they could never change shape, like Harry, who was skinless and stuck as a human. But it was hereditary, Harry had read, passed down from parent to child to grandchild. He couldn’t have just become a Selkie.

He had asked Hermione to make him a hereditary potion, told her he was curious about his grandparents. Really he had wanted to know if he had been adopted, or if one of his parents wasn’t really his parents, because as far as he knew neither his mother nor father had had the overwhelming urge to live underwater, or at least no one had ever told him that they had.

Both James and Lily had turned out to be his parents, but his mother’s mother, strangely, had had no surname. Above Lily’s name had been the names ‘David Evans’ and Rosalie’, no surname. It was unusual, and then Hermione had mentioned that perhaps she had been part-Fae or Vampire because they were known for only having one name, or perhaps she had been disowned, but that wouldn’t have magically erased the name of a Muggle. Harry had asked what a Fae was. Hermione had looked at him curiously, but told him that the Fae were a race of creatures, older than humans, more beautiful than Veela, and native to Germany, Ireland or Scandinavia. Nymphs, Dryads, Fairies, and Selkies were all considered to be part of the Fae. But because Rosalie was dead, there was no way of telling what she had been, or hadn’t been, and so Harry had written to Sirius. Sirius had written back, asking Harry to meet him at the very edge of Hogsmeade on his next weekend visit, and that was what Harry was doing now.

He had managed to loose Hermione and Ron outside of The Three Broomsticks, and hidden under his invisibility cloak, he made his way passed Dervish and Bangs to the scruffy stray black dog that waited patiently for him. His pockets were filled with food that Dobby had brought him from the kitchens in Hogwarts, and Padfoot’s tail began to wag happily at the smell of cooked meat that wafted his way from the hidden Harry. When they were both out of sight of any potential observers, Harry pulled his cloak off and shoved it under his t-shirt.

“Hey Padfoot,” he whispered. Sirius gave a loud bark, leaning sideways to nudge against his godson. Harry smiled down at him, feeling immediately guilty for wishing that Sirius could turn into a seal instead of a Grim. “We need to talk.”

“Follow me,” the man whispered voice hoarse from disuse. He was tall and thin, with dark hair and a scruffy beard. Grey eyes darted around frantically, and he led the way into the cave that Padfoot had brought Harry to, keeping an eye out for anyone who might be following them.

“What did you want to talk about, pup?” Sirius asked, after eating four of the chicken and ham sandwiches Harry had brought him, as well as three frankfurters.

“Why do you call me that?” Harry asked, instead of what he originally wanted to ask.

“Well,” Sirius started, running a shaky hand through his messy hair. “Your mother started calling you that when you were a baby. You made these strange huffing noises whenever she gave you a bath, and from the first time you made them, she called you her pup. I thought, you know, it was because of Padfoot, or even Moony, so I started calling you that too. The others always called you Prongslet, until Remus was your teacher, but for me, pup just stuck.”

“Was my mum a magical creature by any chance?” Harry crossed his arms over his chest, allowing his body to slide down the wall until he was sitting on the ground beside his godfather.

Sirius jumped, turning his head towards Harry so fast his neck clicked. The man paused, mid-chew, nearly spitting his food out as he asked, “what? Why?”

“Was she? It’s just, something happened during the second task and I looked it up in the library and Hermione made a hereditary potion and I think she was. Was she? I don’t have anyone else to ask.”

“She was. I don’t know what, Lily never told me. All I know is for six years her and James were like cats and dogs, James chasing her everywhere and Lily running away. Then she turns seventeen over the summer, comes back to school, and her and James are like this,” Sirius told him softly, before holding up his hands, his middle and pointer finger crossed.

“When you were born, she told James that one day you might leave them. I always thought, you know, your mum meant you’d get married and move out and have kids, or even that You-Know-Who might win, but, well. I asked your dad about it one day when we were alone with you. He said that Lily’s parents came to her on her birthday, told her what her mother was, what she was, and told her that she was going to leave them whether she wanted to or not because there was no fighting it.”

Harry looked at him eagerly. He could guess how his mother felt learning this, because once he had realised it was all Harry could do to keep himself out of the Lake. He wanted to be in the water, he wanted to go home, but he couldn’t without his skin.

“She must have fought very hard,” Sirius continued, “because James said whatever it was they gave Lily, Lily gave right back, went to Hogwarts and married your father. After the wedding, James was given a cloak from Lily’s parents, a strange looking thing, it looked more like a fishing jacket than any cloak I’ve ever seen, but Muggles are odd. Lily burnt it. That was that.”

“When I was a baby,” Harry began hesitantly. He didn’t want to give too much away. What if Sirius knew they had taken his skin, what if Sirius had helped to trap him? “When I was a baby, did mum ever give me anything, like a blanket or something?”

“Well,” Sirius said, rubbing at his chin thoughtfully. “You had this little furry thing. Absolutely filthy, it was. Lily never took it away from you, you slept with it, you took it outside with you, went on play dates with it. And then of course your parents went into hiding, but, well, never thought much of it at the time, but the Headmaster had it then. He had borrowed that invisibility cloak, told your father he wanted to study it, but he had your blanket as well. I sort of assumed that maybe it was valuable, werewolf pelt, demiguise hair, something like that.”

“Selkie skin,” Harry whispered. He kept his eyes fixed on his godfather’s grey ones.

The man mouthed the words, eyebrows furrowing before they shot up into his hairline. “Are you saying… are you saying your mother was a Selkie?”

“My grandmother was. I don’t know if she chose to be with my grandfather or if she was captured or tricked, but they took mum’s skin from her. That’s obviously what they offered her back, what they sent to my dad after the wedding. Humans keep the Selkie female’s skin to make her stay with them.”

“Lily burnt it. Not your father. She chose to stay.” Sirius told him again, as if trying to prove a point.

“But I want to leave. And I can’t. Someone has my skin, and the pod won’t take my without a skin.” Harry’s arms came up to hug his chest, and he curled his legs towards himself, looking small and vulnerable and Sirius felt something stick in his throat.

“Dumbledore…? The furry blanket?” He seemed to think about it for a moment. “It would make sense, why her parents had it. If Lily had turned into a seal around Muggles that would have been bad. The same thing goes for you, pup. Those Muggles you live with don’t seem to be the open minded type, kiddo. But, well, it would be safer for you if you left. You’ll probably find the skin in the Headmaster’s office or in Gringotts. If you write to Gringotts, sign it in blood, they’ll mail it to you if it’s there. Though, where will you go?” Sirius reached out for him, hands shaking, and placed them lightly on either side of Harry’s face.

“Somewhere with lots of water. And more Selkie. I want a pod, I want a cow, Sirius.”

“Cow?” The elder Wizard repeated, looking confused.

“A mother. A Selkie in the Black Lake said she’d be my mother, but I didn’t have a skin.”

“Well the Black Lake is an option, its cold enough, and Selkie are native to colder waters. But it is really close to Hogwarts, and I doubt the Headmaster wants you to swim away from the war. He would have given you your skin back by now if he wanted you to have the option, right? How about, Ireland? There are lots of cold water lakes in Ireland, plenty of rivers too. Or Germany, there’s a whole community of Fae over there. Could even go as far north as Iceland, but that is rather far away. Mind you,” Sirius said, and Harry knew he was only joking, “the waters around Azkaban are fairly arctic all year round too, and no one would ever think to look for you there.”

Harry laughed softly, going along with Sirius’ attempt at humour. But he thought about it later that night, curled up in his bed, and later that week as he stood beside the Lake, with his skin in one hand and the letter from Gringotts in the other. Hogwarts was too close to those that wanted to trap him. Now that he had his skin, he didn’t ever want to lose it again. No one would take it from him. Maybe, he would be like his mother, and find a human mate and choose to stay with them, but no one would ever force him to stay on land again. He needed the water. The salt of the sea, and the chill of the lake and the feeling of family around him, surrounded by Selkie and real seal and fish. He didn’t need humans and he didn’t need land. But he couldn’t stay in this lake. It wasn’t safe.

The skin in his hand was furry, matted in places and dirty. It was a dark grey colour, and there was the faintest hint of brown around the edges, probably where his flippers would meet his body. Harry shook it out, wrapped it around his neck like a cape, and wondered how he was supposed to make it fit. But he didn’t have to make it do anything. The moment it touched his bare back, for his clothes had already been discarded, the skin simply fit around him, became a part of him. Before he knew it, Harry was in the water, tail splashing and flippers drawing him further and further into the lake. He barked, head under water, and several barks echoed back to him.

But it wasn’t safe here. Not for him. Not after the way Dumbledore had been eyeing him once the parcel from Gringotts had arrived, never mind whatever the Merpeople had told him after the Second Task. The elder Wizard was bound to know. Harry had to swim as far away as possible before the sun rose and the humans realised he was gone. Maybe he’d get lucky, and they’d blame Voldemort.

If he was really lucky, if he swam far enough, what began with the Lake would end with a sea. There might even be Selkie there, Harry told himself as he began to swim.

XXX

March 18^th 1995. Azkaban.

He wasn’t expecting anything to change. He wouldn’t have been surprised if today was just as monotonous as every other day had been for the previous fourteen years. With the exception of the Dementors focusing on someone in particular, nothing exciting ever happened in Azkaban. Well, Sirius Black had escaped. That was exciting. But Antonin Dolohov didn’t know anything about that. Sirius Black hadn’t shared his floor, or the one above. The way he heard it, Black might have betrayed an Auror, but he had only murdered Muggles, and that wasn’t all that bad in the scheme of things.

All he knew was that today, the Dementors had left him alone. Instead, somebody on the floor above him was screaming as if their hearts were being ripped out through their nostrils. It was a sound he would have appreciated had he been the one to inflict such pain. As it was, the sound only made him tremble. Because that person’s screams wouldn’t entertain the Dementors for long: they never did. Then they’d change floors, change prisoners; they’d come for him. He had screamed himself hoarse in the first few years of his imprisonment, arrested after the fall of the Dark Lord, only moments before Igor Karkaroff had tried to sell him out. He couldn’t talk properly now, not that he had much cause for talking. But one day, when the Dark Lord returned for him, Antonin would resent not being able to properly voice his appreciation for his Lord’s mercy.

He happened to be peering out of the tiny window in his cell, when he noticed something interesting. The first really interesting thing to happen to him in years.

He was on the second most top floor. Those like the Lestranges and Crouch Jr, the real degenerates, those who had harmed an Auror or a family member of an Auror (the ones the Courts went particularly hard on), were on the top floor. They never saw human guards. All Dementors, all the time, unless someone came to visit. But that had only happened once, when Barty’s mother had visited and dropped dead days after.

His floor was comprised solely of Death Eaters, those who had actually confessed at their trials, those that were considered to be loyal to the bitter end. The Dementors visited them often enough too, but at least they had windows and the smallest bit of natural light, and wind, and the drops of rain that squeezed through and onto his tongue if he held his face close enough to the arrow slits during a storm. It was filthy and demeaning, but it was better than feeling like his throat was on fire from the thirst, while he whispered as loudly as he could, in vain, for water.

That was what he was doing now. He was lapping at the rain water that blew into his cell. Antonin kept his eyes wide open, watching the droplets carefully for the first sign that they might be turning to ice: the first warning that the Dementors were on their way.

Instead, he saw the strangest thing. There was a boy standing just at the edge of the island. Azkaban was surrounded on all sides by water, freezing, frigid water that no one would ever want to stand or swim in. Sirius had swam in his animagus form, Padfoot’s shaggy fur keeping him semi-warm, but a human would likely catch pneumonia within the first few minutes of being submerged. And yet this boy, naked as the day he was born save for a strange looking cape, was making his way back into the water, one step at a time, unhurried and unconcerned that a guard might notice him. Antonin watched him, eyed the pale skin and dark hair as well as he could through the arrow slit, until the boy was neck deep. He wasn’t shivering, he wasn’t shaking, but he was looking up towards the prison as if he knew that someone was staring.

The rain began to freeze on Antonin’s face, causing the man to flinch away from the window. It was stupid, to ignore the Dementors, because if he didn’t try and prepare himself if would be worse, but he wanted to watch the boy, he wanted to look at something beautiful for the first time in fourteen years. By the time he had put his eyes back to the arrow slit, the boy had vanished, the water around where he had stood was still and no air bubbles breached the surface.

XXX

July 31^st 1995. Azkaban.

He was sick.

It didn’t take being a genius to work that much out.

He was very sick.

Today was the first day in what felt like forever that Antonin Dolohov had stepped foot outside of Azkaban prison. He snorted softly; it was the most noise he could make. He couldn’t walk, couldn’t talk, hell, he could barely lift his head to take in the rare sight of the sun burning brightly above him even in the presence of so many Dementors. Two of the prison guards had frog marched him out of his cell, through the building and outside, to where he was now, just by the water’s edge. He was laid on the sand and gravel, and he looked up, not at the sun, but at his own cell window, the same window where he had pressed his face to the slit and stared avidly at the pale teenage boy that appeared once a week as a human, and once a week as something else, something animal. He imagined that he was the boy, enjoying himself in the sand, with the frigid water washing up against his side, with no guards watching him, waiting for him to die.

Prisoners only went outside to die.

That was how sick he was. But he was ok with that, he told himself, ignoring how bitter he felt. It wasn’t supposed to end this way. The Dark Lord was supposed to rise again and save him, the Dark Lord should have never fallen in the first place, he corrected himself, and if he had to, Antonin should have gone down with him in a blaze of glory, not brought so low by fucking pneumonia of all things.

The guards walked away from him, not too far, not that he was in any fit condition for escaping mind you. They walked to the corner of the building, just out of sight, but well within hearing range, and they began to chat loudly among themselves. Mostly about Antonin’s imminent death.

Harry watched from the water, small and furry, his black nose twitching with every deep chuckle a guard released. It was cruel to laugh about death, crueller still to watch it happen and do nothing. Surely, they could bring a Healer here? But it was a Death Eater, and a criminal, and a prisoner, and it would be a terrible waste of taxes and time to try and save him. He didn’t deserve to be saved. Harry had heard it all before, eavesdropping on the guards two other times as they stood and laughed and nudged each other, pointing at two other prisoners who had died in the months since Harry had found his way to Azkaban’s shore.

It was the last place anyone would look for him. But it was so hard to live there. He was so alone; none of the Selkie had chosen to follow him not even the one who had promised to be his Cow. He wasn’t cold, not until he got out of the water, but he was hungry. There was only so many fish he could catch in water that turned solid when the Dementors came too close. Not as hungry as he had been some nights at the Dursleys when they had sent him to bed without lunch or dinner for ‘misbehaving’, but hungrier than he had been since Hogwarts, since before he knew what it was like to be fed. And this man, this pale, trembling man who was dying, he looked so hungry as well. Hungrier than Harry.

Lonelier than Harry.

Harry had noticed him, watching obsessively out of the window. Once, on the wind, Harry had thought he heard the man begging “don’t go, please don’t leave”, but he was so far away and the wind was so loud, Harry might have imagined it either. And yet, he was there every day, every night, with his eyes to the window, even when Harry didn’t come out of the water and there was no chance of the human seeing him, the man still waited.

It was nice, to have someone interested in him. Not because they wanted something from him, or expected him to do anything, but just because. The man just liked to look at him, perhaps he wanted to talk to Harry too, but he didn’t expect anything, didn’t believe it would ever happen, but he kept an eye out every day regardless. Harry probably shouldn’t have felt such pity, such regret at this man’s death, but he was a kind person and no one deserved to be simply thrown out to die while people mocked and jeered from the side-lines.

And he was so lonely. Would it be so bad to have one friend here? Even for a few moments, before the man died? Harry could make his death better, easier; he could give the man some comfort, hold his hand or talk softly to him as he passed. Harry was still considering it, trying to decide if it would be safe or not. The guards couldn’t see him, but they would probably hear him from where they were standing. The guards had never noticed him before, when he chose to walk along the shore, or around the perimeter of the building, but he had never come out of the water while a prisoner was loose either. Perhaps there were wards to monitor the prisoners, and Harry would be picked up on that ward accidentally, when there was no way of monitoring him alone?

“Please,” someone rasped. It was almost silent, the barest of sounds, forced like razorblades from a throat that was so thirsty, from a mouth so dry and lips so cracked, that the word itself caused pain. “Please,” they said again.

Harry turned, pulling himself from his thoughts, and found the Death Eater with his head turned towards the sea. One arm was stretched out, fingers splayed, and dark eyes were watching him with something close to desperation.

Oh fuck it, Harry thought. He could always swim away if the guards noticed him.

He crawled out of the water. His skin fell off around him, peeling back as if he were undressing layers of clothes, until it hung loosely around his neck. It was still furry, with patches of brown around the edges, but Harry had noticed the older he got, the more time that passed, the more his fur moulted. Eventually, his skin would be as Sirius had described his mother’s; leathery, tough, it would be an adult Selkie’s skin, and he would no longer be a pup.

Green eyes held Antonin’s brown ones, which watched him avidly but disbelievingly, as if Harry were something out of a dream made real. When Harry touched the man’s hand, the fingers closed tightly, holding onto Harry with more strength that the boy would have credited the man still having.

“Stay with me,” Antonin breathed, his voice trailing off as harsh coughs racked his body.

Harry allowed the man to continue holding his hand. With his free hand he managed to get his skin off of his neck, and he spread it across the Death Eater’s shivering form. “I’ll stay,” Harry said softly back, his lips quirking into a small smile. “It’s my birthday, you know. I’m fifteen now!” He grinned, widely, and the elder man actually flinched back.

“So young?” It was a rasp again, and Harry had to lean down so that his ear was pressed to the man’s mouth because otherwise he couldn’t hear properly. “So beautiful and so young. This is my punishment for wanting you as I do, I suppose.”

“Death isn’t a punishment for anything. Death just is. What is a punishment is their treatment of you, how cruel they are, how heartless. It is unnecessary.” Harry glared in the direction of the guards who couldn’t see them, though he imagined that they would all flinch back in fear from the force of his glare.

“My name is Antonin,” the man told him, breathing against his cheek. “Will you think of me sometimes, think well of me?” He began to cough again, and Harry drew back sharply to avoid spittle. “Stay with me, please, don’t-” He bit his bottom lip to stop himself from talking. He shouldn’t die like this, his death was supposed to be glorious, or happy at least surrounded by a family that loved him in his old age. And instead, he was alone, no children, no wife or husband, and dying in a proverbial gutter like a rat. The only person who would know what had happened to him would be this boy, this beautiful and kind boy, who he was tainting with his very breath. Antonin couldn’t bring himself to let go of Harry’s hand though, but he resolved himself not to seem so pathetic again at least.

“I’m Harry. I’m not going anywhere.” Harry moved closer, shifting down the sand a little so that he could lay his head on the man’s shoulder. The Azkaban uniform was scratchy and rough, so Harry wiggled down a little further, so his head rested on the man’s Selkie-skin covered chest. The skin was made to fit Harry, and so it was too short to cover the man, but it went from collarbone to knee stretched out, and it made Antonin feel warmer than he had since arriving at the island.

With his free hand, after a struggle to find the strength to move it, Antonin brushed against the skin, marvelling at its softness. “What are you?” He breathed into Harry’s hair.

Harry peered up at the man through his fringe, ignoring how it fell over his face at this angle. Green eyes glanced across his pale features, his long, twisted nose that must have been broken several times and never fixed properly, at the dark eyes that stared down at him with an intensity that made Harry shiver, and then over to the broad shoulders and chest he rested against. Harry felt it again, that instinctive knowing, like when he had thought the female Selkie might have been his mate but then knew he wanted her to be his mother. Except this time, he did want a mate. Not a father. But a human mate.

Harry shuddered at the thought. The man was older than him, but handsome. He was a prisoner, and a human, and even if Harry freed him and they escaped, Harry would end up the prisoner then. Forced to live as a human once again for someone else’s needs and desires, without his skin, without a pod (not that he had one now, but he could make one if he took a Selkie mate), would this man be worth all of that?

Antonin’s hand was on his face now, rubbing lightly across Harry’s smooth cheek. The elder man looked less pale, and he had stopped trembling, but everywhere that Harry touched him sparks of magic danced beneath his skin, burning and warming him, making him feel alive. He didn’t know what Harry was doing, but by Merlin he wished the boy would never stop. “What are you?” He asked again.

Reaching a decision, Harry concentrated on how much he didn’t want this man to die. How wasteful it would be, how hurtful and unfair. “Yours,” Harry whispered, rising up onto his knees so that he could lean over the Death Eater. When Harry kissed him, something exploded within him, burning in his chest and hands and stomach, and Antonin rose off of his back, buoyed by Harry’s magic, and gripped the boy tightly, fusing their mouths together. Dolohov didn’t remember losing consciousness, but when he opened his eyes he found that Harry wasn’t in front of him still, wasn’t just pulling back from their first kiss, but instead that the two guards who had brought him outside were now dragging him back into his cell, legs trailing across the ground, as each of them carried his weight along.

“Miraculous recovery,” one hissed at him, shoving him into the cell.

The other turned the key in the lock, looking rather put out that they hadn’t gotten the chance to kick his corpse into the sea. “There are better people a miracle could have been wasted on.” His lip curled, before they both turned and walked away.

Antonin Dolohov raised a hand to his mouth, pressed his fingers to his lips that still tingled from the feeling of Harry on them. “Mine,” he murmured, before moving to the arrow slit to press his eyes against the gap.

Harry wasn’t there. Instead, sitting in the very place where Harry had kissed him, was a small grey and brown seal, staring up at his window as if knowing that he was looking.

Antonin pressed his hand against his chest, to the bare skin at the v of his collarbones where the cape had pressed against him, warm on bare skin and soft on the outside where his hand had caressed it. There Harry was, wearing the cape now, shifting into animal form, soft and warm and as enticing as he was as a human. Despite what Harry’s answer had been, Dolohov was able to figure it out for himself regardless.

“You are a Selkie,” he told the seal on the beach. Harry couldn’t hear him, he could barely hear himself, but the seal raised its head and gave a soft bark before turning and slipping back into the water. Antonin watched, hands pressed against the stone as if he could push hard enough to simply pass through and be with Harry again, and he continued to watch even after the teenage Selkie was long gone from his sight.

XXX

January 13^th 1996. Azkaban.

Lord Voldemort had not expected Harry Potter to simply disappear from the world. He had waited with his servant, Wormtail, at his father’s old house until the end of the Tri-Wizard Tournament. His other servant, Bartemius, had promised him Harry Potter as the winner. The boy was supposed to arrive, unsuspecting a trap, and revive the Dark Lord. Instead, a blond haired teenager in Hufflepuff colours had arrived, unconscious, with one hand on the Portkey and the other gripping his wand tightly. Someone had used a sticking charm on the boy’s chest, and Wormtail inched over to pull away the piece of parchment stuck to him.

“Read it out loud,” the Dark Lord had ordered, his borrowed body held tightly by Wormtail, wrapped in a black cloak.

“Harry Potter has vanished. No one has been able to find him. But the friend of an enemy is an enemy right? –B.” Wormtail rolled up the parchment, tucking it into his pocket for his Lord’s perusal later. “What shall I do, my Lord?”

“Tie him up.” Voldemort had instructed. “Begin the ritual.”

And so the Dark Lord returned to power, and Cedric Diggory returned to Hogwarts two pints of blood lighter and dead.

He had planned and waited, he had even sent his Death Eaters out to search for Potter, wary that it was a trap of some kind. But no sign of the boy existed, and the papers had begun to speculate that the child had run from Dumbledore, rather than Voldemort himself. Lord Voldemort had not given up the search for the prophecy child, not yet, but it was on the back burner because the time for planning and waiting had come to an end, and his most loyal had been patient enough. He couldn’t, in good conscious, keep them waiting any longer.

Azkaban had been rather easy to break into. Lord Voldemort reasoned that the real difficulty would arise when attempting to break out, but they had done that easily enough as well. The Dementors remembered their alliance with the Dark Lord from the first war he had waged, and all of them kept away from the prison, hovering high above the water instead, out of the way. The guards were easily subdued, for there was only a handful compared to the army the Dark Lord had brought with him.

The prisoners who had been let out of their cells stumbled warily onto the sand, crossing the gravel, and some even dipped their bare feet into the freezing water just to feel it on their feet, wet and clean and real. Freedom. It was a symbol of freedom, no matter how cold, and they savoured the water, the air, the sand crunching beneath their toes. The others kept their distance, wrinkling their noses at the smell and state of their compatriots, but the Dark Lord approached each one in turn and pulled them into a quick, tight hug, thanking each one for their loyalty, for their service to his cause. Their cause.

“My Lord, please wait?” Antonin finally rasped out, just as the first Portkey to Malfoy Manor activated. It wasn’t his one; he was taking the Portkey with Voldemort, Lucius and the Lestranges, the last one to leave. “Please?”

Voldemort chuckled, commenting on Dolohov’s strange attachment to his place of imprisonment. They watched him, smirking, but Antonin didn’t return to the prison. He walked, instead, until he was waist deep in the water, shivering from the cold.

“Are you there?” He asked, voice almost silent, and he knew that there was no chance Harry would hear him if the boy hadn’t already been sitting underwater watching them. That was unlikely though. Harry had been hesitant to leave the water with only two guards standing out of sight. Here, now, there was at least fifty Death Eaters well within reach of the water, and only ten of them were wandless. “If you’re there, please, come out. No one will hurt you. You can come with us; surely you don’t want to stay here alone forever?” He paused, waiting, hoping, and then continued a little louder, sounding a lot more desperate, “Are you there?”

Something brushed against his leg, something soft and cold poked at his ankle, and Antonin crouched down to run his hands through Harry’s fur. “Stay with me?”

The Selkie gave a soft bark, but didn’t appear above water. When Antonin reached down to grab him, there was nothing there, no one swimming around his ankles, no soft nose brushing his bare skin. The boy was gone. Antonin trudged back to the shore alone, keeping his face down and hands clenched at his sides. Once he was beside the Portkey he held one hand out so that the fingers were against the rope and he waited.

“Dolohov?” Lucius asked, wondering if the man was insane as Bellatrix appeared to be.

Voldemort eyed him speculatively, before glancing over at the water that lapped the shore lightly but otherwise remained still. “What lives in the waters off Azkaban, Antonin?”

“A Selkie pup, my Lord. He turned fifteen in July. He saved my life that day.” He would say nothing further, not even in response to Bellatrix’s teasing, half-mad comments. Antonin stood in silence, ignoring the remarks, and Voldemort’s thoughtful gaze, and kept his free hand pressed to his lips until the Portkey activated.

He dreamed that night about the day Harry had saved his life and of the kiss they had shared. In his dreams he had been a free man, and that kiss had led to so much more than it had in reality. He had not ended up back in a cell, and he had not left Harry alone in the waters by Azkaban. Instead, Harry came into his arms, and Antonin came into Harry’s body, and they lay together, holding one another in this borrowed bed at Malfoy Manor, and in his dreams he was warm and happy and loved. And when he woke, he pressed his fingers to his mouth, reliving the feel of Harry’s against them, before allowing his hand to slip beneath his sleeping pants so he could relive his dream of other things Harry’s mouth had done.

XXX

August 1^st 1997. Ministry has fallen.

“My Lord?” Antonin whispered, voice cracking slightly as he spoke. He waited in the doorway of what used to be Lucius’ office, before Lord Voldemort took it for himself.

The man waved him in, and pointed at a chair, without looking up once. When Voldemort finally looked at him, Antonin was sitting patiently in a chair opposite the Dark Lord’s on the other side of the desk, his hands crossed in his lap. Voldemort glanced back down at the book he had been reading from, a small grin on his pale lips. He ran his hand through his dark hair, before trailing them lightly down his sharp nose. “Perhaps it is a good thing Potter went missing. Severus recently informed me that the result of my resurrection could have been a lot different, in my detriment, had I used the boy’s blood while his mother’s protection still existed within him. This book has mentioned, once or twice,” Voldemort gave a snort at that, remembering the numerous references the book had made, “that using Selkie blood in any potion is a very bad idea.”

He handed the book across the desk, still open on the page that Voldemort had been reading, and Antonin took it from him. Dolohov looked at the pictures of women naked but for cloaks of fur and leather, Selkies hidden behind their skins in human form. There was one of a man, smaller than the women and the men on the second page, slight and petit and beautiful, with the annotation ‘submissive’ written beneath him. Antonin trailed his finger over the picture’s face, imagining it was Harry in his place, leaning into his touch, smiling up at him and him alone.

“Was that what your Selkie looked like, my friend? Or was he more like those?” Voldemort pointed at the submissive first, and then at the males entitled ‘Bull’.

“The first, my Lord.”

“Describe him.” When Antonin merely look up at him in confusion, the elder Wizard waved his hand and smiled, “indulge me, my friend.”

Antonin couldn’t remember the Dark Lord being in better spirits since before the meeting at Hogwarts in 1958 when Dumbledore turned him down for Defence Professor. Dolohov and a handful of others had waited at the Hogs Head to congratulate the man who none of them had believed would be refused, and instead had ended up having to console him and avoid his anger. But this, talking of Harry, was making the man smile and laugh and forgive Antonin’s hesitance instantly.

“He was beautiful. He was small though, and young. He turned fifteen that summer, so he’d be about seventeen now. Harry was his name,” Antonin said, ignoring the way the Dark Lord perked up at that. But he continued, giving it no thought. “He had dark hair and green eyes, he was pale, but his fur was grey all over except for these little brown patches at the base of his tail and flippers, and a small white patch on his forehead. When he spoke, it was like wind-chimes, soft and musical, beautiful, and I wanted to do nothing but listen to him forever. He kissed me, you know, the day he saved my life. And when I asked him what he was, he told me that he was mine. And he kissed me.” His fingers were pressed to his lips again, tracing them lightly under Voldemort’s curious gaze.

“What day did he save your life?”

“I- I don’t know, my Lord. The days blurred together, but I think, I’m almost certain it was July. It was the summer for sure, because the nights weren’t as cold, and he first appeared when there was still ice in the air and that was months before I got sick.”

“July? Do you not think it to be coincidental that Harry Potter disappears, and a boy whose birthday is in July, his fifteen birthday in fact just as Potter’s would have been, appears at Azkaban with a strange marking on his forehead and grey eyes and dark hair, also named Harry? Would it not occur to you that they could be one and the same?”

“My Lord?” Antonin swallowed heavily. His throat was starting to hurt again, and he pressed a hand to it as he fought to swallow the saliva that was building in his mouth.

Voldemort handed him a glass of water, and the man drank it gratefully. “Oh of course you wouldn’t have known the boy ran away. But, well, were you informed that we captured Sirius Black? He tells me, most reluctantly however, that he and Harry had a very interesting conversation the week before the boy disappeared. They spoke, can you believe, about the boy’s Selkie grandmother, on his Mudblood mother’s side, though I suppose this would make her less of a Mudblood than we thought, hmm?”

Antonin didn’t know what to say, he couldn’t guess what he was expected to say, so he said nothing. Lord Voldemort watched him for a moment, holding his hand out until Antonin passed him back the book.

“It says here that submissive are males that are capable of acting the same way as women, bearing children, taken by humans against their wills and trapped without a skin. Some are loyal to human mates, and some escape to the sea. His mother was loyal. I wonder what he will be. Impregnate him and he will stay for the child’s sake.”

“You wish for me to force myself on him?” Dolohov looked understandably horrified at the thought of harming the boy who had saved his life, of harming Harry who he had come to believe he was in love with.

“Of course not, that would only inspire the boy to escape from you once the child was old enough to abandon. But, if he said he was yours, it means he has chosen you as a mate. He will give you a chance to prove yourself the better option than the sea. Be warned though, if you bring him here and then let him leave again, he cannot return to the same human for seven years.” Dolohov nodded, rising from his seat as Voldemort waved him towards the door. “Go and get him, bring him here and he will be safe, I promise you. However, if he will not come, take him as far away as possible, my friend, and never let me see him again.”

“Yes, my Lord. Thank you, my Lord.” Antonin bowed as he walked out of the door, closing it softly behind him.

The Ministry had fallen that morning. More than half of the Order of the Phoenix were dead or imprisoned in Malfoy’s dungeons awaiting Azkaban, and the others were on the run. There was no one left who would imprison Harry, for Antonin would not use force to keep the boy with him. But perhaps? Yes, he thought to himself, he could do that instead. Sirius Black’s freedom and safety would be enough to entice Harry Potter home, if Antonin’s love alone was not enough.

XXX

August 10^th 1997. Azkaban.

“Are you there?”

It had taken a few days to convince Lucius to release Black into his custody, not to mention he had to get a house together, and some funds and a way to convince Harry that his skin would be safe at their home.

Antonin, with Voldemort’s help, had gotten the goblins to unfreeze his account, and he had purchased a modest sized cottage that boarded a forest on one side and on the other had a rather large manmade lake. There were fish and seaweed within the lake, and while it wasn’t quite the sea, Antonin hoped it would be a good enough gesture. Harry couldn’t live as a human forever if he kept his skin, but Selkie would never allow another to guard it for them. Perhaps Harry could hide it in the lake, swim there, for that wouldn’t really be leaving him, would it? Not if he was still on Antonin’s property, within their home? And he could have the best of both worlds, a human lover and a Selkie heart, and Antonin would never have to spend seven years without him.

Black lived there now, shaven and cleaned up and looking much healthier than he had in a long, long time. He was looking forward to seeing Harry as well, but for other reasons unlike Antonin’s own which revolved around thoughts that a godfather would rather not know about their godson.

And all that was left now was to find Harry Potter.

“Are you there?” He asked again, standing waist deep in the water in the shade of his old cell.

No body answered him, and Antonin cursed himself for hoping that Harry might have waited two years for him to come back. For all he knew Harry had left immediately after the Death Eaters had Portkeyed away. The boy had probably known who they were, who Voldemort was, and had been too afraid to leave the water, but not because he didn’t want Antonin.

“Harry please? It’s safe now. The Dark Lord has won, and there will be no more war, no more death and you’ll be safe. I’ll keep you safe, and when we have pups I’ll protect them as well. The Dark Lord has given his permission for you to live with me, to be mine like I am yours. He doesn’t want to hurt you, I swear it Harry. He has even protected Sirius Black. Black lives with me now, in the home I wish to share with you. Black is looking forward to seeing you again.”

Bubbles broke the surface of the water, and seconds later a head of dark hair poked up, forehead, eyes and nose above the surface, and Antonin waded further into the water to get closer to the boy. The water was up passed his neck when they were within touching distance, and Antonin flailed slightly to keep his mouth and nose in the air. “Harry,” he breathed, reaching out a trembling hand to cup the boy’s cheek under the water.

Harry rose up higher, floating easily in the water, so that his face was level with Dolohov’s own. “Why did you come back?”

“You told me you were mine. I’ve come to make you mine.”

Harry thought about it, like he had thought about it every day since he had first kissed this man. The sea was his home, but it was a lonely home, especially since he had been afraid to migrate in case Antonin ever came back for him. Sirius and Antonin would be at his new home, and the man had spoken about pups as if it was a guarantee, as if there would be pups and a family of his own. No one else had promised him that.

But to give up the sea? To give up his skin to a human, like his mother had, to burn or destroy or imprison it and himself by association?

“You cannot have my skin.” Harry told the man firmly.

“There is a lake on our property. It is rather large. Would it suffice in place of the sea?” He stroked Harry’s cheek, firmer this time, enjoying the way the boy pushed his face against his hand. “You could hide your skin yourself, use it when you wished, and hide it again later. If you stayed on the property, surely you wouldn’t feel the urge to leave and never come back?”

Harry considered it. Then he thought of something Hagrid had told him the first time they went to Diagon Alley. Gringotts was the safest place beside Hogwarts that anyone knew of. Surely, if Harry wanted to keep his skin safe on his terms, he could put it into his vault? For now, he would hide his skin at the lake, if it was a suitable lake, just until he could determine who could and could not enter his vault. If it was safe, that was where his skin would stay, once more in the same place his mother had hidden it for him years ago. If he needed it then, it would be there, and he could escape to the sea if the need arose. But he would not destroy it, because it was a part of him, a necessary part, and unlike his mother, he had no pup or husband to keep him tied down as a human. Maybe in the future, but right now, he would try this life again and keep his skin for a day when he truly needed it.

“I’m old enough to mate,” Harry whispered, pressing forward in the water until he was chest to chest with the Death Eater.

Their mouths met then, and it was furious and desperate and hungry. Teeth clashed and lips bruised, and Antonin clung desperately to the teenager in his arms, trailing his hands across the boys back and waist and groin that was already achingly hard. The harder Harry kissed him, the closer Harry got to him, the harder it was for Antonin to keep his head above the water. It was difficult to breath with the boy fused to his mouth; they only broke apart briefly so that Harry could pull at the buttons of Dolohov’s trousers. Naked skin pressed against his clothed body, Harry’s skin floating loose around his neck, and Antonin’s trousers sliding off of his legs and into the water. Harry pulled at the shirt the elder Wizard was wearing, kissing hungrily again.

They sank together, mouths joined and hands exploring, and hips thrusting desperately against one another. Bubbles escaped from Antonin’s mouth as his eyes snapped open wide. They were over two feet under water, Harry having pulled them out further into the sea as they kissed, and for a moment Antonin panicked. The boy was trying to drown him! The boy had betrayed him! And then Harry let out a high pitched whine, spreading his legs and arching his groin up into Antonin’s own, offering himself for the taking.

Selkie’s mated underwater.

Selkie’s had sex underwater, Antonin reminded himself, taking a mental deep breath. He tried to calm his heartbeat and fought the urge not to breathe in seawater. A spell kept him from drowning, but it wouldn’t last long enough to do to Harry what he wanted or intended to do.

Briefly, he wondered if his house elf would know to draw a bath the way it knew to have tea ready before a guest even arrived. Then, he held Harry tightly to him, the boy’s legs around his waist, hard cock pressed against his stomach with his own bobbing against Harry’s arse with each wave. Their mouths met again, deep, dizzying kissed exchanged between the two new lovers, and Antonin apparated them both away with a crack.

They landed together with a splash, in the full bath, in the master bathroom, with Harry spread out willingly beneath him. Just waiting to be taken. So Antonin took him.

The End

Thank you for reading! Please leave a review? Cause it’s been a really, really shitty last couple of days!
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Beneath The Skin