Hello, Drinor here. I'm happy to publish a new Chapter of A Nundu for A Pet.
If you want to Read 18 More Chapters Right Now. Search 'patreon.com/Drinor' on Websearch
Chapter 75, Chapter 76, Chapter 77, Chapter 78, Chapter 79, Chapter 80, Chapter 81, Chapter 82, Chapter 83, Chapter 84, Chapter 85, Chapter 86, Chapter 87, Chapter 88, Chapter 89, Chapter 90, Chapter 91, and Chapter 92 are already available for Patrons.
The Mediterranean stretched before Harry like a sheet of hammered silver, each wave catching the late afternoon sun in a way that made him think of Crystal-Harmony's scales. He stood at the edge of the water-darkened sand, salt spray misting his glasses, trying not to look as anxious as he felt. The magical barriers shimmered behind them like heat mirages, keeping curious Muggles from wandering into what would undoubtedly be a difficult scene to explain.
"Stop fidgeting," Nymphadora said, bumping his shoulder. Her hair cycled through shades of sea-green, which she probably thought was thematically appropriate. "You're making me nervous, and I'm not even the one whose underwater girlfriend is about to grow legs."
"She's not my—" Harry started, then gave up. Arguing with Tonks about this particular subject had become pointless.
Ted Tonks stood further up the beach, enchanting what looked like a wheelchair to hover. "Never thought I'd be part of a welcoming committee for actual royalty," he said, testing the chair's stability. "Magical royalty from under the sea, no less. Should I bow? Curtsy? I never learned to curtsy."
"You will not curtsy," Andromeda said firmly, though Harry caught the fond exasperation in her tone. She'd been reviewing diplomatic protocols all morning. "A respectful nod will suffice."
Minister Delacour stood apart from the group, speaking quietly with two healers he'd brought along. Their presence should have been reassuring, but it only reminded Harry of what Newt had explained about the transformation potion.
"It's not precisely painful," Newt had said, adjusting his bow tie for the third time—a nervous habit Harry had learned to recognize. "But imagine if your bones suddenly decided to split in half and rearrange themselves while your muscles learned an entirely new way of existing. Rather like being born again, but conscious through the whole affair."
Harry's hand drifted to his chest, where the Aqualis crystal should have been. The absence of its cool weight made his stomach twist. Would Crystal-Harmony understand why he'd given it to Anna Sallow? Sebastian's sister had been getting worse, the curse eating away at her faster than anyone had expected. The Aqualis crystal had been his last desperate attempt to help, and it had worked—somewhat. Anna was stable now, not cured, but stable.
She'll understand.
"How long did you say the transformation lasts?" Andromeda asked, moving closer to Harry.
"Twelve hours," Minister Delacour answered, his accent thicker with what Harry recognized as concern. "Before she must return to water, at least partially. The potion can be extended, but for a first transformation..." He shrugged eloquently.
"And you spent three weeks down there," Andromeda said to Harry, her tone thoughtful.
"When I came back from Abyssantica last year, I couldn't walk properly for four days. And I already had legs to begin with." Harry pointed out, still remembering the day he needed help just to go to the toilet.
Ted Tonks whistled low. "Four days? I fell off a broom once and only limped for two."
"It was like my body forgot how to walk. I caught myself many times trying to swim in my room." Harry said to Andromeda and Ted.
"Yet she's willing to go through worse," Andromeda observed, studying Harry with that look that meant she was seeing far more than he wanted her to. "You must have made quite an impression."
Tonks snorted. "An impression? Mum, he summoned a Leviathan for her. That's not an impression, that's practically a proposal in some cultures."
"It was to save the city," Harry protested, heat creeping up his neck.
"Mm-hmm." Tonks's grin was insufferable. "Very heroic. Very romantic. Very—"
"They're coming," Newt interrupted, pointing toward the horizon.
Harry's heart lurched. Five shapes moved beneath the water's surface, too fast and too large to be dolphins. The late sun turned the sea to molten copper, and through it, he could see the distinctive glimmer of RSH scales.
"Everyone remember," Minister Delacour said quickly, "this is an historic moment. The first official RSH surface visit in over a century. Please try to—"
The water exploded upward in a spray that caught the light like scattered diamonds. Five Royal Sea Horse guards burst from the waves, their powerful tails propelling them onto the shallows. But Harry barely noticed them.
Crystal-Harmony emerged from the sea like something out of the old stories Ted used to read him—water streaming from her hair, scales catching the sun in patterns that made his chest tight. For a moment, she was suspended between two worlds, neither fully sea nor land.
Then the transformation began, and Harry's relief at seeing her again twisted into something closer to horror.
Harry had expected something graceful, maybe a shimmer of magic like Nymphadora's metamorphmagus changes. Instead, Crystal-Harmony's scream cut through the salt air as her tail split. The sound went straight through Harry's chest, bypassing his ears entirely. Her scales cracked like breaking ice, revealing skin underneath that looked raw and new. Her tail divided with a wet tearing sound that made Ted turn green and Andromeda grip her wand.
The guards weren't faring much better. One had managed to land on his hands and knees, retching seawater while his new legs twitched uselessly behind him. Another had collapsed entirely, making sounds that suggested he was rethinking his career choices.
Crystal-Harmony hit the shallow water hard, her new legs crumpling like wet parchment. She went face-first toward the surf, and Harry moved without thinking, catching her before she could inhale half the Mediterranean.
"I've got you," he said, trying to support her weight while her legs seemed determined to bend in every direction except the right ones.
"Harry." Her voice cracked on his name, but through the pain he heard something else—relief, maybe even joy. She was shaking, her whole body spasming as it tried to figure out what legs were for, but her hands gripped his arms with desperate strength. "You're really here."
"Of course I'm here." He adjusted his grip, essentially holding her upright while she gasped against his shoulder. "Where else would I be?"
"I missed you," she whispered, so quiet he almost lost it to the sound of waves.
"I missed you too." The admission came easier than he'd expected. "Every time I saw water, I thought about showing it to you from this side."
She pulled back slightly to look at him, and despite the tears of pain streaming down her face, she was smiling. "Thank you. For being here. For watching my first steps on land." A particularly violent muscle spasm made her gasp. "Though this is... harder than I thought it would be."
"The air feels too thin at first," he said, steadying her as another wave of tremors hit. "And gravity's all wrong when you're used to water supporting you."
She laughed. "You didn't mention... the burning."
"That's your muscles figuring out they exist. It gets better. Eventually. Sort of."
"Sort of?" She managed to sound indignant even while her legs were staging a full rebellion. "That's not very reassuring."
"Would you prefer I lie?"
"No." She pressed her forehead against his shoulder, and he could feel her trying to get used to breathing in the air. "I came here for truth. For understanding. Even if it burns."
One of her legs gave a particularly violent twitch, nearly taking them both down. Harry caught her again, and she pressed her face against his neck. He could feel her breathing in desperate gulps, her body trying to remember that lungs worked differently in air.
"Your Highness," Minister Delacour stepped forward, somehow managing to look diplomatic despite the chaos of guards flopping on the beach like landed fish. "Welcome to France. We have prepared—"
"Maybe," Harry interrupted, "we could do formal greetings when she's not trying to figure out how knees work?"
Crystal-Harmony made a sound that might have been agreement or might have been her attempting not to vomit. Her legs kept doing things legs shouldn't do, bending in directions that made Harry wince. The healers hovered nearby, clearly wanting to help but unsure how to approach a princess who was clinging to Harry like he was the only solid thing in a world suddenly gone vertical.
"This was," she gasped, "an uncomfrable idea."
"The best ones usually are," Harry said, and felt her smile against his shoulder despite everything.
One of her guards—the one who'd managed to avoid face-planting into the sand—made a sound between a war cry and a whimper. His legs had apparently decided to work independently of each other, resulting in a movement that looked like an aggressive interpretation of contemporary dance.
"Princess," the guard wheezed, managing something approaching a salute while horizontal. "We... secure... perimeter..."
"You can't even secure your own knees, Reef-Shield," another guard pointed out, though he wasn't doing much better, having somehow wrapped his new legs into a configuration that looked philosophically impossible.
Crystal-Harmony tried to push herself up, and that's when Harry realized the transformation had been more complete than expected. The scales that usually covered her torso were gone, leaving skin that had never seen sunlight, never felt wind, never—
"Robe!" Andromeda's voice cut through his sudden brain freeze. "For Merlin's sake, someone get the princess a robe!"
A French Ministry witch practically materialized with a bundle of blue fabric, her expression professionally blank despite the chaos of naked former sea creatures flopping around the beach. Crystal-Harmony looked at the offered garment with the confusion of someone being handed a physics textbook written in ancient Sumerian.
"It's for covering," Harry explained, his face attempting to set some sort of land-speed record for blood redistribution. "Surface custom. We, uh, we wear things."
"But the scales are gone," she said, as if this explained everything. "The skin needs to breathe the air, yes? That's what you said about surface breathing."
"Different kind of breathing," Harry managed, helping her into the robe while desperately thinking about anything else—Snape in a tutu, McGonagall's disapproving face, that time Neville's potion exploded and turned everyone's eyebrows blue.
The guards were being similarly dressed, though one had managed to put his robe on backwards and was now stuck in a configuration that suggested he was either very flexible or about to dislocate something important.
"This is ridiculous," Crystal-Harmony declared, though she pulled the robe tighter when she noticed everyone staring. "In Abyssantica, we don't hide our bodies. They're just bodies."
"Welcome to surface prudishness," Nymphadora said cheerfully. "We're all terribly repressed up here."
Crystal-Harmony tried to stand again. Her legs had other plans, folding in ways that made Harry wince. He caught her before she could eat sand, and she ended up pressed against him, her hands gripping his arms hard enough to leave marks.
"Your sun," she said suddenly, looking up. "It's so... aggressive."
Harry followed her gaze. The sunset had turned the sky into a watercolor crime scene, all reds and purples bleeding into each other. To her eyes, used to filtered underwater light, it must have looked violent.
"That's just Tuesday," he said. "Wait until you see what it does at noon."
She laughed despite her legs currently attempting to pretzel themselves. "You warned me swimming through air would be different."
"To be fair, you're not supposed to swim through it at all."
The French Ministry witch approached with her wand raised. "Pardon, Your Highness. A mild stabilizing charm? It won't fix everything, but it might help with the... interpretive movements."
Crystal-Harmony nodded, then immediately regretted it as the motion made her newly acquired inner ear decide the world should spin. The spell washed over her in visible waves of silver light, and her legs stopped trying to exist in non-Euclidean space.
"Better?" Harry asked.
"Define better." She took an experimental step and only mostly collapsed. Progress. "Everything feels too light and too heavy at once."
Behind them, one of the guards had discovered that human stomachs didn't appreciate the transition from underwater pressure. The sound he made suggested his breakfast was making a return journey, though what exactly an RSH ate for breakfast was a question Harry decided not to contemplate.
"Perhaps," Minister Delacour suggested with diplomatic delicacy, "we should move to more comfortable accommodations?"
Crystal-Harmony straightened as much as her jellyfish legs would allow. "Yes. My guards and I would be honored." She glanced at her guards, two of whom were now somehow tangled together like a game of Twister gone wrong. "Stand at attention!"
They tried. It was valiant. One managed to get vertical for approximately three seconds before his knees buckled backward—apparently nobody had explained to his joints which way they were supposed to bend. Another attempted a salute and punched himself in the face.
"Close enough," Crystal-Harmony decided. "We maintain dignity through... creative interpretation."
"Very creative," Harry agreed, supporting most of her weight as she attempted something that might charitably be called walking. "You're doing better than I did. I spent my first day back on land convinced the ground was trying to eat me."
"The ground does feel hungry," she admitted, then her eyes widened. "Oh! The air! It has a taste!"
"That's just France," Ted called out helpfully. "Everything here tastes like cheese and judgment."
"Ted!" Andromeda scolded, but Crystal-Harmony was laughing again, the sound bright and strange in the open air.
"I like your family already," she told Harry, then promptly tripped over the revolutionary concept of sand being soft. Harry caught her again, and they ended up in a configuration that would have been romantic if she wasn't actively fighting her own skeleton.
"Steady on, Your Highness," he said. "We've got about eleven hours and forty-five minutes to teach you how legs work."
"Optimistic," she gasped, but she was smiling. "Very optimistic."
The Tonks family stood in what Harry recognized as their 'meeting magical royalty' formation—Andromeda in front with her perfect posture, Ted slightly behind trying not to make jokes, and Nymphadora vibrating with excitement that made her hair cycle through colors like an anxious rainbow.
"Your Highness," Andromeda said with a carefully measured curtsey that somehow conveyed respect without subservience. "We're honored to meet you. Harry has told us so much about you."
Crystal-Harmony, still using Harry as a human crutch, managed something approaching a regal nod. "The honor is mine, Lady Tonks. Harry speaks of you as his true family." Her legs chose that moment to remind everyone they were new at this, nearly buckling before Harry steadied her. "He said you taught him everything about proper magical society."
"Well, we tried," Ted said with a grin. "Though he still can't fold a napkin properly to save his life."
"Ted," Andromeda's voice carried that particular warning that suggested sleeping on the couch was in someone's future.
"What is a napkin?" She asked, looking confused.
Nymphadora had been staring at Crystal-Harmony like the underwater princess was a puzzle. Her hair shifted to match the princess's golden shade, then cycled through blues that mimicked her lost scales.
"You're a metamorphmagus!" Crystal-Harmony gasped, nearly falling over in her excitement. Harry caught her (again) and tried not to think about how this was becoming a pattern.
"Guilty," Nymphadora said, her grin wide enough to split her face. "Though nothing as dramatic as growing a tail. Best I can do is—" Her nose suddenly extended into something that would make Pinocchio jealous.
Crystal-Harmony's laugh was bright and delighted. "Harry told me about you! He said you once spent an entire Christmas dinner with your face stuck as his professor."
"McGonagall," Nymphadora confirmed, shifting her features into the stern Scottish professor. "He failed to mention it was his fault for daring me."
"You didn't have to accept the dare," Harry pointed out.
"It's like you don't know me at all."
Crystal-Harmony was studying Nymphadora with fascination. "Can you change everything? Could you grow scales?"
"Never tried scales..." Nymphadora's expression went thoughtful, and her skin began developing a pattern that looked almost iridescent. "Huh. That's new."
"You look like a very confused fish," Ted observed helpfully.
"Thanks, Dad. Really building my confidence here."
Minister Delacour cleared his throat in that diplomatic way that suggested time was money and they were bankrupting him. "Perhaps we should continue to the prepared accommodations? The princess's guards seem to be... struggling."
Harry looked back at the guards. 'Struggling' was generous. Two had discovered that sitting was easier than standing but hadn't quite mastered getting back up. Another was walking in a perfectly straight line, which would have been impressive if that line wasn't directly toward the ocean. The fourth was somehow going backwards despite clearly trying to go forward.
"Reef-Shield," Crystal-Harmony called out with as much authority as someone could muster while hanging off a twelve-year-old boy. "Report."
Reef-Shield saluted, hit himself in the face again, and said, "We are... adapting, Your Highness. The legs are... rebellious."
"Treasonous," another guard agreed, glaring at his knees like they'd personally insulted his mother.
"But we maintain vigilance!" the backward-walking guard declared, immediately walking into his colleague.
Crystal-Harmony sighed. "We're going to need practice."
"Look at it this way," Harry said. "You're already doing better than them, and they're supposed to be elite warriors."
"On second thought," Crystal-Harmony said loud enough for her guards to hear, "perhaps the land isn't so difficult after all."
The guards' attempt to look dignified while tangled in a heap was almost admirable.
"Your Highness," Andromeda stepped forward, "would you like assistance with your robes? They seem to be—"
"Falling off?" Crystal-Harmony looked down at the fabric with confusion. "Surface clothing doesn't stay properly. In water, everything flows together. Here it just... hangs."
"That's rather the point," Andromeda said gently, adjusting the robe. "Though I imagine it feels restrictive after a lifetime of freedom."
"Everything feels restrictive," Crystal-Harmony admitted. "The air presses differently. The light is too bright but also wonderful. And these—" she gestured at her legs with disgust, "—don't work properly at all."
"Give it time," Nymphadora said. "Harry, remember couldn't walk for four days."
Crystal-Harmony giggled, then looked surprised at the sound. "Even laughing feels different in air. Less... musical?"
"Everything's less musical when you're not underwater," Harry said. "Except Tonks' singing. That sounds like drowning regardless of the medium."
"Oi!" Nymphadora protested, her hair flashing red. "I'll have you know I have a lovely singing voice."
"For traumatizing small children, maybe."
"Your Highness," Minister Delacour interrupted smoothly, "I trust you understand that your presence here is of great diplomatic importance. The alliance between the sea and surface—"
"Will survive me learning to walk," Crystal-Harmony finished, managing to sound regal despite currently being mostly horizontal. "Minister, I appreciate your concerns, and I am very thankful for accepting me here, and I hope this is the first of the many steps between my people and your people." She said with the voice of a princess, and Harry was actually surprised and she tried to stand on her own, wincing slightly from the pain.
Harry blinked. This was the princess who'd commanded respect in the underwater council chambers, temporarily displacing the girl who'd just discovered grass existed.
Minister Delacour's expression shifted from diplomatic concern to genuine approval. "Your Highness honors us with your presence. Tomorrow evening, we are hosting a formal feast to celebrate the new accords. We would be delighted if you and your guards would attend. Suitable accommodations have been prepared at the Ministry residence, with appropriate water features for your comfort."
Crystal-Harmony inclined her head gracefully, though the motion nearly toppled her. "You are most kind, Minister. We shall be honored to attend your feast."
"We also have prepared rooms for you and your guards."
"Actually," Andromeda interjected, "we've arranged for the princess to stay with us. The cottage we're renting has been modified with appropriate water features."
Crystal-Harmony's royal mask slipped. "I can stay with Harry's family?"
Minister Delacour looked between them, and something in his expression softened. "If that is Your Highness's preference, of course. Though the invitation to tomorrow's feast stands. Twenty hundred hours, formal dress." He paused. "We can provide appropriate attire if needed."
"That would be most appreciated," Crystal-Harmony managed, back to princess mode despite her obvious excitement about staying with the Tonks family.
"If you'd like," Andromeda said warmly. "Though I should warn you, Ted snores and Nymphadora has a tendency to practice her morphing at inappropriate hours."
"It's called dedication to my craft," Nymphadora protested.
"It's called 'why is there a bear in the kitchen at 3 AM,'" Ted corrected.
Crystal-Harmony was beaming now, the princess facade cracking completely. "I would love that. If my guards—"
She turned to look at her guards. They had managed to achieve something approaching formation, if formation could be diagonal and involve two of them holding each other up.
"We go where you go, Princess," Reef-Shield declared, then immediately had to grab his colleague before they both went down.
"Very well, I already send word, there will be things added to your rooms, Mister Potter. To make sure Princess Crystal-Harmony is comforable," Minister Delacour said with a smile, and Harry bowed his head slightly.
"Thank you for your help, Minister Delacour."
If you want to Read 18 More Chapters Right Now. Search 'patreon.com/Drinor' on Websearch