Harry's first awareness was pain.
Not sharp, localized pain like a cut or curse, but something vast and heavy, threaded through every inch of his being. It felt as if someone had taken his soul, rung it out like a wet towel, then stuffed it back inside his body without bothering to smooth the wrinkles.
For a while, he floated in that pain, half-conscious, mind drifting in and out of a thick, suffocating fog. Thoughts tried to form, only to dissolve midway. Faces flickered at the edges of his awareness—Teddy's bright grin, Andromeda's worried eyes, Calyssa's smile when she'd first stepped onto the shore—but they all slipped away like sand between his fingers.
Then, slowly, a single word surfaced through the fog.
No.
It wasn't loud. It wasn't screamed. It was quiet, steady, stubborn.
No.
Not like this. Not here. Not in some ancient tomb at the bottom of the Indian Ocean.
Harry clung to that thought like a lifeline and began the slow, agonizing process of reassembling himself.
First his breath.
Deep inhale. Slow exhale.
The water pressed all around him, but he didn't choke. His lungs responded, Titan and divine blood mingling with magic to pull in what he needed.
Then his heartbeat.
A slow thud, unsteady at first, then stronger. Stronger. Burning something dark and invasive out with every pulse.
Next, his mind.
That was the hardest part.
His Mindscape was still cracked and scorched from the Trident's assault. The echoes of rage, helplessness, and old traumas still rattled faintly in the corners. But he had fortified it again, stone by stone. Memory by memory. Teddy's laughter, Hermione's quiet trust, Andromeda's patience, Hestia's warmth—they were anchors he clung to while the last remnants of the Trident's influence hissed and died.
He would not be a weapon's puppet.
Not some cursed diary.
Not a primordial trident forged from the birth of the sea.
He was Harry Potter. He had died once and come back. He had stood before Death—literally—and refused to bow. A spear with nightmares inside it did not get to own him.
As that thought settled, the fog finally receded.
He opened his eyes.
Darkness greeted him—endless, swallowing, absolute. But unlike before, he sensed depth, pressure, currents. The faint gleam of distant creatures moving in the deep. The faint shimmer of magic in every drop of seawater.
He looked down at his hand.
The Trident of the First Sea pulsed there, solid and impossibly heavy, and yet it didn't strain his grip. It was black, still rippling slightly as if made of obsidian liquid, veins of dim blue light pulsing along its length like a sleeping heartbeat.
Harry let out a slow breath.
"You're real," he muttered, his voice rolling strangely through the water. "And you're still with me. Brilliant."
There was no immediate whisper in his head this time. No seductive hiss, no urge to crush or drown anything. The Trident was silent.
Not submissive.
Not obedient.
Just… watching.
"Good," he said under his breath. "We're going to have very strict ground rules, you and I."
He tried to move and realized belatedly that he wasn't in his human form.
His body was larger. Denser. His limbs felt elongated, muscles thick with raw power. When he glanced down, his skin was darker—shadow-black, inscribed faintly with glowing green sigils that pulsed in time with his heartbeat. Titan markings, the visible manifestation of his divine heritage.
Right. He'd gone fully Titan in the fight.
"Let's fix that," he said softly.
He focused, drawing his power inward, compressing that towering form back down. His bones shrank. Muscles coiled tighter. The markings dimmed, though a faint hint of them remained, like faint tattoos below the skin.
Within a few seconds, he was back in something resembling his mortal shape. Taller than an average man, yes. Stronger, obviously. But human enough to pass… if you ignored the glowing black trident in his hand.
His magic rippled as he stabilized his form. The Trident hummed briefly, reacting to the shift, and Harry winced as a strange, wild surge went through him—like the sea itself had momentarily tried to move his limbs.
"Oi," he snapped, tightening his grip, eyes narrowing. "No. We're done with that. You don't get a say in my body."
The Trident's light flickered once, then went still. The pressure eased.
"Thought so," he said, though his voice lacked real smugness. He was exhausted, and every inch of him felt like he'd run a marathon inside a dragon's stomach.
He took a moment to get his bearings.
He was somewhere deep—very deep—in the Indian Ocean. He could feel it. The weight of the water above him, the particular flavor of the currents, the subtle tilt of the tectonic plates below. The Trident seemed to act like a tuning fork for the sea; where before he could only sense magic, now he could hear the ocean.
And the ocean was loud.
There were ripples of fear from schools of fish. Confusion from whales. The distant hunger of things that mortals had forgotten existed. Waves unsettling themselves on the surface without wind. The entire sea was restless.
Did I… cause all that?
He grimaced.
"Yeah," he muttered. "That feels about right."
The last thing he remembered before fully waking was raw power flooding him, the Trident's will slamming into his own like a storm. It wasn't subtle. It wasn't careful. It was like someone dropped a second ocean into his veins. No wonder the real one had reacted.
He couldn't stay here.
Whatever happened with him and the Trident—whatever this new level of power meant—he needed to figure it out somewhere far away from forgotten tombs and ancient sea-wraiths.
He needed to go home.
Harry drew in another breath, let the ocean fill his lungs, and then started swimming.
At first, he moved cautiously. His limbs felt strange, too light and too heavy at the same time. His balance was off; the Trident wasn't just a weight in his hand, it was a presence that the sea itself responded to.
But as he pushed forward, his muscles remembered.
And then he became fast.
The water parted around him like a living thing, creating a corridor. The Trident's power hummed along his arms, boosting every stroke, turning effort into momentum. He cut through the crushing depths like a spear thrown by a god.
He passed trenches that might as well have been bottomless. Shadows moved there—vast, slithering, monstrous—but they did not rise. They watched. Observed. And then pulled back, as though bowing.
A megalodon skull lay half-buried in silt far below, the remnant of some ancient predator. New shapes, massive and sleek, swam around it, drawn by the awakening power in the sea. For a brief moment, one of them rose toward him, jaws parted—
Then it saw the Trident.
The creature veered away immediately, turning its enormous head and vanishing into darkness.
Harry eyed the Trident thoughtfully.
"Right," he muttered. "So you're basically the 'do not mess with me' badge of the ocean. Good to know."
He swam and swam, not bothering with time. His body didn't tire like it once had. His lungs never burned. His muscles never cramped. Divine biology and a primordial weapon did not really care about human limitations.
Still, it felt long.
Too long.
When at last the water grew lighter, Harry slowed.
Above him, what started as a faint grey smear became a full, rippling brightness. Sunlight, fractured and scattered into beams of gold, filtered down through the last few meters of sea.
He broke the surface with a sharp inhale, blinking against the sharp glare.
Blue sky stretched above him. Hot sun beat down. Waves rolled gently against his shoulders.
He turned slowly in a circle.
There—far in the distance—was land. The outline of an island, green and brown and familiar enough that a wave of relief washed through him.
Sri Lanka.
"Finally," he breathed. His voice was hoarse. "You have no idea how sick I am of water."
He didn't dare fly or Apparate. Not now. Not when his magic and the Trident's presence were still tangled together like knots in a rope.
He swam the rest of the way in human form, keeping his strokes moderate, using just enough Titan strength that it wouldn't take an entire day. The sea instinctively tried to help—currents pushing him, waves lifting him toward shore—but he kept that aid minimal. The last thing he needed was to accidentally trigger another unnatural tidal event and get blamed for a tsunami.
By the time he staggered onto the sandy beach, dripping and exhausted, he felt… wrong inside. Not in a dangerous way, but like every bit of his magic had been shaken and poured into a different mold.
He glanced at the Trident.
It had shrunk with him, now a sleek black weapon he could carry one-handed. He wrapped it in a Disillusionment Charm and a Notice-Me-Not spell—not perfect in his current state, but enough to keep mortals from screaming about a glowing void-spear.
There was only one way back to America he trusted right now.
Muggle transportation.
Which meant—
Harry sighed.
"Airports," he muttered darkly. "Why is it never anything simple?"
He made his way inland, dried his clothes with a careful, small charm, and forced his magic to obey him instead of the Trident's rhythm. It felt like trying to write with his off-hand, but it worked. Barely.
Getting to Colombo took longer than he liked. He paid in cash, kept his head down, and let the normalcy of buses and crowds and noisy streets act like a balm. People were yelling at each other over fruit prices, cars honked, kids ran, vendors shouted about tea.
It was so… ordinary.
By the time he reached the airport and managed to buy a last-minute international ticket, he was almost feeling like himself again. Almost.
He cleared security with a few subtly placed charms, nothing heavy, nothing that might backfire in his unstable condition. He kept a tight mental leash on the Trident, which lay hidden in a lengthened bag—just another piece of luggage to mortal eyes.
As he finally sank into the airplane seat and fastened the belt, exhaustion crashed over him like a wave.
He closed his eyes.
Then, suddenly, a thought cut through the haze like a knife.
How long have I been gone?
His stomach dropped.
He checked his watch, then realized it had stopped at some point in the ocean. He pulled out his enchanted timepiece instead—the one tied loosely to world time, not his personal perception.
He stared at the glowing runes.
Then checked again.
Then a third time.
"Three… months?" he whispered.
His heart lurched.
He hadn't just been gone for a few days, or even a couple of weeks. He had left America, his home, his family, for three entire months without a word.
No Iris-message. No letter. No Patronus. Nothing.
Teddy.
Andromeda.
Percy.
Sally.
Hermione.
The Grangers.
Calyssa.
The goddesses.
They would have been terrified.
They'd have thought he was dead.
He could practically see Andromeda pacing the Black Mansion floors, Creature wringing his hands, Teddy waiting at the window, asking when Uncle Harry was coming home.
His chest tightened painfully.
"Brilliant, Harry," he muttered to himself, fingers digging into the armrest. "You went to fetch one weapon and vanished off the face of the earth."
He leaned back against the seat, eyes burning, jaw clenched.
The airplane engines began to hum under his feet.
Whatever awaited him in America—questions, anger, tears, lectures—he would face it.
He had the Trident.
He had survived.
But he had also disappeared for three months without warning.
The moment Harry stepped through the wards of Black Mansion, the entire house shivered in recognition. Lights flickered awake. The air rippled with a familiar pulse of magic that had been absent for months. And before he could take another step—
"Daddy!"
A small blur of blue hair shot across the hallway like a launched missile.
"Teddy," Harry breathed, dropping to his knees just in time to catch the boy. Teddy crashed into him with enough force to knock Harry backward onto the carpet.
Harry wrapped his arms around the child with a trembling exhale.
"I missed you," Teddy mumbled into his shoulder, small hands gripping Harry's shirt with desperate force. "You… you were gone for so many days. So many! Percy said sometimes grown-ups leave and forget!" His lip wobbled. "You didn't forget me, right?"
Harry's throat tightened painfully.
"Never," he whispered, pressing a kiss to Teddy's hair. "I could never forget you, Teddy. Not even for a second."
Teddy leaned back, puffed his cheeks, and scolded, "Then why did you go for so long? You said one week. One week, Daddy!"
"I know," Harry said, brushing Teddy's hair from his face. "I got stuck with… important work. I'm sorry."
Before Teddy could say more, footsteps thundered down the stairs.
Andromeda Tonks burst into view, her wand already in her hand.
"Harry James Potter!"
He winced.
She marched toward him, scanning him head to toe like a healer inspecting a corpse for signs of life.
"Are you hurt? Are you injured? Did someone kidnap you?" She grabbed his chin and turned his head sharply left and right. "Why are you thinner? When was the last time you ate something proper? Merlin's pit—look at your eyes!"
"I'm fine—"
Andromeda smacked the back of his head.
"Ow! Andromeda!"
"You deserve that," she snapped. "You said one week, Harry. ONE! Do you know what day it is? Do you know how long you've been gone?"
Harry swallowed. "…Three months."
"Exactly." Her eyes flashed. "Three months of silence. Three months without a letter, a message! Kreacher and I nearly declared you dead!"
Kreacher appeared beside her with a sharp POP, arms crossed, ears stiff with disapproval.
"Master's disappearance was irresponsible," Kreacher said coldly. "Kreacher approves of Mistress Andy beating Master. Kreacher will get a frying pan if Mistress wants to hit Master more."
"KREACHER!" Harry yelped.
The house elf nodded firmly. "Master deserves."
Andromeda planted her hands on her hips. "So. Are you going to explain where in Hades you vanished to? And why the sea went insane at the exact same time you disappeared?"
Harry froze.
Teddy looked up at him, confused. "Daddy… did you make the sea angry?"
Harry's breath hitched. "What… what do you mean the sea went strange?"
Andromeda raised an eyebrow. "The Olympian goddesses came. Artemis, Hestia, Athena—every one of them. They said the entire Ocean went wild. Tsunamis almost formed. Ancient sea monsters resurfaced. Waves of magic shot out across the world."
Harry's hand tightened around Teddy instinctively.
"And," Andromeda continued, narrowing her eyes, "they all said the same thing—'We suspect Harry is involved, because he vanished right before it happened.' So tell me, Harry. Were you involved?"
He didn't answer.
He couldn't answer.
His mind flashed back to the underwater temple, the wraiths, the dream-sea, the sharks, the Trident screaming inside his skull.
The sea bending around him.
The wave he didn't realize he caused.
Andromeda's expression softened slightly.
"You look like someone who just carried the world," she said quietly. "Harry… what happened out there?"
Harry exhaled slowly and stood, lifting Teddy into his arms. "I'll tell you everything. But not here. And not standing."
"Good," Andromeda muttered. "Because I am not done yelling at you."
Harry managed a tired smile. "Wouldn't expect anything less."
Kreacher appeared with a plate. "Master must eat before explaining. Creature made soup. Master looks like he fought a dragon. And lost."
"I didn't lose," Harry argued.
"Master looks like he lost," Kreacher insisted.
Teddy tugged on his shirt. "Daddy? You're not going away again, right?"
Harry pressed his forehead to Teddy's.
"No," he whispered. "Not without telling you. Not ever again."
Teddy's arms wrapped around his neck in fierce relief.
Andromeda watched them, her breath easing. For all her anger, she couldn't hide the warmth softening her expression—it was the look of someone whose family had been returned to her.
Finally, she took Harry's hand, squeezing gently.
"Come on," she said. "Sit down. Eat something. And then… then you're going to tell us the truth. No lies. No half-answers."
Harry nodded.
Because the truth was coming for him—Poseidon's suspicions, the Olympian council, the dangerous, sleeping power in his hand.
He had vanished for three months.
He had awakened a primordial weapon.
And now the whole world—mortal and divine—would demand answers.
But first…
Harry hugged Teddy tighter.
First, he would be a father again.
Author's Note:
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