An Unexpected Dip and An Unexpected Friend PV Clark Stellan

May, 2026

As Spring continued its inevitable march on towards the Summer months, the days had not only gotten longer and longer, they'd gotten hotter... and hotter... way, way, way too hot, in Henry's opinion. He was a boy who enjoyed crisp Autumns, when the wind was blowing, but not too hard, only coming inside because it was dark or storming. Not this nonsense. This? Being stuck in a crowded, ancient, stuffy stone castle with no air conditioning and hundreds, possibly thousands, of preteens and teenagers for hours on end, especially when it seemed as if only some of them seemed to appreciate the finer points of basic hygiene? This was Hell. It felt like he was being baked alive, and when the professors really got going with the more monotonous parts of their lectures, he might have been guilty of letting his head droop down to catch a wink or two. Wasn't his fault! It was basic biology or something. Maybe. Probably.

At least there was the lake. And for an outdoorsy kid like Henry, and one who had a thriving imagination and who heard 'there's a giant squid in there, ya know', well... obviously the most reasonable course of action was to go try and find out if that was true. So once classes finally let out for the week, he high tailed it out there. By the looks of things, he wasn't the only one who decided to find relief by the water's edge. He saw a few groups of students who'd come out here to do some art or homework or get some reading in. That wasn't a bad idea, in his mind. He might come out here with an essay or his guitar or something one of these nights. But today he had a mission.

And that's how our little Hufflepuff found himself 'borrowing' one of the boats and taking it out on the water. As far as he knew, that was perfectly fine to do. Hadn't seen any rules saying he couldn't, at least. Not that he'd asked first, but... that was future Henry's problem! And so, with unearned confidence that he had any idea what the bloody hell he was doing, he took a shaky leap onto one of the boats.

Now, because of the nature of his slightly too spirited leap, the boat was currently in the process of taking that momentum an 80 pound almost twelve year old had brought with him and steadily carrying itself and him out onto the lake. Great! That was, in fact, precisely where Henry had wanted to go in the first place. However, while the potential consequences of the possible rule breaking involved in borrowing one of the boats without asking might have been future Henry's problem, current Henry's problem was figuring out how to steer this thing. He hadn't actually thought that part out. Bugger.

Oh well, he might not have really known how to steer a boat, but if things went sideways he knew how to swim, more or less. Or at least not drown. At least on a good day. And as the vessel made its way out of the boathouse, he had to admit, despite the blasted heat, it was a particularly beautiful day. The sun was shining, the water of the lake was a gorgeous, placid blue rivaling the color of the sky, dragonflies were skimming the surface, birds were singing in the trees, the wind was cooler out here on the water, and it all was enough to make him forget his worries for a bit and just be.

Rifling through his pocket, he fished out a few Berty Botts Every Flavor Beans. He couldn't quite remember where he'd gotten them - probably from a friend. Or it's possible he'd picked them up off the Hufflepuff Table during dinner after they'd fallen out of someone's container. Or maybe they'd been the target for one of the spells he'd been trying to learn. Regardless of their origin, they were his now and he was a little hungry, so, after extricating a bit of errant pocket lint that had entwined itself around one of them, he popped one in his mouth while peering into the water passing beneath his little watercraft, keeping an eye out for anything giant and tentacle-y.

Now, as a muggleborn, and a first year, Berty Botts were not something he'd had very much experience with as of yet. Mostly he'd just seen some people eating them, and they always seemed to have one of two reactions - pleasant surprise or unpleasant surprise. This first one leaned slightly more towards the unpleasant side of that spectrum. Spinach wasn't something Henry hated, per se, but biting into a deep forest green bean expecting watermelon and winding up with a chewy, sticky bit of sludge that tasted decidedly like creamed greens fresh out of a can made his face screw up with displeasure. Plucking the slightly masticated bean from his mouth, he slipped the mass into the depths below his wooden boat.

Maybe red would be cherry, he decided. That normally wasn't a flavor he liked in jelly beans, but if they'd managed to perfectly capture spinach, surely genuine cherry in candy form would be miles better than the artificial muggle attempt. Annnnd that's two for two with the unfortunately flavor pulls that ended up in the water, because following up spinach with what tasted like a tomato made him feel more like he was out here trying to beat the heat on his boat eating a tiny gummy salad instead of indulging in a post-class snack. Hopefully these beans were nontoxic for the fish, colossal cephalopods, and whatever else was swimming in these waters.

He squinted at the pink one. Surely pink could only be candy floss or something pleasant. Unless they made beans that tasted of brains? Or raw meat? They wouldn't. ...But they were called every flavor beans. This time, he took the smallest, most exploratory of bites, then sighed with relief as his mouth filled with the flavor of chewing gum instead of uncooked animal products. Surely whatever bad karma he'd accumulated by commandeering the boat was over, and so this brown one he tossed in his mouth while gazing over the edge at a particularly beautiful fish would be a delicious, rich, amazing chocolate ca- dirt! That's dirt! The bean tasted like he'd taken a handful of bloody potting soil and chowed down on it!

And with his flailing at the assault to his taste buds, and with a tremendous splash, it wasn't only the bean that ended up in the water this time - it brought the eleven year old with it. Henry swam back, his eyes wide and frantic, afraid the boat was about to tip over on top of him. His clothes grew heavy about his limbs as water flooded the fabric, and his panicked mind imagined he could feel a tentacle wrapping itself around his leg. While the boat righted itself and continued on its way, as it turns out, you don't need to get bonked on the head by a boat for 'yeah, I basically know how to swim' to turn into 'oh, wait, do I actually?', you just have to be a particularly freaked out eleven year old boy who is mistakenly under the assumption that an overgrown piece of calamari is about to eat him for a change. "Help!" He shouted as tears filled his eyes, barely able to keep his face above the small waves that had seemed so peaceful only moments before, "Please!"