Magic and physical reality informed each other. The existence of conjuration as a field proved that. And everything could be described via a breakdown of thaumic centres. Normally I would make an anchor by metaphorically folding magic into a shape and telling it to stay. What if instead of simply applying enchantments to an object, I ritually modified the object's thaumic centre to simply have the enchantment exist as a property of its being? The enchantment would anchor itself in magic just as solidly as the actual necklace was. Legacy would take care of the rest on its own.
Given how Babbling had thought anchoring in magic itself to be novel, I was forced to wonder if I'd accidentally stumbled upon something entirely new. Frankly, I wasn't even sure if it still qualified as an enchantment anymore. The more I thought about it, the more I thought it resembled actual transfiguration. Theoretically permanent transfiguration, at that. That was big. Massive. The only thing I knew for sure was…
"I'm not going to be able to finish these necklaces by the time Harry gets out, but I'm definitely onto something," I said, and curled over my journal to work long into the night.
Date to Remember
The week after Harry's disastrous quidditch match was an emotional rollercoaster. Harry was sulking, which made sense for all that it was annoying to deal with. Ron tried to make him feel better by pushing broom catalogues under his nose. If anything, it made him feel worse. Not that he let it get in the way of his sensibly annoying Hermione-sitting duties. I tried to use it to get him to
talk about it, but…
"There's nothing to talk about," Harry had said tersely.
"Of course there is," I'd insisted. "You loved that broom!"
"Yeah, I did, and now it's gone. Sitting here and moaning about it won't bring it back, will it?"
So we sat there and sulked instead, which I felt was a distinctly less productive way to go about things.
Still, I tried not to let it get to me. I had a brand new theory to work with. I asked Babbling about the idea of modifying a thing's thaumic centre directly to give it an enchantment, and she had gotten
visibly excited. It was hard to blame her. I was excited in a way I hadn't been since the Diary too. I ended up spending the majority of my free time with her that week, which I couldn't much complain about. Being excited about magical theory beat sulking over a lost racing broom any day.
Babbling and I quickly determined that the theory itself was workable, but had some practical problems that I just hadn't thought to consider. Namely, the fact that in order to modify a thing's thaumic centre, you first needed to have a working understanding of it. The more complex the object, the harder modifying it got. It meant that step one was to find a material magically resonant enough to reliably enchant and simple enough to be workable.
"Luckily," Babbling said with glee, "Gringotts has already done that legwork for us. British goblins are famed the world over for their magical metalcraft, so we have access to their material datasheets! Dead useful stuff."
I blinked. "I'm shocked they were willing to share."
She waved it off. "Part of the surrender conditions for the rebellions in the late 1800s. Apparently it's why they're so willing to employ humans as curse-breakers. All their real big secrets are already out. Not to say they don't have new secrets, but I figure that's pretty fair honestly."
That didn't quite sit right in my mind. If I recalled correctly—and I was reasonably sure that I did—then those rebellions had been in protest of the goblins' status as second-class citizens. It was a feeling easily quieted. I was coming to learn that very little knowledge in the world was come by innocently.
Babbling stood and grabbed a particularly thick book from one of her shelves. "So given that we want something decently magically reactive for this first go to get proof of concept, I think…" She flicked through several dozen pages with a wave of her hand. "Ah, there we go! Perfect. Looks like silver's our best bet. Magically reactive and stable enough to work with. Gold's a bit too eager for a test case. Enchanting gold's careful work. Stuff tends to take on a mind of its own if you let it. Need to overload your anchor, which sorta defeats our point here doesn't it? So, silver. It'll need to be pure, of course."
I winced. "I was hoping to use something like iron. Pure silver's more expensive than I was hoping for."
"Eh, iron kills magic dead. Useful if you're enchanting it to do just that, bit tricky though. Not ideal for a proof of concept. That's the way it goes." She shrugged. "But I'll bet silver's not as expensive as you think." With a grin, Babbling reached into her pocket and pulled out a single galleon. She tapped it once with her wand and it transfigured itself into a stack of 17 sickles. "Boom. Pure silver."
"But isn't that transfigured silver? And how do we know it's pure?" I leaned in to take a closer look despite myself.
"Well, all wizarding money's pure. No alloys there. And I did say that goblins were genius at this right? Don't know how, but it's not transfigured. It's real silver, and real gold, and real bronze, all at the same time. At least, it is until I do this!" She pulled out another galleon and waved her wand over it in a complicated spiral. A stream of yellow light which flipped my stomach to look at flew from the galleon into each of the sickles as the galleon grew more and more transparent until finally disappearing without a trace. "There we—well that's an odd reaction. Are you all right?"
"A bit nauseous," I said as I stared at where the galleon had been. I had a sneaking suspicion about what I'd just seen. "What was that?"
"Just a complex bit of sacrificial disenchantment. Goblin work's a bit too sophisticated to use something simpler, you… You really look queasy. Do you need to lie down?" Babbling reached one hand halfway across the table before stopping herself.
I shook my head. "No, I think it's just my condition acting up because of—" The other thaumic inversion. "—that spell."
She eyed me. "You know, you never did say what your condition actually was. I might be able to avoid this sort of thing if you let me know."
Silence stretched out while I searched for an appropriate answer. "So those sickles are just normal silver now?"
"Just normal silver," Babbling said after a long moment of her own. "Receptive enough to enchant easily, pure enough that it's not going to cause problems for our modification. It won't be too hard to mould these into shape with magic. I can go ahead and do that. Shaping spells are easier for me than you, and I don't think they're covered until your fifth year anyway…"
With that, we set to work, setting the pace for the week. Despite Babbling's excitement and me dedicating what free time I had outside of classes and homework (which I had pointedly not slipped on, thank you very much), it wasn't until late on Thursday that we managed to get a proof of concept working. It was horribly simple: a little silver ball that glowed when held in the palm of the hand. Our first anchorless and runeless enchantment.
Babbling had jumped for joy. I was tempted to join her but for how thoroughly exhausted I was.
"We need to publish this!" she'd said once she managed to sit still again. "I'll write it up, don't worry about that, then I can send it on to some friends of mine to take a look at before submitting it to a journal or two. You know—" She stopped when she saw my floored expression. "Right. Suppose I should ask. I assume you don't
mind if we get this knowledge out there? Didn't take you as one for keeping magic to yourself, but stranger things have happened. For what it's worth, I think that it would be a
fantastic way to get your name out there early. This sort of thing is why I'm a professor at eighteen, after all."
I blinked a few times. "I didn't think… I knew this could be big, but I'm fourteen. Surely someone older's already figured this out?"
"Ah!" Her grin reasserted itself. "That's what those friends I mentioned are for. Check things up and make sure we haven't just reinvented the wheel. If it is new though, then I'd be happy to put your name first on the byline. You're the one that came up with the concept and realistically speaking did most of the work. I just put a slightly more experienced eye on it."
"Well that's…" I considered it. It wasn't like I was opposed, just slightly shocked. No part of me anticipated making any groundbreaking discoveries while still in school. I liked to believe I
might someday but, well, someday. I'd imagined I'd have to live longer for that. The idea of leaving something like this behind on the chance that I didn't find an answer for my condition… I found that I liked it. Quite a lot, in fact.
"I think that sounds amazing," I finally said.
Babbling hopped up in that air again as if unable to keep it contained. "Perfect. I'll write it all up, let you know when it's done so you can look it over. It's your work too, after all!"
She checked the time soon after to find that we were well past curfew. She wrote me a pass and dismissed me, but not before I got her to thaumically firm another few sickles. Well away from me, mind. I was not keen on experiencing that nausea again.
Thankfully, there were no classes the next day. That wasn't something I said often, but I was truly grateful for the time. I spent the day transfiguring a few silver necklaces and enchanting them to be waterproof and grant their wearer good health. Both of those enchantments were actually surprisingly common, which made it easier. I found a detailed description of their makeup in a book Babbling had lent me,
The Enchanter's Cookbook. Just a bit of effort to translate them to ritual and then translate
that to a modification on the necklace itself, and my work was done.
I looked up from my ritual circle to see that the sun had set and that Harry and Ron both were fast asleep on Hogswatch's couches. There was a picnic basket off to my side with a half-eaten meal. Strange. It made sense that one of the boys would go and get something to eat, but I didn't remember eating at all.
It was lucky that the boys were used to me by this point, else I knew for a fact that I'd have long since starved to death.
It occurred to me while I was getting ready in the morning that normal girls probably did things a bit differently than I did. To prepare for a date, they worried about hair, or makeup, or clothes—which I was to an extent, but only because I didn't have a bathing suit packed, and drying charms were a nightmare to plot ritually. They probably did worry about jewellery, but I'd bet they were more worried about how it looked than making sure their potentially revolutionary enchantment had taken well. I knew for a fact that their morning preparations involved a lot less reading about mermish culture.
It wasn't like I could ask any of the girls in my dorm for advice either. Fay Dunbar was the only one left who didn't blame me for the petrifications, and she was nowhere to be found. So, I did my best. Put on something light that wouldn't weigh me down in the water or get in the way of my soon-to-be gills, tie my hair back tight so it wouldn't float all around me like it was wont to do, that sort of thing.
The panic felt normal, I was pretty sure. Dad had once told me all about how nervous he was before his first date with Mum, so that was good. Because I was. Panicking, that is. My normal approach of studying and preparing well in advance wasn't working so well either. Sure, I could know the eight traditional greetings of northern isle freshwater merfolk and how not to offend them, but it wasn't like anyone had taken the time to actually write a book on how to impress a girl that I might maybe like and that probably liked me for some reason! I had checked. Twice. I was about a second away from asking Madam Pince herself before Harry and Ron had physically dragged me away from the library.
"Come on, stop worrying. It's time for lunch," Ron said with a roll of his eyes.
"I can't! I don't know what to do!"
"Eating lunch isn't that hard," Harry said. I got the sense that the boys truly did not realise how serious a situation I was in.
"I don't think I'll be able to eat," I grumbled, slumping down. "I'm too nervous, I might vomit."
Ron looked me over to make sure I wouldn't bolt before letting go of my arm. "Didn't think I'd ever see you acting this girly. Figured you'd just marry a library someday and be done with it." That earned a laugh from Harry. The first one I'd heard from him since the quidditch game the week before. Hearing that calmed me down somewhat, but brought a revelation: they definitely didn't realise the severity of the situation.
"See, this is
why I stick to the library! Books don't judge," I huffed, resigned to the fact that the boys were taking me to lunch.
"Don't take you swimming in the lake either," Ron said.
"There are spells for that." It sounded pitiful even to me.
"Look," Harry said. "Weren't you excited for this?"
I sighed. "I am, of course I am, it's just… I spent all this time making necklaces for the merpeople and I read Luna's book on them and I even did my hair, sort of. It's just… It's dumb."
"Hermione, come on," Harry pushed. "It's
you."
Ron nodded along. "Don't think you could be dumb if you tried."
"I was just thinking…" I closed my eyes and braced myself because saying my worries out loud always seemed to make it more real in my head. "What if she doesn't like it? Me?"
A moment passed before Ron breached it. "Nevermind. You're right. That
is dumb."
"I'm serious!" I said. "What if we go down there and come back and she decides she doesn't like me, or what if I say something wrong or weird?"
"Yep, properly thick," Ron said.
I glared at him. "Just because it's not about you doesn't mean you get to make fun. I'd like to see how you do before your first-ever date."
"Hermione, you've met Luna, right?" Harry asked, successfully diverting my attention. "I don't think you need to worry about saying something weird. She's probably got that covered."
Well, that was… about right, actually. "You know what I mean."
"No?" Harry said while Ron echoed it with, "Not really."
"I mean, what if Ginny's right?" I asked in a small voice. "Maybe I should just go back to the common room and wait for this to be over."
Ron snorted. "If you did that, then Ginny'd
really hex you."
"Maybe that would kill me and get it all over with," I muttered darkly.
I caught Ron giving Harry a look, who just shrugged. Our entrance into the Great Hall saved them from having to come up with an actual response. I looked over to the Ravenclaw table to see Ginny sitting across from Luna, the rest of the Ravenclaws giving them a wide berth. Luna smiled when she saw me. I answered it with one of my own, hoping I didn't look as nervous as I felt.
Finally sitting down proved me right. The food looked delicious as always, but the idea of actually eating any of it made me nauseous. Ron seemed to have noticed given how he'd taken it upon himself to heap things onto my plate and urge me to eat. Much like he had with Harry over the past week, now I thought about it. I managed to get down most of the soup before my stomach started turning properly.
Most of the lunch was spent with Harry and Ron trying and failing to bring me into conversation while I boiled with anxiety. My newest realisation was the worst of all: I'd brought gifts for the merfolk, but not for the person I was actually dating. That was a thing, right? You brought gifts? God, I had no idea what I was doing.
Or would that be 'Powers' instead of 'God'? I wasn't even Christian really, that was just a thing you said, but did I think of the Powers as gods? Sure, there was definitely something concrete here, but I didn't know if I exactly wanted to deify it. I didn't even know the name of the religion. I'd checked around. You'd think that if you had a whole terrorist resistance movement about it then you'd at least put out pamphlets or something. Surely they'd have got at least a few curious people that way. There was almost a legitimate campaign to be had there. The murder and torture and muggle-hating would have to go, but that was no big loss, and—
I became suddenly aware of Luna putting her head on my shoulder. Ginny was sitting just across from us wearing a mix of amusement and annoyance across her face. Harry was stifling a laugh himself, and Ron was outright giggling. Traitors. I shot the boys a glare, but they seemed to think that was even funnier.
Luna sat up properly when she noticed. "I don't know where you went, but I hope it was nice."
"I was just thinking that the Death Eaters should have put out pamphlets," I said honestly. Harry and Ron gave me a weird look, but Ginny started laughing out loud in earnest. Great, the date hadn't even started yet and already I'd said something baffling. It wasn't even my fault! Luna had just caught me off guard like she always did!
"Maybe fewer people would have been hurt that way," Luna agreed. I relaxed some. It was Luna. Of course she'd be fine with me saying something strange.
Ron gave us both a look. "What would they even put in them? 'Come on down to our creepy cursed manors! Dark arts classes on Fridays?'"
I rolled my eyes. "Well, I imagine a large part of their 'cause' beyond the blood status nonsense was about religious expression. It wouldn't be the first time someone fought a war over who worships what."
"Daddy says that lots of Death Eaters believed in the old faith," Luna said, catching my attention immediately.
"Is that what worship of the Powers is called? The Old Faith?" I stopped. Why hadn't I considered Luna as a resource here? And after all her comments about it. "Wait, Luna, do you believe in that?"
"I believe in lots of things." She shrugged. "Daddy never taught me anything about the Powers, but I've felt them since forever ago. I don't know if that's what it's called exactly, though it works well enough, don't you think?"
"Should've known this is what you two going out would look like," Ginny said, standing. "Right then. See you lot later."
Harry spoke up as Ginny walked off. "Yeah, you don't need us to escort you, do you? Wood wants me to try out some school brooms." His expression soured and I waved him off.
"We'll be fine," I said. "I'll see you both later."
Both boys gathered their things and left quickly, seemingly glad to have an excuse to get away. I wasn't sure whether it was the idea of dating, Death Eater religion, or just them being weird about girls again, but they were gone in an instant.
"So, the lake?" I asked, hefting my bag onto my shoulders and standing. Luna smiled and stood up too.
"I think so, yes. Maybe the wrackspurts won't follow you there."
Then she grabbed my hand. She'd done that before. Plenty of times. But it was just friendly then, and now there was
context and
expectation and
meaning and I was pretty sure there was soup on my hands and my palms were all sweaty and I was gross and I just knew that this was going to be the thing that killed me. Thaumeal Inversion had lost the race. Thalergenic Shock too. Neither the slow unravelling of my thaumic centre or its chronic tilt towards Death could compare to the horror of holding the hand of a girl I kinda-sorta-maybe liked.
Luna looked around my head and frowned. "Oh no, they got worse!"
"It's fine, they're fine," I said like a liar. "Let's just go?"
Thankfully, she accepted it and led the way. "I told Daddy about today, and he sent me this dragontail cutting. They're meant to give good luck." She gestured to her hair, which was tied up in a bun with a glowing blue cattail. It honestly sort of suited her. "He said to watch out for aquavirus maggots, though."
"What do they look like?" I asked, knowing there were even odds they didn't exist.
Luna shrugged. "I don't know, but running into them would be a good way of finding out, don't you think?"
More than even odds, then. "Not sure I like the sound of an aquavirus. I'm already in enough trouble with my healer."
Luna kept up a running commentary along those lines, talking about creatures both real and likely imaginary. Magical creatures weren't precisely something I knew too much about. It made something of a game out of trying to determine what was real, what was imaginary, and what was probably a subjective manifestation of magic. It took my mind off my worries, which I was beginning to suspect was intentional by the time we got to the Black Lake. Once we approached the shore, Luna let go of my hand to start removing her shoes. I missed it immediately.
"You said we'd be using gillyweed?" I asked as I sat down on the bank to follow her lead. "I don't think I actually know all that much about it. I meant to look it up, but I've been a bit busy."
Luna smiled at me. "It's native to the mediterranean sea, so it's not very common here. If you eat it, you'll grow fins between your fingers and toes and gills on your neck. It only lasts for about an hour, so I brought extra just in case." She produced a jar filled with a slimy looking plant from somewhere in her robes. An extension charm in the pockets, I thought. Clever. "We won't be able to talk, though. Unless you know Mermish?"
I shook my head. "No. I'm decent in French and Latin and picking up Cumbric thanks to you, but no Mermish."
"That's okay. The merfolk know that we can't talk, so they won't mind." Luna bounced up to her feet. "Are you ready?"
"Not yet, actually. Gillyweed doesn't make us any warmer, does it?" I eyed the lake suspiciously.
"No, why?" She cocked her head to the side without a care in the world.
"Luna," I said slowly, "It's the middle of November."
"I thought it was. It's nice to have confirmation. Sometimes I lose track."
"Luna."
"Yes, Hermione?"
I sighed, knowing I wasn't going to get any more of a response. "Just come here. Luckily, I've already planned for this." I quickly pulled my spellbinder out of my messenger bag and produced a multi-target warming charm I'd made up for just this purpose. It was a bit of a lazy thing. Using Hogwarts as an infinite spell battery was far too easy for how useful it was. Forget blood magic,
that was addictive. I had actually needed to make sure the spell would end once we'd gone in the lake and come back again, otherwise it would have kept going right up until our next Hogsmeade visit.
"Is it still luck if I knew you would? You're always thinking about this sort of thing." Her voice didn't betray the slightest bit of doubt, and I felt my cheeks warm at the praise.
It only took a few moments before the spell was cast and the chill faded from the air. While Luna basked in the feeling, I retrieved the necklaces I made. They were just silver chains, but I was more than a bit proud of them.
"You were talking about how the merfolk like jewellery, so I made these up. They're enchanted to grant the wearer good health. You've met them before, so I thought they might take it better coming from you?" I eyed my miserably unenchanted school bag. Another thing for the to-do list. "You'll probably be able to hold onto them better too, with your enchanted robes and all."
Luna lit up at the sight. "I've got a better idea!" Without hesitation, she took the necklaces from my hands, split them into two groups of three, and placed one of the groups around my neck. The other, predictably, went around hers. "How better to show them they're good to have than to wear them ourselves?"
It felt a little silly to be wearing three identical chains around my neck, but I couldn't complain with Luna beaming at me like that. Besides, she had a point. Smiling back at her, I pulled my hair through and over the chains as she produced a long, slimy leaf for each of us. Luna plopped hers in her mouth as soon as I took mine, and I followed suit.
My first thought was that Luna had made some sort of mistake and given me something completely inedible. My second was that gillyweed must be a potion ingredient of some sort, not typically eaten raw. It would make sense, knowing both Luna and having become keenly aware of how horrible potions tended to taste. It was slimy and rubbery, sort of salty and horribly bitter on the tongue. I almost spit it out, but Luna's completely unperturbed face kept me from it. It was just typical that even though I'd long since reached a point where I was unfazed by ritual bloodletting and daily batteries of horrendous-tasting potions, I was almost defeated by a weed. There weren't really any upsides to the bloodletting—if it stopped hurting then the sacrifice wouldn't be as effective, after all—but at least with potions I didn't have to
chew. I could just pinch my nose, close my eyes, and swallow.
And then I started suffocating.
I opened my eyes in alarm to see Luna faceplant directly into the water. Right. Gills. I started sprinting after her, diving in as soon as it became deep enough. Relief came instantly, even as I felt itching where my fins were growing in. I turned my hand back and forth a few times, just watching. I gleefully took a moment to register that I had just eaten a bloody leaf and become more adapted to life underwater than on land. God, I loved magic when it wasn't killing me!
A look at Luna showed she was matching my no doubt goofy grin with a slightly more reserved one of her own. We floated there in shared delight for a moment before Luna pointed a webbed hand deeper into the lake and started swimming. I followed dutifully, endlessly thankful that Luna had been sensible enough to wear trousers into the lake.
The light from my hair clip grew brighter and brighter as we swam deeper and deeper, giving form to dark shapes in the water. It was pretty in an alien sort of way, with shimmering forests of tangled weeds and grasses stretching out below us and on into the dark. A good home for grindylows if I recalled correctly. Luna kept us on a course well above it, presumably for exactly that reason. No doubt she'd more than read ahead of her year on magical creatures. A few curious fish wandered up to us, and we stopped more than once so that Luna could pet them properly. The fish seemed ambivalent, but Luna was happy as anything.
As we got deeper and deeper and I got more and more used to the feeling of catching water between my fins and my gills, I began to become increasingly aware of a sort of pressure from above. It wasn't debilitating per se, but I knew for a fact that it would have driven the air from my lungs had I any to spare. I imagined I might not even
have lungs under the effects of gillyweed. That particular thought was as fascinating as it was quietly unsettling. I had some reading to do, it seemed.
Eventually, slowly, light made itself known from ahead of us. It resolved itself into a village as we approached, with buildings hewn from stone and dotted with dull flameless lanterns all around. All around, there were merfolk going about their day and shooting us the odd curious glance. They looked all at once familiar and strange. Like all the drawings I'd ever seen, they
were mostly human from the waist up. Their grey skin, green hair, and eyes in all shades of yellow stood out, though.
Luna swam forward in a sort of wiggly side-to-side 'S' motion, something I remembered to be a casual greeting. I quickly followed suit and was met with answering greetings from the curious onlookers before they returned to what they were doing.
The village was nestled between massive rocks jutting out from the ground and built to take full advantage of the verticality. It made sense, even though I'd never even considered it before. If they could move in all three dimensions, why wouldn't up and down just become another direction? Luna kept us moving in and down to the centre, where there stood what was clearly a town hall of some sort. We swam down and into the door as if we belonged there. I couldn't help but wonder if Luna's confidence came from her previous visit or just her being herself. Both, I imagined.
We entered into a central room full of all sorts of merfolk going about their business, scattered singing echoing around that I knew wasn't English but that I could still understand somehow. Right, Mermish
was a magical language, wasn't it? Completely comprehensible to anyone who heard it, but only under certain conditions. I'd have loved to learn if I had the time.
Luna led us to a mermaid wearing bangles on her hands and arms and seemingly directing the flow of traffic. She stopped what she was doing when she noticed us and approached with a smile full of sharp teeth. Luna twisted her body in a complicated greeting wiggle I recalled to be a sort of equivalent to a bow. I replicated it as best I could.
"Look how the silver one returns to us, and with a friend!" the mermaid called with a harsh voice, and the bustle around us slowed to a near stop. "I must say I am surprised! Most students do not venture back a second time." Luna made a happy little wiggle that I was pretty sure didn't mean anything actually. The mermaid's smile widened a fraction, and she turned to me. "It is nice to meet you, brown one. I'd ask your name, but your kind has ever so much difficulty speaking down here. I'm Chieftain Murcus, welcome."
With a look to me, Luna pulled her set of necklaces off and held them out. I didn't need any words spoken to follow suit. A small wave of exhaustion hit me immediately, creeping into my muscles slowly. We had swam a rather long way, hadn't we? It was good to know the enchantment had taken properly, but I was not looking forward to the swim back.
The mermaid took one of the silver chains from Luna's hands. "A gift?" she asked, and placed it around her neck. "And one spelled so kindly! We've not just wand-wavers and crucible-dwellers in our midst, but an enchantress besides." Chieftain Murcus took the rest of the chains from us and slung them around her arm. "Which of you do I have to thank for this most generous gift?"
Luna gestured to me with a smile while I tried not to fidget.
"A very good new friend, then. We accept your gifts with grace." She looked to the side. "Sialis, show our guests around, will you? The brown one has the look of someone with many questions."
A merman looking to be about our age emerged from the crowd to swim up. "If that is your will," he said reverently
"It is indeed." With that, she looked back around, raising her voice. "Everyone else, let's not gawk at our new friends. We have a winter to prepare for!" Everyone around us returned to what they were doing almost immediately, though we still earned a few curious looks from the younger merfolk.
"Come, follow me," Sialis said. "If I am to answer questions, then you must be able to ask them." He led us over to an alcove carved into the side of the stone walls and produced from within a stone stylus and a clay tablet bearing a woven grass strap. "I may not speak it, but I read your English passably. This will be a good time to improve. Perhaps we will both learn something today."
His tone was genial, and Luna accepted the tablet gladly. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't in a fantastic mood too. Here was this underwater culture like I'd never experienced, and they'd produced the idea of writing in clay independently. Or maybe it was a response to seeing the writing of Hogwarts students. I couldn't help but wonder if there was some sort of convergent evolution which had happened.
Luna took the stylus to the tablet with glee evident in her movements.
'Hello. My name is Luna. This is Hermione.' She took the time to write out my name phonetically, which I appreciated.
Sialis seemed to read the text greedily. "Well met. I would speak your names in kindness, but I fear they are not of the People's words. The cradle would eat the sound before it even left my lips."
I took the tablet from Luna almost immediately.
'Cradle?'
"Ah, yes," he waggled his lips in a way I didn't recognise. "There is the cradle here, and the dry crucible above. You are crucible-dwellers like Chieftain Murcus said. Built to boil, and not to be swaddled in the depths."
I took that in but was already onto my next question.
'Why do you use clay tablets? Can you not make something lighter to write on from the resources you have?'
Sialis made a sort of gurgling sound that I imagined to be laughter. "Ah, this is why I find you of the crucible so interesting! You keep your records in great stacks of hewn wood. It is strange. You will find that here we share knowledge in the form of song. Much more convenient, I think."
I couldn't see how something as easily forgotten as a song was any more convenient, and I was about to say so when Luna took the tablet from me.
'We were hoping to see the bones in the base of the castle.'
"A mind for morbidity, then." Sialis gave a very human shrug. "Very well. Follow me. Perhaps while we swim we can teach each other something of our homes. We might all come away smarter."
Luna shouldered the tablet's strap and Sialis led us out of the village hall and between the buildings of the town. He told us about his neighbours and the lives they lived. There was the home of Anio who bred caught grindylows to be used as pets. There was poor Depin passing us by who had recently come down with scale rot. I told Sialis that the necklaces I'd made were enchanted to promote good health, and he assured me that the condition sounded worse than it was. We passed by a mermaid who bore the universal look of a harried mother who called to her children not to bother us. The children complained, but relented from grabbing at our 'strange hair'.
It seemed that they were just people living life underwater. Dimly, I recalled that merfolk weren't actually considered 'beings' by the Ministry. I felt disgust rise in my throat at that. First werewolves and now merfolk… How many other types of people were facing discrimination? It was no wonder that the Death Eaters had managed to recruit nonhumans of all sorts to their cause.
Finally, we left the village proper and descended down into the depths. Sialis spoke of how his people hunted and grew their food, how the thick grass the grindylows liked to hide in was woven into baskets and ropes, how the children would play a game of going near the surface to scare the Slytherins in their common room. Luna and I asked questions as we could, given that our hands were being used to swim. Sialis answered every one of them easily and with his stilted sort of politeness.
He even asked a few of his own, so we told him about Hogwarts, and what it was like to breathe air, and how it felt to use magic like we did, and what the flying shapes in the quidditch pitch were, and what a forest was. Sialis seemed particularly interested in my muggle upbringing, so I spent quite a bit of time shouldering the tablet awkwardly to write while we swam. Toasters seemed to be of particular interest to him, and I got the feeling that Sialis was going to be experimenting with the idea when he got back home. I wished him the best.
Luna and I had each eaten another far more palatable gillyweed leaf by the time we finally got to our destination. The Black Lake was far bigger than I had ever imagined from the surface.
"Here we are," Sialis finally said as we approached a monolithic wall of unrefined stone and mud which reached up into an unfathomable darkness. "The bones of your ancestors. I doubt I will need to, but duty compels me to ask that you treat this place with respect."
'Death deserves dignity,' Luna wrote. It seemed to be enough for Sialis, and he waved us forward. I thought about that as we swam up to inspect the wall. The words seemed to stick in my mind. Death may be deserving of dignity, but I didn't think that it ever got it. Death was ugly. It was sobbing in the middle of the night with curtains drawn, and mornings afterwards too numb to feel anything. It was being poked and prodded by a healer with stern instructions and words that might be gospel. It was fear and agony and sorrow and an almost unacknowledged relief at release. Death only got its dignity when you gave up. I remembered the book of poems Grand-Mère Granger had read me once. It was still sitting in my trunk. I'd never really managed to part with it, especially not now.
Maybe death deserved dignity, but the Diary had taught me that the world wasn't fair. People didn't often get what they deserved.
A nudge from Luna brought me out of my head, as she so often did. She was smiling softly at me, pointing up at the wall we were now much closer to. It took me a moment to see in the gloom, but there it was. As far up and down as I could see, there were bones of all shapes and sizes. Not just human bones, either. There were skulls big enough that they could only belong to giants or trolls, and little ribcages in the limestone that could only belong to house elves. Bones and bodies as far as the eye could see sprawled in any direction I cared to look.
Because Hogwarts was a castle for a reason. It had been built as a bastion against the Angles and Vikings and as a place of safety amongst hardship for centuries. It was the only truly safe place in the UK for magical folk of any kind leading up to the enactment of the Statute. Only after, when magical numbers were too diminished for anyone to go to war with anyone, had it become nothing more than a school. Before that, though? It had been a castle for six hundred years, and people built castles for a reason.
Our lives were built on corpses who had fallen to make us safe. Hogwarts said that safety was an illusion. It was a castle; a bastion, and I didn't think that it had ever really forgotten that. Somehow Luna had realised how desperately I needed to see this. I'd do what I could—what I must—because no bastion stayed safe without blood.
I hugged Luna tight and didn't let go for a long while, my tears wicked away by the water.
Silias led us back to the village solemnly before bidding us goodbye. Luna and I gave him back the tablet and thanked him for sharing everything he had. He thanked us in turn, and we'd left on good terms. I wondered idly if I'd ever have time to visit again. The swim back to the surface was uneventful save for a glimpse of the giant squid in the distance.
We timed it almost perfectly. Just as we reached the edge of the lake, Luna's gills and fins began to fade away. She walked up onto the beach almost seamlessly. I tried to follow suit, but my fishy features seemed stubbornly stuck on. Luna wrapped up in a towel to wait. And wait. She just sat there in contented silence the whole while, as I wracked my brain to figure out what could possibly be happening. It took an embarrassingly long time to come to a conclusion.
Progressive Thaumeal Inversion left me progressively more sensitive to magic. I'd realised that before, but only in terms of how I could feel it. It only made sense that I'd be more sensitive to magic's actual effects as well. Every second that passed from that realisation was a reminder of how precarious a situation I was in, turning a sort of contented resolve into muted panic.
It took almost forty-five minutes after Luna left the water for my gills to start to recede, something they took their time to do. Forty-five minutes. Gillyweed was only supposed to last an hour. If that was any litmus, then magic's effects would be nearly twice as effective with me. I did the maths as I finally surfaced. My death may be projected for August, but how long would it be until I was a barely-present spirit floating around as a subject of any and all whims that magic cared to have? How long would it be until I simply didn't have it in me to keep looking for a cure?
For better or worse, the gillyweed had shown me that I had far less time to work than I thought.
Luna didn't comment on it, for which I was grateful. She simply helped me dry off in the suddenly much colder air and gather my things before we wandered across the field and up the stairs to Hogwarts' entrance. Ginny was standing just inside, trying to be nonchalant. I made an effort to return to reality long enough to say goodbye.
"Thanks for inviting me," I said. "I learned a lot, and figured some things out too."
Luna smiled, and I realised we were holding hands. "I did too. Would you like to go help me feed the thestrals next week?"
"I'm not sure I'd be able to see them," I answered. Luna just hummed. "But I'd love to." It surprised me a little how much I meant it.
"Don't let the derk sprites convince you of anything. They're very rude." With that, she kissed my cheek and skipped off with Ginny in tow.
My hand rose to my cheek almost absently as a smile forced itself into place. A very strange goodbye for a very strange girl, but I found I couldn't be happier about it. It was with that same dumb grin that I marched up the stairs and all the way to Hogswatch.
I had a date with Corvus Blaec, and I couldn't afford to be late.
