The Ripple Effect
Can a merperson fall in love with a human?
Ask any merperson and they'll tell you 'no.' Not by nature but by principle. Any sentient creature, capable of complex emotion, can fall in love.
Or so you'd assume.
But the merpeople of the Black Lake do not dally in such naïve human failings. Failings, yes, because that's what it is—to fall in love. It's a weakness, a mistake, a natural flaw.
A failing.
We did not form, nor would we be able to sustain, such a well-structured and durable system of living as our colony had if we were to do so. Ours was a system based on rules and cooperation, harmony with each other, conformity and, above all, the total distancing of our kind with the humans that dwelled in the nearby castle.
Few of them even knew we existed.
And while love was not a foreign concept to our kind, per se, it was still frowned upon. There was tenderness between relations, naturally. A mother would care for her offspring, but she would never be too attached. We were expected to work in harmony, to find kinship in every fellow merperson within our colony.
But at the end of the day, that's all we were. We were a colony, a tribe, a family. And personal attachment or preference in any kind would disrupt that system. The whole colony would be thrown into chaos.
They called it 'The Ripple Effect.'
Just one drop of water—one tiny, insignificant drop of water—can set off a chain of reactions, ripple by ripple. One small disturbance on the water's surface can upset everything.
And so the same with love.
It was unnecessary, it was often considered belittling to oneself, and it was disruptive. If two merpeople were to fall in love, what would happen?
They would become distracted and lazy, work would be neglected, and relations with the rest of the colony would be strained. And then what? Where can one go when confined to a lake? Albeit a big one.
Banishment was rare in the Black Lake colony, but not unheard of. Those who were banished (often for something more extreme than mere distraction—mutiny, mainly, or vast corruption of one's morals) often died quickly. Either due to lack of resources or lack of protection—two things the colony provided in abundance.
I had heard of few choosing to leave.
But both of those things had happened in my lifetime—merpeople choosing to leave the colony and merpeople being banished, all in the name of love. It starts off simply. Attachment leads to distraction, distraction eventually leads to neglect, and once one merperson isn't pulling their weight, the rest of the colony feels it.
The Ripple Effect.
But despite having witnessed it, it was surprisingly rare. We feel emotion like any creature, even more complexly than most, but, like the pallid grey skin we're covered in, we are cold. Cold to emotion that otherwise seems pointless.
Relations with humans were unheard of. Our chief didn't even like us mingling with other underwater folk—he had a particular disliking for the Giant Squid—but humans were strictly off limits, and everybody knew it. We did not communicate with them, we didn't even look at them—we weren't ever supposed to be near the surface anyway. There were no exceptions, not even the Headmaster of Hogwarts himself.
And that was the way we liked it.
"Can a merperson fall in love with a human?"—a question I was foolish enough to ask aloud, shortly after having reached maturity, for no other reason than innocent curiosity. I was always asking questions I wasn't supposed to.
It was, apparently, not a question of whether you could or couldn't—it would never be possible, given our strict no-human-interaction rule. One must see a human to do so. One must interact. It was only a few days later when I came to know the latter wasn't true.
Whether it was possible or not didn't matter anyway—it was shameful.
My question was scorned and dismissed, and I knew, from that moment, I was under the watchful eye of the superiors within our colony. Asking a question? Nothing problematic in the slightest. Enquiring about humans? Not inappropriate, but not really encouraged. But sooner or later, one thing might lead to another. An innocent question may lead to curiosity, which may lead to a thirst for answers, which may lead to something as heinous as actually going out of one's way to interact with humans and seek those answers directly.
The Ripple Effect.
It was winter when I first saw him. He looked to be my age, though it was difficult to tell how age translated between humans and merpeople. He was young, nonetheless, but well-matured.
Maybe it was because he was the first one I ever saw. Maybe it's because he was genuinely beautiful—pale, sculpted face framed with soft, brunette curls, and eyes as piercing as cut glass. Maybe it was both of these things. Or maybe it was neither, but something else, something indescribable. Whatever it was, he was mesmerising.
My gentle retaliation by travelling to the surface of the lake was reason enough to get me in trouble, but it was curiosity that pulled me closer. I hadn't expected to find a human boy sat by the edge of the lake.
He never saw me. Not once in all of the transpiring events, and certainly not then. My skin was grey against the water, my body almost fully submerged save for my eyes and forehead, and my thick green hair as it fanned out against the water's surface probably looked like nothing more than tendrils of waterweed. It was the perfect natural disguise.
A book lay open on his lap—a foreign object to me at the time, but one I would see variations of over the years, in the hands and arms of the students that passed by or settled by the lake's edge to read. His face was hardened in concentration, his eyes gleaming with greed and desire as he scanned the pages. A wooden stick lay in the grass beside him—I knew it contained magic.
Why was he alone? Why was he all the way out here by the lake's edge? I would learn such things were common in summer, but not in the heart of winter, surely. The air was crisp and the water was chilled but the boy didn't even wear so much as a scarf. Perhaps, like the merpeople, he was simply cold—the kind of bodily cold that meant he wasn't affected by the chilling atmosphere. And what was he reading?
All questions I longed to know the answer to but knew I could never pursue. Curiosity would lead to seeking answers, maybe even interacting with this boy, and then what? Where would the Ripple Effect lead? Humans asking us questions? Would humans appear in the lake!?
I watched him for what felt like hours, awed and intrigued. He murmured things to himself, shaking magic out of his stick every now and again, eyes greedily flicking through the book—a book of magic I now assumed. I longed to know more.
I watched him leave, temporarily ducking under the water's surface in case he might see me, but he never even glanced at the lake. He was tall for a human boy, as I would come to learn, and his shoulders were broad, hunching up slightly as he clutched the book to his chest. I watched his figure as it retreated back to the castle, and continued staring long after he was gone.
'Tom' they called him. Human news rarely travelled to the Black Lake, but Tom Riddle's name certainly did. 'Rubeus,' 'Tom,' and 'Aragog' were the three names that passed through our waters, all stemming from some new movement in the Forbidden Forest—the forest that lined the lakeside—revolving around an Acromantula and a scandal in Hogwarts castle.
I talked to the Giant Squid. That in itself could get me banished, I knew, as our chief loathed the creature—it made him feel inferior. But I found the Squid fascinating. It took me a while to figure out how to communicate with it, for he didn't speak Mermish. In fact, he didn't speak at all. We communicated instead through a form of sign language created by ourselves. Like me, he was lonely, and I think that's what drew me to him.
It wasn't that I was 'alone'—how could I be? I lived amongst a huge, thriving community. But something was missing. Some part of me craved the solitude I found from drifting away every now and again, sometimes to interact with the Squid, and sometimes to watch the human boy. It was during these moments when I most felt fulfilled, when I most felt like me.
The boy often returned to the lakeside, always alone and always with a book or two. Like me, I could tell he was curious. He was seeking answers, but for what, I didn't know. I longed, more than anything, that I could help him. Perhaps we could have an exchange—he could teach me things, and I could teach him things, too. But to violate our colony's laws in such a way would be fatal for me. If my rendezvouses to the surface of the lake or with the Giant Squid were discovered, there would be no hesitation in my banishment.
And yet I kept going back.
I noticed a multitude of similarities between the three of us—the squid, the human, and the merperson—though we couldn't have been more different. First and foremost, we were alone. We were loners, myself and the boy by choice, and the squid for reasons unknown (his origins were an ancient mystery to the inhabitants of the Black Lake), but loners nonetheless. We had that sorrow in our eyes, cold and hollow. We had an overwhelming curiosity and a desire for answers beyond our understanding. We were different, neglected, and craving a solitude most people did everything to avoid.
My craving to watch the human boy heightened to that of an obsession. Every day, risking exposure to the humans and banishment from my colony if I was discovered, I travelled to the surface of the lake in the hopes that I might see the boy they called 'Tom.' He wasn't always there, but more often than not he was. And when he was, I felt cathartic.
There was something hypnotic about him, and not just because he was a human, but because he was him. The grace with which his hand flicked, magic flowing from his wooden stick, the passion in his eyes as he scanned the pages of whatever book he had that day, the power, the calm authority that he exuded—all of it left me nothing short of awed.
And then, one day, he never came back.
For days—weeks—after his abrupt disappearance, I travelled back to the surface, a sense of despair gripping my stomach. But I never saw him again.
It left me feeling indescribably hollow. Not even the Giant Squid could offer me any comfort.
Tom Riddle's name still circulated our waters, but even that died out. It was replaced by another—one of darkness and destruction and death. We were safe in the lake, but we couldn't pretend that a strong sense of fear wasn't prevalent. We always felt it when the humans were in a period of darkness and war.
The Ripple Effect.
I saw many other human boys sit by the edge of the lake over the following years, and girls too. Only one other piqued my interest. Sadness in his eyes, desperately alone—the same thing that had drawn me to the first one. But he wasn't the same. He wasn't beautiful like Tom had been; his skin was too pale, his nose too crooked, his hair long and greasy and lifeless.
I wondered if Tom would ever find the answers he was seeking. I always wondered what became of him, whether he found true fulfilment in his life. Whether he ever found a companion…
I thought of him often.
I thought of how he had never even known I existed, never even known how deeply invested in him I was, fascinated by his every move and fascinated by every tiny physical detail. I thought of how, in all my years, though I had never once interacted with him, I had never felt more connected to one other being, nor as spiritually fulfilled as I was in his presence.
And I asked myself the question I had always pondered: Can a merperson fall in love with a human?
Originally written for the Quidditch League Fanfiction Competition Season 4—Round 4
Team: Holyhead Harpies
Position: Captain
Task: Write from the point of view of a creature (Merperson)
Cinema Competition II (by TheNextFolchart):
Finding Nemo – Write about any sort of creature. / "I look at you, and I'm home. Please...I don't want that to go away."