Author's Notes: Could I get a flame? A flame would still be preferable to this dead, empty silence.


Lacu was anxious as she waited for Hugo the following week. Luckily he appeared a few minutes early, already in his swim trunks as he threw his Invisibility Cloak and towel on the grass. He ran up to the water grinning, holding something tightly in his hands.

"Guess what?!"

Lacu didn't answer; she was waiting for him to put his ear in the water so that she could remind him that she needed to leave for the festival. Instead he unclasped his hands, revealing something that looked like a ball of slimy worms. She stared at it.

"(Is that for me? It looks tastier than most of your other human food.)"

"I...don't know what you just said. But this'll solve our problem! See, I asked my Uncle Harry about that time he went to your village, and he told me all about how he and the other contestants did it. Some of them used this charm that lets you put a bubble of air around your head, and one guy turned himself into a shark, but that's all, like, sixth-year magic that I don't know how to do—but this is called gillyweed. All I have to do is eat this, and then I'll be able to breathe underwater for about an hour. I'll be able to go with you to your festival!"

Lacu's eyes widened, as did Hugo's grin. He seemed to be waiting for a response, then suddenly bent down, remembering that he had to put his ear in the water.

"That's incredible," Lacu breathed. "I've never even heard of a plant like that. Are you sure this will work?"

"Pretty sure! I looked it up in one of my mum's books. It grows down in, like, the Mediterranean—it'll be really hard to get more after this, but I figured that tonight would be the best time to use it. I had to buy this from my Potions professor."

(One week later, Professor Lemery would look through her meticulously-organized cabinet and be very confused to find a pile of Galleons where her supply of gillyweed used to be.)

"So what do you think?"

Lacu's head was spinning. "I think it's a great idea. I mean—maybe." She frowned. "But what if somebody sees you? You're still not supposed to be in the lake, let alone down in the village. And everyone will be out tonight celebrating."

He frowned. "Oh yeah." His shoulders slumped, sinking into the water. "Maybe you're right. And I really wanted to see this, too..."

He looked so disappointed that Lacu could hardly stand it. "Well...I mean, obviously you wouldn't be able to come down and sing in the middle of the town square—but you could still come and watch, I guess. If you hide."

Hugo's blue eyes perked up a little. "Really? You don't think anyone will see me?"

"I...probably not?"

He smiled. Then he stood, taking his head out of the water, and gave the gillyweed a determined look.

"Alright, then. Here we go."

He shoved it into his mouth and began to chew. From the looks of it he didn't like the taste, but he choked it down, panting a bit when he finished.

Lacu stared for a moment. "Did it work?"

"I don't—know," he said, staring at his hands. "My Uncle Harry said it would turn me into, like, a fish-man—he said it was different than a merperson, but I'm not quite sure..."

He trailed off, and a minute passed, and Lacu was starting to worry that it wasn't going to work. Then he let out a little gasp, and Lacu followed his gaze back to his hands—his fingers were growing, no longer short and stubby like a human's, but longer and pointed and webbed. He made a slight choking sound, but grinned as he pointed to his neck—gills were beginning to appear, opening up like bloodless cuts on his skin.

Hugo steeled himself and dove into the water—Lacu followed after him, and found him turning around to grin at her, taking a deep breath and kicking with his newly-webbed feet. They propelled him deeper, and soon he was kicking along just above the sand, following the lake-bed as it slanted into deeper waters.

Lacu couldn't help but laugh, both at his mood and his appearance in general. He no longer looked like a normal human, but nor did he look like a merperson—he still had legs, however altered, and while his skin looked less pink it was still covered in all those little "freckle" things everywhere that she could see. His hair was still bright orange-red, and his eyes remained small and blue; overall he looked even stranger than normal, stuck in a hybrid form between the two species. Yet he no longer had that human frailty in water—he seemed to move easily in it now, and looked absolutely delighted as he breathed in and out, flashing teeth that still were dull and square and shiny with metal "braces."

"(This is so cool!)" he cried—or at least tried to cry, for instead a large bubble came out of his mouth. He suddenly stopped swimming, his eyes turning down in surprise.

Lacu froze. "Hugo? What's the matter?"

"(I can't talk!)" he cried—another bubble.

"You can't talk?"

He nodded, and suddenly his shoulders slumped. He had really wanted to be able to talk to her—like a normal person, face-to-face, as they went around and saw all the awesome things she had told him about. All this had done was reverse their normal problem. Lacu noticed his disappointment and shared it, but only frowned to herself, trying to see the bright side.

"Well...that's okay. We can still swim together—we don't need to talk." She took his webbed hand in her, and he looked up to see her smiling at him. "Come on, follow me to the village!"

She began to swim, still holding his hand, and he followed. He could still not swim as fast or as well as she could, but nearly so, and as they dove deeper and deeper he began to smile again, gazing around in amazement. At first the water was too cloudy to see much, but it seemed to get clearer as they got deeper, and to him the whole scene was a marvel—the sand below them looked like some vast desert, with crabs and Plimpies occasionally popping out and walking along along the tiny dunes. There were hundreds of fish around them, some glowing or singing or shooting by with streams of bubbles from their mouths, influenced by all the magic coming from the school. At one point they had to stop dead in their track as a huge, dark shadow glided by mere feet in front of them, surveying them with an eye as wide as Hugo was tall.

"(The Giant Squid!)" Hugo tried to yell, his own eyes now wide with excitement. He squeezed Lacu's hand tighter, and again she could only laugh at how absolutely awed he was. Once it passed they kept going, and after a few minutes the outskirts of the village finally came into view.

It was not the underwater utopia that Hugo had envisioned, but surprise only made him more curious to observe it. Each of the dozens of little houses was small and made of stone, covered with algae but decorated with shells or pebbles or other little ornaments. A large statue of a merman stood in the center of town, and here was where all the merpeople had assembled—scores of them, maybe hundreds, men and women and children. They milled around, laughing and talking, and they saw everywhere, not only near the ground but up high enough to skim the rooftops and decorate the statue's head with garlands of seaweed. There were so many of them, and they all looked, from the shades of green in their hair and gray on their skin and what they were wearing and the ways they swam...

Hugo could barely breathe, and touched his neck to make sure that his gills were still flapping open.

They swam low to the sand as they approached; fortunately the rest of the town seemed almost empty, so they were able to get just outside the town square without being seen. "The opening ceremony is going to start soon," Lacu said as they ducked behind a house. "My parents will be looking for me. You stay here—I'll tell them I'm going to be singing with a group of my friends and come right back."

He nodded, and Lacu swam off. He spent the next several minutes trying to stay hidden, holding onto the house's side to keep from drifting every which way—he wondered how merpeople got used to something like that. Maybe it was just like wind to them? Finally Lacu returned. "Okay, they're about to start." She frowned again. "How long did you say you could stay?"

Hugo opened his mouth to speak, then remembered that he couldn't. He held up one finger. "An hour, right," Lacu said. "Well...you can hear the opening song, at least. But then we'll have to swim right back up to the surface." She was suddenly very worried—an hour wasn't very long now that she thought about it, and as amazing as it was to see Hugo move through the water so easily, it would only be for a short time...

A long, musical trill suddenly broke through the water. Hugo jumped, and Lacu motioned for him to look around the house, back at the town square. Merchieftain Siorc—a very large merman with a copious green beard—had swam up level with the massive statue's head, singing the long note as he brandished his spear. After a moment a few other merpeople swam a little lower and began to join him, with the music expanding outward until the entire square was singing.

"This is the opening song," Lacu whispered. She made a face. "I'm sorry it's probably all you've have time to hear..."

She stopped talking as she caught sight of Hugo's face. He was still holding onto the stone wall to keep from drifting in the current, but his face was completely placid, with an extra-dopey smile playing on his lips.

Hugo had researched merpeople a lot in the past year. One thing he read was that ancient Greek Muggles believed their music was so beautiful that any sailor who heard it would get hypnotized and crash their boat by mistake. Uncle Harry had mentioned hearing the merpeople singing, but nothing about it being particularly good. And maybe it hadn't been for him, but for Hugo...yeah, he thought. He could see himself crashing a boat while listening to this. Especially since sailing a boat was probably pretty complicated and Hugo was by nature easily distracted.

Sometimes it seemed like the merpeople were singing with words that he couldn't understand, and sometimes it seemed like they were just singing; Hugo quickly decided that he did not care which was right. It was a slow, warbling, kind of wet sound, and you could really tell that it was meant to be heard through the water. It was kind of...haunting, like it sounded sort of sad but made him feel really happy at the same time. And it was making his mind, which usually traveled a mile per minute, slow down and feel fuzzy, but in an enjoyable sort of way. It sort of reminded him of when he had met some of Aunt Fleur's veela relatives, who had been so nice to look at that he could ignore how being around them made his brain off-kilter.

"It's really pretty," he said simply.

Lacu blinked. "Um, thank you?"

Hugo wasn't sure how long the merpeople had been singing, or how long they were going to sing, but he just sort of floated there feeling calm and happy, occasionally glancing at Lacu and sharing a grin, when suddenly—

"HEY!"

Hugo's calmness instantly vanished as he felt a pair of pointed fingers digging into his bare shoulder. He spun around and saw a furious-looking merman, and behind him an adult mermaid who had grabbed Lacu by the arm. Another mermaid was with him, and before Hugo even had any idea of what to do she was swimming around the building and yelling in the town square.

"Merchieftain! Merchieftain!"

The music stopped within five seconds. Hugo's captor had suddenly spun him around and dug into his pockets—extracting his wand—then dragged him around the building and up the Merchieftain, who was having a quiet, furious discussion with the mermaid guard. Hugo twisted around and saw Lacu being dragged forward too, her eyes wide with fear. Hugo suddenly felt his stomach clench. It had never occurred to him to ask what the merpeople would do if they found out he broke the rules about coming into the lake. He groaned, letting a torrent of bubbles escape from his mouth.

Hugo could hear the crowd murmuring, and Merchieftain Siorc's eyes grew wide at the sight of them. "Who is this?!" he demanded, his voice booming.

Hugo gave what he hoped was a winning grin, but the Merchieftain's gaze was focused mostly on Lacu. She looked away fearfully.

A merman and a mermaid had come forward, the latter looking especially angry. Merchieftain Siorc focused on them. "Saegrund—Muisciuil. Crubag says that this boy from the Wizarding school was hiding out with your daughter. Did either of you know about this?"

"We did not," said Lacu's mother, and despite his predicament, Hugo couldn't help but notice that she did look quite a bit like her daughter; the main difference was that Lacu looked nice and thus kind of weirdly pretty, while this mermaid was snarling and making Hugo feel like he was going to be sick. Hadn't Lacu said something about how her mum could rip the tails off of other merpeople if she wanted to? He gulped.

"Lacu, what is the meaning of this?" asked her father, who had the same shade of green hair as she did.

"I—I'm sorry," Lacu muttered vaguely, not meeting her parents' gaze.

The merman holding Hugo suddenly pushed him forward and let him go so that he floated alone in front of the Merchieftain; Hugo suddenly felt very small. "And you, boy," the Merchieftain boomed. "Did the teachers in your school not tell you that this lake is our territory? What do you have to say for yourself?"

"(Um—you know I can't answer that, right?)" Hugo said, though of course it came out as a bunch of bubbles. The Merchieftain didn't look amused.

Lacu suddenly found her courage, swimming closer. "Please, Merchieftain Siorc—I promise, Hugo—neither of us—meant to do anything wrong. He just wanted—"

"You both violated a treaty with the Hogwarts School going back more than ten generations!" Merchieftain Siorc thundered, holding up his hand dismissively. "How could you not have intended not to do wrong with that fact?"

"Hugo just really wanted to see the festival! And he really liked it! Didn't you, Hugo?" She turned to him, giving a nervous, toothy smile that quickly faded. "H-Hugo?"

His eyes had gone wide, and he was holding his neck, even as his fingers were slowly shrinking back to normal size. He frantically pointed to his gills, which seemed to be closing up before their very eyes. Lacu let out a cry and covered her mouth.

Fortunately the Merchieftain seemed to understand what was going on. "Bradan, Deiseag—get this boy overwater and back to his school immediately!"

Hugo barely had time to register what was happening as the merpeople who had grabbed him and Lacu each took hold of his arms and rocket up through the water almost faster than he could imagine. On pure instinct Lacu began to follow, but her mother grabbed her elbow, pulling her back down and spinning her around.

"Where do you think you're going?" she said, her face stony. "You are in big trouble, young lady."