Recap

"HERMIONE!" her father screamed up the stairs. "GET DOWN HERE NOW!"

She jolted up surprised. Her father never yelled at her like that. She ran down the stairs to find two men in bright purple robes, with their wands in their hands by their sides.

"Hermione Granger?" one of the men asked her.

"Yes. What do you want?" she eyed the men suspiciously.

"We're from the Department of Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures," he looked at her like this should have some meaning.

"And how can I help you with that?" asked Hermione. She was getting annoyed. There were two strange men in her house, blabbering on with unhelpful information.

The men looked at each other. The taller of them, the one who had spoken, cleared his throat uncomfortably.

"You're not aware of why we might be here?" he hinted, hopeful Hermione might all of a sudden be aware of the reason of their presence.

"Don't answer my question with a question," Hermione snapped. "I'm sick of information being withheld from me. I advise you either tell me why you are in my house or leave."

The men looked at each once more.

The shorter man, who looked like he was in his early twenties, decided to speak this time, "You're going to be in your seventh year at Hogwarts soon, correct?"

Hermione groaned, "Another question. Fine. Yes I am. Would you kindly tell me what is going on here?"

The men murmured amongst themselves, but Hermione could just hear their low male voices.

The younger was whispering, "Perhaps this is a better matter to discuss with the Headmaster, considering the odd number of-"

"No, we were sent specifically to this address," the older man interrupted. "Could you imagine the trouble we'd get in if the problem is not directly and immediately dealt with?"

"Yes but we can't just traipse through people's lives like this!" retorted the younger.

"Fine. We'll talk to the headmaster. If he can sort it out we'll leave it at that with monitoring. If not, we're coming back tomorrow," concluded the older and then turned to face Hermione. "We will bring this matter up with the Headmaster of Hogwarts, if he is unsuccessful in helping us monitor this matter we will return tomorrow, otherwise good day to you."

They both pointed their wands to their faces and disappeared with a pop.

"What the hell was that about?" demanded her father.

"I actually have no idea for once," replied Hermione with a calculating look on her face. "But by the sounds of it, it concerns me and it's not good."

Hermione and her father both stared into space a while longer. Then she thought she might explode if she didn't ask.

"Dad?" she asked quietly, and he turned to look at her with a questioning face. "Is it all possible that Mum was not entirely non-magical?"

Her father looked slightly confused, "How do you mean?"

"Well in any way possible," she replied. "I mean, it's not as if the whole me being a witch totally shocked her."

"If she had anything to do with that crowd, I had nothing to do with it and knew nothing of it," her father concluded and walked away.

Hermione frowned to herself and ran up the stairs to her room. She picked up her seventh year book for Care of Magical Creatures and began flicking through the pages furiously, but the search was fruitless.

She was searching for a humanoid creature that could be bred into the human populace with a particular gift for singing. She racked her mental encyclopaedia. She came up with three possible solutions.

One was a banshee. Though stereotyped for a terrifying cry, it is actually a soulful song of mourning that the banshee used to warn Irish and Scottish family members of their death. A banshee could appear as either a young woman, stately matron or a ragged old hag. That was the extent of knowledge that the average witch or wizard knew. However Hermione knew, through her extensive research simply driven by her need-to-know, that the banshee only appeared in these forms because the banshee only developed their mournful songs at the start of adulthood, so banshee children were virtually unheard of. Hermione also knew that there was obviously banshee males; however they did not possess the incredible voices of the female so they could not warn of deaths and stayed out of human sight.

Hermione itched to know if the females' voice was also a mating call for the male and if there were any known cases of banshee/human interbreeding.

Her second possibility was a siren. She didn't have much knowledge of sirens as they were considered a somewhat taboo subject in the wizarding world. However she knew more than most did with the little amount of information she had dug up while researching the differences between what the ministry considered magical beast and magical being.

Sirens originated around Greece and in ancient mythology were said to be 'bird-women'. Hermione's interpretation of this would be to classify sirens in the surprisingly, relatively large classification the wizarding world knew as 'fallen angel' descendents. The song of the siren put men to sleep, supposedly in such a way the sirens could mind control them, eventually leading to their death. Sirens lived particularly longs lives and never aged past a certain point, the only way for a siren to die is either by being murdered, disease or an outside influence for example falling from a cliff.

Hermione had noted there had only been one claim of siren/human interbreeding. A study that followed six generations of siren before the researcher had died. Supposedly there were only female sirens that mated with human men. If the child was a boy he would only have the human gene dominant, but could pass on the siren gene to his daughter which would come out weaker and weaker each generation that a male passed on the gene.

And if the child were female the gene would be passed on fully and her to her daughter so on and so forth until a female bore a son that would once again weaken the siren gene. However the validity of this case study was very questionable. It had been published in the 1700's by an unknown author. Hermione was usually one to trust a well known and proven name.

And then there were mermaids. Hermione knew there were two distinguishable types of mermaids. Freshwater and saltwater. The type she had in mind were the saltwater mermaids. The freshwater mermaids were the 'ugly' ones as Harry had once referred to them as, the fact that they had a different breeding system to humans made interspecies breeding impossible. Whereas saltwater mermaids were the considerably 'beautiful' mermaids. There was little known about these as they weren't anywhere near tame and little interaction with humans – muggle and wizards alike.

What she did know about them was that their beautiful voices often seduced men in a way that the mermaid could control them to either love them or destroy themselves, all in all it was a game to them. However it had been suspected that the mermaid for short periods of time become human and fall in love with men. Although eventually they would break his heart and return to the sea. Hermione amusedly thought of The Little Mermaid and just how accurate it appeared. She then mused at the possibility of pregnancy between a human and mermaid as she didn't know for what period of time was considered a short time for a mermaid to be human. Was it hours? Days? Months?

Hermione rushed to write down everything that was in her head for further reference. After nearly half an hour of writing her hand cramped up beyond belief and her eyes began to droop. Eventually she resigned herself to bed.

She turned out the lights and tucked herself in. She closed her eyes and let her thoughts wander. Suddenly she bolted upright. There was a fifty percent chance she needed to know what Malfoy needed her help with.

This had to be related to her theories. Surely.