Author's Note: This was fun to write, as someone whose thesis has slowly become their personality. Also, hey. Mermaids! Enjoy!

Disclaimer: The following characters belong to J.K. Rowling, and this story derives from her original works, storylines, and world. Please do not sue me, I can barely pay tuition.

Hogwarts: Assignment #4, Forestry Task #3 Write a Merperson!AU

Warnings: NA

This week's AU: Mermaid!AU

The Lady of the Lake

The splash of water at Remus' side told him that he was no longer alone, and sure enough when he looked up he saw that someone had hauled themselves up to the edge of the dock before leaning forwards, propping herself up on her elbows. The mermaid tilted her head to the left, sending her soaked, greyish blue hair tumbling down over one of her shoulders. Between their colour, perfectly adapted to camouflage in a lake, and the ways that the braiding style twisted, it very much looked like a cascade. She blinked her big amber eyes towards him. It always took him a second to get used to their unnatural glow, as her pupils and irises adjusted to their surface state. He suspected it had something to do with the amount of light she saw underwater as opposed to above water.

"Hello again," Remus said.

"Hello," she said. "Are you working on your thesis work again today?"

"I am," Remus said. "So I'm afraid I won't be much fun. Do you promise not to splash if I come show you?"

The mermaid seemed to ponder this for a second and eventually decided she was in a benevolent mood. She nodded and so Remus kicked off his shoes and walked down the wooden dock to go sit at the edge of the water. He dipped his feet down into the freshwater she'd emerged from, circling them in a motion that imitated the way she moved her slate grey tail to stay in place.

"I was hoping to ask for your help, actually," Remus said. He repositioned the order in which his sketchbook, textbook, notebook, and scraps of parchment were piled to show her a sketch he'd recently done in charcoal.

"You drew this," she said.

"How did you know?"

"I recognize that sloppy penmanship anywhere," she said, reaching out a finger to point to the annotations on the page. They had known each other long enough for her to be aware of how disastrous water on paper, parchment, ink or charcoal could be.

"It's not sloppy, the letters are just tiny," Remus said. Lily and the others in his graduating classes called it chicken scrawl.

"Give me a break, you only taught me how to read months ago," the mermaid said. She tilted her head again and the cascade shifted.

"Of course, sorry" Remus said. "Your English is better than my Mermish will ever be, anyways."

"You speak it better than any human I've ever met, though you do sound funny when you use place names… and you put the words in the wrong order all the time so it's like you're a little one... Anyways, why are you showing me this?"

"My vision's not as good underwater, naturally, so I was wondering how close I'd gotten this last portrait," he said.

She studied the picture of the striped Grindylow he'd drawn, her eyes scanning over every detail. This was the sixth distinct species of Grindylow he'd isolated and identified as part of his thesis work in Defense Against the Dark Arts (which had a particular focus on magical creatures). He had seen the signs that this particular lake was full of magical life, which was why he'd chosen it for his fieldwork, but he had never expected it to be this alive. If he hadn't struck up this friendship with the mermaid, he'd still be stumped as to how all the creatures of the lake had gotten there (secret passages under the earth connected after years of cooperative tunneling and labour—that was how… He still had so much to learn about underwater worlds.)

"Well, it looks ugly," she said.

"Dora!" he laughed.

"Not because of you, because they are ugly!" she scoffed. "If anything, it's a compliment!"

"Alright, alright," Remus said. He took a deep breath. "I'm sorry, my nerves are all skewed. At this point, I feel like I'm little more than a heap of anxiety. My due date is approaching."

"I know," Dora said. "I'll miss you when you'll have finished your work and gone."

"I won't go forever, I'll come back," he promised.

"You better, because I'm a tad limited," she said, splashing one of her hands in the water. He thought that there was something vaguely resentful in the way that she looked at her tail and its perfectly geometrical scales or the delicacy of the fins in which it ended.

"I will," he promised. "Is there anything else about this I could improve?"

"You always add shading to your life drawings as if they're being lit like surface light," Dora said. "Although I like that quite a lot, about your art—or science or Magizoology or whatever you call it… The horns could be a little lower on the head though, for the deepwater ones like this. It makes them easier to hunt, actually."

"Really?" Remus asked.

"Mm-hmm," the mermaid mused. "They have to get closer to do as much damage—though those damn things are so much sharper. They really hurt if you're not paying attention, or if you're a klutz like me."

"Noted," Remus said, rubbing at the parchment with his thumb. He stopped before he smudged the image too much. He knew how deep his perfectionist streak ran; he'd be restarting this sketch in only hours to take her advice.

"Will you read me your thesis when it's done and published, so that I see everything you've learned?" Dora asked.

"You can read it yourself," Remus asked. "I'll bring you a copy, cast a water repellent charm on it. You're much better at reading than you think you are, you know."

"I know," she said nonchalantly. "I just like hearing you read."

Remus smiled. That was, after all, why she had first approached him when he had started his research over a year ago. He'd been trying to puzzle through a difficult treaty on kelpies by reading out loud and she'd overheard just enough English over the years, from fishermen and hikers and the like, to be intrigued. At first he was sure she would drown him, but as it turned out she was just as curious as he was.

"I can do that now," he said. "I have a chapter I just finished editing, I can reread it to check for any spelling mistakes."

"Please," the mermaid said before she slid off the dock she had pulled herself onto. He heard her splash back down onto the water and reemerge seconds later, floating at the surface, eyes closed.

"What are you waiting for?" she asked.

He didn't know, so he smiled, looked down at his page, and started reading.

Stacked with: MC4A; Shipping Wars; Hogwarts

Challenge(s): Gryffindor MC; Hufflepuff MC; Seeds; Creature People; Old Shoes; Themes & Things A (Learning); Themes & Things B (Escape); Themes & Things C (Painting/Drawing); Themes & Things F (Improvement); Ethnic & Present; True Colours; Rian-Russo Inversion; In a Flash; Yellow Ribbon; Yellow Ribbon Redux

Word Count: 1102

Shipping Wars

Ship (Team): Remus Lupin/Nymphadora Tonks (Technicolour Moon)

List (Prompt): Fall Medium 1 (Mermaid!AU)