Neville pressed his fingers clumsily against Kyle's neck, desperate to find some sign of life. But it was Hermione who moved into action while Neville felt so defeated and helpless.
"Straighten her legs out," Hermione directed, peeling off her jacket and coming to kneel beside Kyle. She repeated Neville's attempt to locate a heartbeat while Neville unfolded her until she was lying flat on her back. From the look on Hermione's face, and the way she immediately commanded Neville to move away, she couldn't find Kyle's pulse either. She put her hands, one on top of the other, over Kyle's chest and began pressing down rhythmically. The gruesome cracking and popping filled Neville's head, and he found himself sinking to the ground, feeling like he was being swallowed by the sound.
Hermione continued her compressions as the professors, elves, and now even Beezer and Twilly watched on, everyone holding their breath. It felt like it went on forever, with no sounds but connective tissues being moved and, at least once, the cracking of bone. Hermione was shaking as she kept up the tiring pace until, finally, Kyle coughed forcefully, the remaining fluids ejecting from her lungs before she was able to breathe again. Her eyes fluttered open for a second, then closed again, lungs rattling and her whole body shivering. But at least she was breathing.
It seemed that everyone else collectively began breathing again as well, relief washing over them. The black mass that had lingered in the sky began to dissipate, letting more of the moonlight shine through to the Hogwarts' grounds.
Neville and Twilly were able to carry Kyle into the castle and the hospital wing. They put her, unconscious and still shivering, her skin cold to the touch, into her bed and tucked her in tight. Minerva and Hermione followed them in soon after, both looking as pale as Kyle herself.
"I think it's safe to say that that did not go… according to plan." Neville took a seat at the corner of her bed, breathless and, most of all, terrified.
Minerva shook her head and furrowed her brow as she stared at Kyle, as if waiting for her to do something. "I have never—not once in all my years— seen something like that. Spells can backfire, but not like that."
"It'll have something to do with her magic use, that's for certain," said Twilly, picking up a framed picture off of Kyle's desk as he headed back towards the door. "She said her mother's a Muggle, right?" He turned it to show Hermione, whose expression was hard to read to say the least.
"Correct. What is it?" Minerva came to look at the photo with him, but she didn't seem to see the same thing that Twilly did.
"You mind if I borrow this? I'll try to return it the second she wakes up."
"If you think it could help, by all means."
Twilly whisked out of the room, leaving Neville and Minerva quite confused to say the least.
"I'll… I think I would feel best if I kept watch on her, to make sure she's alright. I imagine you have an owl or five to write?" Neville said, taking another cautionary glance at Kyle.
"That I do." She sighed heavily and put a hand on Kyle's forehead. "If she wakes up, or if something happens, come get me. I doubt I'll have the ability to get back into the headmaster's office tonight—lucky I wasn't there last night—so you should be able to find me in the Great Hall."
As Minerva left, Hermione took a seat in the chair behind Kyle's desk. "Shot in the dark, here, but… has Kyle ever mentioned anything strange happening to her? Any weird magical occurrences?"
Neville let his head droop a bit. "She'd kill me if I told you…"
"If she asks, I'll say I twisted your arm for it. What happened?"
"Well… You know, snatchers got her, just before the battle. Tortured her and everything. She said that… That the day of the battle, she drifted off to sleep, and she woke up somewhere else. But she said she hadn't learned how to apparate yet, so she doesn't know how."
Hermione's brows knitted together in deep thought. "Where?"
"Near her home, I think. On the shore."
She thought for a moment, then stood up with a urgent look. "Neville, keep a good eye on her. I'm going to go do some reading, and I'll see if she's any better in the morning."
Once Hermione was out of sight and earshot, Neville moved to the floor, kneeling beside the bed and taking Kyle's hand in his. He willed himself to look past how she was looking—gray, hollow, mouth hanging ajar. It was such a stark contrast to how she had looked not an hour ago by the lake, plump and full of life. "Hey," he began, squeezing her limp hand. "I'm gonna be here until you wake up. We don't know what happened, but I think we need to… we need you awake and here to keep figuring things out. Sorry about your wand, by the way. When this is all over, I'll take you to Ollivander's myself. We'll make a whole day out of it. I heard they opened a new ice cream parlor, since Florean… well, we can check it out. Or, if we have to become Muggles like you said, we can do whatever. Anything you want. I just need you to wake up."
Neville had begun to get progressively more tired as he spoke, until he was laying his head against her mattress and drifting off to the low sound of humming, though he didn't know where it was coming from. He fell asleep like that, kneeling next to her with her hand in his. He didn't dream, so to speak, but he could hear sounds. Birds calling and the sounds of the ocean, waves washing on the shore and the lap of water against something solid. He vaguely remembered getting up and climbing into the bed next to Kyle. Cramped but comfortable, he slept through the entire night like that, gently holding onto her and hoping things would be okay.
When he woke, he didn't immediately recognize where he was. When everything that had happened flooded back to him, he shot up, reaching for Kyle, but she wasn't next to him. "Kyle?" he shouted in a panic, looking around frantically until he spotted her, sitting at her desk and wrapping her hand.
"Please, keep your voice down," she whispered, and he could hear how her lungs still rattled as she spoke. "Whatever happened yesterday, I've got a splitting headache."
Neville threw his legs over the edge of the bed. "Do you remember? Do you know what happened?"
"I remember putting up the masking spell. And then it's all… voices. I could see tons of light, and huge figures in shadow. I felt like I was looking in on some private conversation, because it was like… like they saw me and tried to get rid of me. I felt like I was drowning." She tied up the wrapping on her hand and flexed it with a wince before turning to look at him.
Her eyes were blue. Sharp, biting blue.
He gawked at this new feature before snapping back to reality and shaking his head. "Hermione had to get your heart pumping again."
"That explains why my chest hurts so bad." She whimpered, holding her unbandaged hand against her rib cage. "That will heal, though. My pride will not."
"You need to be resting. You died."
"I'm neither the first nor last to die, Neville." She stood up, bracing herself on her desk. "Where's my wand?"
Neville hesitated. "Well, while you were… while whatever was happening was happening, it kind of exploded." He watched her face fall, and she sighed and slowly came to sit back on her bed next to him. He didn't know what to say to comfort her.
Luckily, he didn't have to. There was a knock on the door, immediately followed by Hermione sticking her head in.
"Oh, good, you're awake. We have so much to discuss." She invited herself in, a heavy old book and Kyle's picture in her arms as she took a seat at the desk. "So, how are you feeling?"
"Hey, thanks for the CPR, but is that my family photo?" Kyle said, abruptly standing and using Neville's shoulder as a crutch.
"We didn't do anything to it, just needed to take a look at it." Hermione set the book down on the desk and handed the photo and frame back to Kyle. "That's what we need to talk about, anyway. Tell me about your family."
"What does this have to do—"
"Humor me, Kyle."
Kyle sighed and pointed at each figure in the photo from left to the right. "My father, Duncan. He's an architectural engineer from Aberdeen. My older brother, Richard. He's a professional diver, works with a lot of historical search teams and such. Most of his work keeps him off the coast of South America. Me, of course. And my mother, Actaea. She studied the classics in college but now she's a housewife. She's from Skye."
Neville got a good look at the photo now. Duncan was a tall, dark man with a stern face. Richard was much the same but with softer features and a leaner body. Actaea and Kyle, however, were what drew his attention the most. While Kyle had inherited her father's dark brown hair, the resemblance between her and her mother was disturbing. They looked nearly identical in face and stature, more like sisters than mother and daughter.
"Did you ever meet your mother's parents?" Hermione asked, touching the spine of the book she'd brought as if she were just itching to open it.
"No, they passed away before my parents even met. Left my mother with a decent inheritance and the house. But I don't understand why—"
"I promise we'll get there, just please bear with me." Hermione huffed, thinking about her next question. "I'm going to make some assumptions about your childhood. Tell me if anything is wrong."
"Okay?"
"You spent an unusual amount of time in or near the ocean growing up."
"I guess."
"Your mother told you a lot of stories about Greek mythology."
"Yeah, how did—"
"No one was surprised when you started doing magic at a young age."
"How did you get this information?"
"Last one. You've been able to do wandless magic for years, like second nature."
"What the hell are you getting at, Hermione?" Kyle was becoming visibly irate, jaw tight, fists clenched.
"Can you?"
Kyle, clearly distressed, raised her hand. The door to her room slammed shut, and her tea set flew out of the cabinet and arranged itself on the desk in front of Hermione. "I was always able to. I use a wand because it's more accurate and I was tired of students and professors thinking I was a freak. Satisfied?" Her breathing was becoming erratic, and Neville could see she was in pain, but he didn't know how to intervene or if he should at all.
"Very," Hermione said, a big smirk on her face. She turned her focus to the heavy book on the table, taking great care in opening it and finding the page she wanted. "Here. These are accounts of sailors and explorers from centuries ago. This one is translated by Beezer. Basically, it's about how a Spanish captain's ship had capsized during a storm, and the crew who were able to survive until the storm broke were able to swim to a nearby island.
"When they got ashore, there were four beautiful women who helped them recover and promised them a vessel to get back home if the men would… attend to their needs, so to speak. They were sea nymphs, or nereids, and they had intense magical powers. They could breathe underwater, fashion healing potions from the sea, 'move things with a wave of their hand,' and perform other spells and rituals. They were, apparently, very adept at healing. When they were done with the sailors, they mended a boat that had crashed into the rocky shore and diverted a current to take them home. He names the nymphs as Ianessa, Panopaea, Doto, and Actaea."
"So my mom was named after a myth. What of it?" Kyle swallowed hard, but her temper seemed to ease a little.
"I don't think she was just named after a myth. There are dozens of accounts of sea nymphs in this book alone. It all seemed to stop about two hundred years ago, but the most recent one that I could find was from a fisherman who was fishing near Skye. And that one also mentions Actaea. Kyle, that would explain why you could still do magic, why you were vomiting sea water last night, your wandless magic, and everything that happened during your childhood."
"Doesn't explain why my brother is not magical. Or why Hogwarts would take in a Nymph."
Hermione closed the book again and set it back on the desk. "Both of those are explainable, too. Nymph magic only passes down from mother to daughter. Sons get beyond-ordinary physical abilities. Think Achilles, who was the son of a nereid. I'm willing to bet your brother did a lot of sports or is unusually good at his job." She raised her eyebrows at Kyle, but Kyle didn't move to respond. "As for why you got to come to Hogwarts, it was just luck of the draw. We've had half-humans here before—the human side is what determines witch or wizard status. Your father is a human Muggle, but your human side is a Muggle-born witch. That's why you could tell your magic wasn't as strong as it was before. You're affected by the loss of magic just the same as we are, but you've got nymph magic to back it up. I'd bet that's why you couldn't perform the protection spell. It's probably beyond the limitations of nymphs."
Kyle stood up, shaking her head and holding gently to her injured ribs. "There has to be another reason. My mother is a Muggle. She would have told me if she was a fucking mythological creature, and I… I'm going to prove that to you."
Neville stood abruptly, reaching for her. "Kyle, wait!" But he was too late. She apparated—or more appropriately, she seemed to dissolve very suddenly, leaving behind a pool of water where she was standing. "Hermione, I don't think suddenly telling someone they aren't fully human is the most tactful approach."
"Neville, I wouldn't have come here if I didn't think it was likely to be true. If I'm wrong, I'll apologize. But if I'm right… well, that solves at least one of our mysteries." Hermione grabbed her book and stood up, looking down at the puddle of water left on the floor. "Look, if you see her before I do, and I was right, let her know that I'm not going to tell anyone about it, not even Kingsley, until she's ready to say something."
Neville sighed as Hermione left the room, sinking back down onto the bed. Kyle needed to be resting, not apparating off to talk to her mother and dealing with the possibility that she has ties to Greek mythology. But what was he to do?