The group of roommates made their way back to the dorm together, subdued and quiet in their progress. Harry wasn't sure if the group therapy approach to dealing with student infractions was better or worse than detentions. He felt a bit queasy as a result and he had never felt that way leaving detention.

And I didn't even cause the disturbance—I was just in the way, he thought.

He wondered how Tony got through each day—all the little things that add up to big things.

People probably wonder that about me, too. I'm just doing what I have to do. I imagine that Tony's doing the same.

He wondered what Mei's mermaid magic was and how it was different from wixen magic. Maybe he could ask Hermione? Would that be violating the privacy piece they'd all agreed to?

Probably.

He could ask Mei, but he was afraid of setting her off again. Maybe he could go to the library and use his anagnóstis to read up on it.

His anagnóstis! He'd forgotten about it, but he and Gemma could use it to communicate! She could write and he could read what she wrote!

Why didn't I think of it earlier? He kicked himself.

He was so excited that he wanted to stop right there and tell Gemma all about it, but decided to wait until they were in the dorm and he could actually show her.

Gemma touched his hand and he realized that he was squeezing her arm. "Sorry, I was thinking about a way we can talk more easily. I'll show you when we're back in our dorm."

She squeezed his arm to let him know she understood. The way her hand fluttered on his made him understand that she was excited about it, too.

"Aminah, where are you headed?" Mei called out.

"I'm going to our dorm, am I going the wrong way?" Aminah asked from across the corridor.

"Yeah, it's over here. That's the dorm for the older residents." Mei told her.

"Oh, thank you!" Aminah said as her steps approached, "I guess I didn't give my staff the right directions."

"What did you tell it?" asked Harry, curious in case he made the same mistake.

"I said 'Navigant dormitory room,' but I guess I need to tell it which one." Aminah answered.

"What's our dormitory name?" Harry asked.

"It's 'Montmorency'," said Mei, with exasperation in her voice, "Everything is named after places in France, I guess."

As they filed into their dormitory, Harry sniffed the air—it was warm and humid and smelled like the ocean. Gemma led Harry to the end of his bed and waved across his hand.

"Bye," Harry said in response.

Harry could hear Mei's wheelchair in her area, next to his. He couldn't really hear Tony… he must be in the loo, he could hear someone in there.

He followed the contour of his bed to the desk next to his bed. The layout of the room was weird, he was noticing. It wasn't a square as he was expecting, it was circular, but different than Gryffindor tower which was pretty spacious and each bed in Gryffindor tower had a lot of space around it. This was pretty cramped.

Like a powder keg.

He was surprised by the sound of something being splashed in water really close to him and instinctively turned his head to the sound.

"Potter, don't look!" Mei blurted out.

Harry froze for a second, "I can't see, Mei. Remember?"

"Oh, yeah," she admitted. "But it looks like you're watching… like you're looking with your ears. It's kind of freaky."

"I was just trying to figure out why it sounds like there is a pool in here," Harry responded.

"Oh, that's because there is. My hydration pool. I'm about to get in it. I hate it when people watch me," Mei said.

"I promise I'm not."

Harry sat at his desk and tried to look as if he were absorbed in retrieving his anagnóstis from his staff along with the scrolls that Hedwig had delivered earlier. He remembered he hadn't read them yet.

Harry unrolled one of the scrolls as he heard Mei move from her wheelchair and slide into the water. Droplets of warm water splashed on his neck, side of his face, and the back of his hand. He imagined she had flicked her tail. The water had a briny smell and he was reminded of how much fun it had been to splash in the waves at the beach earlier with Hermione. Mei sighed and made noises that made him think that the water must feel good. He wondered if she'd sleep in the pool, too. Then it sounded like she dove underwater and he was splashed with a considerable amount of water. He ran his fingers over the parchment he had unscrolled and was getting ready to read and realized that it was pretty wet. He used the bottom edge of his t-shirt to soak up the water and hoped that the ink hadn't run. He thought about the possible stain on his shirt afterward and shrugged it off. It probably had mustard stains on it already from being a hand-me-down from Dudley.

He was expecting Mei to resurface and splash more water, so leaned over the paper and tried to protect it from getting wet, but she didn't come back up. After a bit, he was starting to get worried. He rolled up the scroll and stuck it back in his pocket and stood up tentatively.

"Mei?" he asked. "Are you okay?"

No answer. Gemma and Aminah seemed to be involved in a conversation—Harry could hear Aminah's side of it, or at least her low voice murmuring. He gathered that Tony was still in the loo.

"Hey, Mei—can you hear me?" he asked a little louder.

Still no answer. Also, the water seemed completely still. He wasn't sure how big the tank was. From the sounds she made earlier, he was guessing it was about the size of a bed. The room wasn't that big and he imagined she had room to maneuver in her wheelchair and that she had a desk and a wardrobe as he did, maybe even a bed in addition to the tank. Or maybe the tank was in place of the bed. It hadn't smelled like the ocean the first time he'd entered the room.

He walked to the end of his wardrobe and felt around for the beginning of Mei's space, trying to find something that he could identify to help orient him. He stuck out his foot, too, feeling the ground in front of him. He remembered his staff, and pulled it out of his pocket and squeezed it twice for the description of the area and found the edge of the tank with his hand. It was shorter than he thought—more like the height of the bed than the desk. It was made of metal, not glass like a fish tank—he realized that he was imagining something where Mei would be visible swimming around as if she were in an aquarium.

She wouldn't want to be on display like that.

"Mei, are you all right?"

She's a mermaid, right? She can stay underwater for a long time. But she said she couldn't live in the ocean—so maybe she can't stay underwater? Should I be worried? he wondered.

He thought about sticking his hand in the water and feeling around, then considered what Mei would do to him if she was fine and he was interrupting her hydration time—or if, Merlin forbid, he accidentally touched her tail while she was in the water.

I can't imagine that going well, he thought.

What if I get Aminah and Gemma's attention and they help me figure out if Mei's okay? Then what if we're all standing around her tank and Mei surfaces and gets really mad and hurts them because I called them over?

He stuck his hand in the water to see if he could feel Mei—just below the surface, moving it back and forth in a widening arc. He put his hand down a little deeper, nothing. He moved along the side of the tank and his staff warned him of the wheelchair in his path. He tried to move it, but the brakes must have been on because it didn't budge. He walked around it and swished his hand through the water again.

"Mei, are you okay? Are you in there?"

No answer. This time he leaned over and stuck his hand down to the bottom, but it went farther down than he expected—beyond the floor. His sleeve got wet.

Of course, it is magically extended, so she has more space to swim. Maybe she swam out to sea.

Suddenly Harry was being hauled forward into the water by his arm that he had left dangling in the water. He dropped his staff as he tumbled into the water.