A cold hand with a vice-like grip had latched onto his wrist and was pulling him down and down into the seemingly endless depths of the tank. Harry had barely been able to gasp a breath of air before he was submerged. At first, he fought to rise to the surface but the hand that held him was so strong and torpedoing through the water, that he finally went limp and allowed himself to be pulled. His lungs were burning and just when he thought he would explode from the pain, they burst to the surface.

He gasped for air and flailed, trying to keep his head above the waves that were tossing him around—he was certain that they were no longer in the dormitory. The air whipped around them, the water heaved in swells that carried him up and then dropped him down. The briny water filled his mouth and stung his nose. He spat it out and gulped in air. It felt so good to breathe. The hand had let go of his wrist and he wasn't sure where Mei was or even if it was Mei who had grabbed him.

He was totally disoriented and dizzy—it seemed like they had traveled straight down and then the world tilted upright when they emerged on the surface of the water. His eyes were closed tight against the blinding sun and the stinging salt water.

A wave buoyed him up and then he was crashing down and he went underwater and then he wasn't sure which way was up. He opened his eyes under the water hoping to be able to figure out up from the sunlight. The sea salt stung his eyes and he closed them again, but he'd gotten a sense of direction from the glimpse of light that he'd seen and realized that he'd been moving down and righted himself. He burst to the surface again and the hand grabbed his wrist again.

"For Merlin's sake, I thought you'd be able to swim, Potter!" Mei bellowed at him. "Those cursed papers. Bloody hell."

It sounded like she was swatting at something, but Harry bobbed under water for a second, then came sputtering up to the surface with the help of Mei's hand on his arm.

He was trying to scream "I can't swim!" but he kept going under water. A big fish fin rubbed against his leg and he started, thinking it must be a shark, and then realized it had to be Mei's tail.

"What's that?" she asked.

"I" sputter "can't" gasp "swim!" gurgle.

"Yeah. I figured that out. Now, I'm going to be arrested for drowning the Boy Who Lived," Mei sighed. "That's just what I need."

"Hey!" Harry protested throwing his head back to keep his mouth above water. He kicked his feet and his torso rose a bit out of the water. His trainers felt like they weighed a stone each.

"Don't worry—I'm not going to let you drown."

"Don't" gulp "ever" sputter "do" gasp "that" sputter "again" gulp.

"Okay, okay. Settle down, Potter. But why were you sticking your hand in my tank? That wasn't cool!" Anger flashed through her voice again.

She held him by both arms so that his head stayed above water and he was finally able to speak without getting waterlogged.

His anger was abating now that he could breathe. "I thought you were drowning. I couldn't hear you and you weren't answering and I didn't know where you went."

Harry realized how silly it sounded now that he was saying it out loud.

Mei barked a laugh in response that sounded like the seals at the zoo. He had a vision of a selkie from a book he'd read during primary.

"I'm not going to drown! I'm part sea creature. I can be in the water for a long time," she hooted with laughter.

"But you said you couldn't live in the ocean," he reminded her, feeling chagrined.

"Right, I can't live out here, but I can stay underwater for a lot longer. I just need to surface to breathe air—like a dolphin. I'm a mammal and still part human, not really a full-fledged jiāorén. I can't live at the bottom of the ocean with my relatives—I have to be near the surface. My great-great-great grandmother was a true jiāorén and somehow I got the blood. They thought the blood had been bred out after a few generations of children without a hint of jiāorén—no more pearl tears or anything fishy and then I… " She trailed off, her anger tinged with bitterness.

Harry bobbed in the water, held at arm's distance from Mei.

"That must have been hard—to be so different from your family," Harry said.

He was thinking about his own family, even though, in his case, he had been elated to find out the reason for his profound difference from the Dursleys.

"Yeah. I feel really alone," she said and her tail slapped on the surface of the water surprising Harry with a spray of salty water in his mouth.

"I tried visiting the Jiāorén when it first happened—I thought that maybe they'd be able to help me or something… accept me… but I felt even more out of place among them. Their world is so different from ours… everything I did was wrong-footed," she snorted and then a little sob escaped.

"I miss my feet."

"Yeah. It sucks, doesn't it?"

"Everyone talks about how cool it is that I can swim so fast and stay underwater and everything, even that my tail is beautiful. And yeah, that's true. But I just want to be normal me again. I don't want this. I didn't ask for this."

"Yeah."

Mei sighed and gently squeezed his arms in a way that made him think that it was what she needed to hear. They bobbed in the water. Then she let go of him with one hand for a moment and it sounded like she was trying to catch something in the water between them.

"Here you go. You should keep this," she said as she pressed her fist into the palm of his hand. She turned his hand upward and opened her fist on his palm, letting something small drop into his hand. He closed his fingers around it. It felt small, smooth, and round. He screwed up his face in confusion, and then the pieces fell into place.

"A pearl?"

"Yes, a pearl," she sighed. "I've been crying lots of them lately."

"Oh, well. That's kind of cool," Harry admitted and then realized how that sounded. "I mean, not cool that you've been crying a lot lately. The pearl is cool. Thank you for the pearl."

"I should probably take you back. I bet everyone's freaking out. It's too bad you can't see the view here, though. It's pretty incredible," Mei said, her voice moving away from him as she turned around in the water to look.

"Oh, is it? We're not just out in the middle of the ocean with nothing to see but sea?" Harry asked.

"No, we're off a coral reef that's teeming with all sorts of colorful creatures and there's an island not too far away with a volcano that rises up and disappears into the clouds. I explored some of it after lunch after we got this setup."

"Oh, yeah. I can hear the gulls. Maybe we can come back?" Harry said. "Hey, is this connected to the beach we visited earlier today?"

"No, this is a different beach. That one was in a different part of the world. This one is in the South Pacific and that one was more Caribbean. I wonder if we could get the Center to connect the beaches—then I could go to class through my tank and not have to worry about getting my hydration time in," she laughed. "Though if we're going to spend more time in the water, you're going to have to learn how to swim. I'm not going to haul you around the ocean making sure you don't drown."

"I kind of figured that I'm going to learn how to swim since that room was a beach," Harry said.

"True. Well, take a big breath of air, we're going back."

Harry filled his lungs and Mei plunged down into the depths of the ocean, hauling Harry behind her by the wrist. Again, he couldn't figure which way was up until they burst through the surface of her tank. Harry imagined that his bed got a healthy dousing of water. This time he had enough air in his lungs, so the journey wasn't quite so painful as the first time.

They were greeted by a scream and a shout. Harry thought it must be Aminah and Tony, and then felt Gemma's small hand on his shoulder. Aminah and Tony were talking over each other, both were pretty agitated.

"Oh, settle down, would you?" Mei yelled.

"I told you that they'd be freaking out," she whispered, her voice was right in Harry's ear as she pushed him to the side of the tank.

Gemma grabbed his arm and helped him find the edge. He still had the pearl clutched in his fist.

"Harry, come over here … to this side," Mei said, as she flicked her tail and moved away from him. "There's a ledge that makes it easier to get out."

He edged along the side toward her voice until his knees banged into the ledge and he was able to then stand up, sending seawater cascading into the room. Gemma kept her hand on his arm as he clambered out. He staggered a bit as he found he was dizzy from the journey to the other side of the world.

Aminah and Tony were harranging Mei about why she'd pulled Harry into the tank—it sounded like Gemma had seen it and alerted Aminah who shouted for Tony's help—and that they were all surprised to learn that the tank was actually a tunnel that led who knows where.

"An island in the South China Sea," Harry provided. He heard the paper flapping by his mouth again and imagined all the papers from his conversation with Mei sinking to the bottom of the ocean.

"Are you okay, Harry?" Aminah asked.

"Yeah. Just wet and a bit dizzy," he said as he swayed on his feet.

Will this be the last time today I'm going to be knocked around by Mei? he wondered.

"Anyone know how to do a drying spell?" Harry asked.

Both Aminah and Tony said, "No."

"I can't do magic until I get my Jiāorén and witch magic sorted out."

Gemma tapped his arm once, "No."

Harry heard Gemma's footsteps retreat and then return and she wrapped a towel around his shoulders.

"If you're sure you are okay, I'm going back," Aminah said. And Tony agreed and he heard them both walking away.

Gemma touched his clenched fist and drew a question mark on the back of his hand. He revealed the pearl to her. She picked it up and then set it back on his palm. He put it in his pocket where he found the scrolls in his pocket—sopping wet—and had a sinking feeling that he'd never know who'd written them nor what they said.

He pulled them out and held them out to Gemma. "Gemma, what do you think, any chance I'll be able to read these?"

He could hear her unrolling the wet paper. She drew a question mark into the palm of his hand.

"Are they completely blank then?"

"Yeah, it looks like the ocean washed the ink off the parchment, Harry," Mei said. "Sorry."

"Okay, I'm going to change," Harry said.

He wished he could remember the spell that Tony's dad had used earlier when he dropped the pitcher of icy water on his lap.

Gemma pressed his staff into his hand.

"Oh, thanks, Gemma!"

She took his palm and asked, " G-L-A-S-S-E-S-? "

Harry felt his face. They were gone.

He turned toward Mei, "Mei, do you know what happened to my glasses?"

"No. Why do you need them anyway? Your eyes don't look weird. They are actually kind of nice. You shouldn't hide them behind those glasses."

"They help me with the bright lights that hurt my eyes."

"I thought you couldn't see?"

"I can't, except for bright lights, but that's all I see and it hurts, so my shaded glasses help protect my eyes," he said.

Am I going to have to explain this to people every single day? he wondered.

"Is that why you were closing your eyes when we were out on the ocean?"

"Yes and the seawater stung. Can I summon my glasses from the water?"

"It's worth a shot," Mei said.

Gemma tapped his arm twice, "Yes."

He held his staff over the water and said, "Accio glasses."

He was reminded of Ginny in the Chamber of Secrets, when he was wet with blood and venom, uttering the same words.