Discovery

The brisk wind chases little ripples across the lake's black surface so that the water looks like it is shivering beneath the swollen clouds. Hermione hopes that it doesn't start raining before she gets back up to the castle. With every few steps she takes, her eyes flick towards the lake, hoping that Syrena will surface today. The Freeze passed several weeks ago, but Hermione has not seen any of the lake-dwellers since the morning she glanced out of the dormitory window and the ice seemed to have sublimated into the rain.

Hermione wonders if Syrena is on a tighter parental leash than she used to be, or perhaps if she has been bound by post-Freeze chores. Hermione wants to learn more about how the selkies live; they're intelligent Beings, and she suspects they have a civilised and structured society.

Hermione sighs wistfully and turns back towards the castle; there's just time for breakfast before another Saturday morning duelling lesson with Professor Snape. And she wouldn't miss that for the world, even for a chance to practice a little Mermish on Syrena. Hermione's a little nervous about her proficiency with the difficult language; it's one thing to memorise scores of individual words and sounds but quite another to string them together in a semblance of coherency.

"Wait!" comes a piercing cry from behind her. The sound of Mermish in the open air is far more guttural and discordant than the muted cadence of the textbook, but Hermione is thrilled that she understands it; she's smiling brilliantly as she turns.

Syrena's skin is darker than when Hermione had seen her last...it is flecked and mottled with patches of green algae. Hermione wonders if it has to do with the period of inactivity during the Freeze or if the chemistry of the water is just different during the winter. Hermione drops to her haunches so that they are closer and almost at eye-level with each other. Syrena could choose to come out of the water, to slide out of her shimmering skin, but Hermione knows that she's still rather skittish about walking with the Air Magickers after her fiasco with the squid.

"Hello, Syrena," she says, and she laughs with delight at the astonishment that makes Syrena's black eyebrows wing up sharply.

"How did you learn?" Syrena bubbles, pirouetting in the water with excitement.

Hermione doesn't understand the entirety of what Syrena says, but she picks familiar sounds out of the air and pieces them together so that the essence of Syrena's question sparkles into focus. "Book," Hermione says, miming the opening and closing of a book because she hasn't learned about Mermish pronouns and grammar yet; one-word answers discount the likelihood that her meaning will be lost in translation.

"I thought maybe Gallchobhar teach you." Syrena smiles her crooked-yellow smile. "But book is good also. I am happy we can talk." Syrena spins in the water, her green hair trailing lazily behind her.

Hermione frowns. "What is Gall...?" she asks, tripping over the strange and unfamiliar term.

"Gall is a selkie who is not born in this loch. A Stranger," Syrena explains.

"Much... happen?" Hermione struggles to express the question that is bursting on her tongue, to twist it into sounds that Syrena will understand. She feels frustrated that she cannot express herself better; that language does not blossom into bright comprehension in her mind as quickly as Charms theory or Tranfiguration variations.

Syrena shrugs. "Sometimes. Some selkies go to other lochs for work, to make new family. Others come here, join our people."

Hermione nods because a little biodiversity sounds healthy to her; she's always wondered how limited the merpeople or the centaurs' gene pool is. But she cannot begin to fathom why Syrena would think that she'd learned Mermish from another selkie. "Why..."

A warbling call in the distance cuts Hermione's question short, and she glances up to see a selkie woman gesturing impatiently to Syrena. "Mother is early," Syrena explains with an annoyed little click of her tongue; her gills flare with annoyance much like a human's nostrils might. "Tomorrow?" she asks hopefully over her slim, pearl-grey shoulder.

"Yes," Hermione says with a nod. Syrena streaks like a silver arrow towards her mother, and Hermione is half-relieved, half-annoyed that Syrena's mother knows that she has an Air Magicker friend she visits with. But relief wins out, in the end, and until the squid is taken care of with adequate wards, Hermione supposes it's for the best. As Hermione hurries up to the castle, she wonders if Hagrid has been true to form again and blabbed to the selkie Chieftan about his daughter's wandering habits.

"Did you know that Harry's coming to the Quidditch game tomorrow?" Hermione puffs as she Shields against a rebounding, wiggling Trip Jinx. Since Snape accused her of having a very limited repertoire of spells up her sleeve a couple of weeks ago, she's gone out of her way to prove him wrong. "Tarantallegra!" Again, a flick of her wand is sufficient to raise a Shield against which the returned hex dissipates with a soft sparkle of green light.

"Stop," Snape says abruptly, stepping forward from his usual position...just to the right and behind her.

Hermione drops her wand hand and turns around, pulling the edge of her t-shirt straight. She's taken to wearing tracksuit pants because the jeans she wore the first time she tried her luck against the wall just didn't allow her enough range of movement. Snape hasn't changed his mode of dress since he's started teaching her to duel; he usually falls in with his own practice after she leaves. Today, he's wearing a dark purple Pride of Portree Quidditch supporters t-shirt. It suits him.

Hermione rubs the bottom of a bare foot against her calf and pulls a face that obviously says, "Whaaaat?"

"You are Shielding yourself four times out of five, Granger," he says, spinning his wand through his fingers idly. "You're obviously more witch than Muggle."

"I'm going to take that as a compliment, sir," she tells him, lifting her chin slightly.

"Take it whichever way you wish, Granger," he says with a smirk that pulls at something in her chest like there's a magnetic field attached to his smile. "Be that as it may, relying on a Shield too heavily is foolish. Aside from the fact that there is often no time to use Protego, Conjuring a Shield is also a waste of vital energy. Additionally, it slows your return attack because you can dodge a hex and non-verbalise a return volley in a single moment. A Protego almost doubles your reaction time."

"I know," she says with a sigh. "I think it's just a habit to use my wand if it's in my hand."

Snape taps his wand against his palm, considering. "Let's try an Anti-Shield Jinx on you...that should remove the temptation entirely," he says. "Keep your jinxes fairly innocuous, Granger." She feels a rush of magic tickle across her skin as his non-verbal spell takes effect.

Snape lingers behind her, now, his wand at the ready...perhaps in case she lets a nasty hex let fly by mistake. After several minutes of semi-efficient ducking and weaving, Hermione wobbles unsteadily in the firm grip of a Leg-Locker Curse. She mutters the counter-curse in aggravated fashion.

"That's probably enough for today, Granger," he says. "Not bad, but you're probably going to need to do some concurrent exercise if you're serious."

"I am," she says determinedly. "What type of exercise?"

Snape hmm's softly...the sound is a velvet rumble deep in his chest. "Improve your flexibility," he says. "You need to greater fluidity in your movements."

"Okay." Hermione sighs wistfully and blows a curl out of her eyes.

Snape really looks like he's moving in water when he duels. He makes the sport look like a ballet of sorts...absolute economy and grace of movement. With a sexy, deadly edge to it, of course. She starts to put her shoes back on.

Snape touches the palms of his hands to the floor as if to make his point about flexibility, and then he straights up, sinuous as a cat. "Granger," he drawls. "Potter told me he was coming to the Quidditch tomorrow, yes."

Hermione's smile lights up from her soul.

"Five Galleons Harry acts like an idiot tomorrow," Snape says.

Hermione laughs. "I'm not sure that's a fair bet, but I'll take it." She lingers at the door, wondering if he'll let her watch for a while this time. It's such a dangerous pursuit...every moment she spends in this room with him, every civil exchange and quirked smile, changes the intrinsic nature of their association...but she can't help wanting this tenuous thing, this gossamer friendship, to stay, to grow, to shine.

"Now, go and do something constructive," he says, flexing his wrist as he prepares to face the wall. "I'm not providing your morning's entertainment."

Harry watches the Quidditch match with his entire body, visibly tensing when Hufflepuff take possession of the Quaffle, leaning forward on the edge of the bench as he urges Ginny on towards the goals. "Weasley is our King," he bellows, and most of the first-year students in the Gryffindor stand titter and stare; they do not remember the Weasel King days, nor do they know Harry Potter as a friend, as a real-live and vital person. Most of them don't have any qualms about staring at the Chosen One instead of watching the game.

Harry's certainly more animated than the announcer, who is a dour and sour-faced boy from Ravenclaw, who delivers dry commentary on the game without an inflection of emotion in his voice. "And Ginevra Weasley scores for Gryffindor," he drones. "The score is fifty-ten to Gryffindor."

Hermione can tell that Harry is dying to be out there on his broom...watching the match from a sky-high angle, watching for that victorious glint of gold. His fingers twitch when the Golden Snitch whirs past behind them.

"Watched the Bats against the Arrows in Appleby on Wednesday night," he tells her, "but nothing beats Hogwarts' Quidditch matches."

Hermione smiles. She's sure the Quidditch World Cup does, but she understands what he means. "It's good to have you here, Harry," she tells him. Harry grins at her broadly for a moment, but he turns back to the game when the crowd seems to pull their heads into their shoulders as they wince pre-emptively, hiss with expected pain.

"Move or you're gonna get hit, you git!" Harry moves his shoulders stiffly, miming how he'd move if he were the Seeker being chased by the leaden Bludger. "Ooh, ouch." He winces as the Bludger connects with a dull, fleshy thud. "Who is that, anyway?" he asks her.

"Erm..." Hermione shrugs; the Seeker is a tiny second-year, and she doesn't know his name. The Ravenclaw announcer comes to her rescue, though; he dryly informs them that Connor Jones has been Bludged, and it looks like medical assistance is required.

Madam Hooch calls for a time-out as Madam Pomfrey runs out to do a quick Diagnostic Charm on the befuzzled Gryffindor Seeker.

"Have you decided what you're doing next year?" Harry asks. Tension unspools from his body like a ribbon, and he leans back lazily, his green eyes following Ginny's lazy circling as the teams wait for play to resume.

"I think I'm going to take that job in Beings and Beasts," she says decisively. Although the words seem to tumble from her lips like they've just been Conjured in her mind, she knows with concrete certainty that her decision is right.

Harry grins. "I knew it," he says with satisfied smirk. "Kingsley owes me ten Galleons; he reckoned you'd take up with the Unspeakables or St Mungo's, for sure."

Hermione snorts. "I don't think I have the ideal bedside manner," she says.

Harry runs a hand through his hair...it sticks up from the latent static magic that clings to his fingers. "So, it's the house-elf crusade, then?" he asks.

Hermione shakes her head. "No, I'm going to ask for an assignment in the Water Division." Down on the field, Madam Pomfrey Ennervates the Seeker and gives him a motherly pat on the shoulder. He wobbles a bit on his ascent, but he seems to be all right to finish the game.

"Merfolk?" Harry asks, looking bemused.

The whistle blows again, and Ginny streaks down the pitch with the Quaffle under her arm. Harry's on his feet in a flash and shouting, "Use the Porskoff Ploy, love! Oi, that was blatant cobbing, that was!"

Hermione waits for Harry sit down after cheering Ginny on to a fabulous goal before she replies: "I'd like to work with the merpeople and selkies and kelpies and the like...maybe act as the Ministry liaison with the water-dwellers. I'm not really that keen on doing the census and wearing wellies all year, though, but I might have to work my way up from that."

Harry gives her a suspicious look. "And this sudden interest is why you asked me for Gillyweed, yeah?"

Hermione smiles. "Of course."

"You'd have to learn Mermish, you know," Harry says, leaning to the left and willing the Gryffindor Keeper to save a half-hearted attempt at goal by the Hufflepuffs.

"Yes," Hermione replies in Mermish.

The expression on Harry's face is priceless. "Wha..."

At that moment, though, the Gryffindor Seeker seems to fall from the sky towards them, and Harry focuses his attention on the rocketing red streak. Hermione slouches into her chair a bit because it looks like he's diving right for them.

"Go, go, go," Harry urges. The Seeker pulls up from his dive metres above their heads, holding the Snitch above his head in a triumphant gesture. Hermione puts her hand to her heart and breathes a sigh of relief.

"Jones catches the Snitch; Gryffindor wins the match," the announcer says, although that fact is patently obvious from the crowd's reaction...his words are lost in the commotion around Hermione.

Harry is on his feet again, grinning like an idiot and doing the Gryffindor dance with Dean, and she watches with a bemused smile. Dean's the only other Gryffindor at Hogwarts from her year, and he was thrilled to see Harry today, too.

Then her gaze drifts across to the teachers' stand, where Snape stands watching them, his expression blank and neutral. Then he raises one eyebrow at her and smirks as he pulls his hand from his pocket, making the unmistakable gesture for 'pay up'. Hermione giggles and can't soften the mad width of her returned grin.

Hermione stands with Harry while they wait for Ginny to get showered and changed. Professor Snape stops to greet Harry on his way back to the castle.

Hermione watches the two dark-haired men shake hands, exchange pleasant greetings and small talk, and she marvels at how the world has seemed to tilt on its axis, how it seems to have found its perfect groove... the magical place where anything seems possible, where the magic of healing and reconciliation is bright and tangible.

Hermione bears the post-Quidditch din in the Gryffindor common room with uncharacteristically good grace. She sits in one of the armchairs, her legs flung over one arm, and she listens to Ginny's enthusiastic babble about how much better she plays when Harry is there to watch and how she's sure she saw one of the Holyhead Harpies sitting in the teachers' stand.

"Oy, can you lot shut it for just two minutes, please?" Dean demands grumpily from where he's scowling at a chessboard.

Little Natalie McDonald smirks at him. "They've got nothing to do with the fact that you're losing, Thomas; you fell right for my diversion and into my second tier of attack. Hah!"

In telltale fashion, Hermione tilts her head to the side, her lip caught between her teeth...something Natalie has said has drawn her clever mind back to an old problem, which been circling her brain like a hawk for months, now. The frown lines on Hermione's forehead ease a little as the fractured pieces of the puzzle start to slot together in her head. "Gin... I've... got to go..."

She knows what solution she's going to propose to Professor Snape, and she's positive he's not going to think her new idea is silly or unsound. That horrid old squid has finally met his match!

"Enjoy the library," Ginny says with a grin, saluting Hermione with her Butterbeer bottle as she turns back to the party.

Hermione's heart is pounding against her ribs when she reaches the dungeons. She knocks twice, but there is no answer. The wooden door merely creaks inward under the light weight of her knuckles. Her eyebrows draw together in a frown; it's not like Snape to leave his door open, let alone unwarded, when he's not in his office.

"Sir?" she calls. She presses her fingertips to the door and opens it halfway, spilling a dancing pool of light around her feet and into the corridor. "Professor Snape? Are you here?" Her voice carries that eerie dungeon echo, and she suppresses a shudder.

"God, it's creepy down here at night," she murmurs. A whisper of a draft tugs at the single, flickering light, and the long shadows shift and slant menacingly. She takes a couple of steps into Snape's office, trying not to look at the dull, unseeing eyes that gleam in the specimen jars.

"Professor Snape? Are you all right?" His office is empty, though...only the light and the shadow make any movement at all. Maybe there's a disaster in the Slytherin common room, she rationalises. Maybe he's just gone to bed and forgotten to lock his office.

Hermione dithers in the middle of Snape's office, overly aware that she's not allowed to be in here like this. She decides that it's probably better to go, to come back tomorrow. She's a little disappointed because her idea really was brilliant this time; she's sure it's the one, the solution to help Syrena and her family.

She eyes the bookshelf nearest to her, thinking about how she'd love just half an hour with some of these books. A large, green book catches her attention, and she steps closer to the bookshelf, into the shadows. The title of the book is striking and simple: Selkie, and it's not one that she's seen in the Hogwarts library. Her heart starts to beat faster again, and excitement drowns out her caution. She reaches for the book with greedy fingers, pulls it forward from the shelf.

Click.

She triggers a hidden mechanism and before she can step back, the bookshelf is spinning quickly on a central, hidden axis, and the edge that is moving away from the wall has pushed her hard into the dark so that she stumbles forward blindly before catching her balance on the edge of a frightened shriek.

Click.

The air around her is black and dense and cold, and she's got a sense of something wet and slick beneath the soles of her shoes. It feels like the icy air is frozen in her lungs before she remembers she's holding her breath, and she has to concentrate on using her lungs. The sound echoes dully with an otherworldly quality, now. Fear pounds at her temples, and she knows she's going to be in a world of trouble for this.

"Lumos," she whispers, and the flare of her wand is small and sickly in the dark. She's in a secret passage of some sort...a narrow tunnel that curves steeply out of sight around a sharp corner. The stones around her look like they're bleeding moisture, and they're slimy and green with algae. There's a muted plink, plink of dripping water; it sets her teeth on edge. "It's not blood," she soothes herself as all her worst childhood nightmares flare to life. Panic presses around her, heavy and oppressive.

She turns around and searches for an exit mechanism on the wall that must back the bookshelf, but she cannot find a seam in the rock, let alone a lever. "All right. All right," she says to herself in a rational and calm voice (it quavers at the edges slightly, quivers like her hands). "The tunnel has to lead somewhere... Hogsmeade probably, like all the other secret tunnels... so you just follow it and it'll all be fine... just fine..."

So, she follows the curve of the tunnel, soothing herself in low tones that seem to absorb into the walls the deeper she goes. When she spots the barrier ahead, she stops and utters a cry of frustration. It looks like slick, green glass, curving in a smooth, concave bulge towards her. She can't tell if it's solid or magic, liquid or air. A spell doesn't reveal anything about it, and she spends five minutes arguing with herself about the stupidity of touching it.

After attempting to cast a Patronus messenger and failing (the dark and her fear kill the light), she presses her lips together and tries to approach the problem rationally. Eventually, her desperate half wins, the half of her that wants to escape from here, now. She's shivering as she reaches a trembling hand towards the barrier, and when her fingertips touch it, it pulls at her hard and sucks her in. She spins and spins like she's caught in a vortex, and then it's black-green and freezing all around her, and she can't tell where is up or down, and the weight of the world seems to press in on her lungs, and they really must be frozen this time because she can't breathe and she can't scream.

And then the world is full of glitter... pinpricks of dazzling, white light that flash around her while her lungs are burning. She can't find her wand and the encroaching blackness at the edge of the prickling light feels like something dark and malignant; it's the monster that eats hope.

The last thing she sees before the dark floods in around her is a flash of silver... a familiar face, and there's the faraway feel of somebody carrying her away, upwards, away, towards the silvering divide.

And then there's only the dark.

A/N: Gallchobhar: Gaelic name composed of the elements gall (foreign, strange) and cabhair (help, support).

Thank you to Gelsey!

Thank you to everybody who reads and reviews The Silvering Divide. Writing this story has been a shining and silver experience.