It still very much felt like late summer.  A warm, bright sun shone down through the broad leaves of the trees scattered around the paddocks behind the hospital hut in rich light.  The nurse's paint mare was off at the far end of the paddock, grazing lazily at a thick patch of grass that hadn't yet been bleached by the summer sun.  Gelar was by the gate, watching students as they made their way along the path to the lake.  The tall, lanky mutated wingless half-unicorn, half-pegasus yearling was already considerably taller than his surrogate mother but his mottled golden coat had finally shed out to pure white. 

Sasha sat at the picnic table on the back porch of the hospital hut, overlooking the paddocks.  That weird gill-y second year Hufflepuff was due to arrive at any moment for their first study session.  He'd been assigned to help the girl sharpen her study skills and get caught up in her subjects.  Sasha had assumed the girl would prefer to meet outside though he really didn't have any basis for that assumption.  She just seemed like and outside-y kind of girl.  Again, it might have something to do with the gills. 

Footsteps on the porch steps behind him heralded the girl's arrival.  Sasha got up and greeted the girl with a slight grin, gesturing for her to put whatever books she had with her on the table.  "You're ... it's Heliotrope, right?  I'm Sasha.  So, we're ... we're supposed to study together." 

"Alright," Sasha said, figuring it'd be easiest to ignore the gills by focusing on what he knew best: how to study.  "You just finished your first week of classes.  Now that you have a full free day, it's a great opportunity to take stock of where you are.  How would you summarize what you covered this week?  What do you most remember from this week?  Are there any classes you think about and can't remember what you learned?"

Heliotrope had one of those important papers that told her where to go, moist with dribbling ink like most anything that stayed about the young Hufflepuff's possession. The illegible ink had told her to meet at the Hospital Hut on Saturday for tutoring with a Sasha Schlagenweit. She approached from the lake and showed the signs of a recent swim: down to her black lycra suit, rather damp, her book bag trailing behind her as she dragged it by one strap. She followed the deck around the hut, to where the Sasha Schlagenweit waited for her, turning when he noticed.

"Yes, my name is Heliotrope LeJean of the Loch Lomond Selkies," Heliotrope recited, one of her standard greetings. She sat as Sasha explained how the studying was supposed to go. At the question Heliotrope sat blank for almost a full minute, recent events dredged up and filtered into applicable summaries.

Finally she spoke. "We brewed a potion in Potions, tended plants in Herbology, Astronomy was taught by a winged horse, we were tested on retention in Defense, we read in History of Magic, we transfigured in Transfiguration, we performed charms in Charms." The last one received more in-depth summary. "I am told I am very reactive to Cheering Charms."

Sasha stared at the girl a moment, surprised and somewhat taken aback by the rather ... formal ... greeting.  The style of the greeting wasn't really unfamiliar; he'd heard something similar from any number of guests at one of his parent's formal parties.  He just hadn't expected something like it from the girl.  But, at least, once the initial surprise wore off, Sasha knew how to respond in kind. 

"In that case, if we're being specific, I'm Sasha Schlagenweit of the Counts of Wasserburg and the Barons of Gundelfingen."  Sasha grinned slightly and shrugged awkwardly, before scowling slightly in curiosity.  "Not that it really counts anymore.  Do ... does your kind have, you know, ranks?  I mean - or do you just identify by location?"  Was there a like a king of the lake?  Like the lady of lake?  Even though that was something entirely different. 

The girl's blank look didn't bode well.  As the silence stretched on, Sasha's eyebrows gradually rose on his forehead as he waited for some indication the girl remembered something from her classes.  Finally, the girl seemed to remember and Sasha turned to his notebook and started jotting down notes of the girl's answer. 

Except, the notes were unnecessary.  Heliotrope was really just describing the basic curriculum of the classes.  Sasha set his quill down and looked across at the girl.  "You can look at your notes if you need to.  They might help you remember." 

Unless, of course, said notes were incomplete.  Or non-existent. 

The colonies of Sasha Schlagenweit were big. Two inter connected lochs, or boroughs that the land dwellers were said to live in. "We have the Chieftain of the colony, with the other Merchieftains and Merchieftainesses below. My spawn chieftain is a hunter but not a merchieftain."

"Notes," Heliotrope repeated. "Notes are the scratching of quills on parchment." She had loose parchment in her bag. She reached into the bag and something latched onto her arm. She pulled out the Lobalug she had traded for during the summer. She had been increasing its resistance to fresh water by taking it to the lake. Now it's water was spent, the lobalug dry and shriveled as it latched to her arm. Heliotrope looked about an saw the water trough by the horse pen not far off. She pinched the lobalug off her arm then through a perfect arc to have it splash into the trough.

The aquatic creature had made her things more moist. She removed damped, smeared parchments. These were not notes in the sense of formerly legible words wetted to smear. Heliotrope had copied the movements she had seen the students do in class, jotting down notes during lecture. She had NOT discerned to write down what she was hearing, the 'notes' were originally meaningless scratchings. She retained her information from reading the texts or listening, while another node of her brain did the writing on tests. No bond linked these spheres for the inference on how to take notes, not even the smallest dendrite.

Chieftain.  Hunter.  Merchieftain.  Sasha's brows furrowed as he tried to follow and make sense of what she was saying but he failed.  It all seemed reminiscent of a Russian novel; everyone was somehow connected or related and one needed to sketch a diagram in the front cover to even have a hope of following.  "Like the Lorelei?"  Sasha's breadth of knowledge as far as mer-society was concerned was pretty limited and the Lorelei was about the extent of it.  He didn't even know if the Lorelei was real or a mermaid but she'd always seemed important in the legend.  Important enough to name a rock after her. 

"...scratching of quills on parchment," Sasha mouthed back as he watched the girl rifle in her wet bag.  Maybe the literal definition of notes wasn't as ominous as it sounded.  Maybe that was just her quirk?  Or...maybe not.  Sasha watched quietly as the girl pulled a slimy blob from her bag and tossed it in one of the horse troughs.  "That's not going to ... contaminate ... the water.  Is it?" he asked.  Regardless of the answer, Sasha would be draining the trough and refilling it after they were done. 

"Alright, so," Sasha said, turning back to the task at hand.  "Let's ... well ... okay.  So, how did you approach homework last year?  How did you get prepared for exams?"  Modifying the girl's current study techniques would probably be easier than creating them from scratch.  They could just figure out what has been working for her and what hasn't and build on that.  "What would you normally do with what you learned last week?"

"You know the tale of the blurbeng Lorelei, who came to live with the sirens of the Echo Rock?" A sign of intelligence as only the smartest in the colony could discern the weakest of Siren Calls to weave into one of many tales. "Lorelei had the broken heart from a sailor, so the sirens assisted her to sing at passing ships, enthralling them to wreck were they could hunt the sailor for revenge."

Her wet notes stuck together, the beginning stages of paper mache. "The lobalug is a filter feeder, to turn contaminations into its venom," Heliotrope explained. "It was getting dry."

It took another minute to fulfill a response to test taking until Heliotrope recalled the events of last term. "When the professors said to reread the books I would reread them. I had to practice the 'mice into  snuffboxes' transfiguration. Fauna Blake's rat was turned into a mussel." The query for what she did with homework did not register. "What I have learned last week, stays in last week?"

"Echo Rock?"  Sasha scowled in confusion for a moment until his mind made the connection and he nodded.  He'd never heard the towering rock that stood over the Rhine river referred to in English.  It was like hearing someone attempt to translate Cheeseburger to Käsebratlinge.  It just didn't work.  Cheeseburgers were simply cheeseburgers, regardless of the language.  "But - yeah.  I've visited the Lorelei a few times when my family took boat tours on the Rhine.  Well...the rock.  It was a muggle tour so they told us the legend."

Hearing the little slimy thing was busy turning contaminates into venom wasn't exactly reassuring.  Sasha still had every intentions of draining and cleaning the trough when they were done. 

Sasha sat back and looked out at the horses in the paddock.  Okay.  So...maybe it wouldn't be a simple matter of adjusting already established study methods.  "Alright."  They were going to have to start from the beginning.  Whatever that was.  Studying was such a easy, normal, natural thing for him.  It was like breathing.  He knew how to do it but he didn't have the slightest idea how to explain it.

"Alright," Sasha repeated.  Suddenly, a question occurred to him and he looked across the table at the girl.  Was there really any way ask tactfully?  But, the girl obviously came from a very different world which was something Sasha could relate to on some level.  Not to the same extent, of course, but enough so to realize there may be important elements of all of this world that people falsely assumed she understood.  They'd made plenty of assumptions where he was concerned and he'd just gone from the muggle world to this one. 

"Do you understand what you're doing here?  I mean, why you're here?  In school and classes and all that?  Do you know what you're trying to achieve?" 

The question was at points simple and obvious but complex for Heliotrope to answer. There was the distant recollection of the Hogwarts representative that had come to the Loch, explaining Heliotrope was found on their records to attend.

"Hogwarts is where you come to learn magic, correct? It involves one of these," she pulled out her wand from where it plastered along her back under the swimsuit. "And to learn magic you come to live in a castle for seven years, with it's activities each day."

Sasha nodded his head.  Her answer was correct, though partial.  "Ja.  It is where we come to learn magic.  That is part of it and an important part of it."  Sasha paused after that thought, looking down at the parchment he'd pulled from his bag.  He dipped his quill into a pot of ink and started scratching on the page.

• Heliotrope Le Jean - unfamiliar with notetaking; came to learn magic.

"So, yes.  that's part of why you're here and it's important.  But, there's more to it.  You're also here to get prepared for whatever you're going to do as an adult.  Eirene, for instance - you know her, right?  She may want to be a Healer some day.  So, she's here to learn about plants and potions and other things that will help her be a Healer when she's older.  Do you have any ideas about what you want to do when you leave Hogwarts?"

Heliotrope looked at his writing, though when it took her a marathon of hours to read ten pages she was not able to discern it quickly.

"Eirene, does not like being wet or being touched." Those were the most significant parts of their interactions.

"When I am not at Hogwarts," now that she had experienced a full year, she could say this, "I am swimming in Loch Lomond, or swimming home to Loch Lomond. So when I leave Hogwarts I will be in Loch Lomond."

There was, partially, hesitation to these words. After a pause: "...would not I?"

Sasha started to grin but bit his lip to fight back the slight laugh.  Why wasn't he surprised that Eirene neither liked being touched - especially by wet classmates.  Really, if they knew nothing more about their pasts, Sasha might have been convinced that the now-second-year Ravenclaw was some long lost little sister. 

"I suspect not.  Not all people are quite as ... touchy ... as others.  I'm with her on that.  However, she is very smart.  She could answer a lot of questions." 

In many ways, Sasha could relate to Heliotrope.  Of being not quite sure of how or where or even if he fully belonged here or where this would all lead ... in another year and a half. 

"There's no reason that you couldn't."  Sasha ensured the girl.  "If that's what you want to do then there's no reason you can't go home when your done.  In which case," as much as it pained him to say it, "then you're entirely right.  You're mostly here to learn to use and control magic and, then beyond that, what you're interested in."  She may not need to stress over memorizing every detail in history of magic or potions. 

But, it was also possible that, like him, she didn't really know what other options were there.  It was only within the last couple years that Sasha had really started to grasp what career and life options there were in the wizarding world.  To those purebloods and halfbloods that grew up in the wizarding world, that was ... well ... obvious.  To muggleborns - especially those like him who, outside of school, remained very isolated from the wizarding wold, much like if one spent their holidays in a lake, it was all very much a mystery.

"If you wanted to do more, though, you could.  There are people in the Beast division at the Ministry that work with merpeople.  From what I know, they're all pretty much witches and wizards.  There's really is so much you could do that very few other people could.  You don't have to, of course.  But being here will open up these options."

Heliotrope gazed at him, the information percolating into more cohesive thoughts. One topic stood out amongst the rest.

"Interests?" Heliotrope questioned. "Is that specialized work, such as hunting by spear or trident instead of kelp whip? Like the lebloh that crafts items of shell and rock?" Heliotrope knew how to swim, hunt, and survive on her own but that was stuff she could just do without thought process. Never had her upbringing in the loch thus far brought about specialization, excluding her proficiency with the kelp whip.

Sasha's suggestions brought up another far memory, distinctive enough that Heliotrope recalled it. "There were people from the Beast Division[1] at the day of tents last year. They said we merpeople are Beasts because we do not follow the concerns of the wizard's law. They are right, we merfolk remain below the surface."

Except for her, the only one that could walk about on land without problems. She made an inference with her usual emotionless tone devoid of meaning. "So I am half Beast."

"Being at school tells you of options, then? How to follow them."

1.	Regulation & Control of Magical Creatures Booth

"Yes," Sasha said.  Hunting by spear versus hunting by trident.  He supposed those were, indeed, interests.  "Many of them are practical like that.  Making potions or tending magical beasts.  But, there's a lot of things that are more, well, theoretical.  For instance, I'm sure your chieftains - they make decisions right?  They decide what's best for the group- or ... or colony."  It was colony, right? 

"My guess is the chieftains don't hunt much?  Or, do much ... shell crafting?  They make decisions and plans and work with other colonies- clans?  So, some interests are less tactile like that." 

Sasha nodded.  "I have my own interests.  A direction I think I want to go when I leave Hogwarts.  I learned about those options through classes and what I learn in class will help me get there.  The more classes you do well in, the more options you have.  The more you know what you want to do, the more you can focus on the classes you need.  Does that make sense?" 

Slowly, Sasha shook his head.  "You're not half-Beast.  The Ministry has labeled you half-Beast. But, that's because it has always been just witches and wizards that have made the rules.  Sometimes, the rules they make aren't always right." 

"It is colony. Since the earliest times all merpeople have emigrated from the sea into smaller bodies of water. The chieftains do not hunt. I was taught the ways of the kelp whip though I have picked up on spear."

"So," she summarized. "You need more classes to have options to see how to have fewer classes."

Heliotrope debated the terms of Beast or Not-Beast she had heard defined by the ministry personnel. "Why would someone make wrong rules? There could be others labeled 'Beasts' even though they are not." Government, on a merperson level, was so small and centralized that it worked, if you appreciated merperson values such as the sustaining of the loch.

Sasha turned his attention away from the girl and towards the lake, watching the late summer light sparkle on the surface.  How, exactly, did a merperson emigrate to a lake like this?  Sasha had always assumed the mermaids got stuck here after the last ice age - or whenever this lake was landlocked.  The stream that flowed down from the base of the lake seemed much too shallow for them to swim up. 

Unless, he supposed, they migrated like salmon.  Or trout.  Flinging themselves upstream over the rocky rapids as they made their way upstream pool by pool. 

That was, admittedly, kind of a strange image. 

"Yes.  Usually."  Sasha shook the previous image from his head and turned back to the first year, grinning slightly.  Most of the time, people took classes to, hopefully, take fewer classes one day.  "At least, that's usually how it happens.  It hasn't quite worked out that way for me.  I haven't really dropped any classes, yet.  But, I don't recommend taking everything."

Sasha wasn't entirely sure he was the best or most qualified person to answer why the Ministry - or anyone - would make a rule that is 'wrong.'  Behind him, he could hear a soft clicking noise as Baldur climbed up the porch stairs and flopped down in the sun.  The shepherd's coat was spiked in wet peaks and his chest rose and fell quickly as he panted self-contentedly, all clear indications the dog had been enjoying the very lake Sasha had been looking at.   

"Well, because wrong and right is subjective," Sasha hazard to answer.  "And, usually defined by those who are there when the rules are made.  I don't eat meat.  To me, it doesn't feel right.  But, to someone else, it might not bother them.  So - it's probably just that when the rules were made, the wizards who were there thought it was right to consider them Beasts.  But, luckily, rules can change if people care enough."