10:23am

Past the doors for the Committee for the Disposal of Dangerous Creatures, down the hall from the Dragon Research and Restraint Bureau, in the area of the Beast division of the RCMC where the ambiance shifted towards the creatures aquatic-

-if you reached the Ghoul Task Force, you had gone too far-

- is an otherwise unassuming door just open a crack. One easy to gloss over in the multitude of doors in the Ministry of Magic. It says “Mermish Translation” on the window and there’s a sign with a stiffly animated drawing of a mermaid bobbing too and fro, lines for sound emanating from it’s mouth. The other side of the sign has a sleeping mermaid.

Over the years many offices in the ministry had come and gone, the rooms disappearing and reappearing when needed. It was generally easy to trivialize some departments and sub-offices as ‘dead end jobs’ where you were one policy change away from being out of work. Clearly, the previous incarnation of “Mermish Translation” was such a dead end job, staffed only by one wizard who retired due to tinnitus. Himself probably demoted from some grander office at the time.

Upon reinstating the position, they had even tried to have it as one desk out on the general floor. Yet there was an ear grating quality to raw mermish, outside of a liquid medium, that just resonated wrongly for those unfamiliar with it given the vibrations in the air, Silencing charms be damned. Translation was hastily relocated to this room.

Heliotrope could be considered lucky to be so junior a ministry worker yet already have her own ‘office.’ Although this was more a glorified broom cupboard, not that she minded. And the Beast division should consider itself lucky to have an actual Selkie in the position, without having to worry about qualifications about studying mermish or the duration of one’s Bubble-Head Charms.

Ok, half-Selkie. But the point still stands.

It wasn’t too cluttered inside Mermish Translation but it was functional. On one side was a desk, various scrolls in the In or Out trays. Maps charting the dimensions of colony lakes or sea routes. A few models of creatures like plimpies or grindylows for reference. In the back shelves were a series of egg-shaped crystals, Soundsnatches, with scintillating bubbles in each. On the bookshelf, two Global Gramophones, a series of matching records, more archived documents, a bottle with something strange in it, and a large catalog detailing the features of various species of merpeople. Heliotrope even managed to balance her kelp wrapped broom on top of the bookshelf.

But the really noticeable feature was the large tank of water on the other side of the room, halfway up the wall.

With a Hufflepuff graduate of 2015 bent over the edge, upper body plunged into the water. She hadn’t needed to come up in minutes. She could be listening to the Soundsnatch dry but this was her preferred way of doing so.


There was plenty of backlog on the slow days in Mermish Translation. Wixkind had a scattered comprehension of Merpeople myths. This verse was from the warcries of the Azores Sirens off the coast of Portugal, a song passed down through the generations. In the age of wood and sail over-fishing had debilitated the food sources for the Sirens. An unusually warlike colony that attacked trade routes along the European Atlantic, including an incident of trying to drown 15 wizards from the mouth of the Thames.

The song form was unlike most music heard nowadays, yet had a captivating if haunting cadence. Or if it was dry, just another series of screeches to those that did not understand mermish.

Vincent Fournier was not the administrative type, but had accepted the mantle of the Beasts Division five years ago as the next good thing to do, and to support his old friend Balfour Spectre, Level Four's top chap.

He rolled down the less-travelled corridor until he found the right door. It was ajar and swung open further when he rapped on it with a heavy knuckle.

"LeJean!" he called out and added a yoo-hoo whistle. Peering through, he saw the strange witch neck deep (or deeper) in her work.

Vincent had come from dragons. Dragon handlers did not do things like this. "Oi! LeJean! Come up for air."

If and when she did, she'd see Vincent in the doorway with a Level Two file.

When Heliotrope was tank deep in work, head plunged into the water, it was easy to miss sounds from outside. Such as the Division head entering and whistling. Resolving a situation like this might require a mirror or some kind of underwater sneakoscope.

Luckily for Vincent he only had to wait a few moments longer. Heliotrope closed the soundsnatcher and finally stood from the tank. Wet hair sopping about left plenty of puddles, not to mention her clothes were soaked from shoulder to waist. If the drains ever got backed up magical maintenance might be in for a world of hurt.

Heliotrope had stood because she had finished listening to the song. It would have to be labeled for the shelves in the back, plus write up the transcript so she wasn't anticipating seeing anyone let alone the bearded chin of her boss. Sub-boss. Middle manager. The hierarchy still took some getting used to.

"Vincent Fournier!" Say what you will about Heliotrope's minimally Scottish accent by of aquatic caterwauling but she could pronounce French names as well as her mother Danielle. Even if Heliotrope didn't know enough of the language. "Are you getting more sleep these days?"

Still dribbling the excess from the tank, holding the Soundsnatch in two hands, she noticed the file in his hands. "What is that for?"

Vincent smiled crookedly at LeJean's commentary on, what, his complexion? His chipper attitude? His casual way of leaning on the doorframe.

"Fresh as a daisy," he said. When LeJean indicated the file, Vincent flipped it open.

"Level Two has turned up a Selkie in the Thames," he said. "She's a suspect in some muggle drownings. I don't know how they got there. It got kicked to Level Three, then back to us since no one can understand a word she's saying."

"Are you ready to do this? Big leagues."

Most of life in the Beast Division was bent towards conservation and keeping human/animal interactions as peaceful as possible, but what they were best known for was these kind of things. It was flashy, it caught a headline, so it was important they didn't foul it up when they were called.

Realizing she sopping water everywhere in the middle of office business, Heliotrope retrieved her wand from the small of her back, just below the neck. Usually her bottom layer of clothing was some sort of swimsuit, tight enough to keep her wand secured for underwater journeys. That had been her habit ever since a traveling wandmaker, an Irish Pavee, had helped create a wand for her.

But now Heliotrope was a fully civilized witch! Insofar as she didn't rely on school roommates to casting drying charms for her. In a few moments of the spell ruffling her hair and clothes she was dry, with only one or two moist spots remaining.

Heliotrope had regressed to a frown when Vincent briefed her on the file bounced between MLE and A&C. Heliotrope was no stranger to death, hunting nor the best and worst of merfolk society. She had the Finfolk to thank for nearly missing her 6th year at Hogwarts. Yet as she had just been cataloging legends of the Azores Sirens attacking trade routes she had to wonder if there was some sort of reason for this Selkie to drown muggles.

"Big leagues?" The expression was lost on her. Her first year home from Hogwarts had seen her swim along the coast back home. If it wasn't tradition for students to travel home by the Hogwarts Express, she would have had a more direct route finding a closer Scottish waterway towards Loch Lomond. But then she wouldn't have had the life experiences of her first major summer spent beyond the shores of her loch.

"I've swam leagues before, Fournier, so I'm already ready." If she was to round up her life traveling, maybe 19 to 20 thousand leagues under the sea?

"Do they know if she's a freshwater or saltwater Selkie?" Her parent species had quite the dimorphism: the progenitive saltwater strain were seal merfolk, sometimes even mistaken for sea lions, able to become human if they cast off their pelt; whereas when freshwater colonies became loch bound, only vestigial seal characteristics remained as they regressed to a form somewhat similar to Merrows, only with silvery skin.

"I don't think they know a selkie from a mackerel," he said, then Vincent stood up from the door frame, shut the file, and waved it. "Let's go."

Once Heliotrope was ready to go, Vincent led the way to the rooms some inappropriately called the 'zoo'. Enchanted enclosures were specially kitted out (though not always perfectly comfortably) to temporarily house a variety of magical beasts or 'beasts'. Vincent navigated them through the dimly lit cooridor which was lined with alcoves housing doors. But at the very end was a massive cylindrical tank. Inside, in the darkness somewhere, swam the selkie in question. Periodically she'd charge the glass, her webbed hands splayed, her teeth bared.

It wasn't ideal. She hadn't officially been charged with any crime, but there was, apparently, no better way to detain her for questioning: but no one on Level Two was willing to get in there with her.

Vincent approached. The floor was wet but the tank was sound. "All yours, LeJean."

Mackerel was a good eating fish. Hunted in the open semi-depths, a forage fish and keystone species to many marine predators. Although Heliotrope had learned by now that most people weren't being flattering when comparing people to mackerel. They should have chosen an uglier fish for insults, mackerel meant "marked, spotted" like her roommate Obderedria's hair or that older Ravenclaw girl's freckles that had been in each other's bodies the half-day Heliotrope had been a scarecrow.

A thought that slipped out of her mind as easily as it had slipped in.

Nodding at Fournier, they crossed towards the more active area of the Beasts division. Care of Magical Creatures was one of Helio's few excellent courses, even with the non-aquatic critters, as she had helped out some of the handlers in a pinch. Usually it would be intriguing to catch glimpses and sounds of the creatures waiting to leave the zoo. There was the glow of Blue Caps, a golden unicorn colt being treated for blood loss, gnomes rattling a cage, strange colorful birds under Silencing charms, somewhere someone must be facing a renegade Boggart from elsewhere in the Ministry given the incantations drowned out by the braying of another creature...

...all through this, Heliotrope drew grim when the tank came into view.

Heliotrope had not been one for divination. She rarely had expectations or qualms about the future, so to borrow a phrase she was 'pleasantly surprised' how the job at Mermish Translation had been going thus far. Plenty of underwater missions, usual encounters could be categorized as rescues or diplomatic. It had been some time since she had personally dealt with aggressive merfolk. Once the Level 2 case file indicated her kind, Selkie, a colder stream of thoughts were flowing through her mind. She hadn't heard of any trouble at home in Loch Lomond, so this Selkie was potentially from a neighboring loch. Or maybe even not within the continent.

The tank was necessary but Helio was also a person of the depths. Regardless of how it swam or scuttled, stick any "fish" in too small of a tank at it was as devastating for them as a caged bird. An entity of free movement restrained. Wixes needed brooms to fly, that 'loss' of spatial free-flow was not felt in the same way except from the best Quidditch players.

But there were also muggles drowned by this Selkie hiding in the tank.

Vincent knew what Heliotrope's job entailed, so she didn't forewarn him when she switched to her native tongue. One of her webbed hands was pressed on the glass, a greeting. {Will you speak with me?}

She didn't flinch when it rammed against the glass, predatory anger and gnashing teeth gave way to brief confusion, then the fury returned as it launched to the surface.

"GLORMURGAWG!!" the Selkie shrieked. Sneered, really, before diving again as its grey flippers, two near the waist and two at the tail splashed more water out of the tank.

Hearing that word stunned Heliotrope, unmoving as she was soaked for the second time in as many minutes. It wasn't proper Mermish, rather the hissy sounds of merfolk trying to learn human tongues. A half-language she hadn't put on the lexicon as of yet since working at the Ministry.

She dropped her hand. "Salt." She turned to Vincent. "Saltwater selkie. We should increase the salinity in the tank."

Vincent had seen it all, but he'd done very little work with merpeople. He'd defer to his resident expert, no matter how young or strange she was. Her lived experience was worth more than any language and culture certificate could provide. When the Selkie made their need clear, translated through LeJean, Vincent clapped his hands once and rubbed them together.

"That, I can help with," he said and moved to a control panel near the tank. It was an arcane looking thing, of brass levers and bulbous reservoirs. Pressure gauges might make the contraption look nearly muggle, but the glowing nodes and shimmering substances belied its magical nature. He manipulated a dial and the bottom of the massive tank began to shimmer. He looked over to LeJean with raised eyebrows.

"Should be working," he said. Then he added, "if we could get a name, maybe, their side of the story?"

The case file detailed some circumstantial evidence, but for the moment Vincent thought it better to keep it to himself, so that LeJean could work with the Selkie without preconceived notions. The Wizengamot would appreciate it, if this came to that.

The features of the trapped mermaid and the soak guided Heliotrope on instinct. Proper water conditions would hopefully make her more open to conversation. Fournier hadn't asked what the term actually meant, nor did Heliotrope elaborate. It had been specifically directed at her and it wasn't flattering.

A variation of 'Merg' was the middle syllable. Not just somebody malformed, at the lowest dregs of the colony. A worse turn of phrase. The Finfolk had used it and that there should be any dedicated insult of that caliber in mermish suggested that Heliotrope may not have been a singular half-breed. If still the first to attend Hogwarts classes.

But that wasn't her mission, as Fournier reiterated about talking to this mermaid and not her choice of slurs. Heliotrope had only skimmed the file because she knew getting the other side of this account was important. As the last of the changes to the water settled into place Heliotrope had kicked off her shoes, climbing to the rim of the tank. Still showing herself unarmed.

{I hail from the freshwaters of Loch Lomond. We do not always hear the songs from the sea. But I want to hear yours.}

Less agitated swimming from the Selkie in the tank. Her face was still harsh when she approached the surface again, gaze remaining predatory. Within this tension both mermaid and half-human were sizing up how things could escalate if she tried to drag Heliotrope into the tank.

{Cast offs,} The Selkie spat. {Yours are no longer seals.}

Heliotrope simply nodded. {True. But this cast off has swam your waters and knows of your stories. The Wandfolk only see you as the drowner of two non-magic.} ("muggle" had almost entered the mermish tongue but "wix" was too recent of an identifier; although merpeople had roughly equatable terms) {You must have had your reasons. May I know why?}

It was a very roundabout way asking for her name. The Selkie in the tank spent some time considering her options.

{Sulesk} Heliotrope turned to report "Her name is Sulesk," before the next thing the Selkie said caught her attention. A strange connotation that would require clarification before it made its way into her transcript.

Head turned back to Fournier. "Was there any mention of a pelt found at the scene? A section of skin?"

Vincent stood by with a cat-like interest in a conversation he wasn't a part of, nor did he know the language of. He'd never even attempted to figure out any Mermish, which was probably a demerit on his character. Anyway, when LeJean supplied a name, Vincent licked the end of his pencil and scratched it in the file as best as an Englishman would spell it.

"Let me see," he said. He flipped through the file. "No help. Looks like they're still processing evidence. What's she saying?"

It was probably a situation where LeJean, their translator, would translate as soon as she had something to translate, and having some lout asking her about it would not speed it along.

The intricacies of how Level 2 was processing the scene and updating ministry files were lost on Heliotrope. One of the few times she had been dragged to Philo and company's gaming club at Hogwarts was for Wizards' Poker night. A reduced version of the rules, antes were Bertie Botts Beans rather than money. All this to say that Heliotrope had developed a minor reputation of having a "poker face" when she had pulled off a River Lune's Rescue out of nowhere.

Actually, it had more to do with Heliotrope's stunted display of emotions, as in her younger years at Hogwarts she was plenty stoic. Nowadays she was more emotive, if still muted, and would not be capable of a "poker face" in this instance when Fournier reported no pelt was found. Her expression was still stony but her lips twitched, her eyes panicking.

{The Wandfolk found no pelt. Was it taken?} she asked Sulesk.

The mermaid's tone was as vengeful as a scorned veela's. {They took it from her! I warned Ve'sker against her shedding. To old to still be curious of land-dwellers. The two from the shore had kept her back, deserved to drown!}

Time was ticking away like one of Professor Storm's more sharp Defense examinations. Implications Heliotrope didn't like. A situation that reminded her of another tragedy, this time reversed, and her obligations to the two biomes where she lived were crashing in her mind like the erosion of a seaside cliff from the waves. She turned from the tank with her wand. "Accio catalog."

--where, back behind the Mermish Translation door, the large catalog dislodged from the shelf, the disruption activating a gramophone that left a merrow funeral dirge on loop as the book haphazardly summoned across Level 4--

{Ve'sker. Is she your daughter? Sister?}

{Sister,} Sulesk replied. {Barely of fifteen summers.}

{But the two you drowned didn't have the pelt. Was there another?}

Sulesk just hissed, a non-verbal confirmation.

The catalog slammed onto the ground near Vincent Fournier. Heliotrope had hopped down from the tank, flipping pages until she got to the illustration of a saltwater Selkie shedding its seal pelt.

"Sulesk wasn't the only Selkie in the Thames. I think there's a third muggle that has her sister's pelt," Heliotrope said, as she divulged the main points of the mermaid's account.

"Hello," Vincent had said in greeting of being slightly startled at the arrival of the soggy book and Heliotrope LeJean's sudden wet nearness.

"A pelt, huh? That kind of pelt." He ducked his head to peer past LeJean to the tank were Sulesk was waiting unhappily.

"Right. So Sulesk here didn't drown the muggles? Another Selkie did, over a pelt? Is that something she'll need back, the pelt?"

Vincent was more accustomed to dealing with the animal variety of beasts, rather than merpeople should be in Beings with their complex motives and legal culpabilities and pelt-less sisters. It was easier to advocate for the relocation of a phoenix who singed school children who'd gone off a path, or even a hippogriff who killed a fisherman because it was nature just being nature. But if Sulesk harmed muggles who hadn't harmed them, there wasn't much Vincent could say either way.

Heliotrope had thought she had explained everything, so Fournier’s response confused her. Then she realized she had stopped short when she flipped to the page regarding saltwater Selkie transformations. She was fluent in mermish and English, switching between the two seamlessly in most conversations when she wasn’t agitated.

And that’s what she was currently feeling. Agitated. Not the kind from an accidental Gillyweed high, where her body would dry itself out trying to regress to the parental form of her species, gill functions only. No, this was agitation like her 4th and 5th years, before all her important exams. Trying to dredge up her grades from a mire of “Dreadful” marks in her early schooling.

And from the merfolk perspective; mermish was a magical language. Its only limitation was how it was heard dry. Underwater, anybody could understand so long as they had a concept of language. All someone like Fournier would have to do was dip their head underwater to hear what Sulesk was saying. And if you couldn’t hold your breath that long, that’s why muggles had invented the snorkel.

But then Sulesk might have attempted a third drowning.

Gills twitching, eyes not really focused, Heliotrope fell back on nervous habits. Her fingers tested the crinkle of her often damp and dried books. Her other hand tracing the texture of the wet stones by the tank. She was the translator. A wix response underwater wasn’t the same as mermish, although most outgoing merfolk could read the intent behind the burbles. She had to get this accurate. It was another exam. She remembered some of her peers asking how they would use various “Poor” subjects of magic in their lives after Hogwarts. For Heliotrope, it was realizing that “exams” weren’t just limited to the classroom.

She looked at Sulesk’s predatory countenance in the tank. Heliotrope had to remain objective. She didn’t like it.

She didn’t speak until she turned her head away from the tank. Trying to find calm in the flow of her thoughts. “No. She admits to drowning them. Three muggles had come upon where her sister, Ve'sker, had shed her pelt. Ve'sker can’t return to the seas if she doesn’t have it. They stopped her trying to reclaim it.”

Her face was choppy, like restless waves, in that she didn’t know how to implore the emotions swirling under her skin. Pleading, anger, directness, compassion. The only ‘acting’ she had ever done was stilted reading of lines during a class goblin reenactment while holding an exploding tuba. Expressions were not her strong suit in a mounting crisis.

“We are not like Veela,” she said, not choosing to identify with her human roots at that moment. Or contractions, dropping her improved speaking skills. “Only saltwater merfolk can change into a human form to walk among the land dwellers, for a time. It is a phase, curiosity about life above the waves, and if they choose to trust their ‘pelts’ to another,” no time to get into the variations for non-Selkies, “it is meant to be consensual.”

Legends spoke to such relationships, ‘sea brides or husbands’ not always working out. Besides it being a waypoint in her childhood journeys, dodging hags and learning billiards at The Lazy Kelpie, as a junior clerk Heliotrope was on hand during some sanctions about keeping the ‘brides’ thing above board. And such a union with a transfigured merfolk wouldn’t result in the infamous Hufflepuff ‘fish freak’ currently trying to find something to do with her hands, fingers flexing to feel the indents of her palms.

“Ve'sker would know little about land-dweller customs or language. She is not captured in a tank. She’s scared, in an unfamiliar environment, the only connections to her home waters are her,” pointing to a murderous sister, “and what was stolen from her.”

Heliotrope didn’t want to think about what was going to happen to Sulesk. But she wanted to everything she could to find Ve'sker. The lost selkie wasn’t like her, she wasn’t given a wand or a Hogwarts letter.

Yeah, Vincent nodded, sister Selkie will, in fact, be needing back that pelt. He flipped back and forth through the dampened pages of the reference book, not distracted but keen to understand. Heliotrope LeJean, he could easily imagine, could be struggling to remain objective, but really, it was okay with Vincent if she wasn't.

"You think you can put this all in a, erm, report so that the geniuses on Two and Three can understand it? Not just what Sulesk here said, the cultural stuff. This from here," he gestured at the book, and peered at the young mer/witch.

This was, to Vincent's understanding, LeJean's first real job. There were things about doing Ministry work you couldn't learn other than by experience. Writing useful communications that wouldn't be swiftly returned or even more swiftly misconstrued was not easy.

"Because what's probably going to happen now is going to get a bit tangly. Law Enforcement will need to build the case against Sulesk here. Catastrophes will have to smoothe the deaths over with the muggles. And we're going to have to work with both parties to find sister and, I guess, this missing pelt. And I guarantee you, they're all stupider than I am in Merpeople speak."

A report Heliotrope could do. Seas sakes[1] since having to update text transcripts to all of the audio catalogs her handwriting was better than her blocky school reports. It had taken until her 4th year to properly impart capitalization.

She turned back to the tank with Sulesk with a promise. {We will find her. As Namorg slayed the Kraken}[2]

She didn't sound comforted. {The serpent wyrms do not take to false boasts} "Glormurgawg"

That term was going to remain untranslated by Heliotrope unless she was pressed on it. It had no bering on the incident with Sulesk and Ve'sker. It was only ever directed at her.

She wanted to get the report done, but as dutifully informed, as possible. It gave her swirling mind direction. She did not need to view Vincent Fournier as an enemy. He wasn't like the ministry members who were involved with her mother Danielle's arrest in her 6th year.[3] He was her superior, one who was understanding, as difficult as everything might become.

Heliotrope regarded the catalog sections he indicated. "Thank you, Fournier."

1.	"land sakes"
2.	Namorg/Hercules/Orion depending on how you read your constellations. Sept 5 2009
3.	Implied from Danielle being a last witness and witch representative for the loch from this incident: Search for a Missing Ministry Lawyer Comes to Close - Feb 22 2014