A tiny figure under a cooking pot was working its way towards a corner of the Slytherin common room. Dingy was laden with a tray of salts, herbs, and washcloths moistened from pure, ice melted mountain water that was boiling in the hearth fire. They tray sat balanced on the flat of Dingy’s pot helmet. His master was exhausted from spell work. Dingy was always sad when his master was ill.

“Master Casey, you should be in the ‘Ospital Hut” squeaked Dingy. This was familiar duty for the house elf. His master underwent much stress. Dingy could only nurse his master’s exhaustion. The elf was not a healer. Dingy placed a fresh washcloth on Casey’s head.

Casey was miserable but rightfully so. He hated being sick. These symptoms had been too friendly all his life: cold sweats, migraines, wheezy breathing from a shrinking shriveled windpipe, a stitch in his lungs. Worse still, the longer he was knocked out like this, the greater the chance of catching disease because of his lowered defenses.

He’d brought it upon himself, loath he admit it. Casey had the Third Year practical finals whipped, he knew it. Wand practicals. He didn’t care if History of Magic or Astronomy fell by the wayside. The third year level wasn’t enough of a challenge. Even the higher grades seemed pitiable. Confusion charms? Incendio? Well Tawse could be taken for a fool if he doubted the conjuring abilities of the Fifth Year class. Calling ‘Incendio’ a summon was pushing it in Casey’s book. Wasn’t it energy, like all the other sparks? Conjuring fire had always seemed…instinctive.

The true challenge was Piertotum Locomotor. Casey heard the seven years were learning it before finals. A spell infamously used by former Headmistress McGonagall on the castle’s statues, desks, and suits of armor in the Battle for Hogwarts. An irresistible challenge, weak constitution be damned. Even for an attempt at the spell, his body demanded harsh payment afterward.

Casey was laid out vampiric, stiff as a board with his hand poised on his chest. He could feel his wand and the comfortable lump of his hidden amulet for how tight his hands clutched at his clothes. A towel had been draped across one of the leather sofas. Casey was not one for public displays of weakness but the common room was less stuffy than his dorm, the green light filtering through the underwater windows somewhat soothing.

“No,” Casey rebuked his elf. “I’m fine, I just need rest.” His eyes were almost closed. In truth he was starting to feel worse. His throat was getting dry. Every last ounce of his willpower was keeping a cough under control that if unchecked would threaten to crack his ribs. Now that he was stretched out along a sofa he doubted he would muster the strength to trek across the grounds to the Hospital Hut. Curse Madam Nadge and her practices. A sensible staff of wizards and witches would have managed to reconstruct the Infirmary by now. The only way to the hut would be via apparation, something Casey was not going to attempt in his current state. Two years ago, getting used to Side Along Apparation via House Elf was a deliciously unpleasant experience with much puke arriving with Casey at the destination. Not for the easily nauseated.

As Dingy applied fresh washcloths, Casey tried to block out the world, into the subconscious were discomfort did not follow. If only medical pain could be transferred to another victim. That would be the greatest dueling spell in Casey’s arsenal, if it were possible. Far away was the crackling of the fire and a glassy ‘tonk’ sound, like striking the side of a full bathtub. Must be a Grindylow attacking its reflection in the underwater windows again.

Vulpes yawned rather loudly as he stepped into the common room. It was only the afternoon but he was already tired, he never realized how boring walking was until he lost the drive to skip. With one hand he made a motion to take off his headphones, but he then remembered Cytherea has taken them off his head at breakfast, and he had been so busy studying he never managed to get them back.

He came into the middle of the room to where all the sofa's were lined up and was about ready to collapse face-first into one when he noticed Casey laying on one, his house elf draping washcloths over him. Vulpes tilted his head slightly; Casey didn't look well.

With a sigh of concern (and slight annoyance), Vulpes sat himself onto the arm of the sofa, facing the fireplace. "Whats wrong with you?" he asked in a rather tired voice. "Sick or something? It may be better to go to the hospital hut y'know." Vulpes turned to look at Casey when he heard a dull 'tonk' on the glass. of the window to the lake.

"Oh," he said looking around. "Think the squid came to say-" Vulpes stopped. There was a girl with her face pressed up against the glass. A great many thoughts crossed his mind at that point. He was very tired, after all. It could be he was imagining this...

Vulpes turned his head slightly towards Casey, eyes still fixed on the girl. "Hey Casey... are you seeing what I'm seeing...?"

Lifting Casey from his probes into the subconscious was a sigh and the indentation of weight on the armrest at his feet. He opened an eye. Oh, Vulpes. Even though Casey considered Vulpes to be a goof, wandering about lost in that music of his, Casey didn't mind his presence. Nothing for him to compete with, although Vulpes did have a surprising cool ease with Transfiguration and facing down monsters like Morvin Sharp. It was almost infuriating how easily things came to him. Uniquely, his characteristic head wear was not with him today.

In response to the older Slytherin's questions, Casey attempted a shrug. "You may not believe it but I am rather familiar with symptoms like these. Dingy is more than capable of managing my health." He paused to hold back the cough's latest attempt to be heard. He grumbled lowly "If you must know, Piertotum Locomotor is annoying out of reach."

Another 'tonk' noise was heard and it seemed to infatuate Vulpes. "Oh, think the squid came to say- Hey Casey... are you seeing what I'm seeing...?"

Casey almost opened his eyes. "That's a good question, Vulpes. From my position on the couch I can only see the fireplace and the ceiling. By your words I take it you are looking out the window into the lake which for me is blocked by the back of this couch here."

He was curious but didn't want to risk moving, jarring another flare up of his symptoms from spell fatigue. "What is it, grindylows on the mating ritual? Or worse, a grindylow mating with the Kra--er, Giant Squid?" Although Casey thought 'Kraken' would be a more suitable and fiercer name for the immense beast of the lake, the Hogwarts colloquialism was 'Giant Squid.' Weird.


[[OOC: Someone else please post before I get to Heliotrope, I don't mind]]

Erin was actually somewhere she was supposed to be.  For anyone who knew her, that was a challenge.  She was trying to actually study for whatever exam she was supposed to be studying for.  Erin, being Erin though, did not particularly get much studying done.  She also wondered whose brilliant idea it was to have five exams over the course of two days.  So even though she had her notes out, and it looked like she was studying, Erin was trying to find something to entertain herself with. 

She was about to skip around the common room again, when she noticed something the cat dragged in on the couch.  Erin was not sure what to make of her class mate, other than try to tell him to go see the Healer.  He looked like death warmed over.  Though Erin had never really seen a corpse, she imagined that this was what someone looked like who was about to pass on to the next great adventure.

"Do you need a Healer?" Erin asked the semi-living body.  Erin was about to skip around again, but noticed that another boy was in the room.  He seemed to have a sense of fashion similar to her elder sister, but beyond that she had very little contact with the fifth year. 

"What are you seeing?" Erin asked.

It had taken the year but Heliotrope had mapped the contours of the deep Black Lake under the school. Boredom was another word not in her vocabulary but revisiting the same spot during every free day was not boring. Helping the merpeople colony, avoiding the grindylows (some kept shackled up by the Black Lake residents. Different when compared to the practices of her colony), interactions with the giant squid. She hadn't seen any other kelpies since that day in April. The presence of such an aggressive creature should have been troubling. By far the biggest creature was the giant squid yet the nastiest were the grindylows. But Heliotrope did not linger in the past.

One alcove of the lake offered means for further exploration. One was a giant circular grille with rusty vertical bars. Heliotrope could just squeeze through them but she hadn't, the grille made her head fuzzy (probably due to the filtration enchantments, this being the waste pipe from the school that dumped into the lake). Further and lower, past a curtain of murkiness, was strange light. She swam towards it.

Something emerged in Heliotrope's vision. The light shone from solid rectangles built into the rock, feet above the sandy bottom. As her eyes grew accustomed to the light, she began to see shapes beyond. No, inside. She zoomed closer with a movement until her splayed webbed fingers touched the surface. Smooth like that, what was it called, glass.

Floating back, she pressed onwards to the windows again, black lycra suit sticking to the glass. In the distorted shapes below she could make out a chamber with sofas and fires and people scattered about. The room was much like the Hufflepuff common room if you added more rocks and rich furniture.

Closest to what she could see clearest, there was a figure on a couch, something brown next to it, a boy, and a girl who crossed over to join them. The boy leaning against the sofa, not lying on it, was staring up at her. If Heliotrope had a broader range of adjectives, she might have described him with the word 'gobsmacked.'

Still keeping his eyes on the girl in the window, Vulpes barely made a move to acknowledge the newcomers question. "Well, just take a look at the window and tell me if you see something you shouldn't be..." his voice trailed off as he continued to stare in amazement at the girl. Out of all the things he'd ever witnessed in the lake, this was definitely the most peculiar.

To be this deep and able to breathe and be remotely human, the girl would have to be a merperson. But this girl didn't look like a merperson. In fact, she looked like... "No..." Vulpes whispered. "It can't be. That's not that Hufflepuff first year is it?" he asked aloud, turning to his house mates. Although, now that he thought about it he wasn't sure they would know many Hufflepuff first years.

Vulpes turned back around and looked curiously at the girl. If she was that first year, how in the world did she manage to get all the way down here?

"Do you need a Healer?" What was he, dead? It was just advanced fatigue, had they never gotten a fever before? "As I mentioned to Connor I am fine for the moment." He would almost risk trying to sleep it off in his room if it wasn't so stuffy.

Speaking of Vulpes, he sounded more in disbelief with each passing moment. The words "that Hufflepuff first year" suddenly explained everything. Casey propped himself up to look over the couch despite Dingy's protests. "So it is the fish freak, guess the rumors were true."

"Umm, maybe it is?" Erin offered as an answer to Vulpes's question, not really thinking about it too much.  Then Casey spoke up.  Erin was somewhat lost.  She did not spend that much time around the Slytherin first years, let alone the Hufflepuffs.  Consequently, she had no idea about any of the rumours going around that there was a merperson at Hogwarts.  Erin thought that she should not be surprised, given that the school had somewhat of a history of accepting anyone with sufficient talent, though she could not think of any specific examples off the top of her head. 

Erin then probably spoke what everyone else was thinking, "Why would she be outside our window?  Are we about to be the victims of a prank?"  Erin asked, knowing that her sisters would try to watch the mayhem they caused if they were going to prank someone.  And truthfully, that is the only reason Erin could think of anyone being outside the window.  Wondering if discretion was the better part of valor or not, she decided to skip towards her dorm stairwell, in case something went off.