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Back in the wizarding world Hermione Granger may be a sort of secular, muggleborn queen, consulted on obscure points and presumed to be ready and willing to leap in and do everyone's jobs for them, but in her favourite place - Stardew Valley and it's surrounds - she is merely one more object of mysterious beauty amongst many. And that is no downgrade. To be the only wonder of the world is a danger and a lonely shame.
"I'm just popping out for a bit. If I don't reply it's because I'm having to firefight some sort of office drama." she writes in several different letters to several different people, attaching them all to her poor, overworked owl, who hoots tiredly and takes off out of her London flat's window. Well, the poor girl will be getting a little rest now because Hermione has put in for a week's leave and she means to use all of it, and use all of it without turning her mind to work or touching a quill - an enormous personal challenge but one she aced a couple times before, so she knows it can be done. Self indulgence is absolutely necessary at times, at least in the matter of rest and relaxation.
Locking up (and double checking she's locked up) and leaving her flat, she trots down the corridor separating the apartments in her building, a smooth green plastic painted walkway taking her to the steps that propel her out the glass doors and onto a grey courtyard in a grey city under a grey sky…You get used to it. Or so the foreigners say. The English don't say that, and they never get used to it, they only come to begrudgingly tolerate it. Very begrudgingly. Endure is a better word, really. Some people enter a state of seeming not to notice the drizzle and the cloud and the cold that is not quite cold enough to be really serious most of the year. Drizzle slaps at Hermione's cheeks while she bustles her way down to the banks of the biggest and most famous of London's many rivers. The Thames is glowering, but when isn't it. Opaque and a muddy green, it snakes lazily through the human mess crouched on either bank, a human mess filled with many living lives important to the woman standing on a bank once combed by the poor and desperate for lumps of coal and off cast treasures from the ships that docked here from all over the world. This ancient mess of brick and blood that's crunched through millions and millions and millions since the days when the Romans arrived and named the marshy spot 'Londinium'.
London, London, London - like many a person driven to distraction by the vast tick of a city over the years, Hermione steps into the cold grey waters, walking up to her waist then up to her neck, treading over mud, dirty liquid lapping at her prim and proper working woman's clothing. Her stolid, boring brown clothes which show her to possess a career and a driving ambition. That's really why she chose mediocre Ron over genius Viktor. She could not tolerate equality, or worse, being surpassed. The thought twists her soul like a wet towel, threatening to ring out her life essence.
But unlike almost every other person who has stepped into that fatal river, Hermione does not drown, and there will be no bloated body or shocking news report. No, instead she transforms.
The Thames never sees scales of such a beautiful powder blue and gold, never sees such delicate fins. And it doesn't see them for long this time either, as Hermione leaves the turgid river behind and enters underground passages and tunnels with mouths opening in the riverbed, mouths which only let those who bear the secret through. Fins as see through as iridescent silk chiffon waft gently through pea soup water, hair the captivating warm brown of larch bark dancing silently with the current, overpowering it and making it a lover. Hermione is careful never to let her friends and associates know of this side of her, because they could not handle sirens, so they would crash and burn before a mermaid, and not one of those inbred lake based deformations of the name, but true, salt sea mermaids - half woman and half fish. Starkly beautiful. Creatures for whom men kill themselves without the objects of their desire needing to open their mouths. Men, so silly. So, so silly. And they call women romantic?
It doesn't take long for Hermione to navigate the unseen passages beneath the crust of the world, and in a few hours the water changes, grows salty, cool rather than cold, and clear, changing from grey green to turquoise. Subtly the dark, which she had been navigating with the help of luminescent fish and algae, lightens of its own. Gradually, gradually. The narrow passages, from a constant downwards slant, tilt upwards, and widen.
Gulls and other seabirds raucously greet Hermione's arrival at her destination, white birds wheeling through a blue sky, her sleek body caressed by water as clear as glass. Bright fish in an infinite variety of sizes and shapes dart to and fro amongst coral dazzling in pinks, oranges, reds, blues and purples. Or else giant fish swim past, their big round eyes turned curiously upon the mermaid in their midst. Kelp forests sway with the current near the shore, sheltering aquatic life like otters, while jellyfish pulsate near the surface, which birds spear in steep dives.
The wreck of a small two man boat lies near the entrance to the cave mouth Hermione emerged from, and she swims over to it, a blissful smile on her face. On one of the benches is attached a sign crafted of shells on sea sand:
♡ Welcome to Stardew Valley! ☆
"And I'm glad to be back," says Hermione, turning sinuously towards the path leading down to the local mermaid settlement, the road lined with glowing jellies dancing in place. One of them holds a complimentary necklace of sea flowers while it's opposite number holds out a sea cocktail (for adult mers only). Taking both of these offerings, Hermione amends her statement. "Extremely glad."
🧜🏻♀️🌟🧜🏻♀️
A couple days later she surfaces at the most remote beach in Stardew Valley, near Pelican Town, a very peaceful place. The leftmost beach, full of rock pools, rarely sees visitors, especially since the old planks put up to allow people to cross a stream broke, but Hermione finds that that bridge has been repaired since she last visited. No matter, there is still no one enjoying the blistering day except the birds and the scavenger crabs, and she climbs and takes a seat on the humped rock known as 'Mermaid's Rock', for obvious reasons, the favoured place for her kind to comb their hair while enjoying the golden-white sun's massages. Being who she is, she likes to visit the beach when no other mermaids plan to, bringing a stack of waterproofed books along with her. The others find this behaviour anywhere from merely odd to annoying because mermaids aren't big readers in general.
"Heavenly & Handsome? Yes, please!" she says, reading the titles populating her stack. A guilty pleasure, Rita Skeeter's books. The need to read studious tomes nags at her, but she firmly ignores it.
Almost as soon as she turns to page ninety-six ,something light lands on the crown of her head. Not a bird or bug, but the weight of eyes. There is a man standing upon the shore, a man in a white lab coat, a middle aged man with a blue beard and the remains of a head of blue hair. Half an instant after she looks up, he holds a beaker of seawater up to his face, obscuring his expression. However the flash she caught before that clever move tells her that today the sea and it's energetic liquid is not the most interesting thing in the area for him.
"Hmm. Not the usual sort, I see." Hermione says, lifting her book and pretending to read it while keeping it just below the level of her eyes. Usually people, even Stardew Valley people, begin behaving a little strangely in the presence of mermaids, but this person in the lab coat is simply behaving like a normal, rather sly man, peering through his beaker at her. Clearly he's either encountered enough of her kind to no longer feel the need to turn into a dumbstruck loon, or he's more intelligent than most. Hermione decides on the latter, since he seems to be a fellow lover of knowledge.
The eccentric looking man studies her for a few moments longer, and then lowers his beaker and makes several notes in a notebook. Hermione finds herself sitting straighter. "Stop that." she whispers to herself, dropping her mane of hair and attempting to return her concentration to her book. But she's so so curious about his notes. Some, at least, must be about her. They must. For a mermaid she's not especially vain, but she knows she's beautiful. Impossible not to know.
When the scientist turns to leave she clears her throat. "Excuse me, may I have a look at your notes, please?"
That breaks the ice and the man pauses. "Excuse me? You possess an interest in the study of water, Miss?" he says, in a sharp, gruff voice.
"Ah, well-"
Mr Aguar carries on. "Makes sense. However I have no time to spend explaining my shorthand to you. If you really want to know more, come to the water research facility."
And with that he leaves, striding off across the sand and thumping over the plank bridge.
Hermione is left aghast, her jaw dropped. She thought…well, it doesn't matter. Weird person…however, he most certainly has taken impressions of her sitting so artfully on her rock. Maybe she will visit this 'water treatment facility', just to see what sort of research is really occuring there. She's on holiday, after all.