Chapter Text
Chapter 1
Hermione Granger cut through the water on silent fins, as precise and sleek as an arrow.
She had been coming to the small fishing village of Helmsdale, Scotland regularly for six months now and knew its shoreline like she knew her own skin. Flat land surrounded the village, the coast boasting neither cliffs nor boulders. The harbor approached on her left. Its water curled into the ocean current she rode, a warm blanket no less inviting though it stank with the funk of algal growth and tasted faintly of petrol. She passed it without thought, however, angling herself half a mile east.
Her target was an abandoned house. She poked her head from the ocean’s gentle swells, both to breathe and to ensure that her location hadn’t been compromised.
Mist had rolled down from the highland in a gentle billow, wrapping the house like a gift. Its exterior paint was as gray as the fog, chipping in areas, and the weathered blue fencing that surrounded the property was sorely in need of a power washing. The roof, however, was in good condition, dark charcoal and sound. The ocean-facing porch had once featured a pair of rocking chairs and a small, central table, if the wear on the wood was any indication. When the light hit correctly, the lacy edges of curtains could be seen hanging across the windows.
It was a place someone had loved once. Cared for.
In another life, perhaps it could have been hers. Set off from the town, but not isolated. Ocean front with a private shore. Quiet save for the pounding waves, the call of seabirds, and the distant shouts and bells from the harbor. Maybe she’d have a companion—a man, a cat, a tern she’d rescued and brought up from a chick. The possibilities were endless, the temptation a tease.
Her fire smoke would never curl from the seaside cottage’s squat chimney. Light from her lamps would never flicker from behind those old lace curtains. The routine of setting out the rubbish bins or sweeping the sandy floors would never be hers to enjoy. She would never take a glass of wine on the porch and watch a storm cross the horizon, or take a man to her bed and watch a storm cross his eyes.
Hermione had known for most of her life that she was meant for something more than simple domesticity. In her youth, she’d imagined that this meant an important job: a professor; a Healer; the Minister for Magic. She’d thought she could at least have a taste of it, one hand on the lever of power, the other wiping drool from a baby’s face and tending the washing.
What she hadn’t realized was that a simple life had never been an option. Not since she’d been cornered by a troll in a girl’s loo.
She slipped beneath the waves and broke free of the assisting current, trading speed for warmth as she entered the shallows. Stones pressed against her belly as she hauled herself onto the shore, sharp to human skin but barely noticeable beneath her thick layer of insulating fat. Unfortunately, the flesh that protected and buoyed her in the water turned into an anchor on land, and she had to heave herself across the beach. She moved in a rhythmic clatter, leaving a wide strip of displaced shore in her wake.
Behind the abandoned house, Hermione reached an area where rocks and sand turned to grass. There, she rolled onto her back, a practiced flip that dislodged one strap of the drawstring bag she had looped around each flipper. A second roll in the opposite direction freed her entirely. Hermione let her body find stillness in its own time. She had learned long ago not to force it.
Shedding her skin had never been easy. She’d been ashamed of the failing at first, but after seven years of struggle, she’d learned to appreciate the irony of it.
After all, Hermione had been fighting for her witch-skin since age eleven. She’d had to prove, over and over again, that she had a right to her power despite her heritage. That she deserved her magic and the privilege to use it just as much as a woman who could trace her lineage back generations. She had bled in it, defended it, loved and hated and lived in it. She owned her witch-skin: it was her identity, and she had fully embraced it.
Until the Order of the Phoenix needed her to be something different.
Until Harry had asked her to sacrifice her hard-fought identity for something greater than either of them.
It had hardly been a choice. For her cause and for her friend, Hermione would do—would be—anything.
Even a Selkie.
Hermione took a deep breath and closed her eyes. She relaxed methodically, starting with the digits in her hind flippers. Tensing first, as tight as she could, then relaxing, letting her flippers fall limp onto the grass. She repeated the process with each ascending muscle group until she reached her neck. A deeper inhale this time, as if preparing for a dive, drawing from her diaphragm until her lungs pressed against her ribcage. She counted to thirty, holding her breath until the pressure in her sternum and her throat was nearly unbearable. Then, in a great, sighing whoosh, she exhaled.
Her skin slipped away with the release, unfolding onto the grass around her. The September cold hit her at once. Her skin prickled, tightened, but she fought the urge to curl into herself for warmth. This was part of the reintegration process: a physical reminder of her witch-skin’s limitations and needs.
Nude, alone, and beginning to shiver, Hermione counted a full minute before sitting up. She reached beneath her shed sealskin, still warm from use, and retrieved her drawstring pack. The waterproofing charm had held, as expected, and she pulled it open. Her wool socks were folded on top. She pulled them on first. Her knickers were next, followed by a camisole with a shelf bra.
She grimaced as she pulled on her denims, disliking the feel of her hips, how the sharp crests of bone jutted from her skin. She’d had curves here, once. She’d been soft. Comfortable.
Luxuries of a different time.
Seven years had passed since the Battle of Hogwarts ended in a stalemate. Five years since the war had turned from hot to cold, both sides regrouping after suffering a string of heavy losses. Physical battles had ceased. Now, wins were calculated based on the number of raids executed or supply lines disrupted. Hallows and Horcruxes had dissolved into discussions of philosophy; resource management and government control were more tangible indicators of success. Information exploitation and covert operations had their benefits: fewer people died, which improved the survivability of magical and Muggle worlds alike. But there were other consequences.
Food, for example, had become as much of a luxury as time. Hermione fared better than most thanks to her access to the sea. The fish she caught while traveling were enough to fuel her, but not much else.
It was a vain concern. She’d already sacrificed her identity to the cause, after all; what did the loss of her body matter in comparison? But she had yet to internalize the rationalization. She felt round and comfortable in her sealskin, with none of the aches or complaints that accompanied her witch-skin. Perhaps if the difference weren’t so stark, she wouldn’t feel the loss of her breasts, hips, and rear so keenly.
Perhaps one day she’d get back to a time when she felt comfortable with who she was.
But not today.
Hermione pulled a thick, knit jumper over her head, tied on her trainers, and finally donned a durable, olive green mac. She cast a quick warming charm to dispel the remaining chill, then knelt in the sand, her knees popping and sore from days of disuse.
Her sealskin lay before her, spread like a cloak across the dew-damp grass. The inside was red dun, the color of tender flesh and as soft and downy as a newborn baby’s. An inch of insulation separated the cloak’s inside from its outside, which was coated with dense, silvery-white fur speckled liberally with dark gray. When she wore it, she was indistinguishable from a mundane harbor seal.
Her witch-skin broke out in gooseflesh when she touched it. The connection between her two skins, her two selves, went deeper than musculature and nervous tissue. Handling her skin felt like being touched by a stranger. Invisible fingers caressed her back as she brushed sand and grass from the fur. Hands took her by the shoulders as she shook it out, then the waist as she folded it in half. A moment of claustrophobia descended as she tucked the skin into her pack, giving her the feeling of being held captive without hope of escape.
Hermione shoved the sensation aside, pulled the drawstrings tight, and hitched the bag across her shoulders. She used her wand to conceal the trail she’d left upon the shore and scrunched a hand into her hair to help the salt water set her curls.
She edged behind the house, keeping to the grass to minimize her tracks. The empty gravel drive gave way to potholed pavement: the aptly-named Shore Street. She walked past the harbor, where salmon fisherman by trade and hobby dipped in and out of the fog, readying their boats for the day’s work.
Muggle money jingled in her jacket pocket, a few notes lighter after her visit to the corner café for a hot bacon sandwich and a to-go cup of bitter black tea. Unhurried, she crossed the bridge that led out of town, to where the houses were large and generously spaced.
Hermione tossed her cup into a bin and, with a quick right-left look, broke from the paved street to cut through a well-kept rear garden. She hopped a fence and climbed the uneven hill that created a natural housing boundary. When she could no longer see the houses, she performed the first of three consecutive twists.
Crack, to the Wee Hoose on Loch Shin near Lairg.
Crack, to a patch of a woods in the Heights of Brae.
Crack, to Culloden clootie well.
She caught her balance against a tree, and the contact sent a prickle crawling up her spine. Tokens hung from every branch within arm’s reach, and a fair few that weren’t. They were left by the clootie well’s visitors, imbued with their hopes for healing and guidance. Strips of fine, colored cloth. Threadbare rags. Rosaries and small icons. War medals. Each left by a pilgrim who sought intercession from a higher power.
She took a breath and stepped quietly onto the forest trail, her shoulders tense, dipping and twisting to avoid unnecessary contact with the offerings. She understood why the Order liked this place as a dead drop site. It was guaranteed to be empty in the early morning, yet popular enough in the afternoon that Hestia Jones, their Inverness contact, could retrieve the message without arousing suspicion.
Still, it made her uneasy. The forest was thick, and despite there being no breeze, the tokens moved. They swayed, spun, and glinted in the growing light, setting her on edge. A Death Eater could be hiding in these woods, and she wouldn’t even see him until it was too late.
Surrounding the well was an incomplete circle of pitted stone. It reminded Hermione of a medieval fortress, with walls that stood eight feet tall and tight mortar joints to slow elemental weathering. A gap the width of two men standing abreast allowed access to the well itself.
She knelt beside the spring and, just for a moment, watched it run. Fresh water burbled from the earth, a phenomenon that felt entirely incongruous to the dense forest surrounding her. Though the well was no larger than her fist, she felt small beside it. Powerless against the slow machinations of the earth beneath her feet.
Beside the well, beneath the thick leaf litter, was a stone cut in one corner with a distinctive ‘V’. Dirt had been smeared into the man-made marks, disguising them from anyone who didn’t already know what they were looking for. She lifted the stone and ran her fingers across the wet-dirt bottom, feeling for the catch. She pressed in with the tip of her finger and whispered, “Ouvrir.”
The matter beneath her finger dissolved with a tingle. She cupped her palm below it and waited.
Nothing.
Her heart fell, though it wasn’t unusual for Hestia to have no new intelligence. Inverness wasn’t exactly a high priority strategic location. It controlled no resources that could turn the tide of the war and housed no government that could be controlled to their ends. It was a way-station, an easy link between Edinburgh to the south and Hogwarts further north.
Even if Hestia had nothing new to report, Hermione did. She reached into the inner breast pocket of her mac and withdrew the missive entrusted to her by Kingsley Shacklebolt. She had taken it from London per his request. Hestia would deliver it further and, within the week, Minerva McGonagall would know its contents. In another week, Hermione would make the same run south with Minerva’s reply, bringing news of Hogwarts to the Order’s headquarters.
And so the cycle would continue until something worked to disrupt it.
She pushed the tightly rolled note into the stone and resealed it with a whispered, “Fermer,” and covered it with leaf litter.
Something stilled her as she was about to stand. Maybe it was the shine of dawn light across the flowing water, or the breath of wind that could be heard but not felt, whispering through the tokens and echoing the fervent prayers made by the well’s supplicants.
Without examining why, Hermione pulled a strand of hair from her head and dipped it into the water. She held her hope foremost in her mind and walked to the nearest tree. With delicate movements, she tied the strand to a low-hanging branch, pressed her palm to the trunk, and closed her eyes.
“Let it end,” she whispered, her voice joining the grove’s echoing chorus. “Let it end, and let it be soon. Please.”
A breeze moved her hair. Maybe her wish had been granted.
Or maybe it was just the weather.
She looked up through the thinning canopy as if that could provide an answer. A few yellow leaves, loosed from their summer moorings, floated down around her.
Just the weather, then. She readjusted the straps of her pack and sighed. Ideas of prophecy and fate were convenient lies, absolving individuals from the consequences of their actions. Her wish to the well was that of a child’s: immature and naïve. Embarrassing, had anyone been around to witness it.
A twig snapped in the forest, and Hermione stilled. Her stomach dropped into her feet.
At the far end of the trail, sunk in shadow, stood a tall figure.
Her heart thrummed into a sprint.
She’d been made.
The realization struck at the same time as the Stunner.