Title: “The Depths Between Us”

Setting: Hogwarts, during the cold, mist-laced early autumn. The Forbidden Forest lake, tucked away far from the usual paths, is whispered about in the dormitories — darker and deeper than the Black Lake, and home to things even the merfolk fear.

⸻

Chapter 1: Ripples in the Fog

Theodore Nott was never one to follow rules. Not out of rebellion — but because the rules rarely applied to someone like him. He moved like a shadow through Hogwarts, avoiding the spotlight, hiding scars beneath silence.

One foggy evening, seeking solitude after yet another confrontation with a professor who still looked at him like his father’s trial had just ended, Theo wandered deeper into the edge of the Forbidden Forest. His feet led him to a place he’d only read about in musty books — a second lake, one hidden in the folds of old maps. The surface was ink-black, unmoving, like glass that hadn’t remembered how to ripple.

That was the first time he heard her voice.

Low, melodic, and ancient — not words, but emotion. Grief. Curiosity. Warning.

Theo should have run.

Instead, he stepped closer

The girl was unlike anything he’d seen. Not the delicate, shell-adorned mermaids from storybooks — she was wilder. Her hair floated around her like seaweed in slow motion, her eyes far too human for comfort, and yet not human at all. Her tail shimmered like wet obsidian, sharp and sleek.