Time and Tide

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.