if i was a cryptid i’d just be a guy in a multiple-floor office building who gets on the elevator with everyone else, but i’d never get off on any floors. people would only see me enter, never leave. occasionally i will ask abstract and paradoxical questions that makes people question reality. when they try to describe the “weird guy in the elevator this morning” they can’t seem to remember what I look like. my face is blurry on all the security footage.
headcanon that since the slytherin common room is under the lake there’s a room where the walls and ceiling are glass and you can just see into the lake like an aquarium
headcanon that when this was first done the mermaids got really aggressive and hateful about it and started ramming the glass but since it was magic this just caused them injuries
until a deaf/hoh slytherin started to teach them sign language and it took a long time bit by the time they left hogwarts they and the rest of the house were communicating with the mermaids and on good terms
eventually it becomes a part of slytherin house culture you’re a slytherin you know sign language because if you don’t chat with the mermaids they get grumpy
this helps a lot of deaf/hoh students
this also gives slytherin the best grades of any house on all aquatic magical studies
the mermaids give terrible dating advice do not trust them
The most common mermaid dating advice, of course, being “Drown him”
