For thousands of years people have gazed into the oceans. Every now and then, something unusual emerges from the briny depths, and with them surface the stories: legends, fairy tales and sailors’ yarns of half-human creatures with the tail of a fish. Some of these stories are of love and loss, some of death and drowning. If you want to spend some time with the world’s most mysterious and captivating marine life, go and swim with mermaids.

In an early draft of *Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets*, Harry and Ron are introduced to mermaids much sooner than the Triwizard Tournament in *Goblet of Fire*. After they have commandeered the enchanted Ford Anglia, rather than smash into the Whomping Willow, they crash into the Hogwarts lake and encounter the mermaids that live there. The merpeople save the boys by flipping over the car and bringing it to the safety of the bank. But these mermaids aren’t the enchanting beauties of popular folklore. One is described as follows: ‘A cloud of blackest hair, thick and tangled like seaweed, floated all around her. Her lower body was a great scaly fishtail the colour of gun-metal; ropes of shells and pebbles hung about her neck; her skin was a pale, silvery grey and her eyes, flashing in the headlights, looked dark and threatening.’

An editorial note on the manuscript wonders whether the merpeople scene actually works, since they are not encountered again in the second book. There’s a suggestion that the car could develop boosters and suddenly shoot out of the water, but ultimately J.K. Rowling decided to replace the scene entirely with the car crashing into the Whomping Willow.