If an ordinary person fell into the water, they would most likely struggle. But in Hamlet, the Ophelia spoken of by the Queen chose another way.
Beside a brook stood a willow growing at a slant, its drooping branches and leaves reflected in the mirrorlike current. She came there carrying strange garlands woven from buttercups, nettles, daisies, and long purples. She climbed onto a bough that stretched horizontally, intending to hang her flower crown from it. At that moment, a malicious branch snapped, and she, along with her flowers, fell into the sobbing stream. Her clothes spread around her, making her float upon the water like a Mermaid for a while. She still sang old ballads in broken snatches, as though she had no sense of the danger she was in, or as though she had been born to grow in the water. But before long, her clothes grew heavy with water. Before the poor girl had finished her song, she had already sunk beneath the surface.
Pomona felt herself swimming underwater. She had not used a Bubble-Head Charm, yet she was not at all worried about being unable to breathe. Only, instead of the ruins at the bottom of Black Lake, she saw shipwreck after shipwreck.
The waves overhead seemed violent, and even beneath the water she was affected by them. She met considerable resistance as she swam forward, but she still reached it. Yet through the porthole, she did not see the prince in the cabin. A little girl was carrying a baby into the room next door.
People had always spoken of the grandfather paradox—what would happen if one killed one's grandfather? But what if it were reversed? What if a descendant from the future traveled into the past and saved their grandfather?
Before she could think