Denouement
a commission for K.H.
Note: I don't know how to write 15th century Scottish, and it'd be tough for me to even consider trying. Consider the use of language in this story a translation of sorts, and presume that their words are appropriate for their time.
Recommended soundtrack: Music by Phillip Glass from the film, The Hours
Other Influences: Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, and (in terms of how arithmancy works) this fanfic called Where No Shadows Fall by Saavik13.
Timeline: This is set in the mid-1400s. Let's say it's arbitrarily like 1440. Hogwarts was founded in the late 900s. Given the premise of this story, it's not altogether farfetched that wizards before the events of 1434 (click for spoilers) might have lived upwards of 500 years, particularly since the idea is that after this event, wizards were still able to live 150+ years or so naturally, as in the HP canon. (Of course Nicholas Flamel, with the aid of the philosopher's stone, was able to live for nigh-on 665 years, whereupon he chose to give it up… it might be suggested that 600-odd years was a realistic lifespan for wizards before the events of 1434.
Unfortunately this choice of timeline directly contradicts some canon signposts. For example Helena was supposed to be dead by the 11th century. But then again, in the movies, the Bloody Baron sports a totally ridiculous 1600s hairdo (Bloody Baron). In this setting, he's much more likely to have looked like this. So I figure if canon can be timey-wimey, a fanfic can also.
Rowena gazed out the castle window, feeling cold. Helga was out there in the moor, marching around with her stout wooden staff piercing the peat. Helga - the eternally helpful, characterized by her graceful, simple belief in the inherent goodness of all, the woman of hapless virtue. Rowena envied her to some extent, though perhaps that feeling was unkind. Rowena did ruminate on these sorts of things a bit too much.
Helga was shading her sight with one hand, ending her enhanced perception spell. Rowena could tell what she was doing, even from such a great distance.
Then, with a visible sigh of resignation, Helga turned and began to move back to the castle. Perhaps it was Rowena's imagination, but she felt like as soon as Helga walked away out of her sight, the fog began to roll back in, obscuring the view of the Forbidden Forest's trees from her window. They looked increasingly like ghosts of trees and not trees themselves, their tops placidly fading into a toxic sea of mist.
In fact, Rowena objectively tested the movement of the fog by drawing her finger across the warped, hand-blown glass, leaving a smudge-like trail of magical frost in a line that traced the perimeter of the rising fog. With deceptive slowness, the fog soon surpassed the curve she'd made. It was definitely growing.
Rowena sighed against the glass, her frosty mark vanishing with her hot breath, and she contemplated the strange darkness of the forest. She wished she'd been feeling more well of late; she missed walking among the trees as she'd done so freely two years past.
It took some time for Helga to return to Rowena's tower, but not as long as it'd have taken Rowena herself. Helga was getting quite fat in her older age, but she radiated a hearty healthfulness that Rowena had never known.
"I didn't see anything, my dear," Helga said, her long face a little red from the stairs. "I'm sorry." Her face's worry lines began to show as she gazed at Rowena, settling into her high-backed chair opposite Rowena's own. "Don't worry though," she added, responding with a sense of warmth that Rowena felt was, even for her effusive friend, somewhat forced.
That wasn't good. Helga didn't believe her. Or, at least, Helga was starting to give in to the doubts that had surely needled her since Rowena had started telling her the story.
Rowena didn't blame Helga for doubting her. Any onlooker would have sufficient reason to disbelieve her story. That was the reason, after all, she couldn't tell the men, Salazar and Godric, what she was seeing.
But if she couldn't convince Helga, whose mind was so open it was liable to fall out over the smallest provocation, what was Rowena to do?
Helga, ever the empath, surely noticed the sense of despair that crept into Rowena's eyes. "Don't worry, my sweet," she murmured, "You know I believe you."
Rowena couldn't help but shake her head. Helga didn't want to think she was crazed. That much was clear. But what other conclusion could she be drawing?
"You don't have to," Rowena said, and despite herself, she felt her body crumple with pain. "I just wish you could see it for yourself."
Helga reached out and grasped Rowena's hand, which was trembling. "No," Helga said, her tone vigorous and reassuring, "I do believe you. And we're going to find a way to do something about it."
"The question is," Rowena said, swallowing the tears that threatened to come out if she wasn't careful, "what is there that one can do to address a problem that's so difficult to see?"
"It's not *impossible* to see," Helga said softly. Her thumb ran over Rowena's knuckles - which were wizened, rheumatic, and falling apart - and Rowena wished she knew how much more time she had on this earth.
Rowena said nothing in response. What was there to say? Helga's desire to be supportive to friends trumped her ability to witness her own faults honestly. If she couldn't see herself clearly, how could Rowena expect her to see something so subtle and elusive as the phenomenon that was emerging?
The settee started to get uncomfortable for her perpetually-aching limbs, and she rose and began to pace around the room, lacing her fingers pensively behind her back. Her long dress, with scarcely an inch between her hem and the floor, moved with her elegantly.
Helga, for her part, reached over and drew the pitcher of red wine towards her, and poured herself some into a golden goblet.
"I see your worry," Helga said, as if reading Rowena's thoughts. There was serious concern in her normally jubilant voice. She looked at Rowena with uncomfortable worry. "So, perhaps you'd better tell me the details, love. Maybe there's something you've missed. I'm not quite certain what is happening - what you want me to see, exactly."
Ah, yes. This was another reason Rowena favored Helga for this mission. There was no one else who could both indulge Rowena's most esoteric impulses, but also insist that Rowena bring herself down to the level of mortals when frustration began to eclipse her good sense.
Rowena, with some of her old habit, flung herself down again upon the settee, steepling her fingers like Salazar often did when he was pensive.
"So, let's start at the beginning. What was the beginning, after all?" she mused, her mind actively engaged in reviewing her understanding of the situation. "I wish I knew for certain."
"When did you first start to see unusual things, then?" Helga asked comfortably, sipping her wine.
"I think I first began to see the problem for what it was, merely three springs ago," Rowena said with some uncertainty. "It was a long time before the temperature began to grow warm after the winter."
"That winter was long and cold," agreed Helga amiably.
"So that was happening," Rowena said, thoughtfully drawing her fingers through her graying hair, closing her eyes, and feeling the brittleness of her ribs as she breathed. "I was feeling the arithmancy runes calling me, even though the healer told me to abstain from them. And I used them," she said, her voice sinking with pain at the memory. "I regretted it immediately, and the fire in my veins begged me not to, but oh, how I'd missed it!"
"I know," Helga said, her voice solemn and understanding. "You've been a potter without any clay."
"Alas," Rowena agreed softly. "I still feel ashamed for not having told anyone my intentions. You were in grave danger to save me as you did."
Helga's smile was perfunctory. "It isn't like it was the first time I had to drag you out of there."
There was a sad wisdom in Helga's eyes. She, in her time working as a healer many years ago, had cared for an aging patient and former arithmancer, who, like Rowena, had also fallen to the Arithmancer's Plight.* It was one of the many reasons she tried to look out for Rowena so carefully. Helga was a protector, more than any other of the founders, even though Godric gave the value of protection more lip service.
"You think too much of me," Rowena responded, pragmatic to the core.
Helga opened her mouth to argue, but closed it again. They'd gone down that path before, many times, and it always was unproductive.
"But never mind," Rowena went on, gently, "The problem at hand is pressing."
She stood up and began to weakly pace once more, her bones creaking as she moved. She did not speak again until she approached the window, and she stood there, brooding.
"I began to notice that something was amiss," she said, wistfully, "in the sounds the cows made, as I went to watch them in the fields. Such gentle creatures, cows. I stood and watched them gathered together, feet kicking at the ebbing piles of snow, nibbling at the green sprouts that emerged. There was a new calf I wanted to see, freshly born, and I thought I'd thank its mother for the placenta it lent me for a potion."
Helga nodded and sipped her drink.
"All of this seemed ordinary, to me, but their noises. They sounded as though they were mourning, the way they chattered with each other, their low voices caressing the others' as if there was a great sadness among them.
"I asked the elf who tended to them what seemed to be the matter. She said, with chagrin, that they were not behaving as cows ought to. They were close together, lowing, in the brightness of the day, upon their first morning in the spring sunshine! They were behaving as animals might when there was a wolf nearby, the elf said, and yet there was no such creature threatening them. I curiously asked the elf what else might cause such a disturbance."
Rowena sighed, and turned back towards Helga, her skirt whipping behind her with a dramatic flair. "It was, the elf said, likely something in the environment, perhaps the air, perhaps the water, perhaps the grass. But before my eyes she showed me how it could be none of those things. She then took me to the great matriarch of the cows, who resided amongst them, and asked her what ailed her herd.
"If, my darling, you have never seen the matriarch of the Hogwarts cows, let me confide in you what she is like. There never has been such a beautiful creature, with its dark auburn hide, so pure and rich, and the dignity of a unicorn about her. And as the elf and I approached her, she sat up from where she lay, splendorous on the soft budding grass, and I could see that she was an ambassador to our kind, who could speak as we humans do.
"'Pray, tell us, dear one,' I asked her when I arrived at her side, 'what is happening to your herd?'"
"'It is the darkness,' said this queen of cows, in words as intelligent and considerate as a human being, if not more so. 'It is the darkness which grows around us.'
"Then," Rowena said, with a deep breath for emphasis, and also because she was fast becoming tired, "the queen's eyes grew dazed and blinder, and she blinked at me without any sense of recognition or remembrance. 'What,' this creature began to ask, and then the next words died on her lips. She looked with confusion at the elf at my side, and at me, and she made only bovine noises thereafter."
She removed herself again to the settee, where she draped herself carefully. "The elf has kept my attention on the matter, and has expressed much concern. For, the queen of the Hogwarts cows has not spoken one English word since that fateful day. Nor, for the matter, have any of the others."
Helga's eyes were wide as Rowena concluded. "It occurs to me," she added, passing the goblet of wine to Rowena, "that it used to not be this way. Years ago, the queen of the herd spoke to humans such as us, and many more of them did also. I do not know why they ceased such activities."
"Nor I," Rowena ruefully responded. "I have, in my own research on the matter, confirmed as much objectively. All cows used to speak, as commonly as yourself or I - though neither of us noticed when they stopped." She sniffed daintily at the wine. "I suppose, as Godric would say, they're still better than Muggle cows."
"I… would question that," Helga said gently. "I see no difference between them, though perhaps that is because of my skill at potions; a talking animal is no more potent in my trade than a non-talking animal. They are composed of the same matter. What is the difference, in your mind, between Muggle cows and magical cows?"
"The innate sense of reason," Rowena answered, "they have the capacity to understand in such a way that ordinary cows cannot. That is what the creators endowed of them, is that not so?"
"Perhaps," Helga said with a tolerant voice that indicated she disagreed. "Perhaps."
Rowena might have entered an argument with her friend, but began to have a fit of coughing. Helga hastily stood and offered a blanket for her companion, who accepted it gratefully. Helga's hands rubbed on Rowena's harsh bony back, warming the frail woman.
"Thank you," Rowena said when her body had calmed. "I… I had better get on to the rest. Before I fall down dead."
Helga's eyes were full of alarm, but she didn't say anything, because she could tell Rowena was joking. Mostly.
"So that was the first clue," Helga said, gently. She sat at Rowena's side and wrapped her with a gentle embrace. "What were the others?"
Rowena turned her head to stare out the window. The fog had risen to the point where it had obscured everything. "That wasn't really the first sign, though. As I think back, there are many more. The problem is," she went on, "Sometimes the signs are so subtle," she whispered, "that I wonder if I'm just imagining things."
"Like the shadowy echoes you felt in the moor," Helga observed, and hastily took the cup from Rowena just before Rowena's hand tipped it, absent-mindedly, across the floor.
"Yes," Rowena answered, barely noticing the mishap. "Though perhaps it's just that I'm not quite sure what it is I feel happening there, yet. But I feel something. It is like feeling a burr in one's bed, folded under blankets - one knows it is there, but not sure what it is, or where."
"I see," Helga said, ever so patient.
"Then there's the water," Rowena went on. "We journeyed several summers ago to Edinburgh, if you recall."
"Of course," Helga said, recognition and concern rising in her voice. "We were on one of our last trips there, before you became ill."
"If you remember, I spent many hours speaking with the local fishermen of the place," Rowena said, "and they spoke of how every year, the tide's high-water mark comes in just a bit deeper into the land. They described how where was dry land in their fathers' years is now deep in the sea, and never sees the sun."
Rowena shivered, and Helga's hand gently offered itself to her friend's. Rowena grasped it warmly. "Upon returning home to our library," she went on, as Helga drew the blanket closer around her thin shoulders, "I reviewed the measurements they showed me. While some variation in the water levels is indeed natural with time, it usually coincides with the cycles of the stars. The cycles have, until now, lasted merely a few years, and no more."**
Then, with a flawless gesture, Rowena summoned her glass ball of sight, and showed Helga the vision within it.
"This is what it looked like, a century ago," she said, and in the glass Helga could see the sight of Scotland, as if from the eyes of a raven far above the land, deep in the sky. Then, with a grimace, she passed her hand over the glass, and it revealed the sight of the same Scotland, but its edges looked as if moths had eaten it. "Now here we see how much we have lost."
Helga's eyes were wide. "This… this is not imagined?" she murmured, and it was clear from the question that she had truly been skeptical until this moment. "This… where did you acquire the data?"
"From arithmancy," confessed Rowena. Helga looked alarmed. "You know that we are located on one of the deepest channels of continental energy in the whole of the Isles, and that it is also among the oldest channels. It senses where the land ends and the water begins, and remembers forever each painful loss it endures as easily as a man might remember when he loses his fingers." Rowena looked at her own painful, increasingly-disjointed fingers with visible pain. Then she laid it down and smiled. "I did these calculations before my pain was so acute," she added, to comfort Helga. Though it was a vain effort, for Helga knew that Rowena had been using the arithmancy stones far beyond the initial onset of the plight.
"You shouldn't have, even then," Helga chastised gently, but the smile on her lips showed how much she admired Rowena's selfless perseverance of the truth even so.
"I know," Rowena said, though both of them knew she'd have done as she pleased no matter what, even if she had the chance to go back and revise her actions.
They sat in companionable silence for some time, and Rowena's face began to get tense as her pain began to grow.
Helga got up. "It's time for your potion," she said, her plump body ambling across the room to the table where a large jug of potion was kept. She downed the remainder of the wine from the goblet and poured in an allotment of the potion. Then she brought it to Rowena, who drank it obediently, never one to protest something useful for the sake of its poor taste.
"Are you sure you wouldn't like some honey?" asked Helga as Rowena sipped it. Rowena shook her head, and finished the drink. Her face immediately relaxed as the poppy seeds began to work, and she eased back on the settee with a deep sigh.
"Thank you, my dear," Rowena said, and coughed deeply again. "I know this stuff's poison, but it's all the more healthful for not sweetening it."
"As you say," Helga said with forced rosiness, sitting down again, and she kissed Rowena's cheek, which had flushed red with the potion. "So you have seen the animals stop speaking, and the water growing. What other signs have you seen?"
"Wait," Rowena said, "I wasn't finished with the water yet."
"Oh," Helga acquiesced. "Carry on, then."
Rowena nodded. "The other important thing to note," she said, "is the fact that the moon has been growing more and more distant. It used to be that there was never a night where the moon was not full, in the days we were young."**
"You're right," Helga said, "And yet now, we scarcely see the moon in its fullness for seven nights in a row, much less for longer."
"You see how different it once was," Rowena said. "You know how you've complained that many old potions been found to be unusable in the modern age?"
"Of course," Helga said, "as you say, I've complained of it to you for nearly a century. And every decade I find one or more that has been lost to us."
"I think of your hypothesis," Rowena said with a satisfied smile. "Where the original authors of these potions did not account for changes in the moon. Most of them did not even realize that there would ever be a change in the moon's closeness or fullness. As you've told me in the past, some of those old potions simply cannot be created anymore, for there is no such thing as a full moon for ten days straight. And for some of them, the moon is simply too far off to imbue them with the appropriate potency."
"True," Helga affirmed, and she added with a grumble, "Though so many assume that the moon is as immovable as a mountain."
"Aye," Rowena said with sadness. "But there's the crux of the matter. Even mountains move, sweet Helga."
Helga nodded. "Of course. It's only through living as long as we have that we have seen it."
Rowena shook her head. "And someday, others may yet believe it," she said, "but for the moment, let us not dwell on this. I'm sure you think my mind is long lost among the nervous energies of the arithmancy stones."
"I… I wouldn't say so much," Helga said, "just, that you're tired, my darling. You're tired, and ill."
"Yes," Rowena said, and with a sudden stern motion, she dragged Helga towards her, to look her friend deeply in the eyes. "And you're beautiful, and kinder to me than I deserve."
Helga's face flushed, lost to embarrassment, and she squeezed Rowena's hand. "So," she said, sitting back, "What else have you seen?"
"Ah," Rowena responded, her breath shortening as she thought. "Have you seen more werewolves around, of late?"
Helga's brow furrowed. "Really? Werewolves? Now we're being insensible," she scolded, "That's just what the older children tell the younger ones to keep them from following them on their nighttime escapades."
Rowena smiled grimly. "Indulge me for just a moment, my dear, and at least listen to me."
"I'll listen," Helga said, "but werewolves? Please don't ask me to affirm that what you're saying is true."
"This is, perhaps the most crazed of the thoughts I've had," Rowena said with a smirk, "but I do believe that werewolves exist, and they are growing in number. We all know that old story of how there were once four boys who became wolf animagi, based on the power of the moon - a feature so immovable, or so they thought, that they believed they would never become humans again."
"That's an old legend, true," Helga said, "though that's a much simpler version than my mother told me."
"At the basis of every legend is a kernel of truth," Rowena replied. "And in this case, that abbreviated version is what historical documentation - from hundreds of years before our time - suggests truly happened. So what happens, dear one, when you cast a spell based on a powerful object, and the basis of your power dwindles away?"
"You lose the spell," Helga said, seeing the pieces come together.
"Yes," Rowena hissed proudly, and she kissed Helga's hand. "As their moon dwindles away, century by century, they find themselves starved for the beauty and power it gives them. And, thus, on nights when there is no full moon in the sky, the werewolves lose the power over their form, and become human again."
Helga's eyes widened. "So… so that was why I was looking for footprints in the moors."
"Yes," Rowena said, "for several nights past, I have heard wolves, and then last night was the first night in the cycle without the full moon, and I heard no wolves. So I was hoping that you might find some proof."
"You might have told me that before you sent me out there," grumbled Helga.
"I didn't want to bias you against the truth," Rowena said. "You possess many talents, but objectivity is not one of them."
Helga nodded, though she felt like Rowena's prejudice towards the truth at all costs was the far more troublesome trait.
"So," Helga summarized, "we have, thus far: water that is growing, a moon that is shrinking away, animals that have ceased speaking, and werewolves."
"That are becoming human again," added Rowena.
"Yes," Helga said. "Anything else?"
"Innumerable things," Rowena said, "but of importance and significance that you might understand… only a few."
"Well," Helga said, "I think it might be time for you to rest."
"No," Rowena said, her face growing tense again. "If I rest, all I do is think about Helena. Don't… don't you think it's been a long time? Don't you think that the Baron should have returned with her by now?"
Helga smiled, and extended her hand to stroke Rowena's hair. "I'm sure they're fine," she said, though her own intuition echoed Rowena's fears. "As I've said a thousand times already, the Baron has proven himself loyal to yourself and your daughter many times over."
"I can't help but worry, though," said Rowena, staring out the window. "It's been months since he was dispatched for her."
Helga knew no matter what she said, Rowena wouldn't be dissuaded, so she just nodded and let the statement go unchallenged. It had been a long, long time, and the portkey had to be refreshed every month, which was a strange and painful ritual for them to share.
"So," Rowena said, her forward momentum carrying them both, "Helga, my darling: how much have I told you about my husband?"
The room's ambiance immediately became heavier. In their multi-century-long friendship, Rowena's late husband had been the topic of scarcely seven words between them. Helga had never pressed the subject. Based on Rowena's evasiveness, Helga assumed he was dead, and better off that way. She didn't even know his name.
"Not much," Helga said, her skin electric. It was uncanny to speak so openly of such a ghost, who cast such a pall over her friend whenever reminded of him.
"I think I may have, by omission, given you the wrong impression," Rowena said. "He was not dead when I came up north, as I'm sure you may have thought."
Helga's hand rose up and touched Rowena's cheek. "You need not say any more," she whispered, "what's past is past."
In fact, she feared what Rowena might say. How strange it was, for her to want Rowena to stop talking.
"It's part of the story, though," Rowena went on, oblivious to Helga's discomfort, "though some of these things weren't signs that I could see until recently. For example… I'm certain that my husband is part of this picture."
Helga was used to Rowena's pervasive sense of mystery, but today Rowena seemed a bit more than her usual self. Helga felt like she was witnessing a fountain burbling over, unconstrained, on a final plunging effort before bursting its creaking pipes. She felt like trying to slow down Rowena, telling her to stop lest she break herself.
"I… I never knew what it was to be happy," Rowena said, and Helga saw the dams breaking in Rowena's long-strained eyes, "until I left him, truly, and for good. Helena… Helena was only newly born," Rowena went on, her eyes brimming, "but I had to leave, then, and with her, because I did not want her to be as stifled as I was."
"Shh," Helga whispered softly, and grasped Rowena in her arms. Rowena, ever too strong, did not bend easily to sobbing, and even now she merely wept, her voice as silent as her tears.
"I… I'm all right," she affirmed, as Helga dabbed her eyes with the corner of an apron. "Merely exhausted, is all."
"Yes, that's right," comforted Helga, "it's time for rest."
"No," said Rowena a bit too loudly and sternly, and then, regretting her tone, she whispered, "no, I'm not ready yet. I must finish telling you it all."
"Why the urgency?" Helga asked. "Why can it not wait?"
"Because," Rowena said, and then succumbed to a frighteningly violent coughing fit, "I… I have to finish telling you before…"
_Before I die_ was the unsaid finish of that sentence.
"...You have time," Helga insisted, "you do, you really do. You don't have to exhaust yourself."
"I… I have to," Rowena said, and she stiffened her body and settled against the back of the settee. For all her earlier pacing, she truly looked pale and limp, utterly fragile. She gave another few concerning coughs, and Helga rose to get some strong scented herbal rub from the bureau near the potion.
"Please," Helga said, bringing over the container, "let me put this on, and you can keep talking. It pains me so to see you labor needlessly."
"All right," conceded Rowena, satisfied to get her way and finish her tale, uncomfortable though it seemed to make both of them. "So, my husband… you don't know who he is, I presume?"
Helga shook her head. "Ought I?"
Rowena smiled with a deep, bitter anger, something that Helga had never seen before on her tranquil friend's face. "You would have been terrified to be my friend, much less anything else, had you known."
Helga's body began to grow hot. "Am I to guess?" she demanded, her frustration rising. "Don't play games with me, Rowena."
"I won't, I'm surely not trying to," Rowena apologized. "Suffice it to say, my husband is someone you know by reputation very well. Or, at least, the people of Northern England know him very well, I might say. Let us, for the moment, call him John, and leave it at that."
Helga's eyes bulged. "Not… John U-"
"Yes," Rowena said, her eyes crystalline. "The one and only Black King."
She shook her head. "And I… was…the reason he left Faerie."
It would have been impossible for Helga's face to show an ounce more of surprise.
"That's… that's why you *insisted* on the layer upon layer of protective spells for the school that you did," Helga said, her voice growing higher-pitched as the pieces began to fall together. "You were not merely concerned about the Muggle wars. You didn't want *him* to find us."
She grimaced, and added. "And that's… that's why you practically killed yourself with arithmancy."
"No," Rowena disagreed, thoughtfully. "That's only partly true. I left him because of arithmancy. Because he said it would be the end of English magic."
"But… he's not English," Helga said, "He's Scottish, am I right?"
"Yes," Rowena said softly. "But Scotland is, in many ways, wilder, and denser, and closer to Faerie. It scares him somewhat, to be so close to the source of his power. It is the font that feeds all the magic of the rest of the world.*** And as it travels through the magical channels, it becomes formed by the land, by the water, by the stories people tell, by Muggle folk magicks, the wizards and witches that wander the regions, by travelers, by animals and plants that live there.
Rowena's eyes became foggy, and she laid back, her fingers steepling painfully against each other. "He and I were paired together in Faerie, for the amusements of the Faeries that abided there. We were among a group of some fierce little infants who'd been stolen away from wizards and Muggles alike. We were the only magical people among them, however. He and I were married there, and to say that I had a choice in the matter is to lie. Our life was dull, and dreary, with endless servitude and pranking by our superiors, and it nearly cost me my sanity. There was so little joy between us.
"But there was, indeed, a great partnership built of necessity. We saw to each other's needs in ways that became familiar, that might even have become comfortable, if they hadn't been so devoid of joy and love and choice. I think he felt like he loved me. Why else would he do what he did?
"But you know my vice, dear Helga - it is curiosity. Endless curiosity. And I saw that one of our Faerie-masters had left his set of magic stones on the casting-table one day, instead of locking them up away. After closely looking to see if this was some sort of trick, I tried my finger upon them.
"To say that I was filled with ecstasy would be a misnomer, for this was pure, unadulterated joy. For a person who had only the dull, forced gaiety of a thousand parties and balls to attend to, these old arithmancy stones filled me with such a reverie as to be unimaginable. I had an immediate talent for them, as well, and it was not long before I knew I had to take them, and that they would help me to leave the place."
Rowena began coughing again, and Helga hurried to get the potion. "I always knew you were incredibly brave," Helga whispered as Rowena drank greedily, "but this is simply unfathomable."
"Thank you," rasped Rowena, and swallowed the last of the potion. "I grow weak, my dear," she whispered, "but… this I must finish before I sleep tonight."
"Please," Helga whispered in return, clasping one of Rowena's hands in her own. "Rest and tell me more later."
"There… will be no more later," Rowena said, and began coughing again.
She took her hand away from her mouth, and Helga was astonished to see that there was blood on it, which Rowena swiftly scourged away with a spell.
"How long have you been losing blood?" asked Helga, her eyes full of fear.
"Days," answered Rowena, and she stifled another cough.
"Oh, gods," Helga breathed. "Then… then, you're right," she whispered, her eyes filling with tears. "I can see why… why this has to be now."
"It's all right," Rowena answered, "don't pity me. I'm in no pain. None at all." She smiled grandly, even though it was clearly intensely painful.
"I don't pity you," Helga said, and, the old familiar words tumbled out, "I love you."
"I love you," Rowena answered affectionately, "And I also must lay this story to rest."
She took a deep breath, which seemed to stabilize her. "I… I left him there, in Faerie. I didn't even wish him good-bye. I just left him, and our very young son."
Helga's eyes cast a long look at Rowena. "Is it true?" she asked, "the rumors I've been hearing over the years? That John's son… and heir… is Salazar?"
"He dropped his father's name, poor boy," Rowena said with a sad smile. "But yes, Salazar is my son, by John, before either of us left Faerie."
She added, casually, "He doesn't know. I trust you will not tell him."
Helga's eyes burned brightly. "So what does all this mean?" she asked, her worry accentuated. She didn't know what to believe anymore. This didn't seem like her friend had become unhinged. But it was all too elaborate to be anything but fiction...
"Well," Rowena said, "John left Faerie soon afterwards, on a search to find me. He left Salazar there, which the boy resented. He was abandoned twice, poor child. It is such a secret that I have told not a single soul until you, my darling."
Helga nodded. Salazar's grudges and temper were already legendary, and his displeasure was not easy to avoid, but Helga had no desire to instigate a quarrel with him over his dead mother. This was a secret she too would have to take to her grave. And she would, by the gods.
Rowena nodded, patient. "Thank you," she murmured. "So," she resumed, and Helga felt a rush in her voice that she hadn't heard before yet. "I left John. He was displeased by my abandonment of him and the boy. He soon found a way to break out of Faerie and come after me. I avoided him for years, and he never found me, for I was slightly more clever, and also I knew him better than he knew himself, I think."
She took a deep breath, and then, with a rush of words, she confessed, "And then he found a way to trap me: he laid a curse on me. For this curse, he needed not to see my face or touch my skin. He found Hogwarts, and he poisoned the ley lines, the channels of magic upon which it sits."
Helga gasped, and her eyes flooded with tears, and she couldn't keep them at bay. "Is that… is that what this is?" she pleaded. "Is… is this.. changing of the moon, the animals' loss of speech, the growing of the water.. is it all because of him?"
"No," Rowena said, simply. "It is because of me. I have broken the thing that I hold most dear - arithmancy - because I left him, and made him miserable without me. And because I was already addicted to its magic," she said, her body slumping as it became weaker, "I couldn't stop using my skills. For me to stop doing arithmancy was for me to die. And he knew it. So his curse was such, though, that every time I tapped into the channels, it poison my veins. And not only did it do this, but every time I would tap into the lines, my use of it would close up the channel, as surely as if I was sewing it. Every time I used my arithmancy, I decreased the amount of magic available for Scotland - and poisoned that which remained flowing."
"I can't believe this," Helga said, "I… I can't." But she was terrified because, despite everything, she *could* believe it. It made a thousand other small observations she'd witnessed over the years make sense.
"You have to," Rowena said, and she grasped Helga's hand tightly. "Scottish Magic is in decline, as I am. John, as you know, disappeared immediately after he cursed me in 1434. He's hiding away until I am dead, I'm sure, while he laughs with his Faerie companions. How can one become companions with one's captors? I will never understand," Rowena said, shaking her head. "Somehow he's managed, though. Possibly because he's learned their cruelty."
She breathed deeply. "And slowly, slowly, because of me, magic will slowly fade away from the entire world."
"I don't believe it," Helga said. "I need… I need to see it."
Rowena shook her head. "It's already in front of you, my darling Helga. You see, but you do not observe. Do you not find it odd that we've found it fit to tell the students up through fourth year to use wands, when we used to only use that for first and second years? It is because magic is becoming harder and harder to access, even here, at Hogwarts."
She groaned. "Soon, even witches and wizards as powerful as you and I will need to use wands, I believe."
Helga stood, and walked to look out the window at the world. She was beginning to get a glimpse of the shadows that Rowena had always seen. She wished she wasn't able to.
"I hope you do not hate me," Rowena said, and Helga turned around.
"How could I hate you?" Helga said, "It is you that have been unjustly wronged."
"So you might think, being my close confidante," Rowena said, and sighed. "But every story has a different weave to it, in the hands of a different spinner."
"I don't think you did wrong," affirmed Helga. "Do… do you feel like you did?"
Rowena shrugged. "It's not possible to feel regret for something over which I had no choice. I know no one of them will forgive me, ever, but that life… it was death. I chose life."
Helga nodded. "How could you choose anything else?"
Rowena smiled. "I'm glad you see it from my view. I should have been so disappointed if I lost your friendship."
Helga nodded. "I… I as well, my darling." She proceeded to tuck the ill witch under the blanket, and felt her friend's head. It was hot and wet with fever.
"I… I will sleep, now," Rowena said, and she gave a quiet, shaking yawn.
Helga held her limp hand for hours, until the candle burned to the wick, and only then began to sob.
*or in Muggle terms, Arthritis
**This is the shittiest fake astronomy ever, sorry.
***Or what we Muggles know today as being called Western Europe