Chapter 2: Where did all the witches go?

The mouse-woman straightened herself up.

"First of all, I just want to say that for what it's worth, I deeply regret ever joining Maleficia's horde. I want to make amends, Mr. Shacklebolt. Send me to Azkaban if you must, but please let me tell my story."

That's why we had brought you here today, Miss Spear. We want to hear the whole story. Now, am I right in thinking that Maleficia is to blame for your current condition?"

"She…and that accursed Alma Dal! But first things first…It started ten year ago at Maleficia's annual convention. We were staying at a hotel in Bournemouth, pretending to be a Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children convention - Maleficia liked ironic statements like that."

Harry had been reading up on the Grand High Witch, and it made for a frightening read. From what he could understand, her ultimate goal had been the extinction of the entire muggle race. Not even Voldemort used to have such insane ambitions. According to her own twisted logic, the way to do this was to kill all muggle children so that would be no one left to carry on the "muggle gene". There were, however, some Auror researchers who believed that Maleficia wasn't really that calculating, and that she killed muggle children simply out of irrational, psychotic hatred

"Anyway, Maleficia started by telling us how much she hated children, and how angry she was at our failure to destroy all of the children in England. Then she killed one of us, on the spot, for pointing out that total extinction of all the children in England would be impossible. It was the usual. Or so we thought. As it soon turned out, Maleficia had a plan this time; a highly ambitious plan. First, we were all going to purchase one sweet shop each…"

"Where would you get all the money from?" Harry interrupted.

"Maleficia was an expert at counterfeits", Kingsley Shacklebolt explained. "Even goblins had difficulty telling them apart from real money."

"Precisely" Spear added "Anyway, on opening day, we were to give away give away sweets that would be laced with a magic potion. Naturally, no children would say no to free sweets, and so they would all swallow the potion"

"This magic potion had an unpleasant effect, I gather?" Shacklebolt asked.

Lucrezia nodded. "Correct. It would turn anyone who swallowed it into a mouse."

"Ah, I think perhaps I can guess where this is going. But anyway, I assume that this potion wasn't supposed to go into effect immediately…as that would seem very suspicious."

Lucrezia nodded again. "We were instructed by the Grand High Witch that the potion would activate at 9 a.m., the day after the children had eaten the chocolate, when they were at school."

Then came an awkward pause, as if everyone in the room were now expecting someone else to add a comment. Eventually, Harry decided that he would do it.

"Well, that would be very…evil, no doubt about it. But…exactly how would that lead to the extinction of all muggle children in England?"

"…"

Lucrezia hesitated for a moment. Then she said slowly:

"Maleficia believed…that the teachers would panic when the classrooms were suddenly filled with mice…and…that they would have the mice exterminated…"

For about thirty seconds, Harry just stared at the mouse-witch.

"Let me get this straight" he finally said. "These children were supposed to turn into mice right before the eyes of their teachers…and yet Maleficia expected the teachers to react by just killing them all…killing all the children that they had just seenturn into mice. She expected every elementary school teacher in England to ignore the fact that these mice were obviously their own pupils…and just exterminate them?"

Spear nodded.

"And she thought that just because the transfigurations took place on the day after all the children had been offered free sweets - all over the country - the authorities would not be able to see a pattern? That they would not suspect the sweet-shop ladies of having something to do with all these bizarre transfigurations?"

"I guess so", Spear replied, and nodded again.

Harry looked at Shacklebolt. Then at Lucrezia Spear. Then at Shacklebolt again. Finally he said to the Chief Auror:

"This is a joke right? No offence, sir, but tell me honestly: did you set me up? Let's make fun of the new guy and all that?"

"Common sense was never Maleficia's strongest suit, Mr. Potter. If Miss Spear tells me that this was Maleficia's plan, I believe her. But the plan backfired, didn't it, Miss Spear…?"

"Does it show?" Spear replied dryly. "Oh yes, it backfired. And how it backfired! You see, Maleficia wanted to demonstrate the effect of the potion, so she gave a chocolate bar to some fat, snotty little boy - As I recall, his name was Bruno Jenkins. The day before, Maleficia gave him a chocolate bar with the potion, which had been so timed that he would turn into a mouse after just a few seconds in the room.

"A mouse like you?"

"No, an actual mouse. Well, technically not. He could still talk and…ah, but I'm getting ahead of myself again. Anyway, Jenkins is not important. What is important, is another little boy who was present in the room at the time. He had been hiding from us, and now he knew all about our plan. He tried to escape, but we caught him, and naturally we had to silence him somehow. You can probably guess how we did that."

"You force-fed him the potion?"

"Precisely. We gave him an extra large dose so that the transfiguration would take place immediately. And it did. Unfortunately, he managed to get away, but we didn't worry too much about that then. After all, he was just a mouse. What could he do?"

"What indeed…" Shacklebolt muttered.

"I said we silenced him, and that's a laugh", Spear continued bitterly. "The only thing we didn't do was silencing him. You see, even though he was a mouse, the boy could still talk and think."

"Very interesting. Was that part of the plan, you think?"

"I doubt it. To this day, I can't believe that Maleficia made such a powerful potion, and yet at the same time did such a stupid mistake. And to make matters worse, the boy later turned out to be Michael Dahl, the grandson of none other that Alma Dal."

"Again, very interesting."

"I consider it destiny. It is too much of a coincidence that the one child who learned of our plan should turn out to be the witch-killer's grandson. I believe this means that the plan was destined to fail. Somehow, young Michael managed to get back to his room – he and Mrs. Dal were staying at the same hotel – and tell Mrs. Dal everything. She, of course, knew what to do. Somehow, she managed to steal a small bottle the potion from Maleficia's hotel room, and then pour the entire bottle into a saucepan full of soup at the hotel's kitchen. That was the soup we were having for starters that evening." She sighed. "You can probably guess the rest. The doses were so large that we were all transformed into mice almost instantly. Unfortunately, none of the waiters were looking our way at that moment, so they didn't know what had happened." She sighed again "When the staff noticed us, the transfigurations were complete, and all they knew was that there were suddenly a lot of mice in the restaurant. They killed quite a lot of us that evening, including the Grand High Witch herself. But some of us escaped. The moment our transfigurations were complete, we all realised that we could still think. We knew what had just happened, and how the hotel staff was going to react when they discovered us. So naturally we all tried to escape from the restaurant. One of the chefs caught me, and he probably would have chopped me to bits, had it not occurred to me that if I could still think, then maybe I could still talk. So I cried: Don't kill me, I'm not a real mouse, I'm human! My voice was very…well, squeaky, of course, but I think he understood. At least the surprise of being talked to by a mouse caused him to back away of me, and I was able to escape."

Spear cleared her throat. "Before I go on…you promised me I could have a sherry."

Shacklebolt had a glass and a bottle sent to his office, and Spear took a good sip before she continued.

"Where was I? Somehow, the survivors, most of us anyway, managed to gather outside the hotel. Things didn't look too good, to put it mildly. Two witches who were sitting next to Maleficia at the dinner table confirmed that the Grand High Witch had been cut up by a waiter on the way out, so we didn't don't where we could find an antidote, or if Maleficia had even bothered to make one. Eventually, we decided to take shelter in the house of Griselda Baiter, who lived nearby the hotel. It took all night to get there, and on the way, two of us were eaten by an owl, and another three were taken by a badger. Once we were there, we spent the next few days trying to make an antidote. It was hopeless. Even if we somehow could manage to lift bottles and casseroles and such, we didn't know where to begin. Eventually, we made what seemed to be the logical decision: We decided to search the Grand High Witch' castle in Norway for clues, or possibly even an antidote. Griselda had some floo powder, so we could get there easily."

Spear took another sip.

"Well, guess who was waiting for us when we arrived…?"

"Mrs Dal?"

Spear nodded. "Alma Dal and an army of…bloody…huge…cats! There were one hundred and eight of us when we arrived. Before we managed to escape, the cats had taken fifty-one of us. While the cats feasted, Alma Dal helpfully explained to those of us who weren't already eaten, that she was the one who poisoned our soup, along with her grandson. Then she proudly displayed a mouse she was holding in her right hand. This, of course, was her grandson. And how he laughed! The next few years were miserable. Wherever we went, Mrs. Dal managed to track us down somehow. Three years later, there were only twelve of us who had yet to become cat-food."

Spear emptied the glass. "Another one, please?"

Looking at the bottle, Shacklebolt hesitated.

"Look, I don't expect you to feel sorry for me, far from it, but you have to understand how hard this is for me."

Shacklebolt reluctantly poured her another glass of sherry. "Thank you…now, three years ago, something started happening to us survivors. Our bodies began to grow…started taking more human forms. And in the end, well…" - Spear waved her arms - "I looked like this". Now to begin with, we considered ourselves lucky. Alma Dal's cats would no longer be a threat, we could defend ourselves, and we could make potions. Of course, one problem was that we could no longer go around unnoticed. Fortunately one of us survivors, Marcia Greywill, was a childhood friend of Narcissa Malfoy. Mrs. Malfoy kindly allowed us to take shelter in a remote, overgrown mansion, and provided us, not only with food, but also with ingredients to make potions. Unfortunately, we were no closer to finding an antidote. Maleficia was dead, and her notes were no doubt in Alma Dal's possession.

Then we heard news from the outside world. We learned that the Dark Lord had seized control of the British ministry of magic, and Mrs Malfoy told us that he would consider pardoning the remaining members of Maleficia's inner circle. He never got that far, however, before he died…"

"I know", said Harry darkly "I was there."

"Don't get me wrong, Mr. Potter; at that that time there was no love lost between us and the Dark Lord. As for Maleficia, I was beginning to hate her more than I hated Alma Dal. Often would I wish that she had survived that fateful night at the hotel, only so that I could kill her myself. But the Dark Lord's regime seemed like our last chance. And for many of us, that's exactly what it was."

"What do you mean?"

"She found us at last. About two years ago, Hecate Grinder just suddenly disappeared one day. Then the same thing happened to Tilla Fowles. Then we began to run out of food because Narcissa Malfoy's servants had stopped visiting us. From this, we drew the following conclusions. One, the Malfoys were probably captured, possibly killed. Two, the Dals had found us, and now they were trying to take us down one by one. On the same evening that Marcia disappeared, and there were only nine witches left, we had an emergency council. We decided that one of us would have to get back to civilisation to find out what had happened. If necessary, if all of our former allies were dead or powerless, we would give ourselves up. Then we drew straws and I lost…or won, depending on your point of view. Anyway, here I am. But on my way, I was nearly killed, too. Walking through the forest the very same night, I was assaulted by a young man. He was quick and strong, and before I knew it, he had forced me down on the ground and pressed a knife against my throat. In the dim moonlight, I could see that he was a mouse-hybrid, like me, and it occurred to me that he had to be Dal's grandson, Michael. Obviously, he too had evolved from a mouse into a mouse-human. I tried to break free, but it was no use. I was sleepy and weak from food deprivation, and young Dal's grip was iron-tight.

With nothing left to lose, I did something that saved my life. I tried to reason with him:

"Why do you and your grandmother keep hunting us? You killed nearly two hundred of us. Haven't you gotten enough revenge?"

"My grandmother and I won't stop until all witches are dead!" he yelled, but there was uncertainty in his voice.

"Are you going to kill all the witches in the world? You've got your work cut out for you, then. There are hundreds of thousands of us all over the world. And what about the wizards? Are you going to kill all of them as well?"

Mentioning wizards seemed to confuse him.

"There's…there's no such thing as wizards."

Now it was my turn to act confused.

"I know we're enemies, Dal, but please tell me one thing. What exactly has your grandmother told you about witches?"

For a moment, young Dahl looked like he was going to tell me to drop dead, or more likely, make sure I did just that. But then he decided to answer my question. I think perhaps his instinct told him he ought to. What he told nearly made me break down laughing. His grandmother had brainwashed him, there was no better word for it. She had told him that all witches were like Maleficia's followers - deranged child-killers with bald heads, long crooked fingers and no toes. So naturally, I told him the truth: That witches were part of a huge and complex magical society. That the only witches who fitted his grandmother's description, were in a small sect whose members were mostly dead now, thanks to his and Alma Dal's efforts. That the magical society, including the other witches, regarded us as criminals and terrorists - with good reason."

"And how did he react?"

"He called me a liar, of course, and then he told me that his grandmother had warned him of the lies that witches might try and tell him. But again, there was uncertainty in his voice. You see, the one advantage to being a mouse-hybrid is that our senses are heightened. Somehow, Michael Dal could tell that I wasn't lying. Maybe he saw it in my eyes, maybe he could tell from my tone of voice, maybe he even heard my heartbeat. I don't know about him, but my hearing is so strong that I can tell what kind of mood people are in by listening to their heartbeat. In any case, I was being completely honest with him, and I think he could tell. Young Dal looked at me for what felt like a very long time. Then he retracted his knife, let go of me and walked away."

Lucrezia emptied her second glass of sherry.

"And that's all I know about the Dals. Wherever Michael Dal is right now, I hope he's having a heart-to-heart conversation with his grandmother. Because that conversation is long overdue."

Continued

This chapter was inspired by the Harry Potter books in general - all of whom are written by J. K. Rowling - and The Witches, a book written by Roald Dahl.

All the characters used or mentioned in this story are created by these two writers, except for Lucrezia Spear, who was invented by me (although technically, she appears in Roald Dahl's book; if only as a nameless face in the crowd). I also made up the names for the Grand High Witch, a random selection of her followers, and the grandmother from The Witches. In the book, they have no names.