Shepherding the Flock

Herpo was skirting the North Pennines along the course of the path as the group continued to close the gap between them. He was a persistent, but a slow walker, mostly due to his advanced age. They moved faster, with a certain amount of determination. If nothing changed, they should catch up to him by somewhere south of Durham before he made it to Leeds.

The landscape was beautiful, but he had no appreciation for it. His eyes were locked on the goal. Anything in between was little more than wasted space to him.

He stuck to his practice of avoiding people as much as possible. In his few encountered, he cut them as short as possible. His only real conflict was with a shepherd who took exception to him killing a lamb for food.

"Who are you, stranger?" asked the shepherd, as he approached Herpo.

"I am Herpo," he replied, never looking up from his cooking.

"That is one of my lambs, Mr. Herpo. I would have sold it to you at a fair price. But we do not take kindly to thievery in these part."

"You would deny a weary traveler a meal," he snarled at him. "Yet you have so many, you would fight me over the smallest one."

The shepherd, a fairly large man with a large staff, was not a patient, docile man. He came at him with his staff as his dog tried to attack from behind. With a wave of the wand, the dog was transfigured into a lamb. "There is your replacement," he said, looking at him with icy fire in his blue eyes. "You can join them. Then I will have added to your flock, not subtracted." With a swoosh of his snakelike wand, the shepherd became one more member of the flock. "I hope you are happy, now," he hissed at him, sitting back down to enjoy the meat he had been cooking when the shepherd confronted him.

He slept there for the night, enjoying the bit of warmth provided by the fire. It felt good on his aged body. In the morning, he ate more of the cooked lamb before extinguishing the fire with a wave of his wand. Not that he was keeping track of time, but he felt he had wasted enough on the luxury of a hot meal and warm night of sleep.

As he prepared to restart his trek, he took the shepherd's bundle of food and drink for use on down the path. Again, he made the mistake of leaving his victim's clothing where it might be found, which it would be by the group in a couple days. If he were just a little sharper and disposed of leftover clothing, they made have abandoned their chasing of him. They might have left him as the lone hunter, instead of the hunted. But the clothes and their residual dark magic traces kept them pointed at him. An eventual meeting seemed inevitable.

A day and a half later the team encountered the flock straying all over the hillsides on both sides of the path. Annalphus, who had grown up in an area where sheep herding was common, immediately realized something was amiss. "This flock is out of control," he said. There should be a shepherd and dog keeping them together. They split up, looking around for the missing shepherd and dog. They were not to be found.

Eventually, Harry started yelling for them to come to him. He had found the extinguished fired, half-eaten lamb and a telltale pile of clothes. As they scanned the area around the firepit, the dark magic traces were easy to detect.

"Blimey," said Ron, trying to push away a very insistent sheep. "What is wrong with this bloody thing?" The sheep kept bumping and pushing against him while bleating insistently.

"What, indeed?" said Annalphus. "What do you sense?"

Ron took his wand and started slowly moving it over the sheep." I feel dark magic," he said. "There is dark magic on it."

"Yes," agreed Vertimus as he scanned the strange animal. "This sheep is not what it seems."

'Are you saying this sheep is the shepherd?" asked Harry.

"I don't know. Let's find out," he said, waving his wand. "Finite Incantatem!"

The sheep transfigured back into the shepherd, naked as the day he was born. After being a sheep for over a day, he was quite disoriented. It took him a bit to recover his speaking ability and balance on two legs. However, they managed to get him dressed, and with the help of some water and bread, his senses started to come around.

"Where's my dog?" was the first truly coherent thing he said. "That bastard turned him into a lamb. What kind of demon is he?" Then after a moment, he realized they had similar powers, "And you, as well?"

"He is an evil wizard," said Vertimus. "We are the good guys, so to speak."

"You're telling me witches and wizard are real, not fairy tales? That is a hard thing to believe."

"So, where is your dog? Call him," said Vertimus.

The shepherd whistled very loudly and called out, "CANNIE!", followed by another whistle.

A lamb came up after a moment and started rubbing on him. Annalphus started scanning the lamb and said, "This appears to be your dog. Let me demonstrate that magic truly exists. "Finite Incantatem," he said, swooping the wand in front of the lamb. It was instantly transfigured back into a very confused border collie.

"Saints be," said the shepherd. "I can't believe me eyes."

"Now," said Annalphus. "Tell us everything you can about this wizard who attacked you."

"He was an elderly man, bald with a ring of wild, white hair and a long, scruffy beard. His eyes were blue and cold as a white gale. He didn't say much. He was an ornery sort, not much for talking."

"Did you get his name?

"Yes, it was Her…uh…Herpo, yes, Herpo. That was it."

Harry looked at Ron. You could see the name strike a chord in their collective memory. "Herpo the Foul. The wizard who invented horcruxes," said Harry.

"We know who that is," said Ron, loud enough to get the attention of the others. "We read about him when we were learning about Voldemort. He is an ancient Greek wizard named Herpo the Foul. He invented horcruxes. He was a really nasty guy."

"Are you certain?" asked Annalphus.

"As sure as we can be, without him standing here. How many Herpos can there be that are evil wizards?" replied Ron. "He must be from a horcrux"

The shepherd was watching and listening to this, too stunned to say anything. His whole world was going off the rails, and he didn't even understand the half of it.

"We have to get this information back to the Ministry," said Vertimus.

"We have to tell Ginny and Hermione," said Harry. "I am scared of how they will react. This is a little above the normal bad guy level. This is like another Voldemort, only instead of a grand leader building an army to take over the world for him, this guy is sort of the opposite. His big problem is liking to kill people, or at least finding it too easy."

Vertimus looked over to Annalphus. "Do you think we have gotten all we can get from this guy?"

"I believe so. Are we going to do a standard wipe and new memory?"

"Yes, but we need to let Harry and Ron watch. They need to learn this skill."

Vertimus called Ron and Harry over to quietly explain what they needed to do before leaving this place. Annalphus engaged the shepherd in small talk to distract him while they got ready. It really did not matter what he said or told him. It was all going to be gone in a few more minutes. Then they needed to start tracking Herpo and getting an update to the Ministry.

"We are going to use a 'false memory spell'," explained Vertimus. "They are different than the obliviate charm you probably know about. You can get in a lot of trouble using them unless you have a permit. The people who do the accidental magic reversal and aurors are about the only folks who can get one. You'll get one after you're trained up on them and you graduate. For now, just watch us take care of this situation."

Vertimus walked over to where Annalphus and the shepherd were still talking. He was telling him about the vast network of witches and wizards in the UK and around the world. It was all stuff he should not know, but it was about to become a moot point.

"Recordatio Mutatio," said Vertimus with a twist of his wand. The shepherd sat up straight, with a glassy stare. "You have been having a very normal few days. Nothing unusual has happened. Everything has been fine. You will go on with business as usual when you wake up."

Vertimus and Annalphus quickly buried the lamb and fire pit. They signaled for Harry and Ron to follow them, walking in a purposeful manner until they were well out of sight and sound. "That is how it is done," said Vertimus with a chuckle. "After being a sheep for a couple days, we probably did him a favor.

They kept walking for a couple more hours down the path. It was starting to get dark. According to Annalphus' map, there was a wizard friendly inn called The Gelded Pony near Birtley. If they kept walking for another hour, it would mean hot food and a bed. They could make contact with the Ministry tomorrow after breakfast in the morning.

Going to bed on a full stomach of shepherd's pie and some good drinks felt wonderful. They were once again grateful for Annalphus' book The Little Big Book of Everyplace an Auror Ought to Know by Candlus Renwick. It took no time at all for them to be sleeping comfortably. They doubted Herpo was enjoying similar comforts along the way. No one in the place had seen Herpo, which did not surprise them. There seemed to be trouble anytime he encountered muggles or other magical folks. Everything was quite peaceful at The Gelded Pony.

In the morning, they got up to a breakfast fit for the house elves at Hogwarts. There were eggs to order, freshly toasted whole grain bread, sausage, bacon, ham with fried tomatoes and mushrooms, blood pudding and baked beans. The tea was hot, strong and plentiful. It was hard to push away from the table, but duty was calling.

The first order of business was sending the report to the Ministry. It was a consensus that the Ministry was not going to like what they were about to hear. They wondered if more aurors might be dispatched. At the same time, Harry penned a letter to Hermione. He was confident that she would get it, and then share the information with Ginny. Ginny could be away at a game, but Hermione should be at the Ministry.

Harry and Ron both fretted about how the news would be received. This was not going to go over well. They just hoped they would not have to respond to another emergency situation.

The possession of new information, bad as it was, encouraged them to press forward. With two good meals and a good night of sleep, they were full of energy, ready to cover some ground. They had the spring back in their step that had been starting to wane. They felt like they were getting close to spotting Herpo. They hoped they would see him before he spotted them. As much as they wanted to see him and settle this, they were also wary of the potential danger an encounter with a wizard like him could bring.