Chapter 11
After a glorious Christmas, Biirta was not displeased to be returning to school without Petrus!
Lucius had talked his three first year children into protecting and serving like all Marauders and Malfoys and gently knocking the boy's corners off in Hogwarts; and they had promised to do their best. Accordingly they had spoken to Petrus of the four houses and managed to emphasise the need for ambition in Slytherin and courage in Gryffindor to make sure that at least they would none of them be in the same house as him; and gently guided him to want to be a Hufflepuff where being academic was less important and he was likely to be a class hero for being good at quidditch. Petrus quite liked the idea of being a class hero and the idea that in a school where inter-house matches were important so that a good player was also important rather tickled him; and there was no fuss from the boy at the idea of changing school.
Lucius got a thorough kissing from Biirta for arranging it!
"Can't have my wife worrying about extraneous things" said Lucius "You'll have the Triwizard next year as well as being knee deep in exams; Petrus on top of that would be too much."
Biirta was profoundly grateful! And as she said, Petrus should have a better chance to do well and grow up in a place where he could not blame his sister if he got into trouble. Lucius hoped the little git WOULD shape up; but with marauders on his case, Petrus would be given every chance; and if he was hatted into Hufflepuff, well they took no nonsense.
Biirta had no real expectation of being chosen for the Triwizard; perhaps if she had had an extra year's education, without the worry of the little ones, it might have been a different matter. But she would put her name in! Nobody in the sixth had any doubt but that the amazingly talented Gunnar Heuvormund would be school champion; he himself laughed and said that he appeared to have inherited the talents of the Von Strang family, from their insistence of their 'rights' with village girls, without any of their vices. But it was important that the new school was shown to have a contingent of contenders. And if necessary, contenders who were prepared to stand up to blood snobs in other schools. There were more than one movement afoot that might cause trouble; Wulf had decided to share with all the sixth that there was a French supremacist movement that was being countered by various layers of Marauders in Prince Peak, Hogwarts, and even, apparently, Beauxbatons.
"Why even, sir?" asked Biirta.
Wulf shrugged.
"Beauxbatons is not a school one associates with marauders; they are inclined to be a little bit too precious. But my brother-in-law to be, Darryl Zabini, is apparently a greater man than I gave him credit for, and has actually raised a contingent there."
"Don't be unfair, my dear, kids are kids," said Jade, mildly. "Just some of them get stifled a bit by circumstance."
"It's interesting that being precious can be as stifling a circumstance as grinding poverty," said Biirta.
"It is," said Jade, "and being brought up with a limited belief structure. Some people are capable of having that shaken; some of the other group of supremacists, the Russian Pure Blood School have had their beliefs challenged in a duelling contest with Durmstrang and Prince Peak with regard to the capabilities of elves and goblins and two have applied for post graduate studies at Prince Peak as a result. My father is tremendously pleased," she added. "Stealing two is the equivalent of changing the odds by four, rather than merely depriving them of two. If he can steal them," she added thoughtfully, "but I bet he can."
"He is very clever," said Magda, earnestly.
"And shrewd as a bag full of snakes, L – Mr Malfoy says," said Biirta.
"Which helps," said Jade. No ex-Slytherin ever took being likened to snakes as anything but the compliment Lucius had intended. "But we need to be aware that the seers of Durmstrang and Prince Peak are predicting some degree of trouble from the Russians, which is why we are warning you; we've had nothing from our own resident sleep-genius but let's be vigilant and careful and aware. I don't personally think they rate us enough to attack us – which is foolish but handy – and wouldn't want to split their forces three ways in any case. But we may be called upon to help out, in which case the onus may fall on you older ones to entertain some of the younger ones if we have to be out of the castle."
"And support in other ways?" asked Biirta.
Jade pulsed her a blood throb of approval.
"Quite so," she said.
xxxx
The first year Marauders were keen to get back to the school for various reasons, not least to be able to use its extensive library to undertake searches for hidden trapdoors; and to get at the dungeon floors for the purpose of finding those trapdoors. They held a hasty meeting on their return and decided to tell Florenzia all about Marauding, and invite her in. Wilhelm was elected to this task being wordier than the others.
"Well if it is sanctioned by the heads I suppose there is nothing dubious about it," said Florenzia.
"The Junior head has been part of it from the beginning, with Herr Harry Potter," said Yrmiot.
"And anyone who thinks Professor Nistor is dark has wits wandering as far as any professional Beater," said Anghel.
The only serious quidditch player amongst them was Erwin, who was no great shakes at Charms, but managed to turn Anghel a fetching shade of purple. As this was a personal best, time was taken to congratulate him on this, and Anghel had to be persuaded heavily to dejinx himself as he rather liked the colour.
"Of course we will share some idea of things others do better at," said Wilhelm "Though I'm not sure how it works."
"It means I might not fall off horses and maybe Florenzia will stop firing cauldrons at Professor Rebet," said Darna.
"It is not… no, if it were cheating, it would not be allowed," said Florenzia, who was quite a sensible little body.
"I think there are things you can do with it that it is not done to do in things like exams and Triwizard competitions," said Wilhelm. "And I say, it's time for kaffee und kuchen."
xxxx
Biirta settled down happily in the knowledge that Petrus was in the care of Marauders, and that if he was troublesome, he was no responsibility of hers. The aid Lucius had given her over Yule, allied with the lifting of the strain from her, that she scarcely knew she bore, meant that her classwork improved no end. The staff praised her hard work, and tacitly did not mention that it was as a result of the removal of a bump on a log.
Biirta was wryly aware of one of the reasons for her improvement; but she was too sensible to feel guilty about it. Moreover, she knew she could also attribute some of her better work to the happiness that flooded her every being, and the feeling that she was working to make Lucius, Narcissa, Charlotte, Tanjela and Finn proud of her as well as for her own satisfaction.
When a letter arrived from Petrus after a week that bubbled happily – if still somewhat illiterately – about Quidditch, and what nice boys he had as dormitory mates in Hufflepuff House and how he was well up in class, Biirta relaxed even more. If Petrus was happy she did not even need to tell herself not to feel guilty, for the move had been all for the best. Lucius was a great man!
She felt that to be even more of a truism when Lucius wrote and told her that he believed that Petrus and her father had been susceptible to a brain imbalance that made depression more likely, and had sought a potion to help Petrus by reversing the effects of what the imbalance had been doing, and that his elves were making sure that Petrus took the doses as it was phased out while he settled in. Lucius was so kind! Narcissa had scrawled a note on the bottom that Lucius had not meant to deceive dear Biirta by not telling her, but that he was afraid of raising false hope if it had not worked.
It appeared that either the potion or being a quidditch star in one of the Houses of a big school like Hogwarts had been enough to give Petrus the incentives he needed to get himself a life.
Biirta proceeded to plot with library work allied to her new knowledge, and the First Eagle Marauders were amazed to receive letters that appeared suddenly on their desks, unwrapped themselves, and the hieroglyph figures on them stood up and sang the same song they had enchanted into their folded birds.
"WELL!" said Ulvik. "If that's the kids, it's a bit exotic; and if it's Zaly and Grelleg I'm surprised."
"It's not one of the staff, is it, reminding us we are Marauders?" said Emilia.
"No, I suspect it would be more sophisticated," said Ulvik.
"It looks pretty sophisticated to me," said Ria.
"I suppose it might be Marauders in a different school," said Mava, dubiously.
There was a chuckle from the doorway.
"It was me, actually," said Biirta.
The First Eagle Marauders rose as a body and proceeded to salaam.
"Oh might Head-girl, pray enlighten your humble followers the reason for japing us!" intoned Ulvik.
Biirta laughed.
"Idiots, get up do!" she said. "Well, I'm so happy that my brother is settling in to Hogwarts, keeping up in class and sounding happy that I wanted to break out in childishness and jape someone; and you lot are the only fair game there is. Well, it was hardly on for the head girl to jape the staff, was it?"
"Oh, that makes perfect sense," said Mava.
"Wow!" said Torschik.
"Yes, but are you going to teach us how you did that?" asked Ebert.
"I've written it into the book of all wickedness, with library references," said Biirta. "You'll figure out how to do a physical sending far better for having to do the library work than by being told."
"She's right of course," said Lurtz, "and that we will be doing the library work to find out. And I say, Biirta, when you say a physical sending, do you mean there are non physical sendings?"
Biirta shrugged.
"Well, the normal way is a ritual to send a spell," she said. "This was more or less a controlled and focussed banishing which is a level of Charm I couldn't manage without a chant and a bit of ritual, but I believe the more talented could just manage to do without breaking into a sweat. It was jolly good practise though, and I have to say, I like the idea of dropping a letter on the desk of a miscreant to summon them to my office."
"That would be neat," said Ulvik. "Mind you, we've lost the major irritants in Bric and..uh, sorry."
"Petrus? Well I'd ask someone else to tear him off a strip if it were necessary," said Biirta. "Am I forgiven for japing you?"
Several voices assured her that no forgiveness was needed, and that she was quite right to pick them to jape as Marauders served, and being a safety valve for the head girl was one of the ways they could serve.
xxx
While the First Eagle Marauders were wrestling with ritual, the would-be Marauders of the first continued hunting for the hidden. They were not, at least, likely to be defeated by anything as subtle as Parseltongue, said Jade cynically to Wolf, since none of the Von Strang family managed the subtlety of snakiness. Or, she added with an undue level of snideness, even the ability to master their own language with any tense bar the imperative.
Wolf secretly feared that she might be correct in this surmise.
The only real Von Strang descendents in the castle, in the persons of the Heuvormund boys fared somewhat better linguistically; without studying Ancient Runes formally, Gunnar managed to pick up enough to aid his chanting, and his little brother Wilhelm was fairly competent in the Ancient Runes class, if not quite up to the standard of fellow Marauder Kornelia, but between them the two young marauders managed a fairly competent translation of revealed hidden runic messages which hinted of a keyhole hidden in full view.
This was a little more competent than one might have expected from a Von Strang, and almost as subtle, said Wilhelm, as a blood taint might manage. Kornelia failed to rise to this calumny beyond ensuring that Wilhelm was likely to fluoresce for the foreseeable future by the expedient of prolonging the spell with a rune wand-drawn on his robe.
The keyhole took some finding; it was concealed as part of a drain cover that was not, in fact, a true drain, which Florenzia discovered by accident, when she dropped her pencil – they were taking geomantic notes – and instead of splashing, the pencil lay on the surface of what looked like turgid liquid.
Hasso promptly dropped his pencil in another drain, and it splashed down satisfactorily, which was fair proof that this drain was not all it appeared.
"The problem is, we don't actually have a key," said Wilhelm.
"But then," said Hilder, "there's Florenzia and me, and I bet between us we can make a morphing goblin key to fit any lock."
"But we're not allowed in the metalwork classroom by ourselves," said Florenzia, who was very proud of being so good at a goblin skill even if she was near pure blooded.
"Well it IS Marauder business, and I'm dead certain Professor Black-Weasley is a Marauder," said Wilhelm.
They went haring off to find him.
Leo was working with Wanda Steck, catching her up with her extra-curricular studies, and left her working on her current project to listen.
"Go and get on with it, don't interrupt Wanda unless you kill your silly selves and keep the noise down," said Leo.
Having a morphing goblin key would do their Marauding no harm; and Leo had no intention of making life easy for them by loaning them his.
There were only a few burns to show for the rigid application of the coefficient of magical expansion, which was outside of the remit of the first, but Leo always assumed – and with good reason – that Marauders put in library work outside of their current level of work in order to manage mischief. Hilder had come across morphing keys in a library book the previous term and had made notes, and had started the preparation of the metal surreptitiously at the end of each lesson, while he waited for the rest of the class to catch up, over the last few weeks of term, and Leo had pretended not to notice. He did add,
"You WILL need to finish that off with a brute force chant if you want it completed today; you're one process short, you know."
This omniscience did him no harm at all in the eyes of the first year Marauders.
Key at the ready, the youngsters raced back down to the dungeon, and found themselves apparated to the top floor, with a sonorous spell following them that they might proceed all the way down at a more sedate pace, having almost knocked Ritty flying, and the elf decided they needed to learn patience.
This was a harder thing to learn than the application of the coefficient of magical expansion as applied to infinitely variable extrinsic alteration, which the youngest marauders thought were beautiful terms and had no idea that they were NEWT level in concept.
They proceeded to the dungeons at a very fast walk.
The key slid neatly into the fancy stonework in the centre of the drain grill, and turned with an audible SNIC!
The stone being too large to lift, all ten of the youngsters proceeded to attempt wingardium leviosa on it, which as they were all pulling in slightly different directions lifted, shifted, jiffled and graunched the stone without much success.
"You should designate the person with the best levitating charm as the primary and chant to support and aid," suggested Ihor Rebet, emerging from the potions dungeon at the horrible stone protest noises. "WHY am I encouraging you brats to explore my drains?"
"To rescue the Margrave and Kunegunde, Herr Professor," said Kornelia, whose project it might have been said to have been in the first place.
Ihor Rebet grunted.
"You'd better take a couple of warming potions with you in case you need them," he said, disappearing into his dungeon and returning with a couple of vials. "Do send burning flapping birds ahead of you from time to time; where a flame can live, a being can live. Anything that puts out flames can also snuff out life. And send them WELL ahead before you light them in case of any explosive gases. The physical barrier charm will protect you. If you aren't back up in an hour, I'll send some of the older imps to find you."
"Thanks, sir, you are kind!" said Kornelia.
"Well, I'd rather you little menaces got it out of your system before my next lesson," said Ihor, who would have died before admitting to any romantic urges.
Chanting to assist Wilhelm, who was at least competent at charms, soon lifted the drain cover, and the ten chanted it to one side, and were about to descend the steps without further ado, when the Potions Master's loudly cleared throat stopped them.
"Precautions?" he said.
"Oh, yes, flapping birds," said Wilhelm.
"That too, but what are you going to do to prevent anyone falling down the hole if they are passing by fast enough not to notice it, or piled up with things?" asked Ihor. "You are heedless brats!"
There were several red faces, and the Marauders had to admit defeat.
Ihor sighed.
"Watch and learn," he said.
A rapid chant produced a zone of glowing red lines that both indicated the area excluded, and gave a mild electrical shock to anyone who still managed to walk into them.
"Gosh, sir, you ARE the works!" said Darna, the team chanting star.
"You'll know another time," said Ihor, returning to his dungeon to turn an hour glass and to try not to worry.
xxxx
Biirta, meanwhile, wrote a loving and sisterly letter to Petrus, praising him for staying up with the work. She had no illusions that the threat of holiday work was at least some incentive to him doing so, though finding himself in the middle of his peer group must have been helpful for him. She also wrote to Lucius and the girls confessing to japing the Marauders, because she was inordinately pleased with having managed to make Chanting and Ancient Runes work so well for her. Lucius would be pleased.
Lucius was pleased, and Biirta became all hot and bothered, in the best possible way, when a bloodpulse of approval was sent later, when the owl arrived at Malfoy Manor.
Magda noticed the soppy smile on her friend's face – Biirta's study was always open to Magda as a refuge – and asked,
"What's it supposed to feel like? Being attracted to a man, I mean."
"Well I can only give you my experience," said Biirta, candidly, "and I'm well aware that someone whose personality is as forceful as Lucius' wouldn't be everyone's cup of tea. You'd find him scary."
"I do find him a bit scary, even when he's being nice," admitted Magda.
"He doesn't know how to tone down the charisma because though he knows he has it, and uses it ruthlessly at times, I don't think he's quite aware just how much charisma he has," said Biirta. "But as we aren't talking about him – at least, I assume not – you don't have to worry."
"No, it's not him," said Magda. "It… I do admire Professor Kesselring."
"Well, he's very nice," said Biirta, "and he's quite horsey, which has to be an advantage, but I can't see anything in him that would make my belly feel all sort of melting, and my knees feel weak and my lips soft and wanting to be kissed."
Magda flushed.
"So it's not abnormal to feel like that?" she whispered.
"Not at all," said Biirta, who decided it was better to just be positive rather than say that she'd only experienced it from inside one body and that as she enjoyed it, had never thought of questioning if it was normal or not.
"I … I sometimes don't know what to say to him," said Magda. "You never seem at a loss for what to say to Mr Malfoy, and it's not always polite. I couldn't even imagine speaking like that to Professor Kesselring!"
"Well, I should think not; he'd dislike it intensely," said Biirt, who liked Ritter well enough but privately thought him a bit of a stuffed robe.
"That's why I'm so confused about you and Mr Malfoy," said Magda.
"Lucius likes a lively debate," said Biirta, blushing, "and I suspect he probably likes making up after a near quarrel."
"Dear me, that seems very unpleasant to me that you should want to be involved in such!" sighed Magda. "I couldn't imagine EVER quarrelling with Professor Kesselring."
"I hope you won't turn into one of these wet types of women who bleats 'my man is always right' even when he patently isn't," said Biirta, disapprovingly. "I expect Herr Kesselring would prefer someone who can put their own views, albeit gently, and not let herself be walked all over. Otherwise he wouldn't be such good friends with the other staff, who DO tease him a bit, you know!"
"Well, it would be silly to agree for the sake of it," said Magda, "But then, I've never seen him wrong."
"Oh, he's quite human," said Biirta, "A paragon of virtue he may be, but if he were perfect, it would be a monstrous imperfection, if you think about it."
Magda stared.
"Why?" she asked.
"Because he'd then be insufferable," said Biirta. "And if he had never made a wrong decision or a mistake, he wouldn't have any tolerance with anyone who does, and he IS tolerant, so I wouldn't mind betting that he knows what it's like. And that, my dear Magda, will separate whether you're in love with him, faults and all, from whether he's a splendid being you worship from afar and attribute every possible virtue to, whether it's just or not."
"You aren't half blunt," said Magda.
"You asked."
Magda chewed her lip.
"I don't quite know," she confessed.
"Well, perhaps it's just as well," said Biirta. "He's far too proper to do anything about it until you leave school, and if it's worship from afar, you can use that to get over hating men, and be ready for the right man when he comes along, or if it is true love, you have a year and a half to get your ideas straight about how to deal with the fears. And maybe you could get to know him better by asking if he has ever done anything he regretted, or had anything happen to make him feel bad, and if so, it's a more comfortable way to approach telling him about the Creep."
"I couldn't tell him about that!" cried Magda.
Biirta shrugged.
"Then you don't love him," she said. "If you did, you'd want there to be total truth between you."
"Professor Von Strang said much the same thing," said Magda in a small voice, "that I should tell anyone I was serious about. It's so hard!"
"But not as hard as the first time of telling, because you know that decent people believe you and are shocked at him, not at you," said Biirta. "And if you ask me, it's better to get it into the open with a man you admire to see if he's worthy of your admiration; because if not, you've got me to help you get over it, but if you wait until the end of your schooling, you will be on your own dealing with disappointment. Especially if your feelings become deeper in the meanwhile."
"Oh dear, how I hate it when you are so uncomfortably right," said Magda.