Author's Note:
It goes without saying that there will be swearing. You have been warned.
-o0o-
Nearing noon on September 1st, Sebastian Flint and his son, Marcus Flint, were in the Evil Pugnacious Brewery in Knockturn having a few pints. Contrary to popular belief by those families that never strayed past the Diagon armistice line to enter Knockturn, it did not poison its drinks on those unsuspecting patrons who entered its doors. They did offer to sell poison so that others inside the establishment could poison their neighbors, but not while they were inside, and never so that it could be traced back to the proprietors. As a side business, the owners also sold antidotes.
Sebastian and Marcus had been in the place for the past 20 minutes and were already on their third mug of… something foamy. "I'm telling you, Dawson!" Sebastian slurred to another patron who was doing his best to ignore the older Flint. "It was all my doing! All of it! I had the idea to get Potter's wand snapped, and look what happened?! It happened, I tell you! Snapped. Right, son?"
"Right, father," a buzzed Marcus said, while hitting on a hag that he had no idea was a hag since the hag's glamour gave her a large brown beehive hairdo, large red lips, blue eyes, and a curvy figure, all of which she did not have in the slightest.
"Ha, ha, haaa!" chortled Sebastian. He emptied his mug and slammed it on the counter. "Another! And one for my friend, um, Dagwood, no, um, Dawson! Drink up! It's only good times now!"
Estee Lauder (no relation) patted a further-inebriated Marcus' knee. Dinner in looked like a very good possibility, she grinned, almost drooling.
A clock chimed noon. Sebastian paid no attention to it, but he did pay attention to the mug at his lips being shot out of his hand with an arrow that had a letter attached to it. Looking at where the arrow came from, he noticed a centaur with a Goblin on its back who uncaringly twirled the type of manacles used by kings in their dungeons centuries ago. Worse, the Goblin was smiling.
Sebastian Flint knew trouble when he saw it and took off as fast as he drunken legs would take him. Marcus didn't see his father scamper for the back room as he was flabbergasted that his drink was leaking out of an arrow hole. The pretty girl he was talking to backed up and he immediately noticed a Centaur and a Goblin headed his way. Like his father, he ran for safety.
Pity his definition of safety wasn't anything better than jumping behind the bar itself and grabbing some of the plastic sword-doohickeys bartenders use to skewer olives with and put in fancy drinks, er… antidotes. He saw his problem immediately when the manacles clamped around his wrists. He looked up and saw the Goblin grinning and checking a watch. The Centaur kept Marcus from fleeing by using the simplest method: he stood on Marcus' foot. It was a good thing Marcus was drunk and wouldn't notice the pain until later as his foot had been broken in 4 different places.
Sebastian came running from the other back room entrance and headed for the front door. The Centaur and Goblin chasing him were in pursuit.
"Yee-ha!" the Goblin cheered, swinging his manacles above his head like a lasso.
The other patrons, all four of them, saw then entire action and were glad of one thing: that it wasn't happening to them.
"You don't see that every day, do you?" Dawson said quietly to the hag.
"Nope. Wonder what they did to piss off the Goblins?"
"They must've gotten behind on their payments to the Gringotts or somethin'."
"Pity. Marcus looked rather tasty."
Manacled, Marcus was dragged from the Evil Brewery as he couldn't walk very well on a broken foot. "Seven point six seconds," Rowlf (no relation) the Centaur announced to his colleague, TrickyDick.
"I don't think the cup will be ours this year, my friend."
Sebastian Flint ran by his manacled son without a pause to help him out. Boweldislodger was still twirling the manacles above his head and laughing like this was the best thing since blood pudding, which it really was. Even Hindquarter was enjoying the hunt as he used his arrows to shoot near the wizard and force him to circle back and alert those still in Knockturn that it wasn't wise to mess with a Centaur.
"No," Rowlf agreed. "I think you are correct. Those two are having fun," he indicated the second part of their team.
TrickyDick contemplated the situation. "Want to let him go? We could chase him down again."
A scream and more shouting was heard nearby. They both saw other Centaur/Goblin teams hunting the chattel only a few dozen meters away, in the Diagon Alley boundary. They did not wish to get in their way or assist them in any capacity. It would have been unsporting, they knew.
Rowlf's smile grew. "Let's do it."
In all, Marcus Flint was captured and released another six times before the final capture was done, and that was only due to him being so unable to move as he had quite a few more broken bones in his body.
-o0o-
Poppy woke up September 2nd in her room that was adjacent to the hospital wing of the castle. It was a small room, but comfortable. She looked at her wind-up clock on her nightstand. It was after 8 am. Strange, she thought. Why was she getting up so late? First day of classes had started and she would need to… wait. No classes, she remembered. That's right. The school was being closed.
"Crap," she muttered, rising, dressing and doing other normal morning routines that she had done for the past two decades. "Crap, crap, crap."
She was out of a job.
She was only 72 years old. She still had another good thirty years in her, she knew. She needed to find another job. Well, at least she had socked away her salary for retirement after landing her job at Hogwarts.
-o0o-
"Crap," she snarled, angrily. "Crap, crap, crap!" She looked around her room. Breakfast had ended over two hours ago. The Headmaster had announced that the Hogwarts Express would return the next day to return all the children back to London. The children were still numb. She wasn't sure what kind of calming draughts they would need. And, after checking her financial situation with Gringotts, she found out she needed a calming draught herself.
She looked at her financial report again. The 18,614G she had in her Gringotts account had been frozen pending an audit into malfeasance on the part of the Hogwarts administration.
She had been around the block too many times to not realize what that meant. Someone here at the school was going to get shafted. And most likely it was going to be those in the trenches. In other words: she was likely to lose some, most, or all of her retirement. Her intuition was spot on as the audit later revealed poor money management by all the Headmasters and all their staff (which included her) for the past several centuries, and as a consequence, all frozen accounts were confiscated to pay outstanding debts and return what it could to Mr. Potter. As far as Gringotts would note months later when the audit finished, Poppy Pomfrey would then be dead broke.
Poppy woke up later that afternoon from her hangover… er… her slight rest from taking a calming draught (aka, a couple shots of Jameson Irish Whisky). She took a quick assessment of her situation. One: she was out of a job. Two: she was out of money. Three: her immediate family was no longer with the living. Four: by tomorrow, she would not have a place to stay. Five: her parents hadn't left her anything when they died, having instead given it to her aunt, Barbara Schafer who had since died. Six: Aunt Barbara's son, Nigel, wasn't in any of the wizard directories. She speculated that he had probably taken the money and left the country. He had never been heard from again and she had no way to contact him now. With nothing better to do, she had written a letter earlier to her cousin asking for some help or at least a place to stay, but the owl she tried to give it to had refused which she knew was an indicator that the owl did not know where to find Nigel.
There was no way that she could maintain her quality of life, bare that it was, by not taking the dragon by the horns or however that useless saying went, she thought irritably. By 7pm on the third, she needed a place to go, preferably with a job, or she would be hoofing it to the village and camping out either in an inn, a barn, or something else unpleasant. Right! There was only one thing to do here.
She swallowed her pride, removed the Red Cross donated clothing, put her leather outfit back on that had been collecting dust for the past few decades and headed out to see someone for a job.
-o0o-
"Hagrid?" Poppy knocked on the half-giant's door.
Wilhelmina Grubbly-Plank opened the door of Hagrid's hut. Fang shot out to slobber on the person at the door, but overshot the mark and instead bolted for the forest in fear. "Fang!" Wilhelmina yelled after the retreating dog.
"Wilhelmina, do you know where Hagrid is or when he will return?"
"Nah. He certainly picked a bloody awful time to take some personal time off, let me tell you. Leave me to find homes for all these beasts, will he?"
"Have you been able to locate any place to take them?" Poppy inquired, looking at the various creatures squirreled away here and there.
"A few. Not all. I've been at this since the Goblins came last night. I am exhausted."
"You mean you haven't rested yet? Or done anything else? That is certainly dedication considering," Poppy said as the two of them neared the threstal paddock.
"Considering what?" Wilhelmina prompted, not liking where this was going.
"All Hogwarts finances were frozen as of this morning. That includes the teacher's finances. I image yours too."
"What?! Shit! That's it! Albus can go fuck himself if he thinks I'm doing this for free!"
"I totally agree," Poppy said. "That is why I am no longer a nurse and have to find something else to do. I have nothing to my name other than my skills and my experience."
"Poppy," Wilhelmina said, "I'm sure you will find a job as a nurse again."
"Not bloody likely. No training in that really."
"What?! But you've been a nurse here for over two decades."
"Yes. But Albus asked me to fill in here when Mediwitch Cherice McDougal came down with a bad case of dragon-polkaspots and couldn't return to caring for the children for at least another 14 months. One thing led to another and soon Albus was calling me the school nurse, got me a certificate to that effect with the title and everything."
"Really? Wow, that explains a few things. So if you do not have a healer's background," Wilhelmina started.
"Oh, I have a healing background. It's just not… well… traditional."
"Not traditional? What do you mean?"
Sigh. "My background is being a magical veterinarian."
"Wow. That explains even more. So you were here to…" Wilhelmina prompted.
"Check the health of the magical creatures. I had been here for a week working with Hagrid. Then Cherice got sick and the rest you know."
"So… you were a vet, working with Hagrid and got tagged to fill in as the school nurse, right?"
"Right in one," Poppy said, putting her vet bag on the ground and pulling out some of the tools of trade. "Now it's time to get back at it. I can't retire without a something to live on. I only hope I can find a job. But, better get my vet skills back up to where they need to be. Do you need me to check the health of any creatures?"
-o0o-
Bane met with member of the magical quad council. Per an agreement made centuries ago, ambassadors were to meet in the neutral clearing in the center of the forest. Had human magicals known the quads met there, they would have likely assumed it was some sort of holy ground. It was not holy. It was not sacred. It was simply a clearing that had been used by house elves when Hogwarts had first opened. The house elves those many centuries ago had established free time which they used to make music.
But they were horrible when they tried to make music. They routinely dressed in black, wore berets, pummeled bongos, spouted nonsensical poetry and music lyrics about cooking ingredients as well as cooking recipes. Once they finished a performance, they showed their appreciation by snapping their fingers much like humans would clap when they saw something they liked, such as watching a boy hitting a rat with a rotted peach.
Centuries passed. The elves quit coming to that clearing. But the forest did not forget what happened there. And so trees avoided growing in that place. Grass was not so picky. Eventually it was deemed neutral ground by the quad council. They all had the same reason to make it neutral: no one wanted to do anything that might incur the eagerness of the house elves to return to that clearing and begin banging bongos again.
Bane walked into the clearing, the night sky well seen that evening. Moments later two thestrals landed and walked closer to him. Using a combination of non-verbal communication, whinnying and foot thrusts, Bubbly said, "I thought our people had a deal!"
"What do you mean?" Bane said aloud.
Cuddly responded to that by somehow saying, "We provide you intelligence about what is going on at that bloody castle and you keep the great anal prober away from us! Taking our temperature; yeah – right!"
"Please explain what is going on," Bane instructed.
Cuddly and Bubbly spent a few minutes informing Bane the fallout from the previous day's Goblin collections. That the bipeds were on the move from the castle and that the great anal prober was asking about resuming her old duties which might happen once friend Hagrid moved all the herds.
"It must not happen!" Cuddly stomped on the ground with a fierce determination.
"Get rid of her!" Bubbly backed up his fellow thestral.
Bane looked up to the night sky. He saw things that most did not, including the thestrals. He looked back at his fellow quads. "We will need a new deal."
"What do you want?" Bubbly asked, his eyes narrowing.
"My kind can see things in the night sky. We can see things far away, and even far-far away."
"Yeah…?" Cuddly prompted.
"But," Bane started sheepishly. "We can't see things up close as well as we would like. We need some reading glasses."
"You can't read?" Bubbly said.
"Oh, we can read. Those wizards haven't gotten rid of that ability in us. Not that they haven't tried."
"But…?" Cuddly prompted.
"The writings are fuzzy. And, the bipeds have something new that has come to our attention. Something… magical."
"Duh," Cuddly snarked. "They are wizards and witches."
"No," Bane explained. "It was not the magicals that created this new thing. It was the non-magicals. And we need reading glasses to see it properly."
"Sounds interesting," Bubbly agreed. "What is it?"
"It's something that they call 'comic strips'. It's in their newspapers. The younger foals can read them, but the older you get, well… you know how it is."
"Comic strips?" Cuddly started.
"Yeah. I really want to catch up with Doonesbury or Cathy, or even The Far Side."
"I don't get it," Cuddly said.
"Think of it as concentrated stories, told much differently. Like, a murder mystery except that it is from a bug's point of view."
"Can't your foals just read them to you?" Cuddly tried to understand.
"They can and they do. But the stories have pictures as well. And the foals do not know how to describe some of what they see. I so want to see what happens when a young non-magical biped and a tiger have to stave off an epic snow-goon encounter. Think of what we can learn from this!"
"Wow!" Bubby said. "Those 'comic strips' sound interesting. I can understand why you want to see it. Can we get them some glasses?" This last was directed at the other thestral.
Cuddly responded. "Yeah, sure. We'll just swipe some from the kids leaving tomorrow. It's not like that lot ever notices anything."
Bane stood proudly (like that was any different). "Then we have an accord! Glasses for us and we shall in turn get rid of the Great Anal Prober!"
-o0o-
Hagrid and Olympe were somewhere in Europe when early in the morning an owl showed up with a message attached to his leg. The owl presented its message to Hagrid. Getting the sleep out of his eyes, he read the letter twice before its message finally soaked in.
"'Agrid? Qu'est-ce que c'est?"
"Mmm, bad news frum home," Hagrid said with a sigh. "School's gone."
"The Death Eaters 'ave attacked?"
"Ah, no. Shouldna' said it tha' way. Foreclosure. Bad bizness, that. An' now I got ta find new homes fer all th' creatures."
"You are welcome to come wiz me to Beauxbatons. All magical creatures too."
"Whew. Thanks, Olympe. Ah'll write Bane back and agree ta his suggestins."
"Who? And what suggestions?"
"Oh, ah, one uf th' Centaurs. Leader, actually. One of 'em anyway. He said he'll watch over all th' larger herds while me assistant'll be sent wit' the other creatures ta wherever I want her ta go."
"You have an assistant?" Olympe said in very clear English.
"Oh, aye. Not real well known. Poppy was me assistant years ago. 'Guess the paperwork is still valid fer her. I'll let Bane know I've reactivated her vet seal and ta hand her this letter sayin' she should head to France wit' the smaller herds. Ah know she won't git paid 'till we git back frum here, but at least she'll have room an' board."
"Sensible, 'Agrid." And equally sensible not to return too soon, she thought, pulling Hagrid in to another kiss.
-o0o-
Snap! Poppy adjusted the latex glove on her hand and went to adjust the other hand. She looked up as Centaur exited the forest on an intercept course. "Good morning," she said cheerfully. "Ready for me to take your temperature?" She held up an ominous probing device. Bane shuddered.
"I have a message from Hagrid," Bane said, holding out the letter he received from Hagrid only minutes earlier.
"Can you read it to me while I get my equipment ready to see to your general health?" She began moving around and pulling one ominous gadget out of her bag after another. By the Great Pumpkin! That bag was a never-ending horde or horror!
"Yes, I will read it." Bane held the letter out from his body as far as it would go and then squinted. "Poppy. Stop. Am on official business. Stop. Have re-activated your vet seal certificate. Stop. Your last position was as my assistant. Stop. That position is re-activated per Groundskeeper Rule 5.4.A of the official Ministry Groundskeeping Act of 1706. Stop. You need to get the smaller animal herds to Beauxbatons. Stop. Madame Maxime has counter-signed this letter at bottom. Stop. Re-locate smaller herds there as soon as you can. Stop. Leave bigger herds to care of Bane. Stop. I will meet you in France as soon as I can. Stop. Until Madame Maxime back in Beauxbatons, she cannot authorize you pay, but you will be getting room and board. Stop. See you in November or December. Stop."
Bane looked down on the female biped. "In short, Poppy of the Pomfrey's, you are to move all magical creatures the size of friend Hagrid's canine companion and smaller. I and my kind will oversee the rest of those larger herds that must be left behind when you leave at nightfall."
"I'm going to France?" she was in shock. Leave Britain? The center of the magical world?
"Think of it as a new adventure. You know what they say: don't let the door hit you on the way out. Hasta la vista, baby. Cheerio! Amscray. Arrivederci. Off you go! Toot suite and all that. Pip, pip! Adios! Hey, look at that comet!"
Bane left the still shell-shocked vet tech while the getting was good and the anal probing was not happening.
"And I'm still not getting paid?!" she all but shouted.
-o0o-
On Friday, November 3rd, Poppy found herself rousted out of her makeshift lean-to that some of the older students had put together for her at Beauxbatons as the master groundskeeper hut had been magically sealed and she did not have permission to enter. While essentially a vet tech, as well as a medi-witch, she was technically still a creatures apprentice which meant certain things to certain people. Or in other words, apprentices were treated like crap by their masters, even if said masters were not in residence yet. And by extension, she was treated like crap by much of the student body who had high expectations of masters, and low regard for apprentices.
Madame Maxine had sacked the old groundskeeper at her school once she found she could keep Hagrid safely with her. After Hagrid had penned (or quilled) his letter to Poppy, Olympe had scrawled a note to Groundskeeper Willy (no relation) that was short and to the point. She had meant to delay his leaving until Hagrid and she returned, but she was lost in Hagrid's dark eyes and didn't want that old groundskeeper to stay around her school, polluting its presence with his foul Scottish accent any further than he had to. Besides, she thought, Hagrid's assistant would be up to the task and would be there within a day so no harm, no foul.
Neither of them took into consideration that Willy was a vindictive old bastard who locked everything up, requiring the Headmistress to use her command overrides to open the paddocks, open the groundskeeper house, and so on. He had locked everything up as tight as he could. He was heading out the main gate as Poppy was preparing to leave England with the smaller creatures in tow.
She arrived in France, went through customs, made it to the school, found the deputy (or whatever Olympe called it), and handed him the note with Olympe's authorization and Hagrid's orders. He in turn nodded, instructed her where to integrate her creatures with the other ones for the class that she would (surprise) be teaching, and then gave her the: you're-an-apprentice-so-don't-get-above-your-station speech. He showed her to the groundskeeper house, noticed it was locked, failed to unlock it, shrugged his shoulders at her question of where she was going to sleep, and then left her to it. Her meals were delivered via house elf, which to no one's surprise, let alone hers, didn't speak a word of English, and she was not allowed into the school proper until she could comport herself like a proper magical apprentice. She knew what that meant as well. She'd dealt with French snobs before. It meant: clean up before coming in. Unfortunately, the only way to clean up was to use a shower that was in the groundskeeper house that she couldn't get in.
She ended up sleeping in one of the barns, keeping the monster book of monsters tethered nearby to keep the other, more savage creatures at bay. She had always liked Robert, her monster book. And for some reason, Robert liked her. Well, enough to not draw blood anymore at least. It still liked to snap on her wrist somewhat playfully. That would probably explain why she liked to sleep with a riding crop nearby.
The next day she began teaching classes in Hagrid's absence. The less said of that the better. She had an odd way of teaching. Since she had medi-witch training (on-the-job training at that), she could heal injuries that happened in her outdoor classroom. Surprisingly, once the children understood that this new professor, no…, apprentice-professor would allow them enough rope to hang themselves to the point of near-death as they knew she could keep them dying at least outright, they began to take the lessons a lot more seriously.
But there was one thing those kids would not let go, she knew. They would not take steps to learn English. They persisted in speaking French!
This did cause some friction and now, months later, she woke up in the lean-to that some of her students had built for her. It had running water and everything. But the running water was due to those same students building her hovel over a steam and if she got out of bed the wrong way, she'd fall in. She didn't know that this was their way of making sure Poppy Pomfrey got a bath now and then since she didn't have access to a shower.
"Poppy?! Yeh in thar?!" boomed a deep voice. The lean-top was near collapse.
"Hagrid? Hagrid?! Is that you?!"
"Yeh. Olympe an' me just got back. Yeh okay in thar?"
Such an innocent question she knew. Deep down, she knew he was asking because that was the way he was. But the floodgates were near to opening with her tears. "No," she answered. "Not really. Can you let me use the bathroom in the groundskeeper hut?"
"Shore. Anytime. Why didn't yuh use it before now?"
"Magically locked," she whispered as she moved towards the hut and its glorious bathroom and its heavenly hot water fed shower!
"Right, right," he nodded, not wanting to tell her the magical key was under the non-magical doormat.
-o0o-
Poppy was looking much better. The color was restored to her skin. Her hair did not have leaves, twigs, pine needles, or dirt in it, and she smelled more human. She sat with Hagrid going over the lesson plan she had come up with while they ate at the small table in the hut. Hagrid would resume classes on Monday after watching how she interacted with the children that day.
The day progressed, the classes came and went. No new accidents befell any of the children who had long since become wary of the 'Witch-Who-Would-Let-You-Nearly-Die-For-Your-Own-Good'. Classes ended, evening meals concluded and the two of them returned to the hut to discuss matters. The hut was similar to Hagrid's hut at Hogwarts. There were only three rooms in the hut: bedroom, washroom, and a larger room that served as a living space / kitchen / eating area. Hagrid would stay in the bedroom as his back was all out of shape due to having slept on rocks for the past few months. Poppy could pull up a rug and sleep by the fireplace with Fang. In the morning, Hagrid would begin building an attached shed to the hut where Poppy would stay. She was not happy about having to live in a shed of all things, but it could be worse, she thought.
Close to 10pm local, Hagrid returned from a quickie, er…, a meeting with Olympe, and asked Poppy one of the most critical questions he would ever ask her while in France. He asked her how he would go about ordering drinks at a pub in French.
This resulted in a long conversation about how to speak French, about how to order in French, and all of which was absolutely irrelevant since Hagrid wasn't really thinking of how he would order drinks in French, but instead how she would order drinks in French for him. She understood this soon enough as they entered a locals place just a few hundred kilometers from the school where he had flown them in his flying motorcycle.
-o0o-
Poppy had been in France for two months. She had not learned very much French however, other than a few swear words that the kids had used in her presence, which ironically, had been used about her presence and more often than not, about her smell. She had managed to order Hagrid a few large drinks that he paid for and the two of them sat down. Hagrid downed one glass and then the other. He then got up to go back to the bar for another refill.
The process continued for an hour or so. Hagrid would drink, and the more he drank, the easier it was to talk to him, and he to anyone else. Oh, he still didn't understand French, but then again, he wasn't speaking intelligibly any longer. Grunts, snorts, blinking, a couple belches – it was all part of the guy speaking-while-intoxicated code. Poppy had never understood it. Not even when Robert had gotten loose that one time and managed to drink some of her potions she had brewed while at Hogwarts. She said so to Hagrid whose head was on the table and he was snoring away.
She failed to notice four burly biker members, who were wearing their colors, raise eyebrows to one another. They nodded over to her. They spoke softly. Minutes later, a bar fight broke out, tables were upturned, yelling, shouting, a bag thrown over Poppy's head and she in turn was thrown over someone's shoulder. The roar of a motorcycle. Then another roar. And another. What was going on? What was happening?
-o0o-
The bag was taken off Poppy's head. She immediately noticed she was in a dim room with many burly figures inside, both men and women. They were all speaking French to her.
"Do you mind if we speak in English?" she pointed out. She was tired. Soar. A little light-headed from the excitement, but more than anything, she was in no mood for tomfoolery!
The leader, well, the most intimidating figure of the 20 or so people in that room pointed to another leather-clad man. He was slightly older than the others and nodded. "I am Jacque De Vire," he said with a medium accent as he sat down across from her. "He is Claude Le Meiux," he pointed at the more intimidating hooligan. "We are all members of the Coffin Cheaters."
"Preposterous!" Poppy stated.
"And why is that? Is it you thought yourself too good to be kidnapped by a biker gang? That biker gangs no longer kidnap people? Is that it?"
"Of course not, silly man! It is because the Coffin Cheaters are a biker club in Australia, not France! Honestly!" she harrumphed.
A woman had been translating for the rest of the gang and the leader snapped something at Jacque. "Oui," he replied to Claude. Then, to Poppy, "We are the French auxiliary of the Australia chapter."
"Hrmph. Very well. But I will be checking up on that, I will let you know. Now what do you want?"
To the point then. Good. It made negotiations that much easier. "Member of our club overheard your conversation with the large man you were with tonight. They heard you were a healer for one thing."
"And I take it you all need me to heal your wounds from various altercations with football hooligans who may or may not be traveling around in a stolen double-decker bus?"
"Ah, that would be good, but not the real reason you were brought here."
"Yes? Then why else am I here?"
"Ze, I mean, the men heard you say you were both a healer and you could make homemade brewskies."
She processed what he said for a few seconds. "You started a fight and kidnapped me because someone overheard a conversation and took it to mean I was both a healer as well as someone who could brew beer on the side?"
"Oui!" Jacque agreed, glad that she understood.
"Allow me to clear up some misconceptions, Jacque. I am a nurse. I can do healing, that is true. But I never said I made homemade brewskies in my conversations tonight. What I said was that I could brew things in my home. And what that means is I could make healing concoctions! Not beer, you imbecilic morons!"
"You don't make beer in your part time?" Jacque clarified.
"No!"
"Not even a little?"
"No!"
"I guess it was too good to be true. I will tell Claude that we need to keep looking for someone that can heal our wounds, make brewskies, and heal our little puppy dogs."
"Well, that I can do I guess," Poppy said without realizing it. Lack of sleep for months was finally catching up to her.
A vote was taken and the Coffin Cheaters decided to keep Poppy.
As Poppy poured over texts on how to create beer the next morning, one thought went through her head over and over. It was: 'What did I ever do to deserve this?'
-o0o-
Hagrid woke up hours later, rubbed his head as he yawned to get the sleepies out of his eyes. He scratched himself, blinked a few more times, looked around for Poppy, and then left. The roar of the motorcycle was heard by a few patrons, but none paid any real attention.
Poppy did not return that weekend. When asked where she was, all Hagrid could think of saying was, "She met a bloke who swept her off her feet."
Technically, that was true. She had met a bloke, although not by her choice. And he had swept her off her feet: again, not by her choice.
However, staying with the French auxiliary of the Coffin Cheaters biker club was her decision after they offered to release her once she taught them the secret of making bathtub beer. She had learned to make brewskies quickly. And they were a hit with the club. It was probably due to the whisky she added to it. She could also heal them when they got into fights. And once she colored her white hair back to its original black color, she started to get some action.
The tramp stamp of a dragon riding a motorcycle she got the following summer solstice showed the men how much she enjoyed being part of a gang. One thing was for sure, she knew, it sure as shit beat living in a shack.
-o0o-
Author's comment:
Originally when drafting this chapter, I hadn't thought to include anything on Poppy. Then a reviewing mentioned the following: "Whilst you're shafting the so called adult professionals who have deliberately failed to do their jobs, whatever will become of Poppy Pomfrey! She should have noted the all too clear signs of abuse and malnutrition Harry displayed and fine something the first time the lad was in her alleged care." This got me to thinking. That reviewer was right. Poppy should have noticed. Should have done something. Why hadn't she? I began to wander down that thought path and then it hit me. She wouldn't have noticed if she hadn't really been trained in that job! And therein you have her inclusion in this chapter.
This chapter was originally going to have two additional shaftings in it, but Poppy's story became so long, I had to cut those out and as such, they will be in the next chapter. Half of the next chapter is done, and the second part is already well underway.
Nigel will return in a later chapter. Never fear. Who the hell is Nigel you ask? Stay tuned!
Thank you all for reading and leaving comments!