CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

- Tom & Cauldron Cakes -

Each shovel full of dirt hitting the new grave sounded heavier than it actually was.

Fi stared at the damp earth as Hagrid finished burying the unicorn, both half-giant and hedge witch quiet in their own thoughts. They stood in an outcropping of trees not terribly far from the lake's shore, the dawn air cold and shivering in their lungs.

"Have you heard anything new from last night?" Fi asked, turning a smooth pebble over and over in her hands. "Seen anything weird? Been visited by any hostile centaurs with cryptic messages?"

Hagrid snorted, the sound smothered by his matted beard. "They mean well."

"Meaning well and doing well are two different things, Rubeus."

Fi turned away, her robes curling and fluttering around her ankles, the stone a warm weight she tossed back and forth between her hands. The light barely brushed the horizon, but it was enough to see by. Grunting, Fi shimmied out of her teaching robes, leaving her in just her tunic and leggings.

"I'll be back soon, Hagrid."

"Eh?"

"I said I'll be back soon."

Fi tromped into the woods without another glance toward the new grave, the stone growing red hot against her palm. She hummed slow under her breath as the weeds broke beneath her shoes, and she set her path toward the part of the forest where she'd last seen the monster.

"Monster," Fi snorted, hand rising, tracing runes in the air. By Morgana, she had no idea what that thing had been. According to Mr. Potter, Firenze had told the boy they'd come across none other than Voldemort, the very Dark Lord whose Death Eaters were hounding Fi. She couldn't say if it was true. Whatever it had been, it hadn't looked…human, hadn't felt human, but Fi also couldn't present an alternative idea. Either way, Fi intended to find it.

Calling the thing a monster, though, felt a bit…silly. Monsters were those loathsome things that frightened children, and Fi had a visceral flashback to her childhood, telling her Mum through teary sniffles how much the howling of the wolves terrified her. Those might have very well been the very last wolves—mundane or otherwise—in Scotland, before the remainder were hunted by the Muggle Lairds. There were no more wolves now, and sometimes Fi looked back and missed the howling. Life was simpler then.

She scratched her head and paused to consider her surroundings. The space between trees widened as the boles grew thicker, allowing for the passage of larger bodies, the underbrush and mulch churned by a myriad of hoof prints. Fi guessed the tracks could belong to the Thestral herd—but her Galleons were on the centaurs. They were riled, agitated, and quite a number of little bushes and shrubs were paying the price.

Fi returned to the clearing where the unicorn had fallen. The blood had been burned away to cleanse the curse from the earth, leaving behind an ugly scorch mark and a few fine, silvery hairs clinging to the broken foliage and roots. The hedge witch crouched by the bushes the creature had entered and fled through, twisting the pebble in her hand, holding it up to her lips with two fingers so she could whisper spells into its course striations. She held it aloft—and the stone crumbled.

"Bugger," Fi sighed, sitting back on her haunches as she considered the broken remnants and the plant. My Finding spells aren't working. I know I placed a Track on the thing, but why can I not connect the two? Is…is its Will greater than my own? Is that possible? If it truly is this Voldemort character—what is he doing here? Why attack unicorns? Why bother at all?

Chewing her lip, Fi rattled the questions around in her brain before exhaling loud enough to startle a bird in the trees. She snatched up a handful of pine needles and rotting leaves and set them on fire with a thought, the blue flame tickling and curling around her clenched fist and wrist as magic poured into the clearing like an unleashed river. "Ba mhaith liom a fháil," Fi chanted, eyes on the fire. The ground beneath her began to glow. "Ní mór dom a fháil."

But then the magic hiccuped and the light infusing the earth flickered, sparks catching on Fi's bare skin. The spell ended before it began with a sudden cessation of energy and the hedge witch cursed as she shook her smoking hand. That was how the Headmaster and Snape found her.

"Are you well, Professor Dullahan?" Dumbledore asked as she rose, prodding at the stray burns that had touched her forearm and wrist. Albus wore his typical bright, gaudy color, but Snape looked little more than another shadow pulled from the forest floor, his eyes hard as he took in the scene. Both men scrutinized the woman, and Fi grimaced at the compromising position she'd been found in. Charred leaves stuck to the skin of her palm.

"Fine," she said, temper short. "If a bit irked. Can't find a trace of the creature now. I'm wondering if the unicorn blood is interfering. The kind of curse it unleashes upon its drinker is very subliminal, but very powerful. It could disrupt other types of magic."

The Headmaster studied her with his bright eyes, his mouth pressed into a firm line. "Perhaps it is for the best. The perpetrator will reveal himself in time."

Fi barely stopped the urge to snort. She flicked her braid back behind her shoulder and approached the pair where they stood on the other side of the clearing. Given the state of their hems, Fi knew they had been out searching the forest despite Dumbledore's placating words. He either didn't trust her or worried about her safety. Surprisingly, Fi was more inclined to believe the latter. "Do you think the Potter boy is on to something?" she asked. "Do you think it could be the Dark wizard, Voldemort?"

Snape hissed and Dumbledore's eyes widened a fraction behind his spectacles. "I would not rule out the possibility. Tom would be desperate enough to drink from unicorns at this point."

"Tom?"

"That is his name, Fi. Voldemort is the title he took for himself, but he will always be Tom to me. That's the problem with growing old. We can never forget the young boys and girls our students used to be."

Snape fidgeted but otherwise remained quiet.

"I didn't know he went to Hogwarts. Curious—but what would he be doing out here?" Fi wondered, searching the clearing again with her gaze. "This isn't the only herd of unicorns in Scotland, let alone the UK, but I would say it's the most perilous to reach."

She didn't see Dumbledore and the Potions Master exchange a brief look.

"Then again, he doesn't strike you as the most rational fellow, does he? He's a right prat, trying to murder babies and killing unicorns and hunting—." She cleared her throat. Fi had almost said hunting hedge witches, but she let that thought go, chastising herself. Ever would whack me upside the head for that. "Ah, well. If I can't find him—or it—I might as well return to the castle."

"A good idea, Fi."

She went then, conscious of the eyes on her back, the weight of an aged wizard's attention and the scrutiny of Potions prodigy, but neither called her back.

~.oOo.~

Professor Dullahan receded from view, retreating quickly through the trees with surprising vigor, leaving her statement half-thought and hanging in the clearing's misty air.

"She doesn't fear his name," Albus commented as he stroked his beard in thought. "A singular witch, our Professor Dullahan."

"Either that or a fool," Snape retorted as he marched forward to inspect the charred marks on the forest floor. Crouched as he was, Severus reminded Albus of Dullahan, of how they had found her only minutes before, cradling her smoking hand and staring at her own fingers as if they'd betrayed her. "Or both. I've told you before, Headmaster, that she is a very odd woman."

Albus made a noise of acknowledgment and his Potions Master continued to inspect the site of last night's incident. A thought buzzed in the back of his head like an irate pixie and Albus concentrated on the notion, a line forming between his bushy brows. It seemed every time he came across Delphinia Dullahan, in the halls or at meals or in his office, her presence would tickle the back of his mind, and Albus had never been able to ascertain why.

In fact, the very first time Albus had read her name on the list of prospective Magical Theory applicants handed to him by Minerva, he'd known that he recognized it but couldn't say from where. Delphinia Dullahan. It poked at him constantly like a rather inquisitive house-elf. She appeared in no scholarly publishings, had no patents at the Ministry, had never attended Hogwarts—and yet her name carried a certain gravitas in select circles of the Wizarding community. Most, like Albus, didn't know the witch. Others spoke of her with a form of fond reverence. Fi, they said with secretive smiles. She doesn't like to be called Delphinia. Not anymore.

Yet for all his curiosity and prodding, Albus hadn't found time to discover more about the curiosity witch in his employ. Suddenly, however, that impatient buzzing had returned to his mind, and what Albus Dumbledore found most amusing about this whole situation was how her words, "a right prat," seemed to be the cause.

A memory manifested, and Albus found himself looking upon a scene from his youth, an English cottage in the summer time, the smell of hollyhocks in his nose and the sweet taste of homemade Cauldron Cakes on his tongue. He remembered sitting in old Bathilda Bagshot's parlor, upset with Aberforth from an argument they'd had earlier in the day and more than willing to take his anger out on some poor unfortunate soul. He remembered being invited by Bathilda for tea and discussion, he remembered the feel of the cobblestones underfoot, he remembered the door opening, walking inside, and he'd met—.

A witch. He'd met a witch, a black-haired witch with sadness in her pale eyes, a long braid, and a wicked grin. She'd been tan as if she'd recently been abroad, and Albus had felt an irrational tongue of jealousy light his ire. They'd sat discussing Gamp's Law of Elemental Transfiguration, and the witch had asserted that the Law was mutable, malleable, and Albus had called her an idiot. When he'd turned away, she had hit him in the back of the head with a Cauldron Cake for being 'a right prat.'

Her name had been—.

"Headmaster? Dumbledore?"

Albus shook himself, blinking. "Apologies, my boy," he said to Severus, who had been calling his name for quite some time. "I fear my mind got away from me."

"Did you think of anything relevant to the situation, Headmaster?"

Albus's mouth twitched. "No, I fear not. I was caught in a daydream about a witch I once met a long time ago."

"Who?"

"I'm not sure, Severus. I'm not sure she even knew herself."