Wheels Within Wheels—Part Two
Kendra and Lily
Chapter Twenty-Five
Old, Old Magic
The return to Greengrass Manor was uneventful. Everyone gathered in the gazebo for big tumblers of cold mineral water and lemon, talking about next steps at The Mill, Harry's still-conjectural construction of a new Potter Manor on the site of the old one, and Draco's enthusiasm for a simple retreat house on the Malfoy estate.
One by one, people drifted away, until Harry, Daphne and Kendra remained.
"I need to pull out a calendar and start looking for some dates for our projects," Harry said. "I have a little notebook at the flat with all the big ministry meetings and the holidays blocked out. Do you want to put it together with yours and see what emerges?"
"Sure," Daphne said. "I'll be here a little longer, but you can sit here with us or go on ahead."
"If you don't mind…" Harry semi-questioned.
"Of course not, I know the way, now that you fixed that problem with time," replied Daphne.
"That wasn't me, but okay," Harry said. "Mrs. Greengrass."
"Thank-you for the wonderful outing and picnic, Harry. You and Daphne have turned The Mill into a little paradise," Kendra said.
Harry nodded thanks, then turned to Daphne, bent, and kissed her cheek.
The faint sound of the front door closing got to the gazebo, and Kendra spoke.
"What a nice young man," she said, giving Daphne a smile.
"I know," Daphne said. "How did I get so lucky?"
She looked Kendra in the eye.
"I did get really, really lucky, didn't I Mother?" she asked.
"Daphne, you're asking if Lily and I took away your choice in the matter, I think," Kendra said. "Your free will. Your right to choose your own mate."
"Yes, I am," Daphne said. "Harry and I both wonder. A lot of coincidences had to line up, after years of us having no contact, for us to be where we are. He had completely forgotten seeing me around Hogwarts for six years. Then we have that mysterious meeting with Gringott's, and Ivy Fletcher took a contract to confund the Head Auror. Now we're here. My dog is even crazy about him. We are not accusing you and Lily of anything, certainly not anything unseemly. Harry even said he doesn't care if you two did manipulate us, he's happy to be with me. I'm certainly happy to be with him."
Daphne extended her left hand, punctuating her affirmation of happiness.
"I accepted this, and I meant it," she said. "I admit it does nag, a little, because, if we're the subject of some spellwork, spells can be broken, or lose their potency. I treat people who fall in and out of love, without forewarning, for all kinds of reasons, and no reason at all. It happens, and neither of us would necessarily have any control over it. I just can't go through life wondering if my mother's spell is going to get stale and fade away, along with my love for my husband."
Daphne didn't look at Kendra, but out over the gardens, which were starting to show signs of life, now that longer, warmer days had arrived.
Kendra looked out with her. Then, she seemed to come to some decision, and she stood and held her hand out to Daphne.
"Let's walk," she said.
At the bottom of the hill, Kendra waved her wand, and cast a silent revelio, and walked with Daphne across the boundary toward Fabio's enchanted lake. She continued to a wooden bench that was placed near where the pier left the shore and went on to the cabana. Kendra sat down on the bench, and Daphne followed her lead.
"Love has some mysterious properties. Among them is the ability to become stronger, just when we were thinking we had destroyed it," said Kendra.
"After our discussion in the library, a few weeks back, I decided to do a little work on my marriage. I had never confided in your father about Lily and me. That's deception, and it was very, very wrong of me. I took your father to the most beautiful little cove in Cornwall, lots of witches and wizards, still very much dedicated to fishing and farming, although with a little help from magic.
"Your father wanted to know how I'd found it. You've probably guessed, it was Lily who found it, and we'd managed to visit it together, several times, before we got involved with our future husbands. Then, I told Fabio I'd done him a monstrous injustice, that I had kept secrets from him, wrongfully. I insisted he listen until he had heard all of it, then I offered to get out of his life and never bother him, or any of you, ever again, if that was what he wanted."
"Mother!" Daphne nearly shouted. "Without talking to Astoria and me? You offered to leave us all?"
"Yes, I did," Kendra continued. "I gave it a lot of thought. I hadn't been able to sleep, so I had plenty of time to think it through. It was the only thing I could offer Fabio that seemed to match the enormity of what I'd done. It's one thing to have a little history, and to exercise discretion, but this was something quite different.
"Anyway, your father…is…unique," Kendra said. "We were sitting on a bench, looking out at the water, and the wind was cold! He took my hands in his, and he told me he'd known all about Lily and me, pretty much as long as Lily and I had known, and that he knew she had set a standard, and he had lived his life trying to match it, and love me and treat me as well as Lily had, because that was what I deserved, and he wanted to keep right on doing that. Then he said he understood something had to have brought me to the point of telling him all that I had, and if I was in need of anything, or if I felt I had to leave him, he would support me completely, and he swore on his honor that no one would ever say a negative word about me in his presence and live out the day."
Kendra's eyes were running streams by this point, and Daphne put her arms around her mother.
"The answer to your question is no," Kendra said. "The runes were very favorable, but, as I told you, the closer the subject is to the caster, the less specific the results. We did a little light spellwork, healthy baby charms, that sort of thing. We wanted you to find one another, certainly, but the two of you had to decide your own courses. We were of one mind on that. That's why the Agreement is so loose. You're free right now to pay the fees and abrogate it.
"The day James and Fabio signed the Agreement at Gringott's, we all went back to Godric's Hollow, and the boys went off to the pub and left us at the house. That was nice."
Kendra didn't show any sign of wanting to elaborate. Daphne didn't think it was any of her business, truth be told.
"And the next time we were alone together, Lily had been washed and wrapped in a shroud by the witches of Godric's Hollow, and was laid out in a casket in the vestibule of St. Jerome's Church. You and I sat up with her all night, just a few candles burning for a little light. Her face was so peaceful. Bathilda Bagshot knew all the witches for miles around who practiced the old ways, and they had brought bunches of every herb a witch might need, and they practically filled Lily's casket. Rosemary, lavender, verbena, camomile…
"Next morning, there was a short service, and the cover was put on the casket…"
Kendra broke down completely. She turned and buried her face in Daphne's shoulder, sobbing convulsively.
"Oh, Mummie, Mummie, Mummie, you gave it all up for us, didn't you?" Daphne said, rocking Kendra and pulling her even closer. "We owe you everything, we're so lucky to be your daughters."
When Kendra was able to stop crying, she extracted herself from Daphne's embrace, waved her wand across her face, and cast a silent freshening charm.
"It's best if I become Mother again," she said, and laid her wand against her own forearm while she grasped Daphne's, trapping the wand between them.
"Daphne, we are witches. We are Greengrass witches, and we live our lives to protect and preserve our line. Do you understand what I am saying? Our line, Daphne, is why we live."
Daphne didn't understand.
"Look, Daphne," said Kendra, the steel suddenly back in her voice.
A plant runner was moving across the sand toward Kendra. She stood up and stepped out of her sandal. Daphne thought the plant looked like a venomous tentacula, but it was moving much too fast to be a shoot from a normal plant. Kendra lifted her bare, unprotected foot and brought it down on the runner. Daphne looked, and saw the shoot transfigure into an adder, that twisted around and struck and struck Kendra's bare foot, over and over.
"Mother!" Daphne shouted, horrified, as she watched the adder attack her mother, then stiffen, and become rigid, then turn to charcoal and disintegrate, spreading black grains on the golden sand around Kendra's foot. A puff of wind came and swept the sand clean of the remains of the adder. Daphne had no idea what she was watching. It wasn't Dark, but it was some kind of magic, old, powerful magic, that she had not seen in all her years of study and practice.
"Look at me, Daphne," said Kendra. Daphne looked up at her mother. Kendra's head was directly in front of the sun, whose corona shone out from what was, effectively, a Kendra eclipse. The cumulus clouds appeared to deflate, lose their shapes and descend, cloaking Kendra in a long, white tunic, and the lapis sky fell down as a mantle over Kendra's head and shoulders.
"Look," she said, pulling Daphne toward her, until Daphne's head contacted Kendra just under her rib cage.
"Look, never be afraid. I'm here holding you. I'm always here, wherever you go."
Daphne was aware her eyelids were closed, but she saw a room before her, as clearly as she had seen the gazebo just minutes before. Two girls, who appeared to be teenagers, were kneeling on a blanket on the floor, a cauldron between them. Both were wearing what appeared to be cotton shifts. Daphne looked down and saw that she was wearing a cotton shift as well. From the looks of the junk and gadgetry scattered about, Daphne thought her best guess was they were in the Room of Requirement.
"Here she is," said the girl facing her, who was pulling small leaves off a dried twig and putting them in the cauldron. The other girl turned to look at Daphne.
"Daphne," said the young Kendra, the same Kendra Daphne knew from the photo in the leather holder. "You're just in time. You know Lily."
"Ninety-nine, one hundred!" said Lily, a little triumphantly. Daphne thought Lily looked like the Lily in the photo, as well. Daphne remembered that she did know Lily, although she could not remember why, or where they had first met. Of course, she had always known Lily.
"Yes. Hullo, Lily," Daphne said.
A door closed and Daphne saw movement in the shadows. Walburga Black, the young, dewy Walburga from the portrait Daphne had sent to Hogwarts, stepped out into the light. Daphne nearly curtsied, from habit, but something inside said to greet Walburga.
"Hullo, Walburga," said Daphne. "What are we doing?"
Walburga ignored her, instead pointing her wand at the cauldron and twirling it in a stirring motion.
"One hundred?" she said, looking at Lily.
"One hundred," Lily confirmed, looking at Kendra, who nodded in agreement.
Walburga finally acknowledged Daphne.
"You are going to add to your knowledge, Daphne," said Walburga. "We're here to prepare the potion and make you feel safe and secure. Now we get out of these."
The young Walburga pulled her shift up over her head, as did Lily and Kendra, and tossed it on the floor behind her.
Daphne was the only one still in her shift, but she pulled it up and tossed it behind her, as the others had done. She must have looked like she was harboring an unasked question.
"Because half the point of being a witch is to get naked and drink potions," Lily said, sounding oddly authoritative, and certainly joyous. "Come on in a little closer."
Walburga produced a crystal goblet and tilted the cauldron over the mouth. She filled the goblet about halfway and handed it to Daphne. Kendra and Lily reached behind Daphne, and Daphne could feel their clasped hands against the small of her back.
"Daphne," said Walburga, "You have been chosen to be one of the holders of some rather arcane knowledge. Witches have been passing it along for quite some time. The way it is passed is through experience. You will be incorporating some wisdom into your being, your body, your personality. Do you understand? You've been chosen because the witches who decide these things have observed you, and they find you suitable. That's all. If you accept, you will see your line, and understand. It isn't useful to ask questions. The experience makes the questions irrelevant. You get nothing out of it, beyond getting to carry the knowledge around with you and apply it.
"Now is the time to drink up, if you're willing to be a vessel," Walburga finished.
Daphne thought of that moment again and again, for decades afterwards, and could never find an explanation for why she drained the goblet, or for what happened next.
Daphne took the goblet down from her lips. She remained vaguely aware that her face was still in contact with Kendra's abdomen, back on the strand. Behind her closed eyelids she had a vision of looking through Kendra, through Grandmother Davis, and a long succession of women, who, she somehow knew, were her maternal ancestors stretching back, back, back through centuries, then millennia, through early humans, proto-humans, then further back to the sea, and the earliest life that divided male from female, then on beyond that to the single cells that first populated the planet, then to the lifeless sea, then the chaos of planetary formation, then the great ball of glowing gas, then moments before hydrogen existed, to the tiny point, too small to describe, bursting with purpose, in one magical Instant, to birth everything that was, or ever would be. The engine of creation that started everything had culminated with Daphne, and her potential, with Harry, to carry on the line, her line, which started in that tiny point at the beginning of everything and stretched on and on and on, from mother to daughter, mother to daughter, through Kendra and Daphne, toward infinity.
Daphne opened her eyes. She was sitting next to Kendra, on the wooden bench, near the pier that went out to the cabana on Greengrass Lake.
"What…?" Daphne started.
"Hmm?" Kendra asked. She sat leaning against the back of the wooden bench, looking out at Fabio's lake, legs crossed, flipping her sandal against the sole of her foot. Daphne was startled to see Kendra's foot looking normal, with no signs of puncture wounds or any other trauma.
"I think I've been hallucinating," Daphne said, shaking her head, some stress apparent in her voice.
"Do you?" Kendra asked. "Maybe you nodded off and had a little dream. Anyway, that's your area of expertise, isn't it? Did you learn anything from it?"
Kendra looked at Daphne's face, closely, waiting.
"I did," Daphne said. "I saw everything that went before, back to the very beginning, and I saw myself, and, possibly, my line going forward, potentially long after I'm gone, if I protect it. Like you protected me."
"Did you see Her?" asked Kendra.
"She said not to be afraid, that She is with me, wherever I go," Daphne answered.
"What do you think that means?" asked Kendra.
"It's our line She's talking about. We all go back to Her, and She goes ahead into the future, in us, until we all come to the end," replied Daphne. "THE End, of all of it."
"Very good, dear," Kendra said, obviously pleased. "Hold that thought, as you live your life. Now, don't you need to get to Harry's and get your calendars sorted?"
Kendra stood up and waited just inside the boundary for Daphne. They stepped across, and Kendra waved her wand. The lake, the beach, and the palm trees disappeared, replaced by the green. Kendra and Daphne walked up the path to the manor, in silence, Kendra smiling, Daphne puzzling over her recent experience, and trying to fit it into her understanding of everything she had learned as a healer.
Back in the library, Daphne picked up Raffles, who had been saying he wanted to go to Harry's flat anyway, leaned over and kissed Kendra on the cheek, and took a good pinch of floo powder from the bowl on the mantle.
"Oh, Daphne, when you're doing your planning, you and Harry might want to save the seventh and the seventeenth of July, for now," Kendra said.
"Why? What's going on in July?" Daphne asked, a bit confused.
"I don't know, dear," Kendra said. "The runes just keep coming back to the seventh and the seventeenth as the most propitious days for several months. You know how the runes can be."
Author's Note: This concludes Part Two of Wheels Within Wheels. Thank you to everyone who read to the end. The first chapters of Part Three are in draft and being readied for publication. I hope everyone has enjoyed reading about Harry and Daphne, and take this opportunity to thank everyone who took the time to comment, positively or negatively. All reader correspondence is welcome.
The author makes no claim to anything in this story. All of it belongs to JK Rowling.