Celebwen Telcontar: Here's a new chapter; number 37. Dear Goddess… thirty-seven chapters?! That's a lot… Oh, well.
Balrog: What's going to happen now?
Celebwen Telcontar: Well, you'll just have to see! No one you recognize is mine; they are either JK Rowlings or they belong to History.
Please reiview, people!
CT
Harry stared at the surf beating the rocks. His grandfather had taken his potions professor away not too long ago, maybe a couple hours. How could anyone, especially that old, severely near-sighted Squib, survive even ten minutes in the Black Forest, which swarmed with dangerous magical beasts, much less two hours? Days? Weeks? It was impossible. Professor Blitz would be dead, and probably was sliding down the throat of a basilisk as he mused. Maggie, Snape and Blitz had all told him, in no uncertain terms, not to leave until he was fully healed. Well, he was healed now.
"Horace," a voice called.
"Grandfather?" he replied, turning from the plate glass window.
"Horace, he was a war criminal," Victor said. "We don't let war criminals survive. A living criminal can give his training to an innocent person, and turn them into a monster. It's for the best."
"For the best? He's a teacher. Besides, he's friendly."
"Horace, come with me." The older man took his grandson to his private history tutor. "Jacob, please give my son an in-depth history lesson about the German Muggle Holocaust, and Himmler in particular."
"Gods above… He needs a close-up history of those monsters?!"
"Yes," Victor said softly. He closed the door behind him.
"Alright, Horace. Take a seat, please. Here." Jacob handed Horace a rather large rubbish bin with a thick liner. "It has a vanishing charm on the bag to remove any contents." He passed a glass of water and a stack of napkins to the boy. "Let's start with the end of WWI. It was known as the War to End All Wars, and was… it wasn't a good war. Many people died outright from the violence, and many more were crippled and died from bad sanitation, blood loss, gasses, and illness. In the trenches, the 1918 pandemic of avian influenza was rampant. But most of all was the Germans. They were something out of a nightmare. They would fight when they should have surrendered, they would kill when they could have simply captured. They were ruthless, and evil.
"Then the treaty at Versailles was written. The treaty made peace with the Allied Forces and the Axis Forces. The end of the war came and went, and peace abounded.
"A clause in the Treaty said that the German army could be no larger than 100,000 people strong. Many out-of-work soldiers created illegal groups called Freikorps. A Corporal in the German Army named Adolf Hitler joined them, and within a few years, he was in politicks. He found several right-hand men, and his most right-hand man was Heinrich Himmler. Himmler was an evil man. He was a chicken farmer for a while, and then he became a personal friend of Hitler's. He was tasked to find out about the ancient Germans, and to discover a way to resurrect them. Himmler in turn used the concentration camp "doctors" to find a way to make the old Germanic blood viable again, but he didn't find it. All in all, Hitler and Himmler killed over eighteen million people." Jacob gave Horace a book. "Read this, and write an essay on it. I want it on one four-meter-long piece of parchment. Pay specific attention to Himmler, Göring and Heydrich." The tutor looked rather pale by then, and walked out of the room.
Horace wasn't too affected by the long lecture though. Being the grandson of Victor McPhaerson wasn't for the faint of heart. He was more daunted by the length of the essay he had to write. Four meters?! That was longer than half of his so-far given Hogwarts assignments put together! And what was that blasted waist-basket for? Bits of spare parchment that he messed up on? Did his tutor have so little faith in him? And the napkins and water… why were those here? Well, he'd have to ask later. He decided to get to work; his grandmother was very strict on homework and he knew that he wouldn't be allowed outside until the essay was done to the tutor's ideas of perfection.
Now he just had to wait until his arm healed to go back to school… which wouldn't be the same without Professor Blitz… er… Professor Himmler? Well, it was a moot point now. Life was cheap. You couldn't be raised by a retired super-policeman without finding that out pretty early on.
The man blinked as he appeared in the forested area. As a Squib, he was unable to Apparate out of the wood. A low growl made him turn around quickly, and he saw a huge golden dragon with cloudy blue eyes approach. He stumbled back from the gnashing teeth and churning claws, feeling faint.
"Traitor…" the great beast hissed. "Traitor… Traitor… Traitor!!" The last shout preceded a furious lunge, causing the human to dodge backwards and hide behind a tree. He saw a deer approach, and he breathed a silent sigh of semi-relief. Then, the deer launched itself at him, hissing and revealing massive fangs. Heinrich yelled loudly, and swarmed up the tree, away from the massive carnivorous deer. The dragon might go for the other predator and leave him alone. However, the dragon could be hungry after feeding on the strange carnivore, and attack him.
"I don't know why you think I'm a traitor, but I'm not!" Heinrich stammered. The dragon uprooted his tree with his claws, sending Heinrich and a cloud of birds flying. He landed in the canopy of a nearby evergreen tree, the needles sticking fiercely into uncomfortable places.
"Traitor!!" the dragon snarled, opening its jaws to breathe fire at the human.
"How am I a traitor?!" Heinrich yelped.
"You are a traitor! You must die!"
Maggie shoved the little baby with her nose, getting it to stand. She gave a piercing squeal, and clawed at one of the red-hot rocks, opening her mouth and gaping at her "mother".
"Oh, no you don't, Sid. You just ate a whole calf and drank a pail of milk. Go to sleep, little one."
"Ma'a!" the baby squeaked.
"Yes, you can call me Mama, but you can't go staying up till all hours of the night, Obsidian. Go to sleep." Magma curled about Obsidian's nest of hot rocks, and just looked at her little charge. The baby dragon flapped her wings, and then curled up into a small hole in the cairn, her nose and tail sticking out, stark ebony against the sheer white of the heated rocks.
"Ma'a! 'Tory!"
"You want a story?" Magma asked with a sigh. She hadn't realized just how much work it was to raise a baby. The half-breed oaf wouldn't have stood a chance.
"Yah! Yah! Tory!"
"Well… let's see here… How about the story of the lonely babies?"
"On'y babies! Yah! Yah!"
"Alright. Well, a long time ago, there was a female Thunder-walker. She lived with her parents on a small plateau. Then, she had an egg. The egg cracked one day, and out came a baby!"
"Baby! Baby! Like me!"
"Yes, Sid, a baby like you. The mother raised her son well, until the Tyrant King came and took her away…" Maggie continued the story for a long time, until she was hoarse in the throat and Obsidian was completely asleep. "And they lived happily ever after," she finished with a yawning sigh. Her eyes slid closed and she fell asleep to the sounds of her baby sleeping. Her last thought was for Horace, and how he would take to his little sister.
Celebwen Telcontar: Well, how was that? A new chapter of Constant Vigilance!
Balrog: And now Horace knows who Himmler is! And is the story the—Umph!
Celebwen Telcontar: I want the people to guess, Balrog! Alright, everyone! Please review!
CT