CLASSIFICATION: PG-13 for mild violence later on in the story.
SUMMARY: It's Harry's seventh year at Hogwarts. Strange things are happening at the school, and with some help from his friends, Harry is pushed head first into it.
DISCLAIMER: I do not own Harry Potter, in any way, shape or form. I love to read the books, but I sure don't own them. J.K. Rowling and WB do. This is simply a tribute to the Harry Potter series. I am making no money from this and I'm just enjoying sharing my own crazy ideas.
AUTHORS NOTE: This was my first fan fiction that I ever posted. I pulled it down because it needed to be re-written. However, I have decided to keep this as it is, and use it as a template for the next fic after 'Hate & Love' I hope you all enjoy... This was written almost three years ago and hasn't been changed since. I am under no delusions that it is any good. Just something I wrote.
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From Chapter Two:
"Ah, they are early. Harry, the reason I asked you here." At that, he raised his voice and called out, "Come in, come in."
Harry's eyes widened as the door swung open towards him.
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Chapter Three
An Explanation
Three people were silhouetted in the doorframe. The other two were supporting the person in the middle. Harry would have jumped out of his chair to help, but his legs had stopped wanting to work at that moment. He felt glued to his chair, staring at the open door. It couldn't be.
"S...S...Sirius?"
Finding the use of his legs, Harry moved quickly to his godfather's side, taking the place of one of the person on left. It did not even occur to him exactly who the other two people were.
"What happened to you?"
This was the question of the hour. What had happened to him? Although his robes were neat and tidy, he looked to be a mess. Burses covered his face, and he could barely stand.
Shifting his weight, Sirius smiled, "Hi Harry, it sure has been a while." His deep voice sounded strained. Putting more of his weight on the man beside him than Harry, he made his way over to the chair that Harry had vacated. Nodding to Dumbledore, "Good day, Professor Dumbledore. I'm guessing we arrived a little early from Harry's reaction?"
Harry looked incredulously from Professor Dumbledore to Sirius, still not registering the other two people within the room.
"Ah." Dumbledore stood and started to caress Fawkes head. "Yes, I was just getting to the point when you three arrived. Perhaps you would care to tell the story Sirius, as it is your story to tell." He fixed his gaze upon Sirius as he spoke.
Eyeing Dumbledore, Sirius nodded and then turned towards Harry, "Harry, before I start to explain, I want to apologize for the last few months. Things were out of my control and we thought it for the best that I not owl anyone."
Harry started to say something, but Sirius cut him off. "Let me finish."
Taking a deep shuttering breath, he glanced first towards the door and then to Dumbledore. "It started three months ago. Both Dumbledore and I received the same message. 'The Keeper is compromised.' At that time, I did not know who the Keeper was, but I did know who sent the message. Who ever the Keeper was, they needed to be protected."
A loud HUMPH came from the corner of the room and then a SHH from someone else, but it was enough. Harry's attention had already been diverted from Sirius.
Turning where he stood, he looked towards the far end of the room where the other two had retreated. It was the woman Professor Dumbledore had said was Madam Nurr, and... He blinked just to make sure he was not seeing things... Professor Lupin. He wanted to race over to him, but he did not want to leave his godfathers side.
Sirius continued non-pluses. "Tei, don't give me that, you know what they can do."
Madam Nurr nodded her head in silent agreement and waved him on.
"As I was saying, at that time, I did not know who the Keeper was but from the letter I received, I assumed they needed protection. I came to Dumbledore in secret." Looking to Harry, "I'm sorry, we thought it best to keep you out of it, with all the troubles that were going on last year. I wanted to see you, I truly did, but we all thought it best."
Harry looked at Sirius; a look of shock etched upon his features. "You were here. Why, why didn't you see me? I wanted to see you."
"I could not, as much as I wanted to it was too dangerous. I'd hate to think of what could have happened to you. I have gotten enough gray hairs with worrying about you to pull you into this. As it was, we nearly didn't make it out in one piece." Sirius said trying to reassure Harry. "Remus and I were the only two to go in." He looked pleadingly to Dumbledore for help.
Dumbledore looked thoughtfully from Harry to Sirius, then for the briefest of moments he glanced over at Lupin and Madam Nurr. "We did not quite know where to start at first. The Keeper went into hiding many years ago to protect themselves from Voldemort. We did not even know his or her name when this came to a head. At the time this started, there were only five people who knew of the Keepers location, or at least that was how many were supposed to know."
A low, deep growl sounded from the corner of the room as if to punctuate Dumbledore's last statement. Harry turned to see Madam Nurr gripping the skirt of her gown with both hands, a look of furry passing over her face.
Not seeming to notice this outburst, Dumbledore continued, "I personally know one of these five, but even they would not devolve where the Keeper was in hiding." Madam Nurr punctuated that statement with a nod. "He could give us an approximate location though."
"I told Sirius as much as I could, and then made it clear that he was not to go in alone. The Keeper had been in hiding for many years and would have many defenses built for protection." Again, Madam Nurr nodded in agreement. "Remus had already been contacted by me, and I sent them out. After they left, all that I was able to do was sit and wait. They were under strict orders that no contact was to be made, with anyone. Including you Harry. We could not take the chance that they would be compromised."
While Dumbledore was speaking, Harry had looked from person to person, not knowing quite how to believe this. Sirius and Professor Lupin had gone off to save someone who they did not know, that Professor Dumbledore had not even known. They seemed to think that this was extremely important though. In addition, to make matters even worse, Madam Nurr, who was new to him, seemed to know even more about the situation than he did. She had kept making gestures and noises throughout both Sirius and Dumbledore's explanation. Who was she?
Stepping back, Harry's legs met with the front of a chair, and he fell into it, his eyes darting from one person to the next. His mouth started moving, but no sound was coming out.
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Everyone felt it best to give Harry a few minutes to compose himself. He had not heard the whole story as of yet, and he already seemed to be in a state of shock.
Taking the opportunity as it came, Madam Nurr made her way over to Sirius and touched his forehead lightly. So not to upset Harry, she whispered to him. "Your fever is rising again, you have to lay down Sirius. I know you don't want him to see you weak, but if you collapse in here, what is he going to think then?"
Sirius just shook his head, took her hand away from his head and patted it. Whispering back, "I can't Tei, you should know be better than that by now. I'll lay down when I'm dead."
Muttering under her breath, she snatched her hand back and went back to Remus. "He's a hard headed fool. Trying to put on such a show... fool."
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Harry watched the goings on between the three of them, wondering what was going on. He did not like the way that Sirius and Madam Nurr looked at each other, nor what happened when she touched his head. They had exchanged words, but they were too low to hear. They were keeping something from him. He knew that he had not gotten then whole story as of yet.
A thought passed though his mind, something that Hagrid had said earlier. 'Your gonna love it Harry.' So far, nothing he had heard was giving him anything to love. There had to be more going on.
Clearing his throat so to get everyone's attention, Harry started to talk in a semi-calm voice. "Alright, this is what I understand. Sirius, you went on some sort of errand for Professor Dumbledore, and Professor Lupin went with you. You didn't want to get me involved because it was too dangerous." His face screwed up at this. He had been in dangerous situations before. "What I don't understand is why your telling me all of this now, or what you did. What happened to you Sirius? No one has answered my questions yet. Why am I here? What is going on? Moreover, why does Hagrid say I am going to love this? I haven't heard very much that makes me feel very good so far."
If Sirius had been able to get up at that point, he would have gone over to Harry and hugged him right then. "I'm sorry Harry, I promise you, before we're done, you'll have all your answers and then some. Will you accept that for now?"
Harry nodded slowly, fixing his gaze on his godfather. No matter what people said Sirius had done, Harry knew the truth of the situation and loved him dearly; Sirius was the closest thing he had to a real parent.
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Not taking his eyes off Harry, Sirius started to talk again. "As Dumbledore said, we were under strict orders not to contact anyone, as not to compromise our position. We had no idea who was after the Keeper, just that we needed to get to them first, and that meant finding out who it was. I will be the first to admit that they could hide well, but as someone who has been on the run from the Dementors for as long as I have, you learn how to hide."
"It was a long journey, the most information we had was that they were hiding on the east coast of Canada and that they were very good in the healing arts." Sirius smirked as Madam Nurr started to cough back a comment.
"As I was saying," glancing over at Madam Nurr, "all we really knew was that they lived on the east coast of Canada. I knew that we might have some problems if we did not find them right away though. It was getting near a full moon and since neither of us had ever been in that region, we didn't know what the land was like, or if we could get Remus to a safe spot."
He smiled slightly, leaning back in his chair. "I shouldn't have worried, one thing we noticed when we arrived there in mid-April was that there was lots of woodland, and that it was easily accessible."
Harry started to cut in, "But what about the..."
"No contact, remember." Lupin spoke for the first time, his voice softer than from pervious years.
"No contact," Sirius chimed in. "not even for that. Nevertheless, old Moony over there was not that difficult to deal with. If anything, he was very helpful." Grins spread over both his and Lupin's faces.
"We traveled threw many little communities over the next couple of months, not even knowing if we had bypassed them. However, Dumbledore had said we would know them when we saw them." He looked over to Lupin and nodded, as if passing the story over to him.
Lupin nodded back, strode forward and placed his hands on the back of Sirius's chair, facing Harry. "As you should well know, werewolves are affected not only on the night of the full moon, but the nights before and after as well. Padfoot here," putting a hand on Sirius's shoulder, "kept me out of trouble."
"What we didn't know was on the night of June 19th, I was spotted." Shaking his head, he sighed. "The village wasn't on any may we had, or we wouldn't have stopped where we did. Padfoot was careful to keep me away from people."
"What I gather from the stories I've been told is that the villager went to the local healer for something. He thought he had been seeing things."
Sirius cut in, "Although it was a muggle village, the local healer was nothing of the sort. It seems our Keeper was very protective of their village and when they heard of this 'vision', went out to check it for themselves."
Lupin muttered 'stupid' under his breath.
Continuing unfazed, "They must have know a bit about werewolves, for neither of us heard them coming. All I remember is Moony falling over and then a sharp pain in my side. The world when black after that."
"When I came to, there was a beautiful angel hovering over me." Sirius got this far away look upon his face, while Lupin made motions as if gagging.
Harry grinned at the two of them.
Noticing Harry's grin, Sirius tried to look indignant. "What? She was beautiful, and everything looked so fuzzy!"
Madam Nurr started giggling from the corner.
By now, all four of them had forgotten that Dumbledore was still within the room.
Lupin cleared his throat loudly and took over the tale again. "It seems that instead of us finding our Keeper, she had found us. I was the first to come to, to find her puttering around the room. She was getting something together to put on Sirius's head. Seems he knocked it when he fell." Starting to laugh, "Seems his head isn't as hard as we thought it was."
Both Harry and Sirius started to laugh at that.
"I had no idea where I was, but I did realize I was not a wolf. Then I realized I was tied to the bed." Shaking his head, he tightened his grip on the back of the chair. "She must have heard my movements because she turned around and started to speak to me. 'I am terribly sorry about the rope M'Lord, but I cannot have you or your friend frightening the villagers. I will untie you when the sun rises on the morrow.'"
"I personally had never heard speech like that before, and felt compelled to keep her talking as long as I could."
"'Do you know what I am?' I asked"
"She answered, 'I do M'Lord, but do not worry, I do not fear you, nor your kind. It is the villagers who would not understand, they are but muggles and have no knowledge of what is out there.'"
"'You don't fear me, yet you know my kind?' To be quite honest, she had intrigued me. Though from what she was saying, I could tell she was a witch."
"She smiled at me and continued making some sort of poultice while answering me. 'Yes M'Lord, I know your kind, though you are a bit of a mystery. I would say from your accent, you are from England, and only recently in this part of the world. Also, you do not have control of the beast within you.' She shook her head at me for that. 'Your friend does though.' She nodded at Sirius who was still unconscious. 'I will give you something this eve that should be of much help to you, if you wish to have it.'"
"I must admit I must have looked like a fool at that point. For my mouth must have been hanging open. I told her my name, then just laid there flabbergasted as she treated ol' Padfoot here." Lupin started to laugh again, "That's about the point lover boy here woke up with his 'Have I died and gone to heaven' routine."
All four of them started to laugh at this. Madam Nurr even took a few tentative steps out of the corner of the room towards the three men as they did.
"Needless to say," Sirius started up again, "I wasn't tied down like Moony was. Although, I was too dizzy to move around much on my own, so it didn't really matter."
"She finally gave us her name, though I didn't believe for a moment that it was the real one."
Madam Nurr started cough and was covering her mouth with her hands. She looked as if she were trying to stifle back laugher, for tears were in her eyes.
"Ahem..." Sirius glared at her.
"She told us her name was Teigra Kefira, though she later told us her true name."
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"We told her all about Dumbledore, and why we had come to find her. I know she didn't believe us at first." Once again, Sirius glanced over at Madam Nurr. "However, we got a chance to prove ourselves on the last day of the month."
"While we were staying with her, she passed us off to the villagers as visiting relatives. This seemed to satisfy them, and they did not ask too many questions. I must admit she had a great routine in that little village. There were probably only twenty families all together, and everyone was on a first name basis with each other."
"If you recall, Remus said that she was the healer of that little village." Sirius grinned. "What got me, is I can't remember the number of times I heard 'Tei, will you come look at my cow/horse/cat/dog? They look a little off.' She did not just take care of the people, but she took care of the animals as well. Thought it should not have surprised me. She herself had a huge farm. I never saw the whole of it, for she wouldn't let me near certain areas."
"For eleven days, we hunted the woods, set wards around her farm, and got to know my angel even better." Sirius got a quirky grin on his face. "I know I shouldn't have, but there is only so many times a man can take hearing M'Lord before he starts taking up the speech himself. I fell hard for our Keeper."
"She was not too impressed with the fact that we were setting up wards though. She kept saying that it was unnecessary, that she would get warning long before anything happened. I could not believe her though. There were too many things that were out there, that I was sure she didn't know about." He shook his head. "I couldn't have been more wrong if I tried."
Madam Nurr stepped forward and placed her hand on top of Sirius's arm, then smiled softly at him.
She spoke softly, her voice quiet yet ringing with truth. "Not wrong, just misinformed. Strength is not always what you can see."
Harry watched this with growing fascination. How did Sirius and Remus proven themselves to the Keeper, and how was Sirius wrong? Most of all, why was he here? This still did not seem to deal with him in any way.
SUMMARY: It's Harry's seventh year at Hogwarts. Strange things are happening at the school, and with some help from his friends, Harry is pushed head first into it.
DISCLAIMER: I do not own Harry Potter, in any way, shape or form. I love to read the books, but I sure don't own them. J.K. Rowling and WB do. This is simply a tribute to the Harry Potter series. I am making no money from this and I'm just enjoying sharing my own crazy ideas.
AUTHORS NOTE: This was my first fan fiction that I ever posted. I pulled it down because it needed to be re-written. However, I have decided to keep this as it is, and use it as a template for the next fic after 'Hate & Love' I hope you all enjoy... This was written almost three years ago and hasn't been changed since. I am under no delusions that it is any good. Just something I wrote.
From Chapter Two:
"Ah, they are early. Harry, the reason I asked you here." At that, he raised his voice and called out, "Come in, come in."
Harry's eyes widened as the door swung open towards him.
Chapter Three
An Explanation
Three people were silhouetted in the doorframe. The other two were supporting the person in the middle. Harry would have jumped out of his chair to help, but his legs had stopped wanting to work at that moment. He felt glued to his chair, staring at the open door. It couldn't be.
"S...S...Sirius?"
Finding the use of his legs, Harry moved quickly to his godfather's side, taking the place of one of the person on left. It did not even occur to him exactly who the other two people were.
"What happened to you?"
This was the question of the hour. What had happened to him? Although his robes were neat and tidy, he looked to be a mess. Burses covered his face, and he could barely stand.
Shifting his weight, Sirius smiled, "Hi Harry, it sure has been a while." His deep voice sounded strained. Putting more of his weight on the man beside him than Harry, he made his way over to the chair that Harry had vacated. Nodding to Dumbledore, "Good day, Professor Dumbledore. I'm guessing we arrived a little early from Harry's reaction?"
Harry looked incredulously from Professor Dumbledore to Sirius, still not registering the other two people within the room.
"Ah." Dumbledore stood and started to caress Fawkes head. "Yes, I was just getting to the point when you three arrived. Perhaps you would care to tell the story Sirius, as it is your story to tell." He fixed his gaze upon Sirius as he spoke.
Eyeing Dumbledore, Sirius nodded and then turned towards Harry, "Harry, before I start to explain, I want to apologize for the last few months. Things were out of my control and we thought it for the best that I not owl anyone."
Harry started to say something, but Sirius cut him off. "Let me finish."
Taking a deep shuttering breath, he glanced first towards the door and then to Dumbledore. "It started three months ago. Both Dumbledore and I received the same message. 'The Keeper is compromised.' At that time, I did not know who the Keeper was, but I did know who sent the message. Who ever the Keeper was, they needed to be protected."
A loud HUMPH came from the corner of the room and then a SHH from someone else, but it was enough. Harry's attention had already been diverted from Sirius.
Turning where he stood, he looked towards the far end of the room where the other two had retreated. It was the woman Professor Dumbledore had said was Madam Nurr, and... He blinked just to make sure he was not seeing things... Professor Lupin. He wanted to race over to him, but he did not want to leave his godfathers side.
Sirius continued non-pluses. "Tei, don't give me that, you know what they can do."
Madam Nurr nodded her head in silent agreement and waved him on.
"As I was saying, at that time, I did not know who the Keeper was but from the letter I received, I assumed they needed protection. I came to Dumbledore in secret." Looking to Harry, "I'm sorry, we thought it best to keep you out of it, with all the troubles that were going on last year. I wanted to see you, I truly did, but we all thought it best."
Harry looked at Sirius; a look of shock etched upon his features. "You were here. Why, why didn't you see me? I wanted to see you."
"I could not, as much as I wanted to it was too dangerous. I'd hate to think of what could have happened to you. I have gotten enough gray hairs with worrying about you to pull you into this. As it was, we nearly didn't make it out in one piece." Sirius said trying to reassure Harry. "Remus and I were the only two to go in." He looked pleadingly to Dumbledore for help.
Dumbledore looked thoughtfully from Harry to Sirius, then for the briefest of moments he glanced over at Lupin and Madam Nurr. "We did not quite know where to start at first. The Keeper went into hiding many years ago to protect themselves from Voldemort. We did not even know his or her name when this came to a head. At the time this started, there were only five people who knew of the Keepers location, or at least that was how many were supposed to know."
A low, deep growl sounded from the corner of the room as if to punctuate Dumbledore's last statement. Harry turned to see Madam Nurr gripping the skirt of her gown with both hands, a look of furry passing over her face.
Not seeming to notice this outburst, Dumbledore continued, "I personally know one of these five, but even they would not devolve where the Keeper was in hiding." Madam Nurr punctuated that statement with a nod. "He could give us an approximate location though."
"I told Sirius as much as I could, and then made it clear that he was not to go in alone. The Keeper had been in hiding for many years and would have many defenses built for protection." Again, Madam Nurr nodded in agreement. "Remus had already been contacted by me, and I sent them out. After they left, all that I was able to do was sit and wait. They were under strict orders that no contact was to be made, with anyone. Including you Harry. We could not take the chance that they would be compromised."
While Dumbledore was speaking, Harry had looked from person to person, not knowing quite how to believe this. Sirius and Professor Lupin had gone off to save someone who they did not know, that Professor Dumbledore had not even known. They seemed to think that this was extremely important though. In addition, to make matters even worse, Madam Nurr, who was new to him, seemed to know even more about the situation than he did. She had kept making gestures and noises throughout both Sirius and Dumbledore's explanation. Who was she?
Stepping back, Harry's legs met with the front of a chair, and he fell into it, his eyes darting from one person to the next. His mouth started moving, but no sound was coming out.
Everyone felt it best to give Harry a few minutes to compose himself. He had not heard the whole story as of yet, and he already seemed to be in a state of shock.
Taking the opportunity as it came, Madam Nurr made her way over to Sirius and touched his forehead lightly. So not to upset Harry, she whispered to him. "Your fever is rising again, you have to lay down Sirius. I know you don't want him to see you weak, but if you collapse in here, what is he going to think then?"
Sirius just shook his head, took her hand away from his head and patted it. Whispering back, "I can't Tei, you should know be better than that by now. I'll lay down when I'm dead."
Muttering under her breath, she snatched her hand back and went back to Remus. "He's a hard headed fool. Trying to put on such a show... fool."
Harry watched the goings on between the three of them, wondering what was going on. He did not like the way that Sirius and Madam Nurr looked at each other, nor what happened when she touched his head. They had exchanged words, but they were too low to hear. They were keeping something from him. He knew that he had not gotten then whole story as of yet.
A thought passed though his mind, something that Hagrid had said earlier. 'Your gonna love it Harry.' So far, nothing he had heard was giving him anything to love. There had to be more going on.
Clearing his throat so to get everyone's attention, Harry started to talk in a semi-calm voice. "Alright, this is what I understand. Sirius, you went on some sort of errand for Professor Dumbledore, and Professor Lupin went with you. You didn't want to get me involved because it was too dangerous." His face screwed up at this. He had been in dangerous situations before. "What I don't understand is why your telling me all of this now, or what you did. What happened to you Sirius? No one has answered my questions yet. Why am I here? What is going on? Moreover, why does Hagrid say I am going to love this? I haven't heard very much that makes me feel very good so far."
If Sirius had been able to get up at that point, he would have gone over to Harry and hugged him right then. "I'm sorry Harry, I promise you, before we're done, you'll have all your answers and then some. Will you accept that for now?"
Harry nodded slowly, fixing his gaze on his godfather. No matter what people said Sirius had done, Harry knew the truth of the situation and loved him dearly; Sirius was the closest thing he had to a real parent.
Not taking his eyes off Harry, Sirius started to talk again. "As Dumbledore said, we were under strict orders not to contact anyone, as not to compromise our position. We had no idea who was after the Keeper, just that we needed to get to them first, and that meant finding out who it was. I will be the first to admit that they could hide well, but as someone who has been on the run from the Dementors for as long as I have, you learn how to hide."
"It was a long journey, the most information we had was that they were hiding on the east coast of Canada and that they were very good in the healing arts." Sirius smirked as Madam Nurr started to cough back a comment.
"As I was saying," glancing over at Madam Nurr, "all we really knew was that they lived on the east coast of Canada. I knew that we might have some problems if we did not find them right away though. It was getting near a full moon and since neither of us had ever been in that region, we didn't know what the land was like, or if we could get Remus to a safe spot."
He smiled slightly, leaning back in his chair. "I shouldn't have worried, one thing we noticed when we arrived there in mid-April was that there was lots of woodland, and that it was easily accessible."
Harry started to cut in, "But what about the..."
"No contact, remember." Lupin spoke for the first time, his voice softer than from pervious years.
"No contact," Sirius chimed in. "not even for that. Nevertheless, old Moony over there was not that difficult to deal with. If anything, he was very helpful." Grins spread over both his and Lupin's faces.
"We traveled threw many little communities over the next couple of months, not even knowing if we had bypassed them. However, Dumbledore had said we would know them when we saw them." He looked over to Lupin and nodded, as if passing the story over to him.
Lupin nodded back, strode forward and placed his hands on the back of Sirius's chair, facing Harry. "As you should well know, werewolves are affected not only on the night of the full moon, but the nights before and after as well. Padfoot here," putting a hand on Sirius's shoulder, "kept me out of trouble."
"What we didn't know was on the night of June 19th, I was spotted." Shaking his head, he sighed. "The village wasn't on any may we had, or we wouldn't have stopped where we did. Padfoot was careful to keep me away from people."
"What I gather from the stories I've been told is that the villager went to the local healer for something. He thought he had been seeing things."
Sirius cut in, "Although it was a muggle village, the local healer was nothing of the sort. It seems our Keeper was very protective of their village and when they heard of this 'vision', went out to check it for themselves."
Lupin muttered 'stupid' under his breath.
Continuing unfazed, "They must have know a bit about werewolves, for neither of us heard them coming. All I remember is Moony falling over and then a sharp pain in my side. The world when black after that."
"When I came to, there was a beautiful angel hovering over me." Sirius got this far away look upon his face, while Lupin made motions as if gagging.
Harry grinned at the two of them.
Noticing Harry's grin, Sirius tried to look indignant. "What? She was beautiful, and everything looked so fuzzy!"
Madam Nurr started giggling from the corner.
By now, all four of them had forgotten that Dumbledore was still within the room.
Lupin cleared his throat loudly and took over the tale again. "It seems that instead of us finding our Keeper, she had found us. I was the first to come to, to find her puttering around the room. She was getting something together to put on Sirius's head. Seems he knocked it when he fell." Starting to laugh, "Seems his head isn't as hard as we thought it was."
Both Harry and Sirius started to laugh at that.
"I had no idea where I was, but I did realize I was not a wolf. Then I realized I was tied to the bed." Shaking his head, he tightened his grip on the back of the chair. "She must have heard my movements because she turned around and started to speak to me. 'I am terribly sorry about the rope M'Lord, but I cannot have you or your friend frightening the villagers. I will untie you when the sun rises on the morrow.'"
"I personally had never heard speech like that before, and felt compelled to keep her talking as long as I could."
"'Do you know what I am?' I asked"
"She answered, 'I do M'Lord, but do not worry, I do not fear you, nor your kind. It is the villagers who would not understand, they are but muggles and have no knowledge of what is out there.'"
"'You don't fear me, yet you know my kind?' To be quite honest, she had intrigued me. Though from what she was saying, I could tell she was a witch."
"She smiled at me and continued making some sort of poultice while answering me. 'Yes M'Lord, I know your kind, though you are a bit of a mystery. I would say from your accent, you are from England, and only recently in this part of the world. Also, you do not have control of the beast within you.' She shook her head at me for that. 'Your friend does though.' She nodded at Sirius who was still unconscious. 'I will give you something this eve that should be of much help to you, if you wish to have it.'"
"I must admit I must have looked like a fool at that point. For my mouth must have been hanging open. I told her my name, then just laid there flabbergasted as she treated ol' Padfoot here." Lupin started to laugh again, "That's about the point lover boy here woke up with his 'Have I died and gone to heaven' routine."
All four of them started to laugh at this. Madam Nurr even took a few tentative steps out of the corner of the room towards the three men as they did.
"Needless to say," Sirius started up again, "I wasn't tied down like Moony was. Although, I was too dizzy to move around much on my own, so it didn't really matter."
"She finally gave us her name, though I didn't believe for a moment that it was the real one."
Madam Nurr started cough and was covering her mouth with her hands. She looked as if she were trying to stifle back laugher, for tears were in her eyes.
"Ahem..." Sirius glared at her.
"She told us her name was Teigra Kefira, though she later told us her true name."
"We told her all about Dumbledore, and why we had come to find her. I know she didn't believe us at first." Once again, Sirius glanced over at Madam Nurr. "However, we got a chance to prove ourselves on the last day of the month."
"While we were staying with her, she passed us off to the villagers as visiting relatives. This seemed to satisfy them, and they did not ask too many questions. I must admit she had a great routine in that little village. There were probably only twenty families all together, and everyone was on a first name basis with each other."
"If you recall, Remus said that she was the healer of that little village." Sirius grinned. "What got me, is I can't remember the number of times I heard 'Tei, will you come look at my cow/horse/cat/dog? They look a little off.' She did not just take care of the people, but she took care of the animals as well. Thought it should not have surprised me. She herself had a huge farm. I never saw the whole of it, for she wouldn't let me near certain areas."
"For eleven days, we hunted the woods, set wards around her farm, and got to know my angel even better." Sirius got a quirky grin on his face. "I know I shouldn't have, but there is only so many times a man can take hearing M'Lord before he starts taking up the speech himself. I fell hard for our Keeper."
"She was not too impressed with the fact that we were setting up wards though. She kept saying that it was unnecessary, that she would get warning long before anything happened. I could not believe her though. There were too many things that were out there, that I was sure she didn't know about." He shook his head. "I couldn't have been more wrong if I tried."
Madam Nurr stepped forward and placed her hand on top of Sirius's arm, then smiled softly at him.
She spoke softly, her voice quiet yet ringing with truth. "Not wrong, just misinformed. Strength is not always what you can see."
Harry watched this with growing fascination. How did Sirius and Remus proven themselves to the Keeper, and how was Sirius wrong? Most of all, why was he here? This still did not seem to deal with him in any way.