Chapter 18 – Fairy Rings and Old Tales
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Professor Myfanwy didn't speak as she led him past the Herbology greenhouses to a largish patch of flowers on the very edge of the Forbidden Forest. A ring of fairies surrounded the flowers, illuminating it with a dome of shifting light. Professor Myfanwy stepped through the veil of fairies and pulled out a pocket watch from her cloak. She turned back to Harry and waved him forward. "They won't hurt you." She assured him. "Just step through."
"What are they doing here?" Harry asked, covering his face with his sleeve and plunging through the cloud of light.
"Who, the fairies? This patch is planted in one of their rings," she pointed out the circle of toadstools surrounding them. Harry became edgy. He'd read that fairy rings weren't safe for mortals.
"Professor, are you sure we should be here then? If it's a fairy ring, I mean," Harry asked nervously.
"It's fine," she assured him. "They'll ignore us as long as we don't interfere in the Dance." Seeing his confusion, she explained. "The moon will rise in about five minutes and the fairies always dance by the light of the full moon. I've already asked permission since I need the flowers harvested from here at the same time. They'll keep to the edges of the ring and we'll keep to the middle." Professor Myfanwy leaned down and picked one of the dark blue flowers around them. "This plant is aconite or wolfsbane. The other ones you see are lupine, yarrow, and chamomile. Your job is to pick every third flower stem of the aconite."
Harry examined the small meadow critically. All the flowers grew bunched together making the job tedious at best. Professor Myfanwy smirked slightly. "You didn't think I'd make the detention fun just because Professor Snape isn't exactly fair, did you? And you'll need to be careful about which plants you pick. The wrong one will make any potion I use these in ineffective," she shrugged and added, "or poisonous."
Harry gulped.
Professor Myfanwy pulled her small leather diary out of her robes and knelt down to make a few notes on the plants' growth. Harry reached into the sack he'd brought and pulled out a pair of tiny scissors then reached for the first cluster of blue flowers.
The worst thing about tedious work was that it freed up ones mind and Harry found his mind wandering. The light sound of lutes and pipes and a subtle humming filled this air as the full moon rose and the fairies around them began a complicated dance. Harry sat back and watched for a moment in fascination. The only other times he'd seen fairies was when they were used in the castle as decorations. Those times they'd remained fluttering in place. Now, though, they gyrated in the silvery light of the moon, creating sparkling shapes and patterns in the air around them. Harry hadn't ever seen anything so beautifully magical.
"It makes you pity the Muggles, doesn't it?" Professor Myfanwy asked. He glanced back at his professor. She still knelt amidst the flowers, her quill scratching notes in the small diary, and occasionally reaching up to tuck an errant strand of hair behind her ears. "The Dance, I mean?" she continued, waving with one hand toward the glittering dome around them. "Muggles don't usually see things like this. If they do we wipe their memories."
"I've never met a Muggle that really wanted to," Harry admitted. The only Muggles he really knew were the Dursleys and they'd be appalled to hear about him sitting in a fairy ring with a part-demon watching a fairy dance.
"You need to meet more normal Muggles, Harry," Professor Myfanwy chuckled. "I've met Muggles that would give their right toe to enter Hogwarts."
"Dudley wouldn't," Harry shook his head, finding the concept difficult despite being friends with Hermione. He'd always figure Hermione's excitement at being a witch was unusual; like her love affair with libraries.
"Dudley, if he's anything like I remember his mother, is a spoiled brat with no concern for others," Professor Myfanwy pointed out flatly, toying idly with her quill.
"You knew Aunt Petunia?" Harry gaped. Somehow he'd never put Professor Myfanwy knowing his parents together with her knowing his Aunt.
"Of course I knew her," Rowan waved the question off. "I'm one of the 'weird things' your mother used to bring home! Your mum couldn't stand the idea of an entire summer with only her sister to talk to."
Harry blinked, then smiled. He'd suffered through a great many rants from relatives over the strangeness of his mother. He supposed a part-demon wizarding socialite counted as 'weird'. "You were friends with my mum too?"
Rowan laughed. "I was more friends with your mum than with your father and his friends. I didn't really meet the boys until my fifth year. They were a year ahead of me and I'm sure they didn't even know I existed outside of Quidditch and the occasional rescue."
"Rescue?" Harry asked, his detention all but forgotten in light of a story. Professor Myfanwy didn't bother to remind him of it, her diary also lay forgotten in the flowers beside her.
"Lucius Malfoy saw it as a moral obligation and rare opportunity to throw off two teams at once. Not only did the Gryffindors need their Seeker but also two of my brothers were Chasers on the Ravenclaw team! Malfoy personally sent me to the Hospital Wing five times. I suspect James put his friends and the team up to shadowing me before any Slytherin matches," she pursed her lips in affectionate annoyance at the memory. Professor Myfanwy, apparently, didn't appreciate coddling.
"Why didn't someone stop Malfoy?" Harry demanded, though privately, he could see the older Malfoy sabotaging Quidditch games to win the Cup every year. Draco Malfoy would too if he thought he could get away with it.
"They looked like accidents," she shrugged. "Lucius Malfoy and I still don't get on well. I fully suspect him of telling Voldemort that my entire clan would be gathered the Easter they died and convincing the Dark Lord the Myfanwy Clan was a threat," she said darkly. "We don't even know how they got through the wards. The castle is set on an island in the center of a tarn. Voldemort and fifty of his Death Eaters Apparated onto the grounds in the middle of the night and murdered everyone in their beds then sent up the Dark Mark and set fire to the forest before Disapparating," Professor Myfanwy raised an eyebrow at him. Her eyes were very dark with remember pain. "Are you starting to see why everyone is so terrified of Voldemort and his followers?"
Harry felt rather sick, but he'd seen too much Death Eater activity and Voldemort himself too often to disbelieve her. He simply nodded. "How many people were in your clan?" He finally asked quietly.
"Two hundred and eight," she said sadly. "Three of us are left. I begged off going home for that holiday at the last second and stayed at Hogwarts. Morgaine and Ger decided to stay too."
"Why did you stay?"
Professor Myfanwy blushed slightly. "Because Sirius was in his seventh year and it was the last school holiday we'd have together," she admitted.
Harry hid a smile behind his hand and changed the subject. Any further down this line of inquiry was a slippery slope. Rowan and Sirius still hadn't worked out their differences and while hearing about the old Marauders was entertaining, he didn't want to accidentally lead his professor into the still tender subject of the current Sirius Black.
"Will this be used in the Wolfsbane Potion?" Harry asked.
"Most of it," Professor Myfanwy nodded; eyes still intent on her book. "Professor Snape wanted a bit of it too."
Harry lapsed back into silence, until another question struck him. "Why do you do this, Professor?" Now Professor Myfanwy looked up, raising an eyebrow at him with a small smile tugging at the corner of her mouth.
"Do what, Harry?"
"This potion for Professor Lupin. You've spent over thirteen years on it. Is it just because Professor Lupin is your friend?"
She set her quill and her diary in her lap and gave Harry her full attention. "That's a very personal question Harry," Professor Myfanwy told him, though she didn't seem angry. A distant pain flickered across her eyes. "And there's a very long answer as well but the short of it is that this is the best I could do."
Harry thought about this. If it wasn't entirely for Professor Lupin then . . ."Is it because of my parents?"
Professor Myfanwy cocked her head, surprised at his insight. "In a way, yes, it is," she told him. "Severus Snape will tell you that your father's arrogance killed him. Actually it was more mine. Sirius and I had a monstrous row the night your parents were killed. He didn't like me using Remus Lupin as my Secret Keeper because he didn't think he could be trusted. I insisted." Professor Myfanwy tucked her quill in her hair before continuing. "I didn't want to distrust our friend just because he was a werewolf. Sirius didn't want to take the chance. I'm sure my stubbornness terrified him."
"So he switched with Wormtail?" Harry concluded.
"Exactly. If Remus betrayed us Sirius could worry about protecting me because James and Lily couldn't be discovered through him. He didn't tell me about the switch so that I couldn't reveal it if we were captured by the Death Eaters."
"We knew someone close to us was a spy. The Death Eaters came too close too often. Everyone hoped it was an associate and not one of the Marauders," she laughed mirthlessly. "And Wormtail played us masterfully. Sirius suspected Remus, I was furious with Sirius over it. Neither told James, of course. Peter was always there to 'remind' us that James had enough on his mind; he didn't need to be bothered with a lovers quarrel. And for me alone he would point out that Sirius was overly tired and a bit paranoid," Rowan's voice lowered, barely concealing the current of bitter fury. "Oh, Peter was cunning. He masterfully played us against one another. And none of us caught it. We didn't know. In hindsight it may seem obvious, but at the time it wasn't."
"I wasn't there when Voldemort killed your parents and my other friends were dead, or wished they were." Harry winced inwardly. Professor Myfanwy obviously knew the Dementors. "Dumbledore refused to allow Remus Lupin or I to take you. I think I felt - and still in a way still feel - that I had failed my closest friends. Do you see what I'm saying?"
"You shouldn't blame yourself for my parents deaths." Harry told her sincerely.
She smiled sadly at him. "And you shouldn't blame yourself for Cedric Diggory's death. But you do, don't you?" Harry reddened slightly in guilt. "Voldemort destroys anything he thinks may interfere. He murdered my entire clan because we have a long history of meddling. He would have killed you, at one-years-old, simply because you may have opposed him later. He'd already wiped out your grandparents."
"You knew my grandparents?" Harry's eyes widened. He'd never seen them outside of the Mirror of Erised in first year and no one spoke of them. Professor Myfanwy smiled sadly.
"No, I'm afraid not. They died a bit before your mother and I fell in with the Marauders."
A pair of canine howls from the forest interrupted them momentarily. "Padfoot and Moony," Professor Myfanwy identified them. "It's good that Moony has someone to howl with again." Several more howls answered the roaming Marauders from deeper in the forest.
"That didn't sound like Moony and Padfoot." Harry noted, a thread of nervousness winding through him.
"No, that's the resident pack of werewolves," Professor Myfanwy reported.
"Like Professor Lupin?" Harry asked in surprise, wondering how many wolf-men wandered the Hogwarts forest and where they went when the moon wasn't full.
"Not at all," she laughed. "Remember your Defense Against the Dark Arts lessons, Harry. Lycanthropy is an ancient curse. Didn't you study the original werewolves? The Lukoi?"
"They're real wolves, aren't they?" Harry asked, trying to remember back to Professor Lupin's lessons on werewolves during third year. "But very smart wolves."
"A very rare and unnaturally clever form of magical wolf that can transfer lycanthropy to humans during the full moon," Professor Myfanwy nodded.
"There's a pack of them in the Forest?" Harry yelped. "Shouldn't we go inside?"
"We're sitting in the middle of a field of wolfsbane," Professor Myfanwy assured him. "And they rarely come this close to the castle. Don't be afraid." Harry found himself reassured, and resumed harvesting while listening to the continued singing of the wolves. He had to admit there was something otherworldly and very beautiful about it.
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Special thanks goes to FPW for his assistance on the werewolves!
