Care of Magical… Puppies?
The more lessons Sirius had, the more he liked being at Hogwarts. Studying and learning and remembering a lot of facts that others – Rose, that is – considered superfluous had always come natural to him.
On the other hand he also liked playing Quidditch and flying – but while Rose still didn't get enough of being outside after several hours of throwing and catching Quaffles with Dad, he usually was the one who went inside to sit in the library with Mom. Either she told him about what she was researching on or writing about at the moment while she made hot cocoa for Sirius and herself - or Sirius rummaged around in her vast library on his own. There were so many exiting things to be discovered in books – whole worlds to be explored and conquered – that he never grew tired of pulling out volumes from the shelves, of leafing through pages, of admiring diagrams and charts and maps.
And when nightfall came and his father and sister entered the house and fell down on the sofa with exhausted, red faces he would help his mother prepare something delicious for supper. He liked watching how light-handedly Mom waved her wand to order vegetables around or command a spoon to stir the contents of a frying pan. He agreed with her that cooking was just like potion brewing.
It turned out that the Potions master, Professor Fletcher, had intended the first lesson to be fun and during the week the lessons became more serious and harder to follow.
Though Sirius had been sceptic about the Headmistress at first, the boy now had to admit that he liked Professor McGonagall's stern and strict attitude. He had come to learn that she would pick a student at the beginning of each lesson and question the poor boy or girl about what they had learned in the previous lesson. On hindsight Sirius had done fairly well in the first Transfiguration lesson.
In Care of Magical Creatures Sirius' group earned ten points for Slytherin when their Flubberworms were the first ones to reproduce.
Neville Longbottom encouraged his class to do short presentations about their own wands, how they had acquired it, what their wands' first spell had been, what magical qualities the different sorts of wood had. For this Sirius earned another five points for the House Cup.
On Thursday Albert delivered an invitation to Sirius, Rose and their cousin James: the Hagrid family wanted to have them over for tea on Friday afternoon. The children accepted of course, since they had expected to be invited. Dinner with Hagrid on the first Friday of the schoolyear was a tradition that traced back to their parents' school time.
0=0=0=0
A huge table was already set up in front of Hagrid's house, right beside the pumpkin patch. His first house had been destroyed in the fight against Voldemort, so Hagrid had replaced it with a bigger house. Rooms had been added whenever it became necessary: when Hagrid's wife moved in after the wedding, when Albert was born, when the dog had a litter of cute puppies…
Albert stepped out of the house with a stack of plates and napkins on his arms when the children arrived.
"Mo-hom! They're here!" he shouted and then grinned. "Glad you're here, guys."
He put the plates down on the chequered table-cloth and hugged the arrivers sloppily just as one would do after a successful Quidditch match. Albert was very tall and overtopped even Sirius, no doubt a sign of his Giant heritage.
Not only was Hagrid a half-Giant, but also Albert's mother, Clarissa, was not entirely human. Clarissa was a former Quidditch colleague of Ron's. She ended her career about the same time as Ron started his and he had learned quite a few tricks from her before she retired from the world of broom sports. Clarissa was a few heads shorter than her husband Rubeus, but still reached two metres easily. Her nickname among her team mates used to be "Valkyre": she was blond, had broad shoulders for a woman and muscular arms that could intimidate anyone. She and Hagrid had fallen in love head over heels during a garden party that Ron and Hermione hosted to celebrate Sirius' and Rose's baptism. In under a year they had married and had baby – Little Albert. Because Giant babies grew faster in their first few years than humans, Albert was in the same year as their guests even though he was a year younger.
Clarissa appeared at the door with a huge cake floating in front of her and a dozen of big cupcakes swirling around her head. With her wand she ordered everything down on the table, and then she shook hands with Sirius, Rose and James.
"Rubeus should be here any second", Clarissa smiled. "Rose, would you be so kind and give me a hand in the kitchen while you tell me how your mom is doing?"
"Sure." Rose followed the gigantic woman into the house, from where the boys could here them laughing.
"What's for dinner?" James asked.
Albert grinned. "Mom's made her famous smoked boar, and she's made parsnip purée, roast potatoes and fresh pumpkin juice" –
"You're not tellin' yer mom's secrets, are ya?" Hagrid came round the corner of the house. If you knew him well enough, you could tell that the ruffling of his beard meant that he was smiling underneath it. Some grey strands had appeared in his hair over the last few years, which gave him a sort of dignity. Thanks to Clarissa's culinary talents his belly had grown quite a bit.
The meal was yummy and all of them had a great time, especially when Fang with her five puppies trotted around the corner of the house and joined them. The huge pups almost looked like fully grown dogs and would not have been recognisable as the younger generation if their mother hadn't been there for the comparison.
"Gosh, you're heavy!" Sirius laughed when he lifted a grey puppy off the ground. Only the long ears of the dog were black.
"That's Sira," Albus told him. "She was the last one to be born and she's the only girl."
"Sira," Sirius repeated. The puppy eagerly licked his hands and lower arms while he cuddled her. Funny that he should pick the dog whose name was similar to his.
Clarissa got some dog biscuits from inside the house so the children could feed the dogs. They sat down in the grass, the puppies either on their laps or strolling around between them and begging for food as if they were starving.
Hagrid helped Clarissa to bring the food back inside the house. While his wife oversaw the spells for cleaning the dishes, the half-giant pulled his garden chair over to the kids. Fang rested her head on his knees. She didn't seem worried about her pups, she knew that they were in good hands.
"Ye like dogs, lad, don't ye?" Hagrid asked Sirius.
"Sure I do. Mom never let us have a dog because of the cats."
"She still got that Crookshanks?"
"Yeah… He's terribly old, and he's no fun at all. But the other two – they're called Moony and Padfoot – they're okay, I guess." Sirius scratched Sira between the ears and the dog yawned. "One day when I woke up, Padfoot sat on my chest and had a dead mouse between his teeth, that was gross."
Hagrid and Sirius laughed together.
"You can come here to see the dogs after school, if ye like," Hagrid offered. "Or you'll wait a few days for a surprise in Care of Magical Crea- whoops, shouldn't've said that." He chuckled.
"Really? You'll bring the pups to class?" Sirius asked exitedly.
"Didn't say that." Hagrid shook his huge head. "No, didn't say that."
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Sirius had almost forgotten Hagrid's slip about the surprise in Care of Magical Creatures when Miss O'Hara announced the following Tuesday that there was going to be an assistant teacher today.
The classroom was buzzing with anticipation while the young teacher instructed the class to put the tables and chairs to the corners of the room and to spread some blankets on the floor. "We're going to see some baby animals, a quite unusual species that is. Some of you might already have heard about the grown specimen, but I can assure you that the little ones are harmless – or otherwise we wouldn't have them here in class. I guess you'll find them cute as hell, I know I do..." She giggled and took a deep breath. "And now, class, say hello to Mr Hagrid!"
O'Hara opened the classroom's door and let Hagrid in. He had to duck his head when he entered. In front of his chest he held a huge wooden box, covered with a blanket. Something scratched against the wood from the inside and soft yelping noises could be heard.
Hagrid put the box down on the floor in the middle of the blankets. Jugding from the yapping Sirius first thought of Fang's puppies, but even the smallest one of them would have been too big for the box.
"Who wants to uncover the box?" Hagrid asked. More than a dozen hands shot up in the air and the kids shouted: "Me! Me!" The half-giant picked Alexander.
Sirius saw his class mate's eyes grow as big as saucers when he had pulled the blanket away. The children closest to Alex started to "Ooooh" and "Aaaah" at what they could already see. Sirius got up on his knees to look over their heads and then his mouth fell open.
In the box were two puppies – it took Sirius some seconds to figure out that it were only two – a very special kind of puppies indeed. Sirius had never seen a three-headed dog before and now right before his eyes were two of them.
All around him the girls started to call the welps cute and the boys described them as awesome. Hagrid put his right hand into the box – three heads turned towards it and started to lick his fingers – then he held the fawn-coloured pup by the back of its neck and lifted it out of the box. "That's Finn", Hagrid told the class. He grabbed the other puppy, fawn with creamy white spots, and sat it down next to its sibling. "And this is his sister Fiona."
"How old are they?" Lucinda asked. She extended her hand tentatively so Finn could sniff at it. One of his heads, his left one, came closer and licked the back of her hand just as timidly as the girl was, then the puppy's middle head decided that he could lick her hand too.
"Almost five weeks now", Hagrid said. "They can get quite old, fifty years or even more."
Fiona seemed to be more adventurous than her brother. She padded forwards on her huge paws and sniffed Rob's backpack, then two of her heads started to tear at the material with their tiny teeth. "Oh, clever dog!" Rob, who had never even known that creatures like three-headed dogs existed, took his bag by the handle and put it on his chair before he opened it and pulled an already opened plastic bag from it. "She smelled the dog biscuits! Totally forgot that I still have them in here…" He looked at Hagrid. "Is it okay to feed them?"
"Sure, go ahead, lad. But feed all three heads. They get jealous of each other when they're so young." Hagrid pulled some dog biscuits from his own pocket and handed them to some of the children so they could feed Finn.
"Are the two of them the whole litter?" Emily wanted to know.
"Their mom, Fluffy, she gave birth to four lil'ones," Hagrid explained, "but of course I can't take all her kids away from her at the same time, now, can I? So each class gets to see two of'em."
"How come their mom lets you take them away from her?" Baldric asked. "I imagine she doesn't like it that you take her babies."
"Fluffy has known me for several decades and she trusts me that I won't hurt her lil'ones. And then there's another trick to make sure a three-headed dog doesn't harm you when you come to close." Hagrid pulled a wooden flute out of his chest pocket and gave it to Baldric. "Would you like to play a song for us?"
A little embarrassed and with red cheeks Baldric piped a melody that Sirius identified as a song by the Weird Sisters.
Fiona and Finn started to yawn, first one head, then two, then three. Soon the puppies lay on the blankets and rested their heads on the knees of the students surrounding them before they fell asleep.
"The flute does the trick for the puppies, but one would need a more sonorous instrument for a grown three-headed dog", Miss O'Hara explained after Baldric had stopped playing. The puppies slowly opened their eyes, shook their many heads and yawned again, but they were already up on their feet again and padded towards the pupils to be cuddled some more.
0=0=0=0
"They're fantastic!" Baldric practically jumped up and down in the corridor after O'Hara had dismissed the class. They were on their way to Potions with Fletcher. "I definitely want a three-headed dog when I'm older!"
Sirius laughed. "They're dangerous, didn't you listen?"
"I'll practise playing the flute some more and it'll work!" Nothing seemed to temper Baldric's enthusiasm.
"No, you need to learn something bigger, like a harp!"
Baldric frowned. "That's an instrument for girls!"
"But it works!" Sirius answered.
"And how you wanna know that, smart arse?"
"Because a harp worked for my parents and my Uncle Harry." Sirius sounded a bit smug. He loved Harry's story of how Fluffy had almost ripped him, his mom and his dad apart when they had to sneak past her. Well, Sirius guessed that his uncle exaggerated some parts of what had actually happened, just like his Dad boasted about the gigantic chess game, but it was a good story anyhow. It had happened in Harry's and his parents' first year at Hogwarts.
I wish something like that would happen while I'm in school, Sirius thought. A treasure hunt like theirs for the Philosopher's Stone.
But so far none of the teachers seemed to have an evil wizard growing out of the back of their head.
0=0=0=0
At the swimming pool.
A white beach, the bright blue ocean in the background. In the middle of the beach, raised a little above sea level, is a swimming pool. Its water is so bright that it almost hurts the eyes. It is daylight, but there seems to be no sun.
An airbed with a backrest is floating in the pool. It is red and has white polka dots. A slender man lies on it, reading an ancient looking book. He wears sun glasses on his crooked nose, has a short goatee beard and shoulder-length brown hair, pulled up in a ponytail.
We take a closer look and realise that the man is Albus Dumbeldore at the physical age of 47.
A radio sits on the sand close to the pool, playing soft jazz.
Another figure approaches from the far left corner, leaving footprints in the white sand. We see that the man is much younger, he is barefoot and wears a long white bathrobe as if he was about to enjoy the refreshing water of the pool. His long blond hair spills over his back and shoulders.
Gellert: "You look old."
Albus looks up, mildly interested, but doesn't lower the book.
Gellert: "So you're not talking to me?"
Albus: "No. Won't happen."
Gellert: "Ah, so you're still mad at me. Either because I called you old or because of the, well, unfortunate way our relationship ended. Concerning the first, I can tell you that you'll only need to be dead for a little longer till you look as young and sexy as me." He shrugs off his bathrobe and steps out of the pile. We see a perfectly muscular body, strong and flexible, though not tanned. Gellert wears black speedos – and he wears them like they are his bitch.
Albus – accidentally? – lowers his book.
Gellert: "Concerning the second, I by now have come to the conclusion that you were absolutely right to kill me. Someone had to stop me, so powerhungry and mad had I become. I'm sorry that I put you through that."
Albus: "We always knew that only we would be able to stop each other."
Gellert nods, dips a toe into the water, sits down on the edge of the pool, his feet dangling in the water.
Albus: "Why are you here?"
The radio: "We interrupt our program for an update on the case of The Ministry of Magic versus" –
Gellert switches the radio off with an angry movement of his arm, takes a breath to calm down.
Gellert: "I have some information for you. Well, not specifically for you, but I guess it's important for you and some of your friends."
Albus warily: "Continue."
Gellert: "You probably figured out that my soul is ripped enough to transport me through the different spheres of this world. I also have access to where the most torn and shredded remnants of souls are being kept."
Albus glides down from the airbed and into the water, careful not to get his book wet. The water covers him up to the belly. While Gellert continues to talk he leaves the pool to sit down cross-legged next to Gellert.
Gellert: "After Voldemort's downfall I was curious what had happened to him and I kept looking for rumours if he had even made it to the Netherworld. I was interested in what creating so many Horcruxes had done to his soul, since I had been so close to creating my first one when we last met."
Gellert withdraws his feet from the water and mirros Albus's posture, facing him.
Gellert: "I wouldn't have been surprised if he had been shattered too much to continue existing in any kind of form. After some years I found him." Gellert shivers despite the hot temperature.
Albus: "I take it your… scientific curiousity was satisfied."
Gellert: "More than that. It was a blood-curdeling experience, so horrendous it made me wish I hadn't gone there in the first place." He shivers again.
Albus hands him the bathrobe which Gellert pulls around his shoulders.
Gellert, almost whispering: "On the other hand, if I hadn't been so damned nosey, I would have never found out what he's doing now."
Albus puts his hands on Gellert's shoulders, shakes him. "What are you saying?"
Gellert: "Some days ago one of my sources who had helped me find his remains contacted me. I went to have another look at Voldemort. I found out that he had gathered mass."
Albus frowns. He doesn't like the idea of what he'll hear next.
Gellert: "Albus, he's gathering pieces of souls to repair his own. I don't know what his plans are exactly, but I'm convinced that he's dangerous and must be stopped."
Hope you like my newest writing experiment. Dramatic dialogues and absurd theatre in my opinion work best for the undead. If you have trouble imagining it, best think of the movie scenes from HP 7.2 when Harry thinks he died and meets Dumbledore. The lighting is always a bit too bright and the people on stage are always a bit too realistic, sometimes even In-your-face like the ugly Voldemort baby corpse.
Gellert (of course!) looks like Jamie Campbell Bower. The young Dumbledore looks sort of like Gary Oldman in "The Scarlet Letter". And yes, they were a couple just like JKR said in her interviews.