ArcWraith: The fact that hags are mentioned all of twice in the entire series and have rarely if ever been used in fanfiction (certainly I've never seen any stories featuring them in any real role during my decade of reading HP fanfic) is one of several reasons I wanted to include them here. The other is that (per Pottermore) they only have "rudimentary magic" that they use to brew potions, which fits SO well with my observation that the series is heavy on wizardry but extremely light on and even dismissive of witchcraft. Obviously in this story hags can do a bit more than wizards realize.

Kenneth: I cannot speak for ALL fanfic authors, but when it comes to my stories, I change characters to be "unrecognizable" because sometimes that is what is necessary to tell the story I want to tell. This story, for instance. Harry from canon just did not have the drive or the curiosity to do… well, ANYTHING that Hazel has done thus far. I can't write a tale of exploring the forgotten history of magic with canon Harry; it simply is not possible. At the same time, people like fanfiction featuring the canon protagonist because that is the character who THINGS HAPPEN TO and who have the most interesting tale. It's just the nature of storytelling.

Dadycoool: I wondered who would pick up on the strangeness with the bowtruckles. :-) You're right, they are said in canon to attack anyone who tries to take anything from their tree, which is why wandcrafters have to distract them with woodlice bait. Hazel, however, didn't TAKE from the tree; she ASKED and was offered that branch. Wandmakers wouldn't have nearly as much trouble if they would just be polite.

As for the hags, that's going to get real interesting right about… now.

Chapter 20
Holiday with Hags

Hazel blinked as she stepped out the door of the hag's cabin into the bright morning sunlight. Her eyes stung and watered even as she tried her best to hide her yawn. One reason was because while the cabin was not necessarily dark, it was certainly dimmer than the outside. The other reason?

Her night had – for some reason or another – not been the most restful she ever had.

She would not have accepted an offer of a bed even had such an offer been made, but the hags had been more than willing to let her spend the night in one of the upholstered chairs from around the table. Her sleep was fitful, and even as light of a sleeper as she normally was she was especially alert. Any creak, any rustle, had her eyes opening and her mind and magic shooting to full wakefulness.

For all her worries, though, none of those late night sounds had been the hags trying to sneak up on her for a quick nibble. She saw neither hide nor hair of them until the youngest hag, Hedwig, had entered the living room still half asleep and wrapped up in a thick coat before stomping out the door into the predawn light. Not even a single glance had been made in Hazel's direction.

The other hags started waking up perhaps half an hour after Hedwig's departure, at which time Hazel gave up any further sleep as a lost dream. Quickly changing clothes, she was ready to head out into the bright sunlight in which she now stood.

The morning sunlight did more than just make her eyes water, however. It also highlighted some aspects of her 'hosts' that she had missed in the dim blue light from their strange lamps and jars. For all that the hags were just about a head taller than her, their arms were disproportionately long. If they ever let their arms actually dangle, their hands would probably come down almost to their knees, but both of the green women kept their arms bent and pulled up to the height of their waists. Looking at their arms also made her focus more on their hands and the long, grey nails coming off their fingers.

The less personable of the hag women, the one whose thoughts the previous night had been entirely focused on eating her rather than the one who held something like a conversation, noticed her evaluation and raised one hand, curling and uncurling her fingers in a clawing motion. Hazel had no doubt that if those got close to her skin, they could do all sorts of damage.

The first thought Hazel had was that the hags were planning on leading her into the forest, but instead Hedwig's mother stopped in the middle of the spread of grass between one wall of the cabin and the edge of the woods. "This will do. Brightly lit so you can see, and too far from anywhere you can run. Are you ready for your test, girl?"

'I told you last night, my name is not girl. It is Hazel,' she wrote with a small scowl. The least they could do, especially if the planned on chasing her down and trying to eat her, was to use her name in the meantime. 'You never told me your names either. Rude.'

Now it was the hag's turn to scowl. "She is a wand-waver, but she is technically in the right. It is against the Customs to be rude to a guest, and that is what we made her when we offered her a place to sleep, even for just one night. My name is Elfriede." Hazel nodded, and she smiled faintly when Elfriede pointed at the other hag. "That is my sister, Gertrud. Hedwig, you probably noticed, is my daughter."

'Nice to meet you.'

Elfriede scowled at her flippant remark, but Gertrud snickered. "Cheeky brat. Reminds me of Hedwig at that age."

They could be amused or upset if they wanted. Hazel's mind was stuck on what Elfriede had thought. What were the Customs, and what did that have to do with being rude to a guest? More importantly, Elfriede obviously did not want to give their names to her, so what power did the Customs have over the hag that she would go against her own desires?

The more Hazel thought about it, the more it seemed to be related to the fact that it was tied into rudeness. Could she be talking about guest rights, she wondered after a few more moments thinking about it. She had read that hospitality and ensuring a guest's safety and comfort were of the utmost importance to the Celts as well as the Greeks and Romans. Might the hags have a similar culture? It would explain why Elfriede relented only after thinking about how they had made her a guest by offering her a place for the night.

Not that she had much hope that alone would keep the hags from trying to eat her. Her guest status would likely only last until the end of this test, whatever it was.

Not for the first time, Hazel wondered if staying and taking this test was a bright idea in the first place. The hags could threaten that they would hunt her down if she failed or if she had left during the night, but unless they were capable of teleporting she was just too mobile. Their expectations were based on the fact that she was a normal wizard child; Jean Luc, after all, had been amazed that she could teleport at her age, so the hags would not expect her to be able to escape their clutches.

Honestly, that might be the very reason she was not afraid to stay. Unless she had completely missed her guess, she could be in the free and clear any time she wanted. The hags' threats did not have that much bite. But if they were telling the truth, if they actually would not try to eat her should she pass this test and were able to explain more things about her magic that she had not been able to figure out? That would be marvelous. It would be the very first time since her escape from Privet Drive that she would not be stumbling around in the dark.

Playing along with the hags' test was risky, but the rewards were so very much worth it.

She lowered herself onto the grass and set her staff down next to her. Morgan flitted to the length of maple wood while she wrote out, 'You still have not told me what the test is.'

Elfriede crossed her arms. "Your task is simple, in concept anyway. I have my doubts that you will be able to complete it. I want you to make something for me, right here. If you need materials, Gertrud will fetch them for us, which will also remove her from temptation."

"Do I have to?" the other hag whined.

Make something in front of them? Hazel frowned thoughtfully. That did not sound hard in theory, but the more she considered it the more she realized there actually was an issue standing in front of her. 'Any requests?' she asked after a moment. Elfriede raised one eyebrow, so she admitted, 'If I cannot think of anything to make at the moment.'

"A dangerous means to delay the test. There is no way for her to use anything she has already taken to 'finish' in front of us. What challenge shall I give her then?" The hag frowned as a dozen half-finished words flitted through her head. "Huh. I cannot think of anything either. Pull out your tools. I will choose based on that. Maybe I will get some inspiration from whatever she has on hand after all."

Tools? Hazel blinked at her in confusion. She did not have any specific tools. She had a pair of shears, and she had a needle and some thread left over from when she made her bag, and that was it. Did the hags need specific tools for this magic they did? Was she supposed to be using specific tools? She did not know.

With nothing else to do, she pulled out what little she had and set them out on the grass, keeping a close eye on the needle in particular. If that went missing, it was going to be frustrating to find it again. Elfriede waited another second as if expecting her to continue pulling things out of her bag; when it became clear that she had nothing else, the hag's frown deepened from confusion. "Is… that all you have?"

Hazel nodded.

"What in the world? These are all the tools you have?" Elfriede asked again. "And you claim to have made the bag and staff you carry yourself?" Hazel gave her another affirmative, and Elfriede rubbed her face. "That does not make any sense. I am missing something, I just do not know what." The woman looked at her bag again. "It does look handmade, but not with care. It is sloppy. No hag would go digging through garbage searching for materials with which to work."

That earned a scowl and a short glare from Hazel. She had not gone digging through rubbish! It did not look pretty, no, but it worked just fine, and it was hers.

"But if no hag would make a bag that looked like this, does that not count as evidence that this girl is telling the truth? Why did you make your own bag at all?" asked Elfriede, and for the first time in the half-day that Hazel had known her, there was no aggression or suspicion in her voice. "Surely you could buy one that another wand-waver had cast a spell on. Bought or stolen or whatever you wanted to do. Why take the time to make one?"

'I did not know that magic was real or that there were others like me at first. I lived with my mother's sister and her family, and they did not have magic. I met other wizards later, but not before I made my bag. I made it because I had too much I needed to carry with me.'

"That answers part of my question," Elfriede agreed, "but it does not explain why you needed to make something. Could you not have cast a spell on something? Although, she did just say she only learned of her kind after making her bag. That means she did not have a wand to wave in the first place."

Hazel shook her head. 'My magic is… strange, I guess. It does not work right with plastic. I can use magic on wood or myself all I want, but plastic melts and—'

Hazel's writing slowed to a stop when she noticed Elfriede nodding in comprehension. "Natural materials are easier for us to work with than what pig-humans make. It is because magic is tied to life and growth. Flesh, wood, bone; these all remember the spark of life that once ran through them. Raw metals and crystals and gemstones were never part of a creature, but the earth itself has its own form of life. They are the bones and blood of the ground. Metals from a smithy or alloys? Pig-humans' plastic? That is nothing magic would recognize as coming from itself. There can be power in metal if it is shaped by a living hand and will," she allowed, "but the more it is processed, the less it can be touched by magic."

Now Hazel caught herself nodding. The name the hags used for regular people was something she was going to try her best not to think about too hard. Instead she pushed that to the side and focused on the topic of conversation. She did not know any of the details about how people made things out of metal or plastic, but one thing she did know was that it was not done by individuals anymore. 'I think everything is made by machines today.'

"Indeed. I have heard that pig-humans can make everything they use without it ever being touched by hand. There is no life in their creations, and magic is not just life. It is change, growth, chaos. The farther from its living source an object is, the more vulnerable it is to being broken apart by the strength of a magical will.

"I find myself believing you. That you did not steal your belongings from one of my cousins," she elaborated to Hazel's questioning expression. "Too much of what you say is only known by our kind. A hag would never teach this to a wand-waver. If she knows this, it is because she discovered it by herself."

"You think she learned the Making on her own?" asked a breathy voice from right behind Hazel's ear. She whipped her head around to discover that Gertrud had snuck behind her and was sitting on the ground only a foot from her. That was more disturbing than anything else any of the hags had done so far, mostly because Hazel had no clue how she had been unable to hear the hag getting closer. Even now that she was aware and paying attention, she could not hear much in the way of thoughts from the older being. There was at most an undercurrent of awareness, similar to what Hazel could pick up from Morgan if she really focused.

The idea that someone could force their mind into such a primitive, animalistic state that she could not hear them was concerning, particularly when that someone was predatory and wanted to gnaw on her bones.

"It is a possibility," replied Elfriede in a slow voice. "That is what the evidence in front of me points to, but I still do not understand how. Wand-wavers believe that the longer their families live, the stronger they are. They ignore that the Firstborn so many of them despise are the only source of new magical abilities. Even so, the idea that a Firstborn could use our magics is difficult to swallow.

"This gives me an idea for what your test will be, girl. You will try making a tool. Normally that is the first thing anyone learning the Making would do, but you seem to have done everything backwards. A knife of stone is the most basic even of these."

A stone knife? It all sounded very stone age to her, but she was willing to give it a shot. It would not be the strangest thing she had ever tried while experimenting with magic. It might even make a weird kind of sense, she allowed. If this kind of magic, this Making they were talking about, was a super-primitive magic, then maybe it was first discovered during caveman times when they only had stone tools.

Or perhaps it had less to do with when it started and more to do with what Elfriede had said about rocks being 'of magic'. Either way, there was a little problem. 'I do not have any rocks. And I do not know how to turn a rock into a knife in the first place. My bag I could figure out. I do not know where to start with this.'

Elfriede sighed and nodded her head. "Gertrud, get us some smooth stones, you know the kind. Grab several as well as some sticks to make handles."

"Aww. But she smells so good."

"And that is why I want you to go." Her sister stood and walked away with much grumbling, and after a moment of calm she said, "I will show you how to make the knife. I find myself more and more curious about what you have done, and that means a proper demonstration unhampered by a simple lack of knowledge. This test will be a fair one. It is not our way to teach anything like this to a wand-waver, but should she fail, she will not survive to spread any of this knowledge anyway. Our Secrets will remain with us."

One minute became two, then three. Hazel puffed out her cheeks and blew out an annoyed breath. Since this test of theirs could not start until Gertrud returned with the necessary materials, maybe Elfriede would be willing to answer a few of the many questions she still had in the meantime. 'Why is making a tool important? You said something loses magic if it is changed from its natural state.'

The hag waggled her hand in an ambivalent gesture. "Yes and no. If made thoughtlessly, yes. If made without magic, yes. But if it is made with a purpose, a direction of will, the magic of its nature will be aligned with the purpose that created it. It is much the same as the Making in general," she said with a nod towards the satchel, "except that a tool like this will act as a conduit for your own magic when you create something else in addition to refining its own qualities."

A few more minutes passed before Gertrud returned with an armful of smooth stones and several sticks. True to her word, Elfriede did walk her through how to turn one into a primitive knife blade that would retain an edge far longer than a regular rock, but Hazel would be lying if she ever described it as simple. Precision and a surprising amount of dexterity were necessary to keep from breaking the stone into tiny unusable pieces, something she learned the hard way many times over the next several hours. For all that they had left the cabin shortly after the sun rose, it was solidly in the afternoon when she used the sliver of stone in her palm to carve a thin wedge out of a thumb-sized stick so she could slot one end of the blade into the gap she made before wrapping it all tight together with sinew whose source she very intentionally did not ask.

Looking up from her work, she saw that it was no longer just the three of them. Hedwig had returned as well, a dead deer draped over shoulders that did not look nearly strong enough to bear the weight they were handling with ease. It was a relief to see that the hags did not eat just people, although she hoped they were not straight meat-eaters either. An expert in food she was not, but even she knew humans needed fruits and vegetables and stuff in addition to meat to stay healthy. She turned back to Elfriede and offered the knife with one hand while with the other she wrote, 'Well?'

The hag took her knife and gave it a quick sniff. A pause, then she raised it closer to her nose and took several deep breaths. "Impossible," she muttered.

"Mother?"

Elfriede looked up and stared for several long seconds at Hazel. Her eyes roamed over Hazel's face before they finally flicked over to Hedwig and Gertrud. "It smells just as if a hag made it."

'Then I passed your test?' she asked. She was more than willing to go deeper into how this had happened, but this was a little more important right at this moment. 'I will not be dinner?'

"No. No, I think not. You are… strange." Elfriede's eyes slowly widened as a thought came to her. "I wonder, are you fully human at all, or did a hag choose a human man to lay with? I have never heard of such a thing, I do not even know if it is possible, but it would explain so much."

Hazel in turn just stared at her in shock. They thought her mother was a hag?

Elfriede reached towards her, and Hazel pulled back from the sharp claws coming her way. That reflexive action stopped the hands in their tracks. "I will not harm you, gir— Hazel." Her eyes flicked towards the hag, who gave her a tentative smile. "You have my word. I just need to check something. I need to see if you have a hag's features hidden behind a wand-waver's face."

The hag's fingers started moving again, turning so the pads of their thumbs could press delicately against her lower eyelids. "Look up," ordered Elfriede gently as she pulled the lids lower. "No rings. Are her back teeth sharper than a human's?"

Elfriede checked Hazel's mouth for sharp teeth, then her thumbs for a thin web, and finally her feet to see if she had four toes or five before the woman finally backed away a few steps. "Nothing. She looks completely human, and we are still without answers. Perhaps she knows more than she thinks she does. What do you know about your parents?"

'Not much,' she admitted. 'I told you I grew up with my mother's sister and family. She and they were human, though her sister did not have magic. I know nothing about my father.'

For some reason, that caught Elfriede by surprise. "Her mother was human? Her mother being a hag I could understand, but for her to be half-hag that would mean her father— That is not possible. There is no way a wand-waver would be allowed within a hundred feet of a Hexerin.

"I suppose she does not have to be half-hag, though. Her aunt is not of magic, so perhaps that family is not all it appears and brought in a child of a hag's birth. Not that the details of the how matter overly much in the end." Elfriede shrugged, mostly in her mind but still enough to make her shoulders shift. "Even diluted by pig-human or wand-waver, there is brown in her blood. She is a child without a coven, a child who does not even know what she is.

"You have passed our test," she repeated, pulling Hazel's freshly created knife from the waistband of her heavily patched trousers and holding it out towards her. "This magic you use, you come by it honestly. You need not worry about your safety around us. We shall not harm you, for none of us would dare eat of our own flesh and blood. You are a welcome guest in our home for as long as you wish. It is the least we can offer in apology for our threats to your safety over the last day. No one whose mind is sound and healthy would turn away one of our children in need."

Hazel looked back and forth between Elfriede's face and the knife in her grasp, unsure of what the correct answer was. On the one hand, she knew there was no hag in her ancestry. Why druids and hags could use the same kind of magic when wizards could not, she had no idea, but she highly doubted it because of a shared lineage. If or when this family discovered that, would they rescind that hospitality and put her back on the menu? Possibly.

On the other hand, the hags were the first ones who actually had any useful answers for her. They had an explanation for why her fixing spell had thoroughly ruined her glasses yet worked just fine on wood or herself. They could understand what she did when she made her satchel. She did not think they held answers to all of her questions, but what they did know was more information than she had.

Slowly, she reached out and took the knife from Elfriede's hand. 'Can you teach me more about this magic I found?'

"What Secrets we know and can share, we will," Elfriede answered with a nod.

Grasping the knife more firmly, Hazel gave a nod of her own. 'I accept your offer. I will stay for a time, so long as you are willing to house me.'

The rest of the night was spent discussing some of the particulars of the magic the hags only ever referred to as 'the Making', and by the time Hazel rose with the sun the following morning, she was almost surprised by the conclusions her combined waking and sleeping dreams had drawn.

One of the big ones was that she was surprised at how right and wrong nonmagical authors were. From what the hags had been able to tell her about how wizards' magic worked, when a wizard wanted to make something magical he tended to just wave his wand and cast a spell over whatever object he was playing with to give it new traits and talents. That kind of magic did not sound like it was permanent, or at least not without many additional steps to further tie the spell into the object itself. If what she heard from listening to Elfriede and Hegwig's description of how wizards behaved in their hidden enclave in Stuttgart was accurate, however, it did not appear that most wizards really had much use for permanence in any of their effects. Whenever a spell wore off, they could just cast it again.

Certainly this was not the impression she had gotten about how the average person believed magic to work from her review of folklore and fiction. The idea of magical objects that did not have spells cast on them so much as being inherently magical was more in line with the hags' own magic. If she had made her bag correctly, which Hedwig had assured her had to be the case for it to be bottomless at all, she did not have to worry about the spell ever expiring and stopping. There was no spell on the bag to make it bottomless; it just was.

Conversely, it did not appear that hags generally made many of these creations. Hazel suspected that the lamps of blue fire that never went out were examples of this kind of magic, but other than that she had not seen much in the way of enchanted objects within their home. Was it because of the requirement that whatever they were making they had to make entirely by hand, and anything they would have wanted to make was too complicated? Were there other rules and restrictions they had not yet gotten to discussing? It was hard to say.

Or, she thought to herself as she sat at the table with one of said lamps uncovered and a notebook open in front of her, it might be as simple as the same issue she had during the test in the first place. When there was not a clear need right in front of her, it was hard to come up with an idea at all.

One of the bedroom doors opened, and she looked up to find Elfriede stepping into the living area. "You are awake already?" she asked with a stifled yawn. "Weird. When Hedwig was that age, it was a fight to ever get her up before noon. I need to go out into the woods to gather some ingredients. I would not recommend staying in the house while I am out. Gertrud will be in the basement working, but she might leave now and then and try hunting you… Better you just not be here for a few hours. You smell too human for her to control herself."

She looked truly conflicted at that, so Hazel suggested, 'I could come with you. I have looked for herbs in forests before.' Grégoire had taught her how to look for cooking herbs mostly, but there were a few plants that were both seasoning and ingredient, and looking for magical plants could not be that much different than the mundane variety.

"Absolutely not. That is not a good idea," Elfriede said, her voice calmer than her mind was. "The places I have to go are not somewhere I would take you." Hazel frowned, and the hag sighed. "I hope she does not take offense at this. These woods are not safe for humans. There is much that would not pass up the opportunity to harm you."

As much as Hazel thought she could take care of herself, Elfriede's obvious concern and worry was enough to stay her hand this time. The hag grabbed a canvas bag from a hook near the door and left the house, leaving Hazel in the house with little to nothing to do. She looked down at the heavily marked page of her notebook before tearing it out and stuffing it between the lingering coals inside the fireplace. Returning to her chair and her satchel, she pulled out the maps she had managed to find of Germany and started comparing distances.

Eventually she sighed in resignation. The fastest route to the destination she most wanted to visit would take two weeks, and it was not in the way to anywhere else she planned to see. Not that she had a laundry list of places the way she did when she went exploring England. There were just so many countries she wanted to visit, and while Germany had an extremely dark history, it was not all that called to her.

Drumming her fingers on the wooden table, she looked at the maps and papers she had pulled out and spread over the surface. So two weeks to get to one of her more interesting locations, then another week or week and a half in total to get to the others. In all honesty, she should probably start moving in the next day or two, especially if there were going to be days that it was 'too dangerous' for her to do anything but be left by herself.

Speaking of being dangerous… Hazel looked around. The small house was still and silent. If she did not know better, she would almost believe that she was the only person here. There was no sign of anyone.

Elfriede had mentioned that Gertrud was working in the basement. What, exactly, was she working on?

Quickly packing all of her papers back into her satchel, she started peering through doorways in search of the stairs to the basement. Her first few guesses revealed only bedrooms, all of them relatively simple in terms of decorations. It was only when she opened every door that she found what she was looking for behind what she had first thought led only to a hallway closet.

The hags' basement had neither stairs nor a ladder leading downwards. All it had was a round hole lined with stones, closer to a well than anything else. Because that was not creepy at all. She knew there had to be a room down below because light was streaming out of an arched opening ten feet or so below her feet. What she could not determine was how anyone got up and down on their own.

She fetched her torch from her bag and swept the beam up and down. There were no handholds that she could see, just mostly uniform stones that had lost nearly all of the mortar between them. With no obvious way down, she had little choice but—

—to jump to the bottom of the well. If nothing else, she should have a built-in delaying tactic in case she needed to run away from a hungry hag.

Now that she was here, though, she could see through the arched doorway into the basement proper. There was not much within the room, but not because the room itself was small. The real reason was because most of the space was taken up by four heavy black cauldrons, all of them bubbling and burbling with fires crackling beneath them. Gertrud was walking around them, her attention completely fixated on their contents.

Hazel supposed brewing four potions at a time would qualify as 'working'.

As she walked into the room, Gertrud did in fact turn her head to glance her way, but just as quickly she looked back at her potions and kept circling. "This one is just a little pale, needs more ginseng root in the next stage. This one smells more like roses than pepper. I knew the mace was off. Need to add three anticlockwise stirs between every two clockwise and stew the slugs for—" She glanced over at a complicated chart hanging from one of the walls. "—Uranus and Scorpio in square, mashed under a waxing moon… four more minutes."

The hag wrote something down on the two sheets of thick yellow paper in front of the cauldrons, and her commentary as she continued checking the two on the other side. Hazel mostly ignored her thoughts so she could instead look at the chart Gertrud had referenced. At the top was the label 'October', but that was about the only thing she could understand. There were two rows of the same nine symbols at the top and bottom, and columns of twelve symbols ran down the left and right sides. Between those rows and columns were what must be a hundred or more circles. Most were blank, but others had symbols inside like a stack of triangle tops or jagged swirls or several intersecting lines. After several seconds searching, she was finally able to spot a few circles that did have thick squares inside them.

Hazel turned around again to face Gertrud, who was still busy keeping an eye on the cauldrons. She was not adding anything or stirring, however; she was just watching and waiting. It was for that reason that Hazel felt comfortable writing out a question and then clapped her hands once when Gertrud did not notice. 'What are you making?'

"Bonfire Syrup. It looks to be a bad cold season this year, and wand-wavers cannot handle the sniffles for a couple of days. Apothecaries are always happy to buy our potions when they look to be in demand. Hopefully their suffering will continue long enough for us to make a good profit."

Hazel blinked and blinked again. First, because that was far more mundane an explanation than she expected. Second, because it was a real explanation. It was the longest she had heard Gertrud speak in the past two days, and unlike her previous bloodlust this was perfectly normal. The woman's attention was already shifting back to the simmering potions, so she quickly added, 'Why were you looking at the chart?'

"The best potions need the best ingredients. Good ingredients are expensive; bad ingredients are cheap but will make inferior potions. Ingredients we get from the forest are free, but their quality is variable. We can get around that by concentrating and distilling some ingredients into their essence, and when we cannot do that – sometimes even when we can – it is possible to alter the steps for each recipe so as to enhance the relevant property of the ingredients." Gertrud grabbed a handful of chopped leaves and weighed them in her hand for a moment before returning a big pinch to the table and dumping the remainder into the cauldron next to her before starting to stir it with a long wooden spoon. "Our mother could make those adjustments by instinct. I am not that good, so I have to use a chart. It does the job."

Those must be the ingredients Elfriede said she was going out to collect. She had to admit, making potions only with what they could gather themselves definitely struck a chord with her. 'Elfriede said it would be dangerous for me to go with her to collect ingredients. Is that true?'

At first it seemed like Gertrud's nod would be her only answer, but after several stirs a softer voice than previously answered, "It is. Wand-wavers are not welcome guests in this forest. It remembers what they did long ago, and its darker parts sleep and dream of revenge. There is no telling what would happen should you enter those parts, even with Elfriede beside you." Gertrud looked up and stared at her with a serious expression. "The scoured clearing is dangerous even for us. Stay away from it."

Hazel nodded and looked at the piles of ingredients, both cut up and still whole, that littered the small crescent-shaped tables in front of each cauldron. 'Do you want any help? I have made a few potions before. Really simple ones,' she added after another look at the complicated chart behind her. She did not want Gertrud overestimating her capabilities if this was what she considered typical.

Tilting her head, Gertrud looked her up and down. "Why not?" she finally said, almost to herself. "Start cutting up the ginger root. Throw in what I tell you when I tell you after I check that you did it right."

A couple of hours later, Hazel heard a harsh scraping sound coming from the opening to the well. "Gertrud! Have you seen Hazel? I called for her around the house, but I—" Elfriede stopped mid-statement when she stepped into the basement and stared at the sight before her, namely Hazel standing on a stool so she could comfortably handle the ingredients on the tables and reach over to drop them into the cauldron. "…What is she doing down here, and how did she keep Gertrud from eating her?"

Clawed fingers snapped loudly in front of Hazel's face, pulling her attention away from Elfriede and back to her impromptu potions lesson. "Clover. Now." She grabbed the pile of shredded leaves up and reached out to add them to the cauldron when Gertrude grabbed her wrist. Iron-like nails ran through the clover a few times before taking a tiny bit away. "Too heavy. A quint is this much. No reason to make adjustments if you can do it right the first time."

"You two look like you had fun," Elfriede said slowly, but internally she marveled, "I have never seen Gertrud interact like this with a human. Mother never let her near one, not after she developed her sickness. It should not be possible for someone with the Hunger even to be in the same room with a live human and control themselves. Hazel, I did not know that you had an interest in potions."

With a nod, she wrote, 'I learned a little in France. They are interesting.'

"She taught herself the Making, and she is drawn to the Brewing as well? That just confirms she has a hag as an ancestor. I came back to check on you. I decided to go after the herbs that needed the most care and where I could not take you first and bring them back here. If you still want to go with me to search for the rest, you are welcome."

Hazel could not deny that she was interested in seeing where the ingredients she had been slicing and dicing came from, but the potions they were making were also fascinating. Each one was being stirred slightly differently for different lengths of time and even sometimes with different amounts of ingredients, yet Gertrud said they would all be the same when they were finished. Elise and Amorette had stressed the importance of following directions exactly to make sure their potions did not turn into poisons, but watching and helping Gertrud was exactly the opposite. She almost did not want to leave.

"Go with her," Gertrud said with a wave. "There will be more potions to brew."

'Are you sure you do not need more help?'

That question earned Hazel a scoffing laugh. "I do this on my own all the time. Your help is not needed. Appreciated, but not needed. Go."

'I guess I am going with you,' she told Elfriede.

"Excellent. Meet me outside." Turning around, Elfriede walked over to the wall of the well. Before Hazel could ask how she planned to get back upstairs, the hag was scuttling up the wall quicker than she thought possible. Claws found purchase in the cracks between the stones, and by the time Hazel could run over to take a closer look Elfriede was already at the top of the well and looking down. "Oh. Did not think of that. Do you need help getting back up? In fact, how did she get down in the first place?"

A frown and a small hop, and Hazel was next to the hag, making her jump. 'I am ready. Where shall we go first?'

I've mentioned this to my Sufficient Velocity readers already, but humans CAN use the type of magic the hags call "the Making" on their own. Thing is, wizards in Europe haven't used it in close to a millennium, and even then it had been falling out of favor for several hundred years. It's been so long that hags have as a culture forgotten than anybody but them can use this type of magic, hence the assumptions that Hazel must be of mixed heritage to explain what they're seeing.

None of the characters know this bit of lost history, which is why I'm explaining it in an AN instead of in the chapter, but I wanted to mention it to clear up any questions or confusion about that first scene.

Silently Watches out.