Botswana (bot-SWAH-nah), n. Any object that is more fruitfully used for a purpose other than that for which it was designed.
As the sixth years trooped out of the Potions classroom, and headed up to the lakeside to have Theophania of Wembley teach them to turn pike into cats, one of them lingered behind: a tall, ruddy youth with a fillet and a thick red moustache, whose Irish wizarding clan had submitted to the English crown (and thus come within the purview of Hogwarts School) only a few years before. He approached the front of the dungeon, and coughed to gain the attention of the master behind the great cauldron. "Reverend Sir," he said, in a voice at once gruff and refined, "may one be having a word?"
The Potions master raised his eyes from the tome he was perusing, and rose to his feet with an effort that his smiling face belied. His name was Simon of Troutbeck, and he belonged to the Order of Friars Minor, though there was nothing minor about the girth beneath his billowing brown habit. (It was an old joke within Hufflepuff House, whose Head he had been for fifteen years, that he was likely to leave a ghost of himself to haunt the castle rather than leave the quality of school cooking to ever decline.) "Yes, of course, Domhnall," he said. "What's the trouble?"
Domhnall O'Caisle (for that was the young Irishman's name) reached beneath his robes, and withdrew a heavy granite statuette of the horse goddess Epona. "An old monk came to my family's castle in the summer," he said, "to bless our lands and goods in the name of the White Christ whose fealty we now profess. But when he saw this sacred image that our fathers have revered for generations, he called it foul and heathenish, and refused to bless it with the rest. Enraged, my father had him scourged and cast out, and then gave the image to me that I might take it to my school across the sea, where the Christian clerics were wise and understanding men and not ignorant rustics."
"Meaning that he hoped one of us would bless it?" said Friar Simon, raising his eyebrows.
"Aye," said Domhnall. "I took it first to the withered old one who teaches History of Magic – the Dog-Lord, or what you say…"
"Dominican."
"Aye. But all I had of him was a lot of dusty blather about forms and ends – as though the treasures of the O'Caisles were not perfectly formed in every end, and in the centres as well." (He stroked the elegantly carven effigy with the quiet pride of a discriminating proprietor.) "So it falls to yourself, Master Brewer. Will you be saying your prayers over the most prized of our goods, or must I be taking it back to Connaught with all its earthliness on its head?"
Friar Simon chewed his lip, and let out a heavy breath through his nostrils. "Well, lad," he said, "I'm sorry to have to disappoint you, but I'm afraid it'll have to be the latter. Much as it grieves me to have to agree with my beloved brother Sebastian of Wroot, the truth is that he and your local monkish clodhopper are perfectly in the right.
"Shorn of Aristotelian jargon, you know, it's really just common sense. A blessing isn't just some ceremonial dignity, like a crest on a coat of arms, that means nothing beyond the honour or dishonour it bestows on its possessor; it's an invocation of God's aid, praying Him to sustain its object in His ways as long as that object may endure. And there are things in this world of which that can never be asked except in mockery of God, because their whole purpose for being is so that men may sin against God's goodness. A gang of thieves, for instance: the thieves themselves, being also men meant for Heaven, could be blessed readily enough, but to bless the gang as a gang would obviously be a travesty. Or, again, if one were to brew a potion to keep a man's seed from begetting a child, that would also be an unalterably hateful thing in the eyes of Our Lord, and no God-fearing soul would dream of asking Him to bless it. You see?"
Domhnall's face darkened. "Aye," he said. "And will you then be calling the treasure of the O'Caisles a thing like a gang of thieves?"
"I will," said Friar Simon firmly. "And so should you, if you truly profess fealty to Christ. The first command God gives to His servants is to have no other gods before Him; nothing is more abominable in His eyes than to worship idols and images of false gods. If I were to bless a hundred thieves' gangs, with every man of them still clutching bloody daggers and stolen jewels, that would be better than what you have bidden me do today."
His voice was as mild as ever, but there was iron in it – the iron of a simple man defending primary reason in the face of all incitements to obfuscation – and Domhnall was impressed in spite of himself. He stared down meditatively at the Hibernian Astarte in his hand, and pondered in silence for a long moment; then he said, softly, "My father will not be pleased."
"No, I daresay he won't," said Friar Simon, in a tone as grave as the words warranted. (He could well imagine what displeasure might be, coming from an ostensibly Christian chieftain who had men of God flogged for thwarting his whims.) "Perhaps you might go to Mistress Camilla, and have her enchant it to serve some purpose beyond idolatry. If it screamed when brigands were about, for instance, it would be no longer an idol but an alarm, and I should be glad to give it a blessing suitable to alarms – or, again, if it enabled its bearer to travel underwater, or to…"
At this juncture, the two wizards abruptly became aware of an outcry from the school grounds above: a confused babel of frightened cries and running feet, and, louder than all, a heavy slapping, scrabbling sound that seemed to be descending rapidly toward the dungeons. They barely had time to exchange a puzzled look before the great oaken door was knocked open, and a confused monstrosity of scales, fur, fangs, and scales burst snarling and snapping into the classroom, its green and glassy eyes alight with hungry ferocity. (Such misbegotten prodigies are not uncommon when a particularly clumsy wizard attempts a cross-species transfiguration; indeed, some three and a half centuries before, just another such mishap had nearly ended Rowena Ravenclaw's life, and had cemented Salazar Slytherin's conviction that training Muggle-born wizards was more trouble than it was worth. But Mistress Theophania, herself a Muggle-born and relatively young for a Transfiguration mistress, had not known this, and so had failed to adequately prepare for the possibility of a swollen cat/pike hybrid escaping from her study area to menace the rest of her colleagues.)
Friar Simon gasped, and fumbled for his wand. Domhnall, however, was quicker: with a wild Erse war-cry, he raised the granite Epona and whirled it twice above his head, and then brought it crashing down on the flat forehead of the pouncing fish-beast. A sickening crunch of splintering bone echoed through the dungeon, and the creature let out an indescribable strangled squeal and collapsed onto the stone floor, where it twitched spasmodically twice or thrice and then lay motionless.
Breathing heavily, Domhnall wiped the sweat from his brow, and looked down at the blood-splattered effigy in his hand as at some hitherto unimagined colour of the rainbow. Then, as his mind cleared, he glanced up at his teacher, a sly grin spreading across his face. "What of war-clubs, Sir?" he said. "Would you be blessing war-clubs?"
Friar Simon's eyes twinkled. "Do you know, I believe I might," he said. "Wait here while I go get a hyssop sprig."