The Hard Road

Chapter 19

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Draco groaned as he polished his boots and then scrubbed the blood out of his uniform. Somehow, LeClerc had appointed him the official Hufflepuff Head Boy. Cedric fucking Diggory, himself. He was giving lessons to half a dozen wizards who could just barely do magic. What was the Puff's stupid motto? Something hard work something something? How is that supposed to help ME when they were raised like Ada, trying to hide every trace of magic under threat of death. Merlin, it was hard to think inside the barracks with all the muggle electricity buzzing in his ears.

On the plus side, guns and grenades were so much more fun that he ever imagined. So was hand to hand fighting now that he had mostly gotten the hang of it.

His thoughts returned to his scrum of puffs. Not only was every one of them counting on him, LeClerc was on him to sort them out. Hufflepuff Head Boy indeed... But even if what the instructor said was true, he didn't have a gallon of paste. There hadn't even been a single thunderstorm in the last two months. That's what old Helga did, right? Somehow, teach everybody else's rejects, including the ones without a scrap of magic to their name. He had already posted a muggle letter to McGonagall, but she had refused to share any of Momma Puff's writings, citing his expulsion for multiple counts of murdering fellow students.

Considerable coaching on the hand motions as well as focus on magic flow had gotten all of them through the simple cleaning and laundry charms as well as the translation spell, so that was progress.

He ran a quick exaresco, wringing his clothing dry before folding it, square and tight, exactly as LeClerc had demonstrated. Every piece fit the steamer trunk at the base of his rack. He rubbed his swollen eyes and yawned. The clock buzzing away with its muggle electricity said half midnight. They were getting off easy tonight after what must have been two hundred vaccinations and various shots. His nose had been running all afternoon. Half the men in his battalion had been in the bathroom ever since lunch. His mind was running full tilt with things he needed to do, but the woolen army blanket was so much warmer than the stone floor in Azkaban.

Draco's eyelids slid shut for a second, and he was sprinting through a bright, clear forest while early dusk's light dappled his arms. He stopped to sniff the air and wiped a trail of drool off his chin. His quarry was close. The roe buck was barely as big as a dog, but he had been tracking it for half an hour. He had been craving meat ever since his first go with Koszjek, but tonight, the deer's faint aroma, barely discernible above the leaf mould, was intoxicating. So he ran and ran. Each time he got close, the animal was just out of reach.

The full moon was up now, glittering and bright, but he was hiding, creeping, stalking. The forest was bright as noonday when he caught the scent of a rabbit. He hid in the shadow of a thicket and stilled the heartbeat pounding in his ears. Green leaves rustled as the hare waddled out of a bramble thicket to a patch of yellow clover. Its brown nose twitched, wiggling its whiskers. It was trying to smell him, but could not. He had silently circled downwind. The cool night air's natural flow downhill would carry any lingering scent towards him. Tall, fuzzy ears rotated back and forth as it put its attention to the sweet clover and he waited.

Half an hour of watching had the rabbit turned straight towards him. He was in the perfect spot, exactly where it was blind. The rabbit would startle straight ahead into his hands. Every single muscle was coiled and ready to leap. It hopped forward another foot, and he went. His hands wrapped over its neck as he bit and shook, but the world swirled and sloshed, crashing sideways to angry bleating.

His eyes came into focus and he was laying on the floor beside his bed with a mouth stuffed full of pillow while his half-three AM alarm blared. Koszjek was limping back from the bathroom, and stopped. The big man wiped a slick of sweat off his pink face. "My stomach is such a mess after all those shots."

Draco smoothed the covers on his bed, refolded the hospital corners, and set his pillow back in place before donning his jogging shorts and sneakers for morning PT. "You don't look so good. Think LeClerc will take it easy on us this morning?"

The big man's stomach gurgled. "I hope so," but his face betrayed his doubt. Soon, they stood at attention while the morning announcements blared over the loud speakers. LeClerc marched up and took his place. Dupont had his hand raised before anyone could say a word. LeClerc scowled, but a geyser of vomit poured out before Dupont could get any words out. Within three minutes, half the men were doubled over and LeClerc was cursing "Those blasted fuckers in the medical wing! I told them this was going to happen!"

With that, he marched the entire battalion to the Captain Rosencrantz's hospital ward, where she met them outside. "Not one step inside my hospital!"

LeClerc was cursing and yelling at her while she shoved fingers into his chest and snarled right back. He hauled Draco out of line and shoved him at her. "Here! He's a wizard. Have him mix up whatever you need."

She shoved Draco back at LeClerc. "This inbred moron? What the hell am I supposed to do with the Sister Fucker? He can't even remember his name most times he's come in here."

LeClerc's hands were shoved into his hips. "He's the only one I've got who can do any magic at all!" He turned to Draco. "Can you mix potions, sister fucker?"

"Yes, Chef."

"No! This idiot will poison every one of them." She threw up her hands and stomped back inside the hospital.

LeClerc narrowed his eyes. "Are you going to poison your brothers?"

"No chef. I can do potions."

"Get in there and sort this mess out. You've got anyone you need."

"Yes, Chef." And with that, Draco swung the door open and walked in.

The waiting area was empty, so he made his way to the back and knocked on the captain's door. It swung open on its own, so he walked in and stood at attention.

She was hunched over the desk with her nose in an old book. "You? Out!"

"Mon Capitan, I would just get carried straight back in with a dozen broken ribs."

"No, you would be dumped outside with a dozen broken ribs."

"I can help."

"I don't see how."

"I had seven years of potions."

"Where?"

"Hogwarts, in England."

She groaned. "So, mister inbred sack of shit gets a couple years of secondary school and thinks he knows potions? Which one would you use to counteract vomiting caused by one hundred nineteen different viral vaccinations in concert with heavy doses of pyroxidine and permetherin anti-wormer, on top of half a dozen other anti-parasitics? Oh, and don't forget about the mustard gas antidote they weren't supposed to administer for another two weeks?"

A smile creased the corner of his lip. "Whichever one Mon Capitan ordered me to."

"There are twenty-one Wesen species, not counting mixed bloods and part Kehrsite, as well as seven flavors of half-wizards. Feed a Bludbaden remedy to a Skalengek and what happens?"

"I do not know, mon capitan."

She passed him a jar. "Identify."

He brought the greenish liquid past his nose. "Spirit Oleander. Thirty percent."

"And this?" she slid over a square tin with shredded leaves.

"Coca leaf. Probably two years old."

And another of a yellow powder. He sniffed. "Barley pollen. It's only twenty percent viable."

She laced her fingers while staring out the window. After a minute, she pulled out a legal pad and scratched out lines and lines of notes. "I need six batches worth, but I've only got enough supplies for half of one. You will collect the ingredients."

"Yes, mon capitan."

"If nothing else, it will keep your sorry ass out of my way for a few hours. You are not to get your inbred idiot ribs kicked in, get into any fights, or come back to me with any injuries. Do you understand?"

"Yes, mon capitan."

The blue in her eyes vanished as a murky gray sheeted over them. He swallowed hard at the Aveda's green sparks blooming from her fingertips. "Or I will kill you myself."

He marched outside and reviewed his orders with LeClerc. The drill instructor smirked. "How would you divide the men up?"

He split the list into logical groups by habitat and then divided the remaining forty mostly-able men into nine groups. Wolfish bludbaden and pig-like Bauerschwein had the best noses, but you couldn't put them in small groups together. Feline wesen like the Puma like Balaam and the Lynx like Wenton ogen were natural climbers and stalkers, but they hated swamps that lizardy Skalengek loved. And so so forth. Then, he scattered the Wizards throughout the groups and gave them instructions to keep out of trouble. Everyone had their assignments and began their scavenger hunt.

Half an hour later, he had made the rounds. The first groups were returning. Draco was checking all the ingredients and sorting the wheat from the chaff. On a guess, he kept everything they brought and correctly labelled the mistakes. You just never know. The second round went out for the missing things as he went to go find the wandering children.

Franco, the Skalengek and Ludo, the Bauerschwein were fighting over the grubs, salamanders, and bugs. They were nearly done, but they had eaten more than they had gotten in the jars. He got them back on track and headed back to the hospital with everything they had collected.

Ten minutes later, he found Koszjek shaking a pine tree and yelling at a blonde haired man up in the crown. Draco groaned. "You're like children!"

"Stupid pussy keeps hitting me with pinecones!"

The recruit at the top of the tree snorted and chucked another spiny cone straight at Koszjek's head. "Fetch that you little bitch!"

Koszjek twisted his head and transformed into the huge wolf monster. He flared his eyes fiery red and heaved on the tree, shaking it to and fro. The recruit transformed, sheeting his body in black-striped white fur and hooked claws into the branches. The huge Lynx-like monster was hissing with laughter as he pitched another, clonking Koszjek with a particularly large pine cone.

"Merlin, you're like children. Stop shaking. How many pinecones do you have?"

Koszjek pointed at the pile on the ground before hurling one straight back up into the tree, smacking the recruit's back. They had every bit of a bushel of the immature, green cones, more than enough. "Ok, good, I need you guys to move on to the green apples."

The recruit in the tree blew Koszjek a raspberry, slapped his butt, and leapt from the pine tree, caught the branches of an oak, and scampered off through the crown. He wound his way into the top of a huge apple tree. Koszjek bounded off after him, hurling branches and rocks as he went. Draco threw the sack of pinecones over his shoulder and headed off.

He arrived at a bramble patch along the chain link fence past the cemetery. Three wizards were carefully plucking blackberry flower petals and packing them into jars. There, picking thorns out of his pants, sat an angry looking fellow. He wiped sweat off his bronze brow before jerking a handful of leaves loose and stuffing them into one of the jars.

Draco sat down next to him. They exchanged pleasantries and he got down to business. "I have sort of a special request from Captain Rosencrantz."

"Whatever it is, no."

"She says it's required to get the men back on their feet."

The man groaned. "Didn't you learn never to volunteer for anything?"

"LeClerc volunteered me, didn't he."

The recruit snorted out a laugh. "So, what do you want?"

He wiggled a small jar between two fingers. "Venom."

The man spat. "Not even if you had tits."

Draco put on his best Harry Potter. "How many times did you say you've cycled back through?"

"Three. I have to make it this time. LeClerc isn't kidding about only one way out for our lot. Fucking farm. I hate that fucking place. What I wouldn't give for a cigarette. I haven't had one in ten months."

Draco chuckled and twisted his hand. A haze of cloud sheeted his palm and he laid three on the man's knee.

The recruit greedily snuck two into his pocket while pushing the third between his lips. "Still no. Got a light?"

A quick flick brought a small flare at the end of his fingers. The recruit leaned over and took a slow a drag, igniting the cigarette. Smoke slowly drifted out of his nose. "God, that's good. You just don't know."

Draco waited, and the recruit continued. "I just don't get you. Why do you let those guys beat the hell out of you like that."

"Hand to hand?"

The man nodded and continued. "You have all this crazy power. Last week, you scrambled Chevon's brain. Couldn't remember his name or see straight for two days. But you just let him smash you through a car door."

"Let him? You think I let him?"

The recruit savored the smoke and the blew a thin cloud into the air. "That's why LeClerc kicked the shit out of you? Right? You gave up."

"I'm not supposed to use magic"

The recruit huffed out a laugh. "That's rich. Remind me who drives half of us around on any given day."

It was true. Just yesterday, Draco had seventy men imperiused for their vaccinations.

The man continued. "This class is huge. Last cycle, half the battalion was dead before immunizations. They don't care. LeClerc does, but not the command. We're just trash. So, how'd you end up in here?"

Draco let out a long sigh. "Prison. Condition of my parole."

"I knew when you weren't just some prissy little bitch like the rest of the wizards. The bite marks all over your back? Something spent a long time eating you."

"Happened in prison."

The man took another drag of the cigarette. "Yeah, I can always tell the ones on the hard road. The murderers. You all have the same look, like that other guy is just meat."

Koszjek and Chevon both had that look. Predatory, they enjoyed killing. Dupont too, and LeClerc especially. By implication, he was in the same group. Did he enjoy it? Potter didn't, even at war, but himself? He wasn't foolish enough to deny it, especially with wind in his face, ripping through the treetops on a silent broom with his great grandfather's saber sizzling black in the night, itching to give the signal. That's why he had capitulated to The Legion's offer against the advice of the lawyers and his mother. Parole in two years if he enlisted, the Azkaban sentence commuted after five years service. The siren song of war was just too alluring.

The recruit stuffed another handful of miscellaneous weeds into the jar, shaking Draco out of his memories. "Come on, just dandelions."

The man shrugged. "Why didn't you just take it?"

Draco waited, and the recruit continued. "You could have. You've witched me enough. I wouldn't even have known."

Draco shrugged. "Figured, maybe there was something you needed."

"What I need is to get through the fucking farm."

He passed the recruit the empty jar. "Maybe we can come to some sort of arrangement."

The man shrugged. "I guess it doesn't matter. I'm going go die anyway." With that, he twisted his head. Buff scales sheeted his body. The sides of his neck flared out into a floppy oval as his face flattened into a cobra-like profile. The Koenigschlange hissed and flicked his forked tongue at the jar, and opened his mouth over a foot wide. Curved fangs, longer than Draco's hand hinged down from inside his mouth, dripping with venom. He pressed the jar against glands at the base of the fang and squirted it in. He repeated the procedure on the opposite side before transforming back.

Draco laid a half dozen more cigarettes in the man's lap, and lit one for him. The man nodded and handed the jar back, half full of amber venom, and took a drag off his cigarette.