Summary: There will be 31 days of mayhem, but I'm not sure there will be 31 actual stories. That would require more brain than Corvus has.
Beta Love: Dragon and the Cold Water Bottle Torture, Dutchgirl01 the Busiest Bee that Ever Buzzed, Commander Shepard the Winter Soldier
A/N: Each story will be a separate chapter to feed my laziness and desire not to post that many new stories for the same event.
An Idiot's Guide to Herbology
Frisbeetarianism is the belief that when you die, your soul goes up on the roof and gets stuck.
George Carlin
Prompt: It was only a rumour. A meadow with shards of bone in the soil where the wildflowers grew lush and tall.
Death Eaters weren't terribly keen readers.
Most of them muddled through life with barely enough skill to read the Latin for spells without turning themselves into inverse elephants.
It was only natural for them to ignore the hand-painted sign that stated, WARNING: CARNIVOROUS PLANT LIFE WITHIN, NO TRESPASSING!
Perhaps, Hermione pondered, she should have made the sign even more—brightly coloured.
A pod full of sharp teeth clacked in front of her face, and then nudged her nose playfully, wobbling like a happy dog.
She sighed, petting the pod's "tongue" as one might pet a whale's tongue. "You're so insufferable."
The nearby fanged geraniums rattled happily in the sun, and every so often a squirrel got too close and ended up with a fang or two in its arse.
The ancient Whomping Willow wrapped its branches around her and yoinked her upward into its branches where their comfy treehouse was perched. Her sleepy cubs were sprawled on various smaller branches, having tuckered themselves out from hard play. While her Nundu form loved the branches just as they were, a home was required for research and entertaining guests. Most guests couldn't sit comfortably on a tree branch and avoid being bashed on by a suspicious willow.
Whomping Willows were experts at being sus.
All the time.
It was why Nundus loved them as a place to raise their families.
She, like her parents before her, had experienced a willow christening her fur with pollen and claiming her as its personal bark scratching, catkin chewing assistant and comrade.
She admitted Severus looked so terribly disgruntled covered in pollen. It made him look like a lost galaxy with all the spots swirling over his previously pristine black coat with innumerable white and gold pollen grains.
At least the students stayed well away from the cranky willow—but Death Eaters—
Well, they never did like to follow directions or listen to threats.
Now, their torn and dismembered bodies lay underneath the churned earth, feeding the various magical carnivorous plants that had started to show up on the grounds now that Nundus had moved in.
It was only polite to share the bits they didn't eat from their kill with their plant friends—but the plants didn't exactly turn down a free meal that delivered itself so conveniently late at night by storming the school.
Idiots.
And Dumbledore's greater plan, whatever it was, was lobbed into the rubbish bin as Death Eater after Death Eater stormed towards the school, thinking without the great headmaster that seizing the castle would be shockingly easy.
A horde of angry Tentaculas swiftly took those that went through the greenhouses.
Those that went the way of the back patch where the willow was—only random shards of bone remained, scattered about like handfuls of wood chips upon the earth.
And those who escaped those fates found that the DoM was nowhere near as oblivious as the rest of the Ministry as Manfred Morgan greeted them at the door and SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEEED, bursting their organs from the inside with the power of sound.
Voldemort was no more.
And Potter was out hunting the Horcruxes with a team of actual ADULTS instead of starving in a tent as he gallivanted across the countryside with a prayer and a shoestring.
And Nagini was the first to go—thanks to the Willow that snatched her up by the tail and bashed her against the side of Hogwarts until she was basically handbag material.
Rumour had it that Kingsley now had a glorious man-bag that he gleefully carried to all of his meetings at the Ministry.
It was only a rumour, so of course, everyone knew about it.
He may or may not have had a matching set of luggage as well.
And a briefcase.
And a wallet.
And a fine pair of dress boots.
Only Kingsley could manage to pull that off and remain enviously suave and stylish like it was perfectly natural.
Severus thumped my head down to the branch and gave me a thorough grooming before he jumped down off the willow and transformed into his human form, his black woollen robes billowing out behind him as he returned to "work" as the Headmaster of Hogwarts.
He'd tried to pawn it off on Minerva, but the old Scotswoman was like, "Nae laddie, a wullnae be heidy, headmistress, or whit hae ye o' this schuil. Ah dinnae wantae goup at that mingin' decor 'n' mind howfur muckle a'm waantin' tae wring that auld man's neck!"
Hermione thought, probably, that was a no. Under all that brogue.
Minerva always got so heavy in her accent when she was utterly adamant about something.
So, Severus reluctantly became Headmaster (again,) and she became the magical school's first guardian Nundu and official caretaker of the Whomping Willow.
There were far fewer hallway lollygaggers, merry pranksters, curfew scofflaws, and wayward broom closet snoggers wandering Hogwarts at night ever since the night she and Severus had mated and proceeded to make their home in the Willow.
She couldn't imagine why.
Maybe it had something to do with Nundu nocturnal prowling habits.
Maybe.
Either way, as Hermione patrolled the halls at night for a few hours after curfew, her cubs of course had to come with, and they were always keen on catching any of those lollygaggers, pranksters, scofflaws, and snoggers. Hermione thought her cubs were adorable, but the screaming children ran back to their dorms with more haste than sense.
Then, playtime over, she tucked her cubs into their tree beds, never neglecting personal dental hygiene by gnawing on a few stubborn catkins that needed breaking open and sharpening their claws on the rough bark patches that made the willow itchy. The willow always seemed grateful for the help.
There was a lot less hate being pushed around at Hogwarts with the arrival of the Nundu family—or rather, the settling of them. Arguably, she and Severus had been at Hogwarts for quite some time just not as a mated pair.
Hermione had experienced a very postponed post-Voldemort heat, proclaiming her desire for an appropriately furry, disease-breathing mate from atop the willow's branches, and a certain black-furred suitor had arrived shortly after, convincing her of his prowess with a freshly killed stag, seductive crooning chuffs, at least four working legs, a mouth full of sharp teeth, working claws, and suitably long whiskers.
He was perfect.
Her parents had always encouraged her to get a nice, experienced male for a mate. She wasn't complaining.
Severus was quite purr-able, thank you very much. So much more that he was able to be his true Nundu self instead of—whatever that had been when she was a cub pretending to be human.
Nundu, unlike their leopard cousins, were dutiful mates who believed in shared parentage and a shared territory-home. The willow agreed. Who wanted to argue with that?
Well, they didn't.
And with two healthy cubs with fine teeth, sharp claws, and all pouncing mechanisms in full working order, no Nundu was going to complain that their cubs weren't well taken care of.
And since every Whomping Willow had an official Nundu clause attached (one could never purchase or plant a Whomping Willow outside of Africa and then bar the natural symbiont species from arriving) Dumbledore had inadvertently signed up for Nundu, one way or another.
Life was good.
And as Severus said often, justice was sweeter when they could live well while savouring the utter stupidity of others.
Purrr. Purrr.
Admittedly, Sybill couldn't see much of anything even with her glasses. She'd never really wanted to see—if she saw, she saw entirely too much, so she drank to drive such things away. But she always heard Severus' voice and just knew he was for her.
He was the one.
And that young trollop didn't deserve him.
He knew it in his heart, all she had to do was convince him that he simply couldn't deny fate.
So, she doused herself in her very best mystical perfume, spiked with some extra special and highly potent pheromones from Knockturn Alley and mixed that with some vial of ancient Chinese "special"elixir from the Muggle Chinatown in London, and prepared herself to woo the only one that mattered.
It was full dark, of course, but she was used to not being able to see where she was going.
She spotted a faint glow coming from the large sign that was posted by the supposedly "dangerous" field, but she couldn't read it even with her face pressed against it, so she decided to ignore it. Severus was her priority, after all, not some dumb field.
Suddenly, a stern-sounding voice announced, "Warning, this is a prohibited natural wildlife preserve. The denizens of this area are protected under Wizarding Law -2. Trespassing is strictly—BBBZZTT!"
Trelawney zapped the sign with her magic. "Hush."
She trudged by the stunned sign, oblivious to the stirring Venomous Tentaculas and Audrecious Magicuses in the dark.
High up in the tree top, two young Nundu cubs, one black with gold rosettes and one gold with black were curled up together in solidarity. The gold one lifted her head and stared, ears flicking.
"You hear that, brother?"
"Go back to sleep," her brother answered, smacking her head down with one paw.
"Mmffok," she replied, snuggling into her sibling.
They were out like a light.
The next morning, the Aurors were gathered around the distinctly lush(er) field of carnivorous wildflowers, and one particularly plump pod of the Audrecious Magicus, shaking their heads at the little bits of bone scattered about the area.
Harry Potter, Auror apprentice, rubbed the space between his eyes. "Couldn't have happened to a more deserving idiot," he muttered.
"Coming up for tea, Harry?" Hermione called down from the treehouse.
"Yeah, after we finish the paperwork!" he called back. He repaired and righted the much-abused sign back into proper order and the small addition read:
TO DATE, THERE HAVE BEEN 47 NOW-DECEASED IDIOTS WHO FAILED TO HEED THIS SIGN written in a dark, heavy hand. The 47 ticked over to 48.
Harry was then immediately pounced into the dirt by two highly enthusiastic Nundu cubs. "HI, UNCLE HARRY!" they cried gleefully.
Harry, now supine amongst the lupines, could only wheeze helplessly in response.
And they lived with flower-chomped idiots ever after.