Chapter 11

Chapter 11

"This is a damnable thing that we're doing."

"Yes."

Andy had remembered and located a drain pipe that carried rain water away from the house. Would the entity respond to vibrations sent through the pipe? Adolf and Filius gave the signal, Andy tapped three times on the pipe, and the two wizards fired small fire-bolts from their wands into the ground wherever it seemed likely the entity had roots. Four days after the beginning of this exercise, the three taps produced a plethora of tendrils eager to rend the tormenters.

"We're ready for the officials. I wish we could send up flares to warn us when they're about to strike," said Filius.

"What do you suggest?" asked Adolf. "One if by teleportation; two if by broom."

"Very funny," said Cissy.

"A warning that the government is coming would be useful," said Andy. "We can place wards around the estate."

They charmed sticks to fire stinging hexes and hid them around the house. The weekend was over, and Andy and Cissy stayed to keep vigil while Adolf and Filius reluctantly returned to school. It was mid-morning Wednesday when an outer alarm alerted the two women. They hid in the place they had prepared next to the drain pipe.

"They certainly sent enough of us," said an advance agent, warily approaching the house.

"Would you rather it was just the two of us?" asked his partner.

"We could quietly scout the premises, and no one would miss a few baubles that happened to be lying around."

The two advance agents signaled that the coast was clear and no danger could be detected. The thirty other members of the unit charged the house and tripped the alarms. They stopped. Someone thought he heard three light taps.

The advance agent looked down. "My foot is sliced off," he said.

He reached down to get it, but toppled over. His partner tried to help him up, but a root penetrated his side. Four other agents ran up, spraying fire. They lost their wand hands. From cover, Andy cast an area spell, and each charmed stick fired its sting. Andy and Cissy stayed deep in their hole as screams and hexes filled the air.

Late that Friday afternoon, when Hermione dropped in on Ron and Harry, they had quite a story to tell.

"We missed the whole thing," complained Ron. "They only let senior agents participate."

"Everyone who went is getting a medal for valor," said Harry. "It began with an anonymous tip that a gang of thieves was going to raid the Black estate."

"Thieves?" asked Hermione.

"Yes," said Harry, "but even if it was the Black estate, we're pledged to protect the lives and property of our citizens, so we sent a force to guard the place."

"But the tip didn't say how many thieves there were, and our people were vastly outnumbered," said Ron.

In his excitement, Ron stood. "But our men stood their ground and fought gallantly enough that the thieves fled. By the time reinforcements arrived, only our agents were there."

"That was brave," said Hermione.

"Very," said Harry. "More than half the agents are in hospital, some of them with ghastly wounds."

Hermione commiserated with Ron and Harry that they hadn't participated and had missed a chance to show their mettle.

That night, at dinner at school, Hermione kept stealing glances at Adolf and Filius. What had they done to fend off thirty-two law-enforcement officers? They looked melancholy – as if mass carnage was weighing on their minds.

The editor was thinking that the situation called for a girl more attuned to others than the self-centered Hermione. It called for the responses that the editor knew were deep within her own self waiting for the appropriate opportunity. The editor was thinking that the occasion called, not for the false assertions that the dark parts of the deed were not important which only reminded the wounded hero of his failings, but for demonstrations that his whole life was accepted. The editor halted these musings: Don't think, write.

The female heart, when focused, discerns the secret needs of the one held dear even if the possessor of that sympathetic organ is unaware that she, indeed, has deep feelings, and hence, Pansy, guided – nay, driven – by impulses that bewildered her conscious mind, managed to intercept Professor Galland on his way to a remote tower whereupon she approached him and greeted him by saying she hadn't seen him in quite some time, and even though this seemed lame to her and she had stumbled it out in confused embarrassment, he responded that it had been quite some time in such a friendly manner that she was emboldened to ask where he was going, and when he said that he wanted to look at the stars for a while, she replied that that sounded like a good idea, and, her heart pounding at her temerity and the possibility of his rejection, she walked with him, and when they arrived, she, terrified at what she was suggesting, remarked that it was cold on the heights, but he folded her inside his cloak where her knees almost gave way as she breathed in his clean, masculine scent, and she wanted to say something to keep him there, anything to keep him with her, but she was mindless, and in this fearful state that he would soon leave, it slowly registered that he was telling her she was a brave girl who had returned to school alone and who had questioned her family's values and how he admired her, and as these words were breaking through her defenses, he added that she was a lovely lady, and his hand had not finished the first stroke of her hair before her lips were on his and nothing else existed for her.

Biff was not happy. The editor was constantly reminding him that a bit of adventure might be okay while their readers recuperated for the next round of romantic frenzy, but too much was not acceptable. Besides, the story had too many witches and not enough wizards. What was he doing, writing some male fantasy about a kingdom of surplus females?

He was in a dilemma. He already knew most readers were women, but the wizards in canon didn't have enough moxie, and if he juiced them up, they would be out of character.

At dinner, the Headmaster had introduced Professor Alain Roeder to the school as a special instructor in Crystals. He would spend the next several weeks conducting demonstrations in the field to the seventh years. A select few might want to enter this demanding field. The students scrutinized the steely gentleman with the iron-grey hair and dark aura and thought, A select few, indeed. That evening Adolf introduced Alain to Filius and Horace.

"The famous English Port and walnuts," said Alain approvingly.

Taking a sip, he turned to Adolf and said, "I wondered where you had hidden yourself, my man."

Filius and Horace leaned forward to hear more.

"Hasn't Adolf told you about his adventures?" asked Alain. "It was a famous scandal. I thought he would be bragging."

"It was a misunderstanding," said Adolf.

"That's not the popular version," said Alain. "Tell us yours."

"A female student from Romania, a daughter of some royal family, decided she fancied me," said Adolf.

"Not the only female student to have done so," injected Alain.

"Instead of telling her I wasn't attracted to her, I tried to be kind, and I said I couldn't be involved with a student. This made her think that only my professional ethics kept me from ravishing her on the spot," said Adolf. "She expressed this opinion emphatically enough that both her family and her betrothed, from another royal family, concluded that I had villainously seduced her."

"Europe became too hot to hold him," announced Alain.

Alain addressed Filius and Horace apologetically. "This is probably a puzzle to you. You English do not have the passionate women that one finds in our part of the world. Perhaps, you are fortunate."

Like a Marathon runner discovering a landslide across the official trail, the editor broke her regular stride and abandoned the approved route

"That raid is going to set us behind a month," said Andy. "We don't dare get close to that thing until it's calmed down."

"At least, the government, after saving the estate from largest gang of thieves in wizard history, can leave us to fend for ourselves," said Cissy.

"All praise to officialdom," said Andy.

before returning to the designated path.

What small things trigger the receptacles of our mind and so it was when Draco, fulfilling an earlier promise to a girl who now despised him, found himself repairing the fence for the herd of Razorfanged-Fuzzies who, he could see out of the corner of his eye were buzzing maliciously and egging forward the largest member, who would rush him the second it thought he was not on his guard, but even aware of his danger, Draco was not prepared for his reaction when his thumb brushed a splinter on the wooden rail and a drop of his blood spattered across the snow – the snow dirty with dust that did remind him of dishwater blonde hair, and the blood, blood brighter than anything about the pale countenance of the one who had misjudged him so unfairly – a reaction that dredged emotions he believed burned out of his system and that now burned through him and so consumed him that the small voice saying, "Draco, the Razorfanged-Fuzzies," was not heard, and as he feasted his eyes on the dirty snow that he knew would never be golden blonde, the small voice was yelling, "Draco, the Razorfanged-Fuzzies are stirring," but he had no ear for anything as his being was captured by the droplets of blood brighter than anything a dotty girl could ever offer him, and his feelings welled up inside him to the point that, when the small voice screamed, "Draco, it's charging," he yanked out his wand and blasted the leaping Razorfanged-Fuzzy into such fiery oblivion that the rest of the horde cowered in the corner of their pen and the Beast Professor never found any evidence of what had happened to one of his beloved creatures.