Harmless and Easily Domesticated

The Ramora

After that, Care of Magical Creatures lessons were mainly spent poisoning the Horklumps with Streeler venom. Though Horklumps looked like flesh-coloured, black-bristled mushrooms, they were really animals, pushing their root-like tentacles through the soil to hunt for earthworms. From the trail of eggs Mr Malfoy had scattered, they spread across the Hogwarts grounds like wildfire.

Hagrid was in despair.

'Once yeh've got Horklumps in yer lawn, yeh'll never get 'em out,' he told Harry, Ron and Hermione. 'If I get me hands on that Lucius Malfoy --'

His massive fingers made vigorous wringing motions.

Hagrid did manage to procure some Imps -- brown, flightless, marsh-dwelling Cornish Pixies. In short order, they escaped from their cage and took up residence in the bulrushes by the shore of the lake, where they made a terrible nuisance of themselves shoving and tripping anyone who strayed too close. When Dennis Creevey hit his head on a rock and had to be rescued from drowning yet again by the Giant Squid, Professor Lupin was called back to Hogwarts recapture them. Ron asked if he could stay on to help them deal with the Horklumps, but Lupin regretfully declined.

'I couldn't do a thing you students aren't already doing, and a single extra pair of hands won't make much of a difference,' he said. 'Once you've got Horklumps in your lawn, I'm afraid you'll never completely get rid of them ...'

After a month of hard labour, Harry began to fear that Lupin was right. At long last, however, the Horklumps' numbers were sufficiently reduced for Hagrid to keep them under control without assistance. At around that time, the Ramoras arrived.

A rare species of magical fish native to the Indian Ocean, Ramoras were fiercely protected by the International Confederation of Wizards and the Indian Ministry of Magic. For weeks Hermione had been pelting their own Ministry with owls seeking the special permissions required to obtain specimens, and her efforts had finally paid off.

Slender, darting and brilliantly silvery, the Ramoras were undoubtedly the most beautiful creatures they had studied that year. The flickering patterns they made as they swam about were strangely fascinating to watch. The merpeople who lived in the Hogwarts lake came up to see them. One or two of them could nearly always be found floating by the water's edge, gazing raptly into the Ramoras' tank and giving soft, screechy croons. Even Hagrid liked the Ramoras, which was saying something, as they truly did appear to be genuinely harmless.

The Ministry had sent three Ramoras in a tank the size of a large television set. A fortnight after their delivery, the tank had to be enlarged -- the original trio had spawned a dozen tiny, glittering babies. Hagrid was quite pleased: it meant that the Ramora lessons could be prolonged indefinitely whilst the students observed them growing up. (The alternative was going back to Horklumps and Flobberworms.)

He was less pleased ten days later, when twenty odd more babies turned up. The tank had to be enlarged once more, to roughly the size of a teacher's desk. Moreover, the first batch were now over half the length of their parents. It clearly would not be long before they started producing broods of their own.

'I've never read anything about Ramoras breeding like this,' said Hermione anxiously. 'Perhaps we're overfeeding them ... I'll try and see if someone in the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures can contact the Indian Ministry for information ...'

That proved not to be necessary, however. Scarcely a week afterwards, the Indian Ministry contacted them.

The class was clustered around the tank taking their twice-weekly measurements of the young Ramoras when they were distracted by a loud thump. A coil of rope had dropped out of the sky behind them. One end rose up to vanish into the air; climbing down it was a white-robed, brown-skinned and very angry-looking wizard.

Immediately his feet touched the ground, the wizard spotted of the tank of Ramoras. He staggered back as though he had been punched in the stomach, a look of outraged horror on his face. When Hagrid lumbered over to see what was the matter, the wizard flew at him shouting wrathfully in a foreign language, and would have pummelled Hagrid with his fists had Hagrid not caught him by the collar and held him at arm's length.

'Calm down, now, calm down ...' Hagrid said, but the wizard either didn't understand English or was too incensed to speak it.

'What's he saying?' Ron asked Hermione.

'I don't know, I don't speak -- Hindi, I suppose, or Urdu --'

'Bengali, actually,' said Parvati Patil. 'Load of insults, mostly -- shameless bandit ... filthy son of a pig ... thieving rakshasa -- I think he thinks Hagrid stole the Ramoras.'

'What?' shrieked Hermione, looking nearly as angry as the Indian wizard. 'He never! We got them from the Ministry of Magic! I went through the proper channels, I filled out all the forms, I have letters! You tell him, Parvati, you tell him I have letters!'

Parvati backed away. She plainly wanted nothing to do with the situation, and Harry couldn't blame her. The Indian wizard was practically frothing at the mouth as he shouted at Hagrid with unabated fury. Hagrid's face was screwed up in concentration, in the apparent belief that if only he listened intently enough, he would somehow magically begin to comprehend the other wizard's language.

'I reckon we'd better tell Dumbledore about this,' said Harry. 'If there's a problem with the Ramoras, he'll sort it out. Hermione, you go fetch those letters. We'll meet you by the gargoyle.'

Hermione tore off up the lawn to the castle. With Harry and Ron flanking her as bodyguards, Parvati was persuaded to approach the Indian wizard and request in Bengali that he accompany them to Dumbledore's office. The wizard was sufficiently astonished at being addressed in his own language (or possibly merely starting to run short of breath) that he actually did as they asked him.

Hermione was waiting in front of the gargoyle with an armful of parchment. Hagrid gave the password and they all trooped up the stone staircase, through the polished oak door and into the circular room. When the Indian wizard caught sight Dumbledore, he let out a fresh torrent of speech.

'Er -- he says --' began Parvati.

Dumbledore said something to her in the same language and she subsided.

'Hagrid didn't steal the Ramoras, we got them from the Ministry!' Hermione butted in. 'Look!'

She dumped her pile of parchments on Dumbledore's desk. Dumbledore sorted through them, making the occasional remark in Bengali. Some of the rolls of parchment he passed on to the Indian wizard, who tapped them with his wand, turning the letters into odd squiggles. After reading the last, he said a few words to Dumbledore, who waved his wand, causing the parchment to split into two identical copies. The wizard thrust one of them into his robes with an air of grim satisfaction; Dumbledore magicked the other back to English. Craning his neck, Harry was able to catch a glimpse of it before Dumbledore rolled it up again:

Dear Miss Granger,

Here are your perishing Ramoras, now will you please stop burying my office in owls ...

'What are they saying?' Hermione hissed at Parvati.

Dumbledore raised a hand to forestall her reply.

'Mr Serendip works for the Indian Ministry of Magic in their Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures,' he said. 'Under laws put into place by the International Confederation of Wizards, it is illegal to remove a Ramora from Indian territorial waters for any reason, although no one in our own Ministry appears to have been aware of this fact. Last month, a serious poaching incident occurred off the coast of Brahmapur. A number of the local merpeople were magically attacked by a group of wizards who were trawling for Ramoras with a net. As the merpeople were unable to identify their assailants, there seemed little chance of the culprits being brought to justice -- until Mer-chieftainess Murcus happened to mention to an Indian counterpart that Hogwarts had recently acquired Ramoras of its own, thus tipping off Mr Serendip to a Scottish connection. I believe, however, that I have convinced him that the school and its staff were acting in good faith. He will pursue his case against the responsible parties in the Ministry of Magic -- but the Ramoras must be returned at once.'

Dumbledore went with them to Hagrid's cabin to help arrange the transport of the Ramoras. When they reached the tank, Mr Serendip walked around it slowly, studying the Ramoras from every angle. Coming full circle, he muttered something that sounded like grudging approval.

He and Dumbledore held a brief conversation, after which Dumbledore said, 'Mr Serendip says that Hagrid may keep a pair of Ramoras for teaching purposes whilst he is in Britain -- he'll take them with him when he returns to India.'

'Be'er make it a pair o' males,' said Hagrid, 'or the rate they breed, there'll be thirty more by the time he comes back fer 'em.'

Mr Serendip must have understood at least a little English, for he looked thoroughly shocked at Hagrid's remark. He peered into the tank and began to speak excitedly.

'You mean that some of these Ramoras were bred at Hogwarts?' said Dumbledore.

'All of 'em excep' the biggest three,' said Hagrid.

Mr Serendip's voice grew even more excited as he directed another volley of words at Dumbledore.

'Only nobody has ever before succeeded in breeding Ramoras in captivity,' said Dumbledore. 'It's one of the major impediments to the Indian Ministry's conservation efforts. Er --' he cast wary glance at the Care of Magical Creatures students, who were gazing on in deep interest, '-- dare I ask how you managed it?'

'I wasn' tryin' ter breed 'em,' said Hagrid. 'I didn' do anythin' but feed 'em. Mind, Hermione reckoned I mighta bin givin' 'em a bit much --'

'A bit much what?' said Dumbledore.

'Ah, Horklumps, mostly,' said Hagrid, sounding slightly embarrassed. 'We had loads, an' they seemed ter like 'em, an' Gawd knows there's no other use fer Horklumps. An' Professor Snape's Goldfish Tonic -- they was lookin' a bit tarnished when we got 'em. Had ter swear never ter teach Chizpurfles again before he'd brew it, but it shined up them Ramoras a treat.'

Mr Serendip insisted on being taken to see Professor Snape straight away. Hermione dragged Harry and Ron along too, very much against their wills.

'This may well be the magizoological discovery of the century!' she told them sternly. 'And Goldfish Tonics could come up in our OWLs.'

'The Three Heavenly Lotus Formula?' said Snape, after Dumbledore had explained the situation. 'A commonly used potion in Japan -- many wizards there keep magical goldfish as pets. I obtained the instructions through Slug and Jigger from their supplier in the Far East.'

He produced a grubby sheet of rice parchment from the inner recesses of his desk. Mr Serendip surveyed it narrowly.

'You follow exact recipe?' he said.

'Naturally I followed the exact recipe,' said Snape coldly. 'With certain standard substitutions of locally available ingredients,' he added.

'If you could write down the instructions for the potion just as you brewed it, I'm sure Mr Serendip would be most grateful,' said Dumbledore.

So Snape took out a fresh roll of parchment and he wrote ... and he wrote ... and he wrote. For nearly ten minutes, not a sound was heard but the scratching of Snape's quill. The piece of parchment he at last tore off and gave to Dumbledore was easily seven times as long as the original.

'Gillyweed blossoms for Heavenly Lotus ... agrimony for crane's herb ... milkwort for yuan zhi ... yes, I see,' murmured Dumbledore, running a finger down the parchment. 'But surely an infusion of frogspawn isn't magical enough to take the place of Kappa brine?'

'It is if it's made with Hogwarts lake water,' said Snape shortly.

'And mock pickle of Chung K'uei?'

'A decoction of dill weed, dragon's blood, Ogden's Old Firewhiskey and Muggle curry powder,' said Snape. 'The instructions for brewing it are in the fourth footnote.'

'Severus, is there a single ingredient in this entire potion that you did not use a substitute for?' said Dumbledore, a note of amused exasperation in his voice.

'When I make substitutions,' said Snape haughtily, 'they work.'

But exactly how well they worked Harry was not to learn until one morning near the end of term.

'Oooh, look ...' said Hermione, opening her copy of the Daily Prophet. 'Hagrid's been shortlisted for the Marjoribanks Prize!'

'The what?' said Harry.

'The Marjoribanks Prize,' said Hermione. 'Awarded each decade for outstanding contributions to the field of Herbology.'

'Herbology?' said Ron. 'Hagrid?'

'Yes,' said Hermione, 'for finding an actual use for Horklumps.'

'I thought you said Horklumps were animals, not plants,' said Harry. 'They should be giving Hagrid a Magical Creatures prize ...'

'Well, there's still some debate about that,' said Hermione. 'And it's Snape who's up for the Magical Creatures prize. If his Ramora Tonic lives up to its promise, he has a fair chance of becoming the first Western wizard to receive the Order of Quang Po. Hogwarts has done quite well out of this Ramora poaching,' she went on as she buttered her toast. 'Far better than the Ministry of Magic. Questions have been raised in the International Confederation of Wizards, Britain could end up paying a stiff fine. There's a bright side to that as well, though -- Dumbledore says that Educational Decree Number Twenty-two will be getting revoked any day now. What with everything that's happened this year, the Ministry decided that harmless creatures are just too dangerous!'