The Scent of Trouble

Chapter 2/8 - Golems

The third growling worried Ron.

The first came from the thing at the foot of the tree. It had been there for hours now, circling, sharpening its claws on the trunk. The Forest's midnight gloom concealed all but its red eyes, but the carnivore breath wafting upwards reminded Ron of the thing's presence even when it was silent.

Still, whatever it was, if it hadn't reached him by now it couldn't reach him or Harry, much lessHermione who was farther up the tree. It would only be a problem if they fell, and then only a brief one.

When the thing arrived all the other Forest creatures had fled. The red-eyed thing had caught the slowest of them. It seemed to be a neat eater. The sound of crunching bones had gone on for a long, long time. Then the slobbering of its tongue, and a volcanic belch.

The second growling came from Ron's own stomach. An adolescent boy's stomach doesn't care if the boy is one slip away from another creature's gullet. It only cares if it is empty or not.

The picnic had been interrupted hours before, and they'd had to flee from their dinner to not be dinner themselves for the creatures of the Forest.

Ron's stomach was not so much empty as emptied. The magicked butterbeer had been his idea, and not one of his better ones. It had given him the heaves, and the others as well.

Ron now understood the expression "low man on the totem pole." If Hermione had at least aimed towards the other side of the tree . . . Not having his half-digested lunch in his stomach was bad, but being covered with Hermione's was worse. The smell was awful. But not enough to drown out that darn perfume.

He groaned and hugged the tree harder.

Then he heard the third growling again.

"Hermione, tell your stomach to pipe down, will you?"

"It's not my stomach, Ron. Harry?"

"Not me either. It's thunder, and it's getting closer."

Ron's usual optimism made a feeble attempt to assert itself. "Nothing wrong with a little rain on a warm night. At least it will wash Hermione's upchuck off me. Maybe it will wash off the perfume so we can do some magic again."

"This early in the summer it's going to be cold rain, and if the air is warm on this side of the storm, it'll be cold on the other." Hermione was struggling to act normally too.

"How can you prognosticate, Hermione?"

"What do you mean, how can I prognosticate?" She sighed after a moment. "I forgot, Ron. You never studied anywhere but magic schools. A thunderstorm happens when a mass of warm air meets a mass of cold air. So if we're on the warm side now . . ."

Ron thought about that. They were playing a waiting game. Eventually the beast below would tire and move off, the morning would come, or the enchanted perfume would wear off. But how long could they cling to the tree in a cold rain? All it took was a single slip. Goosebumps covered Ron's skin.

Indeed, they were all that covered him. His clothes were back in Gryffindor Tower. His golem had worn his clothes home, and would be asleep in his warm bed now. How he envied it! And the golems had seemed like such a good idea. But so had the butterbeer and the camping trip itself.

"Golems!" Hermione had said one morning a month ago, just before Potions. It was the only class they had together, and what with Quidditch practice and detention for turning Madame Trelawney's garters into garter snakes, the boys were unable to press her for details until just before lights-out in the Gryffindor common room.

The small fireplace in the nook was theirs by right of occupation, as it had been for countless cliques before them. Privacy spells woven by generations of students had unraveled and intertwined so that they formed not a web but an impenetrable tangle. It was as good a place as any at Hogwarts to conspire.

"What do you mean, 'golems'? What are they, and how do they let us sneak away for a weekend?" Ron leaned back in the deer-antler chair to the left of the fire, and glanced at Harry before turning what he thought of as a stern stare at Hermione.

She suppressed a giggle; it was so cute the way he tried to make his eyebrows bigger and darker. It just didn't work with red eyebrows. "Even Muggles know what golems are. They're very old magic. Think of them as robots made of clay."

"Robots?" Ron's expression was now one of genuine puzzlement.

"Hermione, remember Ron wasn't raised by Muggles. Just talk magic. And please, explain it step by step. I've never heard of a golem either."

"Sorry, Harry." She looked into the fire. When she spoke it was in the tone she used for delivering a report in class. "Golems are dolls make of clay and animated by magic. In classic magic they are full-size human simulacra, with more than human strength. They are most easily made in imitation of a living human. Blood, spit and hair of the original are mixed with clay to create the golem.

"Depending on the spells used, the golem can be an almost perfect replica of the original, and if properly attuned can even speak and move as the person would."

"A very good paper, Miss Granger." Harry applauded and Ron joined in. "But how can we get the spells? And what do you plan to do with the golems?"

"Elementary, my dear Potter," said Hermione. "We go on a picnic on Saturday. We send three golems back at the end of the afternoon. We camp in the hills, the golems eat dinner and go to bed. In the morning, they come back to the hills and we turn them back to clay."

"Could a golem really fool Dumbledore?" asked Ron.

Hermione spread her hands. "How often do we see Dumbledore? There aren't any classes on weekends, so we don't have to worry about a golem answering questions from teachers or being asked to foresee its future in Divination." Hermione giggled. "Although 'to clay we will return' is the sort of gloomy prediction that would please Madame Trelawney."

"It sound like a plan to me." Hermione and Ron looked at Harry, curled up in the worn dragon-leather armchair that had once been made for a giant. He started ticking off points on his fingers. "Everyone has learned not to bother us in this corner at night. No one is going to bother golems when they're in our beds. No one is at breakfast early on Sundays, not even teachers." He looked up. "If we can just the golems through Saturday dinner, we're O.K."

"But . . . Hermione, if there's one think I've learned at Hogwarts, it's that there's always a catch. If golems were so great we'd see them all the time. So what's the problem with golems?"

"For one, a golem has limited life. The spells that create it weaken the original. The longer the life the greater the weakness. Once the golem turns back to clay, the weakness passes.

"Golems don't have to be human. There've been experiments animating golem dogs, golem rats, even golem ants. The basic golem spells handle the creature's instincts. The more the original relies on instinct the better the imitation.

"The spells that make a golem look like a person are much better developed than the spells that make it act like a person. There are lots of different spells to make a golem look and feel exactly like a flesh-and-blood person. You can even use other spells so they take orders, just like you could animate a chair or a clock. Making it talk or act is where less work has been done, so the spells don't work nearly as well."

Ron frowned. "Why have mages spent so much more work on appearance? I mean, what use is an exact copy of you if I have to keep giving it orders to do what I want it to do?"

"Never MIND, Ron!"

For a moment Ron thought Hermione had turned red, but it must have been the fire flaring up. And whatever made her mad? Girls were so hard to understand.

"Hermione, so where don't the spells work well? Where could they go wrong?"

Harry too is single-minded, Hermione thought, and dense for someone otherwise so smart. She silently counted to five in Latin. When she spoke her lecturing tone was back.

"The spells transfer to the Golem what Freud called the id and the ego, but only very weakly copy the superego."

"Freud? Is he at Durmstrang?"

"Ron, forget I mentioned Freud." She counted again and thought. "Suppose I made a golem of you, and put a gooseberry pie in front of it. It would know that you like gooseberry pie very much, but it probably wouldn't remember that it's not polite to eat an entire pie. If the spells weren't done carefully, it might not even remember to use a knife and fork." She looked back and forth from Ron to Harry, trying to gauge what was understood. "It knows what you want to do, not what you should do. Like a three year old, or a spoiled brat."

Harry nodded. "So if Draco came up to the golem at dinner and started something, while I would just move away, the golem might pop him one."

"More like pop him two or three. Golems are very strong."

Ron laughed, "I like it!"

Harry smiled. "I like it too, but I'm afraid I know too well why I shouldn't always do what I like. We can't have the golems doing things that will get them hauled before Dumbledore.

"Hermione, can you find out how we can give these golems as much 'superego' as possible? Ron and I will try to figure out a way the golems can skip dinner that night." Harry looked at the other two. "But I think you've hit it, golems are the answer. Are we agreed?"

"I second it."

"Ditto."

The grandfather clock's chimes struck. Bedtime. Harry slid down from the giant's chair. "Hermione?"

"Yes, Harry?"

"I've never heard of golems before. Where did you read about them?"

"There's a lot about them in the books on the Restricted Section."

"What do people use them for?"

"Never mind, Harry." Hermione sighed. "You wouldn't understand."