The Scent of Trouble

Chapter 4/8 - Muddy Minds

Nothing can grow for centuries in an enchanted forest without gaining some measure of magic.

The nature of a tree is to grow and to endure. As its roots year by year pushed deeper into the earth and its branches each spring reached higher into the sky, the tree absorbed the magic of the land and made it into its own.

When the tree was young, when blue-painted druids danced in the grove, lightning had torn off one mighty bough.

The tree in its slow vegetative way had learned of lighting. It felt its wound and its leaves fluttered in the summer sun and somehow spun a spell against the anger of storms. Lightning troubled the tree no longer.

But termites live more quickly than trees, and they too burrow and climb. The wound grew through long years into a hollow in the heart of the tree, until the tree's slow magic hardened its substance and the insects found easier meals elsewhere.

The hollow remained, for a tree has no way to regrow old wood, and its instincts could not weave a spell not in its nature. Through the centuries creatures found the hole and made it their home. Owls roosted there, squirrels stored nuts against the winter, generations of bobcats raised litters there until their breed was gone from these isles.

Stranger creatures had made their homes in the hollow in the tree. Not for nothing was this known as the Forbidden Forest. Men who knew no magic learned not to enter the forest. Those who did rarely lived to exit it.

In their own ways, chittering or purring, flying strange patterns under the full moon or running spirals about the trunk, each creature who lived in the hollow cast what magic it could to defend and bless its home. The charm of a chipmunk may be a small thing, the spell of a sparrow is admittedly more fragile than an eggshell.

Grains of sand accumulating through centuries can build an island. So did tiny enchantments cling to the hollow in the tree, each the deepest desire of some small heart, beating under fur or feathers or scales, but always with the same message: "This is my home. Keep it safe. Shield my children. This is my place, this is home."

Ron Weasley knew nothing of that. When Hermione and Harry pulled him into the hole, cold and wet but finally clean, he only knew a feeling of contentment.

Tired and cold, he'd flopped into the hole. One hand had landed on something soft. Hermione's . . . chest, Ron thought desperately, chest. He twisted to the other side and landed in Harry's lap. That had happened before when their ankles had tangled in a soccer scrimmage, but then they'd been wearing shorts.

"Wow you're cold! Sit over there and dry out!" Harry half pushed, half lifted Ron until he was sitting with his back to the bole of the tree, directly opposite the hole.

"How are you, Ron?" Hermione's voice came from his left. The hollow was small, and the middle of it filled with a tangle of legs. Let me see, thought Ron, that shin my foot is on must be Hermione's, and that under my right knee is Harry's thigh.

He was feeling woozy again, and shook his head to clear it. "I'm fine, Hermione. Just let me sit a little."

The hollow offered no space to move away from the others. The warmth of their bare flesh pressing against his was welcome, but something about the closeness to Hermione confused him. Leaning against Harry felt strange, too. Maybe it was the darkness, or the insistent scent of perfume.

Ron leaned back and shut his eyes. Now the darkness seemed normal. He breathed in slowly, once, then again. Something in the smell tickled a memory. He tried to shut out all sensation of his two friends, and concentrate on the tree.

The hollow was dark and warm and dry. The trunk behind his back wasn't the rough bark that clothed the tree. Rather it was hardwood polished by centuries of fur. Dried vegetation crunched under him.

Ron sniffed. Behind the cloying smell of Hermione's enchanted perfume, he found the odd scent again. There. Then it came flooding back to him. He'd smelled something like it on a visit to his grandparents' when he had been very small. He had left the boisterous games of his older brothers and climbed to the attic, where he had opened an old trunk.

The smell was a mix of dust and old spices: autumn leaves and lavender, something of cedar shavings and pine needles and a faint musk of cat. Generations of birds and animals had built nests in the hollow of leaves and twigs gathered from the forest and the meadows around it. Some must have favored the same herbs that witches traveled to the Forest to collect.

Thinking of Grandma's made Ron feel small again. The legs tangled with his were no longer disturbing. "Everything will be all right now, won't it Harry?"

"We'll be all right, Ron. Something tells me we're safe here. The storm can't last, and neither can the night." He laughed. "Even that red-eyed thing that thought it had a three-course dinner is going to get wet and tired and go away."

"We're going to be a bit crowded sleeping here," observed Hermione.

Odd, thought Ron, she sounds more eager than upset. "I don't know about you, but after this afternoon, nothing could keep me from sleeping."

"I believe you, Ron. I believe you." Now she sounded upset. Girls.

"We're all right for the night," said Harry, "What worries me is the morning."

"Why? If we could climb up at night, climbing down in the morning should be a cinch."

"Ron, I'm not worried about our getting back to the camp. I'm worried about getting the golems up and out of Hogwarts early before anyone notices they're not us."

"You're right. It was just blind luck we got them to the dorms before the connection broke. Hermione?"

"What, Ron?"

"Your enchanted perfume. Will it wear off by morning?"

"I . . . I think so. The book said something about 'an unforgettable night'. So maybe it only lasts till dawn."

Harry spoke up. "Are you sure, Hermione?"

"Stop it, Harry! How can I be sure about anything that perfume will do!" She seemed about to sob. The boys waited. "I don't even know if the connection is just blocked, or if it's been broken."

"Well, the last commands we gave were to stay in the dorms. They can't get into too much trouble in bed. "

Ron thought back. Like everything about the picnic, the plan for keeping the golems under control had seemed foolproof.

"We can attune them." Hermione said.

"Attune them? Attune them how? Attune them to what?" Harry was feeling well. They all were. When Hermione spoke with that decisive tone, she'd solved a problem. And only one problem still imperiled their plans for the camping trip.

Hermione had thought of using golems to conceal their overnight absence from Hogwarts. Ron had the idea of magicking butterbeer into the potion adults drank, and now six bottles nestled under his bed. Only half pure, but still it was the stuff that made grownups merry.

Tomorrow Hagrid would show them through the hills above the Forbidden Forest, and they'd find the perfect spot.

Controlling the golems was the problem. The golems had to act like them, not just look like them. Left to themselves the golems would to what they wanted to do, not what they should do.

Hermione's tone said she must have found a way to make the golems behave.

She wouldn't tell till coaxed by both of them. Ron knew that as well as Harry, so he picked up the cue. "Hermione, you've found a way to control the golems?"

She looked around. As always, when these three retreated to the nook with the small fireplace the other Gryffindor students left them alone. She pulled a small tome bound in red leather from her book bag.

Several parchments protruded, and she opened the volume to the first.

"'Set the stuff of the golem close by her from whom it draweth its form, by day and by night, until the moon waneth from the half till it be dark, that her mind and heart may be impressed upon the clay, so when the spell be cast the copy be like unto the maid. Then the true mind may call to the shadow across great distance, and bend it to her will.'

"Then it's got the spell." She smiled. "I'll bet a Muggle book this old would have everyone as "he".

"It's so nice it's not sexist, Hermione, but how can we carry our weight in clay around with us for a week?"

Another smile. "My uncle the lawyer says 'there's always a loophole'. Hang on, I marked it.

"Here. 'As the goldsmith puts a king upon a coin, and the painter render a damsel's face in a locket that would not hold the nail of her least finger, the mage may make his seeming in miniature, and it be no less fine for that.'" She looked up from the red book, and glanced at Harry, then Ron.

"Great, Hermione, but how will we explain a Harry a foot tall? Tell everyone I took too hot a bath and shrank?"

Hermione sat, impassive, and Ron spoke up. "Let me guess. Another whole loop?"

"That's loophole, Ron. But yes, there is one." She ruffled the pages until she came to another parchment. "Um . . . yes. 'The golem, once made, may be made greater or lesser. But the spells need be cast anew, and if new clay be added, it need be from the same earth as the first. The golem may yet be formed into two and the charm cast again, making of the twin, twins, and the semblance fadeth not. But mark you that this brings great peril upon the maid that is the model, for the call upon her anima becomes not as two, but as four.'

"All right, Hermione, I see it. We make small golems, and carry them around. Then when we camp, we make the full-size golems, mixing in the clay from the small ones. We send them back to Hogwarts for the night. They mostly do what we would do, and we can control them if they go off the rails."

"That's about it, Harry. I found a few more shortcuts. The small golems don't have to be whole copies. They can be just heads, or just lumps. We only need the attuning spells on them, not the semblance spells."

Ron spoke up, "How do we control them?"

"The book says that if the golem's been attuned correctly, it's like controlling your own limbs. It just comes naturally."

"Hermione, I don't believe that."

She sighed. "Neither do I. But sometimes these old books are vague. I suppose we could practice with the little golems as soon as they're attuned"

"How do we carry them?" Ron looked skeptical

"The book says to carry it by your head to copy your thoughts, and by your heart to copy … well, your heart. In the book witches carry them in their hats."

He laughed. "We'd look pretty darn silly wearing wizard's hats before we've graduated."

"Well, we can put them in the pockets of our robes during the day, and on our pillows at night."

Harry nodded. "The moon is waning now. Two days till half moon. Tomorrow we go to the hills with Hagrid, and Sunday morning we do the golem-heads. Any other problems?"

"We've got to collect the clay in the hills, so when we make the full golems it'll all be from the same pit."

"Anything else, Hermione? Ron?" Harry looked from one to the other as they shook their heads.

"Hermione, you've done it again. Tomorrow we find our campsite, and in two weeks we'll be free for a whole weekend. No professors, no proctors, no parents."

The clock struck. Ron hesitated a moment, then hugged Hermione before breaking away and heading for the stair. Hugging girls was, well, icky. But tonight Hermione deserved it. And, oddly, the smell of her hair kept coming to mind as he drifted off to sleep.