Kjærlighet Verbrennt

XI.

Rotis and Dicken were sitting in the room of windows, watching the orange ball that was the sun sink behind the mountains. The lake mirrored the rainbow of the vanishing light, and it was an all too scenic setting for the dismal air that clung to the two. A cloudy afternoon would have suited them better. Directly before them was Gaiter´s flourishing garden, a reminder of her presence, though she herself was locked up in the dormitory currently tossing dresses about, which left the thoughtful boy and fierce beater alone. It was a situation Rotis still had not grown used to.

"Why did you say that, Dicken?" she asked, leaning back on her hands, her bare feet sticking out in front of her (Hufflepuffs never wear shoes). "That thing about Potter last night? How you don´t feel the same way all of us do about him?"

Dicken was quiet, counting the rosy clouds in the sky, mildly surprised that Rotis even remembered what he had said. In comparison to her explosion, his comment was just that - a passing comment, not worth a second glance. But then, Rotis was a surprising girl. . .

"Harry Potter saved us," he said slowly after a long pause. "He didn´t mean to, of course, but he did. We´re indebted to him."

"But what about last year?" Rotis immediately retorted. "What about - "

"Rotis, Harry didn´t know that would happen."

"He doesn´t know anything," she growled. "He´s an ignorant, thoughtless, and lucky - "

But her insults were cut off as Gaiter´s head suddenly appeared from the Hole below them.

"Well, hello," she said. "What are you doing up here?"

Potter-bashing, thought Rotis, but Dicken answered first. "Better view," he said nodding towards the stunning sunset.

"Oh," she said quietly. "You´re right."

"Come on, join us, then. Still a good fifteen minutes till the stars come out."

"Can´t," she said, and she climbed clumsily into the room, clumsily because she was wearing a sage green dress that had tiny pink flowers, the exact shade of her hair, embroidered along it. Rotis snorted, then laughed, than clapped her hands together.

"What is the occasion, Gaiter dear? The Masquerade isn´t for another week."

Gaiter glared at her friend, though she was flattered, deep down inside. "I´ve got a date," she said curtly, hunching down to browse through her flowers before extracting a rose she´d enchanted to grow thornless.

"With who?" asked Dicken, and Gaiter felt slightly flattered at the indignant tone of his voice.

"Well, it isn´t a date, so to speak," she said, sliding the rose behind her ear. "More of a meeting that will try its damnedest to become a date."

"With who?" repeated Dicken while Rotis clutched her side laughing.

"It´s for me to know," she said, ignoring Rotis. "I´m not going to say."

Rotis laughter abruptly halted. "Gaiter, it´s not one of those Slytherin dolts, is it?"

"Come on, Rotis, you know me better than that. Of course not."

"And not some Ravenclaw brain?" asked Dicken. Gaiter shook her head, and he cursed himself for letting her get the better of him - that was his job, not hers.

"But Gryffindors aren´t your type, Gaiter, they´ve all got the sense of humor of a rock. So you must be off with one of our own! We shall scour the dormitories, Dicken, and discover who this mystery man is!" Rotis flung her arm out grandly, while Dicken just looked embarrassed, and Gaiter looked amused or annoyed, it was hard to decipher.

"Good luck," she said. She shrugged at them both before she slipped back into the Hole, wishing Dicken didn´t look quite so sad.

"Wait, Gaiter!" shouted Rotis, and Gaiter reappeared in the spot between floor and wall. "Did you ask Professor Herring? About Waverly´s eyes?"

Gaiter slapped her forehead. "No, but I will," she promised.

"When?" demanded Rotis.

Gaiter smiled wickedly. "In about ten minutes."

And she dissappeared from sight, leaving Dicken utterly confused (and a little hurt) and Rotis reeling in laughter, gasping something like "She´s bussing with faculty!" but it was unclear through all her laughter. When her guffaws had subsided, the sun had already slinked out of view, and the tiny dots that were stars were pricking into existence.

"What was that all about?" asked Dicken, and by his tone of voice, Rotis could tell he meant the Waverly business, and not who was Gaiter´s snog-mate. How just like him, she thought. He´s always been too serious for us badgers.

"Purple eyes," said Rotis, her shining eyes going completely dim as she remembered the encounter in Potions. Shaking her head, she looked at Dicken and his thankfully ordinary hazel eyes. "Waverly Lysander has these purple eyes, and there was a bit of a scene in Potions today, but I couldn´t tell you any of it because of his - "

"Gemini," Dicken whispered.

"What?"

It was Dicken´s turn to shake his head. "Nothing, sorry. You say he had purple eyes?"

Rotis nodded. "And Gaiter was going to ask Professor Herring about them, see if it was some weird wizard trait. But I imagine she´ll be too busy snogging him to remember."

"She did look nice," agreed Dicken, though Rotis had recovered her previous amusement and was laughing too loud to hear. Giving a last glance at the night outside, Dicken slipped down into the Hole, suddenly anxious for some time alone, a weird feeling growing inside him.

All the nocturnal flowers were in bloom before Rotis realized he was gone.

_____________________

Gaiter thought about making a final reflection check in the girls´ bathroom she´d been in before, but remembered the attitude of the mirror and decided against it. By the time she had reached the classroom, every possible scenario had been covered by her quick mind, and she felt if not stupidly excited, at least completely prepared for whatever came about.

She entered the classroom grandly, waiting for Professor Herring to sweep her up in his arms, break all the taboos of a teacher-student relationship, give her perfect marks until she graduated. But no cascading violin music came, there were no candelabras, and in fact all that had changed from when she had left the classroom that afternoon was the windows had grown dark and the desks were empty. And, she remembered brutally, she was wearing a dress with a rose behind her ear. Exactly not what she had planned.

"Gaiter!" exclaimed the professor, leaving the stack of parchments he was grading and rising to meet her. "You look - " Stupid, foolish, out-of-place, I am a complete idiot, thought Gaiter, "nice."

She bit back a `You really think so?´ though the young teacher´s illumed eyes were proof he did. Maybe she hadn´t made such a bad mistake after

Professor Herring cleared his throat and motioned for Gaiter to have a seat. She did so, wishing she was in the safety of her school robes as he handed her her graded parchment over ancient wizard feuds. There were masses of marks written in iridescent green ink in the professor´s half-legible scrawl all throughout the twenty-eight inches of its length; she surveyed these as he took a seat beside her.

"Um, Gaiter, perhaps I should explain," he started awkwardly, but realizing she could and had to handle the situation, Gaiter held up a hand.

"No, no, Professor, I understand. We´re here to discuss wizard rivals. Of the ancient sort."

Herring smiled, and Gaiter felt twice as stupid, though she attempted to hide it. He reached back and stretched, scratching his head, and she noticed he´d stripped of his robe and was in an ordinary shirt and tie - he could have been her next door neighbor back in her Muggle neighborhood. It was slightly disarming.

"You´ve done a fantastic job," he said, scooting his desk closer to hers. "Really, but there´s one massive example you´ve omitted." She nodded, trying not to breathe too deeply of his cologne - it smelled like raspberries and firewood. Remembering she was under the pretense of having convinced herself she was here solely for homework, she mentally slapped herself. "The Hillel-Druites and the Xanthus."

He maneuvered out of the desk and went to the giant chalkboard in the front of the room, scribbling the two names onto the board. "They date back to who knows when, before Hogwarts came about, when the standing stones still meant something, and druids still met under the waning moon. Ages and ages ago, you see?" Gaiter nodded, absorbed, as she always was when Professor Herring lectured. "The Hillel-Druites were fierce, Viking-like, pillagers and burners, but they were also knowledge-seekers. They would ravage a village, but not before collecting any and all information it contained. The Hillel Libraries are some of the most complete collections of pre-ancient literature still around today."

All through this, Professor Herring had been writing key words under the name, his eyes constantly flicking back to Gaiter (and her very bare legs, she noticed), to see if she not only understood, but was as interested as he hoped she´d be. Each time their eyes met, she nodded, and smiled, and for once made him feel as though he wasn´t wasting his time.

"But the Xanthus were a completely different story," he said, leaping over to the other side of the board. "They weren´t so much a family of wizards as a completely different genre of them. Because a Xanthus can do no wrong - it isn´t in them - they can´t lie, they can´t force, and they certainly can´t kill. Which is how the Hillel-Druites wiped them out."

"Why?" asked Gaiter and the professor smiled. She responded just when she should, she agreed, she inquired, she was beautiful - she was perfect.

"Hillel-Druites are big on prophecies. They´ve got thousands of them, but only a few really, really matter to them - mainly the Gemini and the Aquarius. So in this case, the land was parched with drought, and everyone´s brother was dropping like flies, so it seemed impeccable timing for the Aquarius prophecy to come true and save them all. `The Bringer of Rain shall be brought to us, and quench the land of thirst, and forever will we satiate.´ So they descend upon their neighbors, the Xanthus, demanding to know where they´re hiding the Rain Person. And of course the Xanthus couldn´t lie and tell them he was in Uzbekistan, why don´t they go send a quest over there, so they say they don´t have him. Which the Hillel think means they´ve killed him. And so they obliterate the entire race."

"Why would they think the Xanthus had their Aquarius?"

"The Xanthus weren´t suffering like the Hillel-Druites were. It turns out they´d invented a well, and were therefore digging up water, but the Hillel didn´t know that."

"Completely obliterated them?"

Professor Herring dropped his chalk and dusted his hands on his pants. "Not completely. It was a messy affair, a bloodbath, almost, much confusion and panic and such - no one really knows the details, and no one really wants to. It´s rumored that a few Xanthus escaped to Russia or somewhere, perhaps Iceland, but their numbers have been meager ever since that time. Though many believe they still walk the earth."

"A living myth," she said, more to herself than the professor, though he gazed at her like she had. She shifted uncomfortably - she´d forgotten why she´d come in as he´d been speaking, but now that the room was silent, she remembered it all too well.

"What about the other prophecy, the Gemini one?" she asked, not only because it would get her mind off the shortness of her skirt and what a fool she was, but because she wanted to know. The Professor smiled (he did that a lot around her) and hopped onto his desk, motioning for her to join him. She did, and he extracted a huge leather-bound book that looked about as old as Dumbledore´s great-grandfather would have been. Dust flew up as he flipped through pages, before stopping on what looked like verses with a very ornately drawn letter `G´ in the corner. Professor Herring began to read.

"Born are two boys of the Druites

The saviors of the Hillel race

Of prideful stance and workless gait

Of handsome figure and face

The first owns the mind of a wood mouse

Cunning, deceptive, and sped

The second unhalting ambition

A will to pursue until dead

Both contain the traits of heroic

And others of lesser good sort

Only either share identical lovelust

For women whose heart to share court

With hair of blood-tinted bronze

And sight of amethyst eye

Two boys are born to relieve us

The Hillel-Druite Gemini."

Professor Herring shut the book, fumes of dust clouding around them.

Professor Herring nodded, never taking his eyes off his pink haired student. He absentmindedly drew his wand out of a pocket and with a swish the lanterns that lit the room burned lower and the door swung shut. Gaiter was sharply aware of this and felt a familiar pumping in her chest.

"Professor," she said, conscious of how he was sitting very, very close to her, and how shadowy the room had become. "What´s your first name?"

"Red," he replied, gently kissing her neck, his hand appearing at her side.

"Red Herring?" She stifled a snigger. "Professor, this wasn´t really about ancient wizard feuds, was it?"

"No," he replied, and Gaiter jerked back, looking from one eye to the next, the grassy green flecked with not red, but lilac, and she was so blissfully confused at that moment that she didn´t even realize how childish the grin the professor was wearing was, how much younger he´d become. There was a pause, and Gaiter turned away, looking around the room, the masses of empty desks draped in darkness, the night outside the windows. She turned back to the professor.

"Then what was it about?"

And in response he practically Apparated into her arms, kissing her tentatively, like he´d never done it before, and then putting as much force as he could behind it, lowering her onto the desk, pressing his weight against her while the desk´s protesting squeaks went unheard.

Gaiter had been kissed once before, but it hadn´t counted at all, and this, this was entirely new, this was better than new, she threw her arms around him and worked his tie free of the collar of his shirt, tossing it to the ground. The rose slipped out from her ear.

No one was counting the minutes, but many passed before the professor suddenly halted, sitting up, ignoring Gaiter´s objections and then inquiries of what was wrong as he got off the desk, his figure dim in the light, but it looked as though he was feeling his own face.

"Gaiter," he said, and her eyebrows drew together - he sounded different. Unnatural. "Gaiter, you´ve got to go."

"What?" she asked, sliding off the desk, pulling the skirt of her dress back down. "Why? What´s the mat--"

"I can´t - " he started, and then hearing himself, faltered. "I can´t explain right now, but please, go, it´s better if you just--"

"I don´t understand," she protested, but she could hear the worry in his voice, and a nagging voice in her own head saying Why should he explain to you? You´re just a bit of fun to him. And though it made her feel awful, she knew it was true.

"No," she said emotionlessly. "I do."

And as she left the classroom, he didn´t try to stop her.

_____________________

Dicken opened his eyes to find himself against a tree in a densely wooded forest late at night. Silvery shadows and pools of eerie blue and phosphorescent green light were pooled between huge roots that crisscrossed the floor, and the stars were unusually visible between the branches overhead. An owl hooted nearby while crickets chirruped in the grass, and soon there would be the sound of hooves -

"No," said Dicken, blinking as he surveyed the forest around him, panic rising in his chest. "No, I can´t be here again." He heard the familiar hooves clopping closer, and he leapt up just as the familiar shapes of Figwit and Hermes appeared.

"Brother Dicken, thank the Fates - "

"No," said Dicken firmly. "I can´t heal anything, I don´t know anything about - "

"The unicorn is as whole as the day she first entered this thicket, when she was but a foal. Do not worry, Brother," said Figwit, his eyes unsettlingly calm, just as they had been unsettling panicked in the last dream.

"Why are you calling me brother?" he asked, glancing down at his legs to make sure they were still those of a human.

Figwit stared hard at Dicken, his azure eyes so blue, so unnaturally vivid in this half-light, and a light leapt into them as his face turned to shock, and he looked to Hermes.

"He does not know," said Figwit. The darker centaur did not even blink.

"Know what?" demanded Dicken.

"Your maiden Rotis - "

Dicken felt his fists clench. "What about Rotis?"

"Last night, when you were - "

"That was a dream," interrupted Dicken. "Just like this is a dream."

Sadness crept into the centaur´s eyes, but it was gone before Dicken could really be sure he had seen it. He didn´t want to have seen it - he didn´t want to see anything, for that matter, but being looked at like an ignorant infant by a mythical beast who talked in riddles was the absolute last thing he wanted.

"Brother Dicken, this is not a dream. You have had dreams, yes, of the standing stones and the last battles, but this is not one of them. And last night was as dreamt as the day is dark and the sun shines during the night."

There was silence, save for the crickets that chirruped, and the owl that - Dicken suddenly noticed there was no owl tonight. But that wasn´t proof that he wasn´t dreaming all this, a simple owl hoot did not verify

"The unicorn´s blood," said Hermes, whipping Dicken out of his thoughts. "It was on your hands this morning. That is more than proof that you are awake, Brother."

Having Figwit call him brother was one thing; Figwit, who spoke in tangents, who told him of the stars brightness, who lost his point in ancient references and meandering words. Having Hermes, who rarely spoke, and meant it when he did, call him kindred - it was entirely another. Dicken felt as if the earth was moving beneath him, and he reached out for a nearby tree as he realized what the centaur had said.

"I did that?" he asked, and no one needed to ask what he meant. Hermes nodded grimly.

"You do other things, too, Brother Dicken," said Figwit, and was that sympathy in his voice?

"I don´t," he said, refusing to believe it. "I don´t know what happened last night, but I don´t do anything." He looked up at the centaurs for help, for reassurance that he was right, but their stances had not changed.

"But," he protested, his eyes darting to the stone expression on Hermes to the weary and saddened

one on Figwit, "I´m just a boy. . ."

And before he knew it tears had welled up in his eyes, and he whispered the last words, sinking to the ground to nestle between two outwardly-jutting roots. He couldn´t remember the last time he had cried, but he knew it hadn´t felt like the tears he felt now; it seemed all the sadness in the world had descended upon him, and his shoulders shook with it. He heard Figwit´s hoofsteps as the cautiously approached.

"Leave him be," said Hermes, and the hoofsteps halted. Dicken drew up his knees in hopes of hiding them from view. They weren´t real. They´re just part of the dream, he thought, but he knew it wasn´t true. He knew he was actually out in the forest, sobbing into his sleeves, he knew he´d somehow mended a hurt unicorn last night, he knew he didn´t know anything.

"We will leave you, Brother Dicken. But you must make it back to the castle yourself now." Dicken didn´t look up. "Follow the Star of Polaris, and you will be there. And Dicken," said Figwit, and Dicken felt compelled to return the cerulean gaze, "beware the Gemini."

"Now more than ever," added Hermes, and the two clopped silently out of sight.

Dicken curled up between the two roots, his tears gone but his breath still unsteady. He closed his eyes, willing himself to wake up, but when he opened them, he was still between the roots, out in the forest, alone and tired. A fresh wave of terrible washed over him, but he forced it to pass unnoticed as he stood up to brush the dirt off him.

Suddenly not wanting to bother with astronomy, he drew out his wand and whispered, "Point me."

Following the direction it jerked in, he walked unnoticed through the forest, to the lawns, and into the castle.

Only when he saw his empty bed in the dormitory did he fully realize what had happened, but by then he was halfway to his pillow, and too tired to think anymore.

_____________________

Professor Severus Snape was walking intently down a hallway - he always walked intently, because he always had intent; he knew exactly where he was going, and why he was going there, and how long he should be there, and what time it should be when he got back. In this instance, he was going to the kitchens to bother those spineless house-elves for a sandwich, and he wouldn´t be back for a good quarter-hour, since he had to listen to their incessant groveling, though it did bring a smug sort of pride to know that in the kitchens, he was as respectable and fearful a figure as the Minister of Magic might be, if the Minister didn´t happen to be that halfwit Cornelius Fudge.

But Snape didn´t always get midnight hankerings for sardine and mayonnaise sandwiches. He was practically ravenous from spending long, long hours in his private workroom, and had been forced to skip dinner that evening in hopes he would get caught up. That idiot Herring had put him massively behind - Twitch-Removal Tonic sounded simple enough, but when you ran out of frog femurs and had to have them specially imported from the farthest reaches of Canada. . .

And they wondered why he was always so grumpy.

But the more he considered it, the angrier he became at Herring and his request, Herring and his knowledge, Herring and his unending cheerfulness. Perhaps it was just in comparison, but whenever the two were around each other, Herring seemed to be the most worry-free, smiling, annoyingly happy git in the entire school. And it made Snape mad.

Because Snape had surprised the entire school last year when he vied for the open History of Magic teaching spot. Rumors had spread as though they were contagious, and soon the new teacher debate turned from who would replace Professor Binns to who would be the new Potions Master?

Snape had his reasons. First off, Alastor Moody was still teaching Defense against the Dark Arts, and though Snape believed him to be a paranoid codger, Dumbledore certainly didn´t, and it was the least the staff could do to let the former Auror keep his job after what happened last year. So chasing after that position had become futile as well as simply boring.

And secondly, Snape knew History. He was a knowledgeable man - when he was younger, and his genius had been better known, there was a running gag that all that brain had left no room for a soul, a rumor he did not try to deny. He knew his Potions, and he knew his Defenses, and he knew his History. He was expert in nearly every area, except he had always been a lousy speller, but using a WriteRight Quill and avoiding games of Scrabble had kept that a secret.

And there was a slew of littler reasons, like the History classroom being less dank and no need for cauldrons and ingredients which were fun but got awfully messy, especially with first years. Also the ability to torment students would be just as potent as in Potions - how many would have studied hard enough to know the exact number of lashings Dimtri the Damned received on his third offense?

But all those fantasies (and there had been many) had burnt out like a fire doused with water when he went to the headmaster to present his wish. Dumbledore had already hired a new professor, a newcomer, who was young and enthusiastic and would keep the students´ interest. He was stuck in the Potions classroom for another long year.

And it was all Herring´s fault that the year had to be so long.

As Snape recounted all this, a wicked idea entered his head. Perhaps he should check on the wonderful Herring, make sure he knew how to administer the Energy Elixir. Or some excuse like that.

As he turned and sped in the opposite direction, his curiosity grew. Just what was the professor doing with that mix of potions? What sort of History lesson made you tired, twitchy, and in need of a few more years all at once? Glaring at every portrait that was still awake, he chewed these questions over in his mind. By the time he reached the door of the classroom, he had appointed himself Inspector, set to find out what this naive boy of a teacher was doing with his careful work, his bottled masterpieces.

Preparing to swing the door open with a firm `A-ha!,´ he reached for the doorknob, pulled, and

It was locked.

"Damn!" he shouted, and a portrait woke up with a `Well!´ Ignoring it, he tried the knob again, but it was shut tight. Glancing down the hallway, making sure the portrait had gone back to sleep, he abruptly shoved his ear against the door, eager to hear something, anything, that would calm the burning curiosity he´d awakened.

There was nothing. A few squeaks of a desk, perhaps, but the furniture at Hogwarts was just as unpredictable as the stairways, and it meant nothing by possibly meaning anything.

"Damn," he said again. He´d really thought he´d been on to something there. Giving it one last listen, squeaks and nothing more, he left the door as he had found it and turned toward the kitchen, his pining for a sardine and mayonnaise sandwich twice as strong as before.