A Sea Change

Chapter 2: Folberg.

Sirius and Harry left the motorbike behind Remus and Andie’s cabin and walked stiffly down to the waterside, looking down the fjord toward the open sea. Behind them amongst the trees lay the scattering of low wooden buildings, large and small, that made up Folberg School. Behind the school, and rimming the narrow fjord, wooded mountains rose nearly vertically, a deep, brilliant shade of green against the vivid sky. Several brightly painted sailing vessels of various sizes and types lay in the water, tied to the pier. Others had been hauled up on shore. All were bright, tidy, clean, sparkling in the sun.

The flight had taken nearly four hours. Not bad, Sirius said, for the Shadow’s first long trip in fourteen years. “That’s well over four hundred miles, and I was trying to go easy, just to shake it down. Best bike ever made!” He grinned with satisfaction and gave Harry a quick glance. “I should tell you, by the way: you made a great passenger. You seem to have the knack of leaning the right way into the turns, and keeping yourself balanced. Makes all the difference in the world.”

Harry smiled shyly, hearing the words and the pride. It had been a deeply satisfying experience over the past two days, behind Hagrid's cabin, watching Sirius restoring the motorbike to running order, and helping in any small way that he could.

Mostly, he'd just watched: keenly, attentively studying his godfather. Memorising the intent look on Sirius’s face as he wrestled with loosening years-old joints; as he gently removed and replaced mysterious parts, checked electrical wiring, evicted a family of mice from under the seat. He'd watched Sirius's bony, capable hands, moving with sureness and strength, making it all proper, functional, RIGHT. He’d watched as Sirius, annoyed with shirt sleeves that wouldn’t stay rolled up, had pulled off his shirt and worked the rest of the afternoon in the warm sun, his skin shiny with sweat, ribs and backbone visible, a smear of grease across his chest.

Tools, grease, blackened hands and fingernails, oily rags, strange bits of oddly-shaped metal, a few new spells he’d never heard before, endless cleaning, wire-brushing, and dunking, the sharp smell of petrol, and Sirius's running commentary—amusing, informative, occasionally profane—all blended together in Harry's mind, making him deliriously, unspeakably happy. He’d no idea why, but it had been great. If he’d been asked about the experience, he’d have said, “Motorbikes are cool.”

The ride had been great too, for the first couple hundred miles or so. By the time they touched down in Norway, however, Harry was sure he'd never want to climb on a motorcycle again. The experimental flights around the Forbidden Forest, and south along the coastline had been wonderful, exhilarating—and much shorter.

"Made it! I had my doubts there, towards the end. I wonder if I'll ever walk properly again. OK, Harry?" Sirius had said, when they finally landed.

"Does it always make you this numb?" Harry lurched sideways as he tried to dismount, catching hold of Sirius's arm to steady himself.

"Only if you overdo it, as we did. Over land, we could have taken a break, but stopping in the sea was not really an option. Never mind; nobody ever suffers very long from ‘Biker's Bum.’ We'll be fine in a few minutes. And now that we know everything’s OK, we can really open her up going back; we should be able to do the return trip in half the time."

Harry was not positive that this was reassuring.

                                                  **************

"Do you think the others are here yet? I don't see anyone at all." Harry looked back toward the school buildings, all of which seemed deserted.

"I don't think so; the biggest ship is gone, and that's probably the one Erik and Andreas are using to pick them up. I don't think anyone stays here over the summer except those two, and Erik's wife and baby. We have the place to ourselves for the moment.”

The plan had been for the rest of the Pack to collect Ron and Hermione, and bring them via Muggle air transport into a town down the coast. Erik and Andreas would meet them with a school ship, and they would all sail up to Folberg. Harry tried to imagine Ron in an aeroplane; he grinned to himself, knowing there would be loads of things to talk about soon. He sensed unease from Sirius; glancing up at him, Harry heard a whisper of anxiety. (I was hoping they’d be here by now.) The Pack, Harry had already noticed, didn’t like separation.

Then, off to the southwest, in the distance, they spied the flash of a bright golden sail. Harry grinned; he didn’t even have to turn to feel his godfather’s happiness.

Pack reunions, even after short absences, were likely to be highly emotional and quite canine in their exuberance. This one began with a lithe grey wolf leaping from the bow of the ship to dance around Harry and Sirius on the pier, finally rearing up to place his paws on Harry’s shoulders and lick him in the face.

It gave Hermione a scare, when Remus transformed into the Wolf as they pulled up to the pier, but Andie assured her that it was quite all right. “He can do that whenever he wants to now, like any Animagus. He turns into a sane, intelligent wolf, not a monster.” Hermione watched him leap ashore, not waiting for the ship to tie up. She had a moment of anxiousness as he playfully attacked Harry, but was reassured by Harry’s laughter. Harry looked… happy. Peacefully happy, amused, like any boy fending off an overly affectionate pet.

And Sirius, beside him—had changed! She remembered him, the two times they had met: ragged, dirty, emaciated and bony, with wild, frightening-looking hair, sunken eyes and hollow cheeks. This Sirius on the pier, his hand on Harry’s shoulder, laughing at his…FAMILY, was still very thin, but not so wasted-looking. He was pale, but naturally so, not that scary waxy-yellow she remembered from the Shrieking Shack. He was dressed in faded blue jeans and a black leather motorcycle jacket over a soft cotton shirt, his hair curling down on his forehead in what she decided was a very attractive way…. She hadn’t noticed before how tall he was.

Hermione was suddenly glad she’d left her books at home.

“Moony, you idiot, get off—Yuck!”  Harry tried simultaneously to embrace his Packmate and fend him off, while Sirius laughed and waved at the company on the ship. Harry looked up; saw Ron and Hermione waving furiously to him. As soon as the ship docked properly and the others came off, pandemonium reigned.

                            *********************************

Harry's experience with parties had not been extensive: if one counted Hogwarts feasts and the Yule ball, that just about covered it. He was fairly certain, though, that what was happening now was a party.

The reunion had moved from the pier to the dining hall; a lively, chaotic, friendly cooking session had ensued, everyone getting in each other’s way, and somehow a wonderful meal had been produced.

 Everyone was laughing and joking; there was delicious food, and the general tone was one of celebration. The Norse teachers were not at all imposing or distant; in fact they were just the opposite. Calling grownups by their first names was a bit awkward at first, for Hermione and Ron, but it soon seemed quite natural. Everyone sat together at one of the long wooden tables, chatting together as if they’d all known each other all their lives.

Ron and Hermione, Harry noticed, were a bit shy of him, it seemed. Only to be expected, he thought; he’d changed. His life had changed. They were all, he thought, eying each other from a distance, getting used to the changes without actually talking about them. Tonight, when they were alone without grownups around, maybe they could talk about things, more easily. Having other people around just now helped, he thought. But he was glad, glad to the point of giddiness, that Ron and Hermione were here. He wanted them to know—and approve of—his family.

Ron was at the end of the table talking excitedly to Erik about lines, sheets, tacking, and other things Harry had never heard of.

Hermione sat beside Andie, giggling about something Harry couldn't hear. She glanced his way and whispered something to Andie, who whispered back. Harry himself sat next to Sirius, across the table from Andreas and Remus.  Andreas was telling him something about animals; he had been so intrigued by Andreas's slow, lilting accent that he'd forgotten to pay attention to the words.

"...and tomorrow, if you like, you can go up the mountain to our summer pasture. Andie is certainly going up, to pay a visit to Kjersti, who is watching the herds. It would be a pleasant walk, and give you young ones a chance to stretch your legs."

Harry turned to Sirius: "That sounds great; d'you think you'll come?"

Sirius shook his head. "I don't think so. I promised Erik I'd show him the Shadow. He likes engines. Uses some in his boats. I think Remus and Andreas have some school stuff they want to hash out: curriculum business. So it'll just be you kids and Andie going up the mountain, I believe." He helped himself to pudding, a sort of fruit compote, and ladled a bit onto Harry’s plate. “This stuff is marvellous; try it.”

Harry sat thoughtfully, tasting the fruit compote but not really tasting it, sorting out his feelings. Since the end of school, he’d been with the Pack, day and night. The Hut was tiny; he’d never been more than a room away from Sirius. He’d never wanted to be: Sirius and the others were fascinating, unexplored territory.

There’d been a huge backlog of catching up to do, filling each other in. Andie and Remus had joined in the endless getting-acquainted talks, sharing memories, forming bonds. They’d gone on long walks—together; they’d made a couple of trips to a Muggle village—together, with Sirius in dog form. They’d sat on the bank of the little stream and just done nothing at all, together. And more often than not, Sirius climbed the ladder up to Harry’s room and slept on his bed, as Padfoot.

It had been intense at times, coping with his new telepathic skills, getting used to the rhythm of the Pack and their way of doing things. Today was, what, the sixteenth? Just over two weeks of constant companionship. He thought back to their swimming pool: it had all been a bit like plunging in naked, at the deep end. And liking it, after the first shock. More than that: he knew he loved them. He loved all of them, but especially Sirius.

Now, suddenly, they were creating a bit of distance: he and Ron and Hermione would be setting up living quarters in a student dorm, across the path and up a slope from the cabin where Remus and Andie lived during the school term. It made sense; the two-bedroom cabin was very small, even for ‘his’ three grownups. And now, planning separate activities. Yes, Andie would be with him, but he’d be a two-or-three-hour walk away from his godfather, possibly for several nights, if they decided to camp up there with the herds.

Harry was not at all sure he was ready for the change.

It was stupid, he knew. He couldn’t expect to live in Sirius’s pocket for the rest of his life; that would be ridiculous. Other people—he glanced down the table at Ron—loved their families, but didn’t mind being hundreds of miles away, sometimes.

He felt Remus’s attention turn to him; he looked up into the warmest smile in the world, the kindest eyes. (Everything OK, Harry?) He smiled back.  Everything was OK. It was a thousand times more OK than it had ever been before in his life. It wouldn’t matter where he was; they loved him.

The fruit compote was delicious.

                                       ***************************

Snari sat peaceably among the grey, lichen-covered boulders, barely noticeable, quite still, blinking in the sun. He was about the size of a small bear. His eyes, brown with green flecks, were rimmed by thick, grey-brown lashes. His skin, rough, slightly downy, and brown, was mottled with lichens, and his elbows rested on his knees as he sat. His long grey-brown hair hung down over his forehead, shielding his eyes from the sun’s brightness. The nearly constant daylight of summertime kept most of Norway’s trolls in a semi-dormant stupor; trolls are nocturnal creatures as a rule. Snari, however, was an Earth Troll, and was not troubled by all the light.

Snari liked the sunny slopes of the mountains; he liked the expanses of brilliant wildflowers in the meadows. The encircling stands of trees gave a dark backdrop against which the grazing animals moved slowly, their peaceful calls to each other echoing off the mountainsides.

The herd Snari watched was a mixed one: cattle, sheep, goats and even a few reindeer, each species keeping to themselves, forming little herds within the large herd, but all moving roughly together across the meadow. The numerous young of each species mingled more than their elders did: they skipped and butted, chased each other and made the air ring with their high, urgent little voices. To Snari, it was a scene of delightful complexity and ever-changing surprise; most objects in an Earth Troll’s world are stationary, and permanent.

Their leader/guardian was a human, a tall, blonde young woman who carried a baby with her in a small, ornately decorated, portable cradle of wood with bright woollen webbing and decorative tassels. She was barefoot, wearing a simple blue robe or dress that came to her knees, and a broad-brimmed hat. Sometimes she noticed Snari, sitting by the boulders, and waved to him in a friendly manner.

Snari waved back. When the woman and her animals had first come to Snari’s meadow, he had been frightened; all the movement and the sounds of their many voices had been a torrent of confusion to him. He had hidden himself among the stones and trembled in fear of being eaten by these swiftly moving creatures.

That had been several years ago; now he welcomed them as part of the exciting events of summertime.

The baby was a new addition this summer: a small, wiggling creature with very blue eyes and a whole new repertoire of sounds. The woman often released it from its cradle and played with it in the grass as her animals grazed. Sometimes the woman approached Snari’s outcropping of boulders; she put the baby’s cradle beside him and let him watch the baby, at times touch the baby’s head with one tentative finger. Snari was intrigued by the humans; he had very little experience with such creatures, but he had decided that they were harmless.

The woman had often made sounds to him, which he assumed were attempts to communicate, but he did not understand her language, so he merely smiled and nodded, and enjoyed watching her. The baby spoke a different language, full of little sounds like the birds made. Snari enjoyed these sounds; sometimes he spoke to the baby in his own rumbling, slow language.

Snari’s language was chiefly composed of words about grass, and trees, and moss, and lichens, and stones.

One day, in the first light of early dawn, another human came to the meadow. This one was taller than the woman; it made sounds to her in a voice deeper and louder than either hers or the baby’s. She made sounds in return; then the new human had produced a small stick and held it out for the woman to see. The woman fell to the ground; the new human picked up the baby from its cradle, and vanished. Snari watched, mystified. Humans moved so swiftly; he did not understand their ways at all.

Perhaps, some day, if he came across a more experienced member of his family, he would ask about humans.

A pair of little brown goats with white legs detached themselves from the herd and approached the woman on the ground; they nuzzled her, sniffed the cradle, and shook their heads. Snari understood the goats better than he understood humans: the goats were uneasy and distressed. In the goats’ opinion, this was wrong. Snari had to admit that he had never seen the woman lie on the ground in this way, at this time of day.

Snari picked up a small stone from the ground and nibbled it nervously; he wondered what he should do.

 

After some hours of wondering, he decided to approach: he rose and walked gently to the place where the woman lay still. The animals, now milling nervously around her, hardly noticed him, but separated for Snari to pass. He touched the woman; she was not dead. He touched the cradle; the animals stood watching him now. It was wrong for her to be lying there, they said. It was wrong for the cradle to be empty.

Snari did not know how to make the woman move, but he could do something about the empty cradle. He looked around carefully, choosing well. There, a very good one: a smooth, clean grey stone, decorated with a scattering of pale green lichens and a tuft of moss. It was beautiful, and nearly the same size as the baby. Snari placed the stone gently in the cradle; perhaps the animals would be a little consoled by its presence. 

                                          ****************************

Thor was what they called a Good Baby: his nearly six months of life had been full of tender care and contentment. He hardly ever cried; there’d been no need. His parents, Erik and Kjersti, were even-tempered, soft-spoken, gentle people who were always there when he needed attention. His days were spent in the barns or the field with his mother and her animals, or sometimes on board a pleasantly rocking boat with both his parents. His little life was filled with good smells, entertaining playmates, beautiful things to look at—and magic.

Thor’s parents were practitioners of an old-fashioned, simple magic of the kind that their families had employed for centuries: they knew spells and charms for making their lives easier in a number of small ways. They could heal most animal diseases, grow powerful medicinal plants, build unsinkable boats and ships, call fish to a net—things of that nature. Thor’s father had a lively interest in other types of magic as well; he had purchased a wand in Oslo and delighted in practicing with it, under the guidance of his friend Remus, for faster, more efficient spellwork. He greatly enjoyed the good results he was achieving. Erik modestly would have denied being a proper wizard, however.

Thor had bright blue eyes and wispy white-blond hair; he was an active, healthy baby, just learning to push himself up into a crawling position but not able to actually move forward yet. He could stand on a person’s lap if supported, and bounce up and down enthusiastically; he could do this longer than most adults were willing to hold him up.

There were many people in Thor’s life besides his parents: students, who asked to play with him and feed him, and were sometimes allowed to do so; other teachers or adults who cooed over him in Norse, Sami, or English, and sometimes held him if his mother or father had their hands full. Thor enjoyed all this company, and cooed back in his own private language, which made them all laugh.

 Thor was fascinated by people’s faces, as most babies are: he gazed intently at whoever was looking at him, and babbled urgently back at anyone who spoke to him. His father, Erik, asserted that this alertness and intent scrutiny of his world were signs of superior intelligence; he also declared that Thor understood all the words people said to him, in any language. Erik also claimed that Thor was the most intelligent, beautiful baby ever, since babies were first invented. Thor’s mama laughed at her husband when he said this, but she privately agreed.

Some of the people in Thor’s life were actually, strictly speaking, animals: a pair of inquisitive little goats who always came with the black-haired woman, his mama’s special friend. They tasted his blankets, nuzzled him softly, and made a very enjoyable little noise. There were cats in the barn, reindeer, sheep, cows, and a pair of sturdy draught ponies. Once, he had seen a pointed little face covered in sleek red fur: the fox. And sometimes, there was a wise-looking grey wolf, who gazed at Thor with calm yellow eyes and allowed his ears to be pulled. There were other small animals as well: birds, squirrels, weasels, lemmings, who never came very close, but were sometimes seen or heard fleetingly; they always produced giggles of surprise.

Another person in young Thor’s world was Snari, the troll who lived in the summer meadow. Snari was a special friend to little Thor: he was so still, and so gentle, that Thor was always quieter around him. He spoke to Thor in a soft, rumbling growl and sometimes touched him carefully with a rough, mossy hand. Thor’s mama sometimes took his cradle over to the rocks where Snari sat, when she thought it was high time the baby settled down and had a nap.

 

Little Thor had never met a person he didn’t like.

For this reason, Thor was not alarmed when rough hands lifted him from his cradle one morning, as he lay beside his mama in the summer meadow. He was, however, a bit surprised when the person did not speak to him or hold him up to admire. Instead, the hands shoved him clumsily into a cloth backpack and closed a flap over his head, making the world suddenly dark. There was the feeling of sudden movement, similar to the delightful swinging rides his father sometimes gave him, lifting him high in the air. Thor smiled, uncertainly; it was a change, smiling in the dark, not AT someone.

There was then a sensation of being carried. Thor was used to this. He often fell asleep in his cradle as his mama carried him up and down the mountainside. The regular movement of a walking person was relaxing. Since nothing else seemed to be happening, and he was not uncomfortable in the backpack, Thor went back to sleep.

                                   ********************************

A brief flash of light awakened Thor a long time later. The flap of the backpack lifted and was replaced immediately. Thor tried to stretch his legs, but the backpack’s cramped interior would not allow this. Thor struggled a bit, pushing against the cloth as a new sensation—frustration—arose in his consciousness. He began complaining, in his own language: a series of impatient little murmurs and grunts, accompanied by kicking, and flailing of his arms. The flap opened once again and a hand descended, holding a bottle with a nipple attached. Thor had never drunk from a bottle before, but when it was thrust into his mouth, he did the only natural thing. He was hungry.

The bottle was taken away and the flap closed; Thor began to protest. He had never been fed this way; he had always been changed and washed and played with; he was cramped and beginning to be frightened.

The backpack was shaken, once, roughly, and Thor was startled enough by this that he lay still for a few moments. He thought about the darkness. He wanted very much to move and play, and was unable to do so. He was wet. His mama did not come, and he was trapped. He began to complain again, loudly this time. It was the first time he had actually cried in a very long time, but he had clearly not forgotten how: he roared.

Then the air around him became thicker, closer. Thor had no way of knowing that a silencing charm had been placed on his backpack; he kept on struggling and crying for a long time, until he was exhausted. He drifted off into an uneasy sleep once more.  The sensation of movement happened again, this time of being carried smoothly through the air.

The second time Thor awoke, he was unhappy, bordering on frantic. He was still confined, still in the dark, moving at great speed to judge by the wind buffeting the backpack. The cramped space, the lack of companionship, and the unfamiliarity of the whole situation suddenly became intolerable to him. Thor wanted his mama; he wanted freedom from the imprisoning backpack; he wanted food and dry clothing. He wanted to be back in his cradle, happy and doted on. And he wanted it NOW! He kicked and thrashed frantically.

The seam of the backpack suddenly parted, freeing Thor. The burst of light dazzled him; he blinked his eyes against the sun’s brightness as he fell.

                           **************************************

“So, where’s the baby?”

The question hung in the air ominously, for all that it had been asked very quietly. In the old guardhouse, at the mouth of the fjord, it seemed to echo off the stone walls.

“I asked you, Markus, where is the BABY?”

They stared at the torn backpack as Markus held it in his hands, unbelieving. The seam had ripped cleanly, right around the bottom, so that the leather base was hanging to the canvas top by only two or three inches of stitching. It flapped down limply, giving no clues.

Markus bit his lip. Hans would not let this die, he knew. His cousin Hans, two years older, always cleverer than Markus, always called upon to get him out of trouble, which he always did—always grudgingly. The family name was preserved, time and again, by Hans, against the idiocies of Markus. Hans had voiced his disdain at the teaching position from the first; their family had never felt it necessary to accept paid positions, even relatively gentlemanly ones involving sport. Markus should have stuck to amateur Quidditch, should have played charity matches, but his pride had allowed him to be talked into the professional side.

In his favour, Markus had pointed out, he was good. He was VERY good. Norway had been top of the European league for the first three years he played for them. He was handsome, dashing, never without some beautiful young witch on his arm. Nobody could fly like him, the papers all said. The Chaser of the century.

Eventually, however, he had indeed taken one too many Bludgers to the head—or one too many taunts from Hans about his slumming. He lost control in a number of little ways: more fouls against opposing players than his coaches deemed necessary; a black eye on a girlfriend, which the papers blew all out of proportion, even though she’d been asking for it. And he stopped winning: younger players with greater speed and a good deal more cleverness became the darlings of the press, while Markus supplied material for the gossip columns, in spite of Hans’s efforts to cover up most of his cousin’s indiscretions.

His family had friends in many places; some of these friends, in the Ministry, suggested quietly that perhaps such a revered figure could salvage a bit of his glorious reputation as a coach in the famous old Folberg School, training future champions.

Hans had sneered. “Hireling,” he had called Markus. Markus certainly didn’t need the money. But Markus had taken the job, even though nobody in his family had ever been anything remotely resembling a schoolteacher. It was outdoors, it was something he understood, he was good at it, and the children liked him. The enthusiasts, the Quidditch buffs, sometimes brought him old programmes to sign, as a gift for fathers or older siblings.

But Folberg became gradually less and less satisfying: the old school standards were slipping. It had always been small, but exclusive; now anyone with any semblance of a claim to magic was admitted. Completely unsuitable children with no family background and no training at all were swelling the ranks of what had been an elite institution. He found himself having to train children who didn’t even know what Quidditch was, children who had never seen anyone ever fly a broomstick. Markus, and a few other right-thinking stalwarts on staff who remembered their proud traditions, knew exactly whom to blame: the new headmaster, Andreas, with his stupid expansionist ideas and his dabbling in primitive superstitions.

The school was on the brink of disgrace.

And then, the unthinkable had happened: because of the murderous spell cast by a Sami savage, and the machinations of an English interloper, Markus himself was the one in disgrace!

 

This could not be borne, even Hans was made to see that.

And so the plan was born: a combination revenge and purge of Folberg. There was a young village couple, disgracefully employed as faculty, who had a new baby. Markus would kidnap the baby. It would be perfectly safe:  the couple knew no real magic. Imagine—on the faculty, and neither of them even had a wand! He would hold the baby hostage until they, and the Sami savage, and the English interloper, all handed in their resignations and the school was turned over to a proper administrator. Markus himself would not return to his former position; he had too much pride for that. But the school would be saved, and people who counted would know whom to thank.

Hans rolled his eyes, but agreed to help, or at least to keep his cousin from botching the operation and making even more of an ass of himself.

                                   ******************************

They stared at the torn backpack.

“Of course you had to ride your ridiculous broomstick,” Hans said softly. “You couldn’t just grab the baby and Apparate back here. You hiked down the mountain, for no particular reason except that it was “a nice day,” as you say. Wasting hours. Then you flew nearly a hundred miles with a baby in a faulty backpack, over open water. How do you think this will sit with the doting parents, common though they may be? This, my dear cousin, is murder; I can’t save you from this.”

“Shut up! It doesn’t matter! It will still work. We can make it work. We’ll just continue with the letter, as we said, and then,  then we’ll think of something. They don’t know yet that the brat’s lost.”

“‘Lost,’ Markus, is a fairly mild term for falling a couple of hundred feet or so into the fjord. How can you expect that nobody will find out? I swear, this time I wash my hands of you. Get yourself out of this as best you can; I’m leaving.” Hans Disapparated with a loud ‘crack’, leaving Markus holding, as so often happened, the bag.

Markus threw the ruined backpack into the corner and sat down at the rickety table. Actually, he thought, this didn’t really change anything: he could still demand letters of resignation; could still pretend to fetch the baby. Or, perhaps, someone else could be sent for the baby—someone who would suffer a flying accident on the way back to the school. Markus knew a good deal about flying accidents…. He reached for the quill and parchment.

Quickly he scribbled the letter, removed the owl from its cage, and tied the letter to its leg.