The Journey From Oidhche Shamhna

Disclaimer: Not Mine.

The Journey From Oidhche Shamhna

Chapter 24

Houses and Schedules

Helga knelt at the end of a row of planting and smiled seeing how straight the line was this time. She remembered the first time Hanson had kissed her and thought that perhaps she should curve the line once more. She unwrapped the seeds for the next row and frowned, bringing them to her nose and smelling them. She placed a pinch of the tiny seed in her mouth and bit the outer shells, letting the bitterness bite her back before spitting the taste on the ground.

She wondered why they would have brought her the seeds of a Woolly Croton to plant when they grew wild in the mountains. She slid the seeds into her pocket and stood to seek Gryffin. She could not find him in the school and searched the halls until the sound of blade hitting blade came to her.

Peering out the window, she saw Gryffin and Salazar in the courtyard below. Bretta and Karra had joined them to put on a performance for the students in Gryffin's defence class. Helga bit her lip and hurried to the stairs that would take her down. Closing her eyes and saying a short prayer, she stepped on the moving staircase. She had to step to a new platform three times before reaching the bottom, and once again wondered what Rowena was thinking.

Finally arriving in the courtyard, she stood behind the students and flinched as she saw the blows were delivered with force. Gryffin had spent months teaching them how to heft the blade, and the motion of the slow swing. He made the students practice accuracy on stumps of wood pulled in from the other side of the pass, and slowly brought them to the point of practicing facing each other.

Helga knew this practice was not for defence. These strikes were not the blocking blows she watched them practice the week before. These were the blows to bring death. Karra stood tall in front of Salazar and swung her blade as a man, using both arms until reaching the top of the arc, then letting the weight of the sword swing down, ready to step aside for the returning thrust. She had a strength not seen in women, and would not back down as Salazar's blade came faster and closer than her own.

"Witch," Salazar yelled. "You would not last long on the field."

She brought her blade down to his, trying to knock it from his hands. "If this were a field we were on and the battle real I would not aim for you blade, but your arms or that thing you hide in your trousers."

"Enough!" He laughed as he lowered his blade, resting the point on the ground and leaning with both arms on it, taking great gulps of air.

Karra kicked the point out of the ground, sending the blade and the wizard tumbling to the ground.

"There," she said, turning to the class. "You never turn your back. Even if you think the battle over, you never turn your back. Too many die when a dead man gets their back."

"Especially if there are witches around," Salazar snipped as he gathered himself up from the floor, rather embarrassed that the witch had caught him unaware.

Bretta and Gryffin also stopped their bladework as Gryffin went over to lead the class in their first practice of combat.

"Salazar?" Helga hurried to him before he could leave. "Why am I to plant Woolly Croton?"

Bretta looked into Helga's hand to the seed and smiled. "Hogwarts? Why, it is all that grows on the summit."

"We found it growing in Godric, on the burial mound." Salazar reached out and touched the seed. "It was growing where it did not belong. It somehow seemed fitting to bring it here."

"Hogwarts? You really want me to plant Hogwarts?" Helga looked at him and shook her head. "I will do it, but if it grows in the rich soil it will overtake everything else. I warn you, Salazar, I will have you and everyone else out there tending the plants if they spread."

"Helga?" Gryffin hurried over and laid his hand on her arm. "I need your help with a couple of the younger students."

She turned and looked at the group clustered around Kara, asking her about her swordwork. "Which ones? Are they ill?"

"No, too young to be so long from home I think." He ran his hand through his hair. "Salazar has four he put to writing lines for staying up too late."

"For staying up?"

"They sit by the windows of his tower and cry." Salazar folded his arms and glowered at Gryffin. "They need discipline."

"Good gods, you are more of fool than I thought." Helga looked back at the students. "This cannot keep on. I have four students that already claim they know enough to keep a hearth and want to leave."

"Tonight we will meet in the kitchen. Tell Rowena." Salazar started back to the class.

"In the meantime I am to plant weeds?" Helga turned and went back to the planting, muttering under her breath.

"Who has you talking to yourself now, witch?" Hanson stepped out of the room of wands as she hurried by.

"How is Temin doing?" Helga looked at the door that just closed behind him, wondering what he had been doing.

"He is fine. He has not slept in two months, the babies keep Kista from helping him make the wands, or to plant the forest, and he has lost so much weight he looks like shite." Hanson laughed at Helga's face. "He is smiling all the time and boring me with stories of his children."

"And Kista?" Helga started walking with Hanson falling in step.

"She is tired, and again blesses you."

"It was not me. I held her hand is all." Helga looked up at Hanson. "She should be able to have as many as she wants. The one she lost, she lost on the way here. The trip was too much, and she was beaten before Temin managed to get to her."

Hanson pulled Helga into an empty room and pulled her to him. He tipped up her chin and grinned, seeing her smile at him.

"You should at least pretend to be shocked," he chuckled as he leaned down and brushed her lips.

"Then you would have to do more than..." She clamped her mouth shut and looked at him with her eyes growing large.

"Helga, you really need to be more careful." He laughed at her. "If someone were to overhear you they would get the wrong idea."

"I did not mean it like it sounded," she whispered. "And I didn't finish."

"Did you not?" He put one hand to the back of her head and held her head still as he lowered his mouth to hers, parting her lips with his tongue and feeling her open to him.

Her arms went around his neck as she tried to pull him lower, tried to step closer and to melt into him, hungry for him, for his touch. He lowered his hands to her hips, lifting her robes until he could slide his hand across the skin on her thighs, and up her back.

"Helga." He whispered her name as his mouth crushed against hers. "I want you."

She pulled away, looking as him as she felt his hands slid over her and one hand move to her breast. "Do you still want to wait until the full moon?"

"No," he rasped, letting his hands roam over her. "However, we must. You will see, it will be worth the wait."

He took his hands out from under her robes, allowing the fabric to fall back in place before grabbing her head in both hands and kissing her roughly.

"Hanson?" She looked at him with her brows coming together.

"I 'm sorry, Helga. We need to get out of here." He pushed past her and opened the door, then looked back at her. "I will claim you at the full moon. If we stay here I will take you now."

"Would that be such a bad thing?" She looked up at him, still fighting to catch her breath.

"For me? No." He let his eyes run down her body, and then looked back to her eyes. "You deserve better than to be taken on a student's desk in a dusty room."

He held his hand out to her and was somewhat surprised when she pushed past him into the hallway.

"Helga!" He caught up with her and pulled her elbow back to make her stop. "What have I done now?"

"You make me... you..." Her face turned red and she looked at the floor.

"My gods, woman, think how red you would be if I took you in there." He laughed at her discomfort. "Do you think for one moment you could hide the fact from the children? You already told me you want more than a kiss, what would you say in public then? Maybe I should just have you and forget the claiming."

Her hand hit his face before he recognized the signs. He released her elbow and let her stomp off as he looked after her, sheepishly rubbing his face.

"Again?" Salazar asked him later as they passed each other in the halls and he saw the handprint she had left on Hanson's face.

Hanson sighed and nodded. "Most of the time I admit it is my fault. I say things just to see her flustered. Other times I have no idea why she does it."

"Alya just gets quiet." Salazar frowned. "She thinks I should know when I do something that bothers her."

"Is she not talking again today?" Hanson fought the twitch he felt on his lips.

"No, today she chose to tell me exactly what she thought. I would prefer the silence."

"Marcus is trading some of Helga's herbs and potions for brooms. Bretta has used them before, she says it is easy and will show us how to use them. It would be a good time to take Alya for a short holiday from here."

"She is trying to fit in," Salazar said quietly and looked to Hanson. "I know it is difficult for her. She wants her own hearth as all the other witches have at home. I will need to do something for her."

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"Rowena?" Helga poked her head in Rowena and Erwin's sitting room when no answer came from the knock. "Helena?"

She turned and headed back down, wondering where they would be at this time of day. She needed a list of times and lessons, she thought as she made her way to the north tower and the library. She felt she wasted hours searching for the others and was tired of being the one to try to keep to schedules.

The winding staircase moved her up to the top of the tower and the room that Emila still worked in daily. She had slowly acquired a few books from the clans but the shelves still sat empty. She and Marcus once again sat together pondering over a list of books they had complied from the memories of all at the school.

"I am looking for Rowena." Helga said, looking around the room. "I see I have missed her again."

"She and Erwin have taken Helena to the lake." Emila frowned at her. "What is wrong, Helga?"

"Nothing and everything." Helga walked over to the table and sat next to Marcus. "I do not even know what time to serve meals. Last week alone, Gryffin's students went without the mid-day meal twice and Rowena's once missed the morning meal."

"Helga, you cannot do more." Marcus said, not lifting his eyes from the parchment in front of him. "I think I found it, Emila "

"Found what?" Helga asked.

"The book referred to in the first student text. I think we can get a copy." Marcus looked at her as if she had grown an extra head. "We have searched for its location for two weeks now."

"There," she said, walking to the door. "See, we don't know what the other is doing. Perhaps if we did I could have told you that the book you seek is buried in a cache near my old village."

"Where?" Marcus swivelled around in his chair to look at her.

"My old village, Gurth had that tome."

"Another copy?" Emila asked.

"There were four, but one was destroyed." Helga said from her place by the doorway. "When the brooms come and we can make the trip in one day, I will go with you and get it. There are other things there as well. Even a bowl you can put your memories in to share, or to empty you head."

"Bretta could use that," Emila said sadly. "She still wakes screaming in the night."

"Perhaps we can study the spell and make more," Helga said.

"Don't give it to Rowena to do. She is up all night working on a spell that will keep a list of names." Marcus looked from Helga to Emila and grinned. "And she keeps following the elves around trying to catch them as they travel from place to place."

"I hate to ask after using the steps." Helga looked ill. "She really isn't doing what I think she is. Is she?"

"You know Rowena. I made a mistake of telling her that if it could be done it would have been done years ago." Emila shook her head.

"I won't do it. Even when I travel with an elf I get sick. If I had to do it without an elf... I think I would die," Helga said seriously, looking from Marcus to Emila and back to Marcus. "I need to go down to the kitchens. If you see Rowena and Erwin, tell them I am making pie in the kitchen. Tell them we need to talk."

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Helga put the meat and onion pies on the table for six of them this time as Alya would be joining them. Alya had started to give glamour spells to the Slytherin girls and wanted to teach the old ways of dancing, which was meeting with resentment and objections from the rest. This was one of the many things that they needed to settle.

"Bretta will teach Karra how to use the brooms first. After that we will learn and the others. Only after all the adults know what to expect will the students learn." Salazar looked around the table for objections.

"I don't think my students would want to learn broom riding," Helga said.

"If they do they can travel home for emergencies and perhaps for celebrations. The Ravens still celebrate Oidhche Shamhna. They build small fires and form a circle around it instead of travelling to the stones." Erwin offered information he had learned.

"He is correct," Gryffin said. "Perhaps if we send the little ones home for celebrations it will be easier for them."

"The parents of my students no longer want to send sons," Helga sighed. "They need them to watch the herds and work in the fields in the summer."

"You could send them home for the summer." Rowena frowned. "I am thinking of sending mine home when the snow comes. It is too cold in the library to study. We spend as much time keeping warm as we do learning runes."

"The courtyard is too cold for practice," Gryffin agreed.

"It puts a lot of work on us to have all the students live in but three towers," Helga said. "I know you have no clan, Gryffin, but you could take some of the students that show a talent for the sword."

"No, Helga, that would split the clans." Rowena shook her head. "Some of the little ones are having a hard enough time now."

"Rowena, they don't even live together in clans any longer. I don't see what difference it would make." Alya joined in the conversation. "As a matter of fact, Salazar has two in his tower that should not be there at all. They would rather study in the library. They should be with you, Rowena."

"We don't need anyone that does not know warming spells," she said with a laugh. "I am not joking about the cold."

"We need to have all of them learn the same spells. There is too much rivalry as it is," Helga said.

"I think Alya has a point." Gryffin looked around the table for agreement. "We should sort the children according to what they need to learn."

"No, they should all learn the same. How else will those that decide to take the test to be teacher know enough?" Rowena shook her head and looked at Gryffin. "No, not by what they need to learn."

"Maybe how they learn," Alya offered. "It would be easier to teach all those that think the same. If the whole class likes to plant it would be easier, would it not, Helga?"

"Some of them may like to do work with herbs already and they always will. Perhaps putting them someplace they could learn something different," Helga said.

"This is going no place." Rowena stood to return up stairs. "Just give me the ones that really want to study. I do not care what clan they come from."

Helga stood with Rowena and turned to Alya. "Have them work out who they want and give me what is left. I just want this fighting done with."

"Who is fighting now?" Alya laughed. "I thought you and Hanson had reached an agreement."

Helga blushed but turned to Salazar. "Most of those Slytherin students are fighting with the others all the time."

"They do not fight in my tower." He scowled. "Why was I not told?"

"It is not just yours, Salazar. Each house has a few that believe themselves above the rest," Gryffin said.

"Fine. Alya, make a list and give it to me. I will take those students to my tower and send the ones that do not belong there to the others."

"And what of the ones that need to work the fields? Do we not keep them all year as the others?" Helga asked.

"Talk to Rowena. As far as I am concerned, it is much too nice to be in class when the sun calls. Perhaps we should just send them all home and take the time off ourselves." Erwin laughed. "Tell her to remember the pond. I think she will remember the importance of time to be out of class."

"If we keep them from solstice to solstice they can be home for the celebrations as well." Alya smiled. "And I would get to live elsewhere for half the time. They will agree. I'll make sure of it."

"We can stop fighting about teaching the celebrations since they will be home to learn." Gryffin looked at Alya with a frown. "Glamour charms, we cannot stop. The witches will learn them anyway. Just leave the ceremonies and the dances to your summer."