The Black Forest or the Secret Diary of Prof. S. Quirrell

* * *

August 23

I woke at dawn and before Levin. I gently slid out from under her right arm as it had come to rest across my back during the night. She stirred and said something in Romanian I didn't understand.

As the sun was just beginning to rise, a final lid dropped into place with a thump. I stretched and played "Match the Vampire With His Resting Place" to jumpstart my weary brain. The plain wooden box - of good, strong and simple construction was probably my lederhosen friend's - it reeked of a German practicality. On the other hand, the iron strongbox, decorated with a great family crest, spoke of a spoilt aristocrat, perhaps the elegant blond or young Dracusor.

The latter reminds me of my sister's brat, whom I've seen but once and that one too many times. In fact, Draco has bitten me before just as his spiritual brother, the Romanian vampire, had the night before.

The bite has stopped bleeding and feels a little better. In a few days, it will be gone, implying I can keep the magar mic away from it.

"Greetings, stranger." A thick accent brought to an end my practical vampire defenses contemplation.

A small, graying gypsy woman addressed me, her eyes, wise in their forty-odd years, observing me keenly. She reminded me immediately of a raven.

"Greetings, Madame."

"Are you alright? There is a bite..."

"Right. Yes. I'm fine."

"I'll make you something for it. Sometimes vampires, they carry diseases."

"Thank you." She seemed trustworthy. Well, considering she traveled with a horde of vampires and served some powerful "master."

She fetched a packet of herbs from a pocket deep in her gypsy robes and dropped them into a silver mug. There was a style in her hand pass as she poured water over the mixture that struck me as familiar. There was something in her voice as well.

"Drink this in three quick sips."

I did as she instructed and instantly felt the effect. I felt internally clean, as if my innards had been given a bath.

She watched me anxiously, but smiled a little after I'd drunk. "There, now. Better?"

"Yes. Yes! What is this draught?" I had never seen such a thing made at Hogwart's, although Snape had never taught us any vampire cures. What I knew, potions-wise, I learned from books.

"It is very popular among the German witches. I learned it in the Schwarzwald ." She took the cup from me and slipped it into a dirty old sack that hung at her side.

"Are you German yourself?"

"No, I am not."

"And your master?"

"My master?" she raised both eyebrows at me.

"The vampires - last night - mentioned their master?"

"Puta sucia. Der vampyr est stupido," she shouted their argot as if to them and Levin woke with a start.

"I will kill you, magar mic."

The gypsy woman laughed and looked at me, winking as if we shared a little secret. "Tell me, pureblood, why do you travel with the werebitch?"

Levin bared her teeth.

I was too stunned not to answer. "Levin is my companion and my guide."

"And evil. Her kind is evil and she is evil."

I opened my mouth to defend her, but already Levin had put herself between me and the other woman. "Why do you travel with the undead? Their rot is so high, I could smell them from up on that ridge there where we had camped."

Instead of being insulted, the gypsy smiled. "A werebitch, pureblood, is like a mutt. Useful for some things, but be careful of bites. You don't know where her mouth has been."

A low growl came from deep in Levin's throat and for a moment, I was afraid she would transform despite the moon. But she held and held back.

"Madame, I would like to speak with your master." I attempted sternness, but my voice came out high and uncomfortable.

"But I have no master. I am my own master."

I was confused. "The vampires - "

"Never listen to such as them, pureblood; they're ageless and all talk." She shook her head, mumbling, "My master. MY master."

The gypsy then wandered back to her caravan by way of the rear entrance and shut the door, locking it - against us, I wager.

Levin relaxed her lips back over her teeth. "I don't like her."

"She doesn't seem much taken with you either."

"She calls you sang 'solut as if she knows you."

"It is strange," I thought again of her potion-making. "Breakfast?"

"Tea, coffee. Nothing to eat - I thought we would be back in camp by this time."

"We could go back."

"Not now. We're theirs," she gestured at the coffins.

As her words seemed to imply it, I knew it was best to admit my fault immediately. "It was my idea to come down here. I take full responsibility."

Levin shrugged in her way and said, "What will be, will be."

We relied on my meager skills for a noon day meal and a light supper. The raven woman hadn't left her trailer all day and it was clear that soon the vampires would be out and about.

The German rose first from the plain box as I surmised. He stretched slowly like a cat and licked at his fangs before turning to us.

Or, more like, to me.

"Good evening, mein herr. How was the day?"

"We never met your master," Levin said.

"Did he address you, werebitch?" The elegant blond appeared from nowhere with Dracusor in tow.

Levin stepped forward, challenging and the three fell back.

"The stink of your bitch's blood, wolf!" the blond spat.

'It makes us sick to taste it or even to smell it," Lederhosen offered, almost apologetically.

A light seemed to dawn on Levin's face, even though the sun had since set. It was loving and hateful, that look, and full of understanding. "The vampires of Sibiu. They made me to repel the vampires of Sibiu."

"The lupi of Sighisoara! I should have known. When the sang 'solut burned your pack, they saved a feast for us!"

Levin leapt at the little Romanian vampire, knocking him to the ground.

"Get her off!" Dracusor screamed over and over, but the others wouldn't - or couldn't - go near him. The swarthy one was now with us and two near-albinos who looked to be twins of indeterminate sex. None of them moved.

I let Levin straddle the boy for a few minutes, growling at him in their native tongue, no doubt threatening him. Then I took her gently by the shoulder and she removed herself from him.

The vampire trembled even after she'd stood and he would not get up. The others, excepting the blond, laughed at him.

"You try and live in my Schwarzwald, puta sucia, and see how long you'd last," Lederhosen said.

"I didn't see you helping him," the blond shot back. "Yet you claim you do le plaisir du maestro?"

Lederhosen frowned, pursing his lips to such a degree that his fangs popped out between them. "I do what I am told."

"We know. That's how you ended up here. As one of us." Drawing strength from the torment of another, Dracusor recovered his tongue.

Levin yawned at the obvious tension among the undead. "This is like little girls fighting over hostess of the tea party. Let us have our supper."

I admitted to her I had been ignorant of the werewolf's power. "Your blood repels vampires? I would have never believed it if I hadn't witnessed it myself!"

Levin opened her mouth to reply, but the gypsy woman's voice came out of it. "Do they teach you nothing in England? A werebitch is valued ten times over the rest of her kind. Yes, she repels vampires, but also her fangs cure impotence, her hairs treat baldness and she can even be trained to hunt for those she loves."

This rankled Levin's pride and she said, in half truth (for she has captured game for me). "I hunt for no one."

"Because you love no one."

"As the kettle says to the cooking pot, witch."

The gypsy's jolly exterior cracked for a moment, but just one. "Would you like something to eat? Come inside, pureblood, and bring your dog."

"I will kill her, Quirrell," Levin snarled as we passed into her quarters.

"As my dog?" I joked.

"No. It will be a pleasure to remember her death with the human eye."

Dinner was a quiet affair, given in a second chamber attached at left to sleeping quarters and at right to another, locked room. The caravan was deceptively small from the outside, although that might have been a charm. The gypsy has magic.

During the meal, the conversation was polite or non-existent. Levin didn't speak at all, but warily tasted her food - and deciding it was safe - ate lustily.

As she poured us a gypsy draught for afters, the witch took on an air of command that took both of us by surprise. "From now on, we travel together. It is a happy coincidence we met as we have. Albania is no place for an Englishman and his...companion."

"I have been there many times before. I can handle the country."

I'd forgotten Levin had a voice. "It is true. That's why she's with me."

"But things are different now - things have changed." The gypsy sat and drank her glass in one swallow. The beverage lit her eyes. "I have traveled all of Europe and I am called by many names. You may name me Vultur as in her tongue."

"Vultur," I said, testing it out. Then, with a name to call her by, I gave her ours. "This is Elizabeta Levin. I am Simon Quirrell, Professor of Defenses Against the Dark Arts, Hogwart's School of Witchcraft and Wizardry."

Her bright eyes narrowed and a sly look came into her face. "Well, Englander, you and I will meet tomorrow - alone and after nightfall. We two have many serious things to discuss and Monks Hood liquor goes right to my head."

At the mention of Monks Hood, Levin turned green and then red and fled the caravan, leaving me alone with Vultur. She took my hand in her hot claws. "There is much for me and you to say. Tomorrow."

Q

August 24

After spending all night and a good portion of the day retching, Levin is finally asleep. It was a cruel trick perpetrated by Vultur, but also a final test - of me, I think. The silver in the our camp, the silver cup I drank the anti-vampire potion from, the wolfsbane alcohol.

I hope she is satisfied. I would hate to see more harm done to my friend for my sake.

The vampires were up and off hunting by the time Vultur peeked her head out of the caravan and motioned for me to join her.

"Where is your dog, then?" she asked, closing and locking the door behind her.

"Levin is asleep."

"Still feeling last night's effects? The werecreatures, pureblood, cannot hold their fermented wolfsbane."

"Why did you want to see me alone?"

She moved away from me, keeping her back to me. "Tell me, Englander, at this school where you teach - who else is master there?"

"Albus Dumbledore, who played such a part in the Dark Lord's war, is head master. Professor Minerva McGonagall, transfiguration, is his deputy."

"And who else teaches - as you do?"

"Severus Snape, Potions, Filius Flitwick, my old house master, Charms, Sibyll Trelawney, Divination," I rattled through the staff list. "And, of course, Madame. Hooch, Flying."

"Falka."

The voice had changed.

"Falka?"

"We were girls together." The rough speech was gone, the soft, elegant sounds of the Queen's English replacing it.

"You're -"

"English, yes. And Hogwart's trained. Slytherin, Class of '62." She held out her hand for this new introduction.

"No. I mean, you're - Azrael."

"I haven't heard that in years, but as I said before..." she switched back to her Eastern European tones. "I am called by many names."

I laughed. I had to, as the change between her two personas was so complete. Her very body altered - as the gypsy, she seemed stout and small and hard. As her true self, she was thin and straight-backed and strong. "That is amazing."

"That is a thing you should master in these times, professor. It can be convenient to disappear into someone else when circumstances demand it - as they may of you."

"Madame Hooch asked me to look for you in the Black Forest."

"And so you've found me, only on the other side of the Padure Neagra."

She used Romanian, but the words meant the same thing. "What do the Albanians call the woods?"

"They don't speak of it. After centuries as the center of Europe's dark forces, the Romanians will talk about anything. Even Voldemort."

I gasped like a child at the end of a horror tale. Embarrassing, but yet, I hadn't heard the true name said in years and then only by my brother-by-marriage and I would expect no respect from such as he.

"That's only superstition, professor. You best overcome that while you practice your acting. You are going into a place more dangerous than you should dare."

Suddenly ill and light-headed, I wanted her to beg me to go back, to take Levin and return to Romania. To run away.

I was afraid.

But she smiled. "You're showing some wisedom, professor. I would love to order you home, but I have a little gift for Divination and the leaves and stars say stay the course. Together we can find the way."

"Perhaps."

"Perhaps! Stay close to me, professor, and we will survive. No, thrive! But make no mention of this conversation to the wolf. She isn't one of us."

I nodded and thanked her, then left for the cold comfort of the camp fire. Levin was there, staring into the flames, which pulled at her face, transforming it into a living skull.

"Do you feel better?"

"A little." She kept her arms wrapped around herself, as if she felt a chill, despite the fire.

"Are you cold?"

"I am unwell." She had been crying. Her voice was wet.

Levin isn't one of us - what does she mean by that? Once a month, she is something apart, yes, and dangerous, yes, but for a few hours only and she can be controlled. In this time of the month, she is human and she hurts and can be healed as anyone else can.

I put an arm around her shoulders and was surprised at how easily and well she fit against mine. She broke then and let herself sob like a child and for the first time I wondered how it had been, growing up as plaything, but never equal to a rowdy gang of beastish boys?

I wondered and I let her cry and I had no answer.

Q