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

August 25

I woke this morning again with the haunting voice in my head. "Cine sin urle..." Lupi, Lupi - wolf, but attempts at translating the speech through magic continue to fail.

I don't dare ask Levin. It's against her - she is the wolf in the middle of the mysterious mumble. But what is she doing there? Why am I party to it? Am I a participant? Or merely sympathetic?

I am that. I am sympathetic.

Azrael - for I have decided to call her Azrael as Madame Hooch did, at least in this private record - had not stirred from her caravan. Levin still slept as well. I heated a little water and transfigured it into tea, although my desire was for something stronger. If only something stronger mixed well with English Breakfast.

The sun was gloriously yellow and white in its rising and the way the rays lit my surroundings took me back to the trees of my childhood, when I was blissfully innocent and lonely, but content. It was better then, perhaps, being young and capable and ignored.

Seeking to recapture that feeling - foolishness, I know - I strolled out of our camp and into the rocky forests. I found peace for a time there pretending I was back home, but then the screeching cackle of a deranged woman brought me back to Albania. A harpy perched not far off, tearing a rat apart with her human teeth and eagle's claws.

No, Quirrell, you are not in England, but close enough to Greece to stumble upon the odd harpy. This thought was depressing to me, so I walked quickly back, attempting to ignore the way the trees had changed from something friendly and welcoming to another thing cold and indifferent.

When I returned, Levin greeted me with a half smile and the disconcerting return of something I thought had gone forever - a sort of guarded look. "She has been at it all morning, packing them up."

"The coffins?"

"She is a powerful witch, verita mic, though her line is de namol. As strong as your sang 'solut, maybe. She threw those corpses around like they were only paper."

"They are like paper when they sleep, wolf. It is the boxes that require some effort."

Azrael allowed me to see her then. She seemed younger today and yes, stronger, as Levin had said. It's the power of the secret between us, I think. Maybe no more than my knowledge that she is not who she pretends to be.

"May I talk with you, pureblood, alone in my rooms?"

"Of course."

As I agreed, Levin dropped a log roughly into the fire. Sparks shot up around it at the impact and as they died down, her body relaxed and she smiled, pleased with the disturbance in the flames.

Even inside, Azrael spoke in a low voice as if someone might overhear. "We will have to move on today, dear professor, as I have been through the guts of my little chickadee and they do advise it. The abyss is opening beyond these mountains and we will be there to catch it."

"I don't really understand this."

"You won't - yet - until we traverse Padure Neagre. I'll be able to defeat it as Falka and I always dreamed of doing back when we were still schoolgirls and young and foolish. I almost wish she were here."

"You could send for her, I suppose. She might be able to find a substitute to open the term for her." I said, although I admit I didn't relish the thought of our flying mistress trampling all over Albania with us.

"Oh, professor, your youth is endearing and unendurable. You haven't learned enough about the human heart," Azrael patted my hand patronizingly. "Some wounds can never heal - and certainly not with some rash summons."

"I only wished to help by offering a suggestion."

"And you shall aid me, but not in that way, professor. Now, attend to the wolf. She's suspicious enough."

I rode on the caravan beside the witch. Levin walked in front with the ponies. She talked to them occasionally in something like a happy babyish Romanian. For their part, the animals seem taken with her.

We didn't make it all that far before nightfall, but once the vampires were awake, the load became much easier for Marian and Dorin, as the ponies are called, and we maintained better speed. Levin is showing first signs of the upcoming transformation and doesn't mind the night movement.

I feel asleep watching them walk ahead, the lone wolf and the animals, the various vampires, foot sore and complaining within the first hour. I only woke when Azrael elbowed me hard, forcing me to sit up. I had drooled on her good traveling robes. Embarrassing.

I began to drop off again when the cart came to an abrupt stop and she announced "We will stop here, pureblood."

I can barely unroll a blanket and scribble a few lines before sleep rushes to overtake me again.

What is wrong with me that I can ride most of the day and be this exhausted?

Q

September 1

I don't need to expound further on these mountains or this mode of traveling them. Suffice it to say the Malesia e Malhe are filthy.

Lederhosen positions himself beside me whenever he is awake. At first I thought this was out of some affinity for me, but now I believe it is for my protection. Most of the vampires -- the Moor, the Gemini, the Ratface, the Chef, the Wine Merchant -- ignore me. But the other four -- Dracusor, the Blonde, the Grey Stone and Jean-Baptiste, the actor -- watch me as if I am not only prey, but also a prisoner.

I don't think Azrael is ignorant of this, but she has enough problems with them without worrying about mine. I hear her sometimes arguing with them until dawn.

“No, nein, baboso, eso n'est pas proof! Gott im himmel -- vampyrs!”

Sometimes their conversations are composed of little more than German curse words strung together. She prefers German, anyway; most of them retort in English or Spanish. The Chef uses Creole -- or at least, he speaks what I imagine to be Creole, having never studied the New World's bastard offshoot of French.

Levin, too, is more concerned with her own mind to give me any thought. Four days until the full moon. Her eyes narrow at me constantly. Her emerging bestial nature remembers our last confrontation.

When Azrael calls me to her for a private conversation, Levin shakes her head and sighs “Verita mic.” Then she dismisses the two of us with a careless wave. She pretends not to care what we discuss, but I think it bothers her that we speak alone so often without her.

But my Romanian guide is my guide no longer. Another of my kind has found an unknown, but higher purpose for me. Or so I believe. I know little concrete information yet.

For when Azrael and I do speak privately, we speak only of Hogwart's. She attended before I was born or as she says, “Before I was that mishap nestled on my mother's hips.” Charming phrasing, that, but true enough.

Our memories are similar. Oh, a few portraits have rearranged themselves and the caretaker and groundskeeper have changed, but much has remained the same. Only aged. Azrael remembers McGonagall young (!) and a fat-faced, pudgy Hooch who grew into the best Gryffindor chaser in a century.

“I was a little in love with her back then,” she confided to me a few nights ago when the fermented wolfsbane was flowing a bit too freely. “We were such a pair. But no one likes to see a Slytherin and a Gryffindor too close together. It's bad form.”

They must have had a rarified friendship, but she never mentions why they no longer communicate. Nor why she never returns to England.

Women relish their secrets, as I've so often been told. Levin certainly resents me knowing hers. She has even left off sleeping near me, so that I must put a garlic charm on my blankets before I retire each night. After these several days, I can almost sleep peacefully now without dreaming of pasta and escargots.

I do miss her company. But this is her cycle, not mine, and I must be patient. Control her on the 5^th and then the gentle woman will return.

Q

September 3

Snitch woke me this morning by landing on my nose. He dug his claws into the bridge, announcing his presence and the arrival of a brief note from Charles. "Thankful you're alive. Write if there's trouble. Jones-Skunk 'seeing each other.' All your fault."

It's oddly comforting that Skunk has made a love match. And a little frightening as well. I let myself picture the dragons doctor as a family man with a hoarde of half-American, half-Slytherin children playing at his feet. Not very long into this diversion, I see him pouring a potion over them, transforming them all into giant cockroaches. He seems happy with them that way and keeps them as pets.

I'm not sure how Jones would react to the cockroach children. But perhaps her “Muggle Pride” training would leave her open to raising a family of gargantuan insects.

Like a groggy child, Levin protested our early departure, throwing the blankets over her head and refusing to come out. Azrael didn't hesitate, merely picked her up by magic and laid her on top of the coffins in the caravan. I noticed Levin's nose twitching at the smell of them, but she didn't wake up.

She will soon enough and I dread her reaction. How would anyone feel to open one's eyes in the midst of a room full of the undead?

"What will we do with the wolf? It's almost full moon, pureblood." Azrael keeps up her particular speech with me as if she suspects someone is listening. Perhaps the vampires can hear in their sleep. Or perhaps traveling with them for so long has left her paranoid.

"I'll hold her as I did last moon."

Azrael turned her face away and said. " No. Too dangerous."

"It sufficed - "

"No." Her decision was final. "I have heard of a potion for her kind, like an opiate. Perhaps I could brew her a cup -"

"Drug her? Against her will?"

"Her will, pureblood? What do you know of will?" The witch grimaced as the older ones do when they let their minds return to a darker time. I could have spoken her next words with her. I had heard them many times before. "Do you remember when Voldemort fell?"

"Not well. I was still young - and there were other concerns in my family. At the time."

"Your sisters, yes. Do you feel the eldest should have been punished for what she was party to?"

"She was under the Imperius Curse, as her husband claims he was."

"She was forced to do evil. Against her will."

"That is what the courts found in her husband's case."

"But she is innocent?"

"There are many words I would choose before 'innocent' to describe Narcissa. But essentially, yes." Speaking of my family always causes a great rock to form in my throat. I swallowed hard, but the stone remained there, lodged in my gullet.

"Mercy shown because the evil was against her will. Well, if your wolf inadvertently does good - by my potion - and against her will, we will absolve her too." Azrael cackled under her breath and so resembled a hag for a moment that I edged away from her.

"You are unkind."

"Mankind is unkind, pureblood. Learn that too."

"I know that."

"You do not. That is not something you learn like a charm or a sleeping draught, like so many things you think you know." She clucked her tongue at the straining ponies who managed, with the encouragement, to pull us over a particularly steep turn. "You do not even recognize evil in the wolf and the good in myself."

"The snake in the garden said it too knew good and evil.”

“What are you babbling about?"

"Nothing. Non-magic mythology. An ancient story of a snake and a tree and the knowledge of good and evil.”

"Gott im himmel."

“Yes, Him,” I said, feeling proud then and a bit ashamed to be addressed -- or cursed at -- as one of her vampires.

As if my thought of the undead roused her, Levin's wordless scream interrupted our conversation. A ferocious pounding and a sting of Romanian obscenities quickly followed. Azrael brought the cart to a halt.

“We had better let her out.”

Those were the last words I said the rest of the day and evening. The vampires ignored us ignoring each other as well excepting Lederhosen who pats my shoulder occasionally, almost paternally.

And I feel strangely comforted. As if I have found one of my own. For there is sympathy between myself and the German. It is evident in his gestures and in his eyes.

He had kind eyes for a vampire, although they are coloured as the heart of an iceberg. He must have a kind soul that such a blue can warm me when the night and his hand and everything about us is like the grave, black and dead.

Q

Sept 4

Levin slept all day and is restless this night, pacing the camp, but never venturing very far. I stay awake as long as I can, partially by writing this, partially with my own thoughts, but when I become too tired, the vampires will do the rest. And even they take watch shifts as being too near her pains them. As it does me, when she is like this.

Chef stayed up with me at first. We talked a little of his days in New Orleans. An American vampire and a Creole is something unusual in my experience and I seized on the chance to inquire into his experiences. Mostly he expressed dissatisfaction with his kind. New Orleans, he told me, is too crowded.

"I be suroun'ed down der by vampire folk" is how he put it, adding a string of french-ish words I didn't really catch, except for the one - disang. Blood, of course. It's always about blood with them. With us.

I don't bother with translation spells any longer. Half of the time, they don't work and the other half of the time, they bounce back, leaving me speaking a gibberish that I, in turn, can't translate myself. It's no longer worth it. I rely on my foolish interest in wizarding and non-magic tongues. I have 13 of them and perhaps this trip will aid me in picking up another few to take home to my students.

DADA in any other tongue is still DADA as they say.

I am still unable to sleep when Ratface sidles over to my spot beside the campfire. Ratface is a grotesquerie and my appelation is actually kinder than he deserves. He is all jutting bones and teeth and hairless pink flesh, the stuff of non-magic nightmares and horror tales.

It is no wonder they once modeled their legendary vampires off of creatures like our Ratface. I feel fear when he crouches beside me and I can defend myself -- what of one of their peasants with no knowledge of protection but a silver cross or string of garlic?

We don't speak. Ratface doesn't speak much to anyone. It may be difficult for him with his strange configuration of teeth or he may have said what needed to be said millenia ago. One can never tell with vampires -- they are a strange lot.

By the time The Grey Stone knocked Ratface aside with a hard shove, I was aware the night time was finally slipping over me and sleep without dreams would come. I am able to close my eyes with a whispered "Nidor Garlicum."

No, I won't dream.

Q