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

September 5

The Padure Naegre is below us. Around 11 o'clock this morning, we made a sharp left-handed turn at yet another corner in the endless rock and suddenly, as if by some magic, we were looking down onto a faraway valley, carpeted by trees - the amply named trees. For they are black from here or, at the least, they are a green so dark it ceases to be green.

Or healthy. There is hardly a suggestion of life in that green-black in the distance.

At the sight of the forest, Azrael again laughed her hag's laugh. "It is all downhill from here."

An hour earlier, Levin joined us with a grunt and strangled growl. Azrael, almost as if she were concerned for the wolf, told us how she acquired her vampire entourage. Her tale, we both hoped, would distract our companion from her emerging bestial nature.

I will repeat the story here.

While residing in the Schwartzwald, a popular retreat for Germany's dark and light creatures, Azrael became separated from the group of mixed blood and non-magic gypsies with whom she had been traveling. Convinced she wouldn't find her party stumbling about in the dark, she camped alone with the caravan and the ponies, settling down for a long, lonely night.

As she began to nod off in front of the fire, she heard a voice in her ear and felt cold breath on her neck. "Good evening, good lady."

Azrael turned to face the voice, but no one was there. She shivered and pulled her shawl more tightly around her shoulders.

Again sleep returned and again a voice — a sweeter, younger one — said, "Good evening, good lady. May we join you?"

This time, Azrael didn't turn. She let the hairs stand up on her neck. If she didn't move, if she didn't close her eyes, she would see him. No, she corrected herself. She would see them.

They would materialize.

They did — six of them — nearly half the vampire population she travels with now. And there they were for the first time, staring across the fire at her: the Wine Merchant, the Moor, the Blond, the Gemini and Jean-Baptiste, the actor.

They spoke to her. In fact, they talked all night to her. At dawn, they vanished, leaving her to find seven of the non-magic gypsies and one of the mixed bloods dead in their camp.

The following evening, the vampires returned, only this time, several hours earlier. Again they spoke with her until the dawn, chatting about the inconsequential details of their lives, falling all over each other to talk. The next morning, only one person was dead, an old mad beggar woman who lived a half-existence in the forest.

Every night they came to speak with her, two or less persons died. Some nights, when the vampires were very anxious and very early, no one died. The vampires preferred talking, preferred the attention she gave them to actual killing. With conversation, she could distract them from their true natures.

Azrael had found her purpose.

"I would say to you, pureblood, wolf, go alone into the woods. Go alone and you will hear the vampire voice in your ear and you will find your meaning and your reason."

Levin grunted and jumped down from the caravan. The ponies, so lately her friends, shied away, but she ignored them. There is the animal desire in her to escape us, but beside it is the human resignation that we would never let her go.

A little after 1 PM, we paused in our descent to eat. Azrael cooked meat and a pot of herbal stew. Then she spoke over it when Levin's back was turned and I understood what it was.

The potion.

Focusing on its vile-smelling bubbles as they burst at the surface, I also understood the part I would be expected to play in this. I would distract Levin, then hold her, while Azrael administered this brew — and by force, if necessary.

Levin had removed herself from us, crouching down in a close copse of trees. She wouldn't eat, of course, as her body rebelled against human food on the day before transformation.

Or should I qualify that, for it's not human food that turns her stomach, but the food that humans consume.

Although I knew the answer, I went to her and asked, “Levin, will you eat with us?”

“I'm not hungry,” she said without looking at me.

“Will you join us then?”

“I will not.”

“Please come, Levin,” I said and made my mistake. I touched her.

She went rigid as if shocked by some powerful magic. “I would rather die myself than be with that woman and her dead and her undead.”

“Levin,” I began, hoping to pry into the meaning of her word, but then Azrael was upon us, a flask in her right hand and my wand in her left.

“Hold her!” she cried as the wand flew from her to my hand. It was reflex to reply with the proper spell and I did as I was taught, pining Levin to the ground with a few simple words.

As Azrael struggled to force her mouth open, Levin kept her face turned towards me. It only took a moment to get a dose of the philter down her throat, but Levin's eyes never moved from me.

They were strangely non-threatening, as I would have expected her to hate me at that moment. Instead, they asked me what was happening. They asked me why I was doing this to her.

“Let her go.”

I relaxed the spell. Levin was on her feet immediately. She focused on me as if the witch wasn't -- and had never been -- there.

“How could you?” she spat, but as she said it, she swayed unsteadily on her feet. Then her eyes rolled back into her head and she fell in a heap on the ground.

“Perfect!” Azrael clapped her hands delightedly. “Now the rest of the day will be so much easier.”

And, truth be told, it was. Every two hours Azrael administered another dose and Levin, lately stirring, slipped back into a coma-like sleep. We made quick progress as we no longer needed to keep an eye on Levin.

At 7 PM, we stopped. Azrael explained she would rather be stationary for Levin's transformation and I agreed. In case anything went wrong -- although I was sure that her magic and my own was more than enough for the evening's purpose.

The sun had begun to sink into the mountains when Azrael began unloading the coffins. She didn't ask me for assistance, leaving me alone with Levin.

“Verita mic?”

Levin's voice was thick with the potion, but it was the woman speaking, not beast within her.

“Levin?” She attempted opening her eyes, but couldn't. I took her hand and whispered in her ear. “It's alright, Levin. You're under a potion -- like a drug. You'll be fine in the morning, I promise.”

In reality, I didn't know if that were true. But I said it because it had to be said.

“I dream,” she said. “I dream such things, verita mic.”

“That's only in your mind, Levin. You'll be alright in the morning.”

The sun dipped a little lower and her eyes forced themselves open. They had turned entirely black as if the pupils had devoured everything around them.

“Undress me.”

“I'm sorry?” I asked it, but I had heard what she said. I only needed to disguise the fact that I'd dropped her hand as if she'd bitten me.

“Take off my clothing.”

“I can't.”

She laughed, a short bark. “You can not?”

“I shouldn't.”

“Should not! And I should not turn into a wolf either, but it will happen. Free me.”

“But, Levin --”

“Quirrell.” Although she was unseeing, her blind eyes turned towards where my voice had been, settling uncomfortably on my own. “We have done this together before, you and I. We have made a bond, Quirrell, and no witch can break it, not with her potions or with her lies.”

She called me by my name.

“I will have to keep you bound. As a precaution.”

“A precaution? There is still time, verita mic.”

I didn't move, still afraid, but those black eyes pleaded. Her whole body pleaded.

I carefully unbound her wrists, but kept both pinned to the ground as I had done early in the day.

The sun was nearly gone and I felt the fading rays speeding me on with my task.

First the leather vest and the long-sleeved shirt, then a t-shirt, like a man's undershirt, then a cotton thing worn against the skin like long underwear. It was once white -- a very long time ago.

Levin wears boots -- ancient, but well-loved. Wool socks. Blue jeans that I'd always thought were gray until I was close enough to notice their true color. The long underwear.

Under them, the scar on her thigh was red and wet-looking. She wore it as a reminder of what I am and of what she is. Was this the physical manifestation of the bond of which she spoke ?

Realizing how I was staring, I quickly averted my eyes from her nakedness. I have seen the change before. There is nothing more for me to learn from it.

Yet there is the part that desires and it is not just knowledge I write of. That part that forgets the mind's need to dismiss all the unnecessary distractions. That denies the binding promises made to never pollute the pure blood with my own and the inferiorities of my sex.

Of course, those parts are wrong. Any clear-minded reflection reveals the folly of such contemplations.

But again, there is something beautiful in the pale flesh of a woman, warm and light to the skin of a man in the dying rays of the sun.

The transformation came easily but incompletely. The head was wolfish, long-eared with the expected snout and fangs. But her body still resembled a woman's, covered in dark hair. Her limbs, still muscled with biceps and quadriceps, ended in paws.

As I stared at the misshapen body, trying to comprehend what was before me, the wolf woman whimpered.

Before I could think the better of my action, I had laid my hand on her forehead. The touch calmed her and she rubbed against my palm.

“Levin?”

She raised her head and licked my fingers, lapping at them before taking them into her mouth. Like a puppy, she gnawed at them, gently and without breaking the skin.

She is a werewolf, I thought. It only takes one bite. But I allowed her the simple, childish pleasure. She would not hurt me.

When the wave of power hit her, I had extracted my hand from her mouth to scratch behind her ears. That was my luck as the pain sent from Azrael clamped her jaw down hard enough for blood to seep from between her lips.

That could have been my blood.

I realized immediately what Azrael had used without hearing the words spoken. The Cruciatus Curse. I have seen it used and learned its strength, but I have never never used it myself.

Still it took me a moment to recover my tongue. “Azrael!”

“I have just saved your life, professor.”

“With an Unforgivable Curse?”

“What does it matter how I did it, but that I did what had to be done? Would you have liked to live the rest of your life as an animal, as she has?” Azrael bent beside Levin, who had passed out. She raised the wolfen head and poured a bit of the potion down her throat.

She would not recover from the faint then. Levin would slip back into her potion-coma.

“You hurt her. Badly.”

Azrael ignored me, muttering to herself as an English woman, not as the character she plays for us. “This isn't right. This isn't as it should be. In Germany, I never...well.”

Her voice faded as she roughly pulled one of Levin's lids open. The eyeball underneath was disconcertingly human. Round, not almond, like a wolf's, and colored nearly as black as Levin's were.

I felt sick to my stomach. I couldn't look at them or stay near them. Not without vomiting.

The vampires, standing at their respectful distance from Levin and the witch, closed around me. I didn't hear their chatter, although they addressed me in their various tongues. Lederhosen was there, close to my side, and the Blond stood close behind me. There were words between them in their vampiric argot. I couldn't bring myself to translate more than wolf, witch, wizard. That was enough to understand that I didn't want to know any more.

“I gotta som'ting for you, pureblood.” The Wine Merchant spoke to me in English. “I can' stop myself. I know, I no drink it an'more, but I still lova it.”

He pressed a bottle into my left hand and smiled. “Have coupla on me. I join you, but I spend the dawn bringing it back up. Not pretty.”

I giggled. “I never drink....wine.”

“I know that one,” Jean-Baptiste interrupted, tipping the bottle to my mouth. I gratefully drank and it was good. “I played the vampire, in fact, on the English stage. I would have reprised it on film, but, alas, Murnau wouldn't agree to my shooting schedule. Damn Germans.”

“What does that mean?” Lederhosen asked.

“What do you think it means? You Germans and your airtight schedules. You know what I am referring to.”

Lederhosen went paler. “We do not talk of such times.”

“Of our human days? It is true that that talk is forbidden.” The Blond smiled his silky grin at us.

“Too long ago? Can't remember then?” I offered lamely. The wine was in my head and it was good.

“Too depressing.”

Everyone turned to Ratface, as shocked as I was to hear his raspy voice. He shrugged at our surprise and gestured for the bottle. I gave it to him and he drained it without taking a breath, if that is something that a vampire must do while he is drinking. Then he smiled, the wine still dripping from his raw pink chin, and went off into the night alone.

“Perhaps we should call it an evening. At least for the man here. He looks like something the wolf has dragged in.”

Lederhosen nodded, agreeing with the Blond for once. He put a protective arm around me, drawing me to him. “I will stay here with him.”

“As you will, mein herr. We will remember you as we're supping on the young children of the Padure Naegre. Good evening, pureblood. Don't let the vampires -- or the werewolves - bite.”

“He is a fool,” Lederhosen said under his breath. I raised my head to agree with him, but found myself sinking back against his cold chest. I was so tired.

Q