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

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

September 6

I have seen nothing like it in my experience, although, admittedly, potions are not my forte. Still, Levin, once completely human, shook and sweat and would not wake up. It was like some cruel spell was on her, but one of which I have no knowledge.

Azrael offered little help or explanation. She would cluck at Levin as one would over an ailing puppy and occasionally inspect the unconscious woman, carelessly nudging her with a slippered foot. Then, under her breath, Azrael would call her "M----e." Over and over again.

We kept the poor suffering creature at our feet on Azrael's insistence. I didn't understand why — assuming Levin would be more comfortable laying down in back — until the near lifeless body erupted into a choking cough.

Azrael deftly lifted Levin by her clothes and flipped her over, leaving her head dangling over the wooden foot board. A deft kick to the back and Levin was painfully sick over the side.

"When I was with the gypsies, I saw many things that made me understand our people's reluctance to deal with the non-magic." Azrael indicated Levin, who was now drawing ragged breaths. "This, they call withdrawal. I have seen it before. Young mothers, old fathers, children. They take a potion into their veins by way of a stick, but like all good things, this potion does not last. When it has gone away, they are as the wolf. Sometimes they die like that."

I didn't comment, seeing only other needles in other arms and that sick, white smell not since repeated in my life. Levin breathed on, more softly, but not yet conscious.

"Death makes them stronger, pureblood. Their fit survive, such as these die off. One day...well, one day they will outbreed us and then what will we do? Nothing," she sighed, half-closing her eyes. "Nothing, but pass way from this world ourselves."

The Padure glowers at us from the breaks in the stones. It begins to loom now, growing disproportion ally larger. We will be within the black trees in less than a fortnight.

Levin regained consciousness in the early afternoon. We stopped then to give the ponies rest and to prepare a midday meal.

Levin insisted she drag herself to the fire, but her pride was stronger than she was. She couldn't walk more than a step and it was necessary for me to carry her even that short distance to the fire.

For my efforts, Azrael favoured me with a strange, wondering look. "Why waste your body's strength when you could do such things with your power? You are not weak in your mind, pureblood."

"Magic should be spared when other powers suffice."

"Who taught you that? Feste?" she asked, naming my mentor, a Gryffindor she knew personally and detested.

"No." That was not wizarding philosophy, but the theory of young Rebekah, a philosophy firm in her mind until she was no more.

"It is unsound in practice and in belief." Azrael laughed at me.

"Water?" Levin opened her eyes as if the little action taxed her.

Azrael threw me a bottle. I opened it first, smelled the liquid inside and tasted it, as potions do not always betray themselves with odour and appearance. It was only water.

"I am not cruel," Azrael said in reply.

Levin closed her eyes and drank deeply before falling back asleep - or losing consciousness, I can't be sure which.

Azrael sat herself near, with Levin prone between us. We ignored her and she had no knowledge of us. The vampires slept too and the ponies cropped at the stubborn vegetation that has taken root in these filthy mountains.

"Was the wolf like this before?"

"No." Levin had not been well after her transformation the month before, but she had been able to travel. Today she was completely incapacitated.

"Her blood is weak. She has no power in her," Azrael shook her head and then spit on the ground, mumbling under her breath. They were words of magic, but for a blessing or a curse, I couldn't tell.

We finished our simple meal and I carried Levin back to the cart, propping her between myself and the witch. She continued to sleep through the afternoon and into the darkness, her head drifting from my shoulder to Azrael's.

Often a person places human attributes on an animal. Azrael, for example, calls the ponies stubborn when they resist her commands and believes they love her when she feeds them an extra bit of sugar when they've done well. Even I pamper Snitch with scraps of meat when I feel he particularly needs me or when I feel he knows I need him. Sometimes it is as if he knows I crave company apart from my traveling companions. He is a physical link between myself and Charles.

You see? It's foolishness!

Yet Levin is the first person I have given the attributes of an animal. When she whimpers in her sleep or smacks her lips in a dream, I think of a dog, curled up at her master's feet.

Is that unfair?

After nightfall, Lederhosen approached me and the “sleeping dog” whom I was letting lie for the moment.

"How is das Wölfin?"

"Still alive. That's something, isn't it?"

Lederhosen shrugged his broad shoulders. "If you are alive, I suppose it is."

"I'm sorry."

"Mein herr, there must be invented another language for the dying and the undead, if our peoples are not to offend."

"Where are the others?" Azrael asked. She had no time for our small talk.

""I am not my brothers' keepers."

She stared at him hard. "You are the only one I have hope for, you know. The only one."

When she left to search for his vampiric fellows, I asked after that enigmatic statement. "What did she mean by that?"

"Nothing." Fire flashed in his dead eyes. "Something I understood that has passed on now. Something I remembered last night."

"Last night-?" But Levin didn't let me finish, awaking as she did in a violent tremor.

"I am s-s-so c-c-c-old.”

"It's alright," I said, but before I could jump down and rummage around back for something proper in which to wrap the shivering creature, Lederhosen was there, the pony Dorin's blanket in his hand.

Levin buried herself in it as if the harsh fibers were softest silk. "Thank you, Quirrell."

"It's alright," I said again and allowed her to lean against me.

“Hell erklinget deutscher Sang/Unser ganzes Leben lang/Treue frohe Lieder/Klingen immer wieder.”

Lederhosen sang softly to her, words she didn't understand and ones I only partially grasped -- German, song, love, blood. Always blood.

The song was a march, but the vampire sang it slowly, transforming what once roused soldiers to bravery into a child's lullaby. Levin was soon snoring and I too closed my eyes, although I couldn't sleep.

In the dark, the words became pictures and I saw a gigantic army moving through a vast forest. There were so many of these soldiers that the trees, although they were numerous, seemed outnumbered.

And they sang at they marched hypnotically through the wood, their faces infused with a passion for something -- for country? For war itself?

No, for their kind. They were going forth to kill for their own kind.

And I wasn't afraid. My heart was glad for them and the thrill of their march urged me to join their ranks, to know for myself their excitement and love.

When I opened my eyes again, Azrael had returned and was cooking a stew over the fire. Dracusor and the Blond watched her sullenly. I didn't see any of the others, but perhaps they were on the hunt. I often wonder what they drink from on these mountains, but I don't think I really want to know. They seem healthy, in that way the undead express health, and I suppose they don't lack for prey.

I sense things in the trees and among the rocks, after all, and when the Padure is no longer visible, as it is tonight, I hear many more of them. Without the sun, the world around us grows still and I have heard voices even, spoken words too far away to comprehend, but with vowels and consonants that seem almost to resemble English.

English as spoken through the sibilant hissing of a snake.

But there are no snakes here in the mountains, only Levin and Azrael, the vampires and myself.

It's merely a trick of the mind as was the voice I heard before speaking that strange Romanian phrase at me. There is nothing here, but my companions and forest creatures, dark and light.

I am alone.

And I am not alone.

Levin stayed beside me all through the night, but perhaps that was only because she lacked the strength to move away.

Q

September 9

Levin took her first unassisted steps today. I feel I can appreciate parental joy to some degree - as if my own little one - in this case a particularly large and well-developed little one - had suddenly grown up with such primary movement.

She even managed something akin to laughter when she succeeded in walking, although I am sure her high spirits will soon be replaced by her more typical stubbornness.

Azrael tested and retested the unfinished werewolf potion and has declared her first prognosis (that Levin's blood is weak) to be correct. What she means is that Levin is non-magic and therefore affected differently by her draught. Experimentation with the formula could result in something more attuned to the non-magic physiognomy, of course, but Azrael isn't interested in that pursuit.

"Really, what good would it do?"

Much good, I would wager, even if the effects were to benefit only one woman. No, let me correct myself - one non-magic woman. Therein lies the ethical dilemma.

If it is a dilemma at all. My father taught me it is not our place to infer with them, that their history flows against, not through, our own. We are separate, but equal peoples.

He was correct then as was my mother when she corrected him, “Not equal, Charles. That girl child is not equivalent to a Quirrell, even a male of the family. She is nothing.”

“ Hestia, she was lost -- the Clocaenog is confusing and the house property does border some of their land.”

“Ha! She's been lost every day this week -- or can't you read that in your son's mind?”

“You don't read minds, Hestia.”

“In his eyes, then. She's a danger to this family.”

“She is not such a serious thing as that, Mother. She is going to die.”

“Do they live as little as that now? I have lost touch with them -- thank Hera. Well, good riddance to bad rubbish. Now what shall I have the elves do up for dinner?”

I almost ran then, so convinced was I that we were equal as my father said and not to be separated. I traveled through the Clocaenog in my mind, parting the ancient trees until I found myself face-to-face with her, surrounded by her father and brothers in their dark coats, chanting over her, singing “AI Li Lu Li Lu.”

And the Angel of Death was dancing.

What would I be now if I had traveled the path through the Clocaenog instead of the one I am on now? A fool, at the least, and a lost soul. Ostracized from my world and with no part in hers.

Could I have learned her ways as I learned my lessons, by rote and with practice? Could I have used her words and her speech, when there was nothing of my tongue that I could give her, nothing that she would be able to understand? Could I have held a menial, mindless job, so at night I might hold my Muggle wife and my own Mudblood, half-breed children?

Imagine, a Quirrell, in dressed in her suit and tie, rising every morning for some Muggle task, slaving for their money, for a life that would amount to little but a denial of everything I was ever taught to believe! What a life in the Clocaenog!

And what if I had chosen Clocaenog - would there be flesh of my flesh, bone of my bone? Would they love her god or praise my powers?

"Who soured your milk?" Levin asked, breaking the spell this writing has cast over me. She lets her eyes glance over the book, but has the good grace not to absorb any of it. She can be a good creature.

"No one," I answered and that was true and Levin took it to be so.

She is wise not to pursue with her questions. As if she truly cares to ask for more and is not exercising some deeply buried societal need for concern. I am foolish to think she does care. Like any animal, Levin is happy that we have taken away her pain. She cares for nothing more.

Q