O Dii Immortales

"Oh, be careful with that box, it's kind of--"

"--heavy." Suppressing a sigh, Libby bent down and began picking up the books that had spilled.

Julia looked a little embarrassed. "Sorry..."

"Don't worry about it," Libby assured the young girl. "No need for them to go any further--I was going to shelve them here anyway." With that, she began putting them on the shelves.

Julia started to help, but Libby stopped her. "No, don't. I know you mean well, but I've got a very specific order I like having my books in. Do you think you could bring in my bookends?"

"Sure." Julia ran out of the room. "DAD! Tina says she needs her bookends!"

Libby shook her head and continued shelving the books. She paused a second and looked at one of them. The Book of Werewolves--being an account of a terrible superstition. Flipping open the book, she smiled a little as she read the inscription. For Libitina, also known as Libby, Tina, or Sissy, on this her twelfth birthday. From your loving siblings, Salacia, also known as Sal or Laci, Cardea, and Remus.

It had been years since Libby had thought of her siblings. That surprised her when she thought about it, because her brother had been the reason she'd set off on her current walk of life. She allowed herself a few minutes to think about them as she continued shelving the books.

Julia came back in. "Here, Tina, I got your bookends."

"Thanks, Jules." Libby took the box and opened it, then started pulling out bubble-wrapped statuettes. Most people called her Libby if they knew her well enough, Tina if they didn't. Her younger siblings had often called her Sissy. People only called her Libitina on pain of death, unless it was her parents, both of whom had been dead for twenty years. Julia called her Tina out of respect, although she knew her well enough to use Libby. Julia's father Owen just called her "honey".

Julia studied the books on the shelves as Libby arranged her bookends. "You have an awful lot of books about werewolves," she commented.

"Yup," Libby said cheerfully. Her New Jersey accent contrasted sharply with Julia's soft British one.

"Why so many?" Julia asked curiously.
Libby glanced at the young girl sideways as she placed the last bookend, a rather shoddily crafted clay sculpture of a wolf's head. "I'm a lycanthropologist."

"A what?"

"A lycanthropologist. It means I study werewolves."

Julia looked up, then laughed. "But...Tina, werewolves aren't real."

Libby raised her eyebrows. "Actually, I happen to know that they are. My brother is one. Was. I don't know if he's still alive...haven't seen him in close to thirty years."

Julia gaped. "You're not serious."

Libby laughed. "Of course I am. Hold on...dear?" she yelled out the door. "Can I tell your daughter yet?"

"Go ahead!" Owen yelled back. "Julia, listen to your stepmother!"

"All right!" Julia hollered, then turned to Libby. "Tell me what?"

"I'm a witch."
Caught off-guard, Julia stared for a second, then began to laugh. "Get real. A witch?"

"Mmm-hmm."

Julia shook her head. "A witch. You mean like the witch in Snow White?"

"Actually, she was a hag," Libby corrected her stepdaughter. "Malodora Grymm. Think Merlin."

"Merlin? He actually existed? I mean, he was real?"

"As real as you are. Here, I'll show you." Libby reached up to the top shelf and lifted down a thick volume with no title on the faded brown spine. She opened the book, revealing that it was completely hollow. It contained about six hundred small, pentagonal cards in bright colours.

"These," she explained to Julia, "are Famous Witches and Wizards cards. They come with Chocolate Frogs--those are candies, not real frogs. There are a ton of them out there...let me see if I can find a few you'd be interested in. I used to have a complete set, but I haven't bought a Chocolate Frog in years, there have been new ones since I left Hogwarts."

"Left where?"

"Hmm? Oh, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry."

"You have schools?"

"Well, duh! Did you think we were born knowing how to use magic? We've got to be trained. Seven year boarding school, starting when you're eleven...ah, here we go. Take a look at these."

Julia looked through them, her eyes widening. "Merlin...and Morgana? Hengist of Woodcroft...Babayaga...Old Mother Hubbard?"

Libby chuckled. "It seems outlandish, I know, but there you go."

Julia handed the cards back to Libby. "This is...amazing! How come I didn't know about this?"

"Well, we like to keep hidden. You've heard of the medieval witch-hunts, of course?" Julia nodded. "When that started happening, we started realising the merits of staying hidden from the Muggles--that's non-magic people like you and your dad. Not that the burning hurt us, of course. On the rare occasions that a group of Muggles did manage to catch a real witch or wizard, the witch or wizard in question would simply cast a basic Flame Freezing charm and then pretend to be burning while enjoying a kind of tickling feeling. There was this one witch, Wendelin the Weird, who liked it so much she let herself get caught forty, fifty times in a variety of disguises. Dad thought he might have been related to her somewhere along the line, but we never could prove that."

Julia's jaw dropped. "Your dad was a wizard too? What about your mum?"

"Nah. Mom was a Muggle. Makes my brother and sisters and me half-bloods. My brother even more so."

"Why?"

"Because most people don't consider him fully human, because he's a werewolf."

Julia shook her head. "Is that why you study werewolves? Because of your brother?"

Libby smiled. "Smart girl. My brother was five when he was bitten. I was eleven, already at Hogwarts, when I got the news. I wasn't one hundred percent sure what it meant, so I looked it up in the library. I was a Ravenclaw--that was what 'house' I was in, I'll explain them later--but basically it meant I craved knowledge. My personal mantra has always been, when in doubt, go to the library. If there isn't a book on it, at the time, it didn't seem worth knowing. But you'd be amazed how little stuff there was on werewolves back then." She gestured to her shelves as she put the hollow book back on the top shelf. "Most of this junk is Muggle writings--heck, half of the books are fiction, like Wagner the Wehr-Wolf and Night of the Werewolf. I even have a copy of Cycle of the Werewolf, which is easily the worst book on werewolves out there, not to mention the worst Steven King book it has ever been my misfortune to read. And a lot of it, Muggle or not, is more modern. Back when I was a student--yeah, yeah, back in the Stone Ages--there was almost nothing out there, just brief mentions in one textbook or another that really told me nothing. And the only book I could find that even talked about them extensively was this one here." She pulled a battered old tome and showed it to Julia: The Wehr-Wolf: A Beaste that Crys Moste Foul. "This was written in the Dark Ages--literally--and it basically goes on about how bloodthirsty and brutal werewolves are. I knew that couldn't be right."

"Why not?" Julia insisted. "I mean, they're like wolves, right? Wolves are bloodthirsty and brutal."

Libby held up a hand. "Not quite true--wolves actually avoid people more often than not. Okay, yes, maybe three nights out of thirty a lycanthrope--just a fancy scientific term for a werewolf--is bloodthirsty and brutal, but the writer was trying to convince his readers that the werewolf was like that even in human form. My brother wasn't like that, Jules. He was the sweetest, most caring, most innocent boy you could ever hope to meet. And I loved him, despite what he had become. But I was forbidden to talk about it--we all were--so I thought it was something to be ashamed of. I couldn't find anything proving or disproving that, so I vowed to myself that when I got out of Hogwarts I'd research this and find a way to help my brother."

"Did you?"

"Mais oui! I worked for a year in the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures at the Ministry of Magic--"

"You have a government?"

"Duh. Did you think we just managed ourselves? We're people too. Anyway, I worked in the Beings Division, Werewolf Support...but after a year of that garbage I left. Their idea of 'werewolf support' was teaching them how to hide their lycanthropy. I wanted to teach them how to deal with it. How to cope, how to lead normal lives despite what they were. They didn't like that at the Ministry...so I quit. I went off looking for somewhere I could do some good."

Julia actually looked interested. "Did you find it?"

Libby smiled. "Yup. There was a laboratory at the site of the greatest scientific discovery in the history of man."

"There's a werewolf lab at Albert Einstein's house?"

Libby snorted. "Einstein? Don't make me laugh. They've more or less disproved his Theory of Relativity with this new thing called String Theory. No, it's in New Jersey."

"Jersey?"

"No, New Jersey. Specifically, Menlo Park, New Jersey."

A light went on in Julia's mind. "Oh! Edison and the light-bulb!"

"Exactly." Libby grinned. "There was a lycanthropy laboratory out there...I worked there for a good twenty-five, thirty years."

"Why'd you stop?"

"The lab closed. The wizarding community in America was tired of 'wasting money' on helping werewolves rather than exterminating them. All the government-run labs--including Menlo Park--were shut down, and none of the privately owned labs were hiring. However, there was a small group out here who was starting up a lab, and they wrote to us asking if we'd come out and give them a hand. Menlo Park is now in England." Libby offered a smile to her stepdaughter. "So now you know. What I am, what I do, why I do it."

Julia gaped at her. "Wow. I can't tell anyone, can I?"

"Nope."

"I'll go nuts," Julia sighed. The doorbell rang and she scuttled off to answer it as Libby sat in her comfortable old armchair and roared with laughter.