Childhood's End

CHILDHOOD'S END

1. GAME INTERRUPTED

Shshshshusssss! Thwack!

"Score!" The pitch erupted in cheers. And curses.

"Barley! Try that again, lass, and I'll have to hurt you!"

"Cork your hole, MacMillstone, you haven't stopped a Quaffle all day."

Dugald MacMillan's face turned a brilliant Fwooper pink. The scorer stuck out her tongue at him and made off around the edge of their makeshift pitch, a gorsy glen ringed by pine forest, whooping and punching the air on a broomstick that matched her own slender frame. It was a muggy July afternoon, so her triumphal fly-over served to both cool her off and mock the competition. As soon as she was as far from the goal as it was possible to get without leaving the playing area altogether, the big Keeper made his move. No sense giving the wench an advantage. She'd already scored three times.

"Man your sweeps. Here it comes!"

Dugald hurled a scabby leather ball out into a scrum of kids of all ages, shapes and weights. They rode everything from the latest in Cleansweeps to an antique Moontrimmer held together with Spellotape. They battled fiercely for possession, blagging and blurting, cobbing with elbows, kicking out with dusty bare feet, clawing with dirty, eager fingernails. This was free-for-all Quidditch, Highlands style. Every kid his own team, every score a singular super-human effort of one against many, though only one of them had penetrated the goal today--the sassy waif on the withy-wand broomstick.

The ball bounced from hand to eager hand, but no one could gain more than a few seconds' control. Suddenly a blur of motion on that impossibly slender broom collided with the scrum, blasted it apart and came up with the contested Quaffle. Kids shouted, whined, cursed the interloper. Only the quickest eyes could pick out her features: wiry frame, intense brown eyes, short dark hair, pert freckled nose, mouth set, but they all knew who it was without looking.

"Nerva, you Quaff-hog!"

"Not fair!"

"Get your own ball, McGonagall!"

The dark-haired urchin grinned and brandished her prize. Steering with knees alone, she turned and raced back to the far end of the glen. Her ploy drew the pack away from the goal. Just short of the forest wall, she did a vertical loop, passed all her pursuers, and roared back towards the burly red-head guarding the goal. He outweighed her by some three stone, and came at her, arms flailing and ululating a war cry that would have stopped a Viking invasion.

They met about ten yards from the goal. She'd aimed the head of her stick at his privates in the time-honored Celtic tradition, but he managed to sweep it aside with one meaty paw and grab her about the midriff with the other. Her speed being thrice his, their combined momentum spun them crazily towards the goal. At the last second Dugald realized that the enemy still had the Quaffle and that she would carry it, and him, into the great basket of knotgrass netting which was their makeshift goal.

Thwack! Tangletumbledangle!

"Score!"

More cheering and cursing, and now laughter, as the other kids found the pair trussed up together in the netting hardly able to move--but hissing and spitting like a pair of kneazles in a trap.

"Gerroff me, Dugald! I'll tell my Da you groped me!"

"I never touched you, you scrawny wench!"

The other fliers bore down on them now with hearty hoots and guffaws.

"Lookit, Dugald's got a girlfriend!"

"When's the wedding, sweet face?"

"Look out, fellas, Minerva's gettin' all red."

"Maybe she's gonna blub."

"Naw, naw she's just blooshing."

"Arr, the blooshing bride."

"Am not! You're all just mad because the score's McGonagall, four, the rest of you ninnies, nil."

"Isn't four. That last score didna count. No one but the Keeper's allowed in the goal. That's haversacking, that is."

"It was never my fault. Dugald carried me in, the great lug!"

"Your stick was aiming fer my crotch. I had to defend myself."

But the argument didn't last long. It was coming on towards evening. Only time enough for a few more good scrums. But they needed to rescue the Quaffle, which was caught in the mess as well. Oh yes, and release the wench and their Keeper.

"Anyone know a good charm for this" asked a chubby boy with long blond locks, spawn of the local thane by his display of the Macnair tartan and his state-of-the-art Comet 160.

"I could cut it but I canna get at my knife" This from Dugald, who was thrashing about trying to reach his sporran. It had shifted round in the affray and was now squashed neatly between a goal post and his left buttock.

"Over my bed doddy!" cried Giggie Gwynn.

"What'd she say?"

"She means 'dead body', Raymie."

"Oh. Right. Well then, over my dead body too!"

That sentiment was echoed all around. It was bad enough having to play Quidditch with an uncharmed Quaffle. They didn't want to damage the net that they'd labored so hard on--the net that kept the ball from getting lost in the forest. Nobody in their right mind would want to hunt for it down there it with the Devil's Snare and Creeping Coldwort rampant in the undergrowth.

"Petey, if you're going to be showing off your charm-work, will you kindly start by Stunning this great oaf?" roared Minerva McGonagall in a voice twice her size. "He's squirming about like a Re'em in rut. Every time he moves, he makes things worse."

"I'd rather Stun you, lass, then I could have my way with you," teased Petey Macnair,who had drawn his wand and was stroking it lightly.

"If I had my own wand, and I soon will, I'd make you eat those words, FAT-HAIR!!"

Now there was a flash of light which left everybody blinded for a few seconds, and something slipped through the netting and dropped to the ground. It was Minerva. Later, kids would argue that her screeching desperation had detonated a spate of wandless magic, which loosened her bonds enough to free her.

She reclaimed her sweep and flew up to the net to take stock of the situation. "Hmmm-- if we could just take this monstrous weight"--she indicated Dugald--"off the netting, we'd be able to fix it easily."

"No problem," said Petey, taking stage. "Wingardium leviosa!"

Dugald was now floating gravity-free in the netting. If any of the kids had had experience outside of the Magicosm, which, except for Petey, they didn't, they'd have realized he looked like a great Muggle balloon, tethered and wallowing about in the updraft.

The wench was right. Petey's Levitation Charm took the tension off the netting. Now it was easy to see what needed to be done. Several of the larger kids grabbed the edges and shook gently. Soon the Quaffle was released. Then others moved in and repaired some minor holes caused in the collision. But presently the spell wore off and Dugald came down--in a patch of thistle and gorse.

His plight went unnoticed, as Raymie Sykes halted everyone and pointed west into the sun. "In the distance there, see? A great black creature. And it's flying this way."

His discovery inspired thrilled speculation. Was it not very like a Hebridean Black--the type of dragon that had carried off two Macnair hunting hounds last spring and scared the liver'n lights out of a beach full of Muggles at Ilfracombe only a few years before?

"Gwennog McFusty's bung-full again," opined Magnus MacDonald, flying up the tree line to get a better look. He was referring to the hard-drinking matriarch of clan McFusty, which had from time out of mind taken responsibility for keeping the Blacks in check. "But I ken the Ilfracombe dragon was a Welsh Green."

Regardless of its ilk, most were now sure that the flapping hulk was indeed a dragon of some sort. Boys swooped up and down the glen, scouring for rocks and sticks to fend it off with. The smaller children started scouting out hiding places, and little Angus Flynt took off east for home, crying. Magnus and Petey got out their wands and pointed experimentally at the monster, gauging the distance.

"Reckon I could Stun it when it gets a bit closer," boasted Petey with his usual exuberance. He was one of the few to master this charm in first year Defensive, and he was eager to show it off to the younger kids, especially the McGonagall hag.

"Needs more than one Stunner to take it down," grunted Magnus. "Professor Cavallo was pretty clear about that in Creature Care last year. And the bigger the drake, the more the firepower needed. Anyway, you know we're not allowed. I'll be surprised if you don't get into trouble for doing that Lifting Charm on Dugald."

"Don't worry about that. One word from my dad and the Ministry looks the other way. Anyway, this is an emergency. They'll be mighty grateful for us chasing off a rogue drake for them. We'll probably get a medal."

"Hold on there, you eejits," yelled Dugald, who had finally gotten himself de-thistled and had flown up next to them. "That's too small for even a wyvern. Looks more like Goodie Gudgeon, McGonagall's nanny. She always flaps like that when she rides. Got no sense of balance, that one."

"Wheesht, MacMillstone!""Minerva was on the ground comforting some of the smaller children, among them Dugald's sister Rhona, but she had an ear on their conversation. She flew up to them. "Don't talk like that about my nursie. She's just old is all. Time was, she could fly rings around the likes of you." She waved her arms at the approaching figure. "What say, Gudgieeeeeeee?" she called.

The 'dragon' came within shouting distance, and was now seen to be no threat of any sort, just a fat old witch, clinging to a household broom she might have charmed herself in the need of the moment. "Lett--letter cam for ye, lass. Yer faither wants ye hame--swith!"

Cheers and jeers.

"Great game, Nerves! See you tomorrow."

"Ball hog's going home. Now we can play."

"Crate your choppers, Sykes," Dugald growled. "You couldn't score if you had the Quaffle and four arms-- and the rest of us Stunned. You should get Jockie to play for you."

"Leave my sister out of it! And what about you, you great greasy git? You can't even block the bloody ball!"

Giggie Gwynn shouted over their argument: "'Bye, 'Nerva, hope it's goon dews about your ma."

"Thanks, Gig. 'Bye all. See you tomorrow." Minerva redirected her broom, again with knees alone, and shot into the sunset, leaving her aged nurse clutching her shawl and rocking breathlessly in her wake.

~*~

"I'm home, Da. What's up?"

"You've been out a long time, child."

"Quidditch, Da, out back of MacMillan's."

"Fag okay?"

"Held together pretty good, but you might need to make the braking charm stronger."

"Aye, there's the trouble with that thin stick of yours. No room to put a proper charm. I wrote my auld lad, Randy Keitch. Even he couldna come up with a solution. You'll just have to slow down your turns, lass."

"Da!"

"I ken it's like asking a corbie to fly with but one wing."

"Goodie said I got a letter. Is it from Ma?"

"Naw, your ma will be in seclusion another moon. Healer Kirk says it's the best way."

"Da, she's been at Kirk's almost three months."

"You think I should be sending her back to London for treatment? Naw. And I'll not let those foreign shamans touch her again. New-fangled treatments...untested spells. She just needs rest. The auld ways are best, Minerva."

"All right, Da. What about the letter?"

He waved a tasseled scroll at her. "Och aye--it's from your new school!"

"Hogwarts. Da, you took me away from the game for that?"

"But you have to open it! See if you're accepted."

"Da, all the kids got them--Dugald and Raymie and Susannah. I know just what it says. "She rattled off a singsong: 'DearMissMcGonagall--Wearepleasedtoinformyou--thatyouhavebeenaccepted--atthegodalmighty glorious--HogwartsSchoolofWitchcraftandWizardry--'"

Her father stopped her with a hand on her shoulder. "I know, lass, but all the same, would you read it out--for your auld da?" He sat down heavily, but in high excitement, on a kind of throne, backed with ancient, worn tapestry prominent with the McGonagall blue. It went well with the rest of the room, which was high-arched and gloomy, though with a promise of eastern light from a balcony at the far end.

She shrugged and took the scroll. As she unrolled it, noting its handsome purple seal and gold-leaf edging, the big man prattled on like a child. "I remember my letter. Oh they were not so free in those days with their gilt and their colored inks. And parchment was scarce. Dark Times you know. Wars and more wars. We all knew Auld Grinty was behind it, but no one could catch him--"

She cut him off gently, clearing her throat with a little squeak. She'd heard permutations of this story so many times. Grindelwald--evil magician--responsible for the Great War--never caught--et cetera and so forth. And school was so harsh: no heat, snowstorms every day, teachers who would fail you as soon as look at you. How her father loved bemoaning his boyhood.

A sense of mischief welled up in her. It was time to give Da something to take his mind off his complaints. She ad-libbed: "Dear Miss McGonagall,...ah...we regret to inform you that...um...due to reports of your poor...ah... spellsmanship...and...er... all that jinking and jouking about the Quidditch pitch,...er...you have not made the cut-off for admission to Hogwarts. You will...ah...be placed on the alternates list and...um...in due time--"

"What?! My daughter an alternate?!" Jupiter McGonagall rose to his full six and a half feet. "Those snotty auld Squibs--I'll skin the lot of them!"

"Now, Da..."

He stomped about and strode out to the hallway. "I'll feed 'em to the Loch Ness kelpie..."

"No!"

He about-faced and made for the balcony. "I'll grind their bones to make my bannocks..."

"Da..."

He drew his wand and began waving it about. "I'll call down Mary Stuart's headless ghost on 'em!"

"Please, Da..."

"I'll accio their precious castle to Rannock Moor..."

"..you don't need to..."

"...and sink it in the bog..."

Her father went on this way for quite a while, giving Minerva ample time to repent her joke. In this state, he was quite capable of putting a fist through a tapestry and cracking the plaster behind it with his weight in excess of eighteen stone. She became truly alarmed when his face went beet-red as if he was working himself up to toss the caber at the Muggle Highland Games, his favorite non-wizarding activity.

"No--Da--it's all right--no--here--you read it."

"I'll read it all right. Then I'll tear it to pieces. Then I'll march up Hog's Mountain and fling them in old Dippy's face. He is still Headmaster, isn't he?"

"I don't know, Da. It's signed"-- she struggled with the crabbed writing--"Vergilius--Horatio--Binns."

"Binns be damned! He's been at the place since the Year One. Where does he get off--?"

"Da. Read." She put the scroll in his hand and stepped well back.

"Hmmph! 'Dear Miss...pleased to inform...accepted...book and equipment lists enclosed.' Why you...you...little hempie, I ought put you over my knee and spank the liver-and-lights out of you."

"Please don't, Da. Anyway, you'd have to catch me first." She flashed a grin and brandished her broom.

He chuckled. "That I would. And there's not a sweep made these days that would hold this old body up for more than a few minutes, much less accelerate to the speeds you get up to. Here, I'll compromise with a congratulatory hand shake."

She took his hand and he engulfed hers in his great calloused palm. Then he clasped her to his chest and danced her about. "Ah, I knew you were only pulling my leg."

She pulled out of his embrace. "Did not!"

"Did. I saw your dimple while you were reading. A dead giveaway. And no self-respecting Hogwarts professor would ever use the terms 'jinking and jouking,' of that I'm sure." He sighed. "Your ma will be proud. You have to write to her. And a thank-you to the school."

"Daaa! Nobody writes thank-you notes--not even Dugald."

"Your mother did, Minerva. Always--when she was in her right mind. And she made me promise you would too."

~*~

Minerva acted nonchalant about her acceptance letter, but once she got to the kitchen, she breathed a sigh of relief. Truth be told, it was possible to be turned down by the premier wizarding school in Britain, even in this magic-rich valley in the crook-armed lee of the Grampian Mountains. Even if your family line was pure as pure. Several children of prominent families had in recent years been declared insufficiently magical for the rigors of Hogwarts, and they had in fact received letters of refusal much like the parody Minerva had teased her father with. After much weeping and wailing, attempted bribery, and, it was rumored, threats against the Headmaster himself, the families had finally resigned themselves to teaching their children Charms and Potions at home, and hired a tutor for the more abstruse subjects like Magical Defense, Transfiguration and Astronomy.

But Minerva had been accepted. She would become a witch--not just in name, but in fact. She channeled her excitement into hearty punches of the oaten dough which Goodie had left to rise. She flattened half to parchment-thinness, cut and pricked rowies to go with the mutton stew, simmering deliciously in the fireplace. Into the rest, she kneaded some beet sugar and spices and shaped plump bannocks for the morrow's breakfast.

Minerva had been Goodie's assistant at the great stone-walled hearth for as long as she could remember. As a toddler, she'd fashioned 'dwagon cakes' out of scraps of dough and beat a Highland tattoo with pot and spoon, calling all within earshot to the evening mess. But gradually she moved into her mother's role, making menus, choosing fish and vegetables at market, cleaning, skinning, scaling, and cooking when Iphigenia Wallace McGonagall was too ill to do so.

She skimmed the foam off the Atholl brose and took a whiff of the heady brew, but refrained from tasting it. Even a spoonful of this beloved Scots beverage could put a young lass like herself under the table, and in fact had, at a harvest party the year before. She put out heavy bowls and mugs on the well-scrubbed table in the center of the kitchen, singing to herself the well-worn refrain:

Ane fer Da, ane fer Ma, ane fer the auld troll's daughter-in-la...

It would be a small gathering about the board tonight, which was unusual. Da was stingy in some ways, but would invite everyone and his Kneazle to supper, given the chance. Filch, their foreman, who usually broke bread with them at least once a week and stayed after to talk shop, was laid up at home with a bad Knarl bite, and none of the relatives were visiting. The field workers usually went home for dinner and bed, unless there was a celebration--the end of planting, harvest time or the decanting of a particularly fine Brose. So it would be just herself, Da, and Goodie--because Ma was away...

Ma--Mother...Minerva couldn't yet say or even think the dear name without a lump rising in her throat, although the automatic accompanying tears had long since dried up. Ma had always been a sensitive sort, crying over the smallest things--a broken cup, a lost pet, a wilted houseplant. Minerva was too young to think that such a condition could be passed on, but she had an instinctive fear that the habit of crying could only lead to something worse.

She once heard Goodie whispering to visiting friends about Minerva's birth, a lengthy, painful confinement, which had left Ma in a cloud of sadness. But a course of Dr. Wheezy's Spirit-Lifting Tonic had set her mistress to rights straightaway. Then a year later Ma started experiencing depressions, which would flare up to excited, energetic madness at unpredictable intervals. Once Goodie had caught her mistress dancing barefoot in the embers on the hearth, clasping Minerva, who looked too scared or fascinated to cry out, and moving towards the heart of the fire. Ma hadn't felt the pain of her burned feet. And long after the incident, her eyes still sparkled with an inner fire as if flames were shining out of them. She had been singing something--Minerva couldn't remember what--as she danced that heedless, deadly dance.

And so it went--paralyzing depression followed by uncontrollable bouts of energy--with occasional good times, calm times, lasting as long as a month, when things seemed almost normal.

But the good times were oh-so-good. She could remember holding hands with her parents as they walked together through fields of barley and oats, one summer, together with some Crups they were watching for aunts Philippa and Frances, who were on holiday. Five-year old Minerva would break off giggling and run on ahead and squat down to hide in the waving grain, until Da would 'discover' her and fling her in the air. She cherished the simple memory of waiting with Ma on winter nights for the neeps and tatties to boil. And playing the prediction game: throwing potato peels over her shoulder to see if the long peel would spell a word when it hit the floor. Ma, she now knew, secretly waved her wand and made it say something funny like 'sleekiewhizzie' or grand like 'queenminerva' or touching like 'loveyou.' And there was the time they chased that Nogtail out of the pigsty...and once they had ousted a family of garden gnomes from the orchard, giggling all the while...

Now Ma was in the kind, competent care of Ellis Kirk, the renowned Scots Healer. Madam Kirk had made mental troubles her special study and had at her hospice all kinds of fabulous magical powders and elixirs that a young not-quite-a-witch could only guess at. Goodie herself had potions that could cure headaches, calm a restless sleep, erase bad memories. Not that Ma could have any such memories. She'd been so happy when she married Da, at least that's what everyone said. There was just that story about Grandfather Wallace...but that had been long ago and long forgotten.

Minerva sighed. She doubted even Healer Kirk could cure a disease that had eluded the best efforts of Healers in so many countries. For Jupiter McGonagall, when he finally admitted to himself that his wife's depression was not going to just go away, had made a plan for her recovery. Belying his reputation for stinginess, he started her off with an extensive diagnostic session at Saint Mungo's. Then, after their regimen failed to effect a lasting cure, he consulted with his sisters, his friends, anyone who might have an idea what would help. This resulted in pilgrimages to virtually all the famous healing centers of the Magicosm: to Tibet, Zimbabwe, Germany, Japan, even America. All had short-lived good effects, Goodie told her, but a permanent cure eluded them.

Minerva sighed. Da was right. She would have to owl a letter to Ma tonight. Perhaps the good news about her acceptance at Hogwarts would cheer her mother up.