Nick Cleveland and the Coven of Lancre

Nick Cleveland and the Coven of Lancre, Chapter Three

Lancre, the Discworld

Nick Cleveland slipped through the forest, his senses on high alert. He could hear or see nothing out of place; the breeze sighed gently through the woodland, and all seemed well...but he could sense that something...some one...was watching him.

And he had a pretty good idea of just who it was.

He peered around himself slowly, taking time to take in all the detail; he had been trained by people who knew what they were doing, and he was a good hunter. He knew that just glancing around carried the danger of missing something; he missed nothing. Nothing around him was out of place...

And then something leaped onto his back from above; he had paused beneath a mighty oak with branches that extended out over the path. "Oooof!" He went down, and as he hit the earth, he heard a familiar voice.

"I got you, Nick! I got you, fair and square! Does this mean that I win the game?"

Nick rolled over and looked at Luna Lovegood. She was giggling, very pleased with herself. "Yes, sweetie, you win. You got me good and proper. By the time I'm done teaching you, you should be a good hunter in your own right."

The two Ravenclaws had been in this new place for weeks, and had settled into a routine. Mornings were given over to gathering food; although they both knew preservative spells to keep what they found from going bad, Nick had explained that in the wilderness, there was no substitute whatsoever for a good reserve.

"After all," he had told an attentive Luna, who hung on every word he said, "if something happens so that we can't hunt...a storm, or something like that...we'll still want to eat, won't we?"

' Picking himself up, he shook himself, and reached out a hand to Luna. "Come. It's time for lessons." At her disappointed look, he allowed a bit of sternness to creep into his voice, much against his own inclination. "We may be rescued any day, and I don't want your studies to be damaged by this unexpected holiday. Your father would never forgive me."

"Oh, Daddy wouldn't care. He'd just be glad to have me back." Luna looked up at Nick, her big silvery eyes full of trust and love. "What about your studies, Nick? You teach me...who's to teach you? How can you learn new things?"

"Professor Dumbledore told me, when I was assigned to tutor all those firsties, that going over the basics like I'm doing with you was a very good way to ensure that one knows them thoroughly. In any case, Professor Flitwick says that even without any more studying, I've got my NEWTs in the bag." By that time, the two had reached a long log that they always sat on for Luna's lessons. Each of them sat at one end, facing the other. "Now...what are Gant's Principles of Elementary Transfiguration?"

Hogwarts, Hogsmeade, Scotland, Earth

"Damn that schemer," muttered Professor Vector. "I never would have thought of using Arithmancy this way!"

"Mr. Cleveland was always a very original sort of person," commented Professor Flitwick, who was looking over a thick sheaf of notes. "At least these are in English. He used to keep his notes in some damned obscure Norwegian dialect until his girlfriend got him to use English so she could read them too."

"At least we know he's still alive and well," Professor Snape drawled. "His mother was kind enough to loan us one of the devices she uses to keep track of his well-being. When she heard about his altitude record...after the fact, of course...she created several of those and kept them close by her." He pointed to the corner, where a gadget like a silver gyroscope spun and spun endlessly. "And if he's alive, so is Miss Lovegood...the Ravenclaw Miss Lovegood, I mean."

"Well, if we manage to retrieve him, I plan to give him a nice long set of detentions, and then ask him if he'd allow me to work these equations up into an article for Arithmancy Today," Vector said. Flitwick drew himself up, and Vector hastily clarified: "With full credit going to him, of course." Mollified, Flitwick returned to the absorbing task of tracing where his wayward Ravenclaws had gone to.

"You mentioned his girlfriend, Filius," Snape said. "How did she take the news of his disappearance? She's quite attached to him, and to the younger Miss Lovegood as well."

"Not at all well, Severus," Flitwick admitted. "When she was told, she went into what I'd have to say was nearly a catatonic state. If either of those two had been hurt or killed by some enemy, she'd at least have had that enemy to fight, but this way, she had no outlet for her rage. Some of her roommates were kind enough to lead her down to the infirmary, and she's there now, staring into space. If they didn't have house-elves taking care of her, she wouldn't eat or drink. She's on suicide watch, and if she tries to harm herself, she'll probably have to be stunned long enough to put her into restraints."

"Oh, wonderful," Snape grumbled. "Listen, Filius. I've met the head of her family...the man she calls Taiyue, which means, roughly, "patriarch of my house." If harm comes to her through our negligence, his vengeance will make the worst the Death Eaters can do to us look like a day in the countryside." Flitwick paled; he knew the reputation and record of Melinda Yang's patriarch, and he privately thought that even Dumbledore or He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named would not come off well in an all-out battle with the man he knew as Doctor Fu Renjie. Another title he carried, one he had earned fair and square, was "The Lord of Strange Deaths." Those who seriously displeased Doctor Fu generally had...interesting...demises.

"We will take every precaution to keep Miss Yang unharmed. At least Poppy tells me that recovering her boyfriend and her protégé alive and unharmed will probably snap her out of whatever tailspin she's in." Flitwick quirked a quick grin. "And, I must say, life without Mr. Cleveland's scheming is...dull."

"So it is," Snape allowed. "My Slytherins have felt for some time that he was mis-Sorted; that he should have been one of mine. I do think that I may be the only teacher in this school who has a prayer of keeping up with his shenanigans. Do you remember when he flew out to Little Whinging to deal with Mr. Potter's unpleasant family?"

"Don't remind me of that!" Flitwick blushed. "That young man's plausible enough to sell goblins iron pyrites. Didn't he trick your Slytherins once?"

"Yes, he did. He got them to accept a peace offering from him and his house, to stop a prank war that my Slytherins were waging against your 'Claws. However, he knew that what he offered wasn't enough to go around, and made sure to deliver it where and when everybody in the house could see it and try for a share. That set off the biggest fight my House has seen in decades." Snape scowled. "To add insult to injury, when I called him in and asked about it, he pointed out that he had given fair warning. The bottles all had a golden-apple emblem on the labels, a reference to the Apple of Discord in Greek myth, and he had told the Slytherin envoys in so many words that 'when dealing with the subtle, subtlety's useful.'"

Flitwick shook his head. "I almost feel sorry for whatever place he's ended up. He'll either end up being lynched, or crowned a king."

Lancre, the Discworld.

Nick glowered at the log he had found. It was the right length and diameter, sure enough...but it turned out to be too full of rot for his purposes. With a few Scandinavian maledictions, he went back into the woods, looking for the perfect tree for his purposes.

By this time, he had carved a good few tools of various sorts out of wood, and then Transfigured them into steel, so he wasn't just limited to his wand. Still, he had to admit that being magical made wilderness survival much easier in many ways. He and Luna were both eating well, with very little of the game he caught going to waste. Parts he would have normally thrown away were Transfigured into things that the two castaways could use.

Finally, he found the perfect tree. Strong and straight, its trunk had the dimensions he wanted, and there was no sign of rot, carpenter ants, or other wood-damaging diseases. Patting the trunk, he murmured an apology to the tree's spirit, before severing it just above the ground line with a quick blast of magical energy. The tree fell with a loud crash, and he began cutting off branches until he had the trunk cleaned and ready to be levitated back to their camp.

When Luna came back from her morning's regular search for edible plants, she paused and looked at Nick's latest project in wonder. "Is that going to be a canoe, Nick?"

Nick looked up, wiping sweat out of his eyes; some of the work he had been doing was strenuous, and a lot of it took very careful control. "Sure is, honeybunch. I've been wanting a dugout canoe ever since I found that marsh with all the wild rice growing. It's not in season, but I can deal with that with a Ripen spell. Wild rice is one of the nicest things you can get in this sort of woods. Imagine a bird stuffed with it and roasted in clay!"

Luna gave Nick a beaming smile, and went to put her gleanings away. As Nick bent back to his work, he thought: And if we aren't rescued by the time fall starts socking in, sweetie, I can enchant this thing to fly about as well as a broomstick...but, unlike a broom, we can carry supplies and it'll have room for us both!

Nick was wilderness-wise enough to know that if he went downstream, sooner or later, he'd almost certainly come to whatever civilization existed there. With a canoe that could fly on command, rapids and falls would be no problem, and he knew he could cover a lot of territory in a day's worth of traveling. He hadn't let on in front of Luna, but he was getting very worried. It could be that he and his friend were stuck here for good. At least we have our magic! He just hoped that the local people didn't have some absurd prejudice against witchcraft.

END Chapter Three.