In druidic philosophy, anything possessed of life—anything belonging to the natural world, root or wing or fin—could be communicated with.
They had no love of conflict. They delighted instead in listening to the voices of the natural world around them, and revered above anything else the practice of living in peace with nature.
The philosophy seemed noble enough on its face, admirable even to those who didn't share it. But in reality, it was the very root of why every other group tended to dislike them.
In their relentless pursuit of progress, Muggles had spent the last three hundred years steadily devouring the living space of every other creature that shared the world with them. They would never halt that advance out of pity for other living things.
Wizards were no different in the end, however much they liked to think themselves above it—though as a group, they were not nearly so single-mindedly devoted to expanding their dominion across the land.
But ask wizards to give up dragonhide, dragon blood, dragon liver, the harvested heartstrings of dragons—ask them to give up using every manner of magical creature and plant as raw material for their craft—and that, too, was an absolute impossibility.
This was precisely why, before ever inviting Flomide to come teach at Hogwarts, Bryan had solemnly cautioned him, laying the terms out clearly: he was permitted only to "teach the craft"—never to casually "preach the creed" on ground that was the very foundation of wizardkind's.
"Now that truly surprises me—"
Bryan stepped back two paces, taking in the full shape of the tall, thick-trunked Whomping Willow for the first time, seeing it fresh in light of what he'd just heard.
"I understand your belief that all things possess a soul, in some form or another. But I confess I never expected a tree, of all things, could possess such a complete capacity for thought."
"Ah, well—according to the old wizarding lore on the subject—"
Flomide said with a smile,
"this particular Whomping Willow is a magical plant, and so it's able to hold on to certain things in its own way. Most ordinary plants, though, their awareness is a dim, half-formed thing at best. All they can manage is the simplest of impulses: that they need water, that they need sunlight, that they need nourishment, or that they need someone to come along and pick the pests off them—"
"There is indeed something to be said for it—"
Bryan nodded, still clicking his tongue softly in genuine wonder at the thought.
"Speaking of which—when I crossed wands with Cliodna that time. I mean the Quidditch World Cup final—she conjured, in the space of a single blink, an entire jungle of vines, and an oak giant besides, out of seemingly nothing—"
"That was through the power of the staff—"
At the mention of that particular staff—the staff passed down through countless generations of druidic priests as proof of their whole lineage, sacred beyond ordinary reckoning—a flicker of visible awkwardness crossed Flomide's face.
That staff had once belonged to the druids as their single most sacred object. But now it had fallen into the hands of a wizard outside their tradition, and that very wizard was standing right here in front of him.
Bryan nodded again, letting the awkwardness pass without comment.
Under ordinary circumstances, he knew well enough, Cliodna's strength alone would not have been sufficient to hold her own against him for very long at all. That she had managed to fight him to a standstill that day was owed entirely to the staff—to the "power of faith,", that generations of druidic priests before her had poured into it across centuries.
"Your own attainments in druidic magic run just as deep, though, Flomide—"
The night lay cold and heavy around them both now. The two men walked side by side across the dew-soaked lawn, toward the dark glimmer of the lake ahead.
"If it were you standing there instead of Cliodna—could you use that staff to produce, in quantity, the same sort of oak giant I fought that day?"
Bryan asked curiously.
Flomide gave the answer he had already expected, with a bitter smile.
Of course he couldn't.
If Flomide had truly been able to mass-produce guardians on that scale, on demand, Cliodna—desperate as she'd been that very day, fighting to carry Harry off before Bryan could stop her—would certainly have summoned an army of them herself rather than the single giant she'd managed.
"Forgive my presumption, Professor Watson—"
Seeing Bryan fall thoughtfully silent after hearing his answer, Flomide hesitated a moment before pressing on.
"You mean to create a number of oak guardians of your own. To defend Hogwarts, is that it?"
"That's right. That's exactly what I intend to do, if it can be managed."
Bryan made no attempt at all to hide his purpose. He simply spoke the plain, unvarnished truth of it.
"If your requirements aren't too demanding on the resource side of things, Professor Watson—I may be able to manage something along those lines, by drawing on the power of the staff over time. I believe, with some effort, that before Halloween I could have a reasonable number of them ready for you."
Flomide said, already turning the shape of the task over in his mind.
A brief, considering silence followed. Then Bryan shook his head slowly, setting the offer aside.
"I'm genuinely grateful you're willing to lend your strength to defending Hogwarts like this, Flomide. But the grounds of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry are already guarded by a great many ancient enchantments, layered one atop another across a thousand years of work.
If an invader could actually break through those existing defences, defences that have held for centuries against everything thrown at them, I don't honestly think ordinary guardians, however many of them, would do much good against whatever managed it—unless they were guardians of truly, exceptionally rare strength."
Bryan said, his grave expression let Flomide glimpse something of the disappointment beneath the words.
Hogwarts was about to face some manner of crisis, Flomide understood now—and it was a crisis large enough, apparently, that Bryan believed Hogwarts, for all it currently had as protection, including himself and Headmaster Dumbledore both standing guard, might not be able to meet it safely.
That was why, he'd set his sights on the oak guardians Cliodna had once summoned that day.
A chill ran through Flomide at the thought.
A crisis on that scale... even Voldemort—the one figure alive who could unite the whole of wizardkind in common hatred—probably couldn't pull off something of this magnitude.
So then what could it possibly be—
The instant that confusion surfaced in his mind, Flomide snuffed it out.
The reason Professor Watson hadn't made any public show of warning people was surely to avoid stirring up needless panic across the school before it was necessary. Which meant that he shouldn't press further on the point himself.
Only—
Then a fresh thought leapt up inside him, sudden enough to actually stop him where he stood on the path—beside an ordinary willow tree this time, its leaves had already gone yellow and thin on the branch with the turning season.
"Flomide?"
Bryan halted as well, sensing the shift, turning to look at Flomide, whose expression had turned hesitant now.
"Professor Watson—"
Flomide gritted his teeth.
"This matters a great deal to you, doesn't it. I mean—finding Hogwarts a powerful protector?"
In the cold night wind moving across the lawn, Bryan's eyebrow lifted slightly at the question. He studied the visibly uneasy Flomide for a moment, weighing something, considered his answer, then nodded once.
"That's right. Do you have some good suggestion to make, then?"
"I'd like to make a trade with you. Oh—no, wait!"
Flomide caught himself mid-sentence and quickly corrected course, his tone turning earnest and careful.
"I have a request. If you're willing to agree to it, I'd be willing, on behalf of the druids—I mean, I personally would be willing to pay some price—to help Hogwarts build a powerful defence against whatever's coming."
Bryan's brow drew together slightly at that. He looked deeply, searchingly at Flomide.
"Pay some price, you say. Do you mean someone's life would need to be sacrificed for this?"
Flomide shook his head firmly, dispelling that assumption, and began to explain properly instead, laying the whole idea out, and Bryan listened now with full attention.
As the account went on, the furrow in Bryan's forehead didn't ease exactly, but his eyebrows climbed higher and higher as he listened, and wonder crept slowly into his expression.
"There's a way to do that—"
Bryan shook his head gently at the end of it, full of admiration now.
"Are you certain, Hogwarts would end up with a guardian even more powerful than the oak giant Cliodna conjured that day?"
"I am absolutely certain of it, Professor Watson—"
Flomide spoke with total, unwavering conviction, meeting Bryan's eyes directly.
"It would be far more powerful than that."
The Slytherin common room.
In the windless room, the strings of cold iron chains hanging from the ceiling swayed faintly despite the absence of any draft, giving off a thin, discordant chime that set the nerves on edge.
The old, ornately shaped candelabra that also hung from the ceiling above cast a flickering candlelight tinged faintly with a ghostly, unnatural green, lending the whole common room an air of the uncanny.
Deep in the night, beyond the transparent crystal window set into the stone wall, the lake water had lost every trace of light, gone black as the space between stars.
It was as if, from within a boundless abyss of darkness pressing against the glass, there came a steady, muffled rumble—something like the low growl of some monstrous beast turning in its sleep—the terrible sound of the water endlessly shifting against the castle's foundations somewhere far below.
Before the fireplace, where a few embers still smouldered in the grate, beside a table of sharp angles and upholstered in a red so dark it looked like blood, a pale-faced boy sat curled small in a soft chair, facing out toward the black water of the lake beyond the glass.
Tap, tap, tap—
Footsteps sounded from somewhere down the tomb-like corridor leading into the common room, growing steadily clearer as they approached. But the boy curled by the fireplace showed no reaction at all to the sound.
He stared blankly out into the darkness beyond the window, unmoving, and somewhere deep in his numbed, unfocused eyes, something helpless flickered briefly.
The footsteps kept drawing closer, and at last came to a stop beside the boy's chair.
A warm hand settled gently around the boy's thin shoulder.
Pansy's face, looking down at him, was full of sorrow.
"Professor Watson is back, Draco. I know you couldn't possibly sleep—"
The boy's expression didn't change at all. Only his thin body, made to look even slighter by the loose pyjamas he wore, began to tremble.
"Give it up, Draco. Please. If they find out—"
"You think—"
Draco had sat frozen in that same chair for hours now, barely moving. Now, at last, something in him stirred. He didn't look at Pansy, kept his eyes fixed instead on the darkness beyond the glass—tears were glinting now, even in the dim green candlelight, in the pale grey of his eyes.
"Do I have a choice, Pansy?"
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