A Sister of Mercy was not a role Walburga Black had ever imagined for herself—not even in passing, not even as a flight of fancy. But, as the saying goes, man proposes and reality has its own very particular way of making itself felt.
The feelings were so strange—especially when she found herself personally cleaning and settling everyone, including Hagrid, with that same spell one used for children—that she felt certain she would never quite be herself again. Though compared to the fact that her own house-elf was lying there among the patients, and she was tending to someone who ought to have been serving her—a thought so wildly incongruous she could never have entertained it before—the half-giant turned out not to be the worst of the evils on offer.
And so when Hagrid finally opened his eyes with a groan and asked for water, she provided it in the best possible fashion. Not Aguamenti over his head, but ordinary water in an ordinary cup. Whether Hagrid or Walburga herself was more bewildered by this turn of events, history does not record.
After the half-giant, Kreacher came round as well—which, or rather whom, Lady Black silently praised more than once. Mentally, of course; she had not yet reached the point of admitting such a thing aloud. Apparently two days alone with half-living bodies wasn't quite enough for that. But the madness was retreating—slowly, steadily, especially when she looked at Regulus's dear features. And at the slow rise and fall of his chest beneath the sheet.
The first thing she had done, naturally, was summon the family Healer. But he hadn't understood the case himself, and couldn't find anyone who had ever encountered anything like it. When Mr Tubbs ventured that this was, without question, an unbreakable fatal curse of unknown origin, he was shown the door with considerable energy. This was approximately one hour after the arrival of the… how to put it. The bodies? No—the casualties.
Yes, patience had never been among Lady Black's virtues. And Harry was fussing, on top of everything, until he finally fell asleep—again on the stomach of whoever he had selected as his primary mama. Snape did not protest. He was breathing, and that was enough.
When Lady Black, with her own hands, gave her house-elf something to drink and then asked how soon he would be able to make broth, the poor creature nearly expired on the spot. Then he brightened, leapt up, and rushed off in what she hoped was the direction of the kitchen. The hope proved premature—first he brought the golden fig-shaped ingot and pressed it into his mistress's hands, murmuring not entirely coherently that "the bad thing has no more power and now everything will be all right for certain." Only after that did he disappear, seemingly toward the kitchen after all.
This reassured Andrei somewhat, though Lady Black's behaviour continued to unsettle him—but he felt so thoroughly… that is, if he were honest, he didn't feel anything at all. He understood where his head was, he could blink and look around him, but he was afraid to even try speaking. He simply couldn't feel his body below the neck.
So this is what Professor Dowell's head experienced, the thought drifted through his mind. Though I can see that what's below me is still me—I just can't work out what to do with it or how to make it move. He shuddered—mentally only, which was rather the problem.
And then Kreacher brought the broth.
And Lady Black fed him from a spoon—using a spell to hold it, naturally, but still. The expression on her face was priceless. The hot liquid worked something close to a miracle: warmth descended slowly through him, and after a while the icy hoops around his chest loosened and he could breathe more freely.
"More?" Walburga asked, in a completely neutral voice, looking not at Hagrid but at her son on the adjacent sofa.
Andrei, who had finally regained feeling in his throat, answered hoarsely:
"Thank you. I didn't expect— This is… extraordinary."
Walburga made a sound exactly like Snape. And Andrei was finally struck by an idea worth attempting.
"My lady, I… ahem, forgive me, but…"
Two thin, expressive brows rose in a neat arch. What now?
"Would you be so kind as to touch me?"
"I beg your pardon?"
But her hand was already moving toward his face, and then a finger touched his nose.
She had touched the untouchable—a half-giant, a halfbreed, a— and nothing had happened. The house had not fallen on her head. No swarm of Pixies had carried her off. She had not been incinerated on the spot. She glanced at the portrait of the family's founder hanging in the drawing room, and he gave her a calm nod. Her mouth opened of its own accord.
"My lady—if you've managed that, would you strike me on the arm or leg? Please."
"Why?" Walburga asked, turning to him in confusion.
"I can't feel them. But I think if you did, it would help me find my bearings."
"Ah. Very well."
She touched one arm, then the other, gave his elbow a brisk pat—and the half-giant moved his fingers, then his whole hand, and broke into a grin.
"It's working!"
And she could not hold back an equally triumphant smile—then caught herself and began briskly patting his legs instead, so he wouldn't notice her satisfaction.
After that they divided the work: Lady Black attended to her son, while Hagrid and Harry together saw to Snape. Walburga provided the charm for stimulating swallowing, which was another surprise. But the most remarkable discovery was that Harry could get a full spoon to Severus's mouth considerably more reliably than to his own—and though the makeshift bed was thoroughly irrigated with broth, everyone did at last receive some nourishment. Cleaning Snape and his bedding afterward was a lengthy and painstaking process. Then they wrapped both patients as warmly as they could and stepped back—the fire beside which the casualties had been placed had made things rather too warm.
Andrei sat down with a quiet, serious Harry on his lap and finally told the whole story. Walburga listened and went pale.
"You might not have come back," she said quietly. "Kreacher pushed himself to his limit bringing you both, and Snape—I think he had already begun to fail in the cave. How many times did he use Fiendfyre?"
Andrei shrugged.
"And the bluish colour?"
"The water."
"Yes. Whatever was in that lake wasn't ordinary water. To maintain an Inferius colony, you would need…" She paused. "But now at least I know what direction to look in. Kreacher and I will be in the library," she announced, pressing her lips together—speaking with a half-giant in any sort of easy, natural way was clearly still an effort for her.
And the main thing is she won't have to feed him from a spoon again. Or the other things.
"You'll keep watch over the patients, and I'll think about who else we might call on. Though if no one at St Mungo's understood the situation, our hopes are limited."
"Limited?" Andrei was indignant. "You mean they might just—stay like this? I am not letting this go."
"And I am?" Walburga snapped, giving Hagrid a sharp look. "Sooner or later I will find something that can counter this kind of magic."
Andrei nodded, and thought that right now he would be willing to personally revive Tom, furnish him with some sort of body, and gut him for information about the lake and everything he had constructed in that cave. And then dunk him in the same water afterward. Ah, one could dream.
But things were slowly settling into place. Kreacher moved his beloved master Regulus to his own room, radiant with joy, then escorted Hagrid and Snape to separate rooms as well—behaving, remarkably, with complete coherence. He had evidently not forgotten who had destroyed the Horcrux, thus accomplishing the task he himself had been unable to complete. Andrei had already formed a fairly clear hypothesis, and his conversation with the house-elf confirmed it entirely.
Indeed, Kreacher had been unable to disobey the order and return until the artefact was destroyed. But the fact that Regulus was alive—that was something else. The Black house-elf was not mad. He was an absolute genius. He had somehow become a one-being Time Turner—on his own—and so when they had arrived in the cave, Regulus Black had not yet reached the point of going to drink from the lake.
Like little Ivanushka, Andrei thought, imagining himself as sister Alyonushka. He found this image less flattering than he might have wished.
And then Kreacher had "punctured time" back again, which had nearly killed him—house-elves were formidable magical creatures in their own right, but everything comes at a cost, especially meddling with time. Kreacher was changing slowly but visibly: Andrei watched white threads multiply in his sparse hair, his back beginning to curl, his face settling into lines that suggested a considerably more venerable age—he was starting to look increasingly like his portrayal in the well-known series.
"Is there anything I can do?" Andrei asked him, and Kreacher stared at him with uncomprehending eyes.
"The half-giant wants to help? Kreacher?"
"Well, if you know something… for the… you know. Age. I might have something," the incoherence of Hagrid's speech patterns proved unexpectedly apt.
"Kreacher is grateful, but Kreacher does not know," the house-elf said, with a small shrug of his thin shoulders. "Kreacher should have given his life, but his life is still needed by the Master and the Mistress, and the little Master."
"Needed, certainly," Andrei agreed. "Absolutely essential, I would say."
"And so Kreacher will live."
Immortality through a sense of duty, Andrei thought. Well. That's something.
Then Walburga returned, pleased—positively glowing—and announced that she knew what would restore both "boys": Phoenix tears.
Andrei sighed heavily.
"I had a feeling I was going to end up trudging back to the school to wring a tear out of the Headmaster's bird," he began—and stopped in surprise when Lady Black laughed out loud and held up a small vial in front of him.
"As if the Blacks would be without?"
"What extraordinary luck," he said, brightening.
"And since when are you in no hurry to rush back to your beloved Dumbledore?"
He had to explain. But first, naturally, they administered the rarest of substances to Regulus and Severus, and normal colour slowly began returning to both of them. At the very least, they stopped resembling either statues or fresh corpses.
***
The morning after the Phoenix tears had been dropped into mouths, noses, and even ears, both casualties regained consciousness—though they still couldn't move. Even so, it was an enormous step forward. Walburga was already beginning to snap at Hagrid again—evidently one lesson had not been sufficient. Andrei gave serious thought to how he might reproduce the porridge. It wouldn't have done anyone in the house any harm.
Every day he made his way to work—to his cottage—fed Fang, who had by way of welcome left a pair of throttled garden gnomes and something resembling a water vole with webbed feet and an unusually flat, elongated snout on the doorstep.
A desman, or I'll eat my hat. Strange snout, though—flat.
He had bent down to pick it up and examine it when the creature twitched—and vanished.
Some new magical nonsense, he realised. Playing dead, was it. And Fang's not without talent if he can catch things like that. My dog is apparently not as ordinary as he looks.
He whistled the dog and headed into the forest—to walk, to take stock. He was supposed to be the gamekeeper here; it was well past time he took charge of what had been entrusted to him. And to think through how to get hold of unicorn milk and the Headmaster's phoenix. That he would reduce the bird to tears he had no doubt—unlike the process of milking unicorns. Because that he genuinely did not know how to do. He had only seen it a handful of times, as a small boy, at his grandmother's in the village.
Walking at an unhurried pace, Andrei looked at everything he passed—trees, plants, wildlife—wildlife wasn't showing itself—just an ordinary forest. He'd have liked someone to talk to.
He had no idea he was about to get his wish.
The path wound between old but perfectly ordinary trunks. No particular sense of menace—not what he'd expected. He paused to look more closely at the bark for signs of rot or other damage, then gave it up: you weren't supposed to remove trees from this forest. Though—what about planting?
The thought came to him when he noticed a dense stand of identical young trunks and felt the instinctive thought: they want thinning out. Well—if that was how Hagrid's legacy expressed itself, he supposed he'd better see to it. He'd noticed a couple of spades in the outbuilding.
What he did not expect was for the path to suddenly veer sharply away from the thicket and lead him downward, toward a ravine.
I seem to remember something, Andrei thought, tensing. Unless I'm mixing things up, one of Hagrid's favourites ought to have a nest somewhere around here. But the forest looked nothing like its gloomy cinematic version—especially in the light of the early autumn sun, which had found its stride. Fallen leaves rustled pleasantly underfoot, the bare crowns of the trees let the sunlight through beautifully, and everything was quiet and peaceful. Then Andrei noticed one of those beams illuminating—
Oh.
The cobweb—if one could call it that—was as thick as a finger. A Hagrid-sized finger.
Then came noise from the bottom of the ravine, the bushes parted—and while Andrei was still doing his best to get his hackles to lie flat and his breathing to behave, an Acromantula roughly the size of a small car clicked and hissed a greeting, and before Andrei had quite managed to nod back, enquired whether he had found him the long-awaited bride.
After the wave of sheer visceral terror at the sight of the "charming spider," a wave of profound relief washed over Andrei: the spider colony didn't exist yet. And it won't, he thought—but Aragog was right there, and some sort of response was called for.
He began, as he generally did, from a long way back: shared his recent adventures, naturally. Unlike the esteemed Headmaster, Aragog listened with complete attention and what appeared to be genuine pleasure—clicking appreciatively at various points and asking follow-up questions. He was, it turned out, lonely in the forest. That was why he'd been dreaming of a family—at least there'd be something to occupy himself with, raising children. Andrei found himself talking comfortably and began to feel almost as though he were with an old neighbour. The spider was simply magnificent, and some of his observations—particularly on the subject of certain people—were sharp enough to make the canonical Snape look lenient. And for all that, he was completely non-aggressive: he didn't attack anyone at all, merely ate whatever wandered into his web.
And if some forest creature blunders into a web that size, Andrei thought, glancing at the macramé hanging nearby—too large for any breeze to shift—well, that's natural selection doing its job. But another one of him—or worse, a female—
"I understand you completely," he said, patting the spider's powerful leg. "I'd like to find someone myself, to be honest. You know how it is—with people it's hopeless, magical or otherwise. Found no one." He sighed as heavily as he could manage. "Neither for myself, nor for you. Ah, looks like we're both destined to bachelor lives, my Aragog."
And he produced a sob that was, even to his own ears, convincingly genuine. Aragog made a sound of deep sorrow and appeared to weep—with at least three pairs of eyes; Andrei couldn't see the crown ones.
The lyrical moment was interrupted by a disgruntled female voice.
"Oh, there you are. Get this thing off me this instant."
A bony but unmistakably female figure detached herself from the trunk nearest the hanging section of cobweb. Watching her move, Andrei found himself reflecting on how entirely wrong one's mental images could be.
Dryads—lithe and beautiful? Hmm. How about a Pinocchio-class automaton? Though there is something strangely charming even in the angular movements.
He had to negotiate a settlement between the two, so to speak. The hardest part was getting them to actually look at each other—after that, they worked out their own arrangement readily enough. Aragog was entirely indifferent to which trees he hung his webs from, and he couldn't sense dryad-trees—he didn't know how. So the Senior Dryad, as she turned out to be, undertook to teach him.
The spider was pleased—now he'd have someone to talk to besides Hagrid. Andrei was pleased too—he was beginning to believe again that intelligent beings were capable of reaching agreements. He also walked away with a skein of web—someone had to remove the "decoration" from the dryad's tree—and was already eyeing the movable hooks on Aragog's chelicerae with considerable interest. The ducts to the venom glands should open there, and Acromantula venom was rare, expensive, and generally remarkable stuff.
Well, he had gone into the forest. He had his basket, and in it the usual assortment of useful things: a couple of bags (one never knew), a flask of water, a couple of rolls saved from the school breakfast, and two empty vials—in case anything interesting turned up in liquid form. Even the water from forest streams might be worth collecting, if the Forbidden Forest's streams had particular properties. Snape would know what to do with it.
He shared his modest provisions with his new acquaintances—regardless of the fact that both considered themselves old ones—described his crash landing once more in vivid detail, listened to complaints about the strange and inconvenient design of his body from a natural-world perspective, commiserated, and even received something approaching sympathy. And then it occurred to him to ask the dryad's name—feeling rather like a man who had only just changed careers.
"If I might ask—how should I address you, if you'd be so kind?"
But instead of anything resembling the Marfa Vasilyevna he'd half-anticipated, the dryad bared her teeth in sudden fury.
"Trying to learn my name by trickery, are you, mage?"
"By trickery?" Andrei was taken aback. "I simply—we haven't been introduced, have we?"
"Really did fall on your head," the dryad hissed. "I suppose I'll have to forgive you. Know this: dryads never, under any circumstances, give their true names to anyone."
"Understood. I was wrong, I'll know better." Andrei swallowed, watching the small dry fist relax and a pebble she'd been toying with crumble to dust. "But then—how do we manage?"
"What do you mean?"
"Well, one has to call you something. He's Aragog, I'm Hagrid… perhaps we could invent a name for you—not your real one, a spare one, for outsiders—just so—"
"Hmm," the dryad considered, picking up a fresh pebble. "And what would you suggest?"
"Osenina!" It came to him in a flash. "Because of autumn. And trees in autumn are the most beautiful, aren't they? And for short—you could choose—either Osya, or Nina. Ninochka. There."
"Ossss-ya. Hmm. Ninochka." She smiled, unexpectedly. "I'll be Osya for those I don't like. It sounds like wind between trunks. And Ninochka"—she paused. "That's for those I do. Very well. You may both call me that."
* * *
Returning from the forest after an excursion with the charming—provided one approached her correctly, and he'd had the sense to ask her about that first—Senior Dryad Ninochka, Andrei set his considerably heavier basket on the table, lowered himself onto the bunk, and stretched his legs out with a sigh. He didn't have the energy to stand up and feed Fang, and the dog was obliged to contain himself and wait for his master to rest. The animal himself had turned back when Andrei had first headed toward the ravine—apparently caught Aragog's scent and preferred to forgo the acquaintance. Self-preservation instinct, reasonable. One couldn't blame him.
After resting a while, Andrei fed the dog and turned to sorting through the forest's offerings. Good thing he'd brought the umbrella—he had to double the vials for the venom three times over: Aragog had produced nearly a litre. And then Ninochka had led him to the "ever-weeping one"—a remarkable pine, the like of which he'd never seen, along whose trunk the dryad had drawn one small claw; the bark split open and Andrei had simply kept holding vials under the stream of clear amber liquid that poured out, strange and somehow reminiscent—in scent as well—of a very good cognac.
The education in forest lore he received was thorough enough to make his head swim. Where to find which magical herbs, where the centaurs ranged—best avoided, a disagreeable lot—where the thestrals sheltered by day and grazed by night, and finally, where the unicorns pastured.
Andrei couldn't hold back a sound of pure disappointment when the unicorns, the moment he came within any kind of reasonable viewing distance, rose as one and cantered away. Beautiful Ninochka was a true mistress of her domain—she knew every living thing in her forest by name and number. So Andrei, asking permission first to use the umbrella, Transfigured a pile of dry leaves into a simple notebook and a twig into a pencil, and began to write. Thestral population—males, females, foals, juveniles, sexually mature young, pre-mature young— and so on for every species. The notebook lasted exactly as long as the excursion, partly because he was also sketching the layout of the paths. A gamekeeper who didn't know his own forest was an embarrassment.
At the end of it he was genuinely in awe of Ninochka, and at parting he kissed her formidable little hand, bowing deeply. He did have to explain what the gesture meant and what people put into it. Fortunately, she liked the explanation.
A quiet knock at the door interrupted his thoughts. But when he opened it, there was no one—only a remarkable, faintly glowing vial, blue-white—exactly like the one he had found in the unicorn milk cupboard.
"Thank you!" he called out into the evening dusk and the thickening mist. "Thank you from the bottom of my heart—may the universe keep you safe!"
Then he quickly got himself ready and took a pinch of Floo Powder. The mistress of the house at Grimmauld Place had opened her fireplace to him after all—exclusively to him, keyed to his blood. He was expected.