Chapter Nine: The Garden Window
Time: Breakfast 7/14/95
"Professor Lupin is an old friend of Sirius'," Hermione assured her when Sapphire had related her encounter with the strange man outside the bathroom.
"He lives in the house. You didn't meet him yesterday because he's been sort of ill. But when he's well, he's one of the nicest people I know. I'm sure you'll like him."
Sapphire had not mentioned the name she had spontaneously given the man. The moment had been so strange and so intimate that she hardly knew how to speak of it.
The smell of toast and eggs led them to the kitchen, where six Weasleys had assembled. Having hung the rapier on the wall, Sapphire approached Molly to see if she could be of use, but Molly only allowed her to carry a few plates and then commanded her to sit and eat. Watching Molly fuss over her family, as the boys traded insults and Ginny looked terminally embarrassed at their behavior, Sapphire felt a warmth in the kitchen that much diminished it's gloomy aspect. When Molly had brushed the crumbs from Arthur's robes and he had apparated to the office, and the twins had popped (literally) back upstairs to "come up with more mischief" as their mother surmised, Molly brought a large pot of tea to the table and sat beside Sapphire.
Had she slept well? Sapphire reported that the bed was quite comfortable, but that she had disturbed the girls with a bad dream.
"Mom, could she have some of the stuff Madame Pomfrey gives me?" Ginny asked.
Molly frowned. "I don't know about using that on a muggle, honey. Maybe a calming spell before bed?"
Sapphire allowed that she'd probably sleep better when she'd gotten accustomed to the surroundings, but that she was worried about keeping the girls awake.
"It's summer vacation; we can nap if we want," Ginny offered.
"Professor Lupin will know something that will help," Hermione said, turning to face the doorway.
"Remus!" Molly exclaimed. "I thought you'd be joining us today. Now, let me introduce you to our guest. Sapphire McNiven is an old friend of Sirius'. She joined us yesterday under quite remarkable circumstances."
"We've met," the man in the doorway said, as he and Sapphire took a long look at each other. "I fear I frightened you. I was..., shall we say, I was not quite myself earlier this morning."
He was the same man, but not the same, Sapphire thought. Besides what a shave and a combing could do, there were other things altered that were hard to pin down. Did the hair seem a little less gray? The skin slightly less pale (though he still looked pale enough to concern her)? But most noticeably, the eyes were not the same. He might well say that he had not been himself earlier, for the ancient wildness she had seen was there no more. It were as though one soul had vacated the body and been replaced by another.
"I'm glad to be introduced properly," Sapphire said. "I'm sure you were more surprised to see a strange muggle wandering the halls than I was to bump into you."
"A muggle? I hadn't realized." He looked puzzled as he took her hand. They continued to stare at each other.
Finally, Hermione spoke. "Professor Lupin may know some safe way to control your nightmares."
"Perhaps he'd like some breakfast first," Sapphire added, thinking that, even shaved, this fellow looked like death warmed over.
Molly seated Remus beside Sapphire, handed him a mug and again busied herself at the stove.
"You're a professor?" Sapphire asked.
"I was once," Remus said, taking a long drink from his mug. It was obvious to her that this was not his favorite topic.
"A darn good one," Ron added.
"He taught 'Defense Against the Dark Arts'," Hermione explained. "Miss McNiven is having nightmares because she was attacked by dementors and then obliviated. She says she always has bad dreams after being obliviated. Do you know anything that will help?"
Remus again looked at Sapphire with great interest. "That should give anyone nightmares. How did this happen?"
She related briefly that the dementors and wizards had apparently been searching for Sirius. "I guess I got in the way."
Remus whistled.
"When a wizard tries to alter my memories, they return as nightmares. Sirius tried a few times when we first met and I still have a dream now and then that I can trace to that."
"And if you also stun her, she tosses her cookies," Sirius deadpanned, as he entered the kitchen. Incongruous to the wisecrack, he seemed no less weary than he had the night before. Sapphire noted bags under his eyes as dark as bruises.
"Sirius, some of us are eating!" Molly scolded as she handed him a mug.
"That's most interesting," Remus said, with no trace of levity. "I'd like to hear some more so I can give your problem a bit of thought. There are several methods to suppress bad dreams, but few that have been studied with muggle subjects. First, however, I'd like to know how you two met."
"My granny said we fed a stray dog. And you know what that leads too, " Sapphire laughed, and wondered why Remus and Sirius exchanged such a charged look at her inconsequential joke.
"Sirius, if you feel the need to correct history, feel free to contribute." Sirius was now toying with a plate of eggs and didn't respond; so after a moments pause, she went on. " I and my granny were in the old cabin on the homestead, which is back in the woods miles from anywhere. A storm had taken out both the power and phone, so we couldn't even call for help, and then this young stranger knocks on the door. She and I agreed that he didn't belong out there. She thought he was just lost and hungry. I said he was looking for an easy target. Anyway, we decided to feed him on the porch, and I kept one hand close to the rifle behind the door jamb. Silly me, Sirius later told me I'd have to be pretty fast, and accurate on the first try to get the best of a wizard with a gun. Sirius, didn't you say you thought I had my wand stashed behind that door?"
"Uh..., right. That would seem likely," Sirius said without much sign of interest in the tale. Remus Lupin and the others present, on the other hand, were hanging on every word, so Sapphire forged ahead.
"Anyway, we put him to work doing what the electricity should have done, and he went to work flirting. I think it was about all he was good at in those days -- that and eating. Right, Sirius?"
"Hmm," Sirius said through a full mouth.
"I knew something was odd about him right away. He got us water from the old hand pump, but he never touched the water we had there to prime it, and I never heard him work the handle. Of course, I know now that he summoned the water up the pipe, but I had never heard of such things, and could only wonder. The firewood he split was so uniform that it looked like it had come from a sawmill until I came out to watch. Then I got worried he would hurt himself, he was so awkward with the ax; that particular batch looked like he'd chewed it to size. But strangest of all was when he saw me being threatened by the neighbor who was poaching ginseng and probably growing pot in our north pasture. Sirius used some sort of twitching jinx and sent him packing. I never understood quite what he did to that lowlife, but he never gave us any more trouble. He even stopped cutting our fence wires and restringing them south of that patch of ginseng that grew on our northern boundary. Sirius, how ever did you get him to leave our fence alone?"
Everyone at the table looked at Sirius, who looked into his plate with terrific concentration. "Oh, I don't remember. Maybe after the jinx he was just too afraid of you not to behave properly."
Sapphire shrugged and continued the tale. "Anyhow, after that I was glad enough to see him when he returned the next summer, especially since granny had passed on and I was all alone. I took him with me on a few herb gathering trips and was surprised that this city boy actually knew a fair amount of standard medicinal herbs. Now I understand that you folks use them in potions, but at the time, it was a great mystery to me, and of course, he couldn't explain without telling me he was a wizard. Anyway, it was on one of those trips that Sirius tells me I lost my footing in soft ground and stumbled onto a poisonous snake. He used magic to save my life, then tried to alter my memory. I didn't retain all the details on account of that, but I do have dreams of him holding a snake that bursts into flames in his hand. It seems to be a composite of the reality. He learned then that I have an adverse reaction to stunning, and that my memory isn't easy to erase."
"What did you do about the effects of the spells then?" Remus asked.
Sapphire felt her face warm at this. She didn't look at Sirius, who was slurping his tea. "Well, I had some standard things on hand to calm my stomach and nerves: yellow root, ginger, sassafras, valerian, St.-John's-wort, passionflower and such. " Molly and Remus were both nodding as she recited the list.
"Those would get you started on several standard potions. Did you two find any then that were helpful?" Remus addressed this remark to Sirius, who had retrieved a copy of the Daily Prophet from where Arthur had been sitting and was submerged up to his eyebrows.
Sapphire answered him. "Oh, we didn't make potions! I just made some teas to calm myself and stop the nausea. The nausea was easier to control than the nightmares..." Abruptly, she pursed her lips and lifted her tea cup for a long sip.
Molly prompted, "What about calming spells; did you try some for the dreams?"
Sapphire hesitated, as Sirius loudly turned a page. " I wouldn't allow Sirius to use spells on me... I was afraid, you see, and it was all so new." She was feeling a great urge to apologize, but the others smiled encouragingly, so she went on. "He just had to keep telling me I'd had a bad dream and everything was OK. I don't think either of us got much sleep for a while there." Sapphire was now feeling warm up to her ears. "Say, I don't suppose there's any valerian in the house, is there?"
"Not unless it's in that travesty of a garden," Molly answered.
Remus rose and went to a small grimy window high on the back kitchen wall. It was the only source of natural light for the room, and too high up for Sapphire to see out of from the floor. "Scurgify," Remus commanded and a thin sheet of dust fell from the pane and vanished.
"Is there a garden here?" Sapphire's embarrassment of a moment before vanished. "Is that where this little door leads to?"
"It's probably full of Wizard Dandelion," Sirius mumbled from behind the Prophet.
"Yuck!" Ginny exclaimed, exchanging a grimace with her brother.
"Dandelion? What's so bad about that?" Sapphire inquired.
"It's a powerful diuretic and laxative," Remus explained.
"I never thought of Taraxacum Officinale as being a particularly potent drug..."
"Not Officinale; Illegalis," Remus corrected. " Wizard Dandelion was probably created to repel muggles, solicitors and other strangers from unfriendly yards. It creates, shall we say, instant and massive urgencies on contact."
"Oh, wow." Sapphire was trying to take this in.
"I didn't see any, the few times I ventured out there, but there's an awful mess of Medusa Nettle," Molly added.
"My mother could have planted all sorts of dangerous plants in that garden -- and almost certainly did. You should stay out of it." Sirius had put down the paper and was looking around for Sapphire.
"But who tends it now?" Sapphire was across the room, standing in a chair to see out of the little window.
"No one, " Molly answered. "Sirius is right, it isn't a safe place for a muggle."
"But I have two degrees in botany! I've inherited generations of ethnic botanical knowledge. I spend whole days hip deep in plants; I know plants! " protested Sapphire.
"Not these you don't," Sirius argued.
"So it contains species unknown to muggle botanists?" Sapphire still peering out the window, felt almost as excited as when she had first understood that Sirius was a wizard.
"Look, Sirius," Remus said, "why don't we all look over the garden, and try to eliminate anything truly dangerous."
"It would be easier to eliminate the garden," Sirius grumbled.
"You must promise not to enter it without one of us and to stay away from plants that don't look familiar to you?" Remus offered Sapphire a hand down from the chair.
"When can I see it?"
"It's not going anywhere." Molly poured Sapphire a second cup of tea. "After we eat, I suppose you can have a tour."
"Hmph," grunted Sirius from behind the Prophet.
@ 2,244 words, Last Edit 07/16/07
Posted by Madmaxime at September 10, 2007 04:47 PM