Godric & Rowena
The Hospital Wing was a scene of post-battle chaos. Prefects were sitting four to a bed, chewing determinedly on large blocks of chocolate, some still silent and struggling with shock, others looking firmly cheerful at their victory. Altogether there was a lot of hugging and back-thumping going on, and as stragglers and teachers appeared from the further parts of the castle, house-elves ran back and forth between everyone’s knees to keep the chocolate supply constant.
Eden had been carried into Madam Pomfrey’s private office and was lying, pale and still, on the small bed in the corner. Bill and Charlie had followed, and Ron - whose ears were still an odd colour - and Hermione - who was refusing to meet Ron’s eye. Rosmerta and Madam Pomfrey were assisting the house-elves in the noisy ward.
Harry stood in the corner, looking down at Eden, arms crossed, silent and grim. Occasionally, Ron or Hermione glanced at him nervously. He had refused all chocolate. He didn’t want the warmth it would bring just yet, the dulling of sensation. He was concentrating on the deep cold that had gripped his insides and now lay like a burning lump of ice in his stomach. He liked the fear that it represented, the fingers that threatened to reach out once more and grip him with despair. Its presence inside him made him angry and the anger made him feel hard and powerful. Despair, he knew from his many battles, was pointless – the fight would go on anyway.
He barely glanced up from his brooding when the headmaster entered. Everyone else in the rather crowded office looked at Dumbledore expectantly as he sat down slowly in Madam Pomfrey’s chair. He looked tired.
He gave them a reassuring smile and was about to say something when Professor McGonagall bustled in in an angry flurry of tartan robes. Her gaze swept the room, past Harry who had finally glanced up, over the girl on the bed, and came to rest on the man in the chair.
‘Headmaster!’ The word managed to convey both concern and disapproval.
‘Minerva,’ he replied with calm unconcern.
She gave him a hard stare, but said respectfully enough, ‘The Wards are repaired, but I have left most of the staff on guard. Professor Flitwick is contacting the Ministry. I thought it best - they don’t listen to us anymore!’ She seemed to realise she had said more than she’d intended and gave the younger members of her audience a sharp look. Then she returned her steely gaze to the headmaster, ‘And now may I know what is going on here?’
He smiled at her cheerfully and unhelpfully, obviously quite unashamed of what Harry now saw were his own secret schemings. Professor McGonagall was not in the mood for his games and turned to Charlie, ‘Mr Weasley?’
He, of course, cracked immediately, ‘Professor, the headmaster sent us to retrieve Rowena’s Augur for the Order.’
‘Rowena’s - !’ she took a deep breath to steady herself, then looked shrewdly at the headmaster, ‘How fortunate that the only human heir of Rowena Ravenclaw just happened to be here at Hogwarts to accomplish that task.’
‘Well, we took her mother too,’ said Charlie quickly, earning a look from Dumbledore.
‘Quite,’ said the headmaster placidly. ‘And they returned with it at a most opportune moment, wouldn’t you say? I thought Eden’s Hogwarts Patronus was most impressive . . and rather beautiful too,’ he added, ignoring McGonagall’s glare.
‘Be that as it may, Headmaster,’ she said sharply, ‘retrieving the Augur was no small thing, using it even less so. Perhaps you might have thought of consulting . .’
Dumbledore stood at that, and drew himself up to his considerable height, reminding everyone in that small room that they were in the presence of one of the world’s most powerful living wizards, the man who fifty years ago had defeated Grindelwald and saved muggle and wizard-kind alike. He spoke with all the fire of the young man he had once been, ‘Minerva! I said when the Order reformed that we would have to use every means in our hands to stop Voldemort’s rise and I meant it!’
McGonagall stared up at him, silenced. He placed a hand on her shoulder to soften his words. Whatever else passed between them was unspoken, for after a moment she gave a small nod and they turned to the others, standing shoulder-to-shoulder once more.
‘We have Godric Gryffindor’s sword – thanks to you, Harry.’ Dumbledore inclined his head respectfully and Harry found himself muttering in embarrassment,
‘And the Sorting Hat . .’
‘Ah, but the Sorting Hat would not have restored the sword to anyone less than a wizard of Godric’s own blood.’
Harry gaped. Dumbledore had once called him ‘a true Gryffindor’, but Harry had thought it was merely an expression – reassurance that he was not Slytherin-born despite his ability to speak Parseltongue. Yet now he was telling him that the founder of Hogwarts was his, what?, great-great-great-great-grandfather, or something?
Dumbledore was continuing quite unconcerned, as if he hadn’t just dropped a Chinese Fireball on Harry, ‘And thanks to these gentlemen . .‘ Charlie straightened under the headmaster’s gaze, Bill glanced at Eden and then looked at his feet, ‘. . and the last heir of Rowena Ravenclaw, we have her Augur. Alas, Voldemort has already robbed us of the last blood of the house of Hufflepuff.’
He paused and Hermione said quietly, ‘Cedric.’
‘Indeed, Miss Granger. Although I do not know whether he took Cedric from us by design – evil needs no strategy to spread its sorrow. Nevertheless, the result is the same.’ Dumbledore swept his powerful gaze around the room, ‘Salazar Slytherin’s heir rises and we must gather all our strength to stand against him.’
Eden suddenly laughed.
All eyes turned to the bed at the odd, unnerving sound. With her eyes still firmly closed she began to speak,
‘Maiden in the mor lay, in the mor lay
Seven nistes fulle ant a day . .
Her voice was clear and melodic, the strange words rolling off her tongue like forgotten but familiar music,
‘Welle was hire bower. Wat was hire bower?
The rede rose ant the lilie flour. .
‘What’s she saying?’ whispered Ron in confusion, peering at her nervously over Hermione’s shoulder.
She shushed him impatiently, ‘It’s old English . .well, Middle English, I think.’ She glanced at Professor McGonagall who gave a quick nod of affirmation.
‘Welle was hire drinke.
Wat was hire drinke?
The chelde water of the welle-spring,
The chelde water of the – ‘
Eden opened her eyes.
‘Ah, Godric.’
She looked straight at Harry. He felt a shiver pass through him.
‘Godric . .’ she said, the
voice both strong and sad, ‘we haf mede mony werkes in oor longe lyfs - an
built these Hogwarts touers wyth streynth, high ant fair ynough to withstonden
alle evil dredes . . Yet after this worldes won, wat then?’
She lifted her hands from the
Augur and held it out to him.
‘She thinks you’re Godric
Gryffindor!’ Hermione whispered excitedly.
‘Talk to her!’
She shoved him towards the bed
with such enthusiasm that his knees crashed against the metal frame. He shot
her a dark look.
Eden’s fingers, wrapped in Madam
Pomfrey’s hasty bandages, framed the smooth crystal ball. Grey mist swirled within. She looked up at him standing over her. Before he could react, she shifted the
weight of the crystal into one hand and reached for his hand with the other.
Harry swallowed as her fingers
closed around his. He was horribly
aware of the crowd of people behind him. He looked worriedly down at Eden’s
small, fire-reddened fingertips as she tugged his own towards the Augur. The oily depths swirled ever more stormily
as their joined hands approached its surface.
Her strange, shining eyes found
his again – this wasn’t Eden, he realised.
This was an echo, a ghost from the distant past, and as she spoke to him
he felt something stir inside him . .
He knew this woman – the way her dark hair lay across the pillow, the
fine brown eyes holding his own that were filled with humour and affection .
.
The eyes moved over his face in a
warm, familiar caress, ‘Tha wert fair in lyf, Godric, fair ant true . . Alas
that we twain evere did quarrel.’
There was a tremor deep in her
voice and her fingers tightened almost desperately around his,
‘An hendy hap ichabbe yhent
Ichot from hevene it is me sent
From alle men mi love is lent
Ant lycht on . . thee’
Harry hoped her words - suddenly
so easily, painfully clear to him - were lost on the rest of their audience.
‘Ooh, I know that . . It’s a love poem!’ Hermione cried with scholarly satisfaction.
Harry made a mental note to kill her later.
Linked fingers touched the cool
surface of the Augur. Beneath their
hands a brief light shone, like dawn breaking in an overcast sky. A sigh hovered on her lips, then her eyes
closed, and her hands fell away.
Harry blinked and shook his
head. The vision had passed. It was Eden’s pale face he saw once more,
her gold-streaked hair short and tousled on her forehead as she breathed in the
deep, peaceful rhythm of sleep.
He looked down. In his hands lay Rowena’s Augur, mist still
moving in its depths. He found his gaze
drawn in deeper and deeper. Images were
appearing within the sphere, shapes he half-recognised before they broke and
reformed into ever more tantalising glimpses of . . the future? The past?
It was maddening the way the pictures faded before he could understand
them – perhaps if he looked deeper, concentrated harder, he would be able to –
‘Harry!’
He heard the voice calling, thin
and insubstantial, as if from the top of a great well into which he was
falling.
‘Harry!’
That was Dumbledore, he knew. Dumbledore who had kept things from him, let
the school, and even himself at times, believe for months that he was the heir
of Slytherin, when really he was the heir of the great Godric Gryffindor
himself. Why hadn’t he told him who he
was? Why hadn’t he told him about
Eden? And Cedric? Dumbledore, who threw them carelessly into
the path of danger, yet hid the truth from them . . well, he couldn’t hide it
any longer. Harry held the Augur, and
with it he held the past, the present, the future . . great knowledge . .
greater power . .
‘Harry.’
This voice was soft. It didn’t shout or demand. It just asked him to return. Harry straightened slowly, feeling his neck
and shoulders scream in protest, his eyes ache and blur with effort as he tried
to pull his gaze away from the grip of the Augur’s swirling mists, as if
tendrils were reaching out and encircling his eyeballs to pull them back down
into the deeps.
‘Harry.’
He looked up and into a pair of
grey-green eyes. ‘Ginny,’ he said,
slightly breathless.
‘Give me the Augur, Harry, and we
can put it away where it’ll be safe.’
She spoke slowly, as if she expected him not to understand.
Harry passed it to her
eagerly. He felt rather dizzy and for
some reason his hands had gone numb. He
rubbed them together and realised everyone in the office was staring at him
warily.
‘What?’ he said, a little
annoyed. Then a flash of anxiety passed
through him. ‘I didn’t start quoting poetry, did I?’
‘No,’ said Hermione, stepping towards
him as Ginny lowered the Augur carefully into a small chest on the desk which
Dumbledore then closed and locked, ‘you just went a bit cross-eyed, that’s
all.’
‘Ah, good,’ Harry managed, still
feeling like he was floating in a dim, wavering world that reminded him of the
bottom of the school lake.
‘Hey, Harry.’
With effort he focussed on the
office door and saw that it was filled with two more Weasley faces. ‘Me and George fetched Ginny and a ton of
Butterbeers. Come and put your feet up
out here, and we’ll toast the roasting we gave those Dementors,’ Fred grinned,
clinking together the handfuls of bottles he held in a noisy salute.
Harry allowed himself to be led
from the office in a crowd of Weasleys.
He even accepted a block of chocolate from Hermione who had on her
argue-with-me-now-and-you’ll-regret-it-later face. But when Bill handed him a bottle of Butterbeer he met the
second-oldest Weasley’s smile with a serious look.
‘Caves,’ said Harry. Bill frowned but nodded. ‘Lots of caves,’ said Harry.
‘Caves,’ said Bill wearily, and
the two of them clinked their bottles together and drank deeply.
Translations from the Middle English
(anyone who wants to argue about anachronisms and inaccuracies,
please do – I don’t mind ‘cause you’re dead clever J)
[‘A maiden lay in the moor, for seven nights and a day. What was
her resting-place? The red rose and the lily flower. What was her drink? The
cold water of the spring’. – Maid in the Mor – about the mystical powers
of Woman and Nature - from the Rawlinson Lyrics]
[‘Godric, we have done many great things in our long lives – and
built these Hogwarts towers with strength, high and beautiful enough to
withstand all evil things. Yet after
this world is won, what then?’]
[‘You were handsome in life, Godric, handsome and true. Alas that we two ever quarrelled’]
[‘A gracious chance I have received - I know from heaven it’s sent
to me - From all other men my love is taken - And given to you’ – misquoted
from Alysoun, the Harley Lyrics]