FicWad

The Harry Potter universe is the creation of J.K. Rowling. This is fanfiction. The standard disclaimers apply.


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Chapter 27: Silvanus Kettleburn


Wednesday, November 7, 1990


"Good afternoon, class."

Charlie knew the drill. Professor Kettleburn would not move on—would, in fact, wait patiently for an uncomfortably long time before trying again—if the class did not respond with the expected answer.

"Good afternoon, Professor Kettleburn."

The Care of Magical Creatures classroom, or at least the current one, as Kettleburn had been through several over the years, was a fairly simple affair. Typical castle architecture—arched windows, slightly vaulted ceiling. Polished stone floor, easily cleaned. Rows of desks in the front, counters in the back. No bookcases, no curtains, no fancy teacher's desk. In short, nothing that could burn or shatter too badly.

The desks had some wood in them, but were protected with powerful enchantments against burning or breaking. They were not protected very well against scratching, chewing, chemical marking, or other less pleasant accidents. The walls were covered in scattered stains and scorch-marks, stone counters were chipped, and the castle's natural air freshening charms had long ago lost their struggle against the musk, urine, blood, vomit, venom, ichor, and alarm pheromones left by the five hundred and seventy three species of magical creatures which Professor Kettleburn had brought in here over the years. Today he was introducing the five hundred and seventy fourth, ostensibly because it was native to the Forbidden Forest, and in reality because he was on probation as a result of the poor behavior of the five hundred seventy second.

Charlie assumed this meant Kettleburn would be going with something small and harmless, or at least that looked small and harmless if you didn't scare it too badly, or maybe when it was sleeping. The large wire cage on the front table appeared to be empty save for a piece of tree branch and some newspaper, so Charlie was betting on 'escaped and in the room somewhere' or 'harmless-looking because it is invisible'. He was hoping for the latter, as it would be, for Kettleburn, a novel and creative way to dodge the terms of his probation. He was also hoping it wasn't the former, because that usually ended badly, both for the students and the magical creature.

Another puzzling thing was the presence of Professor McGonagall, sitting in the front row of desks. He had been led to understand that in the early years of Professor Kettleburn's tenure, 'probation' had sometimes involved having an actual classroom monitor keep an eye on him, but that had been given up as pointless long before Charlie had gotten to Hogwarts. Dumbledore probably wasn't even bothering with a stern lecture; Charlie got the feeling that much of the headmaster's duties involved exceedingly dull paperwork, and that dealing with Kettleburn's various accidents had turned into one of those near-mindless tasks like, say, double-checking the budget, or ordering supplies, that he probably strove to complete and file away as quickly as possible. In any case, McGonagall's expression was a poor clue to what she was thinking, so he would have to just wait and see.

Kettleburn himself was known for having 'one and a half limbs', but this was a little misleading, as magical artificial arms and legs had gotten quite good over the years, and Kettleburn had collected some very nice ones. Since the man was rarely without sturdy robes and long dragonhide gloves, Charlie had never been able to confirm the rumors that Kettleburn wore a different right arm every day of the week. What was obvious, though, immediately upon meeting the professor, was that he had quite a few scars on his face. Most wizards Kettleburn's age—he was probably the second-oldest faculty member after Dumbledore—would have hidden these by growing a beard. It wasn't actually that beards were easily burned off that deterred him, Kettleburn had said, but that they were far too inviting to cling to or hide in.


"Legend has it—and by that I mean that the original manuscript was destroyed in a fire—legend has it that while the foundation of Hogwarts was being laid, Helga Hufflepuff made a catalog of every living thing she found on the school grounds. All we have of that work are numerous citations to it from the era when there were extant copies. Our venerated founder may have been quite thorough, but if the citations are any guide, she probably missed some things. Like this little guy here.

What, you don't see him either? We shouldn't be too hard on our tenth-century predecessors if he eluded them, too. He's right in plain view on that branch! Not invisible at all!" The branch in question was about four inches in diameter and three feet long, leaning diagonally against the side of the cage. It was brown and had deeply furrowed bark, but Charlie couldn't see anything special about it. "I can see him, but then I know where he is already and I'm a little closer. Of course, it would help if he'd open his eyes. They're nocturnal, so he's probably hoping we'll just go away and let him sleep, but I know how to get his attention."

Kettleburn reached into his robes and pulled out a banana. "No one knows what they eat in the wild, since they're so elusive. I must have tried a hundred things from the forest and a dozen formulations from Diagon Alley, trying to get him to eat. Finally I gave in and started bringing up food from the Great Hall. So all I know is that he'll nibble on acorns, but he loves bananas. So far as I know there is nothing remotely like a banana tree growing anywhere in the Forbidden Forest, but he seems healthy, and I can train him this way. Let's see . . ." He peeled part of the banana, broke off a small piece, then stuffed the rest back in his pocket.

As he opened the cage door, making clicking noises with his tongue, part of the branch shimmered and moved, then jumped into Kettleburn's hand. It was like looking at a primitive form of disillusionment. The professor had the animal—which seemed to have four legs and a tail—crawling up his right arm towards a piece of banana he put on his shoulder. Kettleburn moved in front of the table now, as the piece of banana seemed to hover near his ear, rotating and growing smaller.

He walked slowly down each row of desks, as students stood up and peered at it, some reacting with various "Ooh!"s and the occasional "soo cuute!", others apparently not seeing it. When it came within ten feet or so of Charlie, he could finally see an eye—small, beady, and rodent-like, but large in proportion to the head once he could make it out. Using that as a reference point made the outline of a small mammal much clearer. "It's all in the fur," explained Kettleburn, "you are looking at the most sophisticated natural camouflage yet discovered—it can change color nearly instantaneously, and it accounts for the angle it's viewed from, too. If you have ever seen someone or something that had been disillusioned badly, you'll recognize the effect. The difference is that these guys evolved it on their own."

The animal had now climbed down to a second piece of banana in Kettleburn's left hand; Kettleburn handed off the rest of the banana to McGonagall with his right.

"Now, I'm going to do something a little mean in a moment, but I want you to actually see this guy. I'll clean him off right after, don't worry. This is just flour . . ."

Kettleburn took a small paper bag out of his pocket, and dumped the contents on the animal, now revealed to look very much like a flying squirrel. It indignantly shook itself like a wet dog, sending a cloud of flour into the air and becoming marginally less visible.

"If you were thinking it looks like a flying squirrel, you're right! Davey here is a chameleon glider, and they've only been found in two other places nearby, besides the Forbidden Forest. Before he manages to shake that all off, let's see him in action. Minerva?"

McGonagall stood, holding her arm out in front of her, palm up with a piece of banana in it.

"Just make that clicking noise I used—it seems to work on most animals."

"If this thing bites, Silvanus, you and it are in deep trouble."

"It's an endangered species, Minerva."

"Okay, then just you. tchk tchk tchk?"

"Go on, over there, see? She's got a banaaana . . ." Listening to Kettleburn talk to animals was always fascinating. Gone was any hint of professorial gruffness—replaced by something approaching baby-talk. It didn't matter what the size or the ferocity was—thestrals, hippogriffs, or venomous snakes got the same voice as cute little flying squirrels. He was worse than Hagrid.

McGonagall apparently got her clicking right, or at least Davey had finished the last piece of banana it could reach without flying, and it took off across the room, shedding flour as it went.

"Notice he flew horizontally, without climbing up to my head first like a regular flying squirrel would have to. They can go straight up, too. Now, Minerva, you agreed . . ."

Slowly, McGonagall used her free hand to reach into her pockets and came out with a wool scarf in a complicated tartan pattern, which she draped around her neck. Actually holding the little squirrel must have made it easier to make out, as she slowly grew less awkward and fearful, and started bringing it closer to herself to get a better look. Charlie decided he must be seeing her 'holding a small furry cute thing with big eyes and a piece of banana' expression; he'd certainly never seen it on her before.

Charlie had spent years speculating as to why Kettleburn did anything he did. Just like the man never mentioned it when he was on probation, he hadn't said why McGonagall was there; Charlie guessed Kettleburn had asked to borrow her scarf, but she didn't trust him with it, so they compromised.

"Now, when he finishes that chunk of banana, just hold him up to the scarf. It's easier to cling to than your hand, so he should climb right onto it. Goood!" Kettleburn had come over to stand at her side. "Now, let's get the rest of that flour off him and see how he does. 'Scourgify'!" Charlie was unsurprised to see the squirrel vanish away, perfectly mimicking the McGonagall tartan.

"You see," explained Kettleburn, "I've tried that on every color-changing animal I've gotten my hands on. The really good ones manage a bunch of lines of about the right colors, going every which-way. Davey here, though, seems to have pulled off plaid. I know, after seeing, or failing to see him, as I walked around the room, this might not impress you. I assure you, though, that nothing in the Forbidden Forest comes in plaid. So Davey can't just fool our eyes with some trick—he's got to get it exactly right." Kettleburn leaned in to get a closer look at the animal's fur, in the process bringing his face within about six inches of McGonagall's breasts. Charlie bit his cheeks to avoid grinning, and wondered why no one else seemed to find the scene humorous; it would be bad enough with an ordinary animal, he thought, but with a near-invisible one it was ridiculous. Charlie wished he had a camera, because Kettleburn looked extraordinarily pleased by what he saw.

"Oooh, he has, hasn't he—every little color, all the right angles! It's amazing! Maybe you all haven't been dying to see this your entire lives, but I certainly have." At this, Charlie had to bite down so hard he was bleeding, but he didn't dare laugh.

"Eep!" Davey had crawled upward, and snuggled in between McGonagall's scarf and her neck, where it was presumably warmer and darker. She had reacted by standing very, very still; Davey, reassured by this, burrowed deeper into her clothing. As much as Charlie enjoyed watching Professor McGonagall react, he would be relieved when the squirrel was finally extricated from wherever it had gotten to.

It was little and cute, and Professor Kettleburn acted like it was completely tame. Unfortunately, Kettleburn's idea of 'tame' was less like 'I have spent many months carefully socializing this wild animal which I probably pulled out of a hole somewhere' and more like 'I know it likes bananas, and also I have named it "Davey".' This sort of situation was precisely how Kettleburn had gotten himself put on probation so often—everything he did today had looked reasonable at the time, but it had ended with the subject of the day's lesson crawling down Professor McGonagall's shirt.

Care of Magical Creatures professors had been bringing things like dragons and hippogriffs into the classroom since the school's founding, and even Kettleburn had done so without incident. Those were big and dangerous, but their behavior was extremely well-understood. In contrast, Charlie wouldn't be surprised if the entirety of human knowledge concerning chameleon gliders had been imparted to him today. He would have felt honored by this if the next few minutes hadn't forced him to bite down so hard on his lip.


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At the beginning of class, Charlie had planned to lurk around the corner outside of the classroom to try to eavesdrop on Kettleburn and McGonagall. He felt bad for the Care of Magical Creatures professor; he was a nice old man, and very knowledgeable, even if he proceeded with cheerful confidence to do things sane people would not. As it was, though, Charlie was bleeding far too much to ignore, and had to go straight to the hospital wing.

Over the last seven years, Madam Pomfrey had seen a lot of Charlie Weasley.

"Ah, Care of Magical Creatures class just ended, did it? What is it today? Venomous bite? Embedded quill? Head trauma? You don't seem to be bleeding . . ."

"Uh, Vadav Vovthrey, uh . . ."

"Sorry, my mistake. Let's take a look at it. I see you've decided to cut out the middleman and do the biting yourself now, hm?" She wandered over to her cabinet and selected something. "Can't wait to see me? Here, swish this around in your mouth until I say you can stop, but don't swallow any of it." The potion stung and tasted bitter.

"Did you bang your head on something?" Up to this point Charlie had been fixated on the thought that he was in serious pain, but the thought of actually explaining the situation to Madam Pomfrey was too much. He couldn't keep from laughing, and wound up spraying mouthwash everywhere to avoid choking on it.

"That good, huh? Here, take another mouthful, and I'll go to my office for a few minutes." Charlie managed to hold it in until she came back. "All still there? Good. Go spit it out in the sink. Now let's see . . . looks good. That cleaned and disinfected it, and stopped the bleeding, but it's going to take at least a few days to heal. So try not to accidentally bite it open again while you're eating." Charlie nodded.

"Right. Any other injuries you haven't told me about yet? No? Oh good. Now then, what happened?"

"I was . . . trying . . . to not lath at Prothessor McGonagall."

Madam Pomfrey smirked. "Believe it or not, I've heard that one before. Do go on. Oh, don't worry, I don't spill my patients' secrets unless somebody's in danger."

Charlie took a deep breath. "Prothessor Kettleburn had a magical thlying squirrel that changes colors, like a chameleon? And wanted to see it on plaid. McGonagall wouldn't lend him her tartan scarth . . ."

"Sensible."

"I guess she thought it would stay sather ith she was wearing it?"

"Ah, her first mistake." Pomfrey was grinning.

"So she puts the squirrel on it . . ." Charlie gestures toward his chest, demonstrating. "And Kettleburn leans in to see, but his head's right here . . . and the squirrel is invisible, so it . . . looks . . ."

"Ah."

"And he looks so, so happy . . . and then it . . ." He made his fingers scurry up his shirt and into his collar.

"Naturally!"

"And she stays stock still, but she squeaks!"

"Oh Merlin, I wish I could share this . . ."

"Just don't say it was me?"

"Deal."

"So, staying still was bad."

"Oh?"

"It must hathe thelt sathe then, and . . ." He put his hand down the front of his shirt. "And no one else looked like they were trying not to lath, either!"

"Of course. Where do you think Hogwarts professors and Ministry employees come from?"

He snickered. "And now it won't come out, and he's there . . . going 'tchk tchk!' at her . . ." He looked up at Madam Pomfrey, who was silently evaluating the possibility of doing this herself at the faculty table. Charlie raised a finger in an 'it gets better' gesture; Pomfrey raised an eyebrow. "Kettleburn has to take oth his glothe . . . and he just reaches in to get it . . ." He made the motion of having to fish around, and struggle to pull it out. "I don't think either oth them realized how it looked."

"Well, you never can tell with Minerva. She's very good in that sort of situation."

"Does she . . . I better not say that."

"I will, though! Does Minerva McGonagall get groped often?" Charlie looked shocked. "No. I bet that was a first for her. Don't tell her I said that, of course. Alright, you—if those cuts start to feel worse, or if they aren't better in a week, come see me again. Of course, you'll probably be in here for something else before that, so I suppose I'll just check it then."


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That evening, Charlie was in the library, working on the project Kettleburn had assigned them. It was actually a pretty clever one.

"Now," the professor had said, as if he had not just pulled a flying squirrel out of Professor McGonagall's cleavage, "your next written assignment is due Friday the 16th, and you will need the library for most of it, so don't put it off." He gave them a stern look. "I want you to pin down when these guys first came flying out of the woods, so to speak. Find the account of that if you can, and then look in the reference works before and after that. Along the way, pick at least two other British magical creatures that turn up in, or disappear from, the references at some identifiable time. Hagrid's escaped pets don't count!" Laughter from the class. "I want at least five feet of analysis on this. Compare and contrast; see how magizoologists handle changes in knowledge. Write about what you find interesting. You can work together on finding books in the library, and I think you would be foolish not to, but the actual reading, writing, and thinking must be your own." Another
stern look. "It's a good excuse to use the Hogwarts history section, which is way up on the front wall, so you'll get to climb around on those rolling ladders! Any questions? Great. Come to my office hours if you get stuck, and I'll see you tomorrow!"

Charlie and several others were now at the tops of ladders, sifting through promising looking books and handing them down to classmates below. There were several large stacks of reference works on the nearest table. Many were similar to 'Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them'—clearly in the "Bestiary" genre of which wizards were very fond. Most, though, were considerably drier, if not more systematic, and had titles like 'The Illustrated Fauna of the Hogwarts Grounds', 'Centennial Gamekeeper's Report', and 'Bewick's Birds of Magical Britain'. Wizards rarely published books with tables of contents, let alone indexes. Charlie had a sinking feeling that the assignment would take all the time Kettleburn had allotted for it.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Oren was in his usual seat at the back of the library. Two things were distracting him. The first was the presence of Albus Dumbledore, rustling around in the Restricted Section next to him. The second was the large number of students climbing around on the library's front wall, a section he didn't remember getting much attention before.

Dumbledore had been in here last night after dinner, too. Fortunately, regardless of what he was after, the Restricted Section would probably have only a limited number of books on the subject, and he could be expected to go away reasonably soon. Oren didn't think much of the Restricted Section. By his calculation, there couldn't be more than 20,000 volumes in there, and once you discounted certain things in foreign languages and ordinary stuff like polyjuice, the actual number of books on supposed 'Dark Arts' was fairly small. The average pureblood household probably had a larger collection, at least if you counted all the stuff stored in boxes that no one had looked at in years. So Oren assumed faculty members (or at least the ones who, like Dumbledore, were always up to something) must take trips to other libraries on a regular basis.

Oren didn't really like being so close to Dumbledore, and eventually decided to give up on studying for the night. On his way out he asked the students in the front what they were working on, and learned about Kettleburn's research assignment. This was the first Oren had heard of the Hogwarts-specific section. The various surveys of the grounds were high up on the wall, but the shelf at his eye level contained mostly history. Scanning these, he came across 'Recapturing Their Youth', which was a sufficiently opaque title that he took it out. It turned out to be a history of how Hogwarts had influenced architecture elsewhere, with whole chapters on various universities—he noticed Oxford, Yale, The University of Chicago, and several others. It also had an entire chapter on libraries, which was interesting enough for Oren to walk back to a table and sit down.

He had acquired a near-pathological aversion to checking out books, for fear that doing anything out of the ordinary would give him away. That in itself was odd, since he had checked out all sorts of suspicious-sounding things his first time around, but on the other hand he spent an awful lot of time in the library anyway. During all that time, though, he never noticed any sort of door to the archives room that the book talked about. It made sense, he thought, that such a place should exist (although making sense rarely predicted whether wizards would actually do something); it was what he would do, at any rate.

Paperwork, gradebooks, general history—after a thousand years, keeping it all in various storerooms would get awkward, and the founders had usually displayed a lot of foresight about that sort of thing. His immediate interest, of course, was dealing with all the papers in The Room of Hidden Things. Why should he bother trying to fireproof one of the most magically confusing rooms ever built, when an archive room already existed, quite possibly designed by Rowena Ravenclaw herself? As best as he could tell from the chapter, the Hogwarts librarian was responsible for it, and had some sort of special powers. That sounded reassuring. Yes, he'd pull out anything he wanted, and take the rest to Madam Pince. Or, maybe, break into her office and leave it there—that was probably more sensible.




















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Author's notes:

URL hack: if you want to give an overall rating to a multi-chapter story, you can add /rate to the URL for the chapter index (for this story, that's http://ficwad.com/story/149388/rate). I'm sure I'm not the only person who hadn't figured that out yet -- someone was asking about it on the forums.

As to the story itself...

I wrote the first section without realizing some bits would look questionable to an observer, and then went back and added Charlie's perspective. In Kettleburn's place, I, too, would have been oblivious.

I wasn't originally planning to write out the section in the hospital wing, but rather expected to simply end that thread with the class ending, then fill out the rest of the details at the faculty table at dinner. I decided to make it more like the chapter with Sirius' hearing, where I deliberately wrote out a whole lot more than I usually would. On the one hand, this is fanfiction, and not intended to be formatted like a novel or at the pace of a novel. So there is the luxury to drill down into the details of the world as much as I like. On the other hand, there has to be something worthwhile to be wrung out of any given scene -- I'm scared of falling into the "What Harry Had for Breakfast" school of fanfic. (In this case, after re-reading the chapter, I'm very glad I did it this way. I think Madam Pomfrey might be the most consistently funny character so far for me.)

Another problem, in terms of putting together a narrative, is that if you want to have multiple things happening simultaneously that aren't closely related quite yet, you can either skip from scene to scene, or go forward for a while continuously and then back up.


Stupid navel-gazing aside, between this and the greenhouse scene, you can probably tell what kind of material I feel most at home writing. Hint: it is not dialogue or internal monologue, even though those are most of the story so far.