The Tree Of Life

by Mad Martha

Part 2

Ron regretted the missed opportunity for sex the following morning.  He could have fancied it when he woke up, but Harry was awake ahead of him and gone; he could hear his voice outside, quietly talking to his father.  So Ron reluctantly told his morning erection to take a hike and dragged himself out of the tangle of blankets and sleeping bag.  The cold air outside the tent finished off any amatory urges, leaving him only with a strong desire for a piss instead.

Camping the Muggle way took all the fun out of things, he thought grouchily, as he took care of business outside the walls of the derelict building.  He was stiff from lying on a hard surface all night and the wind was cold.

When he returned Harry was waiting for him.  He was holding what looked like a tiny green canvas basket with a rope handle which he enlarged with a tap of his wand until it was the size of a small bucket.

"What's that?" Ron asked.

"Collapsible bucket," Harry explained.  "Got it from Granddad Evans.  It's made of some nylon stuff - see the rings around it?  They hold it open.  When you're finished, you just flatten it.  Of course, it's handy to make it smaller too but you need magic for that."  He grinned at Ron, then set the bucket down and swirled his wand inside it until it filled with water.  Another tap and the water steamed.  "Thought you might like a wash and a shave."

"Thanks, mate."  Ron found his wash-kit and cleaned up, grateful for his self-foaming razor and face cloth.

While he was shaving Harry made tea and Sirius, Peter and Remus slowly emerged from their tents.  James, however, was crouching a little way away from everyone else and holding something in his hands that he kept tilting as though to catch the light.  Ron thought he saw his lips moving as he stared intently at the object; a brief flash of light suggested it was a mirror.  By the time he was finished and dressed, and had refilled the bucket and turned it over to Sirius so that he and Remus could wash and shave, James had finished whatever he was doing and put the mirror away.

Breakfast was thick slices of bread toasted over a small fire and a couple of oranges cut into chunks and passed around.

"We'll see if we can get something a bit better on the way," James said.

"Do we know where we're going then?" Sirius asked.

"There's a coven within walking distance," James replied.  "He wants us to go there and wait for word from Lily."

"Which coven?" Harry asked surprised.

"The White Mare Coven?  I've never heard of them before, but he seems to think they'll be glad of a visit from us."

"There's something needs fixing there then," Remus concluded.

Peter was already spreading out his casting bones and peering at them, perplexed.  "I'm not getting much from the ley-lines hereabouts at all," he said, casting the bones a second time.  "They're all weaker ones and seem to be fairly clean."

"Well, when I said 'walking distance' I meant that we'd probably get there before it gets properly dark," James said.

Peter gave him a look and scooped the bones up, dropping them back into their little bag.  "An all-day walk.  How nice!  Especially since it looks like it might rain later on."

"If it does, we'll saddle up and fly," James said in a conciliatory tone, "but we really daren't do that unless it comes in foggy - "

"Fog'll be the least of it."

James sighed.  "Until then, let's get packed up and get walking."

Ron went to help Harry pack up his bedroll and collapse the tent.  Being a Muggle article it was bulky and a nuisance to pack away, especially as it had been damp in the night and the canvas was reluctant to dry out even with the help of charms.  But once it was rolled into its canvas bag the whole parcel shrank reasonably well and he strapped it to the bottom of his backpack.  Harry stowed the bedroll the same way and they loaded themselves up.

"You know, if we follow the road we might be able to pick up a local bus for part of the way," Remus suggested, as Sirius put out the fire and cleaned up the evidence of it with a spell or two.  "A rural bus is surely less likely to be monitored, especially as we weren't expecting to be heading out of here on foot today."

"We'll see," James said neutrally.  He laid his wand on the flat of his palm.  "Point me."  The wand spun until it pointed roughly south west.  "Okay, that's our heading.  Let's go."

It was a long, damp and muddy day.  In the end Remus's suggestion of catching a local bus proved useful, but only for a very short stretch of their journey.  The rest of the time they walked the lesser used public footways, country lanes and footpaths.  The latter in particular were overgrown, wet and slippery.

Ron would have liked to question how they could set off for a place that they knew nothing about and didn't know the specific location of, but none of the others seemed to find this odd and simply followed James's lead as he regularly made use of the Four Points Spell to keep them on track.  It seemed better not to ask questions for the time being, so he concentrated on keeping up and answering Harry's questions instead.

"Are you going to tell me what you've been doing since Yule?" he asked, as they all walked along a lengthy footpath that ran alongside a duel carriageway. 

"If you tell me what you've been doing," Ron replied.

"You already know, mostly," Harry said.  "Find a polluted ley-line, set up wards, clean the ley-line, move on."   He was slightly ahead of Ron on the path; he glanced back with a raised brow.  "You?"

"Got sacked, got a new job, got sacked again," Ron said shortly.

"The twins sacked you?  Why?"

Ron managed a hard smile at this.  "One of their mates pissed me off and I told him to stick a broom up his arse and ride it," he said.

Harry grinned at him.  "About bloody time, if you ask me.  I heard what Jordan said to you the last time I went into the shop.  I'd have told him to suck off a firework personally."

"I was saving that for the next time, but I didn't get a chance."

"So then what happened?"

"Got another job."  Ron wondered how much of their conversation the other men could hear.  They were ahead of him and Harry and the passing traffic was quite loud, but that meant the two of them had to speak up in any case to hear each other.  He wasn't sure he wanted the others to overhear.

"Doing what?" Harry asked.  The pathway widened a little and he was able to drop back until they were level and could talk more normally.

"Doing maintenance mostly."  Ron wondered why he was so reluctant to talk to Harry about his experiences of the past couple of months.  It was stupid; Harry of all people would see the humour in them.

"Better than helping the twins keep shop?"  Harry showed no signs of impatience; he hitched his backpack into a more comfortable position and offered Ron his water flask.

"Just about anything would be better than that."  Ron took a swig from the bottle, wiped the lip and handed it back, deciding he should just come out with it.  "I was fixing stuff for the Pink Kneazle Club."

Harry's head whipped around and his eyes were huge with surprise.  A delighted grin lit up his face.  "You're kidding me!"

Ron grinned back reluctantly.  "Honest.  I wasn't even going to apply, but nowhere else would take me on, so I thought I didn't have much to lose.  I didn't have anything to do with the customers," he added quickly.  "I was just fixing their stuff that got broken."

"Merlin!  So what's it like inside?"

Ron wrinkled his nose.  "A bit tacky, to be honest, but it's only open after dark so it looks a bit different with the wonky lighting they've got set up."  Having got over the hurdle of admitting he'd worked there, he now found it easier to talk.  "It's not what I expected.  I mean, it's ... they've got normal stuff, like a bar and dance area, you know?  But there's a kind of theatre and loads of, um, themed rooms."

"Themed?"  Harry was agog.  "What, like kinky stuff?  It's a sex club, yeah, with prostitutes and stuff like that?"

Ron shook his head.  "Not a sex club.  Legally it's a club 'licensed for the provision of adult entertainment'.  No actual sex between the staff and clients allowed, but just about anything else goes.  Most of 'em seem to go there to get tied up and whipped or watch other people getting off."  A spark of his usual humour flared up.  "The dungeon's pretty popular, and they have theme nights where some of the hosts get dressed up and, um, put on a show in the theatre.  I saw bits and pieces of some of it, but to be honest it was a bit off-putting."

"How so?"

"Well - oof!"  Ron's attention was so completely on Harry that he walked straight into Sirius.

"Sorry," Sirius said earnestly, "but I've got to ask.  I had to go to the Pink Kneazle when my old man died, to cancel his membership.  I thought the place was men only?"

Ron blinked.  The others had all stopped in the middle of the pavement and were regarding him with varying degrees of interest.

"Er ... yeah, it is," he said warily.

"Well, there was a bird there when I went in.  About yea tall, far eastern looking - "  Sirius made a vague cupping gesture in front of his chest, " - tits, the lot.  Not much in the way of clothes."

"That's Fuchsia," Ron explained.  "He's a bloke, the tits are fake.  He says he got them because most of his customers like to fool themselves that he's a girl."

Remus whistled, Harry laughed and James rolled his eyes; Peter looked only vaguely interested.  Sirius blinked and began to grin.

"Kidding me," he said, and Ron sighed.

"I wish," he said.  "He's a nympho and his boyfriend's short of a few brain cells.  I spent half my time trying to keep out of their way, but Fuchsia was always breaking stuff and trying to drag me into a cupboard to 'fix' it for him.  Nightmare."

"And what's his boyfriend like?" Remus wanted to know.

"Keep moving, people," James warned, and they all started walking again.

"He's big, blond and stupid," Ron said.  A brief memory of the man clad in a grasshopper costume swam into his mind.  "Dunno what any of their real names are, but his professional name's Achilles.  Him and Fuchsia put on a lot of shows for the clients - fancy dress and dead kinky."

"And there's a dungeon?"

"Yeah.  That's mostly Horus's place - "

"Horus?"

"Horus does hardcore bondage.  Fuchsia and Achilles do soft restraints and fantasy scenarios, and Triton does water games," Ron explained.

The stories of his adventures at the Pink Kneazle Club (although somewhat edited) kept them all going until they stopped for a late lunch, buying pasties and cake from a farm shop which they washed down with handmade cider.  Until that point the weather had been cold and damp but bearable, but within an hour of leaving the farm the skies clouded up and a thick drizzle set in.

"I think we can risk flying from here," James said, when they stopped in a small copse to discuss their options.  "But we're going to have to fly high enough to be obscured by the cloud and steer clear of main roads.  Pete, I'll take you up behind me if you prefer.  Ron, stick close to one or other of us.  If anyone gets separated, keep going south west and head for the nearest wizard community."

As instructions went this was not very reassuring to Ron, but he took his broom out of its bag without comment.  They mounted up and kicked off, taking a cautious route out of the copse then steering upwards at a sharp vector.  Ron tailed Harry closely, not wanting to lose him in the icy cloud.

Ron had played Quidditch in some pretty adverse conditions, including through a heavy snow storm, but this was still a miserable experience.  The cold moisture of the cloud quickly soaked through the old waxed canvas of his cloak and his hands grew numb on the handle of his broomstick; forward visibility became poor as the evening began to close in early because of the bad weather.  He concentrated on keeping the tail-twigs of Harry's broom in sight, for his own broom wasn't fitted with a compass and he knew he'd be in trouble if he lost sight of him.

Then abruptly Harry swerved and dropped back to fly level with him.  He too was soaked - Ron could see his dark hair running with moisture under his hood, his glasses were almost opaque with raindrops, and he was pale with the cold.

"What's up?" he demanded, raising his voice to bridge the gap between them.

"I lost the others in the cloud about ten minutes ago," Harry called back.  "I've been following the heading Dad set, but we're on our own.  I think we should look for somewhere to set down before it gets properly dark."

Ron felt a twinge of anxiety.  "Do you know where we are?"

Harry shook his head.  "I reckon we're somewhere in Gloucester, but that's a wild guess to be honest.  But if we land, I can use the ley-lines to feel out the nearest wizard community and if we can get to it we should be able to find a Floo point."

"And where do we Floo to?"

"I'm open to suggestions.  But we can't keep flying through this once it gets dark."

"Okay, let's head down then."

This too was unnerving, but he followed Harry's lead again and presently they alighted in a small field.  It wasn't quite so cold on the ground, but the rain was much more noticeable and the heavy mists shrouding everything made visibility poor.  Harry handed Ron his broom to hold while he crouched down, running his bare hands through the straggling grass and weeds for a few minutes.  When he eventually stood up again, shaking a small slug from his left sleeve, he looked relieved.

"There's a magical community just over a mile from here, I reckon," he said.  "The signature's strong enough that it might even be that commune Dad was talking about, but whichever it is, we should be okay there.  Let's put the brooms away just in case, though, this is definitely bordering onto Muggle farmland and we don't want to run into any of them with brooms and stuff on show."

Ron dug the bag out of his backpack and began to run a couple of basic drying spells over the broom itself; they wouldn't be very effective in these conditions, but it was better than putting a cold and completely soaked broom back into the bag.

"What do we say if it's not the commune and the people want to know what we were doing out in this weather?" he asked.

"Tell 'em we wanted to try Muggle-style camping and got caught out?" Harry suggested.

"All right."

They started walking, Ron following Harry's lead again.  This time they deliberately followed the small tarmacced lane that ran alongside the field; the poor light and rotten conditions made it too risky to try walking through the fields.  Fortunately they didn't encounter any Muggle vehicles, or indeed anyone else at all.  The rain was picking up now and Ron could feel the cold water seeping through his clothes and running down his back.  Worse was the clinging weight of his saturated jeans and his boots were full of the water that ran down his legs out of the heavy denim.  He could have shouted with relief when Harry finally grabbed his hand and pointed to a heavy boulder half hidden in the hedge on the opposite side of the road. 

On first glance it was just a large chunk of stone but when Harry went up to it, it seemed to flicker and shift into something else; a properly carved stone with a single image on it.  Ron squinted and finally lit his wand so they could see it better.  The image was of the head and torso of a man in profile, with antlers on his head and a drawn bow in his hands, and it was surrounded by a ring of oak leaves.

"It's a coven," Harry said, and he sounded as relieved as Ron felt.  "Funny, I thought Dad said they were called the White Mare Coven?  Horses are a goddess cult, but these people obviously follow Herne."

"Does it matter?" Ron asked.  He felt he could be forgiven for little impatience under the circumstances.

"I don't think so."  Harry reached out and touched the stone, and a small section of the hedge a few feet away suddenly melted away to reveal a gate.  "Come on, they probably know we're here already.  Let's go and introduce ourselves."

What had looked like another empty field surrounded by a hedge turned out to be a neatly managed orchard when they walked through the gate.  A gravel path edged with light-coloured stones led a winding route through the dripping trees, but when Ron would have started walking along it Harry held him back.

"Wait a minute - there should be a shrine here somewhere, or a Grove God.  We should greet that first, they'll know if we don't."

Ron's impatience began to grow, but he trusted Harry's knowledge of these things and held onto his temper as his friend looked about him.  At length he located a stone fixture the size and shape of a small beehive set just off the path and Ron could see that it was a purpose-built thing designed to hold and give shelter to a cast bronze image of a man with antlers.  He was vaguely reminded of the Pan-like figure of the Grove God in the grounds of the Running Hare Coven but this figure was different, with a man's body rather than goat legs, wearing a loincloth and carrying a bow.  He was also surrounded by small offerings - clay images, pieces of carved bone and antler, and small pentacles woven out of twigs.

"There's a lot of offerings for this time of year," Harry remarked, sounding puzzled.  "Especially for a coven this far out of the way, they can't have that many visitors.  Do you have anything we can give Him?  An apple would do, but I ate mine on the way."

"I've got a bit of chocolate left, I think."

"That'd probably encourage rats - better not.  Well maybe it's better this way, seeing as I'm the son of the King Stag."  Harry rummaged in his pockets and pulled out a penknife.  "Hold my broom a sec ..." 

Ron watched as he unfolded the shortest blade and nicked the little finger of his left hand.  A small bead of blood welled up and Harry reached out to smear it on the tip of the god's arrow.

"Hail, Herne," he said softly.  "Blood has been spilled in your honour.  We come among you and yours in peace and bring only goodwill to your house."

He sucked the abused fingertip for a moment, then took his broom back. 

"Should I?" Ron asked warily.

"Wouldn't hurt."  Harry offered him the penknife and Ron awkwardly stabbed his little finger until it bled enough to anoint the arrow-tip.

"Hail, Herne."

"Okay, let's get out of this rain," Harry said, and Ron gratefully followed him up the path at a trot. 

The path wound around the trees quite a lot, but eventually they came to a house in a small clearing at the centre of the orchard.  Ron could see at once that although it looked old in style, it had clearly been designed to look that way rather than being genuinely old.  Nevertheless, it was a pleasant-looking building built of dark yellowish bricks with a low, traditionally tiled roof and chimneys, deep casement windows, an offset front entrance with a deep, tiled porchway, and rose trellises set on the walls between the windows.  The most welcome aspects for Ron, however, were the lights in the windows and someone standing inside the porch holding a lamp and clearly looking out for them.

He was a tall man in early middle age, with shoulder-length dark hair threaded with grey and a short beard.  "You chose a fine evening to be visiting, lads," he said kindly, as he ushered them into the porch.  "Come along in, you're just in time for supper."

~~~

Harry wasn't entirely surprised to discover that this was not, in fact, the White Mare Coven at all; they called themselves the Green Lord Coven and they were a relatively new group formed from a handful of people who had chosen to split from their mother house, the Green Lady Coven, some five years previously. 

"It was an amicable split," the man who had greeted them, Gwyn ap Allain, assured them, "but we have different aims to them and when the opportunity arose to set up our own hearth, we did so."

This probably didn't mean much to Ron, but Harry nodded - it was something that he'd heard a little about through the network of alternative lifestyle wizards and witches that was such a big part of his life. 

Further conversation revealed that there were eleven residents in the house, only four of whom were currently at home, which was an unusually small number for any coven - the fewest usually considered necessary for a house celebration of the sabbats and esbats was thirteen - and there was a slight imbalance of male and female members.  This wouldn't normally be considered an issue, as there were significantly more female than male practising wiccans in wizarding Britain in any case, but the Green Lord Coven tilted slightly towards male membership, with six male residents to five women.  There were also no members younger than sixteen and while there were three couples in the house, one of them was all female and three of the unpaired men were gay.

Sitting around the table that evening were Gwyn himself, the leader of the coven and high priest; his life-partner Nancy, a woman in her early thirties who was willow thin and had long, pale blonde hair; Rowen, a man in his late twenties with long dark hair in a tail and runic tattoos on his neck; and Joe, who was barely out of his teens and had short, spiked blond hair.  Harry greeted Joe with open pleasure, recognising him as a former Hufflepuff housemate.

They were an open, friendly group, only too happy to welcome visitors and make them at home.  Within moments of being ushered through the door Harry and Ron had been relieved of their packs, brooms and cloaks and - when the extent of their drenching became clear - stripped of their clothes too before the fire in the entrance hall hearth, given warm towels to dry off with and loaned kaftan-shaped flannel robes to wear until their own clothes were dried out.  A hearty supper of bread, cheese and a tasty vegetable stew made up for an otherwise uncomfortable day, and the meal was a leisurely one as Harry introduced himself and Ron and explained a little of their circumstances.

"We were supposed to be going to the White Mare Coven," he explained, as Nancy passed a tall jug of cider around the table.  "I don't know them - how far off course did we fly?"

"They're not known to me," Gwyn said, shaking his head, and there was a murmur of agreement from the others.  "You could be a long way off, though.  We're but half a mile from the north Somerset border."

Harry accepted this philosophically.  He hadn't mentioned that they had been travelling with his father and uncles, and Ron had followed his lead in this by not offering any unnecessary information.  It was better to be careful, despite the unlikelihood of any of these people being connected with the Ministry.  In fact, if anything they were the exact opposite.

"You're part of a coven yourself?" Nancy asked.  "I can tell you're familiar with our ways."

"Yeah, I am," Harry said.  "I was born in the Running Hare Coven in Devon - my mum is one of the priestesses."

"And you?" Rowen asked Ron.

"No - no, my family don't have anything to do with covens," Ron said cautiously.  "I've spent some time with Harry's people though."

"One of our aims is to reach out to people who don't have a traditional connection to the covens," Gwyn told them, "people who might be interested in an alternative to the mainstream wizarding culture promoted by the Ministry, but who might for any number of reasons not find themselves a comfortable fit into the more common coven lifestyle.  Muggleborns and halfbloods, for example, the more nomadic wiccans, and people - perhaps like yourselves - who aren't by nature an easy fit into the goddess cycle of birth and regeneration."

"I noticed you don't have any children here," Harry said, interested.  "That's really unusual."

They were nodding agreement.  "No harm to them for that," Rowen said, "but not everyone wants to have children and not everyone can have children."

"Gwyn and I haven't been able to have children ourselves," Nancy said with calm dignity, "and we've accepted that, but we did find some … pressure … from the other families at Green Lady to keep trying, even though we'd made our decision to move on in our lives.  They didn't mean any harm, but it became quite stressful to be continually pushed to try this ritual and that potion all the time."

"And there was never any problem with me being gay," Joe said, "but I didn't feel like I fitted in and to be honest I didn't really want to fit in there.  If I'd wanted to be surrounded by toddlers, I could have gone to live with my dad and stepmother!"  He grinned and winked at them, taking any sting out of the statement.

"The youngest member of our house is Lucy, and she's a year away from finishing at Hogwarts," Gwyn continued.  "She came here with her mother Sarah, who's a travelling musician, and besides the two of them there's Sarah's partner Lewis - who travels with her - Sean, who lectures on traditional wizard woodcrafts, Matthew, who's currently tending to some family business in Kent, and Hermione and Susan who are both furthering their education through distance learning.  It's an understood thing that while we don't mind children visiting, those who come to live here bring no family younger than fifteen and have no plans to have a family.  And we especially welcome those, like Joe here, who have a preference for their own sex and might prefer a coven with a less traditional emphasis.  That's why we honour Herne, who is first and foremost the Lord of the hunt."

"How do you plan to keep the hearth running in the future though?  Sorry," Harry added quickly.  "I'm not being negative, honest, it's just that every other coven I've visited raises the kids in the tradition and most people have family connections to the house going back generations."

"You don't though," Ron pointed out quietly, before anyone else could comment.

"Yeah, but I think Mum's the only member of Running Hare who's completely Muggleborn," Harry said.  "And I was born and raised in the tradition, the same as the others.  The number of people coming in from the outside is pretty small."

"But we aren't following the tradition you were raised in," Nancy pointed out, smiling a little.

"The intention was - is - to encourage younger people who might otherwise leave a traditional coven to come to us," Gwyn added.  "Hopefully there would be enough newcomers over time to keep the hearth running, and perhaps there would also be people who would come to us initially as a gentle introduction to the life before finding another coven to commit to."

"Except that we're not sure if we can continue here," Rowen said, and there was a grim note in his voice.

"Why not?" Ron asked, surprised.  "It sounds like a great idea to me!"

This brought some smiles from their hosts, but Gwyn moved his goblet on the table restlessly.

"You'll have noticed that we border lands with some Muggle farms," he said, "and there's a village perhaps four miles from here."

"You're well hidden from them," Harry said, but there was a question in his voice as he said it.

"We are now," Joe said.

"Until recently, we didn't ward as strongly as some of the covens do," Gwyn continued.  "The purpose was for Muggleborns and halfbloods to find us easily, not put them off by heavy warding, and we thought lighter wards would be sufficient.  But last summer we had a dispute with one of our neighbours over a boundary fence - "

"To be fair, he wasn't the real problem," Nancy put in.  "The matter was settled easily enough, but one of his farmhands made some threatening noises when it first happened and he and his friends ... well ..."

"We're not sure how they managed to get through the wards anyway," Rowen said.  "One of them must have had a touch of magic; not enough to warrant a letter from Hogwarts, but enough that the lighter wards weren't enough to conceal us from him.  They broke into the north meadow where the Master Oak is."

There was a pause, and Ron glanced at Harry.  "Is that - ?"

Harry silenced him with a touch and looked around at the others.  "You have a holy oak here?"

"That's why we chose this land," Gwyn said.  "The orchard was here already and we built the house ourselves on the spot where another house had been.  But it was the oak that drew us to this spot - the first year we were here the mistletoe was just establishing itself, but the Yule before last it had as heavy a crop as you could ever wish to see."

"We didn't realise they'd done anything at first," Rowen said, and his voice was taut with suppressed anger.  "Then Lucy and Joe went up to the meadow one afternoon and found most of the offerings that had been hung on the oak had been torn off the branches.  Some of them had been broken and left scattered about the area, but a lot were missing altogether.  And there was litter, and graffiti had been carved into the main trunk of the tree."

"That we could deal with, as angry as it made us," Nancy said.  "But we didn't realise then what else they'd done."

"One of the lower branches became diseased in the autumn and we had to remove it," Gwyn told Harry and Ron.  "It was then that we found the iron spike they'd hammered into a fold of the trunk near that branch - we didn't see it at first because the bark is very gnarled at that point.  Since then the tree seems to have been growing weaker."

"And last Yule the mistletoe yield was half what it was the previous year," Joe added.

"Bloody hell," Ron said.  "What did they go and do that for?"

"There are Muggle pagans and people who live alternative lifestyles," Gwyn explained.  "Ordinary Muggles can be quite negative towards them.  I suspect they think we're that sort - that's what Hermione suggested, anyway."

"You haven't heard some of the crap people say when my mum visits my grandparents," Harry told Ron, and he grimaced.  "If she dresses in her normal clothes they make comments about hippies and gypsies and unmarried mothers, and if she dresses like a Muggle they ask her if she's given up all that wild nonsense at last and settled down a bit."

Ron looked annoyed.  "And what do they say to you?"

Harry bumped shoulders with him affectionately, but turned back to Gwyn and the others.  "If it's a Master Oak, it'd have to be a pretty big spike to do that much damage," he said. 

"We think they might have coated the spike with something," Rowen said.  "Weed killer, perhaps.  Quite a small amount driven into the centre of the trunk that way, coupled with the damage and decay around the site of the spike, might be enough to slowly kill the oak."

"But it's not dead yet," Ron said, his brows drawn together thoughtfully.  "Can't something be done to fix the damage?  An herbologist like Professor Sprout at Hogwarts maybe - "

"Someone came out from Green Lady after it happened," Nancy said sadly.  "They said the damage was too deep and if there was any kind of poison on the spike it was too late to fix it."

Harry frowned at this, considering the point, but before he could say anything else, Gwyn gently changed the subject.

"That's enough of our woes.  Now - is there anyone you lads would like to send an owl to, to let them know you're safe, before we find you a room for the night?"

~~~

"This is a bit of all right, this is," Ron remarked, as the two of them settled into the guest room Nancy showed them to. 

It was certainly comfortable.  The House of the Green Lord was a lot smaller than the Running Hare Commune, but it had been built with its residents in mind and there was still a very strong sense of communal living, which was marked by the large, comfortably laid out bedrooms and the two generous shared bathrooms, one at either end of the second storey.  Nancy had pointed out how there was also room for expansion both in the roof and at the rear of the house, should it ever be needed.  She offered them a room each for the night but didn't seem at all surprised when Harry said they would share, and the room they were spending the night in was more than ample for their needs.

In fact, in Ron's eyes it was it was positively luxurious and in a way that he understood and felt comfortable with, with a lot of handmade textiles and simple but robust furniture.  He particularly liked the bed, which was broad and made of some warm golden wood and carved at the head and foot with acorn-shaped knobs topping the posts at each corner.  The floor was polished wood too, spread with warm-coloured rugs, and there were bedside tables, a couple of chairs, a large wardrobe and a long ottoman chest under the window, all made of the same golden wood as the bed.  The chairs and ottoman had thick patchwork-covered cushions on them.

The room was quite big and the furniture didn't fully fill the space; nor were there any hangings or pictures on the walls.  Ron got the impression that it was waiting for an owner to stamp his or her mark upon it.  The notion was curiously attractive to him.

Harry closed the heavy curtains over the windows and tapped his wand on the rim of one of the bowl-shaped lamps that sat on the bedside table nearest to him.  It brightened, and he left his wand and glasses next to it while he climbed onto the bed.

"It's pretty nice, but you can tell it's all new, can't you?" he remarked.

Ron raised his brows.  "What's wrong with that?"

"Nothing ..."

"Potter, what's your problem with these people?"  He was a little amused by Harry's reactions, as he always was on the rare occasion that Harry was caught out in a situation he clearly didn't understand and didn't feel entirely comfortable with.  He was such an easy-going Hufflepuff, generally; it was strange to see him thrown off balance.  Especially in a place like this.

"I don't have a problem with them," Harry said defensively.

"Yeah, you do."  Ron grinned.  "All that stuff about being born and raised in the tradition - what's that about?"

"This isn't what a coven's about," Harry said, waving a hand vaguely at the walls.  "The Wicca's all about life … fertility …  How can you have a coven with no kids and no fertility rites?"

"I didn't hear them say they didn't do the rites," Ron pointed out.

Harry gave him an old-fashioned look.  "There's not a lot of point in performing fertility rites if you can't or won't have kids, Ron!"

"But it's not just about having kids … it's about the fertility of the soil and growing crops and stuff, isn't it?"

"Yeah, but the whole point of the ritual magic is … mirroring.  The coven perform the rites of life and death to propitiate the goddess and put fertility back into the soil.  You ritually kill the old king stag so that his blood enriches the soil and he makes way for a new and vigorous leader of the herd.  And the huntress and new king stag couple to raise power in the earth through their combined fertility."

"And if the huntress doesn't get pregnant, what happens then?  Does everything go wrong?  Crops fail, people die?"

"Are you taking the piss?" Harry demanded, annoyed.

"Nope."  And Ron wasn't, tempting though it was.

"Then what's your point?"

"My point is that you're not making sense.  If the rites depended on the fertility of the priest and priestess, then any rite where she didn't get pregnant would be a disaster - wouldn't it?  So obviously the rite itself is more important than the people performing it.  And if that's the case then it shouldn't make a big difference if the couple can't have kids because one of them's sterile, or even if it's two blokes or two birds performing it instead of a straight couple."

Harry frowned, but he didn't immediately try to refute what Ron was saying.

"Look," Ron continued, trying to keep his tone conciliatory.  "Just because it's not your tradition, doesn't mean it's wrong.  I mean, if that was true then how the hell did my Mum and Dad end up with seven kids?  They weren't shagging under an oak tree at the solstice, that's for sure."

Harry snorted, his expression lightening.  "How do you know if they were or not?"

"If they were, I don't want to know about it."  Ron grinned.  "Besides, after the way you went on about Vera's kids at Yule, I should think you'd love this place."

"I don't have a problem with kids."

"Right.  You're planning to have a bunch yourself and raise them at your mum's coven, then?"

Harry opened his mouth and shut it again, looking nonplussed.  "I'm not saying I don't want kids, I just …"

"Don't want kids."  Ron stretched himself out on the thick, warm blanket that covered the bed and wriggled himself into it comfortably.  "Well, I don't mind kids but I don't want any of my own, so I reckon this place would suit me down to the ground.  They want blokes like you and me - how nifty is that?"

"You'd join them?"  Harry's eyes widened with surprise.

Ron considered the question.  "Maybe I'd need to see a bit more of what they're about and I know they'd have to like the look of us too.  But right now it looks pretty good, don't you think?  I'll tell you this much …"  He hesitated, giving Harry a wary look.  "Look mate, I love my family.  You know that, right?"

The corner of Harry's mouth twitched.  "Prat.  Of course I know that."

"Well, I reckon I'd love 'em more if I didn't have to live with them."

"And why do you think I don't live with my mother all year round?"  Harry sighed and rubbed his face with one hand.  "Okay, okay - you're right.  It's not that I don't like kids, because I do, but it would be pretty nice to live somewhere where I don't have to deal with someone else's if I don't want to.  Especially when it's someone like Vera, who's bloody hopeless at raising them and expects everyone else to just put up with their bad behaviour.  And hers, for that matter."

"Yeah, I noticed how when her littlest one nearly ended up in the fireplace and we fished him out, it was somehow our fault for letting him get near the fireplace in the first place," Ron said dryly.  "Up till that point I didn't know we were supposed to be watching him.  Since she was, what, two feet away? I sort of assumed that was what she was supposed to be doing."

"Exactly!  I don't mind Nuala's little girls, or Rick and Ellen's three, but that's mostly because they're not always into everybody's stuff and at least Ellen and Nuala ask me if I'd mind keeping an eye on them."

"I get that kind of shit from Percy and his wife when they visit," Ron said.  "They're your nephews, you should spend some time with them.  Christmas was a barrel of laughs."

"Tell me about it.  After you left I spent most of my time trying to hide from Vera.  I was dead glad when Dad said we needed to move off again."  Harry wrinkled his nose and looked at Ron.  "Am I turning into a grumpy old git?"

Ron grinned at him.  "Nah.  You're just getting in touch with your Slytherin side."

"Oh good!  Look, changing the subject - I reckon we'll hear from Dad by the morning.  Unless he wants us to get out of here as fast as possible, do you mind if we hang around a bit?  I was hoping they'd let me look at their Master Oak."

Ron peered at him.  "Why?"

Harry was silent for a moment.  "You know my magic's earth magic, right?"

"Yeah."

"Well … it's a long shot, but I was wondering if it might be possible to heal the oak."  He gave Ron a tentative look.  "I'm not saying I can, just that it might be possible.  And if it is, then I should try.  Do you see?  It's a Holy Oak.  I can't not try to fix it, it's practically an obligation."

"Okay," Ron agreed, interested.  "But what can you do?  They said it's been poisoned.  I remember a bit of what Professor Sprout said about xylem and phloem - wouldn't that pull the poison further into the tree and spread it?  They might have been able to fix it when it was first done, but it's been months."

"Maybe," Harry said, "but it's been mostly autumn and winter months, and the tree's system will have been sort of sluggish and slow.  And it's not quite spring yet so it won't have woken up again properly.  The poison might still be contained in just one part of the trunk.  Besides, there are magics that can cleanse the tree's system and work with it so that the tree heals itself.  Sometimes all it needs is help - a sort of magical boost to its own power.  Anyway, there's no harm in looking at it."

"All right, we'll ask Gwyn in the morning."

Harry smiled.  "Great.  You know what?"

"What?" Ron asked.

"It's really brilliant that you're here.  Are you all right about it though?  You didn't mind Dad coming to get you like that, without us telling you or anything?"

"He gave me a choice," Ron admitted.  "It'd be nice to know what I'm supposed to be doing though.  I don't know anything about ley-lines and stuff."

"Neither did I at first, but Dad's been teaching me."  Harry crossed his legs under him, looking thoughtful.  "Uncle Peter says your magic works really well with mine, so they've been keen for you to join us.  We just had to wait for Dumbledore to give us the okay to bring someone else in on the job."  He gave Ron an apologetic look.  "Sorry, mate.  I've been nagging Dad about you for months, but there wasn't much he could do."

"Hm."  Weirdly, this not only made up for some of the lingering frustration Ron had been feeling about getting sacked by the twins and so on, but also made him feel a little more kindly towards James.  "Don't worry about it.  It could have been worse - I mean, in a weird way I'm glad I worked at the club.  It's experience, right?"

Harry grinned.  "That's so brilliant!  I'll bet your mum nearly flipped her lid though."

"You don't think I told her, do you?  Give it a rest, I'm not stupid!  She thinks I was working for a place like The Leaky Cauldron.  The only one who knows about the club is Gran, and I don't reckon she'd be daft enough to tell Mum of all people!"

"Was it interesting?" Harry asked curiously.  "I mean, not just interesting interesting, but … hot?"

Ron made a face.  "Nah, mate, it really, really wasn't.  It was mostly weird.  And sort of funny in a way, but still weird."  He thought about his experiences for a moment, then added, "They weren't bad people, though.  They treated me all right, nobody expected me to help out with the - you know - business, and I almost never saw the customers.  I just fixed stuff and helped out when anything went wrong.  But it didn't do anything for me - actually, it was pretty off-putting.  I'd get home at the end of my shift and mostly I didn't even want to wank."

"It's put you off sex?" Harry asked, sounding dismayed.

Ron looked at him and grinned.  He knew Harry was teasing him.  "Depends.  Are you planning to dress up as a hummingbird and tie me up?"

Harry sniggered.  "Not likely!  Do I look like a bloody hummingbird?"

"The funny thing is that Fuchsia really does look like a hummingbird when he's costumed up … well, a bit anyway."

"Does he really have tits?"

"Yep.  Most of his costumes are designed to show 'em off.  He'll have all these spangly bits up to his waist, then the rest are painted on.  I don't think it'd work for most blokes, but he's pretty small and part-veela too."

"Well, I don't have tits," Harry said.  He uncurled himself, rising to his knees, and in a move that commanded Ron's attention completely, he seemed to shed his grey-blue kaftan like a second skin.

His flesh was winter pale and the hair that curled about his nipples and marched down his belly was black.  It narrowed to a fine line below his bellybutton until it reached the base of his cock where it thickened into wild and tangled black curls that nestled about his balls.  His cock was already stiff, jutting out from his body as though reaching out to Ron in invitation.

Ron took one look at Harry's lazy, hungry grin and felt the blood rush to his own groin almost painfully.  He didn't move though.

"Are you going to let me tie you up?" he asked provocatively.

"I might, one day," Harry said.  He straddled Ron's hips and pulled the loose lacing at the neck of the kaftan undone, pushing it open down to his middle.  He bent over Ron and ran his tongue around first one nipple then the other, while his cock nudged Ron's tantalisingly through the thick cloth.  "Not tonight, though.  Tonight I'm going to ride your cock."

"Hm-hm."  Ron grabbed his head and pulled him up until they could kiss deeply.  Even that felt amazing after the time they'd spent apart and he wrapped his arms around Harry, grabbing hold of his firm arse and rolling them onto their sides, where they rubbed against each other urgently, almost biting each other's lips.

Abruptly Harry pushed him away, panting.  "Get this robe off while I find some oil or something," he commanded, and before Ron could stop him he was rolling off the bed and trotting over to where they'd left their packs by the door.

Ron got up reluctantly and pulled the kaftan off, throwing it over a chair with Harry's.  He stretched luxuriously for a moment, enjoying the pull of his muscles and the deep pleasant ache in his balls, then turned his head to watch Harry, who bent over their packs, rummaging.  His erection throbbed and he stroked it idly with his fingertips, thinking about how much he had missed this - just being able to press against Harry and all but climb inside his skin.

Then Harry straightened up and came back to the bed, carrying a small blue glass jar in one hand.  "This should do," he said, tossing the jar onto the bed.  He pushed Ron back until the backs of his knees hit the edge of the bed and he was forced to sit down, then Harry knelt on the rug in front of him and insinuated himself between his legs.  Smiling at Ron, he bent his head and took his friend's cock in his mouth.

Ron sighed deeply and slowly sagged back onto his elbows as Harry licked and sucked him.  This was only a pale shade of what he really wanted, but he wasn't about to stop him; Harry's hot, wet, wonderfully talented tongue felt too good.  Harry didn't let him enjoy it for too long, though; all too soon he released Ron and stood up, grinning at his friend's near-boneless state of relaxation.

"Come on, move!" he said, pinching Ron's knee gently, and Ron reluctantly dragged himself back up the bed until he was propped up against the pillows.  Harry unscrewed the lid of the jar and put it on the bedside table, then grabbed his wand and flicked a quick silencing spell at the door.  Then he climbed onto the bed and straddled Ron again.  He pushed the jar into Ron's hand, and leaned forward on his hands and knees.  "I'm not doing all the work," he said softly, his warm breath and lips brushing Ron's mouth tantalisingly.  "You can get me ready."

Ron scooped two fingers' worth of the thick, clear gel out of the jar and with one hand on Harry's arse pulled him closer so that he could work the slippery stuff into him.  Harry sighed deeply, running his tongue around the curve of Ron's ear, then moving lower so that he could nip and suck on his throat.

"Feels so good …" he mumbled as Ron slipped his fingers into him, probing, stretching him, searching for his prostate.

"Fuck …" Ron muttered hoarsely as Harry nibbled his Adam's apple.  He couldn't wait much longer.  "Are you ready?"

Harry groaned, then gasped as Ron's questing fingers hit the right spot.  "Fuck, yes!"  He scrambled back, reaching for Ron's erection behind him then rising up to ease himself onto it.

Ron choked back a cry and squeezed his eyes shut, seeing stars for a moment as Harry rocked, working them together carefully … it had been too long since the last time to rush the moment.  Then he was fully sheathed.  Harry grabbed his hand, wrapping it around his own erection, and began to move, first slowly then more urgently.  Ron did as he was bidden, stroking and tugging on Harry's cock, and fondling his firm balls.  Harry groaned again, leaning back and balancing himself with his hands gripping Ron's slightly raised knees as he moved.

Neither of them could last long.  For once it was Harry who came first, shouting and spilling over Ron's belly as he ground himself frantically against him.  He paused for a moment or two once he was spent, eyes closed and head hanging back, gasping for breath.  Then he pulled himself forwards, propping himself up with his hands either side of Ron, and began to move again more slowly and rhythmically, clenching around Ron's cock until at length he too cried out and came hard.

Utterly sated, it took the two of them several minutes before they recovered enough to separate, use charms to clean themselves up, and climb beneath the covers.  Neither felt the need for words, however.  Harry dimmed the light with a wave of his hand and the pair curled into each other, falling into a deep and grateful slumber.

End Part 2