The Tree Of Life

by Mad Martha

Part 3

Harry was partially awoken in the early hours of the morning by sounds below that suggested someone had arrived at the house.  For a vague moment he wondered if it was his father and uncles, but he was entirely too warm and comfortable to wake up properly to investigate; he told himself that if he was wanted someone would probably bang on the door and he drifted back to sleep, tucked into the curve of Ron's back.

When he next awoke it was to the weak light of a late winter morning edging around the curtains.  Ron was lying on his back, snoring softly, and for a little while Harry lay there quite contentedly, appreciating all the little things that came with sharing a bed with his lover - the smell of male sweat and musk on the bedding, the heat of his body against his side, the rough sound of his breathing; just the reality of his presence there with him.  When Ron showed no sign of rousing himself, Harry sat up on one elbow to look at him.

His red hair was bleached-looking and messy in the half-light, and he was utterly boneless and relaxed, his face slack.  Harry reached under the covers to gently rub his chest, feeling prickly soft hair under his fingertips, then ran his hand lightly down Ron's belly until he reached his crotch.  He fondled him, making Ron grunt softly in his sleep, his cock stiffening under Harry's hand for a moment or two, but he still didn't wake.  For a moment Harry considered waking him up with a blow-job, but if Ron was this deeply asleep he probably wouldn't appreciate it as much as he should.

Smiling to himself, Harry released him and pulled the covers back up under Ron's chin, before sliding out from under them himself, slipping his glasses on and padding softly across to the wardrobe.  Nancy had told them the night before that there were towels and bathrobes in there; Harry grabbed one of each, dug his wash-kit out of his pack and set off to find the nearest bathroom.

He was not the only one awake.  He could hear sounds from the ground floor and as he approached a door with a plaque on it saying "bathroom", the door opened to release a shaft of yellow witchlight and a waft of rosemary-scented steam.  There was a soft gasp of surprise.

"Sorry," he said at once, stepping back.

"No, it's all right - I didn't see you there."  The voice was female and vaguely familiar, and as the towel-wrapped form emerged Harry recognised her.  "Harry?  What are you doing here?"

"Susan?"  Harry was mildly surprised to see his former housemate Susan Bones here.  The Bones family was an old and pureblooded one, and not really the type to follow the Wicca.  "We arrived last night - we got caught out in the storm."

"That was lucky," she remarked.  "We decided to take cover for a while and didn't arrive home till a few hours ago."

"You live here?"

"Oh yes, for over a year now."  Susan smiled as she stepped around him.  "If you don't mind … it's cold here on the landing.  I'll see you at breakfast, I expect."

The bathroom was tiled with something like cork (although Harry thought it might be some other natural fibre) and contained a nice big claw-footed bathtub and two shower stalls as well as the other usual accoutrements.  He enjoyed a leisurely shower, washing his hair and shaving, then he returned to the bedroom to dress.

Ron drifted awake just as he finished getting dressed; Harry kissed him, ruffled his hair and left him to make his own ablutions, while he went downstairs to see if any message had arrived from his father.

Nancy was making porridge in the kitchen, accompanied by another young woman who looked vaguely familiar to Harry.  She had brown frizzy hair that was trying to escape from a thick French braid, and she was sitting at the kitchen table with her chin propped on her hand, clearly having a hard time staying awake.

Nancy smiled at him and gestured to a large glazed earthenware teapot into the middle of the table.  "Good morning!  Help yourself to tea.  Did you sleep well?"

"Yes, thanks."  Harry took a mug and filled it from the pot.

"This is Hermione," Nancy continued.  "You might already know each other - you look to be much the same age, so you would have been at Hogwarts at the same time."

Harry glanced at Hermione, trying to place her.  "Granger of Gryffindor?" he said finally.

She nodded and waggled her fingers in greeting, but her eyes remained shut.

"You should go back to bed," Nancy told her, amused.

But Hermione shook her head.  "If I sleep too late now, I won't sleep tonight.  I'll wake up in a minute."

Harry poured her a mug of tea and slid it across the table.

"Thanks."  She opened her eyes and squinted at him.  "Potter of Hufflepuff, isn't it?  The Seeker."

"That's right."

"There's an owl for you, Harry," Nancy said.  She took a folded piece of paper off the welsh dresser and handed it to him.  "Came by a beautiful snowy owl - is she yours?  She's having breakfast and a nap in the owl-loft at the moment."

"Yes, that's Hedwig … thank you."  Harry pulled the note open to find his father's spiky writing.

We ran into some other business overnight, so we'll come and meet you when we're done.  Stay put at this coven of yours for another night if they'll let you, or go to the Green Lady if not. - Dad.

Harry looked up at Nancy.  "Would you mind if we stayed another night?" he asked her.  "My people can't get here straight away."

"It's no bother, but the usual rules apply," she said.  "You pay for your board by helping us out with odd jobs around the property."

"Of course."  This was a common custom in the pagan community.

"You'll be sorry you said that," Hermione remarked sleepily.  "There's plenty of jobs in the orchard and greenhouses."

Harry grinned.  "I don't mind, and I don't suppose Ron will either."

"We could show you the beehives.  That's what Susan's studying - beekeeping.  Gwyn's an expert apiarist."

"Cool," Harry said, impressed.  "Is that why you live here?"

She opened one eye for a moment and the corner of her mouth twitched.  "Partly.  I'm studying Magical Law, though."

"There's strong magic in bees," Nancy commented.  "Susan shows a lot of promise."

"Do you keep a lot of hives?" Harry asked them, interested.  "I know some covens have one or two, but that's usually a casual thing."

"We have nine at the moment," Hermione replied.  She was growing more alert, perhaps because the topic interested her.  "It's one of the businesses that helps to finance the coven.  From spring onwards we set the hives out in the orchard, but it was a cold winter this year so we moved them into one of the glasshouses."

To Harry it seemed significant (although how significant he wasn't sure) that beekeeping was practised here, for bees had an important role in pagan lore and magic.  He pondered the scraps of information he'd picked up from his mother over the years, as he sipped his tea - of how hives were almost exclusively female environments and seen in some ancient cultures as the womb of the Mother Goddess, and how bees were believed to be messengers between worlds.  Then there was honey, beeswax and royal jelly, all of which were remarkable substances and had many uses in magic.

But in this context, quite frankly, he didn't know what to make of it all.

Then Ron walked into the kitchen with Susan and Joe, and he and Hermione clapped eyes on each other.

If they'd been a pair of cats, Harry thought, amused, there would have been a great deal of fluffed fur and hissing.  Hermione's expression slid into one of cool disdain almost at once, while Ron went from being relaxed and cheerful to stiff and wooden-faced, although probably only Harry - and perhaps Hermione herself - would recognise this as him hiding his annoyance.  Hermione, of course, had been a prefect for three years at school, while Ron had managed to get into a fair amount of trouble even for a Slytherin.  And now that Harry came to think of it, Hermione had probably been that "poxy Gryffindor know-it-all with her nose in everyone else's business" whom Ron had grumbled about more than once.

Ron took a seat next to Harry without a word and concentrated on ignoring the girl opposite him.  Amused, and with no personal issues against Hermione himself, Harry said a cheerful good morning to everyone and observed with interest as Susan dropped a kiss on top of Hermione's head as she reached over her shoulder for the teapot.  That probably explained a lot about the pair of them being with the coven in the first place. 

Then he wondered if this development would make Ron reconsider his enthusiasm for the coven, and this amused him so much that he had to hide his grin behind his mug.

~~~

His amusement didn't last long.  Ron and Harry began 'paying' for their board by helping Rowen with the laundry; charming clothes and bedding into the big dolly-tub in a room off the kitchen and setting the dolly to plunging it over and over in the water, then wrestling the wet cloth through a big mangle.

"It's a lot like Muggle Youth Hostelling, don't you think?" Hermione said brightly at one point.  "Paying for your board by working."

"Never done it," Harry said mildly, wishing she would go away.

She seemed to be spending a lot of time hanging around and watching them, to what purpose Harry couldn't quite fathom unless it was to annoy Ron.  Unfortunately this seemed entirely too likely - breakfast had been full of subtly barbed sotto voce exchanges between them - and it worried Harry for he knew what Ron's temper was like.  But Ron had not worked for the twins for as long as he had without learning to grit his teeth and ignore deliberate provocation; he got on with their tasks with a stolid expression and confined any comments he had to make to Harry and Rowen.  Which didn't entirely reassure Harry, it had to be said.  He knew Ron well enough that when his friend helped Rowen to carry some wet sheets outside to the washing lines in the kitchen garden, he hung back to speak to Hermione.

"Can you not keep trying to wind him up?" he asked her bluntly.

Hermione raised her brows.  "I don't know what you're talking about."

That annoyed him.  "There's a saying in my home coven," he warned her.  "If the gods trip themselves on your lying tongue, they'll trip you in return."  She scowled.  "Leave Ron alone.  Just because he's ignoring you now doesn't mean he won't remember later."

"I'm trembling," she retorted.

"You should be," Harry said irritably.  "He's a championship chess-player - which means he's probably already one step ahead of you.  Think about that."

He left her in the laundry room and took a basket of wet clothes outside.  The walled kitchen garden was looking as wind-blown and ragged as any garden did before spring set in.  Apart from some onions and garlic that had been left to over-winter in a sheltered plot, the beds had been turned in the autumn and covered with chopped straw mulch to discourage weed growth until it was time for planting again.  Everything was wet and muddy from the previous day's deluge, but the sun had come out and there was a brisk breeze; almost too brisk for Harry, whose old Hufflepuff shirt wasn't nearly as warm as it looked.

Ron came to help him peg out the clothes.

"Are you okay?" Harry asked him quietly.  "Try to ignore her."

The corner of Ron's mouth twitched.  "Can I drown her in the washtub?"

"Maybe another time.  What's going on between you two?  How many detentions did she give you at school anyway?"

"Not enough or the right sort to suit her, I reckon."

Harry blinked at him.  Ron's tone that suggested something he hadn't expected.  "Ron?"

Ron looked at him and his brows went up.  "She's not my type, you know that."

"I wouldn't have thought you were her type!  She's shacked up with Susan I think - "  Ron gave him knowing look and Harry blinked again.  "Okay ... but I don't see what her problem is if she's with someone else now."

"Well, it's not like she ever really liked me," Ron pointed out.  "Even if she fancied me - and don't ask me if she did, I don't know - it didn't stop her shopping me for all sorts of crap.  I reckon she spent half her time looking for stuff to take points off me for.  Maybe it was a love-hate thing - she loved my arse but hated my personality."

Harry grinned.  "I love your arse myself!"

"Of course you do," Ron said with a smirk.  "You're only human."

Harry flicked at him with a wet towel, making Ron duck and laugh.

~~~

A little later they helped to scour and stack terracotta plant pots outside the long potting shed, and Ron got to show off some of his many new repairing charms on the pots as well as on several broken panes of glass on the sides and roofs of the glasshouses.  Then Gwyn and Susan showed them the beehives - from a respectful distance, as Gwyn was at pains to explain, for Ron and Harry were unknown to the semi-dormant colonies and their magical auras might disturb them.

The hives were bigger than Ron had imagined and it was sobering to see them all set out, evenly spaced, in the two long greenhouses beyond the kitchen garden.  If there was much activity going on inside them, he couldn't tell.  But when the weather became warmer they would be moved out to the orchard and Gwyn confidently predicted a couple of swarms which, carefully managed, could increase the number of colonies.

It was odd to hear the coven members talking like this.  On the one hand there was a strong sense that they felt things were coming to a premature end with the predicted death of the Master Oak - but on the other, they still talked about future projects like hive management and increases.  Ron supposed that some of them would stay on in the house, managing the orchard and hives, even if the coven disbanded.  Something would be missing though and even he could sense that.

He wondered if Harry really could do anything to save the oak.  He didn't pretend to understand the religious significance of the tree but he'd seen first-hand how much the Running Hare Coven venerated their sacred oak and how carefully it was cared for.  Presumably the Green Lord Coven felt the same way about theirs.

Harry broached the subject of the oak when they left the greenhouses and went around the house to see what damage had been done in the orchard during the previous night's storm.

Gwyn was wary.  "The dendrologist at Green Lady Coven said there was nothing to be done - the poison's in the trunk and too deep to do much about without causing more damage in the process.  We've not even removed the spike for fear of other infections making matters worse."

"I wasn't thinking about physical work on the tree," Harry said.  "In terms of magic - "

"The specialist said even magical healing wouldn't help at this stage," Hermione interrupted him.

"And I wasn't talking about ordinary magic," Harry said.

"If a qualified magical dendrologist with decades of experience can't do anything for the tree, then what makes you think you can?" she demanded.

Ron's own annoyance at her lecturing tone was tempered by amusement at Harry's reaction; to anyone who didn't know him he'd seem quite calm, but Ron knew that tone of voice.  Harry hesitated for a moment, his normally open and mobile face quite still, and Ron had to chew on the inside of his cheek to suppress inappropriate laughter.  Then Harry looked at Gwyn, tilting his head to one side.  "The tree's dying, right?"

"So they tell us," Gwyn said heavily.

"Then what's to be lost by trying something unconventional?"

Hermione opened her mouth and Gwyn raised his hand in a mild gesture that silenced her.  He was looking at Harry quite thoughtfully.  "What did you have in mind?"

"I'm not sure," Harry admitted, "but if you'd let me - and Ron - take a look at the tree, I might be able to tell you."

"You'll not touch it?"

"Touch it, yes.  Harm it - no, certainly not.  You have my oath on that."

Gwyn considered this for a moment or two, then glanced back over his shoulder to where Nancy stood in the front porch of the house.  Some sort of silent conversation seemed to go on between them, then Gwyn turned back to Harry.  "I'll show you the oak tree."

Small hope that Hermione would leave them alone to get on with it.  In fact, everyone turned out to follow them out of the immediate grounds of the house and down a lane between the several small fields that were part of the coven's accumulated property.

"This is the boundary with our nearest neighbour," Rowen pointed out at one point, although he really didn't need to - even Ron could feel the presence of the wards where they were anchored in the hedge that separated two fields. 

The oak was in the corner of the next field and like the one at Running Hare Coven it backed onto a stand of other trees, although not the established woodland that Running Hare's Master Oak was set in.  Ron could see from looking at it that it was a younger tree, although 'younger' was relative in the lives of oaks and this one could still be a hundred years old.  But it wasn't quite so massive or gnarled and although its canopy was broad there was still plenty of room for it to grow.  It certainly didn't look like a tree that was dying, although that was harder to judge at the tail end of winter. 

The wound where the diseased branch had been removed was clearly visible.  Gwyn pointed out the head of the spike; it wasn't immediately obvious but two things struck Ron as he peered at it, for he was taller than any of the others.

"There had to be more than one of them," he said, "because that's higher than I could reach to hammer it in, so the one doing the job probably sat on someone else's shoulders.  And it went in at a bit of an angle, I reckon."

"That's what we think," Rowen said.

"The specialist from Green Lady seemed to think it might have hit a knot in the grain," Susan added.

"I don't suppose you contacted the Muggle authorities after it happened, did you?" Harry asked, walking slowly around the trunk of the tree without touching it.

"We have as little to do with them as possible," Gwyn said.  "Besides, they'd never cross the wards."

"Pity.  Because this is a criminal offence under Muggle law, and the kind of people their councils employ to look after trees wouldn't have a problem with you being a coven.  They're used to tree-lovers being a bit different.  They'd have gone after the people that did this, although I don't know what they could have done after all that time, I have to admit."

"That's what I said at the time," Hermione agreed grudgingly.  "But I don't think there's anything they can do unless they catch the vandal in the act."

Harry shrugged.  "It's just that something like this - it's not just vandalism.  You have to know a bit about trees to know this kind of damage would kill it, so whoever did it has probably done crap like this before."

He finished his circuit of the oak before finally bowing respectfully, stepping close and reaching out to touch it - initially just a gentle hand against the trunk, palm flat against the knobbly and grooved bark, then both hands, until finally he leaned his whole body against it, arms reaching out around the trunk and his cheek pressed against it.  Ron saw his eyes close and he was very still for a while, just breathing deeply.

"What does he think he's doing?" Hermione grumbled in the background.

"Hush!" Gwyn told her.

Harry blinked and glanced around, looking for Ron.  "Hey mate, come here a minute.  See if you can feel this."

"I don't have your knack for stuff like this," Ron said doubtfully, but he stepped up close to Harry and allowed his friend to take his right hand and press it to the damp bark under his own.

"Feel it?"

Ron was ready to say no, when he realised that he actually could feel something - a thin tickle of magic at the far reaches of his awareness, almost like a humming at the back of his head.  He was so startled that he jumped back.  "Merlin!"

Harry grinned at him.  "Feel it?  That's the tree!"

"Kidding me …"

"Honest!"

"Should it do that?"  Ron approached again more warily but didn't try to touch the tree again.

"It's sound a lot louder in the summer."  Harry stepped back too, brushing absently at the damp marks left on his jumper.  "It sounds normal for this time of year, but the power - I can't quite explain it, but I can feel a sort of weakness in the flow around the spike, and there's definitely some kind of poison on it.  There's a … a diversion in the tree's own magic, and it doesn't seem to be a problem right now but it will be when the tree starts to wake up properly.  It's starting to wake up a little already."

"So what can we do?"

At that, Harry seemed to remember that the two of them weren't alone and turned to look at Gwyn and the others.  The variety of expressions on the faces of the coven members made Ron feel a little wary, but Gwyn's interest in Harry was intense.

"That depends on whether you're willing to let us try - and support us, if you can," Harry said directly to him.

"Try what?" Hermione demanded, before Gwyn could say anything.  "You're not qualified tree experts, you're not even experienced warlocks and you're not - "

"Hermione," Susan interrupted her, and she took the other girl's hand.  "This is Gwyn and Nancy's decision!"

"It's the coven's Master Oak," Joe pointed out.

"But Gwyn's our high priest," Rowen said.  Neither he nor Joe seemed to have any particular axe to grind; they were just stating facts.

Gwyn ignored them.  Once again he looked across to Nancy, raising a brow at her, then he turned back to Harry.  "You can feel the tree's magic," he said mildly.

"It's the sort of magic I do," Harry said.  "Earth magic." 

Ron thought he detected a note of reluctance in this admission, which didn't surprise him.  He hadn't found out about Harry's connection to earth magic himself until he'd spent some time with Harry and his uncles the previous summer - and James had told him, not Harry himself.  Harry's comment about it the previous night was the first time he'd actually said anything to Ron directly.

"So now you've got a special kind of magic!" Hermione said scornfully.  She seemed incapable of letting the argument go, not that Ron was surprised.  He had significant prior experience of her tenacity in a number of areas.

"Hermione, lass," Gwyn said, still in the same mild tone, "your scholarly achievements are admirable for someone so young, but you don't know everything about magic yet.  Don't scoff at Harry until he's had a chance to explain why he feels so confident about this."

"I don't," Harry said at once.  "I mean - I don't know that I can heal the tree.  But I think I might be able to and since the poison will kill it sooner or later, it seems like it's worth me trying."

"But you have earth magic," Nancy said kindly.  "That's very rare, and you told us yourself that you're a halfblood.  Were you born with the gift?  Is it in your family?"

Harry hesitated again, then reluctantly nodded.  "I was born after my parents performed one of the Great Rites," he explained.  "I'm the son of a Huntress and King Stag."

"Ah!"  Gwyn let out a long breath.  "That explains a few things - the buzz you made in the wards when the two of you arrived and the power you created last night.  Herne knows all the Stags in the Herd … and of course you would have earth magic, how could you not?  Offspring of the Great Rites are seeded with power in the womb."

None of this made a great deal of sense to Ron, although he could see that it meant something to the coven as well as to Gwyn.  All except Hermione, who looked puzzled and annoyed. 

"Come back to the house," Nancy suggested quietly.  "This should be talked about properly, not out here in the cold."

~~~

They sat around the same table where they'd eaten supper together the night before, and Joe and Susan made a spicy herbal tea for them all.  The atmosphere was a little tense, not relieved by Gwyn's thoughtful and introspective silence until they were all served with a mug of the tea and waiting for him to speak.  Then he looked up and his slate grey eyes fixed on Harry intensely.

"The Sacred Hunt has more significance for us than I think you realise, Young Stag," he said.

"I guessed that," Harry said.  "Herne is the Lord of the Hunt and the Huntress dedicates to him before the Great Rite.  The spilling of blood and seed is made in his name as well as the Great Mother's."

"But can you imagine what the Hunt means to us?"

"Do you perform it?"  Harry was unsure how he felt about that, remembering their rule about no young children in the house.

"We do, at Beltane and Samhain."  Gwyn paused, his eyes resting on Harry's face.  "Those who wish to stand up for the rite put their names forward to me and both participants must have agreed to stand up together.  We maintain the same principle in the rite as in the founding of our hearth - it doesn't matter to us if there's a Hunter rather than a Huntress or the Stag is a Doe.  But I'll admit I've wondered more than once if our purpose here is a flawed conceit and that I mistook the dreams Herne sent to me that led us here in the first place."

Harry draw a cautious breath.  "Last night Ron and I … we talked about that, because this is the first coven I've heard of that hasn't any children and I thought it wouldn't work.  But Ron pointed out that fertility isn't everything with the rites - a lot of it is about the magic.  And covens don't exist just for fertility anyway."

"Of course they don't," Nancy said, smiling at him.  "Covens exist for life - for the people who live in them, whoever they are.  Only misguided people think we live together just for sex!"

"You told me that," Ron said to Harry dryly.  "Remember?  When I told you Mum thought covens were full of sex maniacs and nudists."

This prompted a ripple of laughter around the table and everyone relaxed a little.

"Yeah, yeah - you're right again, all right," Harry retorted good-naturedly, and he nudged Ron gently in the ribs with an elbow.

After a pause, Gwyn said, "What you have to understand is that after all this time - performing the Rites faithfully and living together as we believe Herne wishes us to live - it was a terrible shock to have our Master Oak harmed that way.  For all of us it felt as though the previous auspices had misled us and we began to question a lot.  To ask ourselves if this house wasn't meant to be after all."  He took a long breath too.  "And then you come here, a Young Stag in the first flush of your power, and offer to heal our oak.  I've been a high priest for many years and I'm not the kind of moon-struck fool to see Herne's arrow everywhere, but this!  It's hard not to see it as something foretold."

Harry wondered what Gwyn would think when his father turned up too, and quickly decided it would be better not to tell him.  The man had enough to contemplate at the moment.

Hermione was frowning again.  "But it's not as though you meant to come here, is it?" she pointed out.  "I thought you were going somewhere else?"

"We were given directions to another coven, one I don't know," Harry said.  "I know we went off course in the bad weather, but I don't think we were that far off course.  And Gwyn has said he doesn't know of a coven called White Mare either, which is a bit odd because I would have expected him to know all the nearest covens.  So I'm thinking the message we got was a bit … garbled.  Wouldn't be the first time."

"But why were you heading there anyway?"

"Is that any of your business?" Ron asked her irritably, before Harry could reply.

Hermione bristled at his tone, but Susan quickly stepped in.  "Hermione, he's right - that's none of our business unless they choose to tell us."

"Let's talk about what we came into the house to discuss, shall we?" Nancy added in a peaceable tone.

"There's no reason to think he can do anything to help the oak," Hermione said, exasperated.  "I don't see - "

Gwyn raised his eyes to her face and she abruptly fell silent, although Harry couldn't see anything but kindness in his expression.  "If you'll have patience, I believe you may have an opportunity here to learn something new.  We all may.  Harry at least deserves the courtesy of a proper discussion of his offer, I know you'll agree."

Harry doubted that, but she let it go and sat back, holding her mug before her like a barrier.

"Trees have their own magic," he said quickly, to fill the sudden silence.  He was still addressed himself to Gwyn, mostly because it was obviously Gwyn who would have the final say over whether anything was done.  "With a smaller injury an oak that size could have healed itself - maybe not quickly or without losing some limbs, but it could have recovered.  But it's a big injury and the poison's in there, waiting for the tree to wake up this spring.  Which it's doing now, very slowly.  I think - I believe - that if we can boost its own energy and magic now, the oak will heal itself and with our help it can do it quickly before the poison spreads."

"And how do you propose to help it?"

Harry hesitated.  "With a power-raising rite.  Something like one of the Great Rites would be the most appropriate, because they're specifically geared towards rebirth and re-growth."

"Except that we're over two months away from Beltane," Rowen commented, "and the nearest Sabbat is Ostara, which isn't much sooner."

"I don't think that would make a lot of difference for this," Harry said.  "In fact, it might be better if it's not a Sabbat, because that could confuse the issue.  This needs to be specifically targeted at the oak."

"It's the dark of the moon tonight," Susan remarked.

"Better still for our purposes," Nancy said.  "The Goddess turns her face away at moon-dark, so there'll be no conflict there.  Gwyn?"

He was staring into his cup, deep in thought, but at this he looked up at Harry.  "Who would you perform the rite with?"

"I could perform it on my own if necessary - "

Hermione snorted rudely.

"No, he's right," Rowen said.  "Someone with a direct earth magic connection can raise power through masturbation. Sex is sex in that respect, even if it's a solitary act, and spilling semen directly into the earth has its own significance."

"But I'd rather perform it with Ron," Harry said.

"Are you sure?" Nancy asked.  "It's the coven's Master Oak, and you're not proclaimed one of us.  Surely a representative of the hearth should be a part of this."

Ron shifted in his seat rather noticeably.

"I honestly don't think that matters," Harry told Nancy, "and in any case I know I can raise the power with Ron.  I don't have the same relationship with any of you."

"But does Ron understand what this involves?" Gwyn asked.  He smiled apologetically at Ron.  "Don't take the question amiss, but you admitted yourself last night that you don't have the background in this life.  I won't allow anyone to participate in a rite of this kind unless he or she understands fully what's expected of them and is wholehearted and willing.  Have you ever even observed a Great Rite, lad?"

Ron cleared his throat, sounding a little nervous.  "No …  Harry's told me a bit about it, though."

"I'd be happy to talk you through it," Hermione said in a deceptively casual voice, before anyone else could reply.

Harry felt a stab of annoyance at her deliberate needling of Ron, but Ron was quicker to respond.

"Have you ever done it?" he shot at her, and when she seemed stumped for a quick answer he snorted witheringly.  "Thought not!  It'd take a couple of crowbars and a blasting hex to get your chastity belt off, Granger."

"Like you'd know anything about it!" she snapped, unaccountably red in the face.

Ron's sudden grin was alarmingly saturnine.  "Oh - you want me to tell everyone, do you?"

"Hey!" Susan said indignantly, and Harry had to grab Ron's arm to get his attention.

"Cut it out!" he told his partner sharply.

Ron scowled.  "But she - "

"What does it matter?  Let it go!  We've more important things to do."

Ron's fierce blue eyes met his own and Harry was reminded of more than one argument he'd had with him over the years.  Ron was virtually incapable of walking away from quarrels like this - it was partly the Slytherin attitude to challenges and the overwhelming need to win, but also something Harry thought had been ingrained in him since childhood.  He also had no respect for people who backed away from confrontations (something which probably explained his bitter resentment of his circumstances since he left school), which meant there was nothing for it but for Harry to face him down when he got like this.

Not that Harry had any doubts about his own ability to bring Ron to heel.  However little Ron might be prepared to admit it, in their relationship Harry led and he followed; the trick was in managing it so that Ron didn't lose face in the process.  Fortunately he had a sense of humour, which helped.

Harry met his glare and held it until he could see the realisation in Ron's eyes that he wasn't going to win this by attitude alone, then he took the sting out of the conquest:

"Look, you can fight over which of you has the biggest dick later, all right?"

Ron snorted and looked away, relaxing.  Harry doubted he'd really let it go - he was sure it would surface again later somehow, when they weren't occupied with other more important matters.  But for now they could get on with saving the oak tree and with any luck by the time Ron had a chance to remember his grievance they would be leaving the Green Lord Coven anyway.

And if not, then Hermione would just have to deal with it.  Harry doubted she was equipped to take on Ron at his worst, but that was her problem.  She must surely know him well enough by now, and if she didn't have the common sense to stop picking at him then Harry didn't have much sympathy for her.

He turned back to Gwyn and the others and was disconcerted to see them smiling at him.  Granted Hermione was in a high temper, and Susan looked rather put out too, but the others seemed to view the brief confrontation with amusement.

The corner of Gwyn's mouth was twitching gently, but all he said was, "I have to insist you ensure that Ron fully understands what this involves before I'll consider allowing the two of you to undertake the rite together.  Most people who've lived in a coven for several years would hesitate to volunteer, so it's asking a lot of a stranger to our ways to make such a commitment, even with a partner they're comfortable with."

He was right, Harry knew.  His own father had performed the rite with only minimal preparation or knowledge; James might make jokes about it now, but Harry strongly suspected it had come as a shock to him all the same.  He didn't actually talk about it much if he could help it.

"Then I'll talk to him," he said, but he didn't move.  "If we do this - and it doesn't matter who does it or how - we'll need to ward the area around the tree to stop any interference from local ley-lines and such."

"Why?" Joe asked, puzzled.

"There's one running very close to the tree's root system," Harry explained.  "I felt it when I got close.  With the power we'll be raising, we have to ward the tree or the ley-line could be drawn to it and ... we'll, actually I'm not sure what'd happen but I don't think I'd enjoy it much.  Or the tree, for that matter."

"Ley-lines are passive magic," Hermione said, seemingly unable to stop herself.  "They don't carry enough power - "

"You're an expert, are you?" Harry demanded, exasperated.  Why was she so determined to be in opposition to everything he said?

"Are you?" she shot back.

"No, but my father is and so was my grandfather.  And unless you've been making an exclusive study of the subject since you left school, I still know more about them than you do!  If I say I don't want to find out what'll happen if we hold a Great Rite practically on top of one, you can be sure I'm not saying it for the fun of it!"

"Is there any possibility that we can discuss this in a non-confrontational manner?" Nancy asked in a weary tone.  "It doesn't bode well for the success of the rite if we can't even talk about it amicably."

Harry had to bite his lip not to say anything for a moment.  He took a slow, discreet breath and reminded himself that he was a guest in their house; it behoved him to be conciliatory.  "I'm sorry," he said sincerely, when he felt he had himself under control again.  "I seem to be causing a lot of friction and that wasn't what I wanted at all.  The rite was just a suggestion.  If you'd rather not do it - or you'd prefer to postpone it for now - "

"No," Gwyn said firmly, breaking in.  Harry was mildly surprised by the decisive note in his voice.  "No, we should do this and do it tonight.  This is too clear an opportunity, with the two of you coming here at this precise moment.  This chance has been presented to us and I feel very strongly that to turn it down would surely be the end of us as a coven.  It's a shame we aren't a full house today, but this is the way Herne wishes it to be.  So let's talk about what needs to be done."

~~~

Harry took Ron out into the orchard just before lunch - not that anyone was going to eat lunch.  In preparation for the rite that evening the whole household would fast until dusk, breaking it only to drink a special potion that Nancy and Susan were preparing over the main fireplace even now.

There were many other things to be done before then, most specifically the warding of the oak and the building of a small shelter under its broad canopy.  This was being done by Gwyn, Hermione and Rowen, while Joe prepared the pigments used to ritually mark the participants.

Meanwhile, Harry had to talk Ron through the rite and explain precisely what would happen, what everyone would do, and how this related to the two of them.  If, that was, Ron agreed to participate with Harry when he knew.  In the privacy of his own mind Harry admitted to some doubts about this.

The orchard was soggy and rather dismal in the weak sunlight.  Harry deliberately led Ron along a different path to the one they'd walked when they first arrived, until they eventually came to a lonely little marble figurine among the trees; wet leaves clung to him and moisture dripped from both his antlers and his proud, outsized phallus.

"Bit different from the one at your coven," Ron noted, as they took it in turns to fondle the head of the Grove God's penis in the common tribute to him.

"More like Cernunnos or Herne," Harry agreed.  "Makes sense here."

"What are you thinking?  You've got a funny look on your face."

"I was wondering if my dad was going to turn up before tonight."  It wasn't exactly a lie; that was certainly one of the many things on Harry's mind at the moment.  He looked at Ron and grinned wryly.  "It'll be bad enough if they turn up afterwards, but if they arrive just as we're about to start I'll never hear the last of it."

Ron wasn't deflected.  "You didn't tell Gwyn you haven't done this rite before yourself."

"I'm pretty sure he knows that.  Besides, I have been involved in the Great Rites before, just not as a main participant, and that's not exactly unusual at Running Hare.  But I've attended some of the Great Rites on and off since I was a kid, so nothing much about it's going to be strange to me."  Harry folded his arms and looked at Ron.  "How do you feel about this?"

"No bloody idea.  I thought you said the rite's a ritual hunt?"

"It is when it's performed at Beltane and Samhain, but it's different for the other major Sabbats.  Obviously we'll be leaving that part out tonight since it's not relevant."

"Obviously," Ron muttered.  He dug his hands into the pockets in his robe and Harry couldn't read the expression on his face.  "So basically, we're going to shag under the oak tree.  Right?"

"It's a bit more complicated than that, but - yeah."

"How does that help the tree?"

"Sex is power," Harry said.  "Any kind of sex generates power, even wanking, but there's more power when it's two people and there's more still when it's someone who has a connection to earth magic."  He hesitated for a moment, knowing that Ron didn't know about their ability to generate a lot of magical energy together when they had sex.  It was something James meant to explain to him later, when they were in secure surroundings, but Harry couldn't afford to wait that long.  "Look, remember when you stayed with us last summer?  You and me - we rub sparks off each other somehow.  I don't know why.  But every time we shagged we were chucking out enough magic to power the wards - Dad told me after you left.  And there were a lot of wards around us there, you've no idea."

Ron gave him an odd look.  "Is that normal?"

Harry shrugged.  "Don't ask me, I don't know how it happens.  But I reckon it's pretty unusual.  It's one of the reasons why Dad and the others were keen for you to come with us.  Normally we spend ages at every new site setting up these high-strength wards and finding safe sources of power to keep them going, but with you and me there together we wouldn't have to do that."

"Is that why you want to do this with me?"  Now Ron's expression was wary.

Harry smiled at him.  "I want to do it with you anyway.  But if I don't do the rite with you, then I'll probably have to do it with Rowen or Nancy - or even Gwyn.  And that's not happening, mate, you know that.  We don't share."

"I wondered what'd happen if I said no," Ron muttered, not looking at Harry, and he kicked aimlessly at a pile of fallen twigs in the grass.

"Look, you don't have to," Harry said in a quieter tone.  "Gwyn's right - it's not something to do without knowing what you're getting yourself into.  The Great Rites are … intense.  It sounds like a weird thing to say, but you won't be the same person afterwards.  You'll see stuff, experience stuff … things that you can't put into words or make sense of on a normal day.  And you'll do things you wouldn't normally do because the rite makes it the only sensible thing to do.  Things you might be unwilling to do normally."

"Are you trying to put me off?  Because you won't do it," Ron said.  There were stubborn lines around his mouth and his eyes challenged Harry.  "Maybe I don't own you, Potter, but I'm buggered if I'll sit around tonight while you shag someone else under a tree in the middle of a field!"

"You should let me talk you through the whole thing before you say something like that," Harry warned him, but he was warmed by Ron's response.

"Go on then - talk.  But I'm warning you, I'm not backing out.  You do this thing with me or it doesn't get done."

"All right."  Harry took a deep breath and hoped Ron wouldn't regret saying that.  "This is what happens …"

~~~

The coven gathered at dusk in the entrance hall, which had been cleared of furnishings and thoroughly cleaned with small brooms made of herbs.  They had all fasted since midmorning and bathed shortly before gathering, changing into loose garments made of plain linen simply dyed and with only minimal decoration.

No complicated fastenings, Harry had told Ron.  No buttons or toggles or zips.  Tie fastenings only.

Ron glanced around surreptitiously as the group made a loose circle around Gwyn.  He and Harry wore the simplest clothes - sleeveless linen robes made out of single lengths of cloth dyed a subtle green shade.  Rowen and Joe wore loose trousers and went bare-chested; Gwyn also wore trousers, with a tunic that had short sleeves and some embroidery.  Susan and Hermione wore ankle-length dresses formed by wrapping a long length of cloth around themselves and belting it with very simple braided cords.  Nancy, however, wore only a floor length skirt wrap-around skirt; her torso was bare, revealing a set of elaborate ivy leaf tattoos that twined around her arms from just above the wrist, up over her shoulders and down to curve around her breasts.  Ron noticed that Rowen and Gwyn also had similar tattoos on their forearms, although none of the others did; he wondered if they were permanent or something they'd done just for this rite.  Those of the coven with long hair had untied it to hang loose about their shoulders.

The high-priest or priestess makes a blessing, Harry's voice whispered in his mind.

Gwyn stepped forward into the circle.  He was holding a long, oddly-shaped wooden rod known as a stang - it was made of beech-wood, nearly six feet in length, and forked at the top to represent Herne's antlers.  It was dark with age and carved all over with runes that made Ron's eyes feel funny when he tried to look at it directly, and the foot of it was shod in iron.  When Gwyn spoke, it wasn't in English at all -

Some priests and priestesses prefer to speak in one of the elder tongues - Welsh or Gaelic or Saxon, even Cornish.  Gwyn's probably one of that sort, the priests of Herne usually are.

Ron did as Harry had advised and simply let the words wash over him, letting the others make the responses at the appropriate moments.  Nancy and Rowen acted as Gwyn's helpers; at one point Rowen brushed them lightly from head to foot with a small cinnamon-scented besom, while at another their robes were taken from them while Nancy daubed runes on their hands, throats and bellies from a bowl of a dark reddish paint.  Ron was grateful that no one was standing behind him at this point and the birthmark on his back went unseen in the low light of the hall.

Then their robes were returned to them and Nancy left the hall for a moment, returning with a large silver goblet full of a clear potion.  The goblet was ornate, clearly a ceremonial object; on one side was the face of a bearded man while on the other was the head of a stag, and the handles on each side were formed out of their elaborate antlers.

Ron watched warily as Gwyn made a blessing over the goblet.  He took it from Nancy with a formal kiss on her mouth and turned to Harry and Ron, raising the goblet in tribute to them before taking a single deep swallow of the potion.  Then he turned back to Nancy and held the goblet so that she too could drink from it.  Nancy passed the goblet to Rowen - again with a formal kiss on the mouth - and he drank.  Rowen passed it to Hermione in the same way, Hermione to Joe, Joe to Susan, until Susan had taken her mouthful and passed it back to Gwyn with a kiss.  Gwyn turned back to Ron and Harry.

The potion's the part that makes the Great Rites different from the other sabbats and esbats.  It's dangerous stuff if you don't know what you're getting into.  It's part stimulant, part aphrodisiac, and it makes you have waking dreams.  Only the Huntress and King Stag drink a full draught - the rest of the coven take just enough to help them focus their magic into the rite, and the kids and elders don't drink it at all.  Everyone in the circle takes a mouthful, then the main participants drink the rest of it between them.  And from that point you're not really in control - the spirit of the rite takes over and you do what it wants you to do, guided by the priestess or priest.

Gwyn held the goblet up to Ron's lips.  "Drink," he commanded, his eyes intense.

Ron drank; it was bitter-tasting stuff, with a heavy undertaste like strong spirits that seemed to flow gently into his body like the warmth of a fire.  By the time Gwyn took the goblet back Ron could already feel a disconnection from his surroundings.  All his senses were more intense: he was hyper-aware of the waxed wooden floorboards under his bare feet and the coolness of the thin linen robe he wore; there was heat from the fireplace, the candle lamps and the bodies of the others, and a sharp smell of cinnamon and bruised leaves.  He could smell the musk of his own body and of Harry next to him.  The runes on Gwyn's stang, currently held by Rowen, were alight with fire running up and down the length of the staff and the tattoos on Nancy's body moved, twining about her like living plants.

And the room was filled with patterns of light that couldn't possibly come from the tiny candle-bowls placed around the room.  Earlier in the day they had all worked to remove the furnishings from the hall, including the wall hangings and rugs on the floor, leaving it bare floorboard, plaster walls and rafters.  Now Ron watched, distantly fascinated, as cracks appeared on the walls and between the floorboards and little glowing tendrils of light slipped through them, thickening and growing stronger until he could see that they were shoots of ivy with its pointed, heart-shaped leaves.  They crept across the floor, spread out over the walls, and slipped over and around the rafters to drop shining green festoons about the coven and send long ropes snaking over their feet.   Then patterns began to form in the woodwork, turning it from smooth beams and boards fashioned by a master carpenter back to rough-barked branches with twigs and leaves.  Faces bulged out of the plaster on the walls and in the rough stonework around the fireplace, the masks of animals and humans and creatures that were neither one nor the other; eyes blinked, lips smiled and grinned and leered, and here and there canine teeth flashed and long ears twitched.

Harry had finished drinking from the goblet and Gwyn passed it back to Nancy, who put it on one of the hearthstones; Ron watched curiously as a pair of gnarled stone hands twisted up out of the stone to hold it.  Then the birthmark on his back itched furiously and he tried to twist an arm behind himself to scratch it.  Harry reached out to stop him, holding his hand loosely, and Ron was distracted again, this time by the heat in Harry's palm and the smell of him.  He could feel his lover's pulse like a drumbeat through his skin and bones.

Harry was naked.  That was odd; Ron hadn't seen him take his robe off.  Then he saw that they were all naked and that was stranger still, for he couldn't see their clothes anywhere and yet none of them had left the room.  Curiously, the fact that they were all naked was of little interest to him - if questioned, he wouldn't have been able to say what any of the others looked like, although at any other time he would have had the normal young male's interest in what everyone did or did not possess physically.  He was, however, very aware of Harry, who was radiating heat like a kitchen stove and smelled of musk and cinnamon and something else that was entirely him and called to Ron like a siren.

Gwyn was speaking again, words which made no sense to Ron but which had a poetic, rhythmic lilt to them.  The rest of the coven joined in with the chant as the high priest stepped forward to touch the stang to Ron and Harry's foreheads and Ron noticed - again, almost in passing and without any sense of surprise or alarm - that the gaps in their circle left by those members who weren't present in the house that night were now filled by two more women, one in her late thirties and the other a teenager, and three men, one nearly as old as Gwyn and the other two somewhere around Rowen's age.  He concluded that these must be the other coven members after all, and it didn't seem at all odd to him that they should somehow be there now when they were physically somewhere else.

The coven knelt, still chanting; all but Gwyn who gestured gravely to Harry and Ron and turned to lead them out of the door.

The three of them walked out of the house and through the orchard, down the lane and across the meadow to the Master Oak.  The fact that they were naked and barefoot and there was a hard frost settling over the countryside was unimportant - in fact, Ron had rarely felt warmer and more comfortable in his own skin.  His attention was more completely held by the way every living thing - every plant, every bush, every tree and blade of grass - gleamed and luminesced in the darkness, as though lit by tiny internal fires; the land around him was alight, rippling and burgeoning, and none more so than the oak itself which glowed with an emerald green inner fire and stood out among the other trees like a beacon in the landscape.

He could see the wards around it.  That was interesting; they were bands and curtains of multicoloured light rippling across the ground and hanging in the air, some following the line of a thin stream of magic that flowed by the oak perhaps twelve feet away, barricading it off, and others providing a semi-opaque wall around the tree.  The power fizzed as they approached the oak, making his birthmark prickle and itch.