The Tree Of Life

by Mad Martha

Part 4

"It boggles my mind," James remarked rather grumpily.  "I lose track of them for a couple of hours and they start randomly performing Great Rites all over the place."

"It was a little more than a couple of hours," Lily commented.  "Light that range for me, please?  Besides, they weren't randomly performing anything - anyone would have done the same thing in their place."

"I could refute that argument, you know.  Anyone wouldn't."

"Don't be pedantic.  And you're only complaining because they did it without asking your permission first … James, are you going to light that range?  My hands are full!"

"You make me sound like an insufferable autocrat!"  But he lit the range, albeit with some difficulty; Nancy's stove was a little different to the ones he'd encountered before.

"That's because you are," Lily told him, amused.  She reached around him and set a big copper kettle on the hob.  "There is a reason why you wear the antlers in this relationship!"

"Funny how I always seem to be the one taking the orders, then," he grumbled.

"It does you good," she told him.  James snorted.

"I didn't expect to arrive here to find most of the coven flaked out and our two missing," he said.

She relented.  "Neither did I, and it really is a bit of luck that one of the other members arrived home at the same time as us, or we'd have been stuck outside the wards until someone recovered enough to let us in."  She opened and closed a series of cupboards until she found a tub of tea and began to measure spoonfuls into a large teapot.  "It doesn't help that it's barely dawn yet - we'll all feel better for some tea and toast.  Did you see any mugs anywhere?  And milk?  Having to nip out and milk a cow or goat will be a pain."

"You're off the hook - their milk seems to come in glass bottles."  James took one off the cold shelf of the pantry and put it on the table.

Remus appeared in the kitchen doorway.  "Need a hand?"

"Yes," Lily said at once.  She flicked her wand at the pantry and a large loaf of bread sailed out to land on a bread board at one end of the kitchen table.  "Cut some bread and start toasting it, please.  How are they doing in there?"

Remus found a bread knife and began slicing the loaf, while James hunted for mugs and a toasting fork.  "They're all still a bit out of it, but that chap Matthew says it's the potion they drank for the rite," he said.

"The Cup of Life," Lily said and she made a face.  "I wonder which variant they use?  I'd expect it to affect the principal participants but not everyone else, not like this.  I'd better make a pot of mint tea as well, just in case.  Goodness knows what state Ron and Harry will be in, but perhaps the rite will have burned off most of it."

"If they're not back at the house in half an hour, I'm going looking for them," James said.  He herded a small flock of mugs to the table with his wand and opened a cutlery drawer.  "Here's the toasting fork, Moony."

"Good."  Remus raised his voice slightly, calling over his shoulder: "Sirius!  Come and make some toast."

"I wonder if there's any honey," Lily commented, going back to the pantry.  "That's always good for instant energy … oh!  They must like honey, there's pots and pots of it in here."

"They have beehives," Sirius said, as she walked out of the pantry.  He was impaling a slice of bread on the toasting fork.  "Matthew was just telling me.  They make a bit of money on honey and orchard fruit, and they're considering setting up a cider press."

"How many hives do they have?" James asked, surprised.

"Nine, and they're hoping to increase the number this year."

Lily frowned, thinking - as her son had - of the traditional association between bees and the Mother Goddess.  "This is a very odd coven," she remarked.

"Why?" Sirius asked, suspiciously bland.  "Because half of them are gay?"

"It's not a matter of them being gay, it's a matter of balance."

The corner of James's mouth twitched.  "They seemed to be doing fine until someone damaged their oak tree."

"Perhaps if they had a proper balance of energies they could have healed it themselves."

"And perhaps if Maevi could bring herself to hand the reins over to someone younger, half of Running Hare Coven wouldn't be talking about setting up a new hearth elsewhere."

"Maevi's a very capable leader," Lily muttered, setting the honey jar down on the table.  "And I don't see what that has to do with anything."

"I'm making a point," James said.  "As in - there's no point in going on about the balances in this coven, when Maevi is throwing out the balances in your coven."  He tried to hide a grin at Lily's frown, but didn't succeed very well as usual.  "There's nothing to stop her taking the elder wise-woman role, but she won't do it because she likes being in charge too much.  A coven's all about the people in it, you've said it yourself often enough!"

Lily had no comment to make about this, so instead she made the two pots of tea and floated them out into the main hall where the coven members were nursing their potion-hangovers.  Sirius and Remus had moved some of the usual furniture back into the hall with the help of Matthew, the member who had met them outside the wards earlier, and everyone was sitting - or rather sagging - around the table.  James sent the mugs, honey and milk in and Sirius began to stack toast on a large plate.

They were just starting to get mugs of tea into the hands of the sufferers when the front door opened and Harry and Ron, wrapped in wet and mud-smeared linen robes, staggered inside, propping each other up and looking half-frozen and thoroughly exhausted.  Lily hurried to find blankets to wrap around them and make them comfortable by the fire, while James poured them mugs of tea.  Neither of them seemed entirely aware of their surroundings, but Ron roused a little when James tried to wrap Harry's hand around his mug.

"He's got a cut on his hand," he said.

At this Nancy pulled herself together enough to get up and help Lily find ointment and bandages.  They were cleaning the jagged, lightning-shaped wound on Harry's palm when Gwyn made his way over to speak to the two boys.

"The oak?" he asked hopefully.

Ron mutely held out the iron spike that had caused all the trouble.

"It's all right now," Harry said.  He drooped visibly.  "I really want to sleep."

"Then sleep you must," Lily said firmly.

~~~

Ron awoke with the worst hangover he'd ever experienced - which, as he was only nineteen, wasn't saying much, but he was still fairly sure it would be fatal.  For two Knuts he would have gone back to sleep, but his bladder was screaming and he had no choice but to crawl out of bed unless he wanted to have a very embarrassing accident.

He crawled down the passage too, as he couldn't quite work out how to get himself upright and wasn't sure if it would be wise to do so anyway.  The floor tiles in the bathroom were reassuringly smooth under his hands and knees and the porcelain of the toilet bowl very cool.  Getting himself to his feet to piss took a hundred years and had to be done with his eyes closed to stop the room swirling around him.  He ended up sitting down to do it; he didn't trust his balance enough to stand for the duration.

But flushing the toilet afterwards was his biggest mistake.  The roar of the cistern set off an avalanche of rocks in his head and when he tried to jerk away from the noise, the room swung like a crazed hammock and his stomach turned over ominously.  Fortunately, the toilet bowl was still to hand and he vomited into it gratefully.

When the paroxysm had passed, someone wiped his face with a damp cloth and put a glass to his lips.  "Take a sip … and another …"

Ron did as he was told and gagged again when the potion met his tastebuds.

"Try to keep it down, son, it'll help."

Nothing that tasted as bad as that could possibly help.  He did as he was told, however, and after a moment or two the nausea slackened, and he became aware that the person standing next to him was holding the damp cloth to his forehead and rubbing his back soothingly.  He wanted to weep with gratitude.

"Die now?" he mumbled.

His rescuer chuckled.  "Harry wants to skip death and just be buried alive!"

This seemed like a viable plan to Ron.  "Yes?" he said hopefully.

"No.  More potion and back to bed."

Not having much choice in the matter, he did as he was told.

When he next awoke his head was mostly clear, his stomach was noisily pointing out that he hadn't eaten in at least a day, and Harry was missing from the other side of the bed.  It was also clearly approaching evening again.  Ron got up and discovered to his horror that not only was he naked but he was also still filthy from the previous night's adventure.  A hot shower improved his outlook immensely, although he was disconcerted to look in the bathroom mirror and find himself with what would normally be a month's growth of beard.  Was this a consequence of the rite?  If so, it was an odd sort of side-effect.  He shaved it off, not entirely without regret, and noting as he did so that there were a few dark whiskers in the washbasin which suggested Harry had had the same problem.

Clean and dressed, he went downstairs.  The main hall was bustling as the long dinner table was set and there were more people around than he remembered.  Then he was spotted and a ragged cheer set up.  Ron froze for a moment, suspecting mockery, but he was grabbed by Susan and Joe and his back was patted heartily by everyone who could reach - which included, to his surprise, Harry's father and uncles.  Then Gwyn appeared, beaming, and Harry popped up too, grinning at him.

All things considered, Ron was a little surprised himself by the first question out of his mouth: "How's the tree?"

It was rather embarrassing to see just how grateful Gwyn was.

"The oak is healed, Herne be praised," he told Ron.  "There's barely a scar in the bark where the spike was and your arithmancer here - " he nodded to Peter who was standing on the edge of the group, looking interested, "he tells me the poisons are gone from the main trunk.  There might be some loss of minor twigs and leaves over the summer, but nothing of account.  And the wound where we removed the branch might have been made years ago."

"The mistletoe seems to have recovered too," James added.  "Really a very good night's work."

"How's your head now?" Nancy asked him.

"Not so bad, thanks …"

"You're just saying that 'cause you don't want to drink any more potions," Harry teased him.  He reached out and brushed his knuckles over Ron's jaw.  "You shaved it off!  You had a brilliant beard when I woke up."

Ron rubbed his chin self-consciously.  "Did you?"

Harry sniggered.  "Yeah, it looked really stupid!"

Ron grinned.

"Your hair's longer as well," Susan added.

"Great.  Mum'll hit me with a Barber Charm the minute I walk through the door."

"You don't live with your mother anymore," Lily told him with a smile.  "You can do what you like with your hair."  She tweaked a lock in the nape of his neck.

"Tell Mum that," Ron said ruefully.

"I hope you're hungry now," Nancy told him, and she was smiling too.  "Dinner's ready."

That was good to hear.  "I could eat the table …"

It was the first time Ron had tasted rabbit or pigeon, but he was hungry enough not to be bothered by the idea of unfamiliar game meats.  He wasn't the only one with a hearty appetite; Harry was putting away his fair share as were most of the coven.

"It's the Cup of Life potion," Hermione told them distractedly; she was trying rather unsubtly to eavesdrop on the conversation at the other end of the table, where James and Lily had their heads together with Nancy, Gwyn and Rowen.  "It suppresses your appetite for a while, but when it comes back you want to eat everything in sight."

"Before or after you chuck up?" Ron asked her dryly.  He hadn't forgotten his first visit to the bathroom.

"It only makes you sick if you drink a lot of it, like any alcoholic drink.  It's made with mead."

"Of course, you have to drink a lot of it to be in a proper trance state for the Great Rite," Joe added, "which is a problem."  He grinned at them.

"I've never really wanted to take part in a Great Rite," Sirius commented amiably, helping himself to more bread, "which is odd really, because getting whacked out on dodgy potions and having tonnes of sex sounds like a good deal, on the face of it."

Hermione frowned at him.  "It's not about sex or getting high," she said.

"And that's the problem right there," Sirius agreed.  "People take it so seriously."

"You're supposed to take it seriously," Hermione said, annoyed.  "It's not something to be treated lightly, it's an important rite!"

"See?" Sirius said to Remus, who was sitting next to him.  "We've been doing it wrong.  You're not supposed to have fun when you have sex."

"Behave," Remus told him sternly.

Sirius winked at Ron.

"He's winding you up," Remus told Hermione, when she opened her mouth to argue with Sirius.  "Don't give him the satisfaction!"

She subsided, looking indignant.

Sirius pretended to look injured.  "I'm not a wind-up artist!"

"Not much," Ron said before he could stop himself, and Harry laughed at his uncle's surprise.

After the meal there were more than enough hands to help with clearing up, and Harry was able to separate Ron from the others and take him outside for a chat.

It was fully dark out there, but Ron had another handy spell he'd learned at the Pink Kneazle Wizards' Club, one that took the light made by a simple lumos charm and converted it into a concentrated ball of light that could be directed to lead the way down a dark path.  "You need this sort of thing at the club, because it's only open at night and the lighting's a bit dim in parts of the building," he remarked.

"I reckon you did all right out of working at that place," Harry commented, as they strolled down one of the paths through the orchard.

"They were pretty good to me," Ron said.  "I didn't mind working there.  I mean - yeah, it was weird and I don't really get why people find that kind of thing a turn on, but," he shrugged, "it's their money and it's not like anyone working there was being forced to do stuff they didn't want to do.  I reckon Fuchsia enjoyed it a bit too much, to be honest, but that's his business.  They paid me reasonable money to fix their stuff and I did the job, and everyone was happy.  I was a bit pissed off when Gran turned up and started chucking her weight around," he added, frowning at the remembered grievance.  "I love her and everything, but that's only the second time I saw her in years, and she goes and gets me sacked!"

"What really happened with the twins?" Harry asked.

Ron shrugged.  "I got fed up of being treated like a moron.  They pretty much left me to manage the shop single-handed between Christmas and New Year, which was hell because all the kids were coming in to stock up before they went back to Hogwarts.  Then one of their mouthy smart-arsed friends turned up and pissed me off.  We had a bit of a barney about it and I walked."

"I'm glad you did."

"Yeah.  Dunno why I stuck with 'em as long as I did, to be honest."

"Dad said we'll take off in the morning, fairly early," Harry said.  "When we get to wherever it is we're going, Dumbledore'll explain everything properly.  You'll get paid for working with us, by the way.  You won't get rich on it, but all your expenses are paid and you'll have a wage too."

"Who coughs for that?" Ron asked, interested.  He was privately a little relieved to hear that he'd get paid.  He wouldn't necessarily have walked out straightaway if it was unpaid, for being with Harry meant more to him, but everyone needed to eat, wear clothes and have a few Sickles to spend occasionally.

"There are people who back what we do - I don't know who they are, but Dumbledore's been working with them for years."

"Is it true he could have been Minister of Magic?"

Harry shrugged.  "Supposedly.  He was headmaster at Hogwarts for a few years too, but he handed over to McGonagall so he could concentrate on the Order."

"Order?"

"The Order of the Phoenix.  It'll all be explained."

Ron accepted this.  He could have argued, but he was still quite tired from the previous night's activities.

After a minute or two of silence, Harry suddenly nudged up against his side and insinuated himself under Ron's left arm.  He tucked an arm around his waist and after a moment of surprise, Ron slung his arm around Harry's shoulders.

"Are you okay?" Harry asked him earnestly.

"Yeah, of course.  Why wouldn't I be?"

"Well, you know - the weird stuff last night.  It was pretty odd, even for me.  That potion was stronger than I'm used to."

Ron considered the matter for a few moments.  True, there had been all the visions, the sense of being in two places at once, more sex than he would have believed himself capable of even in his most braggardly moments, and the actual healing of the tree which he still couldn't entirely get his head around.  And the hangover, of course, which was a good argument never to participate in a Great Rite ever again.

"You don't have to talk about it," Harry added.

"Not sure there's a lot to say really," Ron said.

"Probably not.  Does it bother you, though?"

"What do you mean?"

"You usually top," Harry said dryly.

"Oh!"  That was one of the things he would have preferred not to talk about, especially his own disturbing willingness to go along with it at the time.  "Well … don't get used to it, all right?" he said, trying to make it sound jokey.  "I'm the boss here."  Harry pinched him in a sensitive spot, making him yelp.  "Hey!"

"Don't argue with the Young Stag!"

"Excuse me, Your Horniness!"

Harry laughed and pulled Ron to halt, dragging him around to face him and pulling his head down so that he could kiss him, hard.

"Come on, we'd better get back up to the house."

~~~

Ron suspected that had it not been for their hangovers, the Green Lord Coven would have thrown a party that night to celebrate the healing of their Holy Oak.  They still managed to be very convivial that evening, albeit without the assistance of alcohol, and he got the impression that when the missing members returned home there would be a party anyway.

This was confirmed early the following morning when Gwyn and Nancy insisted that they must all return - all of them, although Harry and Ron especially - for the next Sabbat, when there would be a proper celebration of the coven's good fortune.  Nancy went one step further than that; while Gwyn was talking to James and the others, she took Ron and Harry to one side and told them that the coven would welcome their return at any time, both as visitors and as members of the house if they wished.

Ron let Harry do the talking in response to this, expressing their pleasure without making any firm promises, but he was rather gratified.  He liked the coven and felt comfortable there.  It would be disappointing not to return sometime ... although he made a mental vow never to be talked into participating in a Great Rite again, or not as a main participant at any rate.

Eventually they all gathered up their packs and broomsticks, and Harry took his owl Hedwig to the end of the pathway to send her off ahead of them.  Only Gwyn and Nancy had got up to see their visitors off in the chilly dawn, but since it was clear that they were expected to return at some point there was no disappointment that Rowen and the others weren't there.

"Well ... fair travels and blessings bright upon you all," Nancy said, clasping their hands in turn and exchanging kisses on the cheek with Lily.  She kissed Ron and Harry too, smiling warmly at them.

"Herne go with you all," Gwyn said, clasping hands with each of them.  "May he bless the work you do and grant you all come safely back here soon."

"Ron, you're with me," Sirius said, and Peter gestured to Harry.

The last thing Ron saw before they Apparated was Nancy and Gwyn raising their hands in farewell; his raised his own in response as he took hold of Sirius's arm, and felt the familiar unpleasant sensation of Apparition.

The House of the Green Lord vanished.

End Part 4