When the Leaves Have Fallen

Author: Atropos
Disclaimer: Etc.
Summery: A love story told from the point of view of the third student to the left. SS/HG
Disclaimer: Not Mine

There is a story that floats around Hogwarts like the early mourning mist. But, why should that surprise anyone? There have always been stories, legends, and gossip floating throughout the corridors of Hogwarts much like the constant Hogwarts ghosts.

One might mention thought, that this story is different. While other stories contain the deeds of brave wizards and witches this one is not about heroic bravo. This story has a different subject matter. The story also seems to have away of captivating and repulsing listeners at the same time. While this may be true, I am not ashamed to admit that this has been my favorite story since I was an ickle firsty.

In the time when my grandparents were young an epic battle was waged against a Dark Lord. A young wizard called "The Boy Who Lived" rose up to fight him. In the end the Boy Who Lived triumphed and destroyed the Dark Lord forever.

The victory was a tremendous relief for the wizard community, wither they stood for the side of "light" or in their hearts of hearts wanted the Dark Lord to triumph. It meant peace, which is just a shorter version of stability. But, while the triumph was well received and earned (by those that fought), it was not bloodless. Thousands upon thousands, good and evil, died horrible deaths.

While many choose to remember every victory in battle as good and glorious with trumpets blow, they are in fact, not. This victory was no difference. Rivers of magical blood flowed from the veins of witches and wizards. Some of this blood belonged to a certain student of Hogwarts.

She was said to be the most brilliant Hogwarts student of her age. Magically and mentally gifted if not gifted with beauty and grace. She was beloved to her friends, housemates, the Head of her House and while all the other teachers, expect for the Potions Master who seemed to have no love for any students save his own house, seemed to be fond of her in an scholarly way. This is why is came as the highest of surprises when the one to feel her death the most, was the fearsome Potions Master.

Those of Hogwarts past, and those of Hogwarts present, would say that he had no heart. But he did, and within his heart he loved the brilliant student. Not to say it was a pure, unselfish love. After all he'd been through (trading from the Death Eater camp to those of the light) who can say he could live another human being with the glory of an open heart? (Though it is highly doubtful that any one can love that way). His love may have been a selfish, dark love that was created out of his own personal need. But, it was love, which could count for something on the karmic scale of love.

I'm rambling and for that I must say I'm sorry. It has always been an unfortunate trait of mine. I have set out to tell a story yet I end up coloring it with my own insights before the time is right. For that I must ask forgiveness. Now it might be prudent if might continue.
It was during the very last battle (a very ironic bookish sort of ending don't you think?) that the girl fell to the killing curse. And there, there among the blood and carnage, the Potion Master came swooping down upon the body like the bat from Hell he supposedly was. With a gentleness that was perverse to the disguising scene they say he carried her corpse into the Forbidden Forest.

Even in times when you would expect all of the grounds of Hogwarts to be used to protect the students and develop a good offense the forbidden Forest stayed, well, forbidden. It was here they say that he toiled for days and nights practicing the darkest of the dark magics: Necromancy. Necromancy: the magic that if you can wield, is a badge of disturbed greatness. But it is a tricky magic. It twists away like an angry serpent from its keeper and not all have hands that are meant to handle snakes….
He succeeded, in part. For yes, his secret love was reclaimed by the living world as was his goal, but a terrible change had taken place. Instead of returning as a human witch as he'd hoped, she had came back as nymph. A magical creature eternally tied to a tree whose life depends on her and vice versa. In this case it was a magnificent white rowan that stood at the very edge of the forest.

Tree nymphs are notoriously shy around men, both wizard and muggle. For out of all the nymphs in the sea, air, and land they have lost the most to the race of man. They do have one weakness where men are concerned, music. For they can not resist the sound of a well played instrument. When the player starts they flock to him (or her) and dance until the player finally stops.

The Potions Master knew this and nothing would keep him from his chosen beloved. Certainly nothing as trifle as the mastery of an instrument.

Through out the winter of that year he practiced the flute well into the night. If anyone had dared to creep into the bowels of Hogwarts they would have heard the strained sounds of the music the Potions Master was trying so hard to create.

By the time of winter's first kiss he deemed himself ready. That night he purposely across the frosted snow unafraid into the Forbidden Forest. Within the forest he played and she danced.
As the wheel of time cycled and brought him into well-advanced age he went out played every night and every night she came and danced.

Again the seasons passed. The plants grew, the leaves fell, and the snow came, bitter and cold. I too came to Hogwarts, was sorted and stayed while the Potion Master grew as brittle as an iced tree branch,

It was within my sixth year at Hogwarts when I became a player of sorts in this morbid little drama. This was due to the fact that even wizards, no matter how powerful or stubborn, must bow to time.

Hogwarts and its grounds were in the midst of that short period of time between fall and winter. Following with his custom of past years the Potions Masters hobbled out across the frozen tundra to the white rowan that stands guard at the edge of the forest.

And I, unable to sleep, stood high in my tower room with my nightgown blowing so gothically and with frozen feet in front of the open window waiting unknowingly for the tale to come to cessation.

He sat down the same way he's always done since I've taken to lurking by my window. (I.e. my entire Hogwarts career) Slowly and gently yielding to his time wearied bones. He was very old even older then the headmaster. The delicate crystal flute rested on his lap clutched in his bony hands.

I stood there by the window watching him as he sat back resting against the tree that held his love. I stood and see how his head stilted slowly to the side dangling like a puppet with a broken string. I stood and observed the fine trickle of blood that ran out of his nose and down his neck, I stood by my open window and realized that after all his years of terrorizing students and being terrorized by his own daemons the Potions Master was dead.

That should have been it. Cessation. Finish. The hero is dead. The story is over. Roll the muggle movie credits. I still stood there, nightgown caught in the gale as surely as some unseen force caught my own mind. There I was mouth gaping in way that would send my mother into fits with my fingers pressed to the panes of the open windows.

It seems like eternity before anything happened. In reality it couldn't be more then a few minutes but at games like these reality is not an important player. Then something happened. As soon as it started I wished for again the blessed sounds of my own rasping breath then this. Anything then this. The only way I can describe this as the noise hell would make if it were sentient.

It started out as a low moaning. The sound rustled the trees and filled the air. The moaning increased as the rowan trembled violently. It would be nice to say that the movement was due to the breeze. It couldn't be. The quivering could only be a sign that she was going to come and Damnit, she wasn't happy.

The Nymph stepped from the rowan.

Have you ever seen a nymph? They look like us in a general sort of way. The way I can describe them as: are what a human girl would look like as her very best and happiest moment. Their teeth are whiter, their hair is more luxurious, and their skin is fairer. They are what each and everyone wants to look like deep within our souls.

This nymph's skin was whiter then the snow falling on her lover's body. Her mass of curling hair was intertwined with leaves and strangely, flowers. The snow fell gently on her naked body as she stared at the body blazingly obvious clothed in black with that thin trickle of blood.

After several moments' careful contemplation, she threw back her head and howled. Mouth wide open to the heavens, arms limp at her sides the screaming radiated across the Hogwarts ground.

The dogs down by the little hut started howling and a cat sitting on an opposite window ledge gave a full body hiss. The girls in my dormitory stirred into awareness just as I slammed the window back into its place, activating the silencing charm. The other girls, clearly not interested, (this is Hogwarts where not only does the impossible, possible so is the scary and demented.) fell back a sleep as I stood by the closed window with trembling legs.
I saw the nymph close her mouth. Her mourning song was clearly done. She knelt down digging her long fingers into the icy ground. She dug a deep hole near but still a distance from her tree. When the hole seemed to be to meet her approval the dead body was placed within the ground. She covered the hole, stomped on it, and then returned to her tree. All of this completed with less ceremony then you would expect from someone who just had to bury his or her love.

I returned to my cold bed. I spent the rest of the night listing to the grunts and moans that was my roommates sleeping noises. For some reason I felt like I was only biding my time in wait of some great and wondrous unknown reason.

Springtime took its along time getting to Hogwarts. It was weary process that depressed both the staff and the student body. It didn't matter how long it took, spring did come bringing with it a surprise.

The sun was just making the ice drip of the trees when I could finally make myself look out my room window instead of just giving it a fleeting glance.

There I was with hands on hips, breathing the clean spring air. I was breathing deeply and trying to blink the bright sun out of my eyes when I noticed something green from the corner of my eye. Squinting, I leaned out the opened window. What I saw almost made me fall out from surprise.

Growing from the grave of the Potions Master was a very small sapling. Something creepy to see growing on the grave of someone you know had died with a year. In any other case it would be only creepy, in this situation it presented me with possibility that maybe my beloved story was over yet.

While I stood there blinking, not from the sun but my own wonderment, the nymph slipped out of her tree. There she stood shaking out her limbs from their winter's disuse. Up till this pass summer she had been an active nymph, this winter had changed it. The, satisfied with her self she started her mission.

She sat on the defrosting earth hands against the little sampling. There she sat silent in both speech and movement. Then she began to hum.

It was a curious humming. It was deep like it started from her belly and then it radiated outward like her scream. The humming took up all the space in the air, which's the only way to describe it. It was one of those sounds that consumed you.

Hands pressed to the baby tree she sat humming and rocking on the soil. There she was doing an act that seemed so strange, even for a nymph, and so hard that sweat beaded out her body.

For while this action seemed strange it caused a marvelous reaction. The little sapling began to grow as she sweated, hummed, and rocked. What once was a baby was now a mature tree. An oak, to be precise.

I had stood and watched wood nymph magic. A magic that is as old and as fleeting the seasons themselves. Even now it causes shivers of delight to race down my spine. For a human wizard this would be one of the hardest magics, if not an impossibility. But, magical creatures have way of making the impossible, possible. (Excuse the cliché)

When the oak was at what seemed to be a mature stage the nymph released the trunk. She sank back onto the ground tried but happy. There she sat peering at the tree in wait of something. I, high up in the window, waited with her.

In a spot in the middle of the oak the bark seemed to stir. It was like watching a butterfly emerge from a cocoon. First one hand then the other followed by the legs exited the tree. A dark head came blinking into the light. The old Potions Master had returned to life as a youngish male nymph! (What is the correct term for a male nymph? He wasn't a satyr.)

I let go off the window a slid down the carpet in a whoosh. There I sat with knee bent and chin resting on the window ledge waiting like I had once did in my cold bed. This time I knew I was waiting for the end.

The newly united couple stood by their respective trees looking at each other with shyness created from their separation. I swore I saw tears glinting on the face of the former Potions Master's face.

Off in the distance I once again swore I heard the strains of a melody as the couple danced. As the night wore on I sat by the window watching them dance. There were a thousand things I should have been doing instead of this. But, still I sat there watching.

This is the end of my story. I may have told it in a horrendously clumsy way but I rest assure that I told it as well as I could. I'm sure there are thousands who could have done better but they are not me and were not there. In the end the story is remembered, even if is by a sixth year.


Thank you and please review on your way out.