20. MA
The next morning, Minerva paced the courtyard awaiting her mother's return. She was to come by carpet, a much smoother ride than broom slings or even a carriage pulled by winged horses. When she saw the tiny black square against the gray sky, her heart went to her throat, and her hands with it, clasped tightly together, as if in prayer.
The woman who emerged from the carpet-bed, helped by Healer Kirk herself, looked much changed from Minerva's last sight of her: pale, but calm, her hair very short and flecked with gray. Minerva remembered it six months back as shoulder-length and dark brown, but matted with perspiration and spittle. She could still see her mother's lips drawn tightly back from her teeth in a rictus of desperation, her eyes wide and pleading as she was forcibly restrained from throwing herself off the balcony in Da's library. It had taken Da, and Filch and his wife Belda, who had come to tea, to subdue her.
This woman, still her mother, but so different, looked at Minerva with concentration and something like hunger, yet she did not move. She looked like a young forest animal, not sure if it was safe to out into the open. The right course in such cases, Petey had told her, was not to make any sudden movements, lest one scared the poor creature away. But months of longing had taken their toll. Minerva could not restrain herself. She flung her arms out in an impulsive gesture of welcome. Surprisingly, her mother did not flinch, but mirrored her movement, though it made her stagger a bit against the steadying hands of her attendant. Minerva ran to her and buried her face wordlessly in her mother's robe. She would not sob, nor cry, nor even sigh, but just hold on for a bit and be grateful.
They all went into the house, she and Da and Goodie and the Healer, and got Ma settled in her room, a pleasant one on the ground floor, next to the kitchen. Filch had converted it from a little-used parlor. It looked out on the courtyard. Some of the farm hands had fashioned a rockery under one window with a pretty little waterfall-- magically sustained of course--and flowers galore.
Iffie McGonagall had tea in her room that night, and her husband and daughter joined her afterwards for a short time. Da brought Ma up-to-date on Minerva's education, the aunts' doings, and his latest inventions. It felt like old times--not the best of them perhaps--but it would do for now.
"Have you seen my mother at all, Jupiter dear?" Ma asked near the end of the evening.
"I've had a letter from her," said her husband, to Minerva's surprise. "She asked after you and would like us to visit when you're feeling better…but if you'd rather not…"
"Oh, no my dear, I want to...I must see her."
"After Yule, perhaps," said Da tonelessly.
~*~
The days passed and Minerva watched avidly for signs that Ma had drawn herself up out of the well of sadness for good. They started having family over, an aunt or two at a time, except for Charlamaine who was thankfully out of town on some scheme or other. Aunt Charlamaine had never much cared for Ma. Minerva didn't know if it was because of her mother's Muggle upbringing or her long-standing illness or something else. Her aunt had always seemed uncomfortable with weakness of any kind, which she tried to cover up with a kind of forced compassion, but the uncomfortableness, and a degree of contempt, always somehow leaked through that facade. It would surely have been hard on Ma to have to endure an afternoon of sympathy from Da's oldest sister.
Minerva made special treats for her mother, the highlight of which was her first-ever haggis. Goodie opined that one could read a lass's heart in the haggis she made with her own hands. Minerva figured this must be an old hag's tale because hers turned out peppery, though with a hint of sweetness, from the currants she'd added in a last-minute burst of inspiration. Ma called it 'full-flavored' and liked that the vegetables were firm, not overcooked, with just enough meat to sustain a body through an honest day's work. It made her want to get back into the kitchen herself, and by her seventh day home, she did just that, donning her work robes and squeezing in between Minerva and Goodie at the table. They made bannocks and a soup of vegetable marrows, and played the tattie-peel game for auld lang syne, although Minerva was way too old to be fooled now.
Her school lessons came regularly by owl, and twice a week the kitchen was converted into a potions lab with Goodie helping her. Together they made, in turn, a maceration of frog's eggs and stump water to cure warts, a cleansing drink to mitigate the effects of billywig stings, drops to change eye color, a lozenge to curtail snoring, and warming powders to sprinkle over one's gloves in nippy weather. She owled samples of her work to her teacher and hoped for decent marks. Hildy Bagshot claimed that Madam Mossbane was more than a bit erratic in her evaluation of their work. The Mint-Monkeypuzzle Infusion they'd made on the first day of classes was a case in point. Everyone had been given full marks, even Raymie and Suze, whose result had not resembled in the slightest the description given in the book. In fact, Suze had confessed later that she'd misread one of the bottles in the ingredients cupboard and not used mint at all, but something called creme de menthe. Well, it had smelled like mint, said Raymie. But the homework papers they'd all handed in at the next session came back graded "Troll"--every single one! Then there was the research on leaching techniques they'd had to do the first weekend. Raymie had copied his word for word from Suze, but their teacher seemed not to have noticed--she gave Suze an "Acceptable" and Raymie an "Outstanding."
Dr. Fancourt, the astronomy teacher, had her keep a journal and draw the phases of the moon as it appeared in the sky at midnight every night for one full cycle. Minerva also had to observe the effect of its light on one plant, one animal, and one inanimate of her choice. She chose, respectively, a clump of silver moss that grew on the forked trunk of the beech tree, a huge toad that lived behind the rain barrel at the kitchen door, and an onyx ring left her by her witch grandmother Johanna Macnair McGonagall. The moss she noticed changed color in the different phases, becoming more reddish as the moon waxed, and, when it turned full, evincing tiny, sweet-smelling spore-stalks that attracted fairies. The onyx was pleasantly warm to the touch at full moon, grew colder and colder as it waned, and was positively icy by the new moon. The toad just stayed fat, grumpy, and hard to catch no matter what the phase. And it would pee or vomit spitefully in her direction whenever she tried to examine it.
~*~
"Jupiter, this experiment of Minerva's reminds me of that time we visited Greenland," said Ma at dinner one evening.
Minerva had come in dripping with toad-slime for the third night in a row, and was being Scourgified by Goodie at the kitchen sink before being allowed to join the family at table.
"How so, Iffie dear?"
"Well, not the ick, so much as the method. Do you remember? We stayed at that Healers' training facility at North Star Bay...on the advice of the twins, I think. I had to keep a journal of my reactions to the treatment to show to the mediwitch on duty every day we were there."
"Tell me about it, Mama," said Minerva as she took her seat, now looking and smelling relatively clean.
"It was one of our first attempts at curing my...disablity. It's called Auroratherapy. You know what the Northern Lights are, don't you?" Minerva nodded. "Well, their maginetic vibrations are supposed to be able to jiggle your brain cells about...dislodge residual curses...diffuse unhappy memories...to give you a fresh start, so to speak."
"We learned about the Northern Lights in Astronomy," said Minerva brightly. "Their technical name is Aurora Borealis. They have great...psychologic potential, though their...unpredictability...and remoteness...makes them less useful than moonglow as a magical...stimulus."
Iphigenia McGonagall took a long, admiring look at her daughter. "I can see school has changed you a great deal already."
"It's just that...well...Doctor Fancourt has us memorize facts from her books sometimes. I'm not always sure what they mean. But tell me about your trip. What's Greenland like?"
"Not green, that's for sure," said her father with a snort. "And cold as a yeti's hind end. But your professor's perfectly right. Those Northern Lights were a wee bit more powerful than we expected."
"What do you mean?"
"He means they cured me quite nicely," said her mother. "I felt better than I had in ages...no nightmares at all...and my appetite came back..."
"But it was their music that gave you the urge to go bobbing about on that confounded glacier."
"What music?" asked Minerva.
Her mother sighed at the memory--with pleasure, Minerva thought. "It's this heavenly sound that accompanies the aurora. The lights appear in the west at sunset and gradually rise and intensify into all the colors you can think of...rippling and flashing and flowing and folding over themselves like silk banners in a breeze. And as they rise, this sound comes out of them ..like so many silver chimes set to ringing...delicate and clear and a little bit wild. A thrill goes through you, and you find you simply must obey their cadence. You can't help but dance. It is delightful."
"Delightful! Dangerous, I'd say."
"What do you mean, Da?"
"I mean those Lights had your mother mesmerized to the point where she waltzed out onto the ice of the bay one night while she was indulging her Muse. The section she was on broke off from the main sheet. She would have been swept out to sea on an ice floe if I hadn't been keeping an eye on her."
"I don't remember that," said Ma.
"You wouldn't. You were out cold by the time I'd accio-ed you back to shore. But there was this blissful smile on your face...like you'd been rolling about in a nestful of Billywigs."
"The sensation was similar, now I come to think of it. but I didn't put that in my journal."
"Did you go anywhere else?" asked Minerva.
"Not that time," said Ma, "because I was feeling so good. Your father was...we both were sure I was cured."
"Och, I just wanted to get you home safe from that damned tingling sensation," said Da gruffly, but there was a smile on his lips.
"I think it was the next Spring that we went out again. To Tibet it was."
"Aye. I remember the brochure: Experience the relaxing herbal teas and specialized diets of the lama shamans…Traditional magic passed down through countless generations…Snow-covered mountains soar above you like castle towers… et cetera, and so forth."
"But, alas, we didn't stay long," said Ma, "I was allergic to the dragon curry you see..."
"Ah, yes, the curry. Too bad. That was the best part of the trip for me." Da patted his belly as he savored the memory
"It would be." Ma poked him, but her hand lingered on his arm in something like a caress as she continued. "So we went on to Germany, didn't we? To Max Spudmore's favorite spa."
"Aye, auld Max. Whenever he'd had a wee dram too much in the biergartens of Bavaria, he'd take a course of soaks and tonics in these subterranean sulfur baths that he swore would straighten out a donkey's hind legs."
"You never told me that," said Ma. "You said he took his aged mother there to cure her delirium."
"Delirium tremens, my dear." He winked at Minerva. "The old lady loved her whisky, she did."
"But I was not, and never have been, a pub-crawler." Ma made as if to slap his face, but Da grabbed her wrist.
"The baths are reputed to cure all kinds of mental...er...insufficiencies, Iffie dear."
"Well, they didn't...work...so well on me...did they?" Ma was struggling to wrest her hand from Da's grasp, but it didn't seem she was trying very hard.
"Why, Ma?" asked Minerva, fascinated that her parents were having an actual argument. "What happened?"
"The sulfur in the water turned my skin a wrinkly green. After two days, I looked just like a Moke."
"But a lovely Moke—with hazel eyes," offered her father, trying to keep a straight face.
"It's not funny, Jupiter!" Iffie made a motion with her other hand, which, if it had held a wand, would surely have taken his head off.
"No, of course it isn't, my dear. But at the time..."
"At the time, you whisked me off to another place." Iffie's face softened. "I can't remember which...but it was nicer…"
"And much more effective," said Jupiter. He drew her hands together and kissed them. She stopped struggling.
"Where?" asked Minerva.
"Japan," said her father, a dreamy look in his eyes. "That cure was the best ever. And the free sake didn't hurt either."
"What's sack-ey?" asked Minerva.
"Never mind, dear," said her mother. "I remember now, Jupiter. There was moon-bathing, and they rolled me in hibiscus petals and jasmine. It was quite lovely."
"You were quite lovely," corrected Da.
"Did it work?"
"Not long enough," said her mother. "Shortly after we got back I had one of my worst bouts ever."
"But we didn't go straight home," said her father. "We went to America."
"Why?" asked Minerva. "If you were feeling so good?"
"We'd never been there," said Da simply. "And your mother was curious about the Snake Dancers."
"Yes, another brochure talked about these shamans in the Ozark Mountains who capture great poisonous snakes that have rattles in their tails. And, can you imagine? They drape these snakes over their shoulders and dance with them. Sometimes they even...kiss them...right on the mouth. It sounded so impossible. I just had to see if it were true."
"Was it?" Minerva was trying to imagine the scene: a roaring bonfire perhaps, and witches and wizards gathered around it in strange feathered costumes like pictures of Red Indians in a Muggle magazine Magnus had once showed her.
"Yes," said Da dramatically. "The snakes were huge. And fanged. And noisy. And there were drummers drumming and they were very noisy. And the people bounced about in time with the drumming with the snakes coiled around their necks, hissing and rattling...that is, the snakes were hissing and...like this." He got up and started towards her, gyrating about and waggling his arms, a look of intense pain on his face. Minerva giggled. He looked like he had been blasted with a double dose of Inkhorn's Incessant Itch Powder.
"Stop that, Jupiter!" said his wife. She was trying hard to keep her mouth serious, but the dimple in her cheek gave her away. "Snakes are beautiful creatures, Minerva dear. Sinuous and graceful. And their coloration is quite remarkable. Great stripes and diamonds that look like they've been painted on. I did so enjoy watching them."
"Watching them?! You joined in the bloody dance and only just escaped being bitten yourself."
"Did I really? And did you save me that time as well?" There was a mocking note in Ma's voice and a gleam in her eye that tickled Minerva.
"No, some old crone grabbed me as I was about to get up. Told me in that awful accent of theirs that it was bad luck to interrupt the ceremony. So I had to watch and pray you wouldn't start hugging one of the slimy beasts yourself. Somehow you managed to survive until you got close enough for me to pull you down."
"So that was the reason. I thought you just wanted to snuggle. But they're not slimy at all--the snakes I mean..."
They went on this way for some moments. Half the time it seemed they forgot that she was there. Minerva was enthralled. She had never heard her parents, or any grown-ups for that matter, talk like this to each other, playful and joshing, but with a hint of something more, a mysterious relationship, more intense than mere friendly affection.
After dinner Ma didn't retreat to her room after dessert, but stayed to help Minerva with her studies for a bit, then went for a walk outside with Da.
While helping to clean the kitchen, Minerva questioned Goodie closely about Ma's 'cures.' How many more attempts had there been? Could she think why they didn't work? Goodie remembered only one other such trip, to a famous 'witch doctor'--as the Muggles called them--in Rhodesia, recommended by Lord Macnair. Minerva wondered if it was the same place his Lordship had found that Shrinking Potion she'd heard Waldon talking about.
Goodie remembered because it was the one time she'd been permitted to go along. The shaman had diagnosed the Mistress with something he called the deeping doubt and recommended that she be coated in diamond dust and purged with viper venom. She endured the first step fairly well, even reveled in the glistening of her skin as she strolled about in the African sunshine. But Jupiter himself balked at the venom therapy when Goodie heard from another patient she was trading recipes with that the chances of mortality were distressingly high, even for magical folk.
Minerva went to bed that night very glad that Da had tried so hard to help Ma, but gladder still that Ma hadn't taken the viper venom. She fell asleep lulled by the sounds of their laughter echoing up through her casement window.
Childhood's End by spiderwort
Chapter Notes: Her mother comes home from the hospital--finally. It's what Minerva's always wanted deep down--a normal life with two normal parents.