Their first stop was a stationery supply store called Scrivenshaft’s. Minerva was delighted by the variety of writing materials available in the larger world: Rainbow Dyes, inks that changed color with your mood, Self-Sharpening Calligraphy Nibs that could also adjust their thickness and angle at a word, Dictation Hands that would write whatever you told them to. The more advanced varieties could even make copies. But more intriguing and useful were the Enhancement Pens. They corrected spelling and grammar and inserted grown-up words and thoughts into your writing to make it more mature. Minerva remembered Petey Macnair had once used one to forge a note from his father to get him out of some kind of school trouble.
She saw a clerk demonstrating the latest in Endless Parchment to a customer. No matter how far you pulled it out there was always more on the roll. But she resisted temptation and bought only enough ordinary parchment, ink, and quills for the first term. She could replenish at Christmas after she opened her presents. The McGonagall aunts were famous for their highly practical gifts. As a new student, she could expect to receive little else besides books and school supplies--from the relatives at least.
After a trip to Bones's Brooms to drop off her fag, they turned in at a side street to Guthrie and Gwynn, the local robe shop. Giggie’s uncle was part owner, and Minerva was sure of a discount as well as free alterations. Jacko Gwynn was in that day, and saw to their needs personally.
“Three sets of work robes in black gabardine and a pointed cap. That’s usual. And I could set you up with a cape and hood with the family crest in a nice wool-silk blend if you like.”
Goodie checked her purse and nodded, then inquired discreetly after the family’s health and activities. Bachelor Jacko was full of stories about his nieces and nephews, especially Gig, who was his favorite. He praised her fashioning of the goal net at the Macmillan farmstead. She was showing signs of becoming an excellent weaver, and once she got some charm-work under her belt, she could have a job in his shop any time she liked.
Minerva liked Jacko. He had a wealth of stories to tell and would regale anyone who would listen with tales of magical beasts and beings of impossibly grandiose attributes. Yet his manner was so compelling that he always left children pleasurably frightened and their elders shaking their heads in wonderment. “Aye, that Jacko,” they’d say, pretending to be unmoved, “Black Irish for sure, with a tongue full of blarney.”
Indeed Jacko had the thick, curly, blue-black hair of his Erse-speaking ancestors, and unusual hazel eyes, and he liked to set them off with brightly colored robes. Today he sported a calf-length azure gown over pine green pantaloons, and strode about, measuring and hemming, mumbling snatches of gossip through a mouth full of pins.
“By-the-by, Minerva,” he whispered in her ear while Goodie visited the Ladies’, “Seen anything unusual in the forest around Macmillan’s lately?”
“N-no.” Minerva sensed the onset of a revelation, and she looked full into Jacko’s eyes. They looked almost golden, and reminded her of the way Ma’s eyes shone when she was excited.
“Well, I heard a rumor, just a rumor mind you, that there’s a strange creature lurking about the vale.”
“What is it? A bear?”
“Now you know there’ve been no bears seen in the Highlands since before the last Goblin Rising. And any that might have been left, Duncan McNair will have stuffed and mounted in his den.”
That was surely true. Laird McNair was a great hunter and had many trophies.
"Not a Hairy McBoon--”
Jacko squinted as if considering this. “Noooo. So far as I know, no Quintaped has ever yet escaped the Isle of Drear. They say this monster--if monster it be--is two-legged, and thin and hairy, and tolerable fast. Magnus says it shines like silver in the moonlight and makes a strange noise…unlike any heard in these parts.”
“Oh. Magnus.” Magnus MacDonald was a great talker, but nothing much ever came of his boasts.
At that second, Goodie Gudgeon returned and bustled Minerva off to the pub for tea.
They enjoyed buttercress sandwiches and gillywater while they waited for the alterations on her robes to be completed. Then they visited the Hogsmeade bookstore and managed to find a copy of every textbook she still needed, except one--Transfiguration for Beginners--which Dugald’s mother could pick up for her in London. In spite of scary reports of the dodgy characters lurking in Diagon Alley, the Macmillans at least didn’t seem to be put off. In fact, Dugald had already Flooed there once by himself and hinted he could be persuaded to take Minerva sometime, an offer she resisted with a snort and a comment that she didn’t need a great overgrown sheepdog herding her about.
They collected their purchases and were returning to the pub when Minerva remembered her broomstick. Goodie glanced at her watch and said the Master'd have nought to eat tonight if she stayed a whit longer. So Minerva left her packages for her nurse to carry back in the Floo and returned to Bones’s to retrieve her newly enhanced broom.
~*~
“Here it is, Miss. Looks like Bobby’s got it nicely polished up for you. I’ll put it on your father’s account, shall I?”
“Yes, thanks.” Minerva looked her sweep all over. The Boneses weren’t the brightest Billywigs in the wizarding world, but they knew their brooms. And Bobby Bones, who had barely scraped through Hogwarts, could take a broom apart blindfolded and put it back together without a twig or spell out of place, or so it was said.
“Best try it out before you go on home. I’m sure Bobby air-tested it, but the owner knows his”ah”her fag best,as we say. Just take her up over the mountain there a bit. There’s no Muggles about for miles.”
Minerva was doubtful about his plan, but she was impatient to get this right the first time. Who knew when there’d be time to bring the broom back to Hogsmeade if she found the finish slowed her turns or something equally unacceptable.
~*~
It was a pleasant afternoon, if warmer than usual. As she kicked off into the air, Minerva felt the thrill of flight, and something more--an unusually compelling curiosity. She’d never been over to the north side of the mountains before. She surveyed the Hogwarts school--her school now-- on its great massif. It would make a clear landmark for her return. She flew out boldly, riding east and north, following a line of soft-looking green and gray mountain tops. She’d just go a little way, put her fag through its paces, and then turn back.
But beyond those bland, featureless mounds lay a wide erosion-scored plateau, multi-hued and dotted with shining lochs, a grand and lonely sight. This was followed by more mountains separated by odd, rounded valleys, and beyond those a stretch of pinkish clay waste, strewn with boulders. At its far edge, some pale, rounded peaks poked their heads above sharp, darker crags, like balding warlocks in a coven of pointy-hatted witches. On her left, far in the distance, she was just conscious of the soothing undulations of the mountains. And beyond them, unseen but felt, like a great rent in the land--Loch Ness.
Every vista promised one better over the next ridge, so she naturally traveled further than she’d planned. When she saw clouds to the east tinged with pink, the reflection of a glorious sunset, she knew it was time to be heading home. Her broom seemed to be flying well. If anything, it was faster and more responsive than she remembered it. But then she hadn’t put it through any heavy testing, taken as she was by the wild beauty of the land around her.
She turned about in a gentle arc and took a last longing look at the mountains. It was dusk when she finally made out the spires of Hogwarts. Goodie would be angry, but the things Minerva had seen on her ride were worth a hundred lectures on punctuality. She angled her fag downward for the descent into Hogsmeade, willing the Brake to take hold.
~*~
“Pa, where’s the McGonagall fag?”
“Gone, my boy. Lass took it out for a test-run.”
“No--oh no, Pa, I weren’t finished with it yit.”
“Whyever not, son? It looked to be in perfectly grand shape to me”-though a mort small. But that’s inventors for you, always making some new…”
“Pa, that’s not what I mean.”
“Well, what do you mean, my boy? You followed the directions on the can didn’t you?”
“Yes, Pa. I removed all the charms: the Cushion, the Brake, the Accelerator. It’s a dandy, is that Accelerator Charm... And I give it three coats, like you said to.”
“Well, then where’s the problem? It was dry enough, and fairly flexible. I bent it acrost my knee, and it twanged right back, no cracks er nothin …”
“Please, Pa. I was able to put the Cushioning Charm and the Accelerator back, but”I don’t know”the Braking Charm wouldn't take hold. The fag’s just too small. I don’t know how Maister McGonagall managed to fit it on in the first place…”
~*~
Instinctively Minerva pulled up on the head of her sweep and shot past the village, barely missing a hill on its outskirts. It got caught in a gust of cooling air and plunged towards some very uncomfortable-looking boulders. Once again, she grasped it hard with her knees and jerked its head upwards, but this exposed the tail-end to other currents rising off sun-warmed rock, and made it buck like an angry centaur. And the Braking Charm was just not there. She bent closely over the stick and coaxed it into a course parallel with the slope. Better that than an abrupt meeting with the ground.
But now she found herself accelerating down the mountainside. Her feet began to brush against the tops of evergreens. Their shadowy depths held who knew what dangers: briar patches, outcrops of granite, beasts with fangs and horns and claws, the kind--magical or not”that Jacko Gwynn populated his stories with.
She could hardly see at all now in the gathering dusk, and wondered in a moment of panic if it might not be better just to slide off her broomstick and hope wandless magic would set her down in the top of a friendly fir. But McGonagall grit and a horror of abandoning her fag won out and she clung on. The suppleness of that stick, so useful on the Quidditch pitch, was a positive liability out here on the mountainside. The wind plucked at it as at a harp-string, and it responded with a strident whine that rose steadily, ominously in pitch. So she wrapped her arms and legs around it, trying to damp the vibration. At this rate her broom would shortly blast into splinters. And Minerva’s energy was draining away along with her courage.
Ahead of her, the darkness, which had been punctuated by pine and fir crowns, became smooth and unbroken like the surface of a great loch. Somewhere below, water rushed, echoing as in a hollow, and Minerva felt about her limbs the cold, sluggish down-draft of a deep valley. The wind, which had pushed her down the slope, now followed a new angle, an almost vertical drop over a precipice. It plunged Minerva and the withy-wand broomstick into that narrow darkness.