Login
MuggleNet Fan Fiction
Harry Potter stories written by fans!

The Friar's Unexpected Army by Oregonian

[ - ]   Printer Table of Contents

- Text Size +

Story Notes:

A huge thank you to my beta readers who helped me get this story done by the deadline: Will, Elaine/Islastorm of Gryfffindor, and especially Nagini Riddle of Gryffindor, who rescues even my most wretched attempts.

For more about the background of this story, you can read Greenhouse Seven, also on my author page.

The Friar’s Unexpected Army

We were on the eve of battle, and never in my life or my death had I felt so helpless, so inadequate to the needs of the time.

Since my youth, I had been nothing but a simple friar, neither great nor learned, never a warrior or a leader of men, or of anyone, for that matter. During the skirmishes and wars between the English and the Scots during my lifetime, I always remained in my church, comforting and tending the wounded and praying for the end of violence. I was ignorant of the tactics of war, but not of its results.

All this changed in the year from the autumn of 1997 to the spring of 1998. As the resident ghost of Hufflepuff House at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, I saw the storm of war approaching like black clouds and an icy wind. Until then, I had never dreamed that this castle and these children would come under attack or that I would have to help defend it. But now the unthinkable was near, and it felt as if we were under siege.

I had many deep conversations with Professor Pomona Sprout, the Head of Hufflepuff House, during that year, in her office in Greenhouse Six, from where she presided as Professor of Herbology. She had instituted a new research course that year in Greenhouse Seven for the N.E.W.T. students, who were growing hundreds of dangerous plants; it was for training the students in the techniques of experimentation, she said, but I wondered about this radical change of curriculum during a year when perils and persecutions were multiplying daily. Perhaps there was more to it than she was revealing to me. But she was a wise and brave witch, and I trusted her.

Although the Hufflepuffs were my particular concern, I roamed the corridors that year to keep all the students safer by warning them if the Professors Carrow or Snape were approaching, and more than once I gave those persons misdirections, sending them far from the path of students scurrying to the shelter of their common rooms. I comforted the younger Hufflepuff students who were homesick, overwhelmed, or frightened, and gave them my ear. –Thank you, Friar,” they would often say. –You’re a good friend.”

And I tried to give encouragement to the older Hufflepuffs also, many of whom were bruised and injured from the violence that was occurring within the castle, some of it due to the discipline meted out by the Carrows, and some due to accidents which I attributed to the tension which made it difficult to concentrate. Wayne Hopkins, a Hufflepuff in that N.E.W.T. Herbology class, appeared in the Great Hall one day with a gashed scalp; he said he had stumbled and fallen while evading a wildly-thrashing tendril of Venomous Tentacula. –Those plants are tough customers,” he said. I just shook my ghostly head. I could not imagine what Professor Sprout was thinking, endangering the students by filling the greenhouse with hundreds of deadly plants.

The end of the siege came late on the night of May first, after my Hufflepuffs were in bed and things seemed quiet. Suddenly the whole castle was awakened and all the students were roused from their beds and hustled into the Great Hall in their nightclothes, cloaks or dressing gowns hastily thrown on. The castle was in turmoil, but everyone fell silent when Professor McGonagall announced that the war was about to begin and that the students would be evacuated. If any person questioned the crisis, the blood-chilling voice of Lord Voldemort erased all doubt. Only two tasks remained to us at that moment-to save the students and to defend the castle, and both tasks needed to be done instantly.

The mass exodus began. The Slytherin students moved out first, as rapidly as a large number of people can, filing along the aisles between the House tables while their prefects urged them with insistent voices, saying, –Hurry, hurry,” and a low buzz of whispered comments emanated from all over the room.

I knew the only thing that I could do, the only way that I could help. Untutored though I may have been in the art of war, I had finally realized what Greenhouse Seven was for. No, I had no wand, could cast no spells, could wield no weapon, but I was not completely useless. I left my place by the Hufflepuff table and rose up into the air so as to move over the lines of quick-stepping, pale-faced students and reach the great wooden doors of the entrance hall. I glided through the doors and went swiftly across the lawns toward the greenhouses, which loomed dark and stolid in the black night.

The castle’s strong walls were stoutly built of thick stone. They had withstood hurricanes, earthquakes…even time itself had not beaten them down. But the greenhouses were thin-walled, wooden, fragile. In an all-out battle they would be destroyed. They are doomed, I thought to myself as I approached them. But before they disintegrated in a heap of splinters and broken glass, they had one last offering.

I reached Greenhouse One and glided swiftly along the footpath to the structure at the end of the row, Greenhouse Seven, where the N.E.W.T. students had been doing their research all year long. Inside this greenhouse was my task. I glided through the door.

The greenhouse was dark inside, but that was to my advantage. My eyes, no longer fleshly organs, needed no light in order to see, and my pearly-white figure gleamed in the darkness as it never would have done in the light. I positioned myself in the middle of the empty space in the center of the room and looked around. Three of the four walls were lined by ranks of shelves and along the fourth wall were various kinds of greenhouse equipment in neat stacks, including commodious, low-sided wooden boxes, the type used to transport many potted plants.

Hundred of pots filled the ranks of shelves. It was as Wayne Hopkins had described to me during our friendly conversations during the school year. He and his fellow N.E.W.T. students had been growing these dangerous plants-Mandrakes, Venomous Tentacula, Snargaluffs, and Devil’s Snares, one hundred of each type-for use in research projects, and now, near the end of the school year, the plants had increased in size from tiny cuttings to full shrubs, giving the greenhouse the feel of a jungle in the night. The Venomous Tentacula and Devil’s Snares were waving their branches around restlessly, as if my arrival had upset them.

During my years of life as a friar I had heard many sermons, some delivered by master preachers who had the power to inspire, to stir up passions we had not known we had, and enable us to transcend our baser natures in an endeavor to achieve greater glory. You know that I have never been a great speaker, I silently prayed to them, but channel that power to me now.

–Plants of Greenhouse Seven,” I cried out, –I am the Fat Friar, the ghost of Hufflepuff House. It is the House of which your mistress, Professor Sprout, is the head. Hear me now, plants, you Mandrakes, you Snargaluffs, you Devil’s Snares, and you Venomous Tentacula. The moment for which you all have been intended has now arrived.”

I paused to see the effect of my words on the plants. I had no idea if they could hear or understand me. How sentient were these plants? Could witches and wizards talk to them? Were ghosts, like myself, on a different plane, a different level of connection? Did the plants harbor long-felt resentments for being kept in pots on shelves, manhandled and pawed by clumsy students? Or did they, like dogs, place some value on the company of humans? I had no idea. Maybe I was making a complete fool of myself, talking to plants. But was not all our resistance to Lord Voldemort just a fool’s errand, based on nothing more substantial than faith? And this moment here in the greenhouse was only faith writ large.

The plants seemed to be writhing a little more strongly, or maybe that was just my imagination. I spread my hands and continued to speak.

–Tonight is the final battle between the forces of good and the forces of evil. And we, all of us and all of you, are on the side of the good. In less than half an hour the fight begins, and everyone must do his part.

–For all my existence I have practiced peace, good will, friendliness, sympathy, forgiveness, but now is the time when we must all be bold, brave, and ready to give our all, even to the point of death. Our foe is one that does not respond to friendliness, sympathy, or forgiveness. He does not seek peace. He understands only war, and war we will give him.

–I will not deceive you-some will die. Some students will die, some teachers, some of our allies, and some of you. Mandrakes, you will be called upon to scream so loudly that our foes will be disabled. Venomous Tentacula, Snargaluffs, Devil’s Snares, your duty will be to attack, engulf, immobilize, even poison the Death Eaters and their foul allies, servants of Lord Voldemort.”

I fell silent again, both to give the plants a chance to ponder what I had said, if by some miracle they could really hear and understand, and to judge the effect of my words on them. In the dim expanse of the greenhouse it almost seemed to me as if their branches and tendrils were waving less.

Let it not be just my imagination, I prayed inwardly, and no prayer I ever uttered during my years of life on this earth was ever more heartfelt.

I turned my ghostly body to face first one wall, then another, as I spoke, so that no plants would think they were being slighted.

–Those who fall, men, beasts, or plants, will be accorded heroes, and they will be remembered whenever the story of our victory at Hogwarts is told. And we will have victory, I know it, because everyone will do his part.

–Very soon, within minutes, students and professors will arrive at these greenhouses. They will take those wooden trays and place all your pots on them and carry them into the castle. There will be your finest hour, our finest hour. When the students come, hold your branches in tightly. Hold them close and still. Let the students do their work safely and swiftly. Let this be the night when they carry you without having to use their wands. Forbear to touch them or sting them, because tonight we are allies united against our common foe.

–When the battle begins, we shall all unleash our fury. Then you can show the enemy how fierce and deadly you can be. You can teach them to fear your names.

–Plants, can you do this for me?”

I had said all I had to say. There was nothing more I could do. With my hands held out, palms upward as if asking a blessing, I turned left and then right, facing all the plants in turn, seeking a sign that they had heard and would help us.

The plants were utterly still. Not a branch or a tendril was moving. I stared with my eyes as wide as Galleons, slowly panning my gaze along rows of shelves. No, it was not my imagination.

But what did it mean? Had I won their loyalty and cooperation, or had my ponderous words merely put all of them to sleep?

I stood in the darkness, waiting, united in spirit with the plants, who also seemed to be waiting. Not for the first time in my tenure at Hogwarts did I envy the Bloody Baron. Now there was an imposing figure-tall, grim, warlike. Even Peeves respected him. The Baron should have been the one to deliver that speech, like an English king rousing his men against the French. Not a foolish figure like me. Not a short, round man with a tonsure haircut and a piece of rope for a belt, who had never held a sword nor fought in a battle. This moment had probably been my greatest self-deception, the desperate charade of a ghost who knew only too well his powerlessness and futility.

Nevertheless, I waited.

Running footsteps and excited voices were coming nearer. And like a fool who didn’t know when to stop, I addressed the plants once more.

–The students are almost here now. Remember what I said. Remember your role.” The final words of a soul who had no other hope.

And then the plants began to move again, but not waving their branches and tendrils around as before. They began to pull their branches inward toward their core. Moment by moment they became more rounded, more compact, and the spaces between the individual plants grew wider. Smaller, shorter, tighter. It was a sign.

The door burst open and a group of students tumbled into the greenhouse, wands alight. Neville Longbottom was at the head of them, but Wayne and several of my Hufflepuffs were close behind.

–Get out the big trays,” Neville barked, waving his wand toward the stack of wooden boxes along the fourth wall. –And everyone grab some earmuffs. Work in pairs so you don’t get hurt.”

As the students scattered to do his bidding, I touched him on the shoulder and felt him shudder involuntarily because of the icy sensation. He turned and looked at me.

–Friar!”

–Look at the plants,” I told him gently. –Nobody needs to worry about getting hurt.”

Neville stared at the plants in the pots nearest the door. They were the Venomous Tentacula, the –tough customers” that he, Wayne, Tracey, and Howe had been working with all year. But now each plant was huddled into a little compact bundle, a shape that Neville had never seen before.

–What…what’s the matter with them?” he stammered.

–Nothing,” I told him over the animated chatter of the other students. –But they know where they are going and what they have to do. Put them in the trays as fast as you can. They are ready.”

I glided out of the greenhouse. Behind me were the clattering sounds of pots being stacked into trays. My heart was aching with anticipatory grief for all the deaths that were going to occur. I needed to go back to the castle and hope that I could find something else useful to do. A lifetime of prayers for peace had not availed to prevent this war, and now I was in the thick of it.

Hope would rise with the sun-it had to, for the sake of the school and the students and the plants. I had promised them that. And next year, I would tell my tale. Pomona would let me come to her first year classes and tell the new students about the brave plants and how they did their part. How they lived and fought and died. How everyone and everything gave their all.