On the twelfth day of Christmas...
...my true love gave to me,
A baker's dozen of summer nights.
High Heaven
McLevy
Drama
FR-T
Edinburgh in summer is a staggering sight, the sun standing over Arthur’s Seat, gleaming on the cobbles. My own parish of Leith is… rather less pretty. Leith in summer has only one thing to distinguish it: the smell. The great and the good - or as great and good as Leith produces, which means money more than quality - usually try to leave the city in the hotter months, leaving it to the ruffians and rogues.
I am James McLevy, Inspector of Police, and I also stay. Leith is my protectorate and I must guard it.
It was nine days after we lost Bludger Bones in the sewers that we found him again. Bones was a hired thug, ten a penny in Leith, but he had an edge over the competition; he was prepared to kill. That made him almost a pennyworth on his own, and the fact that he was careful enough not to get caught might have commanded a tanner a time. That caution kept him out of my hands for far too long, but finally it failed him.
We had him, until a young constable decided that catching a murderer with blood on his hands was less important than keeping his uniform trousers clean.
I can’t say I blame him. He didn’t know Bones like I did, and the sewer did smell foul. And I can’t deny that he made the right choice. After all, when we found Bones in the river three nights later, he was dead of a fever, and presumably he caught that in the sewer where he ran to hide among the other rats.
One less killer on the streets of Leith; I suppose that is a type of justice, but I can not be satisfied. Justice should not be natural, for nature is an unreasoning beast who would have claimed that young constable as willingly as a thug like Bludger Bones. Let nature have her whims; justice is for the law.
The Garden Party
Harry Potter
Fluff
Implied Albus/Scorpius
FR-T
Hogwarts, July 2022
The students of Hogwarts stretched out and relaxed on blankets on the Memorial Lawns. The staff sat at a long picnic table on the mound, while smaller tables had been set up behind the blankets for the seventh years. That evening the children would sit at their long, House tables for the presentation of the House Cup, but as was traditional at the end-of-year garden party there were no Gryffindor blankets, nor Hufflepuff blankets, nor even were there as many all-Slytherin blankets as there had been last year.
Albus and Lily sat with Lily’s boyfriend, Zaccheus Myrth - her seventeenth true love in the past year - and a group of friends drawn from all four Houses. James of course was on the seventh-year tables.
Professor McGonagall stood up and lifted her wand to her throat. She looked as fragile and insubstantial as Scotch mist, but she still had a core of steel after ten years of retirement.
“Students of Hogwarts,” she said, the amplification charm carrying her voice effortlessly across the lawn. “Welcome to the twenty-second Hogwarts Summer Garden Party. I am honoured to be invited - once more - to be your guest speaker, but I shall try not to go on for too long,” she said. “I know that for you, this event is a chance to relax after the trials of your exams, but I feel it incumbent upon me to remind you, just once, that this annual event was inaugurated by Kingsley Shacklebolt as a time of remembrance as well as of celebration.
She touched the white rowan sprig pined to her shawl and glanced, as she always did when she stood on the mound, towards the Garden of Remembrance, where the memorials and graves of those who gave their lives in defence of Hogwarts lay. All of the staff, and many of the students, touched their own rowan sprigs and followed her gaze.
“I look to the past for wisdom,” she said, “to remember what happened once and must not be allowed to happen again. And then I turn back to see your expectant, youthful faces, and they remind me that we came out of those dark times. Memory and hope for the future; these are the things that the Garden Party means to me.”
She was silent for a long moment, but when she looked up she was smiling. “But for you, the summer is starting and you do not want to think of dark things. Nor should you, for you are young and life is before you. So before I commence the festivities, I just want to share with you a few happy announcements.
“Firstly, two of our former pupils, Ted and Victoire Lupin, have written to inform us that they are now the proud parents of twins; a boy and a girl, to be named - I am delighted to inform you - William and Minerva.”
A ripple of applause ran around the lawn, as much for Professor McGonagall as for the new parents.
“Secondly, although the full list of merit prizewinners will be announced by the Minister of Magic, Hermione Granger, at the school Prize Giving tomorrow, I can offer you a few sneak previews.
“The winners of the Remus Lupin and Nymphadora Tonks Prizes for outstanding overall achievement in this year’s NEWT exams will come as a surprise to none. I might announce them now, but I fear that the students in question - Head Boy James Potter of Gryffindor and Head Girl Japera Talkene of Slytherin - appear to be somewhat preoccupied at present.”
All eyes turned to the seventh-year tables, where James and Japera slowly realised that they were the focus of attention and broke apart with a great many blushes.
“Congratulations to you both,” Professor McGonagall said, “although I might remind you that you are supposed to be setting an example to the younger pupils in terms of behaviour as well as academic achievement.”
The pupils laughed. James took a sudden and detailed interest in his champagne glass and Japera let her mane of dramatically white-charmed hair fall over her face.
“If you could keep such ardent displays of affection for the proper place and time - the brush room of the Owlery after lights out, if I recall correctly - I am sure that we would all appreciate it. Especially those of is for whom such things are a matter of recollection only.”
“I still can’t believe our brother is dating a Slytherin,” Lily sighed.
Albus turned aside to hide his own blush. “I still can’t believe you haven’t. Statistically you should have gone out with one of them at least.”
“In this year’s OWLs as well, a few names of note have cropped up,” Professor McGonagall went on. “The Potions Prize this year goes to a student who has attained the second highest score of any pupil in Hogwarts’ history, only two points lower than that of Severus Snape: Scorpius Malfoy of Slytherin House.”
Scorpius stood up, lifting his hands and turning a slow circle to acknowledge the cheers of the Slytherins - and a number of other pupils - before sitting down again.
“Ever the drama queen,” Albus muttered.
Scorpius shot him a grin. “If you’ve got it, flaunt it,” he crowed.
“Thank you, Mr Malfoy,” Professor McGonagall said. “I’m sure that you will have a chance to thank the Wizengamot at the Prize Giving tomorrow. I ask only that you try not to cry at the podium for reasons of timing.
“I am pleased to say that for the first time in three years, we have a student who has achieved sufficiently high marks across all subjects to qualify for the Albus Dumbledore Award for Magical Excellence,” she went on. “It is a particular pleasure that this award will be presented to one of my namesakes: Dobby McGonagall of Hufflepuff.”
Dobby - one of more than fifteen Dobbys in the school at present, the name never having gone out of style with the House Elves - leaped into the air and performed a triple somersault, while his fellow Hufflepuffs yodelled in delight and House Elves of all Houses shot fireworks from their fingertips. Only Dobby X, Slytherin’s representative from the Nation of House Elves, looked sternly disapproving.
Professor McGonagall waited for quiet before continuing. “We also have, for the first time ever, joint winners in the Divination Prize: Sibyl Firenzfoal and Firenze Trelawny, both of Ravenclaw.”
Boy and centaur both stood to bow gravely to their Housemates and friends.
“And I hear Griflock will be winning the prize for Arithmancy,” Lily whispered. “Another strike against anyone who thinks non-humans can’t cut it at Hogwarts.”
“And we have another student who has achieved a record score,” the elderly ex-headmistress went on. “Actually, we have a student who has achieved a round half-dozen records, but I shall leave that announcement to Ms Granger, for reasons which will become apparent.”
Rose Weasley blushed and hid her face under her robes.
“When I retired as headmistress I was determined that my successor must have a strong hand to guide Hogwarts into the future. Many people doubted whether a… what were their words? Oh, yes: a ‘jumped up athlete’ could cut it as Headmistress. Well, the quality of the last few years’ results has shown me that Madam Hooch has guided Hogwarts firmly on its way, and I am proud to see such greatness emerging.
“One more announcement and then I’ll be done. As a teacher, I am not supposed to have favourites, but even very old, retired teachers remain human. I am therefore delighted to tell you all that the winner of this year’s Severus Snape Memorial Prize for attainment in Defence Against the Dark Arts will be, most aptly, Albus Severus Potter.”
Gryffindor’s whooped, Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs cheered and even Slytherins offered up a polite ripple of clapping. Lily hugged her brother tightly, while Scorpius clapped a hand on his shoulder.
And then it happened. In the midst of so much good feeling and joy, a single voice called out: “Muggle Lover!”
Silence fell across the lawns. Madam Hooch leaped to her feet, her hawk-eyes flashing. Professor McGonagall looked as though she were about to explode.
For a long time, no-one spoke, before Scorpius broke the silence and called out: “Is someone calling me a Muggle?”
There was a pause, and then laughter broke out. Even the staff relaxed, and somewhere in the Slytherin ranks a boy could be seen slinking away.
Albus, however, hid his face in his arms.
Lily laughed. “Oh, don’t be such a drip,” she teased. “Like no-one knew.”
The Quiet Life
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Drama
FR-T
Oz knew that he needed to get going, but he was finding it hard to tear himself away from the little community in the woods. He had stumbled upon it almost a month before and almost brought disaster down upon it then. He had woken on the outskirts of the old summer camp the morning after the last wolf moon; it must have been pure chance that he hadn’t arrived in time to kill anyone.
With a sigh, Oz turned away from the little cluster of huts and made his way back into the woods. With any luck, his van would still be hidden off the side of the road and he could be miles away by the time the sun set and the wolf started to draw him back towards…
“Going for a walk, Oz?”
Startled out of his thoughts by the very person who had been at the heart of them, Oz jumped.
Asha walked over to Oz’s side and smiled at him. “Mind if I come with you?”
“I, ah… Really wanted to be alone,” Oz replied. “Guy stuff.”
“Oh. Guy stuff. Now I really want to come with you.”
“Ash…”
“Okay, Oz, I can take a hint, but just hear me out. If you head up to the east you’ll find the sweat lodge; it’s a pretty good place for… guy stuff. Just go straight along that way; you can’t miss it.”
“I, uh… sure,” Oz replied evasively. “I’ll check that out.”
“Okay. Have fun,” Asha said.
“Sure. See ya.” Oz turned and walked away.
“See you,” Asha agreed. “See you soon.”
He turned once to take a final look at the girl. She was taller than he was and quite the least vain woman he had met in some time, wearing her jeans and baggy t-shirt carelessly over a figure which would not have shamed an Olympic athlete. Her hair was black and wild, her eyes were grey and intense; she had coffee-coloured skin and a pretty smile and she smelled of earth and cinnamon. But it was her energy that most delighted and excited him. She possessed a boundless enthusiasm that made him feel almost as though he were still an innocent.
Oz was heading east, but not to see the sweat lodge. Tonight was the first wolf moon and if he was still here, Asha would be in more danger than anyone else. When the wolf was on him, it seemed to be the women he was attracted to who drew his killer instincts most strongly.
That was what had happened with Verruca.
Oz shook his head to clear such thoughts from his mind. It did not do to dwell upon the past and besides, he did not like to compare the lively, buoyant Asha with the sullen, laconic Verruca.
To his great surprise, Oz realised that he had come to the sweat lodge after all. Curious, and still reluctant to leave the community, he surrendered to curiosity and ducked through the door.
Inside, the air was thick with steam. He sniffed and made out the scents of coal and steam… and earth and cinnamon.
“Asha,” he said.
“Hello again, Oz.” Asha’s voice floated out of the steam.
Oz spun around as the door slammed shut behind him. “What’s going on, Ash?” he demanded.
“We don’t want you to go.” The steam swirled and Asha emerged. She had swapped her casual clothes for a long, loose robe and her thick hair hung around her shoulders. “I don’t want you to go.”
“I don’t much want to go,” Oz assured her, “but there are issues at stake that go beyond what we want; issues… you can’t understand.”
“Are you sure?” Asha asked him. “Look at the door.”
Oz went over to the door and examined it. Like many sweat lodges it was made from a wooden frame covered in hide. Unlike the doors of most sweat lodges, it was bolted to the door of a steel cage.
“This lodge…”
“Is built to cage werewolves,” Asha finished.
“Then you know? You gotta let me out… Or get out. When I change, you won’t be able to…”
Asha took another step towards him. For a moment, her face changed, black fur breaking through her coffee skin. Her eyes turned gold, long, white teeth flashed needle-bright, and then the bright smile returned.
“You… You’re a werewolf,” Oz gasped.
“We’re all werewolves. How else do you think a community like ours manages to not get taken apart by Hell’s Angels or road demons?”
"You're like me?"
“Not quite. You fear the wolf, hide from it; you think that it makes you kill.”
“It does.”
“No. Wolves aren’t murderous, Oz. It’s the clash of two natures that makes you kill; an instinctive impulse to hold your human self when the wolf comes out. The wolf is simple, the human is complex. Faced with human emotions, the wolf panics.
“I can teach you to embrace the wolf, Oz. I can help you to be stronger, better, and safer. If you’ll let me.”
Oz was silent for a long moment.
“You don’t like that, do you? You don’t want to be helped; you want to find your own way.”
“Yes,” he agreed. “But… I’ll stay. Ran away before. Didn’t work out.”
She smiled. “Good.”
“So… what do I do now?”
Asha slipped of her robe; she was naked underneath. “Down boy,” she cautioned. “This is just so I don’t rip anything when I change. The first thing we need to do is get rid of all those complicated emotions. We need to make you simple again.”
“And how do we do that?”
She grinned from ear to ear. “We act like children,” she said. In a flicker she had changed into a creature much lighter than Oz’s brutal wolf-form, much more like a true wolf. She cocked her ears, wagged her tail and lolled her tongue. To Oz her body language said: “We play.”
Summer of the Triffids
Day of the Triffids
Drama
FR-C
Bill Masen, my father - well, foster-father, if it makes any difference - once explained to me why we celebrate Christmas. He said that it was a festival of light in the middle of the darkest season of the year, to remind us that the days will get longer and the weather will get warmer.
Maybe that’s so, but I know that I celebrate Christmas for a different reason: Christmas is in the middle of winter and no Triffid ever attacks in midwinter. Winter is our quiet time, our sanctuary; spring brings the horrors back.
Well, it’s in spring that the first attacks come, but those are just sporadic raids; five, ten, maybe twenty Triffids at a time, testing our defences and incidentally giving us a chance to test our new herbicides. Unfortunately, the Russians - or whoever - did a good job of making them resistant to disease, poisons, crop blights and just about anything and everything else that kills plants. In almost fifteen years we still hadn’t come up with anything better than a shotgun blast or razor blade to the stem, or a good incendiary when we have the fuel or the chemicals.
But it’s the summer that kills us.
We’ve been here at Portchester Castle for three years. It’s our beachhead for taking back the mainland.
Actually, that’s a lie. Not a lie I’m telling to you, my hypothetical reader, but a lie we told ourselves. We weren’t ready to take back anything, but we had to do something.
So we took back Portchester, secured it up to the sea and rebuilt the castle walls to keep the Triffids out. And for three years running the first hot day of summer brought them out in swarms.
This morning it was hot. This morning my man woke me up early, fixed me with his blind eyes and said: “They’re coming.”
He’s a good listener, my Alex. Blind as anyone who saw the meteor storm, but he can hear them drumming five miles away. We make a good pair; he hears them coming, I kill them.
They’re coming today, and we’ll kill them, just like last year. We can’t take back the country, but this little bit of it is ours and it will stay ours forever.
The Sands of Mars
Larklight
Action/Adventure
FR-C
Sir Richard Burton, agent of Her Imperial Majesty Queen Victoria’s Secret Service, turned in the mouth of the tunnel and fired three shots from his service revolver to keep the enemy at bay as his elfin-faced Martian wife, Ulla, fled past him into the baking desert sun. The Martian sand was as red as blood and hot as fire under her feet.
“Now, I don’t wish to be picky, my dear,” Sir Richard said, “but I seem to recall you telling me that these creatures were a myth.”
“So I was wrong,” Ulla replied. “Do you want a divorce?”
With a great trumpeting cry, a metal crab reared out of the sand; a hideous, tentacled mass of dark flesh, half-muscle and half-brain, crouched behind the armoured hood.
Sir Richard raised his pistol and fired the remaining three shots; the bullets glanced harmlessly off the hood.
Ulla drew a sickle-shaped throwing blade from its sheath and threw it. The knife swept past the machine and looped back towards Ulla, slicing into the brute in the machine from behind. The crab fell with another dreadful cry; the beast at the controls was already dead.
“Ulla, my darling, I think we can safely hold off on the divorce for the time being.”
“Thank you, dearest.” Ulla took his hand and they ran across the burning sands. They had gone no more than a hundred yards when the sand ahead of them erupted in a great fountain and a second machine, more than twenty feet tall rose up on long, jointless legs. With a triumphant cry it reached down two whiplike tentacles and snatched the helpless spies into the air.
Behind the fighting machine another, even greater column of sand exploded into the air as a titanic metal cylinder blasted out into space in a rush of glowing, green gas.
Miss Garland
Sally Lockhart
Fluff, Double Drabble
FR-C
It was a beautiful, summer day in 1895.
It was Harriet Goldberg’s sixth birthday. Her mother had given her a locket she couldn’t open and a magnifying glass to feed her detective’s instincts. Her father, keen to nudge her towards journalism, gave her a copy-book and a fountain pen. Her Uncle Jim gave her a pocket knife and told her not to show it to her parents for three years. Harriet wasn’t sure what he expected her to be when she grew up.
In the afternoon she had a party. In the evening her mother and father took her to a graveyard, which was a little more unexpected. The name on the gravestone they took her to was ‘Frederick Garland’. She knew that her mother’s company was called Lockhart and Garland, but she had never heard of Frederick Garland before.
“You know that Daniel and I love you, Harriet,” Sally Goldberg said, “but you’re old enough to know about…” She broke off with a choke.
Daniel Goldberg crouched down at Harriet’s side. He reached out and pressed a clip on the side of the locket. It sprang open to reveal a photograph.
“This is Fred Garland,” he said. “Your father.”
Forbidden Fruit
Farscape
Drama
FR-T
“Look at this,” Officer Cayhn said in disgust. “Food growing on frelling trees.”
“Doesn’t our food grow on trees?” sub-officer Sun asked.
“Sure, but before we eat anything we clean it, sterilise it, process it. These people, these savages, they just pick this dren right off the trees and eat it there and then. The conscripts should thank us for getting them the frell out of this cesspit. Speaking of which, I’d better check the line-up and make sure Barsk isn’t conscripting the dead beats and the dead again. Make a sweep of the orchard and make sure there aren’t any likely lads and lasses hiding out in the trees.”
Aeryn Sun saluted. “Yes, sir.” She headed out to the far end of the orchard, pulse rifle held loose but ready; there was little danger on a farming world like this, but a careless soldier was a dead soldier.
The sun beat down on the orchard and a rich, sweet smell came off the fruit which hung heavy on the trees.
On an impulse, Aeryn reached up and plucked one of the fruit; it dropped easily into her hand, as though it wanted to be eaten. She looked around her, then opened up her visor, lifted the fruit to her lips and took a bite.
Juice exploded in her mouth and dribbled down her chin; it was sweeter than anything she had ever tasted. Processed food just did not compare.
A twig snapped, she spun around with her rifle raised; the fruit fell to the floor. A young girl looked down from the branches of a tree. She was no more than nine cycles old, long-limbed and athletic; prime recruitment material.
Aeryn lifted her hand to her mouth and licked the sweet juice from her fingers. She lowered her rifle with her other hand.
“Pass me another of those,” Aeryn said.
The girl plucked another fruit from her tree and tossed it to Aeryn. Aeryn caught it and took a bite, more carefully this time, so that no more juice ran down her chin.
“I’m going to stand over there and finish this,” Aeryn said, “then I’m going to take you over to the recruiting line.” She sauntered away from the tree, chewing thoughtfully, while the girl slipped down from the branches and hared away through the orchard.
Beltane
Arthurian Myth (late mediaeval)
Drama, Drabble
FR-T
“Forgive me,” she said, and then she struck.
Beltane, the first day of summer, when her power was strongest and his artifice weakest, was the perfect time to confront him, but in the end she could have chosen any time; he never saw it coming.
“I loved you,” Merlin whispered as the stone rose up around him.
“And I you,” Morgana murmured hoarsely. “Always you. Only you.”
“Then why?”
The stone closed over his head and he stood, immobile, at the centre of the great circle. Morgana planted a last kiss on the cold rock.
“For my mother,” she whispered.
The Season
Predator
Action
FR-M
Major Helfer surveyed the scene of carnage with distaste. Two dead prisoners - prisoners of war, his fellow airmen - were tied to the back of the jeep like carrion. The blood of the five SS officers had soaked into the parched ground in a rough circle, but there was no sign of their bodies.
Two of Helfer’s men directed searchlights around the scene while the others searched for any trace.
“What happened here?” Helfer demanded. “What were they doing with those prisoners?”
“I think… Hunting them, sir,” Leutnant Schmidt admitted. He bent and ruffled the fur of the dog that whined at his feet. She was Sturmbannfuhrer Zell’s dog, and she had never been known to whine, let alone submit to a petting from a Luftwaffe subaltern.
“Those animals,” Helfer snorted.
“Oh, I think they had a taste of their own medicine,” Schmidt assured his commander. “Someone was hunting them.”
“What? Hilts?”
“I don’t think so, Mein Herr. Where would he get the weapons to…”
“Herr Major!” one of the soldier’s searching the area called.
The two officers ran to the cry; they found the soldier doubled up under an oak tree, vomiting.
“What is it?”
In answer, the soldier merely pointed into the branches of the tree.
Helfer looked up. “Schmidt,” he whispered, “get the men back onto the jeeps. We’re going back to camp and calling this in.”
“Yes, sir,” Schmidt agreed.
They left the scene as swiftly as they could without panicking the men. Behind them, the bodies of Zell and his cronies swung in the soft, summer breeze, stripped, skinned and hung by their heels.
The Sundial
Bagpuss
Drama
FR-C
“Once upon a time
Not so long ago
There was a little girl and her name was Emily
And she had a shop.
“It was rather an unusual shop because it didn't sell anything
You see, everything in that shop window was a thing that somebody had once lost
And Emily had found
And brought home to Bagpuss
Emily's cat Bagpuss
The most Important
The most Beautiful
The most Magical
Saggy old cloth cat in the whole wide world.
“Well now, one day Emily found a thing
And she brought it back to the shop
And put it down in front of Bagpuss
Who was in the shop window fast asleep as usual
But then Emily said some magic words:
“‘Bagpuss, dear Bagpuss
Old fat furry cat-puss
Wake up and look at this thing that I bring
Wake up, be bright
Be golden and light
Bagpuss, Oh hear what I sing.’
“And Bagpuss was wide awake
And when Bagpuss wakes up all his friends wake up too
The mice on the mouse-organ woke up and stretched
Madeleine, the rag doll
Gabriel, the toad
And last of all, Professor Yaffle, who was a very distinguished old woodpecker
He climbed down off his bookend and went to see what it was that Emily had brought.”
“Yes, yes, yes; this is very interesting,” Professor Yaffle said.
The mice scrambled down from the Mouse Organ and huddled around the woodpecker. “What is it?” they asked. “What is it?”
“Nyeh, nyeh; silly mice, how can you see what it is if you’re all clustered around me. Go on; stand back, stand back.”
The mice obediently backed off and gave the Professor some space.
“Now, look at the thing that Miss Emily has brought in and see if you can put it back together.”
“Yes!” Charlie Mouse declared. “We will fix it.”
The mice clustered around the thing, rearranging and reassembling. And as they worked, they sang:
“We will fix it, we’ll refit it,
“We will set it to rights, rights, rights.
“We will dust it, do-just-what-we-must-to it,
“Make it glow like a light, light, light.”
“Excellent, excellent,” Yaffle applauded. “Now, you see that there are two flat wooden panels, each with a dial face marked in black, and you’ve fixed the two panels with a hinge so that they can fold together.”
“But what is it?” the mice demanded. “What is it?”
“This is a sundial,” Yaffle replied.
“What’s a sundial?” Charlie Mouse asked.
“It’s a kind of clock,” Yaffle explained. “This one is a very small, pocket sundial and you would use it like Miss Emily’s watch.”
“Like a watch?” Janie Mouse asked.
“But where are the hands?” Eddie Mouse asked.
“A sundial doesn’t have hands,” Madeleine told them. “With a sundial you tell the time using a shadow cast by the sun.”
Yaffle looked up in delight. “Yes, yes, yes!” he cried. “That’s right. The shadow falls on one of the lines on the dial and that tells you the time.”
Willie Mouse ran over and stood in the window so that his shadow fell right across the sundial and the other mice clustered around it.
“What’s the time?” they asked.
“We can’t tell,” Lizzie Mouse added, crestfallen.
“Of course not,” Yaffle said. “Now listen, you mice. You don’t make the shadow yourself, it’s made by a bit of the sundial called the gnomon. This sundial is missing it’s gnomon, so we need to find a new one.”
“But what can we make it from?” Charlie Mouse asked.
“You need to make a shadow that will fall sharply on one point, so you need something very thin; much thinner than Willie Mouse. For a pocket sundial like this one, you need a thin, black thread. I expect you’ll find something suitable in Miss Madeleine’s sewing box. Lizzie Mouse, why don’t you go and ask if we can have a little piece of thread? The rest of you mice, I want you to get your flying machine and fetch the battery torch from the shelf.”
The mice hurried off crying: “The flying machine, the flying machine!” over and over again, while Lizzie Mouse climbed up to Madeleine’s shelf.
“Dear Madeleine,” she said. “May we please have a piece of thread to make a gnome?”
“A gnomon,” Madeleine laughed. “Of course you may, Lizzie Mouse. Take a piece of the black twist.”
While Lizzie dug in the sewing box, the other mice had got out their ‘flying machine’, a clever crane made out of a fishing rod which they had once used to play a trick on Professor Yaffle, and were using it to fetch a torch down from a high shelf.
“Good, good,” Yaffle said. “Now if you turn on the light and swing it from side to side, you will see that my shadow moves about on the ground behind me.”
The mice did as he said and they did indeed see that his shadow leaped and danced along the floor.
“Ooh,” they gasped.
“And as the sun moves across the sky through the day, the shadow of the gnomon moves,” Yaffle finished. “That is how the sun tells you the time.”
The mice lowered the torch to the ground and came back down into the window.
“But how does the sun know the time?” Jenny Mouse asked.
“Well,” said Gabriel, “the sun knows what time it is by looking at where he is. You see, he always walks at the same speed and… I know a song about it in fact; I think you have a music roll for that song in the mouse organ.”
Eagerly, the mice scrambled up onto the organ and mousehandled a music roll into the top of the instrument.
Janie Mouse took up a pose on the box while the other mice went to the bellows. “The Marvellous. Mechnical. Mouse Organ!”
The Mouse Organ played a quick, lively tune and Gabriel played an accompaniment on his banjo and sang:
“Quite early in the mor-orning,
When all the world was dark,
The merry sun got out of bed,
To the singing of a lark.
He got his boots and raincoat on
And went out for a walk.
He walked all day from morn ‘til dusk,
No time to stop and talk.”
Madeleine took up the tune for the second verse:
“The sun he walked at a steady pace,
He never slowed his stride.
No more did he slow, for even a mo,
Or turn his course aside.
He left his house in the early morn,
And walked uphill ‘til noon,
Then he tripped downhill all even-ing
And came home in the evening’s gloom.”
“And so he walks out every day,
In fair weather, rain or snow.”
“Long walks in summer, short in the cold
Around the world he goes.”
“Nyeh, nyeh, nyeh,” Yaffle scoffed. “Fiddlesticks and flapdoodle. The sun doesn’t walk around the world. In fact, the sun doesn’t go around the world at all.”
“It does,” the mice insisted. “It does.”
“Nyeh, nyeh, nyeh. Go up to my bookshelf and bring me down the small, blue volume and I will show you.”
The mice clambered up the stacks to Professor Yaffle’s bookend. Charlie Mouse and Eddie Mouse carefully slid the blue book from its place and passed it down to Willie Mouse and Lizzie Mouse, who passed it down to Jenny Mouse and Janie Mouse. Charlie Mouse and Eddie Mouse scrambled past to take the book next, and they passed it down to Yaffle.
The title on the cover of the book read: Principles of Mathematics, by Sir Milton Isaac Newtown.
“Thank you, mice,” Yaffle said. He opened the book at a page illustrated with an image of the sun with various planets circling around it. “The rotation of the planets,” he read. And the mice gathered around to look at the pictures.
“There was a very learned man,
Nicholas Copernicus was his name,
Who studied the ways of the natural world,
To see what changed and what stayed the same.
He was troubled by the moving sun,
He wondered did it really roam.
The answer he found by chance one day,
While wandering far from home.
Glancing to his side one day,
He watched a tower marching by,
The faster he walked, it seemed to him,
The faster the tower did fly.
And when he stopped, the tower stopped,
As though it were watching Nicholas,
And that was when he realised,
That the tower was standing fast.
He knew a tower could not walk,
It certainly could not run,
It was he that moved, it only seemed,
And so it was with the sun.
The sun stood still, it was plain to see,
So Nicholas saw now.
It seemed to move because the Earth,
Was speeding round and round.”
“There, you see. As I always say, if you really want to know about something, you must research it thoroughly.”
“Whee!” Jenny Mouse spun past Yaffle’s head, suspended from the arm of the flying machine. “The world is spinning!” she called out.
“Yes, yes!” Yaffle called excitedly. “And when research runs out, there is always a spirit of experimentation. Jenny Mouse sees the world spinning around her, and we see the sun spinning around us, but really it’s the world - and Jenny Mouse - that does the spinning.”
“Can I have a go?” the mice chirruped. They all ran towards the end of the arm, but that left no-one holding the other end and Jenny Mouse fell suddenly.
Yaffle darted forward and caught the plummeting mouse in his wings. “You silly mice,” he said. “You must be more careful. Jenny Mouse could have been seriously hurt.”
“Yes,” Madeleine agreed. “You really must be more careful, mice. Are you alright, Jenny Mouse?”
“I’m alright,” Jenny Mouse quavered. “But I think I need to lie down.”
“Of course,” Yaffle said. “Mice, take Jenny Mouse up to the Mouse Organ.”
“Oh, and quickly,” Madeleine said. “Look at the time.” She pointed at the sundial.
“What?” Bagpuss asked. “Oh yes.”
“What’s the time, Professor Yaffle?” Willie Mouse asked.
Yaffle hopped over to the sundial and inspected it closely. “Let me see, the shadow is falling on the five, so it must be… Time for bed.”
Bagpuss gave a great yawn of agreement.
“Quickly, mice,” Madeleine said. “Put the sundial in the window and back to the Mouse Organ.”
And so the mice pushed the sundial into the front of the window, in case an astronomer who had lost it should come by the shop, see the sundial, and come in to collect it.
“Bagpuss gave a big yawn, and settled down to sleep
And of course when Bagpuss goes to sleep, all his friends go to sleep too
The mice were ornaments on the mouse-organ
Gabriel and Madeleine were just dolls
And Professor Yaffle was a carved wooden bookend in the shape of a woodpecker
Even Bagpuss himself once he was asleep was just an old, saggy cloth cat
Baggy, and a bit loose at the seams
But Emily loved him.”
A Summer’s Knight
Sisters Grimm
Drama/Adventure
FR-C
It was an ordinary, balmy summer’s night in Ferryport Landing, and although it was not quite the weather that she had grown accustomed to in the city, Sabrina Grimm was glad that at least something in her new hometown was ordinary. She had spent so much time recently thinking about stories and Ever Afters and her unwanted-but-apparently-inescapable destiny as a Fairy Tale Detective that it was nice to get away and enjoy something normal like a walk in the woods.
Of course, she did have to wear Alladin’s ring before Granny Relda would let her out, just in case she needed to escape from hostile Ever Afters, but otherwise the walk was normal.
Or it was until the beast showed up.
She heard it first and thought for a moment that it was a dog, but as soon as the beast appeared she could see that it had no place in her ordinary walk. It was something like a borzoi, with fur so white it seemed to glow; in fact, Sabrina was pretty sure it was glowing. Its ears stood straight up and were as red as blood.
The beast bounded out of the woods and stopped in front of Sabrina. It looked her in the eye. She could see a quick intelligence behind the beast’s dark eyes.
“Hello,” she said. “Aren’t you beautiful?”
The beast barked once, then leaped away. Sabrina had been wlaking close to the boundary of Ferryport Landing and expected the beast to be turned back by the mystical barrier, but instead it rushed on unhindered.
A few moments later, Sabrina heard the pounding of hooves. A great, white horse bounded out of the trees with a knight in full armour on its back. The knight wore a hunting horn at his side. Sabrina was so angry at the thought of someone hunting the beautiful beast that she stood in the horse’s path and yelled at the knight to stop.
“Whoa!” The knight drew his horse to a stop. “Careful, girl; you could get hurt doing that.”
Sabrina strode up beside the horse. “Don’t call me girl!” she snapped. “I’m a Grimm and I’m telling you to stop hunting that poor beast.”
The knight looked puzzled. “Beast? You mean Gladys?”
“Gladys?”
“Glatisant, the Questing Beast; I call her Gladys.”
“Is she a sort of big, white dog with glowing fur.”
“Yes.”
“Then yes, that beast.”
“That was no beast,” the knight said. “That was my wife.”
“Your…? Um…”
“Well, I’d been chasing her so long, we thought we might as well make it formal. She’s a lovely gal really.”
“Oo-kay. Well, she uh… She went that way.” Sabrina turned and pointed. “But she went through the barrier.”
“Of course. No one can stop a Questing Beast.” He lifted his horn and blew a long blast. “And no one can stop a Pellinor from following her.”
He spurred his horse forward and they galloped through the barrier as easily as the beast had done.
Sabrina shook her head and turned back towards home. So much for an ordinary evening walk.
Ménage a Trois
Transformers
Drama/Romance, Drabble
FR-T
I guess I have to admit that there’ve always been three of us in this relationship, and that’s not easy. Maybe it would be easier if he was using me, but he loves me, I know he does, and I… Yeah; I guess I love him.
So we love each other, and that’s great, but it’s not just us. There are three of us, and sometimes I don’t know who Sam loves more: me, or the car.
But then sometimes I don’t know if I love Sam or Bumblebee more.
So maybe it works after all. Which is kinda scary.
Summer’s End
Doctor Who
Drama
FR-C
“Were we running short of ice or something?” Rose asked. “Only you said we came here to get something, and there’s nothing else here.”
The Doctor ignored her.
“Doctor, it’s dark and it’s cold.”
“Come and look,” the Doctor called.
Rose tramped ungraciously over. “It’s a rock.”
“It’s Mont Blanc!” the Doctor protested. “The highest mountain in Western Europe.”
“It’s a foot high.”
“No; it’s just under fifteen-thousand-seven-hundred-and-seventy-three feet of ice.”
“Why are we here?”
The Doctor pointed to the horizon, where the sun was rising. “Put your goggles on; don’t want to get snowblind.”
Rose hurried to obey. With the goggles on she could see nothing, but a moment later the mountain was clear again, as the sun’s light flashed from the shining snows.
“Now, look at Mont Blanc.”
Rose turned wearily to look at the rock… and saw a tiny, white flower opening in the sunlight.
“It’s the year one-million-three-hundred-and-fifty-seven-thousand and the last edelweiss in the universe - the last flower on Earth - is blooming for the last time. Until they reclaim her, this is Earth’s final summer.”
“Oh,” Rose whispered.
He bent and gently gathered the flower into a stasis tube. “Some things are worth saving,” he declared.
James McLevy was a real man, his life dramatised by David Ashton. Harry Potter and all canon characters were created by J.K. Rowling. Oz and the world of Buffy the Vampire Slayer were created by Joss Whedon. Susan and the Triffids were created by John Wyndham. Lady Ulla Burton and this version of Sir Richard Burton were created by Philip Reeve; the martians are borrowed from H.G. Wells. Sally Lockhart and family were created by Philip Pullman. Aeryn Sun was created by Rockne S. O'Bannon. The Predator belongs to 20th Century Fox. Bagpuss and the Bagpuss intro and outro were written by Peter Firmin and Oliver Postgate. Sabrina Grimm was created by Michael Buckley. The Transformers belong to Hasbro. The Doctor and Rose belong to the BBC. Original characters belong to me, and the mythologicals and legendaries are free.
So, here we are on the final day, with an extra story because I just watched my birthday copy of Transformers.
I think the most notable thing about this set is how much I know about the background of The Garden Party, but couldn't fit in. For example, Japera Talkene is a Zimbabwean witch, whose mother came over to England to work as a nurse in St Mungo's. Her father remained behind; alive or dead, she isn't sure, because he was a great enemy of the corrupt ruling magical regime and its Mugabe-esque president. The ambition which drew her to Slytherin is a desire to go back and be a part - a major part - of sorting out her country. Sadly, this is a character based in part on children I've taught. I also know that Draco was hit hard by the events of the war, with the result that his ego was crushed, leaving nothing but a fragile veneer of hauteur. He surprised everyone in his choice of wife because instead of someone who complemented his apparent ambition, he went for someone quiet he could push around. His son, consequently, never had any respect for him and stopped being afraid of him once he got to Hogwarts, hence he became the Malfoy family's first serious rebel and quite a decent lad if you get through the spiky exterior.
Sibyl Trelawny and Firenze became close friends after the Battle of Hogwarts, although Trelawny remained a bloody awful seer. They were instrumental in securing closer ties between the wizards and the centaurs, although to date Firenze's daughter is the only centaur at Hogwarts.
Many freed house elves chose a new name for themselves and a large proportion of these chose to become 'Dobby', with either the name of their former family or of a patron as their surname. More radical Elves, such as Dobby X, chose surnames not attached to human families. Once she became Minister of Magic, Hermione achieved her goal of universal suffrage for all intelligent magical creatures and opened Hogwarts and the other wizarding schools to all races.
A baker's dozen of summer nights.
High Heaven
McLevy
Drama
FR-T
Edinburgh in summer is a staggering sight, the sun standing over Arthur’s Seat, gleaming on the cobbles. My own parish of Leith is… rather less pretty. Leith in summer has only one thing to distinguish it: the smell. The great and the good - or as great and good as Leith produces, which means money more than quality - usually try to leave the city in the hotter months, leaving it to the ruffians and rogues.
I am James McLevy, Inspector of Police, and I also stay. Leith is my protectorate and I must guard it.
It was nine days after we lost Bludger Bones in the sewers that we found him again. Bones was a hired thug, ten a penny in Leith, but he had an edge over the competition; he was prepared to kill. That made him almost a pennyworth on his own, and the fact that he was careful enough not to get caught might have commanded a tanner a time. That caution kept him out of my hands for far too long, but finally it failed him.
We had him, until a young constable decided that catching a murderer with blood on his hands was less important than keeping his uniform trousers clean.
I can’t say I blame him. He didn’t know Bones like I did, and the sewer did smell foul. And I can’t deny that he made the right choice. After all, when we found Bones in the river three nights later, he was dead of a fever, and presumably he caught that in the sewer where he ran to hide among the other rats.
One less killer on the streets of Leith; I suppose that is a type of justice, but I can not be satisfied. Justice should not be natural, for nature is an unreasoning beast who would have claimed that young constable as willingly as a thug like Bludger Bones. Let nature have her whims; justice is for the law.
The Garden Party
Harry Potter
Fluff
Implied Albus/Scorpius
FR-T
Hogwarts, July 2022
The students of Hogwarts stretched out and relaxed on blankets on the Memorial Lawns. The staff sat at a long picnic table on the mound, while smaller tables had been set up behind the blankets for the seventh years. That evening the children would sit at their long, House tables for the presentation of the House Cup, but as was traditional at the end-of-year garden party there were no Gryffindor blankets, nor Hufflepuff blankets, nor even were there as many all-Slytherin blankets as there had been last year.
Albus and Lily sat with Lily’s boyfriend, Zaccheus Myrth - her seventeenth true love in the past year - and a group of friends drawn from all four Houses. James of course was on the seventh-year tables.
Professor McGonagall stood up and lifted her wand to her throat. She looked as fragile and insubstantial as Scotch mist, but she still had a core of steel after ten years of retirement.
“Students of Hogwarts,” she said, the amplification charm carrying her voice effortlessly across the lawn. “Welcome to the twenty-second Hogwarts Summer Garden Party. I am honoured to be invited - once more - to be your guest speaker, but I shall try not to go on for too long,” she said. “I know that for you, this event is a chance to relax after the trials of your exams, but I feel it incumbent upon me to remind you, just once, that this annual event was inaugurated by Kingsley Shacklebolt as a time of remembrance as well as of celebration.
She touched the white rowan sprig pined to her shawl and glanced, as she always did when she stood on the mound, towards the Garden of Remembrance, where the memorials and graves of those who gave their lives in defence of Hogwarts lay. All of the staff, and many of the students, touched their own rowan sprigs and followed her gaze.
“I look to the past for wisdom,” she said, “to remember what happened once and must not be allowed to happen again. And then I turn back to see your expectant, youthful faces, and they remind me that we came out of those dark times. Memory and hope for the future; these are the things that the Garden Party means to me.”
She was silent for a long moment, but when she looked up she was smiling. “But for you, the summer is starting and you do not want to think of dark things. Nor should you, for you are young and life is before you. So before I commence the festivities, I just want to share with you a few happy announcements.
“Firstly, two of our former pupils, Ted and Victoire Lupin, have written to inform us that they are now the proud parents of twins; a boy and a girl, to be named - I am delighted to inform you - William and Minerva.”
A ripple of applause ran around the lawn, as much for Professor McGonagall as for the new parents.
“Secondly, although the full list of merit prizewinners will be announced by the Minister of Magic, Hermione Granger, at the school Prize Giving tomorrow, I can offer you a few sneak previews.
“The winners of the Remus Lupin and Nymphadora Tonks Prizes for outstanding overall achievement in this year’s NEWT exams will come as a surprise to none. I might announce them now, but I fear that the students in question - Head Boy James Potter of Gryffindor and Head Girl Japera Talkene of Slytherin - appear to be somewhat preoccupied at present.”
All eyes turned to the seventh-year tables, where James and Japera slowly realised that they were the focus of attention and broke apart with a great many blushes.
“Congratulations to you both,” Professor McGonagall said, “although I might remind you that you are supposed to be setting an example to the younger pupils in terms of behaviour as well as academic achievement.”
The pupils laughed. James took a sudden and detailed interest in his champagne glass and Japera let her mane of dramatically white-charmed hair fall over her face.
“If you could keep such ardent displays of affection for the proper place and time - the brush room of the Owlery after lights out, if I recall correctly - I am sure that we would all appreciate it. Especially those of is for whom such things are a matter of recollection only.”
“I still can’t believe our brother is dating a Slytherin,” Lily sighed.
Albus turned aside to hide his own blush. “I still can’t believe you haven’t. Statistically you should have gone out with one of them at least.”
“In this year’s OWLs as well, a few names of note have cropped up,” Professor McGonagall went on. “The Potions Prize this year goes to a student who has attained the second highest score of any pupil in Hogwarts’ history, only two points lower than that of Severus Snape: Scorpius Malfoy of Slytherin House.”
Scorpius stood up, lifting his hands and turning a slow circle to acknowledge the cheers of the Slytherins - and a number of other pupils - before sitting down again.
“Ever the drama queen,” Albus muttered.
Scorpius shot him a grin. “If you’ve got it, flaunt it,” he crowed.
“Thank you, Mr Malfoy,” Professor McGonagall said. “I’m sure that you will have a chance to thank the Wizengamot at the Prize Giving tomorrow. I ask only that you try not to cry at the podium for reasons of timing.
“I am pleased to say that for the first time in three years, we have a student who has achieved sufficiently high marks across all subjects to qualify for the Albus Dumbledore Award for Magical Excellence,” she went on. “It is a particular pleasure that this award will be presented to one of my namesakes: Dobby McGonagall of Hufflepuff.”
Dobby - one of more than fifteen Dobbys in the school at present, the name never having gone out of style with the House Elves - leaped into the air and performed a triple somersault, while his fellow Hufflepuffs yodelled in delight and House Elves of all Houses shot fireworks from their fingertips. Only Dobby X, Slytherin’s representative from the Nation of House Elves, looked sternly disapproving.
Professor McGonagall waited for quiet before continuing. “We also have, for the first time ever, joint winners in the Divination Prize: Sibyl Firenzfoal and Firenze Trelawny, both of Ravenclaw.”
Boy and centaur both stood to bow gravely to their Housemates and friends.
“And I hear Griflock will be winning the prize for Arithmancy,” Lily whispered. “Another strike against anyone who thinks non-humans can’t cut it at Hogwarts.”
“And we have another student who has achieved a record score,” the elderly ex-headmistress went on. “Actually, we have a student who has achieved a round half-dozen records, but I shall leave that announcement to Ms Granger, for reasons which will become apparent.”
Rose Weasley blushed and hid her face under her robes.
“When I retired as headmistress I was determined that my successor must have a strong hand to guide Hogwarts into the future. Many people doubted whether a… what were their words? Oh, yes: a ‘jumped up athlete’ could cut it as Headmistress. Well, the quality of the last few years’ results has shown me that Madam Hooch has guided Hogwarts firmly on its way, and I am proud to see such greatness emerging.
“One more announcement and then I’ll be done. As a teacher, I am not supposed to have favourites, but even very old, retired teachers remain human. I am therefore delighted to tell you all that the winner of this year’s Severus Snape Memorial Prize for attainment in Defence Against the Dark Arts will be, most aptly, Albus Severus Potter.”
Gryffindor’s whooped, Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs cheered and even Slytherins offered up a polite ripple of clapping. Lily hugged her brother tightly, while Scorpius clapped a hand on his shoulder.
And then it happened. In the midst of so much good feeling and joy, a single voice called out: “Muggle Lover!”
Silence fell across the lawns. Madam Hooch leaped to her feet, her hawk-eyes flashing. Professor McGonagall looked as though she were about to explode.
For a long time, no-one spoke, before Scorpius broke the silence and called out: “Is someone calling me a Muggle?”
There was a pause, and then laughter broke out. Even the staff relaxed, and somewhere in the Slytherin ranks a boy could be seen slinking away.
Albus, however, hid his face in his arms.
Lily laughed. “Oh, don’t be such a drip,” she teased. “Like no-one knew.”
The Quiet Life
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Drama
FR-T
Oz knew that he needed to get going, but he was finding it hard to tear himself away from the little community in the woods. He had stumbled upon it almost a month before and almost brought disaster down upon it then. He had woken on the outskirts of the old summer camp the morning after the last wolf moon; it must have been pure chance that he hadn’t arrived in time to kill anyone.
With a sigh, Oz turned away from the little cluster of huts and made his way back into the woods. With any luck, his van would still be hidden off the side of the road and he could be miles away by the time the sun set and the wolf started to draw him back towards…
“Going for a walk, Oz?”
Startled out of his thoughts by the very person who had been at the heart of them, Oz jumped.
Asha walked over to Oz’s side and smiled at him. “Mind if I come with you?”
“I, ah… Really wanted to be alone,” Oz replied. “Guy stuff.”
“Oh. Guy stuff. Now I really want to come with you.”
“Ash…”
“Okay, Oz, I can take a hint, but just hear me out. If you head up to the east you’ll find the sweat lodge; it’s a pretty good place for… guy stuff. Just go straight along that way; you can’t miss it.”
“I, uh… sure,” Oz replied evasively. “I’ll check that out.”
“Okay. Have fun,” Asha said.
“Sure. See ya.” Oz turned and walked away.
“See you,” Asha agreed. “See you soon.”
He turned once to take a final look at the girl. She was taller than he was and quite the least vain woman he had met in some time, wearing her jeans and baggy t-shirt carelessly over a figure which would not have shamed an Olympic athlete. Her hair was black and wild, her eyes were grey and intense; she had coffee-coloured skin and a pretty smile and she smelled of earth and cinnamon. But it was her energy that most delighted and excited him. She possessed a boundless enthusiasm that made him feel almost as though he were still an innocent.
Oz was heading east, but not to see the sweat lodge. Tonight was the first wolf moon and if he was still here, Asha would be in more danger than anyone else. When the wolf was on him, it seemed to be the women he was attracted to who drew his killer instincts most strongly.
That was what had happened with Verruca.
Oz shook his head to clear such thoughts from his mind. It did not do to dwell upon the past and besides, he did not like to compare the lively, buoyant Asha with the sullen, laconic Verruca.
To his great surprise, Oz realised that he had come to the sweat lodge after all. Curious, and still reluctant to leave the community, he surrendered to curiosity and ducked through the door.
Inside, the air was thick with steam. He sniffed and made out the scents of coal and steam… and earth and cinnamon.
“Asha,” he said.
“Hello again, Oz.” Asha’s voice floated out of the steam.
Oz spun around as the door slammed shut behind him. “What’s going on, Ash?” he demanded.
“We don’t want you to go.” The steam swirled and Asha emerged. She had swapped her casual clothes for a long, loose robe and her thick hair hung around her shoulders. “I don’t want you to go.”
“I don’t much want to go,” Oz assured her, “but there are issues at stake that go beyond what we want; issues… you can’t understand.”
“Are you sure?” Asha asked him. “Look at the door.”
Oz went over to the door and examined it. Like many sweat lodges it was made from a wooden frame covered in hide. Unlike the doors of most sweat lodges, it was bolted to the door of a steel cage.
“This lodge…”
“Is built to cage werewolves,” Asha finished.
“Then you know? You gotta let me out… Or get out. When I change, you won’t be able to…”
Asha took another step towards him. For a moment, her face changed, black fur breaking through her coffee skin. Her eyes turned gold, long, white teeth flashed needle-bright, and then the bright smile returned.
“You… You’re a werewolf,” Oz gasped.
“We’re all werewolves. How else do you think a community like ours manages to not get taken apart by Hell’s Angels or road demons?”
"You're like me?"
“Not quite. You fear the wolf, hide from it; you think that it makes you kill.”
“It does.”
“No. Wolves aren’t murderous, Oz. It’s the clash of two natures that makes you kill; an instinctive impulse to hold your human self when the wolf comes out. The wolf is simple, the human is complex. Faced with human emotions, the wolf panics.
“I can teach you to embrace the wolf, Oz. I can help you to be stronger, better, and safer. If you’ll let me.”
Oz was silent for a long moment.
“You don’t like that, do you? You don’t want to be helped; you want to find your own way.”
“Yes,” he agreed. “But… I’ll stay. Ran away before. Didn’t work out.”
She smiled. “Good.”
“So… what do I do now?”
Asha slipped of her robe; she was naked underneath. “Down boy,” she cautioned. “This is just so I don’t rip anything when I change. The first thing we need to do is get rid of all those complicated emotions. We need to make you simple again.”
“And how do we do that?”
She grinned from ear to ear. “We act like children,” she said. In a flicker she had changed into a creature much lighter than Oz’s brutal wolf-form, much more like a true wolf. She cocked her ears, wagged her tail and lolled her tongue. To Oz her body language said: “We play.”
Summer of the Triffids
Day of the Triffids
Drama
FR-C
Bill Masen, my father - well, foster-father, if it makes any difference - once explained to me why we celebrate Christmas. He said that it was a festival of light in the middle of the darkest season of the year, to remind us that the days will get longer and the weather will get warmer.
Maybe that’s so, but I know that I celebrate Christmas for a different reason: Christmas is in the middle of winter and no Triffid ever attacks in midwinter. Winter is our quiet time, our sanctuary; spring brings the horrors back.
Well, it’s in spring that the first attacks come, but those are just sporadic raids; five, ten, maybe twenty Triffids at a time, testing our defences and incidentally giving us a chance to test our new herbicides. Unfortunately, the Russians - or whoever - did a good job of making them resistant to disease, poisons, crop blights and just about anything and everything else that kills plants. In almost fifteen years we still hadn’t come up with anything better than a shotgun blast or razor blade to the stem, or a good incendiary when we have the fuel or the chemicals.
But it’s the summer that kills us.
We’ve been here at Portchester Castle for three years. It’s our beachhead for taking back the mainland.
Actually, that’s a lie. Not a lie I’m telling to you, my hypothetical reader, but a lie we told ourselves. We weren’t ready to take back anything, but we had to do something.
So we took back Portchester, secured it up to the sea and rebuilt the castle walls to keep the Triffids out. And for three years running the first hot day of summer brought them out in swarms.
This morning it was hot. This morning my man woke me up early, fixed me with his blind eyes and said: “They’re coming.”
He’s a good listener, my Alex. Blind as anyone who saw the meteor storm, but he can hear them drumming five miles away. We make a good pair; he hears them coming, I kill them.
They’re coming today, and we’ll kill them, just like last year. We can’t take back the country, but this little bit of it is ours and it will stay ours forever.
The Sands of Mars
Larklight
Action/Adventure
FR-C
Sir Richard Burton, agent of Her Imperial Majesty Queen Victoria’s Secret Service, turned in the mouth of the tunnel and fired three shots from his service revolver to keep the enemy at bay as his elfin-faced Martian wife, Ulla, fled past him into the baking desert sun. The Martian sand was as red as blood and hot as fire under her feet.
“Now, I don’t wish to be picky, my dear,” Sir Richard said, “but I seem to recall you telling me that these creatures were a myth.”
“So I was wrong,” Ulla replied. “Do you want a divorce?”
With a great trumpeting cry, a metal crab reared out of the sand; a hideous, tentacled mass of dark flesh, half-muscle and half-brain, crouched behind the armoured hood.
Sir Richard raised his pistol and fired the remaining three shots; the bullets glanced harmlessly off the hood.
Ulla drew a sickle-shaped throwing blade from its sheath and threw it. The knife swept past the machine and looped back towards Ulla, slicing into the brute in the machine from behind. The crab fell with another dreadful cry; the beast at the controls was already dead.
“Ulla, my darling, I think we can safely hold off on the divorce for the time being.”
“Thank you, dearest.” Ulla took his hand and they ran across the burning sands. They had gone no more than a hundred yards when the sand ahead of them erupted in a great fountain and a second machine, more than twenty feet tall rose up on long, jointless legs. With a triumphant cry it reached down two whiplike tentacles and snatched the helpless spies into the air.
Behind the fighting machine another, even greater column of sand exploded into the air as a titanic metal cylinder blasted out into space in a rush of glowing, green gas.
Miss Garland
Sally Lockhart
Fluff, Double Drabble
FR-C
It was a beautiful, summer day in 1895.
It was Harriet Goldberg’s sixth birthday. Her mother had given her a locket she couldn’t open and a magnifying glass to feed her detective’s instincts. Her father, keen to nudge her towards journalism, gave her a copy-book and a fountain pen. Her Uncle Jim gave her a pocket knife and told her not to show it to her parents for three years. Harriet wasn’t sure what he expected her to be when she grew up.
In the afternoon she had a party. In the evening her mother and father took her to a graveyard, which was a little more unexpected. The name on the gravestone they took her to was ‘Frederick Garland’. She knew that her mother’s company was called Lockhart and Garland, but she had never heard of Frederick Garland before.
“You know that Daniel and I love you, Harriet,” Sally Goldberg said, “but you’re old enough to know about…” She broke off with a choke.
Daniel Goldberg crouched down at Harriet’s side. He reached out and pressed a clip on the side of the locket. It sprang open to reveal a photograph.
“This is Fred Garland,” he said. “Your father.”
Forbidden Fruit
Farscape
Drama
FR-T
“Look at this,” Officer Cayhn said in disgust. “Food growing on frelling trees.”
“Doesn’t our food grow on trees?” sub-officer Sun asked.
“Sure, but before we eat anything we clean it, sterilise it, process it. These people, these savages, they just pick this dren right off the trees and eat it there and then. The conscripts should thank us for getting them the frell out of this cesspit. Speaking of which, I’d better check the line-up and make sure Barsk isn’t conscripting the dead beats and the dead again. Make a sweep of the orchard and make sure there aren’t any likely lads and lasses hiding out in the trees.”
Aeryn Sun saluted. “Yes, sir.” She headed out to the far end of the orchard, pulse rifle held loose but ready; there was little danger on a farming world like this, but a careless soldier was a dead soldier.
The sun beat down on the orchard and a rich, sweet smell came off the fruit which hung heavy on the trees.
On an impulse, Aeryn reached up and plucked one of the fruit; it dropped easily into her hand, as though it wanted to be eaten. She looked around her, then opened up her visor, lifted the fruit to her lips and took a bite.
Juice exploded in her mouth and dribbled down her chin; it was sweeter than anything she had ever tasted. Processed food just did not compare.
A twig snapped, she spun around with her rifle raised; the fruit fell to the floor. A young girl looked down from the branches of a tree. She was no more than nine cycles old, long-limbed and athletic; prime recruitment material.
Aeryn lifted her hand to her mouth and licked the sweet juice from her fingers. She lowered her rifle with her other hand.
“Pass me another of those,” Aeryn said.
The girl plucked another fruit from her tree and tossed it to Aeryn. Aeryn caught it and took a bite, more carefully this time, so that no more juice ran down her chin.
“I’m going to stand over there and finish this,” Aeryn said, “then I’m going to take you over to the recruiting line.” She sauntered away from the tree, chewing thoughtfully, while the girl slipped down from the branches and hared away through the orchard.
Beltane
Arthurian Myth (late mediaeval)
Drama, Drabble
FR-T
“Forgive me,” she said, and then she struck.
Beltane, the first day of summer, when her power was strongest and his artifice weakest, was the perfect time to confront him, but in the end she could have chosen any time; he never saw it coming.
“I loved you,” Merlin whispered as the stone rose up around him.
“And I you,” Morgana murmured hoarsely. “Always you. Only you.”
“Then why?”
The stone closed over his head and he stood, immobile, at the centre of the great circle. Morgana planted a last kiss on the cold rock.
“For my mother,” she whispered.
The Season
Predator
Action
FR-M
Major Helfer surveyed the scene of carnage with distaste. Two dead prisoners - prisoners of war, his fellow airmen - were tied to the back of the jeep like carrion. The blood of the five SS officers had soaked into the parched ground in a rough circle, but there was no sign of their bodies.
Two of Helfer’s men directed searchlights around the scene while the others searched for any trace.
“What happened here?” Helfer demanded. “What were they doing with those prisoners?”
“I think… Hunting them, sir,” Leutnant Schmidt admitted. He bent and ruffled the fur of the dog that whined at his feet. She was Sturmbannfuhrer Zell’s dog, and she had never been known to whine, let alone submit to a petting from a Luftwaffe subaltern.
“Those animals,” Helfer snorted.
“Oh, I think they had a taste of their own medicine,” Schmidt assured his commander. “Someone was hunting them.”
“What? Hilts?”
“I don’t think so, Mein Herr. Where would he get the weapons to…”
“Herr Major!” one of the soldier’s searching the area called.
The two officers ran to the cry; they found the soldier doubled up under an oak tree, vomiting.
“What is it?”
In answer, the soldier merely pointed into the branches of the tree.
Helfer looked up. “Schmidt,” he whispered, “get the men back onto the jeeps. We’re going back to camp and calling this in.”
“Yes, sir,” Schmidt agreed.
They left the scene as swiftly as they could without panicking the men. Behind them, the bodies of Zell and his cronies swung in the soft, summer breeze, stripped, skinned and hung by their heels.
The Sundial
Bagpuss
Drama
FR-C
“Once upon a time
Not so long ago
There was a little girl and her name was Emily
And she had a shop.
“It was rather an unusual shop because it didn't sell anything
You see, everything in that shop window was a thing that somebody had once lost
And Emily had found
And brought home to Bagpuss
Emily's cat Bagpuss
The most Important
The most Beautiful
The most Magical
Saggy old cloth cat in the whole wide world.
“Well now, one day Emily found a thing
And she brought it back to the shop
And put it down in front of Bagpuss
Who was in the shop window fast asleep as usual
But then Emily said some magic words:
“‘Bagpuss, dear Bagpuss
Old fat furry cat-puss
Wake up and look at this thing that I bring
Wake up, be bright
Be golden and light
Bagpuss, Oh hear what I sing.’
“And Bagpuss was wide awake
And when Bagpuss wakes up all his friends wake up too
The mice on the mouse-organ woke up and stretched
Madeleine, the rag doll
Gabriel, the toad
And last of all, Professor Yaffle, who was a very distinguished old woodpecker
He climbed down off his bookend and went to see what it was that Emily had brought.”
“Yes, yes, yes; this is very interesting,” Professor Yaffle said.
The mice scrambled down from the Mouse Organ and huddled around the woodpecker. “What is it?” they asked. “What is it?”
“Nyeh, nyeh; silly mice, how can you see what it is if you’re all clustered around me. Go on; stand back, stand back.”
The mice obediently backed off and gave the Professor some space.
“Now, look at the thing that Miss Emily has brought in and see if you can put it back together.”
“Yes!” Charlie Mouse declared. “We will fix it.”
The mice clustered around the thing, rearranging and reassembling. And as they worked, they sang:
“We will fix it, we’ll refit it,
“We will set it to rights, rights, rights.
“We will dust it, do-just-what-we-must-to it,
“Make it glow like a light, light, light.”
“Excellent, excellent,” Yaffle applauded. “Now, you see that there are two flat wooden panels, each with a dial face marked in black, and you’ve fixed the two panels with a hinge so that they can fold together.”
“But what is it?” the mice demanded. “What is it?”
“This is a sundial,” Yaffle replied.
“What’s a sundial?” Charlie Mouse asked.
“It’s a kind of clock,” Yaffle explained. “This one is a very small, pocket sundial and you would use it like Miss Emily’s watch.”
“Like a watch?” Janie Mouse asked.
“But where are the hands?” Eddie Mouse asked.
“A sundial doesn’t have hands,” Madeleine told them. “With a sundial you tell the time using a shadow cast by the sun.”
Yaffle looked up in delight. “Yes, yes, yes!” he cried. “That’s right. The shadow falls on one of the lines on the dial and that tells you the time.”
Willie Mouse ran over and stood in the window so that his shadow fell right across the sundial and the other mice clustered around it.
“What’s the time?” they asked.
“We can’t tell,” Lizzie Mouse added, crestfallen.
“Of course not,” Yaffle said. “Now listen, you mice. You don’t make the shadow yourself, it’s made by a bit of the sundial called the gnomon. This sundial is missing it’s gnomon, so we need to find a new one.”
“But what can we make it from?” Charlie Mouse asked.
“You need to make a shadow that will fall sharply on one point, so you need something very thin; much thinner than Willie Mouse. For a pocket sundial like this one, you need a thin, black thread. I expect you’ll find something suitable in Miss Madeleine’s sewing box. Lizzie Mouse, why don’t you go and ask if we can have a little piece of thread? The rest of you mice, I want you to get your flying machine and fetch the battery torch from the shelf.”
The mice hurried off crying: “The flying machine, the flying machine!” over and over again, while Lizzie Mouse climbed up to Madeleine’s shelf.
“Dear Madeleine,” she said. “May we please have a piece of thread to make a gnome?”
“A gnomon,” Madeleine laughed. “Of course you may, Lizzie Mouse. Take a piece of the black twist.”
While Lizzie dug in the sewing box, the other mice had got out their ‘flying machine’, a clever crane made out of a fishing rod which they had once used to play a trick on Professor Yaffle, and were using it to fetch a torch down from a high shelf.
“Good, good,” Yaffle said. “Now if you turn on the light and swing it from side to side, you will see that my shadow moves about on the ground behind me.”
The mice did as he said and they did indeed see that his shadow leaped and danced along the floor.
“Ooh,” they gasped.
“And as the sun moves across the sky through the day, the shadow of the gnomon moves,” Yaffle finished. “That is how the sun tells you the time.”
The mice lowered the torch to the ground and came back down into the window.
“But how does the sun know the time?” Jenny Mouse asked.
“Well,” said Gabriel, “the sun knows what time it is by looking at where he is. You see, he always walks at the same speed and… I know a song about it in fact; I think you have a music roll for that song in the mouse organ.”
Eagerly, the mice scrambled up onto the organ and mousehandled a music roll into the top of the instrument.
Janie Mouse took up a pose on the box while the other mice went to the bellows. “The Marvellous. Mechnical. Mouse Organ!”
The Mouse Organ played a quick, lively tune and Gabriel played an accompaniment on his banjo and sang:
“Quite early in the mor-orning,
When all the world was dark,
The merry sun got out of bed,
To the singing of a lark.
He got his boots and raincoat on
And went out for a walk.
He walked all day from morn ‘til dusk,
No time to stop and talk.”
Madeleine took up the tune for the second verse:
“The sun he walked at a steady pace,
He never slowed his stride.
No more did he slow, for even a mo,
Or turn his course aside.
He left his house in the early morn,
And walked uphill ‘til noon,
Then he tripped downhill all even-ing
And came home in the evening’s gloom.”
“And so he walks out every day,
In fair weather, rain or snow.”
“Long walks in summer, short in the cold
Around the world he goes.”
“Nyeh, nyeh, nyeh,” Yaffle scoffed. “Fiddlesticks and flapdoodle. The sun doesn’t walk around the world. In fact, the sun doesn’t go around the world at all.”
“It does,” the mice insisted. “It does.”
“Nyeh, nyeh, nyeh. Go up to my bookshelf and bring me down the small, blue volume and I will show you.”
The mice clambered up the stacks to Professor Yaffle’s bookend. Charlie Mouse and Eddie Mouse carefully slid the blue book from its place and passed it down to Willie Mouse and Lizzie Mouse, who passed it down to Jenny Mouse and Janie Mouse. Charlie Mouse and Eddie Mouse scrambled past to take the book next, and they passed it down to Yaffle.
The title on the cover of the book read: Principles of Mathematics, by Sir Milton Isaac Newtown.
“Thank you, mice,” Yaffle said. He opened the book at a page illustrated with an image of the sun with various planets circling around it. “The rotation of the planets,” he read. And the mice gathered around to look at the pictures.
“There was a very learned man,
Nicholas Copernicus was his name,
Who studied the ways of the natural world,
To see what changed and what stayed the same.
He was troubled by the moving sun,
He wondered did it really roam.
The answer he found by chance one day,
While wandering far from home.
Glancing to his side one day,
He watched a tower marching by,
The faster he walked, it seemed to him,
The faster the tower did fly.
And when he stopped, the tower stopped,
As though it were watching Nicholas,
And that was when he realised,
That the tower was standing fast.
He knew a tower could not walk,
It certainly could not run,
It was he that moved, it only seemed,
And so it was with the sun.
The sun stood still, it was plain to see,
So Nicholas saw now.
It seemed to move because the Earth,
Was speeding round and round.”
“There, you see. As I always say, if you really want to know about something, you must research it thoroughly.”
“Whee!” Jenny Mouse spun past Yaffle’s head, suspended from the arm of the flying machine. “The world is spinning!” she called out.
“Yes, yes!” Yaffle called excitedly. “And when research runs out, there is always a spirit of experimentation. Jenny Mouse sees the world spinning around her, and we see the sun spinning around us, but really it’s the world - and Jenny Mouse - that does the spinning.”
“Can I have a go?” the mice chirruped. They all ran towards the end of the arm, but that left no-one holding the other end and Jenny Mouse fell suddenly.
Yaffle darted forward and caught the plummeting mouse in his wings. “You silly mice,” he said. “You must be more careful. Jenny Mouse could have been seriously hurt.”
“Yes,” Madeleine agreed. “You really must be more careful, mice. Are you alright, Jenny Mouse?”
“I’m alright,” Jenny Mouse quavered. “But I think I need to lie down.”
“Of course,” Yaffle said. “Mice, take Jenny Mouse up to the Mouse Organ.”
“Oh, and quickly,” Madeleine said. “Look at the time.” She pointed at the sundial.
“What?” Bagpuss asked. “Oh yes.”
“What’s the time, Professor Yaffle?” Willie Mouse asked.
Yaffle hopped over to the sundial and inspected it closely. “Let me see, the shadow is falling on the five, so it must be… Time for bed.”
Bagpuss gave a great yawn of agreement.
“Quickly, mice,” Madeleine said. “Put the sundial in the window and back to the Mouse Organ.”
And so the mice pushed the sundial into the front of the window, in case an astronomer who had lost it should come by the shop, see the sundial, and come in to collect it.
“Bagpuss gave a big yawn, and settled down to sleep
And of course when Bagpuss goes to sleep, all his friends go to sleep too
The mice were ornaments on the mouse-organ
Gabriel and Madeleine were just dolls
And Professor Yaffle was a carved wooden bookend in the shape of a woodpecker
Even Bagpuss himself once he was asleep was just an old, saggy cloth cat
Baggy, and a bit loose at the seams
But Emily loved him.”
A Summer’s Knight
Sisters Grimm
Drama/Adventure
FR-C
It was an ordinary, balmy summer’s night in Ferryport Landing, and although it was not quite the weather that she had grown accustomed to in the city, Sabrina Grimm was glad that at least something in her new hometown was ordinary. She had spent so much time recently thinking about stories and Ever Afters and her unwanted-but-apparently-inescapable destiny as a Fairy Tale Detective that it was nice to get away and enjoy something normal like a walk in the woods.
Of course, she did have to wear Alladin’s ring before Granny Relda would let her out, just in case she needed to escape from hostile Ever Afters, but otherwise the walk was normal.
Or it was until the beast showed up.
She heard it first and thought for a moment that it was a dog, but as soon as the beast appeared she could see that it had no place in her ordinary walk. It was something like a borzoi, with fur so white it seemed to glow; in fact, Sabrina was pretty sure it was glowing. Its ears stood straight up and were as red as blood.
The beast bounded out of the woods and stopped in front of Sabrina. It looked her in the eye. She could see a quick intelligence behind the beast’s dark eyes.
“Hello,” she said. “Aren’t you beautiful?”
The beast barked once, then leaped away. Sabrina had been wlaking close to the boundary of Ferryport Landing and expected the beast to be turned back by the mystical barrier, but instead it rushed on unhindered.
A few moments later, Sabrina heard the pounding of hooves. A great, white horse bounded out of the trees with a knight in full armour on its back. The knight wore a hunting horn at his side. Sabrina was so angry at the thought of someone hunting the beautiful beast that she stood in the horse’s path and yelled at the knight to stop.
“Whoa!” The knight drew his horse to a stop. “Careful, girl; you could get hurt doing that.”
Sabrina strode up beside the horse. “Don’t call me girl!” she snapped. “I’m a Grimm and I’m telling you to stop hunting that poor beast.”
The knight looked puzzled. “Beast? You mean Gladys?”
“Gladys?”
“Glatisant, the Questing Beast; I call her Gladys.”
“Is she a sort of big, white dog with glowing fur.”
“Yes.”
“Then yes, that beast.”
“That was no beast,” the knight said. “That was my wife.”
“Your…? Um…”
“Well, I’d been chasing her so long, we thought we might as well make it formal. She’s a lovely gal really.”
“Oo-kay. Well, she uh… She went that way.” Sabrina turned and pointed. “But she went through the barrier.”
“Of course. No one can stop a Questing Beast.” He lifted his horn and blew a long blast. “And no one can stop a Pellinor from following her.”
He spurred his horse forward and they galloped through the barrier as easily as the beast had done.
Sabrina shook her head and turned back towards home. So much for an ordinary evening walk.
Ménage a Trois
Transformers
Drama/Romance, Drabble
FR-T
I guess I have to admit that there’ve always been three of us in this relationship, and that’s not easy. Maybe it would be easier if he was using me, but he loves me, I know he does, and I… Yeah; I guess I love him.
So we love each other, and that’s great, but it’s not just us. There are three of us, and sometimes I don’t know who Sam loves more: me, or the car.
But then sometimes I don’t know if I love Sam or Bumblebee more.
So maybe it works after all. Which is kinda scary.
Summer’s End
Doctor Who
Drama
FR-C
“Were we running short of ice or something?” Rose asked. “Only you said we came here to get something, and there’s nothing else here.”
The Doctor ignored her.
“Doctor, it’s dark and it’s cold.”
“Come and look,” the Doctor called.
Rose tramped ungraciously over. “It’s a rock.”
“It’s Mont Blanc!” the Doctor protested. “The highest mountain in Western Europe.”
“It’s a foot high.”
“No; it’s just under fifteen-thousand-seven-hundred-and-seventy-three feet of ice.”
“Why are we here?”
The Doctor pointed to the horizon, where the sun was rising. “Put your goggles on; don’t want to get snowblind.”
Rose hurried to obey. With the goggles on she could see nothing, but a moment later the mountain was clear again, as the sun’s light flashed from the shining snows.
“Now, look at Mont Blanc.”
Rose turned wearily to look at the rock… and saw a tiny, white flower opening in the sunlight.
“It’s the year one-million-three-hundred-and-fifty-seven-thousand and the last edelweiss in the universe - the last flower on Earth - is blooming for the last time. Until they reclaim her, this is Earth’s final summer.”
“Oh,” Rose whispered.
He bent and gently gathered the flower into a stasis tube. “Some things are worth saving,” he declared.
James McLevy was a real man, his life dramatised by David Ashton. Harry Potter and all canon characters were created by J.K. Rowling. Oz and the world of Buffy the Vampire Slayer were created by Joss Whedon. Susan and the Triffids were created by John Wyndham. Lady Ulla Burton and this version of Sir Richard Burton were created by Philip Reeve; the martians are borrowed from H.G. Wells. Sally Lockhart and family were created by Philip Pullman. Aeryn Sun was created by Rockne S. O'Bannon. The Predator belongs to 20th Century Fox. Bagpuss and the Bagpuss intro and outro were written by Peter Firmin and Oliver Postgate. Sabrina Grimm was created by Michael Buckley. The Transformers belong to Hasbro. The Doctor and Rose belong to the BBC. Original characters belong to me, and the mythologicals and legendaries are free.
So, here we are on the final day, with an extra story because I just watched my birthday copy of Transformers.
I think the most notable thing about this set is how much I know about the background of The Garden Party, but couldn't fit in. For example, Japera Talkene is a Zimbabwean witch, whose mother came over to England to work as a nurse in St Mungo's. Her father remained behind; alive or dead, she isn't sure, because he was a great enemy of the corrupt ruling magical regime and its Mugabe-esque president. The ambition which drew her to Slytherin is a desire to go back and be a part - a major part - of sorting out her country. Sadly, this is a character based in part on children I've taught. I also know that Draco was hit hard by the events of the war, with the result that his ego was crushed, leaving nothing but a fragile veneer of hauteur. He surprised everyone in his choice of wife because instead of someone who complemented his apparent ambition, he went for someone quiet he could push around. His son, consequently, never had any respect for him and stopped being afraid of him once he got to Hogwarts, hence he became the Malfoy family's first serious rebel and quite a decent lad if you get through the spiky exterior.
Sibyl Trelawny and Firenze became close friends after the Battle of Hogwarts, although Trelawny remained a bloody awful seer. They were instrumental in securing closer ties between the wizards and the centaurs, although to date Firenze's daughter is the only centaur at Hogwarts.
Many freed house elves chose a new name for themselves and a large proportion of these chose to become 'Dobby', with either the name of their former family or of a patron as their surname. More radical Elves, such as Dobby X, chose surnames not attached to human families. Once she became Minister of Magic, Hermione achieved her goal of universal suffrage for all intelligent magical creatures and opened Hogwarts and the other wizarding schools to all races.