Headmaster's Office
“Ah, Horace,” Albus smiled in welcome, gesturing the doors open. “And how was your lunch with Professor Dippet?”
It was a very sincere welcome, even more so than usual. Anyone would have been welcome. Severus hadn’t had the least idea how disturbing his report on his Bulgarian mission had been—not that any other outcome would have struck Albus differently. He flattered himself that Severus, sharp though he could be, had left as ignorant of his effect as he’d begun.
Or, at least, ignorant to the cause of Albus’s disquiet. Severus considered that Albus should be concerned that Central Europe was still angry with him for ‘waffling’ between the Muggle World Wars. Albus didn’t argue entirely with this assessment of their feelings, but thought it might be more accurate to say that Central Europe still resented that England hadn’t been so unilaterally flattened as many by the Global Great Depression, and considered that Albus should have dissuaded Hector Fawley from focusing so closely on internal affairs.
Albus had quite agreed with Fawley. Witches and wizards had disobeyed Archer Evermonde’s orders to keep out of the muggle ‘Great War’ in droves, and died in droves, and those who had survived had come away in just as much shock and despair as any of the surviving muggles who would dream of mud, maggots, maiming, and mustard gas forever. Too many had come away telling themselves that the Great Evil that had had made it all possible was simply the nature of muggles. A period of healing had been badly, badly needed. Everyone had agreed about that.
They might gotten it, too, if someone hadn’t decided that power was a better healer than peace. Or, rather, that it was impossible to feel peaceful without possessing the complete security of complete power.
Albus wasn’t disturbed to hear Severus tell him that the countries who sent children to Durmstrang were still annoyed with him. After all, he led the International Confederation of Wizards. He had ample opportunity to distinguish between the amiable griping of the Australians, the American nation-states, and Western Europe, the polite skepticism of the Norse, the near-complete disinterest of Eurasia and South Africa, and the chilly rote courtesy he received from Germany and the Carpathian regions.
He was a little disturbed, he might have admitted if anyone had asked him, to hear Severus so frankly admiring Durmstrang’s very regimented teaching methods. Perhaps he shouldn’t have been surprised, since he’d heard a very lengthy, loud, and profane ‘why won’t you even try to keep my classmates under control’ rant an average of twice a year for nearly a decade.
Should not have been surprised, but was: Severus had enjoyed Filius’s lighthearted Charms class very much, had been almost infamously inspired by it, and gave every appearance of respecting Filius over all other teachers. He’d shown no such draw towards Minerva’s class, which was probably the closest at Hogwarts to imitating the methods for which he was now expressing such approval.
Albus had barely thought of a single one of these very practical and somewhat pressing concerns the whole time Severus was talking.
Gellert was still locked up.
He was still scheming, and he wasn’t—not really—alone. It was only his body and his magic locked up. He had not been stopped from receiving letters, or sending them.
(He hadn’t been sneaking any to Albus. Of course he hadn’t.)
His spirit had not been broken.
—So Albus had not destroyed Gellert entirely—
—So Gellert, who had been alerted and involved in Britain’s affairs, would be interested, and would involve himself. In Albus’s affairs.
Unless he wouldn’t (want to think of him at all).
How could he resist?
Only to drive Albus mad, only as punishment for Albus agreeing with the ICW that he could never trust himself, except through complete silence between them. ‘
What else could Albus have done? It was true enough that he’d won the duel between them, but he hadn’t been able to finish it. It had seemed to him that they’d stared at each other, filthy and aching and paralyzed, for aeons before Filius had slid in with his stunner and incarcerus and Calid Bashir had rolled Gellert up in an IWP carpet.
Most likely it had been no more than a heartbeat. Filius never hesitated when he ought not to.
Albus had had to stop himself from shouting at Bashir, even from hexing him. Gellert had looked so battered, so sick.
—But the appearance of disinterest would do just as well as the fact of it, for revenge: Gellert might or might not care about his old follies any more, or about Albus, but he could never resist jumping into a great argument. He hadn’t sent Severus away coldly: he was not resisting.
And Severus hadn’t been protecting himself against Albus. He had wanted Albus to have as much insight as possible, and had met Albus’s eyes openly and earnestly and often.
He hadn’t thought much about Gellert’s face. Albus had seen shrewd observations about the way his old friend was kept, about what correspondence the guards allowed, or what liberties were being taken their incompetence. He’d seen a grim young castle frothily skirted in lemon groves.
But Severus was very young, and extremely newly handfast. He hadn’t thought much about Gellert’s face, after the initial shock, but Albus hadn’t been able to look the child in the eye without seeing the shapes of his old friend, rosier and warmer and calmer and more sincere than Albus had ever seen before. For the first time, he’d seen those wolf-shaped eyes race with cool calculation meant for protection, not conquest, seen what that full-lipped smile would have looked like, had it belonged to a man capable of loving people as much as purpose.
Oh, yes, Horace was welcome. Any distraction would have been. Albus would have welcomed a stinking-drunk Aberforth shouting century-old condemnations. With open arms and a hangover cure.
Blissfully immersed in his own concerns, Horace eyed Albus dyspeptically, every curve in his comfortable form doing its best to convey disapproval of Albus’s carefree attitude and overly-dramatic way of greeting visitors when they both knew the gargoyles had alerted him to who was coming upstairs and it was customary for Horace to come tell him about Dippet’s end-of-summer fundraiser in any case.
“When I left,” said the Potions Master with rotund dignity, drawn up to his full, if meager, height, “poor Armandus’s beard was paisley.”
“Oh my,” Albus remarked, intrigued. “Let me see, now… it was 1974 when the boys left off hexing each others’ hair in their House colors, wasn’t it? I don’t think any of them had got past polka dots at the time, although as I recall Sirius Black managed an attractive red and gold zebra-striped pattern towards the end. A very shiny gold, too. I thought it quite fetching, although of course our young Mr. Snape didn’t seem able to see past the patriotic slur. Very clan conscious, those two.”
“Albus…”
“Paisley, now,” Albus continued cheerfully, “is far more complex, although of course a beard,” he patted his own, “would be easier for supporting a pattern than ordinary hair, being stiffer and shifting about somewhat less.”
“Albus…!”
“I’m quite impressed!” he concluded brightly. “I do hope Professor Dippet took it in good part and allowed a photograph to be taken. I’m sure Professor Flitwick will be agog to learn such a clever little charm. None of our curtains shall be safe.”
“It was the Rookwood boy who actually cast the spell,” Horace said irritably, huffing himself cantankerously into Albus’s armchair and digging into the sweets bowl without being asked. Which he was more than welcome to do, of course, but it did show his mood. “So I’m sure Professor Flitwick will have no trouble picking it up. Perhaps you should give Professor Flitwick an assistant to keep under control, instead of me.”
“Surely it wasn’t as bad as all that,” Albus suggested.
Horace glared, and pointedly ate a caramel cobweb. There was a great deal of crunching.
“Let me fetch you a drink,” Albus alternately suggested, “and you can tell me all about it.”
“Well,” Horace grumbled, somewhat appeased, “it’s a bit early… still, you may as well.”
When the elf had brought Horace his tropical-fruit mimosa, and brought Albus a nice refreshing shandy so Horace wouldn’t exactly be drinking alone, Albus asked, “Now, why would a rule-abiding lad like Augustus Rookwood hex his own great-grandfather’s beard?”
“It wasn’t Augustus, it was his son,” Horace corrected irritably, and slurped his drink.
“Gracious,” Albus blinked. “And how old would he be?”
“Eight!”
“What a talented young wizard,” Albus noted, beaming. “I shall look forward to his joining us in a few years.”
“Well I shan’t,” Horace groused, straining more mimosa through a wet moustache. “That boy will be trouble, you take it from me.”
“Did he have a reason for it?” Albus asked, entirely out of benign curiosity and a fondness for the inexplicable whims of the young. It wasn’t at all because he strongly suspected that his predecessor had taken it upon himself to be a stickler and disciplinarian over some matter the boy’s parents would have chosen to ignore, at least in public and with strangers present, such as a failure to present boots to the elf for cleaning or a refusal to eat vegetables. Dear, dear, no.
“I’m sure I couldn’t say,” Horace said primly, clinching it.
“But why would Severus—that is what you were implying, Horace?” This was a more genuine mystery. Albus had once, not long before introducing the young man to Perenelle, tripped over a perfectly innocent and unrelated question into a loud and angry rant over the folly of sharing one’s invented spells, which was to say: one’s weapons. He had been quite forcefully assured that Severus would never do such an idiotic thing, and his ‘naïveté’ for believing that students respected one another’s privacy and belongings had been ridiculed at great length.
“Well,” said the head of Slytherin, rather looking it, which was to say that he seemed to suddenly be finding the moulding around Albus’s office windows inexplicably fascinating, “the child had been making rather of a nuisance of himself until, oh, twenty minutes before letting the spell off.”
“In what way?” Albus enquired.
“Oh…” Horace squirmed. “Asking perhaps somewhat impertinent questions of adults trying to converse amongst themselves. Nothing untoward. Perhaps just a touch distracting for someone who isn’t accustomed to young children, especially while trying to advance an agenda to someone who mustn’t be offended.”
“I do beg your pardon, Horace,” Albus said, trying not to let his beard twitch, “but are we speaking of Severus or yourself?”
“Oh, really,” Horace huffed.
Which was in no way an answer, so Albus mused aloud, “I do hope this luncheon hasn’t cost us more in bribery—oh, do excuse me, Horace, I meant hospitality gifts—than Professor Dippet will be returning to the school.”
“Really, Albus, it was only a sickle or two!”
“But why?” Albus asked with an expression of concerned pain, quite ready to be entertained. “Surely eight year old boys aren’t so much more difficult for you to deal with than the eleven year old variety, Horace?”
“For pity’s sake, Albus,” Horace scowled, less defensive now than really annoyed, “it wasn’t to save myself the trouble of dealing with the child! I had to know how Severus performs under pressure against an opponent he knows he mustn’t curse!”
“I should hardly call one of Professor Dippet’s admirable luncheons ‘pressure,’” Albus suggested.
“You wouldn’t,” Horace said smugly, “and nor would I.”
“Ah.”
“Besides,” Horace elaborated, “I explained to him very carefully before we left that if he wanted any chance at those new cauldrons he was after at the staff meeting, he’d have to help me persuade Armandus that Hogwarts was the proper recipient of the bulk of his charitable giving budget this quarter. Which is an uphill battle, as you know,” Horace sighed, looking fretful, “with Augustus waxing eloquent about the marvelous research being done at the Department of Mysteries and Barty Crouch on fire over the so-called needs of the Auror Office and Barney Cuffe plumping for the Prophet and every one of them a closer relative than poor old Horace.”
“And are we that recipient?”
“No,” said Horace sourly.
“Well, I suppose we couldn't expect anything much in the way of persuasion from our young friend, considering he’s joined us only this week and doesn’t know any of our current budget strains,” Albus suggested. Gently, reasonably. Not a hint of reproach for Horace’s leaving such an important matter to such an untried and awkward young man, certainly not.
“No, Albus, that’s not it at all,” Horace said, scowling again. “Severus and Augustus got into a howling great argument about the proper treatment of the werewolf problem, and Severus kept asking—oh, what is his name, Westley? Barty’s secretary, you know,” he waggled his eyebrows, “the one he takes everywhere…”
“Weatherby, I believe,” Albus supplied, hand over his mouth to hide the smile. “Barty Crouch is married, you know, Horace. I recall your speaking most favorably of his son.”
“As if that ever stopped anyone. Never thought he’d amount to much—Weatherby, I mean—but I suppose it’s the sort of work that makes Hufflepuffs happy, and … well, Severus kept turning to him for support about his cost quotes and statistics and whatnot, and Augustus sneered at him about it, so of course Barty went over all frosty…”
“I suppose Professor Dippet was so offended he washed his hands of the whole affair for the season again,” Albus sighed.
“No,” Horace said again, more sourly yet. “I daresay we’ll be able to get that astral camera Timaeus wanted, and maybe even that special mulch Pomona was asking for. But Severus was, in fact, extremely persuasive: most of the money’s going to St. Mungo’s.”
“I hope they won’t need it,” Albus said, soberly enough to distract Horace from his politics.
“Oh,” he said, fidgeting with his plump fingers. “Well… yes, of course.”
“But let’s not dwell on these dark possibiliites at the beginning of a new year!” Albus decided, as hearteningly as he could. “There’s the feast tonight to look forward to, after all, and a new crop of Britain’s best and brightest to meet! I am agog to see what Severus will do with your classroom this afternoon. I think you said you were going to have him choose the tapestries and so on?”
“Well I was going to,” Horace went fretful again, “to make him feel protective about the classroom—you know—but he’s being so conscientious over taking the inventory that there simply isn’t time. As a matter of fact, Albus, I can’t stay long at all this afternoon, since I meant for him to do it and now I’ll have to myself.”
But he got the numbers from Horace in time to give them to a rabid Minerva. That was a quieter meeting; she liked to attend to budget matters in his office, although she didn’t usually ask his opinion. It was convenient, since he could pass her the parental letters he judged would lead to considerably longer conversations if he answered them himself.
In the middle of that discussion he got a howler he rather suspected Dirk Cresswell’s mother had meant for him to receive at the Welcome Feast. It accused him of passing over her son for Head Boy because he was muggleborn.
“Oh, dear,” he sighed, and Minerva looked up. Since it was her prefect under discussion, he passed her the letter.
“Isn’t she right?” she asked. “You did say a Head Boy wasn’t any use if he was going to spend all year on the defensive. And I said what about ’77, and you said being controversial from a position of strength wasn’t the same thing.”
“If a student acknowledges no peer authority,” Albus shrugged, “and everyone else has already decided to bear with him, and have already sorted out the areas of responsibility between themselves in any case, denying him a role as a figurehead would be foolish and cause unnecessary problems. And when he shows every sign of rising to it and turning it into a real leadership role if expected to, it would also be a waste of potential. As I said at the time. Dirk Cresswell is a fine young lad, but he hasn’t James Potter’s impenetrable self-confidence. Or Lily Evans’s defenders, for that matter.”
“Mmm,” Minerva commented, perusing the letter critically. “He is quite old enough to remember Lily being his Head Girl. Or perhaps a muggleborn girl doesn’t count.”
“His mother mightn’t think Head Girl does count,” Albus agreed thoughtfully. “Not having gone to Hogwarts herself, she might assume they’re quite different jobs.”
“Nonsense,” Minerva said crisply, and drew out her quill.
“She did write to me.” Albus pointed out, smiling and not at all loathe, “and you were doing the donation allocations.”
“The donation allocations,” Minerva said, more crisply yet, “will wait, and you’d muck it up.”
“Just as you like, Professor,” Albus had almost finished saying meekly when the door banged open.
“Muck and FILTH!” Filch railed, waving a furious brochure at Albus. “Have you seen these, sir?”
“Why, I don’t know, Argus,” Albus blinked, and held out a polite hand. “Do show me.”
“It’s those damn so-called Marauders demons!” Filch howled. He was probably trying to hand the brochure over, but he just kept shaking it.
“They’ve graduated, Argus,” Albus pointed out kindly.
“THAT DON’T STOP THEM! And you’ve brought that trouble-magnet Snape back, too, the castle is going to FALL AROUND OUR EARS, and who’ll have to sweep it up? MUGGINS, that’s who!”
“Do tell me what the trouble is,” Albus sighed, massaging the old breaks in his nose with a finger under the bridge of his spectacles.
“They’ve made these capsules of powder,” Argus informed him, still very red, “you can break it over food or dissolve it in drinks, see, and they say it tastes of blackcurrant so people might take it themselves!”
“Oh, dear,” Minerva looked up in dread. “What does it do?”
Apparently Argus hadn’t noticed her, bent over her quill. He turned a slightly different shade of red. “Er… don’t rightly like to say in front of a lady, Miss.”
“Your tender feelings do you great credit, Mr. Filch,” Albus said gravely. “But I’m sure you would also not like to leave the good Professor unwarned against the foul imaginations of her former students.”
He had, apparently, chosen his words perfectly.
“Fowl, that’s the point, innit?” Filch agreed, reverting to the unabashed ruby of infuriation. “If you take that there powder you start sh—” he glanced at Minerva and recollected himself. “Mean to say, when someone does the necessary it’s these little duck eggs hit the water, and then they hatch and fly away!”
Albus blinked. “I must say,” he had to say, “that sounds rather charming, Argus.”
“Oh, it sounds just luv-er-ly,” Filch managed to spit and draw out sarcastically at the same time. “But what about when the magic wears off, you tell me that, sir, and those ducks turn into what they was from the beginning!”
“…Ah. Will they?”
“Doesn’t say! Or if they eat! It’s bad enough trying to keep bird droppings from pitting and staining the outside of the castle, all that acid. At least a castle’s supposed to look weathered on the outside. And they’ve got fumes! You want the kiddies breathing that all day from all the nooks and crannies? The elves don’t do a whole-castle deep clean every night, you know! One undersized duck wouldn’t do much harm, I grant you, except they’re mean little sods.”
Fortunately, he didn’t notice the flicker of a look, loaded with suppressed laughter, that shot between Albus and Minerva.
“But how many hatch at a time? You know there’ll be a fad till the little monsters get sick of it. This says the effects can go on up to a week and what a great selling point because your loo won’t smell! As if birds don’t stink!”
“Long term strategic thinking never was Sirius Black’s strong point,” Minerva noted dryly, the hand over her mouth proving that Sirius Black’s failing was not typical of their House.
“I’ll write to Remus Lupin and make enquiries,” Albus sighed. “For the moment, I think the best thing is not to draw attention to the product’s existence, Mr. Filch. For all the drawbacks you mention, it sounds fanciful and delightful, and to label it forbidden before everyone understands why it is, first and foremost, an annoyance, would only make the children want it more. Thank you very much for bringing this to my attention, Argus; I’ll be sure to ask Mr. Lupin how any inopportune waterfowl that might show up around the castle can best be disposed of.”
Filch sighed too, and thanked him in a disgruntled sort of way. He went out, grumbling about disgusting children liking everything nasty and slimy and smelly.
The two of them got in a further a companionable half-hour or so with the budget and the mail. They had to confer again because Albus opened a somewhat incoherent letter from Madam Jones, whose youngest daughter Gwenog would be starting today and was, apparently, in danger of starving due to a misguided worship for Percy Shelley.
Minerva couldn’t make sense of it either, finally offering up the baffled shrug, “It isn’t as if there aren’t always bread and veg on the tables, and porridge for breakfast.”
“Do you suppose milk in the porridge is allowed?” Albus asked, regarding the letter in equal bafflement.
He never found out Minerva’s opinion: the door slammed open again.
“Albus,” Sylvanus shouted, not as loudly as Filch had but, still, unmistakenly vexed. “ Do you know what your pet haystack has done now?!”
“Escorted our new Research Fellow to his rooms?” Albus suggested, stroking his beard and twinkling at both of them. “Had lunch, I trust? Speaking of lunch, do come and have a caramel cobweb. Or perhaps a wine gum?”
“Parent letters that bad this year?” Sylvanus asked shrewdly, and regarding Albus’s more brightly colored candy bowl with interest. “They’ve got wine in? It’s not tea yet.”
“The letters are a trifle perplexing this year,” Albus allowed, “but ‘wine gum’ is only a name. Hagrid, come in, do try some, sit. I’m sure you’re not in trouble.”
“I’m not,” Sylvanus grumbled, but he sat in an armchair and tried a purple one. Hagrid tentatively shuffled over to take the sofa and half the bowl. He’d hardly have gotten a taste, otherwise.
“Now,” Albus asked kindly, regarding them both over folded fingers, “what’s the trouble?”
“They didn’t mean no harm,” Hagrid said defensively.
Sylvanus threw up his hands, one of which clicked softly from three fingers as he flared them in exasperation. “Of course they didn’t, no one means any harm by belching. The question is, why were nifflers belching flame?”
“Good afternoon, gentlemen,” Minerva said at once, gathering her papers and rising crisply. “I can see I’ll get more done in the library.”
“Smart woman,” Sylvanus observed her disappearing back wistfully. “Wish I could get more done in the library.”
“Why is that, Professor?” Albus asked mildly.
“Because Pomona uses gold watering cans and sickles and rakes for the heliotropes and mistletoe and, I don’t know, some other things. She keeps her tools in a wooden shed. I did mention about the nifflers breathing fire? They noticed.”
“Who noticed?”
“The nifflers did. It was coming out of their mouths. They’re dead clever, you know. it’s not as if they never smelled the gold through the keyholes and under the doors before. They just couldn’t get in before someone spotted them digging.”
“Ah.”
“So between decent walls and wards that kept wizards out, Pomona’s quite expensive tools used to be quite safe.”
“Quite.”
“Neither absent and well-hidden nor gnawed on with their handles burnt off, is my point.”
“Yes, I understand.”
“I’m glad you understand, Albus, because gold is rather a soft metal, and the reason nifflers go after precious metals is to chew them into unrecognizable spiky sheets toarmor their nests with.”
“Yes, I do see.”
“Also there are now honking great melted holes in the greenhouses, because she uses some interesting ores in the fertilizer in some patches, and some of those plants—”
“Thank you, Sylvanus, yes, I grasp the scope of the catastrophe. Hagrid, did you by any chance feed the nifflers anything interesting?”
“No, Professor, I wouldn’t!” Hagrid protested. “They’re cute li’l devils and everything, but looking after the nifflers is Professor Kettleburn’s job. I’d never, unless he asked me. I’d never want to step on the Professsor’s toes. He lets me feed the thestrals and all, and besides, his feet are that small.”
Kettleburn looked up at him sourly. “Ta ever so.”
Hagrid grinned.
It turned out, after in Albus’s opinion rather too much questioning, that while Hagrid didn’t feed the nifflers himself, he did provide Sylvanus with their food.
What they ate, indiscriminately, was insects.
It further transpired that Hagrid had been experimenting with creating gypsy moths that glowed like fireflies. Everyone talked about how pretty fireflies were (Albus couldn’t imagine when this had come up), and the things were almost too small for him to see. It had occurred to him that a glowing gypsy moth would make a lovely night light, much calmer and less likely to bite than a fairy.
Only he’d tried it on smaller, more common moths first. Because he didn’t understand that ‘firefly’ wasn’t a literal term (he didn’t seem to have thought about their never setting forest fires), he’d given some caterpillars water sprinkled with Fawkes-ash from a recent cage cleaning.
And then, after the flaming post-cocoon disaster, it hadn’t occurred to him not to feed his dead experimental subjects to the nifflers. They were dead little insects and so they were niffler food.
After a very long silence, Albus rated his headache a three and said, “I see.”
He let that hang there for a second, allowing everyone to sweat because he had flaming nifflers running amok all over his grounds with children who’d never used wands arriving in only a few hours, and then smiled kindly at Hagrid. “Well, Hagrid, I can see you meant it for the best. Now, you may not have time after helping Professor Kettleburn to secure his nifflers and Professor Sprout with whatever she needs to set the greenhouses in order before you must meet the first years.”
“Er, yes sir?” Hagrid asked, looking more than a bit like a first year caught at mischief himself.
Albus supposed he still was, in a way, a third year, unable to study further, unable to live as a wizard anywhere else in the country, and certainly unable to live as a muggle. It was so important to be a sanctuary and not a cage, to offer what he could to his friend—to this legally-unwanded magical being in his care—without rotting the Wizengamot from the top down.
“When you do have a moment, I should like you to tell Professor Slughorn that I’d like our new Research Fellow to,” he smiled, “yes, to tutor you in basic experimental procedure. Why don’t you make those glowing gypsy moths your project? He did take your class, Sylvanus, as I recall?”
“Oh Merlin,” Sylvanus groaned, covering his eyes, “we’re all going to die.”
“Well, we shall do it with your nifflers in a nice, flameproof pen until we find out whether the effect will wear off,” Albus said firmly, rising. “It’s a lovely day out and I could do with a walk in any case.”
“Because that’s the reason to fence in blazing two-foot squirrels that move at forty miles an hour and have as much respect for personal space as tapeworms,” Sylvanus grumbled, head-butting his way out of the chair for the door.
“Sorry, Professor,” Hagrid tried to whisper sheepishly once Sylvanus had left.
Albus patted his elbow consolingly. “It was a lovely idea, Hagrid. You’ll clean up the mess, and young Severus will teach you to do it better next time.”
“He’ll shriek a lot,” Hagrid predicted gloomily.
“I daresay,” Albus cheerfully agreed. And he would, but this wasn’t in the least revenge for making Albus vividly remember things he’d never wanted to think about again. Severus had expressed a specific worry about having enough free time that Tom might think it reasonable to give him extracurricular assignments. “I suggest you take notes; he does it so well. Now, come along, and tell me all about what bait they’ll like best.”
After all, he had at least thirty letters from the parents and the Wizengamot and the Confederation on his desk, none of the latter color-coded Dammit Albus This Is Really Important People Are Dying Over Here, and it was a lovely warm day under a cool white sky. And in only a few short hours, the skies would darken and the dear locusts would descend.