Jehane Desrosiers

Note: All of the wizarding world belongs to the genius of J.K.. Rowling. No money is being made from this fanfiction. If you wish to borrow anything I invented, email me and I’ll probably give you permission.

This story was begun in 2003, after the publication of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. It was finished in 2005 but does not take into account Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, so that makes it an alternate universe tale at this point.

I’m afraid I am an awful magpie when it comes to phrases and ideas. If I have inadvertently stolen something from your fanfiction, please let me know and I will either credit or return it as you wish.

To PMO,
“the one to whom everything may be said”
and
To Professor Severus Snape
in a thousand imaginations

PART I
ROMANCE NOVEL

Chapter 1: My First Hippogriff

I met my first hippogriff because my mother died.

I was in my fifth year at Beauxbatons, the French wizarding school, when it happened. I went home for the funeral, saw my father scatter her ashes over our vineyard, and came back to school, thinking that I would pick up my school life where I had left off, the only difference being that I was now a motherless girl. But I was wrong. All my studies, games, friendships and rivalries, all the small excitements of school, had lost their charm. I was like a sick person without appetite, moving through the day without interest, dull and distant. After some time I began to spend the day in bed, half asleep, and I was so irritable with my roommates that they soon gave up urging me out.

I had been carrying on like this for a week or so when my visitor came.

I was lying in an unwashed nightgown, the voices of housemates on their way to late morning classes drifting up the stairs. My roommates had kindly left my dimming charm on the windows, and in the crepuscular bedroom it was easy to ignore the passing arc of the day.

The door flew open. I peeked out from beneath the pillow. Silhouetted in the glaring light from the hall windows was the enormous form of Madame Maxime.

Merde! I sat up in a rush. I wasn’t sure that Madame had ever been in a dormitory room, at least not in several decades. She filled the room, and her heavy floral perfume wafted over me. I steeled myself for a scolding.

But her deep voice was kind.

“Jehane, you ‘ave taken to your bed for too long. Now I ‘ave a good job for you, and you weel get up and do the work. Eef you are not ready to go back to classes, I weel permit you to make up your studies when you are able. But you weel come out.” She waved her wand to remove the charms on the windows, fully revealing the dust, crumbs and dirty laundry surrounding me and my wand lying on the floor under a biscuit wrapper. For one awful moment I thought she might actually come lift me out of bed.

“Yes, Madame,” I said, scrambling up. “Do you mind if I take a shower first?”

“Not at all,” she said. “I weel wait for you here.” The bedsprings groaned as she settled on the end of my bed and I beat a retreat to the bathroom.

+++++

Outside, the February chill stung my eyes, unused to the light and the brisk wind. Madame was taking me to the stable.

It was dark there and I stood for a moment in the doorway, letting my eyes adjust. A shaft of midwinter light, entering through a high window over the hayloft and busy with drifting motes, looked cold but the barn was warm, filled with a familiar hay and manure smell. The horses were out to pasture. Why had Madame brought me here?

“Ee is in zee last stall, ma chere. Come look at ‘im.” Now I heard it -- a scrabbling, scuffling sound and a chuffing like a sneezing cat. I proceeded cautiously down the aisle and stopped before the last stall. It was even darker in there. Gradually I made out -- what?

Sick as it clearly was, it was beautiful. Golden eyes in an enormous finely molded eagle’s head covered with precisely overlapping feathers of brown, black and tan. Heavy muscular shoulders where feathers blended seamlessly into a horse’s thick palomino winter coat. Powerful back legs and sharp hoofs that now pawed the ground threateningly. Once or twice I had read about them. A hippogriff.

It glared at me with lowered head --again the chuffing sound, and I saw that the ebony beak, with its cruel hook, was hanging open, clogged with mucus, and the eyes were gummy. The stall door was latched back. Its raptor’s legs, feathered above and black scales below, ended with – but awful!-- where one had fierce toes and claws, the other had only a thickened ball, a stump.

“Jean ‘as been trying to ‘elp ‘im,” Madame Maxime said. “Ee weel not allow eet. Ee struggles and makes ‘imself weaker. Eef ee cannot be re’abilitated, ze Ministry weel ‘ave ‘im destroyed. ‘Ee severely injured ze villager ‘oo found ‘im.”

The hippogriff turned his head to stare at me from one eye. I stared back.

“I know zat you are good wiz animals. Weel you try? “ Madame asked, laying a huge hand on my shoulder.

A singing feeling ran through me. I was fully awake for the first time in months, keenly aware of the planks beneath my feet, the smell of wet feathers and fur, the glowing eye that examined me. My body filled with excitement and a tingle ran over my skin. My hands came up, longing to touch his head. She was giving him to me.

She was giving him to me.

“Has he eaten?” I asked.

“Very little,” she said.

“I’ll try to feed him. Could you send a house elf with strips of raw beef and some blankets?” I asked. Keeping my eyes on him, I settled myself on the floor out of reach of talons and beak. He hissed and lowered his head further.

“I weel see to it,” Madame answered. “And Jean weel help you wiz anysing you ask.”

“Thank you. I guess I’ll just – stay here – and – find my way.”

“I weel come later and check on you. You weel be careful, yes? “

“I will.”

“Zen, till later. Good luck, Jehane.”

When the house elf Tignette arrived, I folded one blanket into a pad beneath myself and put another over my shoulders. In the late afternoon of winter and with the horses gone, I knew the stable would cool quickly. Half an hour passed contemplatively as we watched each other. When his head came up slightly, I thought I could move without frightening him.

“Mmm, this is good meat,” I said softly, holding up a piece. His head rose again, seeking the scent in the air. I leaned forward without getting up, holding it out.

He lashed out suddenly with his stump, trying to knock it from my hand, and at the same moment I saw that he was tied to a metal fastening in the stall. The rope had been hidden in the feathers of his neck, and he jerked against it. I bit back a cry of pity but I held on to the meat.

“No. No, Beauty Boy,” I said soothingly. “You take it from my hand. You take it from my hand, and I’ll help you. And soon we can take off the rope.”

He did not take the meat from me that day or night. In the last try he nearly slashed my face with his beak. I slept on my blankets in front of his stall. At dawn I woke, ravenous, for I had asked Jean to stable the horses elsewhere and leave us alone, forgetting that I might need some dinner. I opened my eyes without moving. The hippogriff was on the floor of the stall, sleeping sphinxlike, with his beak tucked between his front legs. Carefully I inched my hand into the pot of meat. Without lifting my head, I brought a piece to my mouth and took a bite, then stretched forward, extending my open hand along the floor. I was in a very bad position to protect myself if he decided to strike. The hippogriff gave a small snort and awoke. Clear eyes gazed at my chewing, then he extended his long feathered neck and delicately took the meat from my palm.

+++++

By the end of that day, he had eaten and drunk well, always out of my hand. In a few days more he let me curry his coat and cover him with a blanket at night. He would not let me touch his head.

I sent to Madame Rossignol, the matron, for a fortifying potion suitable for a hippogriff with a cold. The note which accompanied the return flask thanked me for livening up her otherwise routine round of sore throats and Quidditch injuries.

I was afraid to untie him. Not on my own behalf, for we had established a beginning trust that I hoped would protect me, but for him. If he hurt anyone the Ministry would kill him. Jean the stableman had brought me whatever books could be found about hippogriffs and their habits. They gave me information about the training of young hippogriffs and the care and handling of older ones, but nothing on rehabilitating violent ones.

Returning from a lunch break after a week or so, I met Jean in the yard. I told him my worries.

Jean’s weathered, handsome face wrinkled in thought. “I did look at some of those books,” he said. “Not much -- I’m not much of a reader – but I do recall about the bowing and the naming. Did you bow to him yet?”

“Oh! no,” I said. “I just hadn’t.”

“And there was something about the naming, too. What are you calling him?”

“Oh,” I said, embarrassed. “You know, Sweetheart, Beauty Boy, Honey – like that.”

“Mm,” said Jean, twinkling at me. “Try giving him a real name, one he can live with. Horses, you know, live up to the names we give ‘em. You can’t go through life called Sweetheart.” He grinned at me and I let go of my anxiety long enough to smile back. It felt good.

That evening, after I had fed the hippogriff and given him his water laced with colds potion and a flask of Potion Restituez, I stood before him and drew myself up, signaling, I hoped, a formal approach. Did I bow – or curtsey? Since I was wearing jeans with mucky knees, bowing seemed more appropriate. I bowed low.

He raised his head and looked down his beak at me, pulling the rope tight. His meaning could not have been more clear.

“Yes, of course.” I moved quickly to untie the rope from his neck, quashing a slight frisson of fear in my belly. This was the only way to move forward.

The knot had tightened and I swore softly as I worked at it. He cocked his head as if amused. Finally I leaned over and worked the loop out with my teeth. The rope fell and hung from the side of the stall.

I stepped back, and bowed again. He paused for a moment, as if teasing me, then extended a feathered leg and lowered his body to allow me to climb on. My hands trembled as I steadied myself against his shoulders where feathers gave way to fur, and when I had settled myself on his back, I laid my face against the short feathers of his neck, and sobbed.

+++++

I never roped him again, although the books treated this as a necessary practice. To approach him with a rope or the standard leather hippogriff collar once I had untied him seemed a betrayal.

Jean had told me that horses live up the names they are given. From the practical manuals, I learned that a hippogriff’s name both acknowledges his essential nature and influences its expression. Therefore, a successful breeder will be a skilled and intuitive namer as well. Superstitiously, some bad luck attends a hippogriff who flies before naming. Hence, the common expression “waiting on the egg,” eg., anxiously watching, refers to the fact that hippogriff eggs hatch within a day of laying.

Alternately, captured hippogriffs are named by their trainers as part of the breaking process. The naming is associated with the leather collar, leg chains and beakstrap used to establish control of the animal, and reflects his birth into human society or his new status. Captured hippogriffs may be given names such as Loyal or Faithful.

But I had not been present at my hippogriff’s hatching and I would not pursue the path of breaking him.

I was still sleeping in the stable, usually curled up just in front of the hippogriff’s stall, my back against a bale of hay. I wanted him to see me all the time, and for my part, I felt better around him. The memory of my recent depression was fresh, and I was afraid to go back to the dormitory.

One night I stood in front of him, but he was larger, much larger, and had grown silvery gray, almost translucent like a ghost, yet at the same time glowing like stained glass. I looked up as if he were a statue, and now he seemed solid, gothic, his head the beaked down spout of a cathedral. He wore some kind of headdress or crown, but I could hardly see it as I craned my neck. My whole body fit in the space between his forelegs, no, now even his scaled lower leg was as tall as I, and he lifted one taloned foot and placed it on my shoulder. Its claws gripped me, steadyingly, as one who wishes to make a point, and a clear masculine voice spoke close to my ear. It said, Protecteur.

I woke all at once and in possession of the whole dream. It was dawn, and twin puffs of condensation rose from Protecteur’s nostrils as he slept, head on forelegs. He must have heard me stir, for he slowly brought his head up and regarded me, first from one eye and then the other.

“Protecteur,” I said crawling to him with my blankets wrapped around me in the cold. He laid his stump on my waist, gave a grunt, put his head down and went back to sleep.