The farm had a wooden sign with a cherry bowl painted on it. A woman with curly grey hair greeted them at the gate. “Mr. Snape! Rose! How nice to see you again! And you brought a friend?”
Harry was flabberghasted. He had never seen anyone so pleased at the sight of Snape, and that included Dumbledore.
Snape nodded. “Miss Thorne, this is Harry, Rose’s half-brother. He has no previous experience, so ...”
“Hello Harry. I’ll give you Dandelion, what do you say? She’s nice and small, and as stubborn as three donkeys.”
“Um. Thank you?” Was a stubborn horse a good thing?
Miss Thorne didn’t notice his lack of enthusiasm, though, as she was already talking to Snape again. “I wondered ... could you perhaps have a look at Buttercup? She must have gotten injured somewhen in the night, I was just about to call you ... something isn’t right with her right front leg.”
Buttercup, it turned out, was a white-yellow Shetland pony and extremely tiny. She limped to the front of the box she was in to push her nose into Rose’s hand.
“Poor Buttercup”, Rose said, petting the pony. “You will be able to help her, will you?”
“I do think so”, Snape replied. “Now, why don’t you and Harry go and meet Dandelion while I am busy?”
Dandelion, though much bigger than little Buttercup, was also yellow-ish in colour and still more pony-sized than horse-sized, although Miss Throne informed Harry that the breed were generally called Icelandic horses. “She has a soft spot for inexperienced riders, this one. Will make sure you stay on her back. She’ll indulge your silly human ideas of what to do as long as she’s in a good mood, but don’t think you are the boss of her. She’ll fight anyone who thinks he can order her around.”
“Oh, okay.” Harry’s only experience in horseback riding – if you could call it that, which wasn’t advisable if you liked being alive – was being carried by Firenze the centaur. “Sounds perfect.”
Miss Thorne had just asked a worker, a younger woman with honey-blonde hair, to fetch ‘Seafoam’ and ‘Silvermane’, when Snape returned.
“What do you say?”, Miss Thorne asked. “Can you do something for poor Buttercup?”
“I have put some comfrey ointment on her leg. Leave it on three days, and she will recover.”
Rose and Snape went to saddle their ponies, and Harry was tasked with leading Dandelion outside. Which worked fine until they reached the stable door, when Dandelion suddenly decided she didn’t want to move anymore.
Harry shrugged and waited. So far, Dandelion didn’t kick or bite, and he wasn’t keen on finding out what she would do if he annoyed her.
“... fixed Buttercup’s leg? How?” The younger woman’s voice, Harry realized. She was quite far away, but he could faintly hear her.
“I told him she was limping a bit”, Miss Thorne replied cheerfully.
“Limping a bit? That leg was broken! The surgery would have cost a fortune, and you say he fixed it?”
“Shush, don’t let him hear that we know it was broken. I doubt he would be willing to fix something so severe. He’s just a humble herbalist who dabbles in healing ... or so he says. And I won’t be the one to challenge him on that.”
“He can’t - ”
“Don’t. Haven’t you read fairy tales? Never question the fair folk. Never try to expose their secrets. Just be grateful.”
Harry had grown quite curious and wanted to hear more, but now, Dandelion decided she wanted to go outside and be saddled.
Which Harry did, advised by Rose.
Once he got in the saddle, Harry realized, to his surprise, that he was having fun. Snape on a pony was a sight it was hard not to giggle at – had someone asked him earlier, Harry would have bet anything that Snape would ride a large black horse.
The pony was grey, which was a colour that would suit Snape, but his feet dangled rather close to the ground.
Dandelion ambled peacefully towards a fenced enclosure, followed by Rose’s and Snape’s ponies.
Miss Thorne joined them, riding a large black horse the exact kind Harry would have thought Snape would want.
“I see you get along with Dandelion, Harry.”
“It isn’t that hard, Madam.”
“You’d be surprised.”
They made two circles around the fenced enclosure, apparently only for Harry’s benefit, and as soon as he said he felt ready, they left for the forest.
Dandelion went first. It didn’t worry Harry much, as he had decided to treat her like a centaur. She clearly knew the way better than he did, and while Miss Thorne had told him how to use his legs to steer a horse in a direction or the other, he didn’t get the impression that Dandelion cared much about that sort of thing. She had walked in perfect circles despite his clumsy attempts, and now she obviously knew where to go.
The forest was quiet and peaceful, only the sound of birdsong interrupting the silence at times.
Somewhere in the distance, a rivulet gurgled merrily.
Dandelion turned right at a crossroads, and when Harry looked behind him, everyone else was, of course, following.
And then, in front of them, there was the streamlet, broader than it had sounded, yet shallow enough so a horse could easily wade through. Which Dandelion did.
Or rather, started to. When they had almost reached the other side, Dandelion reared up on her hind legs, and Harry, instinctively grabbing for centaur shoulders that weren’t there, fell.
He landed onto round-washed stones and heard an ugly, cracking noise. The pain did not even register as much as the fact that his arm was broken.
Not again!
“Harry!”
Suddenly, the very worried looking face of Dandelion appeared in his field of vision. Was she sorry she had thrown him? Could she even understand what had happened?
“Talk, boy!” Snape’s angry face appeared next to Dandelion’s. “Are you injured?”
“Um. Yes, sir. My arm. It’s broken, I think.”
“You feel well otherwise?”
Of course Harry didn’t. The whole side of his body that had hit the stones hurt.
“You don’t feel dizzy or anything?”
“No, I’m okay.” Why did Snape sound so frantic? Harry had broken his arm before. No big deal.
“Get up, then, before your clothes are entirely soaked.” Snape held out a hand, and Harry briefly considered taking it, before he noticed he would have to move his injured arm.
Snape realized his mistake and held out the other hand. This time, he succeeded in helping Harry up.
“Don’t move, Rose. Not a bit”, Snape ordered, quite superfluously, since Rose had stopped her pony the moment Harry had been thrown.
“Let me have a look.” Snape took Harry’s injured arm between his hands and whispered an incantation.
The bone snapped back into place with a sudden pain.
“Just bruised, it seems”, Snape said loudly. “I have a daisy root ointment that will help in my herb bag, once we get back to the farm.”
“I have no idea what got into Dandelion”, Miss Thorne said from behind Rose. “Very sorry about that.”
“Well, I happen to have some idea.”
Snape waved towards the other side of the rivulet, and suddenly, a branch Harry thought might have hit them in the faces while they rode by, was covered in barbed wire.
“Do you have enemies, Miss Thorne? Have a look at this branch there. Careful, don’t get too close.”
“Why, I never!”, she exclaimed. “We don’t have enemies, I don’t think ... there’s this one young man who complains that Dandelion eats the grass on his meadow – he recently inherited it from his father who was a lovely man, and he’s a bit of a nuisance, but ... I can’t believe ...”
“Someone is trying to cause you grievous bodily harm, no doubt about it. Let me remove this.”
Snape waded to the branch, and Harry could have sworn he heard him mutter an incantation as the branch snapped.
“There, now. But you need to be careful. It could happen again any time. Dandelion must have noticed.”
“She is an extremely clever horse”, Miss Thorne agreed.
They returned to the farm without even talking about continuing their ride – but then, Dandelion had already turned around and seemed very decided that they should return.
Rose offered to switch ponies, but Harry declined. Dandelion was a very nice pony, all things considered, and that barbed wire would have hurt a lot if it had reached his face.
Perhaps not more than the broken arm, but that had been an accident.
Nothing happened on the way back, and Rose took care of all the ponies, while Harry sat on a chair as Snape applied that daisy root ointment to his arm. It was hard to not flinch away, since this was, well, Snape. He was surprisingly gentle, though.
“I will return to have a look at Buttercup”, Snape promised Miss Thorne. “And while I am there, I can also pay a visit to this young man you have problems with. Troublesome young men are sometimes more inclined to listen to another man – no offence meant.”
“None taken. Not your fault he’s a misogynist ass”, Miss Thorne replied cheerfully. “And he probably is one. I certainly get the feeling he thinks himself above us.”
For the way back, they took the Knight bus again, and this time, Snape ordered hot chocolate for Rose and Harry, and used a spell to cool it down.
Just when Harry wanted to ask why, the bus started driving and he spilt a good portion of the chocolate all over his shirt and jeans.
It was a good thing it was a nice drinking temperature.
“Scourgify”, Snape said, and suddenly, Harry’s clothes were clean again.
“Thank you?” It felt so weird to thank the man.
“There was a curse on the branch”, Snape explained to Rose, having apparently returned to ignoring Harry. “Intended to permanently blind the target. I merely created an illusion to plausibly explain Dandelion’s reaction. That man Miss Thorne mentioned must be a wizard.”
“But why would he do such a thing? Just because Dandelion ate some grass?”
“He might just hate muggles. That Miss Thorne is under the impression that he looks down on her would support that theory.”
Much of the journey home was spent theorizing about what the man’s motives might be – Rose thought the meadow might be used to grow rare potions ingredients, while Snape tended more towards suspecting hatred of muggles.
It was weird, considering Harry would have thought that Snape hated muggles. Didn’t all Slytherins?
But Snape was almost, well, nice to Miss Thorne.
When they entered the house at Spinner’s End again, Harry was fed up with being ignored, and just blurted out: “She knows you are a wizard.”
“Who?”
“Miss Thorne. She told the other woman not to question you. Said something about the fair folk.” Too late Harry realized that now he’d gone and done exactly what she hadn’t wanted. Snape might stop helping them.
He felt terrible. And all just for – what? So that Snape wouldn’t ignore him? Being ignored was good!
“Oh?” Snape raised an eyebrow. “I suppose they had to figure it out some day. They aren’t stupid, after all. Still, if they didn’t seem inclined to tell someone ...?”
“Didn’t sound like it”, Harry hastily assured. “They were, uh, very worried you might stop helping them if they offended you.”
Snape nodded. “That is how the old superstitions say to deal with the fair folk. As long as they don’t get too close to the truth ...” He held out the daisy ointment to Harry. “Here. Go to your room and apply it where needed. I assume your arm wasn’t the only part of your body that got bruised.”
It wasn’t. When Harry got to his room, he saw that he had a collection of bruises on his thigh, hip and shoulder, too.
The ointment soothed the pain immediately. Must be magical, despite Snape’s pretending it wasn’t.
Chapter 17
To be continued...