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bookishwenchA new one in the Muggle Fairy Tales Are Mad! series.
The earlier ones can be found here:
Cinder-What-the-Hell?-a
Snow Wh-at-Are-You-Kidding-Me?-ite
Sleeping Bea-You-People-Are-Mad-ty
Little Red Riding Ho-w-Is-That-Possible?-od
Rumple-Still-As-Crazy-As-Ever-tskin
The Frog Pr-in-What-Way-Is-That-Possible?-ince
Rap-solutely-mental-unzel
Jack the Giant Kill(-Me-Now!)-er
Hansel and Gr(eat-Now-I'm-Hungry)etel
Goldilocks and the Three B(e-Serious-Now!)ear
Rating: PG-ish
Feedback: Yes, thank you.Spoilers: Through the end of the series
Distribution: The Blackberry Patch and Fanfiction.net. If you’re interested, please let me know.
Summary: During the Horcrux hunt, the trio passes time by having Hermione tell Muggle fairy tales. On this particular night, Ron requests “Beauty and the Beast.” Eleventh in a series of Muggle fairy tales retold.
Disclaimer: All characters are owned by J. K. Rowling, a wonderful author whose characters I have borrowed for a completely profit-free flight of fancy. Kindly do not sue me, please, as I am terrified of you. Thank you.
Beauty and the (Un)Be(Freaking-lievable)ast
The leaves had long since turned brown and red, and the stark wind of autumn was moaning through the empty branches in the deserted stretch of woods where the Trio were camping tonight. It was the sort of sound that made Harry shudder even when he was safely inside the warmth of the tent. He wanted to get up and move, to do something, anything, but there just wasn’t anything he could think of that would improve things. The Horcrux lay on a small table by the couch, concealed from view by a pillow, but it felt like it was still tainting everything around them. Harry could almost see the poison it was leaking into the room, increasing his anxiety until he was sure Ron and Hermione were smothering under its influence as well.
“I’m bored,” Ron said suddenly.
Well, Harry thought, so much for that deep-seated, world-pivoting worry. Apparently Ron’s greatest problem was creeping ennui.
“Have you tried opening your textbooks?” Hermione asked without looking up from yet another perusal of Beedle. “I made a point of packing all the books we’d need if we were having a proper seventh year.”
“What’s the point of running about the countryside in grave peril if we don’t at least get out of doing schoolwork?” Ron said as he tried (and failed) to juggle an apple core from their lunch. “Seriously, if being chased by You-Know-Who while trying to save existence as humanity knows it isn’t grounds for a note of excuse, nothing is. I mean, really, what person in their right mind wants to spend all their time reading huge, dull books filled with educational stuff no one will ever need to know?”
Hermione leveled a look at Ron above the tattered book’s cover that Harry thought was probably the closest he’d ever seen her come to looking like Bellatrix.
“Pardon, but did you just call me daft?” she said in tones so wintry that Harry swore he could feel the temperature in the tent drop ten degrees.
Harry shot Ron a look of utter panic, hoping that his fool of a friend was smart enough to back-peddle on the disastrous statement he’d just made.
“What? I mean, no, not, you know, that is to say, I…,” Ron began, his face clashing horribly with his hair as he went red.
“Or perhaps you only meant that I’m dull, or maybe that the things I’ve spent time and effort learning aren’t actually of any use to you,” Hermione said, and Harry noted that one of the glasses sitting on the draining board behind her was starting to vibrate dangerously.
“No, no, I mean, if you didn’t know all that boring stuff we’d probably be rotting in Azkaban now or worse!” Ron said, looking more than a little alarmed.
“Look, Hermione, we really do appreciate you,” Harry broke in, hoping that she might gloss over Ron’s calling her boring while apologizing. “Seriously! I mean, without you we would have been nabbed at Bill and Fleur’s wedding, and you figured out how to pack everything, and guard the tent, and translate the runes, and well, you stopped me from sitting in that patch of Itching Imps last night.”
“Story!” Ron blurted out suddenly.
Hermione and Harry both turned their heads to stare at him.
“Ehm, just, maybe another story would, you know, get us talking about something else… and keep me from sounding like a prat again for five minutes,” he mumbled, scratching his head and looking apologetic. “Please?”
Hermione blinked a couple times, and Harry wondered if somehow Ron hadn’t managed to say precisely the wrong thing yet again, but then she let out a long sigh and nodded.
“Fine, a story. At least that’s something I know that’s not boring,” she said, still sounding rather bitter as she settled back into the chair. “What sort of story do you want?”
“I don’t know. What kind do you want?” Ron asked.
Harry was stunned to see that Hermione at once smiled, really smiled.
“Are you actually asking me what story I’d like to tell?” she said happily.
“Well, yeah,” Ron said, sounding puzzled.
“We sort of haven’t really asked you what your favorite is, I suppose,” Harry said, realizing that this might be exactly what it took to make her feel appreciated.
“Yeah,” Ron said, cottoning on. “You tell us whatever your favorite is… well, if you haven’t already.”
“Actually, no, I haven’t,” Hermione said, switching to a cross legged position. “I always loved it when my father would tell me the story of ‘Beauty and the Beast.’”
“So, tell us that one then,” Ron said magnanimously with a wave of his hand that Harry thought might be just a shade too lordly, but after a brief pause, Hermione nodded.
“All right then,” she said. “Once upon…”
“…a time,” Ron finished, and Harry tried to give him another furtive look to watch himself a bit, but thankfully Hermione seemed to have realized this would be coming.
“Yes, Ronald,” she continued, managing to grimace only a little. “There lived three sisters and their father in a cottage deep in the woods.”
“Mum’s dead again?” Ron asked in a surprisingly pleasant voice.
“Yes, the mother is dead again,” Hermione said, rubbing her forehead in a sure sign of vexation. “It’s a common theme. Just go with it.”
“Okay, but at least this time we’ve got three sisters who are all actually related to one another,” Ron said. “Perhaps that will go better for them.”
“Perhaps, or perhaps not,” Hermione said mysteriously. “The family had once been very wealthy and prosperous, but the father, who had owned many merchant ships, had suffered a serious blow to his fortunes. Every one of his ships was lost in a great hurricane, and he and his daughters were left destitute.”
“Wait, he lost all of his ships in one big hurricane? What was he doing sending them into a hurricane in the first place?” Ron asked.
“Well, Muggles weren’t always very good at telling what the weather would be like until they invented radar and satellites and lots of other things that help them track of where hurricanes and storms and things are going to be,” Hermione said. “This was long before all that was invented.”
“What’s a satellite?” Ron asked.
“Oh, it’s sort of like, hmm…,” Hermione said, furrowing her brow in thought. “Can you picture a camera strapped onto an unmanned broomstick and flying higher than a Muggle airplane?”
Ron stared at her.
“Why the hell would anyone do that? It would go crashing into something sooner or later,” he said.
“Well, no, you see, from that high up, the camera sends a picture of the clouds and wind currents and precipitation and the like back down to the Muggles, and they’re able to figure out ahead of time whether storms are coming their way. Usually,” Hermione said.
“On a broomstick?” Ron said, still looking at her as though she’d gone off her nut.
“Not a real broomstick, of course,” Hermione said, starting to get flustered again. “It’s actually a big metal thing that’s launched into space and circles the globe in orbit, but I was just trying to compare it to something you might understand.”
“Right, because strapping cameras to broomsticks is common behavior in the wizarding world,” Ron said.
“Actually, it might be rather fun at that,” Harry said, really pondering it. “I mean, picture a camera on a seeker’s broom during a Quidditch match, and the picture is sent to a big screen so the crowd can see everything from the player’s viewpoint.”
“Hey, yeah!” Ron said, getting excited. “Quidditch cam! You know something, Harry? I think you’re onto something there! That’d be dead brilliant, that would!”
Hermione looked back and forth between the two of them and then shrugged.
“Actually, it probably would be, but we’ve gotten pretty far from the story. In any case, because Muggles didn’t have satellites back then, the father had indeed lost his whole fleet of ships…”
“Rotten luck, that,” Ron said, shaking his head.
“Indeed, and now they had been forced to sell all their fine things and live in a tiny house in the middle of the forest,” Hermione said. “The two oldest daughters complained loudly to their father about everything that they had to endure.”
“I can’t really blame them. If you don’t know when bad weather’s going to strike, he really should have kept at least one ship in port the whole time, so it pretty much is his fault they’re penniless now,” Ron said. “I’d grouse too.”
“But the youngest daughter never said a word in anger, knowing her father already felt horrible for what had happened and she didn’t want to make him feel any worse,” Hermione said, continuing as though Ron hadn’t spoken.
“Oh,” Ron said, blushing a bit. “Ehm, well, that was right decent. Good on her.”
“Very,” Harry added in, feeling rather bad for Ron and wondering if he was drawing a parallel between the two complaining sisters and the way he sometimes talked about the lack of money in the Weasley family. “Do any of these people have names?”
“Only the youngest daughter has a name in the story, and she’s called Beauty because she’s so lovely,” Hermione said, moving on quickly as though she too sensed that Ron was embarrassed by his misstep.
“They call her Beauty?” Ron said, raising an eyebrow.
“In the French version that translates to Belle, which isn’t really that odd of a name,” Hermione explained.
“Could be worse,” he said appreciatively. “I suppose they could have named her Spectacular or Fetching or Dazzling or Hottie McHotterson or something.”
Harry snorted loudly, and Hermione gave Ron a look of utter disbelief.
“Hottie McHotterson?” she said slowly.
“You can’t argue that wouldn’t be worse than Beauty,” Ron said simply.
“No, I absolutely cannot argue that,” Hermione said with a shake of her head. “In any case, Beauty did nearly all of the work around the house while her sisters sat and mourned for the days when they had servants to do everything for them or gossiped about the country boys and whether any of them would choose to marry a girl with no dowry.”
“What’s a dowry?” Ron asked.
Harry shuddered and quietly asked Anyone who might be listening to please keep Hermione’s explanation of the commoditization of females through bride price to a maximum of thirty minutes at most. Glancing at his watch after Hermione used the phrase “equating the institution of marriage to a banking operation with the bride’s father acting as broker of his daughter’s personhood,” he realized that not only had Anyone apparently been away from his desk at the time of his plea but also Ron had actually started to doze. Harry scented danger in the offing.
“Okay!” he said entirely too loudly and noticed that Ron shuddered awake in his seat, though fortunately Hermione apparently didn’t. “Yes, well, thankfully those days are long past in the wizarding world, and it was a rotten thing to do.”
“Yeah,” Ron said a touch too emphatically. “Dowries are bad!”
Hermione gave him a searching look for a moment.
“Uh… they are bad, right?” Ron mumbled out of the side of his mouth to Harry, who almost imperceptibly nodded.
“Well, at least that’s settled,” Hermione said, seeming to be pacified.
“Thank Merlin,” Ron said sotto voce.
“One day, as the two older sisters were lounging about and Beauty was cleaning, a messenger arrived for their father. He told them that one of their ships had only been blown far off course and was finally coming back into port in a few days time,” Hermione said.
“That’s great!” Ron said. “So they’re rich again?”
“That’s precisely what they all thought,” Hermione said. “The father made plans to leave at once to meet the ship when it arrived in the port of the great city, and his two oldest daughters immediately came up with lists of things they wanted him to buy for them with their newly restored wealth.”
“Yeah, just think of all the stuff you could get if you suddenly went from being poor to filthy rich,” Ron said, a dreamy look on his face, then he glanced over at Harry. “Blimey, when you first found out you had all that money in your vault when you were eleven, how did you manage not to go bonkers and buy up half of Diagon Alley?”
“I dunno,” Harry said, frowning. “I thought about it, but I suppose Hagrid kept me rather on track. Besides, after years spent sleeping with spiders under a cupboard, just getting clothes that fit and an ice cream cone seemed like I was being posh.”
“I suppose,” Ron said. “Still, I think I would have at least bought a solid gold Snitch or something.”
“He didn’t even know what a Snitch was then, Ron,” Hermione said with an edge to her voice.
“Well, I guess that explains it then,” Ron said with a shrug. “So daughters one and two wanted, what, fancy dresses and jewelry and the like?”
“Yes,” Hermione said, “but when the father asked Beauty what she wanted, she said only, ‘I’d like a rose, please, if it isn’t too much trouble.’”
“A rose?” Ron asked. “Seriously, the girl just wanted a rose?”
“Yes,” Hermione said.
“I can’t decide whether that’s one of the saddest things I’ve ever heard or if this girl is just really good at trying to get a lot of presents by being extra humble,” Ron said.
Hermione sighed and waved her hand as if to tell Ron to think whatever he liked, then continued on.
“The father set off to the city, which was a journey of several days through the woods,” she said when Ron politely raised his hand exactly as if he were in class. “Yes?”
“Did he meet a talking cannibalistic wolf?” he asked seriously.
“No, no wolves in this story,” Hermione said.
“What how about an evil witch who keeps maidens in giant towers?” Harry chimed in.
“No, no witch,” Hermione said.
“A castle surrounded by big thorns with people impaled on them?”
“A cottage with seven dwarfs?
“A cottage with anthropomorphic bears?”
“A cottage made of gingerbread?”
“Hey, you ever notice how many cottages are in these things?” Ron said, breaking the litany.
Hermione seemed to be biting her lip not to laugh, but she finally said in a voice that was cracking a little, “No, he didn’t run into any of those on his way to the city. In fact, his journey was quite uneventful.”
“Oh,” Ron said, looking disappointed. “I was rather hoping something would happen. Seems anticlimactic otherwise.”
“Unfortunately, when he got to the city, it turned out that the ship wasn’t his, and he had to return to his little home as poor as he had left it,” Hermione told them.
“Well, that bloody well stinks!” Ron complained. “Bad enough he winds up poor without basically losing everything all over again!”
“Yeah, that’s pretty harsh,” Harry agreed.
“Even worse, on his way back through the woods, he became lost in a terrible thunderstorm,” Hermione said. “He stumbled on through the rain, the wind whipping through the branches of the trees and tearing at him with every step, when suddenly, in the flash from one of the lightning bolts he saw a set of high gates in front of him, and on the other side of them was an enormous castle.”
“Ah-ha!” Ron cried. “I knew it! Nothing happened going through the woods the first time, but when he goes back through them, then we get the weird stuff!”
“Yes, Ronald, your powers of prognostication rival those of Professor Trelawney,” Hermione sighed. “He ran to the gates and begged for entry or else he would perish in the storm, and slowly the gates opened, though no one was there.”
“Like the automatic doors at the Muggle market,” Ron said knowingly.
“That’s significantly less eerie than the effect I was going for, but yes,” Hermione said as though she had decided she was on the losing side of a battle regardless of what she did. “The father walked all the way to the castle, and the main door swung open just as before. He called out to thank his benefactor, but once again, no one answered. Torches lit themselves down a corridor one by one, and he followed them into a great dining room where a meal appeared on the table for him. He ate hungrily, and once he was done, another set of torches lit his way to a comfortable bedroom where he slept until dawn.”
“Huh,” Ron said. “Okay, so the self-lighting torches are a bit of magic any First Year could do, but the food appearing on the table sounds like the place might have some House-elves.”
Hermione stopped and tilted her head to one side, thinking, before she said slowly, “Actually, that is remarkably similar to what happens at Hogwarts for dinner, isn’t it?”
“Right,” Harry said, “and Hogwarts has a big gate in front of it as well, and it’s a castle of course, and it’s set off in the woods…”
The three of them looked at one another, all a bit startled.
“Yes, so,” Hermione continued, obviously feeling unnerved, “the father slept well and called out his thanks to whoever had helped him, then walked down to the door and through a lovely garden back towards the gate he’d entered. He noticed that the garden was full of the most beautiful red roses he had ever seen, hundreds and thousands of them. ‘Well,’ he said to himself, ‘I may not be able to bring home anything my two oldest daughters wanted, but perhaps I can at least give Beauty her rose.’”
“That’ll go over well. ‘Hey, everybody, we’re still poor, but at least I got Beauty her posy!’ I’m sure they’ll perk right up over that,” Ron said.
“But no sooner had the man plucked a single rose than a horrible, enormous beast appeared before him, snarling ferociously,” Hermione said, doing her best to sound snarly, but in fact sounding more like she had a bad cold.
“Oh,” Ron said soberly. “That’s bad. A werewolf?”
“No, it was daylight, remember?” Harry said, warding off Hermione’s response.
“Yes,” she said to Harry. “Well spotted. No, he was simply a very large, very hairy animal.”
“Like that talking wolf with Red Hat?” Ron asked.
“I suppose a little like that, but he wasn’t a wolf,” Hermione said.
“Was he wearing a grandmother’s nightgown?” Ron asked with deceptive sincerity, but his eyes were dancing gleefully.
“No, he was not!” Hermione said.
“Oh,” Ron said. “Would have been interesting if he was.”
“Anyway,” Hermione said, plowing forward, “the beast grabbed the man and shook him, saying ‘I have given you shelter, hospitality, safety, and you reward my kindness with theft!’”
“Geez, mate, calm down, it’s only a flower,” Ron said, looking sympathetic. “He’s got a whole garden of them!”
“Ah, but the beast was very selfish,” Hermione explained. “He then said that the penalty for stealing a rose from his garden was death.”
Ron looked at her, then at Harry, then back at Hermione again.
“For one rose?” Ron asked as though he needed to clarify this point.
“Yes,” Hermione said, folding her arms.
“Okay, I know some of Sprout’s plants are pretty expensive and all, but that’s way too steep a price for pilfering one rose,” Ron said.
“It’s very extreme, yes, but the beast insisted he was going to kill the man as punishment for his treachery. The man begged for his life, saying he had three daughters with no one else in the world to care for them, and this gave the beast pause,” Hermione said.
“Well, maybe he’s got a heart after all,” Harry said.
“’Perhaps you need not die,’ the beast said, and he led the man to his stables where there was a magnificent white charger,” Hermione said. “’This horse will take you home in the blink of an eye. Once you are there, you have until sundown. If one of your daughters agrees to come back and take your place here, I shall let you live, but if none of them do, you must swear to return and face your death. If you break your promise, I will come for you myself.’”
“Oh, for pity’s sake, this is another one of those stories where the parents swap the kids’ lives for their own, isn’t it!” Ron said indignantly.
“Not quite,” Hermione soothed him. “You’ll see. The beast sat the man on the horse’s back, and at once he found himself back outside his little cottage again.”
“Portkey,” Ron commented at once.
Hermione looked at him quizzically.
“Not the horse, obviously, since a living thing can’t be one, but maybe the saddle,” Ron said. “Strap a portkey on a horse, sit someone on top of it and tell them to hang on tight, and they’ll think the horse brought them there. Plus there’s the preplanned return at sunset, which you can do with a portkey too.”
“Hey, yeah,” Harry said. “That’d work perfectly, wouldn’t it!”
“It really would,” Hermione said, raising her eyebrows. “This seems to be another story that wizards had a hand in somewhere.”
“Okay, so what’s dear old Dad do when he gets home to his daughters,” Ron said, hunkering down on the small sofa and appearing to get more comfortable.
“Well, he told them about the ship, and while Beauty was disappointed, the two older daughters berated their father and wailed with misery, thinking only of themselves,” Hermione said.
“Poor father. I don’t think he’s got much chance of those two taking his place,” Ron said. “Pretty sure he might like to be shod of them, too.”
“Then the father gave Beauty her rose, and when she asked where he got it, he told them the story of his strange stay in the castle and the penalty the beast had laid on him for taking the rose. At once, the two older sisters turned on Beauty, saying that her selfishness in wanting a rose had caused the whole problem,” Hermione said.
“Wait, wait, the girl just asked for a rose. She didn’t say, ‘Hey, Dad, go steal a rose out of a crazy psychopathic beast’s garden for me, will you?’” Ron said.
“No, she’d asked for the least of them all, and yet the sisters blamed her for everything. The father, however, said that this was foolishness and that he had only until sunset to arrange affairs for them because he had to return to the beast to take his punishment,” Hermione continued.
“So he’s not going to sell out one of his kids?” Ron asked, sounding extremely pleased.
“No, it never even crossed his mind to let one of his daughters take his place,” Hermione said.
“Wow,” Ron said, smiling, “an actual, decent, moral, nice parent. I think I like this story.”
“Yeah,” Harry agreed. “If that were Uncle Vernon, he’d already have duct taped me to the saddle and whacked the horse to get it started.”
“Beauty, however, felt deeply guilty that her rose had caused all the trouble, and her sisters’ unkind words made her feel even worse,” Hermione said.
“Aw, poor kid,” Ron said. “She must take after her dad.”
“’I wonder,’ she said, ‘if I sit upon the horse, would it take me back to the beast in my father’s place?’ And so that’s just what she did. She slipped out the door, mounted the horse, and at once it took off at top speed moments before the sun set. She could see her father and her sisters staring in horror out the window for a single second, and the next she was outside the gates of the beast’s castle,” Hermione said. “The horse wandered towards the house, and the moment they had passed into the beast’s domain, the gates clanged shut behind them, locking them inside.”
“Whoa,” Ron said, letting out a half chuckle. “Okay, there’s being a good daughter, but that’s rather over the top!”
“I don’t know,” Harry said, shaking his head. “I think I can picture Ginny doing something like that if it meant saving your dad.”
“Maybe,” Ron admitted. “On the other hand, would you do that for your Uncle Vernon?”
“Not half likely,” Harry said at once.
Ron was about to make a smart remark when he seemed to stop short.
“Hey, wait,” Ron said, pointing at Hermione. “You did do that, didn’t you, trade yourself so your parents would be all right while you go off to face the beast?”
“I don’t know what you mean,” Hermione said, blushing, then continued on as though she didn’t want to think about it. “As soon as Beauty stepped off the horse, the beast appeared in front of her, but he behaved quite differently with her than with her father. ‘You are welcome here,’ he said, ‘and all that I have is yours.’”
“Well, that’s rather nice of him, isn’t it,” Harry said, hoping Hermione wouldn’t be too put off by the memory of having to leave her parents behind to fight Voldemort.
“’But you must never leave this place again so long as you live,’” Hermione finished.
“Oh. Always a catch, isn’t there. That’s not so nice then,” Ron said, grimacing.
“No, it really wasn’t,” Hermione agreed. “The beast told her she could go anywhere in the castle, though, and that his only request was that she would eat dinner with him in the evenings.”
“That’s not too bad… well, unless she’s on the menu,” Ron said.
“Beauty followed the trail of lit torches to her room, then threw herself down on her bed and cried as though her heart would break,” Hermione said. “She missed her family terribly, and the knowledge that she would never see them again was almost too much to bear.”
“Nah, she’ll see them again,” Ron said, putting an arm around her. “You wait and see. Usually these things turn out okay for the girl, especially if she’s pretty.”
Hermione, who a moment ago had looked close to tears, gave Ron a smile.
“Yes, well, let’s hope that’s the case for significantly less pretty heroines as well,” Hermione said.
“You’re pretty,” Ron blurted, then immediately reddened.
Harry abruptly wished he were anywhere else.
“So, ehm, how’d the first dinner go?” he asked lamely.
“Oh!” Hermione said, sounding as though she’d almost forgotten he was there. “Um, right, yes, not well. The beast had terrifying table manners, ripping the food before him to shreds and making a horrible mess everywhere.”
“Sounds like Fred and George,” Ron said.
“Or someone else I could mention,” Hermione said slyly, moving her gaze to the pile of dirty dishes and then pointedly back to Ron.
“Right, right, it’s my turn to do the washing up tonight, point taken,” he said, looking sheepish.
“Beauty suffered through the dinner as well as she could, eating little and trying not to stare at the beast. At the end of the meal, the dishes disappeared…”
“House-elves, I’m telling you,” Ron said firmly.
“…and then the beast asked Beauty if she would marry him,” Hermione finished.
“Okay, now that came out of nowhere,” Ron said, looking shocked. “The big monster asked the girl to marry him?”
“Yes,” Hermione said, folding her hands.
“Is that legal with your lot? Marrying outside the species?” Ron asked, looking rather sick.
“No!” Hermione yelped in disgust. “Remember, Muggles think only humans can talk.”
“And parrots,” Harry chimed in.
“But they just mimic sounds!” Hermione said desperately. “What I mean is, since the beast is speaking, Muggles would regard him as being more human-like than animal in that regard.”
“Just the same, that’s not the done thing,” Ron said, still frowning. “You don’t just whip a girl away on a Portkeyed horse, incarcerate her, eat like a pig in front of her, and they pipe up with ‘Oy! Want to be me missus?’”
Harry snorted very loudly.
“Unsurprisingly, Beauty said no,” Hermione said.
“I should jolly well think so,” Ron said. “I mean, the bloke’s filthy rich and all, but there’s a point where even Pansy would turn down a proposal, and marrying a great big talking wolf-bear-buffalo-whatever-it-is has got to be that point.”
“Things went on like this for several months. Each day, Beauty would find a lovely new dress in her room, and then she would wander through the gardens or the rooms of the castle. Each day, some new amusement presented itself. One day a room had a little puppet theatre with marionettes that made her laugh, and another time a group of musical instruments began to play on their own with no musicians visible,” Hermione said.
“Well, at least she isn’t bored,” Ron said.
“Still other times a great library appeared, filled to the rafters with books, while at other times there were rooms filled with mirrors and jewelry and dresses and things,” Hermione said.
“Bet I can guess which one you’d like best,” Harry said with a grin.
“I’ll admit, the description of the library did make my mouth water even when I was little. But the strangest thing of all was that Beauty started to have the oddest dreams. Every night, after she ate with the beast, and after he had proposed to her and she had said no, she would go up to her room and fall into a sound sleep, and each night she dreamed of a handsome prince,” Hermione said.
“Can’t say I blame her,” Ron said. “I mean, if you look at the descriptions of all the things in the castle, you notice that aside from the beast she never sees another living soul, or even a dead one. Even when there’s food or music or summat, it’s brought in by invisible people. Makes sense she’d make up a fantasy fellow in her subconscious.”
“True,” Hermione said thoughtfully. “It really is very isolating. Plus she never sees even the beast during the day since he’s out killing people.”
“He’s what?!” Ron shouted, his jaw dropping open.
“What? Oh, yes, I forgot to mention that bit. The beast roamed through the forest by day, killing unsuspecting travelers and eating them,” Hermione said off-handedly.
“When it gets to the point when eating people is so normal that you just gloss over it, you know you’ve been camping out too long,” Ron said, staring at her. “Anything else you forget to mention, like, say, the father murdered his two other daughters or Beauty enjoyed maiming cute little woodland creatures or something?”
“No, of course not!” Hermione said indignantly. “It just doesn’t come into the story all that much, so it slipped my mind.”
“Okay,” Ron said, inching a little away from her.
“Anyway, about the dream prince,” Harry said, trying to steer the story back on track before Ron fled the tent out of paranoia.
“Yes, the prince, right. Well, each night, Beauty saw him standing behind metal bars, and he would say, ‘Dear Beauty, do not let your eyes deceive you. Set me free,” Hermione said, trying to lower her voice into an appropriately seductive tone.
“So the beast is keeping him locked up somewhere?” Ron asked.
“That’s what Beauty thought, and she spent her days looking for him, but the rooms seemed to move about in the castle, and they were always changing so that it was impossible for her to find the same place twice,” Hermione explained. “She did sometimes find traces of him, though. Once she found a locket with his picture inside it, and remembering that the beast had said anything he had was hers as well, she put it around her neck. Another time she came across a huge portrait of him…”
“Sounds like an ego-maniac,” Ron said. “You sure this fellow isn’t Malfoy?”
“…but it had been slashed to ribbons by what looked like the beast’s claws,” Hermione said.
“That’s actually pretty disturbing,” Ron said. “Was the painting still moving?”
“No, Ron, it was a Muggle painting,” Hermione said. “They don’t move, remember?”
“Well, what with the self-lighting torches, the Portkey, the Apparating dinner, and the apparent House-elves, I figured moving pictures weren’t much of a stretch,” Ron said, shrugging.
“Not to mention the Room of Requirement,” Harry added.
“What?” both Ron and Hermione chorused.
“The rooms keep changing every time she goes into them, and it gives her something that she likes to distract her,” Harry said. “Sounds quite a bit like the Room of Requirement, doesn’t it?”
“Actually, it sort of does,” Hermione said thoughtfully. “I wonder just how rare that spell is, then.”
“I don’t know, but it’d come in handy for this place,” Harry said. “Just think what would happen if we could treat the tent that way?”
“Yeah,” Ron said, a dreamy smile on his face. “A whole room full of nothing but food.”
“Yeah,” Harry said, looking equally enthralled.
“Yeah,” Hermione agreed, her eyes lost in a dream.
The boys turned to stare at her.
“What?” she said. “I’m as hungry as you lot are.”
“Just thought you’d still be on about a big library,” Ron said.
“I love books, but you can’t eat them,” Hermione said, “and right now I want kippers, some piping hot mash, and a roast, followed by a chocolate sundae the size of one of Hagrid’s Halloween pumpkins.”
“Girl after my own heart,” Harry said with a laugh, only to see Ron giving him a disapproving look.
“Each night Beauty dreamed of her prince, and he would sigh softly and say that he feared he would remain a prisoner forever unless she would release him,” Hermione said.
“Poor prince,” Ron said. “Sounds like he’s on detention with Snape forever.”
“Could you just not mention his name?” Harry said irritably.
“Sorry,” Ron said, ducking his head in embarrassment. “Just with all the Hogwarts imagery and the like, if anyone would be locking people up, especially someone really unattractive, well, it’s pretty easy to picture the beast as… the Other You Know Who.”
“We don’t have to take it quite that far,” Harry said. “It’s not like saying Vol…”
“Just don’t!” Ron stopped him, making the others jump with his sudden shouting. “Sorry, just… I still don’t like the name. I won’t mention old hook-nose, and you won’t mention old no-nose, agreed?”
“Agreed,” Harry said, though personally he still thought not using Voldemort’s name was ridiculous.
“This went on for many months,” Hermione continued, “each day following the same pattern. Slowly, Beauty realized the beast didn’t intend to harm her, and she even became rather fond of him, but still she was unhappy. Finally, one night, when she was at the dinner table with the beast, Beauty began to cry.”
“Well, yeah, what with him spattering food all over the place,” Ron said. “It can’t really make for an uplifting dining experience.”
“The beast stopped tearing his food and looked at her, then said in a kind tone, ‘What is wrong, dearest Beauty?’” Hermione said.
“’Well, let’s see,’” Ron said in a falsetto. “’You’re keeping me prisoner, I haven’t seen another human being in months, a big hairy monster keeps trying to marry me, I’m having dreams about a fit bit of a prince that I can’t find, and by the way, your table manners are simply appalling! Aside from all that, I’m ginger peachy!’”
Ron threw in batting his eyelashes wildly, and Harry and Hermione both giggled.
“Not quite,” Hermione said. “Instead, Beauty said that she missed her father and sisters so much that she might die of homesickness.”
“Poor kid,” Ron said. “I get how she feels. Still, rotten as it is being stuck out here in the middle of nowhere with just the three of us, it’d be a lot worse if I were all alone like her.”
“Yeah, it could definitely be worse,” Harry said, looking at his two friends and actually feeling a moment of gratitude.
“The beast looked at her with pity and said, ‘Then I shall let you go home to visit your family, but you must return in two months. If you do not, I shall surely die,’” the beast said.
“Hey, that’s pretty decent of him,” Ron said, smiling.
“While it does border on Stockholm Syndrome, yes, the point is he doesn’t really want to harm her,” Hermione said. “The beast told her to pack whatever she liked from the castle to give to her family and put it in trunks, so she filled them with dresses and jewels, gold coins and all sorts of marvelous treasures, and no matter how much she put into the trunks, they never overflowed.”
“Like your beaded bag,” Ron said. “Is that where you got the idea?”
“I don’t know,” Hermione said, looking startled. “I suppose it might have been lying about in my subconscious. In any case, when the morning came, the beast gave her a ring and a mirror. He told her that to return to the castle, all she had to do was put on the ring and twist it around her finger, and she would be there. Then he told her to go to sleep, and in the morning she would be home.”
“That’s convenient,” Ron said. “And obviously the ring’s another portkey. But what about the mirror?”
“Oh, the mirror was for her to look into to see the beast if ever she had need of him,” she said.
“So… like Sirius’s two way mirror with Harry,” Ron said, sounding more than a little perturbed, then immediately flushing scarlet. “Sorry, Harry. I probably shouldn’t have mentioned that one either.”
“It’s alright,” Harry said, quite honestly. “I don’t mind thinking of Sirius. Of course I was a stupid prat for not checking that mirror before I ran off into the night to try to save him…”
By now Harry’s mood had started to darken, and Hermione pushed on with the story as though to try to bury the thought in the past.
“That night, when Beauty laid down to sleep, she dreamed of her prince once more, but she was shocked to see that he was laying on the ground looking ill and sad,” Hermione said. “She asked him, ‘Dear prince, what ails thee so?’ and he replied, ‘Oh, you mean to abandon me, and you shall never return, and I shall die of grief for you, my love!’”
“Her subconscious is really feeling guilty,” Ron said. “Also, why do fairy tale people always say thee? It’s right annoying, that is.”
“Beauty assured him that she would keep her promise to the beast, and that she really didn’t want any harm to come to him, but the prince still looked mournful. All at once, Beauty opened her eyes and found herself sleeping on her little bed in her father’s cottage in the forest,” Hermione said, completely ignoring Ron’s with practiced skill.
“I wish I were in my own bed, too,” Ron said. “Be nice to just wake up there tomorrow.”
“The father was overjoyed to see Beauty again, and her sisters seemed delighted as well, especially when they saw all the presents Beauty had for them. There was so much gold they were able to move back into town to a fine house, and Beauty and her sisters went to balls and on picnics and to wealthy people’s homes again, but the sisters often seemed to treat Beauty as though she were in the way since they had gotten quite used to life without her in her absence,” Hermione said.
“Well, that’s gratitude for you,” Ron said, frowning indignantly. “She makes them all rich again, and they don’t even say thank you, just push her to the side. What a couple of right old hags.”
“They obviously aren’t very nice,” Hermione agreed. “However, Beauty loved being with her father, and she told him all about the Beast, who had been kind and generous to her, and about her dreams of the prince, which had stopped since she left the castle. She asked her father what he thought the prince meant about freeing him, and the father said he wondered if the prince wouldn’t be freed if Beauty agreed to marry the beast.”
“That’s a pretty wide leap of logic,” Harry said.
“Yeah, all you’ve got to do to get the love of your life is marry somebody else, specifically this wooly mammoth over here,” Ron said. “The father may have gone a bit round the bend from all the forest-based poverty.”
“Beauty said over and over that she must return to the beast the next day, but always her sisters and father would beg her to spend one more day with them, and she would, forgetting about the time,” Hermione said.
“Uh-oh,” Ron said. “If this story’s like that Ashyweeper one, forgetting about the time has serious consequences.”
“Indeed,” Hermione said, beaming at Ron like he’d said something especially clever. “One day, she came across the magic mirror, and it immediately showed her the beast, but he was lying still on the grass in the garden, just where the prince had been in her dream, and he wasn’t moving.”
“That’s what you get for not keeping up with the calendar,” Ron said sagely.
“She let two whole months go by without once checking on him?” Harry said, raising an eyebrow. “That seems pretty cold.”
“Well, she was excited to be with her family, and I never said she was very bright,” Hermione said. “At once, she twisted the ring around her finger, and she was immediately standing next to the beast in his garden, but all the roses were withering. She knelt beside him, terrified that he might be dead because of her long absence, and she found that he wasn’t moving, nor breathing, nor showing any sign of life.”
“Blimey, now that’s just plain sad,” Ron said. “Not only that, but how’s that little slip of a thing going to bury that hulking monster?”
“House-elves,” Harry reminded him.
“Oh yeah,” Ron said. “I suppose they’d do it well enough, if she even knows they’re there.”
Through this exchange, Hermione half-closed her eyes as though she was pondering a difficult Arithmancy problem.
“Supposing there are House-elves in the beast’s home, and supposing he did die, what would happen to them?” Hermione asked.
“Dunno,” Ron said with a shrug. “I suppose they’d go to whoever inherits the house.”
“Yeah, like Kreacher,” Harry said.
“But supposing there wasn’t any next of kin,” Hermione said, still squinting into the middle distance. “What would happen then?”
“Hermione,” Ron said, patting her hand, “as much as it might be really tempting to kill all the Malfoys and anyone tangentially related to them, I’m pretty sure there has to be a better way to free them that.”
“I wasn’t contemplating murder!” she said, slapping his hand away. “It’s just an interesting psychological and legal question.”
“Whatever lets you sleep well at night,” he said, sitting back against the old chair. “So, the beast is dead. Now what?”
“I didn’t say the beast was dead,” Hermione said crossly. “I said he wasn’t breathing or moving or showing any sign of life.”
“That would mean he’s dead,” Ron pointed out.
“Did you forget about Sleeping Beauty and Snow White already?” Hermione asked.
“Oh yeah,” he said, smiling a little. “So maybe he’s not totally dead but just down with a mild case of nearly dead.”
Hermione rubbed her hand over her face, apparently mentally exhausted, but nodded.
“That’s the general idea, Ronald,” she said. “Beauty ran to a nearby fountain, filled her hands with water, and sprinkled on the beast’s face, and he began to stir.”
“So he was faking it,” Ron said, nodding in satisfaction.
“No, he wasn’t faking it!” Hermione said, and Harry noted that she was pretty close to snapping again. “He was honestly distraught by her absence and had fainted from missing her so!”
“Right,” Ron said, winking at Harry and mouthing the words “faking it” again.
“You realize I’m right here and can see everything you’re doing,” Hermione said, folding her arms and giving him a freezing glare.
“Oh, right,” Ron said. “So, what happened when the not-dead beast was suddenly much more obviously not dead?”
“Beauty said, ‘Oh, dear beast, I didn’t know how much I loved you until I thought you were dead!’ and he replied that she should go back in the castle and he would join her for dinner as he usually did,” Hermione said.
“Fast recovery there,” Ron said. “Looks like his little ruse worked pretty well.”
Hermione gave him a sour look but continued, “That night, after dinner, the beast again asked Beauty if she would marry him, but this time she answered, ‘Yes, dear beast.’”
Ron looked like he had something to say again, but for once he just rolled his eyes and shook his head.
“What?” Hermione asked.
“I reckon I’d best just hold my tongue,” Ron said, and Harry inwardly applauded. “Seriously, what can you say to that one? So Beauty married the beast and they had a bunch of furry sprogs?”
“No,” Hermione said. “Beauty agreeing to marry the beast broke the enchantment over him, and suddenly he turned into the prince from her dreams.”
“So… he’s the prince?” Ron said.
“That’s what I just said,” Hermione answered. “The whole time, the prince was trying to get her to say yes to the beast’s proposal of marriage. You see, as a human the beast had been very vain and arrogant, and as punishment a fairy had turned him into a beast until someone would love him in spite of his appearance rather than because of it, and of course he had been forbidden to speak of the spell or else he would stay a beast forever.”
Harry looked at Ron, who seemed to be mulling the whole thing over.
“Okay,” Ron said. “That’s plausible. Your average fairy would think that was a good bit of fun.”
“So the prince and Beauty were married, with her father and sisters in attendance, and a great cloud of fireflies spelled out in the sky ‘Long live the prince and his bride!’” Hermione said, looking a bit starry eyed.
“Nice bit of Charms work there,” Ron said. “So what happened to the evil sisters, since something always does seem to happen to them in these things?”
“In some versions, nothing,” Hermione said. “They all simply live happily ever after, but in others the fairy returns and changes the sisters into two statues who guard the entrance to the castle garden until they finally realize their own faults, but the fairy says she doesn’t think that’s ever likely to happen.”
“Those statues,” Ron said slowly, “they wouldn’t have happened to be of two great big gargoyles on either side of the gate, now would they?”
“Well, since the fairy did turn the beast into something hideous, it wouldn’t be out of character for her to do the same thing again,” Hermione reasoned. “Why?”
“Because when we get back to Hogwarts someday, I’m going to have a little conversation with the statues at the gate,” Ron said. “A thousand years is a bit long to be turned into stone, even for someone who crossed a fairy.”
“I…,” Hermione said as though to dismiss the idea, then shrugged. “Why not? It certainly wouldn’t be the strangest thing ever to happen at Hogwarts.”
“No, that’d be if Snape turned out to be a… prince… in… disguise,” Harry said, slowly stopping as he realized that’s exactly what he had turned out to be.
“Yeah, but I doubt he’s going to be transformed by love in the end,” Ron said. “There’s only just so far these parallels go.”
Harry grunted his agreement, and quiet reigned in the tent for the moment. He had to admit, Hermione’s story had been far from boring, but on a cold night, as the wind raged in the trees above, it had made him more than a little homesick for Hogwarts and the people there. When all this was over, the Horcruxes destroyed and the inevitable battle won, he hoped he’d be able to see its towers again.
The earlier ones can be found here:
Cinder-What-the-Hell?-a
Snow Wh-at-Are-You-Kidding-Me?-ite
Sleeping Bea-You-People-Are-Mad-ty
Little Red Riding Ho-w-Is-That-Possible?-od
Rumple-Still-As-Crazy-As-Ever-tskin
The Frog Pr-in-What-Way-Is-That-Possible?-ince
Rap-solutely-mental-unzel
Jack the Giant Kill(-Me-Now!)-er
Hansel and Gr(eat-Now-I'm-Hungry)etel
Goldilocks and the Three B(e-Serious-Now!)ear
Rating: PG-ish
Feedback: Yes, thank you.Spoilers: Through the end of the series
Distribution: The Blackberry Patch and Fanfiction.net. If you’re interested, please let me know.
Summary: During the Horcrux hunt, the trio passes time by having Hermione tell Muggle fairy tales. On this particular night, Ron requests “Beauty and the Beast.” Eleventh in a series of Muggle fairy tales retold.
Disclaimer: All characters are owned by J. K. Rowling, a wonderful author whose characters I have borrowed for a completely profit-free flight of fancy. Kindly do not sue me, please, as I am terrified of you. Thank you.
The leaves had long since turned brown and red, and the stark wind of autumn was moaning through the empty branches in the deserted stretch of woods where the Trio were camping tonight. It was the sort of sound that made Harry shudder even when he was safely inside the warmth of the tent. He wanted to get up and move, to do something, anything, but there just wasn’t anything he could think of that would improve things. The Horcrux lay on a small table by the couch, concealed from view by a pillow, but it felt like it was still tainting everything around them. Harry could almost see the poison it was leaking into the room, increasing his anxiety until he was sure Ron and Hermione were smothering under its influence as well.
“I’m bored,” Ron said suddenly.
Well, Harry thought, so much for that deep-seated, world-pivoting worry. Apparently Ron’s greatest problem was creeping ennui.
“Have you tried opening your textbooks?” Hermione asked without looking up from yet another perusal of Beedle. “I made a point of packing all the books we’d need if we were having a proper seventh year.”
“What’s the point of running about the countryside in grave peril if we don’t at least get out of doing schoolwork?” Ron said as he tried (and failed) to juggle an apple core from their lunch. “Seriously, if being chased by You-Know-Who while trying to save existence as humanity knows it isn’t grounds for a note of excuse, nothing is. I mean, really, what person in their right mind wants to spend all their time reading huge, dull books filled with educational stuff no one will ever need to know?”
Hermione leveled a look at Ron above the tattered book’s cover that Harry thought was probably the closest he’d ever seen her come to looking like Bellatrix.
“Pardon, but did you just call me daft?” she said in tones so wintry that Harry swore he could feel the temperature in the tent drop ten degrees.
Harry shot Ron a look of utter panic, hoping that his fool of a friend was smart enough to back-peddle on the disastrous statement he’d just made.
“What? I mean, no, not, you know, that is to say, I…,” Ron began, his face clashing horribly with his hair as he went red.
“Or perhaps you only meant that I’m dull, or maybe that the things I’ve spent time and effort learning aren’t actually of any use to you,” Hermione said, and Harry noted that one of the glasses sitting on the draining board behind her was starting to vibrate dangerously.
“No, no, I mean, if you didn’t know all that boring stuff we’d probably be rotting in Azkaban now or worse!” Ron said, looking more than a little alarmed.
“Look, Hermione, we really do appreciate you,” Harry broke in, hoping that she might gloss over Ron’s calling her boring while apologizing. “Seriously! I mean, without you we would have been nabbed at Bill and Fleur’s wedding, and you figured out how to pack everything, and guard the tent, and translate the runes, and well, you stopped me from sitting in that patch of Itching Imps last night.”
“Story!” Ron blurted out suddenly.
Hermione and Harry both turned their heads to stare at him.
“Ehm, just, maybe another story would, you know, get us talking about something else… and keep me from sounding like a prat again for five minutes,” he mumbled, scratching his head and looking apologetic. “Please?”
Hermione blinked a couple times, and Harry wondered if somehow Ron hadn’t managed to say precisely the wrong thing yet again, but then she let out a long sigh and nodded.
“Fine, a story. At least that’s something I know that’s not boring,” she said, still sounding rather bitter as she settled back into the chair. “What sort of story do you want?”
“I don’t know. What kind do you want?” Ron asked.
Harry was stunned to see that Hermione at once smiled, really smiled.
“Are you actually asking me what story I’d like to tell?” she said happily.
“Well, yeah,” Ron said, sounding puzzled.
“We sort of haven’t really asked you what your favorite is, I suppose,” Harry said, realizing that this might be exactly what it took to make her feel appreciated.
“Yeah,” Ron said, cottoning on. “You tell us whatever your favorite is… well, if you haven’t already.”
“Actually, no, I haven’t,” Hermione said, switching to a cross legged position. “I always loved it when my father would tell me the story of ‘Beauty and the Beast.’”
“So, tell us that one then,” Ron said magnanimously with a wave of his hand that Harry thought might be just a shade too lordly, but after a brief pause, Hermione nodded.
“All right then,” she said. “Once upon…”
“…a time,” Ron finished, and Harry tried to give him another furtive look to watch himself a bit, but thankfully Hermione seemed to have realized this would be coming.
“Yes, Ronald,” she continued, managing to grimace only a little. “There lived three sisters and their father in a cottage deep in the woods.”
“Mum’s dead again?” Ron asked in a surprisingly pleasant voice.
“Yes, the mother is dead again,” Hermione said, rubbing her forehead in a sure sign of vexation. “It’s a common theme. Just go with it.”
“Okay, but at least this time we’ve got three sisters who are all actually related to one another,” Ron said. “Perhaps that will go better for them.”
“Perhaps, or perhaps not,” Hermione said mysteriously. “The family had once been very wealthy and prosperous, but the father, who had owned many merchant ships, had suffered a serious blow to his fortunes. Every one of his ships was lost in a great hurricane, and he and his daughters were left destitute.”
“Wait, he lost all of his ships in one big hurricane? What was he doing sending them into a hurricane in the first place?” Ron asked.
“Well, Muggles weren’t always very good at telling what the weather would be like until they invented radar and satellites and lots of other things that help them track of where hurricanes and storms and things are going to be,” Hermione said. “This was long before all that was invented.”
“What’s a satellite?” Ron asked.
“Oh, it’s sort of like, hmm…,” Hermione said, furrowing her brow in thought. “Can you picture a camera strapped onto an unmanned broomstick and flying higher than a Muggle airplane?”
Ron stared at her.
“Why the hell would anyone do that? It would go crashing into something sooner or later,” he said.
“Well, no, you see, from that high up, the camera sends a picture of the clouds and wind currents and precipitation and the like back down to the Muggles, and they’re able to figure out ahead of time whether storms are coming their way. Usually,” Hermione said.
“On a broomstick?” Ron said, still looking at her as though she’d gone off her nut.
“Not a real broomstick, of course,” Hermione said, starting to get flustered again. “It’s actually a big metal thing that’s launched into space and circles the globe in orbit, but I was just trying to compare it to something you might understand.”
“Right, because strapping cameras to broomsticks is common behavior in the wizarding world,” Ron said.
“Actually, it might be rather fun at that,” Harry said, really pondering it. “I mean, picture a camera on a seeker’s broom during a Quidditch match, and the picture is sent to a big screen so the crowd can see everything from the player’s viewpoint.”
“Hey, yeah!” Ron said, getting excited. “Quidditch cam! You know something, Harry? I think you’re onto something there! That’d be dead brilliant, that would!”
Hermione looked back and forth between the two of them and then shrugged.
“Actually, it probably would be, but we’ve gotten pretty far from the story. In any case, because Muggles didn’t have satellites back then, the father had indeed lost his whole fleet of ships…”
“Rotten luck, that,” Ron said, shaking his head.
“Indeed, and now they had been forced to sell all their fine things and live in a tiny house in the middle of the forest,” Hermione said. “The two oldest daughters complained loudly to their father about everything that they had to endure.”
“I can’t really blame them. If you don’t know when bad weather’s going to strike, he really should have kept at least one ship in port the whole time, so it pretty much is his fault they’re penniless now,” Ron said. “I’d grouse too.”
“But the youngest daughter never said a word in anger, knowing her father already felt horrible for what had happened and she didn’t want to make him feel any worse,” Hermione said, continuing as though Ron hadn’t spoken.
“Oh,” Ron said, blushing a bit. “Ehm, well, that was right decent. Good on her.”
“Very,” Harry added in, feeling rather bad for Ron and wondering if he was drawing a parallel between the two complaining sisters and the way he sometimes talked about the lack of money in the Weasley family. “Do any of these people have names?”
“Only the youngest daughter has a name in the story, and she’s called Beauty because she’s so lovely,” Hermione said, moving on quickly as though she too sensed that Ron was embarrassed by his misstep.
“They call her Beauty?” Ron said, raising an eyebrow.
“In the French version that translates to Belle, which isn’t really that odd of a name,” Hermione explained.
“Could be worse,” he said appreciatively. “I suppose they could have named her Spectacular or Fetching or Dazzling or Hottie McHotterson or something.”
Harry snorted loudly, and Hermione gave Ron a look of utter disbelief.
“Hottie McHotterson?” she said slowly.
“You can’t argue that wouldn’t be worse than Beauty,” Ron said simply.
“No, I absolutely cannot argue that,” Hermione said with a shake of her head. “In any case, Beauty did nearly all of the work around the house while her sisters sat and mourned for the days when they had servants to do everything for them or gossiped about the country boys and whether any of them would choose to marry a girl with no dowry.”
“What’s a dowry?” Ron asked.
Harry shuddered and quietly asked Anyone who might be listening to please keep Hermione’s explanation of the commoditization of females through bride price to a maximum of thirty minutes at most. Glancing at his watch after Hermione used the phrase “equating the institution of marriage to a banking operation with the bride’s father acting as broker of his daughter’s personhood,” he realized that not only had Anyone apparently been away from his desk at the time of his plea but also Ron had actually started to doze. Harry scented danger in the offing.
“Okay!” he said entirely too loudly and noticed that Ron shuddered awake in his seat, though fortunately Hermione apparently didn’t. “Yes, well, thankfully those days are long past in the wizarding world, and it was a rotten thing to do.”
“Yeah,” Ron said a touch too emphatically. “Dowries are bad!”
Hermione gave him a searching look for a moment.
“Uh… they are bad, right?” Ron mumbled out of the side of his mouth to Harry, who almost imperceptibly nodded.
“Well, at least that’s settled,” Hermione said, seeming to be pacified.
“Thank Merlin,” Ron said sotto voce.
“One day, as the two older sisters were lounging about and Beauty was cleaning, a messenger arrived for their father. He told them that one of their ships had only been blown far off course and was finally coming back into port in a few days time,” Hermione said.
“That’s great!” Ron said. “So they’re rich again?”
“That’s precisely what they all thought,” Hermione said. “The father made plans to leave at once to meet the ship when it arrived in the port of the great city, and his two oldest daughters immediately came up with lists of things they wanted him to buy for them with their newly restored wealth.”
“Yeah, just think of all the stuff you could get if you suddenly went from being poor to filthy rich,” Ron said, a dreamy look on his face, then he glanced over at Harry. “Blimey, when you first found out you had all that money in your vault when you were eleven, how did you manage not to go bonkers and buy up half of Diagon Alley?”
“I dunno,” Harry said, frowning. “I thought about it, but I suppose Hagrid kept me rather on track. Besides, after years spent sleeping with spiders under a cupboard, just getting clothes that fit and an ice cream cone seemed like I was being posh.”
“I suppose,” Ron said. “Still, I think I would have at least bought a solid gold Snitch or something.”
“He didn’t even know what a Snitch was then, Ron,” Hermione said with an edge to her voice.
“Well, I guess that explains it then,” Ron said with a shrug. “So daughters one and two wanted, what, fancy dresses and jewelry and the like?”
“Yes,” Hermione said, “but when the father asked Beauty what she wanted, she said only, ‘I’d like a rose, please, if it isn’t too much trouble.’”
“A rose?” Ron asked. “Seriously, the girl just wanted a rose?”
“Yes,” Hermione said.
“I can’t decide whether that’s one of the saddest things I’ve ever heard or if this girl is just really good at trying to get a lot of presents by being extra humble,” Ron said.
Hermione sighed and waved her hand as if to tell Ron to think whatever he liked, then continued on.
“The father set off to the city, which was a journey of several days through the woods,” she said when Ron politely raised his hand exactly as if he were in class. “Yes?”
“Did he meet a talking cannibalistic wolf?” he asked seriously.
“No, no wolves in this story,” Hermione said.
“What how about an evil witch who keeps maidens in giant towers?” Harry chimed in.
“No, no witch,” Hermione said.
“A castle surrounded by big thorns with people impaled on them?”
“A cottage with seven dwarfs?
“A cottage with anthropomorphic bears?”
“A cottage made of gingerbread?”
“Hey, you ever notice how many cottages are in these things?” Ron said, breaking the litany.
Hermione seemed to be biting her lip not to laugh, but she finally said in a voice that was cracking a little, “No, he didn’t run into any of those on his way to the city. In fact, his journey was quite uneventful.”
“Oh,” Ron said, looking disappointed. “I was rather hoping something would happen. Seems anticlimactic otherwise.”
“Unfortunately, when he got to the city, it turned out that the ship wasn’t his, and he had to return to his little home as poor as he had left it,” Hermione told them.
“Well, that bloody well stinks!” Ron complained. “Bad enough he winds up poor without basically losing everything all over again!”
“Yeah, that’s pretty harsh,” Harry agreed.
“Even worse, on his way back through the woods, he became lost in a terrible thunderstorm,” Hermione said. “He stumbled on through the rain, the wind whipping through the branches of the trees and tearing at him with every step, when suddenly, in the flash from one of the lightning bolts he saw a set of high gates in front of him, and on the other side of them was an enormous castle.”
“Ah-ha!” Ron cried. “I knew it! Nothing happened going through the woods the first time, but when he goes back through them, then we get the weird stuff!”
“Yes, Ronald, your powers of prognostication rival those of Professor Trelawney,” Hermione sighed. “He ran to the gates and begged for entry or else he would perish in the storm, and slowly the gates opened, though no one was there.”
“Like the automatic doors at the Muggle market,” Ron said knowingly.
“That’s significantly less eerie than the effect I was going for, but yes,” Hermione said as though she had decided she was on the losing side of a battle regardless of what she did. “The father walked all the way to the castle, and the main door swung open just as before. He called out to thank his benefactor, but once again, no one answered. Torches lit themselves down a corridor one by one, and he followed them into a great dining room where a meal appeared on the table for him. He ate hungrily, and once he was done, another set of torches lit his way to a comfortable bedroom where he slept until dawn.”
“Huh,” Ron said. “Okay, so the self-lighting torches are a bit of magic any First Year could do, but the food appearing on the table sounds like the place might have some House-elves.”
Hermione stopped and tilted her head to one side, thinking, before she said slowly, “Actually, that is remarkably similar to what happens at Hogwarts for dinner, isn’t it?”
“Right,” Harry said, “and Hogwarts has a big gate in front of it as well, and it’s a castle of course, and it’s set off in the woods…”
The three of them looked at one another, all a bit startled.
“Yes, so,” Hermione continued, obviously feeling unnerved, “the father slept well and called out his thanks to whoever had helped him, then walked down to the door and through a lovely garden back towards the gate he’d entered. He noticed that the garden was full of the most beautiful red roses he had ever seen, hundreds and thousands of them. ‘Well,’ he said to himself, ‘I may not be able to bring home anything my two oldest daughters wanted, but perhaps I can at least give Beauty her rose.’”
“That’ll go over well. ‘Hey, everybody, we’re still poor, but at least I got Beauty her posy!’ I’m sure they’ll perk right up over that,” Ron said.
“But no sooner had the man plucked a single rose than a horrible, enormous beast appeared before him, snarling ferociously,” Hermione said, doing her best to sound snarly, but in fact sounding more like she had a bad cold.
“Oh,” Ron said soberly. “That’s bad. A werewolf?”
“No, it was daylight, remember?” Harry said, warding off Hermione’s response.
“Yes,” she said to Harry. “Well spotted. No, he was simply a very large, very hairy animal.”
“Like that talking wolf with Red Hat?” Ron asked.
“I suppose a little like that, but he wasn’t a wolf,” Hermione said.
“Was he wearing a grandmother’s nightgown?” Ron asked with deceptive sincerity, but his eyes were dancing gleefully.
“No, he was not!” Hermione said.
“Oh,” Ron said. “Would have been interesting if he was.”
“Anyway,” Hermione said, plowing forward, “the beast grabbed the man and shook him, saying ‘I have given you shelter, hospitality, safety, and you reward my kindness with theft!’”
“Geez, mate, calm down, it’s only a flower,” Ron said, looking sympathetic. “He’s got a whole garden of them!”
“Ah, but the beast was very selfish,” Hermione explained. “He then said that the penalty for stealing a rose from his garden was death.”
Ron looked at her, then at Harry, then back at Hermione again.
“For one rose?” Ron asked as though he needed to clarify this point.
“Yes,” Hermione said, folding her arms.
“Okay, I know some of Sprout’s plants are pretty expensive and all, but that’s way too steep a price for pilfering one rose,” Ron said.
“It’s very extreme, yes, but the beast insisted he was going to kill the man as punishment for his treachery. The man begged for his life, saying he had three daughters with no one else in the world to care for them, and this gave the beast pause,” Hermione said.
“Well, maybe he’s got a heart after all,” Harry said.
“’Perhaps you need not die,’ the beast said, and he led the man to his stables where there was a magnificent white charger,” Hermione said. “’This horse will take you home in the blink of an eye. Once you are there, you have until sundown. If one of your daughters agrees to come back and take your place here, I shall let you live, but if none of them do, you must swear to return and face your death. If you break your promise, I will come for you myself.’”
“Oh, for pity’s sake, this is another one of those stories where the parents swap the kids’ lives for their own, isn’t it!” Ron said indignantly.
“Not quite,” Hermione soothed him. “You’ll see. The beast sat the man on the horse’s back, and at once he found himself back outside his little cottage again.”
“Portkey,” Ron commented at once.
Hermione looked at him quizzically.
“Not the horse, obviously, since a living thing can’t be one, but maybe the saddle,” Ron said. “Strap a portkey on a horse, sit someone on top of it and tell them to hang on tight, and they’ll think the horse brought them there. Plus there’s the preplanned return at sunset, which you can do with a portkey too.”
“Hey, yeah,” Harry said. “That’d work perfectly, wouldn’t it!”
“It really would,” Hermione said, raising her eyebrows. “This seems to be another story that wizards had a hand in somewhere.”
“Okay, so what’s dear old Dad do when he gets home to his daughters,” Ron said, hunkering down on the small sofa and appearing to get more comfortable.
“Well, he told them about the ship, and while Beauty was disappointed, the two older daughters berated their father and wailed with misery, thinking only of themselves,” Hermione said.
“Poor father. I don’t think he’s got much chance of those two taking his place,” Ron said. “Pretty sure he might like to be shod of them, too.”
“Then the father gave Beauty her rose, and when she asked where he got it, he told them the story of his strange stay in the castle and the penalty the beast had laid on him for taking the rose. At once, the two older sisters turned on Beauty, saying that her selfishness in wanting a rose had caused the whole problem,” Hermione said.
“Wait, wait, the girl just asked for a rose. She didn’t say, ‘Hey, Dad, go steal a rose out of a crazy psychopathic beast’s garden for me, will you?’” Ron said.
“No, she’d asked for the least of them all, and yet the sisters blamed her for everything. The father, however, said that this was foolishness and that he had only until sunset to arrange affairs for them because he had to return to the beast to take his punishment,” Hermione continued.
“So he’s not going to sell out one of his kids?” Ron asked, sounding extremely pleased.
“No, it never even crossed his mind to let one of his daughters take his place,” Hermione said.
“Wow,” Ron said, smiling, “an actual, decent, moral, nice parent. I think I like this story.”
“Yeah,” Harry agreed. “If that were Uncle Vernon, he’d already have duct taped me to the saddle and whacked the horse to get it started.”
“Beauty, however, felt deeply guilty that her rose had caused all the trouble, and her sisters’ unkind words made her feel even worse,” Hermione said.
“Aw, poor kid,” Ron said. “She must take after her dad.”
“’I wonder,’ she said, ‘if I sit upon the horse, would it take me back to the beast in my father’s place?’ And so that’s just what she did. She slipped out the door, mounted the horse, and at once it took off at top speed moments before the sun set. She could see her father and her sisters staring in horror out the window for a single second, and the next she was outside the gates of the beast’s castle,” Hermione said. “The horse wandered towards the house, and the moment they had passed into the beast’s domain, the gates clanged shut behind them, locking them inside.”
“Whoa,” Ron said, letting out a half chuckle. “Okay, there’s being a good daughter, but that’s rather over the top!”
“I don’t know,” Harry said, shaking his head. “I think I can picture Ginny doing something like that if it meant saving your dad.”
“Maybe,” Ron admitted. “On the other hand, would you do that for your Uncle Vernon?”
“Not half likely,” Harry said at once.
Ron was about to make a smart remark when he seemed to stop short.
“Hey, wait,” Ron said, pointing at Hermione. “You did do that, didn’t you, trade yourself so your parents would be all right while you go off to face the beast?”
“I don’t know what you mean,” Hermione said, blushing, then continued on as though she didn’t want to think about it. “As soon as Beauty stepped off the horse, the beast appeared in front of her, but he behaved quite differently with her than with her father. ‘You are welcome here,’ he said, ‘and all that I have is yours.’”
“Well, that’s rather nice of him, isn’t it,” Harry said, hoping Hermione wouldn’t be too put off by the memory of having to leave her parents behind to fight Voldemort.
“’But you must never leave this place again so long as you live,’” Hermione finished.
“Oh. Always a catch, isn’t there. That’s not so nice then,” Ron said, grimacing.
“No, it really wasn’t,” Hermione agreed. “The beast told her she could go anywhere in the castle, though, and that his only request was that she would eat dinner with him in the evenings.”
“That’s not too bad… well, unless she’s on the menu,” Ron said.
“Beauty followed the trail of lit torches to her room, then threw herself down on her bed and cried as though her heart would break,” Hermione said. “She missed her family terribly, and the knowledge that she would never see them again was almost too much to bear.”
“Nah, she’ll see them again,” Ron said, putting an arm around her. “You wait and see. Usually these things turn out okay for the girl, especially if she’s pretty.”
Hermione, who a moment ago had looked close to tears, gave Ron a smile.
“Yes, well, let’s hope that’s the case for significantly less pretty heroines as well,” Hermione said.
“You’re pretty,” Ron blurted, then immediately reddened.
Harry abruptly wished he were anywhere else.
“So, ehm, how’d the first dinner go?” he asked lamely.
“Oh!” Hermione said, sounding as though she’d almost forgotten he was there. “Um, right, yes, not well. The beast had terrifying table manners, ripping the food before him to shreds and making a horrible mess everywhere.”
“Sounds like Fred and George,” Ron said.
“Or someone else I could mention,” Hermione said slyly, moving her gaze to the pile of dirty dishes and then pointedly back to Ron.
“Right, right, it’s my turn to do the washing up tonight, point taken,” he said, looking sheepish.
“Beauty suffered through the dinner as well as she could, eating little and trying not to stare at the beast. At the end of the meal, the dishes disappeared…”
“House-elves, I’m telling you,” Ron said firmly.
“…and then the beast asked Beauty if she would marry him,” Hermione finished.
“Okay, now that came out of nowhere,” Ron said, looking shocked. “The big monster asked the girl to marry him?”
“Yes,” Hermione said, folding her hands.
“Is that legal with your lot? Marrying outside the species?” Ron asked, looking rather sick.
“No!” Hermione yelped in disgust. “Remember, Muggles think only humans can talk.”
“And parrots,” Harry chimed in.
“But they just mimic sounds!” Hermione said desperately. “What I mean is, since the beast is speaking, Muggles would regard him as being more human-like than animal in that regard.”
“Just the same, that’s not the done thing,” Ron said, still frowning. “You don’t just whip a girl away on a Portkeyed horse, incarcerate her, eat like a pig in front of her, and they pipe up with ‘Oy! Want to be me missus?’”
Harry snorted very loudly.
“Unsurprisingly, Beauty said no,” Hermione said.
“I should jolly well think so,” Ron said. “I mean, the bloke’s filthy rich and all, but there’s a point where even Pansy would turn down a proposal, and marrying a great big talking wolf-bear-buffalo-whatever-it-is has got to be that point.”
“Things went on like this for several months. Each day, Beauty would find a lovely new dress in her room, and then she would wander through the gardens or the rooms of the castle. Each day, some new amusement presented itself. One day a room had a little puppet theatre with marionettes that made her laugh, and another time a group of musical instruments began to play on their own with no musicians visible,” Hermione said.
“Well, at least she isn’t bored,” Ron said.
“Still other times a great library appeared, filled to the rafters with books, while at other times there were rooms filled with mirrors and jewelry and dresses and things,” Hermione said.
“Bet I can guess which one you’d like best,” Harry said with a grin.
“I’ll admit, the description of the library did make my mouth water even when I was little. But the strangest thing of all was that Beauty started to have the oddest dreams. Every night, after she ate with the beast, and after he had proposed to her and she had said no, she would go up to her room and fall into a sound sleep, and each night she dreamed of a handsome prince,” Hermione said.
“Can’t say I blame her,” Ron said. “I mean, if you look at the descriptions of all the things in the castle, you notice that aside from the beast she never sees another living soul, or even a dead one. Even when there’s food or music or summat, it’s brought in by invisible people. Makes sense she’d make up a fantasy fellow in her subconscious.”
“True,” Hermione said thoughtfully. “It really is very isolating. Plus she never sees even the beast during the day since he’s out killing people.”
“He’s what?!” Ron shouted, his jaw dropping open.
“What? Oh, yes, I forgot to mention that bit. The beast roamed through the forest by day, killing unsuspecting travelers and eating them,” Hermione said off-handedly.
“When it gets to the point when eating people is so normal that you just gloss over it, you know you’ve been camping out too long,” Ron said, staring at her. “Anything else you forget to mention, like, say, the father murdered his two other daughters or Beauty enjoyed maiming cute little woodland creatures or something?”
“No, of course not!” Hermione said indignantly. “It just doesn’t come into the story all that much, so it slipped my mind.”
“Okay,” Ron said, inching a little away from her.
“Anyway, about the dream prince,” Harry said, trying to steer the story back on track before Ron fled the tent out of paranoia.
“Yes, the prince, right. Well, each night, Beauty saw him standing behind metal bars, and he would say, ‘Dear Beauty, do not let your eyes deceive you. Set me free,” Hermione said, trying to lower her voice into an appropriately seductive tone.
“So the beast is keeping him locked up somewhere?” Ron asked.
“That’s what Beauty thought, and she spent her days looking for him, but the rooms seemed to move about in the castle, and they were always changing so that it was impossible for her to find the same place twice,” Hermione explained. “She did sometimes find traces of him, though. Once she found a locket with his picture inside it, and remembering that the beast had said anything he had was hers as well, she put it around her neck. Another time she came across a huge portrait of him…”
“Sounds like an ego-maniac,” Ron said. “You sure this fellow isn’t Malfoy?”
“…but it had been slashed to ribbons by what looked like the beast’s claws,” Hermione said.
“That’s actually pretty disturbing,” Ron said. “Was the painting still moving?”
“No, Ron, it was a Muggle painting,” Hermione said. “They don’t move, remember?”
“Well, what with the self-lighting torches, the Portkey, the Apparating dinner, and the apparent House-elves, I figured moving pictures weren’t much of a stretch,” Ron said, shrugging.
“Not to mention the Room of Requirement,” Harry added.
“What?” both Ron and Hermione chorused.
“The rooms keep changing every time she goes into them, and it gives her something that she likes to distract her,” Harry said. “Sounds quite a bit like the Room of Requirement, doesn’t it?”
“Actually, it sort of does,” Hermione said thoughtfully. “I wonder just how rare that spell is, then.”
“I don’t know, but it’d come in handy for this place,” Harry said. “Just think what would happen if we could treat the tent that way?”
“Yeah,” Ron said, a dreamy smile on his face. “A whole room full of nothing but food.”
“Yeah,” Harry said, looking equally enthralled.
“Yeah,” Hermione agreed, her eyes lost in a dream.
The boys turned to stare at her.
“What?” she said. “I’m as hungry as you lot are.”
“Just thought you’d still be on about a big library,” Ron said.
“I love books, but you can’t eat them,” Hermione said, “and right now I want kippers, some piping hot mash, and a roast, followed by a chocolate sundae the size of one of Hagrid’s Halloween pumpkins.”
“Girl after my own heart,” Harry said with a laugh, only to see Ron giving him a disapproving look.
“Each night Beauty dreamed of her prince, and he would sigh softly and say that he feared he would remain a prisoner forever unless she would release him,” Hermione said.
“Poor prince,” Ron said. “Sounds like he’s on detention with Snape forever.”
“Could you just not mention his name?” Harry said irritably.
“Sorry,” Ron said, ducking his head in embarrassment. “Just with all the Hogwarts imagery and the like, if anyone would be locking people up, especially someone really unattractive, well, it’s pretty easy to picture the beast as… the Other You Know Who.”
“We don’t have to take it quite that far,” Harry said. “It’s not like saying Vol…”
“Just don’t!” Ron stopped him, making the others jump with his sudden shouting. “Sorry, just… I still don’t like the name. I won’t mention old hook-nose, and you won’t mention old no-nose, agreed?”
“Agreed,” Harry said, though personally he still thought not using Voldemort’s name was ridiculous.
“This went on for many months,” Hermione continued, “each day following the same pattern. Slowly, Beauty realized the beast didn’t intend to harm her, and she even became rather fond of him, but still she was unhappy. Finally, one night, when she was at the dinner table with the beast, Beauty began to cry.”
“Well, yeah, what with him spattering food all over the place,” Ron said. “It can’t really make for an uplifting dining experience.”
“The beast stopped tearing his food and looked at her, then said in a kind tone, ‘What is wrong, dearest Beauty?’” Hermione said.
“’Well, let’s see,’” Ron said in a falsetto. “’You’re keeping me prisoner, I haven’t seen another human being in months, a big hairy monster keeps trying to marry me, I’m having dreams about a fit bit of a prince that I can’t find, and by the way, your table manners are simply appalling! Aside from all that, I’m ginger peachy!’”
Ron threw in batting his eyelashes wildly, and Harry and Hermione both giggled.
“Not quite,” Hermione said. “Instead, Beauty said that she missed her father and sisters so much that she might die of homesickness.”
“Poor kid,” Ron said. “I get how she feels. Still, rotten as it is being stuck out here in the middle of nowhere with just the three of us, it’d be a lot worse if I were all alone like her.”
“Yeah, it could definitely be worse,” Harry said, looking at his two friends and actually feeling a moment of gratitude.
“The beast looked at her with pity and said, ‘Then I shall let you go home to visit your family, but you must return in two months. If you do not, I shall surely die,’” the beast said.
“Hey, that’s pretty decent of him,” Ron said, smiling.
“While it does border on Stockholm Syndrome, yes, the point is he doesn’t really want to harm her,” Hermione said. “The beast told her to pack whatever she liked from the castle to give to her family and put it in trunks, so she filled them with dresses and jewels, gold coins and all sorts of marvelous treasures, and no matter how much she put into the trunks, they never overflowed.”
“Like your beaded bag,” Ron said. “Is that where you got the idea?”
“I don’t know,” Hermione said, looking startled. “I suppose it might have been lying about in my subconscious. In any case, when the morning came, the beast gave her a ring and a mirror. He told her that to return to the castle, all she had to do was put on the ring and twist it around her finger, and she would be there. Then he told her to go to sleep, and in the morning she would be home.”
“That’s convenient,” Ron said. “And obviously the ring’s another portkey. But what about the mirror?”
“Oh, the mirror was for her to look into to see the beast if ever she had need of him,” she said.
“So… like Sirius’s two way mirror with Harry,” Ron said, sounding more than a little perturbed, then immediately flushing scarlet. “Sorry, Harry. I probably shouldn’t have mentioned that one either.”
“It’s alright,” Harry said, quite honestly. “I don’t mind thinking of Sirius. Of course I was a stupid prat for not checking that mirror before I ran off into the night to try to save him…”
By now Harry’s mood had started to darken, and Hermione pushed on with the story as though to try to bury the thought in the past.
“That night, when Beauty laid down to sleep, she dreamed of her prince once more, but she was shocked to see that he was laying on the ground looking ill and sad,” Hermione said. “She asked him, ‘Dear prince, what ails thee so?’ and he replied, ‘Oh, you mean to abandon me, and you shall never return, and I shall die of grief for you, my love!’”
“Her subconscious is really feeling guilty,” Ron said. “Also, why do fairy tale people always say thee? It’s right annoying, that is.”
“Beauty assured him that she would keep her promise to the beast, and that she really didn’t want any harm to come to him, but the prince still looked mournful. All at once, Beauty opened her eyes and found herself sleeping on her little bed in her father’s cottage in the forest,” Hermione said, completely ignoring Ron’s with practiced skill.
“I wish I were in my own bed, too,” Ron said. “Be nice to just wake up there tomorrow.”
“The father was overjoyed to see Beauty again, and her sisters seemed delighted as well, especially when they saw all the presents Beauty had for them. There was so much gold they were able to move back into town to a fine house, and Beauty and her sisters went to balls and on picnics and to wealthy people’s homes again, but the sisters often seemed to treat Beauty as though she were in the way since they had gotten quite used to life without her in her absence,” Hermione said.
“Well, that’s gratitude for you,” Ron said, frowning indignantly. “She makes them all rich again, and they don’t even say thank you, just push her to the side. What a couple of right old hags.”
“They obviously aren’t very nice,” Hermione agreed. “However, Beauty loved being with her father, and she told him all about the Beast, who had been kind and generous to her, and about her dreams of the prince, which had stopped since she left the castle. She asked her father what he thought the prince meant about freeing him, and the father said he wondered if the prince wouldn’t be freed if Beauty agreed to marry the beast.”
“That’s a pretty wide leap of logic,” Harry said.
“Yeah, all you’ve got to do to get the love of your life is marry somebody else, specifically this wooly mammoth over here,” Ron said. “The father may have gone a bit round the bend from all the forest-based poverty.”
“Beauty said over and over that she must return to the beast the next day, but always her sisters and father would beg her to spend one more day with them, and she would, forgetting about the time,” Hermione said.
“Uh-oh,” Ron said. “If this story’s like that Ashyweeper one, forgetting about the time has serious consequences.”
“Indeed,” Hermione said, beaming at Ron like he’d said something especially clever. “One day, she came across the magic mirror, and it immediately showed her the beast, but he was lying still on the grass in the garden, just where the prince had been in her dream, and he wasn’t moving.”
“That’s what you get for not keeping up with the calendar,” Ron said sagely.
“She let two whole months go by without once checking on him?” Harry said, raising an eyebrow. “That seems pretty cold.”
“Well, she was excited to be with her family, and I never said she was very bright,” Hermione said. “At once, she twisted the ring around her finger, and she was immediately standing next to the beast in his garden, but all the roses were withering. She knelt beside him, terrified that he might be dead because of her long absence, and she found that he wasn’t moving, nor breathing, nor showing any sign of life.”
“Blimey, now that’s just plain sad,” Ron said. “Not only that, but how’s that little slip of a thing going to bury that hulking monster?”
“House-elves,” Harry reminded him.
“Oh yeah,” Ron said. “I suppose they’d do it well enough, if she even knows they’re there.”
Through this exchange, Hermione half-closed her eyes as though she was pondering a difficult Arithmancy problem.
“Supposing there are House-elves in the beast’s home, and supposing he did die, what would happen to them?” Hermione asked.
“Dunno,” Ron said with a shrug. “I suppose they’d go to whoever inherits the house.”
“Yeah, like Kreacher,” Harry said.
“But supposing there wasn’t any next of kin,” Hermione said, still squinting into the middle distance. “What would happen then?”
“Hermione,” Ron said, patting her hand, “as much as it might be really tempting to kill all the Malfoys and anyone tangentially related to them, I’m pretty sure there has to be a better way to free them that.”
“I wasn’t contemplating murder!” she said, slapping his hand away. “It’s just an interesting psychological and legal question.”
“Whatever lets you sleep well at night,” he said, sitting back against the old chair. “So, the beast is dead. Now what?”
“I didn’t say the beast was dead,” Hermione said crossly. “I said he wasn’t breathing or moving or showing any sign of life.”
“That would mean he’s dead,” Ron pointed out.
“Did you forget about Sleeping Beauty and Snow White already?” Hermione asked.
“Oh yeah,” he said, smiling a little. “So maybe he’s not totally dead but just down with a mild case of nearly dead.”
Hermione rubbed her hand over her face, apparently mentally exhausted, but nodded.
“That’s the general idea, Ronald,” she said. “Beauty ran to a nearby fountain, filled her hands with water, and sprinkled on the beast’s face, and he began to stir.”
“So he was faking it,” Ron said, nodding in satisfaction.
“No, he wasn’t faking it!” Hermione said, and Harry noted that she was pretty close to snapping again. “He was honestly distraught by her absence and had fainted from missing her so!”
“Right,” Ron said, winking at Harry and mouthing the words “faking it” again.
“You realize I’m right here and can see everything you’re doing,” Hermione said, folding her arms and giving him a freezing glare.
“Oh, right,” Ron said. “So, what happened when the not-dead beast was suddenly much more obviously not dead?”
“Beauty said, ‘Oh, dear beast, I didn’t know how much I loved you until I thought you were dead!’ and he replied that she should go back in the castle and he would join her for dinner as he usually did,” Hermione said.
“Fast recovery there,” Ron said. “Looks like his little ruse worked pretty well.”
Hermione gave him a sour look but continued, “That night, after dinner, the beast again asked Beauty if she would marry him, but this time she answered, ‘Yes, dear beast.’”
Ron looked like he had something to say again, but for once he just rolled his eyes and shook his head.
“What?” Hermione asked.
“I reckon I’d best just hold my tongue,” Ron said, and Harry inwardly applauded. “Seriously, what can you say to that one? So Beauty married the beast and they had a bunch of furry sprogs?”
“No,” Hermione said. “Beauty agreeing to marry the beast broke the enchantment over him, and suddenly he turned into the prince from her dreams.”
“So… he’s the prince?” Ron said.
“That’s what I just said,” Hermione answered. “The whole time, the prince was trying to get her to say yes to the beast’s proposal of marriage. You see, as a human the beast had been very vain and arrogant, and as punishment a fairy had turned him into a beast until someone would love him in spite of his appearance rather than because of it, and of course he had been forbidden to speak of the spell or else he would stay a beast forever.”
Harry looked at Ron, who seemed to be mulling the whole thing over.
“Okay,” Ron said. “That’s plausible. Your average fairy would think that was a good bit of fun.”
“So the prince and Beauty were married, with her father and sisters in attendance, and a great cloud of fireflies spelled out in the sky ‘Long live the prince and his bride!’” Hermione said, looking a bit starry eyed.
“Nice bit of Charms work there,” Ron said. “So what happened to the evil sisters, since something always does seem to happen to them in these things?”
“In some versions, nothing,” Hermione said. “They all simply live happily ever after, but in others the fairy returns and changes the sisters into two statues who guard the entrance to the castle garden until they finally realize their own faults, but the fairy says she doesn’t think that’s ever likely to happen.”
“Those statues,” Ron said slowly, “they wouldn’t have happened to be of two great big gargoyles on either side of the gate, now would they?”
“Well, since the fairy did turn the beast into something hideous, it wouldn’t be out of character for her to do the same thing again,” Hermione reasoned. “Why?”
“Because when we get back to Hogwarts someday, I’m going to have a little conversation with the statues at the gate,” Ron said. “A thousand years is a bit long to be turned into stone, even for someone who crossed a fairy.”
“I…,” Hermione said as though to dismiss the idea, then shrugged. “Why not? It certainly wouldn’t be the strangest thing ever to happen at Hogwarts.”
“No, that’d be if Snape turned out to be a… prince… in… disguise,” Harry said, slowly stopping as he realized that’s exactly what he had turned out to be.
“Yeah, but I doubt he’s going to be transformed by love in the end,” Ron said. “There’s only just so far these parallels go.”
Harry grunted his agreement, and quiet reigned in the tent for the moment. He had to admit, Hermione’s story had been far from boring, but on a cold night, as the wind raged in the trees above, it had made him more than a little homesick for Hogwarts and the people there. When all this was over, the Horcruxes destroyed and the inevitable battle won, he hoped he’d be able to see its towers again.
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no subject
Date: 2011-01-06 07:07 pm (UTC)I'm going to have to go back and read the other parts! I love fairy tales, and I really enjoyed your take on this. :)
no subject
Date: 2011-01-09 03:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-01-10 07:53 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-01-11 11:27 pm (UTC)you're back!
Date: 2011-01-12 06:17 pm (UTC)great as always too.
(did you picked B&B as Hermione's favorite because belle is a bookworm too? ;p
Re: you're back!
Date: 2011-02-04 08:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-02 03:14 am (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2011-02-04 08:18 pm (UTC)