The Marauders: Year Seven Part Two

Bowtruckles

"Gentle now... gentle..."

Silvanus Kettleburn leaned to watch as Regulus carefully levitated what looked like a thick purple honeycomb. He waved his arm - the one that had been replaced by a great mechanical device with a pinching device on the end, and Regulus swooshed the same motion, the purple honeycomb flying gracefully in an arch through the room, and depositing carefully into a wide wooden rack, fitted with pigeon holes exactly the shape of the combs. 

Regulus smiled as several greyish-lavender colored pom-poms with flashing black wings flew from the rack where the comb had been housed moments before, zipping hurriedly into the new rack and setting back to work in organizing the globules of the oozing liquid in each of the comb's numerous, hexagonal cells. The glumbumble bees buzzed merrily.

"Good job, Regulus!" said Kettleburn, quite proudly, "Yes, very good job." He smiled and his mechanical arm extended, shooting out across the room by several feet to grab what looked like a tiny shovel from the shelf. "Here we are, now... We'll use this to harvest the glumbumble honey." He handed the shovel to Regulus, who was still staring in amazement at the distance that Professor Kettleburn's arm had gone. It would never, ever become normal to see his teacher's arm extend so far, Regulus thought, blinking in amazement.

He used the shovel, with Kettleburn's instruction, to scrape the honey out of the combs in the now vacated rack, the purple sludge filling the scoop quickly. He carefully poured it out into a jar, his gloved hands sticky with the slow-moving honey. 

"Most excellent. Madam Pomfrey will be quite pleased." Kettleburn smiled and waved his wand to cork the mouth of the bottle carefully as Regulus wrote down the date of collection on the label that he stuck onto the bottle's side.

"What's it used for, Professor?" Regulus asked, curiously. 

"Antidotes, mostly," replied Kettleburn, "Taken straight the glumbumble bee honey is a depressant, and causes a sort of melancholia, but it treats episodes of mania quite well. It can be very useful in settling high-key anxiety, hyperactivity, and hysteria... especially effective in counteracting the effects of the alihosty leaf."

"Alihosty?" Regulus questioned.

"Mmmhm," Kettleburn nodded, as Regulus filled the next bottle with purple honey. "The hyena plant, they call it. Makes you rather delirious. Extreme hysteria. There've been wizards who have laughed themselves to death while on the stuff. It was a fashion for a time for students to burn alihosty in their dormitories - hallucinegenic. I dare to say that it's been some time since alihosty was used recreationally at Hogwarts, though... No, Pomona had to cut it out of the curriculum. Too many students were stealing sprigs of it. And a leaf is all it takes for some rather... psychedelic results..." Kettleburn shook his head. "It's why I started breeding glumbumble bees in the first," he explained, "To produce the antidote she needed to bring the offenders down from their fits."

Regulus stared at the purple honey. "Sounds like the sort of thing my brother would try at doing, sir."

Kettleburn chuckled, "Ah, yes, Sirius Black. Wouldn't surprise me if he had... Though where he found alihosty leaves around Hogwarts..." Kettleburn shrugged, and capped the second and third bottles that Regulus had filled. 

Regulus reckoned if Sirius knew what alihosty did that he would certainly have found some way to feed it to half the school by now and reckoned it was best that Sprout had taken it off the curriculum - just for the sake of pranksters like Sirius.

Finishing the harvesting of the glumbumble's honey, Kettleburn and Regulus next worked at feeding the thestrals - great strips of raw meat that they slurped up like noodles and chewed on with rotating maws. Regulus liked the thestrals quite a lot, although he knew many people considered them unlucky or even ugly, he thought they were beautiful with their sleek black hair and skeletal, bird-like faces. The hollows between their ribs curved in a way that Regulus saw as artistic, and their gentle spirits were certainly admirable. He thought that the thestrals were simply misunderstood, seen as something dark and evil without anyone ever giving them a chance to prove themselves otherwise.