#I made up thousands of words of lore involving her and werewolves it is actually insane

[dr-wormman]

Io redesign? Idk it's pretty minor but I really do not like how they made her look. I like her little tooth though that's pretty cute

They should have made her older!! And buffer!!!! I know every game these days needs a cute little neko girl but come ON

Apparently she looks the way she does because that's how her followers imagine her, so; moon shatters, she becomes something they need to protect, she takes on a more youthful/cuter/physically weaker-looking form. Idk that's my attempt to rationalize why she is The Way She Is

[loretranscripts]

Lore Episode 3: The Beast Within (Transcript) - 6th April 2015

tw: murder, rape, death of children, bodily mutilation, cannibalism, graphic descriptions of violence, ableist language, disease, werewolves

Disclaimer: This transcript is entirely non-profit and fan-made. All credit for this content goes to Aaron Mahnke, creator of Lore podcast. It is by a fan, for fans, and meant to make the content of the podcast more accessible to all. Also, there may be mistakes, despite rigorous re-reading on my part. Feel free to point them out, but please be nice!

Ask anyone in the mental health profession about full moons and you’ll get a surprising answer. They’ll respond with something that sounds incredibly like folklore and myth. The full moon has the power to bring out the crazy in people. We’ve believed this for a long time. We refer to unstable people as “lunatics”, a word that is Latin. It’s built from the root word luna, which means “moon”. And for centuries, has operated under the conviction that changes in the luna cycle can cause people to lose touch with reality. Just ask the parents of a young child and they’ll tell you tales of wild behaviour and out-of-the-ordinary disobedience at certain times of the month. Science tells us that just as the moon’s pull on the ocean creates tides that rise and fall in severity, so too does our planet’s first satellite tug on the water inside our bodies, changing our behaviour. As modern people, when we talk about the full moon we tend to joke about this insane, extraordinary behaviour. But maybe we joke to avoid the deeper truth, an idea that we are both frightened and embarrassed that we even entertain. For most of us, you see, the full moon conjures up an image that is altogether unnatural and unbelievable. That large, glowing, perfect circle in the night sky makes us think of just one thing: werewolves. I’m Aaron Mahnke, and this is Lore.

Science has tried many times over the years to explain our obsession with the werewolf. One theory is a disease known as hypertrichosis, sometimes known as “wolfitis”. It’s a condition of excessive, unusual body hair growth, oftentimes covering the person’s entire face. Think Michael J. Fox in Teen Wolf. Psychologists actually have an official diagnosis in the DSM IV handbook known as “clinical lycanthropy”. It’s defined as a delusional syndrome where the patient believes they can transform into an animal, but the changes only take place in their mind, of course. Delusions, though, have to start somewhere. Patients who believe that they are Napoleon Bonaparte have some previous knowledge of who he was. I think it’s fair to assume that those who suffer from clinical lycanthropy have heard of werewolves before. It’s actually pretty easy to bump into the myth, thanks to modern popular culture. Werewolves have been featured in, or at least appeared in, close to 100 films in Hollywood since 1913.

One of the earliest mentions of something even resembling the modern werewolf can actually be found in the 2000-year-old writings of the Roman poet Vergil. In his Eclogue 9, written about 40BCE, he described a man named Moeris, who could transform himself into a wolf using herbs and poisons. About 50 years later, Gaius Petronius wrote a satirical novel called, appropriately, Satyricon, which I think is basically the equivalent of Stephen King writing a horror novel called “Frighticon”. In it, he tells the tale of a man named Niceros. In the story, Niceros was travelling with a friend, and when that friend suddenly took off his clothes, urinated in a circle and transformed into a wolf right before his eyes, before running off toward a large field of sheep. The next day, Niceros was told by the sheep-owner that one of the shepherds stabbed a wolf in the neck with a pitch fork. Later that day, Niceros noticed that his friend, now returned to the house, had a similar wound on his neck.

In the Greek myth of the god Zeus and an Arcadian king named Lycaon, Zeus took on the form of a human traveller. At one point in his journey he visited Arcadia, and during his time in that country, he visited the royal court. The king of the land, Lycaon, somehow recognised Zeus for who he truly was and tried, in true Greek form, of course, to kill him by serving him a meal of human flesh. But Zeus was a smart guy, after all, and he caught Lycaon in the act, throwing the mythological equivalent of a temper tantrum. He destroyed the palace, killed all 50 of the king’s sons with lightning bolts, and then of course cursed King Lycaon himself. The punishment? Lycaon would be doomed to spend the rest of his life as a wolf, presumably because wolves were known for attacking and eating humans, and he tried to serve human flesh. Most scholars believe that this legend is what gives birth to the term lycanthropy: lukos being the Greek word for wolf, and anthropos, the word for man.

Werewolves aren’t just a Greco-Roman thing. In the 13th century, the Norse recorded their mythological origins in something called the Völsunga saga. Despite their culture being separated from the Greeks by thousands of miles and many centuries, there are in fact tales of werewolves present in their histories. One of the stories in the Völsunga saga involves a father and son pair: Sigmund and Sinfjotli. During their travels, the two men came across a hut in the woods where they found two enchanted wolf skins. These skins had the power to change the wearer into a wolf, giving them all the characteristics that the beast was known for: power, speed, and cunning. The catch, according to the saga, was that once put on, the wolf pelt could only be taken off every 10 days. Undeterred, the father son duo each put on one of the wolf skins, and transform into the beasts. They decided to split up and go hunting in their new forms, but they made an arrangement that if either of them encountered a party of men over the certain size of seven, then they were supposed to howl for the other to come join them in the hunt. Sigmund’s son, however, broke his promise, killing off a hunting party of 11 men. When Sigmund discovered this, he fatally injured his son. After the god Odin intervened and healed him, both men took off the pelts and burned them. You see, from the very beginning, werewolves were a supernatural thing, a curse, a change in the very nature of humanity. They were ruled by cycles of time and feared by those around them.

Things get interesting when we go to Germany. In 1582, the country of Germany was being pulled apart by a war between Catholics and Protestants, and one of the towns that played host to both sides was the small town of Bedburg. Keep in mind that there were also still outbreaks of the Black Death, so this was an age of conflict and violence. People understood loss – they had become numb to it, and it would take something incredibly extraordinary to surprise them. First, there were cattle mutilations: farmers from the area surrounding Bedburg would find dead cattle in their fields. It started of infrequent, but grew to become a daily occurrence, something that went on for weeks. Cows that had been sent out to pasture were found torn apart. It was as if a wild animal had attacked them. Naturally, the farmers assumed it was wolves, but it didn’t stop there. Children began to go missing. Young women vanished from the main roads around Bedburg. In some cases their bodies were never found, but those that were had been mauled by something horribly violent. Finding your cattle disembowelled is one thing, but when it’s your daughter or your wife, well, it can cause panic, and fear, and so the community spiralled into hysteria.

Now, we think of historical European paranoia and we often think of witchcraft. The 15th and 16th centuries were filled with witch hunts: burnings, hangings, and an overwhelming hysteria that even spread across the Atlantic to the British colonies, where it destroyed more lives. The Witch Trails of Salem, Massachusetts are the most famous of those examples, but at the same time, Europe was also on fire with fear of werewolves. Some historians think that in France alone, some 30,000 people were accused of being werewolves, and some (hundreds, they say) were even executed for it, either by hanging or being burnt at the stake. You see, the fear of werewolves was real, and for the town of Bedburg, it was very real.

One report from this event tells of two men and a woman, who were travelling just outside the city walls. They heard a voice call out to them for help from within the trees beside the road, and one of the men stepped into the trees to give assistance. When he didn’t return, the second man entered the woods to find him, and he also didn’t return. The woman caught on, attempted to run, but something exited the woods and attacked her. The bodies of the men were later found, mangled and torn apart, but the woman’s never was. Later, villagers found severed limbs in the fields near Bedburg, limbs from the people who were missing. It was clear that something horrible was hunting them.

Another report tells of a group of children playing in a field near the cattle. As they played, something ran into the field and grabbed a small girl by the neck before trying to tear her throat out. Thankfully the high collar on her dress actually saved her life, and she managed to scream. Now, cows don’t like screaming apparently, and they began to stampede. Frightened by the cattle, the attacker let go of the girl and ran for the forest, and this was the last straw for the people of Bedburg. They took the hunt to the beast.

According to a pamphlet from 1589, the men of the town hunted for the creature for days. Accompanied by dogs and armed for killing, these brave men ventured into the forest and, finally, found it. In the end, it was the dogs that cornered the beast. Dogs are fast and they beat the men to their prey. When the hunters finally did arrive, they found the creature cornered. According to the pamphlet, the wolf transformed into a man right before their eyes. While the wolf had been just another beast, the man was someone they recognised. It was a wealthy, well-respected farmer from town named Peter Stubbe, sometimes recorded as Stumpp. Stubbe confessed to it all, and his story seemed to confirm their darkest fears. He told them that he had made a pact with the devil at the age of 12. The deal? In exchange for his soul, the devil would give him a plethora of worldly pleasures, but like most stories, a greedy heart is difficult to satisfy. Stubbe admitted to being a, and I quote,  “wicked fiend, with the desire for wrong and destruction”, that he was “inclined to blood and cruelty”. Now, to sate that thirst, the devil had given him a magical belt of wolf skin. Putting it on, he claimed, would transform him into the monstrous shape of a wolf. Sound familiar?

He told the men that had captured him that he had taken off the belt in the forest, and some were sent back to retrieve it, but it was never found. Still, superstition and fear drove them to torture and interrogate the man, who confessed to decades of horrible, unspeakable crimes. Well-known around the town, Stubbe told his captors that he would often walk through Bedburg and wave to the families and friends of those he had killed. It delighted him, he said, that none of them suspected that he was the killer. Sometimes he would use these walks to pick out future victims, planning how he would get them outside the city walls, where he could, and I quote, “ravish and cruelly murder them”. Stubbe even admitted to going on killing sprees simply because he took pleasure in the bloodshed. He would kill lambs and goats and eat their raw flesh. He even claimed to have eaten unborn children, ripped straight from their mothers’ wombs.

The human mind is always solving problems, even when we’re asleep and unaware of it. The world is full of things that don’t always sit right with us, and in our attempt to deal with life we… rationalise. In more superstitious times it was easy to lean on old fears and legends. The Tuberculosis outbreaks of the 1800s led people to truly believe that the dead were sucking the life out of the living. The stories that gave birth to the vampire mythology also provided people with a way to process Tuberculosis and its horrible symptoms. Perhaps the story of the werewolf shows us that same phenomenon, but in reverse. Rather than creating stories to explain the mysteries of death, perhaps we created the story of the werewolf to help justify the horrors of life and human nature. The tale of Peter Stubbe sounds terrible, but when you hold it up to modern day serial killers, such as Jeffery Dahmer or Richard Trenton Chase, it’s par for the course. The difference between them and Stubbe is simply 400 years of modernisation. With the advent of electrical lights pushing away the darkness and global exploration exposing much of the world’s fears to be just myth, it’s become more and more difficult to blame our flaws on monsters. The beast, it turns out, has been inside us the whole time.

And Peter Stubbe? Well, the people of Bedburg executed him for his crimes. On October 31st, 1589, (Halloween, mind you) he was given what was thought to be a fair and just punishment. He was strapped, spread eagle and naked, to a large, wooden wheel, and then his skin was pealed off with red hot pinchers. They broke his arms and legs with the blunt end of an axe before finally turning the blade over, and chopping off his head. His body was burnt at the stake in front of the entire town, and then his torture wheel was mounted on a tall pole, topped with the statue of a wolf. On top of that, they placed his severed head. Justice, or just one more example of the cruelty of mankind? Perhaps in the end, we’re all really monsters, aren’t we?

Lore was produced by me, Aaron Mahnke. You can find a transcript of the show, as well as links to source material, at lorepodcast.com. Lore is a bi-weekly podcast, so be sure to check back in for a new episode every two weeks. And if you enjoy scary stories, I happen to write them. You can find a full list of my supernatural thrillers, available in paperback and ebook format, at aaronmahnke.com/novels. Thanks for listening.

[under-the-lake]

Shape-Shifting Part 1: Transfiguration and Creatures in the Harry Potter Books and European Lore

Animagi, werewolves, Transfiguration… all those shape-shifting forms appear in the Harry Potter series. They can be voluntary or not, linked to a spell, a curse/disease or to the sheer will of the shape-shifter, but they are always quite spectacular. Werewolves are part of the folklore in the northern hemisphere. But what about Animagi? Are shape-shifters a mere figment of Rowling’s imagination or are there shape-shifter stories in different cultures around the world? The answer is definitely the second option, and here are some examples (I can’t promise this paper to be short, I’m afraid :( … However, I can safely promise I won’t take examples from Cursed Child. )

I’ll start with a review of what shape-shifting means in Rowling’s novels, before going for a little tour of some cultures I want to explore regarding shape-shifting.

In the Harry Potter books and Fantastic Beasts-the film

To start with, let’s consider the types of shape-shifting appearing in Rowling’s books: Werewolves, Animagi, Metamorphmagi, Transfigured people, Boggarts, Kelpies, Veela. For the creatures, I’ll try and give a short -snorts- account of the image Muggles have of them, in their folklore.

Werewolves were already discussed a bit in other papers on this blog, so let’s leave them out of this one. For the rest, here goes:

1. Use of a Spell or a Potion

Transfiguration allows the wizard to change the shape of a fellow human into that of another animal, like Moody did with Draco when he turned the latter into a ferret, or into that of another human being. This is a means of shape-shifting using a spell, obviously. The first ever dated record of human Transfiguration was the one happening during a Quidditch match in 1473, when a Chaser was turned into a polecat. Of course, that kind of transformation had happened before. Take Circe, for instance, who was famous for turning sailors into pigs. She lived thousands of years ago. Some examples are more recent, like the one of Gellert Grindelwald, who was superskilled at Transfiguration, and lived as MACUSA Auror Percival Graves in 1926 New York. Transfiguring someone into an animal would cause that person to become an animal fully, not retaining one ounce of humanity, meaning that they could perform no magic of their own, and would need the mediation of another wizard to get back to their human form (I wonder what happens to their clothes and especially to their wand during that time, and also if the one who transfigured the wizard would then become master of the wand, since it sort of defeated its owner…).

Transfiguration in the case of Animagi is going to be dealt with later, because it’s a different form of Transfiguration than just casting a spell. Transfiguration spells are numerous, according to various sources. However, the books don’t mention the spells per se, so I won’t list them here.

There are also examples of humans transforming themselves into humans, by means of Polyjuice Potion. Harry, Ron and Hermione used it in Chamber of Secrets to sneak into the Slytherin Common Room, and they also did use it in Deathly Hallows to enter the Ministry of Magic while trying to retrieve Slytherin’s locket from Umbridge, while trying to get food when they were on the run and finally when breaking into Gringotts to get Hufflepuff’s cup from Bellatrix Lestrange’s vault. In Goblet of Fire, Barty Crouch Jr. drank it all year round to impersonate Alastor Moody, whom he kept secured in a trunk all the time to get hair for his potion. We also know that Draco Malfoy made Crabbe and Goyle drink it and turned them into girls while they were keeping watch outside the Room of Requirement in Half-Blood Prince. Finally, at the beginning of Deathly Hallows, six people turn into Harries so as to keep danger -relatively- at bay while moving Harry from Privet Drive to the Burrow. Rowling made quite a use of Polyjuice. And as far as I know, I might have forgotten occurrences.

I have no recollection of any other potion in the books that would allow the drinker to change form. Since it’s considered Dark Magic, it’s only consistent it would be so. After all, the recipe for the Polyjuice Potion is found in a book called Moste Potente Potions, that is kept in the Restricted Section of the Hogwarts Library, because of all the gruesome stuff it contains, according to Hermione. Shape-shifting is not legal in the wizarding world, unless you’re a registered Animagus (see next paper). I can understand why there’s no more potions about that.

The use of a spell or a potion to change someone’s appearance is not common in cultures around the world - at least not to my knowledge; if you know something, tell me. It’s a pretty artificial way of achieving shape-shifting, and it is restricted to myths and legends.

2.Creatures

Form-changing creatures are more common, even outside the wizarding world. According to Newt Scamander (and I’m sticking to book canon here), there aren’t many shape-shifters among the Magical Creatures. In Fantastic Beasts And Where to Find Them, Scamander mentions only the Kelpie. In the Harry Potter series we come across a couple of other creatures, namely the Boggart and the Veela. It’s strange that they aren’t mentioned in Fantastic Beasts, at least for the Boggart, since it’s definitely a beast (maybe it’s because nobody knows its true shape). As for the Veela, it’s a Being, which accounts for its being left out of the book.

Reminder: the Ministry of Magic has a classification for Creatures. It goes from X (boring) to XXXXX (known wizard-killer and impossible to domesticate).

a. Kelpies

According to Newt Scamander, the Kelpie is a British and Irish water-demon, classified as XXXX by the Ministry of Magic. That means a skilled and trained wizard could deal with a Kelpie. It can change its shape to lure its preys into water, and the shape it takes the most often is that of a horse. It doesn’t take much to differentiate that horse from a regular Equus sp. because the mane of the horse-Kelpie is made of bulrushes. According to Muggle folklore, the hooves of the horse-kelpie are inverted compared to those of a regular Equus sp, and in Aberdeenshire, the mane is made of snakes. It is also said that if a Kelpie takes the shape of a human, then it’s betrayed by his hair being mixed with seaweed.

In his book, Scamander describes the festine that takes place at the bottom of the waters as quite gruesome because the entrails of the victim end up floating on the surface, or, according to legend, are thrown on the shore. Very nice. Sounds like the Kelpie’s Burp.

Still according to Scamander, you can render the horse-Kelpie tame by using and bridle jointly with a Placement Charm. However, it requires skill.

The world’s most famous Kelpie is the so-called-by-Muggles Loch Ness Monster. It was discovered to be a Kelpie when it was witnessed to turn into an otter to escape a crowd of Muggles. Every Scottish bit of water has a kelpie story attached to it. :)

Kelpies aren’t an invention of Rowling’s. They are part of the British lore. In Scotland, where the word originates from (first written records of the name back in the second half of the 17th century), Kelpies are apparently small, roundish, shape-shifting water fairies. They are said to usually appear as grey horses who lure their preys onto their backs, dive deep into the waters and devour their preys. Those creatures - or similar ones -  appear all over the British Isles, with various names according to the region they are in: Each-Uisge in Ireland, Cabbyl-Ushtey on the Isle of Man, Shoney in Cornwall, Ceffyl Dwr in Wales, Nuggies in the Shetlands and Tangies on the Orkneys. Moreover, similar creatures are observed in Scandinavia, for instance (the Swedish Backhäst), or even as far as Southern America and Australia.

The Scottish Kelpie was said to lure people by crying for help, which led people to deny rescue to people drowning or trapped on islands if they thought they were kelpies crying. That, of course, led to the actual people dying. Near Fife, Scotland, the Kelpie is said to make a dreadful roaring before a boat was lost at sea.

In Scotland, apparently, the most usual transformations of the Kelpie are into a horse or a handsome young lad (rarely a lass). Yet Nessie is a Sea-Serpent :P

Lord I just found out something in a book called ‘The Fabled Coast’ (references below, naturally): Newt Scamander wasn’t an old loony when telling about bits of guts floating after the Kelpie’s repast. Actually, a paragraph about Lochboisdale, Western Islands, Scotland, tells the reader that exact gory bit of the legend. Kelpie-researchers go so far as to make a difference between sea-water demons, which they call Water-Horses, and fresh-water demons, which they call Kelpies. This apparently was a huge debate involving famous writers like Sir Walter Scott in the 19th century. The dispute is still not closed today… In that paragraph about Lochboisdale, the author also says that most people don’t give a bit of toast about that and call all those creatures Kelpies. I’ll also summarize the tale told in that chapter about the Kelpie. The narrative frame is the usual one, but still…

In Lochboisdale lived a widowed man and his daughter. The man married again and the stepmother and stepdaughter moved in. As usual, the stepmother was a mean old hag who gave all the dirty work to her husband’s daughter and let hers flirt all day. One day that the girl was fishing at sea and catching nothing to save her life, the Kelpie appeared in front of her as a good-looking young man. He offered her help and they filled the boat with fish, because, he said, he knew about her misfortunes and had fallen in love with her. However, when the lass found out that her rescuer was a Water-Horse, she didn’t want anything to do with him anymore and he had to go back to his underwater realm. Some time later, an assembly was held in the village and the Water-horse told his fellow kelpies he was going to bring a mortal amongst them. So he went to the dance, richly attired, looking handsomer than ever. Seeing him, the stepdaughter was so besotted that she clung to him all night, to the great pleasure of the Water-horse. He then lured her to the beach, and before she was aware the stepdaughter was invited to yet another ball, of which she was the main guest. Nobody heard anything about her on the land anymore. Romantics believe it was a way for the Water-horse to help his beloved have a better life. Realists think he wanted food.

Other tales include children, who try and mount the Kelpie, but as soon as their hand touches the creature, it gets stuck. If the kid cuts off his fingers or hand he might escape. Otherwise, it’s death and guts on the water edge. In some tales the Kelpie actually chooses a mortal life and marries the belle he loved, after trials and all that such a tale requires, naturally. Yet in other accounts, the Kelpies are reckoned to have great strength and when tamed they are used to carry milestones and plough fields. When released, though, they sometime issue a curse and some families are believed to have died out following such a malediction.

In Wales there’s part of the tale Newt Scamander relates in his book, namely the bit about the taming of the Horse-kelpie. There are several tales about Ceffyl-Dwr (see picture above; source: https://imgur.com/gallery/r5NYu ) being caught and used as farm-horses, and inevitably at some point the bridle falls and the Ceffyl-Dwr returns to the sea, sometimes dragging plough and farmer behind him. The Ceffyl-Dwr was sometimes seen plunging up and down into the sea like a dolphin, which makes it more an elemental beast than a water-demon. That’s a difference between the Scottish Kelpie and the Welsh Ceffyl-Dwr, and goes against Scamander’s putting all those shape-shifting water-horse creatures under the same name.

Naturally, Christian religion has taken the Kelpie as a satanic creature, and according to them, carrying a Bible or using a cross to tame the Kelpie works, as well as shooting it with a silver bullet. (strange how the Christian ways to get rid of ‘demons’ is always the same :P )

b. Boggarts:  be good or the bogeyman will get you!

In the Harry Potter series, Boggarts first appear in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Professor Lupin introduces them in the first decent Defence Against the Dark Arts lesson Harry and his classmates have had in the two years they’ve been at Hogwarts. Lupin has stored a Boggart in the staffroom wardrobe and intends the students to practice on it to get the grip of the Boggart-Banishing-Spell Riddikulus.

If the spell is Riddikulus, which is a mere spelling twist on the English ridiculous, then it might mean ridicule has something to do with banishing a Boggart. Sure enough, the only way to get rid of a Boggart is making it turn into something so ludicrous you’ll laugh your head off and it’ll blast off. You could ask why you need to do such a thing, though. Well, the answer is easy: the Boggart is a shape-shifting non being that will turn into whatever frightens people the most when they face them. Of course, that means nobody but one that wouldn’t fear anything would know what a Boggart looks like when they hide in dark corners and other confined spaces. Naturally, the more people are tackling the Boggart at the same time, the easier it is to finish it off. If two or more people are in front of it, the Boggart will get confused because it won’t know what to turn into. Lupin says, in Prisoner of Azkaban, that he ‘once saw a Boggart make that very mistake - tried to frighten two people at once and turned himself into half a slug. Not remotely frightening.’ (Chapter Seven)

According to Rowling in her writings for Pottermore, Boggarts’ presence can be felt by Muggles, yet they wouldn’t dare believe that there’s actually something there, and would merely believe it’s their imagination playing a trick on them.

Boggarts are non beings, like Poltergeists or Dementors. Not truly alive, yet not dead. They seem, like Dementors, to feed on human emotions. We don’t know how they breed, but apparently the fuel they use is fear (while remember, Dementors feed not only on fear, but also despair, sadness and all ‘negative’ emotions).

The particularity of Boggarts among shape-shifting creatures is that what they are going to turn into is unknown until it does so, and the variety of shapes it can assume is as wide as the pictures of fear in humankind.

I don’t think I’ve come across anything like a Harry-Potter-style-Boggart in any culture I’ve been reading about. However, since that could be the case, if you know anything of the sort, please comment below the article or on our fb page! I’d love to know more! Here’s what I found, though. Some traits are similar to Rowling’s boggarts, but not many.

Apparently, in Muggle Scotland, a Boggart is a male fairy who will create havoc in your house with great pleasure. Sounds like Peeves to me, but Peeves is a Poltergeist. It also loves frightening travellers (that’s one of the closest trait to a HP-Boggart). Across the British Isles, the Boggart goes by many names: Padfoot or Hobgoblin in Northern England (Hobgoblin is also a nice ale :P ), or even Boogey Man, and all the nicknames such a name can induce people to think of, naturally.

There are two kinds of boggarts, the household ones, and the outdoors ones, the latter living on bogs and marshes. While the household boggarts are more like Peeves, causing mischief and not living you in peace, the outdoor ones are accused of crimes of a more serious nature, like abducting children.

About household boggarts, if they are anyway like Peeves, I can very well imagine that people would want to get rid of them as soon as possible. However, that proves tricky, as this story shows: A man and his family were living in a house where a boggart had decided to establish his residence. It caused so much havoc that at some point the family decided to pack their things and move out. At the gate, the neighbour coming towards the family asked if they were leaving. From the suitcase came that happy cry: ‘Yes, we are!’. The man and his family turned back and went home. There’s no escaping a household boggart.

There are no specific kind of habitat for Boggarts. Of course bogs and marshes, but those are wetlands in general, that, since they are treacherous to wander on, are believed to be home to treacherous and maligne creatures. There are also reports of them living on dangerous slopes over roads, which could suggest that these are made up locations by muggles, because it’s just avoiding to say nature has her own ways and sometimes the stones and trees move on slopes and come down, causing accidents. Caves are also among the favourites, apparently, and that is closer to what Rowling says about Boggarts living in closed dark spaces. There’s a cave in Yorkshire, near Giggleswick, called Cave Ha, that is said to be haunted by a Boggart. Cave Ha, with its unusual name, is a huge shelter cave, and there has been human and animal bones found there, buried, but some also smashed to remove the marrow apparently, which might link the site to a ritual sacrificial place. There’s evidence of Cave Ha being used since the Neolithic period. The local legends around Giggleswick say that around that particular shelter cries and weird noises are often heard, and that a bogard roams around it. 

The pictures of boggarts we can find in literature or on the internet often resemble a sort of oldish dwarfish creature with crooked nose and fingers, not unlike the Goblins in the HP-films (see pic above; source:

https://lancashirefolk.com/2017/04/19/a-boggart-did-it-proved-in-court/ )

It looks like in folklore, Boggarts aren’t shape-shifters. The closest to shape-shifting I found is the fact that benevolent household creatures like brownies can turn into boggarts if ill-treated or offended. HA! No way. In Harland and Wilkinson, 1867, there’s a few paragraphs about Boggarts in Lancashire, which, as everyone knows, is a land of witchcraft. Here’s a summary of what they say:

Boggart is a name that might mean two things: bar-gheist, which is literally gate-ghost (bar means gate in the North, and ghast is Anglo-Saxon for spirit, anima), or buhr-gast, wich means town-sprite (buhr being the Anglo-Saxon for town, and gast for ghost). The spirits standing on gates or walls were known to frighten people - that’s consistent with the general fear-thing associated with boggarts. They also say that those boggarts can TAKE VARIOUS FORMS, or, as they put it, strange appearances.  So those particular boggarts would be shape-shifters. There’s even a list of creatures the boggart could turn into: ‘a rabbit, dog, bear, or still more fearful form’. Those were recorded east of Manchester. Of course, those boggarts were cleaned off by churchmen at first, and industrialisation next, and in the end, rationality took over and people said that ‘fact'ry folk havin' summat else t'mind nur wanderin' ghosts un' rollickin' sperrits’ and ‘There's no Boggarts neaw, un' iv ther' were, folk han grown so wacken, they'd soon catch 'em.’ That last bit of course makes me think that rationality hadn’t completely won over old ideas, and so much the better, in my opinion. Rationalism alone is not the solution :P

The more I read the book, the more similarities I find with Rowling’s Boggarts. So as seen just before, some boggarts can change shape. It is also widely believed that some enjoy frightening people. However, it was never mentioned to what extent they did that. Rowling of course makes her Boggarts impersonate the worst fear of the person who encounters the Boggart. Tradition makes it a tad different, as Harland and Wilkinson tell (this quote is straight from their book):

‘Having fallen into conversation with a working man on our road to Holme Chapel, we asked him if people in those parts were now ever annoyed by beings of another world. Affecting the esprit fort, he boldly answered, "Noa! the country's too full o' folk;" while his whole manner, and especially his countenance, as plainly said "Yes!" A boy who stood near was more honest. "O, yes!" he exclaimed, turning pale; "the Boggart has driven William Clarke out of his house; he flitted last Friday." "Why," I asked; "what did the Boggart do?" "O, he wouldn't let 'em sleep; he stripp'd off the clothes." "Was that all?" "I canna' say," answered the lad, in a tone which showed he was afraid to repeat all he had heard; "but they're gone, and the house is empty. You can go and see for yoursel', if you loike. Will's a plasterer, and the house is in Burnley Wood, on Brown Hills."’

However, even if there are some tales about shape-shifting boggarts and boggarts that would frighten people so much they’d leave the premises, the usual accounts are those of pesky pests, mostly household creatures who’d play pranks on the inhabitants. Sometimes being helpful, mostly being just nasty things.

Still, whatever the role of industrialisation and almighty priests in getting rid of boggarts, there are places that retain the history of their being in the names they bear. Those I found were mostly in Lancashire and Yorkshire, UK. For instance, Harland and Wilkinson mention a place north of Manchester, called Blackley, where there is a clough in which boggarts are said to live. Today it’s a park complete with stadium and pond, but records of people disappearing have given credit to the existence of a mean spirit in there, and for centuries the bottom of the clough has been called Boggarts Hole… so…

And just to end up on a funny note: I just read a paper while foraging for pictures and found this. In 1869 a boggart was accused by law of breaking windows in a building. The man who was the first suspect claimed his innocence and gave proof of it, ending his tirade with ‘it must have been a boggart’. The court, then had not choice but to convict the boggart and release the man.

c. Veela

Veela appear for the first time in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, during the Quidditch World Cup, as the mascots of the Bulgarian Team. The description in the book when we first encounter those beings is as follows: ‘Veela were women… the most beautiful women Harry had ever seen …  except that they weren’t - they couldn’t be - human. [...] he tried to guess what exactly they could be; what could make their skin shine moon-bright like that, or their white-gold hair fan out behind them without wind… [...] The Veela started to dance, and Harry’s mind had gone completely blissful and blank. All that mattered in the world was that he kept watching the Veela, because if they stopped dancing, terrible things would happen… As the Veela danced faster and faster, wild, half-formed thoughts started chasing through Harry’s dazed mind. He wanted to do something very impressive, right now. Jumping from the box into the stadium seemed a good idea …  but would it be good enough?’ (Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Chapter Eight).

Harry is of course not the only one to be bewitched by Veela, and Ron is even more sensitive to their presence than Harry. He is so sensitive that he, like some other fellow Hogwartsians, is completely besotted when Fleur Delacour arrives for the Triwizard, and she’s only part-Veela, actually only 25%, since it’s from her grandma’s genes.

Veela in Harry Potter can change shape when infuriated, as they did at the Quidditch World Cup after the Irish Leprechauns had been rude to them: ‘They launched themselves across the pitch, and began throwing what seemed to be handfuls of fire at the leprechauns. Watching through his Omnioculars, Harry saw that they didn’t look remotely beautiful now. On the contrary, their faces were elongating into sharp, cruel-beaked bird heads, and long scaly wings were bursting from their shoulders.’ (Chapter Eight)

Veela hair is also considered to have magic enough to be used in wandlore. However, Ollivander wouldn’t use it, sticking to his three favourite, dragon heartstring, phoenix feather and unicorn tail hair. He thinks Veela hair makes temperamental wands (Chapter Eighteen), and honestly who would contradict him, given what happened at the World Cup :P  

Only female Veela are mentioned in the Harry Potter books. Apparently they also can breed with ordinary humans, since Fleur’s grandma was a Veela. There’s not much information in the HP books about details, nor is there any writing by Rowling about them. One thing can be said, though, and it’s the strange fact that Veela would submit to serve ordinary humans, in quality of pom pom girls. Honestly, after reading about them, I can’t imagine them doing that at all.

All right. I must admit I thought Veela were a creation of Rowling’s. Well, they aren’t. I always check my books and google everything just in case, and here I was surprised, and not for the worst. The only consequence is that if you’ve been reading that far you’ll be reading another couple of pages :p

Vila (or Wiła) are, according to what I read, the most important creatures of Slavic folklore and are present from the Baltic States to the Balkans as well as in Russia. Online there’s quite a lot about Serbian folklore, but not much else. That actually has an explanation, and thank you Kikimora for providing it :)

There's an important difference between the three groups of Slavic folklore, namely Balcanic on one side, Czech, Polish and Slovak on another, and Russian.

Balcanic Folklore

The Balcanic folklore was directly influenced by Ancient Greek traditions, and they base their documentation on Vila on a book by the famous Greek historian Procopius, who lived in the 6th century AD (I confess I didn’t read the book, so I trust the bloke who wrote the article).

In Serbian, the etymology of the world ‘vila’ would come from the word vel, which means ‘perish’. If you read what Vilas are, it’s a bit strange that the roots of the name would link the creature to death, while they actually are creatures that have the possibility of deciding the time of their own death and rebirth, and aren’t usually death omens. Rather the contrary. Maybe their fierce warrior reputation? However, it seems that many Slavic peoples have similar spirits of the death, or of unbaptized girls (that of course would be after Christianity had overtaken the world and decided that being unbaptized is some sort of death…) or girls condemned to float between life and death because of living a frivolous life or having been cursed by God because of their bad life (always the girls, right….).

According to Serbian folklore, Vila have been thought to be linked to storms and bad weather at first, and only later got linked with forest, water and mountain habitats. They are the equivalent of the Ancient Greek nymphs, can live in various environments and are shape-shifters, yet their usual form is that of a beautiful maiden. Those women can be either naked or dressed in white, but usually have long silvery hair. While unprovoked, Vila are benevolent and helpful, but turn into murderous creatures if molested or offended. It is also said that if seen bathing, or dancing, Vila would hunt the offending men down and shoot them with bow and arrow, sometimes to death, sometimes not. When not, the offender would lose a limb, for instance. That reminds me a bit of other parts of Greek mythology where offenders lost their sight for watching a goddess bathing. However, unlike Athena, Vila would sometimes lure men into dancing or watching them. That could turn into something good or bad for the men. This bit is sort of consistent with the bewitching power of Rowling’s Veela. Vila get their power from their hair, like many other heroes, and from another thing I can’t write the name of (only heard it and don’t want to misspell it), but it’s an element of dressing going down the back from the hair to the wings (when they have wings). If a man stole that bit of clothing while a Vila was bathing, he stole her powers and thus became her master. In other tales this happens if the man plucks a feather of the Vila’s wings. If a Vila’s hair was plucked, though, the Vila would die. So I must imagine that the hair from Fleur’s grandma, that ended up in Fleur’s wand, was collected on a brush or comb :P

Vilas are mostly female. Some claim there’s no male Vila, some that there’s a few, who became such because they came into contact with Vilas. In Serbian folklore, they would be called Vilenyak. Vila could also ‘adopt’ children and it is said a child breast-fed by a Vila would gain unusual strength from it. That happened for instance to the Serbian folklore hero Prince Marko.

Vila have a big responsibility in communities: formerly they would teach people how to sew, plough, irrigate their fields all kind of skills. Vilas are also believed to be learnt in healing with plants and divination or rather prophetisation, and are often mentioned as healers of the hero’s wounds in folk tales. In some tales, Vila go as far as to marry mortal men, putting the usual set of conditions (like not mentioning their decent) lest they would disappear forever. Apparently Fleur’s grandma didn’t come to that extremity with her husband.

North-Eastern European Wiłas 

(spelling adopted here: Polish, because I discussed the subject with Polish friends. The spelling differs a bit from one language to the next, but not the names).

We know much less of Vilas in the northern part of Eastern Europe. That's due to many things, amongst which the non-writing of legends is one part, and the fact that most of European Slavic peoples' history has been written by others than the actual peoples. Usually dominating countries or foreign explorers. Archaeologists and anthropology field scientists agree that they can't be sure about anything when it comes to Slavic traditions before Christianisation, and what happened after is of course strongly tainted by ideology.

Slavic peoples from the North-East part of Europe think of Vilas not as nymphs, but more as demons. The word Vila, Wiła in Polish, is not that much used in northern countries, apparently, where those beings are also called Rusałki.

In North-Eastern folklore, it is said that wiłas can shape-shift, namely turn into animals and winds. They are also fierce warriors, like their southern cousins, having that bare and raw natural force (we Finns would call it sisu I'd say) that can help you fulfil your dreams and carry on whatever the circumstances but that can turn against you should you be careless. As Kikimora puts it, it's something along the lines of 'watch out what you wish for, respect what you don't understand, you can't rule everywhere' (Kikimora, pers. comm.).

Unlike the southern folklore, northern Slavic tradition doesn't have male rusałki or wiła. In Slavic folklore, there are some traits or strengths (and weaknesses) that are more male or more female; Wiła and rusałki are female. The male counterpart to rusałki would be wodniki.

Like their southern counterparts, Wiła were demonised (in the clerical sense) once their countries were taken over by Christians, in whose beliefs anything female is dangerous and satanic and bad (remember Satan is a bloke - tries to find coherence - there's none). Before that, there were male and female demons, ghosts, energies... and there was a sort of balance.

So even if we consider both sides of Slavic folklore, we can see similarities between the traditional Vilas and Rusálki/Wiła. There's that shape-shifting, the luring people (both men and women, even if the latter very rarely, according to the internet), the demonish side, and the being careful with what you wish. Remember the things the boys at Hogwarts or at the World Cup did to try and get the Veela's attention...

Arts

Vila have been used by composers in operas, like Hungarian Ferenc Lehár in his Lustige Witwe (1905) and Antonin Dvořák in his Rusálka (1901), and Westerners as well, notably by poet Heinrich Heine and composers Giaccomo Puccini in Le Villi (1884) and Adolphe Adam (Ballet Giselle orLes Wilis, 1841).

4. Summary Comparison

Time to draw a small comparison. Rowling’s shape-shifting creatures are all loosely based on folklore. Whether she knew it or not, nobody can tell but her. However, the coincidences are too strong to leave much doubt.

Shape-shifting is a fairly common thing in the wizarding world, as in folklore.

Kelpies are designed straight from the Scottish folklore version, no doubt about that, even if Scamander doesn’t develop the subject much in his works. They aren’t mentioned often in the Harry Potter books either.

Boggarts are loosely based on Lancashire and Yorkshire versions of the creatures, retaining only the fact that they like frightening people and can shape-shift for that purpose. Rowling takes that further, though, making the creatures Dark and rather close to Dementors in the way they use fear. However, as Boggarts in folklore play tricks on humans, humans in Harry Potter play tricks on Boggarts to get rid of them. The way Mrs Weasley sees the Boggart at 12 Grimmauld Place turn into many different dead people in turn is rather exceptional. I didn’t find anything similar in literature, but again, I didn’t read everything available, I suppose.

To write about Veela Rowling must have known about the Serbian Vila. There are too many similarities (the luring, the dancing, the beauty, the magical hair, the turning into harpie-like creatures) to leave much doubt, but there’s a lot of discrepancies as well, and since there’s no writing by Rowling about Veela anywhere, it’s hard to know to which extent she wanted her Veela to resemble Vila. It’s sure she knew they were from Slavic folklore though, since she attributed them to the Bulgarian Quidditch team as mascots. Now I don’t think Vila would have agreed to be used that way, particularly given the fact they punish people for watching them dance.

Fleur’s grandmother was one of the Veela who married a mortal man, but we know nothing more about that. One thing we can infer from the fact that one of her hair is used as a wand core, is that the magical power of the hair was known by Rowling, and that unless Veela gather their fallen hair it must be horribly difficult for wandmakers to come across that particular core.

Now you could ask me why I don’t mention Obscuri here. As you know, they are creatures generated by a form of transfiguration that is intrinsic to a wizard whose magic has been hindered through his own will or others’. The people who create Obscuri are usually children (they hardly ever live over the age of ten, and in 1926 there was no documented fact that any had lived over that age), according to Newt Scamander in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, the screenplay. In the film, Credence Barebone is an Obscurial, whose magical energy has been repressed for over twenty years and who unleashes a devastating monster when his emotions are triggered. It looks, in the film, that he has gained some mastery over the phenomenon over time, but there’s not much documentation about that. I didn’t include Obscurials in this paper because as far as I know, there’s no counterpart in the Muggle world and I like comparisons.

Next bit: Animagi :) Thank you for reading and commenting if you do!

Sources

Rowling, Joanne K., Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Bloomsbury, London, 1998

Rowling, Joanne K., Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Bloomsbury, London, 1999

Rowling, Joanne K., Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Bloomsbury, London, 2000

Rowling, Joanne K., The Tales of Beedle the Bard, Bloomsbury, London, 2007

Rowling, Joanne K., Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them - The Original Screenplay. Bloomsbury, London, 2016.

Scamander Newt, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, Obscurus Books, Diagon Alley, London, 2001

Wisp, Kennilworthy.  Quidditch Through the Ages, Bloomsbury, London, and WhizzHard Books, Diagon Alley, London. 2001.

Kelpies

Kelpies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelpie

Necks (water-spirits): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neck_(water_spirit)

Boggarts

http://caveburial.ubss.org.uk/northyorks/caveha.htm

http://oldfieldslimestone.blogspot.ch/2013/03/prehistoric-three-peaks-part-two-cave.html

http://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/87393/7/bcra_cks124042.pdf (scientific paper about how the caves formed and what is left now)

http://www.haunted-yorkshire.co.uk/giggleswicksightings.htm (pretty bs paper, most of the text not written by one person and mostly copy-pasted from wikipedia, but has some local stories)

https://www.pottermore.com/writing-by-jk-rowling/boggart  

http://manchesterhistory.net/manchester/squares/boggart.html

https://lancashirefolk.com/2017/04/19/a-boggart-did-it-proved-in-court/

Vila and Wiła

Serbian video about Vila in Slavic culture: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qrtiiOH4yc

http://folklorethursday.com/regional-folklore/serbian-folklore-his-majesty-the-zmaj-and-her-majesty-the-vila/#sthash.kgkk4MzK.dpbs

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernatural_beings_in_Slavic_religion#Vila

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Villi (opera by Puccini)

Knowledge base called Kikimora.

General Literature

Johnson, Paul. The Little People of The British Isles, Wooden Books, Glastonbury, 2008. 58 pp.

Kingshill, Sophia; Westwood, Jennifer. The Fabled Coast - Legends and Traditions from around the shores of Britain and Ireland. Arrow Books, 2014. 510 pp.

Kronzek, Allan Zola and Elizabeth, The Sorcerer’s Companion - A Guide to the Magical World of Harry Potter, Broadway Books, New York, 2001, 286 pp.

Harland, John., Wilkinson, Thomas T., Lancashire Folklore, Frederick Warne & Co., London, 1867 pp 50-62: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/41148/41148-h/41148-h.htm  (this book is a real treasure).

[maximumsuckage]

Dreamscape, part 2

Link to Part 1: https://maximumsuckage.tumblr.com/post/167175722147/dreamscape 

Description: Sam, Dean, and Jack discuss the Norse death goddess Hela.  Across the country, a werewolf child turns up dead.

Word Count: 3125

A/n: I am so so so sorry if I ruin this by adding more, but tis the season of NaNoWriMo and this is the closest thing I've had to a plot in ages, so I don't care if it's fanfic and not original.  lemme know if anyone is interested enough to be tagged in updates, no worries if nah

  “So lemme get this straight.”  Dean wrapped his fingers around the coffee mug as he looked down at the book Sam had dropped in front of him.  “You have a dream about our old dead buddy the Trickster, only he’s a giant crazy monster, and he tells you some crap and sends you on a quest to find his freaky death goddess daughter to be the Jedi Master to your freaky angel padawan?”

Sam let out a slow breath.  “No, Dean.  I mean, yeah, but you’re ignoring the point here.  Jack isn’t the first archangel offspring.  It makes sense… we knew Gabe was Loki.  I just never realized he was Loki.  Like, the actual god.  He had a whole life outside of Heaven…”  He trailed off, looking down at the book, not for the first time wondering at how little they actually knew.  “And he wasn’t a giant crazy monster.  He was an archangel.  Without the vessel.”

Dean waved a dismissive hand and sipped his coffee.  “Whatever.  So monster Gabe wants you to find his freaky death goddess daughter.  And what, exactly?  We don’t exactly have a great record with pagan gods.”

“Yeah, but Dean, this could be an opportunity.”  This was pointless.  They were going in circles, still, like they had been for forty minutes already.  “I know that it’s a risk, but-”

“But nothing.”  Dean gestured with the mug of coffee.  “We’ve already dealt with Death himself.  We’re not getting the attention of one of his death god lackeys too.  Mr. Miyagi the kid yourself, fine.  But if we get her attention and she gets pissed…”

“Then we take her out too.”  Sam stood.  “We’ve taken out stronger things than-”

“Than an archangel Nephilim?  An archangel Nephilim who’s had thousands of years to hone her powers?”  Dean raised an eyebrow and sipped his coffee.  “Look, I get it.  The kid’s not all bad.  Might grow up to be a superhero.  Who knows?  But we do know that a goddess named Hell is not someone we want to tussle with.”

“Hel with one L, not two.”  Sam pointed.  “Or Hela, in this translation.”

“Hela then.”  Dean paused. “Wait, wasn’t that the bad guy in that new Thor movie?”

“Well-”

“That settles it.  No.  If she scares Thor, then I don’t want to deal with it.  Wherever she’s holed up, she can stay there.”  He downed the rest of his coffee, made a face at the dregs, and got up.  “Come on.  We’ve got a werewolf to catch.”  Without letting Sam have time for another word, he left the kitchen, heading back towards his own room. 

“I have a cousin?”

Sam jumped at the voice.  Jack definitely shared that little trait with Castiel.  He glanced at the direction Dean had vanished in, and sighed.  He had no idea how long Jack had been listening, and lying would only upset him.  “We’re not sure,” he decided on, sitting down and pushing the book towards him.  “I had a dream about Gabriel- your uncle- and he told me to look for this goddess, who, according to the lore, is his oldest daughter.”

Jack pulled the book closer and studied it, his eyebrows creased together.  “Gabriel,” he said slowly.  “He was in the Bible.  He told Elizabeth and Mary that they were pregnant.  He is good.”  He glanced up at Sam, worried.  “Right?”

“Yeah.  Yeah, he was good.”  Sam decided that they didn’t need to get into the semantics of good when it involved the Trickster.  He’d come over to their side in the end; right now, that was what mattered. 

“Was?”  Jack caught the past tense, head tilting in that painfully familiar way. 

“Lucifer killed him.”  He decided not to sugar-coat it, just ripping off the metaphorical Band-Aid.  “Gabriel was stalling so we could save people.  He knew he was going to be killed.”  He paused, figuring somebody didn’t go through the work of filming a pornographic suicide note if they didn’t know they were going to die.  “He loved your father to the end, I think.  He attacked Lucifer, but now that I think about it, I don’t think he could have killed him, even if he had the ability to.”

Jack looked back down at the book, considering the information, filing it away in what he knew of the world.  “But, he had children.  This goddess is my cousin.”  He touched the picture, running his finger down the sketch.  One side of her was a young lady, lovely if stern, while the other side was a garish image of rot and desiccation.  That didn’t seem to bother Jack, whose impression of the world was still fresh and new.   

It had, however, bothered Dean, who, when Sam had first set the book down, made a comment along the lines of, “this zombie freak your new girlfriend?”

“We don’t know that for sure yet,” Sam was quick to point out.  “Gabriel didn’t give me anymore information…”  Because he was too busy trying to bite my lips off, but Dean and Jack don’t need to know that and why the hell was he doing that anyways I’m not into him I’m straight straighter than Dean anyways like maybe we were friends at the end but only barely and… “and we don’t even know if she’s alive, or good or evil, or if she’s even his daughter.  Sometimes the lore gets mixed up over time, and things aren’t usually that accurate.”

Jack tilted his head.  “But it says here that she was.”

“Yeah, but that was written by humans.”  Sam settled in for a lecture on mythology, which could either go very smoothly or would throw Jack into a mental tailspin.  “A lot of the lore we have is based on old stories.  A long time ago, they were just told word of mouth.  Like… like I’m telling you right now.  And to keep people’s interests, storytellers would exaggerate.”

“Exaggerate.  A small lie.  To make it bigger than it really is.” 

Sam made a small agreeing gesture in his direction, not sure if Jack had read the dictionary or if Dean had covered that particular lesson.  Probably Dean, exaggerating away all the carbs he was drinking to hide the still-raw grief.  “So if every storyteller exaggerates the story a little bit, and then the inflated version gets written down…”

“It might be completely different from the truth?”  Jack looked up at Sam, hopeful, and Sam found himself smiling. 

“Yeah.  Exactly.”

Jack nodded and looked down at the picture again, considering it through this new lens.  “But Gabriel is my uncle.  That’s not exaggerated.  And he does know her, because he told you to find her in a dream.”  He looked up at Sam, hopeful.  “How hard would it be to find her?”

“Well, I don’t know, and Dean’s scared of her.  He doesn’t want us to find her and then it turn out that she’s the bad guy.”

“Why would my uncle be friends with a bad guy?”

Sam really did not want to get into the gray morals that seemed to permeate Gabriel’s pagan lifestyle, and thankfully, he was saved by Dean’s walking in.  “Case,” he said pointedly.  “Wolf clan.  New York.”  He looked over at the book, then pointed at the image.  “Bad guy,” he said to Jack, like that settled it.  “You guys ready to go?”

Jack nodded, hopping up, eager to please Dean.  “Yes.  I had my bag packed last night.  And I didn’t forget extra underwear and socks this time.”

Dean frowned.  “Extra?  You had extra last time.” 

Jack grinned, pleased.  “Yes, for myself.  But I packed for you both as well.  When you wear the same pair of socks every day, it gets-”

“We get it.”  Dean rolled his eyes and headed for the car. 

Sam, for lack of a better response, patted Jack on the shoulder.  “Thanks, bud.  What would we do without you?”

“Probably stink,” he said, dead serious, and followed Dean, a spring in his step at being useful to his guardians, like a puppy.  A wolf puppy, Sam reminded himself, one that was loyal, but could bite. 

A week previous

Fairpoint, New York, was a pleasant little tourist trap in the Adirondacks, somewhere beyond Old Forge.  A main road led visitors to a plethora of family owned motels and campgrounds, winding through little shops owned by kindly retired folk or kids in their twenties irritated at being forced to take over the family business.  A lake nearby allowed for swimming or sailing, though it was quiet now that the season was beginning to turn.  This time of year, the draw was the beautiful shades of red and yellow and gold that graced the ancient trees, and hiking trails winding through the surrounding mountains allowed tourists the opportunity ample opportunities to soak in the autumn aesthetic. 

The only issue was the werewolves.  Those townsfolk who had lived there for more than a generation knew about them- the clan out in the woods, who feasted on deer and moose and bear and avoided civilization like the plague.  That was the original purpose of the village, after all.  Keep the werewolves in the wilderness, away from the more human haunts.  For a long while, the wolves had been quiet, and only the occasional foray into town for medicine or booze by one of their runners told the old folk that they were still active. 

But that had all changed when a child turned up dead. 

He was not one of Fairpoint’s- he was branded by the mark of the wolves, a symbol like four claw marks slashing the shoulder, and he was thin and gaunt, buried in a shallow grave that was unearthed by the excessive rains.  It would have been ignored by the local cops, who, as a rule, kept only to Fairpoint business, except for the fact that it was a clear murder: his heart had been ripped from his chest cavity.  The organ was missing. 

It had to be a wolf, because no fox or coyote or bear would simply take the heart and run, and besides, attacks by wild predators were excessively rare, saved generally for foolhardy hunters (real hunters, with deer and stuff- they had no idea about Winchester-type hunters) who got between Mom-bear and cub.  The thinness was a problem as well- though many wild populations were thinning, white-tailed deer refused to stop breeding, and their population boom allowed not only food for ticks, but for the wolves as well.  Any children glimpsed traipsing through the woods were well-fed, bordering on chubby if not for all the running and playing they did, so a dead child whose ribs were clearly visible?

That was foul play, for sure. 

So, it was with a great deal of nerves that Sheriff Harry Baldwin found himself hiking through the woods, sweating despite the autumnal chill, cop car left behind at the deepest hunting cabin he could drive to.  His twelve-gauge was slung over his shoulder, heavy now that he had to hike with it, and shot shells clinked in the pockets of his jacket.  The gun was only for protection from bears though.  He didn’t fear the wolves.  His family had been there for ages, and he had the feeling there had been a bit of interbreeding- every time the full moon rolled around, he felt peckish for bloody burgers.  It was a craving he didn’t share with anybody, but a very real craving nonetheless, and he liked to imagine the wolf blood in him (even if it was imaginary) made him a better cop. 

There was a stitch in his side by the time he heard a howl that clearly came from a human throat and not a coyote, and he leaned against a tree, panting.  “Hey,” he called out to the trees, knowing one of the wolves was there, even if he couldn’t see them.  “It’s me. Sheriff Baldwin. I need to talk to Alpha Melissa."

A wolf warrior stepped out.  She was a pretty girl, curvy with big eyes and an easy smile, wearing a deerskin jacket over a Doctor Who t-shirt and skinny jeans.  “Officer Baldwin!  Hi!  If we knew you were coming, we would have sent a truck out for you.  What’s up?”  Before he had time to respond, she darted off, and then returned with a bottle of water that she offered out.

He took it gratefully, draining it in a few moments, and then wiped his mouth.  “I’m here on business, Charlotte.  I need to talk to Melissa.”

Charlotte nodded.  “Yeah, of course.  I’ll call a ride to town.  Seriously, next time you need to come out here, just call one of us.”

A few minutes later, Harry was on the back of an ATV, clinging desperately to the waist of Travis, another wolf warrior who was a few ranks higher than Charlotte.  Harry wasn’t exactly sure how the ranking worked here, as the wolves were an independent nation it seemed, yet still had access to ATVs and Poland Spring and, apparently, Doctor Who.  Harry never asked.  He figured, that was their business and his business was Fairpoint. 

The town itself blended into the surrounding forest, log cabins trailing wood smoke into the sky.  A group of barefoot kids were playing soccer in a clearing that served as the town square, laughing and occasionally snarling at each other with teeth too long and sharp for a normal child’s mouth.  Occasionally, there would be a splash of blood on the hard-packed earthen ground, but that only drew more laughter.  Several deer were hanging from a pole, blood dripping into buckets on the ground.  Their glassy eyes seemed to watch Harry as he dismounted the ATV, waiting for the warrior to lead him to the pack leader. 

“Wait here,” Travis said sharply, and disappeared into the largest of the cabins. 

Harry obeyed, but it was with a frown.  He had spoken to Melissa many times.  She was older, a calm leader, giving off the vibe of a Victorian era queen rather than a werewolf pack leader roughing it in the woods.  Never had she kept him waiting. When he became sheriff, she had arrived in Fairpoint for the ceremony herself, congratulating him personally, and after that they had struck up a professional relationship that seemed to border on more than friendly (or at least, so Harry hoped.  He may have had a teensy crush on the pack leader). 

But never before had he been commanded to wait for an audience.

One of the children was on the ground, crying. Somebody had yanked one of her pigtails too hard, and now a few of the boys were jeering at her.  Harry took a step closer to break it up, but then the smallest of the girls snarled as she intervened first, her face twisting, hackles raising, hands twisting and breaking into claws with an audible snapping of bones.  The boys raised a laugh at her as well, but then the beast-child leapt forward, throwing the biggest boy to the ground with a thump.  He tried to change as well, but she slashed him across the face, and he stayed down. 

Harry stood, frozen, watching as the smallest hopped off the largest and walked over to the bullied girl to pull her to her feet.  The boy on the ground sat up, the scratches on his face already healing, and snarled at her, but it was weak and small and ignored.  The girl was alpha, and both knew it.

“I’m goalie!” she declared, human again, sprinting towards the two sticks that comprised the goal.  With that, the fight was forgotten, and the game was back on.     

“Sheriff Baldwin?” 

Harry turned away from the kids to the familiar voice of Melissa, the pack leader.  Middle aged, with a few scars across her face suggesting old triumphs, she exuded the aura of a warrior, despite her torn jeans and sky-blue sweater.  Harry always felt a little subpar next to her, aware that maybe he should put in some time at the gym and maybe avoid the pastries Sally Parr, the town administrator, brought in every morning.  “Yeah.  What’s going on?”

She gave him a thin-lipped smile and gestured for him to come inside.  He followed, grateful to get off his aching feet. 

“Whiskey?” she asked once he had been seated in front of her desk, which was little more than a homemade table.

He waved it off.  “I’m on the clock.  I’m here to talk about a murder.  A child, about ten, was found a few miles outside of town by a hunter.  Poor kid was starving before he died.  Heart ripped out of the body.  Coroner hasn’t told us whether it was taken out before or after he passed.”

Melissa’s brow creased as she turned back to the desk, a small glass of whiskey in her own hands.  That was new.  Harry had never seen her touch a drop of alcohol in all the time that he knew her.  Although, granted, it was more phone conversations than anything else. 

“Shit,” she said, and all hope that she didn’t know about the murder flew from Harry’s mind.  He hoped they weren’t going dark.  He had no idea what they were supposed to do if the wolves went dark.  That was on him, but half of Fairpoint didn’t even know about the wolves, so how would they fight-

Melissa drained the whiskey like it was water.  “I was hoping it wouldn’t come to this,” she murmured, gazing at the golden drops clinging to the side of the empty glass.  “I prayed that it wouldn’t come to this.”

“Come to what?”  Harry leaned forward.  “Melissa, if any of your guys did this, you know I can’t protect you.  This whole settlement is already illegal.  If there’s murder too…”

She stood, slamming fingers that broke and twisted into claws into the wood of the table.  Splinters of wood flew to the floor.  “They are not my guys.  Not anymore.”

“Mel?”  He tested out the nickname cautiously.  “Something’s going on.  Tell me what’s going on so we can prevent anyone else from turning up dead.”

Now her teeth were elongating, and her voice dropped to a growl that resonated within Harry’s chest.  “A strange wolf came.  He corrupted some of our youth- now they wish to summon him.” 

“Him who?”  Harry sat back a little, trying to remain calm in the face of the half changed alpha in front of him.  “Mel, calm down, okay?  We’re friends here.  I want to help.”

She glared at him, normal cocoa-brown eyes now feral yellow, and then took a breath.  “Him,” she repeated, forcing her voice back to its normal register.  “The original Wolf.  Fenrir himself.”