InsaneJournal

The Wizard and the Hopping Pot
Title : The Wizard and the Hopping Pot
Author : shocfix
For : elfwhistletree
Prompt : How about "The Wizard and the Hopping Pot" or "Babbitty Rabbitty and her Cackling Stump"
Rating : PG-13
Words : 1155

Well, here is another of the Tales of Beedle the Bard, timed to be posted today, for the auction – there is (often) method in my madness!

Right.

elfwhistletree - do you have your package ready?

It is also dedicated to Hermione Weasley, for going to her mother-in-law and finding out the way she had always told the story to Ron, so she’d get it ‘right’ when she tells it to Rose and Hugo.


The Wizard and the Hopping Pot
****
Now Sunday is our washing day,
Don't we wash it clean.
We boil it in our hopping pots
And hang it on the green
With a tee-I-ay, tee-I-ay, tee-I-ee-I-ay.

Many years ago, on the banks of the Granta, there lived a witch whose honey beer was legendary, from Thames to Trent, from Cam to Isis.

The first secret of her brew was the garden of lavender where her bees drowsed and browsed and sipped and nipped. Her lavender was more lush and heady and inviting than in any other garden in the area, because of her green thumb, and her very special fertiliser. The other wise women in the village carefully positioned their hives with the entrance pointed directly at her garden, but their bees didn’t seem to want to fly in that direction, and the honey they produced was never as fragrant and aromatic and delicate.

Of course, they were just wise women, and she was a witch, and they couldn’t Charm their own bees to stay in the lavender garden, and the neighbours’ bees to stay out.

Now, the other ingredient she needed, obviously, was the very best hops. So, every September, she packed her sacks and a change of underwear into her hopping pot, and she Apparated to Kent.

She spent a week in the hop gardens around Coxheath or Snodland, under a Disillusionment Charm, stealing the best of the crop, while on the lookout for what she needed to make her special fertiliser. Each day she filled her sack with the whispery, papery flowers, and each evening she returned to her hidden campsite, stored her sack in the hopping pot, which carried an Undetectable Extension Charm, and slept, wrapped in her cloak.

By the end of the week, she had enough hops for that year’s brewing, and all she needed was her special fertiliser.

Her special secret fertiliser, that made her lavender grow so lush and heady and inviting, which made her honey so fragrant, aromatic and delicate, which made her honey beer so pale and light and crisp, and known from Thames to Trent, from Cam to Isis.

Every year, as she picked, she watched the young men, stripped to the waist as they worked in the hop gardens. And every year she chose a particularly handsome young man, cast a glamour of a buxom young woman on herself, to catch his eye, took him back to her campsite, kissed him, killed him, cut off his left leg, at knee and groin, boiled it up in her hopping pot until the flesh fell from the bone, Transfigured the rest of him into a silver thimble and buried him in the ashes of her campfire, and Apparated home with the thighbone, which she ground down to make her special secret fertiliser.

One year, a young man had caught her eye almost as soon as she had arrived in the hop yard. He was so handsome that she was tempted to go straight to the glamour and the kissing.

A young man with shaggy, red hair and smiling blue eyes. A tall young man, whose freckled shoulders caught the sun as he toiled, bare chested. A happy young man, whose smile caught the eyes of the pretty young woman from the inn beside the oast house, who brought a lunch of bread and cheese and pickled onions and beer out to the workers, at noon each day.

The witch watched him all week, hidden under her Disillusionment Charm, as he smiled charmingly at the strumpet and tipped his head back as he drank. He swallowed with gusto and belched impressively, and the witch was almost tempted to do more than kiss him and kill him.

But she couldn’t last another year without more fertiliser, so she removed the Charm and cast her glamour and swayed her hips as she approached him at nightfall with a tankard of her own beer, that was fragrant, aromatic, delicate, pale, light and crisp and hiding a dose of a powerful Love Potion, just in case he didn’t go for the swaying hips.

The handsome young man toasted her with the tankard, raised it to his lips and tipped back his head. She watched his throat work as he swallowed and managed to tame her hungry smile when he lowered it and blinked slowly at her, with wide blue eyes.

“A little supper?” she whispered, half turning away and glancing back over her shoulder. “Join me at my fire?”

He nodded, his eyes fixed on hers.

He followed her obediently and she whispered a Finite to reveal her campsite to him as they approached.

Deciding she deserved more than one kiss, she slipped her wand into the pocket of her dress, stepped closer to him and raised her face to his. He smiled broadly and bent over her, one arm sliding round her waist as his lips touched hers. Her eyes closed and she leant into him, admiring the strength of his arms.

Something pressed against her thigh and his lips left hers to whisper, Incarcerous.

Her eyes flew open and she shrieked as ropes wrapped themselves tightly around her body, trapping her arms.

Her prisoner was glaring down at her, his wand in his hand still digging into her thigh as he smiled grimly.

“What are you going to do to me, sir?” she asked breathlessly, still playing the innocent maid as her mind raced, wondering why the Love Potion hadn’t worked and if she could reach her wand.

His hand slid into her pocket and stole her wand and he stepped away, his wand pointed directly at her face as he said, Finite Incantatem!

“Well, what are you going to do to me?” she spat.

“That depends,” he said calmly, reaching into his own pocket and taking out what looked like a charm bracelet. He held it in his hand, letting it swing back and forth in the firelight and her blood ran cold.

There weren’t the usual selection of symbolic charms.

There were twelve silver thimbles.

“What do you think I should do to you?” he asked.

“Don’t kill me,” the witch whined, watching her captor stride across the campsite and squat beside her hopping pot.

Reaching inside, he pulled out sack after sack of fragrant hops, which he carelessly tossed onto the fire, letting each one flare up against the now ink black sky. The witch yelped as each sack burnt, flinching at the smells and despairing at the thought that her flesh would soon be boiling in her own pot. The wizard brought the hopping pot across to where she stood, bound in magical ropes, and placed it on the ground.

“Don’t boil me alive,” she begged as he placed his hands around her waist, hoisted her into the air and dropped her, feet first into the pot.

The Extension Charm held and the witch dropped out of sight.

The handsome young wizard sighed heavily, extinguished the flames with a flick of his wand, Transfigured the hopping pot into a silver thimble and buried it in the ashes of the campfire

****
OK, elfwhistletree, you can open your package now.

The Wolf Brewery at Attleborough does a Lavender Honey beer that is heavenly… should you ever end up in Norfolk.