"Miss Witch, you're finally back!" the small boy cried, bursting out of the thatched cottage he called home, waving his little arms and bouncing excitedly on the balls of his feet. "Did you bring me a present?"
"Jowan," said Oleandra, her lips curling faintly— though her smile made no attempt to reach her eyes. "Sorry. Not this time."
Jowan's father, Bertram, stepped out after his son and placed a bandaged hand on his shoulder, gently guiding him back inside. He then turned to face Oleandra, his bottom lip trembling ever so slightly. After two months abroad in search of potion ingredients, the Imperius Curse she'd placed on him had naturally long since worn off.
"Please, no more," he said, his voice barely more than a whisper. "I'll give you whatever you want, just leave us alone. I can't bear being a stranger in my own head any more..."
Oleandra held up two fingers, and the man flinched in fear.
"Two weeks— that's all I'm asking," said Oleandra quietly. "Same arrangement as before. After that, we'll be all square for trying to turn me over to the guards. You'll never have to see my face again."
"For true?" said the man, and Oleandra nodded.
With a sigh, the man stepped aside to let her pass, and Oleandra slipped into the cottage. Everything was just as she'd left it— likely because she'd enchanted her potion-making set with the Flagrante Curse, to keep unwanted hands at bay. And judging by Bertram's bandaged fingers, it wasn't for lack of trying.
"Miss Witch, Miss Witch!" said Jowan insistently, as Oleandra set a kettle to boil in the fireplace. "Look, I learned how to do this while you were away! Look!"
Oleandra cast a distracted glance towards the boy. He was hovering his hands over an empty earthenware cup, staring at it intently.
"That's nice," said Oleandra.
She turned back to her potion ingredients, unpacking them from her pouch one by one and arranging them neatly on the table. After a minute or so, the kettle began to whistle, startling her slightly. She pulled it off the fire and poured herself a cup of boiling water, then filled Jowan's empty cup. Into each, she dropped a few mint leaves she'd picked on the mainland, along with a handful of fragrant petals from a tree blooming nearby.
A hot cup of tea would do her good after her long journey, she told herself.
While her tea steeped, Oleandra drew her copy of Advanced Potion-Making from her pouch and flipped it open to the section on the Draught of Living Death. Then, closing her eyes, she traced Kenaz across her forehead with her thumb. The Torch rune would ignite her memory and help her remember Daphne's version of the potion in excruciating detail—
CRASH!
Startled, Oleandra opened her eyes and glanced around for the source of the noise. Jowan had knocked his cup off the table by accident, and it had shattered on the floor.
"It didn't work," said Jowan, sounding disappointed.
Sighing, Oleandra waved her wand and pointed it at the fragments, which rose from the floor and pieced themselves back together. The cup was good as new, but there was no returning the spilled tea to its original container.
"What's that?" Jowan asked, pointing at a brown root.
"Valerian," answered Oleandra without lifting her eyes from her work. "It helps you sleep."
"And that plant?"
"Rosemary."
"And this one?"
"Laurel. Also known as bay leaf. For taste."
"And…"
"St John's wort."
"What about…"
"Wormwood, for fever."
All in all, Oleandra had gathered quite a lot of plants, including some that had gone extinct in her own time. Moondew petals, asphodel root, wormwood, sopophorous beans, vervain, monkshood… everything required to make her Draught of Living Death, and then some— and young Jowan was interested in every one of them.
She'd also picked up a few silver trinkets at a market, and snapped off several branches of rowan wood on her way back to the British Isles. Certain evil spirits and magical creatures loathed the touch of cold iron and silver; others, the scent of trees like rowan or herbs like rosemary. She could never be too careful— especially since she intended to sleep for a very long time.
"Daphne's special recipe calls for sassafras," Oleandra muttered to herself. "The Channel is one thing, but I doubt I could cross the Atlantic Ocean on a makeshift broomstick…"
It was a shame the enchantment to create Seven-League Boots was lost to history, or she could have just walked across the ocean. It would have taken her about 360 steps to make the return trip, more or less.
"What's on the other side of the ocean?" asked Jowan curiously.
Oleandra opened her mouth, then shut it again. That was one can of worms she wasn't quite ready to open. To steer the conversation elsewhere, she handed Jowan a silver knife and asked him to help her slice some sopophorous beans to get its juices out, while she got started with the potion's base.
"The juices come out better when I flatten the beans with the side of the knife," Jowan said after a while.
"Follow the instructions," Oleandra replied curtly.
Within an hour, the Draught of Living Death was perfectly brewed, and Oleandra's cauldron was filled with an almost mirror-like black liquid— as far as N.E.W.T.-level potions went, this one wasn't too difficult to make. Oleandra filled a few crystal phials with the finished product and stoppered them, before clearing the table. She wouldn't be drinking her freshly brewed potion right away— before she went to sleep for a week, she needed to ensure she wouldn't be murdered in her sleep.
Oleandra waved her wand at the dinner table— which doubled as her potions station— and sent it skimming to the far side of the kitchen to make room. She hadn't noticed that Jowan had set his teacup back down on it while helping her fill potion bottles…
"Oh!" exclaimed Oleandra.
The teacup slipped off the table and… remained suspended in mid-air.
"I did it!" cried Jowan excitedly, his brow scrunched in concentration. "I knew it wasn't just my imagination!"
And for the second time that evening, the teacup was dashed against the floor, shattering into a hundred pieces. But never mind that, he had just used accidental magic!
"You're a little Wizard, Jowan!" said Oleandra in surprise, gaping at him.
There was more magic in Oleandra's pinky finger than there was in Bertram's entire body, which meant that Jowan's father had most likely married a Witch… But if that was the case, what had happened to her? She didn't seem to be around any more…