The Final Kiss

CHAPTER NINETEEN

The Final Kiss

Saturday 11 July 1992

Old Basford, Nottingham; the Ministry of Magic, London.

Fare-thee-weel, thou first and fairest!

Ae farewell, alas, for ever!

– Robert Burns: "Ae Fond Kiss"

Rated PG-13 for violence.

"Mummy!"

Elizabeth was standing outside the bedroom door.

"Mummy, David's wanting to get up!"

"We'll be up in a moment, darling." Ariadne began to edge herself out gently from under Remus's arm. His muscles tightened around her for a moment, then relaxed, and she pulled herself away from the warmth of the rumpled bed. She buttoned her dressing-gown as she opened the door, then swung Elizabeth up into her arms.

"Mummy, David's awake."

Ariadne carried Elizabeth across the landing. David had hauled himself to his feet and was rattling at the bars of the cot. He stopped rattling when they entered and smiled at them. Ariadne put Elizabeth down so that she could lift David out, and sat down to feed him. She knew she ought to wean him if she were serious about having another baby, but they were down to twice a day, and David was just not ready to give up altogether.

"Reading time, Mummy." Elizabeth pushed Beatrix Bloxam's The Tale of Benjamin Bowtruckle into her mother's hand. David slurped loudly, while Ariadne began to read.

"One morning a little Bowtruckle sat on a branch.

"He wiggled his twiggy ears and listened to the swish-swish-swish of an Aethonon's wings.

"A chariot was flying through the forest; it was driven by Warlock Thurkell, and beside him sat Madam Thurkell in her best bonnet.

"As soon as they had passed, little Benjamin Bowtruckle hopped across to the next tree, and skipped off through the forest track to call upon his relations, who lived in the tree at the back of Warlock Thurkell's garden."

"That's boring." Matthew had walked in, carrying a pile of his own books in his arms. "I want to read Nigel the Knight Bus."

"Oho!" Remus grabbed at Matthew from behind and twisted him upside-down. "Aren't you satisfied with the standard of entertainment in this circus?"

Matthew shrieked with laughter. "No – stop – she's liking bo-o-o-o-oring sto-o-o-ories! I'm – stop! – wanting – Nigel – do not put me down!"

"Do that to me!" shouted Elizabeth.

"I'm going to run the bath," said Remus. He was pretending to be serious, but he was grinning from ear to ear. "People who are clean can eat toast, and people who have finished their toast can choose any story they like."

"I'm choosing Nigel the Knight Bus!" said Matthew, racing towards the bathroom door.

"Benjamin Bowtruckle," murmured Elizabeth, nestling near Ariadne again.

When everybody was clean, clothed and fed, Ariadne began the laundry, while Remus made coloured lights spark from his wand. David giggled.

"You promised! I've brought Nigel!"

"I'm wanting Madam Curlyknarl!"

When Ariadne returned from scouring the bathroom, Remus was finishing the same two chapters of Nigel the Knight Bus that they had read last night. Matthew was listening in rapt attention as if he had never heard the story before, and David was listening in rapt attention even though he could not have understood a word. But Elizabeth was frowning a protest.

"I know! I know what we have to read next!" Remus turned Elizabeth upside down, then sat her on his lap. "Accio, Madam Curlyknarl!"

The book sailed into his hand from upstairs, and Remus began to read.

"Once upon a time there was a little girl called Lycoris, who lived at a farm called Hufflemere. She was a good little girl – only she was always losing her gloves!

"One day little Lycoris came into the farm-yard crying – oh, she did cry so! 'I've lost my gloves! Three pairs of gloves and a scarf! Have you seen them, Stripy Kneazle?'..."

Ariadne sat down on the floor beside them, pulled David into her lap, and leaned her head against Remus's shoulder. They read all the way through The Tale of Madam Curlyknarl and all the way through The Tale of Puffskein Chestil.

"... And to this day, if you meet Chestil up a tree and ask him a riddle, he will throw hexes at you, and thrust out his tongue and scold, and shout – 'Puff-puff-puff-pu-u-u-puff-f-f!'"

Remus closed the book and said, "I should leave."

"Where are you going, Daddy? Can I come?"

"I have a job interview."

"Daddy, I like it better when you don't have a job."

"But we're running out of money. We won't have any money unless I find a job."

Remus kissed each child in turn. He pecked Ariadne on the cheek, then a light sprang into his eye as if he were a naughty teenager. He flung his arms around her waist, and pressed his mouth against hers. Breathless, she kissed him back, crushing him against her until she was flushed with suffocation, and a plaintive voice instructed:

"Stop kissing!"

They broke apart, laughing, and the look on his face promised that she would be kissed again soon. Remus picked up his briefcase and went out to his job interview.

"Now you have to read Nigel the Knight Bus!" Matthew thrust the book into Ariadne's hands.

"Two Bad Fairies! Two Bad Fairies!" pleaded Elizabeth.

"It's my turn to choose the story," said Ariadne. "And I'm choosing The Dragon who came to Dinner." She took it out of the bookshelf, and sat down on the sofa with David on her lap.

"Once there was a little girl called Sacharissa, and she was having dinner with her mummy, in the kitchen.

"Suddenly there was a ring at the door.

"Sacharissa's mummy said, 'I wonder who that can be. It can't be the Daily Prophet delivery owl because it came this morning. And it can't be the wizard from Spencer's Alimentation because this isn't the day he comes. And it can't be Daddy because he uses Alohomora. We'd better open the door and see.'

"Sacharissa opened the door, and there was a big, shiny, scaly dragon..."

* * * * * * *

They heard Sacharissa's adventures with the dragon three times before Matthew became restless, and Ariadne allowed masculine fantasy to triumph.

"Nigel was a Knight Bus who lived in a Big Depot – "

A tremendous crash in their hall interrupted her reading, as if the front door had exploded. Ariadne put down the book and carried David out to look at the disturbance.

The front door had indeed vanished, and a short, squat, middle-aged witch was pushing her way into their house. She wore a wide mauve ribbon in her mousy curls, and her wide mouth was set in a deathly smile.

"Good morning, Madam Lupin." Her voice raised all the hairs on Ariadne's neck.

"Expelliarmus!" Ariadne had not known what she was going to say, but as the intruder staggered backwards, she knew that there would be no second chances today. She managed to catch the expelled wand; but the toad-woman arrested her fall by catching onto the door-jamb, and while she was struggling back to her feet, Ariadne heard the rattling breath of what was standing behind her.

A Dementor.

Its grey cloak was half-hidden in the shadow of the nearest oak tree, but it was clearly only awaiting instructions.

"Well now, that wasn't very friendly," gasped Madam Umbridge. "I've come..."

"Protego. Protego." Ariadne's voice was drowned out by David's wails, but she knew the Shield Charm had worked, because something seemed to bounce off it – perhaps some wandless magic born of her opponent's frustration. The toad-woman was on her feet again now. Ariadne focused every desperate thought on the Banishing Charm: Abigo.

Nothing happened. Ariadne's wand-work had never been good, and the visitor seemed not to be struggling at all, as if entering the house were no longer her objective. Ariadne tried another Shield Charm, but Madam Umbridge neither cast a spell nor spoke to Ariadne. Instead, she said something to the Dementor.

As the putrid odour wafted into her home, and David howled into her shoulder, Ariadne felt the chilling certainty that she was doomed to lose this battle. Even armed as she was with two wands, what hope had she against a Dementor? Remus will be home soon, she desperately reminded herself, and I have Madam Umbridge's wand. I have to keep my mind clear until Remus arrives... But his image was barely steady in her mind before she felt it flying outwards, as if it had been sucked from her.

In that moment she remembered. Happy thoughts were required to Conjure a Patronus. But that was very advanced magic. She'd not be able to Conjure one. Never, never, never...

Without the aid of a Patronus, her only defence against the Dementor was to focus on a thought that it could not take from her. Sad memories were rushing in – reading Remus's good-bye letter, hearing of Veleta's death, Mamma telling her that Remus was unfit to be her husband, being told that Wolfsbane Potion would never be legalised – but with a gigantic effort of will she pushed them all away and forced her mind onto something neutral.

Two twos are four, three twos are six, four twos are eight...

David was wailing dismally, but Madam Umbridge looked disconcerted, as if she had not expected Ariadne to defy the Dementor like that. Hope stirred and fluttered against Ariadne's ribs, then a dark memory swirled in.

"Come with me to uncover the tortuous web of mysteries that envelop the life of Veleta Vablatsky..." Stop, stop, it's all my fault!

Veleta is safe now. Her mind formed the happy words before she could stop herself.

A clammy finger touched her shoulder, and the memory of a sneering voice rang in her ear. "... make your friend Veleta spill everything – but you betrayed her... betrayed her... betrayed her..."

She turned away from the sound so that the Dementor could not touch David and found that she needed to speak out loud to drown out the buzzing memory of Humphrey Macnair's sneer. "Kenneth MacAlpin, eight-forty-three; Donald the First, eight-fifty-eight; Constantine the First, eight-sixty-two..." That cleared her head enough to remind her that she must unfreeze and start moving, and she made a rush towards the lounge door.

"Mummy, what's happening?" Matthew's face was peering around the doorway.

"Matthew," she gasped, "we're needing to Floo. Take Elizabeth to the hearth..." She wanted to tell him to take David too, but he would not be able to carry the baby safely.

"Ha!" With a snort of triumph, Madam Umbridge had taken advantage of the interruption to stride across the hall.

"Protego!" Ariadne pointed both wands at her, and this time the Shield Charm was strong enough to stop the intruder in her tracks. This gave Ariadne time to sweep herself and Matthew through the doorway and slam it shut.

"Clavis!" she gasped, just an instant before Madam Umbridge's heavy frame slammed itself onto the wood. The Locking Charm had worked; Madam Umbridge no longer had a wand; and Ariadne did not think Dementors could penetrate solid walls. She heaved a cautious breath and tried to soothe David.

"Mummy, who is that angry lady?"

Ariadne put an arm around him without replying. She had three children. And only two arms. And she had to move them away. Elizabeth was sitting on the sofa, still reading Nigel the Knight Bus. Ariadne reached the sofa in three steps, but by holding Elizabeth and Matthew with her right arm, she did not have a firm grip on either of them – or on the two wands that she held in her palm. While David had calmed down, Matthew was now terrified, and Elizabeth, after one glance at him, burst into tears.

"Novem-novem-novem," she whispered, but she had no wrist-movement control, and the sparks that spluttered out of her wand were miserable. She doubted that the emergency appeal would reach the Aurors.

"We have to Floo," she repeated. "Quickly." She urged them towards the fireplace, but Matthew was too frightened to move properly, and Madam Umbridge was banging at the locked door.

Lift Elizabeth over to the hearth. Leave her there. Lift Matthew. Set him down. Close your ears to the senseless banging at the door. Reach for the Floo-powder jar. Raise the lid and scoop out a handful... Ariadne dropped the lid, which shattered over the hearth. Matthew immediately stooped to pick up the pieces.

"Leave it, it's not mattering! Matthew, bide in the – " In the process of grasping the Floo powder and reasoning with Matthew, Ariadne managed to drop both wands. Now Elizabeth darted forward to pick them up.

And in that moment, the lounge door exploded, and Madam Umbridge charged in.

She swept Elizabeth out of her path with a callous blow, grabbed for a wand, and screamed out a spell.

Ariadne saw the red light.

* * * * * * *

Dolores Jane Umbridge had a successful morning.

It nearly backfired. She did not expect the little apothecary to be so defensive – so unfriendly. But, really, what chance had a feeble witch, made clumsy by the presence of three children, against a powerful witch, made adept by the presence of a Dementor?

All the hard work of the last two months had been worth it.

From the moment when the Wolfsbane Potion had been legalised, Dolores kept her eye on those troublesome Lupins. She guessed that they would return to Britain, and she required a daily report on international Portkeys until they arrived. Then she instructed the Office of Improper Use of Magic to watch number 24, Spurge Street. They set up a roster of house-elves to monitor around the clock all the spells cast in that household. The spellometers did not record anything actually illegal, but over the last couple of weeks there had been interesting spikes of complex spell-work around the perimeter of the property. House-elves hidden under Invisibility Cloaks brought back trace-samples, and Dolores personally analysed them, with the result that she acquired a pretty accurate idea of exactly which defensive charms had been laid to protect the property. She worked out the sequence in which she must neutralise each one of them several days before she actually visited the house. After all, there was no need to act before anyone definitively and unquestionably overstepped the line.

But of course Madam Lupin inevitably would overstep that line. Dolores knew she wouldn't have to wait long. The line was finally, irreversibly overstepped yesterday evening, when a house-elf dressed in an invisibility cloak returned from duty early.

"Dilly has news for Madam Umbridge! The neighbour knocked on the werewolf's door to borrow sugar, and Dilly was able to sneak right into the house. Dilly looked and listened, and she saw that Madam Lupin is growing very strange plants."

"What plants, Dilly? Do you mean wolfsbane flowers?"

"No, Madam! This is a new flower – the apothecary brought it back from Romania. Dilly read Madam Lupin's notes, and it's a flower that turns people into werewolves. The apothecary is using this flower to invent a new potion, one that will stop werewolves transforming even when the moon is full."

"How much progress, Dilly dear? Has Madam Lupin completed her analysis?"

Dilly hung her head. "Dilly's not knowing that much, Madam. The werewolf's brat entered the room before Dilly had finished reading, so Dilly Disapparated here at once."

"Well done, Dilly dear – you've achieved enough."

That despicable little Madam Lupin! She might try to look respectable... but what if her real plan, pure and simple, was to trick people into eating this foreign flower so that they became werewolves? Or suppose she did manage to develop some kind of antidote? That meant that werewolves would no longer even look like wolves, but would be indistinguishable from normal people. Dolores shuddered with compassionate horror. Imagine what would become of innocent children when people like Fenrir Greyback could wander around at the full moon, fully conscious and looking normal, yet still internally contaminated, still able to transmit their Bite of Death to any passing stranger!

It was time to act. Dolores regretted that she couldn't confront the whole family at once, but of course she wasn't so foolish as to tackle a werewolf single-handedly. She could deal with the werewolves – yes, every werewolf in the British Isles – after she had eliminated their noxious medicines. She took the house-elves off the spellometer roster and set them instead to guard the front gate of 24, Spurge Street. And the elf returned half-past nine this morning.

"Madam Umbridge, the werewolf has gone out. Madam Lupin and her children is being alone in their house, and the werewolf was telling them he'd not be home until lunch time."

Excitement surged in Dolores' chest so intoxicatingly that she could hardly dismiss the elf. But she contained herself while she summoned a Dementor, then Apparated to Spurge Street wearing an Invisibility Cloak. It took her all of five minutes to neutralise the protective charms surrounding Number 24 – that werewolf was certainly cunning, a real nuisance to society – then to shed the cloak and cast the Reducto on the front door.

She did not expect to be Disarmed on the spot. Fancy Disarming a guest before one even knew the purpose of the visit! Really, it proved how distrustful that renegade apothecary was, how unwilling to give others the benefit of the doubt, how unfriendly a member of their society. It redoubled Dolores's conviction that Madam Lupin's research was a danger that needed to be stopped.

But it all worked out for the best. Dolores was rightfully so furious about the woman's aggression that she managed to explode the lounge door without needing a wand. The apothecary was so astonished at being outsmarted that she lost her advantage. And the wand that Dolores grabbed off the floor was actually Madam Lupin's. Yes, it was the little apothecary's own wand that finally Stunned her.

The little brats set up a furious caterwaul, of course. Dolores had not planned to silence them, but, really, what if their screeching brought the neighbours around? It was the work of seconds to Stun each child too. Dolores left the Dementor to stand guard while she went searching for those poisonous plants.

There was unlikely to be anything downstairs, so she marched up to the first floor. By magically opening the doors she avoided leaving fingerprints; she counted off bedroom, bathroom, nursery and the werewolf's study before climbing up an unexpected second flight of stairs. The first door at the head of those stairs opened onto some kind of laboratory, with bench, cauldron, desk, bookcases, storage shelves and potted plants. Truly her lucky day! The desk was laid out with piles of neatly-written notes, with words like "lupluna" and "aconite" and "lycanthropy" continually recurring. She was no expert on Herbology, but she did not need to read much to recognise that this was the centre of the deadly research. She wiped all the notes clean with a quick Expungeo charm. Now every page on the desk was delightfully blank and white. The little apothecary's theory and calculations had vanished from the record.

Dolores then moved over to the collection of plants that were being nurtured by a lamp shining through a pane of glass – obviously an improvised greenhouse. She recognised several of them even before she noticed that they were systematically labelled. And, yes, that new word "lupluna" clearly indicated a dozen cuttings of some hideous orange flower. There was no need to smash the greenhouse: a well-aimed Desiccato spell could penetrate the glass and dry out each plant in the collection. It took exactly one second for every lupluna flower to wilt and die. Dolores tapped a Thermo onto the lamp, so that the brightness shot to maximum, and the demise of the poisonous flowers looked like the apothecary's own mistake.

She paused to wonder whether it was possible to cast an Obliviate on a person who was unconscious, or whether she should risk reviving the apothecary before modifying her memory. It certainly wouldn't do to have Madam Lupin complain about an intruder in her house. Dolores mentally rehearsed Plan B and Plan C, but she felt there were not many variations on what might happen; after all, she was the only person in the house who had a wand.

She Apparated back downstairs, and saw at once that she would not need her contingent plans. The Dementor, probably bored with merely standing guard, had already feasted.

So Dolores sent it back to Azkaban. She repaired the blasted doors, wiped her fingerprints from the borrowed wand, and replaced it beside the apothecary's right hand, just as if she had dropped it while falling. Then she Apparated to the front gate, picked up the Invisibility Cloak, and Apparated back to her office.

Dolores must have spent an hour gloating over that magical sequence. It was hard to believe that such a satisfying morning had been achieved so quickly – she had Apparated back to her office less than twenty minutes after departing. Plenty of employees spent longer than that on a coffee break.

No-one would ever know that she had been away.

There was more to do, of course, but a dedicated employee like herself – one who worked evenings and weekends in order to ensure the safety of the wizarding population – would not shirk her workload when she was so close to the final victory. She would begin drafting her proposal for Anti-Werewolf Legislation at once. The writing itself would be easy enough. The hard part would be convincing Fudge of the need for tougher measures; he was sensible enough about werewolves in general, but so cowardly about doing anything that might disadvantage that nephew of his. He just didn't understand that Rufus had now joined the ranks of the enemy.

But Dolores could afford to take her time. It might take a year, or two, or ten, but in the end Fudge would see sense. Rufus would bite someone, or he would give Wolfsbane Potion to a member of Greyback's pack, or he would break some other law... in fact, it was only a couple of years since Rufus had been rather heavily implicated in vanishing some Muggle train. The Improper Use of Magic Office had been called in, and it had all been terribly embarrassing for Cornelius. Rufus only had to break one more law... it wouldn't even need to be anything werewolf-related... and he would certainly forfeit Cornelius's support.

When that strategic moment arrived – and not one day earlier – Dolores would have her legislation proposal ready to hand.

She picked up a quill and hummed softly as she began to write.