High Road to Hogwarts

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

High Road to Hogwarts

1 September 1993

Old Basford, Nottingham; from the Leaky Cauldron to King's Cross Station, London.

Oh, you'll take the High Road and I'll take the Low Road,

On the bonny, bonny banks of Loch Lomond.

– Scottish folk song: "Loch Lomond"

Rated PG because everyone has to grow up.

Dear Mr Lupin,

We are pleased to offer you the post of Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, beginning 1 September 1993. Salary will be G3,550 per annum, with full board and lodging included.

Please find attached an outline of the required syllabus for each of the seven year-levels. Any books and equipment that you need to purchase can be charged to the Hogwarts Library account at Gringotts.

You may be aware that Sirius Black, having escaped from Azkaban, is believed to be in the vicinity of Hogwarts. We have reason to suspect that his particular target is Harry Potter, who is currently in third year. Hogwarts is unfortunately being patrolled by Dementors, and we are trusting you to place every effort into controlling the Dementors, protecting the students, and using any expertise or inside knowledge you might possess to assist in recapturing Black.

Our Potions master, Professor Severus Snape, has agreed to brew Wolfsbane Potion for you every month. He has expressed hesitation about the unpatented (and apparently un-trialled) revision to the formula, so we have agreed that it would be safer if he brewed according to the original and well-established recipe.

We note that the next full moon falls on 31 August, and therefore suggest that you may find it most convenient to travel to Hogsmeade on the Hogwarts Express, which departs from Kings Cross Station, London, at 11:00 a.m. Your ticket is enclosed.

Yours sincerely,

Albus Dumbledore,

Headmaster.

No arrangement was particularly convenient on the morning after a full moon. When Remus staggered out of the garage, it was already nine o' clock. Even so, he had trouble unlocking the door, and he didn't have the magical energy to repair the damage to his suitcase. It looked decidedly battered, as if it belonged to a hundred-year-old Muggle who was too poor to repair or replace it. He had to pack his robes and books by hand, and then, after fiddling with the locks and helplessly waving his wand, he eventually tied up the trunk with string.

As he locked the doors and windows (by hand), he tried to tell himself that he might never see this house again. It was his only home; it should matter that he was leaving the building that had sheltered his parents, siblings, wife and children. But he was too stiff and weak from last night's Transformation to feel anything more than a sharp twinge in his muscles... and a vague, faint lifting of his spirits, as if Hogwarts were now his real home.

He supposed he could take the Floo all the way to Hogsmeade, but then he would have to lug the suitcase on foot to Hogwarts, and they might set him to work right away. He badly needed to sleep, and his train ticket provided that opportunity. He threw a handful of Floo powder into the hearth, and gasped, "Diagon Alley!" The wolf must have howled last night, for he had no voice. He clutched at the battered trunk, nearly buffeted to the ground by the motion of the Floo, until he could step out at the Leaky Cauldron.

"Move along, move along!" exclaimed Tom the landlord. "Hundreds more will be coming through today... Hey, you look as if you need a nice pick-me-up, sir. Will you have a Firewhisky at the bar, or will you settle for hot chocolate?"

Remus shook his head, but the mention of chocolate reminded him of the army of Dementors congregating at Hogwarts. He detoured into Mellitus Zacharin to buy a two-pound slab of milk chocolate before pushing his way out through Muggle London towards King's Cross Station, and finally through the invisible barrier to Platform Nine and Three-Quarters.

He was here. Standing in his patched robes and holding his battered suitcase, he even felt a tremor of excitement. He was about to begin his new life. It was time, he supposed. He had had eleven years as a child with his parents, and eleven years as a Marauder with his friends, and ten years with Ariadne... he wouldn't think too hard about the year of grieving that had flanked each end of the Ariadne-period. The next ten or eleven years – perhaps forever – were about to begin, this time as a teacher at Hogwarts.

* * * * * * *

"Defence teachers don't seem to last very long," he had said to Dumbledore.

"Oh, there's no question that the post is jinxed," the Headmaster had replied calmly. "But the jinx seems to take advantage of people's moral flaws. Viridian and Quirrell were servants of Voldemort who failed in the tasks that Voldemort had set them. Then we had Spleen undone by his temper, Honeysmooch by her sensuality, Goldstein by his avarice and Confabulus by her taste for gossip. I believe the key to keeping the job is simply to perform it competently, without giving in to temptation."

"But, Professor, I can't last a year – I can't last a day – in a state of moral perfection!"

"None of us is perfect," said Dumbledore. "But I think you are as likely as anyone to fight off everyday temptations, to admit honestly to your failures, and to keep your mind focused on your teaching. If anyone has the moral fibre to keep the job, you are that man."

Remus had stared at Dumbledore's head in his fireplace, trying to explain how very weak and deceitful he had been as a teenager, how his day-to-day competence would falter as the waxing moon attacked his health, how utterly he would crumble as a teacher when pitted against a Dark Master-Mage like Sirius Black... But Dumbledore was talking briskly about escaped convicts and Dementors and Harry Potter, and long before Remus found his voice, he discovered he had accepted the job.

* * * * * * *

One year, ten, a hundred – he was a teacher for now. Ariadne would have so happily returned to Hogwarts with him. Even though he had to return alone, he knew he was as happy as he could ever be without her.

And Ariadne was standing right in front of him.

He closed his jaw and forced himself to breathe normally. Of course it isn't Ariadne, he reminded himself. The dark-haired girl with Gaelic eyes, deep in conversation with one of the Patil children, had not even recognised him. Morag MacDougal would probably remember in due course that she had once called him "uncle", but they had not met for six years, and certainly he had gained some grey hairs since then. It shouldn't matter that a girl who happened to look like Ariadne had ignored him on a crowded platform.

Ariadne's blood flowed on, in the veins of her innumerable wizarding kin. He braced himself for the reality that there would be many familiar faces in the crowd, and that few of them would belong to people who were familiar with him. Before he had completed the thought, he noticed that William Stebbins was running after an escaped owl, that two Gideon Prewetts were dropping dung bombs on a girl with a very Bones look, and that a pubescent Lucius Malfoy was whining, "But why can't I have a Firebolt? It isn't as if Nimbus will maintain its cutting edge for another year, and if I'm to make it to team captain by my fourth year..."

Exhausted by his trek through the London crowds, Remus leaned against a litterbin. The Malfoy boy was flanked by his cousins, a large youth with gorilla-arms and an even larger one with a pudding-bowl haircut. Remus reminded himself that he would meet a score of students who were connected with Ariadne. In fact, another of her cousins was already walking up to him, a freckled young man wearing a shiny P badge.

"Cousin Remus?"

He forced his eyes open and shook the boy's extended hand. "Good morning, Clement. It's very nice to see you again."

"You too, sir. Are you seeing somebody onto the Express?"

"Only myself." He indicated his embarrassingly battered trunk before he remembered that it had been a present from Clement's parents only a few years ago.

"Oh... are you teaching us? Cousin... Professor... you're not looking very well. Let me help you find a carriage."

Clement Macmillan stowed the dilapidated trunk under his arm and strode off towards the back of the train. Remus followed, but even without a trunk to carry, his progress was slow. This time he was deliberately scanning the crowds. He was disappointed three times before he realised that he was looking for a particular face.

It wasn't Terry Boot, although he was there, happily chattering to a skull-capped stranger clutching a statistics manual and a lanky boy carrying a Cleansweep Seven. Remus would speak to him later, and Terry would tell him that everything had turned out right and that now they were both in the place where they belonged.

It wasn't Mary Vablatsky, her chocolate-brown eyes widening in welcome as a group of second-year Hufflepuffs ran up to ask after her summer holidays. She did not look troubled, either by her past traumas or by her personal gifts (although Remus noted for future reference that her trunk was labelled "Miss M. Fenwick"). As Mary opened a paper bag of mint humbugs for her friends, she looked blissfully ordinary.

It wasn't Pradeep Patil, who lifted his nose from a book for long enough to shout over the crowd: "Has anyone lost a toad? I nearly stood on this one." Pradeep held the toad carefully aloft until it was claimed by a round-faced boy who bore a heartbreaking resemblance to Alice Longbottom. Then Pradeep used his foot to push his trunk into a carriage, while the boy who must be Neville pelted off in the opposite direction.

Ariadne was represented all over the crowd; his parents lived on in his own person; he was now looking for his friends. But not even Neville Longbottom was the real object of his search.

"Here you are, sir." Clement Macmillan, having found a deserted compartment in the final carriage, lifted the battered trunk into the luggage rack. "Oh... it's not empty after all. Somebody's already stowed an owl here."

"And a cat, by the looks of it," Remus agreed. "Never mind, only half the space is taken. I'm very grateful to you, Clement."

"It was no trouble, Professor. I'm looking forward to your lessons at Hogwarts. See you!"

The well-bred young man leapt back onto the platform to collect his own luggage, while Remus sat down in a corner seat. The Macmillans were so staunch, so resistant to the smallest temptation from the Dark Side – clement, zealous, earnest, gracious! – that he wondered for a moment what he would manage to teach them. Then he remembered James Potter, an honourable and heroic friend if ever there had been one, yet so blatantly misguided when he was certain of his own rightness. Even the stablest and best-intending teenager needed some guidance, and even a mediocre adult might be able to offer the experience born of his own mistakes.

As the milling crowds began to swarm aboard the train, Remus closed his eyes. There were Ariadne's Macmillan cousins to be encouraged as they stepped out firmly onto the right path. There were her first cousins once removed – Draco Malfoy, Vincent Crabbe, Gregory Goyle – to be enticed and entreated, or else deterred and averted, away from their terrifying slide down to ruin. There was her niece Morag, and Morag's Cornfoot cousins, to be inspired or shaken out of a half-life of bland mediocrity. There was Mary Fenwick – her friend's child, but, as it happened, Ariadne's second cousin once removed – who had survived ordeals of which the post-war generation never dreamed, to be tenderly nurtured and protected from anyone who might abuse her gift. There was Terry Boot to be acclimatised to the peculiarities of the wizarding culture, just as Remus's own parents once had been, and there were the Patil siblings to be sensitised to the needs of the Muggle community all around them.

He must have fallen asleep before the train even began to move. He had no idea how long he slept, but he was less stiff when a soft bump penetrated his awareness, and the plush seat was steadily rattling beneath him.

A boy with a faint West Country burr was protesting: "Get out of it!"

"Ron, don't!" snapped a young lady.

Remus almost opened his eyes, but he remembered in time that a group of teenagers wouldn't want some teacher spying on their private moments. He was still exhausted, so it was easy to drop his head down against the back of the seat. Waves of drowsiness were already sweeping over him when a third voice spoke, a voice that made all his nerves stand up on end.

"It's all right, Ron, I'm holding the cat."

It was James Potter's voice.

"He's nowhere near Scabbers. If he jumps, Hermione or I can grab him in time."

Remus did not need to look. He knew now who was sharing his compartment.

There would always be somebody else to love.

ENTER, STAGE RIGHT.