Shampoo

CHAPTER SIX

Shampoo

Friday 2 September 1983 – Tuesday 20 December 1983

Hogwarts, the Grampians; Diagon Alley, London; Kincarden, Inverness-shire.

Rated PG for indirect references to sex, violence and lycanthropy, and for overt rebellion against an authority figure.

Needless to say, every teacher began the year with dire warnings on how seriously the seventh-year students were expected to take their N.E.W.T.s. Professor McGonagall said, "I'm feeling obliged to remind you that your entire future rests on your performance this year. Those who are needing extra careers advice can come to me at any time. Those who are expecting to coast through the first two terms and make up the difference after Easter might as well take the next train home."

Professor Flitwick said, "I don't want anyone to have a nervous breakdown about passing Charms. Of course you don't have to make yourselves sick or light the midnight wands over your homework. Five hours a week will be plenty."

Professor Sinistra said, "Those of you who have remained with Astronomy have chosen a difficult and obscure subject. If any of you is not willing to endure the sleepless nights and develop the focussed concentration required, now is the time to drop Astronomy and give the extra time to your other studies."

Professor Babbling said, "The few of you who have chosen an Ancient Runes N.E.W.T. are all competent in basic translation, and you have a working knowledge of early Norse magical culture. But none of you so far has managed to integrate your knowledge. Your translations remain flat, unpoetic, unrelated to the inner dynamics of the culture that produced them – and hence devoid of magical power. We have a hard year ahead if we are to rectify the deficiency."

Professor Sprout said, "I'm sure you're all very competent and will do very well. It just takes a positive attitude, which I'm sure you all have, and plenty of hard work. Make up your minds to spend five hours a week on Herbology homework, and don't be afraid to ask for library permits. My best students – the ones who score Outstanding – have always made the effort to consult twenty texts before beginning an essay, and they do half their research out of books from the Restricted Section."

Severus said, "Those of you who have assumed that, by accumulating adequate marks to date, you have earned the right to cruise through your final year are about to encounter a heavy dose of reality. The seventh year introduces the most difficult and dangerous potions on the entire syllabus. In addition, you will all be required to work on a private research project, which will be worth one fifth of your final mark. Think now what you would like to select as your project, and make your decision before the end of the week. Any ideas, Miss Parkinson?"

"An aphrodisiac?" smirked Hazel Parkinson.

"Five points from Slytherin for reaching your seventh year without mastering the Code of Ethics. No student in this class will brew an aphrodisiac. Even after you have left school, if I hear that any one of you has had any hand in any such unsavoury enterprise, I shall personally ensure that you are struck off the Registry of the Most Extraordinary Society of Potioneers. Miss Parkinson, you will develop a new household cleaner. Miss MacDougal, tell me about your plan to employ your limited abilities to make the world a better place."

Ariadne pressed down the fantastic, self-centred, grandiose thought that she really might discover a fabulous medicine or transformer that would change the world forever, and said, "I was thinking about sleeping draughts. There are several types that suppress dreams, but there's not one yet that causes only dream-sleep."

"Too arrogant," snapped Severus. "Do you fancy yourself a Glover Hipworth already? How about a more modest ambition, one within the limits of your capacities? I have here a nice little project for shampoo."

Ariadne could not imagine why the world needed another brand of shampoo.

"Something to meet a gap in the present market... a shampoo that will cleanse greasy hair, that will un-grease it, without destroying the natural oils. And a conditioner to match. You, Miss Dearborn, cannot possibly have thought of an idea of your own, so you will work on the companion soap and body lotion. Shacklebolt, what ideas have you had?"

"I was thinking of a brew that would make people glow in the dark." Kingsley's voice was deadpan, but Ariadne knew that this outrageous suggestion was part of his private rebellion against Severus. Kingsley had probably compiled a semi-plausible list of ingredients and would never admit that his suggestion had been a joke.

"Ten points from Gryffindor for your insolence," said Severus, but routinely, without passion. "If you have nothing more suitable to suggest, you can work on a vocal suppressant."

I was so angry with him,

Ariadne wrote to Remus that evening. She almost expected the paper to hiss at her for attacking her cousin in this way. Although her classmates often discussed their teachers frankly, she had never before committed such criticism to writing. But the paper did not hiss, so she ploughed on recklessly:

I was not expecting to save the world, but I was hoping to do something useful. Sometimes I think Severus enjoys humiliating us more than he enjoys teaching (and a great deal more than he enjoys shampoo).

After a page of venting about Severus, she felt she owed Remus at least a page of a more pleasant topic, so she described the doings of her classmates. Remus wrote every day at length, but never with complaints. Some of her replies were a mere line of acknowledgment, but if she cleared her homework before bedtime, she spent the rest of the time covering paper with trivia for him.

Ivor and Hestia are always happy, no matter how heavy the workload or how savage their taskmasters. At the moment they are grinning at one another across the table, like two sunflowers in full bloom. Joe is always sad. He is a younger brother of Benjy Fenwick, whom you probably met through the Order of the Phoenix. We're knowing what his inner torments must be, but he never shares them with anybody.

Today Kingsley decided to refine his Memory Charm skills by practising on six of the school owls. The owls now fly as far as the Quidditch pitch, then suddenly drop to the ground like stones, and are not seeming to have any clue where to go next. Unfortunately, Kingsley was not able to reverse the spells, and he had to confess as much to Professor Kettleburn.

Richard was thinking he'd let off some tension by picking a fight in a corridor with a fifth-year named Quirinus Quirrell. They were throwing minor hexes at each other – jelly-legs, tarantallegra, wart attacks, you're knowing the type – and Sarah decided to stop them before Mr Filch turned up. She cast a charm that made showers of pink hearts fly out of their nostrils; I'm fearing Richard will never forgive her for the indignity.

She copied out her Transfiguration problems and challenged him to produce some hints for her by Friday before signing off.

Sarah and Richard both teased her about the number of letters she was writing, for of course the everlasting candle was the kind of present that could not be used without being displayed.

"You do have a boyfriend," crowed Sarah.

"Silly, the candle would have been from that aunt in Glasgow," said Hestia.

"Aunts are too practical to send stuff like that," said Sarah. "The candle doesn't actually do anything that can't be done with a wand-tip, it's just prettier. And aunts don't need letters a mile long."

In the middle of the month, her parents wrote to ask if they would be allowed to take her out to dinner for Kenneth's thirtieth birthday. Professor McGonagall readily granted permission for students to spend important family occasions with their parents, but Ariadne replied:

In general it would be allowed, but I will not dare take time off as soon as Wednesday, since homework is piling up alarmingly. I'm expecting to have a much easier conscience by Thursday. Could we delay a day?

She spent Monday and Tuesday procrastinating her homework so that she could be quite sure she would not have lied about Wednesday being busy. Her parents, still unsuspicious, agreed to postpone celebrations until Thursday.

They gave Kenneth books and Firewhisky and a new Comet 260, and it was already dark when they set out for dinner at The Plum Tree in Diagon Alley. As the full moon rose high in the east, Ariadne kept them talking. She had made a long list of questions to ask and topics to discuss. Whenever conversation with Kenneth flagged, Ariadne asked her family about every crop, every animal, every piece of equipment. She told them about every subject, every teacher and every student. She asked if they needed new scythes, extra fertiliser, more tiles to repair the barn roof. She kept them talking so determinedly that they hardly thought it odd that she was quilling a shopping list onto her napkin. When she ran out of ideas for farm supplies, she asked Janet about the bairns, whether they needed new clothes, books, toys.

By the time anybody else thought of the time, it was too late to take Ariadne back to school, and her parents had bought the idea that they needed to spend the next day shopping in Diagon Alley. They all took rooms in the Leaky Cauldron for the night, and Kenneth escorted Ariadne back to Hogwarts via the Three Broomsticks in the morning. He glowered as he did so and "hoped those farmhands were managing the chores without supervision for once". Ariadne hoped so too, since she doubted William's ability to remember everything when he was the only person home. As soon as she had shaken Kenneth off – he was happy to be rid of her and to begin his shopping trip in earnest – she fairly ran to the Owlery to write to William.

William, did you let Remus out of the shepherd's hut? Did you milk the cows? Did you take them to pasture? Did you feed the pigs? Did you feed the hens and collect their eggs? Did you clean the plough? Did you remember that the charm for ploughing is "Cultro"? Remus is sick, but he has to try to be well by 3 o' clock. Master and Mistress will be home in the afternoon. If you cannot read this, take it to REMUS in the HUT.

A couple of weeks later Remus informed her:

Sturgis has managed to unearth the old record of the Vablatsky murder. The autopsies on Pythios and Jane Vablatsky and their two sons indicate that they died by Avada Kedavra, but the body of their daughter Veleta was never found. Ariadne, I still don't think it's safe to conclude that your friend is alive, but I do think we must stop assuming that she is necessarily dead.

When she broke the news to her friends, Joe stared at her with large, reproachful eyes as if to ask, How dare you raise our hopes? but Ivor took it very seriously. He spent the rest of the lunch break helping her compose a letter to the Office of Births and Deaths, detailing what they had seen in July.

In the third weekend of October Ariadne went home. The full moon fell on a Friday, and she planted the way carefully with many hints to her parents about how difficult Transfiguration was, how nobody ever explained it as clearly as "that nice Mr Lupin who I'm thinking yet works for you". It was difficult to concentrate at school, the boys were too noisy with their Quidditch talk, and they did not always sympathise with a person who was serious about finishing homework on time. By the time Ariadne wrote to say that she thought she would concentrate on an important essay better if she could come home on Friday, her parents believed that they had thought of it first. When Remus entered the kitchen for dinner, his employer greeted him at the door with the words:

"Miss MacDougal is home for this weekend, Remus. We're thinking it would be a good use of time if you left your chores to William so that you can instruct her in Transfiguration."

After dinner they walked up to the shepherd's hut "to talk over the theory". Ariadne locked Remus in, then roughed out some ideas herself. The next morning she released him from the hut and helped him to the farmhands' quarters. While he slept through most of the day, she sat on William's bed, working through Herbology and Astronomy and anything but Transfiguration. It was alarming how much work she could cover in a day with none of the usual school-Saturday distractions. Although she was sitting uncomfortably, and glancing every ten minutes to see if Remus were awake, there really did seem to be a genuine argument in favour of going home to complete more homework.

On Sunday Remus patiently explained the subtleties of Conjuring. Ariadne drew diagrams, and took notes, and read the text over and over, and still felt very, very stupid.

"You're of age now. Conjure something," said Remus. "A button. A matchstick. A quill. A tam o' shanter. Anything."

She waved her wand, and a button, a matchstick, a quill and a tam o' shanter all swept through the window and onto the table.

"But that's not Conjuring, it's only Summoning," she said. "Look, it's Morag's hat. I should send it back."

Remus smiled and Banished the objects. "Try again. A stone. A dead leaf. A mirror... "

She glanced at his face and suppressed a gurgle in her throat. "We are needing a mirror," she conceded softly. "Speculum!"

A sheet of glass shimmered in the air before them, then crashed down to the table. Remus brought it together with a swift Reparo, then frowned at his own image. "Ariadne, you managed the mirror because you wanted a mirror."

She looked at him and then looked away before she laughed.

"You could have just told me that I'd forgotten to shave."

"That would have been rude. What if you were growing the moustache on purpose?"

"I remember now. Yesterday morning you and William came for me just when I was about to shave. So I forgot. It was a bad day to forget, because my hair always grows faster on the day after a transformation. Then this morning you knocked at the door when I was half finished. So now I'm growing a caterpillar under my nose."

"It's your face. Maybe you're liking it."

"If liking it matters, do you like it?"

"Are you planning to keep it?

"You didn't answer my question. Do you want me to keep it?"

It was hard to keep her face still as she insisted, "It'll maybe set a new trend."

"What does it take to make you give a direct answer to a direct question?"

"How about Veritaserum? Or you could try a less personal question."

"Or you could try not caring whether I like your answer."

"All right, you can have my opinion. The moustache does not look like you."

"And I don't like to carry reminders of the wolf on my face. Raso. There. Improvement?"

"It is. I'm liking you better without the moustache."

"Ha, I finally extract an opinion from you! If I knew more about what you really wanted, we might have better success with Conjuring. It's about whether you really want the item... "

Professor McGonagall and Professor Flitwick were both pleased with the improvement in Ariadne's practical work, but Severus was not pleased with any of the students. Everybody could be faulted somewhere, and everybody was. Even when Ariadne had finished all her written homework by Friday evening, she still had to devote all Saturday to practicals and reading.

"The hard part," said Hestia, "is finding a time when Snape isn't in the dungeon. I work better when he isn't watching."

They worked on their degreasing soap and shampoo from breakfast to mid-afternoon. "We have to suppress the stimulation of the follicle, but not too much," said Ariadne for the twentieth time. "So, the question is, how much wormswort?"

"And what will counteract the horrible smell without interfering with any of the active ingredients?" wondered Hestia.

Finally, Hestia went down to the kitchen to see if the house-elves would take pity over the lunch they had missed. Bringing food into the laboratory was not allowed, and Ariadne was not willing to risk another ruined experiment by leaving her cauldron unattended, so she stayed put.

Five minutes after Hestia left, there was a bang! and something clattered about the bottom of her cauldron. Ariadne peered in. A perfect cake of soap lay at the bottom of Hestia's cauldron, a rich creamy colour and smelling of vanilla – and burnt feathers! The fluid residue had vanished. But the viscous liquid in Ariadne's own cauldron was not only still bubbling merrily, it also seemed to be whistling like a blackbird. She turned off the fire, and the boiling subsided. Her potion was also a creamy colour, and also smelled vaguely of vanilla through the strong stench of the burnt feathers, but there was nothing to indicate that the experiment had actually worked.

It might be shampoo. Sarah might be willing to test it out and report. It might even attack grease and inhibit follicle growth – she could experiment by applying it to a fast-growing plant like beanstalk dripped over with olive oil. The problem was, she did not care. As she ladled the mixture into a glass jar, she was thinking, Muggles have shampoos in hundreds of scents and colours, for every type of hair. What does it matter if I've invented one more?

She screwed a lid on the jar, suddenly feeling openly rebellious. I have the right to be useful. She would not test her shampoo yet, nor would she go to the library. She would spend the rest of the afternoon trying out her other idea, the one that might do some good for the world. She opened the students' store cupboard and began to lift out herbs.

It took five minutes to find barakol; it was hidden at the back of the cupboard, between the poppy seeds and the chamomile petals on a shelf laden with sedatives, in a dark jar with the label facing inwards. The label, in the lightest pencil, was barely legible, but she could make out the words Cassia simea. Had Severus taken to labelling his ingredients only in Latin? She had heard him complain about the demise of the Latin language in primary education. After another five minutes of searching, she was still moving every box, every jar, every bottle, but none of the other ingredients had come to light, in either Latin or English. She began to know that somebody was watching her, but she did not allow herself to be distracted until her cousin's voice enquired:

"Having trouble, Miss MacDougal? Forgotten how to read labels? Or are you perhaps after something from my private store?"

She turned around. "I'm thinking it's not in stock, Professor."

His lip curled. "If it is at all a useful ingredient, I'll have it in stock somewhere. What do you require?"

"Atropine, digitalin, strychnine and vulparia."

Severus snorted. "And the person you wish to kill would be – ? Have you taken leave of your senses, Miss MacDougal?"

"I have not, Professor Snape. I'm aware that those substances have poisonous properties."

"To put it mildly. Some of them would finish off your clients by mere skin-contact. Miss MacDougal, if you can outline to me a legitimate medicinal purpose for your dangerous whim, I can supply limited quantities of atropine and digitalin. But not strychnine or vulparia. Those ingredients have no useful purpose save to commit murder."

Not true – vulparia is as much a sedative as barakol, she mentally corrected him. If I mixed the thinnest tincture of vulparia with atropine and barakol, I might set the most chronic insomniac to dreaming like Endymion. "My idea was medicinal, Professor. But the atropine will be useless without the vulparia."

She could see, behind his sneer, that his mind was moving very fast, and that it was still set on the idea of poisons. "Miss MacDougal," he said, "do your parents continue to employ that very disreputable and irresponsible Englishman whom I met at their house twelve months ago?"

She was furious that the mere mention of poison had directed his mind to Remus – presumably connected with his knowledge of Remus's lycanthropy. But if Severus were willing to discuss family matters in school, he had to be seriously concerned about something. She managed to keep her voice steady as she replied, "I'm believing so, sir."

"Purely hypothetically, Miss MacDougal," his voice had dropped an octave, "if there were a person whose presence in your life you found frightening or distasteful, then the poisons you mention would not be the way to deal with the problem. On the contrary, the correct procedure would be to inform the Ministry of Magic of this person's inappropriate behaviour. Do you understand me?"

"I do, Professor Snape." Her fingers were shaking so violently that she almost dropped her basket. Severus has a warped view of life, but he ought to know that I would not kill anybody. Or is he believing that all young people are as misguided as he once was? Now that he has abandoned the Death Eaters, he would not actually commit a murder... but is he yet wishing Remus dead?

"Or why not simply inform your parents?" he asked. "If they knew they were harbouring a dangerous Beast, they would dispose of him at once, without troubling you any further. But be assured that they would act within the law, without resorting to poisons."

Dangerous Beast? She saw no need to reply; she could not speak pleasantly after he had insulted Remus like that.

Severus seemed unable to drop the subject. "Or is there something you would prefer your parents didn't know?" he probed. "Are you contemplating a different kind of murder entirely? Perhaps, Miss MacDougal, you think yourself in need of an... abortifacient?"

An image flashed through her mind, Remus holding her gaze across a cornfield; yet he had never even held her hand. Severus was insinuating that this man could not control himself, and was daring her to unleash her own temper into the bargain? She managed her soft, bland MacDougal voice as she asked, "Can an abortifacient be brewed from digitalin, Professor? I did not know. Well, I'm thinking I'll keep you guessing about my purpose." The soft voice had rarely delivered such rudeness.

"You needn't think your affairs are of any interest to me," he growled. "I am only reminding you that if you have committed some folly, you can expect Hogwarts to deal severely with you. And if you are the victim, you must operate within the law. You took barakol – that you may keep, provided you use it only to scent your shampoos."

She nodded, and walked out of the store-room, still carrying the basket. What a waste of barakol. It would be no good to her without the vulparia. And she knew now that she would never find vulparia at school. It was not until she was seated at the library, depressingly blank scrolls flattened in front of her, that she realised something else.

If Severus had supposed she wanted the ingredients in order to kill somebody, then he obviously had no idea what her real purpose had been. And he had not been bluffing. The only possibilities that had crossed his mind were that she was planning violence – either against Remus or against a hypothetical unborn baby – or that she was being stupid about herbs. The truth had been a million miles away from his imagination. She could spend her spare time brewing up as many varieties of sedative as she liked, and it would not occur to him that she was performing serious research behind his back.

She also realised that barakol might be exactly the right ingredient to counteract the burnt-feather smell of her degreasing shampoo.

The homework excuse remained good for November, when the full moon fell on a Sunday. Her parents readily invited her home, and they did not even bother to inform Remus what was expected of him; he was supposed to know that tutoring their daughter was a priority. Ariadne spent the whole weekend shut up in the barn with Remus and her textbooks, and she released him from the shepherd's hut on Monday morning. She could not hide his "illness", but it was now five months since the last time he had been ill without an alibi, so no suspicion was aroused when she reported, "I went to thank Mr Lupin for his help, Mamma, and he has come down heavily with the cold."

"It's obviously too chilly to spend all weekend in the barn," her mother worried. "Ariadne, I'll brew you some Pepper-up before you return to school. And if you have holiday homework at Christmas, we'll make space for Remus in the house."

The brewing, then the drinking, followed by the walk through Hogsmeade with her disgruntled brother, meant that she reached her first lesson with only two minutes to spare. Professor McGonagall raised her eyebrows, leaving Ariadne to wonder if she would be allowed to go home again.

In due course Ivor received a reply from the Office of Births and Deaths. It read:

Dear Mr Jones,

Our office has conducted an investigation into the unfortunate deaths of the Vablatsky family in 1980. We confirm that our records prove that Miss Veleta Vablatsky was indeed murdered on Wednesday 2 April of that year (copy of death certificate attached).

A review of Macnair family history has indicated that no Macnair has married a Vablatsky at any time in the last 200 years (when the Vablatskys first migrated to Britain). Copies of both genealogies are enclosed.

The cost of this research will be ten Galleons, payable by the 31st of this month.

It is natural that you should be curious about the identity of a person who resembles your deceased friend, but further enquiries would be an unwarranted intrusion on the privacy of both the Macnair family and the woman concerned. We surmise that she was most likely to have been a temporary guest or business associate in their home.

The Office of Births and Deaths extends its earnest sympathies over the demise of the Vablatsky family.

Yours sincerely,

Eugenia Thanatos,Archive Administrator for the Office of Births and Deaths.

"What a waste of time!" said Richard. "It doesn't tell us anything."

"But it does," said Ariadne slowly. "It tells us that the Office is trusting its own records to the exclusion of the objective facts. It's not willing to undertake a proper investigation... Ivor, I'll give you the five Galleons."

"One Galleon and eight Sickles," corrected Kingsley. "We are all in this together."

Remus took an even more pessimistic view:

I cannot believe that they literally did not investigate. It is more likely that they did inquire, but they accepted Macnair's word that no Vablatsky lived in or had visited his home. In other words, he now knows that his household has come under scrutiny. This is bad news even if there is an innocent explanation for the Girl-at-the-Window, because the Macnair family certainly has some guilty secrets to hide. I hope this Madam Thanatos had the sense not to mention the names of the people who initiated the inquiry.

She tried to write a cheerful answer, but she was very worried about the plan for the next full moon. Remus kept telling her that it was not her problem, but she could not accept that.

I cannot wrangle an excuse to go home this month, because it's too close to the end of term, and full moon will in any case be mid-week. I cannot even write to William to remind him to release you from the hut, because he would probably go to one of the family to ask for help in reading the message. I am stumped.

The shampoo is turning out well, and I'm trying to be glad about it. It has stopped whistling when I boil it. Professor Sprout lets Hestia and me work on the olfactory angle in Greenhouse Four over the weekends. Yesterday three panes of glass shattered while we were working. A third-year Hufflepuff named Myron Wagtail had sung In Dulci Jubilo at it! Hestia repaired the glass quickly, but not fast enough to prevent a frost catastrophe, and Myron has been banned from singing.

Ariadne could not settle on the night of the Cold Moon. She sat next to the window, staring at the moon's full face, imagining that she could hear the howling. She could not, of course (distance aside, Remus always charmed the hut to be sound-proof), but something was howling deep inside her. Even if he had remembered a warming charm, it was one of the longest and coldest nights of the year. Remus should not be hiding on a remote farm; he should be working as a teacher, and living among friends who could protect him from the world and the world from the wolf.

She must have fallen asleep, because she was still sitting in the casement when Sarah shook her awake for breakfast.