The Apprentice who Persevered

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The Apprentice who Persevered

Wednesday 19 September – Friday 7 December 1984

Diagon Alley, London.

Rated PG-13 because of what does not happen in this chapter.

The young man with green thumbs laid a carton on the apothecary's bench. "Tilden Toots is the name. Professor Jigger was expectin' the delivery."

"Thank you, Mr Toots," said Ariadne, pulling a leather purse from under the counter and trying to forget that Tilden Toots had been in Remus's year at Hogwarts. "Professor will be glad to see this."

Professor Jigger had instructed her to place the contents straight in the greenhouse cupboard. At first glance, the leafless pot-plants did not look very lively, but then she saw that they were slightly pulsating.

Mimbulus mimbletonia!

She had never seen them before; they grew only in Assyria and were rare even there. But those grey boils were unmistakable. She knew better than to provoke the plants into defending themselves; she placed each one gently on the shelf and closed the glass door with a Locking Charm.

The bell on the front door jangled again, and an insincere-looking wizard entered. Ariadne reminded herself not to judge the customer on first impressions.

"A quart of Photapergaz," he said. "Wet weather, isn't it?"

She handed him a bottle. "That's seven Sickles."

"I could have sworn," he said, without touching his purchase, "that the supplier who just parked that box with you was Tilden Toots."

She made a non-committal noise, wondering what the customer really wanted.

"Quite a celebrity, you know. I always enjoy his gardening broadcasts on the Wireless."

"He's a gifted Herbologist," she agreed. Do not keep assuming that this man has an ulterior motive! she warned herself. "Can I help you with anything else, sir?"

"I might take a throat-soother. So what was in the box? Anything out of the ordinary?"

"Two Sickles. Do you prefer lemon, blackcurrant or wild cherry?"

"Oh... lemon." The customer pocketed the paper bag without checking its contents. "Young lady, what would you say is young Tilly's specialty?"

She tried not to imagine that the customer was becoming aggressive in his search for some kind of information. "I'm not a Herbologist, but his radio shows are certainly entertaining."

"Professor Jigger is lucky to have Tilly on side. Do you think – "

A heavy footstep announced that Professor Jigger had entered the shop. "Morning, Bobbin," he said. "What d'you want from us that your own shop doesn't supply?"

"Your charming apprentice has already served me." The customer, now identified as fellow-apothecary Salix Bobbin, looked embarrassed. He threw out a "Good morning!" and beat a hasty retreat.

"It's as well you kept a still tongue in your head," said Professor Jigger to Ariadne. "Last thing we want is the competitors knowing what's brought into this shop."

Ariadne was surprised to hear another guild-member described as a "competitor". But logic asserted that a competent apothecary had no need to forsake his own shop for basic items like Photapergaz and throat soothers, so Mr Bobbin had to have had an ulterior motive for visiting.

"Why would Mr Bobbin care what Mr Toots brings us?"

"Because if Bobbin knew how Toots accesses our stuff, he'd be acquiring it himself. And then where would we be? If mimbletonia and the like could be bought on every street corner, I'd never make a profit. Toots and I keep our suppliers dark. And you are to keep dark who brings what into the shop."

Keeping "dark" about Mimbulus mimbletonia was fair enough; it was rare, but nearly harmless and quite legal. Ariadne tried to push away her suspicion that some of Professor Jigger's other products were immoral, illegal or dangerous. She had no proof.

"Keep quiet now," Jigger repeated, "and you'll find out a lot more in due course."

"I will, Professor." She gave the Burn-Healing paste a final stir and began to ladle it into jars.

"The Scotchman was wrong," Jigger commented. "You keep quiet and you keep busy."

She looked up. "Is this the man who gave me a bad character last spring? I would not be wishing his report to be repeated to my parents."

Jigger grunted. "He did say he knew your father. Since before you were born, he claimed. He walked into the shop like a customer and spilled the dirt like a journalist. Lazy, he said you were, and always poking your nose into other people's business. I told him right off, if you were to work for me, I wouldn't give you time to be lazy or to poke your nose anywhere, so that didn't bother me. Then he became angry and said you spread gossip and had accused your own cousin of being a Death Eater. But he was too underhand to give me anything in writing. Made me wonder what his game was."

Anybody who knew that she had accused Cousin Lucius of the Dark Arts before she was four years old had to be a person who knew her parents. One of the Macnairs? I have no evidence, she reminded herself yet again. Donald Cornfoot? Surely not Uncle Macmillan! Yet there was a real risk she would suspect the wrong person unless she identified her true accuser soon.

"Professor, do you remember anything about the man? What did he look like?"

"Big-built, dark, wore a red and green tartan. I'd say in his fifties. Now enough of this, or I will start believing that you like gossip. Go and see what the new customer wants."

The tartan alone eliminated most suspects. So it was Uncle Macnair!

"Has Jigger forgotten how to tell the time again?" asked Sarah sympathetically. "You really should report those long hours to the Guild."

"Your hours are not regular either," Ariadne pointed out.

"Yes, but I'm paid a lot more for my trouble. Honestly. Hestia's contract says 'eight until six, not Wednesdays or Saturdays,' and that's what it always is. And no one asks her to play with poisons."

"I'm sorry I was not here to start the cooking, Sarah."

"Don't worry about it. Ivor's here, and Hestia's teaching him. About time he learned. We might tactfully go to my room this evening, so that Ivor and Hestia can tactfully possess the sofa. I'll put your hair up."

After they had eaten Hestia's chicken stew (Ivor had been steered through the process of making the dumplings), Ariadne was too exhausted to relish the thought of playing hairdressers all evening, but talking to Sarah would help her not to think about Remus. It was days since she and Sarah had both been home for long enough to talk to each other. So she submitted to having her hair curled and twisted and thrown up in a French roll. Sarah had apparently spent the day wearing the Muggle equivalent of dress robes and being photographed in unnatural poses on the steps of Westminster Abbey or precariously perched on the railings of the Thames embankment, and she was keen to practise the new hairstyles on a dressing-doll of her own.

"I've broken up with Jean-Philippe," said Sarah mournfully. "I didn't see it coming. I've never had a man become bored with me before, so do you think he's found someone else?"

"What are you thinking about it?"

Sarah sighed. "I'd know if he'd been unfaithful. No, it isn't another woman. It's more likely the distance. All those international Portkeys were a great nuisance to organise. But I can't believe he wouldn't take a little more trouble over me!"

"How frustrating for you to be so uncertain."

"Perhaps. It's stupid to fuss over a man who isn't interested, isn't it? On the other hand, masculine ardour has been known to rekindle. Ariadne, do you think he'd regret chucking me if I owled him? Just a short, happy note describing the British rain and the sights of London."

"Maybe."

"Then again, the sexy Muggle photographer who was working with me today has already asked me out twice. Perhaps I shouldn't be so quick to feel unavailable when I actually don't have a real boyfriend any more. Ariadne, would you go out with a photographer?"

"Does he make you laugh?"

Sarah smiled, and twisted a pin painfully. "Yes, he does. That's the problem. Is he just frivolous? My manager is older and more likely to stay faithful over the distance. He's a very distinguished man and he's divorced; I'm sure I could extract a dinner invitation from him if I really wanted to."

"So are you wanting to?"

"Sometimes. But sometimes all this business of chasing men seems too much trouble. You don't know how lucky you are to be unattached, Ariadne! Some days I just want to give up on all men altogether because none of them can really be trusted... "

At last Sarah had finished with Ariadne's hair, and Ariadne had said "hmm" and "I see" enough times to convince Sarah that what she really wanted was the dinner with the photographer.

"That's it! Next time he asks me, I will accept. Now let's talk about you, Ariadne. That Jigger isn't making your working hours any shorter. Why do you put up with it?"

Because being busy saves me from thinking too hard. No amount of idleness would induce Sarah to think too hard, so Ariadne told her, "If I forfeit this apprenticeship, I'll never find another. I'm needing to please my mentor."

"Would he really throw you out just for demanding your rights under the contract? What would happen if you did complain to the Guild?"

"I might win the case, but it would take too much time and energy, and it would be awkward to work with Professor Jigger after challenging him before the Guild. It's really no harder to do it this way, Sarah... trying to please him as far as I can."

"But you can at least take a lunch break."

"I'm sometimes allowed to eat a sandwich in the shop." She thought fleetingly of Remus, to whom her parents had so often condescended. They had made him many, many concessions – certainly far more than Professor Jigger had ever made to an employee – but even when they allowed a little thing like a lunch break, they had always been so very conscious of how generously they were conceding to him.

"And sometimes they forget to allow it," said Sarah shrewdly. "I think it's time for a rescue mission. If I turned up in the shop at noon tomorrow... "

"Not at noon," said Ariadne quickly. "The shop is busiest between twelve and two. Half our customers can only come at that time of day."

"It will be after two, then," said Sarah, with a gleam in her eye. "But we are not leaving you to Jigger's mercies."

Richard Campion bounced into Slug and Jigger's the next afternoon as the clock was striking the half-hour after two. He had just enough tact to buy a quarter-pound of black beetles before grabbing Ariadne's cloak from the wall and announcing, "Come on – I've somewhere to take you!"

Ariadne would have preferred not to annoy Professor Jigger. But Richard was obviously too zealous to brook a disappointment, so she followed him out into the pouring rain, hoping the "somewhere" would be indoors, and said only, "Tell me about your new girlfriend."

"I met her in – How did you know about that?"

She should not have known; nobody had told her anything. "Only guessing. So tell me the rest."

"Mr Wadcock sent me to Wigtown last month to negotiate a deal on Nimbus Seventeen Hundreds for the Wanderers, and they gave me a free ticket to their Michaelmas game against the Kestrels. There wasn't a very good turn-out because of the pouring rain, but that made it easier to spot people in the crowd. And I saw this gorgeous nymph sitting quietly with her family and actually enjoying the game." Richard had a long-standing gripe about witches who only attended Quidditch matches to show off their robes and attract wizards.

"And was the gorgeous nymph wanting to go out with you?"

"I didn't ask. She's still at school and she had her father with her – I'm not stupid. But I remembered her older brother's name, so I went around to meet him, and before long we'd found so much to say about the old days at Hogwarts that he'd invited me to dinner with their family. And I took so little notice of the Pretty One that she was soon flirting with me madly. Now I Floo her every evening in her common room, and in a couple of weeks I'll be meeting her in Hogsmeade. Here, let's find you some food."

They had stopped in front of Let Them Eat Cake, a patisserie displaying a mountain of cream horns and iced buns in its window. There was no evidence of a wholesome sandwich, but the blurb on the window advertised "finest quolity tea", so Richard held the door open and guided Ariadne to a chair.

"So what's her name?"

"Natalie. What will you eat?"

"Is that Natalie Selwyn? From the year below us in Slytherin?"

He grinned. "Shocked?"

"I am not, for it's your concern." She could not be shocked; her instinct that the pretty Natalie was shallow and materialistic would be mere inter-house prejudice; and Richard had never yet stayed with one girl long enough for her to do him any harm. After all, her own instinct that Remus Lupin had been her soulmate had been utterly betrayed by the reality of his indifference...

"Can I take your order, sir?" interrupted a vacant-faced matron, stabbing her quill into her notepad with some aggression.

"I'm thinking we have met before," said Ariadne, trying not to assume that the woman was stupid. After all, it was nearly two years since their only meeting, and neither of them had said much. "Are you not Madam Crabbe – the grandmother of Victoria and Vincent?"

Madam Crabbe nodded uncertainly, evidently not recognising Ariadne.

Richard took control. "One coffee, one peppermint tea, two currant buns... Do you have anything so healthy as a salad roll?"

The matron looked even more confused, as if adding the question made the whole order too complicated. She doodled on her notepad, then took refuge in the question: "What does your lady-friend want?" She glared at Ariadne for a second, as if daring her to want anything more than was visible at the counter. "And how do you know my grandchildren?"

"We all met at the Christmas party at Malfoy Manor two years ago. You were wearing that holly-patterned robe."

"Yes!" Madam Crabbe broke into a broad grin, apparently remembering the robe with fondness. "The little ones have grown a lot since then. Vicky lost a tooth last week. And Vincy can already ride his broomstick as high as the roof. His father – that's my Valerian – found him stuck on the chimney last week, not sure how to fly down again. Vincy said he'd been playing at Death Eaters and had caught five Aurors – "

A glass tumbler crashed to the floor.

"Sorry," said Richard, with no attempt at sounding sincere. "Reparo. Madam Crabbe, can you bring us a sandwich, or should we try a different shop?"

Madam Crabbe seemed less stupid at this point; she hurried off to fulfil their order.

"Miss MacDougal will not be out in a minute," snapped Belladonna Jigger. "She's in training to be an apothecary, so she'll keep the hours that the job requires, not the hours that some outsider dictates."

"The Guild regulations – "

"Hipworth's herbiary, who are you to spy on the regulations of the M.E.S.P.? Not an apothecary yourself, are you? Professor and I are becoming pretty tired of this endless stream of gentleman friends who have nothing better to do with their afternoons than pull our apprentice away from her work for wining and dining."

Ariadne entered the shop. Today her rescuer was Horatio Chittock – tall, impassive, gracefully ignoring the tirade, and savouring some good news of his own. Ariadne had no time to suppress her instinct that he and Glenda Foster were newly engaged before Madam Jigger spun around to confront her.

"Miss MacDougal, does this one here know how many suitors you have?"

"I'm knowing the laboratory is busy, Madam Jigger, and I'll be back in half an hour."

Horatio opened the door for her, Conjured an umbrella and said, "Half an hour will give us time to walk down to the Wireless Headquarters and back. Glenda is keeping some pumpkin soup hot for you."

"I heard Glenda reading the news last Thursday," said Ariadne. "She has an excellent voice for it; she did not even stumble over the Xhosa names."

Horatio resisted the invitation to talk about Glenda; she should not have jumped to the conclusion that they had news. Instead he asked, "So how many young men have been taking you out to lunch?"

"Richard Campion, Ivor Jones, Sturgis Podmore, my cousin Steady... You bring the count to five. But there is also Emmeline Vance, so it's not only men."

"Miss Webster has her rescue operation well organised. Does she ever come herself?"

"She does not, since I eat dinner with Sarah and Hestia every evening. Nor does Kingsley Shacklebolt, as he is not allowed to leave the Auror training base. So the queue of 'suitors' is far from 'endless'."

They passed the "out to lunch" sign on Horatio's clock shop and kept walking: past the briny odours of Runcorn the fishmonger, past the flashing baubles that advertised Flint's insurance brokerage, past the cow on the door of the Catchlove family's dairy outlet, then through the floral notes that pierced the oriental wafts from Honeysmooch's perfumery, before stopping outside number seventy, the headquarters of the Wizarding Wireless Network.

"Here," said Horatio, once again holding the door open as he Vanished the umbrella. "Glenda is on the first floor. By the way, we are now engaged."

"You might be eating lunch, Ariadne," said Hestia, "but you're working longer and longer into the evenings."

"There's an endless demand for Pepper-up Potion at this time of year," said Ariadne, sinking into the sofa. She was too exhausted to explain to Hestia that it was easier to be overworked; it left no room in her mind for thinking. And she did not want to think. She did not want to ponder what might be in Professor Jigger's secret cupboard; she did not want to consider that she was being exploited; above all, she did not want to think about Remus. She did not even want to re-read her textbook, but she knew Professor Jigger would grill her on it in the morning, so she would have to open it soon.

"I'll bring you food – Ariadne, sit down. It's in the oven and I'll bring it to you. Ivor followed up your enquiry about the Macnairs."

Ariadne had not even noticed that Ivor was in their flat, but she tried to pay attention when he sat down next to her.

"I asked my supervisor just who it was who slandered me last spring," he said. "Griphook told me that he couldn't care less who had accused me of nose-pokery since I was obviously quite adequate in the matter of bringing home the gold. But it was a valued Gringotts customer of pure-blood heritage, and he wore a red and green tartan monogrammed with little castles. So remind an ignorant half-blood Welshman – what colour is the Macnair tartan?"

"Red and green. I'd know it anywhere; my mother brought a dozen blankets of it to Kincarden when she was married."

"No surprises, then. Griphook wouldn't let me guess the man's name; he said that since I had in turn slandered the valued customer, I must consider the matter at quits or he would put me on assignment to a dragon's hoard in China."

Hestia placed a tray on Ariadne's lap. "That explains everything," she said. "Not that it ever was very much of a mystery. It's the Macnairs who've been trying to sabotage your careers because they know you know something about Veleta."

But Ariadne did not feel that it explained very much. Uncle Macnair might have a guilty secret, but they had no proof of this and no way of finding out any more about it. Veleta might be alive; or the face at the window might have been a mere apparition, and Uncle Macnair's anger might be about something quite different.

"But what if I do annoy Griphook?" mused Ivor. "Dragon's hoard sounds exciting, don't you think?"

Hestia was horrified. "Ivor, you wouldn't!"

Ariadne let their chatter wash over her because her participation was not really required and she had to read a chapter before bedtime. At first the words danced on the page in front of her, but she forced herself to focus. By the time Sarah arrived home – smelling of ylang-ylang musk and draped in clinging crimson satin – Ariadne could afford to lay down her copy of Everyday Medicinal Potions.

"Sarah, what went wrong?"

"Oh, the usual!" Sarah threw her black fur cape onto an armchair furiously. "I should have stuck with the photographer – I'm never going out with our manager again! A French restaurant – watercress soup, oysters on ice, salade niçoise, rack of roast lamb in ginger sauce, five cheeses with hothouse grapes, Grand Marnier soufflé, the works – together with string quartet and candle-lit shadows and Château Duc de Who Cares burgundy – and a gentlemanly insistence that I not know the price of anything – although there wouldn't have been much change out of fifty Galleons – no, no, that manager is a Muggle, I'm translating; I'm fairly sure he paid over a hundred pounds for my dinner alone... Then, if you please, he proposes a walk in the park! How sweet, how romantic, we'll gaze at the stars and feed cake crumbs to the swans on the lake, and he'll blow the dewdrops off stolen hyacinths to make a bouquet for me – never mind the torrential rain of the last three months! After all, his real plan is to drench me enough to make me want to drink coffee in his bachelor flat... And he can't even wait to reach the flat, for the minute we're alone in the lift – he makes a grab for me."

She paused theatrically, restraining her hands as if she could not possibly demonstrate exactly where she had been grabbed, so Ariadne provided the correct audience.

"Sarah, how terrifying! How did you throw him off?"

"I pushed him away. And he said he was entitled to me because he'd paid for dinner. After all, why would I have agreed to coffee in his flat if I didn't intend to oblige him? He was an inch away from grabbing again, so I Disapparated."

"How lucky that you kept your wits about you!" said Ariadne, because Sarah was clearly in the mood for being congratulated. She was not in the mood for being reminded that she ought to report the incident to Auror Headquarters – however justified, it was a breach of the Statute of Secrecy.

"Sooo..." Having told her story to an appreciative audience, Sarah dismissed the memory of her caddish escort. "I'm going to apply for a new manager. What have you been doing today, Ariadne?"

By day she could keep busy. It was over the nights that Ariadne had no control. Remus invaded her dreams; perverse dreams, in which he loved her and begged her to return to him. In her dreams, he gave a rational explanation that she never quite understood, and they laughed together over some joke that she never quite heard. In her dreams, a tame wolf was forever at her side, and they walked together towards a huge full moon.