Properties of Moondew

CHAPTER NINE

Properties of Moondew

Saturday 8 February – Tuesday 24 June 1986

Old Basford, Nottingham; Diagon Alley, London.

Rated PG for references to alcohol abuse, insanity, bankruptcy and other unpleasant aspects of being an adult.

"I'd forgotten how vile the climate can be here!" said the dinner-guest, as she stepped out of the Floo and shook snow from her boot. "I found an icicle growing in my cistern – which doesn't flush – and walking in the wind on my way to the public Floo was like being whipped with knives! Remind me, Mrs Lupin – is every winter like this?"

"I'm believing it's worse than usual this year," said Ariadne. "I'm so glad that you could come, Professor Vablatsky. You've probably not met my husband before – this is Remus Lupin."

The thick eyebrows concentrated over the chocolate-brown eyes. "I think I do recognise you, young man. Weren't you one of the boys who were always hanging around with James Potter? And, of course, I certainly remember Miss Webster."

"Welcome home, Professor." Sarah shook hands with her old teacher with a warmth that she usually reserved for her male acquaintances. "And I think you can't have forgotten Richard Campion – or Joe Fenwick?"

If Professor Vablatsky had mislaid their names, she didn't admit to it. She took Joe's hand, a dark shadow crossed her face, and she dropped it again abruptly. "I see you have suffered a major trauma since we last met," she said. "But Mr Campion – do you still play Quidditch? I missed the British Quidditch League when I was in New Zealand."

Ariadne left her friends to tell Professor Vablatsky what they now did with their lives while she brought mushroom soup to the table. It seemed a long time before the guest of honour was ready to stop asking questions and begin answering them.

"I put my affairs in order as soon as I received Mrs Lupin's owl," she said. "I returned to the British Isles four days ago. I sold my old house five years ago, when I thought I'd never return home, but I've just bought myself a new one in Galway."

"But that's... miles from everywhere!" exclaimed Richard. Ariadne was surprised too, for the Vablatsky family had always lived in Guildford, and there was only one Floo grate in Ireland powerful enough to connect over the Irish Sea – it no longer seemed surprising that Professor Vablatsky had had to walk through the snow between grates in order to reach Nottingham.

"Exactly. Miles and miles away. It'll take those media sharks years to work out exactly where I am. Meanwhile, I have a quiet house with five spare bedrooms in a very Muggle village. If we ever pull Veleta and the children out of Perthshire, they will have a very private home."

Joe nodded, the first sign that he had been listening, while Ariadne collected the dishes and brought the two casseroles out of the oven. Remus's distaste for meat was slowly weakening, but she still kept the shredded chicken in a separate dish so that he was free to avoid it.

"So tell us, Professor," Sarah urged. "What's going to happen to Veleta? After all these years... didn't you know she was still alive?"

"No, I didn't." The prophetess spoke very matter-of-factly as she spooned out paella. "I've never been able to See much for Veleta – I've always been too close to her. Obviously, when I heard my son had been murdered, the first thing I did was to consult the crystal. But it told me nothing. Nor did the cards, or the runes, or even the zodiac wheel. There was just fog, and silence, and intense sadness – but not even clear enough to be accepted as confirmation of death. It seems that no magic can untangle our most complex emotions enough to forecast a future."

"So does that mean that you can't – that you won't be able to divine anything about Veleta's present situation? What's happening to her in Foss, or what kind of spells are keeping her there, or what we can do about it?"

"I'm afraid not, my dear. Not by any magical method, anyway."

Sarah came close to pouting, as if a prophetess with no prophecies were wasting their time.

"But you can go to Foss, can't you?" Richard prompted. "You're a prominent community member. If you went to the castle, saw for yourself, and kicked up a fuss in the media – you could do something, couldn't you?"

"You could do that part better than I. I probably can't enter the castle because the Macnairs have cast some kind of spell over me... something they call Banning."

"We know about that." Remus groaned. "It means that if you try to enter the castle you'll die."

"I don't understand," said Richard. "Why would social climbers like the Macnairs want to Ban a famous person like Cassandra Vablatsky?"

"Because I'm infamous. It's to do with a prophecy that I made, oh, twenty years ago now. They asked me to dinner along with a whole crowd of important guests and then asked me to foretell their futures in front of everyone. I did warn them that it wasn't a good idea, but they wanted to impress their guests, and I'm afraid that what the crystal told me was... rather embarrassing."

"Oh, do tell!" said Sarah. "After everything they've done to Veleta, can't we know about their embarrassments?"

Professor Vablatsky laughed bitterly. "After everything they've done to Veleta, their other little sins won't surprise you too much. I Saw that Walden Macnair would waste his loyalty on a Dark Lord and spill much innocent blood, yet gain no profit. That Gertrude would continue to have sorrow in her married life without gaining in character, and that Crudelia would always be assumed insane. By this time the hall was so silent that I realised I'd been... too honest."

"Had they dropped a truth potion into your wine?" asked Sarah breathlessly.

"I'm certain of it now, my dear, but I didn't realise it at the time. So when Walden said, 'Don't stop,' I found myself telling him that the Macnairs would be cast into utter penury because his son Humphrey – who was about nine years old at the time – would drown his life away in Firewhisky. At this point Gertrude was overcome with rage, and asked me what else I had to say about the Macnair bairns. So I said that the Lestrange nephews would be the most notorious criminals of their time, while Baldwin would spend his youth in Azkaban without becoming famous for it, and little Dragomira would make a name for herself by specialising in spells that required... cruelty to small animals. I even said that Gertrude's unborn child would grow up to cheat the Macnair boundaries and do the deed that her ancestors had most dreaded. It was all quite nasty, really."

"And Walden Macnair didn't throw a hatchet at you?" Richard helped himself to the last scoop of rice.

"Even he didn't dare attack me in front of all his guests! But the next day I received a Howler telling me I'd been Banned. And I wasn't too interested in finding out exactly what that meant."

"Well, some of it's come true," said Richard. "We all know that old Walden was a Death Eater, and it's difficult to imagine that Gertrude is happy about being married to him. Baldwin's in Azkaban for trying to kill Ariadne, and his Lestrange cousins were all over the Daily Prophet when they tortured the Longbottoms."

"And Dragomira's animal fetish – ugh." Sarah tried to speak lightly, but her tone was brittle. "I only hope it's true that Regelinda will disgrace her ancestors. I don't foresee it, though. She's such a Macnairish Macnair. Professor, what do you intend to do while we're waiting around for inspiration about Veleta? Would you go back to teaching?"

"No, I've finished that chapter of my life. In fact, chapters are what I'm doing at the moment. I'm writing a book."

Ariadne knew at once that Professor Vablatsky had a draft in her pocket. And, sure enough, the conversation for the rest of the evening revolved around the fascinating topic of Unfogging the Future.

* * * * * * *

"I'm surprised Professor Vablatsky didn't want to spend more time talking about her long-lost granddaughter," said Remus afterwards.

"I'm feeling she finds the subject too painful. She's a visionary, and for this situation she has no visions. So she's... not going to help us after all. Not unless somebody else tells her what to do. I was hoping that she would have ideas for us."

"She said that your cousin Regelinda would 'cheat the Macnair boundaries'. Could that be a clue?"

"Perhaps. But even if Regelinda has discovered a way to horrify her ancestors... are you thinking she'd share her discovery with us?"

"Certainly not tonight," he agreed. "No, definitely not tonight. It's far too late in the evening..."

* * * * * * *

Professor Vablatsky had not exaggerated: the weather was so cold that no wizard ventured into Diagon Alley. The Post Office owls huddled on their perches, refusing to deliver mail, and Madam Jigger had to hand-deliver bulk orders of Pepper-Up Potion by Floo. By mid-afternoon the orders were completed, the books were up to date, and the laboratory was spotless; there was not even a research project to hand, for Ariadne's report on diet pills was already sitting on the publisher's desk.

Even Professor Jigger was too bored with being trapped indoors to pretend he needed to mix a potion. "We'll start your sleeping draught project as soon as the weather clears," he said, "but there's no point in keeping the shop open any longer today. Miss MacDougal, be here at the usual time tomorrow."

Ariadne took the Floo back to her empty house. Remus, who was in the final week of his second teaching round, had been assigned to a Reception class in Mapperley, where the tiny pupils paid more for their haircuts than for their designer shoes, but where surprising numbers of them were unable to count to ten. A sweet young lady named Miss Peach was instructing him on the best way of teaching them nursery rhymes. The hardest part of the job was that Remus had to walk nearly three miles through the snow every morning (he usually contrived a way to Apparate home). But today he would not be arriving any time soon, for this afternoon he had a teachers' meeting and would not be home before six. There was not much for Ariadne to do except curl up in front of a blue fire and open Hesper Starkey's Soporifics and Hypnotics to pore over the herbological breakdown of natural sleep-inducers.

She had written two pages of notes before the fire crackled and turned green. Her brother's head was in the flames.

"Ariadne, are you alone? Thank Merlin. It's taken weeks to catch you home alone on a day when our parents are both out. I'm not wanting to trouble them with this very serious matter."

"I'm listening." She knew she was supposed to ask what the problem was, but somehow she felt it wasn't as important as Kenneth liked to believe.

"Ariadne, have you still those cards that were hexed to bite?"

"I have not. Remus did not let me touch them; he destroyed them the day after you left."

"So he disliked being caught out, did he?" said Kenneth. "Where did he buy the cards?"

Ariadne ignored this insulting insinuation and answered softly, "He did not. They were a present to me from Uncle Macnair. They had a picture of Macnair Castle on the backs, remember?"

"Whatever their origin, they were hexed. Ariadne, think carefully about this. Could Remus ever have been alone with those cards and hexed them?"

"The Macnairs cast the hex."

"It's not appropriate to cast wild accusations without evidence. The Macnairs are very respectable people. Whereas Remus never did make very much of himself. When he worked here at Kincarden he was always disappearing off somewhere..."

The hairs rose on Ariadne's neck and she dropped her eyes to the floor. The flow of her brother's narrative did not falter.

"... and reappearing as a nervous wreck. I seriously suspected him of alcoholism. But Janet seems to have been nearer the mark – she thought he had symptoms of spell damage. And those hexed cards only confirm it. The kindest thing I can say about them is that Remus has a very spiteful sense of humour."

"You're certainly wishing him to be guilty of something."

"I – " Kenneth pulled himself up short. "Rubbish. I'm wishing to save you before you're dragged in any deeper. Remus likes jinxes, even though he's too much of an amateur to save himself from the consequences of his own spells. I spoke to Severus last month and he confirmed all my suspicions. He says that Remus used to be a close friend of the mass-murderer Sirius Black."

Kenneth paused, presumably to check whether she were shocked or defiant. She refused to look at him.

"Ariadne, I think you're needing to consider seriously the possibility that you've married a man who plays with the Dark Arts."

"I am not." Ariadne lifted her head again. "You're guessing wrongly, Kenneth. Remus loathes the Dark Arts. He's never – "

"I'm not here to argue," Kenneth interrupted. "If you will not face reality, that's your problem. I've given my warning. Until Remus can demonstrate decent mature behaviour, I'm having nothing more to do with him. And nor are my bairns."

Ariadne froze on her knees.

"You heard me. I'm not loosing my bairns in a house of spiteful jinxes and Dark artefacts. Either Remus grows up, or you give up on him, or you both stay right away from Morag and Aidan." And Kenneth's head disappeared from the hearth in a blaze of triumph.

For Ariadne, there might as well have been no fire. Kenneth's wanting to believe that Remus is dangerous. The absurdity was devoid of humour, since the consequence was that she might never see Morag and Aidan again.

If Remus were home she would throw herself into his arms and weep a full cauldron... no. Her bone-marrow frosted over with the lonely realisation: I can never tell Remus about this. He had suffered enough rejection for reasons related to his lycanthropy; he was not needing to hear that he was now accused of Dark magic, or that he was unfit company for children.

So she cried out, and washed her face, and began to chop onions for dinner.

Remus said, "You seem distant this evening."

"Perhaps I'm thinking about Potions," she said. "Professor Jigger has finally agreed that I can begin work on a sleeping draught. I cannot decide between henbane and sweet violet as a base."

"Why not poppy syrup?"

She suppressed a genuine smile as she reminded him, "The idea is to induce sleep for a night, not a week! Have you any idea how many opiates would be striking the cerebrum if the primary decoction were poppy?" And so the subject was turned.

* * * * * * *

Professor Jigger became bored with waiting for the weather to improve. After two more days of closing the shop early, he decreed that they would use the days of light custom to begin work on the sleeping draught.

"But forget about the henbane and violet juvenilia," he said. "If you're serious about sending people to sleep, use moondew."

Ariadne was by now familiar with all Professor Jigger's cupboards, but she had never seen moondew in any of them. It was almost unobtainably rare; on the N.E.W.T. syllabus it had been mentioned as a mere academic theory.

He was unimpressed by her astonishment. "Of course you can get it, if you know where to look. But remember that it loses its potency when exposed to fresh air. You'll need to use a spearmint decoction to seal it."

Her mind raced. Moondew would catch illusions and multiply visions, but spearmint was a stimulant. The problem was how to preserve the fragile lunar properties of the moondew without upsetting the hypnotic balance and creating a waking hallucinogen.

No examiner, requiring an answer within the hour, would expect a N.E.W.T. student to solve the problem. It was a calculation beyond the limits of the Hogwarts syllabus. A dozen possibilities were charging into her mind, but she couldn't produce the correct solution without quill and parchment. But perhaps... if she added desiccated fennel and stirred widdershins...

Even when Professor Jigger brought out the unlabelled star-shaped phial, he did not volunteer how he had procured it. He only said, "While you're at it, remember that the product has to be commercially viable. Fresh moondew is an exorbitant price, but it can be forced to self-perpetuate in the laboratory. Show me how you'd set about that."

* * * * * * *

The snow was still falling well into April. On a miserable evening when the rain was undecided whether to become sleet, and Remus was preparing an oral presentation on Non-English Speaking Children in the Multicultural Classroom, a voice from the fireplace called, "Is anybody home?"

"Mercy, what's wrong?" Ariadne flew to the hearth. "We're not busy... come in and talk properly."

Mercy Macmillan whirled in the flames and stepped into their living room. She was fighting back tears. "Ariadne, I've made a mess of everybody's life."

"How miserable." Ariadne set a pint of milk to boil on the stove-range, then stirred a teaspoon of crushed hypericum and a teaspoon of cacao into a mug.

"It is! I'm thinking I've destroyed Kingsley!"

"You're feeling responsible for everything that's gone wrong."

"Well, I am. Hestia says I've just about killed Kingsley, and she's so angry that I'm wondering if we can ever be friends again."

Mercy was alarmingly close to breaking down, so Ariadne passed a handkerchief. Mercy sniffed into it.

"And I'm not knowing if Kingsley will ever be normal again. He'll fail his exams, he'll never be an Auror, and it's all my fault!"

Ariadne handed her cousin a mug of hot chocolate and sat quietly beside her. Mercy gulped at it, then sipped tearfully without speaking. Ariadne pushed away the thought that she had a report to write for Jigger, and let Mercy take her time. Only when the mug was empty did Mercy speak again.

"Kingsley chucked me yesterday. I never thought he would. I really thought he'd stand by me no matter what. But he left me feeling," Mercy's eyes were wide with terror, "that he despised me."

It must have been a bruising experience, but Ariadne wondered what Mercy had left out.

Mercy was apparently expecting Ariadne to say something. She eventually broke the silence with: "He saw me with somebody else." Pause. "It was Dempster Wiggleswade."

Ariadne remembered Dempster Wiggleswade, a large-framed Ravenclaw who had been Mercy's first boyfriend, right back in their fourth year at Hogwarts. Mercy had been devastated when Dempster had abandoned her for Ivor's sister Gwenog; she had never seemed so attached to any of her subsequent boyfriends. "Are you thinking you and Dempster will get back together again?"

"He said he was wanting to," said Mercy, tears trickling down her cheeks, "but there was Kingsley. I've been with him for nine months, and we were supposed to be committed. My parents like Kingsley. He's honest, hardworking, even-tempered, very clever... and I suppose he's good-looking, too. You were expecting me to end up with him, were you not, Ariadne?"

Ariadne had never expected that; she had sensed from the beginning that Mercy wasn't seriously interested in Kingsley. "Were you feeling pressured to stay with Kingsley?"

"Nobody said anything," Mercy admitted truthfully. "But I was feeling how they'd all be... disappointed... if it did not work out. Most of all, Kingsley himself. He'd be so broken-hearted if I changed my mind. So I had to make it work. And it might have, if Dempster had not turned up again."

"But were you wanting to be with Kingsley?"

"In a way I was. I'm not like you, Ariadne. I was frightened of leaving my parents' house – having to live alone and earn a living. Kingsley helped me move into the flat in Diagon Alley, and he carried on looking after me. I do like him. Being with him was better than being alone. We really might have stayed together if I had not met Dempster again. Then Dempster was wanting me to meet him... and I was feeling it better not to tell Kingsley... so I was seeing both of them... Ariadne, I was never intending to go out with two men at once!"

"It took you by surprise, then."

"It certainly did! At first I was only seeing Dempster as a friend; and when it happened... when he said... when he kissed me... I knew I had to break up with Kingsley. But it was hard to find a good moment. It took," her voice dropped to an inaudible mutter, "six weeks. And then last night, just as I really was going to do it – I was, Ariadne, really! – Kingsley saw us. In the worst way. Dempster was kissing me in the living room just as Kingsley Flooed into the fireplace. And Kingsley heard me telling Dempster I loved him. We were not even knowing he was there until we – we looked up and saw him standing in front of the sofa with a bunch of red roses. And he just looked at us, never saying a word, and laid down the flowers and Disapparated."

"How terrifying."

"It was. And an hour later an owl tapped on the window, and Kingsley had sent me – this." The scrap of paper that Mercy pulled out of her sleeve was so crumpled and blotted that Ariadne was struggling to make out the familiar handwriting.

Mercy,

Just in case it wasn't clear, we have now officially broken up.

Have a happy life,

KLS.

"He's so calm – so controlled – so furious with me... and I've ruined his life. Hestia's angry that I didn't tell him six weeks ago, and Sarah says that love is too complicated to have rules of right and wrong, and now Hestia's shouting at Sarah too. But Sarah says nobody can help these things, and Kingsley will get over it... she's maybe right about that, are you not thinking?"

"You're hoping no permanent damage is done."

"But was it such a very wicked thing to do?" Mercy pleaded. "I have to be with Dempster. And it happened because I'm not liking to hurt people. Surely there are many wronger things in the world..."

Two hours and three handkerchiefs later, Mercy had gone to bed in the study (she hadn't the courage to return to Diagon Alley) and Ariadne was aimlessly pulling yet more stuffing out of the sofa, feeling that she was needing the hypericum almost as much as her cousin was. Mercy had been very very willing to pour out her troubles, had thanked Ariadne for taking so much interest... yet Ariadne was left with the dismaying suspicion that she had said all the wrong things.

Remus finally laid his quill down on the dining table and looked over at her. What she saw in his face tore at her heart worse than any of Mercy's tears.

"You're displeased with me," she said.

"I'm sure you did the best you could." He spoke evenly, but he slapped his presentation notes into a folder with unnecessary force. "To be honest, I've no idea how I'd handle a situation like that, and I'm glad I didn't have to."

"But you'd not have done it that way."

He moved into the kitchen and took two mugs out of the cupboard. Ariadne watched until it was clear that he had no intention of speaking, and then returned to fiddling with the stuffing. Mercy had been so unhappy, so sorry about making Kingsley miserable, so guilty... yet so ready to make excuses for herself, so unwilling to admit that she had actually been selfish or deceptive...

Remus handed her a mug and sat down next to her, still without comment. Ariadne knew at first sniff that he too had mixed hypericum with cacao; he had been watching her earlier. That meant he hadn't really had his whole mind on his presentation – he must have absorbed most of what had happened on the sofa.

"You're doing to me what I was doing to Mercy," she said at last.

"What were you doing to Mercy?"

"Not telling her that she was wrong."

"I don't like to tell people they're wrong." He took a careful sip so as to avoid her eye. "I like to focus on the positives."

"Mercy was already so miserable. I was not wanting to make her feel worse."

Remus still did not look at her as he hunted for words. "She might perhaps feel better in the long term if, just for a few minutes, she acknowledged she had been selfish and decided to apologise to Kingsley." He did not add, You have prolonged her misery by encouraging her not to acknowledge her mistake, but she felt it hanging in the air between them.

It was a very long minute before Remus spoke again. "Actually you did well to keep your temper as long as you did. I couldn't have. I'm afraid my sympathies right now are with Kingsley."

"So are mine," she agreed. "As soon as we have Mercy out of the house, we should invite him to dinner."

* * * * * * *

By the time Kingsley came to dinner, he had moved into the Auror dormitories so as to avoid Diagon Alley. He spent the evening pouring out his troubles. But he was evidently embarrassed to have burdened them, because he refused their next invitation.

"He doesn't visit us either," complained Sarah. "Even if Mercy is going out, he won't risk it."

"I don't blame him," said Hestia, after Sarah had gone. "Ariadne, it's so hard not to be angry with Mercy. I try to be nice, but I don't know what to say to her any more."

"The silence is thick enough to cut," said Mercy, after Hestia had gone. "Hestia says nothing but I can see her thinking. Whereas Sarah does not care about what I did, but she complains all day long that Kingsley is not wanting to be her friend any more. Ariadne, I'm thinking I cannot live with them any more!"

Mercy moved out to the Healers' dormitories at St Mungo's. Sarah let the spare bedroom to a French tourist.

"She's a wonderful gourmet cook," said Hestia after one week. "I'm learning so much from her."

"I've dismissed her," said Sarah after another week. "I found her in bed with my boyfriend. We've found an Austrian this time."

"She's amazing with her cleaning polishes," said Sarah the next week.

"She's very particular about housework," said Hestia dubiously. "She's too sensible to annoy Sarah, but she picks on me quite a lot."

Evidently Sarah wised up to the situation, because after another week the boarder was Japanese.

"She's polite and quiet and no trouble at all," they both reported.

But a fortnight later the new flatmate vanished, and Sarah's collection of Wedgwood jasperware vanished with her.