Confidence under a Crescent Moon

CHAPTER TEN

Old Basford, Nottingham.

Rated PG-13 for explicit reference to poisons.

A/N. Please do not try to brew the potion described in this chapter at home. You are likely to end up killing someone. You probably won't manage to brew it correctly unless you are a descendant of Ankarad Murray.

"I'm sorry I'm not much company this evening," said Remus.

"We cannot be fascinating every day," said Ariadne, as she cleared the dinner plates from the table. "I'll wash up by myself. You're needing the time to study."

"I've been revising all day. I could give you a long lecture on Curriculum and Integration."

"And I could give you one on Potions. Lavo!" Hot water gushed into the kitchen sink and the glasses hopped into the water. "Are you bored with exams?"

"I'm boring myself almost as much as I'll bore you if I tell you about it all. Aren't you bored by the thought of sitting by yourself every evening for a fortnight?"

"Are you not just looking for an excuse not to revise?" she asked.

He was, but not seriously. He was eight days away from the end of term; before he was married, seeing to the end of another eight days had been easy. But there was a difference between comparing exam revision with deadly solitude and comparing exam revision with Ariadne. "What will you be doing if I study all evening?" he asked.

"Potions. I've plenty to do." She kissed his cheek quickly and said, "I'll see you in bed."

Once he had opened a book, he knew exactly how he was going to spend his evening. Curriculum and Integration was a dry, fiddly subject, easy enough to understand, but with endless trivial facts to learn. He still had two chapters to commit to memory, and the exam was tomorrow. So he switched his mind off the clatter of pots and thump of knives in the kitchen below, as Ariadne sliced vegetables then slid a heavy casserole into a slow oven for tomorrow's dinner. He was not consciously aware of the laundering and ironing of tomorrow's clothes, the mopping of the kitchen floor, the dust-expulsion from the lounge carpet, nor did he register the moment when she ran upstairs and the laboratory door closed behind her. He must have known that the sounds of her movement were now coming through the wall instead of the floor, but he did not pause to ask himself what she was doing until a warm spicy smell began to creep under his door.

The aroma was so powerfully sweet that in the end he had to notice it. "Is she brewing a new brand of perfume?" was his first conscious thought about her all evening. Ariadne would be sitting with her face on top of the cauldron steam; he didn't understand how she managed not to suffocate. The smell was vaguely familiar; it was a variation on the fragrance that had clung to the laboratory all year; so he supposed it was necessary.

Presently he heard her stirring the cauldron, and he realised he had become distracted, so he once again buried himself in his text book.

As the clock struck eleven, he knew that he was almost ready for the exam. There were three more tables he had to check in the morning, but the exam was scheduled for the afternoon, so he decided to sleep on it. He crept around the bathroom very quietly, so as not to wake Ariadne; it wasn't until he crawled between the sheets that he realised the bed was still empty. But he didn't think about it much, because the small part of his mind that was still awake was full of Curriculum and Integration.

It was only when the clock struck one, and he stirred in his sleep and reached out his hand to the flat cool sheet beside him, that he realised that he was still alone in the bed. Suddenly he was very awake. Ariadne had not come to bed. He lit his wand and pulled on a dressing gown. There was light under the laboratory door opposite, and he wondered if Ariadne had fallen asleep beside her cauldron. He opened the door.

A lemon-and-jasmine scent wafted out through the doorway. Ariadne was sitting quite upright, but she was completely absorbed in her potion. The scent and the light came from her everlasting candle, suspended from the ceiling directly above her. As he approached, the cauldron bubbled out a hint of the sweet fragrance from earlier. He leaned over and murmured into her ear, "Does Jigger deliberately keep you busy all night?"

"This is not for Professor Jigger," she said. She stood up, closing a book that she had been balancing on her lap, and glanced at the window, where there was no longer any sign of the moon. "Goodness, it must be midnight or later! I'm sorry, dearest, I was not meaning to stay up all night, but I'm very reluctant to leave this one."

"What is it? It smells like cinnamon porridge."

Her face closed over. "It's the project on which I've been working all year. I'm thinking I finally have it right. I've just... no real way... of knowing – Remus, do not touch me while I'm wearing overalls!"

"Sorry... deadly poison woven into the weft of your overalls. I keep forgetting."

She began to remove the overall, then the headscarf, then the dragon-skin gloves. "It's not a joke. Scourgify! You're really not knowing what might have been splashed onto these garments, and some of the ingredients will burn to the touch. Lye, for example... the amount of lye that Hestia and I had to handle in our seventh year... and the slightest brush can burn the skin right off your fingertips. There, I'm safe to touch now."

He put his hands on her waist and said, "Is this one the deadly secret that turns rats into sheep? The one about which you daren't say a word? Is it illegal?"

"It is very illegal. My contract says I'm not to do any research without Professor Jigger's direct guidance. And he's not interested in this project. It's also not legal for me to test it on human subjects." She doused the fire, and the cauldron settled to a seductively scented simmer.

"Well, I'm relieved to know that no humans are to be transformed into sheep." He drew her into his arms, but she wasn't smiling.

"I'm hoping not! The problem is... the effects on animals are not the same at all... the animal trials do not really prove anything. Sooner or later I'll be needing a human subject. Tonight's brew will be useless unless it can be tested..." Her voice trailed off. "I've always known I'd have to tell you about this one day."

"So you've reached the moment of truth with this one. You've stayed up until one o' clock in the morning to brew something that completely wasted your time unless you can find yourself an illegal human tester. What does it do?"

She glanced out at the stars again. "It's late, and you've an exam tomorrow. Is this really a good moment? Perhaps we should go to bed and...?"

"... and forget about it, and hope I never ask you again? What is it about this potion that makes it such a state secret?"

"If you keep kissing me like that I will not be able to tell you anything. I can kiss you, or I can talk to you. Choose one."

"You have me properly intrigued now." He drew his head back from another kiss. "I think we'd better choose talking." He took her hand and pulled her after him to the armchair beside the window. "Have you been keeping a secret from me?"

She settled herself into his lap and said, "You might call it a professional confidence. I've never told anybody about it. But I've known all this week that I either have to give up or to tell somebody... but the idea has been so fantastic... who would listen?"

She sounded so serious that he stopped caressing her arm and said, "You have my attention. Start at the beginning."

"The beginning was three years ago. Do you remember that day in the Cairngorms, when I was drawing pictures of toadstools, and we found ptarmigans?"

"I'll never forget." For him, it would always be the day when he had acknowledged to himself that he was in love with her. "You'd recently faced two werewolves without flinching, but on that day you nearly fainted at the sight of an adder. And you shrieked at me as if I were about to dive into a cauldron of lye."

"What I never told anybody was that I did not see the adder until after I'd shouted. I was just lucky that it slithered out at that moment. The real reason I was shrieking was the bush."

He couldn't remember any bush. "Remind me. You mean the bush that had sheltered the snake? Was it a special bush?"

"It was, because it was a species not native to Britain at all. It was an aconitum vulparia – or, in plain English, wolfsbane. The plant that is fatal to werewolves. I did not then understand its exact properties, and I was afraid that if you touched it you might die."

"And would I have?"

"You would not have, as I've since discovered. As long as you're in human form, wolfsbane affects you in the same way as any other human. Not that that's pleasant. If you touched wolfsbane sap with broken skin, you'd soon experience difficulty in breathing, a weakened heartbeat, gastric complications and pains in your limbs. And if you accidentally swallowed any – in that case, you could die. And you'd suffer several hours of intense pain, without any hope of oblivion, because wolfsbane has no effect on the mind; the victim remains clear-thinking and fully conscious to the last second. But if you'd simply touched the plant with unbroken skin it wouldn't have done worse than to sting a little."

He made a face. "It sounds a thoroughly undesirable plant. We should be glad it's not native to Britain."

"I've no idea what that shrub was doing up in the Cairngorms, but it set me thinking. Although it's so poisonous, it does have medicinal qualities when used in tiny, tiny quantities."

He did not ever remember hearing Professor Sprout or Professor Slughorn discussing wolfsbane, and he was sure that he would have remembered everything about a plant that was fatal to werewolves.

"It was used to treat the common cold before the invention of Pepper-up. It can be used as a pain-killer. And it slows the heart-beat and lowers blood-pressure... useful in a fever if you lack access to a dozen safer preparations. It suppresses respiration, assuming you're willing to risk the side-effect of death by suffocation. And a werewolf – in canine form – is powerfully repelled by the smell alone. So I began wondering..."

"Yes?"

She shifted in his arms and looked right at him. "It was a long shot at first. But could we brew a tincture of wolfsbane that was strong enough to repel the wolf, yet weak enough to do no harm to the human?"

The shock almost gave him whiplash. He turned his head towards the sweetly-smelling cauldron and asked, "Ariadne... is that what you're trying to brew? A potion to treat lycanthropy?"

She bit her lip and said, "I told you it was a fantastic idea."

"That cauldron... is it full of wolfsbane?"

"It contains some wolfsbane juices. Together with some barakol, which neutralises the effect on the respiratory system – it's the barakol that causes the sweet-cinnamon aroma. But it wouldn't taste much like cinnamon, because of what else I've had to put in it. Atropine, which counteracts the cardiac effects – but has a bitter, acrid taste. Digitalin, which is said to taste nauseous, but it's needed to neutralise the effect on the blood pressure. And strychnine – "

"Strychnine? Even I know that that's a poison. Doesn't that kill you in about ten seconds?"

"That depends on how much you take. The tiniest quantities – say, one-tenth of a grain – relieve gastric problems, like those caused by wolfsbane. Anyway, if all the undesirable qualities of all the ingredients cancelled out, we might be left with a potion that had no effect except to repel the wolf."

His mind was reeling. "So you've somehow laid hands on all these poisons – "

"I've grown them." She slid off his lap and opened the window. "Lumos." Her wand beamed down onto her herb garden, and he looked – really looked – at the innocent rows of flowers that she had so lovingly weeded. There were poppies and catnip and a sprinkling of wild heather, but there were also stout tri-branched shrubs with irregular leaves and bell-shaped violet petals.

"That's nightshade," she said, "from which I've extracted atropine."

There were tall spikes of bright purple foxgloves. "Are they for decoration?" he asked.

"They are not. Foxglove seeds are the source of digitalin."

There were tender saplings of some red-leaved tree, and a smooth ash-coloured tree whose pale green blossoms had lately given way to some apricot-like fruit. "I always wondered," he admitted, "why you grew trees in a herbiary. Your mother never did."

"It'll take a few years yet," she said. "The large tree is a Poison Nut from India. The fruits are called Quaker buttons, and they are the source of strychnine. Also of brucine, which is said to have similar properties, but is less poisonous. But it can cause paralysis, so I have not dared to experiment with brucine yet, because I know so little about it; at least I know what to expect of the strychnine."

"And the small trees?"

"Cassia – which, by the way, is not poisonous. When the trees are ten years old I'll be able to extract barakol from their leaves. But in the meantime I've had to buy barakol and strychnine from a supplier in Madras. Obviously it would be preferable to use fresh ingredients whose history I know."

But dominant among all the other plants was a striking collection of large shrubs with glossy dark-green leaves, at present opening into new blooms, some with pale yellow flowers, others with deep blue. "Those are the aconites," she confirmed. "The yellow ones are the wolfsbane. And the blue... well, they're a mistake, I suppose."

Not knowing how else to respond to the revelations of the night, hardly daring to acknowledge the wild excitement that had gripped him, Remus remarked that the mistakes seemed to be taking up a great deal of garden space.

"I could not bring myself to throw them out," said Ariadne. "They're so pretty. And they were a present from... from Severus. I know you're not liking him, Remus; I'm often not liking him myself. But he does mean well by me, and those bushes were his clumsy attempt to be friendly. In my seventh year I asked him for aconitum vulparia – that's wolfsbane – and he asked me whom I was wanting to murder. But after I'd left school he sent me some aconitum napella – that's those blue flowers, the monkshood. I'm not knowing why he sent the wrong species, whether he forgot what I'd said, or whether perhaps he was not knowing the difference between the two. Monkshood is just as poisonous as wolfsbane, and quite different chemically – absolutely useless for combatting lycanthropy – but anyway, I was somehow wanting to keep them..."

He reached over her to close the window, then slid his arms around her waist and rested his cheek against her hair. "So this is the grand point, then," he said. "This whole elaborate structure – three years of research, a garden full of poisonous plants, nearly a year of brewing up poisoned cinnamon soup – is aimed at combatting lycanthropy?"

She trembled. "There's not been any previous research. The few apothecaries who noted the properties of wolfsbane always concluded that any brew likely to be effective would contain so many other poisons that it'd not be worth experimenting. Even if a viable treatment could be brewed, some incompetent or unscrupulous apothecary would be bound to add the wrong proportion of something and end up killing some innocent werewolf. They've known for three hundred years that a wolfsbane medication is theoretically possible, but it's always been thought too difficult... the idea's been too unpopular... there's not been the funding... they have not cared enough to..." Her voice caught on a sob.

"Hush." He tightened his arms around her. "What would be likely to happen if a werewolf did drink that very obnoxious concoction? How poisonous is it?"

"Not very." She turned around in his arms, and he saw a tear on her cheek. "That's one thing of which I am certain. The proportions that I'm brewing at present are not strong enough to do much harm even to a wolf. That brew might cause some pain, but there'd be no irreparable damage. It did no harm to the rats. Or to the kittens, who are carnivorous. For some reason, aconite is far more poisonous to carnivores."

"So I did myself a favour by giving up meat." Already he was a jump ahead of her. "You say that your wolfsbane potion would be very unlikely to poison a vegetarian."

She leaned her head against his shoulder. "I'm really not knowing if I'm ready to experiment on humans, Remus. There's nothing more I can do to the formula... it's as right as an untested theory ever can be... but how right is that? It's safe for cats and rats... they're not even seeming to suffer any pain... but what would it do to a human?"

"Could it turn me into a sheep?"

"I do not know." Her voice against his dressing gown was muffled. "Those rats... well, they were not lyco – lycopontics, were they? Even under a full moon, there was no wolf to drive off. So they reacted to the potion by becoming the opposite of wolves... lambs..."

He moved her to arm's length and looked her in the eye. He could see that she was more frightened than he was. "Ariadne. If I'm to become an animal, I'd rather become a sheep than a wolf. The only question for me is, how dangerous is that potion? And, if you're quite certain that it won't kill me, how permanent are the side-effects?"

"It would not kill you. Not at that strength and in the safe quantity that I'd recommend. But it could take several days for the residue to be cleared out of your system. And the unknown side-effects... well, the rats turned back into rats eventually, but I'd never forgive myself if you ended up with a permanent fleece."

"I'd forgive you. Easily. Because wearing sheep's clothing is nothing compared with being a ravening wolf within. How much do I have to drink?"

He was already moving in the direction of the cauldron before she said, "It's yet nine days until the full moon. For the drug to have any effect, you'd have to take some every day until then, and I'm not sure how long the drugs would remain in your system... To be completely safe, I'd not take more than a gill."

"Is that a conservative estimate?"

"Of course. Remus, are you sure? It's against the law."

"Sweetheart, the law has never done anything to help werewolves. And someone has to go first in the name of science. If you're sure that a gill can't kill me, then I'm sure I want to try the experiment." He took a glass measuring cup down from the shelf and picked the ladle out of the cauldron. "Is there anything else that needs to be done to this potion before it's used?"

White with terror, she shook her head. "It has to be taken warm. Just make sure it's still smoking at least a little."

It was. He poured in one ladleful, then a second. At close quarters, a sudden suggestion of nausea nearly knocked him sideways, but he held the measuring cup steadily while he tipped out the excess, so that he held exactly a gill. His gorge rose almost high enough to make him reconsider; he wondered briefly if it were worth becoming a wolf for one night a month in order to avoid drinking this sickening brew for ten.

She closed her eyes for a second, then shook herself, opened them, and forced herself to watch.

He drank.