Victory under Rose Moon

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Old Basford, Nottingham.

Rated PG-13 for explicit lycanthropy.

The following evening Remus was still alive, his exam had gone well, and he hadn't grown a fleece. The only symptom of the wolfsbane potion was that his breath reeked of sweet spices. But he asked for another dose then, and for each evening afterwards.

After feeding him the poisonous cocktail, Ariadne tried to leave him alone to revise for his exams, but she found that he was pursuing her all around the house with a honeymoon ardour. If she worked in the kitchen, he would catch her around the waist; if she were busy in the laboratory, he would creep up behind her to stroke her hair; if she were reading on the sofa, he would pull her into his lap; if she weeded her garden, he would seize her hand and hold it against his face (she had to remind him of the poisonous plants and his lack of gloves); in the middle of the night, she would awaken because he had suddenly clasped her. He was slightly apologetic for paying her so much attention, but the only explanation he ever gave her was, "I didn't think you would love me this much."

After two days she mixed him a peppermint gargle. That greatly improved the after-taste in his mouth, but it did nothing, he admitted ruefully, to soften the immediate revolting taste of the potion.

She was worried by how happy he was. She knew that part of it was simple gratitude to her for trying. But he was also expecting the wolfsbane potion to work. And if it didn't work this month, he would want to keep experimenting until it did. She kept trying to explain that if the dose were low enough to be safe, then it was probably too low to have any repellent effect. But he only laughed, and said, "There are thousands of werewolves in the world, and we are a potential danger to millions of people. Someone has to try the experiment."

On Sunday Ariadne sat at the kitchen table and wrote up her sleeping draught interim report for Professor Jigger.

On Monday Remus sat his Education Studies exam and claimed it was the best exam he had ever taken.

On Tuesday Professor Jigger grudgingly conceded that the report required only minor corrections before it would be ready for publication. Ariadne made the corrections between washing the dishes and ironing the robes.

On Wednesday Professor Jigger submitted the report to the Western Journal of Apothecarism under the authorship of Belby, Jigger, Jigger and Lupin. (Belby, the joint owner of Slug and Jigger's, had had nothing to do with the project, but it was a condition of sponsorship that his name be included on all publications.)

On Thursday Remus sat his Practical Teaching exam.

On Friday he bought a Muggle newspaper and scoured it for casual summer jobs.

When Ariadne stepped out of the hearth on Saturday evening she was greeted by a warm aroma of stewing mushrooms. Remus was stirring a frying pan in the kitchen.

"I'm sorry I'm late," she said. "Thanks for starting dinner. Have you been home all day?"

"It's Professor Jigger who should be sorry. No, I went to Evesham and joined the queue of casual day-labourers in the strawberry fields. I've brought home perhaps five Galleons to offset the costs of my education." Remus indicated the Muggle money piled on the kitchen table beside a pound-punnet of strawberries.

Ariadne forced herself to speak casually. "I'll take it to Gringotts on Monday. You must be exhausted if you've been out in the sun all day."

"I'm certainly not as fit as I was two years ago... Sweetheart, is my potion ready to drink?"

"It'll need reheating. I'll fetch you some." She climbed up to the laboratory soberly, lit a fire under the cauldron, and waited for the potion to boil. She knew there was no escape from tonight's full moon, but Remus's focus on the potion was alarming. So far, as she had predicted, the potion hadn't hurt him; indeed, it didn't seem to have any side effects at all. But they had no way of knowing how wolfsbane and a werewolf would interact with the full moon.

She knew it was too late to discuss the dangers. The time to protest had been nine days ago, before Remus had volunteered himself as a human guinea pig. Nothing they said or did this evening could alter whatever must happen tonight. But Remus was only facing danger; she was facing the moral responsibility for having allowed another person to accept those dangers.

She handed him the measuring glass, filled up to a quarter-pint. He drank it swiftly, without commenting on the horrible taste, and turned back to the frying pan. He told her over dinner that Muggle berry farming was a ludicrous waste of effort, and he couldn't believe the Muggle farmers paid out so much money to so many pickers when the whole crop could be managed with a single spell.

Ariadne did not dare suggest that he was wasting his energy by expending so much unnecessary effort for so little money. Her wages would keep them both through the summer, but she knew better than to suggest that he deserved a holiday.

The strawberries were dry in her mouth. After the first two or three, she left them all to him. She leaned against him on the sofa; although he automatically put his arm around her, he was very tense, and she knew that his mind was travelling in the same endless circles as hers.

"Ariadne. I don't want you to worry about it."

"Of course you do not. But of course I will."

"It can't do me any harm. The worst thing that can happen is that nothing will happen." But she knew he didn't quite believe this. They both knew that they couldn't predict the side effects.

"If you wake up in the morning with an unshearable fleece, will you laugh it off as the cost of playing roulette with science?"

"Ariadne." He tilted her chin so that she was forced to look at him. He was looking at her very seriously, as if this were the last evening they would ever live together as husband and wife. "That's the point. I played roulette with science. Nobody forced me to. You advised me not to. But I chose to."

"And I colluded and made it easy for you. I could have Vanished the potion before you touched it."

"What, you've maintained your Vanishing skills at your N.E.W.T. level of competence?" She had to smile at this. "Yes, you could have made it more difficult for me to drink the potion. But I knew the risks. If I lose the gamble – in the end, it's my responsibility. Not yours. Can you accept that?"

She wanted to make it easy for him by pretending she could. She compromised by saying, "We share the responsibility. I can accept that much."

"And what is the likeliest outcome?"

"On the dose you took," she recited dully, "I'm about ninety percent certain that the wolf will feel rather sick and have a painful night. Then you'll wake up human in the morning, and there's a possibility that you'll feel just as sick as the wolf did. There's no real antidote to aconite poisoning, but – on the dose you've taken – the effects will wear off in the end, and I've prepared the pain relievers for you."

And there's the chance – the wildest, outside chance – that there will be no wolf tonight. The potion may have contained enough wolfsbane to repel the wolf altogether. She didn't want to repeat the fragile hope that was the reason he had taken the potion in the first place.

"And as to how long the wolf will have to suffer," he said, "we did manage to choose the shortest night in the year."

They both relapsed into silence. At half past nine Remus stood up and she followed him to the garage door, the door that implacably separated his nightmare life from his normal one.

"I suppose I can't tell you to go straight to bed," he said.

She shook her head. "I'll have to watch you every minute. If it works we'll... More to the point, if the wolf ends up in trouble, I'll have to be there to do something."

"Ariadne, no! What if it bites you?"

"If you're in pain, I'll probably have time to send a Stunner; but that's a risk that the apothecary has to take. Just as you've taken a risk in becoming the apothecary's guinea pig."

He nodded unhappily, then held out his arms to her. "Promise you'll take all reasonable care," he murmured in her ear.

"Of course I will."

"I love you."

"I love you."

She clung to him, and for a few seconds – for eternity – they held each other as if they would never hold each other again. Finally he loosed his arms and said, "We're cutting it fine. The moon will be up in about seven minutes."

Unwillingly, she relaxed her arms. He kissed her briefly, opened the garage door, cast a two-way Transparency charm, and handed her his wand. She closed the door with a locking spell and Summoned the pain-killer preparations down from the laboratory – it was months since she'd had a Summoning spell go wrong. Then she lit her wand-tip and settled to watch Remus.

He was lying face down, because this was the most comfortable position for Transforming. The light was fading fast, and, even with the illumination from her wand, she almost missed the first twitch.

Perhaps it didn't happen at all, she told herself. Perhaps, in a few minutes, I'll be opening the door and letting him out.

But the pain shot through his face as his shaking limbs bent out of control. His face began to lengthen, grey hair sprang out of his pores, and – as his clothes were mysteriously absorbed into his shaggy pelt – he unmistakably had a tail. His arms were longer, his legs were shorter, his hands were paws... in just one minute, the creature lying on the garage floor was a wolf.

He was a wolf.

She could have wept with vexation. She hadn't realised, until she saw the wolf lying in front of her, how much she had counted on the wolf's not coming tonight. It had been foolish, it had been fantastic... but she had clung to the dear and desperate hope that the potion would make a difference. She had worried about Remus's optimism, but the truth was that she herself had dreamed of success more than she dared to admit.

But the potion had made no difference at all. Remus was as much a wolf as he had ever been. She watched him push himself stiffly to his four feet, shake himself, then walk over to the garage door.

He reared up so suddenly that for a second she forgot that the transparency was magical, that a solid wooden door stood between them, and cowered back on her heels at the sight of the beast's fangs. He placed his paws on the transparent door, and she wondered what exactly he could see – whether he perceived her at all in any meaningful way, and whether he understood about the barrier or whether he believed he could reach her.

The wolf closed his jaws and abruptly dropped himself down to all fours again. He paced slowly around the garage once, twice. He nodded his head in a manner that – by some trick of the wand light – almost looked intelligent. Then he lay down on the floor and closed his eyes. She did not know whether he were really asleep or only lying quietly. But he lay for a long time, with no movement except his own breathing.

Sick with disappointment, Ariadne finally stopped watching the wolf and looked at the array of pain-killing potions in front of her. It seemed she would not need them. Far from being affected by the wolfsbane potion, the wolf did not even seem to be in any pain. Nothing had changed. This was a simple Transformation, like every other Transformation since Remus had been four years old.

Ariadne set the alarm on her watch for four o' clock and lay down on the hall carpet. It was only as she closed her own eyes that one small difference occurred to her.

The wolf had not howled.

Obviously she had not expected to hear the wolf; the garage was always covered with a Silencing charm. But now she recollected that he had not looked as if he were howling. Not while Remus was Transforming; not after the Transformation; not when the wolf had reared up to the door. His jaws had been parted, but not wide open for a howl. The wolf really didn't seem to have attempted to make any noise at all. Nor had he seemed at all aggressive towards her, his prey on the other side of the invisible barrier. After that first attempt, he had shown no interest.

She sat up again. Through the door, she saw that the wolf was still asleep. He didn't usually settle this quickly. Usually he paced and complained and thumped and tore for hours.

Perhaps it was just a coincidence. But could it be that the wolfsbane potion had had some kind of sedative effect? Aconites certainly acted as a sedative on humans; but no other sedative taken by a human seemed to carry over its sedative effect to a werewolf in canine form. And it was almost impossible, to say nothing of perilous, to persuade a wolf to drink any of the sedatives known to be effective on animals. Could aconite be the exception – the plant that would restrain a werewolf efficiently?

She didn't want to think about it too hard. It was such a complex and poisonous potion; if its only useful property were to sedate, then she didn't think it would be worth the trouble of brewing it again.

She began to cry quietly. I must not cry tomorrow, she told herself. Tomorrow Remus will be needing me to take care of him. Tomorrow I'll have to deal with his disappointment. So she tried to cry herself out through what was left of the evening. The potion did not work, but the idea always was ridiculous, she tried to tell herself. For three years I've been following a magically illogical pipe dream; it serves me right if it did not work.

After she had cried, she washed her face in cold water. Then she covered it with Hestia's face cream – the face cream that they had both thought so daft and frivolous, but which really did do a good job of refreshing the skin and smoothing out the puffy bags under one's eyes. I will face tomorrow with dignity, she said, over and over again, like a mantra. I will try to be glad that Remus seems not to be in any pain.

She lay down on the hall carpet and slept.

Her alarm woke her at four o' clock. There was the beginning of the hint of dawn through the hall windows. She surveyed her medical supplies, realising that there wasn't much that Remus would need this morning. He hadn't scratched or bitten himself at all, and he didn't seem to have suffered any pain. She tried to rehearse what she would say to him. All she really wanted was a truthful answer to the question, Are you all right? But Remus was a past master of Stoic deception on this point. How crushed would he be that their experiment had failed? Would he really joke that he was glad not to have grown a fleece?

Would he want to try again next month, with a stronger and more dangerous dose?

Or would he be sufficiently sobered and discouraged to leave well enough alone?

After about twenty minutes the wolf in the garage gave a tremendous shudder. As the moon set and light poured in through the hall windows, the beast's limbs twisted out of shape, his shoulders straightened, his torso shrank. Ariadne tore open the garage door. She was in time to see grey hair dissolving into nothing, and the wolf's snout shrank back into the exhausted face of her husband.

He opened his eyes.

"How long have you been here?" he asked crossly. "That could have been dangerous."

"Only a few seconds," she soothed. "I did not open the door until after moonset." She held out her hand and helped him to his feet. "Are you in pain?"

"No – ouch!" He groaned. "Not pain, honestly. I'm just stiff, as usual."

She guided him across the threshold and into the house. He needed to lean on her, but suddenly he was smiling.

"Ariadne – it works!"

"What?"

"The potion!" He grabbed her hands excitedly. "It works! The wolfsbane repels the wolf!"

She thought he must have been dreaming. He had been so optimistic that his happy dreams must seem more real than his memories of what had actually happened last night. "Remus, it did not work," she said sadly. "You turned into a wolf, as always. The only difference was that you seemed slightly sedated. Were you having good dreams?"

"Oh, wonderful dreams." Remus walked into the kitchen and began to boil the kettle. "But I wasn't sedated. I could move freely." He pulled out two teapots, one for chamomile tea, one for Sri Lankan blend. "Sweetheart, I don't know what we expected to happen last night, but it's clear that your potion does work. I know it looked as if I had turned into a wolf – but that was only my body. I kept my own mind all night."

She didn't understand. "What happened?"

"Usually the wolf takes over my mind and my body. But last night it couldn't reach my mind. It seemed frightened of something... of the wolfsbane, I suppose. I could feel the wolf howling around me, but it didn't want to come any nearer. I was thinking like a human."

Her mind reeled. It hadn't occurred to her that the potion might have this kind of effect, protecting the mind without affecting the body. "Do you remember much?" she asked.

He poured the tea and handed her the mug of chamomile. "I remember it all. Which I usually don't. The wolf's brain is so fuzzy that the most I ever remember in the morning is a series of sensory impressions. But last night I saw and heard and smelled everything so clearly... I saw that I had paws, and I began thinking, 'It hasn't worked,' and then I realised... I was actually thinking in words. How human is that?"

She drank her tea, too much surprised to say anything.

"I'm sorry I gave you a fright last night," he said. "I leapt up to tell you it was working, and you looked as if I were about to eat you. Then I remembered that I still looked like a wolf to you, and that the garage was sound-proofed, so I dropped back to all fours."

"That must have been lonely," she said.

"Being a wolf is always lonely. But usually the wolf doesn't remember how it felt five minutes ago. So I walked around the garage, and realised that I couldn't speak words anyway. That was nothing to do with my state of mind; it's just that the wolf's mouth is the wrong shape to make human speech sounds. The animal part of the wolf wanted to go out hunting, but my human mind knew that the doors were locked, and the only sensible course of action was to lie down and go to sleep. I was rational. So I started to recite the multiplication table, but I fell asleep before I finished it."

She hardly dared ask the all-important question. "So are you thinking – are you honestly thinking – that it would have been safe to let you into the house?"

"To be completely truthful," he admitted, "I could still feel the wolf. I still had the wild perception that eating raw meat would be pleasurable, and that howling was friendly behaviour. Reciting my tables was quite a lot harder than usual, and I couldn't remember any long words. So I don't want to be set loose in the house until you've modified the formula. Next month you must try mixing me a stronger dose – "

She was aghast. "Remus, do you not believe in quitting while we're ahead?"

"Would a slightly stronger dose hurt me?"

"I'm not knowing. On last night's showing, it'd not do permanent harm. But the risk would be there."

"Then I want you to try it. The minimum dose left my mind about three-quarters human. I could control the wolf's instincts in the same way as – as delaying gratification in the ordinary human way. But I can't help wondering whether a stronger dose would destroy the canine urges altogether, whether it would leave my mind completely human. I want to be able to walk down the Old Market Square without the smallest desire to scratch or bite or jump. I don't know if that's possible, but we have to try it... Ariadne, don't cry!"

She leaned against him. "Sorry. I cried enough last night, when I was thinking it had not worked at all. Even though I was not seriously expecting it to work at all. And it never crossed my mind that it might work in the way it apparently did. And you still look sick."

"That's the result of the physical Transformation." He put their empty mugs into the sink. "You look rather exhausted yourself. Perhaps we both need a few hours to sleep it off."