Reaping the Harvest Moon

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Reaping the Harvest Moon

Wednesday 10 – Thursday 18 September 1986

Foss and the environs, Perthshire.

Rated R for human rights violations.

"Are ye frrom the Rrregistrry?" Connell Dewar narrowed his eyes warily.

"We are not from the Registry," Ariadne patiently repeated. "The Registry's not... not been very friendly to us. We have not told the Registry people about this new medicine. We're wanting to give you it without having them interfere."

"But those Rrregistrry people are wizarrds. They're dangerroos to werrawolves."

"Very dangerous," Ariadne agreed. "We're not wanting any Registry wizards around."

"Because they mecht not let me take the medicine."

"They might not. So we will keep it a secret."

"We will. Secrrret medicine."

Ariadne saw that Connell had made his decision. It had taken her half an hour to reach this point in the dialogue. She had first had to soothe the old grandmother in order to beg an entry to the house. Since Connell had been Memory-Charmed not to recognise them, it was no good claiming to be friends of his, so she said they were "friends of a friend" wishing to "deliver a present". Mrs Patterson had been astonished and sceptical, but Ariadne had murmured reassuringly that it was "something Connell's been wanting for a long time," and eventually they had been allowed entry.

Next they had had to introduce themselves to Connell, and to convince him that they came as friends – he thought they were police, and kept saying that he couldn't have done it because he had no driver's licence. Controlling his frustration, Remus had made the illogical statement that "policemen don't carry satchels like this one". And for some reason Connell had found this statement completely reassuring.

Then Ariadne had had to broach the subject of "illness" and explain that she had medicine. It had taken Connell a long time to admit that he had an illness, but he had stopped evading as soon as Ariadne mentioned that "my husband takes werewolf medicine". It was at that point that Connell had jumped to the conclusion that they were from the Werewolf Registry.

Remus frowned slightly when Connell agreed to take the "secret medicine", for it was doubtful that Connell knew his own mind well enough to make an informed decision about drinking an experimental potion. But there was no real benefit in trying to understand whatever was going on in Connell's mind. Ariadne stood up to open her satchel, telling Remus as she passed him, "People like Con are not here to be understood, they are here to be cared for." She lifted out her scales and told Connell, "I'm needing you to stand on this."

Connell stepped up awkwardly, and red numbers flashed up to hover in the air. It appeared that Connell Dewar weighed only seven stone two – even less than Ariadne herself.

"You're needing hardly more than a gill," she said.

Remus took out the goblet of Wolfsbane potion, removed the lid, and set it to boil in a saucepan over the stove. Connell watched with rounded eyes until the cinnamon-scented steam arose from the goblet.

"Does it taste guid?"

"I'm afraid not," said Remus. "It tastes horrible."

Ariadne measured out three jackpots for Remus and a generous gill for Connell. Remus skulled his with a grimace. Even then, Connell did not ask why Remus was taking the medicine too. He simply lifted his cup and solemnly downed his own share.

And even this did not end the complications. Ariadne had to break it to Connell that he would need to take the new medicine every day for a week. Then they had to find a way to visit Foss every day of that week. Ariadne had had vague thoughts that Remus could Apparate to Connell's house, but Remus vetoed that idea.

"The last thing we want is a Ministry inquiry. And it won't take them five minutes to find out who's been Apparating into an all-Muggle area."

So one of them had to take the Knight Bus every evening, at a cost of thirteen Sickles for each one-way journey – fifteen Galleons and five Sickles that they couldn't spare!

Connell's grandmother was pleased that "Con hes fennally made some frriends," but she completely misunderstood the situation with the "medicine". Whatever Connell had told her, she inferred that Ariadne was hawking some kind of cough-relief; it never crossed her mind that they knew about his lycanthropy. She hinted that they shouldn't come on Thursday "when Con will be busy", so on Thursday Remus and Ariadne had to bypass her house and walk in the early-evening chill from the village to the old pine tree in the forest.

They had borrowed a nylon tent from Sarah – an ordinary Muggle two-man tent, no larger inside than out. Ariadne struggled for a minute to separate the poles and hooks from the fabric, until Remus drew her out of the way and waved his wand with a swift, "Erecto!" The tent flew instantly into position, complete with pumped lilo and primly-spread baffle sleeping-bag. The next moment Remus cast a Disillusionment charm over his construction; Ariadne moved to hide behind a tree almost before she was aware that she could hear Muggle voices. Connell and his grandmother were on their way. If they had arrived ten seconds earlier they would have witnessed the magic.

Ariadne was not prepared for what she saw next. She knew the purpose of the chain nailed into the old Scots pine, but the empty clang of the dog-collar as it closed around Connell Dewar's neck bit into her soul like a poacher's rabbit-trap. Connell looked so lonely as his grandmother walked away, abandoned like a stray dog. She collected herself, opened her bag, and approached the prisoner.

"Con," she said, "we've brought your medicine."

"Ye shoudna hae coom tonecht," said Con, although he drained the goblet anyway. "Tonecht I'll be a woluf."

"My husband is a werewolf too," Ariadne reminded him. "And I'll be biding to watch over you both."

Remus was having second thoughts about that part of the plan. "It's too cold," he said. "Look, the grass is frosted over."

"I'll be all right," said Ariadne, trying to control the chattering of her teeth.

"We'll be warrum when we're woluvs," said Connell.

"You won't be all right," Remus worried. "Not all night, in sub-zero temperatures."

Ariadne flicked her wand, but her Incendio charm sputtered feebly. "I'm not l-leaving," she said. "I'll be fine in the tent." She knew Remus had seen her ineptitude, because, at a mere twitch from his fingers, blue flames licked the frosty grass and flared to life.

Connell sprang back in horror. "It'll burrrun oos!"

"It will not spread," Ariadne soothed him. "It's magic fire."

"Oh. Aye. Megic." Connell was not convinced, but he protested no more.

"Would you like me to unchain you?" asked Remus.

Connell recoiled. "I'll be a woluf! It's dangerrous. The Rrregistrry men will tak' me away if I hev no chain."

Remus sighed, and dropped his hands.

"Are ye biding with me?"

"Yes," said Remus, "we're staying with you tonight."

"Folks dinna usually bide near a werrawolf."

"We're staying tonight."

Connell stood quietly for a moment, looking from Remus to Ariadne and back again. The three of them were so still that it was a shock when, at the identical moment, Remus and Connell both threw back their heads and jerked forwards. The glow of the full moon just above the horizon was beaming through the dusk, illuminating the two young men as they dropped onto all fours. By the time they contacted the grass, their arms were covered with grey hair, their noses were elongated, and their hindquarters had sprouted tails...

Remus settled himself on the grass, glancing from Ariadne to Connell. Connell stared at Remus for a moment through wide yellow eyes, then experimentally raised a paw. He examined one paw, then the other, as if he questioned what was happening to him.

"That's right, you're looking like a wolf yet," Ariadne told him. "And Remus is a werewolf too. But you can yet think like a human, can you not? That's the potion we gave you. You're yet human inside the wolf's body." She had no idea how much language Connell was still capable of understanding, but he seemed to relax at the sound of her voice.

Beside her, Remus growled. Reflexively, she stepped back. She saw that she had one hand raised, as if she had been about to pat Connell on the head. This was unwise; Connell was distressed, and didn't fully understand his new situation – he might react impulsively if she came too close. Instead, she sat down beside Remus, and buried her hands in the pelt around his neck.

"You're safe, Connell," she said, with more confidence than she really felt – for she was shamefully glad that he was chained. "You're human inside. You can control what you do."

Remus raised his head and looked pointedly at the tent. She had promised to keep warm; he wanted her inside. She scooted over to sit in the doorway, pulled a MacDougal-tartan blanket over her head, and held her hands out to the blue blaze in front of her, already colder than she cared to admit. Connell, with a distinct air of bewilderment apparent even in his canine form, laid his head down on the ground and closed his eyes. Remus kept his eyes trained on the other wolf; Ariadne knew that he would not sleep as long as Connell seemed to be awake.

It was while she was sitting huddled in the blanket, certain that Connell was asleep and hoping that Remus would relax soon, that something icy slid right through her spine. She cried out, and Remus sprang to his four feet. Neither an Arctic gale nor a sweep of snow was disturbing the landscape; but presently the blue firelight and the yellow moonshine seemed to be highlighting a wavery shape.

"You're not glad to see me," said the shape.

Ariadne's heart thudded to a halt. It was a ghost... a ghost with bloody stains across its breast and her mother's face.

"Merlin's cauldron! You're... nobody told me that you were... oh dear..."

"Mrs Smith said you'd be pleased to see me." The ghost complained in Mamma's voice, yet its face seemed somehow younger than it should be. Remus was lying quietly, apparently recognising that the creature wasn't dangerous. Of course, Mamma couldn't be dangerous, even as a ghost – but what horrible accident had brought her here like this?

The ghost glided downwards, to something close to a sitting position. "Mrs Smith's sent me to tell you everything. Why are you not happy to see me?"

"I... I'm very very glad you came to speak to me." This is not Mamma. It's a lass of my own age. But it looks so much like her, and it's bringing a message from Veleta... "But I was not expecting company."

"It's been thirty years," said the ghost. "I'm supposing they've all forgotten me." She brightened. "But we could do introductions. Mrs Smith says that you are Ariadne Lupin. And I am Keindrech Macnair."

Ariadne's heart fluttered to life again and she allowed herself to breathe. Mamma was not dead. This ghost had been dead since before she was born. Ariadne ought to have made the connection; they were so close to the boundaries of Macnair Castle, where she knew her aunt had died... This time she extended her right hand cheerfully.

"Good evening, Aunt Keindrech. I am your sister Bethoc's daughter."

The ghost's icy hand slid through her own. "It's nice to meet close family," she said mournfully. "The Macnairs are not much for family affection. In fact, if you're wanting the truth, they are perfectly horrible people."

"How lonely for you," Ariadne agreed. She repressed the urge to ask, "Why did Veleta send you to me?" One must never hurry a ghost.

"Lonely! It took far more than loneliness to drive me to this." The ghost gestured to her messy bodice. "But the living are never really understanding, are they? Have you any idea, Mrs Lupin, how hard it was for me to achieve death?"

"I'm expecting it was a great accomplishment."

"It took me four months to die." Aunt Keindrech spoke proudly. "Day after day, I looked for a way to end myself. Spells and potions and cursed objects and fire and water and plain ordinary rope. But nothing worked. The Macnairs made sure of it. Are you knowing what worked in the end? Did they never tell you?"

Ariadne couldn't help shivering as the ghost's face pressed close to her own.

"It was a sword. I plunged it through my ribs at sunset. And I've been dead ever since."

Ariadne could not bring herself to say "Congratulations," but an indistinct murmur in her throat encouraged Keindrech to keep talking.

"On the whole, I prefer being dead. It's less painful. Bethoc may have mentioned that we had a very painful childhood. Our father was a drunk, and our sister Gruoch... she was a terror. Bethoc and I were always running into cupboards and hiding behind curtains, trying to get away from her. Once we found an invisibility spell that nearly worked. But Gruoch always found us in the end. She made our clothes disappear when we walked down the High Street, and she turned us bald in the middle of parties, and she covered us with acne. She knew hot needle spells, and tripping hexes, and freezers, and stingers... as well as Muggle torments like kicking and punching and twisting and scratching and biting and... well, it's amazing, really, that we did not die as toddlers. And Nyfain never did a thing to stop her, and if Donat tried it, Gruoch would just find a way to torture Donat too. Sometimes I think that what Gruoch did to me is worse than what Cousin Walden and his mother did."

Ariadne swallowed her nausea. The Truth About Mamma's Childhood tasted like a draught of asafetida and wormwood. "What did the Macnairs do to you?"

"Torture." Aunt Keindrech relished drawing out the word. "The Macnairs are just like Gruoch, you know. They're all liking to hurt other people. They said they did it for science, but they really did it to have somebody to hurt."

"So you were trapped with your tormenters." Ariadne hoped she wouldn't have to hear what exactly the Macnairs had done to Aunt Keindrech, but the ghost, having found a sympathetic audience, was merciless.

"I was their guinea pig. The Macnairs were researching new ways of attacking their enemies. Melt their eyeballs, sew their fingers together, bend their joints backwards, dig craters in their chests, curse them with uncontrollable flatulence... they thought of everything. And of course they had to check that these punishments worked properly, had to try them out on somebody. That was me. They called it 'assisting with experimental research into magical hexes', but what they were meaning was that they'd cast every hex on me. Covered me with boils, made my body transparent so that every visitor could see my intestines and kidneys at work, changed my gender to male and then to a hermaphrodite and even neutered me... I was wishing to be dead long before they thought of turning my limbs inside out (which they never perfected) or causing my own speech to give me electric shocks (which they tested under Veritaserum). I was hoping every time that each new hex would be the one to kill me."

"Is that how you died?"

"It is not – I've told you that I died by the sword. Those hexes could not kill me. Not the endless coughing – although it scraped my throat raw – nor the stomach-splitting, nor even the three days I spent encased in a block of solid ice. Nothing belonging to the castle could cause my death because... well, you're knowing..."

"I am not knowing. Why are you thinking these hexes could not kill you?"

"The obvious reason," said Aunt Keindrech mysteriously. "The same reason it was so difficult to kill myself. I could not be poisoned, or suffocated, or drowned. Even when I threw myself from the topmost turret and broke every bone at once... yet I survived. The only thing that worked was the ancient sword of Gifford Ollerton. Barnaby Ollerton brought it to the castle when he was visiting Cousin Walden and I... I borrowed it. I was the first person to bloody Gifford's sword in five hundred years. That's my claim to fame, I'm supposing; I died by the same sword that slew Hengist of Barnton."

Ariadne tried not to think too hard about the circumstances that would drive a young witch to such a painful and hazardous suicide. Keindrech had had thirty years to become proud of her dramatic death.

"The sword came from outside the castle, you see," said the ghost. "So it could kill me just like anybody else. It's only weapons and curses from inside the castle that cannot destroy a Macnair."

In the cloudiest depths of Ariadne's brain, something was slowly clicking into place. "Are you saying that items inside the castle are Charmed not to attack members of the Macnair family?"

"They are not; it's quite the other way around," corrected Keindrech. "It's the family members who are Charmed. Nothing that belongs to Macnair Castle – no weapon, no object, no spell, no potion – can cause our deaths. We can be hurt most horribly, but never quite as much as those things hurt other people. And we cannot be killed. I had to choose a weapon that did not belong to the Castle to have any chance of dying. And I found one!" she finished triumphantly.

"But I'm not a Macnair..." Ariadne began.

"Of course you are," said the ghost. "You've said you're Bethoc's daughter. The spell protects all bairns of Macnair blood born in Macnair Castle, and all their descendants to three generations. Descendants were included in the spell so that married daughters could safely bring their bairns to visit. Well, my father – Cuthbert Macnair – was born inside the castle. So all his daughters are protected, even though we never went there in childhood. And so are you, and so, I'm expecting, will all your bairns be."

"So that is why the Animum Quiesco could not kill me."

"Of course it cannot. Your protection is Charmed into your blood."

It was a very sobering thought. She had survived last winter's adventure, not because the Macnair spells were weak, but because they were overpoweringly strong. Perhaps she had survived Baldwin Macnair's assassination attempt the previous spring, not because Remus had chosen to protect her, but because her own blood had been Charmed to call upon – to demand – his protective instincts. Eventually the Macnairs would be careful to select a weapon from outside the castle. Until then, their attacks on her were a hazard to Remus and the other people around her.

"Why did you use the sword?" she asked suddenly. "Why did you not ask Barnaby Ollerton to take you out of the castle?"

Aunt Keindrech snorted. "I'd never risk trusting a friend of the Macnairs! And where did I have to go? Mamma was murdered. Gruoch was in Azkaban. Nyfain and Donat were long since dead. Bethoc was married, and her husband would not have been wanting... well, I'm doubting they had room for me. Besides, there was the magical barrier around the castle... I could not cross the barrier. Nobody can Disapparate within the barrier. I was not authorised to use the Floo. I had not the skill to make a Portkey. I was just like your friend Mrs Smith... but I'm forgetting! It was Mrs Smith who sent me to tell you. She's wanting you to know everything about her."

Ariadne swallowed her impatience, and made an attentive sound in her throat.

"Everything would take too long, but I'll tell you some of it, and then you'll know why Mrs Smith's longing to escape. Did you never wonder who was the father of her bairns?"

"I..."

"Walden's son Humphrey did the first one. But when he married that Yaxley quine, she objected, so he wouldn't do the second. His brother Baldwin had to do that one. But he's in Azkaban now – they're saying that that's your fault, Mrs Lupin. So for the third, Cousin Walden himself – "

Uncle Walden was a heavy-set man who reeked of gingivitis. Ariadne's self-control gave way. She emptied her dinner all over the tent-pole. This is not really news, she desperately reminded herself, to calm her heaving stomach. I have known it for months. But she could have very happily survived a lifetime without learning the exact details.

Remus stood up and surveyed the mess. But not even Remus could perform wand-magic while he was Transformed. Ariadne waved her own wand wretchedly and muttered an Evanesco. Some of the vomit seemed to vanish – her robe was dry again – but the foul smell lingered.

"You're wanting to be careful what you eat," said Aunt Keindrech unconcernedly. "I was telling you that Walden had to do the third one. Gertrude – his wife – objected very strongly, and Walden had to put her in a Bodybind. That would be why Regelinda hates Mrs Smith so much. She sees that third baby as a betrayal of Gertrude – her mother, you know. But they will not be stopping at three, Mrs Lupin. They'll keep on and on, until Mrs Smith is dead with exhaustion. Because they want wee Macnair Locospectors, all of their own, as weapons against their enemies."

Ariadne nodded, while her spine tingled and the sweat ran down her neck.

"And there is lots more to tell you, but that's maybe enough for now."

"Certainly it is."

"Mrs Smith has been Locospecting you every day, so she knew you would be here this evening."

A low growl escaped Remus's throat; Veleta must know by now that he was a werewolf.

"She sent me to tell you that she's wanting to take her bairns out of Macnair Castle, and she begs you to find a way to do it."

Ariadne suppressed her first impulse to make promises. Ghosts were not like live people; it was much harder to discern their real intentions. Aunt Keindrech seemed to sympathise with Veleta, but ghosts were notorious for obliging any person who paid them any attention; she might betray everything to the Macnair family tomorrow. Instead, she asked, "How are you suggesting we manage that?"

"I'm only telling you the message." Aunt Keindrech sounded suddenly cool. "I've no idea. I'm supposing you should find out what kind of spell is keeping the bairns inside the castle, and then find a way to break it."

"Are you knowing what kind of a spell it is?"

"Of course I'm not. If I did know I'd break it myself. But it's very important you find a way to move the bairns. Because Mrs Smith will not leave them behind. By the way, Mrs Smith's not her real name."

"Of course it's not."

"I was there when they named her. They planned on the day they caught her they would call her Jane Smith. And they were knowing she'd guess that it was a fake name, so she'd always live with the question of who she really was, but she'd never find out. Regelinda's liking it when Mrs Smith's uncomfortable. Anyway, that was the message."

A slew of questions were fighting their way out of Ariadne's mouth, but she had no opportunity to ask any.

"I'm not understanding," remarked the ghost, "why you sit around with werewolves on such a cold night. You've maybe a connection with the Dark Arts yourself? Tell me another time; I have to inform Mrs Smith that her message is safely delivered."

Aunt Keindrech wafted off before Ariadne had time to protest that Veleta was needing no information since she would certainly have Locospected the interview.

Ariadne turned to Remus, on the point of asking for his reaction until she remembered that he was unable to speak. Instead, she caressed his head, fanned her bonfire to a higher blaze, and retreated to the tent.

It was a long time before she slept. But she knew that Remus thought she was sleeping, because, after a long silence, she heard his low, angry howling.

A/N. Many thanks to my Alpha, Robert, who thought of the more unpleasant spells that were practised in Macnair Castle.