Mooning after Dreams

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Mooning after Dreams

Thursday 9 October – Friday 31 October 1986

Old Basford and Carlton, Nottingham.

Rated PG for anti-social honesty about the difference between the real and the imagined.

"Tipografia!"

The handwriting on Remus's last essay transformed itself into serifed print as uniform as any produced by those new Muggle machines in the College library – were they called Raincoats? He Banished the essay into his bag – he would submit it tomorrow – and stretched himself, cramped from writing on a clipboard in the laboratory armchair. He had stayed away from college because his classmates distracted him from his essays, but his own study had suddenly seemed a lonely place. So he went to sit in the laboratory, where the delicious scent of Wolfsbane Potion crept comfortingly around every pause in his writing. No matter how vile it was going to taste, the smell of the potion was relaxing, as if Ariadne stood in the room with him.

But she wasn't with him. It would be months before she was released from the long hours at Slug and Jigger's, so Remus was once again home alone. With his essay finished, it was time to restructure his attic. He scratched numbers onto scrap paper for a few minutes, then went out to the landing and Conjured a ladder.

The first thing he did in the attic was to put his foot through the plaster – he had forgotten there were no floorboards. He Conjured a chipboard platform, but obviously he would need raw material of some kind if he were to Transfigure something into a permanent floor. He glanced down at the numbers again, then ordered the walls, "Dilato!"

Immediately the sloping walls sprang backwards and the attic gables were arching far above his head. The room was still shaped like an attic, but it had tripled in size. It needed windows, but they would have to be invisible to the Muggle neighbours in the street. He didn't recall anything in Goshawk's Standard Book of Spells that would Transfigure sections of a roof into invisible windows, but it shouldn't be a conceptually difficult spell. He waved his wand and tried, "Fenestras occaecatas!"

Four large panes of glass shimmered into place between the rafters. He was so entranced by his success that he promptly stepped back from his chipboard (which, as a Conjured object, hadn't expanded along with the original attic) and thrust his foot through the plaster again.

He would need a real floor. And he would need internal walls. And furniture. All before this time tomorrow. It was time to walk down to the lumber yard and hope that the price of a few rotten offcuts would work out at less than the cost of a week of journeys on the Knight Bus.

* * * * * * *

Connell Dewar and his grandmother arrived the next day. Remus met them at Nottingham Station on his way back from submitting his essays. Old Mrs Patterson was very excited. "We hev not hed a holiday since Con was bitten." She had never seen a city larger than Perth, and she had never travelled to a foreign country. "We hed to change trrrains twess, at Glesgow end at Crrrewe, and fowks didna underrrstend a worrrud we were saying!" She didn't even mind having to walk all the way back to Old Basford, and chattered animatedly on how few trees there were, and how the houses went on and on forever.

Connell was more subdued. "We'rre wolluves but we'rre not wolluves," he repeated to Remus several times. Fortunately the crowds of shoppers took no notice. Connell had little else to say until they entered the house, when his first words were, "Em eh to hev meh medicine now?"

He looked so hopeful that Remus led him straight up to the laboratory. He measured a gill for Connell and three jackpots for himself. They faced one another solemnly and drank.

"Ye hev a lovely house, Rrremus," said Mrs Patterson.

He could not help accepting the compliment with an architect's pride. He had Transfigured some very rotten lumber into a continuation of their existing staircase, a sturdy floor for the new second storey, and partitions that gave two large rooms. He had even managed beds, by Transfiguring his desk and bookcase. He knew the construction would not last for ever – perhaps, on such scanty original materials, no more than six months – but no Muggles on a week-long visit would guess that it wasn't real.

Mrs Patterson settled in to enjoy her hosts' kitchen. By the time Ariadne arrived home, there was a huge vegetarian haggis on the rickety dining table.

Ariadne shook hands with Mrs Patterson first, then with Connell. Suddenly her eyes filled with tears. She shook her head and could not speak to him. When she excused herself as fast as she decently could, Remus followed her upstairs.

"Ariadne, what's wrong?"

"It's nothing. I'm... It's really nothing."

"Is something about Connell upsetting you?"

"It's... Not Connell. I'll be all right. But I'm going to change into house-robes before dinner."

He couldn't imagine why she didn't want to discuss it further. It did seem odd – it was hurtful – that she was excluding him from her confidence. But of course he couldn't intrude.

Mrs Patterson loved her holiday abroad. She spent her week gaily riding on buses (as well as up and down escalators in the shopping centres), feeding ducks in Vernon Park, visiting Green's windmill and Nottingham Castle and the Robin Hood Museum, and spending what little money she had on lace curtains and Boots hand lotion so that she could prove where she had been.

Connell remained very quiet. He seemed to like wandering into shops to watch the televisions or admire the bikes, but he never said much about his activities.

And Remus had no time to be an attentive host. For on the Monday he began this third teaching round.

"This one is bothering you," said Ariadne.

It was. By the third round, a certain standard of competence was expected, and how competent was he really? On the first round, he had done little more than observe. Miss Peach, the supervisor of his second round, had been very uncritical and had required very little of him (or, for that matter, of the children). It had been fun, but he hadn't learned much about teaching. But now he had to do well. If he failed to meet the standard, his ineptitude would be duly noted on his record, and, even if he did pass his exams, his chances of ever securing a job in teaching anywhere would be severely reduced.

At this stage – when all their savings were spent, when they were living off what Ariadne brought home each week, when Ariadne was discovering that altruism cost money – but when the worst hadn't yet happened and might never happen – he could not express his insecurities out loud.

So he kissed her and said, "Carlton is a long walk from Old Basford. This seems a bad week to be spending such long hours away from home."

The faint frown on her brow indicated that she knew he hadn't told her whole truth.

* * * * * * *

He had calmed down by the time he actually entered the Year Two classroom. His supervising teacher was a plump Irishwoman in her sixties – no. She was a Muggle; she was probably still short of fifty. He tried not to feel sad at the thought of such a young woman looking so distinctly middle-aged, for Shannon Reed was certainly not a person who wasted any pity on herself. She greeted him warmly, and began to brief him on the children.

"Remus, aren't you comfortable about using Silly Sammy?" She lifted a two-foot rod-puppet clown off her desk and it flopped stupidly towards him. "The gimmick won't work unless you're comfortable with it."

She had an Ariadne-like ability to latch onto his feelings. "I'm not much of a ventriloquist," he admitted. "But if the children expect it, I'll give it a try." His fingers fumbled towards the rod that controlled the puppet's mouth.

"Here," said Mrs Reed. "You move the arms this way."

He was still experimenting with the stiff rods beneath the folds of lozenge-patterned cloth when the children arrived back from assembly. Mrs Reed introduced him as "Mr Lupin, our new teacher" and left him to manipulate Silly Sammy – and hence control the class.

"Silly Sammy says that someone has a birthday today," he began. He waved the puppet's arms, and turned it this way and that, but it was while he was looking to his right that a boy on his left sprang to his feet.

"It's me." Jonathan Miller held out his arms for the puppet and cradled it. "I'm seven today. And I had a bike from Mum and Dad and an air-gun from Grandma and Lego from Uncle Andrew..." After Jonathan had finished detailing his aeroplane-shaped cake and the flavours of soft drink that were to be served at his party, he gave the puppet back to Remus and sat down.

There was no brief for what had to happen next, but Remus waved the puppet at random, pointed at a child, and squeaked in Silly Sammy's voice, "Have you any news?"

A girl with a long swinging pony-tail and gold ear-studs took hold of the puppet and spoke in a clear carrying voice. "I am Jacqueline Sutton and on Saturday I went to New Walk Museum. I saw the dinosaur exhibit, including fossils of stegosaurs and allosaurs, and also the fossils of non-dinosaurs such as pterodactyls and plesiosaurs. Then we went to the art gallery and saw paintings by the Impressioners and Re-Praphaelites." Jacqueline Sutton glanced around her classmates significantly, as if to say: Top that!

A grubby-faced girl shrank back, almost in terror, while a mousy-haired boy frowned angrily. A neatly-dressed black boy seemed eager to comment, so Remus held out the puppet, and the boy scrambled up to receive it. "I went out with my Granddad and... sorry, my name's Wayne Elliot. And I'm a Magpie fan."

There were instant hissing noises, presumably from boys who were Forest fans.

"Be quiet. I'm the one holding Silly Sammy. And I'm telling you that on Saturday my Granddad took me to the match to watch the Magpies play..."

While Wayne Elliot gave his controversial account of his sporting interests, Remus found himself looking at the boy who had seemed so annoyed with Jacqueline Sutton. I know that face, he thought. The button nose. The straight tufts of mousy hair. By the time Wayne Elliot had finished talking about jockeying and feinting and goalies and strikes, Remus had recalled the boy's name.

"Silly Sammy says it's time to do our writing." The puppet was an effective gimmick to remind the children to talk one at a time, but Remus knew it would take him weeks to become used to delegating classroom control to a wooden doll. He picked up the pile of exercise books – handing them out to each child separately would be a start to learning their names. Sure enough, the familiar boy with mousy hair responded to the third name on the pile: Terry Boot.

Remus spent the next hour calling children up, one by one, to hear them read. They were seated around five tables, labelled Lions, Tigers, Elephants, Giraffes and Zebras, but it was clear from Mrs Reed's notes that these names were meaningless. There were children at every reading-level at every table. Remus was relieved to discover that the sounding-out drills he had learned at college really did seem to help the pupils stumble through the large print in The Red Book.

Terry Boot, it appeared, was the milk monitor. At half-past ten he handed Remus his exercise book and crossed over to the sink to do his duty. Remus read Terry's latest entry, keeping one eye on the mousy tufts.

My sister had a bally consit and she was won of the shuger plum farys. I wocht the bally consit. I had a loos tooth and it cam out on sun day it was a insizer tooth. It came out in the sanpit in the park. When I was in the san pit I bilt a cassel becos I wud lik to liv in a cassel...

Terry was picking up a round-handled skewer from the draining board. When Remus had been at Muggle primary school he had called this tool a "bodger", but he had a vague idea that this was probably a slang term that would no longer be in current use. Terry bodged – or whatever the verb was – the milk tops and threaded an orange straw into each bottle. Then he began to carry the bottles, two at a time, around the classroom. Remus – trying to remind Jonathan Miller of the Magic E rule – took no notice until Terry reached the Lions' table. What caught his attention there was the way Jacqueline Sutton's hand shot out to help herself first. She shoved Dolly Clott's arm out of the way, grabbed a bottle, and wrinkled her nose triumphantly at Terry.

Terry stood mesmerised for a second, then suddenly his arm swept the Lions' table and the second bottle of milk smashed onto the floor. Jacqueline's mouth curved into a smile before she clamped it over her orange straw. Mrs Reed, abandoning her observation-only post, was at Terry's side with a dustpan before Jonathan Miller had worked out how to read the word "bone".

After the children had gone out to the playground, Remus asked, "What is the tension between Jacqueline and Terry?"

Mrs Reed began mopping the spillages around the sink. "I'm glad you noticed that. Terry is... excitable. I think he feels sorry for poor little Dolly, who has always been nervous about fitting in. The popular children are merciless to her."

Remus glanced out of the window, where Wayne Elliot was leading the boys in football. Terry Boot was kicking vigorously along with the rest. Half of the girls had paired off with a best friend to play whatever mysterious games girls played in pairs. The other half had clustered around Jacqueline Sutton, like ladies-in-waiting around a queen. Dolly Clott hung on the edge of the group like a mere housemaid.

He felt that Mrs Reed could have said a great deal more, but she tactfully left it at, "Jacqueline has been in trouble for... teasing Dolly. Terry wants to right the wrongs, but has no idea how to set about it, as you saw today. Jacqueline pushed ahead of Dolly by a second, and Terry completely lost control of his limbs. Let's go to the staff room – you must be craving a cup of coffee."

Mrs Reed might rationalise the incident in this way, but Remus had seen perfectly well what had really happened. The glass bottle had exploded before Terry had had the presence of mind to sweep it to the floor.

* * * * * * *

On Friday night Mrs Patterson took courage and agreed that Connell need not be chained for his Transformation. "Connell said last moonth that the medicine had a strrrong strrrong effect," she conceded. What else she thought Remus never discovered for, once he and Connell were Transformed, Mrs Patterson gave them each a brief pat and then chattered only to Ariadne. Ariadne modified her accent to suit Mrs Patterson's, and Remus was disconcerted to find that he didn't understand a word that either of them said.

In the morning the same thick accent was calling into his ear, "Wake oop! Wake oop! We werre the not-wooluves again!" This time it was Connell, thoroughly delighted that the medicine had worked again. Remus forced his eyes open.

"Eh'm going to get a job," Connell informed him conversationally. "In a hotel or barr. Now Eh'm not dangerrrous Eh ken worruk casual. Eh'll save the money and then Eh'll be able to take the trrain to coom and see Arrriadne everrry moonth."

Ariadne didn't seem bothered by this announcement. "Connell will be safer with us," she said. "If he's willing to pay his own fares, that'll make it easier for us. But I'm wondering whether the others will be able to afford it every month. Werewolves have not much money."

He winced.

"Remus... what's wrong?"

"You wish we had more money."

"Everybody's wishing that all the time. If we'd a million Galleons we'd not be worrying about how to distribute the Wolfsbane."

She sounded so cheerful that he didn't bother continuing the topic. But he knew she was really only putting on a brave face.

"They live all over the place," she continued. "I'm not knowing how we'll reach all of them if they cannot afford the fares."

* * * * * * *

But it seemed that the Muggle werewolves were interested in Ariadne's introductory letter, for they all accepted the invitation to visit Nottingham on the second Sunday in November. Ulrica Phelan, a shift worker in the marmite factory at Burton-upon-Trent, was going to beg a lift from a friend. Marcia Lovell, a sales assistant in a ladies' dress-shop in Tewkesbury, was going to take the train from Gloucester. Blethyn Wolcott, a lorry driver from Preston, was going to schedule Nottingham for his weekend deliveries. And Adolphus Randall, a retired gardener, had already booked a coach from Colchester. "My friend Miss Tungsten doesn't seem to know about this," Mr Randall added in a postscript. "Should I pass the message on to her?"

They had not thought to invite Lycaonia Tungsten, for, according to the Registry, she was a pure-blood witch. But she had no obvious Greyback connections, so after Remus had finished planning his Ice, Water and Steam demonstration for the science hour he Flooed her home address.

"Er – I'm Remus Lupin," he began.

"Hello, dear." Miss Tungsten was an elderly lady who, to judge by the clicking sound just behind the flames, planned to continue with her knitting even while she was kneeling in a fireplace. "I was hoping you'd call. You're a werewolf, aren't you? I always keep an updated version of the Registry to hand."

This was disconcerting, despite the old witch's bright smile.

"Young Mr Randall says that your wife is developing a cure. He wanted to know all kinds of things about whether he should trust a magical apothecary. I'm afraid I couldn't tell him much – I couldn't find a Madam Lupin listed in the M.E.S.P. Maybe she uses her maiden name?"

"She isn't listed," said Remus briefly. "But I've been using the potion for five months now, and there haven't been any side-effects. What's worrying Mr Randall?"

"Hard to say, dear, except that the Werewolf Support Services have never done very much for any of us, so Mr Randall is understandably suspicious of the magical community. I've done my best to keep an eye on him over the years, but really for most of the time I haven't had much wisdom to offer."

Remus knew how that felt too. "If your friend wouldn't be comfortable meeting strange wizards..." he began.

"Oh, he intends to turn up on Sunday – he says any attempt at hope is better than none. But, if you don't mind, dear, I think I'll pop in too. I'd like to reassure myself that the ethical procedures have been followed."

The truth was, of course, that procedures hadn't been followed, and, under the circumstances, could not have been. And if Miss Tungsten recognised that, she was as likely as not to report them to the Ministry. But there was no point in alienating the first witch who might prove an ally. So Remus told her she would be very welcome.

That would make five extra bodies in the house (not counting Blethyn Wolcott, who would visit every day but wouldn't need to stay the night). Last month's attic renovations would be very inadequate to the necessary hotel game. The question was, where did a wizard with no money go to find raw material – raw anything – to use in advanced Transfiguration?

The solution that occurred to him seemed too extreme to confide in Ariadne. But he realised within minutes that this was exactly what he was going to do.

* * * * * * *

He dreamed about renovations. Gables pushed up through windows and staircases twisted around hearths. Numbers marched through floorboards and ceiling joists, crazily threatening the trillions of molecules and trillions of ergs that would be required. And a familiar voice – a gasping moan – warned him that Ariadne was falling through the rafters...

He tried to push himself awake. The numbers were not real. The paper-thin floorboards were not real. But the sobbing beside him probably was real. He forced his eyes open, although it was still dark. A restless sighing was muffled into the pillow next to him.

"Ariadne." He stroked her shoulder. "Ariadne, wake up."

She turned to him. He stroked her cheek, which was wet. She hadn't been asleep after all.

She stayed his hand. "I'm all right, Remus. Just a bad dream." She moved nearer to him, so that his arm closed around her.

But she had been awake for long enough to dismiss a mere dream. Why was she letting it upset her? And why on earth wasn't she telling him about it? Was she distressed because of him? He fell asleep again before he could ask her.

* * * * * * *

It was school policy to spend the last week of October counting skeletons and telling ghost stories, bobbing for apples and carving faces on turnips. Autumn Silverstone, all wide-eyed innocence, paused from the problem of how to divide twenty black kittens fairly among four witches to announce, "My mother is a witch."

Jonathan Miller and Wayne Elliot burst out laughing.

Terry Boot leaned forward with interest. "Could your Mum put a spell on me?"

Jacqueline Sutton calmly stated, "Then she's a bad person. In all the stories, witches are evil."

Autumn looked ready to cry. Terry dropped his pencil-box with a spectacular (and non-magical) crash.

Remus decided to intervene. "I think we're all confusing two meanings of the word 'witch'. When Autumn says her mother is a witch, she means she follows the Wiccan religion. What Mrs Silverstone calls spells are similar to what other people might call prayers. But a Hallowe'en witch is different – that means a person with magical powers."

Jacqueline looked startled, then frowned furiously, and said, "Oh, yes. 'Bear' has two meanings too. An animal, or carrying something. And so has 'light'. What's not dark, or else what's not heavy."

"And 'right'," said Gershom Wallace. "The opposite of left and the opposite of wrong."

Gershom liked rhyming words; after "right" he thought of "bite" and "sight" and "kite" and even "trite". Jacqueline stopped protesting that these weren't words with two meanings and returned to her maths.

But the damage was done: Terry Boot was completely bemused by the thought of Autumn's mother. Obviously Mrs Silverstone had no way of knowing that, between breakfast and afternoon tea, she had become a super-powered arch-mage. At half-past three she entered Mrs Reed's classroom in person, carrying a box of home-baked pumpkin pies to share around the class.

While the other children swarmed around the pies, Terry hung around Mrs Silverstone herself.

"Mrs Silverstone, can you really do magic?"

"Don't let the other boys push you out of the way, dear." She handed over a pastry. "I stirred the pumpkin with magic spices, and I used a magic rolling pin to make the pastry. You could certainly see baking as a kind of magic!"

"I mean, can you... would you be able to... well, make me fly?"

Mrs Silverstone laughed. "I know something about the Craft of the Wise, dear, but I don't think that kind of spell would be in harmony with the natural forces! Autumn might explain to you..."

At that moment, Mrs Silverstone was distracted by Jacqueline Sutton's imperious enquiry about second helpings, so she did not see that Terry was holding his pie at arm's length, squinting curiously at the pattern on the crust.

"Terry," said Remus gently, "she was joking about the rolling pin. Mrs Silverstone isn't a real witch. There's no spell inside that pie."

Terry stared at him in dismay, as if he had betrayed some great secret. "Ladder!" he mouthed. The pie crumbled in his hands, squelching pumpkin custard all over his shirt. "Hair!"

The final bell rang at that moment. Terry lingered in the cloakroom, his eyes following the Silverstones until they had left, and refusing all help with cleaning his shirt. Remus knew he should approach, but he couldn't think what to say. Finally, Terry hurled the remains of the pumpkin pie into a litter bin and raced to the school gate as if the hounds of Hades were pursuing.

With all the children gone, Remus returned to the classroom to debrief the day with Mrs Reed.

"You handled the incident in the playground yesterday very well," she began. She always began with a positive remark. The incident had concerned boys who had forgotten not to throw stones; an easy situation, since they had accepted the reminder very meekly. "Now, about the Red Book group..."

It took them twenty minutes to discuss all five of the children who were still drowning in the mysteries of the Red Book. One had begun to improve before Remus arrived; two more, said Mrs Reed, were flourishing under his care; one, she strongly suspected, needed testing for dyslexia; while poor little Dolly Clott was not even ready for the Red Book. Mrs Reed was apparently pleased with Remus's insights, for she next turned the conversation to the difference between fantasy and religion.

"You did well to clear up the witch-mystery so succinctly for Jacqueline Sutton. And Autumn Silverstone feels better about it too. But did you notice that Terry Boot is still confused?"

"I don't think he understood the distinction at all," Remus agreed. "He's still glancing over his shoulder in the hope that Mrs Silverstone will jump out of a dark corner to turn him into a chocolate frog."

"It's just the way you expressed it, Remus – I realise you had to make a spur-of-the-moment statement. But for goodness sake, if the issue arises again, make sure you emphasise that 'Hallowe'en witches' don't exist!"

Remus gazed fixedly at Silly Sammy. Stating his case on the spur of the moment, he had completely forgotten the Statute of Secrecy policy of Lie Through The Teeth. While he hadn't exactly said that magic was real, he hadn't denied it either. And it made no sense at all to lie to Terry Boot, who in less than five years would know the truth, and who in the meantime wouldn't believe him, since he had some very good reasons to suspect that "Hallowe'en witches" were absolutely real.

He shook himself. Muggle-borns were one child in ten thousand; he would have to teach in this school for a hundred years before he was statistically likely to meet another one. He evaded the issue by half-changing the subject.

"And I suppose that applies to Father Christmas too? If the discussion arises, I make it clear that he's only a fantasy-person?"

Mrs Reed's eyes widened in shock. For the first time he felt her to be out of sympathy with him; she actually seemed in doubt as to whether he were insulting her or joking.

"Remus," she warned him, "if you said an anti-social thing like that, I can guarantee that the parents around here would campaign to ensure that you were never registered as a qualified teacher!"