Moonshiner Exposed

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Diagon Alley, London; Old Basford, Nottingham; the Ministry of Magic, London.

Rated PG for Higher Morality (i.e. breaking the law).

Professor Jigger had announced that today they would discuss Ariadne's next project. That meant she shouldn't try to avoid the all-important interview. She tried to concentrate on stirring the blood-replenishing potion that St Mungo's had ordered, but it was difficult to keep her arm steady when the image of Professor Jigger's frown kept invading her mind. He would be merciless if he decided she had breached their contract. By this time tomorrow she could be scouring the newspapers for jobs among Muggles, destined never to become a journeyman.

But Professor Jigger was going to hear of her crimes anyway, so it would be better to tell him herself.

December and January had passed exactly like November. One third of her free time had been spent brewing and measuring for werewolves. The house had been noisy and crowded. And her new friends considered her an angel. The other two-thirds of her life had been devoted to sleeping off the exhaustion and writing up her observations. She had not mentioned Wolfsbane to anybody. But Lycaonia Tungsten had forced her hand.

"The few friends I have left are very excited about this medical advance," Lycaonia had enthused over the knitting needles. "Through them I've met a couple of other werewolves. Can I invite them to meet you next month?"

Ariadne felt she was swallowing lead as she tried to find the words to promise to help Lycaonia's contacts. Before she could open her mouth, Remus put his foot down.

"Miss Tungsten, we hope your friends can wait a few months more. You know that this experiment is technically illegal, and we've a better chance of benefiting more people if we keep it a secret for now."

"Oh, no trouble, dear, I'm sure they'll all understand," said Lycaonia, but with a brittleness that told Ariadne that Lycaonia had already promised too much to too many people. The news could be buzzing around the magical community long before summer. St Mungo's... the Apothecaries... the Ministry... the Daily Prophet... Greyback... as she poured the final phial of comfrey syrup into the cauldron, she knew that ensuring Professor Jigger first heard about it from her own mouth was her only hope of either mercy for herself or dignity and legality for the Wolfsbane Potion.

She knew Professor Jigger was serious because he looked her in the eye when he called her over to his desk. "Have you had any inspiration at all, Miss MacDougal?"

"As a matter of fact, Professor, I have done a literature search." That much couldn't be illegal. "Here are my notes."

He scanned them. "Hmph. Might work. But not commercially viable. Werewolves don't have any money, and the taxpayer won't be willing to sponsor them." She almost expected him to throw her notes in the fire and tell her it would be better to invest in a new perfume. Instead, he frowned, and said, "Cardiac arrest... no, you had the sense to include atropine. Well, you'd be lucky to force anyone to drink a brew that tasted like this one. Did you by any chance bother to boil up a test run at home?"

Her heart stopped beating, for the temptation to lie was overwhelming. Save your face and your career... Just pretend it's all theoretical, that you're waiting for your supervisor's approval... He'll never know... make some at work and pretend you're producing it for the first time...

She looked Professor Jigger in the eye and spoke into the silence. "I did."

"Did you feed it to guinea pigs?"

"Rats and cats." Something was wrong. He wasn't... angry. "They sprouted fleeces for a few days, but came to no other harm."

"Did you calculate body mass before risking it on a human?"

"I did, Professor."

"How many humans?"

"Seven."

He still wasn't angry. "What happened?"

Slowly, she opened her yellow file, and held out her second wad of notes. Professor Jigger did not speak a word as he ran his eye down the pages. Finally, he made a Zerocso and handed back the original.

"You've been busy," he said. And, absurdly, he sounded approving. "We'll owl this to the Western Journal of Apothecarism as soon as you've conducted an official trial under my guidance. Which will be next full moon. And you won't say a word to anyone about all the times you handed out unpatented medicines without supervision. If anyone ever asks, I was with you every time."

She was speechless. Even if he could see that she had taken all due care and that no harm had resulted, he ought to express some annoyance that she had breached their contract. The anti-climax was disturbing. She almost began to remind him that she had broken several rules.

"Come off it," Jigger growled. "How would anyone ever make any money – how would science ever happen – if everyone always kept the rules? No invention that mattered was legal at the time it was invented. Just make sure your experiments don't ever kill anyone."

She supposed Jigger never had had much respect for the law. It seemed that none of her docile industry, none of her technically flawless work in the laboratory, none of the papers that she had drafted under his name, had pleased him as much as her defiantly independent originality.

* * * * * * *

"The timing could not be worse," said Ariadne. As the crescent moon waned, Remus had a revision week. As it waxed, he would have two exams. As it became gibbous – and the werewolves arrived to drink their potion – he had a thesis to finish. "Are you preferring not to have the werewolf community visiting so long? We could maybe cancel this month."

She caught him suppressing an eager smile at this suggestion, but what he said was, "No, we can't refuse to help. We'll work around it."

She knew that Remus had been vaguely unhappy, but she hadn't been able to make him tell her what was bothering him. "It's nothing. I'm just feeling unsettled." The winter was once again very cold, they had just made another rather dreadful visit to Mrs Pettigrew, and a journal article that Remus required for his research was nowhere to be found... there were plenty of reasons to feel deflated. She concluded – not that nothing was wrong – but that Remus himself could not label the problem.

So their house was once again invaded by noisy guests who filled the living room with the stink of tobacco and stained the carpet with spilt tea. But otherwise the week was uneventful. Ariadne urged Remus to spend long hours in the college library, which meant he managed to submit his thesis several hours before the full moon rose. On Friday Professor Jigger closed the shop early so that he and his wife could follow her through the Floo to her own house to monitor the trial.

And the anti-climax was total. Professor Jigger watched Ariadne as she measured out the final dose of Wolfsbane potion for each werewolf. He watched them drink. He followed them up to the attic dormitories to await moonrise, while Madam Jigger poised a quill above a clipboard. The moon rose. The werewolves transformed. They all lay quietly, as Ariadne had known they would. Professor Jigger approached Adolphus Randall cautiously, and Adolphus lay quite still. He looked for a moment as if he were calculating whether he dared take the test any further, so Ariadne moved in beside them and stroked her fingers against the edge of the Mr Randall's jaws. The wolf lay completely quiet.

"Check them all," instructed Professor Jigger.

Ariadne felt she was treating them like pet dogs, but she obediently stroked each wolf on the head. They went into the women's dormitory and repeated the procedure.

"I'm afraid it becomes boring now," she said. "They just go to sleep and... nothing much happens."

"Nothing," snapped Jigger, "is exactly what we want to have happen."

He said no more. He did not even comment on Ariadne's husband being one of the wolves. He simply Conjured himself a chair and sat down at the head of the stairs, leaving both dormitory doors ajar. Madam Jigger Conjured a second chair for herself and sat opposite. She seemed to be writing something, but apparently nothing that required much thought. Ariadne sat on the floor.

And they sat all night.

It became almost a competition to see which of them could keep silent for the longest.

When it was not quite light Professor Jigger pulled himself out of his chair and Vanished it. He walked into one dormitory and Madam Jigger investigated the other. They stood quietly until semi-human groans told Ariadne that the wolves had Transformed back to human. It was strange, she thought, how Remus usually managed to do it quietly. She wondered how much pain he refused to express.

"Time for work," said Professor Jigger, although nobody had had breakfast.

"I usually brew them a strengthening potion in the morning."

"Belladonna, fetch a Strengthener and feed it to the patients. Miss MacDougal, we have urgent work to do in the laboratory."

The urgent work, of course, was to write up their paper.

* * * * * * *

My dear Mrs Lupin,

Please accept my warmest congratulations on the publication of your third paper. Your first two were solid additions to the research venture, but your third project has been ground-breaking. You are truly the granddaughter of Ankarad Murray.

As a specialist in dangerous bites, I am delighted that a project to combat lycanthropy has finally been initiated. Please inform me as soon as the medication is patented. Should your team ever continue this necessary (and fascinating) work in the future, I would be very interested in collaboration.

Yours sincerely,

Hippocrates Smethwyck.

Healer Smethwyck's owl lay next to the spring edition of the Western Journal of Apothecarism. Squeezed between the lead article on invisibility potions and the latest report on dragon pox, her life's work stared at her: "Hope for treating Lycanthropy" by Belby, Jigger, Jigger and Lupin. An important Healer like Hippocrates Smethwyck had taken notice. Now they needed the Ministry of Magic to take similar notice, and Wolfsbane would be legal. More research would be done, an outright cure would be discovered. Lycanthropy would, perhaps, be conquered in her own lifetime.

"Not many people change the world at twenty," said Remus proudly. He had read the article three times, despite not understanding a word, and he was now sifting triumphantly through the personal owls. Ariadne had burnt the one from her brother,

Our parents are maybe proud that you've published yet another paper, but what in Merlin's name are you thinking of to mess around with Dark creatures and poisons? Is that husband of yours not knowing better than to keep you out of that kind of trouble – or has he perhaps werewolves and vampires among his personal friends?

but she now showed him the one that Mr Belby had forwarded.

Dear Mr Belby,

In the light of your article published in this quarter's edition of the WJA, the date of your patent application review has been brought forward. I will interview your research team on Saturday 4 April at 10 am in Room 4.17 of the Ministry of Magic.

Yours sincerely,

Dolores J. Umbridge

Head, Beast Division, DRCMC.

"We will not be needing to open our home again," she said. "Next month our friends will be hosted at St Mungo's."

"Never mind how long it takes." He tightened his arms around her and nuzzled against her hair. "A month – two – six – however long it takes them to process the red tape, we won't back down now."

* * * * * * *

"You're going about it the wrong way," said Sarah. "You need to make an impression. You look haggard in those navy overalls, and your tartan house-robes confuse the eye. If you want this Ministry woman to look at you, you have to be wearing a solid block of colour... nothing red, it isn't a love-tryst. Blue looks professional: how about a blue to match your eyes?"

Garbed in Sarah's royal blue business robes, and decked for the first time in the pearl earrings and diamond wrist-watch from Cousin Lucius, Ariadne felt as if she had borrowed a different person to approach the Ministry in her place.

Nor was she reassured by the new companion who was to accompany her. It was the first time she had ever met Damocles Belby, the financial backer of Slug and Jigger's whose name appeared first on all Professor Jigger's journal articles. He was a small, dapper man in his forties, who walked with a spring in his step as he swung a golden cane. His robes – gold thread shot through crimson satin – were exactly what Sarah would have written off as unprofessionally flashy for a working wizard trying to present himself as a serious scientist. Ariadne knew that Mr Belby was a scientist: he had Master status in the M.E.S.P. But his smile was entirely unconvincing.

"Nothing to worry about, I've taken out dozens of patents in my time," he said. "Just tell the official what our potion does and a few details of our team's work in developing it – she won't understand anyway, so keep it short and snappy."

They were kept waiting in the fourth-floor foyer for half an hour beyond their appointment time. Ariadne kept reading through her notes, because she suspected that anybody who had to approve a patent would understand something about potions. Mr Belby kept twirling his cane and saying things like, "We've made a breakthrough here – this is the kind of discovery that changes the world," and, "This will certainly look good on your résumé, Miss Lupin – you'll remember all your life your years on my little team."

It's not mattering. As long as the potion is legalised, I will not care whose name is on the deed, Ariadne told herself again and again. Just as she was feeling she couldn't listen to another word about what a privilege it was for an apprentice to be allowed to work on something so very important, a new voice broke into her thoughts – a light, clear and warmly friendly voice.

"Ariadne? It is – Ariadne Lupin, imagine meeting you here!"

Ariadne closed her file. "Glenda! Oh, I'm so pleased to see you!" She jumped to her feet. "What brings you to the Ministry of Magic?"

Glenda Chittock indicated the large black box in her arms. "Work – I use this Sound Trapper to pre-record interviews with interesting people. I've just been lucky enough to hear what Dirk Cresswell has to say on the festive customs of goblins – that will make a fascinating broadcast for Easter. But you're all dressed up – are you here for Beasts, Beings or Spirits?"

Ariadne avoided the offensive distinctions by saying it was about a medical patent, then asked if Horatio were well. Mr Belby showed no interest in meeting Ariadne's friend, and nor was the patent office door opening. By the time Glenda had finished talking about clocks, she had taken the seat next to the rubber plant, and was comfortably asking whether they could buy coffee here.

"And I've been meaning to ask you for ages – is there any more news about your friend Veleta?"

"She's yet in Foss. But we're now knowing why..."

Glenda made a sympathetic noise in her throat, and Ariadne found herself suddenly confiding everything as if a dam had burst inside her. How the Macnairs had exploited wartime conditions to destroy the Vablatsky family for their own private vendetta. How they were holding Veleta captive for her Locospection talents. How her memories of her former life had been wiped. How she kept having babies, presumably because the Macnairs were hoping to breed new Locospectors. How St Mungo's had written a medical report on which nobody was wanting to act. How Veleta had expressed her desire to leave Foss, but would not leave her bairns. How the children were apparently Portkey-immune and subject to some unclassifiable act of Dark magic. How the Aurors were reluctant to take any action, and how Auror Scrimgeour was Walden Macnair's brother-in-law. How Veleta was unwilling – or magically unable – to speak the full truth. How anybody who did try to approach Veleta was simply Banned from the castle...

Glenda carried on saying, "Yes," and "I see," and "How criminal," and, "Wicked." Otherwise she said nothing, giving Ariadne her complete attention while her eyes grew large and moist. It seemed a very, very long time since any outsider had shown any real concern for Veleta. And finally Ariadne had told the whole story.

Glenda sat quietly for a moment more, then said, "Ariadne, the M.L.E. Department has been disgracefully apathetic. The community won't accept this. I think it's time we shamed the Aurors into taking action."

Ariadne felt a cold prickle on the back of her neck. She obviously had said too much. But before she could frame a response, Glenda was speaking again, kind and sweet and very concerned.

"I'd like to make a feature of Veleta's story. The next couple of weeks are booked up, but that gives me time to interview a few more people." Glenda's eyes were lighting up eagerly. "As soon as I have an empty hour of prime-time, I think the whole magical community should know about Veleta."

Glenda was so inspired, and she meant so well. Ariadne wouldn't hurt her feelings for the world. She began, "Glenda, it's so kind of you to offer... we've been waiting for months... for years... for some influential person like you to take an interest..." But how was she going to explain that Glenda's kindness was misdirected, that publicity was the last thing that would help Veleta? The Macnairs would be both alerted and angered, while the M.L.E. would pacify community outrage by repeating whatever lie the Macnairs chose to tell next. "But, Glenda, are you sure you're wishing to go to the trouble...?"

"It isn't trouble," said Glenda, "it's my job. I've never forgotten how kind you were about poor Caradoc. And now your good deed has come full circle, because it's the direct cause of my being able to help your friend."

Ariadne tried again. "You're needing to tread very, very carefully. The Macnairs can be dangerous..."

"But, Ariadne, of course I'll protect my sources!" Glenda stared in surprise. "There are journalistic ethics, you know. I won't say a single word unless it's directly from an eyewitness, but I won't give a single clue about who those eyewitnesses were. I'll – "

Whatever else Glenda intended, Ariadne never found out, for at that moment the door to Room 17 swung open, and an elderly wizard in pin-striped robes announced, "Mr Belby? Madam Umbridge will see you now."

"Glenda – " Ariadne began urgently.

Glenda completely misunderstood the fear in her voice. "Later, we'll talk later. You can't be late for your appointment. Good luck with that patent!"

And Glenda Chittock flew away towards the lifts, her Sound Trapper still clasped under her arm. Ariadne forced the image of Veleta to the back of her mind and followed Mr Belby into Room 17.

A short, squat, middle-aged witch in pale pink business robes greeted them with a toothy smile so wide that her jaw seemed on the point of dropping to the floor. The touch of her plump fingers was so cold and clammy that Ariadne found herself thinking: toad. She knew instantly that Madam Umbridge would be merciless.

"Good morning, Mr Belby," fluted the official. "It's a very interesting – a unique – potion that your little team has been developing."

Ariadne's heart lurched into her throat and then sank down to her knees, but she trained her eyes on the parquetry floor. She knew already that Madam Umbridge had decided to refuse the patent.

"An absolutely fascinating exercise in just what the right balance of herbs can do for the human – or bestial – metabolism. I do congratulate you on your creativity."

A sidelong glance at Mr Belby revealed an eager and energetic smile. That meant he still hadn't understood the Head of Division's intentions.

"I believe, dear Mr Belby, you could be nominated for an Order of Merlin award for the sheer brilliance of your excellent theory." Madam Umbridge fingered the wide pink ribbon that topped her mousy curls. "Certainly you are enough of a mastermind to understand the difference between theory and practice."

Only at this point did Mr Belby's smile become fixed.

"Obviously no right-thinking wizard could think of actually feeding this potion to real werewolves. Imagine the dangers if a criminal like Mr Greyback chose to imbibe it... the horrors of giving human thought to a hunting pack... Mr Belby, you are such a genius. You could – were you not a man of such obvious integrity – destroy our entire civilisation with your little brew."

Ariadne forced her clenched hands to relax. She would not, would not, betray her revulsion to this nauseating woman.

"So of course," Madam Umbridge gave a girlish little giggle, "you have presented the Ministry with the interesting little puzzle of how to suppress your recipe before some unscrupulous person takes criminal advantage of it. Quite the busy fortnight we've had, calling in every published copy of this quarter's Western Journal of Apothecarism and removing your article – and all the time having to step discreetly, without raising the alarm that your little discovery might be in any way interesting, before anyone realised his copy had pages missing. That journal circulates all over Europe and the English-speaking world... there are even subscribers in Japan... but do not worry, Mr Belby, we believe we have them all now. You have all the credit of being a genius without the least concern that anyone will ever be hurt by your little discovery."

Mr Belby found his voice. "So it's... you're recommending that the potion be considered illegal?"

Madam Umbridge tittered again. "Well, of course it's illegal. But no-one will miss it, Mr Belby. It wasn't marketable anyway. So complex to brew – so clever of you to manage it, really – and there are only sixty-seven werewolves in the British Isles, which is too small a sample to be worthy of science's attention. Then there's the expense – werewolves can't afford to pay what it will cost, and the British taxpayer certainly won't want to foot the bill of providing for such an unpopular minority. It's safe to say that the chief contribution of the Wolfsbane Potion will be the concept – how the scientific barriers have yet again been pushed further back."

For the first time the toad-woman looked directly at Ariadne. "And your little apprentice here – she's had such a wonderful initiation into the world of research. You are a lucky girl to have assisted with such a revolutionary project, Mrs Lupin."

Her stress on the honorific spelled out that Madam Umbridge had, long before this interview, checked the details of Werewolf Registry pretty thoroughly.

She had known all along that she was really speaking to Ariadne and not Belby.

A/N. "Moonshiner" is slang for a person who brews illegal liquor.