The Moontrimmer

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

The Moontrimmer

Saturday 4 April – Friday 15 May 1987

Old Basford, Nottingham; Kincarden Croft, Inverness-shire; Sneinton, Nottingham.

Rated PG-13 for petting.

Remus squashed the sinking feeling in his stomach, and tried to tell himself that he wasn't really surprised by Umbridge's verdict on the Wolfsbane Potion. "It's what happens to werewolves," he said. "Sweetheart, what do you want to do about this?"

"Our friends will be arriving in two more days," she said. "We cannot disappoint them. I cannot stop brewing Wolfsbane just because it's now officially illegal." Suddenly her mouth opened in shock. "Remus, I nearly forgot! I'm needing to Floo Glenda Chittock at once!"

But the Chittocks were out that evening, and they were out all the next day too.

"Write her an owl," said Remus.

Ariadne sat down with a quill, tore up two or three drafts, and finally produced a message with no more commentary than, "I'm hoping I did not express myself too harshly." She gave no more details about this vitally important communication... was it something else that she felt she couldn't tell him?

She seemed so restless that his first question when she arrived home on Monday was, "Did you send your owl?"

Ariadne nodded. "Lycaonia Tungsten happened to enter the shop this morning just as Professor Jigger was telling me that I'd not have time to go out for errands today. Lycaonia said at once that she'd go to the post office for me – it was on her way to Knitwit's." She sounded doubtful for a minute, then brightened. "I'm glad to have that out of my life – I nearly embarrassed everybody horribly."

He could not ask her any questions, for their monthly guests had arrived. Lycaonia was sitting right behind them, knitting five pairs of socks while she chatted to Adolphus's newspaper. Marcia was directing Connell in the kitchen, Ulrica was staring out of the French windows, and Blethyn was expected at any minute. Remus tried not to resent that it would be more than a week before he had Ariadne to himself again. How would we feel, he reminded himself, if someone else had discovered Wolfsbane and he refused to share?

* * * * * * *

They were invited to Kincarden for Easter. It used up the last of Ariadne's annual leave. "But it's time I spoke to my parents again," she said.

When Remus stepped out onto the red flagstones of the kitchen floor, his first thought was that the farmhouse seemed huge. Mr MacDougal was sitting in the carver chair, folding the Daily Prophet onto the table, and Mrs MacDougal, having just removed something savoury from the stove-range, was greeting Ariadne with affection – but restraint. The house seemed altogether too quiet.

He shook hands with his parents-in-law, feeling awkwardly like a hired man, and asked, "Where are the children?"

There was a split second of silence before Mr MacDougal replied, "Did Ariadne not mention it? Kenneth had to take his family to Edinburgh."

"I've been working so hard I forgot to tell you," Ariadne apologised.

"You certainly have to take a rest now you're home," said her mother.

Over dinner the MacDougals spoke to their daughter exactly as if she were "home" from a term at school, asking about her work, congratulating her on her new publication, enquiring after the health of Sarah and Hestia, checking up on whether she maintained contact with her cousins. The Duncans, who by now understood how Kincarden farmhands should behave, were wise enough not to speak a word, but William interrupted the pauses by giving Remus excited news of the lambing and sowing. After dinner it was time for Ariadne to ask the questions, to learn that Morag was taking piano lessons from Iris Parkinson, that Aidan could write his name and count to a hundred, that Bruic (born last November) had two teeth and colic, and then to admire photograph after photograph of all of them.

"You have not yet seen Bruic, dear," commented Mrs MacDougal. "You really are working too hard."

"It will be worth it when Ariadne earns her journeyship," temporised her husband. "Meanwhile... we did not see you at Hogmanay, so your present is still waiting in the parlour."

The present was a wireless set. Remus and Ariadne both made a good show of admiring it – for they were glad of a wireless, and they had been planning to buy one as soon as they began to earn money – but Remus wondered whether it had been given to them in the same spirit as the cash presents that Ariadne regularly passed on to St Mungo's. What kind of a son-in-law couldn't even afford to buy a wireless?

At ten o' clock it felt very, very awkward to follow Ariadne up the staircase (which he had never before climbed) and enter her childhood bedroom (although the Beatrix Bloxam posters and collection of antique dolls told him that the room was nowadays occupied by Morag). When he closed the door he felt disconcertingly like a callow farmhand who was treacherously seducing his benefactors' daughter.

Ariadne, seated on the narrow bed to unbutton her robe, seemed a long way away. He was startled by the ordinariness of her voice. "Are you feeling like the farmhand again?"

He nodded.

"I'm glad I'm not the only one. I'm feeling like a lassie again. As if I'd no right to bring you upstairs with me. As if... oh, can you not place a Sound-Proofing Charm on this room?"

He did so, and sat down beside her. The candlelight threw enticing shadows over her petticoated curves, but she still seemed very concerned about something. He stroked her arm, and she began to undo his buttons for him.

"Ariadne," he said suddenly, "I went to Gringotts this morning. I've taken out a mortgage on our house."

She looked at him questioningly as she continued to undress him.

"Only a small one – a thousand Galleons. We'll be able to repay it as soon as I'm working again. But we already owed money to Spencer's Alimentation. Our werewolf friends think they're chipping in with the housekeeping costs, but the reality is that we're supporting them more than their pride would like to know."

"Remus, why did you not tell me?"

"I didn't want to worry you. I know that money bothers you... I promise that once I have a real job you'll never know want or debt again."

"It does not!" There was an expression of genuine horror on her face. "Dearest, money is not bothering me. I'm knowing we have not much, but we've enough, and we'll one day have more. But it's bothering me that... that you'd be worrying so much... and not tell me..." Her voice trailed off, then recovered. "You've told me now. We ought not to have secrets from one another – not about something like money."

"You've a secret," he hazarded. "I've told you mine. Won't you tell me whatever it is you've been keeping from me lately?"

Her blue eyes grew so large in her pale face that he knew he had hit near the mark. But she said, "It's nothing, dearest. Really nothing that... that you're needing to know, or is any matter between us." She slid her bare arms up around his exposed neck to indicate that he should kiss her.

So Remus knew that Ariadne had a secret from him.

* * * * * * *

After Easter Remus began his final teaching round. This time he was allocated to a Year Six class in Sneinton. He took an instant dislike to his supervising teacher, a Mrs Sharp, who wore a short jagged haircut, dangly triangular earrings, and a deep-jowled frown.

"This lot are trouble," she told him. "Half are on free dinners, and some barely speak English. Don't take any cheek from them. Don't smile in the first week. Watch your wallet, and it'll be your job to check the boys' toilet for smoking."

The children were indeed very casually dressed: some had holes in their jeans, one had holes in his trainers, another had her shirt folded up above her midriff, and most had grubby fingernails. And there certainly was a roughness to their manners: they jostled one another out of the way, seemed entirely unacquainted with words like "please", "thank you" and "excuse me", and spoke Anglo-Saxon expletives that would have been utterly unknown in the Mapperley reception class and highly punishable offences in Carlton. There was also a streetwise cunning to their rule-bending: Remus could smell the tobacco in the toilets, but he never found any cigarette butts; and the graffiti was in a round generic handwriting that betrayed no personal loyalties or names.

"Tracey Saunders, pull your shirt down at once," were Mrs Sharp's first words to the class. Tracey slowly obeyed, but Mrs Sharp did not appear to absorb the sight. "That display is disgraceful. If we'd displayed our navels like that twenty years ago, we'd have been sent to the Headmaster to be caned. A girl who exposed herself three times was expelled. You obviously have no idea what kind of trouble you attract when you walk around half dressed..." Interestingly, Mrs Sharp did not elaborate on the specific nature of the "trouble", but she spent a full five minutes assuring the class that Tracey's exposed midriff had set her on a pathway to Certain Doom.

She then sent three of the pupils to wash their hands. It was another two minutes before they could actually leave their seats, because first they had to listen to a lecture on the life-threatening illnesses that lurked in wait for "free rides" on the dirty hands of those with poor hygiene habits.

Finally Mrs Sharp could complain that it was already a quarter to ten and they hadn't done any work yet. "We get into this situation every day because some of you will not learn. Have you stopped to think what kind of impression you're giving our new student teacher? This is Mr Lupin, and he's here to teach some of your lessons. Now open your grammar books and turn to chapter twenty-nine."

The children rummaged through their desks – wooden Hogwarts-style desks that still had inkwells and where books were kept under a hinged lid – and brought out elderly editions of Writing Plain English. Chapter twenty-nine detailed the use and formation of the subjunctive mood. Mrs Sharp made no attempt at a group lesson. The children simply read the paragraph of explanation, then launched into the wholesome, but boring, exercises. They worked in a sulky silence. Remus was allowed to walk up and down the aisles to watch them. Most of the children did not appear to have understood the lesson – they were guessing at the answers to the questions.

The boredom was broken when a pencil clattered to the floor. A boy with ear studs and a T-shirt proclaiming "Anarchy in the U.K." grinned sheepishly before diving under his desk to retrieve it.

"Darren Lackey! That was not funny! But you never think about other people, do you? Everyone else is quietly working, and you decide to amuse yourself by disrupting a whole class. You don't think about taking care of your possessions, of course – you just assume your parents can buy you another pencil. And you certainly don't think ahead to what will happen if you don't learn your English. In five more years you'll be leaving school for good, and if you don't know enough English to pass your C.S.E. you'll end up in a life career of digging up the roads or emptying dustbins..."

Remus was pleased to notice that Darren Lackey was not listening to a word.

* * * * * * *

By lunchtime he felt an unholy relief at being allowed to spend an hour away from his supervisor's shrill voice. Six weeks! And Ariadne had tolerated a disagreeable supervisor for almost three years! He walked up to the school gate like a prisoner released from jail. And standing by the gatepost was – against all probability – the lean, curly-haired figure of Richard Campion.

"I've something to show you," he hailed Remus, "but we need to get away from the Muggles."

Remus swung himself over the school gate in full view of the children, feeling that he might as well give Mrs Sharp some reason to be displeased with him, and followed Richard to Colwick Park. "How did you get here?"

"Apparated. Ariadne told me the coordinates and I borrowed this – " he indicated an invisibility cloak over his left arm, "from Ludo Bagman. But I didn't waste my time showing Ariadne this – "

As Richard drew something from out of the folds of the invisibility cloak, Remus felt his jaw drop. No wonder it had to be hidden from the Muggles. He had seen pictures, of course, but he had never before seen one in the wood... the broomstick was beautiful. Its tail was smooth and tapered, with long, even, perfectly honed twigs, while the slender ash handle had been French-polished until the light seemed to shine right through it.

"Is it a real – ?"

Richard nodded. "A Moontrimmer. Hand-crafted by Gladys Boothby herself in 1903, and not flown since 1920. I bought three of them from a deceased estate auction for the shop, and my boss is selling this one to me."

"Does it fly?"

"Of course it flies! We've stripped it down thoroughly, and every charm is intact. It isn't fast by modern standards, of course, but the steering is high-precision, and compared with the mass-produced brands it doesn't leave many magical traces. If a thief swooped through your window on a Moontrimmer, the Ministry couldn't track that it had been there."

Remus laughed. "Are you thinking of a career in burglary?"

"Perhaps..." Richard glanced around, almost as if he were hoping to make a trial flight right there in the Muggle park, then continued. "Last month Emmeline Vance spoke again to the Auror Division about Veleta. The story hasn't changed. The Aurors openly admit that the 'guest' at Macnair Castle is officially Veleta Vablatsky, but they repeat that no laws have been broken and there is nothing to be done. Emmeline says the file was nearly empty – it had none of Veleta's statements about wanting to leave Foss, no mention of her third child, nothing about the report from St Mungo's, not even her real name. When Emmeline pointed out that the file was out of date – that they had just admitted that they knew her name wasn't really Smith – they very kindly reported Emmeline's enquiry to Walden Macnair, who very kindly informed her that Mrs Smith is very well. I think it's safe to say that Emmeline has now been Banned."

For Remus, the only surprise was that Emmeline had bothered to try. Obviously there would be no co-operation from the Aurors while Scrimgeour remained Head of the Division.

"No great surprise," Richard confirmed, "but it does underline the need to operate outside the law. We have to find out what that Macnair ghost – Keindrech – meant by a 'blood-spell' and try to break it – preferably without getting ourselves noticed in the process. That's where the Moontrimmer comes in." He stroked it almost unconsciously, as if it were a pet.

"What are you going to – ?"

"I already have. Last night I took the Moontrimmer on a land-survey of Foss. What I was trying to do was establish the limits of that magical boundary. I flew to the first spot where I could see the castle, and then flew about, keeping myself in the middle of the boundary. If I leaned my head the tiniest fraction to the outside of the boundary, the castle disappeared. Back again, and there it was. No modern broom would allow that kind of precision... well, a Nimbus would, but none of those mass-market brands. So I just kept myself there and flew upwards, to see how high the barrier went. It seemed at first to be about thirty yards high."

"A little higher than the castle, then." This was hardly surprising.

"But I was wrong. Remus, when I tried to fly over the barrier... there was no 'over'. I'd fly forward a bit, and I'd meet the barrier. So I'd fly a little higher, fly forward again, and meet the barrier again. It kept on happening, until I realised I'd been wrong about the barrier's shape. I'd thought of it as a wall – fly high enough, and we could fly over, then down onto the castle roof. But what I discovered last night is that it's a dome. The closer I came to the castle, the higher the barrier went. And even when I was plumb over the middle of the roof, the barrier was still there. At a height of some eighty-five yards, the castle is completely invisible. Drop down to eighty-four, and it snaps into view, bird's-eye."

Richard seemed puzzled by his discovery, and it made no sense to Remus either. "You mean this barrier is about four times higher than the height of the castle?"

Richard nodded. "I'm really asking myself what the Macnairs are playing at. You'd think they'd hide their castle better if they kept the barrier close to their roof. But, no, there's over sixty yards of visibility – any Muggle kellyhopter could fly through and count the battlements – then suddenly, at a height where nobody ever goes – or didn't until Muggles invented their flight contraptions – the castle is gone. Why such a high dome?"

"Because it's a sphere. Or rather, half of one. Perhaps the castle is for some reason surrounded by a perfect hemisphere, so it has to be as high as the castle grounds are wide."

"Could be. But the perfect shape doesn't seem to serve any practical purpose – it would be more useful to have a simple cuboid that made the castle more efficiently invisible. Anyway, what my little survey shows is that the castle can't be entered from above. I always liked the idea of hiring thestrals or hippogriffs and having them fly the children up over the barrier. But now I know that it can't be done. There isn't a way out of the castle – not even up – where the children won't hit the barrier."

"Thank goodness you tried the survey before launching into some insane rescue scheme! Did you get away with it – are you sure no-one knows you were there?"

"No," said Richard soberly, "that's the bad news. I was discovered. I had the invisibility cloak, but Veleta knew I was there anyway. She climbed up a turret to speak to me. So I flew down to say hello... it was a shock. Even by wandlight, even after seven years, that woman so obviously is Veleta. And she knew my name from Locospection, but she had no memory of the time when we were friends. She asked if I'd come to rescue her children. I had to tell her no, my idea hadn't worked out, and I was no nearer finding a way to break the spell. She was close to tears..." Never one to dwell on the unpleasant, Richard shook away the memory with a toss of his head. "I asked if I could take any messages, and she asked me about Futhark."

"About Ancient Runes?"

"Oh, is that what she meant?" Richard's face cleared. "She said the castle has books that are charmed shut, and that this seemed a waste of a hex, since most people can't read Futhark anyway. But she said she could make out a few words – as if Futhark were a language that she had once spoken but since forgotten. She wonders if the important spells at Macnair Castle might have been cast in Futhark, and says that if any of us is interested in researching the crucial spell, perhaps the Elder Futhark spellbooks are the place to start. Is that a clue?"

"Could be," said Remus. "But it doesn't narrow the field much. Any spell can be translated into any of the magical languages."

He was considering this when Richard abruptly added, "A house-elf caught us. A nasty little brute named Toady. He asked her what she was doing up in the tower in the middle of the night talking to strangers. She said she'd thought I was an intruder, but I was actually just a traveller who had lost my way, and she had given directions. But the elf didn't believe us. I think it's reasonable to say that she'll be cross-examined, and that her cloak will be analysed for a hair from my head or the grease from my fingers."

"You're a Banned man," Remus agreed. "Bother, I have to return to work. Have you a message for Ariadne?" He meant from Veleta, but Richard's mind was working in a different direction.

"No, don't tell her! I mean... oh, tell her if you must, I'd rather she heard it from you than from Sarah. I've been going out with the same girl for four months now. I know, that's a record. And..." He swallowed. "It's Ariadne's cousin, Felicity Macmillan." Then he grinned. "Sarah's been giving me hell over it, going on and on about what happened last time a friend went out with a Macmillan. But Felicity isn't Mercy."

Certainly not. Remus privately felt that Felicity could probably lead a man twice the dance that Mercy ever had. But surely Richard had around five times Kingsley's capacity to handle a skittish woman.

* * * * * * *

"It doesn't help." Remus lost count of the number of times he said that over the next few weeks.

It didn't help to take instructions from Mrs Sharp. "They need discipline," she said every day. "It was a mistake to outlaw corporal punishment, but there are other ways." Other ways included keeping children in at recess, sending them to stand in the corner, setting them lines to write, having them pick up litter... but, above all, shouting at them.

Remus couldn't make himself shout. He knew that Mrs Sharp would be writing the report to his examiners, that she considered him wildly over-permissive, that he winked at the children's "disrespectful" freedom of speech towards him. Yet, time after time, he found himself sacrificing his exam results and his career in favour of the immediate gratification of maintaining a happy classroom atmosphere.

It didn't help to teach Muggle children about "great inventions of the twentieth century", for Remus constantly found himself a step behind his pupils. He simply hadn't considered that Muggles hadn't had flight before 1903 or antibiotics before 1928 or potions-based contraceptives before 1960. (Mrs Sharp did not approve of children discussing contraception, but of course the Sneinton children already knew about it.) The Muggle children talked excitedly about televisions and computers in a way that reminded Remus he had no real clue of these machines' everyday function in the Muggle lifestyle. The boys deliberated about the atom bomb with an excited disregard for its horrors ("It changed the world, didn't it?" argued Darren Lackey). Remus even let them chatter on about telephones and wirelesses and automobiles and photography for a whole afternoon before he checked his time charts and realised that these belonged to the nineteenth century.

It didn't help that Professor Jigger had extra ambitions for Ariadne. "We've started another project at work. I was only needing to complete three to gain my journeyship, but Professor's wanting me to do a fourth. It's just a cheering libation, but time's running out, so I'm having to put in long hours. Remus, I'm enjoying the work," but she said it wearily. "It's an interesting potion, and Professor's seemed more... respectful... since he's known about the Wolfsbane."

It didn't help that Ariadne was still trying to brew Wolfsbane at the end of her long working day. "We cannot let down our friends," she said.

"Does Professor Jigger know that you're doing this?" asked Remus.

"Probably. It's not important, dearest. He will not report me, for he's not caring about the law. But nor will he help in a project that'll bring us no money."

It didn't help that the werewolf community had such absolute trust in Ariadne. That month Lycaonia Tungsten brought three werewolf acquaintances through the Floo, and Adolphus Randall brought another two. They weren't staying overnight, since they were all wizards who could travel home through the Floo network, but it still made for a very crowded dinner table.

"Did you explain to your friends," Remus ventured, "that Wolfsbane Potion will always be illegal?"

"Oh, they're willing to take the risk, dear," said Lycaonia calmly. "If you're brave enough, so are we."

When Remus finally had Ariadne alone in the back garden, he asked, "Are you sure you trust all these new people?"

"I do not trust them," she said frankly. "I'm not liking Caleb Oldfang at all, and Mr and Mrs Skyolang are maybe... unreliable in their loyalty. But if we anger them, they are all the more likely to turn against us."

It didn't help that Ariadne was so vulnerable to anyone who demanded her sympathy.

It didn't help that Veleta wanted them to research Elder Futhark spells. If Ariadne knew, she would be burning midnight oil to re-devour her Ancient Runes texts before ordering special loans from the Hogwarts library. But Remus already felt half-destroyed in watching her wear herself out over other people's problems, so he was deliberately withholding the message. And he felt interfering and dishonest for his evasion.

Above all, it didn't work that they were always so tired... so busy... so crowded... that there was never any opportunity to talk about anything important. Remus still hadn't tackled Ariadne about whatever secrets she was keeping from him. He couldn't demand that she confide in him against her will, and there was never any time to persuade her to trust him. And there was always a pile of maths books or history projects to mark. So he sat over his books, while his fellow-werewolves played monopoly in his living room, and watched Ariadne evade him, slip through his fingers before his very eyes...

* * * * * * *

The werewolves slept off their Transformations and returned home. The next evening Remus had nothing to do except mark piles of algebra and geography. Ariadne only had to make notes about cheering libations. Remus switched on the new wireless so that he wouldn't have to think about the fact that he wouldn't hear much of Ariadne's voice tonight.

"How far do you trust British justice?" The clear, pleasant tones of Glenda Chittock floated over the dining table. "It is as strong, I believe, as the personal justice of each British wizard. But even the fairest and kindest person cannot help before he knows that a problem exists. Come with me to uncover the tortuous web of mysteries that envelop the life of Veleta Vablatsky."

Ariadne's quill smashed to the floor, and her face froze in horror.

"Seven years ago, the Vablatsky household was visited by the Dark Mark..." Glenda's sweet voice began the whole story. Veleta was not dead, but living in "a castle in central Scotland". Then "a close personal friend" was introduced, and suddenly Ariadne's soft burr was describing how Veleta was a Locospector, how she had been kidnapped for her talents, how her memory had been wiped.

Ariadne did not move as long as her own voice flooded the room. Then Glenda was talking again, about the attitude of the Ministry, and the voice of Auror Dawlish was protesting how thoroughly the castle had been inspected, how he had personally spoken to Mrs Smith and hadn't found anything suspicious. Glenda added the subject of Veleta's children, and this time a stranger spoke, a Cockney youth who claimed to have been "a reg'lar visitor to the castle in question". He described the children with relish, made some juicy insinuations about their paternity, and commented that Mrs Smith seemed "a very lovin' mother, someone 'oo'd never leave 'er kids just to go fer the easy life."

The Cockney's story, however lurid, was essentially true. Remus considered turning the wireless off, but he knew they had to hear just how much of Veleta's story was being exposed to the magical community. It was almost obscene when the wireless once again produced Ariadne's voice, this time on the subject of Portkeys. He stole a glance at the real Ariadne.

She was immobile in her seat, as sickly-white as her parchment. Her attention was so riveted to the wireless that at first she did not seem aware that he was looking at her. But finally her eyes, huge and glassy, flickered towards his. Her face crumpled, and she collapsed like a punctured balloon, burying her head on her arms, while her frame heaved with wracking sobs.

And Remus knew that something was very, very wrong.