An Interesting Little Legal Problem

Chapter Nine: In Which Reg Crashes a Party and Tells His Story

At Flourish and Blotts, they found Lupin talking with the Evanses and the Grangers. Harry thanked Jack and Harriet for his present once again and invited them all over for cake.

"Sorry, got to get back to the dental surgery," muttered Mr. Granger. Harry had the feeling it was an excuse. "But you can go home with Harry if you like, Hermione. Be careful."

"Well, we'd love to," said Harriet Evans, smiling. "And you don't have to thank us - we liked having Lily's book around when we didn't know any of you, but it doesn't compare to being able to visit Diagon Alley and getting invited to your houses. We should be the ones thanking you for making us feel so welcome in your world."

Back at the flat, Hermione seemed very quiet. "Remus? Are there other Muggles out there ... like the Evanses?"

"Yes, but not many." Answering her unspoken question, he went on, "It's one of those things every family has to work out in their own way. My mum's Muggle-born, and I hardly knew my grandfather on that side of the family. My grandmother, on the other hand ..." He smiled. "Well, she decided she liked wizards so much that she ran off with one. Caused quite a family scandal. Harriet reminds me a little of her -- not that I think she's about to run off with anybody, of course, but she's got the same mixture of curiosity and enthusiasm."

"It would make things easier if my parents ... mixed a little."

"Would it? Don't forget they might be safer this way." Lupin's face had taken on a strange, guarded expression. Neither Harry nor Hermione said anything.

A loud stomping noise outside the door announced that Ron and Luna had arrived with Arjeplog and somehow gotten him up the narrow stairwell. Lupin looked on doubtfully as they removed the Snorkack's new Transparency Blanket. "Good to see you again, Luna ... but I don't think a Crumple-Horned Snorkack will fit inside this flat! Can't he stay out on the landing?"

But Arjeplog had already squeezed through the door, and the living room had expanded to accommodate him. He ripped a new gash in an already decrepit armchair with a casual swish of his tail and began nibbling at the carpet, which he seemed to have mistaken for some sort of vegetation.

Lupin moved toward Felicity, as if to pull her out of harm's way, but the cat had already jumped onto the lion hat, which Luna had placed on the sofa. She began purring like mad and rubbing against the hat in ecstasy.

The doorbell rang. Harry let in the Evanses and introduced them to Luna.

"Cool lion head, Luna," said Mark. "Hiya, can you talk?" he asked the hat.

"MOONY!" roared the hat. "HELP! UNTRANSFIGURE ME!"

Lupin reached for his wand. There was a flash of blue-white light, and a tall wizard with dark, untidy hair appeared on the sofa. He looked like a younger edition of Sirius, except for the Dark Mark etched on his arm, but he had an easy, friendly-looking grin that was all his own.

"Hello, Reg," said Lupin coolly, as if ex-Death Eaters frequently materialized in his living room. "Been a while, hasn't it? Would you mind explaining exactly how you got here?"

"Can I have a slice of Harry's birthday cake first? I haven't eaten in sixteen years. Happy birthday, Harry - we haven't been properly introduced, but I've seen you around. Oh, is that Scotch you've got in the kitchen? Could I have a drop of that, too?" His voice had a raspy, unused quality; it clearly belonged to the same man who had sent the Howler.

Dazed, Harry handed the man some cake and poured him a shot of Scotch. He began to devour the cake in enormous bites.

Lupin's wand was still pointed at Reg. "Explanations," he said firmly. Harry saw a flash of the prefect he had once been.

"Moony, I'm starving and it's a really long, depressing story. Can't you do that Legilithingy you're so good at so I can eat?" mumbled Reg around a mouthful of cake. He looked up, his eyes wide.

Lupin gazed back at him. Slowly, he lowered his wand. "All right, Reg. I trust you, but you still owe everybody else here an explanation. Especially Luna, since you seem to have ruined a perfectly good hat." He seemed torn between amusement and exasperation. Harry had the impression that he was secretly very pleased to see Reg.

"Sorry about your hat, Luna. And listen, all of you - " Reg looked around at the guests - "I'm going to tell you about some bad stuff I've done, but I'm a changed man. It's sort of a Zen thing. One of the perks of being a hat is, you get a lot of time to meditate and reflect."

"Give us the short version, please," said Lupin. "Without too much meditation or reflection."

"No worries, Moony, I don't like dwelling on this stuff." Reg took a deep breath and began. "You probably remember that I got bored and left school at the end of my sixth year, and a few months later, Sirius and I had an unholy row about politics that ended with my joining the Pureblood Britain Party. I'd almost convinced myself I believed in what they stood for, but to be honest, I did it to bug my brother more than anything. You remember how we used to be, always trying to needle each other, and I was always the one who went too far."

Lupin nodded. Evidently this was a familiar story to him.

"Well, on some level I always knew I was doing a stupid thing for a stupid reason, but I didn't really grasp what was going on behind the scenes of the P.B.P. until I was in over my head. It seemed like an ordinary political party - we went to rallies, tried to persuade influential people to join us, solicited donations. What I think back on now was how mundane much of it was - the sort of work that only a true believer would think worthwhile, and I wasn't really a true believer, so I got bored. But I tried to play it off and pretend that I cared about the party, because if I did anything else it would have meant admitting Sirius was right, and I was far and away too stubborn to do that.

"I must have played my part really well, because my evil cousin Trixie - only I didn't know she was evil yet - to tell you the truth, I sort of had a crush on her -"

"Excuse me," interrupted Lupin. "When you say 'my evil cousin Trixie,' are you referring to Bellatrix Lestrange?"

"Yeah. Her." Reg sounded contemptuous. "She invited me to join an elite group of young party members, most of them my age or a little older. She said they were all chosen for their extraordinary intelligence and charisma. I'm sure now that most of us were ordinary enough - if anything, we were probably all too dull or too cocky to think for ourselves - Merlin knows I was an idiot. But I was flattered at the time, and it sounded exciting. We went to an outdoor meeting which seemed like the other meetings at first, only everybody there was masked."

"Wait a minute, Reg," said Lupin. "Where was this meeting?"

"I don't know. Somewhere in the middle of a forest. We went by Portkey and they didn't tell us where we were going. Anyway, they spent most of the evening giving us firewhiskey and making us listen to speeches - I don't remember a thing about what was said, but it sounded fine at the time and we were well and truly fired up. And then at midnight a man and a woman, who I recognized by their voices as Trixie and her husband Roddy ... Rodolphus, that is ... took six of us aside - myself, three other men, and two young women - blindfolded us, and led us into the forest. I didn't know what was about to happen, but I was pretty drunk by then and about to burst with excitement, and I followed them without hesitating. I swear it was the first and last thing I ever did willingly for the Death Eaters."

Regulus swallowed what was left of the Scotch. The good-natured look had entirely faded from his face. Acting on instinct, Harry refilled his glass.

"We walked for a long way, and then they took our blindfolds off in a clearing. What I remember most was how cold it was. In the moonlight we could see a man who was also masked, and his hands and legs were bound. Rodolphus only told us he was a traitor they had caught. I never found out who he was or whether he was guilty or innocent. They - they ordered us each to use the Cruciatus curse on him in turn. The three other men and one of the women went first ... it was horrible ... and then it was the other girl's turn. She refused. Bellatrix dragged her away, deeper into the woods ... and then I saw a flash of green light that looked like it came from far off. I never knew her name.

"I didn't have the guts to do what she did. I was terrified to go on and even more terrified to turn back. Moony, I know this is going to sound like flattery but it's God's honest truth - I thought about you. Never did thank you for all the times you rescued me at school."

"Never mind about that. Go on. Did you torture the man?"

"I - I did. Do I have to go on?"

"Yes," said Lupin gently. He crossed the room and sat down on the sofa next to Regulus. "But not right away. Take your time."

Reg swallowed heavily. "No, it's all right. I'd rather get this over with. Bellatrix came back, and she and her husband unmasked, and they made us unmask too."

"Who were the others? Do you know their names?"

"Some of them. Rabastan Lestrange. Bartemius Crouch, Jr. Crouch looked as ill and shaken as I felt. I didn't know the other two - the man was thin and dark and a little stooped, and the woman had red-gold hair and she was very beautiful."

"That sounds like it could be Jephthah and Medea Nott. Go on."

"Then they led us into the presence of - of the Dark Lord..."

"You'd better call him by his proper name, Regulus," said Lupin. "All of us do."

"Does he even have a proper name?" Suddenly, the ghost of a smile flashed across Reg's face. "I mean, you can't be christened V-Voldemort. Even my cousin Andromeda couldn't have come up with that one."

"I believe his real name is Tom Riddle."

"Well, I'll just say this about Tommy-boy. He's a lousy tattoo artist."

Ron, who was standing beside Harry, suppressed a snort.

Reg continued his story. "I told myself the initiation rites were over and things couldn't get worse, but they could. The next day, my cousin ordered me to find and murder my brother Sirius.

"I tracked my brother down, but I never had any intention of killing him. At that time, he was hiding in an abandoned shack in Cornwall. I managed to break into the shack - but he was pretty quick on the draw, and next thing I knew he'd taken my wand and tied me to a chair. Sirius hadn't spoken to me since I joined the P.B.P., and at first he wouldn't believe me when I said I was there to help him and begged him to find another hiding place.

"I told him everything about the secret meeting and named all the people I had seen there, and finally he loosened my bonds and gave me a glass of whiskey. I think he must have been in contact with people who were spying against - against Tommy-boy, and what I told him must have corroborated what they already knew."

Lupin nodded. "That's exactly right."

"We talked all night. Sirius asked me to go into hiding with him, but it was my first mission for the Death Eaters and I knew it was a test of my loyalty. I felt sure that the - Tommy-boy's spies were watching me closely. If I remained with my brother, it would be as good as signing his death warrant. If I returned, we were both certain that I would be sealing my own.

"I chose to go back to the Death Eaters. I felt like I'd already put an end to my life the moment I let old Trixie talk me into attending the secret meeting - I've gone over it a thousand times in my mind, and I just don't see how any of us had a way out. They may as well have slipped poison into the firewhiskey they kept pouring down our throats. In a sense they did.

"I told Sirius I was as good as a dead man, and if I stayed with him he could expect to be murdered as well. He wouldn't listen. He tried to force me to stay, but this time I was quicker with my wand than he was - I had to Stun him, not very hard, before I could get away. I told Bellatrix I had reached my brother's hiding place just after he left and had been unable to trace him any further, but she knew I was lying. She tortured me to within an inch of my life. Then she told me her master had ordered her to kill me, and she would show me how the Dark Lord ought to be obeyed."

"Wait a minute," Hermione whispered to Harry. "This doesn't make sense - if he's telling the truth he was a hero - so why did Sirius always call Regulus his 'idiot brother' if he saved his life?"

But Harry knew a bit about how life-debts made people feel about their rescuers. Besides, he realized, Sirius had been the sort of person who would much rather give up his own life for another than let somebody else make the sacrifice in his place. "No - it's awful that he never forgave him - but I think it does make sense."

"But my evil cousin Trixie didn't kill me," Reg went on. "She always had a weird sense of humor, and she did something incredibly bizarre instead. She transfigured me into a lion's head and bound me with the Soloresponsus curse, just like our family has always done with our old house-elves after beheading them. I was technically dead, so she didn't have to lie to her master, but not permanently so. Because human transfiguration is so unreliable, she knew that I might come to my senses eventually and have just enough life left in me to act like a lion part of the time, but I wouldn't be able to use human language unless I was spoken to.

"I'm not sure why she did it. I believed for a long time that she simply wanted to torture me ... but these last few months I've wondered whether she realized that if I died in my brother's place, my blood sacrifice would protect him from Bellatrix in the future. Moony - " Reg took a deep breath, "I need you to tell me something. I heard Luna telling her father my brother died laughing. Is it true?"

"Yes."

"I wonder if he believed she couldn't take him out. Things might have been very different if I had found some way to force her to take my life and not just ... everything else."

"You gave him sixteen years, Reg. I don't think anybody could have done more." He didn't mention that twelve of those years had been spent in Azkaban.

"Did he ever talk about me at all?"

Lupin hesitated for a long moment. "No."

"Well, when I finally came to my senses, I was at a church bargain sale. I wasn't sure how many years had passed or what part of the country I was in, but at least Cousin Trixie seemed to be gone, so I did my best to attract the attention of anybody who would help me. I roared, I growled, I snapped, I snarled! But" - Reg gulped down the rest of the Scotch, and an odd light came into his eyes as he warmed to his subject - "you try your luck as a disembodied lion's head at a bargain sale. Just see if anyone will go anywhere near you, much less speak to you!"

Harry, who had never so much as thought of trying his luck as a disembodied lion's head at a bargain sale, tried and failed to imagine what such an extraordinary mode of living would be like. The other guests seemed equally bemused.

"I thought at first that I would go mad - so many people, so impossible to communicate with them. At last, I found it was easier if I pretended to be a harmless, stuffed head. And then Luna bought me and turned me into a hat, which was all right - she took me out to watch the Quidditch, and I got to have a good roar now and again. Nothing like it for letting off tension. You ought to try it sometime, Moony, you look a bit stressed." And by way of demonstration, Reg let out a sudden roar of laughter.

"D'you think he has gone mad?" whispered Ron.

"Wouldn't you if you spent half your life as a hat?" replied Harry.

"No," said Lupin quietly, turning to face them, "he's always been like this. Weird senses of humor run in the family. Actually, I expect that's what kept him sane all this time."

Arjeplog, who seemed to have decided the carpet was inedible, began to chew on an old book that had been lying behind the sofa. Ron darted forward and grabbed it out of the Snorkack's mouth.

"And then," said Regulus, turning sober again, "when I heard my brother had died, I saw at once that my condition placed the family estate in danger. Sirius had never paid much attention to the family history or the conditions that bound the inheritance of the house - it was a subject he hated - but my parents had told me all about the Primogenitrus charm. Unless I showed myself and found some way to contact the family, the son of Lucius Malfoy would take possession of our ancestral home and all its secrets.

"But I was in the most absurd situation you can imagine. Not only was I still unable to speak or write, I was on my way to Sweden because Luna had taken me on an expedition to catch a Crumple-Horned Snorkack."

As if recognizing that he was the topic of discussion, Arjeplog let out a sound that was somewhere between a bellow and a snort. Regulus burst into manic laughter again. "Funnily enough, it was being on that expedition that enabled me to contact Malfoy. We were camping out in the forest, hoping to catch a glimpse of the Snorkack herd as they - Luna, what do you call that thing Snorkacks do, the way they move?"

"Galumphing," said Luna composedly. Alone of all the listeners, she appeared to be finding the whole story perfectly normal. Jack Evans was taking notes furiously; Mark and Harriet had been staring open-mouthed ever since Reg had first appeared; Hermione looked deeply skeptical, and Ron, for some strange reason, seemed lost in the book he had picked up.

"Right, so they were waiting for the Snorkacks to galumph to their favorite watering hole in the morning. It was a very dark night, and Luna had hung her hat on a tree branch. A couple of campers who had drunk too much firewhiskey got lost in the woods, mistook me for a human, and asked me for directions. At least I think that's what they were asking; of course they spoke Swedish, but it didn't matter as far as the Soloresponsus curse was concerned. I had my first opportunity to communicate in years, and I did my best not to scare them off.

"One of them ran away when he realized he had stumbled across a talking lion's head, but the other one was made of stronger stuff, and fortunately he spoke a little English and had a spare owl. I couldn't make him understand that I wanted him to untransfigure me, but I managed to get him to bring me the materials to send a Howler off to Draco - because naturally I couldn't write. Do you happen to know whether he received it?"

"Yes. We intercepted it by mistake, but we sent it on after we figured out what it was." Lupin spoke absently, as trying to figure something out; Harry suspected he was still trying to calculate exactly how far Reg could be trusted.

"Good. Well, as he knows, the consequences of illegally taking possession of a house protected by a Primogenitrus Charm are dire. I don't think he will dare to violate them. My cousin Narcissa was always a coward, and from what I saw of the boy at Hogwarts, he takes after her."

"Oh, he does," said Evans, looking up from the notebook in which he had been writing throughout the whole extraordinary story. "I had a letter from him this morning renouncing all claims to the property. I don't think he'll give you any trouble at all, but just to be safe we should visit the house in Grimmauld Place as soon as possible."

"This is just too much!" exclaimed Hermione. "What makes you think we can trust him? You can't possibly believe this story! It's ... completely preposterous!"