Mordant

Chapter Four: Adjustment

By now Linus was well enough to get around with the aid of a cane, though still troubled by nausea and dizziness. After Lupin had gone, he limped to the window and spent some time gazing out over the bleak, rain-soaked little courtyard of St. Mungo’s, considering his prospects for the future. He was, he was beginning to realize, incredibly lucky that he hadn’t burned his bridges yet. The political climate, plus certain immutable facts of wizarding biology, would have guaranteed many dark and difficult years ahead.

Up until the age of thirty-five or so, wizards and Muggles aged at more or less the same rate; after that, for reasons nobody fully understood, wizarding metabolism began to slow down. At fifty, most wizards could still blend in among Muggles of the same age, though they seemed more youthful-looking than average; by sixty-five, they began to look remarkably well-preserved; at eighty, their continued good health seemed uncanny by Muggle standards; and by ninety-five it was patently impossible. Those who had chosen to live partly or wholly in the Muggle world generally had to move and change their names more than once as they aged in order to avoid awkward questions, and lifelong friendships with Muggles were rarely possible. The compensations for the ordinary wizard, of course, were immense: more healthy, productive years in the middle of life, followed by a long, mellow old age surrounded by great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren. For werewolves it was less clear whether the extra years were a blessing.

Linus had considered himself in the prime of life when he decided to jettison his career at the age of sixty-seven. He had hoped to resume drawing Martin Miggs in a few years, once the political climate was more congenial, but in the meantime he’d been looking forward to a long sabbatical, perhaps supplementing his modest savings with a part-time job in a bookshop or giving drawing lessons.

He now had to face the prospect of chronic ill health and a considerably more straitened life. It would still be a long life – the Healers had assured him that lycanthropy was neither degenerative nor fatal – but he would be unfit for work several days a month; Wolfsbane, even with a partial subsidy from the Ministry, was expensive; and under the current laws he was virtually unemployable, even if he could find an employer willing to work around his frequent illnesses and uninfected with the wildly irrational prejudices that still surrounded werewolves. Martin Lovegood’s long-standing offer of a job at the Quibbler was no good to him; Thersites could do the same work, just not very well. He literally couldn’t afford to throw his career away for a political statement now.

Back to work, then. He picked up the Christmas card that had finally arrived from his daughter in America and began doodling on the reverse side, hoping to hit on something funny, but nothing came to mind. He was feeling depressed again, and somewhat to his surprise, he found that he missed Arthur Weasley, who had gone home that morning.

Arthur had turned out to be a great fan of Martin Miggs, although some of the questions he asked suggested that he regarded it in the light of an anthropological study rather than a comic book. Linus was not surprised; he did his best to take the piss out of both cultures equally, which meant purebloods missed at least half the jokes. He was a little startled when Arthur went into raptures on discovering that Linus had been raised by Muggles and insisted on asking his expert opinion on his Christmas present of screwdrivers and fuse-wire. (Linus’ private opinion was that the Boy Who Lived was something of a cheapskate, but he refrained from saying this aloud.) But on the whole, Arthur was all right. He’d flattered Linus by asking him for signed copies of Martin Miggs for his daughter Ginny and his eldest son Bill (the children in the middle regarded themselves as too grown-up for such childish things), and Linus had been happy to oblige.

That was it. Martin Miggs could have a run-in with Arthur, or rather, with a similarly enthusiastic but clueless “expert” on Muggle affairs.

Tell me, Mr. Miggs, is it true that your people actually purchase breakfast cereals from the leprechauns? How on earth do you keep them from disappearing before you eat them?

He picked up his quill and began drawing energetically. The law couldn’t take that away from him.

 

                                                            *          *          *

A week before the full moon, one of the mediwizards escorted Linus to the basement of St. Mungo’s for his first dose of Wolfsbane. He was a good deal better by now, able to walk about the corridors and spend his mornings caricaturing the passers-by in the hospital tea shop, but the Healers told him he would have to stay under observation until his first transformation had passed.

There were about a dozen men and women standing around in a dimly lit corridor, waiting for the potion to arrive. They looked, for the most part, haggard and unwell; one ancient man leaned heavily on a walking stick, almost too weak to stand. Remus Lupin was not among the group, and Linus remembered that he’d intimated that he had acquaintances who normally brewed the potion for him. None of the others were people he had ever seen before, and they did not seem particularly friendly. They gave him sidelong glances with sharp, curious eyes, and when he ventured to say hello, the only person to respond was a flinty-faced woman who waved a hand toward the far end of the hall and muttered, “The queue ends back there.”

Linus wandered back in the direction she’d indicated and stood in what he thought was the proper place, behind an unshaven young man who smoked incessantly, although it was certainly the most disorganized queue he’d ever seen.

They were all wearing wizard robes – well-worn and often ill-fitting, as if they’d been bought secondhand – and Linus found himself wondering what happened to Muggles who were bitten by werewolves. He also wondered which of these people had bitten him. Frankly, they all looked unpleasant enough to have done it.

“They’re late again,” said the flinty-faced woman after half an hour. “They must think we haven’t got anything better to do than stand around all day.”

The young man blew a stream of smoke toward the ceiling. “And they’re bloody well right. We don’t.”

“Patience,” murmured the old man with the walking stick. “I’ve ... been ... living ... with ... this ... since ... nineteen ... fifteen...”

“There he goes again,” grumbled the woman who had spoken first. “Good luck getting him to shut up.”

Several of the other werewolves also rolled their eyes as the old man began to reminisce; Linus thought he’d rather listen than stand around in total silence, himself, but then he was hearing it all for the first time. It was the story of eighty years of quiet desperation, told by a man who had seen many miracle cures come and go without fulfilling their promises.

“And they said, when this Wolfsbane stuff came in, in three years’ time they’d have figured out how to stop the transformations altogether, or at least make them completely painless. Well, it’s been six ... seven years now, and not a sign ... Millennium’s approaching. Another thousand years of werewolves, who’d have thought we’d make it this far. We go back to ancient times, you know. The first werewolf ever was a king of Arcadia ... Et in Arcadia ego. That’s a good one, that is.” The old man gave a wheezy chuckle.

“Don’t mind him,” said the young chain-smoker to Linus. “He’s rambling. There they are with the potion.”

It was another hour before Linus got his first dose of Wolfsbane, because there was only one mediwitch in charge of the cauldron – the stupid one, from the night he’d been admitted to the hospital – and she insisted on watching each werewolf swallow every last drop of the potion, and then filling out a witness form with elaborate care, before she dosed the next one. By the time Linus reached the front of the queue, the potion had cooled and congealed into a black, lumpy substance with a smell and taste like sour milk.

As he tried to suppress his gag reflex between sips, he ventured a question. “I was wondering about something. All the people who were here today seemed to be witches and wizards. What happens to Muggles who have been bitten?”

The mediwitch looked uncomfortable. “Well, it’s very rare for a Muggle to survive the initial attack, Mr. Brown. Most of them don’t even know a werewolf when they see one, and they couldn’t begin to defend themselves against one.”

“But if they do survive?” he persisted.

“We take care of them. A couple of wizards from the Werewolf Capture Unit go to their homes and fetch them a week before the full moon, and they stay at St. Mungo’s for a week so we can administer them the potion and watch over them while they transform. They stay separate from the other patients. Queuing for the potion seems to upset them.”

“I can’t imagine why.”

“And then we Memory Charm them after the full moon and send them on their way for three weeks. It’s all quite decent and humane. They don’t remember a thing about it.”

“Just as a matter of interest,” said Linus, “how long do you think your employer would tolerate it if you didn’t show up for work for a week every month and you couldn’t offer any explanation for where you’d been?”

“Well, of course they aren’t going to be able to hold down a job,” she said as if this were self-evident. “They’re werewolves.”

“And you think it is decent and humane to kidnap people once a month, wipe out their memories of a quarter of their lives, and make them go through life as a werewolf without even having a rational explanation of why they’re ill and unemployed all the time?”

“It’s for their own good,” the mediwitch said in a tone that made it clear the conversation was over.

Linus drained the goblet and waited for her to finish filling out his paperwork. As he always did when he was confronted with a particularly spectacular piece of bureaucratic absurdity, he began making mental notes for a new episode of Martin Miggs’ adventures.

 

                                                            *          *          *

Shall auld acquaintance be forgot,

And the days of auld lang – BANG!

“FRED!”

A shower of purple sparks spelling out “HIPPOGRIFF DUNG” slowly fell from the ceiling and faded, marking the first minute of 1996.

“I’m George, Mum!” protested the twin Molly had collared. Privately, Remus was almost certain that he was Fred, but he had long since decided on a policy of noninterference where the Weasleys’ domestic disputes were concerned. He had already chosen to ignore the fact that Ginny had mixed a generous amount of red-currant rum with her butterbeer and was getting quietly and experimentally drunk as she played Exploding Snap with Ron and Hermione.

Alastor Moody, under normal circumstances, would have hollered for everyone to duck and cover when the fireworks started to go off, but tonight he only giggled weakly and continued playing the piano. Remus took this as a sign that his hip flask contained something much stronger than the usual dandelion juice.

Bill and Fleur Delacour were dancing; Arthur, still a little stiff from his wounds but in good spirits, offered his arm to Molly, who allowed herself to be distracted from berating the twin. Briefly, Remus toyed with the idea of asking Hestia Jones to dance, but when he spotted her on the other side of the crowded room, she was talking to Sirius and they seemed to be getting on very well. He wouldn’t have spoiled that for the world: it might, just maybe, be what Sirius needed.

The New Year’s party showed every sign of going on until three or four in the morning. Only Harry had gone to bed early, looking dispirited and standoffish as usual. Remus had ached to follow him and make him talk about what was troubling him, but he knew it would do no good; the boy wasn’t confiding in anybody, and if he had been, he would have chosen Sirius instead.

He refilled his champagne glass and had a rather incoherent conversation with Mundungus Fletcher about the odds on the Holyhead Harpies match, which concluded with Dung offering to “‘ave a word with a bloke wot knows about fixin’ these things” if Remus decided he wanted to place any bets on the outcome. He declined politely, and decided to slip away and go to bed. It was pleasant having a house full of people for once, but it was also exhausting, and at this time of the month, he felt in need of some down time.

Tonks cornered him in the hallway, looking flushed and ruffled. “I’m so glad I finally caught you alone,” she said breathlessly. “Kingsley and I were trying to follow up on your friend with the invisible cat, and what we found is amazing. Or rather, what we didn’t find.”

Kingsley stepped out of the party room, pulled the door closed behind him and nodded gravely. “We couldn’t locate any records of werewolf-related incidents filed in the last month. In fact, nobody seems to have reported a werewolf attack in well over a year.”

Remus tried to make sense of this, and wished he’d had less to drink. “Are you sure it’s been filed in the right place?” he asked at last. “Aren’t you always complaining about the way important papers get misplaced all the time?”

“They do,” said Kingsley. “That’s why it took us so long to get back to you. But we’ve been through every nook and cranny of the D.M.L.E., and there’s literally nothing...”

“And then Dawlish caught me going through some papers from the Werewolf Capture Unit on my lunch hour, and he completely lost it. Threatened to sack me.”

Remus raised an eyebrow. “Can he do that? I mean, what possible grounds would he...”

“Well,” Tonks admitted, “I did sort of liberate them from the W.C.U. offices without permission. But everybody does that – I mean, it’s such a headache to go through the proper channels – and I meant to bring them back as soon as I finished. Anyway, I read enough to know that they haven’t heard anything about Berowne, either.”

“That’s odd,” said Remus, trying to sound casual. It was, in fact, a good deal more than odd, and he didn’t like the implications at all. Suddenly he felt very sober. “Try not to get yourself sacked, all right?”

“Will do. But I’d like to meet your new friend after he gets out of St. Mungo’s.”

 

                                                            *          *          *

On the afternoon before the full moon, Linus got his first look at the room in which he was to transform. It was small, square, and antiseptically clean. The door contained a small glass window so the Healers could observe the transformation and an official from the Registry could note the color and markings of his wolf form. The padded walls were otherwise perfectly monotonous. They were the shade of green which is supposed to be calming, but in fact reminded Linus of bile. There was a white porcelain water bowl in one corner of the room, a basket lined with a blanket in another, and several old newspapers spread out on the floor near the opposite wall – to be used as a toilet, he realized.

His overactive imagination had been picturing steel bars and shackles, but in an odd way, this practical, institutional arrangement seemed worse. It took him a moment to figure out why he felt that way. This wasn’t a prison cell, it was a kennel.

“Do I get a chew toy as well?” he asked the mediwitch.

“A what?”

“Like a rawhide bone, or a little squeaky mouse. That sort of thing.”

She gave him a funny look. “That’s not part of our standard equipment, but if you like, I’ll check with the Healers and see if it’s allowed. I don’t think anybody has requested one before.”

“Never mind,” said Linus, feeling more depressed than before. Sarcasm was a human weapon; he’d have to cut it out for the next twelve hours. As she cast a twelve-hour Imperturbable Charm and shut the door on his little room, he tried not to think too hard about the fact that in some people’s eyes, he would never be human again.

 

                                                            *          *          *

The sheer agony of the transformation was nothing like anything he had ever felt before. It was surreal, maddening, like being immersed in scalding water with stiff hairs pricking at your skin from the inside.

At length the pain subsided, leaving him with the shivery exhausted feeling one has after great physical stress. Linus opened his eyes. The first thing he noticed was that the bile-green walls had gone a dull shade of grey. This was an improvement rather than otherwise, but it was a bit disconcerting to find himself color-blind. He turned his head for a look at himself. Grey fur, grey paws, grey tail. How exciting.

He thumped his tail against the floor experimentally and sniffed the air. The odor of disinfectant was overpowering, and he even caught a few whiffs of printer’s ink from the newspapers on the opposite side of the room. He tried burying his nose in his fur to get away from the smells, and then remembered that the bloke from the Werewolf Registry would be taking photographs and he really didn’t want to be captured on film sniffing his own bum, so he got to his feet and tried to look as dignified as possible. This proved to be a lost cause, because he wasn’t used to being four-footed and his paws went splaying in all directions the first time he tried to stand up.

After a few minutes’ practice he got better at walking. He tried pacing to the other side of the little room. Click-click-click-click-click. He discovered that his toenails needed trimming. Sounds were more intense, too, when you were a wolf.

He paced back. Click-click-click-click-click.

So this was being a werewolf. It wasn’t quite what he had expected. He was already beginning to be bored out of his mind.

He decided to check out the newspapers and see if he could still read. He could. In fact, his mind seemed to be in perfect working order; he’d be able to tell the Healers that the dosage for the potion was just right. Unfortunately, though, he was unable to turn over the pages with his paws, which meant he was stuck with some advertisements and a week-old editorial page from the Daily Prophet, which was up to its usual level of idiocy. After reading three paragraphs of an exceptionally vapid opinion piece about why any public criticism of Minister Fudge whatsoever would hurt Britain’s standing in the international magical community, Linus felt a growl rising in the back of his throat. He turned his attention to the personals.

What was it with single witches these days? Why did every last one of them seem to be looking for a man who enjoyed moonlit walks?

He threw his head back.

AAAAAAAaaaahOOOOOOOooooooooo...

Linus let his mouth fall open in a lupine grin. Now that was satisfying.

 

                                                            *          *          *

Transforming back into a human was every bit as bad as turning into a wolf. This time, the hairs retracted into his skin, leaving him with a wild urge to rip up his arms and root out whatever was left of the beast. Linus lay flat on the floor of the little room for some minutes, feeling sick with pain and horror; but gradually, his nausea gave way to relief at having hands and feet and human features and ordinary, dull human senses.

He’d left his clothing folded in a corner, unsure whether the transformation would damage it or not. Before he had a chance to get properly dressed, his nemesis the mediwitch bustled in with a clipboard.

“Well, well, it looks like your dosage is still going to require some adjustment. Have you any idea how long after the transformation it was when you lost control of your mind?”

“I didn’t,” said Linus, clutching his robes against his body and hoping to preserve some semblance of modesty. “Perfectly sane all night long.”

She looked at him suspiciously. “But you were howling.”

“Yes, I was. You’d howl too if you were locked up in a ten-by-ten room, your whole body hurt, you were facing a lifetime of pain, illness, and discrimination, and you had nothing more interesting to do. Have you got any more questions, or may I finish putting my clothes on now?”

“Not yet. You’ve got to have a complete physical before you can go home. Regulations.”

Linus gritted his teeth and forced himself to be extremely polite to the mediwitch for the next hour, lest she take it into her head to delay his release from St. Mungo’s. She poked and prodded his very sore body, ordered him not to Apparate or do any heavy spellwork for at least seventy-two hours, and sent him home by Floo powder with a vial of pain-relief potion.

The place smelled musty after having been empty for so long, and the general disarray of the place – usually so familiar and comfortable – now struck him forcibly and seemed a little sordid. Chess, obviously annoyed at his owner’s prolonged absence, sniffed at him with an air of studied indifference and promptly went invisible. To Linus’ surprise, the cat’s food and water dishes were almost full; Lupin must have sent a friend around while he was incapacitated. Good. He really didn’t feel like bending down to fill them or, for that matter, expending any unnecessary energy at all.

He limped upstairs, swallowed most of the pain reliever at once, and crept into bed, pulling the down quilt up over his shoulders. A few minutes later, the weight of a cat landing on the mattress and the ticklish feeling of whiskers against his face told him that he had been forgiven for disappearing. He didn’t bother opening his eyes to check whether Chess had decided to turn visible again. That would have required effort.

He was awakened – he didn’t know how much later – by the creak of a floorboard downstairs.

Instantly alert, he reached for his wand, ignored the protests of his aching muscles, and cautiously eased his way into the hall. At the top of the stairs he stopped short. A small, unfamiliar figure was bent down in front of his grate and seemed to be kindling a fire.