Mordant

Chapter Eleven: Throwing Dead Ferrets at the Stars

"What do you say we take Buckbeak out for some exercise?" Sirius asked. They had been sitting on the bed for half an hour, licking the chocolate from their fingers like a couple of schoolchildren. He had stopped shaking and his mental state seemed much improved.

"At half-past-three in the morning?" said Remus. Then he shrugged. They were both wide awake anyway, and it wasn't like there were any better hours to exercise a hippogriff in the middle of Muggle London. "Sure, why not?"

Sirius Summoned a sack of dead ferrets from the cellar, cast a Defrosting Charm on it, and slung it over his shoulder. They un-tethered the hippogriff and carefully led him up the attic stairs to the rooftop.

Remus threw the first ferret at the sky with all his strength, and Buckbeak took off with a great beat of his wings and caught it in mid-air.

"Two Sickles says I can hit that chimney-pot with the next one before he catches it," said Sirius, reaching into the sack.

"You're on."

Sirius went into an elaborate wind-up before launching the ferret at the chimney-pot. Buckbeak turned, dove, and snatched up the ferret with his claws just inches from the target.

"Ha! Pay up!"

Sirius reached for another ferret. "How about that television antenna on the second house over? Double or nothing..."

The sack was nearly empty, and their moods a good deal lighter, by the time Remus decided to broach the subject of his mother and Linus Berowne.

"You know about as much about lycanthropy as anybody else I know, including my mother" he said. "Let me ask you something. Would you consider having a relationship with a werewolf, if one was interested in you?"

Sirius looked down at the roof. After a moment he muttered, "Moony-I-think-you're-a-wonderful-person-and-a-wonderful-friend, truly-I-do, and-I-can't-think-of-anybody-I'd-rather-have-with-me-for-a-spot-of-throwing-dead-ferrets-at-the-stars-at-four-in-the-morning-or-any-other-reasonably-nonsexual-activity, and-if-you-do-prefer-men-I'm-happy-for-you-and-I-hope-you-find-somebody-really-nice..." (he paused for breath) "... but ..."

Remus was leaning against the chimney, doubled over with laughter. "Pads, I'm not propositioning you. That isn't what I meant at all," he said when he could speak again.

"Oh. Good." Sirius looked relieved, but mystified. "You know a girl werewolf, then? One who has a thing for ex-convicts with nightmares and a stairwell full of house-elf heads?"

"No. It's about my mum. She and Linus are, well..."

"Really? Good for her. He sounds like a decent sort of bloke, from all you've said about him."

"Oh, he is. Very decent. It's just ... when it's one's mother and all, and when she's had enough hard things to deal with in her life already..." He picked up the last ferret, and flung it skyward.

"She knows what she's getting into, doesn't she?"

"That's what worries me. I mean ... knowing everything she does, why would she want to?"

"Tell me something, mate," said Sirius shrewdly. "When's the last time you were with somebody? In the thinking-about-happily-ever-after-and-cubs sense, I mean."

Remus stiffened slightly. "That's a fairly personal question."

"I'm a personal sort of guy. Answer it."

"Emmeline Vance," Remus admitted.

"Good God, that was fifteen years ago. Unless you got back together with her while I was out of commission."

"Well, you might recall that Emmeline didn't exactly take kindly to the news that her boyfriend had a bad habit of turning into a wolf at the full moon. Might leave claw marks on the new furniture and all that. I came to the conclusion that most other women would be of the same general opinion."

"That's not how Em tells the story," said Sirius.

"Oh, isn't it?" Remus looked into the sack to see if there were any ferrets left, remembered that there weren't, and asked with studied casualness, "Pray tell, how does Emmeline tell the story?"

"Her version was that she had no problem with your illness. She had a fairly major problem with the fact that you'd been lying your head off for the better part of a year."

Something twisted unpleasantly in his stomach. Thinking back on everything that had passed between him and Emmeline, he began to suspect Sirius was right ... but he didn't much like contemplating it.

"So I'd say if he's being up front with your mum ... and it sounds like he is ... and she doesn't mind about him being a werewolf ... then where's the problem?"

"None. No problem, I suppose." He felt uncommonly silly, and noticed for the first time just how cold it was up on the roof.

"Should we stay out here for the sunrise, or go back to bed?"

"Back to bed," said Remus with feeling, and then he remembered how it was that they had come to be out on the roof at such an ungodly hour in the first place. "That is ... if you're sure you're going to be all right..."

Sirius had already started coaxing Buckbeak back down the steps. "I'm fine, old mate," he said lightly. "I always did say there's nothing like a good night of ferret-throwing to take your mind off your troubles. It's done wonders for me."

Remus highly doubted that Sirius had ever said anything of the sort, but he was too exhausted to argue the point. Back in his own room, he curled up under the blankets and was fast asleep within minutes.

 

* * *

The door of the Quill and Quirk swung open one evening and a slight murmur ran through the pub. There stood a woman who was just barely recognizable as Rita Skeeter, who had disappeared nine months earlier. Her hair hung limp around her face, and her eyes were bloodshot behind glasses that were missing several fake stones.

She stood in the doorway for a moment, glaring at the other patrons as though daring them to comment on her appearance, and stepped up to the bar. "Triple firewhiskey," she mumbled. "Neat."

She was swaying on her feet in a way that suggested she'd had several already, but Bert served her without comment.

"What d'you suppose is the matter with her?" whispered Kathy. "And where's she been for the last nine months?"

"Dunno," said Linus, "but I can't say I've missed her."

"Nobody's missed her," said Thersites. "That woman is an complete waste of good oxygen. If she'd just go back to the muck heap she crawled out of, Bert might be able to get the stink out of this place in a few weeks' time."

To their astonishment, Martin Lovegood stood up and waved Rita over to the other end of their table, where he was sitting with a couple of the Quibbler's junior reporters. "Everybody," he announced, "meet Rita. She's our newest staff writer."

"Er'm ... hi, Rita," said Janet Macmillan, who was only a year or two out of Hogwarts. Everyone else at the table was silent.

"What are you writing about?" Janet asked after a few moments.

"'S a secret," slurred Rita. "Stupid ... little girl ... won' let me talk till 's published."

"Oh," said Janet, sounding unenlightened. Kathy leaned forward and mouthed "Little girl?" at Linus, who shrugged.

"She was the one who broke the Lupin story, wasn't she?" Thersites asked Linus.

"Might have been. I wouldn't be surprised."

"Better keep away from her, then. She won't let her claws out of you until the whole world knows about you."

"The whole world does know," said Linus. "It's a matter of public record, isn't it?"

"It's not in the papers. Yet. You think people will keep buying Martin Miggs if they find out you're-?"

"A werewolf," said Linus. "It's not an obscenity and I'm not bloody ashamed of it. And yes. Yes, I think they will."

Belatedly, he realized that he had been speaking too loudly. Rita took her acid-green quill out of her crocodile handbag and perked up visibly. "You're a werewolf now? How does that make you feel? Vengeful? Savage? Bloodthirsty?"

"Shove your quill up your arse, Rita."

"'Interview With the Werewolf'," murmured Rita, not in the least discouraged. "I can see the headlines now..."

* * *

At the end of February, Remus asked Kingsley Shacklebolt if he'd mind brewing an extra dose of the Wolfsbane potion for Linus, a request to which Kingsley agreed at once.

To his surprise, it was Linus who refused. They had both been invited to tea at his mother's house, and Remus extended the offer when Celia was busy washing up. "No, thank you, Remus. It was kind of your friend to offer, but I'd really rather get it from St. Mungo's."

"He's perfectly competent. He's an Auror, and they have to be up on their Potions. And he's had lots of practice."

"It isn't that. I prefer going to St. Mungo's."

Remus was astonished. "You can't possibly. I used to hate every minute of it ... standing in a queue for hours, being stared at by every passer-by and treated like you're sub-human, trying to choke down the stuff when it's stone cold and all lumpy..."

"That's exactly why I need to go there. Because it is nasty and dehumanizing, and most of the people there have no other choice." Linus toyed with the rim of a cup of cold tea. "I saw a man die last month. He was very old, and he just collapsed in the queue one day and never got up."

Remus put down the biscuit he had been eating. "Good God. That's awful. But surely ... your being there isn't going to make things better for anybody else?"

"No, it won't. But I still believe it's the right thing to do." Linus studied his friend's face and added hastily, "Please understand that I'm not judging you or trying to make any kind of statement. This is the right thing for me because of my work. If I'm going to give ordinary people ... the kids who read Martin Miggs ... some sense of what being a werewolf is like, I need to know what it's like myself. I need to have lived it. Do you understand?"

"You're planning to do a werewolf story line in Martin Miggs?"

"You can bet your last Galleon I am."

Remus stared at him. Linus could, of course, find humor in the unlikeliest of places. But old men dying alone in hospital corridors?

* * *

"Feeling better?" Celia asked, fluffing up the pillows.

Linus nodded. Celia really was an ideal person to have around in the aftermath of a transformation. She brought him homemade soup and made sure there was always a generous supply of tea and painkillers at his bedside, but didn't embarrass him by fussing over him too much. But then, he supposed, she had plenty of experience with this sort of thing.

"Oh, by the way..." She reached into her handbag and pulled out a copy of The Quibbler. "I brought you a bit of light reading. I think you'll find it of interest."

Linus glanced at the front cover:

HARRY POTTER SPEAKS OUT AT LAST:

THE TRUTH ABOUT HE-WHO-MUST-NOT-BE-NAMED

AND THE NIGHT I SAW HIM RETURN

"Holy... So Martin's found something to do besides chasing Snorkacks. Good for him!" He turned to the page with the interview. "Rita Skeeter? So that's what she was doing in the pub with him ... but ... How bizarre."

"You know her?"

"She used to write for Witch Weekly. Sob stuff about celebrities. Complete treacle."

"This doesn't seem to be complete treacle, exactly."

"No. I should say not." Linus settled back against the pillows and began to read the article. "Bloody hell, how awful for the kid ... He's naming names, I see ... Malfoy? Well, either the boy's madder than the Prophet's made him out to be, or he's got a hell of a lot of guts. Or both... This man called Wormtail sounds like our friend Sharpe."

"It's definitely Peter Pettigrew. That was his nickname when they were at school. I never did find out where it came from. I suppose it must have been rather cruel, boys being what they are."

"Well, this pretty much knocks out Martin as a suspect." Linus closed The Quibbler with considerable relief, and handed it back to Celia. "He'd never have printed this if he were in league with Voldemort, would he?"

"Unless it's all a pack of lies that Mr. Riddle wants out there to mislead people."

"Stop being so logical, Celia. You're confusing me."

"For what it's worth, I do think this story is the truth. He wouldn't have given an accurate description of Peter if it were a plant."

"Were you fond of Peter Pettigrew?" Linus asked suddenly.

"Yes, I was. He wasn't a good-looking child, and he was very much a follower so people tended not to notice him, but he was a bit like an eager, good-natured puppy. And he was always laughing, that's what I remember most about him ... It's terribly sad. That whole generation destroyed, and for what?"

"For us and our contemporaries, apparently. Doesn't it make you proud, watching the young ones fight the wars we started?"

She shook her head. "It isn't our generation's doing, either. It's a social sickness, and its roots go very far back." She began to tick off the generations on her fingers. "It goes in cycles. Riddle grew up in a world terrified of Grindelwald and his Muggle allies. And Grindelwald was reacting against the old brand of pureblood prejudice, which was the product of seventeenth-century witch hunters, and I daresay they were driven on by real Muggle-baiting. And so forth, back to the day when the first cave-witch found out she could do things with a piece of wood that nobody else could do."

"So what do you suggest we do about it, Madam Ethicist?" Linus couldn't resist asking.

Celia considered for a moment before answering. "Bring it out in the open. Teach our children how we came to this and what our choices are, instead of handing their history classes over to a dead man who hasn't changed a word of his lectures in a hundred years. And for Merlin's sake, stop lying to the world about Riddle's origins. If the wisest and best of us are afraid of the truth, what hope is there for the rest of us?"

"Everybody's afraid of the truth, Celia. It's the scariest thing there is."

"Yes." She tapped the cover of the Quibbler and sighed. "They won't believe a word of this, you know. It's too terrifying. They'll just say Martin made the whole thing up, or if he didn't, it's one more sign that the poor child's deluded."

* * *

Celia was wrong. By the time Linus was feeling well enough to go down to the Quill and Quirk, he found Martin and most of his staff there in a highly convivial mood. The March issue of the Quibbler had gone into a second printing within a day of its release, and public demand for the magazine showed no sign of letting up.

"Tell me something, Martin," said Linus as soon as he managed to have a private word with his friend. "What made you decide to hire Rita Skeeter to write that story?"

"Oh, I didn't," said Martin. "She approached me after she'd already written up the interview. Seemed quite gung-ho about having it published. In fact, she positively insisted that I shelve the Crumple-Horned Snorkack article until next month and print this one instead. I didn't want to do it, but of course, she turned out to be right. Funny how these things work out."

"Why do you suppose she felt so strongly about it?"

The question had plainly never occurred to Martin before. He considered it for a moment and shrugged. "I imagine she thought it was an important story. One the public needed to know."

"This is Rita Skeeter you're talking about. Last I heard, her idea of an important story was the juicy details of Ludo Bagman and Celestina Warbeck's divorce settlement."

Martin took a sip of his gillywater with onion and looked thoughtful. "People change," he suggested after a moment. "Rita's changed a lot since the last time we saw her, now that I think of it."

This was undeniably true; however, in Linus' opinion, the chances of Rita Skeeter having spontaneously changed into a crusader for truth, justice, and Harry Potter were slim to none. And what had she been saying about a stupid little girl who wouldn't let her talk about the article before it was published?

A pint and a half later, he found himself musing about what Celia had said about truth. He decided to try an experiment.

Rita stood at the far end of the bar, holding forth to a crowd of middle-aged witches about her encounter with the Boy Who Lived. The account she was giving them seemed much closer to her usual style than the article itself. "Tears coursing down his stricken face, he pleaded with me to help Cedric Diggory's family receive justice..."

He wondered if he could really bear to have himself spoken of in such terms, but he hesitated for only a moment before pulling her aside. "You know that 'Interview with the Werewolf' article you were thinking of publishing? Well, I'll give you the interview. But you're going to write down exactly what I say without any embroidery or embellishment, and it'll be published on my terms. If I don't like something, out it goes."

Rita's eyes narrowed. "And what makes you think you have any right to dictate what I can publish?"

"I've had a word with a certain stupid little girl," said Linus.

He had no idea what the effect of this statement was going to be; but it proved to be immediate and gratifying. Rita choked on the maraschino cherry in her drink, spluttered ineffectively for a few minutes, and took a quill out of her handbag. It was an ordinary, white, un-enchanted one.

She began to jot down notes un-enthusiastically, but when he got to the saga of his sufferings at the hands of the Werewolf Registry, her eyes lit up. "Do I understand this correctly? The Ministry employee in charge of issuing werewolf identity cards actually offered you a cut of the proceeds if you went around biting other people?"

"Yes," said Linus. He felt a twinge of conscience as she began to write furiously. She was clearly making the spotty-faced young man out to be the greatest threat to the public since Lord Voldemort himself. Moreover, he was pretty sure that he had just blackmailed Rita, although he hadn't the foggiest idea how.

When he told Thersites Mason about his plan half an hour later, the Quibbler cartoonist seemed less than encouraging.

"We're all members of the press, aren't we?" said Linus. "Why not use it to get the word out?"

"Ah yes, the press," said Thersites dismissively. "That great idol of idiot-worshipers. They'll eat it up, all right ... for a good fifteen minutes, and then they'll move on to the Next Big Thing. But not before they've savaged you and spat you out ... You, of all people, ought to know that the public hasn't as much brains as earwax... They don't love anybody for long." He stared into the depths of his drink and murmured, "Nobody loves anybody for long. You'll find that out just like I did."

Linus decided to ignore this last remark, as he didn't have the foggiest idea what to say to it. "You think I should tell her not to publish the interview?"

"Go on. It's your own funeral. Wouldn't trust that Skeeter woman as far as I can throw her, though ... or Martin either."

Linus felt a chill at the back of his neck. "What are you saying?"

"Nothing," said Thersites, and even after Linus bought him several double firewhiskeys in hopes of loosening his tongue, he refused to say another word.

For a moment, he toyed with the idea of chasing Rita down and telling her not to publish the article, after all, but she had already left the pub. He reminded himself firmly that he wanted this story out there, not so much for himself, but for an old man who had died without a Knut in his pocket or a friend's hand to comfort him.