Remorse

Chapter Three: Initiation

Remus spent most of the next week alternately wondering what Barker would have to say about him and wishing he had found a more inventive alias than his mother’s maiden name. He Apparated to The Burrow one evening for Harry’s birthday, but because of his circumstances he brought no presents, only the latest news from Knockturn Alley: Igor Karkaroff found murdered in a remote shack up north, and dementors stalking the alley at night.

Molly frowned and suggested they talk about something else, but Bill and Arthur had begun talking over the latest round of disappearances with relish, and the party proved to be less than cheerful.

“Sorry, Molly,” Remus muttered under his breath at his hostess, who was glaring at him. “Help you wash up?”

To his surprise, she accepted – and did not tap Ginny for additional help, as she usually did. Once they were inside the kitchen, he found out why. Molly swept the dishes into the sink with a flick of her wand. “Aguamenti,” she said, resting her wand on the edge of the counter, and turned her back on the sink as the slow trickle of water filled the kitchen and muffled their conversation.

“Remus, is there anything you’d like to tell me?” she asked.

“Er – no.” There were a great many things he could tell her, of course, but none that he particularly wanted to. The reason he was on this mission in the first place was so that people like the Weasleys wouldn’t have to worry about Greyback. There was no need for Molly to know about the sordid game he’d played with Barker or the desperate and embittered denizens of the Sign of the Bones.

“I’ve had a word with Tonks. She’s quite unhappy.”

Oh, that. It seemed a million years ago. “She’ll get over it,” he said.

Molly put her hands on her hips. “Is that all you have to say about it?”

“What else is there to say?”

“If you don’t think you can ever care for her that way, there might be nothing else to say. If you could, I think you’re making a mistake.”

“Whether I care for her is beside the point. She is a lovely young woman with a promising career and just about everything going for her, and I would never ask her to tie herself to an old werewolf. Regardless of how I felt about her.”

“You’ve just told me you do have feelings for her,” said Molly, “and I think you’re being utterly ridiculous.”

“Molly, I know you mean well, but you have no idea how it is. You and Arthur have been incredibly kind – but most wizards won’t so much as shake hands with me, let alone invite me to tea. I’ve not held a steady job for more than two years, and probably never will again. It’s not the kind of life you’d ask anyone to share. It isn’t fair to her.”

“You didn’t ask her to share anything,” said Molly crossly. “She asked you, and maybe it isn’t fair to make up her mind for her.”

“It isn’t the time for it, anyway,” said Remus. “I’m going away, and I’d be putting her in danger.”

“Where?” asked Molly sharply.

“I don’t know. Wherever Fenrir Greyback is.”

She drew in her breath at the mention of the werewolf’s name. “Well, I think it’s horrid of Dumbledore to ask that of you.”

“He didn’t ask. I volunteered. Much as I am volunteering to wash those dishes for you, if you’ll dry.” He tossed Molly a dishcloth and forced himself to smile at her.

“Well, anyway,” she said irrelevantly, “make sure you take a warm cloak.”

 

                                                            *          *          *

“Barker had a good word for you, and everything seems to check out,” Smithfield said approvingly. Remus had met him once again at the Sign of the Bones, but Smithfield had led him out to a small and evil-smelling alley at the back of the pub and checked the surrounding area for eavesdroppers. “There’s just one more thing. I’m as sure you’re one of us as I’m sure of myself, but just to make the thing proper and legal – I need to see your scar.”

Feeling grateful that he hadn’t been bitten in a more intimate location, Remus kicked one of his shoes off and showed Smithfield the bite mark on his heel.

The Lyconian whistled. “That’s the real deal, all right. No mistaking those teeth marks. I’m amazed you can walk without a limp.”

He’d practiced it for months, perhaps years, when he was a kid. First struggling across the Dai Llewellyn ward on his crutches, training himself to bear a little weight without flinching, then a little more. Later, learning how to run and climb trees like other children – though he had no playmates by then. He remembered his mother’s smile, steady but a little wistful, and his father’s voice: “That is enough for today. Rest yourself, mon petit.” But he had kept pushing himself, and his mother had encouraged him – knowing that his only hope for a normal life lay in concealing what he was.

Sometimes, when he was tired, he still had stabbing pains in his heel with every step, but he had spent so much time learning not to favor that foot that it had become second nature.

The alley was an inch deep in muck; Remus rescued his shoe from sinking into the mire and tried not to fall over as he put it back on. By the time he straightened up, Smithfield had taken a tattered application form out of his pocket. It read, in an elaborate Gothic script:

Application for Matriculation into the Lyceum, the Sacred Academy of Lycanthropic Britons

To His Highness Fenrir Greyback, Lupus Maximus of the Lyceum, and to All Who It Concern:

I the undersigned, being a true-bitten Lycan and a loyal friend to my Lycan brethren and sistern, a scholar of sound and right-thinking mind, and a believer in lycanthropic supremacy and the noble struggle against the oppression of wizardkind, do hereby respectfully request membership in the Lyceum, Lyseminar No. 3, Sub-Lyconference of Southern England and the Channel Islands.

I do promise, swear, and guarantee to conform to the rules regulating my matriculation and continuance as a member in good standing of the Sacred Academy, and at all times full obedience to the righteous authority of the Lupus Maximus and his representatives. I further swear to preserve the secrets of the Lyceum, renounce the company of wizards, not to cooperate with the Ministry for Magic nor to take Wolfsbane. If I should break these promises or otherwise prove untrue to the laws of the Lyceum, I humbly submit myself to what penalty his Highness the Lupus Maximus or his representative on earth the Lupus Minor may deem appropriate to impose even unto death.

Signed,

Remus signed his name, careful not to let his face betray the nervousness he felt. While Greyback could have used a few lessons in writing lucid prose, the threat implied in the final clause was clear enough.

“Welcome to the Lyceum, Roper,” said Smithfield. “I reckon we should be ready to put on your matriculation ceremony in a week or two. Till then.”

“Where do I go for the ceremony?”

There was something distinctly predatory about Smithfield’s smile. “Don’t worry. You don’t need to go anywhere. We’ll find you.”

 

                                                            *          *          *

They found him in Knockturn Alley exactly one week later: three men, ragged and unwashed, who threw a blindfold over his head and thrust something into his hands. Almost before he had a chance to take in what was happening, he felt the familiar tug under his navel that meant he was traveling by Portkey.

“Rudolph?” he asked when they landed. He hadn’t seen enough of the men to be able to identify them.

“Quiet!” ordered an unfamiliar voice. “Unmatriculated Lycans speak when they’re spoken to.”

Remus began to fear that they had discovered his identity. He toyed with the possibility of Stunning his captors and making a run for it, but he’d never be able to take all three of them out before they disarmed him, even if he had been able to see.

He concentrated on trying to work out where they had taken him. Leaves crunched underfoot, and there was a familiar, clean smell in the air. It was a good deal chillier than London had been. They were somewhere far in the north of Britain, most likely the Forbidden Forest, he thought.

“Lycandidates, over here,” called an unfamiliar voice – an educated, faintly affected one. The sound of their footsteps changed, as if they were walking on bare, hard-packed earth rather than leaves. The temperature dropped a few more degrees and the air felt damp. Remus shivered.

Smithfield pulled off the blindfold and said, “This is where we leave you.”

He was standing in what seemed to be a large, gloomy cave, with a handful of other new recruits to the Lyceum. Remus judged from their dress that they were about half wizard and half Muggle, and all desperately poor. Among them were a group of men who talked loudly among themselves and let out the occasional whoop of laughter, an old woman smoking a pipe, and a pair of sickly-looking teenagers whose likeness proclaimed them to be brother and sister. They would be more of Fenrir’s young victims, Remus thought, and he shivered in the chill of the cave. Neither of them had been his students at Hogwarts, so they must be Muggles – or else they had been bitten very young.

He had thought that his everyday robes would be shabby enough to allow him to blend in, but he found that he was by far the cleanest person present, and something in his manner seemed to make the others fall silent when he approached them and eye him suspiciously. He wondered whether it would be advisable to dispose of his wand, but he couldn’t bring himself to give up his only weapon. Well, the others would strip him of it soon enough if wands weren’t allowed.

Plucking up his courage, he approached a man of about forty who seemed less ill at ease than the others, and who met Remus’ eyes instead of looking away. “Where do you suppose we are?” he asked the stranger.

The man spoke with an odd accent that he couldn’t place. “This here’s the Great Den, deep in the Forbidden Forest. It’s the place Fenrir founded the Lyceum thirty-five years ago, and it’s where they have all their Matriculation rites, and also the Lyconferences – that’s what they call a meeting of all the werewolves in the country.”

“I’ve heard that word before. When I signed, there was something about the Sub-Lyconference of Southern England and the Channel Islands on my membership card.”

“Right, there’s three Sub-Lyconferences in the country. One covers Northern England and Wales, and the third one is for Scotland, but you get werewolves from all three of ‘em livin’ round here, ‘cos the Ministry don’t like to come too close. The regional officer in charge of a Sub-Lyconference is called the Lupus Minor. Then there’s a bunch of lower-level officers, like the Lyconians what do the recruitin’, and the Lycologist who’s a sort of secretary, and the Lycographer who supplies the things we need for ceremonies, and the Lycurgists what scout out the territory before the full moon.”

“But shouldn’t the Lycographer be the secretary? Because –”

“Nah, he don’t know how to write.”

“Oh.”

“And there are the Lupercalians, they’re the punishment squad. You don’t want to get on the wrong side of them.”

“How do you know so much?” Remus asked.

The other man chuckled. “Let you in on a secret,” he whispered. “I’m really an old-timer, but Fenrir’s asked a few of us to join the new Lycandidates for the Matriculation. Ranks ain’t growin’ as fast as he’d like, even with the war on, and he reckoned it would look more impressive.”

Remus filed this information away for his first report to Dumbledore.

“Tell you something,” his companion continued. “If you have any trouble gettin’ on, or if anybody steals your food or tries to cheat you, you just get in touch with me. The name’s Phil Craddock.” He extended his right hand, and Remus saw that his arm was badly scarred with the distinctive marks of a werewolf’s teeth.

Remus shook hands. “John Roper.”

Before they could say more, a man in an elegant, and mostly clean, cloak sashayed into the cave. He spoke in the same affected voice Remus had heard before, with a faint trace of a lisp. “The Lupus Maximus is going to be here in fifteen minutes,” the newcomer announced, “and after that, new Lycandidates will be initiated into the sacred mysteries of the Lyceum. If any one of you comes to join the Lyceum in less than full faith, let him disclose his true motives now – or forever hold his peace.” The last few words were delivered with the distinct air of a threat.

“That’s Ferdinand Calabria,” Craddock whispered, “the Lupus Minor. You don’t want to get on his wrong side, either.”

Remus nodded and filed the information away for future reference. On the surface there was nothing obviously wrong with Ferdinand. He neither spoke nor looked like a dangerous man, and he might even have passed for good-looking if his eyes had not been so sunken and wild-looking, but something about him made Remus shiver. He placed an ostentatious hand on Remus’ forearm when he was arranging the new recruits in a line, and it was all Remus could do not to jerk his arm back as if it had been burned. He did not quite manage to suppress a flinch, and he saw Ferdinand eyeing him suspiciously.

To take his mind off his visceral reactions, Remus tried to calculate how many Lycurrencies it must have taken to pay for Ferdinand’s cloak. Most of the werewolves in Britain might be out of work and starving, but the Lupus Minor had clearly turned his position in the Lyceum into a tidy profit.

“Those who are pure of mind and heart will now proceed through the Passage of Enlightenment,” Ferdinand ordered, indicating a dark tunnel that branched off from the rear of the Great Den.

Remus was not sure how far back the passage went, nor how long they spent stumbling through the darkness; he told himself that it seemed like farther than it was. Behind him, he heard Ferdinand begin a tuneless chant, which the other new recruits took up: O Mother Earth, receive us, remake us, tooth and claw. O Father Fenrir, teach us and make us obey thy law. The sound swelled until the walls of the cave echoed with its hum. Remus forced himself to chant along, although he was far from sure that Craddock was doing so.

The passage sloped downward, and wet clay squelched underfoot. At last it widened into an underground chamber, lit by the faint glow of Cave-Dwelling Hinkypunks. The tiny creatures kept flitting down the side passages, ready to lure the unwary into the vast desert labyrinth in depths of the earth.

A dark-cloaked figure stood at the far end of the chamber and turned as they approached.

“Welcome, Lycandidates,” said Fenrir Greyback with a broad grin.

The Lupus Maximus had fangs. For a brief, dizzy moment, Remus wondered if there might be some truth to the stories he had always dismissed as superstition, the theory that a werewolf who had spent too many moons running loose with others of his kind would turn wolfish all month long and attack men in broad daylight. Dumbledore had offered a more prosaic explanation for what had happened to Greyback’s teeth, but it was clearly wrong. No Muggle dentist could have made his canines grow out to a full inch in length.

“This here is my Lyceum, and as of today, you’ve all ma-tric-u-lat-ed,” Fenrir continued, pronouncing the last word carefully. “In plain English, that means you’re enrolled in a school for werewolves. Now, some of you might think you already know what being a werewolf means. Some of you might even have studied it at Hogwarts.” He spat out the school’s name as if it were an obscenity, and looked straight at Remus, who wondered if his false name had fooled Greyback at all. “But I’m here to tell you everything you think you know is shite.”

There was some scattered laughter, most of it from an unshaven young man standing a few paces down from Remus.

“Quiet!” hissed Ferdinand, who had come in behind them. “You’ll laugh when I laugh!”

The young man hastily stifled his amusement.

“I’m here to teach you that there is only one law, and it is the law of the jungle. Blood and fangs and claws. I want to hear you repeat that after me – BLOOD AND FANGS AND CLAWS!”

“Blood and fangs and claws,” murmured the crowd.

“I can’t hear you!”

“BLOOD AND FANGS AND CLAWS!”

It was absurd, Remus thought; it was like one of those – what did the Muggles call them – motivational speakers? Only this one was speaking about ripping people to shreds.

“Right, then. You can see that we have fangs and claws, and that automatically means we’re superior to the ones who call themselves full humans. They have kept us down and they’ve LIED to us. Are we going to let them get away with it?”

“NO!”

“Next lesson, vocabulary. You know what homicide means, right? Homicide is when you kill a man. And you know what suicide means. Suicide is when you kill yourself. But I’m here today to talk about something that’s worse than either of these. How many of you fine Lyscholars know what genocide means?”

Remus did not raise his hand, unwilling to draw attention to himself. Neither did anybody else.

“Genocide is when someone kills you with LIES!” (Remus blinked at this statement, and even Ferdinand looked mildly disgusted.) “That’s what the Ministry is doing to us, killing us with lies. Are we going to let them?”

“NO!!!”

Fenrir launched into a long, rambling homily about the wrongs werewolves had received at the hands of wizardkind. Perhaps it was because the oxygen level in the cave was dropping, but after the first half-hour, Remus began to find it extraordinarily hard to keep his eyes open.

He snapped to attention when Fenrir began talking about the fates that awaited traitors and spies. Was it his imagination, or did Greyback’s eyes rest upon him for a long time? And here he was, deep inside a strange cave and surrounded by Fenrir’s most faithful.

Fenrir fell silent at last and withdrew into one of the side tunnels.

“And now,” Ferdinand announced, “one by one, you may enter the Inner Sanctum with the Lupus Maximus and become fully vested members of the Lyceum.” He flicked a fingernail in Remus’ direction. “You will go first.”

Remus was now certain that he had been set up. For a panicked instant he thought of flight. He scanned the chamber for exits, but he was no longer sure which way they had come, and he knew the hinkypunks would be treacherous guides: they would lead a wizard to his death and leave his bones to rot under the earth. And he could not hope to Apparate safely without knowing where he was, or where he was going.

No; his only hope was to step into the Inner Sanctum and take his chances. If it was a trap, he couldn’t do anything about it, and if it wasn’t, the slightest hesitation would betray that he was something other than what he pretended to be.

Fenrir stood in a small, dimly lit antechamber, one foot resting on a tattered book. Their eyes met, and Remus saw no sign of recognition in Fenrir’s.

“Kneel,” Fenrir ordered.

Remus knelt. Fenrir’s robes, he noted irrelevantly, were even finer than Ferdinand’s, but much dirtier.

“Kiss the Book of Knowledge and repeat after me: I swear to preserve the secrets of the Lyceum and of my brother Lyceans, and may they tear me to pieces if I do otherwise, so help me Fenrir.”

Remus obeyed.

“Now kiss my hand.” He extended a filthy palm.

Remus hesitated for a fraction of a second. I can’t. Not after everything he’s done.

“You can kiss my arse if you think you’d like that better,” Fenrir offered generously.

“I’ll take the hand, thank you,” muttered Remus, brushing it with his lips.

“Ha, ha!” Fenrir shrieked. “Good one! ‘I’ll take the hand, thank you!’” He gave Remus a rough cuff on the top of the head. “I’ve forgotten your name already, but I like your spirit!”

Dazed, Remus stumbled from the antechamber. His initiation was over.