Remorse

Chapter Ten: The Parable of the Talents

Celia reached out her hand for another sip of wine and realized abruptly that the glass was not only empty, she had finished off the entire bottle without noticing it.

William, Jeremiah, and Ruth were seated on one side of the dining-room table, Linus and Carlotta on the other. Celia, feeling like she was hosting a tense diplomatic conference instead of a gathering of her friends and relatives, sat at the head of the table. She suspected the children were listening – she heard a scuffling noise from the pantry from time to time, and remembered that Remus used to hide there when he was small – but it seemed only fair to let them. It was their future that was at stake, and the adults at the table might well be dead long before the consequences of their decision came to an end.

Since Bonnie had demonstrated her new ability, William seemed to have stopped thinking of magic as a sin and started imagining it as something akin to demonic possession. Celia supposed, but was not entirely sure, that this was an improvement.

“Is there nothing we can do to save her?” he demanded of the universe at large.

“It isn’t a question of saving her, William,” Celia explained for what felt like the hundredth time. “She has an ability that most children don’t have, but that doesn’t make her any better or worse than other children. What she does with it is her choice.”

“Could she choose not to be a witch?” Ruth asked hopefully.

“In one sense, no. You are either born a witch or wizard, or you are not. But in another sense –”

“Well, it’s a bit more complicated than that,” Linus interrupted. “There are environmental factors as well as hereditary ones –”

“Linus, this isn’t the time. Let’s keep things simple.” Celia turned back to Bonnie’s parents. “As I was saying, in another sense she does have a choice. When she’s older and better able to control her magic, she will be able to choose not to use it if she wishes.”

“But your Ministry will make her go away to that place – to Hogwarts, won’t she?” said William. “The teachers will punish her if she doesn’t use it.”

“Well, she doesn’t absolutely have to go to Hogwarts,” said Celia. “She’ll be offered a place at the school when she’s eleven, yes, but she’ll be free to refuse.”

“An eleven-year-old can’t make a decision like that!” said Jeremiah.

“Well, all right. Technically, the parents are free to refuse. But I believe that it is rightfully Bonnie’s choice to make, and I don’t think eleven is too young for her to understand what’s at stake.”

“And if you must make her choices for her,” Linus added, “at least have the decency to make an informed decision instead of a prejudiced one.”

“We are not prejudiced,” said Jeremiah. “We believe witchcraft is wrong. Would you say someone who thinks murder is wrong is prejudiced against murderers?”

“You’re condemning magic when you don’t know the first thing about it,” said Linus. “I’d say that’s the very definition of prejudice.”

“If you really believed that practicing witchcraft was right,” said Jeremiah, “why would you take such pains to hide it? It’s the guilty who hide.”

Carlotta nodded enthusiastically and said that this was an excellent question, which was obviously not the response Jeremiah had been expecting. He seemed slightly at a loss as to how to deal with a witch who heartily agreed with him.

“And why do witches and wizards take children from their parents, if it’s not to teach them to forget their families and go against the values they were brought up with?” added William with a pointed look at his sister.

Celia bit her lip. It had been a great deal more complicated than that; she had left for the wizarding world with barely a backward glance, but she had been fleeing a dour father who saw little use in education for girls and a life of drudgery – but she didn’t feel like airing the family laundry in front of her other guests.

“I personally think Hogwarts is an outdated institution, and I shouldn’t be surprised if the Ministry had designed it on purpose to widen the rift between the Muggle and wizard worlds,” said Carlotta piously. “There ought to be wizarding day schools so that Muggle-born children can bring our culture into their homes. Integration, not isolation, should be our watchword.”

“That’s all very well and good,” said Linus, “but unless you’re planning on opening one of these wonderful day schools yourself, let’s talk about the options for Bonnie’s schooling that actually exist rather than inventing hypothetical ones. And anyway, the Ministry didn’t design Hogwarts. It was there hundreds of years before there was a Ministry.”

Carlotta pointed out that the Ministry certainly had some input on wizarding educational policy today, and expressed the opinion that they were deliberately indoctrinating Muggle-born students to despise their own culture. Linus retorted that this sounded like one of Martin Lovegood’s conspiracy theories and suggested that Carlotta should write an article for the Quibbler. And, because left-wing wizards argued with other left-wing wizards with considerably more alacrity than they accomplished anything else, Celia had to step in and turn the discussion back to the main point.

“It’s a gift, that’s all,” she said. “If Bonnie had been born with a gift for singing or drawing, you’d want her to have the opportunity to be properly trained, wouldn’t you?”

“Yes, but I wouldn’t want her to sing obscene songs or draw pornography!” said Jeremiah.

“They don’t offer a Magical Pornography class at Hogwarts,” said Linus helpfully. “Among other things, they were afraid it would distract the students from Introduction to Devil Worship.”

Celia glared at him.

“What my husband means is that there’s a difference between using a gift well and using it badly,” Ruth explained, “and I don’t see how she can use it well, in this instance.”

“Well – I’m afraid she isn’t going to be able to stop using it until she’s been trained properly,” said Celia. “If you don’t send her to Hogwarts, you must expect to see more frequent and more powerful episodes of accidental magic as she grows older.”

“So in other words,” said Jeremiah uncomfortably, “the only way to make her able not to use magic is ... to teach her to use magic?”

“Yes. That’s why I strongly recommend that you send her to Hogwarts, if only so that she can learn to refrain from casting spells.”

Ruth seemed to be struck by this idea. “Jeremiah – we’ve got her for seven more years. That’s time enough to teach her our values so she’ll stick with them for life. I think ... I think perhaps what Celia’s suggesting is the best way.”

“The best way?” exclaimed Carlotta, “It sounds as though you would have her go and hide her talent in the earth – healing nobody, helping nobody, teaching nobody. Do you really believe in a God who would watch her do that and say ‘well done thou good and faithful servant’?”

Celia, who had been relieved to wrest even this shaky victory from her relatives, felt like she could slap Carlotta at that moment – and then, as she watched William and Jeremiah’s faces as they grappled with this unexpected remark, she realized that perhaps it had not been such a foolish thing to say after all.

“I don’t know,” said William at last. “I’m not sure.”

And because it came from a man who had never seemed the least bit unsure of anything, Celia was prepared to take this admission as a great step forward.

“You’ve got seven years to make up your minds,” she said. “All I ask – all any of us are asking – is that you learn as much as you can before you decide. And you can ask me anything about magic or about our world, and I will answer you to the best of my ability.”

“Magic is very impressive in its way,” pronounced Carlotta afterward, when she and Celia were alone in the kitchen, “but it’s nothing to compare to a good Church of England upbringing, that’s what I always say.”

“I wouldn’t dream of arguing,” murmured Celia. “Would you like some more wine? I was thinking I might open another bottle.”

 

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June came to visit Remus irregularly, sometimes every day for four or five days at a stretch, sometimes not at all for a week or more. He gathered, from what little she would say of her life, that sometimes she went into the villages on the edge of the forest to beg or steal food, and sometimes Ferdinand was watching her.

When she did come, they had lessons. Remus had wondered at first whether the girl was of normal intelligence – she seemed very childish for fourteen – but she proved to have an apt and curious mind. She reminded him a little of Luna Lovegood of Ravenclaw, he decided. It took her only an hour or two to master Lumos.

“I like that charm,” said June. “It feels happy.”

“So it does,” said Remus, remembering a summer day long ago on Privet Drive, and another young witch holding up a glowing wand to scatter the darkness. “It’s a simple spell, but I think you’ll find it useful if you’re caught in the Forest at night. Many Dark creatures fear light and warmth above all else.”

“What’s a Dark creature?”

Remus offered her a handful of dried hawthorns and invited her to sit down. “That is a very interesting and complicated question,” he said, “and the answer depends on whom you ask. Some people would say that you and I are Dark creatures.”

“I don’t think we are,” said June promptly.

“Good. Why not?”

“I’m not afraid of light. Unless it’s from a hinkypunk. Are hinkypunks Dark creatures?”

“They’re generally classified as such,” said Remus. He himself inclined toward a much narrower definition of Dark creatures – one that encompassed dementors and Inferi and very little else – but he was aware that his views were unorthodox, and he was more interested in finding out what June would think than in pushing his own ideas on her. “Do you think they ought to be?”

“Yeah. When we was little, Ripper followed a hinkypunk into the bog and almost drownded. They trick people, and they pretend to be Light when they’re not.”

Remus smiled. “Some people have made the same argument about werewolves.”

June’s answer startled him with its shrewdness. “Fenrir tricks people, don’t he? He makes promises to the other werewolves that the Lyceum’s going to help them, but it’s only him and Ferdinand and a few of the other officers what get anything out of it. And he pretends he knows a lot more than he does, and he says girls can’t learn magic when we can.” She nibbled at one of the hawthorns. “He don’t really want us to be able to do for ourselves, ‘cos then maybe we wouldn’t want to be their owngirls, right?”

“That sounds about right, yes.”

“But I think Fenrir would do the same things if he was a wizard instead of a werewolf. Can wizards be Dark creatures?”

“Wizards have choices,” said Remus, “and so do werewolves – twenty-eight days out of twenty-nine. That’s the difference between a werewolf and a hinkypunk. The hinkypunk does what it does by instinct, it hasn’t got a choice.”

June wrinkled her forehead, trying to work out the implications of this. “So you’re sayin’ we’re only Dark creatures if’n we choose to be?”

“Yes. Absolutely. We’ve been given a certain lot in life, and it isn’t our doing or our fault, but it is our choice what we make of it.” He had believed this for a long time, and he tried to forget how much his months with the Lyceum had made him doubt it.

She looked up at him, her eyes wide with hope, and he found that he was beginning to hope too.

 

                                                            *          *          *

Remus started teaching June her letters by writing on birch bark, soaking nut hulls in water to make homemade ink. The letters were thin and faint when they dried, almost invisible in the dim light of the cabin. He resolved to make one of his rare, and increasingly risky, trips to Hogwarts. He needed books and ink and paper, and if the school had any spare cloaks in June’s size, so much the better.

Professor Dumbledore seemed entirely unsurprised to see him. “Do come in, Remus. How is the mission going? I was just hoping that there might be something I, or the Order, could do to assist you, so it is an entirely fortuitous coincidence that you should show up on our doorstep.”

“There isn’t,” said Remus firmly. “Well, yes, there is, but it isn’t for myself. Have you got any school supplies you could spare – a couple of quills and some parchment, and perhaps a first-year textbook or two?”

“By all means.” Dumbledore Summoned the items from a nearby cupboard with a flick of his wand and asked, his eyes twinkling, “Is there anything you’d like to tell me?”

“Nothing very definite – but do you think there might be room for another young werewolf or two at Hogwarts? Even if they’re a bit older than most first-year students?”

“There might, indeed. I see there is something to be said for spies who are teachers at heart. They seem to work out better than teachers who are spies at heart, at any rate.” Dumbledore frowned, but said no more.

There was a knock at the door of the Headmaster’s office.

“Come in,” said Dumbledore, and then, “Ah, Severus, speak of the devil. Remus will be joining us in the staff room for tea before he returns to the Forbidden Forest. Would you please see that he has an adequate supply of Wolfsbane potion to take back with him?”

“It’s all right,” said Remus hastily. “I can buy it in Knockturn Alley – they know me there, now.”

“But it will hardly be of the same quality, I think,” said Dumbledore evenly. “Professor Snape is, after all, one of the best in his profession.”

Remus sighed and resigned himself to an hour or two of jibes. He knew what the Headmaster was trying to do, because Dumbledore had explained it to him once: something in human nature made people more kindly disposed toward those whom they had done favors for, rather than the ones who had done favors for them. Remus was willing to grant that this might be true for most people, but he was sure it wasn’t going to work with Snape. Ah well. At least the potion would be properly brewed this month, and he would have enough of it for once.

Tea in the staff room was, as usual, a generous affair, catered by house-elves. After filling up on sandwiches and muffins, and putting an extra scone or two in his pockets for June, Remus started to walk toward the dungeons. He had to stop short when Snape turned aside toward the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom instead. It was not a sensible choice – the facilities and supplies were better in the Potions laboratory, and Slughorn, who never worked at the weekend, would leave them undisturbed – but it was clear why Snape had made it. He couldn’t resist an opportunity to rub in the fact that the Defense classroom was his domain now.

It was certainly not the room Remus remembered. Snape, for some inscrutable reason, had seen fit to veil the windows with thick black curtains. Once his eyes adjusted to the gloom, Remus saw that the walls were covered with pictures of the victims of the Dark Arts: curse-stricken, Dementor-kissed, Inferius-eaten.

“Wait here,” said Snape curtly, and disappeared into his office. Remus contemplated the pictures during the half-hour that he spent brewing the Wolfsbane potion. There was, of course, no accounting for tastes, but he thought that the peculiar nature of Defense Against the Dark Arts made the pictures of dubious pedagogical usefulness. They seemed calculated to induce despair in students of a subject that called for hope.

“Here,” said Snape discourteously when he returned with a covered cauldron full of potion.

“Thank you, Severus.” Remus felt as if he were choking on the words, but he forced himself to say them. He was not going to let Snape win. “It will be a great help.”

The Defense master surveyed him with unblinking eyes. “Frankly, Lupin, I doubt that anything can help you. I hope you are not under the delusion that you are a real spy. You haven’t the nerve for it. Nor the guts.”

Remus wondered, not for the first time, just why he had bothered to defend Snape to Harry.

“Thank you for the advice,” he said through gritted teeth. “I shall bear it in mind. Oh – by the way and just out of curiosity – have you been having much luck teaching your students how to repel boggarts in here? Or cast a Patronus?”

The look on Snape’s face confirmed what he had suspected: gaining the Defense position had been a broken victory. His former colleague detested teaching as much as he had ever done, hated and feared his students, was hated and feared by them in return.

Could any good thing come out of so much hate? he wondered as he hurried out into the gathering dusk with the potion under his arm.

Trust. Dumbledore trusts him, and so must we all. Trust is what separates us from them.

As he trudged farther into the Forbidden Forest, the snow began to fall in thick swirls that obscured his footprints.

 

                                                            *          *          *

In the event, having a supply of good-quality Wolfsbane proved to be a greater blessing than he could have foreseen. It snowed again on the eve of the full moon in March, and by late afternoon the Forest was a pale, muted blur of whirling flakes and softly deepening snowdrifts.

“Good huntin’ weather,” old Peter Stubbe commented. “Covers up the tracks. I don’t know about you young fellers, but I could go for some fresh meat in this cold weather.”

“Has Fenrir got anything planned?” Remus asked, trying to make the question sound offhand. Perhaps, he thought, if Stubbe spilled anything useful he would be able to get word through to Dumbledore.

The old man smiled enigmatically. “Wait and see. You know how to Apparate, Roper?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Then he’ll be wanting a word with you come nightfall.”

Greyback gathered a dozen or so of his followers together twenty minutes before sunset. Remus recognized two of the recruits who had been initiated with him – the old woman with the pipe and the young, unshaven man – but not the teenaged boy and girl or any of the people in Muggle clothes. They were joined by Stubbe, Phil Craddock, Rudolph Smithfield, and several more old-timers. Ferdinand Calabria was conspicuously absent, and it did not take Remus long to work out why. Greyback whispered a set of Apparation coordinates to each of them in turn, his sour breath hot on their faces.

“Follow us old-timers and try not to get carried away,” Fenrir instructed the newer members of the Lyceum. “This is what you might call a delicate operation. We’re here to bite, not to kill. Tonight we’re going recruiting.”

He fixed his gaze on Remus, who shivered in the thin winter twilight. He felt as if his maker’s eyes could see straight through him to the bone.

“Now, let’s go and show the wizards how little it takes to make one of them into one of us.”

Remus concentrated on the coordinates and Disapparated. He and the other werewolves landed in an unfamiliar part of the country – a place of low clouds and steep hills and silence. Their victim stood silhouetted against the snow halfway down a slope.

Not a man, this time. A child. A little girl of about eight, dragging an empty, snow-covered sack of chicken feed behind her. Evidently she had been sent to feed the chickens and had stayed out to play, using the sack as a makeshift sled; a slick track of compressed snow ran down the hillside. Parents warned their children against staying out after dark in times like these, but night fell early in the winter and often the warnings didn’t take.

“Lost, little girl?” asked Smithfield with one of his predatory smiles.

The girl gulped. “I’m fine.”

“You shouldn’t be out so late. Let me help you find your way home.”

“No!” The girl began to run toward a cabin that stood at the top of the hill.

One of the rough, heavyset members of the punishment squad stepped out of the woods and blocked her path. “Oh, is that where you live?”

The girl turned and ran in the opposite direction, away from her home. Remus shut his eyes and willed her to change her course before it was too late.

“Katie!” called a woman’s voice from the cabin. “KAAATIE!” But the child, breathless and stumbling, didn’t respond.

The first glimmer of moonlight showed at the horizon. The pain of the transformation took his breath away, and suddenly the air was filled with wild, bestial howls. But his own mind was clear and true, and he knew what to do.

Ignoring Fenrir’s instructions, he didn’t try to hang back; he ran forward as soon as his four paws hit the ground and reached the child a split second before the others did. He butted her with his head, urging her to run, and then turned and faced the rest of the pack.

They surged forward, teeth bared. He was their enemy now. Good. That would buy the child time.

He locked jaws with the wolf in front, then with two others, and then a set of sharp teeth sank into his shoulder. He twisted violently, trying to shake the attacker off. His paws skidded on the snow, and the other members of the pack closed in around him.

He was down. A set of powerful claws swiped at his side, knocking him off balance, and then ripped his belly open. He swiped back, feebly, and caught the attacker in the eye. Gasping for breath, he struggled to get back on his feet. He understood dimly that if he left his underside exposed, he would die...

Far away, he heard the child sob, and the woman shout words that some distant corner of his mind recognized as defensive hexes. One of the beasts that had been savaging him fell at his side, and the other werewolves scattered, yelping with pain and fear.

When the noises finally died down, he tried to raise his head, but a wave of dizziness forced him down. He lay very still, his blood soaking into the snow.

 

                                                            *          *          *

Fever dreams:

He is running, running after prey that he cannot catch. The prey runs in packs like wolves, but he knows they are men and their flesh is the meat every werewolf craves. They are hooded and wear black robes. The smell of their fear excites him.

He snaps at the heels of one of them, the weakest of the pack, small and pudgy and balding. He springs, but the man turns into a rat before his eyes. There are other wolves all around, his packmates. One of them snaps up the rat with a sickening crunch.

The other men in robes have vanished and now there are only children, hungry and dirty children with withered leaves in their hair. A girl-child staggers and falls, and the wolves pile onto her. He is in the forefront, this time. He rips the flesh from her bones and savors the taste of her screams.

He gnaws at dirty bones and the flesh that fills his belly turns sour. The flies buzz around heaps of carrion and he feels sick with the knowledge of what he has done, but powerless to stop chewing at the bones.

Somewhere on the outer edge of the nightmares, rough hands are lifting him and dragging him to shelter. He pleads for water and the same hands hold a broken cup to his lips. Later he cries out for water again, but this time there is nobody to hear. He drags himself to the sink and drinks from the tap, but as soon as he straightens up a rush of blackness fills his head and he falls to the floor.

He prowls a desolate landscape, burnt ground, broken trees. He is hungry again, hungrier than he has ever been before. He stalks his prey alone this time, following footprints in the mud and the outline of a billowing black cape. The man never turns his head, so he jumps his quarry from behind and feels the neck snap between his teeth. The body jerks once and falls still.

The man is half-eaten before he sees his face. It is Severus Snape.

The hands are shaking him again. He moans and pleads to be left alone with his guilt; but the other person will not go away. He feels the familiar squeeze of Side-Along Apparition, and then nothing.