Subplot

18 - Lupin

"Want some?" Penthesilea Finnegan was pouring a cup of hot tea from her flask and offered it to him. Lupin accepted with a nod. The screw-on cup was a warm source of comfort in his hand. He thought he had tasted a hint of March in the air already only yesterday, a fragrance of the spring to come, but tonight the air was still icy. Probably it never got warm on this forsaken island, Lupin thought grimly while blowing gently on the steaming liquid until he could touch his lips to it.

While Lupin was savouring the heat of the tea, Penthesilea checked their crystal observance balls. She tapped each of them with her wand to get a better look around. The observance balls were a neat piece of magic, he mused. He knew she had lent a hand in making them, so he told her when she had completed her control round. The witch accepted the compliment with an absent nod, prodding the slightly reluctant crystal ball number seven with her wand again as if to signal that the observance system had its deficiencies, too. She should not downplay her own achievement like that, he thought as he contemplated her dark silhouette against the night-blue sky. The moon, not much more than a reassuring semi-orb yet, had risen between the teeth-like pinnacles of the menacing, black building looming in front of them. Moaning seagulls circled like vultures. The breeze brought a bone-biting moisture to them which even his mother's cloak could not keep off for long, but maybe it was rather the sadness in his heart that weighed him down.

Lupin shivered, reminding himself not for the first time tonight that he was lucky, lucky, lucky. Not only was the night eventless like it should be. No, most important of all, he was outside. Not inside, no, and if nothing unexpected happened, he would never be. Lupin pulled his cloak tightly around him, knowing that inside, no cloak would help. Was that the reason he had never executed his plan to go there, he wondered - was it only cowardice? Slowly he shook his head, if only for his own benefit. He had had his reasons, even if the reasons were wrong. From the past's point of view it made sense, but that did not stop him feeling a kind of retrospective shame because he had not once in all those years visited his friend in Azkaban.

A sudden movement of Penthesilea pulled him back into the presence. She noticed him start and turned to him to shake her head, her silver nose stud gleaming in the moonlight. "It was just one of these damn birds," she said softly. He nodded, knowing from his own experience that the crystal balls could trick even the trained eye at times. And of course, between the convicted Death Eaters pining inside, the Dementors lurking on the premises and the ever-present threat of a Death Eater attack coming from the mainland, they were scared of their shadows. Moody's got it right, Lupin thought grimly. If there's an attack, we are lucky to live long enough to send a message to Dumbledore via crystal ball, but apart from that, we won't be of any use anymore, neither here nor anywhere. He took a therapeutical chocolate bar out of their medicine bag and bit into it to throw his sinking heart a life buoy. If he kept this up, he'd be putting on weight and getting pimples soon, he thought. The other members of their secret guard had already complained about the effect their chocolate intake had on them.

Now it was Penthesilea's turn to sip some tea. Lupin cast a sidelong glance at the tall witch who had been promoted head of the Department for International Magical Co-operation after the demise of Barty Crouch. She doesn't look like someone who sits in an office all day, he thought. After a while, he voiced his thoughts aloud: "Do you ever get scared around here? Get the feeling you should just leg it while you still can?"

"Sure, all the time." Her voice suggested that it had been a stupid question. Maybe it had been. Probably none of their group ever came here feeling he or she did it by choice. He knew it was not a non-sequitor when she asked: "Have you ever - seen her?"

Lupin shook his head. "Never been inside the place, actually," he replied. "Avoided it like the plague." Avoided Sirius, an inner voice commented dryly. Deserted Sirius. But before his usual guilty brooding could catch up with him again, Penthesilea's voice softly intruded, turning his attention from his memories to hers:

"I was there at the court when they convicted her, thirteen years ago. I was quite young then and thinking of becoming a magilawyer. The Death Eater trials put me off it, actually. I still remember the four of them - Charles and Dolores Lestrange, Mordred Crabbe and Barty Crouch Junior. Of course they were guilty as hell, but at that time I wasn't so sure about young Barty, like many people. It was a dreadful night in the court room. But that wasn't the only thing that scared me off - the ruthlessness of the court. I think she must have scared me just as much, Dolores Lestrange, you know. She just sat there and nothing touched her - not her guilt, not her life sentence or that of her husband, not the screams of young Barty, not the contempt of the public - nothing."

"They say she was something like You-Know-Who's second-in-command," Lupin murmured. In such close proximity to Azkaban, even he avoided uttering the name that most witches and wizards feared. "The head of the Death Eaters, the one who ran the show in many respects. If what they said about Varlerta's family relations at the last order meeting is true, Dolores Lestrange was You-Know-Who's sister-in-law."

Penthesilea shook slightly with a silent, half-hysterical giggle, or maybe it was rather a shudder. "It sounds absurd - You-Know-Who having in-laws."

Lupin gnawed at his bottom lip and nodded. "I know. They say he was human once, a mortal wizard, before he magically Transformed his body into something immortal by a spell nobody knows how to work or how to break. To me, this sounds scary enough. But what scares me most is the inhuman things that followed."

"How do you define inhuman, Lupin?" Penthesilea replied. "Take a look around at the things that Muggles do to each other, and that wizards and witches do to each other, and then tell me that You-Know-Who's realm of terror is anything out of the ordinary. But maybe you are right, it is not You-Know-Who's monstrosity but the deeds of his followers that should scare us most."

Not knowing what to reply to that, Lupin turned back to the subject of Dolores Lestrange. "Dumbledore entreated Fudge to draw off the Dementors and install a trustworthy, powerful guard here, or at least to have her removed from Azkaban. He even wanted to hide her in one of the secret dungeons below Hogwarts, but Fudge wasn't having any of it. Said she'd be a danger to the students. Which might be true, I admit - she's not the kind of thing anyone would want to have stashed away beneath the floorboards."

"Dumbledore would be able to keep her safe," Penthesilea said softly, not looking at him. "In Azkaban she might be freed every minute. If that isn't a danger to the students, and to all of us, I'll eat my pointed hat."

The bell of the fang-shaped clock tower of Azkaban tolled three o'clock. It was a sound that seemed to tell of the pointlessness of human existence, of pain and of impending doom, a sound that let even a Metallica tune die on your lips (or was it AC/DC?). Lupin knew that this effect had been the intention of those who built the infamous prison many centuries ago, but could not rationalise away his feelings of dread and fear.

"Another two hours, and Stephan and Mundy will come to relieve us," Penthesilea murmured, pulling her cloak tightly around her. Lupin nodded assent. Each pair worked a twelve hour shift, taking a Portkey to a hidden cottage near John O'Groats on the mainland northern tip after their relief had shown up. With the eight participants of the secret guard service working in pairs, they had settled on a fifty-fifty routine - twelve hours shifts for a week, then a week off to get much-needed repose as well as a return to their daily lives. For Lupin, the rhythm frequently had to be broken, as he was not available for guard service every other week. They made allowance for him, not only because of his lycanthropy, but also because Sirius needed him at Hogwarts. Each time he didn't come down south, somebody else, usually the ever-present Mundungus, had to take his shift, as their group had not been able to recruit any more members yet. Taking somebody else's shift, the exhaustion, the cold, the depression and the danger - a horrible thought. It was a double bind situation all the way through - Lupin felt bad if he failed to come down for his shift, but felt just as bad if he took time off for it.

Speaking of lycanthropy - Lupin sighed, remembering what he had forgotten, or maybe chosen to forget for a while. Resigned to the minor tricks fate played him, he took out his own flask, the one that did not contain tea or even anything remotely as pleasant. Penthesilea, by now accustomed to his habits, only cast him a fleeting glance when he poured himself a cup of his seething, acidic potion. Severus had brewed up a concoction for Lupin to take with him to Azkaban. Now all he had to do every night was add a teaspoon of powdered Erumpent horn and a drop of Glumbumble treacle, boil the potion for another twenty minutes and let it rest for two hours in his flask to get a fresh fully working anti-werewolf-insanity potion.

Lupin was grateful for Severus' help as it granted him mobility in spite of his need for the potion, while not demanding too much of a potion maker's skill of him. While living in his isolated house in Wales, he had found the potion hard to come by; having Severus live nearby was a relief in some ways, Lupin grudgingly conceded. He forced the vile liquid down his throat, resisting the urge to rinse his mouth with water and tea which might dilute the potion and diminish its effect. Instead he contemplated the crescent moon as so often, thinking of Hogwarts, Sirius, the meagre progress they were making at Spellsearching, thinking of Roary's remark and Sirius' opinion of it. Groups. Icy Fingers as a means to attack groups, not individuals.

In a few days he would have to return to the safety of Hogwarts for what Sirius in his affectionate tactlessness called Lupin's monthlies. Before his Transformation, Sirius and he would have a day and a half to build up their next experiment. Every attempt to properly simulate a group within the Atmoglisa Magica had failed so far, which meant they would have to try Icy Fingers on a real group. Most teachers of Hogwarts had volunteered for this experiment, but Lupin wasn't happy about it. If Roary was right, there had to be something specific about groups that could be attacked with magic, something that set off groups from individuals. So far they did not know what this special, magically attackable thing could be, which meant that if they tried Icy Fingers on a group, even in the protective space of the Atmoglisa Magica unforeseeable things might happen. In other words, with the right amount of carelessness and rotten luck, Sirius and he might accidentally wipe out most of the Hogwarts staff with their experiment. Admittedly, this was not likely to happen, but even the remotest chance was not one Lupin would willingly take.

"You know, we need your research more badly than ever," Penthesilea suddenly said. For a second, Lupin feared she might be a mind-reader, but maybe it was the obvious thing to say to a Spellsearcher. She continued: "I don't know if you heard, but there's been an Icy Fingers Attack on a League meeting in New York, two people dead."

Of course he heard, it wasn't as if he limited his news intake to the ever-biased Daily Prophet. "First Icy Fingers attack ever to be worked outside Britain," he replied. "Finally there's a proof that the American Death Eaters are not a mere sect of local loonies, but that there's a connection between the British and the American Death Eaters. They are trying to take over the world, just as certain people have always warned us."

Penthesilea nodded. She routinely checked the observance balls again, then replied: "The League is striking back now. They destroyed a Death Eaters' meeting place in New Jersey and one in Normandy. Killed a few of their lot, I heard. Hope they take some action around here soon, too. All I ever hear about the British League is that some more of their members have been murdered."

"Sounds more like a blood vendetta to me than a political struggle," Lupin said softly. "There's always innocent people in the middle that have to suffer."

"So far all their hits were neat, no one else harmed." Penthesilea's mouth was firmly set now. "I've never heard of League members killing, say, Death Eaters' children or house elves or whatever. Now look at the Death Eaters. They kill whoever comes their way, political opponents, Muggles, children, witches and wizards who are stupid or cowardly enough to maintain a neutral position, you name it." She poured herself one final cup of tea, shaking the last drops out of her flask. "If they come down on us tonight, we will be the ones in the middle," she added softly.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

They had not, Lupin thought while riding back to Hogwarts on a shaky, junior sized school broom through heavy and enduring rain. Once more he had spent a week guarding Azkaban without getting killed. Whatever was keeping the Death Eaters from attacking the prison and freeing such prisoners as the Lestranges, it wasn't their humble little guard, he knew, but of course, the main thing was that something was keeping them away.

Lupin's turquoise cloak was soaked; water dripped from his hair and from the sad-looking tail of his broomstick. After Portkeying down to their cottage headquarter, the broom was the only means of travel available for him - getting an extra Portkey for him to go home would have been beyond his financial means. Another hour and a half of his journey lay before him. He was craving a cup of tea, or maybe, he sighed, hot chocolate with marshmallows, perhaps a biscuit or two. Being a werewolf was a pain plain and simple, he thought morosely. On top of the painful Transformation, the loneliness, the poverty, the danger of biting someone which would result not only in a heap of guilt but probably in an Execution by Silver Bullet by the Regulation of Magical Creatures Department, on top of all of those came his inability to Apparate. Too dangerous, the Committee had told him when he had applied for training more than seventeen years ago. Being a werewolf, the molecules of his body where not wholly settled, they had told him, so if he tried to dissemble them in an Apparition process, nobody knew in which shape he would arrive at the place he intended to go. He might end up stuck in the shape of a wolf, or even an unbecoming mixture between wolf and wizard. So here he was, riding an undersized low-quality broom through unpleasant weather. The thought that as an Animagus, Sirius had not even applied to the Apparition test committee for the same reason was not really a comfort. Lupin shivered, swore under his breath and landed on the deserted grounds of an outdoor pool in Inverness, closed for the winter season. He climbed a fence, hid the short broomstick under his ludicrous cloak and made for a small, shabby café in a narrow side street. He wanted hot chocolate, and he would have hot chocolate, he had decided.

The Muggle waitress gave him a funny look when she took his order. Lupin kept his soaked cloak closed, although he knew that without it, getting warm would have been less unattainable. The wide, turquoise cloak wasn't quite a coat after Muggle fashion, he knew, but in the eyes of Muggles, it would look less outrageous than the damp wizard robes he wore underneath. While waiting for his hot chocolate and chocolate fudge brownie, Lupin looked around in the dark, uninviting room. Nicotine had coloured the curtains a sick-looking yellow; there were grease-stains on the table-cloths and dead flies on the window sills, and even his modest mother would have thought the lamp-shades too ugly. The café, smelling of cold cigarette smoke and damp walls, was almost empty; only in a dark corner, two sorrowful elderly Muggle men were nursing early beers. The street outside looked just as dreary; only occasionally dust-coloured Muggles hurried through the rain like mindless ants. Azkaban, Lupin reminded himself. You've just spent a week in the proximity of Azkaban, so it's no bloody wonder you're depressed. When the waitress came with his much-needed chocolate infusion, he practically snatched it out of her hands, greedy for it in spite of the fact that marshmallows had not been available. He put a few Muggle coins in her hands, suddenly unwilling to stay longer than necessary. In his mind, he was already back on his broomstick, heading for Hogwarts.

He arrived in the early evening, sneaking up the stairs to the deserted west wing. When he opened the door to his room, he smiled. Obviously Sirius had informed the house elves of his expected return, because there was a blazing fire in the grate and a plate of chocolate éclairs on the table. Sirius must have put his CDs in order, too, he thought, because the house elves probably would not have been able to correctly sort them into musical genres. Lupin changed into dry clothes, granting himself the treat of one of his good, new robes, and went next door into the chilly Spellie's Lab. When he entered, Sirius looked up from the notes on his desk and gave him one of his boyish grins. Taking in Lupin's state of mind in one gaze, he said: "There's no way you can come in here until you are properly warmed up and everything. Let's sit down in your room for a while and eat some of those éclairs." Lupin's heart took a jump, or would have if he had permitted it.

Lupin did not like the term 'bisexual'; to him it sounded like only erotic relations to both sexes at the same time could bring fulfilment, which wasn't the case with him. Rather it was that he could not understand why most other people would consent to limit their desires to one sex only, to put the question of 'male' or 'female' over the things that really mattered: the subtle tilt of a head, the light in a pair of eyes, the warmth emanating from a special person's skin, even such abilities as saying just the right thing to a friend overwhelmed by mourning. To Lupin, categories such as 'gay', 'straight' or 'bi' seemed shallow and pale compared to the all-embracing question of loving or not loving someone.

As a student, he had been hopelessly in love with Sirius, just as Sirius had been hopelessly in love with Lily. It was one of these things that just happened, Lupin thought, that gave life its painful and bitter sweetness. Sirius, he had decided decades ago, must never know what effect his striking blue eyes, his quick and sarcastic wit and his slightly husky voice had on his werewolf friend. Love was a thing with many dimensions to Lupin. It went far beyond such secular questions as sexual gratification or ownership. To lose Sirius, to destroy the ease the two friends had developed between them in the course of time, was an unbearable thought to Lupin. Many years ago he had sworn a holy wizard's oath, had made a deal with fate. If Fortuna would consent to work a miracle for him, if she brought back Sirius from Azkaban, free, sane and miraculously innocent, Lupin would never again dream of that other miracle: that Sirius would one day stop being straight as a wand and return Lupin's feelings beyond the bond of friendship. And then, one memorable night, Fortuna had done her side of the deal; Sirius was free, innocent, working with Lupin on a project they both believed in. So far, Lupin had kept to his side of the deal in return, even if he found it difficult at times.

Sirius slumped down on the bed, while Lupin sat down in the squeaky armchair and helped himself to the plate on the desk. "So how's progress?" he asked. Sirius made a face and reached an for éclair instead of answering. Progress, Lupin inferred, could have been better.

After chewing and swallowing, Sirius said: "Okay, Icy Fingers is about power, about Inherent Strength, as Professor Varlerta would put it, and the more you've got, the colder it gets. Okay, we know that's not all there is to it, so I've been reading up on magical group power. Well, it seems there is no such thing. I've found one tiny little reference dated 1752 that says a group is more than the sum of its parts, that there's something between people, just says it like it's common knowledge, and that's it. There's nothing more in the books. It takes us back to where we were weeks ago. Oh, and Dumbledore finally got us the crystal measurement balls we asked for, the ones that are supposed to make unidentifiable streams of magical power flow visible. I tried them out, and it seems they are working alright. That about sums up my week." He frowned, emitting a sigh of anger and frustration. "We can experiment with groups all we like, deep-freeze everyone in this castle if we are lucky, but we still don't know shnirking why." He slapped his hand onto Lupin's blanket.

"Your source says there's something between people," Lupin mused, ignoring Sirius' offensive language. "If this something is the thing we are looking for, it must be something magically attackable, something that makes groups more vulnerable to the curse."

"If Roary is right," Sirius added. "But what could it be that makes groups larger than the sum of their parts, that groups have and individuals don't?" he asked himself rather than Lupin, and certainly not for the first time.

"Love and compassion," Lupin said in a sarcastic undertone. Sirius snorted into his éclair, accidentally blowing bits of cream and chocolate onto Lupin's blanket. He tried to wipe them up with his palm, but only managed to smear them further. Thanks goodness for house elf room service, Lupin thought.

"But seriously, how are the safety measures coming along?" he asked his friend. Without thinking, he added, "no pun intended."

Sirius raised his eyebrows and gave him one of his wry 'haven't-I-heard-that-all-my-life'-looks. "Our participants will be Professor McGonagall, Professor Flitwick, Professor Quibster, Professor Vector, Professor Varlerta and of course our dear and honourable friend, the Git. Varlerta will be here with her guitar, ready to spontaneously conjure up a shield if necessary, while the Git will supervise our attack at Dumbledore's explicit wish. The other four will function as our lab rats within the Atmoglisa."

Lupin felt a shiver run down his back. Lab rats. Lab rats occasionally died in scientific experiments. But at least there was one reason to feel relief. "So you could convince the old man to stay out of it."

Sirius nodded, his face softened by his filial disposition to the headmaster of Hogwarts. "Don't think it was easy. He's stubborn by nature, and that's not supposed to be a fault that is softened by age. If he'd had things his way, he'd be right in the middle of it, with us taking notes on how much he is suffering."

Lupin drew his feet up on the armchair and hugged his knees. "So really, all we do is put them into the Atmoglisa, curse them, try to measure the effect with the balls, see if Snape has any smart remark for us and hope nothing goes so terribly wrong that we can't fix it on the spot."

"Basically, that's it," Sirius added, a touch of bitterness in his voice. "Before that, we have to try to fit the measurement balls into the Atmoglisa. I wanted to do that myself yesterday, but I realised that this job really takes two wands, because if the Atmoglisa collapses in the middle of the process, the crystal balls are likely to break and fall. We should get it done by tonight or tomorrow night at latest, so we can get going with the experiment after your monthlies."

Lupin sighed. "That's right. Afterwards."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Madam Pomfrey had lately improved her Retransformation Ointment, much to Lupin's benefit. Turning back into a wizard after spending two or three nights as a potion-tamed wolf was not as painful as the Transformation induced by the first ray of the newly rounded full moon. Still, Retransformation always left him with sore muscles, tense skin and joints that felt like they had some grains of sand in them. After his first post-werewolf shower, Lupin thoroughly rubbed the sticky ointment onto the skin of his limbs and torso, knowing it would ease the pain soon. He felt he should be fit today of all days. He would have preferred to delay the experiment for another day or two, but Sirius was a notoriously impatient character. He hated to wait, burned for action, so action it was going to be today.

After dressing in his frayed and patched robes, he went next door into the Spellie's Lab. Sirius was already there, checking the position of the crystal globes suspended in midair for one last time. When Lupin closed the door behind him, he looked up. "You alright?" he asked somewhat gruffly.

Lupin took it as some kind of apology for an unnecessarily tight schedule. "Yes, everything is fine," he lied. "That's some pretty good ointment Madam Pomfrey has cooked up."

Sirius gave him a critical look, but did not contradict. He fiddled with one of the balls and adjusted one of the spells that held it. Lupin waved his wand to make the construction in front of him visible. The Atmoglisa they had prepared and enhanced for the occasion was a remarkable piece of magic. Once awakened, it would shelter a power dimension of its own. It felt like nothing could go wrong, Lupin told himself. It felt like a dome of safety.

After a while, the teachers of Hogwarts trickled in: Minerva McGonagall and Severus Snape came first, wrapped up in a discussion that sounded rather controversial. Tiny Chent Flitwick and boring Cosinus Vector walked behind them, the first one's face bright with anticipation, the latter one's impassive and wooden. Nondescript Metheus Quibster seemed to avoid everybody's attention, while Varlerta (the professor without a first name - or was it without a last name?), at once gave Sirius and Lupin encouraging smiles and then eyed the Atmoglisa keenly. Behind her, Albus Dumbledore walked into the room.

"Professor, if you please," Sirius said to him. "I apologise for insisting, but I must ask you to leave. I thought we'd agreed that this experiment is too dangerous for you to attend. We cannot start it as long as you are present."

"We agreed that I would not be within the Atmoglisa," Dumbledore said gravely, gazing down on Sirius with his half-moon spectacles. "I feel that my place is here with you, to see the outcome of this experiment, and to step in at need."

Lupin came to Sirius' aid. "Please, Albus, don't argue. Everybody at this school says that Icy Fingers has an exceptionally devastating effect on you, and you know better than I do that no Atmoglisa can ever be perfectly safe for those on the outside. I would feel much better if you left this room, better still, if you left the west wing."

Dumbledore gave them a benign smile, though Lupin had the impression that underneath it he was hiding displeasure at his own vulnerability. "Severus will protect me in case of an emergency, and so will Varlerta. Please, Remus and Sirius, do not fuss."

Snape stood by the headmaster's side, scowling at the two Spellsearchers. Lupin noticed that he meticulously avoided looking at Varlerta, who was setting up her amplifier and guitar. At the same time, she averted her eyes every time they strayed in Snape's direction. Lupin thought that between his own apprehensions, Sirius' impatience, Metheus' obvious discomfort and Dumbledore's sub-surface denial of his vulnerable state, the tension in the Spellsearchers' Lab was palpable. He felt his heart pump fear through his veins as he watched the four teachers take their places in the Atmoglisa, while the other two flanked the headmaster, Snape with his wand, Varlerta with her guitar. Everybody got their wands ready; Flitwick Summoned an additional jumper for himself and quickly put it on.

"Ready?" Sirius asked. Nods from every direction. Ready - they could start. Sirius gave Lupin a look, and then as one man they pointed their wands at the Atmoglisa and shouted: "Glaciera!"

Immediately Lupin knew that for whatever reason, Roary must be right. They had simulated the curse some forty or fifty times now within the Atmoglisa, but never had it hit with so much force. The inside of the magic simulation dome steamed up completely, then froze over from the inside in a matter of seconds. While Sirius and Lupin were rushing around the Atmoglisa to make notes on his observances in the measurement crystals, Dumbledore tapped his wand against the Atmoglisa to heat it up from the outside, thawing up a saucer-sized, unclouded window to the inside so he could see how the four teachers were coping in there. He gave Lupin a short nod to tell him that there was no emergency yet, that they could go on with the experiment.

They had not anticipated that the transparency of the Atmoglisa would be obscured by the curse's increase of strength: As long as only one person had been the aim of their attack, Icy Fingers had never amounted to such an icy, destructible force. Lupin felt a remote joy at this discovery, because it meant a great step forwards in their spell research. However, he knew that the experiment was indeed becoming quite dangerous. Dumbledore gave him another nod, then blew on his chill-stiffened hands: There was no one hurt inside yet. Lupin nodded back, hoping Dumbledore would give the hand-signal through his small window in the thickly frozen surface of the Atmoglisa. They had agreed that Sirius would signal to them when to attempt Countering the curse, but presently, the teachers inside could not see Sirius at all, let alone any signal he might be making.

Dumbledore caught on at once and signalled. Lupin braced himself against the wall, his wand ready, hoping without reason that the witch and wizards inside would succeed. The counter curse they had taught them was anything but perfect. It was really a generic and therefore weak counter curse, to a certain extent enhanced by such alterations as their present state of knowledge suggested.

When he heard the counter curse take effect with an ear-splitting boom, for the first fraction of a second he hoped and believed in success. Then he saw the light of the Atmoglisa flare up, flutter and suddenly die. For a moment, the room fell into complete darkness, but not the darkness of peace and rest, but a darkness of terror. A severe storm filled with sharp ice splitters grazed his cheeks. He heard Sirius scream the closing word for the curse, the word the Death Eaters used when they considered their evil work finished. Nothing happened. They tried again simultaneously just as the first notes of Varlerta's guitar filled the air. Somewhere, a wand lighted up. Flitwick started singing, if Lupin heard correctly through the roar of the storm. A shield was building up, but it was not yet strong enough. Then Minerva McGonagall held up her wand high into the air, and Lupin could see that they had a problem indeed. The Atmoglisa Magica had blown up and collapsed completely, shattering at least one of the measurement crystals. The whole room was Arctically cold. Dumbledore lay on the floor in a motionless heap, icicles in his beard and in his eyebrows, ice crystals covering the skin of his face, Snape kneeling at his side. Professor McGonagall bent over the old headmaster, terror in her eyes. Lupin felt an elbow nudge in his side, and it was not a gentle one at all.

"Help me stop this," Sirius cried out. Again they shouted the words that should have terminated the curse, but apparently the situation was out of their control. The curse did not die down, but flared up again and again in icy gusts. If the counter curse failed and their closing words did not work anymore either, how could they stop this experiment that had gone out of bounds?

"Severus, tell us how to stop this," Lupin shouted as loudly as he could through lips that felt deadened with the cold. Snape reluctantly turned his gaze from the lifeless headmaster. In the uncertain light of the wands, his pale face looked like a mask of death. After a moment's hesitation, he rose and hurried to Lupin's side.

"Glacifin," he screamed into Lupin's face. "Glacifin, you oafs!"

"We tried it, and it didn't work!" Lupin knew that only those who had worked the curse could terminate it, so it was up to Sirius and him. Still he hoped that Snape would know what to do, because he had worked and closed the curse as a Death Eater out in the real world, unrestrained by any Atmoglisa magica simulation playground.

"Try again, you morons," Snape shouted into his ear, blocking out the sound of the storm, the sound of Varlerta's guitar and Flitwick's feeble voice. He gripped Lupin's shoulder with one hand and Sirius' with the other. "Glacifin, you idiots, GLACIFIN!!!"

The last word the three of them uttered in unison, Lupin's and Sirius' wands thrust forwards towards the frozen remains of the Atmoglisa Magica. Lupin felt the ground shake beneath him, once, twice, and then for a moment the room fell into complete silence. The storm died. Flitwick relighted the magical torches on the wall. Vector and Quibster, huddled in the middle of the room in a grey pile, raised their heads. Lupin felt so relieved that his stomach rebelled. Only with great effort, he could avoid throwing up out of sheer excitement, or was it fear? Whatever - for now the thing that mattered was that the curse was terminated.

Without another word or look for them, Snape left their side and knelt back down beside the headmaster. He put a potion vial into Professor McGonagall's hands. Suddenly all eyes were on the three teachers down there on the floor. Nobody uttered a word until Minerva McGonagall whispered: "He's alive."

Lupin felt himself breathe again. We should have put our foot down, he thought. We shouldn't have let him come here. It was far too dangerous. Whatever it is that gives the curse its strength, whatever power lives within people or between them and gives the curse its full blast only in an attack on a group - whatever it is, Dumbledore has an abundance of it. He is not too weak for this curse, but too strong for it, but that may prove to be fatal one day, he thought. A thought hit him like a fright: We must prevent him ever to be subjected to this curse again, because one day, the curse may very well kill Dumbledore, said Lupin's head with a conviction that reason could not block out.

After Dumbledore had moved his icicle-covered eyebrows, showing everyone that he was still alive, Lupin and Sirius went to check on the measurement balls. Luckily, only one of them had broken after the explosion of the Atmoglisa. The others were secured by magic; they could still be read later. Maybe the experiment would prove to be helpful after all. It would better, Lupin thought - the way the first one had gone, it was not likely that they would start a second attempt. Whatever there was between groups that made the Icy Fingers curse the deadly weapon it was - they had to find out by the data that was in the balls now, and had to find a reasonably effective way of Countering it, before they could try another experiment, if they ever would. Lupin felt himself wishing very urgently that they wouldn't.

Meanwhile, Snape and Professor McGonagall were helping Dumbledore out of the chilly room, or rather, half-carrying him into Lupin's private quarters which were much warmer. Quibster had run off to fetch Madam Pomfrey. Why didn't we have her standing in wait next door in the first place, Lupin told himself angrily. He caught Sirius' eye. His friend gave him a dark look.

"I would have never forgiven myself," he said.

Lupin nodded vigorously. "Me neither," he muttered. Both followed Vector and Varlerta into Lupin's room where Professor McGonagall and Snape had put Dumbledore onto Lupin's bed. The headmaster waved at them weakly when they entered.

"Don't get upset, children," he whispered as they approached, his voice feeble, barely audible. "Everything is under control."

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