Second Chance

Second chance

The waves of the revolutionary Sixties and of Swinging London hit Hogwarts in a somewhat muffled way. The fact that so many students - for a while, the majority - were of Muggle parentage, meant that the great changes at work in the Muggle world could not be altogether ignored. On the other hand, the firm if velvet-gloved management of Albus Dumbledore, newly succeeded to the fading Armando Dippet, and the fact that the great issues of the Muggle world - Vietnam, the Bomb, race, drugs, civil rights, Northern Ireland - mattered comparatively little to most wizards, meant that the school was never a playground for clashing and violent ideologies. The most notable features of the great decade to reach it were the extraordinary Muggle clothes that several older students and even one or two teachers affected in their free time, and the music. New students invariably arrived with hi-fis and casefuls of LPs in their luggage, only to learn, to their great annoyance, that hi-fis would not work in the enchanted castle, and wander around with angry or hangdog expression until someone taught them the uokemdona spell out of sheer pity.

Maria Pinto de Magalhães fit into this colourful world remarkably badly. A tall, serious and attractive young woman, with long black hair framing a well-shaped, pale-complexioned face and huge brown eyes behind large round glasses, she had fled Brazil in circumstances she did not wish to discuss and ended up in Hogwarts when already old enough for a Fourth Year. She had never studied magic at home, and, in spite of widespread goodwill and a general desire to help (she had been Sorted into the kind-hearted house of Hufflepuff) had found herself in many ways a fish out of water. Suggestions that her long legs would look so well in a mini-skirt had been met with a bewildered silence, and later, when she caught the drift, with a chilling stare. Really, she could not figure out these British; could not make out when they were serious or joking; could not understand the nuances of courtship, and whether a boy was in earnest or not. Anyway, she did not want boys. And no - once she had understood the suggestion, and felt duly shocked - not girls either.

In her first year, Maria did not make many friends, apart from a few well-intentioned and tolerant Hufflepuffs. She did, however, attract the attention of one of the most unpopular boys in school, Severus Snape of Slytherin. It was not a romantic attraction; at first, she could not even have said what it was - then she realized that Severus, a boy of poor communicative skill, was deeply unhappy, and that to come to her, as much an outsider as himself, and deliver nasty opinions about practically every member of the school (though she never heard him say anything negative about the Headmaster) was his way of relieving himself. In effect, she was his shoulder to cry on. Severus tagged along with the vicious Rosier-Wilkes gang and its female acolytes - Bellatrix Black and such-like - because it gave him a place to be, but he had no delusions about them. In fact, it was part of the fun to look around himself and see exactly what kind of lowlifes and morons they were. He often told Maria about the essential hollowness of Rudolphus Lestrange, the slippery cowardice of Avery, the twisted ignorance of Wilkes, the utter lack of mind of most of them - they went into Dark Magic in order to pretend that they were something instead of the nothing they actually were, he thought. Bellatrix he regarded as neither more nor less than a lunatic; in the Muggle world, he told her, she would either have been in psychiatric hospital, a criminal, or a drug addict. There was something wrong about a society that allowed this sort of specimens a high social place, merely because of their birth. (Severus' family had been mostly magical for the last few generations, but its Muggle origins were still clearly remembered.) But if he despised his fellow gang members, he hated the Gryffindors who more or less ran the student body at the time; hated them with a hatred that seemed to Maria unbalanced and irrational, that she tried in vain to mollify, but that she could understand - seeing that it seemed that James Potter, the ringleader, had to no more than see Severus, to curse him.

It was on Severus' account that she decided, one day, to tackle another member of the gang, the Gryffindor Prefect Remus Lupin. It was not fair, she complained. Potter was making Severus' life hell, and he had not so much as got a detention for it. It was as good as encouraging him to behave like a thug.

Lupin heard her out with grave respect, and answered her points considerately and as though they mattered. It is true that James gets away with murder, he said, but then, so does Snape. You know that he is always waiting to do James and his friends some mean trick. On practically any occasion when fights take place, it is all but impossible to tell who started it, and in the rare event that you can, the one who started it can plausibly point back to some recent previous event in which he had been at the receiving end. Remus regarded the whole matter between James and Severus as one of those things that simply happen and that cannot really be corrected.

Of course, this stimulated a response; and the discussion went on, in wider and wider circles, until, not very well knowing how they had got there, they were sharing a Butterbeer at the Three Broomsticks. It was only then that Maria really took notice of her debating partner. Though unobtrusive at first, she realized that he was really a well-made young man, with attractive blonde hair and blue eyes, a naturally kind expression, and the manners of someone thirty years his elder. If the truth be told, she had always preferred middle-aged types, but this young man had all the grace and consideration that she prized so much in older men, and something else - an underlying seriousness that hinted at some kind of personal sadness, something in his life that hurt and would not let go.

As for Remus, he had long since noticed the tall Hufflepuff beauty. However, he had never allowed himself to have a relationship with anyone. He was a werewolf; and while his best friends had managed to surprise his secret - and even to find a way around it - he had promised himself that he would never allow anyone else near. It was simply too dangerous.

But this was not like other relationships. It did not wave a flag and shout, hey, here I am. It did not begin with studied courtships and artificially casual dates. It sneaked up on him, as the two of them were deeply involved in discussions about the character of their friends. Before they knew it, it was evening. Next morning, the discussion began again - this time about Muggle affairs and then about the day's subjects; and before he knew it, Remus was looking forward to their time together, all days, every day. For a while, they became one of the sights of Hogwarts, walking chastely hand in hand, their heads inclined towards each other, talking softly and looking into each other's eyes. Many people found them endearing; they were so old-fashioned, they were almost quaint. In a time of mini-skirts and hot pants, Maria wore ankle-length skirts and traditional robes, and Remus a full dress robe and cloak with a pin with the arms of his family.

They spoke of many things; of life with Muggles, of Dumbledore and the strange things that were said about their beloved Headmaster, of the legend of the Slayer, of the use of mirrors in Arithmancy, of their families. As wizarding families went, the Lupins were not particularly ancient - they could only trace their descent to the 1200s and an unfrocked priest in Lombardy; still, to Maria this was a fabulous antiquity. But her family, though Muggle, had her own romantic past: her grandfather had once ridden with the legendary cangaçeiro bandit Corisco, and had at times lived in great wealth. Maria still would not say why she left Brazil; and if Remus, who after all was still a romantic teen-ager, drew the conclusion that it had something to do with these ancient and forgotten deeds of heroism and banditry, she did not contradict him.

Spring came, and summer. Maria and Remus kept walking together hand in hand. Severus Snape had at first been gravely offended, even felt betrayed; but it so happened that with the ripening of the sun, James Potter and his friends seemed to have lost interest and no longer hunted him down for fun. Severus was one of the last to know that James had fallen under a different kind of spell - cast by one Lily Evans - and had other fish to fry; but, since his character had not yet quite hardened into the near-monster that later generations of students were to dread, he was disposed to be grateful, and let his grudge towards Maria and Remus die.

But as the weeks passed, a certain unspoken, perhaps unrealised tension crept in. There was an obvious next step for Remus and Mria; but neither were willing to take it. They still acted as though they were just friends. The weight of unspoken facts and unaccepted feelings hung heavy over them both.

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Remus Lupin had just accepted Dumbledore's offer of the post of Defence against the Dark Arts at Hogwarts. That the old man was still in charge was surprising enough; that he was still as hale, hearty and wise as he had been thirty years earlier - although Lupin was not unaware of the extended lifetime of many wizards, and could be said to have aged slowly himself - was nothing short of amazing. Lupin was telling himself this to avoid dwelling on the wonder of the man's offer: one of the plum jobs in the wizarding world, whatever its danger, given to an outcast, to a worse than outcast... if he dwelled on Dumbledore's generosity, he would probably start weeping, and he was old-fashioned enough to consider tears unmanly.

Once informed that the contract would not be renewed, the Muggle landlord had insisted on bringing in a new tenant as soon as possible. Much good may it do him, thought Lupin, annoyed that he was going to be shoved out with so little time to prepare. Not that he could turn up at Hogwarts in gold cloth and silk, but he was not happy about having to use his old battered suitcase and his threadbare weeds. But he had no time to do anything about it - the new tenant came today - a woman, the landlord had said - and Lupin had to leave before time. He packed his stuff with one swish of his wand, not without wondering how much property even a lonely and impoverished life can burden a man with, and waited for the two friends, disguised as ordinary Muggle "men with a van", to turn up so that the landlord should not wonder how one man could shift all his furniture and possessions on his own.

The doorbell rang. It could be the movers; the landlord; or the new tenant. Lupin, who was polite even when tired or annoyed, went to answer it.

"Maria...!"

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She was beautiful. Dear God, she was still beautiful, and still had that soft, sweet Brazilian accent. Lupin knew that he had not aged well; that decades of painful transformations, of seclusion and self-denial, had lined what should have still been a youthful face, and placed grey among his golden hair. A meeting of former lovers is never without embarrassment, but the last thing he could have wanted was to have this wonderful beauty, a part of the only truly happy period of his life, see him like this. At least meet three months from now, when he was settled into his job, as the established and hopefully accepted member of a prestigious institution!

Not that she can have had so good a life either, he thought. Moving, alone, into this hovel, did not suggest much by way of personal success or family happiness. Lupin wondered about her.

But there was one thing he did not have to wonder about. As soon as he saw her, he knew. After thirty years, he loved her still.

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Showing her around the flat, helping with the luggage, shifting his own out of the way (and how little she had with her; even less than he), all these were things that could be done in place of sitting and trying to talk. There was so much that Lupin wanted to know; and so little that he wanted to say. He opened a package full of oddments and started taking out the few bits and bobs that she intended to use to decorate the flat; well, Versailles it would not be, but at least the lady had taste. He asked her where she wanted the photos of her family; he knew them well enough from their long talks together long ago... Peire, the grandfather who had been a bandit in his youth; Marcelo, the scapegrace uncle who had become rich by dishonourable means and been disowned; Pedro, her father, and Teodora, her mother; Nazaria, her mother's sister, and her children Paulo, Carlinho and Sebastião; sundry other relatives, many with colourful characters and stories... They had wanted to talk about something, and so fell easily into talk about them.

"That is Leonardinho. Surely I told you about him? He went to bed for months with the wife of his best friend... who, as usual, was the last to know... but when he did, there was a bust-up. He went for Leonardinho with a table leg and divorced his wife... there she is, looking very fed up with her bargain. This is Marcela. She went to Spain and came back calling herself Marcelita and having 'come out', with a butch girlfriend who bullied her and wouldn't learn Portuguese. Of course the family disowned her, but in the end her mother left her part of the house - on condition that she got herself a man, or at least a better girlfriend..."

"Are you serious?"

"Absolutely. It was all in her testament in black and white."

"And who is this?"

"This is my cousin Antonio, Fatima's son. He became a priest; funny, because most of her side of the family are Muslims."

"And who is this boy?"

"Ohh... That is Mario..."

"Who is he? Why, here he is again, between your mother and your father..."

Maria fell silent, lowering her head till her face was invisible to Remus, hidden by wings of long black hair. A harsh sob escaped her, making him jump with surprise, and she stuffed her fingers in her mouth to silence herself. Remus was scared and thoroughly unsettled; he did not understand this reaction, did not know how to deal with it. He stretched his hand out to her, then pulled it back. Finally, she raised her face to him again, with large, tragic eyes.

"I have to tell you, Remy. I should have told you long ago. I owe it to you... that is me."

"Oh, my God..." Looking with care, the identity was obvious. The boy was younger than he had ever known Maria, but the features were the same. Only the long hair and large glasses disguised her; that, and a general feminine air that could never be denied.

"That is why my family disowned me. That is why I never, except once, went back to Brazil... I am a transsexual, Remy. I was born a man; or, at least, with a man's organs."

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"So - so that is why you... I thought..."

Lupin's mind went back to that summer day, thirty years earlier. OWL time was coming around, and it was perhaps to get some relief from the pressure of intense study and revision that they had been unusually high-spirited, indulging in horseplay and exchanging terrible puns. They weren't the only ones. All around them, fifth-year students were making the most of their free time, running around, dancing to the sound of LPs made vocal by the uokemdona spell, even - in Sirius' case - throwing snowballs that he had secretly kept magically cold since the winter. Now that was the spirit, laughed Lupin: six months' preparation and a considerable amount of magic - purely for the sake of a good laugh. He then bent over, scooped up the remains of a spent snowball, came up behind Sirius, and (while Maria performed the Silencio spell on herself to stifle her laughter), neatly and carefully dropped it down the back of Sirius' exposed neck. They then had the by no means slight task of outrunning their infuriated friend, the back of whose robes (while the whole fifth year looked on and howled with laughter) showed a large and growing stain of ice-cold water.

With Sirius outrun and the last few snowballs dodged, Remus and Maria flopped down by the side of the lake, still weakly laughing. Somehow, they found themselves, not just holding hands as they usually did, but in each other's arms; and they kissed, passionately, uncontrollably.

And that was the end of it. Suddenly Remus felt Maria go stiff in his arms; she disengaged herself, and ran away. He literally never saw her again till now.

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So... that was why," he repeated.

"That was why," she answered, her eyes still downcast.

"I looked for you all over... I went to Dumbledore, but all he could say is that you had left and would not be coming back. Of course, I thought... What else was I to think?"

"You thought what? I don't understand."

It was Remus' turn to cast his eyes down, ashamed and in pain. "I should have told you a long time ago, Maria. I am a werewolf; and I was a werewolf when we were together."

"You are a werewolf?"

"Yes... ever since I was a child."

"And you thought that was why I left you? My God, Remy, you thought... I'm so sorry... If I'd known, I would never have left you. Not for that..." - he felt his heart twist within him. "Never."

Then the darkness crept back into her eyes, as she asked: "But would you have left me?"

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That was a very good question. If he had known at seventeen, he rather thought that he would indeed have left her. He was a disciplined, old-fashioned young man, perfect Prefect material; a bit of a prig, if the truth be told, with a certain habit of objecting to the natural teen-age rebelliousness of his peers automatically. What someone like him was doing with the three biggest troublemakers in recent Hogwarts history - and why he would from time to time do things like dropping a cold snowball down his best friend's neck - he didn't quite know; but he was sure that that side of him would not have been strong enough to go out with - in effect - a disguised man.

Besides, sex-change spells were among the most forbidden of Dark Magic. Long before Voldemort was thought of, the horrendous use that earlier Dark Wizards had made of them had led to their being outlawed across the world. Their use was stringently restricted to the higher echelons of the Ministries and to absolutely exceptional cases, and so shrouded in secrecy that even the Restricted Section of Hogwarts library had almost nothing on the subject.

But would he have left her? He looked at her. She was in every way so eminently female. There was nothing of the exaggerated quality he had often seen among transvestites, the caked make-up and violent red lipstick, the skintight dresses and stiletto heels. She dressed simply and even, sometimes, mannishly, with jeans and simple shirts. And she made a beautiful woman; her body was slender but sweetly curved, tall for a woman, but only slightly above middle size for a man. She had a natural elegance and femininity, the Girl from Ipanema to the life, tall, slim, leggy, with regular features and a wonderful contrast of clear light skin and large, lustrous, very dark eyes, with long, smooth, shining black hair. Her voice - the hardest thing to alter - was a sweet alto, still with that insidious, soft, hug-inducing accent, and he remembered that she had wanted, of all things, to be a singer. Nothing unnatural or unwholesome about her... all woman, was the expression that sprang to mind. Except, apparently, she wasn't.

Would he have left her?

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"I think you might say that my life was one long nightmare, except that I don't recall it that way. I suppose I've singled out the good bits... the friends I had, the fun I had with them. But it was all wrong..."

From the first day she stood out like a sore thumb, and if she ever had any doubts about her identity, her macho environment drove them out - the working-class districts of Latin cities are no place for effeminates. But she never did. She always felt to herself and to others like a girl in a boy's body. Once, when her school class was being divided between boys and girls for some game, some child piped up, and where do we put Mario - in the middle? And everyone laughed. She had a few friends - who stayed with her because their families disapproved - but contempt and outright hate spread in concentric circles far beyond, and people she did not even know mocked her in the street. Old women spat at her. She told Lupin of being stoned as she went by and having to run away, of being surrounded by children and kicked black and blue. At seventeen, Lupin would have had trouble believing her story, but he had seen too much since - suffered too much. There is a sort of ghastly innocence of evil, a certain self-righteous self-indulgence in cruelty, especially about macho working-class culture, that makes this sort of persecution of a child entirely credible. It is so easy and so seductive to hate the freak; didn't he know it?

"My family did not help. They would defend me if they found me actually being beaten up, but they had this sort of unspoken agreement to ignore my problems. My brother still writes letters addressed to "my brother Mario"... I had to make sure nobody else saw them, or else..." At the mention of the insensitive address, Lupin noticed that her eyes were filling with tears. He reached out and caressed her face; she kept weeping, silently, uncontrollably, as though her heart was breaking. Lupin sat her down and offered her a slab of Hogwarts chocolate. She smiled at the sight of the long-forgotten delicacy, that brought back an echo of happier days long ago, but told him that she could not take it on an empty stomach. She had not eaten for over twenty-four hours; not, apparently, because of any lack of food or money, but because she couldn't put her mind to it. Moving home, it seemed, had been something of a trauma. Lupin found her few pots and pans and her provisions, and got busy. To convince her, he had to sit down and eat with her. She was surprised and delighted to discover that he was a good cook.

She felt immediately better for the food; a simple enough remedy, but it hadn't occurred to her. Lupin looked at her. He was aching to have his arm around her and her head on his shoulder, to offer her, literally and figuratively, a shoulder to cry on; but she was not moving closer. The habit of being alone, he guessed, had become too strong. She spoke of terrible things, with a body posture - upright, lonely and rigid, sitting up on her chair - that spoke of isolation and of a near-certainty that nobody would ever come and reach out to her, of having to stand on her own and without any support; when it was so much her nature to love and be loved and be cradled in someone's affection.

Her magic had manifested itself late, well after puberty, and unfortunately it had been in public; which had made her situation even worse. People now not only hated, but feared her. Her family took her to a Muslim Negro exorcist a few streets away, in the hope that her sexual confusion and her magic could be exorcised at one and the same time. But it turned out that his idea of exorcism was to pummel the demon into unconsciousness: apart from the cruelty and stupidity of it, this was exactly calculated to cause a self-defensive magical reaction. Magic exploded out of her, and nearly killed the man.

But someone else had heard of her and knew what to think. That night, as she wandered the streets, not daring to go home, she was approached by a man in the dress of a sea captain. He was the legendary Captain Shard of the Desperate Lark, and he was looking for men... or women, if it came to that. Shard was a wizard and a pirate, older than almost any magician living, who had looted in dozens of worlds; but not all his men always stayed with him. He knew what Mario/Maria was, for his magic was, in some ways, not far short of that of the great sages.

Of course, she did not want to be a pirate; there would be no violence, he assured her. She would help him and his remaining crew to sail the Desperate Lark to seven isles in seven seas, hidden from the glance of Muggles (non-magical mortals), where he would deliver seven sea jewels; and at the end of that journey, he would sail her to the one place in the world where she could be certain of peace. He spoke of a castle of many turrets in Scotland, presided over by an old sage whose white beard reached nearly to his feet, but whose green power could make mountains tremble; he spoke of young wizards and witches from many lands, gathered together, at peace with each other, with no ignorant Muggles to fear or persecute them; and of the terrible spells that guaranteed that the castle would stand for ever.

Lupin nodded. At a particularly desperate moment of his life, he too had sailed with Shard, who had found it very useful to sail with a werewolf who was also a first-rate Hogwarts-trained wizard; it was with Shard that he had learned much of the Dark Creatures lore that he would now be using as Defence of the Dark Arts teacher. Neither Maria nor Lupin said much about their time with the pirate; it was not good to say why a delicate, attractive, under-age transsexual might be welcome in a ship full of sailors, nor why a werewolf would be so useful to a man whose profession involved a great deal of violence. And neither of them could fathom the relationship between Shard and Dumbledore. Powerful though Shard was, there was no doubt that Dumbledore could have put an end to his career of rapine and illegality on the high seas for good, if he had only wanted to; instead of which, the two were on a friendly footing, Shard took mystical objects and - sometimes - refugees such as Maria to Hogwarts, and often wintered in the deep firth that reached almost to Hogsmeade on the seaward side. Some of his sailors had homes in the magical village, and one cave under the mountains was kept for Shard's own use.

When it pleased God, the journey ended; in Tory Island, off the coast of Northern Ireland, they gave a spear, a sword, a stone and a cauldron to a man shrouded in light, who said they would never trouble mortals again, and rewarded Shard with five barrels full of gold and a jewel of life. Shard kept the jewel, but shared the gold with his men - all except Maria, who did not want any part of pirates' loot, however acquired. Shard sailed from Ireland to West Scotland, and spoke with Dumbledore by the fire in his captain's cabin; and the result was that when the Desperate Lark had reached the end of that firth unknown to mortal men, they were waiting for Maria. Men, and other things. Maria breathed a sigh of relief; she thought she had come home.

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When Maria fled from Remus' embrace, she had no thought of what to do next; she only wanted to avoid the abyss that had opened at her feet, the maddening mystery of love and identity that had been forced on her again. But as she left Hogwarts, it became clear that what was driving her was the old riddle, the old need. She had sought refuge from the question of her being, her self, in the safest haven in the world; but even that had not been safe enough. She was in darkness, in a storm of doubt and terror, incapable of going forwards or back; she could not be what others thought she was, but it was inconceivable to be what she wanted - more than wanted - to be.

Finally, there was a change. As she wandered in the rain in the deserted mountains of North Scotland, there stole upon her a conviction, a certainty, that certain things were going to happen; that she was indeed going to do this terrible thing, and change herself into herself. She did not know how it would happen; and she was more scared than she had ever been, more scared than when she had faced death at home in Brazil and again aboard the Desperate Lark. But she knew it was going to happen.

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Years passed; years of loneliness, of pain, of magic in darkness, of search for what would not be willingly given. "Of course, sex-change spells are the exclusive preserve of the Ministries... or so most people think. And they make it nearly impossible to have them. Oh yes, they know that there are people like me; but we never have enough treasure to give them. It's a matter of money, always. I tell you, I got so desperate I nearly went for Muggle surgery - which is only a poor kind of fake, but better than nothing... And when I made too much of a nuisance of myself, pestering them for help, they had me looked up and discovered that I was an unregistered alien. I had to go underground."

Maria went on. "Every year there are a few suicides... wizards or witches who are too poor to pay the Ministry rates. I think the Ministry really prefer them to die, so they don't have to put up with them. I don't know why I'm still alive myself... or rather, I do. It is because of the anger of the gods."

"You know, Remy, I never should have turned down that share of Captain Shard's gold. It was a god who had given it to him in Tory Island, and, by rejecting it, I rejected the favour of the gods. I only found that out much later, but it explains why I have had such a lonely and unhappy life - although, you know, meeting you here" - and she looked at him and gave a painful, shy smile - "perhaps their anger is spent after all."

Remus hugged her, not yet daring to kiss. "Did you get your sex change, then?" he asked.

"I... I did. I should really not say much about it... I went home to Brazil, once, secretly, and to one particular person, and that person gave me what I wanted."

"Dear God in Heaven... you mean there is somebody out there with an illegal knowledge of sex-change magic?"

"Illegal and very effective, Remus," smiled the tall Brazilian woman. "I doubt whether any Ministry medi-wizard could have made me better. And don't ask anything more, darling. The man is a good man and I don't want any corrupt Ministry idiots finding him out."

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So that was it, then. The woman he loved... the love of his life, he was now sure... was only a woman thanks to illegal Dark Magic of the foulest kind; for, whatever she might say about the "good man" who had changed her, Lupin doubted whether any but a Dark Wizard would concern himself with that sort of enchantment. His love life rested on a lie... or a truth of a nature so convoluted and dubious as to be nothing less than a labyrinth. What was he to do? Could he honestly start a relationship with this person?

Lupin looked at her. If the world he lived in were clearer and cleaner, less full of tainted truths and insane mysteries, less sophisticated and obscure and distorted, perhaps things would be clearer; perhaps she would appear in a different way. But against the background of a world of deformation and contortion, a world in which the simplest truths are twisted to mean their exact opposite, a world of twisting mysteries and mere folly, she seemed to him to stand as something, if anything, clean and pure and white. Whatever the element of falsehood and change in her being, she seemed... she seemed... true. This, perhaps, was the one kind of happiness offered him; he was not going to turn it down.

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"Oi!" - said the landlord after he had come in unnoticed and stood at least two minutes watching his old and his new tenant kissing like schoolchildren - "If you want to move in as a couple, it's ten quid extra a week rent."

"Oh, no," laughed back Lupin, "don't worry, I am going to take up that post in Scotland." (And the landlord muttered, Can't blame a man for trying.) "But I rather think my friend and I won't lose touch again now, shall we?"

"Never, darling. Never again"