Crown of the North

CHAPTER FOUR

The Yellow Flowers of Danger

Monday 25 July - Friday 29 July 1983

From Pitlochry, Perthshire, to The Cairngorms, Aberdeenshire.

Rated PG-13 for explicit lycanthropy.

There was a long and perfectly companionable silence before Remus asked, "What have the others been doing today?"

"Avoiding," said Ariadne. "We were all supposed to be sleeping earlier, but I'm not thinking we did, very much. Every time I stirred Glenda was crying. And Hestia spent hours pacing the room. Emmeline was restless, and we heard Ivor shouting... did you not hear that?"

"No. But I'm usually oblivious to everything at this time of the month."

"It's a great deal to process. But about one o' clock Glenda awoke properly and said, ‘I want to do something else.' And suddenly everybody was out of bed, and they decided to visit Blair Castle. I think they were just wanting a break from thinking about horror - if we could not sleep, doing anything was better than doing nothing. Sturgis offered to stay behind with you, but I told him it would be better if I bided because I really was finally on the point of falling asleep."

"You and Sturgis are both mad," he complained. "Usually no one bothers to stay behind with me."

"That's not meaning that ‘usually' is right. I did sleep for an hour, and then I got up and mixed some more soother. The others will probably stay at the castle until it closes, then take a Muggle tourist bus back in time for dinner... which reminds me, I have to go out to buy food. They're wanting to take a walk this evening... Will it look suspicious if you're too tired to do it?"

"Is it a gentle stroll along the river, or a swift hike up the mountain?"

"A stroll, I'm thinking, because we're all pretty sleep-deprived."

"Fine, I'll lie down again later, and then I should be able to stroll this evening. But you're not going into town by yourself. My dereliction of duty does not extend to days when I am human."

She did not protest when he followed her out of the door, but she did ask, "What kind of harm could come to me in a Muggle town?"

"Automobile accident. Squashed in a crowd of tourists. Ripped off by an unscrupulous tradesman. Assaulted by a mugger who is after your wallet or worse. Assaulted by henchmen of Walden Macnair who are only pretending to be Muggles... "

"What are you thinking Mr Macnair had to do with Caradoc's murder?" she asked suddenly.

"We don't know that he had anything to do with it. The only people there were Connell Dewar and some unnamed witch."

"But it was so close to Macnair territory. Uncle Macnair must have known there was a werewolf in the area. Ivor and Hestia are saying he must have sent a friend to release the wolf at the right moment."

"Do you believe that?"

"Perhaps," she said, "but it's making no sense. If she was simply wanting Caradoc dead, why did she involve Con? Why not just use Avada Kedavra?"

"And if her real goal were to frame the werewolf," agreed Remus, "why did she destroy the evidence of the corpse? But we don't need to know exactly what happened. We can never report it."

He waited for her to ask why not, but she only nodded. "I was not thinking of reporting. The Ministry would give Con the silver bullet without making any attempt to identify the witch. I was only wondering why Caradoc really had to disappear, and why there were at least two people involved in the process of killing him. Wondering what motivated that witch and whether she was Bellatrix Lestrange."

"What makes you think of Mrs Lestrange?" He had thought of Bellatrix too, because the murder smacked of the Black style of cruelty. "Our only description was ‘not old, not ugly', and there are three thousand witches in Britain who might answer to that."

"I'm not really suspecting anybody. But Rodolphus Lestrange is Walden Macnair's nephew."

He stopped to stare at her. "Do you know everyone's genealogy?"

"It's a pure-blood thing, Remus; we're all knowing each other."

He suddenly felt very self-conscious of the fact that both his parents had been Muggle-borns as he asked, "How many generations back does your magical bloodline go?"

"Twenty. At least. But the MacDougal name is only about eight hundred years old. The first MacDougal married the pure-blood heiress of Kincarden, whose family had been magical for a couple of thousand - oh, are you really caring?"

"That's pure-bloodedness with a vengeance. It makes the Blacks, Malfoys, Lestranges and their like look positively nouveaux riches. It may explain why your family survived Voldemort's reign."

She did not flinch at Voldemort's name. She said, "Blood purity did not save Mr and Mrs Longbottom or the Prewett brothers or the Bones family. The MacDougals escaped because of a dedicated policy of neutrality."

He was beginning to know that when she spoke so softly and calmly, she was hiding her real attitude to something. He wanted to ask, but decided that this might amount to an invitation to criticise her family, which would be a breach of his contract to her parents. Instead, he took hold of her jute shopping bag and said, "I should be carrying that."

After they brought the shopping back to the cottage, Remus did need to lie down again. His conscience smote him at the thought of Ariadne single-handedly and without magic producing dinner for eight in all the heat of the day while she was supposed to be on holiday; he was asleep before he had time to reason that the most talented Potions student in seven years was probably also a very efficient cook. He had bad dreams, largely concerned with raking claws and tearing jaws and the corpse of Caradoc Dearborn.

* * * * * * *

When he awoke, finally well in body but very uneasy in mind, the front door was opening to admit the noisy returning tourists, the dinner smelled very ready, and the heat and light had dimmed to the pale gold of early evening. He was able to enter the sitting room before it became obvious that he hadn't been there all along.

Glenda and Kingsley were carrying huge armfuls of flowers, and Emmeline was carrying a Muggle toaster that she had for some reason decided to buy in Pitlochry. Sturgis was Summoning saucepans to act as vases (pausing them in the kitchen sink for long enough to allow half-filling with water), and Ivor was asking Ariadne for instructions about laying the table.

Dinner was a sober affair. All of them had now had time to think deeply about Caradoc's fate. Since no one wanted to talk about him, no one said much at all. After they had cleared the table, Kingsley distributed the flowers, and they held on to each other in order to Apparate to the place of Caradoc Dearborn's final adventure. Ariadne was dizzy and disoriented as she landed in the clearing, but it must have been the right place, because Emmeline said, "Here. This is Con's tree."

It was a Scots pine, with a huge iron ring jammed into the trunk about five feet up, a clumsy chain hanging from the ring, and another iron ring - a dog's collar - attached to the chain. Sturgis picked up the collar and said, "It opens this way. This is the link I charmed broken to release him."

Ariadne was shuddering, but she automatically took Glenda's hand when the older girl stepped closer to her.

"I suppose Caradoc was decoyed to within a few feet of the wolf," said Emmeline. "We can't know where, but probably in the straight-ahead direction."

"Straight ahead" was south. They all instinctively moved that way, eyes to the ground, as if expecting to see Caradoc's ashes. There was nothing, of course, just very fresh grass, too well shaded by the trees even to have wilted under the scorching summer. Glenda knelt to pick a handful of... dust? There was no dust; she could not even scoop up a fistful of damp earth.

"It must have been here, Glenda," said Kingsley. "Try it this way." He pointed his wand and commanded, "Accio, pulvis Carataci!"

Absurdly, the clean evening air was suddenly filled with flying dust that swirled up from the ground - apparently from several yards around and several inches deep, so that clods of grass were being uprooted everywhere - and whirled around their heads before landing in a pile at Kingsley's feet. It was pure matter with nothing remotely like a form, nothing to indicate that these were the pulverised remains of what had once been human. There was nothing but Kingsley's Summoning Charm to indicate that the dust had once been Caradoc.

"Shall we make it to look like his corpse before it was Reduced?" asked Kingsley. "I know a good Reconstruction Charm."

"No," said Glenda. Everyone looked at her. "I don't want to see... a corpse looking like... like his last few minutes. It won't help. It'll just get that poor werewolf into trouble if anyone else finds it. We can't ever let the Ministry know that we found him here. We just have to remember that we... that we did find out for ourselves."

Kingsley nodded and put away his wand.

Glenda looked as if she were trying to speak again, but in the end she said, "You talk, Sturgis. I can't."

"I don't know if I can either." But he walked up to the pine and stood in front of the werewolf's chain to block it from their view. Emmeline placed her photograph of Caradoc on top of the pile of dust, and they all moved into a circle around it.

"Er, Caradoc Dearborn was a good friend," Sturgis began nervously. "He never lost his temper, even when I accidentally knocked him off his broom in his third year at school. He was a considerate son to his parents, he was kind to his sister Hestia when many brothers wouldn't have bothered, and he had honourable intentions towards Miss Glenda Foster... is this the kind of thing I'm supposed to be saying?"

"Keep going," said Hestia.

"Caradoc refused to remain neutral in the darkest days of Him-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, but was completely loyal to the ideals of the Order of the Phoenix, which he joined as soon as he left school. He never gave way to fear, but was willing to tackle the most difficult and dangerous assignments. And... " Sturgis paused, as if running out of words, but then settled on, "and for this commitment to doing right, Caradoc Dearborn paid with his life."

There was a pause, in which Sturgis suddenly stopped looking uncomfortable, and came out with, "Here he lies, and so we remember him. May he live on in our memories until the day we meet beyond the Veil."

Glenda walked into the centre of the circle, tears streaming down her face, and laid a bouquet of pink and red roses onto the dust-pile. She said something, which might have been, "Goodbye, Caradoc," but her voice was muffled. After a moment she straightened up and returned to Ariadne's side.

Hestia followed Glenda's lead into the circle and laid a wreath of white lilies next to the red flowers. She made no pretence at speaking; she just knelt and looked for a while.

Emmeline went next, with a corsage of irises. Then Sturgis, with a bunch of yellow and orange zinnias. Remus felt awkward at following since he had only known Caradoc slightly, but he chose a stem of pheasant's eye and laid it on top of the pile. Ivor came behind him and dropped a shower of blue salvia, then Ariadne, with a handful of wild heather. Kingsley completed the procession with a branch of elder that he must have picked up from the river path on their way.

They remained encircled around the dust and flowers for several minutes. Hestia had fallen into Ivor's arms, her frame heaving tearlessly. Glenda, still silently weeping, had her head on Ariadne's shoulder. Kingsley was holding himself at a respectful distance from everyone who had held a personal stake in Caradoc's life. Remus also kept his distance; Sturgis and Emmeline had both known Caradoc better than he had, and it seemed wrong to stand too close to them.

It was only when the sun began to set that Glenda raised her head and said, "We should go back. It could be dangerous to remain here in the dark." She took Ariadne's hand; the next moment, they had both vanished.

That night they all slept well.

* * * * * * *

It was late the next morning when they finally left the cottage at Pitlochry. (With all their care in packing, Emmeline still managed to leave her new toaster behind.) They had planned an easy journey, yet everyone felt well, and Hestia was singing, "Sure by Tummel and Loch Rannoch and Lochaber I will go..." with an almost defiant gaiety. By the time they pitched their tents in Kirkmichael, they were all singing. When Ivor said he should write his parents a postcard before the post office closed, they all followed without waiting to defer to Glenda.

Remus, having no one to whom he might send a card, was impressed that Ariadne bought five. She crammed into her cards twice as many words as any of the others, and in about half the time. "It's a great deal of work for just three owls," she said doubtfully. "And all this writing about salmon traps and distilleries and walks by the river... I'm supposing it's all true."

"It's going to be," said Hestia. "All those things I claimed to my parents that I would do on this holiday... well, there's nothing left now except actually to do them."

And with this permission from Hestia, they became complete tourists. On Wednesday they walked as far as Glenshee. On Thursday they walked through the pine forests in the Cairngorm foothills. On Friday they sent the owls off with more messages to home before they left the forests behind to climb the slopes. By the time the trees were thinning, Ariadne was lagging behind her friends, which surprised Remus, since she must have climbed more hills in her lifetime than any of them.

"Becoming tired?" he asked.

"I'm not; it's the fungi. If Professor Sprout could see these! It's illegal to pick any, but I cannot just walk past them without looking." She indicated a notebook, on which she had scribbled a couple of sketches. "Do not tell me, I cannot draw, and all my toadstools look alike... The others are way ahead of us. I'm sorry to slow you down, Remus." She put her notebook in her pocket and began to walk swiftly, like a farmer's daughter who had lived all her life in the Highlands.

Later in the day, when they had climbed so high that it no longer seemed like summer, and the toadstools and heather had given way to alpine speedwell and hare's foot sedge, Kingsley claimed he had spotted a reindeer. While the others crowded around to look, with Emmeline protesting that it was actually a red deer, and Sturgis announcing that there were two of them, Ariadne wandered away upwards, presumably still in pursuit of alpine flora. Remus watched, but did not follow, because he imagined that she must be at the limits of her patience for his constant dogging of her personal space. It was five minutes before the deer disappeared into the mountains and Hestia noticed, "Ariadne is miles above us."

It took them another five minutes to reach the spot where Ariadne was kneeling over a yellow-flowered shrub, murmuring, "This is interesting... it cannot be... " She heard them approach and whipped her head around, her face frozen in white terror.

"Do not touch it, Remus!"

Her voice was almost a scream, and he stepped backwards instinctively. So did Emmeline and Kingsley, who were both standing nearer to Ariadne than he was. A small brown snake with zig-zag markings slithered out from the bush.

"It's only an adder," said Kingsley. "It won't hurt us if we leave it alone."

Ariadne had risen to her feet and was blushing furiously. "I'm sorry," she said. "I panicked. It... I was not expecting to find snakes in the mountains. I'm sorry I over-reacted."

They carried on walking, but Remus couldn't forget the episode. Many people panicked at the sight of an adder, but he had never seen Ariadne lose self-control before. And she was a farmer's daughter who should have known better. Even when they reached the peak of the mountain and gazed out at the breathtaking view of half Scotland, she seemed embarrassed by the memory of her outburst.

No one else remembered. They found ptarmigans in the upper boulders, and when they returned to the lower slopes Ivor obliged Ariadne by photographing the toadstools. They bought dinner at the tourists' restaurant, but afterwards returned to their camp site to sit around a Conjured fire. It was still a very warm evening, and the sunset was long and slow.

"I wonder how the Longbottoms are doing," said Emmeline, out of nowhere. In reply to their questioning looks, she explained, "Tomorrow is Neville's third birthday. I always wonder whether he'll ever know his parents."

"Have you seen them lately?" asked Sturgis.

"I visited them at St Mungo's a couple of months ago. There is no change."

Before the pause became too awkward, Sturgis reminded them, "Remus was a friend of the Potters. How's Harry doing, Remus? He'd also be three tomorrow, wouldn't he?"

"The next day," Remus corrected. "But I haven't seen Harry Potter since his parents died. Dumbledore doesn't allow any wizard to contact him."

Ariadne's eyes widened. While her friends moved the conversation to other topics, she asked, "But is that not very hard for you, Remus? Were you not expecting to watch Harry grow up?"

"It is, and I was," he told her, wondering briefly why he bothered to burden her with this particular bruise. "But Dumbledore wants Harry to grow up without knowing about magic."

"And you to live without any link to your old friends?"

He nodded. She looked as if she had several hundred more questions about the Boy Who Lived - or perhaps they were questions about his own misspent youth - but once again she restrained herself. He would have told her about it if they had not been sitting in a group. The presence of the group also reminded him to restrain his hand, which was an inch away from closing around hers, and to pull his gaze away from those Gaelic-blue eyes. He stared at the Conjured flames, but he was not paying attention to the group chatter.

Had he really been about to tell Ariadne his life story? He was still wrestling with the question when he lay awake in his tent, long after Sturgis was snoring and Kingsley had stopped tossing inside a hot sleeping bag. It was so long since anyone had found him so interesting. Certainly Sturgis and Emmeline did not; he liked them both, but he had never been close to either of them. If Ariadne thought to ask him any more personal questions after they returned to the farm, he knew he would tell her whatever she wanted to know. Perhaps, in return, she would drop the well-bred MacDougal mask for long enough to tell him what she herself was really thinking.

Even when he closed his eyes, images of Ariadne poured before his vision. She had cried all night over the plight of werewolves... she could produce dinner for eight without thinking about it... she absorbed her Astronomy textbook as fast as James ever had... she had helped him hide the wolf last November without asking any questions about what she was abetting... her face had frozen in terror at the sight of an adder... she picked flowers patiently and kindly with her little niece... she had recognised Snape's malice automatically... she was eerily aware of his feelings... but her presence was always comfortable... she spoke softly, with endless restraint... her eyes were profoundly blue...

But he knew that these reflections were not really the ones that were keeping him awake. He was restless because of the other thing that his conscience would not let him avoid. He had tried to touch her and would have touched her if they had been alone. He stared at the tent wall while a Muggle camper on the way to the shower block swung a torch beam against the canvas; he imagined for a moment that he could see Ariadne's shadow moving on the canvas of the adjacent tent, even though he knew it must be impossible. Had he really been on the verge of kissing her good night?

He reminded himself that she was only sixteen years old.

He reminded himself that he had placed himself in a position of trust with her parents.

Above all, he reminded himself that he was a werewolf.