The Banebrewer

CHAPTER EIGHT

The Guiltless to Pursue

Friday 21 December 1990 - Wednesday 6 February 1991

The Plum Tree Restaurant, Diagon Alley, London; Old Basford, Nottingham; Oxford; Carlton, Nottingham.

Oh Gilderoy! bethought we then
So soon, so sad to part,
When first in Roslin's lovely glen
You triumph'd o'er my heart?
Your locks they glitter'd to the sheen,
Your hunter garb was trim;
And graceful was the ribbon green,
That bound your many limb!

- Thomas Campbell (1777-1844): "Gilderoy"

Rated PG for forgery and persecution.

"Huan, bring us some of your House Special spring rolls." Gilderoy Lockhart lowered his voice to a stage whisper and informed Remus, "I taught Mr Li how to make them. They contain mung beans, lime and my own secret ingredient."

"They sound delicious." Remus studied the smirking face across the table. Women found Lockhart very handsome; Remus wondered what appealed to the average woman. The man obviously took trouble with his hair, and his smile seemed to be glued into his jaw, but was he really more attractive than, say, James Potter had been?

He felt Ariadne's hand slide into his as she said, "You're a person with many talents, Mr Lockhart."

Lockhart did not notice the blandness of the compliment. "Arianwen, my travels have taken me to the kitchens of many famous chefs," he began. "When I was in Lhasa on the trail of the Abominable Snowman I learned a recipe for scallion dumplings..." His account of how he had exchanged his newly-acquired expertise in scallion dumplings for vital information about the Yeti's private habits lasted until Mr Li brought the spring rolls.

Remus reminded himself that there was no point in hurrying the man who might hold the secret to defeating lycanthropy; they had all evening. On his left, Sarah was staring at Lockhart with an expression of rapt fascination, murmuring things like: "What, really?... No, you didn't... oh, goodness, you did!... Tell me again, were its feet huge...?"

On his right, Ariadne whispered, "I'm thinking the ‘secret ingredient' is lettuce."

A girl with almond eyes brought a bamboo basket to their table. She must have been too young to go to Hogwarts, for she made no attempt to use magic to set three blue and white porcelain dishes onto their table. The girl explained, in a distinctly Cockney accent, that the first dish was beef in black bean sauce, the second was orange-and-ginger-glazed duck, and the third was snow peas and asparagus in honey.

"Now, Romulus, let me show you how they actually serve the food in Guangzhou," said Lockhart.

His demonstration of the only correct serving ritual distracted his attention from the Yeti for long enough for Remus to risk changing the subject. "We're very interested in werewolves," he said.

"You sounded so brave when you confronted that werewolf in Armenia," said Ariadne. "When those red eyes leered up out of the dark... were you not terrified?"

"Werewolves actually have yellow eyes, Arianna," said Lockhart as he spooned black bean sauce over his rice.

He avoided that little trap, thought Remus. He didn't quite understand why Ariadne was feigning ignorance, but she obviously had some kind of strategy.

"But, oh yes, my heart was thumping like a bass drum! Any ordinary person would have been shaking too much to draw a wand. But I did not turn away from the Bandon Banshee, or the Trondheim Troll, or the Memphis Mummy - do you think I played the coward at one more life-threatening peril? All I could think about was those poor terrified villagers who had lost all their sheep and half their children, so I raced towards the ferocious wolf..."

Sarah's expression of rapture had become so fixed that even Remus could tell it was forced, and he was surprised that Lockhart didn't notice. But Ariadne's attention seemed absolutely genuine. Her chopsticks lay untouched beside her porcelain bowl, as her eyes, her ears, the very hairs on her head, strained to attend to Lockhart. Lockhart wasn't eating either, for his description of his battle with the deadly Armenian werewolf required expansive arm-movements and head-gestures to tell correctly. After a while he began to use a chopstick as a substitute for a wand (or was it a sword?) that he thrust towards and around the imaginary beast. By the time he rose to his feet, most of the restaurant's other patrons were also watching, and Lockhart played to his audience, showing the steps of the skirmish with a ritual that almost made a dance of it.

"... and there he lay. Unconscious at my feet!"

The diners clapped. Lockhart bowed. "All the details are in my book, you know," he announced. "Flourish and Blotts would be open late for Christmas shopping tonight, so if you'd care to dash out to buy a copy of Wanderings with Werewolves, I'd be glad to autograph it for you. My friends and I will be here for a while, and I'm sure they'd be pleased to share my company with all of you."

Lockhart seemed slightly deflated when this announcement was not followed by a stampede towards the door (although two middle-aged witches did excuse themselves to their patiently-sighing husbands), but he resumed his seat and began to attack the glazed duck with a fork. Remus looked at Ariadne, and then at Sarah. Had they really learned anything yet?

Mr Li set a tureen of oyster soup on the table, while his daughter removed the empty dishes. Remus would have liked to ask her whether she had helped with the cooking too, and whether she expected her Hogwarts letter this year, but he did not dare avert his attention from Gilderoy Lockhart. As it was, Lockhart seemed ready to discuss something other than werewolves.

"The five-petalled flower on the porcelain is a traditional plum-blossom design," he was happily telling them. "That's because the name Li means ‘plum tree' - their tableware is an antique family treasure from Guangzhou. It was a disaster when a careless customer smashed a bowl. Huan was extremely grateful when I was able to buy him a replacement. It happened when I was travelling in Canton on the trail of an untamed Chinese Fireball... Sarah, I think I must certainly write a book about my adventures with dragons one day..."

This was the first time that Remus had actually caught Lockhart out in a direct lie. He happened to know that the "antique porcelain" at the Plum Tree Restaurant had been cheaply made two years ago by Ariadne's cousin, Scholastica Macmillan, who worked as a Transfigurationist for Crocker's Kiln. However, knowing that Lockhart sometimes fabricated did not help Remus untangle how much of the werewolf saga was reliable. And Lockhart was now in full flow on the subject of dragon-taming.

"... a burn all up my arm, and my robes absolutely smoking..."

Miss Li reappeared at their table, set down another bamboo basket of boiled rice, then stood aside as three more samples of Crocker's ceramics sailed onto the table, presumably at a command from her father's wand. "This is stir-fried broccoli with corn ears and celery; here we have prawns in garlic sauce; and this is our House Special, pork in plum sauce."

Remus was disconcerted; he had not expected another showing of main courses, and he was already comfortably full. However, the interruption from the waiters gave Sarah the chance to insert a word edgeways.

"Which would you say was more terrifying, Gilderoy - the dragons or the werewolves?"

"That's rather academic, since either could kill me." He puffed out his chest and Sarah managed to look admiring. "The werewolf could inflict more permanent non-fatal damage, so of course he's the more terrifying long-term prospect. But dragons are peculiarly resistant to the usual spell-work - very difficult to Stun."

"Your book makes it sound as if werewolves are quite resistant, too," said Ariadne. "Is the Homorphus Charm the only spell that works on them?"

"I never say ‘the only one', Adrienne, because one never knows what new expertise might turn up. But it's certainly true that the werewolf is a resistant species."

"So what class of spell-work is the Homorphus Charm? How do you cast it?"

"Now, now, Annabel, you can't expect me to part with classified information like that." He tapped his nose conspiratorially. "This is about safety, and you aren't exactly at immediate risk of having a werewolf pin you to your bed tonight. Charms like the Homorphus could be quite dangerous to try out at home. In fact, may I caution you not to attempt any kind of personal contact with a werewolf. Unless your charmwork is as refined and intricate as mine, the werewolf may win the fight!"

"Ariadne always was hopeless at Charms," said Sarah. "She definitely won't be trying anything. So the Homorphus Charm is intricate, is it? Is it... er... cast in stages?"

"Of course it is. And every stage has to be laid correctly, but you won't know whether or not you've made a mistake at any stage until the very last second, when the whole spell springs into action. Or doesn't. If you've made a mistake, the werewolf just pounces and bites. But for a correctly laid Homorphus Charm, the correct intentions, the correct incantations, the correct wand movements, the correct aim - now that's dramatic. You see the wolf morph back into a human before your very eyes."

"Where did you learn the spell, Mr Lockhart?" tried Remus. "Was it invented by a British wizard?"

"To be honest, Rufus, I myself played a fair part in developing it," said Lockhart, scraping the last of the prawns from the plum-blossom dish. "But I can't take the whole credit, I'm afraid. The original concept was developed by an old warlock from Jarnitz, whose trade secrets I swore to protect when he shared them with me. And that by itself is an interesting story. I came to visit because I heard that the village had been oppressed by a vampire..."

Remus chanced a frustrated glance at Ariadne. To his surprise, she was quite relaxed, although she shook her head at him slightly and kept her eyes on Lockhart. She didn't seem at all worried by the complexities of the vampire story, and she even managed to gasp and sigh in the right places. He hoped she knew what she was doing; it was purely from his own lack of a better strategy that he kept his mouth shut. He might as well keep it shut, since he was too full to eat any more.

"But enough about me," said Lockhart, as the waiters approached their table again. A bowl of almond jelly and cherries was floating in front of the girl, and Mrs Li, emerging from the kitchen for the first time that evening, was carrying a large teapot. "Let's hear about Sarah's day. Have you tried out that coconut shampoo, my dazzler?"

Remus resigned himself to hearing the great trade secret that the coconut shampoo was in fact a humectant-balanced formula that Gilderoy Lockhart had developed himself...

* * * * * * *

"Have we wasted our time?" he asked Ariadne that night.

"We have not, for we learned all we were needing to know."

"All I learned is that Flourish and Blott's is open for late-night shopping and that Sarah is willing to risk her hair for you." Remus sat down on the sofa, deflated. "Was I supposed to accuse Lockhart to his face of lying about the Li family's tableware?"

"You were not!" Ariadne looked horrified. "Remus, he's a dangerous man."

"Dangerous? A fool, perhaps, but..."

"Dangerous," she repeated. "He's not caring about other people. If he realised we could expose his fantasies... if we angered him... there's no limit to the harm he'd commit to save his face. We're not needing to inform him that we've discovered his fraudulence."

"I don't know that we have. I couldn't begin to work out which parts of his story to believe."

"Could you not recognise which parts he was inventing? He was lying about the Homorphus Charm."

Remus knew better than to ask Ariadne how she knew when a person was lying; while she could never explain it, she was never wrong. "Which part of it was the lie?"

"All of it. Remus, there is no such spell. There was no old warlock in Jarnitz and Mr Lockhart gave no help in developing any spell. He did not confront any werewolf in Armenia, and if he met one in Wagga Wagga, he did not use any kind of charm on it. He's not knowing of any spell that forces a transformed werewolf back into human shape, nor has he ever met any real person who claimed to know one. His entire story about using spell-work on werewolves is a fiction."

"So we've wasted our time."

"That we have not." Ariadne ran her hand down his cheek so that he was forced to turn and look at her. "We've learned that spell-work cannot help you. The only thing that has ever helped werewolves is what we're already possessing - Wolfsbane Potion. We've learned that the only way forward is to keep on developing the Wolfsbane Potion and to campaign to make it legal. We've also learned that we have hope for Healer Smethwyck's release. He'll be vindicated when the potion is - which would probably never happen if a charm really could do the same job."

"Ariadne, why do I have the feeling that you're going to plunge straight into something else dangerous?"

"I've no such feeling. I'm not knowing what I'm going to do. Wait..." His heart sank as he watched the inspiration cross her face. "Remus, I have after all learned something from Mr Lockhart. One reason it's so difficult to prove him a liar is that he sets all his adventure stories outside of Britain. People cannot track what he's really doing once he's travelling abroad, so they believe whatever he's claiming."

"So you are courting danger."

"Not this week. I'm just thinking that... sooner rather than later... we'll be needing to travel abroad. Wolfsbane Potion has been rejected in the British Isles, but perhaps conditions are different in other countries. If we took it elsewhere... if we found places where it was acceptable... if the British Patents Office saw it causing no harm in those places... do we not owe it to the werewolf community here, as well as to Healer Smethwyck, to make the attempt?"

It was difficult to contradict her so late at night.

* * * * * * *

In the last week of the year, Mercy and Dempster Wiggleswade offered their house in Oxford as a base for Wolfsbane operations. Remus knew it was a risky choice, since the lawyer who had defended Healer Smethwyck at his trial was bound to be of interest to the spies. It must look very suspicious that Mercy and Dempster weren't even at home for the "New Year's Eve party" that they claimed to be hosting. While the Wiggleswades Flooed up to Glasgow to celebrate Hogmanay with the Macmillans, the werewolves made themselves comfortable under the Blue Moon at Oxford.

"Enough time has passed," said Mercy. "It will be all right!"

Remus knew he ought to warn her that it might not be all right, but the werewolves had nowhere else to go, so he accepted her hospitality gratefully.

For the first week of the so-called spring term, Remus had to walk to school through three miles of snow, but he cast discreet Thermal Charms in his socks and gloves. It was after he entered the classroom that he encountered a chill that no magic could charm away. The boys paid attention to filtration and evaporation, but the girls sat in rigid silence, unable to answer a single question. They apparently found democracy in Ancient Greece a subject for giggling and whispering, but certainly not for class discussion. Why had attitudes changed over a mere two weeks of Christmas holidays?

At milk time on the third Tuesday, Jessica Glover brought a handful of pale pink envelopes out of her bag and waved them significantly.

"Are you having a birthday party?" Jacqueline Sutton took the envelopes from Jessica and began to leaf through them. "Oh, look. This is a mistake. You can't invite Katharine Phillips. She never was a friend of ours."

"I don't want to invite her," said Jessica quickly, "but my Mum said I had to invite the whole class."

"Your Mum won't want Katharine Phillips in her house. All she talks about is sex and toilets and digestion. But I've been meaning to tell you - you can't invite Natalie Palmer."

Remus's mind lighted on a painful memory of a teenaged James Potter talking about Snape. He began to wipe the whiteboard so that it would look as if he weren't paying attention, while Jessica asked, "What's Natalie done?"

"Last week Natalie borrowed Autumn Silverstone's book on ghosts and UFOs and she brought it back with a torn page. I became worried about a book that I'd lent her, but when I asked her about it, she claimed she'd already returned it. She hadn't, of course. She finally brought it back yesterday, with the spine cracked and dog-ears on two pages. And now she's trying to borrow a book from Rachel Jackson! We can't include Natalie in anything for the next couple of weeks. It's for her own good, she has to learn." Jacqueline pulled out the two offending envelopes. "I'll rip up these for you. Oh, Jessica, really. I'll take this one too. You know we don't ever invite Dolly Clott!"

"My Mum doesn't know..." faltered Jessica.

"Fine, don't try to explain it. Just tell her that Dolly, Katharine and Natalie can't make it. It will be all right to invite Bashira Raheem because her parents won't let her come anyway, and I happen to know that Sophie Williams will be on holiday that weekend. So that will make seven of us that can come - a very nice size for a birthday party."

"What are we going to say to Natalie?"

"We'll confront her in the playground about those books. If she claims it was all a mistake, tell her she's making feeble excuses."

Remus still didn't know what exactly had happened over the holidays, but it had clearly involved a massive advance in peer hostilities. He decided not to continue their discussion of burning and its hazards after lunch. Instead, he used Tipografia and Zerocso Charms to construct a hasty survey.

"This is an opinion survey, Charlotte, so it's no good copying from Jacqueline. I want your opinion. Never mind the ink blots, Tim; I can still read your writing."

Some of the children huffed in annoyance at having to fill out their opinions, but in the end it only took twenty minutes. While they worked at Long Multiplication (with the exception of Dolly Clott, who was writing random numbers on her maths sheet), Remus read through the surveys.

Which of the following behaviours counts as bullying? Tick Yes, No or Sometimes.

1. Deliberately kicking someone who took your ball.

2. Deliberately pushing someone out of the way.

3. Calling someone a rude name, such as "Stinky".

4. Telling your friends not to play with one classmate.

5. Telling your friends untrue stories about a classmate's bad behaviour...

There were fifteen similar questions, then:

16. Have you ever been bullied?

17. Have you ever bullied anyone else?

The only student who had replied "yes" to that last question was Terry Boot. But he had only indicated nine bullying behaviours; apparently he didn't believe it was bullying to "do nothing while someone else calls your friend names" or "tell a former friend's secrets to other people". Most of the other children had only ticked the items concerned with physical violence, although Gershom Wallace had designed a pattern of selecting "sometimes" for the odd numbers and both "yes" and "no" for the even ones.

It was obviously time to deal with the moral re-education of his pupils. A discussion of power abuse in Carlton seemed far more relevant than a discussion of democracy in Ancient Athens.

* * * * * * *

Two weeks later, Remus arrived home from work to find a fold of parchment on the kitchen table.

"It's from Veleta," said Ariadne. She paused from charming the frost on the back windows into teddy-bear shapes for Elizabeth, and he saw that she was radiant. "I've no idea how much longer it will yet take, but Veleta has finally made some progress."

My dear Ariadne,

Thank you for making so much effort to communicate with me. I am sorry I have been so much less efficient in speaking to you. Privately-owned delivery owls do not cooperate with strangers, and it is difficult to intercept even a Post Office owl without the Macnairs seeing me.

Today I have been lucky. I am nursing Regelinda as she sleeps off a moderately severe bout of Scrofungulus. It can safely be assumed that her family will keep away until she is well. A Post Office owl has just arrived with a letter from her boyfriend; since her father disapproves of this man, who is Muggle-born, his owls are always instructed to behave quietly around the castle. I have asked the owl to wait while I write this, and have stolen parchment from Regelinda's desk.

I received your message last November about Donald Macnair's Blood Curse on his descendants. It was very helpful information, although I suspect we shall need to do more than simply destroy a phial of blood if we are to break such a powerful spell.

However, I used Locospection to find the phial. It is locked inside the secret chamber on the top floor of the castle. This chamber is above the Great Hall, and almost as large, but neither the family nor the house-elves are permitted to enter. Its only door is directly opposite Walden Macnair's study. I could not Locospect any key to it, so I presumed it was locked by a charm.

Over the following weeks I Locospected Walden Macnair whenever he was on the top floor. He does not enter the secret chamber often, but I managed to catch him in the act twice, and so I learned the Unlocking Charm.

After that I was impeded by not having a wand. I had to wait until the family next abandoned Humphrey. Usually they put him to bed when he drinks, but sometimes they just leave him in the hall. Three weeks ago I found a night when every one of them left him alone and oblivious with his Firewhisky. I was able to creep up behind him and borrow his wand and a few empty bottles. I had no real trouble unlocking the chamber door, and the crystal phial of Macnair blood was standing on a small table, exactly as I had Seen it (although it was larger than I had realised - as large as my son Robert). However, it was much more difficult than I had expected to Transfigure the Firewhisky bottles into a replica of the phial, perhaps because I was using Humphrey's wand.

Then I discovered that I could not touch the phial of blood. There was some kind of barrier around it, and I could not bring my hand within a foot of it. I could, however, touch it with the tip of Humphrey's wand, and in the end I realised that this, too, had something to do with the Macnair blood. Probably one has to be a Macnair to touch the phial.

I knew any member of the family could awaken at any moment, and Toady the bailiff spies on me at all hours. But they all seemed to be soundly asleep, and Walden Macnair himself was spending the night in London, so in the end I decided to take a chance. I woke my daughter Mary and brought her up to the secret chamber. Mary is ten years old now. I like to think of her as all mine (she is certainly a Locospector), but in truth she is a Macnair.

Mary was able to lift the crystal phial, although it was painfully heavy for her, and then I had no trouble replacing it with the replica. I filled the replica with ordinary water, coloured red, using charms I had no memory of ever learning. It won't fool anyone who inspects it closely, but it might fool Walden Macnair as long as he has no reason to suspect.

It took Mary and me nearly an hour to transport the phial downstairs to our rooms. I was able to use the wand to muffle our sounds, and to use some kind of Hover Charm, but only Mary could bring any part of her body anywhere near the phial. She was exhausted by the time we had engineered it into our wardrobe. No-one looks in there as a rule, but of course I don't expect I can hide it there forever. Humphrey Macnair was none the wiser: he was profoundly unconscious when I replaced his wand in his sodden sleeve.

So I have the blood, and perhaps I can hide it, but I have no idea how to destroy it. Can you make any suggestions?

I have four children so far. Peter is seven, Andrew is four, and Robert is nearly two. After his birthday, they will make me have another baby. I see no evidence that any of the boys is a Locospector. I worry about what the Macnair family will do if my children disappoint their expectations.

Regelinda remains asleep, but I can't keep trusting my luck, so I shall dispatch the owl now. I'm sorry I must ask you to pay postage. Thank you for all your assistance so far.

Yours sincerely,

Veleta Vablatsky.

Remus read the letter twice without understanding why he was surprised before he turned to the immediate practical need.

"Veleta, are you Watching? Do you know how to do a Shrinking Charm?" He hoped she would be Watching soon; since Veleta lived without privacy, she couldn't hide an object the size of a two-year-old child for many days. "You need to borrow Humphrey's wand again, and use it to shrink the crystal phial to a size that you can shut away in a drawer. The incantation is Extenuo. Try an arm movement like this..." He drew his arms from wide to narrow, thinking how difficult it was to teach even a simple spell when there was no chance of making eye contact with the pupil.

He could only trust that Veleta would give it her best effort. For so many years he had thought of her as a helpless victim, yet given a task, she had pursued it with drive and inventiveness. Her letter had finally given him a tantalising vision of the intelligent, resourceful woman who had once been Ariadne's dearest friend.