Cauldron Tales

The Main Ingredients
Without which there would be no potion

June 29, 1985

The Meeting

It was pouring down rain when the man stepped down off the train onto the Hogsmeade Station platform. He was tall and thin, but not much else was apparent under the heavy, battered cloak that covered him. He was carrying a small, equally battered suitcase that had seen more countries than indoor lodgings. The rest was hidden in darkness on the dreary platform. The gallant lantern could not, for all its stubborn refusal to go out entirely, cast enough light to dispel the gloom as the icy rain pelted down at the man who had just arrived.

He remembered a time long ago that was separated from the present by more than just years, when he had stepped off a similiar train onto this same platform, but nothing else had been the same. The sun had been brightly shining on a cheerful day in early January rather than a stormy day in late June. The platform had been packed with students rather than eerily empty.

A pretty blonde girl had dismounted the train a little ahead of him and begun making her way across the platform, keeping to the edge of the crowd. It did not protect her from the onslaught, however.

"Marissa!" a tall, thin boy with messy black hair yelled even as he popped out of nowhere and came pelting at her. He picked her up and swung her around wildly in greeting, making her laugh. Then he stood back, running his hand nervously through his hair as he tried to look more gentlemanly as he peered about for her dormmate.

The girl laughed again, yanking his hand down out of his hair. "She's not with me, James, and she's of the opinion you need a haircut anyway." The boy looked highly affronted. "You've got to stop assuming we girls are as close as you boys are, as a side note."

Before he could retort, another boy with controllable black hair roared from the other end of the platform, "WHERE IS SHE? WHERE IS SHE I'M GOING TO KILL HER!" and the first boy merely smirked at her. Then the second spotted the girl and, brushing past his current flame without a second thought, came pelting towards her much like the first boy had a moment ago, except that he looked fit to kill.

The first boy stood in front of the girl to protect her at the very last moment. "Oh no you don't, PRONGS!" the second shouted, trying to move past him. "Your Gryffindor chivalry does not extend to the girl who had those giggling first and second years pawing all around the castle on a scavenger hunt that RUINED our exploits ALL HOLIDAY! It was like having all the PREFECTS back in the castle!"

"Nevertheless," the boy with messy hair replied, "I'm going to force you to be a gentleman, Padfoot."

"Don't be self-righteous with me, Prongs!" his friend yelled angrily, lunging and very nearly getting past him. "Not after all the threats you made when the last item on the list was a pair of your boxers!" At that reminder, the boy lost his grip. Whether or not it was intentional is subject to debate.

However, the real protection of the blonde girl who had stood calmly throughout all of this came in the form of an invisible force suddenly giving her potential attacker what looked, to the trained eye, like a punch in the gut. It probably was not a very hard punch, but it took him completely by surprise. The unseen force used this surprise to knock him to the ground.

The upright boy and the girl doubled up with laughter at the sprawled boy on the ground who was now wide-eyed with fright and trying to duck unseen blows. He was whipping his head around very comically in his search for their source.

"What kind of new devilry is this, Fletcher?" he demanded, still jerking his head back and forth wildly.

"Honestly, Padfoot," the laughing boy recovered enough to say, shaking his head, now also trying to distinguish where the person inflicting the blows on his best friend was standing. "Don't you know that lionesses stick together?"

"Well call whoever it is off, Fletcher!" the victim shouted in annoyance.

"Is the great Sirius Black admitting defeat?" the girl teased.

"I can't fight what I can't see," he snapped irritably. "Now, please."

"Since you asked so nicely," she replied with a small bow. "Surely, oh mysterious defender of the righteous defenseless," she said ceremoniously in the invisible attacker's general direction, "The perpetrator has been punished enough for his anger and rash action."

The victim waited a long moment after the barrage abated before he moved to stand. Judging by the grunt and sudden massaging of his head, the unseen attacker had used the opportunity to land one last parting blow on the back of his head.

The memory faded away into the rain, the past yielding to the present however much man's desire fought the loss. Instead of the bright figures of that long lost day, a dark, cloaked figure approached through the shadows.

The figure was smaller than it had at first appeared when it approached him. It was as gray as its surroundings and walked forward very slowly. The hood of the cloak was thrown over the face of the figure, probably just to keep the rain off. Five years ago, he would have drawn his wand and attacked instantly if this mysterious and, in the pouring rain, sinister figure had approached him. He nearly did even now.

"Remus Lupin?" a young woman's voice said from within the cloak. She tilted her head up and he could see a delicate, aristocratic face with large dark eyes peering up at him. It was hard to distinguish much more in the poor light through the wind and rain.

"Mariella Goring?" he returned calmly.

He could just make out a small smile on her face. "I brought you a raincoat, Mister Lupin," she said simply and pleasantly. Even in just this simple sentence, there was a blue-blooded dignity that reminded him of Sirius. Remus tried not to think of Sirius as it would only be a few moment before he was remembering the less pleasant things about his former friend.

"My cloak is suitable," Remus replied calmly. He had known that Mariella Goring was the last of one of the seven old families. He should have expected her to have the same timeless dignity and manner as the last of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black. "It is far sturdier than it looks."

"It is, after all, an heirloom of the McKinnons," Mariella said pleasantly, not sounding even slightly unsure of herself. Remus looked at her in surprise, however. "I come from a fallen house as well, Mister Lupin. Please follow me," she politely waved him forward toward the thestral-drawn carriages. She walked past them without shuddering. Remus almost assumed that she couldn't see them until he heard her mutter softly, "Fearful animals. It's so hard to believe that they are gentle."

"Much like myself," Remus said bemusedly as he handed her into the carriage.

"Pardon?" she said politely, looking him in the eye as if she seriously thought his comment absurd. "I do hope, Mister Lupin, that that was a jest."

"You will find Mr. Lupin quite a jester," a slimy voice Remus had hoped to never hear again said from inside the carriage. Remus froze in shock. "Yes, Lupin, it is me. You can still enter."

"You two know each other?" Mariella asked, seating herself on the opposite side of the carriage from Severus Snape.

"Very well, he nearly killed me once," Severus answered coldly.

"Well, I do hope you can both be professional about it," Mariella replied simply and diplomatically.

December 24, 1984

The Link

The world had been cruel to Mundungus Fletcher, and he had been cruel right back. He was a Muggle-born, which surprised most people. Actually, he was technically a halfblood as his mother had been a witch. She had never told her Muggle husband or young daughter before she died in childbirth with Mundungus, however. The fact that he had used his mother's old school books through most of Hogwarts hadn't stopped him from considering himself a Muggle-born.

The reason behind this was simple, though most people would not have immediately guessed it. He hated the wizarding world.

Mundungus had a very skewed sense of right and wrong, as Molly Weasley would be quite eager to point out years later. He had a deep-seated devotion to justice, but he defined justice far too harshly for most people. The way that he saw it, the entire wizarding world was at fault for the murder of his sister. Everyone. From Voldemort who had ordered the killing and the Death Eaters who had carried it out, to the weakling pure-blood and half-bloods who hadn't stood up to stop him, to the Ministry which hadn't cared enough about her to try to protect her even after she had been personally threatened by You-Know-Who, to Albus Dumbledore who hadn't thought she was in danger and hadn't tried to protect her. And, of course, Remus Lupin. Most of all and least of all, Remus Lupin.

Now, he owed Albus Dumbledore a great deal. Dumbledore had, in fact, forced him into the only friendship that he had maintained since the day that his sister died. More than that, Dumbledore was there for him on Christmas, which was always a bad day. He had helped him out of a few spots of trouble with the Ministry, as had Severus Snape.

He thought that he was dead when he had tried to sic Remus Lupin on an unsuspecting population once. Dumbledore had even, eventually, obtained Lupin's forgiveness for that little disaster. Mundungus was not entirely sure that he wanted it, but it was undeniable that Lupin understood his pain more than anyone else. Except perhaps Snape.

Mundungus Fletcher blamed the entire wizarding world, so the entire wizarding world must pay. He had decided long ago, after a few years of observation at Hogwarts, that the only way to truly hurt the ancient, heartless group was through their pocketbooks. That was when Mundungus Fletcher went from magician to thief. That was when he went from a surly Hufflepuff to the Hogwarts bookie with a ring of enforcers.

When he graduated, he set out to cheat as much as possible from as many as possible. The ruin of the family fortune of the Weasleys, the Gorings, the Lupins, and the Carrows were his masterpieces. The Princes had also fallen on hard times. Only the Gorings and Carrows had been Death Eaters, of course, and Mariella Goring did not deserve the pauper's fate she had been condemned to by any stretch of the imagination. Or rather, by the stretch of any normal imagination. One trait that Mundungus did share with his sister was a larger than normal imagination. The Weasleys who hid their large family from the War were as guilty, in his mind, as those who had arranged the death of Marissa Fletcher. Remus Lupin was obvious. He had been disinherited on Mundungus's discovery. With no male heir eligible to inherit, the ancient estate was visibly dwindling.

These were the musings that Mundungus Fletcher pondered at two o'clock in the afternoon when he woke up on Christmas Eve. That was why he had to get out of there and find something to do with himself. He could always get roaring drunk, but that tended to make him remember rather than forget.

So Mundungus set down to plan his next attack on the pocketbooks of the innocent and the guilty alike. His eyes fell on the mail. There was a promotional ad for a new comic book in the mess. Mundungus's eyebrows rose high in air when he read the blurb of the first issue. He smiled slightly. Yes, that would keep him nice and busy for the next few days.

December 25, 1984

The Brewer

A young girl, trying unsuccessfully to keep her long dark hair from falling into her face, was standing slightly behind a pillar in the Entrance Hall of the Ministry of Magic. Her black eyes shone with both intelligence and frustration as she paged through a very large and intimidating stack of very discouraging-looking forms. She had a pen in her long, elegant fingers, which she used to make an occasional notation on one of the numerous forms. She held it slightly awkwardly. Her hand had obviously grown accustomed from the very beginning to quills instead of pens and pencils. However, that was what the Ministry, thoughtfully, provided for those who were filling out Private Experimentation Permits.

She seemed to finally have everything in order, having gathered all of the papers into different sections of a system of folders. She had just straightened, with all of the forms safely stored away, when her vision was suddenly cut off. "Guess who," said a high-pitched voice which obviously belonged to the owner of the hand that had been put over her eyes.

Surprisingly, a smile came to her delicately formed lips. They opened to reveal perfect white teeth. "I saw you come in, Mundungus," she said serenely. He muttered a curse word as he abruptly removed his hand. This gesture almost caused her more disorientation then than when he had blocked her vision. "And I don't know anyone with a voice quite that high," she said with amusement coloring her voice and taking the nearly-perpetual professionalism out of her tone.

"Well, aren't you just special," Mundungus muttered in his normal, much lower, voice. "What brings someone like you to the Ministry on Christmas?"

"Actually," she said with a glance around the deserted hall. It was unnecessary. She would have already known if someone was there. She did it mostly for show now. "I'm hoping to ram these permits through today so that Dolores Umbridge doesn't have the chance to block it."

"Something that earns the disapproval of the fabled Umbridge dragonet?" Mundungus Fletcher said with a matching amusement as he leaned against the pillar. "My, my, you must let me in on this. Truthfully, I wasn't sure that you had it in you, Mariella." He was several years her senior, but somehow he always looked very childish when standing next to Mariella Goring, especially now that she had at long last attained her full height. "Is there anything that I can do to help?" He doubted it, but he so seldom made such an offer to anyone other than Mariella Goring that he seldom failed to help her.

"Not unless you know any werewolves," she said with a laugh. "Then I might actually have a chance to get this through today under Miss Umbridge's nose." She gave a rueful smile. "I don't suppose you do know anyone?"

She obviously expected the answer to be no. It was too bad, really, because this would probably be a chance they wouldn't get twice. If she got everything filed today it would be processed before Boxing Day was over. Even if Dolores Umbridge did work on Boxing Day, this department wouldn't be on the top of her priorities list. She only watched it like a hawk when she didn't have other work to catch up on. The other work could clearly be arranged by whatever Mundungus was here to stir up trouble about.

Mariella smiled, sighed and tried to take her brain off of a train of thought that would only derail in harsh reality. Mundungus looked thoughtful, that was true, but that only meant that her mind would immediately start running new scenarios with this new information. She could never turn the strategy off. It was part of her parents' gift to her.

Pure-blood families, and even Muggles in high society, said that they gave their children the gift of good breeding, but, especially in the pure-blood families, that should know better, this "good breeding" was a joke compared with what had once been customary. Mariella was the last of her line, and her family was the last to preserve the ancient tradition of Breeding. With her parents dead, she was the last of the now fabled Mares in England. There was one Stallion left that was much older. She would be the last. So much the better.

The "gift" of Breeding was the source of all the Muggle-born and half-blood prejudice in the wizarding world because, quite simply, it hadn't always been merely prejudice to think that pure-bloods were superior to Muggle-borns. It was fact. After all, it was impossible to catch up when the first five years of a pure-blood child's life were consumed with their parents' placing spells on the children to give them ridiculous advantages over those who had grown up normally. Even Harry Potter grew up relatively normally compared to Mariella Goring.

Mariella Goring had been programmed to be a fearsome fighter and brilliant researcher for the Dark Lord. Her Death Eater parents had given her everything that she needed to become a powerful member of his ranks except for the inclination to do so. Everything about her life had been planned for her except for her choice. They had taken that for granted. Then they had died, and Dumbledore had taken her in at Hogwarts. So instead of a warrior for Lord Voldemort, she had become a Healer protege and budding potion talent.

Her life had been saved by the most unlikely person imaginable at the most unlikely time imaginable. She had befriended one of the most unlikely people imaginable her first day on the Hogwarts Express. She had formed the first alliance with a very unlikely person who knew perfectly well why he should hate her more than nearly anyone else left alive on the planet. Unlikely, of course, was merely a description of whom she had been when she was rescued. She was a very different person now, at nearly fifteen, then she had been when she was rescued from the burning house as her parents lay dying, at seven.

It was about time, she had decided eight years later, that she did something to prove to everyone (and by that she meant Dumbledore) that she could be an asset to his side of the War, even when there was no war going on. She wanted to prove her worth and her loyalty. So, of course, the Ministry didn't trust her project.

The Subject

A man pushed his messy, silvering brown hair back from his face. He blinked and looked around, trying to make his eyes focus on the scene in front of him. It was his ratty kitchen that eventually became clear in front of him. He wondered occasionally why he insisted on keeping it so meticulously clean. It never looked clean. Sure, he could put on a plastic glove, run his finger along any surface in the kitchen, and come away perfectly clean. It still looked dilapidated and grubby, because it was.

The man massaged a sharp crick in his neck and stretched his shoulders. He suppressed the kind of groan he usually saved for the day after a transformation. When had he fallen asleep? He looked at the glass in the hand that wasn't trying to ease the extreme stiffness that came with sleeping hunched over your kitchen table for several hours.

"Ah," he said aloud as he saw the amber liquid filling the glass. Getting warily to his feet, he poured the rest of it in the sink and washed the glass. He sighed. She wouldn't have liked him actually drinking it. Then again, if she had been there to lecture him about it, he wouldn't have been tempted.

He was just putting the bottle away when a very loud crack exploded in his hungover brain. He dropped the bottle and the sharp smell of whiskey filled the room. Sighing heavily, the man waved his wand, muttering a soft, "Reparo." The bottle flew back together, but the whiskey was still all over his "clean" kitchen.

"Hello, Dung," the man muttered, vanishing the whiskey. The smell lingered. "Dare I say, 'Happy Holidays,' if only for the sake of manners?"

"Yes, I think that the two of you will get along very well," Mundungus said in a mysterious way that made his companion freeze, it was so close to the way that his sister could sound.

"Do you have a point, Dung? You never come here unless you have a point," the man said, still not turning around.

"You always did pretend that you knew me," Mundungus said in a musing way that broke the other man's heart - it was exactly the way that his sister had sometimes sounded. "How did you know it was me, by the way?"

"If you'd tried that five years ago, you'd be dead right now," the man said, going to the sink with a tea kettle and pouring water into it. "Other than Death Eaters, you're the only one that would dare to come here on Christmas."

"You have so much faith in the Ministry then?"

"I repeat: do you have a point, Dung?"

"Actually, I have a job for you," Mundungus told him.

"Refresh my memory, if you would," the other man said, finally turning around to face him. "Were you not the Mundungus Fletcher who figured out that my mother cheated on my father with a Muggle? Thus making me a half-blood and not technically a Lupin? Effectively robbing me of my family fortune? Condemning me to this ratty hole in the wall for the rest of my days? And were not your sentiments, when you owned your triumph over me, that I deserved worse than to be forever poor?"

"It's not for you. It's for a friend," Mundungus replied. "Besides, Hogwarts has got to be better than this, Lupin."

"You have a friend?" Lupin asked curiously.

Mundungus smiled slightly. "Interestingly enough, I do."

"What did you steal from her?" Lupin asked, crossing to the stove and placing the kettle under the fire.

"Family fortune, same as you," Mundungus replied immediately. He spoke casually as if speaking of an impressive Quaffle save. "In the form of an insurance paper that got misplaced this time."

"You'd think that you could afford a better suit," Lupin said somewhat coldly. That was one thing that didn't remind him of Mundungus's sister. She never spoke so casually about hurting people, even if it was only financially. She had broken her fair share of hearts, however.

"I don't care if the money goes up in flames or comes to me," Mundungus replied with an audible shrug that Lupin could hear with his back to the younger man. Remus snorted. "I don't object if it comes to me," he added with a laugh just like his sister's in his voice.

Remus froze again. It was too close to Christmas Eve to think of Marissa. It was too close to Christmas Eve for her to not come to mind. Christmas was too near for any of this. It was too close for Marissa Fletcher's brother to be standing in his kitchen no matter what his mission. Lupin could tell that it was killing Mundungus as well.

"Why are you here, Dung?" Lupin said, letting the torture he was feeling enter his voice.

"The paperwork has to go through today," he replied. "Or Umbridge will block them from going through, and Mariella won't get another shot at her project."

"Mariella?" Lupin asked softly.

"Goring," Mundungus replied solemnly.

"Your only friend," Lupin muttered, shaking his head in slight disbelief.

"If there's one thing that my father taught me," Mundungus said quietly, "it's that you really can't judge a person by their parents. Would you have ever guessed that Marissa came from that man?"

"When did you become open-minded?" Lupin muttered.

"Yes or no, Lupin. She has to know today."

"Will I have any dignity left?" Lupin asked, hunching over his kitchen table and staring at the wood much like he had last night.

"You're a strange man, Lupin. That's the only thing that you want to know?"

"I don't have much of it left," Lupin replied quietly. "Any job you have specifically for a werewolf will probably rob me of any I have left."

"How do you know that it's - "

"Why else would you be here?"

"For your answer," Mundungus said simply. "For a friend."

"Then tell her yes," Lupin said.

"Without even knowing what she wants from you?" Mundungus asked curiously.

"I'll be closer to her at Hogwarts." Mundungus nodded as if he understood, and Lupin thought that maybe he did.

The Mentor

The young professor pushed his greasy black hair back from his face. He stared at the paper that had been thrust under his nose. There were two small lines that were the only ones not filled with Mariella's measured handwriting. One had a sloppy signature that the man unfortunately recognized. The other was blank.

A small sheet of parchment lay on top of the form. It read, in Mariella's steady hand, "Sign it, Professor."

"So she sent you, did she?" the man sneered over his long nose. "She thinks that that will change my mind?"

"No," Mundungus replied simply, "she thinks that you can admit that you've changed your mind to me more easily than to her." The man scowled at him. Mundungus was unfazed. "Sign it, Snape. You know that you will eventually. So don't waste my time."

"Perhaps you do have something of your sister in you," Snape said with a glare just for Mundungus Fletcher. "She thought that she knew everything too."

"And like me, she did," Mundungus replied immediately. It vaguely disturbed Severus Snape how very different the same inflections and tones sounded in the voice of Mundungus Fletcher than they had in his sister. "Here's the quill and the ink, stop being an idiot."

"I will not work with Remus Lupin," Snape said, turning away from the parchment.

"Of course not," Mundungus said condescendingly. That was safe. Marissa had never condescended to anyone. "Mariella will be working with him. All you have to do is go over her potions and make sure that she's not going to kill him."

"Hardly necessary," Snape sneered at him. "The only potions that can kill a werewolf are those made in a silver cauldron."

"Then check her cauldrons, whatever you want to do, Snape; just sign the damn paper," Mundungus said, slamming the damn paper down on the student desk now in front of Severus Snape's eyes.

"You idiot," he snarled up at Mundungus, meeting his eyes for the first time during the meeting. "It won't change-"

"We're not tryin to."

"They just would have found another -"

"No argument," Mundungus replied. "You won't be helping Remus Lupin by doing it."

"Why should I do it at all?" he practically hissed.

"You know perfectly well why you will," Mundungus said impatiently, rolling his eyes and obviously contemptuous of his disingenuous attitude. "You know perfectly well why I've been sent to get your signature, for that matter."

"She chose someone else, I owe her nothing," Snape snarled, shooting daggers into Mundungus Fletcher with his eyes.

"She built her entire married life around you. Not her husband, not herself, but you. For heaven's sake, she broke up the Marauders all for you. You owe her this," Mundungus almost shouted. "Sign it."

February 3, 1985

Mariella slammed a form down on Severus Snape's desk after class. When she spoke to him, it sounded like nothing more than gibberish. It was, in fact, perhaps the precise definition of gibberish, which is slightly more complicated than most people believe. It was a product of one of the innate gifts that her parents had given her in the Breeding process that had tortured her for the first five years of her life. She could understand and speak any language, usually without being more than barely aware that she was mentally translating. As Snape had the same gift from his mother, they had developed a singularly unique dialect. An expert on every language they were speaking would not have been able to understand the hopelessly muddled foreign words and mixed language patterns that flew out of their mouths easily.

"The permits have finally been finalized, Professor," Mariella Goring told him in this manner.

Snape was unable to keep his eyes from flicking to the line that he had refused to sign two months ago. The name "Damocles Belby" was written there in a very self-important signature. "I see that you found another idiot to take on your lost crusade."

"His was the only signature that I could get on short notice," Mariella replied. "Bless the Slug Club after all."

"So what do you want from me, Miss Goring?" Snape demanded.

"Belby's signed the form so that I could get the permit," Mariella told him simply. "I still need someone to do the work."

There was a brief silence. "You're a fool if you think that you can control Belby. He'll take all the credit for your work."

"So long as it gets done," Mariella replied immediately.

There was an even longer pause. "Well, Miss Goring? Where is your research? Surely even you do not believe that you can begin this project without the preliminary research?" Mariella immediately pulled several large folders out of her bag, each of them stuffed with parchment, and placed them on Snape's desk.

"That is the extent of your research?" Snape sneered.

A smile twitched on Mariella's face. "The summaries."

"A slight improvement," Snape conceded.

"Former attempts, their research, studies of werewolf blood, studies conducted on werewolves overall, and charm and transfiguration approaches to the problem," Mariella explained, pointing to the large expandable files in turn as she listed them.

"Take down this list of addition reading," Snape snapped. "And do make sure that you follow everything up. I want to see the relevant Arithmancy studies in two weeks."

Mariella hid her smile from her mentor.

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©KatyMulvaney5-19-2005