Man-eaters of Kumaon

Chapter 5

Remus heals his arm reasonably well, but he suspects it will scar. The closed gashes have an odd feel to them, a warm tingling slightly reminiscent of the werewolf scar, though that sensation has faded considerably over the years. He keeps his upper arm wrapped in bandages to avoid arousing suspicion and is touched by the care Rakesh's mother takes to collect and boil the cleanest strips of cloth in the village for his use. Whatever doubts the villagers had about his prowess as a hunter were dispelled by his seven days tracking the kali vastu through the jungle. Every person in the village demands to hear the story of his fight with the kali vastu at least twice. Remus is embarrassed by the attention, but he soon gives in to their demands. Frequent, graphic retellings of the same story are not only allowed, they are expected, and for three days the village speaks of little else.

Word is sent to Nainital that Mr. Lupin is alive and well, and on the fourth morning Salil arrives bearing a letter from Chandrasekhar. He writes that he is most pleased to learn that Remus is not lost in the heartwood, and that his friend Mastyamohandra has returned from Dharamsala and is awaiting Remus' arrival in Haridwar. Salil shakes Remus' hand and listens eagerly as the villagers begin to tell him Remus' story. Remus slips away from the group and goes to gather his things from the bungalow. As he is returning to Salil's car in the middle of the village, a tiny woman in a yellow shawl comes up to him and says something quietly in Hindi. He recognises her as the mother of the young woman the kali vastu killed, though he cannot understand what she says. She touches her hand to his cheek, then to his chest, and Remus can only stand there, mute and uncomfortable, until Rakesh notices and walks over.

"She wishes you luck on your pilgrimage," he explains, and the woman says one more thing before walking away, smiling despite the tears in her eyes.

"Pilgrimage?"

Rakesh shrugs. "I tell them you are going to speak to a wise man in Haridwar; they believe you are going to pray in the sacred city. She says," he nods at the departing woman, "that you will pray and return to stop the demon that killed her daughter."

Remus rubs a hand over the back of his neck and sighs. "I hope so," he says. He weaves his way through the crowd of villagers, accepting well-wishes and feeling unworthy of the attention. As the car splashes through the mud on the way out of the village, Remus feels a surprising pang of regret to be leaving, if only for a few days. When he glances back, the villagers are still gathered in a tight group, the men in brown trousers and women in their modest salwar kameez. Remus smiles to himself.

Salil tells Remus that it will take most of the day to drive to Haridwar, so Remus attempts to relax and enjoy the scenery as they descend from the foothills. He still holds his breath each time they accelerate around the lumbering, overloaded and top-heavy lorries, intricately decorated in brilliant shades of red, orange, blue and yellow, with helpful reminders in both English and Hindi on the tailgates: Use dipper at night! Tat-tat! He watches the vegetation thicken and change as they descend in elevation, and notes with amusement the abundance of wild cannabis choking the roadside.

Before noon, Salil pulls the car to a stop on an unremarkable roadside and turns to Remus. "Mr. Chandrasekhar says you will like this."

Confused, Remus raises his eyebrows. "Like what?"

Pushing the driver's side door open, Salil grins. "Come."

Remus climbs out of the car and follows Salil to a gate with a sign painted on it. Colonel James Corbett Residence. Salil opens the gate and steps aside to allow Remus entry. A man comes over to them, smiling and nodding at Remus, and begins talking to Salil. Remus wanders along a path that crosses the neatly trimmed garden and toward a modest white house with a green roof. In a small gravel square set into the lawn there is a red pedestal with a rough, rather ugly cement bust of Corbett; Remus examines it for a few moments before turning away, disappointed that he learns nothing of the man from the statue. He walks to the house, and the caretaker hurries over to open the door and show him inside.

The rooms are barren of furniture, but photographs and signs dot the walls, listing the impressive details of Corbett's career. There is a picture of the hunter standing alongside the dead Bachelor of Powalgargh, ten feet seven inches from nose to tip of tail, and another of the dog Robin, who used to perch silently with his back paws in his master's jacket pocket so the man could carry his rifle and comfort his dog at the same time. Remus smiles sadly at the photograph of the little spaniel mutt. Salil and the caretaker speak quietly in the other room while Remus reads the signs, tallies up the man-eater casualties, examines Corbett's hat, guns and writing desk. His footsteps echo in the hot, airless rooms.

After he has seen everything in the tiny museum, Remus steps back onto the veranda and studies the hand-painted map of "Man Eaters of Kumaon (Shot by Corbett)". The village of Pakhari is not marked on the map, but he finds where it would be and notes that it was well within the range of some of the more notorious man-eaters. He contemplates, not for the first time, how the kali vastu would react to a tiger invading its territory, if a mere tiger even could; he wonders how long the kali vastu has been living in the heartwood, and whether that time can be measured in ordinary months and years.

Salil joins him on the veranda and Remus nods that he is ready to leave. As they are walking back across the garden, Remus spots a white sign on the edge of the lawn, written in both Hindi and English: All creatures have equal right to live on the earth. Mahatma Gandhi.

"Good in theory," Remus says quietly.

"Yes?" Salil is behind him, waiting expectantly. "We go?"

"Yes. We go."

* * *

They arrive in Haridwar by late afternoon, as the sun is slanting fiercely across the low foothills surrounding the River Ganges. Remus has won a friend for life in Salil by casting a Cooling Charm on the interior of the car, allowing them to travel comfortably isolated from the lorries, carts and bicycles struggling along in the heat. As they near the city, the roads grow crowded and Salil's driving becomes ever more daring. Remus gazes out the window, watching the jungle and fields give way to muddy tracks lined with squalid, close-set bungalows, crumbling concrete buildings and crooked shanties. Barefoot women balance huge sheaves of grass and baskets of laundry on their heads; old men stoop to push empty carts away from the city. When concrete buildings outnumber wooden shacks, Salil turns off the main road onto a narrower street, leaning heavily on the horn to urge a small boy and his emaciated buffalo out of the way. Remus loses track of the turns and detours as Salil winds into the city. Haridwar is not a large city by Indian standards, but Remus is soon lost and thankful that Salil seems to know where they're going.

The car stops--in the middle of the road, as there's no place to pull aside--and Salil says, "We are here." Remus pushes his door open and steps out; the sounds and smells and heat of the city assault him immediately. The narrow street is crowded with people on foot and bicycle, gathered around carts and flimsy wooden shop stands, arguing over the price of mangos, bananas and litchi, chasing away stray dogs with harsh shouts. The sweet smell of ripe fruit mingles with the sharper odours of petrol, livestock, incense, waste and a hot, tantalising meal being cooked nearby. The car attracts some attention, and the men smoking outside a restra across the street stare openly. Remus feels conspicuously white and foreign as Salil opens the boot for him to retrieve his case.

They have stopped in front of a wide metal gate, painted orange at one time, with a modest sign affixed to it with pieces of wire. The lettering is Hindi and a similar script Remus doesn't recognise; one English word is squeezed at the bottom in tiny handwriting, obviously added as an afterthought: ashram. Salil pulls the gate open and motions Remus inside. The gate protects a narrow brick alley, free of trash and mud, that leads to a large courtyard shaded by four large, leafy trees. A group of boys in matching blue school uniforms are playing at the base of one tree; they fall silent when Remus and Salil enter the courtyard then resume speaking quietly among themselves, pointing at Remus with curious grins. Salil speaks to the boys, motioning at the tall, once-white building at the back of the courtyard. Remus is relieved when the boys nod, "Ji ha, ji ha," and point to the open doors leading into the building.

The room they enter is low-ceilinged, dim and dingy in a way that reminds Remus of the Ministry offices in Delhi. Beige paint is peeling from the walls, the dark blue floor tiles are cracked, and mounted crookedly on the walls are two lonely bronze sconces. Salil wanders from the room into a narrow corridor and begins speaking to someone; Remus waits awkwardly, setting his case on the floor. He hears a laugh behind him and sees two little boys ducking from the doorway, giggling.

Salil returns, followed by a woman barely five feet tall. Although her clothing is Indian, her features are Chinese. Extending her hand to Remus, she says, "You are Mr. Lupin. Welcome to Lam Sangbo. I am Wangdu Li. You may call me Li." Her voice and handshake are both surprisingly strong for so small a person.

"Remus Lupin," he says, "Pleased to meet you."

"Ah, you say that now." She grins and jerks her head toward the corridor behind her. "Come, I will show you the room." To Salil, she says something in rapid Hindi, waving impatiently toward the courtyard. He leaves, and to Remus she explains, "The man who has the restra will protest if the car is in the street too long. He is probably standing at the gate now, waiting to complain." The corridor ends in a narrow staircase, gloomy and dim; Li lifts the folds of her sari and dashes up the steps quickly, glancing over her shoulder on the first floor landing and saying, "The best room is on the second floor, adhyapak insists you have it."

"I'm terribly sorry," Remus says, when they emerge from the stairwell into the wide corridor on the second floor. "But I don't quite know where I am."

Li looks back at him again, an eyebrow raised. "Yes, many people come to Haridwar because they do not know where they are, or why. Though you English usually go to Rishikesh to find your guru and learn to be a rock 'n roll star. Because sitting still like this," she puts the palms of her hands together in front of her chest, "for so long will show you why your music makes young women tear at your clothes and cry."

Remus grins and shakes his head. "I'm afraid I abandoned my dreams of being John Lennon years ago. Haven't the spectacles, you see."

"And you are alive, while he is not." Li stops in front of a closed door, and looks up at Remus, a good foot taller than she. "This is Lam Sangbo. We are an ashram or a school or a debating society, depending on the day of the week and whether we're drinking tea or whisky. Do you prefer tea or whisky?" She pushes the door open and steps into the room; it is large and bright, with double doors opening onto a rooftop.

"It depends," he answers, "on whether I'm in a school or a debating society." Remus sets his case down and goes over the doors; the view of the River Ganges is unobstructed. "What does Lam Sangbo mean? Is it Hindi?"

"Tibetan," Li says. She opens a small cupboard by the door and retrieves linens and a thin, sad pillow. "It means 'compassionate path'." Frowning, she adds, "But Matsyamohandra still calls it skul; he has no imagination. He will be back tonight, or tomorrow, maybe. He has gone to Neelkantha. We heard last week from Chandrasekhar that you were likely dead." With a shrug, Li steps over to the door and tilts her head to the side. "There is a washroom at the end of the hall. Come down for tea when you are ready."

Li shuts the door behind her. Remus steps back out onto the roof and squints in the brilliant afternoon light. Haridwar is a maze of narrow streets and alleys, colourful buildings stacked along the riverside, covered in advertisements and signs, softened by the ubiquitous lines of laundry drying in the sun. The sounds of automobile horns and sporadic shouts drift up on a light breeze. Nearest the city, the river flows in a canal, both sides crowded with people wading and bathing. The worry Remus felt while they driving into the city begins to fade. It is quite a pretty scene, the red and white domes of temples on the riverside, the long bridge teeming with travellers, the natural course of the Ganges glistening in the distance.

Inside, Remus takes the small towel from his case and goes to find the washroom. It is impeccably clean and in perfect repair. Hot water spurts from the tap with no delay. He washes his face and hands, then returns to his room and hangs the towel over a chair to dry. In the evening glow, he looks around the room; on closer inspection, the sparse furniture is quite fine, a desk and chair of heavy dark woods, and the mattress on the bed is actually quite comfortable. The breeze helps alleviate the heat, so Remus pauses only a moment before placing his case in the cupboard and casting a simple Safe Charm on it. He leaves the doors wide open when he goes down to find Li.

* * *

Matsyamohandra does not return to Haridwar for five days. Each day Li says, "Tonight, or maybe tomorrow," and is completely unconcerned when he fails to materialise. Remus is impatient, anxious to meet the man and leave the hectic city, but he finds ways to fill his time. Li introduces him to the extensive library at Lam Sangbo, housed in a beautiful, ornate room just down the corridor on the second floor. Every room that he sees in the ashram is spotlessly clean and decorated in classic style, with the exception of the grim entry and bland hallways. Li explains that they keep the foyer deceptively shabby to discourage Muggle tourists who wander in looking for a religious experience or yoga classes. When Remus asks why they don't simply lock the gate or cast a privacy charm, Li smiles mysteriously and tells him that lunch will be at one o'clock.

Remus spends his mornings browsing Montmorency Maxwell's Indian journals in the warm, sunlit library, blowing dust from the pages that have been magically rescued from dry rot but remain quite delicate. He likes the smell of the Lam Sangbo library, rich in leather, wood and parchment, like the Hogwarts Library, while maintaining a subtle tang of incense and spice just noticeable enough that, however lost he might become in his reading, Remus is never surprised to glance up and see the Ganges shimmering in the distance. Through the window, the noise of the city is muffled to a gentle hum, which Remus prefers to absolute silence. The wing-backed chairs are surprisingly comfortable, upholstered in some brilliant patchwork pattern. "Gujarati," Li explains, when he asks about the patchwork, and laughs when Remus immediately glances at the map on the wall to locate Gujarat. Nobody scolds Remus for sipping tea while he reads, and he is interrupted only when Li or Vijay Gaur, a young man who also teaches at the school, come in to retrieve a book or chat.

It is, in fact, a nearly perfect library experience, tantalisingly close to that desirable abstract of library nirvana, an existence manifest when a lowly man ascends to the status of Perpetual Reader At One With The Written Word, adrift in sea of impeccable grammar and coherent theses, breathtaking illuminations and painstaking calligraphy, where every book is in its proper place and the Enlightened One need only think, "I wonder--" before volumes appear before him on silken pillows and thick old pages rustle invitingly.

During his first morning in the library, Remus decides that the only thing separating him from a truly transcendental literary experience is the reading material itself. He scowls at the jolly jade Buddha smiling on the window sill and draws another of Maxwell's journals from the pile. The journals occupy twelve thick, hand-bound leather books, every page filled with tiny, nearly illegible writing and cryptic diagrams. Maxwell was widely acknowledged as one of the great minds of transfiguration research, but after one hundred years of ground-breaking studies he retreated to a private home in Calcutta and continued his work in seclusion until his death in 1869. He never produced another publication to rival the influence of A Brief Guide to the Animagus Transfiguration, and Remus remembers Professor McGonagall making some offhand comment in fourth year that many believed Maxwell had gone mad in his later years. At the time, Remus hadn't understood the effect that comment had on his friends: agitation, whispering and hurriedly scribbled notes.

Now, years later, Remus is beginning to think that McGonagall's words had a strong basis in fact. Maxwell's journals are, for the most part, painfully unintelligible. The man seldom spent more than half a page discussing a single subject; he proposed an experiment on one page and discussed its possibilities twenty later, then, after thirty pages of unrelated discourse, recorded the results in a hastily scribbled chart between proud ramblings about a distant Muggle relation who had to settle for Second Wrangler in the Mathematical Tripos and discussions about the influence of Ladakhi ley lines on the migration patterns of native Indian songbirds. Remus skims the journals dubiously, well aware that in doing this he could easily overlook any mention of the Himalayan heartwoods, and is relieved when one o'clock arrives and it is time for lunch.

* * *

There are twenty-one boys at the Lam Sangbo school, ranging in age from six to fourteen. Many of them, like their teacher Vijay, come from small Himalayan hill towns with long, respected magical heritages but nonexistent magical education. Matsyamohandra finds the boys and brings them to Haridwar, where they gather in the courtyard and classrooms to learn history and astronomy and practice simple charms with crude, homemade wands. They are a friendly, informal group, taking great interest in their English visitor, cornering Remus with endless questions about wizards and magic elsewhere in the world. His first afternoon in Haridwar, Remus looks over the tops of the boys' heads, sees the cunning glint in Li's eyes and smiles wryly as she suggests that he might like to teach the boys a few things in the afternoons. She even offers a justification for her request, though they both know it is unnecessary. Li herself hails from Tibet, of mixed Han and Tibetan heritage, so, she claims, her talents are focused around combating extreme weather and reciting the many unsuspected magical properties of yaks. Vijay, on the other hand, is from a village near Almora, so his skills lie in cutting grass and herding buffalo.

"Even Matsyamohandra," Li says, "knows much about ancient writings and will talk for days and days about a theory nobody has heard of, but ask him to fix a broken pipe, he reaches for the spanner, not the wand."

Still smiling, Remus sighs. "I don't know much about magical plumbing, but I'd be happy spend a few hours with the boys. What do you have in mind?"

Li waves her hand dismissively. "Oh, anything."

Remus has never taught before, but his childhood is not so far in the past that he has forgotten the best way to gain and keep a small boy's attention. An hour later Li returns to the courtyard, drawn by the shrieks of laughter accompanying one boy's gleeful Jelly-Legs dance. Upon seeing her disapproving frown, Remus pronounces, "Finite incantatem." As the boy collapses, giggling, into the group at the base of one of the trees, Remus asks, "Now, do you know why I can make Ram dance, but it doesn't work when Mehmud tries it?"

The boys begin to speak all at once.

"You're a powerful wizard."

"You have a real wand."

"We must practice more."

"It is an English jinx."

"The English invented jinxes."

Remus laughs at this and is about to speak when another boy adds, "We don't know how to move things."

"Ah," Remus nods, turning to the boy named Bhaskar. "What do you mean?"

"You are moving his legs, but we don't know how to do that. Once I moved a chicken by accident," Bhaskar says thoughtfully. "But I couldn't do it again, even with my wand. And Li can make the teacups move across the table, and Vijay can close the gate from right here. You know how to make things move."

Glancing at Li, Remus sees that her frown has faded. "Yes," he agrees. "Exactly. Now, legs are complicated things, so it's much better to practise on something smaller." He reaches around and grabs a stone from the soil at the base of the tree, placing it before him on the cement.

The boys lean forward eagerly. "Will you make the stone dance?"

"No," Remus says, "You are going to make the stone fly."

* * *

By the teatime on the second day, most of the boys have mastered Wingardium leviosa, and Remus is convinced that if Professor Flitwick--rather than dully floating feathers about--provided his pupils with cockroaches and the instruction, "Make it fly into your neighbour's hair," the charmwork of Hogwarts' first years would progress with unprecedented speed. The boys leave after tea; most of them live with friends of Matsyamohandra's or relatives in the city. They go through the gate in a noisy, cheerful cluster of blue uniforms, waving excitedly at Remus and making him promise to show them another spell tomorrow.

Remus joins Li and Vijay in the kitchen for tea.

"So now they can make things fly," Li says, pouring a cup for Remus. Her expression is unreadable.

Remus sits down and takes the teacup. "Yes. Not a particularly useful skill on its own," he admits, wondering what she is leading up to. If, he adds silently, she is leading up to anything at all; he is not yet familiar enough with her manner to know for sure. He continues, "But it provides a foundation for more complex charms."

Li says nothing, sipping her tea and never taking her eyes off Remus.

Vijay glances from one to the other, then turns to Remus and asks brightly, "How is your research? Have you found anything?" Vijay is a tall, lanky, cheerful young man, with a soft manner that nicely offsets Li's brusqueness. He willingly admits that Haridwar is the furthest he's ever travelled from his home near Almora and expresses no desire to see more of the world, although he asks Remus serious and intelligent questions about Britain and other places.

Vijay is particularly interested in Remus' search for the kali vastu. Rumours about the creature have spread through the Himalayan hill towns, and he's received worried letters from his father.

Remus tells them honestly, "I've found nothing yet, nothing specific. Maxwell's journals are quite difficult to read."

"Matsyamohandra will know," Vijay says simply.

"He will return tomorrow, or the next day," Li adds. Then, "Would you like to go to the ghats tonight?"

Curious, Remus asks, "What happens at the ghats?"

"Every evening at sunset the priests perform Ganga Aarti, the river worship ceremony. Perhaps you have seen it from the library?"

"The fires on the river."

Li nods. "Yes, that is it. Would you like to see it tonight?"

The past two evenings, Remus has watched from the library window, wondering at the beautiful and haunting glow of flaming offerings set adrift on the river, but he feels strangely nervous at the idea of viewing the ceremony up close. Nodding slowly, he says, "Yes, I would like that."

They walk down to the river as the sun is setting. Remus had ventured out of the ashram early that morning, walking down to the river before the city awoke. Before the day began the river was a peaceful place, belonging to the women pounding their laundry on the stone steps, and old sadhus in their orange robes, wading and praying in the soft early light, grasping heavy chains to keep from being swept away by the current. Now, however, the riverside is packed with people, devotees and tourists, vendors and guards, jostling for a position closer to the sacred ghat at Hari-ki-Pairi, the hollow where Vishnu once trod, his footprints marking the point at which the Ganges emerges from the Himalaya. Li strides through the crowd without hesitation, her forceful glare making up for the disadvantage of her small stature; Remus and Vijay follow, subjected to considerably more bumping and shoving.

They find a place on an artificial promontory facing the ghats on which the priests are deftly handling torches before the crowd of onlookers. The riverfront is alight with the same ceremony at all of the temples, large and small, and Remus watches in silent fascination. When the priests have finished, the crowds surge forward with tiny lanterns and flowers, and the water dances with red and golden light. The night is filled with smoke, songs and prayers, thousands of voices ringing through the haze as they set their offerings afloat. The lanterns and petals drift slowly from the steps, drawing the glow away from the city in tight clumps that gently disperse, bobbing on the current like shy little stars, occasionally winking out and leaving a cool, dark void.

The three wizards stand shoulder to shoulder, watching until Li announces that it is time to go. As they walk slowly up the hill toward the ashram, Remus asks, "The ceremony, what does it mean?"

Li frowns. "The Muggles worship the river. They believe the water will wash away their sins, and the offerings are thanks to the gods. For wizards it is different." She says nothing more, hurrying through the crowds with her head high and eyes forward.

Remus turns to Vijay. "Different how?"

The young man gives a one-shouldered shrug. "It is not so different. In India, wizards do not concern themselves with sin, but they bathe in the river and scatter the ashes of their dead here. There are some who believe that setting a flame on Ganga is the same as giving your soul to the magic that flows with the river."

"Why does it upset Li?"

For a long moment, Remus thinks that Vijay isn't going to answer. Finally, he speaks again, "Ganga is an Indian river, born in the Indian mountains."

"I don't understand."

"She cannot go home, you see," Vijay explains, tilting his head thoughtfully to one side. "Li is Tibetan, not Indian. It is the same for many Tibetan wizards, as it is for the Muggles. They cannot go home but it is difficult for them to stay here. Her mother was a Tibetan Muggle, but her father is an important man in the Chinese magical government. She cannot remain his daughter while being Tibetan in Tibet."

Remus says nothing, feeling awkwardly uninformed and struggling to remember what little he knows of Chinese politics.

When they return to the ashram, Remus takes a pot of tea into the library and spends several minutes studying the exquisite map of the world on the wall. It is a magical map, highlighting those cities and regions important to wizards but not necessarily to Muggles; Lhasa is a large red dot while Beijing is barely a speck. The distance across the Himalaya seems minor compared to the span of the Asian continent. Remus turns west and lets his gaze travel over Arabia and into Europe. Britain is ridiculously small, tucked away in the north. The Scottish isles are no more than a dusting of green spilled into the North Sea. He thinks of the maps decorating the walls of the History of Magic classroom, with the regions and wizarding cities of England presented in excruciating detail, surrounded by an ocean so stubbornly blue it is as if nothing could impinge its insular isolation, with vague border scribbles hinting that places such as Ireland and France might exist just beyond the edge of the known world. Remus can see that the muted green hedgerows and stone walls of England would be lost in the seething, churning mass that is India, awash with its patchwork of rich oranges and reds, slightly obscured by a fragrant blue smoke and somehow managing to convey a sense of cartographic confusion despite the neatness of the drawing.

Sipping his tea thoughtfully, he is curiously free of homesickness.

Is that really surprising?

Remus turns the question over in his mind.

Stepping away from the map, he sets another of Maxwell's journals on the table and begins to read.

* * *

On the morning of the fifth day, Remus stumbles across a passage that catches his eye. Maxwell has just finished discussing a dubious experiment that, as far as Remus can tell, consists entirely of trapping an unsuspecting kneazle in various magical containers and subjecting the poor creature to a wide range of transfiguration curses. Concluding the experimental report with a casual comment about the protest voiced by Sridevi, his housekeeper and owner of the unlucky kneazle, Maxwell then launches into a wordy ramble about the residual damping effects of transformative properties in magically prefigured inheritance in such-and-such conditions in someplace-or-other locations, and Remus skims, bored, before blinking at a single word: lycanthropy.

He goes back to the beginning of the paragraph and reads more carefully.

It is apparent upon lengthy study of the transformative properties of entities magically prefigured for feral transfiguration by involuntary inheritance or accursed re-enunciation that limitations to practical capacity evolve concurrently with thaumaturgical development in conditions which require or initiate base familiarity of procedural, theoretical or arithmancical transformative sorceries, the most observable examples being the extreme exertion required for bearers of lycanthropy to achieve proficiency in transfigurative arts.

Remus bristles a bit after he is able to wrap his mind around the sentence. He would never claim to have a great talent for transfiguration, but neither would he say his acceptable marks required "extreme exertion". Anyone would feel like a bit of a transfiguration dunce next to three fifteen-year-old Animagi.

The converse question regarding enhancement of antitransformative ability in saturated transformative environments remains unanswered as appropriately warded locales are rare and lycanthropic experimental subjects are difficult to restrain and monitor.

"Probably because you'd stick them in a box and curse them," Remus mutters, feeling a surge of empathy toward Sridevi's kneazle.

Maxwell says no more about werewolves, moving to discuss, instead, the many-faceted representations of Hindu deities and the philosophical complications presented by a religion in which the gods may outnumber the worshippers.

Several hours later, watching the boys practice the Freezing Charm on scurrying cockroaches, Remus wonders what Maxwell meant by "transformative environments". In Maxwell's nineteenth century terminology, the phrase likely referred to the old belief that magic could be divided into four groups: Transformation, Stasis, Creation and Destruction. The names of the categories are as far as Remus' knowledge of archaic magical theory extends, but he lets himself speculate and decides that "transformative environment" is a fair description of the heartwood. He adds this to his mental list of things to ask Matsyamohandra, then notices that some of the older boys have mastered the Freezing Charm, combined it with the Levitation Charm, and are gleefully bombarding the younger students with arthropod missiles.

After the cockroaches have been liberated and the boys are gone for the day, Remus returns to the journals but finds no further mention of either werewolves or transformative environments.

* * *

Late at night, the city relaxes into a warm lazy hush, and the air is sharply scented with smoke. Remus stands at the library's open window, watching the lanterns on the river blink out and drift away. The candlelight from the sconces flickers gently, and he turns around.

A man stands on the other side of the table. He is thin and frail, dressed in too-large shirt and trousers that give him the look of a child in his father's clothes. But beneath wispy grey hair and startling blue eyes, his mischievous smile bears an uncanny resemblance to the jade Buddha on the window sill. He is perfectly still, poised with one hand slightly raised, as if frozen in the act of reaching toward the books on the table.

For a long moment, neither man speaks or moves.

"Good evening," Remus says.

The mysterious Buddha smile breaks into a wide grin. "'The evening air is eager with the sad music of water.'"

"Sad music of water?" Remus repeats before he can stop himself.

"So wrote the great Indian poet Tagore, a Muggle who understood the magic of language far better than most wizards." The man continues to smile, apparently waiting for Remus to respond.

Remus steps away from the window and extends his hand. "I'm Remus Lupin. Are you Matsyamohandra?"

"Remus Lupin." The man exhales the words thoughtfully, taking Remus' hand and holding it. "Did your parents consult the stars before deciding on so fatefully prescient a name?"

"No," Remus shakes his head, smiling, "but they certainly consulted the stars afterward."

Matsyamohandra releases Remus' hand and motions toward a chair and says, "Li tells me you have been reading Maxwell's journals."

Right down to business then. Remus sits and says, "I have, but I'm afraid I can't make any sense of them. Chandrasekhar told me that you've studied the heartwoods?"

"Ah, yes. Chandrasekhar summoned you to India."

"He summoned a professor of mine, actually," Remus corrects.

"An Englishman to find an Indian monster."

Something in Matsyamohandra's tone puts Remus on guard, though he doesn't know why. Matsyamohandra is placid and attentive on the other side of the table, his posture straight and his expression curious and open. Remus frowns, feeling as though he ought to defend Chandrasekhar, who has been so kind so him, but instead he observes, "I doubt the kali vastu thinks of itself as a monster." The moment the words are spoken, Remus wonders why he said them.

"Tell me what you have learned of the creature and the heartwood."

Remus tells Matsyamohandra about his map of the heartwood and his encounters with the kali vastu. The older man asks several questions, many of which Remus answers with a regretful, "I don't know." When Remus reaches the point in his story where he lost seven days to the heartwood, Matsyamohandra sits back in his chair and says nothing.

"Will you tell me what you know about it--the heartwood?" Remus asks finally, feeling indistinctly guilty for breaking the long silence. A slight breeze stirs the air, tickling the hair on his neck, and he glances at the open window before going on, "I don't understand why some magic works there but some doesn't. It seems quite arbitrary."

"Arbitrary?" Matsyamohandra raises an eyebrow. "Surely you can see how unlikely that is."

Remus thinks, Surely I can't, else I wouldn't have said it. He looks away from Matsyamohandra again, his gaze falling on the jade Buddha. It is a truly superb piece of statuary, the pale green stone almost luminescent in the candlelight. Remus wonders what temple lost its icon to decorate this library.

Out loud, he says, "I don't understand."

"Can you see no pattern in the spells you used?"

Asperix: the Suffocating Spell. Sanguinis: the Bleeding Curse. He considered and tried others, but only those two were effective. The most obvious pattern, Remus thinks, is that both spells are violent, illegal and generally frowned upon in polite society. He recalls suddenly an exhausted Frank Longbottom telling the Order about a family of Muggle bricklayers killed by the Bleeding Curse, a father and two sons left in a bloody heap among their trowels and chisels, Dark Mark shining overhead, found by their Healer sister after her late shift at St. Mungo's. Bricklayers, Frank had practically spat the word, pacing furiously, now they're killing bricklayers. What, are they afraid the Muggles will build a bloody great wall to keep them out?

Remus swallows and says slowly. "Both are physically damaging."

"Predatory."

The single word is sharp, loud and sudden, startling Remus. He immediately looks away from the Buddha. Meeting Matsyamohandra's eyes across the table, Remus opens his mouth, then changes his mind and remains silent.

When it becomes apparent that Matsyamohandra is not going to say anything more, Remus cautiously agrees, "Yes. I suppose so."

"Tooth and claw."

Remus shifts uncomfortably in his chair.

"Crush and bleed, the methods of the great natural hunters."

"What are you saying?"

Matsyamohandra smiles suddenly and stands up. "It is late, dear boy, and I have travelled far today. We will speak again tomorrow. Li tells me the students are quite fond of you. I look forward to seeing what they have learned."

He nods a good night and walks quickly from the library, closing the door silently behind him. The night breeze shuffles the pages of the open journal on the table. Remus closes the journal and keeps his hand on the cover, idly tracing the single embossed word, Maxwell, with his forefinger.

Exhaling slowly and leaning back, Remus stretches his legs before him. He runs a hand over his face and looks past the jade Buddha, through the open window and into the night.

* * *

In the morning Matsyamohandra is duly impressed with Remus' map, though he doesn't seem at all surprised by anything Remus has learned about the heartwood. He is greatly amused by Remus' admission that all he knows of hunting he learned from Jim Corbett and says, cryptically, "Tigers are magnificent beasts, but theirs is a magic too easily understood." Matsyamohandra agrees, eventually, to share what he understands about Maxwell's theories, although he does so with the air of one humouring a child rather than providing vital information.

"Maxwell was a man of many theories," Matsyamohandra explains. "If he saw a tree, he developed a theory. A bird in the tree was worth two theories. A bird devouring a worm in a tree? Why, that was worth one hundred pages of philosophical treatise. But you must understand: he never studied the heartwoods for themselves. Do you know what Maxwell is most famous for?"

"His work in transfiguration," Remus answers. "The Animagus transformation, specifically."

"Yes, of course, though wizards have mastered the Animagus transformation for hundreds, thousands of years. It is said that ancient shamans could take any animal form they pleased, did you know that?"

Remus does know that; he remembers a heated debate in the Gryffindor boys' dormitory that led to an impossible bet about who would achieve the Polyanimagus status first, never mind that Polyanimagi exist only in myths. Five Galleons, two bottles of Firewhiskey, four bars of Delilah Periwinkle's Daringly Delicious Almond Chocolate Delight and the requirement that the loser name his firstborn son after the winner. That was the wager, one that nobody will ever win.

Matsyamohandra is still speaking. "...and that is all that interested Maxwell, what he called the 'transformative properties' of the heartwood -- it's ability to change size and shape seemingly at will, to keep intruders out. Or to keep them in," Matsyamohandra says, giving Remus a significant look. "Maxwell himself was quite frustrated, as he could only enter the heartwood in his animal form--a golden monkey--and a monkey has trouble taking notes. His observations, therefore, are rather difficult to decipher, many of them detailing the quality of the bananas and ease of travelling through the canopy. I am not an Animagus, so I have never been able to verify his findings."

"I'm not an Animagus, either," Remus points out.

"No. You are something else entirely."

Remus is silent, thinking about the pungent odour of damp earth, the subtle scent of flowers, the cool night air and silver moonlight.

Finally, he says, "You're saying that I can enter the heartwood because I'm a werewolf?"

Matsyamohandra's eyes, deep royal blue, are sparkling. "I'm saying that, perhaps, the heartwood and its creature feel no need to hide from a kindred spirit. But, of course, it is only a theory."

"That doesn't help me find a way to stop the kali vastu."

"Ah, yes. Chandrasekhar's request."

"You don't seem to agree with him."

Matsyamohandra shrugs his thin shoulders. "Chandrasekhar is an old friend, but we do not always see eye to eye. He chooses the title and the government, the game of bureaucracy and conciliation that he learned on your English shores, while I choose this humble skul and the boys who have grown so fond of your flying cockroaches. Perhaps we both wish to see India become a place of magic and power once again, but sometimes I think Chandrasekhar is afraid of what that means."

Remus wonders silently what part Matsyamohandra played in the Kashmiri sect's attempt to halt the war between India and Pakistan. "The kali vastu is killing villagers," he says evenly. "Do you think I'm wrong to try to stop it?"

"I think you do not know what the kali vastu is."

Annoyed, Remus agrees, "Of course I don't. As I've told you, repeatedly, I've never seen anything like it, or read about anything similar. If you know more than you've said, by all means--"

Matsyamohandra is laughing. Quietly, gently, but laughing nonetheless. "It is so difficult to explain to an Englishman." He shakes his head. "What do you see when you look at India, Remus Lupin? Do you see a hot, crowded, filthy place, a nation of struggle and grief, a new challenge or horror around every dirty corner? Do you see a frustrating place where insects and gods outnumber sensible men such as yourself? Have you given no thought to why we are this way, why the British wizards could not stay, though you are wealthy, educated, civilised and so very determined to force the magical world into clean Latin phrases and crisp wand movements? There is as much magic flowing in that river you see through the window as in all of England, but it is not magic that can be tamed or tricked or caught for the trifling uses of mankind. This is not a land of charms, hexes and carefully crafted potions. This is a land where even the gods are submissive to the land, changing, mutating and multiplying because they cannot keep pace with the fierce, wild magic that flows from the mountains themselves.

"Maxwell knew this; it is why he came to India to die. He knew that the clever incantations and precise theories of his English colleagues were nothing more than child's play. Grown men studying for years to turn into bears and dogs--was that the culmination of his life's work? Was that all he had accomplished after one hundred years of research? Of course not. Maxwell's greatest discovery was that the magic that transforms, the magic that creates heartwoods and dark creatures, the magic that defies careful Western training and keeps our land in perpetual chaos, it is the oldest, most powerful magic. It is what keeps the rules and laws from strangling our magical world entirely."

Matsyamohandra stops abruptly. His smile is gone; he is looking past the jade Buddha, through the window at the blue sky shimmering with midday heat. After a moment, he continues, "I am an old man. Li tells me I must allow the boys to learn charms and spells, teach them about numbers and potion brewing, because that is the only way to keep their magic alive. And I know, in a way, she must be right. That is the trouble with Tibetan witches," Matsyamohandra shakes his head ruefully, "they are so often right. What do you think, young man?"

Remus considers his words carefully. "If what you say is true--if the land survives on untamed magic--where is the harm in teaching your children to use it?"

"Use it for what? Use it to make their lives easier? Use it to gain power, to fight one another? To learn to control the elements, as every Dark Wizard has done since Setekh harnessed the winds of Egypt to bury peaceful farmers in cascades of sand? To steal the minds of others and manipulate them to their will, a skill at which your recently defeated enemy in England was so talented? An interesting viewpoint for a young man who has just fought a war against dark magic. You see no danger in what you suggest? The boys as they are, they are harmless, yet you would give them the tools to change that. Is that a position you can defend to yourself, to your friends and family?"

"I can't defend it to my friends and family," Remus says, forcing himself to speak calmly, "because they are all dead. As for myself, I have fought darkness my entire life, a war that has nothing to do with any Dark Wizard or misuse of magic. There is a difference between fighting dark magic and fighting human weakness."

Slowly, Matsyamohandra turns from the window to look at Remus. "Perhaps you are right. What is your plan?"

"Plan?" Remus frowns, confused.

Matsyamohandra gestures at the stack of journals. "The heartwood, the kali vastu. You will not allow it to continue devouring villagers, will you?"

Sighing, Remus says, "No, I won't. But I don't have a plan."

"Don't you?"

Remus doesn't answer.

"It is only a theory," Matsyamohandra says. He smiles, though his eyes are sad.

* * *

Remus stays at the ashram for a few more days. He teaches the boys under Matsyamohandra's indecipherable gaze and reads a bit more in the journals, focusing on the passages the old man points out as relevant to the heartwood. One afternoon, Salil comes through the gate and says, "Tomorrow we go, yes?"

Glancing at Matsyamohandra, Remus agrees. "Tomorrow, yes."

After supper, Remus says to Li, "I don't understand what he's trying to tell me."

Li laughs, "Ah, so now you see how it is."

Vijay adds, "Don't worry. We never understand, either. But you do have a plan?"

Remus shrugs. "I don't know."

But he does know. He sleeps fitfully that night, tossing on the comfortable bed until the sheet is tangled around his legs. Finally he gives up and steps onto the rooftop; he looks over the sleeping city until the sky lightens to grey in the east. Then he leaves the ashram and walks down to the river. The city feels huge and empty in the hour before sunrise, the streets wider and the buildings taller. The riverside is not deserted, though; sadhus and yogis pray in silence, their orange robes muted like dying embers in the dim light. Remus finds an empty spot and sits on the cold cement, wrapping his arms around his knees and watching the river, swift and powerful. The sky gives itself over to dawn; grey fades to pink, pink to orange, and the riverside comes alive. Voices ring out in prayer and a group of women pass behind Remus, chatting cheerfully as they make their way to the water with laundry baskets balanced on their heads. Cart wheels rattle, dogs bark, a car horn sounds in the distance.

About twenty feet downriver, a gaunt old man removes his ragged clothes and immerses himself in the water, holding tight to a thick chain as he ducks beneath the current. Just past the old man, a solitary woman in a brilliant blue sari unfolds a white cloth and releases a cloud of grey ashes; she watches the river carry the dust away, then closes her eyes for a moment before turning from the water, gracefully climbing the steps and vanishing into an alley between two buildings.

Standing up, Remus unbuttons his shirt and folds it neatly on the steps. He removes his trousers and steps into the water, suppressing a gasp at the surprising cold, and takes hold of a chain. Lowering himself slowly into the river, he holds his breath and immerses himself completely. For several long moments he stays beneath the water, blind and braced against the current.

Remus climbs from the river just as the sun rises. The red and white temples glow with the first rays of sunlight, and the cacophony of traffic is punctuated by shouts and prayers as the ghats grow more crowded. The old man downstream gives him a wide, toothless grin and says something Remus doesn't understand. He returns the smile but remains silent. A few minutes in the pale morning sunlight and he is sufficiently dry; Remus dresses and shakes the water from his hair. He remains at the riverside for a bit longer, admiring the way the water reflects the dawn.

The moon will be full in seven days.