The Ravishing Thrall

Chapter Four: Remember Me

Hermione wanted to insist on spending the rest of the day writing. As she'd only gotten a little bit done the night before, she felt like she didn't have the time to devote to another all-night excursion. Harry was so eager to go, however, and so effectively distracted from his worries over Ginny that she relented, not feeling herself quite capable of dashing the hopes that she'd bred.

She did insist that both of them shower and clean up, as she hadn't changed her clothes since her trip to the theater the day before, and Harry was still covered in soot from the fireplace. She didn't have any clothes to lend him, but she did smooth the creases in his trousers with a quick mutter of "derigus," and a wave of her wand.

Clean, and slightly less disheveled, Harry looked a lot better. She wished she could do something about the incriminating circles under his eyes, but there was nothing for that save genuine sleep. "All right," she said, giving her friend an appraising look. "You don't look like quite so much like a disgrace to the name of wizards, now. Are you sure you don't want to stop home first, see if Ginny's back?"

Harry's face set into a hard expression, and Hermione wished she hadn't asked.

She was glad that she had Harry to travel with, since he was as used as she was to moving from place to place by Muggle means. They took a cab again, both of them keeping pointedly silent throughout the ride, avoiding accidentally mentioning anything that might give them away.

The drive seemed to take forever, probably because of that anxious silence. Finally, they pulled up outside the theater, and Harry jumped out without giving so much as a backward glance to the cab. Hermione paid the driver as Harry ran up to the doors of the building, and he gave her a sheepish look when she waved a small purse of gold at him. "Next time, you're going to pay." Harry didn't seem to have any objections to that.

She hadn't counted on being recognized by the usher when she came in, having assumed that the workers changed every night. Her heart skipped a beat as the man turned, peered at her, and then gave her a slow, unsure smile.

"Oh yeah," he said. "Yeah, you're the niece, right? You were here last night."

"That's right," agreed Hermione quickly, ignoring Harry's startled look.

"Just can't stay away, can you?" the usher grinned. "Yeah, well, I assume you're here to see him, not to see the show. You can just go around, he's dressing. Don't stay long, we want to start on time."

Hermione blinked. "Oh! Well, ah...thank you." Gesturing at Harry, she added, "this is my, ah...husband. Is it all right if he-!"

The usher waved them in, returning his attention to the stream of people who were arriving early to the show. "Sure, sure," he said. "Whatever's best." To a woman standing by him, holding out her credit card, he said, "Welcome, welcome, come to see some magic done?"

Hermione took Harry by the arm, and hurried him around back to the door next to the women's bathroom. He was laughing under his breath as they came to a stop outside the dressing room door. "Your husband, Hermione? I mean, I guess that makes more sense that me being your brother..."

Hermione glared at him. "Shut up." She gave the door a sharp rap. "Prof-Ah...Mr. Cambio, sir? I've brought someone to see you, if you've got a moment."

There was a short pause before the door opened, revealing Lupin, already dressed in his ridiculous Muggle stage costume. He smiled when he saw Hermione, looking sincerely pleased to see her. "Back again, Hermione?" he asked, his eyes twinkling at her. "Yet again, a delightful surprise. Unless, that is, you've changed your mind, and come back to arrest me?"

It was then that he noticed that there was somebody else behind her. His confident smile flagging, Lupin gave Hermione a startled, accusatory look. She shook her head, reaching back with one hand to drag Harry forward.

Harry and Lupin stared at each other, and the door of the dressing room smacked Lupin sharply in the back, as he released it in his surprise. The force of the door shoved him out into the hall, so that it was just the three of them, standing in an awkward tableau just in front of the bathrooms. Lupin cleared his throat, apparently attempting to think of something to say, his eyes never leaving Harry's. Harry ruffled a hand through his own hair.
"Hi, Remus," he said. "You look...you look good."

"You look terrible," replied Lupin, smiling, but with a hoarse note in his voice, that made him sound a good deal like he was stifling emotion.

"Yeah, well..." Harry shrugged, and looked towards Hermione, as if expecting her to say something.

"It's been a long week," she murmured, echoing what Harry had said the previous night.

Lupin chuckled. "That makes two of us," he agreed. "Maybe three of us. It's really good to see you again, Harry." Then, apparently casting off his indecision, he strode forward, and gave Harry a jarringly tight bear-hug, clapping him on the back with one hand. "Really good to see you."

Hermione felt like a bit of an unwelcome spectator, and had started to turn away to head for the women's bathroom, when Lupin's voice stopped her. "Thank you, Hermione," he was saying, as he released Harry. "I couldn't have come to seek him out myself, not without having people asking questions about where I've been, and what I've been doing with myself. I really didn't think I was going to see either of you again. My goodness, Harry," he added, giving him a wide, incredulous smile, "you've grown again. I didn't expect that would happen at your age. You're taller than James was, and...yes, you're taller than me."

"Not quite," muttered Harry. "We're about the same height, really."

Lupin didn't seem to notice the correction. He gazed at Harry for a few more moments, looking as though he had more to say, but, glancing over at a clock on the wall, seemed to become aware of the passage of time. With a warm smile for both Harry and Hermione in turn, he straightened the blue cape about his shoulders, and then sped away to the backstage doors. Hermione saw Harry watching him go, a look of regret on her friend's face.

"It's all right," she said, guessing what was making him so concerned. "I'm sure you'll have a chance to talk to him after the show. Shall we go and watch?"
Harry shook his head emphatically. "No," he said. "No, I don't think I want to...see him like that. Don't want to watch him stoop to that."

Hermione understood exactly what he meant, but, if they weren't going to go and watch, they were going to have a very long wait. She reached over and tested the door handle. It was open. Smiling at Lupin's thoughtfulness, or his forgetfulness, as she wasn't sure which it had been, she gestured for Harry to follow her into the office. "We'll wait in here," she said. "I doubt he'll mind."

As they closed the door behind him, she frowned, her eyes running over the walls of the office, covered entirely in stationary Muggle photographs. "What I can't understand," she continued thoughtfully, "is why we haven't heard anything of or from him in three years. Surely it's impossible to hide effectively in such a public place. We can't be the first wizards to find him out."

Harry shrugged. "We must be. After all, you said it yourself, he's broken a law, and there's no getting around that. He wouldn't still be here if anyone had found him."

"I suppose," Hermione admitted. "Still, it's an awfully strange coincidence."

Harry settled himself on to the same stool that Hermione had used the night before. "I'm not complaining," he said. "We'll have to convince him to back with us, though. Otherwise he might not have the same luck in the future. If no one's found him yet, they're bound to find him soon. After all, we did."

Hermione thought that convincing Lupin to come away from the theater and return to the wizarding community might not be so easy. She knew that Lupin would probably receive a great deal of curiosity and publicity after a three year absence, and everyone would be terribly pleased to rediscover one of their lost war heroes. Still, that wouldn't necessarily help him be more readily accepted. She couldn't personally imagine spending the rest of her life in Muggle society, now that she'd been a witch for so long, and yet she could at least try to understand how hard it must have been for Lupin to discover that he was still unaccepted as a werewolf in the wizarding world.

"We'll need to have a serious chat with him," Harry was saying, unaware of Hermione's own misgivings. "I wonder, Hermione...could he stay with you, just until we've found him a more convenient home?"

"Professor Lupin isn't a recalcitrant pet, Harry," she admonished. "Besides, no one's asked him if he wants to leave with us, yet."

Before Harry could open his mouth to respond to that, the man in question stepped through the office door. "Oh good," he said, smiling, and wiping a bead of sweat from his forehead. "I was hoping you'd be willing to wait for me."

Lupin drew off his cape, and draped it over the back of his chair. "I confess," he told them, still beaming, "I moved a bit too quickly tonight." He glanced at his watch, his eyes widening slightly as he noticed the time. "Oh dear, I really did go pretty fast...but you see, I was so worried that you'd have gone, so I...I wasn't really paying attention. Maybe that's why I had so much trouble with the subject tonight." He shrugged.

"Remus," Harry began, "you're going to have to leave, you know."

Hermione didn't think that was the best way to begin. Lupin seemed to agree. He stared questioningly at Harry, giving Harry a look that asked wordlessly for him to elaborate. "Well," Harry insisted, "now that we've found you, I'm sure other wizards will start showing up, for odd reasons like Hermione's. And that's hardly safe. We can't just assume that all of them will keep their mouths shut on the subject."

Lupin chuckled. "Oh don't worry, Harry," he assured him, "I don't make assumptions like that one. I'm a lot more careful than you seem to think."

"Then, there have been others?" asked Hermione. Lupin nodded.

"Oh yes," he said, "many of them, actually. I was lucky at the beginning, because anyone who showed up here was too young to really know me. But after a while, there were ministry officials, older wizards, recent Hogwarts alumnae...it wasn't going to do. So I had to do something about it." He shot Hermione a nervous sort of look, and his voice was guilty as he finished the sentence. "There wasn't anything for it, you see, I had to."

"Had to do what?" asked Harry, frowning.

"Well..." Lupin seemed to be considering how best to broach this subject, and it took him several moments to complete the phrase. "I couldn't very well have them remembering that they'd seen me, so...they didn't."

Harry blinked, obviously not understanding what Lupin meant by this. Hermione, on the other hand, got it immediately, and all too well. She froze, turning to exchange a look with Harry, who, as realization dawned, was suddenly no longer as pleased as he'd been previously. Lupin, apparently catching their incredulous stares, sighed in some resignation, and dropped into his armchair.

"You've been modifying memories?" asked Hermione, the pitch of her voice rising in her poorly suppressed alarm.

Harry shrugged, although his expression of dour concern hadn't changed. "We've done it ourselves plenty of times," he reminded her, "at school and outside of it. It's not a dangerous charm."

"Wrong, Harry," said Lupin. "It's actually a very dangerous charm. You can never be sure exactly how much of a memory you're taking away, and if you cut too far into their minds, you can wipe out very important things. Sometimes, if you're really careless, they can forget how to speak, or walk, and never know why it happened."

"But you've just said that you do it all the time!" Hermione was indignant now. She'd been willing to protect his privacy as long as he wasn't actually hurting anyone. Performing any sort of magic on Muggles was quite enough, but-

Lupin looked fixedly at Hermione, temporarily ignoring Harry's presence as he attempted to catch Hermione's eyes. "What would you have had me do?"

Hermione had to confess to herself that she really had no idea what she'd have preferred in the circumstance. "I'd rather," she shot, "have you never have put yourself in this situation! This is bad on almost every level. Why...if you and I hadn't known each other, in the days before you-!"

"Before I what, Hermione?" The former professor's voice was gentle, and Hermione felt a twinge of embarrassment. "Before I turned over to the side of evil?" He snorted slightly, shaking his head slowly at her. "No, no, I think in the grand scheme of things that I could be doing, I'm not engaged in anything as bad as all that. Laws aren't always best for the wellbeing of the community, no matter how much the Ministry would like us to believe that they are. I'm still an innocent man."

Hermione felt that he was far from innocent, but there was nothing that she could say to contradict that reasonable tone in his voice.

A knock at the door drew all three of them out of the conversation. Hermione glanced up apprehensively, but Lupin looked unconcerned. Walking over to it, he stopped with his hand on the doorknob, to ask, "who is it?"

There was no response. Instead, upon hearing his voice, the person on the other end of the door apparently decided that they no longer wished to come in, because Hermione could hear footsteps heading away from the dressing room, and down the hall.

Harry shrugged. "Wrong room number, I suppose."

Something cold, however, had slipped into Hermione's stomach, and she gave Lupin a long, hard look as she listened to the sounds of the footsteps dying away. There weren't really enough doors back here for someone to get the wrong room so easily, and the bathrooms were very clearly marked. Then again, she supposed that anyone could make a mistake without thinking about it, couldn't they?