Slytherin's Warning

4 - The Book on the Highest Shelf

Lana Hopewell, 24, of Haltwhistle, died 15 January, 1944. She was born 30 April, 1919 in Haltwhistle and was a Prefect for Hufflepuff while at Hogwarts. While other classmates married or went on to traditional careers, Hopewell felt it was her calling to educate Britain's werewolves. She made a passionate argument in a guest column for this very paper asserting that left illiterate and uneducated, werewolves would always pose a threat to mainstream Wizarding culture. It was her publicly-sworn personal crusade to someday see a werewolf elected to the Wizengamot.

She was hampered in her quest by the wariness of the very werewolves she sought to help. Frustrated by her lack of progress, and much to the dismay of friends and family, she announced last month that she would subject herself to the Bite and join the pack as a full member. However, after narrowly avoiding bleeding to death, the Bite became infected, and as St. Mungo's does not treat known werewolves, she died a few days later.

Few could find fault with Hopewell's wide-eyed idealism. But it is the opinion of this page that her quest was doomed from the start. Her persistence in treating werewolves as people sprang from her gentle and loving spirit, but it is a well-known fact that werewolves are not people and are in fact impossible to educate. In the end, not only did she not help anyone, she lost her own life.

While we extend our sympathies to the Hopewell family, we hope that impressionable young witches will take a lesson from this tragedy.

--Editorial, from the archives of The Daily Prophet

Around 3:00 that afternoon, Draco heard a door open and a feminine voice call, "Remus?"

Lupin's voice was quieter, but Draco could still hear the answering, "Dora."

"What are you doing out of bed?" "Dora" exclaimed. "Here, let me help you."

Draco couldn't hear Lupin's response, but presumably he'd made some kind of excuse, because Dora said, "At least lie down on the sofa. Here, I'll take care of those."

Although his heart was still hammering, Draco inched closer to the door and pressed his ear against it. He wondered who Dora was. The voice sounded too young to be Lupin's mother... so his sister, perhaps? Her voice was a little quieter now, but he could still hear her clearly.

"I would have come sooner, Remus, but it's been an absolute madhouse at work."

Lupin's response was indistinct.

"I know, but I still wanted to be here. No matter that I'd be completely useless to you....

"No, I would be. I got the results back from the Animagus testing, and it was negative. And I'm hopeless at potions; I only got three steps into Wolfsbane before I bollixed it up." She was crying; Draco could hear it in her voice. "I hate seeing you in such pain and not being able to help."

"You do help," Lupin assured her, though his voice sounded awfully weak to Draco, who was nearly leaning against the door now. "Please, don't torture yourself like this. I don't need you to be an Animagus or a potions Master; I just need you to be you. Now tell me what's been happening, what I can't read in the Prophet."

A pause, then, "The main thing is that the border has been nearly completely sealed. Someone laid a burning hex on the international floo centers. A Muggleborn couple was trying to go to Australia, they'd been granted refugee status. The woman burned to death and the man is at St. Mungo's. He's not expected to live, either.

"The Portkey Authorization Department at the Ministry was attacked two days after the Funeral Massacre. Over 400 Portkeys were stolen and all the employees there were killed."

Lupin asked, "You knew--" Draco couldn't make it out--"Department?"

"Yeah. Viola Benson was one of my best friends at Hogwarts. She--she collected chocolate frog cards and used to sign her name with a little viola under it. She thought it was funny." She sounded teary again.

"Borders... last time, too," Draco heard Lupin say. "Even owls--"

"We think there may be traitors in the postal system tampering with the mail. Their head is going mad trying to uncover the culprits, and he's asked the Aurors for help. But we're far too busy tracking missing people to give our time to missing letters." Draco froze: Dora was an Auror? "But Death Eaters or dark sympathizers are also shooting owls out of the sky, we think. The Prophet's owl delivery service and the owl-order magazines are facing ruin."

There was an Auror in the next room. Draco eased away from the door and somehow squeezed himself under the bed. It was dusty and he almost sneezed, but he covered his mouth and nose and breathed shallowly until the feeling passed. An Auror! She would arrest him as soon as look at him, he knew. Though it was rather surprising for an Auror to spend time with a werewolf, even if they were related. His father had once mentioned a Ministry worker whose father was bitten by a vampire. The man had blasted his own father's name from the tapestry and erased all mentions of the man. His mistake was in overcompensating when he lobbied for stricter vampire laws, and Lucius found out his dirty little secret. The man was now part of the Dark Lord's Ministry spy network.

He could still hear the Auror's voice, but the words were now indistinct and blurred together. Maybe the Ministry checked on werewolves after the full moon, to be sure the wolf had claimed no victims? But no, that would be a task for the Department to Regulate and Control Magical Creatures. Besides, Dora talked to Lupin like they were friends.

The answer was so obvious Draco could have hit himself when he figured it out; Dora must be a member of the Order of the Phoenix. She must have come on Order business, checking on Lupin a pretext. Draco wished he could still hear the others clearly; from here he only caught the rise and fall of their voices. What secret plan was the Order unfolding?

Some Order members were obvious, yes, but their connections to the Order were always unclear and Draco never saw them in that capacity. He knew that McGonagall was in the Order but could not imagine her outside Hogwarts. He considered whether he ought to resume listening at the door--but the decision was taken out of his hands, for a scarce few moments later he heard Dora calling, "Later!" and the cottage's door banging shut.

The bed was still--soiled--and was starting to smell, so Draco only waited a few minutes before leaving the bedroom. Strange, that; he'd spent days only slipping from the room to use the toilet, yet now he felt too restless to continue doing nothing. At the very least he could get a book or something.

Lupin was lying on the sofa, covered with a lime-green blanket (striped with fuchsia) that very nearly made Draco's eyes water with its brightness. Lupin was reading a parchment; as Draco approached he slid it into a plain tan file folder and pushed it between the back of the sofa and one cushion. Order business, Draco thought.

"Can I help you, Mr. Malfoy?"

"Who was that?" It came out rather petulant, but honestly, considering he'd wanted to scream, "An Auror!?" he didn't care.

Lupin looked down at his lap (and thus, the garish blanket), his cheeks turning pink. "Ah. Dora is--a friend. My--well--a good friend."

"A... girlfriend?" Draco gasped with dawning horror. The thought of a witch and a, a werewolf... how completely revolting. He needed another shower.

Lupin frowned. "I rather thought I'd left that term behind when I left Hogwarts. But I suppose...." He trailed off, looking uncomfortable, and Draco was perfectly happy to let the subject drop.

Although--"Why would an Auror...?" he didn't know how to finish the question.

"Want to be with someone like me?" Lupin finished for him with a dry voice. "I have no idea. I'm just grateful she does." Abruptly changing the topic, he gestured to the newspaper on the low-set table. "The Prophet may be unreliable, but if you want... you are free to read anything in this room, in fact, though I don't know how interesting you'll find my collection." Apparently finished talking for the present, he opened the tan file and began to examine its contents again, angling it so Draco couldn't see anything.

Draco hesitated, wanting to go back to his room, yet reluctant to return to the smell and doubly unwilling to ask the werewolf for anything. He sat down on one of the armchairs and reached for the newspaper. The headline story was about a family of three found dead in their home that morning. The woman was a pureblood and the man was a mudblood. The child was four. There was a picture of the family but Draco didn't do more than glance at it.

There was a sighting of "the murderer, Severus Snape." It didn't sound genuine though; just the product of hysterical minds, jumping at every small sound and seeing Death Eaters in each gathering shadow. There was a small photo of Master Snape, which looked appropriately menacing.

There was an editorial addressed to Potter, begging him to, "go out and fulfill his Destiny as the Chosen One." Draco let the paper fall to the floor, irritated, and stalked over to the bookshelf. Although his father disapproved of such books, Draco had always secretly enjoyed lighthearted escapist fare. His favourites were by Erstmann Schlinkel, whose pureblood heroes defended Wizardkind from muggles, blood traitors and dark creatures of all varieties. Too many other authors of modern, popular fiction insisted on casting practitioners of the ancient arts as the villains. He somehow doubted Lupin kept any Schlinkel on his shelves, though, as the author had a series of three connecting books in which the chief villain was a werewolf. What was that series called again? Oh, right--Blood Moon.

But the selection turned out to be even more depressing than he'd guessed. There didn't appear to be any fiction at all. There were some biographies and memoirs. A few of the names were vaguely familiar, but not many. Besides, history was boring. Draco suppressed a groan when upon realizing the next books after the memoirs were all history texts. One book did catch his eye, though, and he pulled it out, stunned. Of Bloode and Magick, by Heather Donaldson, stared up at him. A quote on the front read, "How muggle infusion is hurting our society, and how to stop them before it's too late." What an odd title for the werewolf to have; perhaps it was mixed in by mistake? Draco tucked the book under his arm, and kept looking.

There were also a fair number of books on defense against the Dark Arts, and to Draco's surprise, several Dark Arts texts as well. Maybe the mild, Light-supporting Lupin was just an act--Lupin was a Dark Creature, after all. But the next item Draco lingered over wasn't even a book, but a thin, book-shaped box with no lapel on the "spine." When Draco pulled it off the shelf he saw the box's cover did have writing on it; Quest for Immortality: Speculation on how Voldemort left his body and humanity behind. Contributing authors: A. Dumbledore, A. Dumbledore, E. Doge, B. Fenwick, R. Lupin, D. Meadowes, L. Potter.

The cover was dusty and Draco fought down a sneeze as he opened it. Inside there was a pile of parchments, the top one covered with the same loopy script as the writing on the outside of the box. Gently replacing the cover, Draco studied the names again, questions rising in his mind. There were two Dumbledores? Had he known that? Who was the other? Lupin--the same one who still lay beneath that atrocious blanket and hadn't even looked Draco's way? And Potter--a relative of the Prat-Who-Lived, he supposed? What were Potter's parents' names again? It might be no more than dry tangential magical theory, but the small box joined the other beneath Draco's arm anyway. A third book soon followed: So, Someone Wants You Dead: 50 Spells to Keep Your Ticker Ticking, by Alphonse Patrick.

To see the highest shelf, Draco had to put his selections down and pull over a chair. There was a book on blood rituals that Draco recalled seeing in his father's study; very dark magic. There were seven copies of Hogwarts: A History, which took up a great deal of shelf space. A few were of different editions, but still... who would possibly ever need that many? And then, next to an incongruously-placed muggle cookbook, Draco caught the word "anthology." That usually meant fiction, didn't it? Groups of essays tended to be referred to as "collections." He pulled it off the shelf.

It was a pale grey book, fairly small, with a luminous moon floating lazily around the cover, the title written inside the moon. Full Moon: An Anthology of Werewolf Literature. Draco flipped through the book, too quickly to truly make out its contents. Each page was perfectly clean--no traces of fingers smudged with ink or a snack, no little tears in the paper or bent corners. It looked like it had never been read.

Draco lifted the cover. On the inside cover, opposite the title page, there was an inscription. Happy Christmas 1978, Remus. "Friends are a beacon in times of darkness." I'm honoured to know you, and shall always remain, your friend, Lily. Nothing more. Who was Lily, Draco wondered, and where was she now?

There was nothing else of interest on the shelf, so Draco stepped back down to the floor. Sitting down, he opened the anthology to a random page.

It was a poem, no author or title given.

Sun-kissed moon,
moon-kissed lake;
soft humming between
soft trees, each branch
illuminated, roots melting into
each other, wind-rustled
leaves, my breath,
silent.
Foot-falls, whisper
of a shadow, lean back
grey fur, nearly blue.

In the daylight,
a scarred trunk is reminiscent
of something; a half-lit memory
Rage Pain Howl Scream
When morning
breaks
over streams and mossy stones
blood cakes under my
nails, more terrifying than
a wand between my
eyes. What
did I do Did I hurt someone I
can't scream, can't look
at amber eyes
in the mirror, can't let the
Wolf in. But next moon, I
cry, I howl, Escape.

There was a note at the bottom of the page. "This poem was found by a Squib real estate agent in the ruins of a house outside Newcastle. Though the content of the poem suggests authorship by a werewolf, no werewolf activity had been reported in the area in living memory. The editors are indebted to Geraldine Grant for submitting it."

Draco snapped the book closed with more force than necessary, causing Lupin to look over at him. The werewolf stilled when he saw the book Draco held. Draco said defensively, "You said any book."

"So I did." And actually Lupin didn't look angry, just tired and a little sad.

Draco felt bold enough to ask, "Who was she? Lily, I mean."

Lupin closed the file folder and pressed his palm to his forehead for a moment, closing his eyes. "Lily Evans was a friend of mine at Hogwarts. By the time she gave me this she was already married to another friend, James Potter." He didn't open his eyes but he must have heard Draco's sharp intake of breath because he continued without pause, "Yes, she was Harry's mother."

Draco didn't know what to say. No need to ask where she was now, as she'd been dead since Draco was a year old. It was hard to think of the Potters as actual people, with friends they gave Christmas presents to. Their fame came from their deaths, and their deaths were synonymous with a time of great celebration in the Wizarding World. "It looks like you never read it," he finally said.

"I did read it once. It wasn't really to my taste. I prefer nonfiction, as you may have noticed, and many of the pieces are rather melodramatic and angst-ridden. I also wasn't very impressed with the quality of most of the pieces, although in the editors' defense, there's not exactly a large body of werewolf-themed literature out there. I treasure that book not for its contents, but for the message Lily used it to send."

"What message?"

"Read the inscription again, Mr. Malfoy. When she sent me this book, I realized that she knew my secret."

"That you're a--"

"A werewolf, yes. Yet she assured me that we were still friends. A scarce month before that Christmas, I told my then-girlfriend my secret and as you might expect, she broke up with me on the spot. Knowing that Lily would not turn her back on me--well, I appreciated it. Beyond a thank-you note, we never spoke of her knowledge or how she figured my secret out. It remained an unspoken understanding between us, right up until her death."

Draco couldn't imagine learning one of his peers was a werewolf and remaining on good terms with them. Did that make Lily Potter impossibly brave or impossibly stupid?

He didn't realize he was musing aloud until Lupin said with wry amusement, "I daresay both. We were all Gryffindors, after all." Lupin glanced at the other books on the floor by Draco's chair, but didn't comment on his choices. He returned to his file and Draco read a story about a young woman who fell in love with a werewolf. As she grew more and more suspicious of his absences, Lupin stood, wincing at little, and said, "I'd best make us some supper." He walked over to his office, cast an unlocking charm on the door, and put his file inside before locking the room up again. Then he moved slowly to the kitchen and Draco resumed his story. He'd only caught a glimpse of the corner of a desk.

The story ended badly, as Draco might have predicted it would. The witch found out her lover's secret and committed suicide. The werewolf, brokenhearted, also killed himself. The witch's father, enraged, abandoned his Ministry post and took up werewolf hunting. He died a few moons later, and the story ended with the witch's mother crying over the graves of her family. All in all, it was a relief to hear that supper was ready.

They did not talk of serious matters, of Hogwarts or family or dead friends. Lupin said little, concentrating on his meatloaf and potatoes and peas, but he got Draco talking about the Quidditch League, and Draco's ensuing dissection of each team lasted them most of the meal. For his part, Draco was surprised at how readily he was talking--his isolation and silence had been harder on him than he'd even realized. So he did his best to put out of his mind the nature of the one he'd been dining with.

After eating, Draco swallowed his pride and told Lupin, "My room is dirty." He didn't make eye contact, but he could feel Lupin's gaze on him.

At length, Lupin said, "Well, that's easily fixed."

"If you have a wand," Draco thought bitterly. He watched from the table as Lupin went into the bedroom, reemerging less than a minute later. Then and only then did Draco get up, gather his books and go to read a bit more before bed.

The days fell into a sort of pattern. Lupin stopped leaving Draco's meals outside the bedroom door, apparently expecting him to come to the table if he wanted food. Draco rose late and ate a midmorning snack before doing some reading. If it was a clear day, Lupin usually spent some time outside in his vegetable garden. The Prophet arrived by owl shortly after lunch. Lupin read it right away when it came, always growing quiet and pensive. When he was finished, he disappeared into his office and Draco took his turn with the paper.

There tended to be one or two attacks each day. Sometimes they resulted in injury, sometimes death, and sometimes the person--or people--simply vanished. Six days after the full moon, Draco saw a name he knew.

It was an attack on a café many Ministry workers went to during lunch. Only one person died, though another was at St. Mungo's and apparently not faring well. But Percy Weasley, Hogwarts class of '94 (Gryffindor, Prefect, Head Boy) was dead. It didn't matter, Draco thought. The whole Weasley lot were a bunch of blood-traitors. They certainly didn't deserve their pureblood status, not when everyone knew it was only chance no muggle blood had seeped into their line in the last 300 years.

And Percy--why, he'd been one of the more useless of the lot. Draco had heard that the first two, who were at Hogwarts before Draco started, were at least marginally intelligent and he reluctantly admitted that when the beastly twins were pranking Houses other than Slytherin, they could be mildly amusing. But only a little. The one in his year was a complete idiot, but had the distinction of being the Prat-Who-Lived's best mate, and the girl was undoubtedly Potter's little slut, but even Draco had to acknowledge that she was very pretty. Some of his fellow Quidditch players had nearly been obsessed by her and put a picture of her up in their changing room lockers when they thought Draco wasn't paying attention.

But Percy--he'd been as obnoxious as the others, but without any skills Draco had ever noticed. How he'd gotten Head Boy, Draco had no idea; clearly it was a case of Dumbledore favouring his precious Gryffindors yet again. He didn't care that Percy was dead. He had no respect for the other in life and none in death, even if the Prophet's story about Percy saving other's in the café was true. And it probably wasn't.

Still... Percy was the first one Draco actually knew to die. The first member of the Weasley clan to fall. But not the last, Draco thought, recalling the tight set of Lupin's mouth when the werewolf retreated to his office. And surprisingly, the thought brought Draco little pleasure.

He read Donaldson's book first, and it seemed to say all the things he'd been taught in childhood, all the instinctive hatred and disgust of muggle ways that the Light side stood against. Something about some of the rhetoric was slightly off, though, some of the sentences worded just a little oddly. On page 62 Draco figured out the book was actually a satire of Pureblood views, mocking all his beliefs. No wonder Lupin arched a brow whenever he saw Draco reading it!

Draco tried reading a little bit more, but now that he was aware of the book's true agenda, he was deeply conscious of the smug mockery ingrained in each sentence. He was irritated with Lupin for having the book, with himself for taking so long to recognize what it was, and of course, with Donaldson for writing it at all. He glared at her picture on the back cover, a lithe, attractive witch with smoky dark eyes and fair curly hair, a smirk playing about her mouth. She was a Ravenclaw and died in 1975, just days short of her thirtieth birthday. At first Draco had thought she was one of the Dark Lord's supporters, but now he supposed she'd been on the opposite side, killed for having the insolence to publish such a book. So Draco returned it to the shelf.

With the border nearly sealed, Draco's plan of getting Lupin to help him leave the country was essentially pointless. So Draco found himself in an impossible position; unable to stay indefinitely, yet unable to leave--especially with no wand. It would be complete suicide. So he continued to eat meals with the werewolf, and quietly read Patrick's book on spells to keep oneself alive, occasionally reading a snippet from the anthology. He was sure Lupin had some sort of plan for Draco, despite the werewolf's statements to the contrary. All Draco could do for now was try to anticipate the werewolf's plans and foil them.

And then, as Draco was reading the paper one day (a Hufflepuff among the dead, but he didn't recognize her name) Lupin emerged from his office early. Lupin said without preamble, "We need to talk about the next full moon. It's later this week."

"I know," said Draco, who'd long since figured out the little circle on the calendar which represented the moon. "It won't be the same as last time?"

"No. I'm meeting with some others and won't be here."

Draco thought, "Other werewolves?" but did not speak.

"I don't want you here alone, not without a wand."

Draco laughed bitterly. "By all mean, let's select a location from the vast number of places open to me."

"Oh, I have a place in mind. But you'll need a disguise." Lupin raised his wand then, and when he finished Draco slipped into the washroom. The face he saw looking back at him from the mirror was completely unfamiliar.