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sam_storyteller) wrote2005-07-10 04:22 pm
sam_storyteller) wrote2005-07-10 04:22 pm
Entry tags:
Cartographer's Craft, JOKE Ch. 36; PG.
This chapter was originally posted on October 31st as a Hallowe'en prank. It is not the real CC36.
The Wednesday night that Charlie Weasley nearly died started out on such a positive note.
Remus was up and about again, looking nearly as healthy as he ever looked and back from his first full day of teaching since Thursday. He'd tried to teach the whole day on Tuesday, but at lunch he'd had to admit defeat and let Sirius handle his afternoon classes. McGonagall dropped by and said that Sirius had a knack for teaching, suggesting in her own subtle way that perhaps after NEWTs he'd like to stay on as tutor and work his way up to professor when one of the faculty eventually retired, lost one too many limbs, or turned out to be evil. All three were about equally common at Hogwarts.
At any rate, Remus was feeling accomplished and having fun playing fetch with Padfoot in the garden, throwing the various sticks, rocks, and unripe fruit that Padfoot laid worshipfully at his feet. Tonks and Harry were up a tree with Bowman, helping to prune it. It was warm in the little walled garden, however the wind might howl outside, and the sun was low enough in the sky to turn the light a peculiar colour somewhere between dusk and true night.
Harry dropped down from the tree with leaves in his hair and a big smudge of dirt across his cheek just as Padfoot grew tired of fetch and threw himself down in front of the kitchen door, sides heaving. Remus bent to scratch his ears and then stepped over him, passing inside just as Tonks fell out of the tree with a whump.
"I'm fine," she called, as Harry and Padfoot both looked up. "Didn't fall far! Nothing to worry about!"
Bowman eased his way down the ladder he'd used to get into the tree with in the first place. "Well, that's the quickest route between A and B," he chuckled. "Want some salve? My Missus makes a good bruise salve."
"No, thank you Bowman, I'm all right," Tonks assured him. Harry sat on the grass near Padfoot, pulling the debris of the tree-trimming out of his hair. "Where's Remus gone?"
"Right here," Remus said, emerging from the cottage. He held a book in one hand and a bowl of ice cream in the other. The book was offered to Harry; the ice cream was held well out of reach of Tonks. "I thought you might be interested in this, Harry; I seem to recall talking nonsense to you on Saturday, and I wasn't sure if you knew where it came from."
"This is just your copy of Two Kneazles," Harry said, examining the book.
"I'm pretty sure what I was looking for is in there -- flip through the pages a bit," Remus said around a bite of ice cream. "You're looking for a loose piece of paper."
Harry gave him a sardonic look. At least five pieces of paper stuck out of the book at odd angles, makeshift bookmarks.
"The one you want is in green ink and it's somewhere near the back," Remus specified. Harry pulled out what looked, for all the world, like a restaurant napkin that had been mauled by a small child. "That's the one."
"What is it?" Harry asked, mystified.
"Well, it's a bit of a story, actually. I think what I was saying to you were lines from an old poem called The Second Coming, which should be on one side of that poor napkin," Remus said. Harry flipped it over and nodded. "Recognise any of it?"
"Oh -- yeah, here it is," Harry said. "The best lack all convention -- "
" -- conviction -- "
"While the worst are full of passionate intensity."
"Yeats," Remus said, as Harry read the rest. "It was...oh, it must have been seventy-nine, because Ellis was there but Lily wasn't pregnant yet...we were having a drink at a pub in Edinburgh and it was rather...rather dismal, really. The war wasn't going well and everyone was speaking rather gloomily of our prospects. I quoted Yeats -- I've always liked Irish poets -- and Ellis got rather angry with me."
He grinned as he spoke, the ice cream bowl balancing forgotten on one knee while Padfoot nosed at it delightedly.
"He said that people had been talking about the end of the world nearly since it began and he was more interested in what people would be doing when the world ended rather than how they were preparing for it. He sat down right there and wrote a reply to Yeats. I was -- still am -- excessively proud of it, because he wrote it for me."
Harry turned the page over, examining the spiky handwriting on the other side.
And why should some poor tethered bird
Once-hooded, hear his master's call
When now he has again been sent to wing?
Things fall apart; thus ever is the way
That we move upwards. Anarchy
Does this at least: new things arise.
I see no tides but that the moon pulls in
A necessary ceremony, and most innocent.
The best lack no conviction, but are young
And we deride their passionate beliefs.
"Did he know about you?" Harry asked.
"Yes. Ellis had a way of drawing secrets out of people -- I don't think he even intended it, but something about him made you want to tell him things. Sirius!" he said suddenly. Padfoot looked up at him, muzzle covered in ice cream. Remus sighed and set the bowl on the ground. "Cur."
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Perhaps your second coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Vanity makes
You certain of your own great destiny
That some most fearsome god selected you
To be our final prophet of the end.
A shape with lion body and the head of an ass
A gaze blank and hopeless without light
You move your slow lips while all about
Reel your disciples, shadows ignorant.
"Tough competition," Harry muttered. Remus looked amused.
"Apples and oranges, Harry. You and Ellis could not be more different. Besides, he was a Slytherin."
"He was?" Harry asked, surprised.
"Yes. Very ambitious in his own way, and it paid off -- by the time he was thirty he was a best-selling author. Not that a Gryffindor couldn't do it, but I imagine a Gryffindor would write adventure novels," Remus said.
The darkness drops again; but I have seen
Twenty centuries of human life
Are vexed the more by Prophets such as you.
That rough beast slouching towards the eastern sky
Is dawn, and nothing more, reborn each day.
Harry went to close the book, carefully replacing the napkin, but another sheet of paper fell out; he bent to pick it up, studying the typewritten words.
There are two classifications of werewolf in wizarding society today, the feral werewolf and the nonferal werewolf. It is in itself an objectionable pair of terms; one implying barbarism, the other implying not any form of civilised decision but merely a lack. A man cannot be identified by what he is not, but yearns to be known for who he is.
The feral werewolf is no less a human being than any other, but has chosen or been driven to a life outside of civlised society, on the verge of conditions which would disgust any right-thinking person. Some are illiterate, many are undernourished, and all are unemployed; temporary work of the most menial sort is all they may expect, and many must steal to survive. They are unable to even to beg, thanks to the restrictive new laws which triple the allotted punishment for any given crime if the perpetrator is known to be or proven to be a werewolf.
If a werewolf is arrested for vagrancy, he may be punished by up to six months in Azkaban and fines which he is ill-equipped to pay. If he is not known to be a werewolf and a blood test is performed illegally to determine such, the ends justify the means. Werewolves have no medical rights; their medical status -- for it is a disease -- is not protected under Healer confidentiality. The blood test becomes legal if it is positive. This is a monstrous miscarriage of justice...
"Did Ellis Graveworthy write this?" Harry asked, offering the paper to Remus, who frowned.
"No," he said briefly.
"Is it a quote from somewhere? It's very good..."
Remus shook his head. "Schoolboy scribblings. I wrote it -- dreams of being a political journalist or a novelist like Ellis," he said sheepishly. "Nothing ever came of it."
"Oh," Harry said, offering him the book back. He took it almost possessively, carefully placing the typewritten page between the cover and the frontispiece. "I'd think that'd be a great book, though. I mean. Sensational, novels by a werewolf."
"Yes -- selling my novelty was the reason I never bothered," Remus sighed.
At that point, George Weasley burst through the back door, fell over Padfoot, sent the ice-cream bowl flying and skidded through the dirt, rolling to a stop at Harry's feet. It happened so fast that nobody but Tonks had moved; she had her wand pressed to the back of George's neck before anyone could think.
"It's me, Tonks!" he cried, facedown in the grass. "Lemme up!"
"George?" Remus asked, while Padfoot madly licked all the melted ice cream off his fur. "What's happened? Tonks, let him go before you blast his head off."
Tonks leaned back and turned him over, offering him a hand up. "Sorry."
"Charlie's come home, and he's in a bad way," George said. "You've got to come, he's demanding you and it's -- " he looked pale and worried, a frightening emotion on his usually genial face. "He might -- they say -- please, come quick."
"Of course," Remus said, even as Fred's voice was heard over the wall shouting "OI! LET ME IN!"
"We couldn't apparate in," George said.
"We've put up wards. FRED!" Remus shouted. "GO BACK TO ST MUNGO'S. WE'LL MEET YOU THERE."
"RIGHT YOU ARE!" Fred shouted back.
"I'd better go too," Tonks said.
"No -- stay with Harry and Sirius."
"I'm not staying here!" Harry protested.
"If it's some sort of trap, you're safer here," Remus said. "We can fight about it later. Send Glastonbury to find me, and when everything's cleared I'll send him back to fetch you."
Sirius, who had changed back when Fred started shouting, whistled shrilly and Glastonbury's head poked out the window even as Remus and George ran back inside.
"Glas, find Remus and stay with him until he sends you back," Sirius said, as Glastonbury tilted his orange head and regarded Sirius with one beady black eye. "Go to Remus, all right?"
Glastonbury puffed himself up, smoked a little, and vanished. Sirius turned to Harry.
"You'd better have a quick wash, you've got ice cream in your hair," Harry said.
***
At St. Mungo's, George led Remus quickly past the admitting mediwitch and through the hospital maze until they arrived at a private room, not unlike the one Sirius had recently been treated in after his encounter with the Crypt King. Arthur and Molly were standing outside, clutching each other tightly.
"Bill's gone in to look," Arthur said, when he saw George and Remus approaching. Fred came from another direction, having Apparated back to a different part of the hospital. "We didn't...it's very..."
"It's all right, dad," Fred said. "Remus, you'd better go in."
"Am I allowed?" Remus asked, looking through the slightly-open door. Healers were clustered around a bed, talking in low, urgent tones.
"You'd better," Arthur repeated his son's suggestion, and Remus slipped into the room. One of the Healers looked up.
"Family only," he said.
"Please, I was told I should come -- I was told he's asking for me," Remus said.
"Right -- you're Lupin?" another one asked.
"Remus, thank god," a third one said at the same time, and Augustus Pye's head poked up out of the huddle. "He's been near on to screaming for you. Can't think why, but he says he has to speak with you."
He beckoned Remus closer, sliding over to make room. Charlie did look awful; he was bloody from head to toe with huge gashes on his chest and arms and a nasty-looking puncture wound near his jugular. His eyes were open, though, and fever-bright. His arm, being tended to by a pair of Healers, looked...wrong, and Remus realised what he thought was a bandage was actually a shard of bone sticking out.
"Is he here?" Charlie asked. When he spoke there was an ominous sucking noise.
"It's me, Charlie," Remus answered. "Don't speak too much, all right? Tell me only what you have to."
"My trousers..."
Remus glanced at Pye.
"We cut them off; they're in the corner," he said, indicating a heap of filthy rags in a bin.
"Left back pocket," Charlie rasped. "Cigarette case."
Remus went to the pile and dug through it, eventually coming up with what looked like a gold cigarette case.
"Transfigured," Charlie continued. "Your friends in Russia. Found something."
"All right, Charlie, it's fine," Remus said. "I've got it. Don't tell me how -- I'll have Fred and George look at it."
"Very important...no note..."
"Be quiet and let them help you, now," Remus said. "I've got it; it's safe."
Charlie nodded, swallowing painfully. Pye broke away from the others and pulled Remus to a far corner of the room.
"Some of his wounds are two days old, at least," he said. "Some are fresh. Do you know where he's been?"
"Traveling from Romania, as far as I know. He said he was coming to see us. He didn't say why, not outright."
"I think he must have met a few enemies on the way -- so whatever that is, you'd better keep close watch on it," Pye said soberly.
"Is he going to be all right?" Remus asked. "He looks bad, but not....fatal."
"The damage is pretty extensive and there's a nasty curse on him. I can't conscientiously tell the family he'll survive, not yet -- but he's young and I've found that Weasleys in particular are durable," Augustus said quietly. "I think he'll pull through if they can get the curse off him."
"Best Healers in the hospital?" Remus asked, tucking the cigarette case into his pocket.
"Of course," Pye replied. "And as soon as we leave we'll have a guard put on the door."
"You're a master, Pye. Thanks," Remus said. "Let us know as soon as you can."
In the hallway, the Weasley clan en masse hadn't moved except for George, who had disappeared.
"He's gone to get Ron and Ginny," Arthur said. "And...and probably Percy. Is he...?"
"He doesn't look as bad as I thought he would," Remus said. "Pye's optimistic."
"Thank Merlin. Why did he call you?"
"I..." Remus frowned. "I'm not sure -- he could have given it to you, but he's not well." He moved aside as a handful of doctors left the room without looking at the people waiting in the hall. Pye and two others remained inside. "It may be vital information -- he hand-carried it from Romania, and if I'm right, he had it from some friends of mine from Moscow. Too dangerous to trust to regular post or even floo express, and transfigured to disguise it."
"That's two, now," Arthur said dangerously. "Two sons attacked, one risking his life every other day and one who won't speak to us -- how many sons does the Order expect me to give up, Remus?"
"Arthur, I didn't -- "
"Who next? Fred and George?" Arthur demanded. "You can talk all you like about whose choice it is and the good of the country, Remus, but these are my sons."
"What do you expect me to do?" Remus replied. "I didn't ask Charlie to do it, I didn't even know he had done until it was too late to stop him."
Arthur opened his mouth for an angry answer that he probably would have regretted later, except that Ron and Ginny appeared around a corner and began shouting questions at him. Remus moved unobtrusively aside and gestured for Fred and George to follow.
"Lads, Charlie brought this to us and it's extremely important," he whispered, showing them the cigarette case. "He said it was transfigured to hide its original appearance, but he wasn't in any kind of shape to tell me how. He might not even know. I need you to work out what it was and change it back. I'm sorry -- I know it's not a good time, but Charlie risked his life for this."
He glanced up and was stunned to see Percy Weasley standing against the opposite wall, ignoring them completely and staring at his parents.
"I thought he wouldn't come," Fred said to George.
"I dunno, I banged on his front door and shouted through it and didn't get any answer," the other brother replied.
"We do that a bit," Fred explained. "Bang on his door and all. He's talked to Mum and Dad once or twice -- they have great loud rows about the Order, but it sounds almost like Dad's coming round to Percy's way of thinking."
"Which is?" Remus asked.
"Better to stand back and let the Ministry handle it," George said disgustedly. "Or at any rate better not to take the dangerous jobs. Load of bollocks, I think, but it's brave talk when I'm not the one with the sucking lung wound."
Pye emerged from the room just then and went to Arthur and Molly, speaking quietly; from the relieved look on Molly's face, Remus deduced that they'd been able to fix the curse. Another Healer brushed past them in the corridor and turned in at Charlie's room; Remus tensed.
"After me, boys," he said, stepping around the rest of the family and following the Healer inside. The other man already had his wand raised and his lips were forming the words Avada Ke --
"No you bloody well don't," Fred shouted, fetching up a lamp from a table near the door and cracking it across the man's skull. George tackled him as he fell, thumping the front of the man's head violently into the floor. Remus turned in time for another so-called Healer to enter, wand raised, and he hexed him backwards so hard he left a dent in the plaster of the wall.
Immediately the room was full of shouting, struggling people, including all eight able-bodied Weasleys. Fred and George, having apparently decided that magic was an unsatisfying way of fighting, were beating the living hell out of their man with their bare fists, while Remus and Arthur held another pinned to the wall. Bill, Ron, and Ginny formed up in extremely good fashion as a barricade between the door and Charlie's bed while Percy braced his shoulders against the door itself -- bravely but ineffectually, as others poured into the room.
It was difficult to tell who was friend and who was foe, but the Weasleys went after anyone who didn't have red hair with such enthusiasm that Remus found himself nursing a swollen lip where Percy -- Percy -- had punched him. By the time it was sorted out and Aurors had been summoned, three people were unconscious and the original instigator of the whole thing made Charlie look like an accident on a children's playground.
"That was fun," Bill said, over the moans of the injured.
***
It seemed to make sense to keep them all in a single room, considering that treating the entire Weasley family was akin to a major floo accident or the aftermath of a particularly nasty pro-Quidditch game. Bill had come out nearly unscathed and was merely having a tooth re-inserted by an orthodontic Healer. Percy, sulking in a corner, was applying Blemish-b-Gone to his many bruises and looking myopic while someone fixed his glasses. Fred and George were being questioned by an Auror regarding their particularly enthusiastic pursuit of justice while Ron, Arthur, and Ginny had various bumps and scrapes seen to. Molly was having the bones in her right hand re-knit.
Everyone else, including Remus, had been taken out to a triage area where they were being either patched up or chained down, depending on whether they were legitimately Healers or one of several impostors apparently sent to kill Charlie before he could get his message across.
Remus sat with his back to the others, turning the little gold cigarette case over and over in his hands. It didn't have anything inside it and it did seem to have that look about it -- like a mediocre stage prop, it didn't seem quite real, it lacked detail. For one thing, it was so shiny.
"All right, Remus?" Fred's voice called, and he looked up to see the twins coming down the corridor, the Auror in charge of the case hovering behind them. "Percy gave you a lovely rememberance, didn't he? Trust him to punch the wrong man."
"It's healing," Remus answered. "Are you boys in trouble?"
"No more than usual," George answered. "We're released under our own recognizance as well as the recognizance of the fact that he bloody well had it coming."
"Well, at least Arthur won't shout at me for having one son in hospital and two in jail," Remus sighed.
"Come to the canteen with us," Fred said.
"We want to have another...talk with you about...things we have to talk about," George added, eyeing the cigarette case. Remus nodded and put the case back in his pocket as he stood, following them up the stairs to the canteen level. They didn't seem much the worse for wear, considering the battle royale that had just taken place.
With the cigarette case, two bags of crisps, an enormous soda and a small pile of chocolate bars sitting on the table before them, the twins bent their heads in earnest discussion while Remus had what he considered was a rather well-deserved cup of tea. The case twisted and stretched, shrunk and grew as the boys experimented with it; at one point it vanished for a few seconds, only to reappear a little ways away. Glastonbury, who had kept well away from the fighting, was perched on Remus' chair as a constant reminder that Sirius and Harry were waiting, but Remus wasn't about to send for them until he was certain the place was clear of Death Eaters.
"I think we've got it," Fred said finally, clearing away the junk-food wrappers and setting the cigarette case in the empty space. He and George touched the tips of their wands to it and concentrated.
With a soft pop, the case vanished. In its place was a large, flat square object.
Remus stared at it. "You're having me on."
"Normally we would be," George assured him, "but this is the real thing."
"It can't be."
"It is," Fred said. He tilted his head for a better look. "Mint condition, looks like. Dad's got loads of these -- it's called a Voy Nell, isn't it?"
"Vinyl," Remus muttered, picking up the LP delicately. It was in the original paper sleeve, which had very simple red print on it.
"Igor Stravinsky -- The Fire Bird," Fred read. "Nineteen-ten complete ballet score."
Remus shook the record out of its sleeve and peered inside, hoping for a note, a map, something other than a dusty old vinyl record.
"Could it be double-transfigured?" he asked.
"We'd have found it," George said. "Whatever your contacts wanted to tell you, it's all there."
"The record might have something informative on it," Remus muttered. "Can you change it back, for now?"
"Sure," Fred answered, tapping it with his wand. It shrank down and fattened out into the gold cigarette case once more.
"Let's go see how your family's doing," Remus said. He turned around to meet Glastonbury's inquiring gaze. "You might as well fetch Sirius and Harry," he said. "Bring them to me."
***
Glastonbury must have made short work of the trip, because Harry and Sirius arrived as Remus was holding the door open for the twins; once inside, to Remus' great surprise, Harry ran to Ginny.
"Are you all right?" he asked, looking her over from head to foot. Sirius glanced at Remus, who shrugged.
"I'm fine," she answered with a small smile. To everyone's shock, Harry bent and kissed her, rather more passionately than a young man who already had a romantic entanglement might do.
"You're sure?" he asked, breaking the kiss. Sirius had gone white as a sheet and was clenching his fists, but he didn't say anything; Bill was already speaking.
"Someone must have known we brought Charlie here, but I'll swear we didn't tell anyone," he said. "It had to be hospital staff, or some kind of locating charm. There might be more where they came from."
"Who in the hospital would care enough to tell?" Arthur asked.
"Oh, there's always me."
Everyone turned. There in the doorway stood Augustus Pye, a slight grin curving his lips.
"You?" Remus said. "I trusted you -- "
There was a flash of bright green light and the sound of bodies falling to the ground; the silence that followed was broken only by a rattling noise as Pye picked up the cigarette case that had fallen from Remus' fingers.
"Absolute mistake," Pye replied. "Never trust cheerful men."
GOTCHA.
*grins* That's not the real ending, of course; in fact, much of this is not a real chapter at all. As you all seem to be getting wise to my April Fool's pranks, I thought I'd better pull one on Hallowe'en while I still have the chance.
I'd say I'm sorry, but actually I'm pretty unrepentant. What's life without a few adrenaline surges to keep a person on their toes?
Anyway, you can find the True Chapter 36 here.
The Wednesday night that Charlie Weasley nearly died started out on such a positive note.
Remus was up and about again, looking nearly as healthy as he ever looked and back from his first full day of teaching since Thursday. He'd tried to teach the whole day on Tuesday, but at lunch he'd had to admit defeat and let Sirius handle his afternoon classes. McGonagall dropped by and said that Sirius had a knack for teaching, suggesting in her own subtle way that perhaps after NEWTs he'd like to stay on as tutor and work his way up to professor when one of the faculty eventually retired, lost one too many limbs, or turned out to be evil. All three were about equally common at Hogwarts.
At any rate, Remus was feeling accomplished and having fun playing fetch with Padfoot in the garden, throwing the various sticks, rocks, and unripe fruit that Padfoot laid worshipfully at his feet. Tonks and Harry were up a tree with Bowman, helping to prune it. It was warm in the little walled garden, however the wind might howl outside, and the sun was low enough in the sky to turn the light a peculiar colour somewhere between dusk and true night.
Harry dropped down from the tree with leaves in his hair and a big smudge of dirt across his cheek just as Padfoot grew tired of fetch and threw himself down in front of the kitchen door, sides heaving. Remus bent to scratch his ears and then stepped over him, passing inside just as Tonks fell out of the tree with a whump.
"I'm fine," she called, as Harry and Padfoot both looked up. "Didn't fall far! Nothing to worry about!"
Bowman eased his way down the ladder he'd used to get into the tree with in the first place. "Well, that's the quickest route between A and B," he chuckled. "Want some salve? My Missus makes a good bruise salve."
"No, thank you Bowman, I'm all right," Tonks assured him. Harry sat on the grass near Padfoot, pulling the debris of the tree-trimming out of his hair. "Where's Remus gone?"
"Right here," Remus said, emerging from the cottage. He held a book in one hand and a bowl of ice cream in the other. The book was offered to Harry; the ice cream was held well out of reach of Tonks. "I thought you might be interested in this, Harry; I seem to recall talking nonsense to you on Saturday, and I wasn't sure if you knew where it came from."
"This is just your copy of Two Kneazles," Harry said, examining the book.
"I'm pretty sure what I was looking for is in there -- flip through the pages a bit," Remus said around a bite of ice cream. "You're looking for a loose piece of paper."
Harry gave him a sardonic look. At least five pieces of paper stuck out of the book at odd angles, makeshift bookmarks.
"The one you want is in green ink and it's somewhere near the back," Remus specified. Harry pulled out what looked, for all the world, like a restaurant napkin that had been mauled by a small child. "That's the one."
"What is it?" Harry asked, mystified.
"Well, it's a bit of a story, actually. I think what I was saying to you were lines from an old poem called The Second Coming, which should be on one side of that poor napkin," Remus said. Harry flipped it over and nodded. "Recognise any of it?"
"Oh -- yeah, here it is," Harry said. "The best lack all convention -- "
" -- conviction -- "
"While the worst are full of passionate intensity."
"Yeats," Remus said, as Harry read the rest. "It was...oh, it must have been seventy-nine, because Ellis was there but Lily wasn't pregnant yet...we were having a drink at a pub in Edinburgh and it was rather...rather dismal, really. The war wasn't going well and everyone was speaking rather gloomily of our prospects. I quoted Yeats -- I've always liked Irish poets -- and Ellis got rather angry with me."
He grinned as he spoke, the ice cream bowl balancing forgotten on one knee while Padfoot nosed at it delightedly.
"He said that people had been talking about the end of the world nearly since it began and he was more interested in what people would be doing when the world ended rather than how they were preparing for it. He sat down right there and wrote a reply to Yeats. I was -- still am -- excessively proud of it, because he wrote it for me."
Harry turned the page over, examining the spiky handwriting on the other side.
And why should some poor tethered bird
Once-hooded, hear his master's call
When now he has again been sent to wing?
Things fall apart; thus ever is the way
That we move upwards. Anarchy
Does this at least: new things arise.
I see no tides but that the moon pulls in
A necessary ceremony, and most innocent.
The best lack no conviction, but are young
And we deride their passionate beliefs.
"Did he know about you?" Harry asked.
"Yes. Ellis had a way of drawing secrets out of people -- I don't think he even intended it, but something about him made you want to tell him things. Sirius!" he said suddenly. Padfoot looked up at him, muzzle covered in ice cream. Remus sighed and set the bowl on the ground. "Cur."
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Perhaps your second coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Vanity makes
You certain of your own great destiny
That some most fearsome god selected you
To be our final prophet of the end.
A shape with lion body and the head of an ass
A gaze blank and hopeless without light
You move your slow lips while all about
Reel your disciples, shadows ignorant.
"Tough competition," Harry muttered. Remus looked amused.
"Apples and oranges, Harry. You and Ellis could not be more different. Besides, he was a Slytherin."
"He was?" Harry asked, surprised.
"Yes. Very ambitious in his own way, and it paid off -- by the time he was thirty he was a best-selling author. Not that a Gryffindor couldn't do it, but I imagine a Gryffindor would write adventure novels," Remus said.
The darkness drops again; but I have seen
Twenty centuries of human life
Are vexed the more by Prophets such as you.
That rough beast slouching towards the eastern sky
Is dawn, and nothing more, reborn each day.
Harry went to close the book, carefully replacing the napkin, but another sheet of paper fell out; he bent to pick it up, studying the typewritten words.
There are two classifications of werewolf in wizarding society today, the feral werewolf and the nonferal werewolf. It is in itself an objectionable pair of terms; one implying barbarism, the other implying not any form of civilised decision but merely a lack. A man cannot be identified by what he is not, but yearns to be known for who he is.
The feral werewolf is no less a human being than any other, but has chosen or been driven to a life outside of civlised society, on the verge of conditions which would disgust any right-thinking person. Some are illiterate, many are undernourished, and all are unemployed; temporary work of the most menial sort is all they may expect, and many must steal to survive. They are unable to even to beg, thanks to the restrictive new laws which triple the allotted punishment for any given crime if the perpetrator is known to be or proven to be a werewolf.
If a werewolf is arrested for vagrancy, he may be punished by up to six months in Azkaban and fines which he is ill-equipped to pay. If he is not known to be a werewolf and a blood test is performed illegally to determine such, the ends justify the means. Werewolves have no medical rights; their medical status -- for it is a disease -- is not protected under Healer confidentiality. The blood test becomes legal if it is positive. This is a monstrous miscarriage of justice...
"Did Ellis Graveworthy write this?" Harry asked, offering the paper to Remus, who frowned.
"No," he said briefly.
"Is it a quote from somewhere? It's very good..."
Remus shook his head. "Schoolboy scribblings. I wrote it -- dreams of being a political journalist or a novelist like Ellis," he said sheepishly. "Nothing ever came of it."
"Oh," Harry said, offering him the book back. He took it almost possessively, carefully placing the typewritten page between the cover and the frontispiece. "I'd think that'd be a great book, though. I mean. Sensational, novels by a werewolf."
"Yes -- selling my novelty was the reason I never bothered," Remus sighed.
At that point, George Weasley burst through the back door, fell over Padfoot, sent the ice-cream bowl flying and skidded through the dirt, rolling to a stop at Harry's feet. It happened so fast that nobody but Tonks had moved; she had her wand pressed to the back of George's neck before anyone could think.
"It's me, Tonks!" he cried, facedown in the grass. "Lemme up!"
"George?" Remus asked, while Padfoot madly licked all the melted ice cream off his fur. "What's happened? Tonks, let him go before you blast his head off."
Tonks leaned back and turned him over, offering him a hand up. "Sorry."
"Charlie's come home, and he's in a bad way," George said. "You've got to come, he's demanding you and it's -- " he looked pale and worried, a frightening emotion on his usually genial face. "He might -- they say -- please, come quick."
"Of course," Remus said, even as Fred's voice was heard over the wall shouting "OI! LET ME IN!"
"We couldn't apparate in," George said.
"We've put up wards. FRED!" Remus shouted. "GO BACK TO ST MUNGO'S. WE'LL MEET YOU THERE."
"RIGHT YOU ARE!" Fred shouted back.
"I'd better go too," Tonks said.
"No -- stay with Harry and Sirius."
"I'm not staying here!" Harry protested.
"If it's some sort of trap, you're safer here," Remus said. "We can fight about it later. Send Glastonbury to find me, and when everything's cleared I'll send him back to fetch you."
Sirius, who had changed back when Fred started shouting, whistled shrilly and Glastonbury's head poked out the window even as Remus and George ran back inside.
"Glas, find Remus and stay with him until he sends you back," Sirius said, as Glastonbury tilted his orange head and regarded Sirius with one beady black eye. "Go to Remus, all right?"
Glastonbury puffed himself up, smoked a little, and vanished. Sirius turned to Harry.
"You'd better have a quick wash, you've got ice cream in your hair," Harry said.
***
At St. Mungo's, George led Remus quickly past the admitting mediwitch and through the hospital maze until they arrived at a private room, not unlike the one Sirius had recently been treated in after his encounter with the Crypt King. Arthur and Molly were standing outside, clutching each other tightly.
"Bill's gone in to look," Arthur said, when he saw George and Remus approaching. Fred came from another direction, having Apparated back to a different part of the hospital. "We didn't...it's very..."
"It's all right, dad," Fred said. "Remus, you'd better go in."
"Am I allowed?" Remus asked, looking through the slightly-open door. Healers were clustered around a bed, talking in low, urgent tones.
"You'd better," Arthur repeated his son's suggestion, and Remus slipped into the room. One of the Healers looked up.
"Family only," he said.
"Please, I was told I should come -- I was told he's asking for me," Remus said.
"Right -- you're Lupin?" another one asked.
"Remus, thank god," a third one said at the same time, and Augustus Pye's head poked up out of the huddle. "He's been near on to screaming for you. Can't think why, but he says he has to speak with you."
He beckoned Remus closer, sliding over to make room. Charlie did look awful; he was bloody from head to toe with huge gashes on his chest and arms and a nasty-looking puncture wound near his jugular. His eyes were open, though, and fever-bright. His arm, being tended to by a pair of Healers, looked...wrong, and Remus realised what he thought was a bandage was actually a shard of bone sticking out.
"Is he here?" Charlie asked. When he spoke there was an ominous sucking noise.
"It's me, Charlie," Remus answered. "Don't speak too much, all right? Tell me only what you have to."
"My trousers..."
Remus glanced at Pye.
"We cut them off; they're in the corner," he said, indicating a heap of filthy rags in a bin.
"Left back pocket," Charlie rasped. "Cigarette case."
Remus went to the pile and dug through it, eventually coming up with what looked like a gold cigarette case.
"Transfigured," Charlie continued. "Your friends in Russia. Found something."
"All right, Charlie, it's fine," Remus said. "I've got it. Don't tell me how -- I'll have Fred and George look at it."
"Very important...no note..."
"Be quiet and let them help you, now," Remus said. "I've got it; it's safe."
Charlie nodded, swallowing painfully. Pye broke away from the others and pulled Remus to a far corner of the room.
"Some of his wounds are two days old, at least," he said. "Some are fresh. Do you know where he's been?"
"Traveling from Romania, as far as I know. He said he was coming to see us. He didn't say why, not outright."
"I think he must have met a few enemies on the way -- so whatever that is, you'd better keep close watch on it," Pye said soberly.
"Is he going to be all right?" Remus asked. "He looks bad, but not....fatal."
"The damage is pretty extensive and there's a nasty curse on him. I can't conscientiously tell the family he'll survive, not yet -- but he's young and I've found that Weasleys in particular are durable," Augustus said quietly. "I think he'll pull through if they can get the curse off him."
"Best Healers in the hospital?" Remus asked, tucking the cigarette case into his pocket.
"Of course," Pye replied. "And as soon as we leave we'll have a guard put on the door."
"You're a master, Pye. Thanks," Remus said. "Let us know as soon as you can."
In the hallway, the Weasley clan en masse hadn't moved except for George, who had disappeared.
"He's gone to get Ron and Ginny," Arthur said. "And...and probably Percy. Is he...?"
"He doesn't look as bad as I thought he would," Remus said. "Pye's optimistic."
"Thank Merlin. Why did he call you?"
"I..." Remus frowned. "I'm not sure -- he could have given it to you, but he's not well." He moved aside as a handful of doctors left the room without looking at the people waiting in the hall. Pye and two others remained inside. "It may be vital information -- he hand-carried it from Romania, and if I'm right, he had it from some friends of mine from Moscow. Too dangerous to trust to regular post or even floo express, and transfigured to disguise it."
"That's two, now," Arthur said dangerously. "Two sons attacked, one risking his life every other day and one who won't speak to us -- how many sons does the Order expect me to give up, Remus?"
"Arthur, I didn't -- "
"Who next? Fred and George?" Arthur demanded. "You can talk all you like about whose choice it is and the good of the country, Remus, but these are my sons."
"What do you expect me to do?" Remus replied. "I didn't ask Charlie to do it, I didn't even know he had done until it was too late to stop him."
Arthur opened his mouth for an angry answer that he probably would have regretted later, except that Ron and Ginny appeared around a corner and began shouting questions at him. Remus moved unobtrusively aside and gestured for Fred and George to follow.
"Lads, Charlie brought this to us and it's extremely important," he whispered, showing them the cigarette case. "He said it was transfigured to hide its original appearance, but he wasn't in any kind of shape to tell me how. He might not even know. I need you to work out what it was and change it back. I'm sorry -- I know it's not a good time, but Charlie risked his life for this."
He glanced up and was stunned to see Percy Weasley standing against the opposite wall, ignoring them completely and staring at his parents.
"I thought he wouldn't come," Fred said to George.
"I dunno, I banged on his front door and shouted through it and didn't get any answer," the other brother replied.
"We do that a bit," Fred explained. "Bang on his door and all. He's talked to Mum and Dad once or twice -- they have great loud rows about the Order, but it sounds almost like Dad's coming round to Percy's way of thinking."
"Which is?" Remus asked.
"Better to stand back and let the Ministry handle it," George said disgustedly. "Or at any rate better not to take the dangerous jobs. Load of bollocks, I think, but it's brave talk when I'm not the one with the sucking lung wound."
Pye emerged from the room just then and went to Arthur and Molly, speaking quietly; from the relieved look on Molly's face, Remus deduced that they'd been able to fix the curse. Another Healer brushed past them in the corridor and turned in at Charlie's room; Remus tensed.
"After me, boys," he said, stepping around the rest of the family and following the Healer inside. The other man already had his wand raised and his lips were forming the words Avada Ke --
"No you bloody well don't," Fred shouted, fetching up a lamp from a table near the door and cracking it across the man's skull. George tackled him as he fell, thumping the front of the man's head violently into the floor. Remus turned in time for another so-called Healer to enter, wand raised, and he hexed him backwards so hard he left a dent in the plaster of the wall.
Immediately the room was full of shouting, struggling people, including all eight able-bodied Weasleys. Fred and George, having apparently decided that magic was an unsatisfying way of fighting, were beating the living hell out of their man with their bare fists, while Remus and Arthur held another pinned to the wall. Bill, Ron, and Ginny formed up in extremely good fashion as a barricade between the door and Charlie's bed while Percy braced his shoulders against the door itself -- bravely but ineffectually, as others poured into the room.
It was difficult to tell who was friend and who was foe, but the Weasleys went after anyone who didn't have red hair with such enthusiasm that Remus found himself nursing a swollen lip where Percy -- Percy -- had punched him. By the time it was sorted out and Aurors had been summoned, three people were unconscious and the original instigator of the whole thing made Charlie look like an accident on a children's playground.
"That was fun," Bill said, over the moans of the injured.
***
It seemed to make sense to keep them all in a single room, considering that treating the entire Weasley family was akin to a major floo accident or the aftermath of a particularly nasty pro-Quidditch game. Bill had come out nearly unscathed and was merely having a tooth re-inserted by an orthodontic Healer. Percy, sulking in a corner, was applying Blemish-b-Gone to his many bruises and looking myopic while someone fixed his glasses. Fred and George were being questioned by an Auror regarding their particularly enthusiastic pursuit of justice while Ron, Arthur, and Ginny had various bumps and scrapes seen to. Molly was having the bones in her right hand re-knit.
Everyone else, including Remus, had been taken out to a triage area where they were being either patched up or chained down, depending on whether they were legitimately Healers or one of several impostors apparently sent to kill Charlie before he could get his message across.
Remus sat with his back to the others, turning the little gold cigarette case over and over in his hands. It didn't have anything inside it and it did seem to have that look about it -- like a mediocre stage prop, it didn't seem quite real, it lacked detail. For one thing, it was so shiny.
"All right, Remus?" Fred's voice called, and he looked up to see the twins coming down the corridor, the Auror in charge of the case hovering behind them. "Percy gave you a lovely rememberance, didn't he? Trust him to punch the wrong man."
"It's healing," Remus answered. "Are you boys in trouble?"
"No more than usual," George answered. "We're released under our own recognizance as well as the recognizance of the fact that he bloody well had it coming."
"Well, at least Arthur won't shout at me for having one son in hospital and two in jail," Remus sighed.
"Come to the canteen with us," Fred said.
"We want to have another...talk with you about...things we have to talk about," George added, eyeing the cigarette case. Remus nodded and put the case back in his pocket as he stood, following them up the stairs to the canteen level. They didn't seem much the worse for wear, considering the battle royale that had just taken place.
With the cigarette case, two bags of crisps, an enormous soda and a small pile of chocolate bars sitting on the table before them, the twins bent their heads in earnest discussion while Remus had what he considered was a rather well-deserved cup of tea. The case twisted and stretched, shrunk and grew as the boys experimented with it; at one point it vanished for a few seconds, only to reappear a little ways away. Glastonbury, who had kept well away from the fighting, was perched on Remus' chair as a constant reminder that Sirius and Harry were waiting, but Remus wasn't about to send for them until he was certain the place was clear of Death Eaters.
"I think we've got it," Fred said finally, clearing away the junk-food wrappers and setting the cigarette case in the empty space. He and George touched the tips of their wands to it and concentrated.
With a soft pop, the case vanished. In its place was a large, flat square object.
Remus stared at it. "You're having me on."
"Normally we would be," George assured him, "but this is the real thing."
"It can't be."
"It is," Fred said. He tilted his head for a better look. "Mint condition, looks like. Dad's got loads of these -- it's called a Voy Nell, isn't it?"
"Vinyl," Remus muttered, picking up the LP delicately. It was in the original paper sleeve, which had very simple red print on it.
"Igor Stravinsky -- The Fire Bird," Fred read. "Nineteen-ten complete ballet score."
Remus shook the record out of its sleeve and peered inside, hoping for a note, a map, something other than a dusty old vinyl record.
"Could it be double-transfigured?" he asked.
"We'd have found it," George said. "Whatever your contacts wanted to tell you, it's all there."
"The record might have something informative on it," Remus muttered. "Can you change it back, for now?"
"Sure," Fred answered, tapping it with his wand. It shrank down and fattened out into the gold cigarette case once more.
"Let's go see how your family's doing," Remus said. He turned around to meet Glastonbury's inquiring gaze. "You might as well fetch Sirius and Harry," he said. "Bring them to me."
***
Glastonbury must have made short work of the trip, because Harry and Sirius arrived as Remus was holding the door open for the twins; once inside, to Remus' great surprise, Harry ran to Ginny.
"Are you all right?" he asked, looking her over from head to foot. Sirius glanced at Remus, who shrugged.
"I'm fine," she answered with a small smile. To everyone's shock, Harry bent and kissed her, rather more passionately than a young man who already had a romantic entanglement might do.
"You're sure?" he asked, breaking the kiss. Sirius had gone white as a sheet and was clenching his fists, but he didn't say anything; Bill was already speaking.
"Someone must have known we brought Charlie here, but I'll swear we didn't tell anyone," he said. "It had to be hospital staff, or some kind of locating charm. There might be more where they came from."
"Who in the hospital would care enough to tell?" Arthur asked.
"Oh, there's always me."
Everyone turned. There in the doorway stood Augustus Pye, a slight grin curving his lips.
"You?" Remus said. "I trusted you -- "
There was a flash of bright green light and the sound of bodies falling to the ground; the silence that followed was broken only by a rattling noise as Pye picked up the cigarette case that had fallen from Remus' fingers.
"Absolute mistake," Pye replied. "Never trust cheerful men."
GOTCHA.
*grins* That's not the real ending, of course; in fact, much of this is not a real chapter at all. As you all seem to be getting wise to my April Fool's pranks, I thought I'd better pull one on Hallowe'en while I still have the chance.
I'd say I'm sorry, but actually I'm pretty unrepentant. What's life without a few adrenaline surges to keep a person on their toes?
Anyway, you can find the True Chapter 36 here.
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