Warnings: A not-gory but possibly disturbing death.
One Day
Remus was up before dawn to report to work. It was one of the few times when he was almost relieved to be a werewolf: his body temperature was permanently elevated, which made it not quite as dreadful to stagger out of bed in the dark of the winter night. Especially when the hot water heater had iced over.
He decided to forgo morning tea and see if the Ministry had anything hot and piping. By 5:45 in the morning, he was tucked into a debriefing office with a cup of powerhouse coffee and two roast beef sandwiches from last night, twelve other folks from the Highly and Significantly Catastrophic divisions, and uppers like Campanula Grey. Remus recognized most of these people by sight only; he'd never exchanged two words with them, being so greatly unimportant. He noted that quite a few people in the room seem startled to see him walk in—especially wearing Muggle clothes, as Grey had warned him to do last night. "In case we have to go out in the field," she said. "Which we will."
Weston sat at the head of the table with Grey on his right and another man on his left. They both looked fully abreast of everything. If it was an act, it was a good one. Weston's distant geniality of yesterday was gone; this morning he was curt and authoritative.
"Yesterday, our total number of victims in this business went up to ten thousand," he told them, his voice stark like slim drawings with charcoal on white paper. "We had more heads twisted backward, more vomiting mud, and at least three quarters of that number also had their eyes turned backward in their skulls. This is happening to almost everyone—Ministry employees, mothers, fathers, politicians—not so much to the kids, but we've had about a hundred so far. This has even been happening," he said, his voice altering subtly, "to prisoners in Azkaban."
The tension in the room netted itself more tightly together.
"Earlier this morning," Grey said, "the potion spilled over into the Muggle world. Specifically"—and here her eyes darted toward Weston, although Remus was sure they weren't supposed to—"the attack was perpetrated on the Muggle Prime Minister and certain select members of his cabinet."
Someone knocked over their coffee.
"All of the victims are aware of our world's existence, and it was in private," Grey continued, over the sound of liquid pattering onto the carpet. "A cabinet meeting closed, thankfully, to the Muggle press. We were contacted immediately, but as you may be aware, no antidote to this potion is yet forthcoming. We have made arrangements for a trustworthy Muggle in their Ministry to Polyjuice into the Minister until we can get things sorted out."
"This attack has now reached catastrophic proportions," Weston went on, his face and voice barren of warmth. "We cannot, I repeat, cannot allow our good relations with the Muggle world to be jeopardized by this sick bastard. If I have to tell you why, don't let me know, because you're too thick to be on this team and I don't have time to replace you. We have got to figure out who's doing this. Leave the hows to the Reversal Squad and focus on the whys. When we've got the motivation for this cack, we'll find who's done it."
"We'll start with any theories," Grey said. "Anything any of you has got." Did her gaze flicker to Remus? Well, he'd fallen asleep reading over everything they knew, which had boiled down to little more than demographics. But those had given him more than enough questions to begin with.
"Has anyone made a list of who's not being affected?" he asked.
"It's rather hard," said a woman wearing dark glasses, but she answered without malice, "since we're getting more reports all the time of the same kinds of symptoms rolling in."
"But the symptoms keep adding on, don't they?" he asked; she nodded. "First the head-twisting, then the mud, and yesterday the eyes. Do they know if he's—re-poisoning, or if it's a latent reaction?"
"No." A ginger-haired man shook his head gloomily. "They haven't got a clue. About any of it."
"I'm meeting with the country's most expert potioneers in half an hour," Grey told the table at large. "We'll see what they've got for us then."
"I suppose they still don't know how anyone's getting it, either?" Remus asked, but unless a drastic omission had occurred in the evidence Grey had given him, he knew the answer to that, anyway.
"Not a clue," said Weston.
"Right," Grey said. "Here's what everyone is doing. Gibson, Mullot, Darby—you'll be taking Azkaban, interviewing the guards. Klagg, Daniels, Rutherford, you're tackling St. Mungo's. Either find that quarantine or harass the Healers until you do. Tilford, Teague, O'Connor, you're going to be answering the heavy calls we've got coming in—find the most catastrophic site and keep on it until you get a worse one. You've got over a hundred unders to use; do it. And Lupin, you're with me. Let's see what the potioneers have for us."
Ms. Grey Apparated Remus to an auxiliary ward of St. Mungo's and whisked him into a matryoshka of labs. The air smelled like pine and Armor All and cooking mint julep. Through the haze Remus saw a very familiar rotund figure speaking to an important-looking Healer in lime-green robes trimmed with gold to nauseating effect. Whatever honors the gold trimming signified, it had no effect on Ms. Grey; she strode up to them and dismissed the Healer with a nod.
"Hello, Professor," Remus said.
Slughorn was bowing (as much as he could manage) and beaming at Ms. Grey, who wasn't returning his enthusiasm, but he turned at the sound of Remus' voice to blink at him.
"Ah, Mr. Tooting," he said, a civil enough smile curving beneath his mustache.
"Lupin," Remus corrected easily. Werewolves were condemned social pariahs from the moment they changed; Slughorn had never had any reason to cultivate memories of him. But Remus had been an abysmally mediocre Potions' student in any case, and neither of his parents had been important to wizards.
"Sorry, sorry." Slughorn shook his hand, though, even though Remus hadn't offered it. He looked at Ms. Grey and Remus in surprise. "Are you here about the potion then, son?"
"We both are," Grey said. "Lupin's on my team. We're here to be briefed on any progress you've made."
"Significantly Catastrophic branch then?" Slughorn said. "Well, well, well, that's splendid, son, splendid... unfortunately, my dear Ms. Grey, as much as it truly pains me to say it, we still haven't much to go on."
Her frown was deep yet unsurprised. "Can you at least tell me if it's a Dark potion?"
"Well, potions aren't Light or Dark, you must understand. The Dark Arts, as I'm sure you're aware," he smiled at her, "are not simply all classes of spells that injure; they are predicated with a human conduit, not a wand, as Light magic is—but that's their most basic difference. However, the methodology of potions is quite different—the ingredients themselves are the conduits, so their Lightness and Darkness is neither here nor there."
Remus had known that about the Dark Arts, but Ms. Grey's expression told him that not only did she not, she didn't quite understand what Slughorn was saying. She caught the gist, however, which was that the potion was not Dark, and moved on.
"What is it, then?"
"What is the name of the potion, or its components? Well, we can't tell you much of either one, I fear—we haven't been able to break down the individual components significantly enough to formulate an antidote—not yet, at any rate—"
"But aren't there—quicker ways?" Remus said. Something was tumbling around in his mind, something from long ago. "Some kind of stone—"
"A bezoar, yes." Slughorn nodded, looking surprised that Remus would remember even this much. To be honest, Remus was surprised himself. "Vastly helpful little items. Extremely rare, too—but in this case, not so helpful. They must be ingested quickly after the potion—or poison—enters the system—"
"But one be given to the Muggle Prime Minister?" she asked.
"I regret to say it seems unlikely," he said apologetically. "If it had been within five minutes of his ingesting the potion... but that is only supposing the potion's effects manifest immediately, and I cannot see how they would. For an effect of this magnitude, it is my belief the poisoner has worked in a time delay—an extremely difficult accomplishment."
Remus hoped Ms. Grey didn't hear the trace of admiration in Slughorn's voice.
"Why a time delay?" she asked, eyebrows knit.
"Well, so many people affected on such a grand scale—it is unlikely even a wizard could be in that many places at once—but primarily, it was the prisoners that made me think of it. In Azkaban, you know. Guards on scheduled rotations, aren't they? Place locked down, no one in and out..."
"Would it be very difficult to do? The metabolic delay, I mean," Remus asked.
"Not to someone who knows Potions, but on top of everything else—inventing this potion, administering it to this many victims, and leaving no traces—I don't mean to be indelicate, truly, but we are dealing with... well," he spread his hands, "with something of a genius, I must say."
"Inventing the potion," Ms. Grey repeated sharply. "You're certain it's a new invention?"
"Oh, aye," Slughorn said, nodding, "that's one reason it's so difficult to combat, y'see—I've never heard of anything like it, none of us has, and I've been a hard study of Potions for over eighty years!"
"And you've taught most of the nation's Potions students for eighty years," Ms. Grey said. "Since the 20s, I believe?"
"Well, give or take a decade or so," Slughorn said, now giving his mustache an almost nervous tug. "I retired, you know, back in the early 80s."
And then Snape took over, Remus thought.
"I can give you quite a solid account for a good sixty years," Slughorn said, still tugging on his mustache, as though he didn't want to say the next part. "But for the past twenty you'd need... well..." His nervous smile faded away. "Can't ask the poor boy, can you?" It wasn't really a question.
"If you could prepare a list of former students for those sixty years who are likely to have done this—" Ms. Grey began.
The door to the lab banged open and the red bow-tie wizard from the debriefing room tore in, looking sweaty and covered in soot.
"Madam Grey," he gasped. "They sent me—you have to come—"
Remus saw Ms. Grey's face grow delicately paler, but her expression remained resolute and her eyes sharp. He liked to think this was the kind of Auror Dora would have turned out to be.
"What is it, O'Connor?"
His face beneath the ash was white as the moon. "This time, someone's caught on fire."
Teddy, Remus thought, when you grow up, I want you doing something serene and harmless, like music or sailing.
He, Grey and O'Connor left trails of inky Apparition cast-off as they made the steep climb toward the house, which rose like a jagged shadow on the slopes. Black smudges lingered in the air around its peaks.
"Wind's blown a lot of the smoke away," said O'Connor. The chill in Remus' chest, from Apparating across icy England, sharpened.
The front rooms were a bit turned over, but nothing looked scorched. A number of uniformed wizards and witches were rifling through the house, their voices rolling out of the kitchen, their steps groaning the low ceiling and the stairs. A loose shutter banged somewhere on the side of the house. Bang. Bang. Bang.
A redheaded woman met them in the parlor, her grimness on the verge of becoming panic. "We can't get her to come down off the cliff, she won't let us help her—"
"Slow down and explain," Ms. Grey said sternly. The firmness of her voice seemed to help the redhead get herself under control.
"Her name's Artemisia Dent," O'Connor said. "Her husband was the one who..." He didn't finish.
"When her husband... immolated," the redhead swallowed, "she ran out of the house to the edge of the cliff. She was hysterical—saying she was just going to jump and end it all. We've tried and tried to explain that if she let us get to her, we could stop the, the burning when it happened—"
"Can you?" asked Grey.
"There's no reason why we shouldn't be able to," said Red, but her face was the color of ash. "Damn it, we have to at least try."
"Take me to her," said Grey.
O'Connor led them down a narrow hall, then out a back door and onto a terrace that looked across the edge of a cliff to the ocean. From the way the wind knifed over the terrace, Remus could tell it was a steep, straight drop.
The woman standing on the rocky slope at the cliff's edge had curly, tawny hair; it was all they could see of her from the house. She faced away from them, staring out to sea.
They all stopped at the edge of the terrace, which ended with a low stone wall. There were no steps to descend to the slope near her; one would have to climb. It probably wouldn't have been too treacherous were it not for the wind. Remus didn't know how Artemisia Dent was remaining upright. He could see her body swaying slightly, her hair tangling violently behind her.
"No children, thank Merlin," O'Connor said. "Just her and the husband."
Remus thought of Slughorn saying, "You would also need a delay for the metabolic factor, and that is much more difficult..."
This woman was standing like she was waiting...
Remus swung his legs over the low wall and dropped the half a meter or so to the shale of the slope.
"Lupin?" Grey said.
"I don't think you should—" said Red.
He didn't answer, but picked his way down the stones toward Artemisia Dent, who still had not turned around.
When he was about three meters from her, she curved her arms slowly out from her side, elbows bent like a ballerina.
"Artemisia?" he called into the wind. She didn't turn. "Artemisia, can you come away from the edge?"
She didn't move, but she didn't jump. He increased his pace, catching himself on the jutting rocks when his feet slid, but because of where she stood, he had to approach her from the side. He couldn't tackle her from behind; he'd send them both off the cliff.
He could see her face now. It was so blank it was almost tranquil. There were tear tracks on her face, and pieces of her hair stuck to her cheeks.
"Artemisia?" He was less than a meter away now.
She turned her face halfway toward his, but he didn't think her eyes saw him. They stared straight through him, as if he were made of air.
"It's peaceful out here," she said. Her words were almost lost to the wind. "I wanted it to be peaceful."
Remus smelled the scent of something burning...
She bent her knees, curving her arms out straight from her body, and jumped.
He lunged toward her in the split second before she jumped. He was almost surprised when the ground fell away beneath him. She'd leapt out into empty space and he'd followed... and there was the cut of the wind over the winter sea as they fell... the heat of the fire striking across his hands, his face...
And then the plunging cold of the water...
And then nothing.
Nothing...
Nothing...
...and then the light.
Remus supposed he was lucky—again—that it took a strong, raging fire or silver to kill a werewolf for good.
Absurdly... lucky, he managed to think as he dragged himself up the shore. It was covered in small rocks, and they bit at his hands. Not literally. They weren't magic rocks. But they still hurt.
Or maybe it was everything that was hurting. Even his tendons felt battered.
Like... I was pum... mulled by the... sea. He coughed up more water and something slimy that seemed to take forever to draw itself out of his throat. He retched. Maybe he'd drowned. If he hadn't, he didn't ever want to. Every moment he lay half-conscious on this beach was a moment too long.
He dropped onto his back. His eyes ached. The hard, grey sky filled the world above him, the sea overtook the horizon.
He drifted away on the husking sound of the surf against the shore.
Now
He awoke blinking into the dark.
At first he thought night had fallen on the beach. But the surface beneath him was soft, not made of biting rocks, and the air was marginally less cold. His skin was also dry, and though his clothes felt clammy, especially in the creases at his elbows, knees, and hips, he had either been asleep for a long time or someone had dried him off.
He would have sat up, except something was restraining him to the bed. He peered down at himself, but he couldn't see—well, anything. And he couldn't feel anything other than a faint pressure. A spell, then. Why would he be spelled to a bed? Had the full moon come? No... if he'd transformed, he wouldn't still be wearing the same Muggle clothes. And none of his friends would have left him bound once he changed back, anyway... not unless something had happened to them...
The war had trained him not to draw attention to himself immediately when the situation turned out of his control. First he needed to find out where he was. Then he could start on the more exciting bits: staying alive and getting free.
He turned his head to the left, pleased that he could still do that. He was less pleased to find that he could only see more nothing. The room was completely dark, and lycanthropy didn't actually give your human half increased senses.
Fine, so there was nothing to see. Anything to hear? He listened. No. More surf, maybe. A sort of rhythmic hushing. But it could be anything. He could be only hoping it was the sea, since it would mean he hadn't been taken far.
He was alone in the space, at least.
Next: to test the bonds. If he could move his head, it wasn't a Body Bind—and he could rotate his wrists, wiggle his fingers, and flex his feet. Incarcerous, then. He could feel the pressure of its binding across his chest, his arms, his hips, his thighs and calves. It wasn't uncomfortable, but it didn't give enough for him to wiggle free. He would have to hope that the casting had been be weak enough either to dissipate if not renewed in time, or for him to Finite it wandlessly.
"Finite," he tried sternly. The bonds ignored him. He wasn't that surprised; the magic felt more than strong. Implacable, even, its power forged from a source as deep as a loch. It curled around his senses, taunting yet indifferent.
"Maybe I can talk my way out of this," he muttered, letting his head drop back against the mattress. There was no pillow. "If whoever-it-is comes back."
He needed an idea of who he was dealing with. Was he tied down because he was a werewolf? Because someone had it in for Accidents & Catastrophes? Because he'd been a member of the Order? Perhaps Andromeda had a hit taken out on him. He doubted it was the poisoner, although he couldn't decide whether encountering the person in this way would be ironic enough to happen to him or such a backwards stroke of luck that it never would.
Then he heard it... a soft noise, like the scrape of a foot on the floor. He stilled himself completely, down to his thoughts, his breath, and listened hard. It was muffled, but there... it was drawing closer...
He raised his head and strained his eyes toward the sound and saw, as if by magic, the thinnest outline of a glow appearing at a spot low to his sight. A light shining along the bottom of the other side of a closed door.
Another sound; a soft clunk, as of metal on metal—a key turning in a lock—and then a click. The door parted from the solid darkness, that soft, bare light tracing up its edges.
Remus had meant to put his head down and feign unconsciousness, but he did not. Because standing in the doorway, looking as shocked as himself, was Severus Snape.