Chapter 29
The Old Woman in Red Shoes
Book XIV: In which Romulus was deified for bringing together the Romans and the Sabines in the new city of Rome, and Remus was not mentioned.
She saved the easiest for the last—or at least whom she assumed would be the easiest.
This was how Larka envisioned it:
Hullo Remus.
Hullo Larka.
So, I need this stone that you have.
You do? Okay, here you go.
Cheers!
And it did start out that way, with a pleasant greeting, and smiles on both sides. Remus, however, failed to follow his script. It was not as if he didn't try to be helpful—no, he was ever so sweet as always. It was just that when it came to actually giving her what she wanted, he asked for—well, it progressed like this:
"Hullo Remus," Larka greeted from the doorway, a relaxed smile hanging on her lips. These past few days had been very emotionally—and physically—straining, so Larka was so very grateful to visit an old friend.
"Hullo Larka," Remus smiled back, inviting her into his modest lodging with a friendly gesture and then hugged her briefly.
(The hug was a little weird, not that they haven't hugged before, but because now it felt like there was an empty space between them, a space that was squished.)
In any case, Larka walked in and held back a sigh.
Remus had just returned from a very long trip to Italy, where he was recruiting, as always, for the Order. He had volunteered to go, citing both familiarity with werewolf habits and an immediate confidence based on his own werewolf-ness. Everybody knew that the real reason was domestic troubles, so they let him take on this dangerous task and felt like they did him a favor. Larka did not approve, but she had other matters to busy herself with at the time.
Upon his return, he begun to live in West End again, for some unknown reason—with the Order relocating, it was not like this particular location was convenient, and London property cost a bomb. Remus was still as impoverished as ever, and his place was quite possibly the worst flat in London. The building was washed in a greyish paint that reminded one of a run-down factory. The stairs reeked of weed. There was the constant, scratchy noise of people trying to make music when they were really bad at it.
It took Larka a while to realize that this was the flat that Sirius lived in for a year, before Uncle Alphard left them the money and they could afford moving out. It was as if the hippies who drummed reggae songs to guitars never left, never aged, never changed. Larka could not tell if they were a new generation, or just the old ones who refused to move from the spot they were standing in for years. Of all the things in life, this building changed the least. It was funny, in humorless sort of way.
She never sold this place, so of course it was still under Sirius's name; a place like this would never check for a tenant's record. She knew that Remus used this space for a while after graduation—always the impoverished scholar—but he also moved out later.
(They both came back, full circle, in a way.)
He saw the passing look of recognition on her face, and so said to her, "I'm just here until things settle down."
Larka did not question that. Instead she sat in the chair woven with rattan—(she tried to not think about that time that she and Sirius had sex in it)—and asked, "Remus, I need a stone."
That came as a surprise to him; he had expected a more complicated request. "A stone? A stone?"
"Oh no," Larka explained, "not just any stone of course. I need a touchstone for gold. Supposedly one of the remnant stones that the original city of Rome was built with."
Remus furrowed his brows in thought. After a while, he walked to the other side of the room, where a few boxes and other equipment lay. "When I was in Rome, I lived with my great aunt for a while. She had certain … ah, habits. She wore red shoes constantly, and was insistent on placing stones and branches at what she called crossroads in the house—under the window sill, by the doorway, stuffed in the chimney, the spot where the light from the kitchen met the light from the hallway. The usual places. They were supposed to be wards and good luck charms."
He pulled out one particularly tattered trunk with some effort—it was the same one as when all of them went on that trip to Sirius's family villa in Peschici. She couldn't believe he used the same luggage as his school years—just how hard had the years been on him?
"When I left, she emptied this out and filled it to the brim with polished stones. I brought it back like she wanted me to."
He offered no explanation, but Larka knew why: he indulged the old woman because she had lived long years and didn't have many left. "That was nice of you," she said.
He smiled grimly, and Larka understood that she had since then passed away. Larka was sorry that she had to dig this up.
Remus was, however, a toughened soul, and he talked on as if death was not an end. "I never unpacked the case. I'm pretty sure she used to go to the Rome Rose Garden on Aventine Hill to look for these. Maybe you can find what you're looking for in here."
"I don't know how I'm supposed tell if a stone was a foundation for Rome." She got up anyhow and opened the case.
They seemed to be regular stones at first sight—a little dirty, irregular in shape, and varying in size. Upon a closer inspection, Larka could tell that all the stones had faint traces of old magic in them. It was remarkable that the old woman had found so many of these. It must have taken her years—maybe her entire lifetime—to gather all these.
The old woman knew she was dying, Larka realized, and she must have loved Remus. Even old recluses who met Remus for the first time loved him when they saw him, she sighed, whereas poor Sirius couldn't wring a warm smile out of his own parents, let alone some remote relative. Life was fair and unfair in such strange ways.
"I was never close to her," Remus seemed to read her mind, "I think she disapproved of my mother. My father was from an old Welsh line, and my great aunt thought my mum was a social climber. Bit silly, but she was the granddaughter of Larentia Black."
Larka stared at him.
"Oh nearly everybody has had a Black ancestor at some point. You won't find Larentia Black in the records though; she was blasted off the tree for eloping with a Welsh upstart. My great aunt just thought more of the Black blood than she should have. Made her sprout horns*," he paused, "literally."
At this point, Larka was beginning to worry about the potential daughters** that she might one day have with Sirius. You know, when she saved his soul and brought him back from the Faerie Queene. It had been done before, so it wasn't like Larka was completely off her rocker. And early forties was a perfectly acceptable time for producing babies, Larka told herself. Then again, given how Sirius and Regulus turned out, maybe Larka should be worried about all her potential children***, not just the females. (Was it a little creepy to be thinking about future children with an officially declared dead man?)
More relevantly, this woman obviously gave Remus her stones for a reason.
Again, Remus showed his uncanny ability to tell exactly what people were thinking. "I was just the only one she had left, I think. I know the stones are … special. I just didn't know what to do with them."
Larka sorted through the stones, scratching at every single one of them with her pin. The tingling of magic prickled her fingers like the soft needles of a newborn cactus. It was hardly an unpleasant feeling, except when she came to a stone shaped like a newborn baby, and upon contact, it burned her skin a little, not unlike hot water that was uncomfortable but not harmful. There were all sorts of stones here, it seemed. A momentary wonder struck her: she was dabbling quite a lot in old magic nowadays. There was a quiet, flitting thought about how all her gained knowledge and relics might be an advantage when fighting The Dark Lord—the Green Mantle of Concealment sounded like a wonderful addition to any fighting team—but Larka quickly muffled it out. She had to concentrate on saving Sirius. This was not the time to be worrying about the world.
Her gold pin struck one of the stones, and the stone blazed up like a hot coal. Larka dropped it in surprise, but quickly picked it up. (She struck gold—if her attempt at a pun could be pardoned.)
"Found it," she turned to Remus happily, only to find that Remus had a pensive look on his face. It was not a good look—Larka knew from her school years that Remus was less sweet and docile than people thought, and this look often came with a well-worded request that she had trouble refusing.
"We're moving out of 12 Grimmauld next month," he said simply.
Larka noticed how Remus was mindful of making the place sound as impersonal as possible—not a House, not Black, just an address that sounded grim. She wasn't sure if she appreciated that. "Well, you would have to move out at some point," she reasoned.
"Yes, I suppose," Remus conceded. Then, slowly, more cautiously than Remus had ever spoken to Larka (even in the depth of her grieving stages), he asked, "Would you consider coming back?"
"What?" she asked, eyes wide as if bewildered to be even asked this question.
"We could use all the help we can get. And you were good at it—housekeeping and other logistics. You know, a sort of Molly that everybody liked, instead of rebelled against. Everybody … it's been hard, especially after Dumbledore's demise."
Demise. Like he was an empire, instead of just one wizard. Larka never was very comfortable with all the worship of Albus Dumbledore. It felt … sad. Sad for him, the man, who would never be remembered as just a man. He would be changed with every word that was said about him, and his individuality would shed off, until only the shining pillar of a legend remained. The dead had no claim over their own lives. But Larka supposed that again, the depersonalization helped those who remained. "It was a tragedy," she said, "but we move past these things."
Remus gave her a look that clearly said, no, you of all people couldn't say that. Though instead of calling out her hypocrisy, he just implored, "Please, it's important to the Order."
"No," she said simply, "what do I care about the Order?"
"But you always cared." Then Remus frowned delicately and amended himself, "Sirius always cared."
"Well, I will care again after I bring him back," she stated matter-of-factly. Remus was throwing her a look that was faintly disappointed but understanding in a slightly patronizing way—Remus had always been very good with getting people to do things with his looks, and it would have crumbled Larka if she did not have her resolve.
As it was, Larka just thanked him, smiled, and left with, "Hopefully you will never have to learn to be so selfish****."
* Great-Aunt Rhea Lupin was an unfortunate case: more so than most of the others. She could hear silence, and despite what the average person thought, silence was quite abrasive. As Rhea grew older, the silence grated against her ears physically, giving her thick calluses that eventually grew to be like horns. She was far enough removed from the Black bloodline that she turned out to be the only one in her family to show the mark of the Faerie Queene, and therefore nobody knew why she was defected. Instead, they thought her a devil-spawn (for even wizard folk were prone to explain things away with supernatural unknowns). As one could imagine, this did not affect her school years positively. Rhea dropped out of Hogwarts in her second year due to bullying, and was homeschooled by her father, who took up to stronger and stronger pipes as the years wore him down and gave his daughter longer horns. His life ended in an event that was questionably a suicide. However, his insurance money was paid in full, and with this fund Rhea was able to set up a hermit life for herself. Her hut was her life, and her life was more or less the compilation of stones and sticks. Nowadays, we would call her a hoarder, but back then she was just odd. She stayed this way for what seemed like forever: that was, until Remus J. Lupin barged in. Remus had, as he often did both consciously and unconsciously throughout his own life, given Great-Aunt Rhea a sense of belonging and normalcy, for perhaps the first time in her long and dull life. It still was against her hoarding instinct to give Remus her special stones, and despite the foreboding sense of death around the corner, it was very painful to part with her stones—but it was a pleasant sorrow, also the first time she had known that particular feeling was possible.
** Larka J. Roxburgh was justified in her worry. In 2001, when she gave birth to a set of twins, the younger was a girl—Lyra Isolda Black. At the age of five, Lyra began to show signs of swift and volatile temper, although it was not entirely clear if that was the mark of the Faerie Queene or just growing up as the sole daughter of the family. By seven, Lyra would often jump from roof to roof in her feral escape from her mother Larka. At eleven, Lyra joined the Gryffindor Quidditch team, and no other house saw a victory during the years of her education. Mostly because the Gryffindor Seeker Black was the Girl of the Wild Hair who flitted like a falcon from tower to tower at night, howling like a wolf, striking fear into idle students—no other person dared to fly too close to her. Thus, Lyra was never taught to curb her temperament. Sirius A. Black also largely encouraged this attitude in his daughter, which reared its ugly head when Tristan Jonathan Lupin (a.k.a. Teddy) began to teach DADA at Hogwarts. It was the first time Lyra had seen Teddy since adolescence, and she discovered that Tristan—although being 31 years old and by teen definition ancient—was utterly adorable in his blushing bookishness. She immediately set to seduce her DADA professor, partially spurred on by her ongoing rivalry with Victorie Weasley, who declared that she 'would totally do' Professor Lupin. But of course, Lyra's willfulness triumphed over the one-eighth part Veela blood in Victorie. The scandalous affair between Lyra and Professor Lupin was unearthed at her graduation, when she went up to collect her diploma from the Headmistress and proceed to walk up to Professor Lupin and snogged him for approximately eight earthshattering minutes. Needless to say, Sirius was extremely against this development, as Teddy was fifteen years Lyra's senior (fifteen! fifteen!), for despite Sirius's younger years as a rebel, the moment it came to his precious daughter, he was like any other father in the world. In response, Sirius tried frequently and not subtly to play matchmaker for James Sirius Potter (only two years her junior, which was much more acceptable) and Lyra (but really, when was it ever socially acceptable to date somebody named after one's father?). Even Larka agreed that their daughter Lyra dating any of the Potter boys felt too much like incest. So after much Romeo-and-Juliet, Sirius had to bow down before his daughter's petulance (inherited from her father), and gave his blessings (perhaps accompanied by too much 'if-you-dare-to-hurt-her' speech, but Sirius was really on his best behavior).
*** Larka J. Roxburgh was less justified in her worry for her other children: namely, Lyra Isolda Black's elder twin Altair Deneb Black, and their baby son, Robin Cygnus Black.
As it turned out, the eldest Black son, Altair Deneb Black, was perhaps the most responsible Black to have ever been born. From a young age, he took over the care of the Black House from his father (who was completely hopeless when it came to practical matters), and two years later he took over the financial accounting concerns from his mother (who was simply not raised to think large thoughts). By the time puberty came and went, he had founded BlackCrest Capital Management—although he did not tell Mother and Father that he liquidated most of the Black's holdings in the petroleum business (but really, who was into petroleum anymore in the twenty-second century?—the age of the Rockefeller legend was so over) to use as the seed money. Indeed, his parents never found out, and instead thought that BlackCrest was some sort of school club, and cooed over their son looking so adorable all dressed up in a pinstripe suit like a grown-up. Altair bore this well, for despite his name, he did not have a daddy-complex. (Much.) There never had been a boy more destined for financial greatness—until he was introduced to Vasilisa Berlioz, the most physically daring and passionate girl that Altair had ever seen in his short life thus far. Vasilisa was a Muggle Russian archer who came to England to compete in the Olympics, and Altair left his hedge fund, took over her manager's job, and created an empire for her. Vasilisa would go down in history as Vasilisa the Beautiful, whereas Altair's name would only appear on the family tree, but that was perfectly fine with Altair.
Robin Cygnus Black had a brief romance with Rose Wealsey in his year, after she broke up with Scorpius Malfoy. Their relationship lasted all of two weeks before he provoked Scorpius into a fight, and in turn, Scorpius provoked Rosie into the spat of the decade in front of Ollivander's. It ended with Scorpius proposing and Rosie clubbing Scorpius with her bicycle and then crying (literally) 'yes'. Robin collected a total of fifty galleons from Albus Severus Potter for his behind-the-scenes maneuvering. His father Sirius Altair Black discovered that he had underestimated the wiliness of his youngest son (confounding, since Robin was in Slytherin, a fact that perhaps made Sirius overlook this son on many occasions). Deciding that a penchant for manipulative mischief and very good foresight were more important than housing, Sirius began to seriously mentor his young son, only to learn that there was not much to teach. This moved Sirius to tears—that his legacy would finally be passed on.
**** As with all jinxes, Remus John Lupin would indeed one day face the same situation. For Larka Janet Roxburgh, there was never a choice to be made: she was clear on where her loyalty lay. For Remus, it was an age-old dilemma between the duty and the heart. Conflicts always made for better stories anyway, and Remus had one hell of a life story.
Author's Note: The Red Shoes is a classic Anderson tale of morality. An orphan girl is adopted by an old, wealthy woman, and is gifted a pair of red shoes. She treats the shoes better than anything, including stepping on bread to get across mud when other children were starving and other selfish actions. Soon, she finds that she can't take them off, and neither can she stop dancing. She dances across the moor and through briar, until she meets a butcher and pleads with him to chop her feet off. Which he of course does. The shoes dance off with her severed legs in them (now there's an image...). There's one ending where she goes back and cries and an angel comes to her and fills her with so much peace that her HEART BURSTS, literally, and she dies of a broken heart.
So kids, don't buy red shoes. (Not a result except perhaps a subconscious desire and hesitation towards red shoes, in all my 34 pairs of shoes, none of them are red.)
