The wolf leaps in the air, twisting and snapping at the full moon. It lands and howls with joyous defiance.
The sound dies away. Nothing answers. Gray eyes glitter in the moonlight as the beast stands fixed like an icicle swaying on a branch poised to drop. It takes in sounds and smells with small movements of its head. Then, nose to the ground, the wolf moves forward cautiously, eager to know what has happened in this place since it last came.
A frightened bird takes flight as the wolf slinks into the shadow of an enormous beech tree. Leaves rustle frantically, followed by the precise beat of wings cutting through the air and then fading into silence. The wolf barely pauses as it prowls restlessly around the base of the tree. From the deep shelter of the shadow, the creature scans the open space, brilliantly lit by the moon now risen above the tops of the surrounding trees. Keen ears hear nothing but the rustle of damp leaves underfoot.
Patterns of dark and light, shadows cast by the tree, dance over the rough wooden exterior of a building. The wolf utters a soft growl. This is a shelter built by its enemy, human.
Abandoning caution, the animal leaves the shadows and dashes forward, circling the building slowly at first and then faster in frustrated fury. The wolf, unable to distinguish the tightly shuttered windows from the wooden shingles, can find no openings. The door, however, reeks of human. Pushing with nose, then paws, the creature digs into the door, clawing savagely at the smooth wood. When the door does not yield, the wolf stands on its hind legs and rams the door with head and shoulders. A metal bar, gleaming dully in the moonlight and holding the door fast, burns with such cold fire that the beast falls back, yelping.
Incensed, the wolf begins pacing rapidly back and forth, never straying far from the door. It hates human with an ancient fury beyond any rivalry for food or territory. Lust for hot, red blood, the blood of human, rises inside the wolf who hungers to feel its teeth tearing into flesh, and then to howl triumphantly with its bloody muzzle raised to the moon.
Next to the door a pile of blankets holds the scent of human. With a deep and ferocious snarl, the beast tears into the blankets with its teeth, holding them down with its paws and ripping as if this might appease its hunger. Unsatisfied, the wolf lets the blankets fall with a shake of its head, the urge to kill blunted. Nearby a wooden trough glitters with the moon's dazzling reflection and then explodes as the beast greedily plunges its muzzle into the cool water. Afterward, the wolf sits panting, watching and listening.
White as bleached bones, the moon sails overhead. For the wolf it is liberator and jailor both, uncaring companion of the hunt, forever beyond reach. The cold light burns the wolf, piercing flesh, searing nerves, turning blood into liquid fire. The beast bays at the moon, filling the open space with shrieks that penetrate the thick forest beyond. Echoes surge and swell so that for a moment the voices of a hundred wolves fill the cleared space between the building and the fence. When the wolf falls silent, the echoes die away, the phantom wolves slipping soundlessly into the forest beyond.
The fence. The wolf knows that this, too, was made by human. Close-set pieces of wood shimmer in the moonlight, forming a solid wall rising out of the grass and stretching up to the trees which lie beyond, their dark shapes visible over the top of the fence. Rising, the wolf begins to run next to the fence, slowly at first, then faster as if it knows that it will find no opening, no reason to halt. After several circuits around the enclosure, the wolf stops, recognizing the gate.
Perhaps the wolf thinks the gate will yield more readily or perhaps it detects more signs of human at this spot.
The wolf cautiously inspects the gate which is constructed like the rest of the fence from wooden planks set so closely together as to give little view of what lies beyond. A metal bar cuts across the middle. The creature stands up on hind legs pushing with its paws, but avoids the bar, remembering how the one on the door of the building burned. Even stretched upward this way, the wolf cannot see over the top of the fence. When the gate does not yield, the wolf drops to all fours and backs away from the gate slowly while continuing to glare at it. Then the beast rushes forward, leaping into the air with legs extended to meet the top of the gate.
Flames of brilliant blue shoot into the air as its paws contact the gate, crackling violently and showering the wolf with sparks which singe and bite its flesh. Yelping and twisting the wolf falls to the ground, rolling to rid itself of the painful burning on its fur.
Panting and crouching on all fours, it sits up and then slams into the gate at a run. The gate barely shudders. The wolf tries several more times to ram the gate and succeeds only in bruising and cutting its shoulders. The gate does not yield.
Fury erupts from the beast in a torrent of snarls and howls. With nose and paws, the wolf attacks, clawing the bottom of the gate. Blue flames once again blaze forth sending the animal reeling backward, blinded and howling. The wolf stands up and limps back toward the gate, paws cut and bleeding but rage undiminished. The night is young. It will try again.
~~~~
Sunlight winked through trees and fell upon the ground in untidy splashes making wet blades of grass sparkle. Birds flitted between the ground and branches, twittering with the nervous excitement they feel when dawn releases them from night's dangers.
A patch of sunlight marched forward over the grass and touched the blanket, climbing up and over the folds of coarse wool which outlined the figure of a man who groaned faintly as the blanket fell open and sunshine beat against his closed eyes. He shivered and pulled the blanket over his head.
After several minutes, he groaned again, a little louder this time, and struggled to sit up, rocking his shoulders and lifting his head with great effort.
The light hurt his eyes. He began to be aware that his body hurt, too. Everywhere. Breathing was difficult. That could mean broken ribs. The blanket fell open, exposing his bare chest to the chill morning air. He grabbed the edge of the blanket, pulling it closed, and then stiffened with a sharp cry of pain. His left wrist felt as if it were broken.
He sat quietly for some time with the blanket wrapped around his shoulders, eyes closed. Gray hair, tangled and matted with dirt, fell across his eyes. Underneath the dirt and scratches, his face was pale and gaunt. His eyes blinked open and he stared in an unfocused way for a moment. Then he sighed with a small movement of his head and a faint grimace on his lips.
With more effort he rose to a standing position. No other bones appeared to be broken as he turned and limped toward the small cabin. Painful steps brought him to the door. With his undamaged hand, he struggled to lift a heavy metal bar that lay across the door. He let the bar drop to the ground and stood for a time with his head against the door, gathering the strength needed to open it.
Sunlight burst into the cabin as he stepped inside. The man stumbled as his eyes adjusted to the dim light, bumping into a wooden chair a few steps from the door. He gripped the back of the chair for support and then slowly lowered himself to a seated position, his breathing growing ragged from the effort. He put his right hand on the small round table immediately next to the chair to steady himself.
As his eyes adjusted to the dimness, he could see three objects on the table: a pewter pitcher filled with water, a bar of chocolate, and a long, slender wooden rod.
Things could certainly be worse, he thought as he picked up the wooden rod. It was his wand. The man's name was Remus Lupin and he was a wizard.
His hand shook as he grasped the wand and pointed at the great stone fireplace set in one wall of the cabin. "Incendio," he said weakly. Nothing happened. Holding his wand as steady as he could, which took immense concentration given his current state, he closed his eyes, took a deep breath and cried, "Incendio!"
He did not need to open his eyes to see the sudden blaze; he heard the violent crackling and felt the warmth of the fire soak into his skin. A sigh of satisfaction escaped his lips as he let the wand fall.
The throbbing pain in his wrist would not let him alone, however. Opening his eyes, he picked up his wand and lightly drew a complicated figure across the back of his hand as it lay on the table.
"Osteosanos," he murmured and then closed his eyes once more. The pain receded as the bones knit together. Although not his specialty, he knew quite a few healing charms. He learned them out of necessity since this happened to him more or less every month. In addition to being a wizard, Lupin was also a werewolf.
Even a wizard could not evade the werewolf curse, once bitten. Remus had been bitten as a small boy. Extraordinary efforts by his parents and others allowed him to go to wizard school, the happiest time of his life. After that, however, he found that few in his world wanted to actually employ a werewolf. He drifted through many jobs in the nearly twenty years since leaving school, although the only ones he truly enjoyed were teaching. His last teaching job ended spectacularly badly three years earlier and he had not tried to find another.
He came finally to this old cabin belonging to his family in an isolated part of Wales, having some vague hope of writing a book on Defense Against the Dark Arts. He had always been fascinated by the many ways to defeat dark creatures. Unlike most wizards, the Dark Arts held no great terror for him; he looked into the dark abyss each month when the moon was full.
And he felt weary of hiding what he was, of seeing the mixture of fear and pity on people's faces when the truth came out, as it usually did. He slumped toward the table, cradling his head with his right arm, and slept.
He ran on all fours across a grassy plain, feeling the wind in his fur and the soft grass underfoot. Overhead a huge milky white orb shone, like the eye of some unearthly creature that defied the very boundaries of the world. The harsh light painted everything with a cruel palette of black, white, and gray. He ran. He heard heavy panting not his own and felt hot, moist breath on his back. He did not turn to look upon it, but knew it to be an enormous beast in the shape of a wolf with glowing yellow eyes and white fangs that dripped and gleamed in the moonlight. He stumbled, slamming into the ground as his legs gave way beneath him. He howled at the terrible moon and clawed at the ground as the jaws closed around his neck.
Remus jerked awake with a start, gulping jagged breaths and forcing himself to calm down. He struggled to escape from the dream, the wolf dream. It had haunted him since he was a boy and always ended in the same way, with the kill. Sometimes the beast hunted with him and the screams of terrified humans reverberated through his dream.
But sometimes the beast hunted him, catching him and tearing him to pieces while the cold moon looked on.
He stretched out a shaking hand toward the bar of chocolate, grasping it and fumbling with the wrapper. He forced himself to concentrate on the intricacy of the shiny gold foil, slowly teasing open the wrapping and smoothing it flat against the table. He broke off a piece, popped it into his mouth and swallowing, began to feel warmth flow back into his limbs.
The fire crackled and birds sang outside. Remus extended his arms across the table, feeling the bruised muscles respond sluggishly. The sun had risen higher in the sky while he slept so that it no longer poked a long finger across the floor of the cabin through the open door. Pushing himself back from the table, he stood and stretched his arms upward. His body throbbed with cuts and bruises, nothing more serious that he could tell. He would heal them, as always.
~~~~
The sun had passed its zenith when Lupin emerged from the cabin, washed and dressed in clean if shabby clothes. Walking slowly and deliberately, he inspected the outside of the cabin and then the fence for signs of damage, ending at the gate. He shrugged at the grooved marks of claws ripping through the grass near the gate, but frowned at the bits of singed hair lying on the ground, thinking of times past in which the wolf did not have to be confined when the moon was full.
Tired as he was from last night, he would visit the small village nearby and see about getting food. There was precious little left now that he had finished his last chocolate bar. And a wizard could not always conjure food out of thin air. He counted a few pieces of silver left in his dwindling cache of money. In addition, he knew a few wizard families who would barter with him, food for odd jobs such as expelling boggarts, detecting hexes, and catching pixies.
He took out his wand, arm trembling slightly, and gave the word of command. With a faint flash of blue light, the magical spell that enveloped the fence disappeared. His arm shook so violently that the wand dropped to the ground. He leaned against the gate, gulping ragged breaths, and tried to stop shaking. After some minutes, he stepped back from the gate, took a deep breath and picked up his wand, carefully tucking it into his belt. As he swung the gate open, he saw a most astonishing and unexpected sight.
Standing in the dappled afternoon sunlight was a thin old man with a long silver beard flowing down the front of his purple cloak. He wore a pointed hat on top of his head. Perched on his long, crooked nose were a pair of half moon spectacles behind which a pair of blue eyes regarded Lupin kindly.
"Professor Dumbledore," croaked Remus in surprise, unaccustomed to speaking and more than a little embarrassed to see this particular person, Albus Dumbledore the headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
"Albus. Please call me Albus," the old man said gently with a broad smile on his face and a twinkle in his blue eyes. His voice floated through the spring air, thin and reedy but compelling, like a powerful song heard from a great distance. "It is many years, Remus, since I had much to teach you."
Remus smiled faintly and nodded his head toward Dumbledore in a sketch of a bow.
"Superb job on the fence spell," Dumbledore said with delight, waving his arms fluidly in a gesture that seemed to take in the fence and more besides. "You have mastered a very tricky charm. I have been waiting for some time for you to open the gate."
"Thank you, er, Albus," Remus said with a slight shake of his head. "Although I feel sure that you could have broken the spell if you desired." He also doubted that Dumbledore had been waiting for long. He often appeared at precisely the right moment, a trait which unnerved many people.
"Perhaps," replied Dumbledore with a dismissive wave of his hand," but I do not like to destroy another wizard's work, especially when it is of such high quality."
The hushed song of the late afternoon forest swirled around them, a remote and melancholy opera in which birds sang and trees sighed in the wind. Dumbledore regarded with concern the gaunt figure and suspected that the three years since their last meeting had not been kind. Lupin's clothes, faded but neat, hung on his frame. Thick hair, all gray now, fell across a broad forehead. Deep-set gray eyes were ringed with dark shadows. Pale skin stretched across prominent cheekbones and a thin nose, defining a face which still looked surprisingly young in stark contrast to the gray hair.
"I was just going-" Remus began, but broke off uncertainly. He remembered their last meeting at Hogwarts with shame and bitter regret. In the three years since then, he had received several messages by owl from Dumbledore inquiring after him. He had not replied. He looked down at his feet for a moment and then met Dumbledore's steady gaze.
"My schedule seems quite free this afternoon, if you would like to come in. I'm afraid that all I can offer you is tea, however."
"I brought a few things with me," said Dumbledore cheerfully, stepping aside to reveal behind him two large boxes wrapped in paper and tied with string. "It's Easter holidays at school, you know, and the kitchens aren't very busy."
Dumbledore tapped the packages with his wand and they promptly sprouted feet and began marching in place. With an amused nod of his head, Remus motioned for Dumbledore to proceed him, trailed by the two packages, lurching along one after the other. After passing through the gate, Dumbledore paused to look around at the sweep of the fence. "Most impressive," he said with satisfaction and then resumed walking toward the cabin.
At the door, the packages marched in place, bouncing vigorously like stout soldiers ordered to wear enormous boxes over their heads. Still grinning, Remus unlocked the door with his wand and waited for Dumbledore to enter. However, the old wizard stood gazing at the clapboard exterior of the cabin, one hand resting lightly on the wood.
"A fine tree - an oak, I believe - gave its life for this house." he said without turning his head.
"My grandparents built this cabin. I spent summers here as a boy," Remus replied soberly. He looked into the interior with eyes unfocused for a moment. As the silence lengthened, Dumbledore sighed and turned to face him. The clear blue eyes seemed to pierce his heart and make further explanation unnecessary.
"Let us have some tea, then," Dumbledore said briskly and pointed his wand at the marching boxes, then at the inside of the cabin. In they paraded, hopping first onto a chair and then up to the table with a series of comical thumps. With a final flourish, Dumbledore waved his wand and the boxes were merely boxes once more.
Remus turned to the stone hearth which dominated one wall of the cabin. He raised his wand and the fired blazed. With his back to Dumbledore, he began to take down cups, saucers, and a teapot from the wooden shelves which flanked the stone chimney.
As he took off his hat and great cloak, directing them to stand together near the door like a purple sultan's tent, Dumbledore looked round at the small room, which seemed to function as kitchen, dining room and study. The hearth and chimney, constructed of hewn blocks of stone, sat squarely in one of the walls next to the entrance. Open shelves on either side of the chimney held dishes, but no food that he could see. Opposite the entrance to the cabin was an open door giving a view into a bedroom containing a large bed covered by a quilt and a small table stacked with books. On the wall opposite the hearth stood a large oak desk with a window on either side. Low bookshelves under the windows looked to be of recent construction and were crammed with books. Massive wooden beams, darkened with age, stretched overhead. The floor was worn but neatly made of close-fitting oak planks. The large wool rug that lay squarely in the middle of the room seemed to hold Dumbledore's attention for some time as he paced around its edges. He clucked softly to himself and then turned his attention to the bookshelves.
Dumbledore surely had a reason in coming, Remus thought curiously as he set tea things on the table, although he could not fathom what it might be. A wave of his wand caused steam to issue from the kettle hanging above the hearth. He poured steaming water into a chipped teapot while continuing to stare at Dumbledore, now leafing through a book from one of the shelves.
Some minutes passed; Remus lost track of time entirely, but a check of the teapot showed the tea to be nicely steeped.
"Tea is ready," he said hesitantly.
Shutting the book with a decided snap, Dumbledore turned to face him. Still holding the book, he gestured at the shelves and the piles of parchment on the desk. "Quite a collection of books. I see that you have not abandoned your studies," Dumbledore said as he put the book down and crossed the room.
He produced his wand and tapped the parcels lightly. The strings untied themselves, the paper fell away, and the boxes opened to disclose a jumble of jars and many different-sized packages wrapped in paper. Remus gasped involuntarily as Dumbledore directed the packages to open revealing neat piles of scones, teacakes, biscuits, a large basket of strawberries, pots of milk and butter, jars of preserves, and rows of sliced ham.
"You did not have to--" Remus started and then faltered, acutely embarrassed. After a moment's silence, he said, "I'll just fry up some ham, then." He turned and took a skillet from the shelf. Without meeting Dumbledore's eyes, he quickly put several slices of ham into the pan and set it above the hearth.
Dumbledore waved his wand and plates floated down from the shelves. Utensils danced through the air and arranged themselves on the table while baked goods swarmed out of their wrappings and nestled onto plates. The paper wrappings marched off the table and folded themselves on the floor. All the while, Dumbledore swished his wand here and there as if directing a silent orchestra. Then he sat down and poured himself a cup of tea.
He was thoughtfully stirring his cup when Remus turned back to regard the table, still holding the sizzling skillet. He could only stare in astonishment at the enormous amount of food arrayed on the table. He had not seen so much altogether since leaving Hogwarts with its spectacular feasts.
"I do manage to eat - on my own, I mean," he said as he tilted the skillet, sliding the ham onto an empty plate. He set the skillet back on the hearth and sat down.
"Perhaps you would rather spend your money on books," Dumbledore replied absently while spooning a large dollop of clotted cream onto a scone. "Worthwhile pursuit - knowledge, that is - but a wizard must eat."
Remus closed his eyes, suddenly overcome by the smell of the food and so hungry that he could not bear the thought of eating. If anything, he felt ill; the gnawing hunger was a beast crouched inside him, refusing to let food pass his lips. He opened his eyes to meet Dumbledore's steady gaze.
"A lot of these books were mine... from before. I kept them at my mother's house." Defiantly he took a scone and bit into it, although it felt dry and tasteless in his mouth and he fought to swallow.
"I have a little money," Remus began after putting the half-eaten scone down,"from my mother. She died last year and there is no one else to ...."
"I am sorry, Remus," Dumbledore said after a moment, sounding shocked and saddened. "Very sorry. Your mother was a wonderful woman. She used to send me a card at Christmas every year. Did you know? And a Christmas cake."
Remus shook his head as his eyes filled with tears. His mother had often spoken of Dumbledore, of his kindness in accepting him as a boy at Hogwarts when it looked as if he would never be able to attend school, never be able to have a normal life.
Well, I still can't have a normal life, Remus thought angrily. I cannot escape what I am nor can I repay the debts I owe.
He rose swiftly from the table, pushing his chair back so hard that it fell against the hearthstone with a sharp crack. Crossing the room, he stood staring out the window with his back turned to Dumbledore, absentmindedly fingering scrolls of parchment on the desk. Without turning, he said coldly,"Surely you didn't come all this way to remind me of how poor I am."
"Of course not, Remus," Dumbledore replied gently, "I came to offer you a job."
Remus turned to regard Dumbledore, now contentedly buttering a teacake, with mute astonishment. One hand gripped the desk for support. The last job offer from Dumbledore, the teaching assignment at Hogwarts, turned out so badly that he could not imagine the faculty (especially certain teachers) nor the school governors allowing another. He ran his hand through his hair, unsure of what to do or say. He felt himself to be the victim of a cruel joke, yet he knew Dumbledore was not capable of this.
Dumbledore rose from the table, picked up the fallen chair, and gazed at him steadily saying, "Come, Remus, sit down and eat. You look as if you could do with a bit of something. And I cannot possibly finish all this myself." He smiled warmly and gestured at the food piled on the table. Woodenly, Remus crossed the room and resumed his seat. Dumbledore solicitously filled a tea cup.
"Milk? Sugar?" he clucked. After receiving no reply, he said, "Do try some of the pumpkin quince marmalade. Madame Pomfrey makes it, you know."
Remus merely sipped his tea and absently took another bite of his scone, chewing it doggedly but without interest. He stared intently at the plate for a few minutes, playing with the crumbs, and then looked up at Dumbledore.
"What is it that you-"
"That can wait until we have finished our tea" Dumbledore cut him off with a wave of his hand. "I notice you have a copy of Moreton's Railway Disasters of the Twentieth Century. Do you really believe his thesis that all railway accidents can be attributed to gremlins?"
"Well, he-" Remus began hesitantly, his mind not able to change subjects so quickly. He searched the table for milk, located the pot and poured some into his tea.
"No. I don't," he answered finally with some animation, "He knows far more about steam engines than he does about gremlins. Gremlins generally prefer to cause the greatest amount of harm by making the smallest possible part fail. And most gremlins like to work in darkness or at least in rainy weather. A great many accidents just don't fit - some have to be attributed to Muggle error or pure chance."
"Do try one of these teacakes," interjected Dumbledore, holding a dish in front of Lupin,"The kitchens put the most interesting little bits of things in the center." After Remus had chosen one, somewhat reluctantly, Dumbledore put down the plate and continued,"Of course, Moreton contends that the influx of gremlins from east Asia is partly responsible."
Remus shook his head vigorously while biting into the teacake. Dumbledore was right. The center was interesting, although so chewy that it was a full minute before he could speak.
After washing it down with a large swallow of tea, he said "Moreton uses a confusing and erroneous argument: it is sunny in India; there are railways in India; gremlins cause accidents on railways. However, it does not follow from this that Indian gremlins cause railway accidents in Britain when it is sunny."
"In fact," he continued as he helped himself to a slice of ham, "Native gremlins want nothing to do with foreigners and don't even let them on the trains. Indian gremlins are most likely to be found on the docks, causing cranes to drop crates and so forth."
"There really is quite a lot of confusion about non-native magical creatures," Dumbledore sighed as he took off his spectacles and polished them on his robe.
"Textbooks either ignore them or publish hearsay and rumors," Remus relied, gesturing with his knife,"And some of these foreign --er- immigrants are quite powerful and capable of causing a lot of harm."
Dumbledore regarded Lupin placidly as he continued to polish his spectacles and said,"A more up-to-date text would be helpful, don't you think?"
"Is that the job, then," Remus inquired curiously, his voice taking on an unintended mocking tone, "writing a textbook?"
"No," replied Dumbledore thoughtfully, tapping his spectacles gently against his cheek, "This had not occurred to me until now. However, a good text could provide a modest income...you might think about this, Remus."
Remus merely look baffled, intrigued by the possibility and even more curious as to the real reason Dumbledore had come.
"I believe," continued Dumbledore as he set his spectacles back on his nose," that Madame Pince has a cousin or brother in the publishing business, at Hingus & McNeil." Dumbledore named the most prominent wizard publishing house. "I shall speak to her about this when I get back."
"But that's not what you came to talk about," Remus stated flatly, fighting to keep both curiosity and fear out of his voice.
"No, indeed," replied Dumbledore as he rose from the table and strode to the center of the room, the hem of his robe swirling over the designs on the rug. "A magnificent rug," he continued, "Has it been in your family long?"
"What?" Remus stared up at Dumbledore blankly, caught off balance again.
"The runes are Norse and very old, but the dragons appear to be Welsh Greens. Most unusual."
"It belonged to my grandfather, I suppose. He was Welsh - from around here."
Remus stared at the rug, slowly rising from his chair and circling it. The inner part of the rug was arrayed with a phalanx of Welsh Green dragons in various poses. Around the outside ran a border patterned in green and black. He looked at the black runes woven skillfully into the forest green border as if seeing them for the first time.
As a boy, he played on the rug, sitting for hours with his toy figures arranged carefully in mock battles. The border of the rug was the highway, the castle, or a wall of thorns. Inside, the dancing green dragons menaced his knights, were their prisoners, or occasionally befriended them, telling them magical secrets. When he got older, he was allowed to enchant his toy soldiers and they marched smartly in parade along the border.
Now, squatting down, he ran his hand over that same border. The black characters formed words that hung just out of reach, like the moon covered in clouds whose face contains a secret. He felt the shape of a word, but not the meaning. His eyes closed involuntarily, but the runes remained visible, writhing in his mind, fighting to be free of obscuring haze. Suddenly, as when a rent appears in clouds causing the moon to spring forth, the runes blazed brightly and painfully. He put up an arm to shield his face although his eyes were tightly shut.
"Krakosgard," he whispered and the runes vanished, leaving his mind clear but confused.
"What-" he stuttered as he opened his eyes, looking up until he met Dumbledore's steady blue gaze regarding him with concern and wonder. "Wh-what does that mean?"
"Dragonkeeper. An old Norse word for the men who tamed the great dragons of the north."
"I don't understand," Remus said slowly as he stood, ran his hand through his thick gray hair and began pacing the length of the small room.
Dumbledore stroked his beard, not taking his bright blue eyes from Lupin's moving form.
"Nor do I, just yet," he said thoughtfully," This bears on my reason for coming, although I am uncertain as to how." He paused and looked down for a moment, searching his memory. "Cadwynddraig. That would be the Welsh word."
"My grandfather's name..." Remus said turning around with a start, "He was my mother's father."
"It is possible," Dumbledore ruminated as he stared down at the rug, but seemed to be seeing something much farther away, "that your family have been dragonkeepers. At one time, powerful wizards possessed dragons for their personal use. Dragonkeepers, it is said, could talk to dragons and would have been valued, particularly for taming the larger ones such as Ridgebacks and Horntails. There were quite a few wizards' castles in the mountains of Wales, too."
"Dragons have been outlawed in the British Isles for hundreds of years!"
"Officially since 1709," replied Dumbledore. "Dragons can be employed with permission of the Ministry. Gringotts uses them to guard its vaults, but, in general, the keeping of dragons by wizards is forbidden. So many wizards have used dragons for evil, although I do not believe that dragons themselves are inherently evil. There are still a few native species, like the Welsh Green, of course, but they are small and rather harmless. The larger dragons vanished from Britain...until very recently."
Dumbledore's last words hung in the air. Remus felt his pulse quicken. There was no reason that this should mean anything to him. The rug had been in his family, but what did that signify? What if some long dead ancestor had kept dragons? And yet his heart raced and he felt a terrifying curiosity.
"And what does that have to do with me?" Remus cried sharply, turning away from Dumbledore and leaning heavily on the desk. "Did you come to find the last surviving dragonkeeper in Britain? Is this the job? Really, Dumbledore, your misplaced charity astounds me. I can't even hold down a teaching job, let alone-"
He swept his hand across the desk and a cascade of parchment spilled to the floor. He saw his words flowing over the pages, jumbled and roiling like a torrent of water plummeting through a rocky cleft to be dashed into insensibility on the stones below. He stooped to pick up pieces of parchment. Dumbledore appeared at his side, helping him gather the scattered papers. Remus stood up suddenly and flung an armful of parchment at the desk. He turned quickly, jerked open the door and was gone.
Dumbledore found him outside, standing with his forehead pressed against the wall of the cabin where the chimney curved around to meet the clapboards. One hand lay on the shingles while the other caressed stone, as if asking the cabin itself to give up its secrets, to reveal a history hitherto unsuspected.
"I have found more than I came looking for," Dumbledore said quietly as he regarded Lupin's still form, unmoving save for fingers playing across rough stones. "I came looking for a wizard skilled in Defense Against the Dark Arts, someone who was not afraid of solitude and isolation, someone whom I could trust."
"Why come to me, then?" Remus said bitterly as he turned to face the old wizard. "I have betrayed your trust every time it's been given me."
"Perhaps you feel that you have failed yourself," Dumbledore replied gently," but you have never failed me. You are a good man, Remus. Some day I hope that you have the courage to admit that to yourself."
"Tell me about this job, then," Remus snapped.
"A moment, please. Where did I...Oh, yes, here it is." Dumbledore muttered to himself as he fumbled through various pockets of his robe, at last producing a small gold object which he began to unwrap.
"Do have a piece of chocolate," he said holding out his hand to Lupin, "and I shall explain everything while you pack."
~~~~
Revised 4/25/01 to correct a few more things that nagged at me. The next chapter is called 'Night Flight.'
-CLS