Disclaimer: I don't own the HP characters, themes, and places that are liable to make an appearance below, though a great number of them are OCs. But do you know how useless it would be to sue me? The amount I make in a year wouldn't be enough to pay to fill your car at a gas station!
A/N: Thanks so much to the reviewers, because you guys constantly boost my self-esteem and get me to write.
Several of my friends have given me a few ideas for this chapter, so thanks to them.
Chapter 5
Trapping the Wolf
In London it may have not been overwhelmingly cold, but up north the red line on all Muggles' thermometers was certainly low enough to get everyone thoroughly worked up. This was why Butler really hated being called up to the Hill, especially this early in the morning, but an owl had been sent ahead to him by Bridget. The Speaker wanted to, well, speak with him, and that wasn't exactly a comforting thought.
When he arrived at the top of the Hill at the entrance to the cave, Bridget stood waiting for him. Her dark hair rippled in the wind and her milky features were twisted into a grimace. She disliked the cold even more than he did.
"He's told me to tell you to wait, he's very tired. Sleeping, he is."
Butler looked surprised. "What? Why?"
The man whom they spoke of was a very old one; Bridget would be willing to bet he was one of the oldest in the country. She wouldn't be surprised, anyway. He had been going into a trance last night (that's just what Bridget thought of them as) so it served to reason that he would be quite exhausted now, the morning after. But it was quite irregular for him to do it now, of all times, a week to a full moon.
"So I assume he hasn't done it yet? The process?"
Bridget shook her head. "No, he was just testing something, I think is what he said. He said it's much harder to do when the subject's alive. But far more interesting, he said."
Dalen Butler could have cared less about that. "Listen, if we haven't got something to show her soon she might back out. She's already nervous about the whole plan as it is."
"Come now, Dalen, you can convince her, can't you?"
"I can only hope. She thought she'd be able to present to the company reps by Christmas at the least. But we're not even close yet." Obviously distressed, Dalen took out a cigarette and lit it.
"That's a really filthy Muggle habit, you know that, don't you Dalen?"
"Yes, it is. I'll quit for New Years'."
"That's what you said last year."
"And yet here I am, still puffing away. Hmm. Funny how that goes, huh?"
Bridget shook her head. "The Speaker won't like that. He can always tell when you smoke, you know."
"I could care less what the Speaker likes or not."
"Do you?" asked an icy voice behind him. "I'm not surprised. Come in here, boy."
Gulping, Dalen stamped out his cigarette and went inside the cave.
* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *
"Name," said the woman behind the desk, taking out a quill and a file.
"Remus Lupin."
"Occupation."
Remus shifted uncomfortably in his chair. "I'm…unemployed, as of late."
"Hmm." The woman marked this down. She was rather cold and impersonal and had been sent to set up the register. Umbridge had been making good on all of the things in her beloved bill.
"Location?"
Lupin gave his address, still feeling very fidgety. They were breaking the law, after all, they had no intention of taking any potion that might have come under, even for one second, the nose of Umbridge or one of her cronies. They had all managed to successfully brew the Wolfsbane. That morning, the morning before the full moon, the Ministry witch who gave them the potion had told them all that an administrator from the Department for Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures was coming to interview each of them in turn.
"For what?" Simon had asked sharply.
"That horrid register, most likely," Aurelia had said. "That's what it is, correct?" she had asked the Ministry witch, who had nodded and left them to consume their potion.
"Good thing she's very inattentive this morning," said Alan, pulling out his wand and muttering "Evanesco" once the door had closed behind the witch. The potion in the goblet vanished. "They're really going through with it then?"
Lupin felt another swoop of the anger he had felt since Christmas. He was very much inclined to dart out of the Ministry now before any such interview could take place, but at that moment the woman from Umbridge's office had appeared and had elected to take him into her office first, much to his chagrin.
"What is your current living status (i.e., children, spouse, significant other)?" The woman was obviously reading directly off a form.
Lupin felt a bit uncomfortable again. Aurelia had moved in with him last month around the full moon when Adams had died. "My girlfriend shares the flat with me."
The witch looked over her reading glasses at him almost reproachfully. Bit of a medieval attitude on this one, he thought.
"I'll need her name too."
Lupin felt himself growing angrier now. He was normally an exceedingly calm man, but James and Sirius had always liked to joke about him when he lost his temper. A werewolf on the rampage, they would say, which would just further incense him.
"Is it really imperative that the general wizarding public know the name of my girlfriend? Is knowing that going to protect them when I go on my mad-werewolf rampage?"
The witch apparently didn't have much of a sense of humor, either. The rest of the interview was done in a comparably rushed fashion.
"So how exactly does this register work?" he asked her when the interview had been wrapped up (finally).
The woman seemed disinclined to talk to him anymore than she had to. "The register will be open to anyone who requests it."
Lupin didn't trust himself to remain in the room any longer. Before he could say any retort that might make the woman call the Department of Magical Law Enforcement on him, which was situated upstairs, the part of his head not burning with white-hot anger rushed his legs out of the room.
* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *
Outside the door, he took deep breath. He didn't like losing control like that. He very rarely got that angry, but when he did…well, while in the States he recalled hearing of a Muggle comic book character that went through much the same thing, except that Remus Lupin was not turning green at the moment. He didn't trust himself at moments like those; they made him feel vulnerable, almost like he didn't trust himself not to do something rash.
He couldn't help but wonder if that was the wolf in him, sometimes, it was growling and gnashing it yellow teeth, yearning to get out.
Stop that, he told himself sternly. You're not a wolf, you're a man, so you sure as hell better start acting like one.
Sighing, he sat and waited for Aurelia.
* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *
"Remus."
He didn't answer.
"Remus! Listen, what's wrong with you? You've been acting funny all week. And you look pale. Well," she paused. "Paler than normal, anyway. You haven't been sleeping well. I've seen. What's wrong?"
Not all men were this odd. But then, Remus wasn't like most men, she supposed, and that wasn't counting the fact he was a werewolf. There was something else too, but she was damned if she knew what it was.
It was about two hours before the moon rose and Aurelia was trying very hard to sleep. She wished very much that she could simply doze through the moonrise, but that was pure and utter wishful thinking. She could sooner sleep through a transformation than she could stop it from happening at all.
She was lying on the bed and she could see him sitting on the rail of the balcony that looked out into the street. He turned to look at her and smiled sardonically.
"Don't tell me, Aurelia, you never feel a little off-color around this time of month."
"I never said that. You just seem a little…preoccupied, that's the word."
"I'm fine."
One of the side effects of living with someone, Remus had discovered, was that the person in question had intimate knowledge of what you were feeling like most of the day, something he was not accustomed to. He wasn't sure if he wanted to tell Aurelia of the troubling dreams he'd been having lately. She didn't seem like the type to get nightmares and he didn't want her to get the impression that he did.
The thing was, about these nightmares he tried to conceal from her, that he wasn't quite certain what it was about them that unsettled and downright frightened him. In the dreams, which resembled very much the ones he'd gotten on Christmas night, nothing much happened except that man whispering, and he still couldn't make out what the man was saying, and yet somehow, on another level, he could understand them just faintly. And what they were saying wasn't good. He could get that much anyway.
Maybe you're turning into a Seer, he thought grimly, going into the bedroom and sitting on the bed next to Aurelia. Prophetic dreams, wouldn't you say?
Maybe. A warning of things to come. That would make sense. Though while awake he thought that a bigger threat to his being was boredom, he was getting very restless with no job, Aurelia probably felt the same as well. There truly was nothing for them to do, and it was driving him insane.
He stood up and walked into the bedroom where Aurelia was. An hour until moonrise now. He sat on the bed and stared out the window.
"Remus."
"Hmm?"
"I want to talk." He could feel her getting up to sit next to him, but he didn't stop staring out the window.
"You could have picked a more opportune time, you know."
"Yes, I know, but I, well…" she trailed off. "I feel like I should tell you something."
"Hmm?"
She opened her mouth, but no sound came out. "It's just that…well, you've been feeling very discouraged lately, I could tell, and so have I, but I just wanted to say, as clichéd and predictable as this is going to sound, but…I,"
"Yes?"
"I love you."
There was a silence. "That's clichéd and predictable?" he asked finally, more as a way to break the silence than anything else.
"Somewhat, I thought. But it's true and I just thought you ought to, to know," she finished somewhat lamely.
"All right."
And they were silent with only 45 minutes left.
* * *
"He's ready?"
"He's ready," said Bridget in what she hoped was a reassuring voice. "He'll do it, he promised me."
"He promised. He'll have it all ready, in a bottle, I can bring it to Umbridge, she'll have the um, what's it called?"
"The essence."
"The essence, yes, she'll have it, in a bottle, no fuss, is that correct?"
Bridget smiled. "Well, I don't know about the in the bottle part."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, remember how the Speaker told you when the werewolf's alive it's much more complicated?"
"He did mention it, yes."
"Well, I guess he felt that if the subject is present he could perform it with more accuracy."
Dalen's eyes widened. "You mean here? On the Hill?"
"That's what he intends to do. Get the werewolf here."
"How's he going to do that?"
"Oh, stop worrying, Dalen. Everything will work out fine."
"But he's never done the extraction on a living being, has he?"
"Of course not."
"So what if he can't? Is he sure it's even possible?"
Bridget gave him a smirk. "Well, you can't be certain the extraction's going to work because he's alive, but you can easily remedy that, can't you? A living being can become a non-living one very easily."
"Oh. Right." After that Dalen couldn't help but feel a little sick.
"It's hard to spirit a living being hundreds of miles, you're right, Dalen, but as it's the full moon tonight…"
"What's that got to do with it?"
"Defenses, my dear boy," said Bridget wisely. "You see, you can't normally make someone come to you magically, of course, especially this far a distance. But we're transporting a werewolf at the full moon. That makes the subject somewhat weaker and more vulnerable. His defenses are down and the Speaker should have no trouble with him."
"Oh." They were silent for a period and then Dalen finally spoke.
"What's his name again?"
The young woman raised one thin dark eyebrow. "Remus Lupin. Why?"
Dalen shrugged, feeling more uncomfortable by the minute. "No reason."
"Hmm," said Bridget, still casting a suspicious eye over her comrade. She checked her watch. "30 minutes to moonrise."
* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *
"Remus? What's wrong?"
She was looking at him with worriedly. Half and hour left and suddenly he had felt a strange spasm in his chest, causing him to gasp very suddenly.
"I'm not sure," he wheezed. He was taking very short labored breaths, still clutching his aching chest. Was he having a heart attack? That was absurd. Wolves didn't get heart attacks.
"Remus?" She was patting his back, looking worried. "Do you want me to get help?" Fifteen minutes left now.
He couldn't talk now, the pain in his chest was creeping through his whole body, reaching a pitch so that he felt his fingers clench around Aurelia's fingers.
"Remus! I'm getting help." His hand was still in a death grip around hers. She looked into his face, trying to soothe him back to calm. The look in his eyes was disconcerting, it did not look at all like Remus. "Let go. Remus, let go of me and I'll get help, don't worry." He did not seem to respond, for he did not let go and instead continued staring at her with those un-Remus-ish eyes.
Ten minutes now.
He could see through the pain that seemed to be coming over him that she wanted to leave him. She seemed to be trying to reason with him, but he couldn't let her, for suddenly things became clear, for that one moment a flash of understanding had come before his eyes before being replaced with Aurelia's worried face.
"Aurelia!" he said finally with five minutes left. "Don't…leave…"
Aurelia stopped in her pleas for him to let go of her so she could get assistance. His voice was raspy and throaty, as though it was causing him great effort to speak at all.
"I'm just going to get help, Remus, don't worry –,"
"No!" he said suddenly. His voice wasn't his either. "You've got to understand…"
"What?"
He spoke slowly, trying to tell her everything in the two minutes they now had left. "The man…from the magazine…find him…"
"The magazine, what--," she started, but he shushed her.
"Just…listen…find him…ask him…"
"Ask what?"
"About the article."
"The article? From the magazine?" she paused. It was one minute to moonrise now, she could feel it. What was she to do as a wolf to help Remus? She couldn't speak, she couldn't write, she had to do something, but Remus still would not let her go, he was keeping her on the bed with all his strength.
"Aurelia…going to go…get help."
"Going? You're not going anywhere!" she exclaimed, trying to talk some sense into him before it was too late.
He would've said something else to warn her or maybe to soothe her nerves, because she was looking very frazzled by his spastic reaction to the full moon. But he could not help it.
As the moon rose, Aurelia could feel her fur starting to sprout and felt the familiar pain that went through her abdomen. At the same moment, there was a dull pop and when she opened her eyes Remus was gone.
* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *
