Disclaimer: It turns out that since the time I wrote Chapter 8 JKR transferred ownership of Harry Potter and all related trademarks and insignia over to me, a humble American 14 year-old aspiring writer. Psych! I'm just kidding. I own nothing but my OCs.
A/N: Thanks to all who reviewed. I feel so lucky to have such great people who review nearly everything I write. Thanks so much!
The Storm Begins
Who plays it cool
by making his world
a little
colder?
-"Hey Jude"
the Beatles
Dear Journal,
Sister Eustacia has given me this book cos she wants me to rite my thoughts and mussings in it. She sez I read well but my riting and spelling are both "de-plor-ab-le." I asked her what that meant? She toled me to look it up in the large dic-tion-nar-y that sits on a podium in the library. But I didnt. I shant place much trust in books that way more than I do. But from the way she said it, it means I must rite very much to improove.
Sister Eustacia says that Im supposed to write about meself in here. So I will. My name is Bridget Abigail Talbert. I was born on 24 January 1928. I live in St. Abnernathy's Orphanage for Young Boys and Girls. I dont remember my mother, for I was quite small when she died. She caught tu-berc-u-lo-sis and simply "wasted away," according to Mrs. Crenshaw, who was my mothers nurse while she was ill. My father had died as well, he drowned in the deep blak lake thats on the easterly side of the Hill. That lake is very deep and his body was never found. I dont like to go there very often.
To-day me and Tom went out into the woods together. Tom is my best friend. He doesn't get along well with the other boys. Just me. I'm not sure why, but we're always together. Perhaps because I never get along with Lucie Wren and most of the other girls (they say my embroidery is clumsy and my skin as rough as leather, becos I supose it is.) To-day me and Tom went to the brook. It has been very hot lately so we stripped down to our knickers and went in. We let the current take us down it til we reached the meadow. Beyond the meadow is the Hill. The Hill gives me the shivers as well. I know it sounds silly, journal, but sometimes I think of the Hill as the monster that was always in my dreams when I was a baby, like a large sleeping bear that would one day wake up and come after me. Now I'm nearly seven and cant act like that anymore, so I didnt say anything to Tom, because he actually likes the Hill. He sez one day we should climb it. That thought makes me shiver even harder.
"Ah, now you see, that is beautiful," said Lupin, setting down the old book.
"Is it, now?"
"Well, yes. They make my memoirs look like utter cow manure. Wonderful. The musings, oh, excuse me," he consulted the diary again, "mussings are ever so intriguing. Sublime, even."
Bridget grinned wickedly. "Now don't poke fun."
At about midafternoon of that day, the old man had gone into Mr. Lupin's cell and come out an hour later. Bridget had stood outside the cell door after he'd left, having an inner battle with herself. On one hand, she was dying to go in and see the werewolf but on the other she wasn't sure if she really would want to, dreading what she might see. In the end, she went in. Formed between them was a sort of nightly chat, where little was said but much was eaten. They ate their dinners and talked about whatever a Muggle woman and a werewolf being kept in a cave together can think to talk about.
Today it had been particularly insightful. "Do you like beef casserole?" she asked, pushing the door open with her rear and carrying a tray of steaming food.
"Do I like beef casserole? Bridget, I'm surprised, haven't I expressed nothing but positive comments about your cooking so far?" He was sitting upright on the cot, scribbling on the legal pad she had given him several days ago and swinging his now completely usable legs over the edge. "Honestly, I'm starved."
She set down the tray, eyeing him warily. "Mr. Lupin? Are you quite all right?"
"Good lord, Bridget," he muttered, still writing hurriedly on the pad. "I'm not your grandfather or your rich uncle or something of the like. I mean, I'm not that old, am I? Do I reek of age? No, don't answer that. I'm sure I do. But that's not the point. The point is, I want some of your delicious beef casserole very badly. Thank you," he said, taking the dish she handed him. "And I think we can call each other by our names now, can't we? I don't call you Miss…Whatsit. I don't know your surname."
"I don't know your Christian name." She did in fact, but she had a very scary thought suddenly and she wanted to make sure it was not true.
"Well, then, an exchange is in order. Your surname?"
"I haven't used it in a number of years. Hold on."
She ran out of the cell, down the twisting stone corridor to the smallish room where she slept. Tucked under her bed wrapped in a dusty little handkerchief were a number of small momentos, including a brown leather book. She grabbed this and went back to the cell.
"There you go. Read that, go on."
He had, but just the first entry. After the initial comment, he'd asked, "So it's Talbert?"
She nodded. "You?" she asked tensely, dreading the answer.
"Remus." She let out a silent sigh of relief. That was good. He knew who he was. He added thoughtfully, scratching his chin with the ballpoint pen she'd given him (it was a curious habit she'd observed he had), "If I were in anyway true to Roman mythology I would have a brother named Romulus. But then I'd have to get into an argument and be murdered by him as well, so, all in all, I think it's better I don't, don't you?"
"Oh, certainly," she agreed, digging into the beef casserole. "Remus Lupin. Interesting name."
"I've always thought so." He still had not out away the legal pad and was tapping the pen on it, more as a nervous twitch than anything else. "So you were named after your grandmother?"
She shook her head. "No."
"Oh." He stared at the gooey food on his plate. "A great-aunt, maybe?"
"No-o. Why would you think that?"
His eyes widened and said his next words as if trying to persuade her to speak logically, as if he was a man who still had the urge to persuade people to speak logically. "Because the woman who wrote this had the same name as you."
"She should. That's who it is."
"Oh, certainly," he said, starting nibble at a piece of beef. "You were born in 1928, correct? So you're…64. Certainly." He ate bit of beef and then asked earnestly, "Bridget, do you think werewolves are stupid? Because most of us aren't. And in any case, we do know how to tell the relative age of a person."
"Do you? How old do you think I am?"
"Oh, I'd guess about 20, 25."
"Certainly not 64."
"Certainly not."
"Well, you're wrong on both guesses."
"Am I? So, may I ask, Miss Talbert, and I hope I don't sound rude, how old are you?"
"65."
"I see." Remus stared at the casserole for a moment, and Bridget let the silence wash around them comfortably, and she ate her dinner some more. Finally he asked very exasperatedly, "How the hell is that even possible? If you're a Muggle and--,"
"Mr. Lup—er, Remus," she cut in. "You don't look well. We don't have to talk about this anymore, it doesn't matter. I shouldn't have brought the diary out in the first place, as I doubt you care." She made to grab the book from him, but he stopped her.
"No," he said, drawing himself up taller and staring at her. His legal pad and dinner plate slid off his lap. "Bridget, there's something here I don't get. Take that back, there's a lot of things here I don't get, but I'll start with one. You had to look at this diary to remember you own surname?"
Bridget sank back onto the floor from the half-standing position she had been in. "I suppose…I've been here a long time, Mis--,"
"Bridget, I think if you're in your sixties you're more than entitled than to call me by my Christian name."
"A long time," she continued. "If you stay here long enough you can sort of…forget who you are. He sort of has that effect on you. That's why I asked you for your name. I was afraid you wouldn't know it. After he came in, I was afraid you'd forget. Remus, what happened? What did he do?"
To her surprise, he started laughing.
"What? Why are you--,"
"I just find it funny," he began, still chuckling, "that suddenly you're the one begging me to tell you something."
"Oh yes," she spat sarcastically. "That's hilarious. Simply laughable."
"Oh, don't get bitter. I wasn't laughing at you." He picked up his dinner plate again.
"That's what they all say. Or I suppose what they used to say. I've haven't seen most of them since I was about 24." She stared pensively at him, and he ate more of his dinner. "But are you going to tell me what happened?"
"Honestly?" he asked, still not looking up from his plate. "I slept through most of it."
That evening, Simon Troubadour broke the national record for quickest possession of a potion from the black market. He had left the residence of Remus Lupin (who, of course, was not there) and Aurelia Callard at about quarter past seven and had returned with the Veritaserum in hand roughly an hour later. In order to preserve some sense of mystery, the various potions dealers young Simon visited in such quick succession will not be documented (at least, not yet) here, but if Simon's hour-long adventure were it would serve only to credit the young werewolf's haggling abilities and perhaps mildly impress upon you that there are many odd chaps out and about in Wizarding London at this time of night. That said, we will proceed to the scene Simon left behind him, that is nine anxious werewolves, one highly confused young woman, and a small dark man who refused to speak a word.
"Do you think we've given him enough money?" asked Maylor apprehensively to the Callard siblings, Orion Barclay, Belinda, and his wife.
"I should think so," said Orion. "I've enormous faith in Simon's ability to get a good deal." (Indeed, this faith was well placed.)
Marie shook her head emphatically. "I still don't think we should be getting mixed up in this business at all. Black market and such. It's so…illegal."
Aurelia gave her an almost pitying look. "Marie, dear, do you see this?" She pointed to Dalen Butler, who sat bound to a chair in the corner, watching them all sullenly. "We've just taken a bleeding hostage. I doubt a little black market Veritaserum is going to matter much." She thought a moment. "It's like stabbing someone in the chest with a sword and then giving them a paper cut. Do you expect it to matter that much?"
"Good analogy."
"Thank you."
Simon Apparated into the doorway between the front entryway and the sitting room where they all sat. He did not say anything but merely held out the crystalline bottle he clutched in his hands (an unsavory-looking character in a long cloak had tried to wrestle it out of his hands earlier, so a death grip seemed to him the only logical way to hold it.) Aurelia took it from him and the second after she did so he collapsed on the couch, without much regard to the fact three other people were already sitting in it.
"Ugh. Remind me to never order drinks in a pub where the peanuts are older than I am," said Simon, though much of his face was buried in Jamie MacDonald's knee.
"Get off me," she said. "So you got it?"
"Cost quite a bit," he answered, sitting up and squeezing comfortably between Nema and Jamie.
"How much?"
Simon appeared to be doing some quick calculating in his head. "Roughly an arm, a leg, and a pint of virgin blood."
"Where'd you get it?" asked Aurelia, who had uncorked the bottle and was sniffing it.
"What, the potion or the virgin blood?"
Everyone stared at him.
He squirmed uncomfortably. "No one can take a joke around here tonight, have you noticed that? I got in a back alley behind a pub in Bristol."
"Bristol? You had to go that far?"
Simon shrugged. "Such is the price of success. Now, how would you like to go about this?"
The awkwardness of the situation was this: none of those present had the smallest inkling of how to deal with a hostage. They certainly couldn't see themselves forcing their kidnapee to drink something, but then they couldn't just politely request he drink it and then act surprised when he threw the glass containing the precious potion at the wall in defiance. Thus it was with a highly reluctant air that Jamie held Butler's mouth open while Aurelia poured the Veritaserum down his throat.
Nema Carew sat back and watched with the rest as the bound man got a vacant look in his eyes. Nema was a stock girl at the local grocers' so she found all of this highly fascinating, if a bit reckless.
"Can you hear me?" asked Alan, his voice steady and determined. They only had so much time before the Veritaserum's effects would start to wear off, after all.
The man still looked quite blank, but he answered in a low, gravelly voice that reminded Nema strongly of Barry White. "Yes."
"What's your name?"
"Dalen Butler."
Alan asked, "Where is Remus Lupin?"
"In a cave."
Silence.
Alan began, sounding a little more shaken. "Would you care to elaborate on that a bit?"
"No."
Aurelia rolled her eyes and scoffed. "Alan, you can't phrase it like that. Of course he doesn't want to elaborate. You're so wishy-washy."
"Shut--," he began.
"Do the words 'time limit' mean anything to you two?" asked Simon, amid similar protests from the rest of the group. "Just keep going, Alan."
Taking another deep breath and casting a dirty look at his sister, he continued. "Which cave? Town, village, country, maybe?"
Butler named a small village none of them had ever heard of. The cave was apparently in a mountain called, simply, "the Hill," which looked out over the town, which was in a rural area outside of Newcastle.
"What's he doing there?"
"It begins about a year or two ago, when Mr. Billings started that research on souls and their practical applications. It wasn't a new idea, the Druids and other ancient magic peoples had knew about it for centuries, they even used it to their advantage."
Druids? thought Nema. The funny people with the long white robes and all that? She was getting into something with Druids? A friend of hers had been kidnapped by Druids? Remus Lupin, the mild-mannered man who had explained everything she ever wanted to know (and some stuff she didn't) about the Wizarding world and how it worked to her a few years ago just after she had been bitten? That Remus? Those Druids? Nema was so wrapped up in these incredulous thoughts she barely heard Alan's next question, which was quite short.
"How?"
"They'd take a deceased person and try to summon his soul back to Earth."
Alan's brow furrowed. "What did they want to do that for?"
"They thought that the soul itself could be beneficial to the environment it's called back to," began Butler, and though he still sounded highly monotonous, Nema could hear that professional fascination some people got when talking about their jobs, though in this case it wasn't some smarmy arse at a party bragging about being a successful barrister or accountant or something of the like. It was a bit more sinister, particularly as it involved a friend of hers. "It was thought to ensure good crops, rain, what have you. It was a common practice for centuries, taking dead bodies and trying to talk to their souls, to see if they could get them back to Earth. But the practice died out during the different invasions the area underwent. But it didn't all die out, especially at the Hill."
Dalen Butler went onto explain that in his hometown growing up before leaving for Hogwarts he'd heard numerous rumors for years about the Hill, ghost stories, stuff around the fire, about practices that went on there, about how there were so-called "little people" who lived on the Hill who would kidnap little children and sometimes even grown adults to use for these sort of things. He, Dalen, had researched the subject and found that the magic the ancient wizards would practice was oftentimes preformed on the Hill, and before the Roman invasion it could almost be considered a "metropolis" of sorts. There were even rumors that the wizards on the Hill had found out the secret to immortality.
"That's impossible!" said Alan, quite forgetting his composure.
"That's what I thought at first as well. That it was just a myth, something the Muggles added to their ghost stories. But it's true. I've seen it with my own eyes."
Another silence, but Belinda decided to pipe up suddenly. Something was bothering her. Immortal ancient wizards and human sacrifice were certainly not the first thing she thought of when Dolores Umbridge came to mind.
"What's Madam Umbridge to do with it, then?"
"She heard of the soul theory from the theorist working on it, Bayford Billings and later from me. Billings had studied the practice and thought that perhaps instead of the soul being used to bring good crops or Muggle rubbish like that, it could be used as, a…well, a commercial commodity."
To Nema's right there was a snort. It was Alex.
"Right, I can see it now…Mother Umbridge's All-Natural Soul in a Bottle. Made from 100% slaughtered werewolves, I shouldn't wonder."
Mr. Butler shook his head again. "Stranger things have been sold. Some people buy…you know, mooncalf uteruses because they think it will make them better dancers."
Nema had never heard of a mooncalf, but she pulled a face regardless. "That's disgusting. Just like this. Why do you want werewolves, anyway?"
Dalen explained. "Madam Umbridge had two reasons. One, the fact that if a bunch of werewolves go missing, people are more likely to, well, not care that much. Maybe even regard it as almost a blessing."
"I'm beginning to see where the stealing of people's souls is coming in," observed Jamie MacDonald sardonically as she wrote down verbatim what he said on a notebook. "Bit of a lax moral code coming to light here, wouldn't you say?" (Jamie was a secretary and saw the necessity to take down what was said, "even if no one else does," she had said sniffily. No one else saw the necessity to tell her that they could charm a quill to do much the same thing.)
"No more interruptions," Alan told her, and urged Butler to continue.
"Also because of what I suppose you heard from Mr. Billings," he continued, as though Jamie had not spoken. "Their mental composition. I doubt I could explain it to you without getting overly technical. To put it simply, a werewolf's mind has two parts, a wolf part and a human part and while that first part only makes an appearance once a month, it still is enough to effect you soul and your brain, even that other, non-wolf part. It's a highly interesting area of study, I assure you."
"I'm sure," muttered Simon. "I can only imagine how very potent my soul is."
Alan scratched his head. There were a lot of things he wanted to ask but none of them were directed at Butler. He wanted to discuss this with his sister and his fellows, but now they still had something else to find out…
"Back to Remus, then," he said hastily. "What's he--is he--,"
"Is he dead?" asked Aurelia sharply, making even herself uncomfortable in the silence that followed.
Dalen paused in what appeared to be dramatic effect, but was in fact because the potion was beginning to wear off a small bit and he was actually struggling to keep his mouth shut. He found in the end, however, that he couldn't.
"No."
"What's happening to him?"
"I don't know."
"What?!"
Butler explained.
"The man who Madam Umbridge sort of hired to er, well, to do it, he sort of…tossed me out. Won't let me back in the Hill. So I'm out of the loop."
"Whoa, just hold on a second here," started Simon, and he held up his hands in a sort of stop-everything sort of manner. "Are you saying that first, you murdered a man. Just flat out murdered him, you and Umbridge did, just to make a few bucks."
"Yes, we did. Umbridge never liked Adams much anyway, even before he got his bite, and when he did she pressured him to resign. She wasn't too disappointed when he died."
"How lovely," commented Jamie, unable to restrain herself from speaking. "Like I said, lax moral code."
"Anyway, we sort of…well, I sort of bungled the whole thing up. You see, the process needs a personal item of the person in question, and the watch I nicked didn't belong to Adams, so it didn't work. But then the Speaker got a new idea, so he brought Lupin to the Hill on a full moon and planned to do something else. But I never knew quite what. He, er, got a bit sore at me and made me leave the Hill."
"So basically," said Simon, "you killed one of our friends and kidnapped another one and you didn't even do it right?"
"Yes, I suppose you could say…"
"Merlin, we couldn't even get a good evil villain," said Simon, standing up and walking to the icebox in the kitchen. He dug around in it and got out a few more of his treasured spring rolls. "We do always get the bad luck, don't we?"
"Tell that to Remus," Aurelia said soberly, and she grabbed a spring roll.
"We should."
"We'll leave then?"
Belinda sat up straight. "Leave? Where?"
Aurelia raised her eyebrows at her. "To this village. What was it called again?"
Jamie flipped back through her notes. "Little Hangleton."
A/N: There! Finally! Don't worry, I'm going to add more with Remus later, this was the long-awaited (fanfare please) EXPLANATION CHAPTER.
You see, the whole thing came about when my dad had this friend who worked at the University of Minnesota's music department. This friend would come over for dinner a lot (he must've really liked my mom's mashed potatoes or something) and would explain to me (I was still in elementary school) over said mashed potatoes his life's love, that was old English ballads (the guy was rather odd.) Anyway, there was this ballad called "Tam Lin" which was a ballad about a woman who saved her lover from this evil fairy queen. Being the morbid seven year-old I was (obviously before my Harry Potter days) found the whole thing fascinating and often toyed with the idea for stories (I was always writing, even when I was seven). Fast forward a few years and I got the idea to somehow incorporate it into my Lupin story. Perhaps the idea always seemed better in my head than it did on paper (or the screen, I guess.) I think I've explained it as well as possible for now, but if something doesn't make sense, please review or email me to tell me what it is.
Thanks!
Oh, and there was just one more thing: someone who reviewed a long time ago (I won't say who you are) got the canon character that I refer to here and in an earlier chapter. Some of you probably got it by now. Do you?
