Rolf was reading again when Luna appeared. She put her bag down and leaned down to peer into his cage.
"You're Rolf Scamander."
"Er…yes. Didn't I mention that?"
"No, you didn't. Newton Scamander was your grandfather."
"Yes, and, you know, I don't go around introducing myself to everyone as 'Rolf Scamander, grandson of the famous Newt Scamander, and, ironically enough, a werewolf. How are you?'"
Luna smiled at him. "You didn't introduce yourself to me at all."
"No, I suppose I didn't. You'll have to excuse me: I'm getting irritable again."
"I noticed." She nodded at the book.
"Were you able to get the ingredients?"
"Regulus gave me enough for ages, it looks like."
He sighed. "I am eternally indebted to him—and to you."
"Now you only have to tell me how to make it."
"You make it? I thought I'd just wait until next month and make it myself."
"And spend the whole night as you did last night? I see no reason for that. I am reasonably good at potions, but you'll have to walk me through the steps. And you can tell me about your family." She was creating a fire and pulling out her travel cauldron.
"You don't take no for an answer, do you?"
"No, I don't think so. I like to learn and do things for myself. If there is no Father Christmas, I want to find out for myself, rather than just taking people's word for it. That always bothers people. I don't see why."
"I suppose they don't want to see you hurt. If you don't mind my saying so, you're a very fragile-looking little thing."
She smiled at him again. "I have been hurt quite a lot. I suppose I'm used to it by now."
He gave her a very troubled look, with his head cocked to one side. She had to resist the urge to scratch him behind the ears.
"Put water in your cauldron and let the aconite leaves steep in it for half an hour over a low fire," he instructed. "Only about a thimble-full of the leaves." As she measured, he said softly, "I will tell you how I became a werewolf."
Her head came up to stare at him. "I didn't like to ask… It seems private—and painful."
"It is. But I will tell you. You seem like you would understand, and I know you are curious."
"Yes," she admitted. "I always want to find out about things. I was in Ravenclaw, after all."
"Were you? I was in Hufflepuff."
"Were you?" she asked in her turn. Somehow she'd expected—
"You assumed Gryffindor, didn't you? My father was in Gryffindor, but my grandfather was in Hufflepuff. I almost went into Gryffindor, but Hufflepuff suited better. I was a very inoffensive child."
"That's not the only criterion for being in Hufflepuff," Luna said, stirring the leaves with her wand. "I don't know if it even is a criterion. One of the most offensive people I know was a Hufflepuff. Zacharias Smith." She frowned at her wand. "He was worse than Draco Malfoy, because Draco never pretended to be anything but what he was, an arrogant, Pure-Blood Death Eater. Zacharias fooled everyone, but he was a sneak and a coward. Sometimes it makes me angry."
"I can't imagine you get angry often."
"No. But I know why you were put in Hufflepuff."
"Why?"
"Because you're noble and brave because you're kind. Gryffindors are kind because they're noble and brave. There's a difference."
After a silence, Rolf said, "That might be an over-generalization, but I can't bring myself to object to it."
"When were you at Hogwarts?"
"I was only there for three years, from 1985 to 1988. You would have still been a baby."
"Not quite. I was born in 1981. But you're only twenty-seven or twenty-eight? You're younger than you look. I thought you were. It's the beard, I think."
"It will grow at this time of the month. The only thing I can do is keep it decent-looking. But it's more than the beard. It's being a werewolf. It's…traumatic. It makes you grow up too fast, look old too fast. Do things to yourself." He ran his thumb over the scar on his face. "But anyway, yes, I am twenty-eight."
"How did someone as old as your grandfather have a grandson as young as you? He was nearly a hundred when he died, and that was the year before I started school. And I've never even heard of you."
"No, you wouldn't. My family have seen to that. A werewolf in the Scamander family—what a disgrace." For the first time bitterness tinged his voice. "I haven't seen any of my family members in years."
"And yet you're the one following in your grandfather's footsteps."
"Yes, well… Anyway, my age and my grandfather's. He married young, of course, right out of Hogwarts, to my grandmother Porpentina, and while he was working for the Ministry they had a number of children, all in the 1920s. I have aunts and uncles old enough to be my grandparents. Most people don't know that his wife went with him on many of his trips, and they seem to have treated them all as a honeymoon, because there always seemed to be another child born the following spring." His eyes twinkled at her. "But then in the '30s he became Headmaster at Hogwarts—the youngest in history, I'm sure you know, only in his thirties himself, and was rather too busy to have any more children. He always said keeping track of a thousand schoolchildren was harder than keeping track of a herd of Vanishing Quizzals. Schoolteacher was not his favorite profession. He was always meant to be traveling the globe in search of elusive beasts. Why do you smile like that?"
"He sounds like me and my father."
He smiled back. "Perhaps he was. Oh—add the Munkle now and stir clockwise three times. Then bring up the heat a little and add the Essence of Fire Orchid without stirring."
She did. "Please go on."
"Where was I? Oh, yes. In the 1940s he was involved with protecting various magical creatures from the Muggle war, and then afterward he went traveling again, he and Porpentina. They went to Russia in search of the Ukrainian Ironbelly dragon, which no Englishman had ever seen at the time, and while they were away, my father was born, in 1950. My grandfather was fifty-three, and my grandmother was actually older, fifty-five, and my aunts and uncles have always secretly opined that my father, Leopold was his name, was a little Russian foundling they picked up and not their child at all. Especially when he was sorted into Gryffindor. Scamanders have always been in Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw. It was nonsense, of course. My father was more like my grandfather than any of his siblings. But that is how I came to be born in the 1970s when all my cousins were born in the '50s and early '60s."
"And what about your mother? You've never mentioned her."
"You've never mentioned yours!" he flared abruptly. "Ugh—sorry. I'm getting all crawling and burning under my skin again."
"It's alright," she assured him. "I understand. Will the potion be done in time?"
"Should be. Just add one drop of bitter lemon oil and stir counter-clockwise until it turns brown. My mother's name was Ylva. She was a true discovery by my grandparents. They went to Scandinavia in search of the Norwegian Ridgeback and came home with her. She was Swedish. She was beautiful—I barely remember her. My grandfather said he'd intended all the while for my father to marry her, but my grandmother said no one was more astonished than he when they did. Let me see the color of that. Yes, that's right. Now remove the drop of oil."
Luna gave him a puzzled look. "Remove a drop of liquid from a liquid?"
"Oh, it'll come. Just say, 'Accio lemon oil,' and really mean every molecule of it. If you've done it right, it should all turn green."
She concentrated and drew the single drop of oil back out of the potion, laughed to herself when the liquid instantly went bright green. "Is that right?"
"Exactly right. Regulus would be impressed. Just let it boil until it begins to turn blue."
"How do you know Regulus?"
"He and my father were at school together in the '60s. Opposed each other in Quidditch but were fast friends in all else. Now where was I?"
"Your mother," Luna said softly, peering down into her cauldron without quite seeing it.
"Oh, yes." He fiddled with his book. "She died during the First War. I was five years old. It was just one of many attacks by Death Eaters, one of many deaths in those days. Not significant at all."
"Mothers' deaths are always significant," Luna murmured. "They change the children forever."
"Yes. What changed primarily for me, other than—you know, not having a mother—was that we started traveling, my father and I. The traveling was good—it suited us both—but it led to all this. I don't know that I can say it wouldn't have happened if she'd never died, but that's what I think. It was the summer after my third year at Hogwarts. I liked Hogwarts well enough, but I liked traveling better, and the few times I got in trouble at school was when I contradicted the Herbology and Care of Magical Creatures professors, because they were always wrong about certain non-English species. In the summers my father and I traveled together. We went to Sweden for the first time that year, 1988. It's a beautiful place—I always go back there when I need some peace. Then we went to Germany, and that was where we fell in with Remus Lupin. From what I've learned since, I know he had fought the Death Eaters in the War, but he couldn't get a proper Ministry job afterward, so he wandered about a bit, learning ways to oppose the Dark Arts. By that point—I think he was lonely. It's very lonely being a werewolf. People are afraid of you all the time, even when there are only a few days per month when you're dangerous, and if you can take reasonable precautions, there's much less danger. Do you know what Harry Potter's father and his friends did for him?"
"Yes. Harry told us once, at school."
"Such a thing to do," he said wistfully. "But by then the Potters were dead, Sirius Black was in Azkaban, and that other friend was disappeared, and no one wanted Lupin around. He should have sent us away, but I have a feeling he couldn't bear to. Human contact—English contact. People who weren't afraid of him. He must have been just my age," he realized. "Late twenties. I think my father was as fascinated by him as you are by me—my affliction. He let us know straightaway what he was, and we didn't leave him. We should have done. He was trying to make his own Wolfsbane Potion, but he wasn't very good at potions, and I don't think it worked. All I remember of that night is getting dragged from my tent—a great rush of pain and fire and the whole world full of snarling and roaring and teeth—and feeling this overwhelming desire to kill…" He gasped, put his hands over his face, dug his short fingernails into his skin. "This was a bad time to talk about this."
"It's blue," Luna said.
"What?"
"The potion."
It was late afternoon, the sun already edging toward the horizon. He took a few panting breaths. "Then remove it from the heat and take up your wand. You must be steady and very calm. Do you know the Blasting Charm? Not the Curse, but the smaller Charm."
"Yes…"
"Let me see. The rock over there."
In a moment, the rock some distance away exploded with a small bang.
"Very good. Now, can you control it more? Make it smaller."
He made her try several times and coached her until she could make a leaf go up with a tiny poof.
"That's very well done. What you want to do is direct that same power at the surface of the potion. You want it to skip over the top, like skipping rocks on a lake, rather than going straight in. if you don't get it, don't worry. The worst you can do is destroy the potion. I've lasted this long without it; I can last longer."
Luna turned and smiled at him, lifted her wand, and lightly skipped the charm across the surface of the potion. It instantly turned a paler shade of blue.
Rolf laughed. It was the first time she had heard him laugh. "Well done. You are very talented. Few people could have done that on the first try."
"You are a very good teacher. You remind me a little of Harry that way, your patience. What now?"
"Now just let it sit for a few minutes. I will tell you the rest. Not that there is much left to tell."
Luna sat down and fixed her eyes on him. He took a deep breath.
"My father had to Stupefy me to keep me from killing him that night. I was weak and in pain, so the normal difficulties of restraining a werewolf weren't present. Lupin was gone, and we never saw him again. Some people…you know some people abandon their children when they're turned? My father never did. I never went back to Hogwarts, but we traveled, and when the full moon came, he would keep me Stupefied. It grew more difficult as I got older, but finally Regulus found out the truth about why we were avoiding everyone we knew and taught us both to make Wofsbane Potion. He also insisted Remus Lupin hadn't done it." He shrugged. "Well, after that it was much simpler. Our family was still leery of me, but not my grandfather." He smiled. "He taught me how I could use my isolation to further my profession.
"And then—the Second War started, and my father died. Just another casualty of the Wars. Just another wizard dead in the long list of the dead. He died in a battle, one of many we lost. But I don't need to go on. You know as much about that as I do."
Smoke was drifting across the surface of the potion. Luna stared down into it. "Does it comfort you that your parents didn't make your family even more famous by their deaths?"
Rolf jerked, then went still. "I…don't know…"
"I wish my father had not made our family famous by trying to save my life. He betrayed Harry to get me released from Malfoy Manor. That was wrong." She turned and looked at him. "What did Regulus tell you about Lupin?"
"Uh—that he wanted to explain—about that night. That he felt guilty, as well he should. Even that when he went to teach at Hogwarts he rather hoped I would be there, though I was too old by then. Apparently he thought that if Dumbledore let a werewolf be a teacher he'd let one be a student, and I might want to go finish my education. But I didn't, and even if I had, I couldn't have stayed if he was there. Regulus has always insisted Lupin had never done it. But I know what it is to have the purest of intentions and still to lose your mind and want only to kill—and eat. Usually I don't blame him for it, not since I know what it is like, but I've never wanted to see him again. And now it's too late to hear what he had to say. That's when I started using this cage, though, realizing that a werewolf never can really trust himself. I'm—I'm sorry to say this about your teacher. I can tell you liked him."
"Yes. We all did. He taught us. That was more than any of our other DADA professors did. But he almost killed Harry once."
"Harry Potter?"
"Yes. Just as you said. The nicest person in the world, but he still lost his mind once. Only Sirius Black saved them. Harry, Hermione, and Ron. Harry told us, later. He could have attacked you. Only…I hope he didn't. You must be a very sweet person in normal life, Rolf."
He went red. "Why?"
"Because you're such a nice person even when you think you're irritable."
"Oh—er—the potion is done."
"Just in time." She glanced out at the lovely sunset. "How much do you need?"
"About a quarter of a pint."
"Such a small amount, for something that keeps you from losing your mind."
"It tastes nasty enough."
Luna lifted a small rock with her wand and placed it inside the cage, transfigured it into a goblet, and directed a stream of smoking blue liquid into it. Rolf picked it up and smelled it. "Smells alright." He tasted it and shuddered. "Urgh. Tastes alright." He lifted the goblet to her. "Here's to you, moon-girl." He downed it in one go, making faces.
"Do you want me to unlock your cage?"
"No! No. This potion is untried. I'll stay in the cage tonight, whatever happens. I won't know until I turn again. But look here, you've been here all day talking to me. You must be sick of me, or at least starving."
"I'm not sick of you. But I will eat my dinner." She pulled something like a Tibetan version of a pasty out of her bag. "Would you like one?"
"My dear girl, when I'm hungry, I want something raw. Anyway, I ate earlier while you were gone. My guides brought me some…well…food."
"Did you ever try sushi? It's raw."
"Fish?"
She shrugged. "Don't wolves eat fish?"
"Maybe, but not fiddling little piles of it on lumps of rice!"
"Not even when you're fully human?"
"When I'm fully human, my tastes run more to very large pieces of venison."
"Not rabbits?"
"No. I don't ever eat rabbit in my normal state. The idea makes me sick."
"How odd."
"Not at all. It's—auggggh!"
It had begun again. Luna said, "Do you want me to go away?"
"No—no—you see, I'm taking it on faith that your potion worked."
Even if the potion worked, the transformation was no less painful. When the moon had fully risen, a light brown wolf with black points lay panting in the cage. It got up slowly and bared its teeth at Luna with a low growl.
"Rolf, can you understand me?"
The growl stopped. The wolf cocked its head in a manner so reminiscent of the human Rolf that she grinned.
"That is you, isn't it?" She put out her hand, and the wolf snarled. She quickly withdrew it. "Alright, I'm keeping my distance. You are snappish, aren't you?"
The wolf lowered his head in an attitude of shame, and she laughed. "It is you. I don't suppose you can talk. That would be the most frustrating thing. I like to talk, even if no one likes to listen."
Blue eyes fixed on her, the wolf settled down on the floor of the cage and put his muzzle down on his paws. She smiled at him.
"Tonight I will sleep here properly. Look." She conjured up herself a pillow and pulled a bright square of fabric from her bag. When she shook it out, it expanded itself into a crazily-patched quilt. "My mother made me this, years ago. She would be glad to know I use it for camping on my expeditions. No tent, just the beautiful sky. I suppose you don't think it is so beautiful. How sad it would be to hate the moon."
He cocked his head at her again. She snuggled up under her mother's quilt. She was quite close to the cage.
"Nights like this remind me of the day my mother died," she said after a few moments. "Only because they're absolutely unlike the day my mother died. Cold, clear, bright nights. The day she died was hot and muggy. I was nine. I was watching her practice spells outside in our garden. She was so brilliant at them. She could do so many wordless spells. She was always trying out new ones, doing ones everyone said couldn't be done wordlessly, combining them… She was so creative. And then suddenly she blew up."
He jerked his head up and stared at her.
"Blew up—exploded. There was a great bang, and I was knocked off my stool, and dust was blowing everywhere. Her dust. I've worked out since that she was probably trying a combination of Confringo and her own household cleaning spell, wordlessly, maybe so she could blow something up without making a mess. But she was never very good at cleaning, so…"
He put his nose against the bars and gave a faint whine. Luna put her hand through the bars, and he laid his face along her hand, soft and warm.
"You really are a Hufflepuff." She stroked his fur with her other hand. "Her dust went all over the garden. I have often thought that the wonderful plants we were able to grow after that were from her. Especially the Dirigible Plums. She tried to get that plant to take root for the longest time. It kept floating away. But after that it stayed and grew beautifully." She smiled and scratched between his ears. "It really is a beautiful night." She yawned. "Do you mind if I go to sleep?"
He got up deliberately and turned so that his back was against the bars of the cage. Luna understood. She turned over and put her back against his warm, soft fur, pulled her quilt up around her ears, and was asleep in an instant. The wolf lay and gazed up at the moon, thinking human thoughts and controlling inhuman impulses.