Rated PG for self-deception and romantic attachment.

It took Remus a long time to acknowledge that his behaviour towards his employers’ daughter was unethical.

He had returned from the expedition to Perthshire with good intentions. I can hide this, was his automatic resolution. What she doesn’t know can’t hurt her. He would never indicate, by word or deed, that Ariadne – that Miss MacDougal – was anything more to him than a casual acquaintance, and a social superior at that. Ariadne didn’t care about social distinctions, but she tended to respect them when her parents were around; it should be easy to maintain the correct distance for the few remaining weeks of her holiday. Then she would go back to school, and probably stay away all year. She would be among her own friends, and never spare him a thought. By the time she set foot in Kincarden again, he would have doubtless lost his job, and that would be the end of it.

Good intentions lasted all through the afternoon, when he was kept occupied with the barley, while Ariadne took Morag out to the sheep. They lasted through dinner, when he kept his eyes to his plate, while she looked from one parent to the other and spoke only of the tourist traps in Perthshire. They lasted through the evening chores, when Ariadne was busy in the kitchen. But after the chores, there was nothing to do. Muggle farmers would have been glad of an early night, but harvesting was less strenuous for wizards; over an hour of light remained, and William had walked off to the edge of the property for some obscure purpose of his own. Remus saw Ariadne wander into the barn, and he wandered in after her before he remembered that he had promised himself not to.

That evening they talked until long after dark. The next morning Mr MacDougal instructed him to act as Miss MacDougal’s tutor, to spend every evening going over her books. Withdrawal was now conveniently impossible.

Next he justified the situation by asking his conscience, Why shouldn’t I have a friend? The MacDougals were naïve if they really believed that two young people who had no other intelligent company available could spend every evening together and not become friends. They can’t be that stupid; of course they expect us to be friends.

Why, then, interrupted his conscience, do you both behave as if you had something to hide?

At every meal, Ariadne chose the seat next to her father, while Remus sat near the foot of the table, as far from her as he could. He said nothing to anyone unless someone (never Ariadne) spoke to him first. She occasionally initiated a conversation with her parents, but more often waited for them to question her. In her parents’ presence, she rarely gave a sign that she acknowledged his existence.

Her mother noticed it. “Ariadne, dear, Remus puts a great deal of effort into tutoring you. Will you not ask him if his day went well?”

“I beg your pardon, Mamma. Had you a good yield in the crib today, Mr Lupin?”

“Excellent,” he replied, avoiding her eye. He would not dare report in front of the MacDougals that any part of his day had gone wrong.

Out in the fields, they had little cause to work together. The barley was only the beginning of the harvest, for the MacDougals also had sidelines in wheat and oats. Kenneth supervised William in the fields, positioning their scythes in rows at the edge, and then commanding, “Tondeo!” The tools sliced through the stalks, which flew into the air then landed horizontally. Then Kenneth would cast the Colligo spell (it made a dreadful mess when William tried it), and the straws gathered together in sheaves. Each sheaf had to be separately subjected to the Desiccatio Charm (this was one that William could do, so they left him to it) and then levitated across to the cart. Once the first cart was loaded, Remus took it to the threshing floor, where he worked with Mr MacDougal.

“Why can ye no levi-tet them tae t’ barrn?” asked William.

“Because if sheaves are flying through the air all day, some Muggle will maybe see them,” explained Kenneth for the tenth time. William asked the same question nearly every day.

Ariadne sometimes guided the carts into the barn, since she could do this without magic, but more often Remus came out to fetch them. Occasionally he saw her in the field, poring over a school book, waiting for her brother to give her an instruction, and his eyes would follow her while he walked back to the barn; he didn’t think she noticed. But more often she was in the sheep fold, and the grain fields were empty of her presence. Once the sheaves were in the barn, Mr MacDougal performed the Tritico charm, which separated the grain from the stalks; then Remus winnowed with a simple Ventilo and directed the heavy grain into the crib.

The men left the harvesting in the middle of the afternoon to return to the lambs, who needed to be weighed and weaned. Sometimes Ariadne spent the whole day in the pastures to watch the sheep in the ordinary Muggle way; more than once Remus interrupted her guiding back the strayers, a book still open in her left hand, and surprised her by pulling back the sheep with an “Accio!” But he never spoke to her if any other member of the family were present.

She doesn’t want her parents to know that you are friends, rebuked his conscience, and nor do you.

But it was difficult to maintain the posture of menial farmhand when her parents had made him her teacher, presumably with authority over her. It was almost as difficult to assume the authority of a teacher when they both knew that he would be a menial again tomorrow. And when he treated her like an equal – the way she treated him – the gulf of professional distance yawned unnaturally between them.

“You will not be able to see the book if you sit so far away,” she once said – but she passed the book over, so that he didn’t have to move. It wasn’t an invitation, he was sure. She never tried to move closer, or to deflect the conversation from her studies. But within twenty minutes, they were always talking about something else. And if he even remembered that the conversation had become unprofessional, friendly, even intimate… he always argued, “Why shouldn’t I have a friend?”

He didn’t want her to go back to school. He hoped against hope that he would be instructed to escort her to King’s Cross Station, so that he could say goodbye to her properly. But on the first of September he was ordered out to the potato fields at dawn. By the time he had a plausible excuse to sneak back to the house – an owl brought an unaddressed catalogue from Diagon Alley and someone needed to dump it on the kitchen table – it was too late; Ariadne was vanishing into the Floo even as he entered the back door.

He immediately sat down at the kitchen table, potato fields calling him or not, to write a note of apology. This is the act of a desperate man, he reminded himself. She is going to school. She won’t remember me once she’s there. She is happier at school. She has her own friends there. As of today, I am completely superfluous to her life. A nuisance, even.

Yet he wrote. He wrote as if they were still friends. He wrote as if he could still be useful to her. He wrote as if she would write back. And he told the owl to take the message to Hogwarts, because he didn’t want her to read it on the train in front of her curious friends.

Ariadne’s reply arrived before breakfast the next morning. She had not even started lessons yet, but her account of her journey and arrival was so friendly that he was drafting a reply before he knew it. She seemed to like his letters, for, amazingly, she wrote every day. Even if she didn’t have time to write properly, she would acknowledge his letter with a line such as:

Dear R, So much to do today that I cannot tell you any of it, but of whatever is yet seeming of interest tomorrow, you can in due course be expecting a full account. A.

The candle that he sent her on her birthday was an impulse buy. He had meant to give her a book, and he had meant to spend only a Galleon. But personal shopping had to be fitted in around general errands for the farm; when Kenneth gave him permission to go to Gringotts to deposit his wages, he didn’t dare spend more than ten minutes in Flourish and Blotts. He realised, as his eyes swept the well-stocked book shelves, that he had no idea what Ariadne read when she wasn’t reading school books; and then his glance lighted on the candles arranged among the note pads and quills. He knew, vaguely, that he was supposed to be saving his money; his job provided food and shelter, so his wages – ten Galleons a week – were usually deposited intact. So far the only incursion into his savings had been some odd expenses for the holiday in Perthshire (the MacDougals had financed campsite rental and food, but not entrance tickets or ice creams) and basic stationery, most of which was used to write to Ariadne. Now he suddenly found himself breaking out four Galleons and thirteen Sickles so that a pretty candle could double as reading-lamp and pot-pourri.

He had forgotten why he was saving anyway. He already owned a house, and he would never have a family to support. If he didn’t spend the money on Ariadne, it would only accrue to the benefit of the Gringotts goblins. And she seemed pleased that he had thought of her.

The candle is causing a great deal of speculation at school. Hestia is believing it came from Aunt Macmillan (whose present was actually thermal underwear), but Sarah insists that I have acquired a male admirer. Madam Pince frowned when I brought it into the library, and said a great deal about hot wax falling on books, even though I explained that it was an Everlasting. I placed it in the centre of the table, and eight students could read by its light.

Cousin Lucius gave me a diamond watch. I’m thinking I’ll never wear it, because it’s too fine to match my clothes – definitely finer than school uniform! The watch that my parents gave me when I was ten keeps perfect time yet and was given with a great deal of love. There was nothing from Severus, who yet maintains the pretence that we are not related, but I do not doubt that Kenneth will send Janet to buy me a book. Ivor and Hestia conned the house-elves into baking me a cake, and Richard provided Filibuster’s fireworks, so everybody is happy in the Gryffindor common room.

About tomorrow night: I have managed to lure my parents away from Kincarden for the evening, and I will try to detain them overnight, but I cannot guarantee that they will stay away all Friday. Your best bet would be the shepherd’s hut, with a strong hint to William to let you out in the morning. Teach him the Alohomora charm in advance, and hope for the best.

A week later he was writing:

Your brother is becoming very annoyed by William’s proficiency in the Alohomora charm. No lock on the property is safe from William’s unlocking, and we see every door swinging in the wind and rain.

Ariadne, I don’t want you to feel responsible for my problems. I am grateful for your help, but it’s a burden that no student should have to bear in her N.E.W.T. year. We can delay the inevitable but we cannot prevent it: in the end, I will be found out.

She ignored this paragraph for a couple of weeks, but eventually she addressed it:

Any delay in discovery is better than none. Month by month, we deal with it. This month everything will go well, for I am arranging to come home for the weekend. Try to look a little surprised when you see me – surprised, but not too interested.

In fact he managed the surprise with no trouble. He hadn’t seriously expected to see her again, not standing in the kitchen on a working day, and when he saw her there, chatting to her mother, arranging a vase of marigolds on the table, and giving no sign that she had seen him, that stopped him in his tracks.

All through Saturday, as he slept off his affliction, Ariadne was there. He could hear her quill scratching as he turned on the bed. Whenever he opened his eyes, she was sitting nearby, apparently floating in front of his line of vision. If he tried to speak, she offered water. Finally, when he awoke enough to hoist himself to vertical in the bed, he made out her words.

“They have not missed you yet, Remus. Everything’s all right. Are you well?”

She had placed a jar of marigolds next to his bed too, together with a couple of books and a writing pad and quill, as if she were nursing him in an infirmary. She was sitting cross-legged on William’s bed, which explained why she had appeared to be floating in front of him, and she was working on a scroll that looked like a school essay. He asked, “Ariadne, have you been here all day?”

“I have. You’re teaching me, remember?”

The situation suddenly seemed wildly funny. She had a secret too. She hadn’t come home to be his pupil. She had come home for him. This month she had gone to some trouble to cover up his lycanthropy, just as she went to considerable trouble to write to him every day. As he suppressed his grin he acknowledged what was happening. She didn’t only want to have his friendship, she wanted to be his friend.

And he still did not accept that there was anything wrong with this.

Whom am I hurting? he argued with his conscience. Ariadne is home for the weekend, but she isn’t neglecting her studies, and she hasn’t directly disobeyed or deceived her parents. If she wants me as a friend, why shouldn’t I be one?

And the lies of omission? his conscience nagged. What about everything that you don’t tell your employers?

My whole life has been a lie of omission, he protested. And so has Ariadne’s. It’s the only way I can survive or she can have any reasonable comfort at home. It’s the way she has to live until she leaves her parents’ house, and it’s the way I have to live until society changes.

And what about that huge lie of omission right in the middle of your “friendship” with Ariadne?

I’m keeping that private because it really would hurt her to find out about that. Any young girl would be distressed and terrified to realise that her teacher fancied her. But as long as she doesn’t know, our being friends can’t hurt her. I’m the one who can come off second-best. The risk is all mine, and I can take it if I choose.

When Ariadne came home again in November, she was apologetic. “Having the full moon on Sunday night is bad timing. I can let you out of the hut on Monday morning, but there’ll be nobody to look after you during the day.”

He failed miserably to look grave. The timing had brought Ariadne home for the whole weekend, and he wouldn’t be wasting any of it being sick.

When she didn’t come home in December, and the full moon fell in a cold snap, he charmed the shepherd’s hut to heat up to twenty-five degrees as soon as the sun rose. It was a ridiculous level of warmth, but it was worth it, because he awoke bruised and exhausted, but not frozen. He had to lie and swelter until the middle of the day, when William, who had been half-heartedly looking for him, happened upon the hut and once again experimented with Alohomora.

“It’s gey het un herre,” commented William, as the door nearly swung off its hinges and the heat blasted out to the frosty hillside.

Remus had to plead a magical accident, as well as a bout of winter flu.

Two days later he was sent to Hogsmeade to bring Ariadne home from school. “There is no need to have Miss MacDougal travel all the way to London, and keep her from home another nine hours,” said Mr MacDougal. “She has been studying so hard that she’s maybe not even had time to finish all her Christmas shopping. Remus, you have to allow her to purchase whatever she’s wanting in Hogsmeade before you bring her through the Floo.”

Needless to say, Professor McGonagall did not find the solution so easy. “Miss MacDougal was booked onto the Hogwarts Express. She has either to travel on it or to stay at school unless we have signed permission from her guardians to do otherwise.”

Remus had to walk out of the Hogwarts gates, Apparate back to Kincarden, entice a signed notice of permission out of Mrs MacDougal, and Apparate to the gates of Hogwarts again. By this time it was almost eleven o’ clock, and the thestrals were drawing the school carriages into Hogsmeade Station. Remus located Ariadne without difficulty, but he then had to negotiate her release with Hagrid.

“Highly irreg’lar,” Hagrid complained. “Changin’ plans at the last minute. Yer not her mum or her dad, are yeh, Remus?”

“I have their permission.” Remus handed over the note.

“It looks all righ’, but please tell them for next time to make up their min’s a week before term ends. How do I prove to Professor McGonagall that you weren’t some boyfrien’ who forged that note fer yer own advantage?” Hagrid showed enough of a smile to deter further argument; but Ariadne’s friends were apparently entertaining the same doubts.

“Ariadne, is that man your boyfriend?” asked a blonde girl whom he quickly identified as Sarah. “The one you’ll never tell us about who writes all those letters?”

Ariadne only laughed, and said that Mr Lupin worked on the farm, but he could tell that she wasn’t comfortable with the question. He would definitely never let her feel she was being asked for anything more than friendship.

Once the Hogwarts Express had departed, Ariadne confirmed that she hadn’t started her Christmas shopping, and they went into Scrivenshaft’s to do it. She took a long time selecting an almanac for her father, and finally admitted that she wanted one that did not show the full moons. It only took her ten minutes to pick out an armload of books for the rest of the family, and then she said, “Let’s go to Zonko’s. William will not be wanting a book, and poor little Morag will be wanting at least one present that’s not one.”

“A gift for William? Is it your custom to give presents to the menials?”

“It is if I’m home for Christmas. Though there are rather strict rules about what’s a suitable present.”

“What, no pink teddy bears!”

“Especially not if you can press their paws to make them sing ‘Santa Claus is Coming to Town’.”

“What other rules are there?”

She measured his face before deciding to tell him. “No strong spirits, because William does not cope well with alcohol. My parents usually give him a crate of Butterbeer. Nothing violent or noisy or smelly, so we’ll have to be careful which Zonko’s product we select. And… if I’m buying… ” she looked embarrassed, but he was too fascinated to excuse her from answering, “nothing costing more than ten Sickles.”

“And the shame of this True Confession… is it that you might hurt my feelings, or that your parents will magically overhear what you said and have their feelings hurt?”

“You’re laughing at me again! I assume that if you can refer to yourself as a ‘menial’, then your feelings are safe. But my mother… she would not like to know that I’d repeated her words.”

“Does she regret that she said them?”

“She does not. But she’d be very hurt to think that you knew you had a market value. You’re supposed to be believing that we’re all elevated above such tawdry discussion of Sickles and Knuts.”

“And what are the menials allowed to spend on you?”

She pretended to be shocked. “What travesty! A labourer gives his landlord nothing but his labour. He cannot give back his well-earned Knuts to the employer just because it’s Christmas. Not even if the Knuts have been Transfigured into a box of chocolates.”

“So William never gives you anything at Christmas?”

“Of course not.”

“So I’d better give you this now, when they’re not looking.”

For a moment she was confused by the parcel he handed her, which really was the shape of a box of chocolates. “Mr Lupin, are teachers allowed to give presents to their pupils?”

“Only if they give an identical present to every student in the class.”

“That’s appearing to be in order then.” Her face steadied to its usual colour as she unwrapped the paper. She probably knew from the weight that the present was a book. “It is… you remembered that I was wanting to read it!” The second-hand copy of Memoirs of Cliodna (Montmorency’s translation) was at least a hundred years old, the pages yellowed, the spine so conspicuously sturdy that it must be obvious that he had used charm-work to repair it. Ariadne cradled it as if it were a baby, opened it, then slammed it shut. “I will not be tempted.” She moved a step backwards, as if reading the book in the open street were not the only temptation she was resisting. “I’ll save it until I can be alone with it. Thank you. And this one’s for you… but it’s not wrapped… ”

“Wrapping is a silly custom,” he said automatically. “We put the paper on just so that it can be taken off again. And… did you really?” He remembered in time not to hug her. The book, very new and very obviously costing a great deal more than ten Sickles, was Emeric Switch’s new release, Tempting Transcendence: New Transfiguration Tricks to be taken with Logic and Humour.

She shrugged. “It was no difficult guess. Just do not tell my parents that it came from me.”