Rated PG for malice, materialism and things that go bump in the night.

“Mr Lupin, how did you scratch your face?” asked Jonathan Miller. “Did you go hang-gliding and fall off?”

“Silly, teachers aren’t paid enough to afford to go hang-gliding,” said Wayne Elliott. “Do you have a cat, Mr Lupin?”

“It was actually a dog,” said Remus, hoping this didn’t count as a lie. “But it belongs to… er… a friend. It doesn’t – usually – live with me.” After a third full moon without Wolfsbane Potion, Remus was champing at the bit to be reunited with Ariadne. He had become soft; he had had nearly five years in which to forget that the wolf was a beast. Now he was forced to live through it again. Joe had carefully locked him up in the garage each moonrise, and had let him out again each moonset. Each moonset he had found himself stiff, bruised and bloodied. This morning, a long scratch against his chest would start bleeding again if he carelessly knocked it.

Fortunately he didn’t have to explain himself any further to his students, because they were cut off by a wail from Autumn Silverstone. “He’s de-e-e-ad! Cricket’s dead!”

All the children rushed to crowd around the hamster cage, where Cricket the hamster was frozen rigid in his nest. Natalie Palmer and Sophie Williams began to cry.

Gershom Wallace remarked, “You can tell whether he’s really dead from whether he’s hard or soft when you poke him. But he probably is, because he was nearly three years old. That’s like being ninety for a human.”

Jacqueline Sutton announced, “It’s Charlotte Merriman’s fault. She’s the one who was supposed to feed him.”

“His food bowl and water bottle are nearly full,” corrected Remus, “and his cage is clean. So we know that Cricket was well looked after right up to the very last minute.”

“Charlotte was supposed to feed Cricket,” persisted Jacqueline. “And she forgot, because she’s too stupid to take responsibility for pets.”

Terry Boot did not stand up, but he turned his head towards Jacqueline quite casually. “I watched Charlotte feeding Cricket twice,” he remarked. “She changed his water too.”

“Jacqueline,” warned Remus, “I think you owe Charlotte an apology.”

Jacqueline ignored Remus. “Terry Boot, you can mind your own business! Charlotte Merriman, you nearly dropped Cricket yesterday. I bet that scared him to death.”

“Jacqueline, I want you to say sorry to Charlotte. Otherwise I will telephone your mother now and ask her to come and talk to me today.” He knew he shouldn’t have said this in front of the whole class, but he also knew that the threat would lose impact if he waited. He added, “You have as long as it takes me to look up the number.”

Jacqueline glared at everyone while Remus walked over to the class telephone. Charlotte was tearful. Terry was frowning at his own fists, clearly trying to control his temper. Feeling in slow motion, Remus opened the address book and picked up the receiver. He had already dialled the first digit when Jacqueline finally began to speak.

“Charlotte, I’m sorry you’re so incompetent and untrustworthy. It’s very regrettable, because it caused Cricket’s death. I’m sorry about what the R.S.P.C.A. will do to you when they find out that you murdered a hamster. I’m sorry you’re such a criminal, because it means that if Hinduism is true you’ll be reincarnated as a cockroach. If Islam is true, I’m even sorrier, because you’re certain to go to Hell. I am very sorry indeed to have scum like you in this class.”

Remus telephoned Mrs Sutton.

After that Remus wasn’t surprised when the Headmaster informed him that it would not be possible to renew his contract next year. Some of the other teachers commiserated (“I wish I’d had your courage four years ago!” said Shannon Reid), but Remus found he didn’t care. He was able to laugh his way through the final three weeks of the academic year without sparing a thought for the impression he was creating on Harold Cecil or the parents. He had already been sacked, so he could do what he liked.

How had it happened that he had come to care more about his pupils than his job? Didn’t it bother him that he was once again left without the means to support his family?

Apparently not. When he wasn’t actually teaching, all he could think about was seeing Ariadne and the children again. He would face them penniless, but his mind refused to take a responsible attitude to this reality. After all, when had a lack of money ever bothered Ariadne?

The summer term ended one week before a full moon. Remus resisted the impulse to charge across to Germany and imbibe the full dose of Wolfsbane Potion.

“Let’s just remind ourselves of the situation,” he said to the immobile Joe. “Once I’ve rejoined Ariadne, I’ll be considered accessory after the fact to whatever illegal activities she needs to perform. We don’t know how long it will be before we can safely return to Britain, but it might be years. We’ll be on the move and we don’t speak the languages, so we’ll have difficulty finding work, but we won’t be entitled to benefits. We have enough savings to keep us for twelve months, but if we have to spend half of it on travel expenses and potions ingredients, it will be gone by Christmas. We really don’t know what we’re doing in Europe, but we don’t have any other options.”

Joe’s silence might have been a reproach, but perhaps it was only his own conscience needling him.

“Yes, I know, I could look for another teaching job, and send money to support Ariadne wherever she goes. But Sarah will be leaving her soon, and then she’ll be alone and unprotected in Europe unless I join her. Surely she’d rather have me there with her, even if it means financial hardship? We might be heading in an unwise direction, but really it’s the only direction we have.”

Remus allowed himself five days to put his affairs in order. Joe seemed to understand that he was to remain in their house and take care of it. Remus paid all the bills, tidied the garden (which he had neglected since Ariadne left), packed his suitcase, and put his collection of borrowed milk bottles out on the doorstep for the milkman to collect. He wrote to Madam Bones, under cover to Kingsley, explaining exactly what they were doing and, as an afterthought, he wrote to Ariadne’s parents. It was possible, after all, that they regretted their rejecting attitude to their only daughter.

On Wednesday he went to Smith’s in the Victoria Centre. While he was browsing a selection of Muggle maps and tourist guides, a familiar voice behind him exclaimed, “Mr Lupin! Mr Lupin, you were right – it happened!”

He turned around. There stood Terry Boot, balancing a heavy armload of his sister’s books, his mousy hair dishevelled. He looked radiant and relaxed, not at all in the mood to campaign for justice.

“Did your letter come?” Remus asked.

“It came yesterday – Mr Lupin, it explained everything! My parents thought it was a joke, but my sister said that after eleven years of living with my ‘accidents’, they ought to know it was likely to be real. Some lady with a Scottish name is going to visit us tomorrow to prove it isn’t a joke. Mr Lupin, do you think she’ll manage to convince them?”

“Professor McGonagall convinces most people,” he said. “I went to school with a girl just like you – she had parents who thought the letter was a joke and a sister who knew it wasn’t. After their parents had met Professor McGonagall, they were completely happy and supportive about their daughter’s education.”

Terry beamed. “Even if they don’t believe your Professor, it’s good enough for me,” he said. “I know now that there are other people like me in the world. Where is your friend now? Can I meet her?”

That was an unlucky question, because Remus had to admit, “She died – a long time ago. But she had a son, a boy named Harry Potter, whom you’ll certainly be meeting.” He tore off half his shopping list and wrote down some names. “Listen, my wife has a niece, a girl named Morag MacDougal, who I think will be in your class. And there’s a boy called Ernie Macmillan, who’s their cousin, and another named Stephen Cornfoot. Tell those people that you’re new to… to all this… and they’ll show you around.”

A few hours later Remus was stepping out of the public Floo in Karlsruhe, walking past two tables of beer-drinking Swabians, and exiting to a Muggle street where Audis and Mercedes were flashing past at a far higher speed than was legal in Nottingham. A metallic-red Jaguar was parked two doors down, and a curly-haired man in a leather jacket was sitting in the driver’s seat, apparently waiting for someone. Remus approached tentatively, established that the Jaguar-driver was indeed Nick Diamond, loaded his suitcase into the back seat, and boarded. He was glad he was only a passenger in this contraption; it was soon racing through the Black Forest highways at a velocity that would have given his grandparents a heart-attack.

If his apprehension showed on his face, Mr Diamond misread his expression. “Nice, isn’t it? Pity it’s only hired; I wouldn’t mind owning one of these. But Sarah wants a Bentley.”

The speed meant that the drive was mercifully brief; quite abruptly, the pine trees cleared, a signpost indicated that they were welcome in Bad Herrenalb, and the Jaguar landed in front of a half-timbered cottage that might have been built from gingerbread. Remus was still unloading his suitcase when a voice behind him shouted.

“Daddy!”

Elizabeth hadn’t forgotten him.

She wriggled in his arms and told him something very important. “Daddy, baby, baby!”

“Yes, we’ve had a baby.”

“Baby!”

Someone else was hugging his knees and, with a hint of disdain, informed him, “Babies are not as much inchesting as Elizabeff finks.”

“What interests you, Matthew?”

“Nigel the Knight Bus.”

While he was juggling both children, Nick Diamond kindly carried his case, and Ariadne emerged from the cottage door. She was carrying the baby in question.

Ariadne still had the bluest eyes in the world.

David looked like Remus’s father.

Ariadne had one arm free. Remus had no arms free. Matthew seemed to have at least five arms free. But somehow Remus managed to embrace all of them at once.

“Let’s eat dinner,” Sarah interrupted.

Something smelling of wild herbs and mushrooms was standing on a round table laid for six. Remus was disconcerted. He was grateful to Sarah for taking care of Ariadne and the children for so long, sacrificing her career and taking only half a day to attend Ivor’s funeral, yet somehow he hadn’t imagined her being there on their first night. He certainly hadn’t given a thought to Nick Diamond, who, as a Muggle, presumably didn’t know anything about their real business in the Black Forest.

“Nick and I have theatre tickets in Baden for eight o’ clock,” said Sarah, “so we’d appreciate an early dinner.”

“I’m wanting to sit on Daddy’s lap,” said Matthew.

Remus pulled him up, only to find that Elizabeth wanted to sit on his lap too. Balancing both children gave him no spare hands for eating, so Ariadne had to cut his food and spoon it into his mouth. Remus wondered how it looked to Nick Diamond, and decided he didn’t care.

“Do it this way, Daddy,” said Matthew. “Charm your fork to feed you!” Matthew snapped his fingers in what was obviously an attempt to charm the fork. Instead, all the food on the plate flew up into the air, whirled around in a cyclone formation, then flapped out of the window like a butterfly.

Nick Diamond stared.

“Matthew is a wizard,” said Sarah matter-of-factly. “Remus is a very powerful wizard, but Ariadne’s witchcraft has depth rather than power.”

Nick Diamond laid down his knife.

“Nick, I haven’t been using magic on you,” she said. “If you want to marry me, you’ll have to get used to magic. If you don’t, I’ll have your memory Obliviated so that you don’t remember anything about it.”

Nick put down his fork. “Perhaps we can discuss this on the way to Baden?”

“No,” said Sarah, but more to Ariadne than to Nick. “This is something I have to explain before we go out. When I marry Nick, I’m going to sell my flat in Diagon Alley.” She paused. “And… with my Muggle husband, Muggle house and Muggle job… I don’t think I’ll have much more to do with the wizarding world.”

Remus knew he was gaping, but Ariadne didn’t look surprised. She said, “So that’s what you have not been telling me these two months past.”

“It’s a well-considered decision,” said Sarah. “I’ll still respect the Statute of Secrecy. I’m keeping my wand too – it’ll be useful for housework. But otherwise… I really don’t have many ties to the wizarding world.”

“Ivor’s death was a great shock to us all,” said Ariadne, leaving Remus wondering if he’s just missed ten minutes’ conversation.

“And their failure to catch the murderer was the last straw,” said Sarah. “They didn’t even try. But there are other irritations too. They’ve done nothing for Veleta… they ostracise werewolves and then they reject the Wolfsbane Potion too… they simply can’t see beyond their own closed community, when they could be using magic to end world famine or the Greenhouse Effect. I’m tired of fighting their corruption. Beyond your family, Joe, Hestia, Kingsley and Richard, I really don’t have any attachments in this community. Ariadne, you’re invited to the wedding – if you can enter Britain with any hope of safety! – but after that I won’t be coming back.”

When they waved Sarah and Nick off to Baden-Baden, Remus finally had his family to himself. He was very sure he would rather own the new Nimbus 2000 than a Jaguar. He helped Ariadne to bath Matthew and Elizabeth, then he washed the dishes while she washed nappies. Finally he turned to meet her eye… and found that he was to be sharing the bed with baby David.

She smiled half-apologetically. “He’ll sleep after I’ve fed him,” she promised softly. “There is room for three, since one of us is so small.”

Much later that night, when David lay asleep between them, Remus asked Ariadne, “Have you really been here for twelve days without meeting any werewolves?”

“It’s been a busy month,” she murmured, nestling up to him, “and the werewolves are not much wanting to meet me.”

“Why ever not?”

“They are… distrustful… of other people. They are outcasts in the magical community… much as they are in Britain… they have nowhere to go except the Black Forest. According to the German Werewolf Registry, they are all Sylvanian.”

Suddenly Remus was wide awake. “All? Ariadne, how anti-social are these people? Are we dealing with criminals like Fenrir Greyback?”

“The Fabelwesenminister says not. He claims they have no leader, and are not in any way an orderly society. They are just… existing… wild… in the forest.”

“How were you able to discuss all this with the Farb – with the man you said?”

“He speaks very good English. It’s seeming that all the German officials speak better English than the French, and they are more welcoming to visitors. But Germans are more frightened of werewolves, because they have not thought to lock them safely away in one village. The officials were less friendly to me after they were knowing my purpose. They have not introduced me to German apothecaries, or issued permits or Portkeys. They just coldly informed me that, as Germany is a free country, nobody can prevent my visiting any citizen.”

Remus relaxed a little, and asked, “Do you know where the werewolves live?”

“We met some wizards in the drinking-house in Karlsruhe, and they told us there are werewolves in Ortenaukreis. But they were wanting to tell werewolf stories; once they realised I was intending to shake hands with real werewolves, they became unfriendly, and pretended not to understand English.”

“How many German werewolves are there?”

“According to the Registry, twenty-eight. Well, three of them are Austrian, but they were all tidied away to the Black Forest after being bitten. However, I’ve passed ten days here without meeting any; they are perhaps believing that I’m their enemy because they’ve heard that I visited the Zaubereiministerium first. They probably do not speak English, so now I’m needing to find an interpreter… and I’m needing you.”

As she outlined her plan for making contact with the German werewolves, Remus reminded himself that no problem could be truly insurmountable for the woman who had brewed the first successful Wolfsbane Potion.

Remus sat in a village coffee shop, wondering which of the local Muggles spoke English. He knew they would be more talkative in a pub, but he couldn’t take his children into a pub, and he wasn’t yet ready to leave them behind. He was fast discovering that people politely ignored a young family who seemed absorbed in one another. If he had been alone, they would have been more willing to approach him.

“How do we start talking when we don’t know the language?” he asked.

“I can start,” said Ariadne. “Try to look like a researcher!”

He pulled a notebook and two biros out of his wallet, while Ariadne glanced at a waitress – for some reason, Ariadne’s glances were usually enough to bring waiters running. This one was garbed in impossibly gaudy red bonnet, presumably the traditional costume of the district, and she was brandishing a huge menu.

“Excuse me,” said Ariadne, a note of touching sadness in her voice, “but we cannot speak German…”

“Obadias!” called the waitress. “Noch’ne amerikanische Touristin!”

Remus felt that the waitress had perhaps not quite grasped the situation; but soon she was joined by a waiter in leather knee-breeches.

“Do you vant cahffee?” asked Obadias. Unless he had recently been travelling in the New World, he had been taught English by an American.

“Tea, please, and two glasses of milk, and one chamomile tea. We are also wanting cake… what do you recommend?”

“Our house spetsi-al is the Black Forest cake.”

“Good, we are interested in the local culture. Is Black Forest cake what real German families eat at home?”

Remus didn’t want cake, but Matthew evidently did, and Remus began to divine the method behind Ariadne’s madness. Obadias the waiter explained that German families had no need to eat cake at home, since they could visit his establishment, where they baked the only genuine Black Forest cake in the whole region. Ariadne asked what else was typical of Black Forest culture, and before long Obadias had delegated their order to the junior waitress and was completely drawn in to discussing local mores with Ariadne.

“… You must certain visit the cuckoo clock in Schonach. It is the largest in the world.”

By the time the cake arrived, Obadias was so comfortable that Ariadne was able to confide, “My husband is researching German legends. We’re wanting to know all the – the fairy stories you can tell us about the area.”

Obadias the waiter took a chair beside Remus and, still looking at Ariadne, launched into a tirade about the Brothers Grimm. Remus pretended to take notes, but he felt it would take a long time to arrive at the point.

“I’m not wanting any more cake,” said Matthew. “It had too much cream.”

Elizabeth, after eating one cherry, had finished her milk without taking any more interest in the food, and now all three children were becoming restless. Just as Remus was wondering whether he should take them outside and leave Ariadne to interrogate the locals, Obadias arrived at the point.

“I vant to think it was here in Bad Herrenalb that Little Redcape met the volf.”

Ariadne was swift. “The Brothers Grimm collected a great many stories about wolves. Are there real wolves in the Black Forest?”

“Not many now,” said Obadias. “But there vere, before men hunted them down. It vas the fear of the volf that led to all the little stories about volfs.”

“What about werewolves? You must have many legends about them too.”

“Mummy, I’m wanting to play outside!”

If Ariadne were exasperated, she hid it like an angel. “As I said, it’s my husband who is wanting to collect the legends. Can you please tell him everything you know about werewolves, while I take the bairns out?”

Half an hour later, thanks to the unwitting Muggle, Remus had five pages of notes.

With about thirty hours left until the full moon rose, Remus had to work fast. Obadias the Waiter had been vague about locations, but the name “Enzklösterle” had arisen more than once, so Remus bought a postcard of the village, memorised the view of a scenic forest clearing that might, on a lucky day, be isolated, and Apparated there.

When he returned to Ariadne in the evening he had found the werewolves.

“The story from Enzklösterle was a false lead,” he reported. “It was probably true, but the werewolf died about three hundred years ago. The story about Sasbachwalden was fake; what actually happened was that a group of Muggles went there twenty years ago to shoot a film about a werewolf, and the so-called ‘local legend’ was the plot of the film.”

“What animal were those Muggles shooting?”

Remus explained briefly about the cinema. “So then I went to Schiltach, where every story I heard from Obadias was not only repeated by the locals, but attributed to Schiltach itself, together with a solemn assurance that it was less than a century since there had been people naïve enough to believe the truth of every single tale. I couldn’t find anyone to talk to me in Kappelrodeck or Appenweier, but before I gave up completely, I went to Oberwolfach, and there were… different people there.”

“How different?”

“Younger, and speaking much better English. They believed my story about doing research, and they told me a werewolf story that was ‘doing the rounds’, one that was always reported as true, even though everyone knew that of course it was only a joke or a fable. According to this legend, a Muggle teenager was taking a moonlit hike in Altwolfach. When he heard a howling, he thought at first it came from his transistor – that’s a kind of portable Wireless – but after he switched it off, he realised it came from the ruined castle on the hill. He went up to investigate and found a dozen wolves with their snouts pointing towards the full moon. Taking fright, he ran to report it to the police. By the time they returned with him to the castle, the moon had set, and all the police saw was a dozen vagabonds. The boy stuck to his wolf story despite the annoyance of the police and the absence of any corroborating reports of wolves loose in the area. In subsequent months several – unnamed – people have claimed to hear the howling.”

“Why do the Muggle police not return to investigate by night?”

“The story claims that they have tried to, but that something always gets in their way. A storm blows up, or they hear a woman screaming in the opposite direction. That alerted me that this story might not be pure fiction. Invisible barriers aren’t a usual feature of werewolf stories, but erecting a Muggle-repeller is exactly the kind of thing real werewolves might do. Since the story didn’t seem to be more than five years old, and we do know that Altwolfach is in the right general location, I thought it was worth going there.”

He showed her a postcard of Altwolfach.

“Here is the ruined castle where the Muggles heard the howling. I Apparated into the centre, and I found crude magical traces around the hill. As far as I could tell, it was just a simple Muggle-repeller that could be activated or deactivated at a word. I checked the castle walls pretty thoroughly for ordinary Muggle security, because there was certainly no magical provision for keeping dangerous beasts in.”

“Do not say that…”

“Ariadne, I am a beast when the moon is full. Anyway, this castle is a safely enclosed space, probably the best place for me to Transform tomorrow night regardless of anything else.”

Remus forced his eyes open as soon as he was aware of light behind them. He must resist the temptation to sleep off his Transformation all day. If he thought hard, he would remember the reason he had to be alert early this morning.

He was not at all comfortable, for he was lying on jagged stones, and dishevelled people of all ages were lying haphazardly around him. The tall stone walls that surrounded them all reminded him that they were in the ruins of Altwolfach Castle, and he needed to meet these werewolves before they slunk back to the depths of the Black Forest.

“Good morning,” he said. “Does anyone here speak English?”

He was greeted by blank stares, but a middle-aged man covered with matted hair began to approach.

“Wie ist Ihr Name, Fremder?” The Sylvanian’s scowl might have been aggressive, but possibly it was only cautious. “Woher kommen Sie?”

Remus held out his hand in what he hoped was a friendly greeting. “I am Remus Lupin,” he enunciated clearly. “I am a werewolf.”

A/N. CornedBee has a busy personal life, but he is never too busy to help a friend. I’m sure he had a very good laugh at my original draft of this chapter; but I thank him very much for correcting my German, and so saving me from being laughed at by anyone else.