Chương 25: Chapter 25 Summer in the City
Gilderoy walked up to the Dursley front door and knocked. Today was Saturday and he looked positively dashing in his khaki robe set. He usually reserved this outfit for when he had to travel in rough country; the vest had a few more pockets, as did the trousers. Today, he simply felt adventurous. He had carefully concealed his wands, of course. He ignored as trivial that he was dreadfully overdressed for the neighbourhood. He knew every eye of the snoopy neighbours was on him.
He was about to knock a second time when Harry opened the door.
"Harry, my boy! So good to see you," Gilderoy said jovially. "Your two week sentence is over. I hope things went well?"
Harry stood staring a moment, then said, "Yes, very well. Please come in while I get my things."
Petunia was standing at the kitchen doorway looking at him as he came in.
"Ah, Petunia! I hope I find you well today? I presume Dudley is off carousing with his friends and your dear husband is . . . golfing?" Which Harry/Gilderoy knew was true. It was why he had shown up when he did.
She nodded, a sour expression on her face.
"Harry?" Gilderoy said as the boy reached the top of the stairs, "Leave nothing behind, hmm?"
Harry nodded and disappeared down the hall to his room.
He smiled broadly, showing off his perfect teeth. "Rejoice, Petunia! I think that I can safely say that this is the last time you will see Mr. Potter, barring unforeseen disastrous-for-all-concerned circumstances," he said as Harry came down the stairs. Gilderoy assumed he had placed everything in his trunk, shrunk it, and put it in his pocket.
"By your leave," Gilderoy said as Harry opened the front door and stepped out. Gilderoy quickly casted a disillusionment charm on himself before he went outside. Harry smirked to himself. Petunia probably approved of his hiding himself from view. If she only knew.
They headed for the nearby park. Moments later, they were on the deck in the back yard at Grimmauld Place, the normal appartition point for those acceptable to the protective enchantments — only Gilderoy could apparate into the house itself. Harry, both of them, grinned happily, though for very different reasons. Harry Potter because he was shot of the Dursleys, and Harry/Gilderoy because those snoopy neighbours were going to have a field day about the well-dressed man who entered the Dursley house and then, as far as they knew, spent the entire day with Petunia, unchaperoned! After all, they had seen Harry leave the house unaccompanied. Hah! The gossip about her cheating on Vernon would run rampant, he knew. And she wouldn't be able to explain how he had managed to leave undetected. The gossipmongers would have a field-day! She would be known as a scarlet woman by the end of the week. And unable to ever recover.
"Good riddance to bad rubbish," said Gilderoy as he conducted the boy into the Smoking Room and then down the hall towards the front of the house. "Harry, I am happy to tell you that I don't think you need to worry about ever seeing those obscene parodies of human beings ever again. This is your new home, according to the Wizenmaggots, until you reach your majority."
"Seriously?"
"No, he's Sirius," Gilderoy said as they walked into the sitting room, pointing at the thin man pretending to read The Daily Prophet. Said man grinned, "Did someone just make a joke of my name?"
"Seriously, Sirius, can't you just be serious for once . . . wait, you're always Sirius, right? By the way, this is your godson, Harry James Potter." He pushed the boy forward. "And Harry, this unrepentant reprobate is your godfather, Sirius Orion Black. He was your father's best friend and fellow marauder in Hogwarts. You might have a memory of someone called Padfoot, that is his animagus name. He is a Grimm.
Harry stared at the man wide-eyed. "You knew my father?"
Sirius was torn between laughing at the way Gilderoy had played with his name, being shocked that he not only knew he was an animagus, but also knew what kind and what his nickname was, or drinking in the sight of his godson and answering his question.
With a wary eye towards the smirking Gilderoy, he turned his attention to the boy and started telling him about how he had met the boy's father.
Somewhere in the afternoon Remus showed up and contributed his share of stories.
At supper that evening, Harry was more than a little startled to learn that in addition to living with Sirius and Gilderoy, he shared the house with Remus Lupin, a little girl named Bell, and the Tonks family! And all, except Remus, were related to him! He had inherited, it seemed, an entire family of Wizards and Witches.
After dessert, they adjourned to the sitting room for an evening of getting to know one another, which had surprises for everyone except Gilderoy. He quite enjoyed dropping leading statements and watching the others scramble as they tried to recover and figure out how he knew about those things. Remus made an early night of it, heading to the dungeon at 9:00. Moonrise was at 7:50 P.M. but sunset was 9:15, so he would transform as soon as the sunlight stopped interfering with the Moon's influence.
That was when Harry got the tour of the house and discovered Andromeda and Ted had the Master Bedroom Suite while Sirius was in the Heir's Suite, both on the top floor. Harry had the front bedroom suite overlooking the park in front of Grimmauld Place on the second floor while Bell took the rear bedroom suite overlooking the backyard garden and Tonks was in one of the second-floor magically expanded middle-bedroom suites. All seven rooms had private full bathrooms.
As a non-family visitor, Remus had one of the seven bedrooms on the first floor for stay-over guests. Gilderoy expected the Grangers to be using those rooms the most. Gilderoy had taken over the study on the first floor. His five-room walk-in trunk bedroom suite in one corner provided his sleeping accommodations.
Andromeda and Narcissa had shot down his original plan to have Sirius as the little girl's "parent." Instead, they insisted that the girl needed an adult Witch to raise her properly. Hence their usurping of the Master Suite, at Gilderoy's insistence after they browbeat him into accepting that Sirius was an unfit parent at the present time.
While the others prepared for bed, Gilderoy headed to the dungeon with Sirius. The two of them had transformed the duelling room there into a giant werewolf-proof cage for Remus. Gilderoy's had insisted Sirius and Remus stay at Grimmauld Place instead of out in the wilds.
"What the bloody hell did you do, Gil?" yelled Remus. "Yeah, what he said," said Sirius after transforming back from his Grimm. Remus had transformed just moments before into a werewolf. He had been taking the Wolfsbane potion all week and so had expected to maintain control of his mind while having the appearance of the wolf. Instead, not more than a minute after the transformation was complete, Gilderoy, outside the cage, had hit him with an unknown spell. And now he was human, again. The fur had disappeared, the teeth and snout had retreated, and he looked normal. Upset, but normal.
Harry laughed. "That, my friends, is a little spell I discovered. I wrote it all up in my book Wanderings with Werewolves. Didn't you bother reading it?" He laughed again at their stupefied expressions. "There you go again, underestimating the great Gilderoy Lockhart, Order of Merlin, Third Class, . . ."
". . . Honorary Member of the Dark Force Defence League, five-time winner of Witch Weekly's Most-Charming-Smile Award, Hogwarts' beloved Defence Against the Dark Arts Professor, and Slayer of Basilisks," the other two finished in chorus for him, exasperated.
He continued laughing. "Gentlewizards, I present to you Gilderoy Lockhart's Homorphus Reparifarge Charm." He bowed. "Thanks to me, Gilderoy Lockhart, never again shall you have to taste that vile concoction known as Wolfsbane! My new spell can change any werewolf back to human form. It is a mite bit tricky and does require a powerful magical core, but the average wizard should be able to pull it off without completely exhausting themselves." He laughed again at their dumbfounded faces. "Here, let me teach you." They spent the rest of the evening practicing the spell. Remus decided to stay inside the cage until morning, in case the werewolf somehow managed to reassert itself. This was his first time experiencing that spell.
Just before he headed upstairs for bed, Gilderoy said, "By the way, I opened a new Vault recently, The Gilderoy Lockhart Investment Fund, here is the key," he held it up. With all those stolen galleons in that vault, he couldn't just let them sit there. Not when he could put them to good use and stimulate the Wizarding economy. It is much harder to find malcontents in an expanding economy with many available employment opportunities to keep the citizens happy. "I want you two to get the word out that the fund is in business and willing to loan money to anyone who wants to start a new business, either Muggle or Wizardly. They will have to have a firm business plan, of course." He tossed the key to a surprised Remus. "Here, you're in charge of it." He grinned at their stunned expressions. "Gringotts has the details on your salaries. Try not to lose too much money." He left Sirius sputtering that he didn't know anything about running a business. Gilderoy called down the stairs, "Then hire someone who does, that's what I just did!"
At the next full moon, August Second, Harry intended to have Rita here, and have her cast the spell herself. That would make for an interesting headline article, now wouldn't it? And yet another notch on his broomstick of accomplishments that would keep his name in front of an adoring public.
The next day Gilderoy gave Hermione a Frisbee he had made into a repeating two-way portkey — with the permission of Minister Bones, naturally. Gilderoy thought the minister had looked slightly disappointed when he left without dropping any exploding cauldrons into her lap. A mild reverse prank, but amusing — he didn't want to become too predictable, did he?
The portkey would let Hermione visit Grimmauld Place and return home anytime she wanted. It would "lock" on September Second and become unusable until the Christmas break. Then lock again until next summer.
Hermione spent most of the day grilling Sirius on how he became an animagus. Sirius spent most of the day glaring at Gilderoy for revealing his secret, again. Unbeknownst to Sirius, Lockhart had arranged with Minister Bones to keep the Wizard's second form a secret as a goodwill gesture and part of the Ministry's repayment for his illegal incarceration. Watching him struggle to keep his "secret" when he didn't have to was going to be just so amusing, especially when Gildreroy was telling everyone Sirius knew about it. And Sirius' expression when he finally discovered he didn't need to hide his animagus form would be just piceless.
The following weekend the Grangers stayed over. They were suitably impressed with the Manor. Hermione spent almost that entire weekend showing off all the spells she knew. Watching an exasperated Sirius change back and forth between his Grimm form, after Harry gleefully revealed his "expertise" to the surprised Grangers, left them speechless.
They were still unsure about moving into the Dagworth-Granger Manor, primarily because of the rest of their family. Trying to hide the magic would be extremely difficult. Not to mention the difficulty in explaining how they could afford what was clearly a very expensive estate, well beyond their incomes as Dentists. Hermione would probably use it after she graduated.
They were just as speechless when he handed over to Hermione the veritable fortune of one hundred-thousand galleons as her part of the haul from the Basilisk ingredients.
The Weasley's didn't know it, yet, but Ginny was going to get a vault with two hundred thousand galleons. Ginny was now in the top one hundred richest Witches in the country. Hermione was in the top five hundred. Gildreoy thought it hilarious that Hermione's net worth was now almost double that of her parents, as he delightedly told them. And she was only thirteen!
(◎_⊙)
The days passed quickly for Harry/Gilderoy. He split his time between the potions workshop and his books. While Harry knew he would derive the most satisfaction from what he planned to do this summer, for Gilderoy it was all a yawn as the headlines would not be anything that great. So, Gilderoy was kept busy with his writing and editing — had to make sure those stories were absolutely captivating while always showing off Gilderoy and his talents in the best possible light, not to mention his perfect fashion sense. The occasional book-signing helped control his restlessness.
Since Hogwarts' term had ended, Harry Lockhart had spent most of his time working on a Werewolf cure. The Deathly Hallows ring proved invaluable in that respect. He now had what he hoped was a workable cure. Unfortunately, the earliest opportunity to test it would be August Second. But that date was already booked with Rita for a headline featuring Gilderoy Lockhart's Homorphus Reparifarge Charm — and Harry knew he wouldn't be able to convince the Wizard to abandon the publicity. In any event, it used Phoenix tears, Basilisk venom, wolfsbane, and several other rare ingredients. That made it very expensive, much more so than the seven-days of Wolfsbane potion.
He would have to put off testing the cure until August Thirty-first. If it worked, he would set up a priority list, starting with the youngest and going to the oldest. Between the fortunes of House Potter and House Black, they should be able to put together a fund to provide the potion and eliminate lycanthropy within the next ten years. Sooner if he could get the Ministry to fund the potion supply.
(⊙_◎)
Lockhart walked past the St. Mungos' receptionist and headed straight for the elevators. He was dressed in conservative non-descript grey robes and used a subtle Notice-Me-Not spell to avoid attracting attention — people could see him, but would be inclined to ignore him. Gilderoy hated being invisible, but for Harry's research and work to be effective, he couldn't be seen where he was going to be working. He had no legitimate reason to be in the Long Term Spell Damage Ward. And while he might have been able to get permission, this was one situation where it was better to ask forgiveness than permission.
It was while he was working on Bipsy and Belladonna that he first had the idea. With Bell, he had noted that her personality changed the farther back he went in her memories. That was, of course, what he had wanted. It had struck him, though, as he worked through her teenage years and noticed how certain events had shaped her outlook on life, to wonder if he could apply what he was doing to the Longbottoms.
Neville Longbottom's parents had been tortured into insanity via the Cruciatus Curse. Actually, they weren't insane, instead they were nearly comatose. To escape the pain, their minds had shattered and now nothing was left. Or had their consciousnesses retreated so far from the body that they never realized the pain had stopped? In either case, even though the hospital healers had cured the physical damage done to their nerves and bodies long ago, the mental ability to do things was gone. If he obliviated their memories of their attack, could he restore their minds to functionality?
Well, if he was wrong then it didn't really matter. No one would ever know that these two patients had lost eleven and three-quarter years of their lives. No one would ever know he had been here. No one would ever be disappointed at his failure. No, he certainly didn't want his adoring public to discover he had failed in one of his endeavours!
Clearly, the risks were low and he had nothing to lose in trying. And the payoff if he succeeded? For Harry it was worth more than all his galleons. For Gilderoy, meh. But Harry had delivered on his promises of fame and fortune, so Gilderoy was willing to cooperate. And if this worked, maybe he could find some poor soul elsewhere in the world suffering the same ailment as the Longbottoms and cure them to world-wide headlines!
He decided to start with Neville's father first. It was past 10 P.M. and everyone was asleep in the ward, of course. A quick confundo and the nurse on duty was too preoccupied to notice anything he did that night. He followed that with a heavy Notice-Me-Not and Silencing spell. Unless there was a disaster on the ward floor, the nurse would not think to check on the Longbottoms until her shift was over at eight in the morning.
He transformed the small Spartan chair beside the bed into a very comfortable ergonomic chair that held him at the right height beside the bed to work. Then he arranged Frank into a sitting position directly before him, with their eyes on a level, and cast a petrification hex to hold the man stationary while Gilderoy was clear-cutting his memories.
A sleeping mind is difficult to navigate for most legilimens, but Gilderoy Lockhart was not like most such experts. Mind Arts were his speciality. He quickly subjugated the formless dream/nightmare in progress and started removing memories. It went fairly quickly as any associations between memories of one day and the next were almost non-existent. Much sooner than he expected he reached the time when Frank was under the Cruciatus. Even second-hand the pain was remarkable in its intensity. A few minutes later, and the last thing Frank remembered were two Wizards and a Witch bursting into their sitting room and attacking them. The fight had lasted several minutes, and then . . . there was nothing. Bella had casted the Cruciatus wordlessly, so there was no warning. Something shattered his hastily erected shield and then he knew no more. The hours of torture and questioning no longer existed in his mind.
Gilderoy sat back in his chair. He pulled a Pepper-up Potion out of his pocket and drank it, then stood and did some stretching exercises. He had taken two hours to do that, he noted. Sitting absolutely immobile for that long generated more than a few stiff sore spots in his muscles. That was one reason why he had limited himself to only removing two years of memories at a time from Bellatrix — her memories had been much more complex.
A pain-killing potion took care of the rest of his aches. He re-arranged the sleeping Wizard back into his bed, and cast a stupefy so the man wouldn't wake up in the middle of Gilderoy's treating his wife, Alice, and start yelling. He should easily sleep until morning.
After arranging and petrifying Alice, Gilderoy went to work once more.
Alice, it turned out, was tougher than her husband and had a higher tolerance for pain. Either that or the three Death Eaters had lost patience and stopped sooner. Perhaps they had believed her when she said she didn't know to where their Dark Lord had disappeared.
In any case, it was more . . . not difficult . . . just . . . more tedious. The associations linking daily events were more numerous, especially her desire to save gum wrappers for her son Neville. However, Gilderoy prided himself on being persistent, and drudgework for a good reason had never deterred him. After almost double the hours he had spent with Frank, he was erasing the actual torture session. Like her husband, all she would remember were the attackers and her valiant efforts to keep the three Death Eaters from realizing that her baby, Neville, was asleep and hidden behind a shielded glamour she had barely had time to erect.
In the meantime, she had fought like a demon beside her husband until she saw her husband's shield shatter and him fall to the floor. That moment's distraction was her ruin as almost immediately the same thing happened to her.
Gilderoy was sweating by the time he finished. He quickly arranged the Witch back to the position she had been in before he had started. He took another Pepper-up and pain killer potion before erasing all traces of his being there that night. He casted a finite at the nurse as he exited the ward doors. She would never realize anyone had been in the ward or that she had skipped the Longbottoms while doing her rounds.
If this didn't work, he had a few ideas on a potion that might work, but that would be much riskier in its results. He wouldn't know of his success or failure until that evening's Daily Prophet either proclaimed a miracle or mentioned only normal news and gossip.
The sun was just cresting the horizon when Harry/Gilderoy apparated back to Grimmauld place. He hung a sign on the Study door — The Great Gilderoy Lockart is Doing Great Deeds! Do Not Disturb! — and locked himself in his trunk bedroom.
That evening, just before the elves served supper, the evening Daily Prophet arrived with the banner headline, Miracle at St. Mungos! Below that, it said Famous Aurors in Long Term Spell Damage Ward Wake! There were several articles on the Longbottoms, what had happened to them, the war in general, and Harry Potter (of course). No-one at the hospital could explain why they woke when they did, but no one was going to complain about it, that was for sure.
Young Harry was thrilled when Remus explained that Neville Longbottom had had his parents returned from the living dead. It was, without a doubt, the best birthday present Neville ever had, or would have, even if his birthday wasn't until the following week.
(◎_◎)
Harry's birthday party was everything Harry/Gilderoy could have wanted. All the invited guests showed up. The Pure-bloods were completely astounded at the theme park with its many rides and entertainments, even the adults — while Sirius and Remus had heard of them when they were in Hogwarts, they had never actually been to one. Harry was just as thrilled to be there after hearing Dudley's long and involved bragging about how much fun it was so many times.
The pizza party later was just as big a hit, with only Hermione having had it before. All the kids swore that they had to bribe the Hogwarts elves into adding this indescribable meal to the menu. Hermione, naturally, told them the three rules of eating: Never eat anything bigger than your head; Never eat anything that's covered in red; And never, ever eat anything that looks like a dog threw it up. And pizza broke all three!
The movie, Jurassic Park, released only the month before, had been just as big a hit. The Purebloods were amazed at the realness of the production, and astonished to hear that there was an entire industry devoted to just creating movies — an industry that employed more people than lived in the Wizarding World! The food hits of the theatre, though, were popcorn and sodas. Those provoked another round of "must haves" for the Hogwarts elves. When Hermione let slip that her dad had a "home theatre" where she watched movies, and that she had dozens and dozens of movies, the others demanded to see what she was talking about.
Gilderoy was sure they had visions of a smaller version of the commercial theatre in the girl's home with this "telly" thing as the screen. They were not far wrong, as they saw when they visited the Grangers home the next morning after breakfast using Hermione's portkey. Mr. Granger had one room of the home arranged as a home theatre with comfy chairs and couch, and a theatre-style popcorn machine in one corner. The screen was a giant eighty-inch behemoth that took up most of one wall, with cabinets to either side stuffed with VCR films. They had everything from tear-jerkers to comedies to action thrillers. The kids sat on the edges of their seats as they watched Indiana Jones save the world from the evil Nazi's.
The kids had lunch at the Grangers, which took far longer to fix than it should have as most of them crowded into kitchen/dining room to watch how a Muggle prepared a meal. By popular acclaim, they decided that Wednesday was Matinee Movie Day. After all, they had all those movies to see . . . .
Later, as the other children were floo'ing home, Gilderoy pulled the two Weasley twins aside.
"Fred, George, can you imagine what a hit it would be to sell movies and tellys to Wizards, if only you could make them work in a magical environment?"
He grinned at their frantic nods and exclamations of agreement.
He handed them a large shopping bag full of boxy things — he had gone shopping that morning while they were at the Grangers. "Here are three cassette recorders, batteries, and tapes. These are the exact same as the VCR you saw today, only smaller and restricted to voice. Why don't you grab Harry and Hermione and take them with you to The Burrow and experiment with these at the edges of your property? Perhaps the four of you can develop a way to shield the electronics from magic? Or, perhaps, toughen the electronics so they can work in a magical field?"
Their eyes practically lit up in delight at the thought and they looked at each other doing that silent twin communication.
"While everyone says electric things don't work in a magical field, that isn't necessarily true. After all, your very bodies use electricity in your nerves and to make your muscles work. If magic ruined all electrical things, we'd all die the first time we tried magic! Tell Hermione to bring a book about how the nervous system works on a cellular level.
"By the way, if you remove the batteries, I think reparo can fix any electronic thing that breaks. After all, without the batteries installed there is no electricity and the recorders become just like any other broken item.
"Oh, by the way, I included a couple of books on runes, as well.
"And if you were to succeed? I think you would get a NEWT in Charms, at the least. Maybe even in Runes."
Grimmauld Place did not see either Harry or Hermione until late that evening.
And, even better from Harry/Gilderoy's point of view, Ron was intensely jealous, practically foaming at the mouth at how rich Harry now was, and that even his sister had wealth beyond anything he had ever expected. He took to avoiding them both whenever they were at The Burrow. Ginny, on the other hand, practically glued herself to their sides and rarely let them out of her sight.
Two days after Harry's birthday party, Gilderoy met Rita Skeeter and Bozo at the Leaky Cauldron an hour before sundown. They floo'd to one of the five House Black properties.
"And in here," Gilderoy said as they left the sitting room and entered what used to be the dining room of the small manor, "is our Werewolf cage with resident Werewolf. Rita Skeeter, may I introduce to you Remus Lupin. Remus? Rita." The Witch eyed the Wizard carefully while Bozo took a few pictures. "As you can see, he is dressed rather loosely. For modesty's sake, we deliberately weakened the stitching in the robes so that they will tear off when Remus transforms — normally he just strips nude prior to transforming to protect his clothing. Just to make this a worst-case situation, Mr. Lupin has not been taking the Wolfsbane Potion. When he transforms, the wolf will be in full control."
Remus spoke up, "And, as you know, if I were an animagus, my clothes would transform with me. That they don't is just one more proof that I really am a werewolf." He laughed at the irony of having to prove he was a werewolf. Usually all it took was a rumour to chase people away. Remus walked over and sat down on the comfy chair inside the cage. He had a book resting on a small table beside the chair, along with a tea set.
"Now, then," said Gilderoy, "Let's practice the words to the spell first." He drilled her relentlessly for twenty minutes until she could say the spell flawlessly and rapidly. Then he spent the next half hour drilling her in her wand movements. Bozo took pictures, of course. They planned to document every step of the casting process to make a tutorial. This way, every Wizard and Witch in the country could learn the spell just by purchasing that particular issue of The Daily Prophet — guaranteeing that the paper would be a complete sell-out and require reprints for several years to keep up with the demand.
Gilderoy was sure the D.M.L.E. was conducting their own tests tonight, and Rita would definitely be asking them about their experience with the spell.
Finally, the time came. "Remember, now, Rita, you want to push all you can with the intent that Remus return to being human when you cast," Gilderoy said as Remus started the painful transformation into being a werewolf.
Remus was on all fours, panting from the transformation, and the shreds of his clothes were scattered around him. He slowly rose to his feet and looked around, growling loudly as he saw them, saliva dripping from his bared teeth. He started quickly towards them, teeth bared and clawed hands rising as Bozo frantically took pictures. There would be no doubt in anyone's mind that Remus had truly become an uncontrollable werewolf.
"Okay, Rita, cast it now!"
Rita took a deep breath and firmly cast the spell, Homorphus Reparifarge, and made the correct wand movements. The spell hit Remus squarely in the stomach. Remus flinched and stumbled. He started whining. His fur disappeared, the snout and long teeth retracted, he lost the muscle mass the werewolf had added.
Gilderoy conjured large towel around the former werewolf's waist to protect his modesty, and then magically guided a bathrobe to the shaking Wizard.
Remus stood, panting. He ran a hand through his hair, then swivelled his head, stretching his neck muscles. "Merlin, but that hurts," he said. He walked gingerly back to his chair and collapsed into it. He poured himself a generous helping of tea and took a deep drink.
"Well, Rita?" asked Gilderoy, "How do you feel? What do you think?"
Still staring at Remus, she said, "That . . . was rather tiring, but not that difficult." She looked at Gilderoy. "This, this is incredible. This changes everything about them." She looked back at Remus. "If it really does last all night, it'll cause a sea-change in public opinion. There's no reason to be afraid of werewolves, no more than anyone should be afraid of another Wizard. As long as you have your wand at hand, you're perfectly safe." This would be another epic Prophet issue for her. Gilderoy had turned into a goldmine for her. Every story he gave her became a sell-out issue. She didn't have to make up slander to sell papers; the truth served her far better. She no longer had to scramble for ideas and leads, people, not just Lockhart, either, brought headline stories to her.
She sat in one of the three chairs outside the cage, "Mr. Lupin, Remus, if you don't mind telling me, how did you become a werewolf?"
Gilderoy smiled. It would be a long night, but so worthwhile. Once more, his name would be on everyone's lips.
(◎_⊙)
August passed by quickly. Gilderoy's book, Burrowing with a Basilisk, was at the publisher's now undergoing a final review before they scheduled the actual print run. The goal was to get the book out the last week of November, just in time for the Christmas buying season. Preliminary marketing to the bookstores was already in the works, building excitement for its release. Unlike his previous books there were many pages of pictures of Hogwarts, Myrtle's bathroom entrance, the Chamber and the Basilisk — photographic proof of his greatness. Harry, Hermione, and Ginny would get a portion of the proceeds for their part in the adventure.
While he waited for the publisher's final proofs, Harry/Gilderoy worked on his second Hogwarts' book, Restraining a Rat. That was a bit tougher as many of its events were concurrent with the previous book and he had to do a bit of creative writing to make things fit properly. He was able to work in his attack on the Acromantula colony as rescuing a group of foolhardy children in the Forbidden Forest on a dare. The photos of his memories were more than adequate for the book.
Unfortunately, the werewolves he had to leave out as their story in The Daily Prophet came out after the story about unmasking Peter. Fortunately, he was able to mine his and Sirius' memories about the events of and prior to Halloween, 1981, and make that an important centrepiece of the book as the definitive story of what happened that night and Peter's betrayal. Lockhart's in-depth interrogations of the rat prior to his unmasking made the story that much more realistic — he made up a chapter where Peter snuck into Azkaban and gloated over Sirius' imprisonment and what he had done.
When Gilderoy was ruminating on what to say and how, Harry used Gilderoy's book-signing travel connections to narrow down the area he needed to search in Albania to find Voldewhore's wraith. Even though Albania was one-tenth the size of the United Kingdom that was still over 11,000 square miles to search. The Forest of Dean was miniscule by comparison, and it had seemed vast when he and Hermione had been hiding from the Snatcher Squads. So far, he had narrowed it down to the Accursed Mountains in the northern quarter of the country. Better, but still a vast area of extremely rugged mountains. He would try to narrow down the area before winter had a chance to settle in, and then return there in the Spring, April he hoped. If all went to plan, he would find out if the Draught of Living Death could be given to a spirit! If not, then he planned to force the wraith into a garter snake and thence into a break-proof jar. In either event, he would have a new desk ornament for his study.
In the meantime, he had a grand time with Sirius and Harry. Bell was a delight. Bashful at first, but after a few weeks exposure to Sirius and Remus, and their stories about Hogwarts, she was a terror. Pranking, it seemed, was in the blood of all House Black descendants, it was just a matter of if the talent was cultivated or stamped down. Sirius had flourished at Hogwarts with James, Remus, and Peter all into pranking. Bellatrix had subsumed her frustrated talent into hurting others.
Now that Bell was out of the harsh strictures of her father and mother demanding that she always behave like a lady, that Pure-bloods were perfect and above all others, and not do anything impulsive, she, too, began to flourish. The first time she dumped a bucket of water from the third floor, with a tiny bit of help in execution from Gilderoy, onto the unsuspecting Sirius as he stood by the stairs on the ground floor, he thought the old dog was going to expire he was laughing so hard. Naturally, Harry and Hermione, and the Tonks, were dragged into the prank wars and at any time Gilderoy would see one of the household, except Nymphadora, wandering around in various shades of colour that did not naturally occur in nature. Nymie used her metamorph abilities to mask any pranks that managed to hit her — quite the spoilsport! Even Hannah and Susan got into the pranks, a bit.
In short, the summer was everything Harry, both of them, could have wanted as a family life.
(⊙_◎)
It was August 31st and Rita, Bozo, Gilderoy, Sirius, and Remus were back at the Black property they had visited last month. Remus was, naturally, inside the werewolf cage, once again conjured by Sirius and Harry/Gilderoy.
"As I told you, Rita, this will either be my greatest triumph or the most embarrassing failure I've ever had." He held up his potion. "This should be a cure for lycanthropy." He handed the potion to Remus. "Drink it up. Remus. Let's give this a go."
He turned back to Rita, whose dictation pen was taking everything down. "Like last time, Remus has foregone taking the Wolfsbane Potion so we have an uncontaminated experiment. If my research is correct, that potion will cure Remus and when the moon rises in half-an-hour, nothing will happen to Mr. Lupin. He will remain as human as you and I." He grimaced. "There is a small chance that it might just kill him."
Remus, having just finished swallowing the last of the potion, choked in the background, and managed to gasp out, "Kill me?"
Gilderoy cast a jaundiced eye on the soon to be ex-werewolf. "Hey, I'm risking my entire reputation here!" he said sharply. "I am taking a huge risk. If this fails it will take me years to repair the damage to my reputation." He raised an eyebrow, "All you are risking is your life."
Sirius burst out laughing. "He's got you there, Moony!"
Scowling Remus stalked over to his chair and sat down. Moments later, he broke out into a sweat. "There's a bit of pain, all over, but nothing like transforming." He sat there grimacing occasionally and they could see his arms and legs jerk spasmodically.
An hour later, he was grinning like a mad man.
"Shall we go outside?" suggested Gilderoy, opening the cage door. "Sirius, just to help our guests' piece of mind, would you keep your wand on Mr. Lupin?"
They trooped outside into the backyard garden. For the first time since he was a child, Remus looked at the full moon as a person instead of a wolf. He looked at them wonderingly, "I can't feel him anymore. The wolf is gone. He's gone!" Tears started to flow down his cheeks. Sirius put away his wand and gathered his best friend in a hug. Both were oblivious to the pictures Bozo took.
Gilderoy turned to Rita and handed her a parchment, "Here are the full instructions on how to prepare the potion. Please make sure it's included your articles . . . perhaps in a day or so, after a suitable buildup?
"I'm sure the Ministry will be all over this in testing and verifying the potion. As you can see from the ingredients, it is quite expensive. House Black has set up a fund to supply the potion free to all werewolves. There is a limit to how much can be brewed at any one time, though, due to the extreme rarity of some of the ingredients. As a result, we will give the potions to those bitten within the last year and children under the age of 11 first, in age order from the youngest. I calculate it will take about ten years to cure everyone in the English Isles unless the Ministry gets fully behind it.
"Naturally, there will still be a need for everyone to learn Homorphus Reparifarge, as there will still be a possibility of running into a wild or non-English werewolf for quite a few years." Rita nodded in understanding as her quill practically flew across her parchment as she made notes.
It was a most satisfying way to end the summer, Gilderoy thought.
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