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Aconite Leaves


Remus passed Newt Scamander in the hall, just around the corridor from the Defense Against The Dark Arts classroom. Newt was staring down at his briefcase, which he held high against his chest, open only just ajar and talking to something that had a furry little paw sticking out. “Yes I know, I sholud’ve tried a bit harder to convince him, given what Nerimai said, but I’ve a feeling this may play out differently than we discussed -- I don’t knoooww how it’s going to turn out! I’m not a seer am I? I’m a magizoologist! It’s very different, you know…” Newt was so engaged in the conversation he was holding, he didn’t even notice Remus, who shrunk as close to the wall as he could get, silently watching Newt go by, turning the corner at the end, and disappearing toward the stairs.

Remus continued on his way, carrying his book. He arrived to the Defense classroom only a few moments later and knocked on the closed door. “One second,” came a voice from inside. Remus waited… and waited. It took several long moments before Professor Veigler opened it up, his eyes high as though he expected an adult...then adjusting down (though only slightly, as Remus was by no means short for his age) to see Remus. “It’s you,” he said, surprised.

“I had some questions about the, uh, the homework,” Remus answered, and he held up the parchment he’d been working on and the textbook. “If it’s a bad time --” he noticed suddenly that the edges of Veigler’s eyes were reddened. “Are you alright, Professor?”

“Come in, come in, don’t be silly, of course now’s a good time. I’m just fine. Come in, Remus.” Professor Veigler stepped back and waved for Remus to step inside. He led the way across the room and up the short flight of steps to the little office above. Remus had never been up there before. The room’s walls were coated with newspaper clippings.”Would you like some tea while we go over the homework you’ve got questions on?”

“It isn’t baneberry is it?” joked Remus.

“You’ve heard about that, then,” Veigler said.

“Sirius is my best friend, and he’s got the biggest mouth in the entire school,” Remus said as a reply.

Veigler chuckled, “What was I thinking. And no, it’s not banesberry.” He went to a stout cupboard and rummaged about for a moment. “It’s getting on in the month… you must be feeling the same way I am,” he murmured. Remus shifted uneasily at this statement. “I have a trick for it, if you’d like to give it a go?”

Remus raised his eyebrow, “A trick for it?”

“For the aches…” Professor Veigler replied. “Here, you sit, I’ll brew it up.” He smiled amiably. “I’m very sorry about the classes this month, I’m sure they’ve made you uncomfortable. Is that what this is about?”

Remus shook his head, “No, I actually… I… I mean, yeah, it’s pretty odd studying how it is to go about… you know, killing myself… but…” he shrugged.

“It isn’t you I intend these lessons to kill.”

“It’s Greyback you’re preparing us for,” Remus said. “Or them, rather. The lessons won’t do me much good. After all, as Evans asked, when would I ever use the information?”

Veigler chuckled.

Remus said, “But being an absolute nerd and really stupid about academia and learning and all of that, I’m actually doing the homework.”

“I honestly expected a smart alec response,” Professor Veigler admitted, smirking at Remus over his shoulder from the table where he was pouring hot water into the two tea cups he’d set out. “I know I would’ve done.”

“I thought about it,” Remus admitted. “I actually had written just take a fork in the Great Hall and jab it in myself and I’ll have done it as my essay for my personal strategy on killing a werewolf.”

“Now see, I would’ve had to mark you down for that,” Professor Veigler said, “Seeing as if you’re in the Great Hall, you’d not be a werewolf yet.”

“We’re always a werewolf, aren’t we?”

“Are you?” Veigler asked, coming over with the tea. He put one cup and saucer down before Remus, then sat and took a sip of his own.

Remus watched him drink for a moment, then he decided that if Professor Veigler had wanted to kill him he would’ve done it long before now and he reached for the cup, pushing the story about Cassandra Vablatsky out of his mind, and sniffed the funny shimmery looking tea inside. It wasn’t like ordinary tea. It was purple in appearance. He looked up at the professor. “What is this?”

“It’s aconite flower tea,” Professor Veigler said.

“I’ve… never heard of it,” Remus said.

“I expect not. It’s a trick I was given by a woman who cared for our pack in Albania when I was younger. She was once a healer at St. Mungo’s. Aconite - also known as Wolfsbane - is a plant which can have a calming effect on the symptoms of being a werewolf. The woman was working on a panel at St. Mungo’s that has been studying to create an antidote for decades before she ended up involved with Greyback - though I don’t know how. Anyway, aconite was the key ingredient they were using for the potion study, and she found that although the root itself doesn’t help much, the leaves and petals, when crushed, do. We often would chew the aconite leaves, when we could find them. It helps to ease the pain.” Veigler sipped the tea.

Remus sipped his. The warmth of the aconite flowed through his mouth and he swished it around a moment, then swallowed it. The effect was almost instant. He hadn’t realized how sore his joints were until they suddenly weren’t and his spine had that sort of relieved feeling you get after you’ve woken up and cracked your back for the first time. “Wow,” he whispered, and eagerly took another sip. “That’s… that’s incredible. This stuff is a miracle. Where do you get it? Is it terribly expensive?”

Professor Veigler said, “It’s not widely available… there’s a bit of a restriction on it… It’s a fair amount of galleons, if you can find someone who is selling… I happen to have a friend who grows it that gives me a good deal on the sale.” Veigler saw the excitement melt from Remus’s face.

“That’s too bad,” Remus said, “It really helps.”

Veigler nodded, and he got up and went to the cupboard, removing the wooden box he’d gotten the leaves and flowers from and he carried it back to the desk and put it down on Remus’s side. “Here,” he said. “Take them.”

“But don’t you need --”

Veigler shook his head and sat down. He sipped his tea. When he lowered the cup again, he said, “I’ll get some more if I need it.”

“Thank you,” Remus said, excited, “I’ll be really careful about drinking it too fast… so they last… Thank you so much, sir.”

Professor Veigler smiled, “Of course. Anything that I can do to help.”

Despite his statement that he wouldn’t drink it too fast, Remus finished the cup of tea within minutes. He’d never felt such relief in all his life - like a cool rain in the middle of the hottest summer.

“So what is it about this homework that you needed to talk to me?” Professor Veigler asked, leaning forward.

Remus rolled the parchment out on the table. “Well, you asked for each of our personal tactics for killing a werewolf on the full moon, and - well, like I said, I’m not going to be able to use much of the information that you’ve given us myself, seeing as… well, I’d be the werewolf, so the lessons on how a person can kill a werewolf are sort of… pointless to me. There’s never a time that I would encounter a werewolf without being one myself at the time.” Remus looked up at Veigler, “How does one werewolf protect oneself against another werewolf?”

Veigler leaned back in his seat, still clutching his teacup. “You raise an excellent point - and a very good question, of course. Not that it’s unusual for you to have excellent points and good questions. You’re a very, very smart boy. You’ll go far.”

“So long as my secret’s kept,” Remus said.

“It’s safe with me,” Veigler replied.

“I appreciate that, sir.”

Professor Veigler said, “You’ve never lived in a pack before?”

Remus shook his head. “Other than Greyback the night he bit me, I’ve never met another werewolf before you. That I know of.”

“Yes, that’s right,” Veigler nodded slowly, “I forgot that we are brothers.”

Remus blinked at these odd words.

“If you were to join the pack,” Professor Veigler clarified, “You’d be called my brother.”

In all their talking about Professor Veigler as being a wolf, created by Fenrir Greyback, this connection had never once been brought up. Remus stared at Veigler, seeing him in a whole new way. The professor wasn’t that much older than Remus and the other Marauders. In fact, he couldn’t possibly be more than ten years older… “When were you bit?” Remus asked.

“Summer. 1963. Not too long after the Restriction Act passed.”

“Me, too,” Remus said.

“You were that young?” he looked pained at the thought of it. “So you’ve never really known life without… being one.”

“I was three,” Remus answered.

“I was eleven,” said Veigler. “Almost twelve.”

Remus said, “I’m sorry.”

“At the time, I thought it was the best thing that had ever happened to me,” Professor Veigler said. “I wasn’t wanted at home. Fenrir Greyback seemed a savior more than a nightmare to me then. Of course the true colors have since come out, but in 1963, to a young boy running from his father’s belt it seemed as though an angel had descended from the sky to rescue me.”

Remus couldn’t imagine how terrible life at home must’ve been for Professor Veigler that something like becoming a werewolf could possibly have seemed like a happier thing. He suddenly felt very, very sorry for the Professor and something blossomed in him, a respect. More than a respect - a deep admiration. “I wish we’d talked sooner,” Remus said.

“Dumbledore had said you’d come when you were ready.”

Remus smiled. It was so like Dumbledore to have known this would happen, yet not to force it or even openly encourage it. He understood suddenly why Dumbledore had told him that Professor Veigler knew about his furry little problem that time. He’d been giving him the information that would lead to this sit-down right now. Well, Remus wished Dumbledore had pushed him a bit harder toward Professor Veigler’s office. It was so good to have someone who knew and understood what he felt - even better than he did himself, he thought, looking at the tea. Brother was a good term, he thought.

“Now, to go back and answer your question…” Professor Veigler sat forward in his seat and refilled Remus’s cup with more of the aconite tea and they sat in the Defense Against the Dark Arts room discussing werewolfish things long into the afternoon.




“Where have you been all day?” Peter asked when Remus walked into the dormitory just before dinner. “I’ve been here all alone. James and Sirius are at Quidditch practice.” He looked sad.

“I’ve been down to see Professor Veigler,” answered Remus. He tucked the box of aconite leaves into his trunk where it would be safely kept. “You know, I take back everything I’ve ever said about Veigler that was poor. He’s brilliant. You know he’s been a werewolf as long as I have? But Merlin, he’s got so much more experience at it. Like he knows all these tricks to keeping the pain down. You know they’re working on making a potion to cure it?”

Peter folded the letter he’d been reading and put it into a book that lay before him on the bed, where it would be safe, “Cure it?”

“Yeah!” Remus looked bright eyed, “They’re doing a good deal of research at St. Mungos!”

“That’s good,” Peter said. He looked hopeful, “Think they’re doing research to heal squibs as well?”

Remus shrugged, “Dunno. I didn’t ask him. But blimey -- I really wish I’d started talking to Veigler about my furry little problem ages ago! You know - he laughed so hard when I told him that’s what James called it! He thought it was the greatest thing. Said we should trademark it, make it into a t-shirt.” Remus laughed.

Peter laughed halfheartedly, “That would be very cool.”

“It would. You know Sirius would wear it.”

“Sirius wears weird stuff anyway,” Peter said.

Remus smiled, “Yeah he does.”

“Like when he put his tie ‘round his head like he was a mad pirate…”

Remus laughed, smiling fondly, “Yeah. You said they’re down at quidditch?”

Peter nodded, “Been down there for about an hour now. Said they’d see us at dinner.”

Remus looked around and grabbed a jumper from his trunk, tugging it on over his head. “I think I’ll go down and watch them play.”

Peter raised an eyebrow, “Since when do you care about watching quidditch practice?” he asked.

Remus shrugged. “Just want to support our friends. You want to come?”

Peter shook his head. “No, I’ll stay here.”

Peter watched as Remus bundled up in his robes and wrapped his Gryffindor scarf ‘round his neck before stepping out the door. He sighed and pulled the letter back out of his textbook and curled up so he was hugging his knees, staring at the curlicue writing across the soft pink paper. Peter sighed, wishing there was more he could do to help his sister, whose long letter asked for all of the details of the school she’d never get to attend.