Damage Control
Tired as she was, Aster couldn't stay at the Cottage and just go to sleep. She knew that. Even before a squad of Hit Wizards and Regulation and Control field agents apparated right in front of the restaurant the couple had been coming out of. She and Bella had only been a scant few blocks away when they started sweeping the town, looking for any signs of where Moony might've gone, but it had been far enough they'd had time to make a run for the Cottage before they'd been spotted. And thankfully, the rain seemed to be muddling the Ministry's tracking charms enough they didn't realise that Moony's trail abruptly ended at the site of their altercation, or that two humans had walked away from it, without actually walking into it.
She had to go talk to Dumbledore.
He was the one who'd brought Remus to the school, the one who'd assured whoever he'd had to assure that it would be fine. That there would be precautions in place. He'd be in almost as much trouble as Remus if (when) word got out. Well, not from a potential death sentence perspective, but from a moral condemnation perspective. Which was kind of like breaking someone's wand because they used it to cast an Unforgivable, and letting the actual person off with a slap on the wrist, but whatever. There would still be political consequences, and they needed to figure out what to do with Remus when he woke up in the morning.
Where he should go.
She was sure he couldn't go back to the school. Even if the students didn't know that he was a werewolf (mostly), Madam Pomfrey did, and probably Professor McGonagall, and who knew how many other professors had put it together. She'd be shocked if their Astronomy professors hadn't. Well, Bailey, at least. Weatherwax would probably be just as aware of the moon phases, but she was a bit less concerned with anything nearer than the moon, probably hadn't noticed Remus's absences. And while McGonagall probably wouldn't say anything if Dumbledore ordered her to keep her damn mouth shut, Bailey would tell him to go piss into the wind. Madam Pomfrey might, too, even. She wouldn't want to see Remus executed, but he was a danger to public health and safety, if Dumbledore couldn't keep him contained. And she'd definitely know he'd gotten out, when she went to find him in the morning and he wasn't there.
Plus, there had to be some people in the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures who knew. Mister Lupin was already working there when Greyback turned Remus. It was a political statement, a response to some comments Mister Lupin had made. So people had to know. He might've managed to keep the whole situation hush-hush outside of the Ministry, maybe even outside of his department, but Remus was on the Registry. They'd have to investigate his whereabouts, and whether he could have been responsible. Anyone else, she might say, fix the wards on the safehouse tonight and pretend he was there all along, must've been some other rogue werewolf and bluff it out, but this was Remus.
Even if his victim hadn't turned up at St. Mungo's (which she might not have, if the bite itself weren't life-threatening, hoping to avoid ruining her own life by basically preemptively turning herself in as a werewolf, but when had Remus Lupin's luck ever been that good?), and everyone else had kept their mouths shut, he would probably have decided he couldn't live with the guilt of having turned some innocent person or something, and turned himself in. He would remember — not clearly, more like being in a dream, or drunk and three kinds of high, but he would know. And he couldn't be trusted not to do something really, really stupid like give himself up and get himself summarily executed before she could convince him that none of this was his fault.
So he couldn't go back, but...Aster had no idea where he should go. And regardless of where he went, Dumbledore would have to be involved in his cover story, tell the other students that his mum had suddenly taken a drastic turn for the worse (his usual excuse for his monthly absences was that she was ill), so he'd been pulled out of school to stay with her until the end, or whatever. He almost certainly wouldn't be willing to tell the public that Remus was a werewolf, and Dumbledore had been standing surety for him, and he'd failed, let a werewolf escape into Hogsmeade (with the oh-so-helpful assistance of a certain stag with rocks where his brain should be). Aster wasn't really sure how he'd weasel out of the Ministry holding him accountable for Moony's escape and Remus's disappearance, but that wasn't her problem. Her problem was keeping her friend from being executed for something entirely beyond his control.
Obviously she knew other werewolves she could introduce him to, but...
Okay. Greyback's pack would almost certainly take him in. Greyback had turned him in the first place, she was pretty sure. In that light, Remus was his responsibility, and it wasn't as though Greyback just threw away potential pack members, the whole point was (or had been) that he wanted to raise the kids he turned as werewolves rather than human. Build up their own little society, like.
But Remus, like most of the other werewolves in Britain, had ended up being raised human, and abhorred violence, and thought the fact that Greyback was aligned with the Death Eaters was absolutely horrible (even if it did mean he didn't really turn kids anymore, kids were fucking useless in a war). And even if he didn't...well some of the Pack were alright.
Clarence, the big, dark-skinned man who was their second-in-command, was a nice enough bloke. The only one she actually liked, kind of reminded her of BJ — he really just seemed to have fallen in with a bad crowd, and was fighting to protect his mates, his pack, more than anything else. Which, wasn't that why Aster was (had been?) supporting the Light? So, he was alright. And there were supposedly a couple of pack members who had practically nothing to do with the Death Eaters because they were too old or too young or crippled or whatever to be any use on a battlefield.
Most of them, though, were low-lifes and thugs who'd been given licence to kill (or turn people) by the Death Eaters, and a target for their hatred and frustration in their repression at the hands of daylight society. A few, including Greyback himself, apparently really believed in their Cause, thought it was a heinous violation of human rights to basically decide someone didn't count as human anymore because they caught a fucking disease, and had political reasons for allying with de Mort. (Aster wasn't terribly clear on his ideology, he'd kind of scared her as a kid so they'd never really talked.) And even they tended to be kind of...tough, manly men, with deliberately rough edges and a variety of chips on their shoulders. They took a peculiar sort of pride in their savagery and embraced their Curse, disparaging the vast majority of human society (light and dark, including almost all of the Death Eaters) for being soft, scared, fussy and overly concerned with appearances, and a whole host of other traits they considered feminine. They would almost certainly consider quiet, bookish Remus to be a complete pansy-arse.
A square Tim.
A housepet — domesticated.
He'd be bullied relentlessly, unless and until he 'proved himself' to them somehow. Bella had once told Aster that she'd had to eat a human eyeball before they finally understood that she wasn't just some spoiled little human girl playing at war, promoted to lieutenant because she was sucking the Dark Lord's cock. And that was after she beat Greyback in a knife fight the first time they met. Aster still had no idea whether that was true, but she wouldn't be surprised if it were — either that one of them had given Bella what they thought was an impossible hazing challenge, or that she'd just gone ahead and indulged in a spot of light cannibalism to prove she was just as insane as everyone said. And unlike Bella, Remus definitely wouldn't play their games. He'd refuse to even try to make a place for himself in their pack, if it meant acting like a monster when he was human, as well.
He'd fit in much better in Starlight.
Old Morgen — the unofficial leader of the Starlight wolves — would love him, probably for exactly the same reasons Greyback's men would hate him. They valued civility, their humanity, in a way Greyback's pack didn't.
The problem there was, well...compared to the Blacks, the Lupins were poor. But compared to the Blacks, everyone was poor. It wasn't as though the Lupins had never had food on the table, or decent clothes, or somewhere to stay that they didn't have to share with at least a dozen other people. Mister Lupin had a well-paying Ministry job. They lived in a muggle neighborhood rather than Hogsmeade or Charing or one of the other magical enclaves in Britain, which was generally considered a mark of poverty by most British mages, but only so the neighbors wouldn't get too suspicious about their son's mysterious illness, or at least wouldn't be able to guess he was a werewolf. Aster had visited them once, and she'd definitely say they were better off than the Evanses. And his parents weren't as...supportive, as Remus might like — they loved him, of course, but his mother resented how much more difficult his Curse made their lives, and Greyback turning his son hadn't made his father any more sympathetic to werewolves in general. But they weren't cruel. They'd never intentionally deprived him of food or shelter or even creature comforts, like shoes that fit and a bed of his own.
It was...kind of a shock, realising that people actually lived like that, seeing the realities of true poverty up close and personal for the first time, but at least Aster had known before she found Starlight what it was to go hungry (if only for a few days at a time, in an act of defiance against her parents), how it felt to spend a night sleeping on a bench occasionally, rather than go home. What it meant to be rejected by your own family and society for being different.
Probably more than Remus, actually. It wasn't like it was openly acknowledged that he was a werewolf. His parents had gone to great lengths to hide it from their neighbors, and everyone at Hogwarts accepted him. Might've thought he was a bit of an overly-cautious stick-in the-mud, but he wasn't openly shunned, or whatever. Aster, on the other hand, had made it very, very clear over the past five years that she despised her family and their principles and the Dark as a whole. Bella and de Mort might have a tendency to ignore her loudly-professed hatred of them, but most of the people she'd grown up with, children of the Dark Houses and family alike, wanted nothing to do with her. Which was fine, fuck them, but it did make summers almost painfully lonely.
And more than that, Remus was...sheltered. He'd never seen anyone suffering from viv withdrawal, or so drunk they'd passed out in a gutter and might be dead, for all anyone cared. He was a stranger to the utter callousness of humanity — like James, he kind of thought that, deep down, people were more light than dark. He'd never seen children crying because they were scared that their parents (or the adults who cared for them, most of the time — a lot of children in Starlight were orphans, or raised collectively by the community, because no one family had the resources to raise them alone) hadn't come home, and what if the Aurors got them? or picking through muggle rubbish skips looking for day-old bread and half-eaten take-away meals, and all the good people of London walking by with their noses turned up, not giving a single fuck, because it wasn't their problem.
She didn't think he'd ever seen, let alone spoken to, beggars or whores or the ubiquitous bloke who knows a bloke who can get you what you're looking for, or been accosted by paranoid madmen accusing you of stealing money they'd never had, or senile old ladies who thought you were someone they knew and wanted a bloody hug. He'd never seen anyone die. She wasn't sure, but she didn't even think Remus knew anyone who'd died. Not well, anyway.
Yes, Aster knew, now, that it was highly unusual that she had seen people die before coming to school, and Starlighters weren't nearly as likely to fall to illness and the like now that they could come to the Death Eaters for healing, but accidents still happened, and violence, and particularly bad moons. One of the kittens had been run over by a lorry last summer. The entire enclave had mourned her for weeks. Aster had attended her funeral, such as it was. (More cats — and human-shaped cats — than Aster had ever seen in one place before, sitting solemnly and watching as her tiny pyre burned, and then long after it had burned out, until the wind carried the ashes away.)
The Starlighters themselves could be some of the kindest, most welcoming people Aster had ever met (to non-humans), it wasn't really a question whether they'd find a place for Remus. Mages, especially Hogwarts-educated mages, were always valuable to the community, even if they would have to find a trace-broken wand for him, but she knew they'd take him in even if he were a muggle. There was no place for good, upstanding werewolves in the daylight world, so it was a point of pride that there was always a place for them in Starlight. But their life itself was harder. Less...certain. Less secure, maybe, was a better term.
And Aster...wasn't really sure whether Remus would be able to handle that, the stress of not knowing where his next meal was coming from, or whether the DLE might decide to raid them on a full moon, when the wolves locked themselves in industrial-sized freezers in abandoned factories with upyri to guard them, or even just being forced to live cheek by jowl with all the other unfortunates and outcasts of Britain. The lack of privacy in Starlight bothered Aster more than almost anything else. Strange, maybe, since she almost always preferred to surround herself with people, but Starlight was like a hive, or a warren, maybe. There was nowhere to go where one could be alone. She always felt like she had to be on good behaviour around them (even animagi were only suffered by the wolves and upyri, even if she was fully accepted by the wilderfolk), and there was never a chance to relax, because there was always someone around. And Remus was a much more private person than she was.
Maybe Dumbledore knew someone who would have a better idea, a contact in one of the French reservations, maybe?
She apparated back to the gates and dragged herself across the grounds, slipped through the empty hallways like a very tired, very wet shadow, avoiding Filch and Peeves and the first prefect patrol of the evening (it was barely past curfew, but she could pretty much guarantee that if any prefect other than Evans or Cissy caught her in the corridors, there would be questions about why she was wet and bloody and dressed like she was going to war) until she reached the gargoyle that guarded the Headmaster's office. Every step of the way, she cursed the fact that the enchantments on her armour prevented her using drying spells on herself. It was really bloody annoying, and she couldn't take it off when her corset was acting as a pressure bandage and she didn't have a healer on hand to patch her up if she started bleeding all over everything. Bella had better still be at the Cottage when she got back, she'd promised to keep an eye on Moony, and Aster was probably going to need her to sew the wounds closed for her, since healing charms wouldn't work on werewolf bites. She cringed a little just thinking about it. She hated chirurgery.
The password hadn't changed in the past three days, and the statue didn't care that it was after eleven. Dumbledore probably would, she'd probably have to wait on the landing while he hauled himself out of bed, but this was an emergency, she was fairly confident that waking him in the middle of the night wouldn't matter any more than the fact that she'd been with Evans and Cissy last time he'd seen her, and was obviously having doubts about the Light. None of that had anything to do with Remus.
Or at least, she assumed she'd have to wait. But there was light showing under the door when she reached the top of the tower, and when she knocked on it — rather more forcefully than necessary — and shouted "It's a bloody emergency, Headmaster! Open up!", it did.
To reveal both Dumbledore and James, the former grim and serious, the latter slightly panicked, his eyes catching hers like a punch in the gut. Dumbledore began speaking before, it seemed, her appearance fully registered, distracting her (thankfully) from James. "I'm sorry, Miss Black, but whatever it is— What is the meaning of this, Bellatrix?" he demanded, cutting himself off. He glared furiously at her, his hand resting on his wand, as though—
Oh, wait, she probably did look kind of threatening and out of her bloody mind at the moment, dressed for battle and soaked to the skin. And yes, she supposed it would be fairly easy to mistake her for Bella, what with her hair plastered over half her face, hiding at least one of her eyes.
"Pax," she said quickly, holding her hands up to make it very clear she wasn't about to start a fucking fight in the middle of his office. She pulled her hair back with her right hand so he could see her face better, and twisted her left to display the absence of evil soul-brand tattoos on her forearm. "I'm Asteria."
The Headmaster visibly relaxed, enough she felt it was safe to put her arms down and let herself collapse into the nearest chair.
"Why're you dressed like Bellatrix?" James demanded.
Dumbledore spoke over him. "Apologies, Miss Black. But whatever it is, it will have to wait, I'm afraid, there's been an...accident, which requires my attention elsewhere."
"If that accident involves a fucking moron poking a hole in the wards on the Shrieking Shack for his own fucking convenience—" James blanched. Apparently he hadn't told Dumbledore that. (Which rather begged the question what he had told Dumbledore about how he even knew Moony was out in the first place, but Aster didn't really care.) "—and letting a certain werewolf loose in Hogsmeade, it's taken care of. Which is why I'm dressed like Bellatrix."
"And by taken care of you mean...?" Dumbledore asked delicately.
Did he really think Aster would have killed him? Really?! "I mean Moony's neutralised. Asleep. Bella's minding him."
"You left him with Bellatrix?!" James shouted, as Dumbledore repeated, "Asleep?" sounding completely befuddled. "How?"
"Bella likes werewolves. And if you know anyone else who could keep him contained without wards if he wakes up, feel free to call them instead. I'm sure she'd rather go back to playing Herla and Elsbet with her own wolves than sit around minding one that's unconscious."
"Miss Black! How did you manage to render the Wolf unconscious? Do you understand how– how vitally important such a discovery—"
Aster cut him off impatiently. Did he not realise they had more important things to talk about, here? "It doesn't matter, most people can't do it, and I really doubt anyone who can would be willing to on a regular basis."
"Still, Miss Black, I must insist..."
Aster sighed. He wasn't going to like this. "Werewolves aren't human. No one would argue that they are, especially in wolf form. Therefore, it can't be an Unforgivable Act to cast the Imperius on one."
She was right, he didn't like that. He settled back into his chair, behind his desk, a very judgmental stare weighing her, as though even mentioning an Unforgivable Curse was an Unforgivable Act.
James, on the other hand, continued to be a moron. "You cast an Unforgivable? Sirius!"
"I've cast all the Unforgivables, Potter. Not on humans—" Imperiusing Cissy for practice didn't count. "—and I can't anymore, not now that I've re-aligned my magic, but I do still know people who can cast them."
"Who was it, then? Bellatrix?"
"No, Bella's pants at the Imperius. Well, comparatively speaking. Doesn't have the personality for it. And I'm not telling you. I'm not talking to you at all at the moment, in case you haven't noticed."
"What the hell are you talking about? Obviously you are..."
"No, not literally, right now, this is an emergency, and you've just demonstrated you're such an idiot, I might actually be able to convince myself that your opinion of me doesn't matter. But I'm tired — I had to distract him until help got there, and fighting a werewolf is no picnic—"
"Then why did you stop Pete coming up here to get Dumbledore, if you didn't want to have to wait for help—"
"Well, for one thing, I still would've had to wait. Even if he does have a tracking focus, Pete would've had to explain and convince him that Moony was out and— How long've you been up here?"
He gave an uneasy shrug. "Maybe half an hour? A little more?"
"Yeah, and you were still standing around talking when I got here. And you're a hell of a lot more authoritative than Peter. I don't see Fawkes, so it would be at least another fifteen minutes for Dumbledore to get down to Hogsmeade. Even if Pete had come up here straight away, that's twenty minutes longer I would've had to try to hold him, he probably would've killed me, and if he didn't, we probably would've gotten picked up by the R and C, and if we got away from them, Dumbledore would probably have used a Silver Dart or the Sun-Spear of Ra or something to put Remus down when he caught up and fucking crippled him, assuming the shock didn't kill him outright!"
"You could have waited! No one asked you to stop him!" James snapped, ignoring her second and third points entirely, because she was absolutely right.
"And then he'd've had another half an hour to get spotted biting more humans and did you miss me saying the Hit Wizards are down in Hogsmeade right this fucking second? Showed up right after we captured him. They'd've had him in custody for twenty-five minutes by the time we got there, and we'd all be completely buggered! Why the fuck did you send Pete to get me if you didn't want my help?"
"He bit someone," Dumbledore interrupted before James could explain what exactly he'd thought Aster was going to do, if not take care of the problem while everyone else was being slow and letting it get worse. Outsiders were always, always slow to react when time was of the essence, it was one of the most dependable, and also most infuriating things about them. Oh, there's a werewolf on the loose, better stand around for half an hour talking before we fucking do anything about that, honestly! The old man's voice fell to a horrified hush, his face growing pale and drawn behind his beard.
"Yes. A woman. Probably a local, they were coming out of Aunt Fanny's. Franchesca's," she added, in case Dumbledore didn't know that was what the students called the one decent Italian place in Hogsmeade. "Didn't get a good look at her before her date apparated her away. I was slightly preoccupied at the time, you see. That's the only reason I'm only here now — there are things we need to talk about before I get myself sewn up and pass the fuck out. I suppose it's too much to ask that you had a plan for something like this?"
"You were bitten as well?" Dumbledore demanded, frowning at her as though looking for the wound and ignoring her question, which probably meant, yes, that was too much to ask.
"As a dog. Ah— You know I'm an animagus, right?" From the look of intense surprise on his face, no, he hadn't. "Bloody hell, Potter, what did you tell him?" He winced at her use of his surname. Good. She didn't let him answer because she didn't care, but if he hadn't explained that they were animagi, and he hadn't told Dumbledore about the ward gate, she did have to wonder how the hell he'd managed to convince the Old Goat there was even a problem in the first place. (Maybe that was why they hadn't already left to do something about it?) "The wounds assert themselves across forms, but the Curse doesn't take if you're bitten as an animal. No idea why."
The old man fixed her with a solemn frown. "But it does, my dear. It does. I'm so sorry to have to be the one to tell you, but the only protection afforded to an animagus against the Werewolf Curse is that the werewolf should have no reason to attack a common animal. But if an animagus were to pick a fight with one... I'm sorry, Miss Black. I am so very so—"
"Um, no? Clearly it doesn't, I was bitten months ago, too, and I'm not a wolf now, so..."
"She was, Professor," James confirmed, when Dumbledore just looked at her like she'd lost her bloody mind. A sort of pitying, disbelieving, you poor deluded thing look.
"But... I'm afraid that's simply not possible, my dear."
Aster shrugged. Clearly, it was. She really didn't know what else to tell him. What was she supposed to say? Apparently I'm immune to the Curse, must be a Black thing? It actually might be, Bella had told her that playing chase with her wolves wasn't really as dangerous as it sounded, because they could sense that she wasn't prey. If she ran, they would chase her, because it was fun (and also instinct), but they thought there was too much magic in her for the Curse to take properly, like a vampire or something. She (and Aster) had assumed that was because she was a black mage, or maybe just because she was a bloody sorceress, but it could just as easily be that one of the Blacks' blood alchemy enhancements of their line over the centuries, or their habit of practising subsumption from the age of seven, or the fact that they were all touched by the Dark already— Oh, fuck. Last time she'd been bitten was before she'd broken the Covenant. What if...
No, not important. She'd worry about it later. Make a point of locking herself up on the moon, if she started feeling off as it waxed next month. (Based on Remus's behaviour in the gibbous phase, she would be able to tell something was wrong with her.) And if it turned out she had been turned, well, it wasn't the end of the fucking world. Sure, she'd be a pariah in polite society, but she was already kind of a pariah in polite society — and polite society could go collectively suck a dick, anyway.
"I'm fine. Probably. Worry about Remus. He's the one who's going to realise he ruined some poor witch's life when he wakes up. And I know people know about him. And the D.R.C.C. was already down in Hogsmeade, people will make the connection. So, about that plan?" Dumbledore somehow managed to look even older and more drawn at that change of subject. "He can't come back here," she prompted him, quickly running through her reasoning, the old man's face growing grimmer with every sentence.
He continued to hold his peace, though, even after she finished, eyes distant and horrified behind steepled fingers.
"Sir?" James said. "There has to be somewhere else he can go, right? Maybe one of the Safehouses?"
"Safehouses?" Aster repeated.
"Er...yeah, the Order of the Phoenix has been setting up safehouses for muggleborns, the ones who aren't old enough for school yet, and their families. Dad mentioned them a while ago," he explained, with a somewhat embarrassed glance over at Dumbledore. "I, ah, wasn't supposed to say anything. But if anyone needs a safehouse right now, it'd be Remus...right?"
The Old Goat shook himself out of his stupor. "Unfortunately, none of the Safehouses are equipped to contain a transformed werewolf—"
"So? You have a whole month to ward one," Aster pointed out.
"The nature of the protections on the Safehouses precludes the use of such containment wards as would be necessary, I'm afraid."
"Well, then, where is he supposed to go? He can't go home, they'll find him in a matter of days, and arrest his parents too, for harbouring a dangerous werewolf fugitive. Mister Lupin would be lucky not to avoid a treason charge, given that, you know, keeping werewolves controlled is part of his job, and all."
"Mister Lupin works for the Spirit Division, Miss Black," Dumbledore reminded her absently, as though that mattered. He might technically be an exorcist, but he was also one of the loudest anti-werewolf voices in the department. (Who would have thought attacking someone's son would make them hate you even more?) And she was pretty sure the entire department took the same oaths in regards to following and enforcing British law.
"So, what, force Lyall and Hope to keep him a prisoner in his own home, and pray to any gods who might be listening that the D.R.C.C. doesn't notice that one of their employees, whose son is a known werewolf wanted for turning someone, always calls in sick on the full moon so he can curse their feral fugitive into submission?" (Hope was a muggle, so obviously she wouldn't be able to do it herself.)
"There has to be something," James said desperately. "Something that— You're his custos, aren't you, sir? Surely you could– could appeal, or—"
Aster cut him off with a sharp ha! "Yes, Dumbledore is responsible, alright, even if you're the one who's at fault. What he should do is kill Remus himself and resign every position of authority he holds in shame for having failed in his duty as a custos. Either that, or throw you to the wolves for interfering with the protections he put in place, those are the only options to get him out of being held responsible. And he'd still be bound to execute Remus if he were to see him again."
"He wouldn't do that!" James snapped, before turning to his hero and realising Aster was completely right. "There— There has to be some other... Please, sir! I– I didn't mean to — and it wasn't Remus's fault!"
"No, Mister Potter, I would not. I cannot in good conscience hold you responsible for my own lack of concern for the state of the containment wards on Mister Lupin's safehouse, and I will not execute an innocent child for a crime committed against his will, in a state of mind he could not control. No more than I would have turned you, Miss Black, over to the Aurors for endangering Mister Snape's life in the throes of a fit of madness." Yeah, well, he hadn't actually thought Snape was in danger at the time, had he? "However," he gave a heavy sigh. "However, I also cannot in good conscience allow myself to be removed from my current position of influence, not with the delicate political state of the country at the moment. It would be only too easy for the Dark to take advantage of such a turn of affairs. I simply cannot."
Aster gave him a scornful glare. "So you'll be going with the tried and true method of bribing and threatening investigators into submission, then? How, exactly, is the Light supposed to be different from the Dark, again?"
"No, Miss Black, I will not bribe or threaten the investigators. I will simply suggest that the wards on Mister Lupin's safehouse were sabotaged by dark wizards or witches unknown, perhaps allies of the man who turned him in the first place, all those years ago. It would be in keeping, I think, with Fenrir Greyback's reputation to imagine that, were he aware of one of 'his' wolves attempting to deny his 'true nature', he would take steps to make such denial impossible."
James looked deeply uncomfortable that his idol would do something as dark and ignoble as lie to protect his own political position, but given that the alternative was his neck on the line, after a moment he nodded.
Aster bit her lip. That...might actually work. Remus would still have to disappear, and Dumbledore might lose a degree of face for letting something like that get past him, but Crouch almost certainly wouldn't pursue punitive justice for his failure in upholding his duty as a custos if he could reasonably blame the Death Eaters instead. And everyone would just assume that Remus had succumbed to the inevitable and joined Greyback, especially if he clearly wasn't at Hogwarts or at his parents' home. The D.R.C.C. might raid Starlight looking for him, but if he actually stayed with the Pack for a couple of months before going to Morgen, they'd probably stop wasting resources looking for someone who was obviously off with a group of radicals they were already trying to apprehend pretty quickly.
"That does still leave the question of what is to be done with Mister Lupin, however," the old man mused. "I will admit, I'm rather at a loss as to where we might be able to harbour him without raising undue suspicion."
Oh, piss on your undue suspicion. "I'll take care of it," Aster said abruptly.
She'd just have to make it very fucking clear that Remus was not joining the Pack or the Death Eaters, just seeking temporary sanctuary with them, and they'd shut the fuck up and lump it, and also make sure he didn't run off to turn himself in, because this was all Greyback's fault before anyone else's, and if he didn't damn well take responsibility for it and mind Remus for a couple of months and then let him go to Starlight when it was safe, she'd stab him in the eye. (Or some other suitably mad, Bella-esque threat, the specifics didn't matter nearly so much as the fact that they knew Bella would follow through on such a promise, and after watching them play-fighting at Ancient House a few days ago, the wolves were suitably convinced that she was basically exactly the same person as Bella.)
"I'm sorry, Miss Black?" Dumbledore said, as though he hadn't quite heard her correctly. "What is it that you're proposing, precisely?"
"I'm proposing that it's better if you don't know precisely what I'm proposing. You worry about covering your own arse. I'll take care of Remus."
"Sirius!" Aster's traitorous eyes flicked over to James entirely of their own accord. "You can't just talk to the Headmaster like that!"
"Yeah, well, quite frankly I don't have the patience to act like a bloody sycophant at the moment. I've just done him one major boon by capturing Moony before R and C, and I'm solving his most immediate problem for him, and he is more worried about covering his own arse than what happens to Remus, or you, or anyone, so I'll talk to him however I please — and my name is not Sirius anymore, Potter, and even if it were, we aren't on familiar terms, in case you haven't noticed, so you can just. Fuck. Off." James flinched, clearly hurt and taken aback by her vehemence. Again, good. She turned back to Dumbledore with a scowl. "Are we done here, Your Excellency?"
He nodded slowly, probably wondering exactly when she'd lost every last scrap of respect for him. Not that she actually had, she'd never believed the sun shone out of his arse like James did, it wasn't like it was a surprise to her that he was just as willing to lie to protect himself as anyone. The sarcasm there was mostly aimed at James. She'd been honest when she said she had no patience at the moment. She was hurt and exhausted, and still needed to haul her arse back to the Cottage tonight, and on top of all that, she found herself plotting to keep her friends out of the hands of the law for the second time in two days. It'd be more of a surprise if her temper weren't a bit short at the moment. "Yes... I...believe we understand each other, Miss Black."
"I sincerely doubt that," she said, concealing a wince as she pushed herself back to her feet. "But I do look forward to that conversation on political philosophy. Perhaps you'll change my mind."
Dumbledore actually let her have the last word, slamming the door to his office behind herself.