gehayi
in
omniocular
Fic: Killing Time (Remus, The Grey Lady, PG)
First things first. With the permission of ignipes, who has graciously allowed me to post this here, I'd like to tell you that Femgenficathon II is open for signups. Last year it was strictly for Potterverse women; this year, it's gone multifandom. However, any and all stories about women and girls from the Potterverse will be more than welcome.
***
Second, one of two gen stories I wrote for springtime_gen. I'm posting this one first as one of my omniocular Anywhere But Here challenges inspired it. (The story was written a couple of months ago, shortly after the deadline for Anywhere But Here, but I couldn't post this until the names of springtime_gen writers were revealed.)
Title: Killing Time
Author: gehayi
Recipient's Name: cosmic_llin
Rating: PG
Characters: Remus Lupin, The Grey Lady, Marge Dursley, Lady Janet Douglas, and numerous Muggle OCs
Word Count: 5,529
Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by J.K. Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.
Summary: In Glamis Castle, Remus is forced to deal with ghosts--both the castle's and his own. A Lost Years story.
Author's Notes: Lady Janet Douglas is a historical person. Her history, and her connection with Glamis Castle, are as I have described.
Thanks to my ever-patient beta and Brit-picker, underlucius.
***
August 1984
Remus had never expected to become a tour guide.
Not that he objected. It paid fairly well--well enough so that he could eat with something approaching regularity, and have some money left over to start paying off his myriad outstanding bills as well. And a halfway decent uniform came with the job--a red jacket, a white shirt, charcoal grey trousers, and black shoes with rubber soles.
The rubber soles were a necessity. Slipping and falling down the short, narrow stone steps of Glamis Castle would be very bad indeed--not because he'd be injured, but because he probably wouldn't be. Remus thought of the puzzled glances and the curious questions that would provoke, and shuddered.
He really didn't want any questions to arise. Not here. His fellow tour guides were decent, friendly people who, unaccountably, seemed to like him. There hadn't even been any problem about his having to take a couple of days off a month, as there would have been if the tour guide's supervisor had been a witch or wizard.
Instead, the supervisor--his name was Ian Ramsey--had merely studied Remus's face thoughtfully. "Why?" he asked at last. "It's not as if you couldn't use more hours on the job."
"It's religious," Remus had said, thinking fast. "Every month there are certain…rites I have to fulfil. The rites take place at different times, depending on what month it is, but always on the day of the full moon, and always at moonrise."
Ramsey had looked thoughtful. "Somehow I wouldn't have figured you for a neo-pagan. But that's no problem. If you need to be absent on those days for religious reasons, then go ahead and enjoy the ritual or whatever it is, and we'll see you the next day."
Remus had winced mentally at the thought of having to troop into work the day after a full moon night, but did his best to stifle that reaction. After all, he had managed to survive going to eight o'clock classes for years after full moon nights…after running around the Forbidden Forest with Prongs, Wormtail and Padfoot, if it came to that. And he would have work to come back to, which was the important thing. He had to be grateful.
It was five months later now, and he was surprised at how well things were working out. Aside from a round trip from Glamis to Inverness and back once a month on the Knight Bus, there weren't any problems. And the Inverness Werewolf Control Unit had clean, warm, comfortable runs for the werewolves fortunate enough to come there at the time of the full moon--unlike the Dickensian horrors at the unit in London. Inverness, it seemed, was far enough away from the Ministry so that the people running it could do things the way they wanted to do them, not the way the Ministry both expected and demanded that they be done.
It wasn't the life he'd wanted to live, or the one he'd expected to live. But he was warm, well fed, comfortable and well liked. He'd endured enough in the past three years to know that these were more than adequate compensations.
He should have known it was too good to last.
He was lecturing on the artwork in the castle's small chapel when it happened.
"This," he said, pointing to a picture showing a brown-haired, bearded man in a long shapeless robe that Madam Malkin wouldn't have been caught dead selling, "is 'Mary Magdalene Greeting the Risen Christ.'" He deliberately paused to give someone a chance to ask the next question. Someone always asked. It was inevitable.
A large, beefy, moustached woman with a purple face that hinted at more than a few cardiovascular problems did so. "Why's he wearing a floppy brown hat?"
From her tone, Remus could tell that she considered floppy hats to be decidedly inappropriate post-Resurrection wear. Definitely not what the well-dressed Messiah was wearing this season.
"Because it says in the Gospels"--please, Merlin, don't let her ask me which one!--"that Mary Magdalene mistook Jesus for the gardener when she went to visit his tomb. A Dutch artist painted this in the seventeenth century. And in the seventeenth century in Holland, all gardeners wore hats like that."
He'd expected a reply. The woman--what was her name? Marge…something? --had grilled him on various topics for the past hour, and he suspected she'd continue until the very second before the buses left.
But to his surprise, someone else spoke up--a frail-looking American lady with faded blue eyes, a sweet expression, and false teeth too large for her mouth. "Excuse me," she said, tapping his arm, "but is that one of your people over there?"
She pointed to the ornate altar of white marble. There, a woman, clad in an antique gown of dark brown and silver and her thick brown hair pulled up and back as Remus had seen in pictures of Mary Queen of Scots, was kneeling in prayer.
Remus could have sworn that no one had been there two minutes before.
Still, you had to get used to strange things happening at Glamis. It contained at least one room that supposedly no one could enter, a fair number of secret passages, and colleagues of his who, much as they liked him, wouldn't object to playing a practical joke on the new fellow, just to spook him.
Best not to give them any reaction, then.
"Um…no, she doesn't work here," he said in the softest voice that he could use and still be heard by everyone. He glanced at a circular stained-glass window depicting a blond and baby-faced St George standing on the head of an extraordinarily irritated Common Welsh Green. Judging from the way the dragon's tail was positioned, Remus suspected that George was going to be knocked arse over teakettle at any moment. "Why don't we go on to the armoury and give the lady some privacy?"
"Too late," murmured a third tourist--the one that Remus thought of as the token male of the group. He nodded in the general direction of the woman.
Remus turned, and saw that the woman had risen to her feet, and was now staring at them with utmost perplexity. Her expression said what she was plainly too courteous to say: Who are you, and what are you strangers doing in my house?
He evidently wasn't the only one sensing the lady's astonishment and disapproval. The tourists were shuffling their feet, glancing first at their own practical, casual attire, then looking away, shamefaced.
He knew that he should say something reassuring and then politely herd them out. The problem was, he couldn't do either. He could only watch, as if from a distance, while he tried to ignore the draining sensation at the back of his head. He felt as if all of his energy was being sucked out of an open wound.
Just my imagination, he thought dimly. Or perhaps someone's been smoking something illegal near the castle's air vents.
The woman's eyes widened as if she had heard him. For a long moment, her gaze bored into his own. Then, without warning, she strode toward the chapel doorway, which swung open as she approached and slammed as she exited.
The instant she did so, the sensation of energy draining from his mind vanished.
Remus shook his head in an effort to clear it, then surreptitiously glanced at his tourists. All of them, even the odious Marge, looked as if they were just waking up from a deep sleep.
"Well, I think we've seen enough of the chapel," he said firmly. "Now, let's head on up to the armoury--"
THUD. THUD. THUD. THUD.
All of them, including Remus, froze.
Freezing did nothing. If anything, the pounding grew louder and faster.
It definitely wasn't a person pounding with her fists; Remus could tell that much. Instead, it was a hollow sound, like a horde of mallets or hammers striking wood.
"What's making that racket?" the token male tourist shouted.
The sweet-faced old lady whose dentures were too large looked up at him in utter confusion. "I can't hear you!" she cried, her false teeth clacking as she did so. "It's so loud I can't think of anything else!"
"Renovations!" shouted a fiftyish woman with iron-grey hair as she clamped her hands over her ears. "One of the other tour guides told me that we might hear a lot of noise because the National Trust is renovating the castle."
It was. Remus knew that for a fact. However, he also knew that none of the renovations had begun yet, and that when they did, none would take place anywhere close to the chapel.
"I don't know what any of you are talking about," Marge said derisively, crossing her arms in a defiant manner.
"You don't hear that hammering?" yelled the token male tourist, straining to make himself heard over the noise.
"No!" snapped Marge. "And there's no need to shout! I can hear you perfectly well."
As if in answer, the pounding grew louder and more rhythmic. Remus could feel the blows reverberating in his teeth and bones.
A little girl who was accompanying her grandmother began to whimper. "Make it stop! It's bad!"
The child is right, Remus thought. That sound is bad.
And why it was, he had no idea. The sound of hammering should have been anything but ominous.
"I can't stand this," moaned an old woman with blue-rinsed hair. "If it doesn't stop--"
Remus read the unreasoning panic in her eyes, and in the eyes of most of the others as well, and he knew that, paralysed as he felt, he had to get these poor Muggles out of here. They couldn't deal with much more.
Come to that, he wasn't sure he could, either. Because as little as he liked it, the pounding kept reminding him of something he'd rather not recall.
The pounding is harsh, deafening, impossible to ignore…so loud, in fact, that it wakes him up out of a sound sleep, the first decent sleep he's had in weeks, thanks to those blasted missions to the werewolves that Dumbledore keeps insisting upon. Why Dumbledore keeps insisting, he doesn't know, for You-Know-Who's werewolves are certainly not listening to him.
His first thought on awakening is that the one making all that noise must be Sirius, because, really, who else would be banging against the door of the house they share in the middle of the night? They have no other roommates.
He yells something mildly profane at Sirius and buries his head under the covers. If he has any regrets now, it's that he wasn't nearly as foul-mouthed as Sirius had deserved.
He's almost asleep again when he hears the pounding intensify, hears the door splinter beneath the blows. And then he hears a protesting squeal of metal from the hinges as the door is forced open, and the sound of thudding footsteps rushing into the living room, and then up the stairs.
He's standing there waiting for them when they stampede in, and he's astonished to see that they're Aurors, not the Death Eaters he had expected. And on seeing this, he says in a desperate and demanding way, "It's Sirius, isn't it?"
Because really, what else could they be here for, save to tell him that Sirius went down to the local off-license and now he's dead?
He does not realise then that they hear hopelessness in his words and tone, and that they, who know Sirius is alive, can't account for that hopelessness unless they read it as a symptom of treasonous guilt. The sort of betrayal that you would expect from a Dark Creature.
He will learn this--as well as uncomfortable words like "co-conspirator"--over the next few weeks. Everyone will question him--in private, in public, and often without words at all. A glance, an expression, a tone of voice can be every bit as accusatory as mere words.
The doubt and uncertainty he sees in the eyes of his fellow Order members hurts most of all.
Remus shoved that thought as far away as possible. He didn't have time to think about that now. Later, perhaps, when he didn't have twenty to thirty panicking Muggles to take care of. Later, after they'd escaped
Walking toward the door was difficult as slogging through wet cement. And every instant that he moved, the pounding escalated, so that the sound was less that of the thuds of hammers and more the thud of a beating heart.
After all that had already occurred, he wasn't surprised that the chapel door refused to open, and that no amount of pushing, pulling or tugging could move it.
The thudding noise had one advantage--it drowned out almost everything else, including his own voice. Useful, since he didn't want to be heard uttering a spell. Which, technically, he should not be doing in front of Muggles at all. Hopefully, they would simply think he was muttering to himself as he fiddled with the door.
"Aholomora," he said softly.
The door swung open easily, and he stepped aside.
The Muggles scurried out…not quite running, as most of them were too old to run with ease, but moving as swiftly as they could, nonetheless. Remus strolled out after the last of them, taking care to leave the door open as he did so.
As soon as he exited the chapel, the pounding stopped.
The Muggles stared at him, their eyes wide and showing far too much white.
Fortunately, he knew how to deal with fear.
"Well," he said briskly, "I think we may have spent rather too much time in there. We may have to cut the tours of several of the bedroom suites short if you're to stay on schedule."
A babble of protest arose at this, as Remus had known it would. These people had saved for years to be able to afford a single tour of Great Britain, and they weren't going to miss out on anything. And if fulfilling a lifelong dream meant completely ignoring the weirdness that had been happening for the past fifteen minutes, so be it.
Remus walked them through the armoury, the bedrooms, the dining room, and the gardens, watching them all the while and hoping that none of them would break down.
None did. In fact, by the time that the tour was complete, most of them were smiling, even chuckling a little. Only Marge was tight-lipped and scowling, and kept shooting him looks of purest contempt. It was clear that she didn't understand much of what had happened that day, and that she was inclined to blame him for this.
Still, Marge said nothing about what had happened. And for that, he was grateful.
That afternoon, as he and a few other off-duty guides were having tea, he asked about the chapel. "I could have sworn there was a story about it," he said apologetically, "but I couldn't think of a thing when the American lady asked me."
The other guides exchanged significant glances. The oldest one, a dark-haired, fortyish Lowlander from Perth, regarded Remus solemnly for a moment. "Ah. You ran into Lady Janet, did you?"
"No," said Remus firmly. "I told you--one of the tourists was asking about the chapel. He'd heard stories about it, he said."
The Lowlander, whose name was Tatie Farquharson, chuckled. "Thought you said it was an American lady, not a 'he'. Eh, don't worry about it," he said, waving away Remus's convoluted explanation before he could stammer out more than three words. "We've all seen and heard the ghosts. It's a strange castle, Glamis. Lady Janet, now, she likes the chapel."
"She's also called the White Lady," interposed a blonde girl whose name he couldn't remember.
"Why?" Remus asked, curious. "She was all dressed in brown."
The girl shrugged, as if to say that the ways of those who named ghosts were unfathomable to her. "No idea. But that's what's she's called. Practically every place in England or Scotland has a 'Lady' of some colour or other. There are a few Green Ladies--there's one in Fernie Castle in Fife, one in Stirling, one in Castle Fyvie, and oh, I don't know where else--and Blue Ladies, and there's a Red Lady in a churchyard in Kent, and the Brown Lady of Raynham Hall, and a Grey Lady in Brodrick Castle on the Isle of Arran--"
"And we've got a Grey Lady too," Farquharson added. "No idea who she is. She only pops up occasionally. All anyone can say for sure is that she's not Janet Douglas."
"Lady Janet didn't look much like a ghost," Remus said. "I would have expected a ghost to look more…transparent. Not that I've ever seen any, of course."
"She's never transparent," said Farquharson, buttering a piping hot scone. "I don't know much about her, though, except that almost everyone who's guided a tour group around the chapel has run into her at some point or other. All I remember offhand is that this used to be her castle, before she was burned as a witch. I guess, in her mind, it still is."
Burned as a witch. Well, that made sense, in a way; after all, only witches and wizards became ghosts.
On the other hand, if she were a witch, why would she have allowed herself to burn at all?
Remus shook his head. It didn't make any sense.
And it continued not to make sense for the next four months. Remus kept an eye out for Lady Janet, and listened for the telltale pounding in the chapel, but he saw and heard nothing. Even worse, there were such a jumble of ghosts and legends at Glamis that it was impossible to untangle the history of one from the history of twenty or so others.
Then, one evening in December, just before the close of the year, on the day that the castle's tourist season ended, Remus ran into someone who knew Lady Janet well. Or, to be more precise, he ran through someone.
He didn't know it at first; all he felt was a clammy coldness chilling him to the bone, which was hardly unusual in a great stone castle. However, after he'd passed through the pocket of cold air, he heard a huffy, "Well!" behind him.
Remus turned around…and stared.
Of course, it was a ghost. But it wasn't Lady Janet. This was a far more traditional ghost, silvery-white and transparent.
More to the point, it was a familiar ghost, one that he'd seen on a regular basis for seven years.
He was looking at Ravenclaw's Grey Lady.
The Grey Lady cocked her head at him, looking highly amused. "I've been hoping to see you since Janet met you." She made a wry face. "I was not expecting to meet you under these circumstances, though."
"I apologise," Remus managed to stammer. "I don't normally go about walking through young ladies, truly." Curiosity compelled him to add, "Why are you here, instead of at Hogwarts?"
"Many of us prefer to remain in a single place," said The Grey Lady. "Others, like myself, travel. I cannot do so often --my responsibilities toward Ravenclaw forbid it--but I do so when I can. And, as I said, I'd been hoping to see you. There are some things about Janet that I need to explain."
"Why doesn't Lady Janet simply come and talk to me herself?" Remus inquired.
"She already did," said The Grey Lady dryly. "She spoke to you in the chapel."
"I don't recall any words."
"No. You wouldn't. She hasn't spoken since she died, and that was over four hundred years ago." The Grey Lady shot him a sharp look that suddenly reminded Remus of McGonagall. "But she let you know how she felt just the same, didn't she?"
Yes. She had done that.
"I gathered that she felt we were intruding on her," Remus said cautiously. "But I don't know why she pounded on the chapel door." Or, he mentally added, why she allowed herself to be burned in the first place.
The Grey Lady gazed at him with silver-grey eyes so like Sirius's that he had to look away. "She didn't. The pounding wasn't--isn't--her doing. Nor did she let herself die. That," she said with a scowl, "was the fault of a greedy king."
She motioned him over to a window seat. "Please. Sit. You may as well be comfortable while I tell this. Though the story's not comfortable, not at all."
Remus sat down on the window seat, drawing his long legs up to his chest as he would have as a boy. "Go on," he said. "Tell me a story. Please."
The Grey Lady thought for a minute, as if deciding how to begin. "It wasn't her fault, any of it. You have to understand that. She was simply born into the wrong family."
Like Sirius, Remus thought, then felt ashamed. He should not be recalling Sirius as a friend. Sirius had never been a friend. The boy whom Remus had thought of as a friend had been no more than a mask. He had never really existed.
"What was wrong with her family?" he said, in an attempt to drown out his own thoughts.
"She was a Douglas," The Grey Lady replied. "And the Douglas family was powerful. One Douglas--Archibald, Janet's older brother--was even the stepfather of the king, James V. The Douglas clan's position was more secure than James's own throne, which was in constant danger from ambitious nobles, who were, in effect, running the country, and invaders from England. None of which made James like them one whit better. 'A violent and unreasoning hatred toward them' is how chroniclers of the time put it.
"And the king also disliked Janet's husband--John Lyon, the sixth lord of Glamis. It probably didn't help that Lyon was an argumentative man, quick to anger and slow to cool down.
"What James did like was Glamis Castle. He coveted it, though he'd no right to it, and he meant to have it, by fair means or foul, for was he not king?"
Remus tried not to wince at the name James. This is Scotland. James is a popular name. "What happened to Lyon?" he asked. "I can't picture the king wanting the castle and not doing something about it."
"Lyon died," The Grey Lady said, "though not without leaving a son and heir. Later, Janet remarried, but the remarriage didn't save her. Or him."
She paused for a moment, then continued. "A distant relative of the Lyons--William Lyon, his name was--swore falsely that Janet, her second husband, and her son John, the new Lord of Glamis, had conspired to poison the king.
"No one knows why he betrayed them. It may have been greed for the title and the estates, or hunger for power. It may have been fear. James was known to be ruthless with those who dared to oppose him, and he'd already declared openly that he wanted Glamis.
"But, for whatever reason, William turned traitor. The king laid siege to the castle, attacking and then capturing the family where they had most reason to feel safe."
Remus winced; the tale was resonating a bit more than he would have liked.
"James seized Glamis," The Grey Lady went on, a razor's edge of anger creeping into her tone, "while Janet, her husband, Campbell of Skipness, and her son John were imprisoned in the dungeons of Edinburgh Castle. And because treason, heresy and witchcraft were intertwined in James's mind, Janet was accused of witchcraft.
"When she wouldn't confess, she was tortured. Her servants were put on the rack to force them to tell tales of her vile sorceries--no matter if she'd ever cast a spell in her life or not. Her sixteen-year-old son was forced to watch his mother be tortured, and then was tortured in the precise same way himself.
"John broke."
"He accused his mother of using witchcraft to commit treason?" Remus said in disbelief. "How could he do that?"
"He accused his mother and himself," The Grey Lady replied. "He may have been trying to force her to confess and spare herself the pain; all the tales agree that pain is what broke John. And a confessed witch was never killed, and was rarely tortured, while those who refused to confess were generally the ones who suffered and died."
"But she was a witch," said Remus. "She came back as a ghost, so she must have been. Why did she remain in a Muggle dungeon, instead of Apparating far away and taking her husband and son with her?"
The Grey Lady sighed sadly. "Janet was a witch," she said. "But she never knew it. If she ever received a Hogwarts letter, it was likely passed off as a cruel joke and burned. She had no knowledge and no training. She couldn't use magic to save herself, or those she loved, She didn't know how."
Remus couldn't help envisioning the woman he'd seen in the chapel lying shackled in a foul dungeon, her body wracked with pain, her mind a whirl of confusion and terror as she realised that she was doomed if she didn't say what her judges wanted, and that her family was doomed if she did. For some reason, Lady Janet's face kept turning into Lily's.
"What happened?" he repeated. This couldn't have ended well, he thought. Not for anyone.
"A scaffold was built on Castle Hill in Edinburgh," The Grey Lady said quietly. "The pounding you heard in the chapel was the scaffold being constructed."
"This is Glamis. We're nowhere near Edinburgh."
"Yes, and it's a long time since 1537, too," The Grey Lady retorted. "Some wrongs echo across time and space. They demand to be heard, and acknowledged.
"Anyway," she said, running a transparent hand through ectoplasmic hair, "Janet was taken from her cell to the scaffold on Castle Hill, covered in pitch, and burned alive.
"Her husband and son were forced to watch."
Remus thought of a teenaged boy watching his mother die because of what he'd said and done. He shut his eyes.
"I suppose the boy killed himself," he said. After all, that was the logical conclusion. How could anyone continue to live, after betraying someone like that?
"No," The Grey Lady said. "But Janet's husband did. He flung himself from the battlements of Edinburgh Castle the day after Janet died."
"And the boy?"
"Oh, John remained in gaol until…mmm…1542 or 1543, after James died. Then his castles and his estates were restored, and he went back to being the seventh Lord of Glamis. He married a few years later--to a woman named Janet, coincidentally--and had three children."
Remus was indignant. "You mean he got away with it? He should have been punished--"
"What makes you think he wasn't?" The Grey Lady regarded him sternly. "Do you really think he ever forgot what he saw the day his mother died--or why she died? Hells come in all shapes and sizes."
"What I don't understand," Remus said, ignoring this, "is why Lady Janet is still here. She's obviously not happy about it."
The Grey Lady smiled sadly. "Ah, Remus. She came back here after death because she feared for her son and her other kinfolk. And after she came back as a ghost, she learned from some of the other spirits here that she was--had to be--a witch. And witches were hated by the faith that she held dear. They were considered evil, damned, despised by God. She believes that she's given some hideous offence to the Deity, don't you see?"
Remus stared at her. "She's praying for forgiveness. But…she did nothing wrong."
"But she feels as if she did. And that's what matters." The Grey Lady hesitated a moment, then added, "She wouldn't have come to you if she hadn't known you'd understand."
Remus said nothing, willing her to say no more.
The Grey Lady sat down beside him on the window seat and cupped her chin in her hands. "It's a good thing that the tourist season is ending today and the guides are leaving. This castle has enough ghosts. It doesn't need another one."
Remus disregarded the frisson of fear shivering down his spine. "Excuse me," he said politely, "but how can I be a ghost? I'm not dead."
"You've fled everything that you love, everything that makes you feel alive, and entombed yourself in a place of ghosts. Of course you're dead. All deaths aren't physical. But you needn't stay that way."
Remus straightened his shoulders, gritted his teeth, and braced himself for the lecture that was bound to follow.
But instead, The Grey Lady said nothing. She simply sat, waiting patiently for him to speak.
At last, he did so. "Where would you suggest I go?" he said, painfully aware that his voice was both petulant and trembling on the verge of breaking. "What in the world do you want me to do?"
The Grey Lady smiled sadly. "Go where you will. Do what you will. Just don't be a ghost. Being half alive, unable to touch others…it's better than the grave, but it's not better than living. And you have a choice."
Remus knew she was right. That did not, however, mean that he had to like it. "I'll consider it," he said, a trifle sullenly.
The Grey Lady studied his face for a few moments, then, evidently satisfied, nodded. "Good. I shall be watching."
To make sure I leave? Remus sighed at the thought.
"It was comfortable here," he said ruefully. "I liked the people. I liked getting paid. That was a novelty."
"There will be other jobs," The Grey Lady said in a gentle voice. "And other people."
Remus mentally counted to ten. "I don't get jobs in the wizarding world," he pointed out with as much calm as he could muster. "There's nothing for me there."
"There may be two or three things," The Grey Lady murmured. "Even now."
Remus thought of the interrogations he'd undergone, the gossipy and mostly untrue articles the Prophet had published about him after Sirius's arrest, the carefully averted eyes of erstwhile friends. "No. There's nothing."
"Perhaps someday there will be."
Remus didn't feel like arguing, even though he knew she was wrong. There was no point in quarrelling with a lady simply because she chose to be optimistic. "Perhaps," he echoed.
The Grey Lady stood up. "If you will excuse me, I'll go see Janet now." She gazed at him sternly. "And remember what I said."
Remus nodded as little as possible.
When he looked up again, she was gone.
Once The Grey Lady had left, Remus wandered about the castle, saying a silent goodbye to the places he'd liked best. He'd already bid his fellow guides farewell that afternoon at lunch, and he had a sneaking suspicion that he wouldn't see Glamis again for quite some time.
He took care to avoid the chapel.
He was the last to exit the castle that day, chiefly because he couldn't think of where to go once he left. Well, yes, home, obviously. But where should he go after that? He hadn't thought of leaving the area; in fact, he'd been planning on staying in Inverness until the following April, when the castle opened for tourists once more. That was clearly out of the question now.
Absently, he fished a tuppenny out of the jumble of Muggle and wizarding coins in his trouser pockets and tossed it in the air.
Heads I go east. Tails I go west.
The coin clattered at his feet a moment later. Remus bent to pick it up.
Heads.
For a moment, he wondered where he would go. Eastern Europe? The Middle East? The Far East? There seemed to be almost too many possibilities for him to deal with, and he quailed from them.
Go where you will, The Grey Lady whispered in his mind. But don't be a ghost.
"It's easier," he said aloud. "Living hurts."
As if in reply, he heard the pounding of the hammers building the scaffold on which Janet Douglas Lyon had burned.
Yes. All right. Being a ghost hurt too.
Best not to think about that. Best not to think about where he would go next, either. He would just…take it as it came.
He walked down the endlessly long driveway to an ice-encrusted dirt road, withdrew his wand from his inside jacket pocket, and held it high, signalling the Knight Bus.
The bus appeared mere seconds later. "Where to?" the driver asked him as he got on board.
"Home," he said absently, then corrected himself. "I mean…9 West Bell Street, Dundee. Corner of West Bell and Chameleon."
Home, he thought, peering through the windows in an effort to catch just one last glimpse of the haunted castle. Well, that's as good a place to start as any.
***
***
Second, one of two gen stories I wrote for springtime_gen. I'm posting this one first as one of my omniocular Anywhere But Here challenges inspired it. (The story was written a couple of months ago, shortly after the deadline for Anywhere But Here, but I couldn't post this until the names of springtime_gen writers were revealed.)
Title: Killing Time
Author: gehayi
Recipient's Name: cosmic_llin
Rating: PG
Characters: Remus Lupin, The Grey Lady, Marge Dursley, Lady Janet Douglas, and numerous Muggle OCs
Word Count: 5,529
Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by J.K. Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.
Summary: In Glamis Castle, Remus is forced to deal with ghosts--both the castle's and his own. A Lost Years story.
Author's Notes: Lady Janet Douglas is a historical person. Her history, and her connection with Glamis Castle, are as I have described.
Thanks to my ever-patient beta and Brit-picker, underlucius.
***
August 1984
Remus had never expected to become a tour guide.
Not that he objected. It paid fairly well--well enough so that he could eat with something approaching regularity, and have some money left over to start paying off his myriad outstanding bills as well. And a halfway decent uniform came with the job--a red jacket, a white shirt, charcoal grey trousers, and black shoes with rubber soles.
The rubber soles were a necessity. Slipping and falling down the short, narrow stone steps of Glamis Castle would be very bad indeed--not because he'd be injured, but because he probably wouldn't be. Remus thought of the puzzled glances and the curious questions that would provoke, and shuddered.
He really didn't want any questions to arise. Not here. His fellow tour guides were decent, friendly people who, unaccountably, seemed to like him. There hadn't even been any problem about his having to take a couple of days off a month, as there would have been if the tour guide's supervisor had been a witch or wizard.
Instead, the supervisor--his name was Ian Ramsey--had merely studied Remus's face thoughtfully. "Why?" he asked at last. "It's not as if you couldn't use more hours on the job."
"It's religious," Remus had said, thinking fast. "Every month there are certain…rites I have to fulfil. The rites take place at different times, depending on what month it is, but always on the day of the full moon, and always at moonrise."
Ramsey had looked thoughtful. "Somehow I wouldn't have figured you for a neo-pagan. But that's no problem. If you need to be absent on those days for religious reasons, then go ahead and enjoy the ritual or whatever it is, and we'll see you the next day."
Remus had winced mentally at the thought of having to troop into work the day after a full moon night, but did his best to stifle that reaction. After all, he had managed to survive going to eight o'clock classes for years after full moon nights…after running around the Forbidden Forest with Prongs, Wormtail and Padfoot, if it came to that. And he would have work to come back to, which was the important thing. He had to be grateful.
It was five months later now, and he was surprised at how well things were working out. Aside from a round trip from Glamis to Inverness and back once a month on the Knight Bus, there weren't any problems. And the Inverness Werewolf Control Unit had clean, warm, comfortable runs for the werewolves fortunate enough to come there at the time of the full moon--unlike the Dickensian horrors at the unit in London. Inverness, it seemed, was far enough away from the Ministry so that the people running it could do things the way they wanted to do them, not the way the Ministry both expected and demanded that they be done.
It wasn't the life he'd wanted to live, or the one he'd expected to live. But he was warm, well fed, comfortable and well liked. He'd endured enough in the past three years to know that these were more than adequate compensations.
He should have known it was too good to last.
He was lecturing on the artwork in the castle's small chapel when it happened.
"This," he said, pointing to a picture showing a brown-haired, bearded man in a long shapeless robe that Madam Malkin wouldn't have been caught dead selling, "is 'Mary Magdalene Greeting the Risen Christ.'" He deliberately paused to give someone a chance to ask the next question. Someone always asked. It was inevitable.
A large, beefy, moustached woman with a purple face that hinted at more than a few cardiovascular problems did so. "Why's he wearing a floppy brown hat?"
From her tone, Remus could tell that she considered floppy hats to be decidedly inappropriate post-Resurrection wear. Definitely not what the well-dressed Messiah was wearing this season.
"Because it says in the Gospels"--please, Merlin, don't let her ask me which one!--"that Mary Magdalene mistook Jesus for the gardener when she went to visit his tomb. A Dutch artist painted this in the seventeenth century. And in the seventeenth century in Holland, all gardeners wore hats like that."
He'd expected a reply. The woman--what was her name? Marge…something? --had grilled him on various topics for the past hour, and he suspected she'd continue until the very second before the buses left.
But to his surprise, someone else spoke up--a frail-looking American lady with faded blue eyes, a sweet expression, and false teeth too large for her mouth. "Excuse me," she said, tapping his arm, "but is that one of your people over there?"
She pointed to the ornate altar of white marble. There, a woman, clad in an antique gown of dark brown and silver and her thick brown hair pulled up and back as Remus had seen in pictures of Mary Queen of Scots, was kneeling in prayer.
Remus could have sworn that no one had been there two minutes before.
Still, you had to get used to strange things happening at Glamis. It contained at least one room that supposedly no one could enter, a fair number of secret passages, and colleagues of his who, much as they liked him, wouldn't object to playing a practical joke on the new fellow, just to spook him.
Best not to give them any reaction, then.
"Um…no, she doesn't work here," he said in the softest voice that he could use and still be heard by everyone. He glanced at a circular stained-glass window depicting a blond and baby-faced St George standing on the head of an extraordinarily irritated Common Welsh Green. Judging from the way the dragon's tail was positioned, Remus suspected that George was going to be knocked arse over teakettle at any moment. "Why don't we go on to the armoury and give the lady some privacy?"
"Too late," murmured a third tourist--the one that Remus thought of as the token male of the group. He nodded in the general direction of the woman.
Remus turned, and saw that the woman had risen to her feet, and was now staring at them with utmost perplexity. Her expression said what she was plainly too courteous to say: Who are you, and what are you strangers doing in my house?
He evidently wasn't the only one sensing the lady's astonishment and disapproval. The tourists were shuffling their feet, glancing first at their own practical, casual attire, then looking away, shamefaced.
He knew that he should say something reassuring and then politely herd them out. The problem was, he couldn't do either. He could only watch, as if from a distance, while he tried to ignore the draining sensation at the back of his head. He felt as if all of his energy was being sucked out of an open wound.
Just my imagination, he thought dimly. Or perhaps someone's been smoking something illegal near the castle's air vents.
The woman's eyes widened as if she had heard him. For a long moment, her gaze bored into his own. Then, without warning, she strode toward the chapel doorway, which swung open as she approached and slammed as she exited.
The instant she did so, the sensation of energy draining from his mind vanished.
Remus shook his head in an effort to clear it, then surreptitiously glanced at his tourists. All of them, even the odious Marge, looked as if they were just waking up from a deep sleep.
"Well, I think we've seen enough of the chapel," he said firmly. "Now, let's head on up to the armoury--"
THUD. THUD. THUD. THUD.
All of them, including Remus, froze.
Freezing did nothing. If anything, the pounding grew louder and faster.
It definitely wasn't a person pounding with her fists; Remus could tell that much. Instead, it was a hollow sound, like a horde of mallets or hammers striking wood.
"What's making that racket?" the token male tourist shouted.
The sweet-faced old lady whose dentures were too large looked up at him in utter confusion. "I can't hear you!" she cried, her false teeth clacking as she did so. "It's so loud I can't think of anything else!"
"Renovations!" shouted a fiftyish woman with iron-grey hair as she clamped her hands over her ears. "One of the other tour guides told me that we might hear a lot of noise because the National Trust is renovating the castle."
It was. Remus knew that for a fact. However, he also knew that none of the renovations had begun yet, and that when they did, none would take place anywhere close to the chapel.
"I don't know what any of you are talking about," Marge said derisively, crossing her arms in a defiant manner.
"You don't hear that hammering?" yelled the token male tourist, straining to make himself heard over the noise.
"No!" snapped Marge. "And there's no need to shout! I can hear you perfectly well."
As if in answer, the pounding grew louder and more rhythmic. Remus could feel the blows reverberating in his teeth and bones.
A little girl who was accompanying her grandmother began to whimper. "Make it stop! It's bad!"
The child is right, Remus thought. That sound is bad.
And why it was, he had no idea. The sound of hammering should have been anything but ominous.
"I can't stand this," moaned an old woman with blue-rinsed hair. "If it doesn't stop--"
Remus read the unreasoning panic in her eyes, and in the eyes of most of the others as well, and he knew that, paralysed as he felt, he had to get these poor Muggles out of here. They couldn't deal with much more.
Come to that, he wasn't sure he could, either. Because as little as he liked it, the pounding kept reminding him of something he'd rather not recall.
The pounding is harsh, deafening, impossible to ignore…so loud, in fact, that it wakes him up out of a sound sleep, the first decent sleep he's had in weeks, thanks to those blasted missions to the werewolves that Dumbledore keeps insisting upon. Why Dumbledore keeps insisting, he doesn't know, for You-Know-Who's werewolves are certainly not listening to him.
His first thought on awakening is that the one making all that noise must be Sirius, because, really, who else would be banging against the door of the house they share in the middle of the night? They have no other roommates.
He yells something mildly profane at Sirius and buries his head under the covers. If he has any regrets now, it's that he wasn't nearly as foul-mouthed as Sirius had deserved.
He's almost asleep again when he hears the pounding intensify, hears the door splinter beneath the blows. And then he hears a protesting squeal of metal from the hinges as the door is forced open, and the sound of thudding footsteps rushing into the living room, and then up the stairs.
He's standing there waiting for them when they stampede in, and he's astonished to see that they're Aurors, not the Death Eaters he had expected. And on seeing this, he says in a desperate and demanding way, "It's Sirius, isn't it?"
Because really, what else could they be here for, save to tell him that Sirius went down to the local off-license and now he's dead?
He does not realise then that they hear hopelessness in his words and tone, and that they, who know Sirius is alive, can't account for that hopelessness unless they read it as a symptom of treasonous guilt. The sort of betrayal that you would expect from a Dark Creature.
He will learn this--as well as uncomfortable words like "co-conspirator"--over the next few weeks. Everyone will question him--in private, in public, and often without words at all. A glance, an expression, a tone of voice can be every bit as accusatory as mere words.
The doubt and uncertainty he sees in the eyes of his fellow Order members hurts most of all.
Remus shoved that thought as far away as possible. He didn't have time to think about that now. Later, perhaps, when he didn't have twenty to thirty panicking Muggles to take care of. Later, after they'd escaped
Walking toward the door was difficult as slogging through wet cement. And every instant that he moved, the pounding escalated, so that the sound was less that of the thuds of hammers and more the thud of a beating heart.
After all that had already occurred, he wasn't surprised that the chapel door refused to open, and that no amount of pushing, pulling or tugging could move it.
The thudding noise had one advantage--it drowned out almost everything else, including his own voice. Useful, since he didn't want to be heard uttering a spell. Which, technically, he should not be doing in front of Muggles at all. Hopefully, they would simply think he was muttering to himself as he fiddled with the door.
"Aholomora," he said softly.
The door swung open easily, and he stepped aside.
The Muggles scurried out…not quite running, as most of them were too old to run with ease, but moving as swiftly as they could, nonetheless. Remus strolled out after the last of them, taking care to leave the door open as he did so.
As soon as he exited the chapel, the pounding stopped.
The Muggles stared at him, their eyes wide and showing far too much white.
Fortunately, he knew how to deal with fear.
"Well," he said briskly, "I think we may have spent rather too much time in there. We may have to cut the tours of several of the bedroom suites short if you're to stay on schedule."
A babble of protest arose at this, as Remus had known it would. These people had saved for years to be able to afford a single tour of Great Britain, and they weren't going to miss out on anything. And if fulfilling a lifelong dream meant completely ignoring the weirdness that had been happening for the past fifteen minutes, so be it.
Remus walked them through the armoury, the bedrooms, the dining room, and the gardens, watching them all the while and hoping that none of them would break down.
None did. In fact, by the time that the tour was complete, most of them were smiling, even chuckling a little. Only Marge was tight-lipped and scowling, and kept shooting him looks of purest contempt. It was clear that she didn't understand much of what had happened that day, and that she was inclined to blame him for this.
Still, Marge said nothing about what had happened. And for that, he was grateful.
That afternoon, as he and a few other off-duty guides were having tea, he asked about the chapel. "I could have sworn there was a story about it," he said apologetically, "but I couldn't think of a thing when the American lady asked me."
The other guides exchanged significant glances. The oldest one, a dark-haired, fortyish Lowlander from Perth, regarded Remus solemnly for a moment. "Ah. You ran into Lady Janet, did you?"
"No," said Remus firmly. "I told you--one of the tourists was asking about the chapel. He'd heard stories about it, he said."
The Lowlander, whose name was Tatie Farquharson, chuckled. "Thought you said it was an American lady, not a 'he'. Eh, don't worry about it," he said, waving away Remus's convoluted explanation before he could stammer out more than three words. "We've all seen and heard the ghosts. It's a strange castle, Glamis. Lady Janet, now, she likes the chapel."
"She's also called the White Lady," interposed a blonde girl whose name he couldn't remember.
"Why?" Remus asked, curious. "She was all dressed in brown."
The girl shrugged, as if to say that the ways of those who named ghosts were unfathomable to her. "No idea. But that's what's she's called. Practically every place in England or Scotland has a 'Lady' of some colour or other. There are a few Green Ladies--there's one in Fernie Castle in Fife, one in Stirling, one in Castle Fyvie, and oh, I don't know where else--and Blue Ladies, and there's a Red Lady in a churchyard in Kent, and the Brown Lady of Raynham Hall, and a Grey Lady in Brodrick Castle on the Isle of Arran--"
"And we've got a Grey Lady too," Farquharson added. "No idea who she is. She only pops up occasionally. All anyone can say for sure is that she's not Janet Douglas."
"Lady Janet didn't look much like a ghost," Remus said. "I would have expected a ghost to look more…transparent. Not that I've ever seen any, of course."
"She's never transparent," said Farquharson, buttering a piping hot scone. "I don't know much about her, though, except that almost everyone who's guided a tour group around the chapel has run into her at some point or other. All I remember offhand is that this used to be her castle, before she was burned as a witch. I guess, in her mind, it still is."
Burned as a witch. Well, that made sense, in a way; after all, only witches and wizards became ghosts.
On the other hand, if she were a witch, why would she have allowed herself to burn at all?
Remus shook his head. It didn't make any sense.
And it continued not to make sense for the next four months. Remus kept an eye out for Lady Janet, and listened for the telltale pounding in the chapel, but he saw and heard nothing. Even worse, there were such a jumble of ghosts and legends at Glamis that it was impossible to untangle the history of one from the history of twenty or so others.
Then, one evening in December, just before the close of the year, on the day that the castle's tourist season ended, Remus ran into someone who knew Lady Janet well. Or, to be more precise, he ran through someone.
He didn't know it at first; all he felt was a clammy coldness chilling him to the bone, which was hardly unusual in a great stone castle. However, after he'd passed through the pocket of cold air, he heard a huffy, "Well!" behind him.
Remus turned around…and stared.
Of course, it was a ghost. But it wasn't Lady Janet. This was a far more traditional ghost, silvery-white and transparent.
More to the point, it was a familiar ghost, one that he'd seen on a regular basis for seven years.
He was looking at Ravenclaw's Grey Lady.
The Grey Lady cocked her head at him, looking highly amused. "I've been hoping to see you since Janet met you." She made a wry face. "I was not expecting to meet you under these circumstances, though."
"I apologise," Remus managed to stammer. "I don't normally go about walking through young ladies, truly." Curiosity compelled him to add, "Why are you here, instead of at Hogwarts?"
"Many of us prefer to remain in a single place," said The Grey Lady. "Others, like myself, travel. I cannot do so often --my responsibilities toward Ravenclaw forbid it--but I do so when I can. And, as I said, I'd been hoping to see you. There are some things about Janet that I need to explain."
"Why doesn't Lady Janet simply come and talk to me herself?" Remus inquired.
"She already did," said The Grey Lady dryly. "She spoke to you in the chapel."
"I don't recall any words."
"No. You wouldn't. She hasn't spoken since she died, and that was over four hundred years ago." The Grey Lady shot him a sharp look that suddenly reminded Remus of McGonagall. "But she let you know how she felt just the same, didn't she?"
Yes. She had done that.
"I gathered that she felt we were intruding on her," Remus said cautiously. "But I don't know why she pounded on the chapel door." Or, he mentally added, why she allowed herself to be burned in the first place.
The Grey Lady gazed at him with silver-grey eyes so like Sirius's that he had to look away. "She didn't. The pounding wasn't--isn't--her doing. Nor did she let herself die. That," she said with a scowl, "was the fault of a greedy king."
She motioned him over to a window seat. "Please. Sit. You may as well be comfortable while I tell this. Though the story's not comfortable, not at all."
Remus sat down on the window seat, drawing his long legs up to his chest as he would have as a boy. "Go on," he said. "Tell me a story. Please."
The Grey Lady thought for a minute, as if deciding how to begin. "It wasn't her fault, any of it. You have to understand that. She was simply born into the wrong family."
Like Sirius, Remus thought, then felt ashamed. He should not be recalling Sirius as a friend. Sirius had never been a friend. The boy whom Remus had thought of as a friend had been no more than a mask. He had never really existed.
"What was wrong with her family?" he said, in an attempt to drown out his own thoughts.
"She was a Douglas," The Grey Lady replied. "And the Douglas family was powerful. One Douglas--Archibald, Janet's older brother--was even the stepfather of the king, James V. The Douglas clan's position was more secure than James's own throne, which was in constant danger from ambitious nobles, who were, in effect, running the country, and invaders from England. None of which made James like them one whit better. 'A violent and unreasoning hatred toward them' is how chroniclers of the time put it.
"And the king also disliked Janet's husband--John Lyon, the sixth lord of Glamis. It probably didn't help that Lyon was an argumentative man, quick to anger and slow to cool down.
"What James did like was Glamis Castle. He coveted it, though he'd no right to it, and he meant to have it, by fair means or foul, for was he not king?"
Remus tried not to wince at the name James. This is Scotland. James is a popular name. "What happened to Lyon?" he asked. "I can't picture the king wanting the castle and not doing something about it."
"Lyon died," The Grey Lady said, "though not without leaving a son and heir. Later, Janet remarried, but the remarriage didn't save her. Or him."
She paused for a moment, then continued. "A distant relative of the Lyons--William Lyon, his name was--swore falsely that Janet, her second husband, and her son John, the new Lord of Glamis, had conspired to poison the king.
"No one knows why he betrayed them. It may have been greed for the title and the estates, or hunger for power. It may have been fear. James was known to be ruthless with those who dared to oppose him, and he'd already declared openly that he wanted Glamis.
"But, for whatever reason, William turned traitor. The king laid siege to the castle, attacking and then capturing the family where they had most reason to feel safe."
Remus winced; the tale was resonating a bit more than he would have liked.
"James seized Glamis," The Grey Lady went on, a razor's edge of anger creeping into her tone, "while Janet, her husband, Campbell of Skipness, and her son John were imprisoned in the dungeons of Edinburgh Castle. And because treason, heresy and witchcraft were intertwined in James's mind, Janet was accused of witchcraft.
"When she wouldn't confess, she was tortured. Her servants were put on the rack to force them to tell tales of her vile sorceries--no matter if she'd ever cast a spell in her life or not. Her sixteen-year-old son was forced to watch his mother be tortured, and then was tortured in the precise same way himself.
"John broke."
"He accused his mother of using witchcraft to commit treason?" Remus said in disbelief. "How could he do that?"
"He accused his mother and himself," The Grey Lady replied. "He may have been trying to force her to confess and spare herself the pain; all the tales agree that pain is what broke John. And a confessed witch was never killed, and was rarely tortured, while those who refused to confess were generally the ones who suffered and died."
"But she was a witch," said Remus. "She came back as a ghost, so she must have been. Why did she remain in a Muggle dungeon, instead of Apparating far away and taking her husband and son with her?"
The Grey Lady sighed sadly. "Janet was a witch," she said. "But she never knew it. If she ever received a Hogwarts letter, it was likely passed off as a cruel joke and burned. She had no knowledge and no training. She couldn't use magic to save herself, or those she loved, She didn't know how."
Remus couldn't help envisioning the woman he'd seen in the chapel lying shackled in a foul dungeon, her body wracked with pain, her mind a whirl of confusion and terror as she realised that she was doomed if she didn't say what her judges wanted, and that her family was doomed if she did. For some reason, Lady Janet's face kept turning into Lily's.
"What happened?" he repeated. This couldn't have ended well, he thought. Not for anyone.
"A scaffold was built on Castle Hill in Edinburgh," The Grey Lady said quietly. "The pounding you heard in the chapel was the scaffold being constructed."
"This is Glamis. We're nowhere near Edinburgh."
"Yes, and it's a long time since 1537, too," The Grey Lady retorted. "Some wrongs echo across time and space. They demand to be heard, and acknowledged.
"Anyway," she said, running a transparent hand through ectoplasmic hair, "Janet was taken from her cell to the scaffold on Castle Hill, covered in pitch, and burned alive.
"Her husband and son were forced to watch."
Remus thought of a teenaged boy watching his mother die because of what he'd said and done. He shut his eyes.
"I suppose the boy killed himself," he said. After all, that was the logical conclusion. How could anyone continue to live, after betraying someone like that?
"No," The Grey Lady said. "But Janet's husband did. He flung himself from the battlements of Edinburgh Castle the day after Janet died."
"And the boy?"
"Oh, John remained in gaol until…mmm…1542 or 1543, after James died. Then his castles and his estates were restored, and he went back to being the seventh Lord of Glamis. He married a few years later--to a woman named Janet, coincidentally--and had three children."
Remus was indignant. "You mean he got away with it? He should have been punished--"
"What makes you think he wasn't?" The Grey Lady regarded him sternly. "Do you really think he ever forgot what he saw the day his mother died--or why she died? Hells come in all shapes and sizes."
"What I don't understand," Remus said, ignoring this, "is why Lady Janet is still here. She's obviously not happy about it."
The Grey Lady smiled sadly. "Ah, Remus. She came back here after death because she feared for her son and her other kinfolk. And after she came back as a ghost, she learned from some of the other spirits here that she was--had to be--a witch. And witches were hated by the faith that she held dear. They were considered evil, damned, despised by God. She believes that she's given some hideous offence to the Deity, don't you see?"
Remus stared at her. "She's praying for forgiveness. But…she did nothing wrong."
"But she feels as if she did. And that's what matters." The Grey Lady hesitated a moment, then added, "She wouldn't have come to you if she hadn't known you'd understand."
Remus said nothing, willing her to say no more.
The Grey Lady sat down beside him on the window seat and cupped her chin in her hands. "It's a good thing that the tourist season is ending today and the guides are leaving. This castle has enough ghosts. It doesn't need another one."
Remus disregarded the frisson of fear shivering down his spine. "Excuse me," he said politely, "but how can I be a ghost? I'm not dead."
"You've fled everything that you love, everything that makes you feel alive, and entombed yourself in a place of ghosts. Of course you're dead. All deaths aren't physical. But you needn't stay that way."
Remus straightened his shoulders, gritted his teeth, and braced himself for the lecture that was bound to follow.
But instead, The Grey Lady said nothing. She simply sat, waiting patiently for him to speak.
At last, he did so. "Where would you suggest I go?" he said, painfully aware that his voice was both petulant and trembling on the verge of breaking. "What in the world do you want me to do?"
The Grey Lady smiled sadly. "Go where you will. Do what you will. Just don't be a ghost. Being half alive, unable to touch others…it's better than the grave, but it's not better than living. And you have a choice."
Remus knew she was right. That did not, however, mean that he had to like it. "I'll consider it," he said, a trifle sullenly.
The Grey Lady studied his face for a few moments, then, evidently satisfied, nodded. "Good. I shall be watching."
To make sure I leave? Remus sighed at the thought.
"It was comfortable here," he said ruefully. "I liked the people. I liked getting paid. That was a novelty."
"There will be other jobs," The Grey Lady said in a gentle voice. "And other people."
Remus mentally counted to ten. "I don't get jobs in the wizarding world," he pointed out with as much calm as he could muster. "There's nothing for me there."
"There may be two or three things," The Grey Lady murmured. "Even now."
Remus thought of the interrogations he'd undergone, the gossipy and mostly untrue articles the Prophet had published about him after Sirius's arrest, the carefully averted eyes of erstwhile friends. "No. There's nothing."
"Perhaps someday there will be."
Remus didn't feel like arguing, even though he knew she was wrong. There was no point in quarrelling with a lady simply because she chose to be optimistic. "Perhaps," he echoed.
The Grey Lady stood up. "If you will excuse me, I'll go see Janet now." She gazed at him sternly. "And remember what I said."
Remus nodded as little as possible.
When he looked up again, she was gone.
Once The Grey Lady had left, Remus wandered about the castle, saying a silent goodbye to the places he'd liked best. He'd already bid his fellow guides farewell that afternoon at lunch, and he had a sneaking suspicion that he wouldn't see Glamis again for quite some time.
He took care to avoid the chapel.
He was the last to exit the castle that day, chiefly because he couldn't think of where to go once he left. Well, yes, home, obviously. But where should he go after that? He hadn't thought of leaving the area; in fact, he'd been planning on staying in Inverness until the following April, when the castle opened for tourists once more. That was clearly out of the question now.
Absently, he fished a tuppenny out of the jumble of Muggle and wizarding coins in his trouser pockets and tossed it in the air.
Heads I go east. Tails I go west.
The coin clattered at his feet a moment later. Remus bent to pick it up.
Heads.
For a moment, he wondered where he would go. Eastern Europe? The Middle East? The Far East? There seemed to be almost too many possibilities for him to deal with, and he quailed from them.
Go where you will, The Grey Lady whispered in his mind. But don't be a ghost.
"It's easier," he said aloud. "Living hurts."
As if in reply, he heard the pounding of the hammers building the scaffold on which Janet Douglas Lyon had burned.
Yes. All right. Being a ghost hurt too.
Best not to think about that. Best not to think about where he would go next, either. He would just…take it as it came.
He walked down the endlessly long driveway to an ice-encrusted dirt road, withdrew his wand from his inside jacket pocket, and held it high, signalling the Knight Bus.
The bus appeared mere seconds later. "Where to?" the driver asked him as he got on board.
"Home," he said absently, then corrected himself. "I mean…9 West Bell Street, Dundee. Corner of West Bell and Chameleon."
Home, he thought, peering through the windows in an effort to catch just one last glimpse of the haunted castle. Well, that's as good a place to start as any.
***