Author’s Notes: Set in the evening on the same day as chapter five. Minor DH Spoilers warning for a short scene at the end. Although, I still find it very difficult to believe that there are people on this site who still haven’t read DH.
The Innocent Werewolf
The Uses of Wolfsbane in Potion Making
By Remus Lupin
Remus had started his essay forty-five minutes ago and that was how far he had gotten. He would attempt to focus on his essay, give up, stare blankly across the common room for a few minutes, remember he was supposed to be writing an essay, look down at the heading, and then become distracted again. Well, it was a rather distracting heading. The word “wolf” right there on the page in front of him, staring at him, mocking him.
Did I just accuse an essay title of mocking me? Oi, I’m losing it.
Maybe he should have picked a different title. He could have used one of the other names for wolfsbane: monkshood or aconite. Those words would not have mocked him so badly. But the textbook he was using referred to it as wolfsbane, so it had made sense to him, forty-five minutes ago when he had started the essay, to call it wolfsbane as well. Now he was thinking that he should find a different textbook. After skiving off Potions today in favor of stuffing his face with omeletty goodness, he really couldn’t afford to slack off on this essay.
He looked at his watch. It was twenty minutes to curfew. That really wasn’t enough time to go all the way to the library, search for a book that did not use the word wolfsbane, check it out, and come back again. He could ask James to let him borrow the Cloak, but he knew better than that. James would never lend him the Cloak for homework purposes.
He sighed, staring absently across the common room again. Maybe he should just give it up for the evening and go to bed. It had been a long day.
He looked at his friends. James seemed to attempting the same essay Remus was, but with a similar success rate. Peter had his Transfiguration things in front of him and was sucking his quill with such intensity that it made Remus wonder if he was really thinking hard, or if the quill had come from Honeydukes. Sirius was in an armchair across the common room near the fire playing tonsil hockey with a dark-haired fifth-year girl Remus knew was called Demi Roberts. Sirius, it appeared, was not so concerned about his Potions essay.
“How’s your essay coming, Prongs?” Remus asked.
James looked up at him. “It’s not,” he said shortly.
“Neither is mine,” said Remus. “Want to work together?”
“Some saying about the blind leading the blind comes to mind,” said James. “No offense, Moony.”
“None taken.”
“We could ask Evans for help,” James said, turning in his seat to scan the common room for dark red hair.
“I doubt she’d help us,” Remus said.
“Why not? She’s good at Potions.”
“Yes, but if we go over and ask her for help, she’ll tell us that if we want to do better in Potions, we should actually attend the classes.”
“Good god, Wormtail, get that quill a room already,” James snapped at Peter.
Peter pulled the sugar quill out of his mouth. “How you can lecture me,” he began, “when Padfoot over there hasn’t surfaced for air in about ten minutes, is something I will never figure out.”
“Yeah, well, that’s Padfoot, isn’t it?” James asked rhetorically. “This is ridiculous,” he proclaimed, slamming his quill down on the table and running his hands through his already very untidy black hair. “Wolfsbane will never be useful in any potion ever. Why we still bother to study it is beyond me. It’s a huge waste of time.”
“Oh, you don’t know that,” said Remus. “Wolfsbane could end up being very useful in a potion someday. They could even discover a potion to which wolfsbane is an essential ingredient. Maybe it will be used in a potion that could make your hair lie flat.”
Peter snickered. James used both hands to frantically mess up his hair, leaving it the messiest that Remus had even seen it.
“And why,” James asked, “would I ever want to use a potion like that?”
Remus examined James’s appearance. He looked like an idiot. “No reason I can think of,” Remus replied. “You know what, forget the blind leading the blind. We need to get this essay done and it’ll go faster if we do it together.”
James looked down at his paper, which Remus saw contained the heading: The Uses of Wolfsbane in Potion Making, By James Potter and a very elaborate sketch of a Snitch. “Fine,” James said, scooting his chair over to sit closer to Remus. He looked down at Remus’s essay. “Ha, I’ve done more than you.”
Remus and James were indeed more productive when working together. They had both always had the ability and knowledge to write their essays, but teaming up helped them to stay on task, which was exactly what they needed. They had been working for about fifteen minutes and had each managed to compose several inches when…
“So Lara says they’ve been holding a massive hunt for the werewolf ever since the moon started waning, but they haven’t found it yet. They have some suspects though, you know, shady people around the area. The thing is, it’s hard to prove someone’s a werewolf when it’s not full moon. But of course, local authorities don’t want to wait a whole month. They’re actually talking about testing potential suspects with silver to see if it poisons them.”
It was odd “ the sound of Haley Harrison’s voice had never made Remus cringe before today. Haley, and a small group of followers who had obviously yet to tire of the constant werewolf talk, had just come through the portrait hole and were now making their way across the common room. Please don’t come over here. Please don’t come over here. Please just go up to your dormitory and leave us alone.
“But,” said Mary McDonald, who was one of the group members, “even if they found a werewolf in the search, how would they be able to prove it was the same werewolf who killed Steven?”
Please don’t come over here. Please don’t come over here. Beside him, Remus felt James stiffen, and knew James wishing for the same thing. Peter started to chew his quill nervously rather than sucking it. Please don’t come over here. Please just go away.
“I’m not sure,” Haley replied as she and her friends all took seats at the table just behind Remus and James.
Damn it! Damn it! Damn it! Why did fate always have to pick on him?
“There might be a way to figure it out,” Haley continued. “But what’s the bad luck of having two werewolves hiding in one town? The odds on that must be pretty long.”
“Right, but my point was that even if they find the werewolf, couldn’t the werewolf just deny it and say it must have been some other werewolf? How can they prosecute anyone if they can’t prove anything?”
“Mary’s got a good point,” said Roy Hayden. “How can they make a conviction without proof?”
“Well I don’t know that that’s such a big problem,” said Haley.
“How do you mean?” asked Roy.
“I mean, how hard can it be to convict a werewolf of murder? If they find a werewolf, do you really think anyone is going to demand undeniable proof?” Haley scoffed. “Of course not.”
“But what if they do convict the wrong werewolf?” asked Roy. “What happens then?”
“Well, hopefully they’ll find the other one too. I have a feeling their town will be on pretty high alert for a long time after this.”
“Right, but I meant, what about the innocent werewolf they convicted?”
Haley snorted. “Innocent werewolf? There’s no such thing. Trust me, even if they do convict the wrong werewolf, the werewolf they convict will just be getting what it deserves for something else it wasn’t caught at.”
Remus could literally feel the waves of anger pulsing out of James. This was stupid. Why were they still sitting here listening to this rubbish? Homework be damned; Remus was going to bed. He started cramming his things into his bag at random; trying very hard not to hear the conversation that was taking place behind him.
“But how can you be sure?” Roy persisted. At least he seemed to be concerned for the injustices done to the werewolf. “What if the werewolf they convict never did anything?”
“Well,” Haley sounded a bit annoyed with Roy now, “like I said, I highly doubt you’ll find an innocent werewolf. It’s just not in their natures. But if by some freak turn of events they convict a werewolf who has yet to commit any crimes, the world will hardly be at a loss. In fact, it’s all for the better I should think. Lock it up before it has the chance to hurt innocent people. Lock them all up, as a matter of fact! That’s what the Ministry would do if it had any sense!”
James was not following Remus’s example of packing up. He was still sitting stiffly in his seat. Remus could see his hands clenched into fists on the table. He was staring straight ahead, not seeing anything, and his face was turning a brilliant scarlet color. Remus remembered what Sirius had said earlier, I think it’s far more likely he’ll snap by the end of the day than you will. James was angry, and he was about to snap. They needed to get out of here now.
“James, come on,” Remus hissed. “Let’s go upstairs.”
James didn’t move.
“I mean, look at this situation,” Haley continued to rant. “If the Ministry had done what was right and locked up all the werewolves before this could happen, then Steven Coote would still be alive, wouldn’t he?”
“James!” Remus hissed again.
Mechanically, with his fists still clenched and his eyes still fixed unseeingly ahead, James rose from his chair. Peter started gathering his things up to leave as well.
“Come on, hurry up!” Remus didn’t want to have to listen to a second more.
“And I mean really, what’s stopping them?” Haley demanded of her fellow students. “What’s stopping the Ministry from just locking up all the werewolves and throwing away the key, eh? What point does it serve to let them wander around freely? They’re disgusting, half-breed wastes of space, and all they do is pollute the Wizarding world with their filth.”
James, Remus, and Peter had left the table and were walking across the common room. James was actually shaking with his suppressed rage. Remus could feel the anger and the hurt welling up inside himself as well, but all he could think to do right now was to get James out of the common as fast and humanly or werewolfly possible.
“And then they come and they steal and they attack and they kill! They’re monsters! All of them! Where’s the justice in this world? How can those beasts still be allowed to walk free?! Forget locking them up “ just kill them all! It would do the world a huge favor. All werewolves deserve to die!”
And James Potter snapped.
Before Remus could do anything, James had spun on his heel to face back where Haley was sitting and roared, “SHUT UP!”
Most of the common room went quiet. Haley, who had had her back to James, turned slowly in her chair to look at him. “Excuse me?” she asked, her voice low and dangerous.
“I told you to SHUT UP!” James yelled, advancing towards her. “You don’t have any idea what the hell you are talking about, so do us all a favor and SHUT UP!”
Looks cannot kill. However, if there were ever a look that would be capable of striking someone dead, it would have been the one that Haley gave James as she stood up to face him. The anger coursing through her was as palpable as the fury racing through James.
“You will not,” she said, her voice still low and growing more dangerous with every second, “stand there and defend werewolves, Potter. Not here. Not today.”
“And why not?” James yelled. The whole common room had fallen silent now to watch the fight. “Why not!” James continued. “You don’t the first thing about werewolves and yet you sit there and you judge them and you insult them and you tell people they deserve to die!?! You don’t know anything about werewolves!”
“Oh, and you do?” Haley’s voice was starting to rise in volume and pitch to match James’s. “What makes you think you know so much about werewolves?”
Hi, God, it’s Remus. Listen, I know people usually get down on you for causing natural disasters, but I think now would be a really good time to have one. So, maybe if you wanted to, I don’t know…hit Gryffindor Tower with lightening or…raise a tsunami from the lake or…send in Chicken Little to announce the sky is falling, I would really appreciate it. Or locusts even. I’m not a big fan of locusts myself, but if ever there were a good time for a locust infestation to hit “ it would be now. Please and thank you. Amen.
“Trust me, Harrison, I know a lot more about werewolves than you ever will!”
“Yeah, well I know enough to know that they’re bloody, filthy murderers!” Haley roared.
“You can’t say that!” James shouted, frustration starting to color his angry tone. “You can’t say all werewolves are murders because not all werewolves are murderers!”
Cue locusts “ now!
“How dare you!” Haley spat. “How dare you! An innocent ten-year-old was just slaughtered! How dare you stand there and defend those monsters!”
Now!
“I’m not defending the werewolf who killed Lara’s brother and don’t accuse me of it. But not all werewolves are like that! Some werewolves are just normal people with a horrible curse. Some werewolves are innocent.”
“Oh yeah?” Haley half-shouted, half-sneered. “Like who?”
NOW!
“I’m not going to give you names,” said James. “But I am going to tell that you couldn’t be more wrong when say that all werewolves deserve to be locked up or killed. Actually, I don’t think I’ve ever heard anything so wrong in my entire life!”
“So you think they should just be allowed to run free, do you?”
“I think that if they’re innocent, they have just as much right to freedom as any of us do. If they’ve committed a crime, they have just as much right to a cell as other wizards who have committed crimes. But you can’t lock up innocent people, Harrison. If I haven’t made it clear so far, it’s wrong.”
“But we’re not talking about innocent people, Potter! We’re talking about werewolves: half-breed freaks who in my opinion would do the world a favor to go off and choke on their own fangs. And if it stops innocent people “ people, not half-breeds “ from getting hurt, then you’re damn right I’ll lock ‘um all up! No matter how wrong you think it is!”
Hello? Is anyone even listening up there!
Remus had had enough. He was sick of listening to Haley’s bile and he wasn’t much too fond of watching James make a great bloody prat of himself either. He had heard enough; he was leaving.
“If you think that locking up innocent people “ and yes, when I say ‘people’, I’m including werewolves. If you think that locking up innocent people is a way to solve the world’s problems, than you’re the one that deserves to locked up “ in a straightjacket!”
“Me?” Haley’s indignant voice was muted slightly as Remus started to run up the boys’ staircase to the dormitories. “I’m not the one who’s a dirty half-breed lover! I’m not the one who defends monsters!”
SLAM!
Remus threw the dormitory door closed behind him with all the strength he had. He couldn’t hear Haley or James at all anymore. In the stark silence and completely privacy of his own dorm, Remus leaned his back against the closed door, let all of his composure fall, and slid quietly down to rest on the floor.
It was over.
Haley Harrison had stormed off to bed in angry tears. Most of the Gryffindors had stayed down in the common room just long enough to give him a disgusted look and mutter about him to their friends before retiring as well. Demi Roberts had long since disentangled herself and abandoned Sirius in his armchair by the fire. Sirius and Peter had soon after gone up to the dormitory to find Remus.
And now it was his turn.
James had no idea at what point during his row with Haley Remus had fled. He only knew that when Haley had started shouting about how half-breeds were physically and mentally inferior to normal wizards and James had turned away with his hands over his ears saying “la la la la la, I’m not listening”, Peter had been standing exactly where James had left him, and Remus had been nowhere in sight.
James couldn’t blame Remus for leaving. Who could? No one should have to listen to that kind of slander being shouted about him. Remus had had a bad enough day already.
Standing in front of the dormitory door, James found he couldn’t quite manage the strength to open it. He let out a long sigh, staring at it, wishing he knew what he would find behind it. Best-case scenario: Remus would be a little rattled, but genuinely glad that James had been there to speak in his defense. Worst-case scenario: well, James could only think how he would feel if he were in Remus’s position. He couldn’t imagine what it would be like to know that most of the Wizarding world hated him for something over which he had no control. To know that people would always hate him, fear him, and look down on him, and that there was absolutely nothing he could do about it.
It really had to suck.
But even with these horrible thoughts in his head, along with the memories of every miserable thing that had happened today, James could help but feel a little…good. He had stood up for his friend. He had shown people that there were two sides to werewolves. He had shut Haley up…for now at least.
In short, he had assuaged his guilt.
Well, here goes nothing, James thought. He pushed open the dormitory door.
He could immediately tell that his friends had been talking about him. But then again, what else would they have been talking about?
“Hey,” James said, looking from Sirius, who was leaning against one of the posts at the end of his four-poster bed, to Remus, who was sitting cross-legged on the end of his own bed, looking down at the bedspread, to Peter, who was sitting beside Remus.
“Hey,” Sirius replied. Peter and Remus said nothing.
There was an uncomfortable silence.
“So,” James said once the silence had become too much, “how you holding up, Moony?”
More silence, and then…
“I really wish you hadn’t done that,” Remus said quietly, not looking up.
“What?” James asked.
Remus looked up at him. He looked hurt, but he also looked…angry.
“You shouldn’t have done what you did down there,” Remus said coldly. “You promised me you wouldn’t.”
James gaped at him in disbelief. He hadn’t expected Remus to jump up and thanking him or anything like that, but had never imagined that Remus would be angry. Sure, James had broken his word, but it was a stupid thing for Remus to make him promise in the first place. Didn’t Remus understand that James had had to do what he just did?
“WHAT?” James exploded. “You didn’t want me to stick up for you? You wanted me to just … just let her say all of those horrible things about you? Did you?”
“I didn’t say that!” Remus snapped. “But you sounded like an idiot down there! A ten-year-old boy just died, and there you are, defending the creature that brought it about. People are going to get suspicious! It took you lot less than a year to figure out my secret, and it’s been over three years now, and you’re yelling about werewolf rights, and people are going to connect the dots! And I don’t know for sure, but from all of the shit I’ve heard today, I don’t think people will be as accepting of my ‘furry little problem’ as you all are. But that’s just a guess,” he ended sarcastically.
James felt as though he had been slapped. Half of him wanted to curse Remus for being an ungrateful sod. The other half felt ashamed because he knew that Remus had a point. He had never considered before that he was risking revealing Remus’s secret. Now it seemed almost painfully obvious.
“Moony, I…I’m sorry,” James said quietly, forcing himself to meet his friend’s eyes. “I didn’t think of that. I didn’t think I would make people suspicious. I was just trying to help.”
“But you didn’t help, Prongs,” Remus said even more coldly than before.
“Come on, Moony,” Sirius said, clearly trying to keep the tension level in the room under control. “Prongs said he was sorry. He didn’t mean to do anything bad. Can’t you at least accept that?”
Remus swallowed. “He broke his promise,” Remus told Sirius. “He gave me his word he wouldn’t say anything to anyone.”
“And I’m sorry about that,” said James. “But I couldn’t let her keep saying those things about you, I really couldn’t. Don’t you think people deserve to know that there’s more to werewolves than what Harrison has to say?”
“Not if it risks people finding out what I am,” said Remus. “Once you put the idea in their heads, all they’d have to do is look at a lunar chart. Any idiot could do it. You did it.”
“I really don’t think that’s going to happen, Moony,” James said. “No one’s going to think that there’s actually a werewolf at Hogwarts. We hardly believed it when we found out. I mean, come on, a werewolf at Hogwarts? That’s just daft.”
“Thanks Prongs, I feel loads better now.”
“Oh stop your whining, Moony,” Sirius said. “You’re just being paranoid. No one is going to figure it out. Hate to break it to you, but you just don’t fit the ‘blood-thirsty monster’ profile that most people here seem to think fits a werewolf. You have nothing to worry about.”
Remus snorted. “Me? Nothing to worry about? I’ll believe that when it happens.”
“I think Prongs and Padfoot are right, Moony,” piped up Peter. “It doesn’t seem likely that anyone else could figure it out. We only did because we live with you and you’re our friend. I don’t think anyone else could know unless they were spying on you or something.”
Remus still looked worried, but apparently didn’t want to argue anymore. “I guess,” he said. “I just worry about it a lot. Especially after today…” His voice trailed away, and it was suddenly alarmingly transparent how much pain he was in, how much he had been hurt today.
James walked over and sat down next to Remus on his bed on the opposite side from Peter. “They’re wrong,” James said firmly, gripping Remus’s shoulder. “They’re wrong and they will never be right. They can never be right when they say horrible things about werewolves, because there will always be at least one exception.”
Remus looked at him. “I know that. I’m sorry,” he told James. “I shouldn’t have been angry. You’re a great friend for standing up for me down there.”
James shook his head. “You were right, though; it was stupid. I should have known better than to risk giving away your secret. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be,” said Remus. “You guys are probably right, anyway. It wouldn’t be very likely that anyone would figure it out. I’m probably worried for nothing. They’d have to be obsessed with me or something to see the pattern. I probably have nothing to worry about.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t believe it.”
“It makes perfect sense!”
“It makes no sense whatsoever.”
“You just don’t want to believe it’s true,” said Severus.
“No, I don’t,” Lily replied composedly. “I hate to think that something that terrible could happen to someone that nice.”
“Oh, yeah,” said Severus sarcastically, “I feel so sorry for the poor werewolf.”
“I still don’t think it’s true.”
“But it fits, Lily, it fits!” He paused for a minute as something seemed to occur to him. “What do you mean ‘someone that nice’?”
“I mean that he’s a nice person,” said Lily. “He has bad taste in mates, perhaps, but he’s not a bad guy himself you know.”
“Do you like him?”
“No,” said Lily. Severus was the last person she would have thought would want to discuss her crushes. She usually saved that talk for her girlfriends. “He’s just a friend, Sev.”
Severus did his best to hide his relief. “Yeah, well, I’m pretty sure that your ‘friend’ is a werewolf.”
“He is not.”
“Then how do you explain Potter’s werewolf defense last night? You were the one who told me about it. You were the one who mentioned that you thought it was weird.”
“Yes, I did. But that doesn’t suggest to me that Lupin is a werewolf. It just suggests that Potter might know a werewolf, not that the werewolf lives at school with him.”
“Okay,” said Severus, rolling his eyes, “so according to you: Potter has a mate who’s a werewolf, and he has a mate who’s ill at every full moon, but the two are completely unrelated and it’s all just a giant coincidence?”
“Can I just say it’s a bit creepy that you track his absences well enough to pick out that kind of pattern?”
“Do you really think it’s a coincidence though?”
Lily looked around the snowy courtyard they were sitting in. They were the only two there, but she could see some boys having a snowball fight out a ways in the grounds. She watched them for a minute, pondering Severus’s words.
“Maybe you’re right,” she said finally. “Maybe I don’t believe it because I don’t want to.” She sighed. “But I still don’t believe it.”
Author’s Notes: So, a bit of a quiet, boring chapter… but maybe you can still find something to review. I do love reviews!