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Werewolf Lessons


Remus was reading History of Magic revision outloud as Sirius lay on his back beside him, staring up at the ceiling and chewing on a licorice wand. Remus had already taken away the song suckers after catching Sirius humming to the radio instead of listening to the revision - “You’ve got to study or you’ll fail the O.W.L.s and next year you’ll be in all remedial classes instead of in with us!” Remus had snapped, “Now pay attention!”

Sirius was only half paying attention just the same, though, even as Remus tried to make it exciting by reading the text with gusto, as though he were reading some thrilling adventure novel instead of their bleedin’ textbook. Sirius looked over at Rey, at the flush to his face that came from reading something he truly found interesting. Sirius smiled and reached up his hand, cuppin Remus’s cheek gently, making him pause.

Rey looked down at him, at the way he was smiling up at him. “What?” he asked.

Sirius said, “I want to remember you always like this.”

Remus stared at Sirius for a long moment, “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Sirius replied, “Just that when I’m a hundred and you’re ninety-nine and we’re old and have adopted twenty thousand wolf pups, I want to annoy them all with long winded tales about your beautiful face when we were sixteen and fifteen.”

Remus put the book down, realizing that concentrating was over now and he looked down at Sirius. “So… we’re having twenty thousand wolf pups now?”

“Maybe more.”

“We’re busy in the future, aren’t we?”

“Quite.” Sirius murmured.

“I never knew you were good at divination,” Remus said.

Sirius grabbed onto Remus’s tie, pulling him lower… closer… “I am. I can see your future.”

“Yeah?” Remus asked, “What’s there?”

“Snogging…. Loads and loads of snogging...” Sirius opened his mouth and lifted his head off the pillow he was using as Remus’s mouth met his and they were just about to settle into a good deal of snogging when there came a crack and a house elf wearing a tea cozy emblazoned with the school crest appeared beside Sirius’s head, making Remus jump back with a shout of surprise.

The elf seemed unbothered by what he’d interrupted and simply stated, “The headmaster requests an audience with Mr. Lupin in fifteen minutes,” and then disapparated again.

Remus stared at the spot where the elf had been.

Sirius said, “Bloody hell, couldn’t do with a good old fashioned note?”

Remus’s heart rate was through the roof. “I know, blimey.”

Sirius looked up at Remus. “So we can get a lot done in fifteen minutes, Moonykins…” he grinned and grabbed for the tie again.




Remus ended up late (of course because Sirius wouldn’t stop tugging on his tie and being adorable) and he sprinted up the last few steps of Dumbledore’s staircase, tripping on the landing and knocking over a polka dotted umbrella that leaned against the wall. “Bloody hell,” Remus murmured, righting it, and turning to knock on the door, composing himself as he did and running a nervous hand through his hair, certain it was still a frightful mess from Sirius’s hands having been tugging on his curls for the last fifteen minutes as they snogged madly.

Dumbledore opened the door and smiled down at Remus over his half-moon glasses, his eyes sweeping across Remus’s wrinkled, half-tucked oxford and frumpled hair. He smiled, “I am glad you didn’t feel the need to dress up on my account, Mr. Lupin,” he said, stepping back and allowing Remus through.

Remus tightened his tie and realized the state of his oxford and hurriedly shoved the tails of it into his trousers. “Sorry, sir,” he murmured, “I, uh, was in the middle of… something... when the house elf showed up and I didn’t have time to, uh, to change.” He looked around and realized then that Newt Scamander was calmly sitting and drinking tea in the seat across the desk from Dumbledore’s chair and Remus cried out, “Mr. Scamander!”

“Hullo,” Newt said, flashing a wide, but awkward, grin, which fell away right after he’d said the word. He waved to a second teacup on the desk and reached in his pocket and produced a sprig of aconite. “Full moon this week.”

Remus nodded. He’d felt it for the past couple days, slowly getting worse, his hips beginning to ache, and other than his sprint for Dumbledore’s office just now, he’d been moving quite a lot more like Filch than he was a fifteen year old boy, even with the aconite that Sirius had knicked from Slughorn’s store, which Remus had ended up keeping, promising himself when he was older and had a job he’d donate as many galleons as he could to the school to make up for it.

Dumbledore waved Remus over to the chair opposite Newt and settled himself in behind his desk as Newt dropped the aconite into the other tea cup and poured steaming hot water over the leaves to steep for Remus. The cup immediately gave off a strong licorice scent. This aconite sprig was much fresher than the stuff from Slughorn’s store.

Newt smiled as Remus breathed the smell of the aconite and let out a deep sigh of relief.

After taking his first sip of the tea, Remus looked up at Newt and asked, “Have you heard from Professor Veigler?” It was impossible for Rey to have the taste of aconite in his mouth without thinking of Ned Veigler, who had been the first to introduce him to the miracle leaves.

Newt’s smile faded. “No, I’m - I’m afraid we haven’t.”

Remus frowned.

As Dumbledore lowered himself into his seat, he said, “I have been keeping careful eye on the goings on of the werewolves, and Mr. Veigler, though hunted by Fenrir Greyback, has not yet been found. No news is good news, I would say.”

Remus studied the patterns the leaves were making as they swirled about in the cup, floating in the hot water, and wondered where Mr. Veigler was, if he was okay, if he was happy, if he was safe… if he’d ever come back.

“Mr. Lupin, I’m sure you are wondering what I’ve asked you here for today,” Dumbledore said as Newt added more water to his own tea cup. Remus nodded. “Well, if you recall, before holiday, we had asked about you possibly assisting Mr. Scamander with the matter of a young boy who has recently been bitten by a werewolf.”

Remus nodded.

“Due to circumstances, of course, we were unable to introduce the two of you in January, but I was hoping that perhaps this month I might be able to persuade you…?” Dumbledore looked hopefully at Remus.

“Just… just a bit of of help,” Newt stammered, “Sort of… of like… werewolf lessons.”

Remus nodded, lowering his tea cup, “Yeah, of course, I’d be happy to help.”

Newt looked quite excited at this and he slid forward in his seat and awkwardly reached to put a palm on Remus’s knee. “Th - thank you,” he said thickly. His eyes were wide, “He’s just a - a boy, like I told you, uh, before. He’s… he’s really just… quite small. We kept him in a baby’s playpen last month, handled him with dragonhide gloves so his teeth couldn’t go through.” Newt smiled gently, then, “But he, uh, he needs a bit of a friend, I s’pose, someone to, uh, to talk to.”

Remus nodded again, “I understand.”

Dumbledore turned to Newt, “Why don’t you call him up from the case and we’ll get them introduced?” he asked with a smile.

“Yes,” Newt stood up and walked over to a chair in the corner where his suitcase sat upon the seat, the lid closed. He pushed open the case and looked down inside, “No, Niffler. Not now.” He reached in and picked up the black furry creature, holding her by her hind legs. Several gold coins fell from her pouch and into the case, clinging off the wood ladder on the way down. The niffler stretched her paws, as though trying to catch them. “So sorry,” Newt said, “But that is what you get, trying to, uh, to escape…” he bent low, inserting the niffler back into the case and called out, “Bradley?”

A few minutes went by and then the little boy poked his head out of the cae, his face a bit pudgy in that well-cared-for way, with bright eyes and blonde hair that hung over his forehead. Newt reached in and put his hands under the boy’s arms, lifting him up out of the case, “There you are,” he said, and he put the boy on the floor of Dumbledore’s office. “Bradley, you uh, you remember Mr. Dumbledore?”

Bradley nodded as Dumbledore waved to him cordially.

Newt waved a palm at Remus, “And this,” he said, “Is Remus Lupin.”

The boy looked nervously upon Remus and Remus suddenly felt Sirius’s fingers in his mind, running over his scars and he knew that was exactly what the boy was looking at. He tried very hard to keep his face straight and not to flinch away from the boy’s wide eyes. Bradley looked up, “Mr. Newt,” he whispered, “What happened to his face?”

“So sorry,” Newt murmured, blushing.

Remus shook his head, “No, it’s… it’s alright.” He slid off the chair so he was sitting on the floor, closer to Bradley’s eye level. “They’re scars,” Remus said before Newt could stammer out an answer.

“From what?” Bradley asked.

Remus tilted his head, “Well, I’m a werewolf, too. Only I’ve had many years of changing all by myself. I didn’t have anybody to help me take care of myself, to protect me from hurting myself by accident.”

Bradley leaned closer and looked really carefully at the silver-pink mark on Remus’s nose, then slowly reached up and put up his index finger on the edge of the scar that went over Remus’s nose and he flinched slightly. “Sorry,” Bradley said, drawing his hand back, “Did it hurt?”

“No,” Remus replied. “I’m just not used to anyone touching them.”

Bradley hesitated a moment, then returned his finger back to Remus’s scar, moving his finger across Remus’s nose. Remus closed his eyes as Bradley moved his palm. “You did them to you?” he asked, concerned.

“I did,” Remus nodded.

Bradley lowered his hand when he’d reached the end of the scar and Remus opened his eyes. There was worry in Bradley’s eyes. “Am I going to have scars?”

Dumbledore’s fingers peaked before his face and Newt was leaning forward, his palms pressed together, his jaw quaking slightly as he watched the two boys talking. Remus shook his head, “I don’t think you will,” he replied, “Because you’ve got help to keep you safe on the full moon nights. Mr. Scamander is going to help you and keep you so, so safe.” He smiled and reached forward, fixing a misaligned button on Bradley’s cardigan. “You won’t be all alone like I was.” Remus smiled.

“Remus is - is going to help you, Bradley,” Newt said, leaning forward.

Bradley looked at Remus.

“Is that okay?” Remus asked.

Bradley nodded.

Remus smiled.




“So… what did Dunderbore want?” Sirius asked the moment Remus had come through the door.

Remus looked up at him, speechless a moment. “You… you do know you’re on the ceiling… yeah?”

Remus stood in the doorway of the fifth year boys dormitory, staring up at the ceiling, where James and Sirius stood - yes, on the ceiling. They had put sticking charms on their shoes and used the charm to climb up the walls and onto the ceiling of the dormitory, where they were attempting to figure out the physics of drinking tea upside down, when Remus had returned from the meeting with Dumbledore and Newt Scamander.

Sirius looked down (up?) at his feet on the ceiling, then back to Remus, his face red from the blood rushing to his head. “Ignore this, it’s just a bit of silly wand work we found in one of the joke books,” he said.

James, whose hair was standing straight on end and glasses kept slipping over his brow and onto his forehead, pushed his glasses down onto his nose firmly for about the hundredth time and said, “Yeah, mate, Sirius said you’d gone to see Dumbledore, so out with it. What’d he want?”

Peter was watching from his bed, firmly on the ground like a normal person, and he said, “It’s a bit hard to get over the fact that you lot are dangling upside down, really, you can’t blame him for being stunned…”

Sirius took a few tremulous steps toward Remus and ruffled his hair, grinning, “Aw come now, Moony. Don’t be stunned because we’re high.”

James snorted, loudly.

Sirius grinned over at him, “Shut it, Prongs.” He looked at Remus, “What’d Dumbledore want?”

“Wanted to ask me about taking care of Bradley,” Remus said, and he grabbed another sweater from his trunk, shrugging it on as he climbed onto his bed, reaching into the nightstand for more aconite from the little box where he hid the leaves Sirius had stolen. He took two out and shoved them in his mouth, chewing them like it was gum. He watched as Sirius turned and walked gingerly toward him on the ceiling.

“Who?” James asked.

“Bradley… the boy Newt Scamander saved before holiday. He’s just a ickle bean, got bit by… by a werewolf,” he didn’t want to admit that it was Ned Veigler that’d done it. Even to himself. “Newt’s asked me to sort of guide him a bit this moon, give the boy some pointers or something…” he shrugged. “You know, like werewolf lessons.”

Sirius rubbed his nose, “So we’ll be taking the little potsticker out to the Shack with us?”

Remus hesitated, “Well, no, not exactly. I’ll, er, be transforming in Newt’s suitcase, rather. In the control room.”

Sirius fell from the ceiling.

“Bloody hell!” Remus leaped up from the bed and ran to where Sirius had fallen onto the floor as Sirius sat up, cursing and rubbing the shoulder he’d slammed down onto, “Are you alright? Merlin are you broken?”

“I’m alright,” Sirius said. He looked up at Remus as he clutched the elbow on his injured arm. “So wait, you’re not transforming in the Shack?”

Remus shook his head, “No, in Newt’s control room. Like I did all summer.”

“But what about us?” Sirius asked. “What about Prongs and Wormy and me?”

Remus looked between them uncomfortably. “Well, you lot… would have a month off, I s’pose.”

Sirius looked anxious. “A month off?”

“Yeah.”

“I don’t want a month off,” he complained.

“Well, you have one anyway,” Remus said, “I sort of already agreed to it.”

Sirius made a face, “Oh. Well. That’s settled then isn’t it?” He looked up at James on the ceiling, and then back to Remus, “Brilliant then. I guess we’ll just have to - to think of something else to do that night then, besides, you know, all the fun stuff we usually get into… we’ll just… you know… do revisions or something.” He paused, “I’m sure everyone will have a brilliant night.”

“You aren’t mad at me, are you?” Remus asked.

“Psssssssssh,” Sirius waved away the suggestion, “Why on earth would I be?” he asked, and he turned away, casting the charm on his feet once more, and hurrying to rejoin James on the ceiling….