Just came back from the Wizarding World of Harry Potter and am a woman obsessed. Don't usually write HP. 'Sup, Potterheads?
Bad Blood
Wednesday the 21st of February, 1973.
(five days after the last full moon.)
So it had come to this. After almost two years of world-class education at the greatest wizarding school ever known, Remus Lupin was taking remedial potions.
He had never been much of a potion brewer, indeed, any practical subject that didn't involve wandwork seemed to completely thwart him (his first year flying lessons remained a deeply traumatic memory for him, one that he desperately wanted to forget but his friends wouldn't let him.)
Professor Slughorn, a man whose expertise in potions was such that he was even shaped like a cauldron, let out an exasperated sigh as Remus tried to mop the nervous sweat from his head before it could drop into his curdling mess and ruin the potion even more.
"Lupin, I would expect someone as bright as you to be able to tell the difference between clock-wise and anti-clockwise!"
"Sorry sir," he muttered, stirring in the opposite direction and trying not to push through the thickening mixture. Severus Snape would absolutely love this.
He was trying (and failing) to concoct Gregory's Unctuous Unction, the potion he had already botched twice before in class despite James' detailed notes and Sirius secretly adjusting the heat under his cauldron for him so Remus could focus on stirring the congealing chaos in a blind panic.
"Alright." Slughorn stopped hovering and rocked back on forth on the balls of his feet beside Remus. For a man of Slughorn's girth, this was an impressive feat of balance. "Explain to me what's in your cauldron right now."
"Gregory's Unctuous Unction," Remus recited, "was invented by Gregory the Smarmy. It causes the drinker to believe that whomever gave him the potion his best friend. It's identifiable from it's bright green smoke, well it's more a brownish colour at the moment, but the smoke billows long after the potion has cooled-"
"Yes, yes, that's all correct, Lupin." Slughorn sighed. "The problem isn't your understanding of the theory. I have no doubt that you work hard and you clearly know your stuff - your homework and essays are excellent, it's just your practical marks that let you down."
Remus nodded, feeling his face pickle with redness. Slughorn was never satisfied making his point just once, but rather, he preferred to reword and reiterate his point three or four times over "to let it sink in," he would probably say before adding "to really let it mull over, to allow time for reflection, you see…" Remus wasn't sure if it was a teaching strategy or if Slughorn just really enjoyed the sound of his own voice. Remus squinted through the steam and read his next instruction.
Sneezewart stem, chopped finely and evenly. (Remus remembered James' underlined note in the instructions he had made him: "chop them quickly: don't let the oils drain out! Chop and drop, Lupin! Chop. And. Drop.")
This was the part that always thwarted Remus: the chopping. In first year, Sirius would laugh at Remus' apparent fear of getting too near the bubbling waters, flickering flames and sharp knifes in the potions class, calling it his "Cauldronphobia" (though, he quickly stopped when Severus took notice of Remus' abysmal brewing skills and started making sly comments too. After that, Sirius had lost quite a few house points trying to do Remus' potions for him in an effort to "wipe the grin off that slimy git's face." Sirius spent a great deal of his time and energy trying to Wipe The Grin Off That Slimy Git's Face.) But Remus had good reason to be sheepish about it.
"You need to get a better hold of the blade," Slughorn chastised, "you're almost a foot away from the table, you'll never cut precisely like that! A true brewer needs to wield the knife as if it were an extension of his hand."
Remus took a few meagre steps forward, trying to subtly push the knife a little bit further away in the process. It reminded him of being little and his dad showing him what happened when you tried to push two magnets together. The knife was being repelled from him by irresistible force. A dangerous thing pushing way from a dangerous thing. Mutual revulsion, or something like that.
Slughorn made a grunt of disapproval through his thick moustache, causing the ends to flutter gracefully in front of his face "you're going to push your equipment off the table, what do you think you're doing?"
"Don'tlikeknives," Remus muttered, barely audible. His fist clenching an unclenching around the knife's polished oak handle. It was Sirius's knife. It was a better quality and much sharper than the communal ones they typically used in class and Sirius seemed to think letting Remus use it would help his potions somehow. If anything, it had made it worse.
"What was that, Lupin?"
"I don't like knives," Remus repeated, only scarcely louder than the last time.
"You can't ever expect to master potions without slicing a few fingers, boy, "Slughorn scoffed, "the greatest potion brewers have all had to get a thumb re-attached at one point or another. Why, I've lost this left pinkie more times than I can count! A little blood on the chopping board, isn't-"
He stopped. It clicked.
"Of course," he started, the discomfort apparent in every part of his rotund body, "with your… special circumstances… I could understand why you might be a little more… cautious."
The man who could usually rebuild the same sentence three times over was now struggling to string together one. Remus' ability to make people deeply uncomfortable by his mere existence never failed.
"It's just…" Remus said quietly," what if it gets in the potion and someone else tries it and… I can't do that, I'd never want to turn someone into… into someone like me."
"I suppose we could get you some gloves," Slughorn suggested, "dragonhide is tough without limiting your range of motion-"
"-then everyone would ask why I was wearing gloves all the time!" Remus cut it, his voice suddenly much louder than usual, "I already have to make excuses to my friends for why I disappear every couple of weeks. I'd rather be rubbish at potions than have people ask any more questions. Just fail me for the term - I really don't care! I can't be arsed with it anymore!"
Before his could stop himself, he threw a fistful of the half-chopped sneezewart into the potion, causing the whole thing to turn the colour and consistency of hot tar. He was tempted to kick the whole thing over, but decided against it. He was always irritated in the days leading up to the transformation, but these days he seemed to get irritated in the days following, too. Mum said this had less to do with the transformation and more to do with being a few weeks shy of thirteen. Remus was willing to consider it was probably a little bit of both and he resented it – being a monster one night a month was bad enough without it creeping into the rest of his life.
Slughorn didn't say anything for a while. Remus waited for him to dock some points, or throw in a detention. But instead, he pulled his wand out of his velvet robes.
"Evanesco," said Slughorn, emptying the still-bubbling cauldron of its half-finished, fully-ruined potion.
Remus blinked a few times. That was it? No row for his insolence? No points from Gryffindor? From the head of Slytherin house of all people?
"Sir?" Remus said slowly and carefully.
"I think that's probably enough for tonight," Slughorn said, his voice light and just as careful as Remus'. "It's almost after curfew. You can come back another night and try again."
"Erm, yes," Remus said, not quite believing his luck that he was getting away without punishment. "Of course, sir."
Slughorn followed him to the doorway of the potions classroom, his arm bounced precariously at his side, as if trying to work out if it was a good idea to give Remus a reassuring pat on the back.
"Perhaps you could bring a friend with you next time," Slughorn said casually, "for encouragement. Your friend Sirius Black perhaps? He's a dab hand at potions, why not invite him along? In fact, I run something of an after-school club sometimes, you can come here for your remedial potions with Mr. Black for support and then both of you can come along to the next gathering straight after…"
Of course, Slughorn wasn't going to give up trying to collect Sirius. He was even willing to invite the The Werewolf into the mix if it meant sinking his claws into The Noble and Most Ancient House of Black.
"And don't forget this," Slughorn added, handing Remus Sirius' knife, cleaned and sheathed. "It's a fine blade. I used to have one just like it – got me through my N.E.W.T.S. That and hard work of course!"
"Thanks, professor," Remus said, slinging his school bag over one shoulder and pocketing the knife. Maybe Slughorn wasn't as pompous as Remus imagined he was. It wasn't Slughorn's fault that he had to constantly chastise and correct Remus' abysmal potions. Although, if Remus ever became a teacher, he liked to think that he'd be a bit more tactful in his lessons.
He quickly made his way back to the Gyryffindor common room; he had left his wand on his bed and suddenly regretted it when he remembered that the Slytherin common room was close to the potions dungeon. He would have to hope that no one saw him or felt like cursing him. A wandless Gryffindor was like shooting hinkypunk in a barrel. He walked out of the dungeons as quickly as he could without breaking into a run and didn't drop his pace until he reached the Fat Lady.
"Password," she said lazily.
Remus struggled to remember for a moment. It had been changed since Valentine's Day's "chocolate hearts." Sirius and Peter never missed the opportunity to joke that this was surely Remus' favourite ever password. Because he ate a lot of chocolate – a hilarious and truly original observation that no one had ever made before.
"Semper idem," he suddenly recalled.
"Bingo," The Fat Lady sighed, swinging open.
"Hasn't that been the password before?" Remus asked, climbing through the portrait.
"Yes, that's the point, dear…"
Remus was ready to point out that repetition wasn't the point of passwords at all, but he was drowned out by the noise of the common room. Usually the four of them would be huddled on the sofas by the fireplace, orchestrating the next great prank. Of course, they wouldn't do this without Remus, because was sensible and was always quick to point out obvious flaw and weaknesses in the other's plots such as "Yes, I'm quite certain that releasing a wild mandrake into the Slytherin common room does qualify as murder" and "but if you do summon a cloud of slime to follow Snape around all day will it leave a trail behind? Filch will actually kill you for that one" and "just remember if you plant an all-seeing eye in the prefect's bathroom you'll also see big Benjy Fenwick's arse as he goes for a bath. You'll never be able to unsee that." No one else seemed to think of these obvious things. The lack of common sense was simply terrifying.
He could hear their hushed voices from the foot of the staircase and found himself treading much quieter to better hear what they were saying.
He froze entirely when he heard his own name come up.
"-But Remus has been unwell," Peter insisted, "he was in the hospital wing the whole week after Halloween in first year, remember?"
"He did eat his weight in chocolate," Sirius said, sounding slightly resigned; a tone of voice that didn't suit him at all. "I'd be sick as a dog, too."
"He always eats his weight in chocolate," James sighed. "Have you seen the Honeydukes stash in his bedside trunk?"
"Of course I have, it's the only reason I'm friends with him," Sirius joked, or at least Remus hoped it was a joke. Sirius' line between nice and mean was very blurred.
He quietly leaned in closer to the ajar door to the second year dorm, careful to avoid the sagging section of the floorboards that creaked loudly at the slightest amount of weight pressed against it. Through the small crack he could just make out James lifting up a large black chart adorned with circles and semi-circles.
A lunar chart. Remus had been all but attached to one since he was four years old.
No… no, it wasn't happening. It wasn't happening. It was astronomy homework. They were using it for scrap paper. They were doing anything else in the world, please say they were doing something else.
"And," James added, "If you look at the week after Halloween, there- '71, what do you see on the second of November? A full moon. It's always around the full moon. Our very first weekend at Hogwarts, back in first year, he had to rush home because his Great-Aunt-Whoever was bitten by a Venomous Tentacula and he didn't come back until halfway through the next week. And his arm was in a sling, remember?"
"Yeah, I remember," Sirius said, his voice was moving around the room, he must have been pacing. Sirius could never be still longer than a few minutes, he was the human embodiment of perpetual motion and sometimes just being in the same room as him was exhausting, "but if he really is a… a werewolf-"
The force of the word pushed Remus back. Repelled by the very word that defined him. Magnetic revulsion. They knew. They knew and they were going to tell everyone. He would be chased out of Hogwarts. They'd send holwers and cursed letters to his house. They'd have to move house again. He'd have to run.
And run he did. Straight into the World's Creakiest Floorboard.
The hushed voices stopped in the most explosive silence Remus had ever heard.
"Remus? S'that you?" James' voice called out, but Remus had already burst into a sprint. Without any thought as to where he was going or what he would do when he got there, he made a run for it. He pushed past a small gaggle of first year girls trading wizard cards on the floor the common room and managed to slide through the closing portrait behind some prefects getting ready to patrol the halls. Curfew would be taking effect soon. A ridiculous part of his brain wanted him to back to his dorm so that he didn't get into trouble for running through the halls after hours, but his flight instincts overpowered that thought. Some Gryffindor he was.
Where was he going to go? His first thought was the hospital wing, Madame Pomfrey was always especially kind to him, and she would probably stick him behind a curtain away from prying eyes, but he couldn't stay in the hospital wing forever, they'd eventually hunt him down. They always did.
He stopped breathless by the portrait of Thaddeus Thurkell and his seven sons on the fifth floor. Thurkell's sons were all born squibs and, out of shame, Thaddeus transfigured them into hedgehogs. The hedgehogs frolicked and rolled around the picture frame as Remus tried to compose himself. Just after the summer, Peter, an avid fan of James Bond and top secret passageways and all things espionage, had discovered that if you poked the grey hedgehog (apparently the eldest Thurkell son), he would curl up into a ball and the portrait would open, taking anyone who entered down to the ground floor on the other side. How he discovered this, Remus would never know, but he poked the hedgehog regardless and jumped through the portrait the second it started to open.
After a few seconds of dizziness he emerged through a Welsh landscape on the first floor. The journey had left his shoelaces untied and his jumper inside-out. Normally he would take the time to tidy himself up (probably earning jibes from the others for his compulsive neatness, usually "Lady Lupin." They called him Lady Lupin quite a lot. He would gladly be called Lady Lupin for the rest of his life if it meant they didn't call him "werewolf") but he had no time. He had to run.
He could hear the hedgehogs squeaking on the other side of the wall. The others were following him. He was just around the corner from the main entrance. The doors would still be open for a few more minutes.
The Shrieking Shack. He could hide in the Shrieking Shack – no one else knew how to get in there and very few would dare try. Unfortunately those very few probably included James, Peter and Sirius, but Remus would have to take that chance. He had nowhere else to go.
He was halfway across the entrance hall when he heard the other three emerge from the other side of Thaddeus Thurkell's portrait.
"He's over there," Sirius gasped, just as out of breath as Remus was, "oi, Remus!"
The exhaustion disappeared from Remus' body and he escaped outside. The grass was still wet and slippery from the morning's rain, and he did his best not to slide around too much as he ran towards the Whomping Willow.
He's need to get supplies, he had no food, no money – he didn't even have any furniture that hadn't been ravaged to bits. He could try sneaking into HoneyDukes, he could use the tunnel they had found to sneak in during the night, use accio to get things quickly without being seen. He'd have to learn accio first, obviously, but he was bright, he could work it out, he just needed a place to hide. He just needed to get to the willow-
He suddenly realised.
He didn't have his wand. It was still on his bed in the dorm. He was a wandless Gryffindor. A big barrel of hinkypunk.
He'd have to find a stick or something to push in the knot. There were always branches lying around, he just had to-
THACK
The force of the branch threw him several yards across the ground, and the muddy surface sent him sliding even further back. He was winded, the life leaving not only his lungs but his arms and legs too. He was vaguely aware of a gash on his left hand where the thinnest vein of the branch had sliced past. Brilliant. After all his determination not to cut himself in potions, he had been bested by a branch.
"Are you out of your bloody mind, Lupin?!"
They were catching up with him. His instincts, once again, were telling him to run, but his legs were telling him "would you kindly give us a minute? I don't know if you noticed, but we just got attacked by a tree!"
He saw Sirius bound over in front of the others, his eyes were wild with a mania Remus was all too familiar with. He would be impossible to calm down now for at least half an hour.
"Are you hurt?" He asked, and before Remus could answer spat out. "Good. You could have died. And what a stupid way to go – death by tree." Sirius' voice high and hysterical. It was probably going to be closer to an hour. "I hope you realise how embarrassing that would be." He took a few deep breaths before throwing in "wanker" for good measure.
Peter and James had caught up and joined Sirius by Remus' side. They were just as breathless but seemed a lot less likely to call him a wanker.
"Are you alright, Remus?" Peter asked, looking alarmed. "You do realise that's the Whomping Willow?!"
"Of course he knows it's the Whomping Willow," Sirius barked, "why do you think the idiot was running head first into the most deadly thing at Hogwarts!"
If Remus had any breath, he would have corrected Sirius and let him know that the Willow wasn't the most dangerous thing at Hogwarts. Remus was.
"Remus, what do you think you're doing?" James asked, "you heard us, didn't you. You heard what we said. About…"
He tried to force his lungs to fill with air again, enough air that he could come up with some sort of excuse. Any excuse. Anything to try to convince them that he wasn't-
"So is it true?" Peter asked. "Are you actually a… a werewolf?"
He said the last word so quietly he might as well have not said it at all. Maybe he didn't. Either way, he didn't really have to. It was undeniable now… they all knew.
"Yes," James said, still surprisingly calm," I think it's safe to assume from Lupin's stunning display of long distance running there that he is, indeed, a werewolf. Do you concur, Remus?"
Remus was slightly too stunned to concur. No one was kicking him, or cursing at him (other than Sirius, but he seemed to be more upset about the Whomping Willow than anything else) or calling him a monster. This had never happened to him before. He wasn't entirely sure how he was supposed to react.
"Yeah," he grunted, trying to push himself into a sitting position, "that about sums it up."
"Wow," Peter whispered, looking down at the soggy ground. They were all covered in mud, but no one seemed to notice or care very much.
Sirius broke the silence, still indignant. "And you decided that the best solution to us knowing this is to commit suicide by plant. Tosser."
"It's more than a plant. There's an entrance…" he said, still trying to get his breath back, "a knot at the base… it freezes the willow… it takes you into the Shrieking Shack."
"Oh, well that makes much more sense," Sirius scoffed angrily, "bypass the death tree and face the poltergeists instead. Have you heard the noise those lot make – the Bloody Barron won't even dare to face those nutters!"
"There are no ghosts in the Shrieking Shack-"
"-of course there are ghosts in the Shrieking Shack-"
"-Sirius, calm down," James sighed, but Sirius still had at least another fifty-five minutes of manic energy to disperse.
"You can hear them screaming and howlin-" He stopped. "Oh."
"They planted it the summer before we started school," Peter said, putting the pieces together as he spoke. "They planted it for you, didn't they? To give you somewhere to… erm…"
"Transform," Remus offered, it sounded even more disgusting when he said it aloud. "You should go back to the common room before we get caught. I'll understand if you don't want me staying there anymore."
"Why would we want you not to stay there anymore?" James asked as if this was an absurd concept. "Who's going to idiot-proof our pranks?"
"Or refill the sweet supply?" Peter added. "Or force us to revise for our exams?"
"Exactly!" James said. "What do you say, Sirius?"
James nudged Sirius in an urging sort of way, but Sirius didn't relent, he huffed for a few moments before responding.
"But you still hid it from us you… you… swotty… lanky… northern…. twat."
Remus shook his head, even doing that felt exhausting. "What else was I supposed to do? You know as well as anyone that people like me aren't welcome in the wizarding world. And who could blame them? No one wants their children to be around a monster."
At this, Sirius' threw his tightly crossed arms out, throwing balled fists into the mud. "Oh, bugger off - you are not a monster. You're far too uptight for that. Honestly, Lupin, if you were up any higher on that horse, you'd get altitude sickness you moralistic prat."
Remus couldn't quite work out if Sirius was still angry or not. He used insults for affection just as much as he used them for derision and it usually just left Remus wondering if Sirius loved him or hated him.
"They don't put me in there for my sake," Remus argued, pointing a grimey finger at the shack. "I could kill someone – rip out their throat and slash them until there's nothing left. Or worse if they're unlucky enough to live. If they live through the bite and…"
He couldn't allow himself to finish that thought. He tried to push his matted hair off his head, but only succeeded at adding more mud to his face. It stung as it seeped into the slice on his cheek enough to make his eyes water.
"And Dumbledore lets you come here?" Peter said in surprise, "I mean, no offence or anything, Remus, but I can't imagine any school knowingly letting a… a werewolf study there."
"Well it's Dumbledore isn't it?" James shrugged, "he's hardly the most conventional bloke in the world and he's still the greatest headmaster Hogwarts has ever known. Being conventional's for boring folk."
As if to emphasize his point James ran a hand through his strategically messy hair, preventing it from becoming flat and, well, conventional.
Sirius' face was still twisted into some heavy and incomprehensible. He shook his head a few times and let out a weary sigh.
"I was so rude to your parents at the train station."
Sirius had been rather unpleasant to Mum and Dad at King's Cross after the Christmas holidays. He noted that every time Remus went back home to his family, he'd return covered in cuts and bruises, sometimes even slung in bandages or walking with a limp, Sirius had taken this train of through to its most unfortunate conclusion and had been awful to Mum and Dad ever since.
"I'm sure you can work out how make it up to them," Remus said, an unexpected grin on his face. "It's not like you can be ridiculously charming or anything."
Sirius didn't smile back. Instead he clasped his puddle-drenched hands together, splashing everyone in the process. "Well I'm going to cure it."
Remus felt himself let out a groan. "You can't cure lycanthropy."
"I probably can," Sirius shrugged. "I'm quite brilliant. Just because you're doing remedial potions doesn't mean we're all idiots, you know."
Peter and James laughed, filling Remus with a warm wash of relief, untying his insides and allowing him to breathe once again.
"So you don't want rid of me?" Remus asked, not quite daring to believe it.
"You're our best friend, Lupin." James said, flicking a clump of muck at Remus' head. "You're not getting rid of us that easily."
"We could give you a code name!" Peter added, excitedly, his eyes wide at the thought of a new secret. He did love secrets. "You could be… howler or fang or moony-"
"-Moony means unfocused and daft-"
"-So it's an ironic nickname. Come on," Peter said, pulling himself to his feet, the others following suit. "Let's go back up before Filch catches us out here."
Remus stretched his arms out, opening his chest and filling his lungs with cool, clean air. "Good idea. But can we stop by the bathroom first? I'd rather not go to bed covered in mud."
"Oh, why of course, Lady Lupin!" Sirius chanted. "A scented bubble bath and a big bar of chocolate before wriggling under the duvets, how exquisite."
Remus felt a lazy smile sweep across his face. "I know you're taking the piss, but that sounds really good right now."
They trundled back into the main hall, laughing and joking as the waning moon appeared behind them.