DISCLAIMER: JK Rowling is merely inspiration for this story. She doesn't endorse my work or even know that it exists.
Remus Lupin and the Computational Error
"Strange, indeed, that you should not have suspected that your universe and its contents were only dreams, visions, fiction! Strange, because they are so frankly and hysterically insane—like all dreams"
The Mysterious Stranger
As soon as Remus felt real again, he ran. There was no time to lose: he was just born and his brother would arrive in 3 minutes, and die sometime between 8 minutes and 3 hours from now. Remus was there to change that.
Remus entered the birthing room. There was his mother, looking barely conscious, and a young healer taking a pale infant into his hands.
"That infant needs oxygen and he needs it now!" Remus said.
"Who are you?" the healer asked. "Who authorized you—"
"We don't have time for this," Remus said as he pointed his wand at the young Romulus Lupin and cast a variation of the Bubble Head charm that yielded a higher concentration of oxygen than normal air. This is where things would get tricky: the future version of the healer in front of him hadn't been sure what the cause of the asphyxia in Romulus was, so Remus would have to try and remember what techniques applied to the causes he saw—and hopefully what he saw would help him diagnose correctly.
"You can't just come in here and start doing my job!"
"Healer," Remus said as he took Romulus from the man, "I am currently the expert in the room and you are not helping me save this child's life, so please either shut up or leave so I can heal in peace!"
The healer shut up. Remus felt bad for yelling at him, but time was of the essence. If Romulus died now, then Remus would wink out of existence and be unable to do anything to stop the First Wizarding War before it began. Besides, Remus thought his younger self would do better having a brother to grow up with.
Remus took Romulus to the table where the healer had left the babe's brother—Young Remus, as Remus was going to have to think of him. Remus checked inside Romulus' mouth to see if anything was blocking the airway. Nothing, but he'd doubted that. He cast Tergeo to remove the fluids covering Romulus' body, followed by a weak Hot-Air charm, to keep him warm. Remus checked Romulus' heart rate. Too low. And his breathing was too shallow. It looked like he'd have to start chest compressions.
An eternity later, Romulus was breathing normally. Remus had done it.
"Continue monitoring the heart and breathing rates," Remus told the healer. "Get help from one of your superiors if you have even the slightest suspicion that his stability has changed."
"What?" the healer asked. "Where are you going?"
"I have places to be tonight," Remus replied, by which he meant that he had to get started obtaining the ingredients for his next dose of Wolfsbane potion. "Oh, and have Mrs. Lupin start breastfeeding the boys when she feels up to it. Goodbye." And Remus left before the healer could ask more about what in Merlin's name had just happened.
Certain ingredients of the Wolfsbane Potion grew in the wild, ready to be chopped or mashed or what have you. Other ingredients, however, had to have been harvested at a specific time of the month or treated in certain ways that would take too much time. The only way to get those was from someone who kept a variety of potion ingredients on hand. The main obstacle to that was the fact that the spell to send someone back in time moved three things: the wizard, their wand, and their clothes—and even that last one wasn't permanent, since the clothes would, apparently, disappear after a week. What was missing on the list was money—and there wasn't enough time to earn enough to get some of the more expensive ingredients.
Old George had thought of a solution—well actually two. The first was just stealing from Hogwarts' potions stores, but Remus didn't want to become a thief—he may have been a prankster as a kid, but that did not mean that becoming a burglar was something he wanted to do. He might have to do some illegal things in the near future, but for now, Remus planned to go werewolf the old-fashioned way if Old George's second idea didn't pan out.
Remus gathered what plants he could—might as well get what he could for free if things went pear-shaped—and then Apparated to the lab of a Potions Master by the name of Damocles. Remus had never gotten the opportunity to meet the Potions Master in the future—he was just too famous for anyone to just walk up to—but the Damocles of the present had yet to create his life's work, and so he would probably be much easier to speak to directly.
Remus knocked on the door several times over a period of five minutes, almost long enough to give up, before a wizard finally came to the door. "What do you want? It'd better be good because I'm very busy right now."
"Are you Damocles?" Remus asked, even though he recognized the man that would have portraits everywhere in a few decades.
"Yes, who's askin'?"
"I want to cut you a deal," Remus said. "I know how to make a potion that could make you rich and famous if you patent it."
Damocles looked at him in disbelief. "Then why aren't you trying to patent it?"
"I only know how because I learned to make a dosage for my own personal needs, not for everyone who might benefit from it," Remus explained, figuring that it would be better to remain truthful around a man who could give him Veritaserum to verify his claims. Well, truthful to a degree, anyway. "The wizard I learned it from has recently gone through a traumatic experience that has given him the mind of an infant, and no one else knows anything about it. I heard about your skills and figured you could reverse engineer the potion."
"I still don't hear the part where this is a 'deal,'" Damocles said.
"All I ask is that I be provided with full access to your apothecary," Remus replied. "Possibly for an indefinite period of time, but at minimum for the next three days. I'll repay the cost of the ingredients when I can, but I don't have two knuts to rub together at the moment."
"Full access?" Damocles laughed. "To all of the ingredients that I have meticulously bought on my own? And only a promise that you'll pay me back in the future. You're very funny, sir."
"I would be giving you detailed instructions on how to create a potion that could easily make you famous. That doesn't entice you at all?"
"Who cares about being famous?" Damocles asked. "Wouldn't you rather being helping other people instead of yourself? It's much more satisfying."
Remus' opinion of Damocles went up a couple notches. He hadn't realized that the Potions Master never sought the fame he'd gotten. It was rather ironic that he'd be the best known potioneer of the modern age and that he didn't want his fame. Of course, now that Remus thought about it, a lot of the famous people he'd known or would have known didn't want their fame either.
"I need this potion badly, yes," Remus allowed, "but I know of so many more people who do as well. You wouldn't be famous for patenting love potions or some such frivolous nonsense. You would be alleviating a serious medical problem."
"Now I'm intrigued," Damocles said. "Do you mind if I add a few conditions?"
"Let me hear what they are first," Remus said. Even if he didn't think Damocles was going to rip him off, it was better to be careful.
"First off," Damocles said, "I don't want you to tell me anything about the potion unless I specifically ask. If we're going to get me a patent, I want to have earned it. All I want to see is the finished product, understand?"
"That's reasonable," Remus shrugged. Of course it would be preferable for Damocles to get started treating werewolves immediately, but they all would still be getting the Wolfsbane Potion decades earlier than they would otherwise.
"Also I want you to decide right now how much credit you want for this discovery," Damocles said.
"I'd rather my involvement not be known at all," Remus said. "I'm not particularly fond of attention."
"I'm not either," Damocles said.
"The discovery should be yours and yours alone," Remus insisted. "I'm more like the explorer who stumbled upon some ancient ruins. You're the archaeologist who realized the ruins' significance."
Damocles scoffed. "It's more likely that you've got people after you. People who'd be more likely to catch up to you if I mentioned your involvement to the public, hmm?"
It wasn't exactly the truth, but it was close enough—he could very easily have people after him if someone realized that Remus was a werewolf through his connection to the potion—so Remus nodded.
"Nice of you to admit it," Damocles said. "But you should know that if the potion you show me is anything like something I can find anywhere else, you'll have to find help from an apothecary or Potions Master that doesn't care about the slander I'll be spreading about you. Are you willing to take the risk that your brain-addled teacher didn't tell anyone else anything about your potion?"
"I am absolutely certain that not even the notes on this potion exist and no one else could possibly know anything about it." Time travel made such absolutes so much easier to be declared without lying.
"Then we are agreed?"
"We are," Remus said. "Let's get started."
Damocles waved his wand towards the door to his stores. "I normally have this set up to let me know when an ingredient is running low. Now it will also keep a running tally of exactly how much you take—but I'll only be paying attention to what it's all worth—so as to not bias me, of course. Until you prove untrustworthy, that is."
Remus nodded, ignoring the implied threat, and began work on the Wolfsbane Potion. Damocles made a point to not pay attention to him, instead focusing on whatever he had been working on before Remus showed up. Finally, Remus finished, the potion emitting a blue smoke. Remus cleaned up the table of the ingredient residue he'd left and poured half the potion into a goblet for viewing and half in a flask he'd conjured to drink from later. He'd never made a double batch before, but Snape had assured him that nothing would go wrong so long as Remus was careful in making sure he doubled everything—which he did.
"Do you want to see your next project?" Remus asked.
Damocles turned to examine the potion. "What is this? You are right to believe that this has likely never been seen before." He took a taste and retched. "Are you trying to make the most obviously bad for you poison in the world? What good is that as a patent?"
"I assure you that, at minimum, there are over four dozen people alive in Great Britain alone who would find their lives improved by this potion," Remus said. It had always been difficult to put a hard number on the werewolf population, but he was rather confident that 48 was estimating low, if you included those who avoided being registered.
"Does improving their lives involve killing them?" Damocles asked. "You do know what aconite does to a person, right?"
"If I'm not much mistaken, wolfsbane has medicinal uses—otherwise you would not have some in your apothecary."
"I prefer to call it aconite," Damocles said. "'Wolfsbane' is what superstitious old hags call it."
Remus had to hold back his laughter. As far as he knew, the Damocles of the future had very deliberately given the Wolfsbane Potion that name. "For the time being, do you wish to call this the 'Aconite Potion' then?"
"It's as good as any other name," Damocles shrugged. "Did you need this dose? I need something to analyze thoroughly."
"You have half of the batch," Remus said. "I have what I need for tonight."
"Good, good. But you must understand that I won't be able to work solely on the Aconite Potion—I have experiments of my own, after all. So don't expect me to patent this anytime soon. You can keep coming back here to make another batch for yourself as long as you make me as much as I want for study."
"You have no idea how much it pleases me to hear that," Remus said. "I will be back tomorrow."
"Oh, and by the way, I've got ways of tracking you down if you've deceived me in any way. I might also make you come brew the potion for me at unexpected times, so don't make any absolute plans if you can help it."
So, with his potion out of the way, Remus could finally visit Dumbledore. Despite the confidence he'd been exuding all day, Remus felt as nervous as a screaming jobberknoll. One mistake on his part could set this timeline to implode or to have Voldemort win completely this time—he wasn't sure which was worse.
Remus decided that the best way to meet Dumbledore while still having no money to even send an owl or buy a drink—and without Flooing his office uninvited—would be to sit on a bench in Hogsmeade and wait for Dumbledore to come get a drink himself.
Remus didn't have to wait long. The headmaster, barely looking younger than the werewolf remembered, walked past Remus with a jaunt in his step. Remus stood to go after him, but at the speed Dumbledore was going, he wouldn't meet up with him until after the headmaster entered the Three Broomsticks. And since Remus didn't want to enter the place without money of his own, he'd either have to wait for Dumbledore to come back out or to try again another night.
Remus sighed. He was tired—partly from the day's events and partly because the full moon was so soon—and what he needed to tell Dumbledore would keep. Remus was tempted to just sleep on the bench he was already sitting on, but he knew from experience that the local villagers did not want the appearance of homelessness on their streets and someone would shoo him away before he'd be asleep for five minutes. Instead, he Apparated to a homeless shelter he'd passed by a few times but never had the courage to actually utilize. The way he was now, though, he had no other options. In the previous timeline, going back home to mooch off Dad had always been a possibility—a very distasteful possibility, true, but a possibility nonetheless. Now Remus had no safety net and would have to exist on as low a level a wizard could get.
So it really should not have been as much a surprise as it was to see Fenrir Greyback at the homeless shelter too.
Remus tried to exit himself quietly, but Greyback took notice of him immediately. "Ho, there, friend," Greyback said as he gave a toothy smirk.
"I'm sorry, I don't think I know you," Remus said. "Not enough to be considered a friend anyway."
"I'm pretty good at spotting someone of our kind when I see one, especially around this time," Greyback said. "We ought to stick together."
Remus paled. Fenrir Greyback—the man who had deliberately turned Remus—had not only recognized him as a werewolf, but he wanted to befriend him.
"I...I tend to be more of a lone wolf," Remus stammered.
"How do you know what you want if you've never tried running with a pack?" Greyback asked. "A pack can become a family. You strike me as the type who might like a family."
Remus did like having a family, but he had no intention of joining Greyback's. "I'm really not. And I should go."
"I'm pretty sure you came here tonight for a decent bed—sure beats sleeping on tree roots or dirt. Especially since it's going to rain pretty hard tonight. Just stay for the night, I'll introduce you to some of my friends, and then you can decide whether you want to stay a lone wolf. Having a pack is better than you think."
Remus didn't see a good way out of it—he couldn't exactly use fatigue as an excuse against another werewolf. It would only invite torment. Then again, Greyback would probably torment him anyway. But it probably wouldn't be the best idea to antagonize Greyback this early on...
Finally, Remus replied, "I'll listen."
Remus was starting to see how Greyback had managed to convince so many people that he was a Muggle tramp—he practically was one already, just one that was also extremely proud of being a werewolf. It seemed that he hadn't gotten his taste for children just yet—or he might have been downplaying that part while trying to recruit Remus to his pack. Instead, Greyback kept talking about how he was going to force wizards into learning give werewolves respect instead of perpetually despising them. Remus could obviously empathize with increasing werewolf respect, but he knew all too well that Greyback would only extend the rift between wolf and wizard, not heal it.
Despite his deep longing to just fall asleep, Remus couldn't help but try to reason with Greyback. "I can admire your enthusiasm, but I think you might be channeling it in the wrong direction if you want to be respected rather than feared."
"Respect is fear," Greyback replied.
"Not necessarily," Remus said. "A person who is afraid of you might face their fear and fight back. A person who respects you might help you because they have your interests at heart. Because of this, some of the most successful revolutionaries in history were pacifists. You can get a lot of supporters from people who aren't afraid you're going to bite their heads off."
"Who needs supporters?" Greyback asked. "We've got the pack."
This from the man who would one day join Voldemort despite still getting no respect, Remus thought. "So the wizards that decide to treat you like human beings aren't supporters of your cause? How does that work?"
"You don't understand," Greyback said. "You're using too much human logic and not paying enough attention to your animal instincts. You ignore your instincts and you're dead."
"28 nights out of 29, you're still a man," Remus noted. "Just something to think about."
"You shouldn't think too much, friend. Being a wolf is nothing to be ashamed of."
It is if I hurt somebody, Remus thought but kept it to himself. The best he could hope for was to prevent Greyback from getting as far down his path of inhumanity as he would in Remus' old timeline. Remus had no idea if Greyback's cruelty was inevitable, but he could at least allow the ideas to propagate through the pack—though they hardly participated, two scraggly werewolves had listened to every word that Remus had said. They might listen to Remus and decide to refrain from joining Voldemort.
But the wolves would need help if Remus' encouragement was going to stick. The Wizarding World at large needed to be in a place where it wasn't unheard of to accept werewolves. They needed...
They needed a classic work of literature to be published early.
They needed Hairy Snout, Human Heart.