AUTHOR'S OPENING NOTE:
Once again, and as always, in the spirit of Albus Dumbledore, everything I want to say is in the chapter's end note.
September 14, 1971
Oddly enough, it seems like Eleanor Stark was not expelled, as she was at breakfast this morning and every class thereafter throughout the day, although how she managed to pull that off, and what her punishment might be instead, no one knows, because she wouldn't answer anyone's questions about it. Lily heard from Severus that Norman Avery will be fine, though; he spent the night in the hospital wing and was released after breakfast this morning.
I don't really have much to talk about beyond that, though. It was a tense, quiet sort of day. We had notes in Charms and Defense against the Dark Arts and Herbology, where we'll be starting a new plant, soon, but for now we just did a lesson that seemed to be a very jumbled and not very scientific version of photosynthesis (the word itself was never used, but I learned about it in science lessons with my mother), with some magic added, explaining how magical plants gain energy to thrive. We're still waiting on astronomy.
I suppose besides that, I finally got drawn into the quidditch team conversation that my dad prepared me for, with Sirius and James and Peter in our dorm room while waiting for dinner. The three of them were hiding out in there because they were afraid that they'd be ambushed by Slytherins if they went about in the corridors (such Gryffindor courage they have, after all) and because Paul Howard had thrown them out of the common room for being too rowdy, after James saw the post for the house Quidditch team tryouts and basically through a tantrum about first years not being allowed to play, despite the fact that all of us were aware of this already. Jonathan Vale, the seventh year Quidditch Captain, was having none of this and told James that he wouldn't want a whiny, attention-seeking little midget of a trouble maker on his team anyway, even if he was a second year or a third year or a fourth year or a fifth year or a sixth year or even a seventh year. James drew up as if to fight him, titchy little James against a toweringly tall, quite fit seventh year Quidditch Captain, but Sirius wisely held him back. That's when Paul Howard sighed and told them to vacate the common room. Paul Howard seems to do a lot of sighing around us first years, from what I've seen. It seems he thought I was with them, too, although we were sitting a table apart, because he gave me a stony look until I opted to follow them up.
In the dormitory, James was going on about how he would be the best Quidditch player Vale had ever seen, he'd show him. Then Sirius pointed out that it would be difficult to show him, as first years weren't even allowed brooms at school. James then got shirty with Sirius, but it dissolved somehow into a discussion of quidditch, which is where I got pulled in, with James, who worships all things Quidditch, launching the inquisition against me about it after a few moments of going through league team standings with Sirius. It seems like not picking the Magpies was a good idea, as that's Peter's favorite team and James ended up mocking Peter for only liking the team with the best record, which is the obvious choice for people who have no taste and know nothing about Quidditch. Sirius favors the Falcons while James favors the Tornados. I told them I liked the Catapults because they have a tradition of excellent seekers, including Dai Llewellyn, who 'is a personal hero of mine' (which might have been a slight exaggeration, although I do very much appreciate the ward named for him at St. Mungos, not that I could say as much), and because I appreciate their spirit of innovation and the fact that you can never anticipate the outcomes of their matches beforehand, making them interesting and exciting to follow. I also told him that I'm a partisan to Wales, despite being English born, as we've lived in or near Wales several times and these were my favorite places to live. James actually seemed satisfied by this answer. He asked me if I played and I decided to keep things simple and tell him no, because my parents couldn't afford a broom. Dad travels everywhere by apparition, which is free. James snorted at this. "Your family doesn't own a single broom?" he said, like this was the most absurd thing he'd ever heard, but I shrugged and he let it go. He's been debating ever since with Sirius and Peter which of their teams is the best this year (mine isn't, I know, so I didn't join) and they've been doing this for like an hour, while I finally gave up listening to them and wrote out all this.
Oh well, we've got Astronomy soon. I'll pick up again tomorrow.
September 15, 1971
A rundown of the day: in Transfiguration, we've begun a new practical, this time turning tortoise shells into tea cups, to mixed results across the room. I mostly did well enough, although my porcelain had a tortoise shell pattern. James and Sirius are both quite good at Transfiguration, I might note, to be fair: James produced a perfectly ordinary undecorated white tea cup, while Sirius actually put a floral pattern on his. We had notes in History of Magic on the efforts of the Department of International Magical Cooperation to keep the wizarding world uninvolved with the plethora of muggle wars that were taking place in the early eighteenth century, mostly against France and Spain, in line with the early formation of the Ministry, which was particularly complicated by the fact that neither France nor Spain had moved to a bureaucratic system yet. I found the subject interesting, particularly since I've learned all of the muggle history involved, although of course Professor Binns' teaching is quite bland.
In my break between History and lunch, I went up to the library and searched for a book. I've decided to continue the werewolf research after all. I picked out The Compendium of Accounts of Werewolf Attacks for reading, in the hopes that it might give me some hint as to why it was me who was chosen to be attacked. I read a bit of it, waiting for lunch, but didn't get very far. It's quite gruesome in the detail, with the accounts varying by perspective, sometimes bystanders who witness the attacks, sometimes the survivors of the attacks, sometimes the law enforcement officers and werewolf catchers who arrived afterward to clean up the mess. I feel like it's going to be rather a slog getting through as parts of it hit painfully close to my own memories. I'll see if I derive anything useful from it, though.
In Herbology, we're working on something called the Spectroscopic Prickly Tassel, a nineteenth century discovery, imported from the rainforests in the Congo. Its name is rather uninspired, as it of course, has a lot of prickly dangly bits, rather like tassels. It isn't dangerous; getting pricked just makes the affected region turn random colors for a few hours. We had a few minutes of notes and then we were instructed on pruning the ventral tassels, where they wouldn't get enough light and just stifle the growth of the plant by remaining (tying in with our notes from yesterday) and were set to work, three to a plant. Lily and I worked three to a plant, with Tracey Finch, who, I was pleased to note, is a cousin of Scott Finch, the Fumble-Fingered Keeper of my theoretically supported Quidditch team. She seemed happy that I was a fan, as most people, she said, made fun of her about him, always teasing her about dropping things. She ended up spending a lot of the time explaining some of the finer points of Quidditch to Lily, as this seems to not be a subject Severus ever covered with her. On the topic of the Spectroscopic Prickly Tassel, though, using gloves was optional, since the plant isn't dangerous (although the pricking of course feels like getting pricked by any other plant), so I opted not to, to get the full effect, and my hands and forearms were covered in splotches of purple and orange and blue through dinner time. Apparently it's used in color changing potions, to great effect.
In Potions, Professor Slughorn seemed to want to take no chances. He had the class divided down the middle and put Slytherin on one side and Gryffindor on the other. I took my usual place with Sirius before I thought about it, in front of James and Peter, rather than beside them, as we were confined to one side of the room, leaving Lily rather unfortunately stuck sitting next to Eleanor in front of us. Professor Slughorn very specifically ordered Eleanor to the front row and no one else wanted to sit with her, so when Lily arrived at the last minute with Severus, she was forced to take that spot. It seems I wasted my time Monday writing out the notes we were supposed to be given from the book, though, as Professor Slughorn just gave the whole set over again.
A bit more that was interesting: at dinner, where I scarfed down three pork chops and a healthy portion of mashed potatoes, as well as a piece of chocolate cake, James, who was sitting across the table from me with Sirius and Peter, commented, "How come you eat so much and still are such a skinny little stick, Remus?" (He, of course, did not mean it in any way that was flattering.) I mentally kicked myself for so obviously standing out, but on the outside, I shrugged and said, "I guess I have a fast metabolism." "A what?" James answered. It seems whatever education his parents gave him had nothing to do with science and he had no idea what that was, and neither did Sirius and Peter, so I spent quite a bit of time trying to explain it to them, which was quite difficult, given that none of them even had a rudimentary understanding of the digestive system, besides the fact that food goes in and waste eventually comes out, with the stomach involved somewhere in the middle. James and Sirius didn't even know what intestines were. I repeat: JAMES AND SIRIUS DIDN'T EVEN KNOW WHAT INTESTINES WERE. Peter only had the vaguest idea because sometimes his mum apparently makes her own sausage (Sirius and James were both shocked and appalled, by the way, to discover how sausage is made and Sirius has sworn never to eat it again… we'll see how long that lasts, although he's always preferred bacon, anyway.). Their ignorance was astounding. A lot of the muggle born students nearby ogled them, catching our conversation, equally astounded by the appalling state of their educations. But in their defense, some of the pureblood students around as also caught the conversation and gave it a listen, because they didn't know, either! But then, the wizarding world has utterly no education requirements before Hogwarts and it is apparently considered satisfactory if students have grasped the merest fundamentals of reading, writing, and arithmetic before coming on to school. That is, apparently, all some of them know. The thing is, though, while those of us with some or a complete muggle upbringing were astounded, the ones who had no idea just shrugged it off. Not only are they ignorant, they don't know they're ignorant, and they don't care that they're ignorant. Perhaps it comes from living around magic, which isn't easily explained, that they don't expect anything else to have explanations, either? I'm not sure I can understand that worldview. And perhaps, I think, I should give a second thought to continuing my common educational studies here at Hogwarts, like my mother desires. I added it to my goals' list. It now looks something like this:
Remus John Lupin's First Year Goals List
1: Keep everyone from discovering you're a werewolf.
2: Learn all you can about werewolves.
3: Get at least straight E's in all of your classes.
4: Try not to alienate Lily.
5: Try not to alienate Sirius.
6: Try not to be murdered by or to murder James Potter.
7: Discover what is under the lake.
8: Learn about wizarding spy craft.
9: Explore Hogwarts Castle.
Sub-Goal: Discover the locations of all four common rooms.
Sub-Goal: Discover what's at the top of all seven towers.
Subsequent Sub-Goal: Discover how to enter the seventh tower.
10: Learn to defend yourself.
11: Continue proper academic studies while at Hogwarts.
I seem to add things much faster than I can get them done. Although to be fair, I suppose, at least five of them are long term objectives (items 1, 3, 4, 5, and 6) that would be complete until the school year is done, so there is that.
I think I'll read a bit more of that book now, in reference to item 2.
September 16, 1971
Today officially marks two weeks' worth of classes; too bad Thursday is the longest day of classes we have, with Transfiguration, History, Defense against the Dark Arts, Double Herbology, and Astronomy. It doesn't help that I stayed up far later than I should have reading last night. Anyway, it's easiest to talk about classes first, so, in Transfiguration, we worked on the tortoise shells into teacup bit again, to better results: I had not shell patterns on my cup this time. Also, Professor McGonagal gave us an essay on design in simple substantive transfiguration, which I'll do over the weekend. In History, we continued notes on abroad's efforts to keep us out of the continental wars in the early-to-mid eighteenth century. We've got another essay on why that was considered so important, which I'm also saving for the weekend. In Defense against the Dark Arts, we did more history notes: we've reached the Roman Hegemony, the rise of which coincided with the rise of the Roman Empire, rather than the Roman Republic and are discussing some of the developments in the dark arts and some of the threats from the dark arts that the Hegemony contended with, which I find exciting, because as the empire expands, we cover dark wizardry from different regions, as encountered and written about by the Romans, since many other European cultures at the time weren't literate. James and Peter hate it, as they know nothing about history, either muggle or wizarding (and knowledge of muggle history certainly does help, because no matter what wizards might claim, wizarding history and society runs parallel to that of muggles), they have no desire to know anything about history, and they think it's a waste of time that Professor Gamp is giving us a history lectures, in addition to the ones that we're already getting in History of Magic (despite the fact that the two classes are covering totally different time periods and events and have entirely different focuses for learning), when we could be learning actual practical defense. Sirius is a little less adamant in hating it; it seems his highly traditional pureblood parents did see fit to give him some education in magical history before coming to school and he's aware of the basics of the Hegemony, and the conflicts of Roman wizardry in Judea, North Africa, France and Britain, which are generally considered the most major of the conflicts. He just finds it somewhat tedious. Lily, at least, is fascinated and tells me that she wishes that Professor Binns taught more like Professor Gamp, then History of Magic Might be much more worthwhile as a subject. Needless to say, I prefer to sit next to her, although generally speaking, I end up between her and Sirius in a great many classes. In Herbology, we replanted several rows of Spectroscopic Prickly Tassels as a class, meaning I ended out our early lessons with red and orange and purple and green and yellow and blue arms. I was much more colorful today than last time. I wonder what the mechanism is for determining what color it turns you?
I am, of course, still waiting on Astronomy.
In my breaks during the day, I spent my time reading The Compendium of Accounts of Werewolf Attacks. I have to admit, I ended up engrossed in it, in a sickly fascinated sort of way. I stayed up way later than I should have last night reading it, too, such that I ended up finishing it shortly after dinner. I found a sort-of answer to my question of 'why me?' Several of the accounts given are from the interrogations of werewolves who actually perpetrated the attacks (before the Ministry terminated them, of course) and an unduly high percentage of those were werewolves who attacked young children. In three of those accounts, the interrogator asks the wolf why he (another fact I learned: male werewolves are far more likely than female werewolves to survive long term, although the books I've read doesn't really give an explanation why, but all three of the wolves in question in this case were male) chose the victims they did. Every single one of them answered exactly the same thing: that human flesh is the greatest, the sweetest thing that they had ever tasted, and that children taste best of all, the younger they are, the sweeter, the more tender the meat. I was only four, after all. I wonder, how do people get to be like that, though, so callous that they're willing to hunt children for the taste of them. I understand that the wolf is hungry, that the wolf desires to eat people, I feel that way, too, when I am one, but I stay locked up at the full moon. I would never, ever contemplate not doing so. I know that even as a man, people still spell like they're food, like I believe I wrote, the smell of Norman Avery's burning flesh was delicious. But I've never actually seriously contemplated cannibalism as anything other than abhorrent. To go out, as a man, and intentionally seek prey to satisfy the monster: I don't understand that. Were these men just always evil and coincidentally they became werewolves as well? Or did the years and years of longing and hunger turn them so that hunting people, hunting children, seemed like a viable and appropriate option? Worst of all, could that happen to me one day? These aren't thoughts I enjoy contemplating, so I tried to put it all out of my mind, too little success, as I took the book back to the library.
I found Lily in the common room after I returned it and joined her, where she was sitting, vaguely watching something James was doing in the corner, impressions perhaps, I wasn't really paying attention to him. My mind was on rather darker things.
"James Potter wants to grow up to be the next Godfric Gryffindor," she told me. "He's been telling the whole common room."
"I've heard that from him, yes," I answered.
"What do you want to be?" she asked me then, somewhat randomly.
I thought for a moment. "A gentle man," I answered.
"Huh," she answered. "Well, I haven't really heard anyone stress the chivalric aspect of this House as the one thing to aspire to yet, but-"
"No," I corrected. "A gentle man."
She looked a bit confused. I can't blame her, really, in retrospect, it was such an odd thing to say, and it isn't like I could give her the context for it. "Oh," she said. "I see." Then she added, "You know, you're a strange boy, Remus Lupin."
I could feel myself start to blush. I don't want the closest thing I have to a friend deciding that I'm too weird to be around. I tried to stammer something, but I couldn't think of how to correct the mistake. It's not like I've spent a lot of time in my life talking to people my own age, after all.
She just looked amused at my stammering. "But not in a bad way," she added. "I rather like it."
"Oh," I said. "Thanks." As an afterthought, I added, "What do you want to be?"
"I dunno," she said. "I rather like botany, though, so maybe something with that."
"Botany or herbology?" I asked.
She laughed. "It's silly they have a different word for it, isn't it?"
I smiled and shrugged, "I suppose," I said.
"Both, I guess," she said, "I enjoy working in the gardens with my mum; she loves flowers, as you might have guessed from what she named me and Petunia. My favorite are her roses; they're her favorite, too. I wonder sometimes why she didn't name either of us Rose. But I like the magical plants we work with here in Herbology, too. So maybe I could do both, grow the magical plants for potions ingredients and such and then flowers, too, and have a shop that sells them both. Wizards need flowers, too, after all. Everyone needs flowers."
I can imagine Lily growing up and owning a flower shop one day. It would fit her perfectly; she'd be brilliant at it. It made me wish I'd said something a little less mental in answer to the question, but of course, while there are a lot of things I might fantasize about being when I grow up, I know they mostly aren't practical. Who is going to ever hire a werewolf, after all?
AUTHOR'S END NOTE:
If you think I'm exaggerating too much on the pre-Hogwarts educations received by most wizards, remember, Ron's education, as presented in the books, is such utter crap that he honestly thought it might be plausible that Europa could be covered in mice and fails, at the Quidditch World Cup, to recognize the significance of the Dark Mark. I don't know a high school freshman in the US who wouldn't say, recognize a swatstika and associate it with the atrocities of Nazi Germany, and I consider this basically the equivalent of being a student living in Germany in 1958 and not recognizing the significance of a swastika, because the Death Eaters were functioning in Ron's own country just thirteen years before. You might blame this own Ron, but Ron is presented as being of average intellect. You might blame this on the early education provided by Molly Weasley, but considering the academic success of Bill, Charlie, Percy, and Ginny, I'd guess that the early education provided to them by Molly was entirely adequate by wizarding standards, but that wizarding standards are simply atrocious. If you have thoughts on this matter, I'd enjoy hearing about them in reviews.
Also, if you have anything else to say, good, bad or indifferent, I'd be happy for reviews.
Thanks for reading. I hope you enjoyed it.
