A/N: We are nearing the end here! Thanks for sticking with me this far :)

Just like every other day that month, Teddy dutifully woke up, brushed his teeth, grabbed a quick breakfast, and apparated to Shell Cottage. However, unlike every other morning, Victoire was not there.

"She went back to Hogwarts last night," Bill explained with a yawn. It did not seem like he had gotten much sleep that entire month. "I took her there myself."

"I thought she was going to stay here for the entire month," Teddy said slowly. He seemed to be wrong about everything regarding her lately.

"Yeah, we wanted her to. But she insisted on going back. Said she had work that she could only do there."

"Hm."

"You changed her," Bill said, almost accusingly. "She used to be so happy go lucky- whatever came, she dealt with. Now she wants things and won't stop until she gets them."

"I don't think I did that," Teddy defended. "I never wanted her to change."

"You gave her something to care about and to work towards." He bit his lip. The action made the pale lines of his scars turn even paler. "I suppose I can't fault you for that."

"Thanks," Teddy said because he did not know what else to say.

Bill shook his head. He looked like he wanted to say something. Perhaps he wanted to blame Teddy for the fact that his daughter was bitten, which was partially true. Or maybe he wanted to grill Teddy on how he planned to cure Victoire. In the end, worry silenced him, and he simply gave a forced smile and closed the door.

When Teddy returned home, his grandmother was sitting at the kitchen table waiting for him.

"Hello," Teddy said carefully. She did not usually sit so still with her eyes on the door. If Victoire had been at Shell Cottage like she was supposed to be, he would not even have returned for another few hours.

"Have you seen the Daily Prophet today?" his grandmother asked in a clipped voice.

"You know I don't read that."

She pursed her lips.

"And you know I always told you that you should. It's good to keep up with the news."

"You're the one who told me half of the Prophet nowadays is rubbish." He walked into the kitchen to scrounge for a second breakfast.

"It is. But sometimes it is important to know what rubbish other people are reading."

"Yeah?" he asked, though his voice came out muffled since he had stuffed a slice of bread into his mouth.

"Here."

He took the newspaper from his grandmother. The slice of bread nearly fell out of his mouth when he saw his own picture on the front page.

The Boy Who Cried Wolf

Rita Skeeter

You may not recognize him thanks to his metamorphmagus abilities, but you know his name. Or at least, his godfather's name. Teddy Lupin, godson of Harry Potter, claims to have discovered the cure to lycanthropy. For those readers who do not know, lycanthropy is more commonly known as the condition of being a werewolf.

It only takes a cursory glance through Lupin's Hogwarts records to see that he was admittedly skilled at Transfiguration. Upon graduating from Hogwarts this past June, Lupin was admitted to exclusive Auror training, though one must wonder how much of this was due to his being the head of the Auror department's godson. It seems likely that Lupin was not admitted for his merit, for only a few months into training, he quit the program and has been unemployed since.

However, he claims his unemployment has not been in vain.

"I've been curing werewolves. I've done... I think five now. So there were five people who used to be werewolves who aren't anymore. That's how I've been spending my time."

Has the young Hogwarts graduate gone mad?

"Curing lycanthropy? That's impossible," Julius Warrington, director of Biological Research at St. Mungo's confirmed. "It's something we have looked into, of course. But we do not have any research near that point yet."

"And if I told you a seventeen year old boy claims to have done it?" the Prophet asked Warrington.

Warrington only let out a booming laugh and declined to comment further. His silence on the matter says it all.

Yet the Prophet decided to dig in further. We did a proper scouting of Mr Lupin's whereabouts and were able to trace his steps back to a Mr and Mrs Arbor, who admitted to having been contacted by Mr Lupin three months ago.

"Yes, Teddy Lupin was at our house a few months ago," Mrs Arbor, a striking brunette with soft eyes practically gushed. "We've been trying to contact him ever since to thank him but we can't seem to get a hold of him. This is for the Prophet, yes? Oh, the front page, you say?! Well then, he must see this- thank you, Teddy Lupin, for giving a normal life back to my Beth and Seth!"

The Prophet had the privilege of talking with twins Beth and Seth Arbor, both of whom corroborated their mother's statement as well as Mr Lupin's that they used to be werewolves but no longer are.

"We like to go roller skating on full moons now," Seth informed us.

So is it possible? Could young Teddy Lupin, wild child of Hogwarts, previously known only for wooing young ladies with his morphing abilities, have done the impossible? Continued on page A9.

"I don't believe this," Teddy said, fingers scrambling over each other to flip to page A9.

"It gets worse," his grandmother said grimly.

Continued from front cover.

With such a potential breakthrough on the line, the Prophet invested all of its resources into getting to the bottom of just what Mr Lupin has been doing. We were able to find and confirm two more people who claim to have been werewolves before Mr Lupin cured them. Both requested their names not to be revealed.

"Teddy Lupin is going to change the world. That kid is as bright as they come," the unnamed former werewolf assured.

So how did Mr Lupin manage this? Does he really have something to his name besides the godson of Harry Potter? Will he finally step out of that shadow, and become the boy who cured lycanthropy? Or is all of this an elaborate hoax?

The Prophet attempted to talk to one more source close to Mr Lupin. Prophet readers with Hogwarts age children will recognize the name of Professor Adam Nover, currently professor of Transfiguration. His astonishing good looks and brains that earned him the Wulfric Prize in Transfiguration two years running makes one wonder how he remained single for so long. There must be a personality defect buried in there.

Professor Nover, perhaps best known for his paper published two years earlier entitled Of Mice and Women: Transfiguration Across Gender in the Common Black Rat, graduated from Hogwarts in 1991 where he immediately began a promising career in the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures. He is attributed for the capturing of three highly dangerous werewolves, as well as being on the team that prevented notorious Fenrir Greyback's worst attacks on Muggle neighborhoods. He left the Department shortly before the war ended and devoted his life to research until he was hired by Hogwarts to teach Transfiguration.

"Adam? Yeah, we never really knew why he left. He could have been head of the department by now! Oh, but don't tell my boss that..." one anonymous Ministry coworker stated.

"Professor Nover and Teddy Lupin met all the time during Lupin's seventh year," a current Ravenclaw sixth year told the Prophet. "I don't know what they met about, but the whole school knew that Lupin was a Transfiguration prodigy so we thought Nover was giving him extra advanced lessons or something."

Could extra advanced lessons be lessons in curing lycanthropy? It is fair to say that finding the cure is well beyond the power of a seventeen year old. Could Professor Adam Nover, an already established leader in the field of Transfiguration, be the true mastermind behind all of this? Could he be simply using Mr Lupin? Or perhaps did Mr Lupin, tired of living in the shadow of the Boy who Lived, want so desperately to make his own mark, that he claimed his professor's research as his own, to become the Boy who Cured Lycanthropy? Or is all of this curing a lie, and is he merely a boy who cried wolf?

The article ended abruptly there.

"Do you think people will take this seriously?" he asked his grandmother.

"People have always taken Rita Skeeter more seriously than they should. My question is- how does she know all of this?"

"I don't know. I talked to Eric about it a few weeks ago... and Nover last week..." His head was beginning to hurt. He could not remember what he had told each of them. "If people do take this seriously..."

Would that be so bad? The world would finally know what he was capable of. Something inside him swelled- he had been working in secret for so many months now with hardly any recognition. If things had gone the way he dreamed they would back when was still in Hogwarts, he would have been on the cover of Transfiguration Weekly by now and in all of the lists of accomplished witches and wizards under the age of thirty.

"I don't like that look in your eye," his grandmother said, giving him her most stern expression.

He looked away.

"I know you've always had issues with being known as Harry Potter's godson," she said more gently when he did not say anything. It was like she could read his mind. "But don't let pride get to your head."

He opened his mouth then closed it again. He wanted to say that his parents had not died so that he could live the rest of his life as Harry Potter's godson. Rita Skeeter had hit on a truth in that article- that he wanted, needed, to be something great. He was making it happen- and now the world would know.

"I wonder if Nover has seen this," he said to change the subject.

It was not until the day before the full moon that the effects of Rita Skeeter's article began to show themselves.

It started with a messily scrawled letter from Nover.

Keep on high alert tomorrow. Possible increase in attacks. Do not use SS. Try 14 Beekman Road- abandoned house near Indian restaurant. See you tomorrow.

He wondered if Nover was being overly paranoid. For one, the Shrieking Shack should be perfectly safe due to its proximity to Hogwarts. Teddy was beginning to doubt if the Pack that Nover was so worried about even existed. Nover was like an old war veteran, still worried about threats from years ago.

The next thing that happened was that an authoritative knock came during dinner. His grandmother had cast all sorts of spells on the door since the article came out. Most of them warned against nosy journalists and potential eavesdroppers. The spells would give out a siren like noise every time one came near. Yet this knock did not trigger any of those spells.

His grandmother cast her see through door spell. On the other side was a large man with broad shoulders. She looked at Teddy questioningly. Teddy shrugged.

Sitting up, his grandmother smoothed out her robe and walked with all of the elegance she had inherited from the Black family to the door. She made a striking first image to see when the door opened.

"Mrs Tonks," the man said in a deep voice. The voice sounded familiar. Teddy could not place where he had heard it before, but it gave him a feeling of unease.

"And you are?" she said, not even attempting to disguise her annoyance that a stranger was intruding on her dinner.

"My name is Kenneth Bletchley, head of the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures."

If he expected his name to sound impressive, he did not get the reaction he wanted from Teddy's grandmother.

"Okay," she said.

But Teddy remembered now that he had met this man before what seemed like years ago at Slughorn's Christmas party. That had been when he first realized he was more than fond of Victoire. If he had known how things would turn out, he probably would not have taken her to that Christmas party. He remembered how Bletchley had said the Lupin surname with such disdain, how Nover had argued with him. Standing up, he hoped he could still dash up the stairs and pretend that he was not home. But Bletchley's height and overall size dominated his grandmother and he saw right over her.

"Mr Lupin. May we talk?" he called out in his gravelly voice.

"Um. I'm kind of busy," he called back lamely. His grandmother looked disappointed in his tactless response.

"About what, may I ask?" she asked Bletchley coolly. Teddy was glad that she seemed to sense that he was not one to be liked.

"I read a certain article in the Daily Prophet a few days ago. I'm sure you know which one I am referring to. Due to the nature of my department's work, I thought it would be important to find what you have to say about it," he said simply.

She reluctantly let him in. Bracing himself, Teddy sat down at one of the living room chairs. Bletchley took up the entire two person sofa and so his grandmother contented herself with listening from the kitchen under the pretense of cleaning dishes.

"We have met before," the large man stated.

"Yes," Teddy said. "At Professor Slughorn's Christmas party last year."

"Yes, yes, of course," he agreed, though Teddy doubted he actually remembered. "The general public is saying interesting things about you."

"Oh?" he prodded. "I haven't gotten out much lately. What are they saying?"

"Some people call you a prodigy," he said, pausing for dramatic effect. "And some call you a little orphan boy desperate for attention."

The sound of a plate breaking came from the kitchen. Teddy did not need to look over to know that his grandmother had her hand on her wand, ready to blast the man away if he said anything else provoking. If the man was intending to rile Teddy up, it did not work. He felt strangely calm- he was in the position of power in this case. Bletchley clearly wanted something from him, and it was up to him whether or not he would give it away.

"I prefer the former, if I am being honest," Teddy said with a small smile. He happened to know that that smile worked well with his natural appearance. If he had been able to morph, he would have made his eyes sharper and his cheekbones just a big higher for more of an aristocratic effect.

"Hm." The word sounded like a rumble coming from the man. His thick eyebrows furrowed together. "You must understand that I, as the head of the department that deals directly with werewolves, must ask you whether or not the content of that Skeeter article is true."

"I don't think it has much to do with your department, sir," he said, sitting up straighter. "If I am a fraud, then you have nothing to worry about. And if I somehow am this prodigy that can cure lycanthropy... well, that could only be a good thing for your department, no? One less magical creature to worry about."

"You are young and narrow minded." He folded his hands together. Teddy suddenly had a horrible image of his neck between the man's giant hands. "In the case that you have... this ability... it would change my department's plans, naturally. I don't want you see us as the enemy, Mr Lupin. We could very well help you in your effort."

"Somehow I doubt that," he said coldly.

"I blame Nover for giving you such a poor impression of our department. Times have changed since he left."

Teddy decided it was best not to bring up his conversation with Eric. Though he had fought with his friend, he did not hate him. They had gone through too many good memories together in their seven years at Hogwarts for one fight to distance them completely. He had a feeling that if he told Bletchley what Eric had told him, it would not bode well for Eric. And so he held his tongue for his friend.

"You are stubborn," Bletchley said. "If you won't talk, then I will not waste my time. My only advice to you is to be very careful this full moon, Mr Lupin."

"What do you mean?" he asked in spite of himself. He had just received the same warning from Nover and it startled him to see that both men had the same opinion for once.

Bletchley stood up with a yellow smile.

"Oh, you have nothing to worry about if you are nothing more than an attention seeking boy. But if you are the prodigy that some people believe you are, then you will make enemies easily. I am talking about the same sort of enemies that we at the department have. Werewolves who believe in spreading their condition. So you see, Mr Lupin, we are allies. It would only do you well to tell me what exactly you are capable of, but since you have not told me..." He straightened out his robes. "I can only assume that you are, as Skeeter puts it, claiming your professor's glory."

It took all of his self control not to retort rashly.

Bletchley gave a bow to Teddy's grandmother.

"Thank you for allowing me to visit, Mrs Tonks. You have a very clean house." He turned to Teddy, eyes still narrowed. "Be careful who you make enemies of, Mr Lupin."

"That is a foul fellow," his grandmother said darkly once the man was out of earshot. "Don't mind him."

"Right," Teddy said. Still, the unease had been planted, and combined with the nervousness he already felt for having to cure Victoire the next day, the unease blossomed rapidly.

The day of the full moon, he was well rested. He went over the theory again in the morning only to find that he knew it easily and it greeted him like an old friend. Then, because he did not know what else to do, he tried to morph. He thought that perhaps after his meal with Eric when his hair morphed red due to his anger he would be able to morph again. Yet when he looked in the mirror and tried with all of his concentration, the image that stared back at him remained the same. He kicked the mirror. It remained intact.

He wondered if this had anything to do with his quitting his career as an Auror. He couldn't remember whether or not he had tried morphing between when Victoire broke his heart and when he had quit his job. If he hadn't, then it seemed possible that it was because he no longer was pursuing the Auror path that he could not morph- not because she had broken up with him. Logically, it made no sense. But in areas like this, Teddy was hardly ever logical. In his mind, he could not morph because he had forsaken his mother and so he lost the ability his mother had passed on to him.

To make himself feel slightly better, he transformed into the wolf. He could still do that much. As he trotted around the room, sniffing at smells he had never noticed before, he figured he still had a bit of his father in him at least. The truth was that he felt lost. He did not have a career and his dreams of curing werewolves was happening, yet not nearly as he had dreamed it would. Everywhere he turned there seemed to be a new obstacle, whether it was Bletchley or even Eric. His thoughts were simpler as the wolf and they boiled down to one thing- that his feelings for Victoire were muddled beyond wolf comprehension, and that if he wanted to get a grasp on his life again, he would have to untangle those thoughts.

The plan was for Nover to escort Victoire out of Hogwarts and to the abandoned house he had chosen. Teddy would meet them there, and then they would wait to see if she would turn. If she did, then Teddy would cure her with Nover as support. And if she did not...

He did not want to get his hopes up and so he did not think about it. He had not even asked his grandmother what the chances were that Victoire would not turn. There was no point in looking at chance in this situation.

When he got to the abandoned house, the sun was just beginning to set. Because he wanted to survey his environment, he arrived early. The house was not nearly as dilapidated as the Shrieking Shack. It still seemed very livable. All of the furniture was still in place and only seemed a bit worn. If three rats had not scurried across the floor together, he would have been afraid somebody still lived there.

He rearranged the room so that all of the furniture was lined up against the walls, leaving a large clearing in the middle. He even Conjured carpet on the wooden floors since he found that he did not like to be thrown around by a wolf and land on hardwood. A bit of cushioning would be welcome. When he had finished levitating the coffee table to the corner of the room, the front door opened.

"Hi," she said, letting herself in. She, too, was early. She turned fully around to close the door so that she did not face him.

"Hey," he said, hating how forced his casual voice sounded. Luckily, there was a question he could ask easily. "Where's Nover?"

Turning to face him, she brushed nonexistent lint off of her robe and removed the outer layers. Her cheeks were red from the cold and her fingers stiff as she unwound her scarf and let down her hair.

"I asked if he could let me come a bit earlier. To get settled in." She rocked back and forth on her feet.

"Why didn't he just stay?"

"I... asked him not to. Well, I asked if he would mind if I could talk to you alone, and he said that was fine since he had to do something for McGonagall anyway and that he'd just come at the scheduled time..." She spoke very quickly.

"Oh." He ran a hand through his black hair. "Well, I guess we can sit."

They sat side by side since he had already moved all of the furniture into a line. They had nothing to look at but the opposing wall and a rather hideous picture of a sheepdog.

"How do you feel?" he ventured when she did not say anything.

"Nervous," she answered quickly. She was far jumpier than usual.

"How were the past few weeks at Hogwarts?"

He could not see how she looked since he made himself focus on the ugly sheepdog but he thought he heard the regret in her voice.

"I should have told you I was going back. I didn't mean to just leave like that."

"It seems like you've been saying that a lot recently," he said more bitterly than he wanted to.

"Teddy..."

Her pleading voice melted him. Glancing over, he saw that her hand sat limply by her side right between them. He longed to take it and warm it between his own. He would have rolled the sleeve of the robe up and ran his thumb along the bite mark and with each stroke he would have apologized for getting her into this mess. Instead, he turned away and leaned further into the sofa. She put her hands inside her pockets.

"What did you want to talk about?" he asked.

"I think you know."

"Let's say I don't."

She sighed.

"Things have been weird between us."

"I agree."

"And... I want to fix that."

"Okay."

"...Are we fixed now?"

"I guess."

"That didn't make me feel better."

"Me neither."

This time her voice was tinged with annoyance.

"I'm trying, Teddy. But you're not. Tell me what you want."

He shifted uncomfortably. He had been ready to deal with a werewolf but not for this. He almost would have preferred the werewolf.

"I want... I want you to trust me."

"I do trust you."

"It doesn't feel that way."

"I'm sorry," she sighed. From her muffled voice, he guessed that she had buried her head in her hands. "I had to write that letter to you because I knew you would try to stop me if I went to purposefully get bitten. And I had to go back to Hogwarts so suddenly because I had an epiphany and had to try it out..."

"What was the epiphany?" he asked dully.

"It's not important right now. I'll tell you... after."

"Alright," he said surly.

"If you want me to tell you everything, I will. Would that make things better between us?"

"Do you still like me?" he asked suddenly. It had become obvious to him that it was the only question that would progress this conversation for him.

"Yes," she said without hesitation, voice clear. "Very much so."

He felt light headed from her immediate response.

"Alright..." he said, using the slow word to summon his courage. "Well I've been doing a terrible job of trying to convince myself that I'm no longer in love with you." It really was a very ugly sheepdog.

"Then..." It was hard to say without looking at her, but she sounded excited, or perhaps just hopeful. "Then let's just get back together."

"It's not that easy," he said, suddenly annoyed.

"Yes it is!" She had turned to face him but he still looked at the wall.

"It's not," he said through clenched teeth. "You broke up with me through a letter. You still won't tell me what you're doing. We're only talking now because you went and got bitten and I have to heal you. What happens if I can't heal you? What would your parents think of me? How would I live with myself knowing that it was for my cause that you went through all of this?"

"Don't think about that," she said urgently. Nover was scheduled to arrive any minute.

"It can't just be brushed away-"

"But it can," she argued. "This whole thing is so simple when you boil it down. I think about you all the time- your kindness, your bravery- you make me want to be the best possible version of myself. I hope you can see that that's what I've been trying to do. I've realized that it all comes down to this- that you still like me and I am still deeply in love with you. Shouldn't that be all that matters?"

"I don't know," he said miserably. He glanced over and had a sudden desire to just reach out and hold her. Yet his mind threw up excuse after excuse. "That letter really hurt me-"

"Then I won't do that ever again. I've learned from that mistake. You know what's incredible about my parents' marriage?" She was talking quickly now, as if to convince him through her volume of words. "They got married so quickly yet they've made it work despite the war and everything. It's because they boiled it down to the fact that they loved each other and everything else they would just deal with as long as they had each other. And I think your parents probably realized the same thing. Your father finally stopped caring that he was older, that he was a werewolf, because the pure simple truth was that he was in love with your mother. And once you realize that truth, everything becomes easier and happier-"

Her lips were warm and she smelled of blossoms.

Some small part of his mind was still protesting- how could he forgive her so easily, what if she hurt him again- yet another part knew that holding onto those thoughts were only making him pointlessly miserable. That same part of his mind sent his hand through her hair, drawing her into him as she gave a sigh of what seemed like relief. Pressing him on the shoulders, she pushed him gently into the couch so that she was on top of him. His body welcomed the familiar curve of her body against his own.

When they did part, they did so reluctantly, and only because the room had become noticeably darker. The sun would give way to the moon soon.

"Nover should be here by now," Teddy said, clearing his throat.

"I'm glad he didn't come earlier," she said with a faint smile. Her voice tried to joke, but the nervousness crept through.

"I won't let you become a werewolf," he assured her. He held her hand easily now.

She nodded.

"I know you won't."

Fifteen minutes passed where they did not talk. The silence was a comfortable one though, where they sat close together hand in hand. He still could not morph, but for the first time, he knew with full certainty that the ability would return. Perhaps not that day, but eventually.

"What if I hurt you?" she asked in a small voice.

"It'll be two to one once Nover gets here. I think we can take you."

"How much longer?"

"Maybe ten minutes? Nover really should be here by now..."

"If he doesn't come... just go away. We can do this next full moon when you have proper backup."

"No. I'm not going to leave you alone."

Five more minutes passed.

"Teddy..." she said in almost a whisper. "I don't want to turn."

He swallowed.

"We'll deal with whatever comes."

Three minutes later Teddy deduced that Nover would not be coming. Perhaps his task for McGonagall was taking longer than expected. He was not worried though. Her hand in his made him uniquely calm.

"I'll go to the other side of the room now," Victoire said. She squeezed his hand. He readied his wand.

Five minutes later they were still standing on opposite sides of the room- she curled up into herself on a chair, and he standing with his wand ready.

Ten more minutes passed where they said nothing, both afraid to speak too soon.

Another ten minutes passed and a ray of pure moonlight shined into the room.

Nothing happened.

They met in the middle. She cried silent human tears into his robes and he stroked her spine, loving the way each ridge felt against his hand.

"This means..." she began.

"A breakthrough in immunization," he finished and kissed her with a smile spreading across his face.

She broke away quickly.

"I've been working on a potion at Hogwarts," she said rapidly. "If ingested, it's like a pseudo werewolf bite. I figured it'd be like those vaccines your grandmother was talking about. That's what my epiphany was about and I had to tell Slughorn-"

"That's wonderful. But not now," he said and kissed her fully human lips until she gave up trying to explain her potion.

Eventually they would end up together on the carpeted floor, his hands removing her robes and her breath sighing into his ear. The moonlight would shine over them, not as a threat, but merely as a means of illuminating the room so that they could better see and absorb each other fully. They would fumble and laugh nervously, talk then embrace silently. They would not know what they were doing, and they would not particularly mind. There would still be fights to be had and apologies to be accepted.

But for now, they did the most human thing they knew how to do- love, and be loved.