"Teaching Moment"
As class concluded for the day, the previously quiet room became full of clamor as students packed up their things and rushed for the door. Remus was stuffing his books into his knapsack when Professor Bixby called his name.
"Mr. Lupin, stay a moment."
Remus tensed. He didn't like the Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, mostly because after a year and a half, Professor Bixby didn't much like him.
His friends cast him curious looks as they slowly made their way out. Remus took a breath and gathered his things, holding his book bag to his chest like a breastplate as he approached the professor's desk.
"Sir?"
"I have a special project I'd like your help with," Bixby said. "You'll earn extra credit to help bring your grade up."
Remus's jaw tightened. He knew the professor had been giving him low marks because of his…condition. Not outright failing him, of course, because that would be noticed by the Headmaster in the end of term reports, but he never missed a chance to find fault with Remus's work and detract points from him. So even though Remus suspected this offer of extra credit was just another way to punish him, he couldn't really say no without his grade suffering.
"Yes, sir," he replied respectfully.
"Excellent," Bixby said. "Meet me here tomorrow morning."
Remus faltered. "Um, sir…tomorrow is…"
The professor rolled his eyes impatiently. "Yes, I know. I assure you, your evening activities will not be disrupted."
Remus grimaced. The last thing he wanted to do was spend the morning before a full moon with a professor who despised him, but he supposed he didn't have much choice in the matter. So with a nod, he turned and hurried out of the classroom.
James, Sirius, and Peter practically pounced on him just outside the door.
"What'd he want?" Sirius asked.
Remus sighed. "He's offering me a chance to earn some extra credit and improve my grade by helping him with a project tomorrow."
"But it's Saturday!" Peter exclaimed in affront.
James scoffed. "I don't see why you need extra credit; you're hardly the worst in the class."
Remus just shrugged. His friends didn't know why Professor Bixby always picked on him, even in first year. If they did, no doubt they'd do the same. So he plastered on a fake smile and they went about the rest of their day as though the world wasn't full of bigoted people.
The following morning after breakfast, Remus reported to Professor Bixby's classroom. The professor was using his wand to move all the desks and chairs back against one wall.
"What's the special project, professor?" Remus asked.
"A rare opportunity to give my students a first-hand look at something," Bixby replied, turning toward Remus with an odd glint in his eyes. He abruptly flicked his wand out and uttered a spell.
Remus had no idea what hit him as everything went dark.
"I hope Professor Bixby doesn't make Remus late visiting his mum," Peter said, sitting on the ground and picking at grass while James and Sirius got ready to practice flying on their broomsticks.
"Saturday extra credit," Sirius groused. "Sounds like detention."
James didn't disagree, and it irked him somewhat that Remus never stood up for himself or tried to talk to Professor McGonagall about his unfair treatment in that class.
The boys spent the morning flying, then Peter insisted they do some homework.
"What are deadlines for if not to do everything last minute?" James protested but nevertheless headed back up to the Gryffindor tower.
They didn't see Remus, so they must have missed him on his way out to see his sick mother. She was sick a lot. James hoped she wasn't, like, dying…
Later that night after supper when all students had returned to their dormitories, they received a message from Professor Bixby telling all his second years to meet him in his classroom for a surprise.
"A surprise?" Sirius repeated dubiously. "It's Saturday night!"
"And after curfew," Peter pointed out.
"Well, it is a teacher summoning us," James said. "So it's not like we'll get in trouble."
They headed out with the rest of the Gryffindor second years for the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom.
"I wonder if this was the thing Remus was helping Professor Bixby with," Peter said.
Sirius scowled. "Extra credit my arse. Just watch him deduct points because Remus had to miss tonight."
James's mouth thinned. If that happened, he might have to have a word with their head of house himself…
They all crowded into the classroom where Professor Bixby was waiting for them.
"Professor," someone spoke up. "It's after curfew on Saturday. What are we doing here?"
"A special opportunity has presented itself," he replied. "Now, I know we don't cover this subject until third year, so consider this a preview." He waved his wand at the wall, and a secret door opened, revealing a cylindrical chamber inside.
Everyone screamed and jumped back at the vicious beast that immediately lunged at them, but it was shackled on its arms, legs, and neck, holding it back. James immediately recognized it as a werewolf. The dark creature snarled and slavered as it strained against the chains to get at them.
"It's alright," Professor Bixby assured them in a loud voice. "The beast is well contained."
"Is that a- a werewolf?" someone asked fearfully.
"That it is." Bixby gestured with his wand to the window where they could see the full moon in the sky. "Such vicious, evil, dark creatures. I wanted you all to see for yourselves."
And the beast certainly was that, snapping and lunging at them with madness in its blazing eyes. Until it wrenched away from the students and began clawing and biting at itself. Blood splattered the chamber walls in gruesome patterns.
"Why is it doing that?" Anita squeaked.
"The werewolf needs human prey," Professor Bixby explained. "If it can't get it, it will satisfy its bloodlust by attacking itself."
James grimaced as he watched the grisly scene. "It's a rather small werewolf, isn't it?" he commented. He'd definitely read they were much bigger.
"There are sometimes runts," Bixby replied casually. "Better for me to show my students."
"Are you going to teach us how to kill it?" another student asked.
Bixby waved a dismissive hand. "Killing werewolves is a messy business and for more advanced years. But I hope you all found this lesson enlightening."
With that, he ushered them all out, leaving the werewolf to tear itself to pieces.
The students were in a twitter as they made their way back to their dormitories. Many were shocked the professor had brought in a real live werewolf; they were such dangerous creatures, after all. Some were saying their parents would be furious, while others defended the professor, saying he hadn't actually put them in any danger.
"Let's go back," Sirius declared once he, James, and Peter were back in their room.
"What?" Peter blurted. "Why?"
"Because the professor's right; this is a rare opportunity to get a better look."
"You're mental."
"The professor dismissed us," James pointed out. "He won't let us back in."
Sirius grinned. "That's what the invisibility cloak is for, thick-head."
James wasn't particularly keen on going back to watch the werewolf tear into itself, but let no one say he was never up for an adventure. So he dug out his cloak and the three of them huddled under it. Sneaking around the castle was easy, and they slipped into the classroom just as Professor Bixby was bringing in another group of fourth year students.
James's stomach churned at all the blood on the walls, and still the wolf was clawing at its own flesh in between trying to get at the students in the room gawking at it. But the chains held fast. The wolf even lunged so hard that it nearly choked itself with the collar and ended up falling backward with a pained yelp.
Professor Bixby brought in each of his Defense classes one by one, and when he got to the seventh years, James thought he might show them how to kill the werewolf. But he didn't, and when they all finally left, the wolf was collapsed in a pool of blood, wheezing heavily between long, pitiful keens.
"Can we go now?" Peter whimpered.
Sirius ducked out from under the cloak and took a few steps closer to the wolf. The beast was apparently too injured for its bloodlust to send it into another frenzy.
"Should we, like, put it out of its misery?" Sirius asked, sounding oddly sorry for the creature.
James wasn't particularly relishing in its suffering either, but he hissed, "And how do you plan to do that?"
"I don't know," Sirius snapped churlishly.
The wolf gave a jerk, then another, and Sirius jumped back as it started to convulse. James whipped his gaze to the window and noticed the moon had set. The werewolf was going to change back into its human form.
James had read books on werewolves, understood in theory what the transformation entailed. It was nothing compared to witnessing it. Limbs flailed and snapped at unnatural angles; fur slithered into pale flesh. The snout contorted into a squashed configuration before smoothing out again into human features. James puked into his mouth a little bit at the gruesome display. But then as it finished, all the oxygen froze in his lungs as he stared at the figure lying naked in a pool of blood. It was Remus.
But it couldn't be, his mind protested. He was at his mother's. James's head started whirling with all the little clues over the past year and half—Remus's sickly nature that he seemed to have inherited, the scars he tried to hide…his monthly visits to his sick mum. Who probably wasn't the one who was sick.
Sirius turned sharply and bolted for the window, shoving the pane open a second before he threw up over the sill. The sound triggered James's own gag reflex, and he ran over to retch too. Peter seemed too paralyzed in horror to lose his innards.
At the sound of the door clicking open, James and Sirius scrambled back to Peter, who was still holding the invisibility cloak, and they all hastily covered themselves again. Professor Bixby strode inside, looking annoyed. An absolutely furious McGonagall and Madam Pomfrey stormed in on his heels.
"What were you thinking?" McGonagall raged at the man. "Of all the despicable, heinous…" Her cheeks puffed red with rage, she couldn't even finish her sentence.
James had never seen her so livid, not even after one of their major pranks.
"It was a supervised lesson," Bixby said unapologetically. "No harm was done."
"No harm?" Madam Pomfrey repeated shrilly as she knelt down beside Remus. "Look at him!"
"The wolf always tears itself to shreds."
"Yes, but when you parade a bunch of people in front of it as you did, the wolf could have nigh killed itself!" McGonagall practically shrieked.
James swallowed against another surge of bile at the thought that Remus could have died tonight. Would he even survive those injuries? Madam Pomfrey looked worried, and she never looked like that when fixing up student hurts. Now, though, her eyes were wide as she cast a barrage of healing spells that didn't seem to be working very well from what James could see. He almost inched forward to get a better look, but Peter was still rooted to the spot, and he couldn't let themselves be discovered.
"You will never teach here again," McGonagall threatened.
Bixby scoffed. "What are you going to do? Report me to the Ministry? It's just a werewolf."
"It's a boy!" she snapped.
"Minerva," Madam Pomfrey interrupted. "I need your help."
Professor McGonagall pushed past Bixby and knelt down next to the matron. James couldn't see what they were doing, but a few moments later, they stood up, levitating an unconscious Remus wrapped in a sheet, and hurried out of the classroom. Professor Bixby remained behind, looking sour. With a wave of his wand, he closed the hidden door, hiding the evidence of his crimes.
James shared a look with Sirius and Peter, and together they carefully moved toward the door. Once outside, they made a run for it, ducking into the nearest boys' bathroom.
"Bloody hell," Sirius uttered, going to the sink and bracing his hands against the porcelain rim.
"Remus is a- a-" Peter stammered.
"Werewolf," James finished in a whisper. He couldn't believe it. Remus of all people. They'd been sharing a dorm with him—with a werewolf—for over a year!
Sirius slammed his hands against the sink, and the mirror cracked under the force of an accidental explosion of magic. "That bastard. Bixby knew a werewolf would attack itself if it couldn't get to human prey, and he paraded his classes in front of it like it was a…a…"
"Monster," James said quietly.
That was what Bixby was trying to show them. That was what James had always believed werewolves were. But seeing Remus like that…chained and bloodied…it made James want to be sick again.
"No wonder Remus is getting poor marks in his class," Peter spoke up.
Sirius turned toward them, looking green again. "Remus… James, there was so much blood."
James nodded mutely. He couldn't get the image out of his head. An hour ago they'd been looking at a fascinating specimen, watching it rip itself to shreds without a whit of sympathy for the bloodthirsty beast, not realizing it was their best friend. Remus wasn't violent, or mean, or any of the things everyone said werewolves were, even in their human form. He was the exact opposite.
"What if he dies?" Sirius asked in a strained voice.
James drew his shoulders back and pulled the invisibility cloak over himself again. "Let's go the hospital ward."
Sirius and Peter joined him under the cloak and they made their way through the castle. Fortunately, the hospital door had been left open a crack, probably in everyone's haste. James nudged it slightly with his foot to make a big enough gap for them to squeeze through. Madam Pomfrey and Professor McGonagall were all the way in the back, working urgently. James's heart pounded against his ribs as they crept closer to see what was happening.
Remus was still covered in blood and gaping wounds. Madam Pomfrey was liberally dousing the wounds in dittany, slowing the bleeding here, halfway closing a gash there. James didn't understand why she wasn't able to just fix it. But then he remembered reading that werewolf wounds were cursed and couldn't be fully healed with magic. That was why Remus had the scars. And now he'd have several more, all because a pompous professor wanted to make a spectacle and didn't care about the human boy he tortured in the process. And James realized most of the wizarding world would agree with him. That was why the school didn't know there was a werewolf student among them. That was why Remus had never told his friends his secret.
James watched the matron work frantically, barking out commands for potions and salves and Professor McGonagall hurried to fetch them. It was a surreal reversal of roles, James thought, made all the more incomprehensible by the sight of Remus's pale and mutilated body lying white as the sheets of the bed he was on.
The three boys remained fixated where they stood, unable to move or speak as they stayed hidden under the cloak. Eventually the urgency slowed down and then stopped. Remus was nearly mummified in bandages and still unconscious, but he must be out of the woods if the matron was done with her work.
The doors creaked as Dumbledore came in, and James held his breath as the Headmaster passed by them.
"How is he?" Dumbledore asked gravely.
Madam Pomfrey looked aggrieved as she listed out Remus's injuries—several deep lacerations on his torso, a punctured spleen, bite marks on his arms, and a chunk of muscle torn out of his forearm.
"It's a miracle he's still in one piece," she finished.
"How did this happen?"
"Mr. Lupin didn't show up this evening to go to the Shrieking Shack," Professor McGonagall replied. "Madam Pomfrey came to me and we searched everywhere for him." Her expression pinched. "I regret that it wasn't until near dawn that we came across a group of students out of bed who proceeded to tell us about Professor Bixby's show-and-tell with a real live werewolf. He had the boy chained in his classroom!"
James could practically feel the air crackle with Dumbledore's magic.
"I see," the Headmaster said darkly. "Professor McGonagall, if you would accompany me?"
She looked all too eager to stride out of the hospital wing with him, and James wondered what they were going to do to Professor Bixby. Maybe chain him up in a hidden room and let an animal tear into him, he thought bitterly.
Peter kicked James's shoe to get his attention and arched his brows in question. It was getting uncomfortable hiding under the cloak together, but James didn't want to just leave. Yet if they revealed themselves, they'd be sent away for sure. But Remus was their friend.
Now James knew why Bixby was against killing the werewolf specimen; he wouldn't have been able to get away with murdering a student.
Chaining one up and subjecting him to torture for show, though, that was okay.
James's stomach was curdling again.
Madam Pomfrey left Remus's bedside and went across the ward to one of the supply cabinets, so James took the opportunity to venture closer. He had never seen someone this badly injured, not even after a particularly savage Quidditch match. He reached out to touch Remus's hand, afraid it'd be as cold as death. But while it was chilled, certainly, from blood loss, this close he could see the shallow rise and fall of Remus's bandaged chest.
James glanced at Madam Pomfrey. Her back was turned, so he flung the invisibility cloak off the three of them and hurriedly stuffed it in his pocket. Better to take their chances at this point, he thought. Peter gave a startled squeak, which drew the matron's attention.
"What are you three doing in here?" she demanded sharply.
James decided the truth would be a good answer, for once. "We were still in the classroom when Remus changed back."
Her eyes widened in horror.
"It was just the three of us," James quickly assured her. "No one else knows about him."
Madam Pomfrey's eyes narrowed at that.
"Please," Sirius asked. "He's going to be all right, isn't he?"
"He will live," she replied stiffly, still eyeing them carefully.
"Please don't make us leave," James pleaded. "Remus is our friend, and someone should be here with him. After what he went through…"
Madam Pomfrey pursed her mouth, looking ready to throw them out anyway. But after a long moment of consideration, she said, "I'll speak with the Headmaster about it."
Well, that wasn't an immediate dismissal, so the three boys quickly took a seat on the next bed over. They mostly stayed silent, though sometimes one of them brought up yet again that Remus was a werewolf. They were still having a hard time processing that. After all, they were all from wizarding families and knew that werewolves were vicious, unconscionable creatures of evil, even in their human form.
"Remus isn't like that," Sirius said staunchly.
"Maybe he's an exception," Peter said.
James chewed it over in his mind. "Or maybe…it's the other way around, and what most wizards believe is wrong."
"A very astute consideration, Mr. Potter," Dumbledore said, and they all jumped off the bed in surprise to stand and face him. "Most of the wizarding world doesn't distinguish between the cursed beast that emerges once a month and the human being who was infected through no fault of their own."
Sirius clenched his fists. "How could Professor Bixby do that to him?" he asked angrily. "He's taught Remus for over a year! He knows he's not like that."
"Some people are blind to what's right in front of them," Dumbledore replied sadly. He considered the three of them thoughtfully for a long moment. "Seeing as it's Sunday, you are welcome to spend the day here with your friend. If that is indeed your intention," he added with an inscrutable look.
"Yes!" they all exclaimed together.
"We won't tell anyone either, Professor," James promised.
Sirius and Peter nodded in agreement.
"That's good," Dumbledore said and with a small nod, turned to leave.
The boys settled back on the bed to watch over their friend. Madam Pomfrey came to check on him frequently throughout the day. Sirius was worried that Remus wouldn't wake up, but the matron assured them that he'd lost a lot of blood and suffered severe trauma; his body just needed its rest. And so they passed the time playing wizard's chess, though they were all three a bit distracted with their own thoughts and doubts about everything they thought they knew about werewolves.
Finally the silence was broken by a groan in the next bed, and they abandoned their game to crowd around Remus. James and Sirius each took one of his hands.
"Remus?" Sirius called.
James felt Remus squeeze back, and though his grip was weak, it was also earnest, like he was trying to physically pull himself up out of the darkness. After several moments of bated breath, Remus's eyes fluttered open. He moaned, and Madam Pomfrey came rushing over to help him drink a pain draught. It took a few moments to take effect, but Remus slowly settled and squinted at them in confusion.
"Hey," James said, smiling. "How are you feeling?"
Remus's throat bobbed, and then his eyes widened in horror. "You were there," he whispered hoarsely.
Sirius blanched. "You remember? I thought…I was hoping you didn't…"
Remus's breathing began to speed up, his chest shuddering under the stress of it.
"Easy, easy," James soothed. "Just breathe. It's okay, Dumbledore sacked Bixby and he'll never hurt you again."
Remus continued to shake, and James finally inserted himself on the edge of the bed and put an arm around him. "I know it was horrible, but you have to breathe, or Madam Pomfrey's going to come back here and kick us out."
Remus's eyes were wide as saucers as he gaped at James. "You- you're not…"
He frowned. "Not what?"
"Not…disgusted," Remus ground out.
"With that bastard Bixby!" Sirius interjected a bit too loudly. "Not with you. You're still our friend."
Peter bobbed his head eagerly.
"What Bixby did to you was wrong," James said seriously. "No one deserves that. Not even a werewolf."
Remus flinched at the word.
"We've been here all day waiting for you to wake up, you know," Sirius told him. "We- we were so scared you were going to die."
Remus still looked confused by that. "Wait, how did you find out?" His eyes widened even further. "Did he tell everyone?"
"No!" James assured him. "We…we snuck back in." He ducked his gaze shamefully. "We were curious. If we had known…I'm so sorry, Remus."
Remus's throat bobbed. "So…you don't want me to leave Hogwarts?"
"Of course not!" Sirius exclaimed.
Remus slumped dejectedly. "It won't matter anyway. Bixby will probably let it slip as revenge for getting him in trouble, and then everyone will demand I be expelled."
"For getting him in trouble?" Sirius repeated furiously.
"Mr. Bixby is well aware of the consequences should he divulge such confidential information," Dumbledore said, once again sneaking up on the lot of them. "Your secret is safe." He side-eyed James, Sirius, and Peter, who nodded in staunch agreement.
Remus's eyes welled with emotion, and James squeezed his hand again, no words needed.
They'd all learned something from this. Not what Bixby had meant to teach them, which was hatred and cruelty for those deemed less than human. No, they'd learned the value of friendship, compassion, and honor.
Creeds to live by.