Questus found himself writing letters to Lupin at least once a week, but the secret stretched on and on... despite everyone's constant babbling that Questus needed to tell Lupin! And Lupin was so lonely! And Lupin needed to hear from someone who went through the same things he did! Ridiculous. Lupin had his friend (her name was Susi, Questus remembered). He didn't need Questus, too—not when the knowledge of Questus' lycanthropy would emotionally destroy him. That would be far, far too much for Questus to deal with.

Besides, the longer Questus kept the secret, the more he wondered how long he could keep it. Lupin had to figure out at some point, didn't he? After all, he knew the signs better than anyone else did.

Every so often, Questus slipped small hints into his letters. I'm feeling under-the-weather, he'd always say right after a full moon. I'm tired right now, he'd tell Lupin directly before. My leg's acting up, he'd write, making sure to make the ink a little bit thicker, as if he was thinking of a lie as he was writing. Lupin was sharp. Surely he'd catch on—surely he'd at least notice that there was a pattern to Questus' illnesses—surely he'd come home during holidays and see the telltale pallor in Questus' face; the tremors in his hands; the bags under his eyes. Surely Remus Lupin knew what lycanthropy looked like in himself enough to recognize it in others. Surely.

Apparently not. Questus' "experiment" ran for ages and ages, yet Lupin did not figure it out. It was quite interesting, psychologically. Perhaps he was rationalizing, just as he'd claimed his friends were doing. Perhaps he was so used to being the liar that he couldn't comprehend being the lied-to. Perhaps he really didn't know what lycanthropy looked like from an outside perspective—he tried to ignore the signs in himself, so he ignored them in other people.

Or perhaps he just trusted Questus, with a trust that transcended rationality and observational skills. Perhaps he was so confident that Questus would never lie to him that he'd disabled the alarm bells in his mind, saving them for more important matters.

Questus grimaced. He was feeling a little bit guilty now.

But he couldn't stop now. He had to know. He had to know exactly how far he could push this—exactly how far he could go—the exact moment in which Lupin would figure it out. Where was the breaking point? How many hints was too many? Originally, he'd kept the secret because of emotional overload; now, he kept it because there was an itch, just like the itch that had driven him to research so much about werewolves all those months ago. Questus had to know. He'd need this for the future, wouldn't he? This was an experiment to see what information he could reveal without giving away his identity. When—if—he reentered the wizarding world, he'd need to know this sort of thing.

Wouldn't he?

No use dwelling on it. Questus plodded on through life, going to the Lupins nearly every day (and sleeping on their armchair at night whenever the mood struck), transforming in the cellar, and writing letters to Lupin. Life was not good, but it was bearable. Questus, now that he knew his adventures were over, had never enjoyed simple comforts and a restful life as much as he did now. A beetle crawled across his wall, and he watched it for an hour. An hour. He was going mad, probably, but at least there was certainty in madness.

"You're saints, you know?" he once told the adult Lupins, thumbing through the Prophet while they read on the couch. "Saints."

Mr. Lupin blinked. "What on earth do you mean, John?"

"Have you seen the states of yourselves? You're worn thin, you're exhausted, you're financially drained, and you're worried about your son all the time. It would have been so easy to let him die that night. Why didn't you?"

"What do you mean why didn't we?" Mrs. Lupin's nostrils flared, and she put down her book. "He's our son!"

"So? It's not as if he's going to have much of a life like this. You've destroyed your lives, and his was already pretty much finished. If you'd let him die, then at least you could have saved two. It's the rational option, really. All three of you are suffering, and one simple choice would have meant that none of you would have suffered. Well, you two would have for a little bit—losing a child is devastating, I'm sure—but you'd have healed and moved on eventually. So... do you regret what you did that night? Do you regret saving him?"

"Of course we don't!" Mrs. Lupin stared at him, nearly shaking with anger—or sadness—or something else that was completely indiscernible. "Look, Questus, I'm only explaining this because I know you're sort of stupid when it comes to things like this, but... losing a child isn't just something that hurts for a bit, and then you move on. It sticks with you forever."

"How do you know? You've never lost a child... have you?"

"No, I haven't. But I'm one-hundred-percent certain I'd never have recovered from that."

"You have no evidence to back that up. I thought I'd never move on when my sister died, yet lo and behold, here I am: a healthy, functioning adult who barely ever gets sad about it anymore."

Mr. Lupin laughed. "Very funny."

"It's true. Except for maybe the healthy part, but that's got nothing to do with Clementine."

"Well, let me ask you this, even though I'm not sure I'm going to like the answer," said Mrs. Lupin. "If Bethany Webb had had a chance of surviving that werewolf attack, would you have let her die?"

There was a long moment of silence.

Questus thought about that.

"No," he said quietly. "But I see that as a very selfish decision, not a noble one. I used to be sure that living on as a werewolf was better than not living at all... but now, I'm honestly not so sure."

"I think you're wrong," she said. "Remus is happy, isn't he? He's going to school. He has friends. He comes home smiling over holidays, and he seems perfectly happy when he writes home. There's always something good, no matter how bad things get. Your self-pitying drivel does not apply to Remus, and I'd appreciate it if you'd stop being so doom-and-gloom all the time. You're miserable. We get it. It doesn't mean that Remus has to be, too."

Questus turned to Mr. Lupin, who was looking anywhere but Questus. "What about you?" he said. "You know a lot more about the wizarding view of werewolves, and you know exactly what life will look like for him after Hogwarts. Do you regret saving him?"

"No," said Mr. Lupin quickly, and then he seemed to reconsider. "Well... sometimes."

Mrs. Lupin swatted him on the arm, scandalized.

"Wait, Hope! I mean... in moments of weakness, when I see him suffering... when I think about the lack of opportunities there are for him... when I lock the cellar at night. But most of the time, I'm incredibly proud of him. I think he's growing into quite the wizard, and I think he's left a lot of good in the world as of so far. Life is better than death, Questus. Nearly always is."

"Hm," said Questus, staring at where the beetle had been only a week prior. "That seems reasonable."

Through his letters with Lupin, Questus found out that Potter, Black, and Pettigrew had found out about his lycanthropy. Wonder of wonders, despite what Questus had thought for years, they still accepted him. Questus was perfectly supportive (in a Questus-y sort of way) and made admirable efforts not to be envious. He didn't care about Crawford and Simmons. Not one bit. Over and done with.

His leg was healing, although he got new injuries every month (and seemed to injure that same leg over and over. "Remus always seems to focus on the other leg on full moons," Madam Pomfrey once told Questus, frowning, to which Questus responded, "That's because it's there and I can reach it," before turning to focus on more important matters, like the dots-and-boxes game against Lupin that he was currently winning).

Questus also had a cat now, who provided countless hours of entertainment. Gone were the days of watching beetles; now Questus could watch a cat lick itself for hours at a time. Unfortunately, the cat was rather antisocial, and it wouldn't respond to Questus' call one bit. Questus supposed he couldn't blame it.

Dumbledore kept bringing Questus stupid housewarming gifts, even though the house was already perfectly warm, so to speak. (Well, the cellar was cold, but there was nothing that Questus cared to do about that.) Questus threw himself wholeheartedly into the job that Dumbledore had set for him, combing through every single newspaper, and he eventually managed to fill three notebooks and a full file cabinet of carefully organized instances. He was starting to see connections. Something big was coming, Questus was sure of it, but he couldn't figure out what it could possibly be.

Things were still hopeless, but in a relaxed sort of way. Questus almost reckoned he could get through the year without losing too much of his sanity.

"I'm going to the town," he announced one morning over tea with Mr. Lupin. "Just going to look around."

"You really feel up to walking that much?"

"Just because your son is at Hogwarts doesn't mean I'll happily stand in for him. Stop coddling me."

"Well." Lupin frowned and took a sip. "It's Sunday. Church services start at ten. Hope went once—it's a nice church. Most everybody in the town goes, oddly enough. Strong sense of community down there."

Questus turned to Mrs. Lupin, who was nodding and sipping her own tea over a copy of some Muggle book. "You're religious?" he asked.

"Not particularly," she said. "But... well, it was a bit of a rough time when we moved here. Remus was nine, and things were catching up with him. He was growing older and starting to realize... that he wasn't normal."

"He was nine when he started to realize that? Not an especially bright kid, is he?"

"Well, he already knew that he was a werewolf, obviously. But knowledge is different from understanding, and understanding comes with age. As he grew, he started thinking about the future more, and the fact that he was going to live like this for the rest of his life was sinking in even more than it already had. There was a brief episode of depression, I think."

"Really?" asked Questus, surprised. "Him?"

"That's partly why we moved. We used to live a ways away from a large city, and Lyall used to take Remus there every so often for potential cures. There were plenty of people who claimed to have a cure that particular city, but all of them were either mistaken or con artists. It was difficult for Remus—he'd get his hopes up, only to have them dashed again. Constant let-downs. Lyall and I decided that it was best for all of us if we took a break from the cures, so we moved here."

"And it was a lot better for him when we stopped," admitted Lyall. "But, now that we'd settled down a bit... we started to notice things about him. Tiny things. He wouldn't eat as much, he took more naps, he didn't often want to talk to us, and the full moons got a little more difficult. He just started slipping away, you know? Wasn't nearly as attentive or cheerful. It may have been an effect of no longer having anything to look forward to."

"Sure," said Questus.

"I don't even think he remembers, to be honest. He was just sad, that's all. We saw it last year, too, over Easter break... but he denies these things. He chalks it up to being tired."

"Right. He's not particularly good at identifying his emotions, is he?"

"You're one to talk."

"I know what I'm feeling. I just hate it, so I ignore it."

"Not the healthiest option. Anyway, I started teaching him a bit more magic, which at least distracted him. He started looking better. Eating more. Two months later, he told us that he didn't want to try any more experimental cures—said he was finished, permanently. Said he'd only take something if we could be certain that it would work."

"That's sensible," said Questus. "Seems he's gotten better."

"Oh, he's doing wonderfully now," said Mrs. Lupin. "We owe Dumbledore everything."

"Anyway... the church?"

"Oh, yes. One full moon—a couple months after we moved here—was particularly rough. Remus had been refusing food intermittently all week leading up to it, so he wasn't in the best shape before it, either. Never seen him so poorly. Lyall had to take him to hospital, and he said I needed to stay home."

"She'd nearly strangled someone last time she went with us."

"I did not!"

"You did it with your eyes."

"Since when is that a crime?"

"Since the Healers are looking for something to convict us with."

"Right, well." Mrs. Lupin shook her head in exasperation. "Anyway, I was home by myself for quite a long time, and I realized that there was absolutely nothing we could do about it. The whole situation is hopeless. You understand, don't you, John?"

"Of course."

"We didn't think that Remus was going to be able to attend Hogwarts. We didn't think he'd ever have friends. The future was bleak, and there was nothing that we could do to help. There was nothing to look forward to for the poor boy... and I realized that, if there was a God, then he was the only thing that could help in such a hopeless situation. So I went to the church one Sunday while Lyall stayed with Remus. I prayed. I made some small donation. The preacher approached me—because he'd never seen me there before—and asked me if anything was wrong."

"How did he know?" asked Questus.

"Well, either he was psychic or I was crying my eyes out. Anyway, I wasn't sure what to say, exactly, so I just told him that my son was chronically ill."

"And what did he say to that?"

"Prayed for me, I think. Told me that the church would support me financially if I needed it. Asked to meet Remus." She shrugged. "I didn't read the Bible, and I most certainly did not take Remus to meet them. The service... and prayers... well, nothing helped much. Remus was still the same when I got back. There was no instant miracle..."

"Well, none of that is supposed to be a guaranteed cure. It's supposed to be a comfort. No god of any religion is a cosmic vending machine."

"Wasn't any sort of a comfort, either. Nothing happened."

"Besides Lupin being the first and only werewolf ever to attend school," Questus mumbled. And then, louder: "I suppose I'll take a look. Got nothing better to do."

"Let us know if you..."

"I won't need help," said Questus sharply, cutting Lupin off. "I'm a werewolf, not a cripple. Well, I suppose I'm kind of a cripple. But I don't need help."

And with that, he set off down the hill, praying that his leg would hold up the whole way. "Well, if prayer is a comfort, not a cure," he muttered to himself as he walked, "then I still might fall and end up breaking my leg in seven places... but at least I'll be comfortable."

The service was kind of boring, but the music was nice. There was an organ and a choir, though Questus didn't know enough about music to make a proper judgement.

The priest approached him after the service, and Questus wasn't sure how to feel about that. "I'm Alexander," said the priest, and Questus nearly laughed aloud. That had been the name of Beth's ex-boyfriend, though this obviously wasn't him. The priest smiled back. "I've never seen you around before," he said.

"That would be a miracle, seeing as I've never been here before," said Questus. "John Questus. Have a surname? I don't use first names."

"Smith."

"Well, that's generic. I suppose I can't say anything, though, seeing as my name is John."

"Generic is better than obscure."

"Perhaps."

"May I ask why you're here?"

"I just moved. Figured I'd take a look."

"Hm. Well, tell me about yourself, then. Where are you from? Who are you? What's with the cane?"

"Straightforward. I can respect that. Hm, well... I lived in a flat in London for thirty-odd years and worked in the military. Was sacked for being disrespectful..."

Smith, apparently, found that extremely funny. "Really?"

"Yep. But, in my defense, the man to whom I was disrespectful most certainly deserved it. Then I worked as a schoolteacher in a boarding school for a year. Scotland. Moved back to London and worked in law enforcement for less than a month... some criminal managed to injure me pretty badly. Left law enforcement out of necessity. Now I do freelance work as a secretary of sorts."

"That's one interesting life story," said Smith with a low whistle. "Now... tell me the truth."

"That was the truth." And it was, certainly, as close to the truth as Questus could have gotten.

"Oh, please. That's not the truth. I can see the wand poking out of your pocket. You went to Hogwarts, did you not?" Questus blinked and glanced around the area. "Oh, no one's listening. And even if they were, then 'Hogwarts' wouldn't mean a thing to them. Besides, I say odd things like that all the time. Just in case, though... let's step into my office for a second."

Questus followed Smith into his office, still rather shocked. "You're a wizard?" he said after Smith had shut the door behind them.

"No, but one tends to learn some things as a priest who likes to travel. I've been all around. Drunk people talk, you know: give a man some Firewhiskey and all he wants is to get saved and talk about wizards."

Questus chuckled. "How much do you know, then?"

"Quite a bit. Most things, in fact. Don't worry—I'm not about to reveal the wizarding world to humanity. That would cause plenty of problems."

"So it would," mused Questus. "You want to hear the real story, then?"

"Of course."

Questus was pretty certain that this random Muggle man had no qualms against werewolves, so he didn't hold anything back. "Went to Hogwarts when I was a kid, and my sister was choked to death by a plant," he said. Ah, yes. A solid start. "Graduated. Became an Auror—do you know what that is?"

"Remind me."

"Wizarding law enforcement—right dangerous and very difficult to qualify for. Was sacked for disrespect. Taught Defense Against the Dark Arts at Hogwarts. Left after a year and re-joined the Aurors. Dated someone. A couple weeks later we were trying to control a couple of werewolves—she was brutally murdered and I was bitten by one myself."

"And that means you're one now, too?"

"Of course. But I'm not dangerous or anything."

"No, no. I didn't get that impression. Well, I can certainly say that your current story is 100% less believable than your last one... but I believe it, of course."

"I couldn't make that up if I tried."

"Suppose not. The Bible mentions witchcraft, so I guess I always knew that it existed in some form... I just didn't know that it was like this."

Smith's personal library was impressive indeed, and Questus traced a finger along the spine of a scholarly-looking book about the gospel of John while he thought. "How long have you been working here?" he asked.

"Only a couple of months, but the people have been very accepting. This is an odd little town, but just about everybody is as friendly as you please."

"It's suspicious, that's what it is... speaking as someone who worked in magical law enforcement."

"Well. On that topic, tell me about werewolves. So they exist, hm?"

"They'd better. Otherwise, I'm not sure what I'm doing in my cellar every month."

Smith laughed; Questus appreciated the man's sense of humor immensely. "What's it like, being a werewolf?"

"Well, first off, it comes with an all-expense-paid gift of an extremely painful transformation—you're only a Muggle, so it's far more painful than you can imagine. But the loss of free will is the most humiliating and torturous part of the whole thing. I have no control over myself come full moon. I would kill anybody else in the room with me, so I have to lock myself up. And werewolves will turn on themselves when locked up, so I transform back in horrible pain and barely able to walk."

Smith let out another low whistle. "Anything I can do to help?"

"Obviously not. You're a Muggle."

"Ouch."

"It wasn't an insult."

"I know, but it sounded like one."

"It wasn't. Anyway, no, you can't help. I don't even let Dumbledore help—I assume you know who he is?"

"Headmaster of Hogwarts, ended the Global Wizarding War, most powerful wizard in the universe? Yes, people talk."

Questus laughed. "He's a genius... and also terribly eccentric."

"Geniuses sometimes are."

"Yes." Questus grew silent for a moment. "You know, there's something I'd like to tell you... but I'm not supposed to. Not my secret to tell, really..."

"You've just breached the... what was it, the Statute of Secrecy? Multiple times. I don't think you could possibly do worse."

"You won't tell anyone?"

"Not a soul, and I am a man of my word."

"Being a priest, you'd better be." Questus paused again before continuing. "There's a boy that I taught. He was a werewolf, too. You have to understand that lycanthropy is extremely uncommon—most werewolves go to live with a pack in the wild... or die, of course... so a werewolf at Hogwarts was completely unheard of. Anyway, he was bitten at age four, which is also highly unusual. He went on to grow up completely alone. He's fairly intelligent. Hard worker. Overall good person. But he has no chance of surviving past fifty—and if you consider that witches and wizards frequently live to their two hundredth birthdays, that's about the equivalent of a Muggle dying at twenty. Which he might do anyway. He has no chance of doing anything good for the world—not when everybody in the wizarding world despises him as an animal and a monster. His psychological state is so damaged that it's frankly remarkable that he still holds some semblance of sanity. I might not, after eight years of this."

"That's too bad," said Smith. "I could pray for him, if you'd like."

"Won't solve anything. Help, maybe, but not solve. The suffering he's endured can't be erased, and an instant healing at this point would be even worse—he'd be subject to experiments and the Ministry's suspicion. There's just no solution, even a miraculous one. I suppose I just don't understand why some people have better chances than others. There are people who grow up as intelligent Muggles without a care in the world, and then there are those who get strangled to death by a plant at the age of twelve..."

"Your sister?"

"Yes. It's not fair, is it? It would have been perfect if I could have stayed an Auror... married my girlfriend, perhaps... stayed human. That would've been a perfect scenario. God's plan and all that. Loose ends would've been tied up. But that didn't happen, and now everything is rubbish." Questus crossed his arms. "Some of us just have better lives than others, and it's not fair. I've always been an advocate for accepting the evil in the world as it is. The Dark Arts wait for no one, I've always said, and even children aren't even safe. But I've always said so with the expectation of a greater plan. My sister died, sure, but it improved my life, didn't it? Until it didn't. I ended up like this, so her death was just useless, and now both of us have no future. It doesn't make sense. What kind of torturous plan is this?"

"Ah," said Smith, smiling. "So you're one of those people."

"A pessimist? Yes, I've been told, though I prefer to call myself a realist..."

"No, not a pessimist. A big-picture type of person. You like to think that everything happens for a reason. Jeremiah 29:11, hm? For I know the plans I have for you: plans to to prosper you and not harm you; plans to give you a hope and a future..."

"Of course."

"And God certainly has plans; I'm not disputing that. But not everything is a puzzle piece that perfectly fits into the last. Matthew 6:10: Thy kingdom come; thy will be done—on Earth as it is in heaven. That certainly implies that God's will is not always done on Earth as it is in heaven, eh? If it were, then we wouldn't have to pray for it."

"I... suppose."

"And that's a consequence of..."

"Free will. Other people. Events instigated by forces not of God. Right?"

"Absolutely. Someone else—another werewolf, in your case—made a conscious decision to let himself run free on the full moon. Unfortunately, our actions affect other people as well as ourselves. Just ask Adam and Eve, whose decisions affected generations and generations. Every single generation, in fact. God doesn't will evil; he only makes the best of it every so often when it does happen. That's why we pray, of course... but you know full well that God doesn't always answer prayers in the way we want him to."

"Then why bother?" Questus grumbled. "Why bother with anything? Why?"

"That's the question, isn't it?" said Smith. "No one is exactly sure, I'm afraid. But I don't look at prayer as a command for God to fix things. If he wants to, then he will. I think that my prayers certainly help: after all, persistence is rewarded... but instead, I look at prayer as a reminder to myself that I rely on God first and foremost. Even if he doesn't do what I want him to, it's much safer and much more pleasant to be in an area of complete trust rather than an area of uncertainty. Prayer is a reminder that we are not alone, yes? And that we don't have to fix it ourselves? Prayer is for the state of the mind more so than the state of the world."

Questus sighed. "A comfort, but not necessarily a cure," he said. "Easier said than internalized. So you're saying that..."

"That your life is absolute rubbish and there probably isn't anything that you can do to fix it? Yes."

"Lovely."

"But God didn't cause it just to see you suffer. And even though he didn't will you to get injured, that doesn't mean that whatever plan he has for the eventual state of the world is destroyed. One day at a time—someday it will get better, I promise. Maybe not till after the apocalypse, but that's still something to look forward to."

"Right. Well..." Questus thought about that for a moment. "I suppose... that's what I needed to hear, yes. I'm going to go home now."

"Need me to drive you? You don't look up to walking up that hill."

"How did you know I lived there?"

"There was no divine inspiration involved, I'm afraid. I saw you walking down. It's a rather large hill."

Questus laughed. "And I'm a rather slow walker, yes. I think I'll be all right, but thank you for offering. And thanks for... all that, I suppose."

"You're welcome, though I didn't do anything in particular."

Questus wasn't sure about that, but he wasn't sure about anything anymore. "I think you broke me," he mumbled.

Questus lay awake that night in the armchair, a blanket haphazardly draped across his torso as the temperature in the room seemed to increase (though Questus was getting off-and-on fevers with the curse, so it probably wasn't really the temperature). He used the bout of insomnia to think—after all, he had quite a lot to think about.

He thought about divine will and free will. He thought about wizards and Muggles. He thought about werewolves. And as the phrase "consequences of living in a sinful world" marched through every crevice of his brain, he started to wonder whose sin it was.

Not his, certainly. What had he ever done, besides...

Besides being so heavily involved in witchcraft?

You're only a Muggle, so it's far more painful than you can imagine, he'd told Smith. Magic was far more painful than anything Muggle was. Perhaps the extreme pain that magic could cause wasn't intended. Maybe magic wasn't God's will at all? Perhaps magic itself was the villain in the story.

A nasty feeling began settling in the pit of Questus' stomach—a feeling that implied that he'd soon be doing something that he really, really didn't want to do—but he would anyway, of course, because anything small helped.

If Questus was bored enough to watch a cat lick its rear end for two hours, then he was definitely bored enough to do this.

It was mid- to late January when Questus showed up at the Lupins without his wand. "I need help," he announced. "I'm giving up magic and I have no idea how to do anything."

Mr. and Mrs. Lupin looked up from their coffee in complete unison and blinked.

"What?" said Lupin. "Like... permanently? Giving up magic?"

"Yes."

"As a werewolf? You'll die."

"In all honesty, that's just fine and dandy with me."

Mrs. Lupin looked furious at that. "John! You can't say that! That's not funny at all!"

"Just because you have an awful sense of humor," said Questus, rolling his eyes. "At this point, magic has hurt me more than it has helped me. My fondest memories have nothing to do with magic, but my worst memories are drenched in it. Why should I stay in a world that has done nothing but harm me?"

"Magic has done plenty for you!" protested Mr. Lupin.

"I'm sure that Mrs. Lupin can attest to the fact that Muggles are just as well off as wizards—more so, in fact. Muggles can accomplish anything that wizards can; it just takes them longer. And they're not often werewolves. And they don't get killed by plants. And they're happier, on average. I wouldn't sacrifice health for speed and entertainment, would you? Besides, magic has been a distraction for far too long. I want to focus on things that make me happy, not things that remind me of how much I've lost."

Mr. and Mrs. Lupin argued for a bit longer, but Questus had made up his mind.

Maybe not everything that had happened to him was divine will. Perhaps there was nothing he could do about it. But he'd take it one day at a time... and, in the meantime, he'd do everything he could to keep himself sane, healthy, and happy. That was all he could do.

Questus still received what seemed like ten letters a month from a furious Pomfrey, who professed that Remus needed someone to talk to (which was ridiculous. Questus was still talking to Lupin; he was merely avoiding a certain topic). Questus still had to use silver and Dittany (which didn't count as magic, Questus was certain) on his wounds after full moons. He couldn't walk properly most days of the month, and broken bones had to heal the Muggle way (which was awful). He took as much Muggle pain medication as he possibly could. He started seeing a Muggle doctor (who was thoroughly confused by Questus' vitals and constant injuries).

Physically, he felt terrible, and there was absolutely nothing that he could do for himself. He even had to request Mr. and Mrs. Lupin's help on occasion. He started sleeping in the armchair at their house. He let Mrs. Lupin cook for him. It was humiliating and physically painful.

But mentally, he'd never been better. He was convinced that he was doing the right thing, and that made all the difference.

And he'd tell Remus Lupin that he was a werewolf.

Someday.

AN: A small look into Questus' motivations (and Questus is finally vulnerable... more or less XD). This chapter is a few hours late because the site glitched just as I was trying to save the edited document. I did not have the mental capacity to edit it all over again last night, so I saved it for today! I rushed through it a bit, so I apologize for any mistakes :D I will remember to copy the text before saving from here on out, just as a failsafe!