At the pool, Hermione fretted about the price of admission. It was more expensive than Mr. Weasley had estimated.
"Oh, drat," she muttered. "It's £2.50 each, and at that rate we won't have quite enough to get back on the underground."
"I'm not swimming," said Moody.
"No, no, we'll figure something out," she answered.
"No, forget it," he maintained. "The sight of me in a bathing suit would be enough to make anyone require memory modification."
"If you say so," replied Hermione, but they all knew she was just being polite. Moody was probably right. No one was sure what horrible disfigurements he kept beneath his robes as tokens of a long career as an auror, and they didn't really want to know. They paid for eight.
Harry had a time on the men's side explaining what sunscreen was for.
"It's so goopy, though," complained Mr. Weasley. "Maybe I'll just put on a UV blocking charm."
"You were the one who wanted to do things the Muggle way," replied Harry as he greased himself up. "This is part of that."
Meanwhile, on the women's side, Hermione was laboriously trying to convince Tonks, Mrs. Weasley, and Ginny that they had to shower before entering the pool ("I thought it was the swimming that was supposed to clean you..."). She explained the workings of the pool's water purification system as best she could, and finally managed to drag them all into the shower. They emerged from the locker room dripping wet as Harry, Moody, Ron, and pair of abominable snowmen arrived from the other side.
"Arthur! What in Merlin's name?"
"Er, they insisted on taking sunscreen to the max," explained Harry, gesturing in an 'I don't want to know them' way toward Lupin and Mr. Weasley, who had absolutely covered themselves from head to toe with sun block. There wasn't an inch of bare skin that didn't look like it had been blanketed in shaving cream.
One of the lifeguards had sauntered over to them.
"N-no," he said simply, at a loss for more words. He indicated that the two of them needed to shower off immediately and would by no means be allowed into the pool until they did.
Moody sat himself down in a lawn chair near a set of bleachers, and immediately some young children began to inspect him fearfully. He was easy to spot, even in a crowd of wizards, and he could never really pass for a Muggle. He just sat there in the shade, drinking from his hip flask and trying to be as inconspicuous as possible.
The kids were already in the water by the time Lupin and Mr. Weasley emerged again, severely cleaned off. Harry swam over to where Lupin had seated himself on the pool edge. The ex-professor was wearing turquoise bathing trunks with little yellow palm trees on them. Mrs. Weasley made a sound of concerned disapproval as she walked past and noticed an odd curve in Lupin's spine that shouldn't have been there, a result of the extreme stress his body endured each month.
"What?" demanded Lupin, looking around at her.
"Nothing, Remus."
"Are you going to get in?" Harry asked.
"I don't know," he replied. "To tell you the truth, I don't know how to swim. My parents tried to sign me up for a class once but the instructor wouldn't accept a werewolf child."
With a look of shock that made him immediately ashamed, Harry's eyes fell on a pair of markings on Lupin's leg that looked suspiciously like bite marks.
"You're not the only one with strange old scars, Harry," Lupin remarked. It had simply never crossed Harry's mind that a werewolf bite left a permanent mark other than the curse of the monthly transformation.
"Old Moony Mansfield. He escaped one full moon from the cell he had built for himself. Never forgave himself for what he did-I met him a few years after he bit me. Came to the meeting with Dumbledore to discuss my admission to Hogwarts. Nice old chap. Worked as a test subject when they were developing Wolfsbane a decade or so after that."
"You don't blame him for what he... did to you?"
"Before Wolfsbane, none of us had control of our actions the night of a full moon." Harry decided to leave it at that.
"So, do you want to go swimming, Professor Lupin?"
"I... I don't know. What do I have to do?"
Over on the bleachers, Moody had given up trying to conceal himself and was now delighting in frightening children with his mad eye. When Mrs. Weasley came dripping up to him to advise him to cut it out, that he was interfering with Muggle affairs, he laughed her off and told her they needed a little mental stimulation in the occult, lest they "turn into little Petunias and Vernons."
It had taken both Harry and Hermiones' coaxing to get Lupin into the water. He was now dog paddling tentatively around the shallow end. Ron was bellyflopping off of the diving board along with Ginny, and Mr. Weasley was blowing bubbles and marveling at the fact that there could be lights under the water. Tonks was swimming laps in the deep end, her hair tactfully short. Mrs. Weasley was still haranguing Moody.
Two children approached where Lupin, Harry, and Hermione were hanging out.
"I'm a fairy," said the girl, batting her eyelashes.
"I'm a tyrannosaurus rex!" roared her younger brother.
"Really?" answered Lupin incredulously. "I'm a werewolf."
"Naw you're not," countered the girl.
"Am too!" Lupin lunged toward her and started growling. Harry couldn't stop laughing. Hermione looked at Harry critically, as if to ask whether it was nice to laugh at Lupin's disability, but soon succumbed to giggles herself. Silently, the lifeguard gazed over at them to make sure no one was actually drowning anybody.