Disclaimed

Author's Note: Sorry it took me so long to update. Term papers are the bane of my existence. Thanks reviewers!

The Basement

By Marz

Chapter 21: It's Time to Yell and Smash Stuff!

            It was quarter past ten and Professor Lupin wasn't there. I think it was a sign of his overwhelming popularity that not even one person had suggested leaving yet, although Lavender Brown kept looking at the clock in the corner of the room and sighing. I was starting to get a little worried, and Hermione and Ron were exchanging concerned glances as well.  We were about to start the chapter on Hobgoblins. If Lupin tried to bring a live specimen to class and it got loose in his office or something, well I'd actually done the homework for this lesson, and I knew there'd be trouble of the decapitating variety. Ron, Hermione and I exchanged another round of glances.

            "If he's not here in five more minutes, I'll go check on him," I said.

            He was only five minutes late, and I didn't want to look like the teacher's pet. They nodded.

            To kill the time I took out Sirius' most recent letter. The first few he sent were long rambling apologies, but he was starting to put in words other then "sorry", and I was starting to enjoy having an adult I could talk to, or write to anyway. I mostly just told him things about school. I wrote about the Quidditch game last week. We'd played Hufflepuff and won. We were supposed to play Slytherin, but Malfoy had some fake excuse about his arm being too injured. Snape let them reschedule. Sirius had a lot of bad things to say about Snape in his reply.  I'm going to need a better dictionary to figure out exactly what he was calling him.  I unfolded the slightly dog-scented, crumpled parchment that Hedwig had given me during breakfast.

            Dear Harry,

            Greetings, from the mad house. The "mental healing" practitioner that Dumbledore threatened me with arrived this morning. He's French, incompetent and annoyingly nosey. I think Dumbledore is testing me. If I don't kill this idiot, maybe I'll be given a clean bill of health, though if he is here more then a week I don't think I'll make it. His name is Jean Xavier, by the way. I call him Jennie, but he doesn't seem to understand it's an insult. He just corrects me. If he wants to be called John, he should spell his name the English way. It's as if he doesn't know what country he's in.

He told me he was going to stay the entire afternoon, but I managed to get rid of him in under an hour. He started asking me questions about my relationship with my mother. I took him down to the basement and introduced them.  Not to my actual mother, she's dead, thank Merlin, but there is an unfortunately life like magical portrait of her in the house. I managed to pry it off the wall, but it's depressingly nonflammable.  Mother did serve some purpose today. She had Jennie weeping in less then five minutes and I got the rest of the day off.  I'm feeling more sane already.   

I haven't much other news. I can't get The Prophet delivered here, and I didn't think to ask Jennie to bring me a recent copy. I'd appreciate any information you could pass along.

I hope you're keeping an eye out for rats. Once again I am sorry for all this. I didn't mean for this to happen. I'm sorry. If you need anything, let me know. I'm sorry Harry. I will find some way to make this right. I'll see you on Thursday. I don't know if you've been told yet, but you should get lots of sleep before hand. I'll see you then. If you need anything, ask.

Take care of yourself.

-The Dog

            I looked at the clock and folded up the letter. Five minutes had gone by. I got up from my desk and after another series of meaningful looks exchanged with Hermione and Ron, I headed for Professor Lupin's office. It was up one flight of stairs. The hallway outside looked normal and free of Hobgoblins. The door of the office was closed and I knocked.

            Something heavy fell over in the room. I tried the knob, but it was locked. Pettigrew! The word glowed in my brain in bright red letters. The wand was in my hand before I could think about it.

            "Alohamora!"

            The door burst open. Mess was an inadequate word. Papers covered the floor and another layer of broken glass, discarded cloaks, and carelessly dropped books lay on top of them. I almost didn't see Lupin, slumped on his desk amid a variety of crumpled parchment and newspapers. It didn't matter though. The smell was a more then sufficient guide to his whereabouts.

            It was a sweet-sour smell. Somewhat like food, except it didn't make me want to eat. I circled the desk and the source of the smell came into view. The bottle had fallen to the floor without breaking, and amber liquid poured out onto a splayed stack of Ravenclaw essays, with a soft "glub…glub…glub" sound.

            "You're drunk," I said accusingly to his slumped figure.

            He twitched a bit and let out a long snore. I walked up to him and shook his shoulder. He groaned and put his arms over his head. I shook him harder and began to pulled the chair away from the desk. As he started to fall forward out of the chair, he sat up. He'd been drooling in his sleep and a piece of parchment was stuck to the side of his face.

            "Hu?" he said, while blinking blearily. He looked around with blood shot eyes, until he noticed me. His gaze dropped to the floor.

            "Am I late for class?" he asked, trying to sound awake, "I must have fallen asleep. I was correcting papers, and…"

            "That would be easier to believe if you hadn't spilled whisky all over yourself, your desk, and the floor."

            His face was already red, but he managed to blush a little more. "It's brandy, actually," he corrected half-heartedly. 

"You're being stupid," I said.

He nodded.

"Well stop! The whole class is waiting for you. You have to come teach."

"I shouldn't be here.  I shouldn't have taken this job. I should have known. Harry I'm sorry…"

I cut him off. "You apologized already. You apologized a hundred times. I said I forgave you. So you need a letter from the archbishop to make it an official absolution?"

"Harry I can't fix this.  I can't help you. I can't undo what I did to you and now you're…you're…" He was starting to sound very choked up.

            "Yeah. Alright. You bit me and now I'm a werewolf too.  It's not as if you did it on purpose. And if you hadn't come after us, Pettigrew would've tortured me until I died. Two rounds of the Cruciatus curse are more then enough for me, thanks. If you hadn't gone into the tunnel when you did, we might not have gotten a chance to escape. I'm better off being a live werewolf then a dead body."

            He was still staring at the ground. "I've ruined your life."

            Arguments clearly weren't getting through. I came up with a plan that I though was quite stupid, but the little voice didn't object, so I proceeded. I walked around the desk, drew back my arm, so he would see it coming, and slapped Professor Lupin as hard as I could. He nearly fell out of his chair. He looked at me in shock, but at least he wasn't looking at the floor. The left side of his face was bright red and there was a little bit of blood in the corner of his mouth.

            "There, we're even then.  You bit me, I hit you. Now we can all stop being stupid."

            He still looked slightly less then sober, but I seemed to have his complete and undivided eye-contact. His mouth was working like an airborne fish's.

            I searched through the junk on his desk until I found his lesson plan and threw it in his lap. "You've got five minutes. Drink some coffee, dunk your head under water, or whatever, but in five minutes you better be in that classroom and we're going to learn about Hobgoblins!"

            I was about to leave when I noticed the bottle on the floor again. I leaned past Lupin and picked it up.

            "Do you have any more of this stuff?"

            He shook his head.

            "Good." I turned and threw the bottle as hard as I could. It shattered against the stone wall, in a very impressive spray of liquid and glass.  Maybe I hadn't completely forgiven him. Smashing things in his office felt very good. A fancy paper weight caught my eye. But I turned and left before I lost control of the urge.

            I walked out the door and ran right into Dean Thomas. He was staring at me as if I'd grown a second head. I hoped he only heard the smashing.

            "Professor Lupin is coming to class," I said.

            Dean nodded.

            "He wasn't feeling well. He fell asleep at his desk."

            Dean nodded again.

            "So we should probably get back to class then."

            Dean nodded a third time. I walked past his, down the hall towards the Defense classroom. I heard him following after me.

            I spent the afternoon sweating. I caught Dean staring at me five times during defense class, twice during lunch, and four times during potions.  I considered bringing the matter to Dumbledore's attention. He told me to tell him if anyone else found out about my problem. He said he'd take care of "slip ups."  I really didn't like the under tone of "take care of" though. It sounded as if it would involve extortion or memory charms, and I wasn't fond of either. I didn't mention it to Ron or Hermione either. They'd worry, and then I'd worry about what they'd do because they were worried. Dean probably only heard the bottle smashing anyway. If he hadn't called me a werewolf in front of the school yet, he probably hadn't over heard that part. I kept telling my self that he hadn't heard anything important, until he cornered me in the Gryffindor common room.

            I was going to meet Ron and Hermione in the Great Hall for dinner. I had my hand on the edge of the Fat Lady's portrait when it swung forward out of my grasp. I came face to shirt front with Dean Thomas. I tried to go around him but his arm shot out and blocked my way. He snatched his arm back almost immediately, as if worried I'd bite him. I saw his face and I knew that he knew.

The problem was that knowing that he knew was not even half of what I needed to know. I mean, I knew that his birthday was in April, and that his parents are muggles, and that his favorite class is Defense Against the Dark Arts, but "do you have any strong personal dislike of werewolves" had never come up in a conversation.

I backed into the common room, and he followed, watching me very carefully.  The room was empty of witnesses and I wasn't sure if that was a good or a bad thing.  I considered running up to the third year dorm, but Dean could follow me there just as easily.

"Hi DeEEEn." I hate it when my voice cracks.

"I heard what you said to Lupin." His voice was completely flat.

"…er…you did?"

"You're werewolves."

Deny it? Beg him not to tell? Get Dumbledore? Kick him in the groin and run? I hate decisions like this. I fell back on the basic tenets of adolescence. I shrugged, and tried to look very uninterested.

"You said Professor Lupin bit you," he continued.

Kick and run were starting to look very good. "Not on purpose," I said. I tried to sound bored, but my voice was shaking too much.

"You turned into a werewolf. That's why you were in the hospital last month. That's why Professor Lupin's been acting strange around you." 

I shrugged again. The sweating was getting worse. I tried to casually adjust my glasses, and managed to poke myself in the eye. My left hand was not quite up to speed.

"So that's where you were bit," Dean said, pointing at my arm.

The sleeve of my robes had slid up a little and the edge of the still pink scar was showing. Madam Pomfrey told me it would never fade away. It was another type of curse scar. I think I'm officially a collector of those now.  I thought "what the hell?" and rolled up the sleeve the rest of the way. Dean gasped. I didn't think it looked all that much like a bite mark. The werewolf had shaken its head around while it was chomping, so the scar was big and ragged. I suppose I could blame it on some sort of muggle farming accident. I look like the kind of person who would stick my arm in a grain thresher, don't I?

"Did it hurt?"

I gave Dean a "you're the stupidest person on the face of the planet look, and nodded.  We stood there in strained silence for a couple of minutes. I finally had to ask.

"What do you want Dean?"

"What do you mean what do I want?" He asked suspiciously.

"Why are you telling me that you know? What do you want?"

"I was just thinking. It's a hard thing to keep quiet, you know? It's a lot of work. I've looked up the laws. You could go to Azkaban. Professor Lupin could die. It's very important that no one finds out, right?"       

            "You want money? Is that it? I haven't got that much…"

            Dean cut me off. "Hey! I didn't say anything like that!"

            "Then what…"

            He cut me off again. "I just wanted to say, I wanted to say that if you need help, with an alibi or something, I'm there, right?"

            "Oh.…er…th-th-thank you." I didn't really know what I should say.

            "No problem. Professor Lupin's going to stay then?"

            "I think so."

            "Good. I'll see you around."

            Dean started to go up stairs but stopped halfway.

            "Oh, and I wouldn't let Seamus find out if I were you. His grandfather was one of the most famous werewolf hunters in Ireland.  I visited him last summer, and they've got a head mounted above the fire place. Cheers then."

            He jogged up the stairs out of sight, and I stumbled out the portrait, heading for dinner. I wasn't sure if I felt better or worse, but I could definite use some cookies.