Well. This chapter was supposed to be longer than it turned out (and it's even longer than I expected it would be!). The reason (or excuse) for that is that it more or less sets up a plot, and I had the choice between either making this chapter ridiculously long, or cutting a piece of and leaving the rest to the next chapter. I decided to do that instead. Not that I thought you wouldn't like a ridiculously long chapter, but I´d been suffering a small writers block the past few days, so I decided to take it easy and wait until my muse was in a better mood again. I promise you more excitement, more characters and more dialogue next chapter!
February 1995.
"My parents tried everything, but in these days, there was no cure."
* * * * *
I´d say it's a good thing that you're getting old. Okay, sorry, stupid comment.
Seriously, Prongs and I never understood how you could Change and get back to class the same afternoon. Or why you wanted to do that, for that matter. We would've grabbed our chance to skip class with both hands. Especially History of Magic. But then we figured it had probably something to do with the fact that you wanted top marks, to become a Prefect.
Yes, sitting and waiting is boring, but I think it's even worse for Harry, who has no idea how he's supposed to survive the Second Task.
He's also wrote to tell me something interesting about Moody and Snape. You've probably heard that Mad-Eye's teaching at Hogwarts, and Harry sort of overheard a conversation between the two of them. Apparently Moody doesn't trust old Snivellus one bit. Not that I would, mind. But there is something fishy about Snape – Moody's paranoid, but he's usually right. I wonder what he knows that we don't.
Padfoot.
* * * * *
Remus lazily opened one eye. The dark-blue curtains turned the entire room blue, which was kind of weird. Remus stretched out one arm and grabbed the alarm clock on his bedside table. Half past nine. He half-threw the alarm clock back and rolled on his other side. He didn't want to get up yet. He dozed off again.
A soft thudding on the stairs made him wake up. Monster had found a way to climb stairs by bouncing from step to step, and he was now coming up the stairs to see why Remus wasn't out of bed yet. The furry animal had taken a slightly annoying interest in Remus' exercises, because he couldn't for the life of him understand why his caretaker all of a sudden had started bowing and stretching and groaning when he got out of bed, instead of just making breakfast like he used to.
He had reached Remus' bedroom and pushed the door, which was always slightly ajar, further open to sneak in. Remus pretended to be asleep again, and Monster scurried under his bed and started purring and growling softly.
"Get out, I'm asleep," Remus said. This was too obvious a lie to believe. Monster purred even more loudly and started tugging the bed sheets, holding a corner of the sheet between his tiny teeth.
"All right, all right," Remus groaned. "It's just because you get breakfast after this, right?" He sat up and swung his legs over the edge of the bed. The chilly air gave him goosebumps. He rubbed his eyes and yawned widely. He'd stayed up reading too long yesterday. Monster bounced expectantly and excitedly up and down. Glaring at the animal, Remus got to his feet. He shivered in the cold, and picked up a T-shirt to pull over his head before he walked to the window to draw the curtains open. Outside it was a clear day, the sun shone but not bright enough to bring any warmth. A thin layer of frost lay over the grass. Remus shivered again. It was too cold, he didn't want to do those stupid exercises, he felt like a complete idiot when he was doing them. Sighing, he went to stand on his usual spot, at the foot end of his bed. He looked at Monster, who looked back, almost grinning (even though that wasn't really possible for a Puffskein). Remus pulled a face. He looked longingly at his bed, then back at Monster, who sat there looking up at Remus, silent for a moment.
Then Remus said, "ah, forget it," picked up his pet and climbed back into bed. It was not as if anyone would notice him not doing those exercises anyway.
~* ~
It was already a few hours later when Remus finally poured himself a cup of tea and placed the plate with leftovers for Monster on the floor. As his pet started eating its breakfast, Remus folded open the Daily Prophet, in search for interesting news.
February was almost halfway over, and the Second Task in the Triwizard Tournament was drawing near. There were page-long articles to warm people up for it again, reminding the readers what the first Task had been about, what the score was so far, and who the Champions were. Remus remembered Sirius' depressing message that Harry wasn't sure if, and how, he'd survive the Second Task, and he anticipated the event rather with a feeling of dread than excitement.
After breakfast, Remus went upstairs again. He had decided to sort out his clothes, to see what was wearable and what was too torn and shabby to wear. In or out of fashion was not an issue with his budget, and some of his clothes were so old they were almost fashionable again anyway.
He took a small pause when he was halfway through. There were two neat piles on his bed, a small one with clothes which really couldn't be worn anymore, and a larger one with clothes which were reasonably acceptable, if you didn't look too closely. He went downstairs for a drink, then climbed back up to finish the job.
There was a distinct rustling of paper when he took his summercloak from its peg. He had always had the habit of stuffing his pockets with random things, such as keys, papers, coins and even sweets. He had somehow forgotten to empty his pockets when he had begun wearing his wintercloak.
Remus scooped the junk and other stuff out of the pockets and onto his desk. He'd sort it out later. The cloak was still wearable, so it was put on the right pile, and Remus went on to see which socks had holes in them and which socks didn't.
He only remembered the 'pocket-stuff', as he had dubbed it, when he was done sorting everything and walked past his desk, the rejected clothes in his arms. He made a mental note to sort that out as well, and he thus returned to his room when he had thrown the clothes away (they were too worn-out for a second-hands clothes shop).
To his surprise, it turned out that a pencil he had been looking for, had been in the pocket of his summercloak. He really needed to search his pockets more often.
A lot of the rest was just junk, wrappers of sweets and receipts, and he threw it all in the bin.
He also found seven knuts, which he stuffed into the pocket of his trousers (hoping that this time he didn't forget about them). He then went on to fold the larger pieces of paper open.
To his surprise, most of them turned out to be leaflets. Remus frowned and tried to figure out when and where he had got those – and then he remembered. They had been pushed into his hands at the werewolf protest at the Ministry, a few months ago. He had completely forgotten about them – at that time he had had other things to worry about.
He sat down on his bed and started to read them through. Quite a few of them were from self-proclaimed fighters for werewolf-rights – they promised they would lobby in the Ministry for better living conditions and more rights for werewolves. But the tone always seemed insincere and self-conceited. 'Look at me, I fight for the right of werewolves, aren't I great?', something like that. Two others were advertisements for jobs, and the would-be employer assured him that it absolutely didn't matter he was a werewolf – but Remus couldn't help but notice that neither of the jobs required much thinking, and the career-prospects weren't that great either. Apparently it was okay that he was a werewolf, but he shouldn't suddenly act spoiled and start making demands. What was he thinking, payment above the minimum? He should be happy he had a job!
Remus noticed he was getting sarcastic, and he quickly leafed through the other leaflets. They all fit in the 'yeah, really, we have a cure, believe us'-category. Remus had seen – and done – it all; the herbs, the potions, the charms, the amulets, the diets. He and his parents had decided to stop trying to find a cure when he was nine. At that moment he had tried a cream that was guaranteed to work, instead it gave him a terrible rash that made him scratch his skin even when the moon wasn't full and his coming fur wasn't itching. When he started scratching his skin open again, his parents made him stop using the cream, and the rash had disappeared a week later. He had never tried anything since, and accepted that there was no cure.
He was about to get up and throw the leaflets away, when his eye fell on the last leaflet. The message was the same, a new cure, but the tone was completely different. It wasn't arrogant or condescending, but instead it was friendly and almost shy. Instead of 'we have found a cure', it said 'we think we have found something that might work…' Interested, he started to read.
It wasn't that surprising he hadn't tried this method before, because it was a fairly new approach. The last few years, there was a growing group of witches and wizards who wanted to go 'back to nature', because today's society was too bend on making money. Remus was quite familiar with the Muggle-branche of this point of view, because they had been the main buyers of Lova's paintings. And Lova, opportunistic as always, had managed to make quite a nice living out of them. But he had no real experience with the wizarding version, except reading about them sometimes, if there had once again been a protest to stop using kneazles, puffskeins and murtlaps for potion-testing. Remus had no idea they were interested in werewolves.
He read the leaflet through again. Instead of looking for a cure, to completely get rid of the Wolf, this method seemed more based on acceptance, and just letting it be. If the lycantropy got no resistance, they reasoned, it would eventually give up and go away – maybe.
Remus had to admit he was intrigued – and yet a bit sceptical. He wondered how long they'd been thinking about this theory. Had they been talking to a werewolf about it? It sounded all a bit too "think happy thoughts" to him. But on the other hand, if it did work…
He pondered it a few more minutes, then sat down at his desk and took a sheet of parchment and a quill. Even if it didn't work, he'd have some new experiences and meet some new people. He dipped the tip of the quill in the inkbottle and started writing.
~*~
It was the 24th of February. The day of the Second Task.
This kept pounding through Padfoot´s head as he nervously trotted up to the gates of Hogwarts. He had been restless, and had found himself unable to stay in his cave, so he had changed from Sirius into Padfoot, and walked down to Hogsmeade, just to give himself something to do. But the wizard village was nothing new to him, so he had wandered off towards the edge of the village. He had been at the Shrieking Shack, which stood deserted and quiet in the sun. Padfoot had stared at it for a few moments, resting with his front paws on the fence around it, but the Shack seemed a different one than the one he had visited so often, years ago. It somehow seemed smaller and more dilapidated than it used to.
Sighing because nothing ever seemed to stay the same, he had wandered off again, only realising he had walked to the Hogwarts gates when he nearly walked into the pillars with the winged boars on them. He sat down and stared moodily in the direction he knew the lake was in. He had made an absolute promise to Dumbledore that he wouldn't come on the grounds, to visit Harry, in case someone caught him. And besides, Harry had a complicated year as it was, without a dog-shaped Godfather to add more trouble and worry.
Padfoot started and jumped up when a carriage suddenly rattled past. The Thestrals pulling the carriage paid no attention to him, which was a good thing. He had seen them before, but they still freaked him out a little, with their dragonish head and wings.
He caught only a glimpse of the people in the carriage – the orange blur of red hair, the flash of glasses in the sunlight, someone with blond hair who looked like Ludo Bagman. It was only a glimpse – then the carriage was past the black dog, and rode towards Hogwarts, and out of sight.
Padfoot wished with all his might that he was in that carriage, being driven towards Hogwarts, towards the lake, towards Harry. Harry had only written his Godfather what he knew of the Task, and that was almost nothing. He had to retrieve something from the bottom of the lake, but what? And how? Sirius himself had been racking his brain to see if he happened to know a way to survive under water for such a long time, but he couldn't find anything. The bottom of the lake had always been the Squid's ground, and the Marauders had stayed out of it, most of the time (unless it was very warm and going for a swim seemed an absolute necessity).
The nervosity got hold of him again, and he got to his feet (paws, he corrected himself) and set off again. The problem was that he had no idea what time it was – dogs don't have watches, and Sirius hadn't had a watch in almost fourteen years. He knew that the Task began at half past nine, and he guessed the people he had just seen were the other Jury Members, but he would give anything, anything to see it all himself, and not hear it from someone else, even if that person was Harry.
Which reminded him; Harry and his friends would come and visit him the weekend after next. Finally a chance to really talk to him, instead of having a few stolen minutes through somebody else's fire. This prospect was a good thing, because else he'd really start to feel useless.
* * * * *
"It's a good thing you're getting old." Ha – ha – ha. Really funny, Padfoot.
Just as you two couldn't understand why I wanted to follow classes, I couldn't understand why you two didn't want to follow them – History of Magic wasn't that bad, was it?
I expect that Moody knows a lot of stuff we don't, or we don't want to know, for that matter. But you're right, it is intriguing. As far as I know, Snape hasn't done anything to attract Mad-Eye's attention. Maybe he's jealous that Snape has such a huge nose, while Moody has barely got any nose left?
Just kidding.
Moony.