At the end of the Defense Against the Dark Arts lesson two days before Halloween, FitzSkimmons held back to talk to Professor Lupin.
"Excuse me, Professor Lupin," said Simmons once they were alone. "Since the three of us can't go to Hogsmeade this weekend, for multiple reasons but most importantly the fact that Harry's abusive adoptive parents refused to sign his permission slip and Ronna and I obviously couldn't go without him, we were wondering if you might be free and willing to start teaching us the dementor repelling spell we talked about on the train."
Despite having already learned it on their own, Simmons had insisted that they still ask Lupin to teach them, knowing that he could give them more information about the spell than the book had, and could hopefully give them some tips and pointers to improve their patroni — and anyway, they had said they were going to ask.
Professor Lupin, looking at their eager faces carefully — or at least Simmons' eager face, and Fitz and Daisy's not uneager faces — finally said slowly, "I did say if you proved yourself in class I would teach you, didn't I? Very well then. Come to my office after lunch on Saturday, and I will see what I can do."
And so, Saturday afternoon, FitzSkimmons headed to Professor Lupin's office. They had stayed in their dorm late that morning, keeping themselves occupied as any married trio might, so as not to be questioned about why they weren't going to Hogsmeade like everyone else, or be ridiculed by Malfoy for not going. But lunch was now over, and they'd seen Lupin head back to his office, so they headed in that direction as well.
When they entered his office, Professor Lupin looked up.
"Good to see you. I've just taken delivery of a grindylow for our next lesson," he said, pointing at the large tank of water sitting in the corner of his office.
"Water demon, right?" said Simmons, looking at the sickly green creature with sharp little horns that had its face pressed against the glass, making faces at them and flexing its long, spindly fingers threateningly. "Something about breaking its grip — it's towards the end of the monster book Hagrid assigned us for Care of Magical Creatures, so I've only had time to briefly glance over it that far since Hagrid finally told us how to open the book."
Professor Lupin looked at her, clearly impressed. "You're right — they have abnormally long fingers that are strong, but very brittle, and so can be broken fairly easily. I had heard coming in that you were the brightest student here, Miss Granger, but they really didn't do you justice. Now if you would like to begin learning the Patronus Charm?"
Once the three of them had redirected their attention from the grindylow onto him, Professor Lupin continued on, "Dementors feed on wizards' positive feelings, draining them of their happiness. So to counter this, a patronus is kind of a shield of pure positive emotion. But as it isn't an actual being itself, and cannot feel despair and has no painful memories of its own, dementors cannot hurt it the way they can any living being. They also cannot perform the Dementor's Kiss on it — which is the dementor's last and worst weapon, where the dementor sucks the victim's soul straight out of his mouth."
"So that's what you were trying to do last night," smirked Daisy into Fitz's ear. "And here I thought you were just being very enthusiastic with your kissing."
Fitz just rolled his eyes at her as Professor Lupin, unaware of their antics, continued on, "And so, in order to conjure it for the very first time, you must concentrate with all your might on a single, very happy memory. Once you have learned it, and can routinely conjure it, you can do it purely from muscle memory without needing to be consciously thinking of a happy memory, though if you are depressed, or sad, or in fear, in can be much harder to conjure. But to start with, until you learn it, you'll need to concentrate very hard on the happiest memory you can think of — so take a minute to decide what that will be for each of you."
FitzSkimmons looked appropriately thoughtful for a few minutes, Simmons actually thinking about what Professor Lupin had said about only needing the happy memory until it was muscle memory, as well as how the patronus actually functioned, something the book had completely neglected to mention, while Fitz and Daisy thought about the fun they'd had that morning, and the fun they would presumably have again as soon as they returned to their dorm.
Eventually Professor Lupin asked, "Are you ready yet?"
FitzSkimmons nodded.
"Okay then. The spell is 'Expecto Patronum'. At the beginning, you will probably only create wisps of silver smoke, eventually turning into a full silver cloud. For many witches and wizards, even adults, this is as far as they are ever able to do, and it does work. But for those who can, it will eventually become a distinct animal, which is known as a corporeal patronus. Of course, being you three, who already don't seem to follow the normal rules of magic, you may conjure a fully corporeal patronus on your very first tries. But do remember, it is much easier to form a patronus in a brightly lit office than when actually facing a dementor in a real situation."
"Hermione," said Daisy, looking over at her wife. "You're up."
Waving her wand, Simmons said, "Expecto Patronum," and her silver cuttlefish exploded out of the tip of her wand, swimming a few laps through the air of the room, before coming to land on Fitz's head and dissipating into nothingness.
Professor Lupin stared at her in shock.
"Harry?" said Simmons, looking at Fitz.
Fitz cast his patronus, his monkey gamboling about the room and off the walls, until eventually coming to cling to Daisy's back and dissipating. Daisy of course took this to mean that it was her turn now, and soon had a giant daisy floating around the room, eventually coming to land in Simmons' hair, where it dissipated like the other two.
By the end, Professor Lupin was staring at all three of them in shock, unable to believe his eyes. "I know I said you might conjure them on your first tries, but I have to admit that I didn't actually believe that was possible."
"Well, we do have a bit of a secret we've been keeping from you," answered Simmons. "This was not the first, or even the tenth, time that we've conjured patroni — patronuses? — whatever. Point is, after you used the spell on the train, I searched the library high and low for the spell 'Expecto Patronum', and eventually found it. The book was very limited in its description of the spell, but it gave us the basics enough to practice on our own, and get to where we are now. But I still wanted to have you teach us, even though we could already cast the spell, because I figured you would tell us more about the spell than the book said — and you did. So I do apologize if we wasted your time, it certainly wasn't a waste of ours."
"Not at all, not at all," replied Professor Lupin. "Glad I could help, even if it wasn't actually teaching you the spell. I do have to say though, those were certainly some unique patroni. And what exactly was yours, Miss Granger? Some kind of fish?"
"It's a cuttlefish — ocean creatures that can change their colors with chromatophores," answered Simmons. "Though clearly my patronus version doesn't have any chromatophores, as it's not changing colors."
"It's a ghost cuttlefish," smirked Daisy.
"And yours — I've never seen a patronus that wasn't an animal before," said Professor Lupin, looking at Daisy. "Any particular reason why you think yours turned into a flower, instead of an animal like normal?"
FitzSkimmons all looked at each other.
"Yes, but we can't say."
The evening after visiting Professor Lupin to learn more about patroni, FitzSkimmons joined everyone else for the annual Halloween Feast.
It was its normal, boisterous affair, and FitzSkimmons headed back to their dorm full and content, happy with their day. But the following morning, when FitzSkimmons walked into the Great Hall for breakfast, they found it completely full, and buzzing with an excitement that hadn't been there when they'd left the night before.
"What's everyone talking about?" asked Simmons to the twins as they sat down.
"Last night's attack, of course," answered Fred, looking at her strangely.
At FitzSkimmons' blank looks, George added, "You know, when Black shredded the Fat Lady's portrait into our common room, and we all spent the night down here?"
"Ah, yes...about that…" said Daisy slowly. "Well, you see…we don't actually live in Gryffindor Tower — so we have no clue what happened last night."
"Oh."
But the twins quickly recovered from their shock of learning that FitzSkimmons didn't actually live in Gryffindor like they were supposed, and got on with explaining everything that had happened the night before, after FitzSkimmons had dipped down their secret passageway to get to the married dorms.
"Wow," said Fitz when they were finished.
"There's finally some excitement around here, and we missed it," added Daisy with a sigh.
But Simmons was far more interested in how he had got in and out of the castle and grounds without getting caught.
"Dementors are covering the entrance to the grounds, you can't apparate into anywhere in Hogwarts, and wards protect against anyone trying to fly in," she said. "And from the best I could tell from what Professor McGonagall said and didn't say, everyone believes those methods should all hold. Which leaves somebody letting him in, there being an entrance no one knows about, him being even more dementor-proof than we are — like completely invisible to them, and a cloak won't do that — or something else I can't think of."
"Well, it's a really good thing we don't live there but he clearly thinks I do — he'll never find me even if he does get into the tower someday," said Fitz.
"That won't keep all the people in Gryffindor Tower safe," scolded Simmons. "This is not just about us, and if what's known about Black is actually true, he doesn't have a problem killing people who get in his way. And if he's determined to escape after not finding you, I would expect him to at the very least incapacitate any students in his way to get out."
"Okay, okay," said Fitz, properly reprimanded.
"What I want to know is why didn't he come into the Great Hall while he was visiting," said Daisy. "And how did he get into the castle and not go by the Great Hall and see that everyone was in there instead of in their common rooms?"
"Well, it is possible that he lost track of time being on the run, and hasn't seen a newspaper or anything in a few weeks and so didn't know it was Halloween, but if that was the case he would have had to get into the castle some way other than the Entrance Hall, or else he would have heard all of us in there — we're very loud when feasting," replied Simmons. "The other possibility, however, that I'm sure none of the adults will even consider, is that he knew exactly what night it was, and he knew exactly where everyone was, and more importantly, was not. Which would mean he isn't actually after Harry at all. He's after something Harry has, or perhaps even something else in Gryffindor Tower entirely. Professor McGonagall told us he betrayed your parents, but what if he didn't. Or what if his beef wasn't against Harry, only James and/or Lily, and he doesn't care that Harry's still alive. It's not impossible."
"You know, Professor McGonagall did say that Pettigrew was part of James and Black's group," said Fitz. "Maybe they got it reversed on who actually betrayed my parents, and Black was just avenging my parents' death, and twelve muggles unfortunately got caught in the crossfire — or Pettigrew was actually the one to cast the spell that killed some or all of the twelve, and Black only killed Pettigrew, and just a few muggles in the process of killing Pettigrew."
"That is a possibility, too," replied Simmons, nodding her head.
"Another theoretical possibility is that he was planning to lie in wait for Harry by getting into Gryffindor Tower when no one was in there," said Daisy. "But that's not a strategy I would normally attribute to a wizard to think of, and it's no easier to get out of without getting caught than any of the other possibilities we've come up with for him going after Harry. And speaking of which, it seems like regardless of his plan, if it was to kill Harry, he had to either have planned for a fight out of the castle from the very beginning, or he never intended to leave after he did whatever he came to do. Or, like you suggested, Hermione, he knew no one would be in Gryffindor Tower, and was after something else and used the fact we were all in the Great Hall for a long period of time to his advantage."
"I guess we'll just have to wait and see if anything further happens, and what we overhear from the teachers, to try to figure out what his plan truly is," sighed Simmons. "Because right now we've got too many possibilities without any actual knowledge to know what he's doing, and certainly not to convince the professors of anything if we come to the conclusion that he is in fact actually innocent."
Throughout FitzSkimmons' entire conversation, the twins had stared at the three of them in complete shock. Not only from the fact that they were parsing through the incident in a way the twins were sure the adults hadn't, and were even considering possibilities where Black was innocent, at least of what everyone thought he was guilty of and what he had been sent to Azkaban for, but also because neither Harry nor either of the two girls seemed to be in the least bit concerned that Black was after Harry. It was almost like they didn't give a rat's arse or spleen that a(nother) world-famous mass-murderer was after one of them.
A few days after Sirius stopped by to help the Fat Lady lose some weight by shredding off her extra pounds, FitzSkimmons were sitting in their normal seats in the back of the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom waiting for Professor Lupin to arrive and start class, when Snape walked in instead. FitzSkimmons turned to look at each, concerned for Professor Lupin, and also for the safety of all their fellow students in their DADA class. But Snape was scowling extra-scowley that afternoon, so they didn't dare whisper anything about it to each other, and certainly didn't dare ask him where Professor Lupin was — especially given the almost constant looks of pure loathing and unbridled hatred that Snape gave Professor Lupin every time he saw him — and just waited for Snape to start class. They could ask Professor Lupin the next time they saw him.
Turning to address the class, Snape sneered at them, "Professor Lupin has not left any record of the topics you have covered so far."
"Did you bother looking, arsehole?" muttered Simmons under her breath, making Fitz and Daisy have to bite their lips to keep from sniggering.
"Lupin is hardly overtaxing you — I would expect first years to be able to deal with red caps and grindylows," the Snake continued on beratingly.
"I thought Lupin left no notes," muttered Fitz. "How could you know if he's taxing us or not?"
"Today we shall discuss —"
Here Snape paused to deliberately flip through the textbook to the very last chapter, before finishing with a twisted sneer, "Werewolves."
As the class just stared at him, thirteen year olds though they only may have been, still smart enough to know that textbooks were usually completed from front to back, not the other way around, the Snake suddenly growled ominously, "Turn to page three hundred and ninety-four."
When everyone's books (many of which weren't even out of their bags yet given how many practical lessons Professor Lupin had done with them that year) didn't all magically become open to page 394 immediately if not sooner, he snapped, "All of you! Now!"
Once everyone had opened their books, he asked, "Which of you can tell me how we distinguish between the werewolf and the true wolf?"
Simmons of course immediately raised her hand, Hermione having memorized the book as soon as she had got it back over the summer. Fitz and Daisy had both read the entire book as well at Simmons' insistence and promise of reward if they did, but even Fitz couldn't remember the entire thing off the top of his head after not having read the chapter in question in over a month, and anyway, they were more than happy to let their bookwormier wife answer all the questions. Also as could be expected, everyone else in the class just sat there staring at Snape, never having opened the book past whatever chapter Professor Lupin was on for the particular class or homework they had to open it for.
"Anyone?" Snape taunted, ignoring Simmons as he was wont to do, especially ever since FitzSkimmons had stopped him from killing Neville's toad using Neville's potion. After several seconds, he sneered, "Are you telling me that Professor Lupin hasn't even taught you the basic distinction between —"
"We haven't got as far as werewolves yet, we're still on —" exclaimed Parvati Patil suddenly.
"Silence!" snarled Snape cutting her off before she could finish. "Well, well, well, I never thought I'd meet a third-year class who wouldn't even recognize a werewolf when they saw one. I shall make a point of informing Professor Dumbledore how very behind you all are. Now start reading, and I expect every single one of you to be able to recognize a werewolf by the end of class. There will be no talking necessary."
Everyone grumblingly began reading. Simmons quickly skimmed through the chapter to make sure Hermione hadn't missed anything, or she hadn't forgotten anything Hermione had memorized. Daisy began reading it more carefully, taking down a few notes here and there on information she was sure would appear on the test, that her spouses weren't going to make notes on for her.
Fitz, meanwhile, began to read the chapter thoroughly but quickly, not taking any notes as he could just memorize the pertinent facts, and anyway would have Daisy's notes and Jemma's memories to skim through when they were all studying together before the test to make sure he'd memorized everything he needed. He was reading the paragraphs on werewolves turning during the full moon, when something suddenly struck him — especially when combined with something Snape had said before he'd set them to reading.
He turned to Simmons with a look of shock and mouthed, "Is Lupin—?"
Simmons nodded, whispering back, "It all matches. Moon the last few days, his boggart is the moon — though I'm still confused about how a moon becoming a cockroach is amusing or comical — Snape's comment earlier about the class not being able to 'recognize a werewolf when they saw one', and the fact Snape's an arse who clearly has it out for Lupin and would want everyone to know that Lupin is one because most wizards are very anti-werewolf, and as I think I mentioned before, Snape's an arse."
But at that moment Snape swept down the row on the other side of Daisy, so Fitz just gave a quick nod before turning back to finish up the remainder of the chapter.
Thirty minutes later, as everyone continued to read the chapter and make notes, and Snape examined the work Professor Lupin had assigned them to turn in that day on kappas and made scathing remarks about everyone's work, they heard him sneer at Lavender, "Professor Lupin gave this eight out of ten? I wouldn't have given it three..."
"Well that's of little surprise, but highly irrelevant as you're not the teacher," muttered Daisy under her breath, but quickly cut short as Snape stalked over to them.
Looking down at where Fitz and Simmons were both boredly staring at page 394 of their respective textbooks, clearly not reading and quills lying idly by unblemished pieces of parchment, the Snake sneered, "Ten points from both of you for not taking notes."
"Sir, we both have the entire chapter memorized," answered Simmons. "We don't need notes to pass."
"And you think you could recognize a werewolf if you saw one in human form," snarled Snape, much as if he were a werewolf him.
"Absolutely, Sir," answered Simmons deadly calm, staring him straight in the eye, hoping he could tell that she had figured out that Professor Lupin was a werewolf. She certainly never wanted a psychic link with him like she had with Fitz and had partially developed with Daisy, but it would have been useful at the moment.
He apparently got something, as he merely growled, "I expect perfect answers on your tests," before stalking off to find someone easier to terrorize.
When the bell finally rang a while later, Snape said coldly over the sound of everyone hurriedly packing their bags to escape from him, "You will each write an essay, to be handed in to me, on the ways you recognize and kill werewolves. I want two rolls of parchment on the subject, and I want them by Monday morning. It is time somebody took this class in hand."
"Excuse me, Sir, but isn't that essentially a call to violence, which is illegal?" asked Simmons politely, raising her hand as she spoke so that Snape wouldn't have anything trivial to bitch about in order to avoid her point. "You know that Professor Lupin is a werewolf, and you're attempting to make everyone in this class realize that fact as well by giving us an assignment to learn how to recognize them. Which in and of itself I have no problem with, and is something that does makes sense for a Defense Against the Dark Arts class, but then you just had to add researching how to murder Professor Lupin as part of said assignment — I mean, how to kill werewolves, Sir," she mock corrected. "Now, maybe I'm jumping to conclusions here, but given the well-known werewolf prejudice that exists in the wizarding world, that seems to be very dangerously close to bordering on actively telling people to learn how to kill a fellow professor of yours, Sir. It seems to me like it's rather similar to taking someone you know to be highly racist against black people to a location where a lot of black people are going to be, not telling them that black people are going to be there, and then right before going inside, asking them to tell you the five best ways to kill black people, probably using the n-word to do so, and then once they've answered, leading them inside. And I think we can all agree that is wrong, at least morally if not lawfully, though I think it could be lawfully as well."
At Simmons' casual mentioning that Professor Lupin was a werewolf, the entire class had frozen in shock. But by the time she'd finished rambling on about whatever it was she was rambling on about killing werewolves and Lupin and black people, they had recovered from their shock of finding out that Professor Lupin was a werewolf enough to launch into strong, albeit relatively small, pitchfork riot, that did a splendid job of distracting Snape from trying to give Simmons a detention they weren't going to serve anyway.
From snippets that FitzSkimmons could make out through everyone talking at the same time, no one else in the class had made the connection that Professor Lupin was in fact a werewolf, and if Lupin was known by any of their parents, their parents either didn't know he was a werewolf either, or certainly hadn't told their children.
As everyone rioted, though noticeably out the door as they clearly still wanted to get away from Snape as fast as they could even in the midst of learning such shocking news, along with wanting to tell everyone they knew as fast as they possibly could, FitzSkimmons were able to slip into the crowd that was hastening out the door, hoping to keep Snape from being able to lay his snake-like claws on Simmons for disrupting class in such the way as she had. Sure, having someone figure out Professor Lupin was a werewolf was clearly his entire goal, but they still knew better than to think he'd give Simmons a gold star or Special Award for Services to the School for telling the entire class what he wanted the entire class to know — he may have specialized in abusing children, but he wasn't above being a massive hypocrite on the side.
As they were walking down to supper a few minutes later, following slowly behind in the path the mob had made down towards the Great Hall and supper, Fitz looked over at Simmons and asked in concern, "Do you think there's any chance you just accidentally got Professor Lupin kicked out of here? Because I really like him as a professor, but everyone in the school's going to hear about this in fifteen minutes flat, and as much as everyone has liked Professor Lupin up until this point, I'm not sure it will hold in this mob mentality that's started."
"Dumbledore wants him here, and Dumbledore overrides pretty much everyone else, at least in the past in the books," replied Simmons. "So I'd guess he's probably safe. And it would be a great teaching opportunity to the next generation — that is, all of us — that werewolves can be perfectly wonderful people and shouldn't be prejudiced against so much, but I unfortunately have my doubts that Dumbledore will actually use this opportunity to teach any such lessons."
"And it's not like it would stick even if he did, given the books reseting every year," sighed Fitz. "Well, I at least hope you're right in that Dumbledore will make sure Lupin stays. He's definitely the best professor we've had so far in DADA."
"Speaking of good professors, thanks for not telling me that Lupin's a werewolf, Professor Jemma," interjected Daisy sarcastically.
"Daisy-girl, how do you ever expect to become the best witch you can be if you don't figure these things out on your own?" replied Simmons teasingly. "And besides, I have no doubt in my mind that you would have figured it out writing the essay."
"And I figured it out by myself while reading the chapter in class — Jemma didn't tell me, Daisy," added Fitz.
"Yeah, yeah, rub in your geniuses," replied Daisy playfully, as she bumped into Fitz's side.
Saturday evening, the Great Hall was buzzing again when FitzSkimmons came down for supper, and not about Professor Lupin any more.
Ever since Simmons had disclosed to their DADA class that Lupin was in fact a wolf of the were variety, discussion of said fact had flooded the school, even drowning out the normal discussions of quidditch that would have been obsessing the school the two days before the opening match of the year. But now, a new topic had apparently caught their attentions as FitzSkimmons didn't catch the word 'Lupin' at all.
Finding the twins, Simmons asked, "What happened this time? Did Mr Black come back?"
"No — the dementors swarmed the pitch this morning," answered George.
"Were you not at the match?" asked Fred. "How could you not know this?"
"We, uh — we overslept," answered Daisy shiftily, knowing both Harry and Ron/Ronna were supposed to be huge quidditch fanatics, and it would looked extremely odd if she said that they didn't give a shit about the sport, and certainly weren't about to go spend a few hours sitting in a thunderstorm to not even really be able to see anything that was going on anyway since it was raining so heavily.
"Well...quite a ways into the match, the dementors swarmed the field," said Fred after giving Daisy a suspicious look. "The mood immediately took a massive nosedive, but the snitch was caught almost immediately afterwards, ending the match, at which point Dumbledore chased them off with a Patronus Charm."
"And as we left the field to get to the changing room, we overheard him talking to McGonagall, and he seemed pretty upset that they'd disobeyed his orders telling them not to come onto the Hogwarts grounds," finished George.
"I wonder if they had suspicions that Mr Black was on the grounds, at the match even, and that's why they came in," said Simmons.
"Or they just saw more than ten non-miserable people gathered together and had to go end that as quickly as possible," smirked Daisy.
"I don't know — most of them were probably rather miserable. The weather was pretty terrible out there," replied Fred with a wry smile.
"Yeah, you three were probably the only people at Hogwarts who weren't pretty miserable at the moment, all warm and dry inside the castle," added George.
Simmons' head snapped towards Daisy as the younger girl opened her mouth to say something inappropriate. "Don't! Whatever you're about to say, just don't."
Daisy turned and muttered to Fitz on her other side, "We could have been showering — there's more than one way to be wet inside the castle."
Fred, meanwhile, returned to Simmons' original question. "If Black was on the grounds or in the stands somehow, he clearly escaped before anyone saw him, and before the dementors saw him."
"That would have made the rumor mills really quickly if that'd happened, and you're the first person to even suggest that possibility," added George.
"Everyone else just seems to think they got tired of being kept out, and with such a large crowd in one place to feast on, they couldn't keep themselves from coming in," continued Fred.
"Or never bothered trying keep themselves from coming to a feast," finished George.
"At least they didn't come into the castle during the Halloween Feast, or during classes," said Simmons.
"Dear — pretty much everyone else here would much rather have had classes get raided than a match, even if it was in a miserable thunderstorm," Fitz reminded his wife gently.
"Oh. That's stupid," grumbled Simmons.
"Be it as it may, most students here aren't at school because they want to be," replied Fitz. "They may love the castle, they may love being here, but they'd love it even better without all the classes, and especially homework, part of it. They didn't have to go get a doctorate on their own to even be considered being allowed in."
"Okay, okay, I get it," sighed Simmons. "And I do seem to remember there being other kids who didn't want to be in school, a long time ago when our schooling was still mandatory."
"Yeah, it's been a long time since we've been around anyone who wasn't fighting tooth and nail to be there," answered Fitz with a smile.
As FitzSimmons talked back and forth between themselves, the twins looked at them in confusion, not following along with everything they were saying to each other. But they apparently decided it wasn't worth asking about, as they returned to their eating as well when FitzSimmons did, Daisy never having stopped eating in the first place.
The next DADA class, FitzSkimmons were relieved to see that Professor Lupin was back, looking ill, but nothing life-threatening.
The rest of the class, meanwhile, seemed torn between being afraid of him now that they knew he was a werewolf, and being relieved that Snape wasn't in charge of the class again. But it seemed that their hatred of Snape won out, as they soon burst into complaints about the Snake giving them homework.
"It's not fair, he was only filling in, why should he give us homework?!"
"We don't know anything about werewolves—!"
"—two rolls of parchment!"
Professor Lupin held up his hand to quiet them.
"First off, why wouldn't he give you homework? The fact that he was filling in doesn't make him any less of a teacher. Homework is given to help you learn, which is incidentally the exact same reason why a substitute professor takes over the class in the first place when the main professor can't make it. And secondly, it sounded like the point of the essay was to research werewolves as you wrote your essays. Because essays are supposed to be on subjects you don't know yet — all of the essays you've written for me this year have been on subjects you didn't know yet, even if the creature they were about was the creature we were studying in class at the time.
"However, since Professor Snape did go out of order instead of following the notes I left him about what we were covering — something I will speak to him about — I will make the essay for extra credit, instead of mandatory. Which should be easy extra points for everyone, as you should all have them done. So if you will, please pass them forward for me to collect."
To FitzSkimmons' astonishment, they were the only three to pass anything forwards. To everyone else's astonishment, FitzSkimmons passed three essays forwards. As both parties were wondering why the other had done or not done as they had or hadn't, Professor Lupin just shook his head as he picked up the three essays, really not surprised in the least by the outcome. He expected nothing less than for the trio who had learnt the Patronus Charm all on their own to do the essays, and exquisitely he'd wager, and given the amount of complaining everyone else had done leading to this entire discussion, it didn't surprise him that none of them had done the essay. But both he and FitzSkimmons silently wondered what everyone would have done had Snape been teaching again and asked them all to turn in their essays they didn't have.
But once Professor Lupin had put away FitzSkimmons' essays, and set a glass box with a hinkypunk in it on the front of his desk, Dean suddenly blurted out, "Are you really a werewolf?"
"If you had done Snape's essay, you would know the answer to that already, now wouldn't you?" Professor Lupin smiled wryly. "But to answer your question, the rumors that have been circulating are in fact true. I was bitten at a young age, before I even started attending Hogwarts. And yes, I did attend here, for all seven years. And yes, Dumbledore knew I was a werewolf both before hiring me as a professor, and before letting me in as a student years ago. And no, I have never bitten anyone." He paused for a few seconds, looking around at the class, before asking, "Any more questions about that? Or can I begin today's lesson? I think you will find it quite interesting."