February
"Thanks for inviting me for tea, Professor," Harry spoke then sipped at the Earl Grey.
Lupin cringed, "Yes well, Professor Snape was none too pleased with me after the last Hogsmeade weekend. I thought it best that I really have you over for tea during this one."
Harry squirmed in his seat and blushed, "He was none too pleased with me either."
Both sipped their tea. Lupin's lips creased briefly in a small smile. "Your father used to sneak into Hogsmeade all the time. He'd come back with pockets full of sweets and shrunken bottles of butter beer. Even a bottle of Fire Whiskey once. We had the wildest parties." Lupin seemed to be lost in memory, "Once, during the spring Hogsmeade visit, he and Siri pinched a snitch from the Quidditch shop while under the invisibility cloak and dropped it into the pocket of a Slytherin. The snitch tried to escape the pocket and end up lifting the students robes giving away, or supposedly giving away who had stolen it. The aurors were called." At Harry's questioning look, Lupin clarified, "Magical police. The kid was charged a fine, double the cost of the snitch to the store and an additional 50 galleons to the Auror Department. The kid's family was well to do, so the money wasn't such a big deal, but his parents refused to let their son's reputation be tarnished. It led to quite the uproar."
"Dad was never caught?"
"No."
"The student, was his name ever cleared?"
Lupin shrugged, "Rumors went around for a bit as they are want to do, but it eventually died down. The auror's were idiots though. Snitches have flesh memories. Had they bothered they could have easily figured out that the student had never touched the snitch. But they were former Gryffindors and Snakes are known bad guys." Lupin looked sad, "Please don't fall into that belief Harry. It got your father killed, thinking all Gryffindors were innocent and all Snakes evil. A dark wizard can be in any house."
Harry decided to seize this opportunity. "If you feel that way, maybe you should be on the committee judging the play scripts. I know there aren't supposed to be any identifying markers on them, but still you seem like you'd make a fair judge. You always treat all of us equal in class."
"I'm not part of the Art Department, Harry."
"I heard a rumor that they were looking for judges who aren't part of the art department and aren't a head of house. They want the script that is chosen to appeal to the general public, not just artsy people and they want people who are truly impartial" Well, he hadn't heard it, actually, he was about to start the rumor. "You'd be a great judge."
Lupin looked thoughtful. "I will consider it. So, are you up for a game of chess or would you rather learn spells for changing eye and hair color?"
Harry grinned, "The spells."
A comment shared, a whisper overheard, a suggestion made. Within a week four judges had been selected to review the submitted scripts, including one Remus John Lupin.
On the 21, the day the scripts were to be judged, Professor Vector, one of the proposed judges, removed herself as a judge upon realizing that she was able to use numbers to determine who wrote each script. Professor Sinistra realized that the celestial objects, combined with the date of her birth indicated that this was the day she needed to go house hunting, for the perfect house awaited her this day. Professor Stewart had come down with what the students were calling stickitus. Everything he touched stuck to his hands for 10 full minutes before releasing. And one Harry James Potter found that potions were very useful and that both men and women liked chocolate. Each of the fore mentioned professors had found a piece of chocolate on their desk each enhanced with a different potion: the eye opener potion, the excuse potion and the stick to it potion (originally designed to keep hyper kids in their seat and on task for short stretches of time).
And so it was Lupin (whose chocolate was laced with a perseverance potion) sat alone judging each script. To ensure he judged every script fairly the judge and former judges agreed that Lupin would need to write the reason for the rejection on each and every script. Regretfully, he had to dismiss some decent story lines due to the no identification clause not being met. Others were disposed of because they were not good stories. Really, who would want to watch a play about a bunch of starving people that have to hunt each other so just a few of them could live the good life while the rest suffered? Teens had really odd ideas about what is entertaining. Then Lupin came upon one that made his heart race. The story was obviously about Harry. But Harry hadn't written it, Lupin was sure of that. He had overheard Hermione pestering the two boys to write a script and they each flatly refused to do so. Could that mean Sirius had somehow submitted a script? Was this subterfuge or was there some truth in this tale? Truth or lies this script needed to be performed.
In the next moments Lupin became Snape's ally. One script was rejected because the writer wrote, "Turn the lights of," instead of, "Turn the lights off." Another was binned for the phrase, "He needed a brake." Was the character suddenly supposed to be on an out of control bike? Using then instead of than; improper use of there, their and they're; half where a have should've been used. They were all scrapped. Snape did have a point, some of the students had atrocious spelling. Lupin was normally kinder about such things, but for his goal to be meet he needed to dispose of as many scripts as possible.
At the end of the purge three scripts remained.
One was a rather good rendition of twisted fairy tales. The second was an action story about a bank style heist at a big company. The third was the one he wanted performed, The Night Death Fell.
Snape entered, smoking potion in hand. "Your potion Lupin, since you seem too lazy to come down to the dungeons to pick it up." Snape eyed the overflowing box of rejected scripts and then leaned over the table and read a few lines of the heist script.
The tall, dark haired and roguishly handsome man fell backwards out of the window, tumbling to his death as his enemy, John MacClane, watched from above, a smirk on his face.
"Die Hard? Really? Well you can add this one to the bin. It's plagiarism."
"What are you talking about Severus?"
"Don't you typically find your jobs in the muggle world, wolf? You're telling me you are unaware of one of the most popular action films from the past five years?"
"Films Severus?"
Snape snorted, "Pure bloods." More loudly he stated, "Next time you find yourself unemployed and roughing it in the muggle world you may want to actually bother to learn something about their culture." Snape walked out, dropping the plagiarized script on the growing stack.
Lupin leaned over and wrote plagiarized on the top of the script to make it an official decline then went back to the twisted fairy tales. To be honest, the fairy tales were the more entertaining of the two, which is why he was finding it difficult to provide a reason it should not be performed. But it was vital the other be preformed. If the author was correct, and Sirius was innocent, this was his one chance to get the wizarding world to consider that the wrong man had been put in Azkaban. But what proof could he provide to the others that the The Night Death Fell was the right choice to perform?
Remus mulled it over. He glanced once more at the two scripts. Then his Marauder's spirit re-awoken. Marauders didn't let rules prevent them from achieving a goal. Mauraders circumvented, twisted and on occasion broke the rules. He may be but one of the four horseman that incessantly pranked Hogwarts for seven years, but he was the brainiest of the bunch and was the one that was most capable of circumventing rather than breaking said rules.
Remus engorgeoed a piece of parchment and set about creating a poster.
Lupin recalled James oft repeated words, "Things said or done in public are harder to take back. Sometimes, that's a good thing."
That night at dinner Remus silently made the poster visible above and behind the staff table. It played out like a muggle cartoon. A wolf entered from the right sniffing the air. It seemed to scent something near what appeared to be a hay bale with a door. Suddenly it howled, then all eyes were upon the cartoon wolf. The wolf seemed to puff up its chest as it drew in air. Then it blew as hard as it could and the straw turned into fluttering scripts. Then the wolf stalked over to the next structure, a small home made of twigs. Again the beast breathed deep and blew with all his might. The sticks clattered and became another pile of scripts. "Not up to snuff," the wolf gruffed. The wolf sniffed the air again and followed a path to two brick buildings. The wolf prowled around each sniffing each corner and side, then took has biggest breath yet. Wind billowed from lungs, but the two brick structures refused to budge. The wolf leaned on a wall connecting the two buildings then above each building unfurled the words:
May's Play: The Night Death Fell
November's Play: Twisted Fairy Tales
The students broke into applause and cheers. Dumbledore smiled and applauded. A few of the other teachers joined in. Meanwhile, others groaned and choose a nice goblet of wine to help calm their agitation about another term with students distracted by 'the arts.'
Snape glared at Lupin, "Isn't that a bit too revealing of your true nature?"
Lupin shrugged, "No one's figured it out yet. I don't see why they should."
"Either you finally agree with me regarding the vapidness of these dunderheads," Snape gestured toward the students, "Or you are equally vapid."
Lupin frowned at Snape. "They are not vapid, they are children. They'll have plenty of time for cynicism as adults. They need not see every shadow as a specter."
Snape snorted, "Like your childhood was so cheery that you were unaware of life's living nightmares."
"I was too entangled in my own to notice anyone else's."
"More like too entangled in your group of so called friends to acknowledge the living nightmare you made for others."
"Touché. But the same can be said of you Severus. We each looked for acceptance and found it, for a time, with those that sought to harm others. And we both grew up and away from those groups."
"I choose to leave mine. Yours was ripped from your hands."
Lupin's heart ached. "They were." Then thought to himself, "But with a bit of luck, I'm going to get one of them back."
Author's Note: I am aware that my spelling/grammar are not perfect. I welcome PM's regarding corrections that need to be made. I have already been informed of the misspelling of Daily Profit instead of Prophet. I've chosen to leave that one as profit, because it is more fitting.
Reviews are appreciated. :)