Once we were in the pensieve, we appeared in the exact same room, Dumbledore's office, however, it was slightly different. Obviously from a different period of time.

Professors Dumbledore and McGonagall were seated, facing each other across Dumbledore's desk. Dumbledore had his elbows propped up on the desk, and his face resting in his hands. Professor McGonagall's arms were folded.

They were both silent for quite some time, before finally, Dumbledore lifted his face, cleared his throat, and said, "My answer is no, Minerva. I'm sorry. But it's too much of a risk to the students."

"Since when have you cared about the safety of our students?" Professor McGonagall said coldly, leaning back in her seat. "I told you, there's a war starting, as of February last year, and now it's January, so eleven months ago, I suggested that we should close the school to keep the students safe, you went on about how their education is so important that we can't close the school. You're so hypocritical! You now want to strip this boy of his education to keep everyone safe? Which one is it, Albus? Safety, or education?"

"It's one boy," said Dumbledore. "He can learn from home, can he not?"

"Albus. Put yourself in his shoes. How would you feel? Plus, I realise it's dangerous, but we can take precautions. During the full moons, we can put him somewhere away from everyone else to keep him and the other students safe."

"This doesn't make sense," I said.

"Why?" asked Sirius.

"When I told McGonagall that I was a werewolf... she didn't know," I said. "She just said that she had a feeling that I was, how...?"

"Maybe she lied," said James.

"Why would she lie?" I said.

"Why would Dumbledore make it seem like it was his idea for you to come to school?" said Sirius.

"Let's keep watching," said James.

"Just talk with him and his parents," said McGonagall. "By his eleventh birthday, at the latest. Please, Albus."

Dumbledore sighed. "Alright. I'll talk to them."

Suddenly, everything around us went black, and then we were transitioned into another time. We were now in the Great Hall, in front of the teachers' table, watching Dumbledore and McGonagall talking again.

"It's the tenth of March," said McGonagall. "It's Remus's eleventh birthday. Have you spoken to them?"

"Yes," said Dumbledore. "I spoke to them yesterday. Remus is keen, and his parents are a little nervous."

"So, he's coming to Hogwarts?"

"Yes, Minerva." Dumbledore said the word 'Minerva' through slightly gritted teeth, however, his expression still remained calm. "You know I don't approve of this, though."

"Well, every young witch and wizard in the United Kingdom has the right to an education at Hogwarts, even if they do have lycanthropy," said Professor McGonagall. Dumbledore just turned his head away from her.

The scene changed again, and now the two of them were somewhere in the Ministry of Magic.

"He killed a girl," Dumbledore was saying. I knew immediately that he was talking about Monifa, and my stomach did a sick flip. "They're about to hold his trial just now. The department of the containment of magical creatures is going to put him down tonight."

"Put him down!?" Professor McGonagall cried. "Surely not! They can't do that, he cannot control his actions!"

"I told you it was too dangerous to have one of his kind at the school," said Dumbledore.

"This happened outside of school! We need to at least find out the context of the situation! Albus, please convince them otherwise, they'll listen to you better than they'd listen to me," McGonagall begged. He didn't respond. "Please, Albus. Mr. Lupin, like so many other of my students, I have grown fond of. He is polite and always completes his homework. He is kind to all the students and is happy to help anyone."

"You don't care that another one of your students is dead?"

"Of course, I care!" McGonagall cried. "Miss Blanchet was also a wonderful student. But we can't place so much blame on Mr. Lupin, you know it's not his fault. We can't have two students gone."

Dumbledore sighed. "Very well. I will try and defend him."

"Thank you, Albus," said McGonagall.

The scene changed, but this time, we were back in Dumbledore's office, and it was just us. We were back in the present.

"So..." I said, my voice coming out low. "So, Dumbledore hates me. And those times when he'd defended me, it had just been Professor McGonagall begging him too."

At least Professor McGonagall likes me, I thought, but my heart was already sinking. I'd thought that the headmaster had respected me enough to try and defend me, let me come into his school as a werewolf, and even stop me from being put down for killing Monifa. But no. He was just as prejudiced as everyone else. I wish I hadn't seen that damn memory.

"Well, Dumbledore is clearly an dickhead," said Sirius.

"Yeah, I always looked up to him," said James. "I can't believe this."

"Yeah..." I said, trailing off because I didn't want to think about it. "Anyway, let's keep looking for whatever is keeping the roof going."

We continued our search, but I struggled to concentrate. I felt a little ill after what I'd just seen. I too had somewhat looked up to Dumbledore. I'd been so grateful that he had let me come to Hogwarts and defended me at the trial. But no, he'd only done it because McGonagall had wanted him to, and he had hated me this whole time.

Sirius interrupted my thoughts by waving his mirror around and saying that Peter was talking to them and saying that the feast was already over and they were heading back to the common rooms.

"Dammit," said James. "We'll have to do it at the end of the year, then, I suppose."

We left Dumbledore's office together and went straight to the common room, where Peter was waiting for us.

"What happened?" he asked. "Could you not find it?"

"No, we went into a pensieve," said James.

"A pensieve?" Peter repeated. "What did you see in there?"

"We'll tell you when we're in the dormitory," I said, looking around at the crowd of people, any of which could be listening in on our conversation. I noticed that Mary was walking around and talking to everyone. She then approached us, her expression sad.

"What's wrong?" Peter asked her.

"Did you hear what happened over the summer?" she said. "He's dead!"

"Who?" I asked. "A lot of people have died over the summer. Did you lose someone you were close to?"

"The king," she said.

"The king?" said Sirius. "We were learning about the muggle monarchy in muggle studies, isn't there a queen at the moment?"

"Not that sort of king," she said. "The king of rock and roll and the love of my life, Elvis died in August."

"Oh," said Sirius. "I'm really sorry for your loss..."

"It's alright," said Mary. "But do you guys need comforting? I'm going around to check in on everyone."

"We're alright I think," said James. "Thank you, though."

Mary smiled, a little sadly, then walked off to talk to someone else.

"Can we go to the dormitory now?" Peter asked. We all nodded, then went up the stairs. "So what did you see in that pensieve?"

I explained to him what we'd seen, how Dumbledore was actually prejudiced against me, but he posed as if he respected me because McGonagall wanted to defend him, and he also wanted to feel good about himself.

"Oh, OK," said Peter. "That's not good."

"Yeah, it's not," I said, but I didn't want to talk about it any longer, and I was also exhausted from sitting on the train all day. "What time is it?"

"Almost nine o'clock," said Sirius. "Not too late, but the Hogwarts Express is so exhausting for some reason. I might call it a night."

"Yeah, me too," said James. Thank god I wasn't the only one who just wanted to go to bed.

The next day was a Friday, and we had our first classes of the day. All of the teachers started their first lesson by giving us a lecture about the N.E.W.T.s and the amount of effort we would have to put in this year to do well at them.

"The Nastily Exhausting Wizarding Tests, or N.E.W.T.s, like your O.W.L.s, but an awful lot harder," said Professor McGonagall at the very beginning of our first Transfiguration, which didn't happen until the next Monday, so we'd already heard enough lectures about the exams by that stage. "Their name is not untrue in the slightest. They really are the most nastily exhausting exams you will ever sit, not only the exams themselves, but the preparation and studying that goes into it in order to even just pass school. Otherwise, you'll have to either not get a good career after Hogwarts or repeat your seventh year."

If Peter had been in this class, I knew I would have seen him visibly wince next to me. How awful would it be for anyone to have to repeat, and be in the year with people that you know since they're only a year below you? It did seem like a likely possibility for that to happen to Peter if he didn't pick up his game.

And as for me; deep down, I knew that I wouldn't fail and I'd be fine, I'd always been fine academically, but of course, I was still worrying that I'd have to repeat. But then again, I couldn't get any jobs I wanted to get because of my condition, so I once again wondered why I would even bother with my N.E.W.T.s.

By the end of the Transfiguration lesson, we'd barely learnt any content because Professor McGonagall had spent the whole lesson stressing the importance of the N.E.W.T.s to us.

If we had thought that the workload for sixth year was too much, then we were not ready for the workload of the seventh year. By the end of the first full week of school, the other marauders and I had way too much homework than our liking. Even James couldn't go out to the Quidditch pitch because he had too much work to do.

"Everyone's going for dinner," Peter said on Sunday night when he was sitting in the common room with Sirius, James, and I, all three of us hunched over our homework.

"Dinner already?" Sirius groaned. "It's Sunday! I've been working all weekend! I'm only halfway through."

"Now I know why Marlene was so mad at me for having such frequent Quidditch training sessions last year," James sighed, but he closed his textbook and stood up. "Come on, let's get some food in us, then we'll get back at it.

This would be such a fun year. Definitely.