SMALL CONSOLATION

Disclaimer: This is a non-profit tribute to the works of JK Rowling who created and, together with her publishers and licensees, owns the characters and settings elaborated herein.

A/N: Spoilers to OotP, not HBP-compatible. Thanks to all my reviewers and my previewer, Bellegeste.

Granger or Weasley or whatever your name is now,

I must have been mad to follow Dumbledore's advice about writing to a future stranger, and doubly mad to imagine that you would be a suitable candidate. I know better now. You are almost the last person I would choose, if I had my choosing again; I would rather write to the Longbottom boy than to you.

What possessed me to listen? Too much Phoenix song? Or did I perhaps dimly foresee that your friendship with Potter would be bound to put us in opposition and there would no doubt be many times when the small satisfaction of denouncing your behaviour to your future self would be the only compensation for enforced silence over your present misdemeanours?

But this was more than a misdemeanour. Whatever possessed you? With the school-grounds crawling with Dementors and on a full moon night – after I had alerted you in class to the risk of meeting a werewolf – the three of you sneaked out of the castle to explore what used to be a werewolf's den. What were you thinking? Meddlesome, irresponsible children, do you ever think at all?

I warned Dumbledore how it would be. I reminded him that you three are almost as bad as the Weasley twins for breaking curfew and wandering the grounds; if anyone was in danger from the return of the werewolf it was you. He only twinkled and said that he trusted Lupin. Hah! If he knew him as I do, he wouldn't need the events of this night to see him for the broken reed he is. A liar and traitor; you heard him admit it yourself.

But what did you do after he recounted how he had betrayed you – all of you, and your friend Potter most of all – by withholding information for the full course of the school year, information that would have kept the convict out of the castle, unable to menace the Weasley boy in his bed or try to kill your other friend as he killed his parents?

What did you do after he admitted having violated Dumbledore's trust as a student and having continued as an adult, for no better reason than to protect his undeserved good name? (Or for no reason at all. He would have risked nothing by describing the secret tunnels Black undoubtedly used to enter the school. Could the headmaster who winks at Potter's night-time wanderings possibly condemn the similar wanderings of his father's friends?)

Where was your head, Granger? How could you believe that weak-willed smiler over me, who has watched over the three of you since you were eleven and saved your friend's ungrateful skin at cost to my health and reputation? How could you?

Was I not at school with them? Have I not known them long enough and suffered enough at their hands to understand what they would be at, better than you, you foolish, arrogant girl?

I can only assume that one of them must have Confunded you. How else could you hear the werewolf talk of Black luring me to his den to be eaten and still suggest a few minutes later that "it wouldn't hurt to hear what they've got to say"? They almost killed me the last time I tried to hear what they had to say, you stupid girl, and you thought it wouldn't hurt?

"If there was a mistake," you said. A mistake? Didn't you listen? At sixteen, Black tricked me into confronting a fully-grown werewolf on a full moon night with nowhere to run but a narrow, winding tunnel. Neither of them denied it. Black even boasted of it. He tricked me – and I was not an unsuspicious youth. I had, moreover, the daily evidence of his malice pounded into my body and imprinted in my soul, and yet still I trusted the tale he wove.

(Although that you could not know, not from the falsehoods the werewolf fed you. Jealous of James Potter, that arrogant, bigheaded lout? I have more creativity, more intelligence, more courage in the tip of one finger than he had in his whole self-righteous body. He was a coward, Granger, a coward, who wouldn't even face me without three friends to guard his back!)

You solved my logic puzzle as a first year and yet Black's boast of attempted murder did not clue you in to his character? Wasn't it clear that his only regret was that he did not succeed? He tried to murder me at sixteen! He did murder the Potters a few years later and his friend Pettigrew and a dozen Muggles, besides! And you trusted him? You claim not to have been Confunded, but how could you not have been?

I don't understand. I don't understand why Dumbledore seems to believe his lies, believe him innocent, that murderer who compassed Lily's death after I tried so hard to save her. I don't understand why he connived at rescuing the Dark Lord's favourite, whose testimony when his master returns may be my doom. I don't understand why he sent you out with your Time-Turner, two injured children, to save a villain.

Yes, your Time-Turner, you silly child! Did you think I didn't know you had one; that any of your teachers didn't know? (If you'd ever heard Minerva boasting of your diligence in the staffroom, you'd know none of us could remain ignorant of that fact.) Didn't you hear Dumbledore hint me away from questioning Black's escape; didn't you watch him tell me what you'd done in unmistakably simple words?

"Unless you're suggesting the children are able to be in two places at once", he said, for all the world as if you hadn't done that every weekday since the start of the year or sat three exams simultaneously! Of course that idiot Fudge was too stupid to catch his meaning, but did you think me similarly afflicted?

Why did he do it? Why?

"My memory is as good as it ever was." What did he mean by that, I wonder. I suppose he will come down to the dungeons to tell me after he's gotten rid of Fudge and his Dementors, once he's seen them all safely off the premises. And I'll nod and listen and swallow down my rage, because Dumbledore always knows what he's about and he must have a reason for this.

But even he can be wrong. Until now, I've kept his werewolf's secret for him, exactly as I promised all those years ago. All year, I've bitten my tongue and accepted his reassurances that the werewolf is safe to house in a school, that he is responsible enough to allow near children. That promise is ended now. It should never have been made.

Had Lupin been the caring, careful person Dumbledore believed him to be, it would have been unfair to tell his secret and expose him to the contempt of the world, but he is as fully deserving of that contempt as I ever thought him and as dangerous.

Do not tell me he didn't transform and almost eat you (me?) before I regained consciousness; I am not so stupid as to believe it. The signs of a scuffle, the paw-marks and drag-marks of a wolf's tail on the ground told their own story, even had he not been gone and the moon high in the sky and the other four of you lying unconscious round about when I came to.

Don't try to excuse him. Did he not stand there telling you of his transformations while the moon rode high in the sky, any of its stray beams ready to turn him instantly into a slavering, carnivorous monster? Did I not remind him of the danger, over and over again: "You forgot to take your potion tonight … werewolf …werewolf …werewolf"? Yet still he manifestly took no precautions, with three children – students – at risk every second of the time he dallied.

Even Dumbledore cannot keep him on after this, after his betrayal and his dereliction of duty, after his lies of omission and commission (he told me Potter's Map was a joke-product of Zonko's, though he knew better), after his final irresponsible failure to take his potion or at least to send you away before he Turned. He will have to fire him now and that's as it should be, but I have a responsibility to more than Dumbledore. Lupin is a danger to all around him, and all who might employ or house or trust him in the future have the right to know of the danger.

I won't forget what you've done tonight. I won't forget your wands raised against me as I tried to save your lives, and I won't forget waking up, surely over an hour later, outside, hanging Mobilicorpused in the air, my head throbbing. How many times did you or he or they hit me when I was down, that I feel so many separate bruises and bumps on my skull? How long did you leave me unconscious, without a Rennervate or any attempt at healing? Did any of you care whether I lived or died?

I know the answer. Don't think I will soon forget it, child, adult, whoever you are! I will never forget it.

S

A/N As, a few hours earlier, Snape had overheard Lupin admit to serial irresponsibility and negligent disregard for the safety of others, and as this was the second time that Lupin had come close to killing or biting him, it's understandable that Snape felt that Lupin had forfeited his right to privacy. The first occasion was not directly Lupin's fault, but a history of "near misses, many of them" and "breaking the rules ... set down for my own and others' safety" (PoA, ch 18) couldn't help but inspire mistrust.

Canon doesn't specify exactly where Lupin transformed, what the ground was like or whether signs of a scuffle were visible. I chose to assume they were.