The Way We Were

PROLOGUE

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Observations Concerning the Werewolf Suicide Rate

1989

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I do not mind the bacon bit

And craving meat that's juicy,

And nor is such a piece of shit

The chest hair, I'm not choosy.

But hell if I can live with this

Predicament or what it is;

If I can't get the dimmest guy

To fuck me, I would rather die.

o

Werewolf integrity is a marginal and small, but fiercely debated topic. Does it, considering probability, proof or examples, exist? "I mean to say," said one fierce debater in conference with a member of the species, "Now, really, my dear fellow, if you don't mind my saying it, dash it, I do not think it likely, if you catch my drift."

Let us not rest at this statement alone, though. For this integrity of which we speak: what is it, exactly; how is it seen? Can one justly and without quail or hesitation apply it to being a werewolf if it is lacking in one of such condition? Or could it be that wizards themselves are disposed with these lacks in other cases, for example in their relations with other odd creatures, such as Muggles or earthworms?

"And why," cried Mark McKenzie, "the hell can't those Ministry suckers just get off our tails already?" The werewolves have more coherent and academically elevated argumentations on their side than that which Mark McKenzie here displays I assure you, but it just wasn't thought that debater number one demonstrated my claim of "fierce" debating on quite a satisfactory level.

So where were we? Oh, yes, integrity. Dashed hard to lay claim to, I think the conclusion was. It is, as we well know, our choices that determine who we really are, far more than our abilities. If only choices weren't so ghastly relative. If the wolf inside could only be denied away or fought to death. I think we can safely say that there are different ways of laying claim to integrity if you are a werewolf, and a choice is not always given. There is living with it. There is lying. And there is dying.

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ONE

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The events which will be related here may be said to commence in September of 1979, when there was a werewolf demonstration held in the Ministry for Magic. The Ministry found this a bit hard, don't you know. Were they not, perhaps, at war? And should not all magical beings of human or near-human intelligence let them do their job? Yes, well, the passing of the controversial bill in question would be such grave undermining of being-rights that the demonstrators themselves did not see the raising of voices as anything less than absolutely the right thing to do. It was supposed to be a quiet sort of affair. That was indeed the plan of the demonstrators. When a girl tried to bite a Ministry official in the leg, however, it caused a rather unpleasant hubbub to ensue, giving the werewolves bad press and the Daily Prophet a field day. Still, the Ministry official was not precisely pitied among the gathered crowd, either when it happened or after.

As it is, the Ministry of Magic is really quite fortunate with respect to demonstrating hoards, because to demonstrate openly as wizards, the hoard is not able -nor would it be very effective for them- to gather in large quantities out in the streets in front of the phone box which leads to the Ministry. For one thing, this would make Muggle law-executors turn up eventually, which would create difficulties and paper-work, and for another it would not bother the Ministry in the slightest (except for the ensuing paper-work). And lastly, it would fail utterly to draw attention to the Cause in question. So enraged magical citizens are forced to go below ground into the Ministry's atrium, where there will always be plenty of diligently law-executing witches and wizards present and an Auror office situated just a few floors above.

The problem about this particular crowd however, was not that it was too large in size, and to call it a 'hoard' would be optimistic on the border of naïve. There were about twenty ragged looking men and women standing side by side in the Ministry atrium on this day. The problem about removing them was, as the Ministry's protectors of the peace agreed, that you never knew when one of them might leap up and bite your head off. True, they looked quite harmless where they stood, huddled and uncertain, but one never could know with werewolves.

o

A few hours prior to the start of the demonstration, a wizard had approached a Muggle house in the suburbs of London. He checked the dull brass number on the grey wall against a small piece of parchment in his hand, and then went up a small entrance stair of concrete and knocked on the door. The house was one of those which look exactly like all the other houses in the street: dull grey brick, with a small front garden covered in neat grass completely devoid of any purpose, as it is not large enough to actually do anything with or on.

After a few seconds, a girl opened the door and looked up at the wizard with shining, blue eyes. He smiled at her. He knew she had just turned fifteen, but thought she looked younger. She was pale, and her clothes as well as her hair were entirely black, except a number of lines of orange writing on her too large t-shirt, which hung about her figure much like a small tent.

He extracted a hand.

"Hello," he said, "I'm Remus Lupin, we've been corresponding."

She grinned and took his hand with elegance, letting her fingers rest loosely in his grip, palm down.

"I've got one for you too," she said, indicating the t-shirt.

"Oh," he said uncertainly, looking down his soberly coloured clothes and wondering how one declined garments with the inscription Fuck The Ministry on them. "I think I'm all right, thanks."

"Okay," she said, looking disappointed.

"The message is invigorating, though," he said quickly, and at that moment, her mother appeared at the door. Remus shook hands with her.

"She will be quite safe," he said. "It's going to be a quiet demonstration, I promise."

The mother eyed him suspiciously as she tried to seem on top of the situation. She was a grey mouse of about fifty, with a grey, plaited skirt and a neat white blouse.

"Of course," she said, "it isn't every day this sort of thing happens."

"No, I'm sure it isn't," said Remus understandingly. "But your daughter's future is at stake."

She looked at him and nodded, suddenly remembered that the same thing went for him, and turned a dark shade of pink. Remus looked down at his shoes.

o

And that was how Siren Smith was brought to her first real demo. She met other people who were werewolves, and even some who had finished the wizard school before they got bitten. Never having been to the Ministry of Magic before, she now became keener than ever to get her wand permit back. She didn't really like anybody there much, though, but she kept close to the man who had fetched her, who at least didn't have a voice like a rusty grater. By the time when at long last a Ministry official appeared (a stout woman in young middle age, wearing robes of pale lilac and a purple bow in her hair), she was bored. And as the woman started to read from an intimidatingly official-looking scroll of parchment, she had a sudden idea.

What she did was to walk up to the woman, look her fiercely in the eye as she stopped, and bend down to bite her leg.

o

Many years later, though it seemed longer than it was (it was 1986 in fact, which is lucky, because it was as late as 1985 that he had got rid of the most embarrassing haircut of his life), Remus Lupin was stopped in Diagon Alley, just next to an apothecary's, by an extremely beautiful, blonde, beaming, young and enthusiastic woman who called him by his name. Baffled, he put his hands in his pockets and hitched up his shoulders in defence, but to his utter horror the woman embraced him in a passionate hug. Fearing loss of composure and dignity, he stood rigidly still as the woman's squeal slowly subsided and approximate probability got restored.

"So how are you?" she asked as she withdrew, and Remus, having extracted his hands from his pockets by this time because even he knew that it looks ridiculous to be embraced by dazzlingly beautiful women while you have your hands in your pockets, ventured to reply by asking a question in return.

"Excuse me, but would you mind telling me your name?" he said. "I'm sorry; you do look somewhat familiar, but I can't seem to be able to place you."

"Oh, come on," she said exasperated. "Siren. Siren Smith. You fetched me at home and we went to a demonstration against the Ministry of Magic's proposal for werewolf castration."

"Oh," he said, comprehending and wondering for a brief moment about the existential meaning appearance has if you are expected to recognise people. "Of course." He grabbed her hand and shook it happily. "You have coloured your hair."

"Well, no," she said smiling. "I've avoided colouring it, actually. This is the real pippin. Back then was my black period, I'm sure you'll understand and excuse it."

"You can colour your hair pink and I will let it go without blinking;" he said, smiling too. "Someone who has charged at Dolores Umbridge in anger deserves all the slack she can get."

She smiled widely with content at his acknowledgement and tossed her shining hair. This had a certain effect on the males in the vicinity. While those who were looking at her were out cold next moment, those who had had only caught a glimpse of hair were merely slightly dazed and walked off a little unsteadily. (The writer does however not wish to make the reader believe that the woman had any veela blood in her; she had merely turned out well, her chest and symmetry defying her condition.) Upon finishing her hair-tossing, she said to Remus, who had stood in plain view of her curves and thus was quite shaken, "Let me take you to lunch. There's this thing that I have to tell you now that I've got you here."

o

She gave him lunch. This may seem a bit ungentlemanly on the part of Remus Lupin, at least to the reader who is no connoisseur of werewolf etiquette. But for the well meaning, though - if I'm allowed to make the judgement - prudish citizens lacking know-how on the matter, I will explain that among werewolves it is customary for the person who has gold at the time of eating or drinking to pay the bill, regardless of sex. This is because the likeliness of both or all members of a party consisting only of werewolves being in possession of the Big Gs is minimal. So thus, Siren gave Remus lunch, and they caught up on events.

"I have been writing," Remus said placidly, feeling odd, but content about telling someone about his eventless life, "a few serials for Witch Weekly, and I do wish you wouldn't laugh so hard, there are male waiters who try to balance trays in the vicinity and your teeth are showing. Look for me. Pseudonym of Theodora Bright." He took a sip of wine and looked down into his glass. I had forgotten, he thought, that I could be funny. He felt a jolt of that familiar shock of finding out that Lily and James were dead. This shock had the habit of jerking him back to that knowledge whenever he was about to forget about them. "There are also some pieces of mine in the UoS* Being-department's scientific journal, which doesn't fetch any riches, hence Theodora Bright. There's a book too; a proper scientific study of werewolves, but I'm only writing it yet. Your turn."

"Just writing?" she asked curiously, twisting a lock of hair around her finger. "Nothing else? No sordid affairs? No chorus girls?"

"Only one, but she is safely constrained within the pages of the moving novella Love's Lace Curtains." He drew his breath for strength, and felt it become easier and easier to be at ease as he continued. "Now, you encouraged me to tell my story first, and I am not one to complain, but I believe you owe me some part in the secret you said you would reveal."

"All right," she said and tossed her hair again, as a means of suspense postponement and also so that it wouldn't land in the half-empty plates as she bent forward. "I am opening a pub."

He frowned.

"A pub?"

"No academic prospects or even ambitions, I hear him ponder?" she whispered dramatically, and he looked down into his glass of wine again as she continued. "No doctorate on the works of the Medieval werewolf Growlclaw the third?" He smiled and she leaned closer. "No research for a Cure in the time she does not have to whore nobly for money to survive? Surely, she will go to hell."

"My statement earlier about biting Ms. Umbridge still stands," he said cheerfully and looked up at her, startled at how close to each other their faces suddenly were. He sipped the wine.

"You have enhanced the story, my dear boy-"
He choked on the wine at her form of address, but recovered quickly.

"As I was saying," Siren repeated, "my dear boy, you have exaggerated the story." She leaned back in her chair again. "I never got around to sinking my teeth into her flesh. I tried and should be rightly honoured, I agree, but that I did indeed bite her I will not deceive the historians to believe." She put her hands behind her head and looked at him firmly. He recoiled slightly from the directness of the stare, but still smiled.

"Very well. Attempting to bite honorary Ms. Umbridge, then," he said.

"Precisely. Well, as I was saying, a pub," said Siren.

"Well, it does sound all right," said Remus, and she let her hands down again as he continued, "and you can freely open up a business, there is no anti-werewolf legislation against that. It's getting customers to a pub which is run by a known werewolf that will be the problem."

Siren shrugged and picked at a leaf of lettuce with her fork. She looked a bit sullen all of a sudden.

"I'll work my charm, don't you think?" she asked and Remus took another sip of wine in response, while making an uncommitting movement of the neck. "Besides, I thought I'd make it especially suited for werewolves. Like closing early on the day when it's the full moon and reduced prices that day, and generally getting us people who don't get into the really nice places together in a separate nice place. Without excluding others, of course, that would have been the hypocrisy of the century, but the fact is that I can't be there anyway on the night of the full moon, and I won't employ any assistants for that night just so that the non-werewolves can get their drinks there then. You with me?" She looked at him expectantly.

"Yes, I think so," he said. "It's an excellent idea." He paused; then added: "Except encouraging alcoholism in our kind."

"Yeah," she said thoughtfully, "hardly need it, do they?"

o

Remus and Siren kept up their acquaintance and on paper, a pub was established, bearing the name The Shrieking Shack, and being very realistically decorated on the inside (still only on paper) with bruises to the wood as though from claws and impressive teeth, and a gallery of "famous rumoured werewolves", including the wildest of suggestions, such as Albus Dumbledore and honorary Ms. Umbridge. But premises were a problem, and though Siren had found a place she would like to rent, she hesitated on account of the limitations to expansion and modification of the existing interior that the lease allowed. The place was for sale if there was a bid, but she couldn't get a loan to cover it.

One day, when Remus had dragged Siren into Flourish and Blotts and they were roaming the Dark Arts section, he suddenly sniffed the air and narrowed his eyes in shock. He nudged Siren, who immediately emerged from behind a shelf of jinxing birthday cards.

"What is it?" she said with interest.

"I think," Remus said slowly, "that man over there."

This seemed like an answer incongruous with the question, but Siren sniffed the air as well, looked where he inclined his head, and her mouth spread into a wide grin. She straightened her back, put on her sunglasses, tossed her hair back and advanced. Remus followed her hesitantly, looking warily around. There weren't many customers, but a couple of people looked after Siren as she brushed briskly past. The man indicated was tall and wore a fashionable long, coat-like cloak with large buttons, over an impeccable set of dark robes. His hair was dark brown, and so wavy one could almost feel the sea breeze which had ruffled it so perfectly, and though his features were not very handsome by nature, his self-esteem shone out in his eyes not as self-indulgence, but on the contrary as the man's desire and determination to prove himself to the surroundings and whoever was present, without giving the assumption on his part that this came naturally. This eagerness to please made him rather attractive after all. There was a twinkle of sparkly humour in his light eyes, and though his narrow mouth looked presently grave with its lips pressed together as he read, the lines around it showed that he was inclined to smile a lot.

He stood immersed in a book, and Siren approached him in a quick and self-certain way.

"What are you reading," she said and took the book he was reading from him.

He looked at her, baffled, then down at the book.

"It is a travel book," he said calmly.

"Yes, thank you, I know how to read. Rumania." She thought for a moment, and pressed the book close to her chest with her arms crossed over it. "Did you know that there are over three thousand werewolves in Rumania? More than in any other European country."

"No, I did not know that." The man looked calm, but a bead of perspiration had appeared on his forehead. He smiled nervously at her in an attempt at an easy manner.

Siren looked straight into his eyes for a long time. The man looked back firmly. After a while, she suddenly smiled and extracted a hand, still not letting her eyes fall.

"Siren Smith, nice to meet you," she said.

The man looked down at her hand and she had won. He grabbed and shook it and looked up at her face again, less sure of himself now, but with defensive resolution.

"Pleased to meet you," he said. "Augustus Chafer."

"I..." gaped Siren and spun around to look at Remus, who looked baffled too. She pointed back at the man while still looking at Remus. "He's... did you recognise him? I..." The man named Augustus Chafer suddenly took Siren's arm with a confident air, and as she turned back to him, he looked into her eyes.

"How did you understand it?" he asked her quietly. She looked at him blankly for a few seconds, then drew a breath and let it out slowly. She thought for a moment.

"You smell," she said at last; a wry smile on her lips. He laughed, but kept her eyes in his as he did so. Remus looked uncertainly from Siren to Augustus Chafer and then back at Siren, wondering if he should leave. But when he was about to withdraw, Siren stopped him with a sharp comment and introduced him pompously, and the man, Augustus Chafer, shook his hand with a genuinely friendly smile, making Remus feel out of place, though the greeting was so well-meaning and so very intended to cause happiness, harmony and content that it almost shone by itself.

They had supper in the house of Augustus Chafer that afternoon, to their repeated surprise every time the thought of it entered their minds. He hesitantly bared the background for his secret of many years to them, achieving in return their firm assurance that they would not reveal his predicament to anyone. And there was laughter, and dubious charmwork under the influence of much too expensive alcohol, and gradual acceptance, and a few tears at the erasing of loneliness of condition (mostly from Augustus Chafer's green-clad valet, Cleaves, as he joined in a round of brandy), who had for so long been Augustus Chafer's only confidante and whose loyalty had never wavered. And there were occasional pieces of nostalgia as Remus and Siren recounted their adventures in the Ministry, and when Augustus Chafer in response almost made Siren fall off her chair with a Cornelius Fudge impersonation Remus became a bit anxious. He left the house of the third richest wizard in Britain half an hour later, with Augustus Chafer's - the third richest wizard in Britain's - sincere goodbyes and well-wishes hanging in the air behind him like glue. And three months later, in January of 1987, he opened the door through which was situated the set of stairs leading down to England's first pub primarily for werewolves.

o

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* The magical University of Stonehenge.