Full Moon

He put his book down, stood up, and drew his wand. He pointed it at Severus and said, "Finite incantatum!" James and Sirius looked at him in astonishment. Unexpectedly released from the Impedimenta spell, Severus got to his feet and reached for his wand, but his own wand was still raised and pointed, and before Severus could aim at James or Sirius, he said, "Protego!" and the hexes from both sides bounced harmlessly against the shield. "That's enough," he said to his friends. "Gryffindors do not fight two on one, or attack people who are already down." Lily Evans, who had walked up to see what was happening and put a stop to it, looked at him with new interest when she saw how calmly and courageously he had done it himself. She ignored Severus the Slytherin, who could no longer be friends with a Muggle-born witch. She ignored James, who was making a fool of himself as usual. She had eyes only for him. That kind, spirited, pretty girl was about to run into his arms...

There was a rude, jarring noise, and Remus Lupin rolled over on his mattress to make it stop. Too late, he was awake, and awareness of the grim reality of his life soon set in, made even crueler by the recent memory of a happy moment that had never existed. Why had he bothered to set his alarm? So he could get an early start looking with no experience and no references for a job among Muggles that he would not be able to do? Evening was the best time to return to the places where he had learned to scrape a living among Muggles, or to the only places in the Wizarding World where he did not expect to be rejected. No, he had set it because he had started having nightmares again, and he tended to have them in the early morning, or perhaps those were just the ones he remembered.

He had not had them for most of his recent year at Hogwarts, during which he had had the potion that kept him from attacking people. He had not had them much for years before that, and he had been hopeful that his practice of Apparating to a remote place was serving its intended purpose. He did not remember his transformation at the end of the year, but the kids told him that Padfoot had controlled him and that he had not harmed anyone. There had not yet been another full moon since then, but it was fast approaching. It was likely the knowledge of the last transformation that had triggered them, for it had been at the school of all places, and the knowledge that he had wanted to attack those kids was horrifying.

Lupin had already had a heavy burden of guilt about endangering people at the school, and he had no longer been able to bear it. He had some relief when making the unselfish decision to resign his post, for he thought in that moment that perhaps he would be forgiven. Only after he left did he look to the future and realize what losing the best job he had ever had at the only place where he had ever been happy would mean for his life. For after one year of meaningful and well-paid work, the only such year he had ever had, it was all the harder to face going back to the poor, lonely, dangerous, and deceptive life that he had been living before. His dreams had been broken in his youth, but some part of him had not given up hope. Now he knew that he had none, for he would never have another such opportunity to come back.

He had retreated again to Muggle London, where he had lived for many years, because Muggles did not believe in werewolves, and therefore would be less likely to respond to him with the hostility that he usually saw from witches and wizards who knew. He imagined that by this time everyone in the Wizarding World knew, since everyone sent their kids to Hogwarts, and all the students had no doubt told their parents the exciting news that their Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, Professor Lupin, had been a werewolf. He hoped that Dumbledore would not be blamed too much for this.

There was a rap at the window of his room in the Muggle rooming house where he was staying, and he saw a tawny owl with what looked like a letter in his beak. He hurriedly opened the window to let him in, glancing up and down the street and seeing to his relief that it was empty. The owl dropped the letter on his lap, jumped on his shoulder, and pecked at his nose. He picked up the letter and saw that it was addressed in Dumbledore's elegant handwriting. It must be his promised severance pay.

He took out the note and saw to his surprise that it was for a sum equal to what his pay would have been for another six months. There was another note in the envelope, on which Dumbledore had written:

Don't disappear, Remus. I may have work for you in the future that no one else can do.

Two weeks earlier, when Lupin had appeared in the headmaster's office to submit his resignation, Dumbledore had looked sad but as if he had been expecting it, and was not disposed to disagree. Lupin was sure that Dumbledore must be angry at him about a number of things that Lupin did not much want to discuss, and Dumbledore may have realized it, for he did not discuss them either. He only told Lupin that he would arrange for a carriage to pick him up, and said, "Write to me when you have an address, Remus, and I will send you a note for your severance pay." He hadn't even dared to ask the amount. Somehow his usual street smarts vanished and he always felt like a schoolboy in the headmaster's presence. The word "severance" had sounded unpleasantly like "Severus," and he continued to feel grimly how the two concepts were linked.

So here it was. Dumbledore probably gave him so much because he knew how difficult it was for Lupin to find work. Maybe he hadn't told him the amount because he didn't think Lupin would have accepted it. Professor Lupin might not have, but Lupin the tramp was glad to have anything he could get his hands on. But what could Dumbledore mean, he might have work for him in the future? What work could Dumbledore have for him except at Hogwarts, where he could never work again? When was the future, might he ask? Why did Dumbledore have to be so bloody mysterious?

Lupin already had some money that he had carefully saved over the past year. When he had first arrived the landlady had looked a bit doubtful at his shabby appearance, but seemed reassured when he paid up front for the first month and said that he was a teacher who had recently been laid off from a school up north, and had come to find work in the city. Since he tended to rise early and could often be seen reading, including the papers, she had no reason to doubt him, in fact she rather liked his sort. She had noticed with some concern during the second week that dark circles were forming under his eyes and he was starting to look anxious and depressed, and she assumed that his job search was not going well and that he was too easily discouraged.

"Good morning, Mr. Lupin," she said bracingly when he appeared downstairs. "It looks to be a nice day, doesn't it?"

"Yes, very nice," he agreed, looking out the window for the second time at a quiet street lit by the morning sun.

"Help yourself to some breakfast," she said, indicating the sideboard, on which was an array of coffee, tea, buns, butter, jam, cheese and fruit.

"Thank you," he said, helping himself and eating hurriedly, for he was anxious to get outside, where he imagined his thoughts would be less depressed. For although it was a great relief to have money, he knew that the relief was temporary, and that the fundamental problems of his life had no solution.

He walked out into the street, and turned into a busier street, and then into another that led in the direction of a local library. He found walking and reading fantasy and children's books to be two activities that helped him keep his head above water. He had always enjoyed the way imaginative Muggles wrote about magical phenomena, from seeds of knowledge that had been planted here and there, mostly in long distant times. Occasional exposure to the real thing long ago had led to certain conventional ideas of magic that the Muggles assumed were not real and yet agreed to pretend to believe in for the purpose of spinning their own yarns around them, which they did with admirable spirit and invention.

"Oy! Magic Man!" called a shabby-looking old man across the street, as if in answer to his thoughts. Although he did not recognize the man, he smiled and waved, for he remembered the name, associated with a hundred scenes he could vaguely remember, mostly in dark and low places, dimly seen as if through a rain-washed window, or more accurately a beer-washed glass.

As he walked, Lupin found himself mulling over the path that had taken him from being the first werewolf ever graduated in that state from Hogwarts, using the best of his considerable magic to fight the world's worst Dark Wizard, to being an anonymous wizard in hiding making a living by pretending to be a Muggle magician doing magic tricks for Muggles.

It began on the second most fateful night of his life, the night that Voldemort disappeared, when Lupin had effectively lost all his friends in one fell swoop. In the weeks that followed, while the rest of the Wizarding World was celebrating the end of the war, Lupin was engulfed in personal tragedy. James and Lily dead? Peter dead? Sirius a lifer in Azkaban? Sirius had betrayed them? Little Harry Potter an orphan, to be raised by Muggles? If Lupin had not been a werewolf, he would have offered to take in the boy himself, but Dumbledore had made up his mind anyway.

Lupin was in shock, but he knew he had to get on with his life. Many witches and wizards had died, and there was much rebuilding to be done. The Ministry of Magic had been especially hard hit, since many of its employees had been under the Imperius Curse, and some had become unable to do their jobs or died fighting on one side or the other. The Ministry was hiring in all departments, and there was talk of setting up an office of Werewolf Support Services in the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures. Like his friends, Lupin had done well in school, and he thought he would be especially well qualified to help with this project, having had some experience of living successfully in the mainstream world in spite of being a werewolf himself. But when he applied to the Ministry, he received a letter back saying that they were not hiring non-human beings at this time, and that since they did not find his name on the Werewolf Registry in the Beast Division, he should register there at once.

Lupin had been graduated from Hogwarts with five N.E.W.T.s. He was a veteran of the war. He was in his human form ninety-eight percent of the time. And the Ministry had called him a "non-human being" and told him to register in the Beast Division, the same division that he knew had an office for "Werewolf Capture," something that he thought he might play a part in phasing out. Why did they want him to register? If it would help him, his parents or Dumbledore would probably have registered him. No doubt the purpose was to make it easier for them to track, capture, regulate and control him. They only wanted him to be an object of the department's operations, not a contributor to them. What they had in mind for the "regulation and control" of werewolves, he did not even want to know. This episode lodged in him a detestation of the Ministry of Magic that left traces on him for the rest of his life.

When he applied for jobs after that, he knew better than to tell them that he was a werewolf, but somehow the news always caught up with him, and invariably resulted in the loss of his job. Once his employer had told him outright the reason for his dismissal, but the others had found some other pretext, although they knew perfectly well that he knew the truth. Witches were afraid to go out with him if they knew, and when he became involved with one without telling her, she was particularly terrified when she found out, because she was afraid that if she broke it off he would come and get her in his wolf state for revenge. He had to break it off himself, and gave up trying, because he could not stand for anyone, least of all a woman, to look at him with such fear.

He did not get over the loss of his school friends, but missed them more and more as his rejections in the outside world mounted. He did remember how at school werewolves had been a subject in Defense Against the Dark Arts class, and how there had been some information on capturing and killing them, and how his friends had ribbed him about it and they had treated it all as a joke. It had never really occurred to him that this had applied to him, and it was a devastating shock to find out that in the real world most witches and wizards did think he was a Dark Creature, not a human being with a "little furry problem" as his friends had affectionately called it.

Soon Lupin no longer remembered what happened when he was in his wolf state, unlike at school, when in his human form he had remembered his wanderings with the Marauders. He knew that this probably meant that the knowledge of what he was doing now was unbearable to him. He began to have nightmares about attacking people, which he knew were probably memories of what he was really doing. After leaving Hogwarts, when they were in the Order of the Phoenix, Padfoot, Prongs and Wormtail had still accompanied him when he transformed. Though they were no longer near the school, they did occasionally encounter someone in the forest, but his friends still kept others safe from him. After the loss of his friends, in his bewilderment and his grief, it did not occur to him that there was any way to make his transformations safer to others.

As things got worse, Lupin took to numbing himself with a continuous intake of Butterbeer. Although Butterbeer in moderate quantities was not intoxicating to humans, it was so in the quantity that Lupin drank it, and he was sensitive to intoxicating substances. There was hardly a waking moment when he did not have one in his hand. And at some point he decided that mainstream wizarding society had no use for him, and he might as well go seek out the other werewolves.

Since no one wanted to employ them, the werewolves mostly supported themselves with criminal activities such as smuggling, petty theft, and reselling of stolen merchandise, although they also did some trading amongst themselves. They socialized in a large underground drinking hole off Knockturn Alley that they called the Den. Here they mostly drank Firewhiskey, gambled at various games, and laughed at the world from which they had been excluded. Most werewolves, unlike Lupin, had some waking memory of themselves in their wolf state, and had come to terms with their attacking of humans. There was a complete absence of women among them, which Lupin did not understand, for he was sure that women and girls sometimes were bitten. This was something about which he got a powerful sense that he was forbidden to inquire.

Humans could be bitten at any stage of life and so become werewolves, so there were others who, like Lupin, had been socialized as regular humans, and yet they were not like Lupin. There were wizards who, like Lupin, had attended Hogwarts in their youth, but unlike Lupin, had been bitten as adults. Eventually Lupin figured out why he was different from the other werewolves. For he had been accepted to Hogwarts as a werewolf, and socialized among non-werewolf human friends who had loved him in spite of knowing what he was. The other werewolves had experienced nothing but rejection from non-werewolf humans once they became werewolves, so they eventually lost their sense of obligation to protect other humans from their attack. Lupin's early experience had left some shred of hope that he would not relinquish: the hope that someday, somehow, he would be accepted into regular wizarding society again.

Lupin was afraid to slip too far into the world of other werewolves, because he was afraid he would become like them and lose the conscience that it was wrong to eat other humans or turn them into werewolves. If he did, he thought that a door would be forever closed behind him, a door through which he still thought he saw some little shaft of light. He also found it necessary to be drinking Butterbeer in every waking moment, and thought that Firewhiskey, if drunk in such a quantity, would literally kill him.

So Lupin supported himself for a while in the criminal underground of the Wizarding World, in which he got some help from his former war comrade Mundungus Fletcher. He started to distance himself from the other werewolves, and they became rather cool to him too, for they knew he thought their values were not as good as his. Lupin was also afraid of slipping too far into a life of crime, because he did not want to harm anyone, and he had not forgotten that he had had as fine an education as any wizard in Britain. He eventually realized there was a more harmless racket for him in the Muggle world, for he had an uncanny ability to entertain Muggles with magic tricks. They would not know he was a werewolf, since Muggles did not believe werewolves really existed. So to the Muggle world Lupin drifted.

He became a member of a traveling carnival show, which mostly consisted of a family, and there was a daughter of the family who was about his age, and they took a liking to each other and became lovers. So for a little while Lupin was in heaven, for he was in a relationship with a woman who was not afraid of him. But she was not stupid, and soon realized that he was hiding things from her. He was much more anxious to avoid a pregnancy than she was, for the family had assured them that a baby would be welcome and well taken care of, but Lupin had never heard of a werewolf fathering a child, and he was afraid the child might have werewolf characteristics. She thought it meant that he was planning to leave her at some point, and she thought he should tell her so.

Even worse were his monthly disappearances at the time of the full moon. She thought that he must be observing some pagan rite or celebration, and since they were all as weird as he was, she didn't understand why he wouldn't include her in it. When he insisted that it was something he must do alone, she began to suspect that he was cheating on her. When he finally told her the truth, she was furious that he would insult her with such a ridiculous alibi. The rest of the family was also angry at his lying to her, and they threw him out.

By this time it came as no surprise to Lupin to lose either his job or his girlfriend, though this was the first time he had achieved both at exactly the same time. He took his broken heart and his magic act to Muggle London, where he soon became a popular figure in the pubs and on the street, for he was an affable fellow, and he carefully restricted his act to the sorts of things that Muggles would not believe impossible for a performing magician, but only believe him to be exceptionally good at. Sometimes a jealous Muggle would violently threaten him for the secrets of his act. If this happened in company he found out it was best to let others defend him, because otherwise he would have been too tempted to defend himself with magic, since this he could have done easily and effectively without harming his assailant. Others did defend him, since most of his audience did not think anyone should steal his act. The fact that he never showed fear or anger at these incidents, but always treated them with mocking good humor, enhanced his image both of cool confidence and of geniality.

He always kept his wand ready under his cloak, and if anyone approached him with a knife when he was alone in an alley, he would expel the man's weapon and Accio it into his hand, and the man would run away terrified, sure that Lupin would do something that he had no intention of doing. This did not endanger Lupin's secret, since the man would not want to tell anyone that he had approached Lupin with a weapon, and if he told them what really happened, they would not believe him anyway. Lupin stayed in low places among low company, while instinctively managing to avoid really dangerous people, and he was too far beneath the notice of the Ministry of Magic for them to swoop down on him for violating the Wizarding Statute of Secrecy.

At some point he realized that he could at least try to make his transformations less dangerous to others by first Apparating to places that were farther from human habitation, bogs and moors and faraway forests where he hoped he might wander all night without finding any prey, although he feared that no places in Britain were far enough from human habitation for a swift and powerful animal looking for prey. He also realized that if he was to avoid hurting others, relationships with women were impossible for him, but there were many women in the Muggle world who would sleep with men for money, and prostitutes would not need to know much about him or expect him to stay with them. Once in a while he made enough to pay someone.

He had a great deal of empathy for lower-class prostitutes, who seemed to be in a position he knew well, on the fringes of society, lonely, looked down on, and unsafe. It saddened him that he could not be closer to them for the very reasons he sought them out, because they would not stay with him and because they did not need to know his secrets, nor he theirs. He knew that their heart was not in their work, which they usually considered a tiresome chore, even if they pretended otherwise. He usually doubted whether his attempts at tenderness were appreciated, let alone reciprocated.

Sometimes in the company of men he heard them talk of how desirable it was to have a different woman as often as possible, or boast of seducing women and ducking out of relationships with them, or talk of losing girlfriends as if they were inanimate objects of little value. He heard married men talk of marriage as a prison into which their wives had lured them, denigrate their wives and boast of their cleverness at deceiving them. And resentment roiled inside of Lupin, for they apparently chose to reject the thing he wanted most but could not have: a love relationship. Why then was he the werewolf, and not they?

He usually woke up from his werewolf nightmares cold and trembling, but once he woke up from one finding to his horror that he had been biting his pillow. He was not sure that his bite was not dangerous even when he was not transformed, and thought he might never be able to sleep with another person without endangering her, and once again he threw up the whole business.

But Lupin was only human, at least most of the time, and a few years later during one of his street performances a pretty woman caught his eye. She had been looking at him in such an arch and knowing way that he thought she might have seen right through his act, if it was possible for such a person to believe in genuine wizards. But he soon found out that she was hoping to be paid to go home with him, and he was both pleased and saddened, because she seemed very intelligent, and he thought she might be able to do better for herself. He wished he could try to go out with her in the normal way, but he had sworn off all seductions, since they invariably led to hurt feelings, and she must need the money, or she wouldn't ask for it. His good impression of her increased as the evening wore on, and he could tell that his attempt at tenderness was being genuinely reciprocated. And finally a question popped out of him that he had learned never to ask: why was she prostituting herself?

She sighed. "I'm an aspiring writer, and I can't get published. I can't help myself spending most of my time writing fiction of a kind that there seems to be no market for. I've gotten into debt, and I found out this was the quickest way I could make a bunch of money. I couldn't find a job in time, with unemployment so high. But what about you? Why isn't as nice a guy as you in a relationship? Don't you know you have a lot to offer besides money?"

"I am a werewolf," he said sadly. "I can't stay anywhere for a month."

"Oh, come on," she said, playfully punching him. "That isn't fair. I told you the truth about myself. You must do the same."

"I am a werewolf," he repeated, looking at her seriously. "I am also a wizard." And he began to tell her his story, as far as he could remember it, and she listened with increasing fascination until the sun was well up. Then she said she had to go, because she needed to eat and sleep and move on her hopeless career, but could she come back tonight, because she wanted to hear more?

"Of course," said Lupin, but after she left it occurred to him that if she took him seriously this might be dangerous. He had never told his real story to a Muggle before, but he wanted to tell it to her. She came back every night for two weeks, and listened with rapt attention and obvious enjoyment as he told her all about the magical world, more about his time at Hogwarts and his Animagus friends, about Diagon Alley lurking in London, about magical creatures and potions, about anything interesting he could think of, including the fight against Voldemort. This she approved because it was an obvious play on Hitler and the Nazis, and she was delighted that not only was he anti-fascist and anti-racist, but that he pointed to the complicity of the aristocracy in supporting fascism, and the reluctance of many establishment people to stand up to it, which meant he was not simply mouthing the party line.

"You are so good!" she said at the end of two weeks. "You're like Scheherazade! I would have come back every night to hear this even if you hadn't paid me!"

"That wouldn't have been fair. I know you need the money."

"But seriously, I mean it. You should be a writer of children's books. You should write this all down and publish it. I swear you would sell a million copies! I know some publishers I could refer you to."

"I can't publish it. In fact, you must never repeat to anyone what I have told you." And he told her about the Wizarding Statute of Secrecy, how it had come about, and how it was enforced.

"Brilliant," she said, clapping, "absolutely brilliant!" For by this time she was convinced that he was a genius.

"You have to start the book that way, because everyone likes to think they are special. You should start with 'You must never repeat to anyone what you read in these pages,' and then tell about the wizarding code of secrecy. The kids will be hooked right from the start!"

He was relieved to be assured that to the end she never doubted that he had made the whole thing up.

"You could really be a successful writer," she said, putting a hand on his arm. "I can help you get started, and when you have a good living, you can marry me, and I won't have any more awful jobs, and I'll get published too. And when we have kids, we can read our stories to our kids--in fact you can simply tell them without--"

But she stopped, because he had turned away to hide his face from her, and she did not know what he was hiding.

"I have to leave tomorrow," he said in a shaking voice. "Tomorrow night is the full moon."

"Oh, I understand," she said in a tone of wounded pride, "I understand perfectly." And she hastily gathered up her things and walked out the door.

Lupin flung himself face down on the bed and wept. He wept uncontrollably until the following afternoon, when he took himself to a lonely field and concentrated on Disapparating farther than he ever had before, to a rocky outcropping on the coast of Scotland. He splinched his leg, and as he leaned against the rock, wounded in body and soul, he stared up at the rising moon as if daring it to frighten him, for he thought his sorrow was beyond the penetration of fear. And for the first time in his life, he thought he saw the man in the moon beaming at him in companionship. And his moan of pain turned to the howl of a wolf...

***

He had been so preoccupied with his memories that he had wandered far from his route to the library and farther east, toward the site of many of his old haunts from those other days.

"It's true!" said a man's voice on the other side of the street, at the end of the block. "He's back!" Lupin looked over and saw that a gaggle of poor and eccentric-looking Muggles were staring at him.

"Paddy told us you were back," said an older woman with untidy hair that looked rather matted, who seemed cheered to see him. "He never lies."

"Eh, Magique Man!" greeted someone else.

"Are you a magician?" said a young woman in black clothes with hair dyed jet black and rings in her ears, nose and eyebrows. "Excellent!"

"Hey Magic Man, are you still a werewolf?" said a man, winking.

"Of course," said Lupin, winking back. "It's waxing three-quarters. I have to get on the ball." He had never hesitated to tell these people he was a werewolf, because they found his consistence in maintaining this, combined with his monthly disappearances, to be an excellent practical joke.

"Come with us!" someone said. "We're going to the cinema!"

"Yes, with us!" said someone else.

Lupin's heart was warmed. He knew better than to wonder why they had nothing to do but go to the cinema on a Tuesday afternoon. It occurred to him that he had money and could treat them all. But fortunately, before he opened his mouth, he remembered that he first had to go to Diagon Alley, deposit Dumbledore's note at Gringotts, and make a withdrawal in the form of Muggle money.

"Not now," he said, grinning. "I'm after a big prize this afternoon. But meet me at George's pub tonight, and I'll buy drinks for you all."

"A prize, eh? Nothing shady, I 'ope, fur-face? 'Aven't descended into a life of crime, 'ave ya? Is that why we haven't seen you for so long? Been in jail?"

"You wound me. I've been hired by a rich family to perform at their daughter's wedding. I drove a hard bargain, because they know I'm the finest magician in town." And he added in a stage whisper, "They don't know I'm a werewolf."

"Tonight, then! See you at George's around eight!"

***

Someone handed a battered-looking Fedora across the table.

"Find anything in here, Magic Man?"

Lupin pulled out his wand and pointed it into the hat, concentrating hard and muttering an incantation. He reached in, pulled out a live mouse, and dangled it by the tail in front of his audience. A few people applauded.

"And what am I bid for this beauty?" he said humorously, for mice were plentiful, and nobody wanted them.

"Sixpence," said one man.

"Ten pence," said another. "It will be a treat most appreciated by my kitty."

"Half a crown!" said another. "I have a kitty too!"

"Half a crown it is," said Lupin, and carefully handed the mouse across the table to the man. Other people started throwing coins into the hat.

Lupin had found his favorite Muggle ale again, and so the night wore on. But as it loosened his feelings, there came a moment when, looking into the faces of all these strangers who considered him a good joke, he knew he had to see the one person alive who knew what he really was and still loved him with his whole heart.

"Sirius," he said aloud, "I must see Sirius."

"It's easy to see Sirius, mate," someone said. "It's the brightest star in the sky."

"As long as the moon ain't too damn bright," said a witty fellow, winking at the other.

Lupin had turned pale and pushed himself away from the table.

***

It was the third night he had come home drunk, and the landlady was worried. He had such an increasingly anguished demeanor that she suspected that this was not just a bit of revelry. Most teachers had their summers off; surely an unemployed teacher would not be so demoralized because he hadn't found a job in two weeks. She was beginning to suspect that he was an alcoholic, and that that was why he had lost his previous job. She had known nice people who were alcoholics, and she felt very sorry for them, but unfortunately she couldn't let them stay in her house, because it caused problems for the other lodgers. She hoped he would get back on his feet before it came to this. She had some literature from AA and she put it in his mailbox, just in case he didn't know where to find them, since he had come from out of town.

***

Lupin sat in his room again, brooding on the near impossibility of finding Sirius and visiting him without giving him away. Why did Sirius still have to be a fugitive? Suddenly he felt a surge of rage and resentment toward that mad dog who had been more interested in killing Peter Pettigrew than in explaining himself to anyone and clearing his own name. Even his beloved Harry would not have known the truth if Lupin hadn't come into the Shrieking Shack that night and insisted, over Sirius's impatient objections, on telling the kids their story. If Sirius hadn't broken into the castle with a knife, terrorizing everyone, he might be a free man today. And the way he dragged poor Ron under the Whomping Willow, breaking his leg, before those bewildered kids had a clue what was going on...

Maybe he should cut Sirius some slack because Sirius had just spent twelve years in Azkaban, where most people did lose their minds. But hadn't he always been the same? Lupin remembered secretly feeling the same rage at his friend at school when he found out that thanks to Sirius, Severus had nearly followed him to the Shrieking Shack at the time of one of his transformations. Sirius had been so keen to get back at Severus that he had not even considered what it would have meant for Lupin if he had killed another student. That selfish, reckless, insensitive...Lupin picked up a pillow and threw it across the room. Sirius had the option of controlling himself and never chose to, while he, Remus Lupin, had always had to walk on eggshells--he threw the other pillow and it hit a vase of flowers on the chest of drawers, causing it to fall to the floor and break with a resounding crash--on eggshells because of a condition that was completely beyond his control.

But maybe Sirius was right that it was Severus's own fault, because Severus already suspected that he was a werewolf, and yet that crazy creep would risk his life following him, just in the hope of getting them all expelled. And he was the same on the night of the Shrieking Shack. If he had just gone to Lupin's office with the potion, how could he forget, if he was going to follow them, to conjure a flask and bring it with him? Because he was so hot to throw Sirius and hopefully Lupin to the dementors that he forgot about everything else. All he had on his mind that night was revenge, not the kids' lives or his own, let alone finding out the truth about who was a murderer and who was working for Voldemort. Sirius and Severus were really the same, willing to throw their lives away for revenge, wanting to kill for revenge, while he, Remus Lupin, who never wanted to harm a hair on anyone's head, why did he have to be the dreaded werewolf?

But wait a minute. He was not innocent. He had been about to join Sirius in killing Peter and destroying their best evidence that Sirius was innocent. Maybe Harry shouldn't have stopped them, because Peter escaped. But Peter escaped because of Lupin's transformation, which ruined everything. It was his responsibility, not Severus's, to remember that he was going to transform. It was he who had run out after Peter and the kids, forgetting all about the potion. If Sirius had not dragged Ron into the Shrieking Shack and the other kids had not followed, they would have been alone with him when he transformed, and he would have bitten or eaten them all! What was Ron's broken leg compared with that? And it was his fault that Sirius gave Severus the key to the Whomping Willow, because he had given it to Sirius! He was not supposed to tell anyone. Dumbledore had trusted him! How could he have trusted a madman like Sirius? It was his own fault, his own fault, miserable, wretched beast...

There was a sharp rap at the door, and Lupin suddenly realized that he had been banging his head against the wall. He froze.

The landlady opened the door. "Mister Lupin, what in heaven's name is going on in here?"

Lupin looked over at the remains of the vase on the floor. "I accidentally broke a vase, I'm so sorry. I'll pay for it directly. Just tell me how much."

"Mr. Lupin," she continued, with a look demanding that he drop all attempt at pretense, "I cannot have drunkenness in this house. I'm sorry, but it will drive away my other lodgers. This is a quiet, respectable establishment. If you come home drunk one more time, I will ask you to look for other accommodations."

Lupin sat on the bed, suddenly looking very sober. "Just give me one more chance. Let me sleep tonight, and please let me talk to you in the morning. I understand your position."

She looked relieved. "Yes, try to get a good night's sleep, Mr. Lupin," she said in an almost maternal tone, "and please let's talk in the morning. If you will make the effort, I am quite willing to work with you, for you are a nice fellow."

***

He sat across the table from the landlady, sharing a pot of tea.

"I think it would be best if I go back up north for a couple of days, because I find a walk in the country does more to clear my head than anything. I still have friends up there. I've fallen into the wrong company here, and I would like to come back and make a fresh start. I need to stay clear of some places I frequented when I lived in town before."

"I think that's an excellent idea, Mr. Lupin. I'll look forward to seeing you when you get back. You know where to find the train schedules, I expect?"

***

Long distance Apparating, along with his transformations, had taken a great physical toll on Lupin, and he sometimes took a train north from London so he would only have to Apparate part of the way. His final destination was now the edge of a forest in the Northwest Highlands of Scotland. He took the train north, pretending to be a Muggle on a pleasant trip, sometimes, as in the past, thinking that maybe he was only what he pretended to be, and postponing as much as possible his awareness of the frightening reality. He spent the night in a bed and breakfast in Edinburgh, and the following day hiking to a place where he could not be seen Disapparating, which he did as evening came on. He arrived under a pine tree by a brook at the edge of his magical forest, and piled his clothes by the tree, where he expected to find them again when he returned to his human state.