Full Moon

The new Ministry reclassified the Wolfsbane Potion as an essential medical potion, but it did not become available for years, due to the near bankruptcy of the Ministry and the tragic loss to Hogwarts of the most skilled potion-maker in Britain, whose true allegiance was discovered only after his death. But when the new potions master, Professor Brewster, arrived at Hogwarts, McGonagall opened to him the office that Snape had always kept under lock and key even when his job at the school had changed, and Brewster immediately realized that Snape's old office was a treasure trove of rare ingredients and documents and that it would be a crime to cast them aside without examination in order to make room for his own stuff. He asked the headmistress for a small office across from Snape's old one, from where he spent many evenings culling through everything his predecessor had left behind.

Brewster had loved mixing potions ever since he was a boy, and his boyish enthusiasm for it had never really changed. He loved to watch the changes in color and texture as he added ingredients, and was always very excited if he made one for the first time, watching in triumph as each stage turned out as predicted by the recipe. If a step went wrong, he had even more satisfaction if he could pin down the reason, and sometimes unexpected turns led him to develop new potions of his own, though they seldom served any useful purpose. He sometimes jumped up and down with excitement at his results, but this he did not want anyone to see, for he was afraid he would look like a little boy to his colleagues, and they would not take him seriously. He commandeered a Hogwarts dungeon equipped with fires and cauldrons, where outside of teaching, he could practice his potions making in private. There or in class he never wore robes but always an old tweed jacket, because he thought that robes might catch fire, and that their sleeves could fall into potions.

Brewster found that Snape had made many handwritten annotations to potions instructions written by others, as well as having written up original instructions of his own. He soon found that Snape's instructions, when followed, often provided shortcuts or made the making of potions more accurate, and he came to have a great deal of respect for his predecessor. He did notice that Snape had an unusually large collection of material on the Dark Arts for a potions master, but he attributed that to the fact that Snape had been an undercover agent pretending to work for Voldemort.

Sometimes in his class Brewster would write Snape's instructions to the side or at the end of the traditional instructions for the classic potions, with a heading such as "Professor Snape recommends," because he wanted to give credit where it was due. Brewster, who was always very down-to-earth and even-handed with his students, might have been shocked had he known of his esteemed predecessor's behavior in the classroom, but he did hear enough to gather that the former potions master had been a rather odd man.

It was a favorite pastime of the older students, those who could remember him, to argue endlessly about Snape. They discussed everything they or anyone they knew had ever seen Snape do or heard him say, when he did it or said it, what it had really meant, and if and when anyone had realized what it meant. Brewster imagined that as fewer students remained at the school who could remember the man, these discussions would subside at Hogwarts, although many students were so intensely absorbed in them that he thought they might carry them on into their adult lives. But at the school the younger kids were coming up with something he thought would prove a more lasting legacy: they were developing a strategic spy game called "Severus Snape."

Two teams would compete to achieve the same objective, with one kid playing Snape. Snape would participate in the strategizing of both teams, but no one except Snape would know which team Snape was on. The player would write down his or her choice in a secure place after the teams were chosen but before the game started, so Snape could not change sides. Either team could call the game at any time by hazarding a guess as to which side Snape was on, and if they guessed right they would win, and if wrong they would lose. Snape had an incentive to help his or her team win, because in that case he or she got to be Snape again, and it was great fun to be Snape. If the kid was too obvious, either by choosing the team with more of her friends on it, or obviously giving the most help to his team, that team might lose, because the other team might guess correctly, but it might be a ruse, because Snape could be acting as a double agent. The strategic possibilities were endless. The game ended when one team achieved the objective, or when either team made a guess as to which side Snape was on.

This game transcended inter-house rivalries, because the teams wanted to make use of all types of strengths, and did not compete by house. They could use any means to achieve their ends, as long as they did not harm anyone, which was good enough for the younger Slytherins, who were proud of the game because Snape had been a Slytherin. They could use courage, which pleased the Gryffindors, wit, which pleased the Ravenclaws, or diligence, which pleased the Hufflepuffs. And for many years after on the Hogwarts grounds, when the younger kids got tired of trying to make the expected things happen with their wands, or were in the mood for something more collaborative and strategic, and for getting to know kids in other houses, one of them could sometimes be heard to raise the cry of "Let's play Severus Snape!"

***

The night that Brewster was poring through a pile of papers from one of the drawers in Snape's old desk and found a copy of the original recipe for the Wolfsbane Potion, full of handwritten notes in the margins, his heart pounded, because he knew how difficult it had been for anyone to learn the potion, and he realized that Snape's notes might provide a real breakthrough. He knew that between his collection and Snape's, they had all the ingredients for the potion that did not need to be gathered fresh, but that there were three that needed to be gathered within a few months of use from different places at the full moon. Brewster was very eager to try making the potion, but he knew there was no telling how long it might take the Ministry to come up with the money to hire anyone to collect the ingredients. If it was going to be made differently, it would take even longer, because it would technically be a new potion, and he doubted whether anyone else would have as much confidence as he did in Snape's instructions. Brewster could not wait for that. If he made the potion, he could present the evidence. He decided to gather the ingredients himself.

The ingredients were dangerous to obtain, which was the main reason they had always been expensive. One of them, blueworms, lived in the soil under or near Devil's Snare, one of the most dangerous magical plants, but Brewster, being a potions man, knew his Herbology well, and was good enough with fire charms to make it worth the risk. Wolfsbane itself was poisonous and needed to be handled carefully, but that would be the least of his problems. Another plant was needed that grew only in forests frequented by werewolves. He planned to arrive there just after moonrise, when few werewolves would have yet wandered deep into the forest, and he would circle above with his broom to see that nothing was moving there before making a dive for it. So in the months that followed, Brewster quietly took his broom and his life in his hands and successfully gathered the ingredients.

The night that he secretly took everything down to his dungeon to try making the potion, he was almost breathless with excitement. He followed Snape's instructions to the letter, and his excitement grew as at every stage it looked, stirred and smelled just as it was supposed to. When he was finished, and it looked and smelled just as predicted, his heart was pounding as he dipped a ladle in to taste it. It had the uniquely unpleasant taste described in the recipe, and he did not grimace but jumped for joy, for he was sure he had done it. He would take a sample to the apothecary on Diagon Alley and one to St. Mungo's, where there might even be one or two recently bitten werewolves willing to try it.

He was met at St. Mungo's by a plant and potions poisoning expert who was screening new medicinal potions for clinical trials. Brewster could see that the Healer was as eager and excited as he himself had been when he had first found the recipe for the potion.

"Is this it, Professor Brewster?" said the Healer as Brewster handed him a stoppered flask. The Healer uncorked the flask and waved the unpleasant-smelling thing under his nose with an approving expression, as if he were assessing the bouquet of some fine wine. "Smells like it, alright." And then, much to Brewster's surprise, he took out a spoon, poured out a spoonful of the potion and swallowed it, and without a grimace he jumped up and down with excitement. "That's it! That's it! That's just how I remember it! We need to start the clinical trial at once. I'll be the first to volunteer for it, so the werewolves know it isn't poison."

"But sir," protested Brewster, "I'm not at all sure it's safe for humans. As far as I know, only werewolves have ever taken it."

"You have quite mistaken the matter, sir," said the Healer airily, and Brewster had a feeling he was being mocked. "We need to conduct a clinical trial for an essential medical potion so that it can be made available to humans with a serious medical condition. Since these humans have usually been treated as less than such by our society, they are not likely to trust us if we ask them to swallow something we do not dare to ingest ourselves. They may think we are experimenting on them for our own purposes, or worse. We need as many volunteers as possible to make this trial conclusive and convincing."

Brewster, who had always taken the matter very seriously, thought it a bit much to be given such a holier-than-thou speech in response to one ill-chosen word, and he made to go, when the Healer arrested him with a question.

"But tell me, Brewster, where did you get the ingredients? Has the Ministry finally hired someone to start collecting them?"

"I collected them myself. I've always found Professor Snape's notes to be very helpful, and when I found this recipe with his notes, I was so--I knew it might be a breakthrough, because this potion has been very difficult for witches and wizards to learn in the past. I flew myself to gather the ingredients, because I couldn't wait--for the Ministry, they're so slow."

When he glanced back at the Healer, the other wizard's demeanor had changed again, and he was regarding Brewster with such a look of camaraderie in his warm brown eyes that Brewster suddenly realized that this wizard understood him better than most did. He remembered how the Healer had jumped for joy on tasting the potion, and that he himself had done exactly the same thing, only in the privacy of a Hogwarts dungeon. And he realized that the Healer had the same eager enthusiasm for his work that Brewster had, only unlike Brewster, saw no reason not to wear it on his sleeve.

"Thank you, Professor Brewster," said the Healer earnestly. "You've done us a tremendous service."

"My pleasure, Healer Gillyfeld."

***

The clinical trial was conclusive and convincing, and St. Mungo's put in a large order to the apothecaries for the Wolfsbane Potion. The Ministry finally allocated the funds necessary for the collection of the ingredients, and there were enough daredevils and witches and wizards in need of more pay that employees for the task could be found. During the trial, the potion had no other effect on Gillyfeld than to make him ill on the night of the full moon, but he was not satisfied, because he saw that it made the werewolves ill, and did nothing to slow their premature aging. Gillyfeld did not see why werewolves should suffer any more than anyone else, and he secretly tried to modify the potion, testing it first on himself, for he was confident that he had the antidote to everything in his arsenal, and in an emergency could always swallow a bezoar.

As the potion was becoming more available, the Ministry finally decreed a ban on employment discrimination against werewolves, mainly thanks to the efforts of the brilliant and indefatigable Hermione Granger, who had chosen a career in the Creatures Department of the Ministry, from where she hoped she could be most effective in ending house-elf slavery. This proved to be her most intractable problem, because the house-elves would not yet claim freedom for themselves, and change could not come only from the top. But Hermione had many other things to accomplish.

She learned all the languages quickly was not afraid to go anywhere, and she became so effective in dealing with other beings that her rise within the department could not be stopped, despite the fact that she always told the truth about everything wizards had always done wrong. The other beings knew that no one from the Ministry had ever bothered to find out so much about them, and that this came from her empathetic nature as much as her intelligence. Eventually she became head of the department, from which post she determined to see to it that no other beings would ever have reason to be recruited by a movement like Voldemort's. Under her leadership, any werewolf could obtain the Wolfsbane Potion for free through Werewolf Support Services, which also acted as an employment agency, offered free counseling and legal help, and did outreach to those who might not know about it.

***

The morning that Andromeda Tonks showed up at The Burrow at dawn to find her grandson, it was Arthur Weasley who opened the door, and he nervously hid her in a spare room so he could prepare Molly for the event. Molly had been angry with Andromeda for abandoning the baby, though happy to take care of him, but soon everyone found Andromeda so much recovered that they realized that her absence must have been necessary for the healing of her grief. She must have flown off somewhere unplanned for a change of scene, and no one judged her, as such behavior was typical of witches. The Weasleys, however, insisted that she stay with them for at least a week to make sure she really was in her right mind before returning the baby to her.

Andromeda told Harry privately that in a few years, when he was more settled, he could adopt the baby if he wished, as long as she could visit as often as she wanted to and would be the babysitter of choice. She knew that Teddy had bonded more to Harry than to her during his first year of life, since Harry had paid more attention to him. "And you know, Harry," she said to him seriously, "we always have a special tie to those we bond with during the first year of life, which helps to make us who we are, whatever happens later."

A few years later Harry was overjoyed to adopt Teddy Lupin, for his generous heart could conceive no greater joy than to make sure that this orphan's childhood would be nothing like his own had been. As the boy grew up, Harry often told him how brave his parents had been, not only in battle but in standing up to social pressure, for his father had led a different life from the other werewolves because of his conscience, while his mother had defied, or rather ignored, social convention by marrying him. Harry also liked to tell Teddy the story of how his father had saved Harry's life in a battle in the Ministry's Department of Mysteries by forcibly stopping Harry from following his own godfather across the veil of death, when Harry had been unable to face the fact that Sirius was dead. Harry advised Teddy that if Harry should die, Teddy should not try to follow him, but in case he did try that, or any other very foolish thing, the best he could hope for was to have as quick and level-headed a friend at his back as Harry had had in Remus Lupin.

***

In recent years there has been serious talk among Muggles of reintroducing wolves to the highlands of Scotland. The Sorceresses are cackling. The Wizarding World is not excited about it, because their fear of werewolves has prejudiced them against true wolves. The Muggles may be smarter this time.