Crown of the North

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The Student who Taught

Monday 3 September - Friday 2 November 1984

Nottingham; Hamilton, Lanarkshire; Hogsmeade, The Grampians; Ecclesall, Sheffield.

Rated PG for adult concerns (careers preparation and spouse-hunting) and coarse language.

As Remus realised on the first day of the autumn term, he was about to carry off a whopping deception. The forged A levels were only the beginning of the story. He didn't even know if he looked like a Muggle. There was no mirror in his house, so he had no idea what he looked like in the jeans and windcheater that he had bought three years ago when he was working on Muggle farms. Even if he looked like a Muggle, did he really look like a student-Muggle? Did he even own the right kind of briefcase? Would he be given away by his pencil box, by his scrap paper, by the notes he had already taken?

On the first day he walked to college, but he caught himself thinking that for tomorrow he must look out a suitable Apparition point. Think again. How many thousands of students attend this college? There might be a place - a broom cupboard or the gents' toilets - from which he could Disapparate home, but there could never be a spot so isolated that he could safely Apparate there in the mornings.

A glance around the lecture theatre showed him that he needn't have worried about his clothes. Although he did see a girl with green spiked hair, a boy with a safety pin through his nose, and another girl in a long flowing gipsy skirt, most of the students wore jeans and windcheaters exactly like his. Instead, he should have worried about his age; among so many school-leavers, anyone who looked over twenty was conspicuous. There was a handful of mature-age students, and they were a very distinctive group - a woman in a business suit, another who was showing off wallet-photographs of her children, a fat woman in a faded track suit who was explaining to both of them that she was still recovering from a long illness - all sitting a little apart from the young people. He also realised there were five women to every man; being male made him conspicuous too.

If he wanted to hide among the Muggles, he would have to be a very quiet student.

It was easy enough to keep quiet in a lecture theatre. He sat and took notes, inferring from the murmurs around him that none of the other students knew any more than he did about the theory of the acquisition of literacy. It was harder to be quiet in a tutorial. There was a ripple of laughter when the tutor called his name from the register, and one of the girls giggled, "So where's Romulus?"

When the tutor asked, "What are the chief methods of teaching reading?" she was, predictably, greeted by a stony silence; they had heard the chief methods an hour ago in the lecture, but no one admitted to remembering. Remus knew the answer, but it was more than his life was worth to volunteer it. At Hogwarts he had played stupid in class to oblige James and Sirius; now he played stupid to avoid being noticed at all.

Being a quiet student carried him through his first two weeks. He knew that he was throwing marks away - class participation accounted for ten percent of the final result - but he couldn't afford to attract a reputation as a brainy student. He responded minimally to his classmates' greetings, supplied minimal answers to his tutors' direct questions, spent lunch breaks in the library, then Disapparated home at the end of the day in order to spend the evening organising his notes, reading for the next week's lectures and making an early start on his essays. Even when he had to miss a day to be "sick", no one asked him about it; among a hundred students, no one even noticed that he had been missing.

He nearly blew his cover in the third week, when the student sitting next to him glanced at his folder and exclaimed, "Goodness, do you type out your notes?" He had placed a Tipografia charm on his précis of the previous week's lecture to make it easier to read.

The girl glanced at his transcript, apparently neatly typed, and said, "You take really good notes. How did you manage to write so much so fast?"

All Hogwarts students learned to take good notes; one could scarcely learn anything in Professor Binns' lessons otherwise; but Remus could hardly admit that he had learned the skill from a ghost. Instead, he blundered into, "You're welcome to take a Zerocso… " before he knew what he was saying. He couldn't believe himself. Despite having gone to Muggle primary school, he had forgotten the correct way to speak to Muggles. Fortunately the Muggles also had a concept named "Xerox", so the student only nodded.

On the way out of the lecture theatre, Remus heard the same girl chattering to her friend. "That Remus Lupin isn't nearly as stand-offish as we thought. Perhaps he's just shy; he was quite friendly to me today."

Mortified, Remus realised he now had two things to remember. He must never relax his guard in playing Muggle. At the same time, being "quiet" would be misunderstood as being "unfriendly". And he had to learn to be friendly with Muggles if he was to work with them in the future.

He tried to remember when he had last made a friend. He had been quite withdrawn at his Muggle primary school and he hadn't made any real friends there. At Hogwarts he hadn't needed a strategy; James Potter had made most of the friendly advances, so Remus hadn't so much made friends as been befriended. He couldn't even remember how he had fallen into friendship with Ariadne because it had seemed so natural; they had just talked.

But how did he "just talk" when there was so much that he could not say?

The male students devoted a great deal of time to discussing football. They allowed Remus to occupy a seat at a cafeteria table and listen to them for hours. But there was always one student in the group who was too friendly to ignore him; in the end someone always asked him about League standings or goalie tactics or fan violence, and he had to confess his ignorance.

"Whom do you support, then? Are you Forest or County?"

It would be a major social gaffe to admit that he did not know the difference; but what did these young men find to say to a person who didn't understand football? One of the girls said, "Oh, football bores me silly. I don't have a team," and she was instantly surrounded by avid fans, determined to convert her to the rival merits of Aston Villa, Manchester United and Chelsea. Remus had never even followed Quidditch with that kind of passion; his early, half-hearted interest in the Appleby Arrows had long since been transferred to the Pride of Portree.

In mixed company, the conversation turned to politics. Everyone had a great deal to say on the doings of the Muggle Prime Minister. Remus had to think twice to remember her name; he had no idea whether she had really saved the economy, or whether the price had been too high, or whether it mattered. He wondered if he should take to reading Muggle newspapers, but that would be yet another outlay of time and money. The Muggle students talked about their Prime Minister in terms so similar to wizards' talk about Madam Bagnold that Remus was once on the point of stating that "the Minister has been libelled by Death Eaters because she hunts them down". He remembered in time that the person under discussion was not Bagnold, and declined to have a view on politics.

He did no better on the subject of music. He had never heard of Chicago or The Police, and had to confess that he didn't know which song was "number five on the charts this week".

"Come off it, you must know," said a giggling brunette.

"Oh, his sort never knows," said a bespectacled girl who was looking up from a large book. "I expect Remus prefers classical. Is it Beethoven or Mozart, Remus?"

"Which do you like?" He turned the tables.

The girl blushed and admitted to Haydn; on pressing, she added that she played the clarinet. The truth was that Remus didn't know much about classical music either; Ariadne had liked mediaeval and Renaissance. His mother's parents had owned a gramophone, but someone had told him that no one used gramophones any more; he had forgotten the name of the modern device that they did use.

More common than any of these topics was the universal question: "Did you see that programme on the Telly last night?" That cartoon, that quiz show, that football match, that documentary, that drama… Students didn't seem to mind admitting that they had watched Noah and Nellie with their younger siblings; some of them even admitted that they had watched an adaptation of Shakespeare; and they watched every shade of culture (or lack of it) in between. Remus didn't understand how they watched so much Telly and still finished their homework.

Remus knew what a Telly was; both pairs of grandparents had owned one; he had even watched Play School or Blue Peter occasionally. But that had been a long time ago; his paternal grandmother had in fact sold her Telly before the period when he had lived with her, so he hadn't watched one since he first went to Hogwarts. He cautiously offered, "I don't have a Telly at home. I can't afford it right now," and was greeted by howls of disbelief.

"Come off it, you can pick up a second-hand one for twenty quid." Four Galleons, he mentally translated.

"Can't you go and watch at a friend's house?"

"I'll sell you our third one. It's only black and white. We were thinking of getting rid of it."

"Everyone has a Telly!"

"I read somewhere that more people in Britain have Tellies in their houses than have bathrooms… no, I remember now, I didn't read it, I saw it on the Telly… "

"Oh, that's gross! Some people are too poor to own a bath - but they still have a Telly?"

"Yep, that's what the stats say."

"Remus, you are chasing a majorly Alternative lifestyle."

Obviously he could not explain to Muggles how very accurate a remark that was. He quickly realised that he did not understand anything about any aspect of Muggle culture at any level and that admitting he did not understand exposed him as different.

Perhaps the coursework would be a safe conversational topic. "How are you doing with the essay?" sounded innocent, but it was greeted with, "What, have you started already?" When the woman in the business suit imprudently admitted that she too had started the essay, the green-haired girl immediately acknowledged, "Ah, the class swots." By the time the first round of essays was due - long before they were marked - everyone knew who the top ten students were. Remus was one of them, once again exposed as different.

One day he heard the girl next to him promise her friend, "We're in luck; I managed to find it in the library this morning - I'll make you photocopies this afternoon."

Immediately attracted to her soft Scottish burr, Remus took a risk in asking both girls, "Did you understand what Dr Fogg was saying about assimilation and accommodation?" It was a risk because, for all he knew, every Muggle understood assimilation and accommodation, but he never found out.

The Scottish girl spat out, "A psychiatric patient makes more sense than Dr Fogg!" Her tone was flat and nasal, quite devoid of Highland lilt. "His mind is like a sheep's backside; he wouldn't have needed to use both his brain cells to give that lecture."

Her friend laughed; no one looked surprised. Apparently the malice of the remark was exonerated by its humour. This, Remus knew, was not a Muggle thing; Peter Pettigrew had laughed in much the same way when Sirius Black had made that sort of remark about Snape. (And Remus himself had most shamefully pretended that he had not heard.) But he must have changed since his schooldays, for he could no longer ignore it so easily. Ariadne would never have made or laughed at that kind of joke.

I must not think of her.

It seemed to take a long time to find and settle into a group who were friendly but not too interested in his personal peculiarities. He knew that many wizards did have Muggle friends; some wizards even married Muggles. But he did not understand how they managed it. There was so much that he should know but didn't that it added up to: It will take me a long time to know these people. There was so much more that could never be told - the general secrets of the wizarding world as well as the personal secrets about himself - that it was fair to add: These people will never know me at all.

* * * * * * *

By the time the students began to work seriously on their second round of essays, Remus was beginning to feel that he had found a comfortable relationship with his classmates, friendly but not friends. But even then, he found he was misreading all the cues. One morning Nicky - the student with the Scottish accent - offered him a share in her umbrella (it had been a very wet autumn). Having accepted her offer, it was only polite to ask after her essays.

She replied, with some force, that Dr Fogg's essay on the theories of Piaget had wrecked her life, and she called Dr Fogg a few names that were worthy of Severus Snape himself.

They were twenty minutes early for the first lecture, so they stopped by a vending machine to buy a cheap and nasty cup of coffee. Nicky was short of change, so Remus handed her some of his without really thinking about it. He definitely preferred tea. They sat down to drink, and she continued her venting against Dr Fogg.

"So, enough of that," she said suddenly. "We know that everybody feels the same way about the beef-witted bastard. What are you doing on the weekend?"

"The same as you - writing."

"Yes, but what else? Why do you not take me to the pictures on Friday evening?"

It took him a moment to understand what she meant. "Pictures" did not mean an art gallery; it was a Telly-type entertainment that Muggles visited in a building called a Cinema. It took another moment to register that she hadn't asked him to "go with her", but to "take her". And that meant… Women didn't often proposition him like that, but some kind of proposition it certainly was.

"Nicky," he said, "I don't take people to the pictures."

"Not ever?" Fortunately her scowl was half-humorous. "You're no fun at all. Why not?"

"Lots of reasons, of which the most immediate is the essay I have due this Monday."

"You have not an essay due every week. The lasses are in competition, you know, for who will be the first to go out with you."

He swallowed his shock. She was probably exaggerating. "I can't believe you're all that desperate," he said.

"Oh, lighten up, it's not desperation, it's for fun. There are only sixteen men on this course, and one is married and five already have girlfriends. That leaves about sixty women speculating on only ten men. Of course you've been noticed."

He wanted to ask if her speculating friends had put her up to asking him out, but couldn't decide whether "yes" or "no" would be a more worrying answer.

"I'm flattered," he said briefly, "but, since you've been the one brave enough to approach me, perhaps you should have the honour of spreading the word that I'm not looking for a girlfriend at present."

One week later, Nicky found herself a boyfriend; she had discovered that the engineering faculty was a well-stocked pond. But it was not the end of girls approaching Remus. If Nicky had passed on his message, her peers had not believed her. They no longer accused him of being "unfriendly"; with no acknowledgement of any kind of middle ground, they considered him fair game.

Claire, the girl with green hair, invited him to a disco three times before she accepted that his refusal was serious.

Melanie, the girl in the gipsy skirt, offered him home-made soap and New Age music tapes before inviting him to her house so that she could read his Tarot cards. Remus thought immediately of Ariadne quoting Professor Vablatsky, who had apparently taught her Divination class that the Tarot never worked for Muggles, and that set off a train of thought, wondering if Ariadne had ever followed up her suspicions that Veleta Vablatsky was still alive, and whether she was doing so safely… He reminded himself that he was supposed to be listening to Melanie, and blurted out an abrupt, "Sorry, but divination isn't my thing." Watch your language, rebuked the mentor in his brain. The Muggles don't usually call it "divination".

Jackie, the girl who played the clarinet, mentioned casually that she had a spare ticket to a concert. Remus had been practising his put-down line, and he managed to tell her with reasonable adroitness, "Why don't you offer it to one of the engineering students?"

Samantha, the giggling brunette, giggled to her friends that she was going out to dinner with Brian. "In a real restaurant, with penguin-suit waiters and à la carte menu." For the ten minutes until the tutorial began, Samantha was the centre of attention. Apparently it was a major coup to have attracted a dinner invitation from Brian. Then Remus remembered who Brian was. He was a mature-aged student, aged well into his fifties, and divorced. For a moment Remus couldn't understand why he would be chasing a girl of eighteen, or why Samantha would be so obviously flattered at being chased. Then he was disgusted with himself; after all, he had pursued a girl even younger than Samantha.

Then he remembered that adult Muggles aged much faster than wizards. Brian looked fifty-five to Remus, but he was probably only forty-five. That raised the interesting question: how old do I look to the Muggles? He was twenty-five, but perhaps the girls thought he was only twenty? That might explain why none of them had written him off as too old. He made sure that a rumour about his real age was floated that day.

The next day he was accosted by Valerie, the woman in the business suit. She steered him into the cafeteria and bought him coffee, real coffee from the percolator, not the imitation from the vending machine. She approached him cleverly, asking his opinion on the theories of Phonics and Whole Language, sounding out which references he had found most helpful for their essay, before letting slip that she was only twenty-nine and that she would have time on her hands once this blasted essay was out of the way…

Remus counted that there were eighty-four women enrolled in the course, of whom seven were married and at least twenty must have a boyfriend already; so once the other fifty-seven had asked him out, that would be the end of it. He had not once had to remind himself that werewolves did not have girlfriends, for none of the propositions had been in the least tempting. They had only emphasised the yawning gulf between what he really was and what he was pretending to be.

Fortunately, the word about his aloof attitude spread through the grapevine, and only three other girls asked him out before they collectively gave up on him. Serious essay-panic was setting in, and students huddled over tables in the library or the cafeteria to swap references and clarify ideas.

"Did anyone understand that part about phonemic awareness?" wailed Claire.

"Remus did," said Valerie. "Tell them, Remus."

"It's about being able to hear the separate sounds that make up a word. Hearing that ‘cat' is C and A and T."

"Oh, you mean it's about a spoken word and not a written one," said Claire. "But can't just about anyone who isn't deaf hear that much?"

"Small children can't. They can understand a whole word without recognising that it consists of different sounds."

"So what's the point of this non-words decoding business?" asked Simon, the boy with the safety pin in his nose.

Remus explained decoding assessment concisely. He was half aware that not only Simon, but every student at the table, had eyes on him. But it was only when he saw that Claire was taking notes that he realised what was happening.

He was teaching.

Dr Fogg was a blundering, verbose, confusing teacher. However Nicky had over-reacted to his lectures, there was no question that her criticisms had been essentially justified. Remus felt that if he claimed to be a better teacher than Dr Fogg, he was not claiming very much.

And, apparently, his classmates found him a better teacher than Dr Fogg too.

After that the other students had plenty to say to Remus. They met every day to discuss their homework, and he slid effortlessly into playing teacher. He wasn't the only person who could explain better than Dr Fogg - often Valerie or Jackie knew the work as well as he did - but, somehow, the other students deferred to his judgment. His peculiar personal habits were forgotten, and there was no further need to discuss them. Keeping a professional distance felt as natural in his relationship with the Muggle education students as it had felt unnatural with Ariadne.