Strange Emulsion

Sept. 1

Remus Lupin, now Professor Lupin, settled wearily into the plush seat of the compartment, silently thanking his lucky stars that the porter had allowed him on so early. His transformation was still almost five days away, and already he was feeling the effects of the change in his body. He doubted he could have stayed awake for another moment on the platform. Carrying even his meager bag had been almost too much for him, and Apparating into Hogsmeade was perfectly out of the question. As he slid swiftly into a dreamless sleep, he made a silent wish for quiet cabin mates.

His consciousness rose to the surface but a little each time the door was thrown open, but just as he had suspected, no one seemed to want to share a compartment with a sleeping adult. Finally, it seemed that just three people--two boys, from the voices, probably second years, and a girl who kept shushing them - joined him. He woke briefly when her weight settled on to the bench, but feigned sleep until the real thing came along.

The rolling train was a great asset to both his sleep, and - when they came - to his dreams, all of which took to the rhythm of the metal wheels on the rails. First he was in his wolf form, running through a cool green forest, the scent of pine and his fellows strong in his nostrils, the scents of smaller animals reaching him only incidentally as he ran. Then the light in the forest brightened, and he was running in his human form, dressed to the nines in a sharp dress robe, with all the strength of his youth at his disposal. Now he was running through sparse trees, his hands dappled in sunlight as he pumped his arms, his goal in sight. There, clenched tight to his small fingers, were two golden rings, and he laughed triumphantly as he held them aloft to the small group in the clearing. Lily, who'd been on the verge of tears when he'd left, was laughing, leaning her head in relief on her mother's shoulder. James smiled and shook his head at Sirius, who was managing to look both bashful and relieved at the same time. Trust him to forget something as important as the rings! But now Remus felt he had a role in the wedding as great as the best man's--the savior of the rings. Sirius had given about a dozen rounds of calling out, "Accio!" his very best try, but as Remus pointed out (still breathless) just before the ceremony started, 'Accio' doesn't work if you don't remember precisely where you left the sodding things.

Remus laughed a little, deep in his throat, and the sound startled him awake. Turning his head to the window, he listened carefully to see if any of the children had noticed. They seemed to be talking about him.

"He looks like he could do with some food." It was one of the boys, and Lupin had to admit that he was famished, but it would never do to let them see the tears welling up on the sides of his eyes.

He felt the breath of one of the children on the side of his face. "Professor? Excuse me, Professor?" It was the girl, cautiously trying to wake him.

"Don't worry, dears," the snack witch said. "If he's hungry when he wakes up, I'll be up front with the driver."

Good, good, he thought. He drifted to sleep, riding, it seemed, upon a sea of voices, young voices that rose and fell with the clicking rhythm of the train itself. Every time the door slid open there was a start within him, then a pleasant receding as he realized that he could fall to sleep once more.

A strange, whining type of voice disturbed his slumber, and reluctantly he followed his consciousness to the surface.

"Well, look who it is," the voice by the door said, "Potty and the Weasel." Under his closed lids, Professor Lupin rolled his eyes. Such schoolboy taunts, he thought, bet you wouldn't be so brave if you knew what was in here with you. Yet it seemed that his presence as a teacher was enough to drive them off, and he slept again, the slap of rain on the window a soothing balm.

The cold sounding rain drove his thoughts into warm places like this snug fireside, reading beneath an old, patched quilt. Lamplight colored his light sleep, and the murmurs of the children (so considerate!) were the voices of friends who were just in the other room. He didn't feel as though hours had passed, but soon the train was slowing, and in his lightened sleep his dreams took on a different pace as well.

As the train's speed faltered, his dream self began to run. But this was not the joyous running of the wolf pack, nor was it the breathless, laughing run of the young man. It was a panic stricken run, a crazed scared run that knew no destination, only seeking one thing--his mother.

Branches seemed to reach in from all sides, scratching and tearing at his skin and clothes. Had he become turned around? Where was his mother? He screwed his eyes shut, running blind; calling to her with what little breath he had left.

He stopped, fairly caught in a tangle of brambles and dead limbs. Something was coming towards him, something quick, something with a voice. He stood on his toes and waved his arms, calling to her, overjoyed to hear her familiar voice calling his name. Could she see him? What was she yelling? The trees seemed to be distorting her voice with these awfully confusing echoes, but all he knew or cared about was that she was on her way.

He turned slightly, trying to get a better view of his savior, his mother, when another form made itself known among the branches. The cries of his mother reached him then with a greater clarity, but it was too late. The wolf pounced, and he knew the pain of having his body, his whole complete world, being dismantled, taken to pieces by the teeth of a werewolf.

Perversely, the pain made everything clearer. He heard the triumphant growl of the werewolf, and the anguished tone of his mother, seconds before the white light of her spell engulfed him. The werewolf was banished, but not before rending his arm nearly from its socket.

In his mother's arms, he knew then, he was no longer safe. She quickly applied a pain-relieving spell, but through the resulting numbness he felt that he would always be alone from now on, alone among people who did not know that the borders of the body were not absolute, alone among people who had never been breached and conquered. She bent to kiss him, and he arched away from her.

He arched in his nightmare, and his forehead hit the cold glass. With a start of horror he opened his eyes to find that the cabin was pitch dark, with no gleam of light to banish the horrifying images. Only one thing could bring on that dream, but he couldn't pull his wits together with the jostling and confusion amongst the children.

"Quiet." His voice sounded awful, he thought, as if he hadn't used it for days. "Stay where you are." Murmuring a spell into his cupped hands he walked to the door, hoping to stave off a visit by the only creature that could be responsible for this nightmare, for the residual pain that haunted his scars, but the door flew open before he could touch it.

Behind him he was vaguely aware of a quiet commotion as the children, too young to have ever experienced a dementor before, felt themselves in its grasp.

"Go," he hissed. "None of us is hiding Sirius Black under our cloaks!" He knew it would not listen to the speech of a human, but he had to try, had to try because the only other option might be too much. Yet he knew that one of the children behind him was Harry Potter, and if the dementor could summon one of his earliest memories, there was no doubt that the dementor would have to go, and immediately.

Holding the flame up in one hand, he summoned his wand from inside his robes.

"Expecto Patronum!" He felt the energy draining out of his body as the silver she-wolf, tireless and fierce protector of all her young, leapt from the end of his wand and began circling the dementor.

Stepping through the door, he urged her on, and soon she had corralled half a dozen of them. From the frightened shrieks from other parts of the train, he gathered that other dementors were leaving, going back the way they came. He pushed his group towards the front of the train. With a sound like a great communal hiss of disappointment, the group glided off through the last door before the engine, followed closely by the gleaming wolf.

They seemed to dissolve into the dripping trees; rescinding into a world as wet and unsavory as the gruesome hands they hid beneath their cloaks. Lupin lowered his wand, and the wolf returned to him, leaping on to the already moving train. He reached out a hand, to pet her, to thank her, but just as he knew she would, the silver she-wolf vanished before his touch.

"Thank goodness you were here." He looked to his side; the shaken voice belonged to the snack witch, no longer looking her usual cheery self. "I can't imagine why they would have come on to the train," she said, her face a mixture of fear and disgust.

"They think Sirius Black may be on his way to Hogwarts," Lupin said, feeling that this was only going to be the first of many scares with the dementors. "Though why they think he would be here is ridiculous. Probably just couldn't resist the gathering of so many excited children." He fumbled in his robes for the meager amount of money he had managed to scrape together for the trip.

"Don't worry about it, dear," the snack witch said, pressing a thick slab of chocolate into his hands. "You bring this over to the children in your car, and, here," she reached into the cabinet on the bottom of her trolley, and presented him with an armload of pastille packets. "Better pass these out along the way; it'll be easier for the children than breaking the chocolate up themselves."

"Thank you," Lupin said, swaying slightly on his feet. His own hunger seemed to have vanished in the light of the dementors' presence.

He turned and nearly walked clear into Percy Weasley.

"Excuse me, Professor, I was just coming up to see if I could do anything to help." The young man looked pale, but otherwise capable.

"Eat a few of these," Lupin said, dumping the pile of pastilles into his arms, "and then pass them out among the students, if you would."

"Certainly." Obediently, he opened a tube and shook a couple of the disks into his mouth--he seemed to revive before Lupin had even passed him.

He was back at the compartment in no time--the corridors still being devoid of other students--and found, to his dismay, just what he had expected. Lying on the floor, passed out cold, was James' son.

A ginger haired boy and a girl with rather wild brown hair were kneeling next to him, saying his name in quiet but increasingly panicked voices.

"Go ahead and slap him a little," Lupin said, and the boy patted his face with his palm.

It seemed to do the trick.

"Harry, are you alright?" Despite the cold the dementors sent into his body, it was nothing to seeing Harry look up at him. There before him was the worldly wish that would always remain unfulfilled: the return of the dead. Professor Lupin shook himself quickly. Clearly this boy had nothing more than a great likeness to James, and those were obviously his mother's eyes.

He stood frozen to the spot as he listened to Harry tell the others that he had heard screams, but it would not do for them to know how or why, not now, especially when the youngest girl was obviously so shaken. He snapped the bar of chocolate in half, and they all jumped at the noise.

"Here," he said, breaking off a large piece and handing it to Harry. "Eat it, it will help." Harry was obviously reticent about accepting chocolate from a stranger, and he merely held it while he looked up at Lupin, who was passing the rest of the chocolate around.

"What was that thing?" he asked.

"A dementor," Lupin said, "one of the dementors of Azkaban." Do not, he thought, ask me how or why they do what they do. "Eat," he insisted, "It'll help. I need to speak to the driver, excuse me." He walked calmly past Harry, but did not make it so far as the front of the train. In a quiet bit of the corridor he leaned his head against the wall, clutching the wainscoting for support. Everything seemed a web of confusion. The dementors were only here because of Black, Black was in prison because he betrayed James, and here was James' son, looking for all the world like him, and hearing his mother's last moments, no doubt. A hot bolus of anger seemed to shoot up through him when he thought that it really was Black, after all, who was setting the dementors on Harry and the other children. Would his betrayal never stop?

He only wanted to sink down the wall into a heap on the floor, but his new job was too precious to risk for a moment of nausea on the train. Pulling himself together, the Professor walked back to the compartment, contemplating one thought for perhaps the thousandth time that month--was he going to have to mastermind a little betrayal of his own?