Rating:
PG
House:
The Dark Arts
Ships:
Remus Lupin/Sirius Black
Characters:
Remus Lupin Sirius Black Harry and Hermione and Ron
Genres:
Drama Romance
Era:
The Harry Potter at Hogwarts Years
Spoilers:
Prizoner of Azkaban
Stats:
Published: 12/03/2004
Updated: 06/24/2013
Words: 120,615
Chapters: 65
Hits: 86,935

Another Prisoner, Another Professor

Marauder

Story Summary:
AU. In Harry's third year he must learn the various truths about the new DADA teacher, Professor Black, and an escaped convict, Remus Lupin. SB/RL.

Chapter 22 - Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Summary:
Harry reads about werewolves and ponders the psychology of one particular lycanthropy sufferer.
Posted:
08/13/2007
Hits:
1,438
Author's Note:
Hi, guys, I'm sorry it's been so long between updates. I tried to write this chapter about seven times before I got it right. Lots of you have offered your theories on the identities of Eris, Ares, et cetera, and though many of you have come close to identifying all of them, no one's got it 100% right yet. Something to think about while you wait for the next chapter! :)


That night and the next day, Harry immersed himself in the book about werewolves; it was a far better alternative than researching his essay on Shrinking Solutions, which Hermione prodded him to do during the rare moments that she wasn't frantically flipping the pages of her Arithmancy books and jotting down anything that looked as though it might be of some use. He couldn't say exactly what it was, but something about the book seemed to pull him in. He even found himself thinking about it during classes and impatiently counting down the minutes until he could return to reading it.

Werewolves could be wizards or Muggles, though they were usually wizards, and turned into wolves at the full moon, something Dudley's monster films had got right. Until the full moon had ended they were ravenous for human flesh and would bite any person they came across, their minds animalistic and without human reason. The book insisted, though, that during the rest of the month werewolves were just like other people, and that the ones with magical abilities were just as sane and capable of doing magic as other wizards. ("Though sometimes that's not saying much," said Ron, who had quit writing his History of Magic essay on Ludwig the Loony to read over Harry's shoulder.)

As far as Harry could tell, there was nothing about Lupin's being a werewolf that would make him more dangerous if Harry met him during the rest of the lunar cycle. Though he had told Hermione he would learn everything he could about the dangers of werewolves, Harry kept skipping to other parts of the book. Werewolf children, he read, tended to have one of two reactions to their condition: either they tried desperately to fit in and be seen as normal, or they completely rejected full humans and in time grew to hate them. Harry couldn't decide which one Lupin had been; based on what Stan Shunpike had told him, Lupin must have become a werewolf before he was eleven years old. Had Lupin wanted to belong so badly that he would join any group that was willing to accept him, even the Death Eaters? Or had he loathed the wizards around him and hoped to use what they had taught him to destroy them one day?

"How do you become a werewolf, anyway?" Ron asked. They were sitting at a table in the common room as Hermione worked on her essay. She was very irritable; the common room was noisy and Oliver Wood, wanting to concentrate on drawing his diagrams for the next Quidditch match, had taken back his earmuffs. Every time Ron or Harry suggested she could move her things to the library, she snapped that she had almost finished and besides, it would take her too long to move her three different books and four different charts.

"You ought to know that, Ron," she said impatiently, her finger moving back and forth from one chart to the other. "Quirrell told us that back in first year."

"Like I remember anything Quirrell said," Ron retorted. "You couldn't think of anything in that room except garlic, the way it smelled."

"You have to be bitten by one," said Harry, turning the page. He wanted to read as much as he could in case Professor Black was ready to start his anti-dementor lessons the next day.

Black was true to his word; the following afternoon he pulled Harry aside after class and told him he'd figured out a way that Harry could start learning to fight the dementors. "I should tell you right now that it may not work," he said to Harry as the rest of the class filed out of the room. Harry could see Ron and Hermione waiting for him just past the doorway. "But it's worth a shot. If it doesn't work, I'll think up something else. Can you meet me in my office at eight o'clock?"

"Okay," Harry said. He tried to think of what the idea might be; Black had told him that they couldn't start with real dementors, but they must have to start with some other sort of creature. For a split second he pictured himself battling a miniature dementor the size of Professor Flitwick.

"I know you don't want to look at those records Snape told you about," said Ron as they walked back to Gryffindor Tower, his voice low so Hermione wouldn't hear him. Harry was grateful that Ron hadn't mentioned the records to Hermione, as he knew she would be upset to hear that he had purposefully refused to read something that might tell him more about Lupin. He still wholeheartedly believed that Snape could have had no good reason for telling him about the records; since when had Snape tried to make his life any easier? "But did you look up that potion Snape told Dumbledore about? The thing that was in the goblet? I mean, if Dumbledore knows about it, it's not just Snape - "

Harry found the Wolfsbane Potion in the index and turned to the right page. Invented in 1986, the passage read, the Wolfsbane Potion enables a werewolf to maintain his human mind during the full moon. Though he will inevitably turn into a wolf, the potion makes him no longer dangerous to humans, provided he has no malicious intent towards them while in human form. Unfortunately, a werewolf who bears ill will towards full humans can use the Wolfsbane Potion for his own harmful purposes. As a wolf with a human's mind, he can purposely attack specific victims, as opposed to being overcome with the werewolf's usual madness and assaulting anyone in his path. The Wolfsbane Potion must be taken in the week before the full moon -

Hermione had been reading along with Harry; she looked at him, her face white. "You realize what this means, don't you?" she said. "If Lupin's drinking the Wolfsbane Potion in the week before the full moon, he'll still be sane and remember that he wants to - "

" - get me," Harry finished. A sudden, horrid thought struck him. "Hermione - Hermione, he must want to make me a werewolf. If he just wanted to kill me, he could do it as a wizard, couldn't he? But if he wants to stay sane during the full moon, there's something he has to do as a wolf..." There was a sick feeling of dread in his stomach. So that was Lupin's plan. He didn't just want to murder Harry and avenge Voldemort - he wanted to make him suffer, as he, Lupin, had been made to suffer...

"We don't know if that's true," said Hermione hurriedly.

"Well, what else could it be? If he wanted to kill me all he'd have to do was whip out his wand and do it, but that's not what he wants to do. Either he wants to make me a werewolf..."

"Or he wants to be able to rip you apart with his fangs," said Ron quietly.

They looked at each other silently, Hermione's face still white, Ron's a pale shade of green. Harry felt for the couch behind him and sank down onto it. If Lupin found him he would be dead or else made to live a life so horrible that it could lead someone to this, could lead them to hate a person so much they would write his name in their own blood and break out of the most heavily-guarded place in the wizarding world to kill him...

"I've just thought of something," said Hermione suddenly. "You said that Snape said that the Wolfsbane Potion was invented while Lupin was in Azkaban, didn't you? If this book was written after the potion was invented, it was written after Lupin had been sent to prison. Maybe there's something about him in the book..."

Lupin, Remus J., read the index. Page 189.

Remus J. Lupin, b. 1960, is most famous for killing thirteen people with a single curse, presumably on the orders of He Who Must Not Be Named. Currently serving a life sentence in Azkaban, Lupin previously taught Defense Against the Dark Arts at The Schwartz Academy for Lycanthropic Wizards in Berlin.

That was the end of the paragraph on Lupin. The rest of the page had more short paragraphs about other famous werewolves.

"Wow," said Ron, looking up at Harry and Hermione. "Imagine having Lupin as your teacher."