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The nausea of the potion continued to haunt Lupin, so he decided to talk to Snape about it. He steeled himself and went down to the Potion Master’s dungeon office that evening when Snape was sure to be there. He found him stirring the cauldron that he presumed contained the Wolfsbane Potion.
"Ah, Professor Snape." He said as a way of greeting.
"Lupin." Came the terse reply. Snape didn’t turn, but continued stirring the cauldron, and adding a noxweed powder into the softly simmering liquid by streaming it slowly between his fingers in a dramatic height from the rim so that it fell, catching the flicker of the firelight, and hissed softly as it touched the surface. Snape was a man about theatrics, Lupin decided. Maybe that was why he didn’t appreciate his talent in potions as much as he could have. There was less flair in a cauldron than with a wand.
"I wanted to thank you for the dose that you brought me." Lupin said closing the door, and trying to decide how to proceed without sounding critical. "It was…uh…invigorating."
Snape turned finally with a sneer. "Really?"
"Yes, well, I did want to ask if there were anything that we could do about the taste though. It’s a little repelling." He tread softly onward as Snape’s sneer didn’t deepen. "Perhaps if we added some sugar?"
"Ridiculous!" Snape spat.
For a wild minute Lupin thought he’d been accusing him about the boggart again, and had muttered the jinx to deflect one, but he quickly realized he was mistaken when Snape continued, "Sugar would totally counter the reaction of the sodium. You shouldn’t try to improve upon something you can’t even understand."
Lupin smiled blandly. "Of course, I bend to your aptitude on the subject, Snape. I was merely asking if we could do something about the flavor, or more importantly, the nausea it produces. You probably know better than I."
He watched the emotions passing through Snape’s face as his mouth twisted from a sneer to a twitching smile, and back again. The compliments seemed to soothe him though as he replied, "I’ll see to it. I can’t promise you a lovely lemonade, though I might be able to take the edge off a bit by adding some thistle, perhaps chamomile." He turned and quickly scooped a cup of liquid out of the cauldron, adding a few more pinches of powders to the glass from the different bottles on his shelves.
"Try this." He thrust the cup forward, his eyes narrow and hungry looking.
Lupin couldn’t help the flicker of panic that crossed his face. It had been horrible enough to swallow alone. He wasn’t sure he could endure it in front of his chief antagonist. The vindictive smile on Snape’s face widened as he whispered "Of course, if you aren’t willing to try this remedy…there are other ways. It makes one wonder if you really have taken the previous dose."
Lupin felt quite cornered and impatient at the same time. He took the goblet from Snape and tried to keep his hand steady as he continued watching his foe. "If you feel that you need to survey my treatments, we have reached a measure of impassable distrust."
He waited for a kind of response from Snape before continuing. "I need to trust you to make the potion correctly, and make it so that I can comfortably consume it." Snape’s eyes narrowed. "And you need to trust me to take it, promptly and correctly." Snape sucked in his breath but remained quiet, so Lupin continued. "I truly wish to put our school days behind us so that we may work side by side. Our goals are, after all, the same."
This was too much, and Snape flung out his hand hitting Lupin’s chest and pushing him back. He managed to keep his feet under him and not spill the potion, though he got a whiff of the smoke coming from it, and it smelled, if anything, worse than before.
"How dare you!" Snape screeched. He had turned a violent shade of scarlet, and Lupin stared calmly at him as he lowered his voice and continued in a cold and menacing tone. "How dare you! You,…are…"
What Snape might have said, Lupin never found out, for at that moment the door behind him opened forcefully, knocking Lupin forward and spilling the goblet’s contents all over himself, Snape, and the floor.
The unlucky student who stood framed in the doorway, was sure his life was about to expire. The wrath twisting his Professor’s face was surely his fault. But he only screeched at him to go away, calling him stupid, and other names. He turned quickly to obey, and his luck continued in its bad way as he ran right into Professor McGonagall, knocking her off balance, and into the wall. He watched in horror as she bounced off the door frame and right into the room, slipping spectacularly all the way down to the stone floor. Before anyone could take points, detentions, or just plain yell, his brain registered one thing to his feet, and he fled.
Professor Lupin bent immediately and scooped the Deputy Headmistress back onto her feet, as both men inquired as to whether or not she were hurt.
"Well!" She said, surveying her surroundings, her cheeks were red, but Lupin couldn’t tell if it was embarrassment, or anger. "Well." She repeated brushing off her robes and frowning slightly, looking out the door into the now empty hallway. "I’m fine."
Lupin was aware that he and Snape were dripping, and the slippery floor, which had caused the fall, was somewhat incriminating. He smoothly interjected with "Ah, Professor Snape and I were…interrupted, um, he was giving me another dose. I was a bit careless with the glass I’m afraid. Are you sure you’re all right?"
"Yes, yes, I’m fine. I was actually coming down to speak to you, Snape, but I also need to speak with you Lupin." She assumed her business like tone of Deputy Headmistress, and Lupin found himself standing a little straighter under her authoritative glare.
"What is it I can do for you, Professor McGonagall?" Snape asked silkily.
"Hmm…perhaps you gentlemen should finish your business first." She said crisply. "Then I can accompany Professor Lupin back upstairs as I have need of his presence elsewhere."
Snape looked as though she had just denied him a treat, but he said nothing. Silently, he turned to the cauldron, scooped out another gobletful, and proceeded to add certain powders to it, as Lupin waved his wand at the mess on his robes, drying them off to stop the dripping. Then he turned his attention to the puddle on the floor, and cleaned it away with one sweep of his wand.
Professor McGonagall waited quietly to one side observing the interaction between the two men as Lupin turned to accept the new glass from Snape. He held the glass a second or two and then drank from it under Snape’s baneful glare, and McGonagall’s sharp gaze.
The immediate sensation was one of disgust. The taste was still horrific, but dulled enough that he could drink it in gulps. His eyes stung and watered a little, but no dizziness overcame him. Snape peered at him through his narrowed eyes, and only turned when the goblet was at last empty, saying as he did, "The potion will keep for a few days. I trust you’ll be able to find it when you need to."
Lupin set the glass down on the nearest table and gave his thanks noting to McGonagall that he’d wait upstairs for her before leaving the room.
He walked briskly up to his office wiping the sweat off his forehead and collapsing in his chair. There was just something about that man that made him suspicious. His motives always seemed so dubious. He couldn’t be sure that the first dose he’d taken hadn’t been made with his utmost discomfort in mind, but he couldn’t be sure it was either. If he could only understand why Dumbledore seemed to trust him as he did.
A few moments later, a knock sounded on his door, and Professor McGonagall came through at his signal. After the few pleasantries and inquiries into each other’s health, an awkward silence ensued. He realized that he was poor company for the evening, but there was little he could do about it. He felt drained after the two doses of Wolfsbane, and the confrontations they had brought about. Most of his remaining energies were being used to hold back those brutal instincts he felt stirring inside.
She studied him a few minutes and then said, "Well, I only meant to tell you that Poppy has a room in the back of the hospital ready for you."
He looked surprised at this news, and she continued, "We don’t think that the Shack will be necessary now that you have the Wolfsbane’s influence. But we do think that you should be under…..supervision for the first month. When we know exactly what to expect, we can make different arrangements if you wish."
He nodded silently, caught up in his thoughts. What will it be like? He wondered Will I finally experience what James and the others did? A thrill of transformation into an animal with all my own faculties to guide me? What fun we could’ve had!
This cheered him up considerably as his mind took him off reminiscing his school days and he found himself relating some of his friend’s antics, though not the illegal ones, skipping over Sirius’ role in them focusing instead on Lily and James, to McGonagall who seemed quite happy to take the trip down memory lane with him, adding memories of her own to the tales.
McGonagall stayed for an hour while they chatted and caught up. Got to know each other again, while avoiding any mention of the brilliant, and cheerful student who was once one of Lupin’s best friends. Once or twice Lupin waited, his heart stopping while McGonagall seemed on the verge of asking him about Black, but she never did so. Finally to relieve the tension he felt, he turned their conversation towards Harry, listening delightedly as she listed some of his major achievements for his benefit.
Lupin had heard through the grapevine of the adventures Harry and his friends had during their first two years, but it was fascinating nevertheless to hear them again from a firsthand account. These eventually wound down to worries about some of his faults, and Lupin drifted off into his own thoughts for a moment.
He found himself thinking of Harry’s parents, and wondering if he would ever be able to share those memories with him, as he had with McGonagall. And if so, how to skirt around the issue of Sirius Black.
By and by he realized he wasn’t listening and pulled himself back to the present.
"Its only natural for the boy to be so sequestered from the rest of the students." McGonagall was saying, "But I do worry about him." Lupin nodded. He too worried about Harry. Classes with him were enough to dispel his previous delusions of James. Harry was very different from his father. James had a certain sparkle about him when he’d been in school. He was very outgoing, very eager to please. Harry looked the part of James in every way but two. His eyes, were his mother’s. And this sparkle was absent.
Harry had a different quality about him. One that was hard to see on the surface. Much of his wonderful personality was shut behind a barrier. A consequence, Lupin suspected, of his upbringing with the Dursleys. But, it could also be caused by that separation that McGonagall was referring to,…his connection to Voldemort. His enormous burden of responsibility, of sadness.
Lupin didn’t quite know how to handle a boy who seemed to have the weight of the world on his shoulders. Harry could come across to ignorant people as arrogant. Much like his father. But when one looked closely at this boy, this small and quiet boy, you found a kind and humble person, who seemed to be encumbered with all sorts of trials and grievances, some of which he appointed to himself it was true, but always with the comfort of others in mind.
He hardly ever processed, or treasured his accomplishments, but his failures, and perceived failures were enlarged to encompass everything around him that went wrong. He burdened himself with the care of all his loved ones. And though those were precious few, his sense of responsibility included all those he knew. It also included the wizarding world.
Lupin, with all his hardships in life, could only begin to imagine the load on this child’s shoulders.
They began to share their experiences with Harry with each other, and laughed a bit at things that had happened. Lupin couldn’t stop chuckling about Trelawny’s theatrical predictions of Harry, and Harry’s exasperation with her; it was so like James’ exasperation at being stopped before a really good joke, and Lily’s exasperation at the jokes that didn’t get stopped. McGonagall, he happened to know, did not set much faith in Divination, and had always held this same sort of exasperation towards Trelawny herself. All in all, it made for a very amusing comparison.
Lupin knew that true seers did exist, but he’d studied Arithmancy en lieu of Divination, so he set more stock in numbers than in what Trelawny called, the Inner Eye.
All in all, their reminiscence made for a rather enjoyable evening, and Lupin attributed his exhaustion the next day towards a late night and a lot of laughing.
Lupin had taken to hunting the grounds and forest for the creatures that he used in his classes. Whenever his hunts proved fruitless or impossible he took order of the creatures from either Hogsmeade, or Diagon Alley depending on supply.
He quite looked forward to the forays of hunting these creatures on the weekends. It gave him time away from the castle to relax and enjoy himself. He’d grown so accustomed to solitude, that the constant clamor and interaction with the crowds of students and staff troubled him at times. He had no problem catching most of the creatures for his classes, as the forbidden forest was a harbor for magical creatures, and the students weren’t battling very advanced beasts. Those were covered strictly with lectures and the texts. Poor Hagrid had set a precedent for the rest of them, and Dumbledore didn’t need another mark against the school.
He was out by the pond searching for a wandering kappa, the day the first full moon was set to appear. He was keeping watch on the time, and feeling wonderfully alert and sane, due he supposed, to this phenomenal new potion. It happened. His knees started to shake, and he looked at his watch with alarm. The full moon was not due to rise for another three hours! The weakness continued however, and he decided to abandon his hunt and retreat to the hospital post haste.
He made it to the castle steps, but his legs were threatening to hold him no longer. Looking around in desperation, he spied the dementors by the castle gates turned towards him, watching. Was it their awful influence? He wasn’t sure, but took out his wand in case they came any closer.
Stabbing pains started shooting through his back and limbs, and he started to sweat profusely. No! The transformation can’t be starting yet! I still have three hours! His panic started a surge of adrenaline through his body that allowed him to get back to his feet, and stagger up the steps into the castle. Once inside, he felt better, but decided to continue to the hospital wing straight away. Who knew when the weakness and pain would be coming back?
Madam Pomfrey met him at the door, and smiling ushered him inside.
"Ah Lupin." She said cordially. "I thought you might be along shortly." She patted him on the back and steered him past two small students who seemed to have tried dueling each other. One had leeks sprouting in a steady stream from his ears, and the other was growing extra toes all over his legs.
She merely glanced in their direction as they passed saying "It seems almost like the old days doesn’t it?" Lupin smiled listlessly and continued to peek back at the students.
"Oh, don’t worry about them," Madam Pomfrey said lightly waving her hand. "Students will insist on cursing each other you know. They’ve had a potion though, and their afflictions should be slowing down." They reached a doorway in back and she motioned him into the small room. "This is reserved for communicable afflictions, so you should have the utmost privacy. Dumbledore has put a strengthening charm on all the windows and doors, so you needn’t worry about that. And I’ll be here to check on you, just in case." She beamed at him and gestured towards the bed. "Do you need anything else? Do you wish to have some lunch?"
Lupin shook his head and smiled warmly at her, though it was the last thing he felt like doing. "No, thank you Madam. In fact, if you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll retire for the afternoon." He watched her leave the room, and plunked down on the edge of the bed. He noted that it had been bolted to the floor, and wondered just how much he should trust this potion if these kinds of precautions were necessary. Maybe he should go to the Shrieking Shack. It would be safer for everyone if something did go awry.
The shooting pains returned, and he turned and lay down remembering that he hadn’t taken a pain numbing potion this time. His mind seemed lethargic, and his heart ached dully with longing for his friends to show up. He hadn’t been this nostalgic in a long time. Maybe Hogwarts wasn’t such a good idea after all. Yet,….yet, he did love to be here. Teaching felt so right so worthwhile. He felt useful here, which was something that had not happened since he’d been in the Order.
He rolled over and faced the wall. Training for the Order had taught him many things. One of which he would put into practice now. He emptied his mind and concentrated solely on the cracks in the mortar of the stone wall. He would get through this, just as he always did.
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