On the third floor, Defence Against the Dark Arts was underway for the third-years.
Gryffindor sat on one side of the room. Slytherin sat on the other. Empty desks made a strip of no-man's-land between them.
The usual tension hung there, quiet and ugly. Plenty of glaring. No one stupid enough to do anything with a professor present.
At the front stood a man none of them knew yet.
Ezra Vance.
The new Defence professor looked to be somewhere in his forties, tall and lean, his hair combed with fussy precision. He had sharp eyes and an Irish lilt in his voice.
"Dark creatures," he said, sweeping the room with his gaze. "One of the wizarding world's most common threats. You've learned some basic responses in your first years. That isn't remotely enough."
He flicked his wand. Words snapped onto the blackboard.
Werewolf... Dementor... Red Cap... Grindylow...
"We'll start with the ones you're most likely to hear about first."
He looked over the room. "Who can tell me the best countermeasure when encountering a werewolf?"
Whispers rippled across the desks. Vance let them burn out on their own. Then a hand went up.
"Mr. Potter."
James got to his feet with a grin already in place. "Run."
The class laughed.
Vance didn't. "Run where?"
James threw Sirius a sideways look, eyebrows dancing. "Toward a crowd? Werewolves go for isolated targets, right? No, hang on. That's probably backwards. They'd go straight for the crowd."
"So?"
James lifted a shoulder. "So running's not much use. Cast something, then. Stunner? Body-Bind?"
Vance shook his head. "Werewolves are highly resistant to ordinary spellwork. At your current level, a Stunning Spell would be lucky to singe a few hairs."
James grimaced. "Then what are we supposed to do?"
Instead of answering, Vance turned back to the room. "Anyone else?"
Sirius sat beside James with his hand still down, eyes fixed on the board.
Werewolf.
Something tugged loose in his mind.
Remus always missed a few days every month. He called it illness. Fine. But it always happened at the same time, clustered around the full moon.
And when he came back, he looked wrecked. Like something had spent the last three nights beating him bloody from the inside.
Another memory surfaced.
One night Sirius had woken up and found Remus's bed empty. Asked him about it the next morning, Remus had said he'd gone to the Hospital Wing.
That had sounded reasonable, except Sirius practically lived there. He knew the smell of the place. Remus hadn't come back smelling like it.
He glanced at Remus now.
Remus was sitting on James's other side, head bent, face washed pale. His hand was wrapped around his quill so tightly it looked painful, and his arm was shaking.
He was scared.
Sirius looked back at the board.
Werewolf. Full moon. Same absences every month. A lesson on werewolves, and Remus suddenly looking like he'd rather vanish through the floor.
The pieces weren't all there yet, but they were getting uncomfortably close.
He wasn't sure.
He was starting to suspect.
Vance waited another moment. When nobody answered, he said, "The most dangerous thing about a werewolf is not its raw strength. It's concealment. In ordinary circumstances, they are indistinguishable from any other witch or wizard. Only on the night of the full moon do they transform. Which means the most effective countermeasure is identification."
His gaze swept across the room, slow and deliberate.
"If you know who the werewolf is, you can avoid them. If you know who the werewolf is, you can prepare for the full moon. If you know who the werewolf is, you can protect yourself."
He tapped the board once. "So. How do you identify one?"
The room had gone very still now. Every student was watching him. Vance gave a short nod, apparently satisfied.
"In human form, a werewolf presents no obvious physical difference from anyone else. But there are signs if you know where to look. Unusual sensitivity to silver. A sharper sense of smell than normal. Fatigue in the days around the full moon. And the simplest method of all, routine. Someone who disappears for a few days every month like clockwork, then returns looking as though they've been laid out by a serious illness. If a person near you matches that pattern..."
James was only half-listening. He had already opened his book and was flipping pages at speed, clearly more interested in the pictures than the lecture. Every so often he made an approving sound at a particularly gruesome illustration.
Sirius looked at Remus again.
The color had drained even further from his face. His whole body was trembling now.
Sirius looked away.
I need to talk to James.
Vance moved on. Dementors. How to recognize them, what fear did to the body, the limits of beginner-level defence. Red Caps next. Then Grindylows, their habits and preferred habitats.
He covered a lot quickly. Most of the class was scrambling just to keep pace with their notes.
Sirius wrote because that was what everyone else was doing, but his brain had left the room a while ago.
It kept circling back to Remus.
If it's true, then what?
This was Remus.
They had shared a dormitory for more than two years. Pulled stupid pranks together. Talked half the night away. Spent Christmas at James's place like it was the most natural thing in the world.
If Remus really was a werewolf, what was Sirius supposed to do? Pull away? Pretend not to know? Cut him loose?
He cursed under his breath.
No. Absolute rubbish.
That wasn't even a real question.
Remus was Remus. That was the whole of it.
James still hadn't noticed. He was cheerfully taking notes with the kind of oblivious confidence only James Potter could manage. Sirius kept his mouth shut. This had to go through James first.
Still, he already knew how that would end.
James acted like nothing in the world could seriously bother him, but when it came to his friends, the line in him was iron.
If Sirius told him, James wouldn't hesitate for a second.
Their lot had never cared much for rules like that anyway.
Sirius bent over his parchment and kept up the act of note-taking, decision already made.
The bell rang.
Vance shut his book. "Next week, Boggarts and Red Caps. Read the chapter before you come in."
Then he strode out, leaving the room to explode into noise behind him.
James stood and stretched with both arms overhead. "He's all right, that one. Doesn't waste time."
Remus said nothing. He kept his head down and packed his bag.
James thumped him lightly on the shoulder. "Come on. Lunch."
Remus finally looked up and produced something that was meant to be a smile. "You lot go on. I've got... something to deal with."
James frowned. "What something? You've always got something."
"It's nothing. Really. Just go."
James started to say more, but Sirius caught him by the arm. "Leave it. Let's go."
James looked from Sirius to Remus and back again. Then he shrugged and headed for the door.
Peter, small eyes darting between all of them, hurried after.
Remus stayed where he was, hunched over his desk, not moving at all.
Only after a long while did he finally get to his feet, slowly pack the last of his books away, and leave the empty classroom by himself.