A Memorable Tale

21 | Are Werewolves Still People?

Neville hesitantly lifted his wand and chanted, "Riddikulus!"

The clothes on the Boggart suddenly turned into a gaudy hat and red handbag with a green robe of faux fur.

"Wonderful, Neville, incredible!" Professor Lupin praised.

Neville ran to me with a proud grin. "Great job!" I said.

Professor Lupin told everyone to line up so each of us could take a shot at the Boggart.

It turned into a snake, a mummy, a ginormous spider; the class took great joy in turning it into the greatest absurdities that we could think of.

When it was Harry's turn, Professor Lupin jumped in front of him, preventing the Boggart from turning to Harry's fear. Instead, it turned to a bright white ball.

"That's his fear?" Seamus mumbled, clearly unimpressed. "What's a ball gonna do to him?"

I tilted my head, seeing a transparent mist straying from the orb and disappearing.

My gaze went to Professor Lupin, eying his scars and less than adequate robes, then back to the boggart.

He chanted the charm and it turned into a balloon, darting around the room. Quickly after this, the class was dismissed.

"What a lesson!" Neville said.

"You were great." I grinned. "I've got to head to the library. Want to come?"

"Sure. I need to finish something for Divination anyway."

"Right, Divination." I tried to stifle a laugh in case Neville genuinely believed in such things. "How are the lessons?"

He gave me an unsure look. Unsure looks could mean a lot of things, whether it be that she predicted something so ridiculous that nobody believed a thing she said after that or that she predicted something so morbid that it was uncomfortable.

It seemed like it was both.

"She read that Harry was going to die... that's what the tea leaves said, anyway."

"The tea leaves?" The fact that the tea leaves were saying something was... a concern, to say the least.

Did they form words? Did they grow a mouth and speak? Were there letters within them like some disgusting alphabet soup? Who knows?

"Professor McGonagall says that she picks a student to die every year," Neville continued. "So I don't think I should worry about it."

"Maybe she's just talking about in the distant future," I said with a mocking tone, my arm out dramatically.

We turned a corner, getting closer to the library.

I entered first and Madam Pince sent a nasty glare in my direction, likely still suspecting me of being the robber of the Philosopher's Stone, even though I had religiously taken care of and returned her books.

"She doesn't scare you?" Neville whispered as I led him through the library.

"Not particularly." I reached up and picked out a book about Astronomy. "She doesn't have enough power to do much other than yell at you, and I can't see why she'd yell at me. I haven't done anything."

I sat down at one of the empty tables and Neville sat beside me. When I placed my bag on the floor, it toppled over and I heard something glass start rolling at my feet. When I looked down, I noticed the crystal ball Cedric had given me with the moon phases.

It looked remarkably like Professor Lupin's Boggart.

Once I grabbed it and put it back in my bag, I placed the book I got back on the shelf and began tracing my finger over the spines. "Hogwarts Magic Animals... Witch's Guide to Magic Creatures... Ah! Magic Creatures and Animals."

While the most uncreative title, it was especially informative, especially the year before when I was trying to figure out what creature lied within the Chamber of Secrets.

I sat down at one of the nearby table with Neville beside me, holding his quill and parchment for his essay. "Ink?" I offered, holding up a bottle.

"Thanks... forgot mine."

"It's alright."

With the fact of Professor Lupin's scars and tattered robes, along with his Boggart, I had a strange feeling twist my insides.

I flipped through the pages and stopped, finding the exact title I needed: Werewolves.

Among many different human mutants, a werewolf is one that is most known. It is not a mutation that one is born with, but a mutation that one becomes.

To become a werewolf, it is necessary to be bitten by a werewolf in their wolfish form at the time of the full moon. When the werewolf's saliva mingles with the victim's blood, contamination will occur.

The many Muggle myths and legends surrounding werewolves are, in the main, false, although some contain nuggets of truth. Silver bullets do not kill werewolves, but a mixture of powdered silver and dittany applied to a fresh bite will 'seal' the wound and prevent the victim bleeding to death (although tragic tales are told of victims who beg to be allowed to die rather than to live on as werewolves).

If a human were to live on as a werewolf, every full moon, they will transform. During this transformation, they may cause themselves as well as the people around them harm. This will likely result in their human form having abnormal scars and tattered clothing.

As a result of this transformation, the contaminated may find themselves extremely fatigued. However, they will not remember what occurred during their transformation.

To keep a werewolf at bay during their transformation, a Wolfsbane Potion may be given to them, causing them to maintain their human consciousness.

"That explains the scars and tattered clothes," I muttered.

A Wolfsbane Potion was one I had never heard of before, so it was likely not in our curriculum.

So the ball that the boggart had turned into wasn't actually a ball - it was a full moon.

"He's scared of it," I said softly, pity edging my voice. I glanced at Neville, who got half way through his essay before falling asleep, and smiled. "Nev, let's go."

"Huh? What?"

"We've got to leave the library eventually."

"Oh! Right."

•••

I returned to my dorm and placed my bag in the corner of the room. The sound of it hitting the ground made it seem like I had dropped an entire building onto the floor. "Hopefully nothing broke," I mumbled.

When I got to my bed, I noticed that Hogwarts: 1971-1972 had been turned to a different page, just like the year before. This time, however, there was a piece of parchment marking the page I had stopped on with Sirius Black.

I tilted my head, crawling to the centre of my bed to see which page it had been turned to.

It was only a couple pages after Sirius Black, with students with a last name starting with L covering the page. I scanned the page, noticing very quickly that this page had a very significant piece of the puzzle I was trying to solve without a picture to look at.

"Professor Lupin," I whispered, seeing the young boy grinning at the camera, his hand ever so often coming into frame to scratch at his scars.

His gaze was as gentle as it was now, despite such difficult conditions to live in being so young. His grin carved the smile lines that he owned now, each perfectly placed on the side of his eyes and connecting the corners of his lips and sides of his nose.

I felt awful when I saw it. When I had figured that Professor Lupin was a werewolf, my inside turned as if they were having a bad dream.

But, werewolf or not, he was still himself.

"What are you reading up on now?" Mandy questioned as she walked in, her arms above her for a stretch.

I hid the books beneath my pillow. "Nothing important."

No wonder he kept it a secret. The way I reacted to it was quite mundane; I did own three hippogriffs, after all. I couldn't imagine how other students may react to his other identity.