The first weeks of classes were somehow just as frantic as they had been the first time around. To be sure, Remus spent considerably less time learning names and personalities. He was no longer adjusting to the disconcerting sensation of being teacher rather than student. And, unlike every other inhabitant of the castle, he had no concerns that Sirius Black might break in at any moment hell-bent on committing murder.
Instead, he worried about finding a way to bring about the demise of Lord Voldemort without eliminating his own unborn child from existence.
He periodically thought of confessing everything to Professor Dumbledore, but he knew that Dumbledore would not take a story that must necessarily include accusations against Severus Snape seriously. Dumbledore would sigh and tell Remus that he ought to be more open-minded than his school friends had been, especially when Snape had agreed to brew Wolfsbane Potion every month.
So for the foreseeable future he was on his own.
The first step, he was sure, was stopping Peter Pettigrew from returning to his master at the end of the school year. That would give them all more time to put measures in place to keep Voldemort from gaining power. That would give them more time to destroy the… Horcruxes?
He knew the word but he couldn't precisely define it. Harry had never told him just what Dumbledore had asked him to do, but he could make a decent guess. Everyone in the wizarding world who didn't bury his or her head in the sand knew that Voldemort hadn't been human enough to die in 1981, and there were a limited number of ways that one could go about becoming simultaneously more immortal and less alive.
There was no reference to Horcruxes in the restricted section of the library; it was, doubtless, the kind of thing one learned more about in the private library at Grimmauld Place. Probably Sirius knew, but Remus and Sirius weren't going to be having in-depth conversations about megalomaniacs and dark magic until Pettigrew had been exposed.
And so Remus invited his third-years to bring their pets to class for a discussion of ways in which magical animals could, themselves, defend against the Dark Arts. He knew well that Ron regularly took "Scabbers" to class in his bag or his pocket even without a specific invitation, but on the appointed day, Ron's desk stood empty amidst a sea of cats and toads.
"Where's your rat, Ron?" he asked in a tone he hoped was mildly inquisitive enough to conceal the pounding of his heart.
"No idea," said Ron with annoyance. "Scabbers is the laziest rat you've ever seen, never runs off at all. I told him last night that he had to be ready for class today, and I couldn't find him anywhere this morning. It's like he heard me."
And Remus knew right then that for the rest of the year, Scabbers wouldn't allow himself to be found anywhere that Remus might be.
Remus made a point of wandering down to the Forbidden Forest on occasion. That in and of itself wasn't particularly suspicious; a professor of Defense Against the Dark Arts might well find inspiration for a class there.
Unfortunately, everything else he wanted to do would be so suspicious that he'd be thrown out of the school immediately, and Severus Snape hailed as a hero for recognizing a traitor when he saw one.
He couldn't call out to Sirius that he knew that he was innocent.
He couldn't leave palatable food and a wand he'd procured from the Room of Requirement's collection of hidden things lying about.
He could only hope that Sirius would choose to approach him, but if Sirius was aware of his presence at all, he decided to stay hidden.
Both of his old school friends were going to avoid him as long as possible, it seemed.
It wasn't entirely comforting to know that, if all else remained unchanged, they were destined to meet at the end of the year in, of all places, the Shrieking Shack.
He was half-tempted not to take the Wolfsbane Potion Snape brewed, knowing as he did how deeply misplaced Dumbledore's trust in Snape would turn out to be.
In the end, it wasn't the knowledge that Snape hadn't poisoned him the first time around or the promise of a great relief from pain that prompted him to take the potion. It was only the fact that he had promised to protect the students by rendering himself sane during the full moons. If he declined the potion, Dumbledore would be wise to ask him to leave, and he couldn't leave.
For one thing, he had to teach Harry the Patronus Charm.
Just as had happened the first time, Sirius broke into the castle on Halloween.
(Just as had happened the first time, Remus was helpless to do anything about it, a prisoner of the wolf and the full moon.)
Just as had happened the first time, Harry nearly caught his death when dementors invited themselves to his Quidditch match.
(Just as had happened the first time, Remus was helpless to do anything about that, either. But it did result in Harry coming to him for extra lessons.)
Over the course of the first term, it had been touching to see how fond Harry had grown of the stranger Remus was to him. He wasn't sure that he had properly appreciated it in the past, so concerned had he been with his own insecurities.
Now he thought it was downright adorable when Harry tried to warn him against drinking anything Snape offered him. The urge to protect came naturally to Harry; Remus didn't think it had anything to do with his being trained up as the so-called Chosen One.
He was ashamed, he had to admit, that he had let Harry take the lead with him so often. He had told himself that he didn't want to push Harry, didn't want Harry to feel any obligation to his father's old friend.
Really, he'd been afraid of Harry's rejection.
He should have written letters every week when Harry spent a year in the Triwizard Tournament.
He should have told Harry stories about Lily and James every day instead of waiting for Harry to ask.
He should have been more than a professor to James' son far sooner than he had been.
He would do it right this time.
In his first Patronus Charm lesson, Harry tumbled to the floor twice in a row, teary and dizzy with the memory of his parents' deaths.
"I heard my dad," Harry mumbled as he revived. "That's the first time I've ever heard him— he tried to take on Voldemort himself, to give my mum time to run for it…"
"You heard James?" Remus would have preferred that he didn't sound strangled. He sounded strangled.
"Yeah." Harry looked up, pretending that he hadn't been crying. "Why, you didn't know my dad, did you?"
"I did, as a matter of fact. We were friends at Hogwarts. Listen, Harry— perhaps we should leave it here for tonight."
"No!" Harry demanded another go, and then another, and finally Remus refused.
"You've made excellent progress, but you've had enough for one night."
"Just one more—"
Remus handed Harry a bar of chocolate and forced the boggart back into its case.
"Professor Lupin," said Harry. "If you knew my dad, you must have known Sirius Black as well."
"What gives you that idea?" If Snape had been dropping hints about his loyalty to the students, Remus needed to know.
"Nothing. I mean, I just knew they were friends at Hogwarts, too."
"I'm surprised that anyone told you that," said Remus. He seated himself atop the desk and gestured for Harry to sit beside him. Harry did, with an eagerness that warmed Remus' blood in the drafty classroom. And yet, Harry was conspicuously silent. "Oh, so no one did tell you about your father and Sirius. You— er— overheard?" Doubtless with the aid of a certain invisibility cloak.
"Yeah!" said Harry much too quickly. "I didn't mean to overhear, but I did, and I have a picture of my parents' wedding, and I never looked at the best man before, but— well, he doesn't look the same as he does on the wanted posters, but that's him, isn't it?"
"It is indeed. Azkaban has never been known for improving upon anyone's good looks."
"What was he like then? When you were in school?"
"Sirius? Or James?" Harry looked desperately torn, and Remus decided not to give him a chance to answer. "I'm not going to tell you about Sirius. You don't need to worry about him. I will worry about him, and the Headmaster and the other professors will worry about him. You have enough to concern you without taking that on."
"But he as good as killed—"
"I will tell you about James."
Harry fell silent instantly.
"I think that one of the reasons that the Patronus Charm will be a challenge for you— aside from the fact that it is very advanced magic, well beyond Ordinary Wizarding Level— is that hearing your parents' voices is a bit of a double edged sword."
Harry stared at the floor, still silent.
"Of course you don't want to relive their deaths," Remus continued, his voice cracking slightly. "But you don't have any conscious memories of their voices, and when the dementors draw near you—"
"I won't let that stop me from learning! I have to learn the Patronus Charm, or we won't have any chance against Ravenclaw and we'll lose the Quidditch Cup!"
"I have complete faith that you will learn the Patronus Charm. I only wanted to offer you a… a small compensation for part of what you'll lose when you stop hearing your parents' voices. At the end of every lesson, I will tell you one story about one of your parents. That's only if you want to hear, of course."
Harry nodded enthusiastically. Merlin, Remus had made a mistake not doing this when he'd first had the opportunity.
He realized too late that he didn't have any stories about James at the ready that wouldn't have outsize Sirius-shaped holes in them if he told them now— unless of course he wanted to tell stories that required him to out himself as a werewolf.
"Well, we've talked about your father," he began slowly, to buy himself time. "Let's talk about your mother."
Harry nodded again, his mouth full of chocolate and his eyes trained on Remus.
"Lily was never one to let anyone else tell her who her friends were. She was not going to be friends with someone just because he was popular or handsome or smart or anything else. At Hogwarts, we Sort first years and tell them that their house is their family. Lily took that as a suggestion, and then she proceeded to choose her closest friends from every house but her own."
"Not Slytherin," said Harry around his chocolate.
"Are all Slytherins so awful?"
"The ones I know are."
Remus swallowed a laugh. "I daresay if you spoke with every Slytherin in this castle, you'd meet one or two you liked."
"I'd get hexed and spend the rest of the year in the hospital wing before I got halfway through trying to talk to every Slytherin in school."
This time Remus couldn't swallow the laugh. "You're quite right, of course. I didn't have any friends in Slytherin when I was your age, either. As I say, it was something that made your mother unique."
"Wasn't it lonely for her if she didn't fit in in her own house?"
"I didn't say that at all. She got on well with her roommates and many of the Gryffindors. But she wasn't around her own common room or dining table as much as most students are, so I didn't know her as well as you might expect when we both became prefects in our fifth year."
"Was my dad a prefect too?"
"Can you imagine someone making Fred or George Weasley a prefect?"
Harry snorted.
"Well, that's why James wasn't a prefect. Besides, he wanted to spend his time playing Quidditich, not patrolling the castle."
"But he was Head Boy. I have a picture where he's wearing the badge."
"That came later. At the beginning of our fifth year, your father still rolled his eyes at the idea of following a rule instead of breaking it. When Lily and I were sent out to collect some second years who had been serving detention with Hagrid at the edge of the Forbidden Forest, James did not begrudge us. I didn't entirely want to do it myself. I felt like I'd been made a prefect in error. I didn't say it out loud, of course. I'd spent four years in classes with your mother, but we'd barely had a discussion that extended beyond the various uses of gouging spells.
"I didn't say anything, but she knew. She grabbed me by the wrist and told me that we were very busy and important and we were going to get the second years safely home. All of a sudden it was an adventure, not a chore, and it was something I was completely capable of doing. She was always like that. Very kind, universally kind until she saw an unkindness. She made everyone around her feel more confident and included. I imagine you get that from her."
"People always tell me that I'm like my dad," mused Harry.
"I suppose it's all right for you to be like both of them once in a while."
Harry shrugged. Remus continued.
"The second years had somehow commandeered a container of ice cream. They weren't supposed to have it, but we didn't have the heart to give them more detention, so we had them wash it down a sink when we got back to the castle. Unfortunately, we hadn't figured on the nuts in the ice cream clogging up the sink, and soon enough Peeves got involved."
Harry grinned. "Then what happened?"
"Rather than wait for Mr. Flich to discover us, your mother solicited help from the potions master. That was Professor Slughorn. He was the Head of Slytherin House at the time. Lily was a magnificent potions student, and he told her at least once a month that she really ought to have been Sorted into his house."
"But she was a Muggle-born!"
"Professor Slughorn had his flaws, but he wasn't a pureblood fanatic. In any case, he spun a story that Lily must have gone easy on the second years just so that she could have an extra lesson with him, and really she should have been a Slytherin. She was standing in two inches of filthy water, her robes and hair soaked, a mess that was really of our own making, and she said, 'yes, Professor, I have to agree that at the moment I look just like someone who belongs in Slytherin.'"
"What did he do?" asked Harry eagerly.
"Same thing he always did. Laughed and gave her a point for her cheek. He adored Lily. But then, almost everyone did." He made a show of glancing at his watch. "It's past time for you to be getting back to your dormitory."
Harry slid from the desk to the floor with his usual athletic grace. "Yes, Professor."
"Do not wash any ice cream down any sinks on your way back."
Harry grinned. "No, Professor."
The later lessons were easier. Harry never seemed to mind if the "stories" about his parents were often conversations that began with one simple fact. James had particularly enjoyed enchanting the suits of armor to march around the castle singing songs of his own composition. Lily had introduced half the school to Muggle music— the Beatles in particular. When James ended up in the hospital wing after a nasty Quidditch accident, he had all but pulled his friends into his bed with him, wanting reassurance that they'd managed to survive without him for two days but completely unconcerned about his own health.
Remus loved the after-lessons chats at least as much as Harry did. He'd loved the adult Harry he'd left behind, but the child Harry was so charming and so funny and so strangely innocent that he half-hated to know that he would grow up again.
Before he knew it, the end of the year was near.
Remus awoke on the last day of exams more nervous than he had ever been as a student. (And he had sometimes been rather nervous as a student, always wanting to live up to the faith Dumbledore had shown in him by admitting him in the first place, always wanting to make his parents proud when they had rebuilt their lives around his illness.)
It wasn't that he was afraid to stand over the fourth years while they wrote essays on the Unforgivable Curses or untangle the sixth years if they got a little too enthusiastic as they dueled one another.
It wasn't even that it was the night of the full moon— or at least, it wasn't just that.
It was that this was the day that, more than any other, would demonstrate whether he had changed history for the better, or for the worse, or even at all. If things went as they had the first time, this would be the night that both Wormtail and Padfoot would show their human forms.
This time, he wasn't going to let Wormtail escape. He wouldn't let Sirius murder their old friend, but Wormtail wasn't going to be trusted to walk to the castle under his own power either.
This time, he wouldn't leave the Marauder's Map lying on his desk so Snape could interrupt them and make things even more complicated than they already were.
This time, he certainly wouldn't let himself turn into a bloodthirsty monster with no control over his own head.
Late afternoon found him waiting outside Snape's office door before the Snape had even released his final class. Snape's gaze narrowed when he saw Remus. Snape wordlessly opened the door; Remus entered and sat down without an invitation.
Remus suppressed a shudder as he glanced around at the jars of slimy, venomous, and otherwise disgusting potions ingredients that lined the walls. He had never liked potion-making even as a student, and as an adult he wondered if it took a certain sort of personality to thrive at it. Horace Slughorn hadn't been a Death Eater, to be sure, and he certainly would never have murdered Dumbledore. But he had devoted his life to basking in the reflected glory of the acquaintances he groomed for his "collection" from the time that they were children. Like Snape, Slughorn had never hidden his preference for the students who least needed his help.
Snape carefully inspected the potion that was simmering slightly over the lowest of flames. One careful stir, one last sprinkle of aconite, one wave of his wand, and then the potion was smoking in a goblet.
If it had been anyone but Snape, Remus would have been mesmerized by the attention to detail and the minuscule margin of error. Snape was a bigot and a killer who devoted his life to bullying children and holding grudges, but the man was also an artist and a genius.
"Last time, Lupin," said Snape as he handed Remus the goblet with a tenderness that no doubt stemmed from his respect for his potion rather than his compassion.
"For this year at least," Remus returned mildly. He took a sip of the potion. It tasted terrible, as always, but he was going to miss it over the summer months. He hoped against hope that by the next full moon he would have the only other thing that had ever helped control his symptoms: Padfoot.
Snape's lip curled. "You know that no one has ever held the Defense Against the Dark Arts position for more than a year since before we were students. Since before the Dark Lord himself put a curse on it."
Remus grimaced as he took a second swallow. "Perhaps the werewolf curse balances out Lord Voldemort's curse."
Snape's features went taut, as if Remus had said Voldemort's name aloud for the sole purpose of offending him. (Of course, Remus called Voldemort by name on principle; offending Snape was just a bonus.) "I should think you'd be happy to have me stay for a second year, Severus," Remus offered.
Snape raised his eyebrows in disdain as only Snape could. "Why in Merlin's name would that make me happy?"
Remus toasted Snape with the goblet before taking another swallow. "Isn't it better to have a colleague who is completely dependent upon you rather than one who is working for Lord Voldemort?"
"I would almost prefer to have a colleague who had the Dark Lord attached to the back of his head to one who would walk out the front door and bring Sirius Black into the castle if he could."
"Almost, but not quite."
"So you don't deny that you would bring the most wanted fugitive in all of the wizarding world into this school?"
"I neither confirmed nor denied it, Severus," said Remus mildly. "But we weren't talking about Sirius, we were talking about you. Not only do you know my darkest secret, that secret puts me at your mercy."
"It isn't precisely my pity— excuse me, mercy— if the Headmaster requires me to brew the potion."
"All right," agreed Remus, pretending that the taunt about Dumbledore pitying him didn't sting even after death should have made him a bit more wise. "Let's assume for the sake of argument that one day the Headmaster will come to his senses and allow you to teach Defense Against the Dark Arts. We both know that that day is not today. Wouldn't it be preferable to have me give your future students some kind of background in the subject? You've no guarantee that my replacement wouldn't be another Gilderoy Lockhart."
"Thankfully, there is only one Gilderoy Lockhart, and he is safely locked away."
Remus almost laughed.
If Snape weren't a relentless bully destined to murder Albus Dumbledore and turn Hogwarts over to the Death Eaters, Remus might have found something to like about him, the legacy of James and Sirius be damned.
He left the empty goblet on Snape's desk and stood up. "In case we don't get a chance to say farewell before the term ends, thank you, Severus. I'll see you on September first."
Snape rose, too. "You have over a week left in which you may get yourself sacked, get yourself committed, or get yourself killed, Lupin. Do not underestimate your ability to do any of those happy things."
Remus was forced to concede that Snape wasn't wrong as he settled into his office with the Marauder's Map and waited for Sirius and Peter to make their appearances.
Soon enough, they did.