Chapter 197: Inviting Lupin
The cost of Wolfsbane Potion was so high that most werewolves could only stare at it from afar. It was a price far beyond anything they could ever hope to afford.
Remus Lupin had graduated from Hogwarts—on paper, that alone should have secured him a respectable future. But he was also a werewolf.
And that single truth erased everything else.
Time and again, he found work… only to lose it just as quickly. Sooner or later, someone would notice the pattern—his unexplained absences during the full moon, the unease in his behavior—and then the truth would come out. And when it did, he was always driven away.
At first, he worked in a potion shop in Diagon Alley as an apprentice. The knowledge he had learned at Hogwarts proved useful, and for a while, things seemed stable.
But stability never lasted.
When Wolfsbane Potion was invented, it brought not just hope—but awareness. People began to understand werewolf behavior far better than before. Lupin's monthly disappearances drew suspicion.
Eventually, they caught him.
He was dismissed.
The shop owner, to his credit, gave him an extra month's wages. Lupin had been a good worker—but the shop couldn't keep him. Not when his very existence was a risk.
Even if the owner was willing to overlook it, customers wouldn't. No one would buy potions from a place that employed a werewolf.
Because Wolfsbane Potion, for all its value, only suppressed transformation. It didn't remove the curse.
A werewolf—transformed or not—was still dangerous.
With nowhere left to go, when things had truly reached rock bottom, someone came to him.
Another werewolf.
They had heard of Lupin. In a world where most werewolves were illiterate—some unable even to write their own names—someone who had not only attended Hogwarts but graduated from it was almost unimaginable.
To them, Lupin was a scholar.
And that made him valuable.
Once word reached Fenrir Greyback, the leader of the werewolves, Lupin became a target of interest.
But Greyback had no intention of making him feel welcome.
Authority, after all, had to be established.
Lupin was allowed to join—but at a cost. Every month, he had to provide two hundred milliliters of blood for use in dark magical rituals.
Greyback's breath, rank with decay, brushed against his face as he sneered,
"A Hogwarts golden boy? Right now, you're not even fit to cook lizard stew for us."
At night, as Lupin sat by the fire repairing iron pots with transfiguration, he would sometimes stare into the flames and see fragments of the past.
A rainy evening in the Gryffindor common room.
Laughter.
Magic used for nothing more than mischief.
They had once turned James's teacup into a singing gnome.
Those memories felt like they belonged to someone else.
Even after joining the pack, Lupin was given only the most menial and exhausting tasks—until the day he revealed his skill with potions.
Working in the shop had taught him more than he realized. He couldn't brew something as complex as Felix Felicis, but simpler concoctions—healing draughts, restoratives—came naturally to him.
One day, after a clash between the werewolves and a group of rogue dark wizards, many of the pack returned injured.
Some of them had treated Lupin decently.
He hadn't gone with them—he'd been left behind—but seeing their wounds stirred something in him.
So he brewed potions.
It was then that Greyback realized what Lupin could do.
From that moment on, Lupin's status within the pack began to rise—subtly, quietly.
But his life didn't improve.
His workload shifted. Less manual labor, more brewing—but no real change in how he was treated.
Then came the strangest demand of all.
Greyback somehow acquired a sample of Wolfsbane Potion.
And he ordered Lupin to recreate it.
"A knockoff will do," Greyback had said. "Weaker, harsher side effects—it doesn't matter. As long as it works."
Brewing a crude imitation of Wolfsbane came at a cost.
Lupin's sense of taste was permanently damaged. His hair turned noticeably grayer. His body grew thinner, more worn with each passing month.
And when the others discovered he had been secretly keeping copies of The Daily Prophet, Greyback punished him himself—dragging his claws across Lupin's face and leaving a fresh scar.
"Still thinking about your traitor friends?" Greyback had growled.
"Planning to leave us?"
As punishment, Remus Lupin was forced to raid abandoned hideouts of dark wizards on moonless nights. Whatever money he brought back was confiscated in full—he wasn't allowed to keep a single coin.
The worst moments came while brewing potions. In the bubbling surface of the cauldron, faces would appear—old friends, long gone, staring back at him through the fumes.
On the night news arrived about Sirius being imprisoned in Azkaban, Lupin's hands trembled. He overturned his cauldron, and the corrosive potion ate through the last intact pair of trousers he owned.
The reason he endured all of this wasn't just because he had joined the werewolves.
There was something else.
Fenrir Greyback had placed a curse on him.
It bound him—body and will.
For years, Lupin searched for a way to break it. And just a few days ago… he finally succeeded.
Only for the Ministry to arrive.
Their gathering place—disguised as an ordinary shop called the "Howl of the Full Moon"—had gone undetected for a long time.
Until that day.
When twelve Aurors Apparated at the southern entrance of Knockturn Alley, the bone daggers displayed on the shelves began trembling all at once, letting out shrill, owl-like warning cries.
Lupin had been crouched in the basement, brewing. The swamp toad venom in his cauldron suddenly burst, forming a skull-shaped splash.
Then—
Three Blasting Curses struck the enchanted door simultaneously.
The entrance exploded inward. Shattered glass rained down like a storm.
Rotting troll liver tumbled from the shelves, splattering onto the ground. The acidic sludge instantly ate through the soles of two Aurors' dragonhide boots.
Greyback overturned a boiling cauldron and leapt onto a beam overhead. Scalding liquid splashed across a pursuer's face, blistering his skin instantly—like someone had forced his head into boiling tar.
"Cubs in the upper mezzanine!"
The strike leader, Dawlish, fired a red beam that illuminated the ventilation ducts. Inside, hunched silhouettes of fleeing werewolves scrambled through the narrow passages.
One werewolf snapped his wand—an automatic crossbow sprang from the counter. Poisoned bolts flew, grazing an Auror's sleeve before embedding in the wall, where they hissed and smoked with corrosive green vapor.
Lupin knew they couldn't hold.
He smashed through the back window. As he fled, dozens of jars filled with Bundimun eggs toppled from the shelves, spilling thick yellow sludge across the cobblestone street.
The first Auror to step into it triggered the trap.
The eggs burst open.
Hundreds—no, thousands—of spined larvae erupted, writhing and biting.
Lupin had accelerated their hatching.
Amid the screams, he snatched a pouch of powdered Hungarian Horntail fangs and flung it behind him. The moment it touched the larvae's secretion, a wall of ghostly blue fire roared to life.
Above, Greyback bounded across rooftops, tearing open tarps that covered stacked crates.
Dozens of Sneakoscopes spilled out like a swarm, their shrill buzzing disrupting tracking spells.
One masked Auror fired a Blasting Curse—but the red beam ricocheted off the spinning devices, detonating against the shop's outer wall and leaving a charred crater.
Dawlish and his team sealed the alley's exit. Five Stunning Spells shot forward, cutting off every escape route for Greyback.
In response, Greyback kicked a rusted gas pipe at the corner.
It ruptured instantly.
A surge of violet fumes burst forth, swallowing the entire alley in a choking haze.