Chapter 1
*I am Remus Lupin.*
That wild, utterly absurd thought rang through the depths of my mind like a church bell. But denying reality wasn't an option.
I remembered my own death perfectly. It's hard to forget — or confuse with anything else — the sensation of your ribcage caving inward. And a head-on collision with a jeep that had crossed into oncoming traffic, given the speeds both vehicles were traveling at…
*Brr.* Even now, goosebumps crawled across my skin, and a dull ache tightened in my chest at the mere thought of my own death. Not even this boy's memories were enough to drown out the phantom sensations of shattering bones and tearing organs.
I shuddered, quite naturally, as I relived the final moments of my previous life.
That life already felt like it had been swallowed up by an endless flood of someone else's memories, images, and emotions. As though I hadn't died just a few subjective hours ago, but rather… I didn't even know how to describe what I was feeling. The memories of a thirteen-year-old boy had genuinely shaken something loose in the way I perceived the world. Or had Remus himself remembered a past life, and I was simply the dominant voice in our shared consciousness by virtue of having lived longer?
Honestly, even after digging around inside myself, I couldn't find a clear answer. Remus's memories felt far too natural, too much like my own. And yet the life of Andrei Ryabov felt no less real for it.
"Stupidity, madness, magic, and this damned lycanthropy," I hissed through my teeth, fighting not only with the jumbled chaos in my head but with the glorious aftermath of yet another full moon.
Right. I was a werewolf now. And werewolves couldn't control themselves under the full moon — they transformed into a dangerous monster with a singular hunger for fresh blood. At least, that was the opinion of ordinary wizards, and of my young predecessor.
Ahem. Yes. I supposed I wasn't quite Lupin, after all.
Remus had despised his own nature with a kind of desperate passion, and it had kept him in a state of near-constant depression. Not the worst form of it — his friends had kept him from truly dark thoughts — but the boy had accumulated a remarkable number of hang-ups for someone his age, essentially writing himself off before he'd even had a chance to try.
For some reason, he'd been utterly convinced that his "furry little problem" meant he would never have a family, never hold a normal job, never become a functioning member of society. Though, all right — I understood where thoughts like that came from.
"Local society isn't exactly fond of werewolves," I muttered aloud, a bitter smirk on my lips, "and the man who fathered this body ran his son so far into the ground that anyone would start doubting themselves."
Speaking my thoughts out loud helped me distance myself from the discomfort in my body and fight back against the doubled sense of self. For some reason, I had no desire to identify with the young Hogwarts student. His entire personality struck me as too… pathetic. Too led by others. Even trying to picture myself as this boy produced a strange and furious resistance somewhere deep in my chest.
I also saw my "furry little problem" from a rather different angle.
In my previous life, I hadn't exactly been the picture of robust health. Asthma. A stomach ulcer. Hypertension. A devastating collection of hereditary conditions that had earned me hundreds — perhaps thousands — of hours in hospital wards of every variety.
They'd refused to let me onto the university basketball team because my medical file was thicker than a textbook. And I'd been passionate about that sport my entire life, dragging myself to competitions since grade school. So having these inherited conditions undercut me, despite every effort to live healthily, had felt particularly cruel.
Remus, by contrast, had something close to full immunity to ordinary illness. He could boast of extraordinary physical health. And more than that — despite his slender build and complete disregard for physical training, he was several times stronger than any of his peers.
Being a werewolf came with a long list of advantages. Heightened senses. A physique that surpassed ordinary humans by a significant margin. And if you actually put work into maintaining that physique, the results could be genuinely astonishing — characteristics approaching an Olympic athlete's, or perhaps beyond.
That alone was already quite a lot, objectively speaking. And the physical resilience didn't stop there. Nasty curses? Potion poisoning? Wounds that wouldn't close because of dark magic? Pfft. An adult werewolf could shrug off most of that without breaking a sweat.
Up to a point, of course — truly dark curses would leave their mark even on the most resilient werewolf. But the natural resistances this body carried made it a remarkably durable thing. And yes, being forced to transform every full moon was a serious price to pay for those advantages.
But I preferred to be an optimist. To appreciate what was good, and not to despair over flaws in my nature that I couldn't change. The example of a depressed and despairing teenager made the alternative very clear. Becoming his exact copy — wallowing in suffering and self-pity — wasn't something I had any interest in.
*Besides, who says it's actually impossible to take control during the full moon?* I encouraged myself, feeling a flicker of genuine surprise that Lupin had never even tried to learn more about his own nature.
That wasn't quite accurate, either. He'd known a great deal about his condition. But seeking a way to maintain control during the transformation? That had never even been a question. The teenager had been completely certain it was impossible, and so he'd never bothered to dig in that direction.
"Wallowing in your own tragedy instead of doing something about it," I said aloud, shaking my head with something almost like amusement. Then I added silently that it wasn't only teenagers who suffered from this particular love of personal suffering.
But I didn't dwell on it long. Surprisingly, that small analysis of someone else's life had put a drop of confidence back into me — enough to make me look forward instead of tearing my hair out over the resentment, hurt, anger, and tangled knot of other dark emotions that had gripped my chest.
Coming to terms with my own death had been genuinely hard. Bitter. Devastating, even. A family. A career as an architect that I'd loved, even when it had grown routine. Grand plans for a comfortable life — nothing extravagant, just stable and full. Losing all of that was crushing.
And even the strange sense of temporal distance provided no real relief. What did it matter how long ago it felt like you'd lost everything you'd ever had? It didn't hurt any less. But for some reason I couldn't spiral inward, couldn't fixate entirely on my grief. There was this strange, buzzing, electrifying thought underneath it all — that I wasn't just an ordinary person anymore. That I was a wizard. More than that: an actual werewolf.
It probably wasn't entirely healthy. But I found I didn't want to mourn what was gone.
A comfortable, stable life had always been the goal. I'd pursued it my whole life, knowing full well that the only inheritance my parents had left me was a collection of chronic conditions. But right now, slowly recovering from the last full moon on the rotting floorboards of the Shrieking Shack, sifting through the memories of a third-year Hogwarts student named Remus Lupin…
I was ready to accept the trade. A quiet, comfortable life in exchange for the chance to become an actual, genuine, honest-to-God wizard. Like something out of a fairy tale. And on top of that — strong, resilient, and very, very dangerous once a month.
"I should check on my actual magical abilities, by the way," I reminded myself, noting an important practical concern. "I don't feel any great power surging through me, or anything particularly unusual."
I could sit here and speculate and daydream all I wanted. There was certainly no shortage of time to lie here on the rotting floorboards — after a night spent in werewolf form, Remus always needed a long while to recover, and none of the people who knew my secret would come rushing in unnecessarily.
But every thought I'd had so far could turn out to be completely useless if Remus's magic had somehow vanished the moment I took over this body. Or was this really just a case of a past life awakening inside an existing person?
"Lumos!" I set aside the pointless philosophical tangent and attempted the simplest possible light spell.
Nothing happened.
"Oh, *damn* it, that's not funny."
Fear and disappointment crashed over me simultaneously, throwing my already-overheated mind into even greater chaos. My head swam. The thought that I might not be a wizard after all sent a painful tremor through my entire body.
"Lumos! Lumos! Lumos!" I was nearly shouting the word in something close to panic, thinking of absolutely nothing else — which was almost certainly why it wasn't working. Because after the tenth attempt, when I finally took the time to locate the memory of Remus casting this spell for the very first time, it worked.
A steady ball of light bloomed at the tip of the wand, easy and effortless, and the moment it appeared I felt a wave of calm wash through me, a lightness spreading through my limbs.
"Phew." I laughed quietly, genuinely relieved. "I'd stopped breathing from the tension." I deactivated the spell. "Nox."
The light winked out. I lowered the wand back to the floor — but only for a moment.
"I need to work through the spells my predecessor already had in his arsenal. I have a feeling certain embarrassments are going to be unavoidable otherwise."
Having arrived more or less at that conclusion, I set to work — drilling through the basic spells stored in my predecessor's memory. The ones from the recollections of Lyall Lupin, the boy's father, who had taught his son before enrollment at Hogwarts. Back then, Lyall had expected his son would never be admitted to any school at all, which was why the training had been thorough and wide-ranging. But in the end, Albus Dumbledore had agreed to take me in, assuming full personal responsibility for any complications that might arise.
"That's another mystery worth unpacking," I muttered, summoning a trickle of drinking water with reasonable success. "Aguamenti. What does that old man actually want with me, that he'd so blatantly violate the rules of his own school just to let a werewolf attend?"
The initial uncertainty about my own abilities gradually faded. I grew more confident with each basic spell I ran through — the ones that had been part of Lupin's repertoire. Though not everything came easily on the first try. The habits Lupin had built were helpful — they let me walk a path that had already been cleared — but it would be wrong to say I'd fully inherited them. I'd inherited the teenager's experience, and that experience let me navigate simple spells and basic Transfiguration relatively quickly. Transfiguration had been where my predecessor particularly excelled. Well. For a third-year student at Hogwarts, anyway.
"Interesting. Very interesting." I set down the wand. "But I think it's time to get back to the castle before Sirius and James start worrying."
I paused, a faint unease surfacing as I recalled those names.
Or were they really *my* friends? Accepting two teenagers — textbook representatives of golden youth — as my own companions felt genuinely uncomfortable.
*Then again, I'll think about that after I meet them in person,* I decided, choosing not to rush to any conclusions. Time had a way of sorting these things out.
The important things were simple: don't raise any red flags with my dormmates. And don't lunge at Peter the moment I looked at him, armed with questionable foreknowledge about this world's future. Beyond that — it was unlikely even wizards would spontaneously suspect that their friend had been quietly replaced by someone else entirely. Inertia of thought operated the same in any world, regardless of whether you could do magic.
And in the worst case, even under Veritaserum, I'd almost certainly confirm that I was Remus Lupin. Because there was no other Remus in this world. But there were his memories, his reflexes, and his body — and it seemed like those were what I was going to be working with from now on.
God, how strange all of this was. I genuinely wanted to bang my head against the nearest wall. Just to knock my thoughts back into alignment, maybe stop the memories from torturing me with their endless carousel of emotions, sensations, and images. At this rate, the mild dizziness alone was enough to make my stomach turn.