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Remus is regretting taking this job very much.
After learning that Gilderoy Lockhart was teaching at Hogwarts, he took it upon himself to finally read one of his books. Wanderings with Werewolves was an entertaining read until the revelation that Lockhart defeated the werewolf with a Homorphus charm at close range.
What the fuck?
Managing to change a werewolf back into human form requires both an immense amount of power, and getting up close and personal with the rabid man-eating beast.
It’s a miracle it even worked.
To imagine that the weird little guy who followed James and Sirius around and imitated everything they did until they finally graduated and left him behind somehow managed this feat - and that he might teach it to the students?
In a fit of overwhelming worry that the next generation of Hogwarts students - that Harry - might think it a good solution only to find out that getting within reach of a werewolf’s jaw is the quickest way to end up as a snack, he hastily filled in an application for the Defence Against the Dark Arts post and sent it off to Dumbledore.
Somehow, he was hired.
Just in time for his ex-boyfriend to break out of Azkaban.
Whose goal apparently is to kill Harry.
What the fuck.
Well, it’s good he’ll be spending the next year looking over the kid, because if he doesn’t protect him from his murderous ex, Lily might actually return from the afterlife just to kill him.
Which leaves him here; watching Harry collapse as a dementor tries to eat his soul(!!!) They haven’t even reached Hogwarts yet, and he already wants to resign. His heart is not up for this level of stress.
He gives the kids some chocolate and tries to pretend it doesn’t hurt to be looked at as a stranger by the child who once called him Moo’ey.
—
Staff meetings is draining his soul.
His former War General is pretending to be a daft old man, McGonagall looks harried and tired all the time, the Divination teacher that he still doesn’t know the name of is drunk, Professor Babbling is sleeping with her eyes open (a very impressive feat; Remus is jealous), Hagrid just seems happy to be there, and Snape keeps him within eyesight at all times and is filled with so much disgust and fear that Remus can practically smell it.
Remus tries to be as kind and cordial as possible to reassure Snape and ease his fear, which has the added benefit of watching him turn purple with rage anytime he calls him by his first name. Nice.
He tunes back in on Dumbledore’s rambling just in time to hear his name.
“Remus, how are you finding your job so far?” He says, twinkling his eyes.
“Well, it’s good to be back at Hogwarts, and the students are mostly following along. I had to majorly change my lesson plans, though. The kids are very undereducated..” Remus trails off, looking at Dumbledore for an explanation as to why his second graders know absolutely nothing, and the third, fourth, and fifths are barely any better. The NEWT students are alright, but he is suspecting that might be because the seven (only seven!) students that actually passed their class have been self-studying.
“Ah,” says Dumbledore, patting down his robes in what cannot be a nervous gesture, right? “It appears that the last few teachers might have been a bit relaxed in their teaching styles, and-“
McGonagall interrupts, “And by ‘a bit relaxed’ he means absolutely useless - Albus, you have to stop hiring people with no experience whatsoever! How are you even choosing the candidates? By reading their horoscope?” She says, glaring at Dumbledore who avoids her gaze by looking very intently down at his cup of tea.
“Reading their horoscope might actually be a good idea,” Dumbledore muses, before grimacing like he immediately regrets saying it out loud.
“Or what about you actually start listening to me? Didn’t I tell you I didn’t like how Peterson was looking at the female students? And Severus and I both told you something was wrong with Quirrel - granted, we were afraid he would have a nervous breakdown - or what about Lockhart? He was a useless fraud. A fraud!”
“Minerva, you know there aren’t that many applications due to the rumour of the curse-“
“Then why don’t you hire the goblins to look for it?”
“The Board of Governors won’t raise the budget!”
“Take it out of your own pocket then!”
“How am I-“
Remus tunes the rest of the meeting out, daydreaming about the day the curse takes him out.
—
Remus surprises himself when he discovers that he likes being a teacher. With the exception of how often he feels the urge to tear his hair out in frustration over how bad the previous teachers must have been, he finds it a fun and fulfilling job. And the students are so clearly starved for an actual education that he rarely has to force anyone to pay attention.
Except Vincent Crabbe Jr, who never pays attention no matter how hard Remus tries. But remembering what his father got up to during the war he secretly thinks it might be for the best that the boy doesn’t learn too much about fighting.
Remus uses boggarts as his first lesson in most of his classes. Somehow, no one except the NEWT students know how to deal with the shapeshifters, which he finds very worrying considering how often the castle gets infested.
Boggarts were supposed to be third year knowledge!
Thus follows some very interesting classes. Most of the students, especially the younger years, have relatively innocuous fears. He sees many spiders, snakes, fish (why?), zombies, Ravenclaw students (and one Gryffindor) failing classes, and various depictions of fear of heights and deep bodies of water.
Neville Longbottom, whose parents were literally tortured to insanity by Bellatrix Lestrange, is apparently even more afraid of Snape. Yikes. The whole class ends up laughing at the ridiculous sight of Snape dressed in the Longbottom matriarch’s distinctive clothing, though Neville only pales even further. Remus has to hide his laugh behind a very unconvincing cough.
Some fears, however, are much harder to laugh off.
There are a lot of dementors (understandably), corpses of families and friends, basilisks (not so understandably; Remus thought those were extinct), Voldemort (or at least what the students thought he looked like, because Remus knew for a fact he didn’t look like that), and the standard werewolves and vampires.
He considers the lessons a success and decides not to think too hard on some of those fears. Except Snape-as-Augusta-Longbottom. That’s a memory Remus will treasure for the rest of his life.
—
The rumour mill is somehow even more disturbing than it was back in his school days.
Some of the most notable ones Remus has heard includes:
- • Hermione Granger, the most academically inclined student he’s seen since Lily Evan’s herself, has both fought a troll and set Snape on fire, and regularly brews NEWT level potions in her spare time.
• Pansy Parkinson is leading a spy-ring to gather enough blackmail to fulfill her dream as shadow-ruler of the British Ministry of Magic.
• Opposing Quiddich Captains Oliver Wood and Marcus Flint are in a secret relationship.
• Professors Sinistra, Snape and Vector are involved in a very toxic love triangle.
• Seamus Finnigan is hiding a distillery somewhere and getting rich off of selling it to upper year students.
• Professor Sprout is growing cannabis in one of the greenhouses with the help of Neville Longbottom and Dumbledore is their biggest customer.
• Cassius Warrington is sleeping with half the Hufflepuff Quiddich team and both the Ravenclaw beaters.
• Dumbledore is blackmailing the Health and Safety Department, Minister Fudge, and the Board of Governors, and was once in a relationship with Grindelwald. As in, the former Dark Lord. That Grindelwald.
Remus can only hope that most of these are exaggerated or lies, because what the fuck.
And if one were to believe all the rumours, the Weasley’s are apparently even worse than the Marauders ever were.
Somehow the whole family is involved in all sorts of illegal and dangerous stuff. Stealing a sentient car and setting it loose in the Forbidden Forest (Ron), running an underground potions operation (the twins), blackmailing a government official (Percy), smuggling a dragon (Charlie, who didn’t even go here anymore), almost resurrecting the Dark Lord (Ginny - which, what the fuck), engaging in psychological warfare against Snape (the twins, again), kidnapping Lockhart and returning him with permanent amnesia (Ron, again), blackmailing Dumbledore (Remus is afraid to ask Percy how), and poisoning their first year DADA teacher with experimental potions (the twins).
And worst of all is Harry. The sweet, prodigious DADA student that always has extra questions after class and performs better than some of his fifth years. The child Remus once held in his arms and who made James cry himself to sleep with joy when he was born. That kid is involved with half the Weasley rumours, is somehow threatening Lucius Malfoy, is the Heir of Slytherin, is getting stalked by a murderous house elf, and has killed ‘Slytherins monster’ - and a teacher!
Asking a few discrete questions, (“so, Albus, what’s up with the basilisk boggarts?” “I heard the funniest rumour today,” and “Albus, what the fuck do you mean an eleven year old killed a man?!”) didn’t help either, so for his peace of mind he decided to stop asking questions and try to block the rumours out entirely.
It doesn’t work.
Remus can’t stop thinking about Harry killing a man or Dumbledore sleeping with a Dark Lord. Some things are simply impossible to forget.
Maybe he should ask Ron Weasley if he’d be up to obliviating another teacher.
—
On James and Lily’s death anniversary, also known as Halloween, Sirius Black breaks into Hogwarts.
Remus feels like a fool for not having told Dumbledore about all the secret passageways the Marauders found sooner. It simply didn’t cross his mind that the old man didn’t know about all of them yet.
The unbreakable vow stopping him from informing anyone about Sirius’ animagus form doesn’t help his frustration any either. So now he has no choice but to look for his murderous ex himself and hope to catch him in time. (In hindsight, it might have been a bad idea to use unbreakable vows for just about anything and everything. He can’t even tell Harry half the stories he wants to, simply because he would die the second he utters the first word.)
Remus is feeling very sympathetic towards Dumbledore who also had to stop a murderous ex.
He channels his frustrations through his teaching lessons, trying his best to in-still enough knowledge in the students heads so that they can survive an encounter with Sirius without outright encouraging them to commit murder.
Remus struggled to keep it age-appropriate and legal in the beginning, what with all the stuff he got up to in school and the years he spent fighting a war as a werewolf spy, but as the dementors decide to attack during the Gryffindor vs. Hufflepuff match, and the wards fail to keep Sirius out, he is perhaps a bit more vicious than planned.
But, so long as he doesn’t mention murder and takes care not to teach them any spells that would see them expelled or in Azkaban, it should be fine, right?
—
Snape decides to teach the kids how to identify and murder werewolves. Yikes.
Well, at least Remus wasn’t the one to break the unspoken Don’t Encourage Murder rule. To retaliate Remus is extra kind to him. Nothing seems to infuriate the greasy git more than being subjected to basic manners and politeness.
—
Remus has taken up drinking away his sorrows, and is now included in the secret drinking-and-gossiping nights with some of the other teachers. How his friend group didn’t know about this, what with their (illegal) constant surveillance of everyone in the castle, he doesn’t know, but right now he is just happy it exists.
“-and miss Richards mispronounced the spell so thoroughly that she somehow invented a new one. So the classroom was filled with live frogs that she didn’t even summon from anywhere, just created out of nothing - completely disregarding Gamp’s Law!” Minerva complains loudly, dragging a hand through her hair and messing up her neat braid.
Filius looks awed, clutching his hands in excitement. “How fascinating.. what did you do about the frogs?”
“I couldn’t decide between rewarding her for managing to break the laws of magic or punishing her for filling up the entire floor with frogs, so I gave her 20 points and told her to catch them and set them free in the Forbidden Forest.”
It took Remus a good three months to stop feeling weird about calling his former teachers by their first name, but watching people drunkenly gossip like fourth year students has removed all his reservations. Somehow, teaching is almost exactly like being a student, with the exception of how he has to be the one stopping mischief and copulations in broom closets. Whenever he sees a particularly inspired prank he pretends not to notice though; he can’t entirely go against his nature as a prankster.
Remus recently caught Hufflepuff Wayne Hopkins with what he thought was bags of cannabis, but when he confiscated the drugs he found out it was just bags filled with oregano so he ended up giving it back, and the next day he saw them selling it to a fifth year Slytherin. Very clever.
He tells the other teachers this story and while Minerva looks a bit disapproving, Pomona is impressed.
“A good business acumen is an important skill to develop.”
“Cheers to that,” happily exclaims Sybil, before downing her eight (!!!) glass of sherry.
Rolanda lets out a snore from where she fell asleep draped over the table half an hour ago.
—
The last lesson before the Christmas holidays is with the third year Gryffindors. Since it’s his favourite class and biases are encouraged at Hogwarts, he treats them to hot chocolate and a class discussion about creative defence measures.
“Imagine; your opponent is bigger, tougher, and stronger than you - what would you do?”
Everyone begins to speak at once.
“Calm down, calm down - one at a time. Let’s start with.. Mr. Weasley.”
Harry’s friend turns a bit red at the attention when everyone turns to look at him but answers easily, “Well, a levitation charm can lift all sorts of stuff, so I’d levitate a branch or a stone or something and just drop it over their head. Works a treat!”
Remus doesn’t like how confident he said that. Like he’d already tried it out.
“.. right. Okay, what about you, Mr. Finnegan?”
“Set them on fire!” exclaims the Irish cheerily.
The class laughs, everyone having seen his many pyromanic mishaps.
“It works,” says Miss Granger, very calmly. The laughter cuts off awkwardly and Miss Brown scoots away from her - Finnegan however leans closer, looking at her very intently. Harry looks entirely too unconcerned about the fact that his friend apparently set someone on fire. Sounds like the rumour about her setting Snape on fire was true after all.
Mr. Longbottom, who has never volunteered for anything in Remus’ class ever, decides to do so now. “Lockhart taught us how to remove bones, so you could just remove an arm or a leg. Maybe even their spine.”
What the fuck. The kid didn’t even stutter.
And Remus thought Dumbledore was daft for hiring a werewolf? At least he doesn’t teach kids how to paralyse each other.
But then Remus remembers that this kid was raised by Augusta Longbottom, and that his mother Alice was the Orders second most lethal soldier after Sirius. She and Sirius used to get along very well, having competitions on the battlefields about who killed most Death Eaters and giving each other ‘creativity points’. It runs in the blood apparently.
Harry finally raises his hand. Remus is almost scared to hear what he considers an appropriate response to danger, but he has to do his job so he gestures vaguely for permission.
Harry smiles with too many teeth, “Stab them. No one expects that.”
Not what he expected either, but technically true; Death Eaters always seemed baffled whenever anyone used something other than magic in a fight. He will never forget Lucius Malfoy’s face after Lily kicked him in the nuts.
Remus decides to cut the class short. He needs a drink.
—
The first Patronus Charm lesson with Harry, Remus learns three things.
One: Harry is absurdly powerful and would probably end up just as fearsome as Dumbledore one day.
Two: his friends are extremely loyal, which he figures out when Harry leaves and they both fall though the door because they had apparently spent the whole lesson listening through the keyhole. The Granger girl didn’t even look embarrassed, just stared at him with unnervingly calculating eyes like she was trying to read his soul.
And three: that kid is weird as fuck. Like, even weirder than he already knew. Harry is fidgety and constantly moving, very suspicious towards Remus like he is the dangerous one and not the kid who literally murdered one of his teachers, doesn’t seem to hold an ounce of respect towards adults, and the whole time there is something moving in his pocket.
Remus follows his previous plan, and doesn’t ask any questions. Whatever is moving in Harry’s pocket is none of his business.
He thinks about how much Euphemia would have loved to watch her grandson grow up, and then he cries because the whole Potter family is dead so no one gets to see him grow up.
—
Sirius breaks in again and this time gets all the way to Harry’s dorm room.
Snape is suspicious of him, Dumbledore is way too little concerned about the very real danger that the students are in, and Remus wants to cry.
Instead of crying alone, he cries with Minerva over a bottle of scotch.
—
Harry has been using the Marauders map to sneak out of school, because he is thirteen years old and kids that age don’t think about stuff like ‘hey, there’s a murderer out to get me, maybe I should deliver this surveillance map to a teacher so they can figure out how he keeps breaking into the school?’ and instead think ‘huh, this map can track anyone, I’ll use it to sneak out even though there are dementors everywhere and a murderer is out to get me’.
Fuck.
Worst part is, thirteen year old Remus would do the exact same thing so he feels like the biggest hypocrite in the world when he confiscates it. But hey, at least Snape didn’t get it.
He feels so bad watching Harry’s crestfallen expression that he ends up inviting him for tea instead of giving him the detention like he should. Besides, giving him detention means revealing that he knows that the map is, in fact, a map and not a Zonko’s joke product - and explaining that means breaking down crying in front of Harry which seems like a very inappropriate thing to do as a teacher.
—
As most teachers, Remus has his own favourite students.
Harry is obviously his most favourite - and not only because Remus is obligated to like him best - but also because the kid is an absolute delight in class. He is creative, powerful, engaged in classes, and always delivers his homework on time.
Percy Weasley, the current eldest Weasley at Hogwarts who is also maybe blackmailing Dumbledore, is on track to be the most terrifyingly efficient bureaucrat since Theseus Scamander and it shows in his essays.
Pandora’s daughter is the strangest person Remus has ever met. Luna seems to live in another world entirely, but when she focuses in class she is always cheerful and kind. She also somehow terrified the Boggart so much that it disappeared and Remus had to hunt down a new one for his next classes, and now all the second year Ravenclaws look at her with fear. Very entertaining. Her friend, the Weasley girl, is also entertaining, and acts eerily like her mother before she lost Fabian and Gideon; scary, powerful, and mischievous.
Cedric Diggory is a straight O-student, popular with both boys and girls, and a Quiddich player, but luckily he is boring and rule-abiding enough that he doesn’t remind Remus of James too much. His girlfriend Cho Chang is shy, giggly, and gives him the best essays out of everyone in her year.
Colin Creevey is enthusiastic, socially awkward, speaks a mile a minute, and has questions about everything. Remus can barely look at him without crying because he resembles Peter even more than Harry resembles James.
—
Due to his nature as a werewolf, Remus has very advanced senses. He can smell, see and hear better than a normal human, and as such is very rarely surprised. So when he smelled something that can only be vaguely categorised as death while walking his night rounds, he pushed down the wolf’s instinctive reaction (to run away as fast as possible) and followed the smell.
Turns out, he had forgotten about James’ invisibility cloak which always used to raise his hackles with it’s disconcerting unnaturalness; he crashed into something invisible, and three teenagers tumbled out from under a familiar cloak.
Miss Granger was quick to get back on her feet, subtly keeping her wand trained on him.
Mr. Weasley was groaning on the floor.
Harry was trying to gather the stuff that had fallen out of his pockets: seven writhing snakes, one ginormous fucking kitchen knife, a half eaten apple, and his wand.
The snakes were hissing madly, and Harry was hissing back.
What.
“...” Remus tried to speak, but he had no words for whatever the fuck is going on.
“Sorry, Professor!” Miss Granger said insincerely, “we didn’t see you coming.”
Harry has stuffed all but two snakes back in his pockets, holding the two up with a yell of triumph as he finally gets back on his feet.
“Nice job, mate,” says Weasley, nodding at Harry approvingly while still laying on the floor.
Harry hisses at him.
“Wrong language.”
Harry speaks again, this time in English “Right.. thanks, mate!” and beams at Weasley.
All three turn to look at Remus as one. He suppresses a shiver.
“ …are those poisonous?” Remus asks, trying to project a calmness he doesn’t feel.
“Of course not! They’re totally harmless - grass snakes uses ambushing as a hunting technique and then eat their prey alive,” Harry insists, before adding in a lower voice; “besides, Hermione didn’t let me keep the dangerous snakes.”
Remus doesn’t feel very reassured.
“And what about the whole…” Remus waves vaguely towards Harry as a whole.
“The Parseltongue thing?” Harry asks.
Remus nods.
“ …don’t know,” Harry shrugs.
“What do you mean you don’t know?” Remus asks in a very high voice before trying to calm himself again.
“Professor Dumbledore said that You Know Who gave Harry some of his powers when he failed to murder him,” primly answers Miss Granger.
That doesn’t make any sense, but most things Dumbledore says are like that.
Remus thinks it’s far more likely that someone shagged a Parselmouth and kept it a secret, but everyone he could ask about James’ and Lily’s genealogy are dead, muggles, or is busy being an escaped serial killer.
He sends the kids back off to bed with a warning that the next time he catches them, it’s detention.
It’s only when they leave that he realises that he was so distracted that he didn’t even ask why they were out at night with seven snakes and a kitchen knife.
Well, at least he now has the answer to what kept moving in Harry’s pockets.
—
Whatever the original reason for Harry’s kitchen knife, Remus doesn’t care, because he has found an excellent use for it.
Remus was doing his routine scanning of the Marauder’s map when he saw two names that shouldn’t be there. Peter Pettigrew and Sirius Black were both heading towards the Shrieking Shack at high speeds, with Hermione and Harry right behind.
He has never ran so fast in his life. Probably broke a record - maybe even broke through the anti-apparition wards for all he knows; he doesn’t remember anything from his journey from his office to the Shack. Remus didn’t even have time to think. Which is a shame, really, because if he did, things would have become clear much sooner.
The sight that greeted him was a shock. Ron barely standing upright, but still placing himself in front of Harry protectively. Hermione was wandless, but looked ready to claw someone’s eyes out. And then…
Sirius Black. Looking haunted and malnourished and crazed. He was holding the kids at wand point with one hand, but the other was clutching a bleeding wound in his stomach - Harry’s knife laying on the floor in front of him, just as bloodied. He looked insane. Terrifying. More dangerous than Remus had ever seen him.
And beautiful.
Later, Remus would be proud of himself to managing to stand up to his greatest nightmare (his greatest love), despite the emotions clouding his mind. Even when he learned it was undeserved. His wand was out faster than he could blink, pointing at Sirius. His hands were not shaking. Remus would do anything to protect Harry. No matter who was in his way. No matter if his heart was breaking all over again.
(A shameful part of Remus knows that he would forgive anything Sirius could ever do, mass murder of muggles, siding with Voldemort. The only one exception was betraying their friends).
Then Remus sees him. And several things click at once.
He hugs Sirius; he binds the cowardly rat of a man who had spent enough time as an animagus that his true nature will forever mar his features; he explains everything to Harry; he fights with Snape; he is full of hope and joy; he transforms.
All he can feel is pain and fear, but it’s too late to stop him. His last thought is that he hopes one of the kids has taken Snape’s lecture at heart and kills Remus so he won’t wake up surrounded by their remains.
—
No one was hurt except Snape’s pride, but Peter escaped. Luckily, Sirius did too. On a hippogriff of all things. He doesn’t ask. Harry and Sirius was attacked and almost eaten by dementors again, but Dumbledore is thankfully insane and has given a time-turner to a thirteen year old.
Harry performed probably the greatest patronus ever seen, and pushed back a hundred dementors all on his own. Remus is very proud, and also very concerned about the amount of power cramped into such a young child. He might turn out even greater than Dumbledore at this rate.
Remus spends two whole days in the hospital wing. It’s a small price to pay.
—
Snape has done Remus the biggest favour ever. He’s finally gotten Remus fired. He doesn’t even care that he was outed as a werewolf.
“Thank you thank you thank you!” Remus says, hugging the man tightly and jumping them up and down.
Minerva is laughing so hard she cries, Dumbledore is twinkling his eyes and looking like this was his plan all along, and Snape flees in terror the second he’s released.
Remus packs in a rush, barely stopping to give Harry the map and a hug before he can finally wave the worst job of his life goodbye.
He’s homeless and would probably never get a job in Wizarding Britain again, but he hasn’t been this happy in thirteen years.
Filled with joy and hope, he sets out to track down Sirius.