Remus was, if possible, more disconcerted than he had been the first time this had happened. He was on the Hogwarts Express, not as a student, but as a professor.
Was he alive? Dead? In between? Dreaming? Hallucinating? Was this a test? A punishment? A reward?
The train rumbled beneath him; the children trembled; the dementor sent chills through his blood. Remus' instincts took over. His father had been an expert on non-human spiritous apparitions, and it had been from him that Remus had learned as a very small boy that in matters such as this, the strong always protected the weak. Full stop.
He called for the children to be quiet and let a ball of flames slide into one hand.
The dementor looked him in the face, as much as a dementor could. "None of us is hiding Sirius Black under our cloaks. Go." He remembered saying that the first time; he remembered the pain that had lingered under his words.
He remembered that words had been useless. They generally were, with the likes of dementors.
He raised his wand to cast a Patronus (non-corporeal of course— he might have been changed by Dora and Teddy and death itself, but he still wasn't putting his inner wolf on display for the world without a very good reason) and the dementor retreated.
Remus turned to see Harry semiconscious on the floor. His heart twisted in his chest. Harry looked so painfully young: small and skinny and innocent. This was the man who in less than five years would save the world?
This was the man who would save Remus' marriage and family with a well-placed boot up his arse.
"My father died trying to protect my mother and me, and you reckon he'd tell you to abandon your kid to go on an adventure with us? I think you're feeling a bit of a daredevil. You fancy stepping into Sirius' shoes. I'd never have believed it. The man who taught me to fight dementors— a coward."
Remus turned his back on the children and the memory and reached into his briefcase to retrieve the chocolate he'd known he would find there. He didn't particularly remember distributing it the first time, and he certainly didn't remember packing it, but no competent Defense Against the Dark Arts professor got onto a train that was likely to be stalked by dementors without a supply of chocolate.
He might have been a coward from time to time, but he had never been incompetent.
He began to distribute the chocolate, explaining as he went. "That was one of the dementors of Azkaban. Professor Dumbledore was concerned that they might pay a visit to the train, and so he asked me to ride along with the students just in case."
"What's a dementor?" Harry asked.
"Only one of the foulest creatures that walk this earth. They infest the darkest, filthiest places, they glory in decay and despair, they drain peace, hope, and happiness out of the air around them. Get too near a dementor and every good feeling, every happy memory will be sucked out of you. If it can, the dementor will feed on you long enough to reduce you to something like itself. Soulless and evil. You will be left with nothing but the worst experiences of your life."
Every one of them— Ron, Hermione, Harry, Neville, and Ginny— stared back at him. There was no recognition in any of their faces. They didn't know him. He was just a strange, rumpled man with strong feelings about certain dark creatures and a briefcase full of sweets like a Muggle criminal might use to lure an unsuspecting child into his car.
Remus tried to soften his tone. "The chocolate is an antidote. You should eat it. Particularly you, Harry. The worst experiences of your life were, to understate the matter, rather awful. Through no fault of your own, you give the dementor a lot to work with."
There was a flicker of gratitude and understanding in Harry's eyes amidst the ravages of embarrassment. At least Harry wouldn't waste any time wondering why he was the only one who had passed out. (Though Ginny and Neville, unless Remus missed his guess, had come awfully close to joining Harry on the floor.)
"Excuse me," he told the children. "I need to speak to the driver."
He passed through the train, checking to see that chocolate frogs were distributed liberally, particularly in compartments where the students were looking particularly pale. He spoke briefly with the driver, owled his report to Dumbledore, and managed to look up from his work just in time to catch a glimpse of the castle as it came into view.
It was the sight of the castle, more than anything else, that convinced him that this was real. Not a dream, not a hallucination, not a test.
He had really and truly managed to travel five years into the past.
"Feeling a bit of a daredevil. You fancy stepping into Sirius' shoes," taunted the Harry from the future-past. Harry had sacrificed everything and had defeated Lord Voldemort.
And Remus had destroyed that sacrifice.
Remus, who prided himself on protecting those who could not protect themselves, had allowed the Dark Lord to rise again by tampering with the timeline.
He was suddenly struck by a wave of dizzy exhaustion and grabbed at the side of the train for support.
"I didn't mean it," he whispered. He'd been feeling clever and witty and energized with the delicious feeling of being beside James and Sirius and Lily again. He'd been giddy with relief that Voldemort would finally be defeated. He hadn't quite shaken the soaring feeling that had been his companion ever since Teddy's birth.
The train shuddered to a stop. It took everything in Remus not to fall, and he was grateful when Ron took it upon himself to carry the abandoned briefcase off the train. "I wasn't sure if it would go to your office the way our trunks go to our dormitories."
"Thank you, Ron."
Ron swung around, puzzled. "How do you know my name?"
It was lucky that Remus was a good liar, and a quick one. "Professor Dumbledore asked me to familiarize myself with the students before I arrived. I don't imagine you often meet anyone who wasn't at school with someone from your family."
Ron nodded, accepting that. He was used to everyone knowing at least one of his older brothers. "So you were a Gryffindor?"
"Well, as a professor, I no longer take sides. Naturally."
Ron returned Remus' sly smile with one of his own and rushed off to rejoin Harry and Hermione.
The Great Hall was breathtaking. When he'd last seen it, it had been a battlefield. Now it was a work of art lit by candles and the enchanted ceiling. The long rows of tables full of chattering, eager students were a sign that everything was just as it should be.
Best of all, at the center of the head table was Albus Dumbledore, surveying the throng with twinkling eyes.
Dumbledore, who never missed much of anything, noticed that Remus was watching him and beckoned him closer. Remus couldn't stop a smile from splitting his face as he obeyed. "Headmaster," he said, as he clasped the old man's hands with his own, "You have no idea how good it is to see you well."
"If anyone is going to be fretting about anyone else's health, Remus—"
Remus shook his head. "I look worse than I am."
"Well enough to battle dementors, at least. I received your message." Dumbledore shook his head. "I don't like this at all, but one has to let the Ministry have its way once in a while."
For the first time, Remus wondered if perhaps he had been part of a trade Dumbledore had made with the Ministry. If you must have dementors on the grounds, you can at least let me hire a werewolf.
"It's too early in the term for you to be thinking so hard," Dumbledore directed gently. "Take your seat and enjoy the Sorting and the feast. This will be your last chance to relax for longer than you think."
"Yes, Headmaster," he agreed easily, still smiling like a fool. He might have irreparably changed history for the worse, but Merlin it was good to see Dumbledore alive and in his element. As he made his way toward the end of the table, Dumbledore called his name once more. Remus looked a question over his shoulder.
"It is good to see you smile."
Remus didn't know whether he'd smiled much the first time around. He remembered being embarrassed at how shabby he'd looked next to the other professors in their best robes. He remembered feeling terribly awkward calling his former professors, now colleagues, by their first names. He remembered how welcoming they had all been, with the exception of Severus, who had glowered at him with all the hate he could no longer direct at James and Sirius.
Now he watched Severus take his place near Dumbledore, and was completely unprepared for the rush of rage that coursed through every inch of his body.
He remembered that last Christmas before the Ministry had fallen and the members of the Order had gone completely to ground. Harry had locked eyes with him in Molly Weasley's sitting room.
"Do you honestly like Snape?" Harry asked.
"I neither like nor dislike Severus," he said, as Harry didn't even bother to try to hide his skepticism. "No, Harry, I am speaking the truth. We shall never be bosom friends, perhaps, after all that happened between James and Sirius and Severus, there is too much bitterness there. But I do not forget that during the year I taught at Hogwarts, Severus made the Wolfsbane Potion for me every month, made it perfectly, so that I did not have to suffer as I usually do at the full moon."
He'd meant it at the time. He'd insisted that Harry's loathing of Severus Snape was nothing more than James' blood and Sirius' tutelage. He'd repeated, and not for the first time, that Dumbledore trusted Snape and that to trust Snape was to trust Dumbledore.
Harry, seeing that he would get nowhere, had changed the subject.
And all along Harry had been right.
Not for the first time, Remus saw Dumbledore falling to his death in his mind's eye just as if he had been there.
Not for the first time, Remus remembered Harry's recitation of Dumbledore's reasons for trusting where others didn't.
"I'd love to know what Snape told him to convince him," mused Dora as they gathered around Bill Weasley's sickbed. Fenrir Greyback had claimed another victim.
"I know," said Harry, and Remus turned with the others to look at him. "Snape passed Voldemort the information that made Voldemort hunt down my mum and dad. Then Snape told Dumbledore he hadn't realized what he was doing, he was really sorry he'd done it, sorry that they were dead."
Remus stared at Harry in disbelief, feeling more like a fool than he'd felt in a long, long time. "And Dumbledore believed that?" he asked incredulously. "Dumbledore believed Snape was sorry James was dead? Snape hated James…"
Then, after Dumbledore's funeral, the hard, hot battle to remove Harry from his aunt and uncle's home for the last time.
Mundungus Fletcher had come up with a rather unexpectedly brilliant plan to mask Harry's escape by making use of decoys. Six of Harry's friends had drunk polyjuice potion; George Weasley had been Remus' assigned partner. George, of course, had had had no shortage of jokes about the plan— how demeaning it would be to sit behind Remus on a broom when he flew so much better than Remus possibly could in his wildest dreams. (Remus had nonchalantly pointed out that that was also true of the real Harry Potter.) But Remus had been delighted to partner with George, who for all his reputation as a prankster was strong and talented, loyal and clever.
They'd taken off into an immediate ambush. Voldemort had flown directly at Mad-Eye Moody, prompting Mundungus-as-Harry to undo any respect he was owed for proposing the decoys by Disapparating. Voldemort switched his attention to Kingsley and Hermione; Bellatrix, of course, was chasing Dora and Ron.
Just as Bellatrix sought her oldest and most personal enemy, so too did Snape. His hood flew off in the chaos as he swooped closer, closer to Remus and George, and he'd shouted the curse that had always been his particular favorite— the curse that had prompted Remus and his friends to keep a supply of blood-replenishing potion in the dorm room at Hogwarts.
"Sectumsempra!"
Remus was immediately drenched in blood, and to his horror none of the blood was his. George, always so ready with a quip or a laugh, faded from consciousness and began to slip from the broom.
Remus had no chance to return Snape's fire. He could only hope to keep flying in the right direction, keep George on the broom, and make a safe landing before George bled to death…
George had taken the news that he would spend the rest of his life with a hole where his ear should have been in stride.
"… Saintlike. You see, I'm holy. Holey, Fred, geddit?"
Remus let his eyes dance along the length of the Gryffindor table until they found the Weasley twins somewhere around the middle. He couldn't tell Fred and George apart from this distance, but he could tell that they were whole and healthy, and, of course, laughing.
"You've already been warned about the Weasley twins, then?" squeaked a pleasant voice in Remus' ear. Professor Flitwick had come to sit beside him.
"Their reputation does proceed them. I'm sure they can't wait to see what they can get away with with the newest professor."
"I can't imagine that you would have any particular problem with them, not after you spent your own school years running round with James Potter and—"
Flitwick broke off. It would doubtless be the first of many times that Sirius' name would hang in the air, unspoken, wherever Remus went.
Remus was spared from responding when the Sorting began with the usual song and a bright-eyed boy named Bradley. "One of yours," Remus whispered to Flitwick.
"Ravenclaw!" shouted the Hat.
"Well-spotted," whispered Flitwick out of the corner of his mouth as he applauded. "But these next two are for Severus."
It was, of course, a time-honored tradition for everyone in the Great Hall to guess what the Sorting Hat was going to do before it did it. The tendency for Houses to run in families being what it was, a true surprise was rare. (When Sirius had been Sorted, half the room had booed from pure shock, leaving the rest of the first years waiting in even more terror than usual.) It was really only the Muggle-borns and the children with parents who had come from different Houses who presented any sort of challenge.
"Another of yours," said Remus as a lanky boy called Chambers let the Hat fall over his eyes. The Hat took its time deciding.
"I think he's Minerva's," Flitwick murmured, not wanting to be too obvious about what they were doing. "The complicated cases are always Gryffindor or Hufflepuff."
"Ravenclaw!" shouted that Hat.
"Not that I'm not glad to have him," Flitwick added hastily, and Remus smiled warmly, knowing it was true.
Letters D through G consisted of a run of students anyone could have guessed, and Remus and Flitwick applauded politely as Astoria Greengrass strolled confidently to the Slytherin table to join her sister Daphne.
"I don't believe you've missed yet, Remus," said Flitwick. Remus shrugged modestly. He knew that he should miss on purpose, his unfair advantage being what it was, but he was having too much fun. "A box of ice mice to you if you get this next one."
"How can I miss with something like that on the line?" Remus wondered aloud. "Obviously a Hufflepuff."
"Hufflepuff!"
"And this next one's a Gryffindor, if you'd like to go double or nothing."
"You're on!" Flitwick sat up straighter in his chair.
"Gryffindor!"
Toward the end of the alphabet, Remus finally missed a "guess;" he had honestly forgotten where Adrienne Szczerbiak had been Sorted, quiet girl that she was. Flitwick took more pleasure than was strictly necessary in this, even though Remus had told him that he relieved him of all ice mice obligations.
The Sorting wrapped up with Romilda Vane (Gryffindor of the worst kind), and Remus was so relaxed by his "triumph" that he hardly noticed Snape's glare as Dumbledore presented him to the students.
There would be time enough to worry about Severus later. For now, there was the feast.
The first staff meeting of the year was before breakfast the next morning. The overly excited students had barely closed their eyes; Remus doubted that many of the professors had been to bed at all. Exhaustion with an undercurrent of resignation permeated the staffroom.
Remus had always rather liked the long, paneled room full of mismatched chairs. Today he had deliberately chosen one with a hard, straight back. The professors who had chosen the low, cozy armchairs were fighting sleep.
Everyone, however, sat bolt upright when Dumbledore swept into the room. At well over one hundred years old, he had twice as much energy as everyone else combined and a way of sharing that energy without reservation.
"Yes, I know it's early and that this is the beginning of a long, hectic week. Unfortunately, we have not had an opportunity to gather and discuss the special circumstances surrounding the school this year, and I thought it prudent that we do so as soon as possible."
There was a murmur of agreement. Everyone, including Remus, was suddenly completely engaged, all thoughts of the lost hour of sleep forgotten.
"I don't suppose that overnight the Ministry of Magic changed their minds and determined that the dementors will do far more harm than good?" asked McGonagall as Dumbledore took his seat.
Dumbledore's eyes twinkled humorlessly in her direction. "Alas, there has been no such word. The students have been warned, directed, and begged to stay away. Any student caught disobeying should be punished immediately and reported to me. No exceptions."
Everyone nodded in agreement.
"Those of you who can produce a Patronus would do well to practice it. A corporeal Patronus is not necessary to dissuade them."
Everyone nodded in agreement again.
"I have made it clear to both the Ministry and the School that I do not care for this method of handling the situation, but I fear that we have no recourse until such time as Sirius Black is captured or killed."
Remus' stomach sank. He'd watched Sirius die once; he had no desire to experience that again. And the delicate word "captured," which stood in for "has his soul sucked from his body" was even worse.
"You all right there, Lupin?" asked Snape silkily.
All eyes turned to stare at Remus. He did not relish being the center of attention before he had even decided what, if anything, to do with his five years' of ill-gotten knowledge.
"Perfectly fine, Severus," he said nonchalantly. "Thank you for asking."
"We all understand how difficult it must be for you to have such divided loyalty. On the one hand, you would like to protect the school and its students. On the other hand, protecting the students means the end of your old friend Black. Perhaps it would be better if you recused yourself from this meeting."
"My loyalties are completely undivided," said Remus into the thick silence of the staffroom. He remembered again the feeling of George Weasley's blood soaking his robes, and summoned all of his restraint to stop himself pointing out that the only reason Severus Snape didn't have friends in Azkaban was that Severus Snape didn't have friends.
"If Sirius Black burst into this room right now, you would summon the dementors?"
"If Sirius Black burst into this room right now, I daresay that a dozen Hogwarts professors would be able to subdue him without calling a soul-sucking creature into a castle full of children, some of whom don't yet know which end of their wand to hold."
"So you admit that you don't wish to see the esteemed Mr. Black receive the dementor's kiss?"
"I admit that I don't wish to see the lowest scum who crawls this earth receive that particular punishment, and that does include the man who murdered Lily and James Potter, who you will recall were also my friends."
If he hadn't been looking for it, he would never have noticed that Snape reacted, ever so slightly, to Lily's name.
"I trust everyone in this room, and everything that needs saying about the dementors has been said. Is that correct?" Dumbledore injected at last.
There was a murmur of assent.
"Then please set an example for your students by being on time for breakfast and your first classes."
The faculty rose as one.
All through breakfast, Remus felt eyes on him. The faculty remained unfailingly polite, but he couldn't help but notice that not one of them had spoken on his behalf when Snape had accused him of remaining loyal to Sirius.
It was somehow hurtful even though it was true.