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A man paced around the dilapidated sitting room of the Shrieking Shack. Beside him, on a ramshackle sofa, a black-haired baby boy lay sleeping peacefully.

Across the country, the man knew, people would be celebrating today. He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, the Dark Lord who had ravaged the wizarding world for eleven years, was dead, or at least destroyed.

To Remus Lupin, it felt like a singularly empty victory.

"They're all dead," he murmured, trying out the words, seeing if they made any more sense spoken aloud than shrieked inside his mind. "All of them. Every one. Sirius, Peter—what were they thinking, playing that stupid game with the Fidelius Charm? All it meant was that they both died, Sirius after he'd told them where Peter was, Peter after he'd told them the secret. And then James—at least he got a piece of Voldemort first, I can't imagine what it would have been like to know he died without even having his wand in his hand—and Lily…"

The horror and helplessness crashed over him again, forcing him to bite down on the collar of his robes rather than groan or scream loudly enough to wake little Harry. Lily Evans Potter, bleeding from the spell Voldemort had thrown at her as she fled up the stairs with her son in her arms, had Apparated into Remus's kitchen not eight hours before, gasping out her message almost before she had fully materialized.

"Leave me," she'd spat when Remus tried to pull back her robes, to see how badly she was hurt. "Take Harry. Take him, Remus, and take him away from here. Take him somewhere safe, somewhere he can grow up free and happy." Painfully, she'd straightened, the wand which had cost James his life to Summon for her gripped between her fingers in perfect dueler's pose. "You're the last of us. The last one I can trust. I don't care how you do it, only do it." Her lips had peeled back from her teeth in an expression which set off Remus's every predatory instinct. "I will handle Voldemort."

"And she certainly did." Returning to the present moment, Remus surprised himself with a smile. "Right there in my kitchen, she dueled him to a standstill, and hit him with—good God, I don't know what it was, but he started disintegrating on the spot, literally falling to pieces!" His laugh died away into stillness as Harry stirred. "Though he still managed to get off a Killing Curse," he said softly. "And she just stood there and let it come. I suppose she thought that if he saw her die, he wouldn't make any more effort, wouldn't try to save himself and come after Harry…"

But everything Remus had ever heard or read, along with everything he suspected about "Lord" Voldemort, told him that even apparent death would probably be only a temporary setback for someone so willing to delve into the darker parts of magic. Too, there were the Death Eaters, many of whom might well believe that the best way to resurrect their Master was to kill the child who had escaped his murderous ways. If Remus was going to satisfy Lily's final request, to find a place where Harry could grow up happy and free and safe, he was going to have to get creative.

"She said she didn't care how." Remus turned to regard the sleeping child, who squirmed once and was still again. "I doubt this is what she had in mind. But it will do the trick."

Kneeling down, he pulled open the trapdoor which led to the tunnel onto Hogwarts grounds, propping it up with a handy stick so that it could be knocked out from underneath. "Don't go into the Forest," he sing-songed as he worked, remembering his own Hogwarts days. "There are werewolves in there!" Another tiny laugh escaped from him. "Well, not exactly. At least not until I went exploring in there with Wormtail and Padfoot and Prongs. But we did discover who does live there…"

In one of the more bizarre facets of lycanthropy, a female werewolf became fertile in her transformed state during the full moons of late winter, around the same time a natural wolf would do so. If a male and a female werewolf met and mated during this time, it was entirely possible for cubs to be conceived.

"And I do mean cubs, even if they'll have basically human intelligence." Remus dusted off his hands and stood up. "The woman's reproductive system locks into its wolf form once she's conceived, and the babies are born during another full moon three months later—and heaven help her trying to explain to anyone who doesn't already know what she is where this sudden litter of 'puppies' has come from!"

At least one such litter of "wise wolves" was known, once they had grown up enough to be independent, to have been released in the Forbidden Forest at Hogwarts. Remus suspected, from his nocturnal visits and his friends' reports on same, that more than one had been so released, or that the offspring of a wise wolf and a common wolf was also likely to turn out wise.

"Or there could be some population growth from other areas." Stone-faced, Remus drew his wand. "Like this one." Taking aim at Harry, he whispered a Sleeping Spell, being sure to envision it at a lower strength than usual. Harry twitched again as it took effect, then relaxed into utter limpness.

"Sorry about this, little one," Remus breathed, kneeling down beside the boy. "At least you know you'll never have to transform…"

Drawing back Harry's sleeve, he closed his teeth carefully around the pale, smooth skin and bore down. An instant later, a burst of copper-iron-salt filled his mouth. Step one was complete.

"And now for my next trick." Remus spat to one side, then conjured a bandage around Harry's arm and a cup of water for himself. "How to make a werewolf not a werewolf. The only 'cure' that's ever been discovered."

The spell was one all werewolves knew, whispered in a mountain cave in the silence of the dawn after a full moon, scribbled on scraps of grimy paper slipped from one hairy hand to another as their owners passed each other on the street. Somehow the intelligence had never made its way to the Ministry. Remus wasn't terribly surprised. Werewolves had enough trouble keeping hold of their lives as it was.

"It's just the sort of thing they'd love to have, too, isn't it." Restless, he rose to pace back and forth, checking his watch. The lycanthropic infection, like all magical diseases, spread fast. Two minutes should see it well settled into Harry's body. "Not only would it get rid of the danger we pose to human beings, wizards and Muggles alike, but it would get us completely out of sight. No one would have to look at us, think about us, make accommodations for us." He rolled his eyes. "Not that they do now. But this would mean no 'bleeding hearts', as I'm sure the Ministry would call them, could start a campaign to bring them around to that. It would simply stop being necessary to deal with werewolves, ever again…"

Even the maddest lycanthrope could see the sense in this, and thus the Spell of Sealing remained a closely held secret. Remus had brought it up, jokingly, to James and Sirius once or twice, and they had laughed it off, claiming such a thing was a rumor, a potion-dream, relegated to the same drawer in the Ministry files as reports of necromancers and late-life eruptions of magic in Muggles.

"What they'd say if they could see me now…" Remus sighed, his amusement flowing away as he returned to the present. "But even if they can see me, they can't say anything. They won't say anything, ever again. Which means I'm the only one left to make the decisions, for myself and for Harry." He looked back at the child so named, who slept undisturbed despite the few dots of red marking the bandage around his arm. "Not a place I'm exactly comfortable, even if it weren't such a big, irrevocable decision…"

As far as the old werewolf who'd taught it to Remus had known, the Spell of Sealing, once enacted, could never be reversed or altered, any more than death itself.

"And it is a sort of death, if you want to look at it that way." Remus flexed his fingers, looking at them with new appreciation. "It lets us keep our human minds all the time, well and good, no arguments there. But it robs us forever of our human bodies. How can that be worth the trade? Never again walk down the street and shake hands with a friend? Never again say hello or goodbye, never laugh, never cry, never go to school or hold a job or even fall in love…"

Never be told to get off the street, our kind's not wanted here, his mind supplied. Never have our words or gestures rebuffed because of what we are. Never be forced to keep our feelings private because we know we'll only be mocked, never be told we're not welcome in a school or a workplace. And who says wise wolves can't fall in love? Even common wolves mate for life…

Remus laughed once, pulling himself out of his thoughts. "It'll be like everything else in this world," he said, turning back to smile at the little boy so unexpectedly become his own. "Some good and some bad, but unlike anything we ever dreamed. And since none of the Death Eaters would believe this story even if it came with Merlin's personal guarantee, we ought to be safe pretty well forever!"

His heart at peace, Remus knelt down beside Harry, drew his wand for the last time, and held it above both their heads.

"Lupini conformatio signoque!"

---

In the dim, chilly light of an early November dawn, a gray-furred wolf walked unhurriedly across the lawns of Hogwarts from the direction of the Whomping Willow, a cub with darker fur dangling limply from his mouth. He paused near the edge of the Forbidden Forest to look behind him one more time, as though saying farewell to the castle with all its hidden secrets and strengths.

Then, with a lupine shrug, he turned back to the way he had chosen, and vanished among the trees of the Forest forever.

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