Chapter 218: Only the Wicked Live On
"There's a terrible mechanism to the curse of lycanthropy—" "When a werewolf goes mad, it is most inclined to attack the people it cares about most, the people closest to it."
The campfire roared, flickering with two-toned flames. Sparks of ash and orange light drifted on the forest breeze, carried away into the distance.
Lupin clutched his cup, his eyes red, his words a soft, sorrowful murmur.
The liquor had been provided by Grindelwald, a Dark wizard who, having lived through so much, was capable of empathy for the pain of many. He truly understood the suffering of others, a unique charisma that had won him many followers, not just the manipulation of his words.
Professor Kettleburn also sat by the fire, sipping his drink and listening to Lupin's anguished voice. In his aged eyes, he seemed to be reminiscing about his own life's experiences, and he remained silent.
"Many people can't imagine how terrifying it is," Lupin murmured. "The heat is a horrible, searing thing, and everything you see becomes stained with blood. The wounds you make with your claws and teeth don't seem so obvious then."
"But on the other hand, when you become a werewolf, your soul feels cold, as if it's submerged in the deepest, most silent part of a lake. There's no sound, no movement, just a sense of boundless loneliness and damnation."
His expression was filled with pain. "When you wake from that damnation, everything you did as a werewolf comes back to you with perfect clarity. You know exactly what kind of beast you became, you know exactly how much pain you caused, and you face the indignity of waking up naked in some strange place."
"Many people think the true nature of a werewolf is cruelty, but it's not. A werewolf is capable of tearing defenseless people to pieces, yet they usually only scratch or bite others before leaving."
"Its true nature is loneliness. The injury is a desperate attempt to find others like itself, but they never will, and so they go on and on, creating one victim after another..."
"That's why a werewolf will always choose to attack the person closest to it first."
He spoke on and on, about the rejection he faced as a werewolf—in his school days, during the war, and while he was wandering alone. He had lived through too much pain.
He poured glass after glass of the strong liquor into his heart, but the biting sting did nothing to bring even a hint of warmth to his cold soul.
Grindelwald watched him with a deep, thoughtful gaze, then sighed. "It sounds like you feel you owe everyone—your parents, your friends, Dumbledore. You feel you owe too much?"
Lupin lowered his head, his tangled, prematurely gray hair obscuring his expression. His shoulders trembled slightly. After a long silence, he sniffled, his voice thick with emotion. "The more people are kind to me, the more I fear getting close to them. I never know when I'll bring them irreversible disaster."
Grindelwald shook his head. "Then have you ever considered... that the one you owe the most is yourself?"
Lupin froze. He instinctively hunched his body, despite the fact that the Forbidden Forest, having just entered autumn, wasn't cold. He said nothing. Perhaps, he didn't care about himself at all.
"You can cast a Patronus Charm, can't you?" Grindelwald asked. "But I'd wager you're quite terrible at it, because you've never once thought to protect your own heart."
"You've never even truly faced your own heart."
"That is not a healthy mindset. All that debt will eventually turn to resentment. No matter how kind you are or how you suppress the turmoil and malice within, you are unconsciously pushing yourself deeper into a pit of despair."
"I don't want you to resent or even hate Dumbledore or the other members of the Order for their lack of trust all those years ago."
The liquor was strong, but Grindelwald's words were cold. "Because a person like you is inherently untrustworthy. In a world full of magic, a simple Imperius Curse could turn you into a puppet."
Lupin finally reacted. He lifted his head with force, looking at Grindelwald with a serious, earnest expression. "I have never done anything to betray Dumbledore or the Order! I have never betrayed them!"
"Hahahaha—" Grindelwald laughed, a genuinely hearty laugh. He raised a finger, pointing at him with the hand that held his cup. "Remember that feeling. The moment you said 'I,' you finally began to live."
"I..." Lupin's expression was indescribably complex, a pale and fragmented mess.
"I agree with Gellert," Professor Kettleburn added. When Lupin looked at him, he smiled. "Look at me, I've been so selfish my whole life. The students and other professors at the school often have headaches dealing with me, and many people outside don't like me either."
"But none of them can deny that precisely because of this selfish nature—living in my own world and becoming good at what I do—I've been able to help a great many people."
"When you have no self, when you're not interesting to yourself, how can you ever be of use to others?"
Professor Kettleburn looked at his former student with a sense of poignant emotion, feeling as though the younger man looked like a dying old man, while he himself seemed the more vibrant of the two.
The wizarding world was sometimes like that. If you didn't live more for yourself, it was difficult to become an individual who could be of benefit to the larger community. After all, the power of magic had always come from within the heart.
True magical masters only appeared among wizards with strong inner selves, and the young man before him was so terribly fragile.
Yet it was precisely this fragility, this brokenness, that couldn't conceal the spark of his spirit—a kind of suppressed vitality that instantly made both Grindelwald and Professor Kettleburn take a liking to him. They both wanted to help him out of his inner turmoil.
Just then, a voice came from behind a tree not far away.
"Gilderoy once told me—"
The three men turned their heads. It was Severus Snape, who had quietly arrived and was hiding in the corner without anyone noticing.
He walked over, his expression complex as he looked at Lupin. "He said that to dwell on the past is to completely lose the future. If you value your past, you must walk toward the future, so you can do something for those memories."
Snape's feelings towards Lupin were very complicated.
On one hand, he disliked him. Lupin was a member of the Marauders, a confederate of the boys who had bullied him.
On the other hand, he didn't dislike him entirely. When Potter and Sirius were impulsively looking for trouble with him and a conflict was about to erupt, it was always Lupin who held them back and urged them to calm down.
Snape was grateful for that. He could have said he wasn't afraid of a fight and would drag his enemies down with him, but being ganged up on and humiliated was a terrible feeling, especially since he had no one to help him.
He had always been alone. A single person could not fight four fists. His status as Lily's best friend—a Muggle-born witch—had always kept the pure-blood elite at a distance, making it impossible for him to fully stand with them.
He even knew that while a part of Potter's group truly disliked him, the pure-blood elites secretly instigating them was a key factor. Those people were waiting for him to make a choice—to side with the pure-blood elite and sever his ties with Lily, thus becoming one of their own.
He refused.
And so, he had no allies, not one. Lily wouldn't help him either, and his conflicts with Potter and his group always ended in an extremely poor and humiliating state for him.
The first time Snape faced death was also because of Lupin. He had done everything he could to get back at the Marauders. He secretly followed the group of boys who were sneaking out at night, looking for evidence of their misdeeds, and was then led by Sirius to the transformed Lupin.
That time, he was nearly killed. He was almost killed by Lupin!
Afterward, Lupin found him alone and apologized so sincerely that all the anger Snape had bottled up had nowhere to go. He knew it wasn't Lupin's fault; Lupin was also a victim of that near-death experience. If Snape had died, Lupin would have been sent to Azkaban for life, and even Dumbledore, who had secretly arranged for a werewolf to be at the school, would have had to leave Hogwarts and resign in disgrace.
Life's circumstances are sometimes just like that. If Snape had met Lupin earlier than Potter and the others, they might have become good friends, as they were both insecure, lonely boys who understood each other's pain and were willing to help each other.
But there are no "what ifs" in life. They were members of opposing groups. They were rivals in school and fought each other in the war. When the bloodlust took over, they cast every vicious curse they knew at each other.
The followers of Voldemort back then were not all as malicious as they are portrayed now. Snape knew there were many people with a genuine desire and ambition to change the world, pure-hearted people, like Sirius's brother. Despite Sirius's existence, Snape's relationship with Regulus had been a good one.
The war proved that there was no place for good people to survive. All of the comrades Snape had respected were dead. Some died at the hands of Voldemort and the Death Eaters themselves, while others were killed by members of the Order of the Phoenix.
All of them were dead. Only a bunch of scoundrels were left. Villains, after all, always find a way to survive, like himself.
And so, Snape and Lupin could never be friends. They had both killed someone the other cared about. The trauma of the war tormented every person who had lived through it, and what was even more painful was that the war still hadn't ended. It felt like it was going to last forever.
Snape's eyes were full of shadows, but his voice softened. "I have a life lesson for you. I always yearned to accomplish what I thought was most noble first, thinking I could set aside my personal feelings and the people who cared about me for later, and then treat them well."
In Lockhart's words, it would be, "A great man's ambition is in the world, and matters of the heart come later."
"But I eventually realized that if you don't care for those things, you might lose them forever."
He sighed deeply, walked over to the side of the soul-fire, and sat down, staring blankly into the flames. "Once they're gone, they're gone for good. At that point, it doesn't matter what you say you cared about. It's useless."
For example... Lockhart persuading Lupin to go see his parents.
The soul-fire was a very peculiar kind of magic. Everyone gathered around it seemed to see the person they most longed to see in the flames.
The embers drifted and swayed with the heat, floating away towards some distant, longed-for place.
Without anyone noticing, that corner of the Forbidden Forest grew quiet, leaving only the sound of Lockhart a short distance away, pressing the werewolf pup and the Demiguise to hurry up and get to work, with his wicked, tempting whispers.
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