Dear Sir Comma Enter, Chapter 5

January

Happy New Years, sir. My new year has already been quite stressful I think, I went down to the dungeon at around six in the morning to start doing some reading and arithmetical calculations, I also have started working out ingredient lists that will hopefully be useful. I'll have to isolate properties of the werewolf virus' and then work out a way to isolate it using ingredients and it's just completely complicated.

I think Professor Snape woke up with a New Year's hangover himself, he came wandering in at around nine looking for a Hangover Relief Potion. I'm glad I didn't laugh at him, I think he might have taken my head off. He looks entirely silly when he hasn't woken up yet, his hair sticks out at all different angles and he was only wearing pants, no shirt, just pants, my feelings on that simply complicate my life even more, I think.

I'm also not entirely sure he saw me properly when he came in for the potion, which I'm very glad of. I decided this because he only questioned my presence in his classroom after returning to his room and presumably taking a shower and getting more dressed. I'm not entirely sure he remembered that he had come to his classroom, crisis averted.

I explained my theory to him after he was sufficiently awake and I think he might have actually been a little impressed, well, he said it could work, I guess that means impressed.

There should be a rule that you never have to work with someone again after you've seen them without a shirt on. It's not terrible, Professor Snape rarely works in close quarters with me, but it's making my life sort of strange. If I think about it, I realize he hasn't really been a git for a while either. Damn, I think seeing someone without a shirt makes you think of them as less of a git, too.

I'll admit it, he was pretty cute. Ugg, must work on potion and not think about the fact that I'm thinking about two men who are each old enough to be my father, and Professors, can you get any more kinky? Don't answer that.

Now that I think about it, you probably know Remus and Professor Snape, if you know me. I don't even want to consider who you might be now, the possibilities are all too embarrassing.

There is absolutely no way I'm going to finish the poison in time for this full moon, well I suppose I could, maybe, barely, most poisons are quick to brew, but you need to test them very extensively before giving them to humans. I suppose that's sort of ironic because with poisons you're mostly trying to kill people.

I have been brewing potions all weekend, Professor Snape yelled at me today for trying to brute force the solution. I'd like to know what he would do under this sort of time constraint. I've been working on various ways of getting the poison to home in on the virus, but so far, no luck, I have killed several rats though, I feel terribly guilty, but I'm a woman possessed right now. Success or failure could be near.

Class starts up again, taking time away from poisons, I think this is the first time I've ever actually wanted to skip classes. Not that I did, Professor Snape would never let me into the dungeons during class time. Thankfully I can ignore my homework because I've already finished up this month's homework. All of the time I'm not in class, eating, or sleeping is spent on the potion. Less than a week left.

I wish there were more hours in the day, sorry I'm not writing more.

Wolf hair and powdered silver, it's the answer. I had to make some changes to the base poison to accommodate the silver. I managed to not kill my test rat, that in and of itself was impressive, and I even got to the test on one of the lycanthropic rats I've been using for many of my observations. Tentative results look good, will report more later. Oh yeah, Defense Against the Dark Arts was fun today, we're dueling almost once a week, it's really exciting.

Damn, damn, damn! Were-symptoms have returned to my test rat. I tried the vaccine in conjunction with the poison. I think it might not have killed the entire virus. Up the potency? Second dose? Has their been some sort of virus mutation that I need to take into account? There are too many possibilities. What I wouldn't give for a virologist right now.

I had to start brewing Wolfsbane Potion today, Remus will need it if this is not going to work. I cried the whole time. Professor Snape said something about expecting too much from ourselves', I think he was trying to be a comfort, but it did not particularly help. No one cares about werewolves, they're monsters', they're animals', and they're inhuman', I care, I give a damn, but I can't do everything.

I can't give give him his cure in three days.

I seem to have cured the problem of degeneration of werewolves, a werewolf will get progressively sicker as they go through their lives, and I have concluded that this has a lot to do with the amount of virus in the werewolf's system. I have managed to reduce virus count in the test animal to early stages of werewolf infection. That would mean less painful transformations, but the transformations would still happen.

I've managed to make a more potent version of the were-poison, which managed to kill a typical were-rat, but did not seem to hurt the rat I had been testing yesterday. I live in hope. I can't give this to Remus, but I can keep looking.

Had potions class today, ironically enough we're working on poisons. Quidditch and the full moon this weekend, guess which one I care more about.

Gryffindor vs. Ravenclaw, pretty close game. Draco came to the game and cheered on Ginny, apparently they've been spending more time together than I realized, fancy that, a Slytherin cheering for a Gryffindor. Harry managed to get the snitch, and the win, but it was still a close match. It was a good play all in all.

Lucius came to the match, which he didn't do last time, I think he might have still been a little sick. He came and talked to Ginny and I and was downright civil, actually nice I think. Apparently, Professor Snape had mentioned my werewolf work to him because he seemed interested in my progress, I suppose I was a little negative about the whole thing because it's just not progressing fast enough, but I tried.

The Malfoys invited Ginny and I to have lunch, and after checking with Ginny, in that psychic-girl-way determined I could buzz off and she wouldn't mind I ran off to check on my rats. Terribly exciting, I know.

Full moon tonight, Professor Snape wants me to set up in one of the side potions labs today instead of an abandoned classroom like last time, apparently that doesn't conform to the proper wizarding ideal of scientific method. Wrote more about Voldemort today, I'm beginning to think this book might never get finished with everything else I have going. Also worked on more homework, I like to keep up with it about a month in advance when I can, most of the professors are happy to give me the work in advance because it usually means I'm ridiculously prepared for class by the time it rolls around.

Minerva used my overwork on the lycanthropy cure to demand I take the day off to spend it with Remus. I swear, that woman wants to thwart all my efforts at sanity, does she know exactly how difficult this is for me? But in the end, we had a lot to celebrate, my test rat, has pass its lycanthropy test, which is to say, every way that is currently known to test for lycanthropy failed to detect the rat as a were-creature.

Next month will be devoted to making sure the poisons are safe for humans and developing counter-poisons in the case that the poisons are not werewolf safe. I explained all this to Remus and he seemed quite excited. Well of course he did, I hope, and it's not without foundation, that this might have a happy resolution in just a few months time. One month if it all goes perfectly, maybe as little as two or three if there are problems. I can hope for perfect, right?

I thanked Remus for his Christmas gift, and there were a few moments of complete awkwardness, I wasn't quite sure what to say. How do you explain how you're feeling when you don't even know yourself? I used the only shield I had and discussed some of the more intellectual things I could think of to say about Shakespeare and his sonnets. It's awful, I don't want to push him away, I don't want to draw him near, I want to kiss him, I don't want to kiss him.

He brought me up to the castle just in time for dinner and I grabbed him into a huge hug, I didn't even mean to until after I had, so much trying to take this intellectually. He gave me this adorable smile and then wandered of the to edge of the grounds.

Of course, just to make my life more difficult, Professor Snape was at dinner, slightly glowery. I had been successfully dodging my emotions on that issue for almost two weeks, now with the crunch to the cure over, I had no excuse but to return to my less fevered pace and deal with his proximity again. Just to complicate it even more, today was a scheduled research day.

I picked his brain a little on the making of counter-poisons (entirely different from antidotes), which I am only vaguely familiar with, as they are completely in the realm of Potions Master' level. We discussed ingredients and brewing methods. Anything to keep it intellectual, anything to keep it unsexy, anything to keep me from calling him Severus' in my head.

Damn.

I'm glad to finally be able to relax a little bit, I've been so high strung the last few weeks. Professor Snape assures me that, although the theory is complex, the actual implementation of the werewolf counter poison will be relatively simple. I've been considering what to call the potion should it actually succeed in it's aim. If you think about it, it would be far more apt to be called Wolfsbane Potion then what currently holds that name. I can't keep calling it that werewolf potion' either, that's just silly.

I'm going to turn in my NEWT paper on the Wolfsbane Potion tomorrow I think, I will only turn that copy in if I can't finish up the wolf poison in time, otherwise I will have a much more interesting and important topic to write about.

I forgot to mention it earlier, my metamorphmagi paper has been in the latest Transfiguration Today for almost a week now, pick up a copy, it's exciting. It's funny what you forget about when you're working with a Professor you find vaguely sexy to cure another ex-Professor who you also find sexy, it really throws you from the academic game.

Ron is being an absolute git lately, just the other day he declared that I was turning into an even worse know-it-all, and that I was spending too much time with Professor Snape. His argument was that I was way too excited about Potions for it to be healthy. He's one to talk, especially considering that now that he's not planning to be an Auror he only goes to Defense Against the Dark Arts to drool over Professor Tonks.

I think he might just be a little cranky about the fact that his sister is dating his ex-worst-enemy. It's official, Ginny Weasley and Draco Malfoy, really kind of strange when you think about it. I think I said sometime a while back that Gryffindors and Slytherins could bring out the best in each other, I hope I was right. Of course, Draco is not particularly pulling weight for the cause of not caring about blood, dating a pureblood. Well, beggars can't be choosers, it's not like I was going to shag him.

I've finished up the counter-poison ingredient and instruction list, so I'll be able to start brewing on next monday. I've also started testing if the poison is harmless for humans. That sounded so stupid after I wrote it.

It snowed a lot up at Hogwarts last night. Harry, Ron, Draco, Ginny, and I ran around outside and had a huge snowball fight. After some encouragement from Draco I practiced going into my animagus form, bounding around and pouncing on all of them. I suppose in many ways I was channeling a little bit of Sirius. Harry needs to lighten up, I don't think I've really seen him happy since Sirius died, he always gave his all and still loved people with all of his might, but he was never really happy.

He actually laughed today, it's the first time I've seen really break out in a good long laugh since the battle. We sat there, out in the cold, packed with layers of snow, laughing like there wasn't a care in the world.

That night we talked, really sat and talked. I'd been trying to break through his skin for months, and he just sort of came and knocked on my door, with a smile and a case of butterbeer. I knew he had been keeping a lot of things inside, a lot of anger, a lot of fear, and a lot of angst, and he just laid it all out for me to see.

He's very angry with Dumbledore, not that I blame him. Ever since Harry was chosen by Voldemort, the Headmaster just accepted that he could do nothing against Voldemort. Harry had a destiny that he did not understand, he would always feel that he was pushed into the fight against Voldemort under-prepared and under-supported by Albus Dumbledore. He may be considered the greatest wizard of the era, but he assumed that just because Harry had to be the one to finish off Voldemort that all of the rest of us were consigned to pawns in the war. If I had succumb to that sort of thinking, Harry would have had nothing but a hope and prayer to face Voldemort with.

I think he's terrified of what will happen to everyone near him. It's this strange dichotomy, the friends he has, he holds closer than before, trying to keep them from anyone who might hurt them, those who he does not know already, he keeps them away, worried that if he cares for them they'll just be hurt. I know he wants someone to love, and to care for, but he feels that he can't have that because being Harry Potter's girl friend is too dangerous for anyone to be. Maybe he's just using it as an excuse to not let anyone near him, and to not love anyone again. It's so sad, his love is what defeated Voldemort.

It would be a shame for him to just give up on ever being in love with someone.

When Harry heard about my goal to write a book about the charm that defeated Voldemort, he was actually pretty excited. He decided he wanted to talk about his own experiences casting the charm, and everything. At first I was a little worried, but I realized that he's terrified of reporters, after those Rita Skeeter incidents' in our fourth year and this is his best way to have his voice heard and know that the writer actually listened to him.

Of course, after talking about it, Harry was very excited to have me writing it. With a renewed sense of purpose, I went to work on it for almost the entire day. Harry puttered around my room, he read both of my articles in the journals I had, he read bits of my Ars Alchemica digest too, he practiced transfiguring bits of my homework into owls, and he even worked on his Potions essay, it's about ingredient substitutions in various healing potions. He would chatter with me when I wasn't writing but seemed to think that I should not be interrupted in general.

It was very nice, just sitting with someone with nothing but the scratch of a quill or the turn of a page echoing in the room. The end result was that I finished several pages. I could really use a laptop or something, that would be amazing, of course they don't work at Hogwarts, I can't really understand how wizards can write something hundreds of pages long straight through. That's not to say I'm a good typist, but it's certainly faster and easier to edit. Mostly easier to edit.

I suppose I should quit complaining, it's not that bad to write and edit, I guess it's really only a problem when you are the sort of person to write four drafts. And then, even after you've written out your paper, wizards seem biased against anything that doesn't come handwritten on parchment, maybe a computer wouldn't solve many problems now that I think about it.

I finished brewing the counter-poison for Argentis Poison (that's my new name for the lycanthropy cure). The next few days will be dedicated to making sure that it's safe to drink and that it actually acts as a counter-poison to the Argentis Poison.

I started writing a draft for that NEWT paper, going over my method and preliminary results, I still have to wait until the 10th for results on the human tests.

This morning I received an owl from an alchemist named Antony Flamel (no relation to the famous Nicholas), he offered me a position as his apprentice. I mentioned it to Minerva, she said that I should be prepared for many more offers in the months to come. With two published articles and my relationship with Harry and the defeat of Voldemort, she was surprised that I had not received any offers before today. When I asked Professor Snape about it, he said that Flamel had asked for his opinion of me as an alchemist when he real my article in Transfiguration Today. Apparently it was a good opinion.

If this is going to be a common occurrence, I should probably make a filing system for the offers. I have decided to file this under Alchemy - maybe' and go research more about Antony Flamel. Imagine that, job offers, without even having taken my NEWTs yet, and without even applying. I suppose I'll take a little fame if it means that I get to have a nice selection of jobs to choose from.

Minerva certainly was correct, the floodgates have opened. I've received over a hundred job offers in a variety of fields. It looks like everyone has assumed that they should send them later, but now they had to compete with Flamel's offer. Most of them are research oriented, more information when I've sorted through them more. Harry and Ron have been helping me sort through the lot of them. Apparently Ron had been feeling neglected with me spending so much time with Harry last weekend, I swear, boys are insufferable sometimes. Maybe I could steer Ron in the direction of a girl who thinks he's just dreamy', that could work, he likes having his ego stroked. With any luck I could have them set up before the next Gryffindor quidditch match. Brilliant plan.

Thankfully Ron isn't mooning after me any more, that would just be weird. Harry has gotten some offers as a tutor and a teacher for Defense type jobs, but he's really counting on being an Auror still, and has rejected all of the offers pretty much out of hand. Ron is also receiving some offers, like Harry's, but I think what he's really hoping for is a chance to play for the Chudley Cannons. Of course, they are one of the worst teams in the league, so that shouldn't be too difficult a task.

Where do you go to find a Quidditch groupie for one of your best mates to shag? Quidditch isn't for a few weeks and Gryffindor isn't even playing.

Busy week in Gryffindor, Harry and Ron are working furiously on NEWT papers. I'm actually kind of proud of them for getting down to writing them comparatively early. Harry is less surprising because he seems to focused on becoming an Auror now more than ever before. I think Ron's working because he doesn't have Quidditch practice.

Neville has been working on his Defense Against the Dark Arts NEWT paper. He told me that Snape had only made a few suggestions on his Potions paper and that he was actually almost entirely done. His Defense paper is on Cruciatus exposure, it's actually a bit of a summary paper, but not all NEWT papers can be groundbreaking research. He asked me to look over his changes on his Herbology/Potions paper, nothing too major, but it is a substantial improvement. Neville's really brilliant sometimes, even if he gets really intimidated by Professor Snape. I hope he does well on his NEWTs, studying to be a Healer is one of the more difficult career fields to get in to.

Everything is ready for the full moon, I'm so nervous.

Some day I will look back on this year and laugh, really, really laugh. I spent my first two, maybe three, years at Hogwarts wrapped up in this warm blanket, with the comforting thought that there was nothing in the world that could not be fixed by simple hard work. Then Voldemort returned to full power, and the world denied it, and it was not so simple any more. Sometimes you can take all of your effort, throw it at a problem, and start to move the world. We have to fight, tooth and nail, one prejudice at a time.

Even if, in two weeks time, my potion works, it wont change the fact that werewolves are treated as less than human. I'm not even entirely sure that Remus will truly have a normal life, he'll always have been a werewolf, I can't take that away. I can't make the entire world see a human where they demand to see an animal.

I can get an O' on every NEWT I take, but that still wont convince some, that wont change the fact that muggleborns advance less quickly in careers, that they are payed less, that there are no scholarships for muggleborn wizards. That's why I'm writing you, sir, as you very well know. Two young witches, muggleborns, became completely unable to go to Hogwarts without financial assistance, forced to rely on a faceless stranger for books and clothes, because of prejudice.

I have to prove to the world that muggleborns are just as good as purebloods, anytime, anywhere.