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He subtly knocked on the headmasters office door, half hoping Dumbledore wasn’t there. When the door did not open, Lupin paced back and forth, thinking hard.
As he was about to leave, however, an old but curious voice called “enter”, and Lupin hesitated. Should he just turn away and forget it ever happened? Surely all of this was behind them now?
But no, he knew very well that he couldn’t just let the matter slide, and some part of him desperately hoped that Dumbledore had known, that all of this was done this for a valid reason.
Opening the door, Lupin stepped carefully into the room, closing the door behind him. He approached the old man with a strange sort of resentment that was only growing.
Dumbledore looked up from his desk, and eyed the visitor carefully, his face unusually stiff. He then stroked his long, white beard and motioned to the chair in front of him.
“Ah, Remus. I sense you haven’t just come to say hello. Please, take a seat.”
Lupin did so, his blue eyes meeting Dumbledore’s, which had seemingly lost their usual twinkle.
“Dumbledore”, he began, trying to keep the anger out of his voice. “You know why I am here.”
“You’re right. Yes, I know you want to know the truth. It is only natural, after having been lied to for so long.”
“Well?” Lupin pushed, the firm tone and disappointed looks were bothering him. What excuse could Dumbledore possibly make now?
“You should know that we often have to do what we believe best for the sake of others. That includes making sacrifices.”
He paused, and Lupin stirred in his seat, agitated but remaining patient.
“There was no proof of Peter’s betrayal, or that Sirius was an innocent man. If he was the murderer the world thought him to be, it would be very bad on myself to have freed him.”
Lublin processed this for a moment, before starting, “So this is about your ego now, is it? Your willing to have kept him in Azkaban so long as you had a good ima-” Lupin stopped mid-sentence with a firm wave of Dumbledore’s hand, but he did not apologize for shouting.
“You know it’s not about that. If I wasn’t able to remain headmaster, I wouldn’t have been able to lookout for Harry-“
“-as in, send him to live with abusive relatives instead of a godfather who actually cared about him? And hiring a profesor who had You-Know-Who literally attached to the back of his head? Yeah, thats real good work trying to keep him safe.”
Though Lupins voice had risen, Dumbledore’s remained the same. “If Sirius were free and Harry chose to live with him, he wouldn’t have the protection the Dursley’s house gives him”.
“Why, Sirius could have given him more protection than any other member of Harry’s family! A simple barrier doesn’t compare to—“, he stopped mid-sentence, glaring at Dumbledore so intensely the headmaster could see, for the first time in his life, the wolf in the werewolf’s eyes.
“Do you mean to say….” Lupin continued, now shaking, “You didn’t ever think, not even for a second , to help Sirius? You never listened to me? Never did the research, never bothered to save him yourself? Just locked him up because you thought by doing so you had an excuse to make Harry live with his abusive relatives?”
He took a breath, then continued. “You
knew
he was innocent but didn’t do anything because it was ‘best for those around him’?! And you told me not to pursue it! You told me
he was guilty
!”
“I did not know”, Dumbledore sighed, “anymore than you did, Remus. We-“
“I—DID—KNOW! I TOLD YOU HE WAS INNOCENT AND YOU TOLD ME TO LET IT GO! YOU— I— TWELVE YEARS YOU LET HIM ROT IN THAT CELL, AND YOU DID NOTHING, YOU…YOU….”
Lupin drew himself up, took a deep breath, and stopped shaking.
“That’s it. I quit”, he declared bluntly, before turning and waking away, slamming the door behind him to the perplexed, regretful face of his headmaster.
Though it would be quite painful for him to leave the place which had given him the happiest years of his life, there was no use in staying if the headmaster was going to be this stupid in securing the students safety.
But what was he going to tell Harry?
Then the sudden memory of the incident earlier that morning where Snape had told the students he was a werewolf came back to him, and he began counting the amount of hateful letters he was going to receive. Upon doing so, he realized, that this would be his excuse to Harry when he asked why his profesor was leaving.