The air in the testing chamber was thick with tension. A large, magically reinforced room had been arranged within the Ministry of Magic's Department of Magical Law Enforcement, its stone walls enchanted with protective spells. The space had been cleared of unnecessary furniture, leaving only a long table, a set of chairs, and a few sturdy torches that cast flickering shadows against the high ceilings.
Severus stood near the potion station, arms crossed over his chest. He watched as Cornelius Fudge entered with a handful of Ministry officials trailing behind him. The Minister for Magic wore his usual green pinstriped robes, but there was a stiffness to his step, his expression caught somewhere between excitement and unease. It was clear that he was equally excited and nervous for the whole thing. Perhaps, he might have even laud it and use it for his next campaign for Minister of Magic.
Amelia Bones, the Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, was already waiting alongside him. She stood with her usual no-nonsense demeanor, her monocle glinting in the light as she observed the proceedings with a practiced eye. She was charged with the proceedings and the security details. There were important quests who will arrive today to see the first testing. Honestly, it was much more crowded than he thought. To his surprise, for some reason, nearly every prestigious family had send one member to witness this experiment. He hadn't even counted the excited Ministry Staffs who had arrived to see the trial. That in itself was odd. How and why they were given permission to do so? It was clearly beyond his understanding.
The moment Fudge arrived, hushed whispers broke out between the gathered officials. This was history in the making. A potion that could potentially suppress the effects of Lycanthropy had never been heard of before. He knew he was the talk of the wizarding world. But seeing the number of people interested in him, only made him more anxious and nervous. He didn't want fame. It was the last thing that he ever wanted. He was better as a recluse.
Severus remained silent, but his mind was alert. He knew exactly how monumental this moment was.
Ifthis works, it will change the world.
The development of Wolfsbane Potion had been legendary in his past life. Damocles Belby had been the one to make the breakthrough, but in this world, Belby had died before his research could be completed. No one had continued his work.
Or maybe they never cared enough to try.
Werewolves had been treated like outcasts for centuries. People feared them. The Ministry contained them. No one had truly sought to help them.
Until now.
And now, it was his name that would be remembered.
His gaze flickered to the large steel-reinforced chair placed at the center of the room. There was a magically reinforced cage around it. The cage was reinforced with charms to withstand strong physical forces.
Sitting on the chair, looking surprisingly calm, was Remus Lupin. The werewolf who had been once his school mate.
Severus felt something unpleasant twist in his chest. No matter the universes, the names or mentions, just hit something deeper. No wonder, he really hated them.
Of all the people in the world… it had to be him.
He kept his face blank, but inside, his thoughts were conflicting. This wasn't the same Remus Lupin he had despised in his past life. This was a different world with different circumstances. But old grudges were difficult to ignore.
A part of him still resented Lupin. For being a coward. For turning a blind eye to what his friends had done. For never intervening when things had gone too far.
But at the same time, this Lupin had volunteered to be the test subject. That was pretty brave though. Volunteering to test an unknown potion required courage. Courage which he had never associated with the cowardly werewolf.
He must really believe in this potion to risk it on himself.
Severus exhaled slowly, willing himself to remain detached. This wasn't about personal feelings. This was about the potion. About proving his research correct.
Across the room, a few other high-ranking officials murmured amongst themselves. Fudge's Senior Undersecretary, Umbridge was looking with a sickly sweet smile at Remus Lupin. Perhaps, it was too much hard for her to control her biases publicly.
"Is it really safe to conduct this here?" he asked to Amelia Bones. "Shouldn't we be somewhere… more private?" The alarming number of spectators was what worried him heavily though. There were too many eyes on him and the experiment though.
"The room is heavily warded," Amelia Bones replied crisply. "And we have Aurors stationed outside. If anything goes wrong, we'll handle it."
Severus looked at her. Clearly, she wasn't in the mood for such a public experimentation. But it seemed she had been ordered to do so. It did make sense. The experiment was a gamble through and through.
Fudge and some of the officials walked towards him. The man cleared his throat, drawing attention to himself. "Now, Mr. Blackwood," he began, his voice attempting to sound authoritative, but still carrying an edge of uncertainty. "We've all read the reports. You claim your potion will… what exactly?"
Severus turned to face him, his expression unreadable as ever. Did the man really didn't read? He had submitted an elaborate essay on the potion and the man hadn't even bothered to look into details.
"The potion is designed to suppress the loss of cognitive function during transformation," he stated plainly to the furrowed and unsure eyes of the people. "In simple terms, it allows a werewolf to retain their human mind after transforming."
Fudge blinked, looking slightly overwhelmed by the words. The second part seemed to have made more sense in his mind.
"So… not a cure?" he pressed.
Severus resisted the urge to roll his eyes.
"No, Minister," he replied smoothly. "Not a cure, as the Daily Prophet so dramatically implied. But if this works, werewolves will no longer be mindless beasts during a full moon. They will be aware, able to control their actions."
The murmurs grew louder. Some of the officials exchanged glances. This was still groundbreaking. Even if it wasn't the total cure people were foolishly expecting, it would still change everything.
They were expecting a miracle. But even miracles had limits.
"And you're certain it will work?" Amelia Bones asked, her sharp gaze piercing into him.
Severus didn't answer immediately. Truthfully? No.
The slight magical differences between this world and his own had made him cautious. The potion worked perfectly in his original world. But would it be the same here?
There was only one way to find out. "We shall see," he said neutrally.
There was a pause. The anticipation in the room thickened.
Finally, Amelia nodded toward Remus. "Lupin, how do you feel?"
Remus glanced up, his amber eyes flickering toward Severus before looking at the gathered officials.
"Fine," he said. "I feel… normal before a transformation."
Severus studied him carefully. No immediate adverse effects. That was a good sign. The potion had been administered properly for the past few days.
But the real test would come soon.
When the full moon rises.
Across the room, Rita Skeeter stood with her notepad, jotting down notes furiously. She had been strictly warned not to speak to him, and she had not looked pleased about it. But even she seemed caught up in the suspense of the moment.
The large magical clock on the wall ticked.
The moon would rise in less than ten minutes.
The officials shifted. Fudge was beginning to sweat. Amelia's expression remained impassive, but her posture was rigid.
Severus felt the tension creeping in, but he remained still. Waiting. Watching. Calculating.
This was it.
Either his potion will work… or it won't.
And if it doesn't…
His gaze flickered to the heavily warded doors. The Aurors stationed outside were on full alert.
His mind was nowhere near calm.
His eyes were on Remus Lupin, watching every slight movement, every breath the man took. But inside his head, his thoughts were going somewhere else.
Back to the world he had left behind. Back to the dreams he once had but never could fulfill.
In truth, Severus had always wanted to improve the Wolfsbane Potion. He had dreamt about it often. Especially during the war, when he saw how the werewolves were treated. He never really cared for them as people. Not at first. But as he got older, and as his understanding of potions deepened, he started to wonder. What if it could be made better? What if it could become something more than just a mild help? This was more akin to his curiosity though.
He had the theories. He had drawn out notes in secret. Modified structures, ratios, stabilizers. He'd written pages and pages, but in the end, it had always remained incomplete.
Because the one thing he didn't have was someone to test it on.
He couldn't very well give it to himself, and no werewolf would willingly volunteer for a potion that might kill them—or worse, turn them into something else entirely.
And then there was the Dark Lord. Voldemort would have never allowed Severus to work on something like that. In the Dark Lord's world, werewolves were tools. Rabid beasts meant to terrify and kill. Creating something that might give them peace or sanity would have been considered a betrayal.
So he had left it. Buried it. Let the dream rot with all the others.
But then, when he became Headmaster…
Things changed.
The access to the secret archives, the old forgotten books that had been Dumbledore's personal collection—everything opened up. And that's when he found the alchemy notes. Notes gifted to Dumbledore by Nicholas Flamel before his death. There were even books and notes from Flamel after his death. Allocated to Dumbledore in Flamel's will.
Carefully hidden away, bound in old leather, smelling of dust and forgotten magic. All in Dumbledore's quarters at school.
Those notes had blown his mind wide open. Flamel was a genius. It was like discovering a whole new branch of magic. Alchemy had always been fascinating to him, but Flamel's work was something else entirely. Deep, complex, elegant. With secrets that felt older than Hogwarts itself.
He spent nights reading them. When the castle was quiet and he could just be himself, away from the mask of the stern Headmaster, he dove into those texts. And that's where the ideas began to come again. Mixing alchemy with potion-making. Especially the Wolfsbane. What if that had been the missing link all along?
The full moon started to rise slowly. Remus Lupin became paler with each passing second. His movements becoming twitcher and more anxious with each mom nt.
Everyone in the room knew what was coming.
The room was filled with important people. Ministry officials, watching with silent breaths. Amelia Bones stood near the side with a steel-cold expression. Fudge looked uneasy, dabbing his forehead with a handkerchief even though the room wasn't hot.
To the side, three men stood differently. Dumbledore, Lucius Malfoy, and Regulus Black. Dumbledore was with some other officials, probably from ICW, as seen from their robes. While the Black and Malfoy were standing together and watching. Their faces were different from their counterparts of his world, but the features were similar. Malfoy with his platinum blonde air, same air of superiority around him and all.
Dumbledore looked calm, almost curious, as if watching some quiet experiment he expected to succeed. Malfoy was stiff and tense, his pale eyebrows drawn together. Regulus, unlike the other two, looked more thoughtful than anything. His arms were folded, and he kept glancing between Severus and Lupin like he was studying both.
Severus turned his attention towards Lupin. Slowly the change began.
Lupin groaned and screamed suddenly. A scream which echoed throughout the room. His hands clenched into fists. His back arched, and a shiver went through his whole body. The sound of bones cracking filled the room.
Severus didn't flinch. He had seen this before.
Others did look away though.
Fudge gasped and took a step back. Many of the wizards and witches actually turned and looked like they were about to vomit. Some even vomited too.
The transformation was ugly. Too much ugly and grotesque though.
Lupin's skin stretched and shifted. His hands grew long and clawed, his face pulling forward into a snout. His clothes tore apart, revealing more and more fur and muscle as the man disappeared into something else entirely slowly.
It was hardly thirty seconds when a werewolf stood now in the cage, tall and broad and breathing heavily.
Everyone was silent.
And then it howled.
It was loud and piercing, and it echoed off the walls. Someone flinched near him. Severus didn't bother to look back at the person.
He remained still. His heart was pounding, but he didn't show it.
He looked at the werewolf's eyes.
That was what mattered most.
In a normal transformation, the werewolf would lose its mind completely. The eyes would go blank and wild. Feral. Hungry.
But this one… this one was different.
Lupin's eyes were still red. But there was something else.
They were heavy. Tired. As if weighed down by exhaustion.
But not feral.
There was no wildness. No blind rage. Just… awareness.
The werewolf stepped back slowly in its cage, its claws scraping the floor. It looked around the room, blinking. Breathing slower now.
Whispers filled the room.
"He's not attacking."
"He didn't lunge at the bars."
"Is he… is he calm?"
"Impossible…"
The whispers grew louder. Fudge looked stunned, for once without words. Lucius and Regulus along with many others were looking at him. Dumbledore nodded slowly, as if he had known all along.
Severus said nothing.
But inside, something stirred.
It had worked.
The potion had worked.
Lupin was still a werewolf—but he had his mind. He could think. He could control himself.
This was more than a success. This was something that would change history in this world.
Severus didn't smile though. He just lowered his arms and let out a slow, deep breath. He could already hear it in his head.
The headlines. The debates. The recognition.
The murmurs only grew louder as Remus Lupin—still in his werewolf form—paced the inside of the magically reinforced cage. His eyes, no longer gleaming with the usual feral madness, tracked the people outside with a quiet alertness. They weren't wild, not like they were supposed to be. There was something different in them. A slowness. A fatigue. But not madness.
"He's... he's not charging at the bars," someone whispered.
"Look at his posture," said another voice, quieter, half in awe. "He's... thinking. You can see it."
Severus stood with his arms folded, eyes narrowed as he focused all his attention on Lupin. His mind was already spinning with possibilities and analysis, but he kept his face neutral. Cold. Unreadable.
He pressed the edges of his fingers together and cast a subtle, near-invisible legilimens.
The sharp pain struck him almost immediately, like a blunted knife being shoved into his skull. Magical creatures were harder to read—even more so when their minds were half-shifted, like Lupin's was now. It felt like stepping into a storm. There was static and confusion and something animalistic swirling beneath the surface.
But... there was thought.
He could feel Lupin's exhaustion. The pain. The instinct. And beneath it all, a consciousness. Tired and aching, but aware. A sense of self.
Severus withdrew sharply, shaking his head once as he blinked away the pain.
Cornelius Fudge, who had been shifting nervously behind Amelia Bones, stepped forward. "Is it... safe?" he asked, glancing at the creature. "You're telling me—this thing is still sane?"
Severus turned his head slowly toward the Minister. "Yes," he said calmly. "There is rational thought still inside. It's not... feral. Mr. Lupin appears to retain his sense of self."
Amelia Bones raised an eyebrow. "You're sure?"
"As sure as one can be with a werewolf," Severus replied. "But yes, the potion is working. He is not fully lost to the transformation."
"How do you propose we test that?" asked one of the wizards from ICW, who was with Dumbledore.
Severus looked at the cage thoughtfully. "We begin with simple commands. If he obeys them—responds to them—then we can confirm mental retention. After that, we proceed to temptation tests."
"Temptation?" Bones asked curiously.
"Yes," Severus said. "We place raw meat in the cage and observe his reactions. If he's able to suppress the instinct to attack and feed, then it means the human side is winning. It's one of the clearest indicators of control."
Rita Skeeter, who had been scribbling furiously in the back despite the stern looks from aurors, actually paused mid-sentence and raised her head.
"Merlin," she whispered to herself in glee. "This is going to be front page again..."
Before anything else could be said, a loud, agonized howl tore through the air.
Everyone stiffened. Even Severus was shocked at that.
Lupin was convulsing violently. He staggered, clawing at his own chest, then slammed into the side of the cage. Again and again, his limbs twitched and jerked, and he let out another pained, keening cry.
"What's happening!?" Fudge exclaimed, panic setting in his voice.
"Is he losing control?" Amelia asked sharply.
Severus was frozen though. This wasn't supposed to happen. This wasn't part of the design. The Wolfsbane potion shouldn't have triggered a reaction like this. It was working just like he thought and now this sudden unknown reaction from Lupin.
Dumbledore's expression shifted. His eyes were sharp and watchful now. "Mr Blacwood?"
Before Severus could reply. Lupin collapsed suddenly, writhing on the floor of the cage. His claws scratched the ground as his body began to jerk and twist again—but not like before. This wasn't the painful growth of transformation. This was different.
The fur along his arms began to recede amidst the eyes of the onlookers. His limbs shortened. His snout shrank.
The room fell deadly silent. No one dared speak. Everyone's eyes were locked on the cage.
The transformation was reversing.
Dumbledore stepped forward slightly, mouth pressed in a tight line. His blue eyes were alight now, full of something close to astonishment and sharpness.
"Is he... changing back?" whispered someone.
Severus didn't answer. He couldn't. His brain was scrambling for explanations that didn't exist. This wasn't in the books. This wasn't even in theory. The Wolfsbane potion had never been capable of this. No variation. No version. Nothing like this.
And yet, before their eyes, the werewolf was melting away.
A minute passed slowly. It was perhaps the longest minute, he had ever experienced in this world.
He looked up alongside the other people in the room. Curled up on the floor of the cage, trembling, and naked—was Remus Lupin.
Human.
Alive.
Breathing.
Everyone stared at the figure of the man on the floor. He looked extremely tired though.
Fudge's jaw was hanging open. He wasn't alone. Nearly everyone in the room had the same reaction.
Severus took one step forward, instinctively checking Lupin's vitals with a murmured charm. The man's magic pulsed weakly but steadily. He was unconscious but stable. Severus pressed his lips into a thin line. He wasn't alone though. St Mungos had sent their own healers for experimentation. They were familiar to him and many knew him, though the same couldn't be said about them.
Behind his blank mask, his thoughts were spiraling though.
This shouldn't have happened. There was no mechanism in the Wolfsbane potion that could revert a werewolf transformation. None. No potion in known magical history could do that. It went against the entire biological and magical nature of lycanthropy. And yet, it had happened.
Had there been some latent property in the potion he hadn't anticipated? Had the magical variance of this world reacted differently? Or had something in Lupin's own body triggered this reversal?
Dumbledore finally broke the silence. His voice was amused and joyful though. It cur through the shocked and amazed crowd of witches and wizards. "It appears we have all witnessed something... historic."
There were nods. Still stunned. Still disbelieving.
Severus said nothing.
He didn't want to speak. Not yet. Not until he could make sense of what had just happened. But inside, under the cold exterior, a thousand thoughts raced. A thousand questions. Possibilities.
Could it be...? Had he really stumbled onto the true cure...? But that was impossible. He had given the original Wolfsbane without his theoritical tweaks or modifications. The Wolfsbane of his own world, shouldn't have done that.
No. It was too soon. He needed to test. Recreate. Prove it. He needed to be sure. Lupin's case might be an anomaly. He needed to test it on other people too. He needed to be sure.
The whole mind and magical fuckery was too much to him. Because everything had just changed. And there was no going back now.
Unknown to him or some of the people in the room. His work had done something unbelievable.
It had given hope.
The best christmas gift for many of wizarding citizens.