A lunch ended successfully. Grogan and Pandora left in a slightly carb-dazed state, leaving only Manus and Barty Jr. at the top of the Astronomy Tower.
"You want to have a lesson today too?"
Manus looked at Barty Jr. Today was definitely not their scheduled class time.
"The things I learned before haven't been fully digested yet, and the effect of having a lesson right now would be too poor."
Barty Jr. shook his head, then looked curiously at Manus:
"I wanted to ask you something... Is Remus Lupin of Gryffindor a Werewolf?"
"Hm?"
Manus looked somewhat surprised:
"How do you know that?"
Lupin and Barty Jr. were two grades apart, and their daily routines should have had almost zero intersection.
"It was that day..."
Barty Jr. recounted the prior events, leaving Manus somewhat speechless.
Was he seriously not the only one who accidentally overheard the Marauders Trio planning to practice becoming an Animagus? And was there really no problem with them just blurting out that Lupin was a werewolf? Wouldn't that actually make things even less safe for him?
The first step of practicing an Animagus was to keep a Mandrake leaf in one's mouth for a full month, from one full moon to the next, without taking the leaf out or swallowing it during that time.
Both Potter and Black had already done this step during the summer holiday and had experience, but Pettigrew hadn't, inevitably requiring reminders from time to time. Situations like that could hardly always happen when no one else was around.
Even if they temporarily dragged themselves into some deserted corridor, they couldn't guarantee—or rather, didn't have time to guarantee—that there really was no one around and no one heard.
It was under such circumstances that Barty Jr. had heard about the matter.
Although