All the Young Dudes

In the summer of 1971, eleven-year-old Remus Lupin wakes in a locked room at St Edmund's Boys' Reformatory, his body scarred from another full moon transformation.

In the summer of 1971, eleven-year-old Remus Lupin wakes in a locked room at St Edmund's Boys' Reformatory, his body scarred from another full moon transformation. He has been a werewolf since age five, when Fenrir Greyback attacked him as revenge against his father Lyall—a wizard who advocated hunting werewolves, then killed himself from the guilt. Remus's muggle mother abandoned him to the care system. His cell door is plated with silver to keep him contained. Into this bleak existence walks Albus Dumbledore, eccentric and impossibly kind, offering the boy a place at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Remus protests that he is too thick, too dangerous, too broken. Dumbledore promises they will figure it out. Remus, who has nothing whatsoever left to lose, agrees.

A care home kid meets three pureblood boys on a train

On the Hogwarts Express, Remus claims an empty compartment and tries to disappear. James Potter—bespectacled, brimming with confidence—barges in with nervous Peter Pettigrew. Then Sirius Black arrives, long-haired and aristocratic, fleeing his own family's expectations. All four are sorted into Gryffindor, a shock to Sirius, whose entire bloodline has been Slytherin for five centuries. Sharing a dormitory, they orbit each other warily: James is effortlessly sociable, Sirius oscillates between charm and melancholy, Peter craves acceptance, and Remus keeps everyone at a careful distance, terrified someone will discover what he is. Their first real bond forms over music—Sirius owns a muggle record player, and Remus is the only wizard who knows The Beatles. It is barely enough. But it is enough.

Sirius spends months inventing a spell so Remus can read

Sirius notices what no teacher ever bothered to: Remus cannot read. The letters swim before his eyes, rearranging themselves into nonsense. Rather than telling anyone, Sirius retreats to the library for months, researching cognitive interpretation spells, sacrificing his own grades in the process. On New Year's Day of their first year, he presents his creation—Lectiuncula Magna—a charm that makes written words speak directly into Remus's mind. Remus opens a textbook and reads for the first time in his life. He weeps. The spell transforms a boy dismissed as thick into one of the brightest students in his year—first in History, near the top in everything else. It also forges a debt between them that Remus can never repay, a bond sewn into the fabric of who he becomes.