Chapter 42

Lupin had tried to get some information about the guard test from the house elves that served the sandwiches, but they neither had that information nor were they willing to indulge in much conversation with the applicants.

Some of the applicants thought that the test would be as simple as staying over the night and routinely patrolling, but Lupin wasn't convinced.

Lupin gathered more than half of the other applicants to talk strategy.

He tried to gather everyone, but some refused to listen, building their own group or remaining on their own.

When Lupin inquired with his group who had a wand, there were only five out of ten people, including himself and the two wizards.

The two wizards suddenly realized how many of the remaining applicants weren't wizards, they had thought at most a fifth or a fourth, but not half, so they stood a little closer to the wand-carrying werewolves, guarding against the others.

Lupin's group of ten agreed that they would split into two teams, one to guard and patrol during the first half of the night while the other team rested, and then switch during the second half.

Lupin would've preferred the guard shift in the first half of the night to scout for any surprises they had arranged for the test.

But because everyone wanted that shift to show their presence early, they drew lots, and with Lupin's bad luck, he lost straight away.

Then Lupin transfigured five thick blankets for his group to rest on.

He would've transfigured beds, but he was no master of transfiguration like James and Sirius; Lupin had always been more of a Charms guy.

One of the guys not from Lupin's group rudely laid down on one of the blankets without asking, "Nice blanket. Wake me up in the morning."

Within a minute, he was fast asleep or at least convincingly snoring, so Lupin just left him there and transfigured another blanket for himself.

For Lupin, it proved to be a little difficult to fall asleep in this environment, but he knew he had to be awake for the second part of the night, so he forced himself to relax.

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After an hour of tossing and turning, he finally fell asleep.

It felt like he had only been asleep for five minutes before Lupin was unceremoniously awakened by a scream.

Maybe it wasn't quite a scream and more of a yelp, but Lupin was instantly alarmed and got up as fast as he could in his groggy state.

He knew there was a surprise coming for this test.

Lupin looked around for anything suspicious and found the door leading deeper into the tower, the one they were told to leave alone, open.

Preparing for a challenge, Lupin went there.

The others, who were disturbed from their rest by the noise, slowly followed behind Lupin.

It seemed the other team was not back from patrol yet, so they probably didn't notice anything amiss.

Carefully, Lupin looked into the next room.

There he found one of the other applicants, one of those who weren't part of Lupin's group of ten, lying face-down on the wooden floor directly behind the open door, seemingly unconscious.

Lupin looked for the reason, but without stepping into the room.

They had been warned.

One of the others wasn't as timid as Lupin and directly stepped into the room to help the unconscious fellow.

For a moment, the wooden floor suddenly shimmered with a soft red magical light, and now there were already two unconscious people on the floor.

It looked like there was a Stunning Ward active on the floor, that gets triggered by weight stepping onto it.

Without going in, Lupin levitated the two unconscious bodies out of the warded room and closed the door.

Then Lupin used the Enervate to weaken the effects of the Stunning Ward on the two until they awakened.

The group that had gathered around had grown while he wasn't watching.

By now the people on patrol had come back from their uneventful outing and joined the others, curious of what was going on.

Collectively, they all interrogated the werewolf who had opened the 'forbidden' door.

The only thing they got out of him was that he had mistook the door to the toilet.

His excuse was flimsy at best, but he insisted on it till the end, so they didn't have much choice but to leave it alone.

A few argued to kick him out, and a few argued to tie him up till morning, but they couldn't agree on anything.

And all the others didn't care, or they said they couldn't fault him without evidence.

One even suspected that this was part of the test and that there were some testers mixed between them who were instructed to play thieves that the applicants had to catch.

But the caught werewolf denied this much more believably, and no one else bought into this idea.

So in the end, it was just left it alone.

Grumpy, because he had lost sleep for nothing, Lupin laid down again.

Of his five hours of resting time, there were only two hours left.

It was already one o'clock, and after this stimulation, it would take time to fall asleep again.

But after a while he managed.

Lupin had just fallen asleep again, when a scream tore him awake a second time.

This time the scream was definitely more than a yelp, it sounded genuinely panicked.

Like someone was fearing for his life.