Did we ever get any backstory on what Lupin did in the years between the Potters' deaths and Prisoner of Azkaban? The battered briefcase with the "Prof. R.J. Lupin" tag would seem to mean that he's been teaching for a while, and in the classroom scenes he certainly seems like an experienced teacher, but where has he been teaching? We've only ever heard of three wizarding schools, though it seems like there ought to be more.

I've assumed that it was private families and the like. Of course, not for much more than a month or two, poor boo.

Like a tutor? Would that earn him the title?

Perhaps he's been out forming boys bands.

(This joke would work better if Tonks were a librarian.)

We've only ever heard of three wizarding schools, though it seems like there ought to be more.

nods

Yeah, iirc canon implies that the three schools in the Triwizard Tournament aren't the only ones - although possibly the only ones in Europe.

(In my mental Potterverse, there's one in Egypt which presently goes by the name of Madrassa, and it includes the Library of Alexandria, which wasn't really burnt. And the Ancient Egyptian Gods were in fact Animagi. And...yeah, I've got a whole thing mapped out. I think it's also safe to assume that there's a school in Salem.)

It's frustrating that there's no explanation of how people get higher education, isn't it? Because JKR insists there's no University in the Wizarding World - and yet we have all these professors. How the hell is that supposed to work? Hopefully she'll shed some light on it in her Encyclopedia.

Well, Snape is addressed as Professor Snape, and yet it seems like he pretty much went right from Hogwarts to Death Eater to teacher. There would have been about three or four years between him finishing schooling at Hogwarts and becoming a teacher there. And Tom Riddle seemed to think that there was at least a possibility that he could get a job as a Hogwarts teacher with no formal education after Hogwarts.

But on the other hand, we know that there are academic journals. And for those to exist, there generally need to be people who spend most of their time studying stuff.

Maybe 'Professor' is just a title you get when you become a teacher?

Maybe 'Professor' is just a title you get when you become a teacher?

This is my thinking. Oddly, I just assumed that Lupin's suitcase had recently been labeled, not that he'd come from another school.

I think Remus' suitcase is largely labeled for the purposes of exposition.

I like the theory, though, that he was tutoring students. I also like the idea that James and Sirius and Peter gave him a luggage tag (whatever the magical equivalent of that is) as a joke when they all graduated, because they were always ribbing him about being studious and professorly.

Also, I checked the HP Lexicon, and they have no information for Remus during those years.

[link]

The only note is that it's not long before his time at Hogwarts that Snape discovers the Wolfsbane potion. It must have been a pretty sad time for Remus, without his friends to keep him company during his transformations.