"If a dog had actually attacked me, werewolf or otherwise, I would have called an ambulance and you," Kieren replies, because while he might have become hurt in the process of things, he also wouldn't have been so helpless that he'd just lie there in an alley and bleed himself to death. "I'll carry some protection if you'd also acknowledge that I'm a grown man, Sirius," he insists, as stubborn as ever, "and I can take care of myself. You don't see me asking you to wrap yourself up in cotton padding just because I'm worried something might happen to you, like that dragon pox or some other magical disease."

"Life, sometimes, is hard and terrible, but we can't avoid it," he pleads. "Please don't treat us as something you need to protective wrap," he says. "I came home, didn't I? Without any help at all."