8/8

Luna geared up to a sprint as the creature, oblivious of her pursuit, ran much faster than she could, and she struggled to keep it in sight. As she ran, she saw that it had a great big tail, as long as she was tall, and it bobbed about in the wind as it darted about on its spring loaded little legs. It had some black stripes all over its body, or perhaps they were blue. The lighting wasn't good and it seemed intent on running away from her, even if it gave no other outward sign that it was aware of her presence.

Her attempts to follow the fascinating little animal came to a full stop when the staircase it had just fled up changed and any chance of her catching up became nil. It was disappointing, but Luna decided she definitely wanted to discover what it was, so she'd have to drop her other side project of proving that there was an underclass of House Elves within institutions like Hogwarts depending on the droopiness of their ears.

Gaara honestly hadn't been aware of any of this, but had Luna gotten a little closer perhaps his overly sensitized ears might have picked up his pursuer. Nonetheless, Gaara was content to continue to exercise flat out until he couldn't take anymore. He hadn't had a good workout in weeks and tonight that urge seemed paramount, superseded only by Gaara's remaining conscious pride.

During his continued roaming that took him to all corners of the castle, barring the sealed off dorms, Gaara went to every floor of the school and to some areas he hadn't known existed, like the laundry room and the locked door that led to the house elf room. It was a surprisingly ornate door for such humble beings.

On his lightning fast travels, he stopped every now and then to inspect something a little closer from his new perspective, and during one of these breathers he was tackled from the side by an even smaller fluffy lump. Throwing it off, Gaara saw the hissing, spitting form of Filch's cat, Mrs. Norris.

The disagreeable feline had never quite warmed up to him like all the other animals in this world seemed inclined to, but Gaara hadn't expected such a reaction as this. The cat seemed hell-bent on causing him harm, as she stalked around him, trying to get at his back so that she could claw him to death. He was tempted to return the favour, since his claws were longer and even sharper. In the end, the pragmatist and tactician in him struggled to the surface and he allowed Mrs. Norris to circle around to his back, and looked over his shoulder in order to time it perfectly.

She pounced and his tail sailed through the air to club her right in her squashed face. The cat was sent flying into the wall and didn't move more than a twitch after that.

He was twice her size and his tail was a formidable weapon, but nonetheless his ego was stroked just a bit by overcoming a foe in this debilitating form.

She'd wake up in a few hours with a headache and a newfound vendetta against the red-haired student who she was convinced had somehow transformed into this identically smelling but otherwise totally dissimilar being. Filch also earned himself an enemy that night, in the form of Madam Pomfrey, whom he had woken up in a frenzy, screaming about his dying precious Mrs. Norris. "Perfectly fine, just knocked out and I am not a veterinary-witch, Argus!" was the irate diagnosis. The next morning, a rumour circulated that there had been a torrid affair between the two staff members that had ended unfavourably leading to the dirty looks she kept sending him over her breakfast.

Still being very early in the morning, Gaara left the defeated body of Mrs. Norris to continue his run anywhere and everywhere. It was a night of many adventures for Gaara, including coming across Sir Nicholas de Mimsy-Porpington somewhere on the top floor of the main school building. The supernatural encounter was short but sweet; Jinchūriki, as a rule don't like ghosts at the best of times, much less when they can be as chatty as Nearly Headless Nick. The genteel spirit seemed as puzzled as everybody else in this world that met him in a form they couldn't identify, but Sir Nicholas seemed to be spurred only into recounting one of his many adventures during which he had discovered a new type of pixie but then lost it and forgot what it looked like.

Bewildered and off put, Gaara walked away from the rambling ghost and sprinted onwards, unheeded. The view out of the windows, the ones that were low enough for Gaara to see out of, was stunning. The night sky seemed surprisingly clear and the moon shine illuminated the entire forbidden forest into shades of black and grey. Gaara would definitely prefer to spend the full moon in the open air next month, instead of darting about, practically jumping off the walls inside and surrounded by disturbances and threats.

As the sand coloured boy-tanuki continued his more subdued walk on the top floor, he passed a door he'd been told about but had never actually seen. If Draco was right, which Gaara calculated to be about an even chance, this was the door to the infamous Abandoned Tower of Hogwarts. So-called for plain reasons, the tower had not been set foot in for almost a century by any witch or wizard.

The story told of a pair of seventh-year students at the end of the nineteenth-century who had been practicing some experimental rune configurations in the tower one night, in an attempt to tap into the magic in the castle. Messing with the magic had caused an instability and the tower had to be condemned since no one at the time had the expertise or power to correct the problem. The students were never publically named, but several theories had surfaced over the years, because of the power and skill that would have been required to mess up so spectacularly.

It was said that after the initial evacuation by the precocious pair of students, any attempts to step into the tower's entranceway caused the stones to rattle and shake. The hazardous area of the children's learning institution would have been taken down decades ago were it not for the gaping hole that would have been left in the side of Hogwarts. Repairs could be made to Hogwarts these days, through the Department of Mysteries, but a mix of budget constraints and forgetting about the unusable tower among other reasons had led to it being left as it was by the school's administration. Headmaster Dumbledore had always seemed oddly evasive about the matter, the few times the governors had broached the subject.

Gaara opened the door, wondering why in the world such a dangerous area of the school wasn't locked and/or sealed with heavy magic wards, and poked his head beyond. The darkened staircase was filthy and looked so far aged compared to the rather pristine looking castle. Still buzzing from his adrenaline rush, Gaara didn't think twice about setting foot inside of the unstable entrance. He figured that humans were too heavy, whereas he was not. Gaara: 1, full-sized people: 0.

Later Gaara, when he was back to skin and properly shaped legs, would begin to worry just how present the animal instinct was in his mind, that he would be so reckless and careless. Next month, he decided, in the morning, he would most certainly go into the Dark Forest, filled with all kinds of deadly and evil monsters, where it was safe for a small defenceless tanuki-thing like him.

Now, however, Gaara wasn't thinking as straight as his mind might have led him to believe, so he didn't see a real problem with passing into the stairway and climbing it slowly and somewhat cautiously. To tanuki-Gaara's credit he didn't disturb any of the stones of the castle, even if he could tell that they only just allowed his weight upon them.

At the top of the stairs was a single chamber, but a surprisingly roomy one, almost the size of the Divinations space. It was sparse and featured a number of what Gaara understood to be antique furniture, in varying states of decay. There was a hole in the roof and a few bats were hanging from the ceiling, looking well fed.

The stone tower was nothing more than a condemned stone wreck that was still standing by the grace of God alone, and as he shuffled around some of the more perilous looking areas of the flooring, Gaara believed the only use for such a tower would be to grind it up as sand for one of his techniques. As slack as the security in Hogwarts seemed most of the time, the sand user couldn't imagine that they wouldn't miss an entire tower disappearing.

Through the hole in the ceiling, Gaara saw the most minor change in the colour of the night sky and turned around to go back to the dorms ready for the dawn reversion. He didn't dilly-dally on the return journey, since dawn in the autumn came so much later and he didn't want the early risers, up before the sun, to see him.

He got back to safety as he heard the students in the other rooms begin to wake, and climbed back into his own bed, after he'd thrown some pyjamas under the sheets. Even underground he could sense the ongoing setting of the moon, so Gaara cocooned himself in his bed sheets and waited, hoping the sleeping potion he had dosed Draco with would hold out a few minutes more. Wrapping himself up served to hide him if Draco did wake up early, and it would also protect the delicate boy from the dastardly cold that was soon to come. Fur kept him warm, skin did not.

If he was to survive the winter in this country, Gaara was going to have to find a way to insulate his sand armour technique, or else make himself a fur coat out of something in the Forbidden Forrest.

It was just as people began to exit their rooms and walk to the Great Hall that Gaara felt the beginnings of the shift, and it was just as painful as the last time he'd changed back. It appeared that morphing into his inconvenient monthly form was painless but turning back to normal was anything but.

Gaara stifled his growls that turned into throaty groans that then became muted. He gripped the sheets around him as the hairs crawled back under his skin and his tail forced its way into his back once more. His legs snapped and stretched and within ten minutes, Gaara was human once more, and he was glad of it, even if he was left shivering from the pain more than the chill that assaulted his senses directly after.

It was as he pulled on his bed clothes that he began to reflect on his flippant decision making the night before and questioned his working logic behind the bizarre flippancy.

By some uncommon stroke of luck, it was soon after this that Draco began to stir, adding his own share of groans to the morning as his neck cricking woke him up with a wince. As drowsy and pained as Draco was, he didn't argue when Gaara told him that he'd looked very tired the night before and had crashed as soon as his head hit the pillow without even changing. Draco didn't argue because he was tired and because he was struggling enough with reading the sand before his eyes, much less finding holes in the blurry story.

Draco did however notice that Gaara coughed more than once and seemed to be holding his throat like it was paining him. Draco asked, "Are you okay Gaara? You aren't sick are you? Because Madam Pomfrey would probably give you something for your throat, if you asked. Or is it your, you know, scar...?"

The reverence or caution with which Draco spoke of Gaara's destroyed voice box and slashed throat would have put many in mind of the manner in which people referred to Harry Potter's famous scar, but since the one who spoke had never given any kind of respect to Potter and his scar and Gaara had not been there to hear the initial interest in the Boy-Who-Lived in the first year, the resemblance was missed entirely.

Gaara did seem to have a frog in his throat, but it wasn't anything worth seeing the overbearing matron about. Her spells couldn't heal him anyway and his throat wasn't that much worse than last month, so he didn't give Draco an answer and simply stepped of the bed and went to change for the day.

When he returned, Draco was still stretching and trying to undo the night's sleeping badly and Gaara felt a little guilty about the whole thing so he tapped Draco on the shoulder before he could go to change as well and pointed at his floating sand.

'You're tired. You can rest this Saturday instead of training.' Instead of feeling relieved, Draco was terrified. He hadn't considered that now that they were friends again he would be expected to join Gaara in exercising outside like a muggle again. He'd hoped that was forgotten, or at least that Gaara would have been put off by the frigid weather at the moment that was only set to worsen in the Scottish highland.

Draco's terror at being forced to exhaust himself for no reason subsided because he remembered it was the first Hogsmeade trip this weekend for his year group and he'd be able to go and treat himself to a nice butterbeer and all kinds of confections.

As Draco chatted (to himself, mostly) about the trip, Gaara didn't get as excited as Draco had anticipated. Gaara never reacted that much anyway, but the Hogsmeade trip was an outing, a special day and yet Gaara simply looked bored as he covertly swept up the few stray strands of fur that had been left last night. Anywhere else such evidence was negligible, but there had been no animals in their room to blame the sand coloured hairs on and could have led to some inconvenient questions.

Over breakfast, they talked quietly, or in Gaara's case his sand writing was brought down so that it was not so visible to others; they each recounted some of what had happened to them when they'd been fighting. They talked of Quidditch practices that had gone awry, of the progress of 'secret' supplementary lessons, and the day the weird guy from the Ministry came looking for Gaara. Draco even mentioned, briefly as he could manage, his correspondence with his parents, leaving out the offer of Christmas at the Malfoy home until another day. In turn, Gaara talked about the 'fight' he'd had with Potter and how it had all been a misunderstanding, which was doubly so for Gaara since he didn't understand how such a whimsical match could be called a fight.

Reformed or not, Draco was a little tickled by the prospect of Harry being beaten up. He'd been there, but reliving it was just so much fun. He might fundamentally agree with Potter and his back-up dancers on a few issues now, and most of his antagonism stemmed from where they used to differ in those areas, but enough had happened between them now that Draco honestly didn't care about the ideals or politics, he just didn't like Harry Potter. In many ways it was actually nicer to hate someone because of petulance and grudges instead of political agendas that were never his to begin with. A nice simple feud.

Draco watched Gaara eat his meagre portion and piped up, "You didn't sleep last night."

A statement, unknowably true; Gaara turned to Draco and waited for him to elaborate. The platinum blond obviously hadn't been awake to see Gaara not sleep, otherwise he certainly wouldn't have begun by mentioning Gaara's casual approach to sleep schedules and instead would definitely have whispered in panicked tones about transformations and the like.

Draco did eventually continue unprompted to explain his insight about the guarded shinobi, "I don't know if anyone's ever told you this before, but when you don't sleep your eyes are really wide all day long."

Indeed, no one had told him that before. Although sleep was a relatively new concept for him, he hadn't ever been in the habit of spending enormous amounts of time preening in front of the mirror, unlike some people he knew (Kankuro didn't like it being advertised that he drew on his makeup fresh every morning), so Gaara had never noticed how his eyes had relaxed ever since his mastery of Shukaku reached safe levels and how they would revert to his 'crazy look' when he reverted to his insomniac ways.

It just went to show that Draco's immaculate visage was the profit of hard work and not as God-given as he might have liked others to believe. Only someone obsessed with image would have noticed such a variation even in someone they lived in such close quarters to.

Gaara just couldn't understand that someone could take such a humanitarian interest in his welfare outside of his own oblivious family. He allowed his eyes to drift up to the staff table, seeking out Lupin but failed to find the sickly man. It was no surprise that Remus, as ill as he had been the past few days, had taken the morning off.

OXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXO

It came time for the third years and above to make their first trip of the year to the nearby village of Hogsmeade and Draco couldn't be more excited. He thought Gaara could be more excited, but he settled on the masked bandit just going. He even charmed Gaara's cloak(s) to stay nice and toasty all day long so that he wouldn't have a good reason to complain. As it happened, Gaara was willing to go anyway, not being concerned about going since he had no money and no need to get anything in Hogsmeade, but since it was too cold to train anywhere or to relax in any way he figured if he kept moving he might stave off frostbite. The heated cloak, God's gift to wizardry, sweetened the deal considerably.

As Draco and Gaara stepped out of the massive back doors into the snow covered courtyard, Gaara thought that it was times like these and only times like these that he wished that he was a Gryffindor. He heard they had a really warm common room. It was inconceivable that there were so many eager lions raring to go hike through the snow to the ice covered village that he'd been found in by Snape a couple of months ago.

Gaara spotted that those closest to the bridge were setting off and began onwards as well, heedless of whatever Gaara was telling him, only for Professor McGonagall to step into his path.

"Mr. Gaara, I'm afraid students aren't allowed to visit Hogsmeade without a signed permission form."

Gaara paused for a moment, wondering what the problem was, and his sand popped out and asked what she was talking about for him.

Minerva wasn't used to questions like this, and was unsure whether Gaara was being rude or whether he had genuinely never encountered a permission slip before, wherever he came from.

"The school needs the signature and thus permission of a responsible adult or guardian before it can release a student on a trip like this. Without a signed form, I'm afraid you'll have to stay behind, Gaara."

Gaara eyes widened and he relaxed as he thought he understood the strange concept. 'If you give me a form, I will sign it now.' He felt pretty satisfied that his assurance had solved whatever problem the teacher had. It was just a liability form like the one he'd signed for the Chunin Exam. Though, remembering back to it, it would probably not be as dangerous as the Chunin Exam was (for other people), but then the last time he'd been in Hogsmeade he'd been surrounded by dozens of dementors, so who knew?

"Mr. Gaara, I don't care for your sense of humour. Now, please step back inside." McGonagall was in no mood for jokes as it seemed desert-dwellers and the elderly had in common a susceptibility to the cold despite any number of warming charms they utilised.

'I don't understand. I am an adult, why can I not sign the form?' Gaara didn't really care about the trip; this, like most of his problems in this age-obsessed world, was about his pride.

"Whilst this is hardly the time or the place to be arguing about the age of maturity, you are only thirteen years old and hardly in a place to take responsibility for your own safety." Minerva slumped down a little, not wanting to patronise the short boy any further but wanting to look him in the eyes, "I am sorry Gaara. I understand that you have a unique family situation and no one is claiming that you are immature, but you are not an adult and cannot be given special treatment. Mr. Potter over there also is unable to attend, you aren't being singled out." She looked around to where she had just seen Harry but he'd long gone off to brood somewhere.

Gaara was still confused, but figured that this was just one of those many many things that he didn't understand about this world's culture. He'd been an adult since he became a shinobi in his world, and he hadn't been a child since he got his tattoo years ago (or when he'd lost his teddy some time after). Nonetheless, it really wasn't the time to be arguing with teachers in such a slow manner as this, not in this weather, so he let the issue go and tried to figure out what to do with his day when all he wanted to do was find a spell that allowed humans to hibernate. Or perhaps find a school that was closer to the equator.

Draco was sad that Gaara had been barred from going on, but he decided to go on without him as going to Hogsmeade for the first time was a rite of passage for Hogwarts students, and he wanted his sweets. He'd make it up to Gaara by buying him plenty of candy as well. That'd cheer him up.

Draco spent the day splitting his time between the moderates, who acted like normal teenagers on a field trip, and the elitist blood purists (his old friends), who were willing to travel with him because of his continuing dubious status and undeniable wealth. His father had been pleased with his actions lately, minus the communications blackout, so his allowance had gotten a healthy bonus as a reward and he thought it was only fair that Gaara share in this windfall. He had planned to take Gaara around the shops to see if he wanted anything, but now he'd just go with something sweet. Who didn't like sweets?

During the day while Harry was seeking out Professor Lupin to find out about his parents who the sickly DADA teacher apparently knew, Gaara found the perfect way to spend his Saturday: he snuck into the Gryffindor common room. He had planned to threaten the portrait of the Fat Lady to let him in when he found the painting ajar and unguarded after Neville had forgotten to close it properly on his way to the library just a few moments before.

Gaara sat himself down in front of the fire, wrapped up fully in a thick red blanket he'd found on the plush arm chair, and started on a new book. The few Gryffindors in the tower that had not gone on the trip, mostly first and second years, saw the blankets and book and assumed he was one of them, trying to stay warm.

During the day, Gaara was feeling very peaceful and cosy and when it quietened down in the dorm, he got up and had a proper look around. If someone found him in there he'd tell them he got lost, and then he'd sit back down and dare them to try and make him leave.

When the stairs refused to let him up, he decided that either the tower itself didn't like him (a distinct possibility) or it was the girls' dormitory he was trying to enter and the Gryffindors were so uncivilised that measures had had to be taken to stop the boys from doing something reprehensible in the night.

Up the other set of stairs, Gaara found the coops that housed so many boys in one room, on bunk beds of all things. Not everyone was as antisocial as his House, or indeed him, but it was still bizarre to think that the House of red and gold had to live in such close quarters. It couldn't be to do with funds so it must have been to do with the ideals of the house. Gaara shuddered to think after the sleeping arrangements of Hufflepuff, the friendship house. He soon saw everything he needed to see to satisfy his curiosity and settled back down in front of the fire.

All in all, it was a nice day for Gaara, if perhaps a trifle boring, but one can't have everything. Reluctantly in the evening he stood again to go to dinner and listen to whatever story Draco wanted to regale him with about the assuredly fascinating trip to the shops. As he neared the entrance of the tower, the red head heard shouting and then a sound like a lullaby to his accustomed ears: a blood curdling scream, which was then followed by some kind of ripping-fabric sound.

Gaara proceeded regardless and opened the portrait in time to see a strangely familiar dog run away down the stairs. At the sound of the portrait opening, above the sounds of shouting and roaring from the countless portraits that coated the stairwell, the dog turned back to look at who had emerged and appeared, if Gaara's judgement of dog emotions was any kind of reliable source, surprised. He'd seen the same look once or twice when he'd used shunshin to go and visit Fluffy.

Gaara wasn't sure what was happening or why a dog wanted to get into Gryffindor (either that or the Fat Lady's singing had done number on the poor creature's ears) but the familiarity of the dog persuaded Gaara to chase after it to see if he could find some answers.

As he ran after it, Gaara considered where he could have seen it before. He'd only spent time with one dog that came to mind, and this one was quite a bit different. This big but nonetheless normal black dog with one head... hadn't he seen a dog before he got to Hogwarts, back in Hogsmeade village? Why was it here now?

He continued to chase after the beast as the students were beginning to converge on the empty portrait of the Fat Lady.

It was going to be another long night, this time not only for insomniacs and part-time wolves.

To be continued...

OXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXO

A/N: Thanks for reading, as always. I think I can safely say that anyone that has read this far (133,000 words in total now) is probably in it for the long haul. I have a dedicated readership. Yay, go me.

I'm afraid I skipped writing an omake this time, but I figure most of you are sick and tired of listening to my (narrative) voice by now. And I'm sure as hell sick of reading my own stuff.

In this chapter, as in prior ones, it may seem like I am Snape-bashing. I usually go to some lengths not to explain my work and not to give away anything about the future but I am aware of the similarities between my portrayal of Snape and of those of bashers and I don't want to repulse those who do not enjoy such one-sided portrayals. I will state here that I like Snape and I am trying to keep him in some semblance of canonical character whilst adding in my divergence: Gaara. So, please, bear with me in that regard.

It was hilarious, when I went to see the final Harry Potter film in 2011, after I had long since written the plan for most of this chapter. I had planned to base my 'Henrick Morbidus' character on the Holby City (a British medical drama) character, Henrik Hanssen who I believe to be one of the greatest characters of any current television show. The funny part is that this character, Morbidus, that I have effectively cast as the actor Guy Henry (who plays Hanssen), also play Pius Thicknesse in the seventh and eighth Harry Potter films. It was just the coincidence of it that had me snickering inexplicably for five minutes in the cinema.

Oh and I plan to write shorter chapters from now on to hopefully increase the likelihood of updating more than once a year. Plus this behemoth of a chapter is more daunting than pleasant I think. I would have cut it up and updated twice in a row, but having completed it all, I couldn't bring myself to cut it down and diminish the gargantuan achievement of finishing a chapter exceeding forty thousand words!