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It stopped her speech eventually, as she took notice that Gaara wasn't just standing there with that same impossible featureless expression on his face. She looked closer at whatever he was clutching in his hand and when she saw what it was, she smiled widely and thanked him profusely before depositing all but one into her pockets and starting on the first of her treasured gifts.

Giving her another nod, both in parting and in thanks for understanding that he would not have appreciated a hug for the sweets, Gaara turned around and continued on his way to his bed so he could relax marginally and open his current book. He didn't bother turning around when he heard Luna, who was now sucking on the hard-boiled candy, following him sedately and all the while quietly telling him all about the wonderful and fictional creatures that either definitely or may live in the castle. He sat down on the most remote cot in the Great Hall, pulled out his book and began to read. Luna, meanwhile, took this as no kind of brush-off as Ravenclaws like her often multitasked and read while others were talking. Everyone seemed to do something else when she talked.

Intensely ignoring her as he was, Gaara paid no mind when Luna casually began discussing (quite one-sidedly) the focus of her latest research project: the strange creature she'd chased around the school on the night of the full-moon. If he had been paying attention, he might have had a hard time playing ignorant and not scowling at her when she described the thing as an abnormally large, sandy coloured red-panda of some sort. Apparently she thought his tanuki form and the red-pandas looked similar.

Oblivious as they both were, one engaged with his book and the other engaged with her new good friend, neither noticed the startled jump and gasp of Ginerva Weasley, who was stood close to the middle of the hall, surrounded by a group of other second-year girls.

"What's the matter, Ginny?" One of the girls asked.

"I'll be back in a second." Ginny replied absently, not looking back to the other as she had already begun walking quickly towards her friend and the imminent threat that her friend was talking to. Knowing Luna, she probably didn't know the stories about Gaara and how violent he was. With how annoying Luna could be, it was a wonder that Gaara hadn't already gone for her since the blonde was chattering at full speed into his ear while he was trying to read.

She was almost jogging by the time she came to the end of the hall that was conspicuously empty except for Gaara and his conversational companion.

Luna was reciting the different avenues of research she had tried in classifying her newest 'imaginary' creature, when she was abruptly pulled to her feet and swung behind a ginger girl her own height. Gaara had noticed the fast approaching girl but didn't think it was worth looking away from his book. He did glance up when the girl had reached them and pulled a surprised Luna behind her protectively. The look on the girl's freckled face said it all: fear, anger, and courage. Looks that promised to cause him even more trouble. He again bemoaned his magnetic attraction to trouble. It was one thing to constantly get into trouble in his own world, where he was a warrior (and a murderous demon host), but in this world where he was a (supposedly) harmless child in a school surrounded by other children it was unbelievable.

"Hello Ginny, how are you?" Luna seemed oblivious, as usual, to Ginny's alarmed stance and protective position.

"Stay there, Luna. Gaara's dangerous, he attacked Harry and Professor Snape, and he killed a boggart." She was panicked; that didn't bode well.

Gaara had stopped reading, after finishing the sentence, marked his place in the surprisingly interesting tome and looked up at the disruptive pair of girls. He was glad to see that the red-head hadn't drawn her wand as that would have surely led to a short battle followed by a long riotous frenzy among the inhabitants of the hall.

"He's been very kind to me, Ginny. Are you sure you've got the right Gaara? He even gave me some sweets, would you like one?" Luna reached into her pockets and retrieved one to give to her friend, who was still glaring at Gaara uninterrupted. Ginny refused it, whether it was because it was from Gaara or because she was in the middle of a standoff it was hard to tell.

Finally she addressed the accused, "Why were you in Gryffindor today? I heard you were in there all day. Were you waiting for Harry to come back? Were you going to attack him again?"

Gaara wasn't really sure how to answer any of these questions so he sat quietly and tried not to look angry or aggressive at all. Hopefully Luna or someone would step in before this girl did something stupid. And why would he spend all day in one room waiting to start a fight with someone he'd already beaten?

The people in the outermost social circles, who were closest to the Gaara Exclusion Zone, were privy to what Ginny considered to be a long overdue chewing out. Ginny wasn't raised to be hateful, she came from a tolerant and loving family, but she really hated bullies. Especially when those bullies went after her Harry!

"I'm not going to just let you attack my friends and get away with it!" People further afield had started to turn and watch the spectacle. "I think bullies are despicable." Gaara didn't know when he'd attacked Luna, nor when he'd become a bully, but it didn't seem fair.

Ginny looked very upset and Luna was beginning to look a little concerned. Suddenly, Ginny let go of Luna's wrist, stepped forward and shouted "Leave my friends alone!" And she slapped Gaara.

A gasp rose in symphony from the collected watchers and doubled when they all saw the small sand shield that had blocked Ginny's attack. At the other side of the expansive hall, Harry, Ron and Hermione all started to running through the crowds toward Ron's little sister.

Ginny had frozen, the adrenalin from her rant suddenly deserting her and leaving nothing but cold sweat in its place as she realised that the psychopathic boy that had fought the Boy-Who-Lived, Albus Dumbledore and Professor Snape, who had killed boggarts and (if the rumours were true) dementors, and had used his sand control to attack each time, was also the boy she had just tried to slap across the face. Suddenly the sand, deceptively soft, that her hand was still lightly touching against retracted and then retreated into the gourd on Gaara's back without any kind of offensive action.

Ginny slowly, dazedly moved her hand back down and backed away from Gaara, never blinking or breaking eye contact for fear of breaking whatever peaceful spell had come over the terrifying Gaara. The spell was broken for Ginny when Gaara shifted to pick up his book again and started to read, totally ignoring her.

The crimson-haired boy had thought about saying something to her, but he figured it would have less of an impact if she had to read what he wanted to say in his defence. It wasn't often that Gaara wished he to speak (or at all, as of the last few months), but increasingly of late he had found situations where the right words here or there would have helped his situation enormously.

With Gaara distracted again, Ginny took Luna by the hand again and dragged her back to the safety of the other side of the hall, where Ginny was worried over by both Ron and the twins while Luna continued to suck on her sweets and try to work out exactly what had led to that confrontation. She was also a little upset that Ginerva had tried to slap Gaara unprovoked, but then she was probably just being affected by an excess of wrackspurts making her do silly things for no reason.

Things in the Great Hall quietened down greatly after that and the cots began to fill up as the teachers began the long procedure of making the wizarding world's largest slumber party go to sleep. Meanwhile, the children were all sat quietly talking amongst themselves from atop their beds for the night, and even the ones nearest Gaara felt brave and continued their own hushed conversations. Gaara felt, as he always did, the unwavering glances from the boys nearest to him, and in a moment of inspiration, he set his book face down and turned to find the bag of sweets he'd hidden from himself.

Looking up and around, he saw the largest cluster of teenagers huddled around on their cots, whispering excitedly, so he stood up and padded over to them. He was almost upon them when the ones facing his direction saw him and froze mid-speech, causing the other boys to turn around and freeze too. The mix of Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs were not the bravest and were among the vast majority of the school that outright feared the entity that was Gaara, so his unprompted approach in the middle of the night just before lights out was somewhat startling.

Gaara held out the sack to the closest boy and waited. It took a little while for the boy to both clock on to what was expected of him and to actually take the proffered sack from Gaara. The boy had expected any number of things to be contained within the sack, most of which being nightmarish and inexplicable, but he was surprised beyond words to find a large stash of good quality confectionaries from Honeydukes.

The fearful boy looked up at his scary benefactor but Gaara had already turned to go back to his bunk. He was free of the sweets, he'd done a good deed that might help to clear some of the miasma around his name, and he'd given tons of sugar to a bunch of school kids just before their bed time with only a few over-stretched adults to supervise the resulting sugar-rushing-mess. Worth it.

Wary of this new and unknown, kind Gaara, the collected students did indeed begin to share out the sweets and called over a chorus of thanks before all ducking down a little when McGonagall shushed them harshly. Gaara sat back on his cot, cross-legged and settled in for a long night. He only had this one book to read and he was already halfway through to finishing it. If he'd known his day of lounging in Gryffindor would have extended to include the entire night on an uncomfortable bed surrounded and exposed to hundreds of others, he might have packed a few more books or some of his homework to do since he wouldn't be going to sleep any time soon.

Draco had elected to stay with the Slytherins over on the other side of the hall, owing to a particularly riveting discussion of their upcoming Quidditch match and the season at large. He'd seen the tense standoff, but he hadn't had a chance to move over there before the whole thing had resolved itself. He always tried to keep an eye on Gaara, since the boy was so very foreign in so many of his ways and was prone to doing stupid things.

It was with these same vigilant eyes that he also noticed the astounding act of generosity on Gaara's part after everyone had begun to settle down towards their cots. The wannabe-aristocrat of Slytherin was torn between annoyance at his own act of benevolence and charity being cast aside and re-gifted, to be consumed by ravenous younger years from different houses; on the other hand, Draco could plainly see that Gaara was attempting to buy these students' favour with the confections. Such a Slytherin move. Draco was so proud.

Draco was so delusional...

Not long after he'd sat back down to read, the teachers patrolling the hall called out that Black had not been found in the school but the search would continue overnight, and that it was now time to go to bed. Minerva raised her wand and flicked it, blowing out every one of the floating candles (and not a drop of wax was spilt on a student, Gaara marvelled).

It was a stroke of luck that, though dim, the hall was lit enough by the light of the stars and the full moon through the invisible ceiling that Gaara was still able to read; he dreaded to think about how strained his eyes would be by the morning, though. As he read, he began to think on a number of recurring issues he'd been considering, like a new source of sand and when he'd next get a chance to visit Sirius.

A number of close-by students, excepting those that had received the sweets and goodwill from Gaara, noticed that the world's shortest insomniac wasn't going to sleep nor did he appear to have any intention to do so. The red head was visible in the moonlight, sat stiffly on his bed with a book on his lap, and those that saw his unblinking eyes found themselves fighting to stay awake as well. It seemed perilous to fall asleep when Gaara was in the same room as them and not planning on succumbing to slumber as well.

No one was in a position to laugh at the fact that Gaara was just as afraid of sleeping amongst them as they were of doing so in front of him. The only mirth to be had was Gaara's silent smile as he saw the cluster of boys' breathing even out one by one as they each lost in their attempt at the Olympic waking event. He was the undisputed champion.

It only took him another couple of hours to finish his book, before he carefully and quietly closed it and slid it under his cot and laid back. He stared up at the sky and wondered at some of the forms that magic could take. There was so much glitz and glamour, and curses and hexes, but the simple spell of seeing the stars and bright round moon through the ceiling of this school was really wonderful.

He stayed still and stared up into the sky for a while longer before anything else happened. The teachers, now that the last of the students had settled down to sleep (by appearance only for one), had started to wander through the aisles of children and softly converse about the day's events, as if they weren't surrounded by hundreds of nosy children, at least one of which was prone to insomnia.

It was as Gaara waited for the morrow, that he heard the distinctive Scottish whispering of Professor McGonagall, "There's been no sign of him, but I am still not convinced it's safe for the students to remain here for much longer. Sirius Black has proven that he's capable of breaking out-of and in-to both Azkaban Prison and Hogwarts, and there's no denying that he was violent, look at the way he threatened the House Elves in the kitchen, and that was all over a sandwich!"

Gaara just about stifled his groan and managed to cover his face-palm by turning over and pretending to be shifting in his sleep, as was his disbelief and bemusement at the incredibly stupid things friends of his got up to. Was there something about him that attracted idiots to him? At least Draco was a little more mature, though some of his idiotic rivalries and behaviours still gave cause for doubt.

Gaara was many things, but humble really wasn't one of them.

His movement, innocuous though it was, apparently drew the adults' attention to him. Snape turned to Minerva and Albus and sneered in true form, "Was there ever a doubt in your mind that Black was up to no good? Even before he did away with Pettigrew, he was rotten to the core. When I mentioned inside help, I didn't just mean the obvious suspect among our own ranks. Does anybody else find it suspicious that just a little while after Sirius Black escapes Azkaban, an undeniably suspicious and unaccountable child is found wandering in the village close to the school that Sirius Black has now broken into, and that this same boy is the one that was involved in the incident concerning Black earlier this evening? How do we know that he didn't at least help Black escape the castle, if not helping him to enter in the first place?" It was chilling that Snape had stayed so quiet while he was angrily ranting, so cold.

"Severus, you really must try to find some forgiveness in yourself, especially for one of your own. All of those grudges will fester." Minerva sounded more like a teacher admonishing a student rather than an irate colleague arguing with an unreasonable man.

"Well," he drawled, "you're more than welcome to take him off my hands, if you think you could do better for him than me. What do you say?" He clearly had a big bitter smile on his face from the smarm in his voice, almost certainly stretching upwards when he was met by no answer.

Before McGonagall could shamefully refuse to take Gaara into Gryffindor, Dumbledore spoke in his own whispering voice, "Now, Severus, Minerva, you both know you can't just up and trade your students... not anymore..." The slow footsteps finally took the three teachers out of earshot and Gaara found that he did actually feel a little insulted that the usually magnanimous Minerva McGonagall hadn't been willing to, at least in principle if not practice, take him into her House.

The collected professors were none the wiser that they had just been eavesdropped upon, nor that they would then walk over to where Harry Potter would be able to hear Snape's next theory: that both Gaara and "another within the castle" (read: Remus-bloody-Lupin) were in on the break-in, though without mentioning either by name. Still, it was enough for Harry to consider Gaara with a little more suspicion than hostility from then on.

The next morning, the students were released from lockdown to return to their dormitories and prepare for the day while the cots were switched out for the tables again, in time for breakfast. Relief abounded when it was announced that Sirius Black had not been found lurking in the castle overnight and that security had been stepped up, but the tension was still high for the upper years and a select few in the lower ones that felt the ongoing threat more acutely.

Gaara overheard Harry Potter, as they were leaving the Great Hall, say to his female friend, "They didn't find the Basilisk either."

OXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXO

Gaara knocked lightly on the door, trying not to disturb the teacher that looked suspiciously hung-over.

"Oh, Gaara, good afternoon. Is this one of your free periods too?" Lupin sat up straight and managed to push himself to his feet without making too much guilt-inducing noise.

Gaara nodded and entered the classroom. He'd been waiting all day for the time to come and relay what happened the night before.

"I gather you saw a dangerous and stupid escaped convict last night. What happened?"

Gaara sighed a little and uncorked his sand. 'He snuck in as a dog, to steal the rat. The painting stopped him and I chased him. I helped him to sneak out of the castle.' Gaara figured the bare bones would suffice until Lupin had a chance to go and find out directly from Sirius what had happened, after lengthily chewing him out, probably.

"Stupid, arrogant, self-absorbed..." Lupin's headache didn't stop him from grumbling with all he was worth, growling out the string of insults that included a few barely audible ones that the seasoned shinobi had never heard before. Lupin closed his eyes and exhaled slowly, trying to calm himself down before he ran out into the snow and hunted down the idiot himself. Gaara could blame him as the impulse was hard to resist.

Gaara actually had to hold Lupin back after he told him about Sirius' initial stop off at the kitchens for a spot of dinner before searching for their friends' betrayers. Trying to distract the teacher from doing what he too wanted to go out and do to their mutual friend, Gaara asked him, 'What did you do yesterday?' It might also forestall any further judgements on how the cold red-head had spent his day.

Lupin took a moment to register the words' presence and then another to absorb them before he could turn to Gaara with a smile on his weary face and say, "Harry came to see me yesterday, since he wasn't allowed to go and visit Hogsmeade with everyone else." For the first time in weeks, Lupin was displaying some vitality that wasn't well-aimed aggression towards Sirius.

"He said he wanted to know about his parents, about James and Lily. It was nice to be able to tell him about them; he looks so much like James it's very strange for me, and he has Lily's kindness. He got the best of both, you could say, James' looks and Lily's personality. Honestly, sometimes I struggle separating Harry from my memory of James. I keep expecting him to tell me to hurry up and get Sirius and Peter so we can go and make some mischief. I suppose that might be the reason that Severus has such a problem with Harry. I'm ashamed to admit we gave him a hard time when we were younger."

Gaara wondered what, then, was the reason for Snape's outright animosity towards him?

'Did Lily, Harry's mother, join you in bullying Professor Snape?' He apparently looked an awful lot like this Lily person (enough, at least, to keep reminding him about the similarity), but the look on Lupin's face said that he was wrong.

Lupin had creased his brow in thought as he was clearly trying to find the right way to say something. "No, that's certainly not right. In fact, Lily was usually the one that told us off for... bullying Severus." Lupin clearly didn't like to think of his childhood teasing as anything that serious, but the man did know that what he and his friends had done was wrong. "Lily and Severus Snape used to be friends, a long time ago. They had a falling out, but Lily was unquestionably kind to everyone. I'm not one hundred percent sure why Severus – Professor Snape has taken such a disliking to you, but I really don't think that it is because of her."

Well, that was disappointing. He thought he finally had that one pinned down.

Lupin and Gaara talked for a little longer about Harry and his parents until Draco poked his head through the door, after knocking politely. "Finally! For someone as notorious as you are, Gaara, it's surprisingly difficult to find you. Good afternoon, Professor. I'm sorry to interrupt," He really wasn't, "-but Gaara has another lesson and Professor McGonagall really doesn't like it when Gaara ditches class."

He did it often enough that McGonagall always held off on performing the register every class so that the strangely absent-minded boy could have a final chance to make it to her class.

"Of course, of course, he's all yours. It's been nice speaking to you, Gaara. I'll see you again tonight for the lesson. We'll be working on your wordless-casting theory, unless you would rather take the night to rest after yesterday's excitement." Gaara figured he'd had more 'conversations' since becoming mute than he'd ever had as an audible person. He didn't spare the offer of a night's rest much thought and offered no more than a nod in reply before leading Gaara out of the room.

Lupin was going to have to wait in his office at their usual time to see if Gaara would show up.

As they walked briskly towards the nearest stairwell, Draco said, "I didn't get a chance to say it last night, but well done. If one of those Weasley paupers tried to hit me with their unwashed hands, I definitely would have struck back. Especially if I had your sand. I don't suppose you could tell me how to do what you do?"

Gaara shook his head.

"Shame. Still, I'm glad you didn't hit her back or anything. People are already avoiding you." Gaara couldn't agree more. He was a little offended that people around him, even those as close as Draco, believed that he would attack a little girl at the slightest provocation. It was as if all of the personal development that he'd undergone meant nothing, as if his past was this transparent. But, there still seemed to be a fundamental misunderstanding of his power floating around.

'My sand isn't an offensive weapon.' Gaara wondered if he could get a bell, or perhaps a charm, that would alert people to when he had written out a message as the pair walked for a fair distance before Draco, uncomfortable with the silence (figuratively speaking), glanced at Gaara and spotted the message.

Draco couldn't believe that the sand wasn't a weapon, not for a second. However, Gaara had never really seemed like the type of person that lied, but then maybe he was a just an exceptionally good at it.

'In my home, it is called the Ultimate Defence.' It was a shield his mother had given him, that his father had given him, that Shukaku had given him, that would protect his body from all harm, and it left his heart all the more open to pain. Now things had shifted and his heart was protected by others, as his sand stretched out to protect his precious people. 'It automatically responds to threats to me. With it, I can protect those I care about also.'

The previously self-absorbed prig, Draco thought about this as it was the exact sort of thinking he had decried Potter spouting off about for the past couple of years, but coming from Gaara it seemed a lot less (for lack of a better term) courageous. From Gaara it seemed more like a thoughtful ideological position rather than the idiotic default position of the Lions. Draco wondered if he would, when presented by a threat to Gaara, or his mother and father, or someone else close to him (no one came to mind), would he stand up to fight on their behalf?

They were quite late to class and Professor McGonagall did not accept Draco's excuse of fetching Gaara or Gaara's excuse of not looking her in the eye and pretending not to hear her demand an explanation. To be fair, the red-head's wasn't much of an excuse, but she still didn't press him about it.

With any other teacher, letting Gaara slide where she would almost definitely have given another student a tongue lashing, would have seemed like an act of cowardice of self-preservation, but with the revered lioness of Gryffindor certainly was not one to bow to fear. Especially when that fear came in the teeny-tiny package of a thirteen-year old, orphaned(?) mute boy. Minerva didn't do anything because she had no real recourse to take. She really doubted that Gaara would care if she shouted any of her well-meaning scolding at him, and he already willingly (for the most part) volunteered to spend hours after school in the presence of teacher to improve his spellcasting. She couldn't, and wouldn't corporally punish him, and it wasn't nearly severe enough to trouble the Headmaster about.

So she shot both Gaara and Mr Malfoy dirty looks and continued with her class, pretending not to hear Mr Weasley complain that now she'd also started to favour the Slytherins.

OXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXO

It was the last official event of the year in Hogwarts for most of the students who would be returning home soon, and it was immensely important for Draco, but even with this in mind Gaara looked down through the gale and the darkness to the sodden Quidditch field that housed both the Gryffindor and Slytherin teams and considered whether Draco would even see him in the stands enough to miss him if he snuck off. From the towering wooden structure where he was sitting, the grass field might as well have been empty for all that he could see. So it was no surprise that he was the only one up there holding onto a magically reinforced umbrella with all of his strength that, thanks to the wind, didn't keep him at all dry.

Weren't there deserts in this world that he could have been sent to instead of the Scottish highlands?

Through the wind he thought he could see the briefest flash of orange or gold, from the bright Gryffindor uniforms, but that was swallowed up in the blink of an eye. If he saw as little of the game as he did of the opening ceremony, Gaara was going to go back inside and tell Draco he had sat there for the full... how long did Draco say Quidditch matches lasted for?

Before he could recall that Draco had told him that Quidditch matches could go on for hours until the Snitch was caught, he was interrupted when a shaggy black dog jumped up the final steps into the stands and trotted along to sit by his feet. Gaara looked down at Sirius imperiously, thinking the man was foolish to sneak back onto the school grounds just to watch his godson's first game of the year. Derision or no, Gaara's hand still absently scratched behind the soaked dog's ear as Gaara finally caught a glimpse of something bright green below. He was in the right Quidditch stadium, then.

At least Sirius had had the basic cognitive functions going on that he knew to come as a large scary dog instead of a large scary mass murderer. Plus Sirius' waterproof fur would have been a godsend for Gaara on that evening. The resounding whistle blow interrupted Gaara's thoughts just as he arrived at a half-thought out wish to be in his tanuki form with its own warm, water resistant fur and squishy tail to sit on. The match had apparently started and the players had ascended into the air, drawing to a close the window for Gaara's escape when Draco flew passed his tower along with the rest of the Slytherin side and saw Gaara sitting there. Glancing down after they had gone by, Gaara saw that Sirius had fortunately been lying down at that moment, scratching behind his own ear, so none of the team had seen the suspicious, big dog sat contentedly next to the terrifying, suspicious little transfer student.

The match dragged on for longer than Gaara cared to guess whilst he huddled against the cold. Was his friendship with Draco really worth this? It wasn't like Draco would stop being his friend if he left, right? Eventually a lone green flyer floated by the stand in a lazy, wandering manner, and lo and behold it was Draco. The blond was clearly searching very hard through the rain to see the little golden ball that had swooped by Gaara about twice.

Draco's back was to them for a few minutes, the Seeker using the tower as a wind shelter, but finally he turned to peek at who, if anyone, was using this tower, only to see the blaring red hair and pale white skin of his best friend. Draco could see even from where he was flying how miserable Gaara was and what sort of mood Gaara was going to be in that night, whether or not they won the match. The loyal Slytherin just couldn't see his roommate getting excited over a sporting success. In spite of Gaara's frown, Draco dutifully waved at him and got a short one back.

Through the dark, Draco saw the head of the black dog poking up over the wall of the stand, sitting next to Gaara, and he pointed at it in question. Gaara saw Draco pointed beside him, turned and saw the dog and shrugged in Draco's direction. A noncommittal shrug was his best defence at a time like this; he could pretend the stray had wandered up there coincidentally. He could have told Draco that the dog had been attracted by his inexplicable animal magnetism but he wasn't quite willing to admit to that one just yet, plus it still made no sense to him. Draco seemed to accept this, or was distracted by still being in the middle of a match, and flew away again to continue his snitch hunt.

Another hour flew by before Harry caught sight of the snitch again and he darted after, but it disappeared when he reached the side of the field. He stayed still for a few moments before twisting and flying directly upwards, along the side of the tower and into the sky above to find a vantage point, not that he'd been able to see anything from a distance at all that game.