7/8

The look on Sirius' face, when Remus revealed what Gaara had told him, would have been the ideal defence against any dementor as it was identical to the expression worn by convicts who'd just received the dementor's kiss. That blank soullessness didn't last long enough for a getaway though as immediately Sirius sprang back with a myriad of questions that Remus didn't have any answers to.

It was testament to Sirius' implicit trust in the boy he'd saved that he didn't doubt what he'd been told for a second and was instead more concerned with 1) whether Gaara wanted to go back and 2) how Sirius could help.

Remus had spent a fair amount of time with Gaara over the past few months, but Sirius' bond with the child was something that had been forged out of mutual hardship rather than from time in proximity.

They talked long into the night about Gaara being from another world, his difficult life and his status as a warrior 'shinobi.' Talk eventually moved onto the future, with Sirius' plans to find Pettigrew, to reunite with Harry, and also to help Gaara in any way he could.

Sitting by the window, Sirius looked up to the bright almost full moon and smiled. "You know, Remus, before I saw Gaara falling from the sky, I was sure I knew what I was going to do. I was going to see Harry, and then I was going to rip Peter to shreds, consequences be damned. All those years alone in Azkaban, and then hiding out in squalor, all I could think of was revenge. I hated it. You know what the worst part about it was?"

Remus shook his head.

"How selfish I felt. I was so angry, for what they did to James and Lily, to Harry's future, to everyone else as well, but in Azkaban, I could only think about how much I had suffered because I had lost my friends and my own future. It didn't change after I escaped from there, I just saw that article with that rat in it and I was obsessed with getting here and killing him. I wanted to protect Harry from Peter also, but that wasn't anything more than something to help me sleep at night."

"Sirius, you don't have to-"

"They say that dementors suck out happiness, and have to kiss you to take your soul, but I swear I must have lost something in there, my mind or something else, because I couldn't think straight. It was my fault that James and Lily died, I told them to switch, and then I ignored Harry so that I could satisfy my own anger!"

"You know that wasn't your fault, you smelly idiot! Peter lied to all of us, the traitor could have as easily been me; how could you know? You did what you did, what you could, to protect them." Remus hated it when Sirius got so maudlin; it was so out of character. He could deal with funny Sirius, angry Sirius, pranking Sirius, but not quiet sad Sirius.

"I was doing it all again, Remus, and then Gaara arrived and I had someone to take care of, something to distract me from myself. For the first time in twelve years I had to think about someone else. I owe Gaara so much."

"If you feel that way, maybe next time you can practice duelling with him."

Remus left a lot later than he would have liked, with the sure knowledge that by the next morning he would be willing to take Professor Binns as a substitute teacher for his early classes in order to rest. He was glad, however, that Sirius had been able to get some of this stuff off of his chest before it continued to fester. At least Sirius had stopped talking about storming the castle and dragging Peter out himself. He hoped that meant Padfoot had stopped thinking about it.

Sirius seemed more preoccupied with Gaara's fight with Severus than the fact that he had been transported there from another world. He kept asking for details and wanted to hear that Severus had been badly injured. The escapee had looked a little sullen when Lupin said that their old school punching bag hadn't even walked away with a limp, though with a stoic man like Snape, you never could tell what he was hiding.

The next morning, those in the know wondered whether Lupin was in fact a vampire rather than a werewolf, seeing as he wore sunglasses to breakfast, looked deathly pale and hissed when he inadvertently walked into direct sunlight.

That morning also saw a fresh blanket of snow on the vast Scottish lands around the castle, which caused Draco another drama in the form of an unusually childish and obstinate Gaara, who refused to get out of bed on the grounds that the castle was too cold and not freezing to death was a higher priority than learning.

Any attempt to physically remove the insane (but recovering) teenager from his bed was dangerous and futile, which Draco had figured when he had approached. Even Dumbledore would have been hard pressed to remove the demon-jailer from his warm snugly bed without relying on the Elder Wand that morning.

Draco only got Gaara to leave his bed, that was littered with books that his incredibly useful sand had fetched for him in preparation of a full day inside his fortress of comfort, when Draco warned Gaara that he would liable for a real detention if he didn't turn up to class. He then went on to describe one of his own more harrowing detentions when he and Potter had had to patrol the Dark Forest in his first year at night. That hadn't seemed to affect the regular forest pedestrian, which made sense since Draco couldn't imagine there was anything that much scarier than Gaara in there; well, that is until Draco elaborated that that would entail Gaara having to walk around outside when the air was at its coldest.

Pretty soon Gaara was in the shower and into many layers of school uniform. He kept putting on clothes until he couldn't fit anymore on or ran out. Madame Pomfrey, who was eating her hearty and balanced breakfast in the Great Hall, thought that Gaara looked much more healthy that morning, barring the prominent scowl that looked angry compared to his trademark contempt-filled scowl. It looked as if he wasn't as painfully skinny as he'd always been, but then he was wearing most of the clothes he had in the world.

Gaara was angry because not only had he been dragged out into this world's version of Snow country, but he would later have to go and check on Fluffy out in the woods, seeing as he had somehow taken the beast on as his responsibility. The surest sign of recovery from total psychopathy was empathy towards animals, wasn't it? Shukaku was screaming, like he always was, for him to either leave the animal to die in the cold, whimpering in agony and misery, or to go out and kill the loyal pet and enjoy the look of betrayal on its faces. As a rule, these days Gaara tried to do the opposite of whatever his sand demon told him to, so he cut a compromise of going out there to check if it was alright and not killing it.

Still, no matter the benevolent reasons, Gaara was angry that he was still going to have to trek out into the ice and snow and then endure whatever torturous 'play' Fluffy wished to put him through before he could schlep back to the castle to warm up. If he went all the way out there to find that the dog had died anyway, he would be very upset. Wasting his time and warmth...

As the clothing-cocoon, once known as Sabaku no Gaara, sat eating a warm bowl of full-fat milk porridge, he watched Draco talking animatedly with his other new friends after Gaara had refused any interaction whilst he was still this cold. Desert dwellers had no place living in sub-zero conditions, no matter how much they tried to warm up the castle. Established irritable desert-dwellers in foul moods due to adverse weather conditions were not the greatest conversationalists and the dirty look Gaara shot Draco when he had tried to talk to him earlier had persuaded the blond to leave his roommate alone for the day and continue his bridge building among his fellow bottom-rung peers. Although, the other elites/blood-purists in his year were not entirely opposed to letting him associate with them from time to time, that was only when they weren't too exposed to the other year-groups that might see them with a suspected blood traitor.

Draco, whilst technically now a blood traitor at heart, would have to find some way of discreetly squashing that suspicion. It was insulting to be in the same league as that moron Weasley and the half-blood, blood traitor Potter. At least Gaara was no longer believed to be some sort of plebeian since he had fought both Potter, which earned him points on so many levels, and Snape which was more cool than respectable. Snape was still their Head of House and on Slytherin's side, but Gaara had fought toe to toe with him so the Slytherin loyalists at least respected that he hadn't stood for being insulted.

With his number-one crony in better standing, as long as no one questioned his beliefs on the true station of mud-bloods, Draco was almost one of the guys again, in his old circle, but the tension was still there with the underlying understanding that he didn't believe exclusively in blood purity anymore. It was a simple case of don't ask, don't tell, and everybody's relatively happy.

During the day, the teachers avoided calling on Gaara more than they usually would, which was rare enough with his muteness and acerbic nature. If there had been any doubt that Gaara had started a fight with a teacher before that morning, there certainly wasn't by the time he had made his rounds in the castle for his lessons.

Apparently, or so Draco told his friends the next day, Gaara had decided to take his chances with punishment and had retreated to his bed sometime during his free period when everybody else was suffering in the dungeons doing Potions, after having gone outside for some reason. Professor Snape didn't even seem to notice the terrifying number of sharp icicles above their heads on the ceiling.

The next day, Draco and Lupin were taught a clothes warming charm to bribe Gaara back into regular attendance. Lupin had been concerned when Gaara hadn't shown up to his lesson that evening, but had instead had Draco go in his place with a note apologizing for falling ill suddenly and being unable to attend.

For someone who had never gone to any sort of formal schooling before, and who had solved most of his problems over the years through violence and murder, Gaara had adapted to school remarkably quickly, having just skived off of his first day of school and his first detention.

The note wasn't very convincing and Draco outright told him that Gaara wasn't ill at all and was in fact just sat reading, but it was such normal behaviour that Remus laughed and awarded Draco a few points for doing the good deed. He probably should take some from Gaara, but... well... maybe he would if he remembered to do it in the morning...

OXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXO

The next evening, after the lessons of the day had been braved in spite of the continuing and evidently worsening cold front, Gaara sat next to Draco and listened to him complain about some Quidditch news that he had apparently taken personal offence to.

Gaara had to actively hold back a little smile that was trying to stretch onto his lips when he glanced out of the corner of his eye and noticed that Ron Weasley, Draco's polar opposite (according to Draco), was similarly exasperated as he complained about something very much along the same lines as the Slytherin next to him, at least judging by the identical gestures and hand movements.

Quidditch was the great unifier, it seemed. Not, Gaara was sure, that either of the enthusiasts would admit to such a shared interest. Gaara was certain that, just to spite each other, they would probably swear that they hated their beloved sport.

In the middle of his increasingly energetic rant about a questionable call during a match (Gaara couldn't give more details about his friend's impassioned but ultimately boring speech than that), Draco glanced back over his shoulder to see if he was rudely bothering any of the others around him and while his head was turned he didn't catch the lightning fast action of Gaara pouring a small vial of an unspecified liquid onto his dinner.

Not knowing that a mysterious substance had been poured onto his dinner, Draco didn't think twice about tucking into the meal in between angry complaints to his disinterested friend.

It wasn't much longer until Draco slowed in his speech and switched his grouching to being unusually tired and wanting to go to bed early. Being the considerate roommate that he was, Gaara went with the drowsy blond to the dormitory, mindful of the now setting sun casting an orange glow across the roof of the Great Hall.

By the time they reached the entrance to the Slytherin common room, Draco was nodding off whilst standing, and was slurring his speech. As luck would have it, he collapsed before they entered the boy's dormitory and Gaara had to carry the slightly larger teen to the room, that is until the sun set somewhere above and out of sight. Gaara only knew the sun had set because like a month ago, that same sensation of change began to set about him and he was forced to set Draco back onto the ground and call his sand back into its gourd. The last thing Gaara needed was for the rest of Slytherin to return from dinner to find Draco sleeping, drugged, in a pile of Gaara's sand and him nowhere to be found.

It was strange that now he was transforming awake into the tiny demon-tanuki form, it didn't hurt at all like it had when he had experienced transforming back into a human. He hoped it was just that his body was accustomed to the change; but he expected that it would probably still hurt when he went back to normal.

First he began to shrink, so he stumbled down the hallway and into his room to shift in privacy. Better that Draco and his own gourd be found on the floor of the hallway than him in the middle of transforming. By the time he'd slammed the door shut, he was already half his original size and his ass was beginning to tingle, which he interpreted to mean that he would soon be sporting a long bushy tail from it. Meanwhile, as the tail grew out of his spine, a warmth spread across his skin and his fur sprouted.

As the tail crept out of his spine, Gaara marvelled at the indescribable sensation, and he wondered how another Jinchūriki would handle this part, seeing as the one he knew would have had to endure nine long tails growing from his backside. Then again, knowing that nine-tailed-idiot, he probably would have laughed and celebrated the extra extremities. Gaara would not be celebrating, especially not when his feet began to lengthen in spite of his wishes to the contrary and he began to totter as his least favourite change took place. It was a bit of a tossup, but while he detested his shorter stature, the depths of his hatred for these backwards animal legs was unending.

The entire change, including fur, tail and beastly physique, took only twenty minutes so Gaara promptly shuffled out of his clothes, bundled them up in his arms and dumped them on his bed before creeping back to the door and laying his big sensitive ear on it to hear if anyone had stumbled across Draco yet. Hearing not a peep, only his roommate's soft, uninterrupted breathing, Gaara reached up and tried to turn to the door knob. He growled when the soft paw couldn't get a proper grip on it and he had to reach up with both hand-paws, on the tips of his toes, to grab at the slippery knob.

The amount of effort it took to perform the simplest tasks was infuriating. Usually Gaara's menacing temper was displayed only through his glaring eyes, but in this form it seemed he unconsciously added a soft growl and his top lip drew back a little show off his pointy canines. He suspected his... hackles... he suspected the hair on the back of his neck was also on end, but he didn't have time to check himself in a mirror, dinner in the Great Hall wouldn't last for much longer and he had work to do.

He slipped out of the room and darted his eyes back and forth, imagining himself to be very much inside enemy territory where discovery would equate to a fate worse than death. So, usually, in his missions that meant torture, but his pride was important to him. One of those pesky Slytherin traits that made Gaara ponder whether that poor talking hat at the beginning of term had actually glimpsed inside his cluttered head.

Gaara didn't doubt that Shukaku, and most demons in fact, would be Slytherins, but he himself? He very much doubted the Sorting Hat would be willing to try a second time, not to mention Gaara was about as happy in this house as he was likely to be in any.

That being said, the number of missing students that would have amounted from him being sorted into Gryffindor would have likely given cause for the collected governors to review the age-old system of sorting in Hogwarts. Ravenclaw might have worked...

Gaara stepped up to one of the better reasons he'd rather stay in Slytherin, and marvelled (begrudgingly) how much taller Draco was now, even slumped against the wall. It wasn't fair that everyone was always taller than him. It had always been a miracle that he didn't kill that many children when he was still mad, but now he considered whether he'd spared them simply to remain taller than somebody.

Gaara's mind kept wandering in a similar fashion as he struggled to take a firm hold of Draco so he could drag the blond into the seclusion of their room. 'This job would have been so much easier ten minutes ago.' Gaara kept repeating in his mind.

Eventually he pulled Draco's torso up against his own tiny back and slowly dragged his roommate along. A particularly troublesome part was that he then had to keep pulling the larger boy even after they had reached safety, away from prying eyes, all so that Gaara could dump Draco on his bed.

Gaara was inconsiderate.

Gaara was inconsiderate – but even Draco might have questioned Gaara's willingness to let Draco not only collapse from a suspicious and sudden drowsiness but to then let Draco spend the night on the carpeted floor only feet away from their beds.

From now on, no one could possibly call Gaara selfish, as he lifted Draco's limp body, which weighed probably at least twice his own, over his head and rolled him onto the mattress. Gaara slumped down to sit against Draco's bed, with his giant fluffy tail nestled between his legs like a bean-bag and panted his exertion away. He'd retained thumbs (arguably) and yet he'd not retained his sweat glands. What cruel fate indeed.

Crueller still since he had to then drag his gourd into the room, which was so much heavier! It took him a lot longer to do, but once he worked out that, like most things in this body, it was easier done on all four of his legs, it became possible to accomplish.

He lost his sweat glands, but his teeth were stronger than ever, and had no trouble pulling the sash attached to the considerable weight of tiny ground-up rocks he never had any trouble carrying before. Once the gourd was just inside the door frame, Gaara dropped it and shut the door, only padding over to his bed before collapsing onto it, which was tougher when he had to climb onto the bed using his well-protected tail as a footstool of sorts.

It was a tail of a thousand and one uses, it seemed, as Gaara sat back on his pillows and curled it around him to prop up the now comically-sized spell book he was attempting to read. It wasn't the most exciting thing to do whilst transformed into an entirely different species, but Gaara wasn't much of an adrenaline junkie, not like he used to be when he'd get his fix of adrenaline and other fear-induced hormones right out of his victims' blood. His forehead protector hadn't always been black but some stains just didn't wash out, no matter how hard Temari scrubbed.

Temari didn't clean up after her brothers because she was a girl, it was because Gaara was oblivious in some areas and Kankuro was a slob who pretended to be as unaware as Gaara. If she didn't do it, who would?

But back to Gaara and his current pastime: he was really killing time as the students of Slytherin began to return to the dungeons to continue their nefarious plotting of evil schemes and discussing politics over tea, or at least that was what the other houses seemed to believe. Gaara would have loved to be able to hear an evil scheme; he'd been so disappointed to find that Slytherins, like most Houses, sat around chatting and doing homework most nights. There was the occasional muttering about cursing some sorry student or a parent's evil deeds, but so far nothing worth staying to listen to. It wasn't as if he wanted to take part, he just couldn't understand why the house reputed to be so vile and subversive had to be so passive and quiet.

People passed by the door but not a single one stopped outside his. Most dorms in Hogwarts were host to social gatherings in the rooms of the students, no matter how many students were supposed to be staying in that room, even in Slytherin's exclusive shared rooms. All except Gaara and Draco's, a rooming situation that caused many of Draco's new and old friends to scratch their heads at the feasibility of such an allocation and to politely but firmly refuse offer to join Draco in his room.

Speaking of Draco, who was still sleeping away in the same uncomfortable heap Gaara had left him in on his own bed. Gaara had resorted to drugging Draco because he realised he had to do something to avoid suspicion for never being around during the night of the full moon. So he had come to the obvious conclusion considering his brother's profession, and had snuck in a certain Potions master's private store cupboard and stole a finished brew. It hadn't even crossed the inept potioneer's mind to steal the less traceable ingredients and make it himself. If it had, Draco might never have woken up.

People outside the door settled down to their evening activities and increasingly Gaara's mind wandered to anything but what he was reading. Eventually he closed the big hardback book, which took both hands, and jumped down from his bed.

He walked over to the full-length mirror that Gaara suspected Draco had brought to the room himself but couldn't prove because he hadn't been in any of his school mates' rooms. It came as a crushing relief to see that, as he had suspected and hoped for the past month, nothing was different or worse than it had been. He made the best of a bad situation and looked on the bright side. As long as he still transformed back at the end of the night, he would consider this lunar-cycle transformation nothing more than an embarrassing inconvenience.

It was all the same, the pointed fluffy ears, the long fat fluffy tail, the fluffy digitigrade-jointed legs. Everything fluffy and oh so adorable, as he was sure the female population of Hogwarts would agree, not that they would ever be given the chance.

Gaara was practically pulling out his own fur by the time the slow rhythm of drowsy adolescent footfalls marched outside his door signalling bedtime for all non-insomniacs in Slytherin. Gaara's ears perked up as he waited for the stragglers, having some meaningless conversation, to walk to their own bedrooms. To be safe, Gaara waited a few minutes more, to be sure, but in the end his impatience won out and he carefully opened the door and snuck out with all of the stealth he could muster in this cumbersome form.

It was troubling yet exhilarating to be tiptoeing around in the areas that were normally so busy, when he was so vulnerable to others. The cool night draft that was certainly spelled into the subterranean common room was pleasant, as being cooped up in that stuffy bedroom all evening was almost unbearable.

Gaara, as he began to run around on twice as many limbs as he would have liked, came to the conclusion that this form must have introduced some kind of animalistic mentality into his normally stoic and balanced mind. It wasn't as worrying as it should have been, all things considered, but then that was probably also because it was hard to concern himself over possible influences on his mind when he was just so glad to be out of that room and able to run around.

Maybe this was how some people felt all the time, bursting with energy and inexplicable impulses. If Gaara felt this way as a human, he might find himself in an orange jumpsuit one of these days, drooling over some pink-haired gorilla. Sakura was nice and all, and Gaara had nothing against her, but recently her punches had started to leave dents in his sand shield when he misspoke to her. Like a shorter, more effeminate Temari. Shudders all around.

Gaara didn't wait too long in the common room; just because he was revelling in the wild side of daring-do didn't mean that he wasn't cautious enough to wish to avoid an area so prone to students sneaking around. Often the upper years would sneak out of bed and hold private parties in the common room, safe in the knowledge that the younger years were afraid of them and that Snape wouldn't care nearly enough about his own snakes misbehaving to get out of bed past midnight.

Gaara thanked his lucky stars that unlike the Gryffindor common room that he'd heard about, Slytherin didn't have a living portrait guarding the entrance. No one would be able to report that such a 'strange little creature' had emerged from Slytherin and had returned there before dawn. There also wouldn't be anyone to remedy his leaving the door ajar so that he could return. He couldn't talk as it was, which had made gaining access difficult but not impossible at most times; if he had been locked out in this form, he would have been forced to wait until sunrise, whereupon he would be totally naked, in order for one of his housemates to open up and let him in.

Now that he was free to roam the castle, Gaara let the last of his misgivings slip and gave into the enjoyment of running unrestrained through the empty stone corridors of Hogwarts at top speed, not paying attention to any direction, simply moving with the demand 'forward.'

Gaara ascended stairs when he came to them, and ignored the questioning shouts of the portraits he'd woken up and who could only see a peculiarly long blur in the darkness that was moving far too quickly to be Mrs. Norris. Absent minded as fuzzy-Gaara was, he didn't realise he'd run past a person who had been minding their own business in the hallway.

Luna Lovegood, one time acquaintance of Gaara and all-time biggest nut job in Ravenclaw, had been retrieving her 'lost' school things earlier that evening and had come across her favourite ghost in the castle, the Grey Lady, whom she'd talked to for a few hours. And then she'd discovered that a few of the portraits on the sixth floor had been fighting and had taken it upon herself to mediate the dispute and then to move the problem painting to another area of the floor. All in a night's work, and all that.

Luna had been on her way to returning to her tower, not quite sure which direction her home of two years was in, when her stride had been interrupted by a small sand coloured thing that had run past her, through the moonlit hall and out of sight.

"How strange," she muttered softly, gazing after the curiosity for a few moments.

Her interest, inevitable that it was, compelled her to run after it. It wasn't a ghost or a cat, but other than that she couldn't say what it was. It didn't look like any of the other things no one else saw but her, but she couldn't see anything more specific in that one brief glance.