3/5

And then he heard a strangely familiar thumping on the grounds and wondered whether one of the forest's inhabitants had come to end its life, perhaps some of the giant spiders that had begun to avoid him recently, or even a disgruntled centaur. Instead, as it came closer, Gaara remembered the all too memorable sound of a three-headed hell hound closing in on him and his scent.

Fluffy had smelled Gaara and come to play. As soon as it was upon Gaara, he/they dove onto their back and wagged their tail before rolling back onto their front looking distinctly like they wanted to lick him.

Gaara growled what little sound his throat would allow and he sat down against Fluffy's rather fluffy underbelly and relaxed a little. The dog(s) continued to pant and wag its/their tail even as Gaara ignored them and used them as a seat.

When, after a good long while, no new dementors cropped up, Gaara sat back up and was about ready to go back to the slaughter when he heard the soft whine that signalled a very sad puppy. Fluffy had sat back up and was begging Gaara to stay so, unaccountably, he did. His mood was bad enough but killing hadn't settled him like it should so he thought giving himself a break might help.

He called out his sand and played a game of fetch with the dumb animal, soon learning that he had to throw three logs in the same direction to stop the three heads from fighting each other. Each time they came back, they would proudly drop the logs by his feet and he would repeat, up until the dog(s) tired and laid down in front of him on its back again.

Sighing ruefully, Gaara stepped up and started to scratch Fluffy's belly, a large undertaking in itself, unaccountably feeling better about his failure earlier in the evening, as if playing with the stupid mutt was cheering him up.

It just didn't make sense to Gaara.

He continued to play with and train Fluffy for hours more until he decided to give them both a rest, his dark and murderous mood having passed for now. It was only a couple more hours until the day started anyway, so he started the trek back to the castle. The walk would clear the last of the dark thoughts and he could fly the rest of the way when he had missed his first class of the day.

He didn't feel like sitting through Binns' class this morning. It might not be enough to bring back his temper, but he was feeling a little tired and that class was difficult at times to remain conscious even when he hadn't spent the night fighting and running around.

It wasn't like the professor would notice, and Draco already knew to answer to the register anyway, so he wouldn't even be marked absent.

OXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXO

His failure still fresh in his mind, although not as sore as it was the week before, Gaara sat in the school library pouring over yet another tedious book about ancient Welsh runic configurations and their astrological ramifications. Unbelievably dull, and unbelievably the title was longer than the summation.

Gaara's ongoing boredom (and ever-present frustration) was only exacerbated by the exaggerated sigh that Draco just couldn't stop himself from releasing, earning a shush from Madame Pince.

The aged librarian was one of Gaara's biggest fans since he was the perfect student in her eyes. He never uttered a word, he never ran around, he never ate or drank over her precious collection, and he seemed to really enjoy books. If only all student could be like Gaara, she thought, glaring pointedly at Lucius and Narcissa's offspring. The pair of them had been exactly the same when they were pupils here, abusing her library and distracting other students.

Of course, no amount of glaring from either side could hurt Draco's feeling while he despaired over the latest volume of dull research materials. About half an hour before, Draco had huffed and offered to help Gaara with his 'independent research project' instead of doing his own homework.

The truest sign of a procrastinator: one who will do even more tedious work in order to avoid or postpone their own. Except, the extracurricular assignment Gaara was doing was so boring that Draco was two more sighs away from returning to his own task.

"Good evening Gaara. Hello Draco." Gaara wasn't easy to sneak up on, but when his nose was stuck within a book that would have summoned Shukaku once upon a time, he didn't notice Luna who had walked casually through the library and around to his table secluded by one of the stain glass windows.

"Hello," Draco said, his final sigh escaping soon after. He closed the book he had been handed by Gaara only half an hour before and pulled put his own study materials, which read like a children's picture book in comparison.

Gaara nodded to Luna, not sure whether he needed to 'say' anything more to his other friend. He decided not to.

"You're reading about advanced ancient rune theory? Would you mind if I joined you?" Luna said, looking far too eager for Draco's taste. No sane person would volunteer for those books. Ignoring the fact that he had mistakenly made the same offer not so long ago.

"Sure. If you would like." Draco moved his chair a bit to make room for her, and then dropped the book he had failed at in front of her and went back to his homework.

"Thank you. I want to study Ancient Runes next year but I don't have that many books on the subject. Madame Pince won't let first or second years read too far ahead especially in Runes, so I would love to take a look at the ones you've got here." Luna was happily reading the titles in the pile of books.

"Are they really teaching you all of this in your first year of the subject. It's much more advanced than I would have thought." She seemed both troubled and excited by the prospect. And perhaps a little suspicious…

"Gaara's doing his own work. He would have fit right in with you 'Claws." Draco said. "He gets extra credit for doing all of this advanced theory work," He leaned a little closer to her and checked that Gaara was still engrossed in his book, "which he needs because his spellcasting is still rubbish."

"Aren't some of these books from the restricted section?" Luna returned, only for Gaara to look up from his book and silently shush her.

Draco wasn't sure if that was to tell them both to shut up, or if he just didn't want the librarian to realise her favourite student had been sneaking into the restricted section regularly for more advanced books.

"What is he working on?"

"Pardon?" Draco asked.

"What's Gaara working on right now? He seems very interested in this project and I would like to help."

"Well… it's something about this obscure branch of runic configurations that deals with some sort of… mana… mina? Something. He just asked me to read through that book and tell him if it mentioned something called 'abstracted thuamaturgical mana-morphemes', or something like that." You'd think something like that would be hard to miss even in such a big book, but most of it was written in Latin, which was not Draco strongest subject.

"I've never heard of them, but I'm sure I can find something in one of these books." Luna dived into the first book and sat very still and stared at page after page, turning the book upside down every once in a while for some reason.

It was over an hour later, after Draco had worked on half of his homework, gotten bored and tried helping Gaara again, only to go back to his own work once more, that Gaara instinctively looked up as he sensed someone glaring at him from afar.

Fortunately, of the two people it was likely to be in this castle, it was the significantly less dangerous Harry Potter who had just entered the library with his two compatriots. Potter had apparently spotted his red hair immediately upon entering and had elected to give him and Draco the evil eye.

The ginger one, the Weasley whose name Gaara couldn't remember right now, fortunately didn't see them as that would almost certainly have led to a fight of some sort. Granger, however did follow Harry's gaze and then proceeded to herd her two hard-headed friends to a table as far away from the two Slytherins (and Luna) as possible, with a stack of books between them too.

They stayed for the next hour before Harry and… Ron? Ron and Harry walked out, turning to their table as soon as it was within sight to give them more stink eyes as they left. About twenty minutes later Draco stumbled out of his own chair and to the exit, his brain leaking from his ears.

Meanwhile, Luna and Gaara continued their marathon study session through the dry and dusty tomes. Every now and then Luna would surface with a question about some of the advanced principals she was reading about and Gaara would try to explain them as briefly as he could.

Sometime later, Draco returned looking refreshed, in his cloak he had hidden some food for the two nerds to eat. He knew Gaara was bookish enough to miss meals when he was engrossed, but he didn't know about Luna.

With a long suffering moan, Draco slumped back into his seat and picked up the slimmest book on the table and continued his futile attempt at helping Gaara with whatever secret project he was working on. He knew Gaara wasn't doing this as an extra credit assignment for Ancient Runes but he also knew better than to try and pry. He just went with it and tried to help however he could. The frazzled blond wondered if Luna had figured out as much.

Gaara eventually looked up as the night wore on, and he marvelled at his two friends sat here with him. They were both unquestionably strange in their own ways, but even Gaara, as dense as Jinchuriki tended to be, knew that he was probably infinitely stranger than the pair combined. Nonetheless, he enjoyed this sort of casual interaction, where they could relax or even laugh in each other's company.

He could never experience anything like this in his own world no matter how much he changed. It wasn't just his past, but it was the world itself. It was a place of war and of death where children where children were raised to be weapons or, worse yet, monsters.

Here, children could stay innocent a little while longer, and war would only be a physical reality for an unlucky minority. Gaara would do anything he could to keep things as they were, and to protect his friends here from experiencing real hardships, and for the adults he called friends he would try to alleviate their ongoing burdens before he left them.

He was leaving…

Gaara was resolute that he would leave, since no matter how comfortable and peaceful this world was, Suna and his family needed him much more.

Until that day came, if it ever came, he would try to live by the example that that idiot set for him.

OXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXO

Harry fumed over his map, irate that Hermione had steadfastly refused to spy on Gaara last night in the library for him. She had said something about how Gaara was having a civilising effect on Malfoy and that he was even helping a second year Ravenclaw with her homework. As if!

Once again his enchanted map showed that Gaara was breaking one rule or another, this one being that he was trespassing in one of the towers, the closed one if he remembered correctly. The perfect place to hide his crimes…

Since it was a Saturday and before ten in the morning, there was no chance he would be getting any help from Ron within the next hour, and Hermione would stand on principal, so it was down to him to find out what Gaara was hiding.

As he walked, he thought back to his lessons with Professor Lupin and how unfair it was that he had to share them with Gaara of all people. Not only was he infuriating and probably evil, but he was so bad at spell work it made him wonder if he was even a wizard. Though, having seen the destruction he could wreak with a wand, Harry had to grant him that Gaara was definitely not a squib. But he was still inept.

Even Seamus had never struggled this much.

The opening of the infamous Abandoned Tower was surprisingly degraded, like how Harry would have assumed most castle doorways would look after over a thousand years of use. He stepped through the haphazard planks affixed to the frame onto the first of the rickety stones that made him consider returning to his nice, warm and safe Gryffindor tower. However, he was convinced there would be something here: A stash of letters from Sirius Black (in Gaara's desk), a cache of deadly weapons (in Gaara's pouch under his bed), explosives (in the same pouch), illegal research (technically not illegal…), or simply a clue to his origins.

What he found, after the harrowing climb up the wobbly steps, was any empty and drafty room. There were rotten remnants of furniture but there were no signs of anything being left over by a nefarious Slytherin. Though, Harry noticed as he stepped across the smaller tower, the main room of the structure was not nearly as loose or damaged as he had been led to believe. It was damaged, the hole in the wall testament to that fact, but overall he didn't think it felt very unsafe at all, unlike the steps leading to it.

Grumbling, after half an hour of combing through everything in the tower, he descended back down the steps and went back to the common room to continue his surveillance of Gaara and a number of other people before Hermione could badger him into getting started on his homework. At which point he would ignore his homework for another full day and mess around with Ron for a while. Hermione would huff and join in after a while anyway.

He also spent a little time on his own, when he could get away, to practice his Patronus. He knew that even if he were to succeed on his own, without a dementor or even a boggart to use it against, it was little better than a fancy light spell. Still, it at least made him feel like he was doing something consequential.

OXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXO

"Gaara, stop playing knife games during the lesson, you're marking the desk." Professor Sprout said with a quiet sigh, swiftly moving back onto topic. It was a rather dull class this week since they were dealing with a new batch of Puffapods in Greenhouse Number Seven.

Gaara looked up at his name being called, thought for a second, and deposited the knife back into his pocket and resumed listening half heartedly to the lecture on dealing with the quite explosive plants. Draco hadn't even noticed, so used to Gaara's dangerous antics by now.

After class let out, fifteen minutes early since the Hufflepuff two work stations over from Gaara and Draco's had dropped his seeds and covered the floor with blooming flowers. Sprout had huffed and said that she was fed up with cleaning up Puffapod flowers this week.

Draco had loudly postulated that it had probably been Weasley that had the accident last time; him or Longbottom.

Since Herbology had been the last lesson that Wednesday, the students scattered once they were let out. Draco noticed Gaara was flagging behind him, one of the red-head's favourite tactics for ditching him after classes. Before Gaara could dash away with the crowd covering his escape, Draco caught hold of his baggy robe sleeve and pulled him along to the castle's entrance. They had a chore to do and Gaara wasn't weaselling out of it. Again.

Draco had already written most of Gaara's Christmas thank you notes and he was determined that the mannerless cur wouldn't leave all of it to Draco.

When they were back to their room, Draco sat Gaara down at his desk and told him he was going to finish this today. Gaara scowled and thought about escape methods, like knocking Draco out or setting something on fire…

He eventually resigned himself to writing out the notes, accepting that it probably was the polite thing to do since he hadn't sent out any gifts to the people who had sent him presents, as he understood the tradition went. Fortunately, his penmanship was quick and efficient, and he was well on his way within the hour, much to Draco's appreciation and relief.

Draco was doing yet more homework as Gaara worked, the blond former-dilettante's grades having sky rocketed since his first encounter with his roommate. Soon, he started to chit the chat with his friend.

"You said your brother and sister were older than you; how old are they?" Draco was wondering if they were still in school in Gaara's home country or if they had jobs.

Gaara didn't turn to look at him, nor did he pause in his writing, his sand drifted into the words, 'Kankuro was sixteen and Temari was seventeen, I think.'

"You think?"

'We didn't start celebrating birthdays until recently.'

"Speaking of which, I've been meaning to ask (along with a hundred other things) when is your birthday?"

'January 19th, I think.'

"What?!" Draco was incredulous. That was only a week away! But more than that, this meant that despite being a good deal shorter than him, Gaara was in fact the older of the pair.

Needless to say, Draco didn't see fit to mention Gaara's stunted growth in relation to his age.

'As I said, I've only just started keeping track. I'm pretty sure it's the 19th.'

"We have to have a party." Draco said, already formulating in his head what he could put together in such little time. Obviously organising something at the Mansion was out of the question, not nearly enough time to send out formal invitations and get permission to leave the school for a night.

'What? Why?' This finally got Gaara's attention away from the growing stack of thank you notes, his mind already dreading the thought of another Malfoy event like the Christmas celebration.

Draco sat back in his chair and started jotting down notes, now ignoring Gaara's growing panic, as he tried to formulate this plan. He ran into a bit of a roadblock when he remembered that he was one of two students at the school that would actually come to a party honouring Gaara, and even his parents who had taken something of a shine to the boy wouldn't go to a party without some political reason.

On a guest list he had in his head, the only names he could think of were him, Luna, and a teacher who appeared to favour Gaara. Worse yet, he couldn't hold the party in the Slytherin quarters because of the lack of Slytherin support and the outsiders who wouldn't be allowed to come in.

Gaara sighed and went back to his notes. He knew he had no say in this frivolity, and if he was lucky he would be able to skip the party altogether. But since when was he lucky…?

After some more scheming and writing notes, Draco resumed his previous line of enquiry, not allowing himself to become distracted now that he had a chance to learn a little about Gaara.

"So, your brother and your sister are still in school, back in your home country." Draco concluded. Unless they finished schooling at sixteen like some other institutions did.

Gaara relaxed a little now that they were back to a comfortable subject. 'No, they both finished when they Temari was twelve and Kankuro was eleven.'

"What? How did they finish school when they were so young?" Draco couldn't imagine it. His schooling had only really begun at that age, the previous education he had received was primarily tutorial based.

'They were very fast studies. Our culture believes in vocational learning. We all graduated but we would then learn on our jobs.'

"You all graduated? Do you mean that you finished school in your own country?"

'Yes. I finished at the same time as my siblings. We all worked together.'

"What on Earth were you doing? You must have been…" He worked out the difference, "What? Nine, ten?"

'Nine, I think.'

"And you started working when you were that old?"

'Yes. We have a very different culture to yours. Although, I finished very early. I have certain 'gifts' that helped me to advance.' Gaara felt a little ill at the prospect of referring to Shukaku as a gift. The demon in him was a gift in the same way that a burning bag of dog poop on one's stoop could be called one.

"But what exactly did you do, you, your brother and a little girl?"

Gaara thought for a moment on how best to describe his occupation. Draco knew he was a warrior already, but to admit being one from the age of nine? That might invite uncomfortable questions like when/if he had ever killed. Which led to any number of worse questions.

'We took jobs, with the help of an instructor, which ranged from transporting important documents to guarding places or people.' The latter was a rare occasion and usually signalled that his father had wanted the subject dead.

"So it was a bit like a shared apprenticeship," Draco concluded. "But I still think it's positively backwards to finish school when you're nine and then start working. How can they possibly teach you everything you need to know by then?"

'It is a harder place. We learn what we need to know, and learn the rest in the field.' Or you died.

"Sounds positively barbaric, if you ask me. Where in the world is your home, exactly? Sounds like it's in the Middle Ages."

'I don't quite know. I got sent here (as punishment for his sins) unexpectedly.'

This finally grabbed Draco's full and utmost attention, "Wait, what? What do you mean you were sent here?"

'Someone used a technique to send me here. I don't know how to return.'

Draco was shocked by the fact that Gaara had never seen fit to share that rather important piece of information. Did Dumbledore or Lupin know about this? And then it clicked, a little later than Draco would have been proud to admit: the research Gaara did, the secret research that he did outside of class…

The fact that Gaara had been doing covert reading since he had arrived had just been a factor of his abundant eccentricity and not something to pay any particular mind to. "So someone sent you to a foreign country using magic, and you haven't told anyone?"

'No.' Other than the mass murderer and his friend. Gaara considered telling Draco about coming from another world, but he hadn't really intended to tell the boy this much and he didn't want to overwhelm him. Plus Draco was growing to be quiet inquisitive so he would let his roommate ruminate over the new information for a while.

"Why haven't you asked for help? I'm sure Professor Lupin, or even Professor Dumbledore could help you find your way home or undo the magic that sent you here."

'I didn't want to.'

Draco's hand met his forehead, utterly confounded by his brainy friend's dense personality.

OXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXO

Another rainy Saturday in January, the Golden Trio sat having a heated debate that for once was instigated by Hermione herself, usually the proverbial peacemaker in their group. She had decided that enough was enough and that they (she) needed to address Harry's recent anger issues.

Of course, since she phrased her well-meaning concerns thoughtfully and with a clinical objectivity, Harry reacted by biting her head off…

"Quirrel tried to kill me in our first year, with Voldemort on the back of his head," He continued his rant, Ron flinching noticeably more than Hermione at You-Know-Who's name, "Then there was Lockhart trying to wipe my brains when I was trying to rescue Ginny from Voldemort again, who almost did kill me that time. With a bloody great big snake! Now I've got Sirius Black, my Godfather, out for blood, and Malfoy teaming up with that psychopath Gaara!"

Hermione interjected before Harry could build up any more steam, "Well, I don't know about any of them," Which she most certainly did, "but Gaara hasn't done anything wrong, really, has he?"

"What about when he attacked Harry?!" Ron shouted.

"Harry struck first." Hermione rebutted.

"No I didn't!"

"No he didn't."

"Yes you did. Gaara had just shoved me with his sand-"

"Exactly!" Ron blared.

"He only did that because I tried to give him a hug." Hermione said, still trying to spread reason.