Chapter 5: Same Old Burdens
Disclaimer: I do not own either Harry Potter (rightfully owned by J.K Rowling) or Naruto (rightfully owned by Masashi Kishimoto) nor do I make any money out of this fiction. I will also add that any sections or phrases in this chapter that bear resemblance to works by either author or from movies based on works of said authors is recreated in the same spirit of free usage and is not for profit.
A/N: Well, I had hoped to get more done by the New Year but I did say I would upload something so I have. This is really just chapter 4.5 but I didn't want to mess up the numbering. I will continue to write and finish up what I originally intended for this full chapter or I will extend it to include some more stuff. Who knows…Either way, some time in the indeterminate future, I will upload a new and longer chapter.
Despite it being the shortest thing I have published, I hope you enjoy this instalment.
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(Last Time)
"You had your first meeting with your solicitor the other day, as well, didn't you? How'd that go?"
"Well, the first with that solicitor, yeah. She said as long as we can keep it quiet, until the last minute, we might get away with it. It's the only way we can hope to manage it, if Fudge doesn't get a chance to prepare any impediments."
"Really?" Remus said.
Sirius smiled, "Yes. If we can sneak it in under the radar while Fudge and his lackeys are busy with that Tournament of his, she says I should have no problems with formally adopting Harry and Gaara in the next six months."
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Monday morning came without much fanfare as the looming Triwizard Tournament and preparations for the opening ceremony continued to roil amongst the student body. Gaara enjoyed the comparably quieter mornings like these, regardless of the cause for such lulls. Draco was still in a sullen mood, which did displease Gaara somewhat, but for lack of any remedy, all he could do, he decided, was not make it any worse by misstepping with good intentions.
The morning post came and as usual Draco received another letter from his father, presumably another barrage of abuse directed at the Tournament that was now forcing his son to participate in some humiliating public spectacle. Draco skim-read and tucked it in his robe pockets to file away later with the rest of his stored correspondence. Gaara also got an owl this morning, delivering to him a letter bearing Remus' neat handwriting.
Nestled inside of the wrapping were both a letter and a small familiar bag. The letter explained in a, what he could only assume was forced, polite manner that Gaara had forgotten his expanding bag at Grimmauld Place and that he had better keep a more watchful eye on his precious personal possessions. The rest of the letter was filled with the typical well wishes so he did not bother to reply, simply slipping the bag into his own pocket and ripping up the letter.
When the owl did not leave, Gaara gave it some nearby bacon, ignoring the bacon's previous owner's alarm, and shooed it away.
After breakfast he had a few minutes before his first class of the day so he ran down to their room and tried to stash the unnecessary bag away until he could work out a suitable use for it. Unfortunately, his chosen place to leave it happened to be in Sirius' expanded trunk and due to the nature of the dimensional magics involved in each of their internal expansions, the bag simply would not fit inside of the trunk, despite appearing to be easily small enough to fit. It was only thanks to Gaara's extensive experience in the past year of researching spatial magic that he recognised the issue and did not cause irreparable damage trying to force one inside of the other.
Draco arrived at the room just in time to see Gaara using the expanding bag to store his socks compactly and shook his head at his friend's ludicrousness. He shouldn't be surprised by now as this latest act was just as ridiculous as Gaara himself.
As the day wore on, Draco's mood improved now that his detentions with Professor Moody were over and his evenings, not otherwise monopolised by the opening ceremony, could be spent anywhere but in close proximity to Mad Eye Moody. Father had a lot to say on the subject of Dumbledore's latest appointment in his letters.
During that day's DADA lesson, the campaign against Draco and Gaara went on as Moody loudly remarked that he did not know whether Gaara's total magical ineptitude was a greater danger to his friends or to his enemies. Gaara did not take as much offence from Moody as he did with Snape because while the scarred old warrior was clearly prejudiced against Slytherins and these two in particular, he did at least concede that Gaara's battle prowess, beyond spellcasting, was exemplary. And vice versa, he admitted Draco was amongst the better spellcasters in the class (though not the top) while deriding his lacking physical abilities.
After DADA let out and Draco had to reassure himself that he wasn't that unfit, since Gaara wasn't going to do it, Granger approached Gaara with a smile that he was getting tired of seeing. It never ended well for him.
"Good morning, Gaara." Hermione said, adding a curt, "Hello, Draco," for good measure.
Gaara nodded and Draco ignored her in favour of recollecting his recent caloric intake and exercise routines. His conclusions sadly were, in that order: too much and not enough.
"I was wondering if you might like to come to my birthday party this evening?" She said.
"You're not invited, Malfoy." Ron chimed in from behind her.
"How ever will I console myself?" Draco murmured distractedly, still fretting over his perceived doughy physique.
As Ron tried to pull Draco into yet another bitter argument, and Draco instead focused on developing his burgeoning body complex, Gaara said, "No, thank you."
"Please, do think about it." Hermione said.
"Yeah, it will be fun. And… you can even bring Malfoy, if you really like." Harry added.
Gaara was impressed by the extent of their offer, since even this latest curious attempt to get to know him would have only recently been enough to allow those words to pass through Potter's lips.
"Yes, that would be fine." Hermione said slowly, glancing over at where Draco and Ron where still teetering on the edge of a full-blown fight.
"I do not want to attend." Gaara said finally before walking away. When Draco noticed his exit he trailed off after him, promising to resume this battle of words later when he could really devote his energy to it.
"I don't know why you wanted to invite him, of all people, Herm." Ron said.
"Seemed like a better chance of getting Gaara to agree." Harry replied.
"That's who I meant. Why would you want him there?" Ron directed his question at Hermione.
"Well, I want to get to know him a little better. But also Harry wants him there." She said.
As Ron turned to Harry, wondering how he kept getting left out of these schemes, Harry continued, "The only way we'll ever get to know what Gaara's keeping a secret is if he wants to tell us."
"Harry's right. If we befriend him, Gaara might confide in us." Hermione said.
Ron looked to and fro between them, "But.."
"Plus I think it upsets Sirius when me and Gaara don't get along."
"And nobody finds it strange that a teenager has to keep a grown man from getting upset? And doing it by being friends with a snake!"
"There's nothing wrong with being friends with a Slytherin, Ronald." Hermione scolded him.
"So when's the sleepover with Parkinson and Bullstrode?" Ron shot back.
"Well, some are different." She said.
"Like Malfoy?"
"I'm not sure. Malfoy's still a prig, but he's not been as bad since Gaara arrived, has he?" Harry mused.
"Still seems like an arse to me." Ron said.
"I agree with Harry, actually. He's still not my favourite person but he used to be much worse."
"I think you two are just too nice."
"I've been called worse things." Harry said.
Gaara continued his aggravated walk, heedless of Draco's flustered attempts to keep up. Despite the frequency of such encounters, Draco was quite worked up after that little verbal sparring match with Weasley but Gaara did not seem to be in any sort of reasonable or talkative mood to help him calm down.
Gaara was in a foul mood all of a sudden. Talking with his least favourite Gryffindor trio was always a good start towards that, but their raising the subject of tonight cemented his distemper. He had almost been able to forget about this evening with everything that had been happening around the school and because of his promised solution to the issue.
He had been prematurely reminded of the full moon to occur this evening and he wouldn't be able to concentrate on anything but the possibility of this plan failing until then. All assurance he felt that his animagus training would indeed shield him from the ruinous effects of the moon fled.
After ditching Draco, Gaara sequestered himself for the rest of the afternoon to have one final practice of his animagus abilities before the big moment. Draco had asked to come and observe but like all the identical requests Luna had made, he was denied.
During dinner, at which Gaara ate even more sparingly than he usually did, Hermione tried to approach him to extend another invitation to her birthday party, but by the time she had walked from the Gryffindor table over to the Slytherin side of the room, he had left the Great Hall. Hermione ended up on the receiving end of a dozen Slytherin glares when she stopped right by the snakes' table with no apparent motive. Draco looked up from where he had been in deep conversation with one of his few other friends, which interestingly were some of the least offensive Slytherins she'd met, but ignored her in short order.
He finished his own dinner at a much more leisurely pace after Granger had wandered back to her own side of the hall before following Gaara back to their room. Earlier, Draco had offered, when he was reminded by a Ravenclaw swot's well-timed conversation that it was the full moon that night, to keep watch in case Gaara's transformation occurred despite his preparations. Gaara agreed, reluctantly, that it was a good idea to have a guard ready to prevent anyone discovering him should his animagus training prove inadequate to the task of circumventing his lunar curse.
Of course, the truth was that Draco was more curious to see Gaara's tanuki form again than he would ever care to admit.
In the room, Gaara was calmly reading on his bed, which did not fool Draco. By now, he could tell (more or less) when Gaara was stressed over something, which was a very frequent occurrence. That was part of the reason it had been so difficult to discern this particular mood of his, it was so common on his face. It was the same story for his annoyed face, which was ever-present. Like now, for instance…
"You've got a little time left." Draco mentioned, settling onto his chair and cracking open his Potions book.
Gaara didn't bother nodding, he just continued to read his own textbook, this one on the political history of magical communities around the world.
Half an hour later, Gaara snapped his book shut and readied himself for the moment of transformation, or not in this case. He had consulted with an astronomy book earlier in the day to check the exact moment of lunar rising, and the clock indicated that moment was only sixty-three seconds away. He could feel the sensation welling up inside of him already, preparing him for the change that until now had been inevitable.
He knew what he had to do when the time was upon him, the feeling he was looking for when his animagus abilities were activated. An itching, burning feeling under his skin, behind his eyes and in his nail beds spread and almost overwhelmed his senses, causing pain comparable to the night of his first transformation eleven months ago.
Draco watched Gaara sit up on the bed and then slump back down in a perfectly anti-climactic fashion as nothing visibly happened.
"Is that it?" Draco asked, disappointed both that it had worked and that it had worked in such a spectacularly boring fashion.
In the aftermath, Gaara had a bit of a headache but he was still as human as he had ever been, he noted as he examined himself to make sure that there were indeed no changes to be found.
"Yes." Gaara answered irritably as the headache persisted and the itching continued to hum away in the back of his senses.
The pair lapsed into silence as Draco continued with his homework and Gaara tried to sleep or meditate, anything that didn't require making a noise or looking at any bright lights. He tried not to let the incessant scratching of Draco's pen get on his nerves, more than it already was but it was fast becoming a losing battle.
After twenty minutes of silence, Draco suddenly spoke up, "So, with you controlling your transformations now, will that mean I don't get to see your other form again? I mean, I don't want to see it or anything like that; it's just a natural curiosity. A scholarly interest, really. Magical tanuki are rare and you are so different from them, in that form, from what I've seen, so it's a good chance to research the differences between our two worlds, you see…"
Draco had trailed off when instead of Gaara's mild contempt, which he had expected for bringing up that form, he had found Gaara's face painted with the rage he typically seemed to reserve for other people who weren't protected from his scorn like Draco was supposed to be.
In his head at that moment, Gaara was calculating exactly how hard he could hit his civilian best friend in the head without killing him. On the side of the head, he could exert enough force to send him flying with only a concussion and minor bleeding. That would feel so good right now, to knock that stupid look off of his face and crush him into…
All of a sudden, the wave of anger that had been fuelling Gaara's increasingly violent imagination fled him, and he realised how altered his mind was in those moments. Why had he wanted to kill Draco?
Why did he still want to beat Draco into unconsciousness?
In shock at his rampant thoughts, Gaara stood and stumbled to the door so quickly his previously crossed legs could hardly keep up. He needed to distance himself from people before he did something regrettable. If he stayed in their room, Gaara did not know if he would be able to resist the temptation to murder his friend. Since it would feel so good…
As he ran to a secluded area of the castle, where he was least likely to run into anybody, Gaara tried to clear his mind. He had become an expert at dampening his rage in the aftermath of the Suna-Konoha War but this was different. This was driven not by his own psychosis (as Kankuro was fond of describing it) but by Shukaku's corrosive chakra flooding his system and infecting his mind with its elemental malice. He could feel it coursing through his chakra network, unstoppable and potent.
Why this surge happened during the full moon and why it had previously caused his transformations and, now that he had effectively blocked that change, this inescapable rage, he did not know. Such questions, which had bothered him for a year, would have to wait since he was hardly in a fit state to deliberate this world's peculiar effects on his system.
As he came to the top floor of the castle where he knew the professors patrolled less frequently, he reconsidered this direction when another bout of hot rage rose in his blood and his mind recalled the two Houses located at the zenith of the castle and he remembered all of the fearful looks from Ravenclaws and scowls from Gryffindors that he had received since he was enrolled in this flimsy school. They were all weak, but together, they would be a good fight. Together they might battle him and he could feel alive again.
It would prove his…
Gaara looked to the window but then he realised, in his rush to leave the room, he had left his gourd with Draco in the dungeons. He could run down the side of the castle but he did not know if he could make it far enough before the bloodlust returned. He did not want to risk turning around and doing all of the terrible things that seemed entirely justified in the heat of these episodes.
He was almost to the western corridor's window, in one of his lucid moments when he recognised the dire necessity of his hasty exit, and fate played yet another game with him. He was happened upon by those meddlesome, ignorant children who had caused him nothing but consternation since his arrival.
Harry had interrupted the modest celebration in the Gryffindor common room when he felt an otherwise indefinable heavy sense of dread wash over him. It was nothing like the presence of a dementor, this was more akin to the feeling he got the moment Uncle Vernon pulled into the driveway when Harry had no sensory way of knowing he was home, but he had known somehow that his uncle was there and he was mad. Harry related this sensation to those present at Hermione's party and having learned to trust Harry's strange intuitions, or at least trust their veracity, Ron, Hermione, and Neville all followed him out of the tower to search for the source.
"And there's really no chance it's another basilisk in the pipes, right?" Ron had asked repeatedly.
"I'm quite sure, Ron." Hermione told him each time.
Ron rolled his eyes when they found Gaara wandering around. Of course it was him.
"Wotcha, Gaara," Ron said, "what are you doing up here so late."
"Ron!" Hermione scolded him, "He was coming to my party, right, Gaara?" She said, hopefully. The prospect of finally getting through that thick shell of Gaara's was a wonderful birthday treat. Dashed, shortly thereafter.
"No." Gaara said, turning to leave immediately now that his anger was getting all the worse with the presence.
"Git…" Ron muttered loudly, seeing Hermione's latest act of benevolence being brushed off so callously. "Oy!"
Hermione did not need Ron to fight her battles, much less start battles in the name of her honour so she gave him a smack for good measure. This stopped whatever had been on the tip of his tongue but it did nothing to stop Harry from walking right up behind Gaara and trying to put a hand on his shoulder. She did not know if that attempt had been the start of a comforting heart-to-heart or another confrontation, either way it did not seem to matter.
Gaara had turned at the last moment and spoken clearly to them all, "If you continue to bother me, I will kill you all."
The quartet were shocked by this open hostility. Harry and Neville were the first to draw their wands, while Ron's first instinct was to thump this bastard personally. Hermione simply could not understand what had prompted such a vicious threat when she had been nothing but kind to the boy. Maybe he was going through something?
Gaara had regained his sanity again and knew he had mere second to retreat before someone was stupid enough to cast the first spell and prematurely start the massacre. Forgoing any sort of casual retreat, Gaara started running down the stairs. He would deal with whatever fallout there might be another day.
And if they raised a fuss, he would murder each and every…
Run faster!
At the main staircase now but with the sound of footfalls echoing after him, the Gryffindor party having given chase, Gaara had to persuade his better self that this rage was in fact unfounded and that the trouble of disposing of their bodies would outweigh the satisfaction of killing them. Plus then Sirius needed to be dealt with.
In the middle of his insane train of thought, Gaara nearly collided with Draco who was ascending the stairs towards him. Draco had followed after Gaara left the room without explanation but he'd had no idea where to look so had spent the past twenty minutes running about the castle looking for his wayward roommate.
"Gaara, what's going on?" Draco asked when Gaara had come to an abrupt halt.
Gaara glared at him; this nosey brat, how dare he stand in his way!
Gaara shook his head, he had only a moment to decide what to do. If he stayed here, he would be found by the pursuing Gryffindors, if he left Draco, would follow, either way people would die.
A thought occurred to him when his mind ran through the events of the night, including the probable cause, and Gaara did something he had hoped he would never have to do ever again. Glancing back up the stairs to make sure no one but Draco would see, he gritted his teeth and drew upon the same magic that had forestalled his transformation at the beginning of this night.
As soon as he grasped the edge of his animagus power, the influence of the full moon washed back over him and the wrath he had been struggling against faded as his body shifted. Humiliating as it was to opt into this form, Gaara breathed a sigh of relief when not only was his capability to kill reduced but so was his desire. Now that his mind was clear of those terrifying impulses, he could truly bemoan his lunar affliction. He now had a choice: he could spend his full moon nights as either a homicidal maniac or as a ridiculous animal.
At least the former was nostalgic.
Now all he wanted to do was return to the room and spend the night asleep instead of having to acknowledge this grim reality, but before they could leave, there was one obstacle remaining. That one obstacle came down the stairs in four forms and with three raised wands between them.
"What are you doing here, Malfoy?" Weasley demanded, narrowly avoiding pointing his wand directly at his mortal enemy.
"None of your business, Weaselby." Draco shot back automatically before quickly looking down to where his friend-turned-tanuki was standing. Maybe he could convince the Gryffindorks that the strange animal with him was his pet that he had snuck into the school. Gaara would be upset with him for it later but for now it might work. Except, there was no strange animal to explain away when he looked down, just the polished stone floor.
"What's that, by your legs?" Neville asked, trying to peer around Draco to see what was hiding behind him but seeing nothing but a shadow.
"None of your business, either, Longbottom."
Hermione tried edging around the back of the group, suspecting that Malfoy was meeting with a house elf in the middle of the night. Why and which elf he had been meeting with, she couldn't even begin to guess.
"Did you see Gaara come through here?" She asked as she continued her slow circling. "He was… upset, I think."
"I'm looking for him as well, if you must know." Draco sniffed, trying to act casually so they might return to whence they came and he could get what he assumed was hiding behind him back to their room.
"Surprised you let him out of your sight. Need to keep that guy on a shorter leash." Ron said, wishing he had a chance to retaliate to Gaara's heinous threat.
"Bugger off, ginger." Draco said before turning and scurrying down the stairs at a surprising speed for someone not obviously running away.
Draco was mindful of not walking too fast down the stairs or taking too many steps at a time as Gaara was struggling to stay ahead of him on his two back legs and his tail precariously pointed upwards to keep within Draco's profile.
"Ginger? Is that the best you can come with, Malfoy?" Ron called after him, tempted to use his already drawn wand to hex the posh snake down the stairs.
"Hermione, did you see what was hiding behind him?" Harry asked.
"No, just the shadow. I think it was a house elf."
"A house elf?" Neville asked.
"Why's Malfoy meeting with house elves in the middle of the night?" Harry wondered aloud.
"Who knows. You don't suppose it's Dobby, do you?" Ron said.
"No. That's one elf we can rule out, I think. He wouldn't go within a mile of any Malfoy, not after how he quit." Harry smiled, remembering Lucius Malfoy being thrown on his ass by Dobby.
"Don't tell me he's up to something…" Neville said.
"Malfoy's are always up to something; my dad told me that in first year." Ron said. "You don't think we should follow him, do you?"
"No, let's just go back to the party. Anyway, I'm more interested in how Gaara's involved." Harry asked.
"He was acting oddly earlier, that's for certain." Hermione said.
"I don't know, seemed pretty normal to me." Ron grouched.
"He threatened to kill us!" Hermione said.
"He's always doing that." Ron said.
"Ron, Gaara has never threatened to kill us." Hermione said.
"He's done it loads of times!" He exclaimed, adding, "And the way he always looks at us; he definitely wants bad things to happen to us."
"He might just have a scary face. My gran's a bit like that. Once made a delivery boy cry because a parcel she was expecting came a day early." Neville said.
"Next time you see him, try telling him he reminds you of your gran, see how he reacts." Harry said, smirking. Neville paled at the mental image.
"So where did he go, then?" Ron said as they started back up the stairs to the tower before they were found out in the corridors during the night.
"Probably went down to the dungeons or something and got Draco to cover for him." Harry said.
"Bloody psycho." Ron said.
"I'm sure he didn't mean it." Hermione reasoned.
"Let's forget about Gaara and just enjoy ourselves. We've still got forty minutes until McGonagall comes round for lights out." Harry said as they reached the Fat Lady portrait.
In Slytherin, Gaara was angry but in a much more manageable way. Even if he was being influenced by that same monumental rage from before, he would have been in no position to act upon it with his tiny claws and fluffy tail. Still, he was pissed; he was stuck transforming unless he wanted to go on a murderous rampage.
As he paced back and forth across the floor, Draco watched him from across the room and tried not to laugh at how absurdly serious Gaara's fluffy face was.
"I'm sure you'll work out what went wrong for next month." He said, trying to soothe the distressed tanuki.
Gaara looked over to him before sighing heavily and climbing onto his own bed and crawling under the covers. No better time to sleep than to escape from a disagreeable reality, like now.
"'Night." Draco called, readying himself for bed as well and dousing the lamp.
OXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXO
Gaara awoke as his body automatically shifted back to human, the full moon's mysterious effect over for another month. Draco was still asleep so Gaara did not waste a single moment before sitting up and getting into a more comfortable meditative position. He had been avoiding doing this for a while now, but now he had no choice.
In his mindscape, the winds were tearing past as fast as they ever had, his mind particularly troubled over the danger he put Draco in last night, as well as everyone else in the castle. Into the cave he marched, trying to formulate a strategy to pull some information out of his infuriatingly unhelpful inner demon. As he reached the modified seal, he wondered why he was bothering with strategising when he had seldom managed to make any use of that beast, other than as a source of raw power.
The one-tailed beast roared and cackled with laughter as soon as Gaara walked into view, delighted by the situation it had witnessed the night before. Gaara had to endure the customary half hour of mocking before he could even get a word in.
"So, do you finally want my advice on tick removal? How to style your tail?" Shukaku cackled from his torturous seal.
"What do you know about this?"
"I know everything, didn't you know. Mother knows best." That got Shukaku roaring with laughter again.
"Your chakra was running through my chakra network last night. Why are you affected by the full moon here?"
"Why, indeed!?"
"You know the truth."
"Maybe I do, maybe I don't."
"And you know something about this world, too."
"It's the same answer." Shukaku smirked this time.
"They are related." Gaara concluded. "How?"
"Not at all, but they are." Shukaku was not making sense but Gaara knew he was dancing around a point.
"Where are we?" If he rephrased a question enough times, sometimes the demon tanuki would inadvertently provide an answer.
"We're in the shadow of our world. Or its reflection." Shukaku mused, looking quizzical, "Or maybe it's sister."
"Yes, the universes are too similar to not be related in some manner..."
"And then there's the husk, floating up there. This seal is a pain in the ass but that thing up there shouldn't be there."
"Husk."
"Yeah, ol' daddy ten."
"What?"
"After all we've been through, I try and I try to help you grown as a little person, but I can only do so much!" Shukaku pretended to weep, and then started whining in a high pitched voice that his precious baby boy never paid him any attention any more.
The ichibi would be useless from that point onwards so Gaara did not wait around to hear any more attempts at humour and emerged from his mind to find Draco buzzing around the room, trying not to make any noise (and failing).
"Good morning." He greeted his friend.
"Morning!" Draco said, surprised when his friend, who had been sleeping (meditating?) until then, suddenly spoke. He was unsure what to say about last night, with how strange Gaara had been acting and then how he had transformed halfway through anyway. This boded ill for everyone except Luna who would be thrilled to hear the news.
Gaara did not want to raise the uncomfortable subject so he ignored the awkward silence and started preparing for the day as well.
Draco knew this tactic all too well by now so he was the one to break the silence, "What happened last night? Did the animagus transformation not work?"
"It did but there was an unexpected side effect. I will need to continue researching the subject."
"A side effect? Shame. And just when you could finally focus on your other research project." Draco sighed, unable to actually say the words 'go back to your home.'
"Yes, I suppose it is a shame." Gaara also sighed, knowing that his research for that other subject was more or less stalled and required the input of the man blackmailing him into entering the tournament next month.
"So was the side effect just a temporary change?"
"No. It is not important. There is a month until the next full moon. Enough time to solve this problem."
"If you say so." Draco was unconvinced but, other than peculiar behaviour, Gaara did not seem to have been harmed by last night's misadventure so Draco tried to let it slide until he could weasel it out of him later.
On the way up to breakfast, Luna, who had somehow found herself in the Dungeons early in the morning, joined them on the short walk and was desperate for information on the night's activities. She did an admirable job, Draco thought, of concealing her pleasure at hearing of the failed attempt to prevent the transformations from happening.
"This means you will be able to transform at any time of the month but you cannot prevent the lunar changes." Luna summarised, still keeping a straight face. Gaara did not answer so Draco confirmed her conclusions but remarked that Gaara was as likely to volunteer to transform as a Weasley was to turn down charity.
Luna was adamant that it was her turn with Gaara next month despite Gaara's reproachful look in her direction.
At the entrance to the Great Hall, Luna peeled off to go to her own table while Draco and Gaara sat in their usual spots, starting their breakfasts with gusto since it had been a busy night and they were hungry.
During breakfast, Gaara was reminded that normal people weren't used to his death threats when he noticed Harry, Hermione and Ron entering the Great Hall and paying him a lot of attention.
"That lot are going to be a pain today." Draco said in between mouthfuls of bacon.
"I expect so." Gaara agreed.
"Did you hear about the second floor men's lavatory yesterday?" Draco asked, conspicuously changing the subject.
Gaara tried not to despair at Draco's incurable gossip-mongering ways.
"Someone, meaning those Weasley twins, managed to remove all of the toilets and sinks and replace them with decorative fountains. It's impressive, I suppose, in its own way, because the fixtures would have been enchanted to be charm resistant. They must have taken them all out by hand and then installed the new ones. Must have taken hours."
Gaara looked over to find one of the ginger twins wearing a toilet seat around his neck while the other one was brandishing a less than regal sceptre made of a length of pipe with a tap at the end. McGonagall was headed in their direction already so the boastful boys would most likely be in detention for the foreseeable future.
"Fools." Gaara said after they waved at him.
"Quite." Draco said, continuing, "And you'll never guess which professor has secretly started drinking again." Draco whispered conspiratorially. Gaara tuned him out, instead trying to observe the Golden Trio who were, in turn, watching him.
Gaara would have liked to have asked Draco's opinion on approaching this issue with the Gryffindors but he didn't want to talk about his anger problem from last night. Plus, Draco was more interested in chatting about which seventh-year Slytherin had been caught stealing from a housemate's room last week.
"It's a big scandal, especially because the thieved belonging wasn't money but something much more valuable…." Draco went on.
During the day, the Gryffindors gave him a wide berth, which Gaara considered to be an improvement. They did not approach him during breakfast, nor at lunch, and Hermione even left him alone after Arithmancy.
During the evening, when Draco had reluctantly been attending another opening ceremony practice, Gaara had begun reading about his animagus difficulties after sending a brief note to Sirius outlining it. He did not expect Sirius or Remus to know anything about his demon-fuelled problems, but if they knew anything more about animagi that they had failed to disclose before then, he wanted to hear it now.
Draco was always exhausted after he returned from these practices, which was the only aspect of the top secret activity that had managed to peak Gaara's curiosity. Draco had tried teasing him about it, trying to draw out some sign of frustration, but Gaara honestly did not care about the ceremony, beyond what could be encouraging Draco to exercise.
The next day, Potter finally decided to try approaching him during lunch, concern written all over his face, so Gaara had left early and hidden near his next class.
Sirius had replied to him with the anticipated lack of answers but he had mentioned hearing from Harry about some sort of spat between Gaara and he, without any specifics, so Gaara was cautious to avoid any interactions for the time being. Potter was either looking for a fight or to reconcile, and neither appealed to him at the moment.
Silence, after all, was golden.
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A/N: As I said above, the next thing I upload will most likely be a full chapter of Hidden Inhumanity. Beyond that, I hope you all have a happy New Year.
Thank you for reading.
Edit: Spiral of Destiny has drawn another wonderful piece of fanart for this story, a bit of a conceptual piece for Gaara's episode in this chapter. Follow the link on my profile to see it and other pieces.