3/4

Usually this entailed a few grizzly highlights including eating a couple of rabbits, or fighting acromantulas or being run off by the centaurs. This morning, however, he remembered one interesting thing. After the obligatory running and fighting, he recalled seeing a small fluffy-tailed creature and had played with it all through the night, much like he had when he was younger, with Padfoot and Prongs.

He realised with a start, jarring a headache into full swing from the sudden motion, that the young animal had bourn a striking resemblance to the unusual animal that the odd Ravenclaw girl had reported missing towards the end of January. Now that he thought about it, he was pretty sure the bizarre little thing had been wearing the bow around its neck that the posters had specified.

Lupin sighed and wondered how he could persuade Poppy to give him something intoxicating to get through the day's classes. He knew he wasn't the first teacher to ask, probably not even the first to ask that day when Trelawney had been spotted outside of her tower, but it would be worth a try.

Thoughts of mind numbing potions effectively distracted him from the oddity he had encountered the night before.

Draco, still yawning the last of his good night's sleep from his system, looked over at Gaara who appeared to be as agitated as he most often was after his nights away from his bed. He was wondering what his humanoid typhoon of a roommate was playing with under the table, and then he saw that strange dark knife he carried flash in the morning light.

"Gaara, stop whittling your wand!" He whispered incredulously.

OXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXO

It was in the first week of March that Gaara read the Daily Prophet for the first time, after Draco mentioned an interesting (important) article of the front page. Gaara had never cared to read the paper, both because it pertained to events he felt had no relevance to him, and because even Draco (after talking with the uninitiated moderates) admitted it was biased and badly written.

Just from reading the front page, Gaara agreed with at least that last point.

The reason he had snatched the paper away from his friend, and ignored the angry shouting afterwards, was because Draco had read this headline aloud: 'Black to be Kissed, Orders Fudge.'

It didn't occur to Gaara that the dementors would be involved in this, his mind was caught up in the scandalous orders given by the head of magical Britain. His imagination conjured up the vision of Sirius being pursued by a dozen desperate middle-aged women trying to kiss him.

It was a disturbing thought.

Then he read the rest of the article as was immensely glad he hadn't broadcasted his immature musing to anyone close by. The truth of the matter made him feel sick, understanding how damaging the loss of a soul could be someone. In theory.

The article told of how the investigation had failed to apprehend the fugitive and that the administration was redoubling their efforts, highlighting the increased 'patrols' (because they didn't want to bring anyone's attention to the dementors). It stated that when asked, Minster Fudge had revealed that the order was no to 'Kiss on Sight.'

It was sickening, not just the terrible fate Sirius would now suffer should he be caught, but also the smiles and laughs around the Hall from people also reading the Prophet. Maybe it was because he had never been involved in the criminal justice system in his home village, or because the individual villages had their own centralised systems so they were simpler; in any case, the injustice being perpetrated against Sirius was entirely foreign to Gaara, and very upsetting.

Granted, shinobi could be framed and taken in as traitors, but they were always thoroughly interrogated. They almost always found out if a person was innocent or guilty once they were in T&I cells of any village. As Sirius told it, he hadn't even had a trial (the convoluted Earth version of interrogation, as far as Gaara understood.)

Suddenly cross with the student body, Gaara was happy to follow Draco back to the dormitory where he was less likely to do something malevolent. That thought lasted until Draco stopped in front of the one room in the Dungeons that Gaara had stepped foot in for months.

Technically he had burgled the closet opposite the Potion's classroom not too long ago, but he hadn't stepped foot in Snape's actual classroom since their 'spat.'

Gaara couldn't blame Draco for his double-take when he turned around and saw him. Gaara walked quietly, as anyone in his profession would, so it was perfectly understandable that he had been overlooked.

"Oh, um Gaara, I didn't see you. You should, um, go ahead to the dorms. I'll see you in bit." Draco was rightfully nervous; Snape had the hearing of some kind of sonar-capable animal, and there was no telling what he would overhear through a door or when he pop out.

The door creaked open.

Snape poked his head out of the door, expecting half of what he saw, a student needing advice on an assignment, content to interrupt his precious and rare free time (spent working) without any due regard. He had not expected to see Gaara, of all people, stood next to the student (that he would have helped anyway, after the griping.)

Snape had been in a comparatively goof mood until that moment.

"Don't tell me you want to come back to my class." He said, his eyebrow quirking along with his lip.

Gaara didn't answer, he just continued to stare.

"Because, while the headmaster may have strong-armed into letting you join my class, I have a much higher standard for admittance, and you certainly do not measure up. I don't care what that- what Lupin has been filling your head with, you're still useless. I won't permit dangerous entities into my Potions laboratory."

Rather than rising to the continued barbs or making a cutting retort, Gaara wrote out, 'Why do you hate me so much?'

Snape took a moment to look at the question, something passing over his face before twitching back to his contemptible default. "You are a killer, boy. I don't care what lies you have been plying Dumbledore with, we both know you have killed people."

Draco was wide eyed, hearing some of his worst suspicions mentioned bitingly, aloud, and not seeing any kind of denial or anger on Gaara's face.

"I know that look, those eyes. It's disgusting, seeing that look on those eyes. Any magic you learn would only be an effort to bolster your fighting power, and I will not be a party to that. Worst of all, I hate reminders, and you are a product of some sort of war. I don't care which one, or where, but you were used as a weapon and you do not belong in this school."

Draco watched, very upset by the exchange but unsure how to break it without being pulled in, as Gaara had been verbally assaulted and just stood there and took it. That had been the worst part.

Gaara had left shortly after that, and while Draco would have rather gone with him and not interacted with his otherwise perfectly good Potions professor and Head of House, if he did that then there had been no reason for Gaara to go through that. As soon as his questions had been answered and Snape had let himself back into his quarters to consider whether or not to take up drinking as a hobby, Draco had rushed onwards to the dorms, hoping that Gaara would still be there.

Otherwise there would be a good chance he wouldn't see him again until classes tomorrow.

Not a whole lot upset Gaara, as far as Draco was aware, but this had surely penetrated his thick skin, and he wanted to be of some comfort to his friend. With this in mind, he was surprised to find his roommate sat on his bed reading, as if nothing at all had happened.

Gaara's head had briefly popped up when Draco entered, but had sunk back into the obligatory thick book shortly thereafter.

"Gaara, are you okay?"

Gaara looked up again, assessed what the questioned referred to and answered, 'I am fine. I am used to those words.'

"You're used to them?" Draco had never properly understood the abject terror Gaara inspired. Sure, he was a little intense at times, and he tended to stare, but where had all of this 'killer' talk come from? If it had come from that ridiculous (and fraudulent) Divination teacher, his father would be having words about her. About time, too.

'When I was growing up, in my home village, my brother and sister were the only people who never wanted to kill me. The others said worse things about me and to me. So I'm used to it.'

Gaara looked on at Draco's stunned expression and decided to leave for the night. His friend's speechlessness wouldn't last much longer, and this sort of thing was the reason he had tried to avoid discussing anything personal from his home world. He wanted to trust his friend, but there were some truths that he just didn't want to have to confront here.

Here, he was a child, albeit an unsettling and violent one. He wasn't the boy who had murdered men, women, and children, and who was host to a great evil inside of him.

It was a nice illusion that he was content to enjoy for a little while longer, until the bubble burst.

He got to his feet and quickly stepped out of the room for the night. He's show up again in the morning when there were too many people around to bring up such a sensitive subject.

OXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXO

Gaara, on the frequent nights he spent wandering the halls of Hogwarts rather than sleeping, and excepting the one night a month when he did something else, he would explore some of the unused rooms the castle had in spades. Most of them were dusty and abandoned classrooms, a couple were simply storage for half-rotted furniture.

He had found two treasures so far, an armoury in the deepest reaches of the dungeon, though most of the magically enchanted weaponry and armour had already begun to rust; and he had found a second, much smaller, library. Most of the books were written in Middle-English or Latin, and a handful were written in much older or more obscure languages.

With things likes this open to the tenacious, exploring student, Gaara had become interested in what laid behind the locked doors. Well… the well-locked doors. The armoury, the library, and about half of the unused or abandoned rooms had all been locked, with their heavy iron bonds long since rusting or losing their counterpart keys. Gaara had made his way into each of these rooms as easily as he had the ones with no fastenings or even those missing their doors.

The 'well-locked doors' had been warded against lock picking or brute force, to a degree. Gaara had little doubt he could burst through the simple barriers they had enacted to keep curious children out, but he didn't want to cause any (further) undue alarm, or make them double the security.

Most of these warded doors led to uninteresting places like professors' quarters or offices, which Gaara knew already. So when he found an unfamiliar door on the third floor that definitely didn't belong to any of the teachers or staff at the school, he wanted to know what was so important it had been blocked off so thoroughly. He even went to the trouble of asking a couple of people about the room, but they all responded that it was probably just an empty room, since they hadn't tried to break in themselves and didn't know about the magic stopping such attempts.

So, without a key he couldn't get in, and that left him with only one option if he wanted to proceed.

Gaara approached Hagrid the next morning.

'I need a key.'

Hagrid spent a moment processing. "A key?"

'You are the Keeper of the Keys.' Gaara was patient when dealing with idiots, having practiced on every trip to Konoha. That village bred them, it seemed. Not that Kankuro was much better.

"Oh, you need a key!" Usually, when communicating with people in his unique way, Gaara allowed for an extra process of translation to occur within his conversation partners, for them to take in what they had read. With Hagrid, it was as if he needed another step or two before he could quite grasp what people had told him.

'Yes.'

"Um, what do you need a key for?"

'To open a door.'

Unfortunately, for different reasons, mind you, Gaara also took a little time to quite understand other people, especially those not on the same intellectual level as himself.

So the conversation continued in this disjointed way with neither of them quite sure what was going on or why it was taking so long to say it, but eventually Gaara was entrusted with a large cumbersome brass key that should, if Hagrid knew the school as well as he said he did, open Gaara's problem door.

It hadn't really occurred to Hagrid that the sensible third-year was asking for a key to locked door, and that perhaps he should have asked Dumbledore or one of the other senior staff members why the door was locked. Concurrently, it didn't occur to Hagrid that the door, situated in a school, was locked precisely to keep out students, students like Gaara who'd he'd just handed the key to.

Being who he was, he wasn't troubled by his slip up until Dumbledore reprimanded him a week later.

Gaara was happy that he had tried the upfront approach first, before resorting to the convoluted plan already formulating in his head to rob Hagrid of his keys when he was asleep. Instead, that night he returned to the mystery door and slid the key into the decayed lock.

It took a bit of force to push the hulking door out of the way, it clearly had not been opened in a few years. Instead of the school treasury that he had been secretly hoping for (more for the validation of his efforts than for any personal greed or gain. If he wanted money, he could just rob Draco for less effort…) he was underwhelmed by what he saw.

A mirror.

Granted, it was probably one of the most impressive and ornate mirrors he had seen in his life, if a tad dusty, but it was no more than that. The frame was golden, but wooden, and there were no treasures, weapons or books around or behind the thing. This led to one conclusion, that the mirror itself was somehow special. Most probably enchanted in some unforeseeable way.

He debated whether to risk looking into the reflection, lest he fall afoul of some curse or other. He had enough torments in his life already.

Gaara told himself that no matter the three-headed hellhounds in the grounds or soul sucking monster patrolling the perimeter, there was no way the eccentric headmaster would allow anything so overtly dangerous as a cursed mirror into his school without some sturdier protections in place that the watchful eye of Hagrid. Walking back in front of the enormous piece, he first read the inscription but couldn't make heads or tails of it.

His Latin was passable by now, but he was not experienced in the languages of this world.

Standing before it, shoulders squared, he let his gaze drift downwards to see his own reflection. And he saw himself standing there, and…

And he gasped.

He stared at the image on the mirror for more hours than he knew, and when the sun started to peak in through the window, he finally roused himself enough to leave. He left with a promise to return very soon and see the wondrous image again.

In the evening, he dragged Draco up to the third floor after dinner without proffering any explanation and into the sealed room. The blond hadn't been worried beyond missing the end of dinner until they reached the deserted third floor corridor. Ever since his first year, no one willing went to this area of the school.

The rules no longer prohibited students going to the third floor corridor, but since the rumours of what had been kept on that floor persisted, none of the teenagers had been willing to risk it. Draco had heard a rather unsettling rumour that there had been an enormous Cerberus in one of the rooms, and it had come from a begrudgingly reliable source.

He kept this to himself since he didn't want to appear as more of a coward to Gaara than he already was.

Draco's eyes darted to the back of Gaara's head to look for a sign that he had heard Draco let out a loud sigh of relief when he saw not a demonic dog or any of the hundred other things suspected of being here. Instead there stood a single ornate mirror that Gaara clearly wanted Draco to see.

It was hard to see Gaara's sand writing in the unlit room, but he just about made out 'Look at your reflection in this mirror. It shows you nice things.' Had Gaara been any of his other friends, Draco would have been instantly suspicious at such a claim, but he figured he was relatively safe with present company.

He looked into the mirror, and when the magic took effect he was presented with an image he couldn't describe as anything but wondrous, too.

He had no idea what the exact nature of the mirror's spell was, and looking at what he hoped would be his future, he could only pray that it was somehow related to Divination. Before him stood… him, only he was taller and more regal. He was dressed in robes even his father would have envied. Speaking of his dad, both of his parents were stood behind him, smiling in an uncharacteristically open fashion.

They were all stood in the atrium of the Ministry and Draco was the newly appointed Minister for Magic, his parents supporting behind him and the flashes of cameras announcing the press conference in progress. Not only that, next to him stood Gaara who also looked older, dressed as… Well, he was wearing smart robes. Draco couldn't imagine what Gaara would be when he grew up, except intimidating.

There Draco was, as he stared at his reflection, surrounded by his friends and family, having achieved the most important position in British Wizarding politics. It was lovely. But seeing the look on Gaara's face, he somehow doubted his friend was looking upon the same scene.

"Gaara, what is this mirror? Is it a window to the future?" He could hardly tear his eyes away long enough to direct his question to the red-head.

'No. I believe it simply shows happy fantasies.'

"How can you tell?"

'Because it shows things that can never be. Not any more.'

"Oh… If you're sure. It's just, I can see myself there, but I'm older, and I'm Minister for Magic, and you're there!" Draco went off into a spirited explanation of what the mirror was showing him, including all sorts of details he picked out in his desperate fantasising. "What can you see?"

Gaara had continued to stare at the mirror all through Draco's speech and didn't turn to address Draco even when his sand floated into the letters 'Just a pleasant, impossible dream. Nothing more.' He had the smallest smile on his lips that Draco might have missed were it not for the almost full moon.

He wanted to press for an answer, for the millionth time, but this didn't seem like a good time. It never seemed like a good time to pry into Gaara's personal life and past, but seeing that smile he just couldn't.

They both spent a long while looking into the mirror that evening before Draco was ready to leave for the night.

"Gaara, are you coming?"

Gaara turned to him finally and shook his head slowly.

Draco went to sleep that night, his mind going straight back to the sweet dream he had been able to see and experience consciously.

Gaara had never really had sweet dreams before. His sleep, long time coming that it was, usually resulted in either confronting Shukaku, reliving memories of past atrocities, or experiencing black emptiness until he awoke. The latter was most common, but none of the options approached happy dreams.

OXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXO

The moon was speeding up its orbit, Gaara thought. He believed this so strongly he had suggested it to the Astronomy professor, this hypothesis, but she had laughed at him. Gaara would have suspected some sort of conspiracy were it not for the corroborating calendar that also insisted a full month had passed since his last transformation.

Sure, it felt like he had been cursed with this confounded bow around his neck for at least a year already, but otherwise it seemed like only a week had passed since he had last suffered his monthly humiliation.

In January he had been kidnapped by Luna and beribboned, in February he had almost been eaten by a giant spider and 'forced' to play with a great big werewolf. He weighed up his options all of the day before, but eventually reason won over pride and he was forced to admit he probably shouldn't rush back into the forest.

To be safe, he transformed as far away from the Ravenclaw dormitories as he could just to be on the safe side, which just so happened to be in the Dungeons. An unexpected issue that this placement caused was the proximity to Slytherin and the corresponding patrol route that Snape followed.

He was assigned to guard/watch the Dungeons and lower castle most evenings, except those nights when the other lazier professors had the night off. Snape could only dream of such luxury.

This night, he was in his monthly foul mood after having been forced to give away one of his most profitable potions to one of the people he hated most in the world. He couldn't wait until Lupin got himself fired and would have to go back to struggling to pay for the Wolfsbane Potion.

Recently, irony of ironies, the looming threat of Sirius Black had kept most of his students in check since they didn't want to risk sneaking about the halls when a murderer might try to break in. As such, when he saw a small movement in the dark, he moved swiftly after it. Mrs Norris never strayed into the Dungeons when Snape was patrolling them, mostly since she was never apart from Filch for long and they tended to leave Snape on his own, but he also believed Mrs Norris didn't like him.

None of his Slytherins owned a cat currently, being an exceptionally rare pet among the snakes, so he knew whatever he was chasing shouldn't be down here.

Gaara had rounded a corner only to spot his hated Head of House standing there, presumably on the lookout for intruders, curfew breakers, and other oddities. Since Gaara was two of three, and because of their hate-hate relationship, he had automatically turned tail and darted back behind cover. He hid with his back to the wall, carefully poking his snout back out to check if Snape had spotted him.

The incoming black smudge in the gloomy hall was indicative enough, so Gaara took off full pelt down the corridor. Unfortunately, rushing into a sprint led to his soft pads and claws just slipping on the polished stone underfoot. He managed to get going like a shot before Snape could reach him, but it meant that Snape once again saw his humongous tail turning the next corner.

Thus began the chase between Snape and his most hated student in a compromising state. If only he knew…

It took five adrenaline-fuelled minutes before Gaara was able to get enough of a lead to dart into an unlocked classroom. The funny thing was that before he had transformed, he had told himself that he would stay in the empty room and not go running through the castle again. That decision had lasted all of five minutes after his brain had turned into an animal's.

That chase was not the only one that Gaara had to endure that night. For some reason, Harry had taken it upon himself to see what the mysterious, trouble-making transfer student had been up to on the full moon, evading Professor Snape like he had been.

Harry often watched the school through his map, and had seen Gaara out past curfew more often than he had seen him actually in his dorm room at night. He had always ignored this because he didn't appear to be doing much of anything, either staying in one abandoned room alone all night, or walking around the castle aimlessly.

It was so boring he could never watch it for long without falling asleep or looking somewhere else.

But watching Gaara running away from Snape and hiding just seemed too suspicious. Maybe he was finally making his move, whatever that might entail. So Harry had taken his cloak and his map and descended into the Dungeons.

So it would seem his misfortunes came by twos on these nights. If it wasn't an acromantula and werewolf, it was Snape and then Potter. Except, Gaara wouldn't count on Potter saving him from the Potions Master, hero complex aside.