6/8

Despite the laughter that Draco shared with the head teacher over his largely harmless crime, Draco did allow his eye to check whether 'Kaara' had appreciated this retelling as much as the whimsical headmaster. He began to sweat when he didn't see any reaction from his roommate, and he dearly hoped that he hadn't just inadvertently fired off the opening salvo in another conflict.

Even Albus Dumbledore, having lived through many wars, practiced and taught miracle-making for decades and had born witness to countless awe-inspiring sights, was as surprised as the fresh-faced teenager opposite him when Gaara's mouth, that had so long been set in a perfectly straight line, curved upwards slow as can be and then... and then opened and laughed!

And the minute shaking of Gaara's shoulders and his eyes closing in gaiety was a sight to behold, coupled with the quiet, rapid wheezing that might have been raucous laughter but for lack of those pesky vocal chords. Going from homicidally angry to totally shame-faced and now to being giddier than anyone in that world had ever seen Gaara, it was a vision indeed. The red-head only stopped because he noticed that the other two in the office had ceased their talking and were just staring open-mouthed at him. As if they've never seen a serial killer laugh before.

"Well, yes, I'm glad that all of those troubles are over with now. I think, in future, Kaara should bear in mind our school's pertinent motto: 'Draco Domiens Nunquam Titlandus,' you never know what you might awaken." Draco tittered at the Latin joke, but Gaara's otherworldly linguistic luck apparently didn't extend that far or he'd expended all of his laughter for the year. "Now, I think I've held you long enough. I don't want mean to spoil the mood now that it's back to a proper Hogwarts standard, but nor do I want to mislead you as to the seriousness of what has transpired today. This will not happen again; is that clear, Gaara?"

Gaara nodded to that question in an eerily similar fashion as he had to his father's same orders just a few years ago. 'Don't kill the villagers, Gaara.', 'Stop murdering my shinobi, Gaara.', 'Stop dripping blood all over the floor, Gaara.' It was like white noise by now.

"We're sorry for the trouble, headmaster."

"I'm sure Gaara feels the same. Have a nice day, Draco, Lily." Dumbledore's cup of tea paused on its way to his mouth the moment he realised his tongue had slipped unforgivably. He swiftly continued on his sip and tried not at look either of the boys in the eye as they both stopped in their tracks. The glare sent his way from the red-head was pretty justified but he just continued to pretend to be intently fascinated by his work until this threat passed.

Draco looked back at the headmaster he'd just been leaving to his work, wondering whether he had actually just heard the old man call Gaara something along the lines of 'Lily,' but convinced himself he must have been hearing things when his roommate continued onwards at a typically inhuman pace out of the ornate office. Draco spared another look towards the headmaster working hard and a glance at the phoenix he'd heard of, perched and preening itself happily.

Draco chuckled to himself as he descended the perilously steep stone staircase behind Gaara, finding the idea of anyone calling Gaara a girl's name silly. Gaara would be homicidal, for sure. Besides that, what possible reason would there be for it. Maybe one of the loud noises from the assuredly-legendary-by-now battle earlier had damaged his ears. He'd go talk to that incompetent medi-witch tomorrow about whatever had been done to him. If she valued her job, she wouldn't dismiss his injuries again, forcing him to contact his father for outside medical attention.

Potter may have broken his wrist or vanished the bone like an idiot last year, but he'd come off his broom in that match and Pomfrey had had the nerve to tell him was fine after a single diagnostic spell. There wasn't anything really wrong with him beyond a few bruises, but how could she have possibly known that for sure?

A few hours later, after classes had finished for the day and the bravest Slytherins, amounting to three or four, had finished mining their resident Gaara-expert for details on the newest hot topic around the school, Marcus Flint approached the quietly studying pair sat on the sofa with his trademark scowl being marred by the presence of his horribly protruding buck teeth poking out.

Flint, who, in addition to being the Quidditch captain since he joined the House team after a tragic hexing accident with the previous captain, also happened to be Slytherin's current head boy, was often loathe to perform his duties. There was a very minor scandal that arose when Flint was appointed as head boy because it was suspected by some of the other senior staff members that Snape had not taken a lengthy look at his students and chosen the most appropriate, but had in fact instead just picked the only student whose name he'd already memorised from being the Quidditch captain.

"Gaara, you don't go to Potions anymore, and stay at least twenty feet away from Professor Snape at all times, understand?" Gaara nodded and went back to his book, and Flint offered his minimal greetings to Draco as he stalked back to whatever hole he had crawled out of, to finish his own homework.

The next day, Gaara spent the time that was supposed to be allotted to him and his year group for Potions class instead performing some extracurricular, but no less pertinent, research. He'd only gone to a single Potions class in the whole of this month anyway, so the timetable change was more rectified for him than disturbed, but for some reason the regularity with which the young student spent his time in the library during teaching hours didn't deter the resident paper-weight/librarian from questioning him every time he walked in. He'd sneak in, but that sent his mind spiralling down to that one story he'd been told about a certain someone who used to sneak into the library to rearrange the books and make loud noises. Gaara's pride was under constant threat in this world and he wasn't about to forfeit a major part of it by using his training to avoid a snooty librarian.

That being said, he didn't have the same compunctions about darting into the Restricted Section of the library to access the infinitely more advanced and interesting materials that he was bafflingly barred from reading. But he'd never let silly things like rules and laws stop him in his native world and he certainly wasn't about to now.

He spent this particular hour searching for works on the demons of this world and any dark teleportation magics, but once again after the better part of an hour he found almost nothing at all. There were a few dark spells for transportation, but none of them were what he was looking for, unless he wanted sacrifice ten virgins to reduce the disorientation from Apparition (he'd later admit that he had briefly considered tapping into the unused resource of first years to forgo that unpleasant experience again). As for information on demons, that was harder to pin down in such a limited time period as it seemed there was an extraordinary amount of fiction and religious material related to them, but nothing concrete or credible. And those demons were very different from the kind he knew all too well.

Maybe demons, like shinobi, didn't exist in this world.

His frustrated reading only lasted the first of his two free hours before he dumped his books onto the nearest trolley and decided to go and see his surrogate pet out in the forest. Fluffy, of course, was ecstatic to see him and happily let the small red-haired boy sit atop his aptly named fluffy tummy, where Gaara then started on reading an interesting book on abnormal wizarding diseases. Medicine, in any form, wasn't a particular passion of his, but Gaara was interested enough by the peculiarity of these illnesses that he didn't mind. He'd already read all of the materials from the first, second and this year's curriculum so he needed a break from the standard books he had been and would have been assigned if he'd been present.

Gaara figured he'd finish all seven years worth of material by the end of the teaching year. He'd heard it was quite common practice in Ravenclaw to do so by third year and Hermione Granger was also on track to do so. Bookish though he may be called, especially by his layabout roommate, he didn't regret going back and reading over the previous two years that he had missed. It helped enormously with his theory work, but sadly it had little effect on his spell-casting. It seemed that problem was just something he'd have to learn to deal with in time.

His reading was disturbed only when the massive dog rolled over onto his side and sent Gaara at least six feet before a pretty soft landing on his sand. The dog had the cheek to look over at him whilst lying on its shared back, tongue lolling out, and to wag its tail and shake its body as if expecting a belly rub.

It was only because Gaara had been in a good mood the last few days (other than his little tantrum yesterday) that he did give the soft, fluffy stomach a little scratch until he had to return to the castle. Damn beast was incorrigible.

OXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXO

The supplementary lessons that Gaara had been attending had to be cancelled as the administering tutor had another commitment imposed upon him, which was just as well since Gaara's detentions meant that he couldn't attend the tutorials with Lupin anyway, as he had to go to detention with Professor Lupin.

It was held in the same room and it was largely the same atmosphere, as Remus helped him to improve his practical magic and he tried not to blow up furniture or his professor any time he heard that bloody nickname!

While initially admonishing Gaara for his rampage that had lead to their time together being reclassified, he did understand how hard it could be sometimes to abide by people who repeatedly tried one's patience (Sirius came to both of their minds).

Soon Lupin's manner had been swapped for concern over Gaara's wellbeing as he had fought off not one but two infamously strong wizards and no matter how strong a third-year he might be or how easy the two teachers might have been going on the child, it would be highly irregular if Gaara had come out of the fight totally undamaged. But Gaara insisted that a trip to see Madam Pomfrey would be a needless inconvenience and that he was plainly fine to see, which Lupin had to admit seemed to be the case. In fact, Gaara appeared to be in a much better mood than he had been in weeks, which Lupin secretly attributed to boy's recent reconciliation with the Malfoy boy.

Each of their lessons together over the nights that had been mandated as their 'detentions' went as slowly as before, with Gaara making no miraculous leaps forward in his magical abilities.

It was on one of the last nights before the full moon that the two of them got to 'talking' somewhat more frankly than Gaara was oft to do. Lupin had been talking about his past exploits like he liked to do, reliving happier days, when he came to the subject of his childhood experiences away from the Marauders and Hogwarts.

Now, Lupin wasn't going to tell Gaara about his lycanthropy but he believed he could talk around it without giving too much away.

Truly, telling Gaara about the wolf inside scared Lupin more than perhaps was usual for him in revealing the truth to someone, and it wasn't simply because Gaara was a friend. It was because Gaara would almost certainly not react normally. The boy, wherever he had come from, didn't share the same prejudices and understandings of wizarding culture and so he might not fear a werewolf because he had never been taught to. What scared Lupin out of telling his newest friend about the beast was the possibility that Gaara would have a basal fear towards the wolf, that he might hate and flee from Lupin for what he actually was rather than through ignorance. That sort of rejection was so much worse in his mind, to be seen as the monster he sometimes was.

Remus talked about how he had been hurt terribly as a child and how he had not been able to see or talk to anyone his own age, and how he had almost not been allowed to go to school because of certain prejudices and concerns but how Dumbledore had helped him. He tried to focus as much on how he had felt as a child, alone, to avoid the glaring holes in his story that should have comprised the greater chunk in his cathartic tale of woe.

Gaara clearly listened but his stoic face never betrayed a reaction. Typical.

'I was alone as a child as well.' Lupin hadn't seen the sand sift through the air until it solidified into the sentence above Gaara. 'My mother died in childbirth and I was a weapon and a curse to my father, nothing more.' 'Over the course of my life, there have been many attempts on my life, all from the people from my village.' 'I deserved them.' The older man wanted to butt in here and ardently deny that damning self-assertion but the conviction on Gaara's face wasn't the angst ridden damage of low self-esteem but the dark chiselled regrets of a lifetime of mistake engraved onto a person's soul. He'd seen a lot of faces like this but never on a child.

Gaara looked up at Lupin for a long moment, which the man mistakenly believed was an invitation for comfort or a pause in communication so as to not overwhelm himself and come to tears. Gaara was measuring the man before him, considering whether or not he was as trustworthy as Gaara wanted to believe his friends in this world were. They could betray him and cause him so much trouble and damage, but would they? They could profit from that, maybe even get Sirius off the hook by having him 'out' the monster from another world.

'Where I'm from,' Gaara held up one last moment as he intently watched Lupin's face as it peered upwards at the words, and waited to see some sort of anticipation, a look of ambition or relief, but all he got was that confusing patience. '-is another world.' His first ever friend had told him he needed to trust in people to create real bonds. Perhaps he could get some help.

"Wait, what? What do you mean by 'another world,' Gaara?" Lupin had done a double take after seeing those words. Things flashed through the man's head, maybe a different culture far removed from his own, or maybe the muggle world? But he kept coming back to just how strange Gaara was and how Sirius had described his first appearance, as falling from a great height but from no obvious means, covered in the most horrible cuts and slashes and very disorientated.

Gaara went on to tell Lupin just a little about his home world, about Sunagakure, the Five Great Shinobi Nations and the common existence of shinobi and some of their roles. He spared Lupin some of the more exact details and tried to downplay the murdering side of shinobi life a little, but for the most part he painted a pretty vivid picture of life in the Elemental Nations.

It was Gaara's underestimation of the effect that telling his own biographical experience of his home world would have on his friend that led to him tilting his head when Lupin began to tear up, as if Gaara had just told him some tragic story. He'd totally left out the later years of his life including the war-time preparations, his father's death and the demon that resided within him; but then he'd also skipped over his redemption and finding some measure of happiness that had been almost entirely absent from his beginnings.

"All this time, Gaara, I've suspected that you were different, but now it all makes so much sense. You've been stuck here alone all this time with nobody to talk to about it, I'm sorry I didn't see the truth earlier." Lupin put his hand on Gaara's shoulder, further confusing the borderline-sociopath further still, "From now on, I will do anything I can to help you, and I know for certain that Sirius would do the same."

Lupin continued to look the at the off-worlder with a smile, as if Gaara somehow now made total sense to him, and then frowned in consideration. "Gaara, I need to ask this, but do you want to return to where you came from? I would do whatever I could to help you stay here and once Sirius is cleared he would be more than happy to support you." The thought of sending Gaara back to a world where a child could be considered a warrior and that had produced a child, no matter how sweet, as damaged as Gaara, was repugnant to the emotional Marauder. A small part of him really hoped that Gaara would want to stay, in the short time he'd know Gaara it had been like back in his school days again for the first time in over a decade, with Sirius back in his life too and being back in Hogwarts.

'It is my home and I have precious people waiting for me there that I have to protect.' 'I can't let them down. I need to return.'

Lupin tried not to look too disappointed, "Then I will do whatever I can to help you, Lily." ... "Ehehe... And do you want Sirius to know about this or would you rather this stay between us for now?"

Gaara stopped glaring long enough to write out 'Tell him.' The Suna citizen couldn't imagine that Sirius would act any worse than Remus had, especially when considering Sirius' own history of betrayal. It was something of a weight off of his chest now that someone in this world knew that he wasn't a native inhabitant.

Seeing as Gaara had gone quiet again (figuratively speaking) Lupin said "It's going to be alright, Gaara." And he leaned forward and hugged the small thirteen year-old, forgetting he was dealing with Gaara and not any other thirteen year-old that had been put through such trauma. Gaara stayed perfectly still and as stiff as board under the firm and kind hold before Lupin released him with a tearful smile on his face, as if to say 'We've been through a lot together this evening but we'll be okay.'

Gaara's frown said 'Sand auto-defence reactivating in 3...2...'

OXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXO

Later that same night, after Gaara had endured all of the emotional out-pouring he could take, he had left Lupin to do whatever it is that teachers do at night when they're finally up-to-date on all of their work, lesson plans and marking.

This night, Lupin decided that in spite of the worsening lycanthropy pains he needed to speak to Sirius in person, a task that had been made more difficult by the increase in the dementor presence around the castle at night.

This was one of the many reasons that the werewolf was suspicious of just how much Dumbledore was aware of, as the headmaster clearly knew about the hidden passageway under the Whomping Willow and yet he hadn't requested that any dementors be posted outside the entrance to it. It wasn't as if he actually used that passageway during his monthly issues anymore. The Wolfsbane Potion was the best thing to happen to him in his twenties by far. The Forbidden Forrest was a very beautiful place when you were one of the scariest things in there. Though he didn't even want to know what that overwhelmingly doggish scent all of over the place was. It was like a gigantic Padfoot had decided to mark half the trees in the woods.

He found Sirius snoozing away in his dog form at the top of the rickety stairs, but with the seriousness to come, he had to forgo the traditional attempt to prank the sleeping marauder and just walk noisily up the stairs to wake up the shaggy dog. Sirius was startled at the intrusion but settled back down to an excited wagging when he saw who had come to visit. Lupin walked past the excitable dog-man and into the most comfortable remaining bedroom before falling into the softest patch of the weather-worn bed. The full-moon was always worst during the winter months and the build up was no different.

Sirius trotted in with his tongue hanging out, probably expecting something substantial to eat, which Lupin had forgotten to pick up before coming. It wasn't exactly a regular visit here, he needed to talk, not watch Sirius or Padfoot with his face shoved in some food and his ass in the air. Lupin had often wondered how James had managed to keep himself so human when both Sirius and Peter had become so animalistic even after they had transformed back. Probably something to do with the inherent dignity a stag walks around with compared to a mutt and a rat. That or self-control. Sirius had always acted like an animal anyway, once some of that patented Black conditioning had been stripped away.

After an awkward few moments it was clear that the dog would not be getting anything for dinner so he transformed back into his human form and began to shiver until he wrapped himself in one of the ragged blankets from the bed. The air was getting colder and turning into a fur-less human was becoming harder and harder. The cold air was something that Lupin, of all people, could sympathise with, considering all of the mornings he'd woken up in the middle of nowhere on a crisp winter's mornings to then have to search for his clothes. Cold weather was bad, cold weather naked was worse, cold weather naked with the accumulated aches and pains that surrounded the full-moon was an entirely different matter. Luckily he had found a good method of finding his way back to his clothes before the morning broke as, like with most things, the aches and chills apparently got worse with age.

"No food, Moony?" Talk about puppy-dog eyes; Sirius was a puppy that had never grown up.

"I'm sorry but it was already late and I didn't have time to stop by the kitchens on my way here. There's something you need to hear, it's about Gaara." Sirius was pouting, for God's sake! "I'll come back tomorrow with something for you to eat." As Remus said it, he couldn't stop the sigh that escaped with his breath. He hoped that Sirius wouldn't pick up on it. He didn't want Sirius to think that Remus considered his best friend a burden. After abandoning Sirius for over a decade, the least he could do was help him now.

"Oh God, Moony, the full moon, I didn't think. It should be sometime soon, right?"

"It's in a couple of days, but I'll manage. And I didn't come here to discuss my monthly cycle."

"You said it's about Gaara, he's okay, right?" Sirius snapped back to his seldom seen serious side as his normally carefree nature was swept aside by this newest of feelings, adult concern. A child at heart, Sirius wasn't used to having someone younger and more vulnerable (in his eyes) in his life and he hadn't expected to feel it until maybe the day that Harry moved in with him, after he'd adopted him.

"Yes, he's fine, although that depends on who you ask, I suppose." Lupin sighed again, exasperated this time at the level of drama the red-head ran into on a regular basis. From what he'd heard about Harry's previous two years, Gaara might give the Pronglset a run for his money on the peril and excitement score. "I'll start at the beginning. Thanks to that insane Minister for Magic, we were forced to play hosts to the head of his Administrative Inspectors..."

Lupin went on to describe the inspection, Dumbledore's equal insanity with his plan to move Gaara around, and then the fight between Gaara and Harry, which was something of a sore subject for the both of them, conflicts of interest and all. The flying carpet prank, from a Malfoy of all people, and then Gaara's fight with Snape. To say that Sirius was happy to hear that Gaara had not only got into a scrap with the snake-bat but had come out of it mostly unscathed, would be the grossest of understatements. From there he related Gaara's faux-punishment that led to that night's conversation.