To Hate Oneself
Chapter 1 – Curiosity Killed the Cat
Astrid Olsen was not stupid - she was a Ravenclaw, for Merlin's sake – and she knew she was a bit too knowledge-thirsty for her own good. Astrid called it curiosity, her best friend Freya sometimes called it 'trying to be helpful', but her mother just flat out called her nosy. Freya found her endless interest in observing things and people around her amusing, likening her to a cat's playing with its food – a sentiment Astrid didn't entirely appreciate – and poking its nose into things it shouldn't. Astrid knew the old saying, 'curiosity killed cat', but she hadn't thought it would literally come back to bite her someday.
Her curiosity was what had led Astrid to follow three Gryffindor boys she wasn't friends with out onto the grounds just before nightfall, only to lose track of them in the steadily-growing darkness. She knew they were Gryffindors, because they'd been whispering about how they were going to squash the other houses at Quidditch that year. All three houses but Gryffindor had been mentioned as 'having no chance', leaving simple deductive reasoning to point at Gryffindors. They'd also been muttering about not getting caught, one of them saying, "- your own fault for forgetting the cloak when I specifically asked you to get it, Wormtail, and now we're late – we'll have to try to get in without -" The beginning and end of the sentence she hadn't caught because several jaw-rattling peals of thunder had boomed at precisely those moments.
She'd been left to take shelter beneath a thin, scraggly tree by the Black Lake as the bottom dropped out on the massive storm that had been looming over the castle all weekend, dampening students' spirits and keeping them guessing as to when the raindrops would inevitably fall. Apparently, Astrid had chosen precisely the night to sneak out for the first time in her life, in order to catch the brunt of the thunderstorm.
As if getting soaked to the bone with lashing, icy sheets of rain weren't enough, Astrid hated storms with all of her heart, even when she was safely inside and away from them. They were too loud, too violent, disrupted her sleep, and always made her feel restless. She wasn't afraid of them, she just loathed them - plain and simple. Only the desperate desire to know what, exactly, these Gryffindor delinquents were up to at such a time – and in the middle of a storm, no less – had coaxed her into following them out into the elements with only her sweater and Muggle-style pajamas on.
Astrid had justified it to herself as it being her duty as a Prefect – she had, after all, found them as she was completing her rounds for the night – but in all honesty, she was being nosy, and she knew it somewhere deep inside. She was just too prideful and perhaps a bit vain, in stereotypical Ravenclaw fashion, to admit it.
She'd just pulled the back of her oversized jumper over her head in a futile attempt to keep water out of her ears, steeling herself to make a run for the castle, which the lightning was illuminating every few seconds, when she heard a very faint sound from the direction of the Whomping Willow.
It sounded like a voice shouting, and she could have sworn she heard the baying of a large dog, but all she heard for the next several minutes was the storm's wrath; her makeshift hood was blown off, her wet brown locks whirling around her head in the direction of the Willow. The gust of wind was so strong it pushed her towards the violent tree, causing her to stub her toe and tumble down a small hill to land, sprawled, in front of it.
Yelping, Astrid's hand flew up to her face as a lithe branch whipped across her cheek. The thin girl scrambled backwards on all fours as the tree lunged for her again, wiping at the blood trickling from her new cut, unknowingly smearing crimson across her face. Mud now encased her in a slimy layer from head to toe.
"I hate this tree," She muttered.
Astrid had never cared for the Whomping Willow ever since it had knocked her books out of her arms for merely walking too close to it – one of these books, her favorite, still sported creased pages and mud smears from this event, a fact the girl was still livid about to the day. She preferred to keep up a status quo of 'you leave me alone, and I'll leave you alone' with the tree, as if it were a malformed wasp. The brunette felt the game of trying to touch its trunk, which was very popular among the general Hogwarts population, to be reckless, pointless, and begging for a trip to see either the Grim Reaper or Madame Pomfrey – though, to the slightly haughty girl's opinion, both were just as annoying. It was in these thoughts that she held no pity for Davey Gudgeon, the king of the Whomping Willow game, when he nearly lost his eye the previous year – in fact, she'd been in a smug, 'I-told-you-so' attitude the rest of the day on which she heard of the year-older boy's plight.
Her emerald eyes squinted up at the Willow, eyeing the dark shapes she could see vaguely moving around the base of it. Then, she heard it again – the shouting voice, now much closer, and she subconsciously leaned towards it, all thoughts of picking herself up out of the mud forgotten.
She heard a vicious snarling sound, followed by a yelp like that of a dog's, and then there was the sound of something very large moving towards her at high speeds. A vein of lightning webbed across the sky, twisting around in an intricate, deadly arc.
The shape before her was illuminated by the flash, and Astrid realized what it was with a shriek. She knew that shape, she knew it from her DADA textbook – it was a werewolf, it was the only possible thing such a distinctive shape as that could be, and the horrible howl it let out only confirmed this assumption – drool spattered across her face, and she knew it was drool, because rain was not sticky and warm.
Astrid was not one who panicked – she had always been logical and calm when faced with a crisis, even as a young girl, but now, faced with such a feared creature with no means of defense, all coherent thoughts were lost.
A bloodcurdling scream erupted out of her throat, and she fumbled in the mud for her wand; her hand closed around the wood tightly. She scrambled backwards until her back hit the trunk of a tree, thankfully not the Willow, sinking down to its base and throwing her arms up to shield her face, eyes rounded with fear.
Sharp claws, like knives, raked across her body, slashing from her shoulder to her wrist in the fluid motion of a predator. Astrid screamed again as the force of the blow knocked her away from the tree; her wand flew out of her hand. Her nightclothes were in tatters where the claws had met them, she could feel a warm, sticky liquid running down her chest and arms in rivulets.
When her eyes, vision hazy from a blow to the head, met the wolf's amber ones there was no trace of human emotion in them. The creature went into a frenzy when it smelled her blood, its face filled with the crazed look of bloodlust when lightning flashed again.
Astrid tried to stand, to attempt to run away, but she crumpled when she tried to put weight on one of her ankles. Letting out a whimper, she was gathering her strength to run, injured or not, when a new pain hit her. A searing, ripping pain filled her shoulder as the animal's jaws closed on her shoulder, and Astrid screamed again, the pure agony of the burning sensation filling the wound making it impossible to think of anything else.
Abruptly, a smaller shape barreled into the wolf's side, sending her falling limply to the ground. Another shape joined the newcomer, and she heard the sounds of the werewolf being shoved away.
Her body was writhing, she could feel it and the pain all over her limbs, but she'd lost all control of herself. The burning in her shoulder, where she'd been bitten, was like nothing Astrid could have imagined. She knew humans that were bitten went through immense pain at the time of the bite, as well as at full moons, but she'd had no idea anything could possibly hurt that much until she felt it for herself.
"Godric… Prongs, Wormtail, distract him!" She heard a voice shouting, vaguely felt someone seizing her writhing body, struggling to run with her jerking around; her head lolled in their grip, and Astrid succumbed the blissful relief of unconsciousness.