Outside Interference

Chapter 32

Somewhere near Ottery St Catchpole

Padfoot and Moony ran through the woods. It seemed like forever to Moony that he got to run with his Pack, as this was the first full moon after Sirius was released from rehabilitation, since being removed from Azkaban.

Moony was revelling in the wind blowing fresh scents in his face. He could smell all sorts of prey animals, the smoke from a distant campfire, and something ...familiar.

Padfoot kept trying to herd him away from the scent, so tried to give him the slip. He managed to evade Padfoot, and put on a burst of speed.

**yelp!** Moony was startled by a flash of white, followed quickly by a pained squeal. White-feathered death completed its swoop, with something in its taloned feet. ~Owl-harpy~ supplied the buried part of his mind that was still Remus.

The brief pause allowed Padfoot the chance to catch up to him, but the familiar scent was naggingly close. He needed to investigate it.

He could hear voices! His werewolf instincts started to kick in. voices meant humans. Humans meant prey!

===/===

Padfoot panicked. Moony had surged off again, this time intent on hunting down the source of the voices. This isn't good, thought Padfoot. If Hedwig is nearby, that means the others are out too. The sight of a giant spider-web in his peripheral vision confirmed that the three arachne children were somewhere out there. It wasn't a school night, so Reg's kidss were probably on the hunt as well. He sniffed the air. Shit! Dorea! He was one of the few that knew about Lily's glamour. Remus doesn't know! Which means Moony doesn't know.

He put on a burst of extra speed, hoping that Moony didn't do something stupid in front of Dorea's overprotective stepsister.

===/===

Moony shook in fear. He was entangled in sticky threads, looking down at two sets of six red eyes and a set of six blue eyes. ~Cassandra, Charlotte, and Kuroko~ supplied the part of his mind that was still Remus.

"A werewolf," stated blue-eyes.

"A foolish"

"werewolf," echoed both red-eyes.

Cassandra, moved backwards slightly, and started to climb the trunk of a nearby tree, her eight legs making easy work of the vertical surface of the trunk. The part of his mind that was Remus railed ineffectually at Moony, as he vainly struggled to escape their web. ~they may be children, but they're dangerous. They will drop you in a heartbeat, if they decide you're a threat to their Pack.~

The snap of a twig caused Moony to instinctively turn his head. Padfoot was timidly walking into his field of view, flanked by the Owl-harpy, a lamia and two small dragons, barely larger than Padfoot. One dragon was green, and appeared to have leafy vines growing over it. Instead of scales, the other was covered in pink-tipped red feathers, and had feathered wings.

The familiar scent that kept screaming 'Pack' to Moony's instincts kept coming from the feathered dragon.

Glowing pink runes surrounded both dragons, transforming them into winged girls, roughly eight or nine years old. ~Dorea and Violet~

"Uncle Sirius," said the feathered one, Dorea. The one who smelt like pack. "Bringing Uncle Moony to this part of the forest is dangerous."

Moony's, still-encased, body was lowered to the ground. "You're lucky you only tripped one of my webs," said Cassandra. "The twins use enchantments on theirs."

Padfoot changed back into Sirius, and looked chastised.

"We'll have to leave Mr Lupin restrained until he changes back," said Violet.

"Did you find"

"anything"

"before"

'the puppies"

"crashed the party?" echoed Charlotte and Kuroko.

"Rabbits," chorused Hedwig and Sally, raising their hands/wings, to present their prey.

Dorea's face lit up in a bright grin. "A couple of boars."

"Apport!" called Violet, and two recently-slain boars appeared inside a pink runic circle of light.

Moony spent the next hour, even though he was restrained, gnawing on a boar's leg, and trying to figure out the pack dynamic of all of these not-quite-adults/not-quite-cubs.

===/===

When the sun came up, and he reverted back to human, Remus wearily looked up at a circle of his students' faces looking down at him. "S-sirius?" he muttered. "Why am I covered in spider-web? ...and blood?" A vague memory surfaced from the previous night. "Also, why does Moony insist that Dorea is Pack?"

Sirius looked appropriately chastised, when he replied. "No one was supposed to know about the glamour Lily placed on Dorea."

"But this?" he indicated towards the sleeping girls. Dorea was clinging to Hedwig, as if she was a stuffed toy. "That is NOT a glamour!"

"No, it's not," replied Violet, as she extracted herself from Sally. "She achieved a natural Animagus transformation after our doctors and healers removed a bunch of Blocks, Bindings, and other things from her. She rarely changes back to human, and I don't blame her, considering how she was treated before my sister and I got Mum to rescue her."

"But an Animagus form cannot be a magical creature," Remus commented.

"Says who?" Dorea mumbled, as she woke up. "The Ministry? According to the Ministry, I'm 'Harry Potter' and have been living in luxury since the defeat of He-who-shall-not-be-named. They were wrong on both of those so-called facts. If the adults didn't insist that I needed to transform back to human every now and then, for medical reasons, I'd never change back."

===/===

Ministry of Magic

Spinney despondently slumped against the wall. He looked at the reports in his hand. What was the point of getting me to collect information, if they didn't want to read it? The wizard looked up at the sound of laughter, and was almost floored.

Coming out of the DMLE Office were two of the most beautiful women he had ever seen. On the left was a a tall, curvy, redhead in a very expensive-looking, bright blue, silk dress. The platinum-blonde on her right was taller, but not quite as curvy, and wearing a black dress so dark, it seemed to absorb the light around it. The blonde was shaking her head in amusement. "You should have just hit the bastard centre-mass, and used my Library to find out why he did it. Now he's gotten off on a technicality."

"Bribed the judges, you mean," replied the redhead. "They're too busy with their own short-term agendas, and harming the long-term viability of their society as a result." She shook her head. "Look at how they're treating squibs and squib-borns. Another 'Hogwarts reject' was dumped in an orphanage a few days ago, all because her magic is Druidic. Her 'parents' thought her rejection was because she was a squib! It's no wonder their educational standards have steadily declined over the last few decades..."

"Is that why you made that distance education school open to everyone?" Spinney interrupted, almost dropping his reports in his excitement. He almost didn't recognise the redhead out of the beige-and-black ICEP uniform. I can't believe my luck, he thought. The Director of ICEP herself!

The blonde raised an eyebrow. "And you are?"

/Yuri, you already know who he is. You know who everybody is.

/I know that, Mizuchi, but we still need to keep up appearances.

"Oh sorry," Spinney apologised and held out his hand. "Augustus Spinney I work for the Ministry. ...although... to be honest, I have no idea if this report they won't read means I'm with the department of statistics, or the department of education. Either way they don't take me seriously."

"Yuri Karitoriki," replied the blonde.

"Mizuchi Kobayashi," stated the redhead.

"The Ministry is in negotiations to reinstate the Tri-Wizard Tournament in a few years," Spinney continued. "Because of this, I was asked to compile a report on how our 'rivals' will compare to us."

"Ah," Mizuchi seemed to understand. "You've either found out ICEP have been cooperating with the other schools, providing annexe courses for subjects they don't currently have teachers for, or that the 'filtering' of who gets Hogwarts' letters has resulted in a downturn of quality graduates."

"Let's just say that if the top three schools in Europe are the only schools competing, Hogwarts isn't even the top school in Britain," Spinney commented.

"Then the solution is simple," Yuri commented. "Send a 'leaked' document to the newspaper. Attach a letter, angled towards the old Pure-blood families' own self interests."

"After all, even if the half-bloods and squib-borns are 'inferior' to them, someone has to run the shops, and do the paperwork." Mizuchi added.

===/===

Somewhere near Ottery St Catchpole

"Fred! George! I know you're in the tree!" whined Ginny. "Mummy wants you home!"

She stomped her foot. "Now!"

"Fred, are you sure you don't have a Banshee in your family tree?" Kuroko asked, as she looked through the cloaking-field she'd placed on the web, just below their hammocks.

"If we do, Mum hasn't mentioned it," replied George, as he snuggled up to his girlfriend.

"At least we have most of this equipment in the lab," Charlotte handed the booklist back to her boyfriend. "There's no point in you paying for stuff we already have."

"It's just a shame we can't take you with us," said Fred.

"At least you two got into a good boarding school too, even if it isn't a magical one," said Fred.

"Even if it is in America," whispered George.

"It isn't too far from the Salem, Witches Institute," Kuroko commented. "They're one of ICEP's recognised testing centres, so we should still be able to keep up with our magical studies."

"We can always visit each other during school holidays," said Charlotte. She looked though the cloaking-field. "Ginevra is looking awfully pissed. We'd better stop ignoring her." The girls quietly lowered the boys behind their sister.

"Ginnikins"

"if you"

"screw your"

"face up"

"further"

"you'll get"

"wrinkles." echoed Fred and George.

Ginny jumped in fright. "Mummy doesn't want you near those spiders!"

"Why"

"not?" asked Kuroko and Charlotte.

"M-mummy says you're dark creatures, and h-have bewitched my brothers," defiance trying to overcome the fear in Ginny's voice.

"Us? Dark?"

"Fred, George?"

"Did we"

"bewitch you?" asked the girls.

"We thought our"

"roguishly"

"good looks"

"bewitched you." replied the boys.

"Come, little sister,"

"before mother"

"loses all"

"of her hair'

"in worry."