A/N: How did everybody know what would happen? I feel so inept now. Sigh. But here you go, anyway.

By the way, did anybody notice I always say 'here you go' before every chapter in my a/ns? What is up with that? I didn't even realize I was doing it until now.

Ah, well. Here you go.

Chapter Twenty-one: Lycanthropy

"Why don't you just let me alone?" Donaghan asked rather pathetically. Severus had arrived just in time to pull him with a charm from the window-ledge. "I don't want to be here, just let me be."

"Wouldn't that be let you cease to be, McPhersen? I know you're too bright to be really considering suicide."

Donaghan looked back at Snape with an expression of total despair.

"You know what I am, now, Professor. What good is living when I turn into –that every month? What if I kill someone? How can I ever tell her about this?"

He had honestly meant to say 'them,' but for some reason it came out 'her' instead. Luckily Snape understood and did not rebuke him for it.

"You were bitten while defending a friend ometimes when you're in your wolf form."

This idea made Donaghan feel much better.

"Thanks, Professor Granger, Professor Snape. I won't jump out the window again."

"You're still staying up in the hospital wing tonight," Madam Pomfrey announced decisively. "I want to make sure that your symptoms progress normally."

"Symptoms? The next full moon isn't until November eighteenth, ma'am! I've got the Quidditch match-"

"I'm sure you could have someone substitute."

"But Madam Pomfrey! We haven't got another Chaser!" Hermione was protesting worse than Donaghan.

"There en't nobody else to play for us!"

"Now, now, I'm certain you could find somebody," Professor Snape observed in his silkiest voice. For an instant Hermione looked at him as if he were the most traitorous person on earth, until he raised an eyebrow and she smiled with the sly meaning.

She went over past the curtain to the next bed, where she was very surprised to see a wide-eyed Chloe sitting cross-legged and taking note on what transpired on Donaghan's side.

"You are much better than Julie at eavesdropping," Hermione observed to the convalescent first-year. "Chloe, do you think you could play Chaser for the Gryffindors? I know somebody's been tutoring you 'secretly.'"

"Me, Professor? But I- I'm only a first-year?"

"It's better than forfeiting to Slytherin. Do you think you could handle it?"

"I- I- …Of course, Professor!"

"Madam Pomfrey, can Chloe go back to the tower now?"

"Hold on a moment."

The nurse checked Chloe's eyes for dilation in the pupils, her knees for reflexes, made her hold out her hands and touch her nose with her eyes shut; a whole battery of simple sensory and capability tests. Finally, after jokingly asking the girl to do a roundoff-back handspring full with a twist, which Chloe did rather obligingly, Madam Pomfrey pronounced her fit to play in the Quidditch game.

"Why the –flippy thing?" Professor Snape asked, referring to the complicated gymnastic move.

"I was joking, Professor. Chloe here must really want to play today."

"Oh, I do, ma'am. I'm never gonna let-" Chloe rattled off a string of French words that made Professor Granger's jaw drop and ended the tirade with 'Slytherins,' "-win."

"What did you just call my House, Chloe?" Professor Snape asked very menacingly, as Donaghan giggled from his hospital bed.

"Uh…um…"

"That's alright, Chloe, better go practice for the match today." Professor Granger's eyebrows were still raised in an expression of mild shock. The instant the little first-year was gone, she made a profound observation: "I'm definitely going to have to have a word with Fleur about that child's vocabulary."

"What'd she say?" Snape asked protestingly.

"Dear, it's not something you would appreciate."

"Tell me!" he begged, like a little child who has only overheard part of an adult conversation.

Donaghan cracked up entirely. Julie's parents never failed to make him laugh.

Severus smiled. That had been his intention in doing it.

*********************************

Julie and Malfoy were eating a splendidly Gallic lunch of bread and cheese with burgundy (watered down considerably in Julie's case,) together on the floor of Malfoy's dungeon quarters. It occurred to Draco that having a girlfriend who was not of legal drinking age by the Muggle scale might be a good idea, considering how many Malfoys had been alcoholic by their forties, his late father and uncle included there. Julie was afraid of offending him, but because of the Quidditch game and her old tendencies back at the orphanage, she was rather scared to drink alcohol. She realized she hadn't touched a cup of coffee without liquor since she was thirteen years old, until she came to Hogwarts, and the feeling of wanting to drink frightened her awfully. It was all well and good to have some butterbeer, (the alcoholic or nonalcoholic nature of which she had not yet defined by her trips into Hogsmeade with Tom and Tim,) but to be smashed before a Quidditch game and in the company of a fabulously dishy James Marsters lookalike was not a good idea at all. In fact, she suspected the cheese might not be a good idea either.

"Draco, did you get this from the house-elves downstairs?" she asked.

"No, I was planning to get some in Hogsmeade and it just appeared in here."

"Okay, appeared like a whole bunch of tiny elves put it here while you were in the shower, or appeared magically while you were actually watching the table?"

"Appeared like a house-elf brought it." Julie raised her eyebrow pointedly at him. "You haven't dug up your mother's old soap-box, now, have you?"

"Let's just say I inherited her issues with slavery. Doesn't it bother you that you can remember my mum when she was my age?"

"You don't look all that much like your mother, Jules. I mean, aside from the hair that looks like you've been electrocuted, the know-it-all eyes, the hand that's perpetually twitching as if it wants a quill in it; naw, it doesn't bother me."

"But doesn't the idea of being my teacher in another month bother you? I mean, the idea of being in a room full of fifteen and sixteen-year-olds, one of whose tongues you are quite well acquainted with?"

"That may potentially prove a little difficult, but not if you keep your flirting and good looks in check."

"Flirting? Since when do I flirt, Malfoy?"

"Since…I'm guessing, birth?"

Julie was decidedly offended by this.

"Well, provided you can keep your patrician sentiments, wealthy customs and total lack of frugality under control, I shouldn't have many problems in your class, either."

"Excuse me, little Granger-Snape, but I don't even know what patrician sentiments are."

"You wouldn't, now, would you, Professor Pureblood?"

"I know what Bohemian street-rats are."

"And I know what poor little rich boys are."

"Why are you being so cold all of a sudden?"

"I'm as cold as I'm supposed to be. How 'bout you?"

Julie abruptly began to walk out of Draco's rooms.

"Julie, wait!"

She paid no attention. Draco chased her through the dungeons for a few minutes, only to realize at the door to Professor Snape's classroom that it was a completely different girl he'd been following. Julie went out to the Quidditch pitch and met Tim and Hannah to retrieve her broom. Flying high above the school where noone would hear her, she burst into tears about the fight she hadn't meant.