*Hangs head in shame*
I am very, very bad. I think it's been half a year since I last updated? I'm really, really sorry. I am! I beg your forgiveness. I've actually had half this chapter sitting on my hard drive since I posted the last one, but I could never seem to finish. Well, here it is, finally, not really too late, no? he he he he… I'm sure a lot of you have given up on Dark Side of the Moon ever actually being finished, but it will! I promise you! Anyway, this chapter is something of a transition one but the next chapter, (which I promise you will be sometime before January!) will contain the required confrontation with Voldemort. Hopefully, it will be somewhat original. Here's a hint- the full moon is going to be rising soon, and Harry hasn't taken his WolfsBane potion!
Now, can I please recommend that you go and read Thuunderer vs Warrior? I know it's based around two original character's, but Fortis and this version of Arabella Figg just waltzed into my head fully formed and demanded that I write it. It gives a bit of background information on the two Aurors, and hopefully has a nice contrast between humour and angst. Its been months since I put it up and I still have 0 reviews. If you think its awful, say so and what is awful about it so I can rewrite it! And I'll try to get the next chapter for this up before the end of October. And if you're really lucky, I might have the next chapter of Vampyre up as well!
******
The late afternoon sun hung low in the sky, the heat of the day still present in the air. Long shadows stretched out behind the two figures crossing the Hogwart's grounds, one determinedly pulling the other behind him.
"Ron!" Hermione protested, tugging futilely on the hand grasping her own. "Ron, the exams start in a week and I've still got a ton of revision to do! I can't-"
Ron sighed loudly, interrupting. "Hermione, you started revising months ago! And nagging me and Harry to start, and Neville and Lavender and Paravati and Dean-" He stopped hurriedly when he felt the glare Hermione was giving him. "Anyway," he recovered quickly, "the point is you haven't stopped since! You need a break."
Hermione gave him an exasperated look. "Ron, this isn't just some end of year exam," she hissed. "This is our OWLs! Our results will affect our entire future!"
Ron rolled his eyes as they came to a stop just at the edge of the Forbidden Forest. "Hermione." He said impatiently. "You can't keep revising all the time, you have to do something else! Take a break, have some fun for God's sake!"
Hermione frowned, "Ron," she said disapprovingly.
Ron groaned. "Hermione," he whined.
Hermione sighed loudly and crossed her arms. "Alright. What kind of fun?" she asked warily.
Ron looked down at her and grinned. "Oh I don't know," he said lightly. "How about this?" He kissed her. After a few minutes they broke apart.
"Well," Hermione said a little breathlessly, "that was… fun."
"Yeah," Ron agreed, his eyes a dazed.
Hermione smiled up at him. "You know," she suggested, " I don't think my results would suffer too much if I took a short break."
"Really?" Ron asked, a small grin playing across his face. Hermione laughed and pulled his head down for another kiss as their necklaces glowed warmly against their skin.
******
The air inside the Gryffindor Common Room hung hot and stuffy, even the slight breeze let in by the wide-open windows did little to dispel the heat. The room was silent, only the faint scratching of quills on parchment or the rustle as the page of a thick textbook was turned disturbed the stillness. An aura of strained tension hung in the air. Scattered around the room, the Gryffindor fifth years sat or lay in various postures from deep thought to frantic desperation. Death ray glares had driven all other members of the House to safer arenas, such as Snape's dungeons. The fifth year's OWLs were upon them.
Harry stared down at the scrap of parchment in front of him in disgust and decided nope, glaring at it wouldn't make this Divination calculation come out correct, no more than it had the previous six attempts. Harry sighed to himself as he screwed the incorrect equation into a ball and allowed it to fall to the floor to join its predecessor, his frustration manifesting itself in the barely restrained violence of his movements. He felt irritable; on edge as something tried it's hardest to burrow under his skin- and was succeeding. Harry sighed again as he pulled a fresh piece of parchment from the ready prepared pile. He knew what the cause of his tension was, of course. He couldn't afford not to. In less then two hours, he would be suffering through agonising pain as he made the transition to one of the deadliest creatures on Earth. It was more then that, however, and less. Quite simply, the full moon, so far hidden from view as the Earth slowly turned, was making its presence felt.
Harry sighed a final time as he stared down at his latest sheet of parchment, barely able to prevent it from becoming a full-blown snarl. Normally he would have asked Hermione for help, or even Lavender and Patil. But Ron had finally managed to drag Hermione off somewhere for a break- God knew she needed it- and since he had almost bitten the heads off of the last people to approach him, the other fifth years were keeping their distance. Harry groaned and rubbed at the bridge of his nose- he knew he couldn't really blame all of this on the full moon, most of his classmates were just as snappy as the pressure began building up. And yet… Harry rubbed at his brow again and glanced back down at the still pristine parchment in front of him. Enough procrastinating he told himself firmly and picked up his quill, dunking the tip in the inkpot a little more vigorously than necessary. Now then, if at a person's birth Saturn was in the House of Ares and Jupiter was in ascendance then that meant…. Harry stared down at the parchment, tried to force his brain that had somehow been mysteriously transfigured into cotton wool to work and gave up, dropping the quill onto the page in front of him, causing the ink to splatter over the previously clean parchment. Cursing quietly to himself, Harry reached over the table, grabbed some blotting paper, and began cleaning up the mess he had created.
Of course, Harry realised as he dabbed ineffectually at the pool of ink on his table, he knew one reason why he was so on edge, besides the overwhelming pressure of the OWLs and the closed in feel of the Common Room. And that was the fact that this month's batch of Wolf's Bane potion had been spoilt when a first year, who had been waiting in Snape's private study to receive a detention for disrupting Potions Class, had decided that it would be interesting to see what would happen if he tossed one of Dr Filibuster's Fabulous Wet Start No Heat Fireworks into the cauldron of lightly simmering liquid. The Weasley Twin's were already hailing the first year as their Heir. Harry was just afraid that there would be no Potion available for him to take on the night of the full moon. Wolf's Bane Potion had a very short shelf life, lasting only a couple of days at most before decomposing into its component parts, thus becoming useless. This meant that one batch of potion couldn't be used for more then one transformation- each batch had to be brewed individually every month as the moon waxed. Fortunately, Snape had been able to reassure Harry that their would be enough Potion ready for him to take for the full moon- and that was something he still had some problems with, even after a year to get used to it, Snape reassuring anybody, let alone him. Unfortunately, this meant that with only two hours to go until moonrise, Harry still hadn't taken the Potion.
Harry shifted uncomfortably at that thought, remembering his early transformations without the influence of the Wolf's Bane Potion. Was it really less than a year ago that he had suffered through his first? Harry closed his eyes, remembering. It seemed so, so much longer since he had received the bite. The idea of going through one of the earlier transformations again caused bile to rise to the back of his throat as he remembered feeling his sanity, his mind slip away, and him powerless to prevent it, remembered awakening to the burn of self inflicted injuries, where the Wolf, in its madness and frustration, had turned on itself. Harry swallowed, forcing the memories to the back of his mind where the belonged. Stop it, he told himself firmly. You won't have to go through that again, the Potion will be ready in time. Snape gave his word.
And that was another thing that took some greeting used to, Snape being trustworthy. But, Harry knew, as strange as it may have been when compared to Snape's attitude in previous years, Snape could be trusted. In fact, Snape's behaviour towards him had improved overall, he didn't think that he had lost more than thirty points all year, the change in behaviour extending even towards other members of Gryffindor. Harry supposed that this was Snape's way of making amends for his perceived guilt, even though he had forgiven him for his part in his curse. Mostly. I just wish it hadn't taken me becoming a werewolf for him to get an attitude adjustment, Harry thought, grimly. He sighed and glanced at the clock on the wall, then back down to his parchment. Ten minutes and the only markings on it was the smeared mess from his accident with the pen.
Harry sighed softly, screwed the parchment into a ball, and dropped it onto the floor to join the other creased balls as he stood up, pushing back his chair. Glancing around the room, he made his decision. There was no way he could concentrate on revising with the tension vibrating under his skin, and it was still a couple of hours 'till moon rise so…
Harry walked quickly through the common room, nimbly avoiding the sprawled figures on the floor, curled over sheets of notes, and made his way up the stairs to the fifth year boys dormitory. Pushing open the door, he swiftly made his way over to his bed and threw back the lid of his trunk. Harry rummaged through his various belongings, the amount of items a far cry from his situation almost five years ago. Had it really been that long? Shaking his head slightly, Harry began tossing his belongings up onto his four-poster. Long enough to have changed from an ordinary, if bullied boy around whom weird things occasionally happened to a werewolf, he thought slightly bitter. A spell book, robes, Sirius's weird Christmas present that had been hidden in the robes, exploding snap pack, were all pulled out of the trunk and thrown into a pile on his bed. Finally, Harry found what he was looking for and pulled his Firebolt out with a triumphant smile. Quickly, he hurried downstairs, through the common room and out of the portrait hole, not bothering to pause to stuff his belongings back into his trunk. The fifth years in the Common Room barely looked up as he passed, more concerned with cramming enough knowledge into their brains to leave them with a chance at a decent grade.
*******
As soon as he was out of the castle, Harry mounted his broom and kicked off. As he left the ground, felt the wind streaming through his hair, it as if he had left all of his problems behind him, down on the ground and he let his breath out in a huge, whooshing sigh. For a few minutes he just drifted lazily through the air, performing a few gentle turns and dips. Harry then grinned, leant forward, tightening his grip on the Firebolt's handle and shot forward, going at ever increasing speeds, until he pointed his broom down and went into a dive, not loosing any speed during the manoeuvre. Harry's mouth was stretched into a grin as he pressed his body closely to the streamlined broom as he shot closer and closer to the ground, then at the last possible second turning the broom back up, his toes brushing against the grass as he barely managed to avoid smashing into the ground, a scream of pure exhilaration ringing in his head as he went into a sequence of loop the loops dives and twists, feeling the tension and edginess drain away as he exalted in this. Flying. Freedom. Harry sighed in contentment and sent his broom into a lazy loop the loop, his eyes automatically darting around in search of a glint of gold. Abruptly he paused, holding his broom in place as he focused in on the ground. He had drifted near to the edge of the Forbidden Forest during his flight, and the glint of the last of the day's sunlight reflected of something caught his eye among the shadows under the first ranks of trees.
Curious, Harry directed his broom into a shallow dive, aiming for the reflected glitter that had captured his attention. He pulled his broom up just before he hit the ground and swung himself down, alighting softly on the grass. As soon as his feet touched the ground he froze, nostrils flaring. With the full moon only hours away his senses were preternaturally sharp, and he was almost overwhelmed by the stink of fear and blood that hung in the air around the tree. Fear, and the strange, spicy, almost bitter scent of magic. Harry swallowed and stepped forward carefully, his eyes darting around the area and his ears sharply tuned towards any noise towards the glitter that had originally caught his attention. His heart was pounding and his own fear rising as he knelt down in the soft grass. Almost before he stretched out his hand to pick the object up, he knew what it was going to be. But that did not stop a small moan from escaping his throat as he picked it up. It was Hermione's watch, the glass face cracked and the gold metallic strap twisted and warped. His body thrumming with tension, Harry lifted his head and scented the air. This time he could separate the different individual smells. The familiar scents of Ron and Hermione, and other, unfamiliar ones that stunk of old pain and old fear. The smell of blood brought Harry to his feet instantly, leading him to a tree just a short distance inside the Forest. The rough old bark was stained with blood, Ron's blood only an hour or so old, as if he had bashed into the tree and torn his skin. The Death Eaters weren't being careful with their prisoners then, Harry reflected grimly.
Harry took two steps into the Forest then hesitated and looked back towards the castle. He had no doubt that entering the Forest know meant a confrontation with Voldemort, and it really was only a matter of time before his look run out with those. He had no doubts that Voldemort was waiting for him in there, although his scar wasn't hurting anymore than the slight, dull ache that had been constant since Voldemort's resurrection. He could go back to Hogwarts, tell Dumbledore what had happened, and yet… Harry turned back to face the dark Forest. His friend's scents were clear. This close to the full moon, he could follow them as easily as a road at high noon. And they had probably been in Voldemort's hands for at least an hour… It was the memory of the agonising pain of the Cruciatus curse that decided him. Taking a deep breath, Harry set his back firmly to Hogwarts and plunged into the Forbidden Forest
