The sun rose over the magnificent castle that was Hogwarts, the clouds of the previous weeks raining missing entirely. The many great towers was bathed in sunlight, the painted windows yawning and stretching. A few birds rose from their nests in the Forbidden Forest, and began their morning hunt. Suddenly, the peace was broken by one thing.
A young man entered the top of the Astronomy Tower. This man was wearing a pair of baggy navy blue pants, held up at the waist by a black sash, and tied to his ankles by two smaller, black sashes. His long dark hair fluttered out over his pale skin and his muscled chest bore many a scar; the most prominent of which was two large ones circling his shoulders, as well as a large tattoo of a wolf howling towards the moon. His face was handsome; a gently sloping forehead was adorned with two black eyebrows; beneath them two very dark, almost black eyes looked out over the morning. He had a straight nose, a thin mouth, and a straight, confident jaw. He looked out over the stillness of the forest, and sighed.
Wolf sighed as he stood, looking out over the forest. The morning was quite chilly, but he was used to much worse. In fact, to him, it was a warm morning. Suddenly, something large broke through the leafy cover of the forest. The thing was a large, skeletal horse with large, bat-like wings. A Thestral? Wolfs mouth opened in shock. He had thought them to be nothing but fairy-tales; stories told around the campfire about the undead horses that haunted battlefields, taking the souls of the dead to the afterlife. Surely, seeing one in a school was a bad omen. However, as the thought crossed his head, the horse-thing disappeared into the forest once again.
Pushing the thoughts of the horse from his head, he slid into the stance of the Nether Dragon.
A few hours later, he entered the common room, to find that it was still deserted. Wolf frowned. Ancestors, these people slept much! He had overslept today, sleeping much longer than he usually did, and even though he had gone to bed more than two hours later than anyone else, he still had time to do his workout before anyone else was up. He went up the stairs to his dorm room, to find a few people stirring as he entered.
"Morning, Wolf", the redheaded boy – Ronald, was it? - moaned as he pushed the hangings from his bed.
"Good morning, and a good day to you, Ronald", he responded, in the traditional way of his family, before crossing the room to his clothes chest.
"How come you're up so early?", Ron asked.
"Early? I overslept", Wolf responded.
"Mate, it's not even six o'clock! We don't start classes until half past eight!"
"Yes, but this way I can get some... practice in before class starts", Wolf responded, pulling out a fresh robe from his chest.
A groan from one of the other beds meant that their conversation had woken up some of the other people sleeping in the room.
"Morning, Harry", Ron said as he too went over to his clothes chest.
Harry grunted something in response and pulled his curtains from his bed. The first thing he saw was Wolf, standing there getting dressed. His eyes was immediately pulled to the tattoo on his chest.
"Whoa, wicked tattoo, mate!". It appeared that Ron had noticed it too.
"Thank you", Wolf responded as he slid his robes over his head, before picking up his books from his chest.
"I must bid you both a good day, and I'll see you both at breakfast". Wolf nodded his head to the two boys, before leaving the room.
Unsurprisingly, Wolf was the first one down at breakfast. However, he hadn't finished his first plate of bacon before the first people started trickling in. Maybe fifteen minutes after the first person had come in – a Ravenclaw, looking like he belonged in third year -, Harry, Ron and Hermione entered the room, and, seeing him, sat down next to him.
"Merlin, you're hungry", Ron said with a smile while loading sausages onto his own plate.
"If a man wishes to be strong, a man must eat healthily", Wolf said, quoting his grandfather.
"That's true, but you've cleared out a platter of bacon yourself!". This came from Hermione.
"That is correct", Wolf said, putting his water goblet back on the table. "So?"
"Those are meant for five people!", she said. Wolf raised an eyebrow.
"Does my name suggest that I'd eat little?", he said with a smile on his lips. This caused both Ron and Harry to laugh, and Hermione to smile.
"What are you guys laughing at?". This came from a very pretty girl, with long, red locks and sparkling green eyes. Ron's sister, perhaps?
"Ginny, this is Wolf, Wolf, this is my sister Ginny", Ron said, confirming his beliefs.
"Oh, you're that transfer student Dumbledore was talking about last night!", she said, while helping herself to some porridge. Wolf nodded at this.
"How's our timetable look like today, 'Mione?", Ron asked.
"Outside all morning", she answered. "Herbology with the Hufflepuff's, then Care of Magical Creatures... we've still got the Slytherin's there, though". Ron looked at his own timetable, and groaned.
"We've got Double Divination afterwards", he said.
"You should do what I did, give it up. Silly subject, anyway", Hermione said.
"Don't say that. Where I come from, Seers are held in very high regard", Wolf said, a scornful look in his eyes.
"Yeah, but I'm sure most of those aren't just big frauds, like our professor is", she said. Wolf seemed skeptical at this; surely, one of the greatest magic-schools in the world wouldn't hire an un-Seeing teacher for Divination Class?
Herbology passed on quickly; they had been forced to squeeze the pus out of plants. Most of the students seemed to think this was gross; Wolf, however, had done much more disgusting things in his life, and had no problems at all doing this.
He looked forwards to their next lesson, however: Care of Magical Creatures. He loved animals. He loved the chase of the hunt, turning a hunter into the hunted; he loved caring for nicer creatures.
However, it appeared that he would be disappointed.
His teacher, who was the largest man he had ever seen, talked so fast and with such a broad accent that he could barely keep up, and what he showed to them was neither a fearsome predator nor a wonderful pet: it looked like an unholy crossing between a crab, a scorpion and a manticore.
"Hagrid, what is that?" Hermione asked.
"Blast-ended Skrewts!" Hagrid said proudly. "Jus' hatched the other day, so ye get ter take care o' 'em yerselves! I was thinkin' it could be a little project fer ye!"
Let's just say the the rest of the class didn't get any better.
After lunch, Wolf accompanied Harry and Ron to the Divination Tower. Immediately when he entered, Wolf started feeling sick. Aini and Eru in a tangle, how was he supposed to stand this? How was anyone supposed to stand this? Did the teacher actually expect anyone to be able to study here?
"Good day", a fluttering voice said, coming from just behind him. He spun around, his body instinctively sliding into the stance of the Tiger-Crane, before realizing that he had nearly punched a teacher.
"Oh... sorry, Professor", Wolf muttered, leaving a very stunned teacher before walking away, and having a seat next to a boy called Neville.
As the lesson progressed, he was getting more and more inclined to believe Hermione's accusations of this teacher. She was, undoubtedly, a fraud. Nevertheless, he tried to do his best, but things wasn't becoming any easier as the two girls sitting by the table next to him constantly kept sneaking looks at him and falling into a fit of giggles whenever he looked up.
As night fell, Wolf found himself on the roof of the Gryffindor tower. He went through the day in his mind, reviewing everything that had happened. The entire school had been abuzz with talk about le tournoi de quatre-magicien. However, no one seemed to have connected him with it; he wondered what they would feel when he was chosen for the tournament. After all, Dumbledore had stressed the fact that you had to be of age to enter, and here you came of age at seventeen.
Wolf, however, had become a man when he was twelve.
He wasn't used to living in a single place; his grandfather had taken him away on his sixth birthday, only letting him return home by midwinter, and leaving once the festivities was over.
But all that was over now.
Sighing once again, he cleared his mind and fell into the Illusion of Elsewhere.