Author's Note:

I don't know what's happening with this story, but some of these chapters, or even just parts of them are refusing to be written. This is another one that took FOREVER.

Anyway, I've taken liberties with the Hogwarts class system (which was likely noticed in Chamber of Secrets,, mostly because, as a fanfic writer, I can do that, but also because there's no possible way that a castle the size of Hogwarts is only using maybe 30 or 40 of the rooms it contains for classes.

Just from what we know about wizarding life after Hogwarts, we know that there are dozens of variations in some jobs – like healing – and as such there have to be variations for some classes, like Defense Against the Dark Arts and Care of Magical Creatures, of which we only see the basic lessons in the books, though there's mention of Advanced versions of those classes on the HP Wikipedia page that I don't remember seeing in the book (though they must've been there, if it's on the internet it must be true).

Still, difficulties aside, here's

Harry Potter, the Valerians, and the Prisoner of Azkaban

Chapter Six: Hogwarts Electives

The Valerians reunite with their collaborators, and the King and Queen hold court with the Headmaster. The teens begin their electives, and a student ends up bleeding.


'I'm not comfortable leaving him alone,' Yoko told Fallen as they ascended the stairs with the Gryffindors.

They were alone, if one could call it that, with Tarana and Arcana slipping off to speak with the Headmaster before meeting them at the Tower.

Fallen shrugged, unconcerned. 'So don't. I'll go speak with Severus, it shouldn't take long, given how often we've seen one another. Wilhelma isn't here any longer and McGonagall has always been Tarana's pet project.'

Yoko rubbed his shoulder against Fallen's side in appreciation.

XX

It didn't take long for the children to settle into bed, given the tension and excitement of the last few hours - both good and bad - so it wasn't long at all before Fallen was slipping out of the Gryffindor Common Room and down the massive staircase.

He knew he would find Severus in the dungeons, as it was where any room he had any real interest in was located.

The potions master was waiting for him, lounging in an armchair by his fireplace in his personal sitting room, a glass of what was likely bourbon or scotch on the small table beside him, and a magazine on his lap.

Anyone who thought they knew the professor would assume it to be a potions or apothecary magazine.

Anyone who truly knew the man would know without seeing the swiftly moving pictures that it would be the newest edition of the Quidditch Times, one of the most popular magazines about the sport, though the Daily Prophet had, taking a page out of muggle newspapers no doubt, been trying to edge in on that scene by adding a 'sports' page to their paper.

Like any other new development in the wizarding community, it was receiving mixed reviews.

"Fallen."

"Evening, Severus," Fallen greeted, stretching out on the plush rug before the fireplace, reserved almost exclusively for the 'wolf, regardless of what home Severus was currently occupying. "Ready for another school year?"

"Preferably a less exciting one," Severus drawled. "I don't expect we'll get it, given the mongrel that escaped from Azkaban over the summer."

Fallen's lip curled, amused.

"How is Draco handling his recent summer trauma?"

"You mean how is Draco handling one of his friends dropping out of the sky a bleeding wreck?" Fallen asked drily. "How he's handling Yoko's second near-death experience in the last six months?"

"And the idiocy that occurred on the train this evening. The boys were not the only ones adversely affected by the search."

Fallen tilted his head. "He's struggling, though he won't admit it. He heard his mother."

Severus paused in the act of bringing his glass to his lips. "All the things he's seen…." He sighed, shaking his head. "We'll need to keep a close eye on him."

Fallen hummed. "On all of them," he agreed. "There's only so much trauma we can heap on the children before they break."

XX

Fallen climbed the stairs to the boys' dormitories tiredly.

Due to size constraints, Tarana and Fallen didn't share space with their charges in the dormitories. With a panther the size of a foal and a wolf not much smaller, there was simply no space for them in the dorms with seven beds and associated trunks.

Yoko, who was quite a bit smaller than they were, and used to cramped space, often slept with Blaise in his bed with him, at least at the beginning of the year.

'Yoko.'

Yoko poked his head over Blaise's body, the teen twitching as the fox moved.

The 'wolf slipped beside the bed as Yoko dropped from the bed, nudging his hand until it was free from the tight grip it had on the blankets, dragging it over the side of the bed.

Blaise woke, bleary-eyed, and stared at the red eyes so close to his own for a moment.

'Rest,' Fallen told him. 'Yoko has business to attend to. I'll remain with you until he returns.'

Fallen slipped to the floor beside the bed, and Blaise's hand shot out to catch his fur so as not to lose 'sight' of him. Muscle twitched beneath his fur and flesh but the direwolf didn't shift away from his touch.

Yoko rubbed his neck along Fallen's own, careful to avoid the hand buried in the fur at the base. 'Thank you, Fallen.'

'I know you love him, Yoko,' Fallen told him, tilting his head to momentarily trap the fox. 'But you can't spend your days surrounded by him and his trauma if you're going to work on healing yours. Go. See the half-giant.'

Yoko purred before darting out of the Tower.

XX

"Yoko!" Hagrid boomed as he opened the door for the fox, smiling brightly.

"Hagrid," Yoko said cheerfully, as fond of the half-giant as the groundskeeper was of him. "You look good."

Hagrid's black eyes, far warmer than those of Severus, trailed over the fox in search of evidence of the attack the staff had heard about.

Yoko recognized the once over for what it was. "I'm fine," he assured Hagrid. "The Trance left no sign of the assault."

There was a great, booming bark from within the cabin Hagrid lived in, on the border of the Forbidden Forest, nearly a mile from the front doors of the castle.

Yoko widened his stance, bracing himself, and darted back down the short staircase, the massive dog, a boarhound that was as much a gentle giant as his master, following after him.

Yoko had taken great pleasure in turning the larger dog into a giant pretzel, once, and that pleasure hadn't faded.

It, more than anything else, reassured Hagrid that Yoko was just fine, though Hagrid, though kind, couldn't have known that the remaining damage done to Yoko was in the Assassin's head, not on his physical body.

Yoko bounced back to Hagrid while Fang tried to figure out where his paws had suddenly disappeared to.

"I did want to congratulate you, Hagrid, on getting recognized for your talent."

Hagrid grinned brightly.

"However," Yoko gave him a cool glance. "What the bloody hell were you thinking when you sent for those books?"

Hagrid's brow furrowed. "I thought they were funny," he said, sounding rather lost.

Yoko shook his head. "Hagrid, that book entertained me, but only in that it was Desmond that took the brunt of the pain when he opened it on Blaise's behalf. He likely thought it was something worth being destroyed because someone actually risked sending him something."

Hagrid's fists clenched. "Bastard," he rumbled.

"And then some," Yoko agreed grimly, before twisting his thoughts deliberately away from what Desmond had done to him specifically. "Tarana, I heard, was forced to sit on it when it tried to bite Harry. Draco's is still in a bubble."

Hagrid looked very put out that no one had thought the books as interesting as he did.

"Hagrid," Yoko sighed. "You need to remember that you're built bigger, stronger, and hardier than most others. It makes it harder to hurt you. And though the same could be said for my people, the humans are fragile and need to be handled as such."

Hagrid looked upset. "I hadn't thought 'o tha'," he admitted.

Yoko tilted his head. "If you need help or advice, Fallen and I are always willing."

Hagrid brightened. "Glad ya said tha'," he said cheerfully. "Wanna show ya wha' I got planned fer Blaise's class."

Dread built in Yoko, but he obediently trailed after the half-giant as he disappeared around the edge of the Forbidden Forest, where, a little ways in, a corral stood.

The corral wasn't new, though the students didn't often see it, half-hidden as it was by a Forest that had a rather negative and terrifying reputation, and by the fact that to get to it you needed to go by Hagrid's cabin.

Hagrid, as the Hogwarts gamekeeper, was responsible for the grounds and the animals on it, both mundane and magical.

Yoko had a not-so-secret love of animals that his charge shared, and, since his First Year, the fox and Gryffindor could occasionally be found down at the cabin helping Hagrid with whatever animal it was that had trailed in, injured or lost, that week.

The corral was used to contain the larger of those animals, like the thestrals and unicorns of the Forbidden Forest, though that wasn't the creature that was currently in it.

"Hippogriffs," Yoko breathed, nimbly jumping up onto the highest of the wooden beams that made the enchanted enclosure. "Hagrid are these the Forest's?"

Hagrid hummed an affirmative. "Buckbeak here agreed to help me out a bit. Favor fer helpin' with somethin' 'r other."

"They're beautiful," Yoko told him, ducking his head low where he was balanced on the beam as one of the hippogriffs, a stormy grey one that reminded the Assassin of Archimedes, came over and stretched its neck out, wings fluttering.

Hippogriffs were, as with the Valerians themselves, beautifully dangerous. Half eagle, half horse, the front legs of the creature ended in massive talons, with a vicious beak attached to the head of the magnified version of the bird of prey. The feathers transitioned neatly to a coat of the same color, where the tail and back legs were the hindquarters of a horse.

It didn't surprise him at all when the approaching hippogriff nearly immediately bowed its head in return.

Yoko had practically bathed in Fallen's scent over the last few weeks, and the General had a reputation among the magical creatures of the Wizarding World as someone to be both wary and respectful of and he will do the same in return.

'Well met, Heart of the General,' the hippogriff greeted.

Yoko laughed, delighted.

As with most beings of true magic, like the dragons and griffins, hippogriffs were, with age and contact with others who spoke, verbally or otherwise, able to speak telepathically. It was rudimentary in comparison to what the Valerians were used to, the connection full of static and strange clacking noises (like that of a beak if Yoko thought about it actually).

It was a very rare talent, however, with only, maybe, twenty or thirty creatures worldwide able to do so.

(And this very much did not have anything to do with the creatures having serious contact with humans, contact that stretched from being killed simply for existing or being found foolish, naïve, stupid, etc.…. That would imply that humans could be any of those things.)

"Hyer Buckbeak," Yoko greeted in return, grinning wide. "A pleasure to meet you, though I'm surprised none of us have seen or interacted with you in the past. Are you new to the Forest Herd?"

'I was hatched here,' Buckbeak informed the fox. 'We have taken great pains to avoid your kind, hunter.'

"I am sorry you felt the need, Hyer," Yoko told him. "We'll try and avoid the hippogriff nesting grounds. It was wonderful to meet you at last, however."

Buckbeak ducked his massive head and turned back to the herd behind him.

"Hyer?"

"It's a sign of respect for an Elder, particularly one with the ability to telepathically speak," Yoko turned to Hagrid with a frown. "You plan for this to be which lesson for the Third Years?" he asked suspiciously.

"Tomorrow's," Hagrid told him, still grinning. "Thought o' startin' wit' somethin' cool."

"Hagrid, they're teenagers. Hippogriffs are both proud and dangerous. I really don't think this is the right lesson for Third Years, particularly the first class of the year. Someone will get hurt."

Hagrid's smile drooped. "I, er, I guess I hadn' though' o' that." He sighed, looking at the hippogriffs. "I don' have anythin' else t' teach 'em."

"You don't need to start the lesson with a live demonstration, Hagrid," Yoko told him. "You can start with the basics. You are one of the most respecting people I've ever dealt with. Teach them to respect the animals of the world. To see even the most dangerous as something beautiful." Yoko eyed the talons of the nearest hippogriff, a pale grey that was nearly white. "But to treat them with caution because at the end of the day they are dangerous."

Hagrid smiled at the fox, patting him on the back.

Yoko frowned, but jumped off the fence and darted after the half-giant as he headed back toward his cabin.

He had the disturbing feeling that everything he'd just said to Hagrid had gone in one ear and out the other.

XX

While Yoko and Fallen were connecting with their collaborators/friends, Arcana and Tarana were heading up to Albus Dumbledore's office, escorted, if one could call it that, by Ivory.

Albus stood as the trio walked through the door.

"Welcome back to Hogwarts, Crown of Valeria," the Headmaster said, smiling. "It's a pleasure to actually welcome the King of Valeria back to the castle, as opposed to you being forced to sneak in under the cover of darkness." He turned his smile on the leopard behind him. "And of course, a pleasure to see you and Remus returned to England, Ivory."

Ivory, sitting by the door, yawned.

Albus' smile didn't even dim, returning to Arcana and Tarana sitting before his desk.

Arcana hummed but let the verbal blow glance off his flank. "It's good to see you as well, Headmaster," he said. "Hopefully, you haven't any more secrets hidden within the walls of the castle that could shake up the school year. I admit to hoping, for once, for a rather peaceful one."

"One could hope," Albus said, sitting and lacing his fingers together. "Hogwarts holds secrets even I can't claim to know." He glanced toward the window, brow furrowing and the nearly ever-present twinkle in his eyes dimming. "I assume you wished to speak of Lord Yoko and Heir Zabini's attack?"

Tarana's eyes narrowed. To call what had happened to Blaise and Yoko an 'attack' was rather understating what had actually happened.

"In part," Arcana told him without batting an eye. "I assume you'll be granting Yoko a semblance of leeway when it comes to his behavior toward the students, seeing as how you took it upon yourselves to contact a Mind Healer on the boy's behalf."

"Of course," Albus said gravely. "We understand that they'll both need time to overcome what they've been through and steps are being taken to ensure that there are no serious injuries on both sides. We hope that you'll let us know if there's any more we can do for you and yours during this time."

"That wasn't what was asked, Albus," Tarana told him coolly. "There are, approximately a thousand students at Hogwarts and the hallways are rather tightly packed. There are sleepless nights ahead for both Yoko and Blaise. Spilled blood and injuries are inevitable."

"We are here to forestall any problems that may amass from that spilled blood, Albus," Arcana said, sharp amber eyes watching Albus.

The Headmaster eyed the royal couple seriously. "You understand that the safety of my students and staff are my utmost priority," he gestured toward the window, referencing the dementors that stood outside his proverbial walls. "I can't promise full immunity to Yoko for an event that hasn't yet happened, because I do not yet know the severity or circumstances surrounding it."

Arcana glanced warningly at Tarana, but the panther was watching the Headmaster with half-lidded eyes.

"And a promise you can keep?" she asked evenly.

"That each incident will be handled individually, and the Crown will be present for any and all discussions regarding Lord Yoko and potential punishments, just as you have for the past two years."

Arcana nodded, for it was pretty much what he'd expected to get.

"Was there anything else?" Albus asked, though he knew there to be, at the very least, one other.

"How aware are they keeping you into the investigation regarding the escape of Sirius Black?" Arcana asked bluntly. "Specifically, his whereabouts."

Albus glanced past them at the, supposedly, forgotten Ivory. "I am being looped in, given that his target is on school grounds," he admitted, looking back at the Crown when Ivory did little more than stare back lazily. "Unfortunately, there isn't much I can share."

Arcana's eyes narrowed in warning, but Albus was quick to continue.

"Not," he assured him, "because I don't wish to, Your Majesty, but simply because there is very little to share, as I'm sure you're already aware due to your stay with the Weasley family."

"Arthur is hardly as connected as you, Albus," Arcana said dismissively. "Give me the details again regardless of whether I may or may not have heard them already."

Albus nodded. "According to the guards of Azkaban," he glanced toward the window again, "Sirius was heard mumbling in his sleep that 'he' was at Hogwarts. Given his prior alliance, the assumption was made that he was referring to Harry, likely for vengeance."

"Sirius would've sooner kissed a dragon than consort with Voldemort," Ivory injected coldly. "Especially if it ended with the death of the only person who's, even now, been universally kind to 'im despite his last name."

Albus adopted a sad expression, not unlike a disappointed grandfather. "I admit that I had a difficult time believing that Sirius was guilty of betraying the Potters as well, but when they were attacked at home beneath the Fidelus Charm, the evidence had been rather…overwhelming."

"I agree with Ivory," Arcana told him. "I don't see Sirius having betrayed the Potters."

"What other reason could there have been to bring Peter and Sirius to duel?" Albus asked. "Especially as I was there when James decided to use Sirius as their Secret Keeper."

Tarana blinked, narrowing her eyes on the Headmaster. "You were there when they cast the spell?"

Albus shook his head. "No," he told her. "I had offered, but Lily insisted on doing it herself. I was given the address after the fact."

"Hate t' be the bearer of more bad news, but there's no way that Peter would've had the balls t' confront Sirius, let alone challenge 'im," Ivory added. "At his heart, he was a cowardly rat that relied on bigger and better boys t' protect 'im."

Tarana closed her eyes. "But the fact remains that Peter is dead," she said. "That doesn't exactly leave us with a great deal of other logical options. There obviously was a fight between the two, though we can't possibly know what happened that night without speaking to the only survivor of the duel."

She glanced sharply at Arcana because she couldn't see her brother without being obvious about it. 'Do not,' she said severely, 'let on that there is a divide among us as to Sirius' guilt or innocence. He will use it if given the chance to crack us in half.'

Arcana's lip curled. 'Another split between our people will happen over my dead body,' he growled quietly. "Where was he last sighted?"

"In Surrey, actually," Albus told them. "Two days after you all left the county, he was spotted in the general area of the Dursley's home."

Tarana blinked. "That was weeks ago," she glanced over her shoulder grimly at Ivory, who nodded.

'Sirius has been in Azkaban f'r twelve years. The Madness has t' be stifling by now. He can't possibly be in his right mind and Ebony is aware that it can only get worse. He'll search out the only cure, temporary though it is, and given the knowledge Ebony has of this castle, the staff isn't going to see him coming.' The leopard informed them.

Albus, almost as though he'd heard him, though it honestly wasn't possible, asked, "Will the dementors be enough to prevent Ebony and Sirius from getting on the grounds?"

"If either of them gets onto the school grounds, it is to be considered a Valerian matter before a Ministry one," Tarana told him.

"We wouldn't ask your staff to stand idly by while they're attacked by Sirius, and to defend themselves only in that possibility, to contain not to injure or kill if at all possible," Arcana added.

Albus eyed the Crown wearily. "And Ebony?"

"Run," Ivory said bluntly.

XX

The common room in Gryffindor Tower was rather spacious, in so long as the entire House wasn't in it at once, particularly if you added four larger-than-natural animals to the mix.

Decorated in tasteful red, gold, and dark wood, it was covered in multiple tables, bookshelves, several armchairs by the fireplace, and two couches, one of which had, unofficially, been Tarana's resting place for the last two years (or the equivalent, given that she had only been there a few months at the end of the last school year).

One of the armchairs would, occasionally, be used by Fallen, especially at the beginning and the end of the school year, but, for the most part, he stretched out before the fire with Yoko.

Without the children in the common room, there was plenty of space for the Valerians, but it would likely be a greater problem with the usual crowd, particularly once curfew went into effect around nine (ten for the higher Years).

When Tarana and Arcana returned to the common room after they met with Dumbledore, there was no one in it, not even Fallen or Yoko.

Tarana left Arcana in the common room and slipped up to the Third Year dorm, where she found Fallen lying by Blaise's bed, the teen's hand was buried in the 'wolf's fur. 'Everything alright?'

'Preventive measure,' Fallen told her, not bothering to raise his head. 'Yoko was concerned for a nightmare while he wasn't here. I told him I would make sure it didn't happen while he was following the orders of the Crown.'

Tarana didn't so much as flinch.

They all did things they weren't particularly comfortable with, both before and after the fall of Valeria, the greatest of which had been to separate, even if at the time they couldn't have known that Dark had likewise escaped Valeria's destruction.

'Fallen,' she murmured, leaning a touch heavier against the doorframe. 'How bad is this going to be for him?'

Fallen did raise his head this time, looking her over wearily.

He hid it well, the exhaustion that had come from spending most nights awake with Yoko and his nightmares, but it was beginning to bleed through his edges.

'Bad,' he said bluntly. 'Recovery is always different, but he bounces back so quickly that it could be anywhere from four to eight months before he's mentally prepared to take on the tasks he used to. I haven't managed to pinpoint where his triggers are for this one yet, and Blaise's presence in the equation isn't making it any easier. He's never cared about someone to the extent that he does Blaise,' neither mentioned the obvious exception, 'and that could, triggers aside, even extend the amount of time it takes him to recover from it.' The 'wolf lay his head back down and sighed. 'He managed to hold himself together on the train, though, so I'll hold to my eight months estimation, regardless of how bad he's going to be between now and then.'

Tarana was thankful that Fallen was no longer watching because she was remembering Yoko's brief loss of control on the train.

If the fox was hiding even that from the one creature in all the worlds that he had trusted to help him stay centered and recover, it might be longer than eight months before the Assassin was ready to stand with the Collective again.

XX

When Yoko returned to the Tower, he swept past the Crown in the common room and headed straight for the stairs.

Arcana got to his paws when neither he nor Fallen returned after several minutes.

"Do not," Tarana warned him without lifting her head off the arm of the couch or even opening her eyes.

"I need a report, Tarana," Arcana countered, pausing at the base of the stairs to look back at her.

"And what good will it do you?" she asked him. "What would you plan to do with the information they can't possibly have yet?"

"Tarana-"

"There are children up there, Arcana, who witnessed the aftermath of their friends dropping, bleeding and half-dead, into a muggle park, miles away from anyone else who could possibly help them. They were forced to triage those friends with next to no help from those that know better, because of the flesh we currently wear. Blaise was starved by someone who has beaten and abused him for nearly a decade and rescued his guardian from a session of torture unlike anything I've seen accomplished by wizards in the last three centuries," Arcana flinched under her burning blue eyes. "Those children, Arcana, have been our priority, over even the skirmishes we've had against Dark and you, and we are certainly not going to start prioritizing a search for an adult wizard and our most dangerous strategist over the safety and well-being of our underage charges now."

The panther shook her head and put her head back down. "Besides, odds aren't in our favor. If anyone is going to find Sirius, it certainly isn't going to be a Valerian. Ebony has been out-thinking Ivory and I for our entire lives."

Arcana shook his head and stepped back toward the floor beside Tarana's couch. Neither was certain that it would hold the weight of the two massive cats and hadn't been willing to risk it yet. "Honestly, I was certain that it was why Albus hired the 'wolf in the first place," he sighed. "Even from what little I'd seen of them; Sirius was an anchor for him. It stood to reason that he would likely be one of the best chances as trying to catch him here at Hogwarts."

Tarana tensed. "Don't call him that here again," she warned him.

Arcana's lip curled. "Mortal foolishness," he grumbled, frustration in every line. "They manage to work with us no problems but can't be bothered to drag their heads out of their asses about their own 'mutations'-"

Tarana's lips curled and she fell asleep to the familiar rant of her hicari.

XX

Draco had, to the knowledge of most of Gryffindor, had no contact with the House of Slytherin over the last two years of their schooling.

This was incorrect.

The fact that his cousin was a member of the House, and his godfather, who he was unquestionably close with, was the Head of it aside, Draco did make trips to the Slytherin common room in the dungeons far more frequently than most would have given him credit for.

Though there were select members of the House that knew Draco came down to visit, they wisely kept their mouths shut on the topic until they could use it to their benefit.

It was the Slytherin Way.

There was nothing secret about the fact that Draco, the only Malfoy to ever be Sorted into Gryffindor (at least as far as anyone else could tell), was currently sitting across from Slytherin's current golden boy, Theodore Nott at the Great Hall's Slytherin table, filling a plate with bacon and toast as though he sat there every morning.

Even the Slytherins were staring at him.

"How was your summer?" he asked Theo.

Theo blinked at him once, gave a discrete glance to those around them, mentally shrugged, and went back to filling his bowl with porridge. "Well enough," he said evenly, swirling the spoon through it. "Heard a rather…interesting rumor."

Draco blinked innocently at him over his toast. "Really?"

Theo hummed, hiding his smile with his spoon. "Someone mentioned that you had spent a significant part of the summer with muggles."

Draco tilted his head, weighing his answer.

Katelyn hadn't been in England when his father had agreed to let him go to Surrey and stay with Harry and Tarana, so that rumor couldn't have flown out of Slytherin, it likely came off the train or out of Diagon Alley over the summer. He'd put his odds on the original rumor having been of something else entirely and his stay with muggles, while true, had been guessed at.

"Do I look like someone who would spend serious time with muggles?" he asked, curling a lip.

Theo shrugged and sipped from his goblet. "You've gained some rather strange sympathies over the last few years. I can't be sure of anything you used to care for still being something you do." He said.

"Tarana called Fallen when Yoko and Blaise arrived in Surrey, some artifact or another that they've been toying with to stretch the limits of their telepathy to avoid incidents like what happened summer before last. My father used a portkey of an, ah, delicate, nature to get us there to help."

Theo hummed and accepted the answer.

Draco risked a sharp glance down the table where his cousin was, surrounded by several girls of various ages, was scowling into her own breakfast bowl. "What about that other problem you were telling me about? Any new rumors about that?"

Theo's smile was thin. "It'll get worse with every influx of First Years," he predicted.

Draco sneered.

His cousin had, the year before, suddenly become a feminist or something, and was operating under some strange assumption that, because the Families only had male heirs, the women of the families weren't being given their dues. She had begun pushing those assumptions on the other girls in Slytherin, with mixed results depending on the intelligence and age of those she was talking to.

"I'd thought as much," he admitted.

Theo gave him a mirthless smile before nodding toward the end of the Head Table. "Thoughts on the half breed's promotion?"

Draco's lip curled, if possible, even more, and it wasn't part of an act he put up for the Slytherins around him.

"Blaise is certainly fond of him and I suppose he has his merits, few as they are," Draco told him, "but I certainly wouldn't trust the oaf with teaching. He's got the absolute loosest definition of the word 'safe', make sure you pass that along to anyone who foolishly thought they'd keep a competent professor in this bloody castle."

Theo snickered.

XX

'That was rather clever of you,' Fallen told his charge as Draco joined the rest of his friends in heading up to the Tower for their morning schoolbooks and supplies. 'Securing an inside look into Slytherin. Theodore has little love for your cousin and will report anything he deems foolish back to you so you can deal with it.'

"I did more than that," Draco admitted, running a slightly shaking hand through the fur between Fallen's ears. "Theo's like a dragon. He hoards gossip. If there's anything that happens in this school, Theo will, inevitably, hear about it."

Fallen's eyes narrowed and he gave his charge a side-eye. 'It is seriously unwise, Draco, for you to try and go after Black.'

Draco scowled at him. "Harry's my best friend," he told him. "If you all are going to use all your considerable skill and informants to protect him from a madman and this Shade of yours, then the least I can do is try to help find them." He rolled his eyes. "It's not like I plan to fight him or anything. I know I'm no match for my cousin."

Sirius Black was so rarely remembered as being Narcissa's cousin that it took Fallen a moment to realize that Draco wasn't referring to Katelyn but to his second cousin.

'I'm honestly surprised that you even remember you're related to him,' the red wolf said, shaking his head.

"On good days Mother blames her bad ones on Sirius," Draco said, glancing down at his guardian.

Fallen went, and stayed, silent.

XX

Hogwarts Year Three was where the second major change - the first being the Sorting - occurred in the lives of the students that attended.

Beginning in Year Three, the students were allowed to begin taking courses that weren't part of the core curriculum, electives, if one would.

For this reason, the Third Years, after gathering the appropriate materials, separated for the first time since they started school there, each heading off to where their first classes of the day were going.

For Ron, Neville, Blaise, and their Valerians, that was Divination.

"So where is this place?" Ron asked after several minutes.

"It's in one of the Towers," Yoko told him, having mapped out the new layout for the school. (Not that it changed much from year to year. If there was one thing the Wizarding World was good at it was resisting serious change.) "Not a short trek either, if I remember right. I think she plans it this way, your professor, because it's about as far from the rest of the school as one can get without actually leaving the school."

Ron groaned quietly.

Sure enough, after a trek long enough that, if they hadn't had their guide, they'd have gotten lost, they arrived at the classroom for Divination.

Arcana growled quietly.

"Could she be any more out of the way?" he asked, staring at the ladder that led up to the tower.

If he absolutely needed to, Yoko could probably have climbed the ladder, though Arcana was simply too large and heavy to do so, but even from the base of it, they could smell the perfume that permeated the room above them, which made the fox wonder if he really wanted to be up there, surrounded by the cloying scent of it.

He glanced at Blaise.

'Are you going to be alright?' he asked.

Blaise swallowed nervously, eyeing the ladder.

Neville put a hand, briefly, on Blaise's arm before he followed Ron up the ladder.

"There's only one way up to the classroom," Arcana murmured quietly. "Anyone who wants to get in will need to go by Yoko and me. You'll be safe, I swear it."

Blaise nodded slowly, exhaling shakily before he headed up after his two friends.

XX

The room wasn't much of a classroom, appearing more like a decorated attic or an old-fashioned tea shop, with twenty or more small, circular tables stuffed inside it with each surrounded by chintz armchairs and fat little poufs instead of stools or chairs.

It was dimly lit with crimson light, as the windows and lamps (of which there were many, surprising considering there was so little space) were all draped in red curtains or scarves.

The perfume that the Valerians had smelled below, was so potent at the source that the eyes of the teens watered.

Ron led Blaise and Neville to a table toward the back.

"Where is she?" he muttered as they all settled, hopefully, out of immediate view of their professor and, thus, less likely to be called on.

"Welcome," a soft, misty voice said, startling the students. "How nice to see you in the physical world at last."

Trelawney was extremely thin, almost unhealthily so, draped, as her décor was, in beads, chains, and a large, spangled shawl. Combined with her large glasses, she looked like a giant insect.

"Welcome to Divination," Trelawney said, settling herself into a winged armchair that wouldn't have looked at all out of place in Blaise's mother's study - the one she broke out, he realized now, years later, and the experience of having sat in it, when she wanted to make her guests feel uncomfortable. "My name is Professor Trelawney. You may not have seen me before. I find that descending too often into the hustle and bustle of the main school clouds my Inner Eye."

"Is that a thing?" Blaise asked Yoko, sure that the fox and tiger were listening if only to make sure that nothing happened to Ron or Blaise while they were surrounded by children who didn't know what had happened to Blaise and Yoko over the summer.

'Sometimes,' Yoko admitted. 'I'm not an expert on the subject, you'll actually get more information out of Ivory, I'd imagine, but such clouding would likely only happen if you were trying to see something specific. I can't imagine why you'd want to have a vision of anything you hormone riddled teenagers would be up to during a time where the students outnumber the staff.'

Blaise flushed at the dry tone of his guardian.

Oblivious to Yoko's odd skepticism, Trelawney continued her introduction, rearranging her shawl. "So, you have chosen to study Divination, the most difficult of all magical arts. I must warn you," her eyes, magnified by the lenses of her glasses, drifted dreamily over the assembled students. If she was going for 'mysterious', she failed, instead, falling a little closer to 'drunken'.

The image didn't make Blaise any more comfortable to be up there, surrounded by the overbearing heat from the fireplace – with little ventilation – and the strange, sickly sweet, aroma that was coming from the teapot in the fireplace made the teen – and Neville if the wary look he kept throwing it meant anything – certain she wasn't brewing tea.

"I must warn you at the outset that if you do not have the Sight, there is very little I will be able to teach you. Books can take you only so far in this field."

Ron shot a sly glance at Hermione, which startled Blaise because he suddenly couldn't remember when she'd gotten there.

Hermione ignored the redhead, though she did look rather shocked that books weren't going to help her, considering the weight she usually put on them in her never-ending search for knowledge.

"Many witches and wizards, talented though they are in the area of loud bangs and smells and sudden disappearings, are yet unable to penetrate the veiled mysteries of the future," the professor went on, eyes trailing over the table the four Gryffindors sat in.

Blaise frowned when her eyes lingered on a spot between him and Ron before they moved on.

For a second, it had seemed as though she'd expected to see someone else there, either instead of one of the two Gryffindors or in addition to the four Gryffindors.

"The Sight is Gifted to few," Like a shot, Trelawney's gaze drifted back the way it came, landing on Neville who straightened nervously. "You, boy," she said in what, from any other professor, would have been a sharp tone. "Is your grandmother well?"

Neville glanced at Blaise, frowning. "I think so," the brunette said slowly, though he wasn't entirely sure.

Trelawney's next words didn't reassure him.

"I wouldn't be so sure if I were you, dear," she said, shifting in such a way that the firelight she was seated near sent many of her jewels gleaming.

Neville clenched a fist on the table.

His grandmother had, after all, spent the last few days in the unusual company of Lucius Malfoy and his solicitor, Solomon Burrows. She was, in the same vein, making a powerful enemy of one of the Lords, temporary though it was, of the Ancient and Noble Houses.

It was entirely possible that she wasn't okay.

Blaise put a hand on his forearm, relaxing the fist with his touch. "Yoko says we can always send her an owl and check on her, but if half the rumors Tarana says about Augusta Longbottom are true, she'd be more likely to show up with the still-beating heart of whoever tried to hurt her, demanding recompense from anyone who had backed the attack."

Neville grimaced because he'd been on the receiving end of his grandmother's sharp tongue more often than likely anyone else alive – except his father, but that was another vein and he wasn't entirely sure that counted, considering – and it wasn't all that farfetched to imagine the scene the fox painted, second hand though the vision might be.

He managed a half-hearted smile for his friend, thankful for the reassurance all the same.

"Thank you for the warning, Professor," Neville said, weakly.

Hermione glanced between the professor and their group's 'newest' addition, frowning.

Trelawney blinked at Neville before her eyes returned to their slow sweep of the assembled students.

"We will be covering the basics of Divination this year," she told them. "The first term will be devoted to reading the tea leaves. Next term we shall progress to palmistry." Her gaze stuttered again, this time on Parvati Patil. "By the way, my dear, beware a red-haired man."

Parvati, who was seated just before Ron, shot him a startled look and edged her seat away from him.

Ron barely paid it any mind.

"In the second term, we shall progress to the crystal ball – if we have finished fire omens, that is. Unfortunately, classes will be disrupted in February by a nasty bout of the flu. I, myself, will lose my voice. And around Easter, one of our number will leave us forever."

Blaise's entire being started to shut down.

'Peace, Blaise,' Arcana rumbled to the teen. 'I doubt any of us or you are going to die at Easter. There are too many ways that can be interpreted. Settle down before Yoko starts feeding vines through the windows and hangs Trelawney upside down by her ankles. There are some things children simply have no need to see.'

Perhaps it was the King's reassurance, or perhaps it was the unexpected humor from the tiger, but the panic that had begun to engulf Blaise, the millions of 'what ifs' faded and he choked on a startled laugh instead.

Trelawney's gaze was on him, but she hadn't stopped speaking, instructing the class on their first attempt at reading tea leaves.

Slowly, as though it cost her a great deal to do it, Trelawney pulled her gaze from Blaise to look at Neville beside him. "And dear, after you've broken your first cup, would you be so kind as to select one of the blue patterned ones? I'm rather attached to the pink."

The warning that she'd given made Neville careful, but he was jostled as he turned back toward the table, carrying more cups than he should have been, and, sure enough, one of the pink china cups fell to the floor and shattered.

Behind him, someone scoffed.

"Trust Longbottom to break it even after he's warned he's gonna do it," someone hissed unkindly.

Neville's neck got red and he hurried back to the table, ducking his head and narrowly avoiding Trelawney as she approached with a dustpan and brush. "One of the blue ones then, dear," she said to his retreating form.

Neville hunched his shoulders toward his ears.

Ron, a little more observant than most people gave him credit for, especially given how badly the last two years had gone, none too gently repeated the nudge that had forced Neville to drop his cup to the big-mouthed idiot. "Sorry," he grunted, heading toward the table. "Didn't see you there."

"Ron," Hermione hissed, glancing at Trelawney as though waiting for the professor to suddenly announce lost points.

No such thing happened.

XX

After following the instructions given to them by Trelawney, the four Gryffindors, after a brief discussion, swapped cups to the right as opposed to the pairs that Trelawney had instructed.

Ron, in his defense, tried for a full thirty seconds to take the lesson seriously, but it was hard when the perfumed air made him sleepy and stupid feeling, but Neville and Hermione gave it more than a token effort.

All too soon, however, Ron's hissed – and increasingly strange – predictions were keeping Blaise and Neville entertained, even as Blaise tried to get a real reading on Ron's cup, turning it this way and that and practically gluing his nose to Unfogging the Future.

"Are you seriously trying to read it?" Ron asked, frowning at Blaise.

Blaise looked up at him through his lashes. "Considering how often this school has tried to kill us, I figured any advanced warning can really only help us."

As though she heard him, Trelawney spun in their direction.

"Let me see that, my dear," she said, startling Ron and causing Neville to find Hermione's cup far more interesting all of a sudden. The professor snatched Blaise's teacup from Ron's lax grasp, the redhead trying to clench it tighter in his fist belatedly.

Blaise's expression went very blank and he stared at a spot over Trelawney's shoulder as she stared into the cup, rotating it counterclockwise.

"The falcon," she said at last, "you have a deadly enemy."

Hermione snorted, an inelegant sound that had never, not once in the last two years, ever graced the presence of a professor.

Trelawney, and most of the class, stared at her.

"Of course, he does," Hermione said. "He was attacked over the summer, everyone knows that."

Blaise grimaced.

They would now. He thought glumly.

"The club," Trelawney said, turning her attention back to the cup. "An attack. Dear, dear, this is not a happy cup."

Blaise's breath came out shaky. Another attack? He thought, terrified. We haven't even recovered from the last one!

"Blaise," Neville murmured but was interrupted by Trelawney screaming.

The cup in Neville's hands cracked when he put it down too hard in response to the sharp noise.

There was no threat in the room with them, however.

'Ronald?' Arcana asked sharply.

"I don't know," Ron said, shooting to his feet, much like the rest of the class, as the professor dropped into an empty armchair behind her. "She saw something in Blaise's cup though and none of it reads as good news."

"What is it, Professor?" Dean Thomas asked.

"Child," Trelawney said, huge eyes fixated on Blaise with an eerie sort of intensity. "You have the Grim."

The teacup shattered in Blaise's grip, not that anyone would have really noticed, given that they were all focused on the clear and unmistakable sound of Arcana forcibly removing a livid Yoko from the ladder.

"Blaise," Hermione said sharply, watching the awareness fade from her friend's eyes as his breath came in sharp, stabbing bursts. "Remember, there are four Valerians here. The odds of you dying are slim."

Neville grasped Blaise's wrist loosely. "Blaise," he said firmly, squeezing his wrist to catch his attention and ground him in the present. "Of everyone, you and Yoko are the safest of us. Remember how Fallen's been circling Yoko? I seriously doubt that you or Yoko are going to be randomly attacked while you're at Hogwarts."

'And I have every intention of gutting that bitch like a Christmas turkey the moment she steps out of her fucking tower,' Yoko hissed hatefully. 'What idiot says something like that to someone recovering from a traumatic experience?!'

Blaise made a soft noise of agreement, slightly reassured, and further grounded, by the touch and words of his friends and guardian.

The same, unfortunately, couldn't be said for the rest of the class.

They eye him as they all left the tower, though, with Arcana and Yoko two seriously disapproving presences in the corridor, none of them stuck around long enough to say anything.

It was a long walk down to Transfiguration.

XX

It was the unspoken understanding that if there was a mother-hen of their group of friends, it was most likely to be the last one that everyone expected it to be.

Because of his kind nature, most expected it to be Harry.

They were wrong.

Though he had the oddest ways of showing and going about his 'mother-hen duties' – which no one was foolish enough to call in his vicinity or to his face – Draco was actually the one who was most often likely to bend himself backward to fix things (which was, of course, the reason that Fallen and Lucius were concerned for him), however, because the one that most often needed that level of comfort over the last two years was Harry, it likely hadn't occurred to anyone yet that it was not, necessarily, exclusive to the brunette (though the level likely was).

Because no one had seen this behavior manifest outside of Harry, it was rather surprising to find the blond prepared to breathe literal fire when he found out about that prediction Trelawney had made.

"I'm not saying I agree that Divination is a real magical art," Draco sneered, pushing through the doorway into Transfiguration, "but really, is she so out of touch with reality that she didn't think that maybe it was a bloody bad idea to say someone's going to die when the possib-"

"Draco," Harry interrupted, tilting his head toward Blaise, who hadn't managed to completely recover the mask he usually used around the Hogwarts hallways and was hunched slightly, dark skin still paler than Harry felt was healthy.

Draco grit his teeth.

"I agree," Hermione said, struggling to pull her bag, stuffed with more books than could possibly be used for their morning classes, higher onto her shoulder. "I've read through the book already, of course, and I just can't make sense of a lot of it. It doesn't seem like a very accurate branch of magic."

Hermione and Draco were, by and far, the two brightest members of their group of friends, so it wasn't abnormal for the two of them to get lost in tangents that the rest of them couldn't follow.

Despite Draco's – and the Valerians', though they were far less vocal, and in some cases less subtle – black cloud, it wasn't him that made McGonagall pause her lesson on Animagi, witches and wizards that could transform, at will, into animals.

It was the fact that she, herself, didn't get much of a reaction when she shifted from her human skin to her cat one and back, from anyone in the class.

"Really," she said, looking around. "What has gotten into you all? Not that it matters, but that's the first time my transformation's not gotten applause from a class."

All eyes shifted - uneasily under the combined glare of the Valerians - in the vicinity of the Gryffindors under their charge.

"Professor Trelawney-"

"Ah," McGonagall interrupted, raising a hand. "Say no more, Ms. Granger. Which of you will be dying this year?"

The class stared at her.

Yoko growled quietly. "This has happened before, I take it."

McGonagall's lip twitched, as though she was fighting a scowl. "Yearly," she said, a touch more sharply than any had ever heard her when speaking of another professor. "One student a year since she's arrived. None," she said pointedly, "have died. Seeing death omens is her favorite way of greeting the new class."

Tarana nodded slowly, absorbing the information.

The Queen glanced at Yoko, who was still quivering with the suppressed rage of having been unable to inform Sibyll Trelawney how bad of an idea it was to inform a student struggling with the very real possibility that he could die, that she was seeing death omens as part of any semblance of a joke.

"Which one of you is it?" McGonagall asked - a useless question given the fact that Yoko could barely sit still.

Blaise ducked his head, which was answer enough.

The professor nodded. "Divination is one of the most imprecise branches of magic, Mr. Zabini," she told him. "I shall not conceal from you that I have very little patience with it. Also, True Seers are, as I'm sure your guardian has informed you, very rare."

"One in three hundred, last we checked," Fallen pointed out. "Though it has been a while since any of us ran those numbers."

McGonagall tilted her head, acknowledging his input though she didn't take her eyes off Blaise. "That said, Mr. Zabini, you look to be in rather excellent health to me, so you will excuse me if I don't let you off homework for the immediate future. If that changes, I assure you, you need not hand it in."

Blaise gave her a weak smile, answered by the warmth in the professor's normally stern gaze, though the rest of her expression changed very little.

Draco exhaled, slow and forceful, some of the anger leaving his tense form. "I don't doubt for a second that Yoko is going to leave that there," he told Fallen.

Fallen's tail swayed softly, red eyes watching the Assassin. 'That,' the wolf said, smirking, 'is because you have met him.'

XX

Sure enough, Yoko didn't move from his place on the edge of the table until the last of the students had left the classroom after the bell rang.

Tarana paused in the doorway, one paw raised, and looked back at the fox.

Yoko shook his head and the panther nodded, disappearing after the teens. 'Be swift, Yoko,' she told him. 'Your charge is high-strung enough for today, I imagine.'

Yoko grit his teeth, because he wouldn't have been high strung if it weren't for the sheer ineptitude of Dumbledore's hired help.

"What can I do for you?" Minerva asked, flicking her wand to set the room back to rights.

"Don't make me regret this," Yoko told her sharply. "You are aware of what he and I went through, so you better understand that I am fighting more than one instinct to go up there and ensure that she never wakes again."

Minerva's fist tightened on her wand. "I will not hurt another member of this staff, Lord Yoko," she said, putting firm emphasis on the title, warning him that she would distance herself if necessary.

"You inform her, Minerva, that if she has any more of these 'predictions' of hers that neither myself nor my charge, are to hear about them."

"Understand, Yoko, that Trelawney is not what one would call sociable."

"And you understand, in turn, Professor, that you are his Head of House and I am expecting you to uphold the duty you have to that child. I'm also giving you the courtesy of informing you that if he has another panic attack in that tower, I will bring it to the ground. Arcana is King, but he is not me."

Minerva paled, thinking of the ivy that grew on the walls of the tower. "Yoko-"

"Do we have an understanding, Minerva? You deal with this, or I will."

Minerva's lips went white she pressed them together so hard.

She couldn't even say that she wasn't looking forward to confronting Sibyll, because that was something she had been wanting to do for years.

It was the sheer fact that she didn't like to speak ill of her fellow professors – and the fact that she rarely said anything about Severus was likely the greatest of proofs to that end – that had kept her from mentioning her doubts about the supposed Seer beyond Albus.

"I will speak with her, Yoko," she told the fox, "however, I need your word that you will bring another incident to me before you do anything rash. I will take it to Albus if I can't convince her to keep those predictions to herself."

Yoko's lip curled. "I'm don't really feel all that forgiving right now, Minerva. It will all depend on how Blaise reacts to whatever scheme she tries next."

Minerva nodded, starting for the door. "I will speak to her before lunch."

Yoko followed the professor, but separated from her, trusting that the woman would deal with Trelawney while he joined the others in the Great Hall.

'And what does it say about you that you were thinking of the dozens of other children that would have surely been killed if you brought the tower down as you'd intended?'

Yoko ignored the whispered voice.

XX

Lunch was, predictably, a loud affair.

For the Third Years, this was the first year in which they were not taking classes just with their year, as the electives were, occasionally, changed by older students and, thus, they attended other electives with younger years, essentially beginners.

The fact that not all their friends had chosen the same electives, meant that they didn't all have the same classes this year and the teens wasted little time in sharing their experiences with their friends.

Despite the rather painful hiccup in Divination, for example, Blaise had rather liked the class itself and was informing Harry and a doubtful Draco of what he'd seen in Ron's cup.

The only one who wasn't content, Valerians excluded, was Ron, who was seriously concerned with the fact that Trelawney had supposedly seen the Grim, the greatest – or worst, if you thought of it that way – of wizarding death omens, in Blaise's tea leaves, and hadn't been reassured by McGonagall as most of the others had been.

'It isn't your place to ask if he's seen a massive black dog, Ronald, and even if it were, Yoko would tear your throat out for it.'

"But what if he has seen it?" Ron insisted. "Uncle Bilius saw one and he died twenty-four hours later!"

'I can't say whether that was coincidence or not,' Arcana informed him, 'but I can tell you that most sightings of the Grim are inaccurately portrayed.'

"Inaccurate!" Ron hissed.

Arcana gave him a baleful amber glare. 'Ronald,' he said slowly, keeping his temper well hidden. 'Surely you realize that Dark is a massive black canine. A canine that has never, once, thought twice about terrifying his victims before setting them on their deaths.'

Ron winced.

He might not be of Draco or Hermione's level of genius, but he wasn't an idiot.

He knew that Dark would likely have sent Arcana to kill those victims, just for the satisfaction of knowing he could.

"Sorry," he mumbled.

'Accepted,' Arcana told him. 'That said, it would be seriously unwise to ask Blaise or Yoko if they'd seen a massive black "dog" over the last few months, don't you think.'

Ron ducked his head into his dish. "Yeah, I guess so."

Arcana eyed his charge for a moment before turning his attention to the other Valerians, where Yoko has just finished informing them of Trelawney's prediction of a bloody attack.

Arcana glanced at Tarana. 'Do you think-'

The panther tilted her head thoughtfully. 'We never did get an actual answer out of him,' she pointed out.

'From whom?' Fallen pressed.

'Albus Dumbledore was, in the last months of the war, operating under some prophecy or another that he'd heard and was blind to most else,' Tarana informed them. 'I guessed, when he began to put serious effort into protecting the Potters and the Longbottoms, that those families were, in some way, connected to it and we pressed him for answers at the time, Arcana and I.'

She glanced at the King, whose expression was carefully blank.

It went unspoken that though they had pressed for answers together, by that point it was highly likely that Arcana had already been Thralled by his brother.

'I'm guessing he was about as forthcoming as he usually is,' Fallen sneered.

'In hindsight, that was a good thing,' Arcana pointed out. 'He did, however, tell us that the Seer would be protected here at Hogwarts going forward. Once Voldemort was…foiled, for lack of a better term, at Godric's Hollow, Dark lost interest in the prophecy and didn't follow through on that information.'

'But what are the odds of that Seer still being here after almost a decade without Dark or Voldemort appearing on English soil?' Yoko asked skeptically.

'My odds aren't on Trelawney,' Arcana told them. 'She made several supposed predictions, but,' he glanced up at the table. 'It doesn't sound like she's predicted anything of note yet. Minerva told us that she annually predicts the death of a student, usually in a bloody fashion, and Ron just told them that Neville's broken cup only happened because of someone else, who may have simply done it to make the prediction come true. Self-fulfilling.'

The response didn't come from the Gryffindor table.

The Great Hall wasn't large enough that Ivory, lying half beneath the Head Table, couldn't hear them unless they blocked him from the conversation entirely – which would be foolish, as Ivory was currently the only one Bonded to an adult – he simply hadn't felt the need to speak before then and he had, therefore, been mostly forgotten.

'I wouldn't rule her out, Your Majesty,' Ivory informed them. 'Some Seers just aren't always Seeing.'

The leopard's input left them all quiet as they thought of the potential ramifications of having the Seer responsible for the prophecy that amounted to the end of the last Wizarding War in the castle with their charges.

'Wonderful,' Yoko spat hatefully up at the Head Table.

Albus Dumbledore, oblivious to the idea that had just been planted in the minds of the Valerians, chatted amicably with the professors around him as he ate his stew.

XX

Although he was Bonded to the Valerian equivalent of a walking bestiary, Draco's list of 'acceptable' electives hadn't included Care of Magical Creatures the year before, something he was – with an emotion he currently refused to label as guilt – far more okay with now than he had been when they'd been choosing classes last June.

So, while Draco and Fallen were heading toward Arithmancy on the seventh floor, everyone else was heading out onto the castle grounds for their first Care of Magical Creatures lesson with Hagrid and, to the displeasure of much of Gryffindor, Slytherin.

Yoko's fears from the night before weren't entirely unfounded, as there were three of the hippogriffs tethered outside Hagrid's cabin, one of which, he was delighted to see, was Hyer Buckbeak.

Hagrid, had, however, not totally ignored Yoko's advice and, after allowing the students a few minutes to ooh and aah over the creatures, called them all back to attention.

"Now, firs' thing yeh'll want ter do is open yer books-"

"How?" Katelyn interrupted with a sneer.

Hagrid froze, glancing at Yoko nervously.

The fox tilted his head, having warned the half-giant already that there was little love lost when it came to those textbooks.

"Hasn'…hasn' anyone bin able ter open their books?" he asked, crestfallen, as he looked around the assembled students.

Yoko grimaced, half-ducking behind Tarana because there was no way someone in Slytherin wasn't going to take advantage of this weakness.

The class, ignoring the Valerians, spread out as they were with Fang by the cabin, shook their heads.

"Yeh've got ter stroke 'em," Hagrid said, sounding even more crestfallen, as though he'd been hoping that someone was going to prove Yoko's claim false. He reached for Hermione's book. "Look-"

The half-giant tore the enchanted rope that bound the book shut away, and, before the thing could open wide enough to snap at him, he stroked a large finger down the spine.

The Monster Book of Monsters shuddered and fell open, as though it hadn't attempted to violently assault anyone.

"Oooh," Katelyn scoffed. "How silly we've been. You have to stroke it." She mimicked the half-giant's gesture in the air before her. "Why didn't we guess?"

Blaise clenched a fist and grit his teeth.

Hagrid swallowed. "I thought they were funny," he murmured to his young friend.

Blaise hid his disagreement well.

"Indeed," Arcana drawled, silencing the hissing Slytherins, unsure of who the Valerian King, a new face for all of them, was speaking to. "I don't necessarily agree that they were in any way amusing, but last I checked, Ms. Malfoy, Professor Hagrid was still a teacher at Hogwarts. Perhaps we can remember that going forward?"

"Mm," Yoko added, almost cheerfully, "hate to hear how many points you might lose Slytherin from this professor."

Katelyn and the Slytherins were brought up short at the reminder, and Hagrid stared blankly at the two Valerians, the reminder that he could punish the students ridiculing him, a professor, appearing to go over his head.

'Carry on, Hagrid,' Tarana prompted him. 'I recommend a nice, healthy five points apiece for anyone who finds you unworthy of the job given to you. Arcana, Yoko, and I will try and remain out of your way so as to not undermine you going forward.'

Hagrid's fingers twitched, as though he was struggling not to nervously clench them.

Being in front of a group of judgmental teenagers wasn't, apparently, all he thought it would be.

Buckbeak stood predator still, watching the students with his unnerving, orange eyes, but his two companions shifted uneasily, one of them rearing a bit and the other stomping his hooves with either agitation or nerves.

It was a testament to why Yoko and Blaise were so fond of him, however, that he gathered himself and, planting his hands on his hips, gestured to the creatures behind him.

"Hippogriffs," he said, voice shaking a bit, but getting steadier as he spoke. "Beau'iful, aren' they?"

Hagrid spent the following fifteen minutes explaining how they lived in flocks or herds with as few as three, usually two parents and a hatchling, with the largest being recorded in the Amazon at nineteen; and were carnivorous by nature, but would eat insects and worms if nothing else was available to them.

It was readily apparent to those that were paying attention, that Hagrid wasn't uneducated when it came to the creatures he found so fascinating, and it hadn't been favoritism when Dumbledore had hired him.

Pity not everyone was paying attention.

As Hagrid was explaining that hippogriffs were considered dangerous by the Ministry and should only be raised and properly handled by those that knew what they were doing, Yoko noticed that a handful of girls weren't paying him much attention, whispering about the beautiful colors of the coats and feathers.

He slunk around the group of students.

"Now, the most importan' thing yeh gotta know 'bout hippogriffs, is they're proud," Hagrid was saying. "Easily offended, hippogriffs are. Don't never insult one, 'cause it might be the last things yeh do."

"Are you three listening?" Yoko asked sharply, causing Pansy Parkinson to shriek, startled to find him so close.

Those closest to them glanced at the three Slytherins but didn't pay them much mind because Hagrid had barely stuttered.

"If yeh meet a hippogriff, yeh always wait fer them ter make the firs' move. It's polite, see? Yeh walk toward him, and yeh bow, an' yeh wait. If he bows back, yeh're allowed ter touch him. If he doesn't bow, then get away from him sharpish, 'cause those talons hurt." He glanced toward the Valerians. "Rumor is, once the Valerians came abou', a bunch 'o creatures were found ter be able to talk telepathically when they grew old enough. Hippogriffs are one 'o 'em, though they don't talk to us humans much."

Hagrid glanced over his shoulder at the three hippogriffs and clapped his hands, rubbing them together. "Right – who wants ter go first?" he asked, looking at the class again. "They might let one o' yeh approach 'em."

Yoko grimaced. 'Patience, Hyer Buckbeak,' the fox begged of the flock leader.

It would have been a mistake for anyone to have assumed the hippogriffs, any of them, were calm, despite the lack of agitation in the Hyer.

Buckbeak was waiting for any excuse to strike against the humans and it would have been in Hagrid's best interests to have never offered up the option to let any of the children approach the three, even though they were, technically, tethered to the ground with very little give to rear up. A chain of that nature, however, wasn't going to hold against the full power of a hippogriff if it decided it didn't want to be there, which was likely why Hagrid had chosen adolescents as opposed to full-grown hippogriffs as the two other 'show-and-tells'.

Harry glanced at Blaise, who shook his head firmly.

He liked Hagrid, but he wasn't quite willing to put himself and his nerves before any of the hippogriffs.

Shrugging, and ignoring Tarana's hiss of his name, Harry stepped forward.

It would be something cool to tell Draco that he'd missed.

XX

Hagrid, to his credit, stayed a step behind Harry as they approached the hippogriffs, and Tarana and Arcana paced farther out on either side, the only two of the three Valerians that could possibly try and bodily move a hippogriff if it decided it didn't like something.

"Now, Buckbeak is the oldest, so he'll be the calmest of 'em," Hagrid murmured to Harry, a hand on his shoulder. "Keep eye contact an' try not ter blink too much, they don' trust yeh if yeh blink too much."

Buckbeak turned his massive head to meet Harry's gaze as they approached and, with Hagrid keeping a hand on his shoulder, Harry tried to bow and keep eye contact at the same time.

His eyes immediately began to water as he tried to meet the fierce orange eye that was leveled on him.

It felt a lot like being pinned by one of the Valerians' assessing gaze if he was being honest. He swallowed because he'd always been in trouble when one of the Valerians was looking at him like that.

The staring match between human and hippogriff seemed to go on forever, particularly for Harry and Tarana, who grew more anxious with every moment that passed without Buckbeak making a move one way or the other as to accepting Harry's request to approach him.

The reality was that, between the time that Harry bowed and the time Buckbeak, finally, bent a scaly knee and lowered its head in what was, unmistakably, a bow, was only a handful of stressful seconds.

Hagrid's delight was obvious.

"Well done, Harry!" the half-giant cried, ecstatic. "Right, yeh can touch him! Pat his beak."

'Do not,' Tarana replied with a sharp, dry tone. 'What most wizards forget is that hippogriffs are intelligent creatures that, unfortunately in this day and age, require human aid in keeping safe and out of the way of other humans. That doesn't make them pets any more than we are.'

Harry shot a quick glance in his guardian's direction, wordlessly asking for further instruction.

'Extend a hand to the Hyer,' Tarana told him, trying to remember how Fallen often approached the hippogriffs and translate it into something similarly human. 'Palm outward, facing him. If Hyer Buckbeak is interested in receiving physical attention from a human, he'll reach out on his own.'

Harry felt rather foolish, reaching out to a hippogriff like he wanted a 'high five' from it.

Buckbeak blinked intense, orange eyes at him before ducking his head and pressing the top of it into Harry's palm.

'The General has taught you well,' came a clicking voice in Harry's head, making the boy jump, startled, and nearly pull his head away.

It took him a moment to realize that the voice belonged to the hippogriff.

Swallowing nervously, Harry clenched a fist, more by accident than design, scratching between the raised 'ears' of the creature.

After the single gesture of 'affection', however, the Hyer stepped back, raising his head again.

Behind him, the class broke into scattered applause, but it seemed far away when Hagrid was telling him, "Reckon he might' let yeh ride him!"

"Hagrid, I don't-" Yoko started to protest, but Harry was already ahead of him.

"I don't think I'm quite ready for that," Harry said, still meeting the Hyer's fierce gaze.

Buckbeak tossed his head slightly, as though agreeing, before turning sharply toward the hippogriff on his left flank and shrieking at it.

The noise startled Harry, who took a couple of stumbling steps backward.

The lighter, almost tan, hippogriff reared sharply at what must have been a reprimand, the chain around its neck pulling taught and straining against his weight.

The Slytherin teen before him, who must have gotten too close in his curious inspection, fell onto his back and scrambled away.

It was now clear to the students that the chains only kept the hippogriffs where they were, by the creatures' own will.

Buckbeak's wings flared and he stomped one hoof sharply, clicking his beak at the younger hippogriff.

The other dropped back to the ground and ducked his head. His wings mantled in a show of nerves and mild distress.

Tarana and Arcana moved forward cautiously, but whatever the problem had been, Buckbeak had clearly handled it.

Regardless, Hagrid moved Harry further back.

After several minutes, however, both hippogriffs appeared to calm, and Hagrid felt more assured in allowing other students to approach.

Emboldened by Harry's own success, there were many volunteers.

Blaise, in particular, appeared to wish to try his hand with all three. Buckbeak and the unnamed, younger tan one that he'd reprimanded, both bowed to the dark-skinned teen, but Buckbeak had apparently had his fill of physical human interaction and had backed away, though it wasn't unkindly, when the teen had repeated Harry's offer.

The tan had no such reservations, and he spent several minutes letting the glossy feathers slide between his fingers, the motion oddly calming considering he was used to the silkier, but no less soft, fur of his guardian.

What happened next, however, happened too fast for any of the students to catch and before they knew it, Buckbeak had reared with a shriek of alarm, and his wings flared. A single beat of the twelve-foot wings and the chain snapped.

The adolescents on either side of him reared with shrieks of their own, and Blaise quickly ducked away as the chain stretched taut, the metal stretching and straining to keep it contained.

Buckbeak was quickly being forced backward by the advancing forms of the Valerian King and Queen, while Yoko darted forward, pressing both paws on Pansy Parkinson's chest to keep her lying on the ground where she'd fallen.

"Easy now," Yoko assured her, careful of the sluggishly bleeding wound on her arm. "It's not bad at all. You'll be back at your next class before the bell rings."

Tears were streaming down the girl's cheeks, but she was oblivious to them.

"It hurts," she cried, clutching her arm to her chest.

Before Yoko could do any more to assure her that the wound honestly wasn't that bad for all that Buckbeak had definitely caught her flesh with the intent to maim, the girl had passed out.

Hagrid, horrified and assured that Buckbeak was contained by the two Valerians, rushed forward to pull her into his arms and after a quick glance at Yoko, darted up toward the castle with the girl in his arms.

Several Slytherins followed them, causing Harry, Blaise, and Ron to share concerned glances.

"It wasn't a bad cut," Yoko assured the remaining class. "She had a bad reaction to seeing her own blood, I imagine."

Arcana stepped closer to the untethered hippogriff and buckled a leg, bowing to the Hyer.

Buckbeak gave him a single once over before doing the same, the fastest he'd done so with any of the children he'd bowed to, few as they'd been.

"Not to be offensive, Hyer Buckbeak," the tiger said grimly. "But what was the cause of your strike against a student of Hogwarts?"

The hippogriff shifted, talons shredding the dirt and grass. 'I did not see her approach,' the Hyer clicked at him. 'She gave no warning and touched me. Apologies, King, I was startled.'

Arcana tilted his head, before bowing to the hippogriff again. "Thank you, Hyer, for pulling your blow even startled. Your talons could have shredded her arm straight to the bone."

Buckbeak tossed his head and turned his attention to reassuring the two adolescents, which had spooked with his startled reaction.

More than one student stared, pale, at the blood-stained grass, stunned that the attack could have been worse.

Yoko eyed Buckbeak. "Perhaps it would be in our best interests to all return to the castle. I'm sure the Hyer would appreciate some time with his flock, and it's best not to tempt fate any further."

XX

"Draco!"

Draco and Fallen, who had been on their way up to the Tower, turned to watch Theo stalk toward them grimly.

Draco glanced around, they were far enough into the castle, away from where most of the core classes were taught, that the corridor was mostly empty and those that were still around, were in such a rush to get to their next class that they didn't do more than glance at the Gryffindor and the Slytherin.

"Theo," the blond greeted warily.

"Pansy's in the hospital wing," Theo said sharply.

Draco's gaze sharpened. "What?"

"One of the hippogriffs in the lesson attacked her," Theo said.

Fallen growled. "What the hell was the idiot thinking, showing off hippogriffs to impressionable Third-Years?"

Theo shook his head. "It was her fault," he told them, startling both. "Considering what he is, it was a surprisingly informative lesson. And then he made it hands-on and allowed us to interact with them. She got too close without making him aware of her, startled it, and got attacked. Something that had been taught not twenty minutes earlier."

"That isn't going to matter," Fallen reminded them grimly. "The family is going to come after Hagrid for mitigation."

Draco and Theo didn't need to say a word.

The Parkinsons were of old wizarding blood, though not quite as old as the Malfoys – though few were, not even the Potters – and they most certainly were not going to let the attack, even prompted by their daughter, go unpunished.

"Keep me posted on how she's doing," Draco told Theo.

Theo nodded.

Fallen eyed his charge carefully as Theodore disappeared down the corridor again.

"She wouldn't care, would she," Draco asked him.

'Probably not,' Fallen agreed. 'It makes you the bigger person, to still be thinking of her even though she would prefer to bury the connection between the two of you.'

"Most days," Draco told Fallen as they continued on toward the Tower, "I prefer the same."

'It doesn't change the fact that the two of you were raised with a particular endgame in mind,' Fallen reminded him. 'That amount of close contact does breed a certain amount of affection, though it likely wasn't as deep as your parents intended.'

Draco grimaced. "I'm going to have to pretend to care more than I actually do, aren't I?"

Fallen snorted. 'Draco, I fucked a thief on the regular. I'm the last person who is going to tell you to adhere to a betrothal that will likely never see its end game.'

The uncharacteristic bluntness from the General made Draco smile.

XX

The full story had come out when Draco and Fallen had returned to the Tower and the predictions of the Valerians had been sound.

Pansy was back in class, and later dinner, where Katelyn had repeatedly assured the other girl, who was wearing a bandage around her forearm, that of course the Malfoys would lend any aid to the Parkinsons that they needed to build their lawsuit.

The comment caused tension at the Gryffindor table, because Draco hadn't been able to deny that it was exactly what his father was likely to do and, if he was being honest, Draco did sort of blame the half-giant for the attack in the first place.

Any idiot knew that the first lesson shouldn't be for the awe factor.

(He ignored the little voice in his head that reminded him of their Transfiguration class, where McGonagall's first class of the year had been to transform into a cat.)

The only question remaining was whether his and Pansy's fathers went after the school or Hagrid himself.

XX

Much of the group is distracted after dinner, as they struggle to focus on their Transfiguration homework.

Blaise, predictably, was the first to break, closing his book and rolling up his parchment.

"I'm going to go down and see him before curfew," he said to the table of his friends.

Neville and Harry both quickly followed suit, with Ron – always eager to avoid his homework – stoppered their ink bottles for them after shoving his half-finished essay into the book itself, much to Hermione's hissed disapproval.

Draco sighed, not all that eager to join them but unwilling to mention his, apparently minority, opinion, but slowly began to gather his things together as well.

XX

Though they weren't technically unable to be outside the common rooms, they weren't really allowed outside as the moon was more in the sky than the sun was.

The fact that the Valerians were, in their own ways, concerned for Hagrid as well, was the only reason the children were allowed beyond the massive doors and onto the darkened grounds as it was.

The trip down to Hagrid's cabin was made quickly, and the blood was still staining the grass when they arrived, a darker stain on the dark grounds.

Arcana wrinkled his nose and tapped his Element, summoning a minor deluge of water out of the crisping air to wash away the stain of the afternoon.

The others continued inside, where Hagrid was hammered.

"Honestly," Tarana huffed, shaking her head. "You're still on school grounds, Hagrid."

Hagrid squinted at her, clearly having difficulty bringing her into focus.

"Have you been drinking all afternoon?" Draco asked, half disgusted and half curious as he stared at the massive tankard on the table before the half-giant.

Hagrid shrugged. "'s a record," he said thickly, tongue clearly not cooperating with him. "On'y lasted a day."

"You haven't been fired!" Hermione gasped, hand clenching near her chest.

"Not yet," Hagrid said miserably.

"I'm certain they won't fire you," Yoko said, though his reassurance fell a little flat when he glanced at Fallen and the wolf was grimacing.

"There are plenty of witnesses to attest that you led the lesson well," Arcana said from the doorway. "I doubt, with that kind of evidence, that you'll be let go for this one mistake, particularly because it wasn't nearly that bad."

"Can' fight a lawsuit, though," Hagrid countered. "An' Buckbeak'll be-" he reached blindly for his tankard, but Hermione got there first, pulling it off the table. "'ey-"

"You've had quite enough," Tarana said firmly. "Go outside and take care of yourself, you reek."

Hagrid grimaced, pushing himself to his feet. "Reck'n yer righ'," he said, belching and swaying.

More than one nose wrinkled in disgust.

Hermione followed the half-giant into the back garden, where she dumped the mostly empty tankard into one of the plants.

Through the open door, they could hear a splash as Hagrid dunked his head into the rain barrel he kept out there.

Yoko shook his head with a sigh. "Poor thing," he murmured. "If I'd known he was taking it this hard, I would've-"

"Left Blaise alone?" Fallen asked drily.

Yoko grimaced, but couldn't disagree. He absolutely would have left Hagrid to drink his problems away while he stuck close to Blaise for the last lesson of the day.

Hagrid came back to the doorway, water dripping from his long hair and beard and wiping water from his eyes.

"Don't you dare," Fallen snapped as Hagrid tilted his head in a familiar, canine-like way. "Get a towel or a blanket. This isn't a barnyard, it's your house. Have some decorum."

Hagrid, already flushed from the alcohol, flushed darker at the reprimand but reached for his blanket to sop up the excess water from his hair.

"Hagrid," Hermione said, glancing at her friends. "We just wanted to let you know that we'll do whatever we can to help you and Buckbeak."

Hagrid's eyes watered for an entirely different reason.

"Of course," Blaise said fiercely. "You're my friend."

"And Buckbeak didn't do anything wrong," Neville added.

Harry nodded his own agreement, but Draco didn't trust himself to say a word and thus, kept his mouth shut.

Hagrid wrapped Blaise and Neville, the closest to him, into a tight hug.

He froze as he released them, apparently noticing for the first time that Harry was there.

"WHAT D'YEH THINK YOU'RE DOIN', EH?!" he roared. "WANDERIN' AROUND AFTER DARK!"

"Honestly," Tarana sneered, blue eyes glittering coldly. "Who do you think you're talking to?"

Hagrid flushed again. "Er…sorry," he mumbled. "Got a bit, er, carried away there."

"So, it seems," the Queen said evenly, her displeasure clear. "The fact that he is my charge aside, nearly the entire Collective is currently standing on your corner of the property. Do you think Ebony to be that foolish?"

Hagrid rubbed the back of his neck but couldn't argue.