The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress
Disclaimer: Harry Potter and associated characters belong to the respective owners. No copyright infringement is intended.
Acknowledgements: Thank you.
A/N: Some dialogue and situations coming from The Order of The Phoenix (chapter 10).
Chapter five - Dark Horses
"Laughing too loud at the rest of the world
With the boys in the crowd
You can hide, hide, hide,
Behind petrified eyes"
PINK FLOYD, Paranoid Eyes
"What's wrong with the Express? Usually it is packed," Harry wondered as they trundled with their luggage through the half-empty railcar.
"I guess some parents withdrew their children from Hogwarts," Ginny explained, checking compartment after compartment. The people inside did not seem to want their company; they either dismissed them with hasty waves and glares, or were locked in altogether.
After the fifth carriage, Harry stopped, red in the face and flustered. "Why are they doing that? Is it because of me? Because…"
"Not everything happens because of you!" she snapped. "There have been rumours that a student may have been turned over the summer."
"Turned?" he echoed, dumbfounded.
"Bitten by a werewolf."
"Oh," Harry said, deflated. Ginny's tone softened.
"I overheard Mum and Dad discussing it with Lupin, and they agreed that it has to be a hoax. Just someone's sick idea of fun."
"Really?" Harry pressed on with an air of disbelief.
"Well, Mum took a while to get around it, but..."
"Ah-ha! Now that's more like it," he said triumphantly
Ginny huffed, and slammed the carriage door open. "Look, I'm done dragging this thing. Why don't we just take a... Oh, hello, Neville!"
Neville Longbottom, with his toad in one hand and dragging a trunk, managed to wheeze a reply. "Hi, Ginny... Hi, Harry... can't find a place to sit down..."
"This is getting ridiculous," Ginny said. "There's plenty of place, we just have to... Luna! Hello there," she greeted, opening the door. "Is it OK if we take these seats?"
Luna raised bespectacled eyes from an upside-down magazine and nodded. Harry's eyebrows rose alarmingly behind the glasses, but at least he came in, put away his luggage and sat down quietly... perhaps too quietly. He did not speak after they were settled down, either out of sullenness or embarrassment; Luna was staring at him unblinkingly, which could explain the latter. His mood did not improve after Neville, showing off his pet plant, accidentally drenched the entire compartment in stinking vegetable goo.
By the time the snack trolley reached their compartment, Harry was sitting back with his head turned, eyes staring at the landscape running by; it was obvious his brain was hard at work planning to Do Something about the werewolf. Ginny was thinking of how best to tell him to leave the matter to Dumbledore, when the door slid open and Ron burst in, followed by Hermione.
Now the compartment was getting pleasantly crowded. Pigwidgeon hooted excitedly from his cage; Crookshanks purred contentedly like an overboard engine. Ron sat down, helped himself to a Chocolate Frog and announced, with a disgusted expression, that Malfoy had been made a Prefect.
"With any luck, one night on patrol he'll met some vermin bigger than he is. Chomp!" and he bit down on the Cauldron in an ominous way.
"RON!" Hermione yelled.
"Wha? Whad Ah seh how?" Ron protested, his mouth stuffed.
Harry glared at Ginny. "Just a hoax, is it? Is it anyone we know, Ron?"
"Nah. No one has an idea who it might be, that's why they have their pants in a bunch at the Ministry."
"You're talking about the werewolf, aren't you?" Neville broke in. "Gran says it's c-claptrap. The Prophet has just gone wild with it so that they can have another jab at Dumbledore. They're hinting that he's too fond of t-troubled students to handle the matter properly."
"Dumbledore is fond of you," Luna burst out unexpectedly. "He awarded you fifty points in your first year – for standing up to your friends."
"D-did he?" Neville replied tentatively, his eyes as wide as hers by this point.
"Yes, he did. But the numerical value of the word "points" is sixty-four, which is both a square and a cube, while the value of the word "friend" is seventy-nine, which is greater and a happy prime at that," Luna explained. "Squares are seldom happy."
There was a suspended silence, of the kind that precedes thunderclaps. Harry's eyebrows had disappeared into his fringe; Ron glanced sideways, like an actor in search for the prompt; Hermione was huffing and Neville gaping. Only Ginny didn't seem astounded by this delivery.
"The entire House point system is only a distraction anyway," Luna concluded, sitting back and rising the Quibbler in front of her face again, like a welding shield.
Hermione shrugged and looked through the door and into the corridor. "The Prophet has been using this story to give Dumbledore a bad name, but there's at least circumstantial evidence that the werewolf is real. Prefects have been told to assume the worst. They're not taking any chances. There were Aurors in the Prefects carriage."
"It doesn't make sense," Harry remarked. "It's not even the full moon. Aurors are wasted on the Express."
"Yes, but people are worried for real. One of the Ravenclaw Prefects didn't show up – his parents had him transferred to Beauxbatons. Imagine that, being made a Prefect and not being able to attend."
"It's worse than when Pad... when Sirius Black escaped, because it's a student and you don't even know who you need to watch out for. It's been hectic at the Ministry - Dad said you couldn't hear yourself over the Howlers for the entire week," Ginny said.
Harry frowned. "How do – wait, it makes no sense. I mean, Voldemort is back and they hush it up, but there's a werewolf in the school and it makes headlines?"
"Really, Harry," Hermione said with a tone of infinite patience once the V-word panic had subsided, "there are precautions, even weapons, against werewolves. It's something wizards have learned to deal with. You-Know-Who is another thing entirely."
"Of course the Ministry would cover it up," Luna broke in again: her voice was strange, as if she was reciting a lullaby, only without the melody. "They were the ones who spread it in the first place. It goes back to to Edward Kelley breeding a race of shapeshifters to infiltrate the Scottish clans on behalf of the Queen and one of his test subjects escaped from the dungeons. There's a wing in St. Mungo's devoted to researching a cure and they secretly test every sort of potions and spells on the registered werewolves."
Hermione, whose eyes had gone wider and wider during Luna's exposition, replied, her voice trembling with barely contained outrage:
"First: reports of werewolf attacks go back to ancient Greece. Second: Edward Kelley was a Muggle and a fraud, and he cannot have bred Dark creatures any more than he can have chatted with angels. Third, there is no testing on the werewolves in Saint Mungo, secret or otherwise, because there is not and there will never be such thing as a cure."
"Wait," Ron said, "wasn't there a Wolf's Bait..."
"It's Wolfsbane, and would you call that a cure?" Hermione replied, flustered. "Licanthropy is a curse, not a magical ailment."
Clearly she expected them to know the implications of her argument already, and no one dared to ask for an explanation. When the silence in the compartment threatened to become unbearable, Ron leaned forward and whispered:
"Say, Neville, what's with that green urchin in the pot over there?"
"So, aren't you afraid of the big bad wolf? What about you, Greg?" Theo quipped.
The usual crew had gathered in the compartment. It was a pleasant day, the new and polished Prefect badge was glistening on his robes, there were sweets in abundance (Zabini had even brought a cake from home as well, but unsurprisingly it was still lying on the empty seat, untouched), but all Draco could think of was how many days remained until his next ordeal.
Not running for it had been all that he could do in the Prefects carriage, with half a dozen Aurors grouped in the compartment and Merlin knew how many others scattered along the Express. Luckily they had their guard down – affecting a bored look and even watching out of the windows as the Head Students recited the list of duties to newly instated Prefects. Draco had stood in line with the others, for once perfectly happy with not sticking out from the crowd, as the cold sweat on his back gave him the occasional shiver.
"You don't know me," Greg was boasting. "A werewolf mess with me, I give him a punch and…"
"…get your arm ripped off," Blaise concluded. The boys laughed, Pansy giggled and Draco, trying his hardest, produced a strangled cackle. A vision floated before his eyes, Greg grasping at a bloody stump while his arm lay on the floor six feet away. Really, couldn't anyone change the subject already?
Pansy must have noticed his discomfort, because she burst out abruptly in a shrill tone: "Will you please stop being so morbid? I can't stand the thought of it, I just can't. To think that I might meet it on my rounds, prowling the corridors at night-"
What a drama queen, Draco thought. Even assuming that the werewolf would roam the castle in animal form – and this particular werewolf had no intention of ever letting that happen – what Prefect possessed of a brain would patrol the corridors after dark, on a full moon night? He snorted.
No one could be so stupid, really.
Pansy pouted, everyone else turned towards him, and he realized he had said the last words aloud. Thankfully, as they waited for him to elaborate on that, his mind came up with a fully formed alibi. He was getting better at this.
"The werewolf won't be so stupid as to attend Hogwarts. Did you notice that the Express is half-empty?" he went on. "All students staying away for fear of being turned. If I..." he stopped just in time, not wanting to admit the concept even as a possibility, "...If I had to bet on it, I'd say the werewolf is among those that stayed home. This panic wave gives him, or her, an alibi, doesn't it? The parents will tell everyone that they transferred him to another school and he'll be back in a few years with a fake diploma and fake stories of his classmates. Right now, Hogwarts is the last place where I'd be looking for the werewolf."
The rest of the gang murmured and nodded, even Theo who usually raised objections for the sake of being contrarian. Draco stood up.
"We're supposed to patrol the corridors, Pansy," he said. "Let's get going."
Pansy stood up and left with him, but soon they found Daphne Greengrass and Tracey Davis chit-chatting in a nearby compartment, so she sat down with them, making sure that the badge on her robes was in full sight. The air filled with girly 'ooh's' and 'aaah's'.
Draco made a barfing face at Pansy, who gave him a two-finger salute, so he went back and beckoned to his boys: Greg and Vince stood up with ill grace.
"Whaf eh faff ah wewoff?" Vince grunted. He had spoken so fast and garbled, a whole pumpkin pastry stuffed in his mouth for the journey, Greg just stood there staring at him in puzzlement. Draco realised his hearing had become extra good to make out those sounds into something coherent.
Or maybe it was just because his mind was constantly running werewolf now, werewolf now, werewolf now in the background, and it made it easier to pick up any relevant conversation, like he was a wireless set magically tuned to it.
"Don't be a prat," he snapped. "It's the quarter moon, you're not going to be attacked and sure as fuck you're not going to recognize him!""
"Lift his robes and see if he's got a tail," Greg quipped.
Vincent slapped him round the head much harder than necessary, shot him a malevolent look and shook his head, in a manner Draco recognised as his own, before taking position in front of the line. Crabbe and Goyle both had trouble of their own, Draco remembered: each one of them was wrapped up in his own misery, but least the boys were unaware of anyone else's.
They walked along the train, with Draco making sure that the shiny badge well visible on his robes, letting everyone know that he was taking his role seriously. When they reached Potter's compartment, Vince slid the door open and Draco stepped in, careful as he did so, because Weasley had raised a leg in a lame attempt at tripping him.
Oooh, it was such a sad bunch. Potter's companies got worse and worse over the years, and didn't that just prove him right? Potter really went out of his way to spite Draco, there was no other reason he would consort with such scum as the Weasleys, let alone Mudbloods and traitors and charity cases like Longbottom and now even the Lovegood bird, who was too much of a nutjob even for her fellows Ravenclaws.
Draco looked around, trying to come up with an abrasive remark, something in tone with the Prophet campaign: owls of a feather flocked together; Potter only looked sane when surrounded by people crazier than he was... but, as he was racking his brains for the ultimate slander, Potter preceded him.
"What?" he barked. He looked antsy, as if he hadn't slept well in a while.
Draco felt elated. Looked like someone else's summer hadn't been a bed of roses either, but how was that Draco's fault? Here he was, Potter, lashing out as usual at Shut up, Malfoy when Shut up, Malfoy had only tried to befriend him, had warned him repeatedly about the path he was taking.
"Manners, Potter, or I'll have to give you a detention," Draco replied, speaking as if he was talking to a particularly slow Hufflepuff. "You see, I, unlike you, have been made a prefect, which means that I, unlike you, have the power to hand out punishments."
That had been the one rain of sunshine in all day. There was no doubt that Granger was going to be the female Gryffindor Prefect: the others were barely smart enough not to walk into a wall as they chatted makeup and trouser snakes. But the next-to-last Weasel had been a pleasant surprise... considering the outcome Draco had been dreading.
"Yeah," Potter conceded, staring at him with spite, "but you, unlike me, are a git, so get out and leave us alone."
As a rebuke, it was rather lame, but the other pillocks laughed. It didn't matter; Draco was in the groove.
"Tell me, how does it feel being second-best to Weasley, Potter?"
"Shut up, Malfoy," snapped Granger. Merlin, what was wrong with this bunch? Why couldn't anyone come up with a bit of challenge?
"I seem to have touched a nerve," he gloated. "Well, just watch yourself, Potter, because I'll be dogging your footsteps in case you step out of line."
Potter's eyes widened underneath the ugly fringe; he went pale, and so did Draco.
Suddenly the scene flashed in front of him, just like it had before: Potter clasping feebly at his own neck, blood spurting between his fingertips, his green eyes going glazed and empty... A shiver ran down Draco's spine and he shook out of his reverie only to find himself facing a real nightmare: Granger was standing up with both her fists balled.
"Get out!" she barked.
Thankful for having been given an excuse to leave, Draco backed out into the corridor.
As he returned to his compartment, Crabbe and Goyle in tow, he wondered whether the enormity he had let slip was going to have consequences. Deep down, underneath the fear and the shame, a part of him thought it would be a nice feat if he managed to mess up the Boy Who Lived Only to Annoy Him. But above it there was the knowledge and the regret that he couldn't afford even thinking about it; he spent the rest of the journey in a foul mood.
Soon as they descended the train, there was a blockage on the platform. A couple of diminutive first-years, pale with fright, had apparently frozen on the spot; Draco reached and pushed one of them forward, but he dodged and piped in one breath, "I-wanna-go-home-no-one-told-me-the-werewolves-at-school!"
That high-pitched blether, like a young Mandrake being repotted, set Draco's teeth on edge.
"Too late for second thoughts now, is it? Shut up and move on, midget," he growled, and from the corner of his eye he saw Perfect Miss Prefect Mudblood giving him the stink-eye. Seriously, didn't people have anything else to worry about? Werewolves were as dangerous as blancmange compared to what the students had to face, week after week, in their Care of Magical Creatures lessons.
Talking about Draco's least favourite subject, its teacher didn't seem to be there presently. Pansy had noticed, too.
"Where's the half-giant? I can't see him."
"I can't see why you'd want to." Draco turned, mainly so that the Granger bitch glaring at him with the intensity of a thousand vengeful suns wouldn't be in his line of sight. He didn't want to start his O.W.L. year casting Unforgivables on the very first day.
"The first years, you big twit. He's supposed to take these gnats to the castle. What do we do if he doesn't show up? Toss 'em into the lake and cast a Buoyance Charm?"
Blaise had managed to extricate himself from the human traffic jam. "Ooh, Pansy. You're sounding so Prefect-like and motherly," he grinned. "Don't fret, he probably had a few stiff drinks celebrating Potter's acquittance and he's somewhere in the forest, three sheets to the wind."
That was a perfectly reasonable explanation, Draco admitted. Meanwhile, Blaise had something nice to say to him as well.
"Nice display of Prefectship over there, Draco. Chapeau."
"Hey, they were seizing up the whole queue. Made them move, didn't I?"
Draco scanned the slow-moving crowd, trying to look unperturbed, while wondering what he'd do if the half-breed did pull a no-show. As he did so, his eyes met those of a girl who was looking at him. Normally these meetings ended with swift glances at each other's boots but this one wouldn't stare down. She actually smiled at him, almost imperceptibly. Then Pansy shook him by a sleeve.
"It's Chinderella!" she said, beaming and pointing towards the far side of the platform. "D'you think...?"
Draco squinted his eyes. The figure looked familiar, however how Pansy could identify her with all the glare coming from the lantern she was carrying was a mystery. Then he, too, made out the ruminant-jawed features and caught a whiff of pipe smoke. "I don't know what to think, but at least the firsties are out of our hair," he replied. He beckoned to Greg and Vince, and they all moved forward as the chant of "First years! First years line over here!" went along the platform.
"So typical," Pansy started. "They never get it right at Hogwarts. An hour's lecture on Prefect duties, then another hour's lecture on werewolves, like we were five years old, and no one bothers telling us what to do once we're off the train. Now we're going to be the last ones at the table, and I won't be able to sit in my lucky spot. I had been sitting in there at all the feasts since I first came to Hogwarts, and now it will be gone. And the booklist arrived yesterday. I didn't even have the time to wrap them..."
Pansy's rambling accompanied them until the coach platform. Draco, lulled by her droning voice into a state of partial lethargy, only minded where he was putting his feet and little else, therefore he reached the platform completely unprepared.
Blaise and Theo had preceded them to the coach stop; were also some second-years, huddled together, their breath coming out in wisps of vapour, and a carriage was just arriving.
At first, Draco thought the darkness was playing games on his eyes. There was a shape in front of the carriage, between the shafts, black and indistinct against the equally black lacquer of the coach. He took it for a tarp, caught by the wind and flapping, except it was flapping forward and how could it move like that and yet remain fixed in place -
- then, still at a trot, it shook its head.
it has a head!
Draco jolted, he couldn't help it; it was like one of those novelty "essays" that you're asked to take a look at – and when you're completely engrossed, a decomposed skull pops out of the parchment, screaming, retching maggots or otherwise scaring the living daylights out of you.
He turned and looked at the others – had they seen it, too? But they were relaxed. Only Theo was staring, and not at the approaching coach, but right back at him.
"What are you looking at?"
"Nothing. You jumped."
"I stumbled."
"Whatever." The indifference with which he dropped the subject was telltale, but insisting would only draw attention to it.
The creature came to a halt three feet from where Draco was standing, which was well, because one more inch and he'd have to take a long back step. It looked like a dead, desiccated thing, like it had been lying in a bog for centuries. Bog horse; doom horse; horr-'orse. It had no flesh and its eyes were like those of a boiled fish, two blank bulbs that might either see everything or nothing at all. It had wings, leathery and emaciated like the rest of its limbs, and teeth, too, pearly and sharp, currently champing at the bit with an even creaking noise. A bit of foamy spit dripped from the beak-like snout onto the ground.
And no one except Draco saw anything out of the ordinary.
What the hell was it? Was it a mean of defence, as well as transportation? Did it have anything to do with the absence of the half-giant?
Meanwhile, the juniors were boarding the coach, blissfully unaware as well of the skeletal horror harnessed to it. Draco's hair went up in horror. They couldn't see it. It would drag the carriage into the forest, pull them out one by one...
"Come down!" he screamed, his voice cracking as he did so.
One diminutive head popped out of a window. "Are you talkin' to us?"
Pansy took off. "Yes, he's talking to you! You have to come down!"
"Why?"
"Because we're Prefects, because we're in a hurry, because we told you so, and because at seven I start docking House points. One... two..."
The second-years were all on the ground at five. Now, however, there was no option left for Draco but to board the damned thing or spill the beans.
He took a deep breath. Malfoys had never been fond of riding and had never owned horse carriages, and that one accident with the Hippogryff had been the first and last time he had been around a mount. The more he waited, the more his legs wanted to bend at the knees.
Then the horr-'orse turned its malformed head and snorted, as if wondering what in the thunder were they waiting for, and Theo looked away and his eyes followed the movement of the thing's head.
He sees them, too!
Draco made up his Theo knew about the horr-'orse and he could bear it, he would, too; it wasn't much, but it would have to do. He boarded the coach at once, literally jumping up the steps.
"Sorry for the inconvenience," he said to the juniors as his fellow Slytherins found place on the seats. "Take the next one, it won't be long."
Indeed, the next carriage was approaching, with another of those creatures tied between the shafts.
The horr-'orse sensed that the coach had been fully occupied and started at a trot down the path. Its clawed feet made clicking sounds and the harness tinkled, mingled with the creaking and the whirring of the coach.
Blaise leaned back against the seat and produced a perfect smile in anticipation of the zinger to come.
"Fifteen minutes a Prefect and you're already losing your cool, Malfoy. You said 'sorry'."
A/N: The reason Cho Chang does not show up in Harry's compartment or anywhere in this chapter is either that I couldn't write her to save my life or that her parents did the sensible thing and, werewolf or no werewolf, transferred her to Beauxbatons where students were not put in mortal danger year after year. Your pick.
