Mama Don't Preach
Mischa Dalton fucking hated Hogwarts.
Where many made fond memories during their time at the school, Mischa instead made enemies. From the moment she'd sat down at the Gryffindor table, she had automatically become an enemy to all Slytherins, but she had been led to believe that this was just the status quo. She had not believed that she had to watch out for enemies within her own house. Year after year after year, not only did she contend with the curses from the Slytherin table, but the marauders, that is, James Potter, Sirius Black, Remus Lupin, and Peter Pettigrew, loved to make her life a misery. She had been suspended by her ankle more times than she could count, her hair had been dyed- she had also been dyed on two occasions. She had been locked in broom cupboards; she had been forced to burp the alphabet in the great hall. Just when she believed the torment had reached its peak, they would find a way to top their last prank, and for why? Mischa Dalton possessed so little magical skill she may as well have attended a muggle school. People no longer saw a young witch they saw a target.
While her essays quickly put her near the top of most of her classes, and she had no rival for the top student in Herbology and Care of Magical Creatures, her spellcasting was abysmal. Occasionally she would achieve a small modicum of success, but these moments were so rare and so far between that many doubted they'd even happened at all. She had attempted to ask her mother if she could drop out of Hogwarts but as the years passed her mother seemed more fixed on the idea that she should be around other people and not her beloved creatures.
"Mum, clearly I'm not meant to be there, let me just stay here," Mischa had insisted as they left for Hogwarts at the beginning of her fifth year.
"You're not staying here, Mischa. You need human interaction. I'm not always going to be here; you need other people around you."
"Mum!"
"Enough is enough, Mischa. I've listened to this all summer. Dumbledore wrote to me personally last year to tell me how well you're doing in Care of Magical Creatures and Herbology. You owe it to yourself to give it a chance."
For the first five years, Mischa did her best to disappear into the shadows, and then sixth-year things began to change.
"Are you sure you're going to be okay?" Mischa asked her mother earnestly as they stood on the platform. Mischa had long got into the habit of arriving before most of the students so that she could find herself a quiet corner. "I'm not asking to stay; it's just you've not been dealing with the changes well."
"I'm fine, and the owls know to alert you if something happens. You need to stop worrying."
"I'm always going to worry," Mischa answered. "You should go now though, you must be exhausted after last night."
"That's very true. I'll see you at Christmas, darling."
"Love you, mum. Are you going to be able to apparate home?"
"I'm going to take the train, I'm still quite depleted from last night, I don't want to risk splicing. I love you, baby."
With a final kiss on her cheek, Mischa watched her mother head for the barrier, only to hesitate as another person came through. To Mischa's surprise, it was none other than Remus Lupin, looking rough as sin himself. Mischa watched as Remus and her mother connected eyes. She knew that look, like always recognised like. To her mother's credit, a mere beat passed, and she continued on her way through the barrier. Remus, for his part, paused and stared after her before turning back and zeroing in on Mischa herself.
Dragging her luggage onto the train, she quickly placed it all in one of the luggage berth's and changed into a cat because Remus had the chance to find her and ask questions that she didn't particularly want to answer.
She curled up in a carriage near the back of the train. While she could control what breed she chose to be, there was always a default breed, one that she would always feel more comfortable being. As a cat, she preferred being a maine coon, a cat that very few predators would choose to take on.
As the train began to fill, Mischa found herself woken up by a torrent of students walking by her compartment. Her tail flicked in annoyance as the door opened to reveal none other than James Potter.
"Well, Moony, old pal, we have walked the length of the train, pissed off a whole bunch of Slytherins, and lost our usual compartment. She's not here, but at least there's only a massive cat in this one. Let's stay here and then you can try and catch her at the school."
"That is a massive fucking cat," squeaked Peter behind James, "Maybe if we go to the next one it'll be empty?"
"It's fine, Pete, we won't let the big bad kitty gobble you."
Sirius, who had only seen his affection for felines deepen after becoming an animagus, squeezed his way past the boys and took a seat beside the cat in question.
"She has to be on the train somewhere," reasoned Remus as they closed the compartment door. "Maybe we missed her in the toilets."
"Remus, I love you, but I'm not going to wait outside the girl's toilets again. It's weird, it's creepy, and I don't think the girls bought our excuse that we were protecting them from a bunch of Slytherins that weren't there."
Mischa attempted to slink off of the chair and towards the door, but she instead found herself swept back up into the arms of her nemesis.
"You really are a very big cat," Sirius murmured, running his hands through her fur, "Where's your owner? I hope you're not a Slytherin cat."
As Sirius lifted her so he could look at her in the face, Mischa yowled loudly and attempted to scratch his face.
"Finally, a female that doesn't automatically fall for Sirius," murmured James, "That's one for the books."
"I'll win her over. I always do."
Putting her back down on his lap, Mischa spitefully kneaded his thighs with her claws and looked up at him to make sure he knew it was on purpose before laying down. While every part of her wanted to hate it, as Sirius ran his hands over her fur, she found herself lulled into a doze. She blamed instead the fact that she had spent the night awake looking after her mother.
"So, why are you looking for Dalton?" Peter asked Remus,
"She arrived early, and I saw her mum… I think she's like me."
"Furry little problem, like you?" James asked for clarification, "No, we would know, werewolves have to be registered, she wouldn't have been able to keep Mischa. Everyone at school would know, the Slytherins have plenty of relatives in the ministry that lookout for that information."
"I'm telling you, James, I think she was."
"And what makes you think Mischa is going to tell you all about it? We've hardly cemented ourselves within her friend group," Sirius chimed in. "What's your plan here? Confront her on the train and waterboard her into making her tell you about her mum? What do you want to learn that you don't already know?"
Mischa looked up from Sirius's lap when Remus didn't immediately answer.
"You guys don't know what it's like. There's no network of werewolves, and there's no one I can ask about this. It would be nice to know someone else, see if they have other ways of dealing with it."
Mischa rested her head back on her paws. It was true she had known about Remus from the moment she'd met him, and she'd known what the boys had done to try and help him. It earned them her respect, but not her kindness. Some bridges had been well and truly burned over the past five years.
"I need to go to the prefect meeting. I'll see you guys when we get to the castle."
The four remaining inhabitants of the cabin watched Remus leave before three of them turned to look at Sirius.
"Well Sirius, let it not be said you're not finely in tune with the emotions of others. Do you want to tell Pete he was allowed into our group by accident next?"
Peter looked up sharply at James.
"I'm kidding Pete," James laughed, "I'm just making a point."
"He's got us, surely that's enough. It's not like we're going anywhere any time soon."
Mischa struggled not to roll her eyes. There was a reason there were groups of animals, there was a comfort to be had in not feeling alone, or isolated. Mischa had always felt alone, despite being able to connect to so many creatures. On the nights of the full moon, before she had started school, she would spend the whole night curled up beside her mother in her own werewolf form, and she knew that on some level it had relaxed her mother's beast, wolves after all, were pack animals as well.
James and Peter looked between themselves and decided wordlessly that the topic was not worth pursuing whilst Sirius was in one of his contrary moods. That was always the way with Sirius after he'd spent the summer with his family. It took a day or two of Hogwarts to knock sense back into him.
"Chances are he's mistaken anyway," Sirius continued, "There's no way that nobody would know something."