A/N: I know these author notes are probably hella confusing because some of them are from when the chapter was original written like five years ago, and some of them are from... this month. Or even today, from my perspective. Speaking in March 2020, now. Hello.

Apparently for this chapter, I wrote some middle section in my notebook first. Then I completely rewrote that section without referencing the notebook. Then now I reread the notebook content, and it was so much better. So much livelier. So much friendship. More loose threads tied together. Ah, self, why do you do these things?

Anyhow, the notebook version now replaced the older stuff. Like with most of my revisions, no major events modified but things tie together a lot better and feel better to boot.

Reply to Guest: Here it is!

Last updated 3/12/2020

Chapter Fifteen
The Secret Letter

"How do we get in?" Hermione asked, as they stared at the door to Quirrell's office. She, Harry, and Danny were huddled together underneath the invisibility cloak.

"More importantly," Harry said, "how do we get him out?"

Quirrell was still in the room. They knew because Harry had pressed his ear against the door – a tricky maneuver when all three had to remain underneath the invisibility cloak – and reported hearing the professor muttering to himself.

"We need a distraction," Danny said.

The other two nodded, the motion rubbing the cloth of the invisibility cloak across the top of Danny's head.

For a long moment, they said nothing.

"Dung bombs?" Harry said hopefully.

"Too obvious," Hermione said.

"And where would we get them?" Danny pointed out.

"Maybe… Could we just knock?" Hermione suggested, and Danny shook his head avidly.

"No. He can't know that one of us is in on it."

They all considered it for a long moment.

While they were thinking, a girl in Ravenclaw robes suddenly came barreling down the hall. She must have been a fifth year, by the prefect badge on her robes. The three startled co-conspirators watched her with wide eyes as she tore open the door, panting for breath. From where they were standing, all three clearly saw Quirrell's startled expression.

"Oh, it's terrible," the girl said, sounding panicked. "Professor Flitwick sent me – all the Ravenclaws were hexed."

"A-all of them?" Professor Quirrell asked incredulously, rising from his chair. In one quick, jerky motion, he tossed a piece of paper from his desk into a small open drawer.

"Well – no – not all of them," the girl admitted. "But almost all the fourth years. Professor, please, it's urgent."

"W-well," Quirrell stuttered. "I-I sup-pose I will d-do what I c-can."

The girl was dancing on her tiptoes, clearly eager to go. Quickly, Quirrell gathered himself, exiting his office, and gestured for her to lead the way. She launched off like a rocket, barely restraining her pace for the professor.

"They were going to your classroom to ask some questions about the Fumos Dumos charm, when they all suddenly sprouted bat ears…" They heard her already-distant voice explaining to Quirrell.

The three glanced at each other, then at the empty office's door, in temporary stupefaction.

"Let's go," Hermione suddenly hissed, and they moved as one to the door.

Harry bumped into Hermione, and Hermione bumped into Danny as they all reached for the door knob at the same time. Feeling embarrassed, Danny took a half-step back, and Hermione did the same. Harry reached again for the door, twisting the door back, and they all tiptoed backwards, trying to not step over each other as they performed the maneuver.

Then, carefully, they shuffled into the doorway. Danny stepped on Harry's shoe, but otherwise, there were no major missteps.

"Let's search his desk," Harry said, and they moved to the desk. They stood there awkwardly, for a moment.

"Let's take off the cloak," Hermione suggested. "And keep an ear out for Quirrell. We'll be faster if we're not bumping into each other."

The boys quickly agreed, and they took off the Invisibility Cloak. Harry tucked it around his shoulders, so just his head was visible. "I'll watch the hall," Harry said, flashing them a grin before his head disappeared under the Cloak too. "Just in case. Let me know if I can help."

Hermione nodded absentmindedly as she searched the desk. Danny began looking around it too, rifling through some papers in a filing cabinet, but none of them looked interesting. He was wondering what exactly they would accomplish there, when Hermione pulled out an envelope.

"Quirrell threw this here just when Penelope came," Hermione whispered, opening the envelope and pulling the parchment out from it. It was dry and wrinkled, aged. "It could be important."

Danny pulled closer to her, peering over her arm at the letter. "What's it say?" he whispered back.

She unfolded the letter, then held it between them so they could both read. Soon, Danny felt his eyes go wide.

.

I heard a rumor that our favorite power-mongeror has recruited a werewolf. You will find him as a most recent acquisition to Topsgip's staff.

- Your loyal ally,

Parventium

.

"He must be talking about Remus," he breathed. The message was obvious when he already had a guess as to what it was about. "Remus is a werewolf. That's what he had on him."

Hermione and Danny stared at each other.

"We have to do something," Danny said, frantically. "I… I don't know. I don't know what it means, but this must be the secret he was talking about. We can't let anyone know."

He realized that the ink was still wet. Quirrell had just written this. He must have been planning on sending it, even if Remus hadn't gone to… Well, to do whatever it was that Quirrell hadn't wanted him to do.

"Are you sure, Danny?" Hermione asked him, eyes earnest. "I've read about them… I mean, about werewolves. He could be dangerous. Maybe it's not a bad thing…" She moved the envelope back in front of the letter, so that the receiver's address was visible. "It's being sent to the Minister."

"The Minister?" Danny said, eyes wide. "But - no, I know Remus. We have to do something."

They stood in silence, both thinking hard.

"I have a bad idea," Hermione finally announced.

"A bad idea?" Danny frowned. He had never known Hermione to have a bad idea.

"We could rewrite a bit of it, implicate Quirrell instead."

"That's clever," Danny said, looking again at the letter. "What do we write?"

Hermione frowned. "The problem isn't so much what we write, but how."

"What do you mean?" Danny asked.

"I haven't got a quill with me, and it would be obvious that someone else had written it." She looked at the letter uncertainly. "Maybe I could give it a try. I'd have to write out some letters first, to make sure it looks the same."

"Quirrel has to have a quill here somewhere," Danny said, already looking through the drawers. "Here - I found it."

She took it, still looking hesitant. "Please, Hermione," Danny said, pleading with her, not understanding why she didn't just start already.

"Well, alright," she hedged. "Get me some extra parchment too, then. To practice on." Looking queasy, she began studying the letter in greater detail, and Danny searched for more parchment. As soon as he had it, he set it in front of her, and eyebrows scrunched, she began drawing out the letters in careful detail.

Danny frowned, suddenly feeling antsy at having nothing to do. He peered over her shoulder, before deciding that watching so closely would only be a bother. He began pacing the room.

"Danny," Hermione hissed from the desk. "How does it look?"

He walked over, then inspected her copy of the letter as she held them side by side. He almost whistled in admiration. The writing was almost identical, though the original was obviously distinguished by its leathery, old parchment.

"Perfect," he said, and she gave him a small, nervous smile. "What are you going to write?"

"Oh, something like adding 'in a cursed position' to the end," she said, referencing the infamous DADA curse. "That'll get him - "

"Quirrell's here," a voice suddenly hissed from behind them, and they both nearly jumped ten feet. "Quick - get under the cloak." Harry's lower body suddenly appeared in front of them.

Eyes wide with sudden fear, Danny and Hermione hurried to obey. In the rush, one of the letters slipped from Hermione's fingers, but she didn't have time to pick it up as the boys dragged her towards the doorway. They were still too late, however, as the corner of Quirrell's robes just then flicked into view from the opening. Harry hadn't thought to close the door.

Harry did think fast enough, however, to immediately press the three of them against the wall. That way, they'd be out of the way, Danny realized. He counted his lucky stars that they hadn't made it too close to the door in their rush, or else the professor might have run into him.

But, Danny realized abruptly, the professor couldn't run into them, because he wasn't moving at all.

Quirrell stood stock still in the doorway. His eyes were glued to the sight of the paper on the floor.

Slowly, the turbaned man took a step forward, then, picked up the letter.

Close as they were, Danny could see the man's eyes widen and his hands begin to shake. Danny gulped, wondering if that was the copy or the original. It must have been the copy, he realized. The parchment looked too new to be the original.

That's not good.

He would know they were in there.

Quirrell suddenly looked up, eyes sharp as he scanned the room. "Wh-who's th-there? R-reveal yourself!"

Really, really not good.

Danny scarcely dared to breathe. He could feel both Hermione and Harry, wedged in the middle as he was, tense, their breaths shallow and ragged.

Quirrell waited.

None of them made a move. The moment seemed to stretch into eternity.

Finally –

"L-last warning," Quirrell said quietly. "If you d-do not show y-yourself, there will be severe c-c-consequences."

Despite the stammering, there was an air of seriousness that gave weight to the professor's words, and fear to Danny's heart. He hoped Hermione and Harry wouldn't give them away. But they were just as frozen as he was.

After another long pause, Quirrell flicked his wand and hissed, "Ghost."

Immediately, the glowing green figure was there, coming in through the wall, as if it were but an illusion. If Danny hadn't been scared before, he was now. He felt every beat of his heart thrum through his entire being, magnified. His mouth suddenly felt parched. His mind was blank as he once again saw the creature that had haunted his nightmares.

"Find them," Quirrell ordered the creature. It bobbed in the air, then began lazily floating around the room.

He felt Hermione stiffen next to him, breaking Danny's fearful transfixion.

He turned his head minutely to look at her, seeing her pale face. Then he looked back at the monster. The ghost. The strange, vaguely octopus-shaped green glowing creature. It looked just like his mother's kitchen creations, just bigger, scarier, and more tentacled.

And suddenly, he realized something.

He was scared, but he wasn't scared like he had been the first time he had seen the creature. He didn't feel that eerie rapture that had gripped him. No strange connection, no mystic sensation.

It was… surprisingly normal.

He was scared, but the fear was his own. It was the same fear that had accompanied him when he climbed high treetops so that he could look at the stars at night, and looked down and saw the ground swimming ten meters away from him. It was the fear that accompanied him when his bullies chased him down and he worried they were going to get physical. He was scared, more scared than he had ever been in those times, but this fear was still his own.

He felt himself center, his breathing slow, the palpitations of his heart become less pressing and more calm.

He stared at the ghost, for the first time seeing it. Seeing its smallness, its reality. Seeing its gaze pass harmlessly over them, as if it couldn't tell that they were there.

Ectopus, he thought again, term coming back to him suddenly. Bizarrely, he felt a small smirk come to his face. Just an ectopus. That's all.

Slowly, he relaxed.

They were safe.

Five minutes later, Quirrell had decided that there was no one in his office after all. He stormed out the door, fake letter clutched in his hand, the ghost disappearing into the wall soon after he left. Five minutes after that, the three of them quietly slipped out the door, into the light and safety of Hogwarts' corridors.

Growing Up

When the three of them, grim-faced, weary, feeling worn, arrived back at the Gryffindor Common Room, Ron greeted them with a bright grin.

"You're back!" he exclaimed, scurrying towards them the moment the Fat Lady's portrait had revealed them. "Blimey, I was worried. Kept thinking I should run after yo. How'd it go?"

From outside, a soft rain began pattering against the tower window. A few older students were clustered around the fireplace, reading and chatting softly.

"Yes, well," Hermione said uncomfortably, clearing her throat. "We broke into his office, and... perhaps this isn't the best place for conversation." She pointedly flicked her eyes to a group of third years who were now curiously eyeing the firsties conspiciously standing by the entrance door.

"Lucky that the last few times its been empty," Ron agreed. "Nev and Seamus are in the boy's dorm though, so we can't go there either."

"To the library?" Hermione suggested. "After what happened today, I think we'll be doing some research anyway. We'll catch you up on the way."

No one else had a better idea, so they quickly agreed and scuttled back out of the common room. Soon, Hermione was whispering to Ronall about the letter, the glowing green creature they had seen, and her new suspicions from seeing Quirrell's reaction to the letter on the floor. At one point, she had pulled the said letter from her robes and given it to Ron to read.

"How'd you get into his office?" Ron whispered back, finally, his eyes lingering heavily on the contents of the letter. He held it tightly in his hand, spread freckles visible as his hand paled from the force.

"Some prefect came barreling down the hall and asked him to help with something," Danny offered, also whispering, "Apparently all the Ravenclaws were hexed."

"We got lucky," Harry said quietly, seriously, eyebrows furrowed. "In more ways than one."

"Wasn't all luck," Ron whisepered, face momentarily shining with pride, hand loosening its grip on the letter, "I told Fred and George to hex Quirrell, and that I wouldn't tell mum how much they'd been heckling Percy if they did. Well, and, promised to help them with their next prank..."

"Ron, that's brilliant," Hermione whispered. "Though I do feel quite bad for those poor Ravenclaws..."

"Well, they had it coming," Rom whispered back. "Uppity know-it-alls."

Hermione stared at him flatly.

"Uppity know-it-alls," she said, abandoning the whisper.

Ron's face grew a shade closet to his hair. "Well, what do you expect when they've got their nose in a book all the time?" Seeing her face, he hurried to correct himself. "Not that that's a bad thing - I mean, you're like that, but at least you're a Gryffindor."

"I seem to remember you calling me an uppity know-it-all. Quite recently, in fact," Hermione said drly.

"Well," Ron said smartly, "I can't help it if it's true. Though I suppose you don't know it all. I could still beat you in -"

"Can you stop arguing?" Harry snapped. "Don't we have better things to focus on?"

Both Ron and Hermione turned to him, wearing matching frowns. Danny stared at Harry as if he had grown another head. He had thought Harry was timid.

"Well," Hermione started heatedly, then seemed to recount. "Well, I suppose you're right, Harry. We do have better things to focus on."

"What better things?"

The voice came from behind them, and the four of them all jumped about ten feet into the air in surprise.

"Remus!" Danny brightened, then almost wanted to run over and hug the man before he realizd how completely weird and awkward that would be. "You're okay."

"Sorry if I worried you," Remus said, ruffling his hair. "You were right; I had to do the right thing. Now I'm sure it'll clear up soon enough." Remus scanned the other three first years, then stopped on the letter Ron was stiill holding. "Ron, what's that you got in your hand?"

Ron looked at it as if he was surprising he was still holding the letter. "Oh, er, this? It's um..." He looked at the letter then back up, and something strange happened. His voice choked, his fale paled, and he stared up at Remus with wide eyes.

"We found it in –" Danny started, thinking to help explain the situation, but Hermione sharply ribbed him with her elbow. He looked at her in surprise, but her face offered him no clues.

"I-in the library," Hermione said quickly. "We were just about to bring it back."

Remus creased his eyebrows. Then he laughed. "I guess when I was your age, I got into just as much trouble with my friends. I'll let you keep your secrets – as long as you don't get into any trouble." Seeing their acknowledgement, he then turned to Danny. "I was actually looking for you. Your parents arrived an hour ago."

"They're here!?" Danny exclaimed, then smiled. "They actually came."

Remus nodded. "Want to go see them?"

Danny gave his friends a beseeching glance.

"We'll fill you in later," Harry promised, and gave him a reassuring smile. Danny began to turn away to follow Remus, but movement caught his eye before he could. Ron and Hermione were playing a weird game of charades. Hermione was crossing her arms, then miming talking with one hand. Ron was doing the same, except he was adding exaggerated eye movements to gesture very conspicuously at Remus.

"Ready?" Remus asked, pausing. Ron and Hermione suddenly looked perfectly innocuous, nodding agreeably and very suspiciously.

"Huh? What?" What were his friends doing? They didn't want him to tell Remus about the letter?

Danny shook his head. Now wasn't the time. Remus had asked a question. Parents. Danny needed to go see his parents. "Yeah, I'm ready. Let's go."

Remus chuckled to himself, seeming to enjoy a private joke, then led him to Dumbledore's office where his parents waited.

Humanity

"Danny!" Mom and Dad exclaimed with synchronized expressions. Mom rushed over and wrapped him in her arms. Thn Dad sprinted over and grabbed both of them, in one big bundle, swung them around into the air in an extravagently crushing hug. Danny felt like he was five in that moment, and it was probably the best he had felt in a year.

Danny laughed. It was good to see them, despite all their craziness. Maybe because of their craziness.

After the antics were over and Danny was safely back on the ground and his parents had fretted over him and asked if he was okay a billion times, he laughed again. "Mom, Dad, I'm okay."

"Are you sure?" Dad frowned. "Minerva," he waved a large hand in the direction of the stern professor, who was standing by the headmaster, "told us some ghost overshadowed you."

"Well..." Danny looked down, suddenly unable to meet his parents' eyes.

"Don't worry, sweetie," mom said, squatting down to be at eye level. She placed her hand on his shoulder and looked at him fiercely. "We will never, ever let anything – ghost or othewise – hurt you like that again."

"Mom..." Danny felt his chest tighten, and his eyes become suspiciously moist.

"What happened, Danny-o?" Dad's voice was soft, and his eyes earnest.

So Danny told them. It all came tumbling out of his mouth, unstoppable. Halloween, the ghost portal he saw, the ghost, how he fought off possession, how he had lost a month of his memory, how the professors had found out and Remus came to help him, and that his friends, Harry, Ron, and Hermione now knew.

"Oh, Danny." Mom swept him into another hug when all the words had tumbled out and there was nothing left for him to say.

Then they got to business.

"So," Mom said, standing up now and looking at Professor McGonagall. "What's being done to protect my son?"

"Remus here," Minerva said, gesturing to the werewolf, "has been guarding Mr. Fenton. He is exceptionally capable, and is one of the few people able to sense the ghost's presence." Mom, in soldier mode, nodded at the man in acknowledgement. "However, we were hoping to come to a more... permanent solution, with your help."

She looked towards Headmaster Dumbledore, and he nodded, confirming her words.

"What are you suggesting?" Mom asked consideringly.

The headmaster steped forward, blue eyes meeting Danny's for a brief moment. "You son has told me you are experts on muggle ghosts," Dumbledore said. "I believe we will have to rely on your expertise here."

"Hmm," Maddie tapped her chin thoughtfully, then turned to Dad. "Jack, do we still have the blueprints for that containment device we were working on?"

"Of course, Mads. Never go tthe chance to test out the prototype though."

"Contanment device?" Remus asked with interest, learning forward.

"It's only one idea," Mom said. "I'm thinking we should bring everything in. Ecto weapons, of course, but also anything that might contain it, trap it, or better – stop it from getting close to any of us. So far, we have the weapons – they are just unfocused blasts and require largely no finesse – but everything else is still a work in progress. Our ectoplasmic residue samples just aren't enough to mimic an actual ghost for testing, so we've been having trouble studying how our devices would affect a larger ghostly entity... It's like trying to figure out how human bodies work with only a RNA strand and only a rough idea of the physics of the universe."

She looked up and was happily startled to find everyone listening intently – even Danny, who had never shown any interest in their research after hitting third grade.

"I suppose," Mom continued, "to really build solid defenses, we'd need to get an unlimited supply of ectoplasm – real ectoplasm. We'd need to build the ghost portal." She exchanged excited looks with Jack.

Danny's eyes widened. Suddenly, he felt a tremor in his hands.

"Wait, Mom, Dad. You can't build the ghost portal."

Maddie looked at him, looking confused. "But, sweetie… If we build it, it can help up protect you."

"But…" Danny struggled to make his thoughts more coherent, crystallize this feeling of terror that the thought of ghost portal gave him into logical thought. "But they could come out of the portal, couldn't they? Mom, Dad, please."

Mom and Dad exchanged looks.

"Son, we'd put a genetic lock on the door," Dad said. "Power it off whenever we're not using it. Heck, that's the easy part. If that's what you're worried about, we can fix it, no problem."

"But –" Danny hesitated. "Aren't there any other risks? And… are you sure that the… the door would work? I mean, couldn't they just pass through the door?"

Again, they glanced at each other.

"Well," Mom said. "We've recently been researching a material that appears to have some resistance to ectoplasm. Theoretically, it could be applied as a coating to this 'door.' But we really won't know until we've done more research, and more testing. It takes time, sweetie. And we need the funding and the resources we'd get from building it."

"But…"

"Tell you what," she said. "We'll be very careful about it and keep you in the loop. Until we've perfected this door and make sure it's safe, we won't test the actual portal. Sound good?"

"I guess…"

She smiled at him. "In the meantime, take this," she said, pulling out a tube of lipstick and pressing it into his hand. "You know what to do with it."

He looked down at the object, and saw it for what it was: the infamous Fenton Lipstick Blaster. He smiled faintly, then tucked it into his pocket, making sure the cap was twisted firmly into the off position.

"Thanks, Mom," he said, though he couldn't entirely shake off the bad feeling the idea of the portal had given him.

After that, they talked for a long time, of ghosts, of school. They traded ideas with the headmaster, Danny hesitantly piping up about his experience and any concerns. At some point, Professor McGonagall left the room, feeling as if she was no longer needed and had other things to get to. Soon after Remus also left.

The conversation then shifted to family, what they had been doing before their arrival at Hogwarts. They explained that they had gone to the States to visit an old friend of theirs, Vlad Masters, a friend back in college when they had been lab partners. Back then, they had actually tried to build a ghost portal, but had failed due to an inexplicable reason. Vlad had afterwards been hospitalized (which brought all of Danny's fears back, until they reassured him that it had been some strange, unrelated illness), and they had soon drifted apart.

Still, Vlad had accepted them back into his life with good grace, once they reached out to inquire for his advice as a fellow scientist. It turned out he had become a billionaire – "would you believe that?" Maddie laughed – and a highly successful businessman. When Mom and Dad had received the letter from Hogwarts asking them to come visit, Vlad had been so charmed by his old friends that he had pleaded for them to stay for a little bit longer, explaining their delayed arrival. Jazz was still there with him, since the American ministry had trouble processing her papers to arrange for a transfer all the way back to London.

They had to get back to her soon, they said, and fly back to London the Muggle way, but for the next two days, there would be no one more important than him.

That was a thought that made him smile, but then, of course, in their typical rambunctious fashion, they immediately pestered him to go to his friends and spend some time with them while they got their lodgings and the ghostly defenses started up in Hogwarts.

And so he was ushered back to the Gryffindor common room, where he sat for a long time, enjoying the sound of the crackling fireplace, the patter of the rain, while waiting for his friends to show up.

What a strange day, he thought, as he stared down at the Fenton Lipstick Blaster. He could scarcely believe he had gone from waking up to hear Remus seemingly terrified, to sneaking into Quirrell's office, to a visit from his parents in the middle of the most magical castle in Britain.

That settles it, he thought.

Normalcy is definitely, definitely dead.

Humanity

The day was destined to only grow stranger. Harry, Ron, and Hermione had finally stumbled upon him in the common room, whereupon Hermione had immediately insisted that they go to the library to begin studying for finals – "they're only a month away!" While studying transfiguration, the four of them spotted Hagrid, the groundskeeper, in the library.

"Hagrid?" Harry asked, managing to sound incredulous while whispering. "What are you doing here?"

The giant man looked uncomfortable, glancing down at Danny. "Just looking for some books."

"What kind of books?" Hermione asked suspiciously. All of them had recognized the guilty look on his face.

"Just some books, is all," Hagrid repeated. Seeing their crestfallen faces, he said, "Well… I suppose if you all really want to know, you can come by the hut later tonight." He looked down at Danny, squinting at the boy. "You too, I s'ppose."

Danny grimaced, remembering Remus's warning the other day. "Sorry. I can't leave the castle. I… have a medical condition." He saw Hermione looking at him strangely, and he mouthed, I'll tell you later.

As it turned out, "later" was when they were walking back to the Gryffindor common room to get their supplies for Astronomy, which was just in half an hour.

They were already almost late, since the walk to the Astronomy tower was long, on account of the long spindly staircase that they were forced to climb to get to the observation deck. It had made Danny's legs burn even without considering all the trick steps that he had gotten stuck into in the first months at Hogwarts, and made him remember all the elevators in the Muggle states of America with great fondness.

Harry and Ron had split early, leaving the library to go do who knows what. So it was that Danny and Hermione walked alone to the common room together, and Danny was more comfortable in explaining that because the ghost was still in Hogwarts, he always had to be in the company of someone else while inside Hogwarts, or in the same room as Remus or any other experienced teacher who could protect him from the ghost.

Outside was a different matter, since there the danger of the ghost was increased, since Hogwarts' wards were strongest inside of her castle walls. Inside, at least, if the ghost lingered for too long, Dumbledore or Remus would quickly notice the Dark presence and they could rush to his aid.

So he couldn't go to Hagrid's hut with only three other young students, especially when Hagrid himself hadn't qualified under Remus' list of "teachers who can actually protect you from the ghost".

Hermione was quiet as he told him all of this. When he was done, she was staring fixedly at the floor, eyebrows furrowed, obviously lost in thought. When Danny tentatively asked what she thought of all of this, she only said, "There's something not quite right…" and refused to say anything more, "until I've done more research at the library. I have to think about something."

In the ensuing silence, a strong feeling of distorted regret filled him.

Danny, too, then began thinking about something. Thinking about last night when Neville kept asking for his secrets, Quirrell summoning the ghost, his parents coming to visit, the ghost portal they were building, and his sudden strange lack of fear of the ghost. About Remus, and how he was a werewolf and had never told him. How his friends had acted towards Remus afterwards, how they didn't want him to know about that letter. At how close they had been to death in Quirrell's office, and how he had been the one to lead them there.

By the time they reached the Gryffindor common room, Danny had worked himself into a bad mood. He felt impatient, like he needed to do something, fix something. The rain was coming down even harder now – he could barely see out of the common room window.

"Hold on, Hermione," Danny said, spotting Neville coming down the stairs to the boy's corridor. This was one guilt he could resolve. "I want to talk to Neville for a sec."

She nodded, barely hearing. "I'll see you in Astronomy." She rushed off to her dorm room to collect her things.

"Hey, Neville," Danny said in a rush, once he had reached his friend. "You were right. I am keeping secrets from you."

He glanced down, guilt welling up in him threefold as he found that even now he couldn't just say it. Everything was too complicated, too secret and confusing, even if he had already told Hermione, Harry, and Ron. The rain increased, sounding thunderous, clogging his ears and filling his head with its pounding. "I'm sorry. I'm a terrible friend," he finished lamely.

"Danny," Neville said, giving him a funny look, "We have to get to Astronomy, or else I'd give you a longer talking-to." The rotund boy took a deep breath, shifting the bag he always carried before abruptly dropping it to the ground and resting it against his feet. "You helped me to the Hospital Wing after I got hurt in Potions. You might have even saved my life, in that first flying lesson. Whatever you're keeping secret can't be so bad. I was only teasing earlier. And if anything, I'm lucky to have you as a friend."

"Oh." The guilty feeling faded away, overcome by embarrassment and a swelling ego. Danny suddenly felt rather pleased with himself. He blushed, rubbing the back of his neck with his hand. "Thanks, Nev."

"And you never threw me out the window to prove that I have magic, either," Neville continued mulishly, almost as if he hadn't heard, then picked up his bag again. "Come on, let's get to class."

Though Danny already knew the story, he still was somewhat horrified at the reminder of the complete and utter insanity of wizards.

Crash. Thunder echoed. Danny winced. That one had been close.

"Will we even have class?" Danny wondered. "We can hardly see outside in this rain, right?"

Then he remembered that unlike Neville, he still hadn't gotten his supplies ready for class, and that all the other first years had already cleared out for Astronomy class. He looked around. Had Hermione already gone on without him? Yes, he thought he had seen her walk past, mumbling to herself, all crouched around the books held tightly to her chest.

"Not sure," Neville said, and Danny swiveled back to face him, startled until he remembered what they had been talking about. Neville frowned. "Come on, we'll be late soon."

"Erm, I actually still need to get my books and telescope… I'll be right there."

The moment he stepped into the boy's dorm room and saw that no one else was there, he sharply remembered Remus' "never be alone" rule, and cursed himself for not asking Neville to wait for him. He hoped Neville had understood his wording as a request to wait.

Either way, he needed to be fast. Danny scrambled to collect his supplies. Instead of stashing his books nicely into his backpack, he gathered them in his hands and dashed out of the Gryffindor common room balancing a precarious collection of supplies, which bizarrely (in the wizarding fashion) included an enchanted rainbow magnifying glass and an armillary sphere, and dashed into the common room.

Neville wasn't there.

Danny cursed. He'd have to run to catch up to his friend. He decided that if the ghost were to appear, he'd drop all his books and go for the Fenton Lipstick Blaster in his pocket.

It happened just as he was running, passing a nameless corridor. An echo of thunder, so loud it even resonated through the walls of Hogwarts when –

Someone grabbed him by the arm. He wildly pivoted, caught by momentum, before he was dragged roughly into the passageway. His books, armillary sphere, telescope, and magnifying glass fell to the floor in a loud clutter.

"What –"

Danny's eyes widened when he saw that it was Professor Quirrell who had grabbed him. The man wore a dark expression on his face, and his wand was pointed directly at Danny.

Fear leaped into his throat and beat a rapid tattoo in his chest. His mind was set into a frenzy. He tried to pull himself away, but the professor's grip was too strong.

Plan. I had a plan. His right hand leapt to his pocket, grabbed the Fenton Lipstick Blaster. He wasn't a ghost, but –

"One day," the man interrupted, abandoning his false stutter. "You will understand that this is for your own good." The professor lifted his wand with his free hand.

"Imperio."

Danny felt his body go slack, his head grow dizzy. Then the storm silenced, and he knew no more.

Humanity

.

.

.