After that incident, it seemed that although Professor Snape was allowed to continue teaching me, Amycus blamed his bad experience on me. Every lesson during Defence, he would get me on stage and force me to duel the Gryffindors, from Seamus Finnigan to newly joined Gryffindor Ernest Fawley, both of whom I disarmed before any harm could be metted out on either side. Once he got bored of me winning the Gryffindors, he pitted me against the rest of the Slytherins in front of the entire class. Crabbe and Goyle. Draco and Blaise. Although Crabbe and Goyle were not much of a challenge, their entire repertoire involved previously illegal hexes and jinxes, Unforgiveables, and similar spells. I had to walk away with an inflamed burn on my arm, my heart thudding as I attempted to evade everything single spell of theirs. Then, against Draco and Blaise, who were formidable in their own and together terrifying, I lasted the full session against them, thanks to my Durmstrang training. When the bell rang Amycus disappointedly let us go, but his eyes glittered with pleasure when he saw the cuts and bruises and hexes visible through split robes. I knew very well that if it weren't for the fact that the Burke family was reclusive and in no position of high power, unlike the Malfoys, or a follower of the Dark Lord like the Goyles and Crabbes, I would not have been allowed to be attacked so brutally. Even Daphne and Toni would not have been attacked like that due to the prestige of their families. But I counted my blessings, because Amycus Carrow was even harsher against clear Potter supporters like Longbottom, who frequently left the class with swollen eyes, bleeding all over the ground like an animal for sacrifice. I was suddenly thankful that Professor Vasiliev had pushed me so hard at school, even though at the time, with my muscles throbbing and every part of my body hurting, I hadn't thought nearly as generously of her as I was thinking now.

That evening, haggard but determined, I snuck out of the Slytherin dormitory once I had ascertained that everyone in my dorm had fallen asleep. Once, Tracey had told me, all the Slytherin girls had shared the same dorm. Now, with the new regulations, there were two dorms with four in each - I shared a room with Toni, Samar Shafiq and Tracey. Daphne shared a room with Pansy Parkinson, who despised me, Millie, and this quiet girl named Grace who barely spent any time with us. I hadn't spared her any thought, and now I felt guilty about that, because it suddenly seemed cruel to leave her out of everything, even though the only reason why I had noticed that was because of my private relief that Pansy was not in my dorm to tell on me.

I cracked my wand over my head, and felt the feeling of a watery, liquid egg sliding over my body. The next moment, when I looked down at my hand, all I saw was the floor.

"Lumos uno," I thought, nonverbally lighting the tip of my wand with light that guided me as I closed the heavy forest green hangings around my four poster bed, eased open the dormitory door, and slid outside, climbing the dormitory stairs. At Durmstrang, where we were free to wear anything we wanted outside of school hours (and if you didn't wear enough, your painful frostbites were on you), I had donned muggle attire to sleep. Now, because of Hogwarts' anti-muggle policies, I had no choice but to clamber up the Slytherin stairs in my black robes, a heavy fur cloak swishing as I walked. Thankfully, the soles of my green and grey scaled dragon-hide boots (from a Welsh green dragon, if I wasn't wrong, and only taken after the scales had fallen off naturally during his growth from adolescent to adulthood) were soft and supple, and they did not sound against the stone that I walked on as I went to the Slytherin wall and placed a hand on it, causing it to slide to the side and let me out.

With my heart hammering in my chest, I strode through the dungeons as quickly as I dared. They were completely empty until I turned down the corridor with the flight of stairs leading out of the dungeons, where Filch stood, his nasty eyes sweeping back and forth, and his red-eyed cat mewing with the same snide unpleasantness. "Sniff hard, my sweet. Where are the nasty students out of bed?"

Thinking quickly, I casted a spell that healers used to trap the air particles around them to prevent infection when travelling out of hospital rooms. Then, I held my breath as I strode past them, noticing that there was a small space behind Filch that I could duck behind and continue up the stairs. I passed Mrs Norris, and was heartened to find that she didn't seem to smell me. Then, realising at the last minute that blocking myself behind Filch where he could reach out and grab me any moment wasn't a good idea, I pointed my wand at the left side of the armour and made it clatter, as though someone invisible was heading down that corridor. Instantly, he hurried down that corridor, the cat following him briskly, and I in turn made my way with a sigh of relief up the stairs, arriving at the corridor that led to the Great Hall.

Turning down the other direction rather than the front doors, I went instead to a tiny classroom on the other end, and casted an alohomora on the window, before pushing it open. Then, I extinguished the light on the end of the wand, leapt out of the window, closed the window behind me, and shifted.

I had been practising. Although it had originally hurt to shift, it was now second nature, barely taking longer than a few seconds. I held up the Disillusionment charm even as I felt my paws and my hindlegs hitting the ground at a run as I sprinted for the Forbidden Forest, knowing full well that if I entered as a human anyone looking out the castle might notice the shimmers, but as an animal that was Disillusioned, that would be impossible, with the shimmery trace of Disillusionment hidden amongst the elements, the high grass, the weathered grey stone.

Then I was in the forest, surrounded by moonlit green light that dappled the dark forest undergrowth. The Disillusionment was dropped quickly, being a drain on my magical stores, and I ran through the Forbidden Forest, enjoying the exercise, and suddenly noticing my hunger, feeling tempted to hunt down elk or even a deer for a snack. I settled on the banks of a small river in a corner of the forest, where, as I bent to sip water from the stream, I caught sight of my reflection in the mirror - my long snout, my yellowish-green eyes, the thick ruff, the rounded, muscled, powerful physique, the long silky cream fur, the pointed ears, the bottle-brush tail. I opened my mouth, and the creature in the reflection opened his snout, revealing sharp yellowish teeth. I narrowed my eyes, and the yellow-green eyes became slits. I cocked my head to the side, and the wolf cocked his head as well.

Then I started forwards, jumping into the shallow river and splashing up a huge spout of water with my paws from the force. The feeling of the wind whistling through my ears, the cool air in this woodland forest, where light and air was fresh and cool, easy to see. I wadded my way through a few more puddles, the result of the heavy rain from the past few days, and then suddenly I was out of the forest and on a huge grassy plain, moonlight from a huge round moon shining downwards.

But something was wrong.

"Ah-ooo!" came the sound. A primal sound, but not like a wolves'. I had howled quite a number of times, and it was never as deep nor as flat as this. A true wolves' howling, as I knew, was rounder than this, more timbrous and soulful, and filled with more than one pitch, going from low to high and then back to low and soft the longer the howl continued. This wolf could only howl at one pitch.

Then something burst into the clearing. A humongous brute of a creature, looking part wolf, yet still humanoid, hair instead of fur, bent back, clawed paws. The creatures' eyes glowed dirty yellow rather than the greenish that mine were, and his eyes seemed to dilate with canine and cruel pleasure from seeing me. I frowned. Hagrid had said there were no other dangerous creatures in the forest apart from acromantulas. Evidently, he was wrong.

Even Hagrid must know that werewolves are dangerous. This werewolf must be a visitor.

Taking off as quickly as I could, I raced back into the Forbidden Forest, heart hammering wildly in my ribs. Everything around me was a blur as I pounded hard on my paws every step back toward the castle, pretending somehow that the werewolf would melt away into the shadows, or disappear, the moment I neared the castle. That was my only hope.

At least, until I realised that there were three people in front of me. Three very, dreadfully familiar people.

Blonde hair, milky white skin, wide and dreamy blue eyes. Flaming red hair, determined, stubborn expression. Tall boy, dark hair, looking confused.

Then the howling came again. That grating sound, an abomination to ordinary wolves. Then the confusion in the boy's swollen face melted into terror. I knew from the sound that the werewolf was nearing, that it didn't matter how fast the other three ran. The werewolf would catch up. And there was no hope of my running a different direction, and hoping the werewolf would follow behind. He was getting too close. The moment he got a whiff of their human scent, they were the ones he would attack.

Then he burst into the clearing, teeth bristling, eyes inflamed and a sickly yellow, his long dirty claws extended and ready for battle. Against my better judgment, I turned on the humans and met him head on, pouncing on him with all my weight. His claws snatched at my snout, and though I pulled back my head I could feel the sting of the claw, the stench of his raw, sour, rancid breath. Jumping off him, I ducked around and leapt for his soft underbelly, and he pushed me away, but not before I felt my claws extend and mark his belly, and his whine of pain.

Then he was on me again, fighting me with tooth, claw and fang, and I was doing likewise. Never was I more glad that my form was not just a common grey wolf, but 7 feet and almost 200 pounds of muscle and bone. I was easily one of the heaviest wolves in the world, with a heftier build, but also stronger and heavier, which made all the difference against a man-wolf like the one I was fighting. I could easier match his height, his weight, his fighting, and even with his experience against man-wolves I had experience against the tundra wolves in the freezing cold all around Durmstrang. His human tactics and my wolf fighting skills meant we were matched almost equally in every tousle, and though I could feel the exhaustion drag through my muscles, the stinging pain from his infected claws that scratched my pelt and occasionally drew blood, the adrenaline that coursed through my veins kept me alive, awake, aware.

Then the moon clouded over, and I could see with the waning of the moon his power weakening. As I dug my claws into his fur and nipped with my teeth around the neck, feeling the hair pierce my toughened, unfeeling mouth, I knew I had won. I wrung the neck several times, and it finally gave a howl and, when I tossed it aside, it went sprawling before painfully retreating away from the castle.

I turned, then froze. The three humans were still there, for whatever reason, even though I could see the dawn breaking, the smell of sweetness that came with the beginning of day. And two of them had their wands out.

I didn't know what to do, so I let out a whine. Then I moved back, slowly, my ears flat, trying to make it clear I meant no harm to them. But neither witch nor wizard seemed willing to lower their wands until finally Luna said aloud: "She's not going to hurt us." Her voice was still dreamy, impressively, even faced with what would appear to them as imminent danger. "Look at that. She's hurt."

A gruff voice rasped out: "Luna. That thing just took down a werewolf."

"And protected us," Luna pointed out. Then she started walking toward me, causing her companions to cry out, and demand for her explanation of what she was doing. But she continued to approach. Wary, I watched, but soon determined from her scent she meant no harm.

Then the wand slipped into her hand.

I let out a shriek, and felt my hindlegs snap a few twigs as I retreated further, frantically. But Luna's voice rang out: "I'm just going to heal you, honest. There's nargles all around this scratch. See?"

A silvery spell shot out of the wand, hit the scratch, and stang, causing me to whine. But then I felt the cut seal itself.

"See, nothing wrong," said Luna gently, reaching out a hand and stroking my fur. For some reason, the feeling of a hand over my silky and long fur felt good, and I let out a soft chirp.

"Let me just do the rest," she said gently. "Okay?"

But I knew as I lowered my snout to sniff the wound that even sealed as it was, it was not healed. There was still infection in it, and whatever had been festering between his claws was unclean and poisonous. I needed alcohol, something to clean it out. I could do it in person. I definitely couldn't do it in front of the three of them.

So, instead, I leapt to my feet and sprinted the other direction, feeling the cuts across my face, across my pelt, on my underbelly, sting as the cold wind flapped across my fur.