The next day was a Saturday, which was a good thing, because I did not want to explain to anyone why I still had cuts over my nose, over my arms, over my belly, and my legs. I had turned back once I found a safe place - a tiny little cave so small it barely managed to fit me in it - and transformed there. I had gotten used to travelling with medical alcohol, which poured liberally over my wounds, wincing as the alcohol hit my skin and open wounds. Then, as I waited for the alcohol to take effect before I cleaned it out and closed the wounds, I thought about Ronan's words - that Mercury was out that night. Mercury, the planet of unpredictability. And mutability. The werewolf during a full moon. Me having to fight the werewolf for the protection of those three idiots who, for some reason, had decided to go travelling about the forest unprotected. And the scars I got for it.

I had almost begun to seethe, especially since I could be in serious trouble with the ministry if they knew I was unregistered, when I finally persuaded myself that I needed the fighting practice, anyway. I used to train all the time with the tundra wolves. At first, they were wary of me, and fought me viciously, leaving me bleeding out in the cold every evening when I stubbornly insisted on crossing paths with them, wanting to learn from them, the animal whose form I took desperately wanting its own family. Finally, when they began to accept me, I fought at least seven wolves a night to keep our fighting skills sharpened. It looked vicious on the outside, but was simply us playfighting to learn how to protect the tribe.

I would miss them, I thought. Though I couldn't communicate very well with them, and sometimes misunderstood their signals, they had been family, and had taken me in, even though they must have known from my stench I was human.

That werewolf was a good reminder that not everything was safe, that the Dark Lord was still recruiting werewolves, that we were all in danger. Which made me wonder what a werewolf was doing so far away from civilisation in a Hogwarts forest. Had the Dark Lord sent the wolf. If so, why? To put the students in danger? But weren't the students already under his control?

Shaking away these thoughts, I pointed my wand at the wounds and, gritting my teeth, slowly dragged my wand down, tracing each cut from head to tail. The cut closed up, tugging painfully and tightly against my skin, but I knew it would loosen up in a bit. I resisted the itch to scratch.

Then, wincing, I opened up the previous wound that Luna had closed, using a severing charm to break it open. Pouring alcohol, I hissed painfully. The wound had festered, and was spewing out pus and noxious smells, but the alcohol, I was sure, would clean it out. Then, instead of using the spell, I would take precautions and use a bandage to pull around it, and let it heal on its own. Sometimes it was better that way.

I was glad I had not gotten out of my old habit of carrying a small toolkit of medical supplies like bandages, tape, and so on. I had nearly done so, after so long of going without running and fighting with the tundra wolf pack, but yesterday evening was a warning that I was getting over-confident and too relaxed. I had to be more careful. Hogwarts, while not filled with brutal teachers and tough classes, was filled with a different form of danger. After going to so many classes without regularly fighting anyone, I had gotten overly comfortable. But I was forgetting that there was the Dark Lord out there, somewhere, waiting to take over. And I wouldn't let him do that without a fight.

Fixing the tape on my skin to keep the bandage in place, I packed my supplies into the mokeskin pouch I kept them in, tipped that into my robes pocket, and used a cleaning charm and reparo to fix my robes to its former glory, before returning to my dorm.

It was already approaching lunch when I arrived in my dormitory, fully expecting it to be quiet so that I could take a nice long bath and relax with a book. Unfortunately, I was greeted by a clamour of noise and rebuke.

"Cassie! Where on earth were you just now?" Daphne insisted.

"When I woke up, you were already gone," said Tracey, looking confused. "I woke up at five. Where were you the entire evening?"

Millie was in the dorm too, along with, to my surprise, Grace. Shafiq was ignoring me, though she occasionally shot me glares like the disturbance and noise in her dorm was my fault, and Toni looked...I winced. Toni looked betrayed.

"I woke up early," I said. "So I went for a walk."

"A seven hour walk?" asked Daphne in disbelief. "Don't even try to make us believe that."

I hesitated. "Then I went to the owlery to spend time with Delphine," I said. Delphine was my owl, a beautiful screech owl whom I loved dearly.

"And you spent four hours with your owl?" Tracey asked incredulously.

"Then I went to the kitchens for a late breakfast," I said.

"I was in the kitchens for a late breakfast," Millie said slowly.

"I must have missed you," I said. "Then I went to the library and lost track of time."

"We were in the library looking for you," said Daphne, looking hurt.

"There's a little alcove, in the corner. And you know how I can read for a very long time and forget everything," I said. "C'mon. Why would I lie to you? You guys are my closest friends. And I've known you since I was toddling around at three."

They still looked suspicious, but finally turned to talk about other matters. I pulled out fresh clothes from my dresser and headed into the toilet, and was about to use the shower when the toilet door opened, shut, and I heard the lock click shut.

Then the door to my shower flew open, causing me to jump in surprise, and Toni stood before time, glaring. "Don't feed me that bullshit. I've known you longer than the rest, and even they knew something was up. And what the hell happened to your face?"

Her wand drew squiggly lines, and I knew even before I looked in the long rectangular mirror that covered the length of one wall of the bathroom that I would find the cuts and scratches covering my nose, my mouth, my forehead.

"How did you know?" I breathed, staring at her. But from her wide eyes, I knew that even though she must have seen the shimmer of the spell I had casted over my face, she had not envisioned that it would be this bad.

"I have not been your closest friend for seven years without learning a few tricks," she said, looking affronted, but also oddly sympathetic. "Wait here. I'll go get something."

She disappeared out the common toilet door, undoing the lock she had casted, and I walked to the mirror above the sinks and glittering silver taps. Sure enough, my face was covered in scabs and scratches. Though I had cleaned out the blood and forced it to close, it was still red and inflamed.

Then Toni was back, but this time with a small bottle in her hand. "Healing salve," she informed, opening it and sticking her finger into it. "It might sting a little, but if you apply it every morning and evening the scars should disappear, then you won't have to explain it."

I let her apply it on my face without protest, knowing that her mothering me made her feel better. Only after she covered my entire face with the paste did I realise that I intended to take a shower, and I told her so.

She glared at me. "Well, you're not wasting this. This is extremely precious. Cast a bubble head over your head while you shower, that should do it."

"What about my hair?" I asked, pointing at my oily black hair. It lay flat and greasy, and irritated my scalp.

"Or modify the spell," she said with a roll of her eyes. "I know you can do that. You're the best at spell modification in our entire year."

"Was," I reminded her gently. We were no longer at a Durmstrang, after all.

But she shook her head. "Is," she said. "Don't think I'm not watching, because I'm well aware that the Carrows pick on you because of your skill and for some bit of hatred Amycus feels for you, and that when you fight those Gryffindors you go extremely easy on them, saying one spell and changing your intention and modifying it to be less terrible. I'm not blind."

She wasn't wrong, so I said nothing. Finally, she took a deep breath. "I don't know why you don't trust me more, but whatever it is you are hiding, I'll keep my trap shut, you know that. And take a shower, you stink."

The toilet door slammed shut behind her again, and I looked at the door she had just left through contemplatively, before altering the air-trapping spell around my face and casting a water-repellent over the top, and doing the same for the bandaged wound on my stomach. Then, I pulled out the rubber band and let my thin black hair spring free, and went under the shower, feeling the warm water soak away all my pains.

When I rejoined the Slytherins in the dorm, feeling human again, they were chatting about the newest Prophet issue. Frowning, I reached over to grab it, and my eyes widened when I saw the headlines: Potter Caught Trying To Break Into The Ministry.

Chewing on my bottom lip thoughtfully - a habit I had, to my parents dismay, not grown out of - I returned the paper to Millicent, and wondered about how Reilly was doing, and whether the ministry was truly in havoc as the paper made it seem.