Due

A bloodcurdling scream rang out in the darkness as Isabella splashed through the stream to hide behind Gianna; who wasn't feeling much braver as she fumbled for her wand. She hardly wanted to take her eyes off of the wolf as it began lumbering down though the field, disappearing for seconds at a time in the twilight or a particularly high patch of grass.

She could hear its paws hitting the ground and the grass brushing past its fur-covered body, further inducing her panic.

Finally, her shaking hand clasped around the wooden handle of her wand. She drew it out, as if unsheathing a sword, and without thinking yelled, "Stupify!" A jet of red light erupted from the tip of her wand. It ricocheted off of the werewolf's left shoulder and shot off into the trees. It hadn't even flinched. If anything, it sped up. Gianna stared in horror. It should've worked…

Isabella was shrieking uncontrollably and clawing at the back of Gianna's shirt in fear. Gianna backpedaled a few steps, nearly tripping over her small cousin, as the wolf neared the stream. There was no time to run; it was bearing down on them as it was. It would take them over in mere seconds. They'd never make it to the safety of the house.

"Stupify! STUPIFY!" she shouted, sending more jets of red light flying at the charging werewolf as it vaulted over the stream, clearing it with ease.

This was it. The werewolf screeched to a stop, as if for dramatic effect. Now Gianna could properly see all of the features that before had been obscured by the now bridged distanced.

Its lips were curled back as it snarled and snapped its jaws, menacingly. And there was no mistaking it now, a thick, crimson liquid, mixed with saliva was dripping liberally from both corners of its mouth. Its razor sharp fangs were also stained red. Who or what it had last dismembered had probably long since parted from their body. She could practically feel its hot breath on her.

Several things then happened at once. The werewolf lunged toward them, Isabella shrieked louder than ever and something hot brushed past Gianna's right ear. The wolf yelped and was knocked backward, mid leap, and crashed to the ground, several yards away.

Gianna turned, flabbergasted. Her father was running, best he could, pell-mell down the hill towards them.

"Gianna! Isabella!" Orlando shouted, stumbling on a tree root.

"Zio!" Isabella cried and began sprinting, somewhat clumsily, back toward the house and her uncle, who was brandishing a wand and looking terrified.

Gianna looked at him, then back to the wolf. She'd never seen a werewolf before. Only pictures in textbooks at school. She stood, transfixed, staring at the beast. It looked bigger in person than it had in the books she'd read; more muscular. Its chest was heaving and it was beginning to stir. But still, she could not move.

"Gianna!" her father yelled again, breaking the trance. She shook her head and looked back at him, still clambering down the hill. With one last look at the monster on the ground, she backed a few steps away, and then turned to run up the hill and join the others.

Moments later, barricaded in the safety of the house, Gianna peered out the window. She cautiously moved a curtain aside a fraction of an inch with her wand and let her eyes scan across the back of their house for anything that was moving. She thought she saw something flit across the sky… but that could have easily been a bat or an owl. Certainly nothing to do with the werewolf, which she could not see from her vantage point.

Her father was kneeling in front of the fireplace, his head completely engulfed in flames, talking frantically with someone from the Ministry of Magic. This was eliciting hysterical looks from his brother and niece who were backed into a corner, far away from the many windows and making themselves as small, insignificant and unworthy of being eaten as possible.

Orlando pushed himself up off of the floor and shoved his glasses a little further up his sweaty, soot covered nose. "Well…" he said with a sigh. "The Ministry is sending someone from the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures to try to do something with it… If its still there, that is." he said.

"If we'd encountered something like that in our back yard, I'd have had it shot, straight away!" Raul said, still huddling in the corner, Isabella wrapped closely in his arms.

Gianna and her father both looked into the corner in surprise. After all, what did Raul Borghese know about the disposal of werewolves?

"Well… unfortunately, Raul… that's not possible in this case." Orlando said patiently.

"And why not?" he asked, scandalized.

"Well… for one thing, I don't think that a bullet… unless it was made of pure silver, would do much damage to a werewolf of that size… and also because I'm afraid that there's a person underneath that fur. A person, who hasn't yet been able to gain control of his… abnormality. If only he'd had a bit of my Wolfsbane potion…" Orlando said kindly to himself more than to his brother.

"Abnormality?" Raul laughed manically. "You call that," he gestured out the nearest window, "An abnormality?" His eyes were popping, making his handsome face quite ugly. "It's a dangerous, blood thirsty beast, Orlando! Think of what it could've done to my daughter!? It could've ripped her throat out! Not to mention what would've happened after that! I've seen the movies you know!" he said knowledgably.

Isabella gave a small squeal and her father held her still closer. Gianna was afraid that perhaps he would strangle her out of desire to keep her near him. She would've sworn Isabella's face was turning beginning to turn blue.

"I know what could've happened, Raul. In fact, I'd venture to say that I've got an even better idea of what might've happened than you do. But let's not forget… my daughter was out there as well. And speaking of…" he rounded on Gianna.

Her eyes widened. Somehow she knew this would come back to her at some point.

"Didn't we just talk this morning about wandering around at night?" he asked, seriously, looking over the edge of his glasses.

"I fell asleep!" she said indignantly.

"I told you that you should've taken that nap." He father said, predictably.

Gianna fought off the urge to giggle.

"Well… it won't happen again. Not after this evening, surely?"

"No, Papa. It won't happen again."

"And certainly not while I'm away." It was a statement rather than a question.

"Certainly not." Gianna agreed immediately.

Just then, as if the lecture wasn't enough, an owl swooped down the chimney and skidded out across the hardwood floor. Once it had collected itself, it stood up and stretched out its leg. The scroll of parchment which was wrapped around it was the letter from the Improper Use of Magic office regarding the spell Gianna Borghese, not yet being seventeen years of age, had performed at 8:49 p.m. that evening.

…

Gianna sat, staring out her second story bedroom window. She blew out a sigh and watched her hair drift up, then back down to where it belonged. The Ministry officials had come to collect the werewolf the previous night but had found the field in which it had laid to be empty.

This hadn't made it any easier for Gianna to say goodbye to her father as he left for his trip to London. It was bad enough, with the knowledge that there was a werewolf in the vicinity with her father in the house, let alone with only her clueless Muggle uncle and small Muggle cousin in the house, who were more disgruntled to be there than usual with the appearance of a dangerous magical beast. She was the only wand-wielder in the house while her father was away… and she wasn't of age yet. If something did happen, she couldn't even defend them without risking expulsion. Especially after last night's reprimand.

She tried to tell herself that the werewolf in their yard the previous evening had been just an isolated incident. But she had a lingering sensation that it was not. Werewolves were only supposed to transform during the full moon; which had clearly been the previous evening… or had it?

The morning before, her father had expressed his concern over the disappearance of their neighbor. Had their neighbor's disappearance been simply that; a disappearance? Or was it possible that this particular werewolf had found a way to transform when it wasn't full moon?

Evening brought with it a clearly waning, slightly less than full moon and a renewed sense of panic for Gianna.

The next few days were absolute torture. She barely slept at night. When she did sleep, it was troubled, fitful, filled with strange dreams about self-spelling cleaning supplies, werewolves, talking expulsion letters and the mysterious new tenant for their guest house.

Isabella had, to Raul's great dislike, taken to sleeping at the foot of Gianna's bed like some strange, blonde lapdog. Apparently she felt slightly safer sleeping in the same room with someone who had the ability to fend off a charging werewolf than her father who had barricaded the door as soon as he'd heard the word 'werewolf' and had recently adopted a strange sort of nervous twitch whenever there was any sudden sound that he didn't recognize. Gianna had tried to coax her into sleeping beside her bed on the floor in a sleeping bag several times, but to no avail.

Despite the fact that it was July, the weather was unseasonably cool. Gianna rarely left the house, but when she did, she donned a pair of long pants and a jacket. The nights were even colder. So cold, in fact, that Gianna was sure that when she awoke in the morning, she would find frost covering her windows.

On the third night after Orlando's departure, Gianna and Isabella had only just dropped off to sleep when there was a commotion on the front lawn. Gianna woke with a start and as she vaulted out of bed, knocked Isabella off onto the floor.

Taking no notice of her cousin's groggy complaints, she picked up her wand from her nightstand and crept to the window. She peered down and saw, unmistakably, two figures, cloaked and gripping broomsticks with shaking hands. Steam was rising from one's hood; he was clearly doing all of the talking. There was a glint in the darkness as one turned his head and the moon reflected off of his glasses.

"Papa…" Gianna breathed a sigh of relief.

She dashed out the door and down the stairs, skipping over the last five. She unbolted the door as fast as she could and sprinted down to meet her father in the gravel driveway.

"Papa!" she said happily, flinging herself into his arms.

He laughed happily as he hugged her and gave her a kiss on the forehead. "Ciao bella! Mi manchi tanto!"

"I missed you too, Papa!" she said, detangling herself from him.

"Gianna, this is my new apprentice, Signore Severus Snape." He gestured to the other man, standing next to him.

Gianna turned her attention to him for the first time. His heavy traveling cloak hung on his frame in such a way that lead Gianna to believe that he was a wiry, thin, young man, though his shoulders were somewhat broad. He seemed somewhat diminished, perhaps due to the fact that he was shivering from head to toe and looked ready to collapse.

He lowered his hood slowly with long, lean, nimble fingers and stared at her with hooded eyes. Black eyes. Gianna had never seen another set like them in her entire life and had to stifle a gasp of surprise upon seeing them. If a person had tipped their ink well over and spilled its contents onto a white sheet of parchment, it still wouldn't have matched the depth of his rich, black eyes. They latched onto hers as though she was a text that he was reading, studying. They were calculating, sharp and intimidating. It was as though he wasn't looking at her, so much as through her, or inside of her.

She felt color rising to her cheeks and, despite the chill, felt unnaturally warm. She could hear, somewhere from within the fog that had seemingly settled around her, her father saying, "This is my daughter, Gianna."

The apprentice nodded his head. It was more of a jerk than a nod. Then his gaze dropped to the ground again and he said nothing.

Orlando looked between the two before saying, "Let's get in out of the cold, I'm afraid my protégé is nearly ready to collapse. We'll just have a quick cup of tea before we settle in for the night."

He led the way back inside, with Gianna and the new apprentice in toe.

Gianna knew that the only way she would be permitted to remain in the kitchen long enough to get a proper look at this strange, new, young man was to insist that her father rest while she made them their tea.

"I'm really just in need of someone to assist me with the everyday orders, the ones that come in from area apothecaries and private orders. I must admit… I never thought my little business would turn out to be quite this successful." Orlando said as he ran his hand through what was left of his salt and pepper colored hair and lounged his chair in fatigue. "I can hardly keep up with it. Though, you'd never know it by the state of this place." He gestured around himself at his modest home.

The apprentice sat hunching slightly forward in his chair, his arms wrapped tightly around himself in his cloak. Now that he had entered the light, Gianna had procured a better view of his face. It was thin, almost hollow around where his cheekbones were. He was pale; his skin pallid and bore all signs of living somewhere without much sunlight. His hair was tousled from being underneath the hood for quite some time, though it did not look entirely unkept. It was chin length and the same inky black as his eyes. It was somewhat clumsily parted down the center and hung in limp curtains around his face. He was still trembling. With some interest, he watched Orlando.

And Gianna watched him. She tipped over the sugar bowl twice while she was looking over her shoulder at her father and this newcomer. On the second of these occasions, the apprentice looked up sharply at her. His eyes snapped onto her giving her the sensation that she'd just been slapped in the face. She turned quickly away from him, embarrassed that he'd caught her shamelessly staring.

Inwardly she scolded herself. 'You know what they say about first impressions…' she thought to herself. Perfect.

Now her hands were trembling as she carried the silver tray over to the table and set the tea down in front of her father. She picked up the kettle and hoped that she wouldn't spill it, remembering the incident with the sugar.

Luckily she was slightly more focused this time, though she was acutely aware that both men were watching her intently, perhaps they too, were expecting another accident, after all, her track record so far wasn't stellar thus far; she was certainly no Suzie Homemaker. She could practically feel those black eyes burning holes in the side of her head.

"Grazie, Gianna." Orlando said. "And now… off to bed with you. It's very late."

Gianna looked as though she was about to argue, but her father cut her off. "Now, come and kiss your old father."

Her shoulders slumped slightly. She would have very much liked to stay and eavesdrop on their conversation, just to get taste of what the apprentice's voice was like, for he had not yet spoken. There was something quite intriguing about him. Perhaps it was just the idea of having a young man living so close by.

She moved around the table and bent to kiss her father. Her long, dark hair fell forward into her face and she pushed it behind her ear as she pressed her lips against his cheek, still cold from the night air.

"Buonanotte, bella." Orlando said.

"Goodnight Papa." She said softly as she took her leave, trying to appear as graceful as possible. She failed miserably when she cracked her big toe against the door frame leading out of the kitchen. She stumbled, swore and hopped into the hallway, hating herself.

A/N: Just a brief lesson in Italian... the translations aren't too bad, I don't think.

Ciao bella! Mi manchi tanto - this, somewhat roughly translated means "Hello beautiful! I've missed you much."

Signore - Mr.

Buonanotte, bella - Goodnight beautiful