InsanitySorrow 2.0: If you're thinking about FMA's Alchemy, than yes, Jen's transfiguration is similar to that, but that doesn't exist in the HP-verse. She doesn't need a lot of concentration unless she's either trying something she's never done before (like transfiguring hedgehogs) or is drawing on more magic than she's used to (so it doesn't kill her). Lily accepting Jen's "squibdom" is for the same reason that canon Hermione erased her parents' memories of her: the Wizarding World's views just worm their way inside you over the course of seven years at Hogwarts. Ha ha, I wish I could put the "twenty-sex" down to a typo, but I was writing the chapter while thinking about a later scene between Luna and Jen. It's been fixed, now.

Armacryss: Doesn't everyone hate Draco? I'll admit there were some fanon versions I didn't mind reading, but in canon he's a raised-from-the-tit neo-Nazi who got cold feet when he had to do more than talk. I've got no ideas why they study Astronomy. Keep cracking the jokes; they make me laugh.

The Mad Mad Reviewer: Snape in canon, especially in books 3 and 5, struck me as crossing that line between "asshole" and "evil". By 7, not even his "redemption" (read: creepy obsession with Lily and getting killed for being a self-serving traitor) could make me like him. The worst part? His backstory gives him so much potential, but Rowling just wasted it. As for Moody, I have no idea what you mean…

Zarosian Chaos: That depends a lot on exactly how you think the Ministry detects magic. It likely won't come up in this story, but in Faery Heroes I had them put a magic-detecting ward around Privet Drive specifically to detect Harry using magic. There wasn't such a sensor in Avryporth, or Little Whinging in this AU, now that I think about it. Anyway, in my stories most students get in trouble because of the Trace on their wands, not at their homes. Good question, though!

While writing my response to Mystolon's and Zarosian Chaos's reviews, I realized that some of you might think I'm just hand-waving your questions away. I want you to know that I'm not; every time you ask why X happened when you were expecting Y or what character Z was thinking, it helps me flesh out the world I'm building for this story.

Disclaimer: Did Harry just dismiss that Remus Lupin was a werewolf, a creature with a horrible reputation even in the Muggle world? If so, I don't own the Harry Potter franchise; it belongs to J.K. Rowling, Scholastic Press, Warner Bros., and whoever else she sold the rights to.

Chapter 13
Little Red Riding Hood

Jen smiled as she threw off the trapdoor and stepped onto the open platform. A few deep breaths of the clean air revitalized her, and then she vaulted over the edge.

There was no greater exhilaration than diving through the air at terminal velocity. The wind swept by her with a cold whistle, the sweat streaming from her pores wicked away before she could even notice it. The distance to the ground was shortening: already she was at the fourth floor… third… second… first…

She threw the magic she held before her away from the castle wall, and the 'tube' that chased it turned in the new direction. Eight feet from the ground she executed a 120 degree turn that would have broken her spine had she not been so perfectly limp. As it was, her feet continued on their previous path until the very last minute, whipping her legs around and spinning her like a ship plunging to the depths of a monstrous whirlpool. Her grin stretched to Cheshire proportions, then a snicker broke through, and finally her melodic laughter rang through the air as she flew away from the school. Floating and twisting in the wind with nothing to support her was perfection, the panacea to any and all stress.

With the barest thought, the tube collapsed into the orb it had pursued and weakened the gravity well, making it just enough to negate the Earth's tenacious pull and leave her weightless in the sky. She was tempted, so incredibly tempted, to hang here for the next few hours and relax properly. Unfortunately, there were errands she had to attend to, and she needed to consult her aunts and godfather.

She sighed and lazily drifted behind the orb toward the dome of the wards, taking no pains to hide herself from view. Perhaps if she had known about her dumbfounded watcher, she would have been more wary.

Jen sprinted through the entrance hall of Grimmauld Place. Once she had crossed the threshold of the wards, she regained total awareness of the property; to her surprise, there were five beings in the house. Sirius, Cissy, and Kreacher were expected, and Andi wasn't that great of a surprise, but the last was an unknown. Touching his mind revealed nothing but senseless, feral rage and a mental impression of sweat and old blood. There was a werewolf in the kitchen with her family!

She ran past the stairwell and swung by the drawing room to summon a silver candlestick, and a moment of concentration reformed it into a dagger. Transfiguration is so much easier when you don't use animals as the base, she thought mirthlessly. By now she had descended the stairs and was a heartbeat away from kicking the door in and hurling the knife when she noticed something: none of the people inside were projecting any fear or aggression, nor had they since she first became aware of the newcomer's presence.

How odd, she thought. The one werewolf she had had the pleasure of dealing with had been little more than a rabid beast even on two legs; Elsie had killed him by stabbing a silver potion knife into the base of his skull after he decided she would make a wonderful addition to his pack and chased her into the basement, shedding his human guise as he did. Needless to say, she had developed a distrust of their kind that she held to this day.

Still, the unknown man was apparently a guest. Rather than dart into the room like she first planned, she took a moment to catch her breath and force her expression into one of nonchalance, then she almost casually opened the door and sauntered through, hiding her fear with haughtiness. "So, what's for tea?"

"Jen!" Sirius shouted, echoed immediately by Andi. Cissy had dropped her cup in surprise and was more concerned with removing the hot liquid from her robes before it scalded her. "You should be in school!"

"I would normally agree, but visiting you was just a little higher," she held the thumb and index of her left hand a few millimeters apart, "on my priority list than taking a nap in History. Of course, if you don't want to see me, I can spend the next couple of hours with Aunt Cissy and Aunt Andi, instead."

He shook his head rapidly. "No, no, that wasn't what I meant at all. How did you get here, though; I don't think Hogwarts has changed enough since I attended for students to just pop away on a trip whenever they felt like it."

"I snuck out," she said with a shrug, ignoring his false tears of pride and joy at her rule-breaking. "By the way, who's your… friend?"

"Remus Lupin," the werewolf said, though he didn't stand, hold out his hand, or give more than a weak smile. His attention was focused completely on the weapon she still grasped in her right hand. "It's a pleasure to meet you, Miss Black, though I think this is the first time someone's pulled out the silver before I introduced myself."

Sirius switched his gaze between the two of them a few times before he finally noticed the dagger. "Er, Remus is a good guy, Jen. There's no need to have that with you."

She sat in the chair next to Cissy and laid the knife on the table, still in easy reach. "All the wards told me was that there was a werewolf here. I figured it was best to take some basic precautions."

"Well," Andi said brightly in an attempt to lighten the atmosphere, "I for one am glad you decided to visit us. Now we get to ask all the questions we had in person instead of through a letter."

"I see we don't need to ask what House you were Sorted into, however," Cissy rebutted with a look at her tie.

Jen smiled at her aunts. "Yes, I'm in Ravenclaw, but I was considered for Slytherin, as well. Apparently, the worst match was Hufflepuff, though the Gryffindors would have found me far too calm and sensible for their wild natures. No offense, Sirius."

"Oh, there is much taken," he joked. "I think that deserves three – no, five – pranks this Christmas, and you can't do your whole 'reflect them, but make them a hundred times worse' trick, either."

Her jaw dropped; was he really pinning the blame for that on her? "That was your fault, and you know it. Maybe now you'll think twice about conjuring thirty pounds of honey and feathers and trying to turn me into a five-and-a-half-foot chicken."

"You stuck me to the wall and had the feathers poke me for over an hour!"

"When a dog makes a mess on the carpet, the only thing you can do to keep him from doing so again is rub his nose in it."

Sirius spluttered as the sisters chuckled at the byplay. Lupin, too, was smiling behind his cup.

Kreacher chose that moment to float her tea and some biscuits over. "Kreacher's favorite was the prank bad Master pulled on the full moon." As one, the adults of her family shuffled awkwardly.

"Dare I ask?" their guest questioned.

"I freely admit this one wasn't in the best taste," Sirius muttered. "Or in good taste at all. I used some transfiguration on myself to look like how Muggles envision werewolves; the patchy fur and the blunt claws and the short teeth, you know what I mean. Then I stalked up behind her while she was reading and howled in her ear."

"It was the startling me that made my retaliation last as long as it did." She was still kicking herself over letting her guard down. No one had ever been able to sneak up on her, but on that day she discovered that the Notice-Me-Not worked on her sonar just as well as it did on sight and hearing. To use the favorite phrase of her Defense teacher, she needed to be constantly vigilant to feel through the charm.

Lupin groaned. "What happened next?"

"For the next three days, all the utensils, lamps, candlesticks, and doorknobs burned me if I touched them. She also had a dark cloud pelting me with a hail of tin oval things."

She shrugged. "I have to work within my limits. It's not like I can conjure actual silver bullets."

Lupin dropped his head, and Sirius grimaced. "Like I said, not in good taste."

"You think so, do you?" Lupin growled as he rose from his chair. Jen reached out and grabbed the handle of the dagger in front of her; the blade clinked against the table, an innocuous sound, but one that cut through the werewolf's anger and reminded him of the current situation. He glanced at her, then sat back down. "Then again, you always were one to prank first and consider the consequences later."

Andi once more tried to salvage the conversation. "Yes, we've been working to break him of that habit. So Jen, you said you're playing hooky from History, but how do you like your other classes?"

Jen gave a brief description of which subjects she had liked and which she could happily do without. Everyone had a laugh at her first experience with Herbology, and Sirius was making plans under his breath about how he would punish Snape for his attitude, but it was her Charms class that again had Lupin sticking his foot in his mouth.

"So I'm doing my best to pay attention to Flitwick, but Potter is still staring at me like he's hoping to drill a hole through my head—"

"I'm sure he wasn't that bad, but your arguments with James and Lily didn't leave him with a very good impression. You two need to sit down and talk the situation out; maybe you could even become friends if you got to know each other. Danny has always been easy to get along with."

She growled at Lupin, "Did anyone ask for your input, werewolf?"

"Jen!"

She ignored Sirius's rebuke. "What's more, you make the mistake of believing I give a damn if Potter thinks well of me or not. His opinion is worth less than nothing. Besides, I have far better things to do than cosy up to an obnoxious, spoiled brat. Even Draco Malfoy was less annoying!"

"Dear Merlin, what am I going to do with that child?" Cissy groaned. "What did he say?"

A blush revealed Jen's embarrassment; she had somehow forgotten that the boy's mother was the woman sitting right next to her! "Let's see, he began his little spiel with claiming we were vassals to the Malfoys; then he called the Pureblood girl with me, who is one of the first friends I made in Ravenclaw, a Mudblood; and he ended by referring to two of my other friends as a 'nutjob' and a 'wog'. Honestly, Auntie, I don't know how you deal with your husband if he is where Draco learned this behavior from."

"Sometimes I wonder myself. And yes, that was pure Lucius; he had the same lack of subtlety when he was young, too. How did you respond?"

"I restrained myself from causing any bodily harm, don't worry. I only summoned his wand and threw it down the corridor, causing him to be late for Transfiguration. Ah, that reminds me; unless you want to make a liar out of me—"

"Because you would never lie if it suits your purposes."

"—you need to send him a letter taking him to task," she continued as if Cissy hadn't interrupted her. "He mentioned that I'd regret 'when his father heard about this', and I told him he should be more concerned with what you would do."

The older woman sat back in her chair and started murmuring under her breath about idiot blond dandies, leaving Jen to shift her attention on the others. Sirius and Lupin were having a heated discussion under a silencing charm, but Andi was drinking her tea with a smirk, so she erected her own soundproof barrier around them. "Aunt Andi, something strange happened during my Sorting, and I was hoping that you could explain it to me."

Andi raised an eyebrow but nodded, so Jen took a breath and revealed what had been puzzling her the entire week. "I refused to let the Sorting Hat peruse my memories, and instead it had to ram its way inside. The thing is, it wasn't the one examining me; there was another voice talking, which the Hat called 'Lady Hogwarts'."

"Ignoring that you were foolish enough to pick a fight with a millennium-old artifact, you actually spoke to Hogwarts itself?"

"That's what I don't get," she huffed. "It's a castle, not a person. How can it be alive?"

Her aunt pursed her lips for a moment as she thought. "Hogwarts isn't alive, per se, though many tales have sprung up that point to it having an intelligence of some sort. I've read accounts of other locations across the world that are the same; each was ancient, but that is where the similarities end. For instance, there are ruins in the New World that can control their own defenses when cursebreakers come to loot them, and the nursery of the Egyptian wizard-kings' palace is said to comfort and protect any child that is brought inside. Rumors suggest that Beauxbatons in France is beginning to act similarly to how Hogwarts did several hundred years ago, but it will be a long time before it can be considered in the same league."

Jen frowned and asked, "Doesn't anyone have any ideas about why these places behave like they do?"

"Of course there are. Some believe that all of them were built by an even more ancient race, like the Atlanteans or beings from the stars." The two shared a laugh at that absurdity. "One theory that was espoused a century ago was that they were built on the wellsprings of magic that supplied different regions of the world. More recently, though, arithmancers have suggested that it's because they all have a strong connection to life or death."

That makes sense. Most Voodoo rituals use sacrifices as a power source, whether those deaths are of animals or other humans. In fact, the one that gave me my connection to the world's magic consumed three of Those Bastards in addition to my own core.

"Thanks, Aunt Andi, that was what I was wondering." She removed the spell around them and focused on Sirius, who had dropped his silencing charm and was reciting to Cissy and Lupin issues he had with a bill currently before the Wizengamot.

Ravenclaw was the home of the curious and intelligent. To the Muggleborn and Muggle-raised, that implied that it was a sanctuary from the harassment that they had seen or perhaps been the victims of in their primary schools. Even Jen, who had an education no one could call conventional, believed this. Then she witnessed the scene in the common room upon her return to the school, and the rage the Blacks were infamous for boiled over.

Luna was backed against the wall next to the fireplace, and three older girls were crowding her and occasionally firing stinging hexes while everyone else in the room either watched or tried their best to ignore the entire confrontation. One of the bullies, who Jen recognized as the much maligned Cho Chang, spoke. "When are you going to get it through your thick skull that you aren't welcome here? Ravenclaw has no place for crazies like you; the entire Lovegood family is a stain on our illustrious reputation."

"Please, I need my ink and quills. My grades are going to drop if I can't do any of the assignments."

"Maybe one of your pretend creatures took them, the Snoring Hummer or Winking Splatters or whatever else your father writes about in that stupid rag of his. I guess you'll have to spend a few weeks looking throughout the school for your stuff; it's not like anyone will help. No one wants to be friends with a loser like you."

Jen remembered at the last moment to draw the blank wand, and then she struck. Two nets of razor wire flew at Chang's minions, wrapping them up and drawing significant volumes of blood. A flick of her wrist had Chang soaring through the air in a parody of her own actions earlier, but she at least didn't crash into a wall at full speed.

"I'm afraid I must disagree with your assessment," she snarled, then she stepped on the restrained girls to where Luna was hunched over. "How long were they working on you?"

"Not that long. I'm fine."

She sighed. "If you're too hurt to stand up straight, you're not fine. Let's get you to the nurse."

"Who do you think you are!" Chang shouted as she clumsily climbed to her feet, still unsteady from her head's introduction to the bookshelf. "I am a prefect, and you'll do as I say unless you want a detention with Filch!"

Again Jen aimed at the older girl, but this time it wasn't a wave of force that she released. Instead, she sent a bolt of lightning. Though the discharge lasted only a moment, Chang crumpled and moaned loudly as steam wafted off her skin. "Stay down, bitch."

Before she could decide on her next attack, the door to the tower opened noisily and their head of House rushed in. "Who in Merlin's name cast—" He stopped in his tracks as he saw the two girls bleeding, Jen standing in front of Luna with her wand out, and Chang lying on the floor in obvious pain. "I want answers. Now."

Seeing that Chang couldn't be bothered to answer, Jen turned towards the man. "I came into the common room a minute ago to see Chang and her cronies bullying Luna. They were hexing her and laughing about stealing her supplies so she couldn't do any homework. Obviously, I took exception to the whole situation. If Chang hadn't threatened me as well, she wouldn't look like she tangoed with a power line."

Flitwick sneered at the tormentors much like his goblin cousins would have at a thief. "Miss Black, I can't let the use of such dangerous magic go unpunished – unfortunately – so you have detention for the next two evenings. I am confining you to the library, where you'll research other spells you could have used to incapacitate Miss Chang instead of electrocuting her. There is no need to document your findings.

"Miss Lovegood, how long has this been going on?"

Luna shrugged with a wince. "Since November of my first year."

"I see. Mr. Edden, Miss Starling, Mr. Roznine, what possible reason did you have to neglect bringing this to my attention?"

None of the prefects present answered him, so he repeated the question in a tone that brooked no argument. They glanced at each other, and one of them muttered, "It's just Loony, sir. She keeps talking about animals that aren't real, and we're tired of it. We thought that if she saw her delusions weren't wanted, she'd stop bringing them up."

"Oh, really? Just Loony, hmm? In that case, perhaps I need to rethink my choice of prefects." He summoned the four students' badges, then he turned to the House as a whole. "Why didn't any of the rest of you come to me when you saw how Miss Lovegood was being treated?"

Morag reluctantly stepped forward. "I can't speak for everyone, but some of us were threatened by the prefects as well. They also said you didn't care what happened in the tower as long as it stayed here."

"That, Miss MacDougal, is the biggest load of thestral shit I have heard in years. They lied because they knew I would do far worse to them than they could even conceive of doing to you, something all of you should have realized had you thought about it for a moment. Frankly, I don't believe there is any excuse for your actions, either as individuals or a group. I would say that you should be ashamed of yourselves, but I don't know if some of you are capable of shame.

"Fifty points will be taken from each prefect for failure to stop this atrocious behavior, either directly or by informing me. Miss Chang, Miss Edgecomb, Miss Desford, one-hundred and fifty points will be taken from you for bullying. In addition, you eight will serve detentions for the rest of the term with Professor Hagrid or Mr. Filch, whoever has the more revolting or onerous chore at the time, and the two prefects who are not here have lost their positions as well. Never in the history of Ravenclaw House have we had our house points be a negative number, and I cannot tell you how disgusted I am that I have to see it.

"Someone haul these three to the hospital wing; I don't care who. I have to inform Professor Dumbledore that we have no prefects. Also, there will be a mandatory House meeting tonight. Do not test my patience by refusing to show up." His speech delivered, he stalked out of the room.

Jen took the opportunity to make her own statement. "From now on, Luna Lovegood is under the aegis of the Ancient and Most Noble House of Black. If any of you decide to be as idiotic as these three," she stomped on one of Edgecomb's hands, everyone cringing at the snap of breaking bones, "I will take it as a personal insult, and you will wish you were in Chang's position right now when I get through with you.

"Luna, we're going to see Pomfrey." The entrance closing behind them was deafening in the tower's silence.

In Jeconais's story This Means War (it's on fanficauthors dot com, and one of the only Harry/Ginny stories I've ever liked), werewolves who accepted and reveled in their infection were capable of forcing the change in the day or two before and after the full moon. That story is what I'm deriving Jen's encounter from.

Remember how in chapter 4 I said that Voodoo was classified as a Black Art and punishable by death in most of the civilized world? This is why.

Silently Watches out.