Astra kept reading the letter over and over again. She did not like what he said about her family, but she liked everything else he said.

Dear Astra,

Your lycanthropy does not make you a monster. There are some werewolves who are monsters, and love how they can hurt people in their werewolf form. There are also werewolves who who good guys are try to make sure they can't hurt anyone by locking themselves away, on the full moon, or taking wolfsbane potion if they can afford it.

Contrary to popular belief, lycanthropy does not make you inferior to anyone. Dealing with, and managing the effects of lycanthropy, and even more so with having been attacked by a werewolf in the first place, shows great strength of character. You're probably even superior to how you were before you were bitten.

Anyway, when I was sorted into Gryffindor, years ago, I had been very upset, and it didn't help that my family basically hated me for it, but that didn't last. I soon realized that Gryffindor was a great house. I rebelled, and made a family of my Gryffindor mates.

Harry said that your family does not seem to be mad at you for it, but I should probably warn you that I wouldn't be surprised if they are just pretending not to be mad in an attempt to prevent you from rebelling like me. After all, your mother is my cousin, and she was around when I got sorted, and when I started rebelling.

By the way, keep up the good work with the house-elves. Teaching Dobby to read was a good idea. I never liked my families house-elf, but I sometimes stayed at the Potter's house and I liked their house-elf. James Potter was not a fan of enslaving house-elves either, and when he inherited her he only kept for the rest of her life (she was really old) because she did not want to be free.

- Sirius Black

P.S. Do not be afraid to rebel even farther.

She did not like to think of herself as rebelling, but she knew that she was. After all, she was a member of S.P.E.W., and she had muggle-born friends.

She would have to write him a nice reply. She wondered when Harry would next want to send a message to Sirius. They had agreed that it was best not to write him too often, and to try to send him messages at the same time.

Shortly after Hedwig showed up, with a letter addressed to Harry, Astra got under the table with her wand. "Aquamenti," she said, without aiming her wand because her cats bowl was not empty.

Harry dropped her the letter, as she had signaled for it in exactly the way they had planned. After dinner, she was to read it and then give it to either Hedwig or Pigwigen to fly to the window outside Harry and Ron's dorm.

In the letter, Heather's dad explained that Heather was the result or an affair that he had had with a women who he did not know to be magical, but it would not surprise if him were.

When she died, he took baby Heather home for him and his wife to raise, alongside their son. His wife never liked Heather, and over the years he often had to save her from getting overly punished for tiny things.

She had had the imaginary unicorn for years. He had been concerned by the fact that she had not outgrown it yet, but he did not know what to do. He had not realized that she thought her magic came from the unicorn.

He asked that they not tell Heather about this, but he promised that he would tell her. He didn't want Heather to find out from a letter, so it would have to wait until Christmas break.

At least he planned to tell her, and do it face to face, but Astra still really did not like Heather's father.

Draco approached his sister at the Gryffindor table, carrying a small bag. Harry and Ron glared at him, and Draco glared right back. "Hey Astra, I got you some sweets at Honeydukes."

Astra beamed. "Oh, thanks Draco," she said, taking the bag from him.

"Don't mention it," he said, before turning and heading back to the Slytherin table.

Pansy smiled at him, and Draco smiled back, glad to see that she seemed to have noticed.

Earlier that year, Draco overheard Pansy telling one of the other girls that she found it as attractive when people did nice things for their friends and family, like when Draco walked his sister through the great hall before she was sorted a second time, as she did when people did mean things to their enemies.

After dinner, Astra opened the bag. It contained a cauldron cake, a Wizochoc bar, a cherry-flavored liquorice wand, and a sugar quill. These were probably her four favorite treats.

"Do you want some Heather?" she asked, pulling out a sugar quill.

Heather nodded.

Astra broke off a chunk, and handed it to her.

Astra had not offered any to the older kids, because she figured that they would have bought some candy themselves, if they wanted some, while they were in Hogsmeade earlier that day. The fact that Ron, Hermione, and even Harry, did not have as much money to spend as she and Draco did not even occur to her.

Astra had participated in researching ways to get past dragons, but she had not found anything. She had helped Harry practice the summoning charm, but she felt less helpful than Hermione. Now she had wished him luck with the tournament, but she was not watching it. Instead, she was sitting in the library, with Starbeam, attempting to focus on reading a book, but not being very successful.

She heard something, and looked up to see Pigwigen knocking on the window. She got up, and went and opened it, to find a note explaining how the first contestant did. Astra had thought that she would have to wait until after the tournament to hear about how everyone did, but apparently not.

Astra had seen dragons, while on vacation, and they were pretty cool, but she had not seen dragons attacking anyone, and she did not want to.

Astra's mother had advised her not to watch the tournament. Draco had not only ordered her not to watch the tournament, he had escorted her here and told her that he would come back later, to tell her when it was over. She suspected that their mother had put him up to that.

When Astra saw Harry, later, she congratulated him and let him know how glad she was to see that he had survived.

"Um… why do dragons look so much like dinosaurs?" asked Heather, at dinner that evening.

"Because dinosaurs are what muggles invented, to explain incomplete dinosaur remains," Hermione said.

Astra had read that dinosaurs were a mythological creature, made up by humans as a dumb explanation for dragon bones. Yet, she had never seen a picture of what they were supposed to look like. Apparently they looked a lot like dragons, so maybe it was not so dumb after all.

Maybe muggles were not so dumb after all, but they were supposed to be. Astra knew that much. At least, that's what she had been taught.

There were probably some dumb muggles, just like there were both dumb and smart witches and wizards. After all, in that letter, Heather's father's sure had sounded like an idiot.