Hidden Inhumanity

by ShadowedAuthor

Sequel to Silent Humanity – Into his second year in a strange world, Gaara struggles more than ever to maintain his sanity and wellbeing. The dangers are mounting all around, both to and from the displaced Jinchūriki.

13. Chapter 13: Same Old Schisms

Disclaimer: I do not own either Harry Potter (rightfully owned by J.K Rowling) or Naruto (rightfully owned by Masashi Kishimoto) nor do I make any money out of this fiction. I will also add that any sections or phrases in this chapter that bear resemblance to works by either author or from movies based on works of said authors is recreated in the same spirit of free usage and is not for profit.

A/N: Hopefully I didn't keep you all waiting too long this time. I'm probably never going to be a regular updater, but I will keep moving along at my snail's pace.

Enjoy the chapter, and don't forget to leave a review.

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(Last Time)

"Look, I need to say this and I'm not going to get another change until our next detention tomorrow." Draco started. He knew that Flitwick wouldn't be able to hear them in the office but he didn't want to take any chances so he continued speaking softly.

"I don't hate you, and I'm not afraid of you. Whatever is happening inside of you isn't important. I just want to know what's going on."

Gaara had paused in his writing, his eyes fixed on the page, not reading, just staring.

"Just talk. We need to sort this out."

Gaara finally looked at him.

"You betrayed me. Lied to me. That isn't what friends do. I can't trust you." Gaara said evenly, as if he were talking about schoolwork or the weather. "We aren't friends. We are done."

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"'Done'? What do you mean 'done'?" Draco felt cold lead in his stomach again. The conversation wasn't supposed to go like this. He had rehearsed and acted out Gaara's parts.

Draco would say he was sorry, Gaara would be quiet and then he would say something sharp, then Draco would tell him that he didn't hate Gaara, that he didn't blame Gaara for whatever was going on inside of him, and then Gaara would pretend nothing had been wrong and he would move back into their room. It would be awkward for a few days and then they would go back to normal.

Not this…

Gaara had returned to writing his lines.

"Gaara, do not ignore me!" Draco hissed. "We need to discuss this properly. You're completely overreacting, letting your emotions cloud your decision-making like an idiot. Just listen to what I'm telling you!"

Draco didn't realise he had gone pink in the face and neither did Gaara, since the redhead was steadfastly ignoring him now.

"Gaara!" Draco hissed once more.

"And that, Mr Malfoy, has just earned you an extra day in detention." Flitwick said to announce his entrance back into the classroom.

Draco's eyes shot to the tiny professor and a protest was on the tip of his tongue but he didn't have the heart to start a second futile argument so soon after the first. He just settled back into his seat and scowled at his sheet of parchment.

"I think you should move a few seats down, Mr Malfoy. Avoid the temptation of starting another conversation with Gaara." The professor said, sitting at his desk and continuing his work.

Draco bit his lip to restrain himself from expressing his righteous outrage at the experienced teacher. He knew, from second-hand experience, how such an expressed emotion could quickly spiral into a month of evening detentions no matter how justified one felt.

The platinum blond rose from his seat and moved along. It didn't matter, really; he wouldn't make any more progress that evening. If anything, it was fortunate Professor Flitwick was there to prevent them interacting further. Draco was the model of self-control… but there were exceptions.

If he had free reign to talk to Gaara in that moment, he had the presence of mind to know that he would probably say something that would be poorly received.

Gaara finished his lines in record time and he got up and left without glancing in Draco's direction. Draco felt sick.

Were they really no longer friends? Was that how it worked?

Maybe Draco had, as his parents had warned could happen, over-indulged in novels when he was younger and developed fanciful notions of friendship. Maybe friendship didn't last forever, through thick and thin.

Maybe all it took to ruin it was…

Over the next few days, Draco's mind rarely strayed from the problem at hand. He wanted to try approaching Gaara again and find some way to convince the redhead to forgive him, but every time he saw Gaara's impassive face, he was reminded of the cold indifference Gaara felt for him now.

Clearly he needed to find a new method to earn Gaara's forgiveness. But what else could he do?!

He had tried to give Gaara his space and ample time to calm down. That had been made easier by Flitwick watching him like a hawk in every subsequent detention, never letting him near Gaara.

Draco had tried to rationally explain why he had needed to do what he did.

He had tried apologising. As far as he was aware, anyway.

Draco went to his desk and checked his coin purse. The next logical step would be to get Gaara a gift. And considering how angry Gaara must be, Draco reckoned he would need a gift on par with the time his father had hosted a werewolf at one of his functions and the inebriated ruffian had threatened to bite Draco during a disagreement while his mother was in earshot.

Draco did not think Gaara would care for enchanted diamonds nearly as much as his mother, but he was convinced some sort of token would smooth the way to reconciliation. After all, his father had assured him his mother had forgiven him completely after she received the diamonds. She had been so overwhelmed with gratitude and forgiveness that she had excused herself for the rest of the day.

He admired his mother's dedication to maintaining her public composure almost as much as his father's ability to totally comprehend his mother's moods and react accordingly.

Draco began to mentally wander through Diagon and Nocturne Alley. Draco had a perfect mental map of every shop in the alleys and he was able to browse any time he wanted. Sadly he would need to send off for the latest catalogue to see the newest lines but he sat back in his chair and wandered around in his happy place.

OXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXO

Gaara liked the Library at night. He liked the Library a great deal, but one of the main detractors was the presence of noisy, distracting teenagers. At night, it was silent. And while it was much colder in there than any of the dormitories, the charms in place to keep the books in good condition also meant the Library was still significantly warmer than the rest of the drafty castle.

With that relative comfort in mind, Gaara was unable to discern why he was having such difficulty getting to sleep. He wondered if it was a side-effect of the potion Draco had used to trespass into his mind, but after sneaking back into their room once or twice in the days that followed, it was clear that Draco had been managing to get to sleep despite presumably taking the same potion. Gaara had also been able to find the recipe the blond had been using.

The Dreamwalker Potion apparently was designed to leave no trace, and it seemed Draco had been able to brew it properly. So, why could Gaara not fall asleep? Shukaku had been a little more lively than usual after seeing someone new in his domain, but Gaara had long since learnt to overcome that noise.

Gaara had even been able to devise a secluded place to rest at night, but still sleep eluded him.

It was not quite the spectacle of the moving staircases, known to excite generation after generation of young witch and wizard, but the bookcases in the Library were also prone to rearranging themselves from time to time. Madam Pince was probably the only person in a century who could actually, reliably find any book in Hogwarts' Library. It was just a shame that she despised working with children and rarely told them the correct location of any book if she could help it.

Normally these shifting bookcases would have made camping in the Library a struggle, but Gaara had a moment of inspiration and bound four of the tall, hardwood bookcase together. He could occasionally hear the wood groaning, not expanding or contracting because of the heat but trying to escape the hooks and rope he had used on each of the case's backs to keep them together.

With them stuck in a rough square, it left a sizeable cavity behind them that couldn't be seen because of the backings on the bookcases. Unless someone physically climbed up and over the top, they wouldn't know Gaara had begun nesting in the secret hiding place.

He had to douse his lamp and remain still if Filch did the rounds of the Library, but otherwise he was undisturbed. He had set up a tent made of blankets and it was warm enough that even if he couldn't sleep, he could rest during the long winter nights.

OXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXO

"How would I know how he is?" Draco asked, his temper already short before some no-name third year starting pestering him about Slytherin's very own Champion.

"Well, I thought you might have talked him about the Second Task when you were in your room together." The girl said, now a little uncertain talking to the Malfoy heir, who was supposed to be nice now. Clearly someone had fed her misinformation.

"Not that it is, by any stretch of my considerable imagination, any of your business, but I haven't seen Gaara in a week." Draco snipped.

"Oh… that's strange…"

"Yes, well, he is strange." Draco closed his book and got to his feet. He blamed himself for reading in the common room where the riffraff were congregating. Of course, he blamed the girl for bothering him more.

"No, I mean, I've seen him come and go and few times. And Andrew Komatus said he saw Gaara going into your room the other day. His room. Your room together." She said.

"Did he now?" Draco wondered aloud before tutting and walking away.

Draco felt remarkably silly after he confirmed with a number of more reliable sources that Gaara had definitely been coming and going as he liked while Draco was eating his lunch, or during the evenings, or during the weekends. In short, when Draco was otherwise engaged, Gaara was sneaking back in like a common thief.

There was a half-decent chance the scoundrel had snuck in while Draco was sleeping.

Upon investigating, he found the Golden Egg was missing from their room. Last he'd seen, Gaara had stashed it under his bed like an unwanted trinket.

Draco was indignant that Gaara had gone so far as so sneak around like this to avoid talking to him, but at least it meant the redheaded insomniac was making some preparations ahead of the next Task. Yet another problem with this feud of theirs was that Draco couldn't ensure Gaara wasn't going to get himself killed in this stupid Tournament.

In the following days, Draco began to hear rumours of a terrible screeching in different parts of the castle. Half of the younger students were convinced it was a new ghost that had moved in. A not-inconsiderable subset of that group believed Gaara was the cause of death for that unfortunate soul and that was why he was hiding out around the castle, because didn't want his victim's ghost to find him.

Draco was half-tempted to help further the terror and tell them Gaara was on the prowl for his next victim, but making Gaara the centre of children's nightmares probably wouldn't be a positive step. He could wait until they reconciled to spread those sorts of rumours.

Others had proposed that the wailing was the Weasley Twins getting up to no good, but Draco doubted it. Those reprobates had been lying low as far as anybody could tell after they got the stuffing knocked out of them by their Housemates.

Draco's plan to patch things up with Gaara had hit a snag when his empty coin purse reminded him that he was in his parent's bad graces. They had taken his deception at Christmas particularly badly and had halted his pocket money. At any other time, it would have simply been a disgrace and an inconvenience, but now he was genuinely stuck. He had no money and no notion of how he might earn more.

He had considered shaking down some of the first-year Hufflepuffs for their Christmas money, but he had lost the appetite for such bullying tactics. Plus, without henchmen, even the younger children tended to put up a fight. Hexing eleven-year-olds was not nearly as fun as he remembered, so he needed a new plan.

He didn't need a new plan to win back Gaara, his current plan was solid, but he needed some way to get his parents back on his side.

News of Draco's feud with Gaara clearly meant that Draco had unequivocally lied to their faces about Gaara being ill and they thought he needed to learn a lesson. His mother seemed concerned, but his father was just angry, even if he was probably glad Gaara was gone.

In the aftermath, they said he was cut off but they neglected to mention for how long.

However, a ray of hope had arrived some time after in the form of a letter from his father. He had implied that Draco might be forgiven if he managed to re-ingratiate himself with Crabbe and Goyle. Apparently his father was desperate to know what was going on with the Inner Circle and he wasn't above conscripting his son to spy for him.

Obviously, this was dangerous, hence why the letter had been sent without his mother's knowledge.

However, while hope remained, it was dim. After all, even if Draco wanted his money back enough to put himself through the agony of conversing with those evolutionary throwbacks, he would be surprised if they would now deign to speak to him. They had risen up the ranks of the purebloods in school lately, though the cause of this miraculous ascent was still very much a mystery to him. Draco, on other hand, was tolerated (at best) by the hardliners. He couldn't just waltz back in and demand answers.

But he was a desperate boy and he was a Slytherin. He would at least try to slither in to their ranks and pry some useful information out of one of them.

OXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXO

"No, thank you." Gaara refused as politely as he was able for the fourth time.

"If you're sure." Luna said. "It's just that your other form is becoming quite well-known around the school." Luna was trying not to alarm Gaara so she underplayed just how much of an urban legend his monthly 'tanuki' adventures had become.

Gaara bit back the reply that had been on the tip of his tongue, that his notoriety as a tanuki was at least partially thanks to Luna and her missing pet posters the year before. She had shined a spotlight on him and provided pictorial evidence for other cryptozoologists to fixate on.

In a school where Luna was known far and wide, even by those who had never actually met her, for being obsessed with magical creatures of dubious existence, Gaara still couldn't understand why she wasn't closer with those who shared her interests. When he asked, Luna said that it was a small, close-knit circle, and those cryptozoologists were apparently not interested in outsiders joining their group.

Gaara thought it was a shame that people would still find reasons to reject and isolate her, even if her passion for imaginary creatures wasn't the reason.

That said, he had no desire to spend the evening with her while in his tanuki form. Even if his mind was altered in that state, he had too much pride to allow his remaining friend in the castle to treat him like a house pet.

Besides his aversion to Luna during the full moon, Gaara had another reason to want his freedom that evening.

Gaara had been trying to work out for what purpose he had been given the golden egg, but as of yet he had found nothing. No clues to its purpose, no circumstance in which opening it didn't just release a terrible wave of screeching that made his teeth ache and his ears feel like there were bleeding.

He had tried heating it again, burying it, opening it during the day, at night, high in the air, down in the Dungeons… The only thing left that he could think of was to try under the full moon. As Professor Vector went to great pains to explain, the full moon affected all kinds of magic in different ways.

Unfortunately, how or why the moon would affect something was often impossible to determine until it happened, so he was no closer to working out why it had affected Shukaku's seal and turned the jailer into either a small fluffy creature or a raving lunatic once a month.

Regardless, the egg was magical, so perhaps he needed to open it under the light of the full moon for it to… do something.

It was with Professor Vector's lessons in mind that, after he left Luna near the entrance to her own tower, he went to the Astronomy Tower with the egg under one arm. It was the closest he could get to the sky during the full moon when his sand and ability to fly were out of his reach.

He had brought the egg with him because, after he transformed, he could not imagine a way of transporting it that didn't involve his rolling it along the floor using his nose. And then going up the many staircases…

Gaara's first transformation had caused him such pain that he still winced at the memory over a year later. Now, as long as he didn't resist the change, it was seamless. More akin to the animagus transformation, his body painlessly shifted and he found himself closer to the ground and itching to run.

His animal mind was a peculiar phenomenon that his human self spent a lot of time considering. His animal self did not enjoy the same level of introspection but it was still Gaara in amongst all of the distracting impulses, so even while he really would rather be running around or fighting something, he knew he had to complete his experiment.

He climbed out of his oversized clothing and nudged it under a nearby table where it wouldn't be noticed if anyone wandered through. Then he padded over to the egg and watched it do nothing for a few moments. Clearly just being under the full moon was not enough to make it share its secrets.

He had theorized, when his mind was capable of such theorisation, that the magical sound contained within the golden egg was some sort of magical expression of information, and that it was sensitive to environmental conditions. If the right conditions were not met, all that would be released was discord.

So, as he approached the egg, he felt very confident that it was about to share its secrets with him.

His paws were ill-suited to most tasks, other than running, but he was able to catch his small claws on the edges of the catch.

Gaara didn't typically make much sound in his tanuki-form, other than an occasional growl. Maybe it was a result of first taking this form when he was still functionally mute, or maybe it was because tanuki don't vocalise as much as some other animals, like foxes. Gaara dreaded to think what his first friend would be like under this world's full moon, turned into an animal and even more energetic and loud.

Still, Gaara was normally a pretty stoic kind of animal. Then the latch clicked into place and the egg swung open, releasing the all-too familiar shrieking noise that had made his head hurt in his human body, with its small, insensitive ears.

Gaara yelped.

Gaara could not form a coherent thought or even begin to formulate a way to close the egg. The piercing pain drove him sprinting away from the egg and down the stairs from the Astronomy tower.

Only after the hellish noise quietened and the panic subsided, Gaara stopped to shake the lingering ringing from his oversensitive ears. When his human mind booted up again, Gaara realised he would have to go and hunt down his egg in the morning. Though, since he had left it open and screaming, he suspected he would need to go and reclaim it from someone. He doubted he would have any difficulty breaking into Filch's cupboard if it came down to it.

As Gaara wandered around the abandoned castle, he could still hear the distant screech echoing through the halls. He hoped he was not disturbing anyone's sleep.

Considering that the egg's noise was cut off after around ten minutes, Gaara guessed he might have woken up at least one person.

Gaara trotted along for a little while, doing his rounds of the castle. His claws clacked against the polished stones in a rather satisfying way. He was would they could grip the earth under his paws and he could run faster, but the sound was nice.

"-on Earth would he leave it open like that?" Gaara's ears pricked up again as he heard voices he would dearly rather not recognise coming towards him.

"It's probably just to wake everyone up. Fred and George still refer to him as their only rival for pranks in the school."

"Your brothers are reprobates. Gaara probably just left it there. He's not the most… aware person." Hermione said. "And put away the Map. He's somewhere up ahead and you don't want anyone to see the Map."

"He knows about the Map and there's no one else around." Harry said.

"Fine." Hermione huffed. "But don't blame me if Snape confiscates it from you again."

There was a shuffling of parchment. "He's still in his quarters."

"Sat at his desk again. It's almost like he doesn't have any friends." Ron snickered, as if he would have had the confidence to make the joke in front of the Potions master.

It took a couple of moments for Gaara to understand the real danger he was currently in. Being seen in this form was enough of a threat, but the accursed Marauders Map would tell them who exactly was small, fluffy and defenceless. Perhaps they wouldn't attempt to kill him in his weakened state, but there were other dangers with letting them know this secret.

Gaara began running in the opposite direction.

He needed to escape from the castle to where the Map wouldn't be able to see him. Fortunately, this was not the first time he had been chased around Hogwarts on the full moon and he knew his way around. He went racing through corridors, past Filch's ill-tempered cat and at least three other students out past the curfew.

As Gaara ran out of the castle, it occurred to him that Hogwarts was playing host to two contingents from different schools, and they were each being housed outside of the castle.

Which is to say, a small group of Beauxbaton students who had been out enjoying a moonlit stroll were suddenly clued in to one of Hogwarts' many myths. The unofficial but exclusive Cryptozoologist club would be nashing their teeth that they had been in the wrong section of the castle and had missed out on actually sighting Hogwarts' most notorious cryptid.

Gaara skirted around the gasping French students and ran for the tree line. From what he remembered of the Map, it would not be able to track him beyond that. He ran for a little while more until he heard Weasley's voice in the distance shouting something unfriendly.

Gaara usually preferred to spend his animal time out in the Ineffectually-Forbidden Forest as long as he was away from the Acromantula population. The spiders had been slowly rebuilding their population and while many of them were still small enough for tanuki-Gaara to battle them, all it would take was one of their larger siblings to appear and Gaara would end up running for his life.

Still, while he could soothe the itch under his fur-clad skin by running wild in the woods, he was ultimately a desert-dweller at heart and his fur was not thick enough to stave off the chill of the January air indefinitely. Gaara stayed out for a while but when he began to feel the cold, he could either find a tree hollow to have a nap or he could return to the castle. He did not fancy falling asleep only to wake up in the woods without his clothes or sand so directed his running and jumping in the general direction of the castle.

Potter and his underlings would have headed back to their own dormitory by now so he would just need to keep an ear out for them.

He would give serious thought to stealing that Map before the next full moon. He believed he could put it to better use than Potter could, even if he was not periodically hunting a rat-shaped man this year.

It would certainly make it easier returning to his old bedroom when he could be sure he would not have to run into his old roommate.

All remaining energy that tanuki-Gaara might have had to romp in the forest deserted him in that moment for some reason so he commenced trotting back to the castle. He was intimately familiar with most of the forest by this point so navigating by moonlight was no challenge at all.

At the tree line, Gaara spotted a small gathering listening to the excitable ramblings of a few in the centre, telling of a mysterious magical creature that had sprinted out of Hogwarts being chased one of their Champions. Gaara could just about make out the voices but, not speaking French, he did not know what 'Je n'arrête pas de vous dire que ce n'était pas un chat!' meant. Frankly, he didn't care.

Gaara followed the tree line and slinked his way back up the hill to the walkway so that he could get back into the castle. He just needed to get back to his nest in the library and he could sleep. He would resist the temptation to raid the kitchens again. He was not as hungry this time, since he had taken the precaution of eating a healthy meal before transforming, and the House Elves might start to get bolder with him. Not to mention, he did not want the old man in the high tower drawing any sort of parallels between Gaara stealing from the kitchens and the small lunar animal doing the same.

Dumbledore seemed to know a distressing number of Gaara secrets by this point, he wanted to keep at least a few facets to himself and his close associates. And Draco.

It was getting to be late, so Gaara didn't run into any other students in the hallways. All of the ones who had sneaked out after the collective curfew knew better than to wander the corridors for Filch or one of the other professors to happen upon.

Gaara saw the wisdom in that, so he headed straight for the Library. Unfortunately, that happened to be on the patrol route of Professor McGonagall. Gaara could only count his lucky stars that she had stayed in human form so he could hear her sensible heels clacking along the floor towards him. He darted back and headed straight for the first open door he spotted.

He didn't recall whose office this was but it was cold and dark, so he would be safely secluded for-

"I think she's going the other way."

"Why don't you both go and ask her just to be sure!" The whispers were clearly agitated, but not as agitated as Gaara suddenly felt.

Who else would he run into, not once but twice, during the full moon…?

Potter, Granger and Weasley had dashed into the office and huddled behind the door to listen for McGonagall's approach.

They were all looking away from him but Gaara still couldn't find anywhere suitable to hide himself. The entire office was filled with furniture and books. Perhaps under the desk, before they-

"Oh Merlin, Harry look!" Granger stage-whispered to her friend.

Gaara wouldn't have needed his acute hearing to know which way she was now facing.

Gaara twisted around to find six eyes all peering at him from the gloom of the unlit classroom.

"Ha! I told you it only sneaks in on the full moon!" Potter smirked.

"Shh, Harry!" Granger hissed at him. "You'll scare it."

"What's it going to do, hit us with its big tail?" Ron reasoned. "Let's catch it."

"Ronald! Why would you do that?"

"To give it to Hagrid. He could do with cheering up." Weasley shrugged.

"He's right." Potter nodded.

The truth was, their favourite half-giant had been in a bad mood recently. Just as he had been getting over the dragon incident, which all of them knew better than to mention in the gentle giant's proximity, he had been hit by another shock. His lineage had come to light after an article by the detestable Rita Skeeter had been released.

Skeeter had been trying to publish her exposé for weeks but her editor thought a hack job against a nobody school groundskeeper (and professor) was a significantly lower priority than the hundreds of articles about the Yule Ball and surrounding society news.

Hagrid had been in a foul mood about the attention in the national press. The children did not know that his discontent also stemmed from his attempt at opening up to a fellow half-giant had ended with Madam Maxime blushing and saying he was mistaken before rushing away.

Still, the Golden Trio thought that whatever was upsetting the kind man would be helped a great deal by a fascinating new magical creature to look after.

While she didn't like the idea of frightening the poor animal, Hermione was already picturing working with Hagrid to write a journal article about it. She would be the youngest published contributor to Magical Creatures Quarterly, and she would make sure Hagrid was given some positive media attention too.

A nod, much like the single braincell, was shared between the teenagers as they startled to encircle Gaara. They had their arms wide and approached slowly.

Gaara was equal parts bemused (his human thought) and panicked (animal instinct).

Gaara struggled to organise his thoughts. He thought Weasley would be easiest to rush past since one of his arms was cradling the golden egg. He looked to Granger on the other side but then he heard a loud tapping than made him startle.

With the benefit of hindsight, Ron would admit he did not have a clear plan in mind when he loudly slapped his shoes down on the polished stone floor, but the desired end result would not have been what happened.

Hermione also flinched a little at the sudden noise but she watched the small canine-like creature startle, look around blindly and then ran straight for the door – except Harry happened to be standing in the way.

Harry was not the youngest Seeker in a century for nothing. As the sandy-coloured creature tried to rush in between his legs, he managed to turn and wrap both arms around its midsection. Harry felt one moment of triumph, having finally caught this mysterious creature that had been prowling his school for over a year. But just for one moment.

The rumbling growl Harry felt in his chest as he held the fluffy creature tight against his torso was all the warning he got before the animal wriggled around in his hold and a set of surprisingly sharp teeth sank into his right shoulder.

"Ah!" He dropped the struggled creature, which immediately twisted to stand on its feet and ran straight out of the door before any of them could think to try catching it again.

Harry was a tad distracted by the throbbing pain in his shoulder. He brought his hand away and more felt the cooling liquid than saw the blood in the dim office.

Hermione harrumphed. "Well… what did you expect would happen?" As if she had not been on Harry's right also trying to catch the oddity.

"Come on mate. The sooner you go to see Pomfrey, the sooner the lecture finishes." Ron moped. He had been looking forward to showing off 'his' new discovery in the morning. "Herm, can you carry this. I'll give him a hand."

Hermione took the egg and Ron pulled Harry to his feet. Part of her suspected this single action of helping Harry had been a pretext for the lazy redhead to ditch the heavy egg he had been carrying all over the castle.

They had found the egg and decided to bring it with them, if only to stop some dodgy second year from snatching it for a few weeks before their roommate ratted them out. Or, at least, that's what Ron had said as he picked it up.

Like many others, they had been disturbed by the egg sounding off. In Gryffindor Tower, eyes had immediately turned to the Twins, but they swore on their little sister's life that they had nothing to do with it.

Hermione was the first to volunteer to go and deal with it. She half-suspected she would find Gaara near his discarded egg but he was nowhere to be found, so the hunt commenced.

As they trudged to their doom in the Hospital Wing, Hermione caught up to Harry. "Let me see the Map for a second. I'll check if Gaara's come back inside now."

"Leave off, Herm. He can bloody-well come and get it in the morning if he wants it back. He'll be lucky if I don't make him pay for it."

Hermione thought he sounded remarkably bitter considering he had shirked carrying the thing onto her already.

They left Harry with Madam Pomfrey, who took a moment in between telling him how silly he had been and how dangerous unknown magical creatures were, to tell Hermione and Ron to go back to the Gryffindor Tower. Harry would be sent back shortly when his treatment was finished.

The pair were planning on hiding outside the door to wait for him but then a cat that bore a striking resemblance to their Transfiguration teacher rounded the corner and they scarpered. They had already been docked House points for being out late. They didn't need the accompanying detention from their Head of House.

"Do I need to alert the other professors to be on the lookout for a dangerous beast, Mr Potter?" McGonagall asked, entirely unimpressed by the silly boy holding cloth dipped in some sort of balm to his bare and bloody shoulder.

"No, professor." Harry averted his eyes. "It just got frightened and lashed out. No harm, really."

"No harm indeed." Poppy Pomfrey scoffed. "Whatever it is, it's preventing me from healing that bite."

Minerva wanted to get a closer look but at her apparent concern, the medi-witch went on. "It's nothing too serious. Its bite just interfered with my spells. A potion or two and the second-coming of Newt Scamander here will be right as rain. But with a scar for his trouble."

Harry was about to make a joke about adding another to his collection but then he remembered his friends weren't around and neither of the witches in front of him would find it remotely funny. He didn't think he would either.

"What was it?" McGonagall had been teaching at the school for decades and, up until last year, she had never so much as heard of this mysterious creature. Which almost certainly meant that one of the students had decided to smuggle it in to the castle.

Despite several searches of the different dormitories, none of the professors had ever turned up the creature. They had found a great many other forbidden items and a couple of more mundane but disallowed creatures.

If she had to deny one more accusation of her sending pet dogs away from the castle because of her animagus form, she would expel the student.

Still, if this was a potentially dangerous creature, no matter what the boy claimed, she might need to deal with it properly - but humanely.

Perhaps she could use it to cheer Rubeus up a tad…

"Have you already docked him some House points?" McGonagall asked?

"Yes, a fair few. From him and his friends." Pomfrey said, pulling the cloth away and wiping up the remaining potion to see a small constellation of pristine new scars where each of the teeth and pierced his soft muscle.

"Good. Now, will lost House points and a visible reminder on your very body stop you from leaving the Gryffindor tower after hours?" She asked with a sigh. She was duty-bound to try, but she knew nothing, in magic or logic, would prevent teenagers from disobeying any boundary set for their own good.

"Yes, professor." Harry said sullenly, with very much the same inflection as his father had said it every time he was caught. And meaning just as little of it.

"Good. Now off to bed with you. And do not dilly-dally on the way. I will know if you don't go straight there."

She was bluffing but it was remarkable how few students were willing to try their luck.

Harry scarpered after pulling his shirt back on.

"He'll be okay. No deeper damage and I'll be able to clear up the scar in a few months after whatever was in that bite fades. Could have been much worse. You've seen the scar on his arm."

"Yes." Minerva grit her teeth. Harry's second year had been even worse than his first. Granted, she didn't think whatever this small furry creature was would present the same existential threat as the basilisk, but it was still troubling.

Now she had the delightful duty of writing a report. Several reports. One for Albus to ignore, one for the governors to obsess over, as if they cared for the students, and one for Harry's guardian. Or, at least, the man who should have been his guardian all along. She had stopped bothering to send notices of this kind home to those detestable muggles after the boy's first year when it became obvious they did not care.

Sirius, for all of his innumerable faults, did care a great deal about his godson. That said, she could breathe a sigh of relief that she would not be receiving a Howler from an irate parent because their precious child was silly enough to get themselves injured in the school. Sirius had plenty of first-hand experience as to the cause of such injuries, so his focus would be on the boy's welfare, not recrimination.

A refreshing attitude.

As Minerva settled into her office, well past midnight, and lit one of her candles, she almost felt comforted at how normal this felt. No (presumed) murderers on the loose, no deadly snake abominations, no trolls or possessed professors, no Merlin-forsaken Tournament. Just children running around after dark and getting into scrapes.

'Incident report, January 16th…'

OXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXO

Sirius was in a quandary. He genuinely could not work out if this was funny or not. The injury and scar obviously weren't, but there was something in the fact that his two wards had been at each other's throats since they met and when they finally drew blood, the victim had no idea the other was involved.

Sirius thought about writing a letter pretending to be terribly upset to get old McGonagall into a tizzy, but since he had written several sincerely upset letters in recent months regarding the Tournament, he didn't think it was a good idea. Instead, he started writing to Gaara.

'To Bandit,

Who's a bad boy? You are! Yes, you are!

If I were less than a hundred miles away, I would have already come to whack you over the nose with a rolled up newspaper. A thick Sunday edition.

I did not grow up in a pleasant family, but even we had the rule that we don't bite other members of the household. And if I could resist biting my mother and father when they so richly deserved it, you can keep your teeth off of Pronglset.

I can't tell you to apologise because Prongs Jr. has no idea it's you. Unless he finds this letter. And that would serve you right. Any more scarring of my godson and I will be telling him who is to blame.

Aside from that, I'm guessing he sort of deserved a nip, so just don't make it a habit.

Also, make up with that bratty Malfoy boy, or tell me what he did to get you so upset.

Your generous benefactor,

Sirius Orion Black

Angry S.O.B.'

Sirius did not admit in his letter that he was, in fact, even more guilty of biting acquaintances, including but not limited to the Weasley boy. Aside from not wanting to diminish the scolding tone of his letter, he also did not want to risk leaving documentary evidence of his having maimed Molly Weasley's son. Somehow, in all the excitement of that night, his role in Ronald's injury had never come to light, and he sincerely hoped it never did.

Sirius very much doubted he would get a response, especially when he was telling Gaara off. He signed and then thrust the sheet of parchment under his writing mat when he heard the fireplace roar behind him.

"Cissy, you're early." He said, knowing full well she was perfectly on time. She had probably waited at least two minutes stood in front of the fireplace, staring at the clock, to make sure she departed and arrived precisely when she meant to. He had been forced to do the same when he was a child.

"I trust you haven't been writing to your old prison friends. I believe the authorities frown on that." She said, arching her eyebrow at his clear attempts at concealing a letter.

"I never had any friends in Azkaban. But, funnily enough, quite a few of them seemed to know Lucius." He muttered at the end. Bringing up some subjects would just lead to her storming off and not returning until he wrote a very formal apology.

He had done that three times since they had re-established contact. He would never admit it but he had come to enjoy her regular visits. In some ways she reminded him of the worst parts of his childhood, and in other ways it brought back the few happy memories.

She was one of the last people living that Sirius could talk to about Regulus, about the time before he was turned to the side of the Dark Lord.

If openly disparaging Lucius or Draco would set Narcissa off, talking about Regulus's final years was sure to do the same for Sirius.

"Is it to Gaara or your… friend?" Narcissa had been about to comment on Remus being a drunk or a werewolf, neither of which she readily approved of.

"I was once the belle of every ball, the centre of every room." Sirius lamented.

"I remember you thinking as much." Narcissa commented.

"And now I'm so old and boring that I only regularly send owls to two people." Sirius slouched in his chair.

"I don't know that it is a consequence of your age. I think you have just failed to reintroduce yourself to society. You were exonerated and then locked yourself up in this house."

Sirius scoffed in the same way he used to scoff at one of his parents when they were entirely correct.

"It was to Gaara."

"Oh. I hope he is doing well." She had paused her own infrequent letters to the boy when she caught wind of Draco's disagreement with him.

"Usually you would know about as much as I do from Draco but that's not an option anymore. He hardly responds. It's like he spent his first year in the school not able to speak so now he's spending the second year determined not to write."

"So you have heard nothing more about the boys and their fight?"

"Nothing more than you, I'm guessing." Sirius called for his House Elf in an unnecessarily bellowing manner and soon they were both politely sipping tea.

"Even Draco has fallen prey to the secrecy of teenage boys. I had come to expect some distance but I know it is hurting him terribly. I do hope he can forgive Gaara soon." She said.

"Forgive himself, more like. Gaara won't have done anything. I'd put money on it." Sirius scoffed into his tea quietly.

They both paused, pretending to concentrate on their mediocre tea. The last time they had quarrelled and gone two weeks without speaking had been because they fell into the trap of waging a proxy argument for their children without knowing any of the facts.

Eventually, Narcissa took a deep breath, smelling the lingering dust in the air. "So, is the adoption still proceeding on schedule?"

Sirius almost snapped the handle off his teacup as his hand tensed.

"Oh, please, cousin. It was bound to come out eventually." She said.

Sirius groaned. "How bad is it?"

"Just a few know for now. Lucius hasn't heard yet but these matters always make their way to my circle before they do his. I expect he will know within the month. Maybe two if Murtwood is still avoiding him. His wife is a terrible gossip and shares more than a wife ought to share with her husband." Narcissa took a calculated sip of her tea.

"Is there any reason in particular that you have generously kept this to yourself?"

"Simple, really. You adopting either of those two boys is none of his business. It does not affect him professionally, or… in other ways. Gaara's allegiances have been clear for a long while. Interfering won't do anybody any good."

"Even if he and your son aren't getting along?"

"Pish posh. I cursed half of my best friends in school and they did the same to me. It's the way of youth. When they reconcile, if they reconcile, the last thing Draco needs is an overbearing mother fighting his imaginary battles for him."

"Thank you." Sirius said. It went unsaid that Narcissa would gladly fight those battles anyway if she felt genuinely aggrieved. It also went unsaid that she only cursed half of her best friends at school because the other half knew to toe the line. She was a vengeful witch.

Sirius sighed. "It was probably Gaara." He admitted. He loved Gaara, but the kid was an idiot and it was well within his spectacular idiocy to derail a friendship or two.

"Well, they won't tell us anything when we could actually be of help. And Draco might have played his own part in it. Or Gaara might have overreacted to something Draco did." Narcissa sipped her tea.

"So, remind me. What will they be when Gaara joins the ancient and noble house of bigots. Second cousins?"

"If you have forgotten that much, then the dementors must have been drinking more of you than any of us realised." She tutted.

"If only I could forget. You used to join us for the lessons, right?"

"I didn't join your lessons. I was asked to help Auntie Walburga teach you and Reggie. Help you sit still more like." She rolled her eyes. "Why it came as a shock to any of us that you were sorted into an inappropriate House when you went to school, I will never know!"

"It sure as hell surprised me!" Sirius admitted. "I didn't know other Houses were even possible. I half-expected, when I walked into the Great Hall, to be led to one side. 'Blacks go in Slytherin, no sorting need.'" He laughed.

"Yes, well, that would have saved me the fun of having to write home that evening to tell everyone the news." Narcissa had been watching from her seat at the right table.

"Not just you. The eldest son of Orion Black going into Gryffindor? Every cousin and suck-up owled my parents that night. Probably the most owls they received in a decade. All telling them what they probably already knew. They only sent one owl back out, if I recall. It was too humiliating to respond to everyone else, so they just sent one to me."

"I don't think I've ever heard what was in that letter." She leaned forward almost imperceptibly. This was absurdly interesting gossip considering it concerned events that occurred nearly three decades before.

"And you won't now. Horrid letter. Let's leave it at that. You can probably imagine, anyway." Sirius groaned as he stood to get himself a drink.

Narcissa made a point of looking at the clock but her cousin didn't turn around to see her. He probably wouldn't care anyway that it was too early to be at the hard liquor.

"I swear, I have ten good memories from school for every one that happened outside of it."

Narcissa heard the clink of ice in his scotch. "Is that still the case?"

"Well," He turned around. "Maybe not quite so imbalanced now. The boys have finally given me a few more happy memories in this place."

"Yes, it's done you a world of good."

"More than that; I wonder what would have happened if I hadn't found Gaara that day." Sirius returned to his seat and sipped his whisky. "I would be worse for it, no doubt."

"Perhaps. Remind me where you found him."

"Nice try. I've never told you, and we both know it. But I don't see the harm."

"Really? After all of the mystery and intrigue, you are willing to just up and tell me? I must say, I'm a little disappointed." She pretended to sulk.

"I won't tell you everything. I probably couldn't if I wanted to. That boy has more secrets than Dumbledore."

"Hard to believe."

"You'll have to trust me on that one. Or wait until he trusts you." He stroked his beard in a way reminiscent of Orion, but Narcissa didn't mention that.

"Somehow I don't see that happening anytime soon." She smiled.

"There's not that much to say about the day I found him anyway. I was living in a shack-"

"Seems rather fitting when you say it aloud." She muttered into her tea loud enough for him to hear.

"And I looked outside and there he was."

"Have you thought about publishing this in a short novella?" She asked.

"If I'd looked a moment later, I probably would have missed him. He might have… he would not have done well if nobody found him. And who knows what would have happened to me without him… But, that day, I did look out and there he was. He was unconscious and hurt, lying in that sand of his."

"What in Merlin's name happened to him?"

"I'm not sure of the details. Whatever it was, that's what caused the damage to his throat."

"Yes, he was wonderfully quiet." Narcissa mused. "Some of poor Draco's friends would scarcely enter the manor before they would leave him and try to talk to Lucius or I. Social climbers are the worst sort."

"I'm sure our family would have deemed others to be a worse sort. But you're definitely right about one thing, Gaara is as far from a social climber as it's possible to be. The boy has no interest in politics or connections like that. Seems to want to avoid them."

"Well, he must have gotten that from you." Narcissa smirked.

Sirius felt a warmth in his chest at that, and it almost certainly wasn't entirely the scotch. He loved Gaara dearly but he almost always felt more like a caretaker, a friend. But, in rare moments like this, he felt like a parent. And Gaara needed a parent, more than the redhead would EVER admit.

"So, where had he come from? Was he trying to find you?" Narcissa prompted.

"Yes. He was so awed by my impression of a humble beggar that he demanded to study under my tutelage. I hope to train him to become the best tramp he can be, in time." He laughed.

"So, is that all the story I've earned. You found him on the ground and decided to adopt?"

"Good lord, no. I didn't want this strange child to die from the cuts all over his body. Then I wanted to make sure he didn't die from hypothermia in a shack. Then I didn't want him to starve. Really, it was a series of spur-of-the-moment decisions. And eventually he was just sort of… there. And alive. And not trying to suck out my soul, as far as I can prove, which was a novelty at the time."

"What did you feed him?" Narcissa had been curious what her ne'er-do-well cousin had subsisted on during his stint on the run but had feared to ask.

"Rabbits mostly. Occasionally some things from Hogsmeade. He survived, I survived, it all worked out."

"All thanks to your sound judgements, I'm sure." She sniped.

Sirius chuckled a little and they lapsed into silence for a few comfortable moments. The fire was crackling softly and his scotch was tasty, but something niggled at him.

"I don't mean to sound ungrateful, but something has been bothering for a little while now so I have to ask… why have you been visiting me, Cissy?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, you hate me. And I understand you were expected to check in once or twice, but you've become a regular. And, don't get me wrong, it's nice to have some company, but I just… you hate me and I don't understand. Are you bored?"

"Oh, sweet, simple cousin Sirius… I don't hate you. Hate is for the childish and unimaginative." By which she meant Gryffindors. "I am ruled by my better judgement and my mild distaste. In your case, your manner, while a betrayal of everyone that once made our family great, is not so distasteful to me as to overrule my better judgement that you are the last of our noble house."

"This family means that much to you? Even when its head is a blood-traitor Gryffindor who opposes everything you believe?"

"Even then. If that mattered, we would hardly be family. Just acquaintances. And I have plenty of those." She said. "Besides, while I certainly disapprove of muggleborns entering our society and polluting our culture, I've never really held the same vitriol or drive to seek them out and exterminate them. If they happened to die or find themselves in cages on their own, that would just be lovely."

"Lovely indeed." Sirius took his turn to roll his eyes. Still it was interesting to hear. Narcissa was much more moderate than many in her circles, even if her beliefs still made his skin crawl.

"But let us not discuss politics when we are sure to disagree and be put off out tea… or other beverages. We have plenty of common ground still to discuss. Is that Wizarding Nature I see? Are you hunting?"

Sirius perked up. "No, actually, I'm looking for an exotic pet dealer."

"A pet dealer?" Warning bells were going off in her head, especially after seeing what Gaara considered to be a suitable pet during the First Task.

"Yeah. I've got my heart set on getting myself a pet stag. Remus said I should learn a bit about them first, so I've been reading up first."

What Remus had actually said was that Sirius would surely kill a pet stag within a month with how little he knew about the things. The only deer he had even encountered had actually been a wizard in that form. For all Sirius knew, stags naturally ate chocolate frogs.

Narcissa sighed and then spent the next 34 minutes (Sirius counted) patiently explaining to her cousin why he could not have a pet stag. Fortunately for her, Narcissa was able to repurpose large segments of the same argument she had used against Draco when he was seven and demanded a pet dragon. Her cold logic managed to stop Draco's tantrum in its tracks with enough time to get him ready for his birthday party.

Of course, she had to follow up on her explanation when Draco had claimed, aged eight, that his dream was to become a dragon wrangler. A wholly inappropriate profession for a gentlewizard like him; all that manure and manual labour. Luckily, she was able to put a prompt stop to that idea when she arranged for him to visit a reserve and meet a full-grown dragon.

A little trauma makes the medicine go down.

Narcissa stayed a while longer, if only so the bulk of her visit would not be based on telling her cousin off. In the remaining time, she found out that his werewolf friend had finally secured employment but didn't say where. She deduced he had gone out into the muggle world for work. A shameful necessity.

That could be the title of his autobiography. Narcissa hid her smile

OXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXO

The Golden Trio and one oversized egg entered the Great Hall.

"I told you he wouldn't be here." Ron groaned, shifting the egg to his other arm. Harry had used the excuse of his perfectly fine but slightly punctured shoulder to leave Ron holding the egg. Hermione had skipped the excuse and walked briskly forward before Ron could ask her to carry it.

"And I told you to bring your Map." Hermione whispered.

"Yes, after you told me not to carry it everywhere with me in case it gets confiscated again." Harry shot back at her.

"When did I say that?"

Harry paused for a moment. "I'm not sure. Maybe a year ago."

Hermione huffed and shook her head. "Wait here. I'll go and ask Malfoy."

"Like hell I'm letting her go near Malfoy on her own." Ron said.

"Good luck telling her she can't." Harry said, watching Hermione and then Ron march towards the Slytherin table. He realised he was standing alone so he tried to catch up with them.

Aside from not standing alone in the middle of the Great Hall like a berk, Harry was also on thin ice with Hermione so he needed to be supportive. Earlier she had wanted to study his newest scar to analyse the creature's bite and he had made a joke about her wanting his shirt off. Ron laughed and she got angry.

"Oh, look who it is." Someone said beside Draco. He didn't know who he expected to have approached, but it certainly wasn't Potter and his lackeys.

"If you can't even go to breakfast without getting lost, you might need to ask McGonagall for a map." Draco snarked as soon as they were close enough to hear over the clamour of the Hall.

"Shove it, M-" Ron was cut off by an elbow to the gut.

Hermione tucked her elbow back into her robe. "We need to find Gaara."

Draco sneered. "Good luck."

"Just tell us where he is, you prat!" Ron said, taking a step back before Hermione could elbow him again.

"Keep that up and we'll take this outside." Someone said, but Draco wasn't paying attention to whom. He had spotted what was in Weasley's hands and he had a sneaking suspicion he knew what this was about. Potter had obviously worked out what the egg was for and was going to tell Gaara like a simpleton who didn't know they were in competition.

The three Gryffindors took turns scoffing or sneering and then they carefully retreated back to safer ground. Most Gryffindors could pass near the table of snakes without danger of hexing but Potter provoked strong feelings.

"Who on Earth do they think they are?" Roy said near Draco.

"The real question is why they thought you would help them." Blaise said.

"Clearly I haven't tried to curse them often enough." Draco said. He was kicking himself for not having thought to send them on a wild goose chase.

Truthfully, he really had no idea of where Gaara was these days. The last time he had even spoken to Gaara had been about a week ago, when he returned to his room to find Gaara napping in the unused bed.

Gaara had snapped up as if he was under attack and quickly tried to leave. Draco had tried to tell the redhead that he could stay and that Draco would leave, but apparently Gaara did not trust him.

Draco had tried talking again, saying he had been overzealous (but his actions were necessary), but like always Gaara just walked away. He was impossible!

Draco pushed his breakfast away but reached for some dry toast. He had been losing weight recently and he was starting to look gaunt so he could not afford to skip the meal entirely.

Meanwhile, the Trio were re-strategising. "I say we just leave it with Snape." Ron said.

"We can't do that. Snape hates him. If we give it to the old bat, Gaara might never see it again." Harry said.

"And?"

Harry frowned, more at having to do this than having to explain it to his friend. "And if he was still opening it all over the castle, he must not know the trick. I can't just let him go to the Second Task without knowing what he's in for."

"Harry's right. Let's just go and get the Map and we can be done soon."

Ron scoffed. "Fine, but one of you can carry it."

"Sorry, Ron. That thing nearly bit my arm off. I need to take it easy." Harry teased.

"It's not even that heavy, Ron." Hermione chided him.

Ron grumbled as he followed them back up the castle. They swung by the Library since Harry had seen Gaara in there a lot recently, even by Gaara's standards. Based on the Map, Gaara had been spending his nights in there but Harry had not been able to work out where he was staying. Unless he was just standing there all night…

With Gaara, Harry could not deny that possibility.

When they looked in the daylight, Gaara was nowhere to be found in the library so they continued on up to the Gryffindor tower.

When the three stepped through the portrait of the Fat Lady, they immediately heard many voices shouting excitedly.

They entered the common room and saw two of Ron's brothers at the centre of the frenzy. They were clearly drumming up interest in the next round of betting for the Tournament, and a lot of their Housemates were trying to get in on the action.

The gambling operation that the Twins had been running this year was something of an open secret amongst several of the professors. If they caught anyone betting, they would punish them, but no one was bothered enough to investigate or pursue the matter. If a few silly students wanted to give their pocket money to the Wealsey Twins, it would just have to be an abject lesson in not frittering away their money.

Of course, this was not the stance that Minerva McGonagall took. She had been trying to catch them in the act for months but they had been careful to avoid detection. For instance, when they knew she was on duty in the Great Hall, they could wheel out their portable blackboard and take bets in the middle of the common room.

"Uhh, Hermione?" Harry leaned over.

"Yes?"

"How offended should I be?" Harry continued, staring at the blackboard with all sorts of numbers. He had never been involved in organised gambling so he did not understand most of it, but somehow he didn't think having the largest number next to his name was a good sign.

"Uhh…" Hermione trailed off, seeing 50 to 1 next to Harry's name.

"Pretty bloody offended, mate." Ron chimed in. He had been taught from a young age the ins and outs of gambling, thanks to his older brothers who used it as an efficient method for relieving him of whatever birthday or Christmas money he might have saved for several years of his young life.

Now, Ron did not gamble. Especially when his brothers were favouring Gaara over Harry, and the Champions from the other schools over both of them. Where was the loyalty?!

"Very nice…" Harry said loudly, which had more of an impact than he was expecting.

Everyone had gone silent when they realised Harry was in the room, especially the three or four Gryffindors in the centre of the huddle who had just been in the process of betting against Harry.

"Well, this couldn't be much more awkward." Ron commented redundantly.

Then Gaara climbed out from under a blanket near the fire where nobody had realised he was sitting.

He had been prepared to suffer through the noise, as he always was when near Gryffindors, but the entrance of Potter and his friends only ever heralded disruption.

Gaara often napped in the Gryffindor common room during the weekends and no one seemed to mind. He noticed in the ensuing minutes that the assembled Gryffindors were somewhat put out by his presence. Apparently they did mind a great deal.

No one was eager to actually fight Gaara, but there was a lot of shouting so Gaara felt it was time to leave. He skirted around and moved between the taller students until he was near the entrance. He heard his name, amongst several calls for him to 'stay out' but he did not turn around.

Harry groaned and snatched the egg from Ron.

"Look whose shoulder is feeling better." Ron drawled, letting Harry take the egg and run after the red-headed trespasser.

"Gaara!"

Gaara paused and breathed out in a perfectly normal breath that was not a sigh.

"You left your egg last night, upstairs, in the Astronomy Tower. Open." Harry held out the egg awkwardly. He should not have felt so awkward but Gaara was looking especially hostile in that moment.

Gaara took the egg and then walked away ungratefully.

"You're welcome!" Harry called after him. What did Gaara have to be angry about?

Wait… had someone stole Gaara's egg and left it in the tower as a prank, and Gaara thought Harry was involved? He slumped his shoulders. Just this morning, Sirius had told him to try and get along with Gaara again. Which was a strange thing to include in a letter that was apparently to make sure he was okay after being bitten by that wild animal.

Gaara had received an owl as well and he was not happy about it. The suggestion that Potter might find out his humiliation was unacceptable.

Meanwhile, Harry walked back into the common room.

"So, did you tell him how to open it properly?" Hermione asked.

"Oh, right." Harry sighed. "No. But I'm pretty sure he knows. I think someone stole the egg from him. Surely he would have been more careful with it if he was still trying to work it out." Harry reasoned.

"It is Gaara, though. He seems smart but he's really not that bright."

Harry kindly avoided pointing out the hypocrisy of Ron highlighting another person's intellectual shortcomings.

OXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXO

January 19th was on a Thursday this year and Gaara was alone. He had been spending a lot of his time alone recently, so being alone on a Thursday was fine.

He had received owls from both Remus and Sirius, which was thoughtful of them. Gaara supposed it made sense that they would both contact him when it was his birthday. He had nearly forgotten.

They had offered to meet up with him in Hogsmeade but he had written back only to politely decline. He did not feel like celebrating this year, and Potter's insincere birthday wish at breakfast did nothing to change that. Especially because it came directly after Potter received a letter from the same owl that dropped off Sirius's birthday card for Gaara.

Gaara was in a bad mood so he spent the evening after lessons in the Library. He did not want to be around people.

Unfortunately, people did not care what he wanted, historically.

Luna arrived shortly after he did, presumably having come straight after her last lesson of the day. Gaara liked that time, since even the most studious Ravenclaws did not typically go to the Library right after lessons. He should have had at least an hour to himself.

When Gaara heard the Library door creak open and closed, Gaara calmly stood up from his chosen desk and climbed over the bookcases to hide in his secluded space. Most of the school were ignorant to his birthday, so no one other than Potter and Luna had wished him a happy birthday all day…

But that did not mean that Gaara wanted to put up with any fawning over his Champion status.

Gaara had not remembered to bring his book with him so he did not have anything to do. He sat quietly and considered meditating, but instead he listened to light footsteps tapping along the floor towards him. They stopped in front of one of the cases that acted as his wall, which housed books on Potions ingredients.

There came a knocking that echoed in his space. Were they looking for a hidden passage? Or trying to get a ghost to come out?

"Gaara?"

Oh, it was Luna. Gaara sighed.

"Could you come out?"

Gaara only considered ignoring her for a moment before he stood. Luna knew things and was probably aware he was in there. He jumped up and vaulted the back bookcase to land behind her in what might have been a superhuman feat for a muggle of this world.

"Hello, Gaara." She said cheerily.

"Hello, Luna. How did you know I was here?"

"Oh, well, you often come here after lessons and you seemed quiet at breakfast. If you weren't in here, I suppose you would have been out in the forest. But it's cold tonight, so here was more likely."

"How do you know I come here?"

"It's simple really. The House Elves don't normally keep a fire burning in the Library unless a student is in here. Lately, it's been burning all night. And the bookshelves for Potions, Muggle Studies, and one of the cases on Magical Creatures have been in the same place for weeks when they would normally have been over there, there and there." She pointed to three random places. "You're the only person I'm aware of who would be likely to spend their nights outside of their room without a professor stepping in."

Gaara stared for a few beats. She really was clever.

"You wanted to see me?" Gaara continued.

"Yes, I couldn't give this to you earlier because there were so many people around." Luna pulled out from behind her back a present wrapped in what appeared to be pages of her father's magazine. It looked like a book and when Gaara took it, it had the heft of a leather-bound tome.

He held it in his hands, briefly examining the moving photos from last week's edition of the Quibbler. "Thank you." He said, and made no further moves.

Luna didn't miss a beat. "Would you open it while I'm here?"

Gaara would have rather left it for when he was feeling better but since she gave it to him, he believed it was fair to honour her request.

He carefully peeled the pages apart, tearing as little as possible. Underneath, he found a book titled 'Travels Through the Magical World: 201 Pleasing Sights'. A quick skim found the author to be an Antipidy C. Drinkwater, published in 1884.

"It was written by my great-great-aunt. I've left some post-it notes on the bits that can't be seen anymore. The Shining Lake of Wolves in Ireland and the grand catacombs under the Bruchsal Palace in Germany would have been wondrous to see before they were destroyed, but there are still 182 places in the book that are as my great-great-aunt described."

Gaara skimmed the contents page and did not recognise many of the locations.

"I thought it might be nice to have something to look forward to in the summer. And, if you don't get to see them all this summer, you can look forward to seeing more next year." She added with a smile.

"Thank you again. I think I would like to visit some of these places." He set the book on a table and sat down to start reading.

Luna appreciated that he either really wanted to start reading her gift or he was trying to signal that he would like to be left alone, but regardless she sat down next to him.

Gaara stared at the first page of the first chapter, about a mine that was filled with sapphires that a wizard had enchanted to make them easier to locate and excavate by causing them to radiate a beautiful blue light. Unfortunately, as it turned out, the enchantment made them worthless to goblins, so they were left in the cave walls. The wizard abandoned the mine but it became a tourist attraction, drawing witches and wizards from all around the world to Cambodia.

Luna watched Gaara read but knew her presence, or the presence of any person watching him, would not draw enough of his focus to get him to stop reading.

"Did Draco wish you a happy birthday?" She ventured.

Gaara's eyes stopped sweeping across the page, not blinking. Luna waited.

Gaara stayed frozen for a few tense seconds before blinking and looking to his side at Luna.

"I haven't seen him today."

"Oh…" Luna did not want to make Gaara feel bad on his birthday. "Maybe he doesn't know where you are."

Gaara mulled this over for a few seconds before turning back to his book. His eyes stared at the page but they did not move along the lines this time.

Luna decided in that moment to push onwards. "Can you tell me what Draco did? It won't help if you keep it bottled up."

Gaara frowned, which meant he was more than a little upset with her.

In for a penny, in for a pound. "Please tell me, Gaara."

"He betrayed me. Friendship cannot exist without trust." He said this as a matter of fact.

"Can he not just apologise and you could put it behind you?"

"He has apologised. It is meaningless."

"Meaningless? Surely it's not completely meaningless if he's sincere."

"Betrayal makes it meaningless." Gaara was not looking at her when he spoke, which he tended to do more often these days. She surmised this meant he was uncomfortable.

"How can you be so sure?"

"Because I have been betrayed before. My uncle cared for me when I was young after my mother died giving birth to me. He pretended to… care about me and then he revealed he hated me the whole time. He tried to kill me and I killed him."

Luna felt cold all of a sudden. She knew Gaara had a hard life but this was beyond what she could have imagined.

"Any words before being betrayed, or afterwards, are meaningless." Gaara's conviction was firm.

"But Draco didn't try to kill you, did he? And I'm sure he didn't mean to hurt you. He doesn't hate you either. Whatever he did, I'm sure he's very sorry."

Gaara did not respond and Luna realised why she could not find a logical argument to reason with her rational friend. This was not really a logical problem, it was an emotional one. Gaara seemed so stoic that she had overlooked the obvious. Gaara was hurt and he could not properly express that.

After a while, Luna found her voice again. "Would you like me to stay? To have some company on your birthday?"

Gaara had been motionless and even then he did not turn to look at her. "No."

"Okay, Gaara." Luna stood to leave. She put her hand on his shoulder but she might as well have tried to comfort one of the statues.

Luna wondered if all she had managed to achieve was upsetting her best friend on his birthday.

OXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXO

Draco was surrounded by his Slytherin Housemates for a change. He had just been selected to represent Hogwarts as the Seeker for the two-day interschool Quidditch tournament in March.

This would normally have been one of the proudest moments of his young life, but his mood was soured by a couple of thoughts that kept swirling around in his head.

He had not forgotten Gaara's birthday, but despite his best efforts he had not been able to track down his absentee roommate. At the time, Draco had huffed and blamed Gaara for hiding out, but in the following days he had felt terrible that he had not so much as wished him a happy birthday, let alone given him a gift. Lovegood had apparently given him a book, so Draco knew he could have surpassed that.

The other reason that Draco's mood following his selection was not everything that it should be was because of those reprobate Twins. They reinforced everything Father had been saying about the Weasley clan since Draco could remember.

Shortly after the announcement was made in the Great Hall, they made an announcement of their own, that Draco only got a shot at the position because a Champion like Harry didn't have time.

Draco's associates defended his honour and a traditional Gryffindor/Slytherin riot nearly broke out before Dumbledore set off a canon-bang with his wand.

The blond Seeker was later assured that the Twins were just bitter that no one would place bets on the Quidditch tournament because they were also on the Hogwarts team as Beaters. Everyone was convinced they were not above throwing the match if they stood to make more money that way. They vociferously denied this slanderous accusation and even offered to resign from the team but McGonagall caught wind of their plan (and the reason) and had a private chat with them.

The thought of Quidditch, for the first time in a couple of months, was also a painful reminder of Gaara's animosity. His Firebolt had been a gift (a regift) from Gaara.

Still, Draco knew without asking that his participation was no more voluntary than Gaara's. So, like a well-bred young man, he would push down that nasty feeling in his gut and do what was expected of him.

OXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXO

A few days later, Draco was wondering if his position in society was worth all of the muscle aches and headaches. Because the majority of the Hogwarts Quidditch players had been slacking off, with no games scheduled for the year, Angelina Johnson was drilling everyone into the dirt with daily practices.

Draco, along with a couple of others, had protested at the Gryffindor being selected as Captain of the team but those complaints fell on deaf ears. Snape might not have cared as much about school pride or Quidditch, but he did care about not having to listen to Minerva complain. He left the entire matter in her hands, and McGonagall was perfectly happy with what she had seen of Ms Johnson's leadership so far.

Still, Draco's sudden rise in popularity had given him a rare opportunity to re-ingratiate himself with his old bigoted peers.

He had been looking for such an opportunity since his Father demanded answers, but Draco was no novice and he knew nothing would isolate him more than looking like he was trying to get in with them. Now they came to him, he had ample time and access to weasel some answers out of them.

It was during a trip to Hogsmeade that Draco finally got his answers. After asking a dozen entirely innocent questions of a dozen different connected people, he was able to paint a picture. It seemed that Goyle was out of favour because his father had managed to nearly ruin some super-secret plan that the inner circle was working on.

Part of Draco was curious about what the plan might be, but there was a reasonable chance that the plan was just about when the next gathering would take place, or about updates to their uniforms. It could also have been about some sort of attack or other nefarious plan. With his Father's old comrades, there was no way of knowing, really.

It was probably the uniforms…

Draco quickly worked out that the blood purists were not all conspiring to keep the juiciest details to themselves, they genuinely did not know anything more. Considering the sordid details that his Father had shared with him over the years, Draco did wonder what could have been so important that the next generation was being kept in the dark.

Maybe it was more important than the uniforms, after all?

Once he had gotten all of the answers he was going to get, and he had spent a little more time with them so his interest did not seem so suspicious, Draco split off with a handful of the people he could stand to be around for extended periods. Draco just had no appetite to sit though yet another identical conversation about how muggles were destroying the world and muggle-borns were ruining the wizarding world.

Instead, Draco contentedly listened to discussions about proposed trade agreements with magical South Africa and about who would be voted as Witch Weekly's Most Charming Smile Award this year. Miles Bletchley suggested Gaara and that got a fair few laughs from everyone other than Draco, who smiled politely.

Speak of the red-haired enigma…

Draco and his associates heard raised voices and, sensing prime gossip, hurried over to see what was happening.

It was sadly predictable to find Potter at the centre of the commotion. Gaara was in second place for mostly likely to be involved in drama according to the most recent Hufflepuff polls. Draco was not surprised to find them both involved.

Potter was shouting at Gaara while Luna, Granger and Weasley looked on, rather exasperated. So, nothing new.

Apparently, according to Potter's deranged shouting, someone had been distributing pamphlets and badges around the schools recently, endorsing Gaara as the 'real' Champion for Hogwarts. They referred to potter as a cheating, fake Champion who was lesser than Gaara in many ways, hence being the only one injured in the very first Task.

Potter was understandably upset and naively thought Gaara had some involvement in his own publicity.

Draco felt a little bad about this since he had been the one to produce and hand out the pamphlets and badges. It had used up the last of his remaining pocket money but it seemed worthwhile at the time. Potter-bashing was always worth a bit of money, but he had hoped this might demonstrate to Gaara that Draco was still very much on his side. Now, seeing Gaara being yelled at over this, Draco wondered if it might hurt his cause instead.

"Of all the priggish things to do!" Harry continued on.

"I told him it wasn't Gaara, but did he listen?" Hermione complained from the side.

"I understand. It's difficult when they don't listen." Luna commiserated. She had been enjoying a nice walk with Gaara when Harry Potter stormed up. It had been the first time Gaara did not go to great lengths to avoid her since his birthday, so she had been enjoying herself immensely.

"You're telling me!" Ron agreed with Luna with no sense of irony.

"I don't think Gaara would do something like this. Does Harry Potter have any proof?" Luna asked Hermione.

"No evidence at all!"

"Even I don't think he did it this time." Ron admitted.

"Really?" Hermione asked.

"Well… I still think he's up to no good, but he doesn't seem the sort to make badges. Plus, he's pants at magic, isn't he. He couldn't enchant them himself anyway." Ron said.

Hermione nodded with wide eyes, astounded by Ron's reasoning.

"True. Gaara is not very adept at spellcasting." Luna agreed. She saw Draco approaching and had a suspicion of who was truly to blame for the mess.

The spectators watched Harry rant at Gaara with a certain detachment. No one expected a physical or magical confrontation, so it all seemed a little pointless. Gaara would have agreed.

Whenever he was faced by these situations, which involved Potter too often, Gaara questioned the appropriate response. Violence always came to mind first, but Sirius was very against such conflicts and had threatened to reveal Gaara's fluffy secret, so he couldn't risk hurting Potter for an insufficient reason. Walking away was another possibility, but then Potter might just follow.

So, instead Gaara had opted to stand still and wait for Potter to tire himself out again. It seemed to be working. He was starting to repeat himself a lot.

Harry was indeed struggling. He could normally rely on his rage to sustain him during these fits of anger, but that was difficult to maintain when the subject of his wrath might as well not have been there. Gaara had not moved an inch since Harry started levelling accusations at him. Was he even blinking?

As witnesses started to arrive, Harry began to feel a little silly. Especially when they began to jeer at him.

To retain some measure of pride, Harry decided to end his tirade articulately and leave with his dignity.

"You're just so… ugh!" Harry flailed his arms and stormed off.

"I think that's our cue." Ron said, nodding in Harry's direction and then setting off after him.

"I'll talk to him. At a certain point, it starts to seem like bullying." Hermione assured Luna.

"That's okay. Gaara doesn't take it personally." Luna smiled, looking over at Gaara who seemed to have just realised Potter was no longer shouting at him or even within sight.

"Hold on for a minute." Draco said to his companions. He saw this as an opportunity to approach Gaara while he was distracted. It was more public than he would like, but he did not have the luxury of waiting for the perfect moment.

"Gaara."

Gaara's eyes snapped over to him. "Draco."

Hermione watched this and dearly wished she could stay to see what happened, but instead she was duty-bound to make sure Harry was doing okay.

She wondered if she and Luna were close enough to ask for details later. Probably not. With a sigh, Hermione left.

"I… Potter should not have bothered you about that. I made all of that stuff." Draco said, which was as close to an apology as he was likely to stray.

Gaara nodded and turned away to leave.

"It was- Everyone knows you're the real Champion. I was just reminding the Gryffindors." Draco tried again but Gaara just walked past Luna and led her away.

"Bit ungrateful." Someone said from behind Draco.

"Yes, he's like that." Draco said. He still refused to discuss the well-known rift with others.

Luna was able to keep up with Gaara but he was clearly walking faster than normal. The air was calm so even as they power-walked, Luna would have been able to talk to Gaara. And yet she said nothing. What else was there to say that had not been said a dozen times in the last couple of months?

Gaara would not care that Harry Potter had accosted him out in the open. It was not the first time and it probably wouldn't be the last. But confrontations with Draco… That definitely hurt him.

Luna knew that the only way to make it stop hurting was for Gaara and Draco to become friends again, but that seemed impossible right now.

OXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXO

Gaara approached the February full moon with much more caution than the previous month. Too many close calls and mounting rumours meant he could not afford his tanuki form to be spotted again.

With that in mind, Gaara had decided to barricade the doors to the Library to stop anyone from wandering in after hours. Particularly Potter, who either might try to track him down for some unknown reason or be out hunting for his fluffy form.

Blocking the doors would also prevent Luna from showing up unannounced. She was obsessed with his animal form and he had managed to keep her at a distance for a while, but eventually he predicted she would be emboldened.

Gaara did not know how prescient his decision would end up being. That evening, not only were the Golden Trio out on the hunt, but so were several other student groups. Stories about the mysterious creature that bit the Boy Who Lived had spread and caught the active imaginations of the teenagers in the Castle.

Filch would later remark that he had not caught so many students out of their beds in one night in a decade.

Gaara heard several attempts by different people to try and open the Library doors but otherwise he was undisturbed.

As soon as the moon set and he transformed back, Gaara quickly removed his barricade and then made himself scarce. He would have to find a new place to hangout for a few days until Madam Pince calmed down. She had always seemed harsh but reasonable in his dealing with her in the past, but he had a strong suspicion that she would be out for blood when she found scratches and chew marks on many pieces of priceless antique furniture and several books.

A restless tanuki-Gaara could not be trusted.

Harry heard about the damage in the Library and his mind went to work. Through the Map, he had seen Gaara in there the night before, as he normally was. He had even tried to stop in to say sorry for the episode in Hogsmeade. After calming down, Harry had begrudgingly admitted Gaara was innocent and deserved an apology.

The door had been locked, which was unusual, but now it made sense. Obviously Gaara had tried to trap the creature in the Library, causing it to panic and do all of that damage. He was probably doing it for the Lovegood girl, since she was interested in magical creatures.

At breakfast that morning, Harry planned to try and catch Gaara when he arrived or when he left the Great Hall. Instead, he decided to leave it for another day. Gaara did not look like he was in the forgiving mood.

Gaara had appeared for a quick bite to eat and while he was sat at the table, an unfamiliar owl swooped down to drop off a letter.

Between the fan mail and other such nonsense, Gaara did not like to open letters from unknown owls. However, the extremely plain envelope made him curious enough to risk it. Inside was a single sheet of parchment, on which was written, in neat handwriting:

'I know your secret and where you are from. If you want to keep this a secret, you will do what I say. I will contact you again soon. And do not ignore any more of my letters.'

It was unsigned. Based on the last part, they had tried to contact him before but he must have thrown them away without reading.

It was an attempt at blackmail but he did not know how to handle it. Kankuro was much more adept at these kinds of situations. And Draco. He couldn't ask either of those two, so he had to deal with it.

There was a very good chance that this individual was bluffing. Gaara's origins were known to be a mystery, so it would not have taken a great imaginative leap to guess there was a secret. Also, there were five people in this world who knew that particular secret and he did not think any of them would be likely to either share it or try to blackmail him.

Unless Draco…

Draco had already proven that he could not be trusted. But was this a step too far? Gaara had known Draco for a while and this seemed uncharacteristic.

Then again, was Gaara capable of identifying unusual behaviour?

He shook his head. No, for all of his faults, Draco would not have done this. If he wanted to blackmail Gaara, he would not have needed to bother with hiring a different owl and changing his handwriting.

And, even if Draco had betrayed him before, he had not done anything since to actively hurt Gaara.

Gaara shook his head again. These thoughts only ever made his head hurt. He would better off focussing on the next Task, which was nearly upon him.

He still had no idea what it would entail, and at this point Gaara was not willing to admit to anyone that he had not figured it out. He was a trained shinobi, he would just have to handle whatever situation arose. When he pulled it off, nobody would know any better.

If he failed… it would be even worse after he had repeatedly refused Luna's generous offers of help. And several other people's.

OXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXO

In the morning, Gaara was pulled aside at breakfast by McGonagall to get changed ahead of the Second Task. He was… unsettled when he found out he was expected to don a swimming costume.

That was unwelcome news.

Gaara could swim but he would really rather not, especially since it was February in the Scottish highlands and the Black Lake would be around 3 degrees at this time in the morning.

Potter had already been waiting for him in the boy's changing room, standing over his own swimsuit. The bespectacled teen appeared to be particularly worried as they changed, but Gaara decided this must be because of what happened to him in the last Task.

Since Dumbledore had clarified Gaara's priorities after that debacle, Gaara prepared himself to forsake whatever was required for this Task and focus on protecting Potter.

Gaara's own concern grew when, on their way down to the lake, Potter and he were joined by Delacour and Krum, who both also looked pensive. Clearly they knew something he didn't.

Gaara was fortunate that his expression was naturally blank, so nobody would interpret his expression as being ignorant of whatever horrors were supposed to await them at the lake.

In the time it had taken for them to change and walk down to the Black Lake, many of the guests had already arrived. Along the shore, tiered seating had been set up and there were three structures standing in the middle of the lake with room for the most important spectators to get close to the action.

Enormous white sheets were being strung up in front of the shore seats, and projectors were being rigged to broadcast the action on those screens.

Inside the boathouse they found Bartemius Crouch waiting for them. He invited them to sit in a sizeable rowboat, that he charmed to smoothly pull away from the dock and out onto the lake. There was a smattering of applause and a few cheers from the hundreds of spectators when the Champions appeared.

The boat headed for the centre structure out in the middle of the lake, on which Gaara spotted several familiar faces.

In that moment, Gaara also realised another pertinent fact that he had so far ignored in favour of the pressing issue of the unknown Task's dangers: his wetsuit did not have a warming charm on it like his school robes. So, there he was, sitting in near-freezing weather with next to no protection from the elements.

His body immediately began to shiver.

Fleur Delacour pulled out her wand. "You poor thing. Did you not apply the warming charm? Would you like me to?"

Gaara glared at the patronising tone. "No."

Potter scoffed. "Just do it. He'll freeze his knackers off if someone doesn't cast it and he can't do it himself."

Gaara turned his glare on Potter but did not say anything else. He could not say anything else. It was only through clenching his jaw that his shivering didn't cause his teeth to loudly rattle in his mouth.

Fleur giggled a little and then cast the charm that may have saved Gaara's life. His body immediately un-tensed as warmth flooded back into his extremities.

"Thank you." He said, begrudgingly.

"I'm surrounded by boys." Fleur lamented with a smile.

"It is not so cold." Krum piped up, sitting up very straight in the boat.

"I suppose you do not have a warming charm on yourself?" Fleur smiled.

"I do, but I do not need it." Krum sniffed.

"How very impressive!" Fleur smirked, re-holstering her wand.

When they reached the central floating structure, Gaara saw Luna there waiting for him, alongside Granger and several others who he assumed were the guests of the other Champions. On the far side of the platform were the head teachers, talking amongst themselves. However, by the edge of the large pontoon, they were approaching, there was a large cluster of Ministry officials flanking Fudge and Bagman.

"Good morning everyone!" Fudge said grandly, beckoning them to alight onto the dock. "I hope you are all ready for another exciting Task!"

There was silence as Harry idly scratched at the broad scar running up his neck, and that unsavoury reminder finally registered with Fudge and he simmered down.

"Good morning, Gaara." Luna said, pushing through the Ministry guards. "How are you feeling? Are you warm enough?"

"Yes." He said, ignoring the snort from Potter behind him.

"Harry, Gaara!" Sirius said, also pushing through the crowds, nearly sending on Ministry functionary into the water. "Someone said your boat would be coming from the other side." He paused and looked at Gaara. "Are you cold?" Sirius had already pulled out his wand.

Potter started tittering despite himself.

"I'm fine." Gaara said.

"Oh, okay. If you're sure." Sirius slowly put his wand away. "So, are you all ready, both of you?"

"Ready as I'll ever be." Potter mumbled.

"Yes." Gaara said.

Sirius wanted to press for more information, since Gaara was not fooling anyone, but with the Minister for Magic, several head teachers and a few government officials watching, Sirius thought it would better if he didn't chew Gaara out in that exact moment.

"Come now, enough chatting. We must get on and start soon." Fudge insisted, gesturing for one of his attendants to usher Sirius and the other guests away.

The stands on the shore were now filled with people, and the floating platforms were likewise bustling with spectators. Gaara looked around but he could not see any sign of what the Task might be. If it was a race across the lake, he liked his chances.

"Did you remember to bring your wand?" Potter asked from behind.

Gaara looked to his wrist and found it holstered there. "Yes, I did."

That was a stroke of luck. He had indeed nearly forgotten. Gaara watched as Fudge pushed his way to the pedestal, never one to give up the spotlight. Ludo Bagman waited a couple of paces back.

Gaara had long since learnt to tune out Fudge's bloviating speeches. Luna could fill him in later if something important was mentioned, but otherwise he couldn't see any reason not to let his mind wander.

He was watching the soft lull of the water, back and forth. The platforms were slowly rocking under the movements of the witches and wizards crammed on top.

"Gaara!" Potter whispered.

Gaara blinked. Clearly it was time to do something. He had completely missed Fudge stepping aside and Bagman taking his place to explain the task. That was a mistake on Gaara's part, since he had no idea what he was expected to do and he couldn't ask anyone.

"Were you even paying attention?" Potter asked.

"Yes." Gaara kept his lies simple.

"On the sound of the cannon, our Champions will descend to find what was taken from them." Bagman declared. Gaara was thankful for the reiteration.

So, he would not just be swimming, he would need to dive.

The cannon went off and Delacour and Krum immediately dove into the dark waters. Potter seemed to swallow something before falling somewhat less gracefully.

"Go on, Gaara. It's a race!" Sirius pushed him on.

Gaara looked back and then stepped forward, off of the dock and fell to the water. And then stopped.

He heard a number of people gasp and cheer. Apparently many people had not known he could walk on the surface of the water. A simple trick for his people, an impressive feat for people in this world, magical or not.

"And Gaara has activated a Water Walking Charm in yet another display of wandless casting!" Bagman announced, which seemed over the top to Gaara as he calmly walked along the top of the water.

As he went, he realised he had no idea where he was aiming for. Looking at the projector screens, he spied someone with a shark face swimming downwards, who he assumed was Krum. Then Gaara heard something leap out of the water behind him and spun quickly to see Potter do a flip and then dive back under the water.

"And Potter had made use of… yes, I am just getting confirmation, he has used Gillyweed to transform himself and breathe underwater. We've yet to see what Gaara has prepared to go under the water, unless he plans to stand on top the whole time!" That got a few laughs.

Gaara looked around but there really was nothing he could do without actually submerging himself. Bracing himself, and glaring into space, he took one last breath and then stopped the flow of chakra from his feet. He quickly dropped into the water with hardly a splash.

As seamless as his entrance into the water appeared, it did not feel so serene to Gaara, whose whole body seized from the shock of the cold water all around him. Apparently the warming spell could not stand up to the icy cold of the lake water.

Perhaps, he would later muse, he should have dipped his toes first…

It took Gaara a few seconds to regain his senses. It was pure luck that he had not gasped and drowned from the thermal shock. He realised as he slowly swam through the water that he was battling through both the cold and the weight of his own regrets.

When he was starting to need fresh air, Gaara used a trick that Temari had taught him years ago. Gaara had not been a natural at water walking, and repeatedly dunking a homicidal Jinchūriki into water when he was not a strong swimmer was a dangerous form of training. Temari had offered to teach him this breathing technique to make him feel better.

It had been one of the first nice things she did for him. He threatened to kill her for it. And, in those early days, before he had levelled dozens of similar unfulfilled threats at his siblings, they used to take them quite seriously.

The technique involved using wind chakra to regenerate the oxygen in his lungs. It used up a lot of chakra, which was not an issue for a demon container like him, but it would still only allow him to go without fresh air for around fifteen minutes. That would have to be enough.

Gaara swam directly downwards. Maybe there was a clue on the lake bed. They mentioned something having been taken. Presumably they would not ruin one of his books by submerging it in lake water, but he could not think of what else he owned of any value or concern. He had not noticed anything missing that morning.

Gaara saw shapes moving in the gloom, too many to just be his fellow Champions.

Wasn't there a giant squid somewhere in the lake?

Normally he would consider it unlikely that teenagers would be expected to contend with such a monster, but they had been asked to face dragons in the previous Task, so all bets were off (figuratively speaking). He saw something that bore a striking resemblance to an infamous missing-nin from Kirigakure pass him by and Gaara decided to follow Krum in that general direction.

As he swam, he saw something else cross his path ahead in the murky water. It was his first time seeing them but he was fairly certain he had encountered his first mermaid. As far as he knew, mermaids were sentient and largely non-aggressive unless provoked. Gaara continued onwards.

He spotted Potter swimming around as well, which was a good sign that Gaara was going the right way. He was already a third of the way through his available air, so he needed to find what he was supposed to find soon.

As he kept going down, following the people he hoped knew what they were doing, Gaara began to make out more shapes in the gloom. The structures rose from the lakebed and Gaara could only assume this was the mermaid village.

Considering the way the magical government treated non-humans, in a rare bout of conscientiousness for him, Gaara wondered if anyone thought to consult with the mermaids before setting the Task in the middle of their village. Probably not. Gaara told himself that at least the glorified scavenger hunt would not cause any damage and the disruption would be short-lived.

Gaara looked around as he passed through. Luna would be very interested to hear about the mermaid village, he thought.

Gaara had not thought to check or bring his weapons pouch that morning since they wouldn't let him use anything helpful in the Task anyway. Perhaps they had taken that?

It seemed callous to just steal from all of them for the sake of the Tournament. They could have just hidden some meaningless token under the water and he would have sought it out if that was the purpose of the Task. Now he would have to spend his evening shivering and re-oiling his knives.

Gaara could feel his oxygen running low and he did not want to have to resurface and then find where he had left off. He doubled his effort and eventually, after passing through the mermaid equivalent of streets, he found himself in some sort of open plaza area. And there was something rising out of the centre.

No, something floating was tethered to the bed of the lake.

Good, his search was over. He swam closer and he could begin to make out what had been tethered. It was larger than his weapons pouch but it almost looked like a body.

He didn't think he had misplaced any corpses recently. Not since that time in the north of Wind whe

Draco

It was Draco.

Draco couldn't hold his breath as long as Gaara. He wasn't transformed. He…

Draco was dead.

They left Draco at the bottom of the lake to drown.

OXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXO

"So, he had no idea what he was going to be doing?"

"I don't think so." Luna said.

Sirius barked out a laugh. "Typical! I bet he left it so late he was too embarrassed to admit he hadn't worked it out. James did the same thing with his Potions homework in fourth year."

"Like father like son." Hermione rolled her eyes.

"So, if you're here, that means it has to be Draco down there, right?" Sirius said.

"I would think so. Can't think of anyone else it could be. Luna?" Hermione said.

"No, Draco's the only other person Gaara is close to at school."

"And they couldn't take you because you were with Gaara in the Library last night." Hermione said.

She, similarly, had stayed with Harry in the evening to help him prepare in case he needed to know some basic Mermish. Hence why Ron had missed breakfast for the first time in months.

"Hold on," Sirius started, "is there a chance Gaara's going to take one look at Draco down there and turn around?"

"Now that you mention it…" Hermione looked worried.

"No. they've not been speaking recently, but I think they just aren't good at making up. Gaara still cares." Luna commented, watching the closest screen.

"I hope you're right. It would be pretty awkward if Gaara didn't." Hermione said.

"What's going on?" Someone asked and Sirius turned back to look the projection on the screen. What had he missed now?

The screen showing Gaara's progress was a mess of bubbles and silt. Sirius couldn't even see Gaara's scarlet hair through the rapid moving water.

"That Gaara boy's doing something. He found his friend and then he stopped." Someone said. Apparently everyone was quite curious now that the screen was no long showing them his progress.

A few shouts and gasps arose when some movement was seen on the surface of the water. It began as a little splashing, and then the turbulence grew.

Then the turbulence began to swirl around. Spectators started to clap when they realised Gaara was causing the whirlpool to form.

OXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXO

For someone with such muted emotions, carefully controlled at all times, the sensation of rage was intoxicating. The heady weight of the emotion suffocated any logic that Gaara might have otherwise applied to the situation. Instead, that capacity was being swallowed up by the demonic chakra flooding his system in his moment of weakness.

Gaara was barely conscious of the chakra sloughing off of his body and seeping into the sand and silt at the bottom of the lake. The particles were swirling all around him, causing a spectacular vortex. But all that existed in Gaara's mind at that moment was the impulse to destroy. Everything. Kill everyone.

OXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXO

"Oh dear." Luna's pale skin was nearly translucent when she realised this was not a casual sign of his power but instead anger. "Gaara's lost control."

Sirius looked to Luna and then back up at the screen. Oh Merlin! "Fudge! Call this off now. He doesn't know Draco's okay!" Sirius called, but he couldn't get near the Minister. And when the Ministry guards saw he was making trouble, they would not let him near the water either. "Stop the Task!"

"I suppose Gaara might be upset if he thinks Malfoy's hurt, but Mr Black is making a bit of a fuss. What's the worst he can do? The Headmaster and a dozen Aurors are all here. They can step in if Gaara is about to hurt himself."

Luna was more concerned than that but for a reason she could not quite place.

Sirius, on the other hand, had knowledge neither of the teen girls had. He knew what could be unleashed if Gaara really lost control.

Out of earshot, behind a handful of guards, Fudge was scoffing. "He's gone and snuck in his enchanted sand. I told you we needed to search them beforehand!" He pointed his pudgy finger at Ludo Bagman, who had fortunately stopped his announcing charm.

"Honestly, Minister, I don't see how he could have… he was wearing a wetsuit." Bagman tried to reason.

"Actually, Cornelius, I think you might be premature in your accusation. Gaara has shown a prodigious aptitude for enchanting, with sand as his medium. He is most likely controlling the sand that was already at the bottom of the lake." Dumbledore chimed in.

"We will get to the bottom of this, mark my words!" Cornelius did not point his finger at Albus Dumbledore. Instead, he spun and poked Crouch in the chest. "And there will be hell to pay if I find out you were sleeping on the job!"

Crouch looked startled to have been drawn in.

Outside of that particular huddle, Luna was looking on with growing dread. She realised the last time she saw Gaara angry had been the night of the Yule Ball, when those bullies had hurt her and Luna thought Gaara might kill them. They had hurt her. The Tournament officials had kidnapped Draco and tied him to the bottom of the Black Lake. For all she knew, Gaara thought Draco was dead.

The last time he thought Draco was seriously hurt, Gaara had slaughtered hundreds of dementors, which were supposed to be nearly unkillable.

Most of the spectators had stopped cheering and were now panicking and moving back from the edge of the platform as it swayed with the turbulent water. Some were already demanding to be taken back to shore before they all drowned.

The Ministry workers were trying to reassure the guests that this was all part of the spectacle. Unfortunately, their jobs were made more challenging by those honoured guests screaming and running around on the small wooden surface. This movement was also making the platform even less stable, further panicking them.

Dumbledore, Maxime and Karkaroff had maintained their professional calm and, in an impressive spectacle of synchronised spellcasting, they raised their wands and wordlessly cast a spell to still each of the platforms and stop them from being pulled under by the roiling waters.

"What are they doing?" Hermione tried to peer over the crowds around her to see what the official response was going to be from the Ministry.

"Nothing that I can see." Luna said. The Ministry workers seemed more focused on stopping a stampede of guests off the side of the platform and into the surging waters.

Sirius had stopped wrestling with the pair of Ministry guards so he pulled Luna away from Hermione. "I'm not sure exactly what Gaara's told you, but this is bad. It's not just him being upset or some accidental magic." Sirius cut himself off. He couldn't blurt out Gaara's secrets, especially when half of the people still being corralled nearby could report every word directly to Britain's Minister for Magic or to half of Europe's magical governments. And then there were the reporters.

"What can we do?" Luna said back.

"I don't know." Sirius was still looking around. The Ministry guards would stop him from getting near the water. Even if he transformed and risked being locked up as an unregistered animagus to slip past the blockage, he had no idea how he would get close to his… to Gaara, nor what he would do when he got there. What could he say or do that would break Gaara out of his… panic? Grief? Anger?

Sirius had no idea.

Luna saw the paralysis in the closest adult and suddenly a quality arose in Luna. It had been said in the past that Luna had a bit too much lion in her to be a proper Ravenclaw. On these occasions, she had dismissed the claims as being another attempt to ostracise her. But, then, at other times, she did things like this…

Luna first ran to Hermione, "Give me the spare Gillyweed you brought!" She insisted, staring directly into the older girl's eyes.

Hermione had been trying to find the closest authority figure to find out what was going on and how they were going to resolve the issue. The next thing she knew, Luna Lovegood was entirely too close and demanding the handful of leftover Gillyweed in her pocket. The brunette hardly even thought about it, she just reached in, grabbed the slick weed and offered it to Luna.

It was only after two seconds had passed and the leaves were in Luna's hand that Hermione realised what she had just done.

"Luna, wait!" But the Ravenclaw had a plan and could not be stalled. Hermione tried to catch her sleeve or the back of her robes but Luna had twisted and darted in between the wall of large bodies all around them before she could be caught.

Luna disappeared into the crowd and Hermione had no hope of catching her. Hermione felt sick with worry. But, surely a Ravenclaw would not be so impulsive.

The brunette spotted Sirius on his own, perhaps also searching for Luna.

Meanwhile, Luna was pushing past frightened politicians and celebrities to get to the edge of the platform. The noise of the water was still mounting, drowning out the calls of the officials to keep people calm or to organise themselves. She swallowed the Gillyweed with a grimace and tried to calculate the dose versus her body weight, factoring in her gender, the current lunar stage and the approximate ripeness of the plant, but her heart was racing and her mind jumbled so instead she ran for the first opening she spotted and leapt into the water.

She felt terrible for Gaara all over again, knowing how sensitive he was to the cold and feeling her body going into shock from the sudden freezing cold. She clamped down her teeth so that she wouldn't gasp and drown, and instead waited for the cold-induced cramps to switch to the Gillyweed-induced spasms that she had read about.

As she stayed motionless under the water, she was dragged along with the currents swirling around in the lake. She felt just enough control over her body to try swimming, but it meant nothing against the motion of the water dragging her down.

Her vision began to dim from the lack of oxygen but it did not occur to her until much later, the irony of Gaara's inadvertently causing her death because he thought Draco had died.

Just as her thoughts were fading to black, the spasms finally faded and, despite keeping her mouth firmly locked shut, she took a deep breath.

Luna would devote approximately seven pages in her latest journal to describing the sensation of breathing with gills and having webbed extremities. In the moment, however, she focussed on getting some oxygen back into her blood and battling against the surging current that had been dragging her around all along.

She was a fairly strong swimmer but she was fighting against a wild torrent that appeared to be wearing away the stone buildings at the bottom of the lake belonging to the mermaids. She saw the Delacour girl shoot past her. The Bubble Head charm has saved the French girl's life but it was doing nothing to help her swim against the current.

As Luna dug her way towards the centre of the vortex, the churning silt that was propelling the water reduced her visibility to near zero. She tried to push through even when the debris made her eyes sting so much she had to swim blindly with her eyes closed.

While blind swimming did not help, ultimately it was the raging current that rebuffed Luna and sent her spiralling backwards. She tried a second time, managing to keep her eyes open for a few seconds here and there, but again she could not break through the combination of fast-moving water and sand.

Luna's undeveloped muscles were burning already so she let herself be carried by the current a little further. She almost jumped right out of her green-tinged skin when she was caught in the large muscle arms of a shark.

She screamed briefly before remembering seeing Viktor Krum transfigure his head into a shark's at the start of the Task. She hoped he would be able to change it back afterwards as he was quite handsome before.

Luna was not too familiar with sharks or their expressions, so she wasn't entirely sure, but she thought he looked a little surprised to see her as well.

Luna wanted to explain her intentions but since they were both underwater and his head was a shark, thus lacking human ears, she did not know how well that would work. Instead, she had to hope that his brain was not as small as a real shark's.

Struggling to stay in front of him while they were both swept along with the currents, Luna pointed to herself and then towards the centre of the spiral. Krum shook his head and pointed to the surface.

Luna then shook her head and pointed to where she knew Gaara was, more insistently. Krum bared his multiple rows of great white teeth and then might have slumped his shoulders.

Another page of Luna's journal would be devoted to describing an exasperated shark.

Krum drew his wand and cast something at Luna. She feared it might rocket her to the surface but instead it lessened the pull of the water, making the torrential currents feel more like the flow of waves when she swam at the beach. She gave him a webbed thumbs up and then swam back towards the centre again.

As she clawed her way closer and closer to the opaque wall of swirling sand and water, whatever charm Krum had gifted her seemed paltry when set against the enormous fluid force working against her. She imagined this would be what it would feel like to try swimming through solid rock.

Still, that un-Ravenclaw determination was still burning strong and Luna would not turn back.

The relief she felt when the tip of her finger push through the border of the vortex was almost enough to interrupt her swimming and send her flying back into the slower moving water. Instead, she kicked even harder and managed to push her way entirely out of the spinning water.

Then, Luna realised that she had been swimming about five metres above the bed of the lake when she swam into empty space. The Gillyweed might have granted her many helpful abilities, but flight or cushioning her fall were not among them.

Luna fell down to the base of maelstrom and felt an intense pain in her arm when she landed that made her cry out. As she rolled over and cradled it to her chest, Luna guessed the intense throbbing pain in her left arm meant it was most likely broken, and now that she was out of the water, she could see abrasions all over her visible skin where the sand had scraped and scratched her.

Inside the cone of water, she saw the tornado of sand and wind swirling around Gaara, who was floating just off the ground and doing… nothing. He was just there. Whatever power he was exhibiting appeared to be acting independently.

Luna could see Draco on the ground near the waterline, his sodden cloak struggling to flap under the onslaught of wind howling over him. She stumbled over the uneven, dried lakebed to check on him. He was cold but he had the symptoms of being dosed with Draught of Living Death.

So, Luna surmised, Gaara thought Draco was dead because the redhead failed to pay attention in Potions. Or he had not been able to attend that particular lesson…

Shouting at the top of her lungs did nothing to draw Gaara's attention, and she did not want to risk casting a spell at him. Even if her spell managed to hit him, if she cast it improperly (because, for instance, of webbed hands or the searing pain in her non-dominant arm) and he lost consciousness suddenly, tonnes upon tonnes of water would immediately cascade down on them.

Luna left Draco where he was and approached. Standing in front of Gaara, Luna could see his eyes were unfocused. He did not even know she was there.

So, without pausing for much thought, Luna did the only thing remaining. She swung her damp, webbed right-hand and slapped Gaara full-force across the face.

Whereas, normally, when a younger woman slapped him in the face, his sand armour protected him, participation in the Task precluded wearing it. So, immediately, a vivid red handprint was visible on his left cheek. And his eyes finally turned to her.

The wind and the wall of water swirling around them slowed, as if they too were as shocked to have witnessed the slap as Gaara was to receive it.

Now that he was aware of his surroundings, as well as his stinging cheek, Gaara saw Luna stood with one arm limp by her side and the other raised like she had just struck someone.

"Luna?"

"He's fine. Draco. He's not hurt. He's just under a potion. He'll be fine!" She told him.

The movement around them slowed further. Then Gaara looked over to where Draco's unmoving body was still lying.

"Oh." Gaara's body was still flooded with demon chakra and unresolved feelings, so that was as articulate as he could manage to be.

Luna swallowed the lump in her throat at hearing him utter something approaching a whole syllable.

He was clearly very distracted, so Luna told him, "You need to finish the Task."

Gaara obviously needed some help, but he wouldn't be able to rest and get any sort of privacy until Ministry called an end to the Task and released the Champions.

Gaara was still a little stunned, his hand absently rubbing his sore cheek. "Okay."

"Okay." Luna agreed, stepping back, trying to keep eye contact with him so that he wouldn't look down and see she was hurt. That was the last thing either of them needed. Luckily, rather than making eye contact or looking at her, Gaara was looking to the side, away from her entirely.

Gaara's 'eyebrows' creased as he focused on wrangling Shukaku's chakra now that he was past the serene oblivion and thinking again. Simply cutting it off would have been hard enough, but he needed to take control of it long enough to carefully release the sand still holding the Black Lake from crushing them. Luna used the lull to jump back through the water wall and into the lake to start swimming away. Fortunately, even if she had to swim with only three working limbs, the Gillyweed was still active in her system.

She had no idea how much of what transpired had been witnessed but she did not fancy being at the centre of a Ministry investigation into interference if she could help it. So, away she awam.

OXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXO

"I need to put that girl on retainer." Sirius muttered to himself as they all heard rather than saw the shift. A few tense minutes after Luna dived into the water, the raging storm had died down and now the cone of water was slowly closing up. He did not know what Luna did precisely, but Hermione had stopped by and told him about the Gillyweed heist.

She was not his child, and Sirius was not the best example of mature decision-making, but even he felt he needed to have a stern word with Luna. And with Gaara.

Hell, since he would be chewing out two thirds, he might as well round out the set and give Draco a piece of his mind for whatever had been going on between him and Gaara.

Oh yes, there would be a reckoning.

It occurred to Sirius that somehow, despite being locked up for most of his adult life, he had managed to land himself two teenagers, Harry and Gaara, who would make him go grey.

Come to think of it, shortly after he first told Remus he intended to adopt the pair, his oldest living friend had quipped that he would be asking for his old cell back in Azakaban before long. Sirius said some choice rejoinders at the time, as he recalled.

Now, on the other hand, Sirius was wondering if they had put a new lick of paint on old cell B5986 since he had been gone.

One child nearly eaten by a dragon, another nearly releasing some sort magical weapon of mass destruction because his friend was unconscious. Maybe they could work together for the Third Task and give him that long anticipated heart attack.

"And Viktor Krum is the first to surface with Estelle Larkin!" The announcer called, eliciting some underwhelming cheers and applause.

Sirius managed to push his way to the front in time to see Krum being helped onto the deck of the platform as the partial shark transformation was undone and the boy laid down alongside his Yule Ball partner who would be receiving the Draught antidote momentarily.

People were crowding around the young man, who was breathing heavily and not much else. Someone was kind enough to wrap him and his Ball date in some blankets.

"And who do I see surfacing now!?" The announcer called.

Sirius could see something breaching the water. "It's Harry Potter with his friend Ronald Weasley!"

Sirius moved to the edge to help Harry out of the water but instead he had to lift Ron first. His back would hurt in the morning.

"You need to find a new hobby." The ex-escaped convict said when he clasped hands with Harry and helped him up. The Gillyweed had already run out and Harry looked rough.

"Is Gaara out yet?" Harry asked between heaving breaths, struggling to stay on his feet while he looked around.

"Not yet. Did you see him down there?"

"No. Not for a while." Harry gave up the fight and sat on the deck. Like Krum, he didn't have the energy to stand or even sit up for a respectable photo-op.

"Harry!" Hermione ran forward but she remembered all of the assembled press and their obsession her relationship with Harry, and their cameras, in time to stop at a respectable distance.

"Now that the whirlpool has subsided, they are coming in fast now. I can see another head. It's Fleur Delacour with her sister Gabrielle Delacour!" Ludo Bagman announced.

Sirius felt his gut tightening. Where was-

"Hold on a moment!" Bagman started. "Gaara and his friend Draco Malfoy have surfaced right by the platform and beaten the Delacours, snatching third place!"

Indeed, Gaara had reappeared and managed not to come last, but there was no sense of celebration. Gaara hefted Draco out of the water and into the waiting arms of his mother, who held him close and looked positively distraught. Lucius looked murderous.

Gaara might have benefited from a hand out of the water but he ignored Sirius's offer and instead pulled himself onto the platform.

"And with miss Delacour and the younger miss Delacour back on dry… pontoon, we have now completed the Second Task of the Triwizard Tournament!" There was a reasonable cheer from the crowd on the floating platforms and on the shore of the lake.

Bagman rattled off more details and recapping, while Sirius fretted over the boys who were shivering even after they had been wrapped in towels and warming spells.

"Well, I hope you are happy, Albus." Fudge hissed. "Yet again one of your pupils has managed to derail the entire event. This time we nearly had everyone in the water!" The way Fudge said it almost made it sound like he believed a few dignitaries getting wet would have been an order of magnitude worse than Harry Potter being burned all down his side.

Albus was a talker but even he had no words to say to the Minister in that moment. He would save those for later. Words and perhaps some actions.

"Minister Fudge, do you have a comment about what went wrong this time?!" A reporter shouted past the wall of Ministry workers shielding Fudge.

The red-faced politician muttered something dark under his breath before turning and flashing his election-friendliest smile to the crowd.

"My, oh my! I couldn't be happier with today's Task. I don't think I have seen such a magical spectacle in some time. Truly remarkable that children, not even out of school, could pull off the feats we have all witnessed." He declared.

The questions then flooded in, with many questioning the politician's sincerity. Fudge maintained that it was just an impressive, if a tad uncontrolled, display of magical prowess. It was a shame that the magic used obscured their view of the event, and it might have been a little jarring, but it was all rather impressive.

A few reporters seemed to buy it, a fair few others kept asking what went wrong.

Fudge was about to say something impolite when Bagman and Crouch shepherded the journalists away so that the Minister and the head teachers could reflect for a few moments on what they witnessed. Dumbledore, Maxime and Karakoff wandered away to consider how to score what they saw. The job was made harder by the fact that half of the Task had been obscured.

In the time it took for Fudge to reach his wits end with obnoxious reporters asking questions he didn't want to answer, Gaara had regained his anger. Draco was alive but he had been drugged, brought to the edge of death, chained to the bottom of a lake, all for a politician's game.

He had done it for so much less… and with more witnesses than this…

Gaara stalked forward, armed with only a glare. Sirius saw Gaara's direction and he knew this would not end well. He rushed after Gaara only to be grabbed by a burly pair of Aurors who saw his fast movement in the Minister's direction and deemed him to be a threat. He struggled but he did shout any warnings – he did not want anyone to start cursing Gaara, so he could only try and pull himself free while watching Gaara walking at Fudge with that alarming single-mindedness that Gaara was capable of.

The press had retreated to question the other guests while the memories of their shared trauma were still fresh. Fudge was taking a breather and telling himself that nobody in Britain was having a worse morning (meanwhile, Luna was most of the way to shore after swimming halfway across the Black Lake with a broken arm).

"Oh, um, yes, Gaara. Well done on your performance. Perhaps just stick with the simpler charms next time." Fudge said with a smile when he realised the Champion he had had investigated multiple times was only a few feet away.

The Minister's bodyguards finally seemed to notice that the boy who just exhibited a startling magical power was visibly angry with their boss and stepped in the way before Gaara could get any closer.

Gaara stopped walking. "You will die." He said in his soft way, maintaining eye contact.

"What?!" Fudge and a couple of others gasped. Surely this boy was not threatening to murder the leader of Magical Britain while surrounded by a dozen Ministry witnesses and many dozens of reporters and dignitaries just out of earshot.

"Take a step back, young man." One of the guards commanded, brandishing his wand.

"If one of my friends is hurt by you, I will kill you."

"Gaara, stop talking!" Sirius commanded, still struggling.

Gaara was so angry that he was shaking. Except, he wasn't just angry.

Somewhere between plunging directly into nearly freezing water and the massive amount of chakra being expelled from his body, the warming charm on swimsuit had disappeared.

"No… I won-" He said, half-turning to Sirius, eyes struggling to remain open. "I'll kill."

"What's…?" Sirius had stilled, watching Gaara turn fully towards him, then look around. He seemed confused. Was he drunk?

He could hear Gaara's teeth chattering. Gaara stumbled.

"Isn't someone going to arrest him?!" Fudge hissed, looking at his guards who were all staring at the short red-headed boy shivering and struggling to stay awake and on his feet. And then he failed at both.

"Someone catch him!" Sirius shouted as Gaara fell backwards onto the wood with a thunk.

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A/N: Luna's diaries really have become more interesting in the last year or two. Sadly for a couple of bullies who saw an opportunity to tease her, Luna writes her diary in code.

I hope you liked the Second Task.