Stellarlune

“Fidelis.”

“Draconis.”

I carefully listened for the feminine lilt that was Ginny’s voice, only, it wasn’t there.

“You again, huh?”

“You again, huh?” He mimicked my tone.

There was a beat of silence. And another. And another.

Almost ten heartbeats, and nothing except dry, unfiltered air passes between us. I was the first to break the silence.

“So now what?”

“Now, we don’t fucking talk.”

A second of silence.

“You curse a lot.”

“Thank you, Sherlock Holmes, for noticing.”

I shrug, even if he can’t see anything.

“Is it better?”

“Wasn’t it established that we were nottalking a minute ago?”

“No, you were moving your mouth, I suppose, but I couldn’t hear anything.”

He half scoffed; half laughed.
I ventured into unknown territory again.

“Is it better? Your…shifting?”

I could imagine him tensing. He didn’t reply.

I continued.

“You know, I thought about it, and I think that feeling isn’t necessarily a bad thing. I read about this girl once who burned herself to death because she couldn’t feel pain. She walked right into a fire and didn’t come back out, and flesh and muscle just melted off her bones.”

That got a reply.

“What sort of crazy person are you to read crazy stuff like that?”

“Its just interesting, that’s all. Honestly, sometimes I wish I could stop feeling too. When I look at my parents, or my friends, sometimes. But then I remember the good times, and I wouldn’t take it back for the world.”

“What good times?” His tone is full of disdain.
But then it softens. “Your parents…?

I exhale a harsh breath. This is not something I want to talk about, and the briefness of my reply reflects that a little, I think.

“Obliviated. For the war. You?”

The response was immediate, forceful.

“My parents? Forget it. All they looked out for was themselves. At least one of them, anyway. Let’s just say my methods of dealing with my life were a bit more… research centered.”

Evidently he doesn’t want to talk about it either.

I flounder for another topic of conversation, and my grasping strings reel in a curious subject.

“As in research into…whatever is the source of your problems right now?”
There is a heavy beat of silence.

“A little too perceptive for your own good, aren’t you?”

I hear a petulant sniff and smile a little.

“Aren’t you even the tiniest bit curious who I am? I’ve wondered and wondered about you for ages, you know.”

I stifle a laugh.

“Good to know I occupy the other half of the space in your mind that isn’t muddled from all that Firewhiskey.”

“Hmph.” He’s annoyed and shocked into silence.

Oh, I love this. Even Ron and Harry have never been able to keep up with me when it comes to witty chitchat, and he is no exception. The sick sense of satisfaction that I get is…

“At least Firewhiskey is a better respite, don’t you think?”

I gasp in outrage and a flicker of pleasant surprise. This is new.

This is…nice.

Distressingly enough, I can’t think of anything to say.

A wry smile slowly curls across my lips, even though he might not be able to see it.

Witty, is he then?

At my silence, he snickers.

“And she has absolutely nothing to offer in return.”

“Oh ha ha ha.” I roll my eyes, scoffing, finally giving my response. “Mature. Let’s not act our fucking age, for once, about this.”

I can practically feel the smug, self-satisfied aura radiating off him, the twat.

Silence wraps around us for all of two minutes before he murmurs, “I consulted a book. For my research.”

I don’t question why he is telling me this, however much I want to.

Maybe it is a confession.

“Okay. And?”

“My…research went awry. The book, despite all outer appearances, was dark. I…I made a breakthrough, but I might have given up a bit of myself in the process.”

I raise both my eyebrows in silent shock. “What sort of research is this, again?”

His tone is flippant, like he is trying to draw my attention away from the topic, so I don’t notice his discomfort.

But, like a fish to a hook, I cling on. “Maybe I can help? I’m pretty good at researching. There is a counterspell to every dark one, and although it might not be in the book you mention, it will for sure be in another.”

“….” He is struggling to find words. “I… I don’t know how to explain it. I don’t want to go back. But I don’t know how to go forward either. These transformations…they give me purpose. But I can’t seem to control them. And this isn’t something you can help with, although I appreciate the offer.”

“Oh. In the literal sense?”

He is quiet, and it’s like a few puzzle pieces click together in my brain. “You mentioned the Forbidden Forest earlier, didn’t you? Something about…shifting and now transformations…”

He snorts suddenly.

It’s forced.

“Let’s just leave this, all right? We’re getting nowhere. Tell me about you, instead.”

It’s not a question, but my brain is whizzing too fast for me to respond.

“You seemed particularly off during that last conversation…and that was the day after the full moon!” His weariness, his wariness of others, his nonchalant behavior, like he was trying to ward off suspicion….

My breaths come faster and faster, and all I can picture is claws and teeth and grey fur and blood bloodbloodblood…

I scramble back up against the wall, wand raised in fear.
“You… you’re a…..a werewolf?! Aren’t you!”

He’s standing too, I hear the scuffle of his shoes as he gets to his feet, slowly, carefully.

My mind flashes with memories, flashbacks of Greyback hunting Harry and Ron and I, of him snarling and ripping through trees with his bare hands, his claws as we fled the Forest of Rimens, the bushes whipping past and leaving scars, eyes wide and bodies trembling with fear and exhaustion and despair… because there was no way we were going to fucking get out of this, no escape, we would die…

The response is quiet.

“And even if I was? Would you never talk to me again?”

I don’t know what to say. Fear and panic seizes and limbs, and I focus my wand towards the voice, ignoring the blabber that is coming out of it. 

“Even if I grew claws and teeth and a tail once every month, what gives you the right to judge who I am? Who gives you the right to set the parameters for good and bad? Why do you fucking get to pass judgment on me, huh?” You-“

I tackle him.

I lunge at him with my body, my arms and legs at the ready. I tackle the werewolf to the ground and I seize his neck, his weak spot.
I dig my elbows into his collarbones and my press my fingers, my nails into his neck, at the jugular as hard as I can, searching for the bump of the Adam’s apple, and beneath that, the werewolf’s thaora, or weak spot.

“What the actual fuck…” He chokes against me, fumbling aggressively with both hands locked around mine, trying to pull me off. “Get fucking off-“

He’s not as strong as I expected.

“Who fucking bit you?!” I snarl into his ear, my hair askew and falling around his face.

I still can’t see him. But I can feel him.
And I can hurt him.

“Tell me! Who bit you?!”

I tighten my thighs around his waist, his narrow hips digging into my skin and raising goosebumps. 

Ice crackles across my skin as it comes into contact with his. 

He's ice cold. 

That's not right. Aren't werewolves supposed to be warm?

Not as muscular, either.

He goes limp, and I loosen my hold, assuming him unconscious.

My mistake.

He rips my hands off his jugular, and slams me into the ground. My back emits a painfully loud crack, and a breath is torn gracelessly from my mouth at the impact.

The weak spot...?

“For the last fucking time, who the fuck are you to judge?”

I hardly hear him.

I think I start to hyperventilate. All of a sudden, it's not stone walls around me, but crackly bushes and thorny shrubbery, and the hands trapping me to the floor suddenly become visible and the snatcher bends his head, his good tooth glinting cruelly as he flashes the rest, yellow and broken, at me greedily.

I angle mine as far, far away as I can, whispering in fear, “No nononono, someone save me helpme…”

The snatcher forces my head towards him, and I feel the brush of his hair across my cheeks. I scramble for purchase, anything to get him off of me..

He takes a breath, and…

“Wake the fuck up! The war is over! You’re in Hogwarts. You’re safe.”

I blink, disoriented.

Strands of hair brush across my face, and I feel his breath on my cheek, heavy with exertion, still clutching my arms.

“You’re safe.”

I jerk off the floor, everything coming back to me like a tidal wave crashing onto a beach.

The werewolf…

I don’t anticipate his body, still hovering over mine. Not being able to see him didn’t much help either.

My head knocked into his, noses brushing against each other’s forcefully, and our lips crashing together in furious second.

…..

he tasted like Earl Grey

“-what the frick is wrong with you, Merlin’s fucking tits-“
“-not like you could, I don’t know, fucking move off me-“

his lips were bitten raw and red and full and I could taste the blood from where they had split, tangy and metallic just like its owner

“-can’t even bloody keep her head for one fucking-“
“-god, you are insufferable-“

his breath was harsh and heavy and pine and oak and wood and the forest and the entire underwood, spicy and hot to my skin

“-what kind of abso-fucking-lutely mental case would-“

“-not like you were of much help-“
“-forgive me for having some fucking decency-“

my skin was on fire

“-why would you even-“

“-wasn’t even a fucking proper kiss!”

“Wh..what?” I pant, disbelievingly.

His weight is off me, and I can finally, finally, breathe.

I take in gasping lungful’s of air, acutely aware of the lingering warmth the left behind.

“I said,” he scoffs, “that that… wasn’t even a fucking proper kiss.”

I fill up, like a balloon, I think, with anger. With unfathomable, undeniable rage. “You…you’re a fucking…fucking werewolf, and…and all you can say, all you have to say for yourself…” I sputter.

“Say what? What could I possibly say that would change your opinion of me, huh? You sit there on your fucking high horse like you get to decide that werewolves are the bad, bad guy in the story?” He spits his words like poisonous darts, lethal and meant to sting.

I bristle. “…my high horse? My high horse? You…you’ve been whining about your problems like a fucking first year ever since we met, like no one else has been through what you have, like a stupid, whining, petulant baby, baby.” My mocking words did nothing to his silent façade, I think.

Or so it seemed, until…

“You don’t fucking know what I’ve been through. You…you have no-“

“-and you don’t either!” The words burst from my lips before he even finished his sentence. “You don’t fucking know what I’ve been through, like you said.”

“So let’s just shut up then.” His words were biting, with an edge of finality to them, like he’d been expecting this from me all along.

“Fine. Let’s.” I sniff, cross my arms and turn to face the wall, away from his stupid voice.

He could go and rot in hell for all I cared.

The next time I found out it was him; we didn’t speak.

Seventy eighty ninety minutes of silence, with nothing but our breaths to tell us the other was, in fact, there.

I must have shifted my position at least a dozen times. Cross legged, leaning against the wall, weight shifted to one hip, then the other.
My foot tapped with nervousness and anticipation, waiting, waiting for him to break the silence.

He never did.

Three weeks passed in a blur, just like that.

My wand felt heavier and heavier every time I started to pick it up, and I obsessively started to loan Slinkhart’s book from the library, so much so that Madam Pince had to confiscate it for the one other user that frequented the book.

“He comes almost every week to check if it’s there, you know.” With a purse to her wrinkled lips and a frown to her even more wrinkled forehead, she reprimands me sternly.

I nod my head slightly and say nothing, handing over the book in quiet resignation. My plans would have to wait.

“Draconis”
“You again?” I don’t even bother saying my codename, he would recognize my voice in an instant.

He doesn’t reply.

I frown.

It had been so long. Surely he must have gotten over our little spat.

Thirty, forty minutes pass.

Dry, unfiltered air passes between us. Nothing else.

I realize with dawning clarity that he either really knows how to hold a grudge, or what I said must have really affected him.

It is my voice, wobbly like a wisp of smoke braving the sky, that spreads across the room.

“I was tortured by a werewolf. That’s why I don’t like them.”

I am sharing a secret that I haven’t told anyone other than Harry and Ron, and it is like I am wrenching apart a piece of my soul and offering it to this unknown stranger who I barely know.

But who I want to know.

Desperately, somewhat.

“I’m not a werewolf.” His reply is quieter.

I imagine fingers twitching, his eyes closed, hair smooshed behind his head against the stone of the wall.

Is this his first time admitting anything to anyone, too?

And I think that’s it, until he drops the bombshell.

“I’m an Animagus.”