Effervescence | h.p.

i | xxv. pain for all who trust

On Friday night, Lyra and Harry visited Hagrid for the first time and they took Ron and Hermione with them, introducing them to Hagrid. Harry and Ron asked Hagrid if he had been in Diagon Alley the same day that Lyra and Harry had been there, to which Hagrid grew suspicious and would never quite meet Harry's eyes when he was drawing attention away from that topic.

Lyra didn't really understand why Harry had been asking about the day they had gone to Diagon Alley, but she was too tired to question him. She leaned on Hagrid's large dog, Fang, all evening until Harry decided she desperately needed to go back to his dorm to sleep.

Saturday night, September the twenty-first was two days away from Lyra's first full moon transformation during her time away at Hogwarts. She was more tired than ever, her head and stomach were killing her, and her whole body ached.

She was calm and felt like she was floating on clouds as she walked, but the clouds were hot rock that emitted heat and that rock layer was covered in metal nails that got unbearably hot from the rock. Well, how about we'll just say that walking did not elicit the most pleasant of sensations.

Her bones were shifting uncomfortably in their joints, preparing for the even more painful transformation she would undergo on the twenty-third.

Her transformations would cause excruciating pain in her body, but she was lucky in the way that she kept her mind while she was in her werewolf form — she was more like a normal wolf that had werewolf-like features and some werewolf tendencies than an actual werewolf.

Lyra was currently in Hogwarts castle and despite it being a weekend, Ly was walking through the cold, dark dungeons to see Professor Snape.

They had been getting closer and he was opening up to her more, sharing some anecdotes from his lifetime and he even cracked a few small smiles when she was around. Though, they had been caused by her, of course, so she had earned the right to see them.

It had been less than a month that she attended the school for magical people, but Snape had been kind to the little girl in return for her kindness and respect she had given to him. He could not deny that he had a soft spot in his cold, protected heart for Lyra Lupin-Black.

For this reason, it physically pained him to see how Lyra winced as she moved in his class and in the Great Hall while she went to sit near Potter. He felt a paternal need to protect her and he felt as though he was failing his one mission.

He felt he owed it to her, for showing him that he was important once more. He also felt he owed it to Lily, who he had hurt too deeply to every repair. He knew he could never mend his relationship with Lily, so the least he could do was try to help the little girl who acted so similarly to her Godmother.

Lyra had wanted to ask a question about a Potion the fourth-year students were meant to be concocting, and she figured she would offer her help to him afterwards. She knew she should wait until Monday to ask her silly question, but she had also made it a routine to converse with the dark-haired professor at least once a day, knowing that he could always use a bit of cheering up and she was just the person to raise his spirits.

She was turning a corner, slowly because of her pain-ridden body, when she began seeing black spots in her field of vision. The once small shadowed circles increased in circumference, creating less openings for her to see through.

The spots that were flashing in-and-out were even worse than the spots that constantly obstructed her view — the flashing spots made her feel nauseous, as she had been for the last few days.

Feeling faint and swaying in her spot, alone in the middle of the empty corridor at seven o'clock in the evening, Lyra stood. She was almost positive she was going to pass out, but she didn't know what to do; she was so discombobulated she didn't even know which way the ground was.