Y/n Cordelia Granger lived a happy but simple life in the suburbs of London with her parents and younger sister, Hermione, until her 11th birthday. As the day's sun beamed overhead, the young girl was covered in its light that glimmered with the pro...
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Underneath the mountains of law textbooks and stress that was creasing into her forehead like permanent etchings into stone, Y/n had tucked away a textbook on animagi into her bag and the back crevices of her mind.
After talking with Professor Trelawney, she went back to that yearbook with the picture of the Marauders. She couldn't help but recall their names with curiosity and a new, rising feeling of suspicion. Moony, Prongs, Padfoot, Wormtail.
It was all very odd.
They could've referred to many things, true, but knowing that Moony was Professor Lupin's nickname as a teenage Marauder while he happened to be a werewolf caught her attention and felt like much more than a coincidence. Werewolves were creatures of the night. They howled at and were enslaved by the whims of the very thing he'd been named for.
It simply could not have been an accident.
But that raised the question: if his nickname was a purposeful play on a very real affliction he lived with then what in Rowena's name was the real life connection between each other boy and their Marauder nickname? They all sounded like descriptions, but descriptions of what? The thought of them being animagi popped into her head one day, but none of the boys were registered under the Ministry as animagi.
However, before she could prod further at the dark underbelly of Sirius Black's involvement with the Potter's deaths, Draco Malfoy pranced back up to the doormat of Hogwarts with a limp bunny rabbit trapped inside the clutches of his sharpened teeth that glistened with the blood of a fresh kill.
Buckbeak's trial had ended and he had been sentenced to execution for scratching Draco at Lucius Malfoy's urging.
Now, just as Y/n had promised her sister Hermione, they started to search tirelessly for a remedy she wasn't sure existed. With each page flipped and each of the Ministry's law they learned like the back of their hands, the vision in Y/n's notebook of an axe dropped haphazardly in a pool of something too thick in color and texture to be water crept closer to the forefront of her mind until it lived behind her eyelids. Every night when she went to bed and every moment her eyes fluttered for a mere second, she was greeted by horrific sight and the sinking feeling in her gut that there was nothing she could do to save him.
The image had been eating away at her, disrupting her appetite, haunting her dreams, distracting her in class, and she was completely helpless to stop it. She just continued doing the only thing she could, scanning each law textbook in the Hogwarts library with meticulous detail, because then at least she was doing something.
An awkward, slightly muffled clearing of a throat broke their focus and pulled both Granger girls tired eyes away from the thick books and to the sheepish, guilty faces of Ron Weasley and Harry Potter.
Harry was smiling awkwardly and rubbing the back of his neck, his green eyes shifting between Hermione and Y/n unsure of who to let them settle on. Ron looked like a child who'd just been scolded for being caught with his hand in the cookie jar. His chin was tipped down, his shoulders hunched like he was trying to hide inside himself, and he couldn't meet either of their eyes nor did he even attempt to. Ron fiddled with his hands anxiously and bounced on the balls of his feet as his jittery energy kept him in motion. Harry just looked painfully uncomfortable.
