The Halfwolf (Year 1)

Protectors

The rest of the week trudged by with very little excitement. The incident in the Entrance Hall was kept fairly quiet, allowing for Hannah to settle into a quiet, less boisterous version of herself. Without her older sister there to pressure and taunt her, she had relaxed and lost the too-good-for-you façade that she had carried when the Hufflepuffs had first met her. On the contrary, she now spent most of her free time with the Hufflepuff boys and Gale, who had welcomed her with open arms when her sister was expelled, and she was forced to move out of the dorm she had shared with her. She had withdrawn from a lot of her old friends and had not received any word from her family since the incident earlier in the week.

Friday afternoon classes had been cancelled to prepare for the Halloween feast and ball the following evening. Hagrid could be seen bringing in enormous pumpkins throughout the day and was now carving them into magnificent jack-o-lanterns in the Great Hall. Teddy found himself sitting on the floor before a mirror in the alcove of the trophy room passage, hair magazines scattered around him. Hannah lay across the couch a few feet away, a magazine held above her face, flipping through the pictures.

"What about this one?" she held out the magazine to Teddy, who reached behind him to grab it from her. He looked at the picture, which showed a boy with wild curly hair.

"Bit poufy isn't it?" Hannah slid her head over, letting it fall backwards over the edge of the couch, and looked at him.

"You said you wanted different. That's definitely different." She said with a shrug. Teddy flipped a couple pages further in the magazine, scanning for something different to do with his hair. He came to a picture of a boy and girl walking down a street. The boy had a pair of oversized headphones over his head, but it was his hair that Teddy was looking at. Close-cut on the sides, fading up to the top of the ears where it started to get longer, ending with hair about 4 inches long on the top, which flopped over his forehead and brushed in front of his eyes. Teddy looked up at the mirror, picturing himself with his hair like that, but with his own flare.

"Try it purple." Teddy looked over at Hannah, who was now sitting up, leaning towards Teddy to see the picture he was studying. She raised her eyes to meet his own. "Purple would compliment your eyes if you keep them the pretty teal they are right now." Teddy felt the tops of his cheeks get warm and quickly looked at the floor. He glanced back over the picture, then closed his eyes, picturing what he wanted his hair to look like in his head, willing it to be that way.

"Wicked." she whispered. Teddy smiled, his eyes still closed.

"How's it look then?" he asked Hannah. He heard a bit of shuffling, then felt a hand on either of his shoulders.

"Open your eyes and see for yourself, Teddy." He opened his eyes, slowly looking over the faded sides of his hair, up to the longer hair on the top that laid forward towards his forehead, the fringe of his bangs still hanging just above his eyes in a brilliant shade of midnight purple. Hannah tilted her head to the side, studying him in the mirror in front of them. He flicked his gaze up to meet her eyes.

"What's wrong?" She put a finger on her chin.

"It's missing something." She reached down to the magazine beside Teddy and flipped back a couple pages. She folded back the page she stopped on and held it out in front of her, looking from it to Teddy and back. She scooched herself around, so she was beside Teddy, her knees next to his hip. She laid the magazine in front of him and he looked at the picture she had left up. It was the side of a man's head, shaved close like the lower sides of his own were now, but he had designs shaved into the short hair. Teddy furrowed his brow and looked up at Hannah, who smiled and raised a finger to the side of Teddy's head.