In the Melancholy Moonlight

Chapter III: A Monster

After dinner that night, I decided to take the long way back to the common room. I had let my guard down and let Hermione see my vulnerability, but for her safety, I couldn't let it happen again. So instead, I wandered the halls by myself, eventually finding my way out to the courtyard.

A few of the clouds from the afternoon had dissipated, leaving a couple of patches of stars. I sat with my back to the fountain and let my mind wander.

My parents (for obvious reasons) were incredibly paranoid, or, as they preferred to phrase it, safety-oriented. They always feared the darkness --- every corner of our home was lit with the brightest candles imaginable. Cedric and I were allowed outside only for very specific reasons, and never after sunset or before sunrise.

We were allowed to de-gnome the yard as necessary, which we both enjoyed. We were also allowed to help Mum with her gardening work; Cedric was always the best in his year in Herbology, and Professor Sprout had already told me she suspected that I shared the same green thumb.

But our favorite activity had always, always, always been flying. Cedric asked for his first broom when he was six, and by the time I was six, I was begging for one too. Our parents, I suppose, figured that no werewolves could bite us when we were flying, so we spent hours upon hours in the sky at a time. We would toss Quaffles back and forth, throw Every-Flavor Beans into the air for the other to catch, and even attempt the same Quidditch maneuvers we watched in the pictures of Seeker Weekly. I still had the letter in my trunk I received from Cedric after he successfully used a Sloth Grip Roll in a match for the first time; that had always been his favorite maneuver to try.

It had been only a week since I had last flown, but the sky above called me louder and louder every passing hour. I longed to shoot up into the clouds, and fly right through one of the holes where the stars shone through. I wanted to look at the ground and not be afraid of falling. I wanted to look up and see nothing but stars forever. I wanted to stare at the moon until I forgot who I was, what I was.

For me, the feeling of flying had been hard to explain. It came more naturally to anything else, as if my very soul were tethered to the sky, and each second spent apart strained everything within me. I was feeling the strain that night; the stone pillars around me seemed awfully reminiscent of a cage. I wanted to fly, but I was confined. First years weren't allowed their own brooms anyway.

I was jerked from my reverie by a pair of voices.

"She wouldn't stop talking about how excited she was to be coming back to learn more about the potions she'd need at St. Mungo's, but I just want her to stay away. As soon as I break free of her shiny, perfect precedent, she always comes back and overshadows me again. I mean, what potions does she need to learn here anyway she couldn't learn anywhere else? Literally anywhere else?"

"I don't know, Bea, but I'm sure there's a reason she's coming here. Maybe wolfsbane? I don't think we learn that, even at the N.E.W.T. level." Cedric was talking to Beatrice Haywood. And they were coming closer.

"Why would she need that anyway?" she spat in response. "And why would she learn that here of all places? Dumbledore's smart. He surely knows having a werewolf at Hogwarts would be madness. They're dangerous monsters that can't be trusted. If I found out there was a werewolf here, I might just kill whoever it is on sight and make it look like an accident."

Suddenly, I wasn't feeling well. I crept through the shadows to the opposite side of the courtyard from them and darted back into the castle. While earlier in the afternoon, I was lucky enough to find an empty common room because it was lunchtime, I was not so fortunate on the first Friday night of the semester. Once through the portrait hole, I was met with chaos. A massive game of Exploding Snap was taking place on one side of the room, while the other side of the room was devoted to what appeared to be a wizard's chess tournament. In the center of the room, a few students were flipping through magazines or reading letters from home, but even as I walked in, most of the people in the middle had decided that it was too noisy and started dispersing toward the dormitories.