Harry Potter and the Rewrite of Azkaban

Chapter 4

They were in the dark. The room was cramped and stinky, and it was unable to lighten as they sat, knees to their face, shivering.

Step. Step. Step. Stop. The man was outside their door. They could see the shadows of his feet, moving slightly as they tapped.

"Are you sure she isn't in here, Christopher?" That voice hissed out, like a snake. They flinched at how raspy it sounded, how unused and broken it must have been. The man's breath was loud, laboured.

"I'm sure. If Ciara were here, she'd have come out by now." Lies. Why does he lie? He has no motive. They continued to hold their breath, the tension so high it replicated a dizzying tightrope. Praying that the man wouldn't hear them, they slowly, lightly let out a breath. The doorknob turned, and stopped. It jiggled, trying to move, to open. It doesn't happen like this... What's happening? They froze completely, unblinking, unmoving, unbreathing. A banging came from the other side of the door.
"Alohomora."
The door opened. The man stepped in. He didn't notice them, not immediately. They made themselves smaller, trying to hide, trying to find any way out of this-
A whisper. Green light. And they were gone.

They shot up into the air. That nightmare... It was almost exactly what happened. They didn't think they'd have nightmares, not here. Hogwarts was supposed to be safe, protected.
Heading towards the bathroom, Thea shivered, remembering everything that had transpired in their almost-idyllic household. The deadnaming, the consistent feeling of inferiority, listening for footsteps, watching for suspicious activity on both sides... It can be too much for a fourteen-year-old to bear sometimes. It can destroy someone, no matter their age. It almost destroyed Thea, until their dad approached them. He was unrelenting, again, he'd left them there, barely letting them breathe, let alone feel comfortable, but in a paradoxical way, it was comforting, quiet. It made friends with them and broke their strength. Now they had to continue with what they'd been told.

~~~

He didn't have to do this. He shouldn't have been doing it anyway. Knowing how guarded Snape was about his cupboard, sneaking in and stealing ingredients wasn't the best thing to do. But it's not like Snape could hurt him when he's in squirrel form, not like anyone would even suspect a squirrel of stealing ingredients. He'd even made secret tunnels so that no-one heard heard the rustling of the bag he put the ingredients in. He'd found a recipe and it worked better than every other potion his friend had tried, and anything he could do that helped out his friend, made him proud of himself.
Newt took the last of the Dittany, a bottle of Shrivelfig juice, some Mandrake juice, and three leaves of basil, shoving the Ditanny and basil into his cheek pouches before putting the bottles into the bag. His research paid off, Newt was close to curing his friend's affliction. If only it actually worked.

~~~

Draco turned to Isaac.
"Harry's plotting, isn't he? He has to be. No way his dad would be teaching at the same school as him... It has to be a plot," he says, pacing the floor of the dorms. The bay window that surrounded his bed showed off the path into the Forbidden Forest, where all the fairies, centaurs, and pixies lived. There were benches where students could sit and relax, and flowers of all different colours. Draco secretly loved it, but acted like he hated it.
Isaac thought about it for a second before responding.
"He could just like teaching. You know, Occam's razor." Isaac looked at Draco with an intensely bored, almost uncaring, look on his face. He looked like that almost all the time nowadays. It was like he was proving that he was a guy. Ever since Isaac had come out as trans, he'd made sure he was aggressive, assertive, every trait he associated with masculinity. He had to prove himself. He looked out the window and saw two students fighting. One was Ju-long, the student who'd been sent to the smallest room in the Hospital Wing, and the other was Harry.