Rhiannon turned back late in the afternoon, and Hagrid carried her back to the castle once she had managed to dress herself. Her head felt all muddled the way she did after a regular full moon turn, crowded with the wolf’s instincts and sensations. Nyx didn’t think in words and names, she identified things by sensations and impressions and those all tangled up in a weary Rhiannon’s mind as she dozed fitfully in the Hospital Wing. Her friends stayed with her, reluctant to leave her alone, and that brought her some comfort as she struggled to piece together the fragmented memories her time as Nyx left her, more returning in dreams once she had fallen asleep.

When she awoke the next morning, Rhiannon felt more like herself, but still itchy and uncomfortable. Headmaster McGonagall was seated at her bedside, a scowl fixed on face. “So, Miss Potter, what have we learned?” she asked drily. Rhiannon groaned and pulled the bedsheets up over her face, wanting to hide from the scolding she knew was imminent. But Minerva only sighed and chuckled wryly. “Well, you certainly do have a... penchant, for narrow escapes. Nobody was hurt, and it’s Sunday – no classes. You will speak to me on Monday morning and hand that time-turner back, but in the meantime – rest, recover, and if you can manage it – kick Slytherin’s tails.” she told Rhiannon with another wearily amused sigh, and left her to the care of Madam Pomfrey.

Since Rhiannon was physically healthy, Madam Pomfrey begrudgingly allowed her her leave to play in the late-morning Quidditch match against Slytherin, but she was warned that Oliver Wood knew of the incident and would have her benched if she so much as started sprouting fur. As an aside, Madam Pomfrey also suggested she speak with Professor Lupin after the match, and gave her a small single-dose bottle of Wolfsbane potion in case of emergency.

Rhiannon was a little bewildered by the suggestion to speak with Lupin. He seemed... repressed, somehow. She’d never found a trace of his scent out in the forest or the highlands, not even close to the castle. He didn’t emote like a wolf the way she or Dudley did, either – it was almost sad, really, how determined to be human he seemed. But, he was the only adult werewolf at Hogwarts, and she suspected that Minerva and Madam Pomfrey alike hoped he was scold her more thoroughly than they could.

Rhiannon shrugged and sloped off to the common room, limping heavily and leaning on her cane, another pot of herbal balm and the bottle of Wolfsbane weighing down her coat pocket. There was no harm in talking to Lupin, she supposed. Her distrust of him was long-since buried by respect for his kind, competent handling of his mistake with the Boggart, and he was a lot less intimidating than Minerva. If anyone was going to tell her off, she’d rather it be him. She didn’t need to feel like more of a failure than she already did.

When she reached the common room, Rhiannon was set upon by her anxious peers. “Where did you go?” Kellah asked her worriedly. “You vanished all day, we thought maybe – you know, he’d got you or something!”

Rhiannon sighed as the other third-years echoed similar sentiments, and shook her head. “N-n-n-nah, had an... a slip, you know,” she mumbled awkwardly, waving her hand in front of her face to indicate an episode. “Madam Pomfrey p-p-p-p-p-picked me up and I’m fine now, can someone tell Wood I’m g-g-good to play?”

Someone hollered that over the common room babble, and there was an answering bellow from someone else. Rhiannon grimaced and covered her ears, and, ignoring her friends’ protests, hurried painfully upstairs to swap her old clothes for Quidditch robes. She felt... better, somehow, than she had in days, as if the mistimed change had released the pain and tension that had been building up in her overworked body for months. Wincing as her joints clicked loudly, she dragged herself up the stairs and into the third-year dormitory.

Inside, Ron was waiting, fidgeting anxiously from foot to foot. He rushed forward and enveloped her in a hug as she stumbled into the room. Rhiannon spluttered and wiggled free, uncomfortable at the sudden contact, and Ron looked like he’d been kicked. “S-sorry,” she mumbled, ducking her head in embarrassment. “It’s not you, just – no touchy.”

Rhiannon was saved from further embarrassment by an imperious miaaaaow from the direction of her bed, and she turned away to comfort the displeased mound of cream, brown and black-swirled fur curled up on the end of her bed. “Oh no, I didn’t feed you!” she exclaimed, and rushed to retrieve the food box from the chest at the end of the bed. She scooped some into the bowl beside it and eyed the water tower, that at least was fine for a few more days. She then fished her Quidditch robes out of the chest and closed the lid with a slam, and rushed off to the bathroom to shower quickly and change.

Once clean of the lingering dog smell and dressed in her sports robes, Rhiannon felt a little more comfortable in her skin. She glamoured her scars as usual, after rubbing Madam Pomfrey’s balm into the newest ones with little more than a resigned sigh. She’d dreamed of being a pretty girl once, of wearing summer dresses and having everyone admire her, but that was long gone, and she just had to accept it. She rolled her eyes at her own silliness and retrieved her cane from where she’d hung it on a doorhandle, and limped back to the dormitory room. There she retrieved her pads and laced them on, pulled on her gloves and shoved a spare change of clothes and her goggles into her backpack. After that, broomstick in hand, she fell into step with Ron and headed down to the Quidditch pitch.

“Potter, good to see you!” Oliver greeted her, and nodded to Ron. “Hate to have you miss this. Adrianne booted all the old players, restarted the whole team – it’s gonna be exciting to see what she’s done with it. Now, what do we have to remember?” he asked, turning to the rest of the team with a wide grin.

The team all groaned in unison. “Don’t underestimate them,” they repeated in a monotone, and Oliver nodded emphatically. They had been soundly thrashed by a mixed-house team the weekend before, and Oliver had no patience left for the team learning the changed field. At a gesture from Oliver the team lined up beneath the grate that led to the field as the whistle that announced a minute before starting blew shrilly overhead.

“Right. Fred, don’t get in Bliss’ way, she knows what she’s doing. You’re a good team, the pair of you, but you need to remember to respect a new teammate’s skills. He- Harry, right? Harry, your teammates will back you up, you got this. Darce, you’re in if they’re knocked out. Ange, Ron, you got this. Rhiannon – I’ll be checkin’ on you through the match, you know what Pomfrey said, yeah?” Oliver told her, with a sideways glance at D’Arcy and Bliss who didn’t know about Rhiannon’s being a werewolf. She nodded, and Oliver grinned. “Great stuff. Don’t underestimate them, work hard, and we could win this. Now, mount up and get ready to go.” he told them.

Soon after, the horn blasted through the air and the grate was raised, allowing the Gryffindor team out into the air. They circled the pitch in a wide loop, and as they did so Rhiannon scrutinised the other team. Oliver had been right – the new Captain, Adrianne Pucey, really had made changes, both to the lineup and the overall team spirit. To Rhiannon’s surprise, her friend Faye was playing Seeker while her former teammate Alicia Spinnet flew alongside Adrianne as another Chaser. Rhiannon waved to them, and to her surprise Adrianne and the smaller of the two Beaters waved back. There was no trash-talking, no lewd gestures or threats – all in all, the atmosphere was totally changed and Rhiannon felt a wave of relief wash over her even through the usual full moon fog. Maybe Minerva McGonagall was on to something, changing the houses and their leadership.

Madam Hooch’s whistle began the game, and Rhiannon found herself wholeheartedly enjoying the changed atmosphere as she bantered playfully with Faye, gleefully teased Alicia as she intercepted a Quaffle pass and then passed it on to Harry – there were no rules saying she couldn’t catch the Quaffle, just that she couldn’t score with it. The Snitch was nowhere in sight, so the two Seekers circled eachother in a sort of dance, each simultaneously scanning for the Snitch themselves and ensuring their opponent hadn’t seen it. After their thorough defeat the weekend before, Gryffindor needed more points before Rhiannon risked catching the Snitch, so her job was to keep Faye away from that ball as long as possible.

The new Slytherin team gave them a tough match, but Gryffindor managed a ninety-point win. It seemed like a lot, but the Snitch gave them fifty points and each goal scored was ten so all in all the game was a close one. Both teams celebrated together and congratulated eachother, and Rhiannon was cheered by the spirit of it all. It was supposed to be a friendly rivalry, but this was the first year the first part of that had been at all true.

After the post-match cheer had died down, Rhiannon told her friends that she’d been instructed to speak to Professor Lupin and limped off back to the castle without them. Feeling a distinct sense of trepidation, Rhiannon knocked on the office door at the back of the Defence classroom and was unsurprised to see Professor Lupin looking wretched when he opened it. “Er- Hi, Professor,” she said in a would-be casual kind of tone. “Madam P-p-pomfrey said to come see you.”

Lupin frowned, peering at her more closely. “You didn’t have a run-in with the Dementors again, did you?” he asked concernedly. Rhiannon snorted and shook her head, and with a sigh the worn-looking Professor ushered her inside.

“Well, Madam Pomfrey did mention you’d be coming, but not why, so I must admit I was worried. But if you’re doing alright... I suppose you could come in and have some tea, I should have something around somewhere...” Lupin suggested, opening the door wider and beckoning her inside. He left it standing open and found Rhiannon a chair, then rummaged around in the small kitchenette for teabags. Rhiannon spotted the problem immediately, as Lupin muttered about not having the right kind of tea for her.

“Oh, uh- no, fruit’s fine, I can’t have normal tea,” she said hastily, as Professor Lupin seemed to have found a jar of black tea mixture. Odd, for him to have forgotten... surely he could tell she was a werewolf? She wasn’t exactly the most inconspicuous, to anyone who knew what to look for. Curiously, she stood and limped over to study the large tank on the table in the corner of the room as Lupin made tea. The tank was filled with plant life that looked like it came straight from the lake, and inhabited by the strangest creature Rhiannon had ever seen – and given her experiences, that was saying something. It was perhaps a foot long from the top of its head to the ends of its tentacles, greenish-grey in colour with a slimy, amphibious sort of look to it. Its upper half was somewhat humanoid looking, similar to a gnome or imp, with small horns protruding from its head and long, grasping fingers, but from the waist down instead of legs it had seven tentacles, similar to an octopus or squid’s.

“Grindylow,” Lupin explained when he saw what she was looking at. “It’s a kind of unfriendly water fairy, sometimes classified as a water demon – but demons don’t exist, as we’ve already covered. I borrowed it off the merfolk in the loch, they domesticate them to protect their fish-flocks from predators, wanted to show the class – something to watch out for if you decide to go for a dip, they’re right nasty when they want to be. Those tentacles can deliver a nasty sting, sort of a combination of a neurotoxin and electricity, and they like to grab with those fingers.”

Rhiannon frowned at the little creature, which made rude faces and gestures at her through the glass. “I-I-I don’t think it likes being in a tank,” she suggested, to which Lupin sighed.

“Nope, no it does not,” he agreed, and set two cups of tea down on the table. Rhiannon joined him, perching awkwardly on the edge of her table as she sniffed her cup experimentally, then leaned away as her nostrils were blasted with the strong scents of strawberry and mint. Well, at least it wasn’t just hot leaf juice.

“I only had bags, but I daresay you’ve had enough of tea-leaves?” Lupin said, with a teasing twinkle in his brown eyes as Rhiannon glanced up at him. She groaned, and rested her head in her hand. “You’re not worried, are you?” Lupin asked her.

Rhiannon shook her head, rolling her eyes. “No- n-n-n-n-no. Getting into that classroom is-s-s-sss- more a hazard than any Grim or whatever.” she replied with a sigh. Professor Lupin snorted with laughter and shook his head, seemingly much amused by her wry retort.

“I must say, I haven’t been up to that classroom since my own school days. Stairs and I, not the greatest of friends,” he admitted.

Rhiannon was about to commiserate, when her thought train was interrupted by a brisk knock on the door. “Come in,” Lupin said briskly, and in came none other than Professor Snape, scowl and all. He carried with him a silver goblet that smoked faintly, and Rhiannon recognised the distinctly acrid, astringent smell as none other than Wolfsbane potion. She checked her watch and frowned – the day had vanished, had they really played Quidditch for that long? It was now well after midday and into the afternoon, about the time that she should consider taking her own potion.

“Ah, thankyou Severus,” Lupin said in the politest of tones. Snape favoured him with a sneer and curled his lip at Rhiannon as he set the goblet on the table between them, then left the room in a whirl of robes. Lupin sighed and cast a weary glare at Snape’s retreating back, shaking his head tiredly. “Always sucks the energy out of a room, doesn’t he? Like our very own pet Dementor.” he joked. He turned the goblet around in his hands and scowled at it, then swiftly picked it up and drained it with a grimace. “Ugh,” he muttered. “Pity sugar makes it useless.”

Rhiannon decided to take matters into her own hands. Madam Pomfrey obviously wanted her to speak with Professor Lupin about her time-turning accident, but she couldn’t do that if the man had no idea she was even a werewolf at all. So she took her own potion from her pocket and managed a wry smile. “Doesn’t t-t-t-t-t-taste good, does it? Thanks for th-t-t-t-th-the reminder, th-hh-though,” she quipped.

Lupin stared at her, his expression utterly flabbergasted. “You... you’re...” he stammered uselessly, as Rhiannon raised an eyebrow at him. She knew that expression, she’d seen it on her own friends when they found out – he was connecting all the little clues about her behaviour, her appearance, her Boggart. It appeared Lupin had just reached that conclusion himself, as his mouth dropped open and he seemed to curl in on himself with misery. “That was you, the Boggart, wasn’t it? That’s your worst fear – of becoming that.” he whispered, his eyes welling up with tears.

Rhiannon nodded, and Professor Lupin reached out across the table to take her hands, though she flinched away and held them to herself in her lap instead. “I am – so, so, so sorry,” he murmured, to which Rhiannon only shook her head. She could feel that he wanted to ask her how it happened, to commiserate in that way – there were few werewolves whose turning was not traumatic, she guessed from his mannerisms that his own had been horrific. Silently she drew her wand out of her cane and with it let the glamours fall away, revealing the scars she hid from her peers not necessarily by desire, but by necessity. There was no other way to explain this kind of scarring on a thirteen-year-old girl. And she wasn’t ready to explain it to anyone else. But to Lupin... maybe the scars themselves were all the explanation he needed.

Professor Lupin closed his mouth and took off his glasses, scrubbing at his eyes with shaking hands in a futile effort to stop the tears that spilled down onto his cheeks. He looked more than weary, more like he was broken inside. “I, presume this is why Madam Pomfrey sent you to me,” he said, his tone grey and lifeless.

Rhiannon snickered and shook her head. “Uh – not exactly. I do-do-d-d-d-don’t need, help adjusting or whatever. I think she wanted you to, um, impress on me the extreme s-s-s-s-s-s-stup-id-id-id-id-dity of my attempt to take double classes with time-turners, while being a werewolf. Apparently time turners and werewolves don’t mix,” she replied nonchalantly, though her tone was disrupted somewhat by her stutter..

Lupin’s head shot up, and suddenly the life was back in his face as his light brown eyes flashed with shock. “You – you what?” he spluttered, clearly horrified. “Oh, don’t tell me, that’s why you were out of classes yesterday, wasn’t it? You started turning around the full moon and it piled up, and you turned early?” he said with a sigh. “Next thing I know you’ll be trying out Polyjuice Potion!”

“Oh, d-d-d-do-don’t worry, that was last January – been there, done that, chewed the taps,” Rhiannon assured him cheerfully, as the professor continued to huff and splutter furiously. “Honestly, it was – bad to start with, really bad, I was so scared, but – no-one got hurt except me. Apparently I just cowered a bit and then napped in the sun... I wasn’t a – a-a-a-a- monster, like I was so frightened of.” she replied, thinking back on it. Her memories of her time as Nyx were fragmented, she and Nyx just didn’t think the same way – they had different priorities, different ways of identifying things. But they both had identified the same people as safe, as family. And she hadn’t even tried to hurt anyone, to hunt or attack as Rhiannon had feared.

Lupin shook his head and raised his hand to cut her off. “That’s a good thing, that you faced your fear and found it not real but – Rhiannon, you could have been really hurt. Anything could have happened. Werewolves can use Time-Turners safely, but never so young and we have to be particularly strict about not using it for a week prior to the full moon period – and given the effects, I believe I can safely assume you weren’t.” he scolded her.

Rhiannon frowned closely at him. He sounded like he had personal experience of it... her frown deepened as she considered the timetable of classes, and a suspicion formed. There was only one Professor for each subject... that meant to be able to teach seven years’ worth of a class, a class that occurred in two separate time slots for the first five years – that was twelve separate classes, all three times a week. There was no way a single person could manage all that themselves. Unless, of course, they were in two places at once. “Of course!” she burst out. “That’s why you miss classes! You have to pick which ones to take and which to miss so you aren’t time-turning around the full moon!”

Lupin glared at her. “You, young lady, really are too smart for your own good,” he told her sternly, but there was a twinkle in his eyes as if he couldn’t quite repress his natural good humour. “But for all the hard work and talent, you have limits. Time-turning to take additional classes isn’t sustainable even for a regular student. You are going to choose three to drop, and you are going to do so right now.”

Rhiannon flopped forward on the desk, accidentally knocking her teacup over. Cold tea spilled over the table and she swore, scooting her chair back to avoid the little waterfall that flowed over the edge. “Fffff- damnit, fine!” she snapped irritably. She had to admit, there were classes she wouldn’t mind dropping... she just had to consider which was paired with which in the time-slots, and choose which of the pair she preferred.

The first choice was dead easy – Rhiannon would much rather spend time with the sharp, energetic Miss Finn in Arts than haul her aching body up to the Divination tower three times a week. And the next wasn’t so hard either – she enjoyed Care of Magical Creatures even if her successes were mixed, while Arithmancy hurt her brain. She wanted to be able to construct complex spells, but it just didn’t seem to be an area she had the attention span for. The last choice was harder. Rhiannon enjoyed both Runes and Muggle Studies, it amused her to see how wizards thought of non-magical people and she liked the teacher, who particularly liked covering non-magical media in their classes. But Runes was just more useful to her, with their collective idea of building assistive accessibility devices and spell shortcuts using the magical field. So with a sigh, she decided to take Runes over Muggle Studies, and turned to Professor Lupin. “I... fine,” she said more politely than the first time. “Sorry, um... Divination, Arithmancy and Muggle Studies. I’ll d-d-d-d-dr-r-drop those.”

Lupin smiled and reached out to pat her hand – this time, Rhiannon didn’t flinch away. “Very good. I’ll be glad to see you back at your best, I have heard the rumours about you and Miss Hermione – the brightest witches of your age, so I’m told. Let’s go and tell Minerva about your choices, shall we?” he suggested.

Rhiannon flushed at the compliment and nodded awkwardly, standing with a hiss of pain and hurriedly catching the edge of the table as she tripped over her chair leg. “O-okay,” she mumbled, following Professor Lupin out of the room. As she did so, a thought occurred to her – Professor Lupin had been the one to rescue her from the Dementors that night on the train, hadn’t he? So there must be a way to face them. “Um, P-p-professor Lupin,” she asked shyly.

“Please, call me Remus – at least outside class, I’m not that old yet,” Remus corrected her with a wry smile.

“Um- Remus then,” Rhiannon mumbled, hastily scraping her scattered thoughts into a pile. “I – I wondered if-f-ff- if you could teach me how you b-b-b-beat the Dementors. My issue with them, with the Boggart, it’s all the same – I want to, I don’t know, have a tool to beat it with or something.”

Remus hummed softly, a frown creasing his brows together. As he thought, he wiped a messy lock of hair out of his eyes, the wavy strands escaping the untidy little nub of ponytail he had tied them into. “The spell I used – it’s very advanced, Rhiannon, well beyond ordinary wizarding level. It’s not that I don’t want to, it’s that – I don’t want to waste your time and energy, is all.” he replied cautiously.

Rhiannon shrugged, leaning on her cane as they walked. She had to slow down to keep pace Remus, much slower without the assistance of a cane like she had. “Just – let me give it a go? Please?” she asked him again, clenching her free hand frustratedly as a childish whine crept into her voice. “No, damnit, not like that – I t-t-t-think I can do it, if I work at it. I’d just, feel a bit less helpless with something like that.”

Remus smiled understandingly. “That makes sense – and it’s perfectly natural. You’re not helpless, but you don’t have the right tool. Very well – I’ll think of something, it might help. Now, let’s go on in and talk to Minerva, shall we?” he agreed, and gestured with a hand for Rhiannon to go ahead of him up the stairs into the Headmaster’s office.

Rhiannon sighed and limped ahead of him, painfully hauling herself up the short flight of stairs with the aid of the hand rail. She felt a little less like a failure than she had that morning, comforted by Professor Lupin – no, Remus, she reminded herself – Remus’ comfortingly blunt manner. He reminded her of Xenophilius a little, but more – solid, somehow. Even though he’d scolded her, she’d not been frightened of him, not once, and a warm glow settled itself deep inside her as she realised that for the first time, she and Dudley weren’t alone here anymore.