Rhiannon woke late, having missed lunch entirely, with barely enough time to shovel down her dinner before she had to practically flee the castle to make it to Hagrid’s cabin in time. Dudley, Remus and Hagrid were already gathered outside when she finally arrived, some of their friends arrayed around on the grass waiting for her – Hermione, Luna, Nina, Neville and Lavender, along with Hailey, Ginny and Alain – some of Dudley’s friends. “Rhiannon!” Lavender cried, rushing forward to hug her fiercely. “I heard what happened in Herbology, are you alright?”

Hermione approached more cautiously, anxiously wringing her hands and bobbing from foot to foot, keeping her distance as if afraid she might knock Rhiannon down with a breath, and Rhiannon laughed as she extricated herself from Lavender’s embrace. “I’m fine,” she replied, and dragged Hermione into a reassuring hug. “Just, stupid ‘wolf stuff, we s-s-sort-t-t-t-ted it, prob’ly won’t even happen again.”

Dudley made a dissatisfied noise and limped over, leaning heavily on his cane to support himself. “Wolf stuff hasn’t put you in the hospital wing in ages, what happened?” he asked her anxiously.

Rhiannon made a face and scuffed her foot in the ground, taking Dudley’s arm and helping him back to a seat on the ground. “Si’ down, dumbass,” she grumbled at him as he hissed with pain. “Don’t go getting up for me, I’m fine, was jus’ a bit’ve stupid poisoning, Bubotuber’s even worse f’r wolves than humans. Oh, yeah, speaking of – Madam Pomfrey’s gonna send you a mask for Herbology and Potions, so you don’t get the same thing.”

Remus grimaced, and Rhiannon settled down beside him rather than let him get up as well. “You hadn’t thought about poisoning except for things you can’t eat, right?” he asked, at which Rhiannon nodded glumly, and Remus sighed wearily. “I should... really put together some kind of guide or something so this doesn’t keep happening. Now that I’ve got Tonks, I might have some free time for it.”

Hagrid tossed a tuft of grass at the werewolf professor and scowled. “Sirius’d have me hide if I let you take on extra work, settle down. I’ll try and do something – it might be useful if we ever get any other werewolf kids,” he mused aloud.

Rhiannon wrinkled her nose and shivered, suddenly uncomfortable. She’d never actually considered what might happen if Hogwarts took on other werewolves – or other werefolk, not that she’d met any except werewolves. She thought of this as her space, her territory – and she wasn’t sure she wanted to share it.

Dudley, always able to read her emotions, elbowed her and grinned. “Hey, get over yourself – I’m the oldest, isn’t it my territory? There’s what, fifty each coming from Beauxbatons and Durmstrang, statistically it’s likely there’ll be at least one were in a hundred students. This is probably the last full moon we get to ourselves so, get over yourself and enjoy it!”

Rhiannon growled and stuck her tongue out at Dudley, but she knew her brother was right. In fact, she and Hermione had read up on the two schools that would be arriving for the Tournament, and Beauxbatons in particular was known for its’ acceptance of nonhuman students. There would almost certainly be other werefolk arriving with the Triwizard schools later in the month.

So Rhiannon set her shoulders and made up her mind to enjoy the full moon. And she did – Remus’ fur was even starting to grow back though he still looked an ungainly mess, while Ginny had brought her broomstick and skimmed along the grass having stolen a stick from Dudley, cackling madly and whooping as he raced to catch up on his three good legs, and Hermione and Luna padded along at a more sedate pace either side of Rhiannon, Neville and Luna chatting about the ecology of the highlands as they walked. And that was their routine for the five days of peace the full moon offered, before they had to return to the regular grind of classes.

Classes, once Rhiannon could return without needing to fall asleep halfway through, were a mixed lot. The mask helped things in Herbology, and in Potions – at least, it would have, if Professor Moody wasn’t making things so tense. Rhiannon couldn’t talk through her mask, and he was inconsiderate about letting her use other methods of communication. In fact, that was true for others in the class, including Neville, and the both of them, despite being very competent in the class, were struggling to show their talents when the teacher refused to let them speak the way they needed to.

“Just take off your mask to speak,” Moody had suggested, never mind that the fumes of the Doxycide they were brewing would induce an anaphylactic shock in about five minutes. Yeah, not so much. So Rhiannon stayed quiet, and her contributions to class were made in the form of her homework only.

At least the class was interesting, even if it was inaccessible. Being unable to speak gave Rhiannon a lot of time to listen. And Moody’s material was fascinating – he covered the ethics and social context around the uses of various potions, as well as just the methods with which to make them.

That week, beginning with Monday 13^th, Moody was covering the branch of brews commonly referred to as love potions. Rhiannon could already see the ethical quandaries with them, but for all her irritation with the Professor, she had to admit – he was meticulous in his detail about their side effects, illegalities and exact natures. She’d had no idea, but apparently most love potions had effects that lingered on any children born while a parent was under their effects – similar to fetal alcohol syndrome, it affected decision-making, emotional processing and learning, with exact effects differing from case to case and potion to potion.

But, more interesting were the ethical and consensual uses, historically documented in relation to love potions. Key amongst those were their use in keeping lovers separated by distance – slavery, forced relocation, wartime and all the other ways human society invented to cause hurt – connected. And that idea stayed with Rhiannon through class and well into the rest of her week. She had expected to have ethical quandaries about love potions, she’d liked that Moody was teaching only the theory and not the making of them. But she hadn’t expected to like any part of the topic, especially with her dislike of the instructor. Honestly, that was almost romantic, genuinely touching, and Rhiannon could imagine so many uses for these potions in recent history let alone the historical context Moody had been educating them about. Maybe her parents might have even used it, had they not been forced to hide instead of fight on the front lines.

Rhiannon always tended to brood, and it was natural in the midst of her complex feelings for Luna and Hermione that she would fixate on something of that nature – both romantic and sad. She was good at sad. But the rest of her classes didn’t allow for sad – especially not Defense Against the Dark Arts.

It felt a little disloyal to admit, but Tonks – just Tonks, no title no first name, was a great Defense teacher. Not necessarily better than Remus, but, they were good. And classes with them, when Remus’ schedule didn’t line up or he was recovering from the full moon, they were fun and informative and creative. They had started the year with a focus on stealth, camouflage and surveillance as elements of Defense – you didn’t need to defend yourself with a shield if you could avoid the attack entirely. As it turned out, Tonks was a Metamorphmagus – they could change their physical appearance at will, which certainly gave them an unfair advantage so far as camouflage went. But aside from the odd mischievous prank, Tonks did know a lot more than just metamorphmagery and built a curriculum that the class took on with enthusiasm – warding sparks of various colours, hex deflection and counter-curses, Disillusionment and various kinds of detection charms, to begin with.

Defence was great. And it was a good thing too because Creatures, usually one of Rhiannon’s favourite classes, was not. No, Hagrid had some weird new creatures, and usually Rhiannon – being a weird creature herself – was all for weird new things, but the ‘Blast-Ended Skrewts’ as he called them, were just plain unpleasant. Granted, many creatures that Rhiannon rather liked had the potential to be unpleasant, including dragons, hippogriffs and, well, werewolves. But the Skrewts were something else entirely. They were weird, insectile creatures, a little like a crab, a little like a scorpion, with blobby carapaces that hadn’t quite hardened yet. One end had a stinger, the other spat fire, or something like it – it certainly burned like fire, and right through Rhiannon’s gloves. So they were babysitting awful little scorpion-crabs that spat fire hot enough to burn through dragonskin at this age, and could inflict wasp-like stings with their other end, that had a clearly Hagrid-administered name and no known behavioural patterns.

Rhiannon could handle a testy moonborn wolf pup with a thorn in its’ pad, or an Abraxan having a bad day, or even a particularly bitchy cluster of fairies. She knew how to handle those. But the Skrewts just bugged her, to put it bluntly, and she grumped her way through every day in which she had to interact with the clicky, fire-spitting little bastards. So it was a good thing that Hermione and Luna were around to distract her with plans for S.P.E.A.R. Overseas laws on elven employment rights were quite different, and Britain was one of the few nations left that still protected the Elfbind. France had destroyed theirs almost three hundred years ago, and Romania about fifty. So the students arriving from Beauxbatons and Durmstrang were all potential allies. It was the S.P.E.A.R team’s fervent hopes that the exchange students would be horrified by the state of magical Britain’s civil rights laws and ally with their effort to change things, but that needed an awareness campaign – and one that could be read in at least four different languages.

So, to distract from near-daily burns and the irritating texture of the soothing cream, Rhiannon pitched in with Luna and Hermione to rally their other friends – beginning with Nina, Lavender, Kellah, Neville, Parvati and Padma – and translate the materials they had already put together, and expand to a greater focus on how archaic and out of touch Britain’s laws were as compared to the rest of the world. And honestly, it was frustrating, but it was enjoyable to be making a difference with a measurable goal. Thanks to exchange students from two foreign schools and a major sporting event, the year was going to be up in the air – never something Rhiannon enjoyed. But S.P.E.A.R was something solid to hold onto, and hold on Rhiannon was planning to do. Maybe she couldn’t be some child soldier for a resistance – but she could sure do this with the power she’d been handed.