A/N: I’m aroace and I’ve always hated the ‘more-than-a-friend’ way of describing romance, but that is literally the most correct way of putting it in this case - it’s not other than friendship either, it’s best friend feelings + CONFUSING NEW ROMANTIC FEELINGS all mushed up together. This annoys me. However, I will content myself that it’s not quite the way I’d describe her relationship with Luna – that relationship was romance-flavoured from the beginning, and while it’s also close friend + romance feels they didn’t like, begin as one thing and evolve into something else the way things have with Hermione. Grump grump aroace noises. Dissatisfaction.

The next time Rhiannon awoke it was in the stark cleanliness of the Hospital Wing. Cedric lay in the bed to one side while Fleur dozed in a chair between their beds, however Viktor was nowhere to be seen and as it turned out, would not be returning for at least a day. As Madam Pomfrey explained it, his last desperate attempt to stay alive had also drained his reserves of magical energy almost completely and while that had succeeded in killing the dragon and saving his life that way, it had also stolen the energy his body needed to fuel its vital processes and endangered him in a different way entirely – to say nothing of the damage he had suffered from his burns.

When Viktor did return on the morning of the 28^th, he was a solid mass of bandages right to the waist and wearing an air of depression like a weighted cloak about his shoulders, one that made him seem shrunken, fragile and terribly small despite having survived in such a truly heroic manner. The reason for this quickly became apparent as the day wore on – Viktor’s surviving the fireblast at all had been an incredible testament to his power as a spellcaster, but he had been left far from unscathed by the heat and his eyes, hidden beneath the bandages, were as scarred as the rest of his face and torso; revealed later that day to be lumpy, sunken and a clouded grey with scarring.

“The Healers were not hopeful about my sight,” Viktor relayed to them glumly when he woke in the early afternoon. “I heard them muttering, they say I will be lucky if I keep any light perception at all. It is thanks only to magic that I have a face – who am I to complain if it is a little less pretty than before? It is not as if I have to see the change, in any case.”

That sobered the three other champions considerably. They had been aware from the get go that this tournament was a death match, of course they had been. But they were also young people, and short-sighted – they had forgotten that there was more to lose than a life, and Viktor’s new disability was a frightening reminder of how lucky they had been, and how quickly that luck could run out.

But Rhiannon could not dwell on Viktor forever – the 28^th was also the first night of the full moon, and as the afternoon waned into evening she knew she had a decision to make. Eventually, she decided she was simply too badly injured to leave the Hospital Wing – Madam Pomfrey and Dobby had treated her burns sufficiently that she was scabbed all over her upper back and scalp with the more minor burns elsewhere being almost healed entirely, but she was still very sore and worn out. Both her peers had made at the very least passing comments that suggested they would probably be supportive, and the Hospital Wing had the medicine she would need to dress her wounds when she inevitably tore them open again during the change.

With this in mind, Rhiannon slipped aside with Dudley when he arrived with most of their friends to collect her, and passed on the plan to reveal herself to her fellow competitors provided he did not mind, as it was his secret too. “Rhi, you almost died,” Dudley replied when she told him. “If that isn’t a sign to get on with your life and come out of the closet already, so to speak, I dunno what is. D’you want me and the others to stick around, or just get on with our own thing?”

“Can y-o-o-oo- can y’ stay?” Rhiannon asked, hating the plaintive whine that crept into her voice. Viktor, Fleur and Cedric were great friends, but they weren’t exactly her family yet, and she couldn’t bear the thought of a full moon without her usual pack. Besides, an idea had just occurred to her – Hermione was going blind, and however wry Viktor was being about his new disability Rhiannon could tell he felt lost and alone. Maybe her pack would be good for all of them.

“Sure I can,” Dudley responded, and very carefully leaned in to hug her without smushing the dressiings on her back too badly. “Pack camp-out in the hospital wing, starting now... wait, no, camp-outs need snacks... lemme figure that out, you go talk to the champions, yeah?” he suggested, before limping off to where Ginny was perched on the edge of a bed chatting with Luna and Neville.

Swallowing her anxiety, Rhiannon hobbled back to where Viktor and Cedric lay propped up by pillows in their hospital beds with Fleur keeping watch between them, and sat down on the foot of Cedric’s bed when he motioned he was okay with her doing so. “Um – I’m, sorry to bother you, I’m sure you f-f-f-feel like crap an’ all but, I’ve only got maybe half an hour and I wanted t’ explain myself first,” she began awkwardly. Fleur’s head shot up, yellow eyes narrowed with wariness as evidently she guessed before the others what Rhiannon was about to reveal.

“It is no bother. Please, distract me from feeling terrible,” Viktor responded with a shrug and then a hiss of pain as the motion strained his slowly-healing skin.

“Okay. Um. Sorry, I haven’t... I haven’t, got a lot of experience telling people on purpose, they’ve just sort’ve found it out before... um – I’m, a werewolf. Tonight’s the first night of the full moon, ‘s why I flew in the task – that close to the full moon everything hurts and my joints’re really un-n-n-nr-r-r-re-un-re-li-ab-le, dammit, and um – there’s about half ‘n hour before moon-high and I hurt too bad to go outside for it but I didn’t want to just, spring it on you.” she explained, rambling a little with her nerves. Both young men gasped, Viktor with genuine surprise while Cedric sounded more as if he suddenly understood a whole lot of things that hadn’t made sense before.

“So that’s how you pulled off that jump last year!” Cedric exclaimed, a wide grin spreading across his face as Rhiannon looked anxiously over at him. “No, no, I’m not gonna claim you’re cheating or anything – not like certain family members of mine who’d like to get werewolves formally banned from competing alongside humans in sports – no, that’s just using what you’ve got, and it was brilliant too,” he added hastily, shaking his head and still grinning broadly. “I’m guessing your cousin – sorry, brother - is one too and the story about him breaking his hip in a fall is all dogshit, right?”

Rhiannon grimaced and shrugged uncomfortably, though a wry smile touched her scarred lips. “Well, he did fall – after bein’ tackled and bit by a werewolf – one o’ those human-lookin’ ones, I still have nightmares sometimes. So it’s half true. We fig’red it’d be smarter to stick to half-truths an’ plausible excuses, so I don’t have Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, it’s jus’ that bein’ a werewolf has a lot of the same symptoms if you’re jus’ lookin at the joint and pain stuff. It’s, where the fear of fire comes from too – I found out th’ hard way how resistant werewolves are t’ standard duellin’ spells ‘n’ stuff so I kinda just, chucked everythin’ I could think of at ‘em an’ flagrate sparks caught in the leaves, this was high summer in the Surrey AONB forest park, then I tried to put it out with ventus and well, whoosh, one forest fire for you, nightmares for ever.”

Viktor whistled softly. “No wonder you were so frightened when you told us that the task would involve dragons,” he murmured, low voice cracking in what sounded like pain or sympathy, possibly both. “I hope you know that it makes you all the braver for facing them, not weaker for being afraid in the first place. We were all afraid, and none of us had that solid a reason to be – although I cannot say that is true now, even the idea of torch-heat on my skin makes me afraid.”

Rhiannon shuddered and shook her head hastily – that she could certainly sympathise with, and if she was honest with herself, her reluctance to leave the Hospital Wing was as much for fear of the torch-lined hallways as it was of pain, and she admitted as such to the others. But as she had said earlier, she had less than half an hour before the turn started and that time was quickly swallowed by chatter until her arms began to prickle with lengthening hair and she had to beg out of the conversation and hobble into one of the empty side rooms, knowing them to be soundproof enough that the others would not hear her scream.

The full moon was just visible through a window and for that Rhiannon was thankful, as it took her and held her close, away from the body that writhed and shrieked on the cold stone floor, a brief respite from the pain that haunted every waking moment until her body had changed shape and the moon saw fit to return her to it, coughing and wheezing with the suddenly-returned pain, and when her vision cleared she realised she’d forgotten something very important – that although the door did swing out into the Hospital Wing, she’d closed it for soundproofing – and she couldn’t operate a round handle with paws.

Rhiannon whined and scrabbled at the heavy wooden door, before she remembered the reason she’d come in here – soundproofing, it was going to work against her in this case and she wasn’t sure she could tamp down the claustrophobic panic of being stuck somewhere small that she hadn’t explicitly meant to be, for the time it would take someone to come and find her on their own. Wait – there was one part that wasn’t soundproofed, Rhiannon realised as she nudged the door experimentally. This was a castle and all the fittings were old-fashioned – and if she shoved hard enough, she could rattle the door in its’ frame.

Rhiannon took a few paces back, then reared up and slammed her forepaws into the heavy wooden door, ignoring the fierce ache that flared and travelled up through her forelegs into her shoulders and spine at the impact – it had worked, there was a dull thud as the door shifted an inch or so to slam into the far side of the frame before it slid back into place. Again Rhiannon reared up and shoved the door, then a third time before she had to lie down and take the weight off her bitterly aching forelegs, but by then she caught the sound of hushed, hurried footsteps approaching and a familiar soft scent of old books, ink, dried herbs and coconut hair products wafted under the door – she recognised Hermione even before the door swung open and hauled herself to her paws, whimpering piteously as the door opened too slowly until there was enough space for her head and she barrelled through the gap, flinging the door wide open and sending Hermione sprawling behind it with an involuntary shriek as she lost her balance.

That high-pitched sound of terror stopped Rhiannon cold and she whirled around, piecing together the shapes of the room on the fly and searching for her friend at the same time. There – crumpled against the far wall as the heavy wood door swung closed again. Rhiannon whined anxiously, approaching Hermione more cautiously this time and sniffing at her more-than-friend’s robes for any blood – but no, Hermione was just bruised and she very gently ruffled the thin, bristly fur around Rhiannon’s ears as a sort of reassuring gesture.

“Easy, easy – I’m not hurt, you just startled me and it takes a bit for my vision to focus on new things now so I got scared when I fell. It’s alright, it’s alright, come here – oh wow,” Hermione trailed off thoughtfully, still gently stroking the top of Rhiannon’s head as she bent closer to look more clearly at whatever had caught her attention. “It’s grown back in all white over the scars – or, mostly white I guess, little things like hairs are a bit hard to make out now. It’s kind of pretty, almost – like this really big sign saying ‘look at this incredible girl, she survived dragonfire’,” she rambled, a wistful little smile spreading over the side of her face Rhiannon could make out.

Rhiannon felt a strange pang of loss as it sunk in that what Hermione was describing would affect her human form too. She had expected to lose things to this tournament – what remained of her innocence, perhaps her friendships, even her own life. The colour of her hair seemed such a small thing to lose in comparison but it hurt even so – she’d never gotten to be a pretty girl or even just a girl for very long at all, and this was just one more thing that would set her apart. Maybe it was vain to care so much, but the idea of white hair – or salt and pepper, it wasn’t as if she could see the back of her head to get a better idea of what it might look like than Hermione’s vague description – wasn’t an appealing one at the age of fourteen. Maybe she just wanted to be pretty for once, not brave, not strong, not a survivor – just pretty, an ordinary teenage girl who did ordinary things and maybe even went on dates.

But there was no voicing any of that without a human mouth. All Rhiannon could do was whine and flatten her ears, then wrinkle her muzzle at the unpleasant sensation of scar tissue bunching and shifting. “Don’t give me that look,” Hermione admonished her. Then she laughed and shook her head, her smile turning self-deprecating and wry. “Or do – I want to remember them all when I, you know – when I can’t anymore. You’re so cute when you’re all grumpy like that, I love it.”

I love you. Those three words went unspoken, hanging heavy in the loaded silence and for a rare, brief moment gold-ringed green wolf eyes met clouded human brown before Hermione looked away and hauled herself to her feet. “I... never mind, it’s not important. Let’s get back to the others, Viktor looks just so stuck in that bed I’ve got to rescue him somehow, I’ve mostly got this Braille crap down but I know a bunch of other tricks he can use until his hands heal well enough to read it, too,” Hermione mused.

With that, she set off across the length of the ward with Rhiannon in tow, back to the others at the far end nearest the door to the main corridor outside. Cedric peered at Rhiannon in shameless curiosity and slowly a wide grin formed on his face. “I’m sorry – I’ve just never seen such a little werewolf, Chiara was way bigger,” he explained as she frowned at him and flattened her ears in the best admonition she could manage. “And you’re more wolfy, too – I knew the more human shape was a maladaptive thing, but I’ve still never seen a healthier werewolf except you and... oh my God, you really are tiny, look at that!” he crowed in delight, looking at something over behind Rhiannon.

Rhiannon turned to look for what had caught Cedric’s attention and immediately perked up at the sight of her brother emerging from a different side room with Ginny at his shoulder. The difference in size between the two werewolves really was quite dramatic when they stood together, her head about level with the middle of his shoulder as he crossed the room to stand beside his sister. Dudley wasn’t a tall young man in human form by any means, he had about six inches or so on Rhiannon and Ginny had another two over him – but he was bulkier, solid with fat and thick muscle where Rhiannon was thin and wiry, though she had filled out some with the two past years of reliable access to food she was still little more than a twig by comparison.

“If my hands were not in bandages I would ask to pet you – I’ve always wanted to know what wolf fur feels like,” Viktor commented with a wry shrug and grimace, shifting his bandaged arms uncomfortably – he’d burnt out all the nerve pathways with the way he had channeled that last explosive blast of magic and would take some time to recover, let alone enough to begin learning Braille. That was the risk in using wandless magic, Madam Pomfrey warned them all – even if they learned to control it in the first place, they had to also learn to channel it safely. There was a good reason most wizards chose to use wands or other channeling tools instead of their own arms, and why wand rights were such a fierce topic of contention for the nonhumans who were denied them. Better to burn out the tool than one’s own nerve pathways.

Dudley snuffled and put his paws up on the bed, nosing around in the blankets for a bandaged hand. He slid his nose under and let Viktor’s hand rest on top of his head, panting happily while Ginny prodded his shoulder and scowled at him. “Dudley! Werewolf slobber, open wounds!” she admonished him. Dudley’s tail drooped and he went to move away, but Viktor scratched the werewolf boy’s head and laughed.
“I am blind now – by the measure of most, I am already half a wizard. I do not think being a werewolf would be so bad, perhaps the changed senses might even be a blessing – I mean, that is how you got across the arena when you blinded yourself, is it not?” Viktor inquired.

Rhiannon flattened her ears and slunk back around to her bed, where she put her paws on the mattress and then hopped the rest of the way up, turning around and around until she had made a proper nest out of the blankets and could curl up with her tail over her nose. She didn’t like the thought of anyone else getting turned – the first year was the worst and right in the middle of this tournament would be the worst time for it, that sort of a distraction could get Viktor killed. He’d already come too close to dying once.

Someone’s weight squished the bed down at the end and Rhiannon grumbled softly as that someone reached up and scritched behind her ears, their fingers gentle and mindful of the scarring. “Hey, you’ll match me now,” Luna quipped softly. “It might be a bit strange at first, but I don’t think it’ll look bad – looks like it might come out kinda stripey, most of it’s a mix of black and white but there’s some solid white patches and the odd black spot, it’s kinda cool actually. I know you think it’s ugly, but it’s not – really it’s not. You’re like, the white-haired wonder or something.”

Rhiannon snuffled and curled up tighter in her blanket nest, though she was heartened at least a little by Luna’s reassurances – maybe it would look cool, and if she’d never be pretty she might as well be striking. “Luna’s right – I bet it’ll look incredible. If you like, I can get started brewing some Hair Regrowth potions so you can use them when your scalp’s all healed up,” Hermione suggested, making Rhiannon flinch – she hadn’t noticed Hermione sit down, but now she paid more attention she could hear the breathing and other signature sounds of the others around her – Neville’s persistent asthmatic wheeze, Ginny’s audible grumble-frown, Nina who hummed tunelessly under her breath, Dudley’s snuffling as presumably he settled on or beside Ginny somewhere and Lavender who always sounded stressed even as she flipped through a book of some kind. Her pack, or most of it – they’d all opted for a night in the hospital wing so that they might be together, rather than a fun camp-out in the hills.

“Hey, Rhiannon,” Cedric called quietly across the ward, and Rhiannon pricked up her ears and shifted so that her chin lay in Luna’s lap and she could see the rest of the ward before her, while Hermione hopped up onto the bed behind. “Sorry to disturb you, just – I wanted to reassure you, like, I’m not gonna tell my dad. Pretty sure he still doesn’t know about Chiara either, or she wouldn’t’ve got her job – not the point, but – I’ll keep yours too. He’s still my dad but, I’m not about to give him the opportunity to fuck up your lives. Werewolves still aren’t technically allowed to be enrolled at Hogwarts, and anything you do in the tournament – he could use it to prove you’re dangerous. I’m not gonna give him the chance, I swear.”

“Dangerous?” Viktor scoffed. “As far as I know, I am the one who killed a dragon – Rhiannon had every opportunity to do the same and merely disabled it instead – which got you more points, by the way, cleaner round. Anyone who sees you as dangerous for that, they were never going to see you differently.”

That was a bitter draught to swallow, Rhiannon thought as she considered the words of her peers. Cedric was right – she had to consider every action in the tournament and how it looked from now on, it would all matter when she eventually revealed herself and it could blow back on not just her but Dudley also. But Viktor was right too – her safety had to come before that, and anyone who judged her harshly because of it was never going to judge her in good faith to begin with. Not a pleasant thought for a teenager who wanted to be liked and accepted. But one she had to live with.

And as Rhiannon lay on the hospital bed with Luna’s gentle fingers massaging her ears and Hermione’s in the ruff of fur that stuck up along her spine, she mused on the matter and decided that what she had here, in this room with her pack – of which the other three champions were firmly a part by now – if she had this and her dads, it didn’t matter who else liked her or didn’t. She’d fought a dragon and lived – public opinion couldn’t be any worse than dragonfire and she’d face it just the same.