6 Chapter (1)

It was stupid. The whole thing was stupid. Harry tore through the door of Snape’s—his —study and hurried to the back suite, which housed his bathroom and bedroom, yanking off his glasses haphazardly as he did so.

He hadn’t. He hadn’t.

But he had. He ran his hand over his face and into his hair. He had felt something, someone.

No, you hope you felt something. You wanted so badly to feel something that you did, he thought to himself in a voice that sounded oddly like Hermione’s.

Hogwarts’ hauntings were so flamboyant that the inkling he felt could hardly have been one. That had always surprised him about every ghost he had encountered; they seemed so much like real people, only…less. None of that invisible entities nonsense Muggles seemed so keen on. But this had felt like something of that nature. He felt eyes on him, he felt a sick, prickly feeling, almost like electricity in the air, the way he felt when someone so badly wanted to ask you something, to get your attention, but was waiting for you to make the first move. He felt it, but he had seen nothing. He supposed it was entirely plausible that ghosts could make themselves as visible or invisible as they wished, but he hardly thought Malfoy would opt for the latter. He would want to gloat about how his skin would never wrinkle and he would have a great head of hair for all eternity while all his peers became aged and ugly.

No, he could not imagine Malfoy as a subtle ghost, although he had toned down a bit during his later years.

“Drop it, Harry,” he muttered to himself, walking over to the bathroom. His bathroom things had been unpacked, by the house elves, he assumed. He snatched his flannel from the rim of the sink, wetting it with cold water and wiping his face. He looked at himself in the mirror. He looked ruddy, his cheeks pink from rubbing at them. He had promised Hagrid he would have dinner with him, so pink and ruddy would have to do. He only hoped Hagrid wouldn’t ask what had happened.

“'s bin lonely without yeh, Harry,” Hagrid said for about the hundredth time since he had cleared the table.

Harry hadn’t eaten much. He’d not felt himself since that afternoon, after his time in the dungeons.

“I’m sorry it’s been so long,” Harry replied. Again.

“Not yer fault, is it? I understan’ not wantin’ to be bothered an’ all,” Hagrid replied, although Harry did not believe he was happy to be excluded from Harry’s life for so long. No one had been.

Fang howled suddenly, making the both of them jump.

Hagrid stood quickly, hurrying over to the window and pulling back the curtain. The sun had set maybe half an hour earlier, and the candle light reflected off the window from where Harry sat, making it difficult to see out of the glass. Hagrid, however, seemed to have spotted something.

“Damn wolf,” he muttered.

“Wolf?” Harry asked, standing up at joining Hagrid at the window, which was not an easy task, seeing how much space Hagrid took up.

There, at the edge of the forest, stood a white wolf.

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“He keepsin’ out of the forest, he does, an’ getting real close to the grounds. I don’ like it one bit, but McGonagall told me I shouldn’ worry abou’ it. Says he doesn’ go abou’ killing anything an’ so who am I to kick him out? I say jus’ because he hasn’t killed summat yet doesn’ mean he won’t,” Hagrid said, with distaste.

Harry was surprised. Hagrid normally loved animals, especially ones with potential to kill.

“Why don’t you try and feed him to make sure he doesn’t kill anything?” Harry offered. He couldn’t take his eyes off the wolf outside. It slunk along the edge of the forest, but not in a way that suggested sneaking. The elegance in its movement almost seemed learned, the way it held its haunches, the movement of its tail, even the way it cocked its ears. There was an air of dignity about it that Harry did not associate with wild animals.

“I don’t like 'im. He’s just not righ’, Harry,” Hagrid eyed the animal suspiciously.

Harry agreed that the wolf wasn’t right, but he didn’t think it was bad. He sat with Hagrid half an hour more, all the while his mind unable to move on from the wolf. Finally, he found it had been long enough for him to leave without appearing rude, and made to do so.

Hagrid caught him in a bone crushing hug before he made his way out of the door.

“I missed yeh, Harry. Don’ be a stranger,” he said squeezing all the breath out of Harry.

“I won’t, Hagrid,” Harry laughed.

“An’ be careful on yer way back up to the castle,” Hagrid warned. “Tha’ wolf, yeh know.”

“Right,” Harry nodded.

He shoved his hands in his pockets and began the walk back to the castle. It felt strange. It was his second time making the trek today and about his thousandth time making it in his life, but somehow, it felt longer.

He let his thoughts wander back to the Slytherin dungeons and how he might get in. A simple unlocking charm wouldn’t work, or else students would have been breaking into different house’s dormitories willy nilly. He supposed he could hardly ask McGonagall, either, as she seemed rather tight-lipped about the whole thing. He was half wondering if he could blow a hole in the wall of the dungeon when he noticed something move out of the corner of his eye.

He gasped. The wolf.

It was walking right up against the castle wall, so close its side rubbed against the stone. It seemed to notice Harry in the same instance, stopping in its tracks.

There was only about twenty feet between them.

Harry dropped to a squat and held out his hand, as though the animal in front of him were amon house dog.

“Hi,” he called softly. “I won’t hurt you if you don’t hurt me.”

The wolf tensed at Harry’s voice, but did not make to run away.

“What are you doing so close to the castle? Hagrid doesn’t like it too much, best not let him see,” Harry continued, standing again and walking slowly towards the wolf his hand still extended. He stopped when he had halved the distance and returned to a squat.

e on now, I won’t bite,” Harry said.

The wolf let out a snort that Harry felt sounded strangely akin to a laugh, and then began to inch slowly towards him.

Finally, the wolf reached his fingertips, but did not sniff him like a normal dog would. Instead they sat and looked up at Harry, their eyes eerily intelligent. They cocked their head.

Harry noticed up close that the wolf was not a true white, but rather a white gold.

“Aren’t you a pretty thing? I told Hagrid you were nothing to worry about,” Harry murmured. He reached out and pet the wolf’s head, but drew his hand back as soon as it made contact. A wave of unease came over him, that sick feeling he had felt in the hall earlier.

The wolf did not move, other than to look away from Harry, turning their nose into the air, as though offended.

“I didn’t mean anything by it,” Harry said out loud, feeling suddenly defensive.

The wolf looked at him out of the corner of their eye.

Harry was struck with how human the expression was. It reminded him of when he would talk to Sirius when…Oh. Oh.

“Who—” Harry began but the question died in his throat. He cleared it and began again. “Who, exactly, are you?”

The wolf’s grey eye dragged away from him, looking forwards once more, only more pointedly this time.

“A student?”

The wolf huffed.

“No?”

Nothing.

“A professor, then?”

The laugh-ish snort returned.

“No again?”

The wolf scratched at their ear with their back paw, as if to say, “Just a wolf, thanks.”

“I know you’re not,” Harry said, his voice dropping. “You know who I am, don’t you?”

Another huff Harry chose to read as an affirmative.

“Then you know I was rather close to Sirius Black. I know an animagus when I see one,” he said, most of the time, he added mentally.

The wolf turned back to look at him, narrowing their eyes.

“You’re not helping your case,” Harry pointed out. “Because you clearly understand me.”

Their eyes became impossibly narrower.

“You’re a bit rubbish at being a dog, mate,” Harry laughed.

The wolf snapped at him half-heartedly.

“So, will you tell me?”

The wolf looked at him intently for a moment, then stood, and began to walk away from Harry, back towards the wood.

“Hey!” Harry called to him, but the wolf didn’t look back.

Harry watched them disappear into the line of the trees, bing more convinced with each step that, whatever was going on in this castle, whatever haunting he felt, had a lot to do with that damn dog.

Potter stood outside the castle for a long time, longer than Draco liked to stay in the forest, but he had little choice.

Thankfully, a torrent of summer rain forced him back inside, giving Draco cover to sneak back into the castle. He hurried back to his quarters, moving painfully slowly once he got to the door, hoping that if he was quiet enough, he might be able to hear if anyone was there. He didn’t know if Potter still had the Invisibility Cloak, but he would be surprised if he didn’t.

“Sepultura,” he whispered, barely a breath.

The elves had left some food on Draco’s table, a Shepherd’s pie that Harriet had clearly nibbled, and a small piece of cake. His stomach rumbled at the sight of it, and he meant to eat, he really had but his mind was otherwise upied. He couldn’t stop thinking about how Harry had reached out to touch him and then pulled away quickly, as if he were hurt. How all he had to do was touch him to see through his disguise. He knew he should have stayed back, should have acted more like a wild fucking animal, but the pull he felt in his chest just to be a little bit closer was too strong. How it felt to have someone’s eyes on him and have them really see him instead of see through him, and how if felt for those eyes to be Harry’s. He of course planned on telling McGonagall that the interaction was inevitable, that he was cornered, that he had just sat there and let Harry talk to him. That was, he planned on telling her that eventually.

He had a feeling once she knew they had made contact, Harry would have to go. Either that, or he would.

Harry hadmenced his studies in the library. Or he was trying to. His mind wandered back to the animagus on the grounds relatively often. He had been out every night since trying to spot them again, but to no avail. Either they had left, or they were making sure that he didn’t know they were there. He was almost sure they weren’t malicious, but most of the people that felt they needed disguises at Hogwarts were not people he would want to meet again. Still, he could not bring himself to report it to the headmistress, not until he at least tried to figure out who it was on his own. He supposed he had never been too good at turning down a challenge.

When he wasn’t thinking about the animagus, he was trying to think up ways to get into the Slytherin dungeons. They consumed him, and not just in waking. In his dreams, he would find himself in themon room, a green tinge light filtering in from the windows that looked out into the lake. The rest of the room was too dark to make out, but he could tell it was not the same as the last ti