Hogwarts Reimagined

With the threat of the Chamber and its’ monster ended, the leadership of the school settled and Dobby freed, there was little left to do at Hogwarts for the three weeks that remained. Headmaster McGonagall announced the next day that exams were cancelled, though if any students wished to transfer schools they could contact her to take them privately. Otherwise, their marks for the year would be graded on the average of their year’s marks, with a universal exception for Lockhart’s class and the students who were Petrified. It was with a great sense of relief that students settled back into classes that were designed to bring fun back to the school, with free periods during the time they would have had Defence. And finally, finally, the mandrakes were ready to be harvested. Rhiannon waited with bated breath and a terrible case of the fidgets, however the students could not be woken as soon as the Mandrake Restorative Draught was ready – there was Dudley to consider and calculations to be made.

With so little useful research available on werewolves, they had no idea how being Petrified might affect him or his body’s internal regulation of his lycanthropic cycle. There were all sorts of possible risks – him turning once given the potion as his body struggled to catch up lost time, his internal regulation staying permanently out of balance – there were too many risks. It was decided that the safest course of action was to give him the potion at as close to the exact phase of the moon that he had been Petrified on. With Hagrid’s help they calculated that, and found April 3^rd – the day Dudley was Petrified – to have been two days after the new moon. On realising that the new moon was May 31^st, they realised they had to move very quickly. May 30^th was the day they had entered the Chamber and defeated the Basilisk, leaving them very little time to arrange things for Dudley.

Very early in the morning of June 2^nd, Dudley was hustled out of the Hospital Wing on a stretcher by Hagrid, Madam Pomfrey and the Headmaster. Rhiannon accompanied them with Wolfsbane on hand – given her own experience with the Polyjuice potion, she had some idea of what might happen if the lycanthropic cycle got confused in any way. She hated to leave Hermione, but Madam Pomfrey assured her that they would wake Hermione later in the day – she would miss nothing.

Rhiannon was fascinated to watch as Madam Pomfrey revived Dudley. She had been wondering how the potion would be administered given that Dudley couldn’t swallow in this state. Instead, Madam Pomfrey traced a beautifully even circle around Dudley with his dose of the restorative draught, then traced it over again using her wand – though she explained to Rhiannon she could have used a staff or really any other conductive instrument she chose. She anchored the spell with the draught and built it off that, using a rhythmic incantation to work the spell itself. It was not magic of a kind Rhiannon had ever seen before, and she wondered if this was a kind that Dudley might be able to do – to her inexperienced eyes it didn’t seem to use magic in an active way. She made sure to memorise it for him, just in case.

It was a lucky thing that they had brought Wolfsbane, and made Dudley take it as a precaution. It was not a good thing to take Wolfsbane regularly outside of the full moon cycle, but once would not have hurt had he not needed it. As it was, he did. He stretched and shifted him, then before Rhiannon’s eyes he began to seize. His body shifted disturbingly, parts shifting into wolf-shape and then back again, fur sprouting and shedding and then sprouting again. He screamed, and Rhiannon wasn’t sure whether to hug him or run for the hills as she stood there wide-eyed and trembling. Minerva held her back, her arms folded over Rhiannon’s chest as she murmured soothingly, but Rhiannon guessed the Headmaster was as frightened as she was.

Finally, finally, Dudley fell quiet and for the most part, though he still shuddered and moaned softly. Minerva let Rhiannon go to him and she fell on her knees in the grass at his side, squeezing his furry hand in hers. Dudley looked much as Rhiannon had after her accident with the Polyjuice potion, which they had suspected might happen – it could have been much worse had they not lined up the times so closely but they had guessed that might be a risk. It seemed lycanthropic regulation was rather finicky, and not to be muddled with.

Slowly, Dudley opened his eyes. Rhiannon gasped, then grinned widely as she looked back at a Dudley with wolf eyes, rather than human ones. His eyes were ordinarily a rather plain shade of light brown, but wolves didn’t have brown eyes, so they were now a warm shade of light amber, shot through with gold nearer the centre. Rhiannon fell on him and hugged him tightly, crying and laughing all at once, and she squeezed him tighter as he groaned and finally, for the first time in months, put his own arms around her.

“Rhi?” Dudley asked, his voice cracking with dryness and disuse. He asked as if he were unsure she was real, rather than to check who she was. Rhiannon nodded tearfully and helped him to sit up, then to drink the glass of water Madam Pomfrey gave him. As hers had been, his hands were clumsy – not quite paws, but not as suited to fine dexterity as they should be.

“You- you missed a lot,” Rhiannon murmured, and she set herself down to hug him around his waist as he slung an arm around her shoulders. “Like – a lot.”

Dudley shuddered. “I know that much,” he agreed. “Ugh, it’s all... fuzzy. I could hear bits, in the sick bay – wait no, i’s a hospital wing here... Did something happen t’ Ginny?”

At that, Rhiannon put her head on his shoulder and laughed until she started to cry again. Dudley hugged her tightly, and they sat there for some time while Rhiannon tried to explain what he had missed, as Dudley asked questions about odd snippets and things he remembered. By the time Dudley had the whole story, the sun had risen properly and Madam Pomfrey was beginning to look fretful. Eventually Dudley relented in his questions and looked up at her inquiringly. “Can somebody – help me, up? Because Rhiannon’s got the fidgets but she’s too polite to ask me to move.” he asked Madam Pomfrey.

Rhiannon blushed, while Minerva, Hagrid and Madam Pomfrey laughed. Hagrid held out a hand and heaved Dudley to his feet, at which point Dudley swayed and groaned. “Ohhhhh no,” he mumbled, struggling to balance. He looked down at his feet, then up at Rhiannon, wide-eyed. “What are those?” he asked, holding on to Hagrid with one hand as he wiggled one bare foot, stuck halfway between shapes, around in the air, and gestured to it incredulously with his free hand. He scowled, looking at her accusingly. “Are you telling me it was this hard for you to balance, that whole time?”

Rhiannon stared at him, then burst out laughing at Dudley’s horrified expression. “I did walk everywhere with my cane, except when I was dancing,” she reminded him. Something wiggled, then poked up out of the back of Dudley’s school shirt and he would have tipped over backwards had he not been still holding on to Hagrid’s arm.

As Dudley turned around trying to figure out what was going on, Rhiannon and the adults alike laughed helplessly at the sight of a mostly-human-shaped boy chasing his own tail. Finally he caught it, and he glared accusingly at them as they only laughed harder. Dudley let his tail go and wagged it experimentally as a broad grin slowly spread over his face. Then he wiggled it harder, and his ears poked up from under his hair, fuzzy at the tips.

“Ok, this is even more fun on two legs,” Dudley said, some teeth poking out over his lower lip as he grinned lopsidedly, still gleefully wagging his tail. He let go of Hagrid’s arm and wobbled off experimentally, then on finding his stride he trotted off happily up the hill leaving Rhiannon to run off after him lest he hurt himself, and the adults to follow at a more sedate pace.

By the time they reached the castle, Dudley was puffing and sweaty but his grin was undampened. “This is what, stimming, right? Like you and Luna and ‘mione and Neville do, right?” he asked, curious. Rhiannon shrugged, then nodded – she supposed so. Dudley patted his ears happily, and laughed as his tail swished in response. “Okay, why didn’t you tell me it felt so nice, I’d have tried ages ago!” he asked, jokingly accusing.

Rhiannon swatted one of his ears playfully, and she giggled as he growled and snapped at her in jest. “H-h-h-h-hhhhh, honestly, it didn’t occur to me that it just – felt good, I just... do it, I guess, without thinking.” she replied with another shrug. “Never really thought it’d be good for other people, but I guess it makes sense – our senses are a bit muddly, it makes sense we’d have things we like in that way.”

Dudley patted his tail, obviously fascinated – he’d never touched wolf fur with his own mostly-normal hands before, it was a totally new sensation. “Alright, I have got to get me one of these some time. Just, without all the catastrophic messing-up-of-rhythm stuff. That’d be cool.” he muttered, and turned to Headmaster McGonagall as the adults reached them. “Hey, Prof – is there like, a tail-growing potion or whatever fancy-but-says-the-same-thing name you wizards would call it?” he asked her.

Minerva blinked at him, before shooing him and Rhiannon inside ahead of her as they headed for the hospital wing. “I suppose there would be,” she mused thoughtfully. “But Severus, well... he doesn’t approve of frivolous things – he’s very serious about his potioneering, I’d not bother asking him. What an odd request... I suppose I will look it up myself.”

Rhiannon giggled. “And it’s Headmaster McGonagall,” she corrected Dudley with a broad smile.

Dudley stopped in his tracks and stared first at Rhiannon, then Minerva. “No way,” he replied, as if expecting them to cry ‘April Fools’ when it was the beginning of June. Then, when they did not, he began to smile again, and he set off again with a bounce in his step. “Yes, yes, yes! No more stuffy old Dumbledore! No more Luna sleeping on couches! And no more bad speeches!” he cheered. He continued listing things to be excited about and pestering McGonagall about changes she planned to make. She refused to answer any of his questions except to promise that yes, she was planning to make accommodations for students like Luna – it was high time that Hogwarts School of Magic got with the times.

When they made it to the Hospital Wing, Madam Pomfrey insisted they sit and wait out of her way while she went about her work. Just as Rhiannon expected, Dudley was fascinated by the unusual magic that Madam Pomfrey used to restore the Petrified students and peppered the nurse with so many questions about it that she threatened to jinx his mouth shut and banish him to the hallway. He shut up lest he miss anything and sat there watching intently with his ears pricked and tail wagging stubbornly, looking so puppyish that Rhiannon struggled to stay quiet herself.

As soon as Madam Pomfrey had worked her spell over Hermione, she gave Rhiannon a nod as permission and moved on to her next patient while Rhiannon rushed to her best friend’s bedside, clutching Hermione’s hand and marvelling as the warmth came back. It was like Hermione had been walled in, and the spell brought those walls crashing down, as she lurched upright and then threw her arms around Rhiannon in a crushing hug as tears streamed down her cheeks. She could not speak for some time afterwards, but Rhiannon didn’t mind. Friends didn’t need to speak. She stayed at Hermione’s bedside as long as she could, and Madam Pomfrey brought them a pad of paper and some coloured pens so Hermione could communicate if she needed to. That brought a bright smile to Hermione’s tear-stained face, and she insisted on going back to the dormitory.

Rhiannon was worried about that prospect, to say the least, but Hermione would not be moved on the matter. The hospital wing smelled like cleaning products and stress, and as far as Hermione was concerned she had spent too long in that narrow bed as it was. Rhiannon didn’t miss the shadowed look in her closest friend’s eyes as she wrote, but Rhiannon guessed it – lying in a hospital bed again, even a different one, would be like living the same nightmare, thinking herself Petrified again every time she woke. No wonder she was insistent on leaving.

Rhiannon was loath to leave Dudley behind, but he assured her he’d be fine, that he would find out-of-the-way things to do around the school rather than just staying in the hospital wing. He couldn’t just go back to his common room – he needed his Wolfsbane daily, and he was more than a little conspicuous with near-yellow eyes and a fuzzy tail, the novelty of which had still not worn off. He drooped a little as they left him, and Rhiannon remembered the Easter gifts with a smile. She rushed back to hug him, and promised she’d come back before day’s end.

Gradually, they began to recover. Recovery wasn’t a straight line kind of process. Sometimes Hermione appeared fine, other nights she woke screaming and crawled into Rhiannon’s bed for comfort. She spoke less, especially around large groups of people. It was a lesson in confidence for Rhiannon, because she had to learn very quickly to break up such crowds before Hermione became completely overwhelmed. Even all their friends at once was too much, early on. It hurt, but Rhiannon shuddered to imagine what Hermione had been through – half-conscious, lying unable to move for months on end. There were no words Rhiannon could find to describe how much the idea of that frightened her, so she was endlessly patient with her friend in her fragile state.

Ginny was seen even less. Soon after their experience in the Chamber, she was transferred to St. Mungo’s for treatment there instead. Rhiannon worried, but she was not permitted to visit and all she was told was that Ginny was safe. That was not enough reassurance to set her mind at ease, but it was better than nothing at all – and it was a lot better than dead.

Classes were informal and sporadically attended for the last three weeks of term. The school was made up of almost three hundred students who had spent the last year living in fear for their lives and those of their friends. All had suffered some degree of trauma from that experience, to the point that Madam Pomfrey instated open group meetings several evenings a week for those who needed comfort and community, and a sort of informal walk-in service for students who needed help, but were unable for whatever reason to find it in the groups.

Rhiannon found herself, once again, the object of discomforting awe. She hadn’t just slain a monster – she and Luna had taken down the source of fear that had been not just the plague of that past year, but the boogey-man in so many old myths and ghost stories about the castle from centuries past. And she was the Girl Who Lived, already a figure representing hope to so many. So naturally, Luna was overlooked. Rhiannon would have preferred that Luna at least suffer along with her, if for no other reason than to have some company, but outside of her dormitory she was unable to escape it and desperately hoped the hero-worship would die off over the holidays.

Before they could return home, Rhiannon and Dudley had a final full moon to manage. They did so with easy familiarity, but Rhiannon struggled to watch as her cousin went through what she guessed to be his hardest transformation since the first. All he said of it afterwards was that he was disappointed to lose his tail. Rhiannon’s friends didn’t join them those nights, opting instead to leave the two to spend time with eachother in quiet instead, it being their first full moon back together after two spent apart.

Finally, the end of term arrived. Rhiannon requested that Headmaster McGonagall name no names in her end of term speech, but she and Luna received awards for services to the school, as did Ron for joining them in the first place. Ginny too received an award for incredible sacrifice and courage. Rhiannon thought a trophy was a poor sort of reward in the face of what Ginny had suffered, but her opinion didn’t matter. Now that she known it had been Ginny, little memories came back to her of the year. Voldemort had wanted more attacks, more fear – but Ginny had resisted. No, that wasn’t the target – Rhiannon suspected that Ginny had diverted the first attack entirely. To fight off Voldemort in one’s own mind... Rhiannon doubted she could have done as much as Ginny had. She would never ask, not unless Ginny began the conversation with her first. But she had a little awe of her own to spare for the red-haired girl’s sheer willpower.

Due to the events of the school year, the House Cup was disregarded, and set aside until the next year. Headmaster McGonagall’s words were that “Under immediate threat, we often see our heroes at their best. But prolonged fear chafes at people, wears us thin, and many of us – are not at our best, we have used it up. It would be unfair to judge you all on this year, and I look forward to seeing you flourish in safety in the next.” Rhiannon’s spirits were lifted, and she was not the only one. Dumbledore had been a fixture at Hogwarts, and there were many who were unsure of where they stood on the matter of his being replaced. But there were many too who had been at the school long enough to become familiar with Dumbledore’s style of leadership, and they knew that he would not have thoroughly reassured and re-inspired the student body as McGonagall had. Dumbledore was a brilliant mind, but that wasn’t always what made a teacher or a leader, and as these students left the school the change left them feeling bright.

The train journey back to Euston Station was a peaceful one, and Rhiannon was surprised when she was greeted at the platform by not only her foster-father, but a red-haired couple she vaguely recognised as Mr. and Mrs. Weasley. She blinked and fiddled with the handle of Callie’s cage uncertainly as Mrs. Weasley looked her over, then was almost tackled by the stout woman as Mrs. Weasley seized her in a fierce hug.

“Oh, you incredible girl – you saved my baby, you saved my Ginny!” Mrs. Weasley sobbed into the back of Rhiannon’s robes, as Rhiannon patted her shoulder awkwardly and wondered how best to extricate herself from this increasingly uncomfortable embrace. It wasn’t that she didn’t like Mrs. Weasley, it was that she had been sure Mrs. Weasley didn’t like her, and she was uncomfortable with prolonged physical contact except for a scant handful of people besides.

Finally, Mrs. Weasley let Rhiannon go and dabbed at her face with her sleeve. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she said, on seeing Rhiannon’s awkward stance and expression. “I just – I’ve been so dreadful about things all year, and then you saved my girl and – I don’t think I could ever thank you enough!”

Rhiannon looked sideways at her foster-father, who also looked incredibly discomforted by the public display of emotion. She shuffled from foot to foot, and smiled sheepishly. “Ju-j-j-j-j-j-jus-just, don’t stop Ron coming t’ my birthday again, I guess?” she suggested uncomfortably.

Mrs. Weasley puffed up like a little red hen, looking incredibly offended. “Birthday party? Now see here, young lady – I will throw you a birthday party myself, you see if I don’t! I’ve been planning the cake for the last three weeks, allergies and all. It will be lovely to have you all over – Xenophilius, you don’t mind, do you?” she said, changing tone from strident to cheerfully inquiring so fast that Rhiannon wondered how she didn’t get whiplash.

“I th-th-t-t-t-t-h-think I was less scared of her wh-wh-when I thought she hated me,” Rhiannon grumbled half-heartedly to Ron as they split up to go home. Ron cackled and clapped her on the shoulder, grinning.

“That’s Mum for you,” he agreed cheerfully. “See you for your birthday, if I can’t hop over sooner?”

They parted with a hug, and once she had wished her other friends farewell Rhiannon soon found herself home again at the Rookery. This time, nothing was missing. She had no tears but happy ones to shed as she let her cat out and settled on the couch, no lurking feelings of emptiness – just the messy little household and family that had become her home, and they were together again as they should have been.

As Rhiannon curled up on her favourite couch, Xenophilius bustled around fiddling with a box that had a lot of wires and spiky bits sticking off it, partly covered by a heavy cloth. He refused to explain what he was doing and chased the three pre-teenagers off with his wand when they tried to peer over his shoulder, so they were forced to wait and see – something the werewolves in particular were terrible at. Finally, by almost dinnertime, Xenophilius was ready to reveal his masterpiece. He dropped a warding jinx on it and fetched dinner for them from the kitchen, and then settled down on the couch with his own dinner. With a flick of his wand he removed the jinx, and whisked away the cloth that covered his surprise.

Rhiannon and Dudley gasped, while Luna cocked faer head in confusion. “It’s a... box with bits poking off?” ze asked, confused.

Dudley and Rhiannon shook their heads, both grinning. “No – it’s a television,” Dudley explained. “Or – sort of, I guess – it looks like your dad rigged it up with magic?”

Xenophilius positively glowed with pride. “Yes! Arthur and I worked on it on his days off. He’s very clever with mechanics. And we’ve got a Vee-Haych-Ess-” here he pronounced the acronym very slowly and carefully, setting Rhiannon and Dudley off giggling helplessly while he glared at them mock-seriously over his glasses “-player, so that we can play the – what was it, ah – tape, that Rhi was given for Christmas. I checked the running time, it’s very long – but we can eat dinner while we watch and do the dishes after, if you’d like?” he suggested, with a look to Rhiannon and a little shrug.

Rhiannon’s heart filled up, and she felt like her cheeks would split from smiling. It wasn’t a conventional sort of present, but – he’d gone to so much effort, for something that would make her happy – something they could all use together. And she nodded wordlessly as tears ran down her cheeks, and her foster-father put her video of the Fellowship of the Ring on to play. She might have forgotten to eat her dinner had Luna not moved to sit on the couch beside her, and once she had done so she curled up with her head resting in the tall blonde’s lap and their long fingers twining in her hair, as she gazed wonderstruck at the visual, musical, auditory representation of a book that had been one of her favourites from the moment she had found it on the Dursleys’ shelf. She was home.