4/5

"I heard he doesn't sleep that often. He probably has insomnia." Hermione ignored Ron mouthing the word 'insomnia' to Harry, "What were you saying about a Grim, Harry? I hope you aren't buying into Professor Trelawney's so-called prophecy. You heard what she said to Gaara, and that was obviously fake."

"I saw the Grim sitting with Gaara in the stands when I was flying around!"

"Harry, Gaara was alone in that stand, people saw him bring you down alone. Are you sure you saw what you think you saw? The rain was really coming down and it was pretty hard to see anything."

"I'm sure Hermione, it was a big black hound sat next to Gaara." Harry was more confused than anyone about what had happened the day before. "So I fell... what about my broom, did anyone find it?"

Harry's first clue was Ron, who looked absolutely wretched, "About your broom, it kind of got blown into the Whomping Willow..." He pulled the bundle of kindling back into view, "And you know how it can be."

Harry was devastated to see what had become of his first broom, his first real present, excepting the cake Hagrid had given him on his eleventh birthday.

Quick to try and console his fellow Quidditch and flying fanatic after this grievous loss, Ron went on to say "Don't worry, mate. The match was postponed until after the Christmas holidays, so we can work something out before the season starts up again. I heard that Malfoy lost his broom too, so there's that too, I suppose..." Ron trailed off uncertainly, coming from such a background where losing something so precious and expensive was akin to losing the entire family's primary means of transport (which he had coincidentally done).

Despite their shared good health and ongoing safety, a dark cloud hung over their area of the Gryffindor table.

Back in the Hospital Wing, a few hours after Harry had awakened, Draco's eyes fluttered open in an entirely too graceful manner as far as Gaara was concerned, glancing over the top of his book. It hadn't been a very good book, after all; he hadn't even managed to read a single chapter during the night.

"What?" Disorientated, Draco asked groggily, as he sat up and looked about the partitioned area around his bunk and to his roommate sitting by his bedside, staring at a book.

As if he had only just noticed Draco waking up, Gaara put his book to one side and handed Draco some chocolate that had been sat on the bedside cabinet. Draco had only received a handful of get well baskets with the morning post since his indisposition hadn't been widely advertised. Otherwise it would have been expected that most of the families in Slytherin would have sent at least a letter to him or his parents expressing their best wishes.

"Thank you." Draco sat up in the bed and began eating the offered chocolate, feeling a pleasant, exaggerated warmth chase away what he would later understand was the lasting effects of the Dementors still clinging to him. Looking to the curtains and hearing Madame Pomfrey walking around behind them, Draco asked, "Were you here all night?"

Gaara shook his head.

Draco slowly nodded, understanding, as it would have been strange for Gaara to do something like waiting by someone's bedside. "What happened yesterday? I remember the match in that storm, and I saw you, and then I was chasing the Snitch and I was beating Potter to it..."

Gaara sighed, considering using his sand clone to fill in the blanks, but such a waste of chakra was directly contrary to what little training he had received in his life. His sand zipped out and began spelling out words, the letters forming instinctively now with the practice Gaara had gained over the past few months.

'Dementors attacked the game. You fell and Dumbledore caught you. Dementors sent away.' That was all that Gaara could think to report about the affair.

"Dumbledore caught me? That incompetent managed to perform a proper spell? I didn't think he still had it in him." Despite his bluster, Draco's shock at having almost fallen to his death was written all over his face. Most of what Draco could tell a person was usually on his face, not in his voice.

The curtains were pulled wide open and Poppy Pomfrey was there with her trolley at the ready. "Good morning Mister Malfoy, Mister Gaara. I see you've already been given some chocolate; good, that will help with the Dementor effects still holding on. I think a pepper-up potion should do and you'll be good to go." She looked over her cart to find the proper vial. "I trust you slept well last night, Gaara."

Draco looked at Gaara but the red head gave no sign of giving any sort of response to the odd question.

And then Draco sat up straighter in the bed and tried to angle his head so that he could look down his nose a little at the healer still busily sorting through her cart for the correct potion. "Madame, I expect a full battery of diagnostic spells after you find the potion. I won't risk any lasting damage from the travesty yesterday because of an oversight." He drank the potion the old woman gave him without a second thought and waited expectantly as she began to push her trolley away.

"Oh, Gaara, if you feel faint or ill, please do come to see me."

Gaara stood, ignoring Draco's irate ravings about lazy medical witches, and pulled the hypochondriac blond wizard to his feet as well. Gaara had to drag his friend out of the medical wing before he could demand any other unnecessary medical spells or superfluous potions.

Ignoring the spoiled boy's further insistence that he should spend the rest of the day on bed rest, Gaara dragged him to their room so that Draco could get changed and then off to lessons. He wouldn't give Draco license to slack off because of injuries.

Though, of course, he would never tell Draco or anybody in this world how bad he had been after the first time he had gotten hurt. In the aftermath of the Chunin exam finals and his clash with the Konoha ninja, he had refused to walk for days, using his sand to carry him everywhere. Still, the fact remained that he knew the signs of melodrama when it came to recovery.

As he was changing in their room, casting aside his Quidditch robes for his school finery, he looked around, "Gaara, have you seen my broom anywhere? I don't suppose anyone handed it in?"

Gaara hadn't even thought about the broom, he shook his head.

Draco breathed out slowly, "It probably flew into the forest. I'll have to talk to that ridiculous oaf of a Professor to look for it in the grounds. I wouldn't expect them to find it now if it hasn't already been turned in. Wouldn't be surprised if one of those Weasleys took it to sell for food. I'll have father buy me a new one next term, I suppose."

Draco was relieved, after having changed and been dragged out of their shared room, to discover that their next scheduled lesson was History of Magic, so he would be able to get some sleep anyway.

With the amount of lessons they missed and the amount of slacking they did, it was a wonder that the majority of Hogwarts students made it to graduation.

OXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXO

Gaara looked around him, verifying that he had walked into the Defence Against the Dark Arts classroom like he had intended and hadn't somehow been magically redirected to the Potions laboratory he was no longer allowed to enter. By every sign, he should have been in DADA, which begged the question: 'Why is Snape standing at the front?'

The pupils had entered their class as normal, excluding the absence of Lupin ushering them in with kind greetings, and had taken their seats. The chatter had steadily risen without an adult to stop it until everyone in the class, except Gaara, was loudly conversing amongst their friendship groups. A lot of it was speculation as to why Professor Lupin, who was usually pretty dependable, was late. Before Hermione Granger had had a chance to tell anyone off for distracting her from precious independent study time or suggest that someone go inform a teacher that they were unsupervised, the door slammed open in a damningly familiar way.

The teens all swivelled around at the loud interruption and paled collectively when they saw who was striding through the room with an especially prominent scowl on his face. Gaara and Harry Potter took a few moments longer than everybody else to process who had just entered the room, though Harry was also still reeling from the news that the red-haired psycho who had saved his life had reappeared in class with a disgruntled Malfoy in tow.

Snape swivelled around to face them all once he'd reached the front of the aisle and wasted no time, "Sit down. Take your books out and puts your wands away, there will be no ridiculous attempts at magic in this classroom today. Turn to page four hundred and ninety-four."

Hermione piped up once she had confirmed what she was being asked to work on, and informed the professor that they hadn't reached that chapter yet. She was promptly and rudely told to be quiet and to get on with reading about werewolves. Gaara thought that it was an uncanny similarity to his own condition; though, what he'd give to turn into a ferocious, snarling, magical wolf instead of a small, demonic and plush tanuki...

Snape, with no other reasonable options available, made every effort to totally ignore Gaara's presence in his class. He refused to make eye contact and gave everyone but him a hand-out; but since the only other option was the unreasonable one whereby Snape attempted to exorcise the castle of the monstrous infestation, Gaara thought he could suffer through being ignored if it meant no further antagonism. He shared Draco's hand-out and he was never one for asking questions in the middle of teaching so he wasn't entirely put out by the behaviour.

The level of dark magic creature they were being taught about was somewhat refreshing too, since the pixies they had been taught about, while somehow terrifying to the rest of the students, were astoundingly underwhelming to the veteran.

While Gaara was suffering under the unprofessional conduct of one of his previous targets (one of the few that had actually survived his wrath), Lupin was out on yet another of his charitable visits to the less fortunate and less washed. It was about time someone impressed upon Sirius the full seriousness and severity of his stupidity.

The man, wanted by the entire world for murder and colluding with Voldemort, who had snuck into a school full of children and hosting the boy who was supposed to be his prime target, had then snuck back onto the grounds to watch a Quidditch match! In doing so, Sirius had attracted every Dementor circling the school and had started a mass attack on the student body.

The man wasn't even a student anymore and he was still causing riots!

As he strode through the tunnel to the Shrieking Shack he clutched his cloak tighter around his skinny frame and tried to temper his indignation with the knowledge that this chill was hitting Sirius the hardest of all.

...Although... Gaara came from a desert and was making a good case for students to be allowed to perform warming spells in between classes, contravening that rule against magic in the hallways.

He made his way through the rickety old house and up the stairs and sat on the mouldy bed across from Padfoot's lazing form on the floor. He wasn't here for congenialities so he would dispense with the customary belly rub or ear scratch and move straight onto chewing out the irresponsible thirty-something year old.

How old where they, again?

Shaking his head, he tried to imagine the face Severus would use in a situation like this and mimicked it as best he could manage with his inexperienced, congenial face. The result managed to get Sirius' ears to flatten atop his head, so it was a good start.

While Sirius was being forced through a lecture, the likes of which he hadn't experienced since he'd announced to his mother and father that he didn't want to go muggle hunting anymore, Gaara was being put through a similar but wholly more subtle torture. It only occurred to Lupin later on that he'd failed to warn Gaara of his absence and the solitary free replacement he'd found to fill in.

Remus wondered to himself whether he had withheld their incoming encounter in some sort of unconscious effort to force the two obstinate males to reconcile their differences or at the very least stop attacking one another. Alternatively, if they had to fight each other, where better to do it than in a Defence class where the battle could be billed as a demonstration. He would have to be sure to get Draco Malfoy or one of the other students to fill him in on proceedings. Unfortunately, he couldn't trust Harry to remain one-hundred percent objective when it came to Gaara, or Snape, so he couldn't reliably be called upon as a witness.

He wondered if, now that Gaara had saved Harry's life, they might become friends, or something approaching that sentiment? Probably not...

...Teenagers...

Still, all these thoughts of manipulating ceasefires between his acquaintances made him consider whether or not he could manufacture some form of amicability between his friends and his friend's surviving son.

Gaara hadn't suffered as much that lesson as he had predicted he would by the end. In fact, barring the childish cold shoulder from Professor Snape, Gaara had been fascinated by the topic of the day: Werewolves. The lunar cycle so reminiscent of his own troubles, but the lack of a small tanuki bite proved that he didn't have some similar malady. Still, it was worth looking into, this 'lycanthropy,' if he was to understand his affliction. And it would be nice to take a break from his fruitless research into getting home. Looking into werewolves and animagi would be interesting, and perhaps also useful in the meantime. He might have to ask Sirius about the whole animagus thing when they next met.

The sigh of relief that spread forth from the collective students when Snape and Gaara hadn't broken out into a full-blown battle at the end of the period was promptly sucked back in when they heard the length of the essay he assigned them to complete by next week. It would seem that the red-head would be one of only two students in the lesson planning to take any sort of initiative in undertaking the essay.

Lupin returned to the castle feeling altogether more upbeat, having relayed his conversation with Harry to Sirius before then telling Sirius what Gaara had promised to do him if he tried sneaking back into the castle again. Testament to his godfatherly devotion, Sirius had almost still held a fond smile through Lupin's describing Gaara's threats.

The next week, Lupin was back at the front of his classroom, standing next to his blackboard and looking as unhealthy as ever. No one had trouble believing that the man had needed a day's bed rest the week before.

Remus had been relieved to hear that a fight hadn't broken out in his absence, though Snape had not made the lesson entirely painless. He figured they were even now, for the Inspector's visit and Snape's total non-involvement.

His first order of business was to cancel the ongoing essay set by Snape, trusting that only a small portion of his pupils would have attempted writing the monstrous writing task before the end of the week, and the last minute. He noted that Hermione had brought along a sizable piece of work that now sat forlornly on the edge of her desk, crying out for extra credit. And he also saw that directly following his dismissal of the task, Gaara had tucked a similar sheaf of parchment back into his satchel as well.

With a sigh he resigned himself to marking these two essays anyway, despite their highly personal nature to him and the off-putting length. He'd have to wrestle it off of Gaara first, since the boy would undoubtedly misunderstand his attempt at benevolence.

The truly remarkable occurrence happened after the lesson had ended and Lupin had told Gaara that he'd see him later. Harry had stayed behind, without even his usual entourage, to talk with the aged professor. The scrawny boy wanted to discuss his unusual susceptibility to the effects of the Dementors. Lupin tried to explain to the teen the dreadful nature of Dementors, and the reason for Harry being vulnerable because of the horrors in his past, although Lupin didn't like to dwell on the horrors that Harry had assuredly experienced in his relatively short life. Regrets.

In his newly developed Teaching Mode, Remus had mentioned the means to defend oneself from Dementors and their terrible effects, and Harry had immediately begged to be taught the Patronus charm. Despite its difficulty, what else was Lupin to do but agree to tutor Harry, with one minor stipulation, of course. After all, he only had so much free time and he wasn't as young as he used to be. He would teach Harry how to defend himself against Dementors, even work in some anecdotes about his school years with Harry's parents, but Harry would have to share the his time with Gaara. The insomniac had ultimately been Remus' tutee first so he couldn't just give him the shunt in favour of Harry. Not that he wanted to anyway.

Despite Harry's obvious apprehension at spending time with Gaara outside of lessons, he appeared quite anxious to begin learning the advanced spell nonetheless.

Remus saw it as the perfect opportunity to get the two moody teenagers to bond, which would save them a boatload of grief in the long run once they got Sirius exonerated and both Gaara and Harry ended up living with him. Lupin would, in the interests of the children, drop in regularly to check up on things. Sirius was no better than a teenager himself, and Gaara could be oblivious about the strangest things, and Harry sadly did not appear to have inherited his mother's level head if the tales floating around the school were true.

Remus took a moment to sigh as he came to the realisation that he would soon be the guardian of three children with no common sense between them.

OXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXO

Spirits were high nearing the end of term, the boisterous students collectively forgetting the horrors that had assailed the school from within and out since September. Classes would end next Friday and everyone* was in high spirits, ready for the Christmas holidays.

(*Angst-ridden tanuki hosts, moody teenagers, and orphans targeted by multiple mass-murderers not included.)

In addition to the pre-Christmas cheer, Hogsmeade was once again playing host to droves of chattering teens. The teacher-to-student ratio had also noticeably shifted after the Dementor attack and renewed fears of Sirius Black striking, so now the students would be constantly supervised around the village. That was the plan anyway, but Lupin had prophetically told his old Head of House that not even she could keep track of that many budding mischief makers out in the wild.

Gaara didn't even bother to show up as the third-years and above set off towards the village. More conspicuous was Harry's absence, for a number of Gryffindors and a few Slytherins who were missing the target of their ridicule. Draco was glad Potter had avoided showing up as he was still susceptible to making the same old crude jokes about 'poor orphan Potter' when he was disallowed from travelling to the village. Even if Gaara wasn't there, he still didn't want to be forced to make such an insensitive remark about dead parents when Gaara was also an orphan. Probably.

Plus, with Gaara being as unnaturally quiet as he was, Draco often had to look over his shoulder to be certain Gaara wasn't standing next to him, so it was never a good idea to say something that might upset his friend when there was always the chance he was somewhere within earshot.

The students were guided out through the covered wooden bridge to take the snowy path to Hogsmeade. Meanwhile, two of Hogwarts' most infamous current sons were making their own ways to the sleepy little wizarding village. This time, Gaara hadn't bothered trying to go out through the proper means and instead was walking out towards the Forbidden Forrest. He was using his time efficiently because not only was he going to Hogsmeade, but he was also going to work out some of his misplaced aggression on any Dementors he happened across. They had hurt his best friend (and scores of others), so he was looking forward to slaughtering a few. Plus is it was the only thing he did in this world that went any way towards satisfying his obnoxiously loud, demonic tenant.

At the same time, a much less invulnerable Harry was sneaking out behind his classmates under his father's Cloak of Invisibility. That was the plan, anyway, but he hadn't accounted for his footsteps showing up in the snow or a pair of notorious pranksters recognising the signs of his incognito travel. Whilst it seemed Death could not find one under the Cloak of Invisibility, the Weasley Twins had no such trouble and they dragged their invisible friend into a secluded area.

The pair presented Harry with the Marauder's Map with instructions on its usage and a promise that he would use it to cause as much mayhem as he could manage. They trusted that he would live up to it since he had already broken so many rules in his short academic career. They were so proud that their brother had fallen in with someone so mischievous and that their meddlesome mother even encouraged it.

There was one more piece of information Harry asked for them to impart unto him, after he activated the map for the first time. He scanned over the entire sheaf of parchment and saw something particularly odd, besides his new ability to monitor the entire castle and its populace; footprints with Gaara's name were walking towards the edge of the map, which was labelled as the border of the Forbidden Forrest. Gaara was walking into the Forbidden Forrest? And what was the second line in his given name, 'Shukaku'? It wasn't presented like a normal surname, stylistically it was different, but Harry couldn't help but ask his seniors about it.

"We saw that as well." Gred said.

"We're not sure what it is, either, to tell you the truth." Forge continued.

"We figured it might be because he isn't from this country. They might not name people the same way there." Gred followed on.

"He's from another country?" Harry hadn't really given all that much thought to Gaara's origins. Hermione had helpfully told him and Ron that there hadn't been a transfer student at Hogwarts in over seventy years. But mysterious entrances into the school aside, Harry hadn't thought at all on where Gaara had come from. In all honesty, he was still working under the impression that if Gaara wasn't actively working with Sirius Black then he was at least a nefarious person all on his own.

Fred and George simultaneously shrugged at his question, which was fair as he couldn't expect them to know any more about Gaara than had already circulated around the general populace.

"Where's he going?" He pointed at the map but Gaara's footprints had already walked off the edge.

The twins looked at one another in a shared psychic moment that most magical experts still doubted was real, and frowned, "He goes out there every once in a while. We don't know why but he usually stays out for a couple of hours and then goes back to his dorm room. He wanders around all the time."