The Dire Wolf

The Great Hall was buzzing with chatter and clinking cutlery, but at the end of a table, a quieter conversation was unfolding.

Ron leaned across the table, eyes wide. "So? How was it?"

Aster glanced at him, chewing calmly, before replying with his usual flat tone. "Thanks for the help. And what exactly do you mean? Me not being able to return to human form, or the transformation itself?"

Ron paused, fork halfway to his mouth. He hadn't thought Aster would call him out like that. "Er… the transformation?"

Aster tilted his head slightly, expression unreadable as always. "Hmm."

He shifted his gaze down the table, scanning for Harry or Susan. Neither were there yet, odd, considering Harry was usually among the first to breakfast.

Still, Aster answered, "It was weird. Walking on all fours. The senses were… overwhelming. I could hear hearts beating, feel vibrations in the ground. Smell things from far away."

He took a sip of pumpkin juice, then added, without looking up, "Like Mione's shampoo."

Hermione, mid-bite, choked on her toast.

A few students nearby turned to glance at them. She coughed and turned bright red.

"You—! That's not—" she sputtered, then glared, not quite sure if she was angry, mortified, or something else entirely.

Aster just blinked slowly, unbothered.

"I said it was a wolf thing."

Ron snorted. "Right. Wolf thing. Sure."

Hermione muttered something under her breath that sounded suspiciously like "bloody idiot."

Just then, Harry appeared, looking slightly out of breath, Susan following close behind.

"Sorry—ran late," Harry mumbled, sitting down across from them.

Susan nodded briefly at Aster, then immediately turned her attention to the owls now swooping in overhead with the post.

Hermione was still pink-faced, trying to focus on her porridge.

And Aster? Aster just smirked, a full one this time, showing the faint glint of sharp teeth.

A little more human today than yesterday.

And just a little more wolf.

Aster leaned in slightly, lowering his voice enough that only their small circle could hear.

"I might know who is trying to get the Philosopher's Stone."

Hermione, already stiff with memory, looked up sharply. Ron blinked. Harry froze.

Aster's violet eyes flicked around the hall before continuing.

"It's the same person Mione and I saw last night… drinking unicorn blood."

"W–Who?" Ron asked, voice cracking with dread.

There was a pause, a silence that seemed to pull at the edges of the table like a breath being held too long.

"Voldemort," Aster said flatly.

"Weirdly," Harry added at the same time, "Voldemort."

Their voices overlapped.

The effect was chilling. Susan's hand stopped halfway to her goblet. Ron shivered. Even the candles above the table seemed to flicker lower.

Hermione, the only one unsurprised, kept her eyes on Aster, as if watching to make sure he was still entirely human.

"How do you know?" Aster asked Harry, tone neither accusatory nor trusting, just curious.

Harry reached up and touched his lightning scar.

"I had a dream. A bad one. I've had them before," he said quietly. "But this one… it was like I was there. I could see someone moving through the forest. Hunting. Then pain, right here." He tapped his scar. "It was made by—"

"Mate!" Ron hissed, eyes darting to the nearby Gryffindors at the table. "Don't say it out loud!"

Harry blinked, then sighed. "Right. Sorry."

"I know you're fine with it," Ron added, "but every time I hear it, I feel like something's gonna crawl out from under the table."

Hermione gave him a look but said nothing. She was still shaken from the night before.

Harry gave a small nod. "So… it was made by you-know-who. And I think it… connected us. Somehow."

"If he's after the stone," Aster said slowly, "then what we saw was him… barely alive. Trying to stay that way."

Hermione nodded, quietly confirming, "Drinking unicorn blood lets you live, even if your body is ruined. But at a terrible cost."

Ron looked nauseous. "What kind of cost?"

Hermione's voice was solemn. "Your soul. You live a cursed life. A half-life."

"And he's willing to do that," Aster said, "just to survive long enough to get to the Stone."

Harry clenched his fists. "Then we can't let him."

Aster didn't speak. But the look in his eyes said: We won't.

——————————————————————————————

The fire in the Slytherin common room crackled quietly, casting long shadows against the green-draped walls. April had brought a chill that clung to the dungeons like an unwanted memory. Aster sat back in one of the leather-backed chairs, legs crossed, Pansy lounging nearby, curled like a cat with a book she wasn't reading.

He wasn't speaking, not out loud. His mind wandered, half in the present, half in the past few months.

He could Apparate now.

He'd taught himself in silence, through instinct and brute will, sometimes guided by Kreacher's grumbles and harsh mutters. But eventually, even the elf had admitted he was no longer needed.

"Master doesn't splinch himself anymore. Small miracles," Kreacher had said dryly, then vanished to resume cleaning.

12 Grimmauld Place had been worse than he'd expected.

Dust and decay, and the portrait of Walburga Black screaming the moment she saw him.

"SEED OF THE BLOOD TRAITOR! ABOMINATION!"

Aster didn't flinch. He walked up to the portrait, stared into her hateful eyes, and then, without a word, rotated the frame so she faced the wall.

She hadn't spoken since.

Kreacher had almost cried with pride. That had been unsettling.

The two of them spent days there, fixing locks, cleaning rooms, burning whatever rotted beyond salvaging. Aster didn't speak much then either. He let the house judge him, let it whisper its memories in creaking boards and rusted hinges. It didn't scare him.

But Hogwarts called him back, eventually.

Now here he was again, home and not-home. Sitting beside Pansy Parkinson, the one person in Slytherin who had started seeing him, rather than fearing or flattering him.

Across the room, a group of third-years hushed as he looked their way.

Roughly 20% of the House had fallen into his quiet orbit. Not through fear. Not through charm. But because power respects power, and Aster had learned to project it without lifting a wand.

He could have broken Draco. Publicly. Humiliated him into submission, dismantled his paper-thin control of their year.

But he hadn't.

Beating Draco wouldn't teach Slytherin anything worth knowing. And deep down, Aster suspected that Draco was more useful whole than shattered. He was an arrogant child still, but not beyond influence. Not yet.

Pansy finally spoke, dragging a finger down the spine of her book. "You're brooding again."

"I'm thinking."

"Same thing, with better vocabulary."

He gave her a glance, one of those unreadable Aster looks that might have meant he was amused, or merely awake.

"About the house?" she asked, more seriously this time.

He nodded once.

"It's quiet now," he said. "Not empty. But quiet."

Pansy tilted her head. "You're rebuilding something, aren't you?"

Aster didn't answer.

She smirked faintly. "Fine. Don't say it. But just so you know… people are watching. And not all of them are afraid anymore."

"I don't want them afraid," he said. "I want them ready."

Pansy's brow furrowed, but she didn't ask what for.

She didn't need to.