Lessons in Lycanthropy

Lesson Two: Partial Shift

March 31, 1999

He woke up to a familiar gnawing in his stomach and he rolled out of bed, cracking his neck and stretching his muscles as he did so. His bones ached. They always did at this time of the lunar cycle. It was something he'd quickly learned to live with the last five months of his life. The pain, the mental switch flipping in his head, and the instincts he had that he couldn't fight were his new normal.

Fingers briefly fluttered over the scarred bite just above his hip, the thing that had changed everything. The thing that turned him into something else, something predatory. Sure, he was stronger now, faster, and was able to heal from most injuries in a matter minutes, but the moonlust, the transformation, and the insatiable appetite once a month put a damper on things. It all still felt a little wrong. And maybe it always would. Though the healing thing? He could get used to that. He'd never have another scar. From now on he'd only have two. The bite, and the faded Dark Mark. Of course that would be the one thing he couldn't heal.

He padded his way to the bathroom and ran some hot water in the sink, splashing his face with it to ease the tension. He looked at himself in the mirror and let his eyes flash the golden hue of a beta. He could at least do that on command now and he tried hard not to preen at the accomplishment, but it was difficult. He was proud of himself but it wasn't all his achievement. He hadn't done it alone.

He should really thank her for that.

A knock pierced the silence, and then a soft voice called to him from the other side of the door. "Draco? I've got the cloak."

He opened the door to stare down into the chocolate brown eyes of Hermione Granger. AKA the only other person in this gods forsaken school who knew his secret. "About time, Granger." He drawled, opening the door wider and letting her in. "I was beginning to succumb to my loneliness."

He didn't miss the roll of her eyes as she passed him. "How are you feeling?"

"Oh, not bad." He replied lazily, dropping down on his bed once more. "Just the run of the mill full moon stuff. You know, the aching limbs, the excruciating headaches, and who could forget the craving for uncooked rabbit?"

"Hilarious, Malfoy." She said, but she was clearly unamused.

Theirs was a tentative friendship. One made out of necessity on his part. The first moons he had spent alone were bad. Very bad. All he could remember was pain, excruciating pain and debilitating fear.

He had figured out what he was a week after he'd been bitten when he suddenly started craving steak. That in itself wasn't abnormal, but the fact that he wanted it rare was. He hated rare steak. Then he'd started getting antsy and wanted to be outside a lot more than normal. He also wanted to be in his friends personal space, which was the last straw. He was a Malfoy. He didn't do up close and personal.

He was just lucky that it hadn't caught anyone's attention. He had come back that year so he, and other members of his house, could prove themselves to be upstanding citizens and help with restitutions their parents owed. He was supposed to be staying under the radar. That was kind of hard when he started wanting to run naked under the light of the waning moon.

Those first two months as a werewolf were hard. He isolated himself from his peers and tried desperately to fight his urges. It was only after she'd found out that things had slowly changed for him. The reasons she was helping him were still up in the air, but he suspected their former professor had a lot to do with it.

He still remembered vividly, the day the friendship forged.

It was just before his third full moon, the last day in January. He'd been irritable and feverish the whole week and was struggling to keep his wolf from showing. He'd given up trying to focus on school work and had opted to hide out in the restricted section of the library instead. He should have known the Gryffindor bookworm would probably have no qualms in venturing into that section at her leisure. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, for him, she'd shown up at a particularly trying time. He'd tried to scare her off with a few well phrased insults but instead of making her run off in a huff, she'd furrowed her brows and stared at him.