Hermione looked down at the sleeping Harry, his torso was wrapped with thick white bandages. She was desperate to talk to him, to get some kind of explanation from him on what had happened. But Madame Pomfrey had forced him to take a sleeping potion to help speed his recovery. Everyone was worried that the werewolf’s wounds had infected Harry with the disease and turned him. No one would know until the next full moon when he would turn or remain the same.

Hermione could still hear the Aurors bustling around outside, they were flooding the castle. She had been shocked that it was their defense against the dark arts professor who had been the werewolf. His ‘sickness’ every month had been him taking wolfsbane potion to knock himself unconscious when he transformed and isolating himself in the shrieking shack. The wolfsbane made sure that after he transformed he wouldn’t be able to run around and attack him.

According to Lupin he had taken the potion even if it apparently hadn’t worked as well as it should have. Snape was the primary suspect for giving him a fake potion, and both men had been arrested. It was well known that Snape disliked Lupin ever since the beginning of the year.

Harry stayed asleep, and Hermione went to leave. “Bye, Harry,” she said.

She had to meet with the Weasley family now. The arrest of Peter Pettigrew was news that was quickly drowning out the rest of the events at Hogwarts. It was almost as big as Alice and Frank Longbottom’s recovery had been. The Aurors told the Weasleys everything last night as Hermione slept, but now Mr. and Mrs. Weasley wanted to hear it directly from her. She hadn’t even been able to tell Ron or Neville anything yet, ever since she woke up this morning she had been interviewed by the Aurors about what had happened.

She was led to the headmistress’ office where Mr. and Mrs. Weasley sat with McGonagall.

“Hermione, I’m glad your alright after everything I’ve heard,” Mr. Weasley said, “How is Harry?”

“Madame Pomfrey said he will be fine,” Hermione said, “Since it was a werewolf claw wounds they won’t heal properly and might scar. But she said that she might be able to fix them since she got to him so quickly.”

Arthur grimaced, “Nasty business that. I had no idea that Remus was an alpha variant werewolf. Neither did the headmistress.”

“I certainly did not,” McGonagall added, “I would have provided more precautions had I known. Remus wasn’t even aware of the significance of it when I asked him, he assumed that his experience was odd but not too out of the ordinary compared to other werewolves...”

Hermione frowned, “What’s an alpha variant? There are multiple types of werewolves?”

McGonagall and Mr. Weasley glanced at each other as Mrs. Weasley watched on silently. But Mrs. Weasley looked like she wanted to say something but was holding herself back.

“Ms. Granger, you are aware that the first werewolf was created between seven and nine hundred years ago, correct?”

“Yes, Headmistress,” Hermione replied, “It was theorized that it was a failed animagus transformation ritual of some sort.”

“Indeed,” McGonagall said, “But what is less known is that less than a hundred and fifty years ago a second type of werewolf was discovered. The alpha variant you encountered, a group to which Professor Lupin unknowingly belonged. Normal werewolves only transform under the direct light of the full moon, and as soon as they are in darkness for some time they revert back to their human form. A terrible curse that while dangerous to others can be managed by isolating oneself at the correct times. But alpha werewolves are different…”

McGonagall took a deep breath, “You are lucky that you and Mr. Potter made it away from the beast alive,” she said gravely, “Unlike normal werewolves they always transform even in perfect darkness. They grow larger, are stronger, and most importantly have massive magical regeneration comparable to trolls when under direct moonlight.”

“The ministry is still struggling to cope with their existence and forming policies in dealing with them,” Mr. Weasley added, “They are nearly impossible to kill under direct moonlight, even silver weapons only slowing their regeneration and not eliminating it. They are also generally fast enough to escape any area of effect spells blocking the moonlight if they start to feel threatened."

"Certain individuals have been known to take out whole squads of unprepared Aurors on their own," Mr. Weasley continued, "The only thing keeping them in check is that they are so strong that almost no one survives an ambush by them, so they don’t often manage to infect someone… Their bite isn’t always infectious as well unlike normal werewolves where they almost always spread through their bites. There might be only one or two alpha variants for every twenty thousand normal werewolves these days.”

“Arthur!” Mrs. Weasley butted in, “Why are you telling children this? Hasn’t she been through enough? Despite you knowing Remus, he should never have been teaching at a school with children given his condition!”

“What does that mean for Harry?” Hermione asked to interrupt the brewing argument she sensed. Arthur deflated, “We’ll wait and hope he hasn’t been infected,” He said, “If he has, he will have… difficulties in the future. People are fearful of alphas even more than normal werewolves. Like that boy needs anything else hanging over his head…”

“Can… can an animagus become a werewolf?” Hermione asked hesitantly, thinking of Harry’s towering inhuman second form. Was that what he was, some form of strange animagus?

“What makes you ask that?” McGonagall asked, seemingly thrown by Hermione’s out of the blue question.

“Well, uhm. I was just wondering,” Hermione said hesitantly, “Peter Pettigrew, could he, you know. What if the werewolf had managed to scratch him while he was still a rat?”

This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

Everyone in the room grimaced, “Peter Pettigrew…” McGonagall said like it was a curse. “To answer your question, no. As he was already an animagus, the werewolf could not infect him. That brings us to the reason the Weasley's are here… They’ve already heard bits and pieces of the story from the Aurors and the ministry. But they wanted to hear the story directly from you.”

Hermione shifted, “Okay,” she answered. That was good, that meant that Harry was already immune if he was already an animagus, right? He wouldn’t be infected!

“So it all started when I noticed Harry acting strangely almost like he was nervous about something a few days ago…”

— — —

“...So then Harry told me he figured it out using Fred and George’s secret map and connected it to the stories that Hagrid had told him before,” Hermione said, “I caught him at night leaving with the rat in an enchanted cage. He wanted to go to the shrieking shack so no one could sneak up on him while he was asking him questions. I made him take me there with him, and then you know… the werewolf attacked and Harry managed to drive it off after it clawed at him a few times. I set the place on fire and eventually Professor Snape showed up as I… held… Harry’s… I tried to stop him from bleeding so much.”

“Thank you for telling us all of that, Hermione” Mr. Weasley said, “You and Harry have done a very good thing. Given the new evidence it is only time before an innocent man is freed from his unjust sentence in Azkaban. Harry is very lucky that you were there to call for help.”

“Yeah…” she replied uncertainly. Would Harry even have had to fight the werewolf if she wasn’t there? She had been useless in fighting the werewolf, even her blasting curses had barely even slowed it down.

“Well, Ms. Granger," McGonagall said, "That will be all for now, I would go back to your house and recover if I were you. You have been excused from all classes for the day. Not that you will fall behind considering how far ahead you are on your classwork this year.”

“Yes, Headmistress,” Hermione said before leaving to go back to the common room to rest. Harry would be fine, at worst he would have some scars. Then she could finally get some answers on Harry’s big secret.

— — —

“Oh my gosh, oh my gosh, are you okay Hermione?”

Hermione only saw a flash of red hair in the empty common room before Ginny impacted Hermione and gripped her tightly in a hug.

“Erk! I’m… fine, Ginny. You’re crushing me…”

“Oh, sorry!” Ginny let go of her hug, “I had just heard that you and Harry were hurt. I was so worried, what happened, is Harry okay, was Professor Lupin involved somehow? I heard someone say that he was a werewolf, are you…”

“Slow down Ginny!” Hermione laughed slightly as the worried girl kept speaking rapidly, “One question at a time.”

Ginny stopped and closed her mouth for a moment, “Is Harry okay?” Ginny asked after taking a few deep breaths.

Hermione grimaced, “Harry… Harry will be okay. But he got really hurt. I thought he really might… But we got help in time. Lupin was the werewolf that attacked us. Madame Pomfrey said he might get scarring on his chest from where he got clawed. He drove off the werewolf almost by himself while I stood there all useless…”

“I’m sure you did great, Hermione,” Ginny tried to reassure her, “You can’t compare yourself to Harry, he’s already casting what, fifth year spells already? And that’s after he missed a whole year of practice too…”

Hermione nodded slowly. That was true, wasn’t it? She was good, but Harry was above her in wand magic…

“But Lupin’s a werewolf, really? But I thought he was really nice…” Ginny continued, “Scarring can be handsome though, right? So maybe it's not all bad for Harry,” she said hopefully.

Hermione looked down at Ginny and raised an eyebrow. “Scarring is handsome? Where did you hear that?”

Ginny blushed a little, “Errrrr, mom has some books she wanted to hide from me. I was curious, so I hunted them down and found her hiding place under the sink. I read them and you know… the guys in there had big scars on their chests and the girls seemed to really like them.”

“What, like trashy romance novels?” Hermione asked, “Why would your mom hide those?”

“Well, uh. In wizarding books the pictures move. So when they are kissing it can get kinda gross sometimes…”

Ginny trailed off looking embarrassed,

“Oh,” Hermione said, “OH!” Her eyes widened as she understood.

“Wow, Ginny. Did you get caught?” Hermione said, “My mom would freak out if she found out I ever saw anything like that. Although some of the ones in the library are like that too. You can never tell what will be in there when you go too far back in the history section. You are right about the moving pictures…”

“What?” Ginny said eyes wide, “They have trashy romance stuff in the history section? Since when?”

“That place is barely organized,” Hermione huffed, “I’d be surprised if even Madame Pince knows what half of the books in there are about. Not that I’m looking for it, I just stumble across them sometimes…”

“Stumbled across, huh?” Ginny said with a slight smile, “Did you stumble across all of Lockhart's books too? When we first met you were practically obsessed with them. Some of the pictures in those were… interesting.”

Hermione coughed, “Those were adventures! Totally different from what we were talking about.”

“Hmmm, suuuuurrre,” Ginny said sarcastically, “Handsome guy on the front cover going to save witches from monsters terrorizing the town. Not trashy romance at all.”

“Well… well, only a little maybe. But that’s not what it is about, that's just a bonus!”

“Bonus… sure…” Ginny said with a slightly mocking smile.

“Bah, I’m telling you it's not like that,” Hermione said, feeling herself starting to flush. Those books were informational, she shouldn’t be so embarrassed about it!

Ginny just giggled at Hermione a little in response. Hermione flailed wildly to find another topic to talk about.

“H-Hey, what are you doing here, Ginny? Shouldn’t you be in class?” She settled on.

Ginny froze like she had been caught with her hand in the cookie jar.

“I mean, technicccccalllllly?” Ginny said, “But it's just History of Magic and Binns. It is not like I’m missing anything,” Ginny said, “I heard you were getting out of the hospital wing and I couldn’t just sit in class worrying about you and Harry!”

“I- He just let you walk out?” Hermione said feeling a little touched that Ginny cared so much about her that she had skipped her class.

Ginny gave Hermione a flat look, “Hermione. I could set the room on fire and Binns would keep teaching. He’s a ghost, he didn’t even turn his head when I left and just kept speaking.”

“Well,” Hermione said, a little shocked at Ginny’s sudden rebellious streak, “I suppose it's fine, I’ll just give you my notes from last year. If you are going to miss anything that class is the best one to choose.”

Hermione and Ginny went over to one of the couches and sat down across from each other. They kept chatting and Hermione felt a little better than before. She stared at Ginny in consideration for a little bit after there was a pause in the conversation. Girls would like Harry’s scars, huh? Now that Hermione thought about it a bit it did sound a little appealing… Maybe Ginny was onto something there.