Hogwarts Reimagined

Content warnings. Panic, severe pain, possible body horror, injury, blood, self-injury (unintentional), possible depersonalisation, unwilling transformation

Following the revelation of Dudley’s previously-unknown capability for some magic, the small household of the Rookery began to prepare in earnest for the three pre-teenagers to go to Hogwarts in September. Understandably all were nervous and wanted to get it over with as soon as possible, but they had left their final preparations late and the full moon of August 22^nd caught up with them before they could make the trip to Diagon Alley.

Rhiannon became completely reliant on her cane and Hagrid made a trip out to get one for Dudley as their joints stiffened and muscles seized up in the brief period leading from Dudley’s assessment to the full moon. All of the day of the 22^nd they were on edge and restless, too sore to pace and relieve the stress but too keyed-up to rest at all.

Rhiannon would have worried herself sick and Dudley alike for the entire day, had they been left alone. As it was she wore a track into the living room rug until a knock at the door drew her attention. She sniffed and cocked her head, then brightened and hurried for the door with the assistance of her snake-handled cane, flinging the door open so hard she dented the wall with the handle in her excitement.

“Ron!” exclaimed Rhiannon, shifting awkwardly from side to side and then lunging for him and hugging him tightly. She underestimated her own strength and bowled the much-taller boy over, and they both tumbled back out of the door to fall down in a heap on the gravel-and-sand pathway. Rhiannon groaned, and rolled off of Ron to lie on her back while Ron himself spluttered and laughed, though he wheezed for breath.

“Well, at least we skipped the tears this time?” Ron teased as he stood up, then helped Rhiannon to her feet and returned her dropped cane, inspecting it briefly. “Whoa, neat – kinda creepy though, but way cool.” he commented.
Rhiannon grimaced and pushed hair out of her face, then licked a few remaining bits of gravel out of the backs of her grazed hands and spat them on the ground. Ron’s good humour was infectious despite her discomfort, and she managed a wry grin. “Su-suppose so, hey – wait aren’t you s’posed to be at home? Tho-thought your mum didn’t want you around. Es-es-esss-especially with the whole, you- you know. You do know what today is.” said Rhiannon, fidgeting awkwardly with her cane.

Ron’s expression sobered. “’Course I know. Checked the calendar and hiked on over ‘specially.” he replied simply, shoving his own hands in his pockets and ducking his head. “And yeah, Mum’ll be raging – got extra de-gnoming after your birthday, like. But I know you, I’m not leavin’ you sitting here for hours to think like this. C’mon,” Ron finished, gently ushering Rhiannon inside ahead of him.

“Hey, wait up!” a familiar voice called from behind them. Rhiannon whirled around and would have wagged her tail had she one as she spotted Hermione and her parents hurrying up the hill towards them. She hugged her arms around herself, ignoring the ache in her shoulder that had started again from the fall, and shuffled awkwardly in place.

In a few moments Hermione and her parents arrived beside them, a little wind-blown while Ron himself was still catching his breath. Danjuma carried a dish wrapped in a tea-towel that smelled tantalisingly of food, Evelyn a cardboard box. Hermione ran the last few steps to stand in front of Rhiannon, shifting awkwardly from foot to foot. Rhiannon offered the very-stressed Hermione a hug but Hermione skittered away shaking her head, leaving Rhiannon feeling sad and hollow inside even though rationally she knew her friend hadn’t meant it that way. She and Ron, accompanied by the Grangers, traipsed on inside and they all settled down around the living area, Rhiannon beside Dudley who was drawing on his hands aimlessly with a marker.

“Its-its-its-it’s – nice, to see you, but – why? Nn-no-nnnobody said you were co-ming,” Rhiannon stammered awkwardly, feeling a little under pressure. Evelyn waved to someone behind them, Rhiannon turned awkward around to see Xenophilius hovering around behind them. He mumbled something incomprehensible, possible ‘hello’ or ‘welcome’, and then shuffled off into the kitchen where he would be hidden from view. Luna wandered out from the hallway in xir father’s wake, a paintbrush sticking out of his hair and one sock missing as ze settled herself down on the far end of the couch with Rhiannon and Dudley.

“We knew today was the full moon,” Evelyn said, resting her elbows on her knees as she spoke. Her husband nodded and took one of her hands in his, squeezing it reassuringly. “We didn’t want to leave you alone for it,” he added on. Ron smiled a little grimly. “Last time I left you alone was that ruddy great chess set, and well...” he trailed off, shaking his head. “As if I’d leave you alone all day to face this?” he finished, repeating his earlier rhetorical question.

Rhiannon swallowed past a lump in her throat and chewed her already-ragged nails. “I-i-i...” she mumbled, losing her train of thought in a flood of overwhelming feelings. “I- I don’t want... I don’t, want – you, to see that. Don’t want you to see me like that.” she whispered, remembering the twisted human-canine shapes of the werewolves that had attacked her and her cousin last month. They hadn’t been just mindless, they had made it a game and even with Madam Pomfrey’s reassurance that she and Dudley would not turn out the same... That reassurance still couldn’t stop the blood-freezing fear of the little she knew about what she would be forced to become, combined with the memory of that scorched night which was all she knew of werewolves.

Luna reached over and took one each of Rhi and Dudley’s hands in their own. “I understand you don’t want to be seen like that. We’ll stay in. But me ‘n Dad... we sort of figured you’d like your people around even if not at night.” he explained quietly, before releasing Rhi and Dudley’s hands.

Rhiannon bit her lip and returned to fiddling with her cane. And so, surrounded by those who were as close to family as she had ever had, the rest of the day was coaxed away into late afternoon. Hagrid and Madam Pomfrey arrived a little before the evening meal, bringing with them the necessary potions and first aid supplies as well, to Rhiannon’s amusement, as several heavy ropes and a handful of discarded tyres that were abandoned in the garden apparently for the two juvenile werewolves to chew on. Rhiannon entertained a brief hope that Neville might turn up but wasn’t terribly surprised when he didn’t – in the time since her birthday she’d learned his grandmother’s manner had been because she and Neville were at St. Mungo’s at the time Rhiannon and Dudley were brought in, and must have figured out if not outright heard already about their condition.

Both Rhiannon and Dudley experienced Wolfsbane Potion for the first time before dinner. The blue-lilac liquid smelled herbal and sharp and it tasted terrible, astringent and dry in a way that stripped away Rhiannon’s sense of taste and left her gagging and coughing. Dudley was not so severely affected but he screwed up his face and spluttered a bit. It thoroughly ruined Rhiannon’s interest in the meal and she retreated to the couch to fret silently with a wordless Hermione as the sun sank lower in the sky.

When the others were finishing with dinner, Hagrid got up and headed over to Rhiannon. “Got a bit o’ time, but not much. You’ll want to head o’er t’ yeh room and change, somethin’ loose you can ditch off in a hurry – dressin’ gown or the like. I got some blankets worst case, but don’t want t’ make this harder on yeh than it’s gotta be. You too, Dudley – same drill, go on, but don’t take too long about it yeah?” he instructed them both. His manner was steady and calm not unlike it had been when he first met Rhiannon and she shied away from any uncertain movement. It hurt Rhiannon to think that she appeared that way now, but she did appreciate the effort.

Leaning heavily on her cane Rhiannon limped to her bedroom and rifled through her small chest of drawers for something like what Hagrid had described. She fished it out and re-dressed herself hurriedly, abandoning her decoy glasses on top of the drawers. In doing so she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror. The dressing gown was blue around her neck and shoulders and faded to pink at the hem, tied closed with a fuzzy purple belt. Her feet were bare and the scars on her shins and calves showed starkly, as did the newer ones on her forearms, hands and wrists – being intended for summer, the dressing-gown only reached to her elbows. She had finally shed the gauze bandage on her face, leaving the healing wounds there and on that side of her neck bare.

Rhiannon winced and turned away, catching a passing glint of yellow in her own eyes as she did so. Hagrid had said to hurry. She snatched up her cane from where she had hung it on the doorhandle – it tended to fall if left leaning against a flat surface – and ran her hand over the comforting knot that marked where her wand was slotted in behind the snake’s carved head that formed the handle. Then, bare-foot and holding her dressing-gown closed with her free hand, she hobbled back to the living room to face her concerned found-family.

“Do-don’t, don’t watch. Don’t li-l-l-listen. Don’t come out.” Rhiannon said, faltering at first before managing to speak in a clearer albeit shaking voice. She shook her head and refused to meet their eyes, shifting awkwardly, torn between the desire to hug all of them and to run away. Quietly she shifted closer to Dudley, and Hagrid ushered the two of them outside. He picked up a few of the ropes and tyres along with the heavy blankets he already carried, then fell into step with Rhiannon and Dudley and led them down the hill away from the Rookery. It was almost entirely dark with only the last fingers of sunlight left grasping at the hill-country, and several times Rhiannon misplaced her cane on the uneven grass and almost fell, catching herself to cough and wheeze in the stagnant, heavy air. The night was clouded over, the moonlight faint and diffused, lending it overall a claustrophobic atmosphere despite the greater space.

Hagrid led them to a flat space at the base of the hill. “Got Madam Pomfrey a yell away if anythin’ goes wrong,” he said quietly, but Rhiannon was too restless to hear him. The pain in her joints was frantic, burning, a sort of hot ache that was only exacerbated by the crushing heat of the summer night – she had to move, chase it out. She dropped Dudley’s sweating hand, abandoned her cane near Hagrid’s feet and began to stride away, dimly she heard him shout for her to come back but while she could hear him his words didn’t matter like they usually did.

Rhiannon broke into a shambling run but her overstrained joints couldn’t handle her weight and she fell, tumbling forward to crash on the damp grass. Dimly she was aware of the faint moonlight and the crushing weight of the air seeming to grow heavier, crushing her as she let out a ragged scream, she caught her fall with her forearms outstretched and something shifted in her injured shoulder, a horrible grinding sensation of bone against bone where it should never have been. Rhi rolled over on her side hugging the arm attached to her dislocated shoulder, trying to keep it immobile but she couldn’t, her wrists lost the flexibility she needed and her bones lengthened and cracked and shifted beneath her skin. She sobbed and gasped, she would have vomited had she anything in her stomach. Instead she clawed her spasming limbs free of the dressing gown she wore, convulsed and clawed desperately at her own face and neck as her ears shifted place, her skull morphed and rearranged itself that to an outsider would have been horrifying and to Rhiannon trapped on the inside even more so; so deeply disturbing as not only the shape of the bone itself changed but the structures that supported it and the places her muscles attached writhed and shifted back. Her spine and limbs spasmed uncontrollably as they lengthened and changed in their fundamental structure, drawing another helpless cry from Rhiannon; a choked sound that shifted in its’ shape as her larynx did leaving her choking and gasping on the end of it. There was mud in her mouth now, grass and more dirt caked on her skin that lifted away as fur sprouted, damp mud caked between her claws and torn grass tickling the sensitive fur that protected her newly-reshaped ears.

As any could have said, it was painful. But it wasn’t the simple pain that marked the trauma of the whole experience – it was being Rhiannon, keeping her own mind as her body changed with her trapped inside it. Desperately she half-wished in a throwaway moment that she had been denied the wolfsbane, not forced to live through the transformation as herself – the sheer wrongness of it as her body changed shape far beyond the natural limits of a human form. Her hands – if they could be called that - dropped from her face and she clawed at the grass to try and push herself upright as she struggled to catch a breath, her chest was the wrong shape and her lungs refused to take in air, but her fingernails caught and shifted and she couldn’t grasp for anything, left only with claws that she flailed in a vain search for some sort of hold, to anchor her physical form or her grip on reality or both.

At last the shift settled itself, and Rhiannon lay still in the torn grass gasping heavily. She could feel the blood from however many new wounds seeping into her fur and that sensation alone was enough to make her want to curl up and hold her head between her knees but she couldn’t, her new body wouldn’t move that way, all that was left to her was the pitiful keening whine that came most easily to her even in this shape.

As the last vestiges of the change that had torn through every fibre of her body trickled away and Rhiannon’s perception of the night gradually returned, her first mostly-conscious thought was of Dudley. She pricked one ear and fought back a surge of revulsion at the sensation of it shifting against her too-sensitive skull, seeking in the way that came best to this new shape for some sign of her cousin.

A mournful howl split the heavy night and Rhiannon tensed. Stiffly, her altered joints shrieking in protest, she pushed herself upright driven more by instinct than a particular conscious desire. Then she stood on shaking legs, short claws splayed in the churned-up grass and slick dirt to hold her steady. Rhiannon inhaled deeply, taking in the overlapping scents of the tangled August night. The restlessness that preceded the change hadn’t faded, if anything it had intensified – she itched, the sensation growing louder as the pain both of the change and of the last few weeks became a memory. She couldn’t remember the last time she had just run, for the fun of it. Maybe she never had. She lunged forward, straining for the sensation of wind in her fur that she knew running would bring.

Only, running required learning how to walk. From her splay-legged pose she had shifted into an attempt to run like a human would, and Rhiannon now had entirely the wrong number of legs for that. Instead of a breeze, what she felt in her fur – her fur, a discomforting thought – was grass, and more dirt. She groaned and coughed, but it came out more as a low rasping huff. Again she staggered to her feet, this time the changed motion came easier to her than the first but now she was faced with the issue of consciously learning to walk.

With immense caution, Rhiannon picked up one foreleg and stretched it out, wobbling and straining to keep her balance, She placed it on the ground and then carefully picked up one hind leg, repeating the motion carefully. She managed a few ungainly steps in this manner before one ankle twisted, her foot – paw – no longer having an additional digit to support it and thus she crashed heavily to the ground once again only a few metres from where she had begun.

She was Rhiannon Hestia Potter. She could dodge Bludgers and rival players hell-bent on flattening her. She could beat some dirt. With a low growl Rhiannon stood, shaking out the disturbing sensation of the rumble in her throat and again she picked her way unsteadily across the dimly-lit grass towards where her nose told her she had left Dudley and Hagrid. After that single heart-wrenching howl they had fallen silent and worries for her cousin’s safety clamoured at Rhi’s conscious mind.

This time when Rhiannon fell she caught herself, her muzzle connected with the ground and she stumbled into a sort of clumsy bow rather than losing her balance entirely. From there, regaining her footing was easier and she stubbornly resumed her uneven gait, closing in on the two figures who were at once dulled in colour and sharpened overall beneath the diffused moonlight.

Rhiannon’s ears twitched, and the two figures fell still. She wanted to flatten herself against the thin grass, deeply unwilling to be seen in this state, but that would not have hidden her in her changed shape. More careful paw-steps, still picking up each paw individually and a little too high, missing the fluidity of motion that a natural wolf would have had. Before her a small divide in the clouds split to reveal the moon that had previously been hidden, illuminating their hilly surroundings.

Under the moonlight, Rhiannon could see more clearly as she unsteadily approached the others. Something large and off-white in colour gambolled about before her, Rhi’s heart caught with relief as she realised it had to be Dudley. He was fine, he could run – she could run, surely. Again she leaped forward, more confident on her paws but not making the mental connection about the way wolves loped naturally. She tried to run as she had walked, each foot moving individually and for a brief few metres she was fine but then her mind tangled the erratic rhythm and she was once again thrown to the ground.

Rhiannon skidded across the ground and fetched up spread-eagled over a hillock she would not otherwise have noticed, the tastes of dirt and grass now very familiar to her. She groaned and spat, but wolves couldn’t spit like humans did and the tastes clogged her senses. She pawed at her mouth trying vainly to wipe the taste away but instead managed to cut under her jaw with one of the claws she’d forgotten about. Now it was the iron-and-copper reek of blood that was most immediate. Not just from the new gash beneath her chin but the wounds to her head and neck she had been unaware of prior. To her newly over-heightened senses it felt as if it swallowed her and she swiped at her cheek with a forepaw trying again to wipe it away but just as before she hurt herself in trying.

Rhiannon sank to her belly on the grass and whined, forepaws twitching desperately as she suppressed the urge to cover her ears against the wave of claustrophobia that the sweltering night and the sensation of her own blood coating her skin and pooling beneath her fur brought with it. Hagrid turned then, his attention caught by her whine, and Rhiannon vaguely recognised that he said something but not what it was, his voice was too loud in the still air and she lost the battle with her forepaws, then once again clawing and clutching at her ears trying vainly to limit the sensory overload of everything all at once.

Rhi felt the vibration of Hagrid’s footsteps in the earth more than she noticed him moving, his voice lower now but still too loud in her sensitive ears. She whined and flattened herself to the ground, scooting backwards away from him as he knelt and approached her.
“Bloody hell lass,” the giant man whispered. She whimpered again, and he took something from his pocket that glinted in a stray moonbeam. “Damn near took yeh own head off, looks like. Hold still, needs dittany that does.” Hagrid took one of Rhiannon’s new paws in his hand and she growled and retracted it hastily, the touch crushed her fur against her skin in a completely alien way. More slowly she retracted the other paw from where it was mashed against her ear, curling it under herself and raising her chin a little way off the ground so that Hagrid could get at her injuries more easily.

Hagrid worked slowly and carefully, patient with Rhiannon every time she flinched away from the dittany solution that stung on contact and smelled pungently of alcohol. He swatted at Dudley, who stuck his muzzle in under Hagrid’s arm and sniffed curiously at Rhiannon. “Back, ya fuzzy git, go back to chewin’ on yer tire,” said Hagrid firmly and flapped at the dirty near-white wolf-shape that had to be Rhi’s cousin. The wolf – Dudley – whined and scrabbled away, circling round to nose insistently at Rhiannon. She flattened her ears and tucked her paws in, shrinking from the contact. “I mean it, get!” Hagrid repeated, flapping something over Rhiannon’s head – presumably at Dudley. Rhiannon tucked herself in more tightly and Hagrid chuckled a little ruefully. “Unfortunately gonna need you to unroll yerself so I can get at what you’ve done up under your chest there.” he said, at which Rhiannon shook her head immediately and flattened her ears again.

“Ah, fine then, I’ll get Madam Pomfrey to see t’ you when we head back in, don’t seem t’ be bleedin’ to death. NOW yeh can say hello, ya great goon,” Hagrid relented, the last as an aside to Dudley who immediately bounded in to check on Rhiannon. Seeing she was physically alright for the most part, Dudley scampered away a few metres and returned carrying a car-tyre in his mouth, tail wagging proudly as he trotted across the crumpled grass to Rhiannon.

Hagrid stepped back to allow them some space but Rhiannon remained where she was on the ground. Dudley prodded insistently at her with his nose but, forgetting he was carrying a tyre, managed instead to clock Rhiannon soundly around the head with his prize. Rhiannon shook her head and snapped at him, but he skipped backwards and she was goaded into struggling to her feet to be able to reach him.

As before, Rhi ran into the issue of not knowing how to move her feet. This time she managed a few steps before the overthinking caught up to her, and instead of falling she tripped and slid into an inelegant half-bow like earlier. Hagrid chuckled again, and Rhiannon flicked an ear in displeasure at the sharp sound she guessed to be him slapping his thigh.

“Ye’re overthinkin’ it! Stop thinkin’ about where to put yer paws, you already know but you’re trippin’ yerself up tryn’a suss it out.” Hagrid called out over the short distance. Rhiannon grimaced as best she could with a muzzle, and took a few hesitant steps. Dudley, determined to help, trotted around her in a circle with his tail held high, the car tyre still hanging from his jaws. Rhiannon could have sworn he was laughing at her. Dudley dropped the tyre and bounded over to Rhiannon, seemingly losing patience with her baby steps. He sniffed at her and crowded into her space, nosing at her awkwardly-splayed legs – wolf body language was not terribly familiar to her, but she got pretty clearly the sense that he would be saying “Come on, walk you goof!”

Rhiannon snapped half-playfully at Dudley as he overbalanced her and he leaped away, yipping excitedly. She bounded after him and then she was doing it, she was running! Only then she was completely unfamiliar with the reach she achieved in this new shape, and she collided solidly with her cousin. The both of them tangled up and crashed to the ground, Rhiannon more than a little startled and overwhelmed, the both of them play-growling and nipping at eachother as they righted themselves.

“Oi! Play nice, ye little rotters, you’re enough mess already!” Hagrid admonished them, brandishing a drop sheet and flapping it at the pair of them. They both scampered away yelping, but the dam was broken and Rhiannon bounded along easily enough for the most part. Dudley snatched up a length of heavy knotted rope and it swung enticingly just out of Rhiannon’s reach as he loped around her. Rhiannon was shorter than him even more than in human shape, though she was lighter and fitter than he was and once she managed to let go her overthinking she could keep up with him, though never did she manage to wrest the rope away from her cousin given his advantage of weight and power over her.

Rhiannon lost track of time gambolling around with Dudley on the churned-up green at the foot of the hill, their games interspersed every so often with commentary from Hagrid. The pain and exhaustion of the whole experience only began to catch up to her as the first rays of greedy sunlight crept over the distant hills. The wearing-out would have been gradual had she noticed earlier, but so caught-up as she had been it hit her seemingly out of nowhere and she collapsed in an insensate heap. She groaned and gagged as the first parts of the change clutched at her body but Hagrid was there, covering her in one of the heavy blankets he had brought presumably for just this reason. Rhi clung to consciousness bravely but the full-body exhaustion would not be denied and the door of sleep reeled her inexorably in, holding behind it a merciful reprieve from the agony of the change that she blessedly only felt the first moments of before she was unconscious.