It was stupid o'clock. No one in their right mind would be up at this time on a Sunday evening, not with classes in the morning. And yet, as usual for this time of the month, Ted was conscious.

Oh, he'd tried to go to sleep. He'd gone through all the routines, taking a long bath, exhausting himself with a dorm-room pillow fight, reading one of Aunt 'Mione's incredibly boring books, even getting a bit of warm milk from the house elves. Nothing. All his roommates snored on, completely oblivious, and Ted lay awake, staring up at the dark curtains with a scowl.

Blasted moon. This was all its fault.

Ted groaned and got out of bed, trading his pajama bottoms for a pair of jeans. He wouldn't be getting any sleep tonight, not until nearly dawn. Might as well do something useful with the time, like his astronomy homework. He gathered an armful of books and parchment and padded, scowling, down the stairs.

"Bloody hell," he muttered as he came into the common room. "I hate full moons."

Lexi sat in front of the dying fire, legs pulled up to her chest and her arms wrapped tightly around them. She was in her pajamas, black fuzzy bottoms and a red tank top. Her scar was fully exposed, as it usually was on nights like this. For some reason she couldn't bear to cover the intricate weaving up, it was a reminder that she was still human, that things were only different for twelve hours every month.

Now, her calves hurt, her arms hurt, her joints hurt; hell everything was sore and for the only reason that the full moon was almost here. Tomorrow morning she would head to the ministry, down that godforsaken potion that burned her throat, and spend a night with her insides feeling like they were on her outsides.

"Bloody hell, I hate full moons." Somebody said behind her. She turned, startled that someone else would be up so late.

"You're not the only one," she said to Ted, who walked in with his arms full of homework. "Sorry, I'm normally down here before I get ready to leave for the full moon. Don't mind me, but if you need somebody to talk to I'm here."

"Lex..." Ted paused, at first startled by her voice and then relaxing as he processed who it was. Of course she'd be down here. Of course she'd be up, how couldn't she be? For her, tonight was so much worse. If she wanted to be alone, it felt wrong to intrude but...she had invited him.

"Actually...yeah. Yeah, talking sounds good."

He deposited his homework on a nearby table and came to join her in front of the fire. Despite himself, he found his eyes lingering on her scar. It was both horrid and, oddly, kind of pretty, like unrefined filigree. Did Dad have a scar like that? He must have, somewhere, but it'd be hard to tell in photographs where he'd kept himself so covered up...

It occurred to him that Lexi's scar was usually covered up, too. The only reason he could see it tonight was because of what she wore. Suddenly, Ted was glad that he'd thought to pull his jeans on over his pajamas. Lexi was a pal, sure, but she was also a girl. And girls, apparently, had new rules at Hogwarts that he still struggled to figure out.

"Er," he said, trying and failing to keep his gaze off the scar. "Sorry. I didn't, um. That just now -- that might have been a little insensitive. I mean, I get restless at full moons and can't sleep, but you..." He gave a vague gesture and sighed, frustrated with himself. "Do you need anything? Help? Potions? Aspirin? ...Chocolate?" 

Chocolate could fix anything.

Lexi picked her head up from where she had it resting on the tops of her knees, suddenly wishing she had normal clothes on and not just pajamas. It was kind of weird to be sitting there with Ted, who wasn't in pajamas, but then again, at this point she could care less.

She noticed how he looked at her scar, and how he tried to stop looking at it. Lexi could only wonder what it was that he was thinking about. Being the son of someone like her, well it was rare, and she was curious as to how the curse might have affected him. She saw how restless he got near the full moon, maybe it was a memory sort of thing; thinking about what his dad had to face when the moon rolled around.

"I've already eaten enough chocolate to last me a lifetime, one of the upper years had pointed out to me that it tastes fantastic when it's added to bacon. You know, bacon covered chocolate. It satisfies two cravings at the same time, but I digress." She said, thinking about how she definitely needed to resupply her secret bacon-chocolate stash that she always had.

"Umm, just a quick question. My eyes, they're not going to freak you out are they?" She asked, she took out her contacts at night, revealing the golden-yellow of a typical werewolf. "Because I can grab my contacts and make them green, I know they scare Al... one of my friends."

She caught herself before saying Alice, that would be a weird topic to bring up with Ted. After the whole pumpkin thing in class, it would just be really creepy. Lexi gave him a weak smile, hoping he wouldn't catch her slip up. He probably would though, everyone catches slip ups when they have to do with them or something that happened.

Her eyes? That seemed an odd question. He'd seen Lex's eyes before and there was nothing particularly...oh. Oh. Contact. Right. Ted hummed thoughtfully, holding Lexi's r gaze. He turned his head and closed his eyes. When he opened them again, they'd gone from blue to gold, not quite reflections, but unmistakably of the same origin.

"Color's not a big issue with me," he said, with the hint of a grin. This particular shade felt like an old sweater that still fit even though it hadn't been worn for years. "Actually...when I was a kid, I used to do this all the time. I'd take a mirror to bed and pretend it was my dad, watching over me. Kind of silly, now that I think about it."

Ted gave a self-conscious shrug and angled back towards the fire. The gold eyes would catch its dim light more than any other colo. That's part of why he'd always liked it -- it could turn even the night light into a memory of his dad. Dad. That's always what it came to, during the full moon.

"Look, um. There's something I'd like to ask. You don't have say anything if you don't want to. Change the subject, anything you want. I just...wonder." No more stalling. He swallowed his nerves. "What's it like? For you. When it happens."

Lexi grinned when Ted shifted his eyes to match hers, she'd never really seen anyone else's eyes do that, but it was comforting to know that she wasn't the only one for the moment with the strange eyes. "That's not really silly at all, it's a gift that you have to be able to remind yourself of your dad." She said.

"What's it like? For you. When it happens." He asked, trying not to overstep his boundaries she assumed. In that moment, Lexi realized she'd never described to anyone what it felt like. What she went through, may as well give it a try.

"Well, in case you were wondering, Wolfsbane tastes like battery acid and cranberry juice." She joked, before trying to be more serious. "It's really terrible, to be honest. When it starts, there's this feeling that you get in the pit of your stomach. Like on a roller coaster? But then it doesn't go away... it gets worse until the eventual pain of it spreads everywhere through your body."

She paused, trying to gauge his reaction so far, making sure she wasn't freaking him out or anything. "Then everything changes... it feels like someone is pulling on your face until you have a snout; it feels like your being stretched out and squished together at the same time. After the full moon is over, it's like having mono. You're tired and just all the energy and life that you have in you is drained. I've been told it gets better, but so far it hasn't yet."

Lexi sighed, biting her lower lip and flashing back from her first transformation. She felt so small, and it hurt so much, and there was no one there to tell her it was going to be okay. "But there are some perks, better sense of hearing, better sense of smell... Still, it's a curse, and people hate me for it, but they have to realize I didn't ask for this!" She said, getting worked up.

"I'm sorry, I talk too much. I didn't mean to ramble on like that..." she said apologetically. And she hadn't, sometimes Lexi just got carried away with herself.

After the initial chuckle over the taste of Wolfsbane, Ted went quiet, hanging intently on her every word. No lie, it sounded horrible. Like his nightmares, the ones where his body went out of control and twisted into someone who wasn't him anymore, with nothing he could do to stop it. Only worse. A million times worse. At least the not-him was usually human.

Usually.

"I'm sorry," said Lex, finishing her story. "I talk too much. I didn't mean to ramble on like that..."

"No, it's all right," he said, snapping out of his trance. "Really. I really appreciate it, Lex, I do. Nobody ever..." He trailed off, thinking over what he wanted to say, and backtracked.

"My mum...she left journals behind, things she'd kept all through school. There's pages and pages about our --" He gestured to his eyes. "-- thing. So I never had to wonder what it was like for her. She's the same as me. But Dad never left anything. He never talked about being...about the curse...with anyone, not after he left school. He never even let Mum get near him, around full moons. The only people who ever saw him like that died a long time before I came around."

He stopped, taking a deep breath. He hadn't even realized he'd been bottling that up, but letting it out...that felt really good. He gave Lexi a smile, one of considerably more relief than the thin grins offered before. His eyes drifted to her scar again. His mouth went a little dry.

"One more question. Is that the only scar you've gotten from all this? I mean...the wolfsbane. It tastes awful, but it keeps you from hurting yourself, doesn't it? I'd hate to think of you getting all torn up every month..."

"At least you know what you're going through with your 'thing,' since your mom left journals. I've got nothing." She interjected before Ted continued.

She listened, thinking about how hard it would be to have parents that you never really got to know. It would be terrible to have a mom and dad, but never really meet them. To never be able to hug them or argue with them...

He looked at her scar about it, asking if it was the only one. "Oh, that." She said looking down at her hopeless shoulder, "Well for some reason this will never go away, still I kind of wish the wolf had taken a smaller chuck of my shoulder so it wasn't so darn huge." She said with a small laugh.

"As for the Wolfsbane... well it helps. But being stuck in that creature for a few hours eventually gets to me. I get anxious, and a little violent actually; wolves just naturally need to hunt and fight, but there's no way to do that without taking it out on yourself. So, yeah, I've got little scratches here and there. The first night I bit through my arm," she said, lifting her left arm and showing Ted the pale white bite marks the circled her forearm, almost like a strange tattoo or something.

"The others heal pretty quickly, it's just the bite marks that seem to take longer to go away. Or they might never go away... who knows?" She said.

"What about you, I don't mean to pry but do you get any affects from being directly related to a werewolf? I mean, I can tell you can't sleep tonight, but is that it? You don't have to answer if you don't want to..." She asked, letting the question hang in the air as she waited for him to answer.

"Ah...me?" Ted rubbed his neck awkwardly, dragging his eyes away from Lex's scars and back to the fire. Compared to what she had to go through, his own monthly cycle seemed rather miniscule -- pathetic, really. That he'd complained about it, even worse. Still, she had asked. And she'd already bared her story, so...fair is fair.

"I hear the moon sing."

Lord, that sounded dumb. No wonder Gran'd never believed him.

"You know that thing people do, where they fill up wine glasses and then play music with them? It sounds like that. Only not really, because I'm not really hearing it, technically. I feel it, like it's being played on my last nerve."

"It don't know what it is exactly -- maybe it's what instincts sound like when you don't have the animal to process them -- but the fuller the moon gets, the louder it sings. And you'd think that something like a house or a big stone castle would keep it out, right? But it doesn't. It echoes everywhere. During your actual full moon, I can't even stand to stay in House. I've been sneaking out ever since we got here. You'd be amazed how few prefects actually stick to their rounds after 2 am."

"And it's not like I hate it hate it. The sound on it's own, that's not so bad. But it keeps me up at night, I can't concentrate on anything, and I've always got this nervous energy trying to get out. And then I start getting a taste for rare meat, like, still-on-the-hoof-and-mooing rare. And when I try to change, metamorph-style, it's hard, like my own body's fighting me."

"And then, when it's all over -- poof. No more sound. No more energy. And if there's no class I'll sleep for a day and a half." His hands, which had been gesturing wildly the whole time, fell into his lap. He gave a little shrug. "And...that's it. Nothing bad really. Just...weird."

"I've never heard the moon sing, it sounds nice though. Well... actually I guess that would be really annoying if it's keeping you up at night but still..." Lexi trailed off. That wasn't what she meant to say, where was she even going with this conversation? She should be in bed, the chocolate should have worked and she should be resting before the full moon. But she wasn't.

"And then I start getting a taste for rare meat, like, still-on-the-hoof-and-mooing rare." Ted said, he continued and was saying something else... but whatever it was was lost in Lexi's smile. She would have to remember that when someone asked her how she liked her meat, still on the hoof and mooing. That was just priceless.

"As of right now, I've just classified anything to do with the moon as weird." She said in response to Ted. "It's all crazy and most of the stuff that happens with the moon is so irrational, I don't even get it. But that's sort of fascinating, in a way, that you have symptoms too. I guess I'm just glad I'm not one of the only ones wandering the common room before the full moon."

"The moon is totally weird." Ted agreed with a laugh. "I think Professor Trishna could do an entire semester on how weird the moon is. If he only knew. But...honestly, if it means you don't have to sit up all night on your own, then I don't mind getting kept up. Long nights are better when there's someone around."

He drifted off again, his mind sliding back in time, past Halloween, almost a week. Last Tuesday, the Lost Dungeons. He'd been thinking about that a lot lately.Dessa vanishing into smog, Hunter slipping through his fingers, Lexi facing off against her were-side...those were the scenes that haunted his nightmares. It'd seemed strange to him, at first -- he'd not been particularly close to any of them, going in. But coming out...

"You know...I wouldn't say you've got nothing." He'd been sitting on this thought ever since she'd chimed in about Mum's journals. "You've got Dessa. And Dilly. And Hunter. And...oh, that Lotus-girl, the Hufflepuff. I can never remember her name. And me, if you like."

He gave her grin, thumbed his nose roguishly, and tried to hide the creeping leftover nerves with a laugh. "If there's one thing I've learned from all Harry's stories and the talk of my dad, it's that having friends...that's what makes the biggest difference."

"I'd like that... if you'd be willing to stay up at night. It gets kind of boring down here, and the red and gold gets to be a little much at times when you can't sleep." Lexi joked, nodding to all the banners displayed proudly on the wall.

"And you're right, I have a lot of friends. A lot of really good friends... and I'm glad their all so incredibly loyal because last week... well you were there." She trailed off, shrugging in rememberance of the dungeons they'd been in.

"Are you... umm... are you okay after what happened down there? I never really got a chance to talk to you about it later, I was a little busy dealing with a certain broken and blubbering Hufflepuff we all know and love." She said with a small smile, "What did you see in the mirror? I mean, if you don't mind me asking."

Ted wanted to brush it off and tell her he’d been fine for days, but that wasn’t true. His attempt came out as a nervous laugh. He shook his head. “Ah…to tell the truth, I’m still a bit rattled. That it happened so close to the full moon doesn’t help much, either.”

“The mirror…” Ted hesitated. There’d be a lot of mirrors, in those hidden halls, but only one that showed him something the others couldn’t see. The only one he’d told about it so far had been Neville, and that talk had left him a sobbing mess. He didn’t want to cry in front of Lexi. His stomach squirmed.

“It, ah…it was my Mum. Only not really. She – it – was all rotted and dead, like an inferus. That’s what tried to pull me in.” His tongue traced the faint, mostly-healed scar on his lower lip and he had to hold his own hands to hide their faint tremors. There was more to it than that; horror lurked in the creature’s voice, in its melted skin, in his past and in his future, but that would bring the tears again. He hated to cry.

“Honestly, it was a good thing that you and Dess were there. I don’t think I could’ve fought her off alone.” Ted forced a smile. “What about you? Getting by all right? Yours couldn’t have been easy to face either. And Hunter…how’s she holding up? Did her collar come through okay?”

"I'm sorry you had to see that," she whispered. It would be terrible to never really know your mother, but then to see her all rotted and dead-like. It would have scared Lexi, it would have scared anyone. And by the look on Ted's face, it had scared him.

She tried to copy Ted's smile, keeping the atmosphere somewhat happy, even if it was forced. They both knew how much it hurt each other, how much they had gone through in the dungeons. Dessa, Alice, Ted, and Lexi; they all faced something terrible, but they all made it out, somewhat in one piece.

"I think Alice is... better for the most part. She won't tell me what happened down there from when we lost her to when we found her..." Lexi said with a shrug. She knew Alice was sort of recovering, how long it would take, she had yet to find out.

"As for me, I haven't looked in a mirror since that night. I'm too afraid of my reflection to face what might appear in the glass." She paused, pursing her lips and wondering if she should tell him what she was thinking. It was weird, and probably made her insane or something, but she hadn't told anyone else. "I can hear her, taunting me. Just randomly when I'm alone I can hear her. Honestly, it scares me. And... I just... I don't want to end up like that. All scary and bloodthirsty."

Bloody Hell, Lexi was going to start crying. She didn't cry in front of others often, preferring to hold all of her emotions inside and not letting them show to anyone. But her eyes glistened with the unshed tears that she was trying to hold back as she turned from Ted and looked into the fire.

"Sorry 'bout that," she said softly, avoiding talking to loud at the risk of her voice cracking. "I don't really mean to dump all of my problems on you."

"It's all right." Ted's voice was equally soft as they sat parallel, both staring into the fire. A worn timber broke with a soft crack, sending sparks up the flue. The falling wood-shards brought back memories of the mirror he'd smashed, of the scream. His mother's scream.

He wrapped the memory up tight and tucked it away in the corner of his mind. A faint silence fell between them, both stewing in their own thoughts. The heavy atmosphere'd be unbearable soon. They needed to break free.

Ted contemplated his words carefully before speaking to Lexi again. "You're not going to turn into her. You won't become like that. You're better than that. Way better." The smile he offered her this time was more honest and less forced. "And besides, we won't let that happen. Me and Hunter and Dessa and Dilly, we'll be here. We'll make sure you always come back."

He thumbed his nose again, stretched his legs, and leaned back, supporting himself with his arms. He let his head fall back and gave a heavy sigh. "Merlin's beard. Let's change the subject, eh? Enough with the scary stuff. If we let them get to us, they win. How's your homework coming?"