Early morning. Breakfast.


Feliks stirred a large spoonful of raspberry jam into his porridge, not really paying attention to the creamy red swirls while he idly reread his notes for a Defences lesson. It was a grey and overcast morning. Many of his housemates were scattered down the long table, waking up over their breakfasts or snatching letters out of the air as owls swooped down from the windows with morning mail. The only difference in the air was a sense of anticipation - it was Friday! The weekend was imminent.

An older student next to him caught a copy of the Daily Prophet just before it could land in Feliks' porridge, and he glanced over to peek at the headlines just in case there was something interesting. But there did not seem much, besides a declaration that today was Friday the 13th, rampant with superstitions and bad luck.

"Oh," the young wizard noticed something had slipped out from between the pages, and quickly ducked under the table to pick it up. His eyes were wide with surprise when he climbed back up to sit on the bench, staring at the flier[1] in his hands. "Eradicate the werewolf threat," Feliks read it out loud, unwisely, in a puzzled voice.

The sentiment did not surprise him. And, glancing down at the rest of the flier, he understood its logic. Except, he did not understand how it had come to be in the newspaper. They were not allowed to say these things, yes?

1.	13th Jan - The Werewolf Threat

     "Well, that's fun."

Zeta looked up from her toast at the sarcastic snip of the Hufflepuff  across the table. They were hid behind a copy of the Daily Prophet, just arrived.

"What now?" she asked. The newspapers were full of horrible things and she hadn't been able to bring herself to stay caught up. She knew she should, what with SAWS and all, but it was a little too much right now, what with her Defense and Astronomy grades as they were.

Her friend lowered the paper and held up a flier with a big drawing of claw marks and bold lettering. It struck her immediately as not what other Daily Prophet advert inserts ever looked like.

Within seconds, Zeta had read it twice and shot up out of her seat like a volcano bean erupting from the earth. Her glare was about as fiery. Her accusatory stare was focused across the crowded hall directly at Feliks Spectre. She could see from where she stood that he was holding a copy of the flier. She wasn't sure why she was immediately pissed off at him. He was basically a bumbling infant who attracted trouble and she ought to be patient with him. Certainly he wasn't responsible for this horrible message. But his questionable behavior towards werewolf issues this past school year made her prickle.

"Eradicate?" Sulwen repeated the word in a low, concerned voice, looking over Feliks' shoulder at the flier.

She glanced at the older Slytherin who'd received the paper, thinking for a second that the flier had been meant just for Feliks. Someone had sent him a follow-up to the strange book. Then she looked around, and realized that a few other students had gotten the flier too.

It made the stack of family letters she'd received feel small in comparison. Sulwen had sighed upon recognizing Grandma Reid's handwriting, but in comparison...

Zeta Pepper was standing at the Hufflepuff table. Zeta Pepper looked ready to hex Feliks.

Drawing back in offense, Sulwen nudged Feliks' arm, "Don't look, but Zeta Pepper is giving you the stink eye."

Greer had left her Transfiguration assignment to the very last minute, hastily scribbling away on parchment while her toast and eggs grew cold on the plate next to her.

Singh would go easy on her, as her Head of House. No he wouldn't! But she could pretend, and they'd just had that stupid class two whole days ago, and it was Friday, and it wasn't enough time to complete everything, and she couldn't wait for the weekend, even though Greyfriar had advised her not to venture too far from the castle and she was behind on all her schoolwork.

It had been a very long week.

When the owls flew overhead, Greer ignored them. She hadn't written to anyone at the Ministry yet, and no one from home had sent her letters yet.

Someone exclaimed over the Prophet and she ignored that too. The news had been depressing and miserable since the full moon.

"Werewolf," a Gryffindor said.

Nervous laughter, more whispering.

Greer chanced a glance up to find everyone staring at her. The whole Gryffindor table.

"What?" She snapped. "I'm finishing my revision here!"

"Grant," one of the braver Gryffindors finally spoke. He slid a flier over to her.

"Now don't get upset or anything."

What could be more upsetting than her Transfiguration assignment? Rolling her eyes, Greer looked down.

Eradicate...

She blinked at the flier, so ugly next to her plate of breakfast. She didn't touch it, didn't put a finger on it. Her quill dripped ink on her Transfiguration assignment, while what little she'd eaten quickly soured in her stomach.

Her gaze shot up, scanning the table. Pubs and streets, not just schools. Someone here hadn't done this, but someone here had given her the flier. Staring at her as if they agreed.

Stunned, Greer scooted away on the bench, knocking into the student on the other side of her. That student slid away from her with a squeal, knocking into another student, and another, and the chain reaction continued until the Gryffindor seated at the very end of the table was pushed onto the floor.

"Hey!" The student hopped up, hopping mad.[1]

1.	Can be anyone! Just wanted to show that Greer saw the flier

“No, they’re like zombies,” Gwenna Trevelyan said vehemently, scowling at the sixth year Gryffindor who was sitting across from her.  Younger student or not, she considered herself Gryffindor House’s resident expert on Inferii, and she wasn’t about to cede the argument, even if it had gotten her banished to the end of their long house table so that no one else had to listen to her argue.

There had been chatter rising throughout the Great Hall, but Gwenna paid it no attention.  Forcefully, she jabbed a finger at the gruesome-looking black and white illustration in their textbook, which showed the head of a man with sunken, deadened eyes and a lolling tongue. 

“You don’t know that they don’t eat brains,” she said firmly.  “And who knows?  Maybe no one’s seen them ever eat brains because no one’s ever thought to offer them any — ACK!”

Like the end of a line of dominos, the student on her right suddenly crashed into her.  With no one on her other side to take the force of the impact, Gwenna found herself tumbling off the bench and sprawling onto the floor.

“HEY!”  In a second, she had bounded back to her feet, looking around angrily for the culprit.

There was an uncomfortable shifting and shuffling around the Gryffindor table.  Finally, a space seemed to clear around the middle, and someone pointed at Greer Grant.

Gwenna gaped at her dorm mate.  Greer had left after her first term at Hogwarts, and no one had seen or heard from her until she’d come back to school at the start of the month.  Now everyone knew she was a werewolf, which was pretty cool, except she still didn’t seem like she wanted to make friends with anyone.

Scowling, she stalked over to her dorm mate, looking as if she didn’t know whether she wanted to cry or shout. 

“Why’d you do that?” Gwenna demanded indignantly, crossing her arms against her chest.  “That was mean!”

What the-? Before Greer knew it, a student pointed at her, and her dormmate was marching over upset, and oh no, not Gwenna Trevelyan. Gwenna was one of the friendlier Gryffindors, and they had to room together, and-

Mean? How the hell was it mean?

"I didn't!" She swiveled in her seat, facing her just as indignantly.

She hadn't meant to! It was barely even her fault! Greer glared at the student sitting a few feet from her who had squealed and moved away so forcefully. Her fault! Then she turned her head to glare at the student on the other side who had moved away even though she hadn't gone near him.

They were the ones who had made Trevelyan fall off the bench, and who cared, anyway? It was so stupid in comparison to the stupid flier!

"This is stupid," she muttered, shooting up from the table and crumpling up her assignment and capping her ink well and shoving her still-wet quill and everything else into her bag.

Slowly, exclamations and murmurs broke out across the Great Hall.

            "Don't look, but Zeta Pepper is giving you the stink eye."

Contrary to advice, Feliks looked up from studying the flier, smiling gratefully at Sulwen and then following her gaze to the red haired Hufflepuff standing on the bench. Why was she looking at him? "That really is a stinky eye," his eyebrows went up, and he raised his hand to wave the flier at Zeta. "Zeta!!" the boy wizard called loudly just as some commotion broke out at the Gryffindor table. "Did you see??"

He hoped she had because otherwise she was glaring at him for some other reason. Feliks wondered if there would be another SAWS meeting about this!

Akira had been happily digging into a plate of pancakes, with a more then generous topping of sugar and strawberries. She had wanted to go for a cup of coffee for breakfast also but another Ravenclaw had slapped her hand away from it, fearing the consequences if she was to do so. So instead she had a nice cup of tea with her breakfast.

Or it was nice until it was spilled by Kūki dropping her mail into the table and flying off in a fly by tea spilling! Then they just flew off to another Ravenclaw for affection and shortly left! How very rude of Kūki! She'd have to go to the Owlery later to deal with them. They'd had disagreements but that was a nice cup of tea! Regardless she opened her mail, one was a sweet supply package from her sister, giving her a few packs of Starburst and Bertie Botts. The second was a copy of the Daily Prophet.

She usually didn't read it, but she had been told a few times that she needed to stop being so oblivious to the world after the report of the Level 4 head being killed and her reply being. "Is that high? As level 4 is pretty early on, wouldn't level 10 be more important?" And so she had started reading the newspaper, although she didn't see why she had to, it was always depressing and there weren't any good articles on sweets. She noticed the flier early on in it and read the weirdly worded thing. "Our schools? There aren't any werewolves in Hogwarts is there?" She knew some had said that the Headmaster was a werewolf, but that was just rumors right?

But then a commotion over on the Gryffindor table! One person was staring angrily at another! Was there going to be a fight? How exciting! She hasn't seen a fight in awhile! She jumped up now full of morning sugar energy to get a better look. It was two girls? Neither she recognized, so not in her year. Or they could be and she just never noticed. But they were going to fight she knew it!

The normally chatty Gryffindor table had quieted down quickly, with everyone's attention focused on the exchange between the two girls. 

"Then why did everyone say you did?" Gwenna shot back, hot-tempered.  Embarrassment was starting to turn her face red; now everyone was staring at her, like they'd all been complicit in whatever Greer did that had resulted in her sprawling on the floor.

It wasn't fair. She scowled.  She hadn't been doing anything, just minding her own business and arguing with an older student, when her dorm mate had decided to make her look stupid and knock her onto the floor.  Even if she hadn't meant to, she still should have apologized.

But Greer clearly had no intention of apologizing.  She stood up and began to shove everything into her bag, clearly intent on leaving.

Gwenna huffed at her.  "You don't have to be such a jerk," she said testily, hugging her arms against her chest.  "If you want to push people and lie about it, maybe you should go sit with Slytherin."

It was only a week into the term, but Noriko was already focused on the plan that she'd laid out with Eirene to ensure that they both became prefects in their fifth year.  That meant seizing every moment that she could to study, even when it came at the expense of socializing with her housemates.  This morning, that meant that she had been alternating between burying her nose in her notes from their last History of Magic class with Professor Greyfriar and reading ahead in the textbook, trying to anticipate what sort of questions the professor might ask during the lecture that morning so that she could be sure to get them right.

She'd mostly been ignoring the growing murmurings around the Great Hall, but it was impossible to miss when one of the Slytherin first years a little ways down the table shouted across the room at Zeta Pepper.  Noriko looked up, confused.  Were the others in her house bothering Zeta again?

"You shouldn't shout so loud, you might lose us house points," she told the first year with a frown.  "See what?"

He had to go and make it worse! What good was her warning if he went and did the opposite? Yes, sit down Feliks, Sulwen silently agreed with the levelheaded older student. There was no way that Pepper would take his outburst as a genuine expression of surprise.

"The flier from today's Daily Prophet," Sulwen stood, plucked the flier out of Feliks' fingers[1], shot an apologetic look at the Hufflepuff table, and handed the flier to Noriko Wakahisa, all in a few swift movements before she sat down again. 

Feliks would understand, wouldn't he? She did it for the good of Slytherin.

"Zeta's looking at him as if he knows something, but it sounds like other tables got the flier too, not just Slytherins," she continued, wanting Noriko to understand the gravity of the situation. Slytherins weren't terrible! They cared in sneaky ways.

1.	Okayed by Nuri!

Her chest tightened, and the huge Great Hall full of students shrunk to the size of a broom cupboard. Trevelyan was still standing there, talking. Wanting something from her. She wasn't going to get it.

Hands shaking, she zipped up her bag, still unable to look at the flier on the table. Who had slipped that flier into the mail? She couldn't think about it. She just needed to get out.

Some Slytherin kid was yelling across the hall. Greer shook her short curls out of her face and glanced over at the Hufflepuff table, catching sight of a very angry Zeta. Greer's stomach sank further. Did she know? Was she upset for Lucinda? Where was Lucinda?

She glanced around desperately, finally looking at the staff table. None of the professors would do this... no... no they wouldn't. No, did any of them secretly hate her?

Greer clambered over the bench, her breath coming quick and shallow. A jerk! A liar! Whatever.

"Nobody cares that you landed on your arse," she shot at Trevelyan, her voice ragged at the edges.

She gave a few tugs on her bookbag that had gotten a strap caught on the wood of the bench.

"But you keep standing here whinging about it, and I'll go wherever there aren't stupid people like you."

Outside! In the cold! Alone!

Tug, tug on the bookbag. The bag came loose, she stumbled back - right into Gwenna's path! - and her face changed for an instant, her mouth forming a little 'oh' of surprise-

Sorry! She thought but didn't say.

     "Zeta!!" the boy wizard called loudly just as some commotion broke out at the Gryffindor table. "Did you see??"

Zeta, who'd been distracted by some Gryffindors behind her, turned back to see Feliks Spectre waving the flier at her.

"What's funny!" she demanded of him.

Someone bumped the bench enough that Zeta thought better to put her feet back on the solid ground. She hopped down and started make her way along Hufflepuff table trying to convince to hand them over.

"It's propaganda," she explained. "Just because some loser with a typewriter and a facsimile spell wants to scare people doesn't mean we have to listen."

As she rounded on Gryffindor, she round that all eyes were on Gwenna Trevelyan and Greer Grant. They looked like they were about to have a row. Gwenna Zeta knew by reputation; some funny stories, but she didn't look funny now. Greer, she'd not met yet, but everyone knew who she was.

"People suck," Zeta said to them, tentatively. She didn't know what she'd walked in on, but she had to assume it was about the hateful fliers.

Everyone clearly cared that Gwenna had landed on her arse, judging by how many of their housemates were staring at her.   The teenaged witch's face was bright red now, humiliated by the attention that she was getting.  First Greer Grant had knocked her over, and now she'd moved on to accusing her of whinging and calling her stupid in front of the entire Gryffindor table.

As if she even knew!  She'd been gone so long that she was barely even a Gryffindor! 

Gwenna knew that fighting wasn't allowed, especially not in the Great Hall when they were in full view of all of the professors, but she also wasn't about to back down to someone who pushed her and called her names.  She let out a low growl, fingers curling into fists, just as Grant managed to yank her book bag free and nearly stumbled into Gwenna in what clearly had to be the last straw.

"People suck," a voice cut in tentatively from behind them, apparently trying to calm the tension, but Gwenna was past the point of letting anyone else intervene in this particular battle.  She gnashed her teeth at Grant, just like a zombie readying its attack, and then snapped twice in her dorm mate's direction, as if she were preparing to bite the other witch's nose off.

"GRARRRGH!" she roared, and launched herself at her housemate.

IT WAS A FIGHT! Akira jumped onto the bench full of energy. This was exciting! A real fight! She thought this only happened in movies but here it was now! Disregarding her pancakes she stood up onto the table itself so that she can get a clear look, its not her fault that she is small and perfectly huggable compared to the other girls, they had stuff in the way of hugs and were almost the same height as the boys! How was that a real hug?

But the fight kept her attention, who should she root for? One girl hit into the other! Who will win? She needed to cheer on! She cupped both hands around her mouth to call out.

"Kick her in the balls!"