Chapter 14: 4/5
Gaara wished he knew a violent Katon justu, because simply casting this note into a regular fire would not suffice to quell Gaara's anger at being called Lily again and again. It was bad enough that his ineptitude in magic had been raised so many times, Gaara was tempted to accept Lupin's request just to shoot spells at the man. What stopped him was the knowledge that what the note said was true, the spellcasting part. He would still need to get retribution for the nickname, though, and he excelled at retribution like few others.
The matter of Pettigrew, on the other hand, was problematic. Gaara had yet to see the man-turned-rat and that was the problem. He would have no problem acquiring the rat once he was within sight, his sand being handy like that, but the thing had apparently been hiding out somewhere. The proud shinobi would be damned if were to allow himself to sink as low as to spend his days searching for a hidden pet. He'd heard Konoha shinobi joking about having had to catch a cat as Gennin (honestly, who would assign trained ninja to track a pet down...), so he'd be the butt of everyone else's jokes if he actively searched for the rat. And it was Sirius' problem to deal with, being framed and all. He'd help if he could, but he wouldn't make it his life mission to fulfil someone else's revenge. There was that... and he'd tried in the Gryffindor common room one day, having snuck out of his lesson for a little while, and couldn't find the little rodent. It hadn't been on the Weasley boy and it hadn't been in their room so he was stuck for ideas on where it could be hiding. But other than that, it was in ideological opposition to him to search for Pettigrew.
Gaara went back to the common room and cast the letter into the fire along with some old homework he'd mixed in. The foreigner still didn't quite understand the limitations of magic, but he thought such a precaution should stop anyone from reconstituting the letter from the ashes, and he'd scribbled all over the sheet before hand and ripped it up as well. After he was done watching the paper disintegrate he shifted the ashes around to mix them up and turned around. Snape was standing in the centre of the room looking almost as angry as the other day, but this time he seemed to be focussing on the caretaker. Apparently someone had jinxed the heating for the dormitory and it couldn't be undone for another twenty-four hours. They couldn't even use magic to cool the room down because the castle prevented such spells to prevent pranks...
Moving swiftly around the room, avoiding Snape at all costs, the borderline delinquent was about to vacate the room when he remembered what he had done to Draco a few minutes before. As Snape began to turn towards the entrance he was now occupying, Gaara considered leaving Draco there for an hour or so, in the baking heat with possibly limited oxygen, seething with anger. With slumped shoulders at his own reluctance to let people die, even for noble causes like avoiding Snape, Gaara descended back down the marble steps to return to his room and free Draco and possibly revive him or hide his body.
"Move out of my way, freak!" Gaara wasn't in his way, clearly standing to the side of the staircase to avoid trouble, but irrelevant facts like that were hardly important when Snape was angry. "Don't you have someone's life to make miserable? Or are you finally going to put some effort into learning so you don't remain an incompetent waste of magical power worse than Potter? You disgust me."
Thinking his options through, all too briefly hindsight offered, Gaara drew his leg back and kicked Snape's own from under him causing the potions master to fall flat on his face. The attacker continued on his way promptly, wishing to avoid whatever scathing remark or painful spell Snape would wish to cast his way. As he turned a corner, something that might have been a blasting curse hit the wall leaving a sizable dent. Gaara decided he was probably lucky to be banned from Potions for the foreseeable future as he would be in definite danger if he attended.
Back at his room, he recalled his sand back into his calabash gourd and considered whether an apology written down was worth the same as one spoken directly to the injured party. Draco, down to his underwear, sweating and chest heaving laboriously, laid out on his back looking dazed, could only summon the energy to turn his head and flash a contemptuous look before turning back to the ceiling and trying to regain his breath. The merciless weapon stepped over Draco and opened a window, walked back to the door and turned to the half-dead Malfoy and gave a short bow before exiting the cooling room.
So, he would now have to avoid Snape AND Draco, as well as keeping a reasonable distance between himself and the rest of the student body.
He meant well, but sometimes the best intentions will leave your best friend on the floor trying to stay conscious after being partway roasted.
During dinner, Gaara snuck down into their room, having waited for this brief absence, and left a note to Draco expressing his apologies and his intention to spend the night elsewhere (so that he wasn't smothered in his sleep (not that Shukaku would allow that)). He ended up spending the night in a classroom, sleeping on a soft bed of sand with his protective shield set around him. It frightened the caretaker, doing his nightly rounds, in no small measure to find the ridiculously pale boy sleeping in a classroom with floating clouds of sand hovering around him. The rat that tried to sneak in during the night, sometime after that, trying to avoid Mrs. Norris, was even more scared and considered going back his 'owner' to avoid whatever Dumbledore had let into the school this time.
Deciding to brave the assuredly cold relations he would need to endure at breakfast, Gaara decided to take his figurative punishment and endure Draco's ire the next day. Frankly, Gaara thought sleeping on his sand all night, or the few hours he was actually able to sleep, was punishment enough. He could have stayed up, but he had no books to read and it was too cold outside to practice. Draco, unsurprisingly, was more than irritated; he shot more than a few spells under the table at the Jinchūriki, though Gaara was unaware of this at the time because his sand acted automatically out of sight and out of mind. By the time lessons rolled around, Draco was happy to sit at the other side of the room to avoid Gaara who he considered to be little more than an enemy at this point. Gaara had knocked him out, kept secrets from him, sent dangerous spells his way, almost strangled him, alienated him from his peers and family, and now he'd almost killed him again. And he still hadn't opened his parents' letters. If he didn't soon then he probably go back into Gaara's sand chamber willingly.
In all but one lesson, Gaara was saddened by Draco's sudden distance but couldn't blame his friend. He hadn't really mastered the whole socialising thing yet and, to him, encasing a boy in a cocoon of sand wasn't all that bad, really. He'd have to work on that if Draco ever forgave him. Or if he ever got home and made friends there. On the other hand, the one lesson he wasn't so sad to be alone in was DADA, and that was because he had to swallow his pride and ask Lupin for his help, which certainly didn't need witnesses. What also required no witnesses was when Gaara snatched Lupin's wand from the man's pocket with the intention of withholding it until their lesson in two day's time, after curfew. It was petty revenge, but it was the best he could come up with on the spot.
Now, Lupin wouldn't usually ask a student to break the rules, but Gaara didn't really fall into any categories, much less the rule-abiding kind. However, his expectation of Gaara's rule breaking didn't reach to wand stealing so he was more than a little worried when he couldn't find it where he was certain he'd left it. He spent the remainder of the day hoping desperately that no situation would arise that needed his wand. It was humiliating for a wizard his age to lose his wand, what's more, a teacher of his subject losing his wand. He'd have to make sure Sirius never found out. On the second day, Lupin began to try and whittle down the list of potential suspects of who could have stolen his precious wand, as, by that point, he came to the conclusion that theft was the only way he could have lost it. There was Snape at the top of the list, then the Weasley twins, then the collective Slytherins who hated him for not being a pureblood and not discriminating against the muggleborns. Really, now that he thought about it, the only people he knew hadn't taken it were McGonagall, Dumbledore, Harry and Gaara; the people he trusted. Further thought brought the werewolf to the possibility that Sirius might have been involved, but that was derailed as Sirius hadn't been anywhere near him when he lost it, but there was always a small part of Lupin that would immediately look in Padfoot's direction when something went awry. It was a survival instinct.
Whilst the man worried about his reliable wand, Gaara made his way out into the woods carrying a large slab of unidentified meat he'd stolen from the kitchens. He hadn't ever seen a house elf before and he hoped he never had to see one again. Apparently the odd little slaves were human enough to instinctively fear his presence, going so far as to hide when he came near, and animal enough to venture towards him intermittently before running away again. With over fifty elves running to and from him with looks of fear and curiosity in their oversized eyes, the ordeal wasn't pleasant. Then the look of terror when he told them he was taking one of the big slabs of meat from fridge. They all screamed and tried to escape, some even teleporting away. He might have licked his lips when he looked at the meat, but that was just because he hadn't eaten very much for breakfast, trying to avoid Draco's furious eyes and all.
The weather outside was cold but dry, remedied by a few extra layers, and Gaara was supposed to be in the library doing self-study to bring his potions abilities up to the standard where it would be safe enough to let him back into the classroom, where the rest of his year group currently were. The walking disaster area didn't think he would be safe in the vicinity of Severus Snape for some time, potions abilities or none. His free time and boredom with rereading the same Potions textbooks was what led him to making this impromptu trek back into the Dark Forest again. And though this was certainly the most leisurely stroll he'd taken into the woods thus far, it wasn't without minor problems, as a skulk of foxes had taken a fervent interest in the meat he was carrying. The ravenous pests were persistent enough to force him into using shunshin to escape. Usually he would have fed a hungry family of animals, but ever since the Suna-Konoha war, he'd born a small grudge against foxes, giant or normal.
With the use of the teleportation technique, he arrived at his destination, heralded by the happy barks of three dog-heads that had apparently smelt him coming. He didn't know why they were excited to see him, after having met him once; but then, they might have just smelt the giant piece of meat he was carrying with him. Gaara had thought about getting some dog biscuits for them instead, but they seemed woefully inadequate to give to a dog (dogs?) that size.
While Gaara was off feeding and playing with a stray dog, Draco was sat in Potions trying to avoid Snape's wrath as the grumpy bat limped around the room almost snarling at his students one by one. Harry was unhappy to note that Snape was centring his disdain on him again, which wasn't a particularly happy return.
Now, Draco was still more annoyed than Professor McGonagall when offered catnip by drunk seventh years, but he was also now terribly lonely seeing as his old friends had still deserted him and now Gaara was (rightfully) avoiding him. He was sat on his own at the back of the Potions room, wallowing in self-pity for his lonely state for over an hour. He glanced across the dim room to his housemates, the ones he didn't now hate for their betrayal and/or bigotry, and came to a decision that he wanted them back, his friends and status as unofficial head of the house (in his eyes only). Even if it would be so much harder to achieve now that he couldn't bring himself to hate the muggleborns (for their blood purity at least) and because of his irrevocable link to Gaara despite their current disagreement on how to treat living creatures, especially living creatures they are currently rooming with; he would regain what he'd lost.
That situation with Gaara would need to be dealt with at some point, too, and recently he'd been hankering for some mischief. Once upon a time, when he was feeling the need to cause trouble, he'd probably insult Potter or his friends to get a rise out of them or cause trouble for a teacher by complaining to his father, now, however, he wanted something a little less antagonistic and little more juvenile. He'd have to keep check on this desire lest he turn into another Weasley twin. The heat had been dreadful even after he got out of the Sand-Ball of Death and everyone knew that a prank against the noble house of Slytherin was undoubtedly the work of those two ginger menaces.
Draco's retribution against the other, single, red-head who'd wronged him would have to wait a little while as he wanted to go flying with his team and he had just conjured up a plan on how to achieve that and make the Weasleys pay for their insult. It would also make Potter angry, which was always a bonus.
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"The key's not working."
"What?"
"Yeah, what do you mean 'the key's not working'?"
"I'm saying it's not working. It won't fit in the lock."
"Rubbish, pass it here, I'll try it."
"Be my guest."
"...the key's not working."
"I told you so."
"Well why's it not working, then?"
Harry watched as Fred or George tried to open the broom closet where all of the Gryffindor Quidditch supplies were held, including their brooms, only for their key to once again fail. It didn't make sense, it was definitely the same key and no one could change the locks without unlocking it, and these locks were meant to be spell-proof for all intents and purposes. It was so not fair. Harry had been waiting patiently to go out and practice, enduring all of the week's indignities and now his one safe haven was being taken from him. If they didn't get this sorted soon enough, Slytherin would be sure to slither in and take the practice slot and Gryffindor would have to wait until next week for another, maybe even later. They could only hope that Slytherin didn't find out about this.
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"Flint."
"What is it, Draco?" The upperclassman asked testily, even using the boy's first name as a mark of disrespect after recent events.
"Get the team together."
"Where do you get off telling me what to do?" The buck-tooth boy sat up straighter on the Great Hall bench as his arm twitched eagerly towards his wand.
"The Gryffindorks won't be making it to their practice on time today so we'll steal the slot and get some much needed practice. I'd have thought you of all people would want to take this last chance to best Wood in the House Cup."
"How do you know they won't make it to practice?" A raised eyebrow was all the sign of hope that Flint would share with Draco, but his fingers were no longer itching to grasp his wand to teach his House Seeker a lesson, so the boy took it as a good sign.
"I've ensured it in the proper Slytherin way, of course. It's all ours if we act soon."
A large yellow-toothed smile spread across his face, "I knew there was still hope for you, Malfoy. Go get Higgs and Pucey from the common room."
Without another word, Draco moved on, knowing he was being shown some (very) rare kindness from the captain as Adrian and Terence were the only two players on the team that wouldn't hex him if he tried to talk to them outside of practice these days. Though Terence wouldn't be too happy to see him either, considering he stole his spot as Seeker last year and he'd never quite forgiven Draco for it. It didn't escape Draco's notice that Flint had been even kinder by allowing him the chance to regain some favour in this way. It wasn't beyond the captain to sabotage his attempt at redemption, at the cost of extra practice time, if it meant causing someone suffering. Marcus Flint had never even really cared for winning in Quidditch, he was more about the sadistic joy of watching Gryffindor's falling to the ground.
Luckily, both of the fairest players on the team, other than himself, were quick to follow once he explained what was going on. Draco was pointedly fair when playing (most of the time) because he didn't have to cheat to win, except when he was facing Potter, but his pride still wouldn't let him cheat against the Gryffindors, despite the scathing looks he had received from his teammates the few times they had lost to Gryffindor. By the time Draco, Pucey and Higgs got onto the field, the rest of the team had arrived and were laughing among themselves at their having stolen a practice spot. The elation hit a peak when they spotted the Gryffindors arrive without their brooms and then leave swiftly again when they saw who had profited from their trouble.
As the team mounted their brooms, all in high spirits, Draco did a swift circuit of the field and threw the new key to the Gryffindor broom closet out into the fields surrounding the stadium. He figured it would take at least another hour until they bothered checking with Filch, who would tell them a small blonde 'Gryffindor brat' had asked for the locks to be changed because they'd lost the keys. Now that he'd gotten rid of the evidence, Draco laughed at the image of Filch refusing to change the locks a second time in one day and threatening them with barbaric punishments for wasting his time.
Flint announced that he wanted all of the positions practicing together, including substitutes, for the hour. This was the captain's not-so-subtle hint that he would be shifting the starting line-up if the regulars disappointed him. It was also Flint's way of telling Draco in particular that his ticket onto the team, the Nimbus 2001s, was now expired and he'd have to earn his keep to remain. And from the big smile of Higgs' face, Draco wasn't the only one to pick up on this. The balls were released and everyone began.
Out in the stands, Gaara watched the Golden Snitch race around under everyone's noses. It often amazed the shinobi, how many of his ninja-honed skills were useful in wizarding situations. For instance, along with the instincts developed to track fast moving shiny objects (typically pointy weapons), Gaara was also well versed in keeping secrets, which now helped him to avoid drawing his housemates' attention. If his house found out that he could see the Snitch at any given time, they'd undoubtedly pester him into joining the team. And he just couldn't do that. Playing games was beneath him, and he would essentially be taking Draco's spot, but above all he would never jump onto one of those flimsy pieces of wood and fly hundreds of feet into the air. Not for a game. Not in this lifetime.
Meanwhile, both Draco and Terrence were still in their starting positions, trying to catch a glimpse of gold. Draco scanned everywhere he could, occasionally glancing back to his opponent to see if he had spotted anything. Then, suddenly, Terrence flew downwards in a burst of speed that left Draco stunned momentarily before following him. Now that they were both following the same path, Draco saw the Snitch flying out near the base of one of the stands and tried to catch up to his counterpart who was still a ways in front of him. Pushing forward to his top speed, Draco still wasn't head to head with Higgs. The Snitch didn't sit idle either, flying up to the top of the stands and darting out into the centre of the pitch, among the other players, all the while being chased by both Malfoy and Higgs.
While Higgs was definitely the superior spotter, Draco was the better flyer of the two, and by the time the pair were in the middle of the pitch, Draco had pulled out in front and was not losing his lead any time soon. Then came the Bludgers; Derrick and Bole had been beating them back and forth until now, but as Malfoy came into sight, an opportunity to get rid of a budding blood traitor also appeared. The two then set their sights on knocking their younger seeker off of his broom. So, Draco had to stay ahead of Terrence, chase the Snitch and avoid the barrage of bludgers that he noticed were only being hit towards him. But still he didn't falter, even when he felt a Bludger brush the top of his arm, perilously close to breaking his arm like a certain inferior Gryffindor seeker.
The Snitch began to fly towards the goal posts that Flint was milling around, watching his team practice and cheat. Flint didn't see the Snitch, so when he saw who he had believed to be his weaker Seeker, flying towards him at top speed, with Higgs following quite a distance behind, he was a little shocked, to put it mildly. He'd been glancing towards his Seekers all practice and Draco was flying better than he had ever before. Whether that was because he was maturing into a teenager, or because he had been practicing during the summer (or all of the above plus regular workouts with a sadistic, fitness obsessed roommate), Flint didn't know but either way he was doing much better than Higgs, who was lagging so severely he would rather lose both Seekers and recruit an entirely new one than bring back his old seeker. It seemed that Terrence had been spending the last year wallowing, or doing his schoolwork, and hadn't been practicing at all.
All who saw it were amazed when they witnessed Draco Malfoy, the boy who had had his father pay his way onto the team, presumably following the Snitch, slip off his broom going at top speed and follow the black Nimbus 2001 through the Quidditch Hoop and then pull himself back on to his broom before spiralling around the base of the hoop. Many jaws were slack as Draco landed on the ground and held up the Snitch along with a supremely smug look.
Well, he wasn't going to be cut from the team any time soon and Gaara would never, ever know that his hellish training over the last few weeks had helped him. Never!
Gaara watched and smiled as several other team members landed around Draco and stiffly complimented him. He would have to continue those little exercise routines with Draco. Who knows, maybe one day he could pass for physically fit, rather than the lazy aristocrat he was before.
Back on the field, most of the players hopped back on their brooms and resumed practice after they had given their obligatory congratulations. However, Adrian Pucey stayed on the ground to discuss Draco's performance with enthusiasm seldom seen inside Slytherin house. Even Miles Bletchley stayed around to talk to Draco, who was ecstatic to have people to talk to again, and even better was that they talked back. The rest of the practice was as exhilarating as the first half, and the satisfaction that came from mocking the Gryffindor team about the loss of their much needed practice time was brilliant as ever. Even better, still, when they tried to pin the blame for the loss of their practice slot on Draco only for Flint and the rest of the team to back him up.
And then things escalated when passing Gryffindors and Slytherins started to argue about which side were the liars. Soon enough McGonagall and Snape were breaking up what could have soon turned into Hogwarts' first full-blown riot in years. All of the participants had house points deducted, though some noted Gryffindor seemed to have come out of it worse off than Slytherin.
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One thing could be said for the bigoted and hateful majority within Slytherin, they were certainly interesting to talk to. Whether they were discussing politics or how they planned to beat up dirty-blooded underclassmen, they were engaging from beginning to the end. The moderates, those that didn't share these same ideals or the same pure blood, were definitely not up to Draco's standards in social interactions, for the most part. Sure, one could count Theodore Nott as a moderate of sorts, seeing as he held everyone in equal contempt, and thus was not opposed to, when unobserved, conversing with Slytherin's second biggest pariah of recent months about how detestable certain people were and how incompetents should be flayed alive, but those moments were rare as even Nott wasn't willing to earn the same status by associating with a potential blood traitor, and none of the other interesting people would even talk to him. So, Draco had to talk to people like Tracey Davis and Roy Norbel, and when he was in the mood to converse about Quidditch he could seek out Bletchley; but he was still discontent.
However, as Tracey told him about her muggle mother's cooking, he found himself wondering why he'd once thought muggle borns and half-bloods should be purged from Wizarding society. Now, Draco still wasn't one-hundred percent sold on muggle-borns being taught in the same schools as full-blooded witches and wizards who had been inducted into the world of magic since their births, but he was a long way away from his old views. Draco would have liked to have had a mother who liked to cook for him, but he knew his own mother would never do house-elf work.
And now that his mind had drifted onto his mother, the ever-present problem of the pile of assuredly angry letters he'd received also jumped to his mind, haveing received another in the morning post. He needed to open them, and then it struck him, how he could lessen the blow. He would prank Gaara for revenge, thus equalising the status quo between them and allowing them to be friends again, before reading them. Good news before the bad.
"Hey, Draco, what's Gaara actually like?" Roy said out of the blue, "I mean, no one actually knows anything about him and since you two are, like, you know, friends, I figured you could tell us some stuff about him. Maybe if people knew who he was, they wouldn't be so afraid of him."
Draco doubted it, but who knew. Plus he didn't know anything either, not really, so there was no real danger of disclosing any of Gaara's well-kept secrets. "Gaara can't talk and he's inept at magic. He's strong, in a muggle way, and he likes to read."
There was a collective pause as his small group of listeners were either letting that titbit sink-in or were waiting for Draco to continue with something juicier that wasn't already public knowledge. When it became apparent that the moderately prejudiced aristocrat was finished sharing, a collective sense of disappointment washed over them and Davies was first to air hers, "Um, Malfoy, isn't there anything else you could tell us? We just... want to get to know him better."
"Well, he's very quiet, you know; there's really not much to tell. Gaara can be dense from time to time, and accidentally hurts people sometimes. I mean, he almost cooked me alive the other day, but-"
"Wait, what!?"
"Oh, no, it was an accident. I still haven't talked to him, though that selfish prick hasn't even apologised." And now he was forced to socialise with these dreadfully boring individuals over breakfast; though, that didn't mean he wouldn't be polite and tactful about it.
"Really? He sounds even scarier in person."
"Yeah, is it true he-" Norbel's surprisingly keen eyes had apparently spotted the Devil of which they had been speaking appearing at the entrance to the Great Hall. Roy's stare was followed swiftly by everybody else at the table, minus Draco; all of whom not-so-subtly gawked at the boy they'd just been gossiping about. Draco steadfastly ignored his soon-to-be-friend-again-pending-childish-revenge while the others tried to tone down their gazes to acceptably inconspicuous levels.
A clearly uncomfortable Ichibi Jinchūriki sat down on his own, away from the indiscreet gapers and Draco, and began to eat heartily, having stayed out all night again and not having slept a wink. Gaara had spent the cold dark hours in the school's library continuing his research and rereading 'Speechless Spellcasting and You: A Beginner's Theoretical Guide' in preparation for his fast approaching supplementary lesson.
Munching on dry toast, Gaara noticed that Draco, while still avoiding and flashing him venomous glares from time to time, also occasionally let slip a terrifyingly familiar gleam of mischief that he'd long since learned to avoid whenever he was within a hundred miles of Konoha for fear of orange hair dye or buckets of glue and feathers. It wasn't just his dignity Gaara wished to protect, as important as it was, but also the well-intentioned prankster's health, Gaara having concussed the 'Number One Hyperactive, Knucklehead Ninja' on more than one occasion in evading one of his ill-conceived practical jokes. That this humorous monstrous evil had followed him to an entirely new world and a new blond was testament to Gaara's justifiably paranoid behaviour. Whatever Draco was planning, the probable target would be keeping his pitch-rimmed eyes firmly open.
Meanwhile, the assuredly insidious plot was already beginning to take form in Draco's vindictively focussed mind, and, if all went according to plan, it would be the most poetic of justices. But first the heir to the noble Malfoy family needed to contact his exotic Wizard's-furniture dealer.
Later that day, an uneventful dinner, following a largely uneventful school day, finished with Gaara in a serious rush to increase the distance between himself and Draco and his rapidly expanding malicious aura. Once or twice the mute had actually caught his roommate chuckling quietly to himself as he glanced over to the presumed target.
He had another hour or two before Lupin finished his work for the night and could move onto teaching Gaara, so the second smallest Jinchūriki ('Kami bless Yagura') decided to do some light dementor hunting in the woods as his after-dinner exercise. He'd gotten nothing but grief from the visiting prison guards and they were a liability, not only to their target, his good friend who was now hiding perilously close, but also to all of the relatively innocent children in the school. Plus he really wanted to kill something, anything, after another full day of sitting down, being told absurd facts about a world he wouldn't be staying in and being treated like an academy student.
As the red-head tore yet another of the cloaked monstrosities apart, he pondered not just on whether if he would run out of dementors at some point but also about if he should be dedicating more of his time to researching his way home or on researching his raccoon-dogthropy. He had considered going back to the library instead of killing wraiths but after weeks of sitting, learning and reading, even the admitted bookworm needed a break. And he certainly wasn't going near Slytherin after what he saw that lunchtime, when he had gone down to find Draco attaching a mysterious letter to an owl's leg; and a cursory glance at Draco's desk had shown he'd not touched his parent's letters. Who did Draco have to send a letter to?
Suppressing a deep shiver from the damning possibilities or the declining temperature, the sand enthusiastic finished his eleventh dementor of the evening and headed back to the castle. He was probably about on time. He would usually examine the setting sun's position to gauge the time but with the thick cloud layer here he would be hard pressed to distinguish between night and day. But then, at least it wasn't raining... He hated the weather in this 'England' place with a passion, and apparently this was the popular consensus among the population. The people in Suna, for their many faults, had come to terms with their climate and some, namely Sabaku no Gaara, had thrived in it.
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