Chapter 47: Chapter 12: A New Worry 1/2
Disclaimer: I do not own either Harry Potter (rightfully owned by J.K Rowling) or Naruto (rightfully owned by Masashi Kishimoto) nor do I make any money out of this fiction.
A/N: Shortest chapter yet, but out within a month, so I'm gonna chalk this up as a success.
This is likely going to be the second to last chapter of this fanfic, but worry not those of you who yearn to be kept on the hook for years to come, there will be a direct follow on. Gaara in the Goblet of Fire! Just imagine…
But don't imagine too much otherwise you make me redundant.
Because of various RL circumstances, I don't know whether I will be able to keep up this pace.
Anyway, I hope you continue to enjoy my offerings, which, considering you have trudged through almost 250,000 of my words already, you most probably will.
Edit: I have just gone back and polished a couple of bits but very little substantive changes were made.
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(Last Time)
During the evenings, Gaara patrolled the castle for the rat which was helped by the fact that the House Elves kept the castle pretty clean where Filch couldn't get to, so any rats he was likely to find would either be another pet or the traitor himself.
Sadly he found no such traitors.
Spending hour upon hour hunting for rats in a giant medieval castle was nobody's idea of fun, except perhaps one of the cats prowling around the place.
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With the schism between Gaara and Draco still ongoing, the pair went to considerable lengths to avoid being in proximity to one another. Admittedly, Gaara put a little more effort into this evasion, with his setting up a makeshift bedroom in one of the many abandoned classrooms he had previously stayed the night in.
Classes presented more of a problem, but Gaara had never had the most stellar attendance to begin with, and in those classes where he had to go to, he sat in the back and Draco sat in the front.
Others had of course noticed this tumult, Draco and Gaara having fast become as closely linked in their peer's minds as the Golden Trio. The only thing the Slytherin pair were missing were a catchy group name.
It alarmed almost everybody, this schism, because they had always counted on Draco's cool, collected (and pureblooded) presence to control Gaara, who most still considered something of a bogeyman. In any case, it has resulted in Gaara returning to the absolute pariah he had been at the start of the year, and Draco being drawn closer to certain familiar social circles.
The blonde's moderate friends were around him a lot more now too, no longer warded off by Gaara's intimidating presence. And even some of his more tolerant purist acquaintances had allowed him back into the fold, though of course no longer as top dog.
More than the Slytherins who had been in much more contact with Gaara and knew that he didn't actually eat first years (they were pretty sure…), the other Houses were staying clear of him in light of this current turmoil. If Gaara's handler was absent, they didn't want the violent and potentially dangerous transfer student anywhere near them, so they started to walk on the other side of the hallway or take another staircase if they could.
Amidst all of this, although unable to express it in any sort of helpful or constructive manner, Gaara did acutely feel the loss of his close friend's company. Unfortunately, every time he was anywhere near Draco, that just seemed to anger the blond even more. He had tried thinking of things to say to him, but most of them still referred to the Malfoy heir as an idiot and involved him physically striking the melodramatic aristocrat.
In lieu of anything useful, Gaara spent the time he hadn't reserved for searching the castle, revising for his upcoming exams. He made frequent trips to the Library to swap out books to read up on.
It had become a fun game, finding out what a Ravenclaw or Granger were reviewing and then check out all of the relevant books before they could. The looks on their faces when confronted by the bare shelves was almost a consolation for his other troubles, and it meant he could read the books himself without any gaps.
All this time, Draco was also suffering, of course. The funk from his Quidditch failure had passed quickly enough (it helped that mother had sent an owl following father's, congratulating him on his team's victory and reprimanding Lucius for his pride.) This had just left him with a hole in his life now, where Gaara had been. Gaara had a habit of taking up inordinate amounts of space in the lives of the people around him.
Lonely though he may be, Draco was still angry about what Gaara had said to him, and secretly he was angry that they had fought in the first place and that he was left alone.
Gaara had decided, with term time running as short as it was, that he would forgo the helpful tutorials with Remus since both of their times could be better spent searching for the rat on those evenings. Of course, it hadn't been easy for Lupin cutting Harry's sessions short, but he agreed that they needed to find Peter before school broke up.
Harry had been very upset about the change, his Patronus charm still needing work, but Lupin had felt too guilty about cutting him off so he had agreed to teach Harry during his lunch breaks. For the sickly man, it was likely going to run him down very quickly, especially with the full moon again approaching, but he had never in his life been able to say no to those green eyes.
Of course, not only Gaara and Draco were stressing over the end of year exams. Hermione was spending on average more time in the Library than in her bed at night, and Luna was swiftly moving towards a new record for books read in a single week. She was something of a prodigious speed-reader when the book was the right way up, it turned out.
As two of the more dedicated students, no matter that they were in different years and Houses, Hermione and Luna had ended up sitting together in the Library on more than one occasion. It was always in a companionable silence since Hermione didn't hold much respect for the flighty Ravenclaw, and Luna occasionally knew when not to speak.
This was how Gaara found the two of them, their tables straining under the weight of books they had piled high on top of it, one afternoon.
"Oh, hello Gaara." Luna loudly said, looking directly at the red-head who had been walking quietly passed their table, a stack of his own books in his arms.
Having been spotted, Gaara straightened up, turned to her and nodded. Hermione peered round the stack completely obscuring her body and greeted him as well, "Hi Gaara. Are you revising as well?"
It might have been a stupid question had the odd boy not been visiting the Library all year, checking out all kinds of obscure and curious books.
Gaara nodded again; wondering if the conversation could be considered over and if he could politely depart.
"Why don't you come sit with us? I've just been looking over my notes for Transfiguration and I would love to hear what you thought." Hermione said.
He hadn't interacted with anybody for at least four days and it wasn't good for his stability to be isolated for so long. He nodded again and sat down in the empty chair, clearing a small space for his books. It wouldn't be a protracted stay by any standard since his patience would only last so long, and he wasn't sure the table would hold much longer under the combined weight of all of their books.
"How are you doing today, Gaara?" Luna piped up, not looking up from her current book. Judging by the title of that book alone, Gaara would have been surprised if the short blond girl didn't come in at the top of her class.
'I am well.' Luna looked at the closed answer for a little longer before returning to her book.
Hermione was only too glad to find someone in her year willing to discuss their work with her. Harry and Ron were of course out of the question, much more interested in their sports and their games than their essential studies. And the Ravenclaws of their year didn't care for Hermione very much, for some reason. It was almost as if they collectively found her personality off-putting or something…
The three pariahs happily read and worked together for a while before, ever-vigilant, Gaara noticed a certain someone had walked into the library.
Noticing Gaara's gaze, Luna turned to see Draco shuffling into the room on his own. The boy looked at her and gave a half-hearted wave, either because he was still in the dumps or because he didn't like her, before he turned back to his Slytherin friend.
Luna thought he might have looked away when he noticed Gaara was sat next to her, or some reaction at least, and then she realised Gaara had disappeared when no one was looking, and managed to take all of his books with him. Hermione jumped when she discovered the disappearance, but stifled any further reaction after she saw Draco continuing into the Library.
Later on, Hermione didn't bother mentioning this latest mystery regarding their current favourite school-based curiosity to Ron or Harry. For one thing, they should have been focussing on their studies, not admittedly odd Slytherins, and also she didn't want to ostracise Gaara any further by spreading gossip or talking about him like he was You-Know-Who.
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With Luna knowing his secret, and Gaara knowing Lupin's, he had quite the choice at the end of May when the full moon was once again upon him. Still, his aversion to Luna's obsessive interest in his tanuki-form was as strong as ever, so she wasn't that much of a safeguard.
Since he didn't have to worry about Draco, Gaara decided to transform in his new bedroom and then head out into the forest at his leisure. Dignified, it might not be, but 'exercising' with wolf-Lupin was the most interesting thing he could do in his animal body, so he decided to head straight to where the werewolf was likely to be prowling.
He had brought a lamb bone from the kitchens, with plenty of meat still clinging on, so that he could distract Lupin and run back to the castle when he wanted to. He'd go into the forest and stash it somewhere it wasn't likely to be taken by a giant spider or a wandering thestral. If he took it with him, he would end up losing it to Lupin in moments. Werewolf noses were even better than tanuki ones, it seemed.
After he had shifted, he slung the bone across his back, wrapped in the material he had procured from an old flag in the Hogwarts trophy room. He walked brazenly out in the hallways, being in an abandoned area of the school where no one was likely to be.
On a completely unrelated note, Harry Potter had been out that evening, hidden safely under his father's cloak, desperate for some alone time. Ron and/or Hermione had been relentlessly attentive recently, what with Sirius Black and his latest Quidditch failure. Both of those reason driving Harry instead to seek solace in his own company for a couple of hours. He had taken his chance when Hermione had forced Ron to start revising for Potions since his chances of passing the subject were only a little better than Neville's.
With both of his best friends distracted, he had thrown on his cloak when they weren't looking and left the tower. Still, he didn't want Mrs Norris to smell him and alert Filch, nor did he want McGonagall or Snape hearing him, so he had headed to a hallway everyone knew had been abandoned for the better part of two decades.
At least it wasn't a totally dark night, the moon shining through the windows pleasantly. His mind wandered back to his hunts for Gaara during the nights, impossible now that Lupin had confiscated the Map. His mind was called away from thinking about Gaara when he spotted a strange little animal padding around the corner. It was a little too small to be a dog, plus it had an enormous bushy tail, like a giant canine-squirrel.
Harry walked slowly towards it, to see what it was, when he caught sight of something slung across its back. It was carrying something in the middle of the night! His mind whirred through the possibilities, of which there weren't that many, and he settled on the obvious conclusion that this animal was working with Sirius Black (as were most people and things Harry hated these days) and it was carrying a message from him, or was smuggling something into Hogwarts.
Gaara was rather enjoying the night air this evening. Summer was definitely on its way. He knew it would never be nearly as hot as his home in this country, but any increase in the temperature was a welcome change in the Scottish highlands. He was enjoying it right up until he heard the sound of steps tapping on the polished stone floors, coming towards him without an invisible source.
Gaara never like the Hogwarts ghosts, especially not when they came near him, but they had never been a threat to him. In the body he was in, his instincts were much stronger so when confronted by what he perceived to be a threat, of course, in his mind, there was only one thing to do, and that was run away. Out of the castle it could not follow him since ghosts were trapped in the places they haunted, as everybody knew.
His animal mind racing almost as fast as his animal body, Gaara reached entrance in minutes, having slid and skidded all over the place in his rush down through the castle. His inefficient sprinting had allowed his unseen pursuer to keep up with him, or at least keep him in sight.
After he had darted out of the threshold, Gaara paused, looking back, panting heavily. He was safe now, and had he been given a moment to collect himself he might have chosen a different strategy and run further out into the woods where he could lose whatever was following him. Instead, when he heard the sound of tapping on the floors turn to crunching and thumping when it ran out onto the grass and the dirt, he skirted around the invisible noise and ran back to the castle.
The next day, among his other troubles and thoughts, Gaara worried that this animal transformation situation might be getting worse and that his mind was delving further and further into the animal psyche each month.
For the night, though, his mind was firmly fixed on escaping his pursuer, whatever it was since it was almost certainly not a ghost. His analytical mind which would have pieced together the fact that ghosts float, they don't run, in seconds, had finally worked it out with the help of whatever it was chasing him outside. Still, an invisible pursuer was certainly no safer than a ghost in his mind, so he didn't stop to let it catch up.
He managed to duck into a classroom without the invisible thing seeing. It came with a great sense of satisfaction, the sound of footfalls passing by his hiding place. He stayed in the room as long as was able, but soon his instincts made him restless and sent him back out into the danger.
Sadly, the invisible assailant had been peering into the next room over, so he spotted Gaara as soon as he emerged through the doorway and followed after it immediately.
Harry was wary of simply grabbing the thing since it looked like it had some pretty sharp teeth and probably had some claws too, so he was trying to catch it from behind and use the absurdly large tail to block any rabid attempts to maul him. He might have used magic, but some animals (especially magical ones like what he suspected he was dealing with here) reacted negatively to different spells.
Hagrid was supposed to teach special stunners and restraining spells in seventh year, for use against magical creatures, but until then all Harry could do was transfigure his jumper into a length of rope and hope he didn't catch magical-rabies.
That said, even if this thing could hear or smell him and was much faster, it was skidding about so much on the stone floor that Harry might eventually catch it. Not that he was having much luck so far…
He pursued it down the stairs into the Dungeons, an unpleasant area he was becoming quite familiar with in all of these chases.
Draco also had not been sleeping well, the combination of exam pressure and absent-Gaara stress, and so even though it was a school night he wasn't asleep at midnight. Instead, he wanted to get out of his suddenly stifling room. The Slytherin common room was empty but too static and large for him. He wanted to wander around the empty Dungeons tonight.
Snape wasn't supposed to be patrolling that night, so Draco felt pretty sure he would be okay so long as he didn't make too much noise walking around. Filch never patrolled the dungeons anyway.
As he opened the hidden door, he almost jumped out of his skin when a small animal ran right past his shins and into the common room. Spinning around and fumbling for his wand, Draco was surprised when the small… what was this thing? But it was standing on its hind legs thrusting one of its forepaws at the open entrance rather urgently.
Draco walked up to it slowly, expecting it to dart away from him as most unfamiliar animals would, but instead it watched him approach without any suspicion or alarm and then turned, still on its back paws and started walked towards the dorms.
Draco spotted the bundle slung across its back, so he guessed it might be a hidden pet, so he walked behind it feeling a little silly following this haughty creature like it was a person. He wondered who it might belong to in the boy's dorm as they turned off from the girls (a relief because the enchanted stairs in Gryffindor sounded fun compared to the measures Salazar Slytherin had taken to keeping his hormonal snakes untangled).
The blond was downright suspicious when it stopped in front of his own door and reached above its head to turn the doorknob.
Wary that this thing might try to take something or be up to something, Draco watched it open the door and allowed it to pad in, walking right up to Gaara's bed and jumping onto it.
"Wait, you can't sleep there, that's…" Draco's sentence died in his throat when it performed an eerily reminiscent glare right at him, so similar to the bed's absentee owner, and settled further into the covers. Swallowing, "Well, I don't know who you belong to, but I don't think Gaara is going to like his bed smelling of wet dog or whatever you are when he comes back."
Gaara agreed, but he also knew that he smelled nothing like a wet dog and that he was pristine. Still, he didn't appreciate the comparison and continued to glare at Draco. He also wasn't happy about the probability that he would indeed need to change his sheets because it was summer and he appeared to be shedding a little.
Once again he was forced into an uncomfortable situation, but there was nothing to be done about it. He couldn't let whoever had been after him outside catch him, so he had had to take refuge in his own House. And he didn't like his chances among the other Slytherins so his only choice had been spending the rest of the night with Draco in their room.
The morning was sure to be eventful.
Draco was wary of the animal at first, waiting for it to go for him, but when the odd little fluff-ball moved the pillows and sheets into a loose sort of nest and laid down in it, he put down the book he was too tired to actually read and got ready for bed.
He didn't sleep very well.
Draco blearily cleared his eyes and looked to the window, hoping to see some light filtering through the bottom of the lake. Nothing. He heard Gaara breathing across the room and slumped back in his bed until he remembered that Gaara was staying somewhere else at the moment!
He flew back up to look across the dark room, his mind wondering who exactly would have snuck into his room while he slept. His sleep addled mind took a few moments to recall that he had somehow invited a stray animal to sleep in Gaara's bad late last night.
He breathed out slowly and wondered how he was going to get the beast to vacate the room in the morning. It was only five now, the sun wasn't even up. Perhaps now was the time to kick the thing out, before the other students were awake. It would be kinder to escort it out of the school before everyone woke up and started to panic.
He stood up and turned on the light but that didn't elicit any reaction. He'd hoped that would wake it up. Stepping closer, he reached to nudge its fluffy tail, currently wrapped around the little cannid, only to hear a low growl before his hand could make contact. After recovering from one hell of a flinch, Draco saw its eyes were open and looking directly at him.
"Um, sorry to wake you, but you need to leave now or else people will see you when you leave." He felt silly for talking to a dumb animal, but that shame was quickly faded as the animal regarded him with a look that seemed to indicate it thought Draco was the dumb animal.
The animal failed to rise and pad over to the door, instead it ignored the noble pureblooded wizard and went back to sleep.
"Now, you look here, you're either leaving now or when I go to class because I am absolutely not leaving you in here for Gaara to find when he sneaks in during the day. And I don't want you chewing on the pillows or relieving yourself on the rug. So you have to leave!" Draco said more forcefully.
Gaara had enjoyed his doze until Draco had tried to get him to leave. It didn't occur to the tired tanuki that the invisible being that had chased him in there had most likely moved on (or given up and gone to bed) and that he could still leave and change elsewhere, preserving his secret. Instead, he wanted to continue to sleep on his comfortable and familiar bed with his tail and pillows and sheets all gathered around him.
And then Draco had to wake up and try and kick him out. He stared at his dumb roommate before giving up and going back to sleep. Draco would get frustrated and leave him alone soon enough. He could ignore him until then, Gaara thought.
Gaara immediately changed his mind when Draco made that spurious comment about him relieving himself on the floor. He spun around as soon as those words left Draco's mouth and growled and yipped his indignation loudly.
Draco backed away from the irate animal and decided to leave it be for the time being. He'd try again after he'd showered. If he had to, he would lead it out with people watching. Hell, he'd drag it out by its oversized tail if he had to.
Sighing, he sat down at his desk and started writing more notes for his revision. His life seemed to revolve around revising at the moment. If people knew how seriously he was taking his studies he would never live it down, but he didn't exactly have the same thriving social life he once had with which to otherwise fill his time.
It wasn't long until Gaara felt himself change back into his human body and right mind. Once again, the dull ache in his throat returned, but considering the situation he felt it would be better if he didn't spring his healing voice on his soon to be overwhelmed roommate too.
Still, he couldn't stop himself from clearing his throat a little to ease the soreness.
Draco heard the oddly human sounding throat clearing and glanced back to make sure the sandy-coloured thing wasn't retching on the bed or the floor. Instead, he found Gaara lying in bed like he'd been there all night.
Like he'd been there all night…
He'd been there all night…
Oh for God's sake!
"Gaara, is it normal for people to turn into weird little animals where you come from?"
Gaara missed the rhetorical nature of the question and shook his head.
"If it's not one thing it's another. Can you turn back into it? I want a better look now that I know you won't bite me. You'd better not bite me."
Gaara shook his head, looking around for any sand he might have left behind in here since his gourd was back in his temporary bedroom. He managed to scrounge up a handful from under his bed that had to be spelled out right in front of Draco's face to be legible.
'It is involuntary. I change with the full moon.'
"Wait, so you're a were- whatever that is? You better bloody well not bite me now!"
'I wasn't bitten. And the form is of a tanuki, a… magical creature from my world. I don't know why I change.'
Draco was developing a headache, either from Gaara's ridiculousness or from sleep deprivation.
It didn't occur to either of the boys that whatever tension had been between them the past week or two had been instantly dissolved by this revelation. It was hard to hold a grudge against somebody when they spent the night as an harmless tanuki every month.
"So how long has this been happening?" Draco's mind tried to recall a full moon where he had seen Gaara not transform. He was coming up blank, but he was remembering one or two incidents at the beginning of the year when he had suspiciously 'fallen asleep' early on the evening of full moons and woken up the next day with a bump on his head or a druggy after affect.
'Since I came to this land.'
Draco's mind was abuzz despite the early hour, but Gaara soon clammed up, declaring that he didn't want to talk about it anymore. There was even a hint of a blush on his cheeks at all of the talk about his ridiculous tanuki transformation. It was bad enough Luna that knew, Draco was going to be even worse. For one, he was harder to get away from, sharing a room and all.
Draco turned away to let Gaara get dressed and then proceeded to ask more questions about the transformation: what did it feel like to change? Did he need to see the moon to change like a werewolf? What was a tanuki? Why was Gaara a tanuki of all things? Could he control sand in that form? How good was his hearing or smell? Did anyone else know? Why did he have such a large tail?
'Why do they always ask about the tail?' Gaara thought, outwardly ignoring the questions as he imagined he would increasingly have to do.
Later that morning, Gaara retrieved his discarded possessions and took them back to his room. When he got there, Draco was staring at the bone Gaara had been carrying around on his back.
"A little snack?" Draco asked, sniggering.
Gaara considered his response, 'Not for me. It was for the werewolf.'
Draco turned white, "You're joking right?"
Gaara went back to ignoring him, content to let Draco wonder.
Gaara's morning was quite busy after his secret had been revealed to Draco. He had run to find Lupin and helped him again, following the man's more difficult transformation.
He found him at the edge of the forest, limping his way back to the castle as expected. He was very grateful for Gaara's help with the stairs but kept insisting Gaara's didn't have to help him. He wasn't very convincing when he couldn't stand by himself.
Gaara 'suggested' that Lupin skip breakfast and try to recover some of his strength, which Lupin 'agreed' to. Gaara would let him out when his classes started.
The red-head had woken up from his nap rather hungry, so he didn't skip breakfast that morning as he might have otherwise liked. To that end, he sat at the far end of the Slytherin table from Draco under the pretence that they were still fighting. Gaara had just said he was sitting elsewhere, it was Draco that had said how smart the ruse was.
As had become the custom, Harry was telling his friends about what he had been doing all night while they were sleeping.
"It was about half my height, but it had this really long tail that was as big as it was." Harry said, pouring himself an extra serving of cereal, trying to combat the fatigue he knew would abate with the right amount of sugar. "It smelled me I think, so whenever I was about to catch it, it ran away."
"So let me get this straight, Harry, you stayed up almost the entire night so you could chase some pour cat around the castle?" Hermione exclaimed.
"No, Hermione, you're not listening. It wasn't a cat, it was some weird dog or something. I haven't got any idea what it was, but it wasn't a Hogwarts approved pet, that's for sure." Harry fought back. His heavily ringed eyes and jerky movements didn't speak to his credibility.
"Never heard of anything like that around here, mate." Ron chipped in between mouthfuls.
"It was Sirius Black's, I'm telling you!" He heatedly whispered. "It was carrying something on its back, like a message or a cursed object."
"So why didn't it give you the cursed whatever?" Ron asked.
"Okay, so maybe it wasn't a cursed item, but it was definitely carrying something, and I doubt it was a midnight edition of the Prophet."
"You know what it could have been? It could have been an animagus. Professor Lupin's taught us all about them. Maybe Black's an animagus and he was sneaking around the castle himself last night." Ron said.
"Honestly Ron, that's just silly. Animagi have to register with the Ministry, and I'm sure they would have released a press statement if Sirius Black could turn into an animal. Also, being an animagus is an incredibly rare talent, only a handful of witches or wizards have learned how to do it in the last century. And lastly, don't you think the Ministry would have thought of it, if Sirius Black's method of escape had been so simple."
Ron shrunk in his chair a bit, too intimidated to try and defend his theory. "I suppose you're right."
"I don't think Sirius Black would have run away if it had been him. He probably would have attacked me, or he might have recognised my father's cloak and known it was me."
"So, why were you out there, again?"
"Oh, I was, um, looking for Scabbers. Summer holiday's coming and I thought I might be able to catch him if he couldn't see me coming." Harry said, not wanting his friends to know how stressed he was feeling these days.
Ron was perfectly pleased with the answer. "Oh, thanks, mate."
Hermione might have spotted the lie if she weren't working on another conspiracy at the moment. Another breakfast where Professor Lupin had failed to attend. He had either missed or shown up sick to every breakfast following a full moon since term began. She was 96% sure of what he was.
It might have been higher but for Gaara throwing her judgement into doubt. She had harboured a similar suspicion about him, with his penchant for missing breakfasts and dinners around that time of the month, but he had showed up to enough that it was very unlikely he was a Lycanthrope.
Not that it mattered much either way, other than the obvious safety concerns. She certainly wasn't prejudiced and didn't buy into that preposterous notion that all werewolves were dark creatures who were animals, liable to savagely attack anyone around them at any given time. Granted, she wouldn't approach one on the night of the full moon, but any other day she would try to offer the benefit of the doubt.
It was after breakfast, with ten minutes before he had to walk to his first class of the day, that Draco wondered why Gaara and he were pretending to still be fighting. It had seemed like a smart idea when Gaara suggested it, but now Draco realised he had been tricked.
Easily.
Before any resentment could bubble back up, he felt a tap on his shoulder and looked around to find Luna Lovegood of all people staring at him.
"Good morning. I'm glad you and Gaara have sorted out your problems. He's looking much happier today." She said. Draco stood up and walked out of the Hall, hearing her short-heeled shoes tapping after him.
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