FIC: "A Fucking Marvelous Wolf" for pale_moonlite
Recipient: pale_moonlite
Author/Artist: lash_larue
Title: "A Fucking Marvelous Wolf"
Rating:NC-17
Pairings: Greyback/Lupin
Word Count: 8700
Warnings: Language, Violence, and what would be Chan if they were human. None very graphic.
Summary: Theirs was a complex and largely one-sided relationship, especially after all was revealed.
Author's/Artist's Notes: Dear Pale_moonlite, I hope that you enjoy this at least some, it was very challenging to write, and I myself have mixed feelings about it. Remus from Fenrir’s POV, and without losing his despicableness, I just couldn’t pass it up.
***
The Battle of Hogwarts was not over, but the figure staring down at the body of Remus Lupin ignored it for the moment, because his mind was lost in the past…
He should have listened to me.
If only he’d listened to me…
We - would - be Kings!
Thirty years it’s been, thirty years of grief and rage. Thirty years of hate. Thirty years of boot-licking and scheming; thirty years - thirty years of what might have been.
The wolf was purer in him than in any other I ever made, and now here he lays, just another mongrel crushed under the wheels of a beer lorry.
Fuck the whole fucking world, and every fucker in it.
*~~~*
It was an ordinary day in the alley, the moon was far away and I was hungry, so I swallowed what was left of my pride and held my cap in my hands…
“Can you spare a few knuts for a poor man, sir?” I asked. The boy reached into his pocket, but his father stopped him.
“No, Remus,” he said, “we mustn’t encourage his sort. Leave honest folk alone you filthy layabout!”
He grabbed the boy’s hand and shoved past me, and watched them go. It wasn’t the first time. But then he turned back to me and said…
“Have you no pride, sir? You seem fit enough, go and find employment! Be a man! ‘Worketh not, beggeth not.’ - William Shakespeare,” he said, and he turned up his nose and dragged the lad away.
” ‘For want of a knut, the son was lost,’ - Fenrir Greyback,“ I promised him.
“Go and find employment!” As if I could. As if I should! His kind should pay mine tribute - and they would, in time they would.
I tracked them, it was easy, even without the moon I could follow their scent. The man stank of self-righteousness and privilege; him with his job, and his son, and his fine fucking house, and his wife with her cunt all dried up because he wasn’t man enough to set her flowing. Maybe I’d do him a little favor there, after I dealt with his whelp. Maybe I would.
I followed them to their garden gate, “Lupin” the brass plaque read. Welladay, ‘Remus Lupin’ he was then… that was the moment my thoughts shifted, just a mite.
”The death of a child you might survive, but the birth of a monster in your bosom… we’ll see how you deal with that, you fucking prick.”
And so I watched, and I waited, and I planned, and in the end he served his son to me on a platter…
*~~~*
“Thanks Mom and Dad!” exclaimed Remus as he opened his present. His very own telescope, his parents had given him the sky.
“We’ll go out this evening and try it out,” his Father promised. “It will be better in about two weeks though. The moon is getting full, and the light from it will mask some of the fainter stars.”
“Can’t we just look at the moon?” Remus asked.
“Oh, there is no challenge to looking at the moon, son. That is for dreamers and amateurs, real astronomers look to the stars!”
”But I love the moon,” the boy replied.
“You will learn better,” his father assured him
*~~~*
I had been watching off and on for weeks when I saw the boy and his father emerge from the house at dusk and set up the telescope. The father explained the various knobs and levers to the lad and I could sense his excitement, so much life in the boy.
For a couple of hours they were out there, the father pointing the telescope to the darkest parts of the sky and the boy turning his gaze to the waxing moon. Then they carried the instrument to the stone shed at the back of the property and placed it inside before returning to their home. I went to look the shed over, it might figure in my plans.
It was a pillbox of a thing, thick stone and barred windows and a door to do a bank vault proud. The shed of a man who meant to keep what was his.
I had other ideas about that myself, and in two days, on the first of the three nights of the moon, I would share my ideas with the smug bastard.
Two days. And then a lifetime of payback for him and his kind for what they’d done to mine. Two days. I could wait two days.
*~~~*
“You see Remus; it is as I said it would be, the moon is so bright that we cannot see that cluster we have been observing. We may as well pack it in,” the man said.
“May I stay out a little longer please, father?” he asked.
“Very well Remus, but remember your bedtime, and be sure and put the instrument away properly. One must take proper care of one’s prized possessions.”
John Lupin patted his son on the head and proceeded to ignore his own advice.
With great effort I could control the wolf, and with great determination I could commit to a course of action before the shift and stick to it afterwards. But now the boy was coming, and the moisture filled my jaws and I dropped to the ground even though the wolf wanted to snarl and rip and tear like it always did, but I fought it down. I waited. I waited until he had locked the shed like a good boy and headed home in plenty of time to get to bed and then I sprang from hedge and ripped his thigh open and ran off with his blood in my mouth and his screams in my ears. I couldn’t see them from where I stopped, but I could hear them, I could hear the panic and my heart soared, and I pointed my nose to the moon and sang to her.
Let’s see what you make of that, you smug bastard.
“John, we have to get him to Hospital! Take him to St. Mungo’s, I’ll follow when I can!” exclaimed Miriam Lupin.
“No, not St. Mungo’s” John said fervently, “go and call an ambulance Miriam; I’ll do what I can for the wound. Hurry up, would you?”
“But-“
“GO!” he commanded, and she fled to the house.
“Am I going to die, father?” asked the boy.
“Of course not Remus,” his father assured him, but a part of him almost hoped that he would. John Lupin could not identify a werewolf in human form, but he knew what the howl of one sounded like, and he knew that the healers at St. Mungo’s had ways of identifying a werewolf bite. He was afraid, afraid of what they would do to his son, and afraid of it becoming known that his son had been cursed.
It was this last fear that I had counted on.
*~~~*
It was the afternoon of the day of the first moon of the wolf, and I watched as the man led his son to the shed. It had been three months since I gave the boy his gift, three months of horror for him and his parents. Such a terrible price they all paid for his rudeness. And if I had my way they would pay more. Eventually they would all pay, these wizards, and they would pay in coin of the realm.
“But father, it’s still early, why do I have to go in the shed now?” protested the lad.
“Because your mother and I have an engagement this evening, and we have to leave soon, Remus. I regret the necessity of this, but it is something that you must grow accustomed to. We simply cannot chance you getting loose. Now, there is plenty of food and drink in there, if you can manage not to destroy it when you change. You really must strive to gain control Remus, or you will never have anything like a normal life. I have cast silencing spells on the shed of course, so you needn’t worry about attracting attention.”
”No,” I thought as I listened, ”attention is not something he’ll be getting from the likes of you, you miserable…” The lock clicked and the man turned his back on his son and walked to the house. Soon after, I saw him and his wife emerge from the house, take a quick look ‘round and then Apparate away.
I moved to one of the barred windows, and tapped on it, the boy’s face appeared on the other side.
“Hello there, boy,” I said to him, “and why would your old Da’ be locking a lad such as you in a shed? Should I call the law?” His eyes grew round, and he was talking frantically, but I couldn’t hear him. Bastard he might be, but he could do a silencing charm right enough. I pointed to my ear and shook my head, and the lad really got frantic then, screaming “NO!” I still couldn’t hear him but I could read his lips.
I went to the door and considered the lock. It was substantial, and it would have been a real poser to anyone locked inside the place, which of course is how it was intended to be. It was however, merely a lock, and years of fending for myself outside of society had taught me a few skills. It took a bit of time, but I got the lock open, and swung the door wide.
“There now lad,” I said, friendly-like, “you can go about your business, I expect your Da’ is right sorry he locked you in here by now, anyway.”
“No he isn’t! And you have to lock the door and get away,” said the boy earnestly, “really, you’re in danger here. Please! Lock the door and go!”
“I’m in no danger from you boy,” I said calmly.
“But you are! You don’t understand, you don’t know!”
“Oh, but I do know, boy. I am myself a werewolf.”
“Really?” he asked in shock. “How do you stand it, it hurts horribly!”
“Aye, it hurts,” I agreed, “and it always will, but it gets better over time, and you get used to it. And there are the advantages…”
“Forgive me if I don’t see them,” he replied bitterly.
”This is the one,” I thought, ”only a boy, but listen to him! He has spine, and he’s smart, this one. This is the one!”
“Then come with me boy, and I will show you the upside of your predicament.”
“Are you mad? Do you think I’d go anywhere with a Werewolf?”
“Suit yourself lad, if you fancy being a prisoner I’ll lock you back in there, but as for going somewhere with a werewolf? Lad, you’ll go everywhere with a werewolf for the rest of your life. You might as well learn how it’s done, don’t you think?”
It was a marvelous thing to watch the lad work this over in his thoughts, he was only a boy, and he was scared, but he could still think. Oh yes, he was the one.
“Alright then, I don’t see what you could do to me worse than what’s already been done, even death would be better than this,” he said.
“You’re wrong there lad, now come and let me show you why,” I told him. He gave a short nod, and I reached out my hand to him.
“Don’t touch me!” he snapped.
“Fair enough, just follow me then, and don’t worry about getting caught out. Your father won’t come back here again until after the third day.” I saw his shoulders slump at that, so he knew that his father abandoned him during this time.
“Why does he do that? He could come and visit me during the day; I’m safe to be around in the day. I could even come out of the shed in the daylight and it would be safe.”
“Because he’s afraid of you boy, and he’s right to be afraid, now come.” I led the way on a path that wound through the wood to the top of a hill overlooking the town. The locals never came near here during the wolf moons, even if they didn’t know why, they knew to stay away. “Look boy,” I said as I swept my arm across the view of the town, “all of them, all of them down there, from the meanest dustman to the richest and the most powerful, all of them spit on our kind. Do you not remember me, lad, from the daylight?” He looked at me in the fading light, and I could already see the wolf stirring in the depths of his eyes. He was the one, no doubt of it.
“You asked us for money in the alley once, didn’t you?”
“Aye, and your father told me to be a man, to have some pride, to get a job! There are no jobs for us lad, no one will hire a wolf, and even if you go to the muggle world, where they usually deny our existence, they won’t put up with the regular absences that the wolf demands.”
“So how do you live?”
“We steal, and beg, and hunt and fish when we can, but it’s all worth it for the moon nights lad, it’s all worth it.”
“How? What can make up for being an outcast, and the pain?”
“Because lad, for the three nights of the moon, all of them down there, the richest and the poorest, every last one of them including the Minister himself, are cattle for the slaughter. For the three nights of the moon, we - are - Kings!”
“You’re mad, I’m not going to kill innocent people,” the boy insisted.
“You’ll do as the wolf bids, just like the rest of us. But no more talk of that tonight, the change will come soon, and I will show you the true glory of the wolf. Don’t worry lad, no hunting tonight, unless we happen across a rabbit or a deer. No, tonight you will know true freedom for the first time in your life.”
“I feel it coming,” he said fearfully.
“Aye, and so do I, but never worry, I’ll take care of you, I’ve been a wolf for some time now. Don’t try and fight it boy, for that only makes it worse.” I saw him give a nod of his head, and then he was down and so was I, it still hurt, but I loved it now, because I knew that once the skin-tearing and bone-breaking were done I would be free!
I finished my change and turned to the boy to watch over him as he completed his own transformation. I was dumbstruck to see that he had already finished, and was sitting there panting. He was a marvelous wolf, a fine grayish brown, and of course he was not a pup for in the years of the wolf he was just coming into his prime. Only young infants transform into pups, and sad to say that never goes well.
We sniffed each other as wolves do, and I led the way off through the woods, running faster and faster, expecting him to fall behind, but he did not. He was the one all right.
My thoughts as the wolf were different, based on instinct to a large extent, and instinct would always take over at need. But by now I could follow a broad plan that I had decided on before the change well enough to be getting on with, and I had a plan for this boy, this wolf.
We soon crested another hill, a higher hill, and we stopped and gazed at the moon that was our mother, and the boy pointed his nose at her and sang to her, as did I. And to our ears came the songs of our brothers and sisters as we gloried in the moon, in our strength, in the wolf!
I moved off again and he followed me; we ran fast, and I could feel the joy from him as he realized his strength. We burst through a thicket and a deer bounded off, and the lad was on his trail in an instant, head down and silent, in the way of the true killer. I had to strain to keep up, and he pulled the deer down and tore the throat from it in the space of a few heartbeats, and then he faced me over the body of his kill and growled.
He had to learn better than that, and so I drove him to the ground and fastened my teeth in the skin of his neck until he whined in submission. He was new, but he was learning. I ate my fill of the deer and then stepped aside and gave him a little chuff of permission, and he tore into the carcass with joy and hunger.
After, I led him to a stream and we washed off the blood and gore, I wasn’t ready yet for his father to know I had let him out, let him feed the wolf. He looked at me and I saw the trust building in his eyes, and I knew my plan was working, so I led him back to the shed and stood guard over him while he changed back. He was naked and a bit embarrassed of course, and so was I, except for the embarrassed bit. His memory of the night would be vague, it took time to be able to recall the wolf times, but I could see in his eyes that a part of him remembered that I was his Alpha, and that was more than I’d hoped for.
“You need to plan for the change when you’re free, boy. Get your clothes off and put away safe before the change, and it never hurts to have a spare set or two hidden about, just in case.” He nodded. “Now I’d better get you tucked away just in case your Da’ comes ‘round.”
“He won’t,” the lad said, “but I suppose I had best get used to not taking chances.”
“Aye,” I told him, and I cuffed him on the shoulder.
“Thank you for showing me the freedom and the strength, it doesn’t make up for what I‘ve lost by a long throw, but it’s better than gnawing on myself in the shed. It seems I need to know the things that you can teach me, but I won’t kill humans, and I won’t let you hurt my family.”
“You couldn’t stop me boy,” I told him, “but as a favor to you I’ll keep your Mum and Da’ safe from the others, and I’ll not harm them myself.”
“Will you be back tomorrow night?” he asked.
“No, I have business tomorrow that will take me away from here, but I’ll see you next month on the first of the moons. Remember lad,” I said before I locked him in, “you are a King now, and they are all your cattle, all of them.”
He made no reply, and I gathered up my spare clothes and started the long trek to the meeting place.
*~~~*
The meeting place was deep in the forest, and it was near dusk when I arrived and greeted my pack. Those who had been lucky enough to get food or drink shared it out, and we waited for our mother to rise.
“So, Greyback, does the new lad measure up, do you think?” asked my second.
“Aye, he’s the one, he’s our key, our messenger. It will take time for him to come round, he still thinks of himself as a monster.” There was much rough laughter at that. We were all of us monsters, and we knew it. The difference between us and the boy was that we gloried in it. But none of us had ever had the advantages that he had as a human. I had built my pack from the disadvantaged, thinking them likely to be more apt to my hand, and they were. But none of them could mingle with wizards, get inside their world, and as long as the boy’s father kept his shame a secret, the boy could. I could count on John Lupin to teach the boy how to hide his gift. It was up to me to teach him to love it.
I noticed one of the pack eyeing me rather too boldly, and as the moon grew nearer and my senses sharpened I could feel the tension in him, and scent his excitement. ”So be it, but you’d have done better to have waited for me to be injured,” I thought. We stripped down and laid our clothes aside, men and women alike. For us now the human body held little interest, it was the wolf that was real; it was the wolf that had passion. And then the moon appeared and the change was on us.
He walked up to me bristling and snarling, challenging me for leadership, and I stood my ground and stared at him. I hoped he would back down, I had no wish to harm him but if he did not submit… He lunged at me, but he was too eager, and I skipped aside and tore his flank. I ran a few yards and then faced him, giving him the chance to change his mind, and I could see the fire dim in his eyes when he made his decision and lowered his head to his paws and whimpered. I was happy that he did, for we were not enough to be killing one another, and he had acted as a wolf should act. I briefly mounted him to acknowledge his submission and assert my dominance, and the tension was gone from the pack. It wasn’t sexual, although I did penetrate him briefly to make my point. The pack was free with one another sexually if the urge was on, and while werewolf bitches did not come into season like true wolves, as a rule a healthy wolf had healthy urges and there was the same variety of appetites among the pack as among humans. Here at least if two males or two bitches had a fancy for each other no one gave a damn.
This was my real life, here, with my kind.
*~~~*
“Where are we going tonight, Fenrir?” he greeted me.
Six months now I had come and freed the boy and shown him the glory of the wolf, eleven times we had run together, and now he was eager for it. It was time.
“I am taking you to meet your pack, your real family,” I told him, and I could see the wolf eager within his eyes.
“Will they hurt me?” he asked.
“You may be challenged,” I admitted, “but you are a match for most, and the wolf will know what to do, never doubt that. Just yield to instinct lad,” I counseled him, and he nodded.
“Come now, lets get out of sight,” I told him and we headed into the woods and stowed our clothes in a hollow tree. By now he was over his embarrassment, and moved confidently in his own skin as we moved deeper into the trees. I watched him eagerly, waiting for the change. The boy held no interest for me other than as a tool, but the wolf, the wolf was magnificent, strong, and fine. I had never seen his match.
Then the change was on us.
We touched noses, and I fought the urge to lick his face, rather turning and running hard towards our destination. I no longer bothered to see if he was keeping up, I could best him in a fight, but no wolf ever spawned could match him for running. It was like watching water tumble down a rapid, so fluid, and so powerful. He was fucking marvelous.
I gave voice to let the pack know I was arriving, and they were waiting for us when we arrived, silently staring. I urged him forward, and my second came forward to greet him, stiff-legged and menacing, asserting his position in the pack, as he should. He sniffed the boy and then bared his teeth and snarled. I say boy, but here he was no boy, he was a new male, a rival and a potential threat, and my second recognized him as such. It was the way of the pack.
The boy eyed him for an instant and then rolled over in submission, his instincts were true, for he could not yet best my second, who took the offered throat lightly in his teeth and then moved to mount the boy.
That was when my sight misted over red, and I drove my shoulder into my second and bowled him over and stood bristling and snarling between him and the boy. I had made a statement to the pack, claiming this new member as my own, and I mounted him in front of the pack and cemented my claim to him before them all. My wolf, mine!
*~~~*
The brief years following the boy’s introduction to the pack were my best as a wolf, the pack accepted us a pair, and they understood the boy’s potential importance to us all. I let the boy out whenever I could, and he always seemed pleased to go with me. He was fully accustomed to the change by then, and as a wolf he was more magnificent than ever. I kept expecting him to challenge my second for place in the pack, but he never did, though I was sure now that he would win. I was no longer certain that I could best him, truth to tell.
And that should have let me know that there was a flaw in my plan. But it did not.
I had been careful to keep him away from humans when the wolf was on him, I didn’t want to chance that a wizard would get lucky or a muggle would be armed with silver. I had kept him from his true prey. That might have been a mistake as well.
Or perhaps I simply took too much pleasure in him on the moon nights, perhaps I didn’t want to see the fatal flaw, perhaps I was simply besotted by what a truly marvelous wolf he was. And the fact that he was mine.
The boy? The boy could be tiresome, prattling on about finding a cure in the brief time we were together as humans. Whinging about being confined, about being feared by his own parents, and I unwisely ignored that, brushing it aside as I waited for the moon to free us, because we only had brief moments together as humans. Other than the moon nights, his father kept a close rein on him, as he was young yet and seldom allowed out on his own.
But it was the wolf that mattered, I decided. I was wrong there too.
*~~~*
“Fenrir!” the boy whispered excitedly as I opened the door, “I’m going to go to Hogwarts!”
“Good for you lad! How did this come to be?” I asked with what I hoped was appropriate enthusiasm, but inside of me the wolf was howling with glee.
“Headmaster Dumbledore is preparing a place for me to use during the moon nights. I won’t be able to hurt anyone, and we’ve worked out a story to explain my absences. I’m going to be a proper wizard after all!”
I let that pass as well, for as far as I was concerned the only proper wizard was one with his throat torn out. Or one that paid.
Of course I knew that this would cut my time with him down to nothing. I knew well that I could not penetrate the security that Dumbledore would put around him. I would have to be patient, and have to trust that the two years and more that I had been his Alpha would be enough.
I had to caution him to be quiet, he was so excited, and even when we hid our clothes and took the by-now familiar path through the woods he was fair quivering. We stood on the hill and waited, and at last the change came upon us.
And then the rather annoying boy was gone, and the wolf, my wolf, was there in the moonlight. The excitement had carried over, his muscles sang with it, and his song to the moon set my blood afire. He looked at me with those huge golden eyes, and in his joy and excitement he offered himself to me, and I took him on the hilltop beneath the moon, and I thought that my life would never get better than this.
That time I was right.
I didn’t see him again before he left for school, but I did eventually find where Dumbledore stashed him during the moon times. I knew the sounds of a werewolf confined during the change, and I raged at the injustice of my marvelous wolf being shut away.
But I could do nothing about it, and as there were no wolf moons during his holidays it was not until the summer break that I saw him again.
“I can’t go with you Fenrir,” he told me when I opened the door. “Father will be here at first light and I can’t chance him knowing that I’ve been getting out. He’s very pleased with what Dumbledore has told him of me and I’m afraid that if he knows what I’ve been doing that he will pull me out of Hogwarts.”
“Don’t you miss the freedom boy? I’ve heard you in that prison,” I asked.
“Of course I do, but I won’t risk being expelled from Hogwarts, I’m learning so much.”
“Making friends, are you?”
“Yes, of course I can’t get too close to them, and some of them wonder what’s wrong with my mother that I have to go and visit her every month, but I have friends,” he answered.
“That’s good, lad. Friendship is important, and loyalty. Especially loyalty to your pack,” I reminded him.
“I can feel it coming, you’d best me lock up and go.”
“Very well, I’ll try again next moon, mayhap your folks will have summat else to do,” I told him as I locked him in.
For the first time in a very long time I greeted mother with less than joy. However, the muggles I found trysting in the forest helped with that a bit. From the taste of her blood she would make fine bitch, and the young man had spirit. I killed him anyway, and scattered him through the wood.
I only got to run with him once during that break, and he was more glorious than ever, and more distant.
We put up a deer and he had it down before I could begin to chase it, and he killed it efficiently and sat waiting patiently for me to feed. It looked more like good manners than submission though, but I did not test it.
Then he went back to school and I went back to building my pack, so as to be ready when the time came.
The next year he wasn’t home for holidays at all, nor the break. I could hear him in his prison on the moon nights, the wolf times, but I never found him in his human form. Not until his third year, in Hogsmeade.
I didn’t like to be there, there were wizards about that could spot a werewolf in his human skin, and the wolf grew plainer upon me with every kill, with every wolf I made, and I had made many. We were ready, and it was time for the boy to show his loyalty to the pack.
I found him in a bookshop, his mates had gone ahead to the Three Broomsticks, and he looked both surprised and a little happy to see me. I motioned to him to follow me, and he did so readily. I took this as a sign that he acknowledged me as Alpha still, and I felt hope. I led the way out of town to a place in the hills, not too far, but private.
“Fenrir!” he said, “I’m surprised to see you around all of these wizards.”
“It was necessary,” I shrugged, “and I do what is necessary for the pack. And so will you,” I said sternly. His face grew guarded.
“What do you mean?” he asked me.
“It is time for you to prove yourself to your pack, we have need of you. I want you to provide me with a list of the children of wizarding families that have real money, not just an old name. I want as many details as you can find about where they go on holiday, their family members, particularly if any of them are Aurors or in the Department of Dangerous Beasts or anything like that,” I told him.
“Whatever for?” he asked.
“Because I am going to make wolves of a few of them, and then demand payment from the rest for not doing so, these bastard wizards have had it over us for too long. It is time for them to pay!” My joy in this idea was so strong that I could not imagine that his would not be.
“I won’t do it, Fenrir,” he said, horror in every line of his face.
“Why not? Have wizards done so much for you?”
“They have, in fact. Dumbledore has enabled me to get an education. I have friends among wizards. I am a wizard! I won’t do it, and you are mad to think that I would!” he shouted.
“I am your Alpha and you will do as you are commanded!” I snarled.
“You are the wolf’s Alpha,” he acknowledged, “but I am more than the wolf. Three cursed days a month do not give you control of my life.”
“You love the wolf! I can feel the joy from you when we run, when we hunt!” I insisted.
“The wolf loves freedom, and loves the hunt, yes. And when the moon is on me it feels much better to be free than to gnaw myself in the darkness. But I do not love the wolf, it is a curse.”
“You’re blathering now; your mind has been poisoned by these false friends. You have no friends but the pack, and the pack requires your service! I, your Alpha, require it,” I said fiercely.
“No,” he said calmly.
“You owe me, boy,” I informed him.
“And what I owe you for teaching me of the wolf I shall pay by not denouncing you, more than that I will not do. Further, if I hear of a rise in wolf attacks I shall inform Professor Dumbledore who is behind it.”
“You owe me for more than that, boy. It was I who gave you the gift of the wolf!” I snapped. He grew pale, and I thought I had him, but…
“You bastard! You did this to me? Made me a monster and then pretended to be my friend? Get the hell away from me before I change my mind about denouncing you, there are Aurors in Hogsmeade,” he cried, and his chest was heaving and I could see the wolf stirring in his eyes.
“I did and I’m glad. Don’t you remember the strength, the glory? Do you even remember that we are more than Alpha and pack member?” I tried my last card.
“I remember nothing except that it was you who did this to me. If I ever see you again I will call for the authorities, you filthy mongrel.”
With that he was gone, and the last thread of joy in my life with him. I could have killed him then, and I should have. But if he could forget the wolf, forget our bond, I could not. I hated the wizard that ran away from me more than I had ever hated another living being, but I could not forget the wolf. Nor could I see the tears in his eyes, not that that would have mattered.
*~~~*
I tried to proceed with my plan anyway, but without inside information the wealthy children were simply too difficult to get to. I managed to bite two pureblood children, but the families simply killed them outright once they knew what had happened. The bastards would rather murder a child than suffer a stain on the family name.
So I resolved to do with numbers what I could not do by threat, and I and my pack turned as many as we could. There were losses, many, as the wizarding community grew aware of the threat. I targeted children especially, always hoping to make another wolf like the boy had been. But it never happened, and in time I hated the children for failing me, and I grew to simply like the taste of their flesh and the softness of their skin and the ease with which they died, and the terror that spread among those fucking high-and-mighty bastards of wizards with each dead child. I sowed terror among them, I was the thing in the dark, the nightmare, and the screams of the children were music to my soul, their flesh the food of my body, of the wolf!
And it was this that was my undoing.
I at last had another chance at a pure-blood heir, or so I thought, and in my greed I took it, and Abraxas Malfoy and his mates hexed me senseless before I realized that I had been hunting a mudblood with a glamour on him. The next morning I met him.
“Fenrir Greyback, I believe,” the snake-faced bastard hissed at me.
“Aye, and what’s it to you?” I blustered.
”Crucio,” he hissed casually, and the pain was even worse than transformation, because there was no reward at the end of it.
“Manners, dog,” he hissed as he eased the curse. “Now then, I trust that you realize that your little reign of terror is over? However, I do applaud your ambition, and your ruthlessness, and I have a proposition for you. Well, more of a command, really.”
“Fuck yo-“ I started to say.
”Crucio,” he whispered and I was on the floor again, my bones throbbing in agony. “I can do this indefinitely, Greyback,” he said conversationally, “can you tolerate it similarly?”
I said nothing.
“Well?” he asked, raising his wand.
“No!” I gasped.
“No, what?” he asked softly, and though I knew what he wanted, I was damned if I would give it to him. Him or any other fucking wizard.
”Crucio”, he said with a smile on that awful face, and this time I had stopped moving before he released me. “Shall I repeat the question?”
“No,” I wheezed.
“No…?”
“No - Master,” I forced past my lips.
“Good dog,” he said gently, and I did not dare to meet his eyes. “Now then, as I said, I admire your ruthlessness, but I cannot tolerate your predation on wizard children. Not without my permission, of course,” he said smoothly, and I raised my eyes to that terrible, white, snake’s face. “From now on you will kill whom I tell you too, change whom I command you to, when I command you to do it. In return, I grant you your life.”
I looked at him silently.
“I will also,” he said, and he smiled the most terrible smile I had ever seen, “give you more muggle children than you can eat. And a child is child, is it not? All you have to do is swear to serve me faithfully. I am sure I do not need to inform you of the alternative.”
He didn’t. He was a fucking wizard and I fucking hated him, but I had to admit that he was more powerful and more ruthless than ever I had been or dreamed of being, at least since the boy had left.
“I swear loyalty to you, Master,” I told him, and maybe that was the moment I was truly damned.
“Excellent,” he hissed, and he gestured, and one of the masked wizards standing in a circle around us came up to me and slashed my arm, catching the blood in a vial that he delivered to the Dark Lord.
“Now then, Greyback,” he said, “just in case you ever think of betraying me…” he gestured again, and a man was dragged bound into the room. I knew him, Rogerson, a member of my pack. “A small demonstration, I think,” he said and he produced another vial from within his robes. “Argentum Cruoerem,” he hissed, and the vial glowed silver.
Rogerson however, screamed his heart out, and smoke poured from his toes and his fingers. It was more than a half-hour before he fell silent, and the grin on that snake’s face never faltered.
“A little spell of my own invention,” the Dark Lord said lightly, “it turns the subject’s blood to silver. Slowly. It works over any distance.” He held up the vial his man had brought him. “I have yours now.”
I bowed. Wizard he might be, but he was more than my match for cruelty, and I had to respect that.
“The stick you have seen, and so now for the carrot,” he told me. And at his signal a small boy was dragged into the room. “Merely a muggle,” he said, “but a child is a child, bon appetite!”
I stared at him; the time of the wolf was many hours away.
“Well, are you a wolf or not? Do you have no teeth without the moon? Dine or die, dog!”
I fell on the child while the snake laughed, and inside of me the wolf howled. The wolf was all that I had left now, and so I fed it.
*~~~*
The years that followed were heady times; the only things marring them were the boy’s treachery and the fact that I was a wizard’s tool. I had seen the boy a few times during the moon, out running with his wizard mates, and how I wanted to kill them for taking that wolf from me. But the Dark Lord would not allow it, and so I would always leave them to their stupid games.
I did however, put a bug in Malfoy’s ear, and John Lupin gradually fell on harder and harder times, and there was some small joy in that.
The boy finished school, and I wondered how he would make out now his house was gone, his parents living in a shabby flat. He had chosen the wizards, and they would spit on him just as they had spit on me until the snake made them fear me.
So I was surprised when I heard a familiar voice call my name that day in Knockturn Alley.
“Fenrir, I need a word with you,” he said, and I turned to him.
“Have you summoned the authorities, then? For that is what you swore to do next time we met.”
“No, a truce for now, may we talk?” he asked politely. He was no boy now, the scars on his face made him look older than he was, and he had a weedy sort of unwell look about him as the moon was just past. He also had the unmistakable marks of poverty on him, and against my will a tiny hope flared.
“Come then,” I rasped at him and led the way to a tavern where I knew we would not be bothered, for it was run by the snake’s men.
“I have something to offer you, Fenrir,” he began, and my heart pounded, “I know that you have been working for Voldemort.” I jumped at the sound of the name, but I was proud of him for having the spine to utter it.
“The Dark Lord makes a very persuasive argument,” I replied, and his lips twitched in what was almost a smile.
“I have heard that. How would you like to throw off his yoke?” In my heart the wolf howled with joy.
“Yes! Yes!” I said eagerly, “with you at my side we can take him down! We can have it all! With you now a wizard we can destroy him and take his place! We shall be Kings!”
“You mistake me, Fenrir,” he said calmly. “I offer you the chance to work against him to gain some redemption for the things that you have done. I offer you and the pack a potion that will allow you to control the wolf when it comes, and I offer you the chance for life in prison instead of the death that you have earned.”
I suppose my face must have been quite a study, because the small smile visited his face again.
“You’re mad! Life in prison as a reward! You are no wolf, Remus Lupin, but a wizard’s lapdog!”
“And you are not?” he asked softly.
“Slave I may be, but at least my master feeds the wolf, he does not neuter it and lock it away.”
“I went to considerable lengths to get permission to make this offer to you Greyback,” he said, and the change in address was not lost on me. “For although you cursed me you did in fact teach me that there was some joy to be had in the wolf, now with this potion and my friends I can at times experience that. But what you have been doing to innocent children; there is no forgiveness for that. You must pay the price, but will you not reconsider my offer? It will not be made again to you.”
There was no choice to be made, and even if there had been I would still have rejected it. If I could ever kill the snake, I would, and gladly. But I would seek no redemption for taking my rightful prey.
“You should leave now, Lupin, our truce is at an end, and this place is not congenial to your kind,” I told him.
“Very well then, Greyback,” he said as he rose, and then he leaned in close and quietly whispered, “if I see you ever again as the wolf, I shall tear your throat out.”
With that he was gone, and I felt a bit of real fear at that, for I knew well that he could do it. He was a fucking marvelous wolf. Better to die in his jaws than in a cell, or racked with pain at the feet of the snake.
I signaled for firewhisky and I drank.
*~~~*
Our paths didn’t cross again in that war, I knew that he was at work among the pack, making a similar offer to them, trying to find out our plans.
We had no plans, we did what the snake told us to do, when he told us to do it. He was a bastard wizard to the core, but he kept his word to me. I had all the muggle children I could eat, with the odd wizard whelp as a bonus.
Some of the pack took the offer, and the potion, and I looked on that as a favor. He was weeding out the weak, and the pack was growing stronger, and I was starting to believe that one day we might be able to destroy the snake and his wizard slaves. We would be on top where nature intended.
And then that little wizard baby ruined everything, and the Aurors came, and the hunters, and those bastard, traitorous wolves led by the one who used to carry all my hope and the tiny shred of heart that I had left. I saw him once or twice during the moon, and I did not dare to confront him. He was a fucking marvelous wolf.
Those of us that could ran and hid, some fought and died and some surrendered, but the pack was broken and I was alone in the wilderness.
There are worse places for a wolf to be, and for more than a dozen years I seldom saw a human face. There was scarcely anything human left of me when the word came that the snake was back, bigger and badder and looking for his old servants.
I thought about just staying where I was, but I knew that if I went to him that I could kill more wizards, and I hadn’t tasted a child in ages.
So I went back to him, and if I was more wolf, then he was more snake, and we were both crueler than ever before. It made for a nice business arrangement.
Things moved faster this time around, and if the snake hadn’t wasted so much time on the boy that derailed him last time it might have been easier. But I knew what it was to have a boy fill up your mind, so I said nothing. He would have tortured me if I had, any road.
But he set me to kill, and that was all I cared about any more.
I heard that he was teaching at Hogwarts with one of the snake’s men brewing that castrating potion for him, and that he was still Dumbledore’s lapdog. “Grateful for the job” he was. The bile rose in my throat at the thought, that fucking marvelous wolf, tamed and licking the boots of his rightful prey.
I didn’t see him, I didn’t want to see him, not unless he was mine again, and I knew that would never happen.
And then the whelp of that wizard I thought I was going to bite when the snake caught me got us into Hogwarts and Dumbledore was dead and I shredded the face of that redheaded bastard of a wizard and we ran into the night leaving all of them crying in despair behind us.
It was the best night I ever had without the wolf moons.
The snake moved quickly after that, and the Ministry fell, and the terror spread openly to the muggle world. It looked as if the snake was going to have it all when we moved against Hogwarts.
He said he was giving them time to consider, and I was making my way back to the forest, my head throbbing from where that looney witch had hit it with the crystal ball. I was going quiet like so as not to attract attention from the ones gathering the fallen and then there he was right in front of me, dead as a hammer and thirty years raced through my brain in an instant or an hour and all I could do was stare at him.
The finest wolf I ever made, ever saw, killed by some fucking wizard that should have been his slave. He had a son, I had heard. Perhaps I could find his son, perhaps his son would be the wolf he might have been, should have been.
He was a fucking marvelous wol-
“SECTUMSEMPRA!” screamed two voices in unison.
“This is for my brother Bill, you FUCKING! WEREWOLF! BASTARD!” shouted Ronald Weasley, punctuating each screamed invective with a kick to the face of the dying figure on the ground.
“Ron, come on, he’s finished. Let’s just get Professor Lupin back to the castle. Ron, come on,” urged Neville. “I wonder what he was about, just standing there staring at Professor Lupin?”
“Likely deciding which bit to eat first,” spat Ron as he looked down at Greyback’s corpse. “Just one thing left to do Neville; he’s a werewolf, best to make sure. Incendio!”
The flames consuming the body of Fenrir Greyback cast shadows on the ground ahead of Neville and Ron as they levitated the body of their friend and teacher to the castle.
“Poor Professor Lupin,” Ron said sadly to Neville as they walked, “he was a fucking marvelous teacher.”
***
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Author/Artist: lash_larue
Title: "A Fucking Marvelous Wolf"
Rating:NC-17
Pairings: Greyback/Lupin
Word Count: 8700
Warnings: Language, Violence, and what would be Chan if they were human. None very graphic.
Summary: Theirs was a complex and largely one-sided relationship, especially after all was revealed.
Author's/Artist's Notes: Dear Pale_moonlite, I hope that you enjoy this at least some, it was very challenging to write, and I myself have mixed feelings about it. Remus from Fenrir’s POV, and without losing his despicableness, I just couldn’t pass it up.
***
The Battle of Hogwarts was not over, but the figure staring down at the body of Remus Lupin ignored it for the moment, because his mind was lost in the past…
He should have listened to me.
If only he’d listened to me…
We - would - be Kings!
Thirty years it’s been, thirty years of grief and rage. Thirty years of hate. Thirty years of boot-licking and scheming; thirty years - thirty years of what might have been.
The wolf was purer in him than in any other I ever made, and now here he lays, just another mongrel crushed under the wheels of a beer lorry.
Fuck the whole fucking world, and every fucker in it.
*~~~*
It was an ordinary day in the alley, the moon was far away and I was hungry, so I swallowed what was left of my pride and held my cap in my hands…
“Can you spare a few knuts for a poor man, sir?” I asked. The boy reached into his pocket, but his father stopped him.
“No, Remus,” he said, “we mustn’t encourage his sort. Leave honest folk alone you filthy layabout!”
He grabbed the boy’s hand and shoved past me, and watched them go. It wasn’t the first time. But then he turned back to me and said…
“Have you no pride, sir? You seem fit enough, go and find employment! Be a man! ‘Worketh not, beggeth not.’ - William Shakespeare,” he said, and he turned up his nose and dragged the lad away.
” ‘For want of a knut, the son was lost,’ - Fenrir Greyback,“ I promised him.
“Go and find employment!” As if I could. As if I should! His kind should pay mine tribute - and they would, in time they would.
I tracked them, it was easy, even without the moon I could follow their scent. The man stank of self-righteousness and privilege; him with his job, and his son, and his fine fucking house, and his wife with her cunt all dried up because he wasn’t man enough to set her flowing. Maybe I’d do him a little favor there, after I dealt with his whelp. Maybe I would.
I followed them to their garden gate, “Lupin” the brass plaque read. Welladay, ‘Remus Lupin’ he was then… that was the moment my thoughts shifted, just a mite.
”The death of a child you might survive, but the birth of a monster in your bosom… we’ll see how you deal with that, you fucking prick.”
And so I watched, and I waited, and I planned, and in the end he served his son to me on a platter…
*~~~*
“Thanks Mom and Dad!” exclaimed Remus as he opened his present. His very own telescope, his parents had given him the sky.
“We’ll go out this evening and try it out,” his Father promised. “It will be better in about two weeks though. The moon is getting full, and the light from it will mask some of the fainter stars.”
“Can’t we just look at the moon?” Remus asked.
“Oh, there is no challenge to looking at the moon, son. That is for dreamers and amateurs, real astronomers look to the stars!”
”But I love the moon,” the boy replied.
“You will learn better,” his father assured him
*~~~*
I had been watching off and on for weeks when I saw the boy and his father emerge from the house at dusk and set up the telescope. The father explained the various knobs and levers to the lad and I could sense his excitement, so much life in the boy.
For a couple of hours they were out there, the father pointing the telescope to the darkest parts of the sky and the boy turning his gaze to the waxing moon. Then they carried the instrument to the stone shed at the back of the property and placed it inside before returning to their home. I went to look the shed over, it might figure in my plans.
It was a pillbox of a thing, thick stone and barred windows and a door to do a bank vault proud. The shed of a man who meant to keep what was his.
I had other ideas about that myself, and in two days, on the first of the three nights of the moon, I would share my ideas with the smug bastard.
Two days. And then a lifetime of payback for him and his kind for what they’d done to mine. Two days. I could wait two days.
*~~~*
“You see Remus; it is as I said it would be, the moon is so bright that we cannot see that cluster we have been observing. We may as well pack it in,” the man said.
“May I stay out a little longer please, father?” he asked.
“Very well Remus, but remember your bedtime, and be sure and put the instrument away properly. One must take proper care of one’s prized possessions.”
John Lupin patted his son on the head and proceeded to ignore his own advice.
With great effort I could control the wolf, and with great determination I could commit to a course of action before the shift and stick to it afterwards. But now the boy was coming, and the moisture filled my jaws and I dropped to the ground even though the wolf wanted to snarl and rip and tear like it always did, but I fought it down. I waited. I waited until he had locked the shed like a good boy and headed home in plenty of time to get to bed and then I sprang from hedge and ripped his thigh open and ran off with his blood in my mouth and his screams in my ears. I couldn’t see them from where I stopped, but I could hear them, I could hear the panic and my heart soared, and I pointed my nose to the moon and sang to her.
Let’s see what you make of that, you smug bastard.
“John, we have to get him to Hospital! Take him to St. Mungo’s, I’ll follow when I can!” exclaimed Miriam Lupin.
“No, not St. Mungo’s” John said fervently, “go and call an ambulance Miriam; I’ll do what I can for the wound. Hurry up, would you?”
“But-“
“GO!” he commanded, and she fled to the house.
“Am I going to die, father?” asked the boy.
“Of course not Remus,” his father assured him, but a part of him almost hoped that he would. John Lupin could not identify a werewolf in human form, but he knew what the howl of one sounded like, and he knew that the healers at St. Mungo’s had ways of identifying a werewolf bite. He was afraid, afraid of what they would do to his son, and afraid of it becoming known that his son had been cursed.
It was this last fear that I had counted on.
*~~~*
It was the afternoon of the day of the first moon of the wolf, and I watched as the man led his son to the shed. It had been three months since I gave the boy his gift, three months of horror for him and his parents. Such a terrible price they all paid for his rudeness. And if I had my way they would pay more. Eventually they would all pay, these wizards, and they would pay in coin of the realm.
“But father, it’s still early, why do I have to go in the shed now?” protested the lad.
“Because your mother and I have an engagement this evening, and we have to leave soon, Remus. I regret the necessity of this, but it is something that you must grow accustomed to. We simply cannot chance you getting loose. Now, there is plenty of food and drink in there, if you can manage not to destroy it when you change. You really must strive to gain control Remus, or you will never have anything like a normal life. I have cast silencing spells on the shed of course, so you needn’t worry about attracting attention.”
”No,” I thought as I listened, ”attention is not something he’ll be getting from the likes of you, you miserable…” The lock clicked and the man turned his back on his son and walked to the house. Soon after, I saw him and his wife emerge from the house, take a quick look ‘round and then Apparate away.
I moved to one of the barred windows, and tapped on it, the boy’s face appeared on the other side.
“Hello there, boy,” I said to him, “and why would your old Da’ be locking a lad such as you in a shed? Should I call the law?” His eyes grew round, and he was talking frantically, but I couldn’t hear him. Bastard he might be, but he could do a silencing charm right enough. I pointed to my ear and shook my head, and the lad really got frantic then, screaming “NO!” I still couldn’t hear him but I could read his lips.
I went to the door and considered the lock. It was substantial, and it would have been a real poser to anyone locked inside the place, which of course is how it was intended to be. It was however, merely a lock, and years of fending for myself outside of society had taught me a few skills. It took a bit of time, but I got the lock open, and swung the door wide.
“There now lad,” I said, friendly-like, “you can go about your business, I expect your Da’ is right sorry he locked you in here by now, anyway.”
“No he isn’t! And you have to lock the door and get away,” said the boy earnestly, “really, you’re in danger here. Please! Lock the door and go!”
“I’m in no danger from you boy,” I said calmly.
“But you are! You don’t understand, you don’t know!”
“Oh, but I do know, boy. I am myself a werewolf.”
“Really?” he asked in shock. “How do you stand it, it hurts horribly!”
“Aye, it hurts,” I agreed, “and it always will, but it gets better over time, and you get used to it. And there are the advantages…”
“Forgive me if I don’t see them,” he replied bitterly.
”This is the one,” I thought, ”only a boy, but listen to him! He has spine, and he’s smart, this one. This is the one!”
“Then come with me boy, and I will show you the upside of your predicament.”
“Are you mad? Do you think I’d go anywhere with a Werewolf?”
“Suit yourself lad, if you fancy being a prisoner I’ll lock you back in there, but as for going somewhere with a werewolf? Lad, you’ll go everywhere with a werewolf for the rest of your life. You might as well learn how it’s done, don’t you think?”
It was a marvelous thing to watch the lad work this over in his thoughts, he was only a boy, and he was scared, but he could still think. Oh yes, he was the one.
“Alright then, I don’t see what you could do to me worse than what’s already been done, even death would be better than this,” he said.
“You’re wrong there lad, now come and let me show you why,” I told him. He gave a short nod, and I reached out my hand to him.
“Don’t touch me!” he snapped.
“Fair enough, just follow me then, and don’t worry about getting caught out. Your father won’t come back here again until after the third day.” I saw his shoulders slump at that, so he knew that his father abandoned him during this time.
“Why does he do that? He could come and visit me during the day; I’m safe to be around in the day. I could even come out of the shed in the daylight and it would be safe.”
“Because he’s afraid of you boy, and he’s right to be afraid, now come.” I led the way on a path that wound through the wood to the top of a hill overlooking the town. The locals never came near here during the wolf moons, even if they didn’t know why, they knew to stay away. “Look boy,” I said as I swept my arm across the view of the town, “all of them, all of them down there, from the meanest dustman to the richest and the most powerful, all of them spit on our kind. Do you not remember me, lad, from the daylight?” He looked at me in the fading light, and I could already see the wolf stirring in the depths of his eyes. He was the one, no doubt of it.
“You asked us for money in the alley once, didn’t you?”
“Aye, and your father told me to be a man, to have some pride, to get a job! There are no jobs for us lad, no one will hire a wolf, and even if you go to the muggle world, where they usually deny our existence, they won’t put up with the regular absences that the wolf demands.”
“So how do you live?”
“We steal, and beg, and hunt and fish when we can, but it’s all worth it for the moon nights lad, it’s all worth it.”
“How? What can make up for being an outcast, and the pain?”
“Because lad, for the three nights of the moon, all of them down there, the richest and the poorest, every last one of them including the Minister himself, are cattle for the slaughter. For the three nights of the moon, we - are - Kings!”
“You’re mad, I’m not going to kill innocent people,” the boy insisted.
“You’ll do as the wolf bids, just like the rest of us. But no more talk of that tonight, the change will come soon, and I will show you the true glory of the wolf. Don’t worry lad, no hunting tonight, unless we happen across a rabbit or a deer. No, tonight you will know true freedom for the first time in your life.”
“I feel it coming,” he said fearfully.
“Aye, and so do I, but never worry, I’ll take care of you, I’ve been a wolf for some time now. Don’t try and fight it boy, for that only makes it worse.” I saw him give a nod of his head, and then he was down and so was I, it still hurt, but I loved it now, because I knew that once the skin-tearing and bone-breaking were done I would be free!
I finished my change and turned to the boy to watch over him as he completed his own transformation. I was dumbstruck to see that he had already finished, and was sitting there panting. He was a marvelous wolf, a fine grayish brown, and of course he was not a pup for in the years of the wolf he was just coming into his prime. Only young infants transform into pups, and sad to say that never goes well.
We sniffed each other as wolves do, and I led the way off through the woods, running faster and faster, expecting him to fall behind, but he did not. He was the one all right.
My thoughts as the wolf were different, based on instinct to a large extent, and instinct would always take over at need. But by now I could follow a broad plan that I had decided on before the change well enough to be getting on with, and I had a plan for this boy, this wolf.
We soon crested another hill, a higher hill, and we stopped and gazed at the moon that was our mother, and the boy pointed his nose at her and sang to her, as did I. And to our ears came the songs of our brothers and sisters as we gloried in the moon, in our strength, in the wolf!
I moved off again and he followed me; we ran fast, and I could feel the joy from him as he realized his strength. We burst through a thicket and a deer bounded off, and the lad was on his trail in an instant, head down and silent, in the way of the true killer. I had to strain to keep up, and he pulled the deer down and tore the throat from it in the space of a few heartbeats, and then he faced me over the body of his kill and growled.
He had to learn better than that, and so I drove him to the ground and fastened my teeth in the skin of his neck until he whined in submission. He was new, but he was learning. I ate my fill of the deer and then stepped aside and gave him a little chuff of permission, and he tore into the carcass with joy and hunger.
After, I led him to a stream and we washed off the blood and gore, I wasn’t ready yet for his father to know I had let him out, let him feed the wolf. He looked at me and I saw the trust building in his eyes, and I knew my plan was working, so I led him back to the shed and stood guard over him while he changed back. He was naked and a bit embarrassed of course, and so was I, except for the embarrassed bit. His memory of the night would be vague, it took time to be able to recall the wolf times, but I could see in his eyes that a part of him remembered that I was his Alpha, and that was more than I’d hoped for.
“You need to plan for the change when you’re free, boy. Get your clothes off and put away safe before the change, and it never hurts to have a spare set or two hidden about, just in case.” He nodded. “Now I’d better get you tucked away just in case your Da’ comes ‘round.”
“He won’t,” the lad said, “but I suppose I had best get used to not taking chances.”
“Aye,” I told him, and I cuffed him on the shoulder.
“Thank you for showing me the freedom and the strength, it doesn’t make up for what I‘ve lost by a long throw, but it’s better than gnawing on myself in the shed. It seems I need to know the things that you can teach me, but I won’t kill humans, and I won’t let you hurt my family.”
“You couldn’t stop me boy,” I told him, “but as a favor to you I’ll keep your Mum and Da’ safe from the others, and I’ll not harm them myself.”
“Will you be back tomorrow night?” he asked.
“No, I have business tomorrow that will take me away from here, but I’ll see you next month on the first of the moons. Remember lad,” I said before I locked him in, “you are a King now, and they are all your cattle, all of them.”
He made no reply, and I gathered up my spare clothes and started the long trek to the meeting place.
*~~~*
The meeting place was deep in the forest, and it was near dusk when I arrived and greeted my pack. Those who had been lucky enough to get food or drink shared it out, and we waited for our mother to rise.
“So, Greyback, does the new lad measure up, do you think?” asked my second.
“Aye, he’s the one, he’s our key, our messenger. It will take time for him to come round, he still thinks of himself as a monster.” There was much rough laughter at that. We were all of us monsters, and we knew it. The difference between us and the boy was that we gloried in it. But none of us had ever had the advantages that he had as a human. I had built my pack from the disadvantaged, thinking them likely to be more apt to my hand, and they were. But none of them could mingle with wizards, get inside their world, and as long as the boy’s father kept his shame a secret, the boy could. I could count on John Lupin to teach the boy how to hide his gift. It was up to me to teach him to love it.
I noticed one of the pack eyeing me rather too boldly, and as the moon grew nearer and my senses sharpened I could feel the tension in him, and scent his excitement. ”So be it, but you’d have done better to have waited for me to be injured,” I thought. We stripped down and laid our clothes aside, men and women alike. For us now the human body held little interest, it was the wolf that was real; it was the wolf that had passion. And then the moon appeared and the change was on us.
He walked up to me bristling and snarling, challenging me for leadership, and I stood my ground and stared at him. I hoped he would back down, I had no wish to harm him but if he did not submit… He lunged at me, but he was too eager, and I skipped aside and tore his flank. I ran a few yards and then faced him, giving him the chance to change his mind, and I could see the fire dim in his eyes when he made his decision and lowered his head to his paws and whimpered. I was happy that he did, for we were not enough to be killing one another, and he had acted as a wolf should act. I briefly mounted him to acknowledge his submission and assert my dominance, and the tension was gone from the pack. It wasn’t sexual, although I did penetrate him briefly to make my point. The pack was free with one another sexually if the urge was on, and while werewolf bitches did not come into season like true wolves, as a rule a healthy wolf had healthy urges and there was the same variety of appetites among the pack as among humans. Here at least if two males or two bitches had a fancy for each other no one gave a damn.
This was my real life, here, with my kind.
*~~~*
“Where are we going tonight, Fenrir?” he greeted me.
Six months now I had come and freed the boy and shown him the glory of the wolf, eleven times we had run together, and now he was eager for it. It was time.
“I am taking you to meet your pack, your real family,” I told him, and I could see the wolf eager within his eyes.
“Will they hurt me?” he asked.
“You may be challenged,” I admitted, “but you are a match for most, and the wolf will know what to do, never doubt that. Just yield to instinct lad,” I counseled him, and he nodded.
“Come now, lets get out of sight,” I told him and we headed into the woods and stowed our clothes in a hollow tree. By now he was over his embarrassment, and moved confidently in his own skin as we moved deeper into the trees. I watched him eagerly, waiting for the change. The boy held no interest for me other than as a tool, but the wolf, the wolf was magnificent, strong, and fine. I had never seen his match.
Then the change was on us.
We touched noses, and I fought the urge to lick his face, rather turning and running hard towards our destination. I no longer bothered to see if he was keeping up, I could best him in a fight, but no wolf ever spawned could match him for running. It was like watching water tumble down a rapid, so fluid, and so powerful. He was fucking marvelous.
I gave voice to let the pack know I was arriving, and they were waiting for us when we arrived, silently staring. I urged him forward, and my second came forward to greet him, stiff-legged and menacing, asserting his position in the pack, as he should. He sniffed the boy and then bared his teeth and snarled. I say boy, but here he was no boy, he was a new male, a rival and a potential threat, and my second recognized him as such. It was the way of the pack.
The boy eyed him for an instant and then rolled over in submission, his instincts were true, for he could not yet best my second, who took the offered throat lightly in his teeth and then moved to mount the boy.
That was when my sight misted over red, and I drove my shoulder into my second and bowled him over and stood bristling and snarling between him and the boy. I had made a statement to the pack, claiming this new member as my own, and I mounted him in front of the pack and cemented my claim to him before them all. My wolf, mine!
*~~~*
The brief years following the boy’s introduction to the pack were my best as a wolf, the pack accepted us a pair, and they understood the boy’s potential importance to us all. I let the boy out whenever I could, and he always seemed pleased to go with me. He was fully accustomed to the change by then, and as a wolf he was more magnificent than ever. I kept expecting him to challenge my second for place in the pack, but he never did, though I was sure now that he would win. I was no longer certain that I could best him, truth to tell.
And that should have let me know that there was a flaw in my plan. But it did not.
I had been careful to keep him away from humans when the wolf was on him, I didn’t want to chance that a wizard would get lucky or a muggle would be armed with silver. I had kept him from his true prey. That might have been a mistake as well.
Or perhaps I simply took too much pleasure in him on the moon nights, perhaps I didn’t want to see the fatal flaw, perhaps I was simply besotted by what a truly marvelous wolf he was. And the fact that he was mine.
The boy? The boy could be tiresome, prattling on about finding a cure in the brief time we were together as humans. Whinging about being confined, about being feared by his own parents, and I unwisely ignored that, brushing it aside as I waited for the moon to free us, because we only had brief moments together as humans. Other than the moon nights, his father kept a close rein on him, as he was young yet and seldom allowed out on his own.
But it was the wolf that mattered, I decided. I was wrong there too.
*~~~*
“Fenrir!” the boy whispered excitedly as I opened the door, “I’m going to go to Hogwarts!”
“Good for you lad! How did this come to be?” I asked with what I hoped was appropriate enthusiasm, but inside of me the wolf was howling with glee.
“Headmaster Dumbledore is preparing a place for me to use during the moon nights. I won’t be able to hurt anyone, and we’ve worked out a story to explain my absences. I’m going to be a proper wizard after all!”
I let that pass as well, for as far as I was concerned the only proper wizard was one with his throat torn out. Or one that paid.
Of course I knew that this would cut my time with him down to nothing. I knew well that I could not penetrate the security that Dumbledore would put around him. I would have to be patient, and have to trust that the two years and more that I had been his Alpha would be enough.
I had to caution him to be quiet, he was so excited, and even when we hid our clothes and took the by-now familiar path through the woods he was fair quivering. We stood on the hill and waited, and at last the change came upon us.
And then the rather annoying boy was gone, and the wolf, my wolf, was there in the moonlight. The excitement had carried over, his muscles sang with it, and his song to the moon set my blood afire. He looked at me with those huge golden eyes, and in his joy and excitement he offered himself to me, and I took him on the hilltop beneath the moon, and I thought that my life would never get better than this.
That time I was right.
I didn’t see him again before he left for school, but I did eventually find where Dumbledore stashed him during the moon times. I knew the sounds of a werewolf confined during the change, and I raged at the injustice of my marvelous wolf being shut away.
But I could do nothing about it, and as there were no wolf moons during his holidays it was not until the summer break that I saw him again.
“I can’t go with you Fenrir,” he told me when I opened the door. “Father will be here at first light and I can’t chance him knowing that I’ve been getting out. He’s very pleased with what Dumbledore has told him of me and I’m afraid that if he knows what I’ve been doing that he will pull me out of Hogwarts.”
“Don’t you miss the freedom boy? I’ve heard you in that prison,” I asked.
“Of course I do, but I won’t risk being expelled from Hogwarts, I’m learning so much.”
“Making friends, are you?”
“Yes, of course I can’t get too close to them, and some of them wonder what’s wrong with my mother that I have to go and visit her every month, but I have friends,” he answered.
“That’s good, lad. Friendship is important, and loyalty. Especially loyalty to your pack,” I reminded him.
“I can feel it coming, you’d best me lock up and go.”
“Very well, I’ll try again next moon, mayhap your folks will have summat else to do,” I told him as I locked him in.
For the first time in a very long time I greeted mother with less than joy. However, the muggles I found trysting in the forest helped with that a bit. From the taste of her blood she would make fine bitch, and the young man had spirit. I killed him anyway, and scattered him through the wood.
I only got to run with him once during that break, and he was more glorious than ever, and more distant.
We put up a deer and he had it down before I could begin to chase it, and he killed it efficiently and sat waiting patiently for me to feed. It looked more like good manners than submission though, but I did not test it.
Then he went back to school and I went back to building my pack, so as to be ready when the time came.
The next year he wasn’t home for holidays at all, nor the break. I could hear him in his prison on the moon nights, the wolf times, but I never found him in his human form. Not until his third year, in Hogsmeade.
I didn’t like to be there, there were wizards about that could spot a werewolf in his human skin, and the wolf grew plainer upon me with every kill, with every wolf I made, and I had made many. We were ready, and it was time for the boy to show his loyalty to the pack.
I found him in a bookshop, his mates had gone ahead to the Three Broomsticks, and he looked both surprised and a little happy to see me. I motioned to him to follow me, and he did so readily. I took this as a sign that he acknowledged me as Alpha still, and I felt hope. I led the way out of town to a place in the hills, not too far, but private.
“Fenrir!” he said, “I’m surprised to see you around all of these wizards.”
“It was necessary,” I shrugged, “and I do what is necessary for the pack. And so will you,” I said sternly. His face grew guarded.
“What do you mean?” he asked me.
“It is time for you to prove yourself to your pack, we have need of you. I want you to provide me with a list of the children of wizarding families that have real money, not just an old name. I want as many details as you can find about where they go on holiday, their family members, particularly if any of them are Aurors or in the Department of Dangerous Beasts or anything like that,” I told him.
“Whatever for?” he asked.
“Because I am going to make wolves of a few of them, and then demand payment from the rest for not doing so, these bastard wizards have had it over us for too long. It is time for them to pay!” My joy in this idea was so strong that I could not imagine that his would not be.
“I won’t do it, Fenrir,” he said, horror in every line of his face.
“Why not? Have wizards done so much for you?”
“They have, in fact. Dumbledore has enabled me to get an education. I have friends among wizards. I am a wizard! I won’t do it, and you are mad to think that I would!” he shouted.
“I am your Alpha and you will do as you are commanded!” I snarled.
“You are the wolf’s Alpha,” he acknowledged, “but I am more than the wolf. Three cursed days a month do not give you control of my life.”
“You love the wolf! I can feel the joy from you when we run, when we hunt!” I insisted.
“The wolf loves freedom, and loves the hunt, yes. And when the moon is on me it feels much better to be free than to gnaw myself in the darkness. But I do not love the wolf, it is a curse.”
“You’re blathering now; your mind has been poisoned by these false friends. You have no friends but the pack, and the pack requires your service! I, your Alpha, require it,” I said fiercely.
“No,” he said calmly.
“You owe me, boy,” I informed him.
“And what I owe you for teaching me of the wolf I shall pay by not denouncing you, more than that I will not do. Further, if I hear of a rise in wolf attacks I shall inform Professor Dumbledore who is behind it.”
“You owe me for more than that, boy. It was I who gave you the gift of the wolf!” I snapped. He grew pale, and I thought I had him, but…
“You bastard! You did this to me? Made me a monster and then pretended to be my friend? Get the hell away from me before I change my mind about denouncing you, there are Aurors in Hogsmeade,” he cried, and his chest was heaving and I could see the wolf stirring in his eyes.
“I did and I’m glad. Don’t you remember the strength, the glory? Do you even remember that we are more than Alpha and pack member?” I tried my last card.
“I remember nothing except that it was you who did this to me. If I ever see you again I will call for the authorities, you filthy mongrel.”
With that he was gone, and the last thread of joy in my life with him. I could have killed him then, and I should have. But if he could forget the wolf, forget our bond, I could not. I hated the wizard that ran away from me more than I had ever hated another living being, but I could not forget the wolf. Nor could I see the tears in his eyes, not that that would have mattered.
*~~~*
I tried to proceed with my plan anyway, but without inside information the wealthy children were simply too difficult to get to. I managed to bite two pureblood children, but the families simply killed them outright once they knew what had happened. The bastards would rather murder a child than suffer a stain on the family name.
So I resolved to do with numbers what I could not do by threat, and I and my pack turned as many as we could. There were losses, many, as the wizarding community grew aware of the threat. I targeted children especially, always hoping to make another wolf like the boy had been. But it never happened, and in time I hated the children for failing me, and I grew to simply like the taste of their flesh and the softness of their skin and the ease with which they died, and the terror that spread among those fucking high-and-mighty bastards of wizards with each dead child. I sowed terror among them, I was the thing in the dark, the nightmare, and the screams of the children were music to my soul, their flesh the food of my body, of the wolf!
And it was this that was my undoing.
I at last had another chance at a pure-blood heir, or so I thought, and in my greed I took it, and Abraxas Malfoy and his mates hexed me senseless before I realized that I had been hunting a mudblood with a glamour on him. The next morning I met him.
“Fenrir Greyback, I believe,” the snake-faced bastard hissed at me.
“Aye, and what’s it to you?” I blustered.
”Crucio,” he hissed casually, and the pain was even worse than transformation, because there was no reward at the end of it.
“Manners, dog,” he hissed as he eased the curse. “Now then, I trust that you realize that your little reign of terror is over? However, I do applaud your ambition, and your ruthlessness, and I have a proposition for you. Well, more of a command, really.”
“Fuck yo-“ I started to say.
”Crucio,” he whispered and I was on the floor again, my bones throbbing in agony. “I can do this indefinitely, Greyback,” he said conversationally, “can you tolerate it similarly?”
I said nothing.
“Well?” he asked, raising his wand.
“No!” I gasped.
“No, what?” he asked softly, and though I knew what he wanted, I was damned if I would give it to him. Him or any other fucking wizard.
”Crucio”, he said with a smile on that awful face, and this time I had stopped moving before he released me. “Shall I repeat the question?”
“No,” I wheezed.
“No…?”
“No - Master,” I forced past my lips.
“Good dog,” he said gently, and I did not dare to meet his eyes. “Now then, as I said, I admire your ruthlessness, but I cannot tolerate your predation on wizard children. Not without my permission, of course,” he said smoothly, and I raised my eyes to that terrible, white, snake’s face. “From now on you will kill whom I tell you too, change whom I command you to, when I command you to do it. In return, I grant you your life.”
I looked at him silently.
“I will also,” he said, and he smiled the most terrible smile I had ever seen, “give you more muggle children than you can eat. And a child is child, is it not? All you have to do is swear to serve me faithfully. I am sure I do not need to inform you of the alternative.”
He didn’t. He was a fucking wizard and I fucking hated him, but I had to admit that he was more powerful and more ruthless than ever I had been or dreamed of being, at least since the boy had left.
“I swear loyalty to you, Master,” I told him, and maybe that was the moment I was truly damned.
“Excellent,” he hissed, and he gestured, and one of the masked wizards standing in a circle around us came up to me and slashed my arm, catching the blood in a vial that he delivered to the Dark Lord.
“Now then, Greyback,” he said, “just in case you ever think of betraying me…” he gestured again, and a man was dragged bound into the room. I knew him, Rogerson, a member of my pack. “A small demonstration, I think,” he said and he produced another vial from within his robes. “Argentum Cruoerem,” he hissed, and the vial glowed silver.
Rogerson however, screamed his heart out, and smoke poured from his toes and his fingers. It was more than a half-hour before he fell silent, and the grin on that snake’s face never faltered.
“A little spell of my own invention,” the Dark Lord said lightly, “it turns the subject’s blood to silver. Slowly. It works over any distance.” He held up the vial his man had brought him. “I have yours now.”
I bowed. Wizard he might be, but he was more than my match for cruelty, and I had to respect that.
“The stick you have seen, and so now for the carrot,” he told me. And at his signal a small boy was dragged into the room. “Merely a muggle,” he said, “but a child is a child, bon appetite!”
I stared at him; the time of the wolf was many hours away.
“Well, are you a wolf or not? Do you have no teeth without the moon? Dine or die, dog!”
I fell on the child while the snake laughed, and inside of me the wolf howled. The wolf was all that I had left now, and so I fed it.
*~~~*
The years that followed were heady times; the only things marring them were the boy’s treachery and the fact that I was a wizard’s tool. I had seen the boy a few times during the moon, out running with his wizard mates, and how I wanted to kill them for taking that wolf from me. But the Dark Lord would not allow it, and so I would always leave them to their stupid games.
I did however, put a bug in Malfoy’s ear, and John Lupin gradually fell on harder and harder times, and there was some small joy in that.
The boy finished school, and I wondered how he would make out now his house was gone, his parents living in a shabby flat. He had chosen the wizards, and they would spit on him just as they had spit on me until the snake made them fear me.
So I was surprised when I heard a familiar voice call my name that day in Knockturn Alley.
“Fenrir, I need a word with you,” he said, and I turned to him.
“Have you summoned the authorities, then? For that is what you swore to do next time we met.”
“No, a truce for now, may we talk?” he asked politely. He was no boy now, the scars on his face made him look older than he was, and he had a weedy sort of unwell look about him as the moon was just past. He also had the unmistakable marks of poverty on him, and against my will a tiny hope flared.
“Come then,” I rasped at him and led the way to a tavern where I knew we would not be bothered, for it was run by the snake’s men.
“I have something to offer you, Fenrir,” he began, and my heart pounded, “I know that you have been working for Voldemort.” I jumped at the sound of the name, but I was proud of him for having the spine to utter it.
“The Dark Lord makes a very persuasive argument,” I replied, and his lips twitched in what was almost a smile.
“I have heard that. How would you like to throw off his yoke?” In my heart the wolf howled with joy.
“Yes! Yes!” I said eagerly, “with you at my side we can take him down! We can have it all! With you now a wizard we can destroy him and take his place! We shall be Kings!”
“You mistake me, Fenrir,” he said calmly. “I offer you the chance to work against him to gain some redemption for the things that you have done. I offer you and the pack a potion that will allow you to control the wolf when it comes, and I offer you the chance for life in prison instead of the death that you have earned.”
I suppose my face must have been quite a study, because the small smile visited his face again.
“You’re mad! Life in prison as a reward! You are no wolf, Remus Lupin, but a wizard’s lapdog!”
“And you are not?” he asked softly.
“Slave I may be, but at least my master feeds the wolf, he does not neuter it and lock it away.”
“I went to considerable lengths to get permission to make this offer to you Greyback,” he said, and the change in address was not lost on me. “For although you cursed me you did in fact teach me that there was some joy to be had in the wolf, now with this potion and my friends I can at times experience that. But what you have been doing to innocent children; there is no forgiveness for that. You must pay the price, but will you not reconsider my offer? It will not be made again to you.”
There was no choice to be made, and even if there had been I would still have rejected it. If I could ever kill the snake, I would, and gladly. But I would seek no redemption for taking my rightful prey.
“You should leave now, Lupin, our truce is at an end, and this place is not congenial to your kind,” I told him.
“Very well then, Greyback,” he said as he rose, and then he leaned in close and quietly whispered, “if I see you ever again as the wolf, I shall tear your throat out.”
With that he was gone, and I felt a bit of real fear at that, for I knew well that he could do it. He was a fucking marvelous wolf. Better to die in his jaws than in a cell, or racked with pain at the feet of the snake.
I signaled for firewhisky and I drank.
*~~~*
Our paths didn’t cross again in that war, I knew that he was at work among the pack, making a similar offer to them, trying to find out our plans.
We had no plans, we did what the snake told us to do, when he told us to do it. He was a bastard wizard to the core, but he kept his word to me. I had all the muggle children I could eat, with the odd wizard whelp as a bonus.
Some of the pack took the offer, and the potion, and I looked on that as a favor. He was weeding out the weak, and the pack was growing stronger, and I was starting to believe that one day we might be able to destroy the snake and his wizard slaves. We would be on top where nature intended.
And then that little wizard baby ruined everything, and the Aurors came, and the hunters, and those bastard, traitorous wolves led by the one who used to carry all my hope and the tiny shred of heart that I had left. I saw him once or twice during the moon, and I did not dare to confront him. He was a fucking marvelous wolf.
Those of us that could ran and hid, some fought and died and some surrendered, but the pack was broken and I was alone in the wilderness.
There are worse places for a wolf to be, and for more than a dozen years I seldom saw a human face. There was scarcely anything human left of me when the word came that the snake was back, bigger and badder and looking for his old servants.
I thought about just staying where I was, but I knew that if I went to him that I could kill more wizards, and I hadn’t tasted a child in ages.
So I went back to him, and if I was more wolf, then he was more snake, and we were both crueler than ever before. It made for a nice business arrangement.
Things moved faster this time around, and if the snake hadn’t wasted so much time on the boy that derailed him last time it might have been easier. But I knew what it was to have a boy fill up your mind, so I said nothing. He would have tortured me if I had, any road.
But he set me to kill, and that was all I cared about any more.
I heard that he was teaching at Hogwarts with one of the snake’s men brewing that castrating potion for him, and that he was still Dumbledore’s lapdog. “Grateful for the job” he was. The bile rose in my throat at the thought, that fucking marvelous wolf, tamed and licking the boots of his rightful prey.
I didn’t see him, I didn’t want to see him, not unless he was mine again, and I knew that would never happen.
And then the whelp of that wizard I thought I was going to bite when the snake caught me got us into Hogwarts and Dumbledore was dead and I shredded the face of that redheaded bastard of a wizard and we ran into the night leaving all of them crying in despair behind us.
It was the best night I ever had without the wolf moons.
The snake moved quickly after that, and the Ministry fell, and the terror spread openly to the muggle world. It looked as if the snake was going to have it all when we moved against Hogwarts.
He said he was giving them time to consider, and I was making my way back to the forest, my head throbbing from where that looney witch had hit it with the crystal ball. I was going quiet like so as not to attract attention from the ones gathering the fallen and then there he was right in front of me, dead as a hammer and thirty years raced through my brain in an instant or an hour and all I could do was stare at him.
The finest wolf I ever made, ever saw, killed by some fucking wizard that should have been his slave. He had a son, I had heard. Perhaps I could find his son, perhaps his son would be the wolf he might have been, should have been.
He was a fucking marvelous wol-
“SECTUMSEMPRA!” screamed two voices in unison.
“This is for my brother Bill, you FUCKING! WEREWOLF! BASTARD!” shouted Ronald Weasley, punctuating each screamed invective with a kick to the face of the dying figure on the ground.
“Ron, come on, he’s finished. Let’s just get Professor Lupin back to the castle. Ron, come on,” urged Neville. “I wonder what he was about, just standing there staring at Professor Lupin?”
“Likely deciding which bit to eat first,” spat Ron as he looked down at Greyback’s corpse. “Just one thing left to do Neville; he’s a werewolf, best to make sure. Incendio!”
The flames consuming the body of Fenrir Greyback cast shadows on the ground ahead of Neville and Ron as they levitated the body of their friend and teacher to the castle.
“Poor Professor Lupin,” Ron said sadly to Neville as they walked, “he was a fucking marvelous teacher.”
***
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