Arbitrary Alignment (10/?)
Fandom: Harry Potter
Pairing: Hermione/Draco
Rating: PG13
Summary: A Draco goes to the Order's headquarters/werewolf fic.
Disclaimer: Harry Potter and his universe belongs not to me, but to JK Rowling.
AN: Werewolf transformation is so vamp because Vampire Diaries, True Blood,... its taking over my life!
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Affliction
"Furr" Blitzen Trapper
Yeah when I was only seventeen
I could hear the angels whispering
So I drove into the woods and wandered aimlessly about
Until I heard my mother shouting through the fog
It turned out to be the howling of a dog
Or a wolf to be exact, the sound sent shivers down my back
But I was drawn into the pack and before long
They allowed me to join in and sing their song
So from the cliffs and highest hill
Yeah we would gladly get out fill
Howling endlessly and shrilly at the dawn
And I lost the taste for judging right from wrong
For my flesh had turned to furr
Yeah and my thoughts they surely were
Turned to instinct and obedience to god
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Hermione was furious. Beyond furious.
Earlier she had been bewildered and shocked when Moody showed her the prophesy. But she had had the night to sort it through and the bewilderment and shock had hardened into anger.
They had known.
All that the prophesy had promised, they had seen long before. They had known for months before the attack that she and her family were at risk. They had known that her family had been targeted by Voldemort and instead of placing her and her parents under Order protection they had used her. Like she was some tool, some pawn in their game.
How dare they? How dare they use her like that. Use her like she wasn't a person trying just as hard as the rest of them to survive this war. When had the Order started sacrificing others for the 'greater good'. When had it become okay to sacrifice the very innocents they were supposed to be fighting for? When had the light side started to deal in darkness?
Yes, she was part of this war. But she didn't choose it, it had chosen her. In fact she hadn't asked for any of this. She didn't ask for the magic that ripped her from her world and placed her in the center of a century old struggle. Magic that she had to fight prejudice and hate to prove she was worthy enough to wield it. She had never asked for any of it, but she readily accepted it.
Her parents, on the other hand, had no part in this. She had naively thought they would never have to. After all she is the muggleborn with magic. She is the 'mudblood'. Her parents were simply Muggles, ignorant of the seedier side of the Wizarding world. Her parents were ignorant of the War ripping her world apart. She had known that she might have to make the ultimate sacrifice, and she was okay with that. She was ready to die for the cause. But she had never been willing to endanger her parents lives.
What she had never counted on was just how expendable she was to the Order. She had thought that being the friend of Harry Potter had given her some sort of inside status. That being one of the golden trio granted her an elevated untouchable above it-all-ness. And besides she wasn't completely inept. She carried some merit on her own, a vast knowledge of the Wizarding world and an above adequate arson of spells at her disposal. She had always thought that, not counting her friendship with the 'chosen one', she was a valuable asset to the cause on her own.
But in the end none of that had mattered to the Order. When they had learned from the prophesy that her death would be the catalyst to Harry's victory over Voldemort she had stopped being a person and became only a tool for them to manipulate. Just as they had manipulated Harry all these years, molding him into their perfect savior. Their precious chosen one.
Prophesies, she realized, had decided all their fates for them. A prophesy had sealed her fate just as one had chosen Harry's.
Malfoy was more like Harry than he knew. He was Harry, she realized. Or rather the anti thesis of Harry. Both had been left no choice in the direction their lives would take; their paths had been chosen for them long before they were born.
But then really when had anyone ever had a choice? Hadn't all of them been forced down the path they were on some way or another? Even Voldemort must have once been an innocent, back when his name was Tom Riddle before hate and power consumed him and twisted him into a maniac.
Who really was to blame in the end. Was it the prophesies? Prophesies like the one that left Harry an orphan with a scar and a madman to kill. Like the prophesy that had sealed the fate of her parents and almost her.
If it wasn't for that unnamed unknown spy who had slipped the information of the attack to the Ron and Harry she would have been dead. Whoever that might be, to them she owed her life. A life almost snuffed out by a prophesy. How did one fight for ones life against something like a prophesy? An entity without shape or mass or anything tangible to dig ones fingers into.
The Prophesies were more powerful than all of them. The Prophesies controlled everyone, the Order, Harry, even Voldemort. They were all of them, every single one of them, helpless in the end. Powerless against the prophesies which used and used and used them until everything was used up. Hermione was determined to stop being used. She had finally reached that point. The point of exhaustion. She was fucking tired of being used.
She couldn't stay and continue to be used. She didn't have to stay here and waste away until all that was left of her was grief and anger. She wouldn't stay here anymore. She will walk away, she will leave. She didn't believe in this war anymore. If she was honest to herself she hadn't for awhile. It was all futility an endless cycle of death answered with death. She would miss Harry and Ron but they had grown so far apart as it was. She would wait for them and after the war things would go back to the way it was before. They could forget the war and hate and death and just live.
But until than she wouldn't stay in this place any longer.
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Splintering bone. Cracking ribs. Blood.
Thick, wet, crimson blood.
"DraaaaaaaaaaaaaCoooooooooo"
Blood everywhere. Pulsing in rivers and waves.
It will drown him. It will suffocate him.
The skulls pile up and blood pools around them.
"Draaacooo... its time."
One moment he is sleeping, tossing and turning in a swirling vortex of nightmarish memories so real, he begins to believe they are his own. In the next moment he is jolted awake by the roar of the beast; the beast that has been slumbering just beneath the surface of his skin. The wolf inside that hungers and thirsts.
The pain of his wounds, the throbbing in his skull and the feverish chill of his flesh have faded and become insignificant in the wake of his thirst. It is a thirst unlike any he had ever experienced. His mouth screams with it. His throat burns with it. He knows instinctively that no amount of pumpkin juice can quench this thirst. This thirst requires a more substantial liquid. A liquid thicker and warmer, and freshly pumped from a beating heart. His mouth waters at that very thought and the burning in his throat intensifies.
His senses have sharpened, almost to the point of being painful.
Every sensation is excruciatingly sharp. His nerves feel raw and exposed. He is aware of every muscle in his body, every nerve ending and every pore. He whole body feels like an open throbbing wound. Even though it is dark he can see just as clearly as if the sun was streaming through the window. He can count each individual dust mote that dances across the air. The individual woven threads of the linen sheets under his fingers paint the pattern of its weaving across his skin.
He can hear the swish of the opened shirt rub against his chest with each breathe. He can hear the sound of the small rodent pattering beneath the floorboards with a pattering heartbeat to match. His sharpened senses narrow on the pulse and the wolf in him howls.
The fast heartbeat of the mouse or rat beneath the floor echoes loudly in his ears. Even the scent of it, gerbil stank ripe with feces and filth, causes his stomach to clench and teeth gnash against the hunger.
Another sound pricks his ears. Another heartbeat. This one is slower, stronger, and fuller. Thicker.
A human heart.
The burning in his throat implodes. It becomes a vicious blaze, a dry scorching ache that consumes him until all that is left is a hungry red haze, angry and crushing.
He is out of the bed and halfway to the door as the wolf pants eagerly in his ear, when he stops, horrified.
His hands are like claws at his side. His teeth feel sharp against the insides of his lips.
He is about to back away from the door when her scent reaches him. The scent of muscle and tendon and artery. The scent of succulent fat and the delicate shell of skin. It is the scent of meat. But it is also the scent of woman. He can smell the floral shampoo used in her hair, the mint of the soap to wash her limbs, and the sweat dewed across her upper lip. But beneath all that there is the scent of woman, of her. It smells so moist and appealing and so deliciously forbidden.
Distinctly Hermione.
It sets off a sharp spark of desire that has blood rushing fiercely to his already throbbing cock. The air seems to thrum with the enticing scent of her. The wolf in him scents her womb, ripe and waiting.
He can almost taste the hint of sweat between the cleft of her breasts. He will follow it with his tongue over the curve of her belly and beneath... to delve into her sweet slick folds. The wolf whines shrilly as he imagines himself within the moist silken heat of her. And the image of her, bent on all fours as he takes her from behind, mating and marking her as his, has him so hard and heavy it is painful.
It wouldn't be a gentle joining. The beast would mate with her hard and brutally. The beast would leave its mark in bruises and grooves in her honeyed skin. The beast would mark her with his teeth and claws. The beast would tear at her neck and drink from the river of life that would quench his unbearable thirst. The beast would scar her.
The thought shakes him from his trance and he stumbles back into the far wall terrified.
He knows more surely than anything that the last thing he, Draco Malfoy, wants is to hurt her. The realization would have be much more traumatizing at the moment if he could remember that he was a Malfoy and a pureblood and she was dirty and everything he had been taught to hate, everything he should hate and want to hurt.
But in that moment he can only think to harness the beast, the wolf who strains to break free and brutally claim its mate.
He wants to cry out to her and warn her not to open the door. The wall feels like nails on his back. The dry scorching ache flames into a vicious blaze and he opens his mouth to warn her.
Stay away.
But no sound emerges and his hands wrap themselves around his throat in an helpless effort to smother the flames within. The door swings opens. Then the frenzy is upon him, crushing him. Consuming him. Changing him.
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-Moments earlier-
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She would have to be careful in order to not be detected by either side. She wouldn't be able to use magic, but then she had lived as a muggle for the first years of her life and she could do so again.
Hermione felt certain she was making the right decision. She felt a sense of peace once she had decided to leave that she hadn't felt in the longest time. It was the beautiful feeling of ease and she could breathe a little easier.
She would tell the Order and Harry and Ron right away. They wouldn't be happy about it, but they couldn't stop her. She was done being controlled.
There is a sickening sense of giddiness that fills her stomach as she floos Moody. Now that she has decided on a course of action she is all nervous energy, anxious to have it all told and done with so that she can be gone.
As she speaks into the glowing fire to Moody she is all business. She tells him that she needs to speak with him and if possible Ron and Harry as soon as possible. He tells her they will be there shortly and the jerky nervousness in her middle quiets. She knows that this is the best thing for her and the knowing calms and steels her for what lies ahead.
Her thoughts turn to Malfoy and wonders what will happen to him in her absence. She is surprised to find a slight pang in her chest as she thinks of leaving him behind. He has become, quite swiftly and suddenly, a solidifying constant in the past week. The rational, logical part of her brain knows that she doesn't need him. But then again, the rest of her does.
She needs.
She needs him because in his injured, confused state he needs her. Because in those brief moments when she is with him she forgets how weak and helpless she is. She feels strong and confident and in control. She feels needed. The feeling is beautiful.
She quiet suddenly realizes that she wants to take him with her. She is crazy and twisted to want it but she does. If only to prolong the feeling because she knows like all things it won't last. The feeling will leave as soon as she does. As soon as she walks out the front door and leaves him behind. She tells herself that she will see him again. That she will come back after the war sees an end. But she knows she is lying to herself. This thing, whatever it is between them, was over and done with before it even started.
The Order will hold him here in this house until the end of the war. She knows they will not hurt him. He does not pose a danger to anyone. Just like her he has become an outsider.
He'll stay within the four walls of the room upstairs, safe and sound with only the threat of boredom to plague him.
She should tell him she is leaving. Get the goodbyes over and done with. Not that he will miss her. No doubt he will be glad to be rid of her. But she feels as if she should still tell him she is leaving and give herself and some closure. He deserves some as well, at the very least that.
She walks up the stairs, feet heavy, a feeling of trepidation weighing on her. She pauses outside his door, worrying her lip. Her hand hesitates on the doorknob. She should go. Saying goodbye to him is silly. He probably couldn't care less if she left without telling him and she doesn't think she could stand it if he laughs at her. With that sneering condescending laugh she has come to dread over the years.
She almost turns to go but something stops her. A something beyond the door that calls to her. She gathers herself together and opens the door and steps into the room. Immediately several things strike her all at once.
The first thing is that his bed is empty. The second thing is that the moonlight shines full and round on the floor. Lastly, that Malfoy is against the far wall, hunched over in the shadows.
She had seen what was happening to him once before. She had witness the same thing towards the end of fourth year. She had watched as Professor Lupin had writhed and twisted under the full moon. But it had been dark and sudden and too far away from where she was to get a good look in. One moment Professor Lupin had been... well... Professor Lupin and in the next moment.. he was not.
But this time she is very close to Malfoy. She can see everything that was happening.
The logical analytical part of her brain is fascinated, drinking every detail in. Storing it in the archives of her mind for later examination. She can see everything clearly. She can see the twitching of his limbs, jerking every which way like a puppet dancing on its strings. She sees the way his skin ripples, like the waves of an ocean. It draws her in.
Unconsciously, unknowingly she has moved forward into the room, a half a dozen steps forward, to get a better look. Leaving the safety of the door behind.
His spine arches in a curve so severe she thinks his back shall surely snap.
Then she hears it. His harsh pants become shrill heart wrenching cries that make her want to stuff her fists in her ears. And worse, there is the sound of splintering ribs. Cracking bones. Bones that underneath his skin are changing their shape, forcibly elongating.
The sickening crunching sound pulls her from her fascinated trance and the logical level headed Hermione is gone in the wake of the sound. The Hermione that remains is ill from the violence of the sounds of his breaking body. she is acutely aware of the short distance between them and how very far away the safety of the door is. And even though her brain screams at her limbs to run towards the door and to safety the splintering, cracking sound has her knees go weak and her legs shaky so that she can barely stand.
The change itself is almost instantaneous.
The something underneath his skin pushes and tugs, struggling to break free. His hands claw at it, ripping his own skin open in gaping tears, which rapidly flesh out and thickened with fur. In a matter of brief minutes his skin is rent and torn away and muscle is exposed transforming into fur. Like a snake shedding its skin.
He howls one final time and his face turns toward her fully into the moonlight and she can see that Malfoy is gone and in his place there is this... creature. Where Professor Lupine was dark and shaggy in were form Malfoy is light and sleek. Like a regal blond greyhound. Above a glistening jowl of fangs his nose twitches and his eyes turn towards her.
He circles around her and she scrambles back only stopping as the back of her knees connect with the bed. And it is only then that she realizes, all to late, that he stands between her and the door. She gropes along the sheets, hands desperate for something, anything, to defend herself with. He comes closer.
She thrusts out both hands at him in a desperate attempt to halt his advance. "Malfoy?" She says desperately looking for some sign that he is still in there.
His eyes are feral, devoid of any kind of human emotion.
"Malfoy stop."
She searches the gray depths for him. For the Malfoy that sneered at her and called her Mudblood so many times. For the Malfoy that taunted her with laughter after his curse made her teeth grow past her chin. For the Malfoy that glared at her with black hate every time he tripped or pushed her. She even looks for the new Malfoy she has seen, the scared confused Malfoy of the last couple of days. But he isn't there. Only hunger stares out of the wolfs eyes.
Then he leaps.
Her body tenses for the feel of jaws around her throat while at the same time she instinctively flails, fingernails connecting with his chest and scraping across his pelt in a futile attempt to dislodge his weight which bears her down unto the mattress. His talons dig into her. She kicks out. Hard. And miraculously one of her feet connects with his leg with a sickening crunching sound.
He howls in pain and his grip loosens enough for her to shove him to the side and break free. He limps after her, favoring his left leg.
She runs for the door mind screaming "HURRY HURRY HURRY...".
Tears cloud her eyes and her hands, palms slick with sweat, slide and fumble on the door knob. Finally she grasps it fully and pulls it open. But before she can step through to safety his taloned claw has shot passed her head pushing the door closed with a brute strength she could never hope to match.
He growls, baring his fangs in her face and then swipes his paw at her, flinging her easily across the room as if she is nothing more than a rag doll. She sails through the air and hits the floor hard, sliding across it until the back of her head connects against the bed post with a dull thud. The blow makes her vision fuzzy.
Its odd but she doesn't feel any pain, the adrenaline is keeping it at bay for the time being. She can feel the wet sticky drip of blood from her shoulder from where his talons swiped her. Everything is going foggy now, reality is slipping away from her like sand through the hourglass.
He steps closer towards her and into the moonlight. The moon shining on his fur makes it glow. He closes the gap between them. And right before the glow surrounds them both her last thought is how beautiful he looks.
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Next up: Hermione is 'saved' from Malfoy but which one of them really needs to be saved after all? She departs as planned but an unexpected decision from the Order has her carrying extra baggage.
Preview Chapter 11: And as she turns to leave they don't even look up. She has ceased to exist for them. They are too absorbed with the how and what of it. "Perhaps an efficient potion too off him " Ron suggest, "Or simply an Avada Kedavra" Harry counters. The words follow her out of the room and burn her ears. She is shaking as she climbs the stairs and enters her room but her hands are steady as she begins to pack.
Pairing: Hermione/Draco
Rating: PG13
Summary: A Draco goes to the Order's headquarters/werewolf fic.
Disclaimer: Harry Potter and his universe belongs not to me, but to JK Rowling.
AN: Werewolf transformation is so vamp because Vampire Diaries, True Blood,... its taking over my life!
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Affliction
"Furr" Blitzen Trapper
Yeah when I was only seventeen
I could hear the angels whispering
So I drove into the woods and wandered aimlessly about
Until I heard my mother shouting through the fog
It turned out to be the howling of a dog
Or a wolf to be exact, the sound sent shivers down my back
But I was drawn into the pack and before long
They allowed me to join in and sing their song
So from the cliffs and highest hill
Yeah we would gladly get out fill
Howling endlessly and shrilly at the dawn
And I lost the taste for judging right from wrong
For my flesh had turned to furr
Yeah and my thoughts they surely were
Turned to instinct and obedience to god
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Hermione was furious. Beyond furious.
Earlier she had been bewildered and shocked when Moody showed her the prophesy. But she had had the night to sort it through and the bewilderment and shock had hardened into anger.
They had known.
All that the prophesy had promised, they had seen long before. They had known for months before the attack that she and her family were at risk. They had known that her family had been targeted by Voldemort and instead of placing her and her parents under Order protection they had used her. Like she was some tool, some pawn in their game.
How dare they? How dare they use her like that. Use her like she wasn't a person trying just as hard as the rest of them to survive this war. When had the Order started sacrificing others for the 'greater good'. When had it become okay to sacrifice the very innocents they were supposed to be fighting for? When had the light side started to deal in darkness?
Yes, she was part of this war. But she didn't choose it, it had chosen her. In fact she hadn't asked for any of this. She didn't ask for the magic that ripped her from her world and placed her in the center of a century old struggle. Magic that she had to fight prejudice and hate to prove she was worthy enough to wield it. She had never asked for any of it, but she readily accepted it.
Her parents, on the other hand, had no part in this. She had naively thought they would never have to. After all she is the muggleborn with magic. She is the 'mudblood'. Her parents were simply Muggles, ignorant of the seedier side of the Wizarding world. Her parents were ignorant of the War ripping her world apart. She had known that she might have to make the ultimate sacrifice, and she was okay with that. She was ready to die for the cause. But she had never been willing to endanger her parents lives.
What she had never counted on was just how expendable she was to the Order. She had thought that being the friend of Harry Potter had given her some sort of inside status. That being one of the golden trio granted her an elevated untouchable above it-all-ness. And besides she wasn't completely inept. She carried some merit on her own, a vast knowledge of the Wizarding world and an above adequate arson of spells at her disposal. She had always thought that, not counting her friendship with the 'chosen one', she was a valuable asset to the cause on her own.
But in the end none of that had mattered to the Order. When they had learned from the prophesy that her death would be the catalyst to Harry's victory over Voldemort she had stopped being a person and became only a tool for them to manipulate. Just as they had manipulated Harry all these years, molding him into their perfect savior. Their precious chosen one.
Prophesies, she realized, had decided all their fates for them. A prophesy had sealed her fate just as one had chosen Harry's.
Malfoy was more like Harry than he knew. He was Harry, she realized. Or rather the anti thesis of Harry. Both had been left no choice in the direction their lives would take; their paths had been chosen for them long before they were born.
But then really when had anyone ever had a choice? Hadn't all of them been forced down the path they were on some way or another? Even Voldemort must have once been an innocent, back when his name was Tom Riddle before hate and power consumed him and twisted him into a maniac.
Who really was to blame in the end. Was it the prophesies? Prophesies like the one that left Harry an orphan with a scar and a madman to kill. Like the prophesy that had sealed the fate of her parents and almost her.
If it wasn't for that unnamed unknown spy who had slipped the information of the attack to the Ron and Harry she would have been dead. Whoever that might be, to them she owed her life. A life almost snuffed out by a prophesy. How did one fight for ones life against something like a prophesy? An entity without shape or mass or anything tangible to dig ones fingers into.
The Prophesies were more powerful than all of them. The Prophesies controlled everyone, the Order, Harry, even Voldemort. They were all of them, every single one of them, helpless in the end. Powerless against the prophesies which used and used and used them until everything was used up. Hermione was determined to stop being used. She had finally reached that point. The point of exhaustion. She was fucking tired of being used.
She couldn't stay and continue to be used. She didn't have to stay here and waste away until all that was left of her was grief and anger. She wouldn't stay here anymore. She will walk away, she will leave. She didn't believe in this war anymore. If she was honest to herself she hadn't for awhile. It was all futility an endless cycle of death answered with death. She would miss Harry and Ron but they had grown so far apart as it was. She would wait for them and after the war things would go back to the way it was before. They could forget the war and hate and death and just live.
But until than she wouldn't stay in this place any longer.
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Splintering bone. Cracking ribs. Blood.
Thick, wet, crimson blood.
"DraaaaaaaaaaaaaCoooooooooo"
Blood everywhere. Pulsing in rivers and waves.
It will drown him. It will suffocate him.
The skulls pile up and blood pools around them.
"Draaacooo... its time."
One moment he is sleeping, tossing and turning in a swirling vortex of nightmarish memories so real, he begins to believe they are his own. In the next moment he is jolted awake by the roar of the beast; the beast that has been slumbering just beneath the surface of his skin. The wolf inside that hungers and thirsts.
The pain of his wounds, the throbbing in his skull and the feverish chill of his flesh have faded and become insignificant in the wake of his thirst. It is a thirst unlike any he had ever experienced. His mouth screams with it. His throat burns with it. He knows instinctively that no amount of pumpkin juice can quench this thirst. This thirst requires a more substantial liquid. A liquid thicker and warmer, and freshly pumped from a beating heart. His mouth waters at that very thought and the burning in his throat intensifies.
His senses have sharpened, almost to the point of being painful.
Every sensation is excruciatingly sharp. His nerves feel raw and exposed. He is aware of every muscle in his body, every nerve ending and every pore. He whole body feels like an open throbbing wound. Even though it is dark he can see just as clearly as if the sun was streaming through the window. He can count each individual dust mote that dances across the air. The individual woven threads of the linen sheets under his fingers paint the pattern of its weaving across his skin.
He can hear the swish of the opened shirt rub against his chest with each breathe. He can hear the sound of the small rodent pattering beneath the floorboards with a pattering heartbeat to match. His sharpened senses narrow on the pulse and the wolf in him howls.
The fast heartbeat of the mouse or rat beneath the floor echoes loudly in his ears. Even the scent of it, gerbil stank ripe with feces and filth, causes his stomach to clench and teeth gnash against the hunger.
Another sound pricks his ears. Another heartbeat. This one is slower, stronger, and fuller. Thicker.
A human heart.
The burning in his throat implodes. It becomes a vicious blaze, a dry scorching ache that consumes him until all that is left is a hungry red haze, angry and crushing.
He is out of the bed and halfway to the door as the wolf pants eagerly in his ear, when he stops, horrified.
His hands are like claws at his side. His teeth feel sharp against the insides of his lips.
He is about to back away from the door when her scent reaches him. The scent of muscle and tendon and artery. The scent of succulent fat and the delicate shell of skin. It is the scent of meat. But it is also the scent of woman. He can smell the floral shampoo used in her hair, the mint of the soap to wash her limbs, and the sweat dewed across her upper lip. But beneath all that there is the scent of woman, of her. It smells so moist and appealing and so deliciously forbidden.
Distinctly Hermione.
It sets off a sharp spark of desire that has blood rushing fiercely to his already throbbing cock. The air seems to thrum with the enticing scent of her. The wolf in him scents her womb, ripe and waiting.
He can almost taste the hint of sweat between the cleft of her breasts. He will follow it with his tongue over the curve of her belly and beneath... to delve into her sweet slick folds. The wolf whines shrilly as he imagines himself within the moist silken heat of her. And the image of her, bent on all fours as he takes her from behind, mating and marking her as his, has him so hard and heavy it is painful.
It wouldn't be a gentle joining. The beast would mate with her hard and brutally. The beast would leave its mark in bruises and grooves in her honeyed skin. The beast would mark her with his teeth and claws. The beast would tear at her neck and drink from the river of life that would quench his unbearable thirst. The beast would scar her.
The thought shakes him from his trance and he stumbles back into the far wall terrified.
He knows more surely than anything that the last thing he, Draco Malfoy, wants is to hurt her. The realization would have be much more traumatizing at the moment if he could remember that he was a Malfoy and a pureblood and she was dirty and everything he had been taught to hate, everything he should hate and want to hurt.
But in that moment he can only think to harness the beast, the wolf who strains to break free and brutally claim its mate.
He wants to cry out to her and warn her not to open the door. The wall feels like nails on his back. The dry scorching ache flames into a vicious blaze and he opens his mouth to warn her.
Stay away.
But no sound emerges and his hands wrap themselves around his throat in an helpless effort to smother the flames within. The door swings opens. Then the frenzy is upon him, crushing him. Consuming him. Changing him.
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-Moments earlier-
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She would have to be careful in order to not be detected by either side. She wouldn't be able to use magic, but then she had lived as a muggle for the first years of her life and she could do so again.
Hermione felt certain she was making the right decision. She felt a sense of peace once she had decided to leave that she hadn't felt in the longest time. It was the beautiful feeling of ease and she could breathe a little easier.
She would tell the Order and Harry and Ron right away. They wouldn't be happy about it, but they couldn't stop her. She was done being controlled.
There is a sickening sense of giddiness that fills her stomach as she floos Moody. Now that she has decided on a course of action she is all nervous energy, anxious to have it all told and done with so that she can be gone.
As she speaks into the glowing fire to Moody she is all business. She tells him that she needs to speak with him and if possible Ron and Harry as soon as possible. He tells her they will be there shortly and the jerky nervousness in her middle quiets. She knows that this is the best thing for her and the knowing calms and steels her for what lies ahead.
Her thoughts turn to Malfoy and wonders what will happen to him in her absence. She is surprised to find a slight pang in her chest as she thinks of leaving him behind. He has become, quite swiftly and suddenly, a solidifying constant in the past week. The rational, logical part of her brain knows that she doesn't need him. But then again, the rest of her does.
She needs.
She needs him because in his injured, confused state he needs her. Because in those brief moments when she is with him she forgets how weak and helpless she is. She feels strong and confident and in control. She feels needed. The feeling is beautiful.
She quiet suddenly realizes that she wants to take him with her. She is crazy and twisted to want it but she does. If only to prolong the feeling because she knows like all things it won't last. The feeling will leave as soon as she does. As soon as she walks out the front door and leaves him behind. She tells herself that she will see him again. That she will come back after the war sees an end. But she knows she is lying to herself. This thing, whatever it is between them, was over and done with before it even started.
The Order will hold him here in this house until the end of the war. She knows they will not hurt him. He does not pose a danger to anyone. Just like her he has become an outsider.
He'll stay within the four walls of the room upstairs, safe and sound with only the threat of boredom to plague him.
She should tell him she is leaving. Get the goodbyes over and done with. Not that he will miss her. No doubt he will be glad to be rid of her. But she feels as if she should still tell him she is leaving and give herself and some closure. He deserves some as well, at the very least that.
She walks up the stairs, feet heavy, a feeling of trepidation weighing on her. She pauses outside his door, worrying her lip. Her hand hesitates on the doorknob. She should go. Saying goodbye to him is silly. He probably couldn't care less if she left without telling him and she doesn't think she could stand it if he laughs at her. With that sneering condescending laugh she has come to dread over the years.
She almost turns to go but something stops her. A something beyond the door that calls to her. She gathers herself together and opens the door and steps into the room. Immediately several things strike her all at once.
The first thing is that his bed is empty. The second thing is that the moonlight shines full and round on the floor. Lastly, that Malfoy is against the far wall, hunched over in the shadows.
She had seen what was happening to him once before. She had witness the same thing towards the end of fourth year. She had watched as Professor Lupin had writhed and twisted under the full moon. But it had been dark and sudden and too far away from where she was to get a good look in. One moment Professor Lupin had been... well... Professor Lupin and in the next moment.. he was not.
But this time she is very close to Malfoy. She can see everything that was happening.
The logical analytical part of her brain is fascinated, drinking every detail in. Storing it in the archives of her mind for later examination. She can see everything clearly. She can see the twitching of his limbs, jerking every which way like a puppet dancing on its strings. She sees the way his skin ripples, like the waves of an ocean. It draws her in.
Unconsciously, unknowingly she has moved forward into the room, a half a dozen steps forward, to get a better look. Leaving the safety of the door behind.
His spine arches in a curve so severe she thinks his back shall surely snap.
Then she hears it. His harsh pants become shrill heart wrenching cries that make her want to stuff her fists in her ears. And worse, there is the sound of splintering ribs. Cracking bones. Bones that underneath his skin are changing their shape, forcibly elongating.
The sickening crunching sound pulls her from her fascinated trance and the logical level headed Hermione is gone in the wake of the sound. The Hermione that remains is ill from the violence of the sounds of his breaking body. she is acutely aware of the short distance between them and how very far away the safety of the door is. And even though her brain screams at her limbs to run towards the door and to safety the splintering, cracking sound has her knees go weak and her legs shaky so that she can barely stand.
The change itself is almost instantaneous.
The something underneath his skin pushes and tugs, struggling to break free. His hands claw at it, ripping his own skin open in gaping tears, which rapidly flesh out and thickened with fur. In a matter of brief minutes his skin is rent and torn away and muscle is exposed transforming into fur. Like a snake shedding its skin.
He howls one final time and his face turns toward her fully into the moonlight and she can see that Malfoy is gone and in his place there is this... creature. Where Professor Lupine was dark and shaggy in were form Malfoy is light and sleek. Like a regal blond greyhound. Above a glistening jowl of fangs his nose twitches and his eyes turn towards her.
He circles around her and she scrambles back only stopping as the back of her knees connect with the bed. And it is only then that she realizes, all to late, that he stands between her and the door. She gropes along the sheets, hands desperate for something, anything, to defend herself with. He comes closer.
She thrusts out both hands at him in a desperate attempt to halt his advance. "Malfoy?" She says desperately looking for some sign that he is still in there.
His eyes are feral, devoid of any kind of human emotion.
"Malfoy stop."
She searches the gray depths for him. For the Malfoy that sneered at her and called her Mudblood so many times. For the Malfoy that taunted her with laughter after his curse made her teeth grow past her chin. For the Malfoy that glared at her with black hate every time he tripped or pushed her. She even looks for the new Malfoy she has seen, the scared confused Malfoy of the last couple of days. But he isn't there. Only hunger stares out of the wolfs eyes.
Then he leaps.
Her body tenses for the feel of jaws around her throat while at the same time she instinctively flails, fingernails connecting with his chest and scraping across his pelt in a futile attempt to dislodge his weight which bears her down unto the mattress. His talons dig into her. She kicks out. Hard. And miraculously one of her feet connects with his leg with a sickening crunching sound.
He howls in pain and his grip loosens enough for her to shove him to the side and break free. He limps after her, favoring his left leg.
She runs for the door mind screaming "HURRY HURRY HURRY...".
Tears cloud her eyes and her hands, palms slick with sweat, slide and fumble on the door knob. Finally she grasps it fully and pulls it open. But before she can step through to safety his taloned claw has shot passed her head pushing the door closed with a brute strength she could never hope to match.
He growls, baring his fangs in her face and then swipes his paw at her, flinging her easily across the room as if she is nothing more than a rag doll. She sails through the air and hits the floor hard, sliding across it until the back of her head connects against the bed post with a dull thud. The blow makes her vision fuzzy.
Its odd but she doesn't feel any pain, the adrenaline is keeping it at bay for the time being. She can feel the wet sticky drip of blood from her shoulder from where his talons swiped her. Everything is going foggy now, reality is slipping away from her like sand through the hourglass.
He steps closer towards her and into the moonlight. The moon shining on his fur makes it glow. He closes the gap between them. And right before the glow surrounds them both her last thought is how beautiful he looks.
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Next up: Hermione is 'saved' from Malfoy but which one of them really needs to be saved after all? She departs as planned but an unexpected decision from the Order has her carrying extra baggage.
Preview Chapter 11: And as she turns to leave they don't even look up. She has ceased to exist for them. They are too absorbed with the how and what of it. "Perhaps an efficient potion too off him " Ron suggest, "Or simply an Avada Kedavra" Harry counters. The words follow her out of the room and burn her ears. She is shaking as she climbs the stairs and enters her room but her hands are steady as she begins to pack.