Around eleven the sun finally hauled itself over the eastern hills. Wind funneled through the mouth of the valley and rattled a few ruined doorframes.
The commotion had drawn the werewolves out of the broken houses. They emerged in twos and threes, keeping their distance, each standing in his own patch of ground. Dozens of pairs of clouded yellow eyes fixed on the clearing. Nobody made a sound.
Every werewolf in the mining village watched the same thing. Their leader, Fenrir Greyback, standing before a black-haired boy, not daring to twitch.
The young werewolf came around from behind him, head down, testing the ground with his toes before committing each step, eyes flicking sideways to Greyback again and again. Watching the shoulders, the hands, checking whether those claws showed any sign of rising.
A wary animal, braced to take a blow or duck one.
Nobody was born that cowed. The place itself broke in every newcomer the same way.
Werewolf hierarchy needed no written rules. It recognized whose teeth were sharper. The strong stood in the center, the weak hugged the walls, and there was nowhere to argue the point. The newest arrival was the weakest by definition, reading faces even to cross open ground.
Lucius stood at Regulus's flank, the tension gone out of him. Minutes ago he'd been gripping his wand, dreading that Regulus would strike and the errand would collapse. He didn't know what Regulus intended, but the errand was secure. After that display, Greyback wouldn't make trouble if you loaned him a hundred more measures of nerve.
His chin came back up, the customary Malfoy reserve settling into place. He stood on the winning side and the glow carried. He glanced at the ring of watching werewolves with undisguised distaste. Livestock, the lot of them.
Greyback saw the young wolf leaving and moved to stop him, a growl building low in his throat. His territory, his wolves. Any wolf walking off without his nod deserved a claw across the face.
His arm lifted, claws carving half a circle through the air.
Then the growl jammed. His arm froze, lowered by degrees, and the hand dropped to his side.
Not his body deciding this time. His mind. The lethal presences had withdrawn long ago. Nothing threatened him. He still didn't dare.
So he watched one of his own wolves get summoned away by a tilt of the head. Couldn't stop it. Wouldn't try.
Leader, territory, dominion. Those props let him believe he was king of this hollow. Set against real power, authority turned out to be pitifully thin. What remained was the cleanest thing in an animal.
Obey whoever is stronger.
When you can't take him, lie down.
The two lieutenants behind him traded a look.
Neither knew why their leader had gone limp. But Greyback picked his lieutenants for more than savagery, and they'd grasped one fact. The two wizards had put the fear into him. Not to be provoked.
So they stood quiet too.
The young werewolf arrived, and Regulus let his perception follow.
This one's magic ran differently from the others. Man and beast were still tangled, still tearing at each other, neither holding the other down. Of all the recently turned he'd sensed in the village, this was the one fighting hardest.
Which meant the man inside was awake. Hadn't left the stage.
By appearance he looked somewhere in his twenties or thirties, worn out. Lines at the eyes, skin coarse as if sanded, an unhealed scratch across one cheekbone crusted brown.
Look deeper and he was young. His magic had a young man's texture, still lively, only sealed under the Lycanthropy. Young, and worn old by this place.
His clothes were a shade more decent than the rest. Ruined, but recognizably a proper robe once, not scavenged rags off a corpse. His nails had been cleaned. Holding on to that much fastidiousness here said he'd come from somewhere else.
He stopped several paces off, head lowered. His eyes lifted for a heartbeat and dropped again.
The wolf knew him. Regulus could see it.
"You know me?" Normal volume, but it didn't carry. Greyback, four or five meters off, could see the mouth moving and heard nothing.
Lucius narrowed his eyes and let a brief frown come and go.
Surprise flickered through the yellow eyes. One glance, and he'd been caught out by it. His mouth opened without producing anything. In the end he nodded.
Regulus turned it over. Not old and a respectable wizard once, by the look of him. Two ways he could know the name. Recently graduated, having seen him at Hogwarts, or a family with some connection to Pure-blood circles.
A third option surfaced and got dismissed at once. A Pure-blood bitten into a werewolf. It happened with lone wolves, but an organized pack looking to grow its numbers wouldn't pick Pure-bloods lightly. Bite one and you enraged the entire circle. Aurors, private muscle, bounties. Not worth it.
Greyback had thrown in with Voldemort, so eventually he'd attack Pure-bloods under orders.
That was future strategy. For now Voldemort still needed Pure-blood families behind him, and setting werewolves on them would shove the undecided houses away and summon the Ministry, possibly Dumbledore.
So pack leaders expanding their numbers chose people without backing, people whose disappearance nobody would chase.
Which made the first option likelier.
School.
"Just graduated?"
The young werewolf raised his head. His lips moved around something he swallowed. What came out was a low sigh leaking from his chest, carrying an exhaustion he couldn't have named. He nodded, and his head sank again.
Regulus took in the posture, then the old robe with its restitched seams, laundered as thoroughly as anyone could manage out here.
Someone who'd fallen this far and still cleaned his nails. Someone ground down like this without any meanness in him. Someone whose first response was a sigh instead of a curse.
Not a Slytherin. Not a Gryffindor either. And Ravenclaw wouldn't be quite this docile.
Which left one.
The corner of Regulus's mouth twitched. "Hufflepuff?"
The wolf's head snapped up. His mouth opened, closed, worked several times, and produced nothing.
The numb weariness on his face cracked, letting through something startled and embarrassed. He wanted to object, presumably, to being filed at a glance into the house famous for being harmless and forgettable.
Then he discovered he couldn't object, because he was in fact a Hufflepuff.
His left eye said how did you guess. His right said could you be less accurate about it.
He gave in. Another sigh, another nod, resignation written across every inch of him, accepting even the stereotype with perfect equanimity.
Lucius snorted. A Malfoy, centuries of Slytherin behind him, had never spared Hufflepuff a kind look. It was where they parked the leftovers. And now a Hufflepuff had gone and become a werewolf. A match made for each other.
Regulus ignored him.
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