Remade

Warning(s): gore

Note: Christmas ficlet for the lovely Anne Phoenix.

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Fenrir watches life struggle back into the pup's limp form, pain jolting the slack face into a grimace. His own joints moan in sympathy, although he's long overcome the ache of the transformation. It's still there, of course, but he's learned to embrace it, a crimson Felix Felicis coursing through him and giving birth to his true self. But the first time is agony, most of all when it's fought with the mad determination of the pup's.

The pup is naked now, a swirl of white and red on the moss. Its rags, blood-soaked and dirty from a month's imprisonment, aren't fit for a member of the pack. Fenrir has carried the pup out from the dungeons into the woods to wake. It is one with the wild now.

A groan breaks from the pup's caked lips. It is filthy, smeared with grime and red, and there are specks of blood and tissue left on its face. Yet beyond the dirt, Fenrir can still make out his own marks: an artistic curve of claw over the chest, the loving teeth marks on the fleshy part of the shoulder, just behind the collarbone. The boy's fear and fury mingled deliciously on his tongue, his struggles spicy like fine brandy at the end of an exquisite meal. Now, the marks are no longer bloody, though still bright red. Not swollen, either; contrary to common lore, werewolf wounds don't inflame - they burn on the inside.

For a moment, Fenrir's attention is diverted by Macnair returning his wand into its ankle sheath, the one right next to the knife. Of all the escaped Death Eaters, the Hunter is the most skilled at Obliviate - a talent that kept him in the employ of the Ministry after all his associates had been ousted. Their eyes meet, duel for a second like blades in a riposte: kiss, and gone. Though both serve the Dark Lord with equal fervour, there is no love lost between them.

Macnair leaves with a final look of contempt at the shivering pup; he makes a lot of noise, stomping away through the underbrush.

Fenrir frowns; there's no reason to grudge the pup - it has paid for its crimes, for a month in the dungeons, and then again last night in the full moon of its first transformation. Locked into the cell with the ginger-haired lad and his sister, all chained, but the pup's bonds charmed to vanish at moonrise.

The pup had been promised to him, so Fenrir was the first to enter that charnel house in the morning, stopping the pup from gnawing its own wrists off with a blow to the head that sent it to the floor in the slack tangle of limbs that Fenrir has carried out. They'd had to destroy its memories for that alone - it would go mad remembering, and a mad wolf has to be put down. No, the pup has paid, and it's Fenrir's now.

The pup whimpers as it struggles to get up on its hands and knees, fingers gnarled as if trying to accommodate muscles and joints that are no longer there. It gags and spits blood, then gags again before Fenrir grabs and pulls it up to his feet. Its spine arches, and for a moment all Fenrir can see is white in its eyes. Then they roll back and focus, and although their gaze is dark, blank, Fenrir doesn't see madness there, nor utter emptiness. Too much Obliviate can make you forget to speak, or walk - or breathe, and doesn't that make things final?

Fenrir grabs the bundle of cloth he's brought and unrolls it into a thick black robe. "Put this on. It'll protect you while you're in the wrong form."

The pup stumbles when it reaches for it, and Fenrir steadies it with a hand around the waist. For a second, the pup leans into him as if it were surrendering all its burdens, and it's then Fenrir knows that this one is his. He sniffs the crook of the pup's neck, above the tantalising sharp scent of his marks there, and swipes off a stuck shred of flesh with his tongue. The girl's - sweet.

The pup wraps the robe around its thin shoulders, eyes haunted. "Who am I?"

"You've been reborn into your true self, pup. You're pack, now," Fenrir says, and then, in a low growl, "You're mine!"

Green eyes lower, but not before Fenrir has seen the glint of instinctive defiance. He swipes at the pup, though without claws, and watches it tumble into the moss. The instincts of a fighter who expects to be listened to, obeyed, even without a memory or destiny to his name. Perhaps the pup will one day challenge him and wrest leadership over the pack from his own torn body. Fenrir smiles grimly. For all that he admires their Lord, Fenrir has never understood his obsession with immortality. The strong lead, the young rise and bid for power, the old... die. That's the spirit of the wild, and Fenrir embraces it. He's once before seen his possible challenger in the eyes of a newly-bloodied pup, even if that one proved flawed and weak, and a traitor in the end. This one, though...

Fenrir looks down at the little thing as it scrambles painfully to its feet, mouth set in a petulant curl. His comrades have always admired Fenrir's fearlessness before Albus Dumbledore, but then of all the Death Eaters, he's the only one who has nothing to fear. In the end, Dumbledore was just meat, and now his pup is Fenrir's.

He lifts his chin towards the clearing where the pack has made its camp by the brook. "Move, pup. Let's get you cleaned up, and then... you should have a name, right?" The pup frowns, absently wiping more blood off its mouth as it tries to penetrate the morass Macnair's Obliviates have made of its brain. "What about..." Fenrir pauses, "Harry?"

"I don't like it much." The pup grimaces, and probes bloody gums with its tongue. "Although it doesn't matter, does it?"

"No," Fenrir says, smiling grimly as he gives the pup's robed back a light push to get it moving. "It doesn't matter at all."

~ finis ~

~ finis ~