Remus's skin itched, too tight on his body, and his bones ached in the way that they only did after a full moon. He'd expected to smell the strong scent of coffee and Dora's herbs that he was growing in the garden, and almost choked when he was met with the dampness of bodies and the scent of earth.
Wolves , his mind whispered before he had even opened his eyes.
The previous night came back to him in flashes: the full moon glistening high above as a pack ran through the night, each of them calling to one another during the hunt. They called one another kin and the wolf wondered if he might fit better as one of them. Even in the madness though, he never stopped looking for creatures in the sky and a dark cat at his side.
Remus opened his eyes slowly, hearing nothing but the slow breadths of others around him, none of them awake just yet.
There was stone all around him, the only light coming from the mouth of the cave that they were in. The others slept in small pods, pressed flush against one another, bare skin on display for all to see. He wasn't any better, though he was removed from the rest of them, not yet trusted by the pack.
That was fine.
Remus slowly pushed himself up to his feet, biting back a groan as he weaved through the mass of bodies, his body gaining more strength with each step but still unsteady from the violent change. He almost lost all of the strength completely once he had made it to the mouth of the cave.
The woods were splayed out like a gift before him, the leaves all holding warm hues of varying shades of gold, the mountains tall behind them. The trees looked small though, everything did when the cave you were in was high up one of those mountains with no walkway on either side. He almost wondered how they had gotten that high, but he could smell the magic running through each of the wolves' skin, something thick and metallic that didn't quite smell the same as a wizards'.
"Beautiful isn't it?" A voice asked from Remus's side, the voice low and gravely in a way that only a wolf's could be after a full moon night.
Remus turned slowly, curing himself mentally for not even noticing that the other had crept up beside him, for not knowing that anyone had been awake at all. He wanted to blame his own incompetence on the mistake, but one glance at the stranger told him that it likely wasn't that at all.
The stranger's skin was caked with dirt in the same way that all of those within the pack's was - the way that Remus's was - dirt under his fingernails, and scars shining through the grim. The man couldn't have been older than thirty - three, his hair long and swept in front of his face, matted from not being cared for. His eyes were wild like a beast's, like a man that had completely given himself over to one. From the wolf - like features on his face and fingernails that could almost be called claws, Remus thought that maybe he had.
Greyback .
Remus felt the way that the wolf within him called out to the other and knew that it couldn't be anyone else.
"I chose this place to keep my children safe until the moon, or until we were called for by the Dark Lord," the older wolf explains with a proud smile that revealed too sharp teeth. "What do you think?"
The younger thought about not answering at all, but somehow knew that things would take a very nasty turn should he do so. "It's high," the teen said softly, not knowing which was worse to look at, the monster that had turned him into one, or the ground so far below.
Greyback barked a laugh in a way that reminded Remus of Sirius's, the animalistic tent to it. "Wolves do not like being so far from the ground," the man said simply, as if he was delighted to find that Remus held the instincts of one of them. He probably was. "But a father does what he must to protect his children."
Father. Children.
Remus felt his gut give a sickening twist at such names, knowing that - at least in the others' minds - one of those belonged to him.
A snarl built in the younger's throat and Remus bit it back, but Greyback only smiled even sharper than before.
"Good to see that the damned wizards didn't completely domesticate you," the older wolf noted with an appreciative flick of his eyes, "it would be a shame to have to break one of my children, even if you are Dumbledore's favorite pet."
"I'm not his anything," Remus growled before he could stop himself, anger flaring in his body in the way that it only could around a moon, magic crackling in the air as if he was ten once more with no control.
A hand was on his face before Remus had even registered that it had moved, cupping his cheek in the way that a parent might, though the look in the older wolf's eyes was anything but parental. "You're right," the wolf agreed, running his nails across the younger's scarred skin with too much pressure, "you're mine."
Remus felt the nail break skin.
Down. Down. Down, the nail tore, opening a wound on the side of the younger's face, from the corner of his eye down to the edge of the teen's jaw. A mark of ownership.
As if the bite mark wasn't enough, Remus thought bitterly.
As if knowing what the younger wolf was thinking, Greyback raised his free hand and gripped at the mark on his hip, entirely too close.
"Don't worry," the older wolf said softly, his voice still managing to sound wild instead of comforting, like the wind during a storm, like seas during a hurricane, "you'll be one of us soon enough."
—-
Magic thrummed through the air, thick and coppery and almost tangible as Remus spoke to the other wolves throughout the day, teens younger and hardly older than himself.
Brother, they called him, their eyes just as wild as Gryeback's. As his own as the days passed.
They hunted at the start of each morning, donning fur coats and apparating in a way that wasn't down to the woods below, the magic pulling on something more primal than what a wand would call for.
The magic came easy to him, the wind whispered it and the ground beneath his bare feet felt of it with each step. It was a natural sort of magic that hardly took any energy at all to bend to his will once he had learned how, something addicting that made the wolf forget of the wand that he had lost in the woods the night that he was taken.
It was hard to remember that he had spent so long learning anything else.
The wolves wrestled through the day, a new hierarchy being formed to accommodate the newest addition to their pack and sometimes it was easy to forget that he wouldn't be staying long enough for it to matter.
The older wolves, the one that had been with Greyback since they were young, glared at him each time that he passed, suspicious of him in the territorial way of wolves. Remus didn't mind, they were right to be and he knew that it came from the instinctual urge to protect the young of the camp.
The gazes softened some though on the first half moon night.
The pack gathered in the woods, a fire burning high as the chilled wind kissed at their skin, magic coursing through the air in a way that only the wolves could touch. The pack danced around the flames beneath the bright sky, the stars watching over them in a way that made Remus want to see if they could grasp one, the heart of the Lion reminding him of a world outside of this one.
With each step plants sprung up at their feet, the flames danced higher and higher still, as the wind smelled sweetly of summer even in the middle of October. Sometimes Remus wondered if this was the magic that the school would have classified as dark, the sort that he would find back on the shelves in the study back home, most nights he didn't care either way.
Reality had to find him at some point though.
Greyback stayed away after that first morning, always rushing to one meeting or another and leaving the pack like an absent father, still expecting his children to fight his battles for them as if he were some god and this were a quest.
Remus noticed how the youngest among the pack didn't seem to know much of the wizarding world, not having grown up within it. The older ones that did held no love for the magical world that had scorned them and deemed them wild beast, caring nothing for the magic that the wolves possessed as it wasn't their own.
Dangerous they called it.
He knew that some of them would gladly fight at the sides of Death Eaters should their father ask it, thinking that the world would be kinder to them should the Dark Lord win. Remus wasn't foolish enough to agree, nor was he idiotic enough to say so out loud where he was so easily outnumbered.
The scars on his body grew, as did his control over the primal magic that he held. The pack dueled with the magic that they held and the moon grew fuller still until the night came that each of them let their furs fall to the ground as their bones began to creak.
They traveled to the woods that Remus had first met the pack in, arriving long before the moon had fully risen, still in their human skin. Remus had followed at the front of the group as Greyback led them away from the familiar clearing and to a place with things that he hadn't seen in a long time.
Streetlights shined high above, the yellow light harsh in a way that it hadn't been only a month before. Remus felt his bones creak in a familiar way and understood then what this was.
There was the scent of magic that he had grown up in the air, floating from house to house while skipping over one or two. It didn't take a genius to know that this was a magical village, or why they were at one during a moon.
It was one of the attacks that he had read about in the Daily Profit since well into the previous year.
Greyback grinned as his bones broke and grew long. It was the last time that he was able to do so.
The younger wolf growled as it looked upon the older, the rest of the pack falling back at the clear challenge that the once wizard was presenting. The pack leader stopped the way that it had been walking closer to the village to turn to the younger, a snarl in its throat. An answer to the challenge.
What followed after was bloody.
The pair of wolves leapt at one another, fangs bared as claws dug into one another. There was no way to tell one from the other as the pair tore one another apart, the fight like every time that the pack had wrested one another, only this time neither stopped after first blood.
Neither stopped until there was a body on the ground.
When the sun rose and the wolves shifted back, the pack fell tiredly to their knees before Remus, Greyback dead at his feet.
Then the Order came.
Remus growled like a rabid beast once he heard the first faraway crack of apparition, recognizing the smell right away. With a wave of his hand the light bent around the pack - his pack - rendering them invisible to those other than him. He knew that it wouldn't be enough.
"Go," he whispered, "leave the country and this war behind."
He looked to where he knew the older wolves to be when he said it, he knew that it was an order that they would have to follow. He had killed their previous leader, and as such had become their new one.
He knew that a life outside of the war was the kindest future that he could offer them, Dumbledore be damned.
The air lost the scent of other wolves just as James and Sirius found their friend covered in the blood the way that others would be in clothes, his eyes a little wild and his teeth too sharp as a familiar body laid at his feet like some sort of prize. For the first time he was undeniably every rumor that they had ever heard and an almost perfect stranger wearing the scarred body of a friend.