This story was written for Fire the Canon's 100 Word Prompt Collection Challenge over on the Harry Potter Fanfiction Challenges forum. My claim is Fenrir Greyback and Remus Lupin. This story is meant to be interconnected.
Specific prompt used for this chapter was 74. records.
Word count: 893
There's this little shop in Cardiff – it's dark even in the middle of the day, the air is dry, and it smells like mothballs but he likes it nonetheless. He likes the soft, weathered feel of used records. The fact it never charges more than fifty pence for a record is a bonus too, and that the shopkeeper keeps his nose buried in old magazines and doesn't bother or give Fenrir odd looks is the icing on the cake. Maybe there are other shops out there like this one, closer to home or closer to the action, but he's content with this little one in Cardiff. He's content to keep coming back here over and over to dig through the old records, picking through everything from Eric Clapton to the Stones and the Beatles, Pink Floyd and the Troggs, and to his personal favourites: the Kinks and Sex Pistols
Maybe one of the nicest things about that little place in Cardiff – Hardy's – is that when he goes there, he's free from all the cack of his everyday life. There he doesn't have to deal with the Death Eaters who look at him some like rabid dog or his drooling, simpering pack members who look at him like he shits gold. Not to sound ungrateful but he's surrounded by idiots and Hardy's is one of his few escapes. It even gives him an escape when he's not in the shop; he can take his records to his room, slam the door behind him, and drown out all the irritants with the music.
If he was a religious man, he'd thank God for this blessing. But he's not and he's pretty sure that even if he was, God wouldn't listen to him – not with the blood on every inch of his skin and soul, and not with the amount of people he's sent into God's arms. Not with how he'd rather die than repent. He might have his depths but Fenrir is still a bad man.
A perfect example of it all is August 16th, 1978; he's down at Hardy's after a not-so-good day, picking through the records in the darkened shop, drinking in the stale air. The shopkeeper – who is not Hardy actually – is doing a decade old word-search at the front counter, ignoring the wild-looking man flipping through the records.
That morning he'd woken up on the wrong side of a cold bed, specifically remembering taking Varsha back with him the evening before; upon dressing and heading out for breakfast, Fletcher caught him and said vaguely that there was someone wanting to see him – it took prodding to get out of the idiot that it was a Death Eater who'd Fletcher had left waiting for over an hour. The Death Eater bitched him out before giving him his orders for the next full moon, muttering 'stupid mutts' before apparating away. After that, he found that no one had bothered saving him breakfast (even though he was their fucking alpha) and were all too busy playing poker to be arsed with listening to him. His escape to the little shop had more than likely saved someone's life, or at least their hide.
His fingers brushed over the different records, lazily flipping through them; his eyes took in the Yardbirds, Cream, the Zombies, and far too many Beatles albums for his taste (they were okay – nothing special). Fenrir flitted from one table to the next, looking through each of them with too much interest for a person who was here to just browse. He paused at the cassette players, looking one over and running his hands across it as he debated whether it'd be worth the pounds. He almost didn't notice the chime of the bell above the door – almost.
He looked up, instantly taking in and sizing up the person who'd entered. It was a lanky boy; couldn't be older than eighteen with dust-coloured brown hair and muddy brown eyes. He was a sickly pale and almost completely consumed by the army green duffle coat he wore but there was one thing that caught him off-guard. The scars. There was one along the bridge of his nose and another running vertical across his lips; he could tell by how they'd faded to a silvery-colour that they were old and yet they were the most striking feature on the boy, probably because of how starkly they contrasted with his Eton schoolboy look. If it weren't for those scars, he would've been completely unremarkable and yet they were there and they had caught Fenrir's attention.
The boy's eyes met his for a brief moment before he looked away, shuffling towards a table in the opposite corner of the store from him. The boy hunched his shoulders and kept his head down as he looked through the records, every once in a while shooting furtive glances over his shoulder at Fenrir who was unashamedly staring at him with interest.
But the boy did nothing. After spending minutes waiting for something – for a snap or rebuke or even a fucking whimper – nothing came. Fenrir let out a huff, turning back to the records, grabbing Love's self-entitled album and heading to the register. With pockets only fifty pence lighter and a record tucked under his arm, Fenrir cast one last glance at the scarred boy before exiting the shop.