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Written for - Hogwarts, Transfiguration, assignment 6, using the prompt 'Blood.'
In The Morning
It's almost dawn when she stretches, human once more. She is naked, laying in a pile of leaves. Her muscles ache, pain shooting through her body with every movement as she gingerly sits up to get a clearer picture of the damage. Cuts and scratches mar her body, bruises cover patches of usually fair skin, already turning horrible shades of green and black and blue.
She can hear the others in her pack moving around her, and she conjures a simple, short dress to cover her modesty. Most of the members of the pack are male, and she has no wish for the whistles and catcalls that usually accompany the morning after the full moon. She had been lucky enough this time to be one of the first to wake.
Shaking her hair out, she ran her fingers through it, pulling out small twigs and leaves that had tangled with her fur as she ran through the woods. She hated this. She hated everything about it. She would give anything in the world to be rid of this infection, this curse. She would give anything to no longer see a monster when she glanced upon even the smallest of reflective surface.
She could hear him standing. Their Alpha. Their leader. Their boss. He was the one who changed her. Who changed all of them actually. He revelled in the full moon, he waited for it, he yearned for it. He disgusted her. Yet, she stayed, because at least here, with him and his pack, she had a home. She had a family, as warped as the feeling may be.
Turning her head slightly, she saw him moving closer to her. She stared straight ahead as he looked down upon her.
"Alia," he purred, and she repressed a shudder. Looking up at him, she saw the blood on his body, on his hands, still staining the skin around his mouth.
"Fenrir," she replied, perhaps a little defiant in her tone.
"Did you... have fun last night?"
She rolled her eyes. She was tired of his taunts, because that was what his question was. A taunt, because he knew she hated what he had turned her into, knew she hated the way he mauled and murdered under the guise of 'getting food'. Refusing to answer, she stood up to meet his gaze for a moment, before she walked away, further into the woods where she could relieve herself in private.
When the pack was all up on their feet, Fenrir insisted they move on before the Ministry came sniffing around. They would come, they always did. The murders, always muggles, would catch their attention, and they would know who, or rather what, was responsible.
She walked at the back of the pack, her head turning to look back to the forest opening she had awoken.
The Ministry would be there. Soon.
No more chasing. No more Killing. No more Fenrir.
Did she have the courage to stay behind? To take the blame for the murders in exchange for the peace and quiet of a cell? To no longer wake up the morning following a full moon, scared to look at her own skin, lest it be stained in the dark red of someone else's blood?
Alia drew back from the pack, her footsteps slowing to a stop.
With a deep breath she turned.
With a tensing of her shoulders, she forced her feet to walk in the opposite direction, back towards the forest, back towards the scene of the crime.
With a sign of relief, she sat in the pile of leaves she'd woken up in.
She would wait and when they arrived, she would leave quietly, without fuss. She would accept blame, though to her knowledge she had never personally taken a life.
The next time the full moon came upon her, she would await it calmly, safe in the knowledge that she wouldn't be able to hurt anyone.
And in the morning, she would know that the world at large was safe from her.