WITCHY, WITCHY WOLF
Chapter One
Utter chaos.
Hermione felt an odd sense of detachment as the battle raged around her in the ruins of the Great Hall in the aftermath of Harry's death and Neville's slaying of the snake Nagini. She almost felt as if she were watching herself fighting desperately, mechanically. Her ears didn't seem to be working, either, as the noise in the Hall, the utter cacophony, was strangely muted, as if someone had turned the volume dial on a radio way down low but had also been fiddling with the tuner so that she heard a lot of static over the sounds of the battle.
She wondered dispassionately why her body was still fighting. Harry was gone. Nothing mattered anymore. But then, as her eyes scanned the Hall, automatically searching for the next opponent or for an ally that needed help, her eyes landed on Voldemort, fighting Professors McGonagall and Slughorn as well as Kingsley Shacklebolt. Oh yes. That was why. He needed to die. The last Horcrux, Nagini, had been destroyed. Now he was all that was left.
She could do it. Voldemort was distracted by his fight with the two teachers and the Auror, so she might be able to sneak up on him.
She began to make her way in that direction, but was stopped by a scruffy-looking man suddenly blocking her path. Her nose recognized him first. Scabior. The Snatcher.
"'Ello, girlie," he breathed, sending a wave of rancid breath into her face. "Fancy seein' you again. You just be a good girl an' give yourself up, now. It's no use anyways. Precious Potter's gone an' the Dark Lord's the one what's triumphed. Now iff'n you give yourself up nice and easy I'll give you a right good time 'fore they kill you, 'ow's that?"
Without even answering, Hermione sent a silent Disarming spell at him, but he was prepared. He deflected her spell and sent a flash of some sickly yellow light at her, which she deflected in turn, and then the fight was on in earnest.
Despite his menacing manner, Scabior was not the most difficult opponent she'd ever faced. Likely there was a reason he was only a Snatcher and not an actual Death Eater, and she didn't think either high intelligence or remarkable power were it. This wouldn't last terribly long.
Just as she had dispatched Scabior with a Stunner and snapped his wand for good measure, she heard a familiar mad cackle behind her. She spun and gasped when she saw that Ginny and Luna, matching looks of desperation on their faces, were fighting Bellatrix Lestrange.
Hermione lurched into action, seeing the mad Death Eater send a flash of purple light flying toward the redhead. She sent a shield charm at Ginny just before the purple light could hit her, followed by a Tripping Jinx at Bellatrix as she reached Ginny and Luna. Then the three young witches were desperately hurling spell after hex after jinx after curse at the wild black-haired woman, who was giggling away and fairly dancing as she fought. Had Hermione not been so preoccupied with defending herself and her friends, she might have mused that there was an odd sort of artful beauty about the mad witch as she danced, her wand flashing almost like a strobe light.
Hermione was starting to despair, wondering how long she, Luna, and Ginny would be able to last, when a flash of green light shot between her and Ginny, missing each of them by inches, and a fraction of a second later there was an unearthly howl.
"NOT MY DAUGHTER, YOU BITCH!" All three witches whirled to see Molly Weasley bearing down on them, cloak billowing as she tore at the clasp to remove it. Her grip on her wand made her seem like she was clutching a butcher knife, about to go on a murdering rampage.
Bellatrix howled with laughter at the sight of the stout redhead approaching her as the Weasley matriarch screeched, "OUT OF MY WAY!" at the three girls.
Hermione was all too glad to drag her friends aside by the arm as Molly and Bellatrix faced off. Knowing that Molly would wish to take Bellatrix herself, the three girls decided instead to fend off any who would try to help the Death Eater, while Molly shouted to her own allies among the Order and Hogwarts' students that Bellatrix was hers.
As she fought, Hermione managed to divide her attention between her own fight and Molly and Bellatrix behind her.
As Molly managed to get a curse in under the laughing Bellatrix's wand arm, Hermione experienced an intense feeling of déjà vu. That was exactly how Sirius Black had died. Ironic, she thought, and utterly fitting. Karma's a bitch, isn't it, Bellatrix?
The only other scenario that might have equaled this one in terms of poetic justice would have been Hermione killing Bellatrix herself, her wand held by the arm Bellatrix had carved those dreadful words into. But Hermione had no illusions of grandeur. If she and two other girls together hadn't managed to bring Bellatrix down, she would stand very little chance alone. Her only chance would have been lasting until Bellatrix tired and fucked up – after all, in the seemingly inordinate amount of time Bellatrix had tortured her, she hadn't buckled. Her mind remained intact.
But now the bitch was dead, and Hermione watched, once more with a sense of disconnection from her body, as Voldemort blasted McGonagall, Kingsley, and Slughorn away from him in fury as he raised his wand and pointed it at Mrs. Weasley.
The next minutes seemed to pass in a blur and yet would remain etched in Hermione's mind like a carving in stone. First a voice was shouting "Protego!" then Harry was pulling off his Invisibility Cloak and facing Voldemort, and then he was telling everybody not to help. Then he and Voldemort were talking, talking about love, and Harry's mother, and Dumbledore and Snape and everything the Potions Master had done for them, and Hermione felt a terrible sense of guilt fill her as the tale came out. She decided then and there that when the battle was over, she'd go find Snape's body so that it could be given a hero's burial.
When she tuned back in to what was going on, she realized that neither Luna nor Ginny were beside her any longer. Ginny was slowly trying to make her way closer to Harry and Voldemort, while Luna was helping the injured get out of the way. Harry and Tom Riddle were talking about the Elder Wand and why it wouldn't work for Tom. Then Hermione watched, heart in her throat, as the sun sent its first scarlet rays bursting into the Hall to light upon the two wizards in the center of it as they raised their wands.
She was so transfixed by what was going on between the two wizards that she didn't see her own downfall coming toward her, jagged teeth gleaming and eyes alight with an unholy fire. It wasn't until her wand was torn from her grasp and a band of steel closed about her middle, trapping her arms and dragging her back against a large, hard, hairy body that she even realized her danger.
Unable to see her assailant, she began to kick and thrash, fighting to get away, but froze when she heard a voice growling in her ear. "I do so love when they fight. Makes things so much more…exciting," rumbled the sickeningly familiar tones of one Fenrir Greyback.
Panic raced hot and fast through her veins and her struggles increased as the werewolf held her immobile. She nearly screamed when she felt what she knew to be the wolf's nose pushing into her hair as he breathed in her scent.
"Mm, lovely," he rumbled. "I love your smell, Mudblood. You smell of orange blossoms and fear, and the filthy blood in your veins smells hot and sweet. Tell me, bitch, have you ever had a wolf between your thighs? Or have you only ever had boys?" Something wet traced the outer shell of her ear and she opened her mouth to scream only for him to clamp a large, meaty, foul-smelling hand over her mouth.
The implication behind his words was all too clear. Her panic spiked, and he chuckled, the grating sound causing her to shudder in revulsion. "I'll take that as a no to both, then. Well, this is going to be even more exciting than I thought. Virgin's blood is all the sweeter."
When she tried to struggle harder, his grip tightened. "Now, Mudblood, you should save your strength. You're going to need it when I take you. For now you should just watch. Wouldn't want to miss the Dark Lord's moment of triumph."
She ignored him, her struggles unceasing. "I see you fancy yourself a fighter. Well, I wanted to draw this out – it's more fun that way – but I suppose if you're ready to go, who am I to deny a Mudblood her death?"
And he removed his hand from her mouth and grasped the neckline of her shirt, not caring that his claws caught her skin at the same time, while his other hand released her middle, coming up instead to clamp down on the shoulder opposite where he had his face buried in her neck. She let out a moan of fear when she felt his tongue taste the skin on the side of her neck.
Greyback's giant hand ripped open the front of her shirt just as someone, at the last minute, sent a Tripping Jinx at Harry, who, seemingly in slow motion, stumbled just as he started to raise his wand. He fell, and as he struck his head, his wand arced up into the air and a jet of gold light flew and struck Hermione square in the chest right as Greyback's teeth sank into her neck.
What happened next happened so quickly that no one was entirely sure what happened, and so at this point the stories of the Final Battle suddenly deviated from each other and from the truth.
The reality of what happened was that as the gold light hit Hermione, there was a blinding flash of it and a deafening bang, which was the result of a sort of shockwave which blasted everyone within fifteen feet of the witch, including the werewolf who'd had her in his clutches, away from her. Then as everyone's eyes cleared they saw what appeared to be an enormous white something bounding for Tom Riddle. The reptilian wizard was laughing at the great Harry Potter having been felled by a Tripping Jinx and was lying sprawled and dazed on the floor, glasses askew and arms thrown wide. Voldemort was still laughing as he raised his wand and began the incantation for the Killing Curse.
But the full curse never left his lips; he looked up in shock at the sound of a snarl and saw his doom leaping for him, jaws wide and white teeth gleaming. Before he could do anything else, he was borne to the floor, the large white wolf's jaws clamped shut around his neck. As the impact followed by the wolf shaking its prey like a bone snapped his neck and the wicked jagged teeth pierced his jugular vein, the life seeped from him as quickly as the blood draining from his neck.
When Tom Riddle was dead, the wolf dropped its victim, then sat down on his chest and lifted its head, a great howl rising to the ceiling and seeming to lift the cheers of the Light along with it.
Harry Potter sat up, shaking his dazed head before pressing the hand that still held his wand to his temple. When his vision stopped spinning, he looked around him, wondering at the sounds of celebrating that had taken the place of the sounds of fighting.
Remembering the flash of gold light, he looked down at his wand in confusion, his eyebrows rising in surprise to see the end of the wand blackened and splintered, revealing the unicorn hair beneath. Then he looked to the spot where Voldemort had been standing and gaped, gobsmacked, when he saw the large white wolf sitting atop Tom Riddle's chest, head still raised in a howl, blood smeared across its jaws. As he watched, it lowered its head and, to his astonishment, rubbed its face on Voldemort's robes.
When the great white head came back up and swung around in his direction, he saw that the wolf had actually been cleaning its face. He blinked as the wolf got to its feet and loped over to him. He had a brief moment of uneasiness, but its expression seemed friendly enough, though he was no expert in canine body language.
When the wolf reached him, it lowered itself until it lay in front of him on its belly, head up and eyes watching him. As he met those deep brown eyes, he had the strangest sense that they were familiar. As he pondered this, his mind went back to the flash of gold light. He remembered now having felt a surge of power race from his chest, centered around his heart, and down his wand arm before the golden light arced away from the wand in his hand. What had it hit? As he wracked his brains, he recalled the light racing toward a flash of wild brown hair, and as he looked back to the brown eyes of the wolf beside him, he asked incredulously, "Hermione?"
The wolf gave a happy little yip.
He frowned. "Why don't you change back? I can't hug you properly till you do."
The wolf looked sheepish, as if he were pointing out something that hadn't occurred to it. It sat up on its haunches and closed its eyes as, if such a thing were possible, an intense look of concentration came over its face. Moments later, his best friend sat where the wolf had been just before. She looked down at herself, as if checking that she was all there and in the right shape, and then she threw her arms around Harry.
"Oh, Harry," she exclaimed, "I thought you were lost! I saw Riddle about to cast the Killing Curse and I lost it!"
He patted her back as best he could while clutching her tightly, his face buried in her crazy hair. "We did it, Hermione. We won. It's over."