Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters, storylines or situations from Harry Potter.

This was originally written for the Wuills and Parcent oneshot competition Once Upon a Parchment

Prompt: Little Red Riding Hood - a girl is on her way to visit her sickly Grandmother when she encounters a wolf. She tells him where she is going and he suggests she pick some flowers for her grandmother. In the mean time, the wolf goes to the Grandmothers house and (either eats her or locks her up, depending on version) imitates her, in the hope of eating the little girl.

Once upon a time, there was a crooked cottage perched atop of a hill, flanked by meadows. It was a funny little dwelling, extended and stretched until the original structure groaned under the topsy-turvy jumble of rooms affixed to it. Still, it was home and much beloved to the man and wife who lived there. They were happy and blessed by six sons and when the wife grew large for a seventh time, the elderly women of the village at the foot of the hill whispered amongst themselves "A seventh son of a seventh son! He will be the most magical of them all." For the man had himself been a seventh son. And when the son was born a daughter, with a shock of red hair, just like her brothers before her, the women tutted and shook out their aprons and went back to their gossip, disappointed to be denied such an auspicious event.

That the child was not born the sex of her previous siblings was no disappointment to her parents, who could not have adored her any more. Her mother in particular loved brushing her long red hair and whispering tales of princesses who met mysterious princes and were whisked off to lives of luxury. She told her other tales too, tales of the wolves that lived in the mountains – great beasts who could carry off a child and devour them, leaving nothing but a pile of clothes behind, and made her promise, wide eyed and breathless, that she would never stray up towards the mountains, for fear of the beasts that slunk in the shadows there.

"Oh mum! I don't really do I?" Ginny whined, her eyes on Ron's retreating back, his shoulders still shaking with mirth at the unenviable task he had escaped. She'd get him for that – a few flesh eating slugs in his bed would have him laughing on the other side of his face.

Molly dusted the flour from her hands before putting them onto her hips, her faded blue eyes sharp with impatience at ungrateful children and having to magic a feast from next to nothing.

"Ginevra," she snapped, her voice echoing shrilly around the kitchen, "Your Great Aunt Muriel is one hundred and nine years old and has a bad case of Dragon Pox. I know she's about as pleasant as an infestation of Doxies in your underwear drawer but she's family and she's not well. And you know what that means."

"Chicken soup," Ginny grumbled under her breath, rolling her eyes at the injustice that meant her brothers got to play quidditch in the paddock while she took the long hike through the woods to her Great Aunt's house.

Not to mention the grilling she'd get there about a nice girl like her not having met anyone to settle down with yet, and the listing of all the faults that were likely contributing to her single status. It was the same every time she saw her, the old bag droning on and on until her words were drowned out by the whooshing of blood in Ginny's ears as she battled to keep the itch of magic in her fingertips under control. It wasn't her freckles, or her overloud laugh, or her inability to keep her nails clean that meant she was single. It was the song she could hear on the wind that no one else could, drifting like dandelion puffs and whispering of adventure and freedom instead of a life tied to the kitchen or the nursery like her mother. It was the pitiful sight of the boys down in the village – all either knock kneed, slack jawed or cross eyed. Her youngest brother Ron had brought home a friend from school – Harry – and his dark hair and vibrant green eyes had held a fascination with her for a time. But a clumsy fumble in the broom shed had ended all too soon, leaving her cold and him stumbling over apologies and now that childish fancy had passed, for her at least. When he returned with Ron in the holidays, she still saw him gazing at her with longing from time to time, and worse too. He was staying with them at the moment, and seemed even more tongue tied than normal, as though he was gearing up to something, but she tried to avoid him and so far it had been working. He pressed against her in the narrow stairwells, his clammy hands at her wrists, his desire making itself known against her thigh as he stuttered and stammered against her ear.

Maybe if she had been allowed to go to school, as all of her brothers had, things would have been different – she would have been less wild, moulded into a lady of marriageable material – but with the war that Grindelwald has sent spiralling and raging across Wizarding Europe at no sign of an end, her mother had deemed it too dangerous for her to go. So she had had to make do with staying at home and learning the household spells her mother had thought she had needed, whilst fashioning and taming her powers in secret spots and quiet moments until her magic bubbled up keenly from within her like cool clear water from a spring, or fire from kindling, and even her well educated brothers were a little afraid of the things she could do without even a wand or a spell muttered under her breath. In their house, fear could be as powerful as magic – fear of the war, fear of strangers, fear of the wolves that lived in the mountains and would eat them up if they ventured too far from home.

Ginny stared impassively as her mother loaded jars of soup with a warming charm placed on them into a wicker basket alongside some sharp fresh goats cheese, a loaf of crusty bread not long out of the oven, a small pot of honey cajoled from the bees that had grown fat and bumbling on the Weasley's flower garden, and some sweet elderflower wine. She then covered the lot with a gingham cloth, red and white. Sensing a lost cause, Ginny sighed deeply and tied her clumsy goatskin clogs to her feet. As she straightened up, she noticed her mother watching her curiously, the furrow of concern etched between her brows at odds with the resigned smile at her lips.

Molly shook her head at her own foolishness, "Look at you, my little Ginny. You're nearly all grown up already. How on earth did that happen? Seventeen years passed by in a flash."

Ginny said nothing as she fastened her deep scarlet travelling cloak around her neck with its long satin ribbons. The only pretty thing she owned – her mother had bought it for her on one of their rare trips to town, with strict instructions to never tell her father the cost of it. It flowed around her like water, or blood, swirling around her calves and flaring out behind her like the wings of an exotic bird when she ran through the fields down the hill to the village.

It was too warm for the hood, and besides, her own red hair streamed down her shoulders and down onto the cloak like Phoenix feathers, fire and wine, too good to cover up.

"Goodbye mother," she said solemnly, kissing her on her softly wrinkled cheek and taking the basket from her hands, before stepping out into the world.

She followed the stream down the hill to the woods, leaving behind the joyous shouts from the paddock. As she felt the warmth of the sun slip from her shoulders, to be replaced by dappled shade, she didn't notice a shadow sliding through the long grass behind her and joining into the shadows of the trees like raindrops drops melding together as they ran down a window pane. Nor, as she hummed a tune under her breath and ran her hand through the straggling grasses that grew beside the path picked out in pale pebbles, did she hear the bending of bracken and the crackle of dry leaves nearby.

She made unsteady progress through the woods; sometimes dawdling to eat the blackberries off the brambles that grew in the hedge until her lips were stained indigo, or watch a spider spin its silken web; sometimes running so fast that mud kicked up from her heels and the hem of her long white cotton dress grew bedraggled, just to feel her heart racing. But she couldn't outrun the thing that moved silently behind her. The shift in the corner of an eye, the whisper of grass, the knife in the back.

And although she hadn't suspected she was anything other than entirely and perfectly alone, still, she wasn't surprised when she skidded into the clearing, her cheeks flushed and her hair tangled, to find him standing there. How could she be, when he was as much a part of the forest as the ancient oak tree he lounged against. He didn't look like one of the peasant boys from the village - dressed in a fine snowy white shirt and black trousers, his skin pale and untouched by the sun of the fields. When he saw her, he pushed himself off the gnarled trunk, as though he had been waiting for her the whole time, and his mouth curled up into a smile that could have been welcoming in another face.

Ginny felt an almost hypnotic fascination with him, a desire to tip her thoughts and desires in a jumble out of her head and into his hands for him to pick through at leisure and take what he fancied. He wasn't much older than her, maybe a couple of years, but she had never seen anything like him before - so worldly and suave, like a prince in a fairytale. But even from the other side of the glade she could feel the undercurrent grabbing at her ankles, tangling her in black weeds, wanting to pull her under. Danger. She noticed the eerie silence, like all the birds in the trees had hidden away and even the tiny creatures of the woods had stilled. A collective holding of breath, waiting for the predator to pass and hope that its serpent's torchlight eyes didn't shine on them.

Without introduction, he strolled casually forwards, taking a full circle around her as if to take in all of her, his dark eyes alight with amused curiosity. She felt her skin burn where his gaze fell. Eventually his speculation ended and he stopped in front of her, just a few inches too close, just enough to send a shiver through her.

"What's in the basket?" He asked pleasantly enough, although his voice was cold, a knife ripping through silk.

Ginny faltered, "Just some food and some homemade wine."

"Perfect, I'm hungry."

His mouth split open into a grin, showing off his white teeth, his red mouth a cavern behind them. He was a coiled spring, a monster dressed in the skin of an angel. Ready to pounce. Ginny moved the basket behind her back.

"It's nothing special."

"I'm hungry," he repeated simply, his eyes boring into her as he took another few inches of the space between them, forcing her backwards.

She affected a laugh, although it sounded plastic and brittle, echoing through the silent forest. As she took another step back she felt herself come up against a tree, "My mother says that boys are always hungry."

Tom twirled a strand of Ginny's hair between the tips of his fingers, his breath on her cheek. The bark of the tree was rough at her back, "Your mother isn't here now though is she, little girl. Perhaps it would be better for you if she was. I only want a taste."

Ginny wordlessly enlarged the checkered cloth as she shook it from the basket so it billowed out, snow and roses, over the loamy forest floor. Tom lowered himself gracefully down, crossing his long legs at the ankles and leaning backwards on his elbows to gaze up at the canopy of green above their heads. Ginny waited for a moment to be invited to sit next to him but he seemed to have forgotten she was even there, so, trying not to feel too put out, she sat down beside him, tucking her skirt around her primly, as much to hide her ugly shoes and mud spattered ankles as any sense of propriety.

His hair was as black and shiny as a stream wetted pebble, falling in perfect waves over his pale forehead. But his eyes, his eyes were full of fire and hunger, brimstone and terror, crunching bones and lippery licks, all swallowed up in a great dark maw. She gripped the blanket, afraid she might fall into them and never stop falling.

Then he smiled at her, a confidante's grin, an axe's blade, his white teeth flashing at her, and all the darkness was folded away. The thought of those teeth, pressed at the skin of her neck sent a quicksilver flash bubbling through her veins. She relaxed her hold on the blanket and smiled back.

"I've never seen you down in the village before," she said, cursing herself for the stupidity of her attempt at conversation.

"I'd imagine that was true. I'm not welcome down there. There was some…unpleasantness…my family fell out with some of the villagers. It was fifty years ago now - a distant memory. But we keep ourselves to ourselves now. Better to let the memory fade away."

Ginny, wanting to offer him something – a gift, a pound of flesh, anything – began unloading the basket, shyly sliding the bread and cheese over to him. He devoured them greedily, tearing hunks of bread off with his teeth and gobbling them down whole as though he were scared that they were going to be taken away from him. Tentatively, she stretched her arm across to him, offering him the hedgerow wine. He uncorked the bottle and took several deep swallows from the bottle before grinning lazily at her and offering her some. Together they finished the bottle until Ginny's head was fuzzy and her tongue felt thick and her words bold. She told him of her impoverished upbringing, her loneliness amongst her brothers, the constant feeling of "other" that nagged at her. He listened and said little, drinking her in and devouring the picnic until both were spent.

"What else is there?" He demanded, eyeing the basket with his eyes of hunger and want.

Ginny reached into the basket and handed him the pot of honey. He unscrewed the lid and dipped two fingers into the amber liquid before looking at her wolfishly.

"Come here," he growled, a flash of red gleaming in his eyes.

She crawled over the blanked towards him, closing the scant inches between them. He held his fingers up to her, the honey dripping strands of gold that stretched and shimmered in the light, and without being told, she parted her lips and dipped her head to his hand. She took his fingers into her mouth, her tongue swirling around the digits, suckling and caressing until every last drop was gone.

When she looked up at him through her lashes, his pale cheeks were flushed, his eyes closed, breathing raggedly. It felt like victory.

He dipped his fingers once more into the honey pot and extended his hand to her again but instead of reaching her mouth, he swiped his sticky fingers across her exposed collar bone, before lowering his head to her throat and lapping the sweetness from her skin. She could feel her pulse bouncing against his mouth, faster and faster, like a bird taking flight, soaring skywards. He then lifted his fingers to her lips once more, pressing just one tip to her lower lip and allowing a bead of honey to pool there, before his tongue darted out of his mouth and licked languorously over the curve of her lip, laving it away.

He then slipped his fingers into his own mouth and watching her all the while, cleaned every last trace of honey from them.

"I'm still hungry," he insisted.

Ginny hesitated. At this moment, wine and desire spinning dizzily inside her, she was desperate to give him everything. However, all that was left in the basket was the soup and she didn't dare risk her mother's wrath by not delivering the health giving elixir to her great aunt as promised.

"There's nothing else."

His eyes narrowed at her as he hissed, "Liar!"

Her tone turned pleading as he gripped her wrist with an iron bracelet, "It's for my great aunt - I promised."

"Where does she live?"

"A few miles along the path that way. She's very sick - I really should be on my way to visit her."

Ginny got up and started to pack everything away to demonstrate the necessity of her departure. When she had finished busying herself with the basket, Tom was standing beside her, pleasantness again, holding the cloth out to her.

"Let's play a game," he suggested, teasing.

"Like what?"

"Are you scared of me?"

He seemed merely curious, like being scared of him wasn't a good or bad thing, merely that it was. Still Ginny bridled at the idea, and pushed her fear deep down inside herself so she could answer him truthfully.

"No!"

"You should be, little girl."

She folded her arms over her chest, staring down her nose contemptuously at him, "I'm Ginevra Weasley, seventh child of a seventh child and I'm not scared of anyone."

For a moment, the boy's face was a stoney mask, cruel and mocking, before he seemed to remember his manners and nodded his head in the approximation of a bow.

"And I'm Tom Riddle, most delighted to make your acquaintance. But now we've been properly introduced, let me explain the game. I'll race you to your Great Aunt's house and if I beat you there, you'll give me what I'm hungry for.

"The soup?" She asked.

His eyes danced with amusement, flames over an oil slick, "No, a kiss."

Ginny's heart raced with excited anticipation but she affected cool indifference, knowing better than to be so free with her kisses, "Well what if I win? Do I get whatever I want?"

"And what would you do with me?"

"I'd tie a lead to you, and you'd be my slave and I'd be your queen."

Tom threw back his head and laughed, his teeth pearly white, his tongue red and wet, "We could live in the mountains like savages."

"People say there are wolves in the mountains."

"People say a lot of things, when they are scared of the truth and want to invent a more palatable reality. We would rule over any beasts of the mountains and they would lie at our feet like pets. It is a pretty picture you paint, little girl. Perhaps I should be tempted to dally, just to see it for myself. Be careful not to stray too far from the path, for worse things than wolves are afoot in these woods."

"I'm not scared," she jutted her chin out defiantly and touched her hand to the pliant stem of a nearby plant, making blossoms erupt from it.

Tom reached out and brushed his fingers over the blooms, smiling as they withered and blackened.

"As I said, there are worse things than wolves lurking here. Stay on the path."

She meandered along, the promise of the kiss hanging around her ankles like shackles. What was the harm in pausing for a moment to watch a leaf falling from branch to ground, what was a minute here, a few seconds there? Time being devoured like a wolf gobbling up the moon in great bites. She felt no need to run now.

Ginny was almost there when she saw it – the patch of small yellow aconites growing just off the path, and smiled to herself as she wandered off the track to pick herself a posy. Wolfsbane. She thought it would amuse Tom to see them. She busied herself finding the prettiest blooms and hadn't noticed the shadows lengthening, reaching for her, until a snap of twigs not far off drew her attention.

Remembering Tom's words fearfully, she hastened back to the path, a muttered "point me" spell helping her find the pebbled trail again. As she walked briskly, she fancied she heard something following her from a distance, and she drew her crimson cloak more tightly around herself like a talisman. Eventually she saw her Great Aunt's tumbledown cottage in the distance and was almost surprised not to see Tom lounging outside. Disappointment crashed dully within her – perhaps he had got bored of waiting, or perhaps he had just been toying with her and was somewhere even now, laughing his strange high, cold laugh at the thought of her.

She allowed herself barely a minute to grieve before straightening her clothes and tossing her hair back and approaching the weathered front door. A bird carcass crunched under her clog, the red of its blood staining the dirty goatskin. A fresh kill. The peeling layers of paint crackled as she pounded her fist against the wood.

"Great Aunt Muriel, it's Ginny. I've brought you some soup."

"Come in!" A high pitched voice called from inside, and the door swung open.

Her eyes took a moment to adjust to the gloom, but then she saw Tom sitting in the spindly wooden chair by the bed, his feet propped up. A hammering from the cupboard told her immediately where her Great Aunt was. She set the basket down carefully on the floor and shut the door behind her.

"Why Tom, what big eyes you have," she whispered as he stared at her, waiting. Her heart was pounding so loudly she was sure he must be able to hear it. The flowers fell from her hand and scattered on the floor.

"All the better for looking at you."

Under his gaze, the cloak slithered from her shoulders into a pool of blood on the floor. Her shoes were kicked away and then with sure hands, Ginny pulled her cotton dress up and over her head, before removing her underwear and standing naked in front of him.

"Why Tom, what big hands you have!" Ginny gasped, feeling a thrill of something like fear in the pit of her belly.

"All the better to touch you with," he stood up and and stroked a long pale finger down her cheek. His hands were warm. She had expected his alabaster skin to be cold, for some reason.

"Oh and Tom, what big teeth you have!" She found herself unable to look away from his cruel lips as he smiled invitingly at her.

"Why don't you come and make yourself comfortable on the bed?"

"Why Sir," she murmured, gazing up through her eyelashes and letting her curtain of red hair swing down, "I'd be afraid you might eat me all up."

"That, my dear girl, is precisely what I am intending to do."

She took one step, two, towards the bed, towards Tom. He waved his pianist's hand lazily, bidding her to lie down, feeling her cheeks begin to heat up as he knelt over her, still fully clothed.

"Magic is a funny thing," he mused, "the things it can do. I've always had a skill for making people do what I want, even as a young child. And there's so much I want from you," he pulled his wand from his sleeve as she watched, wide eyed.

"Magic can give you pleasure without desire..." and he pressed the tip of his wand against the sensitive skin of her exposed clitoris. Before she had time to protest, or even decide if she should protest, an orgasm hit her like a punch in the gut, making the muscles of her dry cunt clench painfully. She barely had to time to suck in a mewling breath before it had passed, leaving her limbs twitching and tears leaking from beneath her closed eyelids. She could feel him smiling his executioner's grin above her. She had felt weak echoes of that as she had laid in her bed, her fingers between her legs, thinking of Harry, or faceless princes, but nothing like the magnificence that had just ravaged her, leaving her flesh feeling ragged at the edges, like she could dissolve into pieces.

"Or desire without satisfaction..." this time he stroked the wand once between her folds and she felt wetness pool instantly between her legs. Her hips pistoned helplessly, trying to find some friction and her hands curled fists into the sheet above her head. Her head thrashed from side to side and she tasted blood from where she was biting her lip to hold the begging in. Then once again it stopped as quickly as it started, leaving her slippery slick and aching between her thighs.

"But I believe we made a bet. You owe me a kiss, and I intend to take it."

Ginny waited for his lips to meet hers but her mouth found only empty air. Tom's fingertips deliberately parted her knees, pausing for just a moment to trace the freckles on the milky skin of her inner thighs before she felt his mouth on her. This time he was able to do what his magic had not, to elicit a stream of pleading moans that slipped from between her lips like a cheap magician pulling out a string of silk handkerchiefs.

His tongue worked against her inflamed skin, the swollen bundle of nerves, devouring her like he was starving. He lapped at her folds, hot and wet, like a wolf lapping up the blood of a newly felled deer. Then just as she was teased as thin as gossamer, about to snap, quick as a flash he turned her over, pushing her face down onto the mattress, forcing her haunches up and impaling himself on her in one slick movement that made her inner walls clamp down, spasming against the intrusion. Somewhere in the tiny corner of sanity that remained of Ginny's mind, she realised he was naked and wondedred how that had happened.

His fingers wrote confessions over the page of her skin, bleeding inky bruises as he gripped her so tightly that the wheel span from pleasure to pain and back again so fast that Ginny wasn't sure which was which any more. His nails were a blood quill down her back, more like claws than human hands. His jaws were at her shoulder, biting down, marking her. She could feel his hot wet breath in her ear and with every ragged exhalation she could hear the sighs of every evil thought he had ever had. And she hated it. And she hated herself for loving it, wanting it, needing it.

It felt like falling. Falling into an endlessly dark pool and with every thrust he took into her, it felt like he was taking something from her, taking her secrets and fracturing her reality inch by inch. Madness buzzed in her ears like flies round a corpse. Now he had his hands in her hair, yanking her head up, forcing her into a position of worship, on her knees, praying to him.

He pounded into her, rutted against her like a beast, hitting her most sensitive places with each snap of his hips against hers until she thought she would surely die of it. Her senses coiled in on themselves and she had one last clear perfect vision of the dust motes dancing in the shaft of light coming in from the dirty window before she ignited, shattered into crystal shards, melted into a pool of honey. Electric waves coursed through her, jerking her puppet-like as Tom pulled her strings.

Then with a shudder, she felt Tom still as his hot wet seed pulsed inside her, filling her with a piece of his soul. He was silent in his moment of ecstasy, save for a triumphant sigh. He loosened the grip round her throat that she only realised he had when spots of darkness were exploding like fireworks in her eyes, and let her drop, boneless, onto the mattress. He threw himself down beside her - his hair was a mess, his face flushed. She turned her face away like he was something indecent.

They curled round each other - the she-wolf guarding her mate, the alpha protecting his kill. They could have stayed like that forever, flesh and bone turning to marble but the peace was broken with a crash.

The door burst open, flying back and hitting the wall with a startling clatter. A man, little more than a boy, his black hair wild, his face shining with sweat and dirt, his glasses sliding down his nose tumbled in, tripping over his feet a little and nearly dropping the axe that he carried over his shoulder.

Despite his scrawny frame, he hefted the axe competently, the keen blade whistling through the air as he swung it towards the bed. Ginny scrambled backwards in fear as it sailed home into the mattress at their feet, sending white feathers spewing into the air.

"Let her go!" the boy called, gesturing frantically for her to run behind him.

"Harry! What are you doing here?"

"I followed you – I wanted to be sure you were safe! Don't worry, I'll rescue you Ginny!"

Confusion starts to trickle down Harry's face when, instead of fainting against him, Ginny cowered back, her mate's arm protectively thrown around her chest.

"Quick, come here," he urged, reaching forward with a trembling arm and grabbing her ankle, pulling her towards him.

She slid off the bed into a heap, righting herself in time to see him raising his axe to Tom, who for his part, was merely examining the nails on his hand, unabashed. Ginny could see the crescents of her blood under them, red on white.

Ginny moved her hand like a hammer falling through the air, her fingers clawed. And although there were three clear feet between her and Harry, the slashes appeared down his face. He reached up to run his hand over the ragged flesh, confusion overtaken by pain as he saw the crimson dripping lushly down his fingertips, the huntsman forgetting his prey and becoming man-child again, rejected by the girl he desired.

"You little bitch."

With a metallic clang, he dropped the axe to the ground and pulled his wand from his sleeve.

He advanced towards her one step, then two. She just stared back, her expression blazing as she tossed her hair back over her shoulders. She felt her power rise up inside her, violent and vibrant with the secret new magic that Tom had poured into her. It felt like lightening in her palms, itching and crackling. It howled to be released.

She saw Harry raise his wand, his lips begin to move in a spell and she raised her hands. Then there was a flash of green and he fell to the floor. Disappointed at the prosaic ending, she turned to Tom, irked, barely able to leash her magic back in. He looked almost bored, twirling his wand between his long pale fingers, his hair in perfect waves again, the spots of colour on his high slanting cheekbones paled. He was more perfect in hate than in love, she realised with a cold trickle of shock down her back.

"Ta. But I didn't need you to save me, any more than I needed him to."

"I know, but he insulted you, and it would be remiss of me to let that pass."

She stepped over Harry contemptuously, toeing him over onto his back. His blank green eyes were devoid of the spark that had attracted her in the first place. Besides, it was nothing compared to the emerald brilliance of the Avada. She bent down and pried the wand out of his lifeless fingers. She didn't need one especially, but it seemed a waste to leave it and it might be fun to play with. The yellow flowers lay around him like an offering.

She was halfway to the door before she looked over her shoulder at Tom, calling him to her wordlessly. He seemed unhurried, dressing with leisured grace until he looked just the same as when she had met him in the clearing - hours, minutes, a lifetime ago. She waited in silence although her muscles and sinews were singing with the need to run.

At last he was ready to go, his snowy white shirt not even showing a spot or crease. Ginny stood facing him, blazing in her unashamed nakednesss, her hair a halo of fire and reached for his hand.

"We will need to run to get to the mountains before nightfall."

"What about the old lady?" Tom asked, casting a glance towards the cupboard, although his tone didn't sound overly concerned, and a cruel smirk danced across his lips as Ginny shrugged and the beating on the inside of the cupboard grew weaker.

"She's very old, and very ill."

"So, a kindness?"

Ginny nodded in agreement, her face serene. With a sharp tug, she pulled the length of scarlet satin ribbon from her cloak and, reaching for Tom's pale hand, passed it around his wrist. He didn't move a muscle as she tied it in a bow, other than to raise a quizzically amused eyebrow at her.

"My pretty wolf," she murmured, gathering the trailing length of the ribbon loosely in her hand.

"I let you win on purpose," she offered by way of explanation, "It's only fair."

"As you wish."

And with that, she threw the cloak around her shoulders and it moulded to her, covering her, and her hair flowed down, covering the tattered ends of torn ribbon, and the cloak stayed in place without fastenings, doing her bidding.

Together, they stepped out into the fading light of the forest, Tom trailing her obediently.

When the Weasley brothers stormed the cottage and found Ginny's torn clothes, her lumpy shoes, Harry's bloodstained remains – the axe untested – and their great aunt in the cupboard, they drew nervously together. They said it was wolves, and they mourned the triple loss, none of them daring to mention the echo of magic they could feel on the place. And at night, when they heard the howls from the mountains, they drank more firewhisky than was healthy and vowed to go together to avenge their sister's death. But they never did, because they knew that there are worse things than wolves in the world, lurking just out of sight, in the shadows.