Harry stalks through the house, the nails of her paws clicking against the floor as she follows her nose to the kitchen. She peers around herself, sniffing at the leg of the wooden furniture and the glossy fridge that wasn't much different from a muggle one – lacking electricity but powered by a low hum of magic.
There's a lack of plastic – the bread still warm, wrapped in a checkered fabric instead of the ready carved pieces in bags that she remembered from the Dursley's.
Harry isn't sure what she expected. Bonfires and elves working around the clock? She'd been in the Hogwarts kitchen after all and it wasn't that different.
Her stomach gurgles and she eyes the fridge as she listens for anyone it the immediate vicinity.¨
Nothing.
She stretches up on her hind paws and with a bit of struggle gets the door open and gives it a shove with her shoulder as she breathes deeply. There were a lot of glass jars with all sort of pickled things, marmalade and jams. Cheese under glass covers on a colourful tray - eggs crowding in a bowl.
Harry's eyes tracks up, up, up -
She swallows deeply, draws a sharp breath and her tongue lolls out as the scent of heavily chocolate bombards her nose, crawling down and through her with every breath until she's panting. The fridge door puffs against her side - she gives it an impatient shove as she rises to place her paws on one of the middle planes and stretches until she was nose to nose with a piece of heaven.
It is round and layered, pink and white teasing on the sides of it. On top is a generous heap of dark chocolate lazily styled and crawling up the sides of the decorative strawberries.
Her stomach rumbles and the world fades around her.
She pushes down harder on the shelf, stretching, jaws opening for just a taste - just a tiny little lick-
The glass shelf cracks, breaks.
Harry yelps, slipping forward - shelves loosening under panicked paws, jars breaking, the chocolate cake slipping over her head and landing with a splat on her back. Eggs shatters and she falls into the mess beneath her with a crack of her chin against the floor of the fridge.
Paws scrambles, sliding and finally sprawling her out on her belly in her panic.
She stares at the mess in horror, ears folding low against her head, terrified eyes following the slow slide of a pickle jar before it topples and lands with a noise that makes her flinch low against the floor.
She hardly dare to breathe.
She heaves herself up, slowly, the chocolate cake sliding forgotten off her back and drooping into a sad pile on the floor. The fridge door bounces against a fallen shelf, unable to close, and Harry takes a trembling step backwards.
GET OUT! her mind howls and Harry spins blindly, her mind locking down on the singular need to escape as she skids around the corner, making for the doors.
She only avoids slamming against them because they open up from the other side and she narrowly avoids slamming with a dark hooded figure who only just managed to stumble out of her path with a noise of surprise before she darts past them and out into the heavy snowfall.
Fenrir stares after the odd mixture of wolf and food, sniffing to make sure he wasn't getting the scents it wrong. It was a sour concoction of raw eggs, chocolate, pickle juice and a myriad of different things and he wonders when the the Dark Lord had gone and gotten himself a pet.
A messy one at that.
Lucius was probably having an aneurysm somewhere in the house and Fenrir chortles to himself as he closes the door behind him and shrugs off the outer cloak. Clad in ripped jeans and a half-buttoned shirt he struggles briefly with his boots before depositing them beneath the cloak with relief, his feet free from their imprisonment.
Cracking his neck and knuckles he sniffs for his Lord - deducing after a moment that the smell wasn't fresh enough and shrugs as he headed off in search of something to eat instead. The Malfoy's were always stacked and it was one of the few reasons he agreed to the mansion as a meeting place.
He sidesteps the mess of the fridge, gaze lingering for a moment before he focuses on a a lump of bread cooling on the stove. He's smearing it with a package of butter he bravely rescued from the assault of dripping jar of mustard when he glances back at Lucius who had frozen mid-step into his kitchen.
Lucius for his part had seen the cloak and shoes and known just exactly the werewolf had wandered off and come to look for him since Tom wouldn't be returning for a while.
"This." Fenrir waggles his fingers over the mess. "Is entirely the result of your pet." He shoves the bread into his mouth, chewing noisily.
"Pet?" Lucius echoes faintly, his eyes on the ruined chocolate cake. But then the words registers and he looks sharply to the other man. "Did you see where she went?"
"Wigt awt da fwont voor." Fenrir points through a mouthful. He paused his chewing and raises a brow when Lucius swears - something he'd thought entirely beyond the refined man. Swallows. "Thing was absolutely dripping with food - it's probably hiding somewhere on the grounds." No way a dog was clever enough to get out those fortified gates.
He licks butter from his thumb.
"That thing is a child and an animagus." Lucius gives him a sharp look. "The Dark Lord's familiar is deeply enamoured with her and would be very upset if she was to return to find her gone."
Fenrir feels cold sweat drip down his back as he stills.
Nagini was a terrifying entity in a good mood - he wasn't exactly keen on seeing her in a rage.
"Won't she just come back once she realizes how cold it is?" He follows Lucius as the younger man stalks out of the kitchen. "Kids ain't stupid."
"This one has spent I don't know how many years living on her own with only Nagini for company in the middle of the woods," Lucius says tersely. "She's been abused, shies any and all sort of sudden movements and she's scarred enough to look as if she stepped right out of a torture chamber."
Fenrir stills, digesting the words, and then puts the bread aside and lunges for his cloak with a swear.
Fenrir is old. He'd been bitten when he was barely weaned off his mother's milk and he should have died - too young to handle the transformations. But he'd prevailed and he'd grown up hearing what no one else did, shunned from the humans in the community he'd been born into until his mother had enough and fled with him to a werewolf settlement.
Werewolves were pack creatures by nature and Fenrir had been young and strong, challenging the Alpha with all the rage and bravado of youth at fifteen and won. A natural born Alpha, they called him. They hunt in pack, they sleep in pack - they take care of each other and the more in touch with their nature they were the more their senses grew.
It's the difference between a tame wolf like Lupin who enjoyed playing human and whose senses faded and muted as his wolf twisted into something weak and rabid, and someone like Fenrir who was always side-by-side with his wolf, aware and listening, settling into something less human even outside the influence of the full moon.
It was his wolf he called for, senses sharpening as he sniffs the ground for the smell of canine intermingling with food. It should have been easy but it is cold and snow packs the smells, hiding her tracks. It was still fresh enough that Fenrir is confident he could track her even in his limited human form but the girl had had a head start and was ruled by fear while Fenrir has to track carefully least he loses her.
"Can't you point her?" Fenrir asks, staring past the open gates and the large expanse of forest.
Lucius shakes his head. "We don't know her name. She wasn't very keen on sharing it."
Fenrir would have turned and stared if it wasn't busy ingraining her scent into his nose. What in the world had been happening between the last time he visited and now? The adoption of a feral no-name wolf-child and he wasn't invited? Really.
How rude.
"I can track her but you'll slow me down." Fenrir glances back, just to see Lucius pretty face twist up. "Got anything she'll respond to for me to use?"
Lucius made a reluctant face. "Nagini calls her Little Wolf," he bites out.
Fenrir pictures the prim and proper Lucius Malfoy crying out for Little Wolf and snorts, shoulders shaking. "I'll hunt the pup down." He waves, disappearing quickly in the mess of flurry snow before Lucius could do something with that fancy stick of his.
Lucius remains still for several minutes before his cold fingers makes themselves reminded.
He spins and stalks back to the house.
Harry crashed over the cliff, tumbling down the cold tundra and scrambling for purchase in icy snow. Her fur is crusted and heavy and every breath rattles inside her lungs, wet and desperate.
It blows too hard for her to see more than a couple of feet before her and she heaves herself up on trembling legs, lurching forward.
Getawaygetawaygetaway- her mind cries as she makes her way blindly. She has no idea where the mansion is, doesn't know how to get back to her home. She's lost, trapped in the whirling wind and snow that bites through thick fur until she's a trembling mess.
She yelps as something snaps beneath her and breaks through the soft skin between the pads of her paws and she sprawls out. Red stains white as she scrambles up, jumpong awkwardly with the paw drawn up, whimpering as she bends her head down to nose at it and give it a ginger lick.
She puts it down and continues stubbornly forward with a limp in the thick snow.
Her mind tumbles with images of a furious Vernon.
She can practically feel the tear of her flesh under the snap of leather and the pooling of warm blood spilling down her back. Hands much stronger than herself securing a belt around her wrists and behind her back - the burning gasps for air under water and her own cries rising in crescendo with his laughter as he pulls her out before shoving her back under.
It drowns the world around her until she's practically back with him, long hair ensnared in a thick hand and trembling as he bears down upon her and she stumble to her knees in the snow and claws at her head with a whine, blood beading beneath her nails, unable to remember when she'd gone from wolf to human.
Snow turns to wooden floor beneath her and the walls of her cupboard closed around her, trapping her.
He's the Dark Lord her mind whispers in an echo. If a simple muggle could tear you apart for existing, what do you think he would do to you for repaying kindness with ruin?
Harry slams her head down into the icy crystals of harsh snow beneath her, crying out for escape from her own mind.
"I'm not there!" she cries. "I'm not there!"
But her mind isn't listening and the hunger pools in her belly, the smell of heady food as thick hands stroke down her bare hips - the tempting promise of food if she just allow him this one little thing-
"Sssssh." A clawed hand presses down on her neck, digging in without drawing blood. The palm settled heavy and warm against her icy skin and she jerks, limbs tired and frozen stiff and unable to follow her command to get away as she strikes out blindly.
But the body doesn't move - the grip doesn't change. Steady and fast and there as her mind howls. "Just open your eyes, pup," the gruff voice commands and Harry - Harry hadn't even realized she'd closed them and struggles to pry them open until a warm thumb strokes away the ice crystals in her frozen lashes. She whimpers and squints through snow, trying to make sense of reality and memory and what she's seeing.
She doesn't recognise him. His hair wild and long, tumbling down a large muscled back. His fingers and toes all clawed and his cloak hanging over half-torn clothes, mindless to the frigid air whipping around them.
He grins when yellow meets grinning amber. "You must be the one Lucius called Little Wolf." His voice is gruff and she jerks away from him, baring her fangs with a snarl. But he moves with her, strengthening his hold until it was sure to leave bruises, and when she falters he twists his grip and draws her sharply forward until she's straddling his lap.
He radiates heat and Harry stikes out, her fangs snagging a thick muscled arm and sinking deep into the flesh. Blood fills her mouth and she gnashed her teeth until bone clicks beneath her fangs and twists her body, paws tearing at his skin, forced to swallow the blood that pools thick and heady in her mouth.
Instead of anger he laughs low and deep, a rumble that calls to her deeper instincts. "You've got quite the grip there, pup." He pins her down with his heavy gaze. "You're lucky Nagini claimed you first - I'm not nearly as patient normally." And then he reaches down, grips her jaw and pries her off him with inhuman strength.
Her lips draws back but her mouth clicks shut when he growls deeply. Had she been wolf her ears would have folded back, her belly low against the ground and tail between her legs. Instead she freezes, stiff limbered and still as he manhandles her until she's sitting properly in his lap, his chest large and warm against her back and his non-bleeding arm pressing against her ribs.
She's naked and human but nothing stiffens beneath her and he noses against her neck like a fellow wolf.
Her limbs slowly loosens and she slumps, breathing hard as he presses down with fangs over the expanse of her neck, eyes closing. She draws a deep shuddering breath, whimpering as draws back but not completely - swiping his tongue over the wound, cleaning it patiently until the blood stops welling.
"I've never done that in this form before." The man rubs down on her, scenting her, and Harry's eyes lid against her will. "But you looked like you needed it."
Harry's draws a deep shuddering breath, her mind calmed into a muted buzz.
"You gave Lucius quite the fright." The man tightens his grip on her when she stiffens. "He looked ready to run straight into the forest after you when he learnt you'd vanished." He turns her eye to eye, hand heavy against her neck, a substitute for his fangs. "Why did you run little pup?" He strokes locks of black to the side and Harry becomes aware of the crusted mess of food and blood and snaps her fangs weakly, attempting to avert her eyes.
The man tsk'ed. "Running from your problems won't fix anything," he admonishes with a flick to her nose.
Harry doesn't agree.
Running from the Dursley's had been the best thing she'd ever done and the only reason she was alive to draw breath.
She forces a cold stiff jaw open. "I broke," she hisses, tired of her own fumbling language. "Broke kitchen." Kitchen, kitchen, kitchen - for how many hours had she slaved under the firm eye of her aunt before she could even reach the top of the stove?
"Got a bit too interested in that chocolate cake?" He makes a rumbling sound of amusement when she turns away. "I don't blame you - I was almost tempted to take a bite even after it went flat on the floor," he huffs, giving her a nose a little tug. "I don't know what kind of wizards you think you've landed with." He pins his eyes into hers. "But last time I wandered by neither Lucius nor Alpha was the sort to punish children for getting a bit too enthusiastic about food." He brushes his fingers against her throat and she tucks her chin at the ticklish sensation. "Magic will have that fixed in a breeze and Lucius won't have to lift a single fancy finger of his because he employs enough elves for a small army."
Harry stares down at her fingers, at the left crusted with blood and piece's of the branch trapped awkwardly in blood and flesh. He follows her attention and sighs, tugging at her fingers. "Yeah, you're not heading out on your own looking like that," he decides and Harry breathes in sharply when he rises, drawing her up with him and tucking her on his hip like a toddler, one hand under her rump as he swept his cloak around her shoulders.
Harry goes stiff in his grip, unsure what to do. She's never been carried like this and her arms dangles uselessly by her sides until he takes his free hand and tugs them up around his shoulders with a pat before setting off in an easy jog back towards the mansion.
Slowly, hesitantly, she tightens her grip until she's hugging him.
"I'm Fenrir by the way" He glances down at her, the wolf shining from his eyes. "Fenrir Greyback."
And for just a second there was a brush, the slightest feathery reminder of a name she hadn't dared to think for years; Remus.
Fenrir shakes the snow off his shoulders as the mansion appears through the flurry and Harry rubs a hand against her eyes, grimacing at her cold cheeks and the snow that has gathered against the side not pressed against the man's warm chest.
The man drops her to the ground as they step inside and gives her a shove towards the blond who had clearly paused mid-stride, swivelling around to look straight at her.
Fenrir vanishes inside the house, nabbing his half-eaten sandwich on the way, and Harry takes a slow hesitant step forward, head tilting back to look into unreadable silver eyes. Lucius looks harried, Harry thinks, taking another step forward as her brow scrunches. His shirt is wrinkled and his hair messy from one too many hands carding through it in a hurry.
She looked down at her feet, clenching and unclenching her fists, feeling the splinters digging deeper into her flesh. "I'm sorry." I shouldn't have run, she wants to say. But my mind was screaming too loudly. But she can't find the words and her shoulders stand tense and presses up against her ears as she sinks her head down.
A sigh and then a heavy cloak lands on her shoulder, weighing her down, and she looks up with startled eyes. "Sev will have a heart attack if he sees you naked one more time." Lucius leans down, as if to share a secret. "I caught him hiding extra cloaks all around the house," he entrusts her, reaching out to gently give her shoulder a squeeze.
And all Harry can think is; oh.
Nagini looks close to biting her when she returns home with Tom to find her huddled up by the fire with a heavily bandaged hand. §If you want to stay here with me so badly you just have to ask,§ she grumbles as she drapes herself over Harry's shoulders and allows her to stroke her head. §You don't need to go hunting for stupid excuses§ Her tongue flickers over the bandages.
"It's quite the curious addition to the house you've got there, Alpha." Fenrir throws a leg over the arm of the couch he'd claimed for himself. "She's more wolf than most werewolves."
Tom pauses where he'd been pulling out books and eyes the deceptively innocent looking man over his shoulder. "You met her then?"
"Met her, found her, carried her back." He pops a grape into his mouth. "Found Lucius in quite the tizzy after she fled like the bats of hell were nipping her tail for getting just the tiniest bit too greedy," he hums, spearing a green one on the tip of his claw and regarding it. "She the reason you requested me back?" There is a warning there and the muscles in Tom's shoulder rolls as he drops from the last pin of the ladder and sinks elegantly into the waiting leather chair.
"Have I ever misused you so?" Tom inquires, eyes dark he bores them into the younger man. "Are you unhappy in my service, Fenrir?" He draws the name out admonishingly.
Fenrir straightens from his slouch immediately, lowering his head. "Of course not Alpha." He averts his eyes submissively. "But you have to admit, a feral child might require someone familiar with that kind of mindset and it was a suspicious sort of coincidence."
Tom reaches for his wine glass, swirling the liquid inside contemplatively. "That child is Nagini's first and foremost," he says finally. "She is staying here for now but it's not a permanent solution and as soon as the weather allows it the two of them will be back tumbling under the sun."
"You'll release her? Just like that?" The idea was unfathomable to Fenrir who believed in pack first and foremost.
Tom glances at him as he catches the last snippet of his thought. "Nagini is her pack."
"And Nagini is your pack." Fenrir makes a grab for his own wine glass, peering over the rim. "What will you do the day she has to choose between the pup and yourself?" He drinks greedily, Adam's apple bobbing
Tom watches the expensive wine dripping down a scruffy chin to land on his shirt, saying nothing as he taps his index finger against his knee.
"The thing about children are that once we claim them they have a tendency to bury close enough to our hearts that we place them first, mindless of how it might affect our lives." He thinks of a particular sandy haired boy with bright eyes who had grown tired and haggard, his wolf thin and mad and his hair greying in what should have been his prime. "If Nagini loves that child the two of you walk a dangerous road."
"What would you have me do then?" Tom asks after a long silence, tilting his head as Fenrir pours himself two more glasses. "I cannot force her to stay here - it would only anger them both." There is a warning in the question, a limited patience.
"Visit them," he suggests with a shrug. "Bribe them. A home with the promise of a warm bath and a full tummy goes a long way." He drinks. "Besides, she shows all the signs of an attention starved pup looking for a lick of kindness and touch. It's not like you're setting out to tame a basilisk with a rock."
Tom's hand clenches around the glass for just a moment before relaxing. "You want me to get… involvedwith the child?" he bites out.
Fenrir chortles. "You make it sound so foul." His amber eyes gleam. "Think of her as just another pet. You talk with your snake - it can't be all that different?" He cocks a shaggy brow as he reaches for the expensive bottle, trading it for his empty glass with relish when his Alpha makes no sign of protest.
Harry dozes on the rug before the fire place as the adults talk above her. It isn't until the voices grits with anger that she lifts her head to look up in concern and catches Snape's abrupt departure by the swish of his robes just before he turns the corner.
"He'll be back." Narcissa put a hand on her husband's shoulder. "He's just upset."
"For a good reason." Lucius slumps back into the couch, massaging his brow to stave off the building headache. "Ever since Potter's death he's grown far more impatient and less keen on playing games with Dumbledore. He walks a dangerous line and he knows it." Harry jerks at the sound of her name.
"Dumbledore's painting her up as a martyr," Tom growls. "It's disgusting."
"He's the one who left her there with those monsters. It's a wonder anyone is ready to swallow his words of her last dying wish." Narcissa's heart aches for the fourteen year old in the blood painted cupboard. "They should be tearing him apart not be eating from his hands."
"He'll use every last resource if it means he can keep the magical world slow and stagnant beneath his thumb." Tom shook his head. "He's been hounding Snape about the details of my own survival and resurrection… He's growing more and more impatient."
Harry furrows her brows as she listens, a strange heaviness in her chest. They thought her dead?
Truthfully she hadn't considered what sort of rumours that might have blossomed after her disappearance but - death? Wasn't there some sort of charm for that kind of thing? But then... if there was wouldn't it have been easy to check if Voldemort was alive instead of swearing off the truth and slandering her name in the papers?
And now Dumbledore was using her name? After everything? The same man who had shot down her begging to stay at Hogwarts during the summer, to stay with the Weasleys', to go anywhere but to the Dursley's? The same man who said it can't be that bad, my girl and shooed her out the door days after a man crumbled to dust beneath her hands and your family loves you, my girl after killing a giant basilisk in the chamber of secrets and nearly dying and still being sent back.
The same man who smiled as her only hope of a true home and family vanished on the back of a Hippogriff.
That man was using her death to further his agendas?
She doesn't realize she's been growling low and deep in her chest until Tom cautiously touches her side and she nearly tears his hand off as she whips around, teeth bared.
She stands up and stalks out of the room, fury alight in her heart.
"What was that?" Lucius stares after the furious wolf who looked ready to slaughter the first one to cross her path.
Tom stares at his hand, lips pursued, eyes thoughtful.
Harry nearly bowls Lucius over the day he and Narcissa steps inside with a giant tree floating behind them, arguing about the best way to get it through. She catches herself before she does though, prancing impatiently as she waits for it to get inside, making sure to keep most of her weight off her healing paw and finally planting her rump on the floor, tail beating against the floor, nearly vibrating.
Draco folds down beside her on the floor twenty minutes later when she's slumped down, chin on her paws as she watches the two adults try and fail to get the tree through the open doors.
"They do this every year," Draco confides her and she glances at him. "Get a too big tree, fail to get it through the door, argue until one of them gets mad enough to start cutting branches." He takes a large sip from the cup in his hand and Harry sniffs at the combination of chocolate and- was that mint?
Draco hides a grin as the wolf draws up to peer more closely into his concoction, as if unsure her senses were telling her correctly. But there it was - a candy cane melting slowly in the warmth of the chocolate and he takes hold of it and gives it a little stir just to tease.
She levels him with the largest puppy eyes he's ever seen and Draco throws his head back with a laugh. "I'll make you one, come one." He climbs to his feet and her tail wags as she hurries with him, nearly tripping him in her eagerness.
It is terribly endearing and reminds him of Pansy's pug who was a sucker for anything sweet. Weaving in and out between his legs, having to duck to squeeze herself between, and tail going a mile a minute as she follows his every movement as he starts pulling down ingredients.
He heats the milk on the stove and pulls out their finest chocolate, breaking it into tiny pieces and adding one after another until she's so wide-eye and disbelieving that it's edging into an anxious anticipation before he stows it away. He stirs it until it is all melted and the kitchen smells like Christmas. "Do you want to add the candy cane on your own?" He holds out the package as a peace offering and there is a naked girl beside him before he can blink.
It is only the second time he's seen her in this form. Something about him had clearly disturbed her that first meeting and she'd kept mainly to her wolf form after that. But Draco is patient these days - a far cry from the boy who would have levelled her with a wand and demanded an explanation.
So he takes the opportunity to study the scars from the corner of his eye as she gently, reverently, takes the candy cane from the offered package and plops it into the cup with such a face of delight, as if she'd never imagined such a thing for herself, that Draco worries for his heart.
There are deep scars - many old and stretched in such a way that they can only have appeared during her childhood years. They look like the remnants of lashes, broken glass and even knives. There is an explosion of scar tissue stretching across her upper back, as if someone had pressed her down against a stove as she struggled to get away, smearing and stretching melting skin.
Burns from liquid - oil, likely, by the depth - the scarring dripping down her shoulder and arm.
There are more scars by her hips, too, and over her rump and down the inside of her thighs - fine lines that could only have been made by something sharp, like a knife. There's a puncture wound near the inside of her elbow that looks strangely out of place strange - broad and old, like someone had maybe shoved something blunt through her flesh.
He dismisses the newest ones as the scrapes and scars of a life in the wild. It just proved that she was strong and striving, marks of survival. It meant she had a good head of those shoulders on hers, having been on her own as her own and getting out with a strong and healthy body.
No sign of scurvy, her teeth white and clean, gums pink and healthy. Her hearing and smell were obviously sharp and if her vision was bad she didn't seem to suffer for it, tracking him easily across the room with those eerie yellow eyes. There was no sign of wrongly healed bones but, then, magic could have been at help there because he didn't doubt she'd taken her fair share of tumbles.
He tilts his attention back to her when she looks up to meet his eyes. "Thank you." Her voice comes out gusty, less awkward, more what he imagined she might have sounded like if she hadn't fled to the forest.
"You are very welcome." He resists the urge to ruffle her hair at the hesitant smile.
Narcissa looks rumpled when they finally returns to find Lucius shooing branches out the door. The tree looked a bit dishevelled but stands tall and proud in the living room and there are rows of boxes just waiting to be unpacked.
Harry deposits her mug and shrugs on a shirt and a pair of shorts before settling down to get a good view of the whole spectacle, humming at the taste of chocolate and mint as she takes long careful sips, savouring it.
Draco joins his parents in digging through the boxes, pulling up marbles and glitter and unpacking and entire box of red candles that he leaves in a pile on the floor.
"Where did you place the little silver snakes?" Lucius asks, voice muffled.
"Red box." Narcissa frees what looked some macabre and sad doll with a triumphant look.
"Are you sure-"
"I'm sure!" Narcissa snaps her head up from the box she'd half buried herself in and Lucius mutters something into his own.
Draco looks over to her. "Come here," he beckons and Harry hesitates before placing the cup down and creeping closer.
Christmas with the Dursley's had never been a happy thing. It was hard work for food she wouldn't eat, present after present she could only watch in envy as her cousin tore open, face pressed desperately against the small brass bars of the peek hole deliberately left open.
Hogwarts had changed that but she'd never decorated the trees, only lingered to watch as the teachers flickered their wands and levitated without fuss or muss.
But the Malfoy's looked ready to decorate it by hand as far as she could tell from the bickering between Narcissa and Lucius. No magic, no summoned house elves in sight which was just bizarre and not at all what she'd expected from them. They had always looked so prim and proper as she peered enviously towards her rival across the station, finding him in the warm arms of his mother while his father stood proud and tall with a firm supportive hand on his shoulder.
Family. It had always been an abstract word for her. Dead parents who supposedly loved her enough to sacrifice their lives (but never enough to live for her). Relatives who hated every living breathing fiber of her body and wanted her dead and gone (and had nearly succeeded in making is so)
Harry tries to not to look too eager as she crouches down beside the blond who smiles secretively at her as he pulls up a single ornament. Harry bends down, peering closer. Blinks.
There is a girl with hair that looks like it had gone through an attempt at being tamed but had been abandoned half-way through with a cowlick. She's frowning, eyelids glittery blue, at a shorter boy with a brilliant flush on his face who shifts to look away from the taller girl, ears going even redder, before it looped.
"Mother and Father's first Christmas together," Draco confirms her thoughts and she takes it gently in her hands when he holds it out towards her. "Mother was quite the force when she was younger. Still is."
"That's the photo you decided show her, Draco?" Lucius twirls a blue frame from his box. "What about these simply beautiful baby photos of you? I mean this one with the dragon is just-" He ducks as his son lunges for him, laughing as he throws it over to Narcissa who darts over to Harry as Draco struggles against the arm thrown over his shoulder, pulling him close.
And Harry finds herself swept up in a whirlwind of memories.
Every single thing seemed to have a story tied to it and Harry admires the ugly decorations that Severus gifts them with every holiday, somehow getting them increasingly horrifying with their too big empty eyes and gaping maws.
Photos that spun alive in their frames, the little macabre dolls Narcissa's mother had gifted her with, the decorative heads Lucius had gotten and promptly shoves away the second he draws them from his box, paling.
Along the line, when Narcissa is wrestling a purple doll from a struggling Lucius, Tom ambles inside with his own cup of warm chocolate and folda carefully down beside her, just a little way to the side.
Harry sits with her knees to her chest, chocolate gone, but Tom reaches out and offers her a new cup. Once she takes it he withdraws two candy canes from his pocket and offers her one of them. "Don't let them fool you," Tom says at her surprise, leaning towards her so the Malfoy's wouldn't hear him. "I'm the one who first showed Lucius the wonder of peppermint chocolate."
He stirs his chocolate with a well-practised hand and Harry copies him before raising it to her lips, startling at the rich taste, different from the sweeter taste of Draco's.
He lifts the corner of his lip at her look. "A dash of cream, some cinnamon." He licks some foam from his lip. "A thumb full of secret." He winks.
"You gave her some of your alcoholic cocoa, didn't you?" Severus deadpans at the sight of snoring teen sprawled out before the fire in her human form with Nagini draped over her like a zig-zag of melting coils for blankets, mug hugged to her chest.
"It was just a pinch!" Tom defends himself.
.
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It's a pain to edit on the phone but it takes me two hours to get to work so might as well do something with the time.
So we finally meet Fenrir. He's always interested me as a character and he feels like a natural inclusion in this story. I know some of you have been curious about him - what do you think of their first meeting?
Character evolvement and all that - Harry is still in a bad state of mind and I wanted something softer with this ending. And pureblood or not - even those have their own traditions and joys inside the walls of their house and home.
Drop a review on your way out and let me know what you think!
Cheers!
