A/N: I'm so sorry about the wait. This had a different, pre-written chapter for chapter 4, but then the plunnie took a cannibalistic turn and it's morphed from something with dark overtones to something that I fear may grow to the levels of disturbing witnessed in only a few other fics on this site that I've encountered. Possessive!Draco will reach new heights. xx-Kitten


ANNOUNCEMENT: Canimal, Freya Ishtar and I have begun a Facebook Group pertaining to Death Eaters and all their related excitement. It's called The Death Eater Express. You are all cordially invited on board if you've a love for Death Eaters and their questionable morals. I assume that if you're here, you probably do. xx-Kitten.


Addicted To You

By Kittenshift17


Chapter 4


She crept on silent feet as she descended the stairs from her bedroom in Grimmauld Place. Dinner had been eaten and most people had retired for the night either to bathe, to sleep or simply to find a moment to themselves. The days had been spent cleaning Grimmauld Place fervently, waging war upon the dilapidated structure as they tried to make it fit for human habitation once more.

There had been an Order meeting the previous evening and many people had been coming and going since yesterday. Hermione had been arguing with herself seriously about what she ought to do. It was a full moon tonight and while there was part of her that was terrified to risk running into her potential mate again, another part of her was craving it.

She needed to know. She needed to find him again. And while it didn't make any sense to her at all, Hermione found herself sneaking out of the house. She'd given Ginny a story about how she was going to do some more reading in the library. She'd told Ron the same thing, claiming she would shower first and then begin work on a made-up extra credit assignment. When they'd both heard that, Ron had talked Ginny into a game of chess with him.

Hermione had indeed proceeded to shower, but now that everyone else was distracted, she was making a break for it. Sneaking down the hall and over to the front door, Hermione let herself out with nothing more than a whisper of her shoes against the floor. She hadn't been able to stop thinking about the idea that she was somehow fated to a werewolf that she'd happened to encounter by chance in the woods.

The only thing she could think of doing about it, other than researching the condition and the Mate Principle in depth, was confronting the wolf responsible for this mess. And that meant she had to find him again. Since she had no idea who he was, she didn't really know where to start. She could only assume, based on Remus's observations, that her mate might be feeling the need to find her too. As such, she was going to the place she'd first run into him to begin with.

Turning on the spot when she reached the top step just outside the door to Gimmauld Place, Hermione disapparated with a crack. The nauseating jerk behind her navel coupled her nervousness, and Hermione landed gracelessly on the floor of the forest, her stomach heaving. She hurled until the bile that had been churning in her stomach for what felt like weeks now finally surfaced and left her in a fit of burning coughs.

She groaned as she wiped her hands across her mouth before getting to her feet carefully. The night air was cold amid the gloom of the forest and Hermione shivered, regretting not having donned a thicker coat before leaving the house. She needed to find the werewolf she'd encountered last time. She didn't even rightly known why she assumed she would run into him again here in this same spot. The only people who lived close enough to this part of the Forbidden Forest were those who dwelt in Hogsmeade and Hermione doubted that any of the residents from the small village would actually have become a werewolf so very recently.

She could only hope that her mate, whoever he was, would have the same instinct to find her and so would come to the same spot he'd encountered her. If he truly was her fated mate, she suspected he would be burning with the need to find her again. Hermione walked in silence as she crossed the grove where the Wolfsbane bloomed. The forest was quite, the moon glowing brightly overhead and filtering through the trees to light her way.

She frowned to herself in silence when she noted that though it was quiet here, it wasn't unnaturally so. Night birds called to one another and the sounds of other far-off creatures foraging for their dinner reached her ears. They hadn't fallen silent in the presence of a skulking but unseen predator. Hermione looked up at the moon again. It was definitely high enough that whoever her mate was, he'd have completed the transformation by now.

So where was he? Didn't he crave her the Remus had told her that her mate would do? Didn't it occur to him to come back to the same place he'd first met her as a wolf if he wanted the chance of possibly running into her again? Maybe he'd been distracted, as werewolves tended to be if there was prey that could be hunted once they had transformed by the ravaging effect of the moon. Maybe she needed to call to him in the only language he would understand right then.

Transforming herself into her animagus form, Hermione shook out her thick fur and took a few long minutes to acclimatise herself to the feel of being an animal and standing on four paws instead of two human feet. When she felt in control of herself again, Hermione communicated with her werewolf the only way she knew how. She tipped her own head back and howled long and loud and clear through the night.

Then she stopped.

She held perfectly still as she listened for some sound. For some sign that he was nearby. Utter silence met her ears. All the night creatures fell silent at the sound of a predator in their midst. No night birds called. No woodland creatures scurried about, foraging. They all fell just as silent as Hermione had become herself as she waited with baited breath for the faintest whisper of a hint that he was there.

None came.

Hermione wondered if maybe she just hadn't howled loud enough to echo through the entire forest. The tress grew thick and heavy, the foliage trapping the sound and preventing it reaching beyond. Maybe she had to howl louder. Trying again, Hermione tipped her head back and she howled even louder than before. Long; clear; ringing. She howled so loudly it made her throat ache and the cold night air burned her lungs.

When still no returning call met her ears, Hermione frowned.

Maybe he was running late. Last time she'd encountered him she'd been foraging for a while and had arrived much later in the evening that she'd shown up tonight. Maybe he had run here from some other distant place beyond the forest. Maybe if she wandered far enough, she might have more of a chance of running into him. Setting off into the forest, Hermione padded on four paws through the dense undergrowth.

Any number of scents tempted her sensitive canine nose, threatening to overwhelm her good human sense and have her run off to investigate them all. Being in this form meant she was more attuned to the forest around her. While she had been human, Hermione had had no idea that just a scant twenty meters off to her left, a centaur was silent and watchful in the forest. It occurred to her suddenly that the centaur might have been intent on capturing her before she had transformed.

Narrowing her eyes on the very idea, Hermione padded through the undergrowth towards the equine creature until she stood before him, peering up at the almost-human face.

"You are no real wolf," he accused her, his own eyes narrowed in return.

Hermione shook her head. No, she wasn't a real wolf. At least, not in the sense that she had been born with four paws and a tail. Hers was merely an elaborate and impressive show of magical talent.

"Sometimes you are a teenage girl," the centaur went on, one of his hooves kicking up some of the dirt at his feet, "You seek the werewolf you encountered last time."

Hermione almost transformed back to ask the creature if he had seen her werewolf, but she paused when she watched the way he pranced ever so slightly, almost in preparation. She realised with a jolt that, as was the nature of centaurs, he wanted to get her human again and then he wanted to carry her off into the woods and rape her. Literally.

She didn't blame him, exactly. It was in all the mythology she'd ever learned before Hogwarts and it was certainly discussed in depth within her Care of Magical Creature textbooks. Bestial tendency towards sexual need and the urge to reproduce ran strong within in all centaurs. It was one of the reasons Hermione had thought it a very bold and unnerving move when Dumbledore had insisted of having Firenze teach Divination up at the school. Centaurs were well known throughout literature for the number of times they had attempted to or succeeded as raping human women. Men too, sometimes. Their animalistic drive to mate wasn't so fussy as the heteronormativity humankind tended toward.

Hermione knew too that when she and Harry had tricked Umbridge into entering the forest at the end of last year, the woman had been carried off and brutally raped within an inch of her life by the centaur herd inhabiting this very forest. While Hermione had felt the woman was positively wretched, she didn't think she'd deserved such a harsh conclusion to her teaching career…. Well, not entirely. Part of her was disgustingly gleeful that such a horrible, cruel, unsympathetic and utterly vile woman had gotten her comeuppance.

A sly smile slipped across the centaur's face when rather than transforming like he'd clearly hoped, she growled at him, baring her fangs menacingly to warn him away from such bestial notions.

"I see you are a smart one, then," he smirked at her, "I remember you, you know? You were one of the foals who led that wretched Ministry woman in here not so very long ago to meet an untimely demise. And you came back again, similarly unprotected last month. I'd have had you then, but your lupine friend interrupted me."

Hermione growled at him again. She eyed him carefully, wondering if she would be able to transform quickly enough to escape him should he grab her if she returned to human in order to question him. She supposed she could and even if she couldn't, she had her wand. She could disapparate away from him or she could hex him until he released her.

"Make no mistake, little witch, I will capture you," he warned her, "You would do well not to return to this forest so unprotected in future. It's written in the stars that you will meet a carnal demise within these trees."

Hermione bared her teeth at the centaur again. She didn't doubt that what he was saying about the stars foretelling her doom might be true. She just doubted that her 'carnal demise', as he'd called it, would be at the hands of a centaur.

Transforming back to human, Hermione stood to her full height and glared at the sly centaur.

"Foolish mistake, little witch," he smirked at her, taking several steps in her direction, if hooves kicking up the faintest puffs of dust from the forest floor as he moved.

"You mustn't be very adept at reading at the stars," Hermione told the centaur, holding her ground, her wand clutched in her fist tightly.

The centaur stopped, clearly surprised by her words and by her actions.

"And why might that be?" he wanted to know, raising his eyebrows at her condescendingly.

"In your first breath you stated that my lycanthropic friend interrupted you last month," Hermione shrugged her shoulders delicately, "And then you tell me my carnal demise will occur in these woods. You figure it out."

The centaur eyed her scrutinisingly.

"The stars hold many secrets," he said after many long minutes of contemplating her carefully, "The mistake you make is in believing that you have all the answers when you put so little faith in the stars and arts like Divination at all."

"You know of me then?" Hermione asked, raising one eyebrow, "I hadn't realised my disapproval of Divination as a subject whilst up at the school was of any interest to the centaurs."

"You are of much interest to the centaurs," he countered, taking slow measured steps in her direction as he spoke, "To some of us, in any case."

"To you, in particular," Hermione replied, fixing him a sly glance of her own, "However I'm sure I know of someone who might not take very kindly to your intentions towards me."

"Indeed?" he asked, his eyebrows rising once more.

Still clutching her wand in one hand, Hermione reached up with the other and pulled aside the neck of her shirt to reveal the bite mark scarred into her flesh where her mate had bitten her, claiming her with his bite as the wolf. As soon as he did so whilst also as the man - according to Remus – she would be irrefutably tied to him for the rest of her days.

The centaur stepped even closer, his brow furrowing as he came so close Hermione could pick up the equine scent of his flesh. He had to bend forwards to see the scar through the dark as his height was far superior to her own. He lifted one hand towards the scar that stood out bright red against her pale flesh, his fingers almost brushing the skin before he suddenly recoiled.

"You are fated to the wolf?" he asked, his brow furrowing deeply as he reared back from her.

"I am," Hermione replied evenly, "As I said, perhaps you are not quite so adept at reading the stars as you might like to be."

He nodded his head slowly, looking thoughtful, his eyes lingering a long time on her scar until Hermione covered it with her shirt once more.

"You used the herd for your own ends when you brought that Ministry woman into the forest," he accused.

"I was protecting my friends from her vile methods of persuasion and her illegal activities up at the castle," Hermione retorted unrepentantly, "That your herd happened along when they did, and that she foolishly thought to challenge Bane whilst offering all of you insult was her own mistake. One she paid for dearly. I do not regret her fate."

"No, you do not," he murmured, his eyes searching her expression carefully as though looking for some hint of regret or remorse over Umbridge's fate. One he didn't find. "What is your name, little witch."

"Hermione Granger," she supplied, "And you are?"

"Ronan," he answered, "I was the one who argued the release of you and Harry Potter when the herd carried the wicked witch off."

"I seem to recall your argument that we were just foals and did not deserve to meet her fate," Hermione replied, remembering the name Ronan with sudden clarity.

"You remember me then," he smirked wickedly, "But you are no longer just a foal. You weren't really a foal then either, were you? You are grown. You have reached the age and maturity where you could birth foals of your own."

"I am grown and I am claimed," Hermione replied, "I hardly think the centaurs would welcome a feud with a werewolf."

"That remains to be seen," he replied, straightening once more so that he was no longer peering into her face, "I find it most intriguing that unlike many human females, you are not at all captivated by the beauty of centaurs, nor afraid of me, despite my obvious intentions towards you."

Hermione bit her lip on the large insult it would be to state that she had never been much interested in horses. That would be considered a great offence to a centaur.

"I am… not easily beguiled," Hermione offered diplomatically.

He smirked at her words, seeming to realise she was trying to avoid insulting him.

"Your wolf is not here, you know?" he told her, straightening, "There has been no werewolf in this forest all month."

Hermione sighed, suspecting as much. She nodded her head as supposed she might as well head back to Headquarters before she was missed. There was little point hanging about for her werewolf to turn up if he wasn't already in the forest. He wouldn't be able to apparate whilst transformed with his curse. Meaning that if he wasn't already there, he wasn't going to be there at all.

She felt mildly alarmed that the notion saddened her. She hadn't realised she'd been looking forward to seeing the large white wolf again. In fact, Hermione had managed to convince herself that she'd been rather dreading it. To learn of her own disappointment with unsettling indeed.

She was still nodding and trying to get her thoughts in order so that she could apparate when Ronan interrupted her.

"There were a pack running beyond the forest earlier this evening. Forty or fifty strong. Werewolves, all," Ronan informed her as he continued to regard her and seemed to pick up on her disappointment, "I wonder if you know which among them your mate is."

Hermione narrowed her eyes on him.

"Which way? Whereabouts beyond the forest did you see them?" she asked, hope flaring in her chest that she might not have snuck out of Girmmauld Place for nothing after all.

"You can become a wolf too, Hermione Granger," he told her, clearly not at all intent on helping her any more than he already had. "Figure it out."

Hermione felt the strangest urge to laugh when he threw her words back in her face after what she'd said to him earlier. Clearly he had a sense of human along with his less than honourable intentions. She wondered what to make of the fact that he'd rather baldly implied his intent to cart her off and brutally rape her, and she hadn't been particularly alarmed. She was concerned, of course, that such a character dwelt within the castle so near the school when any student might wander in and be caught by him or his herd-mates.

However, Hermione herself didn't feel overly alarmed by the notion of another creature intending to rape her. Not when she'd been spending a good deal of time mentally preparing for such an ordeal at the hands of a currently-unknown werewolf.

Transforming herself once more, Hermione re-took lupine form and tipped her head back to howl into the night, trying to signal the pack, trying to reach the ears of the wolf that the Fates had determined she belonged with. The sound echoed through the forest, bouncing off the trees and once again silencing the other creatures within the darkness. She waited once more for some hint of sound in return to her call.

"Hermione Granger?" Ronan called when she began trotting away into the darkness, hoping to hear a returning howl.

She stopped only long enough to glance over her shoulder at the centaur.

"Don't return to this forest alone again," he warned her quietly, "You will not be so safe, next time."

With that said he turned and melted away through the trees. Hermione paused as she absorbed his dire warning, taking particular note of his grim tone and his slightly worried expression. She shook herself when goose-pimple raced over her skin, causing her fur to stand on end and making her look twice as large as she actually was.

Before she could focus on it any further, there was suddenly – finally – an answering howl renting the cold night air.

Her mate had heard her.

Hermione yipped with uncharacteristic excitement and nervousness even as she set off in the direction the howl had come from, howling again in return.

~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~

Fenrir Greyback felt the ripple of surprise that rolled through him when another wolf joined the swarm his pack had made upon the plains beyond the forest, slaughtering livestock, hunting for more exciting prey. It wasn't entirely unheard of that such a large pack would draw other werewolves within the nearby vicinity to their pack. Wolves were pack-animals by nature. Pack mentality ran strong within them on wolf-moon nights.

Through the haze of red that blurred his vision and the driving, wild urge he felt to run; to rip; to tear; to kill; to feast; Fenrir narrowed his eyes on the new arrival. They were near enough to the forest that it wasn't entirely impossible the near-human-intelligence offspring of his own might have heard him. They had dwelt in the forest, raised by him when he wasn't with the pack, and they often liked to join in the hunt with him. However, they were already among the pack as they hunted.

The newcomer was a wolf he hadn't turned, and certainly wasn't a full werewolf. They were also female.

Fenrir felt the familiar stirring that always came upon him in the presence of a ripe female, but he pushed it aside. She was much too small to be a werewolf. In fact, she might've passed for a regular wolf, had they not been hunted to extinction within Britain. There was just one problem with her presence there, since he wouldn't have cared either way if real wolves joined them.

She was female, and it was incredibly rare for human females to survive the bite and become lycanthropes in the first place. So if she wasn't werewolf, and she wasn't a regular wolf, she had to be an animagus. Fenrir licked his chops at the very idea. She might look wolf now, but inside she was all human. That in itself was rare. He'd never needed to attempt animagi himself, but he knew it was a particularly difficult branch of magic and that few attempted it successfully. Even fewer took wolf form when they transformed.

It was a trait particular to the female mate of male werewolves. Which mean that little female was someone's mate. Someone within the pack too. Fenrir padded closer to her as she searched through the pack, looking for a wolf in particular. It seemed that whoever her mate was, she knew to recognise him in lupine form. He narrowed his eyes on that idea. He'd only turned one wolf before last month's full moon.

The Malfoy pup.

Even as a wolf the pup's hair gleamed white in the moonlight, marking him out from the rest of the pack who were all mottled shades of grey, black and russet. When the little grey female spotted the Malfoy pup where he was snarling and fighting with some of the others, she wagged her tail slightly and took a step towards him before hesitating.

Through the haze of the change, Fenrir could tell the little female had worked out what the werewolf was to her. She had obviously realised that he was her mate. And they'd met before. Yet she hesitated. Could it be she'd encountered him in wolf form in the forest when the little runt had scampered off on his own last full moon while he was supposed to be participating in a slaughter?

Fenrir padded closer and close, unnoticed by the little she-wolf until he stood right behind her.

She smelled fucking delicious. Wolfsbane, and honey vanilla lingered in the scent of her fur. She also reeked of the Malfoy pup and Fenrir spotted a faint disturbance in the fur in her shoulder. Had the little bastard already marked his bitch? Did the little fucker even know about the Mate Principle?

Fenrir assumed based on the fact that he'd yet to notice his mate in their midst and based on what a smug, pompous bastard the kid usually was, that he had no clue. His wolf had recognised her on instinct and acted to leaving his claiming mark upon his property. Padding around the little female, Fenrir noted that she'd definitely been bitten by the Malfoy pup. His lupine scent had combined with hers, forever altering her body.

Whoever she was, she seemed to understand what she was doing there in their midst while the kid had no idea.

Fenrir stepped even closer, nosing at the fur on her shoulder over the scarred mark the pup had left upon her, needing to confirm his suspicions. She jumped in surprise and spun on him with her fangs bared, her lip curling away from her teeth as she growled and lowered herself into a defensive crouch, her fur raising menacing.

He narrowed his eyes on the little bitch, intent on putting her in her place for thinking to challenge him as alpha but before he had even curled his own lip at her in return her eyes widened at him in horror and her head dropped into a submissive pose. She stopped growling and she lowered herself until she was practically lying at his feet, she tried so hard to make it clear she had been startled and not that she'd wanted to fight him.

So the little bitch even understood lupine forms of communication, did she?

That was interesting. In addition to the inherent smell in her blood from the Malfoy pup's claim on her, the scent of werewolf hung about her. She'd obviously brushed against some of the pack in the run, but there was another smell as well. One he hadn't picked up on in a long while.

Lupin.

She smelled like Remus Lupin. The prodigal son of the pack. The one who defied him and refused to fall in rank. His scent lingered on her faintly as though she'd spent some time in his company recently. That was very interesting. Lowering his nose towards the bitch where she'd stretched out so low, trying to show her submission, Fenrir sniffed at her muzzle before snorting at her. He didn't recognise her scent this time, but he would know it for the future. He got the feeling the little bitch wanted to work out who her mate was when he was in human form. Meaning she'd need to hang around all night until the dawn when they all transformed back.

Clever little bitch, all she had to do was watch and wait and she'd see who the man was behind the beast. The Malfoy pup would be none the wiser and she'd be able to dash off into the forest, transform once more and return to wherever it was that she'd come from. curling his lip at her ever so faintly to warn her against the urge to ever turn on him as she'd just done, even if she'd done so by accident, Fenrir enjoyed the way she trembled and whined slightly, trying to earn his forgiveness. That was interesting in itself. If she was fated to the Malfoy pup, she would be around his age. Had to be clever to have figured out animagi and to have read up on how she ought to act whilst in her beast form.

Maybe the little bitch could lead him back to Lupin to. That bastard needed to fall into line. He might be buying them all a decent standing among certain types of wizards, but that wasn't Fenrir's goal. He didn't want wizards to accept them and treat them normal. He wanted to kill the fuckers and he wanted to turn them all until only the strong, only those capable of being werewolves, survived.

When he stepped back slightly the bitch tipped her eyes up to meet his. Those had shifted to the yellow of a wolf and she really did look very much like she was a real wolf. A particularly thick-furred one. Narrowing her eyes on her, Fenrir flicked his tail, silently indicating she should re-take her feet. She did so hesitantly, half-rising from the ground but still keep her body low and submissive. He watched as she crawled closer to him and a feral grin slipped across his jaws as he realised she meant to play full wolf with him. When she was in reach, she stretched up and licked the side of his muzzle the way any pack-mate would to show affection for and submission to their alpha. The bitch knew how to play the game. The idea amused him no end.

He was thinking he might just have to play with this one. It was much too rare for a werewolf - even one as uppity, bitter and fucking shitty as the Malfoy pup - to find their mate. She might be playing the submission game with him, but he reckoned that as curious as she was about her mate, she would panic when she found out who Malfoy was. If she was running with Lupin in any capacity she was probably part of the Order of the Phoenix, and Order members didn't associate with Death Eaters like that little bastard. Fenrir allowed her to continue trying to earn his forgiveness with her licks, smirking to himself over how pissed the pup would be to see his mate licking his alpha at all. He would have to drive her off before the change returned. Or distract her until she lost sight of the pup in the agony and screams of the morning when the sun rose after the full moon.

This one, whoever she was, she wasn't going to take it lightly to be mated to the Malfoy pup. In fact, she might even be driven to kill the pup before he could mark her as the man as well as the wolf, laying full claim to her. Until he did that and until he fucked her good, she could still fuck around and conceive with other males. If she knocked the pup off before he completed the bond, she'd be free of having a Death Eater and werewolf for her mate and could go on with her life as though she'd never had a mate in the first place.

That wasn't going to fly. Not when the children conceived of mate bonds made stronger, more vicious werewolves when they were turned. They were born prepped and ready for the lupine traits that came from werewolf spit, come and blood of an infected's spawn. And he needed those pups, even if they would be Malfoy's.

Finally accepting her submission, Fenrir nodded her in the direction of the pure-white wolf he didn't doubt she'd come seeking. She turned on the spot, looking in that direction and she practically lit up when she laid eyes on the wolf. Scuffling with some of the others, growling and snarling, the kid was as pissed off as they came thanks to being a werewolf at all.

Fenrir watched as she padded towards the Malfoy kid. She yipped softly to get his attention and the little shit looked over, fangs still bared, fur still bristling. And hell if all the fight didn't go right out of him at the sight of the little female. His eyes widened and he yipped in return starting towards her. At the sign of welcome, the little she-wolf bounded towards him, moving to meet him halfway. She had to go three-quarters when Malfoy stopped just as suddenly, his eyes lifting to meet Fenrir's and a worried expression crossing his lupine features.

Looking on from behind the bitch, Fenrir let the pup know with a single look that he knew just what the she-wolf was to him and that he was going to use it as leverage to keep the pup in line if he tried any sort of shit, rebelling against his leadership or fighting against his plans to infect the entire magical race with lycanthropy. The pup's eyes went wide and his concern grew to such a height that Fenrir knew he'd receive the message loud and clear. He could smell the concoction of anxiety, anger and fear rolling off the wolf in waves. Before he could do anything to express any of those emotions, the little female ran right up to him and licked the side of his muzzle, burrowing her head beneath Malfoy's chin and pressing herself against his chest.

Malfoy held his gaze challengingly even as he dropped at affectionate lick to the top of the little animagus's head and were he human, Fenrir Greyback would have laughed.