A/N: Thank you all so much for your reviews, favorites and follows! I am so glad that so many of you are enjoying this, as I know AUs aren't always the most popular kind of story, so the fact that y'all are giving this a chance is wonderful. You can follow me on tumblr (nauticalparamour) where I post story updates, sneak peeks, and answer questions. Huge shout out to Hollowg1rl for alpha/beta reading this 3
Please let me know what you thought of chapter four and be on the lookout for chapter five soon!
It was two hours before Fenrir's guests left the bar, Rabastan making a rude gesture towards her on the way out, before the man called Tom was hitting him on the back of the head, a snarl on his handsome face. Hermione briefly wondered if he actually thought that it might work and make her want to be with him, or if he was just trying to make her uncomfortable.
She watched with thinly veiled disgust as Fenrir walked them to the door, shutting it behind them, and turning the open sign off. It was nearing bar time, anyway. Hermione could hear the rumble of their motorcycle engines revving, drowning out the sound of the lonely jukebox. She watched in fascination as Fenrir slammed his fist against the steel door, as though he were annoyed.
They were the only two people in the bar when he crossed the floor, slumping into the stool across from her. Fenrir ran his hands through his long, dark hair, pushing it out of his face. "Whiskey, please." He demanded, though his voice was almost meek.
Hermione could feel her nostrils flare in annoyance, but she couldn't deny that it was nice that he'd said please. It was a start at least. "Really?" She asked, though she'd already pulled him a glass and uncorked the bottle that he prefered, pouring him three fingers of the amber liquid. "I was kind of hoping that I could leave. The bar is closed after all."
"You don't want to sit here and shoot the breeze with me?" Fenrir asked, drinking half of the glass in one go.
"Remus said that I didn't have to serve you. That he would take care of you when you came in." Hermione said, not really wanting to talk to him when he had brought those awful people into the bar. If she ever needed proof that he was into questionable activities that had been that.
"Well, Remus isn't here right now." Fenrir said, staring down at the bar. "Come on, just distract me for a little while, and then you can go home. Why don't you get yourself a drink, Peach?"
Hermione looked at him, not sure what he was playing at. Was he just trying to get her in trouble with Remus, or did he know that she occasionally indulged? "No thank you. You want to talk? Fine. How about you tell me why you always call me Peach instead of my name?"
Fenrir did not hide his smirk at that, cautiously looking at her face. "I don't think you want to know." He said, but seeing that stubborn little look on her face, and arms crossed over her chest, he knew that she wasn't going to leave it. "It's because your ass reminds me of a juicy peach, especially when you wear those little shorts, and you can see just a bit of cheek."
She made a noise of disgust, and threw her hands up in the air. "You are a pig." She said, before grabbing the bottle of tequila and pouring herself a draw. She was done caring what Fenrir Greyback thought of her or her habits. "Speaking of my ass, I thought that I was under your protection. What the fuck was that in there then, letting that guy fondle me like that?" She practically snarled at him.
Fenrir finished the rest of his drink, before reaching across the bar to grab the bottle, pouring another drink for himself. "Well, Peach." He said, his mouth caressing each letter in the word, making Hermione's tummy go a bit twisty. "Those are the kind of people that you don't want to piss off."
He pressed his hand to his face, rubbing his thumb and forefingers across his forehead. His mind was still swimming with the request...no demand that Tom Riddle had made. Riddle and his gang - the Death Eaters - were well known in the southwest, and they weren't the kind of people to take lightly. If they wanted you to do something, you should damn well do it. Fenrir's business mostly revolved around smuggling cocaine up across the border from Mexico, after which they would cut it several times, before selling to to lower level dealers. Riddle was...well, they had their hands in everything - but they specialized in heroin and crystal meth. Their tactics were brutal, if you didn't do what Riddle wanted, you were liable to end up dead on a lonely stretch of road.
So needless to say, he wasn't exactly enthused by the idea of helping Riddle to smuggle some of that heroin over the border too. Riddle explained that his contact had recently become unreliable and it would only be temporary, but Fenrir knew it would spiral out of control. Once he went into business with them, there was no getting out.
And he didn't want to get in with them in the first place. They were into some Aryan brotherhood shit, and being that he didn't know who his daddy was, but it was clear he would never be described Aryan. Those kind of ideals were something that he couldn't abide by.
When he looked back up at Hermione, she was obvious getting more and more annoyed with something, and from the look in her brown eyes, she was going to blurt out whatever was on her mind before she could help herself. "I can't believe that you just let them do cocaine in the bar!"
He couldn't help himself. His laughter was rich and throaty and it filled the whole bar, and once he stopped he could tell that she was very clearly annoyed with him. "Peach, who do you think gave him the cocaine?"
Her little self-righteous gasp was kind of cute. God, where on Earth that Remus found someone so naive? And this was the girl who had been living with Sirius for the past year? It almost felt wrong, to corrupt someone like her at a bar like this. "You gave them cocaine?"
"Yeah, I am a drug runner...that's kind of what I do. Besides, they were guests, and you want to make sure they feel at home." Fenrir said, with a roll of his eyes. Of course, they weren't invited guests, but it was clear that the meeting was going to happen one way or the other.
She nibbled on her lower lip, as though she were thinking on a question and not sure if she should ask it or not. Though, knowing Hermione, of course she was going to ask it - she was too curious not to. He wondered briefly if she had any idea how seductive he found that little move, though he was certain she didn't. It was no secret that Hermione did not approve of him at all, and so there was no way that she was doing anything for his benefit, to gain more attention from him.
"Do...do you do cocaine?" She asked, her voice stuttering a little over the words, as though she were committing some kind of faux pax asking him that.
He chuckled again. "I have been known to indulge on occasion." He said, giving her a wide, toothy grin. "I never do it while I am discussing business though." She made a little noise of disgust, low in the back of her throat, completely involuntary. "Maybe you should try it. Might help you stay up so you can get through school and the long nights here." It was mostly a joke, but he couldn't resist it.
Hermione threw her hands up in the air. "I don't even know why Remus would allow you or your illegal little motorcycle...outlaw...gang! Into his bar in the first place. Have you been intimidating him or something?"
He wanted to roll his eyes at her words, but he knew that she clearly had a much rosier picture of Remus than he did. Of course, the way that Remus acted - kind and bumbling and awkward - it would be easy to not know about his more devious past. "Let's get something clear - Remus isn't some innocent barkeep who got intimidated into opening his doors to us. He invited us."
"Why would he ever do that?" Hermione asked. "Aside from the money of course...I suppose I could see how that could be worth his while."
"You don't even know, Remus, do you?" Fenrir asked, his voice low and the dangerous edge slipping back into it. "Did you know he was a member of the Iron Wolves? That he rode with me for years?"
Hermione looked at him, her brown eyes reading his face shrewdly. As though she was trying to figure out if he was lying about it. "No, I didn't." She said finally, her eyebrows knitting together in confusion. He supposed that if Sirius being arrested had been a surprise for her, hearing that Remus Lupin was previously in an outlaw motorcycle gang might be something that finally broke her.
"Didn't you ever wonder how he got those scars on his face?" Fenrir prodded further, wondering just what she knew. How could you not be a little bit curious if you saw someone with three massive scars stretching across your face - looking as though you'd been mauled by a bear or a wolf? Of course, he figured that Hermione was so perfect she would look past skin deep. Fenrir couldn't resist rolling his eyes.
"Of course I have." Hermione hissed. "But, it's obvious that he is self-conscious about them and so, I didn't want to pry. I don't see how it's any of my business anyway." She rubbed her hands up and down her arms, and Fenrir wondered if she was cold or just nervous. Unbidden, his mind supplied an imagine of Hermione in the outfit that Rodolphus had suggested. She would definitely be cold in that. Not that he would ever suggest she would wear it. Bellatrix was right, she was cute, but...he kind of liked it.
He wasn't sure why he needed to tell her about Remus's previous misdeeds, but he wanted to. Maybe it was because he wanted her to see that he wasn't so bad when compared to a man that she obviously admired quite a bit. "Back when Remus was still fully in the Iron Wolves, we were expanding territory." He started the story, keeping his voice low, and enjoying the way that she leaned forward so that she could hear better. Obviously, she was intrigued. "We got into it with a coyotaje - you know people smugglers?"
Hermione rolled her eyes at him. "Of course I know what a Coyote is, Fenrir. I've lived in Arizona for over a year now."
"Well, they got a hold of old Remus one night after he'd been out drinking in a little town near Nogales. They wanted to send a message to us, and they held him down, and cut up his face." Fenrir said, sliding his finger from cheek to cheek over his nose.
Hermione looked horrified at his words, but also, slightly curious. "What happened?" She asked, clearly with baited breath.
Fenrir leaned back into his chair. "They left him outside, tied to his motorcycle. The bar owner didn't find him until the next afternoon, and by that point he was delirious from the blood loss and the heat, and he was sun burnt to a crisp. Took a few weeks in the hospital before he could leave, and then he told me that he wanted out of the Wolves. Couldn't do it anymore."
She looked as though she might cry for Remus, as his injuries were so shocking. It was kind of funny, he was almost completely desensitized to that kind of violence - God knows, he'd done worse to many men - but it was odd to try and see it from her eyes. Here she was, barely eighteen, and just trying to scrape it by, when she should be off on some kind of homecoming committee. It was time that she woke up to the kinds of shit that went down in a place like this if she was going to keep working at the bar.
"And so you just let him leave?" Hermione asked, her mind filled with rumors that once you joined an outlaw motorcycle gang, you could never leave it.
Fenrir finished the rest of his drink, his mind already going a bit fuzzy with all the whiskey he'd had that night. "Of course I did. Well he's still affiliated of course, he just doesn't...do any of the work for us any more." He watched Hermione and noticed the dark circles that were peeking underneath her eyes. It was getting rather late, and he supposed it was time to leave. "Come on, Peach. It's past your bedtime."
He stood, and helped her shut the lights off in the bar, waiting for her to lock the door behind her once they stepped out into the cool air. She bid him a terse goodnight, and though he could tell that she still didn't like him, he could sense that she was warming up to him a bit. He waited until she got into her car - a beat up, red pickup truck - and turned out onto the highway before he got on his motorcycle.