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Chapter Six

Hermione shook her head, her eyes wide with disbelief as she turned the crumpled pages over in her hands and started from the first word for what had to be the tenth time. The journal she'd found—the one from which the smoothed-out papers had obviously been torn—was open beside her reading, she could plainly see the seamless transition of days from before the missing portion, to the missing portion's content, and then onto the rest of the journal after the tearing-out. Somehow, though, she seemed to be reserving judgement on how true she found the evidence that she had before her very eyes, that she was literally holding in her own hands.

Knowing that Ron and Harry would likely be trying to find her, she'd sent a semi-cryptic message about following a lead she didn't want to say too much about unless it turned up something via Floo, and then brought the werewolves to the one place she was relatively sure her friends would not think to look. Not when they'd never be able to connect the location to a search for Remus.

The currently-empty home of her Muggle parents. Of course, she hadn't very much relished the idea of having Fenrir Greyback under the same roof as her bed and undergarments, but she trusted Remus, and he had some strange trust in the elder wolf that she knew she'd never forgive herself for dismissing.

As she combed through Lyall's very distinctive handwriting again and again, she lost all awareness of her surroundings. Completely closed off to the presence of the two males sitting not far from her around the coffee table—Remus at the other end of the sofa, leaving the middle cushion empty between them so she would not feel crowded, and Fenrir, stretched out and lounging in the high-backed armchair on her other side—she muttered under her breath, and sometimes not so much under her breath, about how implausible she wanted to find the information before her.

Fenrir looked up from cleaning his nails with the pretty, gold-toned letter opener he'd snatched off the nearest bookshelf to catch Remus' attention over the top of the witch's head. He sucked his teeth and nodded. "You know, the first, oh, say, five times, I understood her reservations. But now it's just getting insulting."

Remus scowled and made a shushing gesture.

Hermione slapped down the wrinkled pages and buried her face in her hands. Groaning behind clenched teeth, she then collected herself . . . . Or seemed to. Bouncing up to stand, she took a few steps, rounding the coffee table before halting.

She did not appear at all cognizant that she'd come to a stop almost directly in front of Fenrir.

"I can't . . . ." Swallowing hard, she shook her head, her voice a bit numb and lifeless. "I read it. It's his handwriting, I can feel its authenticity, but . . . . Knowing so much of what we thought was a lie." Somehow, this felt distinctly like a gut punch.

Fenrir noted her scattered state. Pursing his lips in thought, he set aside the letter opener and shifted in his seat. Remus looked at a loss for what to say—he hadn't truly allowed himself to grasp his father's lies, either, it seemed. Returning his attention to the potential she-wolf in front of him, he decided to use her current disorientation to his advantage . . . just to see if her change in demeanor toward Remus since his coming back from the dead might extend to him, too, now that she knew the terrible things she'd thought about him were no more than propaganda.

Reaching out one hand, he laced his fingers through hers and pulled her down to sit on his knees. Still in a fog, she merely turned her head to meet his gaze, those chestnut eyes of hers impossibly wide as she tried to come to terms with her new understanding of him. Remus, on the other hand, shot up from his place at the far end of the sofa, his features pulling into an expression of anger.

Holding up his free hand, Fenrir made a placating gesture and then patted the cushion nearest him, though he never took his eyes from those of the witch seated on his lap. His movements reluctant, Remus complied, though it seemed more out of not wanting to startle Hermione than doing something Fenrir suggested.

"At . . . at Malfoy Manor, the way you talked about me, the things you said to me . . . ."

"Let's get some things clear, pretty thing. I wanted you and was acting on impulse." He shrugged, going on before she had the chance to interrupt. "But if I hadn't made it sound like I wanted the things I'd do to you to be terrible, there was going to be no chance of Bellatrix handing you over to me. She'd've killed you as sure as we're all sitting here."

Hermione didn't know what was worse, that his confession seemed to lift a weight from her, or that for the weight it lifted from her, it put a strange heaviness in her heart. It certainly helped to banish the guilt she'd been feeling for those steamy dreams of him, but then . . . there was this new closeness she felt with Remus that she wasn't sure could balance with the rush of emotions that her new knowledge about Fenrir was bringing with it.

Furrowing her brow, she shook her head. "You were trying to save me."

Bracing one elbow on the armrest, he stroked his beard. As he answered, he circled the arm of the hand that still held hers around her hips. "To be fair, I'd probably have still bitten you, but yeah."

Her entire frame seemed to slump. "I'm sure I'd have been grateful for the rescue, not so sure I'd be grateful enough to let you turn me into a werewolf."

"Might be a moot point, that."

She titled her head, as though she'd not quite understood the words he'd spoken. "What?"

Looking past her, he nodded at Remus. "I's all you, Pup."

Hermione didn't know if she thought it was strange or not that she felt no drive to remove herself from Fenrir's lap. Instead, she dropped her heels to the floor and stepped around until she was facing the other werewolf.

"Remus?"

He met Fenrir's gaze with a stern look before sighing and locking his eyes on Hermione's. "You asked earlier about my eyes, about the change in them. Why . . . why they look like his, now."

She nodded, repressing an urge to glance at Fenrir. And God, why was she still perched on his knees as though it were the most normal thing in the world?

"It has to do with how I died." Forcing a gulp down his throat—and painfully aware that one of her hands was occupied by one of Fenrir's—he took her free hand between both of his. "Something in Dolohov's Curse isn't designed to take werewolf physiology into account. It is intended to strike dead any witch or wizard—that's to say any human—who catches the full force of it as I did; to burn them from the inside out without leaving a mark behind."

"But . . . his Curse struck me, too. Full force. I . . . ." She shifted uncomfortably, suddenly aware of the slash of pale-purple fire that marked her skin after she'd fully healed from Dolohov's attack in the Department of Mysteries. "I actually have a scar from it."

"You do?"

Again, she nodded.

His curious gaze trailed over her before he gave himself a shake. They could not sidetrack right now, or he might never get to tell her what she needed to know. "Well, we'll get to that, and to . . . to you. Um, Greyback and I got into a lengthy discussion—"

"And a lengthy other thing," Fenrir quipped in an amused whisper.

At the way Remus' eyes widened and a hint of red bloomed in his fair cheeks, Hermione couldn't help but look from one werewolf to the other and back before she asked, "What does that mean?"

"It's rather a private matter, I should think," Remus said, his teeth clenched.

Fenrir bit back a feral grin. "Was just referring to teaching the pup a few things he didn't know about being a werewolf, is all."

Deciding she wasn't sure she wanted to know what their private meaning was, she drew a breath and collected herself. "Anyway, back on topic, please?"

Clearing his throat, Remus nodded. She could diffuse him with a few words and the continued press of her hand between both of his. Just another sign that Fenrir's prediction about his connection to her wasn't that far off, after all. "Right."

Sighing, he managed a shake of his head. "Understand, I had just found my father's journals. He'd hidden them away in our old home, I don't think he ever expected anyone to come across them, otherwise he'd never have recorded the true events of that night. I was . . . I was so angry, I took the pages and decided if I survived, I was going to confront Fenrir and get the truth. But then—"

"But then Dolohov."

"Right. But then Dolohov." Remus shrugged. "I'm not even sure I knew I'd fallen at first. I just came to in the dark, in a rage. My lycanthropy seemed, for lack of a better term, to come screaming to the foreground when I fell. It is the thing that brought me back. Nothing seemed to matter, but that the War was over, and I needed my answers. I'm ashamed to admit it, but seeing Tonks there, I . . . it hurt like hell, but it was the easiest part of the whole thing to accept. I think, somehow, when she came to join me on the battlefield, I knew it would the last time I'd see her."

Hermione closed her eyes against a wash of tears. Tonks. She knew he'd loved Tonks, in fact, so did she in her own way. So why wasn't her passing, so recent and so raw, more of a factor? Why wasn't it keeping them from holding hands like this? Why hadn't it kept them from so closely near-kissing earlier?

As though he read it from her thoughts, he nodded, his own eyes suspiciously bright. "My lycanthropy saved me from Dolohov's otherwise lethal attack spell. And in talking to Greyback about that, it brought us to you."

"To me?" She shook her head, once more looking from him to Fenrir, and back. "But why? I . . . I survived it, too, so what? You can't possibly be saying that I'm a . . . that I could be a werewolf."

"You misunderstand." Remus shook his head, struck with an odd need, he lifted her hand to brush his lips across the backs of her knuckles. "It's not simply that you survived. It's that you are the only other person to have survived besides me. I didn't make the connection until we came to talking about that full moon when I nearly attacked Harry; when you—"

"When I howled," she finished for him, her tone hollow as she shook her head. Already her mind was jumping to connect the dots, even if the rest of her psyche was otherwise disconnected from the moment at hand. "It shouldn't have worked. You had the hearing of a wolf, you should've been able to detect that it wasn't another werewolf making that sound."

His shoulders drooped and his expression crumbled, those newly amber eyes of his glimmering as he nodded. "Precisely."

She slumped back against Fenrir's solid frame behind her, again acting as though it was the most natural thing in the world to be using the burly, towering werewolf as a chair. "So what's this mean? I'm a werewolf, but not? I don't understand."

"We think," Fenrir ventured, his voice rumbling in his chest—and secretly delighted at the way the feel of it caused her to shiver against him, though she didn't pull away, "a recent ancestor of yours must've been one of us. And . . . the Pup has surmised that physical traumas you've suffered have caused the wolf's blood in your veins to overreact to protect you. That it's possible that, much like his new ferocious side, it's part of some—what'd you call it?"

"Defense mechanism," Remus supplied, his worried gaze on Hermione's face.

"Right, that. The same defense mechanism that caused the wolf in him to surge stronger and drag his scraggly arse back from the dead is what pulled you through the same curse taking your life. There's a chance every trauma you've suffered since setting foot in the Wizarding world has made whatever werewolf blood you've inherited stronger. Toss in what the War put you through, and, well . . . ." The dark-haired werewolf trailed off with a shrug.

"You think I could actually turn into one of you without being bitten?"

They both nodded.

"If that . . . ." Her brow furrowing, she swallowed hard and shook her head. "If that's possible, then the process has been underway for . . . God. There's no way to stop it, is there?"

"No. We still don't know that it will happen, but we need to err on the side of caution, here." Remus shook his head. "We need to all be somewhere secure when the full moon comes."

"And it's only night after next," she said in a whisper that was barely a thread of sound, the breath escaping her lungs in a whoosh.

"Right. Seems like all the time in the world, and like nothing at all, all at once, doesn't it?" Fenrir said, heaving a sigh.

Her head was swimming with everything she'd learned. She might be turning into a werewolf, Lyall Lupin was the villain of Remus' childhood, not Fenrir Greyback . . . . The Ministry of old had bought his lies without investigation to support their persecution of werewolves. So much she had to do. So much to set right . . . .

Though she doubted even Kingsley would believe the proof of Lyall's own words without examining the matter from every possible angle. But she knew. In her heart, in her gut, she knew it was all true. She had to get a message to Harry and Ron to let them know Remus was alive and well, and they were both safe.

Yet, just now she couldn't seem to think about anything but the coming full moon. About what it might feel like to shift, if that was what her future had in store.

About where on earth she could find to safely contain the three of them separately from each other in case she didn't shift and needed to be protected from them. But even if she didn't shift, the evidence still supported that she had wolf's blood in her veins.

Seeming unnoticing of their hands still clasping hers, Hermione curled her arms against her chest. Only when she dropped her face down against the backs of her hands did she realize. She was practically cuddled in Fenrir Greyback's lap. She'd just pulled his and Remus' arms up, inadvertently pressing them tight to the soft weight of her breasts. She knew they could feel the warmth of her breath against their skin now that she held their hands so very close to her face.

The awareness altered the entire mood of the situation. In the space of a heartbeat, two memories thrummed through her mind. That sweet ache that coursed low in her body whenever she had one of those dreams of Fenrir, and the way her skin had warmed and her pulse had quickened, beating hard beneath her skin as Remus' lips had brushed over hers when they'd stood back in his flat just earlier that afternoon.

She could feel the way Fenrir's chest rumbled against her back as he uttered a low, soft growling sound. Lifting her head slow, she saw Remus' golden-amber eyes locked on hers, his fair cheeks flushed and his lips parted with short, ragged breaths.

Hermione turned, the movement careful and paced, to look at Fenrir. The elder werewolf's attention was on the vulnerable spot of her throat, just below her ear as he sank his teeth into his lower lip. The hazy look in his eyes and dazed expression on his face kicked up that sweet, pulsing ache between her thighs.

Strangely aware of the rise and fall of her own chest with her breathing, she turned back to face Remus. A sound that was more animal than human tore out of her as his mouth crashed down over hers and she felt the light, sweet-edged pain of Fenrir grazing his teeth over that soft spot below her ear.

Her eyes drifting closed, she told herself this couldn't happen. She had to push them away and get right to sorting this decades-long anti-werewolf hysteria in the Ministry.

Somehow, though, she instead found herself caressing Remus' plunging tongue with her own and shifting back in Fenrir's lap to press herself more tightly against the solid muscles behind her.