Hey! New chapter! I SWEAR I'm going to try and get some actual plot stuff done this time. Pinky promise cross my heart.

I'm sorry this took a while to post, but I have like four other WIPs and my inspiration to work on them is fleeting. I have mixed feelings at best about this story, and there's so much I want to do that I don't know if I'll be able to include, but I'll give it my best shot.

Good news, though, I know how this ends now! :D I'm going to try making chapters a little longer, to avoid prolonging the story with weird plot-less bits, so we'll see how that goes.

School was exactly as Fenris remembered it, which was unfortunate.

Lysander stuck close to him for most of the day - which, as they had the same classes, wasn't difficult. Lillian was far more elusive, being in a different House and often distracted by her Slytherin friends. But occasionally, she'd come over to eat with them; or really, to bug Lysander.

"I don't see why you don't like Potions," she said, dropping herself into the middle of a conversation and also right in between Lysander and Fenris. Both of them scooted a little to the side reflexively.

"I was talking to Xander, not you," Lysander said, frowning. "And I just don't. It's too complicated."

"Not really," said Fenris, who actually liked Potions. There were no wands involved, and it was somewhat familiar, if with vastly different ingredients and concoctions than the ones he'd known when he was younger.

"Don't take her side." Lysander looked almost betrayed. Lillian looked delighted.

"See, he knows what I mean." She stole half of Lysander's sandwich and bit into it, talking around her mouthful. "You just don't like anything that could explode."

"That's a perfectly reasonable to limit to put on my life."

"Yeah, but it's boring."

Lysander rolled his eyes. He turned to Fenris, but whatever he was going to say or do turned into a frown. "Why aren't you eating?"

"I'm eating," Fenris protested. There was food on his plate and everything. Lysander just raised his eyes at him. Fenris tore a piece off his sandwich and ate it, just to make a point.

"Wow," Lillian said, dragging the vowel out. "No wonder your roommates think you like each other."

"They what," Lysander sputtered. Fenris frowned. Lysander didn't sound offended, just surprised, which was...new. Fenris sort of wished this had been one of the topics his father had covered about the time they were living in. Lysander looked at Xander, sitting across from them, who studiously avoided meeting his gaze.

"Marisol said she overheard some of your dormmates talking about it." Nonchalantly, Lillian stole Lysander's brownie and shoved it in her mouth before he could grab it back. "Why were you sharing a bed?" She asked around it, barely understandably.

Lysander flushed, eyes flicking to the other Hufflepuffs around them. "It wasn't - I had a bad dream."

Lillian frowned, and swallowed. "What for?"

"I didn't have it on purpose."

Someone shouted Lillian's name from the Slytherin table, making her turn fast enough that her ponytail smacked Fenris's cheek. Fenris leaned away, blinking to get rid of the feeling of hair poking his eye.

"Gotta go," Lillian said, spewing brownie crumbs and spinning around to dart away. Fenris watched her go.

"I know she talks a lot," he commented to Lysander, "but sometimes I wish she'd actually finish a conversation."

"I don't mind," Lysander muttered, still blushing a little. "She always brings up stuff if she knows I'll get uncomfortable."

That sounded like a weird thing for Lillian to do, but it wasn't like Fenris knew her nearly as well. Lysander had switched back to staring at Xander, as if that would make him reveal his secrets.

"I didn't say anything," Xander protested after a few uncomfortable moments. Fenris wondered if he was actually intimidated by Lysander, or just being nice and telling him. "It's none of my business what you do about nightmares." Nobody else was sitting very close to them, but they were also paying way less attention - or pretending to - than usual.

This was very familiar, Fenris mused. Humans were very gossipy.

"Nobody should be saying anything," Lysander hissed.

"It's not that big of a deal, c'mon." Xander rolled his eyes. "Fenris doesn't mind."

"Just because I'm not saying anything doesn't mean I don't have anything to say," Fenris said sharply. He hated when people underestimated him because he looked like a child and got presumptuous.

Xander suddenly became very preoccupied with his plate. Lysander stared at him for another moment or two like he wanted to say something else, but turned away eventually.

"Does it bother you?" He asked Fenris in an undertone. Fenris shrugged.

"Lots of people say things about me that aren't true. It doesn't matter."

"Who's saying things about you?" Lysander switched back to 'defense' in an instant. It was a nice feeling, seeing Lysander get immediately fired up on his behalf, but kind of useless.

"Nobody you know." The book he still hadn't read a word of had been written long before even Fenris was born, much less Lysander. The thought occurred to Fenris that at least some of it had to be true, but he ignored it. Or tried to, at least. "People say what they want about me. It's not like myths say anything reliable."

"Oh, you mean people like-" Lysander glanced around warily. "Worshippers."

"Yeah."

"That's too bad. That it's all wrong, I mean."

Fenris shrugged again, feeling a little uncomfortable. "Can't do anything about it now."

Why was it wrong?

Fenris didn't know how exactly myths ended up recorded by human hands, but it had to happen somehow. And every other pantheon had the same kind of stories - so why were the ones about his family the only ones that got it wrong?

Did people just love the gods that much?

He had too many questions that needed answering. Fenris was sick and tired of it, and he only knew one thing he could do that would get him answers.

He sat in the common room, purposefully unnoticeable, until all but the oldest students had gone to bed, and sneaked through the nighttime halls of the castle and outside.

It was colder inside the Forest than it was on the school's wide lawns, or at least it seemed like it should be. The cold had never bothered Fenris enough to make him put on more than his robe. The snow that clung to his boots and the hem of his robes was annoying, though. It was darker inside the Forest, too, despite the bareness of the tree branches that was hardly made up for by the occasional evergreen.

Fenris walked deeper, eyes on the ground, looking for pawprints.

The Forest manages to get gloomier, the farther in he walks. Fenris tries not to think about how he's technically breaking one of Muriel's rules; this isn't Muriel's business, anyway. If anything, it's godly business, and that makes him straighten a little and try harder to distinguish regular shadows and various shallow tracks from the prints he's looking for.

Fenris stopped once, to squint suspiciously at a couple depressions in the snow that might have been snowed-in prints, and the noise of his footsteps continued for a second longer, slightly behind him.

Fenris didn't turn around right away. He pretended to scrutinize the prints for a little longer, and thought about where the noise had come from.

There was a faint noise, like a very gentle footstep.

Fenris whirled around, one hand going to the inside pocket of his robe, the other lashing out. Something in the shadows darted out of the way, moving rapidly through spots of moonlight.

"What was that for?" Came the demand, yellow eyes flashing between the trees. Fenris kept his hand in his pocket, grasping the hilt of his father's gift. He didn't think he'd ever need to use it. The owner of the voice slunk closer, revealing brown fur and lips curled up to show a flash of teeth.

"You were following me," Fenris said, watching Sköll warily.

"You're wandering around like a moron, in this forest, at night." Sköll's snarl looked a lot more menacing than it was meant to be. Fenris hoped so, at least. "What are you reaching for?"

"Nothing." Fenris put his hand back at his side. Sköll's aggression put him on edge, and if he could have he'd have kept a hold of his father's gift, despite its non-reassuring size.

"Didn't look like nothing."

"It doesn't matter," Fenris said, a little sharper. "Just - listen, I have to ask you something."

"Like what?" Sköll sounded like she'd be frowning, if she were human. "I thought you didn't trust us." She was also making a spirited effort at sounding as snide as possible.

"I barely know you." Fenris scowled at her. "Should I?"

"You used to," Sköll sniffed.

"I told you what happened! I don't remember you, so it doesn't matter what it used to be like."

"Oh, so both of us telling you isn't good enough for you?"

"Why should I?" Infuriated, Fenris yanked his sleeve up, displaying the bite scar on his wrist. Sköll's ears flattened. "This is from one of you, isn't it? You haven't given me any reason to believe anything you say!"

"Then why are you here?" Sköll snarled, but she looked less overtly aggressive. Fenris might have called her body language ashamed - she'd crouched closer to the ground, ears still flattened.

"You're the only ones I can ask." Fenris let his sleeve drop. "You were the only ones there, weren't you? With me?"

"So you believe that?" Sköll asked sourly.

"My sister said you were there," Fenris said. "When she came for me."

"You talked to her about it?"

"I don't have a lot of options, okay!"

"Fine!" Sköll snarled. "Ask your questions, then. Or should I just tell you everything from the beginning-"

"Just stop!" Fenris snapped. "It's not like that!"

"Then what is it like?" Sköll's tail was lashing again.

"I-" Fenris raked his hand through his hair, combing his bangs back. As if that would help him concentrate on what he wanted to say. "I dream. Sometimes. And I don't know if I'm remembering or-"

"Dreams?"

"Just let me finish!" Fenris pushed his sleeve up again. "If you want to tell me things so badly, let's start with this! Why did you bite me?"

Sköll's ears flattened a little again.

"We were trying to help," she said. "You were a little tied up for most of the time."

"That's not funny," Fenris snapped.

"I'm not trying to be."

"Then why-" Fenris breathed in, pushing his sleeve back down and looking at the ground. "When I remember - or dream - whichever! I keep - I remember being bound, but it keeps happening differently. Tell me why."

"It did happen differently," Sköll said. "They had to do it more than once. Three times, in fact."

"Why?"

"You broke the first two chains."

Fenris paused at that. His hand drifted down to rub his wrist, and for a moment there was the pressure of something winding around him and restraining him, but a split second later it splintered - the phantom echo of a hard push and shattering metal.

"Hello?" Sköll said, and Fenris jolted out of his thoughts, realizing that she was much closer than she'd been a minute ago. He took a hurried step back. Sköll was pretty large, as wolves went. "Would you like to talk or zone out?"

Fenris didn't even tell her to stop. It seemed like a lost cause, at this point. He raked his bangs out of his face again, instead. He needed a haircut, maybe - no. He had to keep his thoughts straight, or he'd never be able to ask the right questions.

"Why did it work the third time?" He asked.

"Oh, they had to go to the dwarves. Turns out it's really hard to break something if it's made out of shit that doesn't technically exist." Sköll snorted derisively. "Dwarves." There was more than a hint of teeth to the word - her lips curled up and she practically spat it out.

Knowing they'd made his bonds, Fenris didn't think he liked them much either.

"How do you make something out of things that don't exist?"

"I don't know," Sköll said. "All I know is that we couldn't break it, and you couldn't, and I doubt a sword would have worked either."

Fenris gripped his wrist tighter, then realized he was doing it and let go. "But it was broken-"

"Yeah, obviously," Sköll said. "Your sister's got strange stuff. And access to the dwarves that made it, probably."

"...Strange stuff?" Fenris asked, in lieu of other, more difficult questions.

"You know." Sköll shrugged, which looked very strange and was more of a wolfish pushup. "Dead stuff. Old magic. If it's been practiced, she can probably get her hands on whoever practiced it, and they're not going to say no to anything she asks them."

"Oh, you mean the dead," Fenris said. "You could have said so."

"Who else could I possibly be talking about?"

"I dunno." Fenris glanced around, and brushed some snow off a nearby log so he could sit down. Dampness still soaked into his robes when he did. "I don't think of her like that."

"What, as-" Sköll hesitated, and then said carefully, "queen of the dead?"

"I know what she is," Fenris said. "But she's my sister. And still technically younger than me," he added as an afterthought. "Even if I forgot a lot of stuff."

"What, really?" Sköll's ears perked up. "She's your little sister?"

"Yeah."

"Huh."

"What?"

"It's just weird," Sköll said. "You don't think of someone like her as somebody's little sister."

"Well, she is."

"I heard you the first time." Sköll sat down too, pawing some of the snow out of the way.

"Do you have any siblings?" Fenris asked, finding that he was actually curious about the answer. The thought had sprung to his lips without any real conscious effort.

"Uh, yeah, Hati." Sköll gave him an incredulous look, but then drooped a little. "Right. You don't remember."

"Hait?" Fenris repeated, surprised.

"Wolf packs are always related to each other." Sköll shuffled around and then settled onto her belly. "We don't just wander around and find some random wolves to live with. That would be stupid."

"I guess." Fenris had never put much thought into the habits of wolves. Sköll looked at him quietly for a moment, her yellow gaze piercing. Before he'd met them, Fenris had remembered that much, dreamed of yellow eyes when he'd gotten poisoned. Back then, he'd thought it looked like his own eye color, but that must have just been a trick his own fevered mind had played, or maybe he'd misremembered. Sköll's eyes only looked remotely human because of the intelligence that lay behind them.

"What do you remember about us?" She asked, jolting Fenris out of his thoughts.

"Not much," Fenris answered honestly. "I...only dream sometimes, and never for very long. Just bits and pieces, with you two there."

"What kind of bits and pieces?"

"Nothing important." Fenris hesitated. "I don't think."

"You don't think?"

"It's hard to hold onto what I remember."

"Try."

Fenris hesitated again. A moment ago, they'd been arguing, and Sköll didn't seem particularly nice. But the thought that had driven him out into the Forest was still true: Hati and Sköll were the only ones he could ask and get solid answers from, and if he refused to give them any information in exchange they'd be well within their rights to leave and never talk to him again.

Fenris wasn't sure if he thought that was a good thing or not.

"It used to be just - impressions," he said. "Nothing really solid. I dreamed about Asgard, once." He blinked in surprise - he hadn't remembered that until he'd said it, strangely enough.

"Asgard?" Sköll raised her head a little higher, ears pricking up. "But you never lived there."

"How do you - nevermind." She'd probably say that he'd told her and just didn't remember, which might even be true. "I've - been there, once or twice. Before anyone took me there. My dad used to let me come with him sometimes." Loki had never said why, exactly, he did so, but at the time Fenris had been curious to see the place his father told so many stories about.

A rustle in the bushes made them both look over sharply. Fenris only caught a flash of moonlight on grey fur before a yawning voice said,

"What're you doing all the way over here..."

Hati stopped dead when he saw Sköll wasn't alone.

"Uh," Fenris said.

"Great fucking timing, loser," Sköll said. "I just got him to calm down."

"Hey!"

"What are you doing here?" Hati said, sounding bewildered, and then quickly added, "Not that that's a bad thing."

"We were talking," Sköll said before Fenris could even open his mouth. "He says he's been remembering things by dreaming about them."

"Really?!" Hati's shocked gaze shot to Fenris. "Why?"

"What do you mean, why?" Fenris asked, at a loss for anything else to say.

"I don't know how you lost them in the first place, but it's a safe guess that pretty powerful magic was involved," Hati said. "Wouldn't it take the same to create the reverse effect?"

Sköll looked at Fenris sharply, this time.

"No," Fenris said, flatly. "Nothing happened. Nobody enchanted me, either. There hasn't-" A thought occurred to him.

"What?" Hati asked, when Fenris didn't finish.

"There...there was Tyr," Fenris admitted.

"What?" Sköll and Hati said simultaneously. Hati laid his ears back, while Sköll leaped to her feet, snarling. "That slimy little Ás! How?"

"I don't know!" Fenris stared, taken aback by the strength of her reaction.

"You don't think the Bifröst can reach this far, do you?" Hati asked.

"We got here-"

"Yeah, but we didn't use the Bifröst-"

"I'm saying there's more than one way," Sköll snapped. She whirled around to face Fenris again. "What did he do?"

Fenris grimaced at being reminded of the incident. "Tried to poison me."

"He what?!" Sköll was so furious that she reverted to Norse. "That cowardly bastard! I'll kill him! That-" Fenris stared as Sköll devolved into more creative insults.

Even Hati's fur was bristling, his lips drawn back to show his teeth. Unlike Sköll, he managed to stay still, and otherwise looked calm. Fenris still glanced at him warily.

"I'm not surprised," Hati said in a low growl. "He's hated you ever since you bit his hand off." Fenris surprised himself by how little he reacted to that. Hati, however, caught his tiny flinch. "You didn't remember that?"

"...Maybe." Dreams of blood in his mouth and something crunching between his teeth. He'd bitten a man's hand off.

"It was better than he deserved." Hati's lip curled disdainfully.

"Why?"

Hati seemed taken aback for a moment, and then sighed. "You don't remember. Right."

"Don't remember what?" Fenris frowned.

"You always hated him, too. The whole hand thing was his bargain so you'd stay still enough to be bound, the way you told it, and it was a rigged bargain. They were never going to let you go. Tyr was just the only one willing to actually take the fall for it. Bunch of cowards."

"Níðing, vardropi, horasson-" Sköll was still roundly insulting Tyr. Fenris was beginning to feel uncomfortable - he'd encountered some foul-mouthed people over the course of his life, but sheesh.

"I don't know why he was here," Fenris said. "We haven't done anything except leave. You'd think if they were so scared of whatever we were going to do they'd want us to do that."

Hati and Sköll exchanged a look. Or rather, Hati looked surprised, looked at Sköll, and then kicked Sköll so she would look at him.

"What you were 'going to do'?" Hati echoed, looking back at Fenris, and then yelped when Sköll bit him. "Ow! I was trying to get you to pay attention!"

"Yeah," Fenris said, scowling. "Dad was telling us - we got him to tell us why the Æsir did it in the first place. There was some prophecy that people assumed was about us, and stuff like that."

"What kind of prophecy?" Hati asked.

"You must have been prophesied to do some real impressive shit," Sköll said.

"Does killing Odin count?" Fenris asked.

Both wolves exchanged quick, startled looks - nothing like their pointed gazes from before. Fenris was beginning to feel left out.

"That's specific," Hati said.

"It was in the prophecy."

"Would you?" Sköll's voice was oddly quiet.

"I think so," Fenris said. "I wouldn't feel bad about doing it, anyway." Then he yawned. It took him by surprise; it was a real yawn, too, the kind that made his jaw ache from the strength of it. He must have been up later than he thought.

"Maybe you should go back up to the castle," Hati said.

"Come back, though," Sköll said.

"...Sure," Fenris said, rubbing his face. Now that he was paying attention to himself, his eyelids were heavy and aching, and his bed in the quiet Hufflepuff dorm seemed more attractive a destination than ever.

It was a quiet and boring trudge back up to the school. Hati and Sköll trailed him part of the way, padding along through the snow, but they fell away when the trees started thinning out. Fenris yawned again as he made it out onto the empty lawns, and it took him two tries to crack open the doors to get back inside.

It also took him a few moments to process the pointed throat-clearing noise someone was making.

Fenris's stomach dropped when he looked up and saw Muriel standing halfway up the Entrance Hall staircase. Her arms were crossed over her chest.

"I distinctly remember telling you not to go out in the Forest at night," Muriel said.

"You're not my dad," Fenris said, and then winced. He could do better than that. He could see Muriel's frown even across the distance separating them.

"While you are a student here, like it or not, you obey the same rules as every other student." Muriel slowly descended, tone much more formal than Fenris had ever heard from her. "The Forest is dangerous, and like it or not going into it at night is also dangerous, no matter how much you want to."

"I'm dangerous," Fenris retorted. Muriel arched one eyebrow skeptically.

"You're a child," she said.

"Nothing bad happened-"

"Yet," Muriel said severely.

"I don't think it's that bad," Fenris muttered, looking down at the floor.

"Would you think that after you had been attacked by Acromantula?" Muriel asked sharply. "Or kicked out by centaurs who were tired of you infringing on their grounds? Godhood does not make you invulnerable."

"I know that," Fenris said acidly, but he also said it quietly, so it didn't really have the same effect. "I get it. Can I go back to my dorm?"

Muriel frowned down at him for a few moments, then sighed. "Do you promise not to do it anymore?"

"Yeah," Fenris grumbled.

"Fine. Go. And I expect to see you in class bright and early."

Whoo long chapter! I'm pretty busy with some other writing stuff, plus I'm graduating soon, so this story might be on a little mini-hiatus until I get everything sorted out! Rest assured I'm not going to just leave it here forever.

Read and review!