Wolf Meat
Chapter 1:
Duran Duran Romanticized
It was Halloween and Hermione felt like she was a part of a sick Disney movie as she hid out in the corner of a muggle bar, a cheap lamb mask firmly fixed on her face and a bottle of beer sporting condensation in front of her.
Soon, she mused, a group of wild-looking teens will come in and shout about witches living among them. And she will sit there and try to blend in… or, perhaps, she will raise herself to the tabletops and sing a totally unrehearsed version of "I Put a Spell on You". The stupid adults would cheer and the smart teens would point and exclaim that she wasn't one of them. That she was a danger.
Hermione fingered where her hand met her wrist, bones sharp against her fingertips. She wished she felt dangerous. Like no one would screw with her, that her four months living in the wilderness had hardened her into a vicious, unrelenting woman of the sticks. A version of the old witch.
But reality came in the form of starvation and the nights had only been getting colder.
It was by pure luck that the herd of deer she had been following, not for the action of hunting but for the simple need to find consumable food that wouldn't run away, had passed by the of course, Hermione had snapped up the opportunity to stay the night at a shabby hotel and get a cheap meal firmly crammed down her throat.
It was only by pure luck that the next day was Halloween. An easy disguise to take. Especially when some B rated horror film was airing for the first time, and their way of advertising had left the town chock full of flimsy animal masks. Hermione had taken this one from the gutter.
Tipping the mask upward, Hermione took a long sip of her beer before settling the mask over her face one more. Once it was empty, she would need to head back to the woods.
Hermione sighed and fiddled with the bottle. There was maybe another swig or two left in it and she tossed around the idea of staying for another night. That, just maybe, they wouldn't find her here and she could live out her life hiding in some backwater town. Like no true Gryffindor would do.
But her bravery, a lump behind her sore heart, still fluttered with life and her mind turned and spun and tried to figure out a way for her to take back the Wizarding World. But the damp haze that was reality had clamped down on it, and realistically, Hermione knew it was over for her. She was alone.
A tear made its way down her cheek from the inside of the mask.
The bar was getting busier by the second too. Men dressed as monsters, kings and superheroes paid hosts to scantily clad women in short dresses, mostly revolving around someone named "Harley Quinn'. The gay-scene was easily picked out because it looked like they had actually had a conversation about matching outfits that actually fit and actually had some brand of originality to them.
Including a pair that dressed as a very convincing mid-70s Freddy Mercury and David Bowie. If she asked them, Hermione was sure that they would sing an equally convincing 'Under Pressure'.
To stop herself from doing that, she tipped back the rest of her beer and stood.
And was promptly stopped by a man in a mask. A wolf mask, plastic like her own with a fixed snarl and a tongue creeping around its bared teeth.
Hello Disney, Hermione thought bitterly, I knew you were around here somewhere.
"Hey there!" The voice was pleasant, warm with a Scottish accent that rolled the 'r'. "Saw you sittin' lonely and thought ya' could use a new suds."
The bottle offered appeared unopened and condensation was building on the glass and the man in question seemed skinny and slight. Hermione couldn't see his face, but he also couldn't see hers.
So, Hermione let a slim ribbon of cation go as she accepted the beer with a nod.
"Dun't talk much?" The man questioned in a teasing tone as he took the seat across from her, cracking open his own beer, but leaving it untouched in front of him. His face was dark behind the eyeholes, and the dingy bar bulb hanging between them did nothing to alleviate it.
Bad. This felt bad. A sharp turn from Disney Movie to a competent Chiller Original Movie. Or a college sexual assault informational film.
Either way, the thin, curly baby hairs at the back of her neck stood and goose flesh sprung up under the thick jacket she wore. On the run, alone, and being offered a beer that she now realized, after thumbing the lid under the table, it no longer had a protective seal.
Uh, oh.
Almost as if the world was taking its bony little finger and jabbing fun at the new predicament she was in, a familiar song began playing over the rickety speakers lining the bar. Crackling intermediately, like laughter.
Dark in the city, night is a wire
Steam in the subway, earth is afire
Do do do do do do do dodo dododo dodo
Hermione had gone over things like this before, situations that she would have control over. But now? Magic was out of the question and even if it was wandless, it would attract a crowd. And violence wasn't the same between the muggle world and the wizarding one.
She had little power here, in a bar full of drunks on an early Halloween night.
But her mind was a piece of art, wasn't it? And like a well functioning slab of fat and neurons, she decided to take the cat's way out.
Lifting the beer to her mouth, she took a sip and left it in her cheek and pretended to swallow. A sign, she hoped, that would give the man the idea she was invested-
Woman, you want me, give me a sign
And catch my breathing even closer behind
Do do do do do do do dodo dododo dodo
-Before setting down the beer next to her empty one.
"I'll be right back," Hermione said grainily, her mouth still full of laced beer as she angled her head toward the Women's restroom, only identifiable by a lacquered bra and panty set glued to the door.
Charming.
And like that, Hermione slipped away, dodging around a couple snogging over a rum and coke, her beaded bag clasped firmly in her firm grip. She could feel the unseen eyes of the man on her as she walked away, an air of viciousness lancing through the air between them.
In touch with the ground
I'm on the hunt, I'm after you
Smell like I sound, I'm lost in a crowd
And I'm hungry like the wolf
She needed to get the hell out of this town.
The bathroom was as gross as one would expect, one working stall out of three and a constant drip from the faucets. Luckily, there was a lock on the main door, a simple one that she was sure would be easily picked. But, her nerves needed that extra protection.
Hermione spits her beer in the sink before rinsing her mouth out with the pipe-flavored tap water, her mask tilted upward on her forehead.
The door rattled.
Unlike if there was a girl outside it, there was no high pitch whine or further banging, instead it rattled a second time before silence prevailed.
Great. He knew that she knew.
Hermione flicked her mask down again, only catching the sight of gauntness in the second between. She looked awful, felt awful and everything was awful and she kinda wanted to stab the wolf-mask-guy in the testicles for making everything even more awful. Instead, she made her way to the window.
The glass was dirty and the thin streams of the dying sun made it glow tan. Disgusting. But her way out.
Having escaped out of no previous bathroom windows, Hermione ate shit when she hit the ground, face protected by the totally comfortable edges of the plastic mask. It just let her add another point to the awful count.
But she could do that later.
Getting up from her place on the pavement, Hermione kicked herself into high gear and sprinted westward to the edge of the forest. There were people on the street, of course, and had this been a year ago she would have sought help from one of the passersby or would have gone to the police.
But anyone could be anyone. And the police might have wanted some form of I.D., which she certainly didn't have since she had lived in a fucking castle for most of her teen years, fully expecting to join the Ministry after Lord Voldemort died.
Ha, whoops. All her eggs had been placed into a big ass basket with everyone else's and everyone had just ignored the fact a giant ass snake was living in it. Two of them if you counted Nagini.
And now she was here, in clothing she had sink washed that morning running from a guy in a bar. Not even a Death-Eater.
Hermione dodged between a couple of houses and entered into the thick trees, scampering over a log like she was in a Disney film and not in a romanticized Duran Duran song. At least the town had been nice enough to be planted at the edge of a fucking giant forest.
Well, actually. It hadn't been that nice to her.
Checking behind her resulting in nothing. There was no one. Didn't mean she hadn't been followed, but it meant that she wasn't going to have to hide out as a River Otter for the next week.
That would be nice.
Despite this, she felt the overwhelming desire to whip out her wand and taste her magic as she hid herself away from the world. And that's the exact reason why it was locked in a case in the bottom of her bag. So she wouldn't do such a thing and possibly destroy her nice four months of not being in Azkaban. Or tortured. Probably publicly executed.
All of them certain if she fucked up.
From her place on the log, eyes still cast toward the forest edge through the eyeholes of the broken mask, Hermione panted. Her sad, starved body seemed to creak, but the adrenaline didn't end. There was something that told her, perhaps a woman's intuition, that she wasn't out of danger yet.
If she stood there a moment longer, she would have seen the wolf-mask-man. But Hermione turned and slipped further into the trees, bounding away to where a river cut the forest in two. Letting herself fall back on cowardice rather than bravery as anxiety licked up her spine.
He didn't talk to her as he followed, and that made Hermione even more nervous. She had only movies to compare such things to and they usually had the man cat-calling. But this, this felt like a hunt. A true hunt. And for a harsh moment she was sure that this man was a snatcher.
Fear was bitter and she was tired that she was so used to it. Maybe if she just laid down and gave up, maybe they would just fucking kill her and she would be clean of these horrible feelings.
However, this feeling fled, albeit, a little too late.
Hermione was nearly at the river when she was tackled, a body heavier than hers colliding sharply between her shoulder blades. Extra weight and her own moment cast her sideways, her body, incapable of clenching in on itself, rag-dolled as she rolled through the undergrowth.
Ouch.
Instead of screaming, as there was no air left in her lungs, Hermione made a stiff wheezing sound akin to the noise a slowly deflating balloon would make. This was not helped by her struggling limbs as she tried to right herself.
If she could just get to the river, then she could slip into her animagus form and fuck off away from here-
A pitching noise, slipping from a human-like growl to a dog-like whine.
Oh god. If Hermione wasn't scared for her life, she would have laughed at the absolute cliche.
A wolfman wearing a wolf mask. Good god, where was the camera?!
Bare fingers dug trenches in the soil as Hermione pulled herself along, her scrawny limbs tossing about. This had gone from a situation of sexual assault and murder, to simply an act of her brittle little bones getting gnawed on by a werewolf. Both were bad, and Hermione didn't quite want either of them. No, no, not at all.
What she was saying, really, was that the world needed to take a hard step backward and think about what it was doing to her. What it had been doing to her this whole life.
The universe answered with the sound of a snapping bone and the wet sound of skin tearing.
Beautiful. Perfect. What she had always wanted. Thanks, Universe.
Hermione didn't sit around to listen to the soundtrack that would play her out of the living realm and instead began her quick shamble toward her original goal: the river. The cold air stung her shuddering lungs and she needed to use her hands to feel along the trees so she didn't pull a Friday the 13th move and trip and die.
The river was loud in her ears as she stumbled on, her foot work getting easier and easier as she moved and shook off the disorientation of her being tossed around. With this, she was beginning to summon up the switch to her Otter form, which she was seriously beginning to consider taking on the form for the rest of her natural life.
At least Death Eaters and horrible men wouldn't find her. It definitely wouldn't save her from getting fucked up by other means, but all of those she could excuse, especially since she wasn't staring them down that very second.
And looky there the river edge.
Yeah.
No.
This wasn't Hermione's day.
Hermione fell forward as claws scored down her back, a terrible pain right between her shoulder blades as thick nails streamed through her. It felt like a tug, for the first three microseconds, like someone was pulling bits of string glued to her back. Then a slim trickle of pain, a stinging sensation.
The stinging stayed as Hermione rolled to her side, a stong that she had luckily fell on clutched in her bleeding hands as the lamb mask, snapped and broken beyond repair, finally fell into her lap.
There had only been one transformed werewolf Hermione had seen up close. Sweet Remus Lupin had given her nightmares, despite her lack of prejudice, and she hadn't ever quite gotten over his pseudo-hairless-dog appearance.
This wasn't like that at all.
Now, it was fairly difficult for Hermione to simply state she preferred one possible murderer over another, but at least this one had the decency to have a more wolfish face. Dire and thick, with dense red fur, fangs longer than her fingers and sharp yellow eyes slick with a black sclera.
On a nice, friendly dog Hermione would have cooed and called them pretty. On this guy? The branch found its home between his eyes, snapping with the vigor in which Hermione swung with. Or, maybe, the branch was old and rotting.
Either way, it stunned the creature just enough for Hermione to backpedal on her ass to get away from the werewolf until water licked the tips of her fingers. Just as the teeth of the werewolf dug to the gums into her thigh.
Hermione screamed and writhed in agony, a harsh feeling licking up and down her leg until it bit into her pelvis. Her mud covered fingers grappled at the wolf's head, grabbing at his ears, nose and lips. And the uneasy feeling when she sunk her index finger to the second knuckle into the beast's eye.
The reaction was immediate as she was flung away from the creature as it roared and tossed it's head, its fingered paw coming to grasp the popped organ. Hermione, on the other hand, had only caught the image as she moved backward, leg heavily bleeding, into the river.
Water sloshed into her eyes, nose, and mouth and seaweed slithered around her ankles. Without the protection of her animagus form, the water was freezing and it numbed her toes and fingers. At least her mind, whirring and spinning as she fumbled, hadn't slipped into the lethargic sway of hypothermia as adrenaline flickered across her nerves.
Even the bloodloss hadn't begun to affect her as her leg seemed to simply feel like she had cut circulation off. Pins and needles.
Since she couldn't reach her wand, as it still rested at the bottom of her, her only choice was slipping into her animagus form and drifting down stream.
Could werewolves swim?
She didn't want to find out.
AN: You what up, I haven't read or watched Harry Potter in like...1000 years. But I read a shit ton of Fanfictions. So here I am. Here you are. I wanted to contribute.
Just a heads up, this will get a lot darker. A lot darker. I like Fenrir like I like watching a car crash. I can't look away. And I should warn you that there will be some heavy abuse in the next chapters.
This chapter feels oddly stilted to me, but I am gonna just… Post it. And have anyone who reads it suffers.