A/N: Hey! Sorry for the cliffhanger I left you with last time!! (I was feeling cruel) Thanks to all of those people who reviewed and to everybody for their input!!
Disclaimer: Standard
Wolf felt the threateningly cool metal of the knife and would have screamed had not the hand blocking his mouth prohibited it. Instead he held quite still, eyes wide with shock, somebody's hand over his mouth and their knife at his throat. Okay, the vision had been bad, but where had a knife been in there?
"Don't move, kid, or I'll slice your head from your body, Scott," his captor threatened. A hand grabbed Wolf's wand out of his jeans pocket.
Wolf's eyes shot open; he knew who this guy was. Only one person still called him "Scott" and got away with it. "Larry?" he asked, his voice coming out as no more that a whisper. "Larry!"
His captor cursed. "You always were too much trouble to put up with, kid! Not one more sound, hear me?"
Well aware of the knife at his throat, Wolf nodded quickly.
~~~
Larry dragged him into his office, locked the door, flung Wolf into a chair, and calmly took a seat opposite him. Wolf, pale and shaken, managed to ask, "Why are you doing this?" He glared insolently at the large, tall Werewolf League Leader. The man he had trusted to bring up the reputation of werewolves everywhere had captured him and held him at knife-point.
But when Larry turned to face Wolf, he was the not the dark, cruel man Wolf had been captured by in the hallway. Sweat covered his face with a glimmering sheen, he had run his hands through his hair, making him look like a total wreck. He walked in jerky spasms, and his eyes were wider that Wolf's hands. "Because," he said, his voice rasping.
"Why?"
"You weren't a good enough spy. I got nothing but potions to help MUGGLES from you! I wanted money, cold hard cash, as the muggles, the people you wanted to PROTECT, would call it!" Larry said, pointing his wand at the defenseless Wolf. His eyes now held a wild craze.
"Huh?" Wolf asked. "You're going to kill me because I didn't get you any money with my muggle protection potion?"
"No! I wanted you to create something to cure me! I've heard about your uncle, the great Trevor Prince, potions master. I knew you'd inherited most of his knowledge, as well as a lot of his ability! You were supposed to cure ME, not some muggle stupid enough to go walking in the woods on a moonlit night!" Larry's eyes were growing wider, blue pieces of glass burning with rage and a face twisted into a feral smile. "So, now, I fear, I shall have to kill you."
Wolf tried to get out of his seat, but Larry muttered a unintelligible word under his breath and cords snapped around Wolf's wrists, ankles, middle, and neck, binding him to a chair. Wolf let out a terrible yell, but it didn't distract Larry in the least. The ropes binding him made it hard to breathe and he started to see black nibble at the corners of his eyes. After a few seconds, he barely noticed that the wand was pointed at his face.
"I'll kill you now," Larry said in a quiet voice.
"You know, you might want to drop that wand if you know what's good for you," came a voice from behind Wolf. Larry whirled to discover both Ginger and Ron standing him, wands raised. "The spell's half done," Ginger continued. "All he has to do is say the last word and we'll knock you out until next week. From then on, it ain't gonna be peachy..."
Larry yelled something Wolf didn't catch. The room had started to spin. Wolf found his head drooping forward, but there was nothing he could do. The black was coming closer at the edges...The world went completely black...
"Harry! Turn on the lights!" The light came up again. "Holy - !"
"My guess is that the freaky guy got away," Ron said almost calmly as Harry and Hermione entered. Larry was completely gone, but Wolf was on the verge of blacking out. Ginger noticed this almost immediately and set to work on his bonds. The Swiss army knife took a little while to get through the thick bond that covered his stomach, but when the bond had broken, Wolf started to breathe again.
"What's going on?" Hermione asked as Ron pulled out a rusty pocket knife and started to help Ginger out.
"Well, that was my boss. Or he was, at least. He's been the backbone of a political campaign against several wizard laws that state that you can kill werewolves on moonlit nights. I do believe we were actually making some headway with Minister Fudge, but I'm not quite sure," Wolf said just as Ginger and Ron managed to get through the bonds that snapped across his neck. He started to breathe easier.
"Well, he looks kind of crazy."
"I think he's afraid of wolves. He actually thinks of being a werewolf as a disease," Wolf said, rolling his head around to ease the pain in his neck. "He's a LITTLE ticked at me because I didn't create a potion to cure him. The only reason I'm in the league, he says, is to brew a potion that will cure him. He was going to kill me because I didn't do that."
"He's got a sick mind," Hermione said, wrinkling her nose as she shut his desk drawer. "Let's just leave it at that."
"Let's get out of here," Ginger said as the undid one of the bonds that held Wolf's wrists. "It's freaky here."
"I can't leave yet," Wolf said. "There's something I have to do."
~~~
Jake the Snake slithered into the flooed fire and hissed his order. "Weeeerrrreeewoooolllfff Hhhhhaaaallll." To make his hiss heard, he had to say it long and slow. Jake hated his current position, the corny way his name rhymed, and he hated his master. But there was nothing he could about it. He landed, scowling with a snake look, and slithered to do his master's bidding.
~~~
Wolf lifted the beaker of foaming blue liquid. "This is my newest concoction. I've been working on this since I first got my office and its TOP SECRET. I call it the XXXIII."
"Triple X three?" Harry asked.
"Why do you have muggle science books here?" Hermione asked, picking up a book called Genetics and You. "You're studying genetics? Why bother?"
"Because it could be the thing that helps us all out. Especially for those people who want to become Animagni and the like! Only, that is by way of a charm, this is by way of a potion. Have you guys ever heard of Trevor Prince?"
"The Potions Master that appears often in The Daily Prophet?" Ginger asked, poking through the many potions catalogues that littered Wolf's expansive work space.
"Yeah, him. He's my uncle. I've learned a lot about the potions and such from him since I became a werewolf," Wolf said, pulling on a pair of goggles and turning the blue-white lamp up to a visible level. Ron looked startled. Wolf had enchanted his lamp to look invisible, but give off light if he turned a special knob. "The reason I'm into genetics is because he suggested it. He's been working with the genetic coding in DNA."
"Adenine, Cytosine, Thymine, or Guanine?" Hermione asked, looking impressed.
"Guanine, I have discovered, is the base that the werewolf gene exists in. Muggles believe that the sequence of bases that makes the gene, but it isn't when it's a magical sort of problem. When the problem is of the magical variety, the gene exists in one base. However, it needs something to be activated. In this case, the residue from a werewolf needs to enter the bloodstream. Saliva, bits of the nail, or just a simple bit of hair. That activates the werewolf gene and magic sets off a chain reaction to completely change your structure."
"Change your structure?" Harry asked dubiously.
"Well, yes. That is a part of the magic. The complete structure changes are only aroused by the magic in the light of a full moon. But there are several things I've noticed in werewolves - accelerated hair growth, more sensitive sense of smell, etc."
"You're really into this werewolf stuff, aren't you?" Ginger asked, the look on her face blank, but her tone held admiration. "So what's that stuff for?"
"This 'stuff' is a potion that activates the structural change whenever you want. The only problem is that it doesn't stop the reaction to the moon. I've also worked it out so that its only a structural change, not a mind change, which is part of the Mom."
"Mom?"
"Magic of the moon, sorry." Wolf sighed and removed the goggles. "I didn't want to test it yet but...it looks like I don't have a choice. I've replicated it and changed it to work on the Cytosine base, which is where the potential for changing into the animal most like you lies. Uncle Trevor sent me his notes on that a few months back, so I worked with them and came up with this." Wolf held up a beaker of green liquid. "Anybody want to give it a shot?"
"I will," Harry said, thought he didn't look to confident. Wolf poured a proper amount for somebody of his weight and handed the small cup to the boy who had been praised as a hero several times over. Harry stared at the liquid in the glass, raised it to his lips, tilted his head back, and downed it in one gulp. He made a sour face.
"Sorry, I haven't gotten the chance to work on the taste quite yet," Wolf said, taking the empty cup and refilling it. He drank half of the beaker of his own potion and winced at the bitterness of it. Hermione, Ron, and Ginger drank their share of it, all grimacing. "This stuff will start kicking in any second now."
Harry suddenly lurched foward, scratching his face. Everybody watched in horror as his mouth and nose started to elongate, stretching like silly putty from his face. His hair started to expand over his arms and chest and face and legs. He started to grow. Soon, there was a bear standing there.
*But I wanted to be a stag!* they heard him cry in their heads.
Wolf started to feel the telltale effects of turning into the wolf. His transformation took a less amount of time, but Ginger and Hermione and Ron were already halfway when his wolf senses kicked in. Ron was shrinking into a blue Phoenix, but Hermione was...a TIGER?
Ginger, however, was the most surprising. A horn was growing out of her forehead and she was covered in white fur. Her hands and feet hardened and soon a unicorn was standing in front of Wolf.
*Do you hear that?* Hermione asked, flexing her claws. She leaped agilely into the air, slicing out. *Impressive,* Wolf heard her remark.
*I smell something rotten,* Wolf remarked. *It's coming from that way!* Slick as a fox, he sprinted out the door and took off down the hallway. Hermione didn't have to struggle at all to keep up and Ginger surpassed them quickly. Ron kept at Hermione's heels. Harry had a bit harder time, but he loped along anyway. They sounded like an earthquake, tramping along the hallway, cool as you please. *In here! The conference room!*
Wolf managed to sneak in the massive door first, followed silently by Hermione and Ron. Hermione started at seeing a figure with a robe on and his back turned to them. He hadn't made any notice of them yet. *Harry, don't come in here!*
*Too late,* Harry muttered, already in the room. He glanced at what the others were gaping at, dropped quickly out of bear form, and disappeared among a number of boxes that were stacked five tall near the doorway. Everybody copied him and they had a clump behind the boxes. "How did Voldemort get into this mess?" Harry asked in a whisper.
"I don't know. I just know I'd been getting a vision, gotten kidnapped, and then BANG, we're here," Wolf muttered.
"There's Larry!" Ron, who was still watching the dark lord's movements, hissed. "What's he doing?"
Larry was facing the dark lord, wand raced. Voldemort turned and dropped his hood.
The group gasped. Ginger slapped her hands over her mouth to stop herself from puking. The dark lord's face was twisted and cruel, worse than any of Picasso's paintings. Wolf felt sick.
"I shall kill you now, my brother," Larry whispered.