Disclaimer: As much as I would love too, I do not own anything that has been previously mentioned in the Harry Potter Books, which is very unfortunate for me.

Author's Note(s): There is more Werewolf-ness in this chapter then most of the others, and less Harry. There is a bit of him towards the end though. "'Wolf Speak'"

The Tale of a Dragon
Ch11: A Mans Gotta Do What A Mans Gotta Do

Dumbledore certainly took his time coming to his office. It was that old 'think about what you did' technique. And it was working. Except he was mostly thinking about the fact he had left his wand there.

The thing was that Draco had an excuse for taking such drastic measures. But he wasn't in any hurry to tell the headmaster that it was his territorial wolf instincts kicking in. So Draco walked around and looked at the various magical instruments, desperately trying to distract himself.

He was disgusted to find that most of them were silver.

"Mr Malfoy." Dumbledore appeared in the doorway and gracefully made his way over to his desk. "Sit."

Draco decided it was best not to object. "I'm sorry, sir" He said after a lengthy silence. "I got carried away."

Dumbledore's expression softened slightly, but the twinkle didn't return. Draco used his petty occlumency skills to block parts of his mind; He could feel Dumbledore trying to break it, but he wasn't trying very hard.

"By rights I should punish you. But I'll give you just a warning. There is still hope for you not to turn to the dark side. If it happens again you will be expelled. But be careful. Dark times are upon us and, unfortunately, you will have to choose a side in this war."

"I know sir. I am prepared to make my own choices as to which side I will fight for." This time Draco didn't mind sounding like his father. Not much anyway. It was the type of tone that didn't promise anything, but was almost smothered in confidence.

"Just remember Draco; it is our choices that show what we truly are, far more then our abilities. You may go now… And before I forget, here's your wand."

Draco left the headmaster office as a confused Slytherin. 'Not even a detention! Just some stupid advice about choices and abilities and shit. That man is defiantly going weird from old age.'


The trip to the Slytherin common room seemed longer then he remembered, but when he arrived there Lupin (who was expertly ignoring the comments of Draco's fellow house members) greeted him.

"I thought you might like a chat, Draco." He muttered so that human hearing wouldn't be able to pick it up. Draco gave a small nod and followed his ex-professor to the Room of Requirement, but made sure there was a fair distance between them.

The Room had given them two incredibly comfy chairs with a table between them on a posh looking rug. Each werewolf took a seat and Draco discovered the chairs were recliners, so he took full advantage of it.

There was a brief silence as they both relaxed their incredibly tense muscles. Lupin finally decided to speak.

"How have you been coping?"

Draco shrugged dismissively. He knew lupin wasn't just trying to make conversation, and that he actually cared if Draco was alright, but Draco just didn't feel like explaining that his recent temper and territorial attitude caused him to almost torture another student.

There was silence. "What am I going to do?" Draco's voice broke slightly as he spoke.

"In the long run, I don't know. Tonight I'll stay with you in the shrieking shack. I've taken the Wolfsbane Potion so I'll be able to keep my mind, hopefully you in your Wolf form will recognize me as the Alpha-Male."

"Tonight? But the full m…"

"You don't take Astronomy, do you?"

Draco hesitated at the seemingly random question. "No"

"If you did you would know that Werewolves transform three nights a month."

"Oh."

"Oh is right." Lupin got up and walked over to the window, he looked sober and much older then he should have. "Can't you hear the forest calling you? Beckoning you to enter its darkness and hunt the creatures it conceals?"

Draco moved over to a second window and looked out of it. It did seem to be drawing him to it. He couldn't look away; it was almost hypnotic. The grounds looked cold and the wind rustled the trees. 'I'd give anything to feel that wind blow through my fur… Hair! Focus, Draco, focus; you have hair not fur… Not yet anyway.'

"Does it hurt?"

He tore his eyes away from the window. Lupin was watching him, with some unreadable look his eyes. "I'm not going to lie to you, Draco. It will be painful, very painful. And it will never get any easier the older you get. But there are a lot of things that are worse." Lupin took a deep breath and ran his hand through his hair before he made his way over to the chair he was sitting in previously.

Draco spared a quick glance at the forest again as he turned around to face his future Alpha-Male. He lent against the windowsill. "I know, sir."

"How many people know? Excluding yourself, because that much is obvious."

"You, Professor Fable and Hermione Granger."

"It's always good for at least one professor to know about it and Hermione's a bright enough girl to know she should keep her mouth shut."

"Butshe'sscaredofme." Draco mumbled under his breath, more to himself then anything.

"Pardon?"

"Hermione. She's scared of me. I couldn't just see it, I could sense it. Fear and pity." The last word was spat.

"You'll get a lot of that. As well as people who will think they're better then you are."

Draco couldn't help but notice the 'subtle' hint in that statement. He knew what it was, but chose it ignore it. Ignoring things was one of the tasks he did best, but didn't practice the skill very often though.

"I hate pity."

"So do I, Draco. It's unavoidable I'm afraid, you're just going to have to accept it."

"Just because it's unavoidable doesn't mean I'm going to accept it!" he snapped. Lupin gave him a look that clearly said 'calm down'. Draco took a deep breath, which, surprisingly, helped a lot. "Sorry."

"It's ok, quite understandable, really. I suggest you get some rest before tonight." He added before standing.

"Yes, sir."

He threw up his hands, "For that sake of my sanity, call me Remus… Or Moony if you're talking about my wolf form. Under no circumstances are you to call me, sir."

"You got it Remus."


The time Draco spent when he was supposed to be sleeping, he spent thinking. It was two hard to think with all the nerves about that night. It was much easier to distract himself by thinking.

He was thinking of giving himself a nickname that he could use like Remus used the name Moony. It was a lost cause, he couldn't think of a thing.

He showed up for dinner and almost inhaled his food, which consisted of several different meats, before leaving the Gryffindor table before anyone else had finished. He got a few questioning looks as he walked between the tables, but most of them went unnoticed.

When he got out on the hall he walked for three minutes before he heard someone come up behind him.

"Draco."

Draco spun around to face Pansy, while crossing his arms to hide his shaking that came with being on edge.

"You do know that our arranged marriage must go through." Pansy snapped. "You're not allowed to go behind my back and have a relationship with someone else."

"I now that. I'm not stupid."

"Just checking." She responded sweetly, before turning around and walking towards Blaize, who was standing behind her. He had a thoughtful expression on his face.

Draco hesitantly turned around and continued to the main doors. There was something unsettling about the way Blaize had been looking at him.


Just outside the castle Remus stood waiting. He looked skyward and silently cursed the storm clouds that were accumulating. Despite certain beliefs, blocking out the moon did not stop the transformation.

The doors castle doors, which were only slightly to his left, opened at lightning speed and shut just as quickly. Remus always got incredibly jumpy around this time and jumped and he whipped out his wand when he heard the door slam.

"Draco, don't sneak up on me like that."

"Sorry."

Remus looked Draco over. He didn't look like he had slept in the last few days, let alone that afternoon and it was clear the boy was shaking for another reason besides the cold, not matter how hard he tried to hide it.

"Are we going to go down there or not?"

Remus rolled his eyes at the boy next to him, before starting off towards the Whomping Willow, taking long strides as he went.

The trip through most of the tunnel was made in silence. The moon had started rising and it was making Remus's head spin. He knew what was coming up, and he also knew that he would be better off if he ignored the dizziness. Draco didn't know either of those.

"Draco, come on, it's not far now." Draco had turned a pasty yellow colour and had slowed down a great deal. "Ignore the dizziness and concentrate on getting to the shack. That's all you should be worrying about. Getting to the shack."

"R-Right." He stumbled and Remus steadied the Slytherin. The problem was the Remus wasn't much better off.

They reached the shack after a lot of effort and concentration. It took a while to work out who would transform where. Remus decided that it would be better if he took the bedroom up the stairs, since it was the place where the most recent bloodshed happened.

He lifted one of the loose floorboards up and placed his neatly folded clothes in there, then pushed the board down. He felt the skin of his bare body prickle and his stomach twist horribly; he retched at the feeling, but managed not to throw up. He heard (and smelt) that Draco wasn't as successful at that as he was.

His muscles felt like they were being stretched like a piece of gum before finally reaching a point where the felt like they had snapped. Remus fell to the ground, no longer having the strength in his legs. Each bone broke and immediately felt like they were being grown back by Skele-Gro, except extremely fast and in different shapes and sizes.

Claws burst from the tips of his transforming fingers. Remus closed his eyes. He always avoided looking at any part of his body while this was going on.

Eventually the pain stopped and Moony opened his eyes and braced himself like he always did. When he was sure he hadn't died from the pain, he shook the cold sweat from his fur. Pawing the door open he made his way down the stairs on four legs.

The house was in tones of grey and the many smells overpowered his senses. He did his best to ignore the ones belonging to Padfoot and Wormtail as well as the incredibly faint one of Prongs and made his way to the bedroom, where he could feel the presence of another werewolf.

The first thing Moony noticed about the new werewolf lying on the ground was his coat. It was clean, thick and looked soft to the touch, it was also the colour of a Golden Labrador, which was something he'd never seen before.

Moony was scrawnier then Draco-the-Wolf too, who was covered in muscles… Or was that just fur… It's always hard to tell. But that shouldn't be that much of a problem if it was muscle, Moony made up for his scrawniness with his hight. It was going to be hard to determine who will be the Alpha-Male

Carefully approaching the unconscious werewolf, Moony raised his front paw and whacked Draco-the-Wolf over the head. He skidded along the ground before, hitting the wall and slowly regaining consciousness with a snort. Moony puffed himself up slightly to make himself seem bigger.

'This is it. Time to find out who will be Alpha. And with him being a Malfoy, this will not be easy.' Thought Remus. Draco-the-Wolf rose to his hind legs, but Moony towered over him.

"'You're in my territory'" Moony snarled.

"'You can't tell me what to do'" Wolf

Moony looked straight into Draco-the-Wolf's eyesto challenge him. They were bright blue with lots of amber specks through them.

"'State your name Lone Wolf '" Snarled Moony, his hackles raised.

"'Lycan'" Lycan's hackles were raised too.

"'Moony. And as I said before, this is my territory'" Teeth bared, Moony took a few confident steps toward Lycan, who stood his ground.

"'This… Hut, Has been abandoned by you for years'" spat Lycan "'You can't come back to claim it. I smell other species have been here too'"

"'They were my old pack'"

"'Ah, so I'm not the only 'Lone Wolf' here'" Remus saw in Lycan's eyes that he was ready to attack, Moony had to do it first or all hope of being the Alpha were lost.

He whacked Lycan as hard as he could across the face, leaving deep marks where his claws had dug in. Remus immediately felt guilty, but knew he had to do it. Lycan went up to strike and they locked jaws.

'This is going to be a long night.'


Draco woke to the smell of blood, sweat, blueberries, vomit, pine and dust. He couldn't feel anyone else in the room. He tried to call out, but his throat felt like it have been scraped by sandpaper, so that didn't work too well.

There were voices coming from the other room. One was scratchy and hoarse, the other sounded very familiar, and angry. Draco's head hurt too much to work out who the voices were but the blueberry smell was definitely Harry and the Pine smellmust beRemus.

He went to roll over so he could face the door, but was unable to move. He found that even thinking about moving his body he would get a shooting pain through it and his head, which was already throbbing without his help.

The door opened and the smell of blueberries grew stronger as Harry walked closer.

"Draco? Are you awake." Harry whispered incredibly gently, and slowly. Draco sighed in response. It was the best he could manage. "I saw you on the Marauders Map," he continued as an explanation. "I know you don't know what that is. I'll show it to you later. It's really good." He took a deep breath. "Anyway, I came because I was worried about you. I won't tell anyone."

Draco risked making his throat bleed by talking. "Thanks. 'Preciate it."

He felt the ground move and it occurred to him that he was on a bed.

"I know it hurts, so don't speak."

Harry's hot breath blew on the back of Draco's neck, slightly warming up his ice-cold body. It made him shivered and Harry must have noticed, because the next thing he felt was the bed moving again and a blanket being placed tenderly over him.

Harry lay behind him again and kissed the back of his neck. "Go to sleep now. Ok?"

Draco sighed again and slowly did what Harry hadtold him too.