Full Summary: Fenrir Greyback, on the run from Aurors, stumbles across a feral Werewolf living in the garden of Godric Hollow, naked, wild, and nonverbal. Hemlock Potter has been missing since Voldemort's death in her nursery twenty years ago, and has been presumed dead ever since. The one thing that links the two occurrences? A man called Jeremy Danvers. This is a tale of what it means to learn to be human, the good, the bad, and the ugly. Clay/Fem!Harry/Nick. Strong M. Feral!Harry.

Warnings/Tags: Feral Child Syndrome, Animalistic behaviours, Pack mentality, slow moving, slow romance, Morally-Grey Fenrir, Werewolf politics, Eventual smut, F/M/M, Voldemort didn't survive the First War, more tags to be added later.

She saw what their eyes could see
She felt their souls and where they've been
Through the dark she found the place where she felt free
She promised to never leave again

There she was wild
Her thoughts weren't empty
She looked at the moon and smiled
For it saw something inside her the other's couldn't see

~Wild Wolf by G J Salgado

I

The Potter child was gone. The poor kid had been dead for eighteen years now, killed in the cradle with her mother's dying scream as a mournful farewell. It was the stuff of legend in the Wizarding world, growing insurmountably more mythical each passing year.

The Girl-Who-Lived-To-Not-Live-At-All.

One night on all Hallows Eve, if the story was to be believed, Tom Riddle came walking up the garden path of Godric's Hollow. He hadn't come walking back down it again, and what happened between those two points was up to wild speculation.

Some said Merlin himself appeared in some spectral form to avenge the fallen Muggleborn Witch. Others whispered of dark magics enacted by wise old Headmasters. Most gossiped about the power of love triumphing over death itself. The story didn't matter in the end.

The child was gone.

Voldemort was gone.

The First Wizarding War drew to a pitiful close on the death of an infant.

The End.

Fenrir Greyback, on the prowl for a den to settle in for the next full moon that was only two nights away, couldn't give a flying fuck about what happened that night. He was only after shelter, a hot meal, a good hunt, and a place to rest his head for a week or so.

Godric's Hollow hadn't been far off from the Forest of Dean, where Fenrir had spent the last year keeping his head low from searching Aurors.

It was too easy to slip into the quant, sleepy little village unseen. Cottages stood on either side of the narrow road. A short way ahead a golden glow of streetlights indicated the centre of the village. Behind the church, row upon row of snowy tombstones protruded from a blanket of pale blue that was flecked with dazzling red, gold, and green wherever the reflections from the stained glass hit the snow.

Fenrir Greyback had slept in worse places.

So he slunk through the streets, through the cottages and the churchyard, around the golden glowing street lamps, and he skulked through the Potter's garden, and he crept through the broken-down door of the cottage with its roof half-caved in, and he saw the evening in by building a fire in the back garden.

He was just roasting a freshly skinned hare when he heard the noise. The cotton crunch of snow underfoot being flattened. His amber gaze had darted up to the far end of the garden, which led out into a small patch of bare branched trees, misty and murky in the dark.

It was too cold and too late for the local Muggles to be out and about.

His nostrils flared. He smelled nothing but ice and pine-cones. The wind was blowing downhill. Sucking the last bit of meat from the modest leg of the rabbit, Fenrir dashed the bone into the fire with a sizzle and a pop.

Aurors would have attacked by now.

Crunch.

Fenrir's neck snapped around so fast the muscle in his jaw twanged, gaze whizzing towards the right where the stone birdbath laid toppled over under a blanket of white.

Something was here.

Something was fast if they could dart from the far end all the way up the right fence in the time it took Fenrir to scent the air.

"If you're thinking of picking a fight with me, I would advise you to think again."

The smoke from the fire danced in the air.

Crunch.

Another snap, another dash of amber eyes tracking the sound, so quiet and muffled it would be inaudible to anyone but a Werewolves' rather keen ears.

Fenrir's gaze fell on the bush from behind.

Whoever it was, whatever it was, it was trying to get at his back-

The wind blew, fluttering Fenrir's braided hair, and with it came the scent of something wild. A flutter of black amber, a hint of pear, a splash of rosewood and clove and a dark burst of something a little like gunpowder, all topped with a hint of-

Fenrir stood in a blink, a warning growl rumbling in the swell of his chest.

Wolf.

A flicker of movement by the bush, almost too fast to be seen, a shadow dipping in and out of sight and-

The flicker of something green.

No, Fenrir thought as he peered underneath the starlight with his own sharp senses. Not something.

An eye.

An eye staring out from a branch of the bush, staring right at… Right at the roasted rabbit.

Fenrir took a step closer-

The growl that came blistering through the air was feral, untamed, savage. A down right threat.

"Easy, boy. You don't want to test my pity. I have none."

The werewolf, young by the smell, plunged back into the bush, green eye blinking out of existence, dropping into the shadow, and Fenrir didn't know what came over him that brought his attention to the rabbit.

Maybe he was getting old. Maybe he was losing his edge after spending a whole year on the run from Wizards who wanted him in chains and a muzzle. Maybe it had been too long since he had seen another Werewolf, even one as… Coy as this one.

Maybe he was just bloody tired, and of course the one place he had chosen to rest for the first time in six months would turn out to be a den to some pup.

Whatever the reason, Fenrir plucked the rabbit from the makeshift spit from a branch he had pilfered from the woods, tore a leg from the rabbit, and threw it towards the bush, watching it skid in the snow.

He waited.

And waited.

And waited.

And waited-

The green eye appeared anew in the little break of the holly bush. It blinked at him, and then to the leg, then back up at Fenrir.

"Tch. Bloody eat it or I will, boy."

There was no crunch in the snow this time, but a hand did come out from behind the bush. Pale. Long fingered. Smeared in dirt and black soot. Scarred.

Small too.

Very, very, very small.

Huh.

It snatched out, stole the leg, and disappeared anew. Yet, there was the sound of bone snapping now, something a little like the gnashing of fangs, and the slight pop of something being sucked between teeth.

A moment later, the eye appeared again, flashing between Fenrir and the rabbit.

"Oh fuck off. You've had your fill."

The bitter answering growl sounded like it was ripped from a throat, thick and guttural and belly deep. Confusedly, Fenrir grinned underneath the moonlight. The kid had balls; he'd give him that. And, the older Werewolf supposed, he had come settling down in the kids own little patch of territory.

This time, the rabbit leg landed closer to Fenrir than it did the bush. The pale, scarred hand came out to reach. It couldn't cross the distance, not fully without pulling the rest of the body out of its carefully chosen cover, and the limb disappeared into the bush once again. Fenrir's head cocked to the side curiously.

"Don't tell me you're nervous? Shame. I guess you'll be shy and hungry then."

Deliberately, Fenrir sat back down by the fire with a grunt, warming himself up in the golden light, and took to making short work of the rest of the rabbit. Minutes could have passed, maybe a whole hour before the foot came out the bush. It was slowly followed by a calf, a thigh, the side of a hip. Pale, long limbed, slender and coated in grime and silvery scars. The arm came next, along with a belly, and a chest, and a mass of tangled, knotted black hair that appeared as if it hadn't seen a hairbrush in its life.

The face came last, partly obscured by the monstrous hair, tiny, delicately features hidden beneath the streaks of dirt and dreadlocks, keen and sharp and watchful.

And female.

Female.

The small, so very small, completely naked woman, who appeared to be around twenty, perhaps a few years older given her tiny size from, evidently, malnourishment, came scampering forward, crouched down deep in the snow as if she couldn't feel the blistering cold, wolfish in the sharp shocking movements her appendages moved in, where she grabbed the leg, snatched it up in claw like hands half-shifted to a wolf's paw, and began devouring it whole.

Fenrir's own half eaten meal fell between his legs, forgotten in the snow.

A flutter of black amber, a hint of pear, a splash of rosewood and clove and a dark burst of something a little like gunpowder, all topped with a hint of wolf.

Which was impossible. Females didn't shift. They didn't survive the turn. For whatever reason that was beyond Fenrir, medical or magical, there were no female Werewolves.

Especially not ones born as this one, by the headiness of her smell, was.

The small bone broke between her fangs twisted in a hungry snarl, and the young Werewolf, feral by the state of her, slurped up the marrow.

How long had she been out here? Where were her clothes? What was she doing here-

A young girl. Around twenty. Godric's Hollow.

"Hemlock Potter?"

The woman froze, green eyes bright and burning in the night, in her face of soot and scars, and for a moment, just a brief flare, Fenrir thought there might have been a flicker of understanding, in some way, shadowing her eye before-

Before she dropped the mangled leg and darted for the small patch of woods at the back of the garden, faster than a whirlwind.

Fenrir Greyback gave chase.

A.N: I've not been updating lately because life has been giving me lemons, and I've been trying to make lemonade. Life does that sometimes. And I know some of you are going to be annoyed that I've started another story, but to be honest, I just want to write something fun right now and nothing too heavy that I have to think too seriously over. This is me, right now, trying to make some lemonade lol. I am working on my other fics, but it might be a little while before I can update. I just want a bit of fun escapism right now, and I hope this can be that for you two while I get to work on my other stories.

Thank you to my beta GoWithTheFlo20 for putting up with my nonsense! It is much appreciated.

Hope you all liked it and are looking forward to the next chapter! Until then, stay beautiful ~AlwaysEatTheRude21