A/N: Sorry this is a bit of a short chapter. But the idea of the chapter sort of ends here, so I stopped. The next one will be fairly long.

Sky Spade: Have done. Hope you like this one too.

Dolphinz87: Thanks for you numerous compliments!

TrinityDD: Thank you very much :) I feel all warm and fuzzy..

Bitter Reunions: heh. Yeah, this will be one of those very lengthy stories with 10+ chapters.

Secrets in the Snow

Hungry.

Hunger was one of those most basic needs, which all creatures strove to satisfy as best as they could. And all the wolves, but one, were hungry. Prowling at the edge of the pack, a brown-grey wolf dug his muzzle into the snow, trying in vain to numb the itching in his teeth as Fenrir deftly picked out the best parts of the human they had just killed for himself. The huge rangy wolf dug his jaws into the chest, then the navel, each time his muzzle becoming more crimson.

When Fenrir was finally done, the other wolves swarmed over the corpse, nudging and sliding against each other in their own quest for food. Pushed along with the tide, the brown-grey wolf was soon within feet of the body. But even three strides away, the body was blocked by so many others that he could not see it. Padding silently, he saw an opening amidst the fur, and pushed himself forward.

Lying there, in the snow, was food quickly being decimated. In but a few moments, it would be completely gone, with only red stains on the snow to show that anything had ever been there. Eager to take his fill as well, the wolf that was Remus pushed forward until he, too, was close enough to dip his muzzle down and take what was left to take.

There wasn't much left to take any more – undoubtedly, Fenrir had already left with the wolves not feeding to hunt down another human. But Remus-wolf was here, he was standing at the upper half of the human corpse. Not much was left except the shoulder, which had been untouched. Not pleasant, but still food. Food. His human mind, weakened by the hunger and blinded by the wolf's lust for flesh, cowered, not seeing, not believing.

It wasn't until his cold-numbed nose nudged the still-soft flesh of the shoulder that the human eyes shuddered open. While the wolf saw food, the human could see what used to be human. And in imagination's eye, the headless body gained a head – a pink haired head he hadn't seen for too long. The pink haired, fine-boned witch was being ravaged by the werewolves.

Later, Remus was never sure of how long he spent watching, horrified at the sight his imagination gave him, even more so at how much the foreign part of his own mind struggled to join them. The only thing he knew for sure was that when the first glimmers of dawn appeared, the only record of what had passed was the one seared into his memory. When the werewolves shuddered back into their naked, human forms, the harsh snow freezing them to the ground was joined by a violent, opaque white wind.

Staggering upwards, lest he be caught in a frozen tomb, Remus sought for his tattered clothing. His skin was raw, but the accumulated filth of months had been removed (albeit painfully). The process he went through every month took most of his physical energy away, but when he at last leaned against an evergreen's trunk, sheltering under a branch, the vividness of memory did not fade.

Nymphadora. It hadn't been Nymphadora, yet it had been. Every single month, every corpse he witnessed was Nymphadora. And, as always, they had been eating her. Eating Nymphadora. Relishing Nymphadora. Ripping strips of flesh off savagely, throats turned upwards as they swallowed lustily. Jealous of the human who controlled their dual minds, the wolf wished that he, too, could have tasted her.

No longer having the strength to even support himself against the tree, Remus fell forward onto his knees, bracing elbow for the fall. A few short groans later, the ground was covered in what little that had been inside his stomach before. Shaking with cold and fear, he crawled backwards, out of the shelter of the tree and back into the storm. As he tried to stand again, the branch which had been sheltering him before bowed under the weight of the snow.

All traces of what had happened, once again, buried in snow. All records of what had transpired, once more, kept only in the mind of one man. An impatient call cut through the whishing sounds of blowing snow, and once again, Fenrir's pack returned to him. Bedraggled, weak, pitifully clothed in rags and shambles, the men who had witnessed and committed murder not twelve hours before assembled proudly in front of their strong leader.

For residents of the Muggle village, two people going missing from their already small number was another blow. It was accepted that the hunter, Vladimir, had probably been caught outside when the snowstorm struck, and that the same had probably transpired for little Elsie who thought that she was so grown up. Vladimir left behind a pregnant wife, Elsie an elderly father. Breath by breath, the village became aware that not all would make it through the winter.

The violence of the snowstorm meant that any planned rescue of Vladimir or Elsie was impossible. Besides, who knew where they had gone, anyway? One certain young man thought he knew where Elsie's body would be found, but kept quiet. When a search and rescue finally set out, hours later under light snowfall, the same young man suggested that they head towards the cemetery to see if any of the tombstones had been damaged. In front of cemetery, unmarked, white snow lay in a foot-deep drift innocently. When the others went home, disheartened after a fruitless search, the young man returned to the cemetery.

"Elsie?" His voice was guilty, and as close to shame as it had ever been. Disgruntled, he kicked at the fresh snow in front of the beech tree. Alarmed, he tore pink-stained snow away with gloved fingers. Horrified, he backed away from a few tissue-clad bones. Running into the wood, under the very same tree Remus had been at that morning, he vomited his breakfast and lunch onto the snow.

However, unlike Remus, he didn't back away from the tree. A flurry of flakes flew down with renewed vigour, and the tree branch once again bowed down. He was hit squarely on the forehead and knocked out, his prone body folding under a heavy blanket of snow. It would be three months until two young boys who had wandered into the wood saw his frozen body, exposed under melting snow. That certain young man would not remain a secret.

With a dressing gown clutched tight around her body, Tonks stepped out from the doorway of No. 12. Casting a last furtive glance around to make sure nobody was around, she disappeared with a muted crack. Unknowingly, as she brushed against a metal pole, scarlet drops from her lower legs showered the ground in a spiralling pattern. When she appeared again, those scarlet drops were buried under a bright white layer of snow.