Chapter Four

He'd dismissed that other familiar scent that kept flickering across his path every now and again as he wound through the streets the next morning, reorienting himself with his surroundings. The impact of the full moon had been jarring, especially since he was in that confined space rather than free to run the woods, like a true wolf should, inadvertently throwing him off course.

But the more he encountered this scent, the more he realized that something impossible was really going on. Draco Malfoy was here, somewhere. If not right now, than at least recently. Honestly, that was only slightly harder to believe than his own presence in the Muggle side of Britain.

He couldn't pretend he wasn't still just as worried about Frigga's safety as he'd been the night before, but the more he considered it, the more he realized her circumstances could've been much more dire. Pain in his arse this Mudblood was proving to be, her compassionate and radical views on non-human magical species were well known by the public. Even after whatever might've happened last night, he doubted very much his daughter was in any true danger from that witch.

Oh, he was still furious over this mess, but now that he'd had time to observe the situation, to realize it was a misunderstanding and not some calculated attempt on her part to wrong him, the more he was able to manage that fury.

Until he realized that those three scents—his daughter, the Mudblood, and young Malfoy—overlapped. He'd walked the same path the witch had taken with his daughter. Could the Malfoys be behind this? But why? They had no personal grudge against him, did they?

There was some unknown factor here for which he couldn't account, but he was not happy about it.

Finally, he found himself at the front steps of one building, in particular. Bloody hell, it was only up the street from where he'd spent the night! He'd been so close, just as he had thought.

Swallowing down a fresh wash of anger as Malfoy's scent continued up these steps with that of the females, he made his way to the front door. As he gripped the knob and turned, he wasn't sure if he was surprised or irritated to find it locked. Of course it should be locked, Muggles were a paranoid lot.

Glancing over each shoulder, he found the walk around him deserted. Nodding, he put a little muscle into giving the knob a sharp twist, snapping the locking mechanism so the door opened easily. The grinding crunch-pop sound of the whining metal and wood was a bit louder than he'd have liked given that he was trying not to draw attention to himself, but it was hardly the level of spectacle he would've made breaking down the door, either.

Stepping into the small lobby area, he paused and took a deep breath. Fixing his gaze on the staircase, he started ascending the steps, following those three scents.

Hermione was dragged out of a fitful slumber by the hammering of a fist against her front door. Blinking her eyes open, she found little human-baby Elora snoozing on the bed beside her. Luckily, the child had not made a mess of the bed after she'd shifted back in her sleep. The knocking came again, and Hermione hurried to put a diaper on Elora without waking her—clearly shifting took a lot out of one so young, the tiny thing was snoring up a storm.

What the hell was Draco doing here so early? It had to be around ten in the morning and he wasn't due over for another two hours.

Carefully bundling Elora back into the cradle—she feared the baby might roll off the bed without her there—she rushed from the room and to the front door of her flat. God, her hastily bandaged fingers were throbbing.

The knocking started for a third time as she grasped the knob and pulled the door open. "Good Lord, Draco! Why are you making such a—?" Her words died on her lips as she found herself looking not at where Draco's eyes would be, but at the collar of a slightly-ragged shirt, framed by dark hair hanging over shoulders wide enough that she could only register them in her periphery.

Swallowing hard, she lifted her gaze higher—she'd honestly forgotten just how massive he was. "Greyback?" the name tumbled from her lips in a breathless whisper.

He appeared at a momentary loss for words. His expression pinged back and forth between barely veiled anger, and open confusion.

She'd just thought last night about trying to find him, and now here he was? On her doorstep, following a full moon . . . . With a baby-werewolf she'd accidentally stolen asleep in her bedroom. As she watched him take a good sniff of the air inside the doorway, she knew. The dark hair, the golden-olive complexion . . . .

She knew what he was about to say when he finally managed to rein in his emotions enough to speak.

"Where is my daughter?"

Hermione only gaped at him in silence for a few heartbeats, she could feel tears gathering in her eyes. The baby was his. He knew she'd taken the child. He could've attacked her the minute she opened the door and he saw that she wasn't holding his daughter and was unarmed, taken his child and left.

That he hadn't done any of that, that he'd used words, instead, showed he was capable of reason. Something all the stories she'd heard of him, all that she'd seen of him, herself, during the War, had not prepared her for.

Forcing a gulp down her throat, she somehow made the tears stay in her eyes as she said, "Asleep in the bedroom." She dropped her gaze from his and hung her head, aware the contrite gesture would speak more to him than a verbal apology, as she stepped aside to allow him in.

A wary light came into Fenrir's eyes as he understood how aware she was of the situation. But Frigga was safe, and this witch had no designs to see otherwise, that was all that mattered. Walking past her, he started across the living room toward the short corridor that led to her bedroom and the bathroom.

"I didn't know," she said abruptly, her voice small and choked sounding.

Halting mid-stride, he half-turned back in her direction. He didn't speak, however, waiting to see if she had more to offer than that.

The witch closed the door, aware the action carried some weight with him—that closing herself off with him in any measure showed that she trusted and understood that he was not there to harm her. Given their history, she was cognizant that this simple act probably spoke volumes to him.

However, she kept her gaze downcast as she shrugged. "I was in the woods hunting for herbs, and I came across a baby alone. I thought she'd been abandoned, I had no idea."

Fenrir exhaled, long and sharp, through his nostrils. "I know. If I thought anything otherwise, you'd not still be breathing."

She could only manage a nod as he turned on his heel and continued to the bedroom door. Hermione Granger knew she was many things. Overconfident, short-tempered, judgmental . . . but she was also compassionate to a fault, intelligent and insightful. Just now those three latter traits won out over all the others.

Those three traits allowed her to be humbled by her own idiocy. Oh, surely, even in hindsight, she knew she couldn't have expected herself to behave any differently upon finding a seemingly-abandoned child, but in the end, she also knew that any legal channels she'd have gone through about this would've made things far worse. Human authorities would've put the child into the system, the Ministry might've realized what she was and wanted to study her, since baby werewolves were virtually unheard of . . . and either route would've meant Fenrir Greyback potentially never finding his daughter.

Allowed her to recognize that she didn't really understand the man standing in her home, at all.

As she lifted her gaze, watching his imposing figure stalled at the threshold of her bedroom doorway, she recognized that her reluctance to give up Elora had served some purpose, after all.

His steps were slow and measured as he moved into the room, beyond her line of sight.

She couldn't imagine the agony and strain her actions had put him through the last three days. Holding in a sigh, Hermione tried not to think about this being the last she'd see of the child as she walked over to hover in the doorway.

She found him standing just inside the room. Though she expected he'd have gone and immediately scooped the sleeping baby into his arms, he was instead looking about at the things in the room. The bags of diapers and baby books, toys, and clothes, bottles . . . .

"You weren't planning on just keeping her for just a few days, were you?" He looked back at her over his shoulder. "You were going to take in a child you found? Just like that?"

Elora—or whatever her real name was, now that her father was here to finally tell her, proper—stirred, then. Hermione would assume the reason was the sound of Fenrir's familiar voice being so close.

She nearly started toward the cradle on instinct, but just as fast stopped herself. The movement was not lost on him.

God, he wanted to hate her for this! He wanted to be so angry with her . . . but seeing how she genuinely cared for Frigga made that so, so hard.

Ignoring his flagging temper, he crossed to the cradle and sat on the bed beside it, waiting for his daughter to full wake. "Frigga? C'mon sleepy one."

"Frigga," Hermione echoed as she watched the baby open those enormous dark-blue eyes of hers, as she listened to the series of giggles the child broke into upon seeing her father's face. Sniffling, she forced herself, once more, not to cry. "It's a lovely name."

He shook his head as he reached into the cradle, lifting Frigga and settling her on his lap. "Oh, and I suppose you called her 'hey you?'"

The witch's eyes widened as she realized the werewolf had just made a joke. "No," she said, though she couldn't help a laugh that escaped with the word. "I was calling her Elora."

A thoughtful frown curved his lips. "I's not bad, I suppose." Arching a brow at the sound of crinkling that met his ears, he tugged at the bottom of Frigga's lilac onesie. "What the hell is that, now?"

"Oh!" Hermione only now remembered then that when she'd found Frigga, she'd been in a cloth diaper. At the time, she'd not thought anything of it, as reusable baby-things had never really fallen out of favor, and were coming back into popularity. Knowing what she did now, the choice made even more sense. "Muggle diapers. You throw them away after they're soiled and grab a new one from the pack. The outer-shell keeps whatever inside the diaper so it doesn't dirty the baby's clothes."

Lifting Frigga in his hands, he turned her—much to the baby's giggling delight—inspecting her cushy little bottom. "That's actually quite clever."

Lost in the moment of calm and camaraderie, the witch thought nothing of it as she raised her bandaged fingers to cover a laugh.

His eyes immediately shot to her hand. He set Frigga back in the crib as he flared his nostrils. Sooner than Hermione could react, Fenrir stood before her. He grabbed her wrist and pulled the bandaged area toward his nose.

He knew he should've smelled the blood sooner, but with the sheer oddity of the situation, he thought perhaps his mind's need to be in control and understand what was happening around him was overriding his animal instincts and the things his senses might be trying to tell him. "She bit you?" he asked, his tone demanding as he tore at the bandages to get a better look.

She winced, swallowing hard against a new wash of pain as their removal caused friction against the gash on her fingers. "She didn't mean to! She was only playing!"

Those amber eyes of his widened as he saw the wound. This was no accidental nip. But more so, even after Frigga had bitten her—

"You're defending her?" He relinquished his hold on Hermione's wrist and backpedaled, confusion filling his face. "You've been bitten by a werewolf, and you're not . . . you're not angry with her?"

There was a strange, almost childlike demeanor to him as he asked that. Part wonder, part confusion. That he could even think she'd be angry with a child, or that she'd stop caring about her, reminded Hermione of precisely why this situation—Fenrir Greyback, in her home, with his daughter, cracking jokes and marveling over Muggle child-rearing conventions—was so very strange.

"Well, I don't suppose someone like you would be able to understand that, would you?"

His eyes narrowed lethally as he stepped closer, once more, deliberately moving to tower over her. "What could you possibly mean by that?"

"Oh, I dunno, maybe I'm the one shocked by this whole thing? After the way I remember you? After the stories about you? You're a savage and a cannibal!" Where was this burst of anger coming from? Oh, right, because he was mystified that she wasn't angry with an infant!

Fenrir bit back his own anger, reminding himself that her ignorance was a product of what the Ministry wanted everyone to think of him. "Right, then. I suppose you're aware that the Dark Lord was literally starving me back then, yeah?"

She blinked, the emotion in her eyes changing with that downward sweep of her lids, confusion tempering the rage, now. "What?"

Aware this was the reaction he wanted, but unsure exactly how to proceed now that he had it, he forced a nod. "Yeah, didn't hear that as part of your stories, did you? No, didn't think so."

He backpedaled, sitting on the bed beside his daughter's cradle, once more. "He had me under a charm that forbid me from disobeying him. And he wouldn't let me eat . . . not until he said, and only what he said."

Hermione understood, now. The realization made her stomach churn and ice trickle down her spine. "He . . . he kept you like a prize-fighting dog?"

His brows pinched together as he guessed that was some Muggle thing. Shrugging, he offered, "I suppose. It made everyone fear me more, fear him more. Made me irrational, feral . . . . Don't know when he came up with the idea, but one day he just told me I couldn't eat. Then, had to be weeks later, one of the people I'd bitten for his army died. Dark Lord told me to feast on the corpse, I couldn't disobey, but I was so hungry by then—ravenous—I didn't care to disobey. I just wanted to eat something."

She felt her weight give, her body sagging sideways against the doorframe. "I never . . . never knew."

"Only he and I knew."

Hermione was surprised she hadn't fallen on the floor for the shock she was feeling over this revelation. Every time she thought she understood the depth of Voldemort's depravity during those dark times, something like this came out of the blue.

Fenrir, apparently determined to focus on more pleasant things, lifted Frigga from the cradle, once more. "Now you listen here! You know better than to nip!"

Immediately Hermione was pulled from those negative thoughts and she snapped into a standing position. "Don't take that tone with her! She's only a baby!"

"She's a werewolf," Fenrir corrected her. "Born werewolves develop their minds and instincts faster than humans. She may be little, but I've taught her better."

"Wait, so you're saying—"

"I'm saying she might've been acting playful, but she wanted to bite you."

Hermione looked at the baby. Frigga was staring back at her, tiny face smooshed up like she was ready to cry. Little poot was afraid she was in trouble and was trying to get out of it with a cute expression! Oh, this was . . . . Oh! "So she's understood me this entire time?"

Sensing the witch's burst of irritation, Fenrir snickered in spite of himself. "Prob'ly. Likely she understood you didn't mean her any harm. She didn't fuss when you took her in the first place, did she?"

Hermione shook her head, still in a bit of disbelief. "No. She's been an angel. Even when . . . ." She let her voice trail off, aware of what she'd said that first night to the baby. That talk of being her mother. Elora—Frigga had seemed happy.

"There you go."

Turning her attention to her wounded fingers, the witch said, "So then why—?"

"Instinct." He exhaled, once more arching a brow as he said in a slow, cautious way, "She wants you to be one of us."

Hermione and Fenrir stared at one another for a breathless moment as the possibility that she might become a werewolf sank in. Until the silence was broken by Frigga unleashing a happy giggle.

He scowled as he returned his attention to his daughter. "You are in so much trouble."

"So, um, you probably want to go, now, I'd imagine." Hermione shrugged, waving at the things around the room. "You're welcome to whatever you want to take with you for her."

Fenrir stood, the baby in his arms as he looked about. "I should probably come back in a few weeks. Check on you, see whether or not you're turning."

The witch nodded, her gaze fastened to father and child. This was so incredibly awkward, now. All she could think about, though, was a way to delay this.

"Before you go, um, you probably haven't eaten in a while, what with looking for us, so . . . ." She shrugged. "Maybe I could at least make you something?"

Again that look that was part wonder, part confusion came into his face and she was forced to consider that he'd perhaps never had a home-cooked meal before.

After a strained few seconds, he nodded, aware of his giggling daughter in his arms, trying to reach out for the witch. "Okay."