A/N: Thank you all so much for your reviews, favorites and follows! Huge thanks to lanamarymack for alpha/beta reading this chapter!
Please let me know what you thought of chapter ten and be on the lookout for chapter eleven next week!
They rode all afternoon, until Hermione's bottom was quite sore. She was unaccustomed to riding on horseback and even more unaccustomed to sitting up as far as possible to avoid Pettigrew's wandering hands. It left her in an unusual position that left her aching.
Pettigrew didn't let up the pace, even when the sun sank below the horizon and the moon began to rise. Only once the moon was at its pinnacle did he slow his horse to a slow walk, finding the entrance to some sort of cave. He swung himself down from the horse, before plucking her off as well. When she was safely inside the cave, he tied her arms in front of her and her ankles together as well, before propping her up against the stone wall.
"This isn't very comfortable, you know," she growled, feeling the pain of uneven rocks sticking her in the back.
"Your lack of comfort doesn't really bother me, Princess," he said with a sneer.
She glowered at him, still annoyed that she'd been captured so easily. "Once I get my hands on you, Pettigrew, you are going to rue the day that you were born!" she hissed between clenched teeth.
That caught his attention. "You know me?" he asked, with a crooked grin on his face, making him only seem more sinister in the shadows of the cavern. "My reputation precedes me. Tell me, does Remus talk of me much?"
Hermione recoiled from him in disgust. "Remus would never waste his breath on someone like you," she answered, happy to see his face fall. "You are nothing more than an odious, murderous little rat! And I fail to understand why you'd be proud of that."
He seemed wounded by her words, but quickly shook off the hurt and set out building a small fire, doing his best to ignore the angry Princess.
She was grateful for the bit of warmth that the fire provided. It was quite chilly in the cave and the fire managed to stave off the worst of it, although she highly doubted that Pettigrew was doing it for her benefit. With him distracted, she began to look around the cave for something that she might overpower him with. To her dismay, the cave was pretty barren, except for the sword that Pettigrew wore on his hip.
Biting her lower lip, she considered the chances of her getting hold of it. They were probably slim with her hands tied together. She was more likely to end up hurt herself if she tried wrestling it away from him, even if she managed to catch him off guard.
Unable to sit still like a good little Princess, Hermione decided to goad the man. Perhaps if she got him angry enough, he would make a mistake. "You know that when Jarl Remus finds us, he's going to kill you," she promised, her voice as low and as threatening as could be.
He laughed at her threat. "I thought it was you who was going to hurt me, Princess," he answered.
"Well, I'm not going to deny Remus a chance to make you pay, when he gets here," she said with a sniff.
"That might scare me if Remus could find us. But by the time that he locates this cave, we will be far away on a ship, headed back to Denmark, so that I can deliver you to my King," he said, with a leer. "And he's even promised me a taste of you, once he's broken you in, of course."
Hermione shuddered at the thought, but knew that her best bet was to keep him talking as long as possible to keep him distracted. Hopefully, Remus would be able to find her shortly because she did not want to end up on a boat with Pettigrew, even if it was part of the plot. Honestly, she didn't remember the book being that long!
"And just who is your King?" Hermione asked, willing if not to be Voldemort. She didn't want to face him again, even if he was superimposed on another character.
"Why, Lord Fenrir, of course," he told her, seemingly surprised that she wouldn't already know.
"Hm," Hermione said, glad that it wasn't Voldemort after all, but surprised that it was Fenrir. He wasn't the main antagonist in her subconscious, though she had not relished her interactions with him. But then she connected the dots — the book had obviously picked people from both her and Remus's lives. Fenrir Greyback was obviously a bigger antagonist than Voldemort was to the wizard. It made sense. He was the one who had turned Remus, after all.
"I bet you will like him. He's unnatural….just like your dear, sweet Remus," he taunted. "Though he is more frightening than Remus could ever hope to be."
"What do you mean 'unnatural'?" Hermione asked, wondering how Pettigrew would describe lycanthropy in this book world.
"Well, they are both shape changers, aren't they? They can turn into wolves at will on the field of battle, biting and mauling their enemies. And they change unwillingly during the night of the Full Moon," Pettigrew said, his eyes dazed and unfocused while he stared into the flames, as though he was haunted by some memory.
When Hermione made no response, he looked up at her, a malicious grin on his face once again. "I've always wondered if they fuck like wolves, too. Maybe King Fenrir will let me watch him take you, and then I will find out," he said. "Or maybe you can already tell me, Princess. Does Jarl Remus take you like the animal he is."
Hermione's stomach turned at his words. "Remus is not an animal," she insisted. She found herself wanting to tell her captor that she didn't care that Remus was a werewolf. She wanted him to know that Remus was a perfectly lovely human for most of the month and with proper preventative actions, he was a perfectly lovely werewolf as well. The Full Moon would pass without incident.
But she knew that it wasn't going to make a difference to this awful little rat, who'd already decided to see the worst in werewolves. Also, he was nothing more than a figment of Charms work in an overly elaborate romance novel.
Still, as the evening wore on, Hermione was beginning to get worried that perhaps Remus wasn't going to show up. After all, he had been avoiding her ever since they had bathed together at the river. Who knew how long it would take for him to return home from his hunt with Sirius and realize that she was gone? Maybe he would think that she just wanted a bit of space. By the time he put two and two together, she'd be halfway across the sea, ready to be gifted to Fenrir Greyback!
She was pleased to notice that every time they heard a wolf howl off in the distance, Pettigrew would shake like a leaf. It was reassuring that he was so afraid of Remus and whatever vengeance he would bring upon him when Remus eventually caught the devious rat. Of course, Remus was an excellent duelist and he'd fought bravely during the war, but his demeanor was usually so calm and unassuming that she had trouble imagining him coming in a blaze of glory to rescue her. She kind of assumed that others would underestimate him, too.
So, she had been supremely surprised when Remus actually did run into the cave, sword drawn. With his viking warrior armor over his clothes and the intense look on his face, Hermione felt herself actually swooning at the dramatic entrance. She felt ridiculous, but it was just so...bloody romantic to have Remus play knight in shining armor to her damsel in distress.
The only thing that hurt was having to remind herself that Remus wasn't actually doing this for a romantic reason, but instead because he probably felt obligated to look after her. He'd always been selfless like that. And, she supposed that he needed her to get them out of the book in the end.
"Remus!" she said, pleased to see him nonetheless.
His green eyes swept the room with a kind of exacting urgency, until he found her. When he saw that she was restrained, but unhurt, she watched as some of the tension in his body evaporated. He cataloged every bit of their environment, until he found the other occupant in the room.
"Peter?" he asked, sounding slightly confused. Of course, in the real world, Peter Pettigrew was long dead.
"Yes, I bet you never thought you'd see me again after you exiled me from our village," Peter said with a sneer, standing up. "But I answer to a new King now and he was so very eager to hear about the Princess that you had brought home with you. Even the great Jarl Remus has a weakness to be exploited.
"Why would he be interested in that?" Remus asked, his hand tightening on the handle of the sword. Though he was more at home with a wand, he looked strangely normal wielding the sharp, deadly object. Hermione thought that he carried it as if he barely weighed more than a wand.
"No woman has ever turned your head before, so King Fenrir thought that this one might be special. And I see that his thinking was correct if you've come after her yourself," Peter sneered. "But you won't stop me. I won't fail Fenrir - not when he's promised me a go at the Princess. After he makes her his woman, of course." He spoke so blithely that both Hermione and Remus bristled at the words.
"I won't let you take her!" Remus shouted, his voice deadly serious.
Peter laughed in response. "I'd like to see you try and stop me," he challenged.
Remus growled. "Careful, Peter. We both know that I'm the better...swordsman," he said, stumbling over the words. "And this time I won't hesitate to hurt you."
He didn't wait for Pettigrew to unsheath his sword - there were no dueling rules here. Instead, he lunged at the rat and pierced the man in the shoulder, bright red blood flooding his tunic. Pettigrew gasped at the intrusion, but was unphased, drawing out his own sword. His blade crashed down against Remus's, beginning the fighting in earnest.
If Hermione wasn't so worried for Remus's safety, she thought that she might have appreciated the relief that this fight probably was for him. He hadn't been the one to dispatch Pettigrew in their world, despite wanting to avenge his friends. In fact, he'd never gotten closure for the betrayal. Maybe this would be a good outlet to deal with any of the remaining ill feelings he had for his former friend.
Remus disarmed Pettigrew with a flourish, his sword dropping to the ground with a clang. Hermione thought that the fight would be over, but it seemed that the rat had one more trick up his sleeve. "Remus, look out!" she called when she saw the other man pull a small dagger, before plunging it into the werewolf's side. Red quickly blossomed under the fabric, showing a very real wound. She wanted to help him, but was unable to do anything from her prone position.
The cold bite of the metal must have shocked Remus because his face was transformed with fury and he began to rain a fury of blows down on the man. He was pure concentration and no mercy, unbothered by the fact that he was about to kill a man. He didn't hesitate when he ran his sword through Pettigrew's guts only half a moment later.
Pettigrew seemed genuinely shocked to have been run through. He dropped to his knees, his hands on the hilt of the sword, trying to remove it. He gasped at the pain of the blade, unable to pull it in his weakened condition. He looked up at Remus in awe, a bit of blood trickling from his mouth, before he dropped over on his side, dead.