When Harry had mentioned New York, Draco had envisioned the industrial clamour of Manhattan. A pulsing city tangled up in Empire State buildings, towering skyscrapers made of glass and chrome, and rumbling subways churning beneath the asphalt like a heartbeat. This place, Bear Valley, a rustic province located in upstate New York, was a far cry from the concrete wilderness he had imagined.

And he wasn't much impressed with all its countrified charm.

The sign they had passed on the way into the rural town, made from lacquered wood welcoming the trio to the blue-collar home of the Kodiaks, a local school sports team who were the 1982 basketball state champions according to said sign, declared they housed a whole eight thousand people in its meandering cityscape. If the ramshackle wood buildings and merry little white washed flag poles could be called a city at all.

Draco himself didn't see that many people lingering around as they walked into the crux of the town. No more than three tiny coffee shops, two of which were on the local, and only, highway for travellers such as themselves, and a place called The Donut Hole in the stretch of the single road housing what seemed to be the shopping centre of quaint shops all lined up in a pretty row.

"Not exactly the Great Gatsby, is it?"

Harry, hiking beside him down the main road towards The Donut Hole ahead was, for once, wearing a pair of jeans without a single tear to be found, capped with a soft looking burgundy jumper and a pair of flat suede boots. It did little to hide her size, as Draco's own gentle grey sweater and dark-wash jeans did little to hide his own, but it did temper their edges, the harsher colouring of their hair, and in Harry's case, the tougher slashes of her scars. It made them seem innocent enough, approachable, just two twenty-one-year-olds on a Americano-fever driven vacation before hitting University and adulthood. Nothing to see here. Move along.

"I'm surprised you even know what the Great Gatsby is."

Draco scoffed as a couple up ahead crossed the road, arms ladened with brown paper bags and a sticky looking toddler nipping at their heels.

"I'm a Wizard, not illiterate."

The sunlight here was yellow-gold, soft as it filtered through the trees on the side-walk, diffusing to something smooth and supple, and it gave reason to the pair of heavy sunglasses Harry adorned, concealing the, still, amber flare of her eyes.

"Are we truly sure Greyback's heading here? This isn't his usual preferred hunting ground."

No, Draco thought. This small provincial town, with its three little coffee shops, it's one road in and out of the city, and its inhabitants dawdling around in parkers and bobbled hats with linen shopping bags, who could likely name every classmate they went to school with three decades ago and tell you who's cousin had married who's, was a far cry from Fenrir Greyback's typical haunt.

Less tots here to snatch and bite in the dead of the night and all that.

Furthermore, it was largely out in the open. Muggle, yes, certainly, but still very much out there. Four years on from the War, and Greyback had been infuriatingly shrewd in where and how he poked his head out. So much so that three years ago Auror's had pronounced, due to inactivity, his case closed on the grounds of suspected death despite there not being a body to bury or burn.

So why risk his get-out-of-Azkaban death declaration for this tiny, sleepy town?

Harry, who's steps had slowed to a thudding drip, seemed to be of the same mind as him as she glanced around the street, brows heavy behind her sunglasses.

"Bill checked the trajectory of the woods we know he's running through with a Muggle map. This is the only town in a good few hundred miles that he could possibly be heading towards. After all this time… In this town, all seven-foot-odd, bearded behemoth of him will stick out like a sore thumb. All it would take is one sighting by a Muggle, one overheard conversation by a Witch or Wizard, and he's caught with his back to the wall and his jeans around his ankles. It doesn't make sense."

Harry's face turned towards him, and although Draco couldn't see the heat of her gaze behind the thick, dappled glass of her sunglasses, he could feel it.

"He's after something here, Malfoy. It's the only explanation I can think of that he would run the risk of being sighted when half of Magical Britain would be on his tail for it."

Draco sighed long and low, eyeing the elderly woman who passed the pair with a pink paper box of donuts.

"I doubt it's the local cuisine that's drawn his attention."

Coming to the coffee shop, the pair quickly made do with ordering modest coffees with friendly enough smiles. Harry's packed with cream and sugar, Draco's bitter and black, before leaving out the door again with a jingle of the bell above, taking seats outside in the sunlight beneath the shade of a northern red oak, where they could keep a good eye on the main road in and out of town.

Draco had just sat down when he felt the tell-tale warning of a coin vibrating in his jean pocket. A sign that Bill was in place after booking some rooms in the local, and again, only hotel available.

Harry's must have gone off too, by the way she scowled down the road across the way that, if Greyback was coming into town, he would traverse through.

They had him in a bottleneck, and still, still, Harry didn't look convinced. She didn't sound it either.

"I don't know about this."

Draco sipped at his steaming coffee, relaxing at the stinging bite.

"Splitting up was the only option. Bill can't shift, which means he isn't as strong as me and you. If he got into a fight with Greyback, he wouldn't come out of it with all his limbs. It's best for him to keep to the woods out of town and keep watch. That way he can give us a heads up if he spots Greyback or his pack making their way towards us. In turn, we get an early warning, and can cut Greyback off before he makes it too far into town and can start shearing through Muggles if a fight does break out."

Harry's finger flicked on the rim of her paper cup. Tap, tap, tapping away with her thoughts that Draco had no hope in trying to decipher. Years battling Tom Riddle's Horcrux in her own head had made her nearly impossible to breach with occlumency or legilimency, and that left no hope at all for trying to get a glimpse into her thoughts by facial expression.

Harry wasn't just a closed book most days, she was the Merlin damned Voynich manuscript.

Nevertheless, it was worrying that she hadn't taken a single sip of her syrupy drink yet. Harriet Potter turning down something sweet? They really were in the end times, weren't they.

"Something doesn't feel right, Malfoy. Can't you sense it?"

Draco paused with his cup halfway to his mouth.

"Sense what?"

The tap, tap, tapping came faster.

"That… Heaviness in the air. Look around you. People are… Weary. They won't meet our eyes even when we pass them in the street. They're crossing the road as soon as we turn a corner. Look how fast that ol' biddy is trying to scuttle passed us."

Draco chuckled, sipping anew, reclining back into his plastic chair.

"You're six-foot and some, and I'm six-foot and some more. We also have heavy accents. I doubt these Muggles have heard a Brit speak in person since those mad Americans decided to throw the tea into the harbour."

Harry snorted indignantly through her nose, but there was a tiny crinkle at the corner of her mouth, the hint of a smile threatening to break the gloom and doom on her face. It felt… Good, to see it. To know she could still smile.

To know Draco, of all people, could bring that out of her.

Four years had been a long, long time he supposed. They still had their ups and downs, chaffed something terrible against one another, argued more often than not. Harry the perpetual self-sacrificing fool who was always too ready to punch, and Draco, the self-serving boy who lied far too easily, they made a rather ugly pair, like mismatched socks, but a pair none the less. Somewhere along the way, between the Malfoys and Potters, the jabs had somehow become something tender almost, annoyed certainly, but… Pleasant, maybe.

The closest thing Draco had ever had to a sibling, perhaps, if he would ever admit it. He wouldn't, of course. Harry would most likely smack him up the back of the head if he ever called her sister.

"So not only do you read Muggle books, you know their history too, now?"

Harry promptly shook her head, the black curls in her bun glinting blue underneath the filtered sunlight.

"It's more than that, and you know it."

Draco does know it. He knows it all too well. Harry has a… Sense when it came to these things, of detecting calamity on the horizon. Maybe it was growing up as a child soldier, maybe it was the year on the run sleeping in tents and hopping from one forest to another with a Horcrux around her neck and one in her thoughts, maybe it was something to do with whatever she was now, and had been all along, but she could sniff out danger better than a Goblin could snuffle out gold.

Yet, it doesn't change anything. Greyback was their only viable lead to Remus and Sirius. Greyback was coming here. There was only three of them left. The numbers were not in their favour, and that left very little room for them to wiggle and scheme in.

And if Harry knows how to sniff out danger, Draco knows how to plot.

"And I know we don't have many other options at this point, Potter. What do you suggest we do? We leave Greyback to his own devices here, and he'll be back underground before we know it. Lost to the bloody wind. Then what?"

The tapping paused, and for a slow, lengthy while, there was merely silence drifting along with the breeze and the scent of coffee, pavement, and summer sun through oak leaves. In the end, Harry lifted her drink, downed the entire lot one, and scrunched the paper cup into a ball in her fist as she slapped it back down, using the cuff of her jumper to wipe the cream from her upper lip.

Whatever she had learned in Dumbledore's army, it certainly wasn't manners.

"I don't fuckin' know. I just don't like sitting on my arse and waiting for the axe to fall. Maybe we should take a peek around town. At least get a lay of the land. I spotted a woods out west before we entered, right on the outskirts of town. It might be a good idea to take a look. Bill can't shift, and neither can you without a full moon. We need a quick and clear getaway should things go tits up. The woods will offer cover if we need to run, and if we need to run, we need to know what direction to run in."

Draco shook his head, the soft silver locks at his brow tickling.

He should have never let Potter near him with a pair of scissor. Now his fringe was all bloody wonky.

"If we leave this road, Greyback might come while we're away. Bill's early warning will only give us… What? Twenty minutes max? Not enough time to make it back to the road. We might miss the entire reason we're here for if we go on the move."

Harry glared from behind the black of her glasses.

"Fine then. We'll ask the locals."

"Harry-"

But she was already standing up from her seat, and heading towards an elderly man making his way, with a walking stick, down the paved path with a stack of letters in his hand.

"Excuse me, sir?"

"Harry!-"

Draco too stood, lumbering for the bull-headed Gryffindor now bearing down on a man in the middle of the street.

So much for going by unnoticed.

"Sorry to bother you, sir, but you see me and my brother here are on vacation and planning on hiking this afternoon. We're not from around here, as you can tell, and we were just wondering if there was any good spots or routes to go through? I think I saw a woods out west that looked promising-"

The man, weather worn and rosy cheeked with a splattering of grey hair underneath his cap, had originally pulled away from the girl when she approached, cautious of an outsider, a six-foot outsider with a mean looking lightning bolt scar cutting through her right eye to touch base at her cheekbone, but at the mention of the woods his frail old head shook almost violently.

"Oh no, dear! Don't go out there. Terrible thing, really."

Draco came to a shambling stop besides Harry, frowning, grimacing, trying desperately to smooth out the wrinkles in his jumper.

"Terrible thing?"

He asked, and the old man shuffled the letters in his hand.

"Yes, quite! I thought you were one of those out-of-town hunters that have come sweeping through lately. That's all we need. Strangers who know nothing of our town with rifles in hand peaking through our woods. Just an accident waiting to happen, I say. I brought it up at the last council meeting but would Dorothy listen to me? Of course not! They really should-"

Harry promptly cut the man off before he could spiral too far.

"Hunters? There's animal trackers in town?"

The man now shuffled his feet along with his letters, glancing between the two with a fuzzy frown between his watery, pale eyes.

"You haven't heard? Posters are everywhere telling kids to keep out the woods."

The man licked at his lips, a little peak of pink in the leather of his face.

"Poor girl. Found in the thickets just last week she was, mauled to death. The mortician said it was a wolf attack. Strange too, wolves aren't local here, not even at the Stonehaven estate where the attack happened."

Harry glimpsed towards him from the corner of her eye, gold peering out from the turn of her sunglasses, pupil pinpricked and alert. He watched her mouth move with her low, hung voice.

"Wolf attack… There was a wolf attack here recently?"

The man, again, nodded, and Harry and Draco cut their glance off, turning their attention back to the man in front.

"Got everyone on their toes around here. Real nasty thing it was. Best you and your brother stay out of those woods."

The man brightened, teeth white and brighter sandwiched between his laugh lines.

"But there's plenty more to do at Bear Valley. Don't you fret about that. My wife is helping set up a cook off this weekend. You should both come and eat some of the neighbourhood food. My wife makes the best chili this side of the State!"

Harry painted on a toothy, lopsided grin, but Draco could see the glint of a sharp fang peeking out her lip.

"Oh, that sounds lovely! Doesn't it… Deran? We should definitely go."

A little too harshly, Harry slapped a hand across Draco's back, making the man tilt a little bit, and he went to glare and growl at the woman beside him when he caught the expectant look on her face. Oh.

Oh.

Draco nodded, mimicking her smile.

His likely looked more snarl than smile.

"Definitely, H-… Hope. But you know what, we need to go. We have lunch at… Stonehaven to make, and we should start heading there now if we want to make it in time."

Draco rolled his shoulder, cocking his head.

"You don't happen to know the road to take to get there, do you?"

The man, however, circumvented his question altogether.

"You know the Danvers?"

Harry was swifter with her response under the man's sudden scrutiny than Draco was.

"Yeah, they're our… Cousins."

Smooth, Draco wanted to sneer at Harry. Real smooth. But, he supposed, it was the smart choice, keeping it gender-neutral as she was. They were less likely to slip into a rather uncomfortable conversation if she said Uncle and it turned out these Danvers were a woman and a daughter.

Under his puffy Gillet, the man straightened up, whipping his liver-spotted hand out abruptly, pointing the stack of letters shakily up to Harry's face.

"Yes! I thought I recognized you! Darn, you look a lot like Jeremy don't you, girl? Why I didn't see it before is beyond me. These old eyes just aren't what they used to be, I suppose."

A beat, and Harry's hand stiffened on his shoulder, fingers digging uncomfortably into the blade of his back. Draco was momentarily confused by her sudden shift in temperament, perplexed truly by the flinty figure at his side, before, sluggish and dripping like honey, Harry echoed what Draco had missed.

"Jeremy Danvers… My cousin-"

Another glance, unyielding, firmer, and Harry stitched it all together with two syllables.

"JD."

Fuck.

Perhaps it wasn't a name at all as they had first assumed. Maybe, just maybe, in this little, drowsy American town, JD was more J.D.

Initials.

Before Draco could answer, the man before the two chuckled waspily.

"Oh I see it now alright. Quiet, those Danvers, but Jeremy is nice enough. Keep to themselves a lot. Didn't know they had British relatives?"

The smile on Harry's face strained, bottom lip wobbling slightly with the effort it took her to keep it in place.

"We're distantly related and only just got back in touch. Me and my brother thought we would come and… Visit before we went away for University. This is our first time here, and we've gotten a little turned around."

The man's own smile faltered.

"Distantly?"

He seemed to scan Harry up and down with those hazy eyes of his, ignoring Draco completely now, voice lofty and hollow and utterly unconvinced.

"If you say so."

But the man finally did turn around, using the end of his walking stick to point up the same road Harry and Draco had used to come into town.

"There's a road just out of town, a turn off by the welcome sign by the West Woods. Follow it and it'll take you up to Stonehaven. You can't miss it, there's no other lanes."

The end of the walking stick hit pavement with a muted thwack.

"But you two be careful up there, yes? Those are the same woods that poor girl was found in. Stick to the path, stick together, and stick to the daylight hours, alright?"

Harry nodded, wishing the man a goodbye.

"Oh and don't forget the cook off! It'll be held in the town hall this Saturday!"

Harry waved backwards, dragging Draco with her down the road towards the way the man had indicated.

"We'll be there!"

Once out of ear-shot and eyesight, the smile fell from her face like a leaf caught in a winter wind torn from its branch.

"Send word to Bill to meet us at the hotel. We need to regroup."

Hand in pocket, flipping the coin three times until it heated instead of vibrated, Draco was one step ahead.

"Already done. He should be there by the time we arrive. So… Coincidence?"

Harry stormed down the road, all hellfire and head down, keen eyes keeping track of those who passed by as if she was waiting, just waiting, for a reason to start swinging.

"Greyback's coming here for a reason. There's someone with the initials of J.D in the area. A wolf attack happened only a week ago. What do you fuckin' think, Malfoy?"

Draco chuckled, the noise warming the places between his ribs.

"I think there's only two reasons Greyback would come here. Either Remus and Sirius made it to this Jeremy Danvers, and for whatever reason Greyback is after the entire lot, or-"

Harry grumbled, finishing what Draco couldn't when his voice drifted into silence.

"Or this Jeremy and Greyback are in league, and Remus and Sirius are in grave danger. Greyback could be coming here, with Remus and Sirius, to reorganize with these Danvers. Which, if the wolf attack means what I think it means, if Jeremy Danvers and his lot are Werewolves like us, Greyback's pack numbers could bloody double. There's only three of us, two of which can't turn either at all or without a full moon. We can't take on how many fuckin' wolves there could be in this town very soon."

"Or-"

Draco hazarded, knowing just how delicate the path he was trying to walk truly was… And just how hard Harry could hit when she was pissed off.

"Greyback's been here all along, Remus and Sirius are dead, and Greyback is coming back home to-"

Harry whirled on him, nose to nose, toe to toe, voice black and hard like obsidian.

"They're not dead."

There's a flare in the middle of Draco's chest, a terrible fire of his wolf rising to the challenge, to the threat, and then a sharp and sudden drop as it rolled into his gut with a half chewed down whine under the heat aimed its way, the bite, the bark, the danger.

Whatever Harry's own wolf was… it scared the aggression out of Draco's own.

Seemingly coming to her senses, or sensing Draco's reluctant submission, Harry took a shaky step away.

"They're not dead… I would feel it if they were. I would know."

She was so sure of it, of her words, of herself, that Draco couldn't help but slightly be convinced on confidence alone. Her voice took a softer turn, but lost none of the edge.

"If it was any of us who went missing, Remus and Sirius wouldn't sleep a single hour until they had found us and got us home. We owe the same regard."

Her eye peaked over the rim of her glasses, locking onto Draco's unflinchingly.

"And I swear, we're going to give them that same respect or I'm going to burn this entire place down to the bloody ground until there's nothing but rubble and ash, and Greybacks' charred skull. You're either with me on this, Malfoy, or you're in my fuckin' way. So which is it?"

Draco knows she doesn't mean it to be as harsh as it sounds, as cruel as her raspy voice makes it, as he knows she's been running on two-hour sleep for the last three days, and barely any food despite Bill trying to convince her to nap or eat.

Draco knows.

"I'm not your enemy here, Harry."

Harry. Not Potter. And it works, her name snaps some of the aggression out her face, leeches it from the flush in her cheeks.

"And I'm not here to watch you go running head first into danger either. When we bring Remus and Sirius home, they'll have my head for not pulling yours out your arse. If we're doing this, we need to be smart. We just need to consider every option here as… Unpleasant as they may be."

When. That was it. The magical word. A reassurance that he hadn't given up hope either.

When Harry spoke next, she sounded impossibly small, young too, perhaps a little bit broken, and it was easy, far to easy, to forget just how much, and how fast, she had been forced to grow up.

How fast they had all been forced to grow up.

How much they had all lost.

"I just… I just want them home. I don't want to have to bury-"

Anyone else.

Harry doesn't say it. Draco can't force himself to either. Yet they both know those words are there hanging invisibly between them like a noose. He can only remember, as Harry likely does, all those graves, fresh without flowers, topped with shiny headstones, so many, a sea of them, after the Battle of Hogwarts, brothers, mothers, sons, Morgana, the first years caught in the crossfire-

There comes to a point where enough is enough. Even for the Girl-who-lived and the Malfoy-made-defector.

Crossing the short distance between them, Malfoy reached over and braced his pale hands on her shoulders, feeling the muscle and bone jump underneath, tensing in preparation for a fight.

Draco didn't take it personally.

Harry still wasn't used to kind touches. Grips that didn't equate to pain. A hold that wasn't trying to pin her down to carve into her arm or to wrangle her back into a cupboard. As Draco wasn't quiet sure how to be the reassuring force he never got back home with his mother more fond of Dwarven wine, and his father too far gone in the Dark Arts.

"We won't be burying anyone else. Not one."

Harry waited and Harry nodded, sharply, swiftly, a simple up and down motion, before she rolled the shoulders beneath Draco's grasp and squared herself up, stomping down on the wolf inside that merely wanted to go tearing into things into it got its pack mates back.

Knowing when and how Draco could press his luck, he let his hands fall back to his sides. Harry didn't like being touched much. Maybe it was her past, maybe it was her nature, maybe she was just a little feral and would always be that way.

He sort of liked her all the more for it.

"You know… I'm glad I didn't kill you in that bathroom."

Draco snorted, but he heard what Harry refused to outwardly admit. He wouldn't be much of a Slytherin if he didn't.

"Oh, Potter, you warm my cold, scaled heart. I'm very fond of you too, but I must admit I'm partial to blondes-"

Harry rolled her eyes and shoved her sunglasses up her nose, swiftly spinning on her heel with a snorted chuckle.

"Fuckin' mountain Troll."

Marching back down the road, Harry left little time or room for Draco to argue or do much more than follow. By the time he caught back up, she was back to business.

"They're here somewhere. I can sense it. We just have to find them."

Draco nodded, shoving his hands into his jean pockets.

"And our two elusive leads are just so about to be converging in one advantageous spot. What's the game plan here, Potter?"

Harry smirked in the golden morning light.

"I'm on heavy scent blockers thanks to the potions Remus demanded I started taking after my first shift. Not even an Inferi could sniff me out right now from a line-up. the only way someone could scent me was if I was bleeding, and I'm not planning on getting cut. I'm a bloody ghost right now. Be a shame not to use that."

"You can't be thinking of-"

Harry swiftly cut him off.

"Can you think of anything else we can do right now?"

Draco rolled his jaw, teeth clenching behind his pursed lips.

"You'd be alone. If Jeremy and whoever else he has up at this Stonehaven are Werewolves, they would smell me and Bill from a mile off. You'd be walking into the den by yourself, no back-up, no ally. That's not just dangerous, Potter, it could be deadly."

Harry shrugged, of course, thoughtless of the danger to herself.

"You and Bill need to get to the morticians. Try and get a look at the wolf attack victim. We need to make sure this is a wolf attack and not some sort of rabid dog on the loose. Plus, while you're out and about, you can keep an eye out for Greyback's arrival. I'll just pop in, make up an excuse, maybe say I broke down and need to use their phone, and have a little peek around. See if I can scent if they're Werewolves or not, and if so, how many they're bringing to the game. If you two get a scent off the corpse, and manage to get a swab of it, we might be able to match it to one of the one's up at Stonehaven. That way we know if these guys are violent enough to be using Muggles as chew toys."

"I know you currently smell like brick and plaster, and everything else utterly mundane, but one look at you and they're going to know something is up. No offense, but you look like you've just come out of an underground fighting ring twenty-four-seven. Do you even know how to brush that monstrosity you call hair? I'm pretty sure you still have blood in it from last night."

Harry peered over to him.

"I thought you said you were a Wizard not illiterate?"

"What does that have to do with anything-"

Ding.

Draco scowled.

"You have bloody Polyjuice potion on you."

Harry chuckled in the sunlight, bright and breezy and far too happy for the circumstances she was about to embark on.

"I have fuckin' Polyjuice potion. After my first shift, Remus made sure I kept an emergency pack on me at all times filled with Potions, Portkeys, and other nifty get-away-unnoticed tricks. I'm running low, but I have enough left. Come on… It's a quick in and out job. I won't be more than fifteen minutes, and we get to kill three birds with one stone. We get numbers, we see if Remus or Sirius are with them, and we find out if they're Werewolves or not. It's solid."

"It's fuckin' barmy is what it is."

"So you have another plan?"

"No. Fine… Fine. But you can try convincing Bill this is our master plan. He won't bite. I'm telling you that now."

In the end, Harry did convinced Bill, because of course she bloody did, Gryffindor's were as mad as each other, and by noon the group split up at the bottom of a winding path in the shadow of a bare branched woods.


A.N: I'm going to try and keep this fic updated once a week if I have the time. So next chapter should be out sometime next week. I have a few chapters lined up already, but they're still pretty rough so they need some work still. Still, here's to an update, and I hope you all enjoyed it!

Next chapter we're popping into the Danvers pack, and getting our first glimpse at Stonehaven.

Thank you all for the follows and favourites, and if you could, drop a review and let me know your thoughts.