Boy-Snape

Sirius didn't have time to waste. In one sweeping motion, he lifted Severus up and ran for the nearest tree that was sturdy and tall. There were too many of them for him to outrun with Severus (plus, where would they even go?) and he knew he wouldn't be able to protect the kid from all four if Severus was in easy reach of them. At least if he were in a tree, there'd be the possibility of him surviving this attack. Severus could get up high enough in the branches Greyback and his pack couldn't follow and he would be able to stay there (hopefully) through the night if Sirius couldn't fight them off now.

He heard the four werewolves running toward them as he shoved Severus's bum up the tree. "Grab on to a branch, climb straight up! Don't you dare come down unless it's safe!" he yelled at Severus as the men laughed at them and woman cackled along. Looking over his shoulder as Severus awkwardly scaled the tree with his broken arm, Sirius saw the gang of werewolves was circling him. Greyback, the man, and woman wore malicious, delighted grins. The girl, though, just stared up at Severus with a blank expression. Sirius didn't like that at all. What did her interest in Severus mean for them? He already knew Greyback had some creepy inclination toward children, but was she the same?

"Yer not goin' ter save him like tha', boy," the man who wasn't Greyback, but was nearly as large and just as rugged, taunted.

Sirius clenched his teeth and turned to face them. "You might be surprised," he declared with faux-bravo.

Greyback threw his head back and laughed like he'd told the best joke the werewolf had heard in a while. "Will we?" he said in a deep, gravelly purr. "If you hand over the boy, we might let you leave this forest with your life."

Sirius shook. He'd promised. No one was getting left behind for werewolf food. He knew there was only one way out of here and it involved a lot of bloodshed. He wasn't sure if he'd be able to manage it, but he was going to damn well try. It was the only option. He had a promise to keep. "No," he refused.

Greyback's amusement faded and he snarled at Sirius, showing off his ugly, chipped yellow teeth in the process. "That's the wrong answer, boy," he growled.

Sirius didn't look away from the man even as he saw the woman start coming toward him and the tree out of the corner of his eye. "I think not!" he shouted. Then, without a moment of hesitation, he transformed into Padfoot and leaped at the woman. With surprise on his side, he easily took her to the ground with her screaming and thrashing all the while. Focused on protecting Severus by any means necessary, he tore his teeth into the woman's throat the moment her head thudded against the ground. It abruptly cut off her screams and startled the men into roars of rage and panic as they came at him. While the woman choked and gurgled, Sirius moved with all the nimble grace his dog-form allowed him and led the men away from the slowly dying woman. For now, their focus was on him. He hoped Severus would realize that meant he ought to get down from the tree and run as far and fast as he could. He'd be able to find the kid as long as he was still Padfoot later. And if he didn't… Well, the kid knew bugs were a fine option if he didn't want to starve to death.

As he dipped out of reach of the men's grabby hands and dodged their lunges, Sirius looked over to where he left Severus. The girl from earlier was standing at the base, hands cupped around her mouth and Severus was leaning down to hear her from a low-hanging branch just out of the girl's reach. Sirius didn't have a clue what the teenage-girl was telling him, but he was sure it wasn't anything good. While Sirius debated rushing her, he became so distracted that the man with the West Country accent was able to grab him by his scruff. Angry at himself for being caught and realizing that leading these werewolves away might not be enough to save Severus from whatever fate Greyback had planned for him, Sirius twisted in werewolf's hold and bit down on the hand holding him. Hard.

The werewolf's skin tore open, Sirius's teeth sunk past flesh and veins and muscle and right into bone. He heard it crack between his teeth. Sirius felt a devious kind of satisfaction that only grew stronger when the man's yowling took on a higher-pitched quality from the pain he was experiencing. He decided to see how high he could get the West Country werewolf's voice to go by shaking the man's hand around like he might a ragdoll.

Greyback came at him then, fists raised. He throttled Sirius around the head hard enough to make him dizzy, but still Sirius refused to let go of the other's hand. This was life or death and he knew it. Not just his life, either. When Greyback realized Sirius wasn't going to let go of the man's hand from a beating, the man grabbed him around the middle and tried to pull Sirius off the other. The West Country werewolf screamed louder than ever as Sirius felt one of the man's fingers give way and fall out of his mouth between his teeth. It was only then Sirius let go of the man. As the West Country werewolf fell to the ground and tried to stem his bleeding wound with the sleeve of his robe, Sirius turned on Greyback and chomped into the werewolf's face.

Greyback roared and ripped Sirius away from him. He threw Sirius as far away from him as he could. Sirius yelped when he landed on his back some feet away, but quickly recovered. Scrambling up from the ground Sirius bared his teeth and readied himself to pounce when he saw Greyback approaching, one hand over his face. "You—" he gasped between unsteady steps. "You—"

Before he could take another step, however, Greyback fell face-first to the ground with a short, hurt cry. Where he'd stood was the teenage girl. Her blue eyes were feral and between her fingers was a rather large, now bloody, rock. When their gazes locked, she dropped the rock at Greyback's side and told him, "We need to get moving. He's not going to be out for long." She looked up. "Night's only a few hours off too."

Sirius was wary and he looked over to the tree where he'd left Severus. The kid was watching them from the same branch he'd been listening to the girl from before. He was nodding rapidly at Sirius as if to assure him it was safe to be Sirius again. Reluctantly, he returned to his normal form. It did nothing to clear the taste of blood from his mouth. Putting up a hand to keep the girl from speaking further, he turned his head and spat on the ground until he'd gotten rid of most of the blood. When done, he wiped his face clean of the worst of the mess and then turned to the teenage girl. "Who the fuck are you? Why did you just help me take out your pack?" he demanded.

The girl fiddled with a lock of her wispy russet hair. "He called me Lupa," she said, kicking at Greyback's leg. "But…" she ducked her head a little, staring bashfully at Sirius through her lashes. "I was Joan, once."

Sirius nodded. "Joan it is, then." He put a hand to his chest. "I'm Sirius."

"Sirius," Joan repeated. "How fitting," she said, flashing him a brief smile. Sirius only crossed his arms and cleared his throat. He'd only gotten one of the answers he'd wanted and he wasn't going to wait patiently much longer for the other. Joan appeared to realize this as she explained to him, "I helped you because I know he's wrong and evil." She pushed back her hair, showing him a mangled ear. Then, she pulled at the collar of the oversized, holey jumper she was wearing and revealed to Sirius an ugly uneven scar on her shoulder that looked like someone had bit into her and ripped out a chunk of flesh from there once upon a time. She let her collar go back to where it'd been hanging loosely down around the front of her flat chest and Sirius was about to say something, but the girl then lifted up her jumper's hem to display more, claw-like scars that started next to her belly button and ran down past the waistband of her too-small pants. Sirius shivered at that. He didn't want to even start to imagine what the rest of those scars below looked like. "I'd show you the one that turned me," she told Sirius, "but that'd involve taking off my boot since it's on my calf and we really need to go."

He still wasn't sure if he should really be trusting her, but she'd taken out Greyback and she was right. He and Severus needed out of this forest before the full moon tonight. "Right," he told the girl. "Just let me get Severus from the tree."

Walking over to where Severus was waiting on the low branch, he lifted his arms to the kid and told him, "Jump down! I'll catch you!"

Severus slipped off the branch easily and into Sirius's arms. Once there, he clumsily wrapped his good arm around Sirius's neck and muttered into the hollow his throat. "Thank you for not leaving me to the werewolves."

He patted boy-Snape's back. "I told you I wouldn't," he reminded him. He looked over to see the girl was coming over to them. "D'you know a village that's close by?" he asked her.

She nodded. "It's an hour and a half east of here," she told them. She started to worry her lip as an anxious air overcame her. "I know I probably don't deserve anything after all I've done as a part of Greyback's pack these past few years, but can I come with you? At least halfway to where you're going?" She looked over her shoulder and shivered. "He's going to make me pay for what I just did if he catches me."

Sirius shifted Severus around in his arms so the kid could see the girl. "Yeah," he told her. "We're going to Hogwarts. You can come all of the way if you want, even. The headmaster will be more than happy to host you for the moon after what you've just done to help me save the kid from that monster."

Her eyes turned bright and awed. "Hogwarts? I was supposed to go there," she whispered. Her fingers went to where he knew here mangled ear resided behind her hair. "Before, I mean."

Sirius felt sorry for the girl. He couldn't imagine what kind of life she'd been leading as a part of Greyback's pack and all that she'd missed out on. "Maybe you still can," he offered cheerily as he started to walk away from the tree. The girl quickly followed and then surpassed Sirius, taking lead and guiding them a little to the left in their pursuit of the nearby village. "How old are you?"

"Fourteen," she answered. "But I doubt it. I've missed a lot of school and don't have any money to pay for a wand or books or anything else I might need."

Sirius frowned. "Professor Dumbledore will find you your family, they'll take care of the money and stuff. He can probably even find you a tutor to catch you up to where you should be."

She snorted. "Greyback was wrong about a lot of things, but not about how much most people hate us werewolves. They may miss me and want me back now, but once they hear I'm a werewolf, they won't want a thing to do with me."

Stubbornly, Sirius told her, "You don't know that. I got a mate who's a werewolf. His parents love him and everything else, even though he's one."

The girl looked at him, shock evident. "You know a werewolf? At Hogwarts?"

"It's pretty hush-hush," he admitted, "but, yeah, there's one at Hogwarts."

"Wow," the girl breathed. Wistfulness overcame her features. "I wonder what Greyback would have to say about that."

"He'd probably be angry to know he didn't ruin my mate's life like he tried to."

Joan looked back at Sirius, eyes wide with horror and sadness. "He bit your friend too?"

"When he was four."

"And he survived?" Severus piped up from Sirius's arms.

Sirius nodded at the kid. "By the skin of his teeth."

Joan nodded. "I was eight," she told Sirius. "And I only just made it through my attack. I wedged myself in a spot Greyback's werewolf couldn't reach me after he initially bit me. He took me to someone who fixed me up the next morning since I made it through the night. I've been with him since— Or, well, until now."

"I'm sorry," Sirius told her with great empathy. "I can only imagine what living with a monster like him was like."

She shrugged. "He's not so bad anymore," she admitted. A wry smile darkened her features. "I've gotten too old to interest him lately. I suspect if you hadn't taken out Morrighan and maimed Lycaon and Greyback he'd have tried to make Severus his next play-thing."

Severus shivered in his arms and Sirius tightened his grip on the kid. "You're fine," he whispered into his ear. "I didn't let him get you, just like I said I would."

The boy tightened the grip he had on Sirius's neck and nodded against his shoulder. After a short silence, the kid lifted his head and leveled Sirius with an honest to God pout. "You said there was no dog."

He cringed. "Yeah, sorry, kid." He looked up to see Joan was watching the two of them over her shoulder. Sirius found he couldn't blame her. She'd shared most of her life story while he'd told her hardly anything about themselves. "I'm not exactly registered as an animagus and well…" he shrugged. "It'd be an easy way to get me in trouble at Hogwarts and I really don't need that right now."

Severus nodded and took out the chocolate frog card from earlier from his sling. Sirius was surprised the kid had managed to hold onto it. He must really like the card to have the forethought to protect it while they were being attacked by werewolves. Seeing an opportunity to win some favor with the kid after coming out as a liar, he said, "You know, if we hadn't run into Joan here, I reckon you'd have been right about us spending another night in the forest."

Boy-Snape cocked his head. "You really think so?"

"Oh, for sure," Sirius agreed. "I think that means technically the card is yours."

The kid grinned. "Wicked!"

Sirius ruffled the kid's grimy locks before stopping to let the kid down. "I think you've got two capable feet," he told Severus. "We're not exactly out of danger, but it's not imminent anymore, either."

Severus sighed, but didn't fight being put down. Instead, he reached for Sirius's hand. He was surprised the kid wanted to hang onto him, but maybe he really shouldn't be. He had just experienced a very traumatic event. Boy-Snape was probably afraid he'd get left behind if Sirius got too far away from him. Swinging their arms in tandem with some added wooshing noises on his part, he got the kid to giggle. It really calmed Sirius to hear the kid laughing. It was probably the best sign yet that Severus was fine and not hurt.

"Hey, erm, is it okay…?" Joan asked, looking at them once again.

Sirius felt he had a good idea what she was trying to ask him. "To ask how we ended up in this forest and why we're trying to get to Hogwarts?" he prompted with a little smirk.

The girl dipped her chin, cheeks flushing. "You don't have to," she assured. "I know you don't know me and probably don't trust me very much…"

"You're fine," Sirius told her. "And we trust you, don't we, Severus?"

Boy-Snape bobbed his head. "Yes. You saved Sirius."

"Yeah, you saved us," Sirius concurred. "It's really not that much of a story," he said. "It was a Hogsmeade weekend and we were both there when we got in a duel. He threw some spells, I threw a few back… One crossed with another and I tried to take Severus here to the ground to protect him from it and he ended up disapparating us to an unknown forest in the process." He grinned. "Oh yeah, and he went from sixteen to eight between Hogsmeade and here."

Joan stopped in her tracks and gaped at them, her eyes bulging. "He's supposed to be older than me?" she shouted.

Sirius laughed at her expression as Severus, who remained composed, confirmed, "Uh-huh. But I don't remember being older."

"That's mad," she muttered, hand scratching at her head. "I sure hope the professors can fix him."

"You don't think they can?" Severus questioned.

The girl bit her lip, realizing she'd made a faux-pas. "I'm sure they'll do their best."

Boy-Snape looked up at Sirius with large, fretful eyes. "Sirius?"

Honestly, he'd never considered that the professors and Madam Pomfrey wouldn't be able to fix him. They'd fixed a whole lot worse, hadn't they? Surely putting Severus's age right wouldn't be too difficult. "Hogwarts has some of the most talented wizards and witches in the world living in its walls. If anyone's going to be able to make you the right age, it's going to be them."

Severus nodded. "Okay," he replied, looking a little less worried than before.

He pulled the kid close to him and raised his hand to rest on his shoulder. "Don't worry, kid, everything's going to work out." Raising his gaze to meet Joan's he said, "Let's keep moving."

She nodded and turned around. They continued their trek to the village in silence.

How'd you enjoy the fight? Thoughts on the new traveling partner?

Thank you for reading!