The female's words nagged away at Scabior more than he cared to admit. It couldn't be true. Fenrir would never do anything of the sort. The Alpha despised wolves who were unable to control their urges, even during the full moon. That was part of their training, here at Asgard: to learn to control their impulses, even while under the influence of the moon. It was a basic lesson taught from the beginning. Most of the children had already mastered the trick.
It had taken Scabior longer than most to acquire that simple ability. To be fair, his childhood had been even more troubled than that of some of the orphans currently residing in the former prison.
He had been raised in Reading by his babunia, his grandmother, until he was eight. She had taught him Polish but had made certain that his English was impeccable by hiring a tutor. She was not a demonstrative woman, but Scabior felt perfectly at home in their cosy house with the beautiful garden and its cherry trees. He looked back on those days with fondness and nostalgia. His grandmother's only failing was that she had instilled in him, from a very young age, a certain inclination for nalewka, a traditional Polish liquor that she macerated herself.
His mother had left him with the old woman when he was just a baby, and Scabior had never met her until his grandmother died. The government people placed him in his mother's care after a long search to find her. She had moved up north, near Blackpool, with the bloke she was fucking at the time, one Quentin O'Malley.
They were quite wealthy – or at least, Quentin was. He'd inherited a fortune from his parents and owned a fancy villa in a residential area. Scabior wasn't sure what it was they were into – heroin would be his best guess, but he knew little about drugs, even now – but they ignored him most of the time, so it wasn't so bad. He made some good friends at school, though he'd had to insist to be sent to school in the first place, and his mother only consented when Scabior explained that it was compulsory, and that they could get in trouble with the authorities. Some of his friends' parents, guessing Scabior situation, had made sure that he was properly fed and often invited him to stay over.
When he turned nine, Scabior's stepfather – they had gotten married at some point, although Scabior hadn't been invited to the 'ceremony' – sent him to holiday camp. That was the summer when Scabior's life took a drastic turn-about.
Scabior accidentally revealed his magical abilities – abilities he didn't know he had – in front of the whole gathered camp during the first week, by levitating over the lake he was supposed to dive into. He'd never been comfortable around water, and he'd wanted to avoid getting wet besides. Thus Scabior was introduced to the wizarding world and, to his great distress, so were his mother and stepfather. In view of the circumstances, the Ministry of Magic had to get involved. They explained to Scabior that he was a wizard, and that he would study at Hogwarts when he was old enough to attend. They had, of course, despatched Obliviators to remedy the situation at the holiday camp.
His mother walked out on them soon afterward. She left while Scabior was at school. Quentin was passed out on the sofa when Scabior came home, and he didn't wonder at his mother's absence until Quentin broke the news to him the following day. Scabior expected to be sent packing to the nearest orphanage or government facility until his mother or another relative could be found, but Quentin had other plans for him.
He asked Scabior to follow him down to the cellar that day. Scabior had never been downstairs before; he wasn't sure what he'd expected to find there, but it certainly wasn't a cage. It was an old, rusty thing, and barely high enough for him to fit in standing.
"Cages," Quentin had said. "That's where we keep unstable people. That's where I'll be keeping you, freak." Ensued a slurred lecture explaining that Scabior was too dangerous to be left in the care of people who didn't know what he was, and that he, Quentin, was doing the world a favour by locking him up in his cellar, at great risk to his personal safety.
Scabior was chained to the bars inside the cage. He had a bucket at his disposal, and nothing else. Quentin fed him when he remembered to. Scabior was sick most of the time, weak and dehydrated. His stepfather liked to use him as an ashtray when he was bored. Scabior still bore the marks of cigarette burns on his arms and back. When he felt like entertaining people, Quentin invited his mates over and prodded Scabior until he did something magical, to the great enjoyment of his inebriated fellows. Incredibly, the wizarding world never caught up to Quentin, despite blatant exposure to unknowing Muggles.
Scabior wasn't sure how long his ordeal lasted. He counted the days at first, but was soon too weakened to do even that.
One day he heard a kerfuffle upstairs. The sound of smashing glass, a loud thumping noise, a faint groan. He assumed that Quentin had stumbled over an empty vodka bottle and crashed to the floor; it wouldn't be the first time. His stepfather would be in a foul mood when he brought down Scabior's excuse of a meal, if he even bothered. Scabior had curled up in a ball when he'd heard the cellar door creaking open, but it wasn't Quentin who descended the stairs.
It was Fenrir.
The Alpha had torn the cage door out of its hinges and helped Scabior out of his chains, but he'd had to carry Scabior upstairs, weak and sickly as he was. They'd retrieved Scabior's belongings, such as they were and, before he'd Side-Along Apparated with Fenrir – something he only learned about weeks later – Scabior had caught sight of Quentin's disembowelled corpse sprawled on the kitchen floor, his blood mixing with remnants of vodka and shattered glass.
But that wasn't murder. It was justice, righteous punishment. That was what Fenrir stood for. If the girl's family had truly been killed, then they'd had it coming, one way or another. That was how the Alpha dealt with people who didn't show him proper respect, who meddled where they shouldn't, who worked against the werewolf cause in general.
After this impromptu rescue, Fenrir had taken Scabior to one of his sanctuaries, a renovated manor house somewhere in Northern Ireland, and had given him the most precious gift of all: he had bitten him, turned him into a glorious beast, and never again had Scabior allowed anyone to make him feel weak or helpless.
There were forty other werewolves residing there at that time, some of them children, others grown men who sometimes looked much older than Fenrir himself. The Alpha had taught them how to be proper werewolves, how to activate some of the powers that were normally only accessible during the full moon, how to be the best version of themselves. He hadn't raised them to be mindless killing machines, whatever the female believed. Fenrir had taught them to be what they were supposed to be.