[Author's Note] I love seeing all the questions and guesses dear readers! And kudos to anyone who caught Tobey's appearance. He is a beloved recurring character from my fic Savage Heart. This will be a slightly shorter chapter but I promise more soon! As always, your kind reviews are immensely appreciated

Present Day
Lupin Residence

Remus Lupin sat at his desk, brow furrowed in contemplation as he reviewed scroll after scroll in search of answers. He had dedicated a great deal of his time and energy to helping his fellow werewolves over the years but there will still details that continued to evade him. It didn't help that save but his own notes there was next to nothing on empirical studies of his kind. Most of the books published by wizards on werewolves served as nothing more than large paperweights.

His soft brown eyes fixated on the bolded title atop the parchment: Pack Hierarchy Magic. Underneath it were only a handful of lines, words he himself had written and therefore Lupin knew they would offer little insight.

PACK HIERARCHY MAGIC
Werewolves possess their own form of magic that is shared within a pack and guarded in mystery. The purpose and extent of the magic requires further investigation.

Lupin's lack of understanding had not been for lack of effort. He travelled a great deal of places over the years, studying packs with the intent of unlocking this elusive element of his kind. But he was never truly accepted into the groups he followed and as Lupin himself was not a member of an pack he could only witness the magic from the outside. They would permit his presence with one level of wariness or another but no one ever divulged much. He was not entirely sure if this was out of secrecy or simply that they too did not know the complexities of their magic.

What he witnessed transpire between Hermione and the children several days prior was his first true glimpse at the magic in action. Why had the children responded so dramatically to her presence? Could it have been they innately understood that she was somehow different from them? And how was that so? What made her different from all the rest? He had asked several of the children later that day for an explanation but they all simply shrugged.

"She's strong," one of the younger werewolves replied as he flexed his own scrawny muscles and growled playfully. The other children nodded and giggled amongst themselves. After several tries for a more elaborate answer Lupin eventually sighed and dismissed them back to their play.

"Still working hard, love?" A voice came from the doorway of Lupin's office. Tonks, the older werewolf's wife, leaned casually against the frame. Her lithe frame was shrouded in the billowing cloth of her Auror robes; with a shock of purple hair tendrilling down her shoulders, the brightly colored tresses framed the delicate features of her face. Lupin smiled and there was nothing but sheer happiness in his eyes as he rose from his seat to greet her. Embracing her in a hug and kiss, he welcomed her home. It was mid-morning but it wasn't uncommon for his wife to come and go due to the odd hours she kept as an Auror. She often was called away in the late evenings to help with cases, returning in the early hours of the morning. Such was the case today and judging from her tired expression Tonks had felt every bit of her long shift.

Absently gesturing to the piles of paper on his desk, "I wish I could say I was making any sort of progress."

Tonks glanced at the materials and her vision fell to a closed folder with a picture of Hermione on it. The image had been taken during her intake at the hospital and the enchanted picture showed the young woman pacing the frame, her dark eyes narrowing at the camera in angry suspicion. "How's she doing?"

"A little better each day," Lupin replied. He tossed another half-opened scroll on top of the image to escape the piercing stare of the photo's subject.

"Good to hear. Do you think she might be up for a visitor soon? I'd love to see her if you think it wouldn't be too much on her for me to stop in. Maybe I could bring Teddy by too," Tonks said with a cheery hopefulness. Lupin knew she had felt immensely guilty at not stopping in to check on Hermione since she had arrived at the Artemis Home but Lupin had stressed the importance of letting her settle in for a few days before introducing visitors-even if that guest was Tonks.

Lupin smiled, "I think that would be nice."

"Speaking of which, where is Teddy?" Tonks asked.

"With your mother, she picked him up after breakfast to run errands. They should be back by lunch." Lupin replied and his wife nodded. It was a common routine for the doting grandmother to take their son for the day and . Teddy was a rambunctious child on the cusp of his sixth birthday with large brown eyes and ever-changing hair color. Like his mother he was a Metamorphagus, gifted with the ability to transform his appearance on will alone. Nothing gave him greater joy than transforming his face into various farm animals-much to the admonishment of his grandmother. The elder woman by now had gone through her daughter's similar antics when she was young yet to the elder woman's exasperation that wasn't to say Tonks was beyond such things even now either.

"Sounds good, I am going to go crash. These back to back missions are killing me," she said with a yawn.

Lupin gave a loving smile and kissed her before consulting his tarnished pocket watch, "get some sleep dear. I best be off to my staff meeting."

And so shortly after he set off across the estate's property to the nearby manor. He could have Apparated the distance but preferred the walk as it gave him time to collect his thoughts and prepare for the day's agenda. He had already made his early morning rounds, checking in with the overnight staff to ensure all had gone well during the evening hours. His employment as director of operations had been nothing short of serendipitous. Finding work had not been easy for Lupin despite his impressive work ethic and broad knowledge of various subjects. It wasn't until the dusts of war settled did he finally see the first glint of opportunities present themselves.

After a quick role call of the staff in attendance of the meeting, Lupin went straight into the items of importance. Curriculum updates for the week, any incidents or recent developments worth noting. They went through each resident's files, one by one addressing their current progress. By now Lupin had each of forty werewolves and their files memorized but still followed the formality of discussing them with the team.

"The full moon is in five nights," he said. "Have the wards been tested recently?"
"I'll take two volunteers to help me fortify them today, sir," said a staff member in the back of the room.

"Excellent, thank you Jack. Make sure to double up on them; our newest resident Granger has only recently started taking Wolfsbane and we don't want to take any risks especially after the close call we had last month."

It was hard for the former professor to refer to Hermione so clinically but in this meeting she was just like any other of their residents only in her particular case certain precautions seemed necessary. Everyone nodded in solemn understanding, recalling collectively the damaged ward that nearly left the western side of the property an open escape for a curious werewolf. Thankfully the error had been caught and no trouble came of it but the fears still lingered. Beyond the walls of the Artemis Home Lupin knew all too well how little protection was afforded their kind. He, was of course, concerned that the residents in their wolf forms might endanger others if they were to get out but he also knew they too could be at risk of attack or worse by a world of those who didn't understand them.

As the rest of the meeting went on it eventually drew to an end. No sooner had the staff been dismissed then a House Elf appear with a gracious courtesy. "A Mr. Malfoy is here in the sitting room to see Master Lupin."

"Thank you Clementine," he replied and just like that the small creature was gone in a soft pop. He didn't much care for the mantle of "master" but his leadership role at the Artemis Home by proxy put him in charge of the House Elf staff as well.

Lupin wasted little time in locating the arriving guest. The familiar young man sat scowling faintly in an oversized armchair, his steely gaze fixated to the lush scenery outside the window. There was a proudness to his sharp features and reminded Lupin of when he had first met Draco Malfoy. The boy had been bright but petty as Lupin's student. However, hindsight granted the former professor a sense of forgiveness for the young man's childhood transgressions.

"Good morning, or I suppose afternoon I should say. I hope you weren't waiting long," Lupin greeted although the smile was not reciprocated from the tow-headed man.

"I waited long enough," he replied curtly, rising from his seat. "Can we hurry this up? I have more valuable ways to spend my time that hanging around this Merlin-forsaken place."

There was plenty in which Lupin wished to say but as a man of mild-manners he simply nodded, extending his arm in the direction of the hallway. "Very well, this way please."

Five Years Prior

"Tell me," Hermione said but her words were frail and all but a whisper. She wasn't sure how many days had come and gone only that when her health had begun to unravel it had not taken long for her to become this terribly weak.

"You are going to die," Greyback said. There was strange gentleness in his tone that Hermione did not expect from the monster. He pushed a strand of brown hair away from her face and the touch of his fingers felt like ice against her fevered skin. The witch inhaled a long haggard breath and when she exhaled it drew a sharp cough that felt like a stabbing sensation in her chest. What should have been a painful truth to hear only seemed muffled, like a conversation inside a dream one tries to recall upon waking.

Only this was not a dream. The trees that surrounded them and the cold earth beneath her were quite real. As was the passive unreadable expression of the last person she would ever see. Greyback's glowing eyes watching her with a closeness that might have at one point unnerved her, only now she did not have the energy for such mental exertion. The infection had taken hold not just her leg but her entire body as well.

The Brightest Witch of Her Age was to die not in a fiery battle fighting for the good of humanity. Nor would she leave this world of incredibly old age surrounded by loved ones. No, she was to perish as a young woman in a far off land because of something so mortal.

So disappointingly human.

She closed her eyes because by now even the weight of her eyelids felt too heavy.

"There is one option, witch," Greyback said slowly. "The full moon is in two nights."
"I can't," she whispered but there was no conviction in her voice. The words tumbled from her lips purely out of reflex.

"That is your choice," the werewolf replied. "There is no guarantee you would survive the transformation."

Or that she would even make it to see the night of the full moon, Hermione thought to herself. For a long time she could only hear the crackle of the fire and her own pitiful breath. She was curled against wall of their makeshift shelter, an a-frame structure that kept some of the night wind at bay.

"Will I still be me?" She eventually asked but by now her mind had already been nearly made up.
"But better," he answered. "What I offer isn't a curse. Regardless of what your wizarding world considers it... this is a gift."

She wasn't sure of going so far as to calling lycanthropy a gift but the mystery in his words was more so than that the chance at survival, however slim, was what truly guided her decision in the end. She wanted live more desperately than she wanted to die weak and crumbled on some forest floor. The reality of the Fates' scissors perched over the thread of life was enough for Hermione to fathom how fiercely she was willing to fight for this existence.

So she did the unthinkable.

She invited the Wild in.

"I want you to do it," Hermione said quietly. "Change me."