Chapter 6: I'll Put Him Through
"….. soulless, evil, deserving nothing but death…"
At the edge of the new park erected in the name of that elitist Albus Dumbledore, Fenrir Greyback kept his face hidden with a hooded cloak as he had to stand there and listen to the speech from that sneering, condescending Ministry official, Lyall Lupin. Lying Lyall, he would call him. How dare that man say such things about his kind!
Sure, the British Ministry and many of magical birth in this country were afraid and on edge, after he had been accused of murdering two Muggle children in the process of biting them, and then actually biting and transforming the son of one of this Lyall's colleagues. Greyback had avoided prosecution for lack of evidence, though it had been a near thing. The Ministry official's son whom he had successfully bitten had not been able to accurately identify his attacker – that had been all that saved the sadistic werewolf from seeing the inside of Azkaban.
Greyback felt the hairs on his forearms stand straight up as he tuned into what Lupin was saying next, the speaker's voice growing louder and charismatic, whipping the crowd up into a frenzy.
"I shall propose to the Wizengamot that any werewolf known to this government, or anyone known to be dealing with the effects of lycanthropy, should be registered as an offender in the Werewolf Registry, which is currently rather poorly maintained, and monitored more vigorously, just as we monitor those wizards and witches who wield the power of Animagi!"
Fuming, Greyback turned to his one friend in the crowd: a Death Eater sympathizer and pureblood supremacist named Scabior. "That means government-sanctioned wolf tagging! They mean to sedate and put chips in us like we're dogs!"
He was starting to regret he had targeted the son of that Ignatius Thistlewhite and instead of the son of this liar. This Lying Lyall Lupin.
Wait…. Lying Lyall did have a son, didn't he? Little boy, couldn't be any older than Muggle primary school age. Lip curled into a snarl, Greyback shook his fist as recklessly, he made the vow, if not directly to Lyall Lupin's face, then damn close, as the keynote speaker exited the podium to applause.
"I'll put him through! By Merlin, I'll put him through!"
It was pretty simple for a wolf like Greyback to track his prey. Lyall Lupin proved no different.
The man lived in the country, in a modest country house in the foothills of Rockingham. He had been a renowned expert on Non-Human Spiritous Apparitions, the prime examples of those being Boggarts and Poltergeists. Lyall's wife, Hope, was a homemaker. Spying on the little family from afar, Greyback had to guess the couple's little pup was no older than 65 lunar cycles, more commonly tabulated as five years.
He sneered. A perfect victim – perhaps not entirely voiceless, should the pup survive the Bite, but enough trauma during the assault could fix that.
Greyback waited carefully for the right moment to strike. It finally came on a night when the full moon arose, compelling him to change into his werewolf form. During the witching hours, a bank of clouds rolled in from the east, obscuring the moon and granting Greyback the cover of darkness, though he still remained in his beastly shape.
It was summer, so the little boy's bedroom window was left open. Greyback scaled the walls and gained entry to the house from here easily. The huge monster loomed over the bed and the child in it, who was sleeping peacefully, unaware of the hell that was about to visit him.
From staking out the Lupin place, Greyback had heard the cub's mother call him 'Remus,' harkening him back to the old Roman stories which carried the boy's namesake. Remus and Romulus, the twin boys who had been abandoned to the wilderness, only to survive after being raised by a wolf bitch as her own little pups.
The ancient legend only strengthened Greyback's resolve. By names alone, he found what he was about to do more fitting, in a way.
Leaping onto the little boy, Greyback wasted no time in plunging his teeth into the cub's neck.
The hideous scream of pain was like none he had ever before heard from his victims, and it fueled him. Aroused him, even. He had never had a bite from one so young, and the blood and flesh now ripping onto his molars tasted all the sweeter, like a feast.
Greyback reared up, the blood of little boy dripping from his fangs, and was about to go in for another chomp just to ensure he finished the job when he heard the door crash open.
BANG!
He felt liquid fire dig with all the pain of hot scalpels into his fur, and he yelped, driven back by a Lyall Lupin who was roaring in terrified grief and rage. His mate, Hope, let out a blood-curdling wail and ran towards her son, who was thrashing in agony upon the bedclothes. Lyall's expression roiled as he fired from his shotgun again; this time, the bullet only grazed the monstrous beast, but it was just enough to knock Greyback back and fully out the window.
The werewolf toppled to the ground and with plaintive yelps, fled into the night, literally licking his wounds from where that bigoted bastard had shot him. Eventually, once he had changed back into human form, he was able to dig out the bullet embedded in his hindquarters, the shrapnel from the second blast of buckshot digging into his shoulder. In the end, none of it mattered.
The venom would do its work; no one could be expected to extract the stuff from that little brat's body once the effects had taken hold. The mission had been completed. Greyback had found his revenge, the sweetest kind there was.
Now Lyall Lupin would either have to stand by his words, or eat them in the new reality of having his own son become something he feared and wanted to track and put down like an animal. Let that high-faluting Ministry bastard learn how it feels!
Immensely satisfied, Fenrir Greyback turned his gaze heavenward, to where the moon was reappearing from behind the clouds and he let out a howl of victory.
The howls of his brethren echoed through the British countryside.
Luckily, one thing that Greyback hadn't counted on was for young Remus Lupin, despite the trauma and even though the scene had been mostly darkness, to positively identify his attacker by some key markings. Lyall Lupin personally asked that the best Aurors be placed on the case, and Fenrir Greyback was eventually caught and brought before the Wizengamot to once again stand trial.
Greyback had mostly gotten away the last time because he hadn't appeared in the Werewolf Registry, a rather slipshod database that Lyall Lupin was now more determined than ever to update and maintain. Greyback's name was put in the file, and upon his conviction for assaulting an innocent child, no less than a dozen Aurors had needed to hold him down like the dog they thought he was in order to inject the chip. Once the tracking chip was implemented, Fenrir Greyback was sentenced to Azkaban prison, to serve out a life sentence.
Now truly trapped like a dog in a cage, Greyback frothed at the mouth and endured the agony of transforming in a jail cell during the full moon. Even with his anger and resentment now compounded, however, he had to concede that the attack on Lyall Lupin's boy had been all worth it. And besides, he wouldn't be in here long. Sooner or later, the Dark Lord, in His wisdom, would come for him.
And once Lyall Lupin and all his stuck-up Ministry friends fell so that the wizarding world could be made in a pureblood image, Greyback would get the last laugh…. along with all the unbitten, bare necks he wanted.
That feast would be a glorious one indeed…..