The Origins of a Monster

Summary: Fenrir Greyback was said to have been one of the worst werewolves in the history of the magical world, but where did he come from, and what made him this way?

Warnings: Werewolf attacks, violence, mention of suicide.

Special Mention: As with the previous story, this one is also a tribute to a cast member of the Harry Potter films who very sadly passed away recently. After hiking in the Death Valley region of California, actor Dave Legeno, who played Fenrir Greyback in the last three Harry Potter films, apparently got into problems caused by heat exposure. His body was found by other hikers a few days later on Sunday, 6th July, 2014.

When Mrs Greyson gave birth to a son, she and her husband decided to give him the unusual name of Fenrir, after the fabled wolf of Norse mythology, in the hope that he would grow up to become strong and powerful.

It was a decision that would prove to be almost prophetic.

By the age of thirteen, Fenrir Greyson had become the bully of the neighbourhood. Being bigger, older and indeed stronger than all of the other kids in the area made it so that Fenrir found it easy to dominate over the others, especially at this time of year.

There were older children belonging to the families in the area, but they were all off at that fancy-schmancy castle up in Scotland. Fenrir's parents could not afford to send him to Hogwarts and so his mother opted to home-school him while his father worked a low-level job in the Ministry's Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures.

The Greyson family were dirt poor; poorer even than the Weasley family. As such, Fenrir had learnt from a young age that if he wanted something he would simply have to take it from someone else.

Some days, this included food.

One day, Mr Greyson came home and quickly spread the word throughout the community that a werewolf was believed to have moved into the area. As there was a full moon that night, Mr Greyson and a dozen of his co-workers would be patrolling the area in search of the beast. Meanwhile there was a strict 9 pm curfew imposed upon all the residents in the area.

Due to the lack of food, Fenrir went to bed hungry that night. But having had nothing all day, sleep evaded him as his mind focussed solely upon his empty stomach.

By eleven pm he decided that he couldn't stand it anymore. He got out of bed and opened his bedroom window. He knew of the werewolf's presence, but he doubted that the beast would come in close. Werewolves operated best in the dark and all the street lamps had been left on specifically for this reason. If the werewolf approached, he would see it and could get to safety before it could get to him. He was, after all, a very good runner.

He returned to his bed and pulled out from underneath it a length of rope that he had procured a few years ago. He tied one end to the bed and then slung the other end out of the window. He climbed out of the window and slid down the rope onto the dried out lawn below.

There he paused to look around, but saw nothing. He stepped out into the street and across the road. He would raid the bins behind the local corner shop to find something to take the edge off his hunger and then be back inside the safety of his bedroom before anyone noticed, be they his mother, his father, a ministry official or even the werewolf.

Simple.

Unfortunately, and despite his diligence, he did not see the pair of amber eyes that belonged to a large, dark shape that was crouched beneath an old beech tree.

The blood-curdling screams that followed woke up the entire neighbourhood, but by the time anyone got outside, the werewolf was disappearing into the blackness of the night, leaving only a badly scarred teenager behind.

In the days before the Wolfsbane potion was invented, Ministerial procedure for a werewolf was relatively straightforward, but not really as barbaric as one might think.

Treatment for werewolf wounds was a simple application of dittany and powdered silver. This did not remove the lycanthropy infection, but it sealed the wounds and ensured that the victim lived. It was then for the family to purchase a custom-made, iron bar cage into which the werewolf would retreat on the night of the full moon in order to be kept out of harms' way while in their wolf form.

Hardly as barbaric as most bleeding-hearts try to make out, in fact most werewolves came to appreciate their cages immensely, knowing that they would not be putting the lives of others at risk. After all, you muzzle a dog that's a danger to people, so what was the problem with a werewolf being shut away for one night every month? Even after the invention of the Wolfsbane potion, most werewolves still opted to be shut into a cage, just in case.

Still, to some the cage is an insult to their pride. They are unable to accept being locked up like some kind of feral, rabid animal. Of course, they in their minds completely ignored the fact that on the nights when they were required to enter their cages, that is exactly what they were.

As much as some complained about the cages being barbaric, the simple fact was that if every werewolf simply followed this bit of legislation, the lycanthropy virus would have died out within a century as it would have found no new hosts to infect.

Fenrir Greyson, who was used to being the big kid on the block, used to being the bully, and used to coming and going from his home as he pleased, did not take kindly to the cage that his parents were forced to purchase.

The first transformation was horrible and afterwards he vowed to never enter that cage again.

The day before the next full moon he ran from the house and into the woods that stood nearby. He would stay there the night, out of the way. He would stay there and come back home in the morning, and everything would be alright.

Too late did Mr and Mrs Greyson realise that their son was missing. Mr Greyson alerted everyone in the area, but some of their children were outside and in immediate danger.

Becky Thompson and Gemma Ackerly had been playing on the edge of the woods all day and it was now past time for them to return home. As they ran back along the dirt path that led to the village where they lived, a pair of amber eyes caught sight of them and moments later a large, furry body leapt out at them from within the darkness between the trees.

Gemma was bowled over by the beast, but Becky was pinned by it and its massive jaws bit down savagely upon her arm.

Her screams caught the attention of the search party, and moments later the ground next to the werewolf exploded as a spell impacted it.

Fenrir let go of his victim and looked up at his attacker, straight into the eyes of his father. The wold within him growled and he positioned his body ready to attack this new threat.

But more people were coming, and more spells were being fired. He yelped as a cutting curse hit his flank and he turned and ran, vanishing into the blackness beneath the trees, never again to be seen by his father.

Dawn broke with a dim light the next morning, and on a grassy knoll in the middle of the woods, Fenrir Greyson woke up. The first thing that he noticed was that everything around him, including he himself, was wet from the morning dew.

The next thing he noticed was that his mouth tasted strangely of blood. He spat onto the grass and saw that his saliva was stained red.

He tried to move, but a pain in his side stopped him. He looked down at himself and saw the cut on his side. It seemed to have mostly stopped bleeding now, but it still hurt like hell.

He forced himself to sit up, spitting once more as he did so, and surveyed the area around him.

He was in the woods, exactly where he had planned to be. He must have stayed there all night, just as he had wanted, and now he could go back.

Then the memories from the night before came back. That's the thing about being a werewolf, in your wolf form, you remember no one. You'd kill your own mother if she crossed your path, but in the morning you remembered everything that happened while you were a wolf.

He recalled attacking those two girls. He recalled biting one of them. He recalled being attacked, and looking up into his father's furious eyes…

The cold realisation hit him. He could not go back. Not only would the other villagers hate him for what he had done to that girl, he would also face the wrath of his father.

And if the Ministry got wind of this, he would probably be put down.

A small part of him wondered if that wouldn't be for the best, but he quickly quashed that thought.

Listening intently, he heard the voices of people approaching. No doubt they were hunting him. His father was probably with them.

In his human form, Fenrir was not as fast as he liked to think, nor was he a match for a full grown man in a fight, be it physical or magical.

His chances of surviving were minimal if he remained there, so he quickly decided that he would just have to leave and never come back. It was as straightforward as that.

And so he left, never to learn until years later that his father had been sent to Azkaban, where he perished, for his negligent handling of his werewolf son. Nor would he learn that his mother became such a pariah within the village that she was eventually driven to take her own life.

A/N: So there you go. Short, I know, but that's all it was meant to be, though I might develop this more one day to going into how he became the leader of the werewolf pack and so on, but for now, the story finishes here. Obviously, he either changes his name from Greyson to Greyback himself, or he is given the name by the other werewolves.

My thoughts on werewolves are that due to the Ministry mandating that they should be caged on the night of a full moon, Wizarding Britain had got over a good amount of prejudice towards werewolves, knowing them to be a threat one night a month, but also knowing that they were shut away during that time but a lot of minds at ease and a lot of fears to rest. But then when Fenrir and other werewolves joined Voldemort, the fear came back, driving the creation of the Wolfsbane potion.