A/N: This story is being rewritten, but I will post the first version before I begin posting the revised version here on . I'd like to share a snippet of the upcoming sequel (not sure if it will be separate or just continue here):

The moment the hands lay on his shoulders he knows they are a Death Eater's and he knows he cannot fight. It is unlikely he will win and should he fight back and lose, Voldemort will suspect his loyalty has shifted. He glances at Maria, who is looking on in horror at the man Devlin can't see and the wand he can feel against his neck.

:D I have so much planned for the eleven year old Devlin Potter, off at Hogwarts. Hope you'll stick with me. We've got about 40ish pages before that sequel, I think.

ON WITH THE STORY

It will hurt if we don't do as we're told… the wolf whimpers, and lets him take control for one desperate moment. Devlin does something. He slows himself down, so that the ground only skids across his face, rather than turn him into a pancake.

Then he's not in control anymore and it's his wolf, afraid of the people. There are hands on him, and his wolf retches his body back. Something isn't right about his hand, but his wolf ignores him. His wolf is used to pain.

"Devlin, please, open your eyes."

So his wolf does and snarls at them. They'll hurt him. They'll be mad the boy had fallen at all. They'll say he should have done better. He'll protect the boy.

"Whoa…something's wrong Harry. Take Emma and get Remus."

The woman stares at him. Some part of him knows she won't hurt him, but he's too afraid to listen. So they continue to stare. He's too weak to run away from her.

"Alexandra? Devlin?" His eyes snap to the new voice. It is the other wolf. His wolf. His creator. He whimpers, begging for its help. The other wolf frowns, but his steps quicken.

"His eyes…they're not green anymore, Remus. Not even a speck."

The other wolf inches closer to him and he's not sure why he's afraid of him.

"Devlin?"

That's his name, or the boy's name, isn't it?

"Yes?"

The sounds are uncertain and rough. It sounds half like a bark and half like a growl. He's done this before. He pretended to be the boy for weeks after the red-eyed-man nearly made them both mad with pain.

"Your eyes, they're amber. Completely."

It hadn't been a question and he isn't sure what to say to him.

"Do you feel alright?"

"Yes." There, his voice was getting better. Closer to the boy's own voice.

"I think your arm might be broken," the other human-wolf says, very softly.

"I don't feel it." Which is true. But he can't feel much pain beyond what he always feels. That spell had ruined something. Disrupted it. Hurt them.

"You're probably in shock. Can you, ah, turn your eyes green again?"

"No," he snarls, because what the man is really asking him is to stop protecting the boy.

The human-wolf summons a piece of paper and a quill and writes a note to the lady. She dashes off, clutching it.

"What did you do?" He asks, his voice low and gravely. He doesn't feel the need to hide from this man.

"I just asked her to fetch me something."

"What?"

"Something that might help me understand you."

He narrows his eyes.

Moments later, there is a man racing out from the human dwelling. He knows this man.

"Dubhán? Oh Merlin." The man rushes to his side and runs his hand across his face, through his hair, lifts up his shirt. He's looking for wounds. He seems already to know about the arm, because he ignores it.

"Hello, Geoffrey."

It is then that his pack mate looks at his face. He sucks in a breath, obviously surprised by something he sees there.

"He's acting so odd," the lady is saying, coming near him again.

"This isn't Devlin," Geoffrey says very softly. "This, ah, happened once before. This is Devlin's wolf."

"Can't do it again," he says, clinging to Geoffrey with the hand that will work. "Not like before…"

"No one here will curse Devlin," he says softly.

"Do you swear?"

"Yes, I swear. No Crucio."

The other humans are nodding quickly. The lady is crying.

"The boy says so too…"

But his boy, like him, is far too brave for his own good.

"How about we fix your arm? Doesn't it hurt?"

He turns his eyes upon the lady (his Mum, the boy tells him). The fact that he can tell him things means the wolf doesn't have complete control. It means the boy isn't so afraid.

"I can't feel it."

"How can you not feel that?" It is the man, the father. He looks down at his own arm. There is no bone showing. It is merely twisted at an odd angle. He feels an unpleasant twinge.

"It hurts mostly the same."

"Mostly the same?" It is his creator-wolf, so he answers dutifully, despite the panic in the boys mind. He leans close so that the two humans can't hear him.

"The pain magic…it makes us always hurt."

Just as quietly: "You mean the torture curse, Crucio."

"Yes. He feels more than me."

"More pain?"

"No, more other things."

Geoffrey is staring at him. Remus is tense and his voice edgy.

"Is this normal?" Remus asks Geoffrey, motioning to him. Geoffrey shakes his head.

"No, but as the Dark Lord said 'nothing is normal about the Potter line.' Our werewolf parts are semi separate, or else the Wolfsbane potion wouldn't be required to control ourselves. The potion, itself-"

"Works like a liquid Occlumency," says a deep voice, striding purposefully from the house. He is wearing black robes, billowing around him. "So that the human mind may stay in control of the werewolf, like it does the other days of the month."

"Poppy is caring for a foolish child. Albus sent me instead," he says, after silence meets his ears.

He comes close, but out of arms reach. The wolf can sense his discomfort and disgust, but he is trying to hide it on his face behind cool indifference. He doesn't bother to ask about the arm or the pain.

"I assume this has happened before?"

Geoffrey is nodding.

"Well, has it?" Apparently, he wants to hear it from him. He looks up into the dark man's face.

"Yes."

"What is your goal?" The wolf-child regards him for a moment, his head tipped in clear observation. As if he were a strange object in his environment that needed to be observed before it was approached.

There is power in those eyes: not a wizard's power, but rather a mental power. For a moment Severus is thrown aback; he is hit by what must make his potion necessary. Werewolves, he realizes, must have great mental power to overtake a mind. The boy was gifted at Occlumency; perhaps this meant so was his werewolf.

He stopped himself before his mind fell to his curiosity. He would write it all down and ponder it all later.

"To protect his mind."

"The human's mind?"

The wolf-child nods.

"When you have done this before, what has made you stop?"

Severus thinks of the last time he had seen the boy. When he had turned away from Malfoy, hadn't his eyes been a bit amber? But that was hardly different from the first time he had met him, was it? He thinks back to the Headmaster's Office, when the boy had come up to him and spoken about his father's books. His eyes had been mostly green, hadn't they…?

"Stop protecting him, or stop being in control?"

"Both."

"When it became necessary for our safety."

"When was that?"

"When the dark man thought his mind was 'beyond repair'. I had to show him the boy was still there. Still cunning. I did not know how to speak your language."

Obviously, the separation between wolf and boy had been damaged, however remotely, from torture.

"But you learned?"

"The dark man had to think I was the boy, whenever he was hurting the boy."

"With magic?"

"And words, and hands."

"You are not necessary here. We are not upset with the boy. We will not hurt him. We would like to heal him."

"I know that. He knows that."

"Then why are you here still?"

"Because it is almost my time."

The dark-eyed-man looked into the sky. It was true. Even the two other werewolves were looking ragged and exhausted and their eyes were brighter and more feral. Even if it was only mid-afternoon, their wolves knew it was almost their time.

"Fair enough."

The wolf smiles and it makes the boy look like a Slytherin.

OoOooO

The wolf-child looks strange, sitting at the kitchen table. Severus isn't sure if he should pull away from the child's regard, or keep the connection until the wolf-child surrenders.

"Will the boy remember this?" He asks suddenly. Potter and Alex jump at the noise.

"Oh yes," he says softly. "From that I cannot protect him."

"Crucio damages the nerves in the brain that send pain signals, but the boy doesn't experience any of the traditional symptoms."

There it is again, that head-tipping curious-but-cautious regard. The intenseness of it is unsettling.

"I do not experience pain in the same way as the boy."

"So you were not damaged?"

"He was not damaged, that much."

Interesting, so the wolf's full consciousness must shut off the human receptors in the brain. Which might explain the extremely painful headaches recently bitten humans experience for weeks after the initial bite.

"And obviously you did not go mad…"

"Aren't I?" The wolf-child asks, his amber eyes settling intently on his dark ones. "I feel mad. This isn't normal as my pack mate says."

That was true. Was it possible the damage between the two minds had caused the boy to be more wolfish and the wolf to be more boyish?

"Do you feel the need to bite us?"

"With what?" The boy says, showing his teeth. "These things?" He laughs. "They couldn't do a thing to you."

"But do you feel the need?"

"No."

"Why not? Even Lupin begins to smell humans differently the day of his transformation."

The wolf-child folds his arms upon the table and rests his chin there, looking up at him. He's smiling.

"Oh, I smell you, that's true. I smell the little girl you're keeping busy in the next room too. I smell your disgust and your fear, as well. And you," he turns to his parents, "I smell your desperation." He looks at them all again, and then shrugs, his chin still on his folded arms. "But you are all members of my boys pack, so why bite you?"

"That is a logical decision."

"Mmmm, yes it is. The dark man would have said 'what a clever conclusion, Dubhán.' But he wouldn't have really meant it, he would have meant 'that was the right answer'." The wolf-child waves a dismissive hand.

"Werewolves are not logical. Do you recall being logical before you were tortured?"

"Wolf's are logical in their own way, but you humans have a different sort of logic. I don't really recall being human-logical after it, to be honest. Although certainly more conscious. I was merely helping us survive. It wasn't until the dark man fed us his own brew of Wolfsbane for weeks on end, hoping to quell the 'feralness' in my boy that I began to truly think in the same fashion as you or the boy.

"So how did you fool the dark man while you couldn't think?"

"I let the boy talk. He is a clever talker. He said things to the dark man that made the dark man interested in us, and as long as he was interested, we were safe."

Severus turns to the window, watching the clouds snail crawl past the sun. He only has hours left. He doesn't think this will ever happen again, to this extreme; or at least, not soon enough for him to wait. He'd nearly begged Potter for the opportunity, and in front of the child no less.

"Normally would the boy be able to overthrow your control?"

The amber eyes narrow.

"We don't fight each other. We used to, before the dark man."

"How so?"

"The closer to my moon day, the more I would show through in his behavior, I suppose. I don't like listening to humans. I knew very few words. 'No' was one. Growling seemed to mean the same to humans. I think all werewolves know these things; Geoffrey growls more right before his moon day. We begin to smell each other, recognize each other, understand our wolf behavior, even in our human bodies."

So the wolf had once been a normal werewolf.

"But you don't fight anymore?"

"No. We help each other. He knows without me, he would never have survived. Without him, I would never have been able to make the dark man interested, and so would have died, too."

There is a pause. The wolf-boy tips his head again and leans forward.

"Why so many questions?"

"I am a Potions Master, a man of research; this is an opportunity I probably won't have again."

"Pish, that means little to me. You are like the boy, you mean. You always want to know why. Sometimes more than anything else."

"Yes."

"You're both more foolish than is good for you."

To Harry and Alexandra's shock, Snape actually laughs.

"Foolish in a brilliant way, yes?"

The wolf-child snorts.

"Those are the boy's words, not mine! Something he used to say to the dark man, to make his eyes go green."

Potter's eyes furrow together and he leans forward, his voice cutting through the kitchen for the first time.

"Go green, what do you mean by that?"

The amber eyes turn to him and narrow slightly, as if they are judging his worth.

"I mean that the boy would say…" he begins, very slowly and very deliberately, "…'foolish in a brilliant way, right Grandfather?' to make him less dangerous. To gain his care. The boy says he does not love, that we can only make him care for us."

"Why do you call him the dark one?"

"Because I have no lords, I will not call him by a name he made up, and his real name is dangerous."

"Tom Riddle, you mean?" The wolf-child shrinks back in his chair so much and so fast that it topples over. He looks up at the boy's mother, her eyes strong and powerful, from his tangled position.

"Shut it," he says, very softly and very firmly. "Don't say that name! It makes him mad."

"But he's not here."

"It doesn't matter, we don't say that name. We learned our lesson."

Harry shivers, remembering Geoffrey's hollow eyes and defeated tone back in his office all those months ago: 'Foolish, silly child – he should never have called the Dark Lord by his real name. Stupid, stubborn child – he should have screamed and showed weakness.'

"Who is more afraid of the name, you or the boy?"

The wolf-child has righted the chair and is seated on it again. At Snape's words, he lunges forward, his body half across the table, and growls lowly.

"I'm not afraid. It was me who endured the pain. Who felt it turning our insides into fire. Who made sure my boy didn't scream. Who let it rip us apart. It was me, who felt their hands, dragging us away. It was me, who protected us. Me who felt the most. Me who knows the danger of that name."

"Does the boy remember the lesson?"

The wolf-child shivers at the topic, but climbs back off the table and reseats himself.

"Yes."

"Devlin experiences seizures from the torture. Do you?"

"Yes."

"Do you experience anything else?"

The wolf-child growls.

"Not that you need know."

"What if I just want to know?"

He growls again.

"No."

"No what?"

"You don't need to know my weaknesses."

Severus looks out the window at the sky. Afternoon is disappearing. Soon it will be time to lock the boy up. He pulls a potion from out of his robes.

"Drink it."

Amber eyes regard the vial and then he sighs deeply.

"I thought, if I answered you, I would not be drugged."

"This shouldn't disrupt your mind at all."

Another sigh. It sounds more wolf than human, despite the vocal cords it is being made with.

"It is the only way to ensure safety," he says, after the wolf-child makes no move to drink the potion.

"There was only once the dark man didn't make us drink this…" He lifts the vial up and gulps down the potion.

"When was that?"

"The boy says 'no'."

"Pardon?"

"The boy says 'no'. He says not to tell you." He stands up. His shoulders are relaxing and though his eyes stay amber, he somehow looks less feral. "Where do you want to lock me up?"

But no one gets the chance to answer his question. The floo lights up in the living room it's green hue shimmering, even in the hallway outside the kitchen. The wolf-child retches backwards at the green light, and then rushes forward into the hallway.

Harry follows him, confused. That is, until he is standing next to his child as he leans against the wall in the hallway, right next to the living room door.

"I thought…I thought someone had hurt the girl. Green light…it is dangerous."

"It was only the floo…"

"Yes, I see that now."

"Have you seen the Killing Curse?" The amber eyes roam upward to find his green ones. He doesn't look as much like his grandmother, with those eyes.

"Oh, yes," he whispers, his eyes lost and desperate at the same time, his head leaning against the wall, his little chest still rising and falling fast and hard. "It doesn't make any sound at all. One minute they are standing and the next they have fallen. The dark man says it is like a marionette that's had its strings cut."

Harry cringes at his words.

"I'm sorry, Devlin," he whispers hoarsely.

"I'm not your Devlin," the child says, his amber eyes peering intently at him.

"Yes you are. You are part of my boy, so I care about you just as much."

When Harry looks at him next, there is a swirl of green in the amber depths, right around the pitch black of his pupils.

"You stayed with me, that first night. I remember."

"I'll never leave you on purpose, Devlin."

"You wouldn't let the white men near me or my creator."

"Remus."

"Mmm, yes, him."

"He'll be back soon. Devlin told us he doesn't like transforming alone."

Devlin smiles.

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Upcoming:

"Did you know, that my boy knows something about that man?" He is smiling now, a small twisted small that makes Harry wonder what Devlin knows about Severus Snape.

"Oh?"

"Mmmm, he once fancied a…what does he call them, a girl who didn't know she was a witch."