Disclaimer: Nothing is mine.
Warning: Violence.
Authors note: I know, I know, get to the slash already, but I'm having buckets of fun with this whole war thing, and also I like torturing you guys, and also maybe I should take suggestions on how this shindig goes down. I'm leaning towards it all starting as a not relationship style friend with benefit thing because they are AT WAR, WHO HAS TIME TO LIKE, DATE? But at the same time, I feel like Harry is one of those all or none style guys.
ANYYYHOOOWW, this is a transition chapter, and someone dies, but no one we actually care about, so whatever!
Enjoy, keep reading, and thanks for sticking with me, if you've hung on this far :).
Adrian Pucey - Phobos
Liam Baddock - Deimos
Theodor Nott – Oberon
Draco Malfoy – Chaos
Vincent Crabbe - Moros
Gregory Goyle - Pallas
Blaise Zabini – Pan
Pansy Parkinson - Nyx
Daphne Greengrass - Hebe
Morag Macdougal – Nike
Millicent Bulstrode - Cerberus
Elijah Harper - Cratos
Anthony Vaisey - Tyche
Malcolm Baddock – Hecate
Astoria Greengrass - Eris
Flora Carrow - Nemisis
Hestia Carrow – Hypnos
Ginny Weasley – Tartarus
Seamus Finnegan – Hyperion
Neville Longbottom - Chiron
Dean Thomas – Prometheus
Demelza something or other - Selene
Anthony Goldstien - Styx
Terry Boot - Perses
Zacharias Smith - Chronos
Kevin Entwhistle - Pontus
Jack Sloper – Morpheus
Ritchie Coote - Erebos
Colin Creevey - Metis
Dennis Creevey - Eos
Mandy Brocklehurst – Leto
Michael Corner – Charon
Stephen Cornfoot - Atlas
Orla Quirke - Lamia
Ernie Macmillan –Minos
Sally-Anne Perks – Aether
When Draco told them what he wanted of them, the uproar of complains and pledges of unwavering loyalty, and the urge to stay and fight and hold everyone off flooded over the room. He wanted to stay together, fight together, and die together, but he had to be realistic. And the wards would hold them off, but only so long. If they'd managed to take Hogwarts, taking a smaller structure, protected by much less sophisticated magic would hardly hold them up for long. And if they played this right, then the one that really needed to hide, or escape, could.
Eventually the arguments wore thin. The war hadn't seemed that real up until now. It was a dangerous, complicated game, but one that wasn't here, one that could be forgotten during mealtimes.
And now, as basically a maniacal overlord prepared to do his best to kill them all, there was an odd tension. Draco didn't feel the same hesitance he saw in some faces, only felt a sort of grim, all consuming terror.
What the hell had he gotten them into. If they have just stayed at Hogwarts, and shut up, then maybe they would all be alive. Maybe not alive and happy, but their chances of not dying would probably be better.
He split them up into their assigned groups. The wolves were to stay with him. Leto, Cerberus, Eos, Lamia and Selene were staying behind, hidden in the crypts with the refugees, vampires and children, and the centaurs. The truce between the vampires and the centaurs had weirdly come almost the easiest. Though they were both weird, night obsessed ominous groups, Draco supposed. Chronos was also staying, but mostly because he was in no shape to go anywhere.
Chiron, Tartarus, Prometheus and Hyperion were going with Potter and his lot, though that selection did not surprise Draco.
The rest were off with Pan and Phobos, split into two groups, to go in opposite directions, and meet up in a location they would agree on without telling anyone that was staying, in case of anyone's capture.
Phobos was charged to take to the turrets and pick off as many death eaters as he and his could from that high vantage point. Pan and his lot were to be on the ground, behind the wolves, to leave the moment that the breach was getting at all overwhelming.
Draco tried to kick Potter out, but the boy insisted he would stubbornly remain until they at least knew the death eaters were really coming.
They moved everyone down into the very depth of the dungeons, and began activating the traps, and spells, and goblin magic they'd been setting. Draco drew his wand, opening a small gash across his finger, and drawing it across the stones, muttering the ancient incantation Granger had dug up, a form of blood magic. If a property had been in one families possession for a certain number of years, it could have a certain subtle loyalty, and could do things like form unyielding stone walls unless a Malfoy's blood was presented.
After all that, all the moving the food and the beds and the blankets, and everything they could down, and trying to make the mansion except their lair look unlived in, there was still no sign of any kind of impending doom.
Draco and Cole sat side by side, quietly contemplating the skyline, on the front steps of the mansion. Draco was running through things that had been done, making sure they had been, in his head, to soothe himself, when he had a dark realization.
"Cole? Go get all the wolves you can find."
When Cole returned with the rest of them, Draco rose, and moved towards the back garden gate. He felt removed from this thought, as though it was stone-walled off by its own taboo blood magic.
"They'll only be safe if I'm the only Malfoy left. And my dad is half mad somewhere in these woods. We need to kill him, and destroy the body, to get rid of the blood they could use."
His quiet statement was met with silence, but it was the comforting silence of a group of people with the same pack mentality, same heart, same wilderness. They moved through the gate, and effortlessly shifted from a rag tag group of adolescents to a pack of lean wolves.
Draco barked the sound for hunt, and they split off into pairs or trios, to spread out and find their prey. As he moved through the crisp leaves, easing his weight back on his haunches to quiet the sounds his paws made on the forest floor, he marveled at the exhilaration that came from his awareness as a wolf.
Scents were clear, could be felt, followed, nothing the dull twinges he could sense as a human. He could hear and feel the heart beats of his pack mates, of the forest creatures, and thrum of the wards from the manor. Sounds were not only much clearer, but easy to pinpoint with his ears that could twitch to move and pick out exact locations of sounds.
Cole and Fiver followed Draco quietly, padding along at a swift trot, their soft paws making only the quietest of sounds.
Draco paused, dropping his head to the floor, sniffing, tasting. He could smell man, the smell of sweat and urine, the stench of a man who had been in the woods for weeks alone with his madness. The scent wasn't that fresh though, and crisscrossed all over this game track. He picked the freshest trail, and followed it south.
Before long, their scent trail grew cold, and they stopped, trying to pick it up again, the stale scent hard to pick out. But before they had a chance to go back and try to find it again, they heard a bark, and a howl. The baritone, low howl had to be Thom, whose wolf form was a huge, jet black monstrous beast with a low voice. Draco picked up a lope, speeding up as the growls, and adrenaline became clearer, the feeling of prey cornered coming from his pack mates washing over him in a way unexplainable to humans. It was like another sense, awareness of ones pack, and while it was not that strong in his human form, when he shifted, it was as acute as his sight, smell, or hearing.
Lucius Malfoy, or what once was Lucius Malfoy stood in the center of a clearing. He was dirty, his robes torn, his grey eyes confused and scared. He was surrounded, the whole pack was here by now, and he was being stalked, like a sickly deer, by 9 snarling wolves.
His pale eyes darted around slightly wildly, and he made a sound, moving his lips, but not saying any understandable words. And in that moment, looking at this terrified shell of a man, Draco paused. Could he really do this? Kill his father? This scared, trembling man, who had no one left in the world, presumed dead already, this wasn't his father though. This was a shell, a fragmented portion of a once terrifying, powerful man.
But in the wrong hands, he would cause the kids that Draco had saved their lives, cost the nonhumans their freedom, and probably get everyone killed. Lucius turned, to look for an out, and in that moment, Draco leaped. He knew it was an odd form of cowardice, leaping only when his father had turned his back on him, but he couldn't see that odd, helpless look on his fathers face. It was foreign and terrifying, to see his fathers aristocratic face in the childlike state of fear and confusion.
As soon as Draco leaped, the rest followed, snapping jaws descending on the frail man. Tearing, ripping, and the taste of blood, and he was gone. There were a few gurgling breaths, and then Draco closed his strong jaws around his fathers neck, and felt the hot, coppery blood wash over his tongue. He tore and then barked, snarling, the other wolves dropped back at his order.
He made eye contact with Oliver and then Cole, refusing to look at the body as he stepped back, and the three fire-Recombined wolves closed their eyes, and the corpse burst into a violent blue and white blossom of fire.