~~~~~~~~~~~ Throwing Out the Script ~~~~~~~~~~~
~ Chapter 3: The Big Bad Wolf ~
"Go beg somewhere else, tramp," Harry sneered, dropping his lit cigarette onto the ground in front of him. He didn't bother to put it out. "You're an eyesore."
He strolled casually away, resisting the urge to spit. The foul taste of ash had infiltrated his mouth despite the fact that he hadn't inhaled from the cheap cigarette. Harry smiled as he heard a faint growl that would have been inaudible had he not already cast a hearing enhancement charm on himself.
Gotcha, Harry thought triumphantly as he made his way towards an isolated, heavily wooded area of the park.
There was only the barest hint of magic as he crossed into the subtle Muggle Repelling Wards he'd set up earlier, detectable only because it was his magic and he knew to look for them. Greyback would be able to sense anything too overt this close to the full moon.
After deciding that Fenrir Greyback needed to be dealt with, Harry had run into the frustrating issue of trying to plan an assassination in far too little time with no resources. While he was no stranger to killing it had always been in service to some other objective. This would be the first time he'd sought someone out for the express purpose of killing them. Aside from Voldemort, of course, but that seemed more like preemptive self-defence than attempted murder.
The problem was that Harry simply didn't have time to try and figure out where Greyback lived and implement some elegant and sophisticated plan. He didn't even have the luxury of focusing on a plan to safely kill the werewolf. Chances were that even without the mayhem caused by the werewolves Voldemort would still go through with his attack, one way or another.
Harry couldn't predict what Voldemort's response to the Ministry not being tied up in Oban would be to a certainty, but he thought it was likely that Voldemort's pride would force the issue. He'd already given enough information about his planned attack to his more trusted followers, and not going through with it would diminish the larger than life image he was so carefully crafting. He was conditioning his minions just as surely as he was trying to condition the rest of the world.
He had succeeded to a rather significant extent before his first demise in 1981. The goal he'd been inexorably working for was to imprint the idea that resisting his will was unthinkable. Even the mere contemplation of acting against him was something to be shoved into the suicidal and irrational ideas category.
That was why it was important for him to personally kill a complete nobody. More accurately, that was why it was important for him to personally kill a complete nobody in Diagon Alley in full view of bystanders that had just been going about their normal day.
Diagon Alley was safe.
That was a notion deeply embedded in the minds of the populace. It wasn't just about the wards and the Aurors. There was safety in numbers. Voldemort's reputation was such that few people doubted he'd be able mount an attack on the alley, but the difficulty of doing so would surely outweigh any potential gain.
Voldemort would shatter that feeling of safety to its core. These were dangerous times but there were still places that people felt safe in. But breaking the illusion of safety the Alley provided would cast doubt on the idea that there were any places one could be reasonably safe from the Dark Lord. The werewolf attack tying up the Ministry just in time for the assassination wouldn't go unnoticed by the smarter witches and wizards, but even that wouldn't be blunt his point very much. The knowledge that he had to carefully plan such an attack wouldn't erase the fact that it was not only a possibility, but apparently a perfectly viable one for Voldemort.
Harry had spent most of the time he had available planning and preparing for the possible confrontation with Voldemort. Dealing with Greyback was a far simpler task. If worst came to worst, he knew where the werewolves had started their night out when the massacre had originally gone down, although the idea of cutting it quite so close was not one he was fond of. Fortunately for Harry he knew enough about Greyback's habits that he didn't have to show up in Oban as night hit and hope for the best.
Fenrir Greyback was a bona fide serial killer, complete with patterns of ritualistic behavior.
An essential part of Greyback's ritual was his need to revel in the anticipation of his attacks. He would spend the day preceding his transformation watching his intended victims go about their everyday lives, savoring the knowledge that he would be tearing those lives apart. He was partial to places where people brought their pets for recreation, such as dog parks, relishing the unease he could force onto them by the way their animals reacted to him.
Knowing this, it was actually rather trivial to track the werewolf down before nightfall. Harry found Greyback sitting hunched on a bench in the third park he'd checked.
He wore a rough coat over a far too revealing frayed shirt. His dark hair was slicked back, looking greasy and unhygienic rather than styled. While the tilt of his head did a good job of hiding the unnatural amber hue of his eyes in the shadows of his brow, the uneven yellow teeth and the predatory grin that revealed them were more than enough to give him a dangerous vibe.
Having found his quarry, Harry had put his plan into motion.
The purpose of the cheap muggle cigarettes was twofold. He'd cast cleansing charms to strip away the scents that could possibly identify him as a wizard, but there was always a chance that something would remain. Not to mention he'd still be carrying the wand he'd stolen from the shop plus the three he'd looted from the werewolves that had attacked him. Casting a charm to block all smells would make it blatantly obvious that he was a wizard, so he'd had to come up with something more subtle.
Not only did the cigarette smoke he'd steeped himself in mask any lingering scents that might arouse the werewolf's suspicions, but it would be downright offensive to his heightened sense of smell. Harry had made sure to buy the cheapest brand available, guessing that the chemicals the muggles used to treat and preserve the tobacco would be especially irritating. He'd been right on the mark, as the stench was overpowering to even his normal sense of smell. While his own tastes were limited to Gleamblossom, he had at least a second hand appreciation for fine tobacco from Albus's experience.
Greyback fell into his pace without a hitch. There was no way he could have ignored the provocation so close to the full moon. The aggressive breach of his personal space, the insults, and god awful stench that Harry had so generously left for him by dropping the cigarette ensured that he'd follow the wizard to exact retribution.
A low, rumbling growl slid through the air, at first so faint that it could be written off as a trick of the mind.
Harry didn't let it build in volume like he knew it would. He'd been waiting for it, knowing the games the werewolf liked to play with his prey. The instant he heard the growl Harry spun, a jet of red light lancing from his wand before he was even fully facing his opponent.
Having not even had the slightest belief that Harry might prove to be a threat, Greyback was taken completely off guard. He'd had his own wand drawn but held loosely at his side. The wand in his hand came up blindingly fast despite his surprise, but not fast enough to prevent the Disarming Charm from slamming into him.
The Disarming Charm had been one of the first defensive spells Harry had learned and remained a prominent part of his repertoire for quite some time. However, he had found performing it properly wanting in comparison to the rather brilliant way he, Ron, and Hermione had used it on Snape in the Shrieking Shack in their third year. So he promptly 'refined' the improper way of casting it so that it launched its victim in the opposite direction of their wand, much to Hermione's irritation and Ron's amusement. After all, the fight didn't necessarily stop once the enemy was wandless, and giving them time and space to try something was just foolhardy.
Harry much preferred his version of the Disarming Charm, although as he had become more experienced he tended to disarm his opponents in a much more literal sense. That gave even less opportunity for them to make a comeback.
While his charm normally sent its target through the air, Greyback's resistance to magic, boosted by being only hours away from his transformation, reduced the effect to the point where he merely stumbled backwards.
Harry didn't waste an instant, sharply flicking his wand even as his spell landed to activate the Anti-Apparition, Anti-Portkey, and Physical Containment Wards that had been awaiting his signal.
A harsher jab of his wand flung a faint blue haze at the werewolf as he stumbled, smashing into his stomach with a thud and a garbled "Guh!" as he was tossed back into a tree, cutting off his cry. Ropes sprang into existence around him, tying him to the thick trunk rather more tightly than necessary as Harry snatched the flying wand out of the air with his left hand, spinning it around his fingers to land firmly in his grip.
When Harry's wards and nonverbal Homenum Revelio confirmed that he and Greyback were the only people in the general vicinity, he relaxed minutely and strode towards the wheezing werewolf. He stopped a good three meters away.
"Y-you shitfa-!" Greyback snarled, his voice hoarse, interrupting himself with a hacking coughs.
"Good evening, Mr. Gr-"
"I'm gonna fucking kill you bleeding pisslicker!" Greyback growled, glaring manically at Harry. He was straining and wriggling almost violently in his attempts to free himself. "I'm gonna rip yer fucking heart out yer fucking cu-!"
Greyback's face snapped to the side with a sharp cracking noise.
"Put a sock in it," Harry told him, lowering his wand.
"You shut up you shit humpi-mmmmh? MMMMHH!"
Greyback was abruptly cut off by the appearance of a thick woolen sock balled up in his mouth. He continued to try and shout, shaking his head to and fro as he tried to dislodge it. After a few seconds it became clear that he wasn't going to get it out that way, so he settled for growling at Harry through his makeshift gag.
Harry thought it was growling, at least. It was coming out more as a nasally moan. His jaw was moving a bit as well, probably trying to chew his way through the thick wool.
Good luck with that, Harry thought, keeping his amusement off his face.
Harry took a slow, calming breath in through his nose, preparing himself to use Legilimency. The Mind Arts were a complicated and dangerous endeavor, and Harry was about to ignore one of the most fundamental rules of mental safety.
Don't stick your mind into crazy.
Fenrir Greyback was a psychopath who deliberately let his mind fester in the impulses generated by his lycanthropy. He'd even conditioned his mind to generate those impulses on its own. There was no doubt that Greyback's head was not a safe place to visit. Even Voldemort hadn't done much more than skim the surface of the werewolf's mind because of that.
Harry imagined the cleansing Flame of Fawkes's burning day. The purity of that fire had always stuck with him, since he'd first seen in it Dumbledore's office in his second year. He let go of his amusement, and the Flame consumed it.
One by one, all his his worries, frustrations, idle musings, and emotions were fed to the Flame, until all that was left was the Void.
It wasn't that Harry couldn't feel anything, but that his feelings had no power over him in the Void. He could simply acknowledge them and move on. The clarity and sharpness of his mind in Void gave him near absolute mental self-awareness, so long as he could hold it.
It had taken a over a year of daily practice to get to the point where he could slip into it in a reasonable amount of time. When he'd first started developing the technique it would take him nearly an hour to fully reach the Void when he didn't slip up halfway through, and strong emotions or surprises would easily knock him out of it.
Now he could fall into it in three seconds, provided he had a calm enough opportunity, and he could hold it under the Cruciatus Curse.
"Who else was going was going to transform here tonight?" Harry asked Greyback, meeting his amber eyes and sliding into his mind. His resistance to being directly affected by magic provided a bit of resistance to Harry's Legilimency, but nothing substantial enough to cause a problem.
Harry was instantly buffeted by torrent of emotions. Rage, fear, impatience, and a ravenous hunger skittered across the edges of the Void harshly. The strength of them was such that had Harry not been protecting himself as he was or in some other way, he was sure that they would have dug in and imprinted themselves on his mind quite brutally.
Asking Greyback who his companions for the attack would have been made him think about the answer, bringing it to the front of his mind. Brushing past the werewolf's confused anger at how he was expected to answer while gagged and a surprisingly vivid fantasy of strangling Harry with his own intestines, the wizard honed in on a memory of Greyback meeting with Julian Rhigers and Rhiannon Dulcotte to discuss the attack a few days prior. A few other memories had 'responded', but this one seemed the most relevant and best to start with.
He was looking at Greyback, but he was also looking out of Greyback's eyes at the other werewolves. The discomfort of sitting in a hard wooden chair clashed with the fact that he was still standing, and the taste of undercooked pork would have made his mouth curl in distaste were he not in the Void.
Harry let his focus ease until the sensations lost their potency, becoming mere phantoms. While he had little trouble distinguishing between his own feelings and thoughts in the present moment from Greyback's memory, knowing that they weren't his didn't make them not feel real.
"So 45 Galleons now, and another 75 after the job?" Rhiannon asked, the feral grin on her lips making what she thought of the idea obvious.
"Yeah," he lied through his teeth. The Dark Lord's snooty emissary had given him an advance of 75 Galleons with the promise of another 90 on completion, but they didn't need to know that. "So 15 and 25 for each of us."
He followed the connection from that memory to a more recent one of a different kind of meeting with Dulcotte, one that disgusted Harry to the point where his hold on the Void nearly wavered. He definitely hadn't needed to see that.
Quickly skimming the other 'hits' to his query, Harry found nothing of relevance.
That makes things easier, Harry thought, realizing that Greyback didn't know that Rhigers was dead yet, as their next planned meeting was supposed to be that night in Oban.
"Where's Dulcotte?"
A jumble of memories and images indicated that Greyback could only guess. The only concrete answer about her whereabouts was the original plan to meet up in Oban a bit before moonrise.
That'll have to do, Harry mused, mentally noting the location.
By this point, Greyback had realized something was up, and his mind was focusing more on Harry. His confusion, fear, and rage were making it harder to direct his thinking to things he wasn't concerned about in the moment.
Harry didn't need to hide what he was fishing for, so he could just keep on asking questions rather than delving more dangerously into Greyback's psyche to make it seem like the impulse to think about those things was his own.
"Where's the money you didn't tell Dulcotte and Rhigers about?"
While Voldemort had paid seventy-five Galleons for the job up front with the promise of another ninety on completion, Greyback skimmed thirty Galleons off the top and pretended that the advance was only forty-five to share between them. When Harry had relieved Rhigers and his compatriots of the belongings they no longer had any use for he'd only found four galleons and change.
That meant that Greyback possibly had more than forty Galleons stashed away somewhere. Harry found the idea of killing someone and then robbing them distasteful, especially given that he'd initiated the confrontation. But his unwillingness to burden the innocent with his problems certainly didn't apply to Fenrir Greyback, and in this case his sense of practicality was winning over other more aesthetic considerations.
Getting ahold of even the fifteen Galleons that was Greyback's 'legitimate' cut would allow him to reacquire his holly and phoenix feather wand. And while it was doubtful that he'd be replacing his wondrous diamond anytime soon, there were a lot of other nice toys that would make his life easier. Things like combat robes and potions.
By this point Greyback had figured out that the wizard was inside his mind. The realization was not unexpected. Harry had been anything but subtle in his questioning, and had in fact been waiting on this moment.
Harry didn't let the thought fully form. He could feel it sliding into place.
Harry mentally gripped the thought and ripped it from the hate, fear, and burning rage it was inspiring and shoved it down and out of it's place at the forefront of the werewolf's mind. Greyback's most prominent thoughts in that moment had been revolving around the burgeoning realization that the privacy of his mind was being violated, and without that realization they had no proper context.
The mind was far too unique an existence to be quantified by simple analogy, but an often useful way of thinking about it was as a web of connections and associations between ideas and memories.
Greyback's anger at Harry for invading his mind had been by far the most central thought on his mind, his focus so intense on it that there had been no way to direct his thoughts anywhere else. But it wasn't really just one thought. It was a mental concept of Harry linked tightly to rage, transitioning from the realization that his mind was being read, and it was that transition that had been severed before it had a chance to solidify.
So Greyback knew that he was furious with Harry, but every time his mind tried to process why it just… stuttered. It didn't help that the werewolf had other reasons to be angry at Harry, because every time his mind went in that direction it tried to follow that strong association to a node that just wasn't there, and every time it tried the more he focused on it. It was a mental death trap.
Disoriented didn't even come close to adequately describing the state of Greyback's mind. It simply had no way of dealing with the inconsistency it had been presented.
The foundation of Harry's interrogation techniques came from Voldemort's methods, but knowing the Dark Lords tricks didn't grant him the same finesse and subtlety. The difference between their minds was significant enough that Voldemort's 'muscle memory' of the mind didn't transfer terribly well, and Harry couldn't match his nemesis's ease in guiding thought progression.
Ironically enough it was Snape's Occlumency 'lessons' that had bridged the gap for Harry. The Potions Professor had been delighted to take the opportunity to essentially rough up Harry's mind while ostensibly teaching him. The sheer inventiveness of the ways Snape had toyed with his emotions and memories had astounded and angered Harry when he finally managed to learn Occlumency and reflect on his first lessons.
Snape had been a brilliant teacher when he wasn't trying to teach and a ridiculously awful one when he was. Harry had taken the tricks Snape used against him and added them to his repertoire, using them rather brutally when his finesse wasn't up to the task. While Snape had limits on what he could get away with under Dumbledore's nose, Harry didn't need to pretend he was actually helping his targets.
"Where's the money?" Harry asked again.
Directing Greyback's mind to focus on the answer was trivially easy. It was subconsciously looking for any way to get away from the dead end it had been slamming into. Harry noted that Greyback had a bit over eleven Galleons on his person and followed the connection to a memory of placing the rest on a table in a cabin.
Pushing for the werewolf to focus on the Unplottable cabin was a little harder, but still doable in his frazzled state. Harry noted the location and defenses quickly, as Greyback wanted to think about the woods around the cabin more than the cabin itself for some reason. That was far enough removed from the thought of the money that it broke the hold Harry had on the memories.
Greyback once again focused on Harry, who waited for him to once again hit a mental dead end. He'd use the resulting mental stumble to dig up more information about the cabin's defenses.
Things did not go quite as expected. The severed link had frayed, and knotted into itself as it was once again followed. Rather than halting in confusion at the non-destination, Greyback's mind was routed back to his rage at Harry. And then it immediately tried to follow the knotted association again.
And again.
And again.
A feeling of foreboding sent chills down his spine, and Harry's calm, rational mind weighed in.
Oh shit.
Using Legilimency on Greyback had been a calculated risk. Whatever was happening was far outside those calculations, and Harry knew better than to stick around as feedback loop of rage began twist in on itself, seeming to come alive in the werewolf's mind.
Legilimency wasn't a visual experience beyond the sight in the memories themselves, but Harry got the impression oily black tentacles exploding from the rage to slide along it's connections to other nodes as he hastily dropped his probe.
Greyback's subtly glowing amber eyes snapping out of their daze to focus on him was the only warning Harry had.
The moment that he'd decided to get the hell out of Greyback's mind he'd been moving, intending to end the fiasco with a Bone Shredder to the skull. A faint orange glow had already started to appear at the end of his wand, but he hastily dropped the spell in favor of a kinetic shield.
The faint hum of the barrier springing into place coincided with the loud snaps of ropes giving way and the ripping of clothes.
One moment Greyback had been safely tied up, the next he was smashing into Harry's shield like a stampeding mûmak, his clothes in tatters on account of him suddenly being about seven feet tall and proportionally broader.
The barrier held, albeit under protest, but the impact sent Harry flying backwards. He had the presence of mind to awkwardly cast a cushioning charm on his back with Greyback's wand in his off hand as he kept the other pointed forwards.
The unexpected obstacle halted the werewolf for only a moment, and his amber eyes remained unerringly locked on Harry's as he crouched down preparing to pounce. His form was rippling, shifting and growing. His snout fully elongated, and dark, shaggy fur pushed off the scraps of cloth clinging to his form as it fully grew in. Claws attached to eerily long fingers gouged deep chunks out of the ground. It was difficult to tell with Greyback crouched, but Harry estimated he would be about nine or ten feet tall were he to stand up straight in his new form.
A quick glance upwards confirmed what he already knew to be true. It was still hours before nightfall, and there should be no way this was happening.
Well, it was far from the first time that reality had disagreed with Harry's understanding of it, so he brushed aside his confusion to focus on the moment.
Harry held his shield firm, even as he brought the wand in his off hand to bear. The strain of casting simultaneously with two wands wasn't something that was by any means easy to bear, but it wasn't impossible.
The roots of the tree Greyback was fidgeting by violently ripped themselves from the ground, slithering around him in a snakelike fashion. The werewolf tried to jump away, but there had been no avenue of escape.
Harry grimaced as he felt the strain on his magic as the wood binding his adversary creaked dangerously. His struggle definitely had a magical component, clashing against Harry's own in a manner not entirely physical.
Harry just needed to hold the werewolf until he could safely land, and––
His thoughts were interrupted as a loud crack accompanied a sudden, jarring impact on his left shoulder. The cushioning spell had done its job, so the sound had come from the tree he hit being broken and not his shoulder, although he was still sent spinning in one direction while the wand in his left hand was knocked away in another.
The instant the wand left his hand Harry felt Greyback tear through the animated roots that had been binding him. It took only the barest effort to cast a Summoning Charm, another one of Harry's favorites. He didn't even have to think the incantation. His familiarity with the spell meant that he could feel its position relative to himself as it sped back towards him even as he spun through the air. Colliding with the tree had altered his trajectory distinctly downwards.
He could also feel Greyback through the wards, and the sheer speed at which he was moving was worrisome. The werewolf covered the ten or so meters between them in a flash. Harry could have used magic to slow his fall, but that would just make him an easier target.
Instead, he waited until he was just about to hit the ground with the werewolf mere feet away from him. He then jammed his wand into the earth on his third rotation, flooding it with his will and magic.
Two giant hands of earth sprang from the ground.
One gently caught Harry, stopping his motion completely. The other was not gentle, blurring as it slapped the charging werewolf out of the air in an explosion of dirt and grass.
Greyback was sent flying, but agilely twisted in midair. The blow hadn't really fazed him, it seemed. He gripped onto a tree trunk as he flew past it with his unnervingly long fingers, yanking himself onto the tree to cling to it sideways, seemingly regarding gravity with the same level of respect that he did the idea that werewolves should only transform when the full moon was out, or that nearly doubling in height was not a part of the package.
He used the tree to springboard himself at Harry again. At least his single-minded focus on his 'prey' was following the norm.
Harry had released his wand the instant his animation of the earth had taken hold, so as not to snap it. The hand that had caught him was frozen, leaving Harry sitting in it almost casually, raising his hand as though to ask a question in class.
Greyback's wand, which he had summoned after it had been knocked from his grip, slowed to land delicately in his grip. His familiarity with and fondness for the charm lent him a control over it that surpassed both Dumbledore's and Voldemort's, putting it on a very short list of magicks that Harry truly considered his.
So for the first time not on the defensive since Greyback had broken his bonds, Harry felt back in control. Despite the ravenous pseudo-werewolf flying through the air to rip him to shreds. Or possibly envelope him in the mother of all hugs. Reality wasn't making too much sense at the moment, so who knew.
Greyback's wand practically purred in his fingers as he snapped it down. It seemed curiously fine with being used against its… master? Former master? Wand lore was confusing at the best of times. So Harry pointed it a point in front of and slightly to the side of werewolf, and the air started to coalesce to a point with a whisper.
Greyback's path through the air was altered as he was drawn to it, despite his boosted resistance to magic.
It was the Summoning Spell again, but nothing like the basic form he'd learned in his fourth year. The idea was not to summon something to him, but to summon everything to a point. It wasn't something he could easily explain, but it wasn't just compressing the air and whatever matter it managed to suck in. Everything included spacetime after all. Gravity was the effect of mass bending spacetime, but this was more like twisting and scrunching it up at a point.
The results weren't very pronounced in the grand scheme of things, but on the micro-level of the cosmos that humanity inhabited?
A lazy flick of his wand directed all the pent up energy in Greyback's direction, and with a warbling whump! the creature blasted off to the side like he'd been shot out of a cannon, angled towards the ground. He plowed into the earth, spraying out dirt like water to the sides of a jet ski as he dug a furrow a meter deep and ten long, before being stopped by a boulder with sound like a thunder clap.
The spell, which he had playfully named the Gravity Bomb, was a conceptual modification of the Summoning Charm and had no proper incantation. If it did, it most definitely would have been Fuck You!
All of the damage it did was purely physical, a side effect of reality trying to shake the hinky weirdness of magic off, so Harry had been hoping that it would have reduced Greyback to a fine mist.
"You are one seriously tough motherfucker," Harry marveled aloud, allowing his mind to fall out of its disconnected state as he watched Greyback climb out of the hole he'd gouged into the ground with his impromptu flight. The werewolf was a bit unsteady on his feet, but that was a far cry from mess of broken bones and pulverized flesh that he should have been.
Magic was primarily expressed through will, power, image, and desire. While the Void was great for a lot of things and absolutely indispensable for mentally spelunking in crazy people's minds, it completely cut off the visceral connection between Harry and his desires, allowing him to process them clinically within his own mind. It facilitated a beautiful mental clarity, but also sealed off a wide range of powerful and useful magic, much reducing their effectiveness or simply cutting them off completely.
Essentially anything fueled by emotion or desire couldn't be performed in the Void. The Patronus Charm, the Unforgivables, Fiendfyre and pretty much any Dark Magic that really was Dark Magic. Bellatrix had been resoundingly correct when she'd told him that he had to mean it. His Itching Jinx had more of an effect than his Cruciatus while separated from his emotions.
Greyback apparently found physical damage to be no more than a momentary annoyance, so it seemed that switching tactics was in order. Either the werewolf was ridiculously durable, or he'd somehow gained some passive magical defense on top of his resistance. For all its kick, Harry's Gravity Bomb was purely physical in its damage and thus relatively easily dealt with using magic. Whatever the case was, playing around was not a smart option in this situation.
Harry's only misgivings about using Dark Magic was that it lingered, and he was trying not to leave any traces. However, Dark Magic was probably the cleanest, simplest way of dealing with Greyback at this point. Although part of him wanted to start out simple and work his way up to the more powerful curses just to test out Greyback's limits, overkill was definitely the way to go.
The wand he'd stuck in the ground flew to his left hand as he stood from his makeshift chair. Squashing his curiosity, Harry let his desire to utterly destroy Greyback well up within him. For a short time after reconnecting with his emotions they were felt more vividly from the contrast. A flickering orange light appeared the tip of his wand, smoking ominously. His lips curled into a snarl as he thought about all the families the werewolf had ripped apart, the lives he'd poisoned.
Fenrir Greyback was a blight upon the world, and Harry was going to burn him off it. And he was going to enjoy doing so very, very much.
The giddy feeling of Fiendfyre racing through his veins, begging to burnburnburneverything! was halted by Harry's sudden confusion.
Rather than shaking off the dirt and going straight after Harry, Greyback was acting… oddly.
The werewolf was making odd muffled noises, more akin to a seal barking than anything even remotely wolf-like––if the seal in question had a rather deep, gruff voice at any rate. He was writhing around as well, and either trying to scratch off his own tongue or force himself to vomit, given the frantic way he was shoving his claw tipped fingers into his mouth. Harry kept up his guard, but watched in astonishment as Greyback started ramming his back into a nearby tree, still making those odd noises and trying to rip his own tongue out. This devolved into writhing on the ground, kicking at the dirt and clawing at his throat desperately.
After about a minute of this, his movements seemed to peak in a blur and then slow down abruptly. He twitched weakly for a few seconds before falling limp.
Harry eyed the limp form of the previously nigh unstoppable killing machine in disbelief.
For some reason, the memory of a fishlike creature exclaiming 'it's a trap!' popped into his head. Feeling emotions more strongly could edge on the loopy side of sanity.
Although the idea of a transformed werewolf having any grasp of subtlety or deception was patently ridiculous, Harry wasn't going to rule it out. A wave of his wand and a muttered incantation turned the ground underneath the creature to stone, thick tentacles of which whipped around its limp form to create a snug cage.
Greyback didn't move a muscle. Ignoring the part of his mind that was screaming 'burn it!', still in the likeness of that fish creature for some odd reason, Harry cast a dozen protective enchantments on the stone prison, inching forward cautiously. A flurry of diagnostic charms either came back inconclusive or indicated that Greyback was dead, but with all the impossible crap he'd had to go through lately even one inconclusive result was enough to keep him on edge.
"Real smart, Harry," he chided himself sarcastically. "There's something that doesn't make sense. Let's go and poke it with a stick!"
And despite knowing it was a monumentally stupid idea, he levitated a thick fallen branch over to Greyback's prone form and began prodding him. Cautiously at first, but then more and more harshly when he got no reaction.
The smart thing to do would be to immolate the damn thing, but Harry's curiosity got the better of him. He circled around the downed werewolf, keeping a healthy distance. He relaxed minutely once he caught sight of the glassy amber eyes. A cautious nudge of his Legilimency met with nothing in that blank stare.
Tossing the stick aside, Harry flicked his wand to pry open Greyback's jaws, peering in curiously. Despite being 95% certain of the werewolf's death he still maintained his distance.
Harry's jaw dropped in surprise.
"Seriously? You shrug off a Gravity Bomb point blank to the face, but it's the bloody sock that does you in?!"
Lodged in the back of Greyback's throat was the mustard yellow woolen sock that he'd conjured partly to muffle the werewolf's incessant ranting, but mostly just to be an utter dick.
Harry couldn't help smiling as he wondered what Dobby would have made of this. Either he would have thought it was hilarious, or perhaps just a waste of a good sock. Alastor would have loved it. It was an undignified end for an undignified creature.
Alastor Moody was the only one in the Order of the Phoenix who hadn't changed how he interacted with Harry after Albus's death and his subsequent personality shift. Harry wasn't stupid––he knew that the aged Auror had more likely than not been planning to gun him down once Voldemort had been taken out.
Harry was objective enough to know that his changes had been erratic enough actually justify the worry that he might just be the next big problem after Tom Riddle from an outside perspective. He'd just appreciated that there was someone who wasn't walking on eggshells around him. Even if that someone was plotting to Avada Kedavra him in the back at some point just in case he was power crazy.
The Alastor Moody of this… time… probably even wouldn't hesitate to put him down. Harry's grin faded a bit at the thought. Since arriving in the past, he'd killed four werewolves and then looted their dead bodies. Well, he hadn't picked up Greyback's moneybag, but he'd get around to it.
Between the werewolves and the debacle with the Evans, it would be nigh impossible to shake the impression that he was a racist who snuck into teenaged muggleborn girls rooms naked when he wasn't running around committing hate crimes. Well, that was just another reason not to tell anyone that he was assassinating people. Not that avoiding Azkaban wasn't reason enough, of course.
At least he'd been covering his tracks with the werewolves by transfiguring them into innocuous objects. How to discretely dispose of dead bodies wasn't exactly what one would expect to learn from a Defense Against the Dark Arts professor, but Harry wasn't one to look a gift horse in the mouth. Or any horse, for that matter.
Unfortunately the issue with Lily wasn't so easily fixed, at least not without memory modification that he was unwilling to inflict on her. It was a sad fact that Harry had an easier time covering up the fact that he was killing people than explaining a misunderstanding, but sometimes that was just how life worked for Harry Potter.
He'd just have to stay away from her. Not that it would be hard given she'd be stuck at Hogwarts in about a week, and he would be…
"Shit," Harry cursed as realization dawned.
He would need to gain access to Hogwarts at some point, preferably sooner rather than later. Taking care of the Horcruxes would be a lot easier with Basilisk venom, which meant he would have to kill the damn snake. Again. The Diadem was also something that needed to be dealt with. And those were only the absolutely essential things.
The Hogwarts Libraries would make his search for information on the Taint, the 'Rabisu demons', and Merlin's ritual at least possible, although ideally he'd want access to the Headmaster's Library. That wouldn't be easy to pull off. Establishing a rapport with Albus was also something he needed to do at some point, although he hadn't the slightest idea how he could go about that. Trusting his former mentor with the whole truth wasn't an option, but there had to be some way to get him to help.
Too much for now, Harry told himself, forcibly pushing. He needed to focus on his more present concerns. Such as looting whatever money Greyback had brought with him, taking out Dulcotte, and then Confunding Voldemort's scout to make it seem like the attack had happened as planned.
Well, I should have enough coin to get my wand in a minute.
The thought was an uplifting one, pushing aside the vague anxiety over exactly how he'd be able to accomplish all that he needed to. He just didn't feel complete without the familiar presence of his holly and phoenix feather wand. There was still several hours before Dulcotte would be expecting to meet with her deceased pack members, which should be more than enough time to liberate his wand from Ollivander's clutches.
"Note to self," Harry muttered as he transfigured the giant corpse into a block of wood to burn. "Don't fuck around with crazy werewolves."