There is art that goes with this chapter posted on Ao3
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Chapter 27: Hellpuppy
Beta Abuse: Dragon and the Shopping Cart
Summary: Severus learns that it would probably be best if he actually listened to his father instead of being an idiot.
Severus frowned as he was forced to accompany his father to the Undead Nation. His mum was off being social to the Wizarding World in order to get some needed supplies, but some of it was "shadier" and required Knockturn Alley. He was safer with the Nation, she said.
He wasn't sure how.
The Nation was a bit scary.
His father, who normally wore the very commonest of clothes, donned something that looked like it fell out of the Roman Empire, and that plain, Muggle boringness was replaced with both sternness, a hardened expression, and a roll of power he could feel in his bones.
He'd always—
Well, he knew his father was Sang—they'd explained it.
But his father seemed so ordinary. Plain. The very slice of Cokeworth common Muggle stock.
It was shocking to find out that he actually wasn't.
No matter how much he'd been verbally prepared to understand that his father wasn't a Muggle, his da put on a convincing show of the mundane.
"Stay here in the park, my son," Tobias said. "I shouldn't be gone for long."
"But Da— I want to see—"
"It is not an appropriate place for a child," his father said. "The seat of the Council is often a grim place, and those you see there do not come there for happy occasions."
Severus frowned. "Okay."
Tobias placed a hand on Severus' head, ruffling his hair with affection—even though his fingers sported terrifying claws.
Severus had read about vampires—but they were all Muggle books. Stakes, crosses, holy water—considering his father went out in the sunlight and even went to church fetes, they were hardly going to tell him the real story.
He sighed. His parents had promised that once they moved back to the Undead Nation that all would be revealed, but—he was resisting.
Lily would be alone without him there to help teach her about real magic and Hogwarts.
He didn't like change—he didn't want to leave the one magical friend he had.
The garden was so fascinating, but he wanted to explore outside of it. It was like a city surrounded by a castle. High stone walls surrounded it and seemed to go on forever. Yet the Muggles had no clue it existed. Like it was erased off all of the maps.
Magical atlases didn't have it, either.
And no encyclopaedia had mention of the Undead Nation save for the United Nations—which he doubted was the same thing.
Probably.
"Did you hear that Lord Tobias returned for the trial of Thomas Bailey?"
Severus perked at the sound of people chatting in the garden.
"Tobias has returned—it must be serious."
"He turned a blind eye to the murder of several children near Saddleworth Moor," the voice murmured in a hush. "You know Tobias—his hatred for those who would abuse children goes back well over a thousand years."
"Thomas claims he was just trying to keep his head down," the other voice said.
"Do you believe that? What could possibly be worth staying in a place that is obviously harbouring child murderers? Even if he didn't want the inconvenience of moving again—no, I just can't see it."
Lord Tobias? Severus wondered. Surely he had heard THAT wrong.
Severus couldn't hear more as the people walked out of the garden. He thought of following them to find out more. Just a little ways, surely wouldn't hurt.
As he walked out of the garden, he ran into a large black cat with glowing sulphur eyes. It hissed at him, mouth orange as fire. It started toward him—
Severus looked back to the garden gate—but there were other cats there—all looking baleful and rather menacing. The first cat leapt at him, claws extended, teeth bared.
Severus hastily shielded his face, and the claws ripped into his arm. Blood dripped from his injury.
The other felines seemed spurred on by this, and they, too, leapt right for him.
Severus crumpled to the ground, crying.
He was sorry!
He shouldn't have left the garden!
Why did he always have to do that?
There was a sudden roar, and a giant black and brown shape fell upon the cats with a snapping of teeth.
Severus peeked through his webbed fingers over his face and saw a vaguely canine body slashing through the attacking cats with great fervour. The cats clawed at its face, but it turned its body into fire itself—molten lava seemed to ooze from the scratches on its body, covering it in smouldering fury. Fire dripped from curved horns, and a sinuous tail whipped around, swatting the felines away like a cricket bat against a ball. As each seemingly mad cat attacked, the canine snapped, and when her teeth connected, they crushed, lava oozing over her captive as they shook the body ferociously, flinging it away. And its body got bigger and bigger each time a swat connected. Each wound.
A black mass detached itself from the hound's back, and it tore after a few of the felines, crunching and grinding teeth finding purchase on its prey like a spider on a fly— only instead of binding its prey—it was grinding it to paste.
The demonic felines seemed to get the message at last, and they slunk away into the streets, disappearing.
The flaming hellhound snarled viciously, exuding an aura of malevolent protective ire.
"Hermione," a voice rumbled. "Come."
The hellhound cocked her head, reverted into what could only be a cute pup with miniature non-flaming proportions, bounded over to two pale men standing in the street with his father.
Gods—his father.
His father's eyes were glowing—his expression didn't bode well either.
Hermione looked up at the two other men, and one reached down and picked her up. She squirm-wiggled, tail beating side to side, as her tongue pegged under their chin with puppy slurps.
"This is our Hermione," the man with black curly hair said. He had a strangely serene expression on his face. Even cheerful. He held out the pup to his father—
His father's crimson and gold eyes looked over the pup as he took her into his arms, and the pup licked his face as happy to see him as she was to see her other people.
Tobias huffed, drew a claw across his neck, and drew her to it, allowing her to lap at the blood. "I cannot leave you alone for a decade, and you go off bonding to a mutant hellhound," he said with a tch.
"She's adorable," the man with his hair pulled back into a ponytail said.
Their eyes glowed together as a thrum of powerful magic seemed to settle between them.
The hellhound pup sprouted another tail and wove it around each of the men's arms like an anchor.
"I am Tobias," his father told the pup. "Thank you for taking such good care of Rada and Sanguini—and my foolish son."
Severus grimaced.
Hermione snuggled into Tobias' embrace, seemingly happy with any outcome that involved cuddles.
"If she was the runt of the litter, what do the other pups look like?" Tobias asked.
"Quite boringly normal, so it seems," Sanguini said with a rather bored expression. "She is our little Lady of the Most Insufferable Cuteness alone on her island."
Tobias' lips turned up in a smile even as the black cloak returned to remerge with Hermione's back.
Tobias eyed his friends with consternation.
Rada spread his fingers in a placating gesture. "She did that all on her own, saving the Lethifold from the hellcats."
"I'm going to find the idiot who is drugging them and turning them into uncouth heathen felines—they were never this horrible before I left," Tobias said grimly. "but—I cannot truly complain that this little miscreant seems to have made up for the lack everywhere else."
Hermione browled and snuggled against Tobias' chest, tails securing her tightly to her people.
"Come, my son," Tobias rumbled. "It is time you met your Uncles Rada and Sanguini."
Severus stood up awkwardly, dishevelled and humbled. He couldn't help but notice that while his father was decidedly annoyed with him, that the hellpup's warm slurps seemed to distinctly soften that ire.
Maybe he had a friend after all.
A/N2: This short brought to you by the letter H and the lack of tasty cheese in my fridge. However, I will have tea today, or people will be murdered.
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