Every muscle of Remus's body screamed at him to walk away from the house in the woods. An Unwelcoming Charm, I'm sure of it. This must be the right place. Most wizards would feel secure enough with just a Muggle-Repelling Charm. To add such a strong Unwelcoming Charm suggested a greater fear, like that of an illegal werewolf pack.

Unfortunately, knowing that did not make the spell any easier to overcome. Remus managed to grab the porch steps' bannister, but an even greater wave of hostility washed over him and sent him stumbling into the clearing. A second attempt got him up only two of the four steps, and a third went no further.

Taking a deep breath, Remus backed up in the clearing and made a running start towards the porch. That got him up the steps. He had planned to hit the door, hoping it would be past the charm's effect. He hadn't planned on the door opening when he hit it. He stumbled into a small foyer and landed on his hands and knees at the base of a staircase. A second later, the smell of blood hit him like a sledgehammer. He reeled away from the stench, his shoulder hitting the wall beside him.

"Please hold on, Vinnie." Remus froze, not sure he'd heard the tiny voice, then pushed his ear against the wall. "Someone's coming, I know they are. Just hold on a little bit longer," a little girl's voice said. It was carrying through the walls, but where was it coming from?

"Stupefy!"

Remus ducked, and a bolt of red light blasted the plaster off the wall above him. "Expelliarmus!" he shouted, pointing his wand up the stairs. A wand of red-brown wood flew through the air, and its wielder ducked around a corner with a curse. He scrambled to his feet. "Wait! I'm not—"

He'd barely gone two steps before someone grabbed his arm from behind and he felt the tip of another wand at the base of his skull. "Give me one good reason why I shouldn't turn you inside out right now," a young man's voice ordered, echoing through a Bubble-Head Charm.

Remus didn't dare move as the other caster trotted down the stairs. She crouched to pick up her fallen wand, and he wasn't sure if he should be relieved or worried to see it was Athena. She too was wearing a Bubble-Head Charm to block the smell of blood. On seeing Remus, she cursed again and looked past him to the man holding him. "It's that undercover Hit Wizard I warned you about."

"What?" Remus asked. "I'm not a Hit Wizard."

"Of course not, Officer. Eddie, just Confund him."

"I swear, I'm not a Hit Wizard! I'm Remus Lupin. The Ministry blames me every time they pass a new werewolf law. Why would I work for them?"

"Why would you be here if you didn't?" Eddie asked.

"I overheard that the Werewolf Capture Unit was coming after this pack. I came to warn them."

Athena snorted. "'Overheard.'"

"I was in the Werewolf Support Services Office looking for a job. The Capture Unit's right next door."

Remus knew he'd made a mistake from the sarcastic smirk that crossed Athena's face. "That office staffed yesterday, Eddie?"

"Nope. I walked right past it when they finally let me out of The Boxes. That office is always closed day after a full moon. Who would come?"

"Just Confund him."

"I swear by the moon, my word more binding than sleep, that I am not with the Ministry, and I will not tell the Ministry anything about you," Remus blurted out. A wave of cold washed over him like he'd jumped into a winter lake, pins and needles spreading across his skin to his fingertips and toes, then fading to a tickle at the back of his head to remind him it was there. A Werewolf's Oath was considered second only to the Unbreakable Vow in strength, although some people argued it was stronger. With the Unbreakable, a person could chose death rather than fulfill it, but a werewolf surrendered their free will entirely when they swore by the moon. They were compelled to fulfill their Oath no matter the cost, and not even death would free them from it if they could fulfill it as a ghost.

Athena and Eddie looked at each other, and Athena grabbed Remus's free hand and spread his fingers. For the first time in his life, he was thankful that his childhood transfigurations had failed on his hands, leaving his ring finger longer than his middle. She flipped his hand over and felt the fine, downy hairs on his palm that Sirius used to tease him about.

"I guess he means it," Athena said. Eddie took his wand away from Remus's head and let him go, and she took Remus's shoulders. "Look, the Hunters are coming back, and they could be here at any time. You need to get out of here."

"You're looking for survivors," Remus said. "I heard a little girl's voice through that wall. She's with someone named Vinnie, and he's seriously hurt."

Athena pushed him out of the way and leaned her ear towards the hole in the plaster. After a moment, she took a deep breath and popped her Bubble-Head Charm so she could lean closer, and closed her eyes to listen.

"Can you hear them?" Eddie asked.

Her eyes snapped open. "It's coming through the pipes. They must be in the basement."

"I just checked the basement!"

She pushed past them and to the basement stairs. Eddie followed her and Remus followed them both. At the bottom of the stairs, Athena put her hands on the pipe below where they'd been standing and followed it around the unfinished room to an old boiler.

"See, there's nothing," Eddie said.

Athena searched all around the boiler, then banged on it with the base of her wand. "It's Athena! Can you hear me?"

"Yes, yes!" a little girl shouted back from inside. "Please hurry! Vinnie's hurt really bad!"

"How do I open this thing?"

"Leslie put a double lock on it. The password is that thing Mum's always talking about in case someone gets arrested. A, um, a writ of… um…"

"Habeas corpus?" Athena asked.

"Habeas corpus!" the girl answered. The front of the boiler swung open like a door. The chamber within looked empty at first glance, but the bottom was missing and led to a drop. Athena cast "Lumos" and pointed her wand into the chamber. A girl of about five years old stepped into the light, and Remus's stomach turned over. She wasn't injured herself, but dried blood soaked her nightgown.

Eddie sloughed off his long coat, put his wand in his back pocket, and climbed into the chamber. He lifted the girl up, and Athena pulled her out.

"My gosh, Anissa, you're half frozen." She took off her jacket and wrapped it around Anissa. Underneath Athena was wearing short sleeves. An angry red burn scar ran around her wrist and in a straight line up the inside of her arm. Remus turned his eyes away before she caught him staring. A moment later, Eddie cursed.

"You OK?" Athena asked.

"Yeah. Get my coat ready to catch Vinnie. I'm going to have to levitate him up to you. He's got so much silver in him that I can't touch him!"

Athena blinked a few times before registering what he'd said. She grabbed Eddie's coat and spread it over her arms, and a boy floated out of the boiler. Remus had to look away. The child couldn't have been more than seven years old, but his right side was full of hundreds of silver shards, sticking out of the skin like hedgehog spines. They coated his arm until it was nearly unrecognizable and spread across his shoulder and back, some reaching up the side of his neck and into the right side of his face.

"Merlin's beard," Athena muttered as she guided him into the coat and eased him to the floor on his uninjured side. She reached into the pocket of the jacket she'd put on Anissa and pulled out a scrap of parchment and a Muggle ballpoint pen.

"Have they found Doc yet?" Eddie asked, pulling himself out of the boiler.

"I'm checking." She wrote a quick note on the parchment, then tapped it with her wand. It curled itself into a tight ball and vanished with a flash of light. Athena tapped her fingertips on the ground impatiently, and half a minute later another ball of parchment appeared in the air in front of her. It fell to the ground and unfolded to show its message: "Not yet."

Athena shook her head. "We're going to have to take him to St. Mungo's."

"How?" Eddie asked. "You've got a warrant out. I've got an arrest record as long as your arm. The Healers are going to call the Hunters when they see that, and the Hunters are going to know where he came from."

Remus was about to tell them that he knew a healer who wouldn't ask questions when Athena looked up at him and scrambled to her feet. "Remus! You said the other day you don't have a pack. How bad do you want one?"

"Very," Remus answered.

"If you'll get Vinnie help, I'll let you join ours."

For a second, Eddie looked like he was going to argue, but instead he shrugged and told Remus, "We're the alphas; it's our call."

"Do you know how to page people?" Athena asked. When Remus said no, she magically blanked the parchment scrap and taught him the charm she'd used. "Once Vinnie's well enough to travel, just send me a page telling me where you are, and one of us will come get you. Bring your things; we'll move you right in. Deal?"

Remus took the parchment from her. "It's a deal."


One thing Remus had to give Madam Pomfrey, she put her patients above all else. She never questioned the source of an injury, or even the source of the patient. All she cared about was making people healthy. So when Remus showed up at her Hogsmeade home with a silver-injured werewolf child in his arms, she didn't ask what had happened. She just grabbed her medical bag, hustled him into her dining room, and had him lay the boy on the table so she could get a better look. When he unwrapped Eddie's coat, she gave the closest thing to a gasp Remus had ever heard from her. Immediately she recovered and set to work.

Each silver shard had to be individually removed and then the wound dabbed with a potion to stop the bleeding and shrink it into a red knot of scar tissue. Several times she paused to give Vinnie a blood replenisher. Madam Pomfrey worked through the morning and into the afternoon before the boy whimpered. With a soothing noise, she cast a sleeping spell so he wouldn't wake up before she finished. Another hour passed before she removed the last shard and sealed the last wound. She repaired the boy's pajamas around him, and plunked onto one of the dining room chairs.

"How is he?" Remus asked.

Madam Pomfrey gestured towards the boy and the red burn scars covering everywhere the silver shards had been. "He's not going to heal much more than that. Cursed wounds, you know. But he's better than I thought he'd be when you showed up on my doorstep. I'd like to give him an hour or two more of sleep, to give his body the best chance to heal. If you've got an errand to run, now's a good time to do it."

"I do, as a matter of fact," Remus said, standing.

"Remus, when he wakes up, is he going to recognize you?" Remus shook his head. "Can you get a family member or someone he will? He's going to be scared."

"I'll get someone."

Taking his leave of her, Remus made his way to 12 Grimmauld Place. He'd left his things in the kitchen that morning and went to get them, only to be startled by a loud scream and a plate crashing to the floor.

"Sorry, sorry!" Tonks apologized, laughing. "You surprised me."

Doing his best not to grimace, Remus waved his wand over the broken plate, repairing the damage. "Hello, Nymphadora."

"It's Tonks, come on! I was just getting stuff ready for the meeting this evening. You too?"

Remus shook his head and retrieved his suitcase from beside the kitchen table. "I won't be able to come. I made it in."

"In…?" Tonks's eyes widened. "You mean, into a pack?"

Remus nodded, avoiding her eyes as he gathered the rest of his belongings. "I just came to get my things and let someone know. I don't know when I'll be in contact again."

"You mean you're moving in with them right now?"

"That was the deal."

"But what do you know about them?"

A little twinge at the back of his head reminded Remus of his Oath. Tonks was a member of The Order of the Phoenix, but she was also an Auror, part of the Ministry. "With a werewolf pack, there's only one way to learn."

"I understand. It's just…" She twisted the hem of her T-shirt and bit her lower lip, then dropped her hands against her legs. "If something happens to you, we're not going to know about it."

"That was a risk all along. For all of us."

"I know, but… Just be careful, OK? I'm gonna miss you. I mean, we all are, but I—"

"I will be careful," Remus said, slamming his suitcase closed. He didn't dare let her finish that sentence.