channonyarrow (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
channonyarrow) wrote2005-10-10 01:51 pm
channonyarrow) wrote2005-10-10 01:51 pm
#45 - Theodore Nott, "Dying Grass"
Title: Dying Grass
Fandom: Harry Potter: Theodore Nott
Character(s): Theo Nott
Prompt: #45, Moon
Word Count: 3291
Rating: PG-13. It's mild for me. It's got some language, some gore, no sex at all. I'm sort of disappointed by this warning, actually.
Author's Notes: Originally for Noli Me Tangere, a seven-years-post-Hogwarts rpg on GJ. In that storyline, which is (obviously) AU, Theo is an adult, and also an oneiromant, one who practices dream magic - his mentor in his training was Firenze. It's likely that my Theo stories will follow that setting, which will fill in some of the implied gaps in this story. This story takes place in Minster Lovell, a small town in the Cotswolds. All information on werewolf legends and the names of the full moons is from Wikipedia. The Wolverine quote is for my beta,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
graeae.
The full moon goes by many different names. Sometimes the Native American names are the same as the English names, though they never fall in the same month, and sometimes they are very similar in name to the old style - from the Julian calendar and even older.
The full moon in October is the Harvest Moon, the Hunter's Moon, the Travel Moon and the Dying Grass Moon, depending on where and when you stand in the world, looking up at the sky, and down at the ground. But it is a fact, no matter where you stand in the Northern Hemisphere, that the moons of autumn rise earlier and have a lower arc over the earth.
They are huge, luminous. Otherworldly, certainly, but this time in the metaphorical rather than the literal sense. They are the most beautiful full moons of the year, and that is odd because fall's beauty is lush, but not considered something that can compare with spring, as the earth wakes.
It is a tragedy to fail to see fall's beauty simply because it does not come in a riot of colours and scents to dizzy and distract the senses. Fall's beauty is slashes of red and orange and shadow and fire and the scent of burning and nutmeg and the sound of leaves underfoot, the scuff your shoe makes as you drag it intentionally through a pile of leaves on a concrete pavement.
*****
This time, Theo thought with a grim sort of amusement, he was not stalking someone in their dreams. True threats deserved to be dealt with in person, rather than in the mind.
He was not sure when he had come to believe that – it might have always been a part of him, a logical extension of his father's training that you did not ask anyone else to take care of your responsibilities. Or it might have developed when Firenze took Theo under his tutelage – the centaur's code of honour was no less strict than anything the Notts had ever come up with. Or it could have been the war, he told himself sternly, the war and the way he was used and how that had made him feel, being kept away from the fighting, behind the lines because he was too valuable to the his Lord to be risked. It had nothing at all to do with how he'd felt, knowing that there were others fighting a lonely war, as he fought his.
For a moment, he tried to believe that.
The village streets that he walked were cobbled rather than paved, and he wondered why, exactly, Greyback would go to ground here. But perhaps it made sense, he thought, seeing the ruins of the Hall rising just barely over the trees at the end of the street. The place was certainly more used to outsiders than other villages of its size. It was a popular destination for film crews intent on period dramas.
There had been one such in the pub when he'd been there earlier. A small crew – he thought they might be scouting locations. But it seemed that it would be easy to blend in to such a place, where strangers were not unknown, as they might be elsewhere.
And this train of thought was, he thought, a futile one. The point was not that Greyback was here in contrast to all the places he was not, but that he was here and would not leave. Theo smiled coldly at the thought. The creature was an unacceptable risk, a mad animal, and one that needed to be put down.
His mind turned inexorably at that thought to what others had said about being taught by a creature, and he wondered if a day would ever come that he would see Firenze again. The centaur was, apparently, back in the Forbidden Forest – Theo had no idea what he might have done to regain Bane's trust and acceptance – but he could not bring himself to make that journey, and it was not the fear-and-threat of Hogwarts that he felt. It was the disappointment he believed himself to be.
Though, Theo tried to argue, he had acted with honour when he could – but he did not think that Firenze would accept that. If he had not been allowed to behave according to all the tenets of honour that they shared, in the war, then he had no business being there. You could not compromise your honour, because it might be the only thing you had.
That had certainly been true in the war.
He cut short the thoughts before they could become a destructive melancholy – before it could become the state of lethargy and inability to act that had taken him after he'd left his Lord's army – by touching the silver knife in his pocket.
This death, he thought, might as well be given to the memory of Firenze, and he was suddenly angry that the centaur had not tried to find him any more than Theo had tried to find his mentor, because it was his teaching that allowed him to find someone in his sleep.
It was difficult, and not worth the effort unless you truly needed to find someone and conventional means would not serve for that purpose. And even then, Theo knew he was lying. He had used the skill to find Draco sometimes, not to watch him, silent in his want and lust, because he would not cause himself that pain, but simply to know where he was and that he was safe.
And then he would put out his cigarette and climb into bed and refuse to dream as he slept, as if it made up for anything, for any of his sins, for being who he was.
The street was running out - had turned into a lane, really, some houses back. The cobbles were gone; here the road was only dirt. The houses were...not as well kept, he thought, looking casually at them and away, looking for the house with the door that he knew from his dreams, the one that told him where Greyback lurked. The lace curtains looked slightly more tattered, in this street, than they had merely two blocks ago.
He grinned sardonically as he walked; it shouldn't be possible to have a poor part of such a small village, but apparently that was wrong. Money, after all, was the great leveller, when those who had it could ascend the heights of the world and those who did not were forgotten.
That was the house, he realised suddenly, with the green door and the numerals 32 on it, and he kept walking past it. The curtains did not twitch as he went, but that meant nothing. Greyback could have been watching, might have been out, might have truly not been watching. He might have magically warded the house.
It scarcely mattered.
That did not matter, but it would be dark soon.
It would be dark, the moon was full, and Greyback was a hunter in that light.
*****
Some hours later, Theo left the pub. It was dark now, a dark that was not true nor ever likely to be, because of the moon that hung low over the village now. It seemed to him larger and more menacing than he had ever seen it, and he wondered if it was the threat of death and the edge of frost that made him fancy that, or something else. But it was true, he thought with a flashed grin, that he had always liked death in fall. As the year died, before it was fully asleep, so the enemy died.
He was delighted by the thought of bringing death to Greyback this way, and his stride was purposeful as his breath plumed in front of him and he walked back to the house.
There had been, he'd seen that afternoon, a path that led from the end of the terrace into the ruins of Minster Lovell Hall, and he wondered if the cottages had originally been tied cottages, or if they had been built after the Hall was destroyed.
Francis Lovell, loyal to a fault, ally of Richard III, Crouchback - men, both of them, who had fought for a cause and been vilified by their enemies for their pains. Theo wondered if Greyback knew he was coming. It was not as though he'd ever tried to read a werewolf's dream before.
He wondered and thought on balance probably not. Greyback was not the sort to see himself as loyal to anything other than his own wants, and he was probably not aware that Theo came for him.
There was a gate at the end of the path and as Theo opened it a wolf's howl rose like chimes.
So did his hackles, and he cursed himself. There was something so infinitely stupid about this concept of honour, taking on a full grown werewolf on the night of the full moon, with only a knife and his bare hands - and a wand, for the good that would do.
Quite a lot, he thought, and it was the thing that allowed his hand to come down on the gate to push it shut, if he got within range for a Petrificus Totalis. Werewolves weren't magic resistant, other than the minor – minor! - detail that they did not fall under the Killing Curse.
The howl rose again and Theo shouted "Greyback!" It was full voiced, loud against the night sky that was not truly dark, and the howl cut off abruptly as brush rustled - not nearby, but not that far either.
Theo grinned again at a flash of darkness moving towards one of the truncated stone walls and drew his wand.
Then he broke into a run, chasing the wolf for the sheer joy of it.
*****
In Norse legend, the werewolf is said to be the berserker, dressed in wolf hides for battle. They were immune to pain and killed viciously rather than expediently when they battled, like wild animals did.
The wolves of God, according to some traditions, are werewolves. When the Duke of Urbino, Francesco Maria, came to sack the holy house of Loreto, God sent wolves who tore the thieves apart. In 617, wolves presented themselves at a monastery and tore apart several friars before their opinions could become open heresy.
Werewolves, in the Christian tradition of the hands of God, were innocent, God-fearing people who suffered either from witchcraft by another person or from an unhappy fate. As wolves, they acted to protect their benefactors, and were at God's disposal.
As he ran across the half-frozen ground, feet sliding slightly in fallen leaves, his smile fixed and predatory, Theo disbelieved the legends for the lies they were no doubt made of. The creature in front of him was a mad animal, and a mad man, and one to be stopped.
He got a clear shot against the wall of the Hall on the north side, but the Petrificus
rebounded off of it in a shower of sparks and Greyback slipped away, leaping through a gap in the wall with an agility that seemed both human and animal.
Theo cursed and followed.
*****
The Armenians believe that werewolves are women who have committed a deadly sin and are required to spend seven years in the form of a wolf.
But Theo, as he moved under that huge, low moon that cast its light across the ground, light that seemed more a shadow than an illumination, thought that it was possible that his own Greek ancestors had gotten it correct. Lycaon had been transformed into a wolf as punishment for the eating of human flesh.
If that was the requirement, Theo thought, slipping around another piled-stone wall towards what might have once been a garden, then Greyback certainly qualified, and anyone who'd watched him in the war knew that better than a sane person wanted to.
The grass was dead under his feet as he crossed it, moving to the outbuilding that he thought Greyback had entered.
*****
He had thought, he knew later, much later, laying on the cold ground dazed, that he knew who the moon was an omen for - that Greyback would think it an omen for himself, but that Theo was the hunter here.
Fate, as ever when she had a Nott in her grasp, was a bitch.
He managed to raise himself up to his elbows, and realised that the weight on his hip and legs was the werewolf. Greyback's eyes glowed yellow, and it took him one crowded moment of panic to realise that the werewolf was dead - his throat slit with the silver knife that hung from one useless hand at Theo's side.
He shoved the body off with a combination of sheer-bloody-luck and his left hand, still undamaged, and spent some time trying to piece together what had happened.
"Accio wand. Lumos." It was said quietly, but still echoed, and he thought that if anyone had been near enough to hear them, the Shrieking Shack would no longer be considered the most haunted building in Britain. Something scuttled out of the way as he stuck his wand in a convenient bracket, and the knife dropped off his fingers.
Theo sighed. He was really crap with bones, when it came to healing charms.
It could wait.
There, high on the back wall, was the splash of magic from a Petrificus, shimmering and fading even as he watched. He remembered now the snarl and the stench of breath as the werewolf leaped up at him, and he cursed himself for a fool. He'd had two choices and gotten it wrong. Greyback hadn't come down from above but had come up from the floor, and Theo had aimed high, certain it would be the former.
There were pressure wounds on his leg where Greyback had taken hold of him to drag him further into the hut, but he thought on the whole he would be all right - if he'd understood correctly, the werewolf had to break the skin of his victim before the saliva was infected with the disease. And there was - he bent and touched the marks gently with his uninjured hand; his hand came away dry, to his relief - no evidence that his skin had broken.
Greyback hadn't strengthened that bite, and Theo wondered why, prodding at the corpse of the wolf with a toe.
His wand had gone flying, and he remembered pulling the knife. It got hazier then, maybe from pain, but he thought his hand had broken after he drew it across Greyback's throat, that the werewolf had swung his head back against the killing stroke, and that had been the blow that had knocked his wrist askew like that.
He immobilised it roughly, wandlessly - the wand was still in the bracket, illuminating the room.
That seemed to be it, really, he thought with a look around the small room, some sort of kitchen maybe. He was not thinking of the gaping hole where purpose had been in his life the last few weeks, or of the pain that suddenly seemed to shout from all his joints and muscles, nor even of the triumph he felt at making them safe, but he bent and took the brush from Greyback's tale, an operation made very awkward with his hand. It was a combination of severing charms and the knife, in the end, leaving only a ragged stump, not even as long as a dock would have been.
He shoved it roughly into his jacket and picked up his wand again, pulling it out of the bracket. There was something rough-dry on his face - blood, he thought - and he reached up automatically with a spit-dampened finger to wipe it off and nearly screamed at the pain.
"Fuck!" It wasn't blood, it wasn't spray from arterial bleeding - it was a pair of claw marks that - he traced them - missed his eye by less than an inch, travelling from his temple to his chin, where Greyback had tried to tear his eye out, maybe, or maybe misaimed a blow that was supposed to rip his throat out. The angle must have been bad if he'd only been able to bring two claws to bear, and Theo smirked, pulling out a pack of cigarettes with his undamaged hand.
"One...two..." His voice was quiet. "Wanna go for three?" He smirked. The werewolf had tried and had failed.
His lighter came up, and he flicked it and that was when he saw the puncture wounds, these ones welling blood, on his hand.
*****
In shock of realising that he had been bitten by infected teeth and being unsure how to go about doing something, anything, to deal with it, he spent a fair few minutes cutting off the werewolf's head. At least it could decorate the wall of the estate, another trophy to go with the brush of tail. Because if he was going to become one of these things, it was wise to learn one's limits.
He touched the scar of his Dark Mark as he thought that. Learn one's limits indeed. Learn them and then find the way around them.
As he walked out of the room, carrying the head, out of the scene of his triumph and shame, Theo thought of the other fact of werewolves. It wasn't only malignant sorcerers who could transform people into werewolves; in keeping with the idea of the wolves of God, Christian saints could as well.
"Omnes angeli, boni et mali, ex virtute naturali habent potestatem transmutandi corpora nostra,"* as the Muggle St. Thomas Aquinas said. Theo thought it odd that the Christians had so many traditions about werewolves, but he was not about to question it now.
He laughed bitterly. If nothing else, they also had a tradition of hospitality. He was not sure what the others would say of this fool's errand, of its results and its shame, and he was not sure that he wanted to tell them, though he could not lie to them either.
The circles his life seemed drawn in tried always to close, he thought, standing on a slight rise outside the Hall, smoking his cigarette in the clear night. There was no outward sign of his rage at the one that had just snapped shut on him, other than the rhythmic tic of his jaw. He could not clench a fist, not with his hand like this.
He wondered how long it would take him to decide that death would be the honourable option now because there was no place in the world for something like him, if he were truly a werewolf. And the chances that he wasn't, the chance that Greyback had been too close to death to infect the bite, that chance seemed very slim indeed. Not one that he, ever a pragmatist, cared to bet upon.
Theo stood on the hill and watched his breath, the banks of cloud skimming on the wind, and smoked his cigarette, wondering, outwardly calm, inwardly already leaving, eternally leaving the house that he had finally found peace and happiness in, looking behind other doors for the same things and never seeing it no matter the nature of the door or the doorkeeper.
When the cigarette was all the way down to the filter, he tossed it down, grinding the toe of his boot on it, and started across the fields of dead grass and fallen leaves again, walking to escape this place and this circle and this trap.
And the moon shone down on it all.
* "All angels, good and bad, have the power of transmutating our bodies."
Fandom: Harry Potter: Theodore Nott
Character(s): Theo Nott
Prompt: #45, Moon
Word Count: 3291
Rating: PG-13. It's mild for me. It's got some language, some gore, no sex at all. I'm sort of disappointed by this warning, actually.
Author's Notes: Originally for Noli Me Tangere, a seven-years-post-Hogwarts rpg on GJ. In that storyline, which is (obviously) AU, Theo is an adult, and also an oneiromant, one who practices dream magic - his mentor in his training was Firenze. It's likely that my Theo stories will follow that setting, which will fill in some of the implied gaps in this story. This story takes place in Minster Lovell, a small town in the Cotswolds. All information on werewolf legends and the names of the full moons is from Wikipedia. The Wolverine quote is for my beta,
graeae.The full moon goes by many different names. Sometimes the Native American names are the same as the English names, though they never fall in the same month, and sometimes they are very similar in name to the old style - from the Julian calendar and even older.
The full moon in October is the Harvest Moon, the Hunter's Moon, the Travel Moon and the Dying Grass Moon, depending on where and when you stand in the world, looking up at the sky, and down at the ground. But it is a fact, no matter where you stand in the Northern Hemisphere, that the moons of autumn rise earlier and have a lower arc over the earth.
They are huge, luminous. Otherworldly, certainly, but this time in the metaphorical rather than the literal sense. They are the most beautiful full moons of the year, and that is odd because fall's beauty is lush, but not considered something that can compare with spring, as the earth wakes.
It is a tragedy to fail to see fall's beauty simply because it does not come in a riot of colours and scents to dizzy and distract the senses. Fall's beauty is slashes of red and orange and shadow and fire and the scent of burning and nutmeg and the sound of leaves underfoot, the scuff your shoe makes as you drag it intentionally through a pile of leaves on a concrete pavement.
*****
This time, Theo thought with a grim sort of amusement, he was not stalking someone in their dreams. True threats deserved to be dealt with in person, rather than in the mind.
He was not sure when he had come to believe that – it might have always been a part of him, a logical extension of his father's training that you did not ask anyone else to take care of your responsibilities. Or it might have developed when Firenze took Theo under his tutelage – the centaur's code of honour was no less strict than anything the Notts had ever come up with. Or it could have been the war, he told himself sternly, the war and the way he was used and how that had made him feel, being kept away from the fighting, behind the lines because he was too valuable to the his Lord to be risked. It had nothing at all to do with how he'd felt, knowing that there were others fighting a lonely war, as he fought his.
For a moment, he tried to believe that.
The village streets that he walked were cobbled rather than paved, and he wondered why, exactly, Greyback would go to ground here. But perhaps it made sense, he thought, seeing the ruins of the Hall rising just barely over the trees at the end of the street. The place was certainly more used to outsiders than other villages of its size. It was a popular destination for film crews intent on period dramas.
There had been one such in the pub when he'd been there earlier. A small crew – he thought they might be scouting locations. But it seemed that it would be easy to blend in to such a place, where strangers were not unknown, as they might be elsewhere.
And this train of thought was, he thought, a futile one. The point was not that Greyback was here in contrast to all the places he was not, but that he was here and would not leave. Theo smiled coldly at the thought. The creature was an unacceptable risk, a mad animal, and one that needed to be put down.
His mind turned inexorably at that thought to what others had said about being taught by a creature, and he wondered if a day would ever come that he would see Firenze again. The centaur was, apparently, back in the Forbidden Forest – Theo had no idea what he might have done to regain Bane's trust and acceptance – but he could not bring himself to make that journey, and it was not the fear-and-threat of Hogwarts that he felt. It was the disappointment he believed himself to be.
Though, Theo tried to argue, he had acted with honour when he could – but he did not think that Firenze would accept that. If he had not been allowed to behave according to all the tenets of honour that they shared, in the war, then he had no business being there. You could not compromise your honour, because it might be the only thing you had.
That had certainly been true in the war.
He cut short the thoughts before they could become a destructive melancholy – before it could become the state of lethargy and inability to act that had taken him after he'd left his Lord's army – by touching the silver knife in his pocket.
This death, he thought, might as well be given to the memory of Firenze, and he was suddenly angry that the centaur had not tried to find him any more than Theo had tried to find his mentor, because it was his teaching that allowed him to find someone in his sleep.
It was difficult, and not worth the effort unless you truly needed to find someone and conventional means would not serve for that purpose. And even then, Theo knew he was lying. He had used the skill to find Draco sometimes, not to watch him, silent in his want and lust, because he would not cause himself that pain, but simply to know where he was and that he was safe.
And then he would put out his cigarette and climb into bed and refuse to dream as he slept, as if it made up for anything, for any of his sins, for being who he was.
The street was running out - had turned into a lane, really, some houses back. The cobbles were gone; here the road was only dirt. The houses were...not as well kept, he thought, looking casually at them and away, looking for the house with the door that he knew from his dreams, the one that told him where Greyback lurked. The lace curtains looked slightly more tattered, in this street, than they had merely two blocks ago.
He grinned sardonically as he walked; it shouldn't be possible to have a poor part of such a small village, but apparently that was wrong. Money, after all, was the great leveller, when those who had it could ascend the heights of the world and those who did not were forgotten.
That was the house, he realised suddenly, with the green door and the numerals 32 on it, and he kept walking past it. The curtains did not twitch as he went, but that meant nothing. Greyback could have been watching, might have been out, might have truly not been watching. He might have magically warded the house.
It scarcely mattered.
That did not matter, but it would be dark soon.
It would be dark, the moon was full, and Greyback was a hunter in that light.
*****
Some hours later, Theo left the pub. It was dark now, a dark that was not true nor ever likely to be, because of the moon that hung low over the village now. It seemed to him larger and more menacing than he had ever seen it, and he wondered if it was the threat of death and the edge of frost that made him fancy that, or something else. But it was true, he thought with a flashed grin, that he had always liked death in fall. As the year died, before it was fully asleep, so the enemy died.
He was delighted by the thought of bringing death to Greyback this way, and his stride was purposeful as his breath plumed in front of him and he walked back to the house.
There had been, he'd seen that afternoon, a path that led from the end of the terrace into the ruins of Minster Lovell Hall, and he wondered if the cottages had originally been tied cottages, or if they had been built after the Hall was destroyed.
Francis Lovell, loyal to a fault, ally of Richard III, Crouchback - men, both of them, who had fought for a cause and been vilified by their enemies for their pains. Theo wondered if Greyback knew he was coming. It was not as though he'd ever tried to read a werewolf's dream before.
He wondered and thought on balance probably not. Greyback was not the sort to see himself as loyal to anything other than his own wants, and he was probably not aware that Theo came for him.
There was a gate at the end of the path and as Theo opened it a wolf's howl rose like chimes.
So did his hackles, and he cursed himself. There was something so infinitely stupid about this concept of honour, taking on a full grown werewolf on the night of the full moon, with only a knife and his bare hands - and a wand, for the good that would do.
Quite a lot, he thought, and it was the thing that allowed his hand to come down on the gate to push it shut, if he got within range for a Petrificus Totalis. Werewolves weren't magic resistant, other than the minor – minor! - detail that they did not fall under the Killing Curse.
The howl rose again and Theo shouted "Greyback!" It was full voiced, loud against the night sky that was not truly dark, and the howl cut off abruptly as brush rustled - not nearby, but not that far either.
Theo grinned again at a flash of darkness moving towards one of the truncated stone walls and drew his wand.
Then he broke into a run, chasing the wolf for the sheer joy of it.
*****
In Norse legend, the werewolf is said to be the berserker, dressed in wolf hides for battle. They were immune to pain and killed viciously rather than expediently when they battled, like wild animals did.
The wolves of God, according to some traditions, are werewolves. When the Duke of Urbino, Francesco Maria, came to sack the holy house of Loreto, God sent wolves who tore the thieves apart. In 617, wolves presented themselves at a monastery and tore apart several friars before their opinions could become open heresy.
Werewolves, in the Christian tradition of the hands of God, were innocent, God-fearing people who suffered either from witchcraft by another person or from an unhappy fate. As wolves, they acted to protect their benefactors, and were at God's disposal.
As he ran across the half-frozen ground, feet sliding slightly in fallen leaves, his smile fixed and predatory, Theo disbelieved the legends for the lies they were no doubt made of. The creature in front of him was a mad animal, and a mad man, and one to be stopped.
He got a clear shot against the wall of the Hall on the north side, but the Petrificus
rebounded off of it in a shower of sparks and Greyback slipped away, leaping through a gap in the wall with an agility that seemed both human and animal.
Theo cursed and followed.
*****
The Armenians believe that werewolves are women who have committed a deadly sin and are required to spend seven years in the form of a wolf.
But Theo, as he moved under that huge, low moon that cast its light across the ground, light that seemed more a shadow than an illumination, thought that it was possible that his own Greek ancestors had gotten it correct. Lycaon had been transformed into a wolf as punishment for the eating of human flesh.
If that was the requirement, Theo thought, slipping around another piled-stone wall towards what might have once been a garden, then Greyback certainly qualified, and anyone who'd watched him in the war knew that better than a sane person wanted to.
The grass was dead under his feet as he crossed it, moving to the outbuilding that he thought Greyback had entered.
*****
He had thought, he knew later, much later, laying on the cold ground dazed, that he knew who the moon was an omen for - that Greyback would think it an omen for himself, but that Theo was the hunter here.
Fate, as ever when she had a Nott in her grasp, was a bitch.
He managed to raise himself up to his elbows, and realised that the weight on his hip and legs was the werewolf. Greyback's eyes glowed yellow, and it took him one crowded moment of panic to realise that the werewolf was dead - his throat slit with the silver knife that hung from one useless hand at Theo's side.
He shoved the body off with a combination of sheer-bloody-luck and his left hand, still undamaged, and spent some time trying to piece together what had happened.
"Accio wand. Lumos." It was said quietly, but still echoed, and he thought that if anyone had been near enough to hear them, the Shrieking Shack would no longer be considered the most haunted building in Britain. Something scuttled out of the way as he stuck his wand in a convenient bracket, and the knife dropped off his fingers.
Theo sighed. He was really crap with bones, when it came to healing charms.
It could wait.
There, high on the back wall, was the splash of magic from a Petrificus, shimmering and fading even as he watched. He remembered now the snarl and the stench of breath as the werewolf leaped up at him, and he cursed himself for a fool. He'd had two choices and gotten it wrong. Greyback hadn't come down from above but had come up from the floor, and Theo had aimed high, certain it would be the former.
There were pressure wounds on his leg where Greyback had taken hold of him to drag him further into the hut, but he thought on the whole he would be all right - if he'd understood correctly, the werewolf had to break the skin of his victim before the saliva was infected with the disease. And there was - he bent and touched the marks gently with his uninjured hand; his hand came away dry, to his relief - no evidence that his skin had broken.
Greyback hadn't strengthened that bite, and Theo wondered why, prodding at the corpse of the wolf with a toe.
His wand had gone flying, and he remembered pulling the knife. It got hazier then, maybe from pain, but he thought his hand had broken after he drew it across Greyback's throat, that the werewolf had swung his head back against the killing stroke, and that had been the blow that had knocked his wrist askew like that.
He immobilised it roughly, wandlessly - the wand was still in the bracket, illuminating the room.
That seemed to be it, really, he thought with a look around the small room, some sort of kitchen maybe. He was not thinking of the gaping hole where purpose had been in his life the last few weeks, or of the pain that suddenly seemed to shout from all his joints and muscles, nor even of the triumph he felt at making them safe, but he bent and took the brush from Greyback's tale, an operation made very awkward with his hand. It was a combination of severing charms and the knife, in the end, leaving only a ragged stump, not even as long as a dock would have been.
He shoved it roughly into his jacket and picked up his wand again, pulling it out of the bracket. There was something rough-dry on his face - blood, he thought - and he reached up automatically with a spit-dampened finger to wipe it off and nearly screamed at the pain.
"Fuck!" It wasn't blood, it wasn't spray from arterial bleeding - it was a pair of claw marks that - he traced them - missed his eye by less than an inch, travelling from his temple to his chin, where Greyback had tried to tear his eye out, maybe, or maybe misaimed a blow that was supposed to rip his throat out. The angle must have been bad if he'd only been able to bring two claws to bear, and Theo smirked, pulling out a pack of cigarettes with his undamaged hand.
"One...two..." His voice was quiet. "Wanna go for three?" He smirked. The werewolf had tried and had failed.
His lighter came up, and he flicked it and that was when he saw the puncture wounds, these ones welling blood, on his hand.
*****
In shock of realising that he had been bitten by infected teeth and being unsure how to go about doing something, anything, to deal with it, he spent a fair few minutes cutting off the werewolf's head. At least it could decorate the wall of the estate, another trophy to go with the brush of tail. Because if he was going to become one of these things, it was wise to learn one's limits.
He touched the scar of his Dark Mark as he thought that. Learn one's limits indeed. Learn them and then find the way around them.
As he walked out of the room, carrying the head, out of the scene of his triumph and shame, Theo thought of the other fact of werewolves. It wasn't only malignant sorcerers who could transform people into werewolves; in keeping with the idea of the wolves of God, Christian saints could as well.
"Omnes angeli, boni et mali, ex virtute naturali habent potestatem transmutandi corpora nostra,"* as the Muggle St. Thomas Aquinas said. Theo thought it odd that the Christians had so many traditions about werewolves, but he was not about to question it now.
He laughed bitterly. If nothing else, they also had a tradition of hospitality. He was not sure what the others would say of this fool's errand, of its results and its shame, and he was not sure that he wanted to tell them, though he could not lie to them either.
The circles his life seemed drawn in tried always to close, he thought, standing on a slight rise outside the Hall, smoking his cigarette in the clear night. There was no outward sign of his rage at the one that had just snapped shut on him, other than the rhythmic tic of his jaw. He could not clench a fist, not with his hand like this.
He wondered how long it would take him to decide that death would be the honourable option now because there was no place in the world for something like him, if he were truly a werewolf. And the chances that he wasn't, the chance that Greyback had been too close to death to infect the bite, that chance seemed very slim indeed. Not one that he, ever a pragmatist, cared to bet upon.
Theo stood on the hill and watched his breath, the banks of cloud skimming on the wind, and smoked his cigarette, wondering, outwardly calm, inwardly already leaving, eternally leaving the house that he had finally found peace and happiness in, looking behind other doors for the same things and never seeing it no matter the nature of the door or the doorkeeper.
When the cigarette was all the way down to the filter, he tossed it down, grinding the toe of his boot on it, and started across the fields of dead grass and fallen leaves again, walking to escape this place and this circle and this trap.
And the moon shone down on it all.
* "All angels, good and bad, have the power of transmutating our bodies."