Chapter 444 - Return to the Werewolf Camp

Chapter 444: Chapter 444 - Return to the Werewolf Camp

Northern Yorkshire, outside an abandoned mining village.

The two of them Apparated to a low slope about a hundred meters from the village entrance.

The moors were warmer in March than in February, but the night wind was still cold. The heather hadn’t turned green yet, and overhead the moon was big and round, spreading silver light across the hillside.

Regulus raised a hand and brushed the air in front of him. His improved Disillusionment Charm spread out without a sound.

Dumbledore looked down at his own vanishing arm, raised an eyebrow, and said nothing. He let Regulus do as he liked.

Then he raised his hand too and gave a light tap. The motion was easy and relaxed, with a hint of not very well hidden smugness.

Regulus felt a layer so thin it was barely there wrap around him, clinging to his skin, his waistcoat, even the strands of his hair.

Dumbledore was standing less than half a meter away. His eyes could see the old man’s outline. But his Magic Perception told him there was nothing there. No temperature, no flow of air, not even the faint tremor that breathing should cause. He swept the spot twice more. Still nothing.

Coming up empty was itself the answer. A Disillusionment Charm only hid you from sight. Whatever Dumbledore had done shut off every channel of perception at once, and left no residual trace of magic behind. Clean to the point of being unnatural.

Dumbledore’s eyes crinkled, every wrinkle at the corners bunching together. He’d seen the look on Regulus’s face when his perception came up empty, and he was pleased enough that his eyes were laughing.

Regulus pulled his perception back. His pupils narrowed slightly, and his mouth twisted to one side.

The old man was showing off.

Fine.

He reached out, took Dumbledore’s arm, and Apparated again.

The air twisted, and the two of them reappeared at the center of the camp.

Last time, the Fiendfyre Regulus had set loose had burned the whole center of the village. The bonfires, the piled garbage, the sticky filth, the rank secretions of the werewolves. When they’d left, only a layer of scorched black crust had remained, clean except for the smell of char.

Two months on, and they’d soaked it through all over again. Fresh filth smeared over the crust, new grime packed into the cracks. More bones than last time, scattered among the rubble, some still with scraps of meat that hadn’t been gnawed clean, their surfaces covered in tooth marks. All of it eaten raw.

A heavy stench of urine hung in the air. Whether it was human piss or wolf piss was hard to say. He didn’t have enough relevant knowledge to tell. In human form, marking territory with urine was a bit hard to justify, but after turning into a wolf it made sense. They were beasts by then, after all.

Where the fire had burned hottest, the soil had melted and cooled into a thin crust of gray-brown glass. The werewolves obviously didn’t care. Fresh mud was smeared over it, mixed with urine, until it was just another patch of ground.

Dumbledore stood to one side. His gaze passed over the scattered bones, the secretions smeared along the base of the walls, the urine-soaked ground, and the human shapes curled up inside the shelters thrown together at the edges.

The light in his eyes dimmed. His lips pressed together.

Then he saw the scorched earth under his feet. The traces of Fiendfyre, the vitrified surface, the dead zone stretching dozens of meters in every direction.

His blue eyes lifted and settled on Regulus’s face.

Regulus shrugged.

Noise came from the edges of the camp. Footsteps, low growls, cursing, the sharp crack of bones being stepped on.

Regulus’s magic perception spread out, sweeping across the entire camp.

Last time there had been thirty or forty. This time it was around sixty. The new fluctuations were rougher and less stable. Human and beast were still tearing at each other inside their souls.

Voldemort kept sending Greyback supplies, and the Werewolf army kept growing.

Not everyone who got bitten survived, of course. A Muggle who got bitten just died, and werewolves offered no after-sales service. Once they’d bitten you, they were done with you, and you were left in the wild to live or die. The survivors were shunned by society and abandoned by their families, and with nowhere else to go they followed the pull of their own kind and found their way here on their own.

Greyback didn’t need to go recruiting in person. All he had to do was hang out the sign. Werewolves welcome here.

Sixty werewolves meant probably several hundred attacks and dozens of lives. But Greyback didn’t care. Every bite was a win. If the bite killed, that was also what Voldemort wanted. Panic.

Regulus watched the figures emerging one after another from the shelters. It didn’t stir much in him.

The way he saw it, anyone who got bitten was just too weak. Any halfway competent wizard could throw up a Protego and Apparate away, and even flat on his back before he could draw his wand, surely nobody was so useless he couldn’t manage Wandless Magic? A single werewolf was no threat at all to a real wizard. The ones who got bitten either had defenses that were basically decorative, or no sense of caution whatsoever, or were just plain unlucky.

Pathetic.

He turned his head and glanced at Dumbledore.

The old man’s eyes reflected the moonlight. The usual gentleness was gone. His gaze passed over a young werewolf trembling in a corner, then over a burly one crouched on the ground gnawing raw meat.

All of these people had once been ordinary wizards. Some had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time and had their entire lives swerve into this wretched place. Some were still struggling. Others had stopped, the beast smothering the human completely and leaving nothing but an empty shell. Some didn’t even have the shell left. Only enough strength to chew and dig at the dirt.

Dumbledore’s eyes lingered on those figures for a long time. He didn’t speak. Neither did Regulus.

New faces made up a third of the pack. A few looked barely past twenty, their faces still youthful, their skin not yet roughened by life in this place. But their eyes had begun to cloud over, something savage pushing up from underneath. They hadn’t fully accepted their fate, but they were close. Stay in a place like this long enough and you accepted it whether you wanted to or not.

Greyback came out of the largest stone house.

He walked to the center of the clearing and swept his gaze across the pack.

"All of you. Over here."

The werewolves closed in from every direction, dozens of figures gathering into a ring.

Greyback’s yellow eyes moved from one face to the next. The malice in them was thick enough to turn the stomach.

"Some of you are still dreaming. You think you’re still people. You think you can go back. You think you can sit in front of the fire with a mug of hot chocolate and let your mummy..."

He suddenly pinched his voice high. From his gravelly throat came a thin, nauseating squeak. "Oh, darling, you’re home, my darling..."

He dragged the word out, letting it quiver in the air. It was so revolting that even a few of the old wolves beside him bared their teeth.

The savage grin was still on his face. The next instant it exploded. His face went red, every vein on his neck bulged, and spit sprayed from between his yellow teeth.

"Your own mother wouldn’t know you! Go back? Go back and look in a mirror! Look at that face of yours! Who’d want you? Who the hell would want you!"

The roar cracked across the camp. A few pieces of the glass crust shattered from the force of it.

Several of the new werewolves flinched. Some shrank back. Some lowered their heads. Some had something welling up in their eyes that they forced back down.

Then Greyback shifted to a coaxing tone, low and hoarse.

"Wake up. You can’t go back. The smell on you is the proof. Smell yourselves. Your own mothers could stand right in front of you and not know you. What are you still thinking about? You’re not wizards anymore. The people out there won’t take you. The Ministry of Magic won’t take you. You can’t even get through the doors of St Mungo’s. Where can you stay? Only here! Who can you stay with? Only us! What are you? You’re Werewolves! Same as me, same as him, same as them!"

He slapped his own chest. The sound was dull against the thick muscle. Then he raised his hand and swept it across the old wolves behind him, and his voice took on a gentleness that chilled the bone.

"The moon’s coming out. Your bones are going to break. First transformation. Make it through and you’ve survived. Don’t, and you die at the foot of some wall, and nobody’s coming to collect your body."

Then he pulled his hand back and jabbed a finger at his own chest, grinning savagely. "Here, nobody calls you dirty. Out there you’re garbage. Here you’re mine. My people, I protect. But anyone who doesn’t do as they’re told won’t need to wait for those wizards out there to deal with them. I’ll do it myself..."

He paused. His yellow eyes swept every face. His chest swelled, and his voice went so rough it hurt to hear. "Do you understand?!"

The pack fell silent. Dozens of pairs of eyes were fixed on him, some clouded, some afraid. Some bared their teeth. Someone let out a low whimper from deep in their throat.

Greyback said nothing more. He stood in the center of the clearing, waiting for the moon to fill out completely.

Regulus looked away.

Last month this wolf had been tested with three kinds of killing intent, then burned with Fiendfyre. Now he was standing here barking orders at his pack, alive and kicking.

He’d recovered well. A beast’s brain really was sturdy.

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