Grieve

The ground was hard under their feet, the trees high and dark. Their breath made white clouds in the freezing air and two of the younger ones were having fun blowing columns of smoke at each other with their hot breath. There were eight of them altogether, most had stayed behind. The ones who hadn't were just climbing out of the cars, shivering in the night air and looking into the darkness of the forest.

Most of them had already transformed, pawing the ground and sniffing the air, nosing each other and waiting for the last few to empty themselves from the cars. Seedclaw approached the biggest wolf, standing a little way away from the others with his steely gaze fixed on the depths of the forest. He shifted as Seedclaw approached and Seedclaw bent his head in submission to the older wolf. Grey eyes turned towards him.

Ready? The big grey beast spoke in wolftongue

Nearly, Alpha. Can you smell her?

Yes. Can you? Seedclaw raised his head to the wind and inhaled deeply.

Yes. Not far away. The Alpha nodded and turned back to the staring. Seedclaw looked back at the assembled members of the pack and saw the last human shrink into wolf form.

Ready now, Alpha.

Good. Let us go. The big wolf trotted into the shade of the first trees and the other wolves followed. They increased speed and became a long line of powerful shifting fur and muscle, trailing the white smoke of their breath. As they delved deeped into the wood Seedclaw sniffed the wind again and cocked his head, running up to the flanks of the Alpha.

Alpha...

I know. The big wolf said. I can smell Amberfur. But something is wrong. And she is not alone. I smell death.

Another wolf? A rival clan-member? Seedclaw asked. The Alpha's nose was the best in the pack and he could scent many things that the rest of them could not.

No... a new wolf. Recently turned.

What if Amberfur turned someone?

I am not sure... she knew the rules. If it is so, she must be punished.

Seedclaw fell behind again. It was sad, but the Lunar Law clearly stated that werewolves were forbidden to change a human without the permission of their Alpha or a Council Member. If Amberfur had turned a human, even while rabid, she would have to pay the price of going against the Lunar Law.

Seedclaw. We approach. The Alpha was slowing down, and with him the whole line of wolves slowed until they halted at the edge of a clearing. The Alpha signalled for Seedclaw and two others to come forward. Slowly, silently, they entered the clearing. The stench which they had noticed from a long way off was coming from the sad little body at the base of one of the giant trees. Seedclaw knew without having to nudge the body that Amberfur was dead.

The poor little cub had been only eleven years old, one of the very youngest in the pack. Her mother, Moonflower, was even now nosing the body and whining in the back of her throat, a pitiful, sorrowful sound that meant that she was in great pain. The Alpha bowed his head and pushed Darkcloud, Moonflower's mate, towards the grieving wolf. Then he and Seedclaw turned to their other source of interest.

On the other side of the clearing was curled a tiny boy, so small he looked hardly old enough to be walking. Seedclaw had not seen many human children, preferring, unlike his Alpha, to hunt the bigger ones who gave a better challenge. But this miniscule little body seemed impossibly tiny, and Seedclaw would have guessed the child's age at about two years old.

What was incredible was that the child, tiny though he was, gave of the unmistakable scent of a newly turned werewolf. Through the cocktail of scents that was the boy was the clear scent of Amberfur, permeating the air around them. Seedclaw turned to the Alpha and stepped back when he saw the Alpha's teeth bared and anger in his eyes.

My...my Alpha? What is wrong?

Smell him. The Alpha said, growling. What can you smell?

Seedclaw turned back to the boy and inhaled deeply, deciphering the scents in his head. The smell of Amberfur, grass, dirt, body odour, blood and human semen. This little child was reeking the scent of fear and terror, and it didn't take a genius to work out what those last two smells meant.

Seedclaw was growling too now. The smell of blood and semen was fresher than the smell of Amberfur, which meant that even after being turned the boy had been raped. How dare they? How dare some human man rape a wolfchild? Especially one so young as this!

Beside him, the Alpha was shaking with anger, and when he started to stalk towards the direction the scents had come from Seedclaw bit him on his flank. The Alpha spun and snarled, hitting Seedclaw with one huge claw and knocking him to the ground, but some light of sanity returned to his eyes.

Pick them up and lets go. He growled and the wolves obeyed, Darkcloud taking the broken body of Amberfur in his teeth and Moonflower running alongside him. Seedclaw gently picked the child up, holding him by the back of his thin clothes and the wolf wondered how the child wasn't shivering in the bitter cold when he wore such flimsy cloth.

As one, the wolfpack started the journey back to the cars. They had a long way to go to reunite with the rest of the pack, and the rituals to do with Amberfur's death had to wait until they were all together.

It would be a long night.

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Harry woke feeling warm and muzzy. For a moment he wondered how his cupboard felt so good, where nothing was ever warm or comfortable. Then he remembered the forest, and had another few moments of trying to work out how the tree he had been lying under had become so soft, and when the freezing wind had turned into pleasant caressing heat.

They reality kicked in and his eyes shot open. Everything was blurry, someone had taken off his glasses, but he could see that he was in a place of brightness. He sat on grass, long and beautifully green, and the sky was clear and blue. Around him were trees, farther apart than the ones in the forest he had fallen asleep in, so that the forest seemed to be filled with light, airy and roomy. There were the shapes of people moving around, mostly a little way away from him, but a couple of them stood close enough for him to notice their clothing.

Or rather, their lack of it. A woman and two men sat near him, talking quietly amongst themselves. One man was entirely naked, the other wore loose black boxers, and the woman was dressed in a tan slip of a dress that only just reached her thighs and hung off of one shoulder.

He shifted, frowning and the three people looked over at him. The woman got up and walked over to him slowly, smiling. As she got closer she became less blurry and he saw her untamed goldren hair and big brown eyes. Her smile was the most beautiful thing Harry had ever seen and he stared at her in wonder as she sat down next to him.

"Hello." She said, and her voice was as beautiful as her face, airy like the forest and kind. "My name is Moonflower. What is your name?"

"Harry." Harry said, and felt ashamed at the scratchiness of his voice, such a contrast to hers. But she didn't seemed to mind and beamed at him. "Are...are you an angel?" She smiled and laughed softly, but shook her head.

Suddenly she raised a hand to his face and even though Harry thought she was the most beautiful creature on earth, he still couldn't suppress the flinch as the hand raised, his body tensing in anticipation of a blow. She smiled again, sadly this time, and gently pushed the hair away from his face, stroking him. Harry gasped at the warmth of her skin, so soft and gentle, so unlike all the touches he had ever received before. Not that there had been many.

"Harry?" He looked into her deep brown eyes. "How old are you, Harry?"

"Uh..." He thought hard. He and Dudley had always been the same age, right? He thought so... and Dudley was four years old, now, because his birthday had been last month. "I'm four."

Her eyebrows raised slightly in surprised. Harry frowned a little, looking down. He knew very well that he was small for his age. People stared at him in the streets, and young girls cooed over him and called him 'cute'. Not very often, of course, only when he actually went somewhere other than the house, which was practically never.

A warm hand tipped his chin up to face her again. "Harry, don't look down." She was smiling at him again. "It's not your fault you are small. Many children are very small when they are young. You will get bigger."

"Dudley is much bigger than me." Harry said in a small voice. "So is my Uncle."

"It's okay, Harry." She stroked his hair and smiled at him and he felt warmth fill his body. "They can't get you now."

He looked at her hard. "What do you mean?"

"We took you away, Harry. They're gone. You are part of our family now."

Part of a family? Harry couldn't believe his ears. He had seen other families, and longed to be a part of one, they seemed so happy, so nice to each other. He didn't think that families would hit each other or do the other hurt to each other. Vernon had never hit Dudley, and Dudley was part of Vernon's family. Was he... safe now?

"Who else is in the family?" He asked, biting his lip a little. Moonflower pointed back to the other people sitting a little further away, watching. Most of the people further away were watching too, now, but he couldn't really see them properly.

"Those two people are Seedclaw and Darkcloud." The men raised hands in greeting, smiling, and Harry smiled a very small smile back. He really hoped that they wouldn't come close, he was sure that he didn't want any big men coming near him right now, or any men at all, really, and those two men, in fact all the people, were really big. Even Moonflower was tall, big and strong, her skin golden from sunlight. "Darkcloud is my mate."

The man sitting slightly closer grinned, and Harry frowned again. "What's a mate?"

Moonflower sighed and turned back to him. "Harry, I need you to tell me what happened when you got that bite on your neck." Harry reached up and put a hand over the wound, only to look down at it in shock. Instead of the black, oozing mess he had been expecting, only a soreness remained, and when he took his hand away there was only a slight redness to his fingers that indicated a little blood.

"It healed!" He said, and Moonflower smiled at his happy expression. But then her face turned more serious again.

"We cleaned it for you. But what happened when you got that bite, Harry?"

Harry frowned, rubbing the mark. "I had run away from my house, 'cause my uncle was... doing the special hurt to me. I hid in the wood but a big dog came and tried to eat me. I was really scared, but I kicked it in the tummy. It bit me really hard and it hurt a lot, but I kicked it again in the tummy and it went crack. Then it slid away into a tree and was all still and weird. Then I ran home because I didn't want it to wake up again and eat me." Harry looked up at Moonflower, tears at the edges of his eyes. "But I went back later and it was still there, and all cold and it smelled bad. I think... I think I might have killed it." He looked at the ground, wiping his eyes with one hand, the blanket pooling around his waist.

"It's okay, Harry." He felt a hand on his hair and looked up. Moonflower's eyes were deeply sad, but she was smiling a little. "She was trying to hurt you, you were only defending yourself. You didn't mean to kill her."

Harry buried his head in his hands, his shoulders shaking. Moonflower wrapped her arms around him and brought him into her lap, keeping the blanket around him.

"Now Harry, you need to listen. I'm going to tell you something and you have to believe me, okay? I would never ever lie to you." Harry wiped away his tears and looked up, nodding. His eyes were determined.

"The dog that bit you was called Amberfur. But Amberfur wasn't a dog all the time, sometimes she was a human and sometimes she was a dog or a wolf. That's a bit like a dog, only bigger. Some people have the power to do that, change into a wolf or a person whenever they like. They are called werewolves. Amberfur was a werewolf." Harry was nodding, frowning slighty, but not looking too confused. Moonflower mentally braced herself. This was the hard part.

"You become a werewolf when another werewolf bites you. I am a werewolf, look." She showed Harry the inside of her left wrist. There, on the skin, was a little patch of skin slightly darker than the rest, with four dark dots visible. "That is where I was bitten, when I became a werewolf. And when Amberfur bit you, you became a werewolf too."

Harry looked up at her, frowning hard. "Really?" She nodded. "So I can change into a wolf as well?"

"Not yet." She said. "Werewolves have a very strong connection to the moon. On the night of the full moon, all werewolves must change into wolves all night. On other nights, except the night with no moon, werewolves can change whenever they like. Most werewolves can't change during the day, only the really strong ones. New werewolves, like you, can't change at all until after their first full moon."

"So I won't be able to change into a wolf until after a full moon?" She nodded. "Um... what's a full moon?"

She laughed a little at the confused expression on his face. "You know how the moon changes shape?" He nodded. "A full moon is when it's perfectly round, like an eye. There are twenty-eight days between each full moon, and on the fourteenth night after a full moon, there is no moon at all."

"Oh." Harry said, looking down again, seemingly thinking. Moonflower waited patiently for his next question. When it came, it surprised her.

"Did you... know Amberfur?" The big green eyes were sad. Sad for her. Moonflower took a deep breath. The child was certainly perceptive when it came to other people.

"Amberfur was my daughter, my cub. Her name used to be Emma. Darkcloud used to be Michael, but he was bitten by a werewolf when Emma was ten. The pack invited him to join them, but he didn't want to leave her and me behind, so we agreed to become werewolves too so that we could go with him. The pack gives all new werewolves different names, so Emma became Amberfur, Michael became Darkcloud and I became Moonflower."

"What was your name before you became a werewolf?" Harry asked.

"My name was Lilah."

"Oh!" Harry smiled blindingly. "My mother's name was Lily!"

Moonflower smiled as well. "They are both lovely names." She paused. "You said 'was'. What happened to Lily?"

Harry's face suddenly fell and he looked very sad. "She and my father died in a car crash when I was one."

"Oh, Harry." Moonflower hugged him close. "I'm sorry."

"It's okay." Harry smiled at her. "I don't remember them, so I don't miss them." He frowned a little, then looked up at he through his fringe, biting his lip. "Will... will you be my mother? You can say no, I know I'm not very good, but you are so pretty and nice to me and I like you so much and-" Harry stopped as Moonflower put a finger on his lips.

"I would love to be your mother, Harry." Moonflower said, softly. Her smile was beautiful and gentle as she held Harry close, breathing in his scent. "Will you be my child? My cub?"

"Yes, Moonflower." Harry said. "I would like to be your cub a lot."

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Darkcloud looked at the embracing figures and smiled slightly. "I think they will be good for one another."

Seedclaw nodded. "I hope the cub will help Moonflower be happy again. I know losing Amber hit her hard." He regarded the other werewolf. Darkcloud was a fine figure of a man, with dark brown, almost black hair that hung around his shoulders and deep blue eyes. He was a quiet man, a good mate and a loving father, and Seedclaw knew that he missed his daughter a lot as well.

The rituals for her farewell had been the previous evening, after they had reunited with the rest of the pack. It had been sad, but inevitable. All werewolves knew that when a wolf got moon-sickness, their days were numbered. The young Amberfur hadn't realised what was happening and in her terror had fled the pack. She had run a long way, rabid and mindless, causing the Alpha and some of the other members to have to break with the pack to fetch her back to them.

The pack had been on the journey to Lycanth Valley in Canada, when the Packmeet took place every five years. Every werewolf pack in the world was expected to attend and so those weres who also happened to be witches or wizards had set up a system of portals around the globe for travelling weres to use. The one for the British Isles was in northern Scotland and they still had a couple of days to go before reaching it.

"Moonflower." Seedclaw called. The woman looked over and a pair of bright green eyes met his as they peeked out from under a messy dark fringe. "The Alpha said to take the cub to him when he woke."

Moonflower nodded and she and the cub whispered for a bit, before she helped him to his feet. She stood next to him and Seedclaw marvelled at the difference between them.

Although Moonflower was not particularly big, even as a human, she completely dwarfed the tiny child at her side and had to lean down to hold on to his hand. Seedclaw frowned at the way the child's so-called clothes were nearly falling off him. They were grey and brown, dirty and torn, more rags than actual garments. The child's skin was shockingly pale, smudged with dirt and marred by countless scars, the most interesting of which graced his forehead in the shape of a lightning bolt. That scar seemed strange, somehow, and Seedclaw couldn't put his claw on it.

Big green eyes that seemed much too large for the child's face peered out from behind black messy hair that stuck out in every direction and was just as dirty as the child's clothes. The frown that adorned his face could not detract from the cub's beauty, and the twist in the rosy red lips was absolutely adorable, scrunched into a frown.

"What's your name, pup?" Seedclaw asked as they approached and frowned a little as the child looked down, hiding his eyes behind his fringe and clutching Moonflower's hand tightly.

"He's a little shy. It's to be expected, really." Moonflower answered, before looking down at the child. "It's okay, lovely, he won't hurt you. Why don't you tell him your name?"

The cub looked up at his, distrust evident in the green orbs. "Harry." He finally muttered.

"And how old are you, Harry?"

Harry looked up at Moonflower, who nodded. "Four." He said.

Seedclaw's eyes widened and he looked at Moonflower also, who nodded to him. Not only was the child so tiny he could have been mistaken for two years old, but Harry was the youngest turned wolf he'd ever heard of. He had an idea that the previous youngest turned wolf in history had been seven, but that had been over a century ago.

"The Alpha wants to see you, okay Harry?"

Harry frowned again. "What's an Alpha?"

It was Moonflower who answered. "All werewolf packs have a leader, who keeps them safe and leads the hunts. They are the Alpha. You do what the Alpha says, at once and without asking questions, okay?"

Harry nodded, though he looked extremely nervous. Seedclaw took pity on the cub. "Don't worry. It's his job to keep us safe. He would never hurt you." The cub still looked unconvinced.

The Alpha was speaking to the young males when they found him, and Moonflower and Harry waited patiently at the edge of the clearing as Seedclaw went in to announce their presence. The young males were unpredictable and could get a little dangerous around strange wolves and females, even mated ones. There was an interested chatter and a few excited yips as Seedclaw spoke to the Alpha, who was standing with his back to Harry.

Seedclaw beckoned Moonflower and Harry over and they came, Moonflower resolutely ignoring the whistles from the assembled males and Harry cowering, clutching her hand tightly. The Alpha turned as they approached, his shaggy silver hair falling around his face, wild and impressive.

"Harry, this is the Alpha, Greyback. Alpha, this is the child."

Greyback examined Harry's form with his eyes, sweeping over the tiny body, the pathetic way he trembled and clutched Moonflower's hand and the terror in the vivid green eyes.

"Small." He said, short and to the point in his rough voice. Harry flinched and looked at the ground, his trembling becoming more apparent.

"Of course, Alpha." Moonflower said, looking Greyback straight in the face. "He's only four years old."

Greyback looked at Moonflower, eyes narrowed. "Watch your tone, bitch." Then his eyes turned back to Harry and he said, sounding surprised; "Only four?"

"Yes Alpha, the youngest werewolf ever turned." Seedclaw said. Greyback 'hmm'ed then turned away.

"He'll grow, I guess." He went back to speaking to the young adults. Seedclaw sighed quietly and motioned for Moonflower and Harry to follow him.

"Sorry about that, Harry." Seedclaw said to Harry as they left the clearing. "He might seem a little distant, but he can't really help it. Young ones... aren't really his thing." He exchanged a look over his head with Moonflower and they both looked away, avoiding each other's gazes.

To tell the absolute truth, children were very much the Alpha's 'thing'. They were his favorite prey on hunts and he was ruthless with them, tearing their throats out and making them scream and cry. Subsequently he found it hard to deal with young werewolves in human form, too similar to the prey he tore apart on a regular basis. Small children were his favorites, and Seedclaw figured that Harry being so tiny had given him a major headache. His pack senses would be telling him that the little child was precious, insisting he protect and cherish the tiny thing. His hunting senses on the other hand would be confused by the small size and hold a desire to violate and maim the child. Overall, Seedclaw was impressed by his Alpha's self-control.

They wandered back to where the rest of the pack was lounging around. It was late afternoon and most of the pack had woken from their sleep and were rousing themselves into some kind of order. The cars used to collect Amberfur had been ditched a couple of days ago and they were travelling on foot at night, well on their way to the Scotland Portal. They were a little way away, and Seedclaw was only now registering that Harry would have some problems being as he couldn't change yet.

"Moonflower, how is Harry going to travel?" He asked the female and she turned to him, cocking her head. "We have to run as wolves, and he cannot change yet." She nodded, understanding the problem and her brows furrowed in thought.

"I suppose... he could be carried?" They looked down at the frightened green eyes. "Not by the neck, but maybe like we were carrying him before he woke up. On another wolf's back?"

Seedclaw considered. It was possible, he conceeded. Harry had been draped over Darkcloud's back for the past couple of days, secured in place with rope, and there was no reason why he shouldn't just ride Darkcloud like humans rode horses. If Darkcloud agreed, that was.

They talked to the older wolf, and he agreed. For the rest of the evening Harry sat with Moonflower and Darkcloud, holding Moonflower's hand and listening to them talk to each other. Seedclaw had pack duties to take care of but he saw them many times as the evening drew on and the sun set.

As the moon rose the pack seemed to become more restless. They knew that it would be time to move soon, and were excited and ready for the long trek. When the Alpha trotted out of the trees, his great silver body full of power and strength, the pack rose as one and transformed.

For a few moments the clearing was a turmoil of shifting flesh, the cracks of bones reshaping themselves echoing through the night. Seedclaw heard the child's terrified whimper as he morphed but the wolf-mind shoved the thought from his head.

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