Damien had been on edge since waking before dawn.
His pulse hammered far above its usual rhythm, until he simply couldn’t bring himself to keep studying the complex point‑allocation options on the system panel.
He knew exactly why.
Asking any more questions now was pointless.
Robert Jr.
had only just come home early yesterday morning, blowing in with a gust of icy wind.
The noise had jolted Damien awake, but he’d hidden it well enough that Robert Jr.
hadn’t noticed.
It seemed his father was going to join the mission to rescue Remus.
Thanks to all the films and TV shows from his previous life, Damien understood all too clearly that pestering him at a time like this was textbook “death flag” behavior.
He absolutely couldn’t go and slap a debuff on Robert Jr.
or weigh him down with extra worry, so he could only clamp down on his own nerves and wait for the system panel’s feedback.
He dragged a heavy copy of One Thousand Magical Herbs and Fungi from the shelf and opened it, hoping the familiar pages would calm him.
But the book was a pure technical reference, and every line of text seemed to radiate dry, forbidding dullness.
For a young wizard who hadn’t even begun systematic magical study, his already unsettled mood only grew worse.
With a sharp snap, he slammed the book shut.
He began pacing his bedroom, floorboards creaking strangely under his feet.
Afraid the noise would reach his parents downstairs and disturb his father’s state of mind, he forced himself to tread more lightly, then finally threw himself back onto the bed and stared vacantly up at the ceiling.
It was the first time since learning to walk in this life that he had felt so vividly how every second could drag on like a year.
He had a strong hunch that tonight, Remus’s fate would finally be decided.
Unlike the minor shift in Nobby Leach’s destiny, Remus was a major keystone in the world of Harry Potter.
It wasn’t an exaggeration to say that whether Remus became a werewolf directly decided whether the other three would one day become Animagi; the future fates of nearly everyone in the story would be completely reshaped.
So, would the powerful corrective force of the timeline turn all his efforts into a joke, leaving Remus unable to escape the misfortune of becoming a werewolf?
Or could his seemingly small but reasonable plans truly catch hold of the seams in fate and alter the predetermined future awaiting certain people?
He would have his answer tonight.
“I’ve done everything I can.
The rest… I’ll leave to fate.”
The torment of the daylight hours crawled past, each minute a tug‑of‑war inside his own head.
After dinner, just as Catherine was urging Damien to wash up and go to bed early, Robert walked over to the coat rack in the hallway.
He took down his wizard’s robes and slipped them on with deliberate, unhurried movements.
“Going out again?” Catherine asked in surprise.
Robert fastened the buttons with practiced ease.
His tone was as casual as if he were only popping round to visit the neighbors.
“Yes, just a small social engagement.
You know, to make a living.” He stepped over, pressed a gentle kiss to Catherine’s forehead, his smile as warm as ever.
“Don’t overthink it, my dear.”
Catherine said nothing more.
She only nodded and murmured a quiet warning.
“Drink less.”
“Of course,” Robert answered, repeating himself as he turned to the door.
He pushed it open and stepped out, his figure swallowed by the night.
Catherine stayed where she was, brows drawn tight, the worry in her eyes too thick to fade.
The moment Robert crossed the threshold, Damien was already at the second‑floor bedroom window.
He lifted a corner of the curtain and peered out into the darkness.
In the Scottish Highlands of February, the wind still cut like a knife.
He caught a glimpse of his father’s figure crossing the yard—and then, with a faint pop, Robert apparated and was gone.
Damien stared into the howling wind and, in a voice only he could hear, whispered:
“Safe travels.”
Tredigar—Outer edge of the village
A cold full moon hung high overhead.
Two werewolves, fully transformed into bestial shapes, were being driven forward by another, even larger and more powerfully built Werewolf.
Low whimpers leaked from the throats of the two ahead.
Whenever they failed to suppress the instinctive urge to howl, a brutal punch from Fenrir cut their voices short, leaving only strangled whines behind.
They could only curl in on themselves, bodies trembling as they cowered beneath Fenrir’s casual cruelty.
Fenrir’s massive frame was drenched in moonlight.
He drew in a deep breath of the icy winter air, a near‑ecstatic expression flickering across his savage face.
Unlike others of his kind who wrestled with the divide between beast and man, Fenrir reveled in this irreversible transformation.
The Werewolf body was stronger by far than the human shell he wore everyday.
Spells that had once given him pause no longer truly threatened him; his raw strength and speed had grown into something most wizards simply could not match.
He particularly savored the look in the eyes of those usually lofty, self‑righteous wizards when they saw him like this—the way fear and disgust warred in their gaze when they beheld his werewolf form.
That heady pleasure of power, together with the unfiltered savagery that came with his Werewolf nature, intoxicated Fenrir.
What others called a curse, he treated as a gift.
To him, becoming a werewolf was not a torment to endure, but a glorious evolution.
Because of that belief—and the cruelty that backed it—he had risen to become the strongest among them, the uncontested alpha of the werewolves in the British wizarding world.
So when Lyall Lupin—the so‑called expert who loved to hold court before Ministry of Magic officials—publicly condemned Fenrir for being a werewolf, declaring him despicable and fit only for death, every one of Lyall’s words had cut into Fenrir like a steel blade, cold and merciless, stabbing straight through his pride and dignity.
From that moment, Fenrir had made up his mind: he would turn Lyall Lupin’s son into a “monster” like himself, a creature the man believed deserved only to die—and then leave that arrogant expert to spend the rest of his life guarding a werewolf, choking on his own prejudice and the insult he had hurled.
Time slid by, minute after minute, the night growing ever deeper.
By midnight, the village of Tredigar had sunk into a deceptively peaceful silence.
Fenrir ran his tongue slowly over his sharp canines, a cruel light sparking in his eyes.
Then, with one hand for each, he grabbed the cowering Harland and Leon as if they were nothing more than helpless chicks.
“Awoo—!” Read this novel at g.com for the best experience.
A wolf’s howl, no longer held back and now shrill enough to split stone, ripped through the night sky.
Like a boulder hurled into a still lake, it shattered the village’s silence and yanked everyone from sleep.
Scattered lights flared to life in windows.
Fenrir grinned, baring a warped, feral smile, and casually hurled the struggling Harland over the courtyard wall of a nearby Muggle house.
“Go on, find some fun for our Mr.
Lupin,” Fenrir growled.
Then, still carrying Leon—who didn’t dare twitch in his grip—he slipped lithely into the shadows of the trees outside the Lupin family’s home.
From another direction, however, a lone figure on a flying broomstick was streaking toward the place where Harland’s violence had begun.
Harland’s thin frame had swollen into the hulking body of a werewolf, but his natural gauntness left the beast’s form with a strange, unhealthy leanness.
Right now, there was nothing human left in him—only raw animal instinct.
In the farmer’s yard, he shook his head to clear the dizziness from Fenrir’s throw, found his balance on all fours, then slowly rose.
From inside the stone house before him, an older man’s voice cursed, rough with anger.
“Damn wolves, how dare you come into the village to steal things in the middle of the night!”
A middle‑aged man in a fur coat groped for the yard’s electric switch.
Harsh light snapped on, flooding the yard and revealing a werewolf standing a full six feet tall.
Harland squinted against the glare.
Before the man could even properly lift the old‑fashioned shotgun in his hands, the Werewolf surged forward in a blur of motion.
Bang!
The dull crack of the gunshot cut through the night—and then, suddenly, there was only silence.
The werewolf was far faster than the man could ever have imagined.
The bullet skimmed past, only tearing a few tufts of fur from its shoulder.
An instant later, sharp fangs punched deep into the man’s throat.
A rasping wheeze gurgled out of him, but he couldn’t form a full cry for help.
A spreading cold flooded his chest as his life slipped away.
The rush of hot blood on his tongue sent a violent thrill through Harland’s nerves, and the beast’s cruel instincts only sharpened, whipped into a frenzy by that warmth.
Up on the second floor, a muffled exclamation broke the stillness, followed at once by the frantic clatter of a wooden door being locked.
But how could such a flimsy door hope to stop a transformed werewolf?
Harland’s ears twitched.
He set his claws on the creaking wooden stairs and climbed, step by deliberate step.
There was no clear thought in his mind—only the most primitive impulses: slaughter and destruction.
The staircase was short.
In moments, he reached the second floor.
Though the house seemed silent, his hearing—far keener than any human’s—picked up the rapid, panicked breathing of a woman hiding nearby, her gasps tight with fear.
He sprang lightly toward a bedroom door, first tracing the panel with a testing scrape of his claws, then smashing it to splinters with a few lazy swipes.
But the room was empty.
No sign of the woman.
A flicker of confusion, dull and animal, passed through Harland’s blood‑red eyes.
His nose, however, quickly supplied the truth.
The air was thick with the scent of the living—the distinct smell of a human—seeping from the wardrobe in the corner.
He padded toward it at an unhurried pace.
Even through the thin wooden boards, he could clearly hear the woman’s near‑halted breathing and pounding heartbeat.
Cruelty gleamed in his gaze.
He deliberately prowled in circles around the wardrobe twice, toying with the fear inside, then stepped back a pace and braced his legs.
He was ready to rip the flimsy wardrobe apart in a single savage motion—just as his prey dared to let her guard slip.
At that exact moment, as Harland savoured the hunt, a furious shout roared from outside the window, the voice shaking with barely contained rage:
“Reducto!”
The word had barely left the caster’s mouth when the second‑floor window—and a chunk of the wall around it—blew apart with a deafening blast, showering the room with shattered stone and splintered wood.
Robert straddled his flying broomstick, wand clenched tight as he hovered outside the blasted wall.
His face was flushed, eyes burning with furious heat.
He’d thought, at first, that this was just another attack aimed at wizards.
But the Muggle corpse sprawled in a wide pool of blood in the yard below struck him like a curse, sending a sharp, throbbing ache through his chest.
His usual calm shattered.
A crushing shame flooded him, self‑blame and guilt twisting together until they hardened into rage—rage directed wholly at the one who had caused this.
He snapped his wand in a practiced motion.
Inside the room, a desk warped and folded in on itself, reshaping into a gleaming sword.
With a hiss like slicing wind, it shot toward Harland, cold light flashing along its edge.
Harland’s hunt was cut short.
A predator’s instinct prickled along his spine; he felt the killing intent from the wizard hanging in mid‑air.
He let out a low growl, feinting backward as if to dodge, but his hind legs slammed into the ground with explosive force.
Using the recoil, his whole body launched upward, hurling himself at Robert with feral power.
Razor claws slashed the air, leaving ghostly afterimages as they raked toward Robert, intent on shredding this interfering Wizard to pieces.
Robert pressed hard on the tail of his broom.
It dipped and then shot up in a tight arc, slipping just past Harland’s snapping jaws and crushing pounce by a hair’s breadth.
He didn’t waste the opening.
His wand flicked and snapped, his shout ringing through the night: “Incarcerous!”
Ropes burst from the tip of his wand, coiling through the air like living snakes.
They whipped around Harland’s limbs and torso, winding tighter and tighter until they bound him fast.
“Awooo—!”
Howling in pain, Harland slammed to the ground, then rolled and thrashed, twisting madly in an effort to tear free.
Robert had no intention of giving him another chance.
Spells fired from his wand in rapid succession: “Petrificus Totalus! You are reading on g.com, the official source.
Stupefy!
Relashio!”
At first, the Werewolf still bucked and writhed, voicing his fury in hoarse, unwilling howls.
But under the relentless barrage of magic, his struggles grew weaker, slower, more sluggish.
At last he went completely limp, unable to resist at all, trussed up into a tight, compact bundle by the enchanted ropes.
Only then did Robert let out a long breath.
His gaze slid back to the still‑warm body lying in the yard, and his heart felt as if a massive weight had settled on it.
He guided the broom down, landing softly in the blood-spattered grass.
Stepping over to the corpse, he looked down for a moment, then slowly crossed himself.
When he spoke, his voice came out hoarse:
“Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
Rest in peace, stranger.”
He raised his wand, about to cast a Levitation Charm on the bound Harland so he could head straight to the Lupins’ house to support Moody and his sister, when a sharp crack split the air in the yard.
Lyall Lupin appeared out of nowhere, barefoot in thin pajamas, wand already drawn.
He must have apparated the instant he heard the commotion.
His hair was disheveled, eyes hard with caution and suspicion as he leveled his wand directly at Robert.
“Who are you?
This Werewolf… did you catch it?”
At that, Robert hurriedly lowered his own wand to show he meant no harm.
“Mr.
Lupin, don’t be nervous.
I’m Robert McGonagall Jr.
My sister, Minerva McGonagall, is the Transfiguration professor at Hogwarts—we’re not bad people.
My son, Damien, prophesied tonight’s Werewolf attack, so we came specifically to stop it.”
Lyall’s breathing stayed ragged and tense.
His eyes flicked back and forth between Robert and the motionless werewolf bundled on the ground.
“You said ‘we’?
Then why are you the only one here?
Where are the others?” His voice edged sharp with strain, unable to keep up with the sudden turn of events.
Robert realized he’d skipped the most crucial part and rushed to explain:
“It’s an emergency!
That Werewolf you offended—Fenrir Greyback—his target for revenge is your son!
My sister and Auror Moody are rushing to your house; they should have arrived by now!”
“Remus!”
Lyall’s whole body jolted.
At the name, all the color drained from his face.
He didn’t even have time to ask another question or offer thanks before he apparated again with a sharp crack and vanished.
Left alone with the unconscious werewolf sprawled in the yard, Robert swung himself onto his broomstick.
With one hand on the handle and the other tightening around his wand, he levitated and guided the limp werewolf’s body as he shot off toward the Lupin family home.
Lyall Lupin staggered into his own garden with a crack, thrown off balance by the side‑along apparition.
Before he could so much as steady his footing, a massive werewolf claw—gleaming coldly and reeking of rot—whipped toward his face.
For an instant, Lyall’s mind went utterly blank.
The rapid‑fire chaos of the night had stripped him of his usual sharp judgment.
At that critical moment, two clear, forceful shouts of “Protego!” rang out in unison.
An invisible, solid barrier flashed into existence before him, just barely catching Fenrir’s killing blow.
Even so, the weight behind the strike drove Lyall back several steps, nearly sending him sprawling.
Dazed, he lifted his head—and his blood ran cold.
The garden he had always kept neat and orderly was ruined: soil churned up, flowerbeds shredded, grass torn to clumps.
In the middle of the devastation loomed a wolf far larger than any ordinary werewolf, its hulking form shuddering as two differently colored spells struck it, forcing its movements to falter.
The beast glared up at the two witches and wizards circling on broomsticks, then down at Lyall in the yard.
A flicker of unwillingness flashed in its eyes.
In the next instant it twisted lithely, spun on its hind legs, and bolted for the dark treeline at the edge of the property.
High above, Minerva and Moody saw Fenrir break away and immediately unleashed a rapid volley of spells, trying to cut off his escape.
“Awooo—!” Fenrir threw back his head and howled, a deafening, savage roar that split the night.
Somewhere in the trees bordering the yard, another werewolf—Leon, who had been lurking on the outskirts—seemed to jolt at the sound, as if receiving an order.
He dropped to all fours and tore out of the woods, sprinting straight into the Lupins’ yard.
“Minerva, this won’t work!” Moody bellowed to Professor McGonagall, his wand snapping from target to target as he hurled a barrage of curses at Fenrir’s retreating form.
“This fellow’s too strong—ordinary binding and attacking spells can’t control him at all!” he snarled.
His next Stupefy shot past Fenrir as the werewolf twisted aside with a powerful lunge, the red bolt blasting a nearby tree instead.
Minerva pressed her lips into a thin line, a cold glint in her eyes.
“Then let me try!” she called back.
Her wand swept in a wide arc, then leveled at the shattered fence posts and scattered branches littering the ground.
With her incantation, splintered wood and torn plants shuddered, then flew together.
In the blink of an eye they knit themselves into the shape of a towering wooden soldier gripping a spear.
The wooden figure, almost as large as Fenrir himself, strode forward the instant it solidified.
Without a word it leveled its spear and charged, pounding straight at Fenrir with grim, silent intent.
Behind it, the remaining vines in the garden thickened and shot across the ground under McGonagall’s command, writhing like a nest of long green snakes as they followed close on the soldier’s heels.
Just as Fenrir was about to be encircled, Leon burst from the treeline toward him.
Catching sight of the charging werewolf, a flash of satisfaction sparked in Fenrir’s eyes.
Without hesitation, he seized Leon by the shoulder, muscles bunching, and with all his strength he hurled his “companion” backward into the onrushing wooden soldier and the whipping vines.
Leon’s massive werewolf body crashed hard into the wooden construct, sending vines and splinters flying.
In the momentary chaos that followed, Fenrir lowered his head, gathered himself, and bolted, using the opening to accelerate and vanish into the depths of the forest.