The Marauders: Year Four

The Half-Breed Army

The Half-Breed Army

Fenrir Greyback was in charge of Voldemort's half-breed army - and this was impossibly obvious as Ed prodded Remus along, his wand pressed into his spine between his shoulder blades. The woods were cluttered with tents and small shacks... Remus stumbled along, looking left and right at all the different faces looking his direction with interest, amusement, and smirking laughter. There were goblins with thick fingers, long noses and pointed ears, sharpening silver swords... rouge centaurs, their thick muscles flexing as they strung bows and feathered arrows... giants, crouching on boulders and logs, spinning spits with whole goats attached over large fires... and werewolves -- so many werewolves. Men and women with sneering faces, engorged front teeth, sharpened to points stared and cackled as Ed and Remus passed by.

"Ickle thing," sneered one woman, leaning about a tree, breathing deep of his scent.

"Off, Esmeralda," hissed Ed, "This one's Fenrir's."

She backed away quickly.

Then Remus shivered as they approached a stone cottage in the trees, looming ominously in the thick of the forest ahead of him. He clutched his arms around himself, passing through trees that had a thin layer of ice - despite it being April and far too late in the season for ice... He barely had time to marvel at this, and the biting cold to the air, when a great hooded figure floated before him, hovering in the sky and his heart seized, the breath seeming to evacuate his lungs... Dementors - loads of dementors - hung about the cottage's stone walls, guarding it. Remus had never seen one before in person, but now that he had he wished very dearly that he hadn't. He felt all the hope that was left in him - which granted, wasn't very much at this point - completely left him. He felt all heavy and strange, as though happiness was a faint memory... something he wouldn't ever feel again.

"Ever seen one of them before, poppet?" asked Ed in a growling voice. "That's a dementor, that is. Come right from Azkaban, the wizard prison in the sea... Make it angry 'nuff, it'll suck yer soul right out yer mouth, make you worse'n dead."

Remus felt sick as the black cloaked figures leaned closer, inspecting him, as Ed pushed him along toward the cottage. "In you go," he hissed, and he kicked the door open and shoved Remus inside.

The cottage was dark compared to the forest and Remus was blinded in it for a moment, blinking to adjust his eyes. A fire burned in a hearth, a tea kettle hung over it on a hook, and strange, mangy looking cat rubbed itself across the brick hearth as it stared at Remus and Ed with large, glowing eyes staring up at them.

Suddenly a woman with hair in thick, dark green braids came into the room, carrying a tray with tea cups and saucers piled upon it, and a small wood box. Her eyes glowed a shade of lavender when she saw them, "There's our little guest..." she leered, "Greyback's been waiting impatiently."

"Bloody just woke up, he did," said Ed.

The woman leaned down, staring into Remus's eyes. In close proximity like this, Remus could see that the thick braids on her head weren't braids at all, but snakes that sprouted right out of her scalp, undulating and coiling about each other. A gorgon. "Bit peaky, aren't you?" she hissed lowly, and she pushed open the little wooden box and held out a sprig of aconite leaves.

Remus stared at the leaf uncertainly a moment, then reached up with a shaking hand to take it, turning it over slowly, inspecting it.

"We aren't stupid enough to poison you now," the gorgon woman said thickly, "Greyback wants you for himself." Remus put the leaves in his mouth and chewed, feeling stronger instantly as the minty-licorice flavor of them filled his mouth. "Greybacks through there," the gorgon said, nodding her head toward the door she'd come in through. Ed took a couple sprigs of the aconite from the box, too, before shoving Remus along through the door.