The Marauders: Year Three | #Wattys2016

The Most Muggley-Muggle

The Most Muggley-Muggle

Ned Veigler woke as the sunlight blastedupon his face. He had a splitting headache that seemed to tear his skull right in half behind his eye. He struggled to sit up and reorient himself with the world around him. It was dawn, the sun's rays coming into the cave where he lay were new and brilliantly bright. He curled so that his knees pressed to his chest as he stared at the way the sunlight shimmered against the pale tan rocks at the mouth of the cave. Veigler rubbed his forehead and looked around for the things he'd stowed behind a rock, careful to step around the lumps of chewed up aconite leaves he'd spit all about the floor the evening before.

He withdrew his wand and pointed it at his own head. "Prohibere capitus," he murmured. The relief was instant. He breathed a sigh and leaned back against the cool stones inside the cave, relishing the freedom from the throbbing pain that had plagued him. After a few minutes of enjoying the relief, he knew he had to start the journey back to Hogwarts before too many people noticed he was missing... He slung the bag over his shoulder and started to crawl out of the cave when he heard a low chuckling deep in the dark behind him. He paused, looking back over his shoulder.

From the shadows emerged the form of Fenrir Greyback. He had a bit of dried up blood on his chin. "Ned," he drawled, grinning in a profoundly evil way at the Defense teacher. "Long time no see."

Veigler wanted to run - he did - and the mouth of the cave was so close, freedom just steps away. But he couldn't.

"Fenrir," he said lowly.

"Why so long?" Greyback asked.

"I've been very busy," murmured Veigler.

Greyback smiled, his incisor teeth showing with the way he bared his mouth. "Yes, busy... busy teaching at Hogwarts, I hear, working for old man Dumbledore."

Veigler nodded, "Yes, yes I have been."

"Come so far... from such humble beginnings... haven't you?" Greyback moved closer toward Veigler, smiling as he came up to him, his eyes flashing. Veigler bit his lips and held quite still. "You was just a little tot when I took you... just a ickle little tot."

Veigler nodded, "Well, I was eleven but --"

"Just a tot..." murmured Greyback. "Defenseless. I made you what you are."

Veigler nodded. "That you did do, yes."

"Now why are you avoiding me?" Greyback stared into Veigler's eyes, "Hmm?"

"I'm - I'm not avoiding you --" Veigler said.

"Haven't seen you since the night of the summoning in Albania last year."

Veigler hesitated, "I... was lost. Left behind. You lot went on without me, and I... tried to catch up... couldn't... I thought... maybe, perhaps I'd be most useful... you know, getting in with Dumbledore's lot." Veigler looked up at Greyback, seeming to cower away from him as the man moved around him in tight circles, leaning first over one shoulder and then the other.

"Oh I see, you thought you would be useful," growled Greyback.

"Yes," Veigler said. Then, plucking up some courage, he added, "And I take it by your haunting the Forbidden Forest for the past three months, and your presence here now, that I must have been right to come to Hogwarts." He took a deep breath, "What is it the Dark Lord's asked of you?"

Fenrir Greyback grinned, "You don't ask the questions here, I do," he hissed quietly. He leaned in very close and snapped his teeth next to Veigler's face, then backed away. "The Dark Lord demands an army of werewolves, Ned," Greyback said, turning and drawing his wand out of his pocket. He turned it over in his hands, "The Dark Lord needs us. And you - your unique position as a professor at Hogwarts - it lends us a certain... upper hand."