Baked Beans
Harry is rudely pulled from a quite nice dream of death by Kreacher’s tiny hand slapping his face. He splutters awake with a frown, jerking away from the knobbly fingers.
“What? What is it?” He asks urgently, a pit of fear sinking in his stomach. He scrambles for his glasses.
“It be time, Master.”
Kreacher dumps a tray on Harry’s lap. A modest looking breakfast of beans and toast. Harry enjoys beans and toast, but it seems rather an insult when delivered by Kreacher, who prides himself on having improved his cooking skills since serving Harry.
Harry’s brain finally kicks into gear and he frowns at the beans slopping across the plate, shoving his glasses on his face. It is Sunday. The day for his meeting with the shapeshifters. He supposes Hermione coerced Kreacher yesterday into making sure he was awake in time for the meeting.
She is rather good at wrangling the old elf. Apparently Kreacher is easy to understand if you know what he likes. Harry’s yet to figure it out and Hermione always refuses to tell him, saying that he has to be daft to not know. Ron usually agrees with a smirk. Harry assumes its Dark objects as there’s a large collection of random things around Grimmauld that have mysteriously gone missing over the years. Kreacher probably has a whole room upstairs dedicated to them. Maybe that’s where he’s hidden the old elf heads from the hallway.
“Right, thanks.”
Harry adjusts himself slightly, levelling the tray out on his lap and taking a small nibble on the corner of a piece of toast.
“Master be visiting the dogs today?”
“They’re not dogs, Kreacher.”
“Awfully dog-like, those muggle wolves. Kreacher be hearing them alls night. Werewolf friend of Master Sirius much better.”
Harry smiles sadly around his mouthful of food. “He was.”
Kreacher nods slightly, as though proud of his own comments.
“You know, they’re part of the Black line,” Harry adds, wanting to see what Kreacher thinks.
“The dogs?”
Harry sighs. “Ephraim Black was one of them. Son of Phineas Black. There’s still two Black descendants alive there now.”
“No good muggle lover, that Phineas, Mistress always said.” Kreacher shakes his head. “Master Phineas be Black at heart, Kreacher thinks.”
“What does that mean?” Harry asks around a mouth of beans. “He was obviously not a Black at heart, since he got burned off the family tree.”
“Master not be understanding the Blacks.” Kreacher shuffles to the door with a frown. “Master be leaving one hour. Very clear about that, Mrs Weasley were.”
“Can you call her Hermione, please? Or Granger!” Harry yells, just as Kreacher closes the door.
He hates when Kreacher calls her that. Makes him think of Molly and honestly, he’d rather not because it makes him depressed to remember all the family he left behind and all the friends he’s hidden the truth from.
Besides, Hermione hyphenated her name. She said she worked too hard as a muggle-born witch to let her accomplishments be written off to the surname of a pureblood. Ron had taken it hard for about one week, until Hermione passed a bill reforming treatment of magical creatures and their homelands only for it to be reported on as a successful bill passed by ‘Weasley’.
Ron let it go. After a few howlers sent Skeeter’s way and a particularly nasty joke letter that left the receiver with popping pustules for three days, that is. Harry’s under the impression Kreacher knows Hermione’s last name is not strictly Weasley and he simply ignores it. Maybe it’s a rebellion against Harry’s no-pureblood-shit rule.
He reviews Hermione’s key points from yesterday as he finishes breakfast. The shapeshifters are truly muggle, but their abilities stem from magical genes entering their lineage generations ago. All Harry needs to remember is that they are not limited to transforming on full moons, they do not have access to any other magic, and they apparently have the ability to communicate mentally when shifted.
Hermione was rather impressed by the journal she smuggled copies of from the Ministry—one written by a MACUSA researcher who spent a number of years living within the Quileute tribe decades ago. A wizard from Seattle apparently, who’d heard the rumours of the wolves and came to investigate if there was any magical mischief going on.
Hermione had been rightfully distraught to hear about the muggle vampires he’d discovered. Although, she did seem more put out by the fact she would have to research again—“It’s much more effective if you do it at the same time,” she’d complained. “What if there’s connections?”—and there truly was a connection.
In just another hour rummaging through the research she’d brought to Grimmauld, Hermione had found mention of ‘the cold ones’ in the Quileute legends. It was almost a relief to Harry to learn that it likely wasn’t him making the shapeshifter abilities awaken and was, in fact, due to these muggle vampires hanging around in unrealistically large groups of adopted, romantically-involved teenagers. Hermione, too, found their cover story rather ridiculous.
By the afternoon, she had penned a harsh letter to Gringotts demanding they explain why such beings were not included on their list of creatures in the area—even without magic, it’s considerably irresponsible to assume they are not dangerous to wizards at all and, seeing as muggle shapeshifters are a researched and documented branch of werewolves, they should really be included on the list of magical creatures. She wrote a second one too, to complain about the muggle vampires once she has enough information. “It’s much more efficient to simply write the letters together,” she’d explained, along with, “We should probably visit the next few towns on the timeline more carefully and ensure there’s nothing…untoward hiding there.”
Harry supposes that’ll be a task for them later, once this hubbub with these muggle—Can he call them that? Are they still technically muggle?—creatures is over.
----
He takes Sirius’s bike to the Reservation. It’s the longest trip he’s ridden since moving to Forks and the giddiness bubbles in his chest, overflows from the hole there, out into the air in small laughs. It’s beautiful here. It reminds him of home. Of Hogwarts. With the green trees and fog, the crisp air beneath rolling grey clouds. He’s cold, but he welcomes the freedom.
The ride is cut short.
He slams his breaks on and pulls the bike to a stop, chest heaving as he narrowly avoids a man standing in the road.
“You must be James.” The man takes a step closer, his hand touching the bike’s handles. “Turn it off.”
Harry is flabbergasted—first of all, the man is a giant, literally looming over Harry on his bike, and with arms almost as thick as Hagrid’s. Second of all, he’s prancing about in a pair of denim jorts. Only denim jorts. He looks positively ridiculous with his sun-tanned skin and flexing abdominals.
Harry narrows his eyes. “Take your hand off, before I make you.”
So much for his calm and collected, friendly local wizard approach. He’d had a whole plan of attack formed with Hermione, too. Act a little dumb. A bit dopey. Like Ron, from second year. Lower their guards, collect information, maybe make a deal if he felt okay about it. Instead, he’s goading on this stout man whose body shakes in barely-suppressed and over-reactive rage.
They stand frozen for a few seconds, eyes locked in a fierce match, just long enough for two wolves to slink from the trees bordering the road, muzzles pulled back to bare their fangs. Harry glances at the two wolves for just a moment before locking his eyes back on the man in front of him. He doesn’t even need to say the word, he just thinks it, off-handedly, accidentally wills himself to sink into the man’s eyes, to swim through the brown water and into his thoughts.
The man’s mind is a dense forest with winding streams at his feet and mountains in the distance. Thoughts tumble by but memories are organised in the trees, locked in pine cones and branches. It’s rather tidier than he expected. He’s a danger to us, the man thinks to himself—Sam, his name is Sam. Harry knows this now like he knows Sam is new to being a leader.
He was alone for so long, a lone wolf protecting the tribe. He’s angry. So very, very angry at their fates, at the vampires that curse their youth into wolves. Harry finds it interesting that Sam views his condition as a curse, much like Remus did, yet the shapeshifting of the Quileutes seems so different to Harry—so freeing, something so closely entwined with the magic of the nature around them he can’t imagine how someone could perceive it as anything but a blessing. To be gifted the strength to protect your family by nature itself. The wolves remind him of Padfoot, who loved and breathed his animagus form as a means of escape, as a way to ditch the restrictions and complications that come with being human and to live freely.
Deep inside, Sam is also wary, hesitant, hiding his fears inside so his pack mates can’t feel it. Harry can feel it though, in the distance, hidden in the shadows of the trees, calling to him, pulling forth Death’s magic from that empty space inside him.
Harry can understand now why Sam doesn’t find any happiness in his wolf nature, considering the mantle that came with it. Leader. Alpha. Protector of his pack, his tribe, his town. His friends and family. People he doesn’t know, too. A chosen one, you could say, burdened with the lives of those around him simply because of who he is—who he was born as.
“Turn. it. off.” Sam growls out, unnaturally low, unnaturally guttural, eyes still locked with Harry’s in an attempt in dominance, to overpower, without knowing it’s his biggest weakness.
Harry considers it for a moment. He feels a bit icky now. He’s never like legilimency and the ease with which it comes to him now—as easy as considering it, as easy as blinking or breathing—is a little disconcerting to him. He regrets it almost instantly. But, more than that, he dislikes Sam and his approach, all machismo and dominance.
Harry flicks his hand and Sam skids back, involuntarily shoved. His body begins shaking, fists clenched by his side and Harry remembers Remus when he transformed, the way his body bent and broke to form anew. The dark grey wolf on Harry’s left snaps its maw, leaping forward, closing the distance between them. Harry sends the wolf flying back with very little effort—a wave of his hand, barely a glance. The wolf crashes into a tree with a slight yelp and he worries that perhaps he pushed too hard.
The smaller wolf on his right stomps its giant paw on the floor as it growls. Harry imagines they’re rather intimidating for most. Facing Fluffy in first year makes them look quite cute. Just one of Fluffy’s heads is bigger than both of these wolves put together. The second wolf snarls and leaps, slobber flying from its extended canines and in the background Harry can see Sam’s body shudder, his transformation beginning. Harry curls his hand, clenching it into a fist and pausing the smaller brown wolf mid-air before cutting his bike engine. He leans back, hands raised slightly, gently lowering the frozen wolf to the floor.
“I don’t want to fight, Sam.” Although he should have known wolves would be hot-headed and quick to retaliate over any small slight.
The grey wolf limps back to the road with a snarl, placing himself behind Sam with the brown wolf who had skittered there with his tail between his legs the second his paws had touched the ground. Sam’s eyes are closed, his breaths deep. It takes a long minute before he opens them and looks back at Harry with murder in his eyes.
“You don’t want a fight, but you attack.”
“Rather immature of me, sorry. I don’t like being told what to do. Or intimidated.”
Sam glares for a minute. “You know me?”
“I do now.” Harry flicks his leg over stands up, brushing his hand lovingly over where Sam’s had been resting on the bike, looking at the metal as though it could be damaged.
“What are you?” Sam growls, body quaking like a leaf in October.
You’re a wizard, Harry, Hagrid whispers in his mind; You’re a waste of space, Petunia sneers; You’re a very good person, Sirius says, who bad things happen to.
“Well, I’m not like you three. Why’d you call me here?” Harry leans against his bike, crossing his ankles and his arms.
“Your house was…difficult to find,” Sam grunts, crossing his own arms, his body relaxing slightly, the shakes dissipating.
Harry laughs. “Yes, Chief Swan said.”
One of the wolves snarls impatiently and Harry glares at him.
“Who are you?” Sam asks, face scrunched in distrust. “Why are you here?”
“Uh, didn’t we just establish this? Hi, I’m James. You asked me to come here.” He waves.
“Why are you in Forks?” Sam explains with a barely suppressed growl. “We have a duty to uphold.”
“Why do you think I’m a threat to this duty of yours?”
“Because you’re not normal.” Sam waves his hand at his two wolf mates, who pace slowly behind him, obviously rearing for a chance to attack. “We can feel it, when we’re shifted. You’re not human. And you just proved that.”
“Rather hypocritical of you, wouldn’t you say?” Harry raises an eyebrow. “I’d say I’m more human than you.”
“You’re not making this easy for me. We will not hesitate to kill you to protect our tribe.”
Hah. Perhaps being ripped apart by wolves would take longer to regenerate from. Although the scars would be a pain to hide, what with canines so sharps he’s sure his body would be riddled with them, more so than it already is. (Riddled, oh the irony).
He runs his hand through his hair, eyeing the trio in front of him. His original plan is long shot—there’s no chance to act like a second-year Ron any more, so he may as well just put all his cards out there.
“I already told you, I don’t want to fight.” Harry pushes himself off his motorbike. “I moved here under the impression there were no magical creatures here,” he explains with a frown. “I was obviously duped, but it’s whatever now. I just want to live here for a few years in peace and then move on. That’s it.” He waves his hand dismissively. “I wasn’t even planning on coming to the reservation and had already began avoiding your territory, now that I know where it is.”
“Magical creatures?” Sam questions.
“Right, you lot. And those vampires in town.”
“You know the Cullens?”
Harry shrugs. “Know is a strong word. I noticed them at the high school.”
Sam looks confused and the wolves behind him glance at each other, their heads cocked. “So, you’re not with them?”
“Me? A vampire?” Harry laughs. “God, no. Look, Sam—”
Sam cuts him off. “How do you know my name?”
He can’t well say he just took a little jaunt in his mind. Merlin knows Harry’d hate it if someone said that to him.
“I did some research after I met you wolves on the mountain. Wanted to know why there were shapeshifters here.”
“Shape—”
It’s Harry’s turn to cut Sam off. “Look, it’s a long story. Do we have to do this here?” Harry gestures around them at the empty road.
Sam takes a minute to respond. He’s quite sure the dark grey wolf would prefer to bite his head off right now rather than let him enter, a deep growl echoing from his chest. Harry almost asks him to try. It could be fun.
“Follow me,” Sam says with a grunt, jerking his head back toward the reservation.