Moving Past Memories

Naomi was done. She was done with staying at home. She was a werewolf, not a housewife. Especially when her fiancée was losing touch. She was pretty sure Felix had snapped; it had been two months since his last letter. When he had first left, she had received letters every day. She knew he was alive and well, she had her sources, but what he was doing across the world, she did not know. She knew he was doing his work, but that did not seem to include her anymore.

The great Greyback woman had dissolved in tears when she realized Felix was probably not coming back. But that had been a week ago. She was strong. She carried herself tall as she went about her business, in the home and with the pack. Packmates were staying at her house nearly every day, as few of them were employed. She took care of them, and she took care of herself. It was almost enough to distract herself. But it was a Friday night and she knew she would be alone and missing Felix. So it was time to find herself a distraction.

One of the Death Eaters had tipped her off that a good place to go on a Friday was to Satan’s. She was not too sure she wanted to get picked up in a night club, but she knew she wanted to go to Knockturn. She dressed to make an impression and apparated her way there. She slowed down for a stroll down the street, popping inside the new Artificium to look around. She threw around her money and bought a cursed earrings set she did not need. She put them on- if anyone tried to steal them, their arms would be ripped from their sockets. Sounded like her kind of fun.

She stepped into Satan’s and paid for her entrance. She bought herself a drink and drank alone at the bar for a good ten minutes or so. The bartender chatted her up but he was missing a lot of hair, so she resumed her icy glare. After awhile, she felt the need for a smoke and she went outside. She lit her cigarette and stood away from the unruly patrons who had been thrown out for being too drunk. She took slow drags from her cigarette and blew smoke into the air, looking at the moon. In a few days, she would transform. In a few days, she would kill again.

“What do you want me to say, Alistair? You’re going to be alright? Look, from the state of you, I don’t know if there’s anything I can do. I mean, for starters, what have you been taking for this?”

‘This’ probably warranted a capital now. That was the only way it was being described and through the haze of the potions cocktail he’d taken, Alistair didn’t know whether the Healer was going to hurry up and diagnose him or work out what he’d taken and announce rather glibly that he was just going to keel over and die within the next twenty minutes or so. Alistair could never claim to be one that did not resort to extreme measures but the Healer, an old friend of his named Jonathon Wilcox, suspected that next to vowing to spend the rest of his days hunting down the “bastards” that killed his wife, this was the most extreme. That was legitimate. Pouring through the mess of vials that adorned Alistair’s desk now, each one missing a stopper, was the mark of a man hounded by and obsessed with curing his mysterious ailment.

Jonathon Wilcox was a Muggleborn who’d trained in both Magical and Muggle medics. He was a distinguished Healer, the best they’d had in years, but he was also a father - that was something Alistair was often reminded of when he tried to ply the man with whisky and lap dancers. Jonathon had married some six years or so ago and the daughter had come four after that after countless failed attempts. Understandably, Jonathon didn’t want to miss a thing but he’d also tried his darnedest to get Alistair involved too. Jonathon valued the friendship he had with the part-Vampire, knowing just how distasteful the man was of Muggleborns and the like. Alistair had never hidden that from Jonathon and though his dismay of Muggleborns was still ever present and not something Alistair tried to hide, his jibes were in jest towards Jonathon. He was a man that perhaps in the beginning, Alistair had used for his abilities as a Healer but both had quietly become rather fond of each other. They still shook each other’s hands after a meeting, there were no hugs, but there was a certain amount of affection there. And Jonathon understood much about what afflicted Alistair emotionally. His heart still bled for Emmaline, and their unborn child. It was for that reason Alistair had refused to meet Jonathon’s daughter, even though the latter had named the former sole guardian if anything were to ever happen to him or his wife. Jonathon was prepared for his own untimely death, Alistair’s condition communicated to him that the man really was not.

“Calming Draught, Draught of Living Nightmare... Alistair, what the bloody hell have you been taking? Did you just grab the vials based on which colours you thought were prettiest?” Jonathon looked up to see Alistair slide unceremoniously onto the floor and the Healer sighed long-sufferingly before squeezing around the desk to drag his poor friend back up onto his feet again. “Alistair D’Eath, you, my dear friend, are complete intoxicated on all the wrong stuffs. If you want to get wasted and still look semi-attractive, let’s have this and, well, naturally this.” Jonathon produced two vials from his pocket, handing the second to Alistair first. “It’s a sobering potion, Ali. This one, will relieve your symptoms and make you look less like a toad and more like, well, Alistair. C’mon, bottoms up!”

The surface of his skin had certainly lost the green hue but there was little that could be done about his overall state of feeling. Alistair had never quite felt as rotten and the assessment of himself in the mirror of his home in Knockturn Alley, though a boost to his ego, really wasn’t helping matters much. And so with movements that were slow due more to the weight he felt in his limbs rather than calculated movements, Alistair donned a suit that was nice enough to go out in for drinks but not too nice that he couldn’t get messy which, knowing Diagon Alley as well as he did, was bound to happen to him. Jonathon had left hours before, his wife having Flooed the shop to tell him that their daughter had a toothache or something of the like. Alistair hadn’t really been paying attention. Now, however, he was finally taking Jonathon’s suggestion of getting genuinely intoxicated. Alistair didn’t really want to be alone but at the moment he wouldn’t have had it any other way - he just wasn’t in the right frame of mind for company.

The house that Alistair had grown up in and had long since fallen into disrepair but he feigned a crowded schedule or just admitted to his laziness when it came to repairing it. He left shortly after ten o’clock, finding no more joy in the house and the things inside it. He locked the door with a flick of his wand and dug his hands into the pockets of the cloak he’d thrown over his suit. The night was muggy with the heat of the day but Knockturn Alley seemed perpetually draped in the freeze of winter. Snow was still squeezed between the cobbles and people were still shivering in the shadows, clinging to the great winter coats they’d bought with their last few galleons. Alistair had yet to feel the cold, still clenched in the hold of his fever. He definitely looked healthier than he did a few hours before. The potions Jonathon had administered had done right by him but now he wanted to return to the freedom from thought the intoxication had given him.

Lighting a cigarette, Alistair wandered down the road towards the Poltergeist’s bar, Satan’s. He hadn’t really taken up the dirty Muggle habit until he’d begun to feel sickly. Jonathon had condemned him for it but had said no more. Alistair had merely smirked at him. Now, in the dankness of the night, it seemed like the right time. The dankness and he wind soon made short work of the lit end of his cigarette though and Alistair began to fumble with his lighter, finding that the fickle thing would no longer light for him. He sighed in irritation as he came around the corner and face to face with the handsome front of the bar. He took it in, standing under the weak amber glow of one of the street lamps for a few moments before his eyes fell to a girl stood outside. She was young, he realised at a first glance, but not ridiculously so and before he realised what was happening, he found himself walking towards her.

“Got a light?” He asked, taking the cigarette out from behind his ear.

Naomi was lost in a train of thought- it was more like a labyrinth really, because each new thought was exposed to avenues of others, and she found herself crossing and recrossing old thoughts, jumping from one idea to the next without really getting anywhere. If Felix had left her, what was she to do now? Focus back to the Death Eaters and the pack. But, backing up, Felix would not leave her, so he must be in trouble, right? So she should go after him. But that meant abandoning the pack and the Death Eaters, which would put him in trouble. And he had told her not to endanger herself. So really, what was a woman to do?

She took in a drag from the cancer stick and dropped her arm to her side. She tipped her head back and sighed into the air, smoke lighting the air before her. She closed her eyes in the breeze. Her senses were heightened, as the full moon drew ever closer. She recalled the old days where that was as far as it ever got- irritability and heightened senses. Now, the ordeal was furrier. But she would not have it any other way. Not until she was famous.

She was getting there. She knew it. People in Knockturn recognized her as the werewolf who would very well send her pack after you if she had too. The other fools were afraid of her. It had been unanimously decided that Felix had taken her captive. Who knows what he had done to her? But no one bothered to take her in, support her, inquire about herself. Because the fact of the matter was- she had stayed. And everyone was too afraid to get near the question of why.

Which was fine. People were afraid of her, but they felt too bad about not doing anything to help her, so she was fairly sure all of her past charges had been dropped. She did not advertise her current crimes to the do-gooders, only to those who had enough to be convicted themselves. She had her own reign of terror, and she planned to cultivate it handsomely.

She could hear approaching footsteps and she slipped her hand into her pocket, her fingers playing with the handle of her wand. She tipped her head back so she was looking straight and rocked briefly on her heels. A voice greeted her and she turned. Her eyes quickly flicked upwards and across, taking the man in. She pulled out her wand and pressed the tip of the wand to his cigarette, instantly lighting it.