General content warning for this chapter: Greyback is featured in it, and as we know, he's an allegory for a r*pist pedophile. So, you know, canonical creepiness ahead.

Thanks for reading, and as always, I'd love to read your thoughts. My tumblr is ffffinnigan, let's be friends.

Before the war, before feeling true absolute pain for the first time, and feeling the loss of Dean like a missing limb, before headlines flashing death and kidnappings and riots on the Prophet daily, before Hogwarts became a battleground and its classrooms deep trenches, breakfast had been Seamus' favourite meal of the day. Nutritionally speaking, of course, it still was: eggs, toast, bacon, sausages, bowls of perfect fruit and fresh elf-made pumpkin juice, milky coffee and crispy waffles. Then there were the sleepy smiles, Lavender's wet hair parted and braided precisely, the flutter of owl wings and hoots bidding them all good morning, Neville still rubbing the grittiness out of his eyes hazily, Luna humming a soft melody, Tony greeting them with a brilliant smile and whatever thought had crossed his mind since the last time they say him. And going back further, Dean's sleepy frown peeking out from behind his curtains, the way he couldn't quite walk straight upon waking, the droplets of water rolling down his torso down to the blue striped towel he always wrapped around his hips after his shower. He supposed that wasn't strictly part of breakfast, but then two were tangled together in his mind. Yes, Seamus had rhapsodized about the morning meal to Dean countless times, extolling the virtues of yogurt parfaits and his mam's favourite orange pekoe, but never before had Seamus dreaded breakfast as much as he did now, entering the Great Hall with trepidation, his stomach churning not with hunger but with some kind of anxiety and simmering fear.

What the fuck kind of mess had he gotten himself into, letting Zabini into his bed and into him last night? So much for professional distance. The worst was that that was the least of his worries right now – at least he'd gotten an orgasm out of that bad decision. And then another in the shower after letting his thoughts stray to Zabini and the specific twist his long fingers had done inside of Seamus, new and filling and sharp and good. What did it say about him that he kept going back to that, unable to focus on the new problems at hand – the Death Eaters coming to Hogwarts, and protecting Luna, and finding out what happened to Su and Ernie?

In his preoccupation, he'd forgotten all about the actual purpose of the mission last night, and now that he looked around, he saw heads bent together, heard whisperings, saw almost every student holding a brightly flashing Quibbler with an extremely unflattering caricatures of the Carrow siblings and Snape on the front, courtesy of Luna Lovegood. The headline boldly read "HOGWARTS: SCHOOL OF WIZARDRY OR SCHOOL OF TORTURE?" with promises of interviews with students on the inside. He'd read it before last night's mission, and it had been good: Luna, though sometimes a bit disconcerting in her observations and even wilder in her theories, had a knack for laying out the facts as they were, and Anthony, who'd helped her write the exclusive, knew exactly how to phrase things to have the most impact. Every single bird in the owlery had flown in, each carrying another Quibbler, and concerned letters from home. By the first class of the day, every person in Hogwarts was going to have read the article, and thought Seamus knew he should be afraid of the resident Death Eaters' reactions, he was a bit excited to see them too.

And then there had been the little bit of graffiti he'd partaken in. The hourglasses had not yet been repaired, though the gems vanished, and Seamus half-suspected Filch to have been scrubbing at the wall the whole night. He had already been at it when students began making their way into the Great Hall before breakfast, though the message proclaiming DUMBLEDORE'S ARMY: STILL RECRUITING! was not going to be worn off anytime soon.

All in all, it had created a sense of chaos, which seemed to mirror Seamus' frantic mood, and he surveyed the whole scene with something akin to satisfaction, though his stomach was still revolting at the thought of food.

"Seamus? Oi, Ireland!" He hadn't even noticed Lavender taking his hand under the table or Anthony, who was waving a mug in front of his face trying to get his attention. He started. "Need a map there?"

"What? Why?" he asked as Lavender pulled her hand away with two soft pats and reached over to grab a bowl of fruit.

"You seemed a little lost, mate," Anthony said. Maturely, Seamus stuck his tongue out at him before grabbing the mug from his hand and pouring out some coffee from a hot carafe.

"Speaking of being lost," Neville said as he arrived with Hannah in tow, "Ernie and Su are fine, and Han's been to check on them."

"Oh! And?" The coffee burned a bit on its way down, but he welcomed the feeling.

"Just the regular," Neville said, lowering his voice. "Split lips, few bad bruises. Su sprained her wrist trying to get out of her bonds."

"Of course she did," Lavender murmured at Seamus' side. He felt the rush of relief shudder through him and let out a long breath.

"Expect a full report by this afternoon."

Seamus nodded and stared down at his plate, not remembering when he had filled it, and not feeling able to consume anything but coffee.

"Where's Luna?" Hannah asked and Neville jerked his head in the general direction of the Gryffindor table.

"With Gin. So far, nothing."

"Overheard some interesting gossip in town the other day," Lavender said, leaning into Seamus, eyes gleaming the way it always did when she had a particularly salacious bit of news. He raised an eyebrow, bidding her to continue. "It seems a certain Mrs Rosalia Zabini has broken off her engagement with Greengrass Senior—"

"Greengrass? Senior?" Seamus cut her off.

"Daphne and Astoria Greengrass' grandfather. Do keep up, it was all over the Prophet society pages back in July." She sniffed, and if he hadn't been trying to coax information out of her, he would have told her she sounded a bit like Pansy Parkinson.

"You know I don't read that corrupt shite."

"Maybe you should, you know, to keep an eye on—" Anthony cut in quickly, but Lavender silenced him with a prim wave of her hand.

"I wasn't done, thank you. I said, she broke off her engagement, to take up with Bruno Travers."

"Travers?" Neville's head jerked up at the word. "Thought he was in Azkaban."

"Well, this wasn't in the Prophet of course, but the Quibbler reported a mass breakout in August. I say breakout, but I mean—"

"Ministry-led?" Anthony supplied.

Lavender nodded solemnly. "He's at the DMLE now. Handsome salary, so I hear. And now—"

Suddenly, Seamus was pulled off his seat and sent flying back, hitting his rump hard on the stone floor. He let out a sharp shout as pain exploded up from his tailbone into the sinews of his back, and looked up through clouded vision to see Alecto Carrow smirking at him at the end of the aisle, wand in hand.

"The fuck was that for!" he yelled before he could think better of it, and her grin only widened. Silence fell across the Hall like a wave, beginning at the Ravenclaw table, where he'd sat quite without thinking earlier, following Anthony and a still-shaking Terry. Lavender gasped at his cry as did many surrounding him. Painstakingly, he tried to push himself up off the floor, only to be pushed down again by a burst of magic.

"From now on," Alecto began, her voice amplified by a Sonorus, "students will sit at their own tables, with their own houses, and they will line up before meals. They will not eat before every student of their house is present, and they will stay silent throughout each meal. Understood?"

Seamus gaped up at her from the floor, and a sudden burst of muttering began throughout the room.

"She asked if you dimwits understood!" Amycus cried from his position at the head table, his greasy voice louder still. "Do you?"

A strange chorus of yes could be heard – Jack Sloper's voice was distinctively loud and angry from the Gryffindor table, while most were hesitant and confused.

"We are to have esteemed guests here at Hogwarts for the rest of the year," Amycus said, and Seamus finally felt the spell that was holding him down lifting. He chose, however, to stay down, lest she take that as an excuse to do it again. His arse, still sore from last night, was smarting fiercely. "You will show them the proper respect, and you will be on your best behaviour. Furthermore, as you may have noticed, Hogwarts seemed to have been victim of a particularly childish act of vandalism this past night. We have, of course, through our own cunning, apprehended two of the perpetrators. However," and she punctuated this with a clack of her heel, "if any members of Dumbledore's Army would like to come forward, we would be most grateful and would reward them handsomely."

Her voice dripped with disgust as she spoke Dumbledore's name.

"In the meantime," she continued, crossing her arms, "my fellow professors and I have discussed it, and we agree that any Army activity will earn the perpetrators, or suspected perpetrators, immediate punishment. Is that clear?"

This time, the students answered without any prompting, hundreds of voices speaking together. Seamus shivered.

"Oh, and anyone found in possession of a Quibbler will earn themselves detention."

An errant magazine that had fallen to the floor before her burst into flames at an incantation from the head table – it was Snape who had done it.

"What are you still doing on the floor, Finnigan? Get to class, all of you!" Alecto barked before turned and clomping over to the professors' dais. Seamus scrambled to push himself up and look around at the frightened, pale faces.

"Seamus! Are you hurt?" Lavender rushed over to help him up and straighten his robes.

"Not more than I can handle," he said, hugging her tightly. The students all around began to make their way out of the hall, and hushed, anxious murmurs reached his ears.

"I'm scared, Seamus," she whispered into his ear, and over her shoulder, he caught Blaise Zabini's eyes staring at him blankly from across the Hall. He held them, unblinking, until Lavender let go and put her arm around his waist.

Yes, breakfast may have been ruined forever.

"We'll be okay," he said. "You and me, we always come out okay."

He couldn't tell her not to be afraid, not when he felt it too, and for a second he was glad that he hadn't been able to eat anything, because as he looked one last time at the head table and saw Snape's cold gaze, he thought he might have been sick.

::

If the castle had felt cold and unwelcoming and empty before, it was nothing compared to now, with students darting to and from rooms and corridors between classes, taking refuge in their common rooms even more than before, too frightened to speak or catch another's eye in the halls and in classrooms. However, word had gotten around quickly, and by lunchtime it was common knowledge that more Death Eaters would be taking up residence in the castle, though no one knew whom exactly.

The Slytherins were the only ones who felt safe enough to speak freely, and speak they did – laughing boisterously, sneering openly, joking with the Carrows. Parkinson and Nott were the worst of the bunch, their Head Girl and Boy badges freshly shined on their robes, taking pleasure in terrorizing even the smallest Hufflepuffs. And it had only been a few hours.

"How pathetic," Seamus heard Parkinson drawl to a small group that contained Malfoy, Nott and the eldest Greengrass, standing in the grand corridor and staring up at Parvati's handiwork from last night. "They're just a silly bunch of Mudlbood-lovers with a few jinxes memorized. Disgusting."

"They don't think they'll ever be able to touch the Dark Lord, do they?" Nott said, snickering as Seamus hid behind a corner.

"They're so stupid, they might yet try," Greengrass spat.

"They'll die trying," Nott said. He turned away and examined his cuticles.

"Good riddance," Parkinson said, her nose upturned. They walked away still tittering loudly and Seamus closed his eyes. He'd heard it before, or variations of it, but that's not what set his heart beating. It was hearing Greengrass speak like that, and thinking back to Lavender's piece of news from this morning. He knew Zabini spoke almost exclusively to Astoria Greengrass, and even if it made sense as to why now, if her sister was a pureblood elitist like that, then it stood to reason the whole family was, and if Zabini's mother had almost married the grandfather then… could Zabini have been raised in that kind of environment, could he be playing Seamus?

A yelp behind him startled him out of his convoluted thoughts and he spun around, his breath stopping at the sight that greeted him. A man, if you could call it that, for he was so hairy and his eyes so yellow he looked very much like a wolf, had trapped someone – Lavender, Lavender, it's Lavender – between two bracketed arms, leaning against the stone walls, and was breathing heavily and – Seamus saw once he fully turned to look – licking his lips. His robes were dirty and town and his mane greasy, and Lavender was shaking, trembling so hard Seamus could see it from his end of the corridor.

"So pretty," the man said, his voice barely more than a hoarse rasp, "so lovely and small."

"Get – p-please get a-a-away from me," Lavender squeaked. The man was wearing holey gloves and his fingers were dirty where they showed through, and when he raised a finger to touch Lavender's pale cheek, it left a trail of black.

"I've always loved blondes," the man breathed. Seamus felt the fire burning in him again – this man was touching Lavender, his Lavender, strong, caring Lavender, whose mouth was still stained purple from the lolly she'd had this morning, whose wand had fallen away and was near her feet. She had squeezed her eyes shut at the touch and closed her mouth tightly, and Seamus burned. "Maybe if you're naughty, your professors will let me play with you. Have a bite or two of your pretty, pretty skin."

Seamus felt it, fuelled by anger and protectiveness, but though he didn't feel like reigning in his feelings now, he remembered what McGonagall and Pomfrey had said: precision, control, power. He felt the burning magic flow under his skin and concentrated on the hem of the man's robes, feeling the intensity of his hatred for this person.

"Don't – fucking – touch – her," he said through gritted teeth, and just as the man spun around the bottom of his robes caught fire and Lavender crumpled to the floor, her legs giving out.

"Christ!" the man yelled and tried to take a step toward Seamus, but the flames were licking their way up his robes so he could do nothing but take his wand out and frantically cast Aguamentis on them.

"Finnigan!" McGonagall's sharp voice rang out and Seamus looked through his red haze to see his Head of House bearing down upon him, then, as quickly as she'd appeared, notice Lavender and run to her instead. "Mr. Greyback, I will not have you harassing my students!" she cried as she knelt down beside Lavender, who had subsided to choking sobs. Suddenly, Seamus' anger receded as he took in the situation, and with it, so did the fire claiming Greyback's robes. The name clicked in his head – it was Fenrir Greyback, the Fenrir Greyback, and now his wild canine appearance made sense. It all made sense.

Greyback had now stopped try to put out the fire, and he advanced to face Seamus with still-smoking robes, giving an altogether terrifying effect. His teeth were as yellow as his eyes and as he approached Seamus could tell his breath stank like rot, but Seamus did not cower, and decided to do exactly what Dean and Terry and Lavender and Neville and Hannah and McGonagall would advise him not to do. Ginny, though, Ginny would probably clap him on the back and congratulate him.

Seamus spit in Fenrir Greyback's face.

"Finnigan, is that right?" Greyback rasped as he slowly wiped off the glob of saliva that had landed on his chin, a manic glint in his eyes. "I'll be sure to remember that. See you around, Finnigan."

And with that, the wolf-man stalked away, leaving Seamus shuddering as the adrenaline and anger drained out.

"Seamus?" Lavender hiccoughed through her inky tears as McGonagall helped her up. He ran to catch her waist and wrap his arms around her, trying in vain to still her shaking as he rubbing his hand over her back.

"Shh, love, he's gone. I've got you."

"Finnigan, normally I would reprimand you for starting yet another fire," McGonagall said, leaving him to support the blonde, "but in this case, I will just tell you to watch your back."

"Ach," he grunted, pressing a kiss to Lavender's forehead, "my back, my front, my head, my toes. You've got it."

The professor lifted her eyes to focus on the message painted across the wall in the adjacent corridor – the first few letters were visible from here.

"Your work?" she murmured, raising an eyebrow.

"No ma'am, not mine. Lav, it's okay, hey. We're going to be okay, remember? You and me."

"You and I, Finnigan." McGonagall had a certain tenderness around the set of her mouth that offset her exasperated tone.

"If you wanted to give me a hug too, Professor, you just had to ask," he said, and Lavender giggled in between sniffles. It was a beautiful sound.

"Miss Brown," McGonagall said instead of answering, "would you like to come have lunch in my office? I believe Poppy will be joining us also."

A group of second year Ravenclaws appeared at the end of the corridor followed by the Fat Friar humming a hymn, and Lavender stood up straighter, wiping his face on the sleeve of her robes. "Yes, I think I will," she said, her voice stronger already. "Thanks, Seamus. You should go eat now."

"You're all right, though?" he asked, still worried. The mark Greyback had left on her cheek was slowly being obscured by tracks of mascara, but it was still visible under the wetness, and it made him want to retch.

"Well. For now," she said softly. "I'll see you later."

With a last squeeze of her hand she went on her way with McGonagall, and Seamus was left alone in the corridor, unwilling to go into the Great Hall alone, but hungrier than normal because of his lack of breakfast. His stomach made the decision for him with a lurching rumble, and he steeled his shoulders and turned to go down the corridor. He'd be okay. He'd promised Lavender that they both would be. He'd promised Dean that too, when Dean had left, and his mother, when he'd gotten on the train in September, and Hannah too, that night in Gryffindor Tower with Neville curled around her waist. He couldn't go back on his promises now.