This is from a companion fic for One More to Love, one of the More of Everything series. I started working on this literally in May of 2023, and as many of you know, I've been completely borked by mental health and various management meds to the point of not being able to create, which fucking sucks! But lately, I've been trying new methods of writing and I knew that if I could complete one of the dorms of WIPs in my drafts, I could get some momentum going. The OMTL readers (and @theresthesnitch, my #1 cheerleader with @r33sespieces ) have been the MOST patient, so while I'm still working on the next chapter of the main fic, this ficlet was like 80% complete when I stopped working on it before.
I came back to it, rewrote a huge chunk, and found the joy I'd been missing. So please, enjoy this little snippet from the upcoming More of Everything fic, Rage:
Lyall has a bloody tuft of grey fur from the night of the attack, ripped from the werewolf's body with a severing curse. It should have removed his entire fucking head, but werewolf pelts are curse resistant, and even Lyall's most powerful spell barely made a dent. But Greyback isn't in his werewolf state now. He's without that protective pelt, as vulnerable as any other human. But his blood is the same. And with his blood, Lyall can track him.
He's always had a curiosity about dark, old magics, the ones locked away in the Restricted Section at Hogwarts and behind authorization charms at the Ministry. He wasn't a Ravenclaw for nothing, after all. All knowledge is worth having, and so long as the actions he takes with that knowledge don't hurt anyone, what's the harm? His security clearance at the Ministry gives him access to just about anything he could think to ask for, and it's that privilege more than a passion for his job that keeps Lyall working there. He has a thirst for knowledge that has yet to be quenched, and magic that the Ministry has labeled "dark" is the most intriguing. Tonight, he uses a technique from one of the ancient Nordic tribes to extract the clotted blood from the fur into a mortar, followed by several drops of his own that he drips in to beat of a rhythmic chant spoken low in his throat.
Poured over a panel of undyed acromantula silk, the blood bleeds through the fabric in the shape of a magical forest Lyall knows well, one the Muggles don't know about, that backs up against the steep cliffs of Dover.
He Apparates to the nearest wizarding town some twenty miles away and cuts through the sparse woods down to the coast. He’s unguided, he knows, searching for a phantom, a single man in all of the forest, which Greyback knows better than Lyall. He could be anywhere, lurking in the trees, waiting. But Lyall has damned good intuition. He may not be an Auror, but he knows how to follow clues and trusts his instinct that, the further he gets away from his family’s home, burns and burgeons back into that wildfire of rage he felt the night Remus was attacked.
By some benevolent gift of the universe (and his own unmatched skill), Lyall finds the monster. As he’d expected and hoped, Greyback had stuck to the more uninhabitable edge of the forest that faces the cliff’s edge, whether out of preference or because he was too feral to be close to humans. He's in a dilapidated cabin, barely held together by magic, and though it looks ramshackle and ill-defended, Lyall knows better than to underestimate Greyback. He's eluded the Aurors for years, but they have to follow the rules, have to use sanctioned means. Follow protocol.
Lyall is not bound by such formalities.