Chapter 3: Feeding the Pack
The air in the tapas bar was a solid thing, thick with smoke and frying oil and a dozen competing conversations that crashed around them like a stormy sea. Hel clutched her glass of water, the condensation slick on her fingers. It was a focal point. A mundane anchor in the surreal circus her life had become.
They had taken the largest available table, a scarred wooden thing in a corner that did little to make them less conspicuous. Seven of them, now. Antonin Dolohov and Augustus Rookwood had found them just as they’d left the petrol station, emerging from a shadowed archway with the same hollow-eyed, sharp-edged look as the rest. More strays from the shattered veil. The group was a clot of tension in the cheerful room.
Plates covered the table. Hel had simply pointed at what others were eating, a mute game of culinary charades. Now, mounds of golden patatas bravas swam in smoky red sauce, paper-thin slices of ruby jamón dripped oil, and whole grilled sardines stared up with milky eyes.
The Death Eaters ate. It wasn’t eating as she knew it. It was a wordless, focused consumption, a reclaiming of energy. Rodolphus tore a chunk of bread with his teeth, his black eyes fixed on her over the rim of his beer glass. Rabastan, beside her, used his fingers to scoop up potatoes, the simple act somehow predatory. His knee was a line of heat against hers beneath the table, a constant, unacknowledged pressure.
“This currency is flimsy,” Yaxley commented, thumbing one of the stolen bills. He’d been the one to smooth the transaction with the waiter, using a combination of pointed gestures and cold silence that somehow worked.
“It’s paper,” Hel said, not looking at him. She forced herself to spear a potato. It tasted of paprika and grease, vivid and overwhelming. “That’s all it’s ever been.”
“The symbolism is lacking,” Mulciber mused, delicately peeling the skin from a sardine. His movements were precise, surgical. “No sovereigns. No portraits. Just… numbers. It feels temporary.”
“Everything here is temporary,” Rookwood said. His voice was softer than she expected, almost silken. He hadn’t touched his food. He just watched, his silver-gray eyes moving from face to face, cataloging. He’d always been the Unspeakable. Now he looked like he was trying to unspeak this entire reality.
Antonin Dolohov, large and brooding beside Rookwood, drained his beer in three long gulps and slammed the glass down. “We need more of it. And a place that isn’t this… noise box.” His gaze, fierce and black, landed on Hel. “You’re picking at your food like a bird. Eat. You’re no use to anyone fainting.”
The order, so blunt, made her spine stiffen. “I’m not your soldier to provision, Dolohov.”
“Aren’t you?” Rodolphus asked, leaning back. The chair creaked. “We’re all that’s left of a world. That makes us a unit. Whether you like the composition or not.”
The noise of the bar seemed to recede, tunneling down to their table. The leopard inside her paced, restless. They’re gauging your strength. Your compliance. She took a larger bite, chewing mechanically, meeting Rodolphus’s stare. Let him see her swallow.
Rabastan’s hand, grease shining on his fingers, came down to rest on the tabletop, inches from her own. A casual placement. Anyone else might not have noticed. She felt the claim in it like a brand.
“The unit needs intelligence,” Rookwood said, his voice cutting through the chewy silence. “We know this is a non-magical governance. We suspect other things persist here, hidden. We need to understand the hierarchy. The threats.”
“We need a base of operations,” Yaxley corrected. “Consolidation before exploration.”
“We need,” Mulciber interrupted, smiling as he wiped his fingers on a thin paper napkin, “to understand our own parameters. Fully. We’ve seen sparks and claws. We’ve felt the… urges. But what are the limits?” His dark eyes settled on Hel. “You fed. In the warehouse. What exactly did you take from him?”
The question dropped like a stone into a still pool. All motion at their table ceased. Rabastan went very still. Rodolphus’s gaze sharpened. Antonin leaned forward, interest kindling.
Hel’s mouth went dry. She set her fork down. It clattered lightly on the plate. “That’s none of your business.”
“It’s survival arithmetic,” Mulciber pressed, his tone light, reasonable. “If your sustenance requires a specific resource, that resource must be planned for. If it leaves a witness, that’s a vulnerability. If it leaves a corpse, that’s a complication. We need the data.”
She could feel it then, not just her own allure leaking out like perfume from an unstopped bottle, but the responding pull from the men around the table. It was a low current in the air, a magnetic hum. Rabastan’s knee pressed harder. Antonin’s nostrils flared. Rodolphus’s fingers tightened around his glass.
It was Yaxley who voiced it, his cool tone analyzing the atmospheric shift. “It’s not just food she’s affecting. There’s a… radiative effect. Are you aware you’re doing it?”
Shame, hot and prickling, washed over her. “I can’t turn it off,” she whispered, the admission torn from her.
“Interesting,” Rookwood breathed. Not leering. Scientifically fascinated. “A passive allure. Compulsion without intent. What would happen with intent, I wonder?”
“Don’t wonder,” Rabastan growled, the first sound he’d made in minutes.
“But we must,” Mulciber said. “Imagine the applications. If she can lower guard, soothe aggression, or… incite it. She’s a tool we haven’t learned to wield.”
“I am not a tool.” The words were fire in her throat. The air around her hand shimmered, the heat from her skin making the wood of the table let out a faint groan.
A collective inhale from the group. Not fear. Appreciation.
“Fire and persuasion,” Rodolphus nodded slowly, as if pieces were clicking into place. “A potent combination. But tools need handlers, little witch. To be safe. For everyone.”
The implication was clear. You are a danger. You need to be controlled. The old, familiar script. Dumbledore’s pitying looks, the Order’s strategic deployments, always the weapon, never the person. It was the same song in a different, grimy key.
Rabastan’s hand moved then, covering hers on the table. It was a shock of contact, his skin hot and rough. He didn’t look at her. He looked at his brother, then at Mulciber, then at Rookwood. His voice dropped, a low vibration that cut through the bar’s din.
“You will not talk about her like a cursed object. You will not devise ways to wield her.” His gray eyes were chips of flint. “She is her own. She stays with me. That is the only handle any of you get. Are we clear?”
A profound silence stretched at their table. Antonin looked between Rabastan and Rodolphus, assessing the line. Yaxley’s expression was unreadable. Mulciber’s smile had fixed into something cold.
Rodolphus held his brother’s stare for a long moment. Then, he gave a single, slow nod. A tactical retreat, not a surrender. “As you say. But the question of her needs remains. For the unit’s stability.”
Hel pulled her hand from under Rabastan’s. The loss of contact felt like a peeling away of shelter. “My needs are my problem. I’ll handle them.”
“See that you do,” Rodolphus said flatly. “Without compromising us.”
The conversation fractured after that, turning to logistics—the need for a car, for maps, for a less public place to sleep. Hel tuned it out. The sardine eyes seemed to mock her. The press of the crowd, the laughter, the clatter—it was all a smear of sound and color. She was a lit fuse sitting at a table of gunpowder, and every one of them was either trying to snuff her out or planning to point her at a target.
As the men debated, a man at the next table, sunburnt and loud, lurched to his feet. He was drunk, swaying, his laughter too boisterous. He turned, his elbow knocking into Hel’s shoulder, sloshing her water.
“Perdón, pequeña!” he chuckled, not really looking at her, his hand coming down to pat her arm in clumsy apology.
The moment his skin touched hers, it happened.
A jolt, not electric but deep and resonant, like a plucked string in the core of her. The hollow ache that had been a background hum since the warehouse suddenly flared into a sharp, specific hunger. It wasn't for the potato on her plate. It was for the life in his touch, the casual vitality of him. Her allure, a mist before, coalesced into a direct, hungry beam.
The man’s laughter died. His glazed eyes cleared, sharpening on her with startling intensity. His pupils blew wide. The drunken affability melted into something raw and wanting. He leaned in, his breath sour with beer and garlic. “Dios mío…” he breathed, his fingers tightening on her arm.
Chaos, instant and violent.
Rabastan was out of his seat. He didn’t shout. He simply grabbed the man’s wrist and twisted, a move so fast and brutal the bone gave a audible pop. The man screamed, a short, sharp sound of agony, his desire vanishing in a flood of shock and pain.
The bar’s noise plummeted. Heads turned.
“¿Qué coño haces?” a friend of the man yelled, standing up.
Rodolphus was on his feet now, too, placing his body between their table and the escalating situation. He said nothing, just stared at the friend. The man paled, taking an involuntary step back, confused by the sheer, ground-eating threat in Rodolphus’s stillness.
Yaxley threw a wad of cash onto the table, far more than the meal cost. Mulciber was already at the door, holding it open. “Time to go,” he said, his voice carrying perfectly through the sudden quiet.
Hel stood, her legs shaky. The drunk man was whimpering, cradling his broken wrist, staring at her with a mix of terror and lingering, drug-like longing. The hunger in her gut yawned, unsatisfied, shaming her.
Rabastan’s hand found the small of her back, pushing her firmly toward the door. His touch was no longer just a claim. It was a steer. An enforcement.
They spilled onto the darkening street, the bar’s neon lights painting their faces in garish streaks. The warm air did nothing to dispel the cold dread sitting in Hel’s stomach. She had done that. Without thought, without control. She had turned a man’s arm into a trigger.
“That,” Rookwood said softly, falling into step beside her as they quickly walked away from the gathering commotion behind them, “was instructive. The trigger is touch. The effect is… rapid and profound.”
“Shut up,” Hel hissed.
“He’s right,” Yaxley said from her other side, his voice low. “We need to understand the parameters. You just started a fight with a localized compulsion. We need to know how to stop you from doing it again.”
Rabastan pulled her closer, his arm now a bar across her shoulders, possessive and imprisoning all at once. “I’ll handle it.”
Hel looked up at him, at the hard line of his jaw in the neon gloom. His words should have been a comfort. They weren’t. They were just another version of the same sentence everyone had ever said about her.
We’ll handle it.
She walked, sandwiched between them, the taste of paprika and shame thick on her tongue. The city swallowed them, street by street, but the problem, her problem, walked right along with them, a hungry ghost they could no longer afford to ignore.
The city swallowed them, street by street, but the problem, her problem, walked right along with them, a hungry ghost they could no longer afford to ignore. They moved away from the bright, crowded lanes, descending into narrower corridors where washing hung between buildings and the smell of garbage ripened in the heat. The silence among them was heavy, charged with what had just happened and what it meant.
“We need to stop,” Yaxley finally said, his voice cutting the quiet. He nodded toward a dim, weathered building with a handwritten sign in the window. ‘Habitationes’. “There. It won’t ask for passports.”
“You’re sure?” Rodolphus asked, his gaze scanning the empty street.
“No. But it’s this or a park bench.” Yaxley’s practicality was a blunt instrument. “Hel. With me. You look the least like a fugitive from a magical war.”
She hesitated, but Rabastan gave her a slight push from the small of her back. “Go on. I’m right here.” His closeness was the only thing that felt remotely solid.
She followed Yaxley into a cramped, tiled foyer that smelled of disinfectant and stale coffee. A tired-looking man with a nicotine-stained moustache watched a small television behind a high counter. Yaxley approached, his posture shifting into something bureaucratically bored. He slid several of the stolen notes across the laminate.
“Tres habitaciones. Para una noche,” Yaxley said, his accent terrible but the words clear.
The man looked at the money, then at the group huddled in the doorway—a collection of tall, sharp-faced men and one small, wild-haired girl. His eyes narrowed with a lifetime of seeing trouble. He said something rapid and questioning in Spanish.
Hel stepped forward. She summoned a smile, thin but functional, and let her voice soften. “Por favor. Solo estamos muy cansados.” Please. We’re just very tired. The words were simple, but she felt something slip from her with them, a gentle, persuasive push. It wasn’t the hungry beam from the bar. This was a careful nudge.
The man’s suspicion softened, blurring at the edges. He blinked, shrugged, and took the money. He slapped three old-fashioned keys on the counter. “Tercer piso. No ruido.”
The rooms were on the third floor, up a tight staircase that groaned under their weight. The hallway was long and dim, carpet worn to its backing. Each door opened to a space barely large enough to hold a double bed and a scarred dresser. A single window looked out onto a light well.
“We pair up,” Rodolphus declared, taking a key. “Rookwood, with me. Yaxley, Mulciber. Antonin with Rabastan and the girl.” It wasn’t a suggestion.
Antonin scowled. “Crowded.”
“So is the street,” Rodolphus replied, unlocking his door. “We reconvene in ten minutes. In our room.”
Rabastan’s room was a sweatbox, the air stale and thick. The bed dominated the space. Antonin immediately claimed the single chair by the window, turning it to face the room, his expression daring comment. Rabastan guided Hel to the edge of the bed and sat beside her, his body a wall between her and the rest of the world.
“This is absurd,” Antonin muttered, lighting a cigarette he’d produced from somewhere. The smoke coiled in the lamplight.
“It’s a roof,” Rabastan said, his gaze fixed on the closed door. “That’s the current metric for success.”
Hel kept her eyes on the water stains mapping the ceiling. The ghost of her hunger was a dull throb, a reminder of her broken control. The feel of the drunk man’s grasping fingers seemed imprinted on her skin. She rubbed her arm.
When they filed into Rodolphus and Rookwood’s identical room, the dynamic was instantly political. Rodolphus and Rookwood stood by the window. Yaxley and Mulciber leaned against the wall by the door. Antonin remained standing, a brooding statue. Rabastan sat on the foot of the bed, pulling Hel down to sit flanked by his knees, his presence at her back a silent declaration.
“First,” Rodolphus began, “the immediate problem. Her.” He didn’t look at Hel. “That can’t happen again. Not in a bus station, not in a market. It’s a liability.”
“It’s a resource,” Mulciber corrected lightly. “One that requires a dedicated handler and controlled conditions. Rabastan has volunteered for the former. We need to establish the latter.”
“I am not a bloody experiment,” Hel snapped, the words cracking out.
“Aren’t you?” Rookwood asked, his head tilted. “We all are. This world, our changed bodies… we are learning our own functions through trial and error. Your error in the bar nearly brought the local law down on us. We must be more rigorous.”
The clinical dissection was worse than anger. She felt flayed. Rabastan’s hand came to rest on her shoulder, his thumb pressing into the knot of muscle there. A warning to stay still, or a comfort, she couldn’t tell.
“What’s the plan, then?” Yaxley asked, steering it back to logistics. “We have a little money. We have no identities, no history here, no understanding of the power structure. We know there are non-humans. We saw the edges of them in the fight at the warehouse. But who rules?”
All eyes turned to Hel. She felt it like a physical pressure. The girl who grew up Muggle. The one who knew how the mundane world turned.
She swallowed. “We need more money. A lot more. You need papers to get jobs, to rent properly, to do anything. But there are ways… cash jobs. Manual labour. Bartending. Waiting tables.” She looked at their aristocratic, sharp-featured faces, so obviously out of place. “Or not.”
Mulciber smiled. “Or we skip the queue. We observe, we identify the hidden power here, and we insert ourselves. We take what we need from the shadows, as we were trained to do. Just with new tools.”
“We need a car,” Yaxley stated. “Mobility is everything. I can drive. We find one, we take it.”
“Steal it,” Hel clarified, the word blunt.
“Appropriate it,” Yaxley corrected, unmoved. “We also need a secure location to… test capabilities. To understand what we can do without wands, without structured spells. The warehouse was a reactive scramble. We need to be deliberate.”
A plan coalesced in the stuffy air, built on a foundation of theft and aggression. It was the only language they all spoke fluently. Hel listened, the leopard inside her circling uneasily. This was their planning. She was a variable to be managed, a set of skills to be potentially utilized.
“Tomorrow,” Rodolphus concluded. “Yaxley and Mulciber will acquire transportation. Antonin and Rookwood will scout the city’s periphery for a suitable isolated property. Rabastan will manage our liability and continue to assess her capabilities in a controlled environment. I will coordinate.”
The assignments were given, the hierarchy asserted. No one argued. Rabastan’s fingers tightened minutely on her shoulder. Managed. Controlled environment. The words were cool and professional, wrapping around her like chains.
As the meeting broke up, Rabastan stood, pulling Hel up with him. “We’re turning in,” he said to the room, his tone leaving no opening for discussion.
Back in their own room, Antonin grunted and pointedly turned his chair to face the window, a monument to displeasure. Rabastan ignored him. He looked at the bed, then at Hel. The space was too small, the reality too intimate.
“You take the side against the wall,” he said, his voice low. It wasn’t a question.
She didn’t have the energy to protest. The day was a weight on her bones. She kicked off her shoes and slid over the scratchy coverlet, putting the wall against her back. It felt like the least vulnerable position in a room full of threats.
Rabastan lay down on top of the covers, his body a long, tense line between her and the rest of the room, between her and Antonin. He didn’t touch her. He just lay there, a barrier. The light from the street below filtered up, painting stripes across the ceiling.
The silence was a living thing. She could hear Antonin’s steady breathing, the distant hum of the city, the pounding of her own heart. The hunger was quiet now, a sleeping beast.
“It wasn’t your fault,” Rabastan murmured, so quietly she almost didn’t hear it. The words were rough, unpractised in comfort. “In the bar. It’s this… new biology. Like a reflex.”
“A reflex that breaks wrists,” she whispered back, staring at the stripes of light.
“That was my reflex,” he said, and there was a dark thread of satisfaction in it. “His hand was on you. That won’t be tolerated.”
The possessiveness should have chilled her. In the dark, tired and raw, it felt like the only reliable law in a universe that had dissolved. She didn’t thank him. She didn’t move. She just lay there, in the space his claim carved out for her, and watched the light on the ceiling until her eyes closed.
Tomorrow, the planning would become action. Tomorrow, they would start carving their place into this strange world. But for now, in the unfamiliar dark, she had a wall at her back and a tiger at her side, and the ghost within her slept.