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𝐀𝐏𝐏𝐋𝐈𝐂𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍 + 𝐁𝐈𝐎𝐆𝐑𝐀𝐏𝐇𝐘

full name : FENRIR BJORNOLF GREYBACK. This was not your born name, of course. But you can barely remember the moniker which once defined you, for it seems lifetimes away. This name is self-given, reflective of all you are and all you intend to be. Each name is reflective of the wolf, and not of the name you were given at birth; that boy is dead now, and only the wolf remains. You remember reading of kings eaten by wolves the size of bears when you lived in the mountains, amongst all those young minds who knew no better; when you took your first life, you realized that not only kings were fit for consumption. And so you changed your name. You became.

birth date : 4 April, 1944. A night on which the moon was obscured by clouds. Your mother died before you could take your first breath; you were cut from her as she faded away, and then… there you were. You know not what the moon looked like on the night that you were born, nor did your father ever care to tell you before he died. Of course, the moon would only matter to you; it has called to you from the start. Were you, perhaps, born an animal?

gender and pronouns : Fenrir identifies as cisgender male, using he/him pronouns.

character traits :

+ (OVER)PROTECTIVE. One step to the left of loyalty, and just short of devotion, Fenrir’s proclivity for fierce protectiveness is, at first glance, uncharacteristic of his true nature. One would not expect him to feel so fiercely for anyone that he might wish to put his own life on the line for them, but he feels that his pack is his family, and he would easily go so far as to die for them. Sure, his nature is one of a bloodthirsty animal, a feral beast with survival as motive and goal; this has never been a question, and there is no doubting that Fenrir’s capacity for pleasantry and interpersonal communication is a nonexistent one, but his devotion to the pack he has created is unmatched. It is undeniably difficult to land a place on his good side - that would usually include succumbing to a bite that not all survive - but once you are there, once you are in the family, the world will need to go through him before touching you.

+ UNRELENTING. A predator never stops, so neither does Fenrir. Though it could brand him as a firebrand entity, living without conscience or empathy by those who are cowed by his intensity, his refusal to bow, to quit, to relent when it truly matters most is what defines him the most. His is an undeniably intense human being – though, of course, he would point out that he has never been quite human – and is not like to give way even under the most intense pressure. In any circumstance, he is utterly intense, overbearing, frightening; once his mind is locked upon an objective, it would take death alone to pry him from it. His entire life has been a wild ‘do or die’, and so his outlook remains a reflection of such. This is his defining trait, for it can manifest in numerous forms and drives him in whichever direction he feels his unrelenting force is needed. It is an intense trait to possess, and an intense mantra to live by; it has gotten him in more trouble than not, but he has survived yet. And he certainly intends to outlast all his newfound “allies.”

+ RESILIENT. He’s survived so much, and surely will have to survive so much more, that there’s no doubt of his resilience and strength. And it’s not just because of physical fortitude – hell, he’s got enough scars as visible, undeniable proof that he’s not indestructible. But he’s got a stalwart mind, an iron cage about his heart, and an undeniable grit that’s not sure to allow him to falter any time soon. He bows and bends knees to no one – this could force him to come across as headstrong, surely, but his survival instinct outguns any seemingly necessary formality; his pelt is made of iron, of steel, of stone, and does not let just anyone see the weak, fickle humanity behind it all. For that would be weakness – and Fenrir would rather die than be weak.

misc. witty, careless, vengeful, fearless, grudging, conflicted, secretive, nurturing

- CALLOUS. I’m going to be totally frank here - Fenrir is not a nice person in any capacity. He’s blunt, brusque and lacks tact. It could be argued that this lack of ‘people skills’ could come from his lack of a proper upbringing, but in truth it is merely attributed to the fact that he rarely cares to put in the effort. He sees no need for the pretense of pleasantry, for he does not feel beholden to anyone in his current circle, and this can undoubtedly rub people the wrong way. In a circle of primped and polished elites, he sticks out like a sore thumb with no intention of healing; as much as defense mechanism as it is first gear, his lack of politesse makes him quite difficult to maintain within the ranks of the Death Eaters - and in the public eye of their association, in general. He cares little for the feelings of others, thinks nothing of those who feign kindness, and does not intend to try any time soon.

- SELF-SERVING. I’ve elaborated on this a little more below, in the “affiliation” section, but this trait goes far beyond his allegiance within the war. This has always been a necessary trait, a necessary tool used in the grand act of survival. Had he not had his own interests at heart from the onset, Fenrir might not have survived - or perhaps he would have been violently put down, rather than wasting away, for had he not his own preservation in mind, he might have lost himself. He ultimately wants to see himself through the war with his pack at his side; anything that does not further his motives - be it within the grand scheme of the war or in the context of his interpersonal relations - is useless to him, and he will be as underhanded, as devious, as dastardly as he needs to be in order to get ahead. He cares very little for the wants and needs of others - unless, of course, they’re part of his pack.

- EXTREMIST. He is unrelenting, unforgiving, a violent tempest of teeth and anger in equal measure. He is an “all or nothing” sort, with little room for pleasantry or politics. Fenrir is a physical being with animalistic nature and tendencies; there is nothing subtle about him - I mean, he is an infamous murderer after all. It is my job as a writer to understand the complexity of his character, but at the end of a day he is a violent fanatic with no social skills, no remorse, and a nature more animal than man. He was raised feral and wholly stayed that way; predators in the wild don’t know the subtleties and intricacies of the political game - and neither does he. Were this a different universe, “guns blazing” might be an appropriate term. His reputation precedes him, and for good reason; he is a man - an animal - made of violence and selfishness, of hunger and need inhuman, and he has no intention of changing. It has, after all, helped him survive. And he’s not exactly ashamed of his reputation. In fact, the more bloodstained, the better.

affiliation : The Death Eaters. Or, rather, I should be transparent and establish here that Fenrir’s first and strongest loyalty is to his pack. Should it benefit him, he would steer them far from the Death Eaters, for that is what drives his affiliation - benefits. He has no intention of being on the losing side of this war, for his own wellbeing as much as for the longevity of his pack and of his bloodline. At present, it just to happens that the Death Eaters are the most intriguing, the most lucrative, the most attractive offer. The free rein that the Dark Lord offers him, an offer which extends to his created family, is what currently benefits him the most, as it allows him to feed the utmost of his animal desires, to satisfy the bloodlust which drives him and calls him to create. But also, he feels a great deal of responsibility for his pack; his reputation is that of a hot-blooded creator of monsters, one who drinks of the human flesh and leaves it to turn animal - but those who consent to remain by his side are family. He would do anything for his pack, for they are his greatest pride as much as they are his greatest weakness. Should a more conventional member of the Death Eater alliance threaten but a single member of his pack, he would have no qualms with ripping their tongue from within their throat. For now, though, he sees the appeal - and the security - of using his particular talents for the Dark Lord’s cause; no matter how silly he thinks the idol-worship of the group at large truly is, Fenrir is not a stupid man. Fight or flight, survival instinct, whatever you may call it; the pack survives. And no matter which way the war falls, Fenrir and the pack will be in the position required to remain standing.

plot lines :

[ THE LONE WOLF PERISHES ]: Something I would really like to explore is Fenrir’s relationship with people who have strayed from the pack - the most obvious example is Remus. As his only true loyalty is to his pack, he sees it as the ultimate - and damnable - betrayal, worthy of killing for. At present, he doesn’t want to kill Remus; he still maintains the faint delusion that he can bring him back into the fold, for he is quite proud of his creation. He knows that a wolf on its own is one that is likely to be hunted down and exterminated, for Fenrir is not blind or deaf to the way wizards regard his kind. As much as he wants to ‘save’ Remus from all that, for no matter their conflicting ideologies he is still Fenrir’s creation, he knows that he will not hesitate to snuff him out should he continue to stray too far from the pack. He does not take betrayal lightly - nor does he wish to share his toys. And though Remus has only been amongst the pack for a short time, he considers this a return to his roots, a return to where he is meant to be. He shan’t let him leave unscathed again.

[ BUT THE PACK SURVIVES ]: In that same vein, Fenrir is always wishing to expand his family, to grow his pack. Not only in numbers, but in strength - the pack is the most important thing in his life, the one thing that truly matters to him; he would do anything to keep it together, to keep it safe. He wishes to instill a sense of pride in all of his creations, to teach them the ways of his particular brand of feral nightmare, while preparing them to fight in the war that will earn them a higher station in a world of men. If he accomplishes anything, even if he himself were to perish at the end of the war - though, let’s be honest, he has no plan to fall any time soon - he wishes to leave his pack self-sufficient and prepared to raze the world he left behind. There isn’t anything he wouldn’t do for his pack, and this is no secret; as someone who loves to throw wrenches in smooth systems, however, I would love to see that challenged. The pack survives - but not always. Who knows what would happen if one of his number were to fall?

[ A FERAL DARLING ]: Blending in is… largely impossible for someone as ostentatious an unapologetic as Fenrir, and that can create quite a number of problems for him when he is trying to blend in. And, frankly, when he is trying not to get arrested. He and his pack have one hell of a reputation, one which seems to follow him everywhere he goes. And in order to function, he has to take at least some sort of efforts to shirk that reputation. With people like Hestia on his heels, Fenrir needs to blend into society - not high society, of course, because I’m not delusional enough to think that he could be capable of pulling that off (or that he would want to), but a man who lives in the woods, chops his own wood, cooks over a fire most nights, and can often be found picking twigs, grass, and leaves out of his hair is going to take some work when it comes to functioning in common wizarding society. I would really like to explore all the painfully humorous possibilities that come with Fenrir trying to integrate - and everyone who would either call his bluff or help him try.

[ CONSUME OR CREATE ]: Fenrir has, for lack of a better term, a little black book of people he would like to play with; to be frank, they all toe the line between people he’d like to have in the pack, and people he’d like to have for lunch, which is something nonplussing to the pack, but horrifying to anyone looking in. I’d like for him to interact with all the people on the shortlist - Tarquin, Alice, Hestia, and others - and to pursue them in a way befitting his sincere lack of subtlety.

[ WILD CARD IN THE HAND ]: He has no interest in purity and domination, but in freedom, and in this, he is a dangerous and unruly member of the Death Eaters. Though he is, at present, an unmarked member of the Death Eaters, he still operates among them and owes his freedom, allegiance, and influence to them. He joined them, after all, to earn freedom for himself and for his pack, and he knows he must work for it. But his mindset and theirs, his upbringing and theirs, are polar opposites, making it rather difficult to operate amongst them. Whenever he can get away with it, he operates on his own, but when it is required of him he makes no real efforts to play nice. He does believe, after all, that he is the superior being. I would love to see Fenrir more deeply embroiled in the affairs of the Death Eaters; just imagine how someone as blunt as he dealing with some sort of scandal. He’s not as brutish and dumb as they think he is, and though he plays that perception to his advantage, he knows that the intricacies of Pureblood society are a dangerous thing. I would love to see him have to navigate that - it’ll be more difficult than the war itself, to be sure.

biography :

One must always wonder if monsters are born, or if they simply become. If they emerge from the cavernous void of creation with teeth bared and claws sharpened for the ripping, or perhaps if they come about like every other sad child with no mothering touch to teach them what it is to be human. No one really knows where monsters come from, and perhaps that is what makes them so terrifying. Or perhaps it is the inevitability that, no matter what we are inclined to believe about the nature of creation, all monsters were children once.

No one knows where he came from, for he will never tell them. There exists a certain mythos about the wolf, the Greyback wolf, whose reputation precedes him, that he simply appeared in the gutters of London one night, dressed in rags and wielding a thigh bone as a club, blood upon his cheeks as if he had bitten into something far too large to chew. He was a feral child who lived between shadows, inhabiting the old, dilapidated flat that had once belonged to a mother and father who had never truly loved each other, had never truly loved him. They had left him, after all; he’d never even known their names. Beggars, they had been, lowlifes who exposed their child to the worst sort of people - but, perhaps they themselves were the true monsters, packing away their things and leaving him to rot when he came home with empty pockets and a profusely bleeding bite-wound upon his shoulders. They had looked upon it with horror, for it spanned the length of his arm, half his chest, as if he’d been plucked up by the ankles and dipped gently into the jaws of the beast. He knew not what it meant - but his parents certainly did. Perhaps he would have hated them less if they had told him what he would become before leaving him with nothing but the clothes on his back and the mold-touched bread on the table. Perhaps he would have been less frightened had he known, on the following full moon, why it was he lay upon the floor, captured at the base of the window by a single shaft of moonlight, tearing limb from limb and growing upward, outward.

Perhaps he would not hate them so, had they told him that he would feel more himself as the beast, and that they had left him for becoming who he had always meant to be. Perhaps so. Perhaps. Perhaps if he had torn into them with freshly grown fangs, and not the carriage driver in the park he’d have felt their debts paid.

He was a beastly wraith, inhabiting the streets of London, the gutters and sewers, stealing what he could and taking what he must. There were whispers that the old landlord had died, that the dingy one-room flat in which he’d been born was to be abandoned fully, along with the rest of the building. And so he was truly alone, a lonely and feral monster with nothing to lose and everything to gain. Even as a young boy scrounging for scraps and fumbling halfheartedly through the discovery of magic he knew that mortal flesh was not meant for him. He yearned for the change, for the animal that shared space with the scraps of a human soul deep within his chest. His was a lawless upbringing, a ruleless world which belonged to him and only him. He never questioned why he was made this way, nor who it was that made him; as far as Fenrir was concerned, it was the closest thing to a gift from a divine presence that someone so close to Hell as he would ever receive. A divine gift, but not one without its temptations, its pains, its suffering. But is that not the defining quality of all things divine?

But he possessed magic just as greatly as he possessed monstrosity; the magic was much more clumsy in his hands, secondary to the newfound animalism which drove him to hunt, to stray from the city and travel north, to become more nomad than wraith. Far from the city, Fenrir found himself in foreign territories that did not take as kindly, or as nonchalantly, to abandoned adolescents who took their meat raw and slept with one eye open. Those in smaller towns chased him into the wood with angry words and angrier spells, for they who held magic in the palms of their hands wanted not to allow a monster into the fold. It was much harder to steal from these smaller villages, to pillage from the humble houses, and so he learned to hunt - both as man and beast - to fish, to chop wood, to build. He was a man before adolescence, an ancient soul before all else.

At the age of thirteen, he found himself settled quite comfortably just outside Druskininkai; the Lithuanian people, he’d found, seemed more likely to leave him be than most, when encountered in the wood. Perhaps the folk in the city had heard the howls at night, the cries of pain and splendor with each full moon. Perhaps they knew that to leave their chickens in the cool night air and to lock their doors was a safer homage than to try and engage the monster directly. Or perhaps they knew that to offer him still-living stock to drag back to the shed he’d taken to inhabiting in the woods would be better than to allow him to continue to lecherously observe the girls who played in the wheat fields, watching them as if they were his next meal.

He was not ashamed that he had once tried to make a girl - blonde, with pigtails and freckles like full-moon stars - like him, once. But he was too young, and she too frightened. They’d found her arm first, for he’d done his best to bite her in the same pattern that scarred his shoulder; but she’d jerked from him, screaming, howling, and it had all come apart far too easily. He’d not bothered to wash his ragged trousers in the river until the next morning.

It was here, in this village where his reputation was not quite so terrible yet, that a traveling scholar with ties to the Durmstrang Institute dared approach him, dared speak to the feral boy who knew so little of humans, but so much of humanity. At first, Fenrir wished nothing to do with the man, or with the school of which he spoke. After all, Fenrir had known nothing but a self-sufficient life of nomadic survival, living off the land and off the people intelligent enough not to fight back. At first, he thought it frivolous, silly. But then the scholar had produced a wand from within his traveling cloak and had set him ablaze with curiosity.

But the scholar, this man with ties to the school, also made him bitter. You’ll never be like them, he’d said, But you can pretend to be.

He did not want to pretend, to hide, to lessen his monster for the sake of those who did not understand. The way the man spoke, Fenrir thought that perhaps they, wizards, thought him less for his condition. The man had called it an ‘affliction’; Fenrir knew enough of men, however, to disagree. He had never known anything but this life upon the outskirts, but he knew enough of the world to see the opportunity presented to him. The young boy, all rib-bones and dirty feet, knew survival to be paramount. Survival, freedom; acceptance meant nothing, but power was another story.

He lasted but a few years at Durmstrang, but what little education he received was invaluable. They’d cleaned him up, with pity on their faces and determination in their heavy hand, and had taught him - too little too late - all they could about ‘playing nice’ with the others, about becoming a part of a community which required social skills he had thus been lacking. Of course, what need had Fenrir had for the precarious intricacies of social politics? The children in his year had all come from lily-pure stock, and made no secret of looking down their noses at the raggedy boy who disappeared once a month, who was taught to eat with utensils, who ran in his sleep. They looked down upon him, but he cared little for their opinions - only for the practice they gave him. He learned to duel with words just as quickly as with wands, sliding comfortably into a human facade which would be passable at best to most who scrutinized him. He realized that he was quite good at slipping into the facade, at playing into their brutish perception of him, for his greatest power, it seemed, was being underestimated.

After a time, Fenrir felt as if he had exhausted the use of formal education, and left Durmstrang - though some might argue that he was encouraged to leave. At the age of fifteen, he struck out on his own once more, though this time with the skills, mindset, and determination to change the way in which he cut his monster’s path through the world. Where once he had been aimless, his time amongst the Pureblooded wizards - and their talk of purity, and the desire to reign supreme, and a movement in the name of all of it forming to the south - he now quite liked the idea of a superior regime. But, of course, he did not subscribe to the ideal that Pure magic was might, that it was superior, that his own blood was less than those without magic at all; no - he knew better. He almost felt sorry for them, the misinformed bigots who thought of him as an animal to be tamed, to be collared into too-tight robes and taught party tricks.

No - his kind was superior. And they deserved to be free. He deserved to be free.

And so he returned south with the intention of settling near his once-home, to grow his family (family, he called it; this was almost humanity), to mark themselves as a presence worthy of overtaking the lesser witches and wizards who underestimated the vitriol of the truest predator. Fenrir saw the undeniable benefit in doing so on the precipice of a war; it was a war fought by men in studies, haughty chess-makers who thought one spilled blood better than the other. He observed the brewing storm as he roamed about the countryside throughout England, Scotland, Wales; were he to have a stake in the rearranging of the world order, were he to put his hand into the fire that stretched even as far as Durmstrang, he would need not be alone. And besides, what better gift to bestow upon humanity than that of his secret weapon?

With enough of them, with enough numbers behind him, he could eat the men in their studies, and leave the bones with which his children could pick their teeth. It was a lovely thought; it was purpose.

It was not long before Fenrir had cut enough of a path through the community to be considered both a threat and something to be feared; he took children from their homes and brought them into his fold, where they could not be abandoned, where they could not be left to turn feral in the wilds. He thought it a service to them, knew it to be a gift that they could only repay by acting in his service. But he was determined to treat them in a way much different than his own upbringing; they would be an army as much as a community. A presence to be feared - but soon to be respected. He could not deny the thrill, the utterly bloody satisfaction he felt at growing his number, for violence had always been his bread and butter. And soon others saw it his way - and those who did not were quickly eliminated, for monsters of his breed, no matter their beliefs, belonged to him, with him.

Theirs is a lawless existence, this life of the Greyback pack. His body count has a body count of its own; the pack shares his taste for an almost pirate-like lack of regard for the laws of humanity - or of society, for that matter. Fenrir has made it quite clear that he is neither their father nor their master, but that they owe him the debt of their lives. They know all too well that it would have been all too easy to simply destroy them; many are beholden to failed turnings just as often as they are privy to successful ones. They live upon the fringes; rarely do any but Fenrir mingle with the common folk of the wizarding community. They seem to know not, or care not, Fenrir included, that they are uneducated, that they are anomalies, that they are a third horse in a race run by political players, for Fenrir has instilled it in them that they exist here, in this war, in these circles, to accompany the victors to the other side, where freedom awaits. He tells them only enough of his life, of his struggles, of what he has seen to instill in them a confidence that he can, in fact, see the freedom which lies just beyond the horizon of the war. In the service of he who calls himself the Dark Lord - at which Fenrir scoffs, and the pack laughs - they are allowed to indulge in their intrinsic tastes for blood, for violence, for chaos; they are allowed to be themselves where Fenrir was not, at their age. He ushers them into a new age where they will not have to hide, where they will not be forced to live in the hollows and cracks of a society that does not want them - for this is what the world has owed him from the very beginning.

This is not the becoming of a single monster - this is the heralding of their true and deserved age. A dynasty of monstrous creation, a lifetime of retribution. Monsters will be monsters, after all.

And there is no questioning the nature of monsters or men.

iii.

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