Name // Fenrir Grayback age // 59 gender + pronouns // He-him role // Mythic Species: Werewolf // appearance + personality // In his human guise, Greyback is depicted as a large, rangy man, all sharp angles and ill-kemptness. His most striking features are those that blur the line between man and wolf. He is described as having matted, grey hair and whiskers, giving him a wild and unhygienic appearance. This is complemented by his sharp, pointed teeth, which he does not bother to conceal, and long, yellowed fingernails that appear more like claws. sexuality // Straight background // (see Notes and Credits) Hexfer //
Fenrir was born with a chip on his shoulder, as big and heavy as the perpetually grey sky he lived under. He was sneered at by pure-bloods for his poverty and disdained by Muggle-borns for his feral ways. He was a creature of the in-between, belonging nowhere, and he festered with a quiet, biting resentment. He was nineteen when it happened. He was poaching in a restricted forest, tracking a unicorn—its horn would have fed his family for a year. The moon was a sliver from full, a harmless disc. He was crouched in the bracken when he heard a snarl. It was not a magical beast he recognized. It was a man, gaunt and shaking, his eyes wild with terror. "Get... get out," the man stammered, his hands clamped to his head. "It's... it's tonight. I mistook the... the moon..." Fenrir, ever the opportunist, saw only a rival poacher. He raised his wand. "Clear off. This is my hunt." "Run, you fool!" the man shrieked, as the last sliver of the sun vanished and the full moon asserted its silver dominion. Fenrir never even saw the transformation. He was hit by a force that felt like a bolt of lightning wrapped in teeth and claws. The pain was absolute, a fire that tore through his blood and set his very bones alight. He blacked out, his last thought one of supreme, impotent rage. He awoke in a pool of his own blood, the other man—now just a man again—lying dead fifty feet away, his neck broken by Fenrir's own wandless, primal thrashing. Fenrir went home, but he was no longer Fenrir. The first transformation came a month later. The agony was surpassed only by the hunger. It was not just a hunger for flesh, but a hunger for power, a hunger to unleash the rage he had held inside for nineteen years. Wizarding society, which had already shunned him, now had a reason to truly hate him. The Werewolf Registry, the Werewolf Capture Unit—they all came for him. They branded him a "dark creature," "soulless," "a beast." The words, meant to shame him, did the opposite. They liberated him. In his mind, a terrible clarity dawned. They saw him as a monster? Then he would be the monster they deserved. He would not hide in shame as other werewolves did, sipping their pathetic Wolfsbane Potion and whimpering for acceptance. No. He would revel in the curse. He would become the wolf. He let his hair grow matted. He stopped using magic for anything but the most brutal curses. He filed his fingernails and, in an act of ultimate commitment, his teeth, sharpening them into points. He wanted the world to see the beast in him even when the moon was hidden. He wanted them to feel, even in the daylight, the terror he now commanded. His hatred found its true, horrific focus. If the wizarding world was so "pure," he would taint it. If it prized its children, he would take them. He came to believe, in his twisted philosophy, that he was saving them. He would "bite them young," as he later boasted, tearing them away from their parents' "softness" and the Ministry's "lies." He would raise them in his own image—a new, feral, and free society. The bite was not a curse; it was a gift. The wolf was not a monster; it was the truth. His first true victim was not a random child. It was the son of Lyall Lupin, a Ministry wizard who had penned a paper describing werewolves as "soulless, evil, deserving nothing but death." Fenrir read those words and saw the definitive verdict of the world that had rejected him.