He can pinpoint the exact moment that the being woke in his chest. During the war, when the wonder Gryffindors were captured and dragged to his home in a bedraggled mess. Weasel and Scarhead were thrown into the dungeons after Bella saw they had the sword—the one he had placed in his family’s vault and sealed with familial magic; not even the goblins could have opened it, despite the fact that they controlled the whole of Gringotts. When Bella had been carving into Granger’s arm, her maniacal laughter bouncing off the walls and ringing in his ears, the hairs on the back of his neck stood to attention as the stirrings of the beast inside him flickered one lazy eye open.