Chessie Wharton, Dove Dogood, Mary Downspout, The Shiny Teacup, and Rose Carley are mine, but everything else belongs to Rowling, who should feel free to adopt me if she feels that she needs a 30-year-old child.
August 1997
Ottery St. Catchpole
Table five needed more coffee, table eight was waiting for their menus, and table thirteen kept laughing jovially. The general atmosphere was noisy and comfortable in the small space, but crowded. The whole diner smelled of coffee and eggs and sizzling bacon due to the morning crowd, which was to say that all ten tables and booths were full. By most standards it wouldn't be a crowd, but this far from a city it was considered bustling.
Chessie rushed from table to table in her cheesy yellow 1970s yellow diner uniform dress, refilling drinks, taking orders, being frazzled and underpaid. Her hair, which normally looked slightly electrocuted thanks to her African ancestral background, had been beaten into a half-bun, and if one looked they would see slim but solid muscles under the mustard yellow sleeves from years of providing for herself.
It was a normal day amid many normal days, and she was used to it. Once the breakfast rush was over and the diner was occupied exclusively by the employees and the regulars who were so regular they may as well be employees, Chessie and her two fellow waitresses dropped their guard and as they restocked napkins and salt, they discussed the latest Daily Prophet slanderings at the bar among themselves. It wasn't a fully muggle restaurant, but it still paid to be quiet. Mary and Dove loved to argue, and they mastered how to keep it quiet very quickly.
"Did you hear about those new werewolf laws?" Mary, a raspy bleached-blonde witch in her late sixties twittered. She had opened The Shiny Teacup with her muggle husband a little over ten years prior, yet was content to be a waitress. "Apparently enough people thought the Educational Decrees didn't go far enough and so new provisions have been added to keep all of us safe from those monsters."
"Why do you read that crap, anyway?" Dove Dogood, a goth-y 18-year-old witch a year younger than Chessie- she'd been in Ravenclaw, Chessie recalled- retorted over her upside down copy of the Quibbler. "The government's lying about the war, they have been for years. It isn't even a real government, it's all run by puppets these days." She was also resigned to wearing the obnoxiously yellow, out-of-date uniform, but with the addition of dyed-black hair, a choker with a small fake skull, and black lipstick.
Mary tossed a damp washcloth over the shoulder of her starched yellow-and-white uniform while Chessie rolled her eyes. Another fight so soon? Ususally they behaved slightly better than this, especially before the diner emptied. She debated going to the back and hanging out with the cooks while Mary and Dove argued, but something instinctively warned her against it. Instead, she rifled through laminated menus for those covered in mysterious stains from various customers.
"That's nonsense!" Mary yell-whispered at a skeptical Dove, "I've read the Daily Prophet for over forty years and I've never once, in all that time, had any reason to doubt any of it!"
Chessie stepped in before anyone could get physical, spreading her sinewy arms as though refereeing a wresting match behind the diner counter. "Now," she said as neutrally as possible, "Sometimes the Prophet tells the truth and there's nothing to worry about, but," and here she glared pointedly at Mary, who was red with unjustified fury, "sometimes they do exaggerate or underplay some things."
"That miserable Skeeter woman-." Dove started.
"Was fired over three years ago." Chessie responded firmly, holding her hand up like a stop sign. Mary and Dove glared at each other, but decided to drop the matter for the moment by walking off in opposite directions. It is hard to sulk while gracefully exiting with a mop in hand but Mary managed to, Chessie observed wryly. She returned to cleaning menus, pondering the entire werewolf situation herself.
She had been taught to hate and fear werewolves by both her parents and by society in general. Any questions she had during her childhood about the condition had been shot down very thoroughly, but that hadn't been enough to kill off the skepticism that it was okay to hate people for things beyond their own control. She had learned very early on to keep attitudes like that suppressed though, no matter what. She had seen what happened to liberal parties in the government and even in Hogwarts during her attendance when they voiced acceptance of all instead of toeing the line on the normal predjudices. Especially in her former house, Slytherin.
Near the end of her shift, eight or so that night, Mary suddenly appeared by Chessie's elbow with an an earnest espression. Dove had gotten off early and apparated home to wherever she lived in Devon. Out of the three witches, Chessie was the only one who lived even remotely near Ottery St. Catchpole, where the diner was located. Mary and Dove apparated to and from work each day. Chessie was fairly sure Mary lived in Bristol, but never had bothered to ask. Magical upbringing or not, Chessie walked to and from work. It wasn't that far, only about three miles. If anything attacked her, well, she had experience fighting- and more relevantly, running away- from living on her own for far longer than she should have been. All that on top of her Hogwarts education and experiences had left her with the sense that if it came to a duel, she could hold her own.
"Listen, dear, you don't really think that the Prophet overexaggerates everything, do you?" Mary asked pitifully from around Chessie's shoulder. Chessie was relatively tall, five foot nine or so, and Mary was one of those small, stocky, stone-like women who always were underestimated.
"Oh, er…." In truth, Chessie didn't really care. She tried to distance herself from the heart of the wizarding world and the war raging within it and so far, since she didn't bother returning for her seventh year at Hogwarts two years before, she'd succeeded. Somehow she had been graduated still, but in fear of the oversight being noticed, she had never asked for her diploma. It was such a difficult year in Hogwarts history, with Umbridge running the school, and so the sudden decrease in stress alone was worth leaving the school.
Mary interrupted firmly, "Because I think they're right, and they're definitely right about this- the werewolf problem in Great Britain has gotten ridiculous and the Ministry's got every right to open this jail for them."
"Jail?" Chessie paused, "Isn't there already Azkaban?"
"Sure, love, but if Azkaban can be escaped from then what use is locking up werewolves there? They need a new prison so that we can sleep safe!" Mary said confidently, then finished locking up the Teacup. Mary shivered in her pink flowery jacket that was pulled tight over her mustard yellow uniform dress, and glanced up to the partially cloudy sky.
"Full moon tonight, dear. Be careful!" She said flippantly, but with a hint of worry. Mary Downspout looked both ways in the bright moonlight to check for witnesses, and apparated safely home, where she did Merlin knows what. Chessie yanked on the doorknob once or twice to make sure it was locked properly and dropped the key into a little crack between two bricks where it could only be fished out with a bobby pin or Summoning Spell, depending on the upbringing of whoever opened in the morning. That was about as complex as security needed to be in Ottery St. Catchpole. Nothing ever happened in a town with a population of less than a thousand citizens. And so Chessie never worried about living on her own here.
She'd found the place during the summer after her fifth year, when she'd deliberately not returned to her violent home for the second year in a row. It was steaming hot outside and she'd been walking for almost a week, and finally spent the last of her stolen money (one of her Slytherin dormmates was rich and hadn't ever noticed the skinny kleptomaniac delicately going through her stuff during quidditch match Saturdays) on a room in a boarding house. She'd spent the remainder of that week exploring the town, and discovered it was absolutely perfect for her. Small enough that her presence would be noticed and a job could be provided- which it had at the end of that week, at the then-brand-new Shiny Teacup- but it was also big enough that not everybody knew everybody. And then, as her sixth year at Hogwarts drew to a much-wished for close, she bought a small but cozy house across the street from a sweet family who had been letting her baby sit their young daughter sometimes when she was home for her breaks.
No one tried to contact her, either. Not her family, her domineering mother's standards of what it meant to be a wizarding lady, nor her father, who spoke as often with his voice as with his fists and wand. Let them play for power; Chessie would have none of it. She did okay on her own. Just enough money to keep her comfortable and relatively happy while building up her bank account as well. She spent as rarely as possible, preferring to quietly save money in a small private vault at Gringotts and under her mattress.
While at school she had been dead average in every subject, out in the world she had discovered innate skills with accounting and with cooking that served her well. She had helped most of her co-workers with their budgeting and checkbooks the last few years, and gifts had been given in return- free meals, hand-me-down furniture and clothes, and in one memorable case, a small box full of every variety of tea Chessie had ever heard of and then some. She was still slowly working her way through that. It was still wonderful.
As she reached the dirt road that ended in the cul-de-sac where her house sat, she heard a loud, long howl not very far away. It was a cul-de-sac street, with her house and two neighbors forming the roundabout part of the street and lots of nature between the structures. The moon was only partially up, but it was full and silver, almost watching Chessie. Even though her dark skintone helped her naturally hide in the night, her stupid accursed cheerful yellow and white Teacup uniform stood out like a beacon. She tried to ignore the elements of the moment that could add up unpleasantly, and merely picked up her feet and walked a little faster, cursing her own paranoia.
The next howl, shorter and less resonant, was much closer.
She kept glancing around with golden eyes wide, seeing imaginary eyes watching her out of bushes and from the darkness between the trees lining the road and hearing quietly shifting brush- no, wait, that was actually happening- ahead of her!
A shape formed from the shadows behind the two floor house opposite Chessie's- four long legs, big dog-like furry physique, and a very scary growl that made Chessie's human instincts paralyze her for a moment. Werewolf? In Ottery St. Catchpole? Preposterous. But still. Assuming it was a werewolf, and it was on the prowl in this nowhere town, what would it be doing here? Didn't werewolves like children, or was that just Greyback? She'd heard horrible stories. Who hadn't? She tried to not exist and slink into the relative safety of her own front porch simultaneously.
The wolf was circling around the Carley house, nose in the air. The Carley family had a young daughter. Rose, who Chessie babysat regularly both at the Carley house and in her own home, at least once a week. How old was she? Six…Oh dear. Chessie was torn. Go inside her house and call the Aurors and hide in her attic until it was safe to emerge, or try to save the kid- her kid, she sometimes fantasized but would never admit aloud- who was clearly in immanent danger? She blinked as she fumbled to pull her wand out of her frizzy bun. Save the kid? What was she, a Gryffindor?
No, you're a dropout who ran away from Slytherin because she couldn't handle the pressure of failing at everything she tried.
Oh yeah. Drats.
Chessie grimaced and hit her door with her fist softly. Rose was too sweet to have her life ruined. Still though, she wanted someone- a lot of someones- with training to be there too. Preferably in front of her. Preferably instead of her.
She raised her wand and sent a bright red flare up. That should alert the muggle relations division pretty quickly. Rose and her family were muggles, as well as the rest of Chessie's immediate neighbors. It is not my problem, she thought, as she unlocked the door to go hide. In the doorway, despite her instictive reaction at seeing a wolf figure at the full moon, Chessie paused and looked back.
A high-pitched scream filled the air, ending with a strangely out of place trill that only Margaret Carley could manage to make with her wavery voice. Before she realized what she was doing, Chessie had turned around and run across the road, wand hand at the ready as she kicked the door open with strength she'd gained from working in food and knowledge from surviving in school. In the back of her mind, the part of her that rather liked being alive protested weakly, but was covered up by the sound of a growl.
The growl was coming from beside the stairs, where a very large- much. much larger up close- silvery black wolf was looking at Chessie like she was dinner. The wolf had a few scars crossing over it, showing its survival, and was roughly the size of a bear. The fangs alone were over an inch long, and dripping with saliva and blood. Chessie saw a small broken-looking blonde figure in pink pajamas sprawled out like a ragdoll behind it, and her heart sank. She was too late and now she was going to die from stupidity.
At least she wouldn't have to live knowing she did nothing while her sometimes-daughter was murdered.
They looked at each other. The wolf with unsated hunger still evident in its eyes and blood around its mouth, and Chessie with more dismay than fear at this point.
The wolf hurled itself at Chessie and the world went red, then black.