"Greggory Grames!" He exclaimed, drawing his wand.

The other man sneered. "Lupin." He drawled as his hand descended into his pocket and brought up his wand.

Both men pointed their wands on each other and neither moved. The tension in the room grew until it could be cut with a butter knife.

Snape took the lead. "Put your wands away." He stood and his robes billowed impressively. "Kill each other some place where I won't have to explain to Dumbledore what you've done."

Lupin thrust his wand angrily into his pocket. He showed more anger than Hermione had ever seen in him.

"Remus?" She asked him tentatively. She didn't want to be snapped at.

"Yes?" He was tired and irritated sounding.

"Are you going to introduce me to the guests?" She tried to smile, but the attempt failed miserably. The woman and her daughter were frowning at the whole scene playing out before them.

"This." Remus pointed to the woman in a blue tank top. "Is my friend Celia Katic."

"Nice to meet you." She offered her hand to Hermione. "I hear you've got a furry little problem?"

Hermione blushed. "Yeah. A little."

"My daughter." Celia said, pointing to the girl in dark brown robes. "Jessica."

Jessica flipped her long blond ponytail over her shoulder. "Hi."

Remus snarled. It was the most wolfish noise Hermione had ever heard him make. "And this horrible man in Grames."

"Horrid how?" Hermione asked curiously.

Remus shook the question off. "I'll explain later."

The man leered at her. "Another wolf?" He smiled, showing off a row of yellowed teeth. "Wonderful."

"You asked for a favour?" Celia was all business.

"Yes." Snape was back into the conversation. "Miss Granger needs a place to live. You run some sort of place for werewolves. Make the connection."

"I already had." Celia turned to Hermione. "What do you want?"

"I don't know." Hermione replied honestly. "Every thing's so overwhelming. It seems like everything is happening at once."

"Come for our tour." Jessica yawned. "So I can get back home."

"Sounds like fun." Remus rubbed his hands together. "It's been years since I saw your place." He seized a handful of floo powder. "Still the same address?"

"No." Jessica took her own handful. "I'll go first." She threw the powder in and stepped into the high green flames. "Central Australia Werewolf Reserve, Main office!" She disappeared in a whirl of smoke and flames. Her mother followed quickly.

"Miss Granger." Professor Snape beckoned to her. "Come with me please." He walked back into the garage turned hospital of his house. "Sit." He told her, indicating a bed.

Hermione sat. "Professor, why did someone set off a bomb at the ministry?"

He ignored her question and cast a diagnostic charm on her. "You've still got slightly broken ribs."

"My head doesn't hurt any more." Hermione offered. "I thought the combination of potions would...

"Miss Granger, unless you're not as smart as you appear to be, you would know that I am a potions master."

Hermione coloured slightly. "Sorry sir."

"Anyway, your headache is still there. The potion just numbed the pain." He pulled out another set of bottles filled with different liquids.

"Professor? Do I really need all that?" At one point Hermione had read a few books on healing. All of them had spoken on the danger of taking different potions. She didn't want to be accidentally poisoned.

"You will be fine Miss Granger." Snape handed her three vials.

Hermione looked at the first one. "More wolf control?" She complained before taking it. The other two she recognized as pain reliever and the final concussion potion. "Thank you sir."

"You may leave." Snape was already heading back to his lab.

Hermione walked back towards the floo. Lupin was still waiting for her. The other three had already gone ahead.

"There you are." Lupin looked away from the flames. "Here." He offered her the floo powder.

"Thanks." Hermione took a handful. "Is traveling between the continents different than regular floo travel?"

"Slightly." He gave her a gentle push towards the fire. "Go on."

Hermione threw the powder in to the fire. " Central Australia Werewolf Reserve, Main office."

Hermione fell forward out of the floo. International travel was defiantly something she did not want to repeat. Ever. Floo was by no means her favourite way to travel. And being stuck whirling and spinning past fireplaces for almost ten minutes was more like torture than transportation.

"You've got to get out of the way." Celia hauled her to her feet and pushed her away from the floo. "Remus will be here any second." She stepped backwards.

Sure enough a few seconds later the floo lit up and Remus fell forward. Practice was obviously key to flooing because he managed to keep his balance.

"Scourgify" Celia gave her wand a wave and the soot disappeared from their clothes. "I love being a witch."

Hermione's world stopped spinning and the nausea in her stomach disappeared. She took advantage of the situation and studied the room they had floo'd into. 'Main office.'

The room certainly didn't look like a main office. It was mostly empty. The floo was in a corner, a desk, a chair and two filing cabinets. The walls were plain and unpainted. There was only one door and no windows or clock.

Jessica ran in from the door. "Hi Hermione. You finally managed to get here." Her robes had been replaced with ragged cut-offs and a dirty t-shirt bearing the message 'BeWere.'

"Come on." Celia opened the door wider. "I'll give you the grand tour."

The group left the office for the large grounds and other buildings. Grames stayed behind the group. Jessica ran ahead, dropping to all fours and building her speed. She was running like a wolf.

Long, white-washed buildings fill the area behind the office and beyond them in every direction the land spread out, until it ended at mountains far in the distance. Not a singled living creature could be seen or heard.

"Excuse me." Hermione ran up to stand beside Celia. "Where is everyone?"

Celia smiled. "Inside. This is the warmest part of the day and most people are at work."

Jessica had run back to the group. She opened a door in one of the longer buildings. "This is my house." She told them.

Celia laughed nervously. "Actually, this is housing unit three." She lead the way in to the building. A long hall was also plain and undecorated. But the doors on the walls were not.

Jessica beckoned them to the end of the hallway. "This is my room." The door had her name written on it. Posters and paintings of wolves covered the rest of the door. She opened the door by placing her hand on a panel next to the door.

The room before them was decent sized. Hermione estimated it to be about half the size of her dormitory. It was remarkably clean for belonging to a teenager. There was a closet in one wall. Another held a bed and desk. One had a window, sink and mirror. And the one they'd just walked through had the door. Books, clothes and drawing supplies were spread around the floor and furniture.

"I thought I asked you to clean up." Celia was scowling at her daughter.

"Aw." Jessica sighed. "I was busy."

"Speaking of busy, shouldn't you be somewhere?" Celia pointed to her watch. "School's still going on."

"Fine." Jessica was about to prance off.

"We'll go with you." Celia told her daughter. "Then we can include the school in our tour."

The group set off the grounds again. This time their destination was a small square building.

Celia explained the housing system. "There are three housing units. They're all divided by age. One is for people over the age of forty. Three is for those under the age of seventeen and Two is everyone else."

Jessica opened the door to the school room. "Sorry I'm late Jeff. There's some people here on a tour."

Hermione followed Lupin into the classroom. Six kids sat in single desks facing a blackboard. None of them looked the same age. Five empty desks sat in the back.

"Welcome to our school." A very old man walked toward the back. "I'm the usual teacher and principal. Jeffrey Hunter." He offered his hand.

Hermione shook it. "Nice place."

The school was small and simple, but it was nice. There were enough books to make Hermione happy. Cauldrons and animals for transfiguration sat in one corner, while another held art supplies and a few instruments. The walls were painted with murals depicting full moons and werewolves.

The six students stood up and introduced themselves.

"I'm Rebecca!" A little girl bounded out of her seat and tugged on Hermione's robes. "Are you coming to our school?"

Hermione smiled down at her. "I don't yet."

"These are the other students." Jeffrey Hunter pointed to the oldest looking one. "Do the introductions please?"

The boy smiled. He could have easily been twenty. He had short blond hair and green eyes. "I'm Alexandru Gelenis the forth." He pointed the girl sitting next to him. "This is Amy."

Amy smiled and shook her long, silky, black hair out of her face. "Nice to meet you." She didn't have any kind of accent like Hermione had suspected due to her very oriental appearance.

Alexandru cleared his throat. "This is Jean and Charlie Mark." He pointed to and boy and girl how looked identical save for their height. Both had long red hair and brown hair. But Jean was almost a foot taller than her brother.

Rebecca dragged Hermione over to a desk in the front row. A girl was bent over it, hard at work. "This is my best friend, Jamie."

Jamie looked up and smiled. "Hi." She whispered quietly.

Hermione studied the very pale girl. Her hair was more white than blond and her eyes were pinkish red. "You're an albino, aren't you?" She remembered reading about them somewhere.

Jamie's smile disappeared. "Yes." She turned back to her work and wrote out more multiplication tables.

"Hermione!" Lupin called over the conversations of the students. "Time to go!"

Hermione made her way through the classroom. Jeffrey Hunter had gone back to the front of the room and most of the students had gone back to work. Jessica still sat at the back starring out a window. She followed Remus and Celia out of the school.

"Anyone else we should meet?" Remus asked. "We've got to get going soon."

Celia smiled. "I would introduce you to everyone here if I thought it would make you stay longer." As Lupin opened his mouth to protest she held up a hand. "Just one more person."

She lead them to the largest building on the grounds, apart from the housing units. The word 'Laboratory' was hung on a sign outside.

They stepped inside. It was quiet and not a soul could be seen. The inside itself reminded Hermione of the hospital wing and Snape's infirmary. White and sterile. And it smelled strongly. Hermione was certain she wouldn't have noticed if it hadn't have been for her wolf senses.

"Come the full moon, this place is full." Celia explained. "But no one comes here for the rest of the month. Except for..."

Her comment was cut off by a young woman bounding out of one of the rooms.

"Hello." She said as she smiled warmly. "I didn't think you were coming today." She told Celia. "I'm not busy and there's not much to be done."

"This is my friend, Remus Lupin." Celia said, making introductions. "And Hermione Granger."

"Nice to meet you." The woman said. "I'm Carmen Wong."

Carmen Wong was slightly taller than Hermione, making her just over five feet. She had black hair cut short, so it fell to her cheekbones. She wore a white lab coat and had a mask dangling around her neck.

"Carmen is our doctor and scientist." Celia explained. "She was bitten early last year and is still quite new to our home."

Carmen's smiled broadened. "I love it here." She gestured around the lab. "This is more than I ever could have wanted. And all the magic's, just so amazing..."

"You're a muggle." Hermione said. "I thought everyone here was magical."

Remus smiled. "Nope. That's what's so special about this place."

"You mean aside from the fact that it's full of werewolves." Hermione said.

Remus chuckled quietly. "Aside from that, Katic reserve is the only reserve that has none magical werewolves."

"Only about a quarter have magic." Carmen said. "They all get taught about it. And we get to learn too."

"It's their world now." Celia said. "And the place has always been like this. Ever since the first Katic founded it."

A chime sounded in the distance. Carmen and Celia both jumped.

"I've got to go now." Celia lead the way back to her office. "If you want to stay I'll come by in two days." She shoved the floo powder towards Remus. "Okay?"

"Sure. Thanks." Hermione said before throwing the powder into the fireplace and heading back to Snape's.

As usual she plunged face first into the floor after coming through the floo. By now the exhaustion from the day had caught up with here. It had been just that morning that she'd broken her ribs and had a concussion.

"Miss Granger." Snape's voice sounded from somewhere above her.

Hermione rolled over lazily. "Professor?" She asked sleepily, before her jaw cracking yawn.

"We will continue your lessons tomorrow." He helped her to her feet. "Get some sleep."

Hermione managed to stumble up the stairs into her bed. Somehow she managed to pull on nightclothes before falling asleep. The second she hit the pillow, she was asleep.

Snape passed his personal laboratory. Hermione sat in front of him, note taking supplies ready. She looked much more alert and rested than the night before.

"Sir?" Hermione ventured quietly.

"Yes?" He turned towards her, his robes snapping at the sudden movement.

"Do you think we could work on potions instead?" She asked timidly.

"No." He pulled out a stool and sat in front of her. "We will talk of security and muggles." He took her quill and started spinning it between his long fingers.

Hermione started to talk. "The bomb at the Ministry confused me, I mean how would..." She babbled on and on about all of her theories.

"Enough Miss Granger." Snape handed her back the quill. "We already know what's going on."

"We do?" Hermione asked, quite flabbergasted.

"Yes." Snape clasped his hands. He really would have been much more comfortable pacing about the room. "The ministry, as you know has refused to acknowledge the Dark Lord's return."

"Not really a surprise." Hermione muttered darkly.

Snape suppressed a smile. The girl was smarter than she appeared to be. "Also, with Malfoy's recent influence things have not been looking good for muggleborns."

"I read about that." Hermione said. Pausing her note taking for a moment. "Marriage restrictions and house rules. Nonsense."

"It is unlikely that anything will happen. But a more militant group have begun to take action against the ministry." Snape explained, watching as Hermione copied down word for word what he'd just said.

"The Free-borns!" Hermione exclaimed. "I read about them." She pawed through her memory to remember everything the article had said.

"It's not just muggleborns." Snape reminded her. "Half-breed and any creatures considered inferior by the new laws."

Hermione caught her bottom lip between her teeth. "Sir, are they actually a threat?"

Lupin opened the door. "Professor Dumbledore doesn't think so."

"He's wrong." Snape began pacing the room again, faster than ever. "The numbers are growing faster than we thought. The attack on the ministry is only one of their recent acts."

Lupin handed Snape the letter he was carrying, "The headmaster just sent this in."

Snape took the letter and read it quickly. By the time he was finished he was no longer pacing. He stood in front of his main table gripping it so tightly his knuckles were white. "He means this?"

Lupin nodded. "Come Hermione."

Hermione followed Lupin into the living room. He collapsed into the couch and held his head in his hands.

"What's wrong Remus?"

Lupin sighed. "Dumbledore's issued new orders to the order. Severus and I included."

Hermione felt a chill run through her body. "What's going to happen?"

"We're leaving tonight. In a few hours." Snape had walked back into the main room, his arms full of potion bottles.

"And me?" Hermione ventured. "Can I come?" She asked enthusiastically. "I want to help!"

But already both adults were shaking their heads. "Too dangerous." Lupin said.

"I could help." Hermione protested. "You're my guardian."

"Not right now." Lupin said tiredly.

"What!" Hermione had depended on that. It was her only connection to a parental figure.

"You're now in temporary guardianship of Celia." Lupin told her. "All get you as soon as possible."

"Tonight!" Hermione exclaimed. "I wanted to think about it!"

The floo flared green and Hermione starred open mouthed as Ron Weasley tumbled out. Behind him Mrs. Weasley, Fred and George all popped out in rapid succession.

"Hi." Ron said timidly, starring at the floo.

"Why are they here?" Hermione asked. "I thought..."

"You'll be staying with us." Mrs. Weasley gave her a hug. "Until someone can pick you up."

"Thank you." Hermione said. "I, ah..."

"It's all right." Mrs. Weasley pulled her to her feet. "Are all your things backed my dear?"

"No." Hermione headed up the stairs. "I'll get right on it."

"We'll help." Fred and George said, as they bounded up the stairs after her.

The three made short work of packing. Hermione's things weren't as neat or well organized as she'd like, but the trunk held everything for now. They headed back downstairs where Professor Snape was poring over a piece of paper Mrs. Weasley was holding.

"Do not forget." He told her before turning to Hermione. "Come with me Miss Granger."

Hermione left her trunk in front of the fireplace and followed him into a room that was almost identical to his office at Hogwarts. It had the same bottled creatures in jars on the wall, the same desk piled high with exams and papers.

He sat down behind the desk and pointed to a chair on the other side, before pulling out a copy of Moste Potente Potions. He flipped it open to a bookmarked page. "Read this."

Hermione read through it quickly. It was the instructions to making polyjuice potion. "Yes sir. I made this potion yesterday."

"Than Miss Granger." He took the book from her and turned to a different page. "Would you like to explain why exactly, the book was turned to this page?"

Hermione glanced quickly. It was no potion she'd ever heard of. "No sir. I was positive I had the right page."

"You didn't use the book." The professor told her. "You never glanced at it once." He stood up and put the book away. "You've made polyjuice potion before."

Hermione felt the blood drain out of her face.

"I knew you had. In your second year." He told her, his sneer widening.

Hermione let her head drop. "Sorry sir."

"Sorry!" He said, his voice getting dangerously quiet. "Sorry!"

"Yes sir."

"Do you have any idea of what you could have done? The potion is restricted for a reason!"

"I know sir." Hermione twisted her hands. "I experienced it. I didn't know it wasn't for animal transformation."

Snape shook his head. "Leave. Just leave."

Hermione stood quickly. "Yes sir. Sorry sir." She whispered before leaving as quickly as she could. It was time to floo to the Weasley's.

I apologize for the delay in this chapter's arrival. I've been busy with my other story and studying for exams. This will most likely be the last chapter of Bitten until early July. I also apologize for the mistakes I've made, I just re-read HPB and Snape's house is not right. I am in the process of revising and editing the first chapters, as well as expanding on them. It will take some time, but I hope it will make the story better. Thanks for reading!

N. Forest