Oh, wow! I actually mention Harry Potter in this HP-verse fan fiction. Only once, but it's there. In a little sentence in the middle of a large paragraph. But again, it's there.

So the HP-verse belongs to Rowling, including the Death Eaters, Harry Potter, Voldemort, Tonks, the Aurors, the Ministry, Greyback, Bill Savage, and most of Great Britain, etc.

However, the wolves in Greyback's camp, Rose, Chessie, Bartender, the children, and Penny Savage are all mine. And I realized a few days ago that I've taken some liberties with a few canon characters, such as Greyback being slightly less two-dimensional than it seemed in HBP, and pretty much all to do with Bill Savage, but it's my fan fiction, darn it. I shall do as I please.

Chessie stared intently at Hope, who stared right back with her pretty brown eyes. They both concentrated, laying in the fall leaves of the main camp clearing. Without breaking their stare, Chessie calmly reached out and poked her. From the sidelines, Gen giggled and squirmed but didn't interfere under direct warning from Hope and Chessie, after he sabotaged the first two stare downs they had. Hope almost lost her challenge, wanting to laugh, but she recovered and opened her eyes extra wide.

But it was too late. Her eyes were watering, and Chessie was still going strong. Gem's sideline giggling was infectious, and soon Beau, Carrot, and even Wat were snickering a little. They all shared a united glance, and as one tackled Chessie, ending the game yet again.

Bartender laughed as she passed by and sprawled out in the grass a few feet away. Another werewolf joined her, a tall, rail-thin woman with a few wrinkles and salt-and-pepper hair in a stylish messy bun that fascinated Chessie when no one was looking. Daisy was at their feet in a large shirt that passed as almost a dress on her, off in her mental happy place and absently picking small bouquets of wildflowers.

Bartender looked pointedly at Chessie, once she'd gotten out from under squirming triumphant children, in that 'come hither' expression she had grown fond of recently. Chessie did. As she walked over, the leaves fell off her. She didn't bother brushing herself off anymore; it would only smear things or make them crumble. It wasn't like she could look any worse, after three months without any sort of shelter or plumbing. Her skin, normally a dark creamy shade, was chocolaty, and her hair was bleaching lighter as it grew wilder. Her clothes, originally a clean white shirt and loose leggings, were both about the same shade of unattractive brown. Her shoes had been put to a merciful death weeks ago, and she'd gotten hold of some knives and negotiated with her hair by cutting nearly half of it off, so it no longer resembled atomic disaster, merely a badly-executed sagging afro.

"You're trying to be subtle again, Bartender. What's happening?" she asked, surprisingly cheerfully. The children had already started another game, trying to take advantage of the last warmth of late fall, before winter set in and people started dying. Wat, Hope, and Daisy knew winter outdoors in northern England, and they tried not to let their despair show, or the fact that there had once been other children, before the current ones came. So they simply played harder than before, trying to savor what could be their last few weeks together. It broke Chessie's already mangled heart.

"We found her," Marjorie, the stern-looking lady, said. She reminded Chessie a bit of Madame Pince, which was slightly like having a conversation with a spiky pillow. It hurt a little, but if you risked some pain there were soft spots you could get through to. Marjorie had explained point-blank why she had decided to approach Chessie and her subtle-but-there growing group of tired hungry old werewolves. She herself had been bitten at nineteen as well, and had been interested in how well Chessie was adapting to the abysmal lifestyle that they all led. She'd been impressed more with Chessie's level headedness- once she'd found out that there were no winter preparations she'd immediately gotten Burt and the other strong wolves to start building shelters- than she'd ever been with Greyback at any point in the thirteen years she'd been around him. So she'd decided to follow the girl.

Follow, like Chessie was starting a new pack. But in a sense, that was exactly what she was doing. Hopefully Greyback wouldn't notice, or if he did her death would be quick.

He was usually out though, getting more and more involved in the senseless rampages of the Death Eaters and caring less and less about his ragtag reject werewolves, which had left Chessie a large hole to start bumping herself into, especially since she had plans for actually surviving the winter that involved hunting local wildlife, occasional jots into nearby towns for some looting (She didn't bother leaving any money or apologies. She didn't have any.), and storing up of wood under the shelter of large trees, which seemed to be a first and left her wondering, how many werewolves used to be here? Even just last summer? It was butchery, what Greyback did. If it hadn't been clear he was in it more for the chase than the company, it would have been made very clear as the fall wore on and the morning dew began turning into frosts.

The war wasn't going very well either, from what Tonks had told her and the occasional stolen Daily Prophet that the wolves huddled over. Most of them were aware of Chessie, if not actually behind her. Some argued that she was female, some that she was new. Some were just insane. But all agreed they liked how she brought them news from her trips out of the encampment. When she stopped to think about it, it turned her mind. What happened to growing up wanting to be an accountant?

The Aurors were being run ragged by the Death Eaters, but they were running themselves down by trying to keep creating distractions for the Aurors. Both sides were tired, desperate, and had a vague idea that nothing was actually happening and that once all was said and done, it all depended on Lord Voldemort and Harry Potter. That's why
Greyback, on Voldemort's request, had 'taken care of' one of the Aurors as a sort of threat. Apparently in Greyback's mind that translated as 'eat her'. It was just his luck that the Auror he bit was Penny Savage, daughter of Bill Savage, head of Magical Law Enforcement after Scrimegoer's change of position into politics. He didn't even blink in his duty. And if a gruff aging Auror like him felt any fear, horror, grief, or anything else towards the kidnapping and likely murder of his only child, it never showed in public. Just a small, steely gleam of determined hope, like he wasn't going to give up hoping until he physically saw her corpse.

But Marjorie knew where he was, which shouldn't have been as hard to discover as it was. Chessie had her looking for the Auror for two weeks now, and it turns out she was only two miles away, practically under their noses.

Greyback had announced that he was sick of their attitudes and petty concerns, and was leaving, which meant he was going to maim and murder and he'd be back in a few days. It even worked out that it was starting to rain again, a bitter freezing slushy rain, signaling a meeting with Tonks that Chessie was just going to have to miss. She had more important things going on.

"Okay, Marjorie and Burt, you're with me. Bartender, try to keep anyone from dying. That firewood needs moved out of the rain. Again. And…well, I guess that's it. Um, we'll be back later." Chessie directed, and then headed off behind Marjorie and Burt into the woods.

They soon were alone, silently moving through the wet forest. There were perks to being a werewolf, Chessie decided, that Lupin seemed to barely acknowledge. There was more freedom. People weren't going to trust anything you do anyway, so why not just do what you want? And enhanced sense put life in a whole new level of intimacy that Chessie would have appreciated back when she was just a lonely angry little girl.

Greyback bit the wrong girl. He just didn't know it yet.

With a pang she thought of Rose- her innocent Rose- and George. How were they? Was Rose growing? Was she doing well in school? Did one of the twins blow the other up yet? Personal talk was taboo at her rendezvous with Tonks, but they both had questions burning in their eyes they couldn't hide.

"Chessie?" Marjorie asked calmly, like she hadn't just run two miles barefoot in sleety forest. But then, none of them were breathing hard.

"Huh?" Chessie asked, slamming to a stop and then trying to find her face under all her wet hair.

"She should be about fifty feet ahead. No one guards her."

"Why not?"

"No one knows about her aside from Greyback and us."

Everyone was silent for a few minutes.

"How badly do you think this will piss Greyback off?" Chessie asked.

"Oh, he'll beat you to a bloody pulp," Marjorie responded evenly.

"Right. That's fine then. Let's go." Chessie was already wincing in anticipation of that upcoming encounter, but it was too late to back out now.

The Auror Penny Savage, the whole reason Chessie was even outside of her safe little haven in Diagon Alley with Rose and George, was sound asleep in a bear cage with a large beat-up lock, limbs hanging out through the gaps in the bars. She was still in her Auror robes, that dusty black that had been a wall of impenetrable (mostly) justice Chessie recalled from her youth, except that after three months in a cage in a forest, they were more of a muddy brown and more rag than robe..

"Let's get her out," Chessie decided.

They woke her up.