Chapter 37 ~ January, 1997

Fresh baked bread and the warmth from both the huge range and warming charms made the kitchen a cozy refuge from the unexpected snow storm that had descended after lunchtime. Artemis inhaled deeply as she stepped over the doorway, the bang of the closing storm door startling the mess of black curls bent over a table. Jane looked up from where she was furiously scribbling down as many recipes as she could think of to leave for the ones staying behind. "Ketzelah!" she said, smiling. "You're a little early to help with dinner. Did you come for a kaffeeklatsch?"

"I will never say no to a cup of tea and your rugelach, Jane," Artemis replied, shedding her coat and hat. "Really, I just needed to get out of my own head for a little bit."

"You've seemed a little quieter than normal the past couple days. How about you grab the cookies and I'll make the tea, and you can tell me what's going on?"

It never failed to amaze Artemis the sheer amount of time things took without using magic. Gone were the days of filling a kettle and having a spell instantly boil the water. Instead you had to find fiddley little things to do to fill the minutes waiting for the shrill whistle - taking down a tray, choosing cups and saucers or mugs, finding napkins that matched the cups you'd chosen, putting milk in the little fancy pitcher, fixing a plate with whatever the preferred snack might be, rearranging the boxes of tea bags, or as was the case today, flipping through the recipes Jane was writing out and adding notations to them. But finally, Artemis was sat as close to the table as she was able to get at eight months pregnant, wrapping her hands around the comforting warmth of a mug of fragrant tea. "Sorry I can't make the chairs more comfortable," Jane said ruefully. "Ten years without a wand and I still find myself taken by surprise sometimes that I don't have it with me. Now, what has you so somber all of a sudden? Are you nervous about going back to England? I thought you'd be excited."

Artemis tapped her fingers lightly on the handle of the mug. "I'm excited and nervous I guess. But the thing is…I saw something…heard something…and I'm not entirely sure what it means."

Jane drew her brows together, absentmindedly blowing a curl off her face. "What did you see?"

"I saw two figures outside the other night, and one of them kind of…spoke to me…sort of."

"You mean somebody got on to the reservation? That's…well I won't say it's impossible, but it's highly improbable."

"They weren't people. Maybe Patronuses? But huge, and they…acted differently than I've seen before."

Jane's face was suddenly comprehending. "Were they werewolves? But bigger and kind of transparent?"

"One was," said Artemis, feeling instantly relieved that Jane didn't think she was crazy. "The other kind of looked like a Greek statue."

Jane nodded. "I've only seen a wolf once, when I first came here. They're a sort of spirit warrior or angel, I guess you could say."

Her eyes widened. "I didn't think things like that were real."

Jane shrugged. "I told you we tapped into another level of something here. You know, growing up, my grandmother used to tell me stories from the Tanakh. There were lots of these angels that would help out people sometimes. The good ones, anyway…there were bad ones too. Grams talked about it from her book too. I guess you don't know you don't know something until you know it."

Artemis wrinkled her nose at the cryptic statement. "How do I know if the ones I saw were bad ones or good ones?"

"Oh, I'm sure they were good. Grams says the last time any bad ones showed up was when Xander and Xavier first got here. But they couldn't get in, the other ones wouldn't let them."

"What?"

"Well they're around all the time. We just can't usually see them. You said they spoke to you? What did they say?"

Artemis sighed and sipped her tea. "It wasn't exactly talking…more like I just knew what they were saying in my head. I was so shocked I don't remember exactly. It was something about that I wasn't alone and to stay hopeful."

"That doesn't sound bad," Jane smiled. "Why do you look so mopey then?"

"Right before they showed up it had just occurred to me how stupid I was being, feeling so excited and eager to get back to England when Remus…I mean, he doesn't even know about the baby yet, and he's been living with a werewolf pack, and Sirius seems to think it must be terrible, because his transformations have been so difficult, and he was so adamant about not wanting children, and now the one thing he didn't want to happen has happened…she's a werewolf, and I don't see how he's going to get over that…at least not for a while, and I just seemed to get the idea that this spirit, or whatever, was telling me to be hopeful because things were going to look…hopeless."

Jane grabbed the cold hand that had been agitatedly drumming on the table top. "Ketzelah," she said softly, "No matter what happens in England, you won't be alone. We will all be there for you." She paused and her eyes twinkled as she added, "And it's only partly because you'll be the only one who knows her way around."

"Thanks, Jane," said Artemis sincerely. "Part of me knew those things must have something to do with how things are for you all here. But part of me thought I might be going crazy."

"Well, I've heard all the best people are," laughed Jane, "so you'd be in good company."

"Somehow I think when you're a Scamander, you're always treading on the fringes of sanity anyway," said Artemis wryly. "Are you excited about going to England?"

"I'm probably equal parts excited and concerned," said Jane thoughtfully, wrinkling her nose. "I'm mostly relieved…" her voice trailed off for a moment before she finished with, "…that I'll get to at least leave the state once more before I die. This and school are the farthest I've ever been from the Bronx."

Artemis raised her eyebrows. "What were you really going to say? That was a terrible save."

Jane smiled sheepishly. "I'm relieved that Hawthorne decided to come, and that I didn't have to decide between going with everyone else or staying here." She shrugged helplessly. "I wasn't sure how it would go being apart from him."

"I didn't know you two were…together…" said Artemis in surprise. "I mean with him still technically being married, and he seems pretty old-fashioned…Merlin, I mean, I'm not judging you…I mean, it's none of my business…Oh, good grief, I'm just going to shut up now…" she trailed off, seeing Jane's flushed face.

"It…um…well it's not quite that simple," Jane said softly. She smiled up at Artemis a little sadly, tucking a loose curl back under her scarf. "I forget sometimes that you don't really know all the ins and outs of being a werewolf. I'm not even sure we fully understand it ourselves. We're going off of what Nana says it was like before, and what Xander and Xavier said about their time on the Southwest Res. Apparently most packs are pretty violent. There's the whole blood lust thing, and then males fight to be the Alpha and to claim a mate. So you know we don't really deal with the blood lust, and Kieran's pretty much the Alpha, even if he doesn't want to call it that."

"How did that happen?" interrupted Artemis. "I mean, wasn't Oscar here for quite a few years first? And then it seems like most of the others came all in a bunch. How did Kieran get to be the Alpha if they don't fight?"

Jane sighed. "Yeah, there was a particularly prolific werewolf running around in the eighties. From what we've pieced together he's responsible for most of us. Alma's the one that finally took him down, but he got her too."

"Oh Merlin, I'm so sorry," whispered Artemis. "That's the same one that got my brother. Our Auror team was sent after him, but couldn't get him. Alma's team was sent next."

"Maybe it was all for a purpose," shrugged Jane. "Grams says that even bad things can be used for good if we're willing to look for it. Anyway, with the Alpha thing, it's nothing official, you can just sort of sense it, you know? Didn't you feel it when you first met Kieran?"

Artemis nodded, thinking back to her first day here, when the looming figure had appeared in her doorway and she had instantly assumed he was in charge.

"So then the other thing packs fight over is females. We all think it's maybe not the overwhelming problem for us that it is for other werewolves, but no one's wanted to test the theory. So females are claimed as soon as they arrive. Oscar had Rosa, obviously, so when I arrived there was Marcus and Hawthorne. Hawthorne and I were closer in age and our stories were similar, and we just sort of clicked. So…I'm…his. It's just…he's my best friend, and I didn't want to risk being separated from him if there really is something serious to us being connected or whatever." Jane finished, shrugging again, looking at Artemis with a silent plea for her to understand.

"But how does that…work? I mean, do you just…well, what does claiming mean?" Artemis asked, her cheeks pinking in embarrassment.

"Not what you're thinking it means," replied Jane dryly. "The males just have to decide, and then you're scent marked. There are scent glands along the jaw and behind the ears."

Artemis nodded slowly, things clicking into place. "So…Marcus and Alma?"

Jane smiled. "They aren't romantically involved, but he gets her. They're a good team."

"And it's time to match up the younger girls? That's what Joshua meant about promising to marry Daisy?"

Jane nodded. "I know it might seem strange, but you have to take into account that none of us thought we'd ever leave this place. We'd all planned to live out the rest of our lives here, with this same small group of people. So it makes sense to limit any situations that could arise by leaving them unclaimed. And from a human perspective arranged marriages have worked in numerous cultures for centuries."

"And Ellie and I don't cause problems by being here, in that respect I mean?"

Jane looked at her in surprise. "Ellie's been claimed by Kieran. They aren't really together, but Kieran's rather besotted. And you were already claimed when you arrived."

Eyes wide, Artemis stared at Jane, dumbfounded for a moment. "Oh," she said finally. "You mean because of the baby?"

No," replied Jane, shaking her head, "because you're marked." She looked at Artemis in concern. "Remus marked you when he was transformed and you didn't know?"

"But…I've only been with him once when he was a werewolf…what would he have done…"

"He would have rubbed his jaw and head over you…you know, like dogs and cats do."

"I…was transformed that night. He did press his head against my neck, but I…holy hippogriff, I did that to him," Artemis whispered. "And I think he maybe did right before we fell asleep."

Jane made a sympathetic face. "Well, that's why you're claimed. Mazal tov."

"And is that why things have been so rough for him? I mean, Sirius says his transformations have been increasingly violent, and he's been withdrawn and unhappy. Is that because we're apart?" Artemis asked, her face creased in heartbroken awareness.

Jane hesitated. "Probably. That's why I didn't want to risk leaving Hawthorne here. But we're operating on a lot of hearsay in how we handle claiming. All I can tell you for sure is that you showed up here smelling of another werewolf and you were only going to be here temporarily, so we didn't feel it was a good idea to match you up with one of the men."

Artemis sighed. "I came here to get out of my own head for little while, Jane. This didn't really help."

"It's always better to know the truth. Grams says the truth sets you free," offered Jane, the compassion evident in her voice.

"Lina says that too. Ugh…why is life so complicated?!" Artemis groaned, throwing her hands in the air. "Now I get to show up and say, 'Hi Remus. Your worst nightmare is coming true - your baby is a werewolf, but hey, your transformations should be easier now that I'm back because apparently we marked each other and it might literally kill you to be separated from me. By the way, how's that civil war going?' This is just friggin' fantastic," she finished, burying her head in her arms on the table.

"Sooo…I think maybe your warrior was right," said Jane after a minute. "You did need to be reminded to stay hopeful."

** I hope that didn't feel like filler. Sometimes you get going and then realize that just because you talked about something in previous chapters and the readers know about it, doesn't mean the characters all know what they need to know. lol And sorry that these last few chapters have been Remus-less. He'll be back on Wednesday! Thanks so much for reading, reviewing and following - you are all amazing!