Chapter Sixty: From Whence Wolves Come

"I was born at a very young age. Things got steadily worse from there."
                  -Anonymous

'Michelle Tyler

Defense Against the Dark Arts

March thirty-first

Anecdotal History assignment

Let me begin this ridiculous homework on a happy note. Chloe is not nice.

I mean, sure, she made this goofy quill-thing write by itself everything I say to it, which is dead convenient, but she's also made the others leave me here while they go get dinner. I hate it when she does that. It's boring here! And yeah, I know Julie knows what my favorite food is and she'll make sure they bring some for me ('cause for some reason we only get takeout, the Aurors won't let us eat in restaurants.) but I'm still sort of offended to not be going. I mean, we wolves love outings! Even when I have to wear a leash, I like going out. It's my nature. When I'm in my wolfy form, I'm one of those friendly sniffing sorts that lick everyone and bark and wag my tail.

(That really takes some effort, though. You try wagging a shaggy tail sometime.)

I suppose I should draw a picture of myself as a wolf. So I'm doing that now on a bit of drawing paper and if Professor Snape wants this illustrated, (please?) I'll rubber cement it in. Don't you love that stuff? I mean, wizards can just enchant two things to stick to each other, and Muggles have all kinds of other nice adhesives, but something about rubber cement is just nice. You get a brush to put it on with, and if you put some on your hand it peels off all the dirt and is a really good exfoliant. The smell is a little off-putting until you get used to it, but altogether, I am sort of a rubber cement liker.

I suppose I have to explain why I even know the stuff exists. Great.

Alright, here goes. My parents were both wizards. My father came from a long line of American and before that Irish and Scots and English people named Tyler who were also werewolves. His name was John Tyler and he was sort of grey when he changed and wore glasses all the time. The closest physical comparison I have for him is the fellow who played keyboards for the Doors or maybe a really centuries-younger Dumbledore. According to my mother's journal, he was a total dish and deliciously shaggable. That's a direct quote from the entry the night they met. I expect I've inherited a bit of her good judge of character, if maybe not quite the terminal bluntness.

My mother's name was Cassandra Antigone Alcott Tyler. She was, quite obviously, Muggle-born and the daughter of literature and history professors. I was quite nearly named Antigone, by the way, my father's idea, but Mom told him exactly what he could do with that concept. I mean, 'Antigone'? It sounds like one of Professor Snape's more malodorous ingredients. Can't you just see him: 'No, Tyler, a bit more of the arrowroot and far less antigone.' I mean, if you're going to have an odd name, you have to have the character to carry it off, you know? Like my friend Theodoric and Professor Granger at Hogwarts. They've both got unusual first names, but they're interesting and really intelligent. It's logical for them!

As matters worked out, my parents named me Michelle IsoldeTyler. Nice name, really, -though it still took me the first year to say it. Michelle is both a sort of almost-joke and the name of one of my mother's friends. Isolde is after my great-grandmother. I think they did really well in naming me, even if it did degenerate to 'Mitchie' before I was even an hour old.

I never knew my parents. There was this accident as they were taking me home from the hospital as a newborn, never did puzzle out what happened, but I never had a scratch on me from it. After that, my uncle Paul took care of me until I was five. Then he died after being sick for a long time, and Uncle George and his wife took me in. He had rather severe food allergies, and accidentally died from curry pepper. I still won't touch the stuff, just in case. Aunt Rebecca kept me for a while, but she wasn't really up to taking care of a seven-year-old werewolf cub, and Uncle Richard got me. She passed away soon after, 'of a broken heart,' Uncle Richard said.

Of all my father's three brothers, he's the one I resembled the most. I have Dad's and Mom's and his red hair, glasses like the three of them, and Dad and Uncle Richard's eyes, sort of blue-green-gray colored ones. Uncle Richard was only twenty when I was seven, and more like a big brother or cousin than really an uncle. He taught me to read, which didn't go too well, and to draw, which did. I don't make an issue of the fact that I don't read or write well, but I can draw, and usually a picture is enough to get the idea across. Donaghan reminds me a little of Uncle Richard the way he looks at my drawings, that sort of slow smile whenever I hand him one. I think I would be a very different person if I could have stayed with Uncle Richard longer, but either a family curse or simple bad luck kind of devoided me of relatives. Uncle Richard's motorcycle crashed and put him in a wheelchair for the last eighteen months of his life, which meant that my cooking lessons and self-sufficiency training began. Our neighbor, a lovely young widow, came over and both taught me and helped him. Catherine was ill when we met her, but it didn't stop Uncle Richard from proposing and the two of them getting married on my ninth birthday. Uncle Richard was gone within the next three months, and Catherine followed by Christmas.

This is getting dreary, now, isn't it?

My foster parents, to put it bluntly, did not understand my kind. I mean, I was nine years old, could ride a motorcycle, (yes, I do know how,) any broom you handed me, survive in downtown Pittsburgh by my lonesome for as long as I liked, and turn into a wolf every full moon at night.

Their response to this was to chain me up.

Every night of a full moon at around seven, depending on daylight savings time, I had a thick leather collar buckled around my neck, and I was taken outside to what amounts to a somewhat smaller kennel than Hagrid has for Claw. It was more humiliating than painful, except when they decided to get cute and install an invisible fencing system like Muggles use for dogs. I of course, made a run for it, and got electrocuted in the throat from this battery in my new collar. Keep in mind that as much as a werewolf looks like a common, ordinary wolf, it's still a person of that age and size in reality. A collar and fence tuned for a hundred-and-ten pound wolf could kill a sixty-seven pound nine-year-old, as I discovered in the worst way imaginable.

American Muggles have an organization called CYF, short for Children, Youth and Families. It is the biggest gathering of incompetents and mindless fools in the world, especially the Pittsburgh chapter. The purpose of this organization is to provide housewives with a method of threatening each other. If someone else offends you, you call CYF, and they go interview them and sniff around and scare them, because CYF can take kids away. Anyway, one misguided lady who was under the foolish impression that CYF actually did anything useful, called them when she saw me unconscious in the back yard the next morning. After a trip to the hospital and some healing charms on my burned neck, I was fine, except that CYF came sniffing around like the vultures they are and investigated the idiots meant to be taking care of me.

Result: I stayed with them, except I had to go to Muggle school.

Logic is not common in American bureaucracy.

I started with what you might call a bad attitude. Muggles had done nothing but annoy me my entire life, what with their crowds and freakish movies detailing how god-awful they assumed werewolves were. Besides, my male foster-parent was a Muggle. (I don't use the word 'dad' or 'mom' to describe that unholy pair.) Apart from decently good taste in movies and fascination with any small bit of magic I did, there really wasn't much to like about the fellow. He was rather a boring sort. They weren't really trying to be mean to me, they just didn't understand werewolves. So they were very nice about Muggle school, and tutored me into at least rudimentary knowledge of their customs and history and maths and stuff.

The Muggle teachers were shocked by my reading and writing, of course. The fact that I didn't know what a pencil sharpener was never entered into matters, because those two basic skills were so bad. I wound up being placed in remedial reading, but junior-high level math. I've never had any problem whatsoever with numbers. According to the Muggle principal, however, I had some bizarre illness that was causing this, which I believe may have been a total crock, but I do remember getting sympathetic looks and smiles when I asked why they didn't just give me some medicine to clear it up. 'Dyslexia,' the Muggles called it. Wizards never mentioned any crap like that, so I wrote it off and just played around doing their worksheets and stuff until I turned eleven and I left to go to 'private school.' In the meantime, I got to understand and reasonably like Muggles, and also learned how to hot-wire cars, incidentally.

The Morrison Academy isn't much like Hogwarts. For one thing, we didn't wear uniforms or stay in dormitories. At the end of the day we went home, and we only ate lunch there. I made a few friends by the end of my second year, which we called sixth grade around Muggles, and I did reasonably well in the dueling club. I rather liked it, actually, until the end of third year. Another kid from my foster home was getting picked on and needed to distract attention from his own problems, so he outed me. Noone believed him at first, but then there was an eclipse during the day and I transformed right in the middle of lunch.

(So much for my friends and sense of normalcy.)

If God gives you a choice between being a werewolf wizard or an epileptic Muggle at American public school, kill yourself and come back as a butterfly. Everyone acts as if you're about to explode at any second, and some schools even make you wear insignia to distinguish your 'problem.' At Morrison it was a five-pointed star armband. I was one of maybe three there, and the other two were both girls as well, so dating was really not an option. It was only when a new student came and had the audacity to ask me out in front of the entire population of the Academy that my social life really restarted.

Theodoric Malfoy was easily the most attractive guy at Morrison, what with the blond hair and Southern accent that made even the most menial sentence sound like a seduction attempt. There's one genetic problem with werewolves, though, we mate for life, or I will say, those leather pants would not have stayed on him all that long.

And yes, werewolves do get horny just like ordinary teenagers. At least I hope the lot of you are this bad sometimes.

Teachers always said Theodoric's name wrong, which he hated, so we did wind up playing a lot of harmless pranks. (It's not 'Theodore' with an 'ic' attached, it's 'the-ah-door-ick,' by the way.) We got along like the partners-in-crime we were, with our odd pasts and family histories as common ground. I mean, I'm a Tyler and he's a Malfoy. What's more logical? And the pranks we played…the Weasley boys have a little work to go before they impress me better than some of things Theo and I cooked up. Teachers never realized it was us, usually, because for all the world it looked like the two loneliest kids in school just being friends, which they approved of. Eventually something had to give, though, and I was nearly expelled in the first month of my fifth year.

Wouldn't you love to know why? Sod off.

Meanwhile, through all of this, since I was very small, I had been secretly keeping one dream apart from all the other ones. That dream was England. I knew my parents had worked there and been considering emigration before I was born, and the one picture I've always had of them was taken there. What's more, I didn't follow American politics or sports, partially because I didn't like Americans, and partially because Quidditch scores are reported mostly in numbers and on the radio. My favorite team became the Chudley Cannons, simply because they sounded so interesting and fun on the WWN TransAtlantic sports channel, and I decided I wanted to be a Keeper if I ever found a Quidditch team that would take werewolves.

What's more, to Americans who aren't happy in America, England sounds pretty damn good. Can you blame me? There was also the incredible volume of Alan Rickman and Ewan McGregor films I saw, which may at least partially account for some of my more unusual preferences. I actually got away with going as the one courtesan from 'Moulin Rouge' for Halloween with-

Nevermind. That unholy anecdote will have to wait until I'm dead. Or until Theodoric meets Chloe. Either one.

So here you have me, Anglo-obsessed, discontented, and then the one friend I have has to go and get transferred. Then on top of that, my pet collie died. Uncle George had bought Mr. Kite for me years before, and through just about everything awful, I had had him. (You did know we werewolves can talk to dogs, right?) Needless to say, I fell into some rather bad habits then. At the mature and philosophical age of fifteen, I 'made friends' with an amateur potion-brewer at school, who, in exchange for the odd fill-in date (he was extremely geeky and couldn't find an all-human female to save his life,) provided me with various and sundry useful chemicals.

Okay, the scene where the writer gets his first taste of absinthe and the green fairy goes flying off the bottle and all around…not that. I used Wolfsbane Potion to the usual effect, which let me have some company whenever I went furry, and I also used some Invisibility Potions to get out of the house. There are some very good bars in downtown Pittsburgh, did you know? I finally found a wizarding karaoke bar I liked, and it was there that I got my first taste of alcohol.

Well, not the first, but a half-glass of wine at fancy dinners and champagne at parties doesn't really count.

Okay, I got my first taste of being drunk.

Green fairies everywhere.

Werewolves don't react to alcohol normally, you know. We just feel very relaxed and our drunken alter-egoes take over for a little while. Mine is a bit like Jim Morrison. I've also been told we become more attractive, especially when we sing drunk, but that may also be because alcohol's effects as –how can I say this tastefully- promiscuity elixir? Well, those are magnified. A lot. Fortunately for me and my probable descendants, it lasts about an eighth of the time normal Muggle or wizards' drunkenness does, so by the time I got the leather pants unzippered-

Nevermind! Anecdote over! Mental picture off! Return your tray table to the upright position!

Oh, that was not a nice little metaphor…

Okay, I got laced a lot. It happens. I was dancing on the border between alcoholism and death when Theodoric showed up and literally put me headfirst in a rain barrel.

Did I mention werewolves are real mean drunks?

After I fought him in the alley awhile, sort of like the Cowardly Lion in 'The Wizard of Oz' only sillier, this person who was with him put a hand on my shoulder and everything below my ribs went into reverse. I shall likely never need an appendectomy. I was profoundly and violently sick for about ten minutes, while Theo and Dumbledore chatted about what I had been singing when they bodily dragged me out of the bar, cheerful as you please, nevermind I was throwing up my grade-school education in the alleyway-

Oh, of course it was Dumbledore! Who else got the brass balls to have Theodoric haul me out like that?

Besides Professor Snape, I mean.

Well, after I got decently sobered up and the situation explained in glorious Technicolor to my foster parents (who wept when they found out I was leaving, ha ha ha,) Dumbledore plunked me on a broom to England and off I went. It was glorious! We saw dolphins and icebergs, and landed on this big one and went skating, and chatted about Quidditch and politics and theatre and what I was going to do-

You know Dumbledore. The trip across was loads of fun.

And then no sooner had I landed when I met Julie and Malfoy and Uncle Ron. Theodoric and I cut a deal that I'd keep quiet about knowing him around his cousin. And then I got Sorted –scariest moment of my life! I was petrified I'd get put in Slytherin. Malfoy family stories don't get any better across the Pond. But I got Gryffindor, which was nice, because like all wizarding kids I know who Harry Potter is…

That's another weird thing. My foster parents took me to see a whole load of animated films 'bout him, and I always thought the other part of the story more interesting. You know the one I mean, with the dark, brooding, ever-so-Alan Rickmanish professor-spy and the gifted but secretly extremely brave seventh-year…Well, 'My Fair Lady' was my favorite movie, too. The fact that my best friend resulted from that little chunk of wizard history is neither here nor there. It's dead romantic! And of course, my mum's journal of the two years before I was born had a lot to do with Professor Snape. It was like I already sort of knew them by stories and anecdotes, like they were actually my relatives. I mean, your mum and dad make friends with somebody well enough to consider naming you after the one of them –did I mention that? Well, that's what it was like coming to Hogwarts and meeting my permanent foster-folks.

And on top of it all, I met Donaghan…'

She couldn't think of anything to add to the assignment. So she left the quill where it was, having wanted to continue her homework to get her mind off things.

Jen kissed her.

Well, she could always find something inappropriate on TV, or draw pictures of funny things and leave them in Chloe's trunk for her to find. Or maybe she'd use the quill to write a note to Donaghan-

Oh, nice thought, that! She could just see the letter:

'Dearest,
Jen snogged me today. Do you think I'm-'

She couldn't even think the question jokingly. The idea of another female person fancying her was just so off the tracks…it wasn't like it hadn't happened before.

Mitchie stood up and gave herself a once-over in the mirror. Gods. Apart from the jeans being flares and the shirt being tight, you could not tell her clothes from some of the guys' she knew. No damn wonder Jen thought she was up for it.

A sound behind her made the werewolf spin around.

"Donaghan! What are you-?"

"Shh…s'alright."

The Scot closed her in his arms, comforting wounded spirits and reassuring her –but not quite.

"Donaghan…something happened just now…"

She couldn't say it.

"With Jen? I saw, m'love. It's ar'right."

"Then you know…"

"I know she mus' fancy yeh, yeah…unless she were jus' tryin' ter' throw y' one."

"She wasn't…Donaghan, do I look…?"

The Scot kissed his girlfriend long and properly.

"It's not a question o' lookin' like what y'd prefer…it's a question o' y're bein' beautiful."

"So you don't think I'm…gay?"

Donaghan kissed her again and ran his hands up and down her back.

"Would y' be pressin' agains' me like this if'n y' were?"

"Well, there's bi, too…"

"Tha' jus' means y'don' mind who y' fall i'love with. An' I kna' y' like me, so right now I guess y're straight."

Mitchie's eyes darkened slightly and she put a hand to the back of his neck.

"Let me prove it?"

***********************************************************

A/N: One flame? One? I am so disappointed! I wanted to be raked over the coals for that! What's the fun of writing controversially if you're all a lot of liberals, too! And nobody even cared that Donaghan came out –well, a lot the way most guys I know would…anyhow! Couldn't you at least have had 'bad McNeville, no lesbians!'

Or are you all a lot more grown-up than the rednecks I deal with here?

Oh, and sorry about the cliffie…got to go Do Research…or else just snog the semi-Scot I've been dating…

-Jan McNeville, Non-Professional Tripemonger