A/N: woo! I was feeling industrious so I did two chapters. I'm not actually sure about them though, so please give me feed back. Please please please!

Chapter Four

Meg

I knew right away he wasn't one of us. For one thing he was old, there aren't many older than twenty-seven round here and he had to be late thirties, maybe even a young looking forty. His clothes were all wrong too. It's not like they were nice, they were just really straight. I tried to imagine Tom in a white t-shirt, even one with mouse holes in, and corduroy trousers, even faded ones, with his ratty Mohawk and lip rings on top and his evil steel toed boots at the bottom and almost laughed out loud.

This bloke wasn't particularly compelling, just tweedy, so I can't say what it was that made me stop Pete and Joe-Joe from killing him. They had him backed up against the wall of the pub and they were having a real go at him. I didn't understand it a first, I mean sure, he looked a bit of a prat, but Pete and Joe-Joe are usually pussy cats, and I couldn't see that being enough to set them off.

There was a pretty big crowd around them and I had to do a lot of pushing and shoving to get through it. I was at the very front before I realized why they were so upset; it was his smell, it was all wrong. He smelled like a werewolf sure, but he also smelled like wizard. And not like the smell you get when you've been in a strip club full of them or you've gone down on one or something, but like he'd been living with them for ages and their smell had sort of seeped into him. And there was this other thing around him too, this sort of thick, crackly, warm not-quite-smell that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. It was magic, he knew magic, knew a lot of magic. And he had a wand. And that was what had set them off. We don't like wands, they can do horrible things to you and there's no way of knowing what exactly these horrible things will be because the person doing it always uses some gibberish word to make it happen, which doesn't give you much clue.

The odd thing was, he wasn't using it. They were pummeling him, like beating the shit out of him, and he wasn't fighting back. He had a wand, I could smell it so clearly that I didn't need to see it to know it was there, but he hadn't drawn it. He could have turned us all into toads in a second, I reckon, but he hadn't and that was pretty odd. He didn't want to hurt us. He could have done, but he didn't want to. Something was up, something important.

Right, I thought. Time to pull rank.

I stepped right in front of him, put my hands on my hips, tried to make myself look taller than five foot two, and said "What the hell do you think you're doing, then?"

They stared at me, completely gobsmacked, Joe-Joe's fist was still hanging in the air, ready to thump him again, and Pete's mouth was hanging open, and I thought, it was worth doing this just to see their faces!

"What d'you mean?" sputtered Pete.

"What do you mean by injuring Tom's guest?" I demanded. I was trying to sound posh now, because posh people are scary.

"T-tom's guest?" said Pete, the blood draining from his face. "But-but he never said….."

"You expect Tom White to tell you every time he has someone round, do you?" There was a ripple of laughter.

"Why didn't he just come to your gaff then?" demanded Joe-Joe, who's a little brighter than dear old Pete.

"Tom did ask him round, you great lump. I expect he just got here early, and fancied a drink. Isn't that right?" I asked, turning to him. The man nodded, his face completely blank.

"But he's got magic, he has. He's not right!" said Joe-Joe.

"Maybe Tom has a reason for meeting with him. Had that crossed your mind?"

"I-I-I…"

"Look, just budge over, right? You've done enough damage as it is." I turned back to the guy and grabbed his elbow as the crowd parted like the red sea and guided him through it, saying loudly, "I hope you'll forgive them, sir, they're just gormless morons is all. Wouldn't have thumped you if they'd know how important you are!"

We were out of the pub round the corner before the man said anything. "Thank you for that."

"Nevermind," I said, drawing my gun and pointing it at his head. "Give us your wand."

Lupin

From the moment I walked into the pub I knew I was in trouble. I was the oldest one there. Everyone else was mid teens to early twenties and there I was, thirty six, but looking about eighty by comparison. My clothes were also wrong. They were all in bizarre, punky get ups with great metal loops sticking out of their eyebrows, lips, noses, ears, cheeks, and nipples. Their hair looked as if it had been cut by a mad, blind barber with dull scissors. They made Tonks, with her pink hair and patched trousers, look like a church lady.

There was also the smell. Werewolves, wizards, muggles, every species has a distinct scent. Werewolves have a very keen sense of smell, even when we aren't transformed, but we can turn it on and off. I mostly keep mine turned off, because smelling everything within a five mile radius is irritating. Thing is, when you're feeling frightened or defensive it turns itself on, like a reflex. I was feeling both frightened and defensive and as a result the smell of feral werewolf nearly knocked me flat the second I entered the warehouse district.

What I'd not taken into account was the fact that I'd smell very different from them. I had the distinct marks of living as a wizard, not only in my dress and manner, but in my smell. I smelt of magic, wizards and witches, as well as werewolf. This created a problem.

I picked a pub at random, but I was barely two steps in when two gigantic blokes, one with evil looking metal spikes sticking out of his head, came barging over to me, and slammed me against the wall. Soon a huge, jeering crowd had gathered to egg them on. I thought briefly about trying to get at my wand, I could have escaped pretty easily by stunning the lot of them, but that would have ruined everything. I'd have lost their trust completely and we'd have one more enemy to contend against. I'd just have to ride it out and see if I could escape some other way.

And then, just as I was on the edge of blacking out, it stopped.

"What the hell do you think you're doing, then?"

I opened my eyes. There was a girl in a ratty blue plaid shirt and a very short denim skirt standing in front of me with her hands on her hips, glaring up at the two monsters. Her curly brown hair seemed almost electrified, her whole body did. She looked as if she was about to launch herself at them and tear at them with her fingernails.

She began to lecture them, as if they were naughty children instead of grown men. I was slightly dazed, but the name Tom White sank in. Tom White, it sounded familiar. Then I had it. Tonks had nicked a copy of Cummings' files on werewolves for me. Tom White was the leader of a small, neutral pack.

"Look just budge over, all right? You've done enough damage as it is!" said the girl, grabbing my elbow and steering me out of the pub.

We were down the street and around the corner before I finally found my voice. "Thank you for that."

"Nevermind," she said, and suddenly a gun was pointed at my forehead. "Give us your wand."

I pulled it out of the waistband of my trousers and handed it to her, wondering if this night could get any stranger.

"And a fag," she said, taking the wand and tucking it away. "C'mon, don't be stingy, I can smell 'em on you."

I handed her my fags. She wrinkled her nose. "Newports? D'you know how bad these are for you? Glass shards all through 'em, not just in the filter." She put the gun back in her shirt and at the same time produced a bic, lit up, and tossed the pack back at me. "What's your name anyway?"

"Remus," I said.

She nodded. "I'm Meg. You're here to see Tom White, yeah?"

"Yes," I said. "How—how did you know?"

"Why else would a Domestic like you be here," she set off down the street, gesturing for me to follow.

"Why'd they let you take me out of there?" I asked after a moment.

She glanced at me, "You're joking."

"No."

"I'm Tom's bloody girlfriend, aren't I! Everyone listens to me."

We walked in silence until she stopped abruptly in front of an old factory. She unlocked the door and lead me up a dark stairway that smelled, oddly, of rot and incense. Four floors up she stopped and unlocked a door with a lopsided 14 stenciled on the front. A dull base line thumped from inside the flat. When Meg opened it a haze of smoke oozed into the hall.

Inside were about ten people, seven of them men, sitting on the sagging couch and in dilapidated armchairs. A girl with frizzy brown hair perched on the windowsill, smoking a bowl. She was only about seventeen. It was seeing that which made me look more closely at Meg, who couldn't have been older than seventeen herself. A year older than Harry.

"Stay here," she said, and walked over to an armchair, where she slid into the lap of a viscous looking man with a pierced lip and a brown Mohawk, which was wilting in places.

" 'Lo love," he said, kissing her.

" 'Lo love," she said, and nuzzled his neck. "There was some trouble round Sonny's earlier." She jerked her head at me. "Says he wants to talk to you."

"That so?" she slid off his lap and he swaggered over. He was about six feet tall and skinny, but the kind of skinny that's made up completely of ropy muscle and bone. I had to keep reminding myself that ten years ago he was about twelve and probably two feet tall, to keep myself from bolting.

"You smell strange," he said.

"I'm aware of that," I said. He snorted with laughter.

He chuckled. "Funny old man, you are. Meg take your wand?"

"Yes."

He nodded but didn't offer to give it back. "Everyone 'cept Max, Nelly, and Meg clear off. I've got a meeting, I think."

The others left without a word, filing past me, not even looking. Finally, when the only people left were Tom, Meg, the frizzy haired girl from the windowsill, and a anorexicly thin man with long, blond hair and sharp gray eyes, Tom walked back to his chair, motioning me to follow.

"You can sit on the sofa," he said, regarding me regally. The odd thing was that he did look commanding, even if he was sitting on an armchair that looked on the verge of collapse. He crossed his legs and I saw that he was wearing huge steel toed boots with (oddly) little hearts painted along the sides. "So what do you want? You're willing to get beat up and not zap everyone in the pub with your wand, you must really want something bad."

I took a deep breath. Saying what I was about to say could get me killed, but I had to risk it. Praying that I wasn't about to have my throat slit I said, "How aware are you of the current state of things in the wizarding world?"