Late October 1997

Crate Alley, London

All Chessie had to do to get in- escorted, she wasn't entirely ignorant- was walk around Crate Alley until she found the thugs from…was it only a month ago?...lurking around eyeing a prostitute lewdly. She'd lied herself half to death, and they almost fell over themselves to be the ones to bring her to Greyback.

They dragged her through a solid wood door under a faded, scratched sign that read "The Howling". This looked to be a very old and very forgotton basement level pub, with dingy furniture and too many bodies shoved into too small a space. Greyback himself was sitting at a corner table with an amber glass of something, surveying his pack with a look of fierce price on his face.

Chessie was excorted directly to him by her thugs, who stopped short and shoved her hard to her knees in front of Greyback before promptly backing up a few feet and waiting, immovable as big ugly statues. She decided to stare at the ground for a moment and get her breath back and let the inevitable bruises on her knees start forming. Her frizzy dark hair blocked her peripheral vision, but she'd never been so acutely aware of eyes on her back, not even at Hogwarts.

"I remember you," Greyback rasped. His voice sounded as though he'd taken some hard blows to the throat in his day. And had it slashed at some point, judging by the nasty ragged scar. But then, Greyback had been a werewolf longer than even Lupin, and Lupin had around thirty five years under his belt. Chessie didn't even have one. She wondered suddenly how she managed to get into these situations.

Maybe the Ministry was so willing to comply to her demands for reasons other than her pureblood heritage, disgraced though she was. Maybe they figured she would die and all they'd have to furnish would be a lain coffin, provided they even found enough of her to bury. How incredibly depressing. At least Rose would be okay with the Weasley twins.

"I remember you well," Greyback repeated to himself before addressing Chessie. "You tried to save that girl."

He stood up quickly, grabbed Chessie's arm, and twisted her around into an arm lock so all the patrons of the pub could see her. She tried not to grimace in pain as her shoulder socket strained.

"This is the girl who gave me this scar," he raised a tattered grey sleeve to reveal a mostly healed gash on his bicep. Chessie didn't recall giving him that, but it looked like something the Severing Charm could do. Greyback chuckled. "And look at the scar I gave her."

He lifted Chessie's shirt up to reveal the nasty patchwork of scarring across her ribs and stomach from the bite. Many of the patrons of the pub jeered and catcalled. At the bar, a fierce-looking tanned woman, probably only a few years older than Chessie, watched her with a thoughtful look while cleaning glasses.

"When my wolves tried to bring her back, she escaped them."

"The little brat-." One of my thugs- my thugs?- interrupted, looking anxious as well as really, really big.

"That little brat is nothing. Not when we have such a better prize on her knees before us." More catcalls. He dropped her and she did end up on her knees, much to her chagrin and relief at not being held up by her arm anymore. Greyback held up a large, hairy. scarred hand and the pub went silent. "But that doesn't change the fact that she ran, even if she came back. So what should we do?"

"Make her fight Burt!" was the best suggestion Chessie heard, and the only one that didn't involved some sort of involuntary sex. Fortunately, Greyback chose that one, baring his sharpened teeth in a mad grin.

"Burt?" he called out viciously, sitting back down in his corner. Chessie was alone in the circle of light from the one working ceiling bulb in the center of the room. She stood up slowly, pulling her shirt the rest of the way back down, and looked around warily into the darkness around her. She still hadn't said a word. There was nothing she could say.

A wall lumbered towards her. This was the largest man Chessie had ever seen by about a foot and a half in every direction. Somehow, though, Chessie wasn't worried once he'd gotten close enough for her enhanced senses to check him out. Maybe his size was supposed to intimidate her. It wasn't working nearly as well as it probably should have been. And his eyes, though small and trained on her, weren't mean. They were the eyes of a simple man who'd never grown up. She briefly wondered how many other like him Greyback had hidden away before Burt clocked her square in the face with a cinderblock of a fist. She slid several feet across the floor to the edge of the light, where dirty, leeching hands shoved her back into the ring of light.

Maybe Hogwarts hadn't been so bad after all.

She stood up slowly, clutching her gushing nose, and studied her opponent. She couldn't use magic. That was one of the first things Tonks and she had agreed on. Greyback may or may not have seen the stick in her hand a month ago. If he had, well, he gave no sign of it. Lupin had said that he laid all his cards out when he played. Unfortunately, he had very good cards. It looked like Chessie was going to have to either exhaust him or fight back. For something to fill the time in the first few summers away from her family, Chessie had stolen enough money to sign up for martial arts classes. Time to see if she remembered any of it.

I'll fight. There's no way I'll live if I'm gentle now.

She took a deep breath and spit some of the blood that had gotten into her mouth onto the floor. Some of the wolves quieted down as she took her hand away from her painfully throbbing face, and focused on Burt with narrowed eyes, studying his movements.

He waited for her to get in his range, and swung his tree trunk of an arm again. But he missed. Chessie ducked at the last second, and, fighting nausea and vertigo and the urge to go cry in a corner, kicked Burt between the legs as hard as she could, figuring it would slow him down. His small eyes grew wide as he slowly fell to his knees and his humongous hands went to his crotch, which gave Chessie just the opening she needed to throw a roundhouse kick with a booted foot into one of his temples. Burt kept falling, and then lay on the ground still.

There's no way that's all, it was way too easy.

But it wasn't really, she pondered as Greyback, half-amused and half angry, threw another large stupid werewolf into the dim circle of light to fight her. What these boys had in size and muscle they lacked in strategy and skill. Fortunately, Chessie had skill and could fight like a demon when cornered, and if she wasn't that big at least she was moderately tall. And scared.

This werewolf fell to nearly the exact same technique she'd used on Burt (who was still laying there unconscious), as did the wolf after that. Before the mob could throw another victim in to get pounded by the angry pureblood, Greyback stepped in and eyed Chessie. She looked awful- bloody and sweaty and with a little bit of spit on her from the crowd, but the look Greyback gave her make her insides freeze and made her wish that she'd just said no to Tonks and ran off.

"Before I admit that you've finally come to your senses, I have one more fight for you. If you live, then welcome. If not, then you're not my problem anymore."

Cue insane gleeful jeering from the slightly smaller audience. Greyback smiled with all of his teeth showing, and launched himself at her. The next few minutes were beyond thought. Greyback attacked relentlessly, and Chessie wasn't trying to fight back, just block what she could and stay alive. Random parts of her were bleeding, and her left elbow was rapidly swelling and didn't bend well. After a few more minutes that seemed like lifetimes each, she was slammed to the floor, gasping for breath that didn't come. Sweat and blood were all over her and stinging her swollen eyes, and she wanted to die.

But nothing else came. She coughed up some blood and rolled over onto her side and waited, wheezing hard with her eyes screwed shut. But nothing else came.

"Well," Greyback rasped. It didn't sound like he was even panting. "She lived."

The room was silent.

"Welcome aboard," he said, dragging her roughly to her feet and slapping her back hard enough to send her into another coughing fit.

Greyback chuckled menacingly as Chessie fell back to the ground, unconscious, as soon as he let go of her.