The next few days were the stuff of nightmares. The camp, consisting of a few small or medium-sized fires scattered throughout a valley around a large one and whatever meat the werewolves brought in, was in the middle of a forest. There were no showers. There weren't even any permanent buildings. There weren't sheds even, or any shelter at all other than treecover. If someone got sick or too injured to keep up with the lifestyle, they would likely be dead by the next full moon. They would not be buried, or even remembered. It didn't work like that. The mores of society were for civilized people, not a bunch of ragtag feral werewolves in an ancient northern English forest.

The first month of her newest life had been marked the night before, and Chessie had woken up with the increasingly familiar desire to die and a deep feeling that no matter how bad her life had seemed at times, it had never been bad enough for this. She briefly considered how many, if any, Death Eaters had felt the same way once it was too late to get out and then stopped because if there was any group she refused to sympathize with, it was them.

Being the new wolf, and a young female at that, many of the older male wolves had been interested in her. It made sense, from a base animalistic perspective. But Chessie, wolf or human, had quickly dissuaded any attempts on her with enough severity that she was left alone with the children after about a week.

The children.

No one wanted to go near them. Perhaps their young faces, innocent looking despite their lifestyles, reminded the older ones of their own broken dreams or lost humanity. Greyback never really paid attention unless someone was acting up, or for…other…reasons that had made Chessie take a few moments to herself and pull herself back together after she found out. It did explain why Greyback hadn't taken advantage of her though. At nineteen, she was too old for him.

It was almost sad how the children- the six who still felt fear, who hadn't been fully brainwashed yet- had taken to Chessie so quickly. One child werewolf was a child werewolf too many. Six scared, hungry, lonely, neglected children made it hard for Chessie to keep her composure. One in particular, a tanned, scarred boy who hated to be touched, captured her attention.

It was his eyes. No child has such haunting eyes. They were deep blue, and full of secrets no child should be privy to. It was hard to tell ages with any of them unless they told her, but all six sane children were between six and eleven, at a guess. They were all too thin and small, or too thin and tall. And excepting the blue-eyed boy, they always huddled together. Increasingly they huddled around Chessie. She wouldn't let any of the men drag one of the girls off for anything. Not even Greyback. For now it amused him. He would hide his irritation and drag the dark blue-eyed boy away for 'lessons' regardless of Chessie's objections.

She came up with a plan. Her job was to spy, but nobody had warned her about the stolen children. She wondered if the Ministry even knew. While she worked her way in and insinuated herself into the camp culture, she owed it to the kids, as a former scared lonely little girl, to teach them to fight. It would likely end up saving their lives and she wanted to make sure they knew the skills required.

She put up a front, of course. She was teaching them how to detect weakness, read body signs. How to punch, how to kick. How to run. And the basics of blending in. So that they could attack their prey. And they were almost falling over themselves to learn it all after so much neglect. The oldest girl was the worst at trying to defend herself, and for awhile during her first few weeks with them Chessie was confused. Was the girl mental after all?

But it all made sense one night when Chessie had been scoping around the camp and discovered the girl humming a tune Chessie didn't know while sitting in a nearby patch of daisies like a strange extension of the flowers themselves. An idea had sprung, and the next day she tried giving the girl some freshly-picked wildflowers when she 'fought' right in training. It worked. In her mind she started calling the girl Daisy- shocked when it turned out that was in fact her name- and coming up with names for all the other children who, for various reasons, had decided to forget or deliberately not go by their own names.

The pretty brown-haired little boy who put his heart into everything he did with perhaps a tad too much passion was Beau, for beauty. Passion was the boy's best trait. It kept him alive and strong, even for a half-starved eight year old. He learned quickly, too, and even though it seemed Daisy was somehow in charge, likely because she was the oldest, he was second in command because of his fiery spirit.

The tall and skinny, hauntingly blue-eyed ten year old who had to have things explained to him several times was Wat, because he always said "What?" whenever someone spoke to him without looking directly at him. There was a patch of thick grey hair on the right side of his head that had traces of scarring coming out from under it in thick pale threads down his neck and over one ear in a nasty curve. Chessie suspected he was deaf in that ear, and quickly got over the annoyance of having to speak loud just for him. She privately wondered how he had possibly survived his werewolf attack.

The smallest boy was too sweet to have possibly been here too long. He hadn't confirmed his age yet, but he didn't look much older than Rose. So, around six or seven then. He reminded her a lot of Rose, actually. It made her heart ache. He was called Gem.

Carrot wasn't much easier on her emotionally. He had red hair, and even though it was a completely different shade, and there was no physical resemblance at all, he made her think of the Weasleys. It was almost too hard to bear, when Gem and Carrot were together. Chessie purposely put them on opposite ends when the children were in a line for some exercise or another.

Hope was the other girl. She was a mix of Beau and Daisy, in that she was healthy and vibrant yet tended to prefer her own mind to the real world. She cried at night a lot, but Daisy would crawl over to her and wrap her arms around her and they'd go to sleep uneasily, like sisters who knew just how ugly the world could be. They likely did, if what Chessie knew about Greyback's sexual preferences was correct. That they were whole and mostly in the real world was astonishing. Sometimes, Wat would take to standing guard over him, trying to fight when Greyback came to drag one of the girls off. Chessie admired how he always got back up at the same time she lamented not being able to stop what was happening to the girls.

Chessie sat idly one day near the main fire in the camp, eating a piece of lamb she had pulled off the spit in front of her, and concealing disgust both at semi-raw meat and at her inner wolf's joy at it. She listened casually to conversations going on around her. They were mostly of the same things- food, sex, death. It was almost not worth listening to.

"Most of spying," Tonks had said, "is being in the right place at the right time, and being able to pick out what's important from what's rubbish. Oh, and to stay alive. That helps too."

Pretty much everything she'd overheard so far was in the 'isn't' category. The only remotely helpful information she'd gotten were some names, dates of births, a few general group-wide opinions, and a mental list of who might be persuaded to ditch Greyback. One such unknown contender was sitting across from her, devouring a chunk of the same semi-cooked lamb. It was the bartender, from the Howling hazing, who apparently was only a temporary bartender when the wolves were in town. Her black hair hung in dirty strands down her back, but the strand of string holding it back was clean as possible. She was too thin, like most of them, but Chessie could see, possibly, if she squinted and overworked her meager imagination, what the woman might have looked like once upon a time. Clean. Curvy. Not fat, but with the kind of curves some women would kill for. Pretty. Not remotely stringy and dirty and bone-thin.

Chessie had lost quite a bit of weight herself. She'd always been thin, but living on the street had lost her a bit of weight, and whatever she'd gained back in her relatively short stay with the Weasley twins she'd lost living here. There was no scale, and judging by the way the bones in her wrists and ribs stuck out, she would have rather not stepped on one anyway.

"You." The stringy part-time bartender of the Howling said bluntly but quietly in a low Cockney voice. "Come 'ere."

She got up and walked nonchalantly towards one of the smaller fires a small distance away. Chessie followed her. No one cared enough to stop either one of them. Nothing interesting was happening in camp that day, so everybody was somewhat relaxed.

This fire was occupied solely by Daisy, who was absently poking at it with a stick. The light cast shadows on her face that made it hard to read. The bartender sat down beside her and motioned for Chessie to sit on the girl's other side. She did. Their backs were to the forests so they would know where most of the werewolves were.

"Hello," Daisy said pleasantly, tossing her stick into the fire.

"Hi," Chessie said, unsure of what was going on.

"Who are you working for?" the bartender said suddenly. Charisma wasn't high on a werewolf's list of favorable personality traits. Bloodthirst? Definitely. Messiah Complex? Sure. Gift for public speaking? Not so much.

Chessie froze, then thawed and stared moodily into the fire trying to figure out what the tipoff had been.

"I didn't know until Daisy told me," The bartender explained.

"Do I talk in my sleep?" Chessie asked the eleven-year-old. Daisy grinned slightly and shook her head. No.

"Daisy trusts me," the bartender said pointedly. "We talk often."

"How does Daisy know? I haven't even started thinking about you yet," Chessie replied in a bland tone that perfectly contrasted with her mind, which was screaming out in pain from overwork.

"I'm psychic," Daisy said happily, not entirely paying attention. She stared off into the distance. Psychic wasn't what Chessie would have called it, but okay. Let's play along.

"Really."

"Yeah."

So how do you know I'm trustworthy?"

The girl wouldn't answer. She looked Chessie up and down, then ran off to find Beau and the others.

"So now that you're thoroughly confused, who are you working for?" the bartender asked. Her green eyes bored into Chessie's, and she leaned forward in anticipation. Chessie felt inclined to lean back, but resisted. Barely.

"How do I know you won't kill me- or oust me- as soon as I say?" Because getting this woman on her side was one of her goals, she just hadn't been planning on doing it so soon. It would be nice though, she had suspected there was more to the bartender than just putting beer in pintglasses and was reveling in that correct assumption.

"You're just going to have to trust me. Besides, I've known for awhile that you were coming, I just didn't know when. Or why the hell you'd come here of all places. Something you don't know- I was there."

There was a silence.

"Where?" Chessie asked, at a loss despite the gravitas.

"There. At the little white house. A month and a bit ago." Chessie froze. "We never run alone. Usually, Greyback'll pick two of us to come with him. After he bites someone, if he's unable to keep them with him or there's complications- like there was with you, witch- that's where we come in."

Chessie was still, staring moodily into the fire, mind reeling. "It's your fault."

"No, it isn't," the bartender whisper-yelled, "You and the little bird got away. You came back. All I did was bolt when the aurors came. So don't get pissed at me. There's another way how I knew you weren't here as a last resort. You'd have brought the little bird with you, not left her somewhere. So I'm going to ask one more time. I have nothing to lose by 'ousting' you. I wasn't raised to be nice. Who are you working for?"

"Lupin," Chessie sighed. The bartender gasped and sat back, eyes wide. She put her hand over her heart, then scooted closer to Chessie on the log.

"You've met him?"

"I did a full moon with him. Ro- the little bird- is still with him." Chessie wasn't feeling so inclined to talk anymore. Unfortunately, the bartender was.

"You're working for Lupin," she said in wonder. "I didn't know he'd do something so undignified. Most of us think he's like the anti-Greyback."

"He isn't being undignified, technically. I am. Er, the Ministry's in on it too. I think."

"Oh, well, that," the bartender rolled her eyes dismissively. Talk of the Ministry was taboo. Chessie didn't mind. She was uneasy about her deal with them herself. Something didn't strike right about it, they agreed to Chessie's terms far too readily. She wiped her lamb-grease-covered fingers on her dirty denim pants and waited to see what happened next.

"I want in," the bartender said. Her stringy hair fell in her face. "I'm not certain it would be any better out in the world, but as far back as I can remember, I've been here. Twenty-two years I've been a werewolf. I was bitten when I was nine. Do the math if you want my age. But even if the outside world isn't any better, it is because it's not here. I want in. And I know the kids will help, if you let them. I've got ideas, believe me."

Chessie sighed- a personality flaw- and rubbed her temples with dirty fingers.

"Do you have a name?"

"No names. Not here. Call me Bartender." Chessie rolled her eyes.

"This isn't a spy novel. What was your name back when you were somebody?"

Bartender looked around, then at the fire. "Julia," she muttered.

"Okay…you're in."

Julia- the bartender- spat in her hand and extended it, looking at Chessie expectantly. Oh, what the hell. Chessie spat in her own and shook on it.