Sorry it took so long, I got busy with a research paper and then had to plot some more and try to find loopholes. Plus I have a job, so I don't really have hours on end I can just sit around and type these up with. Shame, really, but I need the money. So here it is, the sixteenth chapter (fifteen more than I thought I'd ever write), where dun dun DUUUN! ACTION OCCURS! Sort of.
Tonks, Lupin, Potterverse, and other HP chars and fictional writings of Rowling belong to Rowling. Most of the chars in this fic are mine, but the list has gotten too long to write out. London belongs to me too. I'll sell it if you offer enough.
Tonks had not been happy with the parts of her spontaneous plan that Chessie had told her. In fact, she'd immediately offered several valid reasons the plan wouldn't work. It was too late though, Chessie thought as she reviewed what needed to be done over and over again in her head. Daisy and Wat were running to keep up through the mud and rain.
"Why didn't you tell that nice Auror about Penny?" Daisy had asked after Tonks unhappily apparated away.
"We need her." Chessie said after a few minutes. "It's all part of my plan."
The girl hadn't been very happy with that answer but let it go, partially due to the pace that Chessie had set back towards the camp. She needed her breath.
The majority of the wolves in Greyback's camp were around the fire, listening to Penny, who was being closely guarded by Burt. As Chessie approached, some of the wolves' heads turned towards her. She stopped by the bonfire partially for effect but mostly because she was starting to feel sick from the freezing rain, and looked around at the faces lit up by the flames. Another circle of light, she thought, who's going to beat me up now?
"Oh, don't stop just for me. Finish the story while I warm up," Chessie said calmly to Penny, who had halted. She debated an encouraging smile but decided against it; she didn't want to scare anyone. Penny started back up slowly, and for a final few moments enjoyed some relative peace and warmth. She didn't hear Penny's story. It wasn't important.
After the story ended, most heads turned back to Chessie, whose expression slowly grew dark. She stood for a minute, thinking how best to break this to the wolves, then pursed her lips.
"How many of you trust me, for whatever reason? No, don't answer out loud. Think it. I know some of you can still think independently. Why trust me? And if not, why not? I don't really care either way. There isn't a single one of you I haven't wanted to strangle at least once over the past few months. It wouldn't mean anything, as far as relationships go, if I hadn't. Likewise for you. But the point of this is," she paused. This was the part that required delicacy, finesse, and subtlety, none of which Chessie had in large amounts. If at all.
"I'm leaving this hellhole, and whoever wants a second chance at a real life is more than welcome to join me."
The pack exploded into protests, questions, and other noises. Chessie kept talking, because they were still listening despite their voices.
"Those who decided to stay here, with Greyback, winter, and all of this- and very little food, which I and whoever comes with me will leave untouched- feel free to. I don't really give a damn what most of you do. The food's in the ditch over there, and I assume you have enough logs for a decent fire for a month or so. But I know of a place for those who come with me that is warm, clean, filled to the brim with all kinds of food, and has running water and a bathtub." She almost started drooling at the thought of Tonks' bathtub, but controlled herself, "All I ask of you is loyalty. Not for life, I'm not stupid. Just for a few days. I'll be asking you to do a few things that may seem strange or dumb; do them anyway. Feel free to tell me how stupid I am later on.
"I'm leaving in an hour. If you're coming, then come. We'll all go do something incredibly stupid together. If you're staying here…."
She trailed off, unable to finish the sentence even though the words were right there in front of her mind. She had involved exactly the right people to do what needed to be done, but she hadn't mentioned whose side she was going to be taking to these people.
The reactions to her speech were amazing, in a way. It was obvious that the pack was divided, Chessie contemplated as she pretended not to be on the verge of throwing up from nerves and strolled away. The sides had changed a lot, but they were still there.
Most of the next hour, for Chessie, was spent hiding a little ways into the woods, hugging herself and whimpering, wondering why she didn't have a soul.
When she returned to the camp to see how the arguments had gone, she felt a little better. Or maybe it was numbness, because her two thin layers of clothes and bare feet were not taking to the freezing November rain very well. Said rain was piling up as slush on the ground, which cheered Chessie up because it meant hopefully that Greyback would be delayed in his return and that Tonks wouldn't immediately kick them out.
Many eternities ago, Tonks had invited Rose and Chessie over one evening because Lupin, who was pretty much a permanent guest in her flat by then, wanted to talk to them. Chessie had forgotten why. It wasn't very important anymore. But she'd remembered where the flat was, in a neighborhood that was going seedy very quickly. Exactly the place anyone with a sense of irony would place a bubbly, technicolored magical copper and her unorthodox boyfriend. Fortunately, the werewolves would almost blend in. It only there'd been more time….
Bartender walked up, carrying Gem, with a straggly line of children and a few of the wiser werewolves following her.
"You're…is this it?" Chessie asked cautiously, secretly feeling guilty about feeling relieved that the wolves that had chosen to come were all ones she would have paused to get on her knees and beg for as she left. They didn't deserve what was coming in the same way that Chessie didn't deserve the right to judge people's values, but the plan was in motion and no matter how crummy she may feel morally about what she had put in action, it was too late.
It probably would have helped if she'd been slightly more idealistic and hadn't known that there were more wolves that supported her, but were just afraid to leave. It was similar to how an inmate in a prison, upon the end of his sentence, wonders if the bad life he's had in jail isn't preferable to the real world, because it hadn't forgotten about him and moved on. Chessie understood, in a way. She'd only been in exile for a few months, instead of a dozen or more years, and knew in her sinking heart that the world had moved on without her. She just hoped that Rose and George hadn't.
She was about to find out. They all were.
The roads were slick and empty when Chessie, exhausted and ill, knocked on Tonks' door, surrounded by equally tired and hungry werewolves. Burt had had to carry Penny again, and Chessie had briefly entertained the idea that there was something going on.
The sound of someone falling and various related crashing sounds came from within, and Tonks' brown eye peeked through the peephole.
"What the bloody hell? When you said you knew somewhere to go you never said here!" she cried out. Another sound was heard: Lupin asking who it was from further within the flat. Bartender gasped and Daisy smiled sleepily.
"Nice to see you too. Let us in. It's sort of cold out here." Chessie said. None of them had more than a few thin, worn out layers of clothes on, and it was snowing. Marjorie was trying to suppress cold shivers, and Carrot, the young redhead, wasn't even trying to keep his teeth from rattling.
Tonks opened the door, revealing an open living room that was toasty warm and smelled of butterscotch.
"Oh…" Kel, the werewolf with the dreadlocks, sighed happily. Chessie could see the bathroom, it was so close….
"I told you I was dumb enough to do it," she said. Tonks rubbed her face distractedly, in flannel pajamas, and moved aside.
"Get in here before you get sick," she muttered. Lupin had emerged from the kitchen and watched while calmly sipping his tea as Chessie, her minions, Burt and Penny, the three male wolves, and the kids piled in, dirty feet likely ruining the light carpet. Tonks looked pained. Lupin looked amused. Chessie knew she looked like crap- all of them did- and that they all smelled like it too.
"Did you-" Chessie began, but was interrupted.
"I have one shower and there are fourteen of you. Get started. You all stink horribly. Remus," Tonks said, and gestured at Lupin unnecessarily, all of them could tell who Lupin was. It was a werewolf thing.
"Remus brought a bunch of clothes for you all to pick through. We'll talk later. Just…please. Get clean."
Chessie grinned a little and started hunting for children to scour in the tub. As Bartender and she led them in the direction of the bathroom, Daisy smiled at Tonks.
"Hi," she said sleepily, but kept walking. She was drawn to the tub as well.
There wasn't enough water left for much other than rinsing off with soap, so Chessie still felt unclean when she started back out of the bathroom in a fluffy pink bathrobe that didn't suit her at all and sat down between Penny and Tonks (who'd had quite the reunion). All the available surfaces were being sat on, and the floor by the fireplace was occupied by the children, blissfully clean. Everyone except Tonks and Lupin looked fairly stupid, sitting awkwardly in clothes that were slightly off fitting right and not even close to matching, like the gray-haired rugged wolf that still hadn't told Chessie his name, who was wearing a pair of nearly orange khaki pants with a stained yellow shirt. He looked like the tiny shreds of his remaining dignity were about to ditch him and join the rest somewhere else. Yet Chessie didn't feel like laughing or joshing him or any of her wolves.
Her wolves.
In a sense that was true though. They'd chosen to follow her, and so far she hadn't given them a reason to leave. She'd promised a warm place with a shower and she'd delivered. She'd said she was going to do at least one extremely stupid thing, and she was about to. Well, what she was going to do, and had already, was past stupid and into pure heartlessness.
As everyone talked and Lupin and Tonks fit the story together, Chessie thought to herself, occasionally pitching in on cue. They all looked silly and knew it, but safety outranked fashion disaster any day. As a few hours passed and the children fell asleep one by one wherever they fell, conversation tapered off.
Chessie figured this was as good a time any to ruin everyone's moods and reveal how truly evil she really was.
"So how's the raid on the camp going?" she asked Tonks lightly.