Chapter Five
Hermione left Luna sleeping after casting a spell over the blonde that would alert her should there be a complication with Luna's pregnancy. She penned a note to Luna and left it on Luna's bedside table so that her friend would not wonder where she had gone.
She donned a blue soft cotton long-sleeved button-down shirt and tucked it into a pair of blue jeans that fit her like a glove. On her feet went a pair of dark brown leather hiking boots laced tight. Her wand went into a holster strapped to her wrist, hidden by her sleeve, while a pair of knives slipped into her boots. Her beaded bag hung by its drawstrings from her belt. Of course anyone would tell you hanging a bag like that from a belt was a stupid idea, but then, her bag was no ordinary bag, was it? Even the most skilled pickpocket would be stumped trying to steal her bag, for the two knots that tied her bag to her belt and sealed the bag shut could not be undone but by her own fingers – and that had been a rather tricky bit of wandless magic to master – and neither could the strings or the bag itself be cut by blade. No, if a person wanted her bag, they'd have to take her with it.
She slipped out the door and shut it noiselessly behind her before descending the stairs to the spacious foyer below. She passed the witch behind the desk, the owner of the bed-and-breakfast, and nodded silently to her. Hermione had spoken to her yesterday while Luna got settled in the room and had given the woman a modified version of her friend's story; the witch knew that Luna was pregnant and that it was a very difficult pregnancy, but was completely unaware of just what kind of child Luna carried. But she knew that Hermione was searching for specific help for her friend and had agreed wholeheartedly to keep an eye and an ear out for any troubles Luna might be having. Given that the witch had actually had a background in healing before retiring to open the bed-and-breakfast, Hermione was much reassured regarding the well-being of her friend while she was away.
She paused briefly, collecting her thoughts and reviewing her plan of action before Apparating away to the edge of the town of Forks. She draped the Invisibility Cloak she'd borrowed from Harry over herself just before popping away, so that in case there were in fact people – or security cameras for that matter – around, she'd be able to find a safe place to become visible without attracting notice.
She had decided to appear in a small neighborhood just a block away from the town square. It was midmorning, so by now everyone should be gone from the streets and shut away at work or school. When she made her appearance in the middle of the street, she looked about, gathering her bearings, and decided to make for the town square, lingering behind the shops at its edge. She found a promising alleyway between a small café and what looked to be a tiny, not very well-frequented museum dedicated to the town's history, and checked carefully for the presence of security cameras. When she was satisfied that there were none, she ducked between a couple of dumpsters to pull the Invisibility Cloak off her body before casting a mild Notice-Me-Not Charm set to fade gradually as she emerged from the alleyway; that way, no one would notice her emerging right away, and by the time she was fully visible and noticeable, untrained eyes would think she had been about the entire time.
Her face lit up when she saw the town's library, and she made a beeline for it without another thought. She ignored the obviously limited bookshelves, however, in favor of the computers. Oh yes, Hermione Gryffindor-Princess-and-most-brilliant-witch-of-her-age Granger was still very much in touch with her Muggle heritage, and speaking as a person with a foot in each world, she could say purely without bias that the Muggle way of searching for written information was infinitely superior to the Wizarding way. In the Wizarding World, the speed and efficiency at which relevant information could be sorted from useless information was entirely dependent upon the speed at which the searcher could read and comprehend both relevant and useless information as well as the searcher's perseverance. In the Muggle world, however, a machine could do the exact same thing in tiny fractions of the time it would take her and her own two eyes.
But halfway to the computers, however, she changed her mind and backtracked, heading instead for the stacks of phone- and address-books. She knew it was unlikely she would find the Cullens there, but she thought she'd look anyway.
She had grabbed one of the yellow-paged books and had just started to flip through it when she caught the hushed tones of town gossip behind her, gossip that apparently had something to do with the exact family she sought.
She continued flipping through and staring at the pages, her eyes moving but sightless, as she listened while appearing to still be paying attention solely to the yellow pages before her. What she heard made her use of the yellow pages pointless.
According to the townswoman who was speaking to her visiting…friend? relative?...the daughter of the town's Chief of Police, Bella something-or-other, had arrived new in town perhaps a year and a half to two years ago and had sparked the interest of the entire town, including her dear, sweet son – Matt? Moe? – who had developed an instant crush on the pretty out-of-towner. But his poor heart had been broken when instead she fell in with those Cullens.
The Cullens? asked the other, neatly taking the bait set by the gossip's tone.
Oh, yes, this family of, well, they were rather scandalous themselves, now that she thought about it. Imagine, the young doctor and his wife with so many adoptees, but no, of course, that part was not the scandalous part, no, of course Dr. Cullen and his wife could only be considered paragons of society for taking in so many parentless souls, bless their hearts, the first said sagely. No, the scandalous part was that even though all the children were adopted and biologically unrelated, they were all paired off. Yes, that's right. Well, four of them were. The youngest boy, that Edward, was essentially the fifth wheel. At least until Bella came along.
At any rate, Bella fell in with the Cullens, and from there things turned strange. Her poor Mike said that she stopped spending much time with her first friends, which was to say, him and his friends, and there was a period of several days where she and several of those Cullens disappeared, only to return with her all banged up. Some tale about her having a fight with that boy and running off to visit her mother and falling down a flight of stairs at a hotel when he caught up to her and begged her to talk to him. Of course when they came back things seemed right as rain but Mikey never was all that sure. He suspected domestic violence, but he had no way of proving it.
Even with her increasing feelings of contempt for the gossip's apparent opinion of these Cullens, Hermione found herself listening intently. Soon she almost wished she hadn't, for it quickly became clear that this was the town gossip whose very existence seemed to hinge upon her gossip, and Hermione started to grow bored with the petty gossip. She forced herself to continue listening.
Then there was a time, several months later, when all the Cullens disappeared and seemed to leave her behind. But instead of coming to her senses and moving on, maybe with her Mikey, she fell into a depression. She completely ignored her other friends, all of whom were very concerned. But then she disappeared again in the spring, only to return with the Cullens again. This time they seemed to be back for good, and so poor Mikey gave up. They all graduated from high school, and shortly after that they found out that Bella and her Cullen were…wait for it…getting married. Imagine! Married at eighteen, fresh out of high school! Of course, everyone knew what must have happened, and so she made her Mikey take that Jessica girl to the wedding and look to see if Bella looked like she had a bun in the oven. Of course, he came back saying he couldn't tell, but she was sure that was the only possible explanation. But then apparently Bella went and contracted some terminal illness on the honeymoon and never came back. Instead, the Cullens took her away to some distant country for treatment – Sweden, she thought. And so now the Cullens' vast home sat all but abandoned in the woods off the County Road, and no one had heard from them since. It was all very tragic, and the poor Chief, bless his heart, losing his only daughter like that! Just terrible.
The other echoed the gossip's sentiments as they moved off, while Hermione sat rubbing her now throbbing temples. That was a gossip for you. They started off blowing one direction, and by the time the whole epic story was done they were blowing the other direction. But she had still found some useful information. After just a bit more searching, she had the location of the Cullen home. Apparently the county road was The County Road – or rather, it was County road 57, but it was the only County Road going through the town.
And that was all she needed. Armed with her new knowledge, she left the library and Apparated to the woods near where she now knew the Cullens resided. Once more she assumed the wolf form, and she realized rather belatedly, as she had done this a few times before now, that she had taken for granted that her clothing and wand shifted with her. It made things infinitely simpler. For one, she didn't have to worry about carrying a pile of clothing in her mouth all the time. And far more importantly, she didn't have to worry about carrying her wand in her mouth either.
She took off at a lope, her nose to the ground as she searched for the scent trail of vampires. It didn't take long to find it at all; a minute into her search and she sneezed violently. She had found them.
The inexperienced female wolf in her wanted to prance and jump about in joy, but she forced herself to keep following the trail. As she continued moving, the paranoid war veteran in her began to feel as if she were being watched. She tried to shake it off, telling herself it was just that the strong scent of so many vampires made her uneasy.
She was only partially successful; though she'd managed to relax a little, she was still jumpy. So when she heard a faint rustle of leaves caused by paws other than her own, she whirled, already assuming a defensive stance. And the human girl in her felt ready to faint when she saw what appeared to be more than a dozen canines her own size emerging from the trees before her.
Ears went flat against the head and lips curled away from teeth in a warning as she crouched a little in front of them. They all stopped to watch her for a moment, but then the enormous black male at the front moved forward. Immediately a growl started to rumble from her chest as her stance straightened, the fur on her back rising.
Oh, he couldn't let that go. Of course, she wasn't quite challenging him for dominance; she had no desire to wrest the pack from him. But she was still letting him know quite clearly that he'd best not try anything with her, for she would not be dominated. And of course, the black wolf took that as a challenge. No strange wolf would come onto territory they had worked out an alliance with vampires for and expect to leave without being confronted. He'd have to teach the white wolf a lesson in just who was Alpha and who was not.
Now Hermione was a smart witch, so it followed that the wolf within would be smart, too. She knew that while she might possibly be able to take the black wolf in a fight despite his larger size – for she was a fierce fighter, too – the idea of her taking on the entire pack was as likely and laughable as Voldemort donning a tutu and dancing to Swan Lake. So she did what any smart wolf-girl would do. She turned tail and ran, hoping the other wolves would think they'd managed to run her off.
What she didn't know was that the wolves knew, or had an idea, what she was, and knew they couldn't let her get away. They had to find out who she was, where she'd come from, and how she was able to transform like them. So at a single command from the Alpha, they took off after her.
Of course, catching up to her was far more easily said than done. She was faster than almost all of them. Sam knew there was only one option.
Leah, go! Catch her and keep her busy till we can catch up! But be careful. We don't know how she fights, he ordered.
She barked her agreement and pulled ahead of the pack.
Hermione heard pounding paws slowly catching up to her, and she ran faster. But the two females were well-matched for speed, and she couldn't shake the other one. Finally she lost her patience, and whirled to confront the other.
White and silver faced off, slowly circling each other. The white female's fur was puffed out as she tried to intimidate the silver into backing off, warning growls rumbling from deep within her chest. But the silver refused to either back off or allow herself to be provoked into a fight. Sam had a good point, after all: they had no idea how the white female fought.
It didn't take long, however, for the rest of the pack to catch up, and they quickly formed a circle, effectively surrounding the two females and cutting off any escape routes.
Hermione, her heart in her throat, watched with her ears now flat against her head and her teeth fully bared as the black male approached and looked at the silver female, almost as if speaking to her. She retreated, replacing him in the circle, while he faced the white female. Despite the signs of fear the female couldn't help showing – ears flat, teeth fully bared, tail tucked under, and body crouched– she refused to submit. If he came any closer, she'd attack.
Of course, the black male didn't heed the warning. Oh no, he kept coming. So Hermione lunged, her jaws snapping shut just millimeters from where his muzzle had been a fraction of a second before.
And that was that. The pack watched intently as their Alpha allowed the wolf to take over completely and engaged the white female in a fight for dominance. They all watched as he did them proud; Sam had a natural fighter's instinct that, in combination with the instincts of the wolf, seemed to be giving him the upper hand, though not by much, it seemed.
Leah realized how wise Sam had been to tell her to be careful when confronting the other female as they didn't know how she fought. It turned out she was vicious in a fight as well as clever, and it seemed that the only reason she appeared to be losing the fight was because she was unused to the instincts of the wolf.
Hermione was struggling to tamp down her panic and use her head. If she could only outsmart him…but then she'd have to get past the other wolves, too. The situation wasn't looking good. And it wasn't like she could count on a rescue, either. No one else had followed her and Luna to the States, and Luna couldn't even Apparate, much less perform a daring rescue.
She was trying to decide what to do when the inevitable happened: her foot caught on something and she stumbled. The male was over her in a flash, but to her shock, other than biting into the scruff at the back of her neck, not even breaking the skin, he didn't harm her. Instead, he bore her to the ground until she lay on her belly, immobilized by his weight.
As she lay there and he rested over her with no signs of getting up, she knew she had no other choice. She'd engaged him in this form thinking that he'd tear her to pieces before she could reach her wand and that she'd have a better chance as a wolf. But now that he'd immobilized her large wolf body, perhaps as a human she'd be able to reach her wand and slip out from under him and then Apparate away. She took a deep breath and in the next instant she was a witch again, and she rolled to her back beneath him now that his hold on her neck had broken. She had just pulled her wand from her sleeve when, to her complete and utter astonishment, he seemed to shudder as his outline blurred, and then she was blinking rather stupidly up at a copper-skinned human face hovering over hers.
Sam – the human, not the wolf – had been waiting, in the back of his mind, for her to shift back to human ever since the fight started. The purpose of the fight had been to dominate her with the hope that the magic that had brought the wolves out in his pack would be the same for her and would thus force her under the influence of the Alpha's command so that he could force her to resume her true form and get answers from her. So he was a little surprised when she shifted without his command – apparently still not under the influence of the Alpha's command – but he'd been expecting the shift at some point, so he was still prepared. As soon as he'd realized she'd shifted, he followed suit, forgetting that he was naked as the day he was born.
As soon as the change was complete, he looked at her, meeting her eyes, and that was it. He was lost. Or rather, he knew exactly where he was, but forgot that he'd ever been anywhere else, not that anywhere else mattered but right there, with her beneath him, pressed against him with her body cradling his. For all that he knew of the rest of the world, it didn't exist and the two of them were suspended together in space, and for him, she was all that there was, ever had been, ever would be.
And then she opened her mouth and he thought he'd die happy, even if the question that emerged was one he wouldn't have expected in a thousand years. "Who the hell are you and why on earth are you naked?"
"I could ask you the same question," he answered thickly and without thinking, still rather dazed.
"You could, except I'm not."
Now that finally brought him back to his senses. He looked, and sure enough, he was lying buck naked on top of a fully clothed woman who had a stick in her hand. A stick that she clutched as if she were getting ready to use it to poke his eye out.
Well, fuck. This was getting really awkward, really fast. Without even looking, he knew none of his pack had shifted and were still watching him, as was she.
"Do you mind?" she asked archly. "I don't know if you've ever had someone your size lying on top of you like this, but I do rather value oxygen and I'm not getting much right now. If you'll kindly get off me, I'll even give you some clothes."
He blinked. "But your clothes won't fit me. You're way too small."
She made a face. "Yes, thank you for pointing out my lack of height. I appreciate it. Of course I'm not giving you my clothes. But by all means, if you don't believe me, you can just walk around in nothing. I'm sure it's giving your friends a laugh," she snipped.
Disgruntled, Sam realized she was probably right. His packmates were likely having the time of their lives at his expense. He huffed a sigh, and got to his feet. Not particularly bothered by his own nudity – he never seemed to have inherited a sense of modesty – he stood and then offered her a hand to help her up.
Hermione flushed a brilliant pink as the man – god! her mind supplied giddily – offered her a hand, apparently totally unconcerned about his state of undress. She took his hand and allowed him to pull her to her feet; then she shook her sleeves back to ensure her wand free movement before pointing it at him.
She waved her wand with a muttered, "Vestiet illum," and he blinked in surprise as he suddenly found himself clothed, at least with a plain black tee-shirt and a pair of denim shorts.
He stared at her in shock, and she said defensively, "What? Didn't I tell you I'd give you some clothes? I'm sorry if they're not the most fashionable, but I'm not exactly a designer or a tailor, you know."
"I think you and I need to have a talk," he said finally, deciding to refrain from asking any one of the thousand questions that had suddenly popped into his head. Hopefully he'd not only be able to get answers from her, but would also be able to explain about himself, the pack, and the imprint. She had to understand the imprint. He'd be lost forever if she refused to understand or accept it.
"Can it wait? Honestly, I'm in a rush." When he frowned, wondering what could possibly take precedence over the exchange of information that would allow them to better understand each other and their situation, she continued before he could protest. "No, really. When I say I'm in a rush, I'm not in the late-for-work rush most people are usually in. No, I'm in the life-or-death kind of rush. I need to find the Cullens because they're the only ones who can help me."
He frowned more deeply. "The Cullens? What do you need from those bloo – er, them?"
She met his gaze without flinching, and replied calmly, her face expressionless save for her eyes alight with a fire that captivated him as surely as her next words. "Those bloodsuckers are the key to keeping my friend alive."