Kurby smirked at the kid’s back as the boy turned away, unperturbed by the implication.  Virgil Carstairs couldn’t be much older than Nemo or Figaro, but he spoke with the same pompous attitude that one might expect from a legacy scion on Nine.  No one survived a war or a long career with Magical Law Enforcement or the Capture Unit without figuring out their own strategies for dealing with tough situations.  After the week they’d all had, having a sickly-looking teenager imply that they couldn’t face their own issues was almost insulting.

Roh pressed the Carstairs boy again about the vision, and this time, he gave an answer.  Kurby listened, stony-faced, as he bent down to unlace his boots.  It was unsurprising, too, that this sulky-looking relative of Solomon Carstairs was responsible for the warning that no one had bothered to pass on to Four.  He made a mental note to share that bit of trivia with Iona Ballentyne as he stepped out of his dragon hide boots, set them to the side, and then followed the other two into the chamber.

The soft sand that settled under his feet made him think instantly of Savvina Katopodis, of her own strange beach set somewhere outside space and time.  But compared to the eerie deep-sea scene that awaited them, the peaceful, quiet shoreline that the Level Four holding cell had brought to life for the Greek werewolf seemed positively mundane.  Kurby regarded it all stoically: the drifting, bioluminescent abyss creatures; the giant, ominous sea jelly floating over the somber pool, which shimmered in the faint light of the glowing creatures above.

They didn’t need a snarky little Unspeakable trainee to spell out for them what was probably going to happen.  His expression impassive, Kurby began to systematically remove the silver he was wearing, starting with his silver rings.  He was in the process of twisting one of them off, gathering the collection in his left hand, when Virgil Carstairs’ next remark landed like a punch to the gut.

The werewolf hunter stopped in his tracks, his gaze shooting over to the Unspeakable trainee.  For a split second, it was as if the words weren’t quite registering in a language that he fully understood.  Carstairs had been scrying for who as a favor?

“Wait, Blake knew about the vision?” he asked incredulously.

At the admission that the vision was,in fact Virgil's, Zora sighed and let her arms flap at her sides. It was a gesture usually reserved for her exasperating daughter Waverly than the workplace. She was mostly annoyed with what felt like a breakdown in communication, however inadvertent it was or valuable it had been. Who knows how many deathly visions played out between the ears of this Seer or that, how many went unreported, and how much nonsense had to be rifled through to find something of substance anyone could act on.

She undid her boots and followed the two wizards into the vision pool chamber. She lingered in the doorway, feeling silly without her shoes and socks, and dwarfed by the shimmering leviathan defying gravity above them. The bright light of all of this, the ethereal subdued magic was all a far cry from broken cobblestones, sunken eyes, and green spellfire she was more prepared for. This must be why Mysteries acted so oddly - not a cubicle in sight.

Zora nearly spoke over the end of Bagnold's surpise.

"Really." Zora didn't require an answer. Bagnold could bluster all he wanted.

"I'll just watch it," the Auror said stepping forward and forcing her face into something nearly positive. They could rail against the circumstances or they could buck up and keep on.  Virgil had offered them a choice, so Zora chose the one that didn't have her getting intimate and invasive with the imagined last moments of a man she didn't know.

             “Wait, Blake knew about the vision?”
     "Really."

He stared at the pair, unimpressed by their reactions. Especially Roh's. Shouldn't she already know this? And why did Bagnold say Fauna's name in so particular a way? Virgil answered him first, because the auror was ready to roll and didn't seem as shocked as her companion. "Yes," he shrugged and turned back to the vision pool at his feet. "We went to see the head auror together and all that."

It wasn't his problem if two and four weren't communicating with each other or even amongst their respective floors. Nine followed protocol and Virgil had gone beyond his obligations.

"Alright," he addressed Zora this time and held up the marble between his thumb and index finger. The large jellyfish above the pond glowed orange, red, and if Virgil opened his mind even slightly he could almost feel its visceral anticipation. "We should all watch together first, so that Bagnold will have an idea of what to expect when he immerses himself."

And without further prevarication, Virgil dropped the marble into the vision pool. Plop! The gently swaying tentacles above them began to writhe animatedly and glow even brighter, white now, so white it nearly blinded. The room went dark all of a sudden - dark except for the surface of the pond, which seem to emanate its own cutting light. He stepped back and slowly lowered himself to the sandy floor, knees drawn up.

            Bang! Bang![1]

1.	For reference, Virgil's vision thread and Fauna's experience of it.

Blake had known.  Pratt had known.  It was starting to feel like half of the goddamned Ministry had known about the vision, and yet no one had bothered to breathe a word of it to anyone on Level Four.  Kurby stayed still, frustration and anger and the smallest tinge of hurt warring across his expression.  Two years ago, when Dugan MacDuff had terrorized the Auror Corps and murdered Ed Pratt's parents, Level Two had made sure that everyone knew how they were hurting. When it was Alec Carter who was assassinated and RCMC staff that were threatened, no one seemed to bat an eye. 

But he couldn't force that to change, not now and here in this moment.  His options were either to rage at the utter injustice of it all or to set the weight of it aside and witness what he'd come here to see.

Silently, Kurby crossed his arms and shifted to face the vision pool, the line of his jaw tight.

Bang! Bang!

The shimmering surface of the water darkened immediately as the vision began, showing the dim interior of a house.  Somber shapes added to the shadows stretching across the room: a sofa, a coffee table, overstuffed chairs, the interior of the front door. 

Bang! 

Kurby's stomach tightened as he focused on the furniture at the edge of the vision's field of view.  He'd seen the sofa shredded; seen the coffee table overturned and in pieces. This was Alec Carter's home, back before it had been torn asunder.

BANG!

With a slam, the door was smashed inwards, and a man's voice let out a panicked scream. 

Kurby stared at the werewolf outlined by the light of the full moon behind it, at its scarred face, its enormous bulk.  Realization struck like a bucket of ice water tossed at his face; he clenched his teeth, his shoulders stiffening.  But there was barely a moment to get more than a glimpse of it before it had snarled and charged at the helpless wizard whose point of view they were sharing.

Alec Carter tried to dodge around it in a panic.  He ducked around the sofa, knocked into the table, but it was hard to follow his movements through the darkness, especially with the gnarling teeth and slashing claws of the wolf close behind at every turn.  They raced into the darkened study, and Kurby only saw the briefest flash of the grandfather clock before Carter was seemingly flung against one of the bookshelves.  He crashed to the floor and the scene went black, with only the barest hint of snapping and snarling and bright red blood, of monstrous teeth as they ripped and tore at flesh, of the faintest, shuddering movement. 

Alec Carter died, and the light in the pool flickered and died with him, leaving them engulfed in darkness. 

It took half a heartbeat for him to remember to breathe.  As the drifting cephalopods began to glow softly again, gently returning light to the darkened room, Kurby let out a shaky breath that he hadn't realized he was holding.  Closing his eyes, he turned away from the other two and bowed his head, rubbing both hands over his face.

It felt like a hot, searing knife had been driven straight into his stomach.  Alec Carter hadn't deserved to die that way.  No one ever did; that was one of the truths that Kurby clung to, whether he stood against a werewolf or stood witness to another bloody aftermath.  Even in the darkened confusion of the first-person vision, the reality of the wizard's horrific death hurt like an impossible weight pressing down on his shoulders.  He hadn't used his wand; he hadn't had a chance to stand and fight.  Carter had ended his life desperate and alone, without anyone there but his murderer.

There were a hundred things that he wanted to know, but only one way to get more answers.  Without a word, Kurby reached for the chain that hung around his neck, taking a moment to unfasten the toggle clasp.  As it slid free, he gathered the silver links in his hand and turned to face the other two.

Eyebrows raised, he met Virgil Carstairs' gaze coolly and waited.

There was a part of Zora that was quite curious as the actual workings of collecting, perserving, and reviewing visions. She'd used a Pensieve before, seen them used (dubiously) in court, but Virgil's bauble wasn't a fragile, shimmering thread. It was this solid little pearl. It fell into the still pool and made perfect little dollop of a splash. There wasn't much time to appreciate the ingenuity, however. They were now finally about their macabre business.

She stepped forward with Virgil and knelt down in the sand to get a better view, try and take in as much detail as possible. The vision proceeded and Zora was astonished at the vividness of it, the detail. But it wasn't like a film because it tracked with someone's eyes, not in framed shots like a camera.

Her heart began to beat faster as the scene played out. They could see the werewolf clearly, their scars and naked violence. Zora stood up once the wolf was on Carter - no. Not Carter. An image of Carter, a vision of Carter. She had to remember that. All of the visions supposed accuracy and raw emotion and detail, which she didn't doubt, couldn't actually be a memory taken from Carter. It was received before the attack, but no one called it a prophecy.

And yet. And yet it absolutely froze Zora's gut and hardened her features. She stood and crossed her arms, then glanced at Bagnold. The Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures was like a house on fire. Iona wasn't any better, barely a few months back at work after a long recovery from her own attack. Everyone in the Werewolf Wing.

She lifted her chin and thought the only comforting thought she had. They were going to catch the son of a bitch.

"Well, then."

Legs crossed and arms held close to himself like a little boy, Virgil watched the vision play out sitting at the edge of the pond. He was surprised to find that it was easier to observe now than it had been before - in fact, it got easier each time, insomuch that he could brace himself for each beat of the scene. The hinges of the door giving way, the direwolf entering, Alec Carter's mad scramble for survival. But still, he flinched when the man in the vision was slammed against the bookshelf.

Virgil rolled his shoulders back, feeling the ghost pain from that first experience of the vision. When the images finally faded into darkness and the jellyfish above began to glow once more, he looked first at Roh. She'd come to join him on the sandy floor. "Well, then."

"Yes," the blonde replied, nodding, as if a question had been asked.

By the time his gaze shifted up to meet that of Bagnold's, the other wizard was already freeing himself of his silver impediments. No time wasted. At least Virgil wouldn't have to see the vision for the umpteenth time; if he was lucky, he'd never have to lay eyes on it again.

He turned back to the pool, pushing up the sleeves of his cardigan before reaching in. The water was cool but it stung like seawater against a cut. His gaze lifted to the jellyfish above, who glowed a little brighter, and the marble grazed against his fingers, floundering. Virgil fished out the little sphere. It was warm. "Take it," he held it up in the palm of his hand for Kurby.

"Place it under your tongue and then walk slowly into the vision pool," he scooted away slightly to allow for some room. "Float on your back and look up at Bertha. You're going to feel sleepy. When the vision starts, remember, you won't be able to stop until it's over."

In a way, he was glad Fauna didn't have to come down here and watch this in the pool. She hadn't made it all the way through without throwing up in the IUM office. Virgil smiled a little at the werewolf hunter. "There won't be any pain. But you'll feel what he felt, emotionally."

The werewolf hunter carefully placed the silver rings and the silver chain on the sand near his feet, and then silently began to unfasten his belt.  That went onto the small pile as well, along with a pocketknife and a silver chain bracelet.  Finally, he bent over and rolled up the left cuff of his trousers, unbuckling the straps of a leather sheath that had been concealed there.

Silver rings, silver chains, the silver belt buckle and silver knife: it all went on the sand.  Kurby straightened, feeling more exposed than he liked to be as he reached out to take the small marble from the Carstairs kid.  It felt light and warm against his fingers, one of the magical world's worst possible nightmares kept safe and secret inside the tiny sphere.

"Cheers," he said, and waded in.

Kurby regarded the marble a little awkwardly, and then placed it in his mouth.  The water was cold and salty as he lowered himself into it, ducking his head carefully to avoid the tentacles dangling down from the giant jellyfish. 

Leaning back, he let himself float in the briney water, gazing up at the glowing Bertha until his eyelids grew too heavy.

---

Bang! Bang!

He opened his eyes to darkness. 

Bang!

He was standing in the middle of a darkened room, staring at the inside of a shuddering door, the shadowy shapes of furniture all around him.  But he knew this space: it was Carter's home put back to rights, the same front room that he'd stood in alongside Iona Ballentyne, just barely more than twenty-four hours before.

Bang!  Bang!

Kurby stared at the door, anxiety rising in his chest as it shuddered on its hinges.  He gripped his wand tightly in his right hand -- the wrong hand, Kurby realized with a start, and instinctively tried to shift it before realizing that he couldn't.  The wood felt strange too, smoother than he was used to --

Bang!

His gaze was locked on the door, his breathing quick and panicked.  If he'd been able to do anything, the werewolf hunter would have let out a frustrated growl.  Why the hell didn't he move?!  Why didn't he apparate, why didn't he run, why didn't he raise his damned wand and --

BANG!

The door burst open, and for an instant, Kurby had a clear look at Alec Carter's death.

The werewolf was enormous, snarling and furious.  Carter had been taller than he was, and it still stood nearly as high as his chest.  Its fur was dark gray, and Kurby had a split second to make out the bald, jagged scar that streaked across where its left eye should be before a scream ripped out of his mouth and he finally began to move.

Around the couch, against the table, over a chair, all of it in a panic with the snapping jaws just barely behind him.  Anxiety turned to terror in his chest.  He wasn't fast enough; no one could be, not against a werewolf in such tight quarters.  He could hear his heart pounding in his chest as he stumbled down the hallway, grabbing for the door to the study, careening helplessly inside.

But then something was on him, and he was flung into the air, crashing into a bookshelf that he couldn't feel.  He crumbled to the floor, and then it was nothing but merciless flashes of claws and teeth and screaming that wasn't his, until the overwhelming terror finally faded amidst the devastating darkness.

---

With a gasp, Kurby came back to himself, face to face with the dangling tentacles of an otherworldly monster.  Panicked, he tried to dodge out of the way, which immediately caused him to lose his balance and tip under, disappearing into the vision pool with a splash.

He floundered for a instant underwater before he managed to find the surface again.  Nearly choking, the werewolf hunter spat the blue marble back into his hand, coughing up the briney water as he grabbed for the side of the pool.  Salt stung at his throat and nostrils and made his vision blurry as he clung there for a moment, water dripping down his face, trying to clear his lungs and catch his breath.

He felt like he was going to be sick. Squeezing his eyes shut, Kurby took a shuddering breath, letting it out again slowly.  Alec Carter had died terrified and alone in his study, torn apart by teeth and claws amidst the sound and fury.

The magic done in the Department of Mysteries seemed at the same time ancient beyond memory and past the bleeding edge of innovation never seen by anyone. Their deftness at secrecy was both impressive and worrying, but what else was new. Stranger still was seeing Bagnold disarm and slip into the pool like some kind of arcane baptism.

As Zora watched, Bagnold began to stir. Not violently, not dramatically, but enough to know there was something going on behind his eyes. At one point, she glanced to Carstairs. It was January - he was not even a year into Mysteries, surely this was nearly as new to him as it was to the them. The kids these days. Was Zora as indifferent to danger at their age? What world had they come of age in? Realzing she was thinking more of Waverly than the younger Carstairs, Zora refocused back on Kurby.

After some time, Kurby returned to the land of the living with a jerk like he'd been pulled back with a yank to his gut. It was startling and visceral and the simmering anger that seemed to always grip the werewolf hunter was changed to something more harrowed.

Zora stepped forward and offered a hand to help pull him up.

"Alright, Bagnold?" she asked, more so that he'd hear a voice than thinking he'd want comfort.

He stood and waited at the edge of the pool, watching Bagnold fall into the vision for a moment. This was one of the more recently developed methods to experiencing visions - Virgil was told that the pensive approach had been taken but the vision was often not as visceral or accurate to how it was originally experienced by the seer. 'Recent', on level nine, could mean anything from two days ago or two hundred years.

The younger wizard turned away as Kurby's countenance shifted to a more agitated nature. He drew his wand and gave it a few whirls - sand picking up from the floor in a little cyclone, its grains rearranging themselves into a shape. Virgil jerked his wrist abruptly, "Fiero," he muttered and the shape solidified itself into a little pail.

Behind him, a startled gasp followed quickly by a splash! He turned around with the pail in his hand and watched seriously while the older man struggled in the vision pool. It wasn't a comfortable method, no.

Roh stepped forward to help. And Bagnold definitely looked like he needed help - there was something haunted in his face, perhaps the only natural and human response to what he had experienced. "Here," Virgil set the pail along the side of the vision pool, "if you're feeling sick. Bertha doesn't like it when they throw up in the water."

He didn't expect a reply, or for Kurby to react at all. It was a bit like waking someone from a deep dream; you had to remembered they were waking up from something in another place, another time.

Bitter-tasting bile rose in his throat, nearly overwhelming the sting of the salt water from the vision pool.  He had felt fear before, but never like this.  Facing down normal werewolves was terrifying, but he knew what to do there: even when his normal monthly patrols went horribly awry, he still knew that he’d be able to act.  Dementors brought a dread that threatened to freeze him in place, numb with hopelessness and despair, but he’d always been able to somehow fight through it. 

But the terror that had filled Alex Carter’s last moments had been red hot.  Even now, it made his chest burn every time he forced himself to take a breath.
 
”Alright, Bagnold?”

At the sound of his name, the werewolf hunter opened his eyes and blinked blearily up at Zora Roh.  A moment later, he took her offered hand in a firm grip, pulling himself out of the water with a grunt.

The room felt colder now that he was dripping wet.  Kurby dropped down to sit on the floor, wrapping his arms around his knees and letting his forehead rest against them.  The image of the one-eyed werewolf, illuminated with the full moon behind it as it stood in Alec Carter’s open doorway, felt like it had been seared into his brain.

Something settled on the ground next to him.  Carstairs, delivering a bucket with a polite warning.  Kurby squeezed his eyes shut again, gritting his teeth.  He would have made a rude gesture in the trainee’s direction if he hadn’t been wholly focused on not throwing up.

It took him a moment to calm his breathing again, to force back the bitter sensation that threatened to rise in his throat.  Finally, deliberately, he let out a slow, shaky breath and lifted his head.

Roh and Carstairs were both still there, waiting.  Next to him, the surface of the vision pool was calm and clear.  The strangely-glowing sea creatures still floated overhead, drifting slowly in an invisible current.

Finally, he found his voice. 

“He had his goddamned wand the whole time.”  The words sounded harsher than usual, but with a raw, pleading note as he looked back at Zora Roh. “Why the hell didn’t he use it?”

"It's not a memory," Zora answered Kurby firmly. "We don't know what he did."

The more Zora learned about this vision and Carter's death and the way the leadership was handling it, the more it all seemed absurd to her. Her job could be dead simple a lot of the time. The trails they followed and the investigations they did may have many branches but it was all feet-on-the-ground. An event occurred which could be observed and responded to. Patterns could materialize and be prepared for. But what could have been done with a vision. What should have been done.

She could have just left at this point. They'd done what they'd come to Mysteries to do, but as usual, the more you learned down here, the less you knew.

"Why didn't you tell anyone about this?" she asked Virgil. "When did you know it was him?"

This was... awkward. Virgil hardly knew these two but they now had something intimate in common, because experiencing a vision was an intimate act. He stood to the side unobtrusively and kept his attention on Bagnold, who managed not to be sick. The wizard still held the vision marble, which would have to be returned to its jar when they left.

             “Why the hell didn’t he use it?”
"It's not a memory. We don't know what he did."

Auror Roh's answer surprised him. It would have been his own answer. Predictions were not records. If they could measure a vision against a pensieve, things might not line up, not perfectly. She turned her attention to Virgil.

"I told you, I did inform someone. I filed a report, which is protocol, and I personally spoke to Auror Blake," he didn't appreciate taking flak from the other floors after he had tried his best - and he didn't care how much more senior they were, especially down here.

Virgil's voice carried the slight edge of anger but his gestures were carefully casual. "Blake and I even spoke to Head Auror Pratt. The report, I'm told," he glanced at Bagnold, then back to Zora, "was discovered in Alec Carter's office after the fact. I didn't know it was him until I heard news of his death. I would have told him myself, if I had known beforehand."

Of course he would have. The possibility that he wouldn't was upsetting.

The werewolf hunter stared back at Zora Roh, dark eyes shadowed.  Slowly, deliberately, he forced out a long breath and dropped his gaze back to the sand.

 Roh wasn't going to take this seriously.  He shouldn't have expected any differently.  No one on Level Two had; that was what had brought everything to this point.  They'd seen the vision as meaningless noise against a buzzing background, so inconsequential that it wasn't even mentioning directly to their allies in the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures.  The Aurors weren't going to be interested in what he thought or what his suspicions might be.

Above his head, his current boss and former mentor's wife had already moved on, nipping at the Carstairs boy as if to pass the blame from Level Two back to Level Nine.  Kurby stayed sitting for a moment longer, the tiny glass-like ball of the vision pressed tightly in his left fist.  Then, silently, he rubbed his face against his left sleeve -- a fruitless attempt to wipe away the stinging salt water -- and pushed himself roughly to his feet.

The sulky blond boy was more than capable of countering Roh's attempt to deflect blame from MLE.  Wordlessly, Kurby stepped over to where he'd left his silver, listening silently as he began to gather his belongings once more.  Putting together the pieces with what the Carstairs kid had said before, Blake had asked him to scry for the full moon, probably because she was worried after the zoo ambush in December.  He'd had the vision about Carter's death and let her know.  And then Blake, like the rule-obedient young Auror-in-Training that she was, had taken it to Pratt, where any sense of urgency had likely died.  It was another tally mark to add to his growing grudge against the Head Auror, this one inked firmly in dark, indelible black.

He'd knelt to re-fasten the silver knife's sheath to his leg.  That task completed, Kurby gathered up the rest of his silver -- the belt, chain necklace, and rings -- and straightened to stand once more.  Part of him wanted to watch the horrible vision again, to see if there were any other relevant details that he might have missed, but after the way Roh had responded to him already, he wasn't going to bring it up. 

Silently, the werewolf hunter turned back towards Virgil Carstairs.  One eyebrow raised, he held up the dull-colored marble pinched between his thumb and index finger so that the Unspeakable trainee could see it, as if checking to see if the boy was ready before tossing it back.

Pratt. Head Auror Ed Pratt. Whether the vision was truth or not, it had warranted investigation. What irritated her to say the least was that there could have been but she just wasn't told, which was frankly unusual. The Aurors had historically done a good job of keeping each other in the loop even if they didn't have their hands on. Their former leader Tamis Raynor had established that culture and it had carried through intervening chiefs, more or less. But then, it was Pratt. He had a reputation for being deliberately disruptive. And all of this was just another example of how the Department of Mysteries couldn't be completely trusted.

She was now officially tired of this. Carter was dead. Without the Minister's intervention there'd be no settling the matter.

"Just out the way we came?" she asked and gathered up her things.

Virgil caught the marble, nodding once at Kurby. The werewolf hunter and the auror were on opposite ends of a particular spectrum - Bagnold focused on the raw material, the personal aspect, while Waverly's mum had an eye on the politics of it all. Their questions reflected as much. He felt more removed from events now, as if seeing them from very faraway.

Their visit had given him perspective.

            "Just out the way we came?"

"Yes. Allow me," the blonde pocketed the marble and smiled wanly; as if anyone visiting nine would be allowed to walk out unescorted.

Once everyone was dressed and shoed (and silvered) again, he led them back between towering shelves in the luminescent dark. "Should you have further queries, feel free to send a memo to the Hall of Prophecies. Someone will get back to you promptly," he assured the pair in a soft, effete voice. "We're keen to cooperate."

Were they? Virgil wasn't so sure. That's what Yavin told him to say, though, as part of the department head's initiative to liaise more openly with the other floors. After all... at the end of the day, he was just another Unspeakable following oblique orders.