Brynn was dressed business-causal from head to toe, in her starched and tailored (but perfectly generic) robes, looking good and ready for a long day at the office. She knew it was Sunday, and that she didn't work on most Sundays, and that she was headed to a lunch date and not a client meeting, but she saw no fault in giving off the impression that she could look put together on the weekends, too. Frankly, she wouldn't have minded lounging around in her pajamas all afternoon. It had been a long, difficult week at work, as the week following a full moon always was, and she couldn't help but feel like she deserved to treat herself to a nice little lunch and some casual time in public. She was entitled to this! 

It was also a wonderful excuse to check up on Bitsy, which was nice, if only because her sister's job required her to remain in the room when Brynn spoke to her. It was always a lovely change to be able to say hello to her without getting shouted at. She never meant to put Bethan on the defensive, but her ornery younger sibling always seemed to get herself there all by herself. Not today, however! Her sister was as chipper as she possibly could be during the Sunday afternoon lunch rush, and once the barmaid found herself busy, Brynn found herself a table for two in the dining room, where she sat sipping on a screwdriver that contained a lot more 'screw' than it did 'driver.' That, she supposed, was the perk of being related to the bubbly girl pulling the pints.

Brynn took a sip as she glanced toward the door, waiting for her lunch date to arrive. Auror Evans was a sometimes-client, but mostly a friend, and definitely one of the people she felt she could hold up as an example of an upstanding, perfectly functional wizard who managed his lycanthropy and continued to do good. When the bell above the door sang out its little jingle jangle, Brynn rose to her feet immediately, beaming warmly and holding out her arms to receive him properly. “Good afternoon!” she greeted him, her words emerging like a sing-song melody, “It's good to see you! Come, sit! Tell me about your week.” She sat down herself, scooted her chair beneath the table, and looked to him expectantly, giving him the stage. 

Bloody hell.

Shades over his eyes, head downcast, Cooper’s steps were lethargic as he made his way down the main street of Hogsmeade, arms folded into the inner layers of his cloak. His skin was the pale complexion of the damned –or the hung over, depending how one might look at it. And the small gremlins were hacking away at his grey matter with freshly sharpened axes that would have surely shone bright if hit by today’s oddly bright glow of the sun. As a matter of fact, he found himself rather sensitive to light –and noise, and moving and even simply breathing-, which was why his head hung low and his eyes were nearly shut as he hurried down the cobbled street towards the Three Broomsticks –still desiring nothing else but to be in bed, with ear plugs in his ears, fast asleep. That, or murdering the sodding arses he called coworkers for having obligated him to drink so much last night –for, of course, they had held him at wand point and made him down glass after glass of alcohol or risk being tortured. Of this he was certain, even if he couldn’t quite remember.

The door whined on its hinges as he pushed it open and a small bell rang so loud above him that he was certain his eardrums would explode. Wincing, Cooper let the door closed behind him, as a perky voice greeted him as if the world were not in utter chaos and everything were not shattering around them. Which was a clear indicator that it was only Coop’s mind that was breaking in two and sodding hell he was in pain. Brynn Ellis worked at the Ministry, and to a point their relationship could be called a project: she was something of a Werewolf Counselor –and Cooper was a werewolf. But through that all, a friendship had been born, and that was the one and only reason he had decided not to skip their lunch date, and why he found himself tempted to fall into her open arms and snore. Instead, he hooked a hand around the chair opposite her, and dumped himself down like a mountain falling to pieces: his shoulders slouched, his head seemed unable to stay high and there was a look of pain on his face that seemed unwilling to go away.

“Ask your sister if she can make me a Bloody Mary?” His voice was hoarse, as he lent slightly forwards and edged his wrists on the table, fingers linking together. Sunglasses falling down the bridge of his nose, the white of his eyes were suddenly somewhat red, and he was certain that, if she looked close enough, she’d see protruding skin where a gremlin was working on cutting through his temple. But a Bloody Mary would do the job –there was no better cure for a hangover than simply more alcohol. “My week?” He made a half-hearted attempt to cock an eyebrow, as he stifled a yawn and winced at the loud sound of the bell over the door clattering again as someone either came in or went out. “Well, I decided to swear off alcohol last night, at least.”

Because of the line of work she was in, Brynn Ellis was more than used to seeing people who looked like they'd been recently hit by trucks. She had clients who had to check in on the evening of a full moon, who found themselves in her office with reddened eyes and rabbit's hearts as they prepared to shift and contort in all of the most painful, familiar ways. They were tense but resigned to their fates, scared but ready, sad but going through the motions. Then there were the clients she saw after the transformation, covered in scratches or welts, who couldn't hold their own heads up and felt winded after signing their own names. And then, of course, there were the clients who hadn't just changed, and weren't about to, who looked just as bad. There were people who were so depressed that they could hardly bear to pull themselves out of bed, who came to her full to the brim with pain that a healer couldn't touch. Brynn Ellis knew what it meant to look completely dreadful to the point where every part of a person was worn down, from their head to their heart. When she looked at Cooper Evans, she winced.

She knew that look, too. The auror had been drunk as a skunk at some point in recent history, and though she knew it had been his choice, that these were the consequences of debauchery, she couldn't help but look at him sympathetically – which for Brynn, meant a smile. Rule number one was simple; You couldn't let anybody know you felt bad for them. She had to fight to maintain a sense of normalcy, always. You are normal, she had to suggest to them, This is normal. Everything is normal, and I will not go home and cry myself to sleep because I cannot live with my own privilege.

”Ask your sister if she can make me a Bloody Mary?”

“Absolutely,” Brynn told him, sounding far brighter than she had any business sounding. She didn't move until he finished speaking, however. She was in listening mode – which, admittedly, was her default mode – and just cocked her head to one side, allowing him to continue.

”My week? Well, I decided to swear off alcohol last night, at least.”

“It sounds like you had an interesting night out,” Brynn remarked. Even seeing just how run down the man looked, she was still just the slightest bit jealous. She'd had quite a different sort of night, which had involved babysitting her nieces and then going to bed early so she could get to the market first thing the next day to buy cat food and apple turnovers. It had been a perfectly lovely evening. She adored those baby girls and had spent a good long time holding the sleeping infant just to hold her, looking at her tiny features and trying to remind herself why kidnapping was wrong. At the time, you couldn't have paid her a million galleons to be out at some bar, but in hindsight it all seemed a little dull. “And the rest of your week?” she asked, changing the subject, “Did you recover well? You know I worry about you, and right now it's a bit hard to tell,” she grinned, a little bit of sheepishness in the curve of her lips. Exactly how interesting had his night out been?

“You know what?" she spoke, interrupting her own line of questioning, "Let me go get you that drink.”

“Intriguing?” Cooper all but groaned, as he let his forehead fold into his forearm for an instant, feeling slightly nauseous and entirely worn out. Lifting his head a fraction of an inch, he looked at her through half-closed eyes with a look of deep pain etched across his face. “You tell me –I don’t remember a single sod,” Although, his wand had turned up in a cozy on his bedroom floor, so he could at least guess that Bertie had been present at the gathering. But, holy owl dung, he wasn’t even certain if the engagement they’d been there to celebrate had been fake or not –and that was going to be just sodding hilarious on Monday, when he went into the office and couldn’t quite remember whether his boss was to be married with Radley or not. He assumed he could simply wait for an invitation to the wedding, and if none came simply assume it had, indeed, been a joke, but the entire complicated matter of pondering the predicament was making the gremlins go into overdrive, so he simply decided he didn’t give  a flying sod whether the nuptials were to take place or not.

Brynn made a point of changing the subject and asking about the rest of his week –with a direct interest on the days following the last full moon. Suddenly, Cooper felt like he rather face another hang-over such as this, or even the amused comments from the other Aurors when he went into the office with no recollections whatsoever of the engagement party, rather than speak about the transformation and its effects. He was saved from commenting for an instant, as Brynn cut the conversation short, stating that she would go get his drink. “Much appreciated,” He growled, and let his head fall back into the curve of his elbow, eyes closing and darkness overcoming him quite pleasantly. He still had his hearing, though, and the sound of Brynn’s chair scratching against the wooden floor as she stood put him in such agony that it wasn’t easy to keep himself from whining.

After a few seconds[1], he heard the scratch again, and his chest tightened as the telltale sounds of a body sitting down and something being placed on the table between them reached his ears. Lifting his head with all the effort of picking up a dragon and holding it over his head, Cooper’s eyes fell on the beverage and suddenly grew greedy. “Thanks,” He muttered, forcing one of his arms to move forwards so as to allow his fingers to curl around the glass and bring it to his lips. He drank, not giving a sod that the taste was as disgusting as ever, and simply feeling grateful for the cold against his throat. With only half the beverage left, Cooper lay the glass back down on the table with a please sigh, already feeling his headache begin to subside –although he still felt like he was Albus Dumbledore after having been tossed from the Tower, morbid as the comparison might be.

“The transformation was the same as ever,” He replied to her earlier question, sitting up a bit more and dragging his left thumb against his lips to get rid of a bit of dribble he felt collecting there. “Painful as sod, both going in and coming out,” Cooper shrugged, his tone entirely matter of fact, wincing just slightly at the pain that was still present as the gremlins continued to hack at his brain, although with slightly less strength. “Same old, same old, the curse I’ll have to live with my entire goddamned life,” And though his words were bitter, his tone remained calm and neutral, as if he’d simply given up and no longer cared about what he would go through.

Perhaps he simply didn’t.

1.	Hope you don't mind I gmed her coming back, just wanted to move it along a bit. Lemme know if you want it changed.

“I said interesting,” Brynn informed him with an amused, closed mouthed smile, unable to hold back a good natured giggle, even as she took in the obvious signs of his misery. Even calling Cooper's exploits interesting had been a bit of a stretch – she didn't think there was anything particularly intriguing about a drunken night out. It wasn't like she hadn't had her fair share of rowdy evenings in pubs over the last few years. She didn't do rowdy so well herself, but she certainly knew what rowdy looked like, and it wasn't so much intriguing as it was embarrassing. 

She really did mean well when she'd asked about his week. A simple 'I'm okay' would have been good enough for her, just as long as she got an answer she felt she could believe. Brynn had found that when wounds were self inflicted, people were more likely to hide them, even though they weren't inflicted consciously or intentionally. Sometimes asking during an open, no pressure conversation could bring out the truth, and if that prevented a festering infection from nearly killing someone, she was okay with maintaining her reputation as a nosy, rotten nag.  She was able to recognize, however, that maybe this wasn't the time for nagging – he had other issues, and she'd promised him a bloody mary.

“Here you are, love,” she sing-songed when she returned, placing his drink down in front of him and then taking a good sip of her own. She wondered why he hadn't contacted her and asked to reschedule if he was feeling so rotten he couldn't hold his own head up. It was possible, she supposed, that people had begun making associations between Brynn's face and unending misery. She'd met with clients this week who'd looked worse... and claimed they were having a good day. Listening to his tale of woe, she felt even more terrible for dragging him out – he'd clearly a rough week, followed by a rough night in the midst of a rough life. Merlin, she just wanted to hug him!

“Okay, okay,” she spoke softly and sympathetically, using a voice a mother might use when waking a sleeping baby – soft and sensitive and full of nothing but affectionate understanding for any crankiness that was showing itself in the wake of her actions. “But you're well?” she asked before she could stop herself. Ughh. She was pushing. She always caught slack for pushing, and she really was working on toning it down outside of the office, but it had become so second nature! “That's the last question, I absolutely promise. You'll have to forgive me for getting like this,” she told him, rolling her eyes at herself and her predictable ways. “I can't think about anything else until I know everybody's okay. I like to make sure.”  She took a deep breath and let it out on a sigh, as if closing the chapter on her fussing and moving along. All she could do was look at him, however, in all his pitiful glory. There was a pause as she thought, but she could only stay quiet so long before producing an outburst of concern that would have befit anyone's worried mother.

“I'm dying to change the subject for your sake, love, but you really look like hell,” she told him, burying her face in her cupped hands and taking a deep breath before she deigned to look up at him again. “Are you sure you wouldn't rather go home and lay down? I feel absolutely terrible.”  That was Brynn Ellis – taking the blame for other people's hangovers one miserable brunch date at a time.

Cooper Evans had never had a mother that actually gave enough of a damn to ask him how he was, and worry when he was down for the run –but as Brynn spoke, her tone sympathetic and calm, he imagined this was how a real mom would have spoken to him. Of course, all he had as an actual example was Victoria Evans, a woman rather more obsessed with social status and whether he was behaving himself correctly than in actually raising her children. Until recently, he might add, when all of the sudden she’d reappeared in his life –rather unexpectedly and not quite wanted- to promise she was there for him now, and insist that he and the twins move in with her and Dad. As luck would have it, the day he’d popped by the house in Godric’s Hollow to inform her that he wanted her to keep out, the cemetery had exploded in what Cooper could only assume was some epic demonstration from some mythical deity that he was making the right choice –or, perhaps, simply the act of some lunatic. Either or, honestly, he really hadn’t quite decided.

“I’m fine, Brynn,” He wasn’t proud of the way he spoke with such annoyance as he sat back in his chair and forced a soft smile upon his face –and he wasn’t quite happy with sitting up, either, as apparently his headache hadn’t yet diminished enough to allow him the privilege of moving. But such notions were only registered by the barest of winces, before he let apology leak into his eyes. “I’m sorry,” He said, meaning it entirely. Here she was, worried about him, and he treated her like dragon dung. Cooper would have reached out to take her hand in gratitude, but he found he much rather just sit still now that he had managed to sit and he didn’t feel like he was having needles cursed into his bone marrow. “But I really am okay –just a little bit of a hangover, is all.” As if to remind him that there was nothing little to how he was suffering, one of the gremlins apparently decided to tap into something that made his brain feel like it was exploding and vile climb up his throat before residing back into the pit of his stomach. Still, Cooper managed to smile through all the wincing –rather not convincingly, but good enough, honestly.

“We have a dog in custody,” The words just came flying out his lips, because apparently a Sunday lunch should be invaded by talk about work. Cooper mentally slapped himself, before deciding that –as a matter of fact-, it might be smart to talk this through with her. After all, she did work with animals. Well, werewolves. But werewolves weren’t entirely different from dogs, except for the fact that they were actually humans. Who turned into wolves instead of a pet. Good enough, though. “Actually, we think it’s a dog, but we’re not certain,” One of the craziest theories running around was that it might be a grim –but, considering nobody had yet fallen dead after seeing it, and that Cooper himself who had had most contact with it was still feeling quite alive, this theory seemed rather improbable. “It was in the cemetery when it exploded,” His eyes were narrowed and his head was still hurting, so he simply rather not get into deep details about that day –and he was certain she’d know which cemetery, as it wasn’t as if a ton of them went about exploding every day. Cooper grabbed his drink and took another sip, but other than for the coolness against his throat the Bloody Mary was doing little to help him apparently. “We’re examining it, and there’s some magical trace on it, but we still haven’t quite determined if there’s anything special to the mutt.” Although Potter seemed rather interested in asking about it, but Merlin knew what that was about –maybe the bloke thought there was a chance this was a new incarnation of Voldemort or something. Wacked.

“Oh, love,” Brynn sighed emphatically, smiling softly but sheepishly at her own excessive show of concern. She knew this was just a hangover, and she knew Cooper would be fine, but seeing people in pain always got to her. She wasn't sure, but she'd always thought she would have made either a terrible, sappy healer, or an excellent, engaged one, had she chosen that path for herself – but, chances were, she was really too soft to do anything more productive than her typical bedside hair petting. As a social worker, she was often in a position to help people solve their problems, or at least in a position to point them to someone who could and follow up. She hated feeling helpless. “You can let me know if you want to cut it short,” she insisted, giving him an out just in case he thought going through the motions would please her. It made her feel a bit better, even if she wasn't necessarily helping. Close enough would do.

”We have a dog in custody”

“A dog?” Brynn asked, cocking her head to one side and looking perplexed – that little statement had been enough to hook her into his story for sure. “A dog in custody? Is that a fact?” she asked, the smile on her face somewhere in between amused and confused.  She was trying to imagine what a dog could possibly have done to end up on the aurors' radar. Brynn was only a dog person in the sense that she worked with werewolves, and there were many insensitive types who enjoyed referring to her clients as 'dogs' without shame – in the capture unit in particular. She knew Cooper wasn't likely to be talking about a fellow lycanthrope, though. He had to mean an actual dog. She allowed him to explain.

”Actually, we think it’s a dog, but we’re not certain.”

“So it looks like a dog, but might not be?” Brynn rephrased, mostly out of habit. Part of being a good listener was being able to take in what someone had said and rephrase it, which both validated the other individual's words and let them know they were being understood. She'd grown far better at communicating like this over the past year or two, and now it was second nature. It was far more effective in conversations about feelings and concerns than it was about, well... dogs... but not assuming anything was also a major asset of a strong listener. She didn't even need to fake it - she was intrigued!

It was in the cemetery when it exploded, We’re examining it, and there’s some magical trace on it, but we still haven’t quite determined if there’s anything special to the mutt.”

Brynn nodded sagely. She knew about the explosion, at least to an extent, but she hadn't heard anything about a dog at the scene.“Have you had someone on four look at it?” she asked him, which seemed like the logical next step in the process of figuring out what they were dealing with.  Her department was a veritable zoo at times, and it wasn't rare to see the odd crup running past her cubicle door. Even employees of the Being Divison of the department had to have a tolerance for animals in order to survive. She was certain they had an expert or two around who could ID an odd looking dog.

“Now, do you lot really think this dog caused the explosion, or have all of you tough blokes up on two just fallen in love with a puppy?” she teased lightly, amused by the prospect. “I don't reckon you've taken a liking to it, hmm?” she laughed.