1000 hours


Hannah Bombay was not speaking.

He was accustomed to stubborn detainees, many who were typically involved in crimes far worse than the one inflicted on Miranda and Ignan Storm. His aurors had reported on the relevant events[1] as soon as he'd gotten back from an external meeting that day, Pinn and Hughes later outlining consequent details including the hospitalisation of Hogwart's Deputy Head early this morning.

Solomon was used to headaches but the werewolf witch was pushing his patience. Of course, he'd not questioned her himself: what he knew was only that she didn't seem to trust anyone on the floor.

Other things he knew about Hannah was that she'd been fired from St.Mungo's for attracting publicity.... she was Musgrave's niece....she was one of the more isolated registered werewolves... and a search of her person had revealed rather disconcerting burn marks. There were questions. Surely she had some answers.

Sitting at his desk, hair still damp from a shower and smelling of sweet honeysuckle soap, Solomon signed the last of report verifications that had arrived last night. His office door creaked open. The wizard pushed up his spectacles and he sat back to note a pair of Aurors who were escorting Hannah inside - her hands and legs were both cuffed.

He'd requested this so that he might take them off to earn her good humour at a later point, if necessary. Sol waved the red robed witches off before he gestured to the single chair before the table.

"Miss Bombay. Please, sit." Solomon didn't quite smile: but there was a suggestion of it. "I understand that you have been somewhat taciturn as a result of your arrest."

1.	When I Wake Up - March 26th

Waking up from the curse had been a painful shock. Her insides had been in agony, her chest burning from being magically stitched back together. Aurors had already been gathered around in the room, wands pointed at her when she’d woken. Despite the agony, Miranda Storm had insisted she’d be fine. The Head Healer had explained the younger witch’s condition, she’d explained what had happened and told the aurors that there was no need to take Hannah to St Mungo’s when they asked. That was when the restraints had engulfed her and she’d been thrown in a ministry cell.

The strip search had been humiliating. Some trouser suited witch in high heels had stood in the corner with a clipboard and a quill, noting down every mark on her body. As much as she wanted to scream, Hannah knew what she’d be facing. Her death, the arrest. It was all a means to an end.

But no one on level 2 was a suitable person to entrust her secrets onto. Almasy had control of people within the ministry. Powerful people within the ministry. So until Hannah could feel confident about someone, she decided to remain silent.
The aurors had had her in and out of the interrogation rooms but she’d refused to answer any questions other than her name. Threats had done nothing. The thread of what Ira Almasy could do to her locked in a cell in the ministry far outweighed what the aurors said.

To be marched into the office of Solomon Carstairs office in cuffs and an outfit far too similar to that of the Azkaban uniform, Hannah was far from loose lipped.

"I understand that you have been somewhat taciturn as a result of your arrest."
With no intention of disobeying the Head of Law Enforcement, the young witch moved awkwardly, lowering herself into the chair as instructed. Her bright eyes didn’t move from his face as she studied lines of stress. He had a harshness to him, something to tell her not to trust him.

“Do you think sticking cuffs on an unarmed five-foot witch will make her less reticent?”

Solomon laughed lightly at the riposte as he cross his legs underneath the table and leaned back to deliberate on the character of Hannah Bombay. She was a troublemaker. The sort of person who turns out as a result of unlucky circumstances and an aloof personality, two things that no doubt got her into whatever trouble she was experiencing right this moment. You would think a bright witch might know better.

"You make yourself sound harmless, and we both know that isn't true..." the department head replied after a long pause before drawing his wand. "But I'll offer you the benefit of the doubt for now. There's been no reports of violent or uncooperative behaviour from you since your arrest."

A light gesture from him caused a click to go off in the locks on either pairs of cuffs, the chain themselves dissipating gently into a wisp of silver grey smoke.

Serious, thoughtful blue eyes lifted from the sight of the leg cuffs disappearing and met instead with Hannah's gaze. "I'll be candid. Do you or do you not intend to inform us on the events of March 26th, leading up to the death of Ignan Storm?"

"You make yourself sound harmless, and we both know that isn't true..." Carstairs decided to release the cuffs as Hannah frowned at him. Was it a slight at her being a werewolf? Of course she wasn’t harmless. Once a month she became a vicious monster.

But right now?
Right now Hannah was simply a witch at her wit’s end who refused to talk to the authorities until she knew she could trust them.

She’d been arrested like a common criminal. It wasn’t the first time she’d been treated as such when in reality Hannah was quite innocent of the crimes accused of. She was a habitual sufferer of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. That had started all of the trouble. Now her stubbornness amplified it.

Despite herself, Hannah gave her wrists a rub when the shackled were removed, thankful they’d not used Silver. That particular form of torture was far more suited to the insane bitch she would be informing on.

"I'll be candid. Do you or do you not intend to inform us on the events of March 26th, leading up to the death of Ignan Storm?"

It was impossible to school her expression upon the mention of Storm’s death. Hannah’s eyes involuntarily widened, her brows shooting up in shock.

“He wasn’t supposed to kill Storm!” she shot back before having a real chance to censor her words. The realisation hit and Hannah, her uncle had murdered someone trying to save her life.
Instead of feeling crushing guilt, she was just apprehensive for what that could mean for her.

       "He wasn’t supposed to kill Storm!"

"Oh, wasn't he?" Solomon shot back in a mild, conversational manner as he smiled grimly at their guest. He couldn't pick out remorse from her reaction - it was easy to see how she might be related to Lawrence Musgrave. They were both cold blooded, looking out only for themselves. They were unlucky but maybe deserving of it. Ignan Storm dying seemed more like a frustrating inconvenience, the way she phrased her displeasure.

The wizard narrowed his gaze, deliberating. "What exactly was your uncle supposed to do then, Hannah?" he gestured at her prison-wear. "I take it all this was a part of your grand plan? If you meant to be captured then I could happily supply you with a cell in Azkaban - we can figure out the charge later. Complicity in manslaughter. Complicity in attempt of premeditated murder. Harbouring a known convict."

He lifted a mug of tea off the table, steam still rising from the deeply brewed assam Maya had brought in earlier. Solomon blew on the surface before taking a neat sip.

“I’m not guilty of any of those.” Reacting so quickly about Ignan Storm’s death had been a mistake. Hannah was more than aware of how it sounded. Her plan was quickly unravelling through fear and exhaustion. One wasn’t able to sleep well in a prison cell. Throughout the long hours locked up her mind had spun over every possible outcome from this nightmare. She’d fully expected to be arrested, but it wasn’t until being locked in the cell had Hannah considered how Wolfgang Storm had possibly been killed.

Neither a drop of water or a morsel of food had passed her lips since her realisation. Almasy was more than powerful enough to have people on Level 2 under her command. Who was to say Solomon Carstairs wasn’t one of them?

“My uncle was supposed to kill me.” Her voice was quiet, as if in fear someone might overhear nearby. “He needed to save me from a blood contract.” A pause. Hannah looked around the room, half expecting Almasy to burst in with her wand out, retribution for verbally discussing the contract.

Her gaze jumped back to meet his, bright with fear. “I have refused to talk because if I talk to the wrong person, she’ll have me killed. With no chance of revival.”

He looked at her over his glasses, skeptical. Hannah was at least culpable of harbouring her convict of an uncle - even if his other suggested charges were a stretch of the truth. Not that Solomon would know anything about that, truth. It has been alluding him ever since he came into office as department head. Nobody knew the full story and they received only snippets of veracity in the pursuit of criminals.

The wizard listened quietly to her disjointed confession. The look around the office was telling.

Something has spooked Hannah Bombay.

"She?" Solomon put down his mug carefully and interlaced his fingers over the desk, leaning forward to meet her in the eye. "You had made a blood contract... presumably with a criminal? And now to escape it, you have incited the death of a Hogwarts professor. If you don't start relaying details soon, this is not going to end well. You've confessed to practicing blood magic."

Carstairs put down the tea he’d casually been drinking and leaned forward. Hannah felt his eyes on her so she met his gaze, trying to keep her expression calm. She’d been horrendously naïve to believe that this would be a simple plan to get through. Rather than being able to go to the ministry and speak to someone as an informant, she was now a criminal and being treated as such. The more he spoke of threats, the more trouble she realised she was in.

Not it was a case of weighing up trusting someone with her life or being thrown into Azkaban until she was fully honest.

“I signed a blood contract for a roof over my head that hadn’t been set fire to and a job so that I could feed myself. Your ministry made me a public criminal, a monster. Miranda Elliot sacked me and I had no choice.” Feeling herself getting frustrated, Hannah took a calming breath. She needed to order her story. She needed to share all facts.

“On the 5th of October Ira Almasy broke into my flat[1]. She’s the one who was behind the werewolf ring and I’d bet my life on the fact that she killed Wolfgang Storm because he was a liability to name her in court. She offered me accommodation and a job. A couple of weeks later I was unemployed and desperate. No one would hire me. So I signed her contract.” She didn’t need to state that it was the most dangerous and stupid thing she’d ever done.

“I thought it was just a job.” Now Hannah was looking down at her hands in her lap as she spoke, fidgeting them through nerves. “It was. Until the 5th of November[2].” Exactly a month after she’d first been approached. “I was called to a derelict pub. Lawrence Musgrave was there, bleeding out. He had a knife in his thigh, broken ribs, a punctured lung I wasn’t willing to heal him. He was dead to me.” Up until now, Hannah’s tone had been cold, somewhat unfeeling. Yet now it held an anxious tremor as she fiddled with her fingers, looking down.

“Almasy must have sensed me breaking the contract. There was this excruciating headache and suddenly she came through the doors.” There was a pause as Hannah tried to consider how to word what had happened. “She was livid.” Bright eyes began to fill with tears at the memory. “She tortured me until I agreed to heal him. Strangled in silver chains and cracked bones. I refused to heal Lawrence because I blamed him for causing it all.”

1.	Clawing for the Wolf
2.	Shall I Place the Knife in Your Back or Your Leg?

If Hannah was trying to get him on her side, it was a mistake to begin with how his Ministry had been the one to turn her into a criminal - Solomon had a long history with their government, ranging two wizarding wars in which their leaders had been compromised to varying extents. The Ministry of Magic was not a singular entity.

Thinking of it as such was what had lead them into this catastrophic mess in the first place.

But he held his tongue, expression softening to accommodate what he assumed would be a sob story that the witch would use to barter her freedom against information. 

      "On the 5th of October Ira Almasy broke into my flat."

.... what? His brow furrowed, bearing down on the confused look in his eyes.

Solomon was finding it difficult to believe this testimony: he had expected something remarkable, yes, considering recent events. But what in Merlin's name did Almasy have to do with anything? There was that nonsense in Witch Weekly - lover's spat, or some ridiculous triangle at work. And the Opera murders, though that had injured the Russian aristocrat's reputation rather than helped it.

The tears in Hannah's eyes were real, however. He had seen enough false ones to acknowledge that there was genuine emotion behind the story she was telling him.

"Ira Almasy." Solomon repeated, after allowing for a polite gap of silence to fall between them. "You expect me to believe that you signed a blood contract with Ira Almasy, who to my knowledge has no criminal record, because you were out of a job? Miss Bombay," he reverted to using the surname without thinking. "Did you ever think to sweep floors before breaking the law? No? Mind a coffee shop?"

He would hate to think the state of affairs for werewolves were so horrific that practicing blood magic was a sensible alternative. In fact, he knew it wasn't.[1]

Solomon leaned back into his chair, sighing heavily as he tried to clear his head of that incongruity. It was Almasy he wanted to focus on right now. "Do you have any evidence? Anything at all, that points towards this woman?" his gaze dropped to the collar of Hannah's prison dress. "I understand your burn marks employed the letter A. Is this connected to the events mentioned? Or have you chosen Almasy as a scapegoat because of them?"

1.	The Ministry's Werewolf Wing has a list of werewolf friendly employers.

Solomon Carstairs thought Hannah was nothing but a criminal with a sob story. She saw it in his eyes. To him, she was some troublesome witch that his aurors had arrested. The fact she was in what was no more than a sack of a striped dress, hair scraped back in a mess and looking like she’d not slept in weeks didn’t help her to seem more believable. Instead of being the reliable source she would have been two years ago as a Level 2 employee, Hannah was a werewolf with a criminal record who was informing on a socialite witch with no priors who gave copious amounts of money to St Mungos and other charities.

"Did you ever think to sweep floors before breaking the law? No? Mind a coffee shop?" Behind his giant desk with his well brewed cup of tea and smart suit, Solomon Carstairs had little idea of what it was to be desperate and in need of work. He didn’t know how it felt to come home to a home attacked by fire and for the law enforcers to take no notice. He sat in his crystal palace judging her for her bad choices.

The witch in prison uniform said nothing. She simply glared.

"I understand your burn marks employed the letter A. Is this connected to the events mentioned? Or have you chosen Almasy as a scapegoat because of them?"

Now Bombay did snap. Ever since being bitten, Hannah had found her temper hard to keep in check. This situation made it impossible.

“I’ve just risked my life and my freedom to break the contract and report the crazy bitch that has tortured me. Do you honestly think I would try and frame someone else?” Her eyes flashed, a vicious anger as she stood from the chair and pulled the neck of the dress to the side, revealing the angry burnt A on her skin. “I wasn’t obedient so she marked me like cattle. I was shackled by silver to a post and branded twice. My jaw was nearly broken. All just to remind me who owned me. Why the fuck would I blame the wrong person?”

Clearly, Bombay was not here to discuss the intricacies of criminal motivations and behaviour - she did not seem to think much of sweeping floors or minding coffee shops, from the way she said nothing and simply glared at him. Solomon supposed the witch thought such things were beneath her.

But his accusation certainly hit a nerve. He smirked at her outburst, eyebrows climbing at the insistence with which she displayed her scars.

Proper branding. Not even the usual charm they'd used to mark muggleborns in the last war. This wasn't WBA.

       "My jaw was nearly broken. All just to remind me who owned me. Why the fuck would I blame the wrong person?"

"Because the right person told you to." Solomon replied easily, as if though this were obvious - and it was obvious to him anyway. He couldn't understand how a witch as seemingly bright as Hannah couldn't grasp the fact that she could be misconstrued as a ruse by some greater mind, without evidence to back up her claims. "Please return to your seat, I would hate to restore your shackles when we've been getting along so well up to this point."

Solomon took another sip of tea to gather his thoughts - although outwardly calm, he had been somewhat taken aback by Hannah's welling up. Anger of the righteous if what she was saying was true.

The mug was set back down. He took off his spectacles and folded the sides, placing them on the desk. "At this point, you haven't framed anyone. You've committed a crime and made an accusation which clears you of its culpability. Try to to understand how this looks." Clearing his throat, he sat forward and began to count points out on his hand.

"You are responsible for bringing your uncle into Ignan Storm's home, a fact which has led to his death. You are apprehended. You tell us that you have done the things you have done only because you were made to, and your only evidence are burn marks on your person."

A pause. The wizard lowered his hands and shook his head grimly. "Let's say I believe you. I can't do anything except for put a watch on Ira Almasy, not without substantial evidence." Solomon was going to go with his gut instinct on this. "And I will have her watched because I don't think you're lying entirely. That doesn't mean I can let you go, Hannah. And it doesn't mean you won't be punished for crimes you have committed."

If this was ‘getting along so well’, Hannah wouldn’t enjoy experiencing anything worse. Still worked up, she released the dress, letting it fall back, itchy fabric irritating her skin. Staying in her seat was a small price to pay for the avoidance of shackles, but the threat greatly irked her nonetheless. After informing the Head of Department of her being shackled to a post in silver and branded with hot iron, he quickly happily made his own threats not greatly dissimilar. It seemed like a power play. Hannah was, as she’d said earlier, an unarmed five-foot-tall witch with barely any muscle on her. What she was capable of doing stood up, she didn’t know. Carstairs was like everyone else; he wanted control.

It was with reluctance that, after a moment’s glare, Hannah once more lowered herself into the seat.

Ignan Storm’s death kept getting mentioned, thrown at her as if for a reaction. Hannah, herself, was surprised at the lack of guilt she felt for it. She hadn’t killed Storm and she certainly couldn’t control her uncle’s actions. As far as she was concerned, Storm’s death was no fault of her own.

The build-up of what the wizard was saying filled Hannah with dread. He wasn’t going to follow up on anything. Her whole plan had been pointless; the only thing to save her from Almasy was to put her in Azkaban to be no doubt shortly joined by her criminal uncle.

"And I will have her watched because I don't think you're lying entirely.”
A grimmer of hope from Carstairs was knocked back down with a reminder that she would still be punished for crimes.

Hannah frowned, internally debating the only real piece of evidence she had that tied her to Ira Almasy. She had no guarantee of being able to trust this ex auror or his staff. But her only other option was far worse.

“The blood contract is locked away in the Gringott’s vault. Both myself and Ira Almasy signed it. It ties me to her. At least proves that she practices blood magic. Also in my vault are all of the letters and instructions given to me by Almasy to perform specific jobs. Some illegal.” She took a deep breath. “Please bear in mind, when reading the letters, what happened the one time I refused to follow instructions. I signed her contract based upon agreeing to heal her colleagues. None of these jobs were mentioned prior.”

Finally, progress. He felt like it had been akin to squeezing blood out of a rock.

Solomon reached for a memo sheet and quill as Hannah spoke about her contract, and he began to make notes for the benefit of the aurors he would send with Hannah to recover the relevant belongings from Gringotts. It occurred to him that he couldn't make this information prevalent on level 2. If this were all true and Ira Almasy had done as much damage as Hannah implied, they would have to be careful about who knew what. Especially the accusation about Wolfgang Storm: that was an inside job.

But who was the mole? An auror? Someone in the Wizengamot? One of his own heads, Riordan or Pratt?

The quill was lowered and he looked back up at Hannah. "We'll arrange for this evidence to be collected," Solomon reassured her with a faint smile. "These instructions. I assume they're marked with her name? Or some other indication?" he was impatient to get his hands on such documents now that he knew they existed.

"I quite understand your desire to, as they say, cover your arse..." he stood as he spoke, moving over to a great file cabinet to the side of the room: it was unmarked but as he touched the first drawer, the letters  AL - AR  materialised on the labelling. "But it will depend on the nature of the contract. You didn't sign under duress and we have no way of verifying whether or not you were informed beforehand, about the nature of your work."

It seemed implausible. Bombay was known as a clever witch: she was literate, educated, and had worked on level 2 before. Would she really sign a blood contract without asking for details?

Frowning, the department head began sifting through the folders in the drawer before retrieving three of them, with which he returned to his desk. The smile he gave Hannah this time was more patronising, a teacher's false commiseration. She really did seem remorseless about Storm.

Shame he might live, or it would be easier to level a better sentence to Azkaban.

"And should we capture Almasy, we must take her own confessions into account." The bureaucrat in him was truly coming to life now, and Sol left the files untouched on his table while he droned on in the manner of a meticulous accountant. "You know how this works, Hannah. It's a long process. Now tell me, why come to us now rather than before? You say, Almasy approached you in October. Her torture of you was in November."

His hands met meditatively over the desk and Solomon watched Hannah carefully. The files next to him all carried the same Almasy surname.

The question coming from the quill pushing wizard who’d never faced true hardship was a sensible one. Hannah frowned down at her hands. People who had never felt true fear didn’t understand it. People who had never been trapped in impossible situations always saw a way out. They didn’t comprehend true struggles. Carstairs was a lawman, a wizard who thought that, like he, everyone should think and behave in black and white.
The world, Hannah had learnt over the past couple of years, was far more complicated than simply black and white.

“The contract meant she would know if I broke her trust. In November I was too scared to do anything but obey. She did something in January that I couldn’t ignore. Something I had to get revenge for. But plans take time.” Hannah was now looking at Carstairs as she thought back. “Last month I was summoned to her apartment where she showed me a mirrored window into a room full of mounted werewolf heads. Werewolves she’d killed and decapitated. She showed me just to remind me about obedience.

“With me, I’d brought a corrosive potion. I threw it into her face, burning and melting her skin. She’s a metamorph. Her face only grew back and I couldn’t get out in time. That’s why I was branded.” Hannah paused, squeezing her hands nervously, anxious about her own words.

“November was something I could handle. Pain stops. It’s not personal or possession. To have someone mark your skin as if they own you; as if you’re property…” Evidently still very upset by this, Hannah’s eyes teared and she paused. “Ignan Storm wasn’t supposed to die. I didn’t want that at all. I’m not a murderer. But I wouldn’t change what I did to be free of a woman that treated me like a badly behaved pet dog. You can put me in Azkaban if you don’t believe me, but I don’t ever want to feel the burn of silver around my neck again.”

Hannah's explanations helped, in some way, to fill in the blanks there were missing in her earlier spiel - but Solomon was left with even more questions now. He could see that she was willing to talk but they would have difficulty extracting information in this fashion. And they would need more than just her emotional ramblings.

Ira Almasy, patron of the arts, a werewolf hunting villain who picked on disagreeable little witches and lawbreakers. And a bloody metamorphmagus? It was an image that would sell newspapers. Yes.

Solomon finished most of his tea as he continued to listen, making the odd note here and there. He had been too busy scribbling down a reminder to search the Royal Opera House when Hannah started tearing up again, but acknowledged the tears when he glanced back at the former Healer.

       "You can put me in Azkaban if you don’t believe me, but I don’t ever want to feel the burn of silver around my neck again."

A grim, sympathetic look entered Sol's eye. She was only some years older than his own daughter. Imagine if Cynthia had gotten herself into such a mess. But no - she would never be like Hannah. Never this heartless to news of a death.

"Thank you, for... all that." The wizard paused, checking the wall clock to ensure they still had time before his next meeting. "You will be escorted to Gringotts tomorrow, by a pair of Aurors I trust, to retrieve the evidence. But until then I think it would be wise for you to create a signed and written account of these events."

Sol reached for his spectacles, slipping them on again as he made another note to correspond to what he'd said. "You didn't answer my question about her instructions, by the way-" his gaze did not leave the sheet on the desk. "- but we can get to that at some other point."

"I'm afraid that if what you say is true then you may well be put in Azkaban for some time." For this, he did look up to meet Hannah in the eye; it was as good as a sentencing. "There will be allowances made, of course, reduced penalties or some form of service to the community. You might not be a murderer but you are a criminal, Hannah."