He'd poured a decent amount in the mug to start, and he hadn't had very much of it when Figaro finished it off.  The werewolf hunter arched his eyebrows, grinning at the kid.  Judging by the hangover that Figaro had been nursing that day when Kurby had stumbled in on him and McBoid in the Sellaphix home, it might not take much more to push him to the limits of holding his liquor.

Figaro laid out the rules for retelling his story.  All of these teenagers seemed incredibly preoccupied with not snitching on their friends.  Kurby considered the limitations for a moment, and then shrugged.  He didn't really care about getting Fig in trouble, and he could probably piece together who else had been involved later if it ended up really mattering.

He tossed a lazy two-fingered salute to show his acquiescence to Figaro's terms, and then picked up the tequila to take a long drink.  Swallowing the fiery liquid, he set the mug down back and slid it in front of the kid, and then folded his arms back on top of the chair, resting his chin on them as he listened.

The two were in accord, sealed with alcohol, misery, and a loose salute.

Fig began by licking his lips and shaking his head. "I was taking it all quite rough, with dad and all, and Zelda wasn't telling me anything and people were talking. My friend knew of an open floo in the castle and a safe one in Knockturn, so one night we just," he flourished his hand, "poof, Knockturn. I still had a key."

The Sellaphixes hadn't affixed the seven locks until, ahem, shortly thereafter.

Fig put his hand on the cup, but just rolled the edge on the table for a moment.

"I honestly don't know what we were doing. I don't remember why I wanted to go. But we weren't there more than a few minutes before this massive, feckin', - he's just there."

It showed that Figaro hadn't put the memory to words for awhile. He took a drink, but his face sour more for trying to connect details than the booze. He couldn't remember how he knew it was Cinead Tawse - did he recognize him? And he couldn't remember how Cinead Tawse knew he was Rafe's son.

"He's talking like he owns the place, being aggressive and just pushing me and pushing me, taking the piss. At one point he gets a hold of me (and I'm properly shitting my pants, at this point), and I cast the only spell I could remember and bloke goes flying across the room. Fifteen stone of beard goes crashing into the beans - "

Figaro was making the relevant interpretive motions.

"But heed this, Bagnold, I've popped my Trace and I was fifteen and innocent and didn't know how it worked and Xa-nobody (shut up) he cheeses it leaving me with," and now Figaro whispered, "Cinead Tawse. Who I have recently assaulted."

He slid the mug back to Kurby. The emotions of the memory came up with the words, and he ran his fingers through his hair. There was a smile almost coming, the liquer slowly leeching into his viscera.

"But bloke isn't even angry. He thought it was funny. And there I am, some wayward child, son of his rival or who-the-hell-knows, with no way to get back to Hogwarts. He takes my wand. And I'm like, 'didn't think that was allowed', but he turns me invisible and we go to the Black Chimaera and he gets me to Hogsmeade by Floo."

And suddenly there wasn't anything else left to really tell. It was just the first in a long line of well-intended adventures going off the rails. Fig took up his soup cup again only to find that all that was left were the rehydrated veggie bits stuck to the bottom. He poked at them with the chopsticks.

"That's it. I don't even think I got in trouble. Head of House went easy."

Kurby listened silently, leaning on the back of the chair, chin resting on his arms.  Here in Figaro's tiny, too-cold flat, listening to the kid retell a ridiculous story, the events of Saturday night finally felt like they were miles away.

He'd never been the closest with Fig.  Most of the time, Kurby had found him and Francis to be somewhat bewildering, sort of the tiny, inevitable tagalongs that came along with his friendship with Rafe and Zelda.  When Rafe had been arrested, he'd never really thought to reach out to the kid.  Clearly, Figaro had decided to take dealing with the situation into his own hands.

The kid definitely had a knack for telling a story.  Kurby smirked at the mention of Figaro hexing Tawse across the room, and stayed quiet through the rest.  When Figaro passed the mug of tequila back to him, this time he left it sitting on the desk.

Assuming that most of the story was being recounted truthfully, it seemed likely that Tawse would recognize Figaro.  But even if the adventure had ended questionably amicably, it was concerning to hear that the Scottish wizard had been lurking around the Sellaphix Apothecary to begin with, and that he'd threatened Fig.  It suddenly felt like an awfully convenient coincidence that Figaro had encountered one of Tawse's werewolves only a few short weeks after Rafe had been released from Azkaban.

Figaro finished his story just as he resumed his interest in his soup.  Kurby lifted his head again, straightening to sit more upright in the chair.

"Well, I dunno why you'd be ashamed to tell that story," he said, flashing Figaro an approving smirk.  "Damned near hero, I reckon that makes you, Sellaphix.  I didn't get such a clean shot on him."

"I'm not ashamed," Fig retorted. He wasn't, but he also knew there was nothing heroic about it. Only reason things went the way they had was because Tawse wished it so. Looking at Kurby though, Fig knew he wasn't prone to white lies to spare feelings.

Kurby hadn't taken his turn at the cup, so Figaro took another. Three shots in fifteen minutes was bad maths, but maybe blithe oblivion would be more fun than this confusion. The system for judging what was brave and what was stupid was arcane and indecipherable.

Figaro brought his knee to his chest and pulled off one shoe than another.

"I just didn't want to get into more shit. Pretty well sick of all of my friends crawling down my throat all the time." Whether he deserved it or not, whether they were wrong or right. Or maybe they'd all be proved wrong some day, that this whole time he'd been a secret genius. One thing he did know, he wasn't likely to just stop trying and stay home and, as he'd snarked early, knit.

"So, are you okay? I mean, you're clearly not dead." Ambush, Kurby had said. A deadly situation.

Getting into more shit.  That seemed to be Figaro’s biggest concern, along with not narking on his mates.  It was as if the kid thought that the real world operated within the same moral bounds as Hogwarts, where getting in trouble with adults and betraying friends were the worst possible consequences that he could face.  The werewolf hunter’s eyebrows inched slightly upward as he regarded the teen.  Had he been so obviously young when he was Figaro’s age?

He didn’t think he had been, but then, he’d still been seventeen when he’d joined the Capture Unit straight out of Hogwarts.  Getting thrown straight into a war had had a sobering effect on his approach to life.  Figaro had had to weather Rafe’s arrest, but the kid had perhaps been sheltered from the worst of that turmoil at Hogwarts.  He remembered how angry he’d been at his own older brother, who had gotten to escape so much of their own family’s mess at home when he’d gone off to Hogwarts.

”So, are you okay?” Figaro asked him, cutting off his thoughts.  ”I mean, you’re clearly not dead.”

Kurby blinked, a bit surprised at even being asked.  He flashed the kid a ferocious smile that was mostly teeth.

“Not furry, either,” he agreed with a smirk.  Those were the most important checks once he was sure that the rest of his team was alright: still breathing, still human.  Anything else, he could eventually recover from.

But being dismissive about the risks like usual wasn’t going to get the kid to expand his view of consequences.  Kurby let out a quick breath, and then rolled his shoulders in a shrug, meeting Figaro’s gaze evenly. 

“I’m mostly worried about what we might get thrown at us next month,” he said, a bit more quietly.  “Somehow I don’t think it’s going to be a one-time encounter.  We were lucky we only lost three this time.”

January’s full moon was weeks away, but he knew how quickly the days would tick by.  It wasn’t a lot of time, especially with the holidays, and they were seemingly up against an organized enemy now.  Tawse and his pet dogs wouldn’t have to try very hard to sow chaos, especially if they chose to set a trap in a more populated place or time.  To defend against it, the rest of them were going to have to be both lucky and skilled every time.

But he didn’t feel entirely comfortable lingering on that for too long, especially since he’d have weeks to mull it over.

“How’re you, then?” he asked the kid to change the subject.  Arching an eyebrow, he gave him an appraising look.  “I reckon she’d hate for anyone to point it out, but it seemed like McBoid took the werewolf encounter a bit hard.”  The girl’s sketchbook had been filled with page after page of drawings of werewolves, some lifelike and others looking like they’d been culled from a nightmare.

Figaro rolled his eyes. Moira. She could piss off with that. He didn't want to talk about her, he didn't want to think about her. If there was some kind of excuse for why she'd blabbed, he didn't want to hear it. For all the times he'd been held to account for his own missteps regardless of his reasons. She knew what kind of trouble he could have gotten into. That he could lose his job, that something could fall out on his parents. This wasn't about getting yelled at or disappointing people - it was about life-wrecking.

He bit his tongue. He didn't make any attempt to hide how he felt, if indeed he was even capable.

"Not hard enough to sing a bloody song. She's fine."

Kurby and Moira had a relationship that didn't have anything to do with him. Fig knew now the intimidation Kurby was capable of, but Moira was solid stone. She could take care of herself, or wasn't that the defining aspect of her identity? She was taking this 'hard'. He sincerely doubted it. The absolute least she could have done was to warn him. Or leave his name out of it and told him to come forward himself. He'd have done the same for her.

He reached for the drink again, but stopped himself. He was glad Kurby was okay and it seemed like his team was too.

The werewolf hunter blinked, looking back at Figaro.  All of a sudden, the kid was practically radiating disgust at the injustice of McBoid’s supposed betrayal.  But hadn’t he just been claiming a few minutes ago that there wasn’t any hit for the girl to take for him?

What the hell.  Did teenagers even make sense to their own goddamned selves?

“What’s the worst-case scenario, Fig?” he asked, a bit more sharply.  “More people end up dyin’ because I don’t have a clear picture of what happened durin’ the full moon, or you and I have to have a conversation?”

"Here we go again!" Figaro snapped. "Yea, let's have that conversation but you know what, you can sod directly off. We had nothing to do with those people."

He stood up from the bed, the pent-up emotions coming up had nowhere to go.

"And it's real bloody manipulative of you to keep saying otherwise, as if I had any control over any of this. We were in the park by chance and the rest isn't pertinent. What kind of clearer picture do you need? You know I'm like four shaves from getting sacked? What happens if my name comes up on Level Two again? All she had to do was say she was in the park and leave it. And all you had to do was not be an arsehole for three damn seconds."

He was speaking rapidly and pacing the small space.

"But no, whatever. Put this on me, I don't care. Let's do that. Not like I'm taking this hard or anything. Nah, do it," he glowered.

Kurby regarded Figaro stoically, though his eyebrows were raised practically as high as they could go.  This idiot kid.  What the hell had set him off?   The suggestion that his ideal outcome was one that might cause pain or death to other people?

He’d gone damned well out of his way to keep Figaro’s name off of Level Two.  He’d come to see the kid here instead of hauling him into the Ministry.  He’d kept his identity out of his report, was trying to keep his and McBoid’s names away from the case as much as he possibly could.  Even though the connection between Tawse and Figaro made him extremely uneasy, he had still been planning not to share it unless something else went down.

He rubbed his hands tiredly over his face, running them over the rough stubble.  Hell.

“Figaro, someone sent you a bullshit tip about Runespoors and you went runnin’ after it like a bleedin’ Niffler chasin’ after a Lumos spell.”  Kurby tried to keep his voice calm, even, but there was a hard edge to each word as he forced them out.   “Your dad was sent to Azkaban for blowin’ up Tawse’s goddamned pub, and Tawse clearly knows you well enough to recognize you.  You really think McBoid could’ve told me everything relevant without mentioning you?” he finished disbelievingly.

"That's insane," Figaro blurted nearly shouting, and making a gesture like his head was exploding. "How are you this paranoid? No one sent me anything and you don't know it's bullshit - we saw someone."

He turned his head, hands out in front of him. "How can you possibly think this has anything to do with me?"

All of Kurby's explanations for that question which he'd offered multiple times had run off Figaro's back. It wasn't sinking in that Kurby was just trying to run down the details. All Figaro could hear is that it was his own choices that had caused something terrible.

"I don't care why she told you, she broke a promise that was important. Exactly the same as Nate Briggs rolling on my dad. Running her mouth to save herself a headache.  She had nothing to lose, and I have everything on the line. And what, I'm supposed to thank you for rolling up and making threats, acting like this is all my fault?"

Then his face went grim. "And by the way, Rafe didn't blow up anything and you know it, dick."

Figaro kept yelling, and the werewolf hunter listened silently, his expression unreadable.  This wasn’t going anywhere useful.  He’d gotten what he came here for — more information than he came here for, really — and he felt too exhausted to spend the rest of the night shouting back at Figaro. 

The shot at him about Rafe was the last straw.

“McBoid saved your life, and you’re bein’ a selfish arse,” Kurby said quietly, rising from the chair.

He didn’t want Figaro to get hurt, but based on his response just now, he’d have to consider anything he did as potentially compromised.  The kid was too focused on himself, too easy to injure.  Selfishness was easy to predict and manipulate.

It made Kurby think suddenly of the contrast with Nemo, the teenaged American girl from his adventure to Grimshaw’s on Friday night.  At least she had been ready to run headfirst into trouble on behalf of other people.

“At least one of those Muggles died because you two waited half an hour to report what you saw,” he informed Figaro tiredly.  He’d started to move towards the door, but not so much that he wasn’t still facing the kid, just in case.  “You pull this kind of rubbish too many times, and you’re goin’ to get someone you care about killed, Fig.”

Figaro looked like he was going to cry from anger. He was feeling everything at once and without the skills to process, all he felt was anger. The tequila wasn't helping. He didn't understand why Kurby didn't get it or what he was trying to do. He couldn't fathom that people had died and that he might have played a part - that was too horrible to accept. And he hated being called selfish, but he refused to let himself feel ashamed, clinging desperately to the belief that his hurt was justified.

He snatched up a shoe from the foot of his bed and chucked it at Kurby's head, sending it off with a obscenity and invitation to the older wizard to screw himself.

"Get out! Just $&@'ing get out of my goddamn house," he shouted, his face screwed up. People were dead, people were dead, people were dead and he couldn't deal with that.

Figaro looked like he was in the process of erupting.  The red-faced kid grabbed one of his shoes off the floor and launched it at him, shouting.  Kurby caught the missile mid-air, a few inches shy of his face.

That was reason enough to leave.  Giving the kid a drained look, he pushed open the door and stepped into the hallway, letting it slam shut behind him.

If he’d been feeling especially petty, he would have found a rubbish bin to toss the shoe into.  As it was, he left it just inside the door to the roof, still out of the rain, before he apparated away.