Tuesday, December 20
7:34 AM
The Office of the Werewolf Capture Unit

Kurby Bagnold had arrived at the Ministry early that morning, although not quite as early as he typically did.  Three full days off had left him feeling relatively recovered and well rested, but it was impossible to ignore the ticking clock of January's upcoming full moon. There were less than three weeks until the next peak of the lunar cycle, and with the winter holidays in the mix, the Capture Unit would have fewer work days than usual to coordinate with Level Two and come up with their best plan of attack.

He usually kept his desk relatively neat, with few of the personal items or dressings that adorned those of his coworkers.  While he'd been out, one of his coworkers had left a stack of paperwork neatly organized in the middle of the empty space.  Near the upper right hand corner, they'd also left a glass jar filled with what looked to be shredded, burnt paper remnants -- the remains of what might have been exploded Howlers, which he assumed were responses to the Daily Prophet article[1] from Saturday.  Someone -- probably Fenneken -- had conjured a few colorful paper flowers to stick in it, adding a touch of cheer to the otherwise Spartan desk.

Kurby glanced at the jar, smirking slightly to himself, and settled into his chair, prepared to dive into his work for the day.

Sitting on top of the paperwork stack was a purple Ministry memo addressed to all Werewolf Wing employees.  Kurby didn’t even bother to read it; he crumpled it up and tossed the paper ball at his rubbish bin, banking it in with practiced ease.  Next priority were a few twitching Howlers that looked about ready to explode.  He chucked those into his bottom desk drawer, which at one point years ago he’d enchanted to be fireproof, and sealed the drawer shut with a Sticking Charm.  After a moment’s thought, he added Silencio for good measure.

With the first two priorities taken care of, he slid his chair back, kicked his feet up on the edge of the desk, and began to sort through the rest of the paperwork.

He was still parsing through the stack forty-five minutes later -- a collection of reports that members of the Capture Unit had completed on Monday while he’d been out, forms for transferring their prisoners over to Level Two's custody, missives from the Auror Office, and other non-Howler letters complaining about the Daily Prophet article from Saturday -- when he heard the sounds of the rest of the office starting to arrive behind him.  The mood seemed more subdued than usual, with less chatter than was typical for the start of the workday. Kurby didn't question it; a quiet office meant more opportunity to get things done, and he'd take every minute that he could get before January.

It wasn't until a few minutes had passed until he heard the sound of shuffling footsteps approaching his desk.   A moment later came the well-practiced sound of Gervais Bellingham clearing his throat.

“Bagnold.”  The other Capture Unit member paused awkwardly, eyeing him as if trying to determine what kind of mood he were in. Bellingham was a bit older, in his late forties, and had been in the WCU for even longer than Kurby had.  ”How was your weekend?”

Kurby grunted, not looking up from the summary from Pratt that he was reading through.

Bellingham cleared his throat again awkwardly, apparently not taking the hint from the lack of response.  ”Did you, err, see the department memo from yesterday?”

Apparently, he wasn’t going to be left alone. Annoyed, Kurby paused what he was doing, looking up at the other wizard. 

Bellingham eyed him uncomfortably. ”There’s a new Werewolf Wing head,” he volunteered awkwardly.

The werewolf hunter blinked.  “Alright,” he said after a beat, returning his attention back to his stack of paperwork.  Too often, it seemed like Werewolf Wing employees came and went like a warm, fickle breeze, blowing intermittently through the underbelly of a cursed Knockturn shop.  Most of the time, he ignored them.

But his coworker wouldn’t leave him alone. ”I think you should probably prioritize meeting this one,” he said, a low urgency in his voice.

Kurby rolled his eyes.  Bellingham was a worrier, and sometimes he acted like he was everyone else’s anxious parent.

 “Later,” he said dismissively, not looking up.

”No,” Bellingham insisted.  ”Bagnold, listen.  I really think you should go talk to her now, before she —“

Exasperated, Kurby thrust the stack of papers down at his desk.  “Bellingham, I don’t care!” he snapped, turning to peg the other wizard with a hard glare.  “Alright?  I don’t give a bleedin’ damn who the head of the Werewolf Wing is now!” he snarled. “It could be a bleedin’ werewolf and I still wouldn’t care!  I'm goin' to get my goddamned work done, and then I'll deal with whatever time-wastin' sycophant this place is tryin' to foist on me now!"

1.	December 17 - Grants Sentenced in Werewolf Attacks

M – language used

The noise drew her from her office, and Bruce rose her eyebrows when she realised that it was a decidedly familiar voice, even if she’d not heard it in years. The back of his head was all that she had a view of right now, but from the expression on Bellingham’s face, it was enough.

Bruce chose to quietly approach the desk from behind, a challenge when she relied on her walking stick. Either she had clearly managed such a feat, or Bagnold was so busy snarling at Bellingham that he’d lost awareness of what was around him. One hand in her trouser pocket and her other gripping the cane tightly, Bruce drew to a stop a couple of metres behind him. She let him snarl and snipe at the poor wizard trying to warn him. She stood through him calling his new boss a time-wasting sycophant. The whole time, her gaze was on Bellingham rather than the back of Bagnold’s head. Her lips were pressed together and it wasn’t clear whether she found the situation amusing or irritating.

It would be a lie to say that Bruce wasn’t still angry and upset with Bagnold. They’d been close when she’d headed the WCU. He’d been her second in command. They’d trusted the other with their life, and they’d been friends. But, since the attack that had turned her, she’d not seen or heard from it. Her entire life had been flip turned and her friend had dropped her like a bag of werewolf excrement.

“Well that’s a relief.” The Welsh witch finally spoke, her voice soft. She had an audience now, and wasn’t exactly out here to make a scene. “That could have been really fucking awkward if you had an issue with your boss being a werewolf.” From her trouser pocket, she removed a galleon and threw it in Bellingham’s direction. “Good call. He is still an arse hole.”

He caught the look on Bellingham's face an instant before the voice cut in.

All of the color drained from Kurby's face.  Silently, he dropped his feet back onto the floor, and then turned slowly and deliberately in his chair to face the new division head of the Werewolf Wing.

The last time that he'd seen Iona Ballentyne had been burned into his memory in vivid, searing detail.  Seeing her standing in the Capture Unit office now might as well have been like seeing a ghost.  She was dressed more smartly than he could ever remember her before, cargo shorts traded for professional robes and her wild red curls mostly tamed.  The cane in her hand was another new addition; Kurby instinctively glanced at her left leg, took in the awkwardness in her stance that hadn't been there three years before.

Next to him, Bellingham caught the galleon in one hand.  Kurby immediately shot an aggrieved look at the other wizard, but his coworker avoided making eye contact, instead seizing the opportunity to flee back in the direction of his desk.

He realized that the office was silent enough to hear a wand drop.  The Werewolf Capture Unit had gone through a nearly complete turnover since Ballentyne's days in charge.  and the Ides of March attacks two years ago had been devastating on their numbers.  Most of the team now didn't know her, but they knew of her -- one of the Capture Unit's many cautionary tales, a former leader who had fallen and turned because of a stupid mistake in the heat of an attack.  Now, they were all watching him to see how he would react to this, to prepare to follow his cue.

Without a word, he looked back at Ballentyne again, his expression kept carefully unreadable.

"Bettin' against me bein' an arsehole is a good way to lose your first paycheck."  The words came out sounding calmer than he felt right now, with a storm starting to roil inside of him.  Kurby took a deep breath and met his former comrade's gaze.

"Welcome back," he said quietly, dark eyes locked on her.  "I didn't realize Carter had some sort of furry hirin' quota he was tryin' to meet before the new year."

Iona knew he wouldn’t be happy. She’d talked through it with Zora on Sunday night. She was prepared for hell from him. It had, however, been decided that her giving him hell would get her nowhere. Iona was never going to forgive him for cutting her off when they had been friends. Her career had been ended and her life completely changed, and he’d walked off into the distance to pretend none of that had ever happened. She wanted to hex him and to tear him apart and let him see how it felt. But then she’d be fitting every prejudgement of what a werewolf was.

Breath caught in her throat when the wizard turned in his seat to face her. He’d never looked at her like that before. 3 years ago, she’d stopped being his colleague and boss, and become the monster that he risked his life hunting.

"Bettin' against me bein' an arsehole is a good way to lose your first paycheck." The wizard’s first words to her in 3 years came. Bruce, not even close to wanting to back down, smirked. Her eyebrows rose, agreeing with him. She still had control of her reaction.

Until he looked her in the eye and tried to drive a knife in to her gut. Bruce hadn’t even noticed her unnaturally tight grip on her cane, her fingers turning white.
Silence had fallen in the office amongst the team that she didn’t recognise.
Silence had fallen between Bruce and Bagnold.

Her expression was hard, but not angry. She had so many choices in how to play this, but she had to play it right. They may as well have been dogs about to have a pissing contest up a tree. She had to piss higher and faster. It was like a standoff between wolves. Facing down their prey. Only now, Iona was the wolf and she’d always been very good at playing the game.

“Thank you.” Her lips and face smiled. Her eyes didn’t. “I’m the equal opportunities hire. Gay disabled werewolf ticks a lot of boxes.”

“This is how this is going to go down, Mr Bagnold,” Bruce’s voice dropped, barely audible. “You’re going to stand up and shake my hand. You’re going to tell me how pleased you are that someone competent is in charge, and then you’re going to put on your big boy pants and follow me to my office.” There was no alternative given.

The werewolf hunter studied her silently, his expression cool as he deliberated.  After a long moment, he rose silently to his feet and started for the door to the hallway, breezing past her without a word.

This early in the morning, over a week after the full moon, the Werewolf Wing of the Department of Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures was largely quiet.  Kurby kept his mouth shut as he started down the hallway, his gaze steady ahead of him  He didn't need the werewolf and her uneven gait to lead him to the Division Head's office a few doors down, didn't need to play into her stupid game of dominance like he was twenty-five again and following obediently at her heel.

He waited just outside for her to enter first.  This new workspace hadn't had time to develop any of the controlled chaos of Ballentyne's tiny office when she'd been Werewolf Capture Unit Head.  Kurby glanced over the room impassively as he entered, twisting at one of the silver rings on his right hand.  It was much bigger than what she'd had before, when they'd spent plenty of time crammed into her tight space, going over the team's plans for the next full moon or shooting the shit during the quieter days in the middle of the month.  On the corner of the desk, he spotted one personal touch: a framed photo similar to the ones she'd kept around the office years ago, showing Ballentyne and her small family.

It felt like something hard was stuck in his throat.  Silently, Kurby turned to face his former mentor, shifting so that he had a wall behind him.  Eyebrows raised, he waited, regarding her with a stoic expression. 

The moment between Bruce’s order and Bagnold finally standing seemed to last an eternity, each other simply staring the other out. Unsurprisingly, he didn’t extend his hand. He walked past her, back out onto the corridor. Bruce grit her teeth together, and without a word to any of the audience, turned and followed him, considerably slower. Squaring up to him wasn’t the way to go, she knew. But anger was an unpredictable thing. Anger when you were a werewolf was even more unpredictable. In the corridor, Bagnold now stood outside her office, looking like someone had just thrown up in his breakfast cereal. Clearly, that was how he felt, with a few extra fur balls thrown in for good measure.

Bruce took her time in arriving at the office door. The wooden base of her cane click clicking on the floor as the only sound between the pair. The door, already labelled as the office of Iona Ballentyne was already open, and she stepped inside, moving around the desk where she rested the stick and eased herself down into the chair with a grimace. All the extended time on her feet was wearing quickly.

The office itself was bare, but would no doubt be for long. Bruce had a habit of claiming a space as her own. She’d outgrown her own little desk in the WCU as a young excited apprentice, and had left a mess in her last office. It looked, she remembered, like a werewolf have probably been let loose in there. Soon this one would. But now, there was a werewolf in it.

He was staring at her, waiting.

“I’m glad you took the promotion. You’d have been my first choice.” She said calmly, leaning back in the chair and studying him carefully. “You didn’t take the office, though. How come?”

Kurby watched silently and appraisingly as his former colleague gingerly moved around the desk, lowering herself to sit with a grimace. This was a new version of a witch who had once moved so surely and confidently, a good reminder that his former mentor and friend had been irreversibly changed for the worst during that awful full moon over three years before. They’d all been taken by surprise that night, ambushed by an entire pack when they’d expected only one unregistered werewolf. Harfooey had paid for their mistakes with his life. Bruce had possibly suffered worse.

He had to remember that. This wasn’t the comrade that he’d followed and fought alongside for so long, not entirely. However she might look or act, however he might feel uneasy about taking a stand and setting himself against her, Ballentyne had been turned into a monster. A few years ago, she would have been the first to warn him against her.

Kurby nearly snorted at the comment about the Werewolf Capture Unit. Took the promotion was one way to put it. He’d scrapped for it, fought for over a year for a job that he’d been by far the most qualified and prepared for. It hadn’t been until Mainwaring had retired for a second time, until Dugan Macduff had been dealt with and clear leadership was needed, that Griffon Manley, the Department Head at the time, had finally granted him a chance at the role.

The question about the Capture Unit Head’s office made him pause, his brows knitting almost imperceptibly.

“No windows,” he said after a beat. He cocked an eyebrow at her, as if daring her to challenge his version of events. “Reckon I should’ve told you to hold out for better furnishings when they were movin’ us over from the Beast Division.”

No windows. Bruce would have laughed had she not been so on edge. She met his eyebrow raise with lips pressed together. He continued on to mention the move from Beasts to their own division. During that time, Bruce had resolutely stuck it out in her original office until she’d been forced out. She hadn’t liked change back then. She liked it even less now.

A quick glance was cast at the enchanted windows to her left. They gave a view of what could have been outside, and bathed the room in a natural feeling light. It stopped the office feeling like they were in a broom cupboard, or what it was, an underground pit.

“I liked the broom cupboard.” Bruce had always been convinced that the office had been a repurposed cupboard used by the Ministry Maintenance to keep cleaning potions and have a secret smoke of gillyweed. “And the constant aroma of gillyweed.”

She hadn’t called him in to talk about weed smoking cleaners or enchanted windows, however. Iona frowned as she considered the words she’d planned out. Zora’s advice when she’d asked how she could handle this situation? “Fuck him.” But she couldn’t just ignore her direct subordinate. She couldn’t just ignore what he’d done and treat him like anyone else on her team.

“You were an abysmal friend, you know that?” Her blue eyes danced over his face. “I needed a friend.”

The werewolf hunter regarded her for a moment as something flickered through his expression. He dropped his gaze to the ground for a moment, swallowing, and then raised his dark eyes to meet her blue ones again.

“You want to have a go at me over somethin’ personal, then we can schedule a time outside of work to do that,” he said quietly. “But I’ve got a lot already that I need to get done before January, so I’d like to hear what you’re plannin’ to add to my workload.”

He left the second half of the thought — that he’d decide how much he was willing to comply with once he knew what the situation would look like — unsaid.

Zora had been right. She should have just left it because clearly Kurby Bagnold wasn’t worth her spit. Iona, unfortunately, was really bad at just leaving things and she was presented with a reaction she should have expected. Bagnold was never going to face up to what he’d done because there were no excuses. He’d bailed, and that, as Zora had insisted, said a lot more about him than it did her.

“Sit down.” She stopped any other words from coming out for a moment, and gave herself some thinking time and stood from her chair, moving tentatively to where there was a kettle and come cups. Having given the order/request, Bruce didn’t look at the wizard. He took his time in deciding if he was going to obey or not, but finally he parked his rear and she looked back up. She pointed her wand into the kettle and muttered “aguamenti”

“I need everything you have on the direwolf appearances.” Getting down to business when there was so much unsaid seemed wrong. But she’d go with it. “Any reports from your team, confirmed sightings etc.” Bruce dropped a couple of spoons of coffee into 2 cups. “Carter gave me a quick synopsis of the situation on the 11th but I’d rather hear it from someone on the scene at the zoo.” Iona turned and fixed her gaze on his while the kettle began to boil. She leaned back against the bookshelf and stared at him expectantly.

Ballentyne barked orders just as easily as she ever did.  Kurby stayed where he was, arms crossed against his chest, as he considered the ramifications of following or not following this one. 

Never show weakness.  It had been the tenet of the Werewolf Capture Unit for as long as he'd been part of it.  Iona Ballentyne had followed that rule once as well.  As soon as a werewolf started thinking that he or she was dominant, the situation during the next full moon became considerably more dangerous.  And here Ballentyne was, furry herself, and determined to bark at him until he fell into line.

There was an advantage, though, to picking and choosing his battles.  Kurby silently took a chair, just slowly enough to make it clear that he'd decided to listen.  He needed to get a better sense of the situation, to figure out the limits and bounds of the changed Ballentyne, before he made a decision about how to play this.

Now that the shock of seeing his onetime mentor again was wearing off, a distinctly uneasy sensation was rising in his stomach.  He'd thought that he had a decent working relationship with Alec Carter, but then Carter had apparently brought in a werewolf without telling him and briefed her on the case that the Werewolf Capture Unit was working.  He hadn't given Kurby a head's up; hadn't warned him.  For all the werewolf hunter knew, Ballentyne could have been brought back expecting to slot right back into her old role, minus the duties of the full moon.

Ballentyne wasted no time in jumping right to the point.  This was the danger of people turning:  it was too easy to fall back into old rhythms, to simply hand over control to the werewolf and tell her whatever she wanted to know.  Kurby rubbed a hand over his face, considering the ramifications of possible responses.

Hell -- if he was going to have to figure out how to navigate this, he might as well jump straight into identifying the hazards.

"Let me rephrase my question first, then," he said steadily, meeting her gaze.  "Nobody from the Werewolf Wing's ever given more than a passin' damn about Werewolf Capture Unit work before.  Now you're apparently steppin' in, without anybody botherin' to explain to me how or why there're changes."  He raised his eyebrows at her challengingly.  "Are you expectin' to be makin' all the calls from here on out?"

This was, Bruce knew, going to be a slow process where she would have to fight tooth and nail to get heard and be accepted again. She knew this too well because, years ago, she would have reacted like Bagnold. There was a reason they didn’t have werewolves working for the Werewolf Wing other than the mentors. Members of the Werewolf Capture Unit risked their lives on a monthly basis to protect the public from the monsters; they did not want to be sharing an office with one. But things had changed and Iona’s perspective had changed.

She wasn’t surprised, therefore, that Bagnold wasn’t ready with a plethora of information to divulge her in this moment.

So, she heard him out, leaning back against the bookshelf with her hands in her pockets. All weight was either on her right leg or the wooden structure behind her. She shook her head.
“Not at all. You know I’m not a dictator.” What did Kurby really know about her anymore? What did Bruce really know about herself? She’d lost herself for 3 years. But what she did know, was that she’d always worked as a team. When necessary, she’d pulled rank and barked commands, but, for the most part, she’d been the leader. Leaders listened.

After a pause, Bruce turned back around and finished the coffees. She took her time over it before picking up both cups and hobbling back to the desk. One cup was placed in front of Kurby, and the other on her own side of the desk. Clearly uncomfortable, Bruce pressed her lips together as she made her way back around the desk and dropped into her seat.

“No one from outside of the WCU has had to watch their comrades being ripped limb from limb on the full moon.” Bruce stated when she sat forward in the chair and rested her elbows on the desk. “Your job is to prevent that from happening. Your job, Bagnold, has suddenly gotten a lot bigger than you, and Carter sees that. I’m here to facilitate and make sure that you have the time to do your job properly.”

Without missing a beat, Bruce smirked, the usual grin that she’d always had before dishing out an inappropriate joke.
“Think of me as your furry godmother.”

Kurby stayed silent as Ballentyne finished making the coffee, settled into her chair, and began to speak -- not talking, not fidgeting, just listening.

On parchment, it was what he would have wanted to hear.  The past week, the past month had been overwhelming, and there was still January to prepare for.  If it had been a normal situation with an old comrade coming back as Werewolf Wing head, he would have jumped on board in a second.  Part of him, too, couldn't help but miss the old, easy camaraderie that the Capture Unit had once had.  That had all come crashing down after March 2009, when they'd lost so many.

Ballentyne's crack made him give a snort.  Kurby rolled his eyes at the joke, just so she'd know that her sense of humor still wasn't funny, and then sighed and glanced away.

"The werewolf thing is a problem," he said at last, looking back at her directly. 

It was, in too many ways.  He didn't have any idea what she'd be like now, if he could trust her to keep her temper under control or really put the Capture Unit first.  More than that, having her here set a precedent.  Even if he considered tolerating this as a test case for now, if he found a way to navigate the horrible appearance of reporting to a werewolf and swallowed his own misgivings about having anything to do with one that he'd once known personally, it wasn't true that every werewolf would similarly be able to be hypothetically tolerated.  If he didn't push back hard against this now, he risked losing the ability to fight it in the future.

"What would you have done, then?" he asked, dark eyes watching hers.  "If Gertrudis had come to you and said she was puttin' a werewolf in charge, I can't imagine you thinkin' it was all grand and goin' along with a smile."

Bruce did not need telling that the werewolf thing was a problem. The werewolf thing had been her biggest problem for the last three years. The werewolf thing had seen her experience more pain than she’d imagined she could. It had seen her dropped from her job and changed in the eyes of so many. Kurby did not need to tell her it was a problem because she knew.

The million-galleon question was thrown at her and Bruce remained in her chair, silent. She didn’t shift or fidget, but she did look down at her hands as she considered her response. when she did reply, her words were clearly carefully chosen and carefully spoken, her soft welsh accent adding an extra lilt.
“That depends.” She looked back up at him. “Is this werewolf a stranger, or an old comrade? Is it someone that I once trusted my life with, or someone off the street?”

Pausing, she took a sip of coffee.

“That matters, you see. If Gertudis had told me she’d hired some unknown werewolf as my boss, I’d have refused to work with them. I’d have also told her that she was fucking insane. But, had she told me it was my old boss? Someone I knew and trusted? Maybe I’d have been less stubborn?”

“It’s an impossible call to make, hypothetically. It’s one you have to make now, though. I’m still Bruce, something you’d known if you hadn’t dropped me like a shack of wolf shit.”

There was a moment where he was almost, almost willing to buy it.  Not that Bruce Ballentyne would have accepted a werewolf as a supervisor — even if it had been Theobald Mainwaring himself, he couldn’t picture his predecessor in the Werewolf Capture Unit suffering an affront like that.  But the world was a different place now than it had been three years ago.  The direwolf situation had stretched their resources to the breaking point, and the threat of Tawse meant they could no longer sustainably carry on in isolation if they still wanted to protect the public.

In theory, the argument made sense.  He had trusted her once, and it wasn’t as if he’d been doing things entirely by the established spellbook for the past three years anyhow.  He’d willingly accepted help from a vampire two months ago, and Lazarus had proven indispensable during the ambush.  Giving Ballentyne a similar chance despite her furry-ness seemed a reasonable risk to take.  If she was really able to act as an advocate for them in the Ministry, it could help set up the Capture Unit with the resources they needed to survive the current crisis while taking a considerable load off his own shoulders.  He could swallow his pride and suck up his distaste for almost any situation if it meant keeping more people safe.

But...

Her last comment made his brows knit slightly.  The Bruce Ballentyne that he remembered, the one who’d run the Capture Unit for eight long years, had never had much of a temper.  She’d always been the one to keep her mouth shut and her responses measured in interest of getting what she wanted; she’d even laid into him for running his mouth off plenty of times.  Taking a couple of cheap shots at him when it was in her interests to re-establish their working relationship seemed out of character.

Werewolves were known for having a temper.  That was one reason why they were so dangerous, and not only in a physical sense: they were easy to goad into aggressive, rash decisions, and they couldn’t be trusted to keep their cool under pressure.

That was not a characteristic that he was willing to risk in a supervisor, especially if said supervisor was going to have to help him grapple with Cinaed Tawse.

“So you want me to keep my mouth shut about my misgivings and give this a chance,” he said easily, his eyes locked on the werewolf.  “But that’s the second time in five minutes that you’ve taken a shot at me.  Are you all in on makin’ this work too, Ballentyne?”