1130 hours, office of Harper Graves.


She had a hangover from hell and only her parents to blame. Harper came into work in her sweats - grandpa's old Harvard hoodie and the comfiest trousers she could find that wasn't any older than their youngest intern. It was Christmas eve and she had zero interest in dressing up for work when half of everyone on the floor had taken off for the holidays. Her mom and dad were technically on holidays too.

They were touring vineyards in Europe, and had dropped by her cottage last night to stay on for celebrations. Because nothing said Merry Christmas! like watching your seventy year old parents drink equally ancient brandy and giggle over old copies of Witch Weekly.

It was a nice change from going to New York for the winter, she guessed. At least she could still come into work.

           "Miss Graves?" An intern peeked through her open door. "Do you need me for anything?"

"No, you can take an early lunch if you want." Harper replied, still reading the latest Musgrave report from Mysteries and St.Mungo's. "Get me a hangover potion on your way back?" The bright young thing disappeared down the passageway and Harper turned a page in her folder with a frown. Everyone on nine wrote like they were trying to mean two opposite things at the same time. Or three, if that was possible.

She shut the report and dropped it on one of several stacks on the disorganised desk. Why even bother today? This could wait. Everything could wait. Harper leaned back in her chair and shut her eyes, trying to ignore the throbbing headache. Level two was kind of peaceful for a moment, and the wrinkle between her brows smoothed out.

And then somebody knocked on her door. Harper groaned, covering her eyes with her hands. "Come in!" she called out and made an effort to sit up straight.

The Ministry was practically a graveyard that morning.  Saturdays were typically quiet enough, but with Christmas the next day, he'd barely seen another soul on Level Four since he'd arrived.  Despite the approaching holiday, Kurby had come in to get a few hours of work done while he still could.  Christmas hardly meant that the lunar calendar stopped ticking down:  with the new moon slated to darken the sky that night, the countdown to January's full moon was now halfway over.  There was only a little over two weeks remaining until the next apex of the lunar cycle. 

He'd gotten together what he could for the interdepartmental meeting that was scheduled for after the holiday, and then stopped by the Auror office to hand a few things over.  Then, on a whim, he'd decided to take the long way back to the lift and swing by the law offices to see if anyone was still there.

After Harper Graves' holiday party recounting of the sinister delivery of the silver handcuffs, Kurby had meant to drop by earlier in the week to examine them, but after everything that had happened, the days had quickly gotten away from him.  He was half-surprised to see that the door to her office was still open, with a light obviously on inside.  The werewolf hunter paused for half a beat, and then adjusted his course, heading over to rap on her door.

The groan that greeted him was certainly less professional than he had been expecting, but it was nearly enough to make him crack an unexpected grin.

"Uh, alright then?" he asked, peering at Graves from the open doorway with an expression halfway between concern and bemusement.  The American defense attorney usually seemed completely on her Quidditch game, even with her furry sidekick in tow, but now she was sans George and looking like the holidays had already run her over.  Kurby typically made it at least to Christmas morning before he was shielding his eyes from bright lights like that, but to each their own.

He cleared his throat in an unsuccessful attempt to hide his smile, pausing next to the door.  "Sorry -- I had some extra time before I had to head out today, so I reckoned I'd drop in to see if you had a second to show me those handcuffs," he said, nearly straight-faced.  "But I didn't intend on interruptin'.  I can stop in sometime next week instead."

Kurby Bagnold was not who she expected to be visiting on Christmas eve. They weren't anywhere near a full moon and for a very brief second she wondered if he had heard something horrible about Greer or the Grants. But no. He just stood at the doorway looking perfectly put together and perfectly not-hungover, saying words and being human. Harper didn't feel human. She felt like something George had found on a wet day in the middle of a Surrey field.

The witch rubbed the back of her head, messing up her hair bun as she tried to make sense of the words. Was he smiling? She squinted at him with the vexation of someone who wasn't really vexed. He better not be laughing at her.

"No, um. It's okay." Harper gave herself a shake and pushed her chair back to get up. "You're not interrupting anything I should have known well enough to circumvent. And I think I have a hangover potion to look forward to later."

She opened her drawer to grab a set of keys before heading towards Kurby, sneakers dragging a little. "Handcuffs are in the evidence room but I'm not sure why you'd want to look at them. Aurors couldn't find anything on them."

Just plain old silver. Didn't even boast a maker's mark, or at least one that level two knew how to spot. Her report had been logged and was presumably undergoing investigation; she didn't have high hopes for catching the culprit, she just wanted it to go on the record as a hate crime committed in their offices.

Harper ushered the werewolf hunter out into the corridor, conscientiously locking the door behind her. It shimmered with magic as the key turned in the lock.

"To be honest," she glanced at him, her mouth tugging into a grim smile,  "I half-expected something else to happen, you know, after the trial? But it's been dead as a doornail around here. As you can see."

There was something inherently funny about seeing the normally put-together lawyer looking under the weather, especially if it was the result of her own doing.  With anyone else, Kurby might have seized the opportunity to get a few digs in; with Graves, he settled for merely raising his eyebrows at her, although he didn't do much to hide his bemused expression.

He wasn't surprised that the Aurors hadn't found anything identifiable on the silver handcuffs.  Leaving them on Graves' desk here in the middle of Level Two was a bold enough statement; whoever had done it had surely known that the unwanted gift would be handed directly to the Aurors. 

Kurby stepped back, letting her direct him back to the hallway.  The defense attorney, he noted, took the time to lock her door, wards shimmering behind her.  That was reassuring, at least: it was far better to take extra precautions and stay safe than it was to stay relaxed and expose oneself to too many risks.

He'd been a bit surprised, too, that there hadn't been any follow-up after the verdict.  The handcuffs had been delivered to Greer's lawyer when the hearing was still pending.  Perhaps whoever it was had just wanted to make a point, to scare Graves off the case -- but the mysterious sender couldn't be happy about the verdict.  It didn't help that Greer would be a lot more exposed once she was at Hogwarts and not with a Ministry guardian who could easily screen her mail.  One more reason for him to talk to Greyfriar before school resumed.

"Maybe whoever's been sendin' it overspent their Christmas budget," Kurby said, flashing Graves a sharp grin in return. "Or they've been takin' some time off with family for the holidays."

He shrugged, glancing easily down the hallway behind them.  It was almost eerie, seeing Level Two so nearly empty.  He let the lawyer lead the way towards the evidence locker.

"We've been gettin' a bit of noise, but it's mostly been directed at Carter and our new Werewolf Wing head," he said matter-of-factly. His fireproof desk drawer was now a third-full with Howler ash, but he'd mostly kept his head down on that front.   "No gifts, though.  Reckon you and Spectre's kid must have struck more of a nerve somehow."

Okay, he was definitely laughing at her. On the inside. At least he wasn't an auror - they'd hold it over her head if they ever caught the competent Ms Graves hungover and slovenly before Christmas had even begun.

Harper led them down the corridor towards the locker, slipping the keys into her pocket while they talked. She wrinkled her nose in distaste as he joked that the culprit might be spending time with their family for the holidays. That was probably true... it could have been anyone, from the creepy assistants who ate cup noodles at their desks to the charming family men and their badly timed knock-knock jokes.

            "We've been gettin' a bit of noise... directed at Carter and our new Werewolf Wing head."

"Yeah?" she snorted as they turned into the next passageway, and she pulled her lanyard out from underneath her hoodie collar. The idea of a werewolf bossing Kurby around made her grin a little.

He didn't look like he took kindly to being bossed. "How's that going for you guys anyway, actual werewolf leading the wing?"

A few apoplectic hams on level two had told her more than she needed to know about anti-werewolf sentiment in her department anyway. That's what made it so hard to narrow down a list of suspects, there was lots of people made uncomfortable by werewolf talk. Harper waved her badge at the wizard behind the locker window, giving him a moment to log their entry.

"If we did strike a nerve, it's only a matter of time..." the witch trailed off pensively while they waited for the door to be opened. "You know, acting under the supposition that the twine and handcuffs are connected, I don't think the next move will involve Hogwarts or the Ministry."

Investigating crimes wasn't Harper's job but after a few years of working with criminals, it was second instinct to make an educated guess.

It seemed like that was the question of the week: How’s that going?  When his former boss and mentor had been werewolf-ified three years ago, she’d left what felt like a Bruce Ballentyne-sized hole in the Werewolf Capture Unit.  Over the past few years, he’d gradually learned to ignore it, to move on despite it, to turn his former friend into a cautionary tale for new recruits about not taking stupid risks and wearing proper gear.  But now she was back in the thick of things, and it felt like that wound had been torn asunder all over again.

So far, he’d been keeping his head down, mostly complying with requests and doing his best to stay out of the line of fire.  Maybe he was getting too old or too tired, but there were plenty of battles to fight right now that didn’t involve Iona Ballentyne. The one lone conflict where he’d been prepared to stand his ground was the Grant family.  Whatever Ballentyne thought, he still stood by the decision he’d made.

Graves didn’t need to know all of that, though.  Kurby rolled his shoulders in an easy, non-committal shrug. 

“Ask me after the next full moon,” he said evenly.  That would be the real test, after all: how well Carter’s grand idea held together under pressure.

They’d reach Level Two’s evidence room.  Kurby paused, waiting behind Harper as she presented her badge and waited for the Level Two official to admit them.

”…I don't think the next move will involve Hogwarts or the Ministry.”

The werewolf hunter paused, his brows furrowing slightly.  He’d been busy enough over the past week dealing with Ballentyne and Nemo and everything else that he hadn’t spared a lot of thoughts for their mysterious gift-sender, aside from concluding that whatever Greyfriar thought of his involvement, he intended to follow up on the two incidents.

“Aye?” he asked, glancing sidelong at her.  “What d’you reckon, then?”

The door opened and Harper led them into the evidence room, laughing at Kurby's measured response to Ballentyne's appointment. After the next full moon. Was it weird that she was starting to feel nervous about full moons, ever since Greer's case? Used to be that she wasn't even aware of the lunar cycle but now the date was circled in red on her mental calendar: 9th of January.

            "Aye? What d’you reckon, then?"

They passed the first few shelves, stopping at the third so that she could reach up for a small box at eye level. Harper looked at Kurby just to make sure he wasn't being sarcastic - making fun of the lawyer who was trying to play detective. No... he was genuinely asking for her opinion.

Harper couldn't help smiling a little at that. God, that was sad. She didn't realise how jaded it made her to work around lawyers and law enforcement

"I reckon," the witch mimicked his accent jokingly, "that it's going to be a private individual targeted next. We're on our guard now, both Greyfriar and level two, so pulling the same stunt would take a bigger effort right?"

She gestured for him to follow her again, this time to a door at the far side that would take them to the examination room where the officers and aurors could sit down to more thoroughly examine case evidence. "Some werewolf down on their luck, the kind we don't pay attention to until they're in trouble on the wrong side of the law."

Kurby titled his head to the side thoughtfully, listening to the defense attorney's words as he matched her pace to the small examination room.  Some down-on-their-luck werewolf like Savvina Katopodis, who would have surely matched Harper's predicted qualities if she hadn't been snatched up by Cináed Tawse first. 

It was easy to imagine the sort of person who might deliver silver handcuffs to Greer Grant's attorney and send a werewolf hunting book to a Hogwarts student picking at the edges of society like that.  The sort of werewolf that the defense attorney was describing might never trust the Ministry enough to report an incident like this; they'd certainly never want to involve him or to risk attracting the ire of the Werewolf Capture Unit.  It was likely that they might miss it happening altogether.

He waited for Graves to open the door to the examination room, and then followed her inside, freeing his wand as she set the box down on the table.  "Might be worth askin' the werewolf mentors to keep their ears open, then," he remarked, his gaze already focused on the small container.  "Maybe they'll hear of something happenin'."

 That would probably not go over well if he were the one doing the asking.  He'd been one of the biggest disparagers of the Werewolf Mentor program since the whole thing had started three years ago.  But this sort of thing was what Iona Ballentyne claimed to be here for, wasn't it?  If she wanted to bill herself as his furry godmother, then she could take on the parts of the job that he didn't enjoy, like trying to make peace with the rest of the Werewolf Wing.

"I just worry that it's goin' to start escalating," he said, dark eyes flicking over to meet Graves' again.  "Silver handcuffs and Tenacious Twine -- they both must've come from someone who knows werewolf huntin' and has money to spend on it.  There're a hell of a lot of easier and cheaper ways to threaten a werewolf."

Bagnold seemed deep in thought and she was sure that he had ideas of his own about what the next move might be. As they entered the room, she gave him a quick nod of affirmation - the werewolf mentors held an ear to the ground that most of them couldn't. As much as she cared for Greer and people like Greer, she couldn't completely understand where they were coming from. Not without being bitten anyway.

The examination room was a wood panelled space with four weathered tables that formed a square with a gap in the centre. There was a single chair in the corner but most examinations were done standing. She set down the box.

            "There're a hell of a lot of easier and cheaper ways to threaten a werewolf."

She frowned, opening her mouth and then closing it again. Harper lifted the lid of the box - the silver handcuffs were nestled in a protective black cloth, gleaming with their secret purpose and origin. It always struck her, how new they appeared to be.  "I have to admit," she finally spoke as she slid the box to the side so that Kurby could handle the things, "that I don't know a lot about werewolf hunting."

Weren't they just handcuffs made of silver? The guilty shackles looked more ominous in light of what the wizard next to her had said.

"So whoever did this, they've put a whole lot more thought into it than being purely symbolical?" she glanced at him, a grim expression hiding her alarm. "The twine and these cuffs, it's possible that someone could actually use them for werewolf hunting?"

The idea of anyone trying to handcuff Greer was chilling before but if that someone was a werewolf hunter....

"I have to admit," said the defense attorney, "that I don't know a lot about werewolf hunting."

The werewolf hunter laughed, flashing her a lopsided grin.  “Can’t imagine why not,” he countered cheerfully.  It was a better world when someone like Harper Graves didn’t have any reason to know anything about battling werewolves. 

“You might've gotten the better deal on career paths, to be honest," he informed her, smiling slightly as he turned to face the object of the hour. "More paperwork, more Auror-related headaches, and probably at least as long work hours, but at least the other side isn’t usually tryin’ to actually bite your head off.”

The silver handcuffs glinted inside the box, reflecting the light brightly in contrast with the black cloth background.  Kurby gestured with his wand, causing the metal object to levitate out of the box and float in midair over the desk.  With another wand flick, he caused the handcuffs to start slowly spinning, rotating gently in place.

“Aye, if it’s really Tenacious Twine that Greyfriar’s got, someone could use it,” he replied, a bit absently. His attention was focused on the handcuffs now, gaze locked on them as he examined them carefully.  “We use it too sometimes, dependin' on the month.  Level Four has a small store of it, but it’s expensive, so it’s shared between us and Beasts.”  Considering that the handcuffs had presumably originated from someone with access to Level Two, he probably ought to check to see if any of the Ministry's Tenacious Twine was missing.

It was obvious at first examination that the handcuffs were well-made.  They looked to be better constructed, the pieces smoother and more skillfully matched, than anything he might attempt.  If he had to guess just based on initial impressions, he would have bet that like the suspected Tenacious Twine, they were also capable of being used.

"Constitutivis revelio," he murmured.  He gestured with his wand, flicking it in a tight circle, which caused the silver handcuffs to take on a powder blue shimmer all along their edges.

Kurby glanced at Harper, his brows knitting.  “Whoever made these knew what they were doin’,” he said, nodding to the handcuffs as he narrated his thoughts out loud.  “It's almost pure silver, which I'd wager means there's some spells worked into the metal to strengthen it.  I think that the parts were all cast individually — either they had another identical set that they took apart and used to make the molds, or they spent a hell of a long time gettin’ everything to line up just right.”

            "...but at least the other side isn’t usually tryin’ to actually bite your head off."

"Oh yeah," she muttered with a self-deprecating smile as they watched the handcuffs lift into the air, "just my own side trying to do that." The Wizengamot was a real mess - you never knew who was on your side or which way the Elders were going to vote on any given matter - but criminal defence lawyers definitely got the shit end of the stick from all parties when it came to cases like Greer.

You either did your job too well or you didn't do it well enough. Harper could live with that, though. It was worth the trouble.

The witch fell into silence, watching Kurby examine the handcuffs. She had taken a look at them herself when the aurors were investigating the report but her inspection had been far more cursory than the one currently taking place. He knew what he was doing here and she was going to let him do his job the way he'd let her when it came to Greer's trial.

His findings weren't reassuring. Whoever had done this knew a lot more about werewolf hunting than she expected; to her it had been nothing more than a mean-spirited act, not necessarily by hands that had seen werewolf blood.

"So it wasn't easy for them to do this." Harper echoed the wizard's concern, crossing her arms over her chest as she met him in the eye. "We're looking at someone who's hunted werewolves before, maybe hunted them alone if he - or she - is the one who personally made these cuffs. But outside of what Tawse did, there hasn't really been any news about werewolves being captured..."

In human or non-human form. Harper looked at the silver cuffs again. "Is this his style? Cinaéd Tawse?" she couldn't picture it, for some reason. Especially the twine and book, that was too subtle. "Or one of his followers?"

Kurby had listened silently to the lawyer's summation, prepared to offer agreement.  He didn't know why the hell anyone would have child-sized silver handcuffs simply laying about, even if they'd been involved with hunting werewolves before.  It seemed like, for some reason, either Greer or Harper had offended someone badly enough that their mysterious werewolf-hater had decided to create a threatening object special for the occasion.

Harper went on, and the conversation took a turn he wasn't expecting.  "But outside of what Tawse did..."

The werewolf hunter started, surprise showing on his face for an instant before he gave Harper an extraordinarily sharp look.

As far as he knew, the incident involving Tawse had been kept fairly locked down.  It wasn't as if it was completely a secret -- they'd kept the details out of the papers, but he would have been surprised if there were anyone on Level Four who hadn't realized that something had happened with the Werewolf Capture Unit, considering how they'd all been rushing about since the full moon.  But the circumstances involving Savvina Katopodis hadn't been publicized.  He wasn't sure how he felt about that leaking out on Level Two.

But Carstairs clearly trusted Harper Graves.  He'd assigned her -- or asked her, or whatever -- to defend Lawrence Musgrave, who was probably the highest profile criminal in Ministry custody since Theodora Kingstreet.  Maybe he'd already decided to give her Katopodis and filled her in accordingly.

"Uh," he said after a beat, recovering his composure.  "I'm not exactly MLE, so I dunno if I'm the best one to speak to that."  As cooperative as they'd been recently, the Aurors would certainly never let anyone forget that the Werewolf Capture Unit were dog catchers, not dark wizard hunters.  Even so, he'd had more contact with Cináed Tawse than anyone from Level Two had had in over two years.  He wasn't about to let them forget that, either.

Kurby paused, glancing back at the slowly rotating handcuffs for a moment.  There were a couple of other spells he wanted to try to see if there were any enchantments worked into the metal, but the examination could pause for the moment.

"If I had to guess, I wouldn't think so," he said, giving Harper a cautious look.  "Maybe he'd be interested in needlin' Greyfriar, but I think the bone Tawse is pickin' is more with the Ministry and with Muggles, not with somebody like Greer. He didn't really strike me as the sort to go for subtle threats, anyway.  When his cousin was terrorizin' the Auror Office and sending 'em death threats a couple of years ago, MacDuff made sure everyone knew it."

He rolled his shoulders in an easy shrug, raising his wand again and turning towards the handcuffs.  "You've probably got more experience with gettin' a read on criminals than I do, though," he deferred.  "You reckon it might be Tawse?"

She regretted bringing up Tawse as soon as Kurby's expression changed, reminding Harper that she was bringing up a subject both sensitive and confidential. The incident at the London Zoo was talked about in vague terms on level two but involvement of the dark wizard himself wasn't exactly widespread information. On the QT, in fact. Her companion seemed to recover quickly enough.

Harper nodded as he imparted his thoughts - she was more or less of the same opinion after all, and he was right. What beef could Tawse possibly have with someone like Greer Grant?

             "You've probably got more experience...reckon it might be Tawse?"

"N-o," she began hesitantly, leaning against the adjacent table to sit on its ledge, "I don't think this is his modus operandi. And it's got, like, zilch to do with the Zoo thing. These cuffs, the twine. They feel like a really sharp nudge. Cinaéd Tawse is more like a shove, if you get me."

The subtle criminals were the ones that bothered her the most; you needed a particular kind of intelligence to derive pleasure from subtle crimes. Even Lawrence liked his offences to be theatrical and loud. Swarms of Dementors, blowing up the Cauldron. Not this... this feeling of being maliciously watched.

Harper sighed and rubbed the back of her head, laughing abruptly as she eyed Kurby. "Ah, fuck. I'm too hungover for this, sorry," she shot him an apologetic look, though it was imperilled by a little smile. "Look at me trying to play detective. I didn't mean to poke my nose into your business."

It was so easy to get sucked down the rabbit hole. Every time you did a trial, it was usually related to another trial or an ongoing case. Harper had a professional interest in what the aurors were investigating but she'd never been this curious before.

"I snuck a peek at Solomon's report," the admitted more sombrely, deciding to come clean. "That's how I knew about... about Tawse. What happened. You don't mind me asking if you're doing okay?"

Trying to connect the Kurby Bagnold in the report to the one in this examination room was... weirdly hard. She had just gotten around to looking at him like he was a normal guy instead of a werewolf catcher with an attitude problem and a penchant for jewellery.

The analogy about degrees of criminality in relation to the severity of bodily contact was enough to elicit a chuckle out of the werewolf hunter.  Kurby flashed the lawyer a grin, his shoulders relaxing slightly.  Cinaed Tawse was indeed the harassment level of a direct shove, if not considerably worse.

"Or a knee to the bleedin' stomach," he agreed cheerfully, not looking at all put off by any parallels to real life.

It raised a fair question, though.  Assuming that the silver handcuffs and the Tenacious Twine were connected, who the hell would have sent them?  The unwelcome 'gifts' weren't exactly causing the Ministry to grind to a halt.   Aside from the werewolf fighting ring that had been broken up much earlier that year, it had been years and years since they'd gotten wind of any illicit werewolf hunters making the rounds.

Harper was quick to back off the speculation, though, and perhaps not entirely because of her hangover.  Kurby gave her a sideways look, prepared to point out that he was really the one sticking his nose into her business, when she went a step further and confessed how she had found out about the incident at the London Zoo.

The werewolf hunter blinked, looking for a moment as if he weren't sure if he were supposed to be uncomfortable at being asked after or impressed that she'd stolen a look at one of Solomon Carstairs' classified files. 

"Naw, I'm fine," he said a bit quietly, giving a tight smile in her direction.  "At least our team all walked out of there."  In the end, all things considered, they'd been extremely lucky.  If Blake hadn't figured out the net spell, if Lazarus hadn't managed to take it down right when he did, the situation could have gotten a lot worse.

If, if, if.  Those were things to worry about in January.

"I reckon you've got as much of a right as any of us to play detective on this one, though," he added, changing the subject as he returned his attention to the slowly rotating handcuffs again.  Raising his wand, he cast a silent Specialis Revelio on them, brows knitting as he examined them carefully.  "You haven't noticed anything else odd besides the handcuffs, have you?  No one's been off around the office?"

            "Naw, I'm fine. At least our team all walked out of there."

Maybe he was. Harper was sure that if she asked Fauna how she was, the auror-in-training would have a more emotional and complex response; on account of being younger, yes, but also more comfortable sharing those thoughts. Even if Bagnold wasn't fine, he didn't seem at ease with saying so.

"Yeah," she moved on, smiling as she shrugged, "got to count our silver linings I guess."

That helped them to keep perspective. Cinaéd Tawse wasn't the end of the world after all: especially not if they kept challenging him, ideologically, and vilifying him to the press. Focusing on their little wins was part of the good fight. She watched Kurby further examine the cuffs, glad that he was fine playing along with her casual investigation of recent events.

"No, nothing beyond the usual." Harper answered, bringing her hoodie sleeves down over her hands. Thinking about the perpetrator working on level two always gave her a chill. "It's been tense because there were some big trials this winter but nothing else strange has happened here."

She paused, thoughts pulling themselves out of the thick miasma of a brandy hangover. Were they assuming that the person who put them on her desk was also the person who made them, or whose idea it was? "Metalworking isn't a common skill, right?" The witch looked at Kurby, studious. "I feel like there can't be many proficient metalworkers at the Ministry. That would be on hell of a hobby. We should be able to narrow them down."