27 December 2011
Tuesday @ 5:30pm
The Gates of Hogwarts Castle

The sun was well below the horizon when Knox Greyfriar approached the massive gates of Hogwarts, followed by a trio of floating lanterns. It was cold, but not intolerable, so he'd taken his sweet passive aggressive time leaving the empty castle and traversing the long road through the woods.

He carried in one hand a thick bluesmoke cigar, and in the other a steaming cup of tea. He enjoyed them both in turn. There was something about tension that seemed to inspire a haughty defiance in the old man, a deep relaxation that came from confidence of dealing with far worse things than Kurby Bagnold. But truth be told, Bagnold was among the most dangerous people he knew of. The key was to never let on he thought so.

The great boar statues, anticipating their master's whims, began the machinations of opening the gates. Slow, scraping and creaking in the cold and dark.

"Hope you weren't waiting too long," he lied, speaking to the figure standing on the other side.

The house call[1] was ostensibly about some werewolf wing nonsense, but Knox knew it was an excuse. There were a few reasons the head of the werewolf capture unit would be following up on what was essentially boilerplate paperwork. One reason could most certainly be a pretense for harassment. Another could be matters concerning Greer Grant; perhaps Knox should presume the latter in the interest of this preposterous inspection to go smoothly. Or not.

1.	26 Dec 2011 - On the Case

Opportunities to get out into the field felt few and far between these days.  With most of the recent troubles focused on London, it felt rarer still that he actually had an excuse to get out into the woods.  As much as he'd come tonight to deal with Capture Unit business, Kurby had decided to make the most of his visit by apparating to Hogsmeade and then taking an ambling, circuitous route to Hogwarts Castle.

There was a cold bite to the Scottish air tonight, but the chill felt refreshing more so than it did uncomfortable.  The werewolf hunter had come clad in a dark hooded cloak and dragonhide boots, with his silver chain tucked away out of sight on his belt.  There were wolves in the Forbidden Forest, the offspring of werewolves mating in lupine form years and years ago.  Although they weren't nearly as dangerous as their savage parents, with all of the unrest recently, he still wasn't about to wander around after dark without an extra tool to defend himself.

Greyfriar had, of course, decided to keep him waiting.  For once, Kurby hadn't been entirely annoyed by the werewolf's impertinence.  He'd lounged near the gate under the waxing moon, arms crossed, giving his vision time to adjust to the darkness and listening to the nighttime sounds of the forest.  Becoming familiar with what the Forbidden Forest sounded like on a normal, quiet night might give him an extra edge if anything happened here during the next full moon.

Movement behind him gave away his host's belated arrival.  A moment later, the gates began to shiver and creak, slowly grinding their way open.  Kurby straightened as they opened outwards, shifting his position slightly so that he faced the other wizard.

He raised his eyebrows, regarding Greyfriar in the dark.  Inconspicuous, the werewolf was certainly not.  He had come flanked by a set of three lanterns, which seemed obnoxiously bright against the darkness.  Smoke rose from the cigar in one hand; steam from the teacup in his other.  Clearly, the older wizard had no regard for the old adage of keeping one hand free for one's wand.

"Naw, the hospitality's been grand," Kurby retorted, eyeing the lanterns.  Bringing a light was probably the worst way to make oneself a target in the woods at night, but as much as the werewolf Headmaster got under his skin, he hadn't come tonight to pick unnecessary fights.

Knox stood there for moment and smiled wide, taking a long draw from the cigar before turning and walking back up the path.

"Come on, then," he said. "Can't let double-u double-u twenty-nine forty-seven luna lambda waiting. Imagine me, getting the personal head of the werewolf capture unit. Covering holiday shifts for your subordinates?"

He smiled again over his shoulder. Bold move, Bagnold agreeing to meet him after dark to tromp through an ominously titled forest to a magically hidden location. Not that Bagnold had anything to fear from Knox, but no one had told Bagnold that, apparently.

"Hmm. Just up this way."

Knox drank more of his tea as three shadows danced at his feet.

Greyfriar kept talking, prodding at him, needling to see if he could get him to bite.  But Kurby felt far more comfortable here, at the start of a path winding through a pitch-black forest, than he ever had in the Headmaster's office or a Muggle coffee shop or even back in the claustrophobic halls of the Ministry.  There were no whispering portraits gazing down to judge him, no sense that he was a bit out of step with everyone all around him.  He knew what sorts of dangers could lurk in the woods, even in the Forbidden Forest, and they weren't the kind that unnerved him.

He lifted and dropped his shoulder in a nonchalant shrug at Greyfriar's crack about holiday shifts, and then fell into step just behind the werewolf.  All around them, he could hear the noises of the forest, the darkness come to vigorous life.  Wind rustled through the empty branches, sending them shivering overhead.  Every so often in the canopy above them, he spotted the flash of an enormous silvery spider web, hinting at an arachnid much bigger than his gleaming patronus.

He'd never liked the idea of a lycanthropic safe house so close to so many youth, but that was one of the rights that had been pushed through with the werewolf reforms a few years prior.  As long as the safe house was registered with the Ministry and the owner submitted to quarterly inspections, werewolves were free to build a place to transform wherever they liked.  But in the perpetually understaffed Werewolf Wing, regular inspections were few and far between, and if an approved transformation location were really unsafe, the odds never felt good that they'd be able to catch it in advance.

"Where're you and the Temple kid gettin' your Wolfsbane potion from now?" he asked evenly, following as Greyfriar led the way through the trees.  The lanterns behind them were distracting; he kept catching sight of them out of the edge of his vision, and even the dim lights ruined any chance he had of allowing his eyes to fully adjust back to the darkness.  "Have you got someone on staff who's accredited to brew it, or are you gettin' it from us?"

"Lucinda Temple," Knox said. "Why do you ask? Lucinda and her parents, they deal directly with the Werewolf Registry on that aspect of compliance, as do I. It's all sorted out, I'm certain."

At that point, Knox stopped and the lanterns transitioned into a lazy holding pattern. They'd come some ways down the heavily wooded road, the deepest part of the main way up to the castle. The Headmaster finished his tea, shook out the little cup and slid it into pocket. The cigar he kept - a boon to sustain a calm in what really was a discomfort for him. He didn't want to be speaking with Bagnold, leading him into what had come to feel rather private, and now Lucinda's name between them. Thought of Bagnold having anything to do with that troubled girl left Knox feeling like he needed a long draw of that nightshade.

Knox turned to Bagnold not, apparently, keen at the moment to explain anything beyond the scope of the note. Not unless pressed or if he had any faith it would earn him any good will.

"Seek and Find spell," he said and drew his wand. "The house is hidden in the forest at a location only the spell can now find. Dyszititos."

His wand gently tugged in his hand and Knox moved into the woods, two massive oaks like sentries at a gate. The lanterns followed him in.

"Ignan Storm, Sylvain Onuris (with whom I know you're acquainted), and Owen Prewett are the only others on the inside," he said by way of explanation. "Stay close."

Kurby gave a nonchalant, unconcerned shrug in response to the werewolf's question.  He'd expected that that would be the case, but it was still worth asking, worth seeing if Greyfriar would indirectly give away a possible explanation for the nine months' supply of Wolfsbane Potion that he had supposedly gifted to Savvina Katopodis. 

It wasn't illegal for werewolves to take unregulated Wolfsbane; although it once had been, that act had been decriminalized a few years ago.  It was, however, still against Ministry law to illicitly distribute the potion without a license, particularly to unregistered werewolves.

Kurby kept his mouth firmly shut as Greyfriar stopped to explain the next leg of their journey.  A Seek and Find spell offered a level of protection for the werewolf hideaway, although it didn't necessarily keep the werewolf in question from getting out.  That depended on the quality of the enclosure and/or the werewolf's desire to stay put, predicated by a full run of Wolfsbane Potion.

Still comfortably watchful of the woods around them, even though the most careful observations couldn't help him to find this hideaway again, Kurby kept within a short distance of Greyfriar, following behind the much taller werewolf as the led the way between the two enormous oak trees, in search of his monthly retreat.

The Headmaster of Hogwarts was afforded a comfort moving through the Forbidden Forest than just about any other. And while it wasn't close to comprehensive immunity, it was significant. He was part of the cadre of caretakers of the place and he and his groundskeeper make efforts to maintain diplomatic relationships with the factions and fauna of the wood. He was glad for his wand out, and to be frank, not ungrateful to have a wizard of Bagnold's skill at his flank.

Grateful also, for Bagnold's silence. Greyfriar glanced back at him only once or twice in the next fifteen minutes, when they had to maneuver over a fallen log or through a stony stream.

The nature of the Seek and Find was that you weren't sure you were close until, well, you were there. And then, all of a sudden, they were there. The old trees broke away to a wide deep gully, above them they could actually see stars. Below them was a small dark stone cottage. It was, to Knox, becoming a haunted doppleganger of comfort. It was an exact replica of his home in the sweet countryside of Kent, but it held nothing but trials.

He paused at the ledge. In the light of his lanterns a thick silver chain glinted from its hook by the door.

Knox looked down at Bagnold with a somberly arched black eyebrow.

And then, all of a sudden, they'd stumbled upon the cottage.

It was a bit disconcerting, seeing something in the middle of the woods that looked like it would be more at home on the same road as his grandparents' house near the coast in Kent.  Years of trekking through forests spread throughout the United Kingdom had taught him that if something looked like it didn't belong, it probably wasn't a good sign.  Wizards and witches who tried to make the woods into something they weren't, who squirreled away little bits of civilization amongst the ancient trees, were rarely possessing of good intentions.

Here, at least, he knew the purpose of the slightly-unsettling cottage.  It was Greyfriar's attempt to hold on to a bit of civilization when he was at the most bestial, to give himself comfort in a familiar space or to cling to a bit of his sense of self.

The werewolf hunter glanced sidelong at his guide as he strode forward, examining the cottage intently from the outside.  Aside from the silver chain hanging by the door, there was nothing to mark this as the abode of a monster.  At least the dark stones looked solid enough to likely hold up to a werewolf's force.

He approached the front door, studying it carefully, taking a moment to examine the hinges.  The werewolf who had constructed this place clearly didn't like the thought of being imprisoned, a feeling that was hard to shake within the silver cages of the Ministry.  Even knowing what this cottage became once a month, it still had the air of a somber retreat and not a monthly prison.

"You ever been on the outside of this when you were in wolf form?" he asked, glancing back at Greyfriar.  "How strong's the smell from it?"

Knox stood back, brooding and entirely unimpressed. Storm and Onuris, they'd both been only marginally better at hiding their contempt for Knox's arrangements. It was hard to get the thought to sit straight, but it seemed people found it offensive that a werewolf would attempt to find even a shred of peace, that they'd imagine any accommodations could resemble anything other than punishment.

Bagnold began in with a question, and Knox took his time coming down the steep embankment. He dug in his pocket for a great silver key. He handled it with a bit of handkerchief.

"I don't know what that's supposed to mean. I haven't been outside of anything in wolf form since - " Knox stopped himself, his hand frozen with the key halfway in the front door lock. He looked at Kurby.  Since the 11th of March in 2009.[1]. Or a few months after that, in August.[2] There wasn't a way to uncast that spell, as much as he wanted to. It was a bad slip. So he just looked back at the lock and clicked it open.

"No. I arrive well before nightfall, Ignan and Sylvain secure the locks and chain," Knox pushed the door open and went inside. A lantern followed him in. The house seemed smaller on the inside. There was a patched easychair and side table on a rug, but otherwise the house was empty. The plaster on the wall was marred with scratch marks. Knox stood aside and took a very long pull from the cigar.

"They come fetch me in the morning."

1.	11 Mar 2009 - Those Dog Days Aren't Over
2.	6 Aug 2009 - Isolated Together With You

Greyfriar resorted to his usual bluster in response to Kurby's perfectly reasonable question, up until he abruptly cut off his complaint.  Kurby met the werewolf's gaze directly, his eyebrows raised and his expression perfectly impassive.

Since almost three years ago, in March 2009.  They both knew.

That didn't invalidate his question, though, although he waited for Greyfriar to return his attention to the door before he rolled his eyes at the Headmaster's failure to answer.  Most werewolf holes that he'd encountered had a particular aroma to them, and that was only what he could pick up on with his limited human senses.  To werewolves, the stench had to be much stronger, much more obvious.

And to direwolves, whose senses were even more sensitive to smells and sounds than their normal lycanthropic cousins, he had to imagine that the scent of another werewolf was as obvious as a giant flashing magical billboard in Diagon Alley.

That was the challenge that they were now facing.  The Seek and Find spell might be a perfectly competent deterrent when it kept to keeping students away from the werewolf hideaway; it might even be able to prevent human wizard adversaries from finding Greyfriar's safe house.  But direwolves transformed a good thirty hours before other werewolves.  If one was turned loose in the Forbidden Forest with the mission of tracking down the Hogwarts Headmaster's intended transformation spot, he wasn't certain that the normal precautions would be able to keep it from finding this place.

Greyfriar unlocked the door and stepped inside, one of the lanterns on his heels.  Kurby followed behind, pausing again to examine the door frame on his way in.  It was a bare, empty room, with deep scratch marks on the wall that reminded him of Greer Grant's underground chamber.  For the briefest of moments, part of him wondered where Iona Ballentyne went to transform.

The werewolf hunter swallowed as he moved to stand in the center of the room.  He turned slowly, letting his gaze play over the walls as he examined them for any sign of a fault or crack.

"Not a big space," he remarked out loud.  He spared the briefest of looks at Greyfriar, his dark eyes cool.  "You lot'll have three werewolves at Hogwarts soon.  What's your plan if the other two can't make it to the Ministry?"

Knox hadn't meant to bring those two nights to mind, and certainly not verbalize them to the top werewolf hunter. They were proof that all of Knox's principled claims disciplined advocacy would never be good enough. Living his daily life rather depended on hoping they hadn't occurred. The hostile calm that had provided him confident movement this evening was now in jeopardy. Being in this place didn't help. Perhaps he'd been too daring, perhaps Bagnold wasn't the one who'd been reckless.

"I should have mentioned it in my letter," he began and paced a few steps. He leaned on the back of the chair. "Before you came all this way."

It had been on his mind since what he'd heard about the last full moon, the Grant verdict, and Fauna Blake's warnings concerning both. Not to mention he no longer fully trusted Sylvain Onuris.

"I'm thinking of packing this up and patronizing the Ministry venue again."

The girls were not a topic of discussion. Bagnold could keep trying to bring them into this, but Knox wouldn't have it.

He took a deep, deliberate breath and furrowed his brow.

"I've heard you're serving a proper breakfast now, and Storm still won't bring along muffins, so ..."

Yet again, Greyfriar dodged his direction question.  "I should have mentioned in my letter..." the werewolf began.

At least this time, he didn't accidentally bring up the night when he'd almost had Fauna Blake for supper.  Instead, he relayed another decision he intended to make, with a flicker of humor at the end that took Kurby by surprise.

The werewolf hunter blinked, and then barked out a sharp, unexpected laugh.

"We've got a new Head of the Werewolf Wing now.  Send along your breakfast order in advance, and I'll see if she can find us a budget for it," he said, grinning.  That would be one for Ballentyne's new effort: increase compliance with the Werewolf Registration Act by providing steak-flavored muffins in the morning.

This was probably a smart idea in the grand scheme of things, but it didn't solve the immediate problem: what would Hogwarts do if the Ministry wasn't an option?  Greyfriar clearly wasn't taking his questions seriously; he'd gone into this conversation already clear on what he would say or admit, despite his slip. 

Perhaps it was time to raise the stakes.  Raising his eyebrows, Kurby glanced at the space around them, and then reached into the pocket of his cloak and slid out a folded photograph.

The photograph showed a gaunt-looking woman with dark brown eyes and long, curly black hair.  She sat in a chair, facing towards the camera with a vacant, distant gaze.  Although only the top half of her body was visible, she appeared to be wearing the gray robes provided to Ministry prisoners.  At first glance, she stood so still that the picture didn't even appear to animated; it was only after watching it for a few moments that the viewer could notice those little ticks of life, hints of her chest rising and falling, a slow, placid blink.

Without a word, he passed it over to Greyfriar, dark eyes trained on the werewolf's expression. 

For just a moment, Greyfriar thought he'd charmed the situation with his stupid joke. Kurby Bagnold had volleyed it back, something about a new administrator in the Wing. With a laugh even. Knox was smiling as he puffed his cigar, smiling as Bagnold handed him a photo.

He didn't anticipate what it could possibly be. Knox actually looked at it for a good second before looking away to find his glasses in his breast pocket. As he adjusted small rectangular spectacles on his nose, he expected Bagnold to provide some context. It never came. Instead, the Headmaster was left in silence to push through the recognition.

That pain in the pit of your stomach when the emotion of a memory came before the content. Knowing that you felt dread before you know what you were afraid of. It was a mug shot. Not Azkaban or the MLE, no it was Werewolf Registry. He had one, too. In spite of himself, Knox took far too long with the picture. The realization came and Knox's face when blank. He didn't know her name, but he'd met her. That day in the park, him with the shopping bag, her and her dog.

Knox hadn't asked her any questions, but he'd assumed she was unregistered. But this picture said otherwise. If she wasn't registered then, she was now. But none of that meant anything, not on its own.

Finally, he straightened and handed the picture back.

"What is this?"

There were different ways that he could have played this.  Knox Greyfriar was undoubtedly an arse.  He took digs at Kurby every chance he got, apparently intent on forgetting how he'd almost savaged an innocent student once.  Under other circumstances, the Head of the Werewolf Capture Unit would have simply washed his hands of this entire affair, turned up what evidence he could and then dumped the entire mess on MLE's desk so that the Aurors had to wrestle with the complicated question of how to charge the Hogwarts Headmaster with providing illegal Wolfsbane Potion to unregistered werewolves.

But the werewolf hunter had made his decision two weeks ago, when he'd told Li to strike any mention of this from her interview notes.  And he'd confirmed it tonight, when he'd arranged for Greyfriar to bring him out here in the middle of nowhere, instead of insisting on talking in the Headmaster's office or summoning him to the Ministry.

Kurby took a deep breath, and then leveled a look at the werewolf.  "You need to keep this as confidential as you possibly can," he told Greyfriar, very quietly.

He'd already rehearsed this tale in his head: how much he wanted to tell Greyfriar, what he could leave out.  The kids who were involved -- Moira McBoid and Figaro Sellaphix, even Fauna Blake, Charlie Harris, and Tessa Fenneken -- none of those names needed to be mentioned.  Lazarus, too, he could somewhat protect.  But whatever personal gripe he might have with Greyfriar, the Hogwarts Headmaster needed to know the rest of it.  If something bad was going to happen in January, he'd bet a galleon on the sickle that Tawse would consider targeting Hogwarts if he could.

"Two weeks ago," he began, dark eyes trained carefully on the werewolf, "Cinaed Tawse ambushed one of our teams in London.  He turned an unregistered werewolf loose in a park to lure us in, and then sprung a trap by activatin' some enchantments that stopped us from sending up red sparks or apparating.  Once he had us there, he called in one of his direwolves, and showed off by havin' it follow his instructions and attack."

Kurby shrugged, content to gloss over the middle section.  "The direwolf ended up dead, and we took the werewolf into custody," he said, nodding in the direction of the photograph as he slid it back into his pocket.  "Tawse and his crew had removed her memories, so she couldn't tell us anything about how they'd grabbed her or what else they did with her."

He raised an eyebrow at Greyfriar, meeting the older wizard's gaze steadily.  "The only useful thing she did remember," he continued, his words matter-of-fact, "was meetin' you in a park last July and havin' you give her nine months' worth of Wolfsbane Potion."

There was none of the characteristic derision in Bagnold's voice, none of his perfect conviction. Knox crossed one arm over his chest and rolled the cigar in his fingers, keeping his eyes on Bagnold and waiting for the turn. The warning of confidentiality and the implied promise that the purpose of the photo would be made clear kept him a patient listener.

In his movements in the Wizengamot offices these last two weeks, Knox had found out some of the story about the zoo incident, that there'd been werewolves that there'd been muggle fatalities, and the rumor that it hadn't been an accident. But this, all that Kurby Bagnold began to tell him, it was horrific. Cinead Tawse, the man who'd loosed a werewolf on him and his students that night on the road.[1]. It was happening again.

His expression only darkened further as Bagnold went on. He leaned forward again on the back of the chair and took off his glasses so he could rub his face. Knox guessed before Bagnold confirmed it, that one of the werewolves was the witch in the photo. There was almost enough time for Knox to ask himself why Bagnold was telling him this now, why the pretense of an inspection and his paperwork-level questions for -

"The only useful thing she did remember ... was meetin' you in a park last July and havin' you give her nine months' worth of Wolfsbane Potion."

Greyfriar rose up and glanced at the open door, but of course no one was there. They were alone. He was silent for a few moments, a man very used to being a keeper of conversations. He took a few deep breaths and settled into his feet before responding. His voice was low, slow, and careful.

"You're not telling me this because you think I had anything to do with that attack," he stated. "And I don't think we'd be here if you could take the statement to your superiors. But here, indeed, we are. Why?"

Greyfriar just couldn't figure it. He was full to brimming with worry for that werewolf, already thinking of how quickly he could send warning to Hannah, how this was related to the girls, the secrecy. And Tawse. It was happening again.

1.	Plot: Greyfriar the Werewolf