0805 hours, Level 2 Foyer.


It was always strange, alighting at the Department of Law Enforcement without going straight to Abby's desk. Perhaps it wasn't quite appropriate for trainees to loiter on other floors but he got away with it by having a handy surname and a shiny Mysteries badge. This morning, however, Virgil was here with an actual purpose - he came to report a vision[1] that had relevance to an ongoing investigation.

Having woken early after a late night tussle with Anton, he first returned to his flat on Diagon for a change of clothes. Fauna's response had been waiting, leaving him just enough time to throw on an all-black outfit before going straight to the Ministry.

One quick check-in with the Hall of Prophecies later, and here was. Virgil lingered by the welcome desk with his coat still on his shoulders and hot coffee in his hands. Merlin, why did he say he would be here so bloody early?? All he wanted right now was to go back to bed, Anton or no Anton. Maybe he could have a lunchtime nap. Just a tiny one... his eyes drooped sleepily and he rubbed them.

No! Stay awake! Virgil glanced around, searching for the witch Fauna Blake.

1.	Jan 6th - A Little Blurry, Or Maybe it's My Eyes

After receiving Virgil's owl last night, Fauna had only gotten an hour or so of sleep. She'd headed into the office extra early, and had just started to review the procedure for 'visions involving violence' when she checked the time. 8:00!

Fauna rounded the corner of the hall and entered the waiting area, covering a mighty yawn with her hand. There was Virgil! Looking exhausted and like he'd just arrived. She bit her lip and hurried forward.

"Hey," she said sympathetically. They both looked dressed for a funeral. She wore black slacks and a navy blouse that she'd thought was black this morning. Oh well.

"Uh, so," she blinked at his coffee. Mmm coffee. She had coffee at her desk. They'd make a detour and get it.

"So, I checked what we should do - I'm sorry," Fauna interrupted herself with a shake of her head. She managed a smile, and drew him to the side, away from Sandra the welcome witch's keen ears.

"How are you?"

How are you, he who had foretold a direwolf attack?

            "So, I checked what we should do - I'm sorry....How are you?"

Merlin bless her witchy soul. Virgil wondered if, in the middle of a heated duel, Fauna Blake would pause to ask after her opponent. But then again he had never seen her in action and was certain that the former Hufflepuff could throw a hex better than most. He handed the coffee over to her, suppressing yet another catlike yawn.

"This is yours, I've had mine. Triple shot latte. There isn't enough caffeine in the world to wake me up." Virgil rubbed his eyes, looking more than ever like a little boy in his oversized coat. "I'm fine other. You're the one who has to see this vision for the first time, so you'd better drink up."

The Keeper of the Hall of Prophecy had nearly clipped him around the ear when he said he was going up to two to share his vision - she let him go, though, under the condition he wrote up the vision and put through the paperwork later. Virgil had used the best of his theatric ability to convince her that every second until the full moon was crucial.

And it was! Hopefully. One day he was going to have a nice vision. About monarch butterflies and grass snakes.

"Oh," Fauna's face lit up at the sight of the coffee. A large coffee, all for her.

"A latte! Thank you!" She said with the pleased surprise she always expressed whenever someone did something nice for her. It wasn't that it rarely happened. It often happened. People went out of their way to be nice to nice people.

But the vision. Virgil was here to show her the vision. He'd come all this way from... wherever he lived. London! He must be working today, but - focus, Fauna!

"Er," she glanced quickly at Sandra and lowered her voice further. "That's the thing, Virgil. I checked policy," she winced. She hated policy. She hated checking policy. She hated when policy told her not to do what she wanted to do. It was as annoying as Pratt if not more so, but she had to pay attention to it if she wanted her red robes.

"The vision is supposed to go to the Hall of Prophecies," she explained earnestly, unsure if he'd had a vision like this before. "And then some poor sod sends out a memo to Carstairs." The other Carstairs. "And then he, I don't know, sighs and sends someone - like me! It could be me - to Level Nine to pester your boss to find out... Well, anyway. I'm not actually allowed to see the vision."

Fauna took a much-needed sip of coffee. He could tell her about it, though. Nothing in policy against that!

Policy! He eyed her amusedly, tickled by the whispering. They were like children hiding from the grown-ups. Virgil did not like policy either - level nine's were constantly changing - but he tremendously enjoyed working contrary to it. What were they going to do? Tell him to stop having visions? Neither his Seer ability nor his Legilimency were instigated by the Ministry; and he wasn't even registered for the latter even though he had told more people about it in the last year than ever before. Now he was about to add another person to that list.

            "Well, anyway. I'm not actually allowed to see the vision."

"I checked in with the Keeper of the Hall, it's fine." Virgil glanced around, noting that the foyer wasn't too busy just yet. "Besides, it's my vision isn't it? Let me share it with you and then I'll pop back down to nine and get the paperwork put through. It won't hurt anybody."

In fact, it might save someone from getting hurt (or murdered!) if they got the search going sooner rather than later.

Come on, he implored, voice ringing clearly through Fauna's mind. Virgil raised an eyebrow in smug Slytherin fashion - he never got tired of this part. There ARE other ways to skin a cat. Or share a vision, in this case.

Virgil had checked in with the Keeper already. Ok then! Fauna glanced at the coat he was still wearing, wanting to believe him. How was he to show her the vision if he hadn't yet filed the paperwork and sent the-

"Come on," Virgil coaxed.

Her gaze snapped to his face. He was speaking so strangely, close to her ear-

There ARE other ways to skin a cat...

He hadn't moved closer at all. His mouth remained shut. His voice rang out. Right in her head.

"Virgil!" Fauna exclaimed, taking a small step back. Her eyes widened. What. the. hell.

She glanced around the nearly empty foyer. Sandra the desk witch did not look up from her desk. Sandra the desk witch was used to Fauna's emotive reactions.

"You-" she sputtered. That had really just happened, hadn't it? Clever words. Smug execution.

She gestured to the empty hallway between the waiting area and the Improper Use of Magic Office. Felt appropriate.

In the hall, Fauna crossed her arms, a bit awkwardly with her large coffee in hand. Heat rose to her face as she stared at Virgil, torn between nervous laughter and harsh words. It was worse than when he'd sent that singing howler!

He might be - well, he must be some form of legilimens, to talk inside her head like that. She didn't know if that was the extent of his ability. He could be reading her thoughts right now. He wouldn't! Would he?

Her brow furrowed as she locked eyes with him, the weariness of the past few days settling on her face. He hadn't asked.

The young wizard bit his lip, holding back a laugh. Why didn't he tell more people like this? It was so much more entertaining than saying so outright.

Fauna ushered them away from the welcome witch, into one of the lesser used passageways. He didn't know level two very well but a sign on one of the closed doors told him that they were near Improper Use. Who even worked there? And shouldn't it be on three instead? This Ministry made absolutely no sense and he was thinking that as an Unspeakable. It must be logical to somebody out there.

Awkwardly, Fauna didn't say anything after the initial surprise. She just stood there with her arms crossed looking rather... well, rather cross. He felt his cheeks colour as their eyes met, her thoughts bubbling easily to the surface of his own. Oh. Oh, she was actually angry at him.

"Sorry." Virgil stepped back with his hands in the air, though he didn't think she was about to pull an Almasy on him. His mind drew away similarly - like tentacles recoiling from a predator mistaken for prey. "That was rude. I only meant that I can just show you the vision now, without all the official nonsense."

For just a second, their roles reversed, and she felt the slightest amount of smug satisfaction when Virgil blushed and stepped back in a peaceful gesture. He couldn't just pop into people's heads like that! She was sure some wixes wouldn't mind, but she was also very sure he knew better.

She hadn't thought to - what did the senior Aurors say? - build a wall. Hadn't thought to think back at him. Hadn't even reached for her wand, which wasn't much use these days, when she'd needed it.

Her gaze dropped to the yellow ribbon tied around his wrist. He was trying to help. The coffee helped, at least.

"Alright," Fauna took a breath and sighed out the word, running a hand through her hair. Alright, she acknowledged his apology. Alright, she'd think about the vision he offered.

"Let's, uh," she glanced around, settling on the closed door to the Improper Use of Magic Office. "Actually..." Fauna murmured, and tried the handle. Unlocked! What was wrong with this office? Anyone could walk in.

"Oh right, I think several wixes came down with the measles too. Let's step in here?"

Fauna held the door for Virgil. A little lamp still flickered atop the nearest desk, and next to it, the daily calendar was left on January 5th. Just a few days ago.

The park, the dog, the little tow-headed child.[1] Fauna shook her head, focusing on Virgil.

"Ok, um," Fauna sipped at her coffee, welcoming the warmth. First, as always, she had questions.

"I'm not sure how this would work," she admitted. "Have you shared visions before, mind to mind? How is it different from filing it in the - do you file it, in the Hall of Prophecies?"

Her eyes widened. She first pictured something like Level Two's evidence room, with towering shelves of boxes and creepy doll artifacts popping up to cackle maniacally. No, that was silly! She then pictured a dark hall with rows and rows of stone bowls atop altars covered in runes. The bowls would hold visions, which was a type of memory, Fauna supposed, a memory from another world that overlapped this one, became this one, if the vision came true. If other choices were made, the vision drifted alone, lost in space, never finding its place in time, never connecting its voice and image to the multitude of voices and images that defined a person. Their life, their death.

Their life this time, she told herself firmly.

1.	Oh dear, how uneasy I feel

Note to self: don't cross Fauna Blake. Virgil was happy to irritate even his friends but everyone had different boundaries and she seemed extremely averse to the odd gleaning of thoughts. Like Nick. Was it a muggleborn thing? Some muggleborns would probably jump at the chance to learn legilimency, though things are always different when you're on the receiving end of it.

They stepped into the Improper Use office, which was luckily vacant on account of how early he and Fauna decided to come in today. On a weekend, too. Even the workaholics of level two were allowed to sleep in if they weren't red robed maniacs. He removed his coat and folded it over his arm.

            "Have you shared visions before, mind to mind?"

That was a question he could answer. The other one, less so. Virgil sat on the ledge of the closest desk, displacing a quill holder, and wished he had remembered to bring his cigarettes.

"Let's not talk about the Hall of Prophecies," he smiled dryly. "It's much more impressive to see it anyway, how we store visions. Don't worry about that part." It was a more fluid and active process than actual Prophecies, or what Yavin called Big Fate. Visions happened all the time. "I have shared visions between minds. I shared the one I had about Abby, with Yavin. He asked."

That had been before the exorcism, during one of their chats about how they were going to separate two souls. It had been straightforward in some ways but he had to isolate his vision in his mindscape. Recollecting a memory alters it if you didn't pay close enough attention.

"I would advise sitting down, for the sharing. All you have to do is close your eyes." Virgil corrected the quill holder on the desk, delicately. "It will feel like you're dreaming."

Fauna smiled and scrunched her nose at Virgil. She hadn't been worried, but curious! She should have known better than to ask about Level Nine's classification system.

"Hm?" Fauna raised her eyebrows. What vision was that? Did Abby know he'd had a vision? Was Abby in any danger? Fauna studied his face. No, the danger must have passed. He mentioned something about it in early January, she thought. She'd been too distracted to ask about it then and was too distracted now.[1]

Fauna hesitated by the armchair nearest to Virgil's perch on the desk. The content of the vision would get to the department heads anyway, so she could make her own judgment call. Who was she kidding? She'd already decided while half-asleep last night. She sat down, crossing her legs. It all seemed so simple. Close her eyes. Like dreaming. She kept her eyes open and watched him straightening the desk.

Virgil seemed completely sure and efficient, showing no ill effects from the vision last night. Fauna sipped at her coffee, fighting the urge to make small talk. Perhaps he considered this part of his job. She didn't know how long he'd been practicing legilimency, but if he'd practiced with Yavin Morgenthau, she suspected that he was quite advanced.[2]

Like dreaming, he said.

"Will it hurt you, to share it?" Her brow furrowed a bit, not meaning to discourage him, but wanting to know what he meant. Like a dream. Dreams could feel incredibly real. Her favorites were when she dreamed of another life, another Fauna. All the doors still open, and time topsy turvy.

She couldn't always pick where she went. Sometimes she closed her eyes and saw snarling teeth, watched the red sparks fall down from the sky.

1.	Virgil's mention of his vision of Abby
2.	When Yavin first became Head of Level Nine, he was rumored to have written the handbook on Legilimency and Occlumency - confirmed by Nuri!

He realised, distractedly, that Fauna didn't know about his vision of Abby. But why should she - Virgil had only told Abby's sister and then Abby herself. For some reason he had assumed people on two knew because Abby was working here and might have mentioned. The wizard was thinking about clarifying when Fauna asked a question he hadn't expected at all.

            "Will it hurt you, to share it?"

Hurt him? His countenance softened and he felt kindly towards her. "No. Not exactly, it only hurt the first time. It just... it just makes me very tired." Virgil explained as he turned slightly so that he was properly facing the armchair she'd chosen. When he first helped Abby in her dream, he'd had a nosebleed because he was out of practice and had tried very hard to keep Iona from interfering.

Being on level nine meant he was practicing all the time but everyone had their limits. The days after the Death Chamber and Stardust, Virgil had slept unnaturally long hours.

"You won't feel anything," he didn't want Fauna to be afraid, fear was a mind-killer. "But you will see and hear and smell. If you panic, I'll sense your panic and I'll bring you out right away. Trust me."

"Thank you," Fauna's expression softened in turn. If Virgil had the ability to not only share the vision but also bring her out of it if necessary, she trusted him to do that.

"I'm going to try to be cool," she held her hands in the air palms up, smiling wryly. Cool Hufflepuff!

"Uh, but if I panic, it's just because I've seen this kind of... attack, a few times before."

She pursed her mouth to the side and glanced away for a moment. Most everyone who'd attended Hogwarts with her would know that she'd witnessed the werewolf attack on Knox Greyfriar, thank you Hogwarts gossip mill. Less people would know that she'd been attacked later at the Ministry cells. Very few people would know that she'd faced a werewolf for a third time at the zoo during Tawse's ambush.

Virgil, at least, accepted her concern without getting offended that she dare to ask about his feelings. He answered earnestly. And kindly, seeming to realize she'd asked just as much for herself.

She reached over to set the coffee cup on the corner of the desk, then leaned back in her seat. What should she do with her hands? No coffee. She rested them loosely on her knee.

Fauna closed her eyes. Her stomach gave a nervous jump. "Ok then."

If anyone could stand to see what he saw last night, it was Fauna.

She had witnessed an attack before - if word around school was right - and she would know the ferocity of such a creature, the sudden and visceral violence of which it was capable. Virgil was all for werewolf rights but he knew one thing now: when they turned at the full moon, they weren't human anymore and nobody could afford to think so.

            "Ok then."

The auror-in-training closed her eyes. He looked over his shoulder to ensure the office door was still closed, and then sat properly on the table before closing his own eyes. Inside his head, he uncovered the pearl of a vision: like a memory, it felt, though to the trained Legilimens it was clearly made of different stuff than a memory. To remember what will one day happen, that's what it meant to have a vision.

The scent hit him first. Always the scent, no matter the vision, and in this one it was the awful, sleazy aftershave. His pulse picked up while he reached for Fauna's mind, peeling off the surface layers to slowly introduce to her what would come to manifest in his own mindscape. At the first Bang! Bang! of the door, he felt himself shudder.

He hissed and opened his eyes, sitting up...It was somebody else's flat, a far cry from Cambridge accommodation. It was dark: vague shapes, a sofa, coffee table.

The banging continued, Virgil facing the door in the tidy front room. This was a vision, it had to be a vision. With a sickening SLAM! the door burst open off its hinges and a voice that wasn't his own suddenly screamed.

A man's voice. In its wake followed a snarl so vivid that he could feel himself shaking in Anton's bed. He had never seen anything like this in a vision before. Outlined by the passage light behind it, a Direwolf lunged at him.

His stomach turned but he kept his senses out for Fauna's feelings, as the man inside the vision turned to flee and fell under an immense and purposeful weight. Virgil was grateful they didn't have to experience the pain.

This[1] was when it got bad. A lamp crashed to the floor, a scream curdled the air.

1.	10th Jan - The Moon's Gift [M] - Bruce Ballentyne's description of what would eventually become of Alec Carter

Fauna fell into the dreamlike vision. The smell of coffee wafted away. The solidity of the armchair underneath her faded until she stood in a dimly lit room, hearing a terrible weight slam against the door. Bang! Her house. His house. Unlike her dreams, here she stood in another person's shoes, breathing his panicked breaths.

Cologne. Cologne? She smelled his day-old clothes and over it all, cologne that could be anyone's but reminded her of the suffocating Ministry lifts.

Bang! The front door. Bang! The front door. Fauna tried to look around the room with his eyes, but he was staring at the door. The door looked like any door, shuddering on its hinges.
 
A smell, she thought desperately. Any smells, any sounds, any clue -

BANG!

The door flew open.

The man stared at the huge, snarling creature in the doorway. A scream ripped out of her- his throat. Move move move move move!

Go! Move! Run! Fauna thought.

The man moved, his legs pumping as he ducked around a couch, knocked against a table, then a large chair. She couldn't feel the table. She felt his leg flinch instead. The wolf lunged after him, growling, throwing the furniture aside. So fast. So much faster than the man.

Oh my god, oh my god. Fauna couldn't see anything but shapes and things. Dim shapes, dim things in the dimly lit room. Just objects between him and escape, him and the wolf. Run! Move! Her heart pounded at the snarls filling the air. The smell of wet dog and rancid breath.

She was used to fear. She breathed through it every day. She knew the next step. Assess and act.

But she couldn't act. All she could do was move where the man moved, limbs trembling. He ran to the nearest door, stumbling into the darkened study.

His body, lifted in the air, flung against the bookcase. The bookcase shuddered. His head thudded against it. She heard it, she saw it, she couldn't feel it or stop it.

He crashed to the hard floor. She imagined the air knocked out of his lungs, the weight on his back.

Then nothing. Nothing but sounds and smells and blackness at the corners of her vision. Claws and teeth shredding skin, bones popping out of sockets - NO!

This was the third time he had experienced the vision in the last six hours, if he counted the first one. It did not get any easier with repetition.

Yet there was something comforting about Fauna's thoughts, the presence of another person here with him, even if that other person was rightfully panicked and horrified by the events. Virgil forced his breathing to slow down instead of matching breath with the man in the vision, hearing the blood in his ears and smelling the terror of his sweat. You could smell fear. Who knew that you could smell fear? Fauna's mind screamed for the man to run, to move, but Virgil only swallowed as he ground his teeth upon being flung like a ragdoll.

             NO!

It was with sudden relief that he jerked himself out of Fauna's mind, and with such vehemence that when he opened his eyes in the office he nearly fell back against whoever's desk this was. The world came rushing into existence once more, the dimly lit space with the fragrance of good wood polish and better coffee. The young wizard grabbed at the ledge of the table, pushing down waves of nausea.

He'd spent fifteen minutes throwing up into Anton's toilet, earlier this morning. And he had thrown up when he stored the vision on nine, just half an hour ago. There was nothing left in him to vomit anymore.

Virgil looked over at Fauna and saw that she was hunched over with head in hands, dark hair a silky curtain that hid her face. He quickly slipped off the desk, with every intention of going to her side but his legs went weak and he fell to the carpeted floor instead, with a weak yelp.

On all fours, wearing the incredulous expression of someone whose body had inexplicably failed them, Virgil clasped his nose. It was bleeding. "Fuck," he muttered.