3 January 2012
Tuesday at 11am
Department of Magical Law Enforcement

Savvina Katopodis sat in an old chair in a narrow hallway waiting for one of the doors to open. A junior officer of some kind leaned against the wall opposite her picking at his nails. The handcuffs weren't necessary and everyone seemed to know that, but rules were rules. The thin witch with dark eyes was by official definition lethally dangerous, but without the file it was hard to see why.

Savvina was making it a point to keep track of the time.  Working backwards, this was her tenth day in the custody of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. Before that, she'd spent twelve days stalled on the Werewolf Capture Unit, held in a stale vision of a home-sweet beach. Beyond that, the clock began to melt. One bloody night in the London Zoo, she'd been told and could be sure it was tru. Before that, though, how many days in what sort of place? And before that? When had she last walked Skýlos in the park, when had she last felt the steam of the hotel laundry on her skin? What had been the last meal she'd made for herself and her friend?

Working forwards now: today she'd finally meet with a lawyer. And in six days the next full moon would come. 

The healer had advised against pushing herself, that trying to force out memories that may be lost or damaged could create false ones and could even disrupt recovery efforts later. She existed in mist now, both the future and the past foggy. Time was what she needed and only time would tell if she got any of it back.

While she waited for the lawyer, Savvina ran her fingers through her loose curls trying to tidy her appearance. These last few weeks had done its work on her nerves. She'd been flat and numb in the care of the WCU when she didn't know what would happen. But the days had come where everything she'd done and hadn't done and what had been done to her would be reckoned with.

Savvina Katopodis, unregistered werewolf, had been apprehended on a full moon after killing a number of muggles.

Harper Graves finished writing the last of her morning memos, setting them side to be sent out. Her desk was in its usual organised mess - each stack of folders growing by the day or, it seemed, the hour. She was carrying two active caseloads and a third, Greer, on retainer. Each of them were high publicity cases but the witch herself had managed to avoid making the news, eclipsed by the fame or notoriety of her clients. Musgrave, Grant, now Katopodis. And Glass.

She wasn't a prosecuting attorney but for Edwin Glass[1] she would make an exception, if only to prepare the argument against, should the opportunity ever come. A secret fourth case.

Harper checked her watch and rose to her feet, going straight to the door. It was time for Savvina's appointment. Carstairs had agreed to letting her take it on, in spite of the nature of her other clients. He trusted her not to allow things to go 'tits up', which was a very strange phrase to hear from the head of the DMLE.

So she was going to try her best not to.

"Savvina?" she opened the door, peeking out and smiling mildly at the werewolf sat outside. "You can come on in," Harper glanced at the junior officer with a dismissive gesture. "Thanks. I'll call if we need anything."

Stepping aside, she let her latest client into the office. Everything in here was cosy and a little disorderly - cardigans and scarves left about, tangled parchment ribbons, two dirty mugs. Even so it was easy to tell that things were in their place. Shelves were neatly organised, folders were in the right piles, and a small brass table presented its gleaming wares of a teapot and French press.

"Would you like something to drink first?" Harper nodded at the table and then at the chair across from her desk. "Have a seat."

1.	31st Dec 2011 - The Party has Arrived

Savvina as greeted by a witch with red hair and a friendly smile, the first smile she'd seen that wasn't fragmented with judgement or pity. It was a first impression made in seconds, but it was hopeful. Anticipating what she'd learn in this visit, a little hope would go a long way. So far, everyone she'd met had been ready with judgement. Everybody knew that she'd not registered and each time Savvina had responded with the restrained contrition that she knew they wanted to see. She'd been in custody before, she knew how to play the game to survive. But a genuine smile, even if small, this was new.

Savvina stepped into the office slowly - no sudden moves - and looked around without being furtive. The chains around her wrists twinkled lightly against Savvina's careful stillness. The office was tidy and cozy and told a tale of long hours and a heavy workload. What kind of cases got dumped in Miss Graves' lap, Savvina wondered. What kind of case was she?

Her first impulse was to decline the offer of refreshment, but she thought maybe accepting would make Miss Graves feel more comfortable.

"Yes, thank you. Tea if you have it," Savvina said with a nod. Her rolling Greek accent contrasted with the few words the lawyer had said - North American to Savvina's ear. Something comforting about hearing another outsider.

She sat down and tried to get comfortable to put them both at ease. She laced her fingers together and sat forward. She was more nervous than she wanted to be, her stomach in knots.

"Thank you for meeting with me. It's been a long wait."

She gave the teapot a tap with her wand on the way back around the desk, glancing at Savvina in a cursory way. The other woman was quite thin; not naturally, though, it was the emaciation of stress and hardship, the kind you could see worn into the lines of faces that suffered more in a short time than most did in their entire life. Harper thought that she was pretty, maybe more obviously so in a different time or place.

            "Thank you for meeting with me. It's been a long wait."

The lawyer sat down across the table, a wrinkle in her brow. "Yes," she agreed. "Longer than I would have liked, sorry. I'm Harper Graves. You can call me Harper or Miss Graves, whichever you prefer."

The teapot was burbling now, and lifted itself off the brass table alongside a clean porcelain mug. "I'm going to be your defence attorney for the foreseeable future, and I'll try my best to be as honest and upfront about your chances in the coming weeks. " Harper continued while fragrant black tea was poured. "Current Ministry policy isn't very forgiving towards unregistered werewolves but I wouldn't let that get you down from the start. It's not a piece of paper we'll be preaching to in the Wizengamot."

The mug settled down on Savvina's side of the desk, and Harper sat forward slightly. "How would you like to be addressed, by the way?"

Harper Graves seemed indefatigable and there was something comforting about it coming from someone who looked like her. She was a contrast to hard-edged witches and wizards who'd been handling her since she'd come to in a cell. Be that as it may, Savvina didn't know if the court system of the British Ministry of Magic was just for show.

"Savvina," she said and took the up. It was warm in her hands, and fragrant. She just held it and looked at it a moment.

Harper said she was do her best, said that the Ministry was unforgiving, and that all was not lost. So much of Savvina's memory had been damaged that she didn't know what she ought to ask forgiveness for, nor did she know what justice might be owed her. Bagnold had told her she'd been 'turned loose' by a terrorist. Used like a bomb.

She looked up.

"Harper, who knows that I am here?"

Even behind doors, Savvina knew the world moved on. The attack Bagnold described it was so terrible that it must have been in the newspaper. Had her name been included as well? She didn't know if anyone had spoken to her neighbors in Peckham, or tried to contact her family. But more than that, bombs were meant to be destroyed and yet she was alive. She was a loose string, frayed at both ends.

She let Savvina just sit in silence for a little, allowing her the time to be still and to absorb.

There was a lot of time to be still when you've spent ages in a cell but it was different out here. Harper knew that her clients needed time to adjust. When your points of communication are aurors and patrol officers and werewolf hunters, you had to rewire yourself for the rest of the world - the one that existed outside the Ministry, which she tried to evoke in the comforts of the office.

            "Harper, who knows that I am here?"

"From what I can tell, nobody." Harper reached for a spare sheet of parchment on the desk, clearly not satisfied by the facts she was having to relay. "Nobody outside this floor and the Werewolf Wing knows that you're here or that you survived the events of the full moon."

She picked up a quill, sliding both items across the desk with a half-smile. "If there's anyone you need me to contact, just jot down their names. I'll have to clear it with the investigators, depending on what they want made public, but we can try." The witch sighed and frowned a little. "I know people might be worried for you?"

Savvina's relief was apparent in the drop of her shoulders and a long blink. It was a mixed blessing. Savvina couldn't yet be sure the Ministry of Magic could be totally trusted. Yes, they'd treated her fairly since she'd been picked up, but the delays in getting to meet with a lawyer couldn't be entirely dismissed. And it was true, the people who'd used her didn't likely know she'd survived and would not be seeking her. But there was something vulnerable, too, about being, essentially, missing off the face of the earth.

So Savvina Katopodis would proceed as she always did. Be clever, stay sane, do whatever it takes to survive. Harper's sincerity that she was here to help seemed genuine, and so Savvina was prepared to accept and assist.

She offered her lawyer a small smile. The list of people who'd miss her right now was short. Her family will have missed her years ago and this particular disappearance would go unmarked. She had friends in other werewolves, and friendly faces in her neighborhood who'd mark her absence, but they didn't know what she was. That was part of getting on, keeping the secret and staying quiet. It was isolating, but it was the most peaceful she'd been in a very long time. She'd been hoping to stay in London and make a life for herself.

"My boss, he will be wondering" she said with that smile. "But wouldn't care to hear why I am gone."

Offer something. Something they don't know.

"I work in a muggle hotel laundry." If anyone were to ask her wand it's last spells, there would be an endless stream of steaming and cleaning charms all cast surreptitiously.

Her smile turned wry, a twinkle of defiance maybe. "And I still have not heard about my dog. They told me they would look for him."

Poor Skýlos. He was becoming, a bit, a bellwether for what sympathy she might expect here. What care would they have for her an unknown witch and killer werweolf if they had no care for an innocent dog with a soot-black snout?

So she didn't want anybody to know what happened - or she lived the kind of lifestyle that didn't warrant the need of it. Harper could understand why Bagnold suggested taking on Savvina's case. This woman didn't seem to have a person in the world on her side; she was just the kind of person who suffered from the Ministry's policies the most. And, if she was made known to the public, the press would eat her alive as well.

When there is nobody to offer personal testimony for you, your personality became whatever the papers wanted it to become.

            "I work in a muggle hotel laundry....And I still have not heard about my dog. They told me they would look for him."

Well that cancelled out having to get in touch with an actual business. Wixes dropped in and out of no-maj lives all the time. Harper frowned a little bit at the mention of this dog, however, and flipped through her folder to see if there was anything in there about it. "Um, I don't think they found a dog," she shook her head, confirming that nobody had made a note. "No. I'm sorry. Is it possible somebody else could have picked him up?"

The idea of Savvina's dog ending up at the RSCPA was a little upsetting. Harper thought of her own field spaniel, and bit her lip anxiously. "If you write up a description I'll ask someone on level three to have a look around the muggle shelters, maybe."

Savvina didn't mind describing Skýlos again. It felt a little spinsterly to say he was all she had in the world, but he certainly was the best. Dogs were like that. With a dog you could walk anywhere and no one would think you were wandering alone. He was big but tried to sit in her lap. His favorite toys were take-away paper bags; he shredded them to bits very carefully. She was conscious that her focus on her Skýlos was probably serving as a self-distraction, a clear problem with a clear solution. At least she could see that Harper cared.

Savvina sat forward and took up a pen and paper, not bothering to trouble Harper Graves by asking. For a moment she felt like herself. A pen in the hand and making a mark was grounding.

"Skýlos is friendly. He would go with anyone." He could be anywhere, and she was worried about him, but he charmed and manipulated everyone he met.

As she wrote in a neat script  (angled just so, even pressure, effortless serifs here and there) she spoke out loud. "He is tawny, pointed ears, and his snout is black like he's been digging in soot. About fifteen kilos. Comes up to here. Just here at your hip." Savvina held out her hand to her side to show.

Finished, she placed the pen on the pad and sat back. For some reason he felt like she'd accomplished something. She didn't know what 'level three' meant. She knew she'd come from Four and was now on Two. What lay between the beasts and lawyers? Dog catchers, she mused.

"Thank you," she said. She took another moment then inquired further.

"Harper, what other cases have you had like mine?" She lifted her eyebrows. Savvina knew she can't have been the only lost werewolf who'd been found wandering.

Skylos, thought Harper, was a big dog. It seemed weird that he hadn't been spotted.

She accepted the description and set it aside on her desk, picking up her own quill to mark a little red star on the corner so that she would remember it was a priority. As a witch very much attached to her own canine familiar, Harper sympathised with Savvina. Everything about this case felt so disjointed. Pieces of a puzzle missing, probably because it was part of a larger case. Cinaed Tawse.

           "Harper, what other cases have you had like mine?

"Technically," she smiled as she leaned back in her desk chair, "all my cases are like yours. It's my job to ensure that the Ministry doesn't overstep. I think we can both agree it has a... history of overstepping."

And Merlin knew she never let them forget it, in a court of law. There were people in the Wizengamot who were alive and active when its powers were abused to send muggleborns to Azkaban; what right did anyone have to believe that they were untouchable and always correct in their judgement? A system was made of people. People were vulnerable and corrupt.

"But if you mean specifically to do with werewolves," she continued in a more sombre tone, "I've recently defended a young unregistered werewolf, and kept her parents from Azkaban. She was my first werewolf case." Harper raised an eyebrow at Savvina, adding: "You're lucky number two."

Two. Savvina clicked her tongue and sat back again. Harper Graves knew the right things to say, an admirable pairing of idealism and pragmatism. Confident and clear-eyed. She could promise only her most dogged efforts and Savvina could not expect a hero. Even if Harper was a novice to werewolf cases, she was fluent in this Ministry's courts. Savvina couldn't ask for better.

The werewolf in the grey clothes sipped her tea and ran her fingers through her loose curls. She was debating. Right now, this case was only her. She alone stood between victim and killer, she alone was the witness who remembered nothing. She'd fallen alone and was collected alone and how alone awaited consequences. But, in reality, noone is alone. Savvina could not pretend to be alone forever.

"There is someone," Savvina admitted.  "But I do not want to get him into trouble. His name cannot be passed on to investigators or else I am sure you will have a third werewolf case to add to your list. This person helped me and will be worried I am dead. But more than that..."

Something went grey behind Savvina's eyes. She was thinking of the time she'd lost and waking from it into a new reality.

"They should be warned."

She stopped then and waited. It must be an impossible paradox job to both work for the Ministry and work against it. It must be like existing on a Möbius strip, to be simultaneously pursuing and being pursued. Harper might not be able to hear this name without being obligated to turn it in, so Savvina wouldn't continue if that put Harper in a position she couldn't occupy.

             "There is someone..." Savinna began, and Harper sat a little straighter.

This was crucial. She had a lawful obligation to maintain client-attorney confidentiality - the only exception was if Savvina imparted information to do with future criminal activity, in which lives might be endangered. What the werewolf was implying didn't sound like that. It sounded more like she didn't want to hurt someone in an unfortunate position.

"Warned?" Harper repeated in a low but sharp tone, eyes coming back into focus. "Warned about what?"

If someone was about to be hurt, that did fall into purview of the law; especially if they were being targeted by Tawse. "Any name you give me, as long as nobody is hurt as a consequence, I won't pass on to investigators. Can't pass on, even," she reassured Savvina before the other witch could reply. Her client's peace of mind was a priority. "Don't worry about that."

Savvina needed to feel safe, to feel like she could trust Harper. And Harper had to live up to that trust.

Ever since Kurby Bagnold had made it clear that nothing good would come from Savvina making accusations against the name of a man called Knox Greyfriar, she'd set aside the rest of the small circle of helpers. There was a close-knit community of unregistered werewolves in London and a few of their friends, but Savvina wasn't one of them. It felt like too much of a risk to connect with them; she felt safer just outside the circle. It felt safer for everyone, but looking back, she wondered if she'd been wrong.

The guilt of the violence, whether Savvina deserved to carry it or not, weighed on her heavily. She owed them the risk to try and get word to them.

"When I came, I needed to find a source of Wolfsbane Potion," Savvina said firmly. One of the questions facing her was why she didn't register, but Harper hadn't asked.

"I was told of a place called Lapin," she began, the statement was almost a question. "It is a club for werewolves in London."

Savvina was still skeptical of the concept. It was a place so desperate in exclusivity and hid it self just enough that the exclusivity was on garish display. Guest lists, memberships, and dramatic privacy.  Savvina was only able to find out anything about it because she'd already been told, and even then, she'd never been inside.

"He is called Oscar Truemane. I believe it is his real name. He told me where to find a supplier. He's like me and his friends are like me. Not registered."

Savvina watched Harper closely for a moment, wondering if her secret little package of a name and crime would arrive across the desk intact to caring hands.

She set her half-empty cup of cooled off tea back on the desk. She continued in the same stony practicality.

"If you do not catch Cinead Tawse, Oscar and his friends could also go missing. Do you think you can get word to him? He won't be on the list."

To Harper, for whom werewolf politics and lifestyles were still recent knowledge, the idea of a werewolf club felt bewildering. As in a society? Or a night club? Something told her that she was better off not knowing which; Carstairs wasn't entirely wrong when he preached culpable deniability. It was enough to simply know the name of the place.

            "He is called Oscar Trueman....where to find a supplier.... his friends are like me. Not registered."

Birds of a feather. Harper closed her eyes for a moment and let go of her quill. "Oscar Trueman," she slowly repeated the name to commit it to memory, not wanting to risk putting it down on paper. When she opened her eyes again, the lawyer smiled softly at Savvina. "I'll do my best to pass the message on to him. Thank you for trusting me with this."

Harper reached for a sheet of paper on her desk, gesturing with it.

"Meanwhile, I have a few standard questions to ask for the trial. Boring stuff," she sighed softly, "but we might as well get them over with, yeah?"

What's done was done. Oscar Truemane's name was out. Savvina smiled but rubbed a spot on her forehead. Maybe she'd put him and his friends in danger of being hauled off the street, maybe she'd just saved their lives. It all depended on Harper now. In the short time they'd been acquainted, Savvina would just have to choose to trust her. There was no reason to other than her word and laws she cited, but if not Harper Graves than who? Time ticked on.

"I only want to help. Please tell him I am fine," she asked. It did feel as if a weight had been lifted off her shoulders, even if it was replaced by anxiety. But she'd done something. It was the first thing she'd done that helped anyone but herself since that horrible night, and that was worth some relief. That was remembering who she was.

It was time to move on now. Savvina noted that Harper had began with hospitality. It was a very clever way to go about it. If she's started off their meeting with a quickfire of questions there wouldn't have been the opportunity, as brief as it had been, to get to know something about each other. Savvina had seen it before used manipulatively, but this time it just felt kind.

"By all means," Savvina said, a little more color in her cheeks.

Fin