It was at least 11 o’clock by the time that Iona Ballentyne stepped foot on Level Four of the Ministry of Magic, and she looked like she should have stayed hidden under a duvet with a bucket beside the bed. It was the look of someone severely hungover. A face pastier than usual (she already had pasty red-head skin in the first place), tired blue eyes surrounded in dark circles. Her fiery curly hair had been washed, and was still damp, starting to protrude from her head in wild directions. She was dressed in her new usual work attire; smart black trousers, and a shirt. Her smart robes hung loosely off her shoulder. The limp, as she walked through the corridors on Level 4 was distinctly more pronounced than was habitual, and her grip on the cane tight enough to send her knuckles white. One didn’t have to study her expression of her grip for long to recognise that she was in extraordinary pain.

Every month held the same misery. To add to the overwhelming nausea was the excruciating flare up of her injured leg. Most wounds could be healed with magic; and to an extent, hers had been. She could walk on it gingerly, for short distances, and required her cane for the extra support when covering more than the length of her living room. But every full moon, the wolf forgot that weight being positioned on the leg was a bad idea. Thus, every month when she woke up naked on the floor of her safe room cell, she was in a considerable amount of pain.

As usual, Bruce had dressed and used the floo to return home after her wake up. She’d vomited a couple of times, checked the Daily Prophet briefly, asked Zo if she’d heard anything about the night’s events, taken a bath, dressed, refused any breakfast, vomited again, and left the flat.

As agreed with Carter the day before, Bruce had firstly gone to his office for a briefing. His absence led her to making her slow and steady was to her office, pausing momentarily to lean against a wall and breathe through the pain shooting through her left lower limb.

After a slow move through the zoolike area of the Beast Unit, Bruce approached her office and the small outer office where the previously empty desk had sat. Now, the office was occupied by young witch she’d recently hired.

“Morning.” She tried to smile, a strained smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “Have you seen Carter?”

Dido was already missing her gig at Reducto. It wasn't anything to do with the workload or being at the Ministry of Magic, so much as it was to do with the hours. Waking up at noon to take an afternoon shift? Bliss. This was the nine-to-five life, though. Such was the price she had to pay for getting a full time job that would pay her enough to move out of her parents' place by the summer.

There were some perks: she got her own desk! It was still pretty bare, mostly papers and quills and forms, but she was going to jazz it up. A little ceramic Griffin was perched on the very corner of the table: a dip between its wings held dark ink, and Dido plucked the quill it carried in its beak. Paperwork came before decoration; a good impression had to be made if she wanted to keep this up. Luckily she had extra time without her new boss, to adjust and get shit done.

She was dressed in black and white robes, kinky curls knotted into a bun on top her head. The bun bobbled when she looked up upon hearing the irregular step.

            "Morning." Bruce Ballentyne had finally arrived to work, at an understandably late hour. “Have you seen Carter?”

"Nope!" Dido smiled casually. "G'morning. That other dude was here, though, the grumpy one. Bagnold. Said you should find him in the unit office or level two. Seemed kinda important?" she gestured with her quill, not sure what was or wasn't normal for the WCU Head. "He looked really, like, mad."

Blue eyes scanned the desk. Tidy, organised. Since her arrival in late December, Bruce hadn’t had an assistant. Her own office was a clear representation of that. In reality, she would be working in a chaotic mess regardless of having someone to attempt to keep her organised. Poor young Dido was in for a tough job. She’d certainly be working for her wage.

Normally, despite her current physical misery, Bruce would probably have smiled genuinely at Bagnold being, quite rightly, referred to as ‘the grumpy one’. He’d always been abrasive, not a people person. He’d always, however, done his job well. It was why his bosses had always kept him around. The wizard just needed a tug at his leash occasionally.

Today, ‘the grumpy one’ coming to say she needed to find him did not mean anything even remotely pleasant. The WCU and Level 2 had prepared thoroughly for the prospect of what could happen last night, and Iona was dreading what she was about to find out. She gripped the cane tighter, frowning.

“Mad is his usual expression when he comes to this office.” Bagnold and her had once been friends. They’d been close enough to trust the other with their life. Now, she felt like she was walking on eggshells with him. Whatever had happened last night, today was going to be deeply unpleasant. “Did he mention anything?” It would have been nice to have warning about what was to come.

            “Mad is his usual expression when he comes to this office. Did he mention anything?”

That was gonna have to be something she got used to. Grumpy people. Tons of them in the werewolf wing though that was likely because of the full moon. Werewolves grumpy because they had to become wolf-monsters. Hunters grumpy cause they gotta chase 'em down or whatever. Everyone else grumpy because of chain reactions.

"Umm," Dido glanced down at her memo pad, where she'd taken down a bunch of notes from everyone who had stopped by the office with a message for Bruce. "Nah, not really. But level two has been hopping around, so I think something bad went down...." she shrugged. "Obvious, I know. Sorry."

Whatever Bagnold wanted with Bruce, it was probably going to be gruesome. Dido was curious - she wanted details! - but she wasn't impatient to find out. And if her boss left to meet him, that gave her more time to settle into the desk before shit got real.

“@*&%.” Bruce swore under her breath. She could hardly blame her young new American assistant for not asking Kurby Bagnold for more information. She should only be relieved that Dido wasn’t another Penny Pickler who would probably break down into tears at the mere sight of Bagnold.

“There’s a file on my desk,” there were hundreds of files on her desk and hundreds more piled up on the floor. “Proposals for the registry. It needs to go to Carter’s office.” When she found it, anyway. “Tell him I need to see him.”

Unable to delay any further, Bruce turned on her heel and headed back down the corridor for the Werewolf Capture Unit office. With luck, Bagnold would be there parked at his desk and not on Level 2.

When she pushed through the double doors, she was thankful to see, amongst several haggard looking former and new colleagues, her old mentee. Dido was right, he looked mad. Her gaze scanned over him, checking for any sign of what had happened. Blood, bruises, ripped clothes. None of that. She said nothing to him, only rose her eyebrows, expectant.

The Werewolf Capture Unit office looked like a Concusso blast had gone off inside it.  Once Kurby had started to impose his will as Capture Unit Head, even in the lead-up to a full moon, any mess within the office was always forcefully contained within an acceptable range.  But today, there were stacks of file folders everywhere, spread across the different desks, as Gervais Bellingham and Thaddeus Smith helped him sort through them for the relevant papers.

Kurby looked up sharply as the red-headed witch pushed her way inside.  There was a hard edge to his expression, a tense energy to his stance that made it seem as if he were only one prick away from exploding.  He stared her for a moment, the line of his jaw tight, and then turned and marched over to the door that led to the small side room that had once been the private office of the Head of the Werewolf Capture Unit.

He pushed open the door, every movement rough, leaving it agape behind him so that Ballentyne could follow inside. 

The former office wasn’t very big; it had enough room for a desk and two chairs, with a stone mantle along one wall framing a magical fireplace.  First Bruce Ballentyne and then Theobald Mainwaring had left it without ever really cleaning it out, and there were traces of both that had been left behind: a green glass lamp that had long ago run out of oil perched on the edge of the desk, a collection of quills in an old inkwell, a tilted picture frame forgotten on the mantle.  Since it had fallen out of use, the office had gradually been converted into an informal storage space, with stacks of boxes and crates scattered around the room.

Kurby dodged around some boxes, uprighted a chair that had been knocked over, and then stepped behind the desk.  Without a word, he turned to face his former mentor, staying on his feet as he crossed his arms tightly against his chest.

He waited until Ballentyne shut the door.

“Someone broke into a safe house,” he said, his voice low and dangerous.

Irrespective of the ostensibly unpleasant situation, a strange feeling washed over Bruce when she followed Bagnold into her old office. She’d cluttered this small office up for 8 years; not a short time by any means. During her time, the desk had been chaotic, much like her current one was down the corridor. The pictures that had been stuck up on the walls had long since been removed. She’d never come into the office to clear it herself. Instead, her personal belongings had been packed up after the attack and sent to her flat. The receiving of that box had been a very bad day for the recovering witch. Now, the office appeared to be in use merely as a storage room for the WCU. A space that had once been comfortable for her now felt claustrophic and unpleasant.

Bruce glanced at the chair that Bagnold had picked up before her gaze followed him around her old desk. Now, with him stood before her, it was easy to see just how tired he appeared to be. Perhaps he looked worse than her; angrier for sure.

She nudged the door with her cane, and it swung shut.

“Someone broke into a safe house,” Bagnold informed her, clearly on the precipice of an explosion.

“@*&%.” She repeated her curse from several minutes previous with Dido. Safe houses were supposed to be exactly that, safe. They were a necessary cage to hold several werewolves, but they were made to feel like a sanctuary. People had to feel comfortable attending.

Her stomach sank, causing her nausea to increase.

There were so many questions. Too many questions. But her head wasn’t clear enough to ask them.
“What happened?” Was all she could make out, her voice low and quiet.

He'd had time now to work through the details in his head, to begin fitting them into some semblance of a story.  As much as Level Two might think that they had a monopoly on anything regarding investigatory skills, it didn't take an Auror to fit the pieces together. 

Whoever had broken into the safe house hadn't made any effort to cover his tracks.  The culprit had wanted them to know exactly what he'd done.

"There're two werewolves missing."  Kurby looked directly at Bruce as he said it.  That was the most important point; there was no reason to beat around it.  Two werewolves who had checked themselves into the safe house, who had trusted the Ministry's processes enough to put themselves under someone else's protection, were now gone.  Based on what else he'd seen, he didn't have a lot of hope that they'd be found in one piece.

"The arsehole broke in last night."  The werewolf hunter's voice was cold and harsh, but there was a hazardous undercurrent to his words, as if he were dancing too close to some perilous, terrible edge.  "It sounds like he used Polyjuice to disguise himself as one of the attendants.  Knocked out both attendants, dumped them in a closet, and then went on to check in all the goddamned werewolves."

The terrible thing that had been done to Figaro Sellaphix was another dark hole inside him.  Kurby had pushed it aside, something to rage at later once his official duties were through and he could get the hell away from the Ministry.  Whatever kind of an idiot Fig might have been about the December full moon, whatever reasoning he'd had to take up a position in a safe house and not tell Kurby about it, the kid didn't deserve the all-too-personal assault that had taken place.  When he finally finished what he had to do and got the bleeding hell out of here, he was going straight to find the Sellaphixes.

Ballentyne listening in silence, her already strained grip on her wolf’s head of her cane tightening with the more information shared.

2 missing werewolves. A polyjuiced attendant. Attendants dumped in a closet. No one knowing any different.

Bagnold was evidently raging inside and trying to remain professional. Bruce could clearly understand why and she was feeling her temper flare.

Attendance at a safehouse was protection. You went through the usual routine and left in the morning, a rough return to normal life. It was supposed to be guaranteed. The public were safer, and so were the werewolves.

In the silence that followed Kurby’s explanation, Bruce closed her eyes against a pain shooting up through her leg. She shifted her weight, breathing deeply through both the pain and her building anger and frustration. She’d expected something; they all had expected some nightmare. But whatever the reality was, it would always have made her feel sick.

“They can’t identify him, then?” she asked, a foolish question, perhaps. Him, Bagnold had said. A presumption or a fact?

“Is Carter aware? And Level 2?” Even in her shock and her own crescendo of emotions, Bruce was able to consider policy.  It was all she could consider to stop the panic from settling in.

The werewolf hunter let out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding. Turning away, he rubbed his hands over his face, pressing his fingers against his temples.

"Level Two came," he said, squeezing his eyes tightly shut. "I haven't seen Carter. I dunno if anyone'll be able to identify 'im."

He'd been up and on his feet for over two days now. There had been a few hours of sleep here and there, but it had been inconsistent and restless, mostly stolen as he'd lounged in an uncomfortable office chair while waiting for something else to happen. Now, in the brief moments when he could feel his rage slipping, exhaustion threatened to come creeping in.

Kurby forced himself to open his eyes and looked back at Bruce.

"The other six werewolves are fine," he said, very quietly. "Adrestia Gamp was one of 'em. They're all down on Level Two now; the Aurors are questionin' them.  But --"

He broke off, fighting to swallow past the hard knot in his throat.

"The roof was half caved in," he said tightly, giving a hard shake of his head. "There was blood everywhere, Bruce, and fur and silver flakes all over the ground." The words came out in a rush now, and he gave the red-headed werewolf a pleading look, as if he were entreating her forgiveness for something that he hadn't done. "There was a goddamned skinning knife in one of the cells. I don't know which fecking, @$%!#, %&*#-hole took them," he growled, spitting each profanity out with vehemence, "but there's no bleeding way we're ever goin' to find them alive."

Adrestia Gamp was being dragged into this made it more personal for Level 4. She was one of them, a comrade.

Kurby continued, barely keeping himself together. She’d never seen him so on edge, struggling so much. Usually, the wizard was stoic, controlled yet grouchy. He angered, like most in the WCU, but he tended to simmer like a pot of cabbage left on too long. Things bothered him, but they never really touched him. The look flashing in his eyes now set her further off kilter.

She held her breath, staring straight ahead at her old friend and colleague when he talked of the roof, the fur, silver scattered across the ground. Silver, treacherous to a werewolf even in human form.

"There was a goddamned skinning knife in one of the cells.”

Everything around her froze as images flashed through her mind. Bloody, harrowing images now too vivid in her imagination. She had the numbing sensation as if her blood had run cold. When she blinked, her eyes were wet, damp with tears threatening. This victim wasn’t just some wolf anymore. It was her kin.

“Oh my god.” Was all she could get out for a moment, frozen in place by the door. Her knuckles had turned white on the cane, fingernails digging into the wood. After a moment, she lowered herself carefully into the chair, wincing slightly as she stretched out her left leg.

“But we will do our damndest to find who did this.” Her voice was barely above a whisper. “Ha-has anyone informed the families?”

He wanted to shout, wanted to hit someone, but there wasn't anyone there to suffer the full onslaught of his wrath but Bruce. Kurby settled for kicking the nearest box as hard as he could. Luckily for his foot, it happened to made of cardboard and not wood, full of papers that he'd abandoned to the office that he had never wanted years before. The box bounced off the toe of his dragonhide boot and went flying, dumping its contents onto the floor in a disheveled heap.

The cigarette butts that had been scattered across the floor of the safe house felt like they had been burned into his skull.  Someone had left them there, dropping them to smolder carelessly on the ground as he or she had danced whatever dance they'd come to do with the wolves.

Not do their damndest. They would find whoever did this. He'd damned well skin the bastard himself.

Bruce's last question pulled him back to the surface. Kurby looked back at her, the line of his jaw tight. She looked as miserable as he felt, her eyes red and glistening.

She always thought of the families first. When Bruce Ballentyne had run the Capture Unit, she'd always been the one to personally go when any of their comrades had fallen. When she'd been bitten, he hadn't even had the courage to face her.

It took another round of swallowing before he found his voice again.

"I don't know," he said, looking away. Weariness was suddenly surging back to the forefront again, and his own eyes were stinging. He took a deep, steadying breath, and then put a hand on the wood of the desk to help ground himself. "Bellingham and Smith are tryin' to dig up whatever information we have on everyone.  The two who're missing are two brothers."

Seeing Kurby like this was deeply unnerving, and Bruce looked away as he gripped the desk and drew some deep breaths. Their work had always been trying. Both had been in the business of werewolf hunting for a long enough time to have seen many a witch and wizard fall. Sometimes it had been their fellow hunters, sometimes it had been innocent bystanders. Each victim was as painful as the person that had come before. Death didn’t get any easier with increasing numbers. But the death they’d seen had rarely been malicious. It was always wolf mauling. What they encountered was rarely done to an innocent werewolf who’d put their trust in the ministry and been betrayed.

Two brothers. She closed her eyes and drew a slow breath. Siblings. 2 losses in one family in one night.
“Have them give me the addresses and names.” She would deal with that as soon as she could. Even if they had no information, the families needed to know something.

Now, this wasn’t the only thing playing on her mind. She glanced back up at Kurby, a deep frown creasing her pale brow.
“You don’t think it’s weird that this has happened and Carter isn’t here?” The words came out before their possible meaning registered. Realising that it may have sounded like an accusation that Carter was responsible, Bruce shook her head, her frown deepening. “No one seems to have seen him, Kurb.”

Some mix of shame and misery made him drop his gaze again as he gave a short, brusque nod in response to his former mentor's words.  Kurby might have been the first one to charge into unknown danger inside the safe house, but he would have done anything to avoid being the one to have to face the missing werewolves' family.  For Bruce, being the one to have the most difficult conversation that he could possibly imagine was non-negotiable.  It was part of her duty.

He was still trying to figure out how to respond, what he could possibly say in return, when Bruce spoke up again.  "You don't think it's weird...?"

Kurby went still.

She didn't have to explain her meaning. Brows knitting, he wracked his memory, trying to think through all of the recent events at the Ministry. Carter had checked in the night before like he always did during a full moon, right before the Department Head had gone home to get some sleep. But he had never seen the other wizard after he was supposed to come back in the morning. The shift had been changing just as the red sparks had come in, and Kurby had left for the safe house with Fenneken.  And then they'd returned to the Ministry, and in the thick of it, Kurby had stopped to drop off a message for Ballentyne once she showed up, but he hadn't...

Dark eyes moved sharply to meet Bruce's gaze.  The werewolf hunter straightened instantly, pushing off from the desk.

"Let me grab my gear," he said, starting immediately for the door.  He'd abandoned his chain mail and hunting gear almost as soon as he'd gotten back to Level Four, vehemently flinging each piece somewhere across the room.  But he didn't need to recover it all right now.  Even if there was a direwolf waiting for them when they went to find Carter, he was angry enough that all he wanted was his silver chain.

It wasn’t long before Kurby Bagnold and Bruce Ballentyne apparated just outside of Alec Carter’s small London home. First Bagnold appeared, followed almost immediately after by the red-haired witch. She landed awkwardly, screwing her face up for a moment as she shifted her weight to her right leg and took a breath. Her wand was gripped tightly in her left hand, raised and prepped for whatever was to come. She was desperately trying to fight the nausea, to push it down with the adrenaline that was stirring from the possibility of what was behind Alec Carter’s front door.

She spared a quick glance at Bagnold, indicating for him to move first. He’d be far quicker and nimble if something was going down behind that door. Wherever their boss was, it wasn’t good.

Bagnold, she clocked, was once more kitted out with his silver. He was prepared for an ambush, and Bruce was suddenly feeling decidedly under equipped. Her silver chains had been hung up a long time ago, relics in the back of a cupboard, untouchable now for the werewolf.

Before them, the door to Carter’s small house was clearly beaten down, blown off its hinges. It was lying in the hallway beyond the door. Bruce glanced around, checking for anyone on the street as they were in a muggle area. It was clear bar a few empty parked cars along the curb.

Together, Bruce behind her colleague, they moved up the small path and climbed the stairs to the front door. It was hard to approach silently with a cane, so she instead limped up the stone steps, clearly a struggle that was easily read in her facial expression, but her wand didn’t lower. She was primed.