Office of the Werewolf Capture Unit
1:35 PM
One day after the end of the Wolf Moon

Even during the lead-up to a full moon, the chaos and activity inside the Capture Unit's headquarters was rarely allowed to transform the team's office into a disaster.  But today, one day after the events that had culminated in Alec Carter's death and the disappearance of two werewolves from the Dumfriesshire safe house, it looked as if someone had dumped a small storage room's worth of cardboard boxes and crates into the middle of the office.

After finally having the night off, Kurby's team had reported in early that morning.  They hadn't wasted any time: they'd divided into pairs and then split up the Werewolf Registry, so that each group had names to check.  Now, they were all off visiting werewolves and checking them off their list, making sure that no one else was missing after the events of the full moon from the night before.

Kurby had stayed behind.  He'd spent the morning in meetings that he really didn't want to be a part of, even if Bruce had been there to do most of the talking.  When she'd finally released him, he'd come back to the Capture Unit office, still exhausted from the past three days but without any real urgent tasks that needed to get done.

There was nothing to do but wait.  Wait for his team to finish their task and report back in, so that they could finally debrief together.  Wait for Level Two to decide to update them on whatever the hell was going on.  Bruce was insisting that Level Four would be part of the investigation, but for the moment, that was her battle to fight.

The state of the small room that branched off to the side of the WCU office, which had once served as the personal office of the Capture Unit's Head, had been indirectly bothering him since he and Bruce had stepped into it for a tense conversation the day before.[1]  When Iona Ballentyne had been bitten and forcibly retired from the Capture Unit back in 2008, he hadn't had the heart to try and step inside it, let alone making any effort to pack her things up.  Then, three months later, Theobald Mainwaring had returned as the official Capture Unit Head[2] and suddenly the office wasn't his problem to deal with anymore.  When Mainwaring had officially retired for a second time in 2009 and Kurby had finally been granted the leadership role he'd fought for for so long, he'd just...ignored it.  And then continued to ignore it for the next three years.

But stepping into the Capture Unit Head's office again the day before, accompanied by Bruce in her new role, had felt...wrong.

And so, with an hour or two to kill and nothing else to do to make himself feel better, Kurby had turned to organization.  He'd moved all of the boxed and crates from the small room into the main office, boxed up the remaining personal items that belonged to Bruce or Mainwaring, and rolled up his sleeves to clean.  Doing at least some of it the Muggle way at least made him feel like he was accomplishing something.  Once the surface-level cleaning was finished, he'd returned to the main Capture Unit office and started sorting through the boxes, trying to figure out what the hell to do with the files that had accumulated in storage over the past three years.

He was sitting cross-legged on the floor in the middle of the office, dressed in dark street clothes instead of the silver and leather hunting gear that he'd worn the day before.  Boxes and parchments were strewn around him in an incongruous mess.  The werewolf hunter had been sorting through the contents of a crate that was labeled Interview Requests and Favorite Recipes in Bellingham's neat handwriting when he heard someone come to the door.

Kurby looked up, his expression instantly a mask.  It was probably too soon for any of his teams to make it back, and he wasn't expecting Ballentyne; either way, he wasn't really interested in being the target of the smart comments that his new boss or the Capture Unit members would make if they saw what he was doing.

But it wasn't either of them.  It was the Auror from the safe house, with the two parallel scars across the left side of her face that looked like they might have been caused by werewolf claws.

Kurby didn't try very hard not to groan.  He didn't want to talk to Aurors, didn't want to look at Aurors, and didn't want to think about Aurors.  He was strongly considering banning the entire Capture Unit team from wearing red.  If he ever had to deal with Level Two again in an official capacity, it would be too soon.

"Yeah?" he asked tiredly, setting the stack of handwritten recipes aside so that he could push himself to his feet.

1.	January 10, 2012 -  The Moon's Gift
2.	December 1, 2008 - Office of the Werewolf Capture Unit

Well she hadn't expected a friendly greeting when she'd walked into his office unannounced, but she was more surprised about the boxes. Bagnold was the current head, wasn't he? Was he moving out? Or just doing some immense spring cleaning? She could bank on the latter, she was doing it herself getting ready for her own celebration.[1]

"Hey, sir," she said, defaulting to authority. He reminded her of someone she knew very strongly - someone she'd left behind in China. "Just thought I'd update you on some progress of our investigations. Level Two kindly asked me to share information with you, but I'm not here just out of obligation - you were there last night and you have better information of how you guys deal with werewolves in this country."

She looked around the room. "But if this is a bad time, I'll come back later and send you notice in advance. Didn't know you were cleaning up here." The auror turned around to leave, and then half-turned back. "Oh I forgot to mention... what I said about the evidence, I meant that I was going to do it myself. It's all in Evidence now if you want to have a closer look, it's all been labelled and checked. Sorry about that - still getting used to an all-English environment." His words hadn't really stung her last night, more just a revelation she'd probably been misinterpreted.

1.	Chinese New Year 2012 fell on 23rd January.

Kurby crossed his arms against his chest, regarding the Auror warily.  She looked younger than many of the others in her office, maybe even a year or two younger than he was, and her manner seemed much closer to one of her more friendly coworkers, like Trevelyan, Warrington, or Blake, than it did the Aurors who regularly got under his skin, like Pratt.  He hadn't heard her name the day before, hadn't bothered to ask in the middle of all the infuriating madness at the safe house, but Fenneken had mentioned accompanying an Auror Xin to the hospital to interview Figaro and the other attendant.

The two scratches stood out against the Auror's face like a beacon.  How you guys deal with werewolves in this country, she had said.  If she'd had her own unfortunate encounter with a monster while the full moon blazed brightly overhead, it hadn't been in the United Kingdom.

Without a word, he bent down to toss the stack of parchments he'd been sorting through back into the box.  Kurby glanced at her again, and then, with a tilt of the head that indicated that she could follow, turned and started for the door to the small side office.

He'd managed to mostly empty it of storage boxes.  When Bruce had been in charge, the small office had been a chaotic nightmare. Although she'd always protested his complaints, the redheaded witch's filing system seemed to consist solely of leaving everything in piles on her desk and trusting that Fate would cause the correct one to surface when she needed it.  Stepping in now to see mostly clean felt a bit disjointed.  Aside from a couple of boxes still sitting near the magical fireplace, the floor was bare and uncluttered, the desk cleared of everything except a couple of quills.

The werewolf hunter stepped past the two chairs intended for visitors, around the side of the desk, and finally turned to face her.

"I didn't catch your name."  Expression still cool, he extended a hand across the desk to her.  "Kurby Bagnold."

Well now that was a reaction she wasn't expecting. Frankly with the way things were going, she would have expected to get yelled at. It was better than the tension hanging around the two floors. She followed him into a side office that was actually in order, stepping carefully over some of the boxes to make sure she didn't kick something. She didn't want to add to her yell tab.

Despite the casual manner she was taking this with, his gaze hadn't gone amiss. Adrianna, having managed to develop a hide thicker than elephant skin, said nothing. She took his hand and shook it, her grip a little more firm than she intended.

"Adrianna Xin," said the auror after positioning herself on the opposite side of his desk. "I'm wondering if you're going to start yelling at me any moment now that you know my name."

The werewolf hunter blinked, and then immediately turned bright red.

"Uh," he said, casting desperately about the room for something to save him.  He didn't know if she was referring to the day before at the safe house, or the blow-up on Level Two, or just his general reputation at the Ministry.  Was that what the Aurors were saying now about him behind his back?  He wasn't sure that he exactly cared, at least not when he was considering it in theory.  It didn't really matter what anyone thought of him, and having a reputation for shouting often helped to get things done.

However, he did care when he was getting called out on it by a witch that he had probably unfairly snapped at the day before, now a colleague that he was going to be expected to work with.  Kurby winced, shifting awkwardly as he tried to look anywhere but at the scarred Auror's gaze.  Looking back in retrospect, he probably should have tried harder to be less of an arsehole at the safe house.

"Naw," he said, shaking his head as he lowered himself to sit in the chair that had once been Bruce's.  "I, uh, usually save the yelling for the pre-introduction.  Uh..." 

Grimacing, he swallowed hard, and then finally risked a look at her.  "Sorry about that," he ventured uncomfortably.

"I, uh, usually save the yelling for the pre-introduction.  Uh. Sorry about that." The look that he gave her would've made a more inexperienced colleague cackle. Adrianna decided to save him some face; he probably didn't deserve this right about now. She took his sitting as an invitation to do the same.

"Don't sweat it," she said, her scars curling as she smiled wryly. "I'm used to people yelling. I should've clarified what I meant last night, this morning - whatever you wanna call it, that's what I get for not filling in the important bits. Back to speaking English for two years and it still isn't enough." She angled her gaze away from him, not wanting to prolong this man's suffering. "But I did what I said, so everything's all ready for you to check when you want."

The auror leaned back in her chair, crossing a leg over the other. "Did Fenneken tell you everything?" she asked, more seriously. "The two attendants are probably going to be struck off the suspect list if I'm any judge, but I can't say when. You get a clear hate crime with related apparatus, no one's getting off lightly. If you're not going to yell at me, sooner down the line someone will." Adrianna pursed her lips. "What do you make of the tools? I have my own opinions but I'll hear yours too if you've got one."

Swallowing again, Kurby did his best to focus on the conversation that was unfolding in front of him.  Auror Adrianna Xin was brisk, punchy, and to the point.  She probably had to be, if she wanted any hope of holding her own amongst the wizard-dominated hoard on Level Two.  Over the years, he'd heard Bruce make a handful of discreet comments about what her Auror wife had to put up with.  Merlin only knew he wanted to punch Ed Pratt and Sol Carstairs every time he was stuck in the same room with them; he couldn't imagine what a female Auror had to deal with in that bleeding office.

Xin again mentioned her lack of practice speaking English; she was either being self-deprecating or giving him a discreet out, if she'd apparently been in England for two years.  It made him wonder again about her scars.  Werewolves existed the world over, and several countries dealt with them more harshly than Britain did.  Wherever she had been before the British Ministry, she could have easily had a run-in with one.

The speed at which the conversation was evolving forced him to make an effort to follow it.  It didn't help that he was still exhausted from having been on his feet for nearly straight seventy-two hours.  Kurby rested his elbow on the arm of the chair, leaning his chin on his hand, trying to process everything that Xin was saying.

"Aye, Fenneken gave me an update," he said, when there was finally a break for him to respond.  He'd taken the time to skim her report, mostly because he'd been worried about Figaro. 

Xin made another dig about him yelling, which he probably deserved.  Still slightly red, Kurby looked up at the ceiling, taking a deep breath to gather himself.

"I didn't get a chance to look at 'em too closely, but they both looked like they were made out of silver."  Kurby looked back at the Auror, meeting her gaze directly, his jaw set.  "That type of knife, with the curved blade and the notch along it, is usually for skinnin' an animal.  It looked like it'd seen a bit of use with those nicks along the blade, but someone's been takin' care of it, keepin' the silver from tarnishing."

He shrugged, tilting his head to the side as he drummed absently at the arm of his chair.  "The manacles looked like they were made of silver too," he said simply.  "I've heard of cuffs like that being used in Europe for bringin' in werewolf bounties when they're in their human form."  Something shifted in his expression, a slight tightening of his jaw as he looked back at her.  "I don't think there's any goddamned reason to own something like that unless you're plannin' to go hunt werewolves."

She let him talk, which she was at least happy to do. If she could make an educated guess he was trying to his damndest to stay awake and not letting his exhaustion show. Right now everyone involved in the case had been running around on their feet at least for twenty-four hours straight, her included. Sure it was tiring, but it was better than having to dwell too long on the implications of the case.

Adrianna rubbed her chin thoughtfully. "Do you have any ideas of criminals with an anti-werewolf streak?" she asked. "I wager the missing two are already dead. Call me a pessimist, but I've seen too much I suppose." The auror sighed.

"You think those missing werewolves have a chance?" she asked, leaning her head against a hand and rubbing her forehead gently. "That they'll turn up alive? Can't believe I'm holding out hope for werewolves..."

It was the same question that the scarred Auror had asked him the day before, right before he'd lost his temper and stomped out.  This time, he shook his head.

"No," he said shortly, as he shifted in his chair so that he could reach the drawers on the right side of the desk.  "I don't think we'll find them alive."

While he'd been cleaning out the office, he'd moved over his current stack of files related to the past few full moons.  It was probably the first time in the drawer's illustrious history that it had ever actually been used for filing; Ballentyne had only ever used it when she needed to quickly extricate herself from a mess on her desk.

He took a moment to find the file for Robert and Richard Dunnigan.  Pulling it free, he laid it flat on the desk and flipped it open.

"You lot'd have a better idea of anti-werewolf criminals than we do," he said, with a glance at Xin as he began to page through it.  "We only deal with the werewolves."

The Daily Prophet article[1] that he was looking for was close to the top.  Kurby glanced at it briefly, and then passed it across the table to the Auror.

"The Dunnigan brothers disappeared out of a safe house back in 2010," he said, leaning back in his chair as he crossed his arms.  "It wasn't anything like this, though.  No mess, no blood, no silver..."  He grimaced, thinking of the mess from the morning before in the safe house.  "It looked like they'd just decided to walk out early, even though the doors're normally locked from the outside.  Somebody found 'em wanderin' in Pembrokeshire a few weeks later, lookin' exhausted and with no memory of what happened."

1.	26 May, 2010 - Werewolf Brothers Found

She took the file and skimmed it, reading quickly. Dunnigan... the name was familiar. She'd passed it by the previous night, when she had been looking up names for her report and had entertained the wandering thought that they would find some connection to previous affairs. The fact that a stray musing had become reality did nothing for her already sinking heart.

"They were found to have been... deployed in the illegal werewolf fighting rings," she informed him, flipping over a page. "Along with a whole list of other names. That they've been taken out of a safehouse before and the incident has come to repeat... look, I don't have much heart for werewolves normally, but they should have been left alone for their own peace of mind after that." Adrianna dropped the file back onto the desk and absently stuck her thumbnail between her teeth, gazing at the cover without really looking at it.

Well, that was that then. This was indeed a fine mess. "Level Two didn't tell you?" she asked, looking up at him. "Didn't know they liked to keep secrets so hard. I should correct you that Level Two knows more about anti-werewolf criminals than I do, too. My last case was dealing with a werewolf, not anti-werewolf crimes. But it's all related and there's no escaping it, huh?" The auror passed her hand down her face. "Hooray, I get to deal with this all over again. 有多麻烦."[1]

She looked at him again, taking in his weariness. "I'm sorry," she said. "At least the other six were safe, but the question is now how long they can remain safe."

1.	"How troublesome."

The werewolf hunter stared at her, the line of his jaw tight.  The Dunnigan brothers had been found to have been what?

It was impossible not to keep the resentment from exploding through him all over again.  Frustrated, Kurby dropped his gaze, aiming an angry glare at the inside of the file folder.  Level Two kept their damned secrets to themselves because they didn't ever think that anyone else needed to know anything, except when they were shouting at him for not telling them things quickly enough.  Didn't anyone think this might be important for the Werewolf Wing to know?

Except at least Xin was telling him this now.  The werewolf hunter forced out a huff of breath, forced himself to breathe in again.  The Capture Unit hadn't been involved in the mess involving the werewolf fighting ring, which had been eventually exposed as being run by Ira Almasy, the wealthy Russian witch who had turned out to be the head of a crime syndicate.  Kurby had found out about it after the entire thing had come to light, after the whole mess with Hannah Bombay and her uncle, after Almasy and her right-hand man had died during an Auror raid.

He couldn't help but roll his eyes at Xin's surprise over her department's habit of keeping secrets.  It wasn't her fault, especially since she had come here to share information with him,  but everyone at the Ministry knew that the Aurors hated to give up any semblance of control.  If she didn't wasn't aware of that, she was far greener than she looked.

Her comment about her last case made Kurby glance at her again, at the two discolored scars that arched across her face.  If she'd gotten them from a lycanthrope transformed into its bestial form, she was lucky to still be alive.  Most werewolves didn't stop at half-measures when they attacked their prey; he'd dragged enough teammates away from the wrong end of an attack to have an idea of how bad things usually got.  If Xin had only escaped with a few scratches and no bites, she was incredibly fortuitous.

"Well, if you can get me Level Two's list of the werewolves that were involved in the fightin' ring, that might be a start," he said, his tone a bit short.  But that wasn't Xin's fault.  Kurby frowned, brows knitting as he glanced at her again. "What happened with your last case involvin' a werewolf?"

"Well, if you can get me Level Two's list of the werewolves that were involved in the fightin' ring, that might be a start." She hadn't thought of that. Wait, seriously? Level Two hadn't-- was there that much distrust in the Ministry? Adrianna pursed her lips at this thought. She'd seen how that went down in China, with the added blessing that she had been ranked too low to be involved, but she was back here now.

"What happened with your last case involvin' a werewolf?" His voice broke through her thoughts. She stared at him for a tad longer than was comfortable, though it was unintended - she'd spent the past few years after the case mulling over different points of time regarding the case herself, trying to make sense of all of it after her mind had had decided it had been through enough.

"It's a story spanning over seven years and I figure it's a bit long for you right now," she said, her mind briefly thinking about the shitshow that was about to go down between floors. "But to make it quick - had a werewolf who went on a rampage every month murdering people over the state of werewolf treatment. Slipped out of our fingers with his premeditated murders every single time, because bloodlust and intelligence never go well together. We lost a lot of good people to him." Her hand absently went up to the pendant resting just below her collarbone. "Seven years and a four-hour wolf hunt to kill him. Cornered him in an alleyway in Hong Kong and had the fight of my life." Oh yeah, it hadn't been England. "It was all in China - when I got back here and looked through the Prophet archives, I found an article this small about it."

She held up her hand, the gap between her forefinger and thumb about the height of a shot glass. "Really brief mention. Back in China we do try to take criminals alive so they face justice, but he was pushing the line too far. By the time we caught up with him, it was straight up a kill order. Better to end him than risk more casualties."

Adrianna shrugged. "You remind me of him - my superior on the case with me, not the werewolf. Can't tell whether that's good or bad, though."

Kurby sat back in his chair, staying still as he listened.  He hadn't heard this particular story that Adrianna Xin was sharing, but he knew the shape of it well enough.  It had been a long time in the United Kingdom since a werewolf had truly gone on a rampage.  Even Dugan MacDuff, who had murdered several people, stalked Margo Amherst, and terrorized Level Two, had been apprehended in a matter of months.  It hadn't really been since Fenrir Greyback during the darkest days of the second war that the Werewolf Capture Unit had really had to deal with a nightmare that seemed like it would never stop.

Going up against a monster left scars behind.  Not all of them were physical -- although Xin clearly had her share of those too, a constant reminder of what she'd faced.  But so much of those scars were invisible ones, marking the comrades that they had lost, the horrible scenes that they could never forget.  He couldn't imagine having to hunt the same werewolf and bear witness to its crimes for seven long years.

And so he listened.  Silently, respectfully, his arms crossed against his chest.  It hurt beyond measure to see horrific things that no one ever should, and then realize that the world was carrying on around them as if such a tragedy had never even happened. 

Her final comment, at least, made him bark out a swift laugh.  Kurby flashed the Auror a sharp grin, pointed and amused at the sentiment.

"Well, let me know when you decide which one it is," he said nicely.  "I'll put a galleon on the latter."

His expression sobered, and he inclined his head ever so slightly to her, meeting her gaze directly.

"I'm sorry," he said quietly. "Sometimes the only thing we can do is keep anyone else from havin' to face a monster like that."

She appreciated the sympathy, she really did. People like him and outfits like the Werewolf Capture Unit were at least one of the many layers of prevention Britain had. "At least you guys have got this going," she gestured at the office around them, "and werewolf rights. China doesn't. The fault lay with China as much as it did with the werewolf. Werewolves are second-class citizens officially over there - in society they're lower than that. At some point someone thought it was a good idea to hire professional animal handlers early on in the case." She snorted with mirthless laughter. "That didn't even last a year. Mercenaries wanted triple the pay by the fourth year."

Adrianna nodded at him. "But you'll probably understand if I don't have much adoration for werewolves. I'm not for taking their rights away, just that I don't like them. When they're people, they're fine. When they're wolves, they're not. I can't... I can't deal with it. I'll try my best to keep it to myself, that I can promise. And if we're up against anti-werewolf sentiment, I'm sorry to say - we've got work cut out for us and it isn't pretty."

She looked back down at the folder thoughtfully. "I know a bit about anti-werewolf sentiment, but not as much as the rest of Level Two. I'm only on this case because of my experience with werewolves and it turns out that it's a complete reversal of roles. I couldn't find any leads on criminals with a record of anti-werewolf grudge or hate crimes in general, though I'd suggest starting with perps who might mistreat animals." Adrianna looked up at him. "Am I better off assuming you guys are outside of the information bubble right now, sir? I might have some way of breaking that bubble, but I can't promise a lot."

First she’d remarked on how he reminded her of her old supervisor; now she was calling him sir again. That was one habit he’d rather put a stop to quickly.

“Bagnold’s fine,” Kurby said briskly, giving a quick shake of his head.

Xin seemed happy to move the conversation onwards, which he was more than relieved to let her; but even so, the Auror seemed intent on communicating that she wasn’t an expert on the issues that they were wrestling with. Kurby took that as a sign that she felt a bit overwhelmed, maybe even a hair out of her Quidditch league. Werewolves were a tricky moral issue; many Aurors steered well clear of anything involving them. It wasn’t surprising that Xin could have wrestled with one directly, but still felt uncomfortable dealing with the broader issues surrounding them.  After all, he’d only immersed himself in werewolf politics by necessity.

Still, after yesterday, when it had felt like the walls were on the verge of caving in around them and things were so tense with Level Two, he’d take his allies where he could get them. Auror Adrianna Xin has gone out of her way to seek him out. She was offering help and information, promising to do what she could to bridge the gap of mistrust between their floors. The least he could do was take her at face value, accept the help she was offering and give his own in good will. What really mattered, after all, was figuring out what the hell had happened at the safe house and making sure it couldn’t happen again.

”Aye, you could say that. Reckon the best place to start might be the fighting ring,” he said, moving past the implied tension with Level Two as he frowned more at the air than at her. “But Almasy and her deputy both died earlier this year, aye? Reckon it could be someone else involved in that, though, if the Dunnigans were targeted again.”

Glancing down at the folder, he took a second to search his desk, trying to remember where he’d stuck his quills. Once he found one, he swiveled the folder sideways, positioning it so the blank inside cover was close to him.

“So we have the Dumfriesshire safe house...”  Kurby trailed off as he sketched a quick caricature of the building: a rectangle with a roof, a door, two windows.

He glanced up at Xin, raising an eyebrow quizzically. “There’s two paths that our infiltrator could have taken to target it — aye?  One is the Dunnigan brothers.”

Looking down again, he sketched two stick figures below the building, adding ears, black circles for noses, and wolf-like tails.

“The arsehole could’ve targeted them specifically,” he said, tapping his quill against the drawing as he looked back up at the Auror. “Followed them the month before, saw where they went and then found a way to break into it for January.” He shrugged, leaning back slightly in his chair.  “I checked the record book, and they were both regulars there. The registers and safe house locations are all kept secret, but I reckon it wouldn’t have been that hard to get a sense of their habits.”