Solomon Carstairs was beginning to feel like he was a part of the furniture on level two, eternally sat at his desk as witches and wizards came to and fro bearing strange news of the evening. The only time instance in which he left the office this morning was to personally owl his wife, who had transformed in one of the Ministry safe houses last night. This wasn't long after six werewolves appeared in their foyer for processing - shortly followed by Auror Xin, and explanations of an infiltration that stung his ears and turned his insides to ice. Irene was fine. Irene was home, oblivious. Her safe house in Cambridgeshire remained untouched... for now.

Once more since the events of December, he could sense the countdown to the next full moon. Their deadline.

Right now, they were running on a tighter schedule than that. An auror-in-training had come by to inform him that they'd been called to a crime scene by the WCU: Alec Carter was dead. Alec Carter was dead and he was hearing it from a practical child, instead of from four. The news clarified some things, such as why it had been impossible to get anyone credible up from the werewolf wing to explain their findings in Dumfries and offer conjectures.

Without a leader, any department would act like a chicken with its head cut off. Still, he expected more. A significant Ministry figure had been murdered and it was beginning to look like the head of the DMLE was the last person to find out! Well, no. Glass would be.

"Reid!" he barked in the general direction of the glittery desk just outside the open office door. "Send Bagnold and Ballentyne in as soon as they arrive!"

This early in the week, Solomon's office was still in an organised condition, though his desk was covered in memos - including a confused one from three about whether they were needed - and fresh photographs of the scene from the safe house. He could barely strand to look at them: every time he saw the blood on the walls, the silver, the tufts of fur, he thought of Irene.

It could have been her. Something went wrong. They had failed to protect people last night and Solomon needed to know how and why. They had to be better than this.

The short journey up to level 2 had been silent, both Bruce and Bagnold exhausted yet seething. Bruce once more held the memo in her spare hand as they walked through the foyer[1] on level 2, her limp heavily pronounced, and her gait slow. In her 22 years in the Werewolf Capture Unit, she’d rarely frequented the Department for Law Enforcement. It had been occasional for the odd collaborative meeting. Now, she’d been there twice in a month. A record she wasn’t happy to set.

Past the office of the Head of Magical Law Enforcement, Iona could see the corridor that led down to the auror headquarters. She wondered briefly if Zora was there now after her morning off, and how much she knew about what had happened last night and this morning. If she knew anything, she was very likely to have been pretty worried. What if it had have been Iona’s safe house? Iona turned her gaze to the office doors ahead of them. She couldn’t afford to think of that now. Her boss had died. More were possibly dead. Work first, wife later.

On approach into the outer assistant’s office, the pair were ushered to go straight through. Iona’s grip on the memo tightened, the paper scrunching in her hands as she and Kurby stepped through the double doors and they closed gently behind them.

She said nothing for a moment, stepping up to Carstairs’ desk and tossing the memo onto it in front of him.
“Balfour Spectre just found this on Carter’s desk.” She muttered, voice clearly displaying how much she was struggling to keep her temper at bay. “Did your people know about this?”

1.	Going off this map.

If Solomon had hoped for Ballentyne to take the initiative by delivering her briefing of last night's events, he was sorely disappointed to be on the receiving end of a question instead. The memo on his desk was nondescript - as common and crumpled as any delivered from two over the course of their busy days. The witch's tone, everything about her expression and body language, said otherwise. Bagnold did not appear capable of speech, so Sol reached for the note to scan it.

            “Balfour Spectre just found this on Carter’s desk. Did your people know about this?”

Ah, so it was Spectre holding down the office on four. The older wizard placed the memo back where it had landed, somehow calm when confronted by Bruce's simmering temper. This was the first he'd laid eyes on the memo but he'd been briefed about it before, in passing.

"It appears we sent it, so it stands to reason we must have known." Solomon adjusted his spectacles, grim. "I take it your people did not, in spite of where it was found? But I didn't call you both up here to point fingers," he gestured dismissively at the chairs across the desk, fairly certain at least one of the two would refuse it. "I need to know what occurred, and what you think, in your professional opinions, occurred last night."

His bespectacled gaze flicked from Bruce to Bagnold, and then back to her. "And why the hell nobody thought it was pertinent to brief anybody on this floor about what must have been, on first sight, a crime scene. Did you think something had happened to Carter when you ran down there without a word to Law Enforcement?"

Typical werewolf wing, thinking they ran the ABCs of anything to do with wolves. One angry hunter and a woman with a cane was not his idea of an inspection patrol, not even on a bad day. And today was a bad day.

"It appears we sent it, so it stands to reason we must have known." Carstairs was playing the sarcastic card, great. Iona’s fingernails dug into the wooden handle of her cane when he suggested how he hadn’t called them up here to point fingers. Could have fooled her. The fact that she’d been ordered anywhere by the Head of another Department was grating very thinly. Solomon Carstairs was no her boss, he did not get to make such demands.

It went on. What actually occurred. What they thought occurred. Like they were a pair of naughty children who’d just returned covered in mud and high on sugary sweets, refusing to tell the truth about how they’d ended up like that.

Historically, Iona would have preferred to stand, not giving in to the authority quite so easily. Today, physical limitations and pain dictated far more strongly that fury and ego. She sat down opposite the wizard’s grand desk, knowing full well that Bagnold wouldn’t oblige. He was still stood close, stony.

“Great strategy not pointing fingers, that’s going really well for you.” Her tired blue gaze shot an angry, pointed look. He didn’t want fingers pointed at him. Shooting the blame at her team was clearly okay. She wasn’t even going to be petty enough right this moment to point out that every damned werewolf attack left a crime scene.

“A safe house was attacked last night and two werewolves are missing. Carter was attacked and killed in his own home by a werewolf and your people had a fucking vision all about it. Right now, sir I should be finding out what the hell happened and speaking to the relatives of our missing werewolves instead of being questioned on why Bagnold and I did our damned jobs this morning.”

In spite of her acid remarks, Bruce did in fact go on to deliver what he had expected: a brief account of last night's events. Solomon pressed his lips together as he thought of how, if Irene had been taken, that's all she would have been to these two. A kidnapped werewolf. Even so, he could understand why nobody was sent up right away if the first thing they did after learning about the safe house was to investigate Alec Carter's mysterious absence on four.

            "Right now... what the hell happened and speaking...instead of being questioned on why Bagnold and I did our damned jobs this morning.”

"And were you going to do those things before you made the rest of the Ministry aware that a department head was dead?" Sol drawled dryly as he took off his spectacles raising his eyebrows. "Maybe check in on the other department heads? See if anyone else outside your minuscule little world was targeted? Or perhaps I should expect the Werewolf Wing to only think of the expected, rather than the unexpected. Certainly would account for how easily a safe house was attacked."

Carter, after all, wasn't the only one here with a hardline on werewolves. He raised a hand to indicate Bagnold but continued to address Ballentyne. "By all means, though, do send your schoolboy off to do the very real work required of him while you brief me on the details of what happened. I'm certain you trust your own people to do their jobs in your stead."

This was always the problem with department heads and division heads and any kind of bloody head. They forgot that when you became a leader, you had to delegate and you had an obligation to keep the Ministry of Magic running at the breakneck speed it required. Bruce wanted to go gallivanting like she was one of her underlings.

 "I trust you've sent someone to brief the Minister?" Solomon slipped his glasses on again, adjusting it to look at the redhead witch properly. "He has to hear it from four, you understand that."

Slight warning for language.

As soon as he’d seen the memo, Kurby had known what they were walking into.  Solomon Carstairs was the sort of wizard who had fought alongside the lot of them in the last war, but had learned all the wrong lessons from it.  The Head of Magical Law Enforcement reminded the werewolf hunter all too much of his older brother: supercilious and self-important, biding his time in perfunctory ways until he could rise to power and impose his own pompous stamp on Level Two’s brand of justice.

And impose himself he had.  Kurby was still angry over what had happened with the Grants, over the injustice that he fully expected to be delivered to Savvina Katopodis.  Carstairs cared more about appearances and public perception than he did justice or keeping people safe.  There was a reason that Harper Graves had told him that the surest way to get the outcome they wanted from a trial was to try and sway the presses.[1]

Kurby had been fuming when he stepped into the office, with what felt like a hot, smoldering fire burning deep underneath his icy, glacial veneer.  Angry for Carter, who’d died all alone in horrific fashion when his death could have seemingly been prevented.  Angry for the werewolves, the six who’d had their safe space penetrated and the two that he was certain they’d never see alive again.  And angry for Bruce, whose first full moon back had exploded in the most catastrophic way possible, who was now being shouted at and ordered around by peers and colleagues instead of being allowed to do her damned job.

Despite it all, the werewolf hunter had kept his mouth shut.  He’d stayed silent while the Department Head had delivered his scolding, silent while the exchange with Bruce had turned patronizing, even silent when Carstairs tossed pointed barbs Kurby’s way, as if he hadn’t been the one to order them both to his office.

But when the Magical Law Enforcement Head turned his condescending tone back on Bruce, he lost it.

“Carstairs, why don’t you pull your bloviated head out of your paternalistic arsehole and stop tellin’ her how to do her fucking job!” he erupted.

The werewolf hunter took a step forward, teeth clenched and shoulders tense, jabbing a finger at the door behind him.

“I’ve been on Two for the past two days, and not once has one of your bleedin’ Aurors bothered to mention that you knew someone might get murdered by a werewolf!” he snarled.  “But no!  Who the hell cares about that!  Let’s all stand around and whinge about how Bruce isn’t in eight places at once when you were the one who goddamned ordered both of us up here!”

1.	December 6 - Not a Dog’s Chance

If he were stood, Solomon might have stepped back when the of the Werewolf Capture Unit suddenly burst into speech. The man had been silent up until this moment and now it were as if a cork had become unstoppered, filling the office with Bagnold's snarling voice. "I’ve been on Two for the past two days.... all stand around and whinge about how Bruce isn’t in eight place...ordered both of us up here!”

There seemed no end to the injustices imposed on the struggling pair, apparently!

"Thank you for your enlightening comments," the older wizard raised his eyebrows further as he got over his surprise, "and if you feel so strongly about it, Bagnold, I advise you to take your leave of my paternalistic presence to perform your duties. However..." Solomon trailed off with a grim look, his eyes shifting to Ballentyne in the chair.

That damned vision. They couldn't let it out to the press, it would be disastrous. Bagnold was crying over spilled milk when they had other concerns.

"However," he continued more carefully, not quite looking at them so much as he was looking past them as he thought hard, "We did not know with certainty that someone was going to die. I think it is important not to go around yelling about the vision of Carter's death, if it's all the same to you. Four was notified and the notification, I take it, was ignored. We do not make plans based on precursors that may or may not turn out to be true but last night has proven that policy must be altered to take this into account."

How many visions did Mysteries even log, on a monthly basis? How many of those were related to Ministry work? He drummed his fingers on his desk, on edge, disturbed by the unknown factors. Factors he could not control.

"I ordered you both up here for a briefing. You have no department head but you have obligations to the rest of this Ministry, particularly in a time of crisis." Solomon met Bruce in the eye, as she was the one who should have taken charge of both ministerial and field work. "We all have things we should be doing right now so if you would finish your briefing, quickly and professionally, we could get on with the job."

They both seemed so keen to do things and yet it was taking all but heaven and hell for them to do what was necessary before anyone could. Solomon, after all, had questions from his aurors that he needed to answer.

Carstairs had been the one who’d sent the Howler memo to summon him up here, but now that Kurby had opened his mouth, he threatened to make him leave.  The werewolf hunter was so angry he was practically shaking, but there was no goddamned way in hell he was letting the Department Head push him out of the meeting now so that he could continue to bully Bruce.

He yanked back the empty chair that was next to Bruce and dropped heavily to sit, avoiding eye contact with his former mentor so that she couldn’t give him a glare to shut him up.

“Reckon I should’ve just sent a memo to notify you lot when I saw that first damned direwolf, then,” he snapped.  “Sayin’ you want a professional tone when you’ve been snipin’ at us about our ’miniscule little world’ is dragon shite and you know it.”

"And were you going to do those things before you made the rest of the Ministry aware that a department head was dead?"

Iona didn’t reply, but her nails further dug into her palms as she grit her teeth. This imbecilic jobsworth was demanding to know her next moves without even allowing her to make them. Her and Bagnold had arrived back at the ministry, briefed their colelagues immediately, and not had a chance to do another thing before being summoned to this moron’s office.

Furthermore, Carstairs called Bagnold a schoolboy, and had the audacity to question her leadership! She was about to respond to his arrogant patronisation about informing the minister when Kurby snapped.

“Carstairs, why don’t you pull your bloviated head out of your paternalistic arsehole and stop tellin’ her how to do her fucking job!” Too bloody right. Iona schooled her expression, it wouldn’t do to congratulate him on such words in front of a superior. Nope, but she’d buy him a drink for it. Paternalistic arsehole. Schoolboys didn’t tend to know words such as paternalistic, did they Carstairs?

"We all have things we should be doing right now so if you would finish your briefing, quickly and professionally, we could get on with the job."

Bruce found that she was holding her breath, counting to ten. Historically, Bruce had always been a calm individual. While never one to hold back her views and opinions, she handled it calmly. She hated any sort on confrontation. Today, she was finding herself ready to pop and let rip at Solomon Carstairs and his paternalistic arsehole. Professional, he demanded. Professionals didn’t demean colleagues and make them feel worse than they already did. He was here, keeping her from her job while telling her to do her job. Today, Iona found that she had a new respect for her wife for having to put up with this chauvinist piece of bureaucratic shit on a daily basis.

Bagnold (a great surprise to Bruce), dragged out the chair beside her and parked himself down. Clearly, he had no plans on leaving her there to deal with the situation. While appreciated, she didn’t need a knight in shining silver. Bruce avoided looking too shocked, and instead fixed her gaze on Solomon Carstairs.

“With all due respect, Mr Carstairs,” clearly there was no respect on either side right now, “I’m not a green rookie.” Of course, someone had gone to brief the minister. “Mr Spectre is with the Minister, another thing that would have been better for me to do had you not flung your weight around and demanded us come up here. You…” she paused, feeling her nausea strengthen. With a frown, the witch pushed up from the chair and limped over to the jub of water on a sideboard. She began to pour herself some. “you will…be briefed in detail when I’ve actually had a chance to find this out myself.” She glanced up from the glass back to Carstairs. “I’m still waiting on my ministry issue time turner, it seems.”

            "Reckon I should’ve just sent a memo to notify you lot..."

Solomon had to bite his tongue to retort that he wished Bagnold had! If anyone on four besides Spectre had even thought to send a coherent memo up to two, they wouldn't need to be having this bloody conversation in the middle of a crisis! That these two sneered  at bureaucracy and the little things that allowed the Ministry to function was, in a word, infuriating. You never heard anyone complain about paperwork when they got their damn salaries on time, but Merlin forbid they remember to owl a note in a crisis.

Ballentyne followed in the wake of Bagnold's sharp remark - the hunter was apparently here to stay - with her own set. "...you will…be briefed in detail when I’ve actually had a chance to find this out myself," the witch spoke from where she'd moved to pour a drink of water. “I’m still waiting on my ministry issue time turner, it seems.

Oh, excellent, the both of them were being sarcastic now. Tweedledee and Tweedledum. It was at least good to hear somebody had gone up to one to brief Glass.

"Fine." Solomon narrowed her eyes at her, nodding tersely. "If that's all you can afford to tell me now, then I won't keep you. That's all you had to say, and it would have fit on a memo if either of you had thought to write one," he glanced at Bagnold with irritation, then back to Ballentyne. "You left your division unmanned and you are unfit to handle an active direwolf as it is, Bruce. Try not to do that again. If I don't tell you this, Carter's replacement will or your peers should, and you should put aside your pride to heed this advice."

She wasn't the head of the WCU anymore. He respected her calm right now but it was the act of a rash field agent to leave her post unattended, and he knew she would brush off the reprimand if it didn't come now rather than later. If she stopped acting like a rookie, she would stop getting treated like one.

He picked up a fresh folder on his desk, flicking open to the first page of Alec Carter's file. "I've asked to hold off on notifying next-of-kin," Sol frowned down at the names, mentally adding Miranda Storm to the bottom of it. "Wasn't sure if your people wanted to do it," his gaze lifted to them. Woman and guard dog. "Being so tightly knit, on four."

Much like two, Magical Creatures was also a family. Some things he knew they would want to do for themselves.

“That's all you had to say, and it would have fit on a memo if either of you had thought to write one,"

Carstairs blithely continued. Iona grit her teeth., pointing out “If we’d had the chance to write one.” This was a wizard who clearly only felt comfortable when he had all the power in a room. Now, he felt as if he was on the back foot, and started snapping back, shooting out in any direction that he could. Iona had seen it in many rookies on their first night with the WCU. Spells everywhere in the hope that at least one hit.

The next remark hit, and Bruce stared across at him. Unmanned, she wasn’t bothered by. The division hadn’t been unmanned. It was full of perfectly capable staff. It wasn’t like she’d been there this morning, either.
“…you are unfit to handle an active direwolf as it is, Bruce.”
Her expression froze. While overwhelmingly true, Bruce didn’t need to hear it from the condescending arsehole that wrote her wife’s pay cheques. It was pretty crap being constantly told what you could no longer do, and he had no place voicing his own opinion.

Fortunately for Carstairs, he also mentioned notifying family.
“Something else that we’ve surprisingly managed to coordinate.” Iona took a sip of water before her eyes widened and she pointed at Sol. Not a rude, point; it was more of a ‘you know what I just remembered?’ point. “Gosh, that’s something else we could have put in a memo! Would you believe that!”

She’d been calm up until this point, but even when pushed back, he was still flailing, still trying to assert his authority. Bruce finished the glass of water and placed it down on the desk with more of a thump than anticipated.

“I’ll let you know when I get my time turner, too? Then I’ll be able to be in 8 places at once and you won’t need to call us up here to demonstrate how much authority you have.” She held her hand out towards the chair where she’d been sat, and her cane jumped to life, flying quickly to land in her palm.

He'd expected Ballentyne to snap at him, at least to give him a hard look to make him stop, but Bruce kept her attention firmly focused on Carstairs.  That was enough of a tell.  If he could bark at the Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement to pull his head out of his arse and not get his own bitten off in return by his typically more diplomatic supervisor, then Bruce had to be steaming.

Ballentyne and Carstairs continued to nip back and forth at each other, even as Bruce stood to pour herself a glass of water.  At Carstairs's pointed comment about Ballentyne's fitness for duty, Kurby's eyebrows shot up, and he gave the Department Head a cool, unreadable look.  Was Solomon Carstairs now their resident expert on direwolves?  Let him test his own goddamned wits in the field against one, then.

Judging by Bruce's growing levels of sarcasm and her summoning of her cane, the conversation had reached its end.  If they were leaving, he wasn't about to leave the reason for their discontent with Level Two behind.  With a flick of his wand, the memo lifted off of the Department Head's desk and floated back to him, letting the werewolf hunter snag it out of the air.

Kurby looked directly at Carstairs as he rose to his feet, holding tightly to the memo. It might not have meant very much to Levels Nine or Two, but there was plenty that he could glean from watching a werewolf attack, even one twisted in hazy layers of prophecy.

 "I want to see the damn vision," he said harshly.

Bruce clearly didn't appreciate having her handicap pointed out to her - she was as prickly and sarcastic as a teenager, reaching for her cane. "...  and you won’t need to call us up here to demonstrate how much authority you have,” the witch was more than ready to leave his office. There was nothing else she could say after all: he was right. Abandoning her post, however briefly, was not the act of a leader.

Solomon was apt to allow for it, considering she had not long taken up her position as a division head. Merlin knew she wouldn't dare make such a stupid mistake again, after this.

            "I want to see the damn vision," Bagnold demanded before he entirely joined Ballentyne in her departure.

The man was obsessed. "Good for you," the older wizard sat back in his chair, sighing heavily. "Tomorrow, I'll send one of the senior aurors down as well. I'm sure you two have more than enough on your plates now, unless you're not being quite serious about the urgency of doing your jobs. Safe houses to check and whatnot."

No doubt there might be something useful to be discovered in the vision - but it wasn't going anywhere, was it? Solomon ranked it low on their list of priorities. They had to ensure nobody else was targeted last night, first, and sort out protocol for four's missing head. The clock was ticking and the countdown to the next full moon had already begun.

Bagnold wanted the see the vision. Despite her own fury at this having been known of but not shared with her or her team, Iona had no wish in seeing it. She’d had her fill of being attacked by a werewolf to last a lifetime. Regardless of Carstairs’ poorly timed, patronisingly delivered and unwelcome point, Iona was in not fit state to handle a werewolf, and she certainly didn’t want to witness someone being mauled to death by one.

To finish off the meeting, the rude older wizard threw another condescending barb their way about whether they planned on doing their jobs properly. Those same jobs that they would have been doing if he hadn’t summoned them here. This time, Iona didn’t hold back in her eye roll. Everything Zora had told her about this man was true, and so much worse.

“Safe houses to check, shockingly another thing we could be organising right now. Don’t choke on your own condescension, Carstairs. No one else can reach your pedestal to save you.” Before she said anything to really overstep the line, Bruce cast her glance at Bagnold and left the office, limping heavily with the cane. She needed to scream. She needed to vomit. She needed to make something explode. Too many emotions yet so much work to do.

Of course Carstairs had to put his own officious stamp on everything.  The werewolf hunter gave a massive roll of his eyes as he turned to go.  The Department Head could assign whatever damned Senior Auror he wanted to play nanny on the trip down to Level Nine.  With any luck, he'd send Pratt, and Kurby would finally have an excuse to slug the former Slytherin who'd spent the past month refusing to shut up about Gen Garcia.

Ballentyne was clearly as done with Carstairs' domineering pedantry as he was.  Maybe if Carstairs was able to extricate his head from his arse, he'd have better luck not choking on his condescension. 

Tucking the portentous memo into his back pocket, he followed in his former mentor's wake, casting one last angry look over his shoulder at the Department Head.