Continued immediately from Mad and Dead as Nails

The air in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement felt dangerously electric as they left Solomon Carstairs' office, like they'd departed right on the edge of a storm that would bring rattling winds and vast lightning.  Kurby stayed a pace behind Ballentyne,  matching the werewolf's slower pace as he avoided casting any glances at the Department Head's young assistant, Abigail, sister to Aileen Reid and occasional friend of Nemo. 

The last two hours felt like a precarious, perilous whirlwind.  Ever since they'd gotten the call to go to Dumfries, it felt like he'd been careening from moment to moment at breakneck speed.  Investigating the safe house, returning to the Ministry, going with Bruce to find Carter, informing Spectre and Gamp, and then reporting to Carstairs: a mix of adrenaline and anger driving him through each encounter, with little chance to stop and think about what their next move should be.

But now, finally, they were in control of their fate again.  The corridors of Level Two were bustling with the crisis, with Aurors, Hitwizards, and support staff hurrying to and fro.  Kurby swallowed, slowing his pace as he looked back at Ballentyne, pausing along the edge of the hall.  Despite everything else -- the maelstrom spinning around them, the frustration and discomfort that her return to Level Four had caused him over the past three weeks -- he felt intensely glad that she was there.

"I've already got the Capture Unit checkin' on the other safe houses," he told her, keeping his voice low.  "Fenneken's taggin' along with the Auror on that case.  They'll let me know right away if they find anything else."

Self-consciously, he glanced down the hallway to his left, where the Magical Law offices were located.  He hadn't forgotten the silver manacles and the skinning knife that they'd found in the empty rooms at the safe house.  With any luck, Greyfriar and his small pack were already safely back at Hogwarts, where they'd be out of harm's way until he could send the werewolf a warning.  But there was one other person who could be at risk from the mysterious silver connoisseur.

"Can I meet you back on Four?" he asked, brows knitting as he looked back at Ballentyne.  "Five minutes?  I need to do somethin' quick."

Outside of the Department Head’s office was busy, but the air seemed less stifling and suffocating. Bruce and Bagnold stopped once free of the outer office, and he informed her that he’d already set his team on the tasks Carstairs had suggested. Bagnold had always been on the ball, it was why she’d always had him by her side for the trickiest cases back in the day. He’d always been the wizard that she knew would have her back, and even now, he seemed to.

He wanted to meet her back on four, but Iona frowned. “Can we make it an hour? I need to speak to these relatives before news makes it to them through another means.” She felt physically exhausted and worn out yet the anger was still coursing through her. There were still hours of work and unpleasant deeds to complete before she could even consider calling it a day. In fact, it was only out of this office that the reality of the situation suddenly hit Iona.

Two wizards had put their trust into the Werewolf Wing, and they’d been kidnapped and probably murdered. The prospect of the skinning knife made her feel even more sick. Then not only that, but their boss had been brutally murdered. All on her watch.

“I’ll come and find you.” She told her old team mate.

Kurby regarded his former mentor silently, taking in her pale, drawn face and the painful tension to her stance.  This was the first time he’d seen Iona Ballentyne after one of her now-regular transformations.  The strain of her furry escapade the night before showed in Bruce's dragging steps and in the stiff, tender way she was carrying herself.  The shock of the morning's events couldn’t be helping, but the full moon had certainly taken its toll on her.
 
“Take someone with you,” Kurby ordered firmly.  He could guess that Ballentyne was going to protest, especially after Carstairs’ idiotic dig at her fitness, so he pressed on, dark eyes trained on hers to drive home the gravity of what he was saying.  “If somebody grabbed the Dunnigans, it’s not that hard to guess where else we might show up this morning.  You don’t know what the hell you might be walkin’ into.”
 
It was stupid to waste time arguing about it.  Level Four had already been targeted once today, and letting the Head of the Werewolf Wing romp around by herself when she was already worn down by last night's full moon seemed like a hugely unnecessary risk.  On a day like this, it was dangerous to go alone.
 
At least Bruce, as stubborn as he knew she could be, seemed willing to acquiesce.  The werewolf hunter rubbed his hands tiredly over his face, and then left her to figure out her escort as he turned and started down the hallway to the Magical Law offices.
 
This area of Level Two was quieter than the main corridor had been.  The tragic events of the morning hadn’t yet trickled down to the prosecutors and defense attorneys who served as Magical Law Enforcement’s steady backbone; their involvement would come much later, when the murderous, monstrous arseholes responsible for the day’s twisted nightmare were made to answer for their crimes.  The atmosphere here still felt quietly tense, but the electricity of the coming storm was far less oppressively heavy than it had been outside the Department Head’s office, less reminiscent of the end of the world than it was a slightly stressful Tuesday.
 
There had been a gnawing worry in his stomach that he was going to be too late for the third time that morning, and so Kurby felt a prick of relief to see that the door to Harper Graves’ office was slightly ajar.  Whatever else had gone wrong today, at least there was no need to send a search party out after the American defense attorney.
 
He stopped short in the hallway just outside the door, suddenly self-conscious of the silver and leather hunting gear that he was still wearing, of the fact that he felt and probably looked like he’d been run over by a rampaging hippogriff.  Swallowing hard, the werewolf hunter looked up at the ceiling and tried to brace himself to have a conversation on this day of days with a perfectly normal, always congenial colleague, who was likely enjoying a pleasant and uneventful morning in her predictable, non-lethal workplace where coworkers didn’t get unexpectedly mauled and nobody had any reason to keep track of the phases of the moon.
 
Kurby took a deep breath, held it, and let it out again slowly.  Steeling himself, he stepped forward and rapped on the door, edging it open far enough that he could step inside.

Standing at the fireplace, Harper Graves was dropping the morning's influx of hate mail piece-by-piece into the flames now that they had been screened by Law Enforcement. She had her back to the cosy, organised mess of her office and she watched the fire eat up roll upon roll of parchment with a very simple but effective sense of satisfaction. The room smelled of burning paper and the clean, crisp oud perfume she had been wearing last night[1].

It was the morning after the full moon, and she was hoping to receive a letter from Greer Grant later today - and was contemplating checking in on Savvina when somebody knocked on the door.

The witch looked over her shoulder, unsmiling but welcoming, and blinked in surprise. Something has happened, she thought with a shudder that she did nothing to repress. Her hands let loose the rest of the parchment to burn and Harper turned around to face Bagnold properly. Seriously. "What is it?" she looked him over, dressed as he had been last night, something difficult to pin in his expression.

Something extraordinarily bad had happened, then. When you worked on level two you needed to separate the different levels of badness.

"You look like you're about to deliver a dirge." Harper quickly followed up the worried observation. "It isn't Greer or Savvina, is it?" If it was, she was braced for it, arms crossed loosely over her stomach.

1.	9th Jan - Never Trust a Monday

Less than an hour before, he'd been standing in Alec Carter's study, staring at a stopped clock.  Even though he'd been the one to step into the defense attorney's office just now, it was still disconcerting and a bit dizzying to see her standing there in front of him, ready for her workday in sharply professional dress. It made him even more self-conscious that he'd barged in still clad in his hunting gear, intruding on her morning just like she'd inserted herself into the lock-up procedures the previous night. 

 Harper Graves was easy to like because she was clearly a principled person.  She cared about her clients, cared about doing the right thing, and he'd appreciated that she seemed both straightforward and sharp enough to get a read on those around her.  But she wasn't the sort to try to hide her emotions. That made it impossible to miss the shudder that passed over her when she caught sight of who had come to visit.

Kurby shifted uncomfortably, jaw tightening even as something tensed in his expression.  Ballentyne had gone to deliver the dirge.  He hadn't offered to go with her, not to carry a lament to the Dunnigans and not to help with the requiem for Alec Carter, either.  But he also hadn't come here to linger on those losses, nor to worry Harper about their obvious mutual connections.

"No," he said, giving a slight shake of his head.  "It's not Greer or Savvina."

There wasn't any point in drawing this out.  The werewolf hunter forced out a breath.  Short, quick, and to the point, like ripping off a plaster. 

"Somebody broke into a safe house late yesterday afternoon."  He met her gaze squarely, crossing his arms against his chest.  "They hexed the attendants and went on to check in all the werewolves like nothin' was wrong.  When we got called in this morning, two of the werewolves were missing." 

Focusing on the details, on a factual recounting of what had happened that morning, made it easier to stay focused and steady.  Kurby kept his dark eyes trained on the defense attorney's, his expression guardedly neutral. 

"Whoever took 'em," he said quietly, "left a silver knife in one empty room, and a set of silver handcuffs in the other."

She could breathe a little easier, to know it was neither of her werewolf clients.

            "Somebody broke into a safe house late yesterday afternoon."

Harper sat down in one of the rarely used Bergère chairs by the fireplace, not waiting to hear the rest before she decided that - whatever Bagnold was about to say - it was going to be difficult to hear. Although she'd vaguely noticed that level two was busy this morning, the particulars of last night's full moon had not reached her ears until this moment. The law offices were their own little world of parchment and ink and heavy tomes.

On the chair across hers, a delicate brown nose stirred from underneath brushed cotton blankets, followed by a little whine. "Whoever took 'em," Kurby pressed on, relentless in his delivery, "left a silver knife in one empty room, and a set of silver handcuffs in the other."

"Of course they did," she muttered in an upset voice at the same time George slipped off his makeshift bed to come prodding at her legs."Fuck. They're playing with us, whoever they are." The field spaniel nudged Harper's knees and she gave him a distracted scratch behind the ear, looking up at their visitor instead.

He had come to tell her in-person. Had he been on the floor for other business? Either way, she could recognise that it was an unprompted courtesy, and was grateful. "Thank you for coming to tell me," she spoke in a bit of a daze, still processing the news. A double kidnapping of werewolves. It wouldn't be the first time and yet...

"What kind of mad person kidnaps a werewolf on a full moon?" Harper leaned back with an angry hiss, crossing her legs and pressing her lips together. George, deterred, trotted up to Kurby instead for his morning share of petting.

He'd passed on the warning that he'd come to deliver, and Kurby was starting to feel increasingly out of place standing inside the door to Harper Graves' office, watching uncomfortably as the American defense attorney tried to process what he'd just told her.  Harper had lowered herself to sit as she listened, her expression a mix of shock and dismayed emotion. 

George, at least, offered a friendly respite as he hopped down from his nest in the other armchair and came trotting over to say hello.  Tugging his gloves off, Kurby tucked them into his back pocket and extended a hand to the friendly spaniel.  George gave his fingertips a friendly snuffle in greeting, and then seemed to pause as his nose began to twitch more quickly.  Half a second later, he shoved his wet nose at Kurby's hand, sniffing the werewolf hunter's fingers in vigorous earnest.

What kind of a mad person --? Harper had asked.  Most of the morning's events could be framed with that same question. Kurby crouched down near the floor, half-heartedly fending off the dog's intense olfactory curiosity as he attempted to distract him with scratches instead. What kind of mad person would set a werewolf on a Ministry Department Head at home?  Hell, what kind of mad person would ignore a goddamned prophetic vision about someone dying, and then spend fifteen minutes snarking at them about pointing fingers?

The answer to the lawyer's original question seemed to loom large in his memory of the safe house.  There had been the cigarette butts, scattered all over the floor amongst the blood and fur and flecks of silver.  Someone had lit them, savored them, flicked them aside.  He or she had known the rhythm of the Ministry's safe house well enough to arrive early so that they could deal with the attendants unseen before the werewolves had started to arrive.  They'd waited upstairs for the full moon to rise, taking long drags on their cigarettes as they let them burn down to the end.  Then they'd faced the monsters in that narrow hallway, and once the monsters had been subdued, they'd left their silver calling cards behind.

George had suddenly discovered his boots, which evidently inspired even more curiosity than whatever aroma still clung to his hands.  The spaniel began sniffing vigorously at the dragonhide leather, which at least let Kurby drag his fingers through the dog's reassuring chocolate fur with without having to dodge a cold nose. 

"A dangerous one," he said at last.  He looked up at the defense attorney, swallowing past the knot in his throat as he scratched at the spaniel's back with both hands.  "It's one damned thing to try to terrify werewolves by makin' them afraid that someone might be out to get 'em.  But grabbin' them from a safe house is as good as drivin' a dagger between them and the Ministry."

Although she always maintained that anger was a paralytic - that it was often useless, contrary to true efficiency - it was hard to abide by such logic right now. Harper watched as her field spaniel bothered the werewolf hunter but her mind was somewhere else, trying to put together the horrible consequences of what he'd told her. Kurby was right. This mad person wasn't really mad: they were intentionally forcing up a divide, chipping away at the trust between werewolves and the Ministry.

"No face, no name." Harper murmured as she stared into space, countenance stony. "That's how you make yourself larger than life. Anonymity..." she trailed off and drew away from those thoughts, pulling her red hair back from her face. "Who were the werewolves taken from the safe house, by the way? I might know about them, I've been reading up on werewolf cases since taking on Savvina."

George was perfectly oblivious to their conversation, content to be scratched and to satisfy his curiousity. He was sometimes too friendly but she trusted Bagnold not to entertain a creature whose affections he didn't want in the first place.

"Did you want to sit?" Harper remembered her manners and motioned invitingly at the other chair, one of three. Her visitor was clearly fresh off the field: he did not look terribly unchanged from last night, when they had passed one another in the Ministry cells.

All the same, she wasn't sure if her office was a quick detour or a longer one. "Don't let me keep you, if you're needed elsewhere," the witch smiled, and she could feel it loosen the tension in her brow. "My questions can always wait."

Kurby hesitated, his expression strained as he glanced through the open door to the hallway behind him. 

An hour, Bruce had said.  Bellingham and Li were still at Carter's, liaising with the other departments.  He'd sent Fenneken to dog the Auror from the scene in Dumfries, and the rest of the Capture Unit's patrols had been dispersed to check on the other safe houses. For the moment, unless he wanted to dive headfirst into the political mess on Level Two and try to browbeat his way into viewing the vision, there wasn't anywhere he needed to be.

It was tempting to take Harper up on her offer to sit.  With the logistics all underway, he could afford to pause for a moment, to catch his breath and reorient after being on his feet for nearly three days straight.  Solomon Carstairs likely wouldn't see things that way, but Carstairs had also demonstrated that morning that he'd achieved the rare feat of becoming a reverse ouroboros in wizard form, which negated most of his probable criticism.  Kurby could spend a few moments playing detective with the defense attorney, pretending that there was some solution to all of this that they might be able to discern, just like they had a few weeks before. 

But that would mean affirming the rest of it aloud.  He hadn’t had to say it yet; hadn’t had to really vocalize or think about what they’d seen in the study.  Avoiding the words meant that the morning's events still didn’t feel quite real, as if he could ward off the tragedy by simply refusing to talk about it.  It was almost as if he were stuck in the same plane as the stopped grandfather clock in Carter's study, locked in one long, nightmarish moment until some greater force forced the seconds to begin ticking forward once more.

Besides, there was still the Werewolf Wing.  With Ballentyne off notifying the families, there was no one else to deal with the Registry staff and other case workers.  The day was also still well within the danger zone for direwolves; until the sun set tonight, there was still a very real chance of another attack.

Trying to ignore the knot in his throat, the werewolf hunter gave George one last pat and rose to fully stand.

“Naw, I should get back to Four,” he said tiredly.  His eyes were nearly starting to sting, so he ran his hands over his face, pressing his fingers briefly against them.  “It’s been a bit of a rough morning.”

That was not the face of a man who wanted to run back to work.

Harper recognised it, now looking at Kurby properly now as he stood up from lavishing attention on the disappointed George. The wizard had been on his feet at least since before the full moon last night - and if he was as devoted to his work as he had been to Greer's case or to the investigation of those silver cuffs, she could estimate the extent of his exhaustion.

           “Naw, I should get back to Four," he surprised her by declining. “It’s been a bit of a rough morning.”

"All the more reason not to go back so soon, then, don't you think?" The redhead gestured mildly with her wand and the office door, which had been left ajar, closed shut behind Bagnold. "Put your feet up. I don't think George is going to let you go if you don't spend at least a few more minutes with him."

The dog whined, looking between the two of them like he wasn't sure where to go. Harper snapped her fingers and clicked her tongue, causing him to obediently saunter over to the fire. "Um," she glanced uncertainly at Kurby and nodded at her drinks table by the desk on the far side of the room. "Are you a coffee or a tea? Or a brandy-before-noon?"

Frankly, he looked like a nails-in-whiskey kind of person, but she didn't keep whiskey in her office. Even the bottle of brandy was covered in a light dust; in her line of work it wasn't a very good idea to offer liquors to your clients.

Harper Graves was not someone who was easily pushed around. It was not hard to imagine that someone who didn't know the personable, quiet American defense attorney might take her as obedient or meek, but Kurby had a wary suspicion of what it might be like to end up on the wrong end of a disagreement with her.  Reserved and friendly though she was, Graves had a steely will about her, a steady determination that he'd gotten a glimpse of firsthand when she'd defended Greer and her family in the courtroom.  She wasn't the sort of person that he ever wanted to go out of his way to cross.

Evidently, she was also having none of his current excuses.  Before he could turn to leave, the door swung shut behind him with a nonchalant click and the American witch directed him more firmly towards the empty armchair. 

Kurby looked up, lowering his hands slowly to his side.  George had gone to sit obediently by the fire, hardly seeming bothered by his sudden conscription into emotional blackmail.  The werewolf hunter couldn't help but wonder how many hardened, accused criminals had been pressured into doing whatever Harper Graves wanted in just the same way, victim to George's friendly brown eyes.

But however obvious the pressure might be, he was too exhausted by the day to fight it. Kurby hesitated for only an instant longer before he resigned himself to following the defense attorney's instructions.  Sighing, he headed for the indicated chair and lowered himself wearily to sit.

It felt too good to get off of his feet.  Kurby rested an elbow on the armrest, stretching his legs out in front of him.  Getting started on alcohol seemed like an inordinately bad idea, especially now; especially when he was going to have to dive back into the abyss as soon as he left this momentary interlude. 

"Coffee's fine," he said, leaning his head against his hand.  "Cheers."

            "Coffee's fine. Cheers."

She was relieved he didn't resist the invitation - men did, sometimes, because they were too proud or they took it as an insult that they needed rest. As if rest was an unmanly and weak thing to do, rather than a very human necessity. Everyone needed rest and the Ministry of Magic definitely needed rested beings if it wanted to get any work done on a regular basis.

With another gesture of her wand, the coffee pot at the brass table burbled to life and lifted itself into the air to pour two cups for the pair.

"So, rough morning huh?" she repeated his words as the white china floated over to them, one into her accepting hands and another found its home on the table next to Kurby's chair. "Just in terms of the safe house incident?" Harper sipped her coffee with thoughtful eyes still on the wizard.

It didn't make sense to her if he meant just that - the incident was over, what he'd described was more of a clean-up than anyone's definition of 'rough'. Emotionally harrowing maybe but Harper suspected that it took a lot more than one awful thing to shake the Capture Unit. Those people saw bad things happen almost every full moon. They faced cases like Greer Grant's, for Merlin's sake.

"No offence," her mouth twitched into a grim, humourless smile while George pawed at her free hand for a scratch, "but you sound like you've been through a dragon's maw and out the other end."

The werewolf hunter gave a quiet snort.  "That's probably a step better'n I would've put things at," he quipped, giving her a faint, tired smile in return.  "Reckon I've never survived a dragon's maw, though."

Steam was rising out of the coffee cup, sending little tendrils of mist towards the ceiling.  Kurby took it in both hands, letting his fingers rest against the heat radiating through the ceramic as he closed his eyes.

The harrowing images from the morning seemed almost jumbled together.  Burnt cigarettes and fur and flecks of silver, scattered before a half-caved-in wall.  The metallic smell of blood and death that had hit them as they'd rounded the corner into the study.  Figaro Sellaphix's pale countenance, as he'd urged them onwards to check on the werewolves upstairs.  The frozen look of utter terror on Carter's face.  And the overwhelming silence that had settled over both places when tragedy had plucked them out of time, smothering and suffocating like the hot, dry air inside a tomb.

He didn't want to say it out loud, but he also wasn't going to make it through the rest of the day without confronting it head on.  Kurby let out a slow breath, and then glanced over at the defense attorney, his expression sober.  Better to just get the damned thing over with.

"Alec Carter didn't come in to work today."  Grimacing, he rolled his shoulders back in an unhappy shrug; that was probably enough of a lede for anyone to guess how the rest of this story was going to go, but he still had to say the rest of it.  "It took a bit for us to notice after everything with the safe house. When Ballentyne and I went to his home, we found 'im mauled to death in his study."

            "Alec Carter didn't come in to work today.... we found 'im mauled to death in his study."

Her cup gave a little clinking tremor in its saucer and she stilled her hands, swallowing. That was it. The reason he looked the way he looked. Harper glanced into her milky coffee before setting it aside to process what she was feeling. Surprise, mostly. Carter was a department head - and while people expected the head of four to die of being gobbled up by a dragon or trampled by a giant, this felt different. Intentional.

"I'm... sorry," she finally spoke, and drew her hand away from George so that she could rub her eyes tiredly. "That's horrible, Christ." Bagnold and his people, they'd actually known Carter.

Saw him daily, drank with him, worked with him. To find someone like that, slaughtered in their own home. Shit. Harper's hands returned to the arms of her chair as she watched the field spaniel nose its way to Kurby, whining. Dogs can always sense. Animals in general. George didn't need to understand them to know some terrible thing had passed between the two humans.

She glanced into the fire, where a few slivers of parchment were still being eaten up by flames. "Between that and the safe houses," Harper murmured, the concern in her face deepening into seriousness, "everything feels so personal. Someone really wants them to hurt."

Hateful. That's what it felt like, and especially the silver cuffs in the safe house. She didn't care how methodical or perfectly it was planned, the concept itself was so personal to werewolves.

It was easier to focus on the coffee than it was to look at Graves. The heady, earthy aroma rose from the cup as he lifted it to take a sip, letting the warmth linger in his throat as he swallowed.  It was grounding and real; something to focus on in this moment far away from all of the horrors of the morning.

George had come padding back over, offering a welcome distraction as he shoved his nose back at the werewolf hunter.  Kurby scratched him absently between the ears, listening as the defense attorney spoke.  "Between that and the safe houses..."  There was something relieving about hearing the sentiment out loud.  It did feel personal; aimed right at the heart of the Werewolf Wing and Level Four.  Two of their own had been directly impacted in the attacks today.

But then Harper went on.

Somebody wants them to hurt.

Kurby glanced up at her, a harsh edge to his expression. 

"I think this one was a bit more aimed at makin' Carter hurt than the werewolves," he said sharply, the line of his jaw tight. 

Regret rose in his throat like bile as soon as the words left his mouth. Kurby looked away, his jaw set, and forced himself to breathe out.  Setting the cup of coffee down, he rested his left elbow on the armrest, pressing at his stinging eyes.

Whoever had instigated the attack on Carter clearly didn't care if werewolves got hurt.  It was the opposite of what had happened at the safe house: one incident was designed to drive the lycanthropic community away from the Ministry, the other would effectively push the public away from werewolves once word of the assassination got out.  It was as if someone had grabbed at the fragile tapestry that made up Ministry-werewolf relations and pulled on it in opposite directions, trying to see which fraying thread would give first.

Weaponized werewolf attacks.  The thought of something like that happening again made something ache deep in his chest.  They didn't even know if this had been like the incident with Katopodis, where a werewolf had been kidnapped and then turned loose.  Something in the scene -- the purposeful way it seemed to have come for Carter, the lack of other signs of destruction on the street -- made it feel like the wolf had had intention.

Kurby exhaled again and forced himself to look back in the American attorney's direction.

"Sorry," he said, not quite meeting her gaze.  He leaned his chin against his left hand; with his right, he continued to scratch George, who at least gave him something to fidget with so that he wouldn't have to sit still.  "You're probably right.  It sure as hell seems like someone's intent on drivin' a wedge between werewolves and the Ministry."