Fauna was no werewolf, but she felt different this week.

Her scratches were all healed up, the bruises mostly gone, and she'd taken the last of the potions before the spring holiday had started. Emotionally, she was not too sure of things. There were days when she was just fine, as long as she didn't have to focus on unpleasant, stressful topics. Like when she'd spent time with Akiva. Even a little when she'd seen Dion, despite his questions about SAWS. Then there were days, like on the full moon at the Ministry, like now, that she wanted to curl up and sleep until the end of the school year. Prick her finger and let a few months pass her by.

This change wasn't anything she'd striven for, it was just something that had happened to her. Again. She hadn't asked for the October attack, or to find Akiva in September, but those things had worked out alright for her anyway (especially finding Akiva). She'd suffered no extreme emotional or physical damage. Those events had even pushed her to make changes on her own.

This just felt bad. She didn't know how to put a positive spin on it. She didn't feel any stronger, braver, or happier. She didn't have any answers.

Perhaps seeing Greyfriar would help. She could show up at his door, and it would be like always, with bear hugs and glasses of milk and chit chat. Fauna clung on to that hope. At the very least, Greyfriar would have the answers. She'd at least know that he cared about her, didn't he, and he'd wanted to owl her first, he really had?

On impulse last night, Fauna had decided she needed to see him before returning to school. She'd fought with her mum about it this morning, cried about it on her way here, and now she was standing in front of Knox Greyfriar's door, telling herself she just needed to knock.

Instead of a hat or red hood, she wore her favorite army coat and jeans. Her fringe was shaggy and almost grazed her eyelashes, and the rest of her hair was loose and windblown. She finally knocked, ducking her head to try and hide the pallor to her face, and shoving her hands in her pockets.

When the door opened, Fauna looked Greyfriar in the eye, but was unable to smile.

"Hi," she said softly, waiting for him to invite her in before making any move to go forward.

Knox opened the door to find Fauna Blake, and a strange cold rock appeared in his gut, heavy and frigid.  The few seconds that passed seem to be ages.  When Knox had finally been released from Ministry custody, things had moved very quickly.  There was a great deal of paperwork both on account of his lunar activities, but those of two dozen other werewolves.  The Wizengamot suddenly had a score of hearings each day, all trying to sort out what had happened.  He'd even had Olivia Foley visit, she as off-kilter as he was.  But there'd just been so much going on that he hadn't had time to settle, and all of a sudden, April's full moon was upon him.

It was so trying.  To spend the entire month regaining some sense of dignity, only to have to become a werewolf all over again.  Despite all his knowledge and research into werewolves, he was learning it was all sadly, pathetically incomplete. 

And behind all of this last month's tribulations the name that was haunting him was Fauna Blake's.  He'd been accused from the outset of having harmed her in his rampage, and her name kept appearing on this report and that - on his own at his own hearing.  He'd gotten word that she was fine.  That she'd recover.  That she'd only been scratched.  But he expected that she'd never be able to see him again, even if she wanted to.  That she'd never speak with him again. 

He'd been stunned to get her owl asking for a good time to come by. 

Seeing her standing there, all he could do was lean down and wrap his arms around her. 

"I'm sorry I didn't write," he said, his voice heavy, still hugging her.

Fauna's eyes widened and her body went rigid. It took her a few moments to process that he was hugging her and apologizing for not writing. As she reached up to pat his back gently, a part of her felt hopeful, and the rest was a confusing muddle of anger, sadness, and fear. A lump formed in her throat.

"It's okay," she croaked, suddenly questioning why she'd thought for a minute things would be the same. Greyfriar looked the same, and she didn't want to feel scared of someone who was greeting her so warmly, someone she'd trusted for years. But her mind made the leap from the wolf who'd attacked her in the Ministry to the human being in the doorway, and there was no easy separation between the two forms anymore.

It didn't feel right.  She was tense and didn't return his embrace and he felt like he'd overstepped.  He let go and took a few steps back to let her into the house.

Once she was inside, he shut the door and sighed.  What was this about? What was his responsibility here?  He'd been owling with his ex-wife, who was in Argentina.  She was telling him he had nothing to apologize for, no more than a person with a dragon pox should apologize.  No more than a recovering victim of the Imperious Curse.  After all had been investigated, he'd been vindicated - he'd done nothing wrong.  Nothing unlawful or irresponsible.  The potion had been faulty, a door had been left unlatched.  Meredith hotly told him to stand his ground and admit no responsibility, admit no shame.  That it would undermine everything the werewolf cause stood for. 

But looking at Fauna, he wasn't sure anymore.

He sat down in his chair  and looked at her.

"Devlin's at work," he told her.  "Calaveras, now.  And Olivia Foley stopped by last month, she's doing well, considering.  Are you, um...?  You're clear?" 

He should say something.  He should tell her how horrified he'd been to hear what he'd done.  How he regretted so deeply what had happened, and how happy he was that she was okay.  How relieved. 

She took a seat, perching on the edge, and pretending she hadn't heard his sigh.

A flash of guilt went through her. Fauna hadn't seen Ollie yet. She certainly hadn't seen Devlin since they'd broken up in February. Fauna just hoped Devlin would be at work for a while, because she didn't think she could handle two very awkward situations at the same time.

Clear? What did that mean? She stared at him. It was the way he'd asked, like he was talking about a simple check up at St. Mungo's.

"Yeah, I mean... they're done with their... tests and stuff, at the Ministry. I'm going back to school tomorrow, if-" Fauna paused. Her mum wouldn't actually stop her from going just because she was furious at her and everything concerning administration right now. "I'm going back."

"Um. How are you?" There was a lot behind that question. She swallowed and settled back slightly in her chair.

Knox looked at Fauna with concern, making no attempt to hide is weary face, his tense composure.  They seemed to both know there was more to be talked about although they were both sneaking around it.  This was not a friendly call.  Not quite.  There was too much hurt between them.  He'd watched her though, as she moved across the room and sat down, looking for a sign of injury.  A limp, a bandange.  But he couldn't tell if she was sitting gingerly, or just... carefully. 

He was glad to hear that she hadn't been curse.  Rather, that he hadn't cursed her, to tell the truth.  His mind kept using the passive voice to protect itself, but there was no mistaking.

He was the subject.  She the object.  Knox had attacked Fauna Blake.

"I'm sorry I didn't write," he repeated, seemingly ignoring her question.  "I've been thinking of you, I promise I have.  Every day.  They told me that I'd..."

He stopped.  Should he do this? Or should he leave Fauna to carry the burden of bringing it up?  No.  He had to take some responsibility, for something. 

"They told me that I attacked you that night.  That I broke out my cell and you and Bagnold -"

The pause he left there as he searched for words was wide enough for a dragon to walk through.

He apologized again for not writing. Raw emotion flickered across her face. She'd wondered earlier if she was fooling herself, had remembered when they'd all been escorted to their cells in March, and Greyfriar hadn't seemed concerned, had barely looked at her. At the time Fauna hadn't cared. But she'd thought about it these past few weeks. What if she was just a reminder of the attack? Or a reminder of his old life at Hogwarts?

And now he was reminding her of her Da with those kinds of excuses- I thought about you everyday. Those words struck a nerve.

He was trying to explain what had happened, and Fauna shook her head, hoping to evade the inevitable.

"It's okay," she repeated, her voice strained. She cleared her throat to try to get the lump out. "It was the werewolf. Not you."

Making a slight face at the way that sounded, she glanced down and crossed her arms.

Knox's heavy brow furrowed and he looked hard at Fauna, trying to see what she was feeling.  She looked hurt, unhappy.  She didn't look like she was okay.  Not okay with him not having spoken to her this month, not okay with having been attacked.

"We're supposed to say that, aren't we?" he asked her, for a moment letting down his facade that he had all he answers, the professorial mask of confidence he was always so comfortable wearing, especially with the students.  But Fauna Blake was not only mere weeks from leaving Hogwarts for good, she'd been through enough to give her a different view of the world.

"All of us good little readers of Maya-Strangely," he said, citing the well-known werewolf scholar, "putting the responsibility on some Other entity, that when an attack occurs, we are betrayed as much by our body as our society...?"  He spoke quickly, somewhat franticly as all the research that had been helping him cope was falling short.

"That feels wrong.  It doesn't work.  It's not okay, is it?"

If Knox had been looking to be punished, he'd have found plenty of that from Bagnold, the media and that strange Healer Bombay.  What did he want Fauna to say to him?

The concern in his eyes and his open expression made her feel worse and worse. She had no idea what she was supposed to tell him. She had no idea what she even wanted to hear, why she was in this house.

"I don't know what else to say," Fauna peppered each word with a burst of emotion. "I don't want to be scared of you or mad at you. And there was so many other reasons, and people, to point the finger at, and so many who see it as black and white. How could I add to that? To blame you? That feels wrong, too."

She made a listless gesture with her hands. "But I don't know how to stop feeling..."

Fauna paused. She looked at him, face miserable.

"Don't know either," he mumbled.  He took off his cap he wore often, a small box-shaped cap embroidered with his family's rune, and ran his hand through his thick black hair which was starting to grey at the temples.  He'd never been grey before, not until this werewolf business.

It killed him to hear that she felt afraid of him, even though he already knew she was, even though he could see it in her.  He was a big man, and tempestuous.  Bellowing to his peers, but as kind as he could be to the students, always.  It horrified him to be horrifying. 

His head in his hand, he looked down at the carpet. 

"I still don't understand how it happened," he said, not even trying to explain his feelings, or help Fauna explain hers.  They were catagorically alien - no way to rationalize them.  Like two creatures inhabiting one body, like the Curse they were both victims of.

"I... it was a freak accident!" he said in a sigh.  "So many tiny mistakes leading up to it... And the mistake we all made was trusting the system.  But what choice did I have?  I thought I'd done everything right.  We're all paying dearly for whose errors?"

"What happens next?" he asked.  Because for him, there had to be a next.  There had to be a course of action, something to set in motion that would fix all this somehow, make it matter, make it relevant.  To close the door on it so that it was a catalyst for something good. 

"I don't know," she said in a defeated tone, shaking her head. She'd thought Greyfriar would have the answers. Fauna glanced at the gray strands atop his head and then glanced away.

"People- students, SAWS, I mean, are looking at me for answers, and I don't know what to do," she mumbled, not really expecting a solution. Whole departments in the Ministry hadn't figured things out. She and Greyfriar were having a hard enough time with the more personal aspects, with acting normal around each other.

"You didn't do anything wrong," she stated, understanding that he knew this, but needing to say it out loud anyway. "None of it was supposed to happen..." Fauna trailed off, repeating what she'd told Baxter, but finding it rang hollow.

"Well, actually," she sighed. "We don't know that. That's what makes it so hard. We don't know that everyone is a victim or just made mistakes. We don't know why werewolves are transforming during the daytime. We can't say that it won't happen again. Maybe it won't to us, specifically, but... we don't know anything."

She rested her chin in her hands, thinking of how so many mistakes had led to disasters, and disasters led to more mistakes.

Knox and Fauna's postures mirrored each other, and the blank, sad looks on their faces could have been duplicates.  There was a silence.  The seventeen-year-old was right - they didn't know anything.  Mistakes mixed with extremely suspicious circumstance.  Victims indistinguishable from hateful chaos-mongers. 

There were foggy avenues before them.  Fauna Blake had emerged almost on accident from her quiet school-girl shell and had become a powerful student advocate.  And in a matter of months, she'd leave Hogwarts and be thrust into the wide world where the rules would completely change.  Knox had gone through a similar journey, walking away from a world were he was king - the Headmaster of Hogwarts - and into the political, convoluted, deliberately mysterious Wizengamot ranks, where he was one among eighty. 

He looked at her again.  She was so tired.  And he felt like he'd been sleepwalking since October.  How could they possibly hope to get to the bottom of this if they were barely awake. 

"We need to rest.  Regroup.  Focus on your N.E.W.T.s.  Keep your fellows calm, united.  Drop an owl to Olivia," he shrugged.  He really worried for Olivia now that she'd slipped up, now that she'd seen her own monster inside - Fauna could be a great comfort and part of Knox wished he could have Olivia around the house again.  For a strange reason, the littlest werewolf was a source of great strength for him.

"I'll start slow, but I think I can make some headway through the Wizengamot.  I don't know that the detention and strong-arming many of us experienced is truly legal, and if it is, it's reactionary, it's fearful.  Might be a blue moon before there's any change, if ever.   Got to move forward.  Either that, or we just let these sleeping dogs lie..."

He scratched his beard, feeling some sense of resolve and that was comforting. But at the same time, the task was daunting and very likely never ending.

Fauna nodded at his suggestions, thankful for a moment that Greyfriar had an idea of what she should do. How to keep her peers 'calm and united' went beyond her, but she could certainly owl Ollie, and she could do her best to focus on NEWTS. She let out a breath and ran a hand through her hair, resisting the urge to rub at her eyes. They were itchy from lack of sleep and her crying on the bus ride here.

As he explained his plans to try to move forward and make things fairer for the werewolves caught up in this mess, there was one word that caught her attention. Strong-arming? Fauna peered at him, sympathy and guilt clouding her expression. When she'd been at the Ministry on April 9th, she hadn't thought much about anyone but herself, and had let Bagnold drag her away from the cells. In March, she hadn't considered that Greyfriar would have to face much but the wrath of her own mother. Fauna had taken for granted that the RCMC would have simply locked him up for a little while, no real harm done.

"Knox?" This was the only time she'd ever used his first name out loud. He'd given her permission to long ago, but it slipped out before she could think about it.

"Did they... treat you badly?" Her voice was hesitant, but worried.

No matter how much Fauna had been through, no matter her work with SAWS, she was not a werewolf and had never personally experienced the full brunt of it.

For a second, Knox was happy to see Fauna relax, and thankful that the tension in the room had broken.  He was even moving to get up and see to about tea or something - a diversion from just the sitting.  But just as he was shifting his weight forward she stopped him solid.

"Did they treat you badly?"

For a half second he had excellent success in keeping his cool.  But then his throat tightened up and he covered his eyes with one large hand.  He couldn't speak, the memories working too hard to become verbal.  There was no way to say them without making it real again.  To re-tell it was to re-live it, and he'd tried to forget it all as soon as it happened. Leaning forward there, his back rose and fell in deep, slow breaths. 

Lucky for Knox, no violence had been done to him.  Maybe his name had protected him, maybe his size.  But he'd been held for three days in a prisoner's cell while powers out of his hands sorted him out.  He'd been threatened, bullied and spoken to like a zoo animal.  He was accused of criminal negligence and tested - not like a patient in St. Mungo's and not entirely voluntarily. It had been so humiliating.  The utter vulnerability.  And not knowing.  Not knowing for days what he'd done.  No control.  He sat there silent and still to keep himself from remembering.

He didn't know what to tell her, his eyes wet behind his hand.  He swallowed hard and shook his head.  "I'm alright," he reassured her first and foremost.  His deep baritone was even lower with the strain.  He was fine.  He'd go on. 

"They're just..."  Another long moment.  "I was held for three days - could have been indefinitely.  There was no hearing.  I just waited.  They tested me involuntarily.  And when they were satisfied, they let me out.  In-bloody-hospitable," he spat out the last word.  But the law was on their side.  In a situation like that the WCU was permitted to do whatever it had to.

Fauna froze, eyes widening, as something terrible happened. The unshakable former Headmaster leaned forward and covered his face with his hand, struggling to get his emotions under control. She glanced away, deeply uncomfortable. These things just should Not Happen. It was like watching her mum cry.

But maybe she'd needed to witness this to lessen the irrational feeling that she was visiting the big bad wolf. He was so human right now. And he was not alright.

Fauna stayed seated, didn't even shift her posture, but tried to look him in the eye. "I'm sorry," she offered gently. "That's terrible," she shook her head.

"I was fine at the hospital," she told him after a pause. "They just... saw people as patients. I mean, I'd only been scratched, so they just treated me like regular, I think."