After...July 7, 2009, 7:12 PM

She was beginning to lose everything again (again?), and though it should have frightened her, she was more concerned about something else, something by far more dangerous. She was beginning to forget everything. She could feel it, just as she could feel her blood seeping through the wounds on her body. She was losing all the reasons as to why and how, she was losing her name and her past, and she was, with every drip by slow drip, losing her life.

Her body was battered and broken, and there was considerable pain, but it was nothing in comparison to the fear.

She could not run, stand, or even crawl. Her legs and arms were broken, ribs cracked, body bleeding from numerous shallow wounds—she was effectively crippled. Her state was purposely set so that she could not escape. It was déjà vu, somehow. Even her placement on a high catwalk over a piece of hot and whirring machinery was done purposefully, for below her, lying in between two pieces of moving machinery, was the thing she feared more than her slipping memory.

A patch of sunlight lit the concrete floor, oil and grease stained. Inside this patch of late daylight laid a man, a man she did know. She was losing everything else, but she knew him, his name, his face, and she knew that she had grown to care more for him than anyone. She also knew that she was frightened of him, what was inside him, what he would become as soon as that blissful light that lit his bloody body would fade for night.

The roar of machinery did not wake him from his slumber, and she stared at his wide chest, ignoring the gashes, to see that he was breathing evenly and deeply. He was alive, more so than she was. Surely, her life would end soon enough. She was cognizant, but circling the proverbial drain.

She could not remember how she got to be at this place and time.

She was inside a building, a factory, she could only assume. What kind of factory and where it could be was one of perhaps a thousand bits of information leaking out of her mind along with her life? It was like a New Objectivity nightmare, but she was beginning to forget why she knew this or thought this...

She could not remember her name. She only knew the fear.

Something was going to happen to her when the sunset and the moon rose. Something more terrible that having her limbs broken and her blood spilt was going to happen. He, the man whose chest rose and fell to breathe, was going to do this 'something' to her.

She could not remember her name, but she could remember his, and by his very name, she had to hope that when he opened his eyes, he would remember everything in her place.


Before...June 26, 2006, 3:56 AM

They say only idiots get summer colds. Personally, she did not know who 'they' were or who said it, but she felt the full meaning of the saying. She was suffering from a cold that nothing, not even magical cures, could knock out of her system.

As it was, the damp of an early morning in North London, and trudging through the wet, did nothing to help ease her malady. Hermione Granger was annoyed, wet, sick, and horribly awake. To add to her misery, she was staring at a sight that would turn most stomachs if she were not convincing herself she was having a dream, or if she could breathe properly through her nose. Surely, if she could breathe in the stench of a smoldering body, she would be vomiting through her nose as well as her mouth.

It was far too early and she knew that she should be in bed.

She was crouching next to what remained of a once living human, only the limbs left virtually unscathed while the rest of the body smoked and sizzled on a concrete floor of an underground parking garage in Kilburn.

"Give me your pen, Harry?" Hermione grumbled in request, not bothering to look at the one reason why she was not in bed convalescing, and reaching out blindly in his direction at her right.

With Harry's fancy Muggle fountain pen in her hand, Hermione's Christmas gift to him from years ago, she used it to push gently at the curled digits of what had once been, and quite obviously by the pink lacquer on the nails, a woman. Rigor had not yet set in, and she wondered if rigor would set in with such a death.

Hermione retched, but began coughing, feeling phlegm rattle in her chest.

"Two wounds on either palm," she said more to herself than to Harry Potter, Head of Magical Law Enforcement. "Practically healed, but burnt into the deep tissue..."

Whatever combination of lethargy and sickness that had kept her distant from her situation was suddenly gone. Hermione knew what she was seeing, but she could not understand why she was seeing it.

She stood, passing Harry his fountain pen and turned away from the body.

The flashing of camera bulbs disoriented Hermione as she looked to the second body twenty feet away. The Forensics team were moving all around the second body, one Auror holding up the Conjured sheet, another taking the documentary photographs, another placing field markers to measure evidence. Once the photographs were done, the Forensics team would begin magically collecting trace evidence for further analysis.

"You can finish now," she heard Harry say to the Forensics team, and soon she was able to crouch down again next to the second body.

The Forensics team had left the sheet pulled back from the face, a face Hermione knew, and wished she did not.

She wanted distance from this place, this situation, if she were to decide to help Harry at all.

"You owe me, Harry, you owe me big..." Hermione whispered as she pulled a tissue from the pocket of her damp Mackintosh and staunched her flowing nose.

Hermione was looking at the beaten and bloodied face of Theodore Nott. However, the cause of death was what puzzled her more than the burnt corpse or the wounds on the hands. Theodore Nott had been shot with a Muggle gun, the entry wound leaving a clean hole in the middle of his forehead while blasting out the back of his skull on exiting. The evidence of such a violent death was splattered over the wall next to the body, a concrete painted wall, marking the basement level of the garage.

"Is this why you called me?" she asked, struggling to stand again, her bones aching.

Harry had been silently watching her all the while, ever since he led her under the police cordon. Hermione noted that the white and red tape was not used by the Aurory, but by the Muggle authorities. So far, Harry had told her almost nothing as to why she should be in a stuffy parking garage in the middle of the night.

Hermione was no forensics expert. She had no experience with crime scene investigation or reconstruction. If it was not for her stuffy head and dulled sense of smell, Hermione was sure she would be violently ill all over Harry's crime scene.

She was a legal advocate and liaison for the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures, Werewolf Support Service, and nothing more, in an official capacity.

"What is this really about, Harry?"

Harry shrugged and tried to flash one of his silly smiles, which, in turn, would make her smile. However, this particular early morning, Harry Potter's charm was wasted upon Hermione Granger. Taking her by the arm, he walked her back toward the cordon, and seeing that she was not smiling, became serious and more like a man as compared to the boy she had known most of her life, so far.

"I thought I said no more favors?" she rasped, feeling a coughing fit beginning to build in her throat.

Harry released her arm and shoved his hands into the pockets of his dark brown trench coat, part of his 'I am the Head of the Aurory' costume, complete with dark suit, buffed shoes, all slightly disheveled, just like his hair.

"If this were not important, I would not have called, Hermione," Harry said gruffly, none too happy, apparently, to bring someone from the outside into an active investigation.

Hermione snorted, however. "Calling? Using your Patronus to 'call' was overkill, Harry. Being awakened by a snorting, glittering stag as large as a small elephant is not a normal way to 'call' a person."

He smiled, albeit sheepishly, Hermione was sure her ragged voice, her pallor, and bedraggled appearance only made her physical expression of annoyance quite comical. She did not want to know what her hair looked like at that moment.

However, under her annoyance and horror at the death around her, there was something akin to fear filling a vacuum in her belly. She could not tell Harry that she had known the address of the parking garage even before his stag Patronus had burst into her bedroom, causing her to throw her hot water bottle at it in a weak attempt of self-defense.

"Besides, I thought it was an emergency," she continued. "You could have been a bit more informative with the Patronus—besides the address and 'please hurry.' I thought Ginny was going into labor..."

Harry paled. Ginny was eight months pregnant with their third child, the first Potter girl.

It had been agreed upon long ago, though Harry had obviously forgotten, that Patronuses were only to be used for dire emergencies. Just like Harry, his stag Patronus was larger than life, and damn frightening, she thought, at three in the morning, doped up on Muggle cold medicine. She made a mental note to attempt to mend her old water bottle when she returned to her flat.

"What is this about?" Hermione asked again, this time in a hiss, peering back at the movement of the Forensics team, collecting evidence from around the burnt body.

She wanted Harry to tell her why she was indulging him with another favor. She had done too many favors for Harry, and by extension, Ginny, ever since they asked her to be godmother to James.

Hermione knew why Harry felt he could ask anything of her—it was his way of trying to keep her included.

"I needed your particular expertise on this one, Hermione," he said, his voice taking on a graver, more adult quality. "Your expertise as part of the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures."

Hermione cringed automatically. To be honest, she thought, the Department needed an overhaul, beginning with its name.

"And you have requested my assistance with this investigation?"

Harry glanced away and toward the cordon of police tape, Metropolitan Police Service cordoning tape, she noted.

"Not yet," he sighed. "It will be done in the morning..."

How sly, Hermione wanted to say. Old Scamander as they called him, Theseus Scamander, Newt's son, would never let the Aurory appropriate her services, no matter if the Minister himself were to send down the decree. Her department Head shielded her, she was protected by her rank in the department, and by people she cared for and cared for her. Harry should have been one of those people, he was one of those people, but Hermione knew, standing in her dripping Mackintosh, that the need for her particular assistance was far more imperative than considering her personal feelings...

Harry would never ask her to work with the Aurory again, unless it was for something extremely important.

He seemed to be thinking about this even as they stared at each other.

She sighed. "You asked me to look, I looked. Now tell me what I need to know now so I can give you whatever information you think I might have. You know that your request will be refused..."

Harry nodded and glanced around as if looking for something. Hermione paid little mind, but waited.

"Last month, a contact in the Met called us to a scene in New Cross. The crime scene was nearly identical to this..." Harry said, nodding his head back to the bodies behind Hermione. "The contact detected a magical residue on the burn victim and contacted the Aurory."

Hermione licked her chapped lips, nervously. "The autopsy findings of the first victims?"

Harry shuffled, and she knew what he was thinking. Nothing was official yet, at least, where she was concerned. Whatever information Harry had, he legally could not divulge until Hermione's signature was on parchment and her addition to the investigation was on record.

However...

"The burn victim was cursed to burn from the inside out, the body fat was melted, the organs, only the limbs remained intact. Whoever cast the curse did not care if we were able to identify the remains."

There was, typically, no body fat in the extremities, she knew. In cases of supposed spontaneous combustion, limbs were charred, but not burned. Of course, the smoldering body behind her near a concrete pillar had not combusted spontaneously...

"And the second was shot?"

Harry nodded, pulling a hand from his coat pocket to scratch the back of his head. This gesture made Hermione nervous. Harry was the Head of the Aurory, and yet, he was concerned. For Harry to be concerned and to call for Hermione meant only one thing: this was a serious situation.

Then there was the fact that Theodore Nott, a former schoolmate, was lying on the filthy floor of the parking garage with the back of his skull splattered on the wall.

Gods, she hoped she could keep herself together...

She could not remember the last time she had seen Theo Nott, at least, not in the past ten years, but Hermione had heard plenty of rumors. The last rumor had been that he had lost his fortune to gambling debts and was on the verge of losing the Nott Lodge in Cheshire. Before this rumor, she had heard he had been engaged to Daphne Greengrass... Hermione never was one to keep up with rumors, but she heard them all the same.

Had he been the one to send the letter? Now, Theo Nott was dead and Harry was concerned.

As if answering her next question before she could form it on her tongue, Harry said: "The first two victims were American tourists, recent graduates from Ilvermorny here on a walking tour. They were reported missing north of Manchester, their bodies found in New Cross two months later."

Wizards, albeit American, but wizards...

"The circumstances are virtually the same," Harry continued, "the condition of the bodies, the markings on the burn victim's palms..."

"And why bring me in, exactly?" she interrupted.

Harry shifted on his buffed leather shoes again, and she knew, before he was about to say it, that she would not like his answer.

"Trace evidence and the autopsies, if this is the same as before, will reveal that the unidentified female and Nott were infected."

'Infected,' it was the current politically correct term for 'bitten by a werewolf.' It was strange how one vocabulary had been replaced by another, just as Ministers for Magic were replaced.

"Infected..." Hermione repeated, and she felt her head begin to pound. The letter had said...

Harry's hand moved from scratching the back of his head to rest on her shoulder. Hermione had swayed on her feet without realizing it.

"I told you..." he whispered, leaning toward her to let his lips brush the shell of her ear. "If this was not important..."

"I am not doing this," she gasped, the sound of her voice startling her. She sounded old, ill, and angry. It was as if her words and the tone in which they were uttered betrayed some inner truth about herself. She would not do this; she would not play this game again.

Hermione pulled away a little too briskly, and began coughing. She had managed to stave off the coughing as long as she could, but her physical state gave her distance from she knew Harry was implying.

Her coughing brought several sets of eyes toward her direction, and for the first time since her arrival, Hermione wondered why Harry, of all people, was at this particular crime scene. As far as she knew, as Head, Harry had complete freedom to involve himself in any case he wanted. Why this case? Why now when he could be home with Ginny and the boys?

Perhaps if she had come when she was asked, Theo Nott, possibly a werewolf, would not be missing half his skull and the unfortunate woman with the branded palms would not have died a terrible death...

She had to tell Harry. She had to tell someone...

She dabbed at her nose and tried to breathe normally as Harry sighed and pulled a large, clean handkerchief from his coat pocket. Offering it to her, his emerald eyes scanned her face then her body. He frowned, apparently finding Hermione's appearance to be less than desirable. She knew he was looking for some sign that she was going to refuse his favor, whatever the specifics might be.

Yes, he would be sending the appropriate paperwork to ask for her consulting services to the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, and yes, old Scamander would read over them. She knew that in the morning Theseus would call her into his office and tell her that it was her choice whether or not she would refuse another request for her consulting services.

In her curiosity and repressed fear, she had allowed Harry to divulge sensitive information regarding an open investigation. She had affectively signed and sealed the request contract by merely listening to Harry speak.

Hermione had to know, of course, she had to know why the symbol for the process of purification was branded into the palms of two supposed victims. She also had to know why an anonymous letter was sent to her earlier that day, using simple, pleading words that she come to Kilburn.

A dread gripped her as suddenly as her coughing fit, and for several moments, camera bulbs flashing away, Hermione could breathe through her nose. Her eyes closed as her senses reoriented themselves, and she could feel the humid air in the stuffy garage, smell it. The scent of urine, cigarette smoke, automobile exhaust, and burnt motor oil inundated her nose. There was something else however, and Hermione smelled it for just a moment before her sinuses closed again and she could not properly inhale through her nose.

"Do you smell that?" she asked, opening her eyes. Suddenly, the dread and the annoyance she had felt was gone, along with her sense of smell.

Harry inhaled sharply through his nose before making a terrible face. "Piss?"

She shook her head and tried to inhale again. It was useless, as there seemed to be a pressure seal set in her nose, mucus blocking her sinuses from functioning properly, but her brain had equated the scent with a word.

"Dirt?" Hermione asked with a nasally voice, raising Harry's handkerchief to her nose.

Harry lifted his chin to sniff the air, frowning. "Something like it... I did not really notice before."

It was probably nothing, but the scent, what little Hermione had taken in through her nose, sparked the recollection of a memory. This memory was lost just as it was forming, and Hermione went about trying to blow her nose discreetly with little success.

Harry shrugged and began speaking about reports being sent to her office, requests and waivers that needed her signature, as if she had agreed in totality that she would assist him in this investigation.

"Longbottom will be by your office sometime tomorrow, I am sure..."

Hermione blinked in confusion. "Longbottom?"

How long had it been since she had heard that name?

"He's leading the investigation, I am just here because he called me, and, in turn, I called you. The circumstances of the sce—"

"Longbottom, as in, Neville Longbottom?" she asked, interrupting again, her voice nasal as she was still pinching her nose in Harry's handkerchief.

Harry inhaled sharply and shoved his hands into the pockets of his coat again. The unease that marked his face was unsettling to Hermione.

"The same... Is that going to be a problem?"

Problem? Of course not, she thought. She supposed she was just surprised. Hermione knew Neville had become an Auror, following in his parents' footsteps, but she simply had not heard the name or saw the man's face in years. Not since...

"He's questioning a security guard a few levels above. I think he was also trying to get whatever security footage there might be, but this garage is..."

Harry did not finish. This garage was a den of filth and a lure for criminal activity. In fact, the few automobiles in the garage were not what she would consider high-end vehicles. There was graffiti spray painted on some of the walls and broken glass from ale bottles strewn across the concrete floor. If it were not for the fact the basement level was filled with Aurors and lit by flashbulbs and wand tips, Hermione would never allow herself be drawn to such a dark and foreboding place, yet she had come, and not just due to Harry's adamant request.

This garage was such a location where a few dead bodies would not be out of place. Whatever had happened, this garage was chosen for its darkness, its privacy, and its seclusion from the streets above. Had she been wise to ignore the anonymous letter after all?

"This is a hell of a way to retire," Harry muttered.

Ah yes, she had heard that rumor, just as she had heard rumors about Theo Nott. Neville Longbottom, after ten years of service, was going to retire early, and replace Pomona Sprout as the Herbology Professor. Neville had the proper certifications, Hermione remembered, but opted to work for Magical Law Enforcement. Ron had told her once how proud Neville's grandmother had been when Neville passed easily through Auror training along side Harry and himself...

"I'm going," Hermione announced, more to herself than to Harry.

If she were to be of any use in the morning, she needed to get as much rest as she could. She knew she was going to be miserable regardless. Summer colds...

"Let me walk you up."

Hermione shook her head, as there was no need. The anti-Apparition wards that protected the crime scene ended just at the entrance of the garage and from there she could easily find a dark corner to pop home. Besides, Hermione began noticing that several of the Aurors and members of the Forensics team were eyeing her suspiciously. She knew most of them, of course, but names were lost in her groggy brain, but she knew that they knew who she was.

As she stepped into the narrow stairwell, making sure not to touch the railings, but grasped her wand in the pocket of her Mackintosh, Hermione realized she had not actually agreed to do anything for Harry.

She supposed, in actuality, she was doing a favor for Neville Longbottom, but she did not know all the facts yet. All Hermione did know was that there were striking similarities to the exact reasons why she never wanted to work with the Department of Magical Law Enforcement again, and a reason why she should refuse the official request in the morning. There was also the issue of the anonymous letter still in her office drawer, written in unremarkable blue biro ink.

To be honest, she thought, she should not have even looked at the bodies. Hermione should have told Harry that she could not help him, no matter if it might, eventually, involve her department. If werewolves were involved, she was involved by the nature of her work. All the same, Hermione wanted to control her level of involvement, and coming at Harry's summons before the proper documents were signed, was a mistake. She could never accuse Harry of being as manipulative as to call her to Kilburn and show her a crime scene just to 'involve' her in some way.

No, Harry was concerned; Hermione could see it clearly, even through her cold and dulled senses.

She trudged up the stairs, ascending the three levels to the street entrance. With her lungs burning, her head pounding, Hermione managed to finally reach the last landing and reach for the door handle to exit the stairwell. However, just as she touched the metal handle, the door opened with such a force, and with her senses dulled, the edge caught her in the forehead, just between the eyes, before she could manage to move out of the way.

Hermione saw stars. She stumbled back, her nose feeling as if the pressure seal had suddenly burst, her hands flew to her face, handkerchief between her fingers. She fell back against the railing of the landing, her jaw locked in bone jarring agony.

"Merlin!"

She could not open her eyes for a moment, but when she did, it was to find that someone was standing over her. She had crumpled to her knees at some point, trying her best not to cry out. Hands grabbed Hermione's upper arms, jerking at her Mackintosh roughly, and with no effort at all, she was placed on her feet.

"Are you all right?"

Opening her eyes, blazes of red and orange still flying across her vision, Hermione found she was standing a head and half shorter than a man with a shadowed face.

Hermione's summer cold, which had lasted for over a week, had prevented her from breathing properly. For a week, she had felt as if her head were a tank of pressurized bile, water, and blood. No potions or Muggle curatives had any affect, but as she stood, eyes watering from pain, Hermione could breathe. She smelled tobacco or maybe hashish smoke and a trace of mint. Granted, the headache that was building from the edge of a metal door impacting her skull was painful, but the ability to breathe properly was a boon.

"I..." she began, pulling Harry's handkerchief from her nose, expecting to see blood. "I think so..."

Hermione's nose was not bleeding, neither was her head.

"Excuse me, I am very sorry, but may I pass?"

Hermione exhaled, realizing that the landing before the door was very narrow and that this man, who had nearly knocked her unconscious, was bending down to collect a pile of video cassette tapes that had been dropped in the collision of her body blocking the opening of the door. Hermione had not heard the clatter of plastic, but until the door hit her, her senses had been impaired.

The man, whose black trench coat was strangely dusty and ragged, collected the last tape, and they moved in tandem, he behind the opening door and Hermione through it. Dazed as she was, she did not manage to see his face as he began down the stairs, calling up to apologize again.

By the time she returned to her home, far, far away from North London, she realized who it was that had given her a slight concussion.

Hermione found it humorously ironic.


Billions and billions of stars and as many miles, the universe in its vastness did not frighten her, in fact, as she lay in her bed just at the edge of dreaming, a part of her ached to see and to know the macrocosm. Perhaps it was because she found her attachment by gravity to a single world so painful, or perhaps it was because she did love the Earth so much that only ever thinking about the vastness of the universe soothed her into a restful sleep.

In her dreams, she struggled to find contentment in feeling her magic swirl through her body—her soul. It should have been a comfort to know that there was something inside her sense of self that was unexplainable, made of star stuff, connecting her to all things. It was only in waking did the tedium of life and the horrors of her eventual dreams force her so far away from the mystery that was the cosmos. It was in waking that the emptiness and loss of control made her think that being a witch was more a complication than a blessing.

Hermione Granger's question of self-purpose was so clear in comparison to the universe, but in comparison to all other things, small and trivial, she had no idea what to imagine as her raison d'etre. She lived, but had not felt lively in years. She lived, but she had no life. So much had been taken from her, and finding something to replace it had been difficult.

Hermione moved in silence through her days, feeling too much or not at all. The waking world was more a dream to her, and after so long, she accepted that perhaps it was so.

Theseus Scamander, aged ninety-odd years, refused to see Hermione the next morning, but shoved the thick packet of parchment under his office door with his signature clearly penned in the appropriate places. Hermione saw it was a facsimile of documents already filed with the Department of Records, and she stopped herself from using a Blasting Hex to get through the Department Head's door to throttle the old codger.

Theseus Scamander, son of Newt, in general, was a very likable Department Head. However, there were times when Old Scamander seemed to break from his generally kind and warm mien to become the grouchiest bastard one could ever meet. In the years Hermione worked in the department, she knew that Old Scamander was usually the worst when the Ministry interfered in some way with the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures. Apparently, the request sent by the Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement had done more than ruffle Scamander's feathers.

Hermione had come into the Ministry especially early, getting only an hour and half of sleep, in hope of intercepting the forms she expected Harry to send to Scamander. She had hoped to speak to Scamander first, but Harry was not wasting any time.

Picking up the packet, Hermione sniffled, and sighed as she stared at the tarnished plaque on Scamander's door—the surname having not changed in several generations. Scamander was angry, and the answer as to why surely had to do with what was in the packet in her hands.

Moving down the narrow corridor of the fourth level Beast Division, Hermione entered her small office and groaned as she sat down in her rickety office chair, her headache making any change in her head's elevation painful. She closed her eyes for a few moments, still holding the packet in her hands, and waited for the tinging of misfiring neurons to pass.

It was six in the morning, and she did not have any appointments until ten, but with the forms in her hands, she wondered if she would have to cancel everything for the day. It was time to know, she decided, and opened her eyes to begin scanning the forms after opening the bowed ribbon holding the packet together.

Technically, she found, the Department of Magical Law Enforcement could conscript any Ministry employee to work with their department due to an obscure loophole in Ministry code. Hermione knew about it, of course, but to see it being used in her case was, simply, over the top. Hermione began grinding her teeth as she scanned the later pages. She would be conscripted for an indefinite amount of time, but would be compensated for any lost wages. Her official title was 'consultant.'

Dropping the forms to the desktop, Hermione sat back in her office chair and between rubbing her temples with chapped and dry fingers. She eyed her locked office drawer, feeling nauseous.

The owl had come the day before just as she was donning a cloak to go to lunch in Diagon Alley. The owl was unremarkable, a small brown barn owl, generic, she would say. The letter the owl had dropped on her immaculately tidy desk had been the same, unremarkable. However, the contents of the envelope were anything but...

'Ms. Granger,' the letter had begun, 'it would behoove you to be present at a meeting at six PM...' The address was for a car park in Kilburn.

The letter had been a thinly veiled threat, unsigned, and written on a plain piece of unruled white paper. To be at a certain place, at a certain time, or something unfortunate would occur.

Hermione was used to anonymous threats, death threats included, ever since the Tri-Wizard Tournament so many years before. Even after a decade, a week did not go by that some sort of anonymous written threat would find her. This had been especially true since she began working with the 'infected.'

It did not matter that the War was over, very little was learned in terms of tolerance. And very little had been gained in treating lycanthropy either, as far as she knew… Oh, there were the usual grifters who sold poorly crafted Wolfsbane, and unscrupulous potioneers who had been caught using poisoned ingredients. No matter what sort of world they lived in, no matter how progressive, werewolves were the pariahs of the Wizarding world.

How Hermione found herself as special liaison to the werewolf community was convoluted, but it had started not long after the War. Shaklebolt had reopened the Werewolf Support Services when so many people began coming forward after Voldemort, and eventually, Fenrir Greyback's demise—Greyback was given the Kiss after a very fast trial. Lavender Brown had been the most prolific victim who had survived a Greyback attack, and had pushed very hard that the Werewolf Support Services be reinstated. Ten years on, however, Hermione found that the 'support' part really came when the 'infected' were detained for suspicion of trespassing or worse. Hermione was the legal advocate in many cases. And when she was not advocating, she was helping find work for the afflicted when it came out they were 'infected' and patrons to businesses demanded the removal of the 'infected.' There were plenty of those who were sympathetic, especially after the editorials in the Prophet about Remus Lupin and his sacrifices, but there were far more who hated werewolves for simply being…

She did not want to walk down those old paths again and turned her attention to the packet. Hermione sniffled over the papers, rereading the papers before taking her pen from her desk drawer and signing. At the last signature, Hermione stacked up the pages, and sighed as the ribbon holding the packet together tied itself back together, glowing momentarily before popping out of view and most likely back to the Department of Records. Hermione was alone with little to do in her small office with its enchanted window and she sighed, sitting back in her rickety chair.

She supposed it would only be a matter of time before she was summoned and/or accosted by someone in the Aurory. The ten o'clock appointment would not be canceled, but either way, she would have to wait, and it galled her.

Luckily, it was not a long wait.


Author's Note: I started writing this fic in 2009 and it has sat on a hard drive until recently. That said, I should note that during my long fanfic hiatus I was not aware that Lavender Brown did not survive Greyback's attack in canon. Well, damn. So, for the intents of this fic, Lavender Brown managed to survive.
~_^