Circe decided not to have maimed civilians ruin her night further.
Picking up her freshly bruised body, Circe sniffed around the now wrecked shack for a scent she could track. She found a pile of clothes neatly folded in a dusty corner, and gently picked them up. The scent of chocolate overwhelmed her and as oddly pleasant as she found it, Circe set off to put the werewolf's rampage to an end.
Turns out it wasn't all that hard to track a werewolf, as all she had to do was follow the trail of trampled plants and small trees. It was lumbering through the dark, whimpering and scratching at itself every few unstable steps. From a distance, Circe thought she saw a flicker of green in the gold abyss of its eyes. She knew what that meant.
Newt's constant speeches advocating for the well being of every magical creature under the sun came back to her in full force. She couldn't just let it torture themself, not when she knew better than most that there was a person trapped beneath the wolf, who was fighting it with everything they had.
Circe steeled herself, setting the clothes down and letting out the best howl that she could before leaping out, wagging her tail playfully. The wolf stared at her, baring its fangs and backing away. Not one to back down from a challenge, Circe took this as an invitation to roll onto her back, head tilted in her best you wouldn't hurt little ol' me, wouldja? look. She didn't think it was possible for a werewolf to look so confused.
Circe leaped around some more, closer and closer to the wolf before lightly tapping its snout with her paw, retreating quickly afterwards, starting what she hoped resembled a game of tag.
It still looked confused, caught between joining in on Circe's mad prancing and raising its claws to marr its face once again. A low whining from Circe evidently helped in its decision. Hesitantly, it approached her, nudging her back. Circe barked her approval, dancing in a circle around the wolf. Soon enough, they were both yipping at the moon, playfully swiping at the other.
They spent the rest of the evening chasing their tails, bounding through the forest and playing tag. As the sun rose, a panting Circe and a worn out werewolf settled themselves at the edge of a clearing, letting orange light graze their fur.
Circe stared as the wolf set its head down, amber eyes closing slowly. She waited, watching bones shift beneath its fur, contracting and twisting until only a boy was left. He looked younger than she'd expected, probably around her age- but the scars made him look a bit older. There were lots of them, obviously from the wolf, streaky and pink. They must've hurt. Circe didn't want to intrude further, not on scars he probably didn't want anyone seeing, so she quietly trotted to fetch his clothes.
As she lay the pile next to the boy's head, his eyes flit open. She froze, momentarily forgetting she hadn't shifted back. Circe opened her mouth to speak, but the boy's eyes squeezed shut in exhaustion before she could. His eyebrows furrowed in pain, and the boy curled up into the fetal position. Circe noticed the blood then.
All over his back were angry, red scratches, probably from before Circe managed to distract him. They appeared to be bleeding heavily, and assuming the little shack was near where the boy's home was, there was no way he would be able to make it back without bleeding out in the middle of the woods.
Circe paced briefly before sprinting as fast as she could back to Queenie's.
As she raced back to the house, all she could think of was what might happen if she didn't make it back in time. Stupid, stupid. She scolded herself for going so far from home, especially because she should've known that werewolves needed special attention the night after a transformation. Imagine what people would say, she thought bitterly, if they knew how careless Newt and Tina Scamander's daughter was.
At last, she caught sight of the back gate. Circe willed herself back into her human form. She remained unshifted. "C'mon, c'mon, this is not the time for performance anxiety!" She screamed in her head. A sharp pain developed in her head as her claws slowly began to retract into her knuckles. The rest of her change was considerably slow to follow. It probably wouldn't have been as bad had she not spent so long in the form, but now was not the time to dwell on her shortcomings.
Though her knees were still weak and buckling from her taxing change, Circe ran into the house, ignoring her mother's calls of worry. She rummaged through the cabinets in the living room, pulling out an emergency healer's kit before racing back out the door. "I'll tell you about it later, bye!" she yelled to an utterly baffled Newt and an equally infuriated Tina.
Halfway across the backyard, she realized she was still bare naked, which probably wasn't ideal for her first introduction to wolf-boy. Face flushed, Circe quickly morphed back into her other form. As she approached the clearing with the medi-kit between her teeth, Circe immediately felt something wrong in the air.
There were still splatters of blood on the grass, and nearby lay the boy's sweater, but the boy himself was gone. Circe glanced around quickly, dropping the kit on the ground to sniff out his scent, when she froze at the feeling of a wand to her neck.
"Who are you?"