Lupin tasted the warm metallic blood in his mouth. His stomach lurched and he didn't know whether to lick his lips or wretch. He glanced down and scanned his body. No cuts or open wounds. He lived in dread of the day he might slip up and bite someone. He lived in dread of Sirius being a little too tired or not fast enough but today, the blood was coming from his own mouth. He spit onto the snow and half expected for it to sizzle and steam through to the ground but when he glanced over it was already forming ice crystals at the edges, stuck floating red against the sparkling white snow.

There was a time when Fenrir woke up like this. Slightly dazed, disoriented before he could decide for himself what his body should do and how it should do it. The salt taste in his mouth was never his own though. He licked his lips compulsively. At first it was to force himself to find a way to deal with it, a sort of nightmare-immersion therapy. Now he did so because he had developed a taste for it. As a man he could order his steak as rare as a cook could stand to make it. Even still, his stomach hurt. The blood curdled there but he no longer threw up. He wished he could make himself a werewolf again to better process it. So he wouldn't have to double over when the transformation back was complete, clutching his sides at the boiling in his insides but depending on how much blood he consumed, he could sit through it.

It was part of his life but he still hated the stink of old blood. He could feel Bellatrix and Alexia before their time came and got goosebumps at the thought. He would have to excuse himself to swoon alone, nauseous, in the lavatory or get a cold washcloth to place on his head, if he could manage, he just wouldn't attend meetings but, and he certainly didn't know this, Lord Voldemort found this especially revolting and entertaining, making Fenrir sit and sweat through it. When the time arrived the contradiction pulled like the tide towards the full moon. Fernir's stomach growled in recognition and his mouth watered. He took greater pains to stand slower so as not to tip over. All the blood was concentrated around his stomach preparing to be filled and preparing for pain. How Lord Voldemort even let a monster like Fenrir get that close was to Fenrir's immediate benefit but he had his uses, Lord Voldemort thought, sickened. He seated him next to a fidgeting Alexia.

Alastor was called from his room to follow the labyrinth. He would meet a little boy, a fan and soon to be werewolf. One of the survivors on the hit on children's ward at St. Mungo's. The child also had part of his face…

That's how they knew. That's how they'd known he would be a werewolf. The child had been picked up by one of the sisters and carried without magic, that's how scared she had been. Did she know that she had put herself at risk too? Did she know that she put him at risk for other infections and maladies? Who knew what was on her apron. What possessed her to forget her training? What in her had made her forget she could use magic? She scooped up the little boy. She could feel tears welling in her eyes and cursed under her breath since she hadn't felt like crying. The tears were just getting in the way and she couldn't rub them from her face because the little boy was in her arms. He was still breathing. She ran through the corridor. She heard humming. From the little boy? But he was unconscious and she realized she was humming. He looked a state. A bright flash of purple whizzed through the air, and she could feel the radiation, the singeing insistence of the spell in her teeth. A handful of sisters ran past shouting. She turned another corner and ran to another sister who looked over her shoulder and at the other healer and the child.

"Locomotor mortis." She called at the child and he floated out of her arms became rigid and was pulled like a boat on a line. They turned the corner and she saw them. Sisters, healers, kneeling over the bodies of slightly levitated children, some covered in blood. From the looks of some of the aprons, she had not been the only one to forget her magic. Some plain clothed witches and wizards were sprinkled throughout the group, someone from the ministry, this was bad. This was so bad. How did anyone get in? She heard a little squeal and then the sound of choked sobs. A sister wrapped her arm around another and yet another conjured a white sheet and draped it over a small body. The last waved her wand again and the body and sheet disappeared.

The children's ward sister understood now. This was even worse than she thought however bad it was. They weren't keeping anyone not alive in the same hallway. They were being kept somewhere else. She heard the familiar crack of someone disapparating and the ghost of a sister was in the room patrolling in between the orderly rows. So it was even worse. You could no living thing could apparate in St. Mungo's and especially not the children's ward. Not even house elves could do such a thing. But ghosts could not float through the walls of St. Mungo's either (and for very obvious reasons ghosts were discouraged from being there at all). Every magical creature had been brought in to test the protections of this very old building and every protection had strengthened the ones before it. Ghosts of healers past had to be called in using some strange loophole, a combination of magic that had to be exploited to get more help. No one could understand what happened or how. Every protection known to wizarding England and its adjacent countries were put on children's wards the world over. This was the one thing every magical community agreed on, the love of Quidditch and the protection of children's wards. She had done her training on that. But she couldn't think of that now.

She busied herself by running errands for the other sisters. What had happened? She didn't know then that a werewolf had been let in. They had broken the jinxes, the curses and the spells protecting that ward. She would never find out that they had been let in because they had been. There was no other way, there was literally no other way to get into that part of St. Mungo's. She stopped midwalk to survey what was going on, trying to make sense of what she knew and what she was witnessing. Their work in that part of St. Mungo's had done this. There was some magic that just didn't work, couldn't work here so how did this happen?

"Talia!" The ghost healer snapped. "Get cleaned up and stop staring! Bring that ointment first, Talia…" She curtsied and scurried off to the lavatory on her toes. Her feet barely made contact with the ground she felt so lightheaded she moved that quickly. She was still humming to herself.