Fenrir, like the Lestranges and the Carrows, never denied being a Death Eater. He confirmed the name. He spoke in English and needed no translator unlike the Spaniard and Rodolphus Lestrange who had spoken in French. Several things were revealed. He claimed he had the power to turn himself into a werewolf, that he didn't need the moon. The next time he was brought into trial he was placed in an enormous cage which he talked through as if he hadn't noticed. It didn't make any difference to him which made everyone more nervous. This is what Fenrir intended to do. He liked the smell of fear. He said as much.

"Not the smell of old fear. All of you stink."

Strange then that people who also thought this man, this animal, could injure their feelings. They didn't stink and they knew it!
But everyone in the room had leaned in despite their own reservations and hated themselves for it. Everyone who was there for his relatively short trial tried to understand every word. Amelia Bones was not offended.

Amelia, Edgar's sister had been on the Wizengamot for only a short time but had taken charge after a number of sloppily conducted interviews. It was she who suggested they be conducted in the old dungeon's with regular witches and wizards, mixed in with Ministry employees, as witnesses. She had sat by watching the process devolve into farce and degeneracy. She wouldn't allow anyone to speak if necessary. She would personally determine if Fenrir Greyback was, one, a werewolf. Two, a dangerous werewolf, three, a dangerous werewolf who had worked for Voldemort and lastly, if he had committed any crimes. She was determined to do this by herself if she had to and once she found the answers to his questions. He would either be let go or sent to Azkaban. She didn't try to be impartial. She was resolved only to do the right thing by her title and with the group of people to keep her and the other members of the Wizengamot honest.

"Mr. Greyback, would you please tell us about your responsibilities within the organization? We have been told that you were referred to as Death Eaters."

"We were Ms. Bones. Really, it started as a joke but…"

"And you, then, were a Death Eater?"

"I am a Death Eater. Yes."

"What was your personal role as a Death Eater?" She was such a professional; she didn't even flinch to say it. Fenrir smiled.

"We didn't really work that way, Ms. Bones"

"So there was no structure, no hierarchy?"

"There was both but we did not have ranks. It wasn't an army, as such, though it was very organized."

"And what was the point of this organization?"

"That I will not share with you."

"What can you share with us Mr. Greyback?

"Please, Ms. Bones, Fenrir will do."

"What can you share with us?"

Fenrir licked his lips.

"I think some of you think I'm a monster." He chuckled a low soft chuckle. What he had to say would either make everyone feel sorry for him or put something into perspective that they hadn't considered. The Spaniard's trial was bad, they could all admit that. Amycus and Alecto Carrows trials also a farce. The Wizengamot and the Ministry could not withstand another mistake, another slip up. It had been easy to prosecute the Lestrange's because they were snobs. They wouldn't lie and participate in what they believed was beneath their own standards of truth and loyalty but Fenrir they didn't know. Amelia breathed in through her nose and steeled herself against what he might say.

"I have a condition." Someone let out a low groan.

"Name the condition, Fenrir!" someone on the panel cut in. They too perceived this could go multiple ways and they would rather steer it in a direction they knew the gallery would understand. Amelia took a very long steady breath. She wouldn't let this spiral. It was a reasonable assertion but it should have been asked.

"I am a werewolf." He said smiling to himself an inky, wet smile.

"Lycanthropy is part of a class of greater conditions. You understand the nature of these conditions?"

"I do."

"Have you made the proper and ministry suggested lifestyle amendments to protect others against your form of lunaphilia?"

"I have not Ms. Bones."

"And why haven't you?"

"Because I shouldn't have to amend my life and go into hiding."

"The ministry does not explicitly suggest that any witch or wizard go into hiding for their condition-"

"The ministry implies it."

"You'll excuse me, I do not want to be insensitive but do you understand that through the mismanagement of your condition, that you can also pass your lunaphilia onto other people." Amelia could feel the tone in the room shift. People start to squirm in their seats. She almost called order.

"My lycanthropy wasn't my choice either." He stated plainly.

"According to what you said, you can become a werewolf at will…"

"I can and do."

"Could you do it now, in this room or do other conditions need to be satisfied?"

"I could. Though I really don't want to. Would you like me to?"

"That was a hypothetical question. I am trying to understand the boundaries and extent of your condition."

"You didn't answer my question…"

"Which one?"

"If you would like me to do it?"

"That won't be necessary."

"You stil-"

"No, thank you. Please tell me more about how you are able to purportedly do this, can others?"

"Not necessarily. I think it's a combination. When I do its usually because I want to."

"When do you want to?"

Fenrir leaned against the chair in the cage and people thought he would do it, change. He instead wiped at his hair, pushing it back.

"I think many people don't understand or know what I know and I don't think you'd want to."

"Know what Mr. Greyback? Understand what?"

"If I say it, you can't unhear it, Ms Bones."

"We are all adults here, Mr. Greyback."

"Unfortunately."

"Pardon?"

"You like steak Ms. Bones? When you go to the butcher, that smell. It's old blood. The smell of blood already starting to rot. It's cold and fishy. I hate that smell as much as anyone. Some people, maybe, in this room like it? I don't know but, maybe, you tolerate the smell because you know you'll eat soon. You associate the two smells. You tolerate the one because you know the other one better. When people panic, it produces another smell…"

"Sweat?" Someone on the panel suggested disgusted but curious. The fear tilted their voice into a higher than normal pitch for their normal speaking range.

"No something else. You can run and sweat. It's not the same thing. It's sweat and something else."

Lydia sat next to Dylan and could feel herself trying to steady her breathing. She wondered if Dylan or anyone else could hear her, she wondered if Fenrir could smell her. She had been offered an opportunity to sit on the Wizengamot when she was an intern but she found the process tedious and boring, even more than the job she had now. She wondered who she might have been, or become, if she'd taken that path. She would have to ask questions, too. She might also have the power to stop this and put him in Azkaban that second. Fenrir sniffed at the air and several people made shuffling noises. He chuckled to himself.

"Have you ever attacked anyone- anyone who did not produce this…" Someone else piped in asking the question and wafting at himself.

Amelia had to get this back on course and finish this up. It would start spiraling. She could feel it. They were already starting to ask desperate questions. Questions out of fear. Whoever had asked that leading question about sweat would be getting a personal talking to.

"You mean anyone sleeping? When I was desperate but I prefer to smell it first."

Lydia turned when Dylan made a contained belching noise and brought his fist up to his mouth. The noise of someone about to vomit.

"Smell what first? For clarification?" The secretary taking notes had lifted her quill.

"Panic. To let it marinate if I can use the term."

"And then?…" Someone chimed in with their voice trembling.

Amelia had lost it. This trial would be in the Daily Prophet as yet another example of all of them being unfit to do their jobs asking good enough questions to put people in Azkaban.

Fenrir wiped his hand across the bottom half of his face, slowly. Someone in the gallery of witnesses took a sip from a flask.

"The trick… You'd understand maybe if- it has to be warm and fresh. Blood is sweeter then."

He clenched and unclenched his jaw involuntarily. His eyes started to glaze over.

"Especially when it's a child."

A witch stood up sweating. She called him a monster. She yelled the word wretched repeatedly. Fenrir hardly noticed as she was escorted out of the room half screaming, half sobbing. Someone in the gallery, many people started to move uncomfortable, not even at what he was saying. Werewolf attacks were usually against younger people but because they shared the same air with him. They felt incriminated by something just being in the same room. Lydia's head swiveled from the witch to the cage and to the witch and back to the cage.

"Please continue, Mr. Greyback." Amelia said solemnly.

"I don't want you to think I'm a monster, Ms. Bones."

"Do you consider what you've done to be monstrous, Mr. Greyback?"

"I've never touched babies. The small ones."

Amelia knew this was a trap and she wasn't going to say anything but she had tilted her head and she would kick herself for having done so.

"Not enough meat."

Someone in the gallery retched. And several people stood up yelling obscenities. Dylan sitting next to Lydia shook his head. He said one word: vile. Fenrir laughed and they understood that this was an act even as he was telling the truth or half truths as they more readily hoped he was playing this as a joke.

"Mr. Greyback…" Amelia huffed, exasperated.

"Amelia." He put his hands clasped in between his parted legs, now his body language relaxed.

"Please answer the following questions to the best of your knowledge and truthfully. These questions pertain to your current state and generally would not pertain to actions you may have taken while under the influence of the moon which the Ministry understands compels and exasperates a condition you claim to have. Given what you have told the Wizengamot however, you have explicitly stated, that there are unique aspects to your particular condition that allow you to have control of how and when you control your lycanthropy. Do you still stand by that statement?"

"I stand and sit by it." He wished the Carrows had been there to hear that. They would have thought it was funny. No one else laughed.

"Then we will continue the questions with the understanding that you can answer these questions as you are in your current state or before your uniquely altered form precipitated by your condition which you purport to have control over. I will use the term Death Eater to refer to members of the organization founded and under the control of Lord Voldemort and the man himself, interchangeably. Have you ever attacked a child or children as a Death Eater or on the orders of a Death Eater?"

"Yes. I have."

"Have you ever, acting autonomously, attacked a child or children?"

"I have."

"Have you ever, acting autonomously or as a Death Eater or under the orders of a Death Eater attacked an adult?"

"Not if I can help it."

"Mr. Greyback…"

"Yes."

"Are the attacks precipitated against children ever under your control? That is to say, as a lunaphiliac who has some admitted control over his condition, could some of these attacks have been prevented by your own will or choice?"

"Yes."

"By your estimation, how many?"

"Maybe fifteen, maybe twenty."

"How many children would you say you have attacked?"

"Maybe fifteen, maybe twenty."

"Are you saying that you had control over all of the attacks?"

"Yes."

"How many were when you worked as a Death Eater or under the orders of a Death Eater?"

"No more than three, probably."

The next day when the Daily Prophet did post part of the transcripts from the trial, Lupin would read this and feel nothing. If what Fenrir Greyback had said was true, most of the attacks were not only a conscious choice but most did not occur while he worked with Lord Voldemort.

Somewhere else in England, Lupin's own father had read the paper and his wife had found him crying at their dining table. She took the Daily Prophet outside and lit it on fire after reading it herself and returned to find her husband wiping his splotchy face to get himself up to prepare for work. He no longer worked in the same position he had held when Lupin was attacked. His wife, Lupin's mother, made a move to say something but knew if she did it might make it worse. She knew he still blamed himself even though the words were there, or rather the words had been there before they were burned to ash, that it was not his fault and never had been. He took a bath, got dressed and kissed his wife goodbye. He collapsed on his way to the door.

"Are you aware if any of them have died?"

"No, not really but certainly some have." Several people in the gallery were crying now. Sniffles and coughs and hiccups could be heard. Several members of the Wizengamot were wiping at their own eyes or shaking their heads in disgust.

"You know that how?"

"Two I read about in the papers."

"When did they occur?"

"The late fifties, early sixties, maybe." He shrugged. Someone gasped and tittering went up in the witness gallery again.

The hair on Lydia's arms stood up. This was only a coincidence. She slowly rubbed at her arms as if there was a great chill in the room. Lydia could have sworn that she heard someone behind her say, 'the muggle girl'.

"Do you remember their names? Please!" Amelia said addressing the conversations starting in the witness gallery.

"Of course not!" He said offended.

"Did any of these attacks occur in England?"

"All of them did." Lydia wanted to put her fingers in her ears.

"Are these in any way connected to the attacks that occurred on and around Grand Pike Road?"

"I believe it was a muggle suburb. I am not sure about the name of the road…"

Lydia's stomach tightened. This was not happening. He was lying. He thought this was funny and, so, was lying. She willed him to say it. 'I'm lying, look at all your faces! So worried! I'm not a werewolf because they don't exist! They never have! Go home to your families; this has been a test. You will find that everyone who you thought was a werewolf is playing a big, unfunny joke on everyone. Everyone who knows someone who suffered in a werewolf attack is mistaken and that they will call you shortly to let you know that it was a joke! A cruel one, an overly long one but still! Everyone is safe and sound and unharmed. No werewolves here! I don't even look like a werewolf, do I? A little pale but that's part of the setup. I'm just a man, in a cage, telling stories.