Meredith's memories of her first few days in the hospital wing were fuzzy. She knew that Tom, Felicity, and the girls had stopped in to see her each day, but for the life of her she didn't know what they'd spoken about. Just that she'd be exceedingly happy to see them whenever they come in.

As the, well, shock she supposed, wore off, her visitors became less lighthearted and joyful and more officious.

"All I'm saying, Dumbledore, is that this is a serious violation of the Statute of Secrecy," said a rather stuffy looking, pasty-skinned man in a bowler hat at the door of the hospital wing early in the morning, a few days after things had begun to clear up.

"Show me where she and her husband violated the Statute of Secrecy and I will act accordingly, Minster. Otherwise, we shall continue to care for her here," said Professor Dumbledore.

The other man scowled at him, then turned to walk away. The little toad-faced woman that she and her family had met upon their first journey into Diagon Alley, Dolores Umbridge, was close behind him. Meredith nearly stuck her tongue out at her.

"Good morning, Mrs Granger," said Professor Dumbledore when he turned and saw that she was awake. "I hope you're feeling better."

"Much, thank you. We didn't break the law, did we?" asked Meredith, moving to sit up in her bed. She winced as she moved her arm; it was still tender from the bite.

"Of course not. There isn't a rule against wizarding kind speaking with muggles, nor is there a rule against families of muggleborns interacting with the wizarding world. The Minster is simply confusing outdated taboos with law," said Professor Dumbledore. He waved his wand and a chair manifested behind and he sat beside her.

"Will I be alright?" asked Meredith, wiggling her fingers a bit.

"Your arm will heal with time, though the scar will stay with you forever. But I do believe that you've been infected with lycanthropy," said Professor Dumbledore.

"I met other werewolves a couple weeks back. Other werebeasts. Therianthropes. They don't seem so bad," said Meredith, thinking about Sara. They'd have a lot more in common next time they spoke.

Professor Dumbledore smiled at her. "And that is the attitude you should keep in mind going forward. There are ways of processing your new style of being, and their community will be able to help you. In a way you're very lucky. The wizarding world has a rather dim view of werewolves, so the fact that you can work in your muggle job is a great boon."

"It can't be that hard for werewolves to find work, can it?" asked Meredith, frowning.

"Wizards can be very clever while also very stupid at some thoughts. The majority opinion on werewolves is, in my opinion, one of those thoughts," said Professor Dumbledore.

It would have been wonderful if that had been the end of it, but word seemed to get out that she was feeling up to good conversations and so that evening a few more official looking folks dropped in to visit her.

Folks from the Ministry of Magic.

Aurors.

Three of them.

Two of them she already knew, Auror Rachel Smith. She was Felicity's sister and joined Tom, Felicity, and herself for brunch on Sundays. And Rosalina and Hermione, now that they were back home. The, Mr Ollivander, owned the sole legitimate wand shop in Diagon Alley and looked almost old enough to be her grandfather.

The other man she didn't know. He was a very stern looking man with a wooden leg, a peculiar eye, and the tanned brown skin of a man who spent much of his time outside.

"Hallo, Meredith," said Rachel, giving her a half smile as she walked into the hospital wing.

"Hallo, Rachel. Who's your friend?" Merdith asked, doing her best to not seem fretful.

"I'm her partner, Alastor Moody," said the man with the odd eye. He looked like he'd seen better decades as his face was heavily scarred.

"Is it true you blasted out his eye?" blurted Tonks, her eyes wide.

"Well it was that or let him finish my arm off. I'd only meant to jab it out, though," said Meredith, trying and failing to not look too smug.

"That's one of the things we're here to ask about, actually. How'd you manage that?" asked Auror Moody, eyes narrowed.

"Manage what?" asked Meredith.

"Manage to blast his eye out. I can accept a lot of things. I can accept a muggle gaining magic in a moment of stress. But what I've heard say is that you used a wand to do it. How?" asked Moody, leaning in towards her.

"How what?" asked Meredith, sitting back a bit in her bed.

"How did you get that wand to respond? Wands don't work that well for just anyone, especially untalented and previously unmagical folks like you. It didn't belong to anyone in your family. So far as I know, it was just some wand you got off a no-talent hack of a wizard," he said, glaring at her. She felt like his eye was looking past her clothes and into her soul.

"I don't know. I jabbed my wand into its eye and it did that on its own so far as I could tell. As for the wand, I won it. In a duel," said Meredith. She glanced at Rachel, who coughed and looked away.

"I can confirm that she won it, but I had no idea it was still active. I thought it was dead the moment it became hers. This is beginning to sound like an Ollivander question," said Rachel, glancing over at Moody.

"Not really," said Moody, his attention never leaving Meredith. "Mrs Granger,"

"Doctor," interrupted Meredith. "Doctor Granger. I didn't go to medical school to be called Miss." She didn't normally insist, but this man wasn't a normal occurrence.

He nodded slightly. "Dr Granger, if you could pull out your wand and swish it about a couple of times for us. Just try to make it do a bit of magic, nothing big."

She shrugged and pulled her wand out from under the covers, where it had been laying beside her. Then she swished it about in the air a little bit. She gave a delighted squeak when it shot off a little stream of glittering light as she did so.

"It did something! It's never done that before," she said, grinning broadly at Rachel, who grinned back.

"You're a witch through and through, now. You've certainly earned it, stabbing no less than Fenrir Greyback in the eye," said Tonks, giving her a toothy smile. "And there's a reward for his capture, too. Your family would be splitting that with the Weasleys, of course, but still. Its nothing to sneeze at."

Meredith's smiled faded a bit. "Fenrir Greyback is who bit me? That … overbearing, brutish thug?"

"You've met him, then," said Moody, raising an eyebrow at her.

"We crossed paths at a club once. Where is he now?" asked Meredith, her mood darkening.

"Azkaban, where he belongs. He's got a laundry list of crimes he's committed over the years so he had a cell waiting for him there," said Rachel. Azkaban was the wizarding prison, meant for the worst of the worst.

"Good. Did you neuter him? Because I'm told that's what you're supposed to do with feral dogs," said Meredith, scowling. She knew it was a nasty thing to say, but he'd just been such an utter ass.

Moody laughed, a full throated hearty thing. "No, but I'll inquire about it."

From there, her meeting with Rachel, Moody and Tonks went smoothly enough. They confirmed details of the attack ("We spoke to your daughter Rosalina already but we wanted to hear your take on it as well. Don't worry, we've already got more than enough to convict him") and clarified things that she'd suspected to be true ("You'll have to go down to the ministry to fill out a few bits of paperwork and follow-up with Ollivander but that shouldn't be too much trouble").

Tom and the girls came to visit as often as they could, of course. At least, as often as they were allowed to visit. It seemed that students on campus over the summer was something of a taboo, so all the castle ghosts (Ghosts were something else to get used to) kept coming in and out of the Hospital wing to look at her. It wasn't until an ancient ghost, dripping with blood and covered by chains, shooed them all away that she got any real peace from the ghosts.

She met Peeves. Or at least, Peeves tried to meet her until the bloody ghost terrified him away. She got the sense that the bloody ghost wasn't quite like the others. The other ghosts, except for Peeves, seemed to be tied to who they were in life and afraid to move past that. The bloody ghost just seemed angry. She didn't know if it was himself or the world he was angry at, but she was very happy that she wasn't on the receiving end there.

The most interesting person, though, the one with the most secrets, was Mr Filch.

He was … old. She didn't know if he'd come to that by stress or years, but he was in no way a young man. And from the lines on his face, he'd more or less earned a permanent scowl.

"You got yourself some magic. You're a muggle and you got yourself some magic," were his first words to her, on her last day in bed.

She shrugged. "By getting attacked by and turned into a werewolf. Almost doesn't seem worth it. You must be Argus Filch."

"I am, and it will. In time. You just paid your price up front, that's all. Instead of in the end, like the rest do," said Mr Filch, sitting down in the chair next to her bed.

"I bet if you got attacked by a werewolf you could get magic," said Meredith, rolling her eyes. "Then you could pay your price up front too."

Mr Filch just laughed. " 'S not how it works. See, wizarding folks heal faster from injuries that would do a real number on muggle folks. Cept me, I got cancer and a whole host of other deformities. I only look as pretty as I do because what magic I've got is bound up keeping me alive. If I ever start slinging spells that's it for me."

"I'm so sorry," said Meredith.

He shrugged. " 'S alright. Dumbledore let me work here, which is about as close to magic as I'll ever get, and that's enough for me."

"And Rosalina. She's very fond of you. I don't know what she'd've done last year if you'd not been there for her," said Meredith.

Mr Filch looked at her like he'd only just seen her for the first time. "She … she's fond of me, is she? I'm … I'm very glad to hear that. I'm rather fond of her myself. Thank you."

Then he snuffled a bit and excused himself from the room, and that was that. She didn't quite know why Hermione seemed to dislike him so much. For the most part he just seemed to be a lonely old man.

But as it was, that last day flew by as well and in no time at all she was home again, absent the girls and Felicity. There was a very strongly worded letter from the Ministry waiting for her and a little kong sat in a box on the bed, next to a little bag of dog treats which smelled better than she would have cared to admit.

The girls gaining magic had been one thing, but this, she was beginning to realize, was quite another thing altogether. Life, as she knew it, had just changed for her and her family forever.