"Owen!" A short man trotted down the Ministry of Magic's hallway and pumped Owen's hand like he expected it to give water. "So good to see you! Did you hear the good news, that we finally caught that girl who bit you?"

"That's why I'm here, Tim."

"That's right, you never signed the paperwork. I told you that you should have just signed it right then and there in St. Mungo's. How would Greyback have ever known, really? I'll take you down to the office to get it done."

"We've already been there." Owen gestured to the folder he was carrying, with the statement he'd written when he was bitten. "The thing is, I'd like to speak to her first, and I'm getting the run-around."

Tim's face fell. "I don't think that's a good idea. Why poke the glumbumble's nest like that?"

Remus closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead. It seemed like everyone in the Ministry was greeting Owen today, and each person had this same conversation with him. Don't talk to the girl, don't give her a chance to prove she's worthwhile, just send her to Azkaban and move on. As though that weren't enough, the ache at the back of his skull and the three times his Moon Oath had stopped him from making an innocent remark had him desperately wishing he'd been more careful making it. Even swearing that he wouldn't tell the Ministry anything incriminating about Eddie and Athena, instead of just "anything", would have made being in the building so much easier.

"Have you tried the Werewolf Capture Unit?" Tim asked.

"I've been in the hall, but I can't get in the door down there. Frankly, I'm not sure I want to. They're a little trigger-happy with that new spell of theirs."

"I bet that's where you need to go, though. They're the ones managing her until she's transferred. Come on, I'll go down with you and see if we can get something done."

Tim gestured for Owen and Remus to follow and led them to the nearest elevator. After a few minutes of chit-chat, they were again standing in front of the Werewolf Capture Unit's section, and Tim left them to go inside. A good ten minutes passed before he returned with a woman dressed from chin to toe in dragon hide, down to gloves on her hands and a hood of the same material tucked under her arm.

"Mr. Milburn, it's good to see you again," she said as Tim took his leave. Owen extended his hand to shake, but the WCU Hunter didn't move to accept it. "I understand we've been waiting for you to put this Silversmith case to rest."

"That's my understanding as well, Hunter Hembree."

"So is there a problem with the paperwork?"

"I'm not sure. I haven't looked it over yet. I want to speak to the young lady first."

Hembree didn't seem to connect the term 'young lady' to Athena at first. "The prisoner? That's a terrible idea. You know that. You won't get anything out of her. Even if you did, you're not an Auror anymore. We couldn't use it."

Owen sighed. "Hunter Hembree, let me just make this simple. I will not sign these papers until I've spoken with her."

"You do realize we can only hold her for a limited time, right? If those papers aren't signed in that time, she'll be free to leave. It took us 7 years to catch her the first time. We may never manage a second."

"I know that very well. I also know that the moment I sign those papers, she'll be hustled off whether I've talked to her or not. I'm not touching them until I've gotten what I want."

Hembree let out a huff. "If you're going to be stubborn, I suppose my hands are tied." She turned, gesturing for them to follow, and led them back through the office to a middle-aged man who was also dressed in dragon hide. "Marolt, have that Silversmith girl taken to a visitor's room."

"I already told that boy no," Marolt said, turning around in his desk chair. "There's no way I'm putting Silversmith in a room with a Lithobolic."

"Not for the Lowell boy," Hembree said. "Mr. Milburn wants to talk to her."

"Oh, that's a terrible idea," Marolt said. Hembree gestured to him as though making a point. "Mr. Milburn, in the last 24 hours, she's nearly killed herself with Wolfsbane, was given a belladonna counter-potion that makes werewolves loopy, led us on a merry chase through St. Mungo's, then took a stunner and fell down a flight of stairs. Her broom is not flying at altitude right now."

"How badly is she hurt?" Remus asked.

"A little banged up. Could have been worse."

Owen looked at Hembree. "I'm not having this argument again."

"He's very determined on this," Hembree said. "Just go put her in a room."

As Marolt left to do it, Hembree held out her hand. "I'm going to need your wand." Her eyes darted to Remus's hand and back. "And your friend's, too."

They handed them over, and she locked them in a drawer in her nearby desk. She led them down a narrow hall into a stone corridor lit by the occasional bluebell flame in a torch holder. Marolt was just coming out of a room.

"She's as ready as she'll ever be," Marolt said with a gesture to the door.

"Why don't you leave those papers with me?" Hembree asked, taking the folder from Owen. She pointed at Remus and said, "and you can stay out here with me, too."

"Of course," Remus said.

Owen walked into the room, and the door shut behind him with a heavy thud. Hembree flipped open the folder and made a show of looking through it, then said with mock casualness, "I didn't catch your name."

Remus managed not to groan, but he had a good idea where this conversation was going. "It's Lupin."

"Oh!" She looked him over from head to toe. "You don't look like I expected, Mr. Lupin."

Given everything the Ministry had blamed on him, she probably expected him to be Hagrid's size and have Greyback's teeth. "I imagine not."

"So, what have you been doing since leaving Hogwarts?" she asked.

"I work for Muggles now."

"That must be tricky, avoiding a secrecy violation."

"Not as much as you would think."

"Mmm hmm. How long have you known Mr. Milburn?"

"A while."

"A long while, or a short while?"

"A while," Remus repeated. He was not an Occlumens by any means, but he did know one trick. Experience had taught him the same trick could work on unwanted conversations. He started humming the most annoying earworm of a song he could think of.

Hembree pursed her lips and looked back at the papers in the folder. She opened her mouth to ask another question, but before she could, the door in front of them swung open and Owen stepped out. As it shut with another thud, he leaned against the wall and put his hands over his eyes. Oh no. What had happened? What did Athena say to him?

"Are you all right, Mr. Milburn?" Hembree asked. He nodded, then shook his head. Hembree was polite enough not to say 'I told you so', but it was written all over her face. "Would you like to sit down?"

"I don't know."

"Why don't we go back to my desk?" She led him back into the Werewolf Capture Unit's office and into her desk chair, drew up a chair for Remus, and put the folder of paperwork in front of Owen. She reached across him and moved an inkwell beside the folder, then sat a quill beside it. "Here, if you just sign your statement, that'll be the end of it," she said as she unlocked her drawer and put Owen's and Remus's wands on the desk.

Owen open the folder and picked up the handwritten parchment, his hands shaking so badly it rattled. He looked at the parchment a long time. "This is wrong."

"What do you mean it's wrong?" Hembree asked.

A pause limped by. "It's not right. The Wolfsbane Potion, it didn't work right on her. She didn't know what she was doing."

"Whoa, hold up here," Marolt said, kicking his chair away from his desk to join them. "I was the responding Hunter on this. I talked to you extensively about this at St. Mungo's. You were positive she was in her right mind when she bit you."

"I know a lot more about werewolves now," Owen said.

Marolt yanked the parchment out of his hands and glanced over it. "Right here, you said she growled at you," he said, pointing out the statement. "Werewolves don't growl before they bite. They just bite. I've been a Werewolf Hunter for 12 years. The only time I've heard a transformed werewolf growl, it was under Wolfsbane Potion."

"May I see that?" Owen asked, holding out his hand. Marolt handed the parchment back to him. He grasped it at the top and ripped it in two, and as Marolt's eyes widened, ripped it again into fourths. "I'm not signing it."

Hembree put up her hand to stop Marolt as he opened his mouth. "Mr. Milburn, could I speak with you privately?" she asked with a gesture to an office against the wall. Her eyes darted to Remus. "Alone."

Owen stood and followed her to the empty office. Meanwhile, Marolt leaned back in his chair and looked Remus up and down. "So, how long have you known Mr. Milburn?"

This time, Remus didn't catch the groan before it escaped. "A while," he said, and then he started humming.

"I'm not signing it," Owen said as Hembree closed the office door.

"I caught that." She cast an Imperturbable Charm on the door as he sat down. "Did she threaten you?"

"What? No!"

"Did someone else? That man who's with you?"

"No, he's a friend. He came for moral support."

Hembree sat down in the office chair and leaned forward on the desk. "If we hustle him down to the Isolation Center a bit early so you can have some breathing room, would he still be your friend?"

"Yes! How did you know he was a werewolf, too?"

"Ring fingers," Hembree said, touching her thumb to her own ring finger. "He was bitten as a kid. If the transfigurations are going to fail anywhere, it'll be the hands. Did Fenrir Greyback pay you a visit last night? Because we can offer you and your family protection."

"No one threatened me," Owen said.

Hembree leaned back. "Are you a father?"

"What does that have to do with anything?"

She smiled. "How old?"

"My son is 8, and my daughter just turned 11 a few weeks ago."

"Your daughter have a bit of a temper?"

"Where are you going with this?"

"My son had a terrible temper as a preteen. One moment he'd be fine, then something would set him off, and wow. I remember when I first read this case, thinking that if it had been Scott at 12, he definitely would have bitten someone, too. You ever have a case with a kid when you were an Auror?"

"A few times, as the victim."

"They're rough, aren't they?" Hembree asked. "I hate cases with kids. Adults I have no problems handling; they knew what they were getting into. But kids… The Werewolf Codes weren't written with kids in mind. Like the Malicious Biting Act, it covers this, but it wasn't meant to. It was written for serial biters. And a serial biter, it makes sense to send them to Azkaban for 10 years. You don't want them ever getting out. But a 12-year-old girl, scared out of her mind, angry at the world, and raised feral so long that she might not even understand what she was doing… Well, it's your bite, Mr. Milburn. Do you want to send her to Azkaban?"

"Are you saying I'm lying to keep her out?"

"No, I'm saying I don't want to send her to Azkaban, either. And the way the law is written, we don't have to." Hembree leaned forward conspiratorially. "I want to put a tag on her."

"A tag?"

Hembree nodded. "Have you seen them before? I think he's got some in here."

She looked through a few drawers in the desk, and pulled out a jeweler's case. She opened it to show him three small gold tags with numbers written on them in green enamel. "One of these can track where she is, what she's doing, and who she's with. We'll put one on her ear, and she can walk right out of here and do whatever she wants. Well, whatever legal thing she wants."

"Why do you want her tagged? Do you think she's part of something serious?"

"She's Greyback's. We've suspected others, but her, we know for a fact."

"Greyback won't get anywhere near her while she's wearing that."

Hembree grinned like a Cheshire cat. "With the new one, he doesn't have to. We just got a prototype from Ares Silversmith—her brother. What better use for it, right? And the ferals don't know about it yet." She tapped her fingers on the jeweler's case. "These tags just track the werewolf they're on, but the new one, for 24 hours after she touches another werewolf, the spell replicates onto them, and any werewolf they touch, and so on. Ferals can't stand to be alone, so sooner or later, someone will take this spell from her to Greyback. The instant it gets within range of him, we will know it, and we will be there to take him down."

"You really think you can catch him that way?"

"I think it's the best shot we've had in the 20 years I've been here. But if I don't have a malicious bite, all I have against Silversmith is some fining offenses. Once those are paid, I can't even hold her here, much less tag her."

If you were sorry, I wouldn't be here. That's what Athena had said to him when he tried to apologize for the way he had treated her that day, for allowing the bullying at Hogwarts, for failing to teach the other students that a person with lycanthropy was just a person. Prof. Milburn, if you were sorry, I wouldn't be here. I know I ruined your life, and there's nothing I can ever do to make that right, but you're getting justice for it. Why isn't that enough?

Owen had seen tags on werewolves before, in the ears of ones who'd come to W.A.G. because they were so desperate to talk to someone, anyone. The ones who couldn't get close to any of their friends, and didn't have anyone else to turn to. As Hembree said, ferals couldn't stand to be alone. Solitude was killing them. He always worried when they left, especially if they never came back.

Hembree studied his face as he thought. "We keep contract parchments to write plea deals on. If you think I'm going to bait-and-switch you once you sign a statement, I'll write all this out for you right now."

"I'm sorry. Now that I know more about werewolves, and how Wolfsbane Potion works, I know that Athena didn't intend to bite me."

"Mr. Milburn, what does it matter? Whether it was malicious or just careless, she still bit you. The tag isn't going to hurt her. It's no worse than getting your ears pierced. They're harmless. Fenrir Greyback is not harmless."

"I'm sorry. I can't help you."

Hembree threw herself back in the chair and threw her hands up in frustration, then tossed the tag case back into the drawer so hard that the metal interior echoed. She slammed the drawer shut and jerked open the office door. "Then I'm afraid I can't help you either. If you want to rewrite your statement, you'll have to do it somewhere else."