How had the week of Christmas become so busy? There was the holiday itself, viewing the house in Warwick, another date with Seph afterwards, and a trip to Azkaban to interview Scabior. Before that was an interview with Vincent Trimble—Vinnie, the werewolf she'd seen so badly scarred at King's Cross station and the boy she'd seen get those scars in her house—and first, she was going to demand an explanation from the people who had given him those scars.

The way to the Werewolf Capture Unit was becoming a little too familiar. The receptionist looked up as Hermione walked in and jumped to her feet. "I'll get Hunter Hembree for you right away, Miss Granger."

"Wait, I don't need—" Hermione started, but the receptionist was already on her way to the back office. A minute later, she and Hembree returned.

"Miss Granger, you're becoming a regular visitor to our office," Hembree said. "What can I help you with this time?"

"I'm looking for some information on a case from your department."

"Which case?"

"I'm not sure of the details. It was about six years ago, during or just before the war. Several werewolves were killed by W.C.U Hunters."

Hembree tightened her lips. "Miss Granger, the W.C.U. is a law enforcement agency. We are not in the habit of murdering werewolves."

"Look, I live in the house where they died. I cast a Ginsburgh Playback Charm, so I saw part of what happened before I couldn't stand to watch anymore. I want to hear your department's side of it."

Hembree sighed hotly. "All right. Where do you live?"

"One Delamere Forest."

Hembree's face fell, and she swallowed hard. "You live in the Delamere pack's house." She waved for Hermione to follow her. "Come back to my office."

Hermione followed her back to the corner office.

"Close the door and take a seat." Hembree gestured to a chair in front of the desk, then pulled a file out of the cabinet behind her. As Hermione sat down, Hembree dropped the folder onto the desk with a 'whomp'. "I want you to look at that."

Hermione opened it and immediately snapped it shut again as a cry of revulsion escaped her lips and left her shuddering.

"Not pretty, is it?" Hembree asked.

"What is that?"

"'That' is a photo of one of the luckier victims of a gang hexing. The Healers at St. Mungo's are pretty sure Mr. Towsley will be able to walk again, eventually, although probably not in a straight line. I don't think you understand why the Werewolf Capture Unit exists, Miss Granger, and it's about time you did. We are not here to antagonize sick people. We are here because werewolves form packs, and packs can do that." She thumped her gloved fingers on the file. "The goblin mafia employs at least three of them. And you can bet after this, Mr. Towsley's not willing to testify anymore, which means Narshank the Nasty is going to go free again."

"Are you saying the people who lived in my house worked for the goblin mafia?"

"No!" With a sigh, Hembree eased herself into her chair and lowered her voice to a reasonable level. "No, I'm not saying that at all. The Delamere Pack case was a fiasco; my predecessor lost his job over it. It just plain shouldn't have happened, and I don't want you judging my department on the basis of that one botched case."

"I'm trying not to judge anyone until I've heard both sides. I just want to understand what happened. What had they done?"

Hembree drew a breath and gestured vaguely with her arms, then let them drop and gave another heavy sigh. "They hadn't done anything."

"What?"

"Do you want me to lie to you?" Hembree asked. "I could tell you they had a kidnapped child, but we didn't know that. I don't think they even realized it. There were a lot of Memory Charms going on in werewolf kids back then. Even if they had known, we wouldn't have the moral high ground after what Hornby did to him."

"So what happened, exactly? Why were you there?"

"We were there because there were a lot of them. Keep in mind, it was 1996. The war had been going for a few months. We knew You-Know-Who had at least one werewolf working for him, and we wanted to keep it at one. You have one werewolf, they're nothing special; they're just like everyone else. But you get five or six of them together, they are not like other people, and if you got twenty, or thirty, or more…"

A shudder went through Hembree. "It's a thought that gives me nightmares. We wanted to keep them broken up, so we got an Anti-Pack Law passed. It was illegal for more than three unrelated werewolves to share living space, with the penalty up to a year in Azkaban. It was rescinded with a bunch of other stuff at the end of the war, but we had it then. We got a tip that there was a pack living in Delamere Forest. When we found the house and watched it for a while, we saw at least four individuals with visible lycanthropic traits coming and going. We didn't know if they were up to anything else, but just having four sharing living space was enough for us to go in, make arrests, and search the place. If we found something else while we were there, great, we've got a criminal pack off the streets and the Daily Prophet gets to print some good news for once. If not, well, they can still be sent to Azkaban. That's four or five more who won't be joining the Death Eaters, or if they're willing to cut a deal, we can put trackers on them and use them to find others. No matter which way it goes, we win, or at least that's how it was supposed to work. Then my predecessor got the idea that there'd been a leak and the pack was going to be warned we were coming. Because of that, he made the call to go in the night after a full moon. Which is crazy talk."

"But… they didn't have four sharing living space," Hermione said. The two women in the playback had insisted on it so clearly. "They were in two different flats."

"Exactly." Hembree said. "We didn't realize the house had been split into flats. They were not violating the Anti-Pack Law, so we had no reason to be there. Worse, because the raid was moved to just after a full moon, we were short on Hunters and had to take Hornby. He was brand new out of training and had never been on a field raid before, so he was jumpy to start with. When they called the children out of hiding, he thought the little girl's stuffed toy was a weapon, and he panicked. He shouldn't have cast anything at all, but with five other Hunters present and the werewolves in human form and disarmed, if he had to, then he should have cast a Stunner. Instead, he cast Fragmina Argentea at the children, and all hell broke loose."

"Was he ever disciplined for that at all?" Hermione asked.

"Miss Granger, Hunter Hornby died at the scene."

Hermione gasped and put her hand to her mouth.

"We'd only had the Fragmina for a few months at that point," Hembree said. "We knew it was a powerful spell, but we didn't realize how much. Now we do. After that night, we are now painfully, painfully aware that at point blank range, it is strong enough to go through dragon hide. Fragmina Argentea is devastating to werewolves, but taking that many enchanted knives to the chest isn't real good for a normal human, either."

"Oh Merlin," Hermione said.

"Believe it or not, I don't hold it against Mrs. Rowle. If someone launched a spell like that at my kid, I'd be casting something a lot nastier than a Shield Charm. I don't like using the Fragmina, but sometimes we don't have a choice. Even in human form, it can take two Stunners to incapacitate a werewolf. When they're transformed, it can take up to four. When you're alone and you have a transformed werewolf charging you, you don't have time to cast that many Stunners. But Fragmina Argentea is a spell of last resort. Hornby shouldn't have cast it. No one should have cast it that night. The whole night shouldn't have happened, and there are still times when I close my eyes, and I see that young woman's body."

"Here! Over here! I found her!"

Elmira ran towards Jasper's voice, pushing tree branches out of her way. "How bad—"

"She's dead," Jasper said, sitting back on his heels beside the body.

"Oh Merlin." The Crockford girl had leaned her shoulder against a tree, then slid down and fallen face forward. Blood glistened on the tree's bark, black in the nascent light of dawn. It soaked her clothes, dyeing them black-red around the gleaming silver shards sprouting from her body like hedgehog spines. She'd taken almost all the shards in her back; she never had a chance to defend herself.

The head of the Capture Unit, Moulton Withers, ran into the clearing a moment later. He asked the same question, got the same answer, and cursed. "What the hell made her think she could apparate in that condition?"

What would have made her think her odds were any better with us? Elmira wondered. "Are you sure she didn't have those kids with her, Marolt?"

"I swear, Hembree, she was alone when I caught up to her in the house. She gave me this weird little smile and disapparated. I thought for sure she was going to splinch." Jasper turned to Withers. "How's Hornby?"

Withers shook his head. "He didn't make it to St. Mungo's. The portkey was too much for him."

This time Jasper cursed. "What about the two survivors?"

"Mungo's will do what they can, but I don't give them good odds, especially not in Azkaban."

"Azkaban? What for? They hadn't done anything; they weren't a pack."

"Did you miss that Hornby's dead?"

"So's the woman who killed him!"

"Look, it's not our call to make."

Elmira knelt by the girl's body, trying to block out the bickering behind her. Where did you hide the children? Merlin only knew how badly the little girl was hurt. As for the boy, there was no pretending he hadn't taken a lot of shards, but if they were mostly in his arm like she thought, he might still be alive. He might even stay that way if someone found him in time. Elmira had already searched the house twice, checking every nook and cranny with no luck. But the Crockford girl was the only werewolf who'd gotten out. If they weren't with her, they had to still be inside. Where?

A brassy glint between the girl's fingers caught her eye. "She's holding something," Elmira said.

The argument behind her broke up. "What is it?" Withers asked.

Elmira pried open Leslie's fingers, still warm and flexible, and something metal dropped into her hand. "It's one of those watches they use." She flipped it over, and behind her, Withers cursed again. The face was glowing a soft blue.

"She got a message off," Withers said. "We need to clear out; there'll be reinforcements here any second."

Elmira jumped to her feet. "What about the kids?"

"We can't find them now. We'll have to get some back-up from Law Enforcement and come back for them."

"They might not have time for that. You saw how badly that boy was hurt."

"I'm already down one Hunter; I'm not losing any more, not for these mutts."

"I'm not leaving without them," Elmira said, starting back to the house.

"If you want to have a job tomorrow, you'll do what I tell you," Withers said. Elmira didn't turn around.

"Hembree, wait," Jasper said, going after her. He caught her arm and stopped her, then turned to Withers. "Let me talk to her; I'll get her calmed down before you get everyone else together."

"You better." He jerked his head towards Leslie as he passed them. "Be ready to move that body out; the last thing we need is some Muggle stumbling on it."

Elmira jerked her arm away from Jasper. "I don't care if he sacks me. I'm not leaving those kids to die."

Jasper glanced after Withers, then lowered his voice. "Myra, if that girl had called reinforcements, we'd already be up to our eyebrows in pissed-off werewolves."

"You think she didn't get the message through?"

"I think she didn't ask for help, not for herself. What if she told someone where those kids are? They might be waiting out there right now, watching for us to leave so they can go in and get them."

Elmira looked at the watch still in her hand. They'd been trying for years to learn how to read them. Not even a pardon from Azkaban was enough to get a werewolf to explain it. The few who were willing didn't know how. They said that, with a few exceptions like Fenrir Greyback, only alpha and beta females knew, and that high up wouldn't turn on their packs. If it was glowing, she'd gotten a message out, but that was all Elmira could be sure of. What that message was or who it went to, there was no telling.

"Even if she didn't say where she hid the kids, maybe they know the house better than we do. We've already looked everywhere we can see. Trying to find something in a wizard's house they don't want you to find, that can take days, and those kids don't have that long. If someone else has a chance…"

Elmira looked at the watch again and closed her fist around it. "All right. But I'm going to be on the team that comes back, in case whoever she contacted doesn't."

"I'll help you look when we get back," Jasper agreed.

Hembree was as white as a moon calf as she finished the story. She had pulled a pocket-watch out of her desk when she started, and the whole time she had her fingers wrapped around it and stared with fixed and yet distant focus, as though again seeing the events of that night. As she returned to the present, she saw Hermione studying her.

"It was the Crockford girl's," Hembree said, unwrapping her fingers and holding the watch up. The face was darkened like a burnt-out lightbulb. "Her family didn't want it; they didn't want anything to do with her. When I took over the Werewolf Capture Unit, I kept it to remind me to manage the department better than Withers did. It's important we get the bad wolves off the street." She thumped her fingers on the case file of the gang hexing again. "But it's also important that we don't take the good ones off, too. If we treat everyone like we did the two families in Delamere Forest, we won't have anyone to blame but ourselves if they fight back."

She sat up, twiddling the watch with her fingers as she looked down at it. "It burnt out while we were getting back-up. We still don't know how they work. I don't know if someone on the other end broke it, or if it just took a while to realize she was dead. By the time we got back to the house, it was clear someone else had been there. I hope they had better luck finding the kids than we did. They must have found Vincent Trimble, at least; he was returned to his parents. I can't imagine what those scars do to him, but at least I know he's alive. I've tried to find out what happened to the little girl, Annie I think her name was, but he won't speak to me. I can't blame him. The lady in the registration office hasn't had any luck, either, and Mr. Blaine in Support Services refuses to ask. He says it's a breach of trust. All I can do is hope. There shouldn't have been any bloodshed that night, and I hate to think she was a victim of it."

Hermione bit her lip. "May I speak off the record, Hunter Hembree?"

A sarcastic smile spread across Hembree's lips; she was expecting a lecture. "Go right ahead, Miss Granger."

"Off the record?"

"Off the record."

"That little girl lived." Hembree's eyes widened, and she opened her mouth, but Hermione plowed on over her. "She's just fine, because she's not a werewolf. She's a normal witch."

Before Hembree could react, Hermione grabbed her bag and walked out of the office, forcing herself not to bolt as she strode towards the lift.