#bi!remus | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

fatecanberewritten-writer · 3 months

Text

By the Light of the Moon | Chapter One: Monster

Stars Series | By the Light of the Moon

Trigger Warnings: Blood, Aftermath of Violence

The dark red against the dirty snow was a sickly sight to see, but it had nothing on the two mangled bodies of children that lay not far away. The two boys, each about ten years old, were hardly recognizable. Whatever had attacked them had not just killed them - it had torn them to shreds.

The man’s stomach felt uneasy as he stood from where he was crouched beside the bodies. In his job, he’d seen things like this several times before, but this had to have been the most bloody. With a shudder, he turned away from the bodies and caught sight of something that until then had been overlooked - a single bloody footprint in the snow. Only, it wasn’t human.

Taking a deep breath, the man turned from the scene entirely, ducking under the caution tape to join his partner.

“It was Mrs. Randall, there, that found them,” a uniformed police officer told his partner as he approached them. They all looked in the direction of the nearest house, where a plump woman was standing on her back porch, her horrified eyes still fixed on the bodies. “Will you be needing to speak with her as well?”

“No,” answered the partner. “I think we’ll be alright with what you’ve told us already.”

“Anything else I can do to help, let me know,” the policeman said with a solemn bow of his head.

“Before you go,” the man intervened, stopping the officer before he could walk away. “I did have one question.”

The officer looked cautiously from the man to his partner, then back. “Of course, Mr. - uh - ”

“Scamander.”

The officer’s confusion only grew. “Mr. Scamander.”

“Was there anyone around,” started Mr. Scamander, “anyone suspicious reported within the last couple of days?”

As he said this, his partner’s face slacked with the sudden realization, but the officer looked more astounded than ever. “No way could a person do this!” he exclaimed. “This was a beast! I’m sure of it!”

“Answer the question, Officer Roberts,” Scamander’s partner said, almost lazily.

Officer Roberts looked extremely taken aback at this, as if he would’ve expected the man to be on his side instead of his partner’s. He gaped at both of the men, and answered hesitantly. “There’s been an uptick in the homeless population in this area, but they’re mostly drunks or shell-shocked vets! None of them could’ve done this, I’ll tell you that!”

“Those vagrants are more trouble than they’re worth, Roberts, and you know it!” shouted Mrs. Randall from her porch, in obvious disagreement. “Especially that horde of young ones that hang around in these here woods, scaring the wits out of everyone in the neighborhood!”

Both Mr. Scamander and his partner tilted their heads toward a red-faced Officer Roberts, their eyebrows raised at Mrs. Randall’s words. “Like I said,” Officer Roberts continued, flustered, “drunks! Probably just some Uni dropouts trying to live like beatniks. But there’s no way they could have done this! No human could have done this!”

Mr. Scamander ignored him, stepping towards the home of Mrs. Randall. “Do you think you could describe them to me, Mrs. Randall? Perhaps we could get a sketch or two going?”

“Certainly!” beamed Mrs. Randall, very glad to be of importance.

“Now hang on just one second!” cried Officer Roberts, fuming. “This is nothing more than an animal attack, Scamander! Surely this still falls under local jurisdiction! Now, I was happy to keep you Feds in the loop, but I will not stand by and let you take over my investigation!”

“Despite what you may think,” said Scamander, hardly even turning around, “this is no longer your jurisdiction, Roberts. Mr. Lupin,” he said, addressing his partner, “would you please escort Officer Roberts from the scene?”

“Certainly,” answered Lyall Lupin. Once Mr. Scamander had escorted Mrs. Randall back into her home and out of view, Lupin pulled out his wand, held it to Officer Robert’s temple, and uttered a simple word: “Obliviate.”

Nearly a month had passed before the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures, headed by Dalton Scamander, were able to track down the ‘horde of young vagrants’ Mrs. Randall had described to them. As he suspected, two of the seven young men were listed on the Werewolf Registry, albeit under different names. All but one of the seven had reliable alibis for the night in question, including the two known werewolves. Only one remained.

“Get your hands off me, you fuckin’ coppers!” spat Fenrir Greyback to the two men struggling to bring him into the dark room. The rough-looking young man, with his hands restrained behind his back with a set of Muggle handcuffs violently shrugged the two men off of him, but as the door was shut and he turned to face a room full of about a half-dozen men, he made the wise decision not to struggle any more.

An intimidated look on his weather-beaten face, Greyback moved towards the empty, metal chair at the center of the table. He turned his back to it, attempting to awkwardly pull it from the table with his bound hands. With no more than a slight twirl of Dalton Scamander’s wand, the metal cuffs fell to the floor with a clang, and Greyback blanched. “Have a seat, Mr. Greyback.”

“How the hell did you just - ”

“Have a seat,” said Scamander again, the patience gone from his voice. Hesitantly, Greyback did as he was told.

“What is all this?” Greyback asked immediately, his voice a bit shaky as he looked around at the strange men. “Why go to all this trouble? I admit it, I stole that bloody whiskey! Throw me in that damn cell like you always do and let me out the next day - it was just a petty theft! Don’t you people have more important things to deal with?”

A few eyes of the Committee members drifted cautiously over to Scamander, but he seemed to ignore Greyback’s speech completely. “Do you know where you are, Mr. Greyback?”

Greyback’s eyes scanned around the room again, trying to meet the more sympathetic ones. After a moment he answered, “No.”

“You’re in the Ministry of Magic,” Scamander answered coolly, sitting forward and into the light. Greyback watched his face carefully, memorizing it. “In the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures, to be more specific.”

There was a silence, a silence in which Greyback’s wide, wild eyes did not leave the calculative ones of Dalton Scamander. Slowly, he began to chuckle, and his chuckle quickly evolved into an all out laugh. “Quit pulling my fucking leg, copper, I haven’t gone mad yet! Magic? Creatures? What kind of sick joke are you tryin’ to - ”

“It’s no joke!” cut in an angry voice at the far end of the table. Greyback’s eyes drifted over to a man he would soon know as Lyall Lupin. “And it’s no petty theft you’re in for today!”

The amusement gone from his face, Greyback slowly turned back to Scamander, the obvious man in charge. “What’s he talking about?”

“Mr. Greyback,” Scamander drawled, interlocking his fingers on the table in front of him, “where were you on the night of the seventeenth of January?”

Greyback’s eyes narrowed, his bushy brows furrowing. “That was almost a fucking month ago!” he exclaimed. “How am I supposed to remember? What the hell do you think I’ve done?”

“On the morning of the eighteenth of January, two children were found dead at the edge of the forest that you and your friends have frequented for nearly a year. Now, I think you should try your hardest to remember where exactly you were on the night of the seventeenth of January.”

His eyes were wide and glossy now. “K-Kids? You think I had something to do with the death of two kids?”

Impatiently, Scamander repeated, “Where were you the night of the seventeenth of January?”

“Probably at a bar with my mates!” he exclaimed defensively. “Ask Danny Anders, he’ll tell you!”

“We’ve already spoken to Mr. Anders, Mr. Greyback,” came a voice to the left of Scamander, an older man with square spectacles. “He was confirmed to be at the local pub on the night in question, alongside Mr. Lowe, Bates, and Silva. The other members of your little gang, Mr. Adkins and Mr. Garza, were confirmed to be out of town on that same night. None of them gave any mention whatsoever of you, Mr. Greyback.”

“Well they’re fucking lying, then!” shouted Greyback. “I was with Anders and the rest of them at that fucking pub!”

Scamander cut in again. “Are you aware, Mr. Greyback, that Abraham Lamb and Paul Massey, or as you would know them, Kyle Adkins and Bradley Garza, are both registered werewolves?”

“Werewolves?” The chuckle was back in Greyback’s voice. “Like that storybook creature from Little Red Riding Hood? Are you sure you’re not the one that’s gone mad?”

From his right, Mears leaned over to Scamander. “You sure about this, Dalton? He may not have a solid alibi, but he seems like nothing more than a Muggle tramp to me, like Anders and the rest of them were.”

“Don’t call me no fucking names!” Greyback growled. “What the hell is a Muggle, anyway?”

“Mears has got a point,” said Graff, and three more of the investigators nodded in agreement. “I don’t think he’s our man. Maybe we should check back in with Lamb and Massey.”

“Hang on,” Lupin cut in, looking incredulously at the rest of the investigators. “Don’t tell me you’re falling for this! This man’s got all the tell-tale signs of a werewolf! He’s covered in scars, he’s agitated, and he looks sick!”

“Lupin, this man’s a Muggle beggar!” exclaimed Graff. “He lives on the streets, like the rest of them! He’s probably just sick because he’s malnourished!”

“Or because the full moon’s approaching!”

“You’re grasping at strings here, Lupin,” chuckled Newell. Lupin, while respected, wasn’t very well liked among his colleagues. After getting rid of that Boggart in Strathtully, he’s had a bit of a hero complex.

“Yeah, a man without an alibi on the night of the attack with relations to known werewolves - really grasping at strings!” Lupin fumed. He turned to Scamander. “Dalton, come on. This is our man.”

Before Scamander could respond, Newell was chuckling again. “Lyall, you just stick to Welsh Boggarts, that’s what you’re good at.”

At the hardening look on Lupin’s face, Scamander quickly felt like he was losing control of his Committee. “And what if we set him free, and I’m right?” Lupin bit back, staring at Newell. “D’you want his next bloody murder of Muggle children on your conscience, Newell?”

“Lyall, please,” Scamander cut in, “even if we do release him, he’ll be surveilled until we find the werewolf responsible.”

“Then why don’t we just keep him in custody?” Lupin pleaded with Scamander. “The next moon’s only in twenty-four hours. Why don’t we just keep him until then?”

Newell scoffed. “You’re gonna make Scamander jump through all those administrative hoops just for twenty-four hours?”

“You’re suggesting we set him free just to avoid the paperwork?” Lupin seethed, getting to his feet. In a burst of rage, he slammed his fist on the table, and pointed angrily to Greyback with his other hand. “This is the werewolf! This monster tore those two kids to shreds! You saw it, Scamander! You saw what he did! He’s soulless, evil, and deserving of nothing but death, like all his other werewolf friends!”

The room went silent, and as Dalton Scamander swallowed and closed his eyes, he missed the dark shadow that passed over Fenrir Greyback’s face. “Take a walk, Lupin,” Scamander said quietly, restraint in his voice.

“Dalton - ”

“I said take a walk.”

For several moments, Lyall did not move, merely gaping at his superior, a man he respected above all others, a man that he thought for sure would be on his side. His eyes shifted to a smirking Newell, and he shut his mouth, storming out of the room without another word.

After another breathless moment, Scamander looked up at Greyback, who sat back in his chair, still as a statue. “I apologize on behalf of Mr. Lupin’s outburst,” he said rather reluctantly. “Let’s continue on with the investigation, shall we?”

The investigation didn’t last much longer. With Lupin gone, Scamander was the only one that wasn’t fully convinced that Fenrir Greyback was just a lowly Muggle tramp, and without any damning evidence, Dalton was forced to follow procedure, and release him. Newell and Mears stood to escort him out and obliviate him, but surprisingly Scamander stood with them.

He took Greyback a little roughly by the arm as they left the room, and hissed into his ear, “Don’t think that you’ve gotten off yet, Greyback. You might have them all convinced, but not me. I’ll be seeing you again, I can promise you that.” And he turned away, stalking angrily down the hall, leaving Greyback to Newell and Mears. His back to him, Scamander once again missed the dark shadow that fell over Greyback’s face, this time accompanied with the slightest smirk.

Yes, thought the werewolf, I can promise you that, too.

1 note · View note