Marauding in Hogsmeade
Marauding in Hogsmeade
The sun was just beginning to rise as the entirety of the Werewolf Capture Unit stepped out of the Hogs Head Inn. Uncle Cecil gathered us for a final briefing before setting off. "Right then! Team Bravo, you two stick close to the village and make sure the Werewolf hasn't been moving in on the inhabitants. Team Alpha will head back to it's camp and try to pick up the trail from there. As always, send up red sparks if you encounter the beast and require assistance. All clear?"
Barnaby and I were used to these jaunty little speeches by now so we just nodded. Alexi however, was really struggling to keep a straight face. He ended up turning away to hide his laughter and bounded on ahead up the road, his new purple tail coat swishing along behind him. Barnaby and I waited until they were a good distance away before dissolving into giggles. "Alright, alright" I gasped, trying to pull myself together. "We should be on the look out for what, human shaped footprints?" It was hard to stop laughing when our assignment was laid out that way. Tracking a Werewolf who we knew hadn't been in the area for weeks was a fool's errand. I was tempted to take Barnaby home for a nap while team Alpha ran around the woods all day, but it was too beautiful a morning. The newly risen sun was warm and pleasant and we enjoyed meandering around the village, looking for anything that we might be able to pass off as wolfish clues. It felt very much like one of our school dates, and I was about to suggest we pop into Madam Puddifoots for a spot of tea and reminiscing. But I accidentally stumbled upon something I hadn't expected to find.
Up near the Shrieking Shack, clearly impressed in the now dried mud was a very long, pointy clawed paw print. I pointed it out to Barnaby and asked, "Does that look pretty fresh to you?" He bent down to examine it closer and confirmed that it was days old maybe. That lined up with the full moon that had just passed. The full moon that Alexi and Chiara had spent locked in our attic. There was no way either of them could have been in Hogsmeade that night. "So there actually is another Werewolf" I said nervously. "Do you reckon it could be the one who bit Alexi? And it was in the village, not just the woods surrounding. This one feels more dangerous, more wild. Do you think we should get team Alpha back here?" I asked hesitantly. I didn't want to put an innocent person in jeopardy by capturing them, but if this Werewolf was loose and coming into town I didn't see that we had much choice. Barnaby agreed with me that we had to find them. "Vermillious!" We cast the spell together to make it as potent as possible.
A moment later team Alpha Apparated next to us on the hill and we showed them the paw print. "Oh ho! That's a nice one that is!" Caltus beamed at us, pulling out a long measuring tape. "Indeed! Team Bravo, take Alexi with you and follow the tracks. Caltus and I are going to investigate the Shrieking Shack for more clues." Uncle Cecil instructed us gleefully.
"Er, Cecil, do we have to go in there? Couldn't we just peek in the window?" Caltus dithered nervously. Uncle Cecil scoffed at him and pulled him along by the collar of his coat. The second they were out of earshot Alexi started panicking. "It's him. The one who attacked me, I'm sure of it. I think I can still smell him. What do we do? It's not safe here, he could be in the village now, watching us. He might recognise and expose me."
Barnaby and I did our best to calm our friend down as we carefully followed the tracks backwards from where they'd ended. I reassured Alexi that the other Werewolf couldn't expose him without exposing himself as well. Alexi nodded but he was still on edge as we made our way up to the top of the muddy hill. The tracks disappeared into a thick patch of tall grass that lead back into the forest. But even more curiously, we came across a new set of tracks. Human ones. Leading out of the forest and towards the Shrieking Shack, only several yards away from the original set we'd followed. I looked at team Bravo to see if they were as confused as I was. "Two sets of tracks?" Barnaby scratched his head and continued, "This just keeps getting weirder, how many Werewolves do you reckon run around up here?"
Alexi said what I'd been thinking, "We can't say for sure these other tracks belong to a Werewolf, but it's pretty clear the wolf ones followed them. I hope team Alpha didn't find anything horrible in the Shrieking Shack. Maybe we should go check on them?"
We agreed and headed once more down the hill, following the human tracks that time. We ended up in front of a crudely boarded up window, with just enough space for a child or rather thin adult to slip through. Uncle Cecil and Caltus came out to meet us through a side door that they'd broken into magically. We showed them the other tracks and explained where they'd both come from.
Team Alpha confirmed there were fresh claw marks throughout the Shrieking Shack, and Caltus showed us a bit of spiky, silver fur he'd collected from inside. "I think it's best if we split up again. Alexi, you join team Bravo now and the three of you follow the human footprints. Caltus and I will go after the Werewolf ones and we'll all meet back here in one hour if no one finds anything else of interest." Uncle Cecil instructed us.
I raised my wand and said, "Appare Vestigium." Both sets of tracks started emitting a faint golden glow. "Do you know a spell for everything?" Barnaby asked in admiration. I gave him a cheeky wink and took his hand in mine before setting off down our path with Alexi in tow.
We walked for about fifteen minutes through the dense trees, stopping here and there whenever the tracks did. It looked like the person who had made them had stopped regularly, perhaps to check he was headed the right way. Eventually Alexi, who had gone on ahead of Barnaby and I, shouted that he'd found something. We hurried over to join him as quickly as we could.
"Well, we know who we've been following now, at least" he told us, holding up a very worn and tattered looking traveling cloak for us to see. "There's a name stitched on the inside, R.J. Lupin."
I could have been knocked over with a feather as he said it. The other two didn't realise, but we had in fact, been following the human tracks of yet another Werewolf. I just couldn't believe it was Remus Lupin. "I know him." I admitted. "Well, I met him anyway, years ago." I tried to make sense of what that cloak was telling us. Did it mean that Lupin was the Werewolf of Hogsmeade? Had he been the one who had bitten Alexi? But what about the other tracks, the Wolf prints that had followed him, was he running around with a Werewolf mate, in the wild? It just didn't fit. The Lupin I had met, who had been Chiara's friend, had been a kind man. I couldn't make myself believe he would have let himself get loose and attack someone. But of course, I had never met the Werewolf form of Lupin. Werewolves without Wolfsbane were feral, unpredictable and vicious. I was extremely reluctant to give Lupin up to the WCU, but Barnaby and Alexi outvoted me. And they had a point, our job was to eliminate Werewolf threats and keep people safe. Alexi had been a special case, we'd been very lucky to find him before anything bad had happened, but he easily could have attacked someone if we hadn't come across him in his human form, before he transformed again. We discussed it together and eventually decided we just didn't have a choice. We cast Vermillious together and waited for team Alpha to find us.
Uncle Cecil could barely contain his excitement when we showed him the cloak. I made sure to tell him we had absolutely zero proof that it belonged to a Werewolf, and asked if we could handle finding Lupin. Caltus balked that the Unit should all go together, in case Lupin tried to flee. But Uncle Cecil overrode him, simply because we didn't have the proof necessary to apprehend Lupin. He said we could interview him and we'd go from there. The next step would be to actually find him. It looked like he'd Apparated directly out of the Shrieking Shack. It wasn't really clear if Lupin had stayed there long enough to transform and be met by the other Werewolf, or if he'd left before the moon had risen and the other had simply been following a cold trail. But one thing was for sure, there were no tracks leading out of the Shrieking Shack, human or Werewolf.
I didn't let on that I'd met Lupin before, or that I might have had a way to reach him. Uncle Cecil dismissed team Bravo to get on with finding Lupin's whereabouts and went back to tracking the other Werewolf with Caltus. Instead of going back to the Ministry to dig through records on where Lupin might live, I took Barnaby and Alexi straight to St Mungo's, hoping Chiara would be at work.