It  felt like forever while Evie sat up in the hay loft, alone. Cheated of her dinner, the werewolf paced back and forth, snarling, glaring up at her and gnashing her teeth. Only when the beast finally gave up and trotted out in search of easier prey,  did Evie have a good look at the scratch on her hand. It wasn't that big, now she examined it, but it was pretty deep, and bleeding a lot. She shuddered, thinking how the werewolf would have reacted to the blood if it could have got hold of her. Then again, having had a wheelbarrow full of Thestral dung dumped all over her, Evie smelled like rotting meat. Small wonder the werewolf had singled her out....

But what in the name of Arawn was a werewolf doing out in the daytime? And while Evie had learned about werewolves in some of her classes, nothing had  prepared her for one this big...

She wondered where Freya had got to. Probably she and Dimbleby ran off when their spells didn't work, and joined the others. Evie hoped the werewolf didn't catch up with them...

There was a sudden sound of footsteps, followed by a blasting curse and another yelp from the werewolf. Evie couldn't see what was happening outside the barn, but she recognized Professor Kirchlehner's voice.

 "Get out of the damn pen! Go on! Don't stand there - get to castle! Go!"

"Professor!" she yelled. "I'm up in the hayloft! I'm OK...but I can't get down!"

"She's probably safer up there." Ignan remarked to Georg without taking his eyes off the wolf. Definitely a werewolf and not a normal one, the pupils, the snout and the tail... Professor Storm's wand was poised, and he split off from Georg so as to come at the wolf from two angles, either Professor covering the other.

As soon as the wolf arranged its paws to spring back to its feet from Georg's curse, Ignan hit it with another, biding some time to establish the scene. Slinging a binding charm towards the wolf on the ground, he thought it had held,
"If we were anywhere else I'd kill it." Ignan called to Georg, given that this was not the first one they had ever encountered together, but never in daylight, and never attacking teenagers. "I'll get Chancelier out - hold its bind!"

Not turning his back on the scene, he darted into the barn where Eveline was.
"Chancelier?" He called, not seeing her immediately.

Georg nodded stiffly to Ignan's words, wand staying steady on the struggling werewolf. It howled in its binds, straining - they wouldn't hold a werewolf for long, Georg knew, but they'd stop it for a little bit - long enough for Ignan to retrieve Miss Chancelier. 

This werewolf was odd, that was for sure - and not in just its daytime appearance, its overall look was like nothing he'd seen, even in the Black Forest. It looked deadlier, its eyes were wilder; the minor injuries seemed to worry it even less than-

It burst from the binds all at once - it was all he could do bind it again, the spell hitting the creature in midair. But it had gotten a leap off, in the second when Georg had sat shocked. Teeth bared, it hit him in the chest, the both of them crashing to the ground. Georg forcefully flung himself sideways, trying to get away from its jaws. He succeeded - or thought he had - until the front claws rolled towards him and raked across his chest, ripping through his suit and flesh.

Georg cried out in pain but had the sense to continue his roll, stopping a short distance away. He still held his wand, and he blasted the howling wolf with another blasting charm, badly singling its hide and blasting away a chunk of flesh. The werewolf screamed in pain and Georg stumbled backwards to lean against a post of the barn, one hand holding his chest. The cuts weren't lethal, he felt, but they were deep; his shirt and suit were already becoming discolored with red. Every breath sent pain burning through his frame.

"Ignan, haste would be...very much appreciated. If you'd be so kind," he called into the barn.

Eveline heard more running feet, and then she saw Professor Storm down below, trying to look for her while still keeping an eye on the pen where the werewolf was. "Chancelier?"

"Up here, Sir! " she yelled, leaning out and waving to catch his attention.

When she thought he could see her, a torrent of words poured out.  "Sir, I kept  hitting that thing with a shovel  over and over, then Dimbleby tried to BodyBind it but that didn't work, and then Freya tried to turn the shovel into silver but that  didn't work either...well it did sort of, it melted the metal and almost caught my hair on fire too but since the metal was hot I burnt the werewolf's nose with it and that made it really really mad at me so I climbed up here to get away and then it tried to come up after me! So I let it get most of the way up and then I pushed the ladder over on it. It fell a long way, but that didn't stop it for long..." After explaining all that Evie was out of breath...and crying hysterically.

"Ignan, haste would be...very much appreciated. If you'd be so kind!"

Evie couldn't see Professor Kirchlehner from the haylost, but it sounded like he was in trouble.

Evie took a deep breath, and hiccupped. "He sounds like he might need more help than just you, Sir. I think the others ran away, I would have too if I could have," she confessed." But..erm...I pack a mean wallop with a shovel. Only..."She looked sheepish. " I need the ladder to get back down, and I think maybe I broke  it..."

"I think for the time being, Chancelier, it is safest to stay there - I will return." Professor Storm called up to her, already heading back to Georg.

He found his good friend and colleague leant against the post of the barn, and could see immediately he had been wounded by the way Georg held himself. The wolf was also wounded, but the sight of Georg wounded switched Ignan from his more rational, considered self that had moments before considered not to kill the wolf on sight, into a rage.

"Conicio flamma"

The bolt of flame singed the ground beside the wolf, which leapt cat-like into the air and lashed out with its teeth at the flames. Ignan threw the fire again, and again, tirelessly driving the beast away with a ferocious look on his face. It circled, avoiding the flames until one struck so close its tail was set alight and it howled, the fire and the wound Georg had given it enough to make it think twice.

It put up an admirable fight, despite his wound, though as the ground became scorched it jumped the fence, and Ignan gave chase, his head screaming to kill the wolf, but the small, rational part of him still vocal within reminding him he could not do so for the consequences it would bring on them all.

The fire he threw at its retreating, snarling form caught trees and set them alight, not helped by Ignan stumbling and setting his own arm alight. Extinguishing the flames, the Defences Professor was forced to take his eyes from the wolf's retreating form, and also realised he had done all he could for the moment. Bowing his head at the fence, breathing heavily at the effort it had taken, he hoping with all his heart that the wolf would not return. The smoke that undoubtedly billowed up from the trees and the scorched grass in the paddock and filled the air with acrid smoke.

"Georg!" Ignan about turned from the fence and hurried back to the man's side - only now thinking it time to send a patronus to the castle to back up the students' claims that hopefully had reached other staff.
"I shouldn't have left you for Chancelier... idiot girl." He spoke to Georg in their native tongue, blaming himself for his friend's wounds which didn't look good at all from all he could see behind Georg's clutching of his chest.
"Staima" Ignan cast, though his knowledge of healing spells was patchy, and he doubted the blood flow would entirely stop from the wound, but it might buy some time as opposed to doing nothing.
"Your turn to be the invalid in the hut." He muttered to Georg in English again, his initial shock of Georg's injuries the cause of his earlier switch.

Chancelier would have to wait for rescue a little longer.

Figaro had found his way out of the pen, looking around for what would become of his classmates and where the adults had gone.  And though the time passed like molasses, in moments Eveline was up into the barn and the grown-ups were back in full force, wands out.

It was an impressive display seeing Professor Storm casting without the same care and caution he must have had in class with them.  So that was how it was done...

"What should-! Is he okay!?  How -?!"  he shouted stilted questions, still hovering just outside the pen, his muscles all twitching to run and his wand more or less useless in his hand.  Perhaps he could levitate some poop, or cast a shielding charm...?  Red sparks again? He was having a hard time coming up with something practical, especially with Professor Storm throwing balls of fire at a werewolf who'd just mauled Professor Kirchlehnor.

Someone shouted to get back to the castle, but Figaro wasn't very keen on the idea of turning his back on the scene and running across the lawns like some sort of rabbit.  Or deer.  Or other chase-able quarry.   He hesitated a moment, but another look at the werewolf seemed like enough to get his feet moving.

"Freya! Bellatrix! Jordyn!" he shouted at his classmates - the ones not trapped up a barn - as he made progress backwards away from the pen and towards the open Hogwarts lawns.

When Evie yelled for them to get the teachers... well, Freya couldn't argue.  Her best spell had fizzled and Evie's attempts to knock down the ladder were actually not only more promising but more logical than trying to turn iron into silver.  She lit out quicker'n snot down the path the teachers had taken but somehow got turned around and ran down a side path instead when she came to a fork.  They weren't supposed to go into the forest and no one had ever bothered to show them the paths within.  They shouldn't have needed them.

The path suddenly ended and Freya teetered at the edge of a ditch.  It hadn't been a path at all, but one of those will-o-wisps.  She tumbled down an incline and fetched up against a tree, scratched, muddy and panting.  She laid there for a minute, head spinning, then remembered what she was about and scrambled on hands and knees to try to climb back out again.  It didn't take long before she had to admit that the face of the incline was too steep and the roots that stuck out of the embankment were too rotten to hold her weight to climb.  A howl broke the forest silence off in the distance and the hairs on the back of her neck stood straight on end.

She thought she heard someone call her name.  "Down here!" she called as loud as she could, but she doubted her voice carried.  How far had she run before she fell?  She was at least as far from the thestrals' corral as the Gamekeeper's cabin was, only in the wrong direction.  She attacked the embankment again, scrabbling fruitlessly, but froze when she heard a snuffling in the underbrush above her...

Shep's cabin wasn't far down the path from the corral.  It was easy to hear the shouts and disgusted squeals from the beleaguered students, but when those shouts turned frantic, he was only a step behind the professors in realizing something wasn't right.  A step behind, because he wasn't a teacher and was more inclined to tune into the distressed calls of animals than that of human young.  A frustrated werewolf fell into the former category.

Professors Ignan and Storm tore out like the divil took 'em--which likely, he had.  Shep knew from the noise what they were up against, though it seemed impossible at dusk, before the moon was even up.  Impossible or not, he stopped to gather a few things from his shed: his trusty shotgun and the few silver shotgun shells he had left from the last time he had to run a wolf from his claim, hand-poured and carefully replacing the usual brass balls inside the plastic shell.  He ripped down a handful of pretty, purple-blue flowers hung upside down from the rafters with twine, snapping the line with a jerk rather than stopping to untie or cut them.  In the lowering gloom, it was impossible to tell if he had the right ones among the many herbs he had drying there, but he trusted his memory.

He exited the shed at a run, but not immediately toward the path to the corral.  First, he ran toward the cabin.  Reaching up, he took hold of a massive bough from the Mountain Ash that shaded its roof and heaved, cracking it at the trunk and splitting it off.  This, he hoisted over his shoulder.  Another man might have been slowed down as he was forced to drag it.  Shep simply adjusted his gait and lit out after the professors...

All of this took perhaps a minute or two.  He expected that two grown and experienced wizards could hold off one little wolf for a short span of time.  But the scene that met him as he tore around the bend and the corral came into site shocked him.  Georg was hurt.  Ignan was facing off with the beast, blasting it whenever it paused, then he left off to tend to his friend, whose chest was bleeding profusely, his shirt in ribbons.

"Tarnation," Shep breathed, then made his way to the two men.  "I shouldn't have stopped.  I didn't expect it to be so cussed.  I'm sorry."  He laid down the Ash bough beside the wounded man.  It measured at least as long as he did.  He nodded at it.  "Belgian repellant.  Stronger than wolfsbane."  Which of course he held in his other hand.  " 'Specially fresh."

He eyed Georg's wound thoughtfully and then glanced in the direction the werewolf had run.  "I would say we should go after it, but... judging from that, I'd say we'd probably lose."  He was shaken, despite his blase words.  A werewolf out in daylight.  This forest was his home, damn it all.  Of course, Shep was confident he would eventually catch it.  He was an expert trapper of any animal, magical or otherwise.  The question was, what would he do with it, once he caught it???

Maybe it was his brain registering his wounds, but watching Ignan mercilessly attack the werewolf made Georg's stomach drop for reasons that had little to do with the werewolf itself. Ignan had never fully stopped being the man he'd been during their fight - but then, he's always had that element to him...it was what made him Ignan, after all. Still...

Ignan turned to him, worried in his own way, and Georg offered him a quick half smile, glad to see Ignan able to turn his rage off. "It was faster than I expected," he said. "Resilient bastard got out of my charms early - wasn't ready," he added, eying the direction of the wood that the wolf had run to.

Looking to Shepherd, he grunted his thanks. "Getting the students and ourselves to the castle would be best, I think. We can call the WCU from there - this is their damn job, not ours." He straightened up, brushing at the flowing blood. "It's not as bad as it looks. One of you get Chancelier down...where are the others?"

A voice answered him, and Figaro trotted through the thick brush, away from the thestral pen, and towards Freya's voice.  He couldn't see her, but she had to be close.  Every muscle in his body was panicky taut as he came upon a ravine - he stopped short.

"Whoa..." he breathed.  It was deep.  He stood at the edge and leaned out to look down.  It was much deeper than he'd thought approaching it, and it fell away suddenly.  And down below - raggled, be-twigged Freya Jansdotter.

"Freya.  Why you in that hole? Don't you know there's a werewolf?" he joked despite the danger, with nervous, cynical laughter.  Jokes aside he was already looking up and down the ravine for a place she could climb out.  He didn't want to be stuck in this forest, with Freya stuck down a hole.  It was time to get back to Hogwarts were it was safe - not out here were werewolves came out in the daytime and Ava Grosvenors were killed in her shoes.

"Y'all right? C'mon."

('Course he did and is.  And thanks for sending him to the rescue )

"Fig?  Oh, thank Merlin." 

'Why you in that hole? Don't you know there's a werewolf?'

And if Fig wasn't too frightened to joke, Freya wasn't too frightened for sarcasm.  "I thought it was a good place to hide.  You know, what with all the howling and snuffling up where you're standing."  She didn't bother to pull the twigs from her hair or wipe the dirt from her face.  "I accidentally followed a will-o-wisp," she explained more patiently.  "I forgot we were so close to their natural habitat."  As if she actually listened in DADA class.  "Are there any stout branches up there?" she asked.  "Something you can pull me up with?"  Fig wasn't exactly big and strong, but he was a boy which meant he had at least a little more upper body strength than Freya, and Freya wasn't exactly voluptuous.  In fact, she rather resembled some of the twigs poking at odd angles from her short, blonde hair.

While she spoke, she was stalking up and down the ravine, pulling every now and then on a root, kicking at rotting logs that stuck out enticingly from the peat, all to no avail, though she took some comfort in kicking at the logs... until she got a splinter, since she still wore her Docs hung about her neck by the shoestrings.  She refused to cry out but her eyes watered with the pain.  She'd completely forgotten she was barefoot.  Of course, she wouldn't really want to scuff her Docs or get them muddy in the sludge running along the bottom of the ravine...

In the decade the two wizards had travelled together, they had become used to patching the other up occasionally, but seeing Georg's clothes so tattered caught Ignan off guard. When it was a colleague, a fellow who stood beside you and prepared for battle with you, received a wage for his troubles, it had been easy to think rationally about such deadly injuries. Ignan had even gone as far as to document the dying descriptions of his fellows cut down by dark magic, back in his twenties (a diary now held in the possession of Melanthe).

Georg was different. Despite the twenty years or more of being apart, he shared a very unusual friendship with Georg, only akin to the one he shared with Tapendra now. The third, well, it explained perhaps why he shared the relationship so easily with Tapendra. The exact thoughts were far from his mind as he listened to Georg's response, catching sight of Shepherd entering the scene, carrying items.

"It was faster than I expected," Georg explained, "Resilient bastard got out of my charms early - wasn't ready," His gaze went past Ignan who shook his head.
"No, I was too hasty, I should have known she was in no danger while we were engaged with it." Storm raised his eyes to Shepherd who approached.

"I shouldn't have stopped.  I didn't expect it to be so cussed.  I'm sorry."  He laid down an Ash bough as long as Georg was tall. Ignan and Georg had run headlong into the situation, whereas the groundskeeper had applied a little lateral thought. It could have saved a few trees, had Ignan not rushed in with throwing fire at a werewolf. Fire, Merlin. He was most displeased with himself.
"Belgian repellant.  Stronger than wolfsbane. 'Specially fresh."

Ignan nodded in agreement, getting back to his feet and turning to study the trees over the singed paddock, fearful that the wolf would return.

"I would say we should go after it, but... judging from that, I'd say we'd probably lose."

Professor Storm glanced back momentarily and saw Shepherd looking the same way. 

"Getting the students and ourselves to the castle would be best, I think." Georg spoke from behind, drawing himself up. "We can call the WCU from there - this is their damn job, not ours."

Ignan gave a single nod in agreement, wand still in hand poised in the direction the wolf had retreated into. The grass had begun to burn out and the smoke dwindled into the sky above them as the light faded.

"It's not as bad as it looks. One of you get Chancelier down...where are the others?"

"Back at the castle if they have any sense. You are going to Nagde. I sent word to the castle." Ignan's patronus augury had swept off before he'd briefly treated Georg. "That is undoubtedly not going to hold, I am a haphazard healer." He pointed his wand at Georg's wounds.

"Shepherd, please ensure he gets back, and find our colleagues on their way, and hope they have already summoned the Ministry." He peered towards the trees again. "I will retrieve Chancelier and seek out any stray sheep."

Without letting either of them disagree, he stalked back into the barn.
"Chancelier!" He barked, yanking the ladder from where it had fallen and inspecting it suspiciously. A couple of the rungs had broken, but it seemed to hold firm as he lifted it and rested it against the loft near to where Eveline's head had reappeared.
"Hurry." The defences professor met his student's eyes with his cold ones, "It may return, and I cannot guarantee our safety. Keep your wits about you." He held the ladder with one hand at the base, his wand in his hand poised towards the main route the wolf could return through. 

It was on the tip of Eveline's tongue to say that she had kept her wits about her and that was why she was still alive, no thanks to him! But if those two old grumpuses had got their knickers in a twist over just putting dung in a wheelbarrow, what would they do if she actually dared talk back to them? She didn't think she wanted to know...

Nevertheless she was disgruntled. She hadn't cared at all for the tone of voice with which he had spoken to her, as if he thought she was stupid. She understood he was worried about Professor Kirchlehner, but it wasn't her fault that a werewolf had attacked. And she thought she really hadn't done so badly. Her hand did sting a little but she didn't think that much about it...

She made her way down the ladder quite fast, considering that her knees were shaking.

"Thank you, Sir. Erm...do you think you could teach me that blasting spell?"

Shep tucked a sprig of wolfsbane into Georg's pocked and offered him a stout arm, in case he thought he needed support back to the castle.  Blast the wards that made it impossible to apparate inside the grounds.  "You heard the man," he said gruffly to the thin man.  "Bo peep will look after the sheep."

He turned his face toward the barn.  His beard twitched as his jaw worked which it did every time he became thoughtful.  "Professor Storm," he drawled.  "I really do recommend you take along a bough from this Mountain Ash, heah.  Plenty to go around and if you're moseyin' in the direction that feller went, it might just come in handy."

If Ignan didn't heed his warnings, he supposed there was nothing he could do about it.  At the same time, the girl they called Chancelier should hear his call as well, and might make use of it.

Then he did as he was told and started toward the castle, glancing to see if Georg needed assistance...

"Thank you, Sir. Erm...do you think you could teach me that blasting spell?"

"In time, yes, Eveline," Professor Storm replied without looking at her, his eyes still intent on surveying the scene for the wolf, and his tone his usual though more hurried, "but not at this moment, it takes practise not to cause serious fires, or set oneself alight." He gestured to his own singed robe arm which he'd set alight after stumbling after the wolf.

"Professor Storm, I really do recommend you take along a bough from this Mountain Ash, heah.  Plenty to go around and if you're moseyin' in the direction that feller went, it might just come in handy."

Ignan re-emerged with Chancelier,
"Whatever makes you think I'll go after it?" He looked sceptically at the groundsman, "Let us get away from here now." Stepping behind Georg and Shepherd, he gestured for Eveline to go with them, while he turned to face the wrong way, retreating backwards to cover them from an attack as best he could.

"We need to collect your classmates," He told Eveiline, glancing to her most briefly, "See if you can raise them, but don't stray." As a four, they made their way towards the castle with ash bough, torn, burnt robes and the aroma of thestral dung hanging about them.

Over the cries that followed, the wolf howled.