Second Glances, Second Chances

In a flash of a fraction of a second, Khaat saw Remus's face rise up in her seer's senses. She had a simultaneous vivid memory flash of every lesson he and her father ever drilled into her about coming face to face with a fully transfigured werewolf. It had been Remus's greatest fear, but he had far more dreaded that werewolf would be himself. At first she thought that Remus's face was just a memory, but the scent of his Turkish cologne overwhelmed her far more than stench of the beast. Some part of him was here, rising up from beyond the veil. And the beast was breaking down the door, shattering it into splinters of wood and glass. She had heard the bloodchilling howl of the fully transformed enraged monster as the door shattered into mere fragments.

The stone on her chest was already firing. Already sending a killing spell in one straight, concentrated, blinding emerald green line. It was shrieking with a deafening scream. The stone felt white hot against her throat. It was all incredibly physically painful. Blackburn had crossed a barrier that the stone was not going to permit. It was what Remus had had it designed to do. He had already determined that if he himself ever would attempt to harm her that he would far rather die that to hurt his brother's child.

"FIRE!" Remus's voice bellowed so hard in her mind that it felt like her brain was exploding, so hard it caused her excruciating pain. Her hand raised on its own, the wand poised with the characteristic flourishing twist to the wrist that her uncle had used so many times that it was indelible in her memory.

"AVADA KEDAVRA!" her voice ferociously bellowed, the deadly spell firing like a canon from her wand. It had happened before she had had time to disobey Remus. She had instinctively responded to his command, just as she had always done when he had trained her. He had trained her to not second guess, not question. Just automatically and instantly respond with all the power she could muster. And when combined with the power of the stone, she seriously doubted there would be enough left of Blackburn to bury.

Somewhere, in the distant place of her mind that was still able to hear sound, she heard horrified screams of unwitting muggles who were witnessing things that their own blissfully ignorant little world did not believe in. Her head spun viciously, She wasn't sure she was even seeing anymore. It was all too much. Too much physically, too much mentally. Too much magically.

She felt a powerful alarm ringing inside her. She'd never felt anything like it before, but it felt like some sort of an alarm against an intruder had gone off and alerted all the wizarding world. She had a quick flash of her father standing to his feet and hurling off his reading glasses and grabbing his wand. Everything started to blur. It was happening all in the flash of a wand flick.

Ted barely had time to react. There was a flash of green, and then another flash of green along with a bellow of a spell, and his mind could barely comprehend what was happening. Both spells hit him with full force, and with his momentum, he was flung out onto the street, dead. Muggles screamed as the giant wolf landed right in the middle of the street. Cars slammed to a halt, people started to look out through windows. Everything was chaos, in fact, it became even more so, when the prone wolf started to transform one more time, and slowly shrunk down into a man. Naked, laying in the center of the street, where the wolf had just been.

---

At that same moment in time. Faith was riding along with Brian, trotting at a comfortable pace, when suddenly Faith screamed, and for no apparent reason, went limp, falling forward onto the horse's neck, the only thing keeping her on the saddle was the stirrups which hooked onto her shoes easily, as designed. The horse panicked at the scream, and went galloping towards Brian, taking Faith to him and stopping, snorting, and bucking with Faith still prone across her back. Something was obviously wrong, as Faith was in a very, very bad way.

"Aresto momentum!" Brian cast a spell to stop Faith from being thrown. He leaped off his mount and grabbed the reins of Faith's horse, easing it back to all fours. Angus was already running across the grounds. He heard the roar of Robert's wand. Robert's wand never roared with that sort of force unless something was horribly wrong. Brian's blood ran cold.

"Angus! Take Faith to the house!" he said. Angus pulled Faith off the horse. Brian laid his hand on her. She''d fainted at the same instant that Robert had apparated out with such force. "What the hell is going on?" Brian asked Angus as Angus picked Faith up.

"No bloody clue. Robert transfigured into a black suit and apparated out like the Ministry was on fire."

"No, Mate," Brian said. "Its worse than that. At least in Robert's mind. Something is seriously wrong. Take her to the house. Call some of our backup men. We need this place staffed and secure now." Angus nodded and took Faith to the house and put her on the sofa. He sent an emergency signal to some of Brian's other fighters and they immediately began to apparate in, wands drawn. Angus ordered a couple of them to return the horses to the barn. He ordered three more to get the kids inside, and he ordered four more to secure the property at once. They flew into action. Brian returned to the house to see to Faith.

Khaat's mind wasn't connecting. Blackburn dead. Naked. and sprawled in the street. Werewolf fur caught in wood and glass from his sailing through the door. It wasn't altogether an inppropriate form of justice for his crimes against his daughter that he would end up on public display as a direct result of what he had tried to keep so private. She wanted to apparate out but her feet couldn't move. She was frozen. Numb. Staring, her wand still pointed at the corpse. Muggles still screaming. Somebody needed to shut them up. She wanted quiet. It wasn't entirely connecting that they were partly terrified of her too. She heard sirens approaching, police whistles. Someone approached her. Spoke to her. She couldnt respond. She stood, frozen. More police arrived. Men in suits. The muggles knew. The wizarding world was blown all to hell--at her hands. Her knees gave way, and it all collapsed in upon itself in a black fog as someone seemed to be, maybe, catching her. And then it was gone.

Faith had tears running down her cheeks as she lay motionless. She lay like that while all of the preparations were taken care of, passed out cold on the couch, her breathing shallow and light, her face flushed bright pink, and her heart beat fast and weak. Images flashed through her brain, and as they did Faith was tossing and turning, sweat beading on her forehead.

Her father lay motionless on the ground. She couldn't tell if he was alive or dead, but something was dreadfully wrong. There was a flash of green light, screaming.. sirens.. everything felt so charged with activity, but still her father didn't move from his place on the ground.

"Father!"

Her voice sounded so distant, so weak..

"Father get up!"

He didn't move.

"Father I'm begging you get up!"

Faith took a step forward, stumbled across the empty dark space, and landed beside her father. He was dead.. laying on the ground, dead. Faith looked up with anger, fear, sorrow, and saw Khaat Lupin standing not ten yards away.

Faith sat up with a start, she heard some sort of high pitched noise, a loud, blood curling scream, and it took her a moment to realize it was her own voice, before she was able to stop herself, curl up on the couch, and start sobbing. The loss hit her like a ton of bricks, as the spell had been designed. No matter what had happened to him, her father had been a smart man. He had designed a spell that would show her how he died.. no matter how, and if someone killed him. Who had done it.. and over the years, he had renewed this spell adding changes to it as he did. A spell woven into the food she ate at the house during the summer. A spell that made her love him no matter what, do what he said, and not be able to know that she hated him. It was a simple love potion that was modified horribly.

Faith sat sobbing on the couch, tears streaming down her face, her legs drawn up to her chest as she hugged them, completely oblivious to the world, and what was going on around her. "She killed him! She killed him!" She sobbed over and over, her face still high in heat, and her heartbeat still dangerously fast and weak. She was in a bad state, because the nature of the potion had taken an affect on her as well, and since he had died.. she had come very close to death as well, with that little vision she had had.. it was as though part of her HAD died.. even though it was still in working order, and her body had taken the effect to a bad degree, leaving her close to death, if not feeling much like she was.

Brian wasn't the slowest mind in the house. Things were adding up. Khaat had gone to take care of the paperwork. And only a short time later, everything seemed blown to hell. She killed him? Surely she hadn't gone to see Blackburn by herself. He checked his thinking. Chase. It was too close to Khaat's heart. She had felt that she had lost Chase and she had always blamed herself somehow. Now with Faith, Khaat was doing her best to not repeat herself. Of course she had gone to see Blackburn. Most likely alone. But...as far as they knew Blackburn was dead. Or so they thought. Evidently she had tracked him pretty quickly. Ministry records or traces. She had found him, and somehow in trying to serve him, something had surely gone wrong. But why call Robert out? What had been so wrong?

His blood ran cold. What if...? What if she had somehow revealed magic in front of some muggles? Oh, God. Their world exposed. In an effort to protect a child. A child who was now, for some reason, hysterical on his sofa. He touched her forehead, ever the healer. He had made a promise to this child. Khaat wasnt' here. Faith was. He had to deal with what was right in front of him. Her vital signs were very irregular. Something was truly amiss. All he understood was that Faith was bewitched. He didn't know if it was a spell or a potion. But when all did not add up, then being bewitched was what was, clearly, left. For now, he wasn't sure that perhaps all he could do was to stablize her vital signs a bit.

He cast the spell to stabilize her and provide her a bit of calming, but what effect, if any, it would have on the emotional hysteria, he had no clue.

And beyond that, he was uncharacteristically frightened. Frightened for his wife and his entire existence. Everything he knew.

Faith felt a hand on her forehead, and she nearly fell off the sofa in an attempt to move away from him. "Stop.. stop.. please don't hurt me.. please." She sobbed, mass panic rising through her as she fought the urge to throw up. The spells he had placed upon her mind while she had slept for all of those years, were spells that showed him in a good light, showed what he did to her as a good thing, and also kept him on her mind almost constantly. The potions in her food had kept her under his spell, for years and years, carefully monitored, tested and proven before he gave them to her. She was abnormally slow in healing, she loved her father more then she could understand why. And she was connected to him in ways that no other person in the world could be connected to another.

It was as though they shared a part of themselves that had literally taken years to develop. A sick love for each other that was monitored by her insane father, who knew exactly what to do. His love for her was not that of a father for a daughter, but something much more sinister, that had him in her room almost every night that she was there with him. He had banished any part of her that could carry the werewolf gene, and even been smart enough to find a scent repulsive to himself while he was transformed so he stayed away from her during the full moon.

The wounds on her body told a tale of sorrow, one that clearly showed that his affections were shown to her in ways of almost torture like abuse. Cuts, bruises, and even hickies dotted her skin every moment of the day, so that even when she was not with him, with her abnormally slow healing time, she kept the scars and hurts on her far longer then they should, so that he could renew them each time he saw her, and she was constantly reminded of them.

Faith was sobbing however, over the death of a man who had kept her bewitched from day one. A man who had been feeding her lies, and pain for the course of 15 years, through abuse, emotional, sexual, and physical. Bewitched her with spells and enchantments he had designed, that had been renewed for year after year, and still.. when he had died, only a small portion had died with him. A portion that affected her health in the last final way possible. A last burst of energy towards her that was both painful, and completely unheard of. Because now that she was slowly calming down, an almost.. crawling sensation of pain crept from her stomach, to her limbs, and then to her head. Slowly, Faith realized the pain, and started to freak out, his last ditch effort to cause as much pain in his child as possible, but never kill her.

Brian felt the dark magic fighting against his own, but he left his hand on her forehead, even though the dark magic seemed to try to make her pull away. He did not dare stop his stabilizing spell until it was complete. What he did not know was what she would be like when she got her energy back. He had his own deep demons about Chase and what had happened when she had 'flipped.' And what it had done to his family. And what her death continued to do. He didn't want a repeat.

"Someone check for a stinking owl!" he commanded, irked. He needed some sort of word from Robert. The sound of subservient scrambling feet wasnt helpful. It made him realize he was not treating the staff he had, who were all so dedicated to him, in the way he wanted to.

"What are you looking for?" Someone asked. Dolts.

"My wife?" he asked incredulously.

"Oh." That was the quiet reply he had gotten.

In another place, Robert was making his way through the stinking useless muggle security into Whitehall. Muggle security could not possibly keep a wizard out of any place he truly wanted to be. At best it slowed him down. At worst, it pissed him off. And Robert was trying to walk the fine line in between--observing their customs, and doing what was very necessary right now. But he was sorely tempted to slip into a men's room and just apparate to David's office and be done with it. Nonsense. All of it.

Faith felt her heartbeat slowing down, her face going pale, and her body slowly succumbed to the relaxing actions of Brian's hand. She was pushed away from going into a sheer panic, and because of him, she was slowly slipping back into unconsciousness, laying down on the couch, and passing out again, her mind a whirlwind of flames, and fire, and hell.. but at least she wasn't dying anymore.

----

Meanwhile..

----

"Khaat Lupin? Are you absolutely sure?" The man looked surprised when he heard the reports, and he stood up quickly, he grabbed his jacket, and quickly pulled it on, but not before the door was opened, and of course, the Minister of Magic strode into his office. "I have just received word that your daughter has caused a lot of trouble Mr. Lupin." The Prime Minister said, completely ruffled and confused at the sight of the Other Minister, who sometimes showed up when something was going wrong.

"I've just received a report that a.. Khaat Lupin was seen with a dead wolf that turned into a dead man. Hundreds of eyewitnesses! Police investigators! Civilians watching from their windows! A man who was known to a be a bit odd, and never really left his own, A wolf came flying out of his house, dead, and then literally transformed into a human man, completely naked, and dead! People saw your daughter standing with a stick in her hand, and they all believe she killed him! What on earth are your people thinking Mr. Lupin?!" The Prime Minister was in a daze as he sat back down at his office chair, his eyes glued on the Other Minister.

Well, David did seem to be on his high horse today. Robert waved his hand and wandlessly shut the door. Magic was somewhat tolerated in the PM's office. Somewhat.

"Alright, who are you and what have you done with my friend?" Robert scowled. "Or aren't you up to a bit of pressure? Its not like this hasnt' happened before and you know it. I have every available Ministry official out controlling the damage. And I really am not interested in hearing about your blessed electronics. You know they're worthless compared to a wizard. Or shall I show you?" He thrust the palm of his hand towards the computer on David's desk, hoping only to make a point that the Ministry of Magic could well control this.

"So, lets talk semantics, then. A wolf that flew out of his house. My daughter, with a 'stick' in her hand, and then a transfiguration into a naked man. Now--clearly he was either an animagus or a werewolf. And if it was an animagus, my daughter would not have needed to defend herself unless it was a dark arts wizard. Animagi are in control of their faculties. If it was a werewolf, do you truly want that outside the boundaries of the magical world--whether or not he stayed to himself? And I'll tell you one more thing. If it was a werewolf. It really didn't matter if she fired at him or not. If he flung himself at her, he was a deadman either way.

"And--if that were the case, do you think I would send my only child into the line of fire if I had had any idea she'd have been dealing with a murderous monster? I do realize you don't truly understand the workings of magic like we do, but do try to grasp this. Some of the horror stories you know about werewolves? They do have their basis in truth. Werewolves are primal, murderous, killing machines who cannot control themselves once transfigured. So--would you prefer I leave them run loose about downtown London next time--because there surely will be a next time. They are not as rare as you think. I presume you still want my help. And if that is the case, let's get to it.

"Now--where is my daughter? If you bring her, we can sort this out," his tone was becoming more reasonable. Actually, he planned on not leaving without her anyway. He preferred, though, not pressing his friend into any more of a difficult spot than he was already in.

Brian finished his life support spell. Faith was stable but unconscious. He felt a need to stay lose to her and keep watch simply because he didn't know what she was going to do next.

David stared at the Other Minister, and then sighed heavily. He sat back in his chair and looked at his friend. They were friends in fact, but still.. his world was like a fantasy book to David. Werewolves, and Animagawhatsits.. Whatever those were. But he was right of course, he was handling the situation well enough, and he knew they would clean it up, however, he was having problems besides just modifying memories and fixing things up. Something had already begun and it was up to David to squash it.

"I know you don't know much about the real world, but we have issues here that aren't just modifying memories.. someone decided to tweet about it.. using their phone.. erm.. gosh.. okay.. so they used an electronic device and posted something on the internet.. which let people know what happened literally seconds after it did! Pictures! Posts! Blogs! It'll reach the news FAST.. and unless you can hurry up, we have a major issue on our hand.."

"Now--where is my daughter? If you bring her, we can sort this out,"

"Ah yes.. Mrs. Lupin.. she was found outside of the house in question with her stick in hand.. looking about to collapse.. she then fainted, and one of the police officers caught her and brought her here.. She's resting.. but we can go down to see her.. follow me." David stood up again, and led the way out of the office, going towards an office room that a cot had been brought into, and Khaat had been placed upon shortly after arriving. The incident had happened not to far from this office, and so getting her here had been simple. David pushed open the door, and let Robert through first, into the room where Khaat lay, still unconscious.