Marjorie Underhill was showing Storm her collection of chocolate frog cards, laying on the floor of the living room. All around the two kids were famouse witches and wizards, blinking up at them from hexagonal purple and gold cards.

"Next time I'm by Diagon Alley, I'll stop by the sweets shop and bring some new frogs along so you can start your own collection," Underhill promised Storm, watching the kids going over Marjorie's impressive set.

"Wow cool," Storm said, eyes bright with excitement. "Thanks!"

Underhill smiled and nodded.

"You really do all this stuff like this article says?" Carl asked Underhill, lowering a copy of the Daily Prophet. "Working with the queen and all?"

Underhill smiled humbly, "I mean, they've made a bigger deal of it in the paper, of course."

"Seems you ought to be one of those card things," Carl murmured, waving at the frog cards.

Underhill chuckled and shook his head, and got up from the couch he'd been sitting on, watching a bit of telly. "Merlin's beard, I'm starved. Anyone else want a bite?" He asked.

"Got one of them already," Carl joked, and he and Underhill cackled with humor.

"I'll get some lunch made up," Underhill decided, heading for the kitchen.

On the way, a knock came at the door and he rerouted to answer it, peeking through the door window before opening to find Remus Lupin on the stoop, looking uncomfortable and shuffling foot to foot as he looked about, the Knight Bus still huffing on the corner behind him.

Underhill opened the door and Remus looked up, and held up the parchment Underhill had sent him that morning. "Hullo sir."

"Come in, come in, Remus," Underhill ushered him into the house, "Just about to make lunch, I have some guests, you're more than welcome to joi--what?"

Remus had stopped dead two steps into the room and his eyes were wide with a panicked expression on his face. He looked up at Underhill with an expression between suspicion and anger, and drew his wand, fist tight around the hilt of it. "What's the meaning of this, Underhill?" he hissed. "Did you think I wouldn't pick up the scent the moment I stepped in the house? How many are here, huh? An ambush?"

Underhill looked confused for a moment, then realized. "Wait, Remus, it isn't what you're thinking it is."

"What then?" Remus's voice was lethal, low.

"It's --"

But before Underhill could reply, Carl had stepped into the door of the foyer, his broad shouldered form hunkered in position, ready to defend Underhill with the layers of brute strength he had in his body. Carl's arms were probably as thick as Remus's waist. Between Carl's strength and Remus's magic, it would've been a rather excellent fight.

Both Remus and Carl glared into one another's face with wary expressions.

Underhill stepped between them, arms out stretched. "Hang on. Both of you calm down, I have a perfectly rational explanation, and I honestly just never even thought of this being an issue and it's entirely my own mistake."

Suddenly Storm pushed past his father into the foyer and looked up at Remus with wide eyes. "You smell funny," he said.

"Storm!" Carl snapped. "Back to the living room."

Storm blinked up at Remus, "Are you one, too?"

"STORM!" Carl's voice was a growl.

"Sorry Dad," Storm said and he turned and ran back out of the room.

Remus looked at Carl, his wand slightly lowering.

Underhill looked between the pair of them.

Remus murmured, "What's your explanation, Underhill?"

"Carl's family is staying with me. Fleeing the same pack you flee," he said pointedly.

Remus's wand was down now, Carl easing up. "I don't flee a pack," Remus said. "I'm not part of a pack."

Carl said, "You're Greyback's, I can smell it."

"I was bit by him, but not his," Remus replied sharply. "I have no allegiance to him, he isn't my Alpha, nor will he ever be again."

"And he is mine only in the way werewolf blood law works," Carl replied, "Which is why I have run... but his power over me still remains embedded as deep as the venom that turned me. How have you overcome it?"

"I've bested him in battles," Remus answered plainly. "There's a pull when we are in wolf form, but in human form he has no control over me." He didn't dare say more - Dumbledore had told him to keep the information to himself.

Carl's eyes drifted over Remus slowly, judging his stature, his size... Remus didn't seem like much in Carl's eyes... but if he'd bested Greyback, there was clearly more to this scrawny young man than met the eyes, he thought, and he felt something deep in his blood stirring, as though the very essence of Greyback's venom trembled at the thought of facing a challenge from Remus.

Underhill looked between the pair of them. "We're all on the same side, see? And... actually, it's rather helpful having both of you here for our discussion. I want to talk about how the Ministry legislature can improve for werewolves, how I can help you lot. I want to work to reverse the Restriction Act and work to repair the damages it has inflicted on your communities."

Remus looked at Underhill in surprise. "Reverse the Restriction Act?"

"Your father wrote the Restriction Act, Remus," Underhill said gently, "It seems only right that you help to write the corrective legislature."

"I don't want any part of the Ministry's work," Remus murmured. "I came to tell you that. The Ministry doesn't help werewolves and in order to be a part of something like that I would need to reveal myself, to register, and --"

"I want to undo the Registry."

Remus smiled tightly, "I mean that's wonderful. If you were guaranteed to win, if it was certain you could get the Wizengamot to agree to that, if you were positive the Registry would not be binding... There's a lot of ifs with very little benefit for revealing oneself to the Ministry. I revealed myself to you out of courtesy to your relationship with James and the kindness you showed Sirius in the past, but I don't have any allegiance to you myself, and certainly none to the Ministry. I respect you, of course, and if you do win and manage to abolish the Registry and can prove there to be no repercussions for having revealed myself - sure, I'd help with the new act then, perhaps. But I can't risk my life and my reputation - which I have fought very hard for all of the years I've been alive - only for a promise that you have no way to ensure you can keep."

Underhill sighed heavily, clearly disappointed. Carl was studying Remus carefully. Underhill said, "Remus, I understand fully. I do. I think you are very wise and I didn't consider the repercussions that asking this of you could have. That's... clearly a folly of mine, not understanding fully the politics and landmines of a werewolf's life." He paused. "I wish to be more educated on these things so I can be a better leader and, hopefully in time, bring the sort of equality that your kind needs in the wizarding community. Can you at least help me in that? At least educate me so that what I push for and work to obtain in the months to come is at least... the right things?"

Carl spoke, "Financial support for the werewolves. We can't afford food, we can't afford homes and clothes and cars and the things required to make a living for ourselves to start with. Protections so that we aren't punished with the loss of jobs when we're ill due to our condition."

"Furry little problem," Remus murmured.

Carl looked at him with an eyebrow raised.

"My friends call it that," Remus supplied. Then he looked to Underhill, "Educational rights for werewolves. I am an exception, having been allowed at Hogwarts out of the kindness of the Headmaster. I'm not allowed at Wizarding university if they know who I am. The wizards wish to keep the werewolves uneducated, they do not want us thinking for ourselves because there is power in knowledge that they don't want us to have."

"All excellent points, let me get my quill --" Underhill bustled from the foyer on the hunt for parchment and quill.

Carl looked at Remus. "Did you really defeat Greyback in battle?"

"Wizard duels," Remus said, shrugging, as if that were unimpressive.

Carl studied him for a long moment, then asked, "Are you the one Ned Veigler spoke of? The brilliant boy he knew from his summer with Newt Scamander? The one who helped the charkorias birds by facing a boggart in the shape of the full moon?"

Remus looked startled, and flushed warm in the cheeks. "I - yes, I suppose that was me," he nodded, stammering with disbelief. "You - you knew Professor Veigler?"

"Quite well," Carl answered. "My family - we came to Mr. Underhill because of Ned Veigler."

"Because of --?" Remus looked confused, his brow coming together. "But Professor Viegler's - he's passed on," he said apologetically.

"Yes but Ned's niece is being well cared for by a good man, and we were told if ever we needed protection from someone who would respect our wishes to remain unknown... Harry Underhill was our man."

Remus stared at Carl, head tilted slightly with intrigue.

"He tried to be sure we knew what to do incase he didn't make it when he challenged Greyback," Carl said, "Or - he tried to at least. He didn't want things to go back to the way things were... He tried to instruct us how to break free, as he did - as you've done. But Greyback's hold is fiercely strong, and when the time came --" Carl hung his head in shame. "I'm afraid that we - I - failed him. When Greyback came, when the moment for the challenge came..." Carl shook his head. "Greyback's hold over those he has bitten is strong. Even Ned -"

"He was under the imperius curse," Remus said. "Not following Greyback by allegiance. Greyback did not have true hold of him, whatever it seemed like." Remus's voice trembled, "The true end was that Ned Veigler shook off the imperius curse to save a friend. He - he summoned the strength to overthrow Greyback and ultimately sacrificed his own life to save our friend's.". Remus swallowed back a horrid taste of bad memories. "Fenrir Greyback was not Ned Viegler's Alpha. Professor Viegler had no alpha. He was a lone wolf, as am I."

Carl looked Remus steadily in the eyes, "Is that what you think?"

Before he could elaborate, or Remus could ask what he meant, Underhill had returned and in a flurry ushered them to the kitchen with excitement, all questions and interest, keen on working out some way to help the werewolves if he won the title of Minister of Magic.

Spencer was bent over his sketchbook, hard at work, when Sirius returned home from the Potters via the Floo Network. Peter sat in a chair next to the fireplace, flipping through the Daily Prophet.

"Where's my Moony?" Sirius asked.

"Some appointment," Spencer answered, concentrating on smudging and blending the edges of lines to create a more natural feeling image.

Sirius frowned, "I didn't know he had anything today." He sat in the chair opposite Peter and was about to put his feet up when he spotted Spencer's drawing. "Oh, Remus figured out how to make the pages come to life, did he?" Sirius sat forward, eager to see.

Spencer nodded eagerly.

Sirius looked over Spencer's shoulder and saw the familiar drawing - the cephalopod entangled with masts of a great ship. But usually, the image was still, the only movement implied by swooshes and colors creating a visual effect.

Now, the waves crashed in great sprays of salt water against the rise and fall of the ship's sides, and the tentacles of the kraken squeezed and hugged into the water-softened wood of the boat, utterly capturing Sirius's mind.

"Oh," he said, sinking onto the couch beside Spencer, staring at the page. He'd been thinking about that very drawing since he was a kid, looking out his attic window. Sirius watched, captivated by an artist at work, as always.

Remus arrived home then, pushing his way into the flat quickly, a rush of cold November air came with him. It was raining out, and he shook his umbrella, making it turn back into his wand as he tore off the soaked outer layer. His teeth were chattering.

"Hullo," Peter said, looking up.

"Hi?" Remus said, surprised when Sirius barely looked up to wave. "What's on?"

"Spencer's drawing," Sirius announced.

Peter dove back behind the paper and Remus made his way across the room, looking over Spencer's shoulder. He leaned down against the back of the couch, and watched as the drawing came to life, even as Spencer dragged the pencils across the page.