It happened early over the summer holiday.

Elphinstone Urquart, fresh from his time as a Professor at Hogwarts, had returned to his position in the Auror's office at the Ministry of Magic. Things had changed there since Alastor Moody's departure, though - things that Elphinstone did not like. Barty Crouch, he thought, was the least forgiving head of the department that he had ever worked below. And Elphinstone wasn't the only one that felt that way. There was a great deal of mumbling about the office, not the least of which came from Gideon and Fabian Prewett. All of the talk made Barty Crouch very uneasy. Especially around wizards and witches that had been in the department longer than he had - like Elphinstone Urquart.

Perhaps it was this unrest that sent Barty Crouch into a fit when the Department of Magical Maladies and Cures Development requested assistance from the Law Enforcement and Control of Magical Creatures departments in a very dangerous and sensitive testing process that would take several months. Crouch was uninterested in assisting - saying that the testing process was too dangerous, and besides that everyone knew that Lycanthropy was not curable. 

"Well the proposal isn't saying that they're looking for a cure," Elphinstone Urquart had pointed out, waving his wand to underline the sentence that was key to his point, "See here. They're looking for a way to allow the wolves the ability to keep their faculties under the full moon. The Wolfsbane Potion, in early testings, has shown an ability to allow the werewolf subjects to maintain their mental capacities during transformation under the full moon," he read. "That's actually quite helpful. Rather than becoming raging beasts hungry for prey, the werewolves stay in control of themselves."

Barty Crouch had turned rather red - angry and a bit embarrassed for being corrected during his meeting. He said, "Well werewovles are generally dark wizards anyway, I'd much rather a werewolf with wolf instincts than the full capacity of a murderer!" Several people murmured their agreement.

"Not all werewolves are dark wizards," Elphinstone Urquart argued. "There are many that are very fine people. Something like this could revolutionize their lives - it could give them opportunities that are otherwise denied them - the ability to become employed, for example. It would lift the stigma that werewolves carry."

Barty Crouch said, "It is an awful lot of work for one or two good compared to the many thousands who have committed unknowable legions of crime..."

Elphinstone had scowled. "Even if there was but one... it would be worth it."

Mr. Crouch had drawn a deep breath. "Then you, Mr. Urquart, can be the one who volunteers for the committee." 

And that had been that.

Elphinstone had been assigned to the Wolfsbane Testing Unit under the Department of Magical Maladies and Cures Development and he'd moved his office to the newly created office area for the purpose at hand, located just to the left off the elevator or the same level as the Department of Mysteries, just up the stairwell from the dungeons where the werewolves were held in captivity each full moon night.

Elphinstone had heard rumors, of course, of the deplorable conditions and treatments of the werewolves - Newt Scamander had spent a good deal of time in his office during the last term at Hogwarts, giving him a good earful about it during a time he'd spent at the school. But having never been in the dungeons during the processing and containment process of a Full Moon cycle, he had never quite comprehended just how terrible things were.

Witches and wizards from all over the country came to the Ministry for the full moon night - either voluntarily, or else by a specialized team that would go and hunt the registered werewolves and bring them back to the Ministry. 

It was there that he met Garm Tyr again for the first time in many, many years.

Garm Tyr had begun his time at Hogwarts during Elphinstone's seventh year and he'd been a member of the society that Minerva McGonagall and Euphemia Black had begun together, which Elphinstone had also been a member of. It surprised Elphinstone, therefore to find Garm Tyr a member of the retrieval squad that went out and collected reluctant werewolves from their homes and hiding places, set on dragging them into the Ministry for the Full Moon Captivity. Garm Tyr had always struck him as a pacifist and he was surprised that the violence of the program did not bother him.

For the program was quite violent indeed.

When a werewolf arrived at the Ministry, they essentially became a prisoner. They were given a jumpsuit to wear and they were numbered - they were magically branded, marked on their hands with an ink that would not fade, like a tattoo - and they were brought into the dark, filthy dungeons, given cots with no blankets or mattresses, and cuffed in pure silver shackles. They were put into the dungeons, chained to the walls and locked in until the next day. They screamed for someone to come and to release them after they'd turned back to their human forms, but the screams could go for hours before someone answered them.

The testing process only seemed to make it worse. The treatment wasn't lightened for those given the wolfsbane. They were still chained and mistreated, even though they were fully aware of their surroundings and what was happening. The wolves would howl through the night, scared, alone, hungry, and unable even to pace in their anxiety deep below the Ministry's floors.

Elphinstone Urquart was sick about it.

One full moon cycle had been enough to send him running to Barty Crouch to complain about the treatment of the werewolves. "This isn't right - it isn't humane. It's disgusting!" 

"Do you want to be the one to be eaten by a wolf, or worse turned into one yourself, because the improper precautions were taken?" Barty demanded. 

The second Full Moon night that Elphinstone worked in the unit, he decided things must change. He processed werewolves through the system and the ones who were given Wolfsbane were put into specially prepared cells, where Elphinstone himself had put a cushioned cot and blankets for the werewolves to curl beneath in the dank coldness. He commanded for the administrators to leave them unchained, to trust the cell doors alone if the Wolfsbane didn't work as intended. He left food and water in bowls in the cells and demanded that the lights remain lit in the corridor that ran alongside the cells.

That night, though, a terrible disaster had occurred.

That night, one of the wizards had come had suffered an upset stomach during the week and he had thrown up one of the doses of the potion, though he hadn't been aware of the fact that this would compromise the effects of it at the time, they soon found out that it did. Not only did it, but it negated the purpose of it entirely... and so that night, when the final dose had been administered, when the moon rose - that particular werewolf turned with all of the rage of the wolf burning through his veins. He lost control of himself, and the cell proved ineffective to keep him from breaking free, and the next thing there had been a werewolf loose in the dungeons of the Ministry for Magic.

Elphinstone Urquart arrived on the scene as quickly as possible - as had as many aurors as Barty Crouch could get in contact with. Elphinstone had also contacted Garm Tyr. As a retreiver, Garm had undergone training on the capture and control of werewolves. Garm and his assistant, Frek, had arrived at the Ministry, along with Garm's daughter, Sabrina, who was only four.

"I can get him," Garm had said, hearing the growls and yelps of the wolf rising up from the dungeons. He pulled on his protective gear and prepared his wand. Sabrina had hugged his leg and cried because the sounds scared her, and she didn't want her father to go down there... but Garm had extracted her from his leg, handed her over to Frek, and gone down into the dungeons.

No one quite knew how it happened - how it was that Mr. Frek lost his grip on the arm of Sabrina Tyr, but by the time he'd shouted her name, she'd already sprung forward after her father and taken quite a tumble down the stairs... She'd landed at the bottom, just before a terribly ravenous wolf. In a blind fit of desperation, Garm Tyr had thrown himself forward and in the effort to save his daughter from the werewolf's tearing jaw, he'd gotten himself bit as well before Gideon and Fabian Prewett had come down behind him, launching stunners for the werewolf... But it was all too late. Too late to stop the werewolf venom from reaching the veins of Garm Tyr, and too late to save the little girl, whose pale face was the last thing her father saw before making his first transformation under the moonlight.

The howl that had broken from Garm Tyr's throat that night had shaken the stones of the cells, sent dust and pebbles to the floor. 

Elphinstone Urquart had decided at that moment that the testing needed to stop and that he would, himself, see to it that the testing and retainment procedures would be fixed to be at least humane. But Barty Crouch refused, and, in a very heated discussion about the incident and what needed to change about the facility beneath the Ministry's floors, Elphinstone Urquart had found himself sacked.

But that, Elphinstone Urquart had sworn, would not stop him from stopping the testing.

Rather, he'd simply take it out of the Ministry's control altogether.

It was, after all, a project much better suited for a skilled Magizoologist.

This was all of the things that Elphinstone Urquart, Minerva McGonagall, and Garm Tyr were thinking about as the elevator skittered down it's shaft through the levels of the Ministry of Magic. Garm's disillusionment charm having worn off so that he was fully visible, carrying Newt Scamander's briefcase, a terrified expression in his eyes - coming back here while everything was so fresh... when he ought to be under Dumbledore's protection back at Hogwarts... but Dumbledore had asked for him specifically to go along...

The elevator shuddered to a stop.

Department of Mysteries, declared a cool voice, and the door clattered opened.

"Wands at the ready," Elphinstone Urquart said, and they stepped through into the black tiled floor.