Left to bleed

A week later, Gaude was sleeping blissfully after another heavy sparring session with Linda. She had come to a conclusion that Gaude's skills still weren't good enough, due to him almost getting himself killed by fighting off a single vampire.

He was suddenly interrupted by a sensation of extreme heat from one of his pockets. It was hot enough to almost burn him. It took him a moment to remember what it was about, but as soon as he did, he shouted: "Broge, take me to the orphanage as fast as you can! Laly, you and your team should prepare your most powerful spells and apparate in as well. There's an ongoing attack! All of you, go stealth mode."

###

Near a house with the address 150, Newham Way, almost inaudibly, footprints appeared on the lawn and the paths around the house that had been worn muddy by many little feet.

That house was naturally the orphanage where Gaude had spent the first months of his new life. One of the windows facing away from the street was open, letting in the chilly autumn air.

There was a figure with glowing yellow eyes climbing in through the window. It seemed to have long-clawed fingers, pointy ears and a fur instead of clothes.

Gaude saw the creature from another window that he had used to peek inside. The hair on his neck and arms rose up nearly instantly, the knowledge about the creature he was looking at paralyzing him with fear.

'For fuck's sake! I'm not prepared to deal with a Werewolf that big!', Gaude thought, his mind already rushing a mile a minute to figure out the best solution to keep the two that he actually somewhat cared about in there, safe. Those two were naturally Irma and Adelaide, he didn't give a damn about the noisy kids – except the part where Irma or Adelaide would be sad if something happened to them.

For a moment, Gaude considered just sending in his house elves and having them deal with the creature, but looking at it once more, he felt like it would only be enough to anger it even more. Most likely, house elf magic wouldn't be powerful enough to take down a manbeast jacked up on curse magic, especially since there was a full moon in a clear sky.

Gaude wasn't willing to lose one of his house elves – they were his precious investments. Finally, he came up with a half-decent strategy – he still had his throwing stars and a few phials of Draught of the Living Death.

Just in case, Gaude also used a custom Fireworks charm to create a giant glowing sign in the sky with an arrow pointing at the orphanage. The message on the sign was 'Werewolf is here'.

Naturally, this sign was meant to draw the attention of the Auror department if Gaude's own efforts weren't enough to deter it. His reasoning for using the Fireworks charm was the fact that Muggles wouldn't be able to see manifestations of magic, such as spells and constructs of pure magic, and the Fireworks charm was one of such things.

The beast stopped for a moment, as if it had sensed something. It looked around in the room, pausing on the window Gaude was looking through while kept invisible by house elf magic, then it moved onto another child. Finally, he walked to that child and grabbed it with one arm. The child was around 6 years old.

Suddenly, the child woke up and started punching at the wolf-man and screaming: "Let me go! Let me go!"

"You've got a lot of fight in you. I like that. You'll make a good addition to the pack.", the werewolf growled.

Suddenly the door opened, the light was switched on and in came Irma. She shouted: "Put the child down, I've already called the police! They'll be here any minute!"

The wolf growled and seemingly smiled while walking closer to her.

That particular Werewolf looked quite different from the drawings that were in the books describing the creature. Instead of a long snout, it had a relatively human face, with only the nose being flattened and connected to his upper lip. His lips were thin and revealed razor-sharp rows of yellow teeth.

His eyes had black sclerae like a normal werewolf. His arms were long enough to reach his knees and his legs were double-jointed. The upper joint was a forward-facing knee and the lower one was a backwards-facing tarsal joint that you could see on a dog's leg.

As Irma finally managed to take in the appearance of the intruder, she let out a shrill scream, but still managed to raise a shaky hand with a sharp-looking kitchen knife held in it.

"Stay away! I have a knife!", she said in a voice that was barely able to escape her throat that was about as petrified with fear as the rest of her body. Her legs were shaking, struggling to take even half a step backwards.

The beast just started laughing and took the last step, then took a bite out of her neck. Before Gaude could even react or give orders to his house elves, he saw Irma falling to the floor with three deep gashes from his claws across her face and a hole in her neck.

It didn't look like any arteries were injured, but from what he knew, a Werewolf bite wouldn't stop bleeding unless it was properly taken care of.

Police sirens sounded off in the distance and two cracks could be heard outside.

"This is the DMLE! Hands up and don't move! Immobulus!"

Gaude suddenly felt his body being completely immobilized, He couldn't even open his mouth. All he could do was move his eyes. 'What was the training with Linda for, if I can't even resist the effects of a simple spell?', Gaude thought. However, suddenly, he felt a fire start burning inside him, starting from the middle of his chest.

Straining his muscles, Gaude managed to move his arms by an inch, then his legs. He kept trying to force himself free from the restraint.

The werewolf growled: "How the fuck did these cunts get here so fast?"

It then jumped out through the window.

"It's Greyback! Anything goes with him!"

At that point, before the heat inside him had reached his skin, Gaude felt the restraining force dissipating, so he commanded the house elves that were still waiting for orders: "Take him down with everything you have, just keep a safe distance from him."

Gaude saw enough colorful flashes going off to make a disco ball blush. It seemed that Aurors were good at silent spellcasting.

"Laly, take me after him. Apparate when the distance is more than twenty feet, to a minimum distance of six feet."

Soon, with a pop, Gaude found himself in a different location, the flashing heels of the Werewolf not too far from him, but not close enough to pose a risk of getting cut by accident. He released the prepared throwing stars, sending them at the Werewolf, but for some reason, they bounced off of its skin with clanging sounds as if it was steel instead of flesh. The spells of the house elves that had been charged up all the time until Gaude had given the order, were only enough to make the Werewolf stumble or fall over without leaving even a mark on his body.

Gaude wasn't willing to use his own wand, as it was likely there was a Trace already placed on it and the ministry would be notified and come looking for him. The wand he had ordered from Gregorovitch's hadn't been completed yet, either.

"Goddamnit, he got away again! I hit him at least twice!", one of the Aurors yelled from a distance.

"He must be wearing protection. Must come with the job when you're working for you-know-who.", the other Auror could be heard saying.

Gaude reached the same conclusion – there definitely seemed to be some sort of an invisible force that was protecting the Werewolf from both physical and spell damage.

Soon, the escaping Werewolf had made its way into the thick underbrush of a nearby forest, making it impossible for the house elves to catch up to it. Gaude had lost track of Greyback.

"Take me back to the orphanage. Irma needs medical attention right now.", Gaude then told Laly.

They apparated to the orphanage, but the Aurors were already making their way inside as they had been much closer after the chase officially ended. At the same time, a police car arrived.

Two police officers exited the car and one of them shouted: "Freeze! Hands where we can see them! This is the Police!"

One of the Aurors pointed his wand at the officers, waved it around and mumbled something, then spoke calmly: "You don't want to do that. You will return to your station and report that the problem has been handled by the proper authorities.

"We'll leave you to it then, I hope my coffee hasn't gone cold yet." It was just that easy to deal with Muggle police for Aurors, or any Wizardkind with a wand permit, really.

The two then walked in, with their boots still on. Muddy footprints were left on the floor by them. One of them, a blonde-haired wizard with green eyes cast a spell on Irma.

He must've gotten some sort of feedback from the spell, because he spoke: "She's still alive, just unconscious. Enervate!"

Irma jolted up, into a seated position. The claw marks on her face were still bleeding.

The wizard held his wand against her temple.

"Tell me, what happened in here?"

She looked around for a while before she started speaking. She seemed to be unaware of her own injuries. Perhaps one of the spells that were cast after she had been brought back to consciousness was meant to numb her to pain. "It was a monster! A monster took little Peter!"

"What did that monster look like?"

"It had sharp fingers and a wolf's face! Please tell me you've caught it!"

The wizard pulled his wand away from Irma's temple. A silver strand was attached to it. He goaded the silver strand into a small phial.

He pointed his wand at Irma once again. "Obliviate."

"It's better than getting turned if she just bleeds out on the floor. Wouldn't wish it on my enemies."

"No need to fret about it, she's just a Muggle. There's no point in wasting good money on Muggles in the first place."

While Irma fell unconscious once more, they started going from bed to bed and obliviated all the children.

A few minutes later, the two Aurors disapparated, apparently satisfied with what they had achieved.

Finally, Gaude was free to act – he didn't dare to before as he didn't want the Wizarding world knowing that there was a child going around with a band of house elves and sticking his nose into other people's business, especially if it involved Muggles. He wasn't willing to get caught going against the Ministry's rules of 'no magic around Muggles'.

Gaude finally made his way to the already pale-looking girl on the floor that was slowly bleeding out. From his Mokeskin pouch, he took out a phial of clear liquid and another with silvery powder in it, or truthfully, a phial of powdered silver and another of Essence of Dittany.

At first, Gaude had only carried around a few phials of Essence of Dittany as his emergency medical supplies, as it was the best thing to have when it came to flesh wounds, but once he had read about the dark creatures and various curses and hexes, he had quickly expanded his collection of medical supplies. Now he had antidotes for common and uncommon poisons as well as Bezoars, Skele-Gro, and various other potions – in essence, his Mokeskin pouch was an undercover portable Apothecary.

Gaude quickly mixed the powdered silver with the Essence of Dittany and smeared the resultant paste onto Irma's wounds. Clouds of black and green smoke rose from her injuries and the bleeding started to lessen. Gaude then parted Irma's blue-tinged lips and poured some blood replenishment potion into it.

Slowly, her lips started to regain their color and her face after that – a clear sign that the treatment had wrestled her out of danger.

Next, Gaude gave her a dreamless sleep potion and a calming draught. Finally, his eyes landed on Laly that had been patiently standing beside him, waiting for her next order.

"Take us to the research facility. I'll have to make a few arrangements. It's best to keep her under so that her body can recover from the shock first.", Gaude said, already planning out the next steps.