Just as Will was talking with Dumbledore, someone hurried into the office, his usually scholarly face now tense with anxiety—it was Lupin.
Lupin held up a letter and cried in alarm, "Professor Dumbledore, something terrible has happened! A group of werewolves is planning to attack Diagon Alley!"
Dumbledore frowned. "Calm down, Remus. Tell me everything."
Several days earlier—
The night was pitch-black. Inside an abandoned warehouse in London's East End, a dim oil lamp cast swaying shadows across the damp walls.
The air reeked of mildew and blood. Rusty iron barrels and rotting wooden crates were piled in the corners, and rat bones littered the floor.
Corban Yaxley stood in the center of the warehouse, his black robes fluttering slightly in the draft, his face wearing its habitual icy expression. Behind him stood two hooded Death Eaters, as silent as statues.
The warehouse door was pushed open, and a chilling gust swept inside, carrying the rank musk of a wild beast.
The newcomer strode up to Yaxley, his shadow stretching long in the candlelight like a wolf walking upright.
Had Lupin been there, he would probably have recognized the man who had changed his entire life—the werewolf Fenrir Greyback. Fenrir had attacked Lupin as a child simply because Lupin's father had insulted him, forever changing the course of Lupin's life.
Fenrir Greyback's dirty, gray-white hair hung to his shoulders. Crisscrossing scars covered his face, and his lips were torn all the way to his ears, exposing yellowed fangs.
A pair of yellow eyes glowed eerily in the dim room.
"Yaxley," Greyback rasped, his voice like scraping sandpaper. "Long time no see. I thought you 'noble' Death Eaters had forgotten all about us 'lesser creatures.'"
Low murmurs of agreement came from the shadows behind him. Several pairs of werewolf eyes gleamed