Rainy day

Rise couldn't help but feel something of a bit of happiness inside of her. He was just in general being nice to her, and she wasn't used to it. He started to steer her towards the Entrance Hall and she let herself be moved, moving away from the rain and into the dry. She stared at the doors leading inside, and out of the courtyard, and she shivered slightly. It was like walking into a giant mouth, and although she had gone through the doorway plenty of times, each time made her shiver, because it felt like she was walking to her death.. and in a way, she almost was.

"But you do know why I was upset..." She said and shook her head slightly. "Why are you nice to me then? I thought everyone.. I mean you know.. and yet you are.." she couldn't help but glance at his hand, which had touched her... no one touched her.. no one ever did, because they felt like it would rub off on them, which was obviously not true.. but she knew that was what it was like, the only time she was touched was if she was shoved.. or pushed, or hit.. other than that they steered clear of her. "How do you know anyway?"

"There's been a rumour going 'round," Monroe answered lightly in the hope she wouldn't freak out about it. She must already suspect that, anyway.

"Do you know much about empowerment, Risé?" he asked as they walked across the hall, towards the grand stairwell.



((sorry short! Also, I have to go for the night))

Rise nodded when he said there were rumors going around. "About me being a werewolf? yeah.." She said and sighed. "It's true.. sad but true.." She said and cast her eyes downward, unable to look him in the eye, fear filling her that he would leave now. She liked him already and she didn't want that information to scare him away. She didn't want him to go away now that she had a chance to talk to him, she felt comforted, and it was nice.. it had been a while since she had felt quite that way.

"Empowerment?" she asked softly, her eyes training on his face, curiosity etched onto it, her eyes lit up. "I don't.. no.." She said and fought off the strong urge to call him sir. He wasn't graduated, but he had an air about him that made her automatically want to treat him with respect. "What is it?"

[ooc: that's okay, goodnight!]

What is it? Good question. Monroe had thought he knew, right up until he was asked. At that point, he was suddenly lost for words.

"It's a muggle idea," he replied as he gathered his thoughts. "It means taking charge of your life instead of letting other people do it for you."

"Like, if people are picking on you, or saying things about you, you can just act like you don't care. Why would you care what a mean person like that says about you? Why would anyone?"

"Or, you can confront them. They must think you're pretty special if they spend so much time thinking about you. How much time do you spend thinking about people you don't care about? Those people must absolutely adore you."

The description wasn't exactly what empowerment was about, but it was close enough that Risé would be able to learn from it.

Rise frowned as he spoke, his words made sense, but she had never really thought about it like that. "I just don't do that.." She said shaking her head, her eyes flicking from his face and then back to the ground. "Cause I do care... I can't just.. just act like I don't! Because I do.. it hurts.. it sucks.." She said shaking her head quickly and staring down at the ground, watching her feet move in whatever direction he was leading her in.

"Confront them on what? I've confronted them before.. and they go all 'we weren't talking about you' or.. ew go away Werewolf, I don't want to get fleas..'" Rise looked up at Monroe with a sigh and ran her hand through her hair, before letting her hands fall to her sides, her whole body posture suggesting that she just wanted to give up, her head hung, staring at the ground, her arms at her sides, she just looked ready to drop.

Monroe frowned. Clearly, this was a much bigger problem than he'd thought. He liked to think he could deal with anything, but sometimes it was just beyond his sphere of influence.

"You must have talked to the Beasts and Beings Division at the Ministry," he said. "Didn't they have any hints?"

God, he felt like such a loser for not knowing about it already. Of course there was systematic discrimination against werewolves. There was systematic discrimination against muggleborns and they were human. He was going to be utterly unprepared to become minister for anything at this rate.

"What do you think werewolves need?" he asked.

Rise couldn't help it, she looked up at Monroe, and outright laughed. "Beasts and Beings Division..." She snorted, and shook her head, the first real smile she had shown towards him. "They took my name down.. put it in a book, made me sign a bunch of papers and told me to get the hell out of their office before they called security to round up a rogue dog." She laughed and looks away. "Luckily I was there with a friend who was able to keep me out of trouble.." She said, remembering Neville Longbottom as he steered her out of the Ministry, looking upset.

She was startled out of her laughter by his last question though, and she found herself staring at some point in the distance, her eyes flickering between objects. "Counseling... funding.. Someone needs to come up with a cure on how to NOT be a werewolf.. so that those who don't want to be don't have to be... I say make it optional if a cure were to be found ya know? Not everyone should be forced to change who they are.. and some werewolves are actually very nice.." Rise sighed.

Her mind drifted back to the camp she had been kidnapped to, before she had become a werewolf. It was quite literally a werewolf camp, for people who wanted to get away from the eyes of society, to share with each other what they could, and live in a place where they wouldn't be judged.. except of course by the head of the camp, Fenrir Greyback, who kidnapped girls from Hogwarts who wouldn't be missed, forced them to work as slaves for the camp, and every now and then would choose one at random to make into a werewolf. Often times the girls who were bitten by the group for fun would die, mostly because shortly after they were bitten, they were taken away, and forced to do horrible things. Many things had been done to her as well, things that had almost killed her.

The reason she was even alive was because Fenrir hadn't bitten her himself. No.. he had forced his son to.. right between her breasts. He had essentially beaten her nearly to death, and then dropped her off on his doorstep, inches from death, and he had taken her and healed her up, got her happy again, and she had run away from the Greyback family forever, and instead gone and moved in with the Longbottom's, who had discovered her.

Rise had a far away look on her face, as she thought about all this, before she snapped back into reality. "Not all werewolves are bad.. even without their potion.. just because you transform.. doesn't make you a mindless killing machine.. I've never killed anything as a werewolf... and that includes when I wasn't on the potion." She said jutting her chin out and looking slightly proud of herself.

Monroe didn't object to the story, no matter how much he wanted to ask why there were so many reports of werewolves attacking themselves when there was no other prey to be had, or why so many of her kind had those unseemly scars.

Her trust was more important at the moment.

"Well, that's good, but you can't know you'll always be so in control," he said. "Wolf's Bane is the only thing close to a cure we have at the moment and it's better to be safe."

He wanted to make her promise she wouldn't stop taking it, too, but somehow, that felt like a little too much.

Rise couldn't help but smile. "Just because I could before.. doesn't mean I go without it now.." She said with a wry smile, her eyes shifting up to meet his before she looked away again. "I am not dangerous.. I've never BEEN dangerous.. but people seem to think that poking a sleeping werewolf is a good idea.." She said and looked around them to see where they had gone, she hadn't even been paying any attention to where they had been walking.

"I don't like being a werewolf..." She said slowly, her mind racing. "I don't like it.. I didn't CHOOSE it.. if I could get rid of it I WOULD.. but I can't.. so I just take all the abuse.. take all the fighting.. and the names.. because there isn't anything else I can do about it.. if I try to fight.. I'll get in trouble... if they fight me.. I'll get in trouble.. if I speak out.. I"ll get in trouble.. no matter what I do.. it's my fault.. so I take it.. not much more to say about it than that."

Monroe disliked Risé's willingness to capitulate to her tormentors. He was sure he would never have done the same in her position, but he couldn't force her to stand up for herself, either.

At least he'd shown her that not everyone would automatically hate her, though, right? That was something. On one level, Monroe knew it was morally ambiguous to think of people as projects, but on another, the world would never work properly if he didn't modify a few people here and there.

"I see," he replied. "Maybe you ought to make friends with some of the other werewolves around Hogwarts. Find out what they do."