Spells in Silence

Chapter 16: The Cave

New werewolves are generally going to be young rather than old. A large part of that is the simple fact that adult wizards have more ways to drive off or escape a rampaging werewolf, and magical children do not. Muggles almost invariably don't survive the initial attack, so they don't offset that unbalanced proportion. It doesn't help that when an adult wizard IS bitten, they have a better understanding of how their new condition will ruin the life they are used to and therefore tend to... How do I put this delicately? End matters on their own terms.

As for Greyback, my understanding of canon is not so much that he's feared because he targets children but because those he targets nearly always survive. Werewolves in general don't have the control when transformed to hold back. They keep lashing out until the victim dies or they are driven off. Greyback, even under the full moon, acts with intent. He bites and runs, his goal accomplished. It's the difference between being attacked by a rabid animal and being hunted by a man.
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By the end of the night, Hazel almost regretted figuring out how to write in the air.

Or no, that was not quite right. The writing itself she was very happy with. It was showing her new spell to anyone else she regretted.

Marcel was the first person she went to, both because he set the challenge for her and because she wanted to thank him for showing her that it was possible. Hazel knew that his real reason for suggesting she try to learn this was because he wanted her to go away and not ask him about his time at wizard school, but she thought he would at least be impressed that she had figured out how to do it provided she quit poking at his massive sore spot. He might not have finished his schooling, but he still knew useful stuff, and her success was a testament to that. Instead he had watched her form letters made of glowing white sparks, and his thoughts had passed through disbelief and eventually settled on wariness.

The rest of the commune had either yet to return from work or were waiting to use the shower stalls set up in the back of the compound, so not everyone saw her demonstration. Jean Luc and Elise, however, did. Elise had the same reaction to seeing this as she had when Hazel started stirring the cauldron with her ghost hand: disbelief and confusion, including telling herself several times that what was there in front of her eyes was impossible.

Jean Luc's reaction was the most interesting of the three, though it did not bring her any relief. His thoughts had actually become quieter to her ears, and rather than forming sentences they were broken phrases. Hazel had only experienced something like this once two years ago, when Miss Brandine, the school librarian back in Little Whinging, had found out her husband was divorcing her. She had gotten quieter and paid no attention to anything going on around her, and she wore the same deeply contemplative expression that Jean Luc had.

After demonstrating her new talent to three people and with zero positive responses, she decided quickly that she was not going to show anyone else, or not right now anyway. Not until she could figure out just why she was eliciting such...

Her heart sank as she finally put a name to the emotion the werewolves felt upon seeing her magic. Such fear. It was not the same kind of fear the Dursleys had felt, not a fear that turned into anger, but it was present nonetheless. She just could not understand why.

She sat at her own when everyone started eating the roast beef Elise and Amorette had prepared for dinner, her mind half on the conversations going on around her and half on her own task for the evening. When she had started writing her response to Marcel, he had to come to where she was standing in order to read it. She had not thought about that issue, so now she let her fingers drift in the air tracing letters backwards. If she was looking at somebody and writing backwards, they should be able to read it more easily. She was also using her left hand to do this; she was right handed, so if she could write with her left hand and do other things with her right, she would be able to multitask in conversations as well as anybody else could!