Harry Potter 1. Stars Rising

**I don't own Harry Potter, in whole or in part. But you probably guessed that already.**

**As always, any constructive criticism will be gratefully received.  
**

* * *

_Three._

_Three's a good number for stories with wizards._

_Let there be…_

* * *

Atop a tower, beneath a ceiling that revealed the cloudless evening beyond, a witch was weaving a mirror. Ice-blue flames in charmed torch brackets lit her work, catching the starlight from the first stars to appear.

Rings adorned her creased and nimble fingers, glinting as they dipped in and out of the wicker strands, tugging and tending them into a ring frame. She hummed tunelessly as she worked, the wandless magic insinuating into the wicker and giving it a subtle sheen.

Two Inferi watched silently from the room's sides, dead flames swimming in their dull eyes. Black-and-white tabards were draped over their thin forms, a red emblem of a circle and line enclosed in a triangle bright on the fronts. Around them, tapestries and paintings adorned the solar's walls, the figures within caught in endless and silent motion.

Finishing the wicker frame, the witch breathed in satisfaction at a job well done, and set it down on a short stone plinth in front of her at the room's centre. Drawing out a blackwood wand from some recess in her robes, she passed it over the frame in a complex, flowing motion, drawing out the words "_Fabra Speculaere_," like a tune from a harp.

The wand's tip tapped down into the empty frame, and from it silvery metal ran outwards, stopping at the wicker. One more tap against the surface gave the metal a reflection, and the witch took a moment to critically regard her handiwork.

"Artisan's work," she decided, approvingly. She beckoned at one of the Inferi. "Lift this for me, there's a dear. And bring me over a chair."

The Inferius lurched to attention, grey fingers clenching around the arm of a cushioned chair and dragging it across the floor. It stopped before the plinth, sliding the chair around to the witch, and reached for the mirror in turn.

The witch sank down into the chair, and regarded the mirror which the Inferius presented, its hands supporting it at each end.

"Now then," murmured the witch, drawing out her wand once more and tapping it against the reflecting surface. "_Animaspeculara._"

Her reflected face, showing all its cares and age, melted away into shadows and fog. Amidst the morass, the vague outlines of magical patterns appeared.

"Show me the king."

The shadows and half-glimpsed patterns took substance, solidified, into…

* * *

Flames lapped up from the blackened skeleton of a stake-bound pyre, vomiting smoke into the darkening sky.

The body inside the flames had died many merciful minutes ago, and the crowd around it had long since stopped cheering and cursing, and had now shrouded themselves in unease and guilt. They were peeling away gradually in dribs and drabs for their homes in the village. North Berwick had many shadows to offer them succour.

From above, from the tower of the repurposed kirk, the King of Scotland watched, and casually sipped wine from a silver-gilted goblet. The commander of his guard loomed behind him, the man's expression indiscernible behind his helmet.

"God wills it," commented King James, swilling the last dregs of the wine in the goblet, and tipping it out over the tower's sides.

Commander Wilkie shifted and made a vague noise of assent; following any such noise up with "Your Majesty" as was the proper wont.

James took no notice. "He was unrepentant. His sins were unconfessed, despite all measures. The devil had his heart, and where the heart goes, our souls follow."

He turned the goblet in his hands, and murmured under the starlight, "We are but fickle creatures, after all."

The king, still young in his mid-twenties, had large and deep-set eyes that caught the distant flamelight, framed in his pale face by dishevelled brown hair. A wisp of hair clutched at his chin, which he compulsively stroked between his fingers. His clothes were rich and well-tailored, but stained with the remains of food and drink, and marred with the stench of smoke.

Wilkie, a behemoth in piecemeal plate armour, remained silent. It wasn't his job to comment. His job concerned the longsword and crossbow across his back, the man at his front, and the men under his command. Nothing more.

Watching the crowd disperse, James said, "If nothing else, the wretched man's death serves a greater good. Now there are none here who will risk cleaving unto the true heresies. None will chance to channel the devil's own might, for fear of the fire. For fear of us as we work justice."

He set the goblet down on the ledge before him, and turned, cutting a silhouette against the fire rising at his back. "With me, commander. To our _other _captive. Bring steel and fire." His hand went unconsciously to a recess in his doublet, and he said quietly "God's light blazes with us."

* * *

And elsewhere, beyond land and darkening seas, under broiling skies and sleeting drizzle…

"_Lumos_."

The hushed command sent light spilling over the chopping water, turning the tips of the dark waves to gold. The glow was the only light source for miles; the sea turned beneath an expanse of brooding thunderheads.

It came from the wand held by a witch in drenched robes. She took step after careful step through the waves, the ebbing Adhesive Charm on her boots giving her what steadiness it could upon the rocks underfoot.

Judith Fairweather hadn't actually intended to go nuckelavee-hunting in the dark. But the weather for the late afternoon – the only time when nuckelavees would venture out from their seabed lairs - had turned treacherously inclement on her, and though it would have been sensible to withdraw, she had never been a witch for doing the merely sensible.

That, and when rewards from wealthy wizarding families became involved, she'd be the first to concede her better judgement went clean out the window; and good riddance to it, too.

Standing waist-deep in the sea, she tilted her hat's brim back and pressed onwards, raising her wand aloft and muttering "_Lumos. Lumos Maxima._" Her wand's tip pulsed with renewed light, casting the world around her into something that could have almost been mistaken for daytime.

Before her, the expanse of grey broiled and hissed. Behind her, the black cliffs of Westray rose, the distant screaming of the countless nesting gulls competing with the tide chopping against the rocks for volume.

And beyond, something on the absolute edge of hearing rumbled.

"Out you come, beastie," Judith breathed, satisfaction colouring her words. She took a few more unhurried steps across the line of stones beneath her feet, carefully sounding out the route ahead. One step, then another … the water now lapped above the belt at her waist, and a sharp gust of wind sent a wave's worth splashing against her front. The rumble came again, laced with malevolence. Far out into the waters, a shadow swept underneath the surface.

A black crag that swept out of the water before Judith, the remaining refugee from the incoming tide, offered a vantage spot. Judith took it, reaching out with gloved hands for the barnacle-encrusted stone. Holding her wand between clenched teeth, she clambered awkwardly up, boots almost slipping beneath on the smooth stone, the light from the wand's tip jerking and sending the stone aglimmer with each pull. The sky seemed to broil further as she climbed; the seas became a grey tumult.

Reaching the crag's peak with one more heave, Judith clambered to her feet and shook herself, sending droplets spraying to be lost amidst the drizzle and sodden dark hair strands bouncing. Her grey eyes narrowed as she squinted for any sign of movement beneath the waves, and she sniffed at the air.

There it was. Any nuckelavee worth its salt could be smelt from a half-mile off, much as those in that vicinity may wish otherwise. And this one was close and … a follow-up sniff confirmed, getting closer.

Judith caught a snatch of movement out of the corner of her eye, and spun to face it, trying not to sway right off the rock. There, ahead of her, something at yet indiscernible stirred under the water's surface. It could only be seen by the motion of the currents as of yet. Nuckelavees projected a natural Disillusionment when underwater, which dispelled when they emerged.

It was assuredly piqued by this intruder in its waters by now. The currents swished ever closer to the crag; and the foul smell, that of rot and stale blood, rose in intrusiveness. Judith spat her wand back into her hand and began breathing through her mouth, keeping her gaze fixed on where she best judged the invisible creature to be.

Some would have tried a subtle approach in this sort of hunt, relying on obfuscating Charms to shield their approach. A retained beast-breaker might have gone for a diplomatic approach. A sensible magic-user wouldn't have gone at all.

Judith's approach consisted of her baring her teeth in what amounted to a feral smile, raising her wand directly into the sky, and barking "_Incendio!_"

The flash of light and peal of thunder that came with the spell enraged the beast below the waters; and it erupted from the waves, seawater cascading down around a solid form that swiftly took substance. Red and bloody-pink swam into existence beneath the water, hooves reared at the sky, and the stench that slammed at Judith's nostrils all but made her stagger back.

The nuckelavee stood twice the height of a human at the withers, and that again at the shoulders. A skinless human torso rose from a skinless horse-form, slick pus and blood pulsing across the beast's hideless body. Massive sickly-yellow eyes dominated the foreheads of both human and horse heads, staring at Judith with an unfettered bale. Long claws hanging down at its sides unfolded, and both its mouths opened to unleash a set of hellish screams.

As Judith took it in, lightning struck and thunder clapped amidst the dark sky, briefly turning the nuckelavee to a rushing silhouette. Waves crashed amidst the thought-destroying screams from the creature, and it ploughed towards Judith's insecure refuge.

Judith reacted as quickly as she could; all but leaping back off the thin top of the crag as the nuckelavee rushed in. Her feet alighted on the sheer serrated slope falling down to the chopping sea, the Adhesive Charm on her boots flickering to life as they touched the stone. She swayed wildly at the impossible angle, hardly having time to pray that the charm held before the nuckelavee came flying in over the crag in one snarling bound. Its claws snared at the point where Judith had been standing, followed by the rot-mottled hooves flying overhead, its bloody hulk briefly becoming the sky.

In Judith's grasp, her wand spun; in less than an instant she spat "_Diffindo!_" up at the nuckelavee's underbelly, accompanied by a flash of cold white light that slashed free the creature's tail. It fell and flapped on the crag beside her, thrashing and spraying blood like some stricken serpent, while from behind her there came a watery crash and two bellows of pain as the nuckelavee hit the sea.

She threw herself forward and grabbed with some desperation at the top of the crag again, seizing it and heaving herself back up to the top with some difficulty. Energy, the wild sort that came of immediate danger, was flooding through her; and she slid swiftly into a duelist's stance atop the crag, her wand out and angled at the thrashing nuckelavee.

Past the din and motion and blur of thoughts, she was vaguely aware that her hat had fallen off. She paid it little heed.

The nuckelavee rose again from the tumultuous waters, red staining the grey around it. The horse head sighted Judith and loosed a rattling scream; the human head bared its teeth in a vicious smile. It started forward again at a steady march, hooves chopping through the water. Claws stretched, the curving black talons on each finger glistening under the rain.

"_Diffindo!_" The spell threw itself forward in a spiral of light, aiming for the nuckelavee's human throat.

The teeth of the human head peeled apart, and before the charm had closed half the distance, blackness slashed out of the creature's mouth in a writhing cloud of dark particles. They caught the light of the charm, curdling and tearing it apart into harmless specks that drifted against the fleshy torso as it lurched onwards.

"Oh, come now," muttered Judith, "Fight like a gentleman." The nuckelavee was now too close for comfort, and she tensed herself again.

Her wand shifted through another swift pattern (all the while, Judith tried to ignore the growing ache and fatigue in her fingers), and unleashed another plume of flame with "_Incendio!_", the tip slashing down through the air and sending fire arcing at the nuckelavee from head to gut.

The nuckelavee spat magic-destroying darkness again, catching the part of the fire that would have hit its body with an eruption of shadow and what sounded like the screaming of tortured flames. Part of the fire hit the water, however, and steam billowed up in a boiling rush. The creature screamed once more from both throats, and Judith exulted with the unintended success. A quick "_Protego_," brought a shield of shimmering demi-light into the air before her, and she edged backwards, glancing behind herself at the few feet of space she had in which to manoeuvre.

Out of the steam, a skinned horse head dashed forwards, and Judith's sudden flinch backwards saved her life. Great teeth like mildewed tombstones tore open the magical shield, gnashing and tearing the gossamer-thin magic into pulses of lightning and thunder between the beast's teeth. Judith slashed down with a shouted Reductor Curse, sending the head flying backwards with the sound of steaming flesh and an appalling scream.

No sooner had the head vanished, than one of the great claws slashed down out of the steam, trailing white strands of the gas behind it. Judith hurled herself to one side, just as the claw hammered down into the stone and tore through it like tissue paper. Shards and whirling rubble flew in all directions, and Judith fought for her balance on the thin ledge.

The claw withdrew, knocking more rubble clear from the metres-deep gouge it had torn into the crag. The clearing steam revealed the full form of the looming nuckelavee. Both heads had teeth bared, and from the human head, more ghastly laughter slithered clear.

Judith flicked her head to her side, to the crag on her side yet unmarred. An idea occurred, and she jumped briskly into the ruined dip in the stone, perching on a short ledge before the sudden jagged fall and sweeping her wand with another cry of "_Reducto!_" at the unbroken stone. Rocky shrapnel flew out at the nuckelavee, which shook slightly and hissed with pain at the unexpected attack.

The curse had been placed to leave a sharp jag of stone between the two new dips in the crag. Judith, breathing heavily, placed one foot on either side of the jag, and angled her wand once more up at the nuckelavee.

"_Diffindo_," she breathed, for form's sake as much as anything else. Darkness ate the spell, and the laughter from the nuckelavee couldn't be described as anything but malevolent.

Judith's real attention was on the distant crop of cliff on Westray, and she forced her mind to be still, to prepare itself, to _concentrate_-

The nuckelavee, with one more twinned howl, plunged down upon her, both sets of teeth blazing and both claws sweeping around in black arcs. Judith breathed in-

-Apparated-

-and breathed out, in no small amount of pain.

The sounds of the sea and battle, which had been so immediate, were now distant and rolling; and with a twist of her head, she could make out the form of the nuckelavee over the ruined crag.

It was in pain, that much was clear. The horse head had slashed itself open on the jag and then been pulverised by the unstoppable slash of its claws and the crush of rubble that had ensued. Its body was reeling, as if drunk and tired, and the human head seemed to be emitting a confused and distressed lowing.

Judith realised that she herself was recumbent on the grass at the cliff's edge, and that she was still drenched with seawater. In addition, two of her fingers were missing.

Every time. Every bloody time she Apparated. Splinching, for her, was as inevitable as death and taxes.

She had a remedy for the first, at least. Right now, she had to take advantage of the chance she'd made for herself. Rising to her knees, she bit down and hissed with pain as she braced her injured hand between her arm and body, and aimed the wand at the nuckelavee and managed "_Reducto_," once more.

Her aim was good. The nuckelavee was too distant for the messy details of the spell's impact to be made out, but she saw the human head flopping forward and the whole body slumping.

Judith took a few moments to catch her breath and retrieve Essence of Dittany from her belt's pouches. The mixture smarted when she applied to her fingers' stumps, but the pain quickly subsided, and additional charms worked into the substance quietly retrieved the fingers from whatever exciting locale they'd found themselves. In a few moments, she flexed them and tested out a wand grip in the hand; good as new.

Rising to her feet, she looked down at the remains of the battle; at the smashed crag, the uncalm water, the spreading blood, and the dead nuckelavee. The skies were darker than when she'd begun, and the water choppier. Past gaps in the clouds, the first stars were coming out.

"Right," she said to herself and the distant nuckelavee corpse, with a certain amount of weary satisfaction. "Down we go again. There's a pouch of Galleons that one of your heads'll fetch."


	2. Home Fires

"This would … _appear_ to be a satisfactory resolution to the problem."

The words came from Lord Domnall Greengrass, Head of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Greengrass. They were addressed to the two heads on the trestle table before him, both still slick with seawater.

Leaning on an eagle-headed cane, the old lord squinted at them over cut-diamond spectacles. One gnarled hand twisted off the cane's head and drew out a slim oak wand. "I shall test that appearance. _Revelvera._"

Both heads wouldn't technically have been required, but Judith believed in a belt-and-braces approach to claiming her just due. She hovered nearby, taking advantage of the roaring fireplace in Greengrass Manor's great chamber to dry off slightly. A charred log pressed beneath the weight of burning wood finally crumbled away; and a new log was spat in from empty air to replace it, raising a gust of heat and cloud of sparks.

"_Finite_." Lord Greengrass brought another counter-spell to bear, filling the room with a brief flash of light and rocking the heads slightly. Judith ignored him, and took stock of the manor's innards.

Statues had stood at attention in the long hallway outside alongside guttering torch brackets. Inside the great chamber itself, tapestries and paintings decked the high walls, all of them some illustrious ancestor of the Greengrass's. The figures within either moved according to their own painted motions, or had stopped for a moment to watch the delivery of the heads. More than a few of the latter were regarding Judith with distaste.

Judith recalled Lord Greengrass's son, Ioan Greengrass, as a prefect when she had first started at Hogwarts. This seemed exactly like the place that would have spawned him; rich, frivolous, and completely self-absorbed. She itched to get her reward and leave.

"_Contram Endaci_."

That, and all the counter-spells in the name of her assumed-crookedness were starting to grate.

However, Lord Greengrass seemed satisfied with three, and glanced around at Judith. "Genuine nuckelavee heads. I suppose Lady Prince's recommendation had some bearing behind it."

Lady Prince, Head of House Prince, had been bereft to the tune of an enchanted necklace, which Judith had been happy to seek out for her and happier to be rewarded for doing so. Adding another note to her reputation hadn't hurt either, and Judith bit back her annoyance and said "You're welcome."

"You're welcome, _my lord_," replied Lord Greengrass, sounding bored as he turned back to the heads. "An unpleasant business, when muggles start turning up dead and half-devoured on one's property. It attracts unwanted attention from interlopers. My commendations for your assistance. I suppose you'll be due a reward." His nose wrinkled ever-so imperceptibly while he spoke; Judith still had the distinct aroma of nuckelavee about her.

"Compensation to the sum of ten Galleons and fifteen Sickles was agreed upon, my lord. With additional monies for a speedy resolution." It was a good reward for the effort put in, and Judith had a good memory for those sorts of figures.

"Just so. Two additional Galleons seems fair." With a flick of his wrist, Lord Greengrass drew a small money purse out of nowhere and opened it up. Glancing inside, he began picking out and casually flicking aside coins.

She could have pressed him for more, Judith knew, but she wouldn't have been likely to get it. She was lucky that the agreed-upon extra was being remembered at all. Coming from this bastion of purebloodedness, she was probably lucky that she wasn't being expected to take the honour of having served her betters as payment.

"There," said Lord Greengrass, finishing his subtractions and tossing the purse over to Judith, who snatched it just in time to stop it sailing into the fireplace. "That should be adequate recompense. And that should conclude our business."

Judith slipped the pouch into her moleskin pouch, and went through the routine courtesies and fare-thee-wells as were appropriate from a retained commoner to a noble. She could probably have done them in her sleep; she'd taken jobs for entirely too many wizarding lords, and politeness was expected if you were to stand a chance of getting them in future.

Greengrass merely grunted his dismissal, and summoned a house elf to escort her out. It was a long trek down the long corridor again, under the eyes of dozens of dead lords and ladies; and when a night wind blew across her and the manor's door slammed shut behind her, she couldn't help but heave a sigh of relief.

Above her, the drizzling darkness was patched with stars, giving paltry illumination to the flat, grassy landscape before her. Beyond, a dark expanse of water that shimmered under the starlight, past sheer cliffs that fell straight down to the sea.

She was on Hoy, one of the more southerly of the Orkney Islands. Apparation from Westray to here had been relatively easy and approximately painless; Apparation from here to Hogsmeade would be another story altogether.

Still, the prospect of home, a bath and a bed had an appeal that outweighed any Splinching.

She gathered herself, focused on the main street leading into the village, imagined the point on the landscape from which you could see the lights from Hogwarts twinkling in the distance, and breathed in…

* * *

She re-appeared on the snow-dusted rise of rocky hill just to the left of Hogsmeade's main road, off target by a dozen feet and bereft of her left ear. Dittany and a moment's rest solved that latter problem, and she picked herself up and dusted herself off, glancing around as she did so.

The night sky was clear here, save for the shapes of a few passing owls. If Judith crooked her head, she could make the distant lights from the towers of Hogwarts insinuating themselves into the constellations. The distant shapes of dark mountains rose and fell all the way to the horizon, white shrouding the tops of each.

Above the snowline, the cold was a constant, biting companion. A customary "_Calefacio_," sent a small amount of warmth rising throughout her, and once some feeling was restored to her extremities, Judith began her stroll into the village.

A few outlying houses lined the road on which she trod down into the village proper, the homes of the village's poor and unskilled. Past them, the homes and shops grew richer and taller and ever-more jumbled together, thatch yielding to tiles and plaster-coated bricks yielding to wood and stone. The snow-laden roofs gleamed white against the dark night, and the few small glass windows were frosted over with delicate ferns.

Judith wasn't the only one still about at this hour. She saw a few other wizards and witches making their own way through the streets. They nodded politely to her as she passed, recoiling slightly as she came within breathing distance. Judith couldn't help but wryly wonder what Rebecca would make of the smell.

Rebecca.

Guilt suddenly washed over Judith, and she made a sharp detour for a place that might help alleviate it, that might, just, _just_ might, if there truly was a kindly God, still be open…

She turned a swift corner, and Judith sang a silent hosanna as she saw the lights were still on in _Sprout's Select and Curious Floriculture_, a wide and sprawling wooden building that took up the lion's share of a street. Smoke and steam rose gently from a few of the chimneys scattered across its roof, some plumes of which were tinged with magical colours.

Judith jogged up to the door at the building's front and knocked twice, to be greeted with a slightly breathless "Er…come in. Come in! Just a … arrgh!"

Drawing her wand out from a loop at her belt, Judith cautiously pushed the door open, to be greeted with what was only the second-most unusual thing she'd seen that day.

Past the shop front's usual veil of steam, she could make out the shape of what had to be Nathaniel Sprout, the young nephew of the shop's owner, trying to extricate themselves from the strangest plant Judith had yet seen in the floriculturists; something man-sized and with two great tendril-lined leaves wrapped tightly around Nathaniel's upper body. The plant crooned as it grappled with Nathaniel; a low, happy sound like some blend of whalesong and a contented cat.

Nathaniel for his part produced little save consternated blasphemies, and Judith sent a barked "_Stupefy!_" the plant's way in his defence. The red light flew into one of the great leaves, and the plant yawned open with a discontented murmur to release Nathaniel. He fell back, catching himself before he impacted with the wooden floor.

"Um," he said, pulling himself up and catching Judith's baffled stare. "Much obliged, Miss Fairweather. Otherwise, it'd have had me until it fell asleep or got bored."

"Pleasure to help, lad. I would insist on recompense, however, by way of you telling me what in God's green earth it _is_."

"It's a pain in the fundament, is what it is," he replied, drawing himself up to his full gangly height and shooting a glare at the plant, which was now producing a considerably more disgruntled croon than before. "A Mercurian Man-Hugger. Some poxy thing from the New World, and I'm not going to ask why Lord Torque's so keen on getting one. Auntie asked me to make looking after it a priority while she's in Brittany, and it's happy to help me with that."

"Well, you'll be glad to know my tastes are going to be much more pedestrian," Judith said, drawing out her purse from her moleskin pouch. "A two-Knut's-worth bouquet of roses and snapdragons. Bound with a decent ribbon, if you have one."

"One _Stupefy_'ll get you our finest ribbon, Miss Fairweather. Just one moment." The lad turned to the rows of flowers that lined the counter and shelves behind him, and began carefully picking out a selection from the contingents of flush roses and eager snapdragons, humming vaguely as he worked. Judith recognised the tune as the closest approximation to the proper notes for the Hogwarts school song.

"You'll be in fifth year now, then?" asked Judith, making conversation while she waited.

"Just finished fourth year, going into fifth year after the summer's wound down," came the slightly distracted reply. "Auntie's had me earning my keep here in the meanwhile, which isn't too bad. And according to a few unreliable sources, I've been considered for the Gryffindor male prefect this year coming – which I can't foresee ending badly at all." He busied himself in silence for a moment, and then said "You were a Slytherin, weren't you, Miss Fairweather?"

"Aye," she said, after a moment's pause, finishing picking out two faded Knuts and jangling them in her hand.

"No disrespect to your past loyalties, but we'll see Slytherin House beaten again on the Quidditch grounds this year." Having picked out a large bouquet, Nathaniel deftly drew out a bright ribbon and bound the flower stems together, making sure to keep his fingers away from the eager jaws of the little snapdragons. He kept up his side of the conversation, happily oblivious to Judith's. "Our captain's got new ideas for this year, and he's got this notion where the players ride _two_ brooms at once…"

"Tried that in third year. It landed me in the infirmary for a while and lost me ten House points," interjected Judith, jangling the Knuts slightly more forcefully in the hope that Nathaniel would take the hint.

Bringing up the incident was what Judith considered quite a charitable act. It might end up getting someone not killed, and she'd have been loath to bring it up or recall it normally. It hadn't been the sort of incident that had raised her stock in Slytherin much – which had been low enough to start with.

Nathaniel finished fussing over the bouquet, and turned to Judith, extending the flowers with one wobbling hand and holding out his other palm-up. "Here you go, Miss Fairweather – and I'll take the coins, thank you, and hope to see you again."

"Many thanks to you. Don't get into too much trouble before I see you next," replied Judith, swapping coins for flowers and taking her leave. As she stepped back out into the brisk evening, she knocked the door shut behind her with her foot, and stopped for a moment on the shop's stone step, gathering her breath and a reasonable explanation for the day's outing.

Once she had finished (or more accurately, when a node of her conscience had insisted loudly enough that she cease procrastinating), she made for home.

It was just a street away from Sprout's; past a row of small and cosy homes in the inner part of Hogsmeade, the lights from which twinkled invitingly. At the point where it faced down that street, there rose a larger building, wrought from plastered-over brick and brown-grey tiles. Long windows ran along its ground floor, displaying currently empty stands and trays, and a sign over the front door read _Gryffindor's Fine Baked Goods_, the letters formed from faintly luminescent wood.

Judith skirted around the building's right side, venturing to its back. She absently tapped a section of the wall as she went, and felt the familiar warmth of the huge ovens within. They would have been left alight, she knew, baking the bread and dishes that required long hours of cooking, and which could be sold cool the next day.

She rounded the last corner, and placed herself before the shop's back door. Clearing her throat, she held the flowers ready – taking a moment to prise a snapdragon's jaws free from a strand of her hair – and knocked on the door.

There came the sound of hurrying feet on a wooden surface from within, and after a brief moment, the door swung open, revealing the slightly breathless form of Rebecca Gryffindor.

She was a small, fine-featured witch, running to stout; with bright blue eyes and hair that fell in a curly red cascade around her shoulders and upper back. Brushing her floury, burn-scarred hands off on the apron hanging down her front, she looked Judith up and down, taking in the proffered bouquet, the missing hat, the dishevelled hair, the sodden robes and cloak, the slightly panicky and expectant expression, and the aroma of exploded sea monster.

"Oh, Judith," she said, in a tone that ended up somewhere between concern and disappointment. "Tell me you didn't."

"I … did. But, _but_, and I believe this deserves consideration," started Judith, rattling off words that might, just _might_, make Rebecca stop looking disappointed on her behalf, "I brought you flowers. And I'm still alive and very much unharmed. Not even scratched."

"Where did you go? What was it-?"

"Orkney, for Lord Greengrass. A nuckelavee. Nothing to be afra-"

"A _nuckelavee_? Stars, Judith, if-"

"Unharmed, I must reiterate. They're practically no harder than Doxies, if you know what you're doing-"

Rebecca lunged forward and seized at Judith, drawing her in quickly for a tight kiss and cutting her off mid-sentence. Judith, after a moment's pause, returned the kiss and wrapped her free arm around her partner's shoulders. The bouquet was squashed between them, the snapdragons issuing squeaking protests.

Rebecca broke it off first, but kept her hands on Judith's shoulders, as if worried she'd fly off.

"I … thank you for the flowers," Rebecca said, her voice rough, taking the bouquet. She stepped away, back inside. "Come in and get warmed. You're drenched."

She turned and rushed back inside, while Judith trudged in after her, feeling nowhere as triumphant about the victory and earned Galleons as she had been a few minutes ago.

Through the low corridor that led to the back door – once again nudged shut by Judith's foot – two branches led in turn off to the oven room and the living room. Judith made for the former, following Rebecca and desiring the warmth of the ovens.

She could feel their heat before she stepped through the carved wooden doorframe. They took up all of one side of the long room, great contraptions of brick and clay and brass, lit from within by a steady carmine blaze. The dark mounds of baking loaves could be glimpsed amidst the red-hot coals, and sweet cooking smells filtered out. Facing the ovens was the bakery's long worksurface, strewn with flour and utensils and small sacks of cereals and fruits and spices; more of which, Judith knew, would be crammed into the cupboards under the surface. A wooden pole ran along the room's low ceiling, draped over with gloves and cloths.

Rebecca paused briefly to draw out her wand, dim the magical red fire within to cool rose-coloured flames with a casual swish and flick, and moved away to the worksurface with the flowers. Judith made for the ovens, stopping a few steps from the open mouth of one. She tugged off her gloves, stuffing them into her belt, and stretched out her hands to catch the heat.

Greengrass's fire had done little to remove the cold and wetness, which by now felt as if it had seeped all the way down to her bones. Here, she felt herself begin to thaw.

She felt a hand gently reach around her shoulder and unclasp her sodden travelling cloak, which fell to the wooden floor with a damp thump. A warm and dry towel was draped around her as a substitute, and Judith clasped it around herself eagerly. Turning, she saw Rebecca absently picking up the cloak, with another hand proffering a small pasty. Behind her, the flowers rested in a clay jar full of water, the snapdragons crooning in contentment in the room's warmth.

"Thank you," said Judith, a smile coming to her lips as she accepted the warm pasty and bit into it, exulting in the hot beef and vegetables. "I could get used to this manner of reception."

Rebecca smiled as well, but her own was slightly more strained. "Next time, I'll have a larger one on hand. If nothing else, it'll be more like to keep you weighted down."

Judith bit and chewed again, some of the relish gone. The silence that stretched out started awkward and tense, and only grew more so.

"Judith," said Rebecca quietly, "We'd agreed."

"No. We didn't. We'd _discussed_. We hadn't actually come to any particular conclusion, save that you didn't like my occupation, and I for my part was quite comfortable with it-

"An occupation that nearly gets you killed on a basis that I wish I could deem to be anything – or preferably much - less than _regular_."

"Indeed. You can tell from the fact that I'm conducting my end of the conversation from within a funeral pyre, or a kirkyard."

"Today, it was a nuckelavee," said Rebecca, her tone controlled and brittle. "A few days ago, it was a thief on Lady Weasley's estate, who defended themself with curses. Last week, it was Horntail fledglings setting a warehouse in Bristol aflame-"

"-_And_ recall for that particular case, that I subdued the fledglings, saved and Obliviated the dockworkers present, and got out to collect my fee from Lord Motley with nought but a scratch. I'm surprised that Healer Arborlun didn't tell me to bugger off and stop wasting his time when I went to get it treated-"

"Yes. A scratch across your throat. What if it had been a little deeper?" Rebecca's tone had all but been broken by the weight of emotion behind it. "When would you have been found and returned to me for burial? When Motley sent out another hunter when the warehouses were yet burning? Or when the muggles managed to douse the blaze themselves? Or never, when fire and falling wood consumed you?"

"Those … those aren't _relevant_," replied Judith, snappishly in spite of her attempt to temper herself here, in this place. "I don't think about 'what if', I don't _need_ to-"

"_I do_. Is it too bloody hard to accept that I hate it when you throw yourself into fires without a thought for what'll happen if, for once, they actually _burn_? That every time I see you Apparating away to your work, you might not…not…"

Judith's own ground was being battered at waves of guilt and self-reproach at being the source of Rebecca's unhappiness, but she tried to hold it regardless. "Rebecca," she started, hesitantly, trying to hide the roughness that threatened to overwhelm her own voice as well, "It's my occupation. I hunt down and solve problems, whether beast or criminal. I'm good at it, I enjoy it, I get paid for it, which isn't an easily dismissed factor."

"I make enough for both of us-"

"You wouldn't want me to just … become _vestigial_ to our household, and neither do I. I'd feel useless."

"The find something else, something that would let you use the same skills with less risk. Beast-wrangling and training-"

"-Is stuffed to the gills with the smaller sons of pureblood houses and families. I'd hardly be greeted with laurels, and there'd be few who'd hire me."

"Then what about retaining yourself to a Lord who likes you and knows how good you are, as a guard. Weasley, or Prince…"

"I'd be attaching a ball and chain to my ankle, but in a much more metaphorical and much less desirable form. I like choosing my jobs. I can't be a retained _hound_."

Rebecca's hands were clenched, and her lip was bit tightly. Judith reached out and took her hands in her own, and made eye contact as well.

"You could have proposed being a professional second for duels," Judith said, trying to inject a gently-teasing note. "But I doubt I'm really the polite duelling sort. And I doubt you'd have liked that much either."

"You're incorrigible," Rebecca said, a sniff and smile escaping her at the same time.

"You can't claim you didn't ken that since the beginning." Judith swung their entwined hands back and forth, leaning in towards Rebecca on the last swing. "A promise. I'll ask questions of whichever chinless marvel offers me a job right at the beginning. If it seems to involve a significant risk to my life and assorted limbs, I promise I'll return home here in the moment after discussions pause and talk it over with you."

"That would be good of you." Rebecca seemed mollified, and the smile that touched her blue eyes was genuine.

That was enough for Judith (and always would be), but couldn't be left _entirely_ alone.

"_Assuming_ you don't mind me intermittently warping into the living room, screaming and spraying blood from Splinched digits while yelling things like 'Aaaargh, Lord Something-or-Other wants me to find and smoke out a banshee nest, what do you think, aaaarghaaargh…'"

"I'll be by the ovens or manning the counter. I won't mind that at all," replied Rebecca with a chuckle, giving Judith a gentle swat to the head, and leaning in a little herself.

Judith leaned in the last crucial few inches; and this time, the kiss was less forced, less sudden, and went on for a little longer.

Judith wasn't normally one to let philosophy and the abstract distract from a perfectly decent tangible event, but she always couldn't help the near-complete study in opposites between Rebecca and herself.

Bright red versus dull black. A soft and appealing face versus one full of sharp and crooked angles. Gryffindor versus Slytherin. Baker versus mercenary. Pureblooded last scion of a Founding House, versus a Borders-raised muggleborn.

Judith wished to tighten their embrace, to go deeper, to take everything she loved about Rebecca into herself, to have something of the woman that could never be let go or taken out of sight.

When she broke off the kiss, after some reluctant moments, it was to ask "Bed? I mean, if you were finishing with work here…"

"I believe I'd like that very much," said Rebecca, her smile positively bright. "I'll first finish here and then be ready. And while I finish that, for yourself-" Her nose wrinkled, and Judith recalled the nuckelavee. "-Perchance a bath?"


	3. Catalysts

Sunlight was already streaming in through the sloping window when Judith awoke, painting the bedroom in shades of gold made murky by the battered glass.

Hiding beneath the rumpled covers eventually proved ineffective for avoiding the nasty sunlight, and Judith finally mustered the will to pull herself up to a sitting position. Feeling beside her, she discovered that Rebecca had since risen to attend to the bakery's business, leaving her side of the sheets neatly folded. Looking up, Judith saw she'd left a message as well, hovering at the bed's end in floating red letters.

_Leaving you to rest seemed like the only kind thing. Remember to check in with Arborlun and be sure the nuckelavee didn't do anything lasting. - Rebecca_

The message had been signed off with a shape like a pair of lips. Beneath it, on a stubby table, there was a dish holding a cup of water and breakfast, the latter of which was kept warm by a heating charm.

Judith reached for her wand on the bedside table, dispelling the letters with a swish, a smile touching her features as she did so. Reluctantly, she pulled herself free from the bed altogether, cleaning herself with a routine charms as she shrugged off the covers – "_Purihlus, Ablesedente, Solvenda,_" – and stumbled her way to the trunk holding her and Rebecca's clothes.

The trunk sat beneath a tapestry emblazoned with the heraldry of House Gryffindor, a snarling lion rampant on a quartered gold-and-crimson field. A crossed sword and wand, the crest of Hogwarts, a patched hat, and a squid (a feature that Judith always intended to quiz Rebecca about and never quite got round to) filled each of the quarters; each loving sewn and enchanted with life.

The tapestry was part of the old paraphernalia that came with House Gryffindor's history, joining other such artifacts in the clutter of the bedroom as old jewellery, the preserved wands and staves of past Gryffindors, antiquated magical devices, a silver goblin-made sword that always proved strangely heavy and intractable to Judith's grasp, and numerous other small items packing tucked-away chests and compartments. Most of the pieces were centuries old. House Gryffindor's fortunes had fallen enough to prevent much of anything potent and new being acquired; but not to the point where much had had to be sold off. Rebecca was the last to bear the family's name, and so to her most of it had fallen.

Nudging aside something almost certainly of great interest to magical historians with her foot, Judith heaved the trunk open and pulled out whatever was clean and near the top; a shift, a dark grey skirt, a pale shirt and a faded bodice, and a heavy set of warm robes that she left to one side.

She dressed quickly and turned her attention to the food; a small platter of bread, bacon, and fried root vegetables. She speared pieces of it with a knife and ate methodically, mentally going through her planned business for the day.

See Healer Arborlun, as requested and as what she'd have likely done in any case – she wasn't totally heedless of her own continued health, and she liked catching up with the man every few days, chore as it could be at times. Return and investigate the morning's owl-mail for potential job offers from interested lords – she supposed that Lord Greenglass wasn't likely to have boasted about her talent far and wide in the intervening twelve hours, but it would be another mark up for her reputation in any case. If nothing was offered, she'd alternate between assisting and getting in Rebecca's way in the bakery, and see what work might need seeing to around the house. If boredom truly threatened, she might even bother to buy a news pamphlet – there were plenty going around now that the Wizard's Council was going through another seemingly-routine spat.

Happy that she had some sort of plan to work with for the day, she shrugged on the heavy robes and stole one of Rebecca's hats from a peg, and ventured outside to begin the day.

No wizarding architect had ever seemed to be content without incorporating some form of unnecessary madness into their structure, and _Gryffindor's Fine Baked Goods_'s was the doorway in the bedroom opening onto a spiralling stairway – if it deserved to be called such, consisting solely of a curving flat plane of metal and only ever one step - to the ground below.

Shutting and locking the door behind her and alighting onto the waiting step, which began obediently reforming itself down the spiral in a rotating motion that bore its passenger with it, Judith breathed in and out. Her condensed breath all but formed ice in mid-air and the sharp cold brought her to full wakefulness. Hogsmeade – and the summits of the Highlands in general – had heard of the notion of existing below the snowline and wanted nothing to do with that nonsense.

It was a short journey through Hogsmeade's centre to Arborlun's offices, the streets constantly being cleared of snow by house elves on retainer to the village's council. More witches and wizards were out and about than had been last night, some of whom, Judith noted, were travelling briskly in the bakery's direction. It tended to be a popular place in Hosmeade in between the morning and afternoon's work, competed with only by the local inns and pubs for custom.

She got a few nods and greetings as she walked, returning them as they came, the several years she had spent living here having placed her on first-name terms with most of the other inhabitants. Rebecca was well-liked as well, which gave Judith some assistance, as did the numerous small favours she'd done for those who'd asked after the local thief-taker, small-time beast wrangler, and witch-of-all-trades.

She reached Arborlun's building, a circular structure of faded dark timbers over pale plaster – the sign posted across the front door's top reading, with Arborlun's usual directness, _Healer's Office – Maladies Tended and Associated Services Offered Within_. Checking whether or not he was currently engaged with a patient, and seeing from the green light flowing from a small porthole cut into the door that he wasn't, Judith knocked thrice and tried the handle, letting herself in.

Stepping into the warmer air in the building's small hallway, to a quick and low call of "Yes, yes, come in, just seeing to something," from behind the door facing her, Judith stamped her boots clean and shook off whatever snow had fallen on her robes. The green light suspended from the ceiling ebbed to red as she closed the door behind her, and there came the sound of it locking.

"Healer Arborlun?" she called out, taking her hat off, as was only polite, "It's me. Judith."

There was a pause, and there then came a still-quick and low call of "Come in faster. Catch a chill out there."

Hanging up her robes and hat, Judith opened the door and entered into Arborlun's office. The low-ceilinged room, possessing almost the same circular dimensions as the larger building, was kept clean and orderly. Chairs and a desk sat at one end, flanked by glass-fronted cabinets packed to the brim with indecipherably-labelled jars and tubes of unknown solvents and pastes. A hard-looking bed, in turn flanked by strange and rotating equipment, sat at the room's other end. A terminally-confused-looking crocodile, as required by traditions almost older than Healing, was suspended from the room's ceiling and took up a significant chunk of the room's habitable space, its open mouth stuffed with bottles of coloured liquid and the emerging handles of medical tools. Charts and diagrams stretched along the walls, as did a briefly-rising staircase to Arborlun's living quarters.

The man himself was knelt in front of the crocodile, carefully looking through the bottles and muttering to himself as he did so. As Judith entered, he turned and rose to his full gangly height, brushing away stray blonde hairs from the front of his face and spectacles.

"Judith," he said stiffly, as was his wont, bobbing his head sharply, his expression remaining impassive.

Judith smiled and nodded her own head to one of the friends she'd had since her days in Hogwarts, and replied, with the old running joke that had become a reality, "Healer Arborlun."

* * *

_Fourteen years prior, not so far away..._

"Pardon me, but would you like to join us at our table?"

The request came from the boy that had materialised at Judith's side at the table in the Great Hall. She turned away from her lunch towards the grinning face framed by wild dark hair, unsure of his intentions.

The tables were only kept in House formation for important meals, like the Welcoming feast. For most ordinary mealtimes, leeway was given by teachers for pupils to separate out the component smaller tables for their own cliques. It made the Great Hall a complete guddle to navigate at the best of times, and made anything like a timely progression to classes after mealtimes impossible. However, with many of the pupils being noble-born and pure-blooded, the need for them to mingle at an early age with their peers in other Houses was recognised and allowed for, as well as the need for them to distance themselves from the less noble in their House.

Judith, being what she'd variously heard called a 'muggle-born', a 'mudblood', or 'magic-thieving vermin' was becoming acquainted with the latter in pure-blooded bastion Slytherin. She was left to herself by her house-mates most of the time in meals, the dorms, and in lessons, and the times when they did seek out her company invariably left no good impressions. Other students in other houses tended to keep their distance or actively reject her as well, doing their part for what seemed to be an age-old rivalry between Slytherin House and everyone else on the planet.

She'd been mostly by herself, this far into October in her first year, and she had every intention of keeping it that way if all wizards were like the ones she'd had to spend time with. "Keep your enemies close, love, but only as close as required to stab their throats clean through," her dad - who everyone said had once been a Reiver - had said before she left, while her mum had given her a lecture on keeping herself safe and distant from strange people in strange places.

They'd thought she'd been chosen to go to a special university somewhere in the Highlands run in the name of His Majesty-In-Waiting King James, where she could study and deal with all the … well, unusual things that tended to happen around her. The local minister had been getting edgy, and back then it seemed like the best solution. It had even come out the blue, like all the best miracles, and the professor from Hogwarts who'd spoken to them had been able to present themselves as a man of the royal court, produce what seemed like the Royal Seal, and swear them to secrecy.

Dad had even tried to give her his old sword to smuggle in to protect herself with if needed, before mum had caught him and given him a row that could be heard from neighbouring houses. She later secretly gave Judith her best knife, on the grounds that it was more practical.

Judith wasn't so daft as to wish she'd been left where she was, but neither was she enjoying it much here. It was just as well she had a strategy for the school. Staying solitary, when she could manage it, was working out perfectly well for her.

Hence, her reaction to the boy of "Who's 'us'? And why would I want to join you?"

The boy, whose blue-trimmed uniform robes identified him as a Ravenclaw, appeared briefly puzzled before a smile broke like a sunbeam across his features again. "Oh, my pardon. I'm Bezalel Loew, son of Judah of Prague, Arcane Maharal of Bohemia and all that. And 'us' is us at the table over there-" he said, indicating a table at which several other first-years were sat and watching him and Judith. "We, ah, thought you might want some company."

His speaking was clear, if marked with the trace of an accent Judith thought might be foreign, and she wondered if 'Bezalel' was maybe a Jewish name. Those wouldn't have been the strangest things she'd have come across at Hogwarts by a long way – but they were still curious enough for the girl who, a few months prior, had been living in the middle of nowhere on the Anglo-Scottish border.

The curiosity rose, and wasn't tempered by the usual hostility that she'd expect to see brooding in her housemates whenever she was in the vicinity. Besides, Jews and their creed were, as far she knew about either, comparatively normal muggle things, and she'd maybe have them as handles in whatever conversation she'd have with him.

"Alright," she said cautiously, picking up her plate and cutlery and following him to his table.

The four others already at the table became clearer as Judith neared, two boys and two girls. Both of the girls wore robes trimmed with Gryffindor crimson, one of them - Judith saw – with dark moorish skin and eyes, while the other had an ungainly tangle of red hair. They had been talking to each other, but had stopped to regard Judith; the moor doing so with open curiosity while the redhead did so from beneath the security of her fringe. One of the boys, a tow-haired Ravenclaw, kept his eyes down at his drumming hands on the table; while the other in patched Hufflepuff yellow kept his arms folded on the table before him and his gaze straight ahead, seemingly as some sort of effort to gain something approaching what Judith had heard referred to as _hauteur_.

"Seat yourself, seat yourself and we'll welcome you to our – oh blast, you might need a chair. Hold on, I'll see if the Quidditch team's up for surrendering one..." Bezalel rushed off, leaving Judith standing awkwardly with her plate balanced in both hands, trying to think about some way to broach conversation with the others.

"I recognise you," she said to the Hufflepuff boy, who started at being addressed. "We have double Transfiguration with Hufflepuffs on Wednesday, don't we?"

"Oh. Well, yes, I believe so," said the boy, his tone starting off mild enough and then suffering from a sudden frantic injection of what seemed like an attempt at a noble-born accent. His head of auburn curls bounced as he tried to correct his posture, his heavy-lidded brown eyes widened slightly. "With Professor Prenderghast?"

"Aye. I thought I'd seen you in the class before." Truth be told, she'd seen most of them at a distance in corridors or mealtimes – particularly the moorish one, she was hard to miss. "I'm Judith. Judith Fairweather, daughter of Martin and Sheila Fairweather. Yourself?"

"Me?" The boy looked more uncomfortable than he had previously, his put-upon accent became stiffer even as it wobbled precariously. "I'm Tamerlane FitzGaunt, son of Heraclion Gaunt of the Most Noble and Ancient House of Gaunt and … ah … some pureblooded witch of no great consequence."

"You're lying," said the Ravenclaw boy, his hanging blond hair masking his face and his voice low and monotone, his gaze not drifting from his hands. "When you keep pausing when you're talking, you're trying to prepare yourself to sound convincing, and it doesn't work when people know-"

"Would-you-shut-_up_."

"Aaliyah of Giovanni and Ilham of House Zabini," said the moorish girl quickly, thrusting her own hand towards Judith. Judith took a brief if flustered moment shifting her dish to the one arm before shaking the hand, trying to ignore Tamerlane silently berating the Ravenclaw in a manner that aimed for 'stern' but only ended up in 'flustered'.

"Is House Zabini from -" Judith tried to remember the name of a country where people like Aaliyah might come from, and improvised when she failed. "-Turkland, or elsewhere like that?"

"My dad's from Venice and my mum's from the Ottoman Empire," said Aaliyah proudly. "We couldn't have a say on the Serene Council because we're not pure-blooded _enough_, so mum and dad said we were going to start the house again here and that I was to become Chieftainess of the Wizard's Council in Britain and make them proud."

"...well, that's..."

"If you're muggle-born, that needn't be a problem. You could still be my vizier." Aaliyah looked briefly disappointed. "Nobody else takes me up on that."

Judith turned to the blond boy who, becoming aware that he was being looked at, looked up in turn. His gaze fluttered, settling nearly everywhere that wasn't Judith's face, and the drumming of his hands increased in intensity. He seemed to realise after a few moments that nobody else would bear the burden of social interaction, and reluctantly shouldered it himself.

"Elijah Arborlun," he muttered, his words fast and hard to make out. "Halfblood. Blood not important anyway. They teach you Healing here in later years, if you do well enough, and there's books in the library. I'll be a Healer. Right thing to be. Do you know much about it?"

"I don't, really. Is it like being a doctor, treating poxes and the like-" Judith began uncertainly, aware of some gulf of difference between her and the boy and unsure of how to approach it. She extended a hand for shaking purposes, though the way he seemed to hold himself _in_, as it were, suggested that he wouldn't take it.

He looked at the hand she was offering, and something evidently clicked inside him.

To Judith's surprise, her hand was taken, but not in the way she'd expected. Both of Arborlun's hands reached out and gently took a hold upon it, pulling it towards himself for closer examination. His now-bright gaze narrowed as he began to delicately manipulate the rotation of the fingers and the joints in the knuckles.

"Like knowing that there are twenty-seven bones in each hand, and that the ligaments and tendons attached to them are necessary for any meaningful use," he started, the words coming out in a torrent. "Damage to them can be healed naturally by rest and abstaining from movement, or more swiftly by the intake of a potion of adderfen leaves and willow bark, which invigorates the existing healing processes and also can be generalised to most tissue damage, or most quickly by the consumption of fermented Kneazle tongue along with the prior application of a willow poultice to the hand, the latter of which acts to direct the flow of vital reforming humours from the former-"

"...Well, that's-" started Judith, even more confused even as she now tried to extricate herself, trying to pull her hand away. Arborlun, unfortunately, both possessed a surprisingly strong grip and selective obliviousness, and continued.

"-the normal flow of humours conducted, naturally, by the veins visible _here_ and deeper within the arm. Kneazle tongue possessing clotting properties, and hence being an inhibitor of sanguine fluid flow; consuming at least a leaf of redwort – more depending on your size - is also necessary so that proper humouric balance can be maintained-"

"Fascinating, but if you could let go..." said Judith hurriedly, nodding even as she pulled harder. Her plate wobbled precariously; she looked around in mute appeal, and the redheaded girl obliged, reaching up and taking it down to the table. Judith mouthed "My thanks," as the girl did so.

"-Now for injuries involving the outright disappearance of bones, there are potions that manipulate the capacity of the body for regeneration, although some using magical beast components, such as powdered hydra vertebrae, can substitute a foreign regeneration. That can occasionally lead to some complications with multiple copies of the same regrown bone, but simple Charms can -"

"_Excuse_ me," said Judith, bracing against the table with her now-free hand and yanking her hand free. The boy looked up at her with a surprised look, as if having forgotten where he was and what he was doing to whom, and then immediately withdrew into himself again, his face flushing.

"Yes, sorry, forgot," he said. "Grabbing people for demonstrations not good, social-wise. Just wanted to show. Sorry." He looked down, then up again, his green eyes meeting Judith's only briefly. "I _will_ be a Healer, though."

That left the red-headed girl, who also seemed unsure about the new presence in her midst, though she did at least attempt a shy smile.

"Yourself?" asked Judith.

"Rebecca," replied the girl, her voice also quiet if somewhat more toneful than Arborlun's. "Rebecca of House Gryffindor."

"Not your school house. Your family house," said Judith, assuming the girl had one.

"Still the same answer, I'm afraid."

"...Hold on," said Judith, puzzled, "Would that mean you're a descendant of-?"

She was interrupted, however, by the sound of a chair scraping across the floor behind her. Turning, she saw Bezalel dragging a chair towards her with some effort: the chairs here were wrought from metal and heavy wood. She rushed over to help him drag it the last few metres.

"My thanks," he said. "With any luck, the Gryffindor captain won't notice his chair's gone missing."

"Who?"

"Nothing, honest. Seat yourself." Judith did so, planting herself to Rebecca's right and Tamerlane's left. Bezalel returned to his own seat directly across from her at the circular table, completing a circle consisting, in a clockwise spin, of himself, Arborlun, Tamerlane, Judith, Rebecca and Aaliyah.

"So why did you invite me over?" asked Judith, folding together her bread and unidentifiable meat to give her hands something to do while she glanced around at the others.

"Well, we'd heard about you beforehand," started Bezalel. "And 'tis known that muggleborns don't often crop up in Slytherin."

"We guessed that your housemates wouldn't be going out of their way to provide you with companionship, and we thought … well, we thought that we could offer you our own," said Aaliyah.

Judith paused mid-folding, touched and yet-unsure of how to take the offer.

"So … none of you are ashamed to be around me?" she asked.

"We consist of assorted foreigners, misfits, and outcasts," said Tamerlane dryly, with a little flourish of his arms. "Guess our social standing, and you'll almost certainly shoot past the mark."

"And last scions of Founding Houses," continued Arborlun. "And bastards of technically-Noble Houses."

"Yes, _thank you, _shut _up_."

"You should tell her the history of House Gaunt some time," said Arborlun, indicating Judith. "It's good. Include the part when the muggle knight-"

"Rest assured that if it was physically possible for me to bellow '_Shut up_' loudly enough, I would-"

"I won't pretend we're a particularly highly-regarded fellowship around the school," pressed on Bezalel. "But if you want to join us – well, we'd appreciate your company."

Judith looked around at the table, at each one of the associated foreigners, misfits, outcasts, last scion of a Founding House and bastard of a technically-Noble House. Behind her, there rose a guffaw from the patchwork remains of the Slytherin table, and to her side, the teachers at their high table appeared deep in discussion. Above her, a rainbow slashed a narrow line between grey fingers of cloud in the ceiling. Owls swooped overhead, and the odd minor spell corkscrewed through the air.

Inwardly, a little part of her remarked that she certainly wasn't in the Borders anymore.

Outwardly, she said "Aye, why not?"

* * *

"How is your supply of Dittany?" asked Arborlun, who had sat Judith down in one of the chairs near his desk and was quickly going over some scattered paperwork at the same time, having been blessed as one of nature's chosen multi-taskers. "Assuming you're here about that."

"The jar's still more than half-full," replied Judith. "I'm here specifically because of my job last night. I had a mild scuffle with a nuckelavee. I felt it advisable – and Rebecca may have concurred - to be sure it hadn't done anything lasting."

Arborlun looked up at her – not directly at her eyes, he'd never been comfortable with that – and, while getting up from his seat, remarked "You're a one-witch justification for my textbooks on exotic maladies. Did it scratch you at all? That's how they commonly spread infection, beyond their simple miasma."

"I suffered my entirely usual share of open wounds while fighting it, but suffered none directly from it."

"Hmm. Any lasting headaches, internal pain, or vomiting? Or any unusual discharge?"

"No to all of these. Assuming that unusual discharge is you trying to be tactful, and not suggesting that I, say, might have thrown up Merlin Reborn."

"Look at the world we live in. The latter wouldn't be that unreasonable a prospect." Arborlun produced a white handkerchief and presented it to Judith. "Cough into this exceedingly hard several times, if you would, then pass it back."

Judith obliged and gave it back, and Arborlun regarded the handkerchief. "Well, judging by the absence of parts of your lungs, it's probably not infected you. A rot would have set in before now." He shrugged and folded the handkerchief back up, placing it back in his pocket. "You're fine. Tell Rebecca that."

"Your base suspicion that I would simply absent-mindedly forget to tell the most important witch in my life about my ongoing health-"

It was somewhat unnerving when Arborlun _did_ make eye-contact with you, especially as his expression defaulted to flat and utterly unconvinced.

"-May have prior justification, I'll be sure to tell her. What do I owe you for the examination?"

"Hmm," said Arborlun non-committally. "Taking into account all the reagents used in your treatment, wear and tear on tools, and emotional duress undergone by your Healer – probably more Galleons than exist in the world for the latter, but since I don't want Rebecca to be made a pauper, I'll forego that much."

"You're a kind and charitable and good soul, and I've always said so."

"That had the hint of an untruth about it, Miss Fairweather." Arborlun looked up from where he was sorting papers. "Have you heard from Aaliyah, perchance? I've heard not much since her letter by owl last month."

"Us neither. She did say she'd be in the New World for a while, sorting things out as an envoy of the Council. I'd got the impression she'd met a potentially significant other over there, so she might end up staying there or bringing him back here."

Arborlun nodded. "If so, he must be something special to have gotten her interest. I suppose the same – not hearing from them since I did, that is - applies to 'Lane and Bezalel?"

"Bezalel's still working with his father in Prague, I think, though he did mention in his last letter that he might visit some time soon. As for 'Lane..." Judith trailed off. "I don't think anyone knows what he's doing. Last I heard from him personally , it was a year ago and he was with some new group in Muscovy, and the letter was written in a hurry."

"I hope he's alright," said Arborlun. "Not trying out mercenary work again or something similarly hazardous. One old acquaintance doing that was hair-raising enough."

"At least I'm usually novel in the treatments I need each time. And one day, you'll retire a wealthy man off the money gotten from me alone."

"Now there's a thought to provide comfort." There came a knocking from the front door, and Arborlun looked apologetic. "That might be an appointment."

"For shame. You have _other_ people who seek your help for injuries?" Judith rose from her chair, Arborlun rising with her. "See you next time I should cross life-threatening calamity?"

"I await this evening's visit with pleasure, then," said Arborlun, bowing slightly. "Get thee hence."

Judith made her farewells and exit, retrieving her robes and Rebecca's hat on her way out, passing by the wizard waiting for his own turn in Arborlun's clinic as she stepped out into the cold.

She hurried back to the bakery, seeing a couple leaving it with wrapped parcels in their hands as she neared. The stairway only operated going down, and so she entered via the front door, walking into what was practically a cushion of warmth and baking smells. Shelve sections were already cleared of their goods, and Rebecca was busy with the bakery's ledger when Judith entered.

"Hello, love. How was...?" Rebecca started.

"I coughed up no bits of lung, and according to Arborlun, that's a good thing." Judith shrugged off the robes and hat, and wandered over behind the counter to bestow a kiss. "Nothing to worry about beyond the usual. I don't suppose we got any letters?"

"You missed the morning flock." Rebecca gesticulated with the quill she was holding. "Check the table through in the living room."

Through the oven room and through the short corridor, Judith entered the living room for their home; a cosy place dominated by soft surfaces suitable for comfortable sprackling, with a staircase rising up along one side to upper levels and the walls dotted with a few portraits of snoozing Gryffindor ancestors. She found the stack of letters from that morning's owl post on the central table. Plucking them up and finding a suitably cushion-covered armchair, she threw herself into it and began sifting through the letters as she sank into goosefeathers and fabric.

One from a Wyrmwood, cousins to the Gryffindors – Judith tossed it into a pile for Rebecca's own handling. Pamphlets – complete with woodcut moving pictures, no less, dealing with the latest split in the Wizard Council, and why it was the Avowed Duty of All Loyal Magic-Wielders to Stand Steadfast in the Face of Rank Upheaval, according to the nice bold title above a caricature of some demonic-looking Councillors. Judith knew little about the affair, as did most others – the pamphlets had regularly been forthcoming with invective and funny illustrations, but little by way of what was being debated. Some change in the structure of the Council, was all she understood.

Another pamphlet, from the opposing side. A letter from Gringotts, detailing the current state of the bakery's accounts – Judith put it aside to be pored over later with Rebecca.

And the last...

Good-quality paper, indicating a wealthy sender. The letter was addressed to her personally, usually indicating a desire for her professional services. These were all signs Judith liked to see in a letter.

She opened it up, breaking the wax seal (green wax, with a sigil of a badger rampant – clearly a noble crest, though she had trouble recalling which one) and read on.

_For the professional attention of Miss Judith Fairweather,_

_Having heard of your reputation as a thief-taker, investigator, and capable witch-of-all-trades from parties close in my confidence, I would wish to tender the following request for your services, and to outlay the following terms under which your potential services will be discussed._

_The details of what I wish cannot be discussed via letter, for reasons of delicacy and preferred discretion – and I may only render the assurance that they should require all your existing skills to be exercised to the utmost – and so I wish that tomorrow on the mid-day, on the 17th of August, that you come to London and Diagon Alley, and bring yourself to the House of the Council. The guards shall expect you and bring you to my office, where we shall outlay the service requested of you, and payment for its rendering._

_I expect your arrival, and remain yours in good faith,_

_Eldritch Diggory, Lord of House Diggory, Chieftain of the Wizard's Council_

Words danced before Judith's attention.

Lord of a House, Chieftain of the Council, discretion required … this had all the makings of a sweet and embarrassing scandal in the houses of power, not that Judith was so base (she reminded herself sternly after grinning too hard) as to chuckle at the prospect … but still, more saliently, this had all the makings of a good and lucrative job, which, if she was very lucky, might involve some amount of excitement.

Tomorrow? It was all she could to do to not head off to London this moment. Judith scented gold in the air, and all but skipped through to the bakery to tell Rebecca.


	4. Dreams and Gold

"Well," said Rebecca, scrutinising the letter, "_Someone's_ rising far in the world."

"Unproductive as it may be of me to speculate on what the case may be … I'm putting money on an affair." replied Judith. "He's cavorting with one – no, _two_ secretaries of his, and he's retaining my services to try and hide the evidence."

"Some manner of clandestine work, I shouldn't wonder, given that he doesn't want to divulge the details in a letter," mused Rebecca. She was staring at the letter spread flat on the shop's counter, her free hand almost casually totalling sums in the ledger next to her.

"Alternatively, he wants to start conducting an affair. The myths and legends of my beauty have reached his ears at last, and he can contain his passions no longer."

"They'd be the most mythical of accounts, no denying that," said Rebecca, almost absently raising her hand to block the retaliatory swat from Judith. "Diggory's got a lot of people loyal to him, though. Why would he hire help for whatever the task is?"

"None of his vassals are up to scratch for competency, and he wishes me to replace them. _All_ of them."

"One might note that you aren't treating this with the seriousness it deserves."

"I'm treating this entirely seriously," said Judith, wrapping her arms around Rebecca from behind. "I'm just indulging in some manner of light-heartedness before the usual and inevitable frantic escapes and death-defying and wand duels."

"Speaking of-"

"Should Lord Diggory mention the word 'nuckelavee' or anything else of a potentially risky nature even once, I promise to return home and inform you before making a final decision." Judith leaned to kiss Rebecca on the cheek. "I can remember some of the things I pledge, you know. Sometimes."

"'Tis possible it's tied in with the Council's goings-on," continued Rebecca, turning to face Judith directly. "There might be Transmutation politics at play here if he's going for a private thief-taker."

Judith gave Rebecca her best blank expression, and Rebecca clarified. "Transmutation. Diggory's keen on reforming the Council. He presented plans to change the structure, to allow for Council seats to be extended to non-nobles and for voting rights to be extended beyond pure-bloods, all talk about making the Council a modern Ministry. They went down about as well with the traditional houses as you'd expect."

"I can imagine," said Judith. "If you let the likes of us muggleborns into the Council, why, we'd just bring disgrace and disrepute to politics and politicians everywhere. And then where would we be?"

"Diggory's got a solid and growing group of supporters, which is why the debate about Transmutation's still going on. So I'd imagine there'd be some business that might need attended to, and that'll need a neutral party to carry it out." Rebecca shrugged and smiled. "Or indeed, yes, he's heard tales of your beauty while recovering from a head wound, and is determined to pursue them."

"I can't imagine what could inspire such cynicism and cruelty from yourself, but I'll nobly bear such slanders as best I may." Judith appeared thoughtful, as she pulled away from Rebecca. "Extended rights to muggleborns as part of this 'Ministry', then?"

"I believe so, though I've not been keeping up as best I may. Halfbloods and muggleborns in good standing would be eligible to vote for new leaders and have their opinions considered before the Council."

"And would I-?"

"Sharing the bed of a member of a noble house would probably qualify you for a fairly good standing, yes."

"Interesting," said Judith, rubbing her chin. "So if these reforms passed and if I wished to increase my standing, I would only have to seek out other nobles and – ow!"

"That would qualify as taking unfair advantage of the law, which is generally frowned upon, love," said Rebecca, looking innocent while Judith rubbed the back of her head. "Besides, it's still very much on the Council's debate floor, and I think it'll be lucky to get off there any time soon. They'll probably yell at each other about it all over again in the upcoming Moot, and I wish each faction there joy of one another." She then bit her lip and hastily followed on with "I mean, I do hope Transmutation gets through eventually, for your sake and other muggleborn's..."

"Rebecca, rest assured that the day I start investing interest in what goes on the halls of powers beyond that which stands to require the services of a manifestly competent and good-looking thief-taker will be the same day you can get Arborlun to examine my skull for bruising. Let the nobles pretend they're making a difference, for all I care."

"And _I'm_ the cynic?" Rebecca feigned shock. "Heavens know what Diggory'll make of you. Should I be surprised if he sends you back tarred and feathered?"

"I've avoided such a fate so far. Somehow. Is there any way I can make myself of use between now and tomorrow? Be advised that if you answer 'Sit still and don't touch anything, especially the ovens' again, I'll be exceedingly hurt."

Rebecca shrugged and stepped from the ledger, laying down the quill. "This morning's tallying is almost done. If you'd like to offer assistance, then there's some nice ongoing totalling and balancing for the month that could be done."

Judith eyed the ledger cautiously. "Is this my punishment for the nuckelavee? I thought the flowers would kindle mercy."

"For the nuckelavee, and for the ovens. The brass one's still caked with soot in the corners – and do tell me one day how you even _did_ that." Rebecca patted Judith on the shoulder as she passed by. "The afternoon tarts are calling my name. I'll help you here once they're done."

"Not sure the anticipation of a struggle in that last sentence was truly necessary," muttered Judith, approaching the ledger and picking up the quill with the air of a warrior entering a battle.

* * *

It was drawing close to midday in the day after; and over Hogsmeade, the sun was shining without much hope of success upon the snow-mantled streets and buildings.

Over London, hundreds of miles southwards, the sun tried to break through the pall already rising from hundreds of smoking chimneys and the smokestacks of foundries and smithies. People flocked through the streets; peddlers and entertainers and beggars and labourers alike milling. The towers of palaces and prisons jutted upwards into the sky, pennons flying and guards shivering atop them. Through the city's centre, the Thames ran like a silver serpent, mottled with waste and crowded with shipping – trader cogs and river-taxis and great war galleons, the latter of which bore the colours of the Navy Royal.

A muggle, watching from above, wouldn't have noticed their attention simply gliding over one particular part of the city - a street running between other streets, running at a diagonal slash right through the city's centre and seemingly closed off from the rest of it by a layer of superfluous buildings.

The same muggle wouldn't have noticed the Disillusioned flocks of owls or broomsticks in the sky around them either, for that matter.

Into that street, Diagon Alley, Judith Fairweather Apparated into an alleyway, and shortly thereafter emerged swearing under her breath and dabbing more Dittany onto her raw-looking nose, getting only a few peculiar looks from passing witches and wizards as she did so.

"Perennial Splinching?" said a nearby sympathetic-looking vendor-witch with a stall full of assorted skulls – owl, monkey, dragon, cat, and unicorn, amongst others. Some near the back looked human, little orange lights glowing in the backs of their sockets and seeming to track anything interesting in the vicinity.

"What was your first – ow, bloody bastard, _ow_ – clue?" asked Judith, distracted as she assured herself her nose was on properly and not like to slip off. Again.

"Got a grandson with the condition. You soon pick up on certain symptoms," replied the witch. "Fancy a skull, dearie? Useful ground up in all sorts of potions, or for just a bit of indoor décor."

"Or for witty banter," offered one of the human skulls, its mouth opening and shutting and somehow producing sound from no air moving through a non-existent larynx, its eye-lights brightening.

"Or for a bit of conversation with these ones," said the witch. "Daft as brushes for the most part, no better than portraits, but built to last and better than a parrot. Would you like one?"

"I'm satisfied with my own, but thank you regardless," said Judith, her composure regained. "Do you know where I can find the House of the Council? It's been a while since I was last here."

"To your left and onwards for a hundred yards. Big green building compensating for something of the architect's, dearie, you can't miss it."

"My thanks." Judith finished checking her nose and headed off into Diagon Alley, joining the press of the midday shoppers and residents moving along the cobbled street. Every shop was open at this time of the day, and business was in full flow. Shouts and the babble of conversation mixed with whirring and chirps from displayed magical trinkets and gewgaws and the screeching of owls, either caged or message-bearing.

She paid little attention to most of the shop fronts, though she did sneak a glance at the windows of _Saunderly's Brooms_ – admiring the sleekness and smooth trim of Saunderly's new Sparrowhawk model, while balking at the price on the attached label. Judith liked broomsticks. They offered various advantages over Apparating vis-a-vis not often losing body parts in transit, and the little part of her that perked its head up at adrenaline and risk-taking could usually be satisfied with the feel of high winds at dizzying heights.

One broomstick rider, she noticed, was alighting from the top of Gringotts. They wore a white uniform and had a white streamer – matching the marble of the huge building itself - flying from the end of the broom, next to which a bulky package was sat. They rose, accelerating as they did, and hit the Disillusionment field shrouding the top of Diagon Alley in a burst of disintegrating motes of light, with nothing but the suggestion of their outline in the air a second after. The effect wasn't intended to last long, but it would last long enough to see them safely away from the sight of London's muggles.

Past Gringotts, she sighted the House of the Council; a four-storied structure overbuilt in all three dimensions (and probably more, knowing wizard architects), and built from dark green bricks. Gold ornamentation covered the outside; with various banners, sigils and moving statues generously peppered on any suitable dimension that had held still long enough. The only part of the exterior that wasn't green or gold were the banks of crests of noble families surrounding the front door, each from the ranks of the current Council members. The dominant crest, just above the entryway, was House Diggory's own black-and-silver badger rampant.

Two guards, a witch and wizard of equally strapping builds and wearing the same gold-trimmed green uniform robes, regarded Judith as she approached the entryway. The witch held out a hand to stop her.

"Your business?" she asked.

"Appointment with the Chieftain," replied Judith, wearing a neutral face over her inner nervous anticipation.

"Your name?"

"Judith Fairweather."

The witch nodded, evidently having consulted some internal list, and looked pointedly at the wizard. He drew out a slim wand, angled it at Judith and murmured "_Revelvera._"

Judith felt the tingly wave of magic wash across her, failing to find any deceptive charms to dispel. With a satisfied grunt, the wizard sheathed his wand and said "Enter the House of the Council, and comport yourself with respect."

Judith stepped through, and into the expanse of pale marble and thick dark carpeting that passed for the building's hallway. Doors lined the walls, between which stone plinths topped with magical flames cast a bright but flickering light. Stairs rose from the opposite wall up through the open ceiling, rising in a right-angled zigzag all the way to the distant top floor.

A plump wizard in dark and sober robes and a thinning head of red hair approached Judith as she entered, his face breaking into a smile that, against all expectations, reached his eyes as well. "Miss Fairweather?" he enquired, bowing and extending his hand.

"The very same," she replied, returning the bow with a curtsey and shaking the proffered hand.

"Excellent, excellent. Pardon my bad manners – I'm Gareth Weasley, assistant to Chieftain Diggory. You're expected, so I understand. Would you care to follow me?"

She followed Gareth up the stairs, all the way to the Chieftain's offices on the top floor. Portraits of past Chieftains, councillors, and assorted historical magic-users watched them as they went, and waiting suits of armour intercepted them every so often with crossed halberds; a quiet word of command from Gareth was enough to set them back at rest.

On the last flight of stairs, Gareth said, in a light and thoughtful tone, "Judith Fairweather … I don't suppose you'd be the same witch involved in that business on the Weasley estate a few days ago?"

"I was the thief-taker retained by Lady Weasley for the business in question, yes." Judith still had clear memories of the case, though she'd hardly be inclined to call it a highlight of her career. The business – a thief making off with some treasured necklace of the Weasley family – was part of the one-upmanship that so frequently informed relations between the noble families, each thieving the artifacts of their enemies for the damage to morale dealt by the item's loss rather than its material value. It was a cheap way of publicly rattling a rival house, and the most that could ever be lost at worst was the thief themselves, invariably sworn to silence and of no great concern otherwise.

Judith had managed to track down the necklace before it had been spirited away to the family who had sought it, and had taken it from the thief, who had tried to duel Judith for it. She'd won, but had gleaned no satisfaction from the despair and horror in the man's eyes as she'd taken it. His employers clearly weren't the sort who thought highly of failure.

"My aunt would undoubtedly wish to pass on her further congratulations to you for resolving the matter in good time," continued Gareth. "The necklace was of sentimental value to us all, and so I would humbly add my own thanks to hers."

Mind you, the party subject to the theft would usually have the lion's share of deciding upon the punishment given. House Weasley had a reputation as one of the more merciful and honourable families; which suited a House sharing nearly as much of Gryffindor's bloodline as Rebecca herself. The thief would probably be spared on the official front, at least.

"I'd gratefully receive those thanks, sir," said Judith, as they reached the topmost floor at last. A short corridor faced the stairs, at the end of which a huge and ornate door took up most of the wall. "You're Diggory's assistant, then?"

"Well, yes, since he assumed the Chieftain-ship a few years back. Just for some minor matters like note-taking, tea-making, visitor collecting, guard duty … nothing especially strenuous or exciting."

Judith at this point took note of the muscles concealed by Gareth's girth, of his scarred knuckles, and the walk and straight posture of a professional duellist; and congratulated herself on making common courtesy to everyone she first met a habit.

"I believe he's not occupied presently, and that it's your alloted time at hand. I'll just check that he's free to receive you." Gareth moved ahead of Judith to the door and opened it slightly, poking his head around. There was a brief murmur of conversation which ended with Gareth opening the door wider and standing back, and a voice from within saying "Do enter, Miss Fairweather."

Judith did so, and took stock of the room around her. It was large, and as with the building's outside, decorated to a fault. Paintings and tapestries and bookshelves jostled for space against the pale walls, with most objects sunk an an inch into the thick and yielding carpet. Soft yellow lights drifted in the enchanted ceiling, providing a secondary source of illumination next to the light drifting in from large windows looking down into Diagon Alley and offering a superb view of muggle London.

Before one of these windows, behind a great semi-circle of a desk across which papers and stray quills and inkpots were strewn, a heavily-built man stood admiring that view.

He turned, his eyes glinting behind silver-wire spectacles and his mouth spread into a thin smile, and greeted Judith with "Well met, Miss Fairweather. Won't you take a seat?"

Eldritch Diggory was tall and broad, a giant of a man in plain dark robes, with a tousled head of grey-streaked brown hair and heavy-lidded dark blue eyes given gravitas by the spectacles. Hands the size of dinner plates spread magnanimously to a chair before the desk, which Judith took.

"You requested my services as a thief-taker, Chieftain?" she asked, settling herself into the chair and trying to not become submerged beneath the padding.

"Oh, indeed, for a most critical and … ah, sensitive matter." He sank into his own chair with a sigh of pleasure. "Best gone over with another person relevant to proceedings, who'll be arriving momentarily."

Judith waited, the silence accented by the ticks of several incongruously mechanical clocks around the room. She was having trouble reading the man, who seemed content to sat back in his chair and regard her with a vaguely approving expression.

"You've been reported as reasonably competent by several that I trust," Eldritch said. "Would you share their opinion, Miss Fairweather?"

Judith opened her mouth, deciding quickly between modesty or mild aggrandisement and settling on what she thought would appeal more to the man.

"I wouldn't have bothered wasting your time, Chieftain, if I thought I was only _reasonably_ competent," she said.

Eldritch laughed, an appropriately booming laugh coming from one such as him; but behind his gaze there was something shrewd looking out at Judith, weighing her up, fixing her directly in its line of sight and saying: Oh, a game of social graces, is it, Miss Fairweather? I know some of that myself. I might even be fairly _good_ at it.

"Well," he chuckled, "I shan't say over-confidence isn't a sin, but I won't say the same about frank self-appraisal. I suppose we'll both be able to put that to the test soon enough if you're willing. Ah, speaking of..."

Judith turned to where a high fireplace in one wall had suddenly flourished a tall column of green flame. A woman took form inside it and stepped out, the flames flickering off her as they stopped beside the desk and bowed briefly to Eldritch.

She stirred some memory that Judith had trouble immediately fixing. She was old and evidently a noble, her red-and-white robes richly decorated in contrast to Eldritch's own. Her iron-grey hair was fixed in a bun with two long golden pins, her face was weathered with wrinkles and small duelling scars, and her pale green eyes appraised Judith from behind spectacles made from carved crystal and fine dark wood.

"Lord Diggory," the woman said with a smile, offering a brief curtsey and an extended hand, her gaze not leaving Judith. "My apologies for my tardiness. I would have come sooner had I known you were already entertaining company."

"My lady, your presence alone makes up for any trifling lateness." The same chilly appraisal surrounded by careful cheerfulness hadn't left Eldritch's expression even as he leaned forward to kiss the woman's hand. "Miss Fairweather, may I introduce Lady Clemency Peverell of House Peverell? Lady Peverell, this is Judith Fairweather, the thief-taker so highly recommended to us."

"Indeed?" Clemency arched a grey brow. She snapped a finger, levitating a chair closer to the desk, which she perched herself upon. "Shall we discuss the task with her, then?"

Judith made no immediate reply, as where she recognised the woman from suddenly came back to her.

Memories stirred, and burst to life...

* * *

"All of you will have studied the basic books dealing in Defence Against the Dark Arts," came Professor Peverell's ringing tones as she strode between the two rows of students. "You've all turned in the homework to an … approximately satisfactory extent. You've done rote casting, of basic defences and basic harmless curses."

She stopped at the head of the classroom, and sharply turned to face her waiting Slytherin first-years, her well-tailored robes flapping in appropriately dramatic fashion behind her as she did so. "Since we've still got a few minutes until the end of class, shall I have you try something a little more practical?"

Judith, waiting in the row on the right side of the classroom, had to resist bouncing on her heels with excitement. Defence Against the Dark Arts had been one of her favourites from the beginning in spite of her classmates. She judged where this was heading, and was eager to get on with it.

"To finish off today, you'll _duel_," said Professor Peverell, leaning forward with a conspiratorial look on her face to excited mutters from several students, including Judith, whose judgement had been vindicated. "You all remember the Lesser Shield Charm and Impact Charm, do you not? Pair up with your opposite number in each row and practise as if you were engaged in a frantic life-or-death struggle on which the very fate of wizardkind hangs." Her eyes twinkled. "Or whatever else might motivate you most. This'll be a test of your speed and reflexes in a semi-practical situation as much as anything else, so I'll be observing that."

She stepped back, and started walking around the rows, around the classroom's perimeter. "Get ready, and start when I say so. I'll be keeping an eye on events in case anyone should suffer injury, so rest assured on that front – although, frankly, if one of you does do injury with the Impact Charm, I'll be _very_ impressed."

As the class broke into excited and nervous mutters and chatter, Judith turned on her heel to face the other row, closing her eyes as she did so. She'd been practising the Impact and Less Shield Charms for _ages_. Spells were hard to pick up easily for Judith, she'd learned that much, but she could do them as well as any other when she just practised. She'd even convinced Tamerlane into doing some practise duelling with the same Charms in a deserted hallway, and had been having fun before the caretaker had caught them, shouted himself hoarse at them, and given them both detentions for a week.

She opened her eyes and saw that opposite her was Ylonda Rosier, and couldn't help but groan. Ylonda didn't have a high opinion of Judith – or of any muggleborn, generally speaking – and had often been heard making long and pointed conversations with sympathetic Slytherins and purebloods in other houses about how Slytherin was inarguably going to the dogs and, ugh, what had the Sorting Hat even being _thinking_, the tatty old thing ought to be replaced, and all of _them_ kicked out, and suchlike topics – especially when Judith happened to be in the vicinity. Which, for both of them, was far too often.

Ylonda looked at Judith with undisguised disgust, and raised her hand.

"Professor?" she said, in tones designed for all in the classroom to hear, "I object to being partnered with the _mudblood_."

Judith held her breath. It wasn't the best possible course for the event to have taken, certainly, but it would turn out alright, surely. Professor Peverell was one of the better teachers, she'd surely just tell Ylonda to shut up and get on with the duel, and then Judith could see just how fast she could be when she had a _very_ good motivation...

Professor Peverell turned her head, and said, quite casually, "Then find someone better, dear," before resuming her rounds.

Ylonda smirked and looked down the row for someone suitable, while Judith stood right where she was, keeping her stance so still she seemed almost to tremble.

_Did she just..._

"Taurus!" shouted Ylonda, her voice seeming a long way off to Judith. "Over here!"

Taurus Black, from where he stood with no evident partner, shrugged and sauntered over from his end of the row, casting a glance void of even contempt at Judith as he did so.

"Hmmph," came the voice of Professor Peverell. "We appear to have an odd number of students. Fairweather, with me."

Judith walked over to the end of the row, still as if in a daze, and turned to face the professor, who looked at her briefly before redirecting her attention to the gradually assembling rest of the classroom.

"Everyone ready?"

Judith breathed in, remembering the various tips for a stance for a duel her dad had mentioned, some principles of which would seem to carry across to wand fighting as well. Her right foot slid forward, aimed right at her opponent and her left behind at an angle, placing her body to present as slim and small a target for her opponent as possible. Her wand was raised in her grip, her elbow slightly crooked and the wand aimed directly at her opponent's face.

Professor Peverell turned back to face Judith, and with that, the daze went. And in its place, there came realisation, anger, _motivation_...

"Begin," said Professor Peverell, and the first spell was already on Judith's lips.

"_Collido_!" she barked, her hand weaving through the movement and sending the sputtering line of yellow light right for the professor's face. Once the spell was off, she threw her hand into the movements for the next, the Lesser Shield Charm, in case of a quick attack from Professor Peverell in return. "_Sartego_!"

Peverell was ready, however, and her own waiting Shield, a gleaming plane of shimmering air in front of her, caught the Impact Charm with a harmless burst of light, dispersing both charms with a flash. Quickly, impossibly quickly from Judith's perspective, she sent a "_Collido_," of her own at Judith, a second chasing on its heels just as swiftly.

The first Impact Charm burst against Judith's Shield and both Charms vanished, leaving her defenceless against the second Impact Charm. Judith quickly twisted her body to one side, sending it hurtling past her. She readjusted herself, regaining her poise, and almost seethed when she saw Peverell.

The professor was bored. Her wand was only vaguely pointed in Judith's direction, and her attention had drifted away from Judith to scan across the rest of the classroom.

She'd humiliated Judith in front of Ylonda and Taurus and _everyone_, given her another excuse to be mocked later, she was engaged with Judith in a duel – a mock duel, but even so - and she wasn't even _looking_ at Judith. She wasn't _caring_.

Judith felt her indignation filling her - pitting her, the tiny first year, against the towering professor, and making the odds seem pretty good - and swore to _make_ her care.

"_Collido_!" Judith didn't bother with a follow-up shield, but with a second "_Collido_!", repeating Peverell's action. The professor flicked her head around, and a Shield that seemed to appear instantly with the briefest of incantations intercepted the first with a flash of light, into which the second Impact Charm vanished.

When the little blinding flash faded from Judith's vision – in which time she had hastily conjured up another Shield – she saw the Charm suspended in a little fizzing ball of yellow light between Peverell's index finger and thumb. The professor, looking dryly amused, flicked the Charm back at Judith, breaking apart both Charms.

"Tsk," she said, shaking her head. "There's a time and a place for being a copy-"

"_Collido_."

The spell impacted into Peverell's open mouth, cutting her off with a "-ca_ffwwuh_!" and setting the grey-brown hair at the side of her head fluttering. For a moment, she looked shocked, the shock giving way to a brief expression of anger, which then turned back to dry amusement. She glanced at the rest of the class, caught up in their own duels, and then back to Judith.

"Wands down, everyone," she announced, to a general quieting across the room. "The clock's against us, I'm afraid, and you'll probably be wanting your lunch. Before I bid you all avaunt, just a brief note. You'll have observed that your spells couldn't penetrate an active shield. However, there are ways of getting around a shield – and though dispelling's generally overkill for a Lesser Shield Charm, it's fit for breaking a full-blown _Protego_. I'll demonstrate. Fairweather, if you'd produce a shield?"

Judith, her anger simmering down to confused caution, whipped her wand through the air in the motions needed and said "_Sartego_." Peverell blurred behind the screen of light.

"Observe," said Peverell, angling her wand directly at Judith. "_Finite!_"

The counter-spell flashed and the Shield, rather than shimmering away with a weight of magic bearing down on it, shattered with a pulse of light and an eruption of sound and motion. Judith fell backwards, caught off guard by the force of it, and landed against the wall with a stunned release of breath.

As if from a distance, past a ringing in her skull while she tried to scrabble of the floor for her fallen wand, she heard the others alternately _ooh_ing, applauding, or laughing. She refused to look at them, turning her face and blurring vision angrily away from them as she found her wand.

"_That's_ what we'll be covering the theory for next lesson," said Professor Peverell, strolling back to her desk in a corner of the room. "Class dismissed."

* * *

Professor Peverell had left at the end of first year, Judith recalled, for reasons nobody had ever elaborated on and which Judith had never pursued. She was a noble – the last of the illustrious Peverells, no less - so it was assumed business relating to her House and requiring her attention was involved.

Now she had apparently risen again like a bad smell, and though Judith wasn't about to let a bad experience or two or several in childhood impact on this meeting, she still felt herself tense.

Peverell – _Clemency_, of all names – didn't even seem to recognise Judith, so that wouldn't be a complicating factor at least.

"Now, you understand that what we're about to discuss can't leave this room, Miss Fairweather. It's the sort of thing that could potentially make things complicated for the Council – for both sides in the current great debate - if enough wizards found out and took their own initiative on the business," said Eldritch. "Do I have your word of honour that you'll hold your silence?"

"You do," replied Judith, banishing her prior thoughts and letting her curiosity rise. "By both my honour and all that's sacred. _And_ my professional guarantee."

"Well, then," said Eldritch cheerfully, "Let's get to it, shall we? Wizards in the Scottish Borders and Lowlands are disappearing and dying. We'd be greatly appreciative if you could find out why and put a stop to it."

Judith sat silently and processed the sentence.

Disappearances and murder. This already sounded fun.

"Well, that sounds civilised and very much within my remit," she said. "What are the gritty details?"

"These are always the best details," replied Eldritch. "Four victims in a short space of time. Shall we, Lady Peverell?"

"The first was Simon Araghast," said Clemency. "Member of an old and distinguished family, basing themselves in Dumfries. A member of the Council as well. He vanished while out walking a month ago, and a few days after that, the lifeclock for his family saw his hand set finally on twelve."

"A week after that came Elizabeth McDonald, a muggleborn witch. Vanished quite suddenly from her home in Selkirk, with some signs of a struggle about the place – some of those signs including blood on the walls and her wand shattered on the floor." Eldritch spread his hands wide. "No convenient lifeclock at hand, but there's only one reasonable conclusion from that."

"Ten days after her came the Canmore siblings, Duncan and Iona. Both of them Council members, both of them accomplished magic-users, and both entirely abducted from their home in North Berwick, likewise leaving blood and shattered wands behind them. Their family's lifeclock has, alas, set upon twelve for both of them as well." Clemency looked briefly saddened. "And unless Old Lord Canmore sees fit to sire new heirs, that threatens an end to the Canmore name."

"Four vanished magic-users, all vanished in the same mysterious manner barring Araghast who wasn't in his home, and all except maybe Elizabeth dead. And all from the Borders." Judith frowned. "It would all seem to suggest a common culprit or culprits. But what makes this particularly sensitive? Why am I being brought in rather than an official retainer of the Council?"

"...Politics," ventured Eldritch after a long and reluctant pause.

"How acquainted are you with current debates raging in the Council, Miss Fairweather?" asked Clemency, staring at Judith with an expression that seemed to indicate she wouldn't expect much acquaintance at all.

"I assume the relevant current debate is Transmutation?" asked Judith, returning the expression with a cold and professional regard. "I'm aware of if not particularly invested in it."

"Ah. A pity," said Eldritch. "You're probably aware that I head the efforts to reform the Council. Lady Peverell, in this case, acts as the leader and spokeswitch for those opposed to my efforts. And where this gets sensitive is the dead Council members."

"The muggleborn is irrelevant to the issue. But Simon was a staunch ally of mine. And both of the Canmores were very much on Lord Diggory's side of the fence," said Clemency.

"Since the divide in the Council is particularly fraught, and especially now that tensions are high with a Moot on the way, the Council's retainers – answerable to me – regrettably wouldn't be regarded as neutral by much of the Council," said Eldritch. "Likewise, any retainer of the Araghasts or anyone working on behalf of Lady Peverell wouldn't be considered to be neutral. A private thief-taker, however, agreed upon by both Lady Peverell and myself..."

"You came recommended by several known to us," said Clemency. "And despite your natural … disadvantages, your record seems competent enough."

Judith counted slowly in her head, knowing that to press the issue of 'natural disadvantages' would result in at least hurt feelings all round. "What would be the Council's level of gratitude, exactly?" she ground out, moving on the conversation.

"Thirty Galleons at minimum for pursuing an investigation," said Eldritch. "Sixty more in the event of it being successfully resolved. Should additional complications arise which we direct you to settle, then additional rewards will be proportionate to the scale of the risk involved. And, of course, the warm glow of virtue for serving your nation and helping avenge the dead, and the thanks of a grateful Council. The latter two, I've been informed, cannot be easily priced, though I doubt my wise informants really seriously tried. They'd probably come to a lot."

Judith struggled to find a single word amidst that that she objected to, and came up blank. She especially liked the numbers, and almost asked Eldritch to repeat them. Instead, she said "Well, that seems quite reasonable."

"Just so. Do we have your service, then?"

Judith then thought of Rebecca, and reluctantly concluded that 'disappearances and murder' was the sort of thing that probably predicted some element of risk.

"Permission to briefly excuse myself?" she asked. "I'd like a moment to confer with my nearest and dearest."

"By all means," said Eldritch, looking amused.

Judith rose, curtseyed, left the room through the same door she'd entered, and closed it behind her.

She breathed in, focused, and there came the rush of air filling a sudden vacuum...

* * *

...And then there came the crack of displaced air and the sound of Judith cursing inside the bakery's living room.

Rebecca came through by the time Judith's ear had reattached itself with the assistance of Essence of Dittany, brushing her hands off on a heavy apron, into which was stuffed a clean cloth.

"I assume words pertaining to danger were mentioned?" she said, offering Judith the cloth, with which Judith mopped at the side of her head.

"They were," said Judith is a somewhat strained voice. "Four wizards and witches in the Borders have vanished, and 'tis likely all of them are dead. They need me as a neutral party to investigate, you were right about that, and I'd just like to say the following numbers before you consider your objections: thirty Galleons minimum, and at least ninety if I complete the job."

Rebecca paused, her face set in concentration.

"And what do they want you to do, exactly?" she asked. "Just investigate, or to actively hunt out whoever or whatever's involved and deal with them?"

"Investigating was the main gist of it," said Judith slowly. "But while they did mention the latter as something they'd like me to pursue, I'd probably end up being safe to call in someone's retainers if it's a great enough threat. It's certainly not going to be as dangerous as the nuckelavee – or even as much as most things I've done in the past."

Rebecca looked equal parts reassured and unsure, and Judith ventured her most winning smile in an attempt to shift the balance on the scales. When that didn't work, she said "Ninety Galleons for minimal risk. We could expand the bakery. Hire an assistant. Maybe … well, call in an architect to do some work on the top floor with our bedroom. See about getting that _other_ bedroom we'd discussed built."

The silence then held promise. Rebecca looked up and said, with a smile, "Oh, go on then. But ... be careful."

"Am I not always?" said Judith, leaning in and stealing a quick kiss. "I'll be just a moment more. It's probably considered rude to keep a Chieftain waiting."

She stepped back, concentrated...

* * *

After a moment's muffled swearing and strategic placement of Dittany, Judith re-entered the office. Eldritch sat with his head supported on his folded hands, regarding her with amusement. Clemency sat, her expression blank.

Judith coughed and resumed sitting.

"Well," she said, "That all seems perfectly reasonable and straight-forward. Shall we draft that contract?"


	5. The World's Deceits

In the dawn's early light, King James knelt in prayer.

"Almighty God and Sovereign Christ, I beg forgiveness for my sins and beg for Your grace to guide me," he started, the rote he had kept since childhood and that he had meant sincerely every time. His head rested upon his clasped hands, his elbows rested upon the side of his bed, and he spoke the words so softly that they came out as a whisper on the edge of hearing.

Two of his guard waited inside James's bedroom, their own morning prayers since performed so they could attend to the king without pause. They stood at attention, wearing matching gleaming cuirasses over buff coats, their heads covered by steel close helmets. Crossbows were strapped across their backs, while snaphance pistols and sheathed arming swords hung from their belts.

"Grant me Your strength, for today I go forth to protect the righteous and punish Your foes. Help me guard my people and my nation, mine by Your will, for… for…"

James gathered himself, swallowed, and continued.

"For we are but fickle creatures, and I would be lost without Your guidance. In the Name of Christ, Amen."

"Amen," came the quiet echoes from his guards, and James rose.

He had already given himself a brief wash and dressed for the day, in a suitably well-made white shirt, gold doublet, and black leather jerkin with dark padded hose. He reached out for his sword belt, holding a richly ornamented rapier, and began securing it around his waist.

"Let's make for the court's camp," said James, finishing and turning to the guards. "Edinburgh's gentry undoubtedly eagerly wait to bore me with finances and clan squabbles."

The men fell into line with the king as they made their way downstairs. The minister for North Berwick had generously offered his comparatively fine home – part of the local kirk - to the king for the duration of his stay, probably not anticipating that the stay would last for more than a month. It had accommodated James and a few of his servants, while the bulk of his guard and whatever of his court had travelled from Edinburgh had assembled a large camp of tents and fine pavilions on the edge of the town. James, of course, allowed the kirk to be used as normal for Sunday services; and had brought along his own minister for his court's makeshift services in the camp, so that the local religious practise didn't have to be compromised by the royal weight of numbers.

It looked like being a beautiful Sunday as well, he thought, as they left the kirk and headed out into North Berwick. Smoke was streaming up into the clear dawn sky from several buildings as they made their way through the streets, with farmers already heading out to their fields and tradesmen beginning to set up shop. To the north of the town, the clear dark blue expanse of the Firth of Forth glittering under the sun, with Fife just visible as a distant dark band on the horizon

James received deep bows from the peasantry he passed on the street, imagining that the bows now had a touch of routine about them that they hadn't had when he'd first arrived. The novelty of having the king in one's own town must have worn off, he supposed. Early on, he'd often been asked by the townspeople, in trembling and respectful tones, for his blessing and royal touch to drive out the scrofula of sufferers. He had granted such requests, of course. One time, it had earned him a bite from an uncooperative infant; and he had laughingly waved away the fraught mother's apologies. After all, the child would have a lifetime in which to learn that such behaviour was generally considered impolite; and if nothing else would at least have a unique claim to fame.

He was greeted by Commander Wilkie, attended by four other guards, as he left North Berwick and entered the small sea of tents and banners that was the royal camp. The huge man bowed, merely placing his head on a level with James's own.

"Good morning, commander. Does the usual morning business await my attention?"

"I'm afraid so, Your Grace." Wilkie motioned at the four. "Attend to the king, all of you. MacFarlane and Tennant, with me. With your leave, Your Grace?"

James nodded, and his two guards peeled away after Wilkie. The four replacements fell into step alongside James as he made his way to the open pavilion at the camp's centre. He sighted a large queue of expectant-looking messengers and petitioners waiting near the pavilion as he approached, and suppressed a sigh.

The bolder amongst them began to approach James as he walked, only to be pressed away by the guards. He reached the pavilion, seating himself behind the table that separated him from the queue, and beckoned the first one forward.

"Your Grace, I come at the command of the Earl of Gowrie," started the man, a messenger in a red belted plaid, still muddied from the road. "He bids me to deliver his fondest wishes, and the following enquiry after the repayment of the loan taken…"

James dealt with the man, making whatever promises would likely sate Gowrie and sending the messenger on his way. The next one in the queue ventured forward – a Highlander, by James's immediate guess, and who vindicated the king with a Gaelic-marked accent.

His request broke like water on a rock; James hardly needing to scratch the surface of his memory of legal matters to resolve the petty dispute the man brought to him - some contention about some old contract over which two chieftains had placed themselves at loggerheads.

He knew the affair would be much the same as the rest; all the matters requiring the king's attention before the camp's early morning service. It would like as not be the same mix of reports of squabbling clan leaders across the Highlands and bickering nobles in the Lowlands, the realm's finances, trouble from the barbarian Hebrideans, requests from peers and chieftains; all sent to Edinburgh and then ferried to his court here. All routine matters that he had been bred, born, and raised to handle; that he could like as not resolve in his sleep, were it not for the sheer volume of them.

This realm of his was entirely too messy for James's liking. Too much tangled history, too many primitive and petty leaders presuming to argue against his divine right to rule; men who quietly scorned his reign, who ignored the greater perils in favour of their insignificant bickering, and some of whom even scorned the true faith in their adherence to papism and other heresies.

If a king was to remain sane, it would all need simplifying.

James absently gave some thought to Anne, his wife and Queen, still living in the capital. He felt a flush of guilt for not replying to her letter the day before yesterday as quickly as he could have done, and swore to make it his first priority.

He would have asked her to come here with him – but it was safest that she remain in Edinburgh, surrounded by kirkmen and his loyal lords. Besides, her crossing from Denmark had already been assailed by storms sent by witches, and he would not see her come close to the peril posed by them again.

_That_ was what he anticipated, after the business of court and the service were both finished. The witch trials, both public and private.

The public ones would be the less serious of the two, but were necessary to reassure his people and to combat the Enemy's lesser plots and servants. Many of those accused and brought to them would turn out to be innocent; victims of jealous neighbours bringing false witness. A severe questioning from James would usually be enough to assure himself of their innocence.

Others would bear undeniable signs of consorting with Satan. The weight of testimony would be great, and signs of familiars and illnesses sent upon their enemies would further damn them. There were conventional means for dealing with them as well. Instruments of pain, the extraction of confessions and repentance, and, for the truly lost, the fire. Their punishment would be witnessed, and the righteous would gain heart and the unfaithful would know fear.

But there were others yet, who, due to the threat they posed, couldn't be brought before the people. They were mortal vessels for the most terrible and potent of the Enemy's craft.

James almost shuddered, as he remembered…

But he knew how to deal with them. Had he not secured four of them in the past month? Had he not seen them denied their sources of power, found them truly damned, and seen them each dead once their brief private trials had concluded?

He had his guards; the Witchguard as he would have had them known, if he risked betraying their true purpose to the Enemy's greatest servants. He had knowledge kept close to his heart, foolishly given to him by the witches themselves when they had dared to reveal their presence in his realm. Some of that knowledge he had passed to Commander Wilkie and the Witchguard, and it had served them well.

And he had God's own might at his side. He had the promise of final victory, of seeing Scotland scourged of witchcraft during his reign and being made a pure and good country in the eyes of God.

Hadn't the angel told him so?

* * *

Rebecca woke to early-morning sunlight edging across the bedroom. She was one of those rare people blessed to naturally rise early, but was simultaneously cursed to begrudge it; and mustered herself from sleep with some token grumbling. She had a bakery to run, after all.

Rising to a sitting position in the bed, she reached for her wand and coaxed a soft flame from the oil lamp on her bedside table. Turning to the other side of the bed, she prepared to go through the usual morning routine; kiss and tousle the hair of a still-sleeping Judith; be ineffectually fended off by a Judith who wished to remain sleeping, thank you kindly; Charm herself clean and alert, and get dressed; go down and check on the overnight baking while preparing breakfast; draft whatever letters needed to be sent to her suppliers or creditors at Gringotts…

Her mental list was thrown off slightly when Judith turned out to be absent, her sheets folded into something approximating neatness and still bearing something of her body's impression. On the table at Judith's side, there lay several pages of the notes she'd scribbled to herself last night when she'd returned from the meeting with Diggory, topped by the contract she'd proudly brandished when reappearing in the living room.

Frowning, Rebecca felt the impression. There was still a bit of warmth there. In the stillness of the room, she heard movement from the ground floor as well.

A few quick charms and the shrugging-on of dressing robes later, Rebecca headed down the stairs. As she descended, she became sure that she was hearing footsteps on the hard floor of the baking room, matched with the purr of the flames in a lit oven. Reaching the ground floor and passing through the living room on the way to the baking room, she heard muttering from Judith in the baking room, companioned by the sounds of something heavy and metal – most likely a tray – shifting.

She rounded the corner to the baking room, and required a moment to process the sight properly. Judith was baking. She was poised in front of one of the open ovens, from which a flickering orange light spilled. The long metal handle of a baking tray, painted orange by the reflection of the flames, protruded out. Judith peered into the oven, muttered something under her breath, and briefly grasped the wand hanging from her belt with both hands before saying "_Frigiflammas._" She removed her hands from the wand; each now covered in an icy-blue sheen, and pulled out the tray by the handle, heaving it onto the low stone plinth jutting out from the oven's front.

It was only while combing through them that she noticed Rebecca, and rose with a start, brushing her now-normal hands off on her dress's front.

The dress - that was another oddity in the situation. It was a kirtle, a piece of muggle clothing, woven from simple dark wool and draped over a pale smock. A linen apron hung from the dress's waist, supported by a plain rope belt. A wide-brimmed hat, similarly made from dark wool, perched atop Judith's head.

Rebecca had known Judith possessed muggle clothes, but had never known her to actually wear them, apart from on the odd occasion a few years back when she'd been visiting her family. That had ended when the plague had had one of its regular outbursts in the muggle world, and Rebecca thought Judith had locked the clothes away, along with most other items from that time. Apparently, she'd been wrong.

"Good morning," said Judith, who'd clearly been awake long enough to appear reasonably bright-eyed and alert. "I didn't want to wake you, and I thought I could finish these before you'd need the ovens. I might have borrowed some ingredients from your store cupboards for these. I can pay back the cost of them if you…"

"Morning also, love, and rest assured that the ingredients aren't a problem," said Rebecca, gathering her dressing robes around her and tightening the knot at their waist. "I have several questions, as you may imagine."

She took stock of the items on the tray at this point, two dozen or so small blueberry scones. You had to really try hard to go wrong with scones, and with them even Judith's tendency to produce charred messes that probably qualified as sins against creation contended in vain.

Judith appeared briefly deep in thought, and then replied with "I think I may be able to answer all of them at once."

"Oh?"

"Have you ever heard of what theatre players call 'getting into character'?"

Rebecca nodded, and then realised. "So this is how you'll be investigating? By asking muggles while pretending to be one?"

"In essence, exactly. I'll start in North Berwick – that's where the Canmores were taken from, and starting there might yield something useful."

"Why do you think the muggles would know anything?"

"I'm wondering whether the victims might have accidentally revealed their magic in some way. If they had, and some observant witch-hunter had managed to evade an Obliviation afterwards, then … well, that would have left them open to retribution. And if that same hunter had succeeded, and had then decided to make it a habit-"

"That's quite a string of 'ifs'."

"This is just my first line of enquiry. But a muggle culprit might make some sort of sense. There doesn't seem to be any overarching connection between or allegiance of the victims that would suggest a magic-user acting for political reasons. And if the victims had been attacked by a magic-user, there'd … well, there'd either be a lot more obvious destruction in their homes or a lot less. Blasting Curses would have caused a lot more damage, while something like a Killing Curse wouldn't leave any at all."

Rebecca still looked sceptical, and Judith followed on with "I'll admit, it's just a thought of mine. For all I know, it could just be some lone mad wizard whom they all happened to infuriate during their histories. This is just the beginning of the investigation. I'm probably not even going to have a single no-holds-barred duel today, just you see."

"If you say so. Although I'm still mystified over where the scones come into this."

"Observe," said Judith. She stood deliberately apart from the scones. "Wandering nosey gossip." She moved nearer the scones, picking one up and offering it to Rebecca with a smile. "Tradeswoman who you wouldn't mind having a chat with while you eat some of her excellent and unparalleled baked goods. Heard anything about missing witches and warlocks of late, good woman? You didn't happen to gruesomely murder one or know someone who did, perchance?"

Rebecca ventured a wry grin. "Well, I can only assume you know what you're doing. And if the muggles turn out to be blameless, at least you'll have made some money from the day."

"Probably not in a useful form for us. Gringotts probably doesn't recognise placks and pennies." Judith placed the scone down into a nearby basket, and began delicately stacking the other scones therein as well. She paused halfway through, and looked up at Rebecca brightly. "You know, since I'm already roused and I've got the oven lit, why don't you take a few extra minutes in bed? I'll make breakfast today for both of us, and you can…"

"Oh, no. No, that's … that's alright," said Rebecca quickly. Successful as Judith's crack at the scones may have been, there came a point (and though she felt like a dreadful person for thinking it, she had a lot of precedent on her side) where it was best to not push the world's suspension of disbelief in a single morning any more than you had to. "I'll have to start on a few orders anyway now that I'm up. I'll make some bannocks. They'll fill you up for a day of acting."

"Oh, my thanks." Judith picked up the basket and left the room, landing a brief kiss on Rebecca's nose as she went. "Do we still have some of that strawberry preserve? That would go nicely with warm bannocks."

"In the leftmost store cupboard, top shelf. Lay the table while you're about it," said Rebecca briskly, regarding the oven that had been used for the scones, the embers within still glowing red-hot. She decided to use it for the morning's loaves, left to bake at the back, while the bannocks could take a few moments at the front. She'd already planned out what the other ovens would take, as part of the Sunday schedule.

She turned to the cupboards and work surface, intending to retrieve whatever ingredients she'd need and start preparations. As she did so, she absently snapped her fingers, and was rewarded with a sudden rush of orange light filling the room behind her, coupled with heat spilling from the other ovens.

Rebecca allowed herself a brief smile. Managing fire had always been a specialty of hers.

* * *

The morning sun was firmly in the sky over the rolling fields around North Berwick, the dawn long since having moved on to bother the western sea. On a dirt road that ran between these fields, connecting the town to several farmsteads, a cart trundled. It was pulled by a lumbering ox, which was goaded on by a young and well-built man sitting in the cart's front. An old woman sat next to him, peering out at the world ahead while her hands rested on a short and thick walking stick.

At one point, the woman squinted out at the road and said, "Is there someone ahead of us, Seth?"

"Yes, Gran," replied the young man in a voice like a meek mountain.

"Speed up a bit, then, there's a lad. They might want a lift."

"Yes, Gran." Seth flicked the reins, goading the ox into taking the road at a slightly faster plod.

After a few moments, the cart drew level with the person ahead, who revealed themselves, on closer inspection by the old woman, to be a young lady with a small and full basket.

"Morning to you, chookie," said the old woman, catching her attention. "You headed into town?"

The woman turned, revealing a pinched and angular face set into a wary smile. "Morning to you also, good mother. North Berwick's where I'm headed." Her accent suggested the Borders to the old woman, who'd known a few peddlers and traders heading from there over the years.

"Oh aye?" The old woman leaned down with a conspiratorial wink, as she eyed the young lady's basket. "Service, followed by a little bit of Sabbath breaking?"

"To that general effect, yes." The young lady returned a nervous grin, even as she took stock of the cart in which a few sheared sheep carcasses were heaped. "I willna tell if you don't."

"Good lass. Would you like a lift there? It's hot weather for walking."

"That would be good of you," said the young lady, her smile turning into something a lot more comfortable.

"Budge along, Seth, there's a good lad. Make room for our guest," chided the old woman as she shifted herself to give the young lady room for a seat. She extended a well-weathered and wrinkled hand. "I'm Agnes Blackadder. This here's my grandson, Seth. Blacksmith's apprentice, would you believe. What do you go by, chookie?"

"Judith Fairweather," replied the young lady, settling herself in beside Agnes. "M'husband moved into his cousin's farmstead to the south a couple of days back. I thought I should attend a service and see myself introduced to the people here. Sell off a few scones while I was about it."

"Well, you're in good company. Stick by me and I'll see you right."

"I'm sure. Would you like a scone or two? I made them fresh this morning."

Agnes was pleasantly surprised to find herself presented with one of the scones by Judith, another being held across to Seth, who took it with a murmured "My thanks."

"My thanks also," said Agnes. "Keep that up, and you'll be everyone's friend in no time. I'd offer you something in return, but I doubt raw mutton's much to your taste. If you'd hang around when I get these to the butcher, I'll see you get a cut if you want."

"That'd be too generous of you, ma'am. It was the least I could do for a lift in the sunshine."

The cart trundled onwards. After a while, Agnes decided to break the pleasant silence with a decent bit of chat.

"So, newly arrived, you say?"

"Aye. About as new as can be," said Judith. "Anything of interest that I'll have missed been happening of late?"

"Michty," said Agnes, shaking her head slowly and wonderingly. "You could say that again."


	6. Faith and Evidence

The game was afoot, the chase was on, the hunt had sounded; and all these other expressions that came to Judith's mind when she felt the thrill of a new job settling in. It was one thing to talk about it in mild tones with whatever aristocrat of the week had required assistance; it was another to finally get out into the field and let the rush of it flow through you.

She'd admit, of course, that the circumstances under which the thrill set in were usually more exciting than exchanging polite conversation with an old lady; but the means weren't the most important thing.

"Call it about …three months? Aye, three months ago was when the whole business started, when the king and his new queen were coming home from Denmark," started Agnes. "They ran smack into a storm on the first try – a big, black beast of a tempest, a real ship-breaker. And once they'd sheltered in a friendly port in Norway and finally made the crossing home, there was a hunt for where the storm had come from and who'd sent it."

"It wasn't just one that … well, happened?" Judith played her role as best she could, looking appropriately sheepish in her new company and awkwardly eager to ingratiate herself. Internally, she carefully dissected Agnes's words for anything that sounded promising.

The point where Agnes had said "We've been having the king in town for the witch trials," had qualified. Judith had pursued the subject and listened closely as they drew closer to North Berwick; the town's buildings, backed by the waters of the Firth of Forth, began to dominate Judith's view of the landscape.

"Storms are acts of God, chookie, and God wouldn't smite a king that wasn't wicked," said Agnes with an air of stern authority. "This was one sent by Satan's servants. I heard they started first in Edinburgh, amongst the gentry, finding a few witches in _their_ midst. But none as could have sent that storm until they found a trail here."

"And what did they find?"

"Dark things. Hauntings sent out upon decent and holy folk in the night, familiars from Satan colluding with the damned, secret meetings with the Enemy himself, poisoners and people working arcane things upon flesh – a nest of serpents fit to send any storm upon any crown, that I'll tell you!"

Judith made herself look suitably aghast. "And that's when the king came to North Berwick?"

"Aye. He's a learned man as well as a king_, as well as_ the attempted victim of their sorceries. Of course he'd take a personal interest. He led the witch-hunt in Edinburgh first, and sent a few of his men here when they first started finding witchcraft here. He followed shortly after – this would have been about a month back – along wi' all his guard and court, and a minister for their own services."

Agnes fell silent for a moment, watching the streets of the town roll up ahead. "I wouldn't have thought it of old Thompson, mind you. But the king found him guilty and … well, it'll always be those you suspect the least, won't it? And he wasn't the last. Dozens followed, a trickle and then a flood. Many tried to pin false accusations, trying to hurt their neighbours for their land and property or for their own revenge. But some weren't so falsely accused."

They had entered the town proper, the cart trundling down a wide dirt road lined on either side by wood and stone houses. Other people were out in the streets, trickling in from the town itself and from outlying farms towards where a kirk steeple jutted into the sky. Old people struggled onwards, assisted by others or supporting themselves on sticks. Children ran, screaming and laughing as parents made vague efforts to control them and stop them from dirtying their Sunday clothes.

Judith looked up, to where gulls screeched and swooped in the blue sky, some perching themselves on the roofs of houses and others atop the tall stone steeple of the kirk. Looking west, she thought she caught a glimpse of brightly-coloured cloth before a house blocked it from view – the king's camp, she guessed.

She caught the glint of metal to her front, and saw ahead in the street two armoured figures crossing it in the direction of the camp. They were heavily armed and armoured in helmets and cuirasses, and the townsfolk gave them a respectable amount of space. Judith imagined they would be part of the royal camp if they were headed there, and probably – judging by the quality of their arms – the king's own guard. She asked Agnes about them.

"Oh aye, they're His Majesty's guard. There's about sixty of them along wi' all the rest of his court in the camp – they cart in supplies from Edinburgh to keep them all fed. A cold bunch when they're on duty, but they often come into town when they're free, to splash their pay around. Seth sold one of them a good knife he'd made, didn't you, lad?"

"Yes, Gran."

"Had a chat with him as well. A Highlander, apparently. Rough lot." Agnes nodded towards the men, where they were just vanishing out of sight past a junction in the street. "Supposedly, they're all noblemens' sons or clan princes who the king picks out specially. He likes them to be good and faithful. He usually keeps a few of them in the minister's house with him – that's where he's taken up quarters, I've heard."

They rounded a gentle curve in the street, coming within sight of the front entrance to the kirk itself, a great stone building that dominated the town around it. The great doors were open, already admitting a steady stream of quietly-chattering people.

"We'll let you off here," said Agnes. "Seth and I'll just get the cart stowed at the smithy and turn up heretically late, as usual. Probably a bad habit in these days."

"My thanks," said Judith, dismounting off the cart's side as Seth slowed the ox. "I'll catch up with you both in the fullness."

"Take care, chookie," called Agnes, waving as the cart trundled away. "Bid her goodbye, Seth."

"Goodbye, miss," said Seth, glancing around briefly before turning his attention back to the street.

Judith entered the kirk, joining the stream of people that were taking their positions inside it and attracting a few curious looks as a newcomer. Passing the doorway, she became aware of the stifling warmth of the building, of the crowd dividing itself to pool into the rows of pews, and of the minister at the front; a small and demure-looking man standing behind a rough stone altar on a raised wooden stage.

Low and fervent conversations filled the air around her, the sounds of the solitary grumbling, others mouthing the routine hymns under their breath, parents corralling their children and mothers hushing crying babies. Judith began edging herself into a pew, tucking the basket of scones between her feet, and couldn't help but smile at the nostalgia that broke over her. She'd not been in a church since her parents' passing, and hadn't attended one regularly for … over ten years?

_That long?_, she thought. _That's not a good deficit._

"Be standing," came the surprising-deep command from the minister, as all those that had been sitting, not including Judith, rose.

Judith's nostalgia turned to vague guilt at the thought, mired in the confusion that had haunted her ever since she'd had to reconcile her magic and the Bible's teachings.

Mind you, she thought, at least not all of her early problems had been due to her magic itself.

The congregation broke, slowly and in a disunited fashion, into the first hymn for the service, led by the minister. Judith joined in, opting for the 'hum the approximate melody and try and look as though you're producing words' approach taken by many others as she let her mind drift-

* * *

The summer was nearing, and as the authorities in Hogwarts weren't cruel enough to inflict the joys of exams on first-years, they sought to keep them occupied with an abundance of homework instead.

Judith had worked her brain to near-rebellion over an essay for Herbology, practising and transcribing the procedure for Mordenkainen's Effective Self-Preservation in Defence Against The Dark Arts, and the complete Fifth Degree of Safety in Transfiguration. These had taken up nearly all of her spare time, which hadn't even been enough for all of the homework.

It was a cold and brisk Monday morning. She waited behind in the Potions classroom, and dreaded explaining the absence of the twelve-inch essay on the historical and modern uses of willow bark Professor Zhong had requested. The professor would believe her to be lazy, slow, incompetent- or some mixture of all of the above – and the very thought rankled.

She waited until everyone else had departed, hanging behind until the last few students had put their essays on the desk and left chattering through the door. Professor Zhong regarded her impassively as she approached. He had been said to be from Far Cathay, and, based on his exotic complexion and name, Judith could believe it. Hogwarts apparently recruited the best, wherever they might be, with wizarding magic making distance no object.

Hesitantly, and more than a little trepidation, she confessed that she had no completed essay, and apologised.

Professor Zhong, his expression acquiring the hint of a frown, enquired how this could be the case, given that he'd allowed the class a generous amount of time to get the essay done.

Judith replied that she'd had to spend her Thursday afternoon on Professor Peverell's procedure, Thursday evening and all of Friday on Professor Prenderghast's homework, and that Professor Cattermole's own essay had taken up more of Saturday than she'd anticipated for.

Professor Zhong opined that, the current day being Monday, that would still have seemed to have left her a perfectly good Sunday to use to her own benefit.

Judith, with some confusion, said that that would have been the Sabbath.

Professor Zhong agreed that that was another name he'd heard for the day, and a nice name it was too, but that he still did not see how that was relevant.

Judith elaborated, patiently, that working on the Sabbath would have breached one of God's Commandments, and would have been a sin.

Professor Zhong replied that he expected the homework he set to be prioritised over a student's comforting ritual.

Judith repeated the sin part.

Professor Zhong paused, and then enquired whether or not that was the sort of thing to represent a threat to some ambiguous part of Judith called her 'soul', which she held in high estimation.

Judith affirmed this.

Professor Zhong, seeming to experience some manner of epiphany, asked if Judith happened to worship Christ.

Judith also affirmed this.

Professor Zhong gave the matter consideration, heaved a sigh, and then informed Judith that he expected her essay on his desk tomorrow evening; that she was to have no compunctions about working through a Sabbath in future if her schoolwork for Potions demanded it; and that if her God had a problem with this, He was welcome to take it up with Zhong himself.

And Judith had left, greatly confused.

"Does Christianity even exist in Cathay?" she asked later, seated around one of the great animated fountains in the main courtyard of Hogwarts with the others. The courtyard was busy and filled with the babble of the conversation all around them, being a popular gathering place as summer drew nearer. Judith was seated on the fountain's edge, with Rebecca and Bezalel to her right and left, respectively. Tamerlane was comfortably sprackled in the crook of the low-hanging stone arm of the troll at the centre of the fountain, with Arborlun perched beside him on the troll's palm, his nose buried in an old textbook. Aaliyah was standing, resting a sheet of paper up upon the flat back of a centaur as she scribbled furiously. "I'd heard that there were papists there – though I don't suppose there could be very many of them."

"There wouldn't be many, I'd think," said Rebecca. "Though I've heard he's from a pureblood line there, so that wouldn't have helped either." Her voice was almost drowned out by the hubbub of conversation all around them; the fountains were a popular gathering spot as summer rolled n.

"How so?" asked Judith.

"Well," started Tamerlane, from his position lying in the stone troll's arm, "It's evident, isn't it? We purebloods don't do as much of that Christian stuff."

"But you're not pu-" started Arborlun.

"I _will_ lay a horrific curse upon you. And it doesn't really matter – religion, that is – to me. Anyone can believe what they like, so long as it's _correct_."

"To clarify, before this turns into a brawl, what are our various positions, religious-wise?" asked Rebecca, who'd been coming out of her shell in recent months. "Because I do like a lot of the cathedrals and churches, even if I don't really believe in the things they say in them – my family's always been Arcanist."

"Jewish. My father's the chief rabbi in Prague, and all of Bohemia for that matter – and the Maharal," said Bezalel cheerfully. "He said that magic's a gift from God, that we have to be responsible in using it – that we have to protect ourselves and others with it, to be brave and hard-working and faithful and all the usual to be worthy of it."

Judith nodded – she'd had her long-running suspicions about Bezalel confirmed openly, and she'd been friends with him long enough that she didn't feel discomfited by it – but she was still wondering what 'Arcanist' referred to. Aaliyah interjected before she could ask, however.

"I've thought about it a lot – my mum's from the Ottoman Empire, and she's a Muslim; while my dad's a Catholic Italian," she said. "Both of them, I think, want me to be happy, but I want both of them to be happy as well, and I've always been told to find a third option where one presents itself. I found one."

"That being?" asked Judith.

"I'm a Catholic Muslim," said Aaliyah firmly. "Jesus was the Son of God, and Muhammad was His Prophet. The pope in Rome's the authority on God's teachings, except when he's wrong; and you do your best to follow all of the teachings from both of them, whatever the teachings may be."

"That..." started Judith. "I... that's _cheating_!"

"How so? If it's what I believe, it's what I believe, correct? And if I don't, I just have to do it hard enough for a while."

"Delaying brawl," said Arborlun quickly. "Christian, I suppose. Mother tried to take me to churches. Priest once tried to talk to me. Not sure if he was correct or not." He returned the surprised looks he got, and then hid, blushing, behind his book, his voluntary social interaction done for the day. "Never was that interested, really."

"Arcanist as well," yawned Tamerlane. "It's the done practice amongst wizardkind here."

"What _is_ it, even?" asked Judith.

"Well it's not so much a faith as a position," said Tamerlane, more hesitantly now that he was being questioned. "It's more – well, you know magic in general? It's really the view that _magic_ is the main force there is; that it makes up the building bricks for the world and that it lets us truly change things about the world in turn. It's the higher power, unaccountable and generous only to the worthy and – well, mindless in its own way, and that we exist as petty beings in its domain."

"So … you just believe in magic?"

"Yes, more or less. Though we do usually like a lot of muggle religious paraphernalia. The buildings are pretty. Sometimes, we borrow them for our own weddings."

"And magic just – hovers around, being a reason without doing anything else?"

"Essentially, yes."

The idea left Judith uneasy. Ever since she could remember, she'd been going to churches and being spoken to about God and Jesus and the salvation you had to strive towards. And what it had given her, in addition to the satisfaction of feeling that she knew what everything was all about and a vague fear of Hell, was a comfort in feeling that no matter how dark a night or lonely a dorm, there would always be something greater out there keeping watch over her and walking by her side.

She'd been sure about that even since Hogwarts had happened. The magic warned against in the Bible surely couldn't be the same practised here. She'd not even seen anything that could have resembled a demon, barring the giant squid or some of the gargoyles (and some of the teachers and her fellow Slytherins, when she was in an uncharitable frame of mind), and the former were quite friendly once you got to know them.

To say that there was nothing but some sort of aloof and mindless chaos watching over everything seemed not only blasphemous, but terribly alienating and lonely, and she said so in perhaps-undiplomatic terms.

"That's horrific," Judith opined. "If all you're worshipping's just unfeeling chaos, then – what's the real difference between that and nothing at all?"

"Well, it's_ real_," said Tamerlane, looking affronted. "We can see that magic exists, we can use it to empower ourselves, and we can see it given to the worthiest. It's _there_. It's got a _purpose_. The fact that it's so powerful and almost beyond your or our understanding isn't relevant."

"You make it sound like some sort of cold monster," replied Judith curtly.

Rebecca and Bezalel shot each other expectant and slightly wearying expressions; and Aaliyah and Arborlun, both of whom were more sensitive to social currents than even they appreciated, found themselves putting away their paper and book out of harm's reach.

"Well, if you're going down that road, I could say a lot of things about your religion," snapped Tamerlane. "I've picked up some bits of knowledge here and there about some of the things you do and believe. That bread and wine stuff, and the resurrection, for two examples."

"What _about_ them?"

"They make you _cannibals_ worshipping a glorified _Inferius_, is wha-"

There came the inevitable splash of Tamerlane hitting the water in the fountain as Judith dislodged him, followed up by his own attempts to grab at her and drag her into the same predicament as well, assisted by the floundering attempts of the others to pull the two apart.

A week later, when the homework season was almost past and Judith and Tamerlane had been variously convinced, cajoled, and /or threatened into sullenly apologising and being friends again, they agreed that the issue only mattered as much as they wanted it to, and decided to just keep what they believed their own business.

Hogwarts, and the world for that matter, were big places. There was nearly room enough for everyone's creed.

* * *

The service continued, led by the minister. It was punctuated by psalm-readings and led prayers, the bulk of it formed from the minister's recitation of a passage and the teachings interpreted from it. The voice of the assembled congregation was enough to give Judith the shivers, triumphant and energetic as it seemed.

But that was unusual, she recognised that much. The events of the last few months had clearly been affecting the people here; who seemed nervous and almost desperate with their worship. Nobody who thought they were at risk of being named a new suspect dared exhibit anything less than strident devotion, anybody who counted themselves honest and holy sought to sing God's praises all the more, and those who were simply terrified of the growing crossfire between King James and whatever infernal forces he fought tried to reach out all the more for God's comfort.

The whole church was on edge. Fear was infectious, and Judith was certain the whole community was threatening to rot away under the pressure.

She sighted Agnes and Seth amongst the pews to her right and paid them little more attention. Glancing past, she started at the sight of a tall young man in a buff coat – surely one of the king's guard, attending this service rather than the one down in the king's camp. His hands were clasped, his eyes were shut, and he seemed to, if not actually know the words to the psalms, at least be able to mime the mouth movements correctly every time Judith cast a look his way. She caught a few dirty looks from others for being distracted during the service, and resolved to try and interrogate him if she could.

Past her observation of the congregation and her attention to the service, which was coming to a close, she found herself partway through her own prayer. She was shocked both by how long it had been since she'd properly done one, and how much of a struggle it was to frame it properly in her mind.

_Lord_, she thought, _there's someone – or something – or many out there hurting and killing innocent people. Witches and wizards, and muggles who for all I know are guiltless of anything relating to this. It might be the king who's hurting them, somehow, or an unknown magic user, or some sort of beast – but whatever the cause, I have to stop it._

_I don't deserve your favour. But the others may do. Please, help me help them. For their sake._

Nothing else came to her mind, and she awkwardly finished it with_ Amen._

The service ended, and there was a general rising from people from the pews. She edged out quickly, scooping up her basket and casting her gaze about for the guard again. She sighted him already near the kirk's exit, picking up and strapping on various items – a sword in its scabbard, a pistol, a helmet – that would have been slightly out of place in the service proper.

He finished and left, along with the first of the wave of people leaving the building. They left into the same curving street, with many following the routes which would lead to the market square a fair distance away. (If they had to break the Sabbath, it only made sense to not do it within sight of the kirk. God might see you at it otherwise, went the unconscious logic.) Judith hurried to catch up, thinking quickly about how she could inveigle her way into a conversation with the man.

She could offer to sell him a scone - though he might not have money on his person. She could attempt flirting - something she'd never been especially good at and that he might not be receptive to. She could try using magic to coerce him – which would be risky, illegal … and ethically problematic, best not to forget that.

_Hells with it_, she decided, speeding up; and as he rounded a street corner, she deliberately bumped into the back of him and dislodged several scones from the basket's top into the street.

"Oh, my pardon!" she implored, crouching down down quickly to retrieve the scones as the man turned on his heel, surprised.

"Nae bother at all," he said reassuringly as he bent down to help her, his voice mellifluous and his accent somewhere westerly – Glasgow, if Judith had to guess. "Here, have a haund. Nae sense in leaving them on the ground."

"Thank you very much," said Judith, picking up the last of them and dumping them into the basket as he obligingly dropped in the few he'd picked up. "I'd offer you one by way of apology and thanks – one without road-dust all o'er it, even," with a laugh.

"Well, I wouldnae press ye, but I wouldnae say no either if ye're offering," he said, his tone brightening as he pulled up his close helmet's visor. His countenance was cheerful and fresh-faced, and he took the proffered scone with thanks. "Daft question, but I take it ye're one of the townsfolk, or from roundabout here at least? I dinnae think I've seen ye before."

"Recently moved here with kin," replied Judith. She ventured another laugh and a smile. "Shock for me when I saw all the king's banners and of you – his guards – wandering about the place."

"I cannae imagine ye'd see the like that often," the guard replied, suddenly seeming to remember his manners and dropping a brief bow. "I'll beg your pardon now. John Buchanan, formerly of Lanarkshire and now of the king's guard."

"Judith Fairweather, formerly of the Mairches and now of North Berwick," said Judith, returning a curtsey. "A pleasure to meet you. Do you mind if I indulge in terrible nosiness?"

"Not at all."

"I thought that the king's camp had its own minister?"

"Aye, but … I prefer the services here. Kirks make me feel mair comfortable than a gust-ridden tent, and so do the people in them." The man laughed, briefly, bitterly. "Though I'd swear that they're all waiting for me to pronounce them all heretics and witches, the feart looks I get at times."

"I'd heard that's what's been going on," said Judith. "I wouldn't have imagined I'd been heading into a town full of witchcraft, but that's apparently what the king's been investigating."

"Aye, the king. Guid man. High-minded. Weel-learnt." John seemed to think of saying something else, and then thought better of it. "I probably shouldnae say much, but we've been doing well here. His Majesty says the investigations he needs to make are almost at a close."

"I'd heard. Folk here were telling me all about the dangerous sort brought to heel. All the accusations and trials, and those found guilty."

"Mair than that, besides." The man once again seemed to think of elaborating, and this time failed to think better of it. "There's select work the king's guard have been doing as well – partly why he brought us here. Ye ken what the name between us is for the king's guard, the name the king gave to us? The Witchguard."

Every part of Judith's mind had perked its ears up, labelling the king's involvement in the murders as potentially _significant, very, very significant, investigate further for the love of God_. Outwardly, she said, with a teasing grin, "I'd bet there's a story or two in that title."

"Walk with me a while. There's some odds and ends I want to pick up while all the shopkeeps are doing me the courtesy of Sabbath-breaking," John said after a pause. "And as for a tale … well, a few weeks back, we'd heard of a particularly dangerous witch from some of the king's sources – I couldnae say who – and a few of us were sent off to capture him alive for the king's own interrogation-"

He continued as they set off along the street towards the market square, something of a swagger entering his gait as he told the story. Judith kept her outward countenance suitably enthralled – being sure to punctuate his story with the odd appreciative "Ooh!" or "Surely?" - and she picked his words apart as carefully as she'd done Agnes's.

Of specific interest, John mentioned that the witch in question was male; that they had been apprehended by themselves; that the Witchguard had made to get them while he was out walking in the woods, and that this had been near Dumfries.

_Simon Araghast sounds like a good match, _thought Judith. _But how did they get him at all?_

Luckily, John was just getting to that part as they entered the square.

"...So there we were, a few of us crouched in the bushes, waiting as patiently as anything for the witch to come by the forest trail. After a while, we heard his footsteps, and we were waiting and poised with blades and pistols."

"Once he was within sight, we had to act quickly – if ye gie a witch of that power any time, they can call upon a horrific amount of dread power and ye'll be lucky if ye're not just annihilated there and then. Getting us an initial advantage went to Tennant – he's a crack shot wi' a pistol, as precise as ye can get. The heretic passed by our position, and as soon as his back was to us, Tennant just stood right up and got him through the back of the leg."

"He fell, pained and yelling, but that wasnae the end of it. Because witches like that, they can draw upon the Devil to whisk them away, see? He gies them wings of fire and they're off before you can get off anither shot. And even if they don't call upon that, they can still wreak havoc even when hurt and bawling."

_Makes sense_, thought Judith. _If you're a muggle trying to fight a magic-user, then strike from a distance if you have to strike at all, and make sure the element of surprise is in your favour. If you're not looking to kill them, then disorientate or hurt them so they willnae be able to cast spells – but what do you do afterwards? How do you stop them escaping once they're conscious and able to Apparate, like this one's thinking of? Assuming this even is Araghast and not just some made-up tale or poor accused muggle they happened to collar in a forest._

For that matter, she saw from John's expression that he was thinking carefully, trying to improvise something that would explain away the next part of his tale. What was he making up? What was he trying to conceal?

"For that problem, what we had was a minister – a specially-trained and experienced one, who's a fair hand at stopping the Devil's workings wherever they arise." The man was obviously lying, but Judith still couldn't think of what they'd used instead. "He came at the witch, chanting psalms which were like fire to the man – he was doon on the ground, screaming for aid. The minister kept him doon, and the rest of us took just a short moment to knock him out and tie him up, ready to be delivered to the king."

"And that was the end of it? Did the king interrogate him afterwards?" asked Judith, gnawingly curious about what they'd done to restrain Araghast – for she was now certain that the king and the Witchguard were the ones behind the killings – and she let the curiosity about their methods overwhelm her role. John seemed not to notice, however.

"Well, he did, though I wisnae on hand for-"

"_Buchanan_."

The short bark came to their sides, and both Judith and John turned abruptly at the sound.

The man who had been the source was clearly another Witchguard, even greater in dimensions than John was, who was already impressively built. He bore a great longsword across his back as well as a steel crossbow. His dark partial plate armour gleamed under the sunlight, and pale blue eyes glinted behind a closed visor. His voice had all the delicacy and gentleness of a thunderclap.

"Commander Wilkie," said John, coming to attention and briefly bowing. "My apologies for-"

"Back to the camp. You've indulged your fun here, and you are absent from your duties."

John swallowed, said "Yes, Commander," and then walked briskly away with a quick over-the shoulder glance backwards at Judith and a mouthed "Farewell."

Wilkie watched him depart, and then turned to Judith as well. Even from two metres away, he still managed to loom.

"Do not distract the king's guard," he rumbled at Judith. "Know better than to do so in future."

"Yes, mi'lord," said Judith with a curtsey, even as she thought _How much will that armour and strength do against a Stunning Spell, do you think?_

The man turned away, dismissing Judith from his personal universe, and stalked in the same direction John had fled. Judith, annoyed though she was that he'd whisked away a promising source of future information, did likewise in the opposite direction.

The guard had left her with a lot to consider. Now that her initial excitement during the conversation had dimmed, it still seemed to her exceedingly likely that the king and his guard were involved in all the killings of Araghast, McDonald and the Canmores. But that prospect begged several questions. How did they learn that the victims had been magic-users, assuming that none of them had been flaunting magic in a muggle high street recently? How had they picked up the experience to apprehend them in a sensible manner, rather than trusting in praying loudly and charging in with swords drawn? What could some fictional preacher somehow cancelling out magic even have been based upon? To what end were they abducting the magic-users – and then presumably killing them?

Judith supposed that last had an obvious enough answer, involving as it did a king who had apparently dubbed his elite hunters and guards the 'Witchguard'. Putting what you believed to be Satan's minions to the knife and the fire was its own reward for a certain kind of person, and the king seemed to be nothing if not that person.

It even made a ghoulish sort of sense, if she considered that her services had had to be retained in the lack of a culprit identifying themselves to the wizarding lords. Who'd ever suspect muggles of having the capability for a killing spree?

But there was still the prospect that the king and his guard were still firmly focused on muggles who had the sheer misfortune to be both disliked and naturally suspicious, and that Buchanan's story had been either made up or based on the pursuit of a muggle. The fact that some of the details fit with those you could assign to a genuine witch-hunt proved nothing. She'd need more evidence.

The Canmores had been taken from North Berwick, hadn't they? She'd investigate their case further.

Judith ventured into the market square, a small expanse in the town's centre that had been ringed with temporary stalls. The children and aged amongst local farmers – those who could be spared from work in the fields – hawked produce alongside travelling peddlers offering manufactured items. Amongst the press of residents buying whatever they needed, Judith sighted not only food being sold; but also small pieces of jewellery, knives, clothes, the odd book, candles, and crockery.

She couldn't help but compare it to the wonders found in Diagon Alley or Hogsmeade, even though she knew that it was an unfair comparison. Magic itself made so many muggle items trivial to come by in their ease of manufacture or completely unnecessary for use. Why have a well-made knife, made in the course of hours at a blacksmiths and capable of holding an edge for weeks with regular use, when you had a Cutting Charm at hand? Why fret over what you had to grow yourself or spend on food when magic could accelerate the growth of crops and make food shortages unknown to magic-users?

Hells, the only reason Rebecca's bakery could turn a consistent profit was because nobody had any spells for synthesising a entire recipe from base ingredients – at least, not to the same quality Rebecca's quasi-traditional methods could.

Even poor magic-users could live – comparatively - like kings. Poor muggles had no such luck, and purely because of some seemingly-arbitrary decision by God or the natural order or something else Judith found herself hard-pressed to articulate. The injustice of it, when she had first fully understood partway through her time at Hogwarts, had once made her angry. She'd grown desensitised since, but the embers still flickered deep within her.

She ventured into the market square, calling out "Scones! Fresh scones for ha'pence!", and thus insinuated herself into the throng.

With the providence that so often stumbled across her path, it didn't take her that long to find a lead in one amongst the natural supply of talkative old ladies that North Berwick seemingly played host to.

"I'll take two, there's a duck," said the aforementioned old lady materialising to Judith's left as she roamed the square, looking up at her with bright eyes peering out of a face full of wrinkles, one hand resting on a stick and the other holding out a penny.

"Two scones for your penny, good mother," said Judith, taking the penny and handing over two reasonably large scones from the basket. "One for lunch and the other for dinner, eh?"

"One for this week and the other for the next, the rate I eat at now," chirped the old lady, a smile taking sudden shape amongst her wrinkles. She leaned closer towards Judith with a conspiratorial air. "Would ye like to know something, duck?"

"I would indeed. What would you have me ken?" asked Judith, crouching down to the old lady's level and leaning closer in turn.

"The world's ending," replied the old lady brightly.

"...oh. Truly?"

"Aye! Ending in fire and screaming as the earth itself bleeds! It's all coming tumbling down, down, down, and we'll all have been amazed that God could have let us down so far. None of us righteous will be spared the fire, nor Turks nor Muhammadans nor Judes nor preachin' papists neither. It'll all end burning." The old lady tucked the scones into her shawl, and patted Judith's hand, smiling. "We'll all pass through the fire. Ye'll see."

"That's affa nice, but-"

"And you've got the look of one!" the old lady said, peering at Judith, her voice raising in both volume and cheer as several onlookers stared and then walked on, shaking their heads. "A hell-raiser! Aye, ye'll be the first in."

"_Careful_ what you're saying, good mother," hissed Judith, noticing the looks from passers-by. "There's a witch-hunt on, mind? They'll think you're possessed."

"They shallnae, for they've already questioned me," replied the old lady with confidence. "Vile wee Mungo accused me, and they brought me before His Highness – nice young lad – who questioned me for a few minutes, with a' his big guards in attendance. Well, I gave him answers, and he listened to me a wee bit before standing up and saying that I was clearly just as daft as a brush and that Mungo was to be clapped in the stocks for wasting his king's time. They shallnae pay me heed, nor you for heedin' me."

"I still don't..."

"Nice young man, the king. But he's blind as well. Blind as you. Hell-raiser as well, I shouldnae wonder, come the end of things. Was there something you wanted to ask, duck?"

Judith, her patience eroded, snapped "Font of babble that you are, babble about the Canmores. They're kin, and I came to town looking for them. Unless you know what-"

"Vanished quite inexplicably a wee while back from their home to the west, just outside the town," replied the old lady. "Never saw them go out much, and they're not going out at all now. The king posted one of his guards there, saying it was clearly a mysterious crime the crown could attend to while it was in town. But I can spot fibbers as well as hell-raisers."

"...to the west, you say?"

"Aye. Kin, ye say? Aye, that'll be right. Gie them a look-in, though I doubt they'll have returned there," replied the old lady, starting to walk off with her scones, her cane tapping out a route.

"What's your name?" Judith called after her. "You never told me. Or asked for mine."

"What's it matter?" returned the old lady, still cheerful. "The world's ending!"

Judith stood there for a moment, as if rooted to the spot with her astonishment, shook her head, and then started walking out of the market square.

Westwards was as good a direction to head in as any, all things considered.

She walked along the long, curving streets, passing by townspeople and farmers heading to and from the market and the odd group of children playing. One little girl to one side looked scrawny and a little unsteady on her feet, and the clothes she wore were dirty and ragged around the hems. Judith slipped her a scone and the penny as she passed by. The child seemed too surprised to offer thanks, and stared after Judith as she kept walking.

Past where the houses yielded to farmland fragmented by tendrils of forest, Judith decided on her next course of action. It only made sense to drop by the Canmore's dwelling and see if she could find anything that might provide a lead in the investigation. If the king really had posted a guard there as well, than that would also seem to support the idea that he had been involved in their disappearance … or possibly not, if it really was just the crown investigating a crime out of the kindness of its heart. Stranger things had happened.

It made sense that wizards, desiring some degree of seclusion from muggles, would favour forests, so Judith headed in that direction.

She headed along the branching roads, making for the forest along the gradually thinning paths. She passed under the overhanging tree canopy just as the path she had chosen turned entirely to a mere beaten dirt trail. Glancing around her, she saw a glimpse of assembled stone, the outline of the house it formed half-shrouded by tree trunks and hanging greenery.

Judith paused only to check that she was alone and unobserved before she set the basket down against a tree trunk, drew out her wand, and wove a simple Disillusion around herself. If there was a guard outside, then he wouldn't see her approach. She stepped off the trail and stepped briskly towards the house, fallen leaves and undergrowth rustling gently underfoot.

Weaving around tree trunks and ducking under low-hanging branches, Judith finally came to the house's side. It was a simple, squat, single-storied stone dwelling, with a roof that looked to be formed entirely from thick moss and tiny porthole-like windows set with thick glass. Thin chimneys sprouted from the roof, and thin root tendrils crept in regular patterns up the side of the walls.

And lo and behold, there was a Witchguard in a buff coat and cuirass standing outside the front of the house. A scabbarded sword hung from his belt, a helmet and loaded crossbow rested at his feet, and most of his attention seemed to be focused on a small smoking pipe in his right hand, into which he was carefully dropping cuttings of tobacco leaves.

Judith made for the back of the house in the hope of finding a door there, keeping her progress away from the guard slow and steady so he wouldn't be alerted by undue rustling. She rounded the corner and was greeted, to her relief, with a closed and presumably-locked door.

She tried the handle to no effect and applied a quiet "Alohomora," to the rusty lock. There came the click of falling tumblers, and her next cautious press upon the door provided a yield. She quickly opened it, producing the slightest of creaks, and ventured inside, closing it behind her.

Once inside, she could understand why the Canmores would have been prime suspects for witchcraft if any muggle had ever ventured inside. The interior was filled with light, in stark contrast to the image presented by the dark porthole-windows. The back corridor was wide and well-lit by several warming Perpetual Light Charms, mounted atop slim wooden plinthes. The long corridor connected to what Judith believed to be the front door, and two open doors ran along either wall – two bedrooms for the two siblings, a kitchen, and a storeroom, judging by what she could make out of their contents.

On the floor and across the walls, about a third of the distance from the front door to the back, long scratches ran in the wood and painted plaster. A embedded piece of metal glinted in the floor – the broken-off head of a crossbow quarrel, on closer inspection. Next to several of the scratches, dark stains left thin trails down the walls and darker patches on the floor.

Judith crept closer towards them, crouching as she neared them in order to investigate. The scratches certainly seemed like something you'd get with wild strokes of a long sword going agley, or broad Cutting Charms doing likewise. The crossbow bolt needed hardly any explanation – it was the result of a missed shot, and it presumably had contemporaries who had hit their targets.

And the stains – well, injuries were messy things. They liked to spread their mess as far as they could.

Looking up, Judith saw the lock and hinges on the front door were fresh and bright, more so than those on the back door - a sign of obvious recent replacement.

_They would have trusted in a quick raid_, she thought. _Knock the door off its hinges with a battering ram while the occupants are still abed, have men standing by with crossbows and guns for when they come out of their bedrooms. If they survive the first volley or get shields up, sent in your swordsmen as quickly as you can. They can only curse so many at a time, so throw numbers at them, all swinging away with blades in tight quarters._

_Take alive or dead at your convenience, once they've been overwhelmed and their wands broken.. Get your mysterious magic-nullifier to attend to them, to prevent wandless magic being deployed. Deliver to the king wrapped up in a bow._

_Hell's bells, if I had my own army of trained muggle soldiers, I'd be _good_ at this._

She realised that she'd been constructing the scenario based on the assumption that it was definitely the king and the Witchguard involved. It seemed right, the guard at the door only added to the liklihood, and there was no conceivable way they could have investigated the house and not found the magical lights within. That would be a clue discernable to anyone that something odd was afoot.

Judith rose up, brushing her hands off, and her foot accidentally connected with one of the wooden plinths.

The loud knock sounded throughout the space and Judith wheeled to face it with her wand drawn before (to her sole embarrassment) realising that the noise had been her doing.

She remembered about the guard outside the instant before he let himself in to do his own investigating. The door slammed open, and he stood within the frame, the smoke-trailing pipe set within his mouth and his crossbow levelled. He caught side of Judith and aimed the crossbow at her.

"You're not supposed to be in here-" he growled, and then stopped.

His eyes had dropped to the wand in her hand.

Judith barked "_Protego!_" just as the quarrel came whistling through the air, shattering against the wall of shimmering force that had sprung up before Judith. The guard cursed and dropped the crossbow, drawing his sword out in one smooth movement and dropping into a ward, the sword angled in one hand towards Judith's half-seen face.

"STAND DOWN IN THE NAME OF THE-" started his bellow, and "-unk!" finished it, as a furious Stunning Spell from Judith impacted with his torso and sent him flying backwards onto the grass outside the house in an uncontrolled rolling tumble. He sprawled insensible, and Judith dispelled the Shield and gathered her thoughts.

She shook off her sudden tension briskly and stepped out after him. With some heaving and judicious use of "_Wingardium Leviosa,_" she managed to bring him to a sitting position leaning against the house's front wall. She closed the front door behind her, kicking his pipe outside from where it had fallen onto the floor as she did so, and crouched down before him, her wand carefully levelled at his forehead.

"Last few minutes will do," she muttered, waving it in a complex pattern. "Fancy you nodding off on duty like this. _Obliviate_."

The memory charm was complex and tricky to control, but invaluable for a witch who had to mingle with muggles a great deal. It sent thin lines of pale smoke drifting from his ears to coalesce around the wand tip, a paltry amount of memory that Judith dispelled with a single flick. She stood up, considering her options.

She could cover up any evidence she'd been here by the time the guard awoke. That wasn't what was concerning her.

He'd seen the wand in her hand, and correctly identified it – a stick to all normal muggle expectations – as an immediate threat.

If that wasn't evidence that the Witchguard, their commander, and the King of Scotland were up to their necks in this business, Judith didn't know what was.

She'd had less interesting beginnings to an investigation, that was also certain.


	7. Angels

When the contract for Judith's investigation had been drawn up, part of it had stipulated that Judith contact the latter pair when 'findings potentially relating to the security and continued well-being of both the muggle and wizarding nations of the British Isles should come to light.'

Judith imagined that a muggle king targeting and killing magic-users was almost exactly the sort of bad dream that stipulation was aimed at; and thus made her way safely out of town and deeper into the forest to send off a message via a Patronus.

After a few minutes' walking, she happened upon a suitably remote and tranquil looking clearing that would let her concentrate undisturbed. She set down her basket, took off her hat and perched it upon one of the handles, and, stepping into the clearing's centre, drew her wand.

Firing off Concealment, Disillusionment and Quietus Charms to ensure no muggles happened upon her, she then took up her routine casting stance, closed her eyes, moved her wand into a proper grip, and went through the wand motions of the Patronus Charm in one fluid movement. As she did so, she sought for an appropriate memory.

The impression of an afternoon in her childhood came to mind. Dad, laid up at home with an injury while Mum was out at the apothecary's, had taken it upon himself to teach the six-year-old Judith the basic points of wielding a cavalry broadsword for both his entertainment and Judith's joy. Granted, her frame had meant that much of it had consisted of her struggling to maintain a two-handed grip on the weapon, and Mum had given Dad what was up until then the biggest row of his life when she caught them in the act – but it had been a moment worth remembering.

She summoned the memory forth, brandishing it like a banner in her mind, and triumphantly flourished her wand.

"_Expecto Patronum_!"

A pretty silver mist exuded from the end of Judith's wand and dissipated into little beyond a few sparkly motes and a general feeling of joy and wholesomeness in the clearing. Judith swore, dispelling the wholesomeness, and tried again.

"_Expecto Patronum_! …bugger it! _Expecto_-!"

Two things were working against her, she knew. Firstly, by her own slow confession, she was as introspective as the average brick, and immersing herself in the emotions needed for a Patronus came with great difficulty and usually only in the heat of the moment.

Secondly, her magical repertoire, while effective, was limited. "Magical thug", a description attached to her by Ylonda Rosier in second year (along with others, which had combined to earn Ylonda an impromptu Bat-Bogey Hex and which in turn earned Judith a worthwhile month's detention) had a grain of truth to it. There were a number of charms, hexes, curses, and rote transfigurations she could perform quickly and well; but she struggled both to learn and use spells she had less need to call upon to a greater extent than other magic-users.

Patronuses were counted amongst the latter. Scamander's Great Cull of last century had pushed the Dementors back to the very edges of Britain, and Judith had rarely had cause to encounter one. The advantage of this was self-evident; the disadvantage lay in the lack of live practise.

There was also the possible third option that whatever qualities had seen her placed into Slytherin were working against her capacity to summon a Patronus. It was a common legend that Slytherins were incapable of the spell, and Judith admitted that there seemed to be trends in its favour. Rebecca, as far as Judith knew, could conjure her silver bear with ease, while Judith floundered. The others at school had all been capable.

But damn it, she _knew_ she'd conjured Patronuses in the past, no matter the effort involved. And whenever Judith had found herself lacking in skill, she'd been able to make up for it in sheer bloody-mindedness. She tried a different memory.

The Yule Ball in her fifth year. And if it didn't work, then (her mouth twitched upwards at the edges with brief recollection) she'd still want to revisit the memory later.

"_Expecto Patronum_!"

A slightly more substantial silvery cloud formed, and Judith breathed out with aggravation. She supposed other aspects of that particular Yule Ball meant it lacked a certain … clarity in the recalling.

Firewhisky, and a half-pint thereof. What _had_ she been thinking?

She tried to sooth her growing impatience; breathing steadily and swinging her arms from front to back. Her wand cut thin trails through the slight silver mist around her.

It was one of the things about Patronuses, they had to almost be _spontaneous_. The heat of the moment, the cloying despair that heralded a Patronus's greatest need, the abyss thereof opening wide before you … the base reaction to that could help you discover what truly kept you moving onwards.

She held the residual frustration briefly, just briefly. And as she sought swiftly in her mind for anything to cool it, she saw in her mind's eye waking up that very morning in the dawn's breaking light. Rebecca had lain sleeping in the bed beside her, and Judith had kissed the red curls at the side of her head before rising for the day's exploits, receiving a sleepy murmur by way of response.

On reflex, her hand and wand moved in quick sweeps through the air and she intoned "_Expecto Patronum_."

When she opened her eyes, a brightly-glowing silver polecat was perched in the crook between two branches before her, looking almost confused by the lack of Dementors to savage. The clearing seemed peaceful in its presence, and Judith's prior aggravation was forgotten.

"Send a message to Eldritch Diggory," said Judith, relief colouring her tone. "As follows - 'Clause two-five has suddenly become a concern, Chieftain. I would like to meet with you at your earliest convenience to discuss appropriate action.'"

The polecat bobbed its head, acknowledging the message, and then took off at a silvery blur into the trees and out of Judith's sight. Patronuses could produce a message as it had been spoken and could move swiftly and undetected. It would reach Diggory in a matter of moments.

Judith leaned against a nearby tree and simply waited, reaching down for one of her scones as she did.

There were worse places to do it. The sun was out, sending rivulets of light peeking down from the gaps in the green canopy above her. Birdsong trilled down from the treetops, with some of the culprits fluttering down to low-hanging branches. Far ahead, Judith sighted the round black-and-white body of a badger snuffling in a sedate manner through the undergrowth.

There came a distant flash of silver, interrupting Judith partway through a bite into the scone. She saw a silvery hulk coming galumphing through the forest, sending the badger fleeing and the birds back into the canopy.

Judith was pleasantly surprised. She hadn't been expecting this prompt a response.

Diggory's Patronus slowed gradually and padded to a halt in front of her – its animal form was unknown to her, resembling nothing so much as a massive and muscular housecat with darker banding along the sides and back. It opened a massive set of jaws, and Diggory's tones purred out.

"Come and brief me within the hour, Miss Fairweather. Do be prompt, and assemble all the details."

Its mission complete, the Patronus faded away into a cloud of gleaming and gradually-dispersing motes. Judith quickly finished the scone and reached down for her hat and basket. Planting the former atop her head and cradling the latter in one arm, she did her best to clear her mind of errant thoughts, trying to fixate purely upon Diagon Alley.

She breathed in…

* * *

London was overcast. The streets were shrouded with thick white mist in the muggle part of the city. People took care, kept close to walls, and kept an ear out for carriages clattering across the cobblestones.

In Diagon Alley, the same mist reacted with whatever leaking magical paraphernalia was at hand to create a chaotic and multi-coloured pall. Dark green patches of the mist drifting outwards from _Gillespie and Sons Select Artifice_ collided with sky-blue clouds emanating from _Madam Tennyson's Reagentry_ to create small purple thunderheads in the middle of the street; from which the odd randomly-created bat flapped out to enjoy an entirely unexpected existence. Several witches and wizards stalked up and down the alley's length, attempting with some futility to disperse the mist with Weather Charms.

It did at least give Judith some privacy in which to put her left foot back together. She hobbled gingerly out of the smaller alleyway a few moments after her Apparation, passed by the skull-vendor – who was occupied showing her wares with some enthusiasm to several equally enthused children – and made for the House of the Council; reduced to a looming dark shape past the mist.

Her muggle garb attracted a few odd looks from passers-by – those who came near enough to be something other than vague shapes in the mist - but went unremarked-upon. It wasn't unknown for magic-users with rudimentary knowledge on muggle dressing customs to spend some of their time in the city beyond Diagon Alley.

Mind you, this also applied to the magic-users who _thought_ they had a firm grasp on muggle fashion. Whenever Judith had spent time in muggle London, she'd never found it difficult to identify another witch or wizard. They were usually the ones looking quite annoyed by the gang of children following them asking where the travelling show was.

She drew out her wand and, with a murmured Charm, sent a small gust to clear a short trail through the mist before her, trying to keep her balance on the uneven cobblestones underfoot. On a day in which she'd already been shot at with a crossbow, it would be flat-out embarrassing to be injured by a street.

The mist cleared ahead, revealing two tall walkers going in the same direction as Judith. She glanced briefly up at them – taking stock of their height, confident gait, and exceedingly conspicuous hooded cloaks – before putting them out of mind and mulling over Diggory's possible reaction to the information she'd bring.

The worst-case scenario would be that he'd declare the entire case null and void, eliminating the possibility of Judith getting her rightful fee for what she'd done so far. She could theoretically press the matter before a Wizengamot sub-court, but the emphasis there was on 'theoretically'. He was a pureblood noble and she was a muggle-born; and even the signed contract could only do so much against that distinction.

It wouldn't be a disaster. She'd have lost hopefully no more than a couple of working days. But it had happened to Judith before, and it was the sort of event that rankled, that _festered_.

The voices of the two ahead encroached on her concentration.

"…I'm saying this is what we describe with a certain poetic flourish as the _nicer_ sort of arrangement for us," said one with a voice that could be heard streets away (male, accent marked by Ireland, Judith absently noted). "The captain drew up time-based accumulating charges in the contract. Until a happy termination dawns, you and I will be paid as we drink. Drag your cup out long enough, and it'll pay for itself."

"It's a nice arrangement for us, but I query the intelligence of any client who would agree to that order of payment and then keep us idle." (Also male, and curiously familiar to Judith, this latest one.) "Is it intended to keep us loyal for the duration? Do they expect someone else will try and buy us away while they're trying to pull their finger out?"

"Maybe. That's how I might justify it. But I'm not a noble with more Galleons than sense. What's the cost of a full company for days on end if your family name goes back further than Merlin?"

"There is that," said the familiar voice again, with a touch of dryness in the tone that set another bell ringing in Judith's head.

Judith tried to focus once again on more pressing matters than her immediate envy for and desire to join whatever profession these men held.

She supposed that Diggory might want her to conduct further surveillance on the king and his retinue before deciding on another course of action. If so, she knew where to look, and she felt she might forego a disguise in favour of a prolonged Disillusionment. A scone-seller snooping around the king's camp might be regarded as suspicious. Something which appeared only as a faint distortion in the air could be overlooked.

Of course, there was the risk that whatever means they had of nullifying magic would dispel the Disillusion. But Judith had yet to encounter a problem that couldn't ultimately be resolved by Obliviating everyone and everything in sight and then running for the horizon.

The men's voices rose again, disturbing Judith's thoughts. The Irish man was telling a story, in the same booming tones.

"It was the Crimea or thereabouts. We'd been hired by the Occult Khan for some drudge work, clearing out some of his political enemies from the peninsula, when we stopped by a muggle village – you wouldn't believe what they can do with horse milk, they make it _alcoholic_ somehow, and-"

"We could do that at home as well," interjected the infuriatingly familiar voice, to whom Judith was on the verge of placing a face. "We had a home, an old manor, and there were muggles nearby who brewed the stuff. It was called 'blaand', and made from cow's milk rather than horse milk, but the fermentation process probably doesn't change that much between species."

"Really? Huh. You get odd sorts everywhere, it seems." The man faltered, and then picked up the story again. "Anyway, we'd just pitched a camp there, saying we were traders. Well, the locals didn't seem too suspicious, but there were a few watching us anyway-"

The House of the Council was looming closer and closer yet, and Judith sped up her walking pace. She'd overtake the two men on her way in, and satisfy her curiosity about the latter man's identity.

Besides, their conversation showed no signs of ceasing to be a distraction, and her guess that they were headed to the Leaky Cauldron put them on her path all the way until she entered the House of the Council.

"-So there we were, muggles with bows and swords jumping out all around us with a few Crimean wizards at their back. We hadn't raised our shields just yet, and one of them let off a shot at me. Went past my chest – just by an inch or so, closest call you can get – and hit Captain Desjardins in the leg. You can imagine what-"

"Excuse me," said Judith, brushing past the man on the right, the one whose voice she thought she recognised, and turned briefly to see his face.

He turned, and heavy-lidded brown eyes widened as they met her own.

The man said "Judith?" at almost exactly the same time Judith said "Tamerlane?"

He'd trimmed his hair back since Judith had last seen him a while back, shaved off his attempt at a beard, acquired a small and vivid scar running across his left cheek, and had found a set (which matched his companion's) of dark, practical-looking lighter robes beneath the heavier travelling robes. A symbol of a golden sunburst was sewn on the front of his chest.

"God's blood, you've been away for a while," said Judith, surprise making a smile break over her face as she moved in for a friendly embrace. "It's good seeing you. Where have you been?"

Tamerlane's initial surprise also turned to a wide smile, and he returned the embrace with enough strength to briefly lift Judith off the ground. "Here and there, interesting places, meeting interesting people, but none quite so -" He finished with an awkward grin and set her down again. "I'll say, it's great seeing you again. How are you? How's Rebecca?"

"I'm keeping well, she's keeping weller." Judith looked Tamerlane up and down. "What are you-?"

"Tam," said his companion, brusquely and with a firm tap on his shoulder. "Oi. Fraternising under contract duration. You know what Desjardins thinks about it."

Tamerlane shot a look filled with both irritation and apprehension at the man, a look that Judith caught sight of and wondered at. "Jack, it's an old frie-"

"Not my rules, Tam. Desjardins', and you'll need to stick by them to keep your lieutenancy." The man, Jack, beckoned, his earlier boisterous amiability replaced with something stern and disciplined. "Come on."

Tamerlane looked from Jack to Judith, aggravation and disappointment clear in equal measures on his face. He seemed to come to an unhappy decision, and said "Look … I'll send you a Patronus, alright? We'll catch up. I'll finish this contract soon and-"

"Wait, what are you doing here?" Judith was thrown for a loop by the reappearance of Tamerlane, and his sudden inexplicable departure at the bidding of Jack left her confused and aggravated. "Who are you now-?"

"Lieutenant!" The bark from Jack was undeniably an order; as he turned to face Tamerlane with a cold expression, she saw that his sunburst had a golden band underlining it, a probable signifier of rank.

Tamerlane turned away from Judith with a quick murmur of "I will catch up, I promise," and a peck on the cheek before following Jack in a somewhat stiff-backed manner. Judith heard a low argument arising between them as they stalked off.

"What in Hell's circles?" she said after a moment.

Seeing an old friend in strange new garb pass by and then be tugged away before you could get a chance to catch up could throw anyone into temporary emotional discombobulation, and Judith was no exception; with this not being helped by a sharp spike of annoyance at the stranger Jack for doing the aforementioned tugging and slight resentment at Tamerlane for not resisting the tugging as much as she felt he should have done. She'd been looking forward to meeting him again whenever he next surfaced.

But Judith could at least extrapolate a few things of note about Tamerlane's current situation; from what seemed like a uniform, the mention of being hired and of a contract, and the drinking friend apparently able to give him orders while the contract was active.

Mercenary work. She'd hoped he'd not have had to resort to that again.

There were always places in the world where the governments of wizards and witches weren't as cosy or disinclined to conflict as that of the British Isles', where it wasn't unknown for the nobles of magic-using nations to go to war with one another. There were even places where Merlin's Masquerade wore thin, where the boundaries of secrecy between magic-users and muggles were practically non-existent, resulting in varying degrees of co-operation and conflict.

In these places, there was always work available for a company of magic-users who were reasonably adept in the various forms of combat magic. Judith had never been tempted – the work came with too many restrictions and demands for her taste, though she supposed there were many parallels between it and her own thief-taking. But for others, the work of a mercenary was a bloody and joyful calling, or the only thing available.

Judith shook her head, hoped that Tamerlane wouldn't suffer the usual fate of all mercenaries before the end of this apparently-uneventful job before she had a chance to properly berate him and convince him to keep himself safe, and made for the House of the Council.

Two different guards were on duty this day, both witches, both lean and scarred and similarly built so that they could have passed for twins.

"Your name and business?" asked one of them as Judith approached.

"Judith Fairweather, on contract to the Chieftain and seeking an urgent meeting relating to same," Judith replied.

The guards must have been expecting her. "Enter," said the one who had spoken, opening the front door after the other had gone through the routine of dispelling non-existent charms on Judith. "He is currently in a meeting with Lord Malfoy. Be prepared to wait as long as the meeting persists. You know the way to his offices?"

"I do."

Judith entered and ascended the stairs at a brisk pace, trying to dispel the turmoil of Tamerlane's sudden reappearance with the much more productive turmoil of King James potentially breaching the secrecy between wizards and muggles in murderous fashion.

She had collected herself and prepared the mental list of evidence in the idea's favour by the time she reached Diggory's door. The sound of a heated discussion from within greeted her, with what she recognised as Diggory's and Clemency's voices mingled with another man's.

After a moment, the discussion ceased, and the door slammed open shortly afterwards. A man in rich robes swept out, his long greying-blond hair flying behind him, his face contorted with barely-contained fury. His gaze simply swept over Judith, dismissing her as irrelevant the instant he saw her, and marched straight down the corridor and towards the stairs.

He stopped and turn on his heel to bark "And you _will_ deliver news of Gallus the minute, the _second_ you receive word from your vaunted investigator! Do you hear me, Diggory? The very _second_!"

With that, he vanished down the stairs, and Judith turned to see Diggory sitting slumped and wearied behind his desk. To her surprise, Clemency Peverell was there also, standing by the desk's right side and kneading her own forehead. They were poised against the windows, stark against the late afternoon sun.

Diggory looked up to see Judith, his face putting on its best attempt at a smile, and said "Ah, and speak of the devil. Come in, Miss Fairweather. You've found yourself the subject of recent discussion."

"Part of the discussion at any rate," said Clemency in weary tones. "Another wizard has been taken. This very morning, in fact."

Judith didn't say "Oh, bloody hell," with only the greatest of effort, closed the door behind her, and ventured "In similar circumstances to the others?"

"While out on a broomstick, apparently on a jaunt around the New Forest."

"That's down in the south-west of England. That's a hell of a way from the Borders," said Judith, before realising that she'd voiced some part of her profane musing out loud. Diggory seemed not to acknowledge it, though Clemency slightly raised a brow.

"Quite so, though it seemed to match many of the other scenes. There were crossbow quarrels embedded in the trees, some with blood on them. A piece of the wizard's wand – Gallus Malfoy, for the record, was found amidst the undergrowth."

"Gallus Malfoy? Then that was Lord Malfoy himself?" asked Judith, remembering the guard's words.

"Lord Borealis Malfoy, Lord of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Malfoy. Gallus was his firstborn and heir, and Lord Borealis is understandably keen that I and Lady Peverell commit some of the Council's resources to assist in the search."

"The man didn't have to call in a favour from me to press upon the Chieftain," said Clemency, ruefully and with some sadness. "I count him as a friend, despite our recent differences. I would go to any lengths to secure his son's safety."

"I assured him that I already had a competent investigator pursuing disappearances similar to Gallus's, and that they would winkle out the culprit and deliver them to us so that justice could be done in short order. He took a lot of reassuring, and I do not think I entirely succeeded, in spite of Lady Peverell's support." Diggory shook his head. "He has a powerful voice and vote in the Council, as did Gallus. I had counted them as among my allies there. That may change."

The fact of Lord Malfoy's allegiance to Diggory and (presumably) Transmutation initially surprised Judith, though she supposed it shouldn't upon further consideration. The Malfoys were notorious for both their pureblooded pride and their coldblooded pragmatism, truer heirs of Salazar than even the fallen and shamed Gaunts. If the political winds promised a sweeping change, even one that threatened power being given to halfbloods and muggleborns, then the Malfoys would fly their banner in its support and see themselves in a position of future authority over the changed political scene.

Diggory looked up at Judith, composing himself and fixing a somewhat grim smile on his features.

"That may affect your investigation. But onto lighter matters. I understand that both wizarding and muggle nations are imperilled?"

Judith took a breath. "I believe so, Chieftain. By none other than King James of Scotland."

There was a pregnant pause. Diggory scrutinised her, his impassive expression carefully betraying nothing. The expression was mirrored by Clemency, and both sets of spectacles caught the shifting light from the ceiling to make fires dance in the two lords' eyes.

"Perhaps you had better start from the beginning, Miss Fairweather," said Diggory.

Judith obliged.

She caught subtle shifts in their expressions, quiet attempts to keep their inner thoughts firmly on the inside, when she got to the key parts of the initial investigation; at the point where the king had arrived in North Berwick a month prior, coinciding with Araghast's capture; when one member of the 'Witchguard' had divulged a story that echoed both Araghast and a hunt specially made for hunting magic-users; the disappearance of the Canmores and the inevitable search of their magical home by the king's forces; and the reaction of one of the Witchguard to her wand.

When she finished, the two remained silent. Diggory was watching her - or a point a thousand yards behind her - like a hawk. Clemency stood with both hands spread flat on the table, looking down at the woodwork.

Finally, Diggory opened his mouth.

"This … I'm sure I don't need to say that _if_ true, even on that remote chance, this is-"

"Eldritch, excuse Miss Fairweather for a few minutes," said Clemency crisply, her face raised and her expression sharp and angry. "There is something germane to this matter that we need to discuss. Privately."

Diggory looked at her with exasperation, and then at Judith. "If you would-?"

Judith left, and as the door closed behind her, she caught the incantation of "_Muffliato_," before all sound coming from within the office ceased.

She leaned against the wall, swinging her arms back and forth, with the prospect of the whole contract being declared null and void becoming seemingly inevitable.

Well, she could at least count her blessings from the experience. She'd managed to practise a few of her rote spells and even a couple she was less adept with. She'd brightened a few muggles' days with free scones. She'd helped that little girl. She'd potentially started what might be a useful habit of getting right with God again. Rebecca would be privately glad she wasn't out risking life and limb for a purse of money – a very, very substantial purse, that could have paid for so many things both Rebecca and Judith wanted; but that line of thought didn't lead to satisfactorily counted blessings, and she tried to abandon it.

She'd reached the point of considering what else ninety Galleons could have bought once the amount necessary for desired extensions and a new bedroom for the bakery had been spent when noise resumed from the office, the sound of a heated argument cooling down, and the door opened. Diggory beckoned her in, with Clemency now stood directly beside him behind the desk.

Judith entered, taking up a stance before the desk. Diggory took off his spectacles and tapped his wand against the lenses, an unspoken Cleaning charm shimmering across them.

"You say the king had a camp full of these … Witchguard? And that he'd taken up quarters in the local kirk-cum-minister's dwelling?"

"Aye, Chieftain."

Diggory sighed, replacing his spectacles, and said "Then on the morrow, investigate both these places for any hint, any sign of those taken by the king and his soldiers. Gallus's lifeclock hasn't set twelve yet, so there's yet a chance that he can be reunited with his father if you work well and quickly. Under the circumstances, considering what is known about his guards, you may consider this to be an extension to your assignment, bearing the additional reward of ten Galleons if anything is found of the victims, living or dead."

"You believe me?" Judith was surprised.

"I do now," replied Diggory. He turned his attention to the papers on his desk. "We both have busy days ahead, Miss Fairweather. I'm sure you can see yourself out."

"I wish you the very best of luck in your investigations," said Clemency in turn. "May you emerge successful, and may the king's unaccounted victims emerge unharmed."

Judith left the office. She felt fatigue begin to set in, now that the exciting part of her day was certainly over, and she wanted nothing more than a living room to lie in, a fire to warm herself by, and a Rebecca in her arms.

She breathed in, and breathed out. The corridor of the House of the Council vanished away in spiralling wind, and Hogsmeade's main street flourished before her. Only a slight gash opened in one cheek – every so often her Splinching offered mercy – and she barely stopped to apply Dittany before heading home.

The lights from the bakery front were still on when she arrived, bright against the darkening day, but the shop was empty of customers and the signs all indicated that Rebecca was starting to close for the evening. Judith saw her inside, packing things away beneath the front counter.

Judith made her way to the door and pulled it open, to the accompanying jangles of a small collection of bells Rebecca had rigged up above the door frame and attached to the door itself with strings. Rebecca looked up at her entrance, and rose from her task, brushing her hands off against her robes. "Good day, dear?"

"Interesting, I'll say that much," said Judith, traipsing over for a welcoming kiss and to sneak a bun from the few left on a clay tray. "Would you like the condensed version first, from which appropriate questions and longer answers may be devised?"

"I might go for that. What's the condensed sum of today's events?"

"Wizarding Britain might be under attack by the King of Scotland, I got shot at with a crossbow, and Tamerlane's back in the country, doing mercenary work."

Rebecca's voice faltered as several questions at once occurred. Judith gave her a weary grin as she bit into the bun.

"It's been that sort of day, really."

* * *

From atop the kirk tower of North Berwick, King James surveyed the town. In the dying light of the day, the last of those in the market square were vanishing in turn in dribs and drabs. A few folk were making their way back to their homes in the town or in the farms upon ox-wagons and drawn carts.

There had been no burnings today, no great spectacle at the trials he'd held in the town's hall. Tonight, the peasants could walk home with unburdened hearts. Sometimes, James envied them for that.

He held no goblet tonight, his stomach being unsettled, but instead slowly spun his crown around on his palms. It wasn't the heavy and seldom-used royal crown, currently kept securely in Edinburgh, but a slim golden circlet that spoke greater volumes about his God-given authority than any resplendent plate armour or rearing destrier.

His crown. His nation. His people. With the right to rule came the responsibility to rule well. Could it not be said that a ruler, divinely chosen as they were, had all the further to fall in God's sight if they failed in their duties?

He'd have to teach his eventual son and heir about this, he reflected as his thoughts turned fondly to Anne. His duties would always keep him busy and likely lamentably absent from his children, but there was no reason he couldn't write it down in lessons, to be imparted to his heir and (he grew excited at the thought) all future monarchs in Scotland.

He tempered the pride that had threatened along with the thought. His duty was only to relate that which made a worthy ruler, so that his country would be evermore wisely governed.

No Witchguard stood by him tonight. Those near him were all either in the lowest floor of the kirk proper or in the kirk's cellars, keeping a watch over their new captive – a true servant of the Enemy. That one, he had been informed by one of the senior Witchguard, Urquhart, had not come gently. Nor had they been nearby; they had had to venture into England, his sister kingdom, in order to bring them to justice.

The angel had been able to speed them there and back again in a matter of moments. It had been the angel who had warned him about this latest Devil-sworn and many of the others.

And no sooner had he begun to contemplate it, than there came a soft light from behind him and the quiet music of something surely Heaven-sent.

He turned, praying that this latest visitation was not a mere dream, and bowed almost as soon as he saw it – him – her – whatever term applied to this purest being and servant of God.

From its body, covered by a white robe, soft white light shone. From its face, aglow with the same light and crested by the golden luminance of a faintly-seen halo, serenity and love all but streamed forth. Heaven's light covered it like a shroud, obscuring its features but indicating all the more clearly the quality of the being.

It was the same angel which he had first clutched the robes of, weeping, during that darkest night in his childhood. It was the same angel which had guided and taught him ever since, and promised it always would do. It was the angel which set him upon his holy work even now.

He bowed, and it rested a white hand upon his shoulder.

"Arise, my child, and be not afraid," it said in a voice like harp-song, and James did so. "Your work over the last few days has been seen by Him above. It has brought joy and comfort to Heaven's throne to witness what you have wrought so far."

"I have but brought forth a portion of what I know I must provide to be worthy," stammered James. "I will continue to serve God, in whatever way is required."

"This is known. And rest assured that your soldiers have done sterling work today. Such dedication and courage in the apprehension of the Enemy's servant will earn their seats by His side in their next lives."

The angel seemed to sigh. "You must speed that servant to his passing and his eternal punishment. His capture and interrogation has opened his heart, and there is nothing there redeemable in Heaven's sight."

James bowed once again. "I shall see it done quickly."

"Do it with surety. Call upon Azrael, and their passing shall be both swift and true."

James nodded, though the mention of the name had already sent a knot of cold dread coiling in the pit of his stomach.

Angels were but aspects and messengers of God. This angel before him must stand for God's guidance, others for His compassion, His wroth, His justice, and His benevolence.

Azrael, the king thought, could only represent God's _terror_, and though James was not a man easily frightened by anything, Azrael was one of the few beings that could manage it.

But he had a duty, and Azrael had to be called.

"I shall see it done," the king promised, and the angel smiled and kissed him upon the cheek.

When the king snapped himself out of his daze and opened his eyes, he saw the angel was gone and still felt the brush of its lips upon his cheek. He gathered himself, and ventured down the tower.

It was a long walk from the kirk's top to its bottom, taking him though all its levels and most of its rooms. The Witchguard James passed stood to attention in the king's wake. He reached the cellar entrance, descended the stone steps into the torch-lit gloom.

There was a long, curving stretch of stone corridor beneath the kirk. In one of the sets of rooms, the king had set up his room of confinement and interrogation for those servants of the Enemy he captured. The Witchguard on duty fell into step alongside the king, and stood beside him as he unlocked the door into the holding room.

Within the room, strapped firmly into a heavy, immovable chair, the Enemy's servant waited and glared daggers at the king as he entered. His face was pale, his blond hair was matted with blood, and stained bandages were still wound tight around those areas in his chest and legs where bullets and quarrels had struck home. The fire within him still burned bright, and every word he spoke was laced with cold venom.

"If you are the chieftain among this pack of vermin, then I will make the same demand of you that I made of your brute followers," spat the prisoner as James entered. "Release me. Now. Or my family and House will destroy you, root and branch."

"Be still and silent," said James. "I would advise that you compose yourself and remember what you can of prayer."

"Are you _listening_ to me? I am Gallus Malfoy, of a noble House you should damn well have no trouble guessing, and you have already earned yourself pain for laying hands upon me."

"Azrael," whispered James, the name passing from his lips like a word of power, unnaturally still and cold. Those of the Witchguard who recognised it blanched under their helmets, some crossed themselves, the prisoner seemed not to notice or care and continued to rant.

"If you do not release me, then you, your families, your servants, they _die_. House Malfoy, its vassals, all our kin, everywhere, we will unite and turn your very nation to a molten waste! Heed me, damn you!"

From the dark corridor, there came a deathly rattle. Within the room, there grew an unnatural cold.

James and the Witchguard were now almost all bowed in prayer. Even the prisoner had briefly shut up.

"What … how … how have you acquired one of – those?" he asked, his voice trembling.

The darkness beyond the doorway grew deeper, and there came the twitch of movement, as if of robes being drawn apart by a corpse's hand.

The prisoner beheld Azrael, and then the fire inside him died as if frozen over.

"No," he breathed. "No, not again. Please. Send it back. Send it away. What do you want? Please, just make it go."

The shadow moved closer, taking form in a ragged cloak floating above the ground that seemed to shroud a thin carcass. The rattle, the sound of breath passing through a dead pair of lungs, once again sounded, and the torches on the walls flickered.

"Please, my family is wealthy," pleaded the prisoner. "If – if you just make it _go_-"

Azrael continued to move, slowly, torturously, the rattle coming from the angel sounding all the louder and thick with anticipation. James was sure he was the only man with his eyes still open, watching it all happen. He had a duty, after all, no matter how hard the duty may be.

He had a _duty_.

The corpse-hand reached up to the cloak's hood, twitched it aside, and as Azrael loomed over the prisoner, that was when the man – really not much more than a boy, James supposed – shattered.

"No! NO! PLEASE!"


	8. Upwards Spirals

They were eating dinner in the living room. A short table had been pulled to the centre and over-stuffed armchairs dragged to either end. It was a talkative affair that night, filled – after Rebecca had finally reluctantly decided on a question to pursue initially – with talk of Judith's work that day. Rebecca disbelievingly queried the fact that a muggle king was targeting magic-users for death. Judith repeated the evidence she'd found in the theory's favour, placing the hand that wasn't preoccupied holding a knife on her heart as she did so.

"And … after what you found, Diggory believed you?" Rebecca still looked sceptical herself.

"Not initially. Peverell had a talk with him for a few minutes, which I wasn't invited to. He started believing me after that." Judith paused, a chicken leg raised partway to her mouth. She had taken the chance to change back into lighter, more comfortable wizarding garb. "That was damnably odd, now I think about it." She frowned and bit into the chicken, mulling that aspect over.

"Maybe she was just convinced by your evidence, anticipated Diggory's objections, whatever they were, and argued quickly in your favour – using incriminating information about Diggory to do so out of your sight, combining as she does fair-mindedness with pragmatism." Rebecca's smile was bright.

The look Judith returned was as flat as a plateau.

"Fine, here's a more realistic suggestion. She foresees your investigation – whatever it turns up – will distract Diggory from the upcoming Moot. Since she'll be speaking against him there, his distractedness benefits her. She'll keep you and your investigation ongoing, because if Diggory dismisses you outright, he'll like as not put the matter aside until the Moot's over."

"Or he'd just send a mercenary team hired with his and Peverell's funds over to sort the matter out," said Judith dubiously. "And I'd have thought something like ongoing murders would a big enough distraction without even being attended to. Lord Malfoy was there before me. His son had been taken, and he'd raise a riot if nothing was being done. "

"Which son? His heir?"

"Aye. Gallus – the one that was a prefect in Slytherin when we were second-years. You never had to interact with him much, you lucky thing."

"I wouldn't assume that much," said Rebecca dryly. "Until you make yourself learn any spell that simulates sickness, it's _impossible_ to avoid the noble banquets when you're a child." Her expression grew more sober. "We shouldn't be talking about him like this. Is he still alive?"

"Yes, at least so far." Judith put the cleaned leg down on her plate, using her knife to skewer segments of roasted carrot from a tray at the centre of the table. "My job tomorrow will be to ensure he persists in that happy state, and get ten extra Galleons for my trouble. Turns out that you _can_ put a price on a nobleman's life."

"By finding where he's kept and breaking him out, I take it?"

"I was planning on doing it in proper story-fashion. Donning bright plate, dashing in on a caparisoned white charger, and dashing out again with him in my arms while scorning the enemy's arrows."

"I'd expect nothing less."

"Do you think I could convince Gallus to don a hennin and a gown? I wouldn't want any part of this to seem improper."

"Oh, indeed. The whole situation would just appear farcical otherwise."

"Rather." Judith polished off her token vegetables, and tapped her knife gently against the edge of her plate, looking thoughtful. "If I was a mad muggle king who'd made a habit of capturing magic-users, I'd want to keep them close at hand - for my own personal attention and next to all my nice guards, wouldn't I?"

"I suppose you would," replied Rebecca. "Would you have a secure place in which to keep them?"

Judith grinned. "Well, I might have access to a large stone structure – a _kirk_, in the vulgar parlance – which will have many nice cellars, which in turn can be made to have relatively few people walking around nosing into things and asking the wrong sorts of questions."

"Well, if you did, that would of course be terribly convenient. Any other likely places?"

"Either my camp, or holding cells back in some Edinburgh dungeon. The former's like to be crowded, bustling, and not even slightly secure enough; while the latter's too far away for a king who supposedly's been doing all this waylaying for a month while not budging from North Berwick. Especially when the Witchguard bring their captives back to the king once they've laid hands upon them."

Rebecca frowned. "About those Witchguard-"

"Trained soldiers, for the most part. Sons of gentry and clan chiefs, according to a Berwick local, so they probably double as a prestigious company _and_ a pool of potential hostages for the king as well as his guard. Some armour – they most likely do actual guard duty for the most part beyond just hunting down magic-users – but not a burdensome amount. Swords, guns, and crossbows were the most common weapons for them, it seemed."

As she spoke, it slowly dawned on Judith that Rebecca's pensive frown probably wasn't reflecting a nagging curiosity about the specifics of the Witchguard. She changed tack.

"Skilled enough, but they're still only using muggle methods. They strike from a distance and use ambush strategies because that's the minimum of what they need to create anything like a level fight. If I don't just go charging boldly onwards, then the only risk I'll be like to suffer is running out of insults to sling at them from behind a Shield Charm."

"Ah. Because charging boldly onwards isn't something you've acquired a reputation for."

"Not when it's unnecessary or unlucrative to do so. I can be discreet," protested Judith with the air of someone vainly fending off a long-lasting, unwanted, and somewhat justified reputation. "I'll weave Disillusionment about my person and creep in under its cover. They'll notice my presence only in the sudden and inexplicable absence of their captive magic-users."

"Not the armoured and dashing figure charging out through their gatehouse?" Rebecca was reassured enough to start making jokes, and that gave Judith heart.

"Well, possibly that," Judith allowed. She noticed that the table's dishes were clear, made eye contact with Rebecca, and received a nod in return. They started clearing the table, stacking the dishes atop one another and the cutlery on the top. Judith picked up the completed stack, holding it out in front of her. "Do you think they'd notice that sort of thing?"

"It stands to reason," said Rebecca as she drew her wand and tapped the dishes with a muttered "_Lucere_," setting them asparkle once again. "Someone must always notice that sort of thing when it happens. Else there wouldn't be so many stories in which it does."

"Confusingly logical point. Maybe I shouldn't go ahead with the armour and charger then." Judith rebalanced the dishes in her grip and headed through to the kitchen. "I wouldn't want some snooping storyteller observing my every move and blabbing about it. That would grow aggravating."

"I can only imagine," said Rebecca, following her. "Onto another interesting thing you mentioned earlier."

"But there's so _many_."

"You mentioned you bumped into Tamerlane."

Judith sighed. "Aye. That was bizarre." She stopped in front of a segment of the kitchen's counter. Rebecca tapped it with her wand, and the counter top sprouted two slender arms at its sides. It rose, propping itself up above a space in which other dishes gleamed, safe from dust and vermin. Judith began distributing the dishes and cutlery to their appropriate columns and sections. "He's doing mercenary work again, I think."

"Oh, bloody hell. What makes you think?"

Judith shrugged and stepped away from the countertop, the arms on which folded back into its sides and let it fall with a slam, sounding a rattle from the dishes within. "He was wearing some insignia, and had a companion who whisked him away the moment he tried to exchange a sentence with me. That speaks of being a mercenary, and being in a company thereof so professional that they receive a regimental stick up their nethers."

"It does." Rebecca frowned. "Damn it. I'd hoped he wouldn't try it again. Not after he nearly got himself killed in Paris."

"Looks like he's trying his hand at it again. I don't know which company – his company seems to disallow fraternising with the outside world when actively working on a contract."

"Some mercenary companies do that a lot. Supposedly it prevents any chance of their soldiers developing outside allegiances when working on a contract. If a company has a reputation for adhering to that strictly, amongst other things, it makes it more trustworthy and more likely to be hired."

Judith blinked and Rebecca smiled. "When I first met Aaliyah, she was in Hogwarts' Library, researching this sort of thing from some of the books there. She tried to bribe me to secrecy by offering me a position as her vizier." Her smiled slipped to a frown. "We should write to her. I don't want to hear one day that she's conquered the New World without our calming hands on her shoulders."

"Aye. We'd miss out on a share of the territory if that came to pass."

"Did Tamerlane mention meeting up by any chance? Or did he not even get that chance?"

"He mentioned catching up, but only after the contract was done. Beyond that, I don't think he'll be allowed to slip out of his captain's sight-"

Judith caught sight of a silver glow at the corner of her gaze, and frowned. "What's that?"

Rebecca turned, and saw it coming from the living room. She craned her head, and gasped "It's his Patronus."

Judith said "What?" before it swooped into view from beyond the door frame, a silver falcon that filled the room with a gentle light. It alighted on the top of an oven, looking straight at Judith.

The Patronus opened its beak and said, in Tamerlane's voice, "Hello, Judith. I'm sorry we couldn't meet properly earlier – my company's regulations are a frightful pain."

"Don't reply to this, or I'll catch some amount of trouble. But I'll be dropping by the bakery in a few minutes, and if you and Rebecca are still up and ready, I could meet you then. Else – well just bid me piss off and come back some other time and I'll do my damndest to meet again."

The Patronus faded away, its message complete, and Judith and Rebecca drew simultaneous breaths.

"The Tam-Lin Firewhisky," said Rebecca. "That, and three glasses."

The jolly ship 'Tamerlane's Visiting' met the rocky, objectionable shoals of But The Best Whisky in Judith's mind, passed through with only minor scraping, and Judith quickly rose to seek it out from a cupboard in a corner of the living room with only token grumbling. She found it after some rummaging, blew dust off the bottle, and plucked three small glasses from the top shelf before turning to place them on the table in the living room. Rebecca was already there, scrutinising the room.

"I don't think tidiness will be a concern," said Judith, setting the glasses and bottle down on the table. "Tamerlane, remember? As a fish to the open sky, so him to anything resembling tidiness. He might be a host for some petty demon of disorderliness."

"I recall you sharing the theory before," said Rebecca, continuing to scrutinise and absently straightening a chair against the wall with a flick of her wand. "Just call this a reflex when visitors draw near."

"Act on it very quickly or not at all," Judith said, her expression brightening as she heard a knocking from the bakery's front door. "That must be him."

The two headed to the front room of the bakery at a quick walk, Rebecca straightening her robes and sending out her spare hand to dust off the front of Judith's. Judith returned the gesture with a touch of grope, which earned her a flick to the ear. Judith stifled a chuckle just as Rebecca opened the door.

Tamerlane stood without, and his nervous expression broke into a bright and wide grin when he saw them.

"Tamerlane!" said Rebecca, accepting him forward for an embrace and mutual kisses on the cheek. "You're a sight for sore eyes. Where have you been the last age?"

"And you're a sight for sorer ones yet, Rebecca," laughed Tamerlane. "Life treating you as well as it should?"

"All it should and more yet. Come inside. We have soft chairs and whisky."

"And like that, you have my undying love." Tamerlane stepped inside, and stopped to exchange an embrace and kisses with Judith. "Also, Judith; as I was saying before we were rudely interrupted…"

"You were expounding on my beauty and wisdom, which had somehow impossibly grown in the intervening age twixt our meetings," said Judith. "You didn't get the chance to finish, thanks to your companion. Pray, continue."

"I'd fear not doing the subject justice, nor did my mother raise a liar," said Tamerlane, taking off his outer robes. Underneath, the same golden icon of a sunburst glimmered on his front.

"Through to the living room," said Rebecca. "We can talk in comfort there."

They dutifully resituated (Tamerlane casting many admiring and envious glances over the home as they did so, Judith saw), and Rebecca poured a measure of the Firewhisky into each glass, topping them off with conjured water. She handed them out, and Tamerlane sat in a padded chair with his while Judith and Rebecca collapsed into a cushion-strewn couch.

"I've made some educated guesses about what you've been doing the past while," said Judith, taking a sip of the Firewhisky (which was nearly as good as she'd built it up in her head to be). "You haven't perchance taken up mercenary work again, have you?"

"Perchance, possibly," allowed Tamerlane. He took a sip from his own glass, and then ventured a nervous grin in the pair's direction. "I can read expressions well, you know. You're both wearing the look that foretells some form of educational beating."

"I say we avoid his head," said Judith. "He needs as little damage there as possible as it is."

"Really? I thought some percussive maintenance would knock it into a better shape," replied Rebecca.

"I just want you to know that I won't be berating you or calling you a numpty," said Judith to Tamerlane, "But I'll be _thinking_ it very loudly."

"In my defence, it's not as bad as the first time around. I'm informed this time, I've had practise, and the company are professionals," protested Tamerlane. "They're charted and recognised in more than twenty wizarding nations. Their fatality rates are near to the lowest in this side of the world."

"Any line of work in which the term 'fatality rate' has to make an appearance still sounds like a daft thing to embark upon," replied Judith. "Why would you even-?"

There came a pause when she realised that both Rebecca and Tamerlane were staring at her, baffled, as if waiting for the hypocritical penny to drop. She threw up her arms and conceded the point while Rebecca said "Tell us about them, at least. When did they sign you up?"

"You ever heard of the Oriflamme company? They're the culprits, thirty-odd including myself, led by one Fleur Desjardins."

"What's she like?"

"_He_ is very much a cold-blooded emotionless son-of-a-bitch – and he won't get angry at you if you chuckle about the name, but he will give you this really flat, pitying _look _– but he's decent enough. Pays on time, enforces discipline fairly, doesn't usually get us embroiled in anything too horrific." Tamerlane took a sip, and then continued.

"I got signed up just after the Paris debacle, in fact. My company at the time – the Warhounds, or something like that – and the Oriflamme were hired by rival nobles. They thrashed us for the most part, and we were licking our wounds back in Moscow. I must have made an impression on the Oriflammes, because I got a letter from Desjardins soon after, asking me if I'd be interested in working for a better-paid and more competent group. How could I refuse?"

"How could you indeed?" said Judith, and raised her glass. "To generous offers from out of the blue."

There came a collective assent and sipping from the glasses. When it was over, Rebecca asked "What are you doing here? What's the contract and client?"

"I'm really not sure – Desjardins' been keeping fairly tight-lipped about it, even to the Oriflamme's officers – I was promoted to lieutenant just a month back. Whatever it is, it's involved a lot of waiting and being paid for doing so. I suspect we're just being hired to stop someone else doing so. I'm obviously wrong, and we'll be assigned to attack a dragon's nest on the morrow, but a man can dream."

There came a lull in the conversation, which Judith broke with "I take it you've not gone out of your way to inform the other Gaunts of your all-too-brief return?"

Tamerlane made a wry face. "I fancy you know the answer to that."

Being a bastard half-blood in an obsessively pure-blooded family hadn't made for a happy home life for Tamerlane, Judith knew, or entailed much positive support from his older brothers in Hogwarts. Matters had come to a head a few years after leaving Hogwarts, when Tamerlane and one of his brothers had fought a duel for murky reasons and left the brother badly wounded. Rebecca's family, the last of the Gryffindors and about as noble in all senses of the word as humanly possible, had offered him shelter in their home. As far as Judith knew, Tamerlane hadn't yet returned to the dilapidated wreck that was Gaunt Manor, and had no intention of doing so.

"What of Arborlun?" asked Rebecca. "Do you have any plans to meet him?"

"Meeting him in an hour, once you finally grow sick of me. I sent him a Patronus as well so he'd have time to prepare himself in whatever fashion he does best. I don't often have the chance to slip away during a contract, but I intend to take full advantage."

Tamerlane took another sip at the Firewhisky, and then shook his head and said "I've been talking about myself more than is healthy, I'm sure. How are you two? Still…?"

"Still very much a pair, and still very much in comfortable prosperity," said Rebecca. "Nothing too exciting's happened on the bakery side of things. I put in another oven since business was increasing and finally got my torte's in hand."

"I've been keeping busy," said Judith. "I killed a nuckelavee earlier this week. That was fun."

She didn't divulge the details of her current contract. Parts of it invariably involved breathing not a whisper of what was happening to anyone who wasn't directly involved, and while Judith implicitly trusted Rebecca enough to casually discard that part with her, she didn't have the same trust in Tamerlane. She did feel comfortable with divulging the fee, however.

"My current contract's a lovely payer. A hundred Galleons, all told, if I complete it to everyone's satisfaction." She took a moment to admire the look of awe and slight envy on Tamerlane's face before continuing. "We've got ambitious plans for that amount if it all pans out."

"Bakery expansion, an assistant, and another bedroom upstairs," provided Rebecca.

"Another …? Oh. _Oh_," said Tamerlane, delight and surprise filling his face. "You're thinking about taking that next major step which I am reliably informed is a consequence of a committed pair growing all the more committed-er?"

"Adopting a child, you mean? Exactly that."

"If I'm not there to witness the event – but I will be, no matter what Desjardins says – then bloody congratulations. If they're an infant, name them after me. Tamerlane's a good boy's name. Likewise for a girl if you put in an accent around the end."

Loud and happy discussion of the subject followed, and while Judith participated with gusto, she still couldn't help but find herself mulling over two things related to it.

The first of these was what good deed she could have possibly done to deserve it all.

The second was how it had even started. That _had_ been a damnably strange Yule Ball, all things considered.

* * *

It was the time of the Yule Ball, and to any graduate of Hogwarts, Durmstrang or Beauxbatons with the scars to prove it, that alone carried half the story. It happened every four years, in whatever school was hosting the Triwizard Tournament, and had the same invariable effects wherever it was hosted.

Impatience and dread each ran wild in the corridors and classrooms of Hogwarts. Those with partners largely endured the former, the single from the latter. Sudden frantic matches were sought, the visiting students largely retreated to their own habitation until the chaos had died down, and every professor came to the silent conclusion that, no, actually, nostalgia for their schooldays was _entirely_ unjustified, and not even with a pack of wild horses could they be convinced to go through them again.

The six that made up the school's collection of outcasts, misfits, and foreigners had come to the gentlemen's (and ladies') agreement that they needn't be involved with all this courtship and romantic partners silliness, especially not just for the sake of a fleeting ball, and that they were secure enough in themselves to pay no heed to what was just a trend. They were fifth-years now, all of them, and sensible and adult enough to stick with their resolve.

The agreement was inevitably broken when Bezalel found himself a sudden partner in a heartbreakingly attractive Beauxbatons girl. To his credit, he at least _tried_ to look unhappy and ashamed of himself when informing the others. Aaliyah, a politician from the womb onwards, decided that if an agreement was worth breaking, it was worth breaking thoroughly, and was seen the next day in the company of boys from both Hogwarts and Durmstrang.

That left Rebecca and Arborlun, who looked largely unconcerned by these events, and Tamerlane, who had been overheard requesting that Arborlun and himself see if they could, working in tandem, attract anyone, _anyone_.

Judith, for her part, affected a lack of concern, but was trying to conceal a great and growing crush on none other than Rebecca.

She'd become acutely aware of it over the last couple of years, and had tried to bury it even as it grew, sure that it was just a simple mistake in whatever part of her mind governed unconscious attraction and that she would soon get over it.

When this hadn't worked, and when the redhead had started to made inroads on her dreams and certain imaginings that she intended to keep very much to herself, she had consulted her Bible in the hope that it would grant either reassurance that these feelings were either natural and wonderful in God's sight, or grant her stern resolve that this sort of thing was to be avoided if she was to refrain from sinning.

But all she'd gotten was a terse and enigmatic verse that males weren't to lie with themselves as they did with woman, that made no mention of women feeling those things and acting upon them, and the exercise had been of no help either way.

So she waited, and brooded on the subject, and came to the decision that, damn it all, she would at least muster the courage to give voice to her desires and see what Rebecca thought. Better to state it and be denied than to let it fester in the darkness and live in confusion and uncertainty. At least Rebecca turning her gently down might give her closure on the whole matter.

But courage was hard, or least this sort was. Judith already knew that there was countless horrible things, discussed and introduced and even tested in Defence Against The Dark Arts and Care of Magical Creatures, that she could face with batting an eyelid. But this was different, and she needed help from elsewhere.

And she'd found it in a visit to Hogsmeade, when she'd discreetly bought a bottle of Firewhisky from the barman with all the wizarding currency she'd saved up.

Alcohol for courage. Alcohol to loosen her inhibitions and express herself as she ached to. Alcohol - just a little, for she wouldn't need to imbibe too much - to put this to whatever end. What could go wrong?

It was the night of the Yule Ball, the dances were soon to begin to the backing of a solemn troupe of instrument-wielding centaurs, and Judith had to acutely concentrate to walk in a straight line. The Firewhisky had burned going down, and it seemed to have taken her motor control with it. She'd washed her mouth out thoroughly with water to take away the smell of it, but not everything could be concealed so easily.

She saw Rebecca and Aaliyah standing at one end of the Great Hall, past a throng of chatting students in all their finery (Aaliyah had been kind enough to lend Judith a dark green piece of finery) and made for them, managing to not knock anyone over in the process. Aaliyah sighted her first and waved, seemingly in her element amongst the bustle. Rebecca seemed somewhat lost and insecure, and unhappy that she had come at all.

"Judith! We were looking for you earlier," said Aaliyah. "Did you find anyone at the last minute?"

"I … er, no. I didn't," said Judith, shaking her head, carefully not looking at Rebecca so as not to give the game away. "Nobody walking around that caught my eye."

"I'm in the same boat," said Rebecca, who seemed to not be looking right at Judith either. Was that an omen? Was she not even slightly interested? The alcohol advised that surrendering now would be pathetic. "Er … are you alright? You look a little flushed."

"I'm alright. Just a little lack of sleep. Working all night on a Transfidula – _Transfiguration_ essay, that's the right word. That's _a_ word, even. You know how no sleep makes the mind go." Judith straightened herself and smiled at Aaliyah. "Where are your lads?"

"Archer's chatting to some friends, and we'll meet up again before the dances start. Gunnarson found love in a Beauxbatons girl, sorry to say," Aaliyah replied. "A word to the wise; I saw Arborlun and Tamerlane wandering around, Tamerlane in a state of some franticness. If both of you are unspoken for, they might suddenly realise that you're both female and capable of dancing. Just so you know, however you might react to them."

"Ah." Judith nodded, putting the matter out of mind almost as soon as she'd heard it. She had a duty here tonight, after all.

Aaliyah looked round at the dance floor. "That looks like the musicians are setting themselves up. I'm just going to find Archer. See you two later tonight?"

They nodded and Aaliyah headed off into the crowd, leaving Judith and Rebecca alone. Free to talk.

"Nice night tonight," said Rebecca uncertainly.

"Aye," agreed Judith. Desire, freed from its chains by Alcohol, finally announced the charge.

"Look, there's something I want to sla- to _say_," she started, Desire tripping in the attempt and Alcohol leading a confused attack on her speech. "I mean, I – we're friends; we've been friends for a while."

She faltered. Rebecca looked like she was about to speak; fearful of outright rejection on even this basic point in her sudden insecurity, Judith rallied and continued quickly.

"But, but I mean, I like you. And when I say like…"

She faltered again. Rebecca appeared deep in turmoil, as Judith's meaning edged its way towards apparentness.

On the edge of hearing, a small part of Judith noted that Tamerlane and Arborlun were speaking nearby.

"…Look, we'll ask _them_, alright? They both look unspoken for, they're good friends, we know they like us as friends and might take sufficient pity to bestow a dance in our most desperate hour, and they both have two legs and are hence physically capable of rendering such a favour. I'll ask Rebecca and you can ask Judith."

"I still don't understand why you're so desperate about this."

"Because … because it's _done_, that's why. Because when I sit with my great-grandchildren in some distant century and they ask 'Grandfather, who did you court at the Yule Ball', I will _not_ be caught smiling and blinking vacantly at them. That'll come in a yet later century."

"Hyperbole aside, can I not just dispense with this and leave you to it? I don't do dancing."

"No. We're partners in this grand enterprise, my man. And well … look at Judith. Look at her. I assure you she's feeling what I'm feeling right now; she's just strong enough to not speak of it. Will you let her be miserable? Will you, Elijah?"

There came a pause, and then "Damn it. Fine."

"Gods, at last. You only took a _month's_ convincing. Now let's … oh, bloody hell, that's the music starting up, _hurry_."

From the centaurs, there came the single high note of a harp lovingly being plucked. From the hall, there came bustle and laughter as couple flocked to the dance floor. From Judith's right, there came hurried footsteps; from Rebecca's face, there came indecision and conflicting emotions, and from Judith's throat, there came nothing of use.

"I … I truly…"

And then, as the harp and flute and drums of the centaurs began to sound across the hall and as a thousand feet began to step and crash in rhythm; as Judith tried to speak from the very essence of what she was and what she felt, she found herself leaning forward and planting a kiss on Rebecca's lips.

The world stood still. The music was just noise in the background. The footsteps halted.

And then everything lurched back into grand, glorious motion as a pressure against Judith's lips indicated that she was being kissed back.

From the side, Tamerlane and Arborlun stopped and watched, Tamerlane taken entirely off guard and Arborlun watching with a kind of detached interest.

Tamerlane finally said "Well, I'm not saying this was the worst possible outcome but … oh hells. Let's give them some peace. I saw a tray of drinks back there. I'll _lie_ to my grandchildren."


	9. Cold Light

On the table at Judith's side of the bed, a small pebble, the surface of which was ashimmer with the energies of imbued Charms, rose a few inches and hovered briefly in the air. It fell back down with a sharp rap on the wood; sounding the sound of a bell as another Charm glimmered. It waited a second and then repeated the paired actions, and then repeated itself again with even less of a time delay.

Judith fumbled out a hand and caught it mid-hover around the seventeenth time. It was funny how the idea of an alarm to wake oneself in the morning had seemed like such a good idea the night before, but only inspired murderous grumpiness when its time of practical use came.

Tamerlane's visit had been prolonged as the night wore on, and extended further when Arborlun showed up at their door bearing a complimentary bottle for the group and a mouthful of stored-up banter for his old friend. The darkness outside had already started to lighten towards morning before the bodies of everyone involved had sternly informed their passengers that they were far too old to get away with this sort of thing now, and Tamerlane had been obliged to leave before he was certainly noted as absent by his company. Arborlun had left for his own home alongside the man, and Judith and Rebecca had finally made for their own bed.

She rose, groaning and stretching, and regarded the day outside with little enthusiasm. The oncoming dawn was obscured by thick grey clouds, dark enough to almost resemble the night in which Judith had fallen asleep, and the air was cold enough to almost make her reflexively draw back inside the bed covers.

"Doesn't feel like one of the more pleasant days ahead, all things considered," came a sleepy murmur from Rebecca, who had been stirred to wakefulness as well.

"You'll be spending most of it next to ovens, at least," said Judith. "Give yourself an extra few minutes. I'll see the ovens lit."

Rebecca replied with what was probably sleep-addled assent, and Judith reached for her wand and swung her legs out of the bed at the same time, going through her morning cleansing and summoning over a bundle of robes. She held them by the neck and let them fall to the ground, regarding them critically.

Judith still intended to work today with as much discretion and magical assistance as possible. Her relatively confining and uncomfortable muggle clothes had been left in an approximately folded state in a corner of the room, their favour lost to Judith's favoured set of light robes. They were dark grey silk, padded at key locations, and loose enough to move in comfortably while avoiding trailing folds that could snag on anything and everything inconvenient in the world.

She secured any remaining looseness around their middle with a tightly drawn belt, to which she affixed a moleskin pouch, and made for the bedroom's door. As she passed by the bundle of muggle clothes, she gave brief consideration to the broad-brimmed hat, shrugged, and picked it up at well. It would likely be as dreich in North Berwick as it was in Hogsmeade, and headwear wouldn't go amiss.

Judith ventured downstairs to the kitchen, where all but one of the ovens stood cold, great and empty presences in the dark room. She checked the lit oven to make sure none of the baking loaves had burned, and moved on to each of the others. Trivial, voiceless magic to conjure flames breathed life into each one, igniting the coals – Charmed to be persistent – and washed the room with carmine light.

That chore done, she searched around for some of the leftover chicken from last night and assembled a small stack of it between two halves (when inspired madness gripped her) of a blueberry scone. Stopping to summon water into a cup and bear it in her other hand, she migrated through to the living room.

She found an unread pamphlet there, and let herself be distracted by it and the food until she heard Rebecca's footsteps descending the staircase at the room's side. Turning, Judith saw her in a pale red tunic and dark breeches, covered by a heavy linen apron she was securing at the small of her back. She caught sight of Judith and turned to her, smiling.

"Thank you for the extra minutes. I made use of them in … what are you eating?"

"It's _good_," said Judith defensively, holding up the half-eaten fusion of blueberry scone and chicken. "I don't know what it is – some wise future generation will name this sort of thing, I have no doubt – but I'd recommend it. You should make more of it. Sell it warmed over the counter."

"Thank you, no. I like being gainfully employed and not being pursued by a mob intent on entirely just murder." Rebecca stopped behind the chair Judith was sitting in, that she'd yanked over to the table in the room's centre. "You're going in without a disguise?"

"My available disguises were made for warmth and endurance, not unrestricted movement and silence, both of which I suspect I'll want to make great use of." Judith finished the last of the scone, and leaned her head back in the seat to regard what she could of Rebecca upside-down. "Do you anticipate doing much in the way of travelling today?"

"You know what my Mondays are like," said Rebecca, making a face. "I don't understand why people want more of my wares around then, but I'll refrain from complaining too much. Why do you ask?"

"Would you mind if I borrowed your travelling cloak? My own met its glorious death a couple of months ago, and I've yet to replace it."

"Go ahead. Endeavour to come back with it alive, though, rather than … _what_ exactly happened to your own?"

"Picture the scene," said Judith, spreading her arms wide. "There lay the cave on the outskirts of Stornoway. On clawed feet out crept the dragon, confronted by an unlikely hero made from sticks, a travelling cloak, and a carved turnip; animated by a handy little Charm. Onwards the dark beast came, bellowing spite and flame, oblivious to the skilled and beautiful witch positioned in the clouds overhead ..."

"Burned to ash, in essence?"

"In essence. But its sacrifice bought me an fifteen-Galleon purse. It's a pity I didn't have rights to the dragon's remains. There's a lot to be made from their various bits if you know potential buyers."

"I can imagine," said Rebecca, kissing Judith's upturned forehead before heading towards the kitchen. "Take care today. Come back with yourself alive as well, if possible."

"All these boring requests," mock-sighed Judith as she finished the water. "I always look forward to charging boldly onwards, but time and time again you insist on ..."

"Currently baking, hence deaf to your sparkling wit," came the called reply from the kitchen. "Have fun storming the kirk."

Judith smirked, stopping to clean the plate and cup before levitating them to a surface in the kitchen before she retrieved Rebecca's cloak from a peg in the central corridor. It was made from thick wool dyed a faded red, set with a multitude of pockets and imbued with small Warmth Charms. Judith aspired to one day either acquire a copy or steal the original, and she exulted as she shrugged it on. The coldness of the day outside was now just an unpleasant thing happening to other people.

Making her way outdoors through the door at the bakery's side, she braced herself for the cold and wasn't disappointed. Summer, such as it applied to snow-shrouded Hogsmeade, had evidently been distracted from its duties and had let the normal state of affairs for Scottish weather assert itself once more. Winds made frigid at this height swept in gusts through the streets; and precipitation that didn't know whether it wanted to be rain, snow, sleet or hail when it grew up tumbled downwards. Judith clenched the cloak tighter around herself as she mustered the will for Apparition, her breath coming out as mist as she did so.

She focused, summoning the image of the forest clearing from where she'd sent the Patronus. It was bound to still be an isolated spot, and would minimise the chance of her Apparating on top of some unsuspecting muggle. (Quite aside from blowing her cover, doing so would potentially end disastrously for both Judith and the person on the receiving end. Books on Apparition that had broached the subject had always done so accompanied by plenty of nice pictures in which a great deal of red predominated. Judith had often wondered in fascinated horror whether her own Perennial Splinching would add any extra dimension of consequences to the event, and she had always come to the conclusion that she was happy to never find out the specifics.)

She breathed in, brought the isolated clearing to mind as sharply as she could, and focused...

* * *

...She breathed out, anticipating the usual jolt of pain (which she could now almost blot out) and the scrabble for her Dittany, and was surprised when it didn't come.

It should have been a merciful relief, but Judith was aware that whenever her Perennial Splinching seemed to take mercy a few times in a row, it was only so it could flare up again in an even more painful and gruesome form later.

She took stock of her surroundings. It was the same clearing, devoid of inconvenient passers-by. Above her, the sky was a dull mass of angry grey, darker mottling and a distant rumble indicating oncoming rain. Raindrops had an uneasy relationship with Disillusionment – it was no great feat to be suspicious of drops that fell upon and ran down a human-shaped patch of empty air – and Judith started to move quickly after weaving her concealing Charms, eager to get out of the rain preferably before it even fell.

Several minutes of walking led Judith past the Canmores' cottage, where she sighted what looked like the same guard on duty outside the front door. Their pipe was absent and their crossbow was firmly in hand this time, even as they slouched against the wall. She moved quickly and as silently as possible, taking care that the sound of her movement through the forest's undergrowth wouldn't be loud enough to attract the Witchguard's attention.

After a few more uneasy minutes of careful padding past the house, Judith judged herself to be out of earshot and resumed at a normal pace. She still kept an eye on the trees around her for any suspect movement of glimpses of another person, whether common forester or Witchguard. Before her, the trees were staring to thin, with the forest's visible and the suggestion of building roofs and smoke plumes beyond.

Judith emerged from the tree cover before long, and set out on the road to North Berwick, keeping to the hard path so that her unseen feet wouldn't leave impressions on the grass.. She sighted farmers working in the fields on either side of the road, looking up with weary expression at the brewing storm. She encountered people on the road moving towards or away from the town, singly or in groups, and was able each time to slip past them and leave them none the wiser. They grew more numerous as she moved closer and closer to the distant kirk steeple and as the buildings sprouting at the road's side grew increasingly frequent.

They were oblivious to her, Judith knew, her Disillusionment leaving her as only the suggestion of a faint and briefly-glimpsed blur in the air to the most alert amongst them. But caution was still paramount. A rising cloud of road-dust or a section of grass being crushed or water being struck up from a puddle with cause wasn't like to leave these people at ease; and they were but a prelude to the Witchguard, who would likely know what such phenomena indicated if they had been properly trained.

She pressed onwards to the distant and nearing town, where it lay still beneath a broiling sky.

The point where it became North Berwick, where the Firth of Forth slid into view as a great shimmering dull-grey mass on the very edge of discernibility past the growing thin mist (she cursed at this, mist being the worst of all environments for Disillusionment), was a stone's throw away from the kirk itself. Judith continued her swift and stealthy progress, determined to beat both the inevitable rain and developing mist.

A short journey through the short and twisting streets later, she faced the kirk from an angle at the building's front, from across a stretch of open street. The great front doors were closed fast, with a couple engrossed in conversation just outside them.

The building's front was devoted to the kirk's actual functions, Judith was aware of that much. If there was an entry to the building's cellars, it would therefore be somewhere in the back, in what was the king's own quarters for the duration of his stay.

Looking to the side she could see, Judith's sighted a small door towards the rear of the kirk. It was wide open, with steam spilling out from the top of the entryway. A woman was leaning out of it, shouting instructions at someone who revealed themselves presently; a younger woman heaving two full buckets that had presumably been filled from a nearby well.

Judith's attention narrowed upon what she could make out of the door's mechanism as she crept closer. She finally saw it, just as the young woman entered with the buckets and the older woman stepped from the door to close it; a metal crossbar that permitted locking and unlocking from one side only. The woman lifted the metal bar from where it lay within two hooks and jutted past the door's edge into empty air, and pulled the door in towards her. There came the distant clunk of the bar being lifted and dropped again into the hooks, including one presumably on the inside past the door's frame.

Right. This could be tricky. Her known spell for giving her illicit access to places she shouldn't be, the Thief's Friend, was designed for locks. It would have no purchase on the crossbar.

Still, nothing was impossible when approached with the right amount of cunning, with bloody-mindedness to taste. Judith already believed she had the answer.

She made her way to the door, walking quickly across the street – her Silencing Charm would muffle the sound of her footsteps – and walked all the more quickly when the first raindrops began to patter down. Nearing the door, she pressed herself against the building's side and drew her wand, aiming it at the point on the door where the crossbar was on the other side.

Levitating something you couldn't see was no easy feat, and Judith struggled to summon a near-perfect visualisation of the bar resting in the hooks. The task wasn't aided by the old man who suddenly rounded a corner from a street ahead, hobbling his way along on a stick. Judith was aware of the rain drumming down all the harder as the seconds ticked by, and she ventured a hasty and hushed "_Wingardium Leviosa_."

There came the soft impression in Judith's mind of the spell connecting with its target, and the door gradually slid open as the bar was kept in mid-air. Judith slipped in as quickly as she could, praying that nobody on the other side had spotted the bar rising.

She entered, and silently breathed with relief. The room was a kitchen, with cupboards and pantries lining the walls and steam billowing out from a pot suspended over a brick hearth. The older woman was shovelling chopped vegetables from a tray into a pot over the fire, while the younger woman was gingerly skinning a rabbit with a large and wickedly-sharp knife.

Judith eased herself into the room, ducking under a cloud of steam that issued from the pot. The heat in the room was intense, and there hadn't been any appreciable draught that would issue inside, so she might well get away with this long enough to-

There came a brief chapping from the door, and the old man stuck his head around the open door's edge, grinning. "Nice, hospitable place the minister has here. Any old rogue could just wander in."

"Morgan, ye old goat." The older woman put the tray down and bustled over to the door (brushing an inch past Judith's nose and avoiding clipping her thanks only to Judith's hasty breath inwards) while the younger one glanced around before returning to her work. "I could swear I'd set that thing in properly."

"You sure I cannae wander in? If the king's in residence, he's bound to have a few nice things with him."

"Get along. There's his guards about the place, and I like your guts where they are." She kissed him briefly on his whiskers and said "I'll see ye tonight at your place. Head there before ye drown in this."

"Will do. Take care yourself, duck," replied the man, backing away from the door, letting the woman replace the crossbar in the hooks, seeing the door properly closed. She turned back to the pot.

"Morgan," the woman commented, craning her head over her shoulder to speak to the younger woman – hardly much more than a girl, Judith noted, who was currently tiptoeing her way towards the open door at the room's other end. "Old acquaintance. We get along well. More than well, intermittently."

"Oh aye?" replied the girl, hesitantly, as a kind of catch-all prompt.

"Time was, a few decades back, when you'd be lucky to attend a Sunday service without the old minister bringing me and Morgan up before the congregation and shaming us for frolicking in an unwholesome manner, with all others doing their best to look solemn and disapproving and usually failing miserably. Arrive, Psalm-reading, Mary-and-Morgan Shaming … it was a good schedule."

"Aye?" said the girl, now apparently regretting giving her earlier prompt. Judith was nearly at the door

"Time's passed now," replied Mary. "Nobody now gets excited about us cavorting when we're all wrinkled and starting to creak – even though the practise only improves with age, let me tell ye-"

"Aye, aye, aye," replied the girl quickly, as a kind of quick and desperate attempt to head off this particular conversational avenue, at the point where Judith crossed the doorframe and left them to their conversation. She doubted she would have been needed or been able to provide relevant insights, in any case.

She emerged into a short stretch of corridor, another corridor branching away to her left and voices and the sound of laughter coming from the ajar door to her front. An armoured form in the room passed briefly by the door, holding something while chuckling. Judith opted for the corridor to her left, deciding upon discretion as the better part of valour. It was likely that the stairs to the cellars were nearer the outside edge of the building in any case. As she walked, she drew off Rebecca's travelling cloak and, folding it, stored it in the moleskin pouch hanging at her belt. She wouldn't need its warmth, and its bulk could prove a disadvantage.

Following the corridor to where it turned away at another angle, this time to her right, Judith became aware of footsteps in that general direction. She continued, her caution growing, ready to press herself into the wall to avoid an oncoming Witchguard.

She neared the corner and glanced around, sighting another corridor that at its end led to an open door from which light spilled, and which on its right side had another open egress with the top of a flight of stairs visible. Someone's shadow was vanishing down against the wall for the stairway, with the footsteps clearly coming from their direction.

Judith thought a rude word. _Of course_ this person was heading in the same direction as herself, and, if it was one of the Witchguard, might intend to spend a lengthy time there on guard duty.

She ventured briskly in their direction, reached the top of the stairs in a few seconds, and looked down.

Judith thought a ruder word. It _was_ one of the Witchguard, the giant who had accosted her yesterday after her conversation with Buchanan no less. His sword twinkled across his back, naked without a scabbard, and he marched with an alert, unhurried air. His close helmet completely covered his face, denying her even that source as an insight into him.

Judith ventured down cautiously after him, to where he was headed for yet another right-angled kink in this house's enjoining spaces. She matched her footsteps with his, taking care that the muffled noise made by them was eclipsed by his own heavy treads, and kept her wand steady in her hand.

He rounded this latest corner, Judith still on his heels. From past him, she saw this short length running flat, to be terminated at yet another turn to the right. In the corner of the turning point, she saw a chair had been set tor rest. It was sturdy and well-worn, and presumably acted as a point where guards could wait and watch over what was presumably the next exciting corridor past the last stairs leading down.

Judith took stock of the chair, came up with a mad and inspired plan, and decided to keep an eye on where this - Commander Wilkie, had Buchanan said? - was headed. If he was just headed for the chair itself, all well and good (relatively), she could just sneak past him. If not, then she'd put him there regardless.

He passed by the chair and showed no signs of slowing. Judith repressed a sigh, and, to the latter end, crept up behind him, pressed her wand into the back of his armour, and whispered "_Somnium_."

All the weight of plate armour did exactly nothing to ward against the simple Sleeping Charm, and the huge man sagged mid-step. He began to sway and, conscious of the noise he could make falling, Judith reached out quickly to grab him and attempt to steady him.

Judith succeeded on the first part, but the second made her eyes bulge and her whole body tauten with effort; the man's weight in armour was comparable to a respectable mountain. It was only with the assistance of a Levitation Charm to take some of his weight that she managed to arrest his fall and drag him over to the chair. Depositing him in the seat (with an audible creak from the legs), she studied him as if contemplating an artwork and began to arrange his legs and arms into a realistic sleeper's pose. His helmeted head flopped back, small snoring sounds beginning to escape it, and Judith stood back after a few moments.

She turned to regard the top of the stairs, just to be sure nobody had accidentally witnessed Wilkie's apparent fainting spell and subsequent causeless levitation and flopping around in a chair and was reacting to these events by standing still with stupefied shock. Satisfying herself that no-one was there, she turned back to Wilkie and considered Obliviating him.

The problem there, however, was that she couldn't actively put in a false memory with the Charm – she didn't know that particular advanced spell – and he'd wake up wondering what he had been doing asleep in a chair in any event. If his last memory had been of walking down these stairs, then it might seem more plausible that he'd simply slumped into the chair and lost track of time than if Judith erased his memory back, say, five minutes ago when he'd been in a different part of the building.

Were these guards trained to recognise Obliviation and be suspicious of sudden sleeps? It dawned upon Judith that the only reasonable option open to her for avoiding deception, based on her current knowledge, was to leave him be as he slept. She didn't know nearly all the factors that might be at play, and reasonable grounds to suppose that the man would assume failings on his own part when he awoke.

Judith left him, descending the stairs to where a heavy oak door sat shut at their feet. No light shone from within past the thin cracks at the floor and sides, and the door itself revealed itself to be locked when Judith tried the handle.

"_Alohomora_," resolved that latter problem. Judith opened the door gently, careful to make as little sound as possible, and saw the vague outline of a long, curving corridor stretching away into pitch-darkness. No lights twinkled in the dark, no sound of human voices came to greet her, and Judith judged it safe to step inside, close and lock the door behind her, and summon light with a whispered "_Lumos_."

From her wand's tip emerged a ball of shimmering golden light, illuminating the worn stone of the long corridor and glinting off the surfaces of the unlit oil lanterns that protruded from the walls at regular intervals. Judith could make out several doors running the length of one wall, dark against the golden light.

Bright as it now was, Judith was now profoundly aware of the coldness that seemed to permeate the place. It seemed like the logical thing to find in a place like this – firewood was saved for warming the living spaces of a home, not its storage – but something about this coldness left her unsettled, left her taking a firmer grip on her wand. Trying to put it from mind, she glanced along the doors, her eyes drifting over each one until she reached the end. Her gaze narrowed, and she stepped forward.

At the last door's edges, along the top and bottom and the side without hinges, full sacks of what Judith took to be straw had been nailed fast. Over the lock and handle, another sack dangled from a nail, intended to be lifted away only when necessary. Judith would have bet that the other side of the door, any edge or crack in that room beyond that would have let noise through to the outside world, had been similarly muffled.

She reached the door, found it locked, opened it with "_Alohomora_," and slipped inside.

When she saw what lay within, as she closed the door behind her, her suspicions had been confirmed. The inside of the door had also been muffled, but that wasn't as damning at what lay at the room's centre. A solid-looking chair, crafted from some heavy metal, managed to loom in the room's relatively small space. It sat within a slight depression in the floor, from which a stained groove ran out to a hole in the wall. Stubby iron manacles were set in its arm-rests and in its front legs.

There was a small cabinet at one end of the room, and another door at the other, and as she turned to regard that door, Judith became aware of a faint rank in the air, as if of rotting meat.

The urge to _not_ find out what exactly lay behind that door began pealing like an alarm bell in Judith's mind, contesting with her sudden fury at this king, at these guards who employed this room, with her determination to discover exactly what they had been doing to their captured magic-users and resolve to, if it was within her power yet, save any that she could.

She tried the handle to this last room, found it wasn't locked, and swung it open, pointing her wand within to shed whatever light it could.

The full smell of what lay within the room hit her before the sight of it.

* * *

King James and a member of the Witchguard - Dunn, James believed – were making their own way down the stairs towards the cellars when they came across the entirely unexpected sight of Commander Wilkie fast asleep in a chair far too small for him.

James arched a brow, trying not to break his composure by laughing. Dunn boggled. Wilkie produced a series of surprisingly gentle snores.

James's suspicions didn't flare up, not yet, and so after quietly taking in the scene, he shook his head with a chuckle and said "Go and wake your commander, Dunn."

Dunn, for his part, ventured forwards cautiously. Had it been any other man in dereliction of his duties in favour of snoozing in a chair, his method of waking them up would have been a light cuff to the head and an amicable shout of "They're called waking hours for a reason, you dozy bastard."

Since, however, the man asleep was Commander Wilkie, and because Dunn was relatively new to the Witchguard and had the general idea that you weren't meant to say words like 'bastard' in front of the king, he instead reached out a hand to shake Wilkie's shoulder and said "Commander? Commander, are you asleep?"

He received an initial sleepy murmur, and then further response in the form of Wilkie yawning and stretching. The man's eyes opened behind his helmet's visor, falteringly at first, and Dunn took a step back.

"Call that a first-time offence, Commander?" said James with a smile. "I'd thought you'd been running yourself ragged yesterday."

Wilkie absently reached up a hand to scratch at his chin, doing so with some futility past the steel of his helm, and then suddenly sat bolt-upright, his eyes now bright and cold.

"Your Majesty," he said quickly, "My immediate last recollection is of descending these stairs, before awaking here. I was under no great fatigue nor do I have any reason to believe sudden illness has simply befuddled my memory. I do not suspect my sleep to be natural."

James's breath caught in his mouth. Dunn looked confused, his expression tempered by growing wariness.

Wilkie glanced towards the stairway leading down, and looked back to James. James gave him a nod back, and Wilkie drew the longsword at his back in a motion that was almost too fast to be seen. Dunn cautiously echoed the action, drawing out his own pistol in his left hand and his backsword in his right. James let his hand dangle over the rapier hanging at his belt.

He suspected it wouldn't be enough. Not for what would likely await them in the darkness.

"Commander, Dunn, take the lead," he ordered. "Forge a path, and I shall be ready for whatever may await us."

* * *

In the room beyond, the slumped form of Gallus Malfoy lay at the front. He was splayed on his side, his hair and long robes trailing in the dust and mould, his open blue eyes staring at nothing at all. He was breathing steadily, the subtle rise and fall of his chest visible, but he showed not a single sign of life beyond that.

Behind him, there lay three others, two of whom, dark-haired twins, were almost certainly dead, and the other of whom, a woman in muggle clothing, couldn't be alive. Their frayed robes were stained with old blood, their skin was tight and drawn, and at the edges of their limbs, rats had already started to gnaw away.

Behind them, there lay what could have probably once been an old man, and there was nothing of him left but rotting meat on his bones and robes trailing through his own slurry.

Judith wasn't sick on the spot, but only just. Her nausea rose inside her as she stooped down to confirm that, yes, these were wizarding robes, yes, everyone apart from Gallus was dead, and, yes, that Gallus -

She rested her hand briefly on his own, and didn't get a response from him, nothing beyond his constant monotonous breathing and slow blinking.

- had been Kissed by a Dementor. So must the others, before their bodies gave up absent anything compelling them to keep living.

Judith still wasn't sick, but only with great effort. The Dementor's Kiss...

She'd first heard about it, and the creatures themselves in any accurate detail, in her third year at Hogwarts, in Defence Against the Dark Arts. Their teacher that year, Professor Zimerman, an expert from some state in the Holy Roman Empire who owed the Headmaster a big enough favour to risk taking the position, had described them during one chilling lecture.

They were creatures practically composed of the worst parts of human existence, feeding on humankind wherever it languished in despair. In their presence, all things rotted, all happy feelings slipped away, all hope and joy faded like the embers in a dying fire. They could be repelled by the Patronus Charm, and _that_ would be tomorrow's lesson, by wielding your own true happiness as a banner in the night against their darkness.

And it_ was_ imperative that they learn the Patronus, the Professor continued, for Dementors didn't represent so tawdry a threat as dragons or trolls or giants or other wizards. They fed on a victim's soul, and consumed it in the process.

Judith had been quiet for a long while after leaving that class, stunned by the implications.

To kill was a sin, to murder one's neighbours or friends or innocents or even one's enemies without just cause was abominable in God's eyes, she knew that. To speed all that a person truly was to the afterlife, risking their eternal suffering by cutting short their work and chances for redemption in this world, was a clear sin. An immortal soul was meant to head to its judgement when God wished it, not before.

But to _annihilate_ an eternal soul outright-

Judith couldn't think of a blacker sin than that, a blacker creature than the one that thrived doing exactly that.

All these thoughts came rushing back as she gazed upon the bodies, mutely wondering how they had seen their end coming, whether they had thought in their lives that they would receive eternal life hereafter.

They were joined by another thought which whispered, _How did the king get access to a Dementor in the first place?_

Judith stood up, shakily at first, and prepared to make her exit.

She'd be able to confirm that Gallus and all the other magic-users were dead, or near enough in the eyes of magic-users, and she'd report that the king and his guard had a Dementor to which they'd presumably been feeding the prisoners after interrogation. That should raise a whole clutch of questions needing answers, and Diggory and Peverell would either release her with her fee or retain her for extra coat to unearth these answers, and if she came across the person, King James or whoever, that had unleashed the Dementor, then she would-

There came the click of a key in the lock of the door behind her, and the creak of it swinging open. Light crept into the room from another source.

She whirled, extinguishing her Light Charm as she went, but it was too late, the armoured figures emerging through the door had already sighted it, and, true to their expected training, one of them had a pistol already levelled.

Judith's "_Protego!_" cut straight through through the bellow of "_At them!_" erupting from the largest figure, the one she recognised as sending to sleep earlier. The bullet glanced off her gleaming Shield, spinning to one side in the after-effect of the shot's brief light. Before her, she sighted the oncoming outline of the giant with a drawn longword, which seemed to catch any light in the room to made the blade shine as it swung down as the figure lunged.

It hammered off the Shield Charm, sending long blister-red cracks running down its curved surface, but before Wilkie could pull it back for another shattering blow, Judith leapt to her left and, angling her wand at his exposed side, shouted "_Petrificus Totalus!_" A surge of blue-white light seemed almost to lash out of her wand and impact with the man's torso: he stopped mid-lunge, motionless as a statue for a few brief seconds before his own stance sent him slowly crashing to one side.

Judith turned to the next figure, briefly illuminated by the fading light of the spells, armoured as any other of the Witchguard, bearing a basket-hilted backsword in one hand and a hastily-drawn dagger in the other. He came at Judith, and was met with "_Expelliarmus!_"

Red light snatched his backsword from his grasp and sent it flying in an arc towards Judith, who shifted her wand to her left hand and seized hold of the sword with her right. The man pressed his assault, bringing his dagger down in an overhead sweep, and Judith lashed out wildly. The sword's flat cracked against his knuckles, making him cry out and drop the dagger. Before he could react, Judith stepped in towards him, pressed her wand's tip into the middle of his cuirass, and snapped "_Stupefy_."

He fell back, down and certainly out for a few minutes, and Judith took that quick moment to breath, to register her own thundering heart rate, to acknowledge how quickly that had happened and how matters were almost certainly out of control by now, to notice the last man still standing in the doorframe. He was stark against the light cast by a lit oil lantern he bore.

He was young, about her own age, with messy and wispy hair and a beard that were spotted with the stains left by food and drink. His clothes were rich and likewise stained; his large eyes seemed almost to burn with intensity, and rose to meet her own.

He didn't look anything like he did on the currency, of course, but he was still unmistakeable.

Judith Fairweather stood across from the King of Scotland, over the unconscious forms of his men. He was the first to move, putting down the oil lantern and then reaching up to a feathered hat perched upon his head and dropping it on the floor, while his other hand drew forth the rapier hanging at his belt.

Judith spoke first. "Put the sword away, Your Majesty," she said, the words cold and collected to bely her pounding heart. "You saw what just happened here."

"I certainly did," replied the king, his voice surprisingly soft. He looked from Wilkie to the other guard, his expression twisting into a slight frown.

Judith sighed and went through the motions for another Full Body-Bind Curse, ready to do whatever would give her an extra few minutes to perform Obliviations and think about how she was going to report this utter mess, and the very moment she finished the movements and spoke the words-

- King James's other hand blurred -

- And the spell Judith sent forth blasted off the face of a solid and shimmering Shield.

Judith stood still, processing what she was seeing.

Behind the Shield, the king stood poised for battle, bearing in one hand the gleaming rapier. In the other, he held a wand as white as bone.

Judith, her mind running in confused circles, said "_What_ in the _name_ of Merlin's rotted left-"

"You break into my dwelling," said the king softly, though his voice strengthened. "You assault my guards. You defy God's will and consort with the Enemy, you wield his darkest of arts, and you threaten. My. Realm." Each word was spat, and the king began moving his wand through the air in complex, shifting motions. "Suffer the fury that shall await you ever after, _witch_. Feel the might of God Himself! _Incandes!_ _Burn!_"

* * *

Atop a tower, beneath a ceiling that let in the daylight, a witch sat with a well-worn mirror. She suspected she'd have to weave another one before long. Inferi stood at slouching attention beside her, bearing the insignia of her House upon their tabards.

She said, as her wand tapped out an intricate dance against the mirror's surface, "_Animaspeculara_. Show me the king."

She waited patiently as the spell found its target and conjured a clear image.

After a few minutes, while the crack and skirl of clashing metal sounded throughout the room and the flash of curses from the mirror's vision reflected off her gaze, she said, in tones so controlled and icy that they could have been chipped fresh from an iceberg, "Well. This could prove problematic if she lives."


	10. Revelations

From James's wand, a stream of blood-red fire spat forth. The heat of it all but came before its existence; a scalding herald that sucked moisture from the air and hammered at Judith.

Judith's own wand blurred through the motions of a reflexive Shield Charm, the craft of it coming voiceless to her in her urgency. She kept the wand angled, and a shimmering plane of magical force sprung up before her at a forty-five degree angle to the oncoming flames. It didn't meet them head on, but deflected them to blaze past Judith's left side, turning the Shield prismatic with the collision of magical energies and producing what seemed almost like a tortured shriek from the same.

Before her, she saw that James had stepped with the spell, his sword rising to a proper ward as he moved within striking distance. His wand scythed through the air as he sang "_Finite!_" and sent a flash of light that struck at the burning Shield. The spell exploded with a furious retort of light and kinetic force, slamming against Judith and sending her footing agley.

Half-blinded and staggering, she glimpsed the royal rapier descending down through the same haze of disrupted energies. Behind it, the king's eyes shone in the firelight.

A wild swing of her backsword knocked away the rapier's point, and Judith forced herself to stand. She kept her sword pressing hard upon the rapier and bulled forward, shoving their swords up to maintain the bind and slashing her wand across James's exposed midsection with a cry of "_Stupefy!_"

Red light spiralled out and forwards, meeting the grey blast of James's own "_Bombarda!_" with an explosion of light and thunder, the force of which forced the two combatants back a step. Bracing herself for another attack, Judith adopted a low, crouched stance with the backsword ready in her grasp, her wand jabbing out briefly to weave a Minor Shield before her with a quick murmur of "_Sartego_."

James's rapier thrust out just before the Shield was raised, to be deflected with a flash of red light. His wand then thrust forward, throwing forth a blazing orange-yellow orb. Judith, knowing that the Minor Shield almost certainly couldn't withstand the effect of whatever spell this proved to be, instead sent the Shield flying towards the orb with a twist of her wand, smashing away some of its force and deflecting it away to a wall behind her. It flew past her side, and from behind her there came a sudden loud hiss, as if a furnace's roar had been compressed into a second, coupled with the acidic stench of what could only be burning stone.

James snarled with aggravation, and the rapier's point came slashing through the air again, to be met by Judith's wild and swift swings of the backsword. Openings between the clashing blades were quickly filled with blazing and rebounding curses and shields and counterspells, filling the room with the light of flashing fireworks and the sound of thunderstorms.

(Neither of them noticed Dunn beginning to groan and stir, his gloved hands fumbling for the unloaded pistol, powder horn and bullets at his belt.)

Fragmented and parallel streams of thought, split asunder by the chaos of battle, were running through Judith's mind.

Shift to hanging guard to intercept overhead thrust while cutting with a Counter-Spell to overwhelm his Shield, to be followed up with a Stunning Spell to his midriff, adjust to changing circumstances, side-step thrust and bring a Stunning Spell to bear against his exposed side- opined a practical one which currently held court, focusing purely on keeping her alive in the duel.

A less focused and much more confused part of herself demanded to know why in the name of hell's darkest imaginings the _muggle_ king knew _magic_.

A detached and worryingly unconcerned part observed that the king had quite a strength behind his wand arm, and some of the spells he'd used had been ones even Judith didn't know. His swordsmanship was above her own as well, managing to compensate with pure technique where she could press with greater speed and strength.

This answered none of the confused part's questions, and indeed raised some more.

The focused part took a moment to sweetly enquire whether they could both shut up, it was trying to concentrate, and returned to business.

They had split apart during the short-range firefight, forced to do so by the impact of detonating curses and the footwork of swordplay, and James had raised a Shield between them. Behind it, his wand was aimed for Judith's centre of mass, and Judith heard the first part of a distressingly familiar incantation. "_Avada -_"

Can't be blocked by any shield, tangible or magical; passes through barriers, ignores fortitude and resolve, requires a pure hatred in order to be cast, a dark and powerful mirror to the Patronus, all the victim can do is not be in its way- piped up the detached stream of thought, throwing the information from various memories to the focused stream.

"_-Kedavra!_"

Judith immediately jumped to one side as cold green light slashed past and swept into the wall behind her like a ghost. Stepping back into position, she fancied she could still feel the chill of its passage.

From behind his Shield, she saw James bringing his wand forward from a backwards sweep with a spell on his lips, already halfway through his next attack. In quick desperation, she slashed her own wand around with the quickest attack she knew, anything to put him off his balance and keep him from pressing an advantage. "_Diffindo_!"

The Cutting Charm flew upwards as Judith cursed her shoddy aiming, skimming past the top of James's Shield and into a wooden support beam in the ceiling above. A cut was opened in it with the sound of an axe splintering wood apart, running right through to the mottled brick ceiling itself, and splinters, dust, and brick shards rained down upon James. He raised his sword arm to protect his face with indecent haste, clearly caught off guard.

It clicked for Judith then. The king was a ferociously powerful magic-user, with a good wand-arm and the capacity to put real potency behind his spells. His reflexes were impressive, if perhaps not at Judith's own level, and his technique was impeccable.

So taking _him_ head-on obviously wasn't the answer. You looked for something to exploit, and if nothing availed, you _made_ one.

Actions and consequences ran out in a single cold line of clarity in Judith's mind, and her eyes narrowed and sweat-streaked face tautened.

(Neither of them had still noticed Dunn, finishing loading his pistol and trying not to gasp with pain as he did so.)

James recovered, and his arm twitched forward in the same movements as before, his voice rattling off the incantation once more. "_Avada Kedavra!_"

Judith ducked just as the second phrase was spoken, just as the spell turned the air above her head to green lightning and as she stabbed her wand out with a barked "_Finite!_" The acclaim of James's Shield shattering into directionless chaos sounded the action; and she fell with one knee on the floor, the basket-hilt surrounding her sword-hand pressing into the floor. Her wand was held out from her side, ready to be swept forward.

Judith flicked her wand out again, bringing one of the few rote Transfigurations she knew to mind. Transfiguration in battle was always chancy but … needs must. Stone-to-Water. "_Terraques!_"

An area beneath James's feet of a foot long in length and breadth and half a foot in depth turned to water, and into it James fell with a startled cry. His feet and shins splashed into the water, and his slipping body hit the stone floor, releasing a short and involuntary gasp of pain from him.

Judith strode forward; to where the king lay prostate with his feet and lower legs submerged in water, aimed her wand at the pool of water, and said once more "_Finite_."

The water collapsed into flurried and unmoving grey waves, in which James's legs were caught. Grey mottling appeared up the length of his breeches and where water had splashed upon him. He struggled, his face blanching as the pressure of the stone began to assert itself, and his wand rose in his shaky grasp.

Judith's backsword descended in one swift movement and struck it from his grasp, sending it clattering across the floor.

His rapier came up in a thrust that tried to be sudden, but which was thwarted by his inability to manoeuvre. Judith caught it in the elaborate crossguard rising from her sword's great hilt, twisted savagely, and threw the two bound swords aside.

Her wand, still tight in her left hand, came forward with the point angled at the king's throat. His pain-etched, sweat-streaked face glared up at her, lips curling back from his teeth.

At this point, the sensible thing to do would be to make sure everyone was unconscious, clear up any damage, apply Obliviations, and then Apparate away to Diggory and Clemency.

Part of Judith, slithering through the tracks in her mind still slick with pounding battle-fury, whispered _Burn him_.

Her wand's point hovered, a faint orange glow creeping around the tip.

_You saw the bodies in the room. You know what he feeds people to. You know what he's been doing to innocent muggles these last months. He's fed people to fire. Repay the monster in kind._

The vengeful thought was met in its tracks by a cold spear of rational realisation; that killing King James would see every punishment for violating wizarding secrecy heaped upon Judith, that neither Diggory or Clemency would protect her, that Rebecca would be sad to see her executed, and that there were too many questions left hanging over this, too many prospects for other players she hadn't yet encountered. Kill the king now, and nothing would be served.

Slowly, with great effort, she drew back the sword's point and banished the growing fire around her wand. A basic clean-up would have to suffice for now.

"Apologies about this, Your Majesty," she hissed, extending her wand to aim between his glaring eyes. "_Obliv - _"

And then Judith's world fell away in shock and pain as a bullet slammed into her right arm, racing through the retort of a gunshot. She fell to her left, flailing and taken utterly by surprise, and collided with the stone floor in an impact that knocked the breath from her lungs and the senses from her mind.

To her right, Judith became vaguely aware of one of the Witchguard rising, a smoking pistol in his hands. He was reaching down for the backsword and rapier.

Judith's wand was still in her left hand, her knuckles white around the handle. She tried to twist around to let off a curse at the guard, but a bolt of agony surged up from her now-unresponsive right arm as she briefly leaned on it.

To her front, Judith heard the king shout, his voice twisted with agony. "At her, Dunn! Cut her down!"

The king's command seemed to spur the man on, and he rushed forward, both rapier and backsword separated and twirling in his grasp.

Judith breathed in, an action that emerged as more of a hiss, and tried to concentrate -

_Don't concentrate, just Apparate, no matter how painful it is at the other end, just get out of here, you still have your Dittany come what may, GET OUT, APPARATE –_

- And vanished, just as two swords struck up sparks from the floor where she'd lain.

* * *

Under a ceiling that shifted with the movement of clouds, a witch sat and stared into her mirror.

After a moment, she irritably waved away the Inferius holding the mirror, and sat and pondered.

Killing the investigator before she came clamouring back to her payers would be dicey; her location for Apparation wasn't known, and the odds of anyone being able to kill her were dicey based on that display.

Another angle of attack would have to be considered. What did she know about the investigator?

The witch summoned her Patronus – a gleaming white scorpion with molten orbs of silver in place of eyes – and when it sat upon the table before her, she said "Tell good Captain Desjardins this – 'Vous devez aller à Hogsmeade - '"

* * *

"My king!" Dunn turned to where King James had let out a loud and frustrated snarl as he had witnessed the witch escape. "I apologise, I should have been faster - "

"Wand!" bit out James, cutting through Dunn's words. His torso twisted and his arms shoved against the ground, and he bit out another gasp of pain. Where the stone covering his legs parted, small trickles of blood were starting to emerge. "Retrieve my wand!"

Dropping the swords, Dunn ran to where the king's white wand lay on the floor. He picked it up, cradling it carefully as only an artefact of Heaven deserved, and rushed with it to the king. James snatched it out of Dunn's hands and aimed it at his entrapped body. "_Terra – Ahh! Terraques!_"

The stone collapsed into water once more and James heaved himself away with a great groan and shudder. His breeches were sodden with both water and blood, some of which trickled through the Transfigured pool. He swept his wand around to Wilkie and managed "_Finite!_"

Wilkie's form flopped to the ground with a crash, the paralysis suddenly lifted. He heaved himself up with one hand, craning his head around to face the king. "Your Majesty - "

"Help me up," snapped James, waving his free hand at the commander. "The – _ah_, bloody stone fragments when turned to water – must have soaked through, somehow. Help me to my quarters."

The two Witchguard hurried to help James up to his feet. "Was … was that a servant of the Enemy, Your Majesty?" ventured Dunn, as he wrapped one of James's arms around his shoulders. "Is that what happens if they get a chance to draw upon their full power?"

"Don't bother the king with questions - " growled Wilkie.

"It is. But that was a particularly fearsome one amongst them." said James, the effort of speaking reduced with the comfort of his attending guards. He sighed. "Do not blame yourselves for the witch's escape. I … had that responsibility. I should have called upon Azrael."

Wilkie and Dunn both couldn't help but feel glad he hadn't resorted to that last option as the king continued. "I should have drawn upon more of Heaven's fires. I was entrusted with that power." His voice lowered. "I had that duty."

James's voice rose again as they started moving out of the room as he managed to move at a hobble supported by the two men. "To my quarters. Do not send for a doctor for several minutes. I must pray. I couldn't channel what God required of me, so I shall beseech one of His own servants. Hell sought to shake us this day. We shall make it _tremble_."

* * *

Judith tumbled onto the cobblestones in the Diagon Alley alleyway, emerging from an inchoate, violent torrent of tumbling sensation. The suddenly-forming world was a mess of grey and brown streets and building walls, blue skies and distant white clouds-

She rolled to rest on her left side, retched, and added red to the mix.

It was then that the effect of the Splinching registered itself to her senses; a great and distressing hollowness that seemed to curl up inside her gut and rasp outwards in all direction.

Oh, joy. This had had all the makings of a spectacular Splinching, with a previous run of good luck compounded by a lack of focus in her Apparation attempt.

She recalled what Arborlun had instructed her to do in this sort of scenario, when the vagaries of Apparation magic saw fit to reach inside you, and grabbed for her jar of Essence of Dittany, dropping her tightly-gripped wand as she did so. Fumbling it out of the moleskin pouch as the pain in her gut redoubled its efforts, she all but tore the lid off and knocked back a mouthful.

It tasted like nothing a benevolent God could have permitted to exist, but she kept it down, and dragged herself into a sitting position leaning against a suitable wall, to wait while it did its work. She forced her mind to be still, to put away the physical pain into the well-practised compartment of her mind she often called upon when Splinching's effects proved a threatening distraction.

While Judith waited and concentrated on breathing in and out, she ventured a smear of the Dittany upon the wound in her limp right arm, and was unsurprised when nothing happened. The wound hadn't been caused by Splinching, after all.

Instead, she took up her wand and, with some gritting of teeth, extracted the gleaming bullet from the wound with focused levitation. She flicked it aside, cleaned the wound with a quick sweep of a Charm, and rummaged in her pouch for a bandage. One Charm cut away her sleeve, another Charm set the bandages thick about the wound, containing the loss of blood, and another small Charm would keep their surface clean and slightly.

Judith didn't know the Charms for repairing what had to be a fractured bone with relative speed – that was very much another matter to pester Arborlun with. Absent another suitable expanse of cloth, she drew out Rebecca's travelling cloak and, via with application of focused and multiple Levitation Charms with the wand pointed at an awkward angle, managed to form it into a sling.

As she finished, a sensation of wholeness returned to her gut, and she managed to rise as she brace herself against the wall. Looking towards the mouth of the alley, she saw the skull vendor preaching the merits of her wares to passers-by, and the street beyond her in full flow.

Judith emerged, wincing as her arm's movements bounced it off her chest, and the vendor turned. Her eyebrows rose as she took stock of the sling. "Been in the wars, dearie?"

"You should have seen the other army." An idea dawned on Judith. "I don't suppose you've got a Charm that repairs bones, perchance? I'd pay you for your trouble."

The witch frowned and peered at the arm. "I can do that, right enough. Don't pay. Immoral to profit off a person in need, I've always thought." She drew out a thick wand and tapped it upon the sling. "_Os integrum_!"

Feeling, ability, and a blessed reduction in pain all happened to the arm in a flash as the spell's energies took hold. Judith joyfully yanked off the sling and flexed the bandage-wrapped arm. There was still some pain and stiffness there, but not enough to make the arm unusable.

"My thanks," she said to the skull-vendor. "Surely there's some way I can repay you?"

A few minutes later, Judith was striding towards the House of the Council with a small glowing-eyed owl skull set fetchingly into the front of her hat's brim. She'd seen muggles wearing similar hats with buckled bands around the hat, and couldn't help but prefer her own take on the style. The skull-vendor had nodded approvingly and with some hint of speculation about her expression.

Judith had taken advantage of the brief and relatively mindless lull to think about what she'd just emerged from.

It had certainly been a revelation, say what else you could about the whole mess, but not an especially beneficial one. The question of King James's magical ability just spawned countless little questions more. How could a man as fanatical as him use the magic with a clean conscience? How had he kept it hidden from his court?

Who had taught him in the first place? It must have manifested in his youth, as it did for all magic-users, and it couldn't have developed into full-blown spell-casting without some sort of instructor – especially considering the complexity and power of some of the spells he'd used. Some of these would have had to be learned in adulthood, implying that the king still had access to magical resources or a wizard confidant.

She listed what she knew as a certainty. King James was magically-talented, and strongly so. He had been trained by some unknown party and still or at least had until recently enjoyed access to magical resources and education. He and his men were targeting magic-users across the country – across all of Great Britain, even, after Gallus Malfoy's capture.

But did she know even these things for a certainty?, whispered some inner part of her that the Sorting Hat must have decided tipped her towards being a Slytherin. Would it be so hard for an existing wizard to impersonate a perfectly innocent – correction; _relatively_ innocent – muggle king using Polyjuice Potion, and arrange for these murders and the king as a scapegoat to some great advantage of their own?

All Judith could really admit in the end was that she didn't know nearly enough to reach anything resembling an informed conclusion. That was where briefing Diggory and Clemency would render assistance.

Judith remembered being ejected from the briefing yesterday, and how Diggory had accepted her account of the Witchguard's competency after Clemency had had a quiet word with him.

Clearly, multiple people knew much more about this whole case than Judith did, and that rankled. She let that same rankledness give speed to her strides and proper strength to her posture, leading her to the front of the House of the Council. The guards outside, the same pair from the first day she'd came, recognised her and checked her briefly for illusionary spells before giving her entry.

"You're recognised, and may count yourself admitted," said one of them as Judith entered. "But you haven't sent work ahead of your arrival. Be prepared to wait and be sure that your business is urgent."

She entered the front hall and embarked up the stairs. The suits on armour on guard had clearly been Charmed to recognise her by now; for they parted at her approach.

Judith reached the corridor leading to Diggory's door, and was surprised to see it open and Diggory sorting sheaves of parchment on the desk beyond. He looked up and sighted her, and beckoned for her to approach. His expression was wry, and clearly weighed with mounting worry which he did his best to hide.

"I don't normally accept meetings which haven't at least been asked for beforehand, Miss Fairweather," Diggory remarked dryly as Judith entered the room, the door gliding shut behind her. "But judging by the bruises and cuts on your face and the marks all over your clothing, I can only assume that you're fresh from some exciting event to which I was not invited. I must request your share of the gossip."

"Ask and ye shall receive, Chieftain. A question first, if I may. Will Lady Peverell be able to attend this meeting?"

"She's recently taken unwell, Miss Fairweather, from what I understand. She might be able to attend if I beseech her, but why would I disturb her? What do you want to speak about in her presence?"

"Matters relating to the muggle king of Scotland," replied Judith, making eye contact with Diggory.

The man returned her gaze with one of his own that seemed to be combing through her expression for intention, and then shrugged. His glance turned to the empty fireplace at one wall, from which a column of flame suddenly erupted. "Take a seat, Miss Fairweather. Let us see if she is receptive."

Judith seated herself before the desk as Diggory wrote briefly on a scrap of parchment. He folded it into the shape of a bird, sprinkled a touch of Floo powder on its nose, Charmed it with flight, and casually sent it right at the fireplace. The fire roared green just as the parchment entered, and Diggory barked "Peverell Maenor, in the solarium brazier." The parchment vanished amidst the flames, and Diggory took his own seat behind the desk.

Barely a minute had passed before the fire, since faded to red and orange, flashed emerald-green again and admitted the suddenly-materialising form of Clemency Peverell. The old woman was clearly under the weather; her skin had taken on a grey and mottled hue that suggested the early symptoms of dragonpox.

Clemency's voice, when it emerged, sounded as if it had been produced by something parched. "This many meetings in this many days? What an industrious investigator we have landed, Diggory." Clemency's sharp gaze turned to Judith, and continued to bore into her as the older witch summoned a chair from the side and settled herself into it with a satisfied groan. "Do you bring news of Malfoy's heir?"

"I do. I regret to report that Gallus Malfoy, along with all other magic-users reported missing thus far, are either dead or suffering from the Dementor's Kiss," said Judith.

There was a sharp intake of breath from both of the senior magic-users, and Diggory asked "You saw their condition for yourself?"

"I did. In addition," and here Judith straightened her posture in the chair, making sure the marks of her battle were clear and visible, "I wish to report that King James is a muggleborn magic-user, trained to cast spells in battle and in possession of a working knowledge of wizarding techniques."

This failed to produce the same intake of breath. Diggory closed his eyes, as if in contemplation, and Clemency's gaze remained fixed and unmoving. Judith ventured "Am I correct in assuming that this isn't a revelation to either of you?"

Diggory chuckled briefly, the sound of it grim and mirthless. "Correct, indeed."

"Excellent. Perchance, before the next time I am sent upon a mission, you could see fit to inform me of similarly salient details? I prefer possessing knowledge that diminishes my chances of _dying _when forced into an unexpected magical duel," said Judith, her tone growing harsher despite her company and the setting.

"We had unwisely assumed that you would conduct the mission in a suitably discreet way, and would have no need to engage in any duel," replied Clemency smoothly. "That, and the matter related directly to the highest possible security of both the wizarding British nation and muggle Scotland. We saw no need for knowledge of it to be dispensed."

"Let us dispense it now," said Diggory. "Bring her up to speed as you did me, Lady Peverell."

"Truly? Our investigator has proven herself a liability. It would be prudent to Obliviate her and dismiss the whole matter from mind-"

"Miss Fairweather's services might yet be of use to us. And if I am mistaken, then we can Obliviate her by the end of this meeting regardless."

Judith, who had shrunk back defensively in her chair at the talk of Oblivation even as her ire at Lady Peverell threatened to broil over, became aware of some silent battle of wills going on between the two lords. Eventually, Clemency shrugged her arms and turned to Judith.

"Oh, very well. But if the knowledge becomes widespread, responsibility for the mess will fall on your head as much as it will fall on hers, Diggory."

"That's a risk I'm willing to take," came the firm reply.

Clemency faced Judith directly, her expression cold and wry. "You guessed that good King James's talents weren't unknown to either of us."

"I did," replied Judith, leaning forward in her chair.

"An especially accurate estimation for myself. After all, _I_ was the one who taught him."

* * *

On a snow-shrouded street in Hogsmeade, driving winds chased sheets of snow almost horizontal to the ground. What had begun as uncertain precipitation had turned into a full-scale summer blizzard.

It had cleared the streets of casual walkers, and made others reluctant to venture outside for as long as it lasted. It was perfect for the three wizards currently making their way up along a street of small and cosy houses in the central part of Hogsmeade towards the larger building at its head.

The central man in the group of three ventured a glance up at the sign over the building's front door, reading _Gryffindor's Fine Baked Goods._

His pale blue eyes narrowed in satisfaction, shrouded as they were by windswept dishevelled brown hair. Snowflakes clung to his dark outer robes. Looseness at their front gave a brief glimpse of the golden sunburst that lay emblazoned on the robes below.

Past the windows, Captain Fleur Desjardins of the Oriflamme Company could see stocked counters and shelves, and a woman bustling behind the counter with several dishes in her hands.

He nodded to the wizard and witch on his left and right, respectively, and drew his wand from a recess in his robes.

"Callahan, Allesandrini, scout around the entrances and enter once you hear either my signal or battle joined," Desjardins said in French-accented English. "Incapacitate all within the dwelling, and bring them down to the ground floor. On my mark."


End file.
