Absit Omen RPG

"Cheers, mate," Jonas said to the I.D.R.E.A.D. member, flashing them a tight, tired smile as he accepted the two paper cups full of hot chocolate.

The air was still thick with smoke and ashes, stinging at his nose and making his eyes water as he picked his way back to Carstairs. It felt much colder than it had when they'd arrived that morning, a conspicuous chill that still lingered even though the Dementors had been driven away.

They'd been lucky. He couldn't shake that thought from his mind. If they'd faced the same sort of trap that Bagnold and Blake had stumbled into in December, they wouldn't have been able to cast the red sparks[1] that had brought them help in the form of I.D.R.E.A.D.

No, the trap that they'd walked into had been deliberate and intentional -- even a bit cheeky and irreverent, with the references to the fairy tales that he still needed time to make sense of -- but they had still been lucky. It would have been very easy for the events of the day to have taken an even darker turn.

Still, it was impossible not to feel defeated. The remains of the Wold house were still standing, but most of the building was charred and blackened. The wind chimes hanging on the porch appeared to be one of the only features to survive intact, their sad, solemn sound tolling a death knell for the rest of the family's onetime home. It seemed likely that everything inside was ruined. Carstairs had rescued the picture book, and he'd taken the dragon-headed cloak, but all the rest of it -- the enchanted toys in the bedroom, the dried herbs on the ceiling, the gray cloak hanging on the hook...all had probably been destroyed in the fire, which had started upstairs. The only way that they'd be able to revisit those clues now was through a pensieve.

Whoever had been inside watching them when they'd first arrived had surely apparated away.

When the Dementors had appeared, the Aurors had taken a stand to defend the pentrals. The pentrals hadn't cared. One had turned on Dean Bailey, rushing in to take the Senior Auror by surprise while he'd been focused on the Dementors. The I.D.R.E.A.D. healers were seeing to their colleague now, preparing to take him to the Unspeakables so that they could start the long process of untangling two souls. The second pentral had gone diving into the flames, a Dementor close behind. Jonas would never know who they had been in life -- could never know their stories, not the same way that he'd come to know Iona McBoid and Lucy Wold -- but he still felt a strong feeling of sadness at their loss. They surely didn't deserve such a sudden end to their life or the long, lonely tail that had trailed behind them after death.

Carstairs had been left to himself for a moment, standing alone amongst the bustle of I.D.R.E.A.D. and Aurors and looking nearly as tired as Jonas felt.  The red-headed Auror stepped up to the Department Head and silently passed him one of the paper cups, steam rising from the hot, sweet liquid inside.

Jonas raised his own paper cup to take a sip, savoring the hot chocolate inside. He could feel the coursing warmth as he swallowed, a natural remedy to the chill that still lingered from such a close exposure to Dementors.

Someone cleared a throat in front of them. Jonas glanced up to see Auror Alan Childs, looking a little worse for wear but still dressed quite crisply in his crimson robes.

"We located what appears to be a large wooden coffin buried under each of the greenhouses," Childs said, far more to Carstairs than to Jonas. "I think you should come and see what we found inside one of them, sir."

And so they went: back inside the second greenhouse, mostly empty without the well-tended jungle of the first. Except now, the paving stones had been pried up and set aside and a section of the ground had been removed, all to exhume a wooden coffin that looked large enough to hold several bodies at once.

And inside it, dressed in grubby rags and clutching what looked to be something broken, was a gaunt house elf with a tear-streaked face.

Frowning, Jonas examined the small survivor for a moment and then cast a sidelong look at Carstairs beside him. Neither Wesley nor his family had mentioned owning a house elf, but there had been one at the Lilly Lakehouse. Abigail Reid had spoken of one called Jeeny, who appeared to have been in service to Lori Lilly up until the pureblood Squib's life and soul had been usurped by the Hunts. Carstairs had also noted the presence of house elf magic inside the house, although they hadn't had time to follow up on it.

Was this the house elf that had been enslaved by Lorelei Hunt and her brother? But if so, why on earth had she abandoned it here, hidden in a wooden coffin deep underground?

1.	During the Cold Moon ambush in December 2011, a magical dome had prevented the Ministry team from calling for help.

The red-headed Auror listened intently, brows knitting and mouth pressed into a thin, firm line. Storm's former vocation showed in the professor's rapid-fire recounting of the facts. Two students, attacked by someone wearing the face of a third. That in itself was notable: the older wizard, after all, had had very personal knowledge of a Metamorphmagus.  If Storm presumed that the attacker had been in disguise, Jonas was inclined to believe his impression.

The spectral blue light followed them, casting an eerie tinge through the growing shadows as Storm led the way to the wooden box at the center of the scene. Jonas studied it silently, his expression steady. Two werewolf girls, Tenacious Twine, and a pinewood coffin -- yes, he could understand why the note that had been sent to Carstairs had drawn a parallel to the tragedy in Dumfriesshire.

Pausing, he glanced across the clearing, gaze playing across the scuffled mess of frantic footprints, fallen debris, and churned-up mud. On a Hogsmeade weekend, it couldn't have been too hard to lure two girls away from their classmates in the village. Out here alone, with their mouths hexed so they couldn't scream for help, it would have been too easy for things to take a turn for the worse.

"They're lucky you happened to be on patrol," Jonas remarked mildly, though he doubted it was luck.

Taking care with his bad knee as he picked his way through the mud, he stepped closer to carefully examine the child-sized coffin, painted a pale, sickly blue by the light of the floating orb overhead. "How long was he or she alone with them?" he asked, with a sidelong glance to Storm. "What happened when you reached them?"

The woods were lovely, dark and deep, and if it wasn't for the faint yellow shimmer against the muddy ground ahead, it would be hard to know this spot from any other in the eerie twilight settling over the forest. Jonas had hardly been acquainted with the Forbidden Forest during his Hogwarts days, but it seemed determine to loom over his career as an Auror. At least this time, the call for assistance had not come with accounts of a ghastly murder[1] in the woods -- though with his daughter now a student herself, any report of trouble at the magical school seemed ever more portentous.

The flash of light signaled his arrival better than words ever could. Jonas stopped just inside the edge of the ward, at the perimeter of whatever Ignan Storm had chosen to demarcate.

"You're supposed to finish mucking about with the crime scene before you send for the Ministry," he remarked nicely, casting a sidelong glance at the old professor. Ignan Storm was a master of both sides of the course that he taught, but he'd earned polite respect from the Auror. Unlike Gwenna, who loved to imagine all sorts of conspiracies and had refused to let go of the Defense professor's supposed villainy, Jonas knew when to tactfully stop prying.

He returned his attention to the scene before him. Something had clearly happened here. The ground was roiled and churned, with some sort of gaping hole before him. Broken tree limbs stretched up toward the darkening sky, and the air smelled faintly of blackened wood.

"What happened?" Forehead creasing, Jonas looked back at the Defense professor. Storm, too, looked a little worse for wear than the stoic wizard normally preferred, his robes muddy and hair a bit unkempt. "Is everyone alright?"

1.	February 1, 2009 - the Great Escape

For all of Blake's original impression of Duncan McBoid as a friendly, talkative bloke who asked more questions than he answered, the Scottish wizard remained committed to giving precise, surgical responses to every query that they made. Either he had nothing really useful to share, or they were going to have to hope they hit on the right question and drag it out of him in stages, one bit of information at a time.

This answer, though, made Jonas blink. Whoever he might have expected the big Scotsman to visit for a friendly New Year's Day celebration, the surly werewolf hunter was perhaps the last on the list.

But that also...made an odd kind of sense, the Auror thought as his blue gaze flicked briefly over to Blake. That might explain the mysterious connection between Bagnold and Duncan's niece, who had sent a patronus to the werewolf hunter at the Ministry during the December full moon. It also might explain why Bagnold had gone out of his way to conceal Moira's connection to the Runespoor sighting the same night. And, perhaps, it put the poisoned Valentine's Day chocolates in a new light, if Duncan McBoid might be a possible connection between Bagnold and Lorelei Hunt.

Not to mention, Jonas thought dryly, that if he were visiting the grave of a murdered relative and thought he was being watched, Kurby Bagnold was probably high on the list of wixes that he might run to if he were planning to return and risk a possible fight.

"Well, convenient that you've got a mate who's so social that you lot can stay up all night talking," he remarked without a hint of irony, flashing the other man a quick smile as he regarded him again. "What did you mention about your cousin's grave to Bagnold?"

With a pop! pop!, they reappeared on the bare earth between the two greenhouses. Jonas shaded his eyes with his free hand as he squinted up at the one on the right, which was mostly free of greenery. This close, he could see that the fierce brilliance was coming from something inside the glass building, some bright streak of white light that was racing through it with a terrible speed, zigzagging as it ping-ponged to and fro from wall to ceiling to wall and back again.

Fascinated, the red-headed Auror stepped forward, letting his hand hover just next to the glass. What kind of terrible beacon spell was this? But no -- forehead creasing, Jonas tried to track the streaking source of the light with his gaze. It shone bright enough to be a patronus, but it gleamed white instead of silver, and though it was moving quickly, it seemed to have an amorphous shape, much like the wispy bursts that many young wixes managed as their first failed attempts at Expecto Patronum.

Was it a pentral?

The day had been cold and cloudy when they had arrived, but the weather had still been bearable. Now, as a dark cloud drifted across the horizon, the temperature seemed to be growing colder yet. Jonas shivered as he tugged his coat tighter around his shoulders. Whatever was raging inside the greenhouses, it was clear that their arrival had been expected: and that meant that somewhere he had gone wrong, that he had taken Wesley Wold's prophetic dream less seriously than he should have. It was the nagging fear of inadequacy that he'd never quite been able to shake, not since the awful day in the Ministry when he'd shown up to find half of the Auror Corps vanished and a summons on his desk commanding him to report to the courtrooms on Level Ten.

And now, if the child's dragon-headed cloak was any indication, he'd not only failed to do his job, but he'd very likely failed to protect the defenseless Wold family in the process.

A glittering web of ice crystals was creeping down the glass of the greenhouse. Jonas stared at it, not really seeing, as his own breath left a puff of bleak condensation in the suddenly icy air. There were so many things that had gone so wrong, and in the end, he knew what the common thread through them all was.

Behind the frozen glass of the greenhouse, the pentral was racing faster and faster, as if desperate to escape from a doom that was marching ever closer.

Hericho's second suggested approach was much more practical than her first. There was enough low-level magic in the background here that it might be difficult to spot active enchantments, but they could look for caverns or crevices through other methods. If there was a magical reason behind the disappearing children, that could be their first step in locating it.

"Sounds like a plan," he agreed, flashing the trainee a lopsided smile. "Let's head on, yeah?"

There was another large tour group just starting to come through the entrance gate behind them, so it was perfect timing for moving on. The path that led to the island with the ruins was steep and a little meandering, and the grassy green of the hill contrasted sharply with the gray of the cliff faces. The day was still windy, but the clouds above had started to clear a bit; the spots of blue sky overhead made the turquoise water below even more vivid, as waves crashed against the rocky shore.

Jonas turned up the collar of his coat, tugging his hat low over his forehead and tucking his hands into his pockets to ward off the sharp wind. They'd ended up on the path a few dozen feet behind a trudging family. The breeze carried the joyful screams of two young boys, who looked to be chasing each other around and around their parents, who were struggling to push a pram up the path.

"I reckon it's probably safe to say we can stay away from the main points of interest, innit?" he asked, with a sidelong look to Hericho. "I can't imagine something magical would want to risk getting too close to crowds of Muggles, even in a place like this."

Carstairs dodged neatly out of the way of the burst of yellow light. A moment later, after a flick of Jonas's wand, and the attacking toy was hovering in mid-air, encased in what looked to be a bubble of shimmering, near-translucent water.

Judging by the speed at which the traps had been sprung, the Hunt siblings -- or whoever else had been living in the Wold family home -- had clearly been expecting someone. Jonas pressed his mouth shut as Carstairs stepped over to the table to pick up a picture book that was lying open. The smell of smoke was getting stronger, and they'd still seen no sign of the figure who had been detected by his Hominum Revelio spell, but the Department Head was right: they needed to see what was happening down in the greenhouses, and then they probably needed to summon help from the Ministry for backup.

Jonas cast a wordless glance back at the little red cloak hanging on the back of the door. He didn't know Carstairs' reasons for taking the picture book, but if the dragon-hooded cloak was the same as the one that he remembered belonging to Wyatt Wold, then he didn't want to risk it disappearing as they sprung the rest of this trap.

Silently, he flicked his wand. On the other side of the bedroom, the small cloak gracefully lifted itself off the peg and floated across the room to him, settling over his arm.

"I've got a bad feeling about this," he said without a trace of irony, glancing over to briefly meet Carstairs' gaze.

Then, with a crack, he apparated -- only to reappear a moment later on the patch of bare dirt between the two green houses, with the Department Head presumably a mere second behind him.

He had perhaps been giving Hericho a little bit too much freedom, because her second direction for their Cornish investigation was a little more out there than the first. Jonas cocked an eyebrow at her, torn between simply looking bemused and giving her the go-ahead to try it and see what happened.

Unfortunately, if Eddie heard that Auror trainees were reverting to toddlerdom instead of casing a potential crime scene, he'd likely take it out on young Hericho far more than he would Jonas. The thought of Pratt and the trainee shouting at each other was potentially amusing but would probably lead to poor outcomes. Better to head things off now and let Hericho flex her creative muscles a bit later.

"That's an innovative thought, but I reckon we might want to be a bit more methodical than that," he told the young witch, his expression a mixture of poorly disguised mirth and disappointment. "Any thoughts that might be a little more practical? What do we know so far about the disappearing kids?"

Hericho had definitely missed her calling -- that, or she'd wrapped herself up in it all too well when she'd found her footing as a rebellious teenager. Jonas barely hid a smile as the tour guide looked her over, and then raised his envelop full of tickets in seeming defense.

"Yeah, no worries, mate," he said, still managing to flash them a friendly smile as he stepped back out of range of the hug.

Still smothering a smile, Jonas put a hand on the Auror trainee's shoulder to guide her away.  "Cheers, Mr Green," he said amiably, with a nod to the tour guide's name tag. "Come on, Gris, let's see if we can't figure out the ticket situation next, yeah?"

It was a short walk along a flat path to the entrance to the historic site. The line for the ticket booth wasn't very long. Jonas used one of his credit cards to pay for it, making sure to fold up the receipt and tuck it into his pocket for later. Level Two didn't really have a good way to cover Muggle expenses that were incurred during investigations, but he'd be damned if he didn't turn it in for reimbursement later.

"Well, it doesn't seem as if anyone's very worried about the disappearances," he remarked under his breath to the Auror trainee, passing her a ticket as they got into the line for entry into the courtyard. "Any thoughts on what we should do next, Hericho?"

They'd climbed the stairs to the second floor, with Carstairs in the lead and Jonas behind. The red-headed Auror had kept a careful eye behind him, just in case whoever had apparated into the greenhouses decided to enter the cottage behind them, and his free hand on the bannister, to help keep the weight off his bad knee.

It was hard to judge which room the light had come from. Carstairs entered through the first door. Past him, Jonas could see what looked to be a child's bedroom, with a narrow bed and toys scattered across the floor.

As he began to follow the other wizard inside, with a quick glance to check once more behind them, something hanging on the back of the door caught his eye. Frowning, Jonas stepped over, pushing the door partially back so that he could fully examine it.

It was another cloak. Unlike the gray one hanging in the main living area down below, though, this one was red and child-sized, with an elongated hood lined with white felt triangles. Uneasily, Jonas reached out to touch two fingers to the hood, lifting it slightly so he could see the shape more clearly.

A memory rose unbidden in his mind: a young, eager boy with bright blonde hair and chubby cheeks that were almost as red as his dragon-hooded cloak, unaware of the solemn faces of his aunt and uncle as he raced around, shouting "Aura! Aura!" as he chased after his freckled sister.

"The Wolds didn't have a house elf, did they?"

The Department Head's words brought him suddenly back to the present.

"Not that I --" Jonas started to say, as he turned back to face the rest of the room. But just then, the faint, ashy smell of smoke hit his nose, and out the window, he caught sight of the glowing greenhouse.

Alarmed, the Auror stepped over to the window, leaving the child-sized cloak behind. From the second floor, he could see both greenhouses clearly. Both were glowing brightly, with a fierce light quickly expanding inside them.

Bloody hell. He very nearly fired off red sparks then and there. But they still didn't know exactly what they were up against, and every Auror knew what had happened during the Leaky Cauldron explosions over a year before. Calling in reinforcements when they didn't know for sure exactly what they'd walked into seemed incredibly dangerous.

He'd begun to glance back at Carstairs, to voice a warning about whatever was happening in the greenhouse, when a loud, high-pitched quack suddenly split the room. Jonas whirled just in time to see a bright yellow light shoot up from one of the toys on the floor directly at the other wizard.

Jonas flashed a lopsided smile back at the other wizard. "Cozy family retreat though, innit?" he asked cheerfully, watching as the other wizard's shadows broke off to explore.

Inside, the cottage had clearly been recently in use. There were no electronic devices in site: the family living here had clearly been more comfortable with a magical life than a Muggle one, and that appeared to be continued by the recent residents.

As Jonas glanced around the room, his gaze lingered over the gray cloak, hanging on the hook.

 A witch was there, wearing my mum's gray cloak...[1]

Dreams were strange things. Under normal circumstances, he wouldn't have been inclined to hinge the next stage of an investigation on them. If it weren't for the disastrous January full moon, he might have discounted Wesley Wold's retelling of his nightmare this time around, too. Suddenly, he was very glad that he hadn't.

Carstairs had stopped to examine the herbs hanging near the ceiling. The red-headed Auror took a step closer to the fireplace, taking care with his bad knee as he bent to take a closer look at it. Running his fingers through the dust on the mantle, he lifted them to examine it.

"It looks like Floo Powder," he observed over his shoulder. "I wonder where they're heading off to that they can't go by apparition. Might be worth reaching out to the lot at the Floo Authority and --"

 He broke off suddenly, forehead creasing, as he looked back over his shoulder towards the door.

"I think someone's in the greenhouse." Frowning, Jonas rose back to his feet, casting a glance over at Carstairs. Someone in the house; someone in the greenhouse. It had seemed silly at first, bringing in a full team to follow up on an eleven-year-old's dream, even if the townsfolk nearby had reported someone at the house, but now he was beginning to wish they'd dragged Worthington or Roh along with them. With only two of them present, it felt like a painfully stupid idea to split up.

Then another distant twinge tugged at the edges of his awareness, and the Auror blinked again.

"Both greenhouses." Uneasy, he looked back at the Department Head. The second greenhouse had been mostly empty. He could imagine Hunt or her brother apparating back to their main plant room, but sensing a new presence in each was making him feel a little unsettled. "Reckon we should finish clearing through here first, sir?"

1.	January 18, 2012 - Mother cannot guide you

Hericho had gone all in on the acting assignment, and Jonas couldn't help but wonder dryly if she'd missed her calling on the stage. Her prying was perfectly believable, though. His own daughter was still only thirteen, but he could very well imagine her pushing to see if a local curfew would impact her planned night out on holiday. (Although Gwenna would probably be more interested in a local ghost tour or horror show than drinking at a pub.)

The tour guide didn't seem at all phased by it, though. Perhaps he dealt with this sort of question a lot.

"No, no curfew," he replied, giving Hericho a patient smile. "Well, not unless your dad wants to set one. Like I said, it's just been a handful of kids wandering off while they're exploring the ruins. There's all kind of little hidey-holes in there, and you know how kids are. They probably tucked themselves away to hide, fell asleep or whatever, and then got scared that they were going to get in trouble and didn't want to come back out."

Jonas listened silently, considering. Lorelei Hunt certainly seemed to have a knack for haunting the families of her victims. First had been Wesley Wold's recounting of his strange dream, and now the ominous happenings around the McBoid family. It made him resolve to check in on Aileen Reid soon. He was glad that Carstairs had installed Abby in a position on Level Two, because it made keeping an eye on her easier, but the elder Reid sister also had a clear connection to the Hunt siblings.

It was interesting, though, that all of these encounters seemed to have started after Christmas. For months, the Ministry hadn't been able to find a single sign of either of the Hunt siblings after Abby's harrowing escape in August. What had changed? The Death Chamber had been more active then, helping pentrals to cross over -- had that roused her? Or had she and her brother simply taken that long to set up shop again somewhere?

"Duncan, you mentioned that you left a bottle of wine at the grave before you went to celebrate with a friend," he interjected thoughtfully. They had found remains of a wine bottle amidst the signs of the battle, seemingly exploded by a burst of magic. "Do you remember around what time you left? When did you get to your friend's flat?"

Carstairs had a fair suggestion, though it seemed likely that someone else had already laid down their own alerting charm. When the Aurors had finally gotten to the Lilly Lakehouse, it was clear that the Hunt siblings had burrowed in deep there.  The manor had been rift with the remains of containment spells and wards that had been destroyed by the fire, though none of them had seemed expertly cast.  Magic that seemed likely to have been intended to keep the pentrals in and the teenaged Squibs trapped as much as it also kept anyone else from stumbling upon the siblings' hideout.

Jonas paused  -- he remembered the illusion spells that shimmered like cobwebs in the owlry, concealing the entrance to the hidden tower above.[1]  He took a moment to cast Goleya again and check for any sign of a hidden chamber, but there was nothing else to find.

"Not sure how I feel about a trap, when we know the Hunts have taken prisoners to live with them before," he remarked, as he ended the spell and rejoined Carstairs. "But I can set something as an alarm behind us."

The older wizard was lingering near the table, hand against the wood. Jonas glanced down instinctively. W.W. and L.W.

A sad, melancholy sense of knowing struck him. Walter and Lucy Wold. Part of him regretted not taking the time to talk more with Aileen Reid's pentral while she had still been with them. Though his conversations with her had been fractured, broken by what she'd been through and her unnatural mixing with Aileen, Lucy as struck him as someone kind, who cared deeply about something that she couldn't quite remember. After meeting her children and her brother and his wife these past few weeks, there was no doubt in his mind that she'd deserved better than her tragic fate.

He glanced over at Carstairs. "Might as well check the other to be thorough, yeah?" he asked. "Then we can head up to the house."

---

The second greenhouse had the same, strange-looking ward on it as the first, and there was a similar lack of response as they stepped inside it. The interior lacked the lush greenery of the first, but there were still signs that someone had been about: it looked much less run-down and wild than the front yard, which had been left to fend for itself against the garden gnomes.

Jonas set another alarm charm around the second greenhouse as they left. As they approached the main house, a slight breeze had started to pick up. The clouds were moving along a bit more briskly overhead, and the lonely wind chimes that hung from the porch had begun to awaken, welcoming their arrival with a cheerful, ringing song. In one of the upper windows, some sort of lantern appeared to be flickering.

Pausing in front of the main steps up, the red-headed Auror drew his wand.  "Hominum Revelio," he tried again.

With a whoosh, the magical spell left on its journey once more. Jonas paused, waiting. He half-expected not to get anything back in response: even though it seemed as if the little farm had been recently attended, he and Carstairs hadn't exactly tried to conceal their approach. If the Hunts were living here, they had to know about the intrusion.

But then it came. One ping. One revealed presence.

The Auror paused, forehead creasing.

"Someone's still in there," he said, glancing sidelong at Carstairs.

1.	August 8, 2011 - Show them the crack, and they'll tear down the wall

So much of the little farm's land looked like it had been abandoned to return to its natural state that it was strange to see the first of the greenhouses looking so lush and green. Were the plants inside still flourishing from the days when Lucy Wold had still tended to it? It seemed much more probable that whoever had taken up residence here had been using it to cultivate their own greenery.

"Appears that way, doesn't it?" Jonas replied, forehead creasing, as he freed his wand again. "Homenum Revelio," he murmured, letting the familiar spell fly.

The magic of the Revealing charm swooped into the greenhouse. Jonas waited, counting silently to five, but nothing came in response: no ping that would mark the presence of another person.

"No one appears to be home," he remarked, with a half glance back at Carstairs.  "Reckon we should have thought to bring Longbottom along in case Audrey III is waiting inside to greet us, yeah?"

Wand still out, moving cautiously and alertly, he started in.

Whatever spell was on the outside of the glass building, it didn't seem to impede their entrance. The interior of the greenhouse was far warmer and muggier than cold, crisp day outside. Plants were everywhere: growing in raised beds, cluttering the counters in pots, hanging from planters along the walls. There were some species that he recognized, and many more that he didn't, but they all looked strong and well-tended. Jonas checked the soil in one of the larger pots as Carstairs came up behind him: it was still wet.

"Either someone's been tending to these regularly or they've got a green thumb for self-maintaining gardening magic," the red-headed Auror remarked, looking back at his partner for the day. "I know there's plenty of wixes that enjoy tending to plants in their spare time, but there was quite the outdoor garden at the Lilly Lakehouse too, before the grounds there burned."[1]

1.	From Show Them the Crack, and They'll Tear Down the Wall: "The fire that had devastated the house had destroyed much of the plant life surrounding the manor as well. Though he could tell there had been shrubs, hedges and elaborate gardens."