Friday, January 27
10:32 AM
Outside Madame Tussauds, London

Now that London was on the far side of the winter holidays, the streets around Madame Tussauds had returned to their normal quiet state.  The few Muggles on the street seemed more interested in going or coming from some place than paying any attention to the happenings outside the wax museum, which meant that at least they didn’t have to worry about subterfuge as Jonas and his companion made their way to the hidden panel on the side of the building.

It was just him and Raizel Cohen today.  It wasn’t like Niobe to miss an adventure, but she’d begged off with a hastily scribbled note: something about Cuffe and the Prophet that couldn’t wait. Though he was currently blessed with a supervisor who largely left him alone and spent all his time picking on the other employees, Jonas could still sympathize.  He’d sent back a reassurance that he’d take detailed notes on anything that Cohen managed to find and pass the memo along to the reporter.

He’d met Raizel near the Underground station at half past ten.  Despite the fact that it wasn’t raining, the Cursebreaker still looked about as happy as a drowned rat.  She was bundled up as if she were about to venture into the Arctic, with an enormous coat, a white knit hat, and a matching scarf and gloves that looked like she was expecting the day’s escapades to threaten her with severe frostbite.

“Alright?” Jonas had asked when he’d first reached her, with a look that was probably far too bemused.

Raizel had grumbled something about London and the weather and begun to trundle off in the direction of the museum.

It hadn’t take long to find the spot that he and Niobe had spotted during their visit back in December.[1]  Cohen had wasted no time.  With a quick casting of Goleya, she pursed her mouth, staring intently at the spot on the wall where the broad ring of symbols were just barely visible to the naked eye.

Jonas gave her a moment.  Then two.  Finally, he couldn’t stand it and cleared his throat.

“Seen anything like that before?” he asked.

It took a moment before the Cursebreaker seemed to hear him.  She glanced at him, and then shook her head.

“Some of these are Futhark,” she said, raising a hand to the runic circle.  She let her finger hover lightly above the top rune, a hair away from touching it.  “This one, yeh?  And that one, and that.”  She indicated two others, one immediately to the left, and the other one at the lower right diagonal.  “And that one is Dalecarlian.”  She pointed to another barely visible rune, which looked like a circle above a strangely-shaped uppercase A.  “But the last two, I don’t know.”

Jonas squinted at them.  “It all looks like Elvish to me,” he remarked dryly.

The Cursebreaker blinked at him.  “No, elvish symbols are very different,” she said, her frown deepening. “Gobbledegook uses some similar runes to Dalecarlian, but even those are —“

He needed to remember to save his Tolkien jokes for when he ran into Sasha Snow.  “Never mind,” Jonas said, flashing her an apologetic smile.  "Forget it."

He sighed, glancing back at the mysterious compartment that was apparently destined to stay a mystery.  “I reckon if you don’t recognize the runes, it’s too much of a trick to open it then, innit?”

1.	December 21, 2011 - Deal Me In

Raizel couldn’t help but be offended.

“Too much of a trick?” she echoed, giving the red-haired Auror a disapproving look. Whoever had hidden this small space had obviously known what they were doing, but it was quite a supposition to assume that she didn’t know her craft even better.  Huffing, she dug into the bag that she’d slung over her shoulder and pulled out a small, patterned cylinder and some clay.

It only took a few moments to get set: one to flatten the clay and press it against the hidden runic circle in a criss-crossed X shape, and then a second moment to roll the cylinder seal across it, imprinting the clay with her own set of runes.  Raizel raised her wand and murmured a spell, touching the tip of the spiraled wood to the center-point of the clay X.

The entire thing glowed a faint, pale blue for half a second, and then the whole thing seemed to crumble away like dust. As it dissolved, the portion of the wall marked by the runic circle disintegrated with it.

Next to her, Jonas raised his eyebrows.  “Nicely done,” he said, stepping closer to peer inside the newly revealed compartment.

It was about a meter tall by a meter wide, though it stretched back a little farther in.  Trevelyan glanced over his shoulder, and then pulled out his Muggle cell phone.  Sliding his thumb back and forth over the screen, he activated what seemed to be a bright torchlight, and then angled it into the compartment, squinting after it to see.

The inside of the compartment stretched back about a meter as well.  From where Raizel was standing, it looked empty.  Whatever might have been concealed there once, it was clear that someone had long since come to claim their cargo.

A cold wind tickled the back of her neck.  Raizel sighed and snuggled deeper into her coat, glancing over her shoulder at the Muggle street.  Despite her visible display of magic, no one seemed to be paying them any attention.

“Here’s something,” Trevelyan said abruptly.

Blinking, she turned back towards him.

The Auror had extracted what looked to be a small, curved tooth, no bigger than a toothpick.  Gingerly, he gripped it between two fingers, holding it up for her to see.

A wary look crossed Raizel’s face, and she met his gaze as he freed a napkin from his pocket and tucked the tiny sliver inside..  They both knew what that was.

A Runespoor fang.

This time, a real shiver ran down Raizel’s back.

“We should go,” she said, glancing back uncomfortably at the street. There was still no sign that anyone was watching them, but now even the Muggles walking by looked a little ominous. Runespoor smugglers were notorious: only desperate wizards trafficked in such dangerous wares.  Even back when she had run with the likes of Topuluk, they had rarely dabbled in the trade. 

Jonas was peering into the concealed compartment again, giving it one last sweep with the light from his phone.  Suddenly, he stopped, looking intently at something inside.

As he leaned back again, he was holding a torn piece of bright purple paper, held tightly between two fingers.

Raizel blinked. “What’s that?” she asked warily.

The Auror paused for a moment, looking almost as if he were about to say something, but he quickly shook his head.  “No idea, mate,” he said, reaching into his pocket again.  He tucked the purple slip of paper into the napkin with the Runespoor fang and slipped it back out of sight. 

Forehead creasing, he glanced at her again.  “Reckon you can close that up again?”

First she was brought all this way to open something, then she was told to close it once again.  Raizel made a face.  “This counts as two favors,” she grumbled at him as she drew her wand. 

But she was just as eager to get out of here as he was.  Taking a deep breath, she set about restoring the wall once more.