Azkaban, the North Sea
2 pm

"I don't care if it's old news," Sissel said into a hand mirror. "They labeled me as an Unspeakable but still thought to mention TTI? Whatever happened to anonymity, Jenny?"[1]

The woman on the other end of the mirror sighed. She had been handling Sissel's affairs with TTI as he was distancing himself from active duty. "We told them 'how' we knew about the crime beforehand. The paper can still draw whatever conclusions it wants."

"Tip-off from a really advanced Diviner? You know what everyone is really thinking, how everyone wants to find out what we're up to with time travel. A competent lawyer could have gotten Briggs off by claiming entrapment."

"Speaking of requests for what we're up to, when you get back there's--"

"If I hear one more petition about Clark and Wayne's 'dimensional doors' I'll send it back with a latent, touch sensitive Stinging Hex. They aren't used for a reason![2] Cripes Jen, you won't have me around the department anymore. Heck, I've got homework to grade!"

She pouted. "This one really has a big push behind it, can't you just spare some time to look it over--"

"Can't hear you Jenny! I have to cut off all ties to the outside world now!"

---

The flight out to Azkaban could have wrecked the new broom Sissel had traded up for at the end of summer, when he had to fight his way through the storms that surrounded the wizarding prison. Once he landed he had to authenticate his identity, then as he dried off with a charm in the visitor's hallway he had a chance to attend to matters before he had to cross the next security checkpoint. All this for answers. Since handing off Briggs to MLE their side of the case had been nonexistent. Barely any activity in the office at all again, of the kind that invigorated Sissel. Excluding his trip abroad.[3] And since he was the first responder, they still wanted Sissel to clear it up even though he had changed careers. Or it was from understaffing. Which was really bizarre for a time travel department.

"Name?" asked a guard at the checkpoint.

"Sissel Jowd, Time Travel Investigation and Regulation Bureau, Department of Mysteries." History of Magic Professor at Hogwarts but that would just befuddle the guard. After checking in his old ID he hadn't expected he would be holding it again so soon.

"Reason for visit?"

"Questioning prisoner number 15Bŵ5..." Gosh they made this difficult to remember! Sissel had to sound out each character slowly. "dash 14, Nathan Briggs."

"You will be required to surrender your wand and all--"

"Yes, yes, before meeting with the prisoner." Sissel submitted his wand and equipment. His broom was already confiscated by the exterior checkpoint. As he handed over his egg timer he said "Come get me immediately if that thing goes off."

Finally he was escorted down a hallway to the visiting center. Even with the dementors absent, the prison still had a chilling quality to it. Sissel was told to wait in one of the rooms. This was almost like a cell, a rectangular room with a table in the middle, the haze of concentrated and permanent shield spells separating the room in half. Sissel sat, waiting for Briggs, wondering what the prisoner was thinking given that one week into his sentence he had a visitor.

1.	July 17 - Lone Wizard Charged In Burglary
2.	link
3.	July 26 -  Forbidden Secrets, We Shall Know

A door opposite Jowd opened with a long, gritty scrape.  It might not have been opened in years, so rare were visits to Azkaban Prison.  Shacklebolt's reforms had done wonders for the rights of prisoners there, but it was difficult to see in the dim light how anything here could be seen as a step up.  Azkaban was a place of nightmares and bogeymen and it fulfilled on its promise. 

Nate Briggs had been there for 9 days.  That was all.  He was still adjusting.

He was led in and sat down by a guard with a heavy hood. His uniform was worn out and striped, his number patched on the front, back and both sleeves.  The young wizard's beard was growing more than he'd usually let it, and his eye was black from a few days ago when he'd tested his short leash.  His hands and feet were chained.

Once Briggs was in his chair, the guard left.  Only when the door closed and latch-locked did his bonds dissolve with the sound of breaking gravel. 

He looked through the flickering, glowing barrier between him and his dimly lit visitor. The green light of the magical division their faces eerily, and Nate didn't immediately recognize Sissel Jowd, one of the wizards responsible for catching him at the Magicarium.[1]

Nate set his hands on the table and tilted his chin. 

"Who're you, then?" he asked, his voice calm and more or less friendly - a sharp contrast to their venue.

1.	The Vidris Curtain

Briggs had been half the ragamuffin he was now the last time Sissel had seen him. The three squares and wakeup service of the Azkaban inn must not be agreeing with him.

"You don't remember me?" Sissel matched the friendly tone. Almost a parody of it. "I'm hurt. We practically made it to first base when you decided to strangle me by the neck while resisting arrest. Second base, even."

Sissel could recall the night Briggs robbed the Magicarium like it was yesterday. Because, yesterday, he had been analyzing his memories in the Penseive. Watching again as he and Ackerzonne came from opposite ends of the shop as Briggs was picking the lock. Their confrontation, the destruction. And nothing in Sissel's memory offered any more hints as to where Briggs had specifically banished the Muhra Glass.

"Think back, young sir, it's only been the biggest event of your life for the past few months."

Nate didn't even attempt to hide the realization.  It was that Department of Mysteries wizard.  Sissel Jowd.  The same who'd helped to get him these new accommodations... He sighed and shook his head, feeling bolloxed.  He nodded.  It was the same man.

Part of him wanted to apologize for getting rough with him - not at all how Nate usually went about his daily business.  Strangling Unspeakables or anything.  But Jowd here had it about right.  That night when he burgled the Magicarium had been unusual in many ways.

"Wasn't personal," he shrugged.  Then he scratched the stubbly part of his neck. 

"Damn lucky none of your charges stuck," he said with a play at smugness.  The Department of Mysteries had stacked on a great pile of extra offenses on him, but none of them ended up getting past the Wizengamot.  All the better, but he wondered if that might have steamed Jowd's broccoli some.  Maybe that's why he wasn't as impressed at the Unspeakable's presence as he would have been at an Auror's. 

"Sure, sure." Nothing personal. Nothing personal from me when I thought of flipping your body parts in reverse one limb at a time. That still would have been funny. A different kind of funny from Ackerzonne's 'let's blow up half the shop and indiscriminately hex people to get the bad guy down.'

"Well, we have to give you hope that you'll be a free man in a year." Sissel had spouted numerous threats of legal red tape in hopes of getting Briggs to confess when he was caught red handed. "You lucked out that you weren't doing anything serious like smashing time turners or reversing the flow of time or anything." TTI only had tabs on the Magicarium because Muhra Glasses were strange things for how anything could be stored in them and never stale. It was still the property of the shop, so in a way the Time Travel Investigators had basically played the first response security team when Briggs robbed the place.

"You'd get out a lot sooner if you confessed where the Muhra Glass went. Or why you were so interested in it in the first place."

Nate scoffed and shook his head. 

"So that's it, yea? That's why I've got a lovely visitor.  You're going to do what the Aurors couldn't and wheedle it out of me?"

Briggs's skepticism was clear.  Nate wished it was that simple.  He bloody would have loved it had it all been just that simple.  But his life was complicated.  And Auror Jonas Trevelyan had done a very good job to convince him this - pleading down to a stay in Azkaban - was the most preferable option.

He had his reasons to keep the Glass's whereabout hidden, as well as his motivations. 

"Good fecking luck, mate.  It's not going to happen."

He was confused though.  He wiped his face with his hand and leaned back in the chair, away from Jowd.  He'd passed that Auror a hint - had it not been enough?  That was kind of the linchpin to all this.  He discreetly gave the Aurors something to go on, Nate got the benefits, and was still able to walk the streets his live-long life. 

Nate peered at the wizard.  Keeping his mouth shut had been easy before - the threat seemed clear.  But Azkaban, she was very convincing otherwise.  He didn't know how long he'd last here.

He crossed his arms, thinking it better to say nothing else.

Figures. Sissel had read that Briggs had been belligerent on his reasoning for keeping quiet before. A short stint in Azkaban was not enough to make him crack. 'Wheedlesome Plan A' was out of the works then. Time for a different angle completely.

Sissel kept smiling. "You're right, if it was that important there would have been other ways of getting the information out of you sooner." Veritserum, Legilimency. All possible if the greater Department of Mysteries had kept Briggs, being things the Aurors couldn't readily get. But the damn paperwork behind everything these days! That was what was getting to Sissel. Trade me forms asking for the impossible with essays where students tried to pass off the impossible. At least when grading he didn't have to fill out forms in triplicate.

"So let's talk about you," Sissel leaned back in his seat, crossed a sneaker caped leg over the other knee. "Nathan Briggs. Terrible name you've got for yourself there given your present circumstances. Supposed to be a smart guy, sorted into Ravenclaw. Ever have a favorite subject in school?"

For a second there, Nate feared the worst.  Just the mention of 'other ways' called to mind what he'd been dreading.  Truth-taking magic was never without it's draw-backs, and he'd wondered when he'd be threatened with it.  He didn't know the law well enough to know if his crime warranted that kind of thing - but then, he'd been convicted without it.  Perhaps Level Two didn't see the point seeing as they got their man anyway.

But soon it became clear that Jowd here wasn't going to try any of that.  And instead it was to be more back-and-forth and playing at being friendly.  Not that Nate trusted him. At all. 

Better than his cell, though.  He shrugged.

"History of Magic," he said.  And he wasn't lying.  You could get a long way with Nate by validating his intellect - it was were most of his ego hung out.  He knew most people had hated History.  And for the most part, Nate hadn't gotten along with school, even a wonderful school like Hogwarts.  But if he'd had to pick the class he'd liked most.

"I know everyone hates, but it was easy for me.  Just had to think of everything like a story.  Get around Binn's droning voice, and all the numbers and nonsense, yea - History."

"Really?" Sissel said. "It's rare finding anybody that liked the subject under Binns. That makes you and I strange bedfellows when it cones to liking the subject. One of a kind. Though I think I've done a bit more with it than you."

Sissel scooted his chair over, leaning close to the secured shielding. "Although what's the best thing about magical history is when you realize why things happen. Take your circumstances. A little over a decade ago you would be getting soul sucked by hundreds of dementors as you waited out your sentence. It took the dementors aligning to Voldemort before they were no longer used as prison guards." Sissel borrowed a page from a creepy albino student he'd seen about the castle, though she no longer took the subject. The page was one of those madding, worrisome smiles to look upon.

"But did you know how, exactly, Azkaban was filled with so many dementors in the first place?" There were some elements of the wizarding world that people liked to ignore, its prisons being one of them.

Nate had been alone for many long nights these past few months.  Held in the Ministry cell in between questionings, between sessions in court.  Long nights of letting his mind roll over what was going to happen to him, dreading a life where his time, his purpose, his prerogative would not be his own.  And how easy it would be to lose himself.  And even though the dementors were long gone nearly a decade they still came to his mind often. 

He frowned and looked down into his lap.  He resented Sissel Jowd's position of freedom behind the flickering magical divide and his subtle threats and jabs. 

Nate looked up and smirked without mirth.  Did he know? Of course he bloody knew. 

"Was an infestation.  They were drawn here by the despair already soaking the place," he said, summing up an article he'd read many years ago.  The details were foggy, but it struck him a bit demented.  And harrowing that Wizarding kind could be so brutal to their own.  But then, that's how he got here.  A chain of violence. 

"Right you are," Sissel said. In class that would have been two points but there was no reason to tell Briggs this. It wasn't like Azkaban used a system of points for good behavior where you could save them up and earn benefits for your cell.

"That accounts for the modern use of dementors as Azkaban guards from the 1800s as the prison was increasingly bureaucratized, drawing in more from other places. But there was a time when there were no dementors or even a prison on this rock. And that's where things get interesting."

He scratched his chin before continuing. "This island was long used a place where you wanted to get rid of people. Sending the dying and insane, often at the hands of massive magical innovation of the ancient times. At least you have your health," he told Briggs. "So that explains your conclusion of the dementors being drawn to the despair of the island. But in numbers around a dozen, there weren't enough people with emotions to steal to encourage the dementors to populate further."

"And hopefully I don't need to tell you about Herpo the Foul," Sissel said. One of the earliest Dark Wizards ever mentioned in history classes. Quite literally invented half the book on Dark Magic. " 'But Sissel!' I hear you say in rebuke, 'What does Herpo have to do with the North Sea? He was from Ancient Greece!' And that's true. There's no proof Herpo ever came here. But his innovations did spread and there were numerous copy cats trying to achieve his darkest magics. Thus, the early popularity with our little Azkaban Isle. Experiments to interrupt the Dementor's Kiss and see if the soul could survive on. Some were after immortality, others sought a kind of astral projection, the idea your soul could observe the earth completely unnoticed, unlike a ghost, and eventually return to its body. Though you can see how that never took off from the all consuming destruction with dementors. Then throughout the centuries are government took more interests with the place as a means of captivity and the rest, as they say, was history."

The teaching bug sure was an odd thing to catch at times. Here he was, lecturing an uncooperative prisoner just because Sissel could call the shots on how much time they spent together.

"That should make you sleep better at night, won't it? At least you're not cannon fodder for soul experimentation."

The man was insane.  Even for a wizard, this Mr Jowd was off his nut.  Nate glowered at him with increasing condescension and perplexation as he continued on with what sounded like a made-for-Wireless history lecture.

As Jowd wrapped up his harrowing tale, Nate scratched at his neck below his chin in and old nervous habit.  Circumstances had given him more nerves as of late.

"I'm not going to tell you where it's at," he told Jowd with a shrug. Defeated maybe, resigning to his choice.  The choice he was convinced was his best option.  He had to believe it was because there was no going back now.  And now, he didn't like this Jowd person.  He'd rather the Aurors found it.  And that was saying alot considering how much Nate hated the Aurors.  As a group. 

"You've got to let it go.  Probably turn up.  You know how it goes.  Soon as you stop looking for what  you lost, and go off and buy a new one - that's when the lost one turns up.  So happy hunting."

"Prat."

"Oh, you're still talking about the Muhra Glass?" Sissel said with almost believable naivety. The most obvious thing for Nate's us of 'it.' "Funny you should mention that. It ties into my little research much more than you realize."

He leaned closer. It had been funny watching Briggs squirm. If he couldn't stomach some of Azkaban's origins he really wasn't as tough as he thought he was. "In this proposed dementor soul sucking experimentation, what do you suppose they would have used to store the soul? Unless the dementor eats it, it's liable to just pass on and the victim dies. What would have been used was a long lost process of spinning glass containers that could store potentially anything at peak freshness."

"That's right sir, Muhra Glass! There's ancient record of Muhra Glass trade as far north as here. But as the experiments failed, Muhra Glass would be taken away. Nothing was ever found at present day Azkaban except for shards. Making them very very rare because after Azkaban there's no other notable cache of Muhra Glass to track."

"And look what you did," Sissel chided. "The one time a complete, unbroken Muhra Glass is discovered in centuries and you banished it away somewhere." The spell was arguably smart work on Nate's part. Many people only got to banishing something away at high speeds, seldom master the thought of having the object vanish from one spot to reappear in another.

Sissel added one last jab. "You didn't happen to check if there was anything in it, did you? You might have endangered somebody's final resting place."

"Moron." This was almost like a game of table tennis.

Nate could picture his life as being trapped in a black pit.  Trapped, wet, horrible, rocks and hard places.  But it was only made worse by the introduction of a lit candle, because only then could he see he was in a manticore's den. 

The more he learned about the quality of shit into which he'd stepped, the less cheerful he became.  His heart beat heavy in his chest.  The man across would have seen him sitting stock still, stony scowl on his bruised face.  And all lit eerily green by the Curtain. 

And then, suddenly he was on his feet.  The metal chair shoved away, scraping on the stone floor and falling down with a clatter.  Nate's palms were flat against the table, and he leaned forward, his nose inches from the crackling, magical barrier between them.  It hummed in anticipation.

"Sod. Off." 

His anger was palpable, written all over his face.  But he was also desperate.  He wasn't a diabolical mastermind, or career criminal.  He wasn't violent or dangerous.  He was just  ... this was all ... he'd screwed up and was trying to get out of this hole.  He'd been hounded by Aurors, Hitwizards and now the strange Mr. Jowd - none of them interested in relenting and leaving him alone. 

Nate wouldn't tell anyone where it was.  He couldn't.  If he did, he was better off dead.  But there was no way he could tell Jowd. 

The subtext was the word please.

And........crack.

Sissel had to admit he rarely saw how people acted under pressure. Sure, a few times in his TTI days he dealt with perpetrators that messed around with time and their reactions were mixed depending on their intent. At some level, he wondered what Briggs had expected for the troubles he had put himself in. It may have seemed like a routine burglary but a life of crime was going to catch up one way or another.

But, one the other hand, for as smart as he thought he was Briggs didn't seem to realize how much beef he was in. Truthfully, anyone who would had known more might have taken other efforts in securing such a rare item. Before he had left the department Sissel had been able to see a summary of the Auror investigation and they were convinced Briggs was acting under someone else's orders. And Azkaban's latest resident was mum on the other details.

Maybe he had hit Briggs with too much weaponized information. That was the only sympathy he was getting.

"This is what you get when suddenly you're the center of everyone's attention," Sissel said mildly, having not flinched from Nate's outburst. He crossed his leg again. "Whether it was a plan all along or you just happened to be the first caught, suddenly it's very easy to consider you the scapegoat for everything. Since you're already in here there's little to do to get that to change."

"Forget all of that if you want, though." Sissel lifted into a lighter tone. "You're here, after all, with nothing but a year to think of other things as you wait to be released. In fact, let's start now."

He eased up the sleeve of his jacket. The only remaining watch on his armband that made it past security was a plain watch. "I have fifteen more minutes of your time. We can chat about whatever. You're comfortable, otherwise? It isn't the Leaky Cauldron but a term in here doesn't need to be a night at the Hog's Head. You're pretty lucky with prisoner conditions now that the war is over and dementors are absent."