Cameron Rosier's Townhouse, 8 PM.
Chelsea, London.

Whenever she stopped to think about it, it felt a bit frightening that this had developed into something like routine, these clandestine visits to see government officials.  But it was a delightful sort of frightening.  Raizel held her chin unabashedly high, determined to ignore the flutter in her stomach or the way that her heart always pounded in her chest as she made her way up the path to knock solidly on Cameron Rosier's door.  She would much rather be taken for fierce than nervous or anxious, and so when it came to collaborating with the Ministry, fierce was what she would be.

The newness of all this -- of putting her trust in the government, of cooperating instead of expecting arrest or betrayal -- was still rather raw, even months later.  As Raizel waited at the door in the frigid night air, hands rubbing at her arms in a futile attempt to warm them, she couldn't help casting a wary look over her shoulder.  This British Ministry was obviously a different beast than the one she'd known back home.  After six months of living here in London, of getting to know the ins and outs of the situation intimately, she was willing to extend a tentative trust, but even that only went so far.

The door opened, and Raizel practically sprang into the warmth that radiated from inside. The house elf had come to provide a welcome and show her to his master's study.  Even now, months after she had met him, Cameron Rosier was unusual in that he was still a bit of an enigma to her.  He was old, intent, perpetually grumpy, and sometimes she wasn't certain if his eccentricities were really eccentric or a bit odder than that.  The summoning tonight had not come with very much information -- it had been expectedly short, and similarly light on information.  After a career spent in Magical Law Enforcement, Cameron Rosier had apparently learned to keep his cards close to his chest.

She didn't let that bother her, though.  She liked secrets, too, and she had plenty of experience at managing grumpy. Head held confidently high, Raizel breezed into the study.

"It is too cold out.  I need something to drink," she announced immediately, not waiting to be greeted.  That was one of the benefits of colluding with this particular wizard -- his choice in alcohol might not always taste pleasant, but it was assured to be of high quality.  With that, though, she stopped short, looking startled as she took in his appearance.

"Where have you been?  You are very red," she informed him, as if he could have possibly missed it.  Her brows knit in surprise as she quickly glanced him over.  Cameron Rosier had never struck her as the sort of man to spend much time outside, nor one who went adventuring abroad away from his British comforts, but here he was, sunburned and wearing shoes that he could have surely only purchased in some suq far from London's shores.  Even so, with the evidence in front of her eyes, she could hardly believe it.  "Are those slippers?  How much did you pay for them?"

Rosier was slowly getting used to London, the Ministry and his old life. However he could not get used to the weather so easily. His house was reasonably warm, but he still felt like he was freezing half of the time. The time period which so many called 'The most wonderful time of the year' was utterly miserable and depressing in the eyes of the new Senior Undersecretary. At least he managed to miss Christmas celebrations this year. With a large cup of tea, Rosier walked into his study and took out some files and a messy-looking map. This time, the study was a bit neater (Puck the house elf managed to convince his master that it was time to at least clear all the papers from the floor), but it was still obvious that its owner wasn't an ordinary wizard.

Many people called Rosier eccentric or sometimes even unstable, but he was a firm believer of the 'end justifies the means' scheme. However, in order for all his plans to work and in order to untangle the mystery of the Corpus Inversus murders, they needed more than just the involvement of the Auror office. Rosier considered himself lucky to have befriended Raizel Cohen, a young witch who still managed to surprise him from time to time with her knowledge of the goblins and their methods. He hoped she will have answers for him - or at least more comments to offer than Trevelyan, even if his reaction was expected.

Cohen was lucky to meet with Rosier on a weekday after his day at the office, while he still wore his usual work clothes. With the exception of the silly slippers from Morocco and a ghastly sunburn, Rosier looked almost completely normal and respectable. As the blonde witch entered the study, without a proper greeting or anything, Rosier looked up through his reading glasses and offered a hint of a smile. Getting up from the armchair to greet her, he couldn't help but sigh at her numerous questions. Everyone asked him the same thing because of the wretched sunburn. 

"Nice to see you too..." he said coldly, but evidently amused. "Yes, they are slippers. And I didn't." He wasn't sure how he came into the possession of said slippers, but he was certain he did not purchase them. At that point in Marrakesh he barely had enough money to afford drinkable water. As a pureblood wizard who was brought up in a mansion and lived his entire adult life in a house next to Sloane square with his house elf, Rosier had no idea what being penniless means.

"So you don't like my tan? I think Raynor liked it, but you never know with her," he said sarcastically, very aware that he looked ridiculous. "I mean, who knew the Moroccan sun can be so deadly even at this time of year. Would you like some tea?"

The revelation that Rosier had not spent money on the garish slippers that graced his feet was mildly placating.  Raizel gave a brisk, approving nod.  Garish souvenirs were one thing, but spending a small fortune on something that probably cost mere agorot to make was somewhat unforgivable.  Rosier was so British that she wouldn't have expected him to be good at bargaining, but the man occasionally surprised her.  Maybe he had managed to avoid the usual traps.

"I don't think that that color is tan," she pointed out, giving the extremely red sunburn a doubtful look.  That nuance of the English language, however, was considerably less disappointing than Rosier's suggestion of beverage.  She had not come to this man's house so that she could drink tea.

"Why were you in Morocco?" she asked, glancing around the room.  She quickly decided which chair looked the most comfortable, and then went to sit in it, not bothering to wait for an invitation.  "Don't you have something to drink other than tea?"

Rosier rolled his eyes, but also laughed a bit when she mocked his sunburn. He sincerely hoped it would fade away soon enough so people would stop staring at him and making smart comments. Earlier today a reporter from the Prophet snapped a couple of pictures of him as he passed through the Atrium and Rosier was secretly thankful the newspaper only printed in black and white.

He wished he could simply explain why he was in Morocco, he certainly didn't feel like re-telling that entire tale once again. And of course she expected something other than tea, the two of them usually drank something much, much stronger. He felt slightly awkward telling others he decided to stop drinking, but it was inevitable. Most people associated Rosier with smoking, heavy drinking and reckless behavior and he was wise enough to cut down on one of those.

"I might, but I'm afraid in that case you'll be drinking it alone, my dear." He shrugged and looked through his pockets for the silver cigarette case. Opening it, he offered them to the young witch even though he knew she didn't smoke. "Tea tastes a lot better than gin anyway - took me only forty-something years to realize that," he said with a small smile. It was funny how he thought that he'll be very miserable if he stops drinking, but he actually felt fine. Also, waking up without a crippling headache every morning was a plus.

"What do you know about Morocco? Or goblin artifacts over there? I wasn't there exactly on vacation..." She wasn't Trevelyan so he won't bother telling her stories about his great adventures. He hoped they could jump straight to the important bits. Cohen did not need to know about him getting his wand stolen, falling off a camel, spending all his money and eventually ending in a muggle prison. It's not that he particularly cared but these things hardly made him look competent.

Raizel did not believe for an instant that drinking tea was anywhere near as good as other more potent beverages.  But before she could really gear herself up to lodge a protest, Rosier managed to save himself the argument by changing the subject.

The Cursebreaker blinked, and then frowned, her frustration at the lack of accommodating alcohol momentarily forgotten.  "What do I know?" she repeated, her brows knitting.

She paused as she thought for a moment.  Rosier had not said a word to her about Morocco before he'd disappeared for a month.  Raizel felt like she knew a decent amount about the country, but the thought of goblin-made trinkets coming from there -- the thought had never crossed her mind before.  If the wizard had asked her the question before, she would have completely discounted it.  Why would anything goblin-made come from Africa?

"I know a little about Morocco," she said, still frowning.  "But I've never seen a goblin artifact that comes from there." She gave a shrug, still watching Rosier, her brows knit. "Almost all goblins live in Europe, nachon?  They would never travel to Africa just to make something."

That was obvious.  But what wasn't obvious was why the idea had even entered Rosier's mind.  "Why do you want to know about goblin artifacts in Morocco?" Raizel asked, giving him a quizzical look.  "If someone tried to sell you something in a suq that they said was made by goblins, then they were probably lying."

Of course she knew a little, she always did. But he could see her puzzlement, this was probably the first time someone mentioned Morocco to her regarding the case they were trying to untangle. He knew most goblins lived over here and while traveling through Africa he did not run into any of them there, so she was right about that. However, this wasn't the point - Rosier was interested in artifacts which were already made, not their current production. Getting behind his desk to dig trough a messy drawer, Rosier took about a minute to find a piece of parchment.

"I didn't mean it that way - I'm not interested in goblins who travel to Africa in order to make things..." he sighed and then studied the parchment in front of him while squinting a bit. "I meant - are you aware of some sort of a black market over there? The antique pieces smuggled through Tangier, then sold across the country?" He wasn't sure if that was right, but he wanted to see if she was aware of something similar. Was Morocco the final destination of all stolen, goblin-made antiques? Rosier thought this was an important piece of their puzzle, the key to discovering the motives behind those murders.

Why he wanted to know? He showed the girl the parchment he was holding. Under the dim lights of his office, the elaborate drawing on the tattered parchment looked almost sinister. It clearly showed the goblin-made mask from the famed (and now dead) collector Rippringham-Gomfrey. The more he looked at it, the more he was sure it was the one he came across in that inconspicuous shop. And the more the thought about that, the more he hated himself for his recklessness.

"This mask is in Marrakesh. I don't know how it got there or why it's there, but I'm certain it is our mask. I risked my life at least three times a day over there, so I assure you - this is not just speculation or some silly theory."

The blonde mage frowned as she listened, resting her chin on one hand.  She hated to let it show, but the fact that the former Head of Magical Law Enforcement even knew about the illegal trade through Tangiers -- even if her current position as a Gringotts Cursebreaker would give her a legitimate reason to be aware of it, the other implications left her slightly uneasy.

But as far as she knew, goblin-made artifacts weren't traded on the black market.  As soon as even the slightest hint of one surfaced, Gringotts representatives snatched it up -- whether through legal purchase or other means of acquisition.  The thought that the Harvest Mask might have ended up somewhere in northern Africa seemed a little outlandish, not when so many people had been searching for it back in England.  As far as she knew, Rippringham-Gomfrey had no connections to the black market in Morocco.  Why on earth would he have let the mask escape to there?

But...she had to admit as she looked at the sinister drawing that it did look like the missing artifact.  Frowning, she reached for the parchment, examining it carefully.  The markings, the slope of each line looked very similar to the sketches that she'd seen before, to the description that she had read. 

"This...could be it," she admitted, giving Rosier a wary look.  "But I do not know; it is hard to tell for certain from a drawing."  She regarded him seriously, her brows knit together.  "Where in Marrakesh did you see this?  You did the drawing yourself?  Based on a mask that you were looking at?"

After the conversation he had with Trevelyan, Rosier sort of expected everyone else to be just as skeptical about all this. When Cohen expressed genuine interest in his drawing and admitted that it could be their mask, he suddenly stopped feeling like a madman. Well, he was sure he was right, but it was nice to know that it wasn't just his own, often wild imagination. But he was relieved as well - this meant he would not have to prove his tale to even more people; it was essential they took him seriously. It was the only way to solve the Corpus Inversus mystery - he was certain of it.

He looked at the drawing again, frowning just like he usually did. "Yes, I drew this," he said, remembering how much time and effort it took him. Rosier was not a particularly good artist, but apparently stress and anger did wonders. Of course, he used magic to make the drawing so precise, but he still secretly congratulated himself on it. "Based on my memory...I could hardly take out quills and ink while skulking around dodgy shops, right? I used a spell to make it accurate, of course - I preserved the memory." He was good at things like that - certain magic which took time and effort and sometimes a lot of studying. "It was a shop inside the old Medina, within the bazaar...I would be able to locate it again, but I don't think I'd be able to point it on a map - as I said, Marrakesh is a maze for wizards and muggles alike..."

"I think we need to dig deeper into the history of Rippringham-Gomphrey and see if there is even a slightest connection with North Aftrica. As an adventurer, I bet he found himself there from time to time - it's a goldmine in a way for such people." He thought about it for a moment; in a way this was how he saw Morocco as well and no matter how much he missed London, he secretly already longed for the freedom he found in Africa. "Have you been to Morocco?" He was interested to see if she would agree with his vision of the place, even though she was different and did not belong in London like him.

She wasn't entirely certain what she had expected when Cameron Rosier had summoned her to his townhouse.  The older wizard had a way of throwing her off balance -- his rank, his reputation, his penchant for secrecy.  Even so, when she had imagined all kinds of things that he might want to conspire on, she hadn't quite predicted this.

"Yeh.  I've been there."  She was still frowning as she eyed him, mulling over this information.  Was it possible that Rippringham-Gomfrey could have connections to North Africa?

"There...might be a connection," she admitted, sparing a wary look at the wizard.  For all of his eccentricity, she liked Cameron Rosier; even so, trusting him with information that could potentially be used against her was not something that she was entirely comfortable with.

"Rippringham-Gomfrey kept some of his collection in his house.  He had a shaman's costume that he said was from West Africa,[1] but it was not.  Most counterfeit things like that come through Morocco or Egypt."  She gave Rosier a vaguely daring look, as if judging whether or not he was going to challenge how she knew this.  "If you can get me into his house, I could check for more," she offered with a frown.  "Or we could check his financial records.  Do you think it's worth going to Marrakesh to find this mask again?"

1.	Keep Your Wits About You