If Josephine actually stayed at her flat, she might have had to worry about cleaning it with the anticipation of a visitor.  Thankfully, however, she was more accustomed to sleeping in whatever hotel she was closest to – or that Leandre picked, or out in the country – where her family home had been. 

 The previous evening she’d stayed at a swanky little place in London, muggle world, of course, without any connections to anyone she knew.  She and Leandre had both been suitably discreet. 

Josephine left on Sunday morning without more than a kiss goodbye, and had a tea and croissant by herself on her way home.  It was a good way to start a morning – or perhaps, more aptly finish it, since she hadn’t much slept the night before.

But, on the way back to her flat, Josephine hurried along the way. 

She had a meeting to attend to. 

Whatever Trevelyan wanted, he had certainly piqued her interest.  His letter was just cryptic enough to engage her in whatever this was, and Josephine was smart enough to not fall for something.  She’d have been more worried if it was Cohen doing this, but Josephine had a history with Trevelyan, even if it was in Hogwarts, but they’d known one another, and she wasn’t nervous about him.

If anything, she knew how to get her way.  That was precisely the reason she wasn’t at her apartment.  Unlocking the door, Josephine strode in and peeled off her grey and black coat and sighed.  It didn’t feel like a home, she supposed because she hadn’t lived there, really, but Jonas found the address and she supposed it was the nicest thing to do. 

Besides, once someone had her attention, she felt personally obligated to figure out what they wanted.  If it proved of no further interest to her, well... a waste of time, but no harm.  If she was intrigued beyond one meeting, well... it might be better than trolling through an archive or being sent out to fetch a treat, like some krup that got tossed a bone.  Honestly, the goblins were making it exceedingly difficult for her to know just where she stood.  Pesky little buggers would be the death of her, for certain. 

Currently, however, she was not worrying so much about pint-sized green-hued misers.  She was more concerned with a tall, red-headed auror that could potentially get her arrested.  That, in and of itself, was enough to make Josephine eager for this.  Walking on the wild side had always been part of her job, after all. 

She put on some tea, just in case, and grabbed one of her many books off of the shelf in the sitting room.  West African artifacts.  A suitably fantastic read, as far as waiting was concerned –and considering she’d written a section on tribal magic… maybe she’d flip to that part first. 

Twenty years prior, the thought of an invitation to Josephine St. Just's abode would have been a nearly world-shaking opportunity.  But the unrequited heartaches of Hogwarts had long passed, and Jonas was all business as he arrived at the Cursebreaker's flat, cap pulled low and hands tucked into the pockets of his overcoat. 

Tracking down a magical residence in Muggle London took a certain knack, but he rather liked to think that he'd finally gotten the hang of it.  Finding St. Just's residence hadn't been entirely impossible, and he didn't even know the witch as well as he knew Tamis.  From what he did know, she didn't spend very much time at home, so he wasn't likely to be exposed to many of her secrets, here in her inner sanctum.  This was likely a neutral location for her as much as it was for him.

And today was certainly not personal.  He'd held off on really probing St. Just so far.  The Corpus Inversus investigation was a delicate business, and spooking one of the possible primary players when he had another willing source seemed too much of a risk.  But it had been months, and they still had yet to stumble upon a real lead.  If there was a time to start taking risks, it was now, before another dead body turned up.

The door opened a few moments after he knocked.

"Miss St. Just."  He flashed the red-haired woman a bright, appreciative smile.  "Thanks for letting me stop in," he said, putting a hand to his hat.  There wasn't a sign of Auror-ly significance today -- he'd come in street clothes, his badge nowhere in sight.  "I'm hope it's not too much of a trouble for you to play host; I know things have to be busy down at the Bank."

 A light, serene smile decorated Josephine’s face as she opened the door for her guest.  He was on time, thankfully (she hated people who could not hold their appointments), though certainly not dressed for the occasion. 

She supposed not everyone could make a business meeting in their finest.  “Auror Trevelyan,” Josephine greeted with a slight nod of her head.  She didn’t want to forget just who he was or what he was doing here, after all. 

It wasn’t exactly a guess as to what he could possibly want to talk to her about, and no: it wasn’t her influence on his daughter, that was for certain.  Josephine had connections, she knew some of what was happening on Level 2 of the ministry, and knew it was somehow going to come back to her – though how and why and in what capacity, she couldn’t figure out yet. 

Remembering that he had the capacity to put her away for a very long time on evidence that was fabricated, at best.  “It’s my pleasure,” she smirked as she stepped out of the way and beckoned him to come in with a wave of her hand.  “I put water on, just in case.  Tea?” she glanced over her shoulder as she led him into the sitting room.

It was a formal space, to be certain, but good for this type of thing, and impeccably clean.  The only thing lying out, the book she had been reading before.  “I make a habit of taking a bit of time for myself every weekend, so it wasn’t a problem at all,” she added, wand out and ready to beckon tea if it were requested. 

“I know you’re not just here for the tea and biscuits, however,” she laughed lightly, “so how can I be of any help to the you?”

"Cheers," he replied, stepping inside.  An invitation to tea was as good a reason to linger as any -- it gave him a reason to sit and chat, instead of just pounding his host with questions.  It would also hopefully ease Josephine's nerves by giving her something to do; no one liked being asked to sit down for a conversation with an Auror, let alone a witch in a profession known for keeping secrets.

He'd learned long ago -- more from his time as a private investigator than as an Auror -- that a person's home relayed all kinds of useful information about them.  Josephine's looked neat and immaculate; barely lived in, aside from the book that sprawled on the table.

"And the career advice for Gwen?" he asked, flashing a crooked smile.  It had been over a year since he and the kids had run into St. Just at the Petrie museum.[1]  Back then, Gwenna and Artie still hadn't known about the magic, although Josephine's description of her profession had certainly caught his daughter's interest.  Oh, well.  At least it was better than the phase where she'd wanted to grow up to be Mothra.

He gave a shrug, easing himself carefully to sit in a chair that was more decorative than comfortable.  At times like these, sometimes it paid to treat his knee more stiffly than it really was.

"Well," he began, "I was hoping you might lend a hand with a case.  Not details -- I was just hoping for a more general impression of how things have been at Gringotts.  Temperaments.  Atmosphere."  His eyes were on her now, but he kept his expression amiable, relaxed.  "Just that sort of thing, yeah?"

1.	Raiders of the Lost Ark

Trevelyan was much easier going than she expected about this.  Usually, aurors were stuffy and invited themselves in.  They sat on the furniture and ordered one about and demanded the answers to questions that were almost always impossible to answer in the correct way: dancing a fine line between protecting one’s self, one’s clients, and one’s employer. 

It made working in Gringott’s exceedingly dangerous – a grand balancing act that always seemed to leave one holding one’s breath over the center of the ring on the tight rope. 

It was easier to talk about things that didn’t involve the scrutiny of her work, and Jonas’ daughter might have provided a momentary distraction.  Josephine laughed lightly, walking toward the pristine, and mostly unused, kitchen where the water was sitting at an even (hot) temperature, thanks to her insulating spell.  “Well, I’d suggest she seriously reconsider her relationship with the living dead.  It is far easier to be a curse breaker when one’s facilities are not entirely devoted to the pursuit of brains.” 

A bit tongue in cheek, but she felt she had earned that, at the very least. 

Walking into the kitchenette (less of a kitchen, really), she waved her dark wood wand at the pot, controlling it as it rose from the countertop and she poured the two cups from across the room.  She didn’t even need to really leave the room. 

She could continue to watch Trevelyan, awkwardly sitting in the decorative chair – which looked as though it would swallow him whole with its formality juxtaposed against him.  She might have laughed if not for the question that was posed to her.  Atmosphere?  That seemed odd. 

She shifted her weight, just a bit from one foot to the other as she twirled her wand around in motion with small teaspoon stirring sugar into her tea.  “My general impression?  Well, I suppose that might be biased,” she laughed lightly, “seeing as how I have never been in London this long in my entire career.” 

A true enough point.  “Stiffling, I should say,” she shrugged with a bit of unrestrained honesty.  “Daft little beasts thinking they know just about everything there is to know,” she added, referring to the creatures that currently held her livelihood over her head.  “Though, outside of their insistence on keeping their most talented work close to home, I suppose you could say it is normal – as far as goblins can be normal.” 

“I’m sure you’re familiar with their idiosyncrasies.”  She levitated the teacups toward them and quirked her eyebrows at him, wondering what else he could want. 

Jonas adjusted his position in the armchair as much as he was able considering the awkward slope of its cushion, frowning as he settled down to listen.  That was slightly interesting.  He'd known that Raizel Cohen had been stuck in London, and it didn't take much in the way of deductive skills to realize that the Israeli was extremely unhappy about her grounding.  But it hadn't occurred to him that other Cursebreakers were facing the same predicament.

Cohen's re-assignment to London had preceded the first Corpus murder.  Had St. Just's?  Were there other Gringotts employees similarly being kept close to the bank?

But that was a line of questioning that he could wait to follow up on.  For now, he was still interested in the red-haired woman's general impression.

"Pretend I'm not," he put in, flashing St. Just a smile.  The tea cup had floated over to him; he accepted it out of the air.  "How would you describe their idiosyncrasies?"

Ah, of course, the dispassionate questioning – pretend, imagine, whatever it was.  Josephine had to tread softly.  She didn’t want to be too outright in her distaste for her employers, it’d get to back to them.  Sure, she had used goblin prejudice before as a tool to ingratiate herself to an audience, but that was in the course of the job, something she could smooth over with the retrieval of an object that justified her hateful speech toward them when she returned.

This would probably lead nowhere good, and Josephine did not pretend Goblins were simple creatures without an idea of revenge or justice.  She supposed, above all other magical creatures, perhaps with the exception of centaurs, they were the most demanding of respect.

Sighing, she breathed in the scent from the tea coming off the cup, and took a sip before she started to speak.  “Their management habits are peculiar, and often unjustified.  In a profession that demands secrecy and sensitivity, that is expected, in some ways, but in others, it’s not.”

“When dealing with potentially cursed objects, it be troubling – some of the reluctance to share information.  Though, recently, it’s been much more of a game figuring out what is desired of me in the building.” 


“There aren’t many opportunities for a witch in the actual bank.”

"Yeah, it doesn't sound like it," Jonas agreed sympathetically, his forehead creasing.  As far as interview subjects went, Josephine was far more practiced than Raizel Cohen.  He could tell that much already -- she was much more difficult to get a read on, mostly because she didn't wear her heart on her sleeve.  He couldn't help wondering how much of this was the truth, and how much were practiced words -- if the bit about goblins not sharing information about artifacts was intended to protect her if anything about the Harvest Mask came to light.

"You've been there for a while now, haven't you?" he asked her with a frown.  "Since school?"  Josephine hadn't really been a friend back then, but she'd been a housemate and friend of Tamis -- which meant that she'd been included in some of their goings-on by default.  He'd been a bit too embarrassed to really try and keep in touch with her after he and Tait had graduated.  Being horribly shot down when he attempted to ask someone out usually had that effect.

But from the bits that he did remember, she'd gone into training fairly soon after.  Sometime in the intervening years, she must have found herself spending time in London at the Bank.  That made her valuable as a baseline, someone who could compare the goings-on now with what had been before.

"Have their management habits gotten better at all as time goes on?" he asked.  "You must've gotten more used to them now, yeah?"

Licking her lips, Josephine assuaged her dry mouth with a sip of tea.  She didn’t want to implicate herself in any of these goings on – or any past ones. It wasn’t a stretch of anyone’s imagination to know that a curse breaker who spent most of her time in post-Colonial Africa was not going to come back with something illicit.  She’d made plenty of friends and enemies (and friends of enemies) along the way, so she had to be careful. 

Granted, some of their training as curse breakers had been in disguises, lying, and generally avoiding being contacted by aurors or law enforcers in any place, muggle or magical. 

Nodding, Josephine finally crossed the floor from the mouth of the kitchen back into the living area and sat on the chaise where the book she was perusing had been sitting.  She crossed her ankles underneath the seat, and leaned against the armrest, precariously balancing the teacup while she mulled over her answers. 

“I did start working there immediately after graduation,” truth, “though I did have to take a bit of a break – family,” she shrugged (also true), “before I was able to return.” 

“But, even then,” Josephine sighed after taking another sip, “they seldom kept witches and wizards very close to the inner-workings of the bank.  Which, in some ways has not changed.  I feel fairly isolated from what goes on beyond classification and appraisal.” 

Jonas was clearly a person who was accustomed to talking to others and making them comfortable in doing so.  Josephine liked to talk, and had to close her mouth at some point.  “I suppose it’s just a changing position that’s ruffled my feathers recently,” she shrugged, trying to cover any suggestion that there was more there. 

He made a face, as if similarly frustrated in sympathy.  "Yeah, I can imagine."  Surely Josephine St. Just was not the sort of woman who liked feeling as if she were not in control of anything.  In a way, it was almost surprising that she'd lasted at Gringotts for as long as she had.  Jonas couldn't help but wonder what it was that was keeping her there: the pay, the thrill of it, or if there was something more, some other tie that they developed over their cherished Cursebreakers.

Whatever it was, it didn't seem as if her loyalty to them was out of goodwill.  St. Just was covering herself, as much as she was avoiding giving him any information that he could really use.  If witch and wizard employees were far from the inner workings of the Bank, then they could hardly be held accountable if any sort of dirty dealings were exposed.  Which would have been helpful, if he could take that as implying that there was something untoward in the depths of Gringotts -- but for all he knew, this sort of self protection was merely matter of fact.

"I can imagine how frustrating it is having to deal with them so much recently, then," he said sympathetically.  "It must be hard with them keeping you around the office.  Since what -- August?  Reckon you must be itching to get out from under their thumb and back into the field."

“August sounds right,” Josephine shrugged.  It had probably been longer than that, truth be told, but Jonas did not need to know all of that.  Her personal inability to get back into the graces of the goblins and move forward in her career was her own problem, and if it was going to relate to something that might be exposed later, then it was certainly not her place to say anything about it. 

Honestly, there were times it would probably be best to leave, but it became apparent that once one was involved, Gringotts had a way of… amassing ways to keep one present. 

It wouldn’t do well to leave of her own volition, much less have her position terminated.  There were many papers and artifacts listed under her accomplishments here that would be damning outside.  Foreign governments aside, the English system would hardly be kind to a woman who had made her career and reputation on questionably retrieved items. 

But, she slowly sipped her tea and took a deep breath.  What was that muggle idiom about keeping calm?  “I believe anyone with a sense of adventure might want that,” she smiled.  “You must know something about that, Trevelyan.  Wasn’t it only recently that you returned to the fold of the Corps?”

She quirked her eyebrow in curiosity, wondering how he might answer the return of a question.  This interview had, after all, started to become far too one-sided. 

"Yeah, about a year ago," Jonas replied, smiling.  In some ways, it was hard to believe that so much time had passed; in others, it seemed as if he'd never left at all.  Returning to the Aurors had been nearly as seamless as putting on old robes that somehow still fit -- which, to be fair, was literally what he'd done.  For all of the buildup and trepidation beforehand, it was nice to feel part of something bigger than himself once more.

"I'm not sure if that says much about me sense of adventure, though," he admitted, shaking his head ruefully.  "I think things might've been a bit more adventurous when I didn't have the weight of the Ministry backing things up.  Reckon it was a lot more likely I might trip up and get meself killed back then."  Not that it was completely out of the question now, but at least most criminals would hesitate before engaging an Auror.  An independent private detective who enjoyed sticking his nose into matters far out of his pay grade had enjoyed no such aura of immunity.

Intriguing, the way he smiled - coming back under the ministry's fold.  Though, his next statement illuminated a little bit of what Josephine probably could have figured out. 

Adventure was not generally a desire after the first thirty years of one's life, and the fact that it still held some allure in Josephine, she attributed to a genetic inheiritance of the lack of committment to any one place longer than 5 years. 

As much as she would have liked to deny it: she was her mother's daughter.  "I suppose, with a family in mind, stability and the backing of a large organization might be just a tad more appealing than freelancing," she laughed lightly, understanding, but not at the same time. 

She supposed her own qualms with the large organization had just grown over the years.  At first it had been quite protective, she was sheltered from much of the backlash of her activiites by virtue of doing her job.  Now, it seemed, the large organization could, if it wished to, revoke its previous warmth and rip apart a career.  If it wanted it. 

"Free lancing, in my line of work, tends to lead down a similar path."  She shrugged and put her empty tea cup on the arm rest.  Perhaps this interview was getting just a tad too personal - and revealing.  "Is there anything else you need from me, Auror Trevelyan?"

"Yeah."  Jonas's expression, his posture hadn't changed, but he was watching Josephine St. Just even more closely now.  It had been years since he'd really known her -- if he could even call his teenaged crush "knowing," in the not-so-Biblical form -- but observation could convey a lot.  St. Just cared very much about appearances, and judging by her house, judging by much of this conversation, she put great effort into seeming in control.

Showing his hand on this was a risk.  In the long run, it might end up backfiring; there was no telling if letting on how much he knew would cause the few cracks at Gringotts to be even more tightly bound.  St. Just was already laying a careful escape plan for herself, saying the right things to make sure she couldn't be held accountable if it turned out that there was something fishy at Gringotts.  Laying things out too bluntly would certainly put her on the defensive.

But he wasn't getting anywhere by playing it safe.  It was time to kick a few bushes so that he could see what went scurrying away.

"Is it more Cursebreakers that they're keeping close to home?" he asked with a frown.  "Or just the two of you that they sent to Rippringham-Gomfrey's to collect that mask?"

Josephine was not a fan of bad posture, however, at Jonas’ question, her back went ramrod straight.  She took in a deep breath through her nose, knowing her instantaneous reaction would be noticeable.  She was usually so good at controlling those things: keeping her inner feelings secret, but it slipped. 

She slipped, and she wanted to curse herself for it. 

But there was a story for everything, and that was what she was going to have to dig for.  “We’re all kept fairly separate at Gringotts,” Josephine said – mostly truthful.  “Unless you work on an assignment with another curse breaker, it’s rare you see colleagues.” 

She didn’t want to admit that very few had been kept closer in the fold.  It seemed like it was setting things up for disaster, on her end, but maybe Trevelyan could read through the lines.  He was a smart sort – not that she knew him particularly well – but you couldn’t be an idiot to be an auror (though some tried their damnedest to prove otherwise), and she lifted her chin. 

“As unfortunate – and untimely - as Rippringham-Gomfrey’s death was,” the party line of the business, “it certainly couldn’t have been foreseen, and had nothing to do with that visit.”  Her inflection could not have been more emphatic on the point, and she didn’t want anyone drawing any unnecessary conclusions.  “Unfortunately, the mask in question is also still out of Gringotts hands, as I’m sure you’re well aware, Auror Trevelyan.” 

“There are, however, many collectors in this world – certainly not associated with the bank, that would be willing to do quite a bit to get hold of such an ancient – and priceless – piece.”  Indeed, it was true.  The Harvest Mask was something lauded as a great masterpiece of Goblin smithing.  She could only imagine how many hands it had bloodied over centuries.  This circumstance was not, assuredly, be the only one that had ever cropped up.