He'd made it into the office a little bit later than usual that day.  In the year since he'd rejoined the Auror Corps, Jonas had managed to make a habit out of punctuality -- not for punctuality's sake in itself, but because the early mornings were the best time to get things done.  Too many of the good men and women in MLE were committed to perpetually staying as late as they could, in some sort of bizarre competition to prove their dedication by outlasting each other each evening.  When it  came to Level Two, evenings were nearly always as busy as midday.

The night before had taken it out of him more than he wanted to admit.  It wasn't simply being woken up at two in the morning[1] -- not that the lack of sleep on Niobe Thursby's account had helped matters.  But all that the adventure in the Daily Prophet office had entailed: specters of Tait's death whirling about again, the Runespoor case seemingly rearing its third head, and this time, not even his partner by his side to make certain that he wasn't letting things get too personal.

He'd already sent an owl to Tamis, but Jonas was dreading going in and having to report.  Dealing with this all over again had seemed much more appealing when it was only Charisma Aldridge coming to deliver a ghostly missive from the past.[2] That was why he'd done most of the work from home, referencing and cross-referencing the copy of the Runespoor casefile that he Really Shouldn't Have but happened to anyway.  It was only now, when he'd done most of the work writing things up and double-checking his hunch, that he finally felt able to brave the office.

Luckily, Tamis's door was closed -- a lucky occurrence that meant that she probably wasn't there.  Jonas let out a breath that he shouldn't be holding as he skirted by her office on the way to his desk -- and then stopped, blinking.  It wasn't unusual for the other cubicles to be occupied at this time of day, but he hadn't been expecting a body in this particular cubicle.

Cooper Evans.  He was an Auror about Pratt's age.  Jonas didn't know him well -- the bloke hadn't been about the Ministry in his day, and they hadn't socialized much since he'd been back -- but everyone in the office knew what he'd been through in the past week.  When death came to an Auror's family, it was as if the entire Corps had been punched in the gut, as if every witch and wizard in crimson was left helplessly holding their breath. 

He'd heard the news secondhand from Archer, who'd sent a letter in warning once it had happened.  Evans' wife had been murdered in some sort of botched robbery.  It had been heart-wrenchingly tragic -- and no one had had any reason to think that the devastated Auror would be back at his desk anytime soon.  Frowning, Jonas took an instant to study the other man.  There was such a thing as using work to distract oneself, but...bloody hell.  It had been what, a week? 

"Cooper."  He flashed the younger Auror a friendly smile in greeting, pausing alongside the entrance to his cubicle.  Despite his friendly tone, his eyes slid quickly over him -- silently evaluating, reading the signs.  "Didn't expect to see you in the office today, mate," he said amiably, his forehead creasing slightly.  "You back to work?"

1.	The Tree of Knowledge Bears No Fruit
2.	The Red Robed Buffer

First days back after tragedies should certainly be outlawed. It should be ruled that, when returning to work, everything would return to normal, as if nothing had happened. It was bad enough that being at home only brought constant reminders that his wife had been murdered –having people glance at him uncomfortably or lower their voices when talking to him as if they were by a man’s deathbed and wished to show respect was downright torture. Cooper felt tempted to growl at every single one of them, a low, guttural sound that would set the hair on their napes on standby and leave it clear that he was not grandma’s glass vase that needed to be treated as an antique. His wife was dead, and it was horrible –but half of these hypocrites had no idea. Most of them had never gone through anything similar. Their whispered I know how you feel’s were utter bollocks, and simply served to make the Auror feel outright rage. At least at home all the faces and all the sympathy easily became a confusing blur: here, it was all too clear. Half of his coworkers didn’t treat him as an equal, but as the poor man whose wife had been murdered.

At midmorning, one poor bloke received the blunt edge of his mood when, having asked Cooper if he wanted a glass of water, the werewolf yelled that if he wanted a drink he could very well get it himself and that if the other man wished to keep all his body parts intact he should very well get out of his sight. The Auror had then proceeded to sit back down, scribble his signature on a brief, and forget about the encounter. That had become a habit –forgetting. It was as if the blur of events of the past week were too much for his brain to process, and things he would have usually remembered became lost in his memories. It was annoying. Chewing on a fingernail, Coop pushed his stair back, circled around his cubicle and, having made sure Adrianna was no where in sight –after the morning’s events, it would be better if he didn’t meet her or the rest of the day- fixed himself a coffee.

One run to the bathroom to cry without understanding why later, and the man was back behind his desk. The stable routine of doing paper work was starting to make the Auror restless. He hadn’t come back to the office simply to have time to sit and think –he was here to keep his mind occupied. To ignore. Currently, the words on the paper were simply blurring together, slithering upon the parchment to form drawings of his wife, or of Aidan Renwick. It honestly was not helping. At all. His heart longed for home, for the twins and for quiet, but his mind reminded him that this was better. That, soon enough, he would be able to immerse himself in the job, in searching for vengeance, and everything would feel much better. Locking himself up behind walls had worked in his youth, so he had no reason to doubt it would work this time as well.

The sound of his name had the Auror glancing up just in time to catch a friendly smile that only made him groan inwardly. The redhead standing before him was Jonas Trevelyan, an older bloke and coworker whom Cooper did not actually know much about, but who he held a healthy respect for. But here the man was, surely about to offer the same condolences as everyone else, surely about to repeat the practiced line. Or maybe he’d be original, and state the obvious by admitting he couldn’t imagine what it must have been like. Either way, Cooper honestly had no desire to hear it. The werewolf felt the other’s eyes almost inspecting him, and he cocked an eyebrow in return. And then, the words came, and they weren’t what he’d expected –they were worse.

“I’M BLOODY WELL FINE!” He hadn’t meant to roar out the words, nor had he intended to shove his chair back and stand so as to stare the bloke straight into the face in a somewhat imposing manner. His breathing hitched, as he realized that he certainly wasn’t acting as if he were okay. Clearing his throat, he let his heart beat calm just slightly, as he hooked an ankle around his chair and pulled it forward, dropping back down. He kept his eyes downcast, as he could feel tears pricking at them and didn’t trust himself not to start sobbing again. “I-I mean, I’m fine,” He muttered, tongue darting out to dart across his suddenly dry lips. He blinked, and took control of himself, before glancing back up at the bloke. “I don’t need a babysitter, Jonas,” Perhaps the words came out slightly more acidly than he’d meant, but he could feel that people were suddenly staring after his outbreak.

Though it was certainly emphatic, Jonas had learned a long time ago that shouting was generally not a sign that one was in a tolerable state.  Nor was answering questions that he hadn't asked, although the concern might have been implicit in the fact that he'd made an inquiry at all.  His eyebrows inched up incrementally as he took in Evans' appearance: his expression, the glimmer to his eyes, the acerbic edge to his words.

Perhaps under other circumstances or less scrutiny, he would have sighed.  The other Auror was clearly not fine. Jonas remembered all too the bleak, despairing, barely-functioning tension that had filled Ed Pratt after his parents had been killed the prior spring.  Back then, it had seemed a near miracle that their friend and co-worker had held it together at all; it had taken the collective efforts of a considerable amount of Aurors, as well as quite the forgiving blind eye from both Tamis Raynor and Cameron Rosier, to keep the man together and employed.

Evans seemed like he was on the verge of that same sort of tension, as if he were a string who'd been stretched too tight for too long and the only option was to snap and break.  Judging by the volume he'd just offered, chances were that the entire office already knew it. If the other wizard hadn't been sitting right there in front of him, and if he hadn't already seen that it was closed, Jonas would have cast a tired look back at Tamis Raynor's door. 

"Well, cheers then, because I'm bollocks at babysitting," he countered cheerfully.  He flashed the other man a quick smile, though it didn't quite reach to his eyes as he silently considered him.  Leave Evans to himself, and he'd likely spend the rest of the afternoon snapping at anyone who approached him until he gave up and went home in defeat.  That wasn't going to be productive for anyone: not morale in the office, not the clearly isolated Evans.

He raised his eyebrows, giving the other Auror a quizzical, searching look.  "I don't mean to be rude, but I wasn't asking if you were fine," he said in an easy, light tone that did not come close to matching his expression.  "I was asking if you were back to work.  If you're not, no worries.  But if you are..."  He gave a careless shrug.  His gaze hadn't left the other man's face.  "There's a couple of things I could use a hand with, if you don't mind something to do.  Adon's still off abroad, and Ed and Arch are both busy," he said good-naturedly, tripping down the list of his usual collaborators.  "Impossible to round up proper help in this office sometimes, it is."

Jonas’ cheerful tone was in direct contrast to the acid tinge to Coop’s voice, but that allowed him to relax somewhat. It was the first time since That Day that somebody had actually not acted all glum at him, the first time that somebody hadn’t spoken to him as if at his deathbed. For that, the werewolf was completely grateful –though he wouldn’t admit it, other than for a slightly grateful glint in his eyes as he gave Jonas the curtest of nods. “You didn’t seem the type, really,” It was the first attempt he’d made at a joke so far, and the words were strange and spoken in a strangled baritone –but at least he’d tried, and that had to prove he was moving forwards. He’d often wondered, during the past few days, how long it would take to start feeling normal again, for that sudden emptiness to disappear. Half of him had felt guilty at the question, as if it were a lack of respect towards his departed wife. The other half simply knew that, if his life was going to function, if he was going to raise the twins and get his job done, then he would have to move on at some point. It didn’t mean dropping his ideals of vengeance –it simply meant having to be able to interact normally with people. Without crying or having outburst at the tinniest things.

Grief. He’d heard so much about it, and how people went through all these different stages after tragedies. Yet, somehow, Cooper felt as if he’d hit all of them at once. There was denial, in the fact that, at times, when he’d been laying in bed and about to go to sleep, he’d actually for a second called out for his wife to come lay down with him. But acceptance was also there, as he had no problem admitting Bella was gone for good. She’d struggled through her last breaths in his very arms, so denying it would be plain idiotic. Perhaps anger was the stage he was most settled on, as images of Aidan tortured to death kept skipping through his mind. Soon enough, he’d bring the son of a bitch down. Soon enough.

The other bloke’s cocked eyebrow and the words he spoke might have stung anyone else, but Cooper simply felt more grateful towards him. The glint in Jonas’ eyes was proof enough that he knew what the werewolf was currently going through –but the sentences coming from his mouth made him feel as if the other Auror was aware that he simply wanted to act as if everything was normal. Coop cocked his head sideways and gave the man a thankful blink, his lips just slightly twisted downwards and full of the possibilities for sobbing once again. But –thank Merlin- he was able to control his emotions this time around, as he straightened in his chair and gave a determined nod of his head. Work. This was what he was here for. Work and distraction. He actually found himself on the verge of smiling at Jonas.

“I’m back, mate,” He answered, and though his tone was still somewhat strangled, but he was certain there had been at least a bit of an improvement. He took a sip of his coffee, licked across his bottom lip, and actually felt the tantalizing hint of everything going back to normal. Of course, it hadn’t –it never would. Cooper was forced to deal with a new normal, one he was only now learning to handle and that was what left everything so off balance. That was what grief really was –a person grew so accustomed to one way of life, that when everything suddenly and without warning changed, they felt so out of control that they became somewhat volatile. But everyone eventually learnt how to cope, and Cooper had no doubt he would to. “What cases are you on?” His voice matter-of-fact, he pushed his chair slightly back and folded his arms over his chest. “What do you need help with –and at my desk or yours?”

He could practically see the thought process as Evans ran through it.  It was clear that the other Auror was at the end of his rope, and Jonas couldn't say that he particularly blamed him.  It was never easy to shoulder the burden of losing someone close to you.  Some might think that the Aurors would be better equipped than the average witch or wizard, but it simply wasn't true.  Even during the days of the last war, many of them had never been soldiers; they were law enforcement, plain and simple, and even so, the most professional of military would never expect, could never prepare for the pain of losing a loved one at home, far away from any battlefield.

When Tait had died, it had been nearly impossible for him to process -- and though that had been unexpected, it had still been tangentially connected to a case.  Jonas couldn't even imagine -- didn't want to imagine -- what it would feel like to lose someone even closer than that.  If something were to ever happen to Anna or the kids -- ...well, he didn't even want to think about what the next morning, the next week, the next month, the rest of his life would feel like.  Even the barest glimpse of it last spring had left him shaken to the core.

And maybe that was why Evans had been left all alone at his desk here today.  It wasn't only the fact that he was clearly not his usual self.  In a way, the younger Auror had been condemned to be a window into a life that they all hoped they'd never have to suffer.  He was an all too vivid reminder of what could happen, if things played out too poorly.

And Evans' wife hadn't even died as a result of a case.  Jonas wasn't certain which would be worse -- understanding that Anna had been hurt because of something he'd been involved in, or knowing that there'd been no reason to it at all, that it had been only bad luck and happenstance that had caused her death.  He hoped -- he prayed -- that he'd never have reason to compare.

But now, at least there was something small that he could do to help.  "My desk, yeah?" he asked, flashing Evans a lopsided smile.  That was the better bet for now -- it meant removing the other man from the memories inherent in his own cubicle, and if the conversation became too much and he needed to get away, it would be less difficult for him to flee.

"Oh, you know," he said with a shrug, starting back for his desk.  He risked a glance at Tamis's door -- still closed -- on the way.  "The Corpus Inversus case has been the most pressing."  There was also the investigation into Dreogan's disappearance, but that had been at a frustrating standstill for weeks, and the recent resurgence of the Runespoor case -- but he and Raynor were very carefully keeping that one off the books.  "You been following it at all?" he asked, with a glance back to Evans.  "I can't remember what you were on up until now."

Cooper wasn’t certain if Jonas was trying hard, or if the grin on his face as he suggested his desk was simply effortless. Either way, two thoughts crossed his mind as he stared up at the other bloke, and nodded: the first was that Trevelyan was good at this type of thing; the second was that this was a type of kindness that not only could he stand, but made him want to quietly cry at how kind the world could be at times. Damned emotions. Placing one hand on each arm of his chair, he pushed himself into a standing position and did his best to smile as well –but at the hint that the gesture was about to become as big and insane looking as it had been earlier this morning, he quickly decided against it. Instead, he settled for not sobbing and hugging Jonas as he wailed about how thankful he was that the man was treating him like just another Auror and not a cracked window that needed special care. Hopefully that would be enough of a smile.

“Haven’t been working it,” That might be obvious, but just speaking was enough of a comfort and took away a bit of the ability to think about Bella. “What I know is mostly what’s been in the Daily Prophet,” Walking, he found, even if it were a few paces to Jonas’ cubicle, was yet another comfort. Anything to keep his mind off or focused on other matters –that seemed to be the trick. Of course, he’d also discovered that simple things like spilling coffee on an unsuspecting victim could trigger the tear ducts, but hopefully through time his emotions would linger back into his control. “The Renwick case, mostly,” It surprised him, somehow, that he could mention Aidan Renwick without spilling his guts about the cover up. Tempted as he’d felt at certain moments to confide the truth about Bella’s death to someone, he’d already made his choice and going back now would prove a mistake: with his words and his lie, he’d eliminated evidence again Aidan, and that was not exactly something Aurors were awarded for doing. It still lingered on his mind that, had he told the truth, Renwick might now have been behind bars. But he would have probably been off the case, and Cooper had simply not been able to deal with that prospective. “And Lexus Dale,” He mentioned the informant casually as his gaze settled on the side of Jonas’ face.

As they reached the other man’s desk, Cooper did his best to lean casually against the sides of the cubical –although there was nothing at all casual about the careful way in which he folded his arms over his chest stiffly, as if he had rehearsed a thousand times before and not yet managed to get it right. “So, go ahead and brief me on the Corpus Inversus case, and tell me what you need help with.”

If the red-haired Auror's expression had been amiable before, it still lightened considerably at the mention of Lexus Dale.  Once she'd begun working -- really working -- as an undercover informant for Magical Law Enforcement, they'd had to go their separate ways by necessity.  Jonas's connection to her was too well known amongst the Knockturnites; no one would ever believe that an encounter between them was casual, and so her handling had been delegated to another Auror.  But even though he hadn't seen much of her recently, he still felt fiercely protective of the Canadian werewolf.  They'd been up against the mess of the world together, once upon a time.

But it was clear from Evans' casual mention that this wasn't the time or place to talk about it, and so Jonas let the name drop of his former assistant slide.  Somehow in the past year and a half since he'd met her, Lexus had grown up.  She was facing the world alone now.

"You want to grab a seat?" he asked Evans over his shoulder.  He took his own chair without prompting; his knee was better these days, but that was mostly because he knew better than to push it. 

"Well, it's been mostly quiet these days.  I've got a couple of leads that I'm following up on."  He reached for the file -- it was never far out of sight -- and flipped it open, and then began rifling through the pages.  "One is the girl that the boss -- uhh, I mean, Rosier -- and me, that we found dead.  Here."

He turned the page, and Rosemary Hampton's photograph stared up at them.  The girl had been twenty-one years old when she had died, and all of the details on her had been distilled down into the barest of facts.  Originally from a small town outside of Leeds.  A Hufflepuff graduate.  Left home back in mid-2009 without contact with her parents.  Just looking at it made him feel depressed.  She wasn't really that much younger than Lexus, not when he thought about it.  How easy would it have been for the young Canadian witch to have gone the same route?

“I’m fine,” The reply came through slightly clenched teeth and almost in the form of a snap, in a protective attempt to not appear weak: The last thing he wanted was everyone not only pointing him out as the poor widower, the one who cried and yelled, but also the poor bloke who was clouded in grief that he couldn’t manage to stay standing for five minutes. The honest truth was he felt like collapsing, and the thought of lying in his bed with the covers pulled over his head and nobody to bother him –either with responsibilities or coddling- was the most tempting idea he’d ever been presented with; but his life had become a series of battles now, and among them was the war to prove himself still worthy to carry his badge. There were people who simply shattered at death, but in Cooper’s case he’d faced it enough times before to cope –barely, but well enough, if with a few tears and raised voices perhaps. Still, snapping at Trevelyan would hardly help his case, so he decided to shrug at the bloke, a quick rise and fall of his shoulders to brush his words away. “I prefer to stay standing,” Even if he really didn’t, and his knees were already aching as a sense of fake exhaustion made mashed potatoes with his brain as the main ingredient.

Quiet was certainly never good in their line of work: quite seldom meant things were done and had been fluttered away like an autumn leaf in a gust of wind; quiet usually meant you were sitting in the eye of a hurricane and things could not be about to get anything but quite sodding worse. As Trevelyan ruffled through the file on the case, Cooper suddenly felt a sense of apprehension, a certain desire to step back and pull away and not let his eyes fall on the words. Though it wasn’t supposed to, it always became personal; they were trained to let go of their emotions and look at any case with eyes that were cold and prepared, not likely to feel. Most of them –Cooper included at some point in the past- would fill their lungs with air and puff out their chests, standing tall and with a hand on each hip with a proud air to their faces, as they exclaimed that they’d mastered it. But it wasn’t true: for every Auror, each case was another dart aimed at the wooden board that had become their emotions, and each case managed to chip off another splinter. Until, some day, there was no wood left. And Cooper wasn’t certain he’d be capable to take another dart at the moment.

And yet, his green eyes still flitted down to the pages Trevelyan was holding up, as the picture of a girl stared up at the two and Cooper felt a bulge form in the base of his throat. The first thought that registered was that she was so young –and the second was that Bella had been too. But he forced both back: Aurors had emotions, but what they really did learn was how to keep them at bay and focus on facts instead. Feeling only got in the way of doing, as Cooper was quickly finding with the Renwick case. “What connects her with the rest?” He managed to ask, as he shifted his position and decided that, despite his earlier words, he really did need to sit down. The werewolf pulled a chair back and sat opposite of Jonas, eyes moving the distance from the file to Trevelyan’s face and back. Over and over. “Any suspects so far?” As he asked, he leant slightly forwards, and extended a hand. “May I?” His eyes on Trevelyan’s face, his chin jerked towards the file. “Might help to take a closer look.” He was all business and zero emotions, and suddenly the past –and even the present- were gone from thought. Only the case mattered.

Jonas waved a hand, gesturing for Evans to take up the file.  There was nothing extraordinarily classified about the Corpus Inversus investigation; unless the other Auror had a bad habit of practicing dark magic on members of the Wizengamot, Jonas doubted that keeping him in the dark was really crucial to the case.  The really secret case files usually didn't make it into the office -- like the Runespoor investigation, which was still not officially reopened and which had gone back to being hidden away in his office on Garrick Street.

"Yeah.  Reckon we've got a whole bank full of suspects," he said, only a tad bitterly.  Gringotts had not been cooperative or forthcoming at all with the investigation.  "I still can't say for sure what that means though.  Short of finding someone laughing maniacally over a body..."  He shrugged, waving his hand again.  Every murderer slipped up eventually, but this one hadn't yet.

Sighing, he leaned back in his chair, crossing one leg over the other.  Picking up a spare sheet of parchment, he began to carefully fold it in half.  "Nothing connects her," he said, adding a sharp diagonal crease, and then folding another one.  "It's that tailor shop where we found the body.  It showed up in the Gringotts transactions for both blokes who were killed -- Rippringham-Gomfrey and Dawlish.  But as far as I can tell from talking to the lot around Knockturn, the shop's never open.  No one knows who runs it, no one knows what it sells..."

Nate Briggs had given him a lead on that.[1]  He was still due to talk to Zelda Sellaphix, but he was waiting to do it right -- doing his homework first, making sure they had what they needed on Sellaphix Apothecary in case he ended up needing to apply pressure.  This would have been far easier if he could have found something on Grimshaw Tailoring and Alterations somewhere else.  Then he'd only be needed to verify, rather than risking it all by pushing his only lead.

"So that's the link."  His folding project was now well on its way to becoming a paper airplane.  Jonas squinted down the body of it, checking the balance, and then sent it flying into Archer Radley's cubicle.  "Mysterious shop that's never open, dead girl's body turns up in it, and both our other corpses, who were otherwise upstanding citizens outside of their manner of death, seem to have been spending their quid there.  Not really the most iron clad of leads, I'm sorry to say."

1.	In Over Sea, Under Stone

At Trevelyan’s affirmative response, Cooper folded his fingers around the file and dragged it closed to himself. It was thick, but nothing compared to the paper load on many other cases –although, compared to what he had on Renwick after everything had been stolen, it weighed a ton. Flipping through it, the werewolf glanced down at information on the other victims, while Jonas spoke about the leads they had. The grim fashion in which the murders had been committed left a sour taste in Cooper’s mouth, but he was able to ignore all sense of instability by forcing himself to simply focus on the case. If he did, if he managed that, perhaps the day could have a happier ending than its beginning had been –and Raynor wouldn’t be as hard on him when she found out about his crying and screaming as she would be otherwise. The pages were crisp, but he quickly realized that wasn’t exactly a lead at anything.

The entire time Trevelyan spoke, Cooper kept his eyes on the file –until an airplane went flying by and towards Radley’s cubicle, and Trevelyan admitted one primitive fact about the entire case: it was going nowhere. Coop flipped the pages shut even though he was far from done reading it, and folded his hands over the top, pursing his lips and letting them slide to the left, then the right and back to the left as he pondered the dilemma: what did you do when a case was turning cold, but was so brutal there was no possible chance you could just let it die away? An answer wasn’t quick to coming to mind, and Cooper settled back into his chair with a drawn out sigh as he dragged his fingers through his hair, disheveling it even more than it already had been.

“You need to figure out who runs that shop,” He stated the obvious, but by this point he was simply trying to trigger ideas by speaking his thoughts out loud. Glancing at Jonas, he shrugged. “There’s got to be papers on it, realtor contracts and the likes,” They were flimsy hopes, and in all likelihood it had already been checked, but he was just tossing ideas out –until a light bulb flashed over his head, or so he liked to imagine as he sat up quickly. “Dale,” He said, and there was the slightest of smiles on his faces, as he came to the belief that he was a genius. “Our best lead to figure out who the sod runs the place is someone who knows the under workings of Knockturn,” He stated simply, letting Trevelyan come to his own conclusions regarding what he was suggesting.

Jonas had leaned back in his chair, ankles crossed, as he listened to the other man speak.

"Realtor contracts -- that might work great in the Muggle world, but it's a bit more complicated in the magical," he said, with a lopsided smile.  "Especially when they might run back a few hundred years, and Gringotts not being the least bit helpful."  According to all of the records that he'd been able to dig up, the building that housed Grimshaw's was owned by some bloked who'd died back in the 1700s.  Tracing anything since then had been impossible.

But the suggestion of asking his former assistant...

Jonas stayed still, his mouth pressed into a firm line.  "Maybe," he said after a beat. Putting an inquiry out to Lexus was certainly an obvious tact to take.  But something inside him shied from drawing the Canadian werewolf into this.  She was mixed up with Tawse because she'd gotten mixed up with Tawse.  He wasn't sure that he liked the idea of pulling her into this -- not when the murders had been so horrific, not when a girl her age was already among the dead.

He wasn't certain what he thought about Evans suggesting the idea, either.  The other Auror didn't share his personal connection to Lexus -- probably an advantage, at least in Tamis's eyes -- but on the other hand, that meant that he didn't necessarily have the witch's best interests in mind.  Something else to keep an eye on, maybe.  Jonas certainly hoped that his coworker took the young woman's safety as seriously as he did.

"I reckon I'd rather not press that one unless I have to.  There's another angle, though."  He flipped to another page in the file, and then slid a second photo towards Evans.  This one showed a young man with dark hair and gray eyes, looking barely older than Hampton had been.  "This is Rosemary Hamptom's boyfriend.  He was a year ahead of her in Hogwarts.  But I've been able to turn up even less on him."  He was also not a woman, possibly not dead, and therefore a decent distraction to set the bereaved Auror on.  Not to mention that Jonas had his hands full running down leads.

"You reckon you might be willing to see what you can find?" he asked, raising his eyebrows.  "I haven't been able to give the kid as much time as I would like.  Anything you turn up'll be a help."

There was a beat of silence following Cooper’s suggestion, and the werewolf found his eyes narrowing just slightly at the way Trevelyan’s lips were pursed into a firm line. The bloke answered in one word, neither affirmative nor negative, yet there was something in his body posture that had suddenly changed and left Coop feeling as if Trevelyan hadn’t thought the revelation to be as brilliant as he’d found it. A second later, Jonas was confirming just that –and Cooper forced himself not to frown, nor to complain. This was the other man’s case, and he was just tagging along for the ride, which meant that decisions would be left up to Trevelyan. All he could do was suggest –even if an easy idea, in his opinion, were turned down. Dale was already working with them, so why not make use of her? Cooper dragged his tongue against his teeth, but nodded as Trevelyan mentioned yet another lead.

The lycanthrope took the offered picture and let his eyes settle down on the male face it featured: dark hair, grey eyes, of an age with the Hamptom girl. Hamptom’s boyfriend, as a matter of fact, from what Trevelyan went on to explain. Cooper still felt sore that using Dale had been eliminated from the picture, as he was rather certain it was the fastest way to churn up results, but he’d pursue that at another time if it became necessary. For now, he nodded, glancing briefly at the small amount of information there was on the kid in the picture, before letting his eyes fall on Trevelyan once again. They might not have ever been close friends, but he respected the man well enough to force himself to once again kick Dale out of his mind.

“Last known location?” He was hoping they’d have a recent one, or he was about to go out on quite a goose chase. Somehow, he felt like that was exactly what this was: a distraction to keep Cooper on instead of letting him wallow in his grief, and he couldn’t be certain if he should be grateful for it or not. Fact was, whoever this wizard might have dated, there didn’t seem to be anything connecting him to the rest of the case –but he’d follow the lead anyways, and allow himself to focus on it instead of Renwick, at least until he had something to focus on regarding the son of a bitch. “Any known connections to anyone else involved?”

"Not aside from Hampton.  He was applying for jobs around Hogsmeade and Diagon about a month before the girl turned up dead."  Jonas spread his hands.  "That's as far as I've got.  Either the kid's dead too, or he's got some reason to want to be off the radar.  Err, magical map."

He had his own vague suspicions about that, and none of them were very good.  If only he hadn't accidentally drenched the basement -- well, he'd stick Rosier with the blame for that.  But Jonas still wished there was a way that they could have checked for any sign of ritual magic.  For now, he was stuck riding on his hunch.

"Anyway." He shrugged at Evans.  "If your own cases aren't too much, I'd appreciate the help."  If not, he'd certainly be out of leads on this case soon enough, and then he'd have plenty of time to run the kid down himself.  "But I know how things can get."  He paused, his blue eyes flickering over the other Auror for the briefest of moments.  They weren't really friends; Evans wasn't part of the motley social circle that he, Archer, Eddie, Roh, and a few others circulated through.  But even so, even if it was imposing, sometimes it had to be said.

"You ever want to get out away from the office..."  He shrugged again.  "Or need help with the kids.  One of ours is off at Hogwarts now, so the house has been quiet.  If you want a hand, or company, just shout, yeah?"