The case of nerves and guilt was entirely irrational but that didn't make shaking them any easier.  Growing up, the Waldgraf Library had always been one of those 'off limits' rooms and breaching it's old, warn pocket doors was one of the easiest ways to work her grandfather into a fit.  While her grandmother had been much more relaxed after Rudolf Waldgraf's death, the library had remained off limits.  There were artifacts of family history that were meant for casual observation and there were artifacts tucked away like the skeletons in a closet they were.  Given her grandparents' reactions, the library seemed like a good place to start. 

It had been years since her grandfather had passed and several months since her grandmother had been moved into a care facility in Munich but, still, it was difficult to complete dismiss the unease. 

Especially since there was no telling what they'd find.  There were plenty of unsavory tidbits in the Waldgraf family history and Jacoba's current company were new and, ultimately, untested acquaintances.  She'd met Raizel in passing several weeks before when they'd originally made plans to travel to Jacoba's family home.  A bitter cold front in Central Europe, and a frozen Konigsee, had delayed their adventure across the lake.  Jacoba didn't know everything about her family history (obviously, otherwise this expedition would be superfluous) but she knew enough to anticipate coming across dishonorable discharges, imprisonment and Nuremburg execution paperwork. 

"So, how's your German?" Jacoba asked Raizel as she pulled a third box of papers from one of the cabinets and set it on large, wooden desk.  "Or, do you have translation charms?  If Otto magically concealed things, is there something I should be looking for?  Any trick to recognizing that?"  She opened the third box and started pulling out faded, yellowed bundles of paper. 

"There might be more in the attic, but no one got as excited about me rummaging in there as they did when I snuck in here.  Assuming they knew what really needed to be hidden." 

Old parchment always had the same smell.  The musty, rich scent of an old book, of stories and photographs and memories come and gone; it was the same everywhere she'd been, be it the depths of the great magical library in Alexandria or these hidden archives in this old Muggle home by the lake. 

Raizel wrinkled her nose as Jacoba tugged open yet another box.  She could spend a lifetime in here, just leafing through history and reconstructing old lives, but they'd come here with a purpose.  If there was any remaining evidence of Jacoba's magical ancestor or his connection to Hector Harrison and Grindelwald, then she was determined to find it.

"My German?"  She shrugged.  It was close enough to English that she always assumed she could read it if she had to, but her travels both before and after Gringotts had only rarely brought her to Western Europe.  German, French, and Spanish were all filed as languages that she'd learn someday if she really had to.

"I don't trust translation charms," Raizel said firmly.  Box inside box -- she watched, somewhat entranced, as Jacoba finally began to free some papers.  Muggle-looking -- bundled, not rolled up in scrolls, though certainly yellowed with age.  "It is better to translate yourself.  But yeh," she added, sliding her wand free of her pocket, "there are ways to see if there are charms on anything."  She paused, glanced sidelong at Jacoba.  The other witch didn't have a wand, and she couldn't take it for granted that she was comfortable with spellcasting.  "Do you want me to check?  It will be easy to see if there are."

Jacoba looked up from her stack of papers and across the library, grinning at Raizel.  So, little to no German on the cursebreaker's part.  Somewhere hidden in this was the plot for the strangest sitcom.  A magically-capable witch who knew no German and a German-speaking, magically-incompetent sort-of-witch attempting to find information written in German potentially hidden by charms.

The younger woman turned back to the box in front of her and lifted it.  This time, her grin held a mischievous slyness as she rounded the desk and sat in the big leather chair with an exaggerated, satisfied air.  "You have no idea the years I've dreamt of doing this.  It feels so scandalous."  Granting herself a moment to relish the moment, Jacoba reached in to pull out the topmost stack of papers. 

"I don't trust manual translations, half the time," Jacoba admitted as she leafed through the pages.  Even with full use of the human brain, translations were finicky things.  There were just so many facets and elements of writing, ones that had little to do with the actual choice of words.  Tone.  Idioms.  Double meanings.  Ask anyone to translate Rammstein and they'd admit it was near impossible.  They never actually meant what they said.  Jacoba hesitated a moment at the mention of using charms on the pages, her lips pursing in confusion at her own unidentifiable reaction.  The gut reaction of the part of her that was a history student wanted reassurance that the charms wouldn't harm anything in the room.  The rest of her scoffed at that reaction, reminding her how often she'd wished the lot of this stuff would just vanish. 

Finally, she let reason prevail.  "It'll probably be necessary.  The more I think about it, the more likely it is what we're looking for is concealed.  Military records seem the most likely place to start; if Otto was in uniform in the picture, I assume he and Harrison crossed paths while Otto was at the front."  Away from the prying eyes of home.  "Anything referring to the Wehrmacht.  He was the only one who was active military.  Everyone else was ... police." 

Raizel cast a glance at Jacoba as she positioned her wand.  For all the talk of military records and uniforms and fronts, they hadn't really talked about what that meant.  The seeming political leanings of the witch-girl's family were like an unspoken sphinx lurking just out of sight.  Judging by the photograph that they had already seen, Otto Waldgraf had been on the wrong side of two wars at once.

"Goleya," she murmured, and the room subtly shifted around her.  Using this spell in a magical location initiated a light show for the caster; Goleya allowed one to see magical auras and remnants from active spells.  It was a useful trick for a Cursebreaker, especially when she needed a passive way to locate potentially dangerous enchantments, but the drawback was that too much magic could be so bright that it was nearly blinding.

Here in a Muggle home, the effect was much more muted.  The faint glow from her own protective charms was the most noticeable; Raizel glanced at Jacoba long enough to note a soft flicker, and then shifted her attention to the boxes before them.

"This is an Aramaic spell," she explained for Jacoba's benefit, as she began to look through the papers.  "Semitic magic works a little differently than Latin-based spells -- you need to understand the root to cast properly.  So manual translations don't help," she said, with a faint flicker of a smile.  "Goleya lets you see any active enchantments -- so if something is spelled to be hidden, we will find it."

But they didn't -- not in the boxes.  Searching page after page went much more quickly now that she was only flipping through them checking for the unmistakable traces of magic, but there didn't seem to be anything magical to find.  Raizel finally heaved a sigh, looking to Jacoba.

"I don't think anything here is enchanted," she said with a frown.  "Is there somewhere else that you think it might be?"

Despite almost a year and a half in the wizarding world, displays of overt magic still fascinated Jacoba.  The day to day architectural magic of the brick wall behind the Leaky Cauldron and the floo network were settling into the mundane of normality in much way automatic doors at shops and escalator's self-moving stairs faded into the backdrop of the muggle world.  Conscious, purposefully crafted acts of magic controlled by someone's will still continued to be  novel and titillating.  Perhaps more so now that, in theory, such actions were potentially within her abilities. 

She watched Raizel cast the spell, grinning, slightly, as the soft light enveloped the other woman.  She spared another moment to consider the faint light shimmering around her own frame before turning her attention back the box in front of her. 

But, even with the aid of the spell, they found nothing of note.  Most of the library's files seemed to be filled with official, legal notices: birth certificates, death certificates and other items kept more for legality purposes than sentimental value.  Jacoba replaced the files and stood, drumming her fingertips on the desktop. 

"My grandmother married into the family after the war - so Otto would have been dead by then.  But, he was first born.  He probably had suitors but, as far as I know, he had no serious relations.  So, any wartime correspondences would have probably been to my great-grandmother and any personal effects they received after his death would have probably been consolidated with that?  Perhaps they're still in the master bedroom?"

Jacoba led the way to the sitting area of her grandparents' bedroom and began rummaging through drawers, cabinets and the closet.  Everything appeared mundanely un-shimmering until she tugged open the doors to the bottom of the armoire.  Old archival boxes were carefully lined up on the two shelves in the armoire.  A soft glow was eminating from under the lid of the one labeled OLW.  Jacoba withdrew the box and removed the pair of old card boxes. 

Inside each card boxes, letters, journals and photographs were stacked in a casual though not messy manner.  If they had been disturbed since each box had been placed in the archival box, the contents had been replaced with the same apparent hand-placed care they'd originally been placed inside.  They appeared to be in rough chronological order, starting when he first enlisted in 1939. 

"So, we know they crossed paths in 1939.  How long did Harrison stay with Grindelwald?  Do we know?" Jacoba asked, carefully withdrawing the contents of the first box.

Nothing, nothing, nothing.  Digging through historical records was far less interesting when they were doing so in Muggle archives, especially Muggle archives that she couldn't really read.  At least in a magical library, there would be the chance of a misplaced hex or forgotten curse to keep her on her toes.  Still, Raizel bravely tried to keep her chin up as Jacoba led the way to the next enclave of old boxes and yellowed letters. 

At least this collection of aged papers looked like it might yield something useful, if the light made visible by Goleya was anything to judge by.  Raizel straightened, doing her best not to look as though she were impatiently peering over the younger woman's shoulder as she tried to focus on answering Jacoba's question.

"He stayed with him through most of the war."  She spoke with the certainty of one who had done as much reading as was possible on the subject, though a frown still crossed her face.  "He was with him until he betrayed him, and told the British wizards how to get through his defenses."  The history books had had an awfully lot of good things to say about not only Harrison's deception and betrayal, but Harrison himself.  Raizel struggled to reconcile the old, lonely man that she'd watched die in the Three Broomsticks with the hero captured by magical historians.

Finally, she could stand it no longer.  "There's a bewitching enchantment on that one," she said impatiently, jabbing a finger at the parchment that Jacoba was holding.  "It hides the writing, makes it look like something else.  Who's it addressed to?  Here," she said, aiming her wand at it.  "Salah."

As the enchantment left her lips, there was a deep thrumming sound, as if a large bell had been struck.  A blast of sparkling silver mist shot out of her wand, settling over the piece of paper and causing its current markings to fade away and reveal something underneath.