"Mr Glass?!"
"Where is he?"
"Willy?"

Edwin pushed open the front door of the ramshackle farmhouse in Godric's Hollow with a heavy hand, forcing Shufflebottom back a pace as he pushed past.
"Musgrave, is he here?"
"William!"

Gladys-May Shufflebottom's voice came from the kitchen at the back of the house, increasingly terse at not being told who was calling at the front door at this hour on a Wednesday evening.

"My love, nothing to worry about, just someone interested in the skrewts…!" Shufflebottom called back in an upbeat voice and opened the door to Edwin's right, hurrying him inside before shutting it behind them.

It was dark in the room and Edwin's eyes took a moment to adjust before he used his wand to light the scene until Shufflebottom lit a few candles. For the state of the household in general, this room was incredibly tidy and ordered. It smelled damp, as did most of the house on entry, but more for the sake of not being lived in at all. This room was ordinarily closed up. Kept for best, for visitors only.

"Lawrence Musgrave," Edwin asked again, "Where is he?"
"I don't know Mr Glass. Haven't seen him for a week." Edwin frowned, fixing Shufflebottom with a steely stare.
"Yes you have, you were with him last night.[1]"
"Were I?"
"You were moving on a dementor."
"Right we were!"

He really was as thick as Mortimer suggested. How on earth did Lawrence put up with him as company? Size of his patronus aside, Edwin couldn't see what Musgrave saw in William Shufflebottom. Then again, the pair of them stank, had hardly any money and didn't mind risking their necks. Shufflebottom out of stupidity, Lawrence out of a need to prove himself. If Edwin knew how to summon the dementors, he and Musgrave could be far more powerful than the likes of Almasy. Instead, Musgrave chose an idiot to know the method.

"You didn't move it on at all, Shufflebottom." Edwin snapped, "You stunned an auror and almost had a woman kissed. That was not moving on. That was not what we agreed."
"She weren't our fault Mr Glass-"
"You two can't move on a dementor can you?"
"Yeh we can. We moved on twenty the other day."
"Where?"
"… Turvey."
"Bollocks!"

"Willy?"

The two wizards stopped at the voice right outside the door. Edwin's wand arm was outstretched towards it, watching Shufflebottom decide what to do.
"Just a-"

With a sly smile, Edwin's wand twitched and the door came open, greeting the lady of the wretched house with a false smile.
"Mrs Shufflebottom, how lovely to see you. You husband was just explaining what he was up to last night. You haven't seen Lawrence Musgrave recently have you?" Unlike her husband, Gladys-May Shufflebottom was canny and remembered that name. She rounded on William without hesitation, jumping to conclusions.

"What? WILLY!"

This, Edwin thought to himself, was why he hadn't bothered marrying. The best wives were observant, tenacious and wore the trousers. Their husbands lived in fear of them as well as adoration. Edwin couldn't be doing with that. Gladys-May Shufflebottom could run the house and look after the children without her husband, Edwin had seen. Whereas he unusually couldn't recall Shufflebottom the night Lawrence had brought him to the house in Cambridgeshire, he remembered soon enough; Gladys-May had been the one yelling vitriol from the court's public gallery when the Wizengamot had agreed her husband's sentence. The one who had been removed, even if she agreed with the sentence. He hazarded a guess she was a crack shot with both her wand and rolling pin.

"You husband has been helping Lawrence Musgrave to control dementors, Mrs Shufflebottom." Edwin explained in a raised voice while Gladys-May continued to rave, wielding best crockery at her husband, though thinking twice about throwing it as he cowered.

"I've evidence against them both. It'll be life in Azkaban…" The crockery flew this time and Shufflebottom drew up his arms to save his face, shrieking.

Edwin's wand snapped to position and the scene before him froze. It took a moment for Willy to realise, his head popping up again from behind his raised arms to see the dish paused in the air inches from him. His wife was frozen behind it, a tray in her hand, readying to swing it at him, wearing a murderous expression.

"Where is Musgrave?" Edwin asked again.
"I don't - I don't -"
"Then you will take him a message: that I do not believe him. He cannot control dementors, he never will." Shufflebottom gaped wordlessly like a fish at Edwin's statement. He'd kept it simple in the hope Shufflebottom would remember it.

"Obliviate."

Gladys-May's head nodded forward a moment, bewildered, examining the tray in her hand without memory of why she was clutching it, or her anger.
"I won't stay for tea, but many thank you for your kind offer Mrs Shufflebottom." Edwin addressed smoothly, wand tucked behind him again as Willy snatched the other dish out of the air. "I'll have a think on the skrewts, Mr Shufflebottom." Edwin smiled thinly, "Good to know the Ministry can rely on you."

1.	Jan 11 And Fate Disposes