Morning


It took Harper Graves a moment to realise that she was being watched, flipping through old folders inside an open drawer of a cabinet in the Records Room on level two. The prickle of fine hairs on the back of her neck was what gave it away.

Only creeps look at you like that. She glanced up from dust and parchment to squint at Solomon Carstairs while he made his way down the aisle between cabinets. His hands were in his pockets, casual. He didn't look like he was dressed for working the weekend, which she definitely was - digging out old cases for her backlog of unusual legal precedences. But Harper knew why London's finest was in his finest work robes.

It had been in the papers that morning and, before that, all that anyone from the DMLE could talk about. Him.

"No," the witch asserted as soon as Solomon was close enough for a conversational volume - his bespectacled face falling into the circle of light afforded by the keen lightbulb above them.

          "No?" he stopped abruptly to fix her with a skeptical look; a playful glimmer in his eye. Harper hated that face.

A face old enough to have seen some commonplace laws borne into existence, a bureaucrat's face. The I-have-some-doubts-but-I-know-how-this-is-going-down face. She shut her cabinet drawer with some force and the sound echoed in the great space of the room. Flecks of dust were suspended between man and woman, and a feminine sigh joined the echo.

"He's going to Azkaban." Harper pushed up her sleeves, shaking her head at their venerable leader. "I can't do anything for him. It's open-shut. You'll be wasting my time...." she trailed off in a soft but clear voice. "You'll be wasting his time."

Graves was the sort of witch who cut her corners so well you thought you were talking yourself in circles; she never said her good mornings to Solomon and always started somewhere in the middle of an unspoken argument. Not even the pretence of good manners. He worried a knut coin in his pocket, anxious but very good at hiding it. She had outlined her case against.... well against excepting the case.

An expectant silence followed.

Solomon cleared his throat, noting the weary manner in which Harper crossed her arms across her chest. And then he had to make certain he didn't linger on the chest, of course.

"It's not that simple, Miss Graves. And I daresay you know it isn't," he narrowed his gaze at her and smiled slightly at the little furrow between her eyebrows. "We aren't simply carting him off to the island, you know that at least. Merlin's to say what will happen between now and that hour, should it come."

His phrasing threw her off for an instant. Should it come? Why shouldn't it come? Harper's arms fell to her sides and she mirrored her superior's posture now, unconsciously, hands slipping into the pockets of her tweeds.

"He has something you want," she reasoned thoughtfully and wondered a bit about all the Dementor talk in the papers; it wasn't really surprising. Should have thought of that sooner. "And you... want him alive? Obviously alive, but in good condition. So he's not really crazy, I'm guessing. Where is he now?"

As soon as she asked that, Harper knew it was hopeless to push back. This was probably a nicety anyway. Solomon was all about that applesauce, dressing up his orders like they were just chatting about something normal. Yep. Just normal stuff. The Ministry of Magic's most wanted. Former Auror. Number one most hated man where the force was concerned. Nothing to see here, people.

          "Being interviewed," Sol answered with an unconcerned shrug and she bit her lower lip in irritation.
"Interviewed as in..." Harper drew one hand out, gesturing an inverted comma. "Interviewed? Or actually interviewed? Is he going to have all his teeth in when I get there, is what I'm asking."

Carstairs laughed, already turning around to leave the Records Room. "You'll have to come see for yourself, Miss Graves!" he called back over his shoulder as he retreated back into the distant darkness of unlit cabinet aisles. "I'll send his file over right away."

Harper stared after the old wizard without really seeing him. No, she was thinking of something else already, trying to picture the face of a man who has been plastered all across the Daily Prophet for months now. Trying to imagine what's it must be like to sit in an interrogation room in which you were once on the other side.

She had defended hopeless cases before, like every other lawyer on level two, but never one with this much publicity. Harper snapped out of her stupor. The dust had settled.