The moment the fireplace emptied, the Deputy Headmaster’s shoulders dropped from their sharp outline. It was as if a bad spirit had whooshed up the chimney with the wizard. It had been some time since another had attempted to intrude so casually. He would be too late to warn Raine.

It was too late for his classroom, too.

He could hear the crashes through the thick wood door as he hastened towards it on his return. A couple of prefects heading his way exchanged a look, realising the noise from the Defence Against the Dark Arts classroom was not in his presence. The silver-haired wizard swept past them, pausing with one hand on the door, wand in hand, to shoot them a pale glare as they looked back, awaiting a show.

The door closed softly behind him, and he stood in silence just inside it, waiting for Almasy to draw a breath.

She had waited until the two wizards were gone, before stepping out of Storm's office and into the classroom itself. Raine didn't want to break anything valuable that might belong to her Defences professor.... whatever was in this room was more dispensable. Wand drawn, the first thing she shattered was two random bits of pottery from the shelves. And then she moved on to bigger things.

What, after all, was the bloody point of knowing all this magic and not being able to do anything worthy? Away with her Aunt Ira, who looked to be getting away with everything. Away with Layton, that bloody liar. How many have they hurt or killed? The very things Raine swore to have been against since Sanya died?

A flick of the wrist, she cast a quick mulciberus and whipped it at one of the chairs. Raine tugged it back, smashing the chair against the wall. She did this again, and again, until it was nothing but burnt little bits of splinters. And then she moved on to another chair or table, not thinking or caring about which as long as it was big and heavy and made the right sounds when it broke.

It didn't seem like any time had passed at all when a movement at the doorway caused her to drop one of the tables and rescind the fire whip. Its flame evaporated into nothing but air still smelled foul. Raine frowned at her wand, then looked up at Professor Storm.

"I'm a halfwit, aren't I?" she said this while trying to catch her breath, "I should have known. It's so obvious now, I should have known he's.... whatever he is. She has a grip on everyone around her."

Despite the splintered furniture scattered across the scorched classroom floor, the Deputy Headmaster was only focused on the seething, raging red head in the middle of it.

“Hindsight is twenty-twenty vision,” he spoke softly, “those who do evil do not have it written on their foreheads, or tripping off their tongue.” Fourteen years ago, Ignan had been no more honourable than Layton, but Raine didn’t consider him a threat in the same manner. He could only begin to imagine what she felt, perhaps a mixture of anger that her best efforts to inform on her own family would amount to nothing if this illness was true. For an aspiring auror, any trace of family misdemeanour was a drawback, though she would not be the first, nor the last to tread the boundary. He hoped for her sake, she stayed the right side.

The Professor took two steady steps into the room and allowed his gaze to travel over the debris without outward emotion. He did not want Raine to distract herself with apologies for damage.

“What do you believe Mr Layton to be?” He asked, calmly,

It helped, even at the height of her self-loathing, that Professor Storm didn't agree - and he wasn't one to drape answers in euphemisms. Raine felt something like weakness in her legs as she regained her breathing, so she approached one of the chairs that hadn't yet been broken and sank into it while the wizard spoke. He was a voice of reason.

She hadn't been the only one deceived by Ira and Layton. They had fooled respectable society.

             "What do you believe Mr Layton to be?"

"Accomplice," the Gryffindor replied instantly and flexed her wrist as she considered the doorway through which her aunt's assistant had left. "Not that I..." she hesitated here to get her mind in order, "Not that I didn't suspect. I just thought that maybe... maybe he wasn't always on her side."

A roundabout way of saying that maybe (and wouldn't it have been reassuring?) he was sometimes on her side. That he cared, that he let her go in December in defiance of Ira and not because he was following the rules of some twisted little game.

Raine looked away from the door, gaze shifting to her defences teacher instead. He looked so perfectly calm and collected. The opposite of how she felt, yet this made her feel better. If Ignan Storm wasn't out of sorts, then the situation was manageable. He was a good measure for that.

"Layton once told me that I'm nothing like Ira. I didn't know if he meant it as a compliment or insult," she tapped her wand against knee, irritable, "But I'm starting to think it was a slight. Like I'll never live up to her." Raine paused and nodded once, curtly, to herself. "Good. I'd rather be dead than be anything like her."

“Never measure yourself against another, especially not your family,” the Professor agreed, the volume of his voice still measured. It was irony, since he spent his working days measuring one student against another against an established scale. His gaze dropped to the splinters on the floor, following them up to the dashed chairs as he added, “You will always better them.”

For all his calm expression, inwardly he hoped Raine kept herself together, though he would not blame her for showing strong emotion.
“It is ill advised to make decisions in anger,” he continued, the soles of his shoes cracking on the debris. “But in the circumstances there may not be time to wait.”

The uneasy feeling Layton induced escaped outwardly in the way his fingertips turned his ebony wand by his side, his back near turned to the Gryffindor. The other man had taken some pleasure in knowing Ignan distrusted him, but could do nothing visible about it. Like a smug classmate, untouchable as teacher’s favourite. Had the visit been a power play or as Raine suggested in her description, an occasional gesture of solidarity with the young relative of his employer. What had Layton to gain from Ira Almasy’s demise? Had he entertained Raine as a suitable replacement - her sabbatical from Hogwarts an attempt to recruit?

He looked back over his right shoulder to Raine, frowning in thought. “You perceive the message as genuine? If so, it would be prudent to share with those you trust. If a lie, what gain from emotional blackmail?”

              "You will always better them."

Her anger abated for a moment, long enough for Raine to smile at this. She didn't take such things lightly when they came from Professor Storm, who wasn't exactly known for sparing one's feelings. The witch laid her wand across her lap - resisting the temptation to wreck more of the classroom - and watched him as another question was delivered. Questions were good. It was better to focus on answers than on being angry.

"Genuine?" she repeated in a confused tone, brow wrinkling. In her mind's eye she tried to picture the evening she discovered the mirrored cell in Ira's mansion. The same evening Layton let her leave. It had been planned, surely. A test to see how she would react, and then to see if she would betray or join them.

"Yes," Raine began slowly and, realising she was staring into space, glanced up to meet Storm in the eye. "Yes, I think it is genuine. I don't believe she has anything to gain from lying to me about this. I've already picked a side."

There had never really been a question of whether she'd end up with her aunt instead. If Ira thought there was a possibility, than she wasn't as clever as they anticipated. "Layton must be devoted to her. Wasn't it a risk, him coming here?" Raine pulled a face. "What if there'd been Aurors waiting to question him? Or worse?"

Maybe there should have been. But he'd given short notice, and there was nothing concrete to tie the wizard himself to what Raine knew of Ira. Even so... he didn't know that.

“What if there’d been aurors waiting to question him? Or worse?”

“There weren’t.” The Professor gave the slightest of shrugs. “If he believed there were then he would not even have contacted you, in my opinion. Or sent an owl.” Unfortunately the aurors could not always rush in and arrest people without first acquiring some firm evidence. Premature arrest risked losing a suspect before good evidence could be brought before a court. Ira and Layton were not an easy pair to pin down with things, even if Raine had collected the wands, there was no proof they had directly stolen them, just come into possession of them later. Handling stolen goods was not as serious as abduction and murder.

“He wanted to see your reaction for himself.” The Deputy Head looked round at Raine with an expression far more serious and judgemental than before. Although Almasy had held it together more of less before Layton, she had let rip after. The thoughts in her head were a ticking time bomb. “Maybe more than feel,” Ignan added, frowning at Raine. “How is your occlumency?”

          "He wanted to see your reaction for himself."

She stopped herself from flinching - Professor Storm had meant it as a matter of fact, naturally, but Raine felt it as a rousing slap. Even now she was trying to make excuses for Layton, trying to salvage something good out of this insidious realisation. There was no use to it. He wasn't the wizard she thought he had been, and his coming here had not been for kindly reasons. Not been out of care or love or anything even remotely good.

          "Maybe more than feel. How is your occlumency?" The older wizard asked and Raine quickly turned her attention back to him. Alert.

Like a person checking their pockets after having been warned of pickpockets, she drew her awareness to the borders of her mind; duelling and cursing might have been part of Raine's education with Ira but she had neglected her Occlumency at the time. "You think he....?" she touched the side of her head, scowling.

Shit. Did he? Would he have? And what would have have found, if not during this visit, then in the past?

"I haven't been practicing," Raine admitted and closed her eyes softly. "I can't tell if he's been in."

“You think he…?”

The Professor issued Raine a direct stare.

“I haven’t been practicing, I can’t tell if he’s been in.” The side of him which drew down generations flexed to snap at Almasy, and tell her she was a fool for lapsing. It wanted to round on her for being a silly little girl, just as his own father had rounded on him countless times in his final years at Durmstrang when he failed to grapple with occlumency when taught. It had taken distance and a tutor through his auror training to make it work, and then decades of refinement. She was barely an adult.

“Nothing you can do about it now,” he uttered instead, unable to hide the rhythm of dismissive disappointment. He redirected his gaze to the mess and wordlessly twisted his wand through the air before him, concentrating on the reconstruction of what had taken the brunt of Raine’s anger. It allowed them both a moment.

Once the floor was free of splinters, and the chairs uprighted, the Professor sank down in one opposite Raine. He rested his elbows above his knees, wand still in hand.
“He wasn’t shy in being forward about it,” he explained, sounding a little regretful he didn’t say something aloud to Raine at the time. “Though if you were not on your guard, I anticipate you were unaware he likes to listen?” It was too intrusive to ask Raine what she might have been thinking of at the time, though he was sure she was now reviewing her thoughts in the presence of the other wizard moments before. The uncomfortable feeling of mental burglary was entirely unpleasant.

            "Nothing you can do about it now," the professor's tone of voice was unmistakeable.

Raine looked away, on one hand keenly feeling the same disappointment in herself that she was sure Storm himself felt - and on the other hand furious with Ira. Because she must have known. Because she let it happen. That was not something you allowed to happen to people you loved. Did Ira know what love was? Were those moments of sympathy, each and every one, a pretence? The prickling behind Raine's eyes indicated that her instinctual answer was the right one. If she hadn't been paying enough attention, stupid stupid stupid, why couldn't everything have been a lie?

Professor Storm sat down and she blinked away the urge to cry, glancing back at him.

The room had returned to normalcy and its former neatness. Raine pulled herself together in the same way, or at least insomuch as she could be unaltered by today's revelations.

          ".....not on your guard, I anticipate you were unaware he likes to listen?"

Her cheeks warmed in irritation - nearly as red as her hair - and she shook her head. No. She was unaware. Merlin, the things he could have read in her. What sickened her the most was how fond her thoughts of him and her aunt had been. How she loved to see him at Christmas time, loved his warmth and her aunt's cold and appraising elegance.

"It was for the best that I was never more suspicious of Ira, I suppose." Raine finally muttered, after a short pause. "He would have known and I wouldn't have been able to hide it. I... I wouldn't have believed..." she trailed off to clear her throat. The haze in her thoughts broke and she considered Storm with a touch more self-awareness.

He had been more than patient with her. That was more than she was being with herself. "Thank you, Professor." Raine's smile was a feeble but genuine thing, "I wouldn't have fared well without you here," she sighed - a frank statement. "I should leave. I think there are some things I need to think about, alone."

“I should leave. I think there are some things I need to think about, alone.”

The Professor gave a respectful nod. He had no wish to keep Almasy, but had felt it prudent to give her an option with the fictional essay after Mr Layton’s departure. He had correctly surmised she was unaware of the wizard’s mental travels and she would need time and privacy to come to terms with it.

“You know where to find me,” he replied quietly. The wizard got to his feet, student and teacher parting in opposite directions as Raine left. At the foot of the steps to his office, Ignan cast a glance back at the Gryffindor's retreating figure. He hoped that she would be able to weather this, but he would ask the others to keep an eye out for her. But for now, he had an owl to write to London.


End