Friday 26 August 2011
7:30pm

"And furthermore! If I wanted to speak to the assistant herbalist, I'd have subpoenaed the assistant herbalist!" Knox bellowed, a charicature of himself earlier that week. He punctuated his words with a slap on the hard-worn table and jabbed his finger towards his colleague and company, the Auror Jonas Trevelyan.

"And furthermore, that's none of your business!" He boomed out laughing and then had another onion ring.

The conversation had started a couple of hours earlier, the two wizards meeting to discuss Trevelyan's big smuggling case. As the office started closing up and the night shift filtered in, they decided to continue their discussion as they both walked out to the Floos. But by they time they made it to the Atrium, there was still more to discuss. "Why don't we take this to the Leaky? I could stand some supper," Knox had suggested.

So here they were, getting deeper into food and drink not yet abandoning shop talk.  Knox had little occasion to get to know Trevelyan on a personal level, but was definitely finding him an agreeable chap.

Sometimes it felt as if he could fall down a rabbit hole, sorting through stacks of old records and picking through piles of paperwork.  There were days when he got so caught up with in casework that he didn’t realize what time it was until the sun had set on London above and the office had already begun to empty, which usually resulted in him slinking home with his metaphorical tail between his legs, hoping Anna would be too distracted with the kids to notice.

The Auror had laughed so hard he’d nearly doubled over. It took a moment for him to straighten, wiping a tear out of his eye.  Then there were days like this, where his rabbit hole dumped him out somewhere unexpected, such as dropping by the Wizengamot Elder’s office to ask a quick question, which somehow had morphed into a two-hour conversation.  At this rate, he’d probably end up sheepishly sneaking in tonight as well, albeit for a different reason.

Jonas raised his mug to take a long swallow of ale, nominally to clear his throat, and then flashed a quick smile at Greyfriar.

“Well, that’s one way to put it, innit?”  he asked cheerfully, setting the mug down again.  “What, did he think if he took a pass on your questions enough, you’d let him run along and pull in the other poor bloke?  Not bloody likely, is that?”

"Not! Bloody! Likely!" Knox agreed with full voice.

"Everyone is just doing their jobs, aren't they? Diffusion of responsibility," he whispered leaning forward. "Upon whose head will the axe fall?"

Trevelyan was heading up a team of Aurors, and they were ratters down every hole in every winding, tangled, warren. One-by-one, the Aurors marched witnesses in front of the Wizengamot, one-by-one the Wizengamot authorized warrants. All trying to track down the queen at the heart of this smuggling ring.

"Honestly, it's all so spectral hard to say if there ever was even a crime committed all," he played.

At that, the redheaded Auror let out a laugh.  "Oh, there's always a crime, mate," he said cheerfully, winking at Greyfriar.  "Trouble's more like whether there's any poor sod on our side willing to dig deep enough to find it.  Seems like there's plenty of times when it's a hell of a lot simpler to just let it stay a ghost, rather than sort through whose is head is supposed to get lopped off."

The matter was certainly made worse when the crime wasn't really serious enough to doom a head for the lopping.  When all that was in question were the legal equivalent of fingers, sometimes it was tempting to simply sign off and put the legal matter to rest.  That was what the poor herbalist in Greyfriar's story had probably been hoping -- send the Wizengamot off in circles somewhere else, and hope they gave up the trail before it circled back to him again.

That was one reason why Jonas had come to like Greyfriar.  The Wizengamot Elder was tenacious.  Maybe it was the wolf in him, but Knox Greyfriar wasn't likely to let a witness off. He hounded and harried until he got to the bottom of things, which was why he'd become Jonas's favorite Elder when it came to warrants or subpoenas.

"I have to say," he admitted, leaning back in his chair, attempting to balance as it tilted precariously on two legs.  "This lot seems particularly committed to the run-around, though.  Not that they're doing a proper job of it at all -- reckon I planned out me denials better back when me and me mates were planning pranks at Hogwarts."

Knox laughed.  "Oh, I learned all the tricks."  He'd spent many years as an educator at Hogwarts School and had learned every weasel and squirm by the end if it - the hard way. 

He leaned back as well, mirroring Jonas's posture.  "And here's the catch to this one - there's always a name that doesn't come up.  That if you take a breath... you'll find there's someone quietly set in the very middle that no one has mentioned. Every deflection is a misdirection."

His dinner done, his whiskey dry, the old man took out a violet-tinged cigar. He guestured with it in one hand while he searched for a his wand with the other.

"There's someone at Drammes Apotheke who we haven't heard from yet, who no one's pointing to."

Sure. On paper, the Dramme's leads were all sewn up and that whole leg of the scheme chalked up. Only minimal charges filed. But something didn't smell quite right yet. Why else would these middle-minions be sweating in his courtroom?

Jonas quirked a brow, his expression sobering slightly as he mulled over the Wizengamot Elder's words.  "There's plenty of blokes we haven't heard from at Drammes," he replied.  "Practically like Boots over in Europe, aren't they?"

But he was clearly listening, frowning now as he regarded the Wizengamot Elder thoughtfully.  That was a trick with it too though, wasn't it?  Get too close to the matter, and you could get so caught up in running down the details that you missed the obvious connection.  He'd seen that all too frequently during the decade he'd spent working as a private detective, first down in Exeter and then in London.  Granted, in those instances, he was usually on the other side of the familiarity chasm: half the time, the answer that his client was looking for was so obvious he could sniff it out at their first visit, except that they never wanted to admit it. 

"What d'you reckon, then?" he asked quizzically, arching an eyebrow at Greyfriar.  "Mind, you make me feel like I've been missing something too obvious, mate, and you might have to write the warrants from here on out, as well as sign off on them."

"Oh!"

Knox sputtered and held his hands up in surrender.

"Me? No, I have no idea whatsoever. I'm as in the dark as anyone else, completely dim on the subject. But I am a blowhard, so I thought I'd mention it."

Towards the end of his speech, he began to mix back in his usual mirth - he could never keep a straight face for long and he never ran out of self-deprication. It was a privilege of being generally well-liked and of a size and reputation few would take it upon them selves to do the deprecating.

He sat up and waved a hand in the air, miraculously getting the attention of a barkeep. He gestured for another round.

"Although ... maybe there is something to this assistant herbalist..."

Jonas chuckled, giving a nod to the bartender to signal that he'd take a second drink as well, and then took a long drink to finish his current beverage off.  "I'll circle back around on Drammes," he assured the older man.  Instincts could be a powerful thing in their business, and he was willing to trust Greyfriar's.  For all of his bluster, the Wizengamot Elder had a knack for cutting to the chase with his questioning.  If something seemed off to him, it was worth taking a second look at.

He got up briefly to pay -- his turn, this round -- and then returned with the two drinks in hand.  Passing one to Knox, he took a seat again.

"So what's the worst lie you've ever had some poor bloke try to tell in front of the Wizengamot?" he asked cheerfully, cupping his hands around his glass to warm it.  "Reckon I've heard a few good ones just as an Auror, but it's a different sort of pressure once they're hauled in front of you lot.  Practically like testifying in front of an army, innit?"

Knox made no show of rifling through all possible candidates. He had an immediate answer.

"I was born a fish."

He opened his hands in a gesture to say, 'have a look at that, would you?'

"Can you believe that? This wix gets up in front of us, a character witness for some silly parole hearing, and claims that since they were born a fish, they couldn't have known the subject and therefore couldn't comment! When we pressed for more detail, they said - I was born a fish and was raised in the North Sea until 1987 and so didn't even know the bloke!

"By Merlin's beard, their solicitor was absolutely dumbstruck - looked like a fish himself, his mouth opening and closing, lost for any explanation. I'll tell you, we were utterly derailed. Apparently the statutes placed the burden on the court to prove they hadn't been born a fish rather than the other way around! Gamp sent up some people from Mysteries after Level Four washed their hands of it.

"In the end, the cost to clear it up was just silly and we released them."

Jonas paused, quirking a brow.  Mentally, he filed this apparent fluke of the magical legal system away for possible later reference, just in case he ever found himself called to stand in front of the Wizengamot.

"Well, that's a winner," he agreed cheerfully.  "Almost a waste to use that one on a parole hearing.  Reckon the poor bastard he was accused of knowing must have been positively career-ending, or else maybe he really was born with scales."

That was one thing about the magical world.  In what now seemed like his previous life, when he'd been working as a private detective first down in Exeter and then in London, he'd encountered plenty of creative explanations.  Cheating spouses who swore that the whole thing was simply a misunderstanding; lost objects that suddenly turned up in the possession of someone other than their owner, despite the obvious lack of magic.  But to be fair, Muggles never got quite so creative as to claim icthyan ancestry.

"Most of the time in the Corps, we just get them pleading ignorance," he said, suddenly feeling a little disappointed in the breed of criminal that they commonly had to deal with.  "Although it's a bit harder to claim you didn't know you were doing something wrong when you've been caught with a half-dozen venomous three-headed snakes under your cloak,  innit?  Hardly stops them from trying, though."

"Those where the days, weren't they! How long has it been since there were Runespoors wrecking havok in open-air markets? It feels like almost ten years, but it can't be that long..."

Knox's face relaxed as he tried to mark how the time had passed. He tapped his fingers to his thumb in sequence, silently counting. "Merlin's beard. Barely two..." He doffed his cap to scratch his hair, as if to brush away the strange contradictions.  It was no matter. Time was wobbly and it was better to allow it to flow as it would.

"It's a strange place in which one has found oneself when ignorance is a desirable quality to claim. I can't say I've ever been there. Why, I don't think I could even pull off a ruse of it... I'd be entirely unconvincing..."

He sipped from his drink slyly.

The Auror laughed outright, flashing the other wizard an appreciative grin.  "Oh, entirely," he agreed cheerfully.  "Probably the best defense, that.  Lucky for us that we're all on the same side at the Ministry, because if a bloke like you ever had cause to claim ignorance, I can't imagine we'd ever be able to shake you out of it."

Had it really been two years since the last time he'd had reason to tangle with a Runespoor?  The last must have been the incident in the Daily Prophet office with Niobe Thursby.  Life certainly seemed slightly less stressful since the three-headed snakes had stopped popping up everywhere, and the smuggling operation had slithered its way back into some deep hole underground.  Maybe they'd earned themselves another dozen years of respite from that particular threat.

"I have to say, though," he admitted, after taking another drink from his beer, "that these recent smuggling cases are a hell of a lot less exciting after that mess with the Runespoors.  At least Tentacula seeds don't have a habit of sprouting and trying to rip your head off when you happen upon a cache."

"Huh. I can imagine that flipping through forged delivery receipts and cracking open foul-smelling crates is not much compared to spell fire and eviscerations. Call me an old man, but I think I prefer it quiet."

The levity was tempered for just a moment, and he had another sip. He felt like the last two decades of his life had been a quest to find some kind of peace, some relief of strife. Could there not be a way to live that was Good and Hearty? Could one do Good and Have Good? He was a Hufflepuff inside and out, he had to admit.

"Too bad the scum and nogoodnicks don't share my affinity for cozy nights in."

He raised his nearly empty glass. "To the nogoodnicks. May they have a good night's sleep so the rest of us can as well."

That was something he could toast to.  After all the Runespoors and smuggling cases, Dementors and dark magic, if only everyone and everything was willing to spend a quiet night in every so often, then perhaps the troubles wouldn't seem so bad.  It was too bad he couldn't talk every potential dark wix into joining him for an ale after work.  That was one way to improve the chance for peace in the magical world, so long as they stayed away from that horrible American yellow water.

"Or at least take a few hours off for a drink," he agreed, raising his own glass in return in a sort of half salute.  "Cheers to that, mate."

After taking a long swallow, he set the glass back down on the table, nearly empty. 

"I appreciate the advice on the case, anyhow," he said, giving Knox a nod.  "Even if those blokes don't decide to have a quiet night in on their own, we can do our best to earn one for them."