(Keeping up Niklas's theming with the Rolling Stones discography titles!)

It was always a pleasure to head south from London, even if his reasons for visiting Devon recently hadn't been any reason to cheer.  Jonas sometimes missed taking the train that ran from Paddington.  Even with the ease of travel, the great increase in speed, and the considerable difference in cost, somehow apparition wasn't nearly as romantic.

He'd apparated down again this time, as close to the Aldridge residence as he dared.  When you were a Ministry employee, paying Charisma Aldridge a visit was an exercise in skirting danger.  After the attack on her husband the night before, he half expected that she'd crank up her defensive spells to the absolute maximum, and he didn't always trust her to remember that there was at least one Auror for whom she was obligated to make an exception.

But he'd apparated in without a problem, and he hadn't been fried to a crisp as he started down the walk.  It always felt strange, approaching this house that looked exactly the same as it had when he was younger, when he'd come to visit Tait and the Aldridges as a respite from his Muggle home life.  During his Hogwarts years, holidays and the summer break had always been an awkward time.  After months away at school, dealing with all sorts of fantastical situations and creatures, it had always felt a little empty to go home to his family, to tuck his wand away for the summer.  As he'd gotten older, he'd come up with reasons to spend longer and longer wrapped up in the magical world: a summer internship; visiting friends; a holiday overseas with the Aldridges.  He'd spent plenty of weeks here conspiring with Tait and Taryn, who he'd always had a bit of a crush on, under the watchful eye of his best mate's formidable mother.

That formidability was largely the reason that he was here now.  When word had come to Level Two that Ryan Aldridge had ended up in St. Mungo's following some sort of attack, the other Aurors hadn't exactly been jumping at the chance to pay a necessary follow-up visit.  Charisma Aldridge's extreme distaste for anything related to the Ministry was well known, and thus mostly avoided.  And so Jonas had volunteered, partially because his most recent case was starting to wrap up and so he'd had the time; and partially because it was Charisma and Ryan, whom he sometimes still felt awkward calling by their first names.

The evening air was warm and humid as he made his way up the walk, slowed by his slight limp.  He'd come in street clothes, with no red robes or obvious fanfare to tie him to the official Ministry business that brought him -- although his badge, Tait's badge, was somehow heavier than usual, tucked into his pocket.

Jonas knocked on the door, and then stepped back, waiting for it to open.

Finally it did.

"Charisma."  He flashed the older woman a smile.  His brow furrowed with concern.  "How's Ryan?"

The owl from St Mungos had arrived over breakfast at the castle. Charisma Aldridge had been tucking into a pile of pancakes and berries with eagerness when the letter dropped into her lap. It didn’t matter how she and her husband had barely spoken over the summer and been at odds for nearly a year before that, she wasted no time in jumping to her feet, grasping her cane and making her quick apologies to a Deputy Headmaster that looked ready to kill due to the inconvenience.

Shortly after, Charisma Aldridge was entering the cubicle where her husband was bedded to see him laid out and weary. Blue eyes scanned his body (or what she could see of it) and he appeared uninjured other than several bruises and perhaps his ego.
“What in Merlin’s name happened, Ryan?” Her words came out rushed, worried and breathless.
The wizard in the bed opened his eyes and stared for a moment at his wife. “Someone wanted your stash. I was in the way.” There was a bitterness to his tone, a bitterness that seemed to resonate every time he spoke to her.
“My stash?”
“All those trinkets and relics that you’ve failed to hand over to the goblins or the ministry, she wanted. She broke in, attacked me and took what she wanted.”
Charisma’s mind was a whirr with questions; questions which, to his irritation, she threw at her husband quickly. From the discussion, Mrs Aldridge gleamed that Mr Aldridge had been too lazy to set their wards that night, whether he usually failed in such an important endeavour, he wasn’t willing to admit. It was at least an hour of awkward questions before the healers agreed for Ryan to be released to go home and by 10 that morning, Ryan was propped up on the sofa being fussed over by Herby in their Devonshire home and Charisma was wandering the house to check what was missing.

Starting from bottom to top had seemed sensible. Most things were not of a serious concern. Paintings, the odd vase or small Egyptian relic. It was when she reached the loft that the curse breaker’s stomach sank and she turned white her body immediately taking a chill. What had been an inconvenience had immediately graduated into a nightmare.

A loud pop resounded in the small loft and Charisma span around to see Herby the small elf standing before her with a saucepan in hand.
“A knock at the door, Mistress. It’s Mr Trevelyan.” The elf croaked before popping again back to the kitchen.

Normally Charisma would have been cursing by this point in her mother tongue of Welsh. She’d have been losing her temper with the situation. But this nightmare, this needed her intellect, it needed her calm intelligence to handle. It was therefore with a silence that the witch, cane in hand, made her way back down several flights of stairs in the large and tall house to finally reach their front door and haul it open.

Of course, the healers had told the ministry. A man had been attacked in his own home. They’d done their jobs and the aurors had sent the one man they knew wouldn’t be hexed on the doorstep.

Charis pressed her lips together, eyes swiftly taking in the red headed family friend. No robes. Perhaps not official.

“Alive.” she calmly told the younger wizard and stepped to the side to allow entry. “Are you here as a friend or auror?” He couldn’t be both, not to Charisma Aldridge.

Are you here as a friend or Auror?

To Charisma Aldridge, he could never be both.  It didn't matter that he felt conflicted enough about his red robes sometimes; that he never felt wholly on board with the Ministry's far-flung reach, nor its lack of ability to truly police itself.  There was something sinister about any government that controlled so much, but there was also plenty of good that he could accomplish by wearing Auror crimson, too.

An argument over semantics wouldn't help him gain entry to the Aldridge household, though.  Neither would playing cute games.  Charisma Aldridge had her own way of making people pay when they avoided being upfront with her.

"Yeah," he agreed, arching a brow at the older woman.  As a friend, and as an Auror.  "Someone in crimson was going to have to stop in to perform a wellness check on Ryan after last night.  Thought I'd save you both a headache by popping by meself."  Whether the 'both' in that sentence applied to Charisma and Ryan or Charisma and the Ministry didn't need to be resolved.

He gave an easy shrug, letting any tension in the conversation roll off his back.  "So now that official business is done, I'm here as a friend.  You both alright?" he asked, his forehead creasing, as he regarded Charisma seriously.  "Sounded like it was nasty, whatever went down."

Out of any auror coming around to check on things, Jonas Trevelyan was certainly the best option both for herself and the Ministry of Magic. Any other might have insisted on checking the house which would have meant finding things that needed to stay hidden from an official gaze. The house was full of illegal secrets that dated back thousands of years all the way through to the addition of an illegal safe room in the basement for their daughter who happened to be an unregistered werewolf. As such, if an auror was required to make a visit, Jonas was welcome.

Were they both alright? Charisma was angry and worried. It was hard to focus on appearing unperturbed when that goblet was in the hands of merlin knew who. Ryan’s laziness when it came to setting their security wards had thrown the both of them head deep into proverbial dragon shit and they’d need more than a shovel to dig themselves out. He’d sealed their arrest warrants if she couldn’t figure it out.

“We’re okay.” The witch grimaced, nodding. Jonas was a friend, had been since an eager eleven-year-old at Kings Cross station when Tait had immediately befriended the ginger haired muggleborn boy. They’d been glued to one another and the Alrdidge’s had taken him under their wing. Yet so many years of friendship didn’t matter when Ryan’s idiocy had just released something so dangerous from their home into the world.

Charisma pulled the door completely open to let Jonas enter before waving her wand and allowing it to close behind her.

“It was nasty. My husband’s ego is permanently damaged and I might attack him again for his stupidity.” She led Jonas past the living room, knowing if she brought him face to face with Ryan, one of them might say something they’d regret. Instead, the couple entered the large kitchen. “Bloody idiot thinks that he can do without the wards I’ve set up.”

When he'd been younger, visiting the Aldridges' home had always seemed a bit like taking a trip to a museum.  Paintings peering down from ornate walls; strange knickknacks collected during Charisma's many travels, set out on display. Every time they came to visit during a holiday from Hogwarts, it seemed as if there were some new addition and some exciting story to hear.

Today, the entry hallway to Charisma and Ryan's home looked a little worse for wear, like a museum that had just played host to a touring group of primary students who had had more interesting things to think about when they were being told the rules about not touching.  The paintings that loomed in his memory now hung slightly askew on the walls; the artifacts that were still visible were not perfectly placed on display, but a bit scattered about.   A chipped marble estuary had tumbled to the floor behind an ornate wooden desk, its lid nowhere to be seen.

The witch led him down the hallway, past the living room where the Aldridge family normally received visitors, and into the kitchen.  This room had been saved from the turmoil of the entry hall.  There was no sign here that anything was out of place, and the big, frightening jackal-like head carved out of dark-colored wood still loomed over the cutting knives, as if warning any underaged fingers to think twice about reaching for them.

"Lucky he survived it," he said sympathetically.  He'd always liked Ryan, who had welcomed him into the family as enthusiastically as Charisma had.  There had even been a year or two, soon after he'd started to take Care of Magical Creatures, when he'd even entertained the thought of following in the wizard's path and becoming a dragon researcher, before his aspirations had become focused on the even more exciting pathway of becoming an Auror.

It infuriated him to think that someone like Ryan Aldridge could be attacked in his own home.

"So the wards weren't up?" he asked, his forehead creasing.  Charisma Aldridge's skill at warding was notorious; whoever had breached the Aldridge household would have had a much harder time gaining entry if the protections had been set.  "How many blokes broke in?"

The kitchen was large and positioned itself at the back of the old house. Dark wood cupboards surrounded one half of the room with a counter in the center. It was the only room in the house which wasn’t greatly cluttered by artwork and trinkets but the surfaces were still quite busy. It was the room where Herby, the house elf could take control, keeping it tidy and as clutter free as her Mistress would allow. To their right as they entered the kitchen, the large table stood, surrounded in chairs that had now seen better days. The number of hours of family time spent around the table was overwhelming for the mother who’d lost her son so many years ago now. The table now stood covered in various notes, journals and parchment that Ryan had been working on recently.

Charisma’s gaze purposefully avoided the table to land instead on the kettle which she flicked her wand at. Her cane was rested against a cupboard as she pulled mugs and a teapot from a cupboard.

“No. He may as well have opened the door and packed up whatever she fancied to hand it to her with a bow on top.” Charisma found herself replying, her irritation and frustration clearly evident. She could have strangled Ryan when she found out that he would, actually, be perfectly fine after some rest. “She. One damned woman, he says.” The cups banged onto the wooden surface as the kettle roared and she spooned some sugar into both. “Swedish sounding.”

As she continued to prepare the drinks, Charisma continued to rant, not letting Jonas get in any more words.
“One woman manages to break into my house and take my husband out. My husband who has worked with dragons for nearly 50 years. Do you know how humiliating that is? I’m a bloody curse breaker. My house should be impenetrable but my husband forgot to set the blasted wards and now we’ve been robbed. When did I get old enough that my husband can forget something like that? When a single witch can catch him off guard and put him in St Mungos?” Now her gaze danced to the red headed auror.

“I don’t want you lot to go after her because I will catch her and show her what a bloody curse breaker can do.”

Sometimes, a little voice surfaced at the back of Jonas's mind.  It tended to make itself known in a very timid way right when he was about to do something that was probably ill advised, like accepting an invitation to visit an old wizard with very friendly cats, or accepting a case to track down a perfectly normal dagger.  Somehow, he knew in the back of his head that he was making a poor decision, and yet he happily charged down the ill-chosen path, common sense and safety be damned in the name of curiosity.

It occurred to him, somewhere in the middle of Charisma Aldridge's didactic and foreboding monologue, that taking this case and offering to check in on the Aldridges had probably been one of those moments when the little voice had likely been screaming at him.  There was no good that could come of his involvement in this.  And that was when he realized that if he was already thinking of this as 'taking the case,' then he was probably done for. 

Getting mixed up in some vendetta with the Aldridges was not what he ought to do.  Logically, what he should do was march back into Pratt or Carstair's office, tell them that there might be more going on than had first appeared, and then confess that he needed to tap out of the case due to a personal connection.  But that choice would leave Charisma Aldridge at risk of an exacerbated Level Two, and Level Two at risk of an exacerbated Charisma Aldridge.

Even as he reasoned the excuse out, he could almost feel a hairless cat making insatiable love to his leg.[1]

"...I will catch her and show her what a bloody curse breaker can do.”

He waited a beat, just to make sure that the pause in the dialogue was indeed due to awaiting his response, and not merely a break for air.

"Look," he began, and then paused again, realizing that there was no good way to end this sentence.

Jonas sighed.

"I'm not 'you lot,'" he said, a bit tiredly.  "There's only one of me here.  You want me to head into the office and come back with a red robe on, let me know, Charisma.  But I thought we cleared all of that up already."

1.	It was not really actually making love; simply getting to know it extraordinarily well.

"Look," Jonas started and Charisma was looking. He seemed to reconsider his planned words, pausing for a moment before informing her that he was not one of ‘you lot’. He protested too much and for all of his wish to be separated from the red robes sat in his cubicle at the ministry, he was an auror. It wasn’t something that would change through his clothing choice, and neither would he ever not be an auror at heart. Charisma had left behind her job at Gringotts to become a Hogwarts professor yet she was still and would always be a curse breaker. It was her.

“You cleared it up.” The older witch pointed out as she poured hot water into each teacup. “You’re a fool if you think a red robe dictates who you are in the moment.” Well aware that she was being harsher due to stress and frustration, Charisma found herself unable to bite back. She’d already given Ryan a piece of her mind and simply felt herself only further frustrated as her husband of 44 years slipped through her fingers, while she ultimately let him.

With the tea’s finished, Charisma pushed one across the work surface to Jonas before grabbing her walking stick once more.
“This wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t left,” She frowned, looking down at her own tea, her grip tight on the wooden handle of her cane. “He hates me, Jonas.”

For not the first time in recent years, Charisma Aldridge was calling him a fool.  Jonas bristled, his jaw tensing as he prepared to draw himself up.  The point was that it didn't dictate who he was.  More of his life had been spent without an Auror badge than had been weighed down with one.  Despite the fact that Charisma sometimes acted like she couldn't move beyond his willingly-established connection to the Ministry, he hadn't signed his life and free will away when he'd agreed to come back on.

He was on the verge of opening his mouth to launch a protest when Charisma's demeanor changed.

"He hates me, Jonas."

Jonas's mouth opened, and then he shut it again, as his brain raced to try and catch up with the dialogue.

"Wait, what?" he asked, his brow furrowing.  The cup of tea sat forgotten on the table in front of him.  He hates her?  Both Charisma and Ryan had been consistent in stating that the individual who had broken into the Aldridge home was a woman.  What other third-person 'he' was involved in the conversation?   

"D'you mean Ryan?"  Now he was entirely confused, and starting to fervently wish that maybe he had let someone else suffer the wrath of Charisma Aldridge after all.  He hadn't come here to help address marital discord.  "He's not... -- He's probably just upset over that woman breaking in," he finished lamely, shifting uncomfortably in his chair.  "He certainly can't expect you to spend every night at home and never go out, Charisma."

Jonas hadn’t known and Charisma certainly hadn’t planned on letting him know. But with the morning surprise letter and seeing Ryan in the hospital, usually predictable emotions had been off kilter and Charisma was feeling the effects of months of separation from a husband who’d been extremely keen to distance himself from her. It was proving a challenge to keep herself together.

“It’s got nothing to do with that woman.” She waved a hand, frustrated, stressed. But she needed to calm herself. The pain in her leg only amplified when she grew stressed, angry.
“He doesn’t expect me to stay at home, Jonas. He doesn’t want me at home.” At it felt like he never would.

“I took the job at Hogwarts because Ryan won’t even speak to me anymore.”

Somehow, this conversation had taken a turn from mildly awkward into the depths of decidedly uncomfortable. Charisma and Ryan Aldridge had always seemed like a model couple in his eyes, the sort who'd be celebrating their seventieth anniversary together with matching teary eyes and gray heads.  Charisma might snap at her husband from time to time, but it had never occurred to Jonas that the bickering extended beyond a momentary irritation.  The idea that they weren't speaking, that Charisma had taken another job and moved out of the house, left him feeling like the entire world as he knew it had been suddenly shaken off its foundations.

The Aldridges were having marriage problems?  When he and Anna had been fighting and he'd moved out of the house, he had felt so ashamed that he had spent more than a year avoiding them, not wanting to discuss how his marriage had gone sour.  He couldn't even conceive of a world in which Ryan and Charisma weren't together. 

"Well, that has to make for some awkward breakfasts," he tried weakly. 

It wasn't funny, and he knew it.  Jonas sighed, running a hand awkwardly over his face.

"Charisma, I'm sorry," he said, shifting uncomfortably in his chair.  What was he supposed to do now?  Meet her gaze?  Pat her hand?  Become very interested in his tea?  "I didn't know.  Are you...both alright?"

For over a year now, Charisma had kept the secret of her marriage failing. Over 40 years of being in what people saw as a ‘perfect’ marriage made it extremely embarrassing to admit to anyone that they no longer talked and that her husband had withdrawn away from her when his trust in her was shattered. But even their kids didn’t know. It was easy enough to explain her absence during term time and she’d spent the majority of the summer in Greece with Taryn. Keeping such a secret was tough but admitting it to Taryn and Trystan meant admitting it was over.

Jonas may not have been someone Charisma would have preferred to tell, but it certainly felt like a weight off her shoulders. She only hoped he didn’t feel the need to share the burden.

“Why would you be sorry?” With a frown, Charis leant herself against the counter, now grasping her mug. “I’m fine. I made my decision when I kept that damned journal to myself.” Ryan wasn’t ever going to forgive her and she could hardly blame him. “Always tell Anna the truth, Jonas. Secrets are so destructive.”

"Yeah, reckon I've lived through that morality play already." He settled for flashing her an uncomfortable, rueful smile.  "No need for an encore on my part."

Relationships were hard.  They weren't the sort of thing that you just ran into after a chance encounter or two at a coffee house, whatever the films would have one believe.  They took work and maintenance and checking in on both sides, and anything that violated the veneer that you had formed a team together could be deadly to them.

He remembered all too well the day that Charisma had brought her son's diary to Level Two, and handed it over to Tamis Raynor and himself.[1]  Tait Aldridge's journal, entrusted to his mother in the days before he died when he'd come to her, terrified about something related to the Runespoor case.  Charisma had even told them that she had kept its existence a secret for all these years, kept it a secret from Ryan, but the magnitude of those words had never quite sunk in.

Surely, this hadn't been what Tait would have wanted when he'd asked his mother to hide the journal: Charisma keeping the secret for all these years, it damaging her marriage so severely when she finally decided to share it.  But his friend had been gone for years, and there was no way to undue the pain caused by his murder.

"I'm sorry because I care about both of you," Jonas said firmly, at last raising his eyes to meet the older witch's.  "If there is something I can do, Charisma --"  He hesitated, and then gave a half shrug.  "I know that when Anna and I were having a rough patch, it would've been nice just to have someone to talk to," he said, a little awkwardly.  "So even something like that, just shout, yeah?"

1.	The Red Robed Buffer

The awkwardness of any conversation about a failed relationship or marriage was a good enough reason, in Charisma’s eyes, to never talk of it. Unfortunately, such an unavoidable state of affairs had led her into the situation where she might very nearly pour her heart out to her dead son’s best friend. The same best friend who she’d handed the journal over to, who she’d welcomed into her family and had a hand in bringing up.

The offer to talk only left the witch feeling more uncomfortable and she hid her expression behind the cup of tea brought to her lips. Talking wasn’t going to make Ryan forgive her for lying to him for decades. It wouldn’t provide her with a time turner and save their son. She’d heard of couples failing to survive the loss of a child; she’d thought her and Ryan to be stronger.

“You and Anna hadn’t lost a son.” Madame Aldridge stated calmly. It sometimes scared her how she’d gained an ability to talk of Tait with a detachment that only time provided. It scared her how his memory slowly slipped away despite her unhealthy reliving of it in the family’s pensieve on occasion. “What I did… the secret I kept was unforgivable. Talking won’t change Ryan’s mind and it won’t bring Tait back.”

A moment’s silence allowed Charisma to realise the harshness of her words.
“You’re trying to help, I know.” And she was pushing back. “And all I do is blame you for being a damned auror.”

Rationally, he knew that Charisma Aldridge was not currently her best self.  Her estranged husband had been attacked; some still-unknown objects had likely been stolen; and she was still hurting from a tragedy that had played out years before, when her beloved eldest son had been murdered.  He hadn't come expecting to be hailed as some sort of savior for merely showing sympathy, and Charisma certainly had the right to respond to his offer however she needed to.

But her words stung like a slap to the face.  You and Anna hadn't lost a son.  Jonas's expression tightened, and he stiffened in his chair, fingers tightening around his tea cup.  No, they hadn't lost a child -- even the thought of something like that happening, of something befalling Gwenna or Artie, made his jaw clench and his stomach twist. 

He wasn't about to get into an argument with her about whose lie had been more sinful.  He'd come today to try and help, to express sympathy.  If this was where she wanted to take this, then he could politely excuse himself and let some other bloody idiot from the Ministry take the abuse next time.

He sat there stiffly and silently for a long moment, before Charisma finally broke the tension between them.  Jonas let out a slow breath, his jaw still tight.  She wasn't her best self, he reminded himself.

"Yeah, getting a bit old, innit?" he retorted, more than a bit sharply.  Pressing his mouth shut, he looked away, forcing himself to swallow. 

"I need to go take a statement from Ryan about the break-in."  He didn't look at her as he set the tea cup back on the table, although he forced his voice to stay level.  "Then I'll be on me way, and get out of both of your hair."