Witch Weeky’s Editor, Queen G, Genevieve García-Gamp never left the house without a full face of makeup perfectly neat hair and a fashionable outfit of her choice. She tended to believe that she was a setter of witch fashion and prided herself on her pristine appearance. It had only been in the past several years that she’d become a household name for a reason other than her husband being an Azkaban detainee of the Death Eater muggleborn hating sort. She’d made her own name in the media and kept her real self hidden firmly behind the mask of Queen G.

This morning, Gen had arrived at the Ministry of Magic before most of its daytime staff. She didn’t need directions to Level 2 because she’d been brought down there personally many years ago. One didn’t forget such a journey and it had been burned into her mind.

“Queen G!” The welcome witch squeaked from behind the desk as Gen came down the corridor. She’d dressed normally, sparkly high heels and skinny black jeans accompanied with a leather jacket and white shirt. Her makeup was light and hair scraped back into a messy bun. A few hairs fell down to frame her face. From a distance, she looked normal. Up close, it was easy to see the bags under her eyes making it clear that she’d not had a wink of sleep in the past couple of nights.

“Morning… Enid.” Gen’s gaze swept over the name badge and she smiled softly at the witch who was now sat bolt upright and wouldn’t stop staring.

“Oh merlin’s beard, I love your editorials! The one about the randy trolls had me and my husband laughing for hours!” The middle aged witch continued as Gen nodded.

“I try.” Gen rose her eyebrows, really not in the mood to chat with another fan today. “Can you help me, Enid? I really need to see Mr Carstairs.”

After a mention of him being due to arrive anytime now, Enid gave her a simple set of directions, a wand check and a wave past.

There was only about five minutes of pacing in the outer office when the door opened and the man himself appeared. Gen, arms crossed over her chest in a very defensive body language, fixed him with a gaze of wide eyed concern.
“Did you know, Solomon? About Leo?”

He was informed, as he stepped off the elevator, that the fabulous Queen G was waiting to see him in his outer office.

Solomon glanced at the clock behind the welcome witch. It was much too early. Even his personal assistant hadn't yet arrived - didn't seem fair to demand her to be in long before himself on a Monday, especially as there weren't any pressing appointments this morning. What in Merlin's name could the editor of Witch Weekly want at this hour? Surely gossip could wait, they didn't publish until the bloody weekend.

"Genevieve," Sol greeted warily as he entered the waiting room and tugged off his navy coat - it was much too warm for it anyway. The witch wasn't in her usual predatory state, he discovered, although she was still in the journalistic habit of launching straight into questions.

            "Did you know, Solomon? About Leo?"

Ah. He'd nearly forgotten. There had been something about the Death Eater in a briefing last week. Solomon hadn't given it much notice, except to reinforce his hardline against that particular brand of purist criminal.

"I did," he threw his coat on to one of the chairs and leaned back against Reid's desk. "Forceful new attorney, I understand." Solomon eyed the witch carefully. "Put you in a state, has it?"

He’d known but not seen it fit to share the information? Had he been aware when they’d last spoken? Their little meeting in the pub would have been a far better way of finding out that coming face to face with Leo. The conversation kept repeating itself over and over again in her head. The look he’d given her, the confidence with which he’d told her he’d be released. The way he’d told her that she’d not be working at Witch Weekly any longer. As if she wasn’t allowed.

“That’s an understatement.” She’d like to see Sol not becoming a state if the roles were reversed. He made no move to enter his office, instead choosing to lean against what must have been the assistant’s desk. That meant that he didn’t plan on entertaining her for a moment longer than was polite. It clearly didn’t benefit him.

“He’s a murderer. He was found guilty.” There was too much nervous energy for her to stand still and she still felt physically sick. “You arrested him.” She was being dragged back 13 years, dragged back to finding out about his treachery and crimes. Had they even been real? Was he innocent? Was she about to get a furious husband return wanting to know why the hell she’d given up on him, an innocent man?

“Why is the ministry even entertaining this? Is he innocent?”

So far, all she had done was reiterate things that Solomon already knew about Leo Gamp. A thoroughly hateful man. It dredged up memories from the war, memories Solomon did not enjoy relieving when he had an unpleasant present with which to deal. There were still pentral possessed victims languishing in St.Mungo's and mischief being made in all quarters - including level two[1]!

            "Why is the ministry even entertaining this? Is he innocent?"

"You know I can't tell you anything about his innocence, there's a due process now that it's being brought to light again." Sol crossed his arms and shook his head at her, as if she should know better than to ask him such a question. "And we are entertaining it because we must abide by protocol, Gen. His lawyer has made a formal and legitimate appeal."

Appeals made by former Death Eaters were not unpopular moves. It happened every so often and they would keep the courts busy with various claims of new evidence or character testimony, their attorneys having dug through decades of history to scrounge up something useful.

To him, it was just another day on level two. To Genevieve, it looked like her world was coming apart at the seams.

"You're better off speaking to his lawyer than to me. She'll have more useful information," Sol advised with a grim look that indicated he wasn't keen on the idea of Leo walking free again. "I can't really do anything about this. I have to be impartial."

Always, impartial. If his soul did not damn him for being otherwise, the Prophet or Witch Weekly would.

1.	Twue Wove.

Gen had one enormous question that she knew Sol would surely have to answer. Who the hell was Leo’s new lawyer?! They were clearly someone being paid a horrendous amount of money and thought getting a monster out of Azkaban was worth it. The Gamps, Leo’s parents were clearly behind it all, trying to salvage what was left of the family after Mortimer’s recent disgrace. Gen hadn’t spoken to her in-laws for years, preferring to keep that injection of purist elitism away from her son.

“His lawyer?” Gen had stopped pacing, she was now stood near the door to what she could only presume was his actual office. “This lawyer must have given him my book to read because prisoners can’t read otherwise! He knows about Dante and he’s furious. He tried to launch himself over the table at me! Does that sound like an innocent man?” She was speaking quickly, panicked. “He was making comment on me being an unfit mother. If you release him, he’s coming for Dante and I won’t be able to do a damned thing about it because he’s been exonerated!”

On the surface, Gen never appeared to be a doting mother. She wasn’t. She was, however, a mother that had done everything so far to protect her son. It had been, clearly, in a manner in which no one else would touch, but it had worked for her and Dante and he was growing as happy as he could be with a Death Eater father in prison and a mother whose face ended up plastered in the country’s most popular magazine. She’d do anything to protect her son and now it looked like she may very well be able to do nothing but run and leave the country.

“Please don’t give me this bullshit about you being impartial when a Death Eater is about to be released and your department have to apologise for your mistake.”

           "Does that sound like an innocent man?"

"You didn't tell him about your son?" Solomon's eyebrows rose marginally, trying to imagine how a wizard might feel about having a child he didn't know about - Merlin knew that Balfour Spectre had been furious about Almasy, although obviously quite taken with the boy. Leo Gamp launching himself across the table did not sound like an irrational reaction to him.

At any rate, Genevieve was getting ahead of herself. She was making it sound like her husband was already at large and about to wreck havoc on her personal life.

"Bullshit, is it?" he murmured dryly, thinking of when she had commended him for that same quality over drinks last month. "You may want to think about making more friends on this floor, Genevieve. Leo's lawyer is Enid Jingleberry." Solomon said this name with a fair bit of distaste but perhaps the woman might get along with Queen G.

They were both people who had sold their integrity for money. Gen could paint herself as the sad single mother but she enjoyed the things they published at Witch Weekly, or she wouldn't do it so well. Maya Elliot, his former assistant? A genuine sob story. Gen was a gossip monger who'd sell Solomon up the river if she thought it would protect her.

"I'll have my assistant forward you her contact details.  You know I won't interfere with the legal process," he continued as he glanced down at Abby's desk and the little sign which read BRB - Riding Unicorns. "All I can assure you on my end is that we don't easily allow Death Eaters to walk."

"You didn't tell him about your son?" Solomon was clearly judging Gen and, in her opinion, he could judge her decision all he liked. Not telling Leo had been a decision made to protect her son at the time and it had seemed relevant up until now. His determination to pull her up as a terrible mother when he was the one 12 years into a life sentence made that clear. Solomon had spent years as an auror with loose personal morals who now felt that he could judge from his seat of recently acquired power.

The name Enid Jingleberry made Gen freeze, staring at the bearer of bad news. She’d heard of the lawyer a few times during her reporting career, and never good things for the ministry and getting people into Azkaban. As such, Gen’s stomach sank and she was suddenly looking paler than before.

“Well I feel really well assured.” The witch was rarely sarcastic and even this was said with a shaky voice as she followed his gaze to the assistant’s desk.

“Have people been released before, Sol? Would Leo be the first?” She felt like she should know these things, but some ministry moves were kept from the media; especially those as unpopular as the release of convicted Death Eaters. “Surely he would be. Because families of muggleborn victims would have rioted. They will riot when they hear about this.” It wasn’t a threat, it was a definite.

This was getting beyond the point of sanity. Had she come here so that he would hold her hand and tell her everything was going to be fine? If so, she had seriously misjudged his character. Solomon pushed up his spectacles and pinched the bridge of his nose as his visitor fretted like a chicken whose head had been cut off.

"Genevieve. You know there have been pardoned Death Eaters[1] before," he sighed heavily at her as you would sigh at a child who is unable to solve a simple puzzle. "Nobody rioted then and if you wish to incite a riot now, I suppose that's your prerogative. It won't matter what you write, if Leo is proven innocent in court."

Proven innocent, rather than actually innocent. Sol knew there was a different between those two things just like he knew there was nothing he could do if Jingleberry brought forth evidence they couldn't disprove. He was in no position to grant favours to people like Gen.

Solomon glanced at the waiting room clock. They had a little time still, although she was clearly wasting her energy here.

"What do you expect from me, exactly?" he asked, sharply and with a hint of impatience.

1.	e.g. Lucius Malfoy - and as the wiki says a few have been pardoned, I am assuming he wasn't the only one.

She needed to scream and hex something. She’d come today in hopes of being told it was ridiculous. She’d expected Solomon to laugh and tell her not to be so ridiculous because of course they weren’t going to be releasing Leo Gamp. But to be told it was possible? Of course, she was freaking out.

"What do you expect from me, exactly?"

As if by magic, there was the bureaucratic quill pusher eager to return to the security of his desk without pests like Death Eaters’ wives to bother him. She was, after all, a pest with a quill and the power of the press. A big pest.

“I expected morality, logic and reasoning to preside over blindly and idly following the letter of what seems to be outdated law.” Gen had respected Solomon. Not so much after this conversation. “You know it’s not right yet you do nothing about it because that is easier. You’re supposed to lock criminals away, not hand them a pass to freedom!” Even Gen could see when she was flogging a dead horse. So much for her having commended him for his work. Now he was sitting back in his posh office while they released murderers!

With a shake of her head, Gen started to walk to the exit of the outer office.
“Forward the details to my flat, please, not Witch Weekly.” She didn’t need her staff questioning why she was receiving post from Level 2.

The editor of Witch Weekly left, even more keyed up than when she had arrived.

It was amazing how people like Gen never care for the law until they're affected by it. And then, of course, it was his fault for not giving in to a hysterical woman who'd been stupid enough to make an enemy of half the Ministry of Magic by dragging other people's dirty laundry into the public eye.

Solomon sighed, plucking a memo sheet from his assistant's desk and leaving her a note so that she would know to forward Jingleberry's details. He picked up his coat and entered his office - a stack of paperwork awaited him, as it did every Monday morning. He would sit and work in silence until the job's more diplomatic duties demanded his time.

Amongst the paperwork there was, he knew, a folder devoted entirely to Leo Gamp. A small part of Sol wondered with amusement what sort of hell awaited Genevieve if her husband got out. Perhaps, after all these years of harassing innocent people, she would get a bitter taste of her own medicine.

He smiled grimly to himself as he sat down and dipped his quill in a bit of black ink.