Early evening.


Abby had planned to laze around today, but life had other plans, making her quite productive. It had all started this morning with her niece's early owl tapping at the window. She'd spent the morning at the Ministry, chatting to Balfour Spectre and sending owls back and forth to Sulwen. In the early afternoon, Mr. Carstairs had thanked her and told her she could go.

After an afternoon at her sister's, where she'd updated Aileen about Mr. Spectre's life and all the latest gossip, she'd grabbed a bite to eat and then remembered Raine. She didn't think her flatmate had plans tonight. Abby had been thinking about her throughout the day, wondering how she felt about the rude Witch Weekly article, Feliks himself, and the hexing incident that had resulted in Spectre clouding the conference room with anxious puffs of cigarette smoke.

"Raaaaine," she called as she entered through the front door, dropping her keys onto the hexagonal, colorfully painted side table.

Abby took off her shoes, and padded to their small kitchen in fuzzy zebra print socks.

Raine looked like she'd been home for a little while, her face fresh, her hair damp and curling.

"I brought dinner!" Abby presented her with a plain white box, the word 'Bonbon' printed neatly on the center. Inside, a rainbow assortment of macarons were displayed, including multiple raspberry macarons and lemon macarons, Raine's favorites.

She sipped at her pumpkin spice (what else?) in a to-go cup. A smudge of glittery ink marred her finger from the letters she'd penned.

"You'll never believe who I met today!"

Yes she could. Raine might even guess, if she'd heard Abby had left the Ministry earlier.[1]

1.	Bright Metal on a Sullen Ground

Today had been.... a Day.

Raine Almasy stood in the kitchen in her fuzzy slippers, staring into their open icebox while she contemplated what to do for dinner. A part of her was tempted to just go down to Rachawadee and stuff her face with spring rolls, satay, and mango lassi. Tasty tasty food to make her forget this morning's events. She could understand why some departments didn't tolerate the very sight of Witch Weekly.

            "Raaaaine," a welcome voice intruded on her ruminations.

Abby had been to work today as well, which was unusual for a Saturday. Raine shut the icebox just as her flatmate entered, bearing a prettily wrapped gift. Macarons! Macarons were perfect.

"This is dessert, not dinner!" she laughed as she took the box and set it down on the counter, shooting Abby a dry smile - again, with the pumpkin spice. "Are you talking about Balfour Spectre or did Carstairs introduce you to some dangerous criminals?"

The squib would have been an ideal interrogation weapon. Disarming and prepared to drive anyone insane with copious amounts of glitter (the stuff got everywhere'). Raine turned around to lean against the counter, curious to know what kind of impression the Beast Division head had left.

"What did you think of him?"

Abby grinned as Raine laughed, relieved to find her in a good mood and wearing the happiest pink fuzzy slippers she'd ever seen.

"Balfour, Balfour Spectre," she confirmed with dramatic emphasis, resting her hip against the kitchen counter.

"I like him! I hung out with him in the conference room this morning after the Witch Weekly fiasco, basically babysitting, though my time went much better than yours did last month with the Pratt brats," Abby nodded. Abby hadn't witnessed the Pratt invasion first hand, unfortunately, though she'd gleaned enough from the grumbling of the Auror trainees.

"He was worried about his son, of course. But he asked me questions, and didn't just look at me as a coffee-fetcher." Raine would know the feeling well. "Seems like he's got both creature skills and people skills."

Abby ran a hand through her hair, catching a very faint whiff of smoke. She wrinkled her nose, and decided she would shower this evening, too.

"It's hard to imagine him hexing anyone, though I guess you saw that in action this morning," Abby raised her eyebrows, sipping at her latte.

This was probably going to spoil her appetite for dinner but they were adults now and they could have dessert before a main meal. Raine primly opened the Bonbon box to survey the macarons with a critical eye, although her lips twisted into an amused little smile as she pictured Abby babysitting a grown man who handled beasts every day.

             "Seems like he's got both creature skills and people skills."

"That's what I hear." Raine muttered, thinking of the few times she had seen him in person: an affable and handsome figure. "Doesn't hurt that he looks the way he does, either."

She had eyes after all. After a thoughtful pause, a raspberry macaron was selected and she bit into it with a glance at Abby. This morning. Witch Weekly. That had been odd and she hoped to Merlin that they started sending her on errands more relevant to her auror training.

It couldn't always be coffee fetching and paperwork.

"I caught him turning Misslethorpe's eyeballs around. It wasn't especially violent." Raine explained, letting the macaron dissolve on her tongue. "Carstairs is shrewd, isn't he? Soon as I arrived, Queen G tried to get something out of me. She's such an idiot, he obviously sent me to distract them from Balfour."

Like a child distracted by a shiny new toy. Raine nudged the box over the counter, so that Abby could take her pick. "What kind of questions did he ask you, anyway?"

Abby let out a giggle at Raine's assessment. She assumed many a wix lamented Balfour Spectre's engagement, and she wouldn't put it past Lil Snigger to have plotted the whole Feliks article as a way to cause strife between the couple and place Spectre back on next year's Bachelor list.

Abby bit into a pistachio macaron, and shook her head at the description of the hex. Eyeballs! Healers needed those.

"Odd. I assumed that Carstairs had sent you to distract Spectre from his hexing spree," Abby fetched a napkin from the counter as Roxy skidded into the kitchen and bumped into her legs, hoping for a macaron crumb. "Could be both! He has a reason for everything, even on Saturdays when normal people are sleeping in."

Raine seemed absolutely fine, describing hexes as nonviolent and calling people idiots like usual. Still, Abby would turn the conversation back to her in a bit, just to be sure.

"He asked if all Reids were Slytherins, and then we talked about Houses, and we both agreed that I likely wouldn't have been a Slytherin, surprise-surprise." Abby popped the second half of the macaron in her mouth and finished it. "What else. Oh, he asked after Aileen. Yay! They were friends growing up." Double yay. "He confirmed she was a hellion in school," Abby grinned. "I told her that this afternoon and she kind of laughed and said, sounds about right."

           "Could be both! He has a reason for everything, even on Saturdays when normal people are sleeping in."

Still half-chewing on her macaron, she nodded at this fair statement. Carstairs had a politician's mind - Raine didn't doubt for one second that he had considered the different implications behind sending her to Witch Weekly. Either way she was inclined to think that magazine was staffed by overzealous cretins.

"Hellion Aileen, I like that. Did you ask her what he'd been like?" Raine asked, thoughtful. "Probably as hex-happy as he is today. I would have done the same thing in his position."

She drew her wand, giving it a twist to summon a ceramic carafe from the ice-box. "Actually, no, I would have hexed that Queen G woman and not Healer Misslethorpe." Poor man didn't even go near that article, probably. Not very clever of Balfour to do that.

Raine poured them both glasses of strawberry water and glanced up as she did so, smiling softly at her flatmate.

"My aunt would have done a lot worse," she commented before sliding one glass down the counter towards Abby. A clouded look entered her eye. "Not a hundred percent sure I would have stopped her, either."

Abby shook her head. "No, not hex happy. If he was, he was sneakier about it. She said, from what she remembers, that everyone pretty much liked him, and witches trailed after him asking for tips about hippogriffs. How low to bow and such."

She accepted the glass of water and sipped at it, looking at Raine closely as she mentioned her aunt.

"There's no stopping such a strong personality."

She'd meant to say it lightly, but the bitterness in her tone surprised her, the strawberry-infused drink souring on her tongue. Abby shook her head, noticing the spark fading from Raine's gaze. Her friend was usually 100% sure of herself.

"But you would have tried. Eventually. After she moved on from the nonviolent hexes to the violent-violent hexes."

Abby nudged the macaron box between them and softly smiled back.

            "...and witches trailed after him asking for tips about hippogriffs. How low to bow and such."

She snorted into her glass of water, meeting Abby's gaze humorously. Oh, yes. Raine was sure that he taught those witches how to bow at exactly the right angle. Alex had mentioned her godfather's numerous romantic adventures before - she just wished they hadn't happened with Aunt Ira!

Her smile faded slightly. Strong personality. That was a lighthearted way of phrasing it.

Abby was not like Abby from before. This worried Raine but she tried not to let it worry her too much because it never helped to feel stressed over things beyond one's control. They would sort it out somehow.

"Maybe," she agreed with her friend and reached for another treat, holding it delicately between her thumb and index finger. "I don't know, Abby. Sometimes I feel like I understand how Ira looked at things. I feel like it's too much to care about people like Queen G or Lil Snigger."

The sugar shell of the deep red macaron cracked slightly. People were fragile, more fragile than they acknowledged.

"What is the value of a human life that doesn't please me?" Raine enunciated this in a rich, Russian accent and then snapped out of the impersonation to smile dryly at Abby. The regular Raine Almasy smile. "Not a very practical viewpoint, though."

Abby laughed, nearly spilling her water at Raine's impression of her aunt. "Don't do that!"

It was a little unsettling. If Ira Almasy had really said that, it sounded too practical and cold. Raine was not cold.

"You can't care about everyone. It would be exhausting. You care about your friends and family, you're fiercely loyal, and you're in Auror training to learn how to protect people, even the idiots. You don't have to care about them individually to do your job, as far as I understand it."

Raine had done that at Witch Weekly today. Maybe this wasn't about the job, though. Abby searched in the box for a coffee macaron to match her latte sitting on the counter.

"Did it bother you before, Raine, when you noticed similarities between you? Before her criminality became public."

Only Abby Reid could laugh at a thing like that - which was why Raine loved her friend very much, and how she knew they had made the right decision to become flatmates. Plus, sleepovers. A flat without Abby would not have fun sleepovers. Raine bit into her macaron as she listened.

"Even the idiots," she agreed with a laugh. Although that didn't mean she had to like the idiots.

              "Did it bother you before...Before her criminality became public."

This felt like such a grim conversation to be having over colourful desserts and strawberry water or pumpkin lattes. It was the kind of conversation Solomon Carstairs had over straight firewhisky. Probably. She finished the macaron and pulled herself up on to the kitchen counter.

"Yes. Usually. But before I discovered what she really was, Layton used to say[1] I was nothing like her." Raine wrinkled her freckled nose, pulling a face at Abby. "That used to bother me too. There were parts of her that I admired."

Parts of her that maybe only Almasys could. "Nobody is completely evil, right?"

1.	Guide us to thy perfect Light - 21st Dec 2010

Abby blinked in surprise, then nodded. Raine had confidence and poise similar to her aunt, just expressed those traits very differently. Family members shared traits. She'd spare Raine an account of the number of times she sighed like her mother at some injustice or made terrible puns like her father. Raine had likely heard it enough around the flat and would pick up on the similarities right away if she met the rest of Abby's family.

"Nobody is completely evil, right?"

Her shoulders tensed at the innocent question.

"Wrong," Abby said definitively, echoed by a strong surge of emotion from Flower Girl.

The macaron, sweet as it was, tasted bitter too. Abby leaned against the counter and set half of the macaron on her napkin, then picked up her water glass and offered Raine an apologetic look.

Raine had lost her aunt, the person she thought her aunt was, and all those memories didn't just go away. Abby rubbed at the freckles on her jaw with chilled fingers.

"If they have a shred of humanity, but still do evil things, does that make them more, or less evil?" She wondered with a wry smile.

Philosophy at 7! She used to have conversations like this with Calix, when he felt like talking. They'd resorted to grim humor and impressions of their captors, huddled on the window sill of his room with a tray of tea between them, looking out at the vast woods.

             "Wrong."

The raspberry in her mouth was too tart. Downright sour, actually. Raine's expression cleared as a cloud descended on to her flatmate, and she realised how insensitive her words must have sounded. Abby had been at the mercy of someone who they could agree was beyond redemption.

Raine only wondered about Ira because Ira had been nice to her - she would never feel or think the same of Arthur Lemon.

"I don't know," she reached out to rub Abby's shoulder without thinking, the kind of thing she would have done to her sister if they weren't feeling well. "If we look at the insides of people, they don't seem completely good or evil. But it's their actions that have to count, right?"

Aurors didn't throw people into Azkaban for having bad thoughts - or refrain from throwing them just because they meant well. Purists probably 'meant well' when they informed Death Eaters about their muggleborn friends.

And Raine knew for a fact that she wouldn't hesitate to do her job, or more, if ever confronted by the people who had hurt Abby. She'd use every one of those terrible hexes Professor Storm had taught her in their private lessons, and then some.

"Maybe parts of me resemble Ira on the inside," she said in a quiet voice, "but being like her, that's a decision. I get to decide not to be like her."

Abby nodded, though she did not actually want to know some people on the inside, what they really felt or thought. If Raine were fierce, it was directed at those that deserved it. Her friends and family, on the other hand, were privy to her kinder actions and gestures. There was no better friend for Abby to have run into that day she'd stumbled out of the Ministry floo. The night of the sleepover, Raine had been there, nudging glasses of water toward her and gently steering her away from making a fool of herself over pillow fights. And now, Raine's hand on her shoulder was the sort of gesture that reminded her strongly of Aileen.

Abby didn't know if she could ever really know people, but with Raine, she didn't need to know everything. She already trusted her.

"You do," Abby agreed, matching her quiet tone. "You decide to be your own person. You have the strength to do that. You're one of the strongest people I know."

That was a benefit of having a strong personality. Though quieter, gentler personalities could also be strong, like Sasha. She sipped at her water, silently worrying that she was not made of the same stuff. How could she be her own person with the Lilly's in the back of her head, and the pentral at the forefront?

"Is it weird, finding out you have family you didn't know about?"

She tilted her head, focusing on her friend, and wondering about the boy who had hid in the Hogwarts kitchens this morning, according to Sulwen.

            "You're one of the strongest people I know."

She wasn't one for blushing but she did, just then, and smiled at her friend. "Birds of a feather," Raine insisted fondly. Everybody had their burdens to bear. Abby wasn't excluded from that, as much as one might wish otherwise. It wasn't easy to be a squib in the wizarding world. That was why people like Roger Lemon settled into muggle society and relished the technological forms of magic that lay within their reach.

But Abby seemed somewhere in between the two, a unique equilibrium.

            "Is it weird, finding out you have family you didn't know about?"

Raine wrinkled her nose thoughtfully, leaning back and resting her head on a cupboard door. She had cut out the photograph from Witch Weekly to keep - although she was sure Balfour would have sent her a proper photo if asked.

"It's probably weirder for him than for me," she replied after a pause. "I'm just having a hard time trying to picture Ira as a mother. But I guess she wasn't a real one. He's never even met her." That really upset Raine, the more she thought about it.

Ever since she found out she'd been trying not to think about it but here they were, naturally, talking about the whole situation. Only Abby could have nudged her into this conversation. She picked up another macaron and simply looked at it in the palm of her hand. A perfect red circle.

"Did you know? She sent him to be brought up Siberia. In this big orphanage, with old witches." Raine glanced at Abby, sighing. "That's where the Almasys send all their squibs. I guess she thought nobody would find him there."

And she'd been right. Merlin, Raine hated it when Ira was right.

Abby nodded, glancing at the red macaron in Raine's hand. It must feel strange, for Feliks to grow up without knowing where he came from and who had given him away. Though perhaps it was better to have no impression of his parents than a negative one, at least when he'd been very young.

"Until she wanted him to be found," Abby murmured. The wheels that Ira had set in motion before her death still turned, and no one seemed to know when they would stop. She wondered if that worried Raine. It worried her, remembering how angry Lori had been in May upon discovering Ira's death, and the number of squibs found buried in Ira's rooftop garden.

Speaking of squibs!

"Wait - what?" Abby turned toward her as Raine leaned against the cupboard. "The Almasys send their squibs to Siberia?"

Sulwen had wisely left out that piece of intel. Abby arched an eyebrow at Raine, unable to decide whether to feel offended or flummoxed or both.

"How boring! What in squib hell?" Abby popped the rest of the coffee macaron in her mouth and chewed with annoyance.

"What do you even do there? Build snowmen with the elderly watchers? Only you can't use any coal up, you need it for heat, and you can't use any carrots - they belong in stew, it's only faceless snowmen for you!" Abby nudged Raine's leg with her fuzzy zebra-print sock and laughed, a little uneasily, as she shook her head.