“Gen!” The witch at the welcome desk blurted out, jumping to her feet as Queen G, dressed in a dark green knee length dress and her trademark impossibly high heels walked into the Daily Prophet reception. “Didn’t think I’d see you here, again, did I?” She rushed around the desk and the women shared a hug.

“Don’t get excited, Katie, I doubt I’m welcome for long.” Even if they were nice in public, Gen wasn’t sure of the reception she’d received today. Today was a drop in, an uncomfortable request for help. “Is he in?”

Katie looked mildly perplexed as she stepped back from the former Daily Prophet reporter.

“The old bastard that keeps a stock of paperweights for target practice.”


“Never mind.” The editor smirked knowingly at her old colleague. All she had to do was follow the disgruntled hollering, and Katie made no move to stop her. So, she headed through the glass doors to reach the entrance to the Daily Prophet’s bullpen. It was a hive of activity with reporters, printers, photographers and various assistants rushing around or sat at desks eagerly typing on typewriters or scribbling with quills. A few glanced her way but most hurried about their business.

And at the helm? Barnabas Cuffe, Editor in Chief and paperweight tosser extraordinaire. Gen couldn’t help but smile with the kind of nostalgia you could only have after being away long enough to forget how bloody annoying and rude he was. Was that black grease covering his hands and face?

It was with ease that Genevieve navigated the various desks and mass of people rushing about to make her way up the stairs to Cuffe’s office, him still below. At the top of the stairs, Gen leaned over the bannister, elbows resting on the metal as she stared down with a grin.

“Daddy!” She yelled, “Your princess returns!” Most activity on the floor below stopped, people staring up at the familiar intruder. “And now she’s a @#*%ing Queen!”

The press was down. The magical mechanical monstrosity was ancient and arcane and few people knew how to wand-handle it better than their normally fastidious editor-in-chief. Niobe did not envy Cuffe and the other tinkers who were all elbow deep in the workings, covered in grease and whatever other ichor the press was leaking.  Without the constant churn of the apparatus, the Daily Prophet headquarters lacked the usual background nose that was constant beneath the din of news being made.

So it was not difficult to hear a witch shouting into the air.

   "Daddy! Your princess returns! And now she’s a @#*%ing Queen!”

Everyone turned to look up to the balcony and Niobe's jaw dropped.  It was Genevieve Garcia-Gamp, the editor of the Witch Weekly and a well-known personal rival of Barnabas Cuffe. Against whom Cuffe had published a passive aggressive editorial a week ago.

Niobe's jaw dropped. "Oh. My. God." Did she just call Cuffe 'Daddy'?

The next thing everyone did was turn to look at Barnabas Cuffe.

"Holy. Shit."

Fig Sellaphix was grinning. There was a slayer of a witch at Cuffe's office calling him daddy. He looked from the woman, craned his neck to find Cuffe, back at the woman, than at the other assistants sitting around waiting for the press to be up and running.

"That's not really his daughter."

   "It's Gamp. Witch Weekly editor. She used to work here. Got sacked in dramatic fashion..."

Figaro whistled a falling note. Should he be getting popcorn?

Cuffe straightened up from where he was hunched over, and his eye led as he slowly, slowly turned to face the source of the voice of some dark visitor. His gaze widened as he saw it was exactly who he thought it was.

"Gamp..." he hissed.

The Daily Prophet was as part of him as the inside of his brain, every warm body an extension of his will. The visitor was an anomly, a piece of his psyche he didn't control. Outside of the Prophet, well, she was one thing - a professional rival, a colleague, a dare-I-say friend. But here, in his palace, she was an anomaly.

With deliberation, he removed the expression of rage from his face, and took up a rag to wipe his hands, never breaking eye contact. He took a many long moment to finish, then he began his to make his way to where she stood.

"Get back to WORK!" he barked in the face of a sports reporter, an order meant for the entire staff.

---

"Genevieve Garcia-Gamp, welcome back," he said clasping his hands behind his back and tilting forward in the subtlest of bows, not yet inviting her into the office. "What could you possibly be doing here, on this lovely sodding day?"

Every eye in the bull pen was staring at her.
      Was that coffee that she saw being spit from a reporter’s mouth as he sat at his desk!?
Even Thursby was staring, mouth agape.

But Gen only had eyes for the wizard that was in his semi-permanent state of anger. Like a teenage girl surging with hormones, Cuffe seemed infuriated with everything. Her entrance, of course, could have been far quieter, but where was the fun in that when this was her first time in the Daily Prophet Headquarters since he’d tried to fire her after her attempted resignation (she still wasn’t sure which really counted). 7 years had passed and the place was exactly the same. A few new faces, a few of the same and a few clearly aged.

An onlooker who didn’t know the pair’s history and current working relationship may have found the situation utterly bizarre. They may have gawked at the way that neither person looked away, instead watching the other carefully as the Daily Prophet Editor ascended the stairs to greet his counterpart from Witch Weekly. He was clearly holding back rage, she was clearly enjoying herself perhaps too much.

Cuffe bowed, Gamp took her skirt in hands and gave the tiniest of curtseys.
“Thank you so much for the kind welcome, Mr Cuffe.” She countered, gaze still not leaving his. “Perhaps I just felt overcome with nostalgia? Overwhelmed with the desperate craving to see my dear mentor?”

Barnabas watched her and then winkled his nose.

"No..."

No to what? No to it all. She was being cute. In another venue he might have accepted the false flattery graciously and even joined in. But this was a powerplay and Merlin's fingers, he was very good at that game.

"Well, let's get started, then."

He opened the glass door to his office and held it open for her.  His office was barely changed in these seven years. He had a new chair, and there were new framed front pages on the walls. He had a new paperweight, a hefty bronze gargoyle with unfurled wings. After following her in, he revealed an ambiguity in his most recent comment and poured them both two fingers of scotch from a bottle.

Cuffe lifted his drink in a silent toast, then downed half it in a gulp.

"My press is down. Blasted thing. So, I'm in the mood to destroy something, so please, tell me what you want so I may crush your hopes and dreams."

"Well, let's get started, then."

There was a marginal crease in Gen’s brow as she internally questioned what exactly her former boss planned for them to ‘start’, but she stepped into his office nonetheless. Away from the prying eyes of Daily Prophet staff, mostly her old colleagues, she could be honest and far more truthful. Merlin knew she’d need to be upfront if she wanted Cuffe’s help.

It came to light a few moments later that ‘started’ referred to drinking. One might think that every time the two came together there was alcohol involved and perhaps that was simply a coping mechanism in order to handle the other. Two such loud personalities in close proximity rarely ended well for both.

With a smile, Gen took the drink and after a nod of recognition to the man that had screamed at her in his office 7 years ago, she took a gulp. The dutch courage was definitely helpful.

“You’re too late for that, Barney.” She wasn’t looking at him, instead choosing to move around the room allowing the nostalgia to creep in. Back in her twenties she’d had dreams of sitting in this office as the Editor, having the true power of the press at her fingertips. She’d settled with Witch Weekly, but it was a compromise that she didn’t regret.
“Solomon Carstairs shat on my last hope yesterday.” The witch sounded distracted as she moved to his desk, fingers running gently along the surface until they reached the paperweight which she lifted into the air. “He pulled his pants down and took a steaming hot dump on that last hope of clinging to sanity I had.” The paperweight was turned over in her grasp, “And just for good measure? He packaged it up for the first owl post of the day.” That morning she’d received Enid Jingleberry’s details from Carstairs’ assistant.

Cough! Sputter!

Barnabas nearly spit out a mouthful of scotch. His nasal passages burning, he put the back of his hand to his mouth. It was the sudden image of the self-controlled head of Level Two doing 'the deed' on a rug that did it.

"Merlin's bones!" he wheezed. Seemed that his protege had since picked up some colorful metaphor in the intervening time (not recalling he'd introduced the imagery during their previous meeting in this room).

He went for a handkerchief in his drawer, then to refill his glass.  As he did, he pushed for more detail.

"I'm afraid to ask - but what foul business are you delivering me!"

Cuffe spluttered over his drink in the shock of her grimly vivid metaphor while Gen simply took a sip of her own scotch, her own expression lacking any concern.

“Death Eaters, Cuffe.” Gen lifted the paperweight to get a better look at it. Had her old boss modelled the purchase of a gargoyle on himself? Was there some sort of symbolic imagery that he wished to leave with people that had the pleasure of having it launched at them? “One in particular.” The paperweight was replaced on the desk but Gen made no move to sit down.

“Imagine your family having so much money that you could kill, torture, exterminate and get away with it. Lives destroyed in your wake, families painfully grieving their loved ones but you have enough money to pay a lying lawyer with no morals who is going to set you free.”  Dark eyes darted to the Daily Prophet editor, alert and focused. “The ministry can’t do shit because the archaic law hasn’t been changed in centuries and it won’t be until someone stands up to it.”

But she may as well have been talking in riddles and she knew it. With a sigh and a gulp to finish what was in her glass, Gen finally got to her reason for the visit.
“I need your help, Barney.” He probably never thought he’d see such a day and Gen really wasn’t sure how he’d react. He was, however, the only person with clout who might actually see it in his interest to help.

Death Eaters? Relics of an atrophied movement, an epithet (or epitaph) for the fanatics who'd been captured or run to ground. It  was rare in past decades for anyone to speak of them regarding any new transgressions. Rare enough, but apparently Garcia-Gamp here was lucky.

Cuffe frowned and gave her a sideways look as he went around to his desk. He leaned back in the seat and steepled his fingers (black grease still stuck under his manicured nails).

"First of all, I know a dozen families matching that description." Merlin's bones, was he bragging about that? "None of them actively terrorizing society or contorting justice, of course."

"Secondly, you've come to the right place. I'm exceedingly benevolent, bursting with means. Well, once that bleeeeeding press is fixed!"  He shouted the last part past Gamp and out the door, that particular pain in his side apparently yet a constant plague.

He turned back to her, his face calm again. "Well, do you have any idea what you're doing?"

Cuffe didn’t laugh and neither did he scream. To Gen, this was most surprising. She’d come to him with the slim hope that he’d be interested in helping and now she was stood in his office as he seemed only too glad to suddenly get involved.

Did Cuffe, however, know what Death Eater his former employee was referring to?

Content that, at present, she wasn’t about to be yelled at by the balling old bastard, she dropped into the chair and deposited her empty glass on the desk between them. He was, of course, yelling at the people still on his staff.

“In short? No.” She honestly stated, resting an elbow on the arm of the chair. “I know what I want to do. But I don’t have the clout.” Which she would readily admit. Gen was proud to be the Editor of Witch Weekly, but she knew it was a dwarf compared to the Daily Prophet. She was a celebrity, but not for being a serious reporter like she’d once dreamed. She was never going to be taken seriously, especially as the man’s wife. “I have to be careful what I do.” Surely, he’d realise why she was coming to him.

Cuffe had returned to looking at Genevieve under heavy eyebrows over his steepled fingers. She was speaking, of course, of her husband the Auror-Turned-Death-Eater Leo Gamp who'd been locked up these past 13 years. The ghost of her past, the subject of her tell-all, and now a sword of Damacles about to fall.

The law was not on her side. Could the media? Cuffe had taken sides before. Some claimed neutrality was required for objectivity, but Cuffe did not. Sometimes the imperative of an objective truth was taking a stance. The question was, did "Queen G's" truth carry that import? Perhaps it didn't have to be. Asking the questions could be enough. Enough for Genevieve, and enough for a boost in sales.

'Death Eater' moved ink.

"Oh, not a shadow of a doubt of that, madam. Not a wisp. If there's one thing better than inciting the public to have an opinion, it's 'asking the hard questions'. The Daily Prophet has a, heh eh, an obligation." He grinned slyly.

"Tell me, what do you have so far? Where do we stand? And, tell us, how much time do we have?" All these questions would inform their strategy.

“Enid Jingleberry.” Gen stated. Jingleberry was notorious as a criminal lawyer. Criminals would pay her extortionate sums and she’d make them look like saints. Leo’s parents had clearly grown wearisome of their son being in Azkaban and had chosen to fork out such sums of gold. Gen’s own hopes of it all being something that would blow over had vanished when Jingleberry’s name had slipped from Solomon’s tongue.

“From what I can gather, they’re going for a false trial, something to have impeded justice at the time.” Gen looked across the desk at her former boss, still not quite believing he hadn’t laughed her from the room, thrown something, or yelled at her for her rather loud and obnoxious entrance. “He was prosecuted by Theodora Kingstreet. She was meticulous. The whole thing was tight, not a stone unturned.” She remembered her own name being dragged through the mud, her own privacy being on show for the wizarding world to peer and probe at, like an animal in a magical menagerie.

Leaning forwards, Gen took the bottle to refill both glasses. This new turn of events may well turn her to drink far more than she already did!
“A couple of months.” Gen took a large gulp and once more sat back. “He said he’ll be out in a couple of months.” But she needed to stop dwelling on her conversation with her incarcerated husband. “There’s a few possibilities for this, Barney. The first is that he really was a Death Eater, the ministry got it right and that will be seen. But if he was guilty and this lawyer is as good as we know she is?” Another gulp was taken as Gen tried to stifle the emotion she was feeling as it was all dredged up. “But what if he is innocent? Then the Ministry stole 13 years of his life and his relationship with his wife and son.” So many ways to angle it, but Gen had no idea which she really wanted to be true.

As Genevieve laid out the details with a calm that was well above the panic that this situation might cause someone else, Barnabas Cuffe's blood had slowly drained from his face. He had barely registered a word of what she said following the name of Kingstreet.

"Very ... interesting," he murmured. A tremor in his hand told a tale of its own as he reached for the refilled glass and brought it to his lips.

"Kingstreet, you said. You said Kingstreet? She's involved then. Well, she can't be, can she. That batty thing has been permanently archived, though, filed away under F for Forever in Azkaban, so certainly she's..."

He trailed off and took another shaky drink. It wasn't often that Cuffe was blindsided in this sort of way, that knocked the sense right out of his knickers. Death Eaters, Runespoors, even Ira Almasy - all truly shocking, truly terrible and he respected their danger certainly. But nothing put a chill in his heart like Theodora Kingstreet.  He'd effectively kept it out of the paper, but Kingstreet had blackmailed him in the short time between her 2008 release and final imprisonment. The threats she made, what he knew she was capable of? He'd rather not risk it.

"No. The evidence against your husband, if I recall, was demonstrative. There were bodies. His guilt is clear."

He sounded almost sure.

Gen studied her old mentor with caution as he thought over Kingstreet’s participation in Leo’s incarceration. There was something categorically peculiar about his reaction; a bizarity that she may have brought up had she not been currently so distracted by the need to keep calm and not freak out like she was so close to doing. On Saturday evening, she’d drunk late into the night with Kurby, desperate to block out her panic. Now, she didn’t have the privilege of time to continue panicking. She needed to action something.

“If his guilt was clear, the Wizengamot wouldn’t be hearing his appeal.” Gen countered, her hands idling fiddling with the glass in her lap. Cuffe’s hands were shaking vaguely and the witch decided that she really couldn’t ignore it. “What’s got your knickers in a twist, Barney? I mention Kingstreet and you’re more freaked than me. I should be the one shaking. You aren’t about to be reacquainted with the murderous spouse you’ve lied to for years.” she still couldn’t shake the expression of pure hatred at keeping any knowledge of Dante from him.