2045 hours, Diagon Alley. Early autumn of 1976.


They were only meant to be passing through. This is what Yavin Morgenthau, at the still-tender age of 35, told himself as he drew up amongst the murmuring crowd at the Leaky Cauldron bar to order a drink, nearly elbowing patrons. He was dark, gangly figure with black curls slicked back. His wife Indira followed him in a distraction as she was digging through her backpack for their coin purse - her greying hair was a curtain between them. She finally glanced up and shoved the velvet pouch into his hands.

A sharp, tired face with a lively gaze. Still beautiful and full of her practical character.

           "I have to see mum again before we leave," Indira sighed heatedly, looking him in the eye; one of few women tall enough to do so. "Stay here? Do be careful, I hear the Death Eaters are using the Imperius Curse now."

"I... I'll be right here." Yavin smiled grimly as they exchanged the kind of kiss people exchanged in an atmosphere like this. "Tell her I don't wish her, aha, wish her the worst."

She left. Indira's parents hadn't approved of their marriage so he never crossed the threshold into their home, not even now with He Who Must Not Be Named terrorising wizarding society like an invisible figure in the streets. None knew who the Death Eaters were and loyalties were not to be trusted.

But life, both its significant and trivial aspects, carried on. People still streamed into pubs and inns and ordered their drinks and spoke in low voices about the day's intrigues. Minister Minchums and Barty Crouches.

"Barwitch!" Yavin turned back to the counter, leaning heavily against it and rubbing his face tiredly. "Anything to, hah, to keep me awake. None of that Gurdyroot stuff."

He hated it when Indira left him alone in London, trying to puzzle out the accents was a nightmare. Even in their thoughts! Who the hell thought in an accent? The British, that was who. Yavin slid on to a barstool, resigned to this purgatory as a heavy tankard was slid towards him.

Green ale. Oh God, they'd served him green ale. This must be a sick joke. He glanced at the customer next to him to make a deprecatory comment but - ah. The brown haired wizard was deep in a book.



Yavin forgot the green ale. And he forgot his general misery and tiredness, as he was known to when something intriguing made itself obvious. He didn't disguise his sudden interest, inky eyes taking in the stranger's appearance from behind tortoiseshell spectacles. Tall and serious looking, although you would be if you were reading Angkatell.  Around the same age. Handsome in wizard robes.

Angkatell's Legilimency texts weren't exactly light, not with that flowery writing style. Yavin's attention was aptly caught. His lips twisted into a thoughtful smile.

"You finding that an interesting read?" he ventured, turning slightly on the stool to face the man. "Not, hah, not my favourite but it's damn clever."

Ordinarily, Ignan Storm would not have been sat at a pub bar, reading, but life rarely fitted ordinary in wartime. He had been in Britain a year now, on secondment of sorts from the German Ministry to the British. Despite spending the latter half of the sixties trying to infiltrate and squash uprisings of rogue wizards in the Black Forest, Voldemort had succeeded in rising to power in Britain. What had begun as a short stint to share intelligence, had lengthened into an indefinite stay across the English Channel.

Ignan had not long ago celebrated his thirty-second birthday, and was in his fourteenth year of calling himself an auror. While independent to be content enough to spend time in his own company, his lodgings above a cauldron shop in Diagon Alley were modest, if not downright poky. They lacked alcohol and the possibility of company. Not that Ignan ever actively sought it, ever prevailing the suggestion he was aloof, while actually enjoying friendship and conversation, albeit on his terms.

“You finding that an interesting read? Not, hah, not my favourite but it’s damn clever.”

The auror blinked, and glanced sideways, realising that the question was indeed posed at him and nobody else. There was a wizard of similar age to his left, examining him behind glasses. He had an inquisitive, open expression, and had adopted a style Ignan associated more with Muggles than British witches and wizards. His accent was not from round here, much like Ignan’s. He didn’t know enough of America to place where in the vast continent. In his periphery, he ascertained the fellow was on his own too.

If this was a shiny hook, and Ignan were a fish, he decided he had time to swim circles and nibble at the bait.

“It is slow progress,” Ignan replied, glancing back to the paragraph he had read for the fourth time. “Why does he use twenty words when five will do?” He gestured to the page with upturned hand, irritated. “I would read a translation, but I do not think it would help.” He lay it flat, midway through a chapter on attempting to measure the possibility of naturally occurring occlumency. “I was taught our minds are behind doors. Occlumency is to lock that door. But he says the wall around the door could be glass. That we can give clues to unlock our doors. Or that we can have more doors?” Ignan gestured to the pages in mild puzzlement.

He had learned basic occlumency in his training, and did his best to practice it. He had not perfected it, by any means, just reduced the volume of his thoughts and could crudely silence them by concentration. He envied those who it came naturally to. His own ‘door’ was stiff on the hinges, and sometimes he seemed to stick his own foot in the way of it closing. As for legilimency, he had a growing interest, though no desire to hear the passing whims of a crowd, just the pertinent thoughts of his captive.

“You have read it all?” He asked Yavin, intrigued. He had not met anyone as yet who knew it, and he had been struggling with the text on and off for a fortnight, when he had time to read in the relative safety of others.

A gradual, genuinely amused grin crept into his countenance as the other man explained his problems with Angkatell's writing and analogies - in a delightful German accent, too. It was fun to run into someone who spoke his language! And of course he couldn't agree more with these issues, they were the same ones he had on reading the book.

            "You have read it all?"

"Somehow, with difficulty, I have." Yavin raised his eyebrows dramatically and faced Ignan properly on the stool, propping his head up as he leaned an elbow on the counter. "The doors are, ahah, are a conundrum aren't they? I personally would prefer a less, that is, a less rigid structure."

Or a more versatile one. Everyone seemed to have their own theory. He wasn't sure of his own, except  his work with MACUSA's Department of Mysteries had led him to believe there were more diverse and innovative ways to comprehend the nuances of Legilimency and Occlumency.

"But if we, ah, if we follow Angkatell's logic... almost everyone in this room," he lowered his voice and leaned in to meet Ignan's gaze, "I assure you, has unlocked doors and unfastened windows." Yavin made a gesture with his hands, wiggling his fingers in the general dining area of the pub. "Probably because they don't know they, hm, they even have those doors."

It took painstaking awareness to master the ability. Even now, he wondered if there were parts of his mind - doors - he didn't know about. He sat back and picked up his drink, still watching Ignan. "I assume your door is more or less guarded," Yavin sipped and then pulled a face.

Green ale was a very bad idea. He swallowed the disgusting beverage and glanced at the book his new friend had set down.

"How long have you been, um, been learning?"

Books were fantastic and often worthwhile, but Ignan had always gained better understanding through practical application, and through discussion. If the fellow beside him had read the text, and was eloquent enough to discuss it, he might find the rest of the reading far easier to digest.

“… with difficulty, I have.” Was this an attempt to level with him, or was the book genuinely difficult? If the roles were reversed, Ignan might have been tempted to arrogantly suggest it was rather more easy to comprehend. Such was the family’s competition in intelligence. Ignan was instead, rather weary of arrogance at present. It got good wand-bearers killed through lack of caution. There was bolstering courage, and pride before a fall.

Tonight, devoid of company, Ignan allowed the American to intrigue him. He lay a forearm upon the bar, fingers pressed down on the open pages. Ignan had a habit of rolling his shirt sleeves and pushing back the cuffs of his robes to keep them out of the way of his book and the sticky damp of the bar. A fading spell burn shadowed the back of his strong hand and wrist, and the nails on the ends of his long pale fingers had been cut short. His left hand rested on the top of his thigh. Although his wand was not in hand, it could be there in the blink of an eye.

“… almost everyone in this room… has unlocked doors and unfastened windows.” Ignan instinctively glanced about them, considering the possibility, imagining tiny windows in the sides of their heads, and doors on the worried foreheads of the British drinkers. In this chapter, Angkatell suggested some hung off their hinges, others were safe doors quite down to your family lines, or maybe your upbringing.

“I assume your door is more or less guarded,” came the query. As if drawing a string tighter on one’s purse, Ignan had felt the instinctive need to do so on his mind in the background. “How long have you been, um, been learning?”

“Are you in the business of knocking?” Ignan asked, blue eyes not leaving the other man’s face since the mention of his own ‘door’. “Or the business of locking?” He lifted his chin defiantly, though only subtly. In these times one was always on guard, but people needed to stick together. “On and off a few years now,” he answered, “where I’m from we are trained to hear a chance knock and to latch our doors, enough to be aware of them.” He blinked, “how about yourself? How do you come to read Angkatell?”

Oh, good. Yavin noted from the slight shift in body language that he had captured the man's attention - a valuable resource in the pub, with bodies pressed up against each other or against the bar as people murmured worriedly about the war. It was much cosier to chat with this man in their own intellectual little world, like sitting at a hearth in a dark room.

His gaze flicked down to the book as they spoke; he noted the scars on Ignan's arms, the careful and initially guarded mannerisms. These gave the impression of the kind of man you would like to have in a tight spot.

              "Are you in the business of knocking? Or the business of locking?"

Yavin laughed at this extension of the analogy and adjusted his spectacles, resting a foot on the rung of the other man's stool. "Both," he answered with a wry smile. "But sometimes I must, aha, make sure I've locked my door before I knock on somebody else's." Twist the key, leave the lights on, draw the shutters close.

There was something in the movement of his companion's head, a slight lift, that warned him of a kind of pride. A scholar's pride, maybe, or a warrior's? Yavin nodded in approval of all this door latching. It was not hard to agree, when you've been on the other side meticulously picking locks.

             "...how about yourself? How do you come to read Angkatell?"

"From my work with  -" he lowered his voice in the crowded room, leaning in slightly again and breathing in the scent of old ale or mellowed liquors, "- MACUSA. But I acquired the skill before when I was, hm, a Healer. I helped my mother heal a Legilimens." It had been the start of his life long love affair with all things to do with mind magic. A pure, cerebral love.

He didn't want to elaborate on his work in the American Congress and, anyway, he couldn't because he had worked for Mysteries. It was wiser to move the subject away from that specifically. "I would, to be honest, like to see how they do it in other places around the world." Yavin reached over to tap a page of Ignan's book emphatically.

"Angkatell and the Americans shouldn't, hah, shouldn't be the final word eh?" he really was very excited about the travels ahead of him, the temples and settlements awaiting study. "What we see as a door might be nothing but a thin veil in, say, Mongolia or Brazil. Oh, but I'm being rude..."

Suppressing only a touch of cockiness in his gregarious grin, Yavin withdrew his hand and extended it again to shake. "Yavin. Nice to make your acquaintance."

“…  must… make sure I’ve locked my door before I knock…” the American explained, and the corner of Ignan’s mouth turned upwards in wry agreement. It was no good attacking if one could not defend, both with wand and with mental magic.

His conversation partner lowered his voice as he explained a role with the American magical government. It did not surprise Ignan that there were other countries over here who were part of, or had been involved in similar Ministry organisations. As much as other countries would love to leave Britain to their problems with ‘he-who-must-not-be-named’, lessons learned with Grindelwald in decades past showed that they could not entirely turn their back.

Ignan gradually lowered the book as the American went on, with a rather more animated patter. He was altogether much more engaging than the printed text at this juncture. Ignan’s pale blue eyes had lifted entirely from it.

“Yavin. Nice to make your acquaintance.”

He clasped the proffered hand in a shake, though his mind continued to pull together the metaphorical purse-strings as he did.

“Ignan.” He nodded respectfully and let go of the equally large hand. “Let me get you something better than green ale,” he turned back to the bar and made eye contact with a figure behind it, ordering two pints of mead which were altogether more palatable. He passed the coins over before Yavin could protest. Given the state of Britain, it was better to spend one’s generous auror wages than keep them. Ignan had no-one to pass them to than his father and younger sister if he did not survive these times. Neither of them particularly needed the inheritance.

“Angkatell wouldn’t have the final word on anything, in my opinion,” Ignan continued the conversation as the two pints settled themselves before each wizard on the bar, “he would try to have the final twenty when one would do.” He shook his head gently and glanced down at the page before marking his place and pressing the cover closed.

“If it is a veil in Mongolia or Brazil, then what is to say it is no different to our doors, and just a metaphor to help our minds tangibly understand the concept?” Ignan asked, with a light shrug of his shoulders, wishing Yavin to elaborate. “Wands for us channel a magic within us, whereas other cultures use staffs, artefacts or nothing at all. One can argue it is all still our magic, and those are just methods of externalising it.” He wasn’t intending to draw Yavin into serious debate, just prod gently to see what came of it. Nobody felt much like discussing such things amongst his colleagues these days, which was a pity.

Mead. A drink of the fairies and, he couldn't deny it, much better than green ale.

Yavin opened his mouth to offer to pay but the other man beat him to it, and his lips relaxed into a laughing smile instead. "Thanks," he bowed his head, pleased that his interruption had resulted in the possibility of an extended chat. Merlin knew how long Indira would be with her parents; and she generally approved of him trying to befriend more Europeans. Up until now many of them had proved odious.

This European, at any rate, was worth talking to. Yavin grinned at his damning quip about Angkatell and lifted his pint of mead in heartfelt concurrence. It was sweet, like a drink should be in dark hours.

"One could argue that. And if one did, well, hah, I wouldn't argue against it," he licked his lips thoughtfully. "There is a linguistic theory - you may know it - proposing that the language we speak helps to form the way we think. A language with no past tense nurtures a mind that can barely grasp the notion of an intangible past."

The theory had intrigued him and was partly responsible for his anthropological tendencies. Sometimes you needed a word in your language in order to understand a concept, especially if it was a complex one. He looked at Ignan but his gaze also looked through him as he continued to speak.

"So the doors might, hm, might be a metaphor but not just a metaphor." Yavin gesticulated with his free hand, as if though movement could help him to articulate his thoughts. "In the same way that a wand is not just a medium, because the nature of the medium affects how we perform magic. Therefore, the metaphor might affect how we reach minds."

Spells cast with a staff of orb were different, for example. If someone gave him conch shell and told him to use it to unlock a door, he'd laugh them out of the room (or off the beach as it was).

Yavin drank a bit more of the mead, leaning in again without thinking about it. "That's why I think it's important to use less restrictive metaphors. Maybe using Angkatell's doors is stopping us from practicing mind magic in a... in a spacious capacity. There's a hell lot more in here," he tapped his forehead and nodded at Ignan's with a wink, "than just a house with doors, don't you think?"

Certainly in his new acquaintance's head, there must be. He detected a conscious and intelligent light in those eyes.

Looking across the room at the bar, Ignan was glad they had stolen a free table at the edge of the room. There were only so many accidental elbows and muttered apologies from fellow drinkers he could take when trying to concentrate. There were now four empty glasses on the edge of the table, such as conversation had progressed.

“Sometimes it feels as if I am attempting to understand a foreign tongue in rural Britain,” Ignan gesticulated with his half-empty glass, “I find myself wondering if I should read their thoughts for easy translation.” He wouldn’t, though. It was an invasion of privacy and however tempting, you never knew what you were wandering into without permission. As much as times had darkened, they weren’t quite at the same level of the Black Forest attacks back home.

“Have you ever read someone who speaks a language you don’t know? Is there, common tongue, so to speak?” Ignan asked, as the empty glasses lifted themselves up off the pock-marked table top and drifted over the heads of other patrons to be washed up. The copy of Angkatell’s book lay between them, silver lettering glinting in the candlelight.

The slight change of scenery, from crowded counter to cosy corner, suited Yavin better. He had never been one for crowds and it was impossible to hold a coherent conversation with wizards constantly leaning over one's shoulder to order an inhumane amount of Firewhiskey. Their own progress, with the mead, was much more gradual.

             "Have you ever read someone who....common tongue, so to speak?"

He made a thoughtful sound, a low hum, smiling a little at the other wizard's perplexity of the British. Oh, yes. The British could be very peculiar - but they had one thing in common with his American upbringing. A selective historical memory. The Germans, as it was, were more.... cognizant, which reflected in their manner. Maybe that explained Ignan's displeasure.

"My, ah, my wife." Yavin gestured vaguely at the pub, remembering that Indira would eventually be back to collect him. "Urdu speaker, you know, thinks bilingually. She lets me read her," he added sheepishly so that it didn't sound like he was the kind of man who casually peered into his partner's head. "Her conscious thoughts, I can't interpret from Urdu. But her subconscious ones..."

Things were a little harder to explain when you've had two glasses of mead. Yavin rested his elbows on the table, long arms stretched out while he drummed his fingers against the surface. "The subconscious is visual, emotional. I can grasp it. If there is a common language, it is the inherent emotional experience. The interior." A messy melting pot of sensory input being latently processed.

"But," he continued, shrugging, "I think you understand what I mean when I say everyone speaks their own language in their heads?" Yavin glanced around the Leaky Cauldron, at the myriad of different people. "Their own esoteric slang, inside jokes. It would take a lot of practice to parse them from the get-go."

He considered the relative stranger sitting with him. "What do you use your skill for?"

“I think you understand what I mean when I say everyone speaks their own language in their heads… esoteric slang, inside jokes.”

To truly understand anyone’s thoughts one would have to study them externally as well as internally, and maybe even know them intimately. There was nobody in Ignan’s current life that even got near to that description. He hoped that Yavin’s beloved was comfortable with such a study. Perhaps there were thoughts she kept only in urdu for security.

“What do you use your skill for?” Yavin posed. Ignan stalled a moment, deciding on his answer, rubbing his thumb across the outside of his glass. If he answered with no detail of recent events, he broke no oaths and secrecy impositions with the British Ministry.

“Not so much of late,” he answered truthfully. “The laws here state we’re not to use legilimency on suspects and act on what we find. They still have to give up information willingly.” The twitch of an eyebrow suggested that the young Ignan would much rather use a shortcut, especially in times with an uprising. “I just keep my walls up in defence as I carry out my duties.” Duties that were satisfactory, but not exactly all that motivating and stimulating in comparison to his previous posting. Hence the additional reading, and the times he lingered in the geography and culture sections of Flourish and Blotts down the Alley. Considering where he might go next.[1]

“Back home, however,” he lowered his tone a little, though not near as much as he would have soberly perceived, “legilimency was authorised when we were under attack by his forces in the Black Forest.” His second hand joined his first in holding the glass before him, and he focused on his short thumbnails.

“They were using dark magic on us.” Ignan gestured to himself with one hand, unable to meet Yavin’s gaze as he recounted the situation. “Not only dark but psychological tricks, so it levelled the playing field, if you ask me.” His lips twitched uneasily and he pulled at his nose, finally looking back at his conversation partner. “I’ve not the skills to break an unwilling mind. I’m more defence than attack.” He shrugged. “In my line of work that’s probably for the best, would you agree?”

1.	The following year Ignan resigns and begins to travel - meeting Georg early on in Moscow.

            "They still have to give up information willingly."

This man wasn't a fool - the information he offered was with deliberation, and Yavin could pick out the clear hints to his actual vocation. So he worked for the Ministry or in conjunction with it. The Dark Lord's followers did not follow rules of consent as such, it was the good guys who did that. They practiced their untouchable principles as a wall along the line they did not want to cross; past it, you began to see people through a very different lens.

Ignan apparently flirted with the line, if his German experiences were true. "I’ve not the skills to break an unwilling mind. I’m more defence than attack..." the other man continued, after a tense pause.

Ah. That was reassuring.

"I do, ah, agree." Yavin replied after his own hesitation. "It takes a tremendous amount of restraint to stop oneself from breaking a weak defence in the heat of a moment. In a, hah, a duel or confrontation, yes," he confirmed that he understood the nature of Ignan's work. "But maybe, in the right hands and head--"

The American stopped himself and gestured with his hands helplessly. A mea culpa shrug. "I'm out of my depth," he reached for his tankard of mead. "To imagine both a physical and cerebral duel between two Legilimens is a novelty. And in, ah, in reality I imagine it would be a very dangerous kind of fight."

The stakes ran high if your opponent could damage the interior of your mind as radically and violently as they might wound one's physical self. He finished his drink, as though the thought necessitated it.

"Either way, I'm pretty um, glad to have you on this side of the war." Yavin smiled, looking his companion in the face. "May it reach a peaceful conclusion," he added in the voice of someone who doubts such a hope.

“May it,” Ignan echoed, though his tone suggested he didn’t believe it would so easily, with a metaphorical bow on top.

It was worthy hard work, but there were more than a few times Ignan felt that the British way of doing things by the book, by the rules, left the opposition a step ahead. They would never catch up unless a few corners were cut. The red tape was the constant irritation in his work.

It takes a tremendous amount of restraint to stop oneself from breaking a weak defence in the heat of a moment. Yavin had said. Ignan mulled the sentence over in his memory as he stared into middle distance. He wondered if the other wizard was skirting his mind right now to see if there was anything to worry about. You couldn’t truly trust anyone in these times. Especially interested strangers. Ignan had the measure of himself, at the peak of his abilities in his life so far, even with alcohol. A familiar book could definitely break down distrust, only he doubted the other side were so well read as this American.

Reading the cues, and checking the hour, Ignan understood when a conversation was over, or at least when he was putting a stranger on edge.

“Safe travels, Yavin, and well met.” He extended a hand to shake, “Keep your thoughts to yourself until you’re home.” He lifted the book from the table as their hands parted.

Later, in his rooms above a Diagon Alley cauldron shop, Ignan blew across the fresh ink in his journal and hoped that the curious Yavin Morgenthau made it home.



End