“Genevieve!” Agatha Pendragon was holding her front door open, looking suitably surprised as she held a long cigarette holder up to her lips. She was dressed for a party. All sleek vintage dress and overly made up face. She looked like she’d stepped out of an issue of Week Weekly and then aged 40 years. From her position on the doorstep, Gen was quite certain she was looking down her nose at her. She could feel bright, judging eyes raking over her face but Gen resisted the urge to cover the quickly colouring black eye and bruise on her cheek. “We did suggest on the invitation a dress code…”

“I’m not staying, Agatha.” Gen had rarely hidden the fact that she wasn’t a fan of Barnabas Cuffe’s wife. She was snooty and had very little gage for what conversation was suitable to share and engage in and what topics to avoid. “Is he here?”

“We’re entertaining.”

“Here I was thinking you dressed up like that for him.” Gen immediately regretted the comment when Agatha’s snooty look turned into a somewhat smug, knowing smile. So, so wrong. They were 30 years her senior! She frowned and glanced past Cuffe’s perfectly put together actress wife towards the hallway. “This won’t take long.” she’d forgotten about the party. Gen had really not been thinking about her social schedule for a few weeks, too caught up with the mess with Leo. And now, she’d finally, possibly found answers that she needed to share with Cuffe immediately.

Agatha opened her mouth to give, what Gen assumed, would be a negative response. So, Gen surprised even herself by pushing past and into the house.

“Stop! Genevieve!” Agatha yelled from the door. But Gen was already down the corridor and into the large kitchen where Cuffe stood with a group of wizards.

“I need to speak to you.”

     "Merlin hex me, is that Queen G?" Basil Rathbone[1] asked looking past Barnabas Cuffe's shoulder.

Barnabas turned to match Mrs. Rathbone's blinking stare. He coughed at the sight that greeted him. It was indeed Genevieve Garcia-Gamp, known professionally and prodigiously as Queen G, and from the look on Agatha's[2] face. It was a look that told him there'd be hell to pay later. 

"Genevieve," he said, plastering on a smile. "Genevieve, do you know Basil Rathbone? Basil here, she's the voice of - you know what, I think you need a drink. Basil, my love, excuse use for a moment."

As Genevieve neared, Cuffe had clocked onto more and more details. She was dressed well, as always, but her shoes were scuffed.  Her make-up was impeccable, but, Merlin's wand, she had horrible bruising on her face! And she smelled of cold rains. Something was very wrong, something far more dire than a neglected RSVP.

He made a discreet gesture to Agatha that she carry on without him, as he steered Genevieve to an empty sitting room. It was a large house, too large for only two people who were rarely even home.

"Stars and garters, Genevieve, are you quite alright?" he said and turned his head, not shy about trying to get a better look at her face. His eyes widened suddenly - had Balfour Spectre had another go?

1.	Basil Rathbone, voice of the Wizarding Wireless Network
2.	Agatha Pendragon, his wife of twenty years

Cuffe was about to introduce her to Madam Basil Rathbone and Gen prepared herself to politely decline and insist they move somewhere far more private. Fortunately, however, the Daily Prophet Editor and (dare she say) friend figured out pretty quickly that now wasn’t the time to play ‘I know more celebrities than you’. Between his years in the business and his wife’s own career, he would always win at that game. Not that it mattered tonight.

“No.” That was a short answer to his question. She was as far from ‘alright’ as it was possible to be right now. Her world had been flipped on its head and she was spinning with no safe place to land. It really said something about her personal relationships when the person she turned to right now was the one who’d fired her 7 years ago.

She glanced around the large sitting room. Where was that drink he’d suggested? Or an ice pack, her head was banging painfully.

“That psyhco faked evidence about Leo. Just admitted it to me before pretending I attacked her. I would have been arrested, too, if it wasn’t off the records.” Gen was speaking too fast to really be clear, blurting it all out. “He’s innocent, Barney. He was a %*^@ing scapegoat for the Ministry. We need to get him out.”

“Merlin’s balls! I turned my back on him and he was framed!” Her hands were shaking with nerves. She was still wearing the wedding ring she’d slipped on for the visit.

Genevieve started talking and she was using far more pronouns than there antecedents. It was as if she was just picking up a previous conversation.

"This is about Leo!" he said, catching on after a spell. He quickly moved to slide the door closed, then fetched a decanter, glasses, and ice bucket from the side board. He sat down and began undoing his cuffs and rolling up his sleeves.

"You're burying the lede, Genevieve," he said as he poured two brandies. He kept his sharp grey eyes on the young media mogul, the one who not weeks ago was in his office conspiring to keep her murderous lying monster of a husband incarcerated where he belonged. Now? She had come through a storm, and seemed convinced he'd been innocent all along.

"Please, sit. Start from the beginning. What happened to your face?"

There was so much pent up energy in Genevieve that contributed to the strange mix with the exhaustion of the day, that she didn’t want to sit. She wanted to scream and throw things and go back there and actually attack Kingstreet. Not that she would, Gen hadn’t attacked anyone in her life. A verbal dressing down or an exposé in the media were very different to a hexing or something more serious.

“That’s not the beginning.” Why the concern for her face? Leo was innocent. He’d been used and all sorts of lies had been said about him and it was tearing her apart at this very moment. A black eye and a bruised cheek was nothing compared to that.

“I went to see her, Theodora Kingstreet.” The witch forced herself to slow down but still hadn’t sat down. She never could when she was worked up. “You know she can’t even have quill and parchment in the same room as her? I have no notes! Nothing! My quick quotes quill didn’t even record her telling me how she arranged facts.” What proof did she have that any of the conversation had even happened?

“I’m in the same place as I was before but worse because I know what I’ve done to contribute to this!” It was clear that Gen wasn’t currently capable of thinking linearly, too many thoughts were rushing through her mind at the same time and she was starting to panic. “What does ‘arranging facts’ mean to you, Barney?” She didn’t let him answer immediately, her train of thought not ending. “That’s what she said. I could be certain about the facts. ‘I arranged them myself.’”

CLANK

Barnabas dropped the heavy glass stopper onto the silver tray. He loosened his cravat with a shaky hand.

"K-Kingstreet?"

The wizened, shrewd old newspaper mage was doing his best to follow Genevieve's frantic ramblings. Did Genevieve say she'd been to see Theodora Kingstreet? She'd actually spoken to her? And something Kingstreet had said was enough to convince Genevieve that Leo Gamp was strung up.

He groped for the stopper which clattered as it evaded him between the glasses. He finally grabbed it up and shoved it into the decanter.

"Sh-shut up!" he hissed, holding a shaky finger to his lips than out in the air between them. She was pacing. They were going to be overheard.

"You ... bloody fool. You are a f-fool of the most superlative reckoning, I don't know how you've done it, but in the order of magnitude of thousands, you are a fool."

Cuffe's voice was shaking. With fear? Rage?

"You went to Azkaban. You spoke to her, you showed your face, you let her tell you things, and you came here. What possessed you!?"

He snapped the last demand.

This was not the expected response. But, perhaps, it should have been given her old boss’ unpredictable personality. Instead of being a voice of sensibility and reasoning, the eager wizard he’d been when she’d first come to him with the problem, he resorted to calling her a fool and started talking to her as if she were crazy.

Gen was stood staring at him, her arms crossed defensively over her chest, and her brows furrowing deeply to reveal wrinkles that were usually hidden by potions and clever makeup.

“The same as what would possess anyone; the need to know the truth!” Her voice was low, quiet, but her own frustration was crystal clear in her tone. Cuffe was acting like he was mentally unstable himself. Of course, he was usually idiosyncratic and unorthodox, but why so on guard? Why was her own experience affecting him so much?

“What the hell is your problem, Cuffe? Did you not hear me? She arranged the facts. She framed my husband!” Where was her drink? And some ice. Her face was aching painfully, a vivid reminder of her day’s activities. “I came here for help and advice, Barney, not to be called a fool when this whole mess has destroyed my family!”

But the pain in her face was causing her eyes to water and Gen shook her head. She didn’t know any damned healing spells or anything to just ice it. She may as well have been a muggle.

Cuffe, with effort, calmed himself after seeing that he'd been too unkind to Genevieve. Who was she to him? Once, he'd been here benefactor, her captain. Years later, they'd found an edgy balance as rivals. And now? There was no affection, they rarely saw eye-to-eye; and yet here they stood at the thin end of a wand. Here he was, concerned for her.

From his breast pocket, Cuffe withdrew a berry-colored handkerchief. He wrapped up a dozen ice cubes, tied it up and offered it to Genevieve.

"I'm sorry, dear." He said, with a wincing apology. They weren't in his office. She was not here in her capacity as Editrix of the Witch Weekly and he was not her host as the Editor of the Daily Prophet. They were ... allies.

"But please, lower your voice. I haven't told Agatha -," he shrugged in hem-haw, then waved his fingers.

"This is not for publication. Be that as it may, I am not at all fine with your having come here. Not after seeing her. You should have spoken to me first. So I could prepare you. And then stop you."

Was she being loud? Had she shouted or just spoken with too much force? Since when did Cuffe have an issue with verbal outbursts? Gen bit her tongue and steadied her breathing as she took the ice and raised it to her cheek and eye.

“Stop me?” There as an incredulousness to her tone. How on earth did the old crust bucket plan to ever have stopped her? Contacting Azkaban himself and warning them of her impending arrival and blackmail? Did he not realise how serious this was? Of course, it didn’t affect him, so why bother? Quieter now, so as to not further agitate him, Gen continued, “Why would you want to stop me, Barney?”

Clearly, Genevieve was starting to calm, despite there evidently being some nervous energy affecting her. The ice was pressed against her face and she dropped down onto one of the sofas.
“And I was invited Barney. To show off to all of your wife’s friends, no doubt.” Goodness Gen didn’t like Agatha. But then, she didn’t actually like Cuffe. Respecting someone didn’t mean that you needed to like them.

Oh, she was impossible. Perfectly impossible. He drank deeply from his own glass of brandy. The cocktails had already been flowing at the get-together, but Genevieve was on his last, raggedy nerve. Upon further reflection, it would astonish him to note the colorful array of feelings from fondness to terror that Genevieve Garcia-Gamp had managed to inspire in him.

"Merlin, save us, we can litigate the finer points of RSVP some other time, perhaps when my life is at its natural end and I wish for death to come swiftly and sweetly, but for the sake of all that's sane in this world, why?," he hissed, pleading.

"Everything that witch says, Gen? Genevieve? It's a lie. Trying to make sense of Kingstreet? Now? It's like trying to do divination with dog shit constellations in the park! There's nothing there but foul, fly-riddled, rubbish. You can't trust her. And now you can't trust yourself. She's in your head."

He wasn’t listening. He was so consumed with his own ridiculous fascination with Kingstreet that he wasn’t listening to what she’d had to say. It was deeply frustrating.

“She isn’t in my head!” The Witch Weekly Editor hissed back, her eyes tearing. Was it the bang to her head, the shock of the day or just pure emotion? “Just listen!” She wanted to scream, but instead she took a gulp of her own newly acquired drink.

“Why else would she have said it?” She wanted to hard to believe it was true, that Leo was innocent. “He’s been rotting in that prison for 13 years, what if she set him up? What if the evidence was planted? Faked? She’s a lunatic!” Gen’s mind was spinning and now a few tears had fallen.

Just listen. At the command, he again resolved to make himself calmer. His immediate reaction to the name 'Kingstreet' spoken in his home was to pack his bags and try for Reykjavík, but what's done was done. Gen was always going to do what she wanted, and he realized now that even if she had consulted him, he wouldn't have been able to deter her.

The Queen G, she needed the truth. She'd looked for it in the absolute worst place, but here they were.

"I'm sorry." He never apologized. He was going to use them all up if he wasn't careful.

"Start over. What did ... she say? You've asked yourself all those questions before and moved on with your life. Why are they haunting you again? What did she do?"

“How can you really move on from that?” Roughly, Gen wiped her cheeks free of tears and once more lifted the ice to the quickly formed bruise. There was too much going on at once, too many thoughts and feelings rushing chaotically through her mind to stop her from thinking clearly. It was as if a 3-year-old Dante had taken a quill and ink and made as many whirring lines as possible with the ink. Only they’d filled her brain rather than crisp clean parchment.
“You just imagine your Agatha.” As instructed, Gen was speaking with a lowered voice, but her emotion was dripping from her voice. “You imagine she is arrested one day and it turns out she’s a murderer. Not only that, but she’s been at it for years. Murder, torture, anything else the Ministry fancy accusing her of.”

“Could you ever really move on from that and accept it? Truly? Without ever questioning it if doubt resurfaced?” No one understood. No one would ever understand. The law said Leo was a monster. She’d was married to the monster. End of story.

“‘The facts speak for themselves,’ she said, ‘I arranged them myself.’” What else could it mean? “I tried to get more out of her but she threw herself off her chair and started screaming for help. She made it look like I’d attacked her. But with what? I’d hardly smuggled my wand in down my knickers, had I? Guard burst in and sent me flying into the wall. He actually thought that’s I’d gone for her!”

Leave it to an editor to inspect his every word and critique it in real time! Was it a defense mechanism? It caused the most suffering look on Barnabas's face. He was most certainly not going to play the pointless game of putting himself in Gen's fashion forward footwear. He wanted to know what had happened.

How do you tell someone in the throes of a maelstrom that you just ... didn't ... care? Alright, he thought, that sounded awful. But he was sane (marginally so) only because he was able to turn the empathy off. Else the daily flood of horrible news would be enough to consume. So whatever Genevieve was feeling, Cuffe had no time for. Callous, sure. Practical? Mightily. That didn't mean he wasn't concerned.

'Blast it, Cuffe. Look sympathetic,' he coached himself. And Genevieve mercifully got back to the point.

His eyes widened.  It was worse than he'd imagined! He'd been picturing smuggled whispers through a locked door, not an unobserved face-to-face meeting.  He held up his hands.

"My dear, she's very clearly gone the rest of the way mad. And even before - I was in the court room both when she was first convicted and then when she was released - every word she says, it can't be believed at face value. Everything is a manipulation. Y-you should forget the whole thing. Obliviate yourself if you have to. She wanted to hurt you. And has she has."

Cuffe drank again, shakily, and his gaze went to a thousand meters. Kingstreet was capable of anything. If she wanted harm, she'd have it, and in the most cold-hearted, personal way.

It was with a sickening realisation that Gen came to be aware that she had deeply misjudged Barnabas Cuffe. She’d actually thought he might help, that he cared for the truth. But instead, he clearly had some unresolved issues with the lunatic witch and he wasn’t willing to see past it. He was narrow minded and clearly too vexed by the situation to see clearly. She was disrupting his party. Someone might hear her.

“I’ve been hurting since my husband was thrown into Azkaban.” Gen said simply, dabbing her eyes with the handkerchief and standing up. She placed her barely touched brandy on the side table and refused to make eye contact with her former boss.

Making a steady pace to the door past him, Gen handed him the ice and shrugged, still not looking up. “You should forget the whole thing. Enjoy your party.” There really was no point in pressing her point. He wouldn’t listen. No one would listen. The world thought that Leo Gamp was a killer and a Death Eater and the only person who knew any different was his wife who’d written a book all about finding out that he was a killer and a Death Eater. She’d hammered the nail in Leo’s cold damp North Sea coffin and she was clearly going to have to live with that.