At her desk, Abby fidgeted with one of her bobble-head pens, wondering at the quiet of the morning. It felt a little too still and too quiet, here with her thoughts and very few files to sort in front of her. She yawned and leaned back in her seat, daydreaming about lunch and her next masterpiece in the coloring book Sulwen had gifted her. Maybe during lunch she'd figure out the best way to introduce Sasha to her parents. It was time. Their relationship was going well. Just a few weekends ago, Abby had attended multiple Halloween parties with her friends and donned multiple costumes and explored not-forbidden forests on Sasha's estate. She felt like she was doing well.

Maybe too well.

She straightened in her seat, a thought prickling at the back of her mind. There was something she kept meaning to do. Abby glanced around the empty waiting area, and shook her head. Gone. The thought was gone.

She peeked inside one of the files in front of her, and flinched at the image. Another dead body. Her day might be quiet, but the department had been working overtime.

Since August, Level Two had been identifying the bodies buried in the woods near the Lilly Lakehouse, making progress by referencing Lori's hidden stash of wands and the records she'd kept of her pentral prison. While informing families that their missing loved ones had been killed, they'd heard a few strange stories. Instances where family thought they saw the missing out and about town, or spotted someone very similar, or ran across a stranger with the same eyes or nose or hair. These sightings had been explained as grief and anxiety, until now.

As the evidence mounted, the Aurors considered whether the collection of pentrals had been used on purpose, by Lori and Lee's criminal associates. By Lori and Lee themselves.

They'd found old photos and letters in the house elf's cupboard suggesting that Lori Lilly had been born around the 1960s to a wealthy but reclusive pureblood family. Abby understood the signs of possession now, and remembered Lori's cold hands, the twitching features, the headaches, the muttering, everything she'd passed off as madness and temper. She'd caught glimpses of something sad and gentle every once in a while. The squib beneath.

Who were Lori and Lee, really?

Whenever she worried about it too much, she started to panic and the pentral took over. Minutes turned to hours of lost time until she woke in the real world again, wondering what she'd said and what she'd done.

Abby stood, the vague thought prickling, then settling into place.

Ask Fauna about Lori's potions records! That was it. Abby hurried out of the waiting area, leaving her 'BRB Riding Unicorns' sign askew. She moved down the halls of Level Two in a cinched blue robe, her red hair parted crookedly, her steps swift and sure.

"Abby!" A trainee passed her. "Did you do something different to your hair? Looks nice!"

Abby paused, offering a smile. "Thanks!"

AskFaunaAboutThePotionsRecords. Records about the potions sold. December. Sasha's dead sister. Have they found out anything new.

She turned a corner into the bullpen.

"Reid, did your mother take you shopping for that formal outfit?" An Auror teased as she stood from her cubicle.

"Yes she did! Official Ministry attire," Abby gathered the blue fabric and posed. "Blue suits me, don't you think?"

Ask Fauna. Potions Records.

There Fauna was, in her cubicle with her lamp on, surrounded by stacks of parchment. Her dark hair had a funny wave in the back.

Ask Fauna...

      Ask her about her running into Moira yesterday, a stronger voice interjected. We haven't heard all the details. Doesn't that sound more fun?

Abby opened her mouth, then shut it, hovering at the entrance of the cubicle. She lifted a hand to her mouth and chewed on a nail. Fauna was one of those wixes who didn't bother to separate home life from office life, covering her cubicle walls in muggle family photos, sketches, and three warnings of 'Don't trust the Ministry chocolate!' On the shelf, an old SAWS pin glinted next to a tiny deer figurine from Fauna's sister. Competing with her woodland calendar, a narrow poster spelled out FLORA in bright flowers and animated bees.

Fauna turned in her squeaky chair and smiled, "I sense hovering."

"Hi! Guilty." Her headache eased, but she had no idea what she wanted to say.

Abby took a seat in the wobbly chair next to the cubicle wall.

"What's going on?" Fauna tilted her head.

"I was going to ask you something, and I have no idea what now. I'm losing my mind," Abby affected a Fauna-like shrug.

"Ok," Fauna bit her lower lip. "This has happened before, I think."

"Oh. Shall I add my lost mind to Pratt's list about your lost sanity?"

Fauna wrinkled her nose. "No, I mean, you've stopped by before, wanting to ask something, and then you don't remember."

"Have I? Because I don't remember."

Fauna blinked worry at her.

"Kidding!"

The Auror's eyebrows furrowed and the corners of her mouth tugged down.

"It's fine if you don't remember," Fauna attempted a smile. Abby nearly smiled back, realizing the reference. "But I'm going to help you, by, uh, listing a bunch of stuff that we've talked about recently."

She straightened in her seat and Abby fought the urge to hand her a notebook.

"Ready?" Fauna adopted a serious face.

"No."

"Is it about this weekend? How we should plan something for all the November birthdays?" Fauna glanced at the calendar behind her with several dates circled, none of them work-related.

"No."

"Is it about how I need to read Game of Thrones, because Abby, I've really tried."

"No."

Fauna's face brightened. "Our anonymous letter to Witch Weekly asking when they're going to release a Bachelorette version of their Bachelor list?"

"No, but my pink glitter pen is ready."

"Is it about the rumor going around that the bosses are going to lock the trainees in a cell for a whole weekend?"

"That's a new one! But no."

Fauna looked actually serious now.

"I hate to even bring it up, but is it work? The lakehouse case? You haven't asked about it in a while."

"Yes! Bingo!"

Fauna shuffled a few papers on her desk, closing and opening folders until she found the file she wanted. She glanced at Abby hesitantly, though they both knew that Abby read whatever passed by Carstair's desk, and that she snooped and eavesdropped into everything else.

Together, they went over what they already knew. The purpose of the pentrals. Lori's stolen identity. The mystery of Lee's identity. How odd it was that seven unicorn blood vials had gone missing around the same time that the unicorn files were stolen from Pilpher.

"And then there's whoever impersonated Cannenta Caldwell at St. Mungo's in October. Cannenta is alive and well and not a pentral, thank Merlin, but to have her identity stolen the same night that dementors show up at the hospital? Also weird."

Abby nodded. It chilled her to think that Lore was out there somewhere, scheming to cause more harm.

She sighed, rubbing at the side of her face.

"Was that what you wanted to know, Abby? I mean, was there something more specific?"

Abby leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees, copying Fauna's posture.

Ask Fauna about...?

A memo flew into the cubicle, unfurling in Solomon Carstairs' handwriting. Fauna straightened and started brushing pastry crumbs off her front, but the memo flew to Abby. Abby stood and Fauna stood, too.

"Are you ok?" Fauna opened a desk drawer. "Do you want an aspirin? Or I can walk with you if you need to talk."

Abby blinked.

"I'm good. Thanks Faun," she shrugged, stepping out with a sidelong glance at the parchment and books. "Happy reading."

As Abby left the bullpen, a pair of worried blue eyes peeked over the cubicle wall, watching Abby's steps fall more firmly on the tile floor. Abby slowed near the waiting area of Carstair's office, her fingers curling against the memo in her hand.

"I'm not familiar with that attire."
            "Sleeping exercise, aha, nothing to concern yourself with."

Yavin Morgenthau was sat in one of the two chairs across the desk, wearing navy pyjamas underneath a red batik robe. He was in velvet slippers. Solomon supposed it was better than being disguised as a hat stand in the Minister's office. He tried his best to ignore level nine's eccentricities - convinced that they're constructed specifically to infuriate him - but sometimes it was difficult not to discuss the elephant in the room.

He handed the other man a tumbler of whiskey and resumed his own seat just as he caught sight of Abby Reid through his open office door and the waiting room beyond.

"Miss Reid!" Sol called out, raising his glass in invitation. "Come in and have a seat. We've something to discuss."

Morgenthau looked over his shoulder at the young witch, light catching on the lens of his spectacles. He was smiling. A knowing, amused smile. Merlin help those Unspeakables and a department head who looks right through them like they were made of glass. He might not be a reassuring figure but Sol wanted Abigail to hear about their progress from the horse's mouth.

More than that... Morgenthau had interviewed many of the possessed victims but he had not yet spoken to Abby, who had the most concrete memories of the notorious siblings. Never mind his bedside manner. They needed more information.

Abby turned her head, ever so slightly, upon hearing her name. Miss Reid. She was Abby. Abby Reid.

She glanced at Carstairs out of the corner of her eye, a whole waiting area away, and even from a distance, from hearing his voice, her fingers tightened around the memo in her hand, crushing the thin parchment against her palm.

As she strode in, she tried to pass off the feeling as normal resentment that every employee felt for every boss everywhere. Except it wasn't. It was stronger, deeper than that. Annoyed, hurt. Abandoned. Always abandoned.

Her fingers jerked when she tossed the memo onto her desk, leaving her 'BRB' sign still askew.

The thing was, she liked Carstairs. Abby slowed, her steps softening. Mr. Carstairs, she corrected herself. He was respectful, polite, a good boss. Maybe a little arrogant, but all department heads were arrogant. That was how department heads inspired their underlings to work, by expecting them to do the job and do it well, to care as much as they did, to plan to succeed.

She paused in the doorway of Carstairs' office. Oh look! A butterfly in red batik. If Kafka's metamorphosis were benign, here was the untold story of a man floating above the masses of the Ministry, smiling beatifically at all the cockroaches who had yet to sprout wings.

"Mr. Morgenthau, hello. Abby Reid," she smiled at Butterfly Man, offering a hand to shake.

She'd kept meaning to meet him since Virgil had suggested it in October, and since her sister had survived the lift from hell to reach Level Nine. Aileen had described him as "a tad odd, but knowledgeable," which coming from Aileen was the highest praise.

Now it was November and here he was, on Level Two in his sleepwear. She glanced at her boss. Mr. Carstairs hadn't asked for tea, or asked her to take notes for a meeting. Whatever this was had to do with her.

"I left my slippers at home, hope that's alright," Abby affected amusement to hide her nerves as she took the seat closest to the door, giving a pointed glance at her silver flats as she crossed her legs. A star pattern glinted on her shoes. It felt like one of the few things that still belonged to her, compared to her mother-approved blue formal robe, and her red hair, parted so plainly down the middle.

            "Mr. Morgenthau, hello. Abby Reid," a hand was offered.

He took it and smiled back at her, a single eyebrow arched over the rim of his dark spectacles. "Yavin, please. I'm, hm, I'm familiar with your work." The allusion was to the mischief she had caused last month with the help of his protege and level nine's potions. The pair were like oil and fire; Virgil was now categorically banned from the Love Chamber for the rest of the year.

"It's, that is, it's trickier to run after the likes of Mr. Carstairs here if you're, hah, wearing slippers." Yavin glanced at shiny shoes and then looked at Solomon - the other wizard was less interested in trying to keep the mood light, though he cracked a smile.

            "I invited Mr. Morgnethau because we may have developed a solution to your... friend," Sol informed.

Yavin blinked slowly and thoughtfully at that choice of word. Abigail Reid was working on level two with a pentral inside of her; she was a fully functioning person in the same way that her sister was but Virgil had indicated that there was something menacing about the 'Flower Girl' in Abby's head.

"It's a work in progress," he added, turning his attention back to her. "What I, ah, would like to do is to, with your permission, step inside your head. Examine your, hah, your circumstances. You see, if we, God willing, if we succeed then we won't have another chance to find out what your, um, your pentral knows."

The implication was that removing Abby's pentral in the near future would be an irreversible process. They wouldn't be able to contract anything past the veil in the Death Chamber. Yavin avoided saying this explicitly: he didn't want to panic the other entity inside her.

A solution.

The pentral within grew very quiet.

Abby swallowed, no longer making butterfly comparisons in her head. All of her mirth and her mild worry that Yavin knew that she'd been involved with the love potions, all of that faded to the very back of her mind.

Without much preamble, he asked if he could step inside her head. Abby had worked with Healers, she was used to Virgil, and she was aware that Aileen of all people had allowed Yavin to look into her head. Yet she drew back in her seat, struggling with surprise, alarm. Excitement - she could be herself again sometime soon.

"That's great news," Abby pasted on a smile, trying very hard to be positive. Professional. "You'll be helping a lot of people. Pentrals, people." She waved a hand in the air.

Would he? What did he mean, exactly, by success?

Abby looked at her boss, searching for some reassurance in his slight smile. He had a drink in his hand. He must need it.

"The thing is, I'm not sure she knows much."

Her smile flickered, hearing the lie as soon as she said it. Why had she said it? Her pentral knew something. They wanted to find out what she knew as they continued working on a... solution. She hadn't faced Level Nine, so Yavin had decided to come up to Level Two, because she hadn't been able to take the steps herself, because her pentral was hiding something. She knew something.

"Or rather, I doubt she'll tell us much."

Her words came slower than usual. It took concentration to think them, then to order them, then to speak them, through the walls that the pentral was building in their mind.

Solomon had been made to sign a confidentiality agreement before he was told about the solution to their pentral problem. The idea of a 'death room' had initially confused him but Morgenthau's description had been thorough - insomuch that Sol himself had no desire at all to see this place where the barrier between life and death was dangerously frail. He had anticipated his own demise often enough. To be in the vicinity of it...

            "Or rather, I doubt she'll tell us much."

There was a strange reluctance in Abigail's voice. He looked up from examining the bottom of his whisky glass, eyeing her carefully. Yavin had subtly shifted his chair so that he was facing the girl more directly.

"We'll take what we can--" Solomon began but the other wizard cut in, voice soft.

            "I can separate her, ah, from you. Inside. It won't be comfortable, it might even be painful." Morgenthau's expression had gone neutral and serious, uncharacteristically so. "Just for a few minutes. Put her in a, hm. In a box, so she can't make it.... hard for you. To talk."

Anger. That was the look. Sol glanced between him and Abby, uncertain of what had suddenly provoked the head of level nine. "I don't see why any pain ought to be inflicted," he remarked, spurned by a vaguely paternal feeling for the poor squib. "Am I missing something?"

Yavin understood now, why Virgil was concerned. He did not have to be in the girl's head to see that she was struggling with her pentral - he had seen it in other victims, to varying extents. But this pentral had important information and she was using somebody else's autonomy to protect herself against divulging it. Somebody else's mind.

Not a developed, experienced mind like that of Aileen Reid. A young one. A traumatised one.

            "Am I missing something?" Carstairs sounded uncomfortable. Yavin didn't glance at him but he made a dismissive gesture.

He didn't want to look away from his subject.

"Abby. If your friend," Yav took the word up with care, "doesn't want to come out and, hah, and play..." the old wizard shrugged, depositing his glass on the desk. He hadn't really drank any of the whisky Solomon had poured for him. "There are other methods. I am not, hm, not above using them."

There were, in fact, multiple methods. None of them to be used by anybody besides a master Legilimens. Yavin had his principles but he gave no quarter to any entity that endangered a child; Abby looked like she was a child, not long ago.

If you stop her from talking again, I'll put you in a nasty little box, he spoke into her head - his mental voice carried none of the usual hesitations, and I'm not as nice as the boy in blue pyjamas.

M - for language

---

A box. A box? Had he just said a box? No, she couldn't. Fight or run. Fight or run. Her hands curled into fists. She wanted to fight. She wanted to scream and shout in his face. But she had no wand, and she wouldn't make it if she ran. The lifts were too far.

She took a quick glance behind her at the door. She wished Fauna were here. She wished Fauna had walked her right to Carstairs' office and then sat down and spoke reason to these men. She glanced at Carstairs next, hearing the concern in his voice. She glanced at Yavin, then at the door, then at Carstairs, then around the room. No wand. Lifts too far. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing but the threat of a box that had six walls and four corners and felt and functioned like a frame hung on a stone wall in a room that she hadn't once been able to leave until... until Abby had freed her.

"I... don't know?" Abby was saying. She was responding, belatedly, to the suggestion that they put the pentral in a box for a few minutes.

And now, and now, he was talking about using other methods. Why? She did what she had to do to protect herself - her - them -

If you stop her from talking again, I'll put you in a nasty little box...

The box. Again? Fuck. You!

Fight or run or freeze.

The girl in the chair froze, her hands limp on her lap, her gaze blank. Meanwhile, Abby fled. Abby opened a door in her mind, and fled into the woods, an enchanted wood, a wood completely different from The Woods surrounding the lakehouse. Abby left the door open behind her, for Yavin.

Iona remained at the forefront of their mind, looking through Abby's eyes, breathing Abby's breath. She kept her gaze unfocused, her limbs still. Don't look at me, don't notice me, I'm not here. Her heart went thump, thump, thump, like the rhythm of those clocks in that house, the footsteps of the siblings in that house, the years slipping away in that house, thump thump thump, the sound echoed in her - their - her head.

            The box. Again? Fuck. You!

He felt a wave of anger and fear, emotions so closely entwined that Yavin sat a little straighter in his seat. His focus was now entirely on Abigail's mind - observing first the pentral's outburst and then, to his frustration, the squib's instinctive response to flee from her own conscious existence. Was that the only way she could be alone and apart from the entity?

"The pentral is minding the shop," he said in a careful voice, glancing at Solomon just long enough to convey his intention. "I'm going after Abby so, hm, so call me if you need me. I can still hear you."

And in the eye of his mind, he had come into the thick of a magical forest. The mindscape created as a means of escaping; in some ways a natural consequence of being trapped in the same moment of meeting at the Lake House. A kind of limbo for both souls.

Yavin appeared much like his corporeal self, cutting through the wood in his colourful robe and looking almost certainly misplaced in such surroundings. Abby! he sent his voice throughout the mindscape, Abby Reid! It's only me, you can come out. She won't follow.

He had locked the door behind me: a special kind of mental trap, a door that did nothing but lead to another series of doors, each one needing to be unlocked and exhausting the mind that tried. Yavin had promised his pupil that he would be good to the young woman. No such promise was made pertaining to the pentral.

What in Merlin's bloody name was going on?

Solomon abandoned his drink altogether when the other man dismissed his first question. There was something the matter, something he couldn't see on account of a conversation between minds. Yavin had sensed something; maybe the pentral was trying to harm Abigail? It sounded like that.

Either way, a strange stillness suddenly came over her. Sol stared, brow wrinkling as he leaned forward against his desk.

           
Minding the...? So that was it. They were split up, two rabbits running in opposite directions and Yavin had gone chasing after one; down a path that only a few could follow. Which left the interviewing up to him. Solomon looked back at Abby now, hesitating. This girl was his personal assistant.

It seemed bizarre to address her as anything else and yet he knew that he wouldn't be speaking to that version of her now.

"Hello?" he tried, smiling very slightly. "Do  you have a name? You probably know this, but I am Solomon Carstairs. Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. Will you speak with me?"

Abby ran down a path of glimmering cobblestones, which gleamed silver in the sunlight. The stones shifted as she ran, revealing stretches of a dirt road, patches of yellow bricks, and faded mosaic tiles that could be from Greece, or Egypt, or ancient Persia, depending on where she stepped.

The trees towered around the path like sentinels covered in moss, forming their own walls. Flowers sprouted between the twisted roots. The path in the enchanted forest was just one path of many. A maze that she'd formed around her. The sky above her shifted in blues and purples and pinks, never gray. Never stormy.

It was quiet here, and the wind wound through the maze gently, like a summer breeze. A voice sounded. Abby remembered why she'd been running. It took her a moment to connect the voice to the man who spoke in Ah's and Hah's.

Though her heart - her head - still pounded, she stopped running. Virgil knew him. Virgil trusted him. He must be a good person. People were good or they were bad.

Abby waited in the middle of the path, looking just like herself. Short and slight. Her eyes were a warm brown, very similar to what they looked like in life. She had a pert nose and a mouth that smiled easily. She wore a pair of riding trousers and a white tunic top. Her curly blond hair was pulled back into a loose braid.

Yavin appeared in his patterned robe. She glanced at his slippers flopping as he walked, but she didn't smile.

"You and her," she paused, feeling breathless. The sound of her own voice annoyed her. That couldn't be her, still afraid of the world.

"You scared me."

Even in her mind, she hesitated to say it. What had just happened in there? It had escalated so quickly. The pentral had been wrong to control her, but Abby didn't like the idea of boxes either. Boxes were houses, and houses kept people like her in.

---

Iona let out the breath she'd been holding. Yavin was gone. He was there, somewhere in their mind, and he still sat in the chair opposite her in that colorful robe, but she'd stopped building the walls and he hadn't put her into a box. Yet. She took another breath. She fought the urge to give the robe a good kick.

Carstairs was talking. It took her a moment to realize he was talking to her. She sat very still, trying to reconcile this older, polite version of him with the young man in Auror robes, and the arrogant, cheeky Gryffindor boy who'd taken up so much space in the halls. People didn't really change though, did they? She hadn't. She felt stuck in time.

She glanced in his direction. His desk with the whiskey glass and the papers.

"Carstairs," she said after a long pause, her mouth dry, her voice hoarse.

"What do you mean," she paused, at the same moment Abby paused in their mind. "when you say you've developed a solution?"

Her voice sounded flatter than Abby's.  Why was this the only chance to know what she knew? She feared the answer. She didn't expect an answer, but she had to ask.

This was most definitely not Abigail Reid. There was something almost... familiar about the way she spoke, although he wondered if this was simply because he had caught traces of the pentral in his assistant's behaviour over the weeks. Solomon leaned back in his chair and watched her carefully as she spoke.

            "...when you say you've developed a solution?"

So she wanted to know her fate. His gaze flicked over to Yavin - who looked quite relaxed in posture in spite of the earlier tone - and then back to the girl. It wasn't level two who'd developed the bloody solution.

"From what I understand," he began slowly, hoping to buy time for Morgenthau to speak with Abby, "the solution will allow you to move on. In a natural and dignified manner."

If either of those things meant anything to a soul with no body. It really was a shame that they couldn't administer a potion or charm to solve the issue; each victim and pentral had different emotional reactions to this news. They were as varied as people always are, no two exactly alike. Solomon reached for his whisky again.

There was a lot of fluff in this head. It swarmed and teemed, borders shifting to merge with one another as the one forest contained multitudes in itself: the vistas of memories integrating to form an ever-shifting mindscape. This was the sign of an unhealthy mind, an undisciplined one. He couldn't blame her, given the circumstances.

When Abby did finally wait to speak, she did not look as she had in the corporeal world. Yavin stood with his hands behind his back - he breathed in the air to taste the strange texture of a head inhabited by two souls. Like breathing dust.

            "You scared me."

"I apologise," he bowed slightly, sensing the fear emanating from her. "I had to separate you two, willingly or unwillingly. It was not you that I would have placed in a box. Nor would it have been for very long."

The old wizard smiled. His countenance was soft and humorous but it was also the face of a practical man, a man who did not think it was kind to sugarcoat truths.

"We can talk here," Yavin gestured around them, "and she won't hear us. I'm making sure of it. Will you tell me how you feel right now, Abby? Take your time. Consider the state of your emotions when away from the pentral."

Abby nodded, after a moment. He spoke calmly, kindly. Didn't get offended at her fear. She wanted to believe him.

Time. She had time to consider things, without the pentral overhearing. Abby glanced around them. No, she didn't have time.

"Let's walk and talk," she offered in a chipper voice. Her mouth curled up at the corners, an echo of the smile she used in life.

"I am..." She flitted, light on her feet, stepping over the cracks in the road.

"I am fine, living like this. Sharing with her is easy. I'm totally aware of what I'm doing, and I always remember what she's doing, and we don't ever keep secrets from each other, and I don't dream her dreams and she doesn't see mine."

Her smile twitched. It wasn't sarcasm in her voice, and it wasn't denial. It was survival. She glanced on either side of them as shadows formed behind the trees, twisting into dark threads that carried dark thoughts. Abby walked faster.

"I can rest any time I want. I can stop running any time I want. Watch me."

She leaped over a hole in the pavement gracefully enough, but faltered slightly on the other side. Someone steadied her. A thought of Raine. Abby looked behind them, where trees swallowed the path they'd hurried down, and someone stood between the trees and her - a thought of her sister - while the dark threads stretched past the branches. They carried the smell of rot and frayed at the edges like ragged cloaks.

"I'm not tired, Yavin."

Abby paused to catch her breath, inhaling the dust in the air. Ahead, several paths opened up, splitting between the trees.

"I've not gotten lost. Not once."

Yes, she had. More than once. But someone always drew her back home. Her family, her friends, her boyfriend, her boss. Even Flower Girl. Even herself.

---

Move on. In a natural and dignified... well shit.

"Translation," she drawled in that snotty voice she'd used whenever the professors had decided it was a good idea to combine the upper and lower years. Translation! She'd piped up, and the professors had sighed, but it wasn't to do with them, it was all to do with annoying the boys and the Gryffindors and the Slytherins and anyone who thought they ruled the corridors of the castle.

"They are going to kill me." Again. "Or they are going to put me in a box." Again. "And you," she breathed in, the air as dry as dust. "You are going to let them."

Every word had a little punch, a little kick to it, delivered in a flat, bitter tone. She met his eyes, glaring with all the accusation and anger she could throw. His fault. She couldn't kick Yavin, and she couldn't hear Abby in her head, and here was Carstairs, lying to her. A dignified death? He was an Auror. He knew the truth about death.

Her gaze flicked to the whiskey glass he hid behind. Her hand on the armrest twitched.

It did not bode well for them that she began on a defensive note. Yavin followed the girl with ease, feet sliding over the cracks in the road as if though an invisible barrier had smoothed the gaps together for that very purpose. He held his hands behind his back as they spoke, and watched her answer questions that had not been asked.

            "I can rest any time I want. I can stop running any time I want. Watch me."

She made it. Barely. Maybe she could stop - but did she want to? Was something compelling her not to? He was suddenly relieved that Virgil hadn't asked to come help. The younger wizard would have been unable to repress his opinion, the same one Yavin was now developing.

Abigail and her pentral had merged together so well that even when they were separate, Abby did not have a strong sense of self. "But you do understand that this isn't an equilibrium?" he asked softly, lingering at the crossroads - careful not to get between her and the many paths ahead.

"Neither of you can live like this for very long." Yavin gestured at their surroundings, smiling wryly at the squib. "Even if the both of you wanted to, it isn't feasible. Not without... not without unicorn blood, for example."

He understood that she liked those magical beasts and held an aversion to what had been done to the ones at the lakehouse. Yavin watched carefully for a reaction, for a trace of something distinctly her.