*Bang bang bang!!*

The sound was distant, not quite reaching her conscious. Gen frowned, burying her head under the covers against a thick chest. But the banging continued and she started to stir, opened her eyes and glancing across at Kurby. Both wixes looked suitably confused and, by the look crossing Kurby’s face, he wasn’t getting up to answer the door. This was Gen’s flat. This was her eager visitor.
“If I get murdered…” The witch muttered with a scowl at her bed mate. She untangled herself from the sheets and climbed out of bed, grabbing her dressing gown. “They’ve come back for the other shoe and you’re sending me to the door. Shit bodyguard you are, Bagnold.” Before he had a chance to inform her that whoever had stolen the first shoe wasn’t about to knock, Gen snatched up her wand and left the bedroom. Barefoot, she crossed the open plan living space, wrapping the gown tightly as she went. Bruce, her 20-year-old grey cat was stalking lazily beside her, weaving between her legs. It wouldn’t be strong enough to say that Genevieve wasn’t a morning person. She hated mornings. She was a night owl. Everything interesting happened at night. Mornings were unpleasant and full of coffee and hangover cures. She supposed, at least, it was fortunate that this morning there was no hangover. Just a giant headache.

The banging continued up until, with a twist of her wand, the locks clicked out of place and the door was pulled open. The already dark expression typical of the morning darkened further as Gen’s eyes swept over the mass of crimson robes adorning Auror Zora Roh and her younger minions. They were all holding a coffee.

“¡Puta madre! I don’t remember agreeing to host a crimson breakfast.” Dark eyes shot up to meet Roh’s gaze and she raised her dark eyebrows. “It takes 3 aurors to return a shoe?” No wonder Level 2 seemed to solve jack shit.

Zora Roh looked up and down the home-owner with an arched eyebrow. Well, good morning. Even in the early hours home alone, 'Queen G' was at her maximum. If it was possible, she looked even more pissed off than last week.

Zora hid a smug grin behind her sunglasses a sip of her coffee, and unfurled a long scroll. It flip-flip-flipped down to the floor where at the very bottom was a large purple wax seal with a great big W. It was, of course, a search warrant.

Genevieve Garcia-Gamp wasn't a suspect, after all, just a pain in the arse. I mean, someone nicked her shoe, right? Not worth the dramatics of last week's questions[1], but well worth doggedly following up. Roh had a few other cauldrons on the fire, but this glitzy shoe and its mistress was their best first lead to solving poor Shahidi's mysterious death.

"Good morning, Mrs. Gamp. This is Almasy and Blake. Apologies for the hour, but this shouldn't take long."

Unless Genevieve interfered. Sssssssip.

They'd come prepared though - Blake was nearly ready to be an Auror on her own, and Raine Almasy was the go-to among the Trainees for being impossible to intimidate. That, and coffees.

1.	26 Nov - What Queen Doesn't Wear Glitter?

Of course, Roh was smirking; she looked like a smug little Slytherin who’d just grassed Gen up to their professor. Gen had Roh pegged for one of those snakey little brats so far up their professor’s arse that they couldn’t see daylight. Now, this brat turned bigger red robed brat was clearly enjoying the situation far too much.

Queen G, with her arms now crossed over her chest and wand lowered, eyed her newest nemesis carefully as the auror unwound the scroll and let it fall to the floor. She’d been right, it was never just a few questions. Not with Gen. She was forever going to be targeted. Now, a few questions had turned into an official scroll probably announcing their legal right to enter and search her property for any evidence.

Dark eyes now took a moment to scan to aurors Blake and Almasy. Last time she’d seen the young redhead, Gen had been quite convinced Carstairs had sent her as a present. How wonderfully ironic it had been for her to come to WW HQ when her aunt’s lover was there screaming about their illicit secret love child. Now, Gen cursed anything in crimson robes. She knew that there was, however, little point in fighting the inevitable. She’d been dragged through hellfire last time she’d had any sort of collision with the aurors, a repeat hopefully wasn’t on the cards this morning or this month.

“Am I going to need my lawyer, Auror?” Kurby was still in the bedroom. She’d told him very little about any of her recent exploits. He knew about the shoe, of course. But she’d told him it must have been an obsessive fan. He’d insisted on more security in the flat, Gen hadn’t argued. She’d been glad, just as normal, that he’d not pried. For once in her life, Gen had wanted to keep her private business private. It appeared that she was destined to forever share every scrap of her personal life with anyone interested. “Your timing needs work.”

"That's up to you," Zora began when the crack of a nearby Apparition took her attention. Someone was hastily climbing the stairs and who should appear but Talisha Crowe. She looked like she'd dressed quickly and was unused to the height of her heels, but her hair looked lovely and she had a smile on her face.

"It's all about timing," Talisha said. "Hullos, Aurors. Oh, Almasy and Blake! Nice to see you again."

Talisha had that way of talking that made it hard to know if she was being genuine or snippy. She fumbled with her briefcase while simotaneiously trying to get a hold of the warrant.

"Morning, honey mine," she said to Genevieve. "Never fear, Talisha's on the job. Put the kettle on, this could take awhile."

Of all the lawyers Zora might have expected to show up on Genevieve Garcia-Gamp's behalf it was not the odd-ball Talisha Crowe who always seemed to be in the middle of a small-scale disaster. She'd expected someone in pin stripes with winged eyeliner.

"No, it really shouldn't," Zora said. "Not if Mrs. Garcia-Gamp stays out of the way."

Talisha threw her head back and laughed, laid a hand on Genevieve's shoulder (still laughing) and brushed past her into the home.

Zora pulled her sunglasses down and turned to glance at Almasy and Blake.

Raine wasn't sure what was going on - she knew the facts, obviously, she just wasn't sure how everything was going to piece together in the end. But that's why she was here: to learn. And it was a pleasure to learn by watching Auror Roh bypass useless niceties at Queen G's very threshold. Admittedly, she was also here because she enjoyed annoying the editor.

"Um, good morning," she watched Talisha Crowe move past them to enter the flat. "I think."

Figaro's bloody lawyer? Really? She drank her coffee, glancing at Fauna with a look - as if to say, are you seeing this too? One run-in with Crowe was more than enough for the rest of the year. Getting used to lawyers being on the other side was going to take a while.

"Are we coming in or is she going to drop some legal owl shit on us first?" Raine looked from Genevieve to Zora, as if though she was hoping they could come up with an answer between the two of them. Why was Queen G being so cagey? She probably had some shady things in her possession.

Everyone in the wizarding world had shady things in their possession. Or maybe Raine needed to start moving in different circles.

The arrival of Talisha Crowe, the rather overworked yet seemingly adequately efficient lawyer whom Gen had taken on the same day as Roh’s visit, signalled that she did in fact need an lawyer. The scroll falling to the floor signalled that this was far more official than a informal sit down in her office downstairs. She’d denied them a search of her flat on the grounds of her privacy being needlessly invaded. The Ministry of Magic, for all the judgements from them on her publication invading the privacy of citizens, seemed to care little for the privacy of their law-abiding citizens.

Crowe made a tea order as she swept into the flat and Gen, arms crossed over her stomach, frowned deeply. With resignation and reluctance, the editor stepped back from the door and moved further into the living space of her top floor flat.

The apartment was neat and rather modern in terms of wizarding style. Tastefully decorated with creams and splashes of reds and deep oranges throughout. The space was open and bright, large windows offering a view down onto Diagon Alley. The living room, dining room and kitchen were all simply divided by carefully placed furniture. This wasn’t Queen G’s flat; it was the home of a mother and her 12-year-old son. This son ‘s face was dotted around the room in various picture frames, some with Gen accompanying him. One of her hugging him tightly, another with a snowball being thrown straight at her face, Dante proudly stood in front of the fireplace in his new Hogwarts uniform, Gen holding a baby and beaming down at him like he was the only thing that mattered. There were no wedding pictures or any sign that Gen was married. There were no witch weekly magazines in here, no copies of Gen’s book. But there was a wall to wall bookcase with all sorts of titles, wizarding and muggle. Fiction and non-fiction.

Now her sanctuary was being invaded by careless aurors and she’d not even tackled the naked man in the bedroom.

A quick flick of her wand and the kettle danced under the tap, filling itself up.  2 cups floated down from the shelf and Gen frowned in thought. Would the naked man in the bedroom be staying for coffee this morning or would their company prove enough for him to leave and never return?

“Perhaps you can spare a moment for me to get dressed, aurors? Unless you get a kick out of harassing half naked civilians?”

Fauna shared a bemused glance with Raine and offered a slight, but friendly smile to Talisha Crowe who brought some life into the modern, classy flat. Though Fauna had expected to find glitz and glitter, Witch Weekly covers framed on the walls, and a dressing room in the living room, she was not surprised by the number of books on the shelves. It fit with Genevieve Garcia-Gamp's witty, snippy retorts. She glanced over the family photos. No Gamps here, just the son of one. The old cat had left more of a mark, slinking silently away at their entrance.

She shifted a bit from foot to foot, hoping her boots hadn't dragged in anything from outside. She felt like an intruder, but if the missing shoe led them to solving Shahidi's murder, then they had reason to be here.

As Garcia-Gamp frowned at the two teacups she'd levitated out of the cupboard, Fauna sipped at her coffee. A dash of sugar, lots of cream.
 
"Um, of course," she politely averted her gaze. She could blame the tinge of pink in her cheeks to the cold outside and the warmth of the coffee. That was all!

"We'll just get started out here and go over any paperwork with Ms. Crowe," she suggested, glancing at Auror Roh. Garcia-Gamp was not a suspect. If she wanted to 'get in the way', she should hurry out.

In response to Almasy asking if they were going to tary in the stairwell all day, Crowe and Garcia-Gamp made way from the door and that was enough cooperation that Zora led her trainees through. She walked into the space, absently handing the lawyer the long warrant.

She summarized. "Black will go over it with you. We're only here to find anything that would lead us to understand how one of Mrs. Garcia-Gamp's shoes ended up in a remote homicide scene in York."

This really didn't need to be this difficult. She turned her attention to Raine Almasy.

"Almasy, check all possible entrances to the flat - windows, doors, floo - and look for any sign someone's been tampering, yeah? We'll give Mrs. Garcia-Gamp a moment to make herself decent then I'll check the bedroom."

The bedroom where Zora would check first for the other shoe, and in the same manner she'd assigned Raine, do a thorough survey of any sign of an intruder. The sticky bit was that last Zora spoke with Genevieve, she couldn't remember when it could have been taken.

"Ta, my love," Talisha said to Genevieve who was kind enough to get the tea going.

And, "ta, my love," Talisha then said to Auror Roh who had handed over the long legal document, full of teeny tiny text.

She laid it out on a table and began tracing her finger down it, reading it with an inhuman rapidity, even speaking at the same time.

"Genny, why don't you go cover your jennys and bits. I'll keep an eye on this lot. Worry not, worry not."

Her full attention paid back on the warrant, she confirmed the limitations of the search. It was an unusual situation! The search was compulsary, but her client was not suspected of wrong-doing. But that didn't mean that the Aurors had to ignore anything incriminating if they did find it while keeping in bounds. Or did it? It would certainly be simpler to keep the Aurors in-bounds.

She turned to Auror Blake, crossed her arms and regarded the warrant like a piece of modern art.

"Look at that beast, eh? How's anyone supposed to get any work down. Imagine."

Did the young auror blush and look away. Gen would have rolled her eyes had she not been so irked by the intrusion and invasion of her privacy. It was with a startling vividness that this experience already reminded her of 13 years previously when the aurors had barged in in a much more aggressive manner to search her and Leo’s small Knockturn Alley flat.  She’d been in the very early stages of pregnancy with Dante at the time and had hurled all over an overeager hitwizard barring her from entering the bathroom. The whole ordeal had been humiliating and harrowing and it appeared that with Roh’s early morning wake up, she wished to go for round 2 over a decade post round 1.

At the mention of ‘Jennys and bits’, irritated, Gen decided that she would be hiring a new lawyer after this torment. She bit her tongue for now, and crossed the living room to the bedroom.

Inside, Gen came face to face with a deeply irritated looking Kurby. Kurby, of course, always looked some sort of irritated. Even in his sleep, Gen could have sworn that he frowned. But this wasn’t ‘someone has put salt on my cornflakes’ irritated; this was ‘someone ran over my cat and hung it from a lampost’ irritated. Big difference.

“It turns out they found my missing shoe. Three aurors it takes to tell me the news. Mystery over…” Gen started before frowning. She wanted to cry. She wasn’t going to. But she wanted to. Cuffe had been right. She was a fool and she’d &@*#^* up.

To stop the tears of realisation and fear from appearing, Gen rushed past Kurby and opened her wardrobe to pull out a pair of jeans and a t-shirt.
“I’m guessing you’ve figured there’s an anti-apparation charm on the building?” She muttered, not at all happy about it either right now.

This morning had quickly devolved into something close to Kurby's worst nightmare.

Leaning against the wall, his head tilted back to rest heavily against it, he gave Genevieve the sourest look he could possibly muster as she swept into the bedroom.  The werewolf hunter had silently pulled on clothes in the time since she had left to answer the door, but his expression left no doubt that he was Not Happy about the way that the morning had started.  There were few things that her considered worse than having his private life plastered all over the front page.  Getting questioned by the smug Aurors of Level Two about his personal relationships was probably one of them.

Part of him wanted to snarl at the witch, to snap at her in frustration as she flounced over to her wardrobe to get dressed. Aurors wouldn't come all this way about a missing shoe.  They also wouldn't show up with a warrant and demand to search Gen's house because her one of her personal belongings had gone missing. Clearly, there was some part of the story that the editor hadn't bothered to relay to him.  Now, because he'd been stupid enough to take her at her word and not dig any deeper, he was stuck dealing with the consequences.

Frustrated, Kurby dragged his fingers through his hair, and then shot an unhappy look at the door.  He goddamned well knew there was an anti-apparition jinx after helping Gen strengthen her wards.  While she'd been out swearing at her guests, he'd half-considered blasting a hole in the side of the building and jumping out of it so that he could apparate away.

But that wouldn't solve his problem.  Kurby knew that his options were limited.  Either he could stay here skulking and wait to be discovered or hope by some miracle of Merlin that the Aurors didn't enter Gen's bedroom, or he could escalate this on his own goddamned terms.

Rolling his eyes at Gen's back, he opened the bedroom door and strode out into the main room of the flat.

The situation could have been worse -- having to deal with Pratt and the endless hounding that was sure to result came to mind -- but it was also Not Great.  Genevieve's early morning visitors consisted of Zora Roh, hotshot extraordinaire; that redheaded Almasy kid who was probably in the Corps as Carstairs' pet project; some disheveled-looking witch balancing precariously on too-high heels, who must be Gen's erstwhile lawyer; and...Blake.

Great.  Kurby wasn't sure if he was relieved to see someone from Level Two who at least didn't have an automatic chip on her shoulder, or if the wide-eyed trainee's presence somehow made this entire situation even more embarrassing.

He crossed his arms defensively against his chest.

"What the hell is going on?" he demanded, looking from Roh to (unhappily) Blake and then back at the full Auror again.  They'd shown up with coffee?  How the hell had Gen peeved them off this time, that they'd felt the need to bang on her door so early and rub it in?

           "Almasy, check all possible entrances to the flat....We'll give Mrs. Garcia-Gamp a moment... then I'll check the bedroom."

She took a sip of coffee and put it down, to begin. The pessimist in her was 110% certain doing that would only give Queen G a chance to hide anything illegal that might be in the flat - but it would be rude to do anything else, and Roh was good at balancing procedure with manners. As good as you can be when you have a warrant anyway.

Raine twirled her wand, bored, and started examining the entrances and walls and windows. She trailed the walls with her free hand while she quietly cast the odd charm to double check for any enchantments or tampering.

"So far so good!" she called back to Zora as she finished covering the living room. And then she paused, taking a few steps back to stare at a blank space in the wall: no photographs or paintings. Not even smudgy prints, which you would expect from the kind of child Queen G would raise.

Maybe...

"Revelio!" Raine enunciated in a low voice, blue light falling across the wall. A cupboard door shimmered into existence and she smiled smugly, flicking her wand to open it. As she did so, the redhead looked over her shoulder to call for the Auror-in-Charge.

            "What the hell is going on?"

There was something about the angry tone of men's voices that set her on edge.  That wasn't an effective greeting! She narrowed her gaze across the corridor, recognising Kurby Bagnold from level four. He was talking to the others. Clearly Queen G liked her wizards angry and morally questionable.

Click.

The cupboard door unlatched and swung open. Raine yelled in surprise, stepping back as a pile of books hit the floor. "Godric's socks!" she exclaimed testily and stared at the rest of the books in the cupboard. There must have been hundreds. All of them were Queen G's book.

"Not going to lie," Raine recovered quickly and picked up one of the copies. "I didn't think she was this narcissistic."

Fauna stood near the kitchen table and blinked at the lawyer in surprise as Crowe read the warrant at an impossible speed, her finger following not words or lines, but whole paragraphs. She glanced at the lawyer's face, trying to figure her out. What a hasty person! Crowe had been thorough with Figaro's transcript earlier that month, hadn't she? Thorough and extremely quick. Fauna had hardly had time to regret her 'good night' farewell to Figaro before the lawyer had ducked her head out of the conference room and said they were ready. It only took her minutes to reach the bottom of the scroll.

"Right," she replied in a soft, bemused tone, looking at Crowe with frank curiosity. Was it a spell? A lawyer-spell? Her gaze drifted to the woman's eye and then more politely settled on her face. With so much going on, she didn't want Roh to overhear her asking questions about fast reading skills. Best to stick to the basics.

"Do you have any questions, or anything you need to review with your client?" The words barely left her mouth when someone familiar burst out of the bedroom. Fauna's hand went to her hip, then relaxed. It was just Kurby Bagnold.

Bagnold?

Fauna returned his miserable stare with a wide-eyed look. She glanced at the bedroom door, then at Bagnold. She glanced at Bagnold, then at the bedroom door. A blush crept up her face as it all sank in. Ugh! She really did not want to think about any jennys or bits or - or other bits! No Bagnold bits!

Raine shouted, and Fauna took a step away from the table to glance into the living room, mildly relieved at the sight of the books and too flummoxed by the situation to wonder why there were so many books hidden in the wall. She did wonder if she could get away with scurrying over there and pretending interest in the discovery, or if she might hide behind the huge warrant scroll, but she also realized that she was only months away from becoming an Auror, and she would not be defeated by awkwardness. Not today.

"Good morning," Fauna managed. She hoped Raine had not heard that.

"We have a warrant to search the flat, Bagnold. It shouldn't take long," she gestured at the parchment on the table and glanced at the lawyer. It shouldn't take long, but it probably would.

"Uh," Fauna hesitated. "There's tea?" She gave a nod to the kettle on the stove, and met Bagnold's eyes again. Very slowly and very self-consciously, Fauna raised the to-go cup to her mouth and took a sip of her coffee. Still warm!

There wasn't much that surprised Zora Roh nowadays, but she was hit with a stunning one-two-hex. The chic but modest flat got suddenly more crowded with the arrival of Kurby Bagnold emerging like a hastily awoke old tomcat from Genevieve's chambers.

Roh knew Bagnold only professionally and in passing. He had a reputation as being grimly effective. He did not however have a reputation as being a fan of Witch Weekly. She made eye contact with Genevieve as if to say, 'him? Really?' Fauna Blake was handling his demand for an explanation fine enough, and Raine had found something but Zora did take a moment to advise Kurby.

"Investigating a break-in related to a killing. We'll, heh, need to speak with you too, seems like." She couldn't hide a small eyeroll before joining Raine Almasy at the hidden cupboard.

Zora slipped one of the books off the shelf and opened it up. Scrawled on every page in bright blood-red the word LIAR.[1] She held it up to Genevieve and her lawyer, who was hustling over.

"Are they all like this? What's the story here?"

1.	[5th November] What Happened to Flowers?

No lawyer like to be caught off-guard and certainly never in front of the law. 'Surprises are for cakes and pregnancies,' she'd said to one of her clients. 'Not for legal boggle.' Talisha eyes went wide and she joined in all the lookings-back-and-forth when - was that the werewolf hunter - appeared. She set her jaw once more, mentally cataloging the implications for Gen's legal situation and they were few.

She was far more interested in Almasy finding some kind of literary stash. Or was it a shrine? Oh Merlin. As the Aurors began to snoop, Talisha joined them ready to make sure the Aurors weren't being over-zealous, as much as one could. With Aurors.

"You don't have to answer that, G love," she called.

She smiled in an aggressively friendly way and budged her way in to have a look at another of the many copies of the book.

Talisha leafed through it. Sure enough. Every page. LIAR. LIAR. LIAR.  She smiled again at Almasy and Roh with a wrinkled nose and shuffled over to her client.

She whispered, using the book as a modesty panel. "Mr. Gamp, I presume?"