They were supposed to meet her. Duncan was offering to write a response. They were supposed to meet Iona at the Ministry.

"She's dead," he repeated with more feeling, his grief-stricken expression contrasting with the snarl in his voice.

Donnan stepped back from table. He glanced around. He picked up the letter again. He tried to connect his nephew's words to the words in the letter. Currently inhabits. Currently resides. He took another step back and held up his hand.

"Just. Give me a second," he avoided looking at his nephew, avoided the truth written there.

He would confirm the truth the way he always had. By reading it, and reading it until he understood.

Leaving the letter crumpled and creased on the table, he went to the small stack of newspapers crowding one of the bookshelves. Small, in his opinion. It was a good thing it took him a while to throw the news away.

Or not. Donnan grumbled and muttered as he tugged at the topmost newspaper wedged underneath the shelf, ripping the page as he tried to get it out. He pulled out another and the rest toppled, the whole stack falling to the floor.

"Damn flimsy pieces of-"

Finally, he dumped the newspaper stack onto the closest armchair and rifled through it until he found the one dated November 10th[1]. His back to Duncan, he read the front page article for the second time that month. Pentrals were disembodied souls. Dementors were drawn to them. Souls. Disembodied.

Her soul, inside another body.

He glanced up. A redheaded girl had followed him down the street that one night. Earlier in November. Earlier than November 10th.

The walks from the bookstore, the music playing from the shop, do you remember?

She'd pleaded with him to remember. That girl with the red hair and the familiar features and the eyes that didn't match the eyes he knew.

He threw the paper down and turned to face his nephew. The memory retreated once again to a place safe and hidden in his mind.

He looked at Duncan, really looked, seeing the patience and graciousness there. He gestured at him helplessly.

This was too much.

"I thought - no, I knew something had happened to her! I knew it. I told Marianne to get her head out of the clouds, and she-" his hands balled into fists and he shook his head.

"Goddammit! This is going to crush her."

He glanced out the window, expression etched with sorrow, then furrowing. His ex-wife had held out hope, but she hadn't been the only one.

"She's... she's... it's not enough that she's dead, is it? Not enough that someone killed her. They had to bring Iona back, in a.... they couldn't leave her alone. That's what happened, isn't it? Why did they... Who, who would do this? It's not enough to kill her?"

His shoulders curled in, his hands moved close to his face in shock, as if bracing for another blow.

1.	A Puzzling Predicament

Duncan stayed quiet as his Uncle turned to his most trusted source of information; the written word.

Every time he and Angus were sent here to spend some time Donnan would try to get them to read different books. His brother usually tried. Sometimes he did, too.

The unbalanced stack of newspapers proved to be a bit much and toppled to the floor. Duncan considered finding something that fit in a corner space and didn't take up too much room. Something that would help separate the papers and hold them better than a chair. Christmas was just around the corner and he hadn't finished getting gifts yet.

Donnan found the appropriate article and read through it a few times, slowly comprehending the full weight of Carstair's letter. The old man's following rage and sorrow were well known to his nephew still stitting at the table.

If a murderous glint had entered his eyes at the old man's questions, Duncan couldn't help it. His tone had a darker note when he responded, "Who is exactly what I hope to find out, Uncle."

Such a feat might be difficult with Ministry people hanging around. They held cases, suspects, and the guilty close to their chests. He could understand why to a point. Such tactics helped keep the 'enemy' from knowing how much they knew, didn't disturb certain aspects of the investigation.

Duncan knew if he could get the name he'd be keeping his ear to the ground. At the moment it was impossible to imagine what he would do if he heard a whisper. Between the training received both at the Ministry and in the Resistance he knew he wouldn't go hunting for the murderer as he might have when he was younger, at least.

Donnan turned away, slowly lowering his hands and balling them into fists, breathing ragged.

The house. You remember the house, by the lake, where Lori lived and where I... I used to spend summers there, in that house by the lake.

The redheaded girl's voice from that night, the last piece settled in his mind and then flitted back out again, pushed aside by crushing despair.

Duncan's words, his tone of voice, filtered in. Donnan clung to those grim, determined words like an anchor, finding more surety in them than any words of comfort or assurance could offer.

He looked at his nephew, recognizing the angry glint in his eye.

"We're going to find that out," he said gruffly. "I guarantee you."

If his daughter had died, it stood to reason she would know who had killed her.

He looked at his nephew a moment longer, taking strength from his support. Good bloke. Duncan understood the injustice and was willing to act.

Donnan cleared this throat, clapped him on the shoulder, and glanced around the living room.

Next step.

Despair threatened in a wave, but he pushed it back, taking a few deep breaths. No, next step was not to wallow, but to go to the Ministry. See her. See her now. He had to get out of the house. She was never coming home.

He moved toward the bookcases, patting his pockets. Ah, keys on the coffee table. Wand already in his pocket. What else?

The letter. Donnan moved to pick up the letter from the table. Proof that he'd received it. He had a right to show up.

"Is she there right now?" He muttered, half to himself. "No, she wouldn't be there. She wouldn't just be there, sitting and waiting for us. I'd expect she's at St. Mungo's or someone's-" his brow furrowed. "Someone else's home."

He paused, trying to wrap his head around that.

"If we show up to the Ministry right now, there's no bullshit waiting for owls. They'd have to call her in."

He put his hand over his mouth, glancing at the door, itching to go.

A few seconds later he realized that he'd said 'we'. We. He was asking Duncan to come with him. Duncan, who had a very good reason to avoid the Ministry.

Donnan glanced at his nephew, uncertainty flickering in his eyes. The last thing he wanted was to pile more pain on him, and yet if there were ever a time when he needed him most, this was it.

Duncan watched as his uncle moved about the room, looking for things he would need before leaving the house. That feeling of needing to move had been part of what drew him to engage in lunch with the old man. Aside from not wanting Donnan to find out alone.

He couldn't just abandon his uncle, even if Donnan was asking him to go along to the Ministry. Having worked there for so long, he knew just what kind of response they would get, and not one in their immediate favor.

"Unfortunately, showing up right now would do no good for either of us. The Ministry is full of bureaucrats and politicians who can't be inconvenienced for anybody. They love their appointment books." Precise time for everything, even an afternoon break for tea if nothing dire happened to be taking place.

"Let me write a response," he continued to keep his Uncle's mind moving towards a goal, "telling them we would like to attend such a meeting. After that we can...," Duncan paused to think for a few seconds.

Going out to get drunk was a bad idea. Early in the day as it was, that would just lead down a dark mental path. Best to stay active, "We can go get those groceries your kitchen is terribly bare of. We have coupons now." The Scotsman patted the paper full of them. "I'm assuming you still know how to cook?"

Donnan scowled and kept looking at the door, juggling his keys in his hands, an angry energy running through him. Where had the Ministry been all these years? They hadn't been looking for his daughter. They'd waited for her soul, her trapped soul to escape the hell she'd been enduring and to come darken a doorstep that wasn't his.

He frowned at Duncan spouting his reasonable ideas, frustrated by his stillness. His patience and logic and youth. He had time, Donnan did not.

Yet he didn't want to go alone.

"They'd better make an appointment quick," he grumbled, jerking out the chair and taking a seat. He tossed his keys onto the coffee table somewhere behind him.

He rested his hands on the table and wrung them together, glancing at the lines accumulated there and the protrusion of veins. So much time had passed since Iona had gone missing. He'd last seen her in 1989. Would she recognize her old man? Would she want to see him? Would she ask him why he'd given up the search?

A knot of pain twisted in his stomach.

Clearing his throat, he nodded. Better Duncan write it than him.

"I'll send an owl to Marianne. A letter, rather."

He pulled out a page of parchment and stared down at it, brow furrowed. He had no idea what to say. He didn't want to explain Iona's death in a letter like the one Solomon Carstairs had sent. He'd have to ask to meet with her, let her know it was important. She'd show up if it were some place neutral and muggle.

"Yeah. Yeah I guess, smart ass. I haven't burnt down the place yet," Donnan muttered.

He turned his head towards him then, his face settling into the usual grumpy lines.

"What would I do without your coupon-clipping and your spaghetti bolognese, huh? Did you forget who you learned that from? Not Daniel."

Donnan's brother, Daniel, could burn a boiling pot of water. He gave a little smirk, which faded instantly, and looked down at the blank parchment, grateful for his nephew beside him.