6:45 p.m.


Moira was late[1] but not disastrously so. Finding the location of Trevelyan’s office had been easy enough and the box with the button on it was more than a little obvious with the name attached beneath it. The witch didn’t completely understand how the contraption worked and that was fine. It still gained her access.

When she arrived inside her gaze swept over the room even as she began speaking, "Sorry, there was a problem with a Thestral that I had to stay and help with.” Moira’s gaze shifted again, fixing solely on the man she had come to see. “I'm McBoid. Pleased to meet you." She’d already said her name of course when she pressed the button to let him know of her arrival.

The auror appeared more put together than she. A few new stains had appeared on her work robes earlier that day, several strands of hair had fallen out of the clip on the back of her head, and unbeknownst to her a decent sized cut ran along her jawline.

Were they still supposed to shake hands? Probably. Most social rituals started out with a handshake; the beginnings of sizing up another person and trying to figure out their character.

Moira was nervous. She could all but hear her heart pounding in her ears and as a result her muscles were tense though her voice remained steady. Facing down charging horses helped in working past nerves.

Over the years social interactions sometimes caused her mind to freeze or alternatively work too fast where she almost couldn't keep up. When that happened, she fell back on her standard no-talking stoicism. This evening such a response was not acceptable. Moira had initiated contact. She needed to see it through.

Sometimes she wished she had ingrained manners she could fall back on like Sasha did. She could bow but the wizard was the wrong species for that action to work as intended.

1.	Silver Snakes

His visits to his old private investigator office, tucked on the first floor above a second-hand bookshop in central London, were becoming few and far between these days.  From time to time, Jonas had debated abandoning the space, but there were advantages to maintaining a second working space even when he had little reason to frequent it.  He still had a few documents, like his illicit second copy of the Runespoor case file, hidden away here, and every so often, his work at the Ministry gave a need for an offsite private meeting space.

He didn't know exactly what to expect from Moira McBoid's visit tonight.  He hadn't mentioned her missive to Kurby Bagnold, who had been the one to recognize the patronus that she'd sent back on the night of the December full moon.  Jonas had avoided asking Abby Reid about the letter, too. If this was somehow entangled in the Cold Moon mess, he didn't want the Department Head's young Squib personal assistant drawn in any more than she needed to be by virtue of her job.

Half past six had come and gone, but he'd barely noticed, engrossed in catching up on the day's news on his phone as he lounged behind the large wooden desk that took up the center of the office.  When the intercom finally sounded, it startled him back to reality; it had taken him a moment to buzz her up.

The witch who climbed the steps to enter his office a few moments later looked younger than the formality of her letter might have had him guess.  She had long brown hair, grey-blue eyes, and a nervous air about her, as if she might start suddenly and bolt back down the stairs if he should do anything to surprise her.

"A pleasure, Ms. McBoid," said Jonas, as he eased himself carefully to stand.  He was in Muggle street clothes, the red robes of his workday happily abandoned as soon as he'd left the Ministry.

"Thanks for coming all this way at the end of your workday," he said, extending a handshake to her across the desk.  "Please, take a seat."

The office had a lived in, homey feel to it. Probably because Trevelyan spent so much time here, had lived here, or cleverly tried to put his clients at ease. If the latter, it didn't much help her.

Moira approached and gripped the offered hand before lowering herself down into the chair. “Of course. Thank you for agreeing to meet with me.” He could have ignored her strange owl or told her to bugger off, professional or not.

After a short moment’s thought she let out a small breath. As much as she trusted Abby, Moira did not know this man. She didn’t want to waste his time or test the levels of his patience. “I’ll go ahead and get right to it. This is the item in question.”

Moira pulled the silver token out of her pocket, the etching of the runespoor against her palm was a little too familiar now for her liking, then set it down on the desk. Sliding it over to the auror she sat back again, fully relinquishing the coin. Currently it was in a resting state, as she’d come to think of it. The back remained blank and smooth aside from the ornate design around the edge.

“I found it on the bank of the Thames River a few weeks ago.” That particular detail she had debated on telling over the past several days. In the end, she decided the location might be important for the auror. The dead Runespoor had been found on that same bank, after all.

The girl took his invitation to sit, although she still had the air of a wild animal about to bolt.  She was as direct and concise as her Patronus had been the night of that full moon, wasting no time on pleasantries as she got straight to the point of her visit: the suspicious object that she'd referred to in her letter.

In the time since he'd received Ms. McBoid's letter, Jonas hadn't given much thought to what it was that she actually wanted to talk about.  The holidays were busy enough without work intruding on his thoughts, especially with his teenaged daughter home from Hogwarts, and there had been plenty to distract him at the office earlier that day once he'd returned to Level Two.  But whatever he hadn't been expected, it certainly hadn't been a silver coin with what was clearly a Runespoor engraved on its surface.

The Auror frowned as he picked up the coin, examining the etched design on its front.  It was starting to seem as if no matter how many times they knocked at the door of the Runespoor smuggling ring, the criminal organization who dealt in the magical serpents had nearly as many heads as its illicit payload.  Two years ago, Charisma Aldridge had given Level Two information that had allowed them to bust what was left of the ring -- or so he and Tamis Raynor had thought at the time.  But here they were in another December, and there were Runespoors surfacing once more.

McBoid spoke up again, giving a little more context to her find.  Jonas looked up at her, his eyebrows raised, as he turned the coin over in his hands to study the back.  The seven dead Runespoors had been found washed up along the Thames back in November.[1]

"Do you remember around when that was?" he asked, glancing at her again.  'A few weeks' could be just that, or it could mean much longer.  People had a funny way of remembering time.

1.	4 November - Runespoors Wash Up on Thames

Moira didn't respond to Jonas' question for a few ticks of the clock, watching him all the while, before finally saying a little vaguely, "Around the time of the full moon."

Seventeen days prior on the night of the full moon was the more exact answer on when she found it. During an adventure with Sellaphix she'd had misgivings about from the start. Nothing good had come from that night. She found an enchanted item likely to do with some illegal acts, the budding friendship with Figaro was lost in a sewer, and now she kept track of the moon’s cycle. Of course, her run-in with the vampire had helped that new habit along as well.

At least in coming here she could put one of the issues to rest. Giving the Runespoor coin to someone more capable of doing something beyond walking around with it in their pocket was more of a relief than she thought. The tricky portion was in the details and not giving her ex-friend away. Telling Bagnold had been different.

The wix added, "Sometimes it heats up like the healer badges at St. Mungos. Then writing appears on the back with a location and time. After a couple hours at most it disappears." If Moira were to hazard a guess, the time window was open long enough to make any transactions and short enough to not attract unwanted attention.

Around the full moon.  That was an interesting way to mark time, but if she'd had a run-in with one of Tawse's direwolves before they'd holed up at the zoo, that would have surely been a night that stood out.  Bagnold had insisted that no one else had needed to talk to the girl, but in retrospect, perhaps he should have been more firm with the werewolf hunter. 

Jonas looked down at the back of the coin, examining it carefully.  There was nothing written on it now, but the center of it was smooth and empty -- potentially a place for markings to appear, as Ms. McBoid had said.

He turned it back over so that the etched Runespoor was staring up at him again.  It seemed a bit showy for a criminal enterprise to be emblazoning the symbol of their wares on the front of their secret communications device, but if there was anything that he'd learned about the Runespoor smuggling ring in the last few years since he'd re-engaged with the investigation, it was that they liked to make a statement. 

"How many times have you noticed it heating up since you've had it?" he asked, looking up at Moira.  If she'd found it around the December full moon, then the coin had been in her possession for two weeks, give or take.

Slowly, as the minutes ticked by, Moira began to relax. If Trevelyan knew anything about her and the incident at the zoo he wasn't mentioning it. Bagnold had told her no one should reach out to her regarding the incident. Except she hadn't told him about the coin she found on the bank of the Thames. The two subjects weren't related, of course, but they had both occurred on the same night.

Moira never took her gaze off the Auror/Investigator though it was less intense than before. “Five total, including the night I found it.” Since she and Fig had been chasing down a Runespoor lead anyway, it hadn't seemed too odd that the place they were watching appeared on the back of the token.

When Jonas asked if she remembered the locations Moira gave a nod and listed them off, starting with Madame Tussaud's. She did not mention sitting on the roof across the street and watching someone deposit a bag in the wall.

Well, that was an unexpected coincidence.  Jonas kept his expression carefully schooled, masking his reaction to the news that Moira McBoid's mysterious coin had evidently listed the exact same location where the Werewolf Capture Unit had happened on someone using a strange smuggler's hole.  And the last one that she mentioned -- the name of the pub sounded vaguely familiar, although he spent less time at pubs outside of Hammersmith these days.

Thoughtfully, he pulled open one of the drawers in his desk, extricating a shabby-looking Muggle notebook and a pen.  The Auror flipped through the notebook until he found a blank page.

"Reckon you could write all of those down for me?" he asked, sliding the notebook to her across the table.  "Along with the dates and times, as much as you can remember.  Circle anything that you're not completely sure about and add a question mark to it," he added, offering her the pen as well.

“Aye.” Moira accepted the notebook and pen, eyeing the pen with mild curiosity. She’d heard about them before, the muggle writing tools, but she’d never actually used one. Holding the pen in her hand she ran her thumb and fingers over it for a moment. Smooth, sleek, and comfortable enough to hold.

Following his instructions the teenager wrote down the places in the order they had appeared with the dates below and the times below the dates. They were all late night or early morning, usually between 11 pm and 4 am. One of the times and three of the dates were circled but she was sure they were close.

Moira’s writing was neat and easy to read. Each pen stroke stayed true and steady thanks to all the practice spent drawing in her own notebooks. Words and pictures were nothing more than intentional lines.

Once finished, Moira returned both items to Jonas and sat back again, waiting. This was one meeting she couldn’t predict.

Jonas took the notebook back from the girl, examining it carefully.  Madame Tussaud's indeed stood out at the top of the list, and he was almost certain that the location at the bottom, the Royal George, shared a name with the shabby pub that stood across the street from the Ministry's visitor entrance, where he and Adon Eleor had once spent three days staking out the red phone booth in anticipation of a possible assassination attempt on Azize Mulogo.[1]

Why the hell would Runespoor smugglers be meeting across the street from the Ministry?  The Auror frowned, his forehead creasing.  For all he knew, 'The Royal George' could mean somewhere entirely different -- it wasn't as if pubs held exclusionary rights over their names.  If Ms. McBoid had had the coin since early December, it was also possible that the smuggling ring could have realized that one of their tokens was missing and tried to set an ambush.

 "Thank you," he told Ms. McBoid, his attention still on the notebook page.  His gaze flicked up to meet hers briefly.  "Have you happened to drop into any of these locations?"

1.	March 15, 2009 - Crossing the Rubicon

Moira gave a small nod in return to his thanks, “S e do bheatha.” The Auror gave her a quizzical look and she blinked. She hadn't meant to say that out loud. “You’re welcome,” she supplied.

His next question should have been expected. Not everyone could stay away from such a mystery. Maybe it was a good thing Figaro hadn’t kept the token. “No, of course not. Even during the day there’s been no need to.” None of the locations held any interest for her, especially the muggle ones.

Studying a live Runespoor would be grand. That was one creature she wasn’t likely to see at the menagerie ranch ever and for good reason. Personal experience over books was always preferable but she wasn’t foolish enough to try handling one of the beasts alone and she certainly didn’t want to go through a ring of criminals to get to one.

The young witch was at least quick to deny that she'd gone to any of the meeting places.  That was definitely for the best; if this coin was indeed an artifact of the Runespoor smuggling ring, the criminals involved in it had well-earned their reputation for thorough cruelty. 

They were also exceedingly careful, though.  Jonas found it almost interesting that the token had been missing for several weeks and was still showing the seeming location of meeting places.  Either whoever had lost it hadn't reported that it was missing, or the smugglers suspected that someone had found their token, and were carefully broadcasting times and locations in hopes that the new owner would show up.

Either way, that was something that he could look into on his own time. 

He tucked the notebook away and flashed the girl a friendly smile.  "Well, thank you for bringing it to me attention, Ms. McBoid," Jonas said graciously.  "I'll follow up and see if we can learn anything else about this."  He arched an eyebrow at the taciturn girl. "Is there anything else that you think I ought to know related to it?"

Trevelyan asked if there was anything else he ought to know. There was plenty more he could know, her watching from the roof as someone deposited a bag at Madame Tussauds right before the coin heated up and gave the address. Not a good idea.

“Only that it was partially submerged in the mud when I found it. I saw it because of the light.”

Moira hadn’t seen it because of the light but because of a spell. She had been by the river at night, not during the day. They were small, unnecessary details that lead to even more questions she couldn’t answer. She and Figaro weren’t speaking and they might never hold a civil conversation again. Even so, she wouldn’t bring him up to anyone else.

With his friendly dismissal, the witch stood from the chair, working out what to say in parting as she made her way to the door. Good luck? In this circumstance it sounded more ominous than intended. She hoped the information helped? While true, it was likely she had simply piled more work onto his busy schedule. Moira turned her head to look back at the Auror, settling on something simple.

“Good night.”