Family home of Mrs Ailis Bagnold
Outside of Oldbridge, County Wicklow
Ireland

Hints of spices and roasting meat were wafting through the air of the old, drafty manor, hinting at the feast that was to come.  On days like this, when Ailis Bagnold had the honor of hosting their entire extended family for an important holiday event, Kurby knew that his mother spent just as much time on aroma charms as she did on actually coaching her lone elderly house elf through preparing the meal.

Their guests had started arriving at 11 o'clock sharp.  He'd escaped away from the hubbub as soon as he was able, away from the exchange of greetings and pretentious exclamations and fake friendly chatter.  Holiday gatherings were bad enough, but they were worse when his entire extended set of relatives descended on one place.  Kurby didn't really mind his sisters (as long as Dervla didn't try to put in an appearance), and he could stomach his mother and older brother Shay for short periods of time.  But when the Whitmans were involved -- a proper upperclass pureblooded family with far more wealth than the Bagnolds had ever possessed, even back when his grandmother had been Minister and his father had still been alive -- Kurby could feel his patience wearing thin with every well-practiced and cultured snide remark.

This particular room rarely saw visitors.  Tall bookshelves lined most of the walls, filled with hefty volumes that had probably been flipped through once and never been looked at again. A long velvet curtain hung down between them, concealing something out of sight behind it.  In the middle of the room, two oversized arm chairs covered in crushed red velvet sat on either side of a large globe, which showed international borders in terms of the magical governments that ran them.  The giant sphere rotated slowly, seemingly keeping pace with the Earth's rotation.  As he passed it, Kurby noted that the eastern edge of Great Britain was already approaching the midway point on top, signaling that noon was almost here.

When he'd been young, he'd never dared to come in here; none of them had, not even the house elves to clean.  Later, once the nightmare of his youth had passed and the study had emptied, this had become Dervla's domain, as his younger sister devoured whatever books she could find.  Kurby had willingly ceded it to her, not the least because he knew what still lurked behind the velvet curtain.

The writing desk on the opposite end of the study was what had brought him here.  Kurby started directly for it, his footsteps sure and even as he made his way across the forbidden room. 

It looked unremarkable: carved of wood, with a segmented cover that arched over the front of it like a half-dome.  Like the rest of the study, it looked as if it had been dusted recently, preserved as both testament and tomb. Along the bottom edge of the cover, there was a keyhole, which looked as if it were made of iron.  For as long as he could remember, even when he'd been little, the desk had stayed locked.

Kurby eyed the keyhole for a moment, and then silently slipped his hand into his pocket.  The ornate iron key that he pulled out didn't look as if it matched the desk's decorative motif.  The handle of it had a twisting, elegant design that looked a bit like ivy, a bit too fancy for the writing desk.

Even so, the end of the key looked like it was about the right size, so he slipped it into the keyhole and gave it a try.

It didn't turn.  Sighing, the werewolf hunter tried to pry it for a few seconds longer, but it didn't take long for him to give up.  Whatever the key that he had found in Grimshaw's was supposed to open, it clearly wasn't this writing desk.  He returned it to his pocket and then straightened, rubbing his hands tiredly over his face.

Behind him, he heard the sound of the door to the study opening again.  Startled, Kurby looked back, surprised to see a small figure slip inside. 

"Nicola," he said, recognizing the girl.  She was the one relative he'd actually meant to talk to this holiday, even if he hadn't intended to run into her in here.  He raised his eyebrows, and then flashed her a tired smile.  "Done with the crowd already, then?"

Cole was out of breath as she pushed open the large doors to the ornate office and swiftly closed them behind her. With her back against them and her chest heaving she barely noticed there was someone else in there with her until her Uncle spoke. She gave a start and whipped her eyes to him, there was never ever anyone in here. It was just her luck that not only was the room occupied, it was currently occupied by the one family member she may have been actively avoiding all night.

"Nicola, Done with the crowd already, then?"

"No," she panted and indicated for him to wait as she finished catching her breath. She pushed off from the door and entered the room properly, "the cousins and I were playing hide and seek. This is always the best place to hide. No one comes in here and most of the littler cousins believe it's haunted." She gave Kurby a sly smile, as if she'd ever believe that sort of drivel.

She looked him over and her curiousity got the best of her, "what are you doing in here? Playing hide and seek as well?" She was hoping that if she kept the conversation light and playful she could avoid the scolding she was certain was coming. After all, she had lied to Kurby in order to get information on The Lycan and the Tenacious Twine. That lie had then spiralled out of control and got the Headmaster in trouble. She had no doubt that she was the cause of all of it and while she had already done her duty in apologizing to Greyfriar, she had kept her distance from the werewolf hunter.

"No one comes in here," Nicola began with a sly smile, as if they were sharing a secret between them.

Her words prickled at his sense of the world.  Always the best place to hide.  Kurby raised his eyebrows, regarding his niece silently as a mask slipped over his face.

It didn't really matter.  The study was hardly a holy place, and it hadn't been in use for decades.  Judging by the lack of dust, not even his mother's aging house elf held it in any reverence now.  It was only an empty room, filled with books that had barely been read, useful solely for scaring the littler cousins with distant stories that were a generation removed from any world they knew.

"Naw, it's more like I had to sit across the table from Shay at dinner last night and I reckoned I heard enough about how the Minister likes to take his shits to last a lifetime," Kurby retorted, making a face.  His animosity towards his older brother was well known even in their extended family; the biggest question at most Bagnold family gatherings was whether he or his sister Rosheen would manage to get themselves sent away first.  Rosh had set a new record by managing the feat for the past three years in a row.

He shrugged, rolling his shoulders back as he shifted to half-examine the shelves.  Kurby wasn't really sure what he was looking for -- he wasn't really certain that there would be anything relevant here -- but even so, he began to read over them, scanning the spines one by one.

"How's Hogwarts, then?" he asked, his gaze briefly flicking back over to her.  "You've finished your first term now, aye?"

Cole chuckled lightly then politely covered her mouth when her Uncle swore. It wasn't like the language was out of place for Kurby but she had spent so much time with kids her own age she had almost forgotten what it was like to speak with adults.

As Kurby moved to look over the shelves of books Cole began to browse the room herself. As she had mentioned earlier, this was a great place to hide while Playing. Which meant she was usually huddled by the door listening to whether or not she was about to be found. She rarely got a chance to really look around the greater room herself.

Cole bristled when he asked about school. She waited for the scolding to follow but when it didn't come She realized she'd actually have to answer the question, "it's alright. The classes are interesting and I've made a few friends." She paused, wondering if she should admit the one thing that actually bothered her about her school life. Perhaps if she drew attention to her other problems, it would keep him from asking about her letter, "it's just . . . I thought I'd be in Ravenclaw like Grant and Kelly," she looked closer at a book title, "or even Gryffindor with Harrison but I'm not." She pulled the book out, "I'm in Slytherin," there was obvious disdain in her voice, "the first in my family. I mean, Kyson's in Slytherin with me but he's not really my brother."

Books upon books upon books lined the shelves.  Kurby skimmed over them silently as his niece began to speak.  Volumes that recounted magical history or described the 25 major uses of magical plants from the Mediterranean; shadowy tomes that chronicled rarely-practiced esoteric forms of magic and codexes on spell-casting traditions practiced on faraway, distant shores.  He wondered if even half of them had been read by anyone other than Dervla; more likely than not, the only time they had probably been touched in the past twenty-plus years was when the house elf came by to dust them.

Cole's confession made him pause.  Kurby glanced at her, one eyebrow raised.  His own time at Hogwarts felt like it had been a lifetime ago, but getting sorted into Slytherin alongside students like Ed Pratt would have ranked high on the list of twists that would have made his years at the magical school even worse than they had been. 

Saying that out loud wasn't exactly going to help, though.  Neither was telling Nicola that there were a hell of a lot more important determinants of character than what house one was sorted into, or pointing out that her time in Slytherin would only last seven years.  To an eleven-year-old, that was most of a lifetime.

"It happens," he said with a shrug, as he tugged a book titled A Moste Magicale Historie of London free from the shelf.  "Rosheen got sorted into Hufflepuff."  That was after Dervla had been put in Ravenclaw, but he pushed that fact aside; he'd already spent too much of today letting his estranged sister creep into his thoughts. 

The cover of the book felt stiff from disuse as he opened it.  Inside, the pages were slightly yellowed, with a slightly mismatched type that made the text look oddly mechanical.  Kurby flipped through the first few pages to find the table of contents, running a finger down it as he read the chapter titles.

"How're the other students in Slytherin?" he inquired.  They had to be better than they were during his years at Hogwarts, when it had felt like Slytherin House was a hotbed of purists and bullies -- although that was probably something else that he shouldn't say out loud to Nicola.  Absently, Kurby began to turn the pages, searching for the proper heading.  "That how you met Spectre's kid?"