18 January 2012
Wednesday, 9am
The Atrium, Ministry of Magic

Nate Briggs in a black blazer with the winter damp still on his shoulders exited the turn stiles, tapping the butt of his wand in his palm. He'd managed something not all Azkaban parolees did: getting his wand back.[1] Pretty lucky considering his conviction had been assaulting an Auror and Hitwizard while commiting a robbery. But he'd had the right information at the right time delivered through a safe back channel. He'd found his freedom like he always did; a half-step ahead of the trolls-with-badges that sauntered around on marble floors.

The one lingering indignity was the monthly calls he was obliged to pay to a parole supervisor. The Ministry just couldn't let him go. Once a month he showed up at the Department of Magical Law Enforcement to demonstrate his hands were clean. And for once, they actually were. Sure, all through the fall he'd been on a shopping spree under his business alias 'Hermes', breaking and entering and riding that ride. But when he found out the glittery shoe he'd stolen was an accessory[2] to murder[3], he'd shut down operations. Any slip-up could link him to the death of an Azkaban guard and there'd be no getting out of that. Lying was easy. He knew what the parole supervisors wanted to hear so they could tick the right boxes. But not having to go to the effort to lie was a nice change of pace.

He was bored, of course, and that was a high risk state for Nathan Briggs. But at least he was free and clear.

The lift doors opened and he stepped inside. The doors closed, the cage rattled, some people stepped off and someone stepped on. He didn't notice who.

1.	8 Mar 2010 - Rehabilitation
2.	HA
3.	24 Nov 2011 - Conspiratorial Conversations

It had been. A. Week.

It had been more than a week, really, and it showed in Kurby Bagnold's lagging body language as the werewolf hunter waited wearily for the crowd to exit the lift on Level Six.  There had been the nearly nonstop planning that had led up to the last full moon.  Three days and nights of patrols.  The full moon itself.  Then everything that had come afterwards: the safe house invasion, Carter's murder, the vision, the flyers in the paper, and the final appearance of the Dunnigan brothers' corpses.  Half the time, Kurby wanted nothing more than to collapse into bed and sleep for days at a time; the rest of the time, he just wanted something to hit.

Finally, the last of the wixes wearing the green and yellow of the Kenmare Kestrals exited through the sliding brass doors.  The magical lift was left nearly empty.  Kurby tucked the folder full of parchment from the Floo Authority under his arm and hit the button for Four with his thumb.

It was only after the doors slid shut that he happened to glance to the side and realized who else was waiting in the lift.

The werewolf hunter's eyebrows shot up.  The last time he'd seen Nathan Briggs just over a month before, the small-time criminal had been sitting on his arse in a rubbish bin.[1]  At one point, he'd meant to have another go at him over Briggs' work with Lorelei Hunt,[2] but time, death, and werewolves had conspired to keep that from happening.

For a moment, he considered just taking a swing at the younger man's chin, but having to explain to Bruce Ballentyne why he'd started an unprovoked fight in a Ministry lift was not how he particularly wanted to spend the rest of his morning.  Instead, Kurby turned to face him directly, adjusting his stance as if he were preparing for quick movement.

"And here I thought that smell meant that the centaur was usin' the lift again," he said nicely, shooting the other wizard a sharp smirk.  "Turns out it was just someone playin' in the rubbish."

1.	December 14, 2011 - Cracking Skulls
2.	December 18, 2011 - Fire on the Mountain

The lift rattled to life again. The customary anonymity of the sacred vessel snapped as the two wizards realized their company. Of all the idiot thugs Nate might've met on his way up, it was the unhinged, vengeful, silver-clad git Kurby Bagnold. Since the last time he'd seen Kurby, he'd spent weeks expecting the next creak on in the hallway or figure crossing the street to be Bagnold's threat to sic the hounds on him come due. But it had never happened. It was a bit twisted, but the newspapers had let him sleep easier because he knew that Kurby Bagnold was too busy to harass him.

Nothing had changed between them. Nate had walked away from that alley with questions still between them. But ironically, here on Bagnold's turf, Nate felt untouchable. Nate scoffed, handling his wand absently.

"Well, that's just grand." Nate reflected Kurby's casual feigned nice, if not his ready-stance.

"How are things in the Werewolf Capture -- "

CLANKTHUNK

The lift came to a sudden, clattering stop. Nate fell against the back wall and swore. Then the lights flickered and went out.

"Lumos."

Nate's wand lit the small space.

Kurby waited for it with a smirk, waited for the hit that he was sure would come.  Let Briggs scoff and sneer; let him make snide comments about what he'd read in the papers and hold it over his head, as if he'd ever managed to do a single worthy act in his entire miserable, worthless life.  If the dishwasher didn't give him an outright excuse to hit him now, it hardly mattered.  Kurby knew where he worked: he could always ambush him later.

Even the knowledge that he might finally be able to hit someone made him feel a little less worn, a little more awake.  As Briggs started in on the Werewolf Capture Unit, Kurby broke into a predatory grin.  He balanced on the balls of his feet, fingers curling slightly, ready to pounce, until --

CLANKTHUNK

The lift jostled to an unexpected halt. Kurby nearly lost his balance, catching himself on the inside of the door.  He'd already started to let out a fluent, practiced string of swears when the lights suddenly went out.

He didn't have time for this today!

"What the hell!" Kurby snarled, swinging a hand in frustration at the wall.  Unfortunately, in true Newtonian fashion, hitting an unmovable object with his fist made it hurt.  Scowling, the werewolf hunter let out another few emphatic adjectives as he tried to shake out his hand.

And there was Briggs, smugly casting a Lumos spell as if adding a little light to the mix was going to solve their problem.  Kurby rolled his eyes at the younger wizard, even though he could barely see him via the pitiful light that was coming from his nemesis's wand.

"Take that goddamned thing and shove it --" he growled, finishing with a colorful description of what confined space Nathan could try to illuminate next. 

Kurby Bagnold's hair-trigger temper hadn't, apparently, faded since they'd last met. In the past in the few times he'd seen him around Sellaphixes he'd been taut but docile, but outside of that context, Merlin help anyone who looked at him funny. Nate was sick of tip-toeing around the werewolf hunter's delicate feelings. He flicked his wand and let the light go out in spiteful acquiescence.

They were left in the dark, the hollow sound of distant clockworks and cables jangling around them in the dark. Nate could feel their dark sarcophagus gently swinging.

"Stop moving, shitsake," Nate ordered. "You're going to shake us loose, genius."

His spiteful darkening of his wand hadn't actually been that helpful. He felt for the buttons by the door and pressed one of them a few times. tap-tap-tap-tap. A light inside the button flickered and faded. He was going to be late. Getting stuck in a lift was not going to be an acceptable excuse.  He swore under his breath.

Just as he was trying to peer out through the grating, attempting to get a sense if he needed to worry about their tiny prison suddenly dropping like it had the last time he'd been trapped in a lift,[1]  Briggs shut off the light of his wand.  Kurby broke into another string of swears, shooting a nasty look over his shoulder in the direction where the other wizard had been.

"Oh, are you an expert on gettin' stuck in Ministry lifts, then, Nathan?" he sniped back at Briggs.  "Happens to you all the time, does it?  Merlin," he growled with emphatic displeasure, swinging another fist at the front caging in frustration.

He hit it hard enough to make the metal rattle.  Suddenly, as if in response, the lift dropped an inch in the darkness.  Kurby froze, his gaze shooting up to the ceiling as he gripped his wand in the darkness.

But that seemed to be as far as the lift was dropping for the moment.  Either way, the werewolf hunter decided that he was not going to do that again.  Unhappy with the turn of events, he retreated to sulk against the back wall, doing his best to trod on Briggs' foot in the process.

1.	October 7, 2011 - That Bwessed Awwaingement

Kurby punched the wall again and for a half a sickening second, they were falling. It was enough to make Nate's stomach turn in a knot and brace himself in the corner as if holding on would do anything.

"Stop doing that!" he shouted a touch of panic coloring his frustration. Since when did the basics of gravity make one an expert in anything. Kurby stepped on him in the dark and Nate resolved to relight his wand if Kurby didn't have enough sense to.

"Lumos."

Again, the small chamber lit up in dramatic shadows. The hand on the dial above the door was dangling lifelessly directly down, which was ominous. He looked at Kurby against the other wall.

"That's better. You just sit there and carry on not hitting things," Nate said. He tucked his wand in his armpit and turned to the button panel. There seemed to be more buttons then there would be destinations. There were knobs as well, and one heavy lever like you'd see in a mad necromancer's laboratory. A little paper tag hung from it. At the bottom of the panel was a larger button, red with a question mark on it.

Nate pressed it. It stayed lit.

"Today's date is the twenty-ninth of October twenty nineteen."

"No, it's not," Nate responded automatically.

"You might be right, Susan. Have a niiiiiiiii-khhhh."

The posh voice skipped like a record and then died along with the little red light. The mechanics and alchemics of their lift car appeared to be caput. Nate glanced at Kurby out of the corner of his eye, then thought better of it. Great load of help he'd be. So Nate stood back and looked up. There were always hatches on these things in the comic books.

It was less a product of Briggs’ command and more a result of the fact that he had no desire to die ignominiously in a rapidly descending lift that Kurby did indeed stop doing that.  Irritated, he crossed his arms and slouched back against the wall, folder tucked under one arm.

What the hell was with Magical Maintenance and their inability to keep anything working?  He would have half-suspected that the navy blue-robed custodians purposely engineered the lift failures as a way to keep themselves employed, except for the fact that none of the wixes employed in that department seemed intelligent or cunning enough to make something like that happen on purpose.

Across the lift, Briggs had lit his wand again and was fiddling with something on the button panel.  One of the buttons lit up, and a strange, aristocratic-sounding voice emanated from the panel, and then promptly seemed to die again.  Briggs snuck a glance in his direction and then straightened and looked upwards, seemingly examining the ceiling.

Kurby set his jaw, his patience growing short.  He didn’t know much about how the accursed lift system worked, but he’d learned from experience that messing around with it when it was broken had a way of making everything worse.

“You miss your life’s calling with Magical Maintenance or something?” he asked the younger wizard sharply.  “If you've got a death wish, Briggs, there's plenty of other ways to go about it."

Nate turned his head to look at Bagnold who had managed to be quiet for all of seven seconds. He narrowed his eyes at the sulking werewolf hunter as if to inspect him. They were stuck in a lift. There were no badges in here, no exploding cases of snake oil. And yet, Kurby Bagnold was pretending there was. They were supposed to just carry on as if they weren't stuck in a lift?

"Is he really like that all the time?" Nate asked no one, regarding Bagnold as a specimen. "Or maybe is life is shit, no one can stand him, and I'm the closest arsehole he has to a friend and that's rather pathetic so the only way he knows how to cope with that kind of rubbish life is to be a prick."

He looked back up at the ceiling where he did see screws in the corners of some tight grating. It was something. Getting the grate open in the dark was a two wand job unless they wanted to just aim and shout and take their chances.

"Help me or shut it. I'm meant to be on Level Two in five minutes."

Apparently Nathan Briggs had been put on this earth solely to try his patience.  Kurby stared up at the ceiling, counting backwards from ten as Briggs attempted to spit out some sort of Muggle psychoanalysis as if he were talking to an invisible friend.  Outright throwing a punch at the younger wizard was starting to sound more and more appealing, especially if there might be a way to blame knocking him cold on a poorly placed elbow in the dark.

Briggs had returned his attention back to the grate in the ceiling, as if he could magically escape and appear wherever the hell he was going just in time for whatever goddamned appointment he was worried about missing.  At the brusque command, Kurby rolled his eyes; he had no intention of either helping or shutting it, at least not so long as he was stuck here with possibly the worst company on the entire planet.

"Aye, because I'm sure everyone in MLE has nothin' better to do than stand around and stare at their pocket watch to make sure you show up exactly on time," he shot back at the younger wizard. 

There was something about Briggs that grated on him.  Not his words, because although the younger man was a sharp-tongued smartarse, Kurby didn't give a damn what some shabby, half-failed criminal lackey thought of him.  It was more the fact that after everything, a lowlife like Nathan Briggs could run his mouth off and skip away free while a good man like Rafe Sellaphix had to spend three years in Azkaban.  Briggs acted like he was simply too clever for everyone around him, as if he were flying rings around the rest of them on the latest Firebolt while they putted along behind on early-model Cleansweeps.

Suddenly, Kurby didn't even care if he mouthed off about things that he'd already decided to keep to himself if it meant putting Briggs back in his place.

"You tell your Auror mates yet about your business relationship with Lorelei Hunt?" he asked nicely.  He favored Briggs with a smirk, dark eyes settling on the younger man despite the darkness.  "That seven hundred and ninety-eight galleons she paid you must've been an alright profit. Maybe they'll let you be late to class just this once if you report it yourself."

Nate crossed his arms and massaged his temples. The movement of his wand, still the only light source, flipped the shadows all around. He'd had many worse days in his short life so far, but he had a hard time remembering one as so carefully designed to aggravate him. Bagnold was a step beyond that, even. He was a bully with a badge from a government agency that had shitty oversight. Stuck in a little box with a little man who liked to hit things. Bagnold wasn't going to help. He was going to have a jolly good time making it worse.

"...stare at their pocket watch to make sure you show up exactly on time..." Kurby rambled. That's exactly what they do, yes. Any excuse to make tick a box on a form and make his life worse.

And then blah blah something about someone named Lorelei Hunt who Nate had never heard of. Whenever Bagnold used his nice tone of voice it just meant he was feeling smug about something and he didn't need to be properly lit to know exactly what kind of shit-eating grin he had on his face.

"...seven hundred and ninety-eight..."

Nate looked up to see Kurby smirking at him. That was a very specific amount. Why, it was exactly two galleons short of the price he'd asked for carefully lifting and delivering seven vials of Ministry of Magic unicorn blood to some half-dead wraith of a witch at Grimshaw's back in November, and exactly the amount she'd actually paid him. Grand. So good. Amazing. What a lovely day. Lorelei Hunt was Lucy and she apparently had a big mouth.[1] He honestly couldn't believe Kurby had actually followed up on it. There wasn't a single part of that deal had anything to do with Bagnold or werewolves or the Sellaphixes or any other thing Nate imagined he'd have any interest in.

"I hate you so much," Nate said, scratched at his jaw and nodded. "Truly. So much."

The ironic part was he hadn't bought, sold, stolen, or fenced anything since then. He'd been keeping it daylight, and this is how the fates repaid him. Two galleons short the deal and stuck in a lift with his best friend.

1.	11 Nov 2011 - Sane, Sane, We're All Insane

The light from Briggs' wand illuminated the younger man's scruffy face from underneath, throwing the shadows in opposition to their normal direction against his features.  Kurby shot him a self-satisfied smirk, clearly pleased with the response he'd managed to elicit.  Tormenting one of his nemeses was only fun when he managed to squirm his way past their defenses and drive a knife under their skin.

"Reckon there was only one way you could go after rattin' Rafe out over nothing," he said smugly, settling back against the wall behind him.  He was comfortable in the darkness, even trapped here with Briggs in such a small space.  "What's it like to cavort with one of the Ministry's most wanted?  You two sit around and pass a thesaurus to see who can come up with the biggest word for --"

Suddenly, a high-pitched noise -- the equivalent of claws being dragged across a Hogwarts chalkboard -- split through the lift.  Cringing, Kurby covered his ears as the red lights on the button panel came to life again.  They flickered as the screeching sound continued to blare, and then flared brightly as the sound cut out just as suddenly and an unseen speaker crackled to life.

"H-...hello, everyZZZne," a crackly voice announced to the occupants of the lift.  "This is...spzz-zzzt...from Magical Maintencrrrrrr..."

Warily, Kurby removed his hands from his ears, peering up at the ceiling as if he were trying to find the source of the static-filled announcement.

"We're having a slight problem with thCREEEEEEEE--"   For a moment, the words dissolved into another high-pitched squeal, but this time, the crackling speech quickly resumed.  "--so just h-h-h-hold tight and we'll have you lot on your way in...zzzt...of a hippogriff's creeeeeeezzzzzzzzz..."

As the staticky voice faded away again, the red light on the button panel cut out entirely again, leaving them alone in the darkness.

Nate hadn't always hated Bagnold. Nate didn't hate any of them, the Sellaphixes. They were good people and never minded how they made their living. Nate hadn't enjoyed saying what he had to say to keep himself out of Azkaban, he hadn't gone in trying to screw the old man. But he wasn't sorry, either. Rafe and Zelda had made their own bed. All that aside, he understood why they'd be pissed at him, Kurby as well, which is why he'd kept his distance. Which is why Nate had more or less allowed Kurby to be a whiny  vindictive shithead. But this was going too far. Kurby was getting more and more bold threatening to get Nate locked up again, and he didn't seem to be reigned in by anything like Cinead Tawse's twisted sense of fairness.

At a certain point, this would need to get sorted out.

Nate didn't know the name Lorelei Hunt, but she was known to the Ministry. If she'd been picked up and dropped his name it'd be Aurors not deranged werewolf hunters talking to him. Tawse wouldn't have told - Nate was more useful to Tawse out than in. No, something was up.

The lift though, it wasn't finished with them. It began screetching and crackling in broken customer service-ese. Nate's instinct was similar to Bagnold's, clamping hands over ears and looking to the ceiling.

Nate re-lit his wand, then slid down the wall to sitting. He watched Bagnold for a moment, thinking.

"Right, so in the interim," he began conversationally, "what's your hold-up? Why not turn me in if you've got what you think you've got? I'm not telling you anything interesting, not being any help to you at all. Why wait? I figure you'd want me off your lovely streets as quick as you could."

Nate decided he wasn't going to try breaching their shared sarcophagus and risk plummeting to his death or some sort of opportunistic vandalism charge. Bagnold could if he fancied. Nate was going to be late, a bit of a spot to be in but nothing to do about it now.

"Or are you just having fun?"

The shadows in the lift shrunk back as the other wizard's wand flared into luminescence once more.  Briggs was watching him now, but Kurby wasn't bothered; he leaned his head back against the wall so that he could look upwards at the ceiling, waiting impatiently for them to be freed from this durance.  They were castaways, adrift somewhere between Levels Five and Four, imprisoned perpetually in this tiny lift until some outside power finally managed to send them on their way.  But even if they were stuck here together, that didn't mean he had to tolerate his fellow captive.

Briggs's question made him glance back at the younger wizard.  His point hit a little too close to the truth.  If Kurby had had any sort of dirt that he could have passed on to Magical Law Enforcement, he would have done so in an instant, but explaining how he knew that the weaselly Nate Briggs was trafficking with dark sorceresses who stole souls because a cursed shop had told him about it wasn't anything he intended to do in the near future.

Kurby regarded him for a long moment, his expression cool.  Finally, he shrugged, a half-smirk playing at his face.

"Rafe lost three years to Azkaban because of you," he said softly, raising an eyebrow at Briggs.  "Where's the fun in sendin' you back without remindin' all of your criminal mates how big of a snitch you are first?"

Tell one Auror one thing one time and you'll never live it down. Nate felt that he'd never forget a word of that interview three years ago, each little step he and the Auror took around each other, all the while Nate as still smoking from the Runespoor venom burns. And how by the time it was all over, there wasn't much that Nate could have done to change anything that would happen. There was a distinct possibility that the Aurors would have had Rafe no matter what Nate gave them, that one Sellaphix or another was going to end up in Azkaban. Only a Seer could know. And it didn't change anything.

They'd all made their choices.

Nate chuckled into his hand and leaned his head back against the wall.

"Fair's fair," he said. "I mean, you're not really delivering breaking news to the masses, but alright, makes sense."

Then Nate held up a hand.

"But here's the thing. You might want to ask yourself how far you're going to take that. Never know what people will do when they're cornered."

Nate shrugged and kept a steady eye on Bagnold. Nate wasn't a thug, he wasn't a duelist, and he wasn't particularly cruel. But the situation was changing. His wife was in the wind, Tawse was playing governor again, Nate's ambitious thieving had wound him up with Kingstreet, and now Bagnold's refreshed interest. It was clearer now, sitting here in the dark. Bagnold had sniffed out Nate's limit for this sort of 'fun'.