Just after 11am


Wesley bolted from the Defense classroom, tossing a grin over his shoulder. First! He was first out the door, and he walked fast, expecting to hear the professor's sharp voice any second now.

Another door opened down the hall, and third-year students filed out into the corridor.

He paused, looking over his shoulder again.

Why wasn't the professor calling after him? Hadn't he noticed? Wesley turned back, just to peek inside and figure out the situation, when a whole line of first-years strolled out of the classroom, bumping into him.

"Hey, do we have revision? Hey," he followed his peers, poking and pestering them until they told him. They did have revision! But it it didn't count if he hadn't heard it from the professor himself, Wesley argued. It didn't count if it was one minute after 11:00. Too late and too bad!

As he was telling them this, an older student stopped him in his tracks.

"Are you Wesley Wold?"

"Yeah," Wes smiled a little, until he saw the prefect badge.

"You've been summoned to the Headmaster's office."

And with that, the prefect walked away.

"Why?" Wesley called.

His friends looked at him with wide eyes. He shrugged, glancing from side to side, and then up at the portraits as if they had the answers. What had he done? Nothing. What had he done that he'd forgotten he'd done? Could be lots of things.

Wes strolled to the stairway with his head down, his hands in his pockets, shrugging his shoulders every so often to adjust the weight of the bookbag.

The Headmaster had never summoned him before. Wes hadn't had time to do anything too bad this year, and he'd only gotten a few detentions last term. He hadn't seen the Headmaster much outside of history class, actually. Headmaster Greyfriar had been busy! He'd taken care of the sick kids in the infirmary, transported the whole Gryffindor house to the Ministry during the full moon, and destroyed a bunch of fliers in dueling practice with Professor Storm. Or so Wes had heard.

When he reached the office, the door opened to let him in.

"Hey Professor," he said cheerfully, looking around as soon as he stepped inside. Was he the first first-year who had ever been summoned to this office?

First!

Or not. Another wizard was here, and he didn't look like a new professor. Wesley stopped short.

"How much trouble am I in?" Wes smiled slightly, hands still in his pockets.

Knox Greyfriar turned away from the red-robed Auror where they both stood near a warm fire. Wesley Wold arrived, chipper and golden and out of breath. Knox knew it was stomach-churning to be summoned up to the tower without context, but Wesley seemed unworried. A pure dinner roll, this one.

He waved Wesley over with a somber smile.

"None at all. If you're up to some criminal enterprise, I haven't caught onto it yet," he said. "This is Mr. Trevelyan. He's an Auror."

Jonas was, a matter of fact, Gwenna's father; if time permitted Knox would enjoy informing about his daughter's biting incident.[1]

1.	13 Jan 2012 - Rapture is Coming

It was never good news that brought him to Hogwarts. 

Knox Greyfriar, at least, was pleasant company; Jonas had come to know the returned Headmaster through his work on the Wizengamot, where he was occasionally responsible for mundane matters like issuing warrants and delivering judgements on trials.  Jonas far preferred chatting with the older wizard in his office near a warm fire to finding bodies in the woods[1] or even riling up teenagers for career day[2].

But he hadn’t come to trade pleasantries with Greyfriar, and before too long had passed, the door to the Headmaster’s office swung open again to admit his reason for visiting.

Wesley Wold was tall, with sandy blond hair and large brown eyes that didn’t look at all abashed by being summoned to the Headmaster’s office.  Even with his height, he still looked young — somewhere between Gwenna and Artie, if Jonas had had to place him. 

Far too young to deserve the conversation they were about to have.  But he was here to have it anyway.

“Wesley Wold, innit?”  Jonas extended a hand to the boy, offered him a quick smile.  “It’s a pleasure to meet you.  I’m sorry to drop in on you, but I was hoping we could have a word,” he said, glancing at the chairs near Greyfriar’s desk, then at the other wizard to ask silent permission.  Here in Hogwarts, even Aurors found themselves reliant on the good graces of the Headmaster. 

1.	February 1, 2009 - As Wind in Dry Grass
2.	April 18, 2009 - Law & Order: MLE

"Hi, Gwenna's dad," he reached out and pumped his hand once, then twice, chuffed to be shaking the hand of an Auror. He'd only met one other Auror, a funny man named Pratt, who was father to Natalie and Noah.

Gwenna's dad! He'd heard a lot about Gwenna Trevelyan lately. After the flier incident in the Great Hall, Wesley and a few of his friends had run up and down the corridors pretending to bite each other until a professor had made them stop.

Knox Greyfriar had said he wasn't in trouble though. Knox Greyfriar looked a bit grave, and Wesley's mind flashed back to his old house where he'd seen that strange redheaded woman. The Aurors couldn't know about that, right? Why would Trevelyan want to have a word?

"Is this about the dementor at the train station?" Wes plopped down in one of the chairs near Greyfriar's desk.

He looked at the Headmaster and raised his eyebrows and widened his brown eyes slightly. Yeah, he'd survived it! Didn't the Headmaster know? He'd warned about all sorts of scary things at the December feast, and didn't he know, didn't he think it was cool, that Wesley had seen a dementor up close and definitely survived it. Never mind the fear. Someone was paying attention.

"I can tell you all about it," he said confidently, wriggling in his seat to find a good spot in the middle of the cushion. He set his arms high on the armrests, and tried to look like he belonged, just like the Headmaster behind the desk, and the Auror in his red superhero robes.

Knox opened a hand to indicate that Auror Trevelyan had his leave to make himself at home; Wesley didn't hesitate. No, the young man settled in and continued guessing much to the Headmaster's and Auror's chagrin. It was a game that wouldn't bring any satisfaction to win.

"The Dementor, yes, well that would be a thrilling tale, but you'll tell us another time."

Thinking it was better to avoid any official capacity and to leave the bulk of this conversation to Auror Trevelyan, Knox didn't sit in his chair behind his big desk. Instead he perched on a sturdy bureau nearby.

"Wesley, do you recall when you and I delved the school archives?"[1] Knox knew he did. "We found some traces of your mum's time here and you told me all about her. Isn't that right?"

Knox remembered clearest of all how Wesley had glowed golden with certainty about it all and in admiration of his mum's cleverness and care for him.

1.	8 Oct 2011 - Who tells your story?

Wesley stopped moving in his seat.

His mum? His mum. Why was the headmaster mentioning that time in the archives, or acting like Wesley wouldn't remember it? He'd listened and been nice, and said a lot of smart things that Wesley had mostly forgotten. Didn't he want to hear about the thrilling tale of the dementor, or about the time that Wesley had met the new ghost in the castle, or about the time that he'd eaten so much at the feast that he'd thought he would puke but instead he'd let out a loud burp that had echoed in the corridors. Stuff he could talk to the Auror about. Stuff the Auror would want to hear about.

Wesley slow-blinked at Headmaster Greyfriar to let him know that he didn't like his tangent, but then...

His mum. He'd told the professor all about his mum, and an Auror was sitting right there, quieter than any other Auror he imagined.

Which could be bad-quiet or good-quiet. Throughout his young life, he'd sat in front of many adults with serious faces.

"Yeah?"

His tone ended on hopeful. Wesley glanced from the Auror to the Headmaster to the Auror again.

The news would be difficult to bear Knox could imagine, but it was far better to hear it than not. The truth had revealed itself now. To keep it from him, Knox believed, wouldn't be right. He had been looking so hard. He deserved to know what had been found.

The headmaster lowered himself to sitting now across from Wesley and deciding to allow a somber tone to provide prologue to the oncoming revelations.

"Auror Trevelyan is here because he has news to share about her, your mother."

Knox might have said more than that to prepare him, but he decided against it. Better to let this thing move on than delay unnecessarily with his typical brand of silence-filling and aloud-thinking. He'd gone through his share of parent-finding dramatics in his own life and had a thing or two to say about it, but really, there was nothing to do about it than get on with it.

Young Wesley Wold wriggled his way into the arm chair, propping his arms up on top of the high rests as if he spent every day chatting up Aurors in the middle of the Headmaster's lair.  Jonas counted himself lucky that the boy was in a different house and year then his daughter; Gwenna got up to enough trouble with Noah Pratt as a running mate.  Wesley had an earnest sort of confidence about him that was as certain to get him into trouble just as surely as it would enable him to talk his way out of it.

Seeing the blond boy in front of him now, bold and eager, it was impossible not to think of Lucy Wold.  Jonas had only encountered her through the filter of Aileen Reid, but even trapped inside another's body, the pentral had shown flashes of a sharp wit.  It was easy to imagine her raising a son like this, easy to understand why she would risk everything in hopes of finding a way to shelter Wesley and his two younger siblings.  Despite how everything had turned out, he couldn't say that she had chosen poorly.

Greyfriar, with all the ease of a practiced educator, skillfully shifted the conversation to the subject at hand.  But Wesley, in all his earnestness, hadn't been wrong.  Jonas had come here to discuss the incident at the train station; just not for the reason that the Wold boy might think.

"Unfortunately so."  He gave the boy a tight smile.  There wasn't any easy way to slide into this; the best option was to be quick about it, to yank the plaster straight off.

"While we were investigating a recent incident, we found evidence of what happened to your mother," he said, as gently as he could.  "She passed away four years ago, Wesley, back when she first went missing."

Wesley slow-blinked, for real this time. Evidence! They'd found evidence. He'd known they would, someday. They'd find his mother alive, here in the magical world.

But she'd passed away. No. Not passed, but went away. She'd gone missing four years ago. The Auror had that right. The Auror had found evidence from something that had happened recently.

Wesley glanced down from the Auror's tense face and looked at the Auror's hands. Nothing there. No evidence. Was it in his pockets?

Wesley inched back in his seat, stretching his feet out, his hands curling in on the too-high armrests. Such a cozy chair, in a cozy room with a cozy fire. He didn't know why he felt so uncomfortable.

"Uh, so."

The corners of his mouth twitched into a slight, automatic smile.

"She went missing four years ago," he nodded, looking at the Headmaster. Wesley knew the answer. He was the one who knew his mum best.

"She's still out there, somewhere. Alive. I just know."

He'd had that dream, and Sulwen had told him about her dream from November.[1] He glanced at the Auror, and looked away quickly again. Wesley had no evidence for what he knew.

"You know when you get that feeling, that someone is still around?"

1.

The Dream

Knox's face fell and he ran an hand through his beard. Merlin save them all. Welsey's hope was a candle flickering bravely against a gale, shielded by its own wax crown, the wick burnt down so deep. But it couldn't last.

"I do," Knox said leaning forward to rest his elbows on his knees. He glanced at Auror Trevelyan. "And I don't doubt that its real to you, but Auror Trevelyan is telling you they have every reason to believe your mother is dead and has been for some time. She hasn't returned because she couldn't."

'Your mother is dead,' are words no one is ever meant to utter to a child. Wesley's brave quest might mean they'd have to say it more than twice.

Some time.

His mother, dead for some time.

Wesley turned his head toward the Headmaster, staring at him as the seconds passed. No, that wasn't fair. That wasn't a good joke. Wes had the right answer, and it wasn't some time. No, she hadn't been dead for some time. She wasn't dead any time. He didn't like that word and his mother in the same sentence.

The words were wrong. Unreal. It felt like when his cousin Wendy poked him in the ribs a bunch of times to be funny. It didn't hurt yet, but if he heard it enough, over and over, it would hurt a lot, and he didn't know what he would do.

Headmaster Greyfriar was supposed to be on his side. He'd listened to him, and helped, and found that journal written about his mum in the library archives. So why was he saying such wrong things?

Wesley looked at the Auror. He frowned, his frown as slight as his usual smile.

"What happened?" Wesley paused. "Where is she? Is she here?"

He glanced at the door, and then at the fireplace, and then at the Auror again, his leg bouncing.

Even as Wesley's uncomfortable smile faded into an uncertain frown, the boy still clung to his beliefs about his mother.  Jonas exchanged a glance with Greyfriar. He was immensely grateful for the wisdom of Knox Greyfriar as an ally on this sober journey.  The Hogwarts Headmaster had an educator's gift for engaging with children, a patience that the Auror hoped he could one day echo as a father. 

The boy's question about what had happened hung in the air between them.  Between Aileen Reid's personal account and his own cursory investigation into Lucy's life, he'd pieced together enough of her story.  Lucy Wold, desperate to support her family after her husband's death, had become less particular about where she sold her wares.  Her activities had caught the Ministry's attention near the end, enough that her name had ended up in some old case file that he'd managed to dig up.  Jonas wasn't sure if that was what had driven her to do business with Lorelei Hunt, or if the Hunt siblings had been the source of her suspiciously sudden rise in income, but either way, Lucy had likely met her corporeal end on the island near the Lily Lake House.

But not all of that burden needed to be passed on to her son Wesley, not now.  Wesley deserved the truth of it: to know the tragedy of his mother's death, and how her bravery and love for her son had driven her spirit to risk death a second time.  He didn't need to worry over the integrity of her decisions while she'd been alive.

"No, Wesley," Jonas said, as gently as he could.  "She's not here.  She died four years ago." 

He paused, brows knitting, as much to give the boy a chance to process this as to consider how best to phrase his next words. 

"Did you hear anything about the incident in Cumbria this past summer?" he asked.  "The lake house that burned down and set all the Dementors and spirits loose?"

Knox felt deeply sad. Wesley was so young and the permanence of death would be hard to understand. There was nothing else like it. Knox remembered when he was twelve or thirteen and the family cat passed away. He'd grown grown ill and the local Healer couldn't do anything for him. Back at home, Knox remembered feeling like a ghost. He knew that he could search and search the house and the cat would be nowhere to be found. It was that seeking and not finding that had made him feel so empty, but it had been important to find that journey to permanence.

He remembered what his father said that no grief truly left you. But it did get smaller and fill less of your heart, and the edges smoothed so that when it came to mind it hurt less. And it was true.

When Jonas began to explain the circumstances, Knox sat back. He was curious himself.

Four years. The words jabbed him in the ribs. Not just some time ago. Four years ago. Before Wesley had ever come to Hogwarts, before he'd fully understood his magical powers, four years ago he'd had to leave home with his siblings because his mother had not come back, and four years ago his uncle and aunt had sat him down and were trying to speak as nicely as this Auror here about what her disappearance meant.

Four years.

He'd hoped that she would be back. Hogwarts had given him more hope. It was a cruel thing now, this hope, fluttering in his chest. He didn't believe it. Hope was real. More real than this stranger's words.

What was Auror Trevelyan saying about Cumbria and dementors? He'd barely paid attention to the news about the spirits and the poor squibs and the criminals who were up to no good. He'd survived the stray dementor at the train station, but they already knew that.

"Yeah? Penpals got loose. Pentrals," he corrected without his usual 'silly me!' smile, his voice tight and resentful. He didn't want a quiz. Just for the Auror to admit that he'd made a mistake.

"Spirits you don't wanna be penpals with, I guess?"

Headmaster had warned the kids about pentrals and dementors at the end-of-term feast. Zeta had said someone was stealing souls.[1] The ghost that Wes had met in the Hogwarts halls had mentioned pentrals too, holding up a protective charm.

"My mum's never been to Cumbria though."

He didn't think so. He glanced down at his hands, bouncing atop his bouncing knees. Cumbria was just so far from home.

1.	The feast in December

The boy's charm was endearing, but Jonas allowed himself only a slight smile now. Considering the direction that the conversation needed to be gently guided in, he didn't want to risk the tone seeming too light-hearted. Wesley Wold deserved to know the truth of his mother's passing, even as Lucy deserved for her story to be told.

The fact that the boy didn't know about his mother's trips to Cumbria didn't seem surprising. Lucy Wold had clearly loved her children dearly. When the world had threatened, she'd tried to keep them away from the cold truth of it. He couldn't help but feel a buzzing of sympathy for that. If things had turned out differently, if he'd spent too long dabbling with Cinaed Tawse and Kronos Malvivicus instead of falling back into his friendships with Tamis Rayner and Archer Radley, someone might have been having this same conversation with Gwenna.

"She did," Jonas corrected gently. Forehead creasing, he kept his attention on Wesley, watching to see if any of this seemed to settle in.  "She started selling potions and some rarer ingredients after your father died. Two of her customers -- a sister and a brother -- lived at the lake house in Cumbria.  They were the ones who created all of those pentral spirits in secret and kept them trapped in their house."

Vividly, he could remember the gallery: walls of broken prison cells, fronts marred by shattered glass and backgrounds faded to dull sepia tones. Abby Reid and her Squib companion might have acted out because of their frustration at the hopelessness of their situation, but their futile crusade had done more good than they could have imagined at the time. No soul deserved to be trapped like that, no matter whom they had been in life.

The truth of it was cold, hard, harsh. When he'd met Mark Wold to break the news -- Lucy's brother, Wesley's uncle, and the adopted father of all three children -- he'd asked how much of this to share with his eldest adopted child. The Muggle had stared off into uncomfortable space for a long moment, his expression marred by fear and pain and more than a hint of resentment.  Finally, he'd given an unhappy shake of his head.

Wesley deserved to know all of it, he had said gruffly. 

Though the man had left his reasoning unspoken, Jonas could understand the thought behind it. The magical world had visited nothing good or kind upon the Muggle Wold family. If Wesley knew the truth of his mother's death, perhaps he'd decide to leave it all behind.

"That was what happened to your mother." Jonas met the boy's gaze squarely, though not unkindly. "She met the sister near the lake one day, and something went wrong. Your mother was killed. After she died, the two siblings trapped part of her spirit and turned it into a pentral."