“Andie!” Cepheus called, hurrying through the busy Ministry atrium. “Andie!”

It was first thing on what could have been an ordinary Tuesday morning. The floo fireplaces were as busy as ever, green flames throwing sparks and shadows on either side, and the regular pop, snap of apparition as the day shift arrived.

But the Ministry’s reception desk sported several deliveries of outrageous flowers, stuffed bears. The Daily Prophet stand was decked out in heart bunting and the Ministry Munchies stand had turned pink, surrounded by buckets of roses. He passed by it, through the cloud of strong early morning coffee scent.

Couples who both worked in the Ministry could be seen walking arm in arm around them, doe eyed. Cepheus Gamp wriggled through the gaps, apologising continually. If it wasn’t so obvious that Cepheus and Andromeda were siblings, the casual onlooker might have pipped Ceph as one chasing his potential girlfriend.

“Hey,” Cepheus greeted, catching up with his sister, and trying to catch his breath too. “You alright?” Best to cut to the chase. Never good to delay an auror on their way to start their shift. “Has Ri gone already?” Ceph asked after their brother, “Only, I got this…”

He extended what he’d found under the sofa the previous evening, when fishing out one of Claude’s cat toys. He wondered if it had arrived on the Friday when he’d dropped all the post by accident in his hurry. Either way, it seemed strange, and he trusted his sister's intuition.

Andie heard Ceph before she saw him. She was going to start her shift. Everyone was looking loved up. For her it was a normal day. She did not have a date. She wanted to forget it was valentines day.

"Hey." Andie said. She shrugged. She did not know how to describe the indifference she wanted to express.

Cepheus handed her a postcard. It was a picturesque view. Somewhere on the coast. Sunny. Hot. Bright blue sea. A proper holiday postcard. Just like Ri would send. Especially if it was rubbish weather at home. Andie turned it over. Recognized her brother's handwriting instantly. Her brother was at the house. In Godric's Hollow. He waved her off in his underpants that morning. Typical Orion.

I can't believe it is February. the postcard read.  Andie frowned. Orion came home in January. But here was a postcard that said it was written in February. It was dated last Wednesday.

That retreat was too good. I was only meant to be there four days. But it was like ten when I came out. Trippy. I must have smoked-

"Do you think he set this up as a joke?" asked Andie. "Because this is elaborate for Ri." Andie's gut twisted. The handwriting looked absolutely right but something was definitely not right.

“A joke?” Cepheus echoed, unsure. He wasn’t wholly sure what to do with it himself, so seeing Andromeda unsure at least put them in the same place. Only Ceph wasn’t sure he liked the place they were in. There was that uneasy feeling he’d felt before, where they’d wondered how they could have missed something so obvious. “I’d have said this was just really delayed in the international owl post, but the content of the postcard disputes it.” He gestured to it and then handed Andie a second postcard. It was the one he’d received[1] on the 27th January, when his brother had mentioned going to the retreat. The postcards were similar in design, just as weather-beaten, and the handwriting matched.

“I got that the day before he rocked up on my doorstep,” Cepheus explained. “It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, which is why I wondered if he’d gone already. Sent this to mess with me. I don’t think it’s in code either, I tried some simple deciphering charms and even verdimillious in desperation.” Ceph was good with charms, though he was far too modest to say.

“I’ve got that awful feeling, and I think it’s more than just because it’s a year since they… you know.” Cepheus dropped the volume of his voice and stood a little closer to Andromeda in the throng. “That’s why he’s back, after all, isn’t it?”

1.

Jan 27th, To Calm Unsettled Waters Quote from: Cepheus Gamp on October 22, 2019, 12:22:40 PM “Ah, another postcard from Orion,” he lifted the card from between the envelopes and turned it over for a read, “apparently he’s aligning his chakras or something. Booked into some retreat with meditation, chanting, bells and the whatnot.” Cepheus frowned, puzzled, “I’m only hoping he’s calling it that on his postcards to me and Andie, not to the locals.” It was amazing that Orion continued to survive given his jack-the-lad type approach to life and cultural investigation. Penny Pickler would have a field day.

"Come up with me." said Andie. She said it in a way her brother would not refuse. They stood in silence together in the lift. Andromeda frowned. She was thinking about everything. Andromeda barely said hello to her colleagues. They knew her face meant business. She was not to be disturbed! She went straight to her desk. Summoned a chair for Cepheus. They sat shoulder to shoulder in her cubicle. "Let us go over this again." Andromeda took up a quill.

"You got a postcard on the 27th. Orion says he is going to a retreat. That could have taken a day or two. Was it dated?" It could have been sent as early as the 25th. "He arrived at dawn on the 28th." Andromeda wrote it down. "He's stayed with me." She pulled her cubicle calendar down. "We had lunch. He went out and met Nadine." She looked at Cepheus. Remembered Nadine told her about it. "She said he asked about mum and dad. She thought he would ask me first. But he has not really." It was strange. "All we talked about was when we were kids. And how I have decorated."

They crammed into Andromeda’s auror cubicle. His sister began to map out their brother’s movements without delay. What had begun as a bit of a puzzle, and perhaps a joke on Orion’s part, had very quickly been transformed into a mini investigation by their youngest sibling.

“Was it dated?”
“Er - I don’t know actually. It’s at hom-“
“He arrived at dawn on the 28th.” Auror Gamp did not delay, seizing her calendar and scrutinising it.

“.. He went out and met Nadine. She said he asked about mum and dad. She thought he would ask me first. But he has not really. All we talked about was when we were kids. And how I have decorated.”

“The house decoration, right,” Cepheus agreed, “But wasn’t he just teasing us[1] about it? Last time he was there it was when we got it back after MLE went through it top to toe. It was a mess.” Cepheus kept his voice down, more because they were sat in the middle of that specific Department. In lieu of his volume, both hands gestured even more noticeably. “When did he go see Nads?” Ceph asked, moving on. “Did he go to see Ari?” He frowned, “Wasn’t he going to go round and teach them how to roll or something he thought was cool? Hang on, we all did that dating thing together, didn’t they catch up[2] then?”

1.	29th Jan, 2012 Everything's Fine Today
2.	11th Feb, 2012 Love is Blind

"Tuesday night." Andie filled him in. "He asked her. She told me seemed different. I did not think much of it. And I do not think so. But Ariadne is busy with the paper yeah?" Andromeda had not seen her niece much in months. "Ceph this is going to sound strange. But I woke up in the middle of the night last weekend. Orion was out of bed. There were books all over his bed. I swear he was reading alchemy. I almost blew his head off. He sneaked up on me. But when I looked again it was language books. I do not sleep walk. I could not have dreamed that." Andromeda wrote more on the list. Drew arrows to dates. "Shit. Now this sounds like a conspiracy theory. What is he even here for? It is not like he can go say hello to Dad." Andromeda rolled her eyes. "Look it is a long shot. Maybe his job knows? Has he been there? Is he on holiday here? Did he bring a load of writing home for them?"

Alchemy? Strange reading for Orion. That was the sort of thing their parents might have kept in the house though. There had been books on all sorts of curious and niche parts of magic, often at a very high level. Perhaps their big brother had just picked up one out of sheer boredom.

“Shit. Now this sounds like a conspiracy theory.”

Andromeda voiced what they were both feeling right now. This could all be a joke postcard, some desperate insomnia reading and their brother just a bit out of character for coming home a year after their parents had shocked the country with their experiments. But they hadn’t thought anything odd about their parents, and look where that had got them. Orion hadn’t ever seemed keen to come back after he’d seen the house. He’d not hung around and left as soon as he could. He wasn’t the sentimental sort to come home now. He’d not come home for Christmas as soon as Ariadne had moved into her own digs.

“Look, it’s a long shot. Maybe his job knows…” His sister had practical ideas where Cepheus had fallen down a rabbit hole of thoughts.

“Good idea,” he agreed. “It can’t harm asking. I’ll owl Ariadne and see if she’s any ideas on Ri’s plans. He’s already stayed longer than any of us anticipated.” He rubbed the back of his neck, feeling rather unsure about things again. “I don’t suppose he’s thinking of going to visit dad in hospital?” He gave Andromeda an uneasy look. “I wonder if Healer Misslethorpe can say? He was a bit closed-lipped about whether you or Ri had been when I saw[1] him. Like we were all his patients.” He’d also given Ceph some leaflets for a support group, legilimens counselling and one firmly warning off self-obliviation.

1.	27th July, 2011 Between Chaos and a Dream

"I will go to their office. It is on Diagon." Andromeda said. "Hospital?" There was that cold feeling in her stomach. Someone transfigured it into a deep dark well. All around them were pink hearts. Roses. Chocolates. Valentines day again. "What is that. Poetic? Romantic?" Andromeda viciously shook her head. "We should get a message to Healer Misslethorpe. It will not harm if we are shooting our hexes off target." Andromeda wrote it all down. "You do that? Before you write Ariadne?"

“Tragic more like,” Cepheus muttered. His earlier delight at sending Virgil some roses for that morning had been driven far from his mind.

“We should get a message to Healer Misslethorpe… You do that? Before you write Ariadne?”

“Yeah,” Cepheus agreed, “I’ll see if I can get a message through, and you let me know what you hear back from the publishers. I’ll owl Ariadne after that, if we still need to. I don’t want to worry her unnecessarily. Like you say, if we’re a mile off here, the fewer people involved the better.” Cepheus got back to his feet, his fingers gripping the backrest of the chair before him.

“As soon as you hear something, reach me here. I’ll impress on Kayla that any owl or memo from you is urgent today. If I’ve not heard from you by eleven I’ll go straight to St Mungo’s.” He doubted it would come to it, but backup plans were always necessary, so they wouldn’t be used.

He squeezed his sister’s shoulder in a show of solidarity, and left her to do what she did best. Investigate.

End