Midday. The Labyrinth, Mysteries.


How fortunate for them that Lyra Gamp wasn't quite insane. It would have been much harder to convince Miranda Storm than to persuade Solomon, who trusted the Unspeakables to deal with Lyra's unstable magic.

"Good day, Lyra." Yavin greeted as the obsidian walls slid close behind him. "I'm afraid your husband is still, ah, still an umbrella."

Not that the witch would be surprised - they had been trying, since doomed Valentine's, to re-transfigure Mortimer to his original state, to no effect. He was an abysmal human being but a perfectly reliable umbrella. What were they going to do? Throw a brolly into Azkaban?

The department head took a seat. He brought his own plain wooden chair to these interviews, and often perched himself in one corner. The rest of the room was quite plain - a single bed against the wall on the far side from the door, with a table and stool. On Two's request, parchment and quill were given should Lyra wish to jot down further confessions.

This was the same room in which she and her husband had imprisoned the children[1] last February; one group of the children anyway. Virgil had been in this one, so it was a pleasing choice to have made.

"How are we feeling?" he leaned back in his chair, his bespectacled gaze directed at Lyra's side of the room. "Any new manifestations of magic?"

A thin, translucent wall stood between them. It glowed blue, and would reflect most magics back on the caster. Yavin wasn't taking any chances anyway; there were Unspeakables just outside the door.

But he preferred some time alone with Lyra. From one pioneer to another.

1.	12th - 13th Feb - Ten Below

Still an umbrella.

Mortimer was never one for fun though, was he?

The table legs protested against the floor with a long, painful battery on their ears. It was slowly growing, or rather, lengthening. It was as if the wood had gained the properties of stretching, while maintaining rigidity beyond muggle physics. The stack of papers spread themselves unevenly as the surface beneath the pages drifted out.

At last, the ends of the table met the dark tiles of either side of the labyrinth room with a bump. Constrained. A white-haired witch in a simple black robe held her arms out to either side, fingers splayed, gaze fixed on the table. Her expression was focused, but there was an unmistakeable glint in her eye of pleasure at demonstrating the experiment.

She brought her hands together, a single, sharp clap. At once, the table snapped back, scattering the papers up into the air with the sudden draught. The moment it restored to its original size, a smile spread on the aged features of Mrs Gamp, up until the moment the table splintered and fell in on itself as if an axe blade had landed on the top.

In her displeasure, she threw her hands into the air, and a table leg snapped off as easily as one broke a toothpick.

“You should let me try,” she was referring to her husband, and placed her hands on her hips. “We are beyond Gamp’s Law here.” Lyra’s voice was husky through a lack of use, but self-assured. She cleared her throat. “You have little to lose. He used to have a fine mind, and doubtless an inferior umbrella.”

She shrugged in replacement for a gesture which might cause further interaction with her surroundings. The papers around her settled on the glossy black tiles which covered the floors as well as the walls.

He was wearing one of those hideous pieces of knitwear again. It looked as if someone had drawn geometric shapes, sliced it up like a child’s jigsaw and used that for a pattern. If she had not met him in person before now she might have queried his eyesight behind those enormous glasses.

He was aware of a kind of pageantry taking place as Lyra exhibited the ease with which she defied laws both magical and physical.  Yavin himself was intensely curious - far for power hungry, of course, but he would have given up a few fingers to understand what it meant to hold so much useable magic inside yourself. Lyra Gamp was clearly enjoying herself.

"Allowing you to try would be beyond, hah, beyond other, more bureaucratic laws..." the old wizard trailed off and stood up, hands in pockets. He strolled up casually to the barrier between them.

Having never met Mortimer before the unfortunate incident of his capture, Yavin found himself more interested in Lyra. She appeared to have her wits about her still; and she was wily about finding a way to infiltrate St. Mungo's. He appreciated that kind of cleverness in someone.

It helped that she was pleasing to look at. Mad women often were.

"What difference would it make if Mortimer wasn't, hm, wasn't ever turned back?" Yavin adjusted his spectacles. "You seem to have been doing just fine without him. You've clearly succeeded where he has failed."

Laws. Those had been cast aside in Voldemort’s time, and what progress they made down here in those months! Research without the red tape.

“Flattery,” Lyra retorted with acid, and then softening with a lined grin, “May get you places.” She shrugged her shoulders. “Little difference in here. You people did something to him. He had control when I left…” She was staring off into middle distance, recalling the weekend of the labyrinth work. Giddy with triumph.

“I have had time. The luxury of a whole year dedicated to one project, out of sight. A researcher’s dream.” She inhaled calmly and laced her fingers together carefully, particularly, closing her eyes to imagine the table reformed. Before her the splinters reversed, leg reattached. Up it stood once more.

She opened her eyes, looked pleased with herself, and then in that moment of admiration, the table leg fell off once more, clattering to the tiles. She wouldn’t admit it, but her power was diminished. Running low, unreliable, unstable. She needed to draw again or she would eventually return to her former strength. Be reduced to a wand to channel her magical potential like a pedestrian.

“Research is how I met Mortimer,” she elaborated, slowly inching her hands back to her sides. “We work well together. Especially with the right investor.” Lyra met Yavin’s gaze, a suggestive smile growing.

His smile broadened slightly at the accusation. You people did something to him.

Not to his knowledge, although it would have been fairplay after what Mortimer had done to a group of children. Yavin's moral compass was not incorruptible but it swivelled sharply and quickly to certain punishments. There had to be an equilibrium even in a moralistic life - and the equilibrium was always changing.

A table fixed itself together and fell apart over a matter of seconds. She might be sane but she wasn't necessarily skilled at using all that power.

            “We work well together. Especially with the right investor.”

Yavin laughed, crossing his arms as his black eyes glittered with amusement. "I, ah, I prefer to get my hands dirty to meet my ends. It may, hm, may be the common denominator of this position."

Had Mysteries ever been led by a wix who didn't have one foot in something dubious (at best)? Their hobbies, experiments, aims. No, it wouldn't be fun at all to be a bystander or commentator for the mad couple. Tedious, in fact.

"What research were you, ah, were you doing when you met Mortimer?" he reached into his pocket, taking out a rosewood pipe. "Tell me a love story, Lyra. I, hm, I love a good one."

“Pphrm…” she exhaled through near closed lips, eyes narrowed. It was not as if she had much better to do these days. Not if they wouldn’t let her play. Maybe she might convince Morgenthau yet, he had that certain unspeakable quality.

The stool slid across the tiles at the merest suggestion, and she settled, folding one ageing knee over the other, tucking feet beneath.

“It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen,” Lyra began, laying one hand and then the other on her lap purposefully. Her accent was shifting unintentionally, mimicking his American tones. Playing. She had always been the one with a sense of humour out of the pair, the one who enjoyed the mischief while he was the straight man.

Not everyone got her humour though, or found it tasteful. She had always put on appearances, been proper in company until she saw it fit to be more herself.

“Pureblood cliché,” she admitted. “Father wanted Lyra Nott to be kept by a husband, continue a life of comfort and privilege. One had other ideas, naturally.” She shrugged nonchalantly. “One did not excel at studies to be confined to keeping house and managing children and house elves. Not without other motivation, anyway.” A smirk reappeared as thoughts of the three Gamp children at home before their Hogwarts education. A mother could never stop loving her children, however much they got in her way.

“We were both researchers, and I was appointed to his team to study magical potential in humans. Wixes, squibs, muggle borns, muggles. What quantified one of us, was there magic untapped out there - not to an extent of an obscurial. How could it be measured, when did it manifest, could it be predicted, or induced in a standardised manner…” She inhaled deeply, picturing her younger self. If she were not encased and unable to transform, she might adopt the face once more.

“There were so many families pleased to bring their children for study. On the barest bones of understanding, swayed by financial gain. Mortimer was no natural parent. He never has been. Always focused on the work. I think he barely looked at me for a good month, but I respected him for that. I was all about the work too. You are too, but you put the effort into preserving a personality.” She chuckled. “Or whatever you’re hiding behind those jumpers.”

This what not a love story, but Lyra had never been one to monologue, it made for a bad teacher. “But while others came and went, he kept me on. We hung on, defended our research, well, his research, as it was presented.” Lyra tutted. “It wasn’t until near Christmas of 1967 when he asked me.”

She switched voices, something more grave, stilted, measured now, “‘Lyra might our partnership extend beyond the boundaries of our professional contracts?’” her mannerisms changed to match. Possibly lost on Morgenthau - he had never met her husband in his prime. Pre-umbrella. Pre-magical potential madness.

“Text book romantic, Mortimer Gamp. He had of course over-analysed the possibility I might decline, at twenty-seven, working day in and day out in the very same office in these halls for three years. It’s where Andromeda gets it. Blunt, analytical, verging on seeing the world in black and white. Remarkably straightforward to get along with once you learn the rules.” She carefully recrossed her legs in the other direction.

“I’m tired of talking, your turn.” No harm in being blunt. “What did you do to Lumpkin,” Mortimer’s once deputy, “and why did you come here? Did you get too big for your specialism?” Lyra had read his books, any half-decent unspeakable had.

The simplest of love stories. Witch meets wizard, witch marries wizard. Witch and wizard go on to kidnap children, leave them for dead. A charming telling with hints of the sinister. Yavin stuck his filled pip between his lips even as he smiled at Lyra.

            "I was all about the work too. You are too... whatever you’re hiding behind those jumpers.”

Oh, wouldn't she like to find out? He dug out a matchbook and struck out a stick to light up. The flame in the match reflected in his spectacles, obscuring an amused and unreadable look in his eyes for a moment. Lyra offered him her tale and now she had questions of her own.

The air filled with warm, spicy tobacco smoke.

"Lumpkin's somewhere," he finally spoke, gesturing in an offhand manner. "Working on her own little projects. I haven't, ah, haven't discovered a deputy. I'm sure you and, that is, you and Mort would agree it isn't an easy position to, hm, to fill."

The changes he was effecting on Nine, to open it up more and stretch their tendrils out to other departments, would need a specific kind of deputy. He was sure one would present themselves eventually.

"I've published my, hah, my books and stunned my audiences. Ordered a Merlin." Yavin blew a circle of smoke into the air, watching it rise and dissipate. "I'm here to see what else there is."

And, God, wasn't there a lot? "So..." he raised his arch eyebrows at Lyra. "Did you two find anything out? Forgive me but your magical potential doesn't appear, ah, doesn't appear predictable or standardised."

“There’s the rub.” Lyra agreed, huffing. “I’m so very close, but we are fighting against the very elemental magic everything is founded on.”

Here she was, all of a sudden speaking to a fellow researcher. If he wanted to prise it all out of her skull he would of course be able to as a world-class legilimens. But where was the fun in that?

“We are all vessels of different capacities. Mortimer and I established that well enough with our Department-sponsored experiments.” The steady queue of young children brought through a rather more mundane route of Level 9 to be tested. “Great wizards are not just taught,” Lyra maintained her view, “If one has a greater magical reserve, one can learn to tap into it. If one has a limited reserve, then one can never hope to achieve the higher status.”

She shook her head gently, pitying those they discovered with the variation.
“It’s why blood purity is important,” Lyra insisted, “there is a correlation between purity and capacity. Those Muggle-borns are deplete, they can never hope to hold the same potential. Their Muggle side takes that away.” She paused to draw breath. “It is just a great shame some old lines squander their potential on lack of education, drive and ‘misbreeding’,” for want of a better word, this was how Lyra saw it. Marrying Muggleborns.

“Even squibs are better than nothing to marry,” Lyra remarked, “we reached a junction there at our research, whether we could detect and then unlock magical potential dormant within a squib. We knew it was there, but there was no great interest to take that route. No funding. The Dark Lord certainly took far greater interest in our research on how magical potential could be stolen. It was why he had so many muggle borns questioned over how they came about their powers.”

Lyra’s gaze fell to middle distance, remembering those times of unbridled research without ethical considerations, moral objections. The progress! A smile spread across her wrinkled features, more at home on the face of a younger woman.

“Yes it can be stolen.” Lyra stated proudly, looking to Yavin once more. “That is refined enough, but retaining it is another matter. I could throw you against a wall with a mere gesture, seal a doorway, all without need of a wand. But with time I can establish how to capture it and absorb it for longer. It dissipates, my cup runneth over.”

She let her hand fall limp from her lap, the damaged table skittered in the opposite direction across the tiles, resting a foot further. Lyra gave it no attention, gaze fixed entirely on her conversation partner.

“Think of what we could do with that, Yavin. I am sure you have.”

It was a dream, as impossible as a cloud you can touch and feel. Such dreams were not-so-impossible on Mysteries. Yavin wondered if he would see the world through Lyra and Mortimer's eyes if he remained Department Head for too long. He wondered if he would know when to stop.

           “It’s why blood purity is important,” she explained, "there is a correlation between purity and capacity."

The wizard breathed out a cloud of smoke and his lips tugged into a dry smile. Ah. How easily Purebloods give away their little opinions without care of who they are addressing.

He listened quietly to the rest of her spiel, puffing away with his bespectacled gaze trained firmly on their guest. She truly believed her work was purposeful and exciting.

"Think of what I could do with..." Yavin trailed off and shrugged expressively. "With what? All that power? Hm, I, ah, I daresay I've speculated. But maybe not with as, hm, with as much imagination."

His conversational manner concealed any irritation sparked by Purist views. Himself a halfblood, his mother and paternal grandmother had been muggleborns. You got used to these things. Unfortunately.

"My problem, you, ah, you see, is that I like puzzles," he remarked pleasantly and tapped some ash out of his pipe. "And what are puzzles? A purpose, with a series of limitations."

Yavin gave the pipe an experimental puff. Satisfied it wasn't blocked up, he looked at Lyra again. "I don't have, hm, much love for power. It's dull. So the purpose of your puzzle," he glanced at the table that had distanced itself from her, "um, it escapes me. What did you and Mortimer want to do with it?"

His opinions ran stronger than how he gave them but there no point in confronting the witch. He didn't come here to rehabilitate a relic. Just to listen to one speak.

“For a man who likes puzzles, your outlook is blinkered.” Lyra quipped back. “Disappointing,” she added, with all the experience of a mother of boys and a school-teacher to boot.

“To master such a technique, aurors would have little difficulty holding power of the law. Our weakest could achieve minimum potential, squibs a potential baseline. We could take power from those who have proven themselves unworthy.”

Yes, there was the irony she was considered that at this very moment. But why hold that in the way of her arrogance?

“We understand the need to strengthen our lines. The families always have known it, but we have proven it. Just as you do not breed the runt of the pack, you want the best of lines to continue.” She lifted her jaw proudly. “The modern liberals cannot deny it now when we have proof.” Lyra smirked, her expression long past anything reassuring.

“Then why stop there - why stay in the shadows from the Muggles? They are ridiculous, basic creatures with their pathetic attempts at ‘science’. Why should we hide from them, even if we see it as a mercy to them?” She shook her head. “They’ll want to be vessels too, but my strong theory is there are others out there, like us, who just have their potential dormant, not great enough to unlock, but enough to take…”

Lyra's dream, as she described it, grew vaster and more sinister with each word. He knew dreams like these.

"And the world would be your, ah, your oyster...?" Yavin proposed playfully, shrouded by his cloud of pipe smoke. "Power for the sake of mastering power is, hm, sorry to disappoint, an uninteresting idea. To me, that is," he splayed his free hand against his chest as if to imply it wasn't an objective judgement of her lofty claims.

As far as he was concerned, wizarding society had enough trouble corralling their capacities without the added anxiety of ultra-powered wixes like Lyra. Power could destroy - and did, in fact, destroy both Mortimer and Lyra.

"I'm afraid I would do something, hah, something droll." Yavin paused to puff the last of his tobacco. "Put all that power in a little treasure box," he raised his eyebrows and pinched his fingers together, "meant only to be, ah, to be opened by the worthy."

Worthy. Unworthy. How confidently they used those words, he thought as he put out his pipe with a smile at the with. "Rather like, hm, rather like Excalibur."

“Is that what this is?” Lyra shot back, “am I in your little treasure box?”

He was just goading her again, wasn’t he? How tiresome. What was the use of this discovery, this power if she was locked in here, unable to use it or further the research?

“Or am I just your little lab rat? I’ve heard you are keen to keep those.” She raised an eyebrow at Yavin. “Pet projects. That’s what you were keeping Mortimer for. But St Mungo’s isn’t secure enough for me unlike the others.” Lyra shrugged. “Is this what you and the Minister have decided? Keep me down here out of harm’s way. Am I under the Ministry rug, Yavin?”

She cackled. Knowing full well the Ministry had been keen to distance itself from the Gamp couple when it had all come out. They were frightened of what the public would think. Frightened that they had trusted the Gamps in the past. They had helped Zephyr hide the Goblet of Fire from the goblins, and that had just been the last request.

“You don’t know what to do with me, do you?”

His eyebrows went up a little, picturing Lyra and Mortimer and their macabre experiments in a gilded treasure box. He ran his thumb along the side of his smoking pipe, now unlit and full of ash. The treasure box was a better metaphor than being swept under a rug; waste not, want not. There would be uses for them one day - be it under his helm or another Head of Mysteries.

            “You don’t know what to do with me, do you?”

Yavin's mouth twitched into a smile and he pocketed the pipe. "Of course I, ah, I don't..." he held out his two hands palms up in a kind of relaxed, show-shrug. "My, ah, my dear you are on a long list of things I don't know what to do with."

What to do with the meteorite Sphere? What to do with his trouble-seeking protégé? Or the dementor that occupied Labyrinth rooms not dissimilar to this? And that was only the beginning of things. Yavin loved it, loved the question marks that danced above his head every morning and night.

"But I'm hardly, hm, hardly in league with the Minister," he lowered his arms and rose from the chair. "You must know that? Let the Ministers think, hah, think they know what's going on. Mysteries is its own."

The old wizard slipped his hands into his pockets, standing right before the barrier between them to look down at Lyra with a thoughtful expression. Yes. Pretty witch in a pretty treasure box.

"I'll come again?" he asked in a polite voice. "Maybe when, um, when the sword is out of the stone."

“Or the wizard is out of the umbrella.” Lyra replied dryly, peeved her entertainment was leaving already. Her expression dulled to staring in middle distance past him, as if Yavin had already left.

Did everybody in her life have to chalk up to be such a let down? Mortimer self transfigured and doo-lally before it, their younger two children obedient to the Ministry, their eldest a waste of space. Almasy had brought her own curtain down on what could have been the most delicious of partnerships, and Edwin Glass had clearly appointed a tall glass of lukewarm water to replace Mortimer.

“You’re a disappointment, Morgenthau,” Lyra intoned lowly at his departing form, “but only as I expected.” She tutted and drew air through her teeth, an undisguised sneer of revulsion.



End