Fauna sat at her desk, her mind many miles away, immersed in the grimmest stack of case files she'd ever seen. Though she knew the details of the lakehouse murders well, the facts outlined in stark ink on parchment always made her stomach turn. She barely noticed it this late Monday morning, taking a moment to stretch her arms and straighten the crick in her neck. The sense of dread had become routine, and there was nothing for it but to sip at her lukewarm coffee and keep her desk lamp shining brightly.
   
Last week had brought trouble in the form of murder by flower.[1] This week, they were going back to the source.
   
The Lilly Lakehouse.
   
The timing wasn't purposeful. It just so happened that after months of inactivity, something had triggered Level Two's alarms, alerting them of a magical anomaly within the manor's crumbling walls. Fauna had thought they'd have Level Nine look at it and be done with it. But they had to dispel the strange magic, first.
   
Hence the cursebreaker arriving today.
   
Fauna lifted up an animated photo - one of the few provided by distant family members of Lori Lilly. The estate loomed imposing and formal, but the sky was a soft blue behind it, and the lake in the distance appeared placid and calm. Birds flitted from windowsill to windowsill, unafraid of the owls within the tower. It had once been home to Lori Lilly, a squib who had made it her whole world.
   
Lorelei Hunt had ruined all that. She'd murdered the squib heiress, stolen her identity, and trapped so many others in her gallery of pentrals. The pentrals were souls again, Fauna supposed, since they'd been set free.
   
At this morning's meeting, Fauna had volunteered to return to the lakehouse, her hand raised not quite as high as it could be. It had been months since Level Two had needed to investigate the house and grounds, and she remembered the house best in autumn with the smell of decaying leaves wafting through the broken windows, and in winter when the rooms had turned cold and every breath misted like a pentral. Fauna set the photo down. The house would never be what it once was, and lives that had been stolen couldn't become whole again.
   
At the sound of footsteps nearing, Fauna stepped out of her cubicle into the hall. The friendly, familiar voice sounding down the hall still gave her hope that not all was lost.
   
Abby Reid, the DMLE's most sociable assistant, was in a bright wizarding robe, her curly blond hair up in her usual ponytail. She met Fauna's eyes and smiled a little. Perhaps only those close to her would notice that she looked tired.
   
The man beside Abby surprised Fauna, mostly because he looked young, in his late twenties, when she'd been expecting a grizzled cursebreaker with decades of expertise. She straightened, aware that she too, was one of the youngest in the office, and lacked the dramatic red robes that the fully-fledged Aurors wore. Her blouse and black trousers were neat enough, as she'd been sitting at her desk and in meetings all morning, and her dark hair hadn't yet had an opportunity to frizz.
   
"Fauna, this is Patrick Watkins, the cursebreaker from Gringotts," Abby introduced him in an easy tone.
   
"Hi," Fauna smiled, extending a hand to shake. "Fauna Blake. Auror trainee. I'll be your, er, guide for today as we investigate the lakehouse. If you didn't get buried by the paperwork?"
   
"He got it all done, the whole never-ending scroll of it," Abby answered happily for him. "The confidentiality agreement, the conflict of interest form, the injury waiver form. And he's still here. We haven't scared him off yet."
   
"Good," Fauna said brightly, glancing at Watkins' face. How did he really feel about being here? It had been some time since the Daily Prophet had reported on the lakehouse, but it might be strange for him, having completed the paperwork with the very squib that had been the only one to escape.[2]

1.	Lorelei Hunt leaves a cursed gift in For the Devoted
2.	House of Horrors

His assignment today was certainly not one that he'd expected, but that had always been a big part of the appeal of the job, dealing with the unexpected. On the surface, it seemed tame enough, but he knew all too well that appearances were almost always deceiving when it came to mysteries and magic and this was a bit of both. He had arrived early, as was his habit, which turned out to be a good thing considering all of the paperwork that he'd had to muddle through. He'd done so with patience and diligence, appreciating the order of it all. Patrick had dutifully done what was required and then followed Miss Reid to one Miss Fauna Blake, the young woman that had requested his help today.

The slightest of blushed touched his cheeks, an unfortunate side effect of his being terribly shy around women. Thankfully he was able to brush most of his fumbling aside when there was work to be done. He gave a small laugh in Abby's direction. "I don't scare that easily and Miss Reid was most helpful with everything." Stepping forward slightly he gave Fauna his full attention. "I hope to be able to return the favor in kind on your behalf, Miss Blake." There were no guarantees that nothing would go wrong after all. He was confident that he could break the curse, a bit of hubris perhaps, but that didn't mean there wouldn't be complications or danger. Until they reached the house and he set out to do his thing, she was wholly in charge and he willingly let her lead him where they needed to go. "I'm ready whenever you are, lead the way," he said, making sure to focus on the business at hand and not think about Miss Blake as anything other than a business partner for the time being

Fauna blinked. Return the favor on her behalf? Well, that was very polite! Her smile widened with a touch of amusement, and she glanced at Abby, curious if she was clocking this, because of course she was. That kind of talk didn't really happen on Two unless an Auror was trying to get on Solomon Carstairs' good side, or making fun of his good side. This cursebreaker came from a different world where the coffee must be decent and his colleagues nice and polite.

But Abby was fidgeting with her necklace, and she kept glancing at the files on Fauna's desk. Fauna's face fell.

"I'll come find you as soon as I'm back," Fauna promised, keeping her tone casual as she caught Abby's eye. "We'll grab lunch and catch up."

Abby nodded after a moment, wishing them luck and walking back down the hall. Fauna glanced after her, a faint line of worry appearing between her brows, then turned her attention to Patrick Watkins.

"Just a second. I want to show you where we're going."

She gestured Watkins inside her cubicle, which had the sort of comfortable clutter that looked like she had been working there for a decade rather than a few years. A trainee had gifted her a calendar of spooky castles for her birthday a few months ago, and another trainee had doodled ghosts circling the castles in each photo. On the other wall, her old SAWS[1] pin held up a note stating: 'Don't trust the chocolates!', and just below it was a note someone had added last week in blocky lettering: 'DO NOT TRUST THE FLOWERS, EITHER'.

Fauna nudged aside several framed photos of her family, and one new animated photo of her and Tia sharing a tropical drink on the beach during their weekend holiday. She rifled through the file on her desk and pulled out one of the first photos they'd taken of the Lilly Lakehouse last summer, after a magically-fueled fire had destroyed most of the estate.

She held up the photo to show Patrick.[2]

"We'll be heading here, to this tower, where the Hunt siblings summoned souls to turn them into pentrals."

Since last year, the term 'pentral' had become commonplace in the bullpen of Level Two, but Fauna still lowered her voice. In the animated photograph, ash and crumbling bricks were piled at the base of the manor, and the sky was blotted with clouds that had signaled the storm of dementors, and the tower that Fauna pointed to stood burnt and blackened and baleful.

Fauna barely glanced at the photo, having been there so many times, but she wanted to prepare the cursebreaker a little before they got there.

Giving him a moment, Fauna gulped down the last of her lukewarm coffee and put away the rest of the files on her desk. Fauna then donned her trainee jacket, patting her pockets for all the necessities. Her dark brown hair nearly blended in with the sturdy black fabric. When Watkins seemed ready, she tilted her head at the hallway and led the way.

It was so nice to lead for once.

"We won't be alone, though."

He'd sounded confident earlier, and Fauna truly didn't want to scare him off. After the ambush at the Wold cottage, it was smartest to investigate the lakehouse as a group.

"You'll see other Aurors surveying the rooms at the estate, along with some folks from Mysteries. They might join us once you're done, so we can give them an update and they can, er, analyze the song? Bottle it?"

She was never quite sure what Level Nine would do, but she was secretly glad that Two and Nine were working together and that she'd have a chance to understand the curse before it got taken away. Fauna glanced at the young man's face and stopped in her tracks next to Auror Bailey's cubicle.

"Oh! I didn't tell you about the song, did I."

Auror Bailey's chuckle sounded over the cubicle wall.

"Right. The reason you're here," she smiled sheepishly. Fauna glanced ahead, thinking for a moment about how best to explain it.

"Some of the bricks in the tower fell out one day and triggered the alarms we'd set on the house. We found no evidence that it was intentional - the wall likely crumbled because of the fire damage and the change in weather," Fauna lifted a shoulder.

"Anyway, we got there, and we saw - heard - a piece of the summoning song coming from the tower. You know, because Lorelei Hunt used a form of music magic to lure in the souls. Again, it didn't seem to be left there intentionally, and it's only a piece of the song, not the whole thing, but it's still dangerous, and we haven't been able to, uh, extract it. We'd like to save it somehow, instead of just dispelling it."

They'd found the tower chock full of illusions, wards, and dark magic late last summer, most of which had been haphazardly and inexpertly casted, held together by Lorelei's sheer force of will and spite. Though they'd taken extra care cataloging and dismantling the magic that the necromancer had spun around the estate, threads of it must have seeped into the shifting walls and nested there like the mice.

She rubbed the back of her neck. As much as she enjoyed this part of the job, it all sounded so dramatic.

They reached one of the conference rooms on Level Two that had been set aside for apparating to the site today. Fauna paused at the door, turning to face the cursebreaker with a patient look.

"Do you have any questions before we head out, Mr. Watkins?"

1.	Students Against Werewolf Segregation
2.	It would look something like this, but burnt and crumbling