Late morning on Friday, August 3
Editor's Flat
Witch Weekly office

It had become close to a routine, weaving his way through the busy Witch Weekly office to make his way to its editor’s flat. The first few times that Leo had made this walk, he’d felt the eyes on him: all of Genny’s employees, unsure if his presence here was welcome or a dangerous intrusion.

Over the past half-year, as his visits had become more and more regular, the sense that everyone was watching him had begun to drop away. And now that Dante was home for the summer holidays and his father’s presence was more or less a given, barely anyone paid him any mind. Of course, Genny still worried — she still hadn’t really told Misslethorpe, who owned the building and the flat — but to everyone else’s, the presence of her formerly incarcerated husband had become routine.

It was nearly as if they were getting a second chance on their marriage. How long it would last, though, was anyone’s guess.

Today, though, Leo Gamp was attracting a bit more attention as he made his way through the magazine’s headquarters. Part of it was his robes — the dress robes that he only wore when he was off for an official meeting with his lawyer and someone important, to settle out the wrongful prosecution claims with the Ministry or for another session on his reinstatement. The other part of it, though, was the way that sheer, angry frustration seemed to ripple off of him like a dark, angry storm cloud. His jaw was clenched tight, his shoulders tense, and his furious green eyes fixed solely on his destination like a dragon on its horde.

Genny had finally deigned to give him a key a couple of months before, when Dante had moved home and she had resignedly accepted that Leo’s presence was a near constant. As Leo unlocked the door and stepped inside, it slammed shut loudly enough behind him to rattle the windows of the tiny flat, though whether this was on purpose or simply a careless oversight was any of the occupants’ guess.

Ever since he’d gotten out from Azkaban, he hadn’t been much of a drinking man, but a day like this certainly called for alcohol. Leo headed directly for the kitchen, with every angry footfall making it clear that wherever he had just come back from, it had Not Gone Well.

“When you find a solution that doesn’t involve sticking pins in my eyes, holler.” Queen G told her artistic editor before she turned from the desk to catch the back of her estranged now not so estranged husband stomping up the stairs to her flat. Dark eyes didn’t fail to spot that she wasn’t the only one who’d made note of his entrance. Several of her reporters and gossip artists looked on as the flat door was opened and then slammed shut. Coffee in hand, Gen took a very slow swig, stealing herself for what she knew she had to do.

Fridays were always an intense day at Witch weekly. Because, you know, they were a weekly. On Friday morning, her team scurried around like busy little bees around their Queen. On Saturday morning, thousands of copies of their magazine were flown through windows and doors and landed in small shops around the country. Dealing with an angry estranged now not so estranged husband didn’t really fit into Gen’s schedule.

“Fix it.” The editor gestured to the page on her colleague’s desk before she started her steady walk through the office towards her flat, keenly aware of the eyes now on her. Damn Leo and damn his ability to have snuck back into her life. Not even your dirtiest darkest secret could stay secret when you lived above your workplace.

When inside the flat, Gen found her husband in the kitchen, already opening a cupboard which held the good stuff.
“I’m connected to the floo, network, Leo. You know, to use during business hours.” As she’d told him before. A closer inspection made the witch frown. “Who pissed on your bonfire?”

The person who pissed on his bonfire, so to speak, was not in the room at the moment, but his wife had done her fair share of adding vodka to the fire. Leo ignored his wife as he moved on to search for a glass. The first cupboard he opened held several perfectly satisfactory options, but he moved on to a second and third simply because loudly banging them shut did something to take the edge off his anger.

"And that's the most important thing to you, is it?" he shot over his shoulder at Genny. "Pretending to everyone out there that I'm not here?"

There were times when he wanted to rend the book of his wife's life to pieces all over again. It was always about appearances with Genny. She'd let him back in, slowly and begrudgingly, but she still wasn't sure if she wanted to. Salazar forbid he walk through her office, rather than Flooing to and fro like a helpless Squib. When he'd brought up looking into finding a different place to live, or even just having Dante stay with him at his parents' house instead, she'd squashed it.  No, Genny wanted to keep her elegant little flat, and perhaps even her kept husband too, but she didn't want anyone in the outside world to know about it.

The fourth cupboard didn't have anything resembling a cup in it. Glowering, Leo backed up to the third to claim one of a selection of flowery tea cups, which would do for now that he had had his fill of slamming cupboards. Snatching up the bottle of good gin that his wife preferred for her martinis, he stalked over to the kitchen table and dropped heavily to sit.

Oh Merlin, it had been one of those mornings.

“Not having my office used as a thoroughfare, yes.” But this wasn’t about Leo’s choice of entrance.

Gen, stood a suitable distance away from her stormy husband, wracked her brain for what might have caused this mood to descend on him so dramatically. Her dark eyes raked over him. He was dressed smart, new dress robes and neat hair. The stubble he’d sported recently was gone. No court dates, all that was done. He was still waiting on hearing anything of a settlement for the wrongful time served. That meant one thing.

“Oh shit.” Gen whispered, her expression suddenly changing. Leo had been at the ministry that morning on Level 2. He’d been in to see about getting his old job back 12 years after his arrest. He so badly wanted to become an auror again, much to Gen’s confusion.
“You saw Auror Pratt today.” Better than having seen Carstairs, at least. Leo, fortunately, still didn’t know just how his wife had spent some of his incarceration, and she hoped he never found out.

With a sigh, Gen moved closer, perching herself on the edge of the kitchen table beside Leo.
“And now you’re going to get blind drunk on expensive gin before it’s even noon. Good plan. I can’t see a fault in that at all.”

Faultless or not, his plan wasn't doing anything to quell his temper. Green eyes stayed glued on his task as Leo uncorked the bottle of gin and then carefully tipped it into the tea cup. Keeping one hand on the gin bottle, he tossed back the first cup of gin, coughing slightly as it burned on the way down.

Without hesitation, he poured himself another.

This one went down a little more slowly. He'd left the bottle of gin on the table between them; neither an invitation or a peace offering. That was about how things between them still were. They'd adopted a semblance of normality over the past few months, mostly for Dante's sake. (And perhaps a little bit for Bruce the cat.) Their playacting of life together even felt a little reminiscent of the old days from time to time. But he and Genny never really talked about the things that mattered: what she'd done to him. What Azkaban had been like. What he wanted next.

It was an armistice more than it was a real truce. Perhaps she could tell anyway, but the one time she'd asked him directly, he hadn't responded.

"He said," he began at last, finally breaking through the silence, "that we'd all be waiting for his last breath before 'Death Eater scum wear the Auror badge again.'"

The last part of this sentence was embellished with a poor impression of a thick Yorkshire accent, as one might encounter when speaking to the Head of the Auror Corps.

Leo Gamp, if Gen remembered correctly, had never been a heavy drinker. They had, of course, enjoyed a tipple when they could afford it. Cheap wines, beers or a dripple of firewhiskey when it had been a really difficult day. But the alcohol had always been in the right mood and they’d enjoyed it together. Gen remembered drunken evenings decorating the flat or the times when they’d just curled up on the moth-eaten sofa with a bottle of red wine, two mugs and some toast, chatting all night until they had to almost crawl to bed.

Times changed, and Azkaban changed people. Now the cheap wine was an expensive gin and it was slipping down her husband’s throat a little too easily. Ironically, the gin was still in a mug. The man drinking it, however, still a stranger after months of freedom.

“Oh.” There wasn’t any funny comment or deflection that could be made in response to that. There wasn’t anything that could be said to make that sting any less for him.
With a frown, Gen leaned over to take the cup from Leo. She poured a small measure for herself and lifted it to her lips. She wasn’t used to drinking it neat, and she pulled a face as she felt it go down.

“Mierda.” Gen muttered, putting the cup back down for Leo. “Easy to sit in your ivory tower and judge when you’ve not lost everything. I’m sorry, Leo.”

His wife plucked the sad little teacup from his fingers, leaving Leo with nothing else to do but to take his head in his hands. "They landed the wrong bloody Pratt in St. Mungo's, the foul-mouthed tyke," he muttered, pressing his fingers tightly against his temples.

Azkaban had given him practice at holding on to his anger, but out here, it left him feeling exhausted in a way that he never had inside. Perhaps it was how the whole world had shifted around him while he'd stood fastened to a pinpoint: Eddie Pratt had still been wearing his trainee blacks when Leo had received his unjust sentence. Now, the uncouth Northerner was the Head Auror, and frivolous Sol Carstairs had somehow managed to turn his constant dalliances into a Department Head title. Dan Pratt, Robards, Cox, and the Snarks were all dead; Yaxley, Musgrave, and most of the other surviving purebloods had been arrested and deposed just like he had. The cowardly Trevelyan, who had run away when the war had taken a turn, had apparently crawled out of whatever hole he was hiding in; he had been allowed to take up the badge again. And although Zora Roh was the only one he'd outright recognized, it now seemed like half the bloody office was made up of witches.

There was a clink as Genny set the teacup back on the table for him. Leo sighed, his anger tempered a bit by the offered commiseration in her words.

"At least you'll be happy to know that Pratt's a fan of yours," he told her, the sourness in his voice nearly masking any attempt at humor. He reached for the bottle again to pour himself another cup of gin, though a bit more slowly this time. "He quoted his favorite passage from your book at me. I wouldn't be surprised if he owns an autographed copy."

Gen bit her tongue to stop her making a comment in response to Leo’s suggestion the wrong Pratt had been put in St Mungo’s. Since his incarceration in Azkaban, there had been a darkness in Leo that she wasn’t sure would change. Dante brought out the old Leo, but even then, Gen couldn’t be sure what the old Leo had really been. She still didn’t truly believe that he was innocent.

At the mention of her book, Gen frowned. The book that Leo had angrily filled with red inked scribble. He’d then had hundreds of copies magically dumped on her bed on the 40th birthday. She’d been in bed with Bagnold that morning, the beautifully grumpy wizard who definitely thought she was completely messed up.

“He does.” Gen gave a shrug, frowning. That didn’t help, did it?

Twisting herself on the edge of the table, Gen looked down at her husband. “I’m going to ask one question.” She waited for him to look up at her. “Why the urge to go back to Level 2? I’m not about to pretend I know what it’s like to be an auror but I do know that your colleagues need to have your back. Do you really want to spend your life looking over your shoulder because you can’t trust the colleagues that you should be relying on?”