It had been three weeks since Knox Greyfriar had found out by a rogue letter from a muggle law firm that he was the father of Devlin Matthews via Lucretia Santoya.  And with Devlin and Knox rather hating one another, it had been a nasty confrontation and an even nastier couple of weeks.

Luckily, he had been vetted for the Wizengamot earlier in August so the skeleton in the closet had not effected is appointment as a junior Elder - notification of which had arrived earlier that week.  He'd spent the last week in orientation meetings and refreshing himself on Wizarding Law in the terrible annals of the Ministry libraries.  It'd be the end of him if he didn't begin to acquire his own copies.  The dust and spiders and the occasional sprout of Devil's Snare down there were quite enough.

And now, after a month of tossing and turning, and the stress of a new job, Knox had finally admitted he needed a friend.  Someone not in his family.  Someone who had never pried into his past at all.  A wise friend who would tell it to him straight.

"Tulojow."  He rapped on her door, eager to be in and out of the open.  While most of the people at Hogwarts would welcome him overwhelmingly, the hatred his presence would elicit from Devlin and Headmistress Snark was enough for Knox to don a heavily wooded cloak.

"Tulojow, it's Knox.  Did you get my owl?"

With the Hospital Wing covered in ashes and soot, and another student expelled as a result, the last few days had been devoted to periodically checking in with Akiva Katz and getting the school's medical facilities moved to a new location.  It had taken a rather explosive conversation but Tulojow had managed to get approval to have the hospital wing moved down to the cabin Tulojow had occupied the previous years.  The painful challenge of stairs aside, Tulojow was relieved to not find herself confined within the dark, cold halls of the castle.  Or, right underneath the nose of the new Headmistress. 

The interior of the cabin had been magically enhanced and enlarged to allow for a smaller, private residential area while several rooms had been added to allow for patients.  Gone was the white, sterile feel of the old hospital wing.  Each room was decorated with colorful, woven rugs, ethnic wall hangings and decorations.  The beds were bedded with colorful quilts and plants livened up each of the rooms.  Dreamcatchers and sand paintings were present in each room.  The front living room had several equally informal and comfortable couches and lounge chairs as well as comfy pillows on the floor around the roaring fire.  Tulojow's small kitchen, personal sitting and bedroom branched off from the living room, opposite the patients' rooms.  A door out the back of the bedroom opened up to the small paddock where the mustang mare and Gelar were kept. 

"It's open," Tulojow called from the kitchen.  She had, indeed, gotten the owl and had been expecting the former headmaster.  Bob Dylan's raspy voice resonated from a charmed hand-cranked gramophone in the corner.  Leaving a pot of anti-fungal salve simmering on the stove, Tulojow limped towards the door to let Knox in.  "Come in, come in," she urged, waving him in.  "No need to give Snark any more reason to be upset with me.  Would you like something to eat?  Drink?"

"Whatever's on would be lovely," Knox responded, hurrying inside.  The old witch seemed as hard-nosed and spry as ever, but the cabin looked like something new entirely.  He'd stepped out of ancient Scotland into some distant New World.  Hogwarts truly was an amazing place to have harbored such wonders as the likes of Tulojow Nagde.

He followed her back through the main sitting room to the warm little kitchen and stood in the doorway.  Even with the enlarged area, tall and broad Knox Greyfriar filled the space.  He had two letters in his pocket and he touched them, feeling apprehensive to begin a discussion or two that was certainly less pleasent than commenting on this delightful cottage.

"This is the solution to poor Darcy's remodel? It's not horrible, not at all. You've got a knack, really.  How have the Howler's been? Merlin, shame about Darcy," he repeated.  "Confounds the brain."

Knox had estimated that leaving Hogwarts would leave him in a constant state of worrying and wondering and attempting to use mind control and astral projection to keep an eye on things.  But frankly, with Devlin and the Wizengamot, his mind had been occupied.  All he got was an occasional owl from an old student, or the clippings from the Daily Prophet.

"I'm afraid all that's on is some stuff that'll do wonders for your athlete's foot but'll taste like a three year old orange."  After closing the door behind the former Headmaster, Tulojow followed him into the kitchen, gesturing towards a chair at the table.  The golden eagle shuffled on his perch as he watched the newcomer before resuming his preening. 

Tulojow shuffled past the younger man and tugged open the icebox and pulled out a plate of leftover corn cakes and an opened bottle of blackberry wine and set it on the table.  After giving the salve a brief stir, she, slowly, settled herself into a chair at the table.  "Well, this is the solution I convinced Snark of.  She wanted to put it in the empty wing on the fourth floor but, truthfully, I couldn't have climbed that many stairs that regularly."

With a shrug, Tulojow poured the wine.  "Any red envelops I've gotten, I've given to him," Tulojow nodded her head towards the eagle.  "He loves ripping them apart before they catch fire.  But, yeah, Darcy's another victim of Snark's anti-werewolf stance.  I fear it's going to get worse before it gets better."  Tulojow offered Knox a slight grin before shaking her head.  "If I thought it'd actually work, I'd strongly consider drugging you and hog tying you and dragging you back in that castle." 

"You'd probably find what others who've tried discovered:  there's not enough nightshade in all of Scotland to bring me down!" he said jovially, slapping his broad chest.  His laughter was the first he'd had in too long to think about, and it felt refreshing, like the first breath of clean air come spring.  The memory was one of his fondest from that time when he was a Healer's apprentice.  His wizened old crone master had him estimate the dosage for himself, and after hours of dosing himself to test his mix, he cleaned out her entire stock.  There was just something about his size and constitution that had made him a hard tree to fell.  She accused him of building up an immunity by constantly sipping on Nightshade tea.

"If I had any regrets about leaving Hogwarts, they all vanished with the recent arrival of a letter from a muggle law firm," he said, deciding this was a viable segue.  "Would have made the castle all too hostile for myself and a student who needs all the help he can get."

He took the offered seat then, and took up a glass of the sweet wine.  He raised his glass and with a wry smile offered a toast.  "To bastard sons."

He wasn't nervous admitting this kind of compromising conundrum to Tulojow.  He trusted her to know who to mention it to and who should be kept in the dark.  She was an ally and trusted friend. 

Tulojow laughed, her eyes twinkling with amusement.  "Well, now that you've been kind enough to forewarn me, I know not to use nightshade."  Tulojow hoisted her glass in a mock toast before taking a sip.  Unfortunately, as difficult as she suspected incapacitating Knox would be, getting rid of Snark would still, probably, be harder. 

Though Tulojow hoisted her own glass to Knox' toast, an eyebrow twitched in curiosity.  Between the previous comment and the toast, Tulojow found it easy enough to put the context clues together. 

"Bastard sons?" she repeated, curiously.  "And, I take it, this news wasn't, exactly, a welcomed turn of events?"  Of course, such news could come as a shock to anyone - sometimes it took time for the mind to adjust to a new state of life.  Though, Knox wasn't offering the information in a manner that suggested an immediate, reflexive response. 

"Would I know who he is?"  As gamekeeper, Tulojow had had few reasons to approach the students on her own.  Some had opted to venture down to visit her but they were, in many ways, the minority. 

For the first time, his newfound fatherhood was amusing.  Sitting there, talking about it with Tulojow over homemade berry wine made it seem like some strange tale.  It had been so painful.  His feelings of guilt, and Devlin's profusely stated hatred.  The stress of the Wizengamot proceedings and the fear he'd be found out. 

He chuckled as a wash of surrendered mirth came over him.  He held up his hands, as if baring his wierd new secret to the world.  "Devlin Matthews!" he cried.  "Devlin Matthews!"

He shook his head, smiling.  His white ivory teeth contrasted against his thick, dark beard - the very same sort that Devlin had been cultivating since he was 15.   

"He doesn't want a thing to do with me.  Poor lad can't imagine that back when I had known his mother I wasn't as old and objectionable as I am now."  He smiled again and laid a hand on his chest.  Knox wasn't old by wizarding standards.  But any man who was responsible for an adulterous pregnancy of your own mother is old and gross. 

"But yes, he was rather adamant that we never, ever see each other again.  Funny thing, though, Tulojow, my friend - I'd almost rather have it that way myself but can't shake this wracking, nagging sense of duty that I must force myself on him anyway.  There's no telling how Douglas Matthews would react if he was also sent a letter.  Devlin and I may be stuck with each other, whether we like it or not.  And by all rights, I'm bound to be the adult about it."

"You've not got kids, have you?"

It wasn't unlike winning an old Ford Pinto in the lottery.  Tulojow wasn't familiar with most of the students at the school, but rumors spread far and wide enough for her to understand the source Knox' amusement.  She chuckled, slightly, taking a sip of the deep, sweet wine. 

"Christmas came early, didn't it?" she asked, slightly teasingly. 

Parenthood was, really, this strange, peculiar beast.  One which everyone saw all the time in others but never fully understood until they experienced it themselves.  While fate had, largely, denied her the personal experience, she'd found herself on the observational (and quite often advisory) of parenthood.  During her assignments in former British Territories, as both an auror and Healer, Tulojow often found herself serving both roles in remote locations.  She'd had her share of experience in midwifery and, on the flip side, she'd arrested her fair share of teens who fell too far in the dark arts.  And, she'd carried the news to the family and friends of these youngsters. 

"Of course he doesn't," Tulojow said, figuring with Knox she didn't have to coat your words.  "He's a teenager.  You could have been there every day since the day he was born and chances are he'd probably still not want anything to do with you now."  But, Tulojow knew well enough, that didn't account for the whole problem at hand.  "'Course, you're coming into this after how many years of just being an authority figure? And, from what I understand, Devlin's not one keen on authority."  Which, of course, Tulojow couldn't point fingers on.

Tulojow shifted herself in her chair and kicked her leg up on the chair next to her.  "No you don't," Tulojow corrected him as she rubbed her knee between her fingers.  "You say that now because it's easier.  The river may choose the path of least resistance but, in the end, our heads aren't filled with water.  It'll eat at you if you just let it go." 

And, then, without warning, the topic was turned around.  The usually calm and collected Tulojow froze, staring blankly at her glass of wine.  After a few breaths, Tulojow tugged her pipe out of her pocket and filled it with a mixture from a leather pouch before lighting it.  Finally, she shook her head.  "No.  Not for a lack of trying, though.  Two nieces, a nephew and I can't remember how many grand nieces and nephews.  But, fate or the powers or whatever seemed to think my path didn't include the family life."

Immediately Knox could see that his mundane question had come off as much more macabre to Tulojow and she was uncomfortable.  If Knox guarded his past, then Tulojow kept hers in a subterranean drago-secured Gringotts vault.  He raised his palm, retreating for now from the reciprocal questioning that in other situations would be innocuous. 

He sipped from his wine and nodded.  She had said something wise though and it was sticking in his mind.  Right now he resented Devlin.  He'd been fond of him, in general, as he was fond of all his students, wishing them the best, caring for their well-being.  But in the last couple of years, Devlin had turned for the worst.  Knox hadn't been able to prove anything, but it wasn't a big secret that he stole test answers, sold contraband to students and that a rather large majority of Hogwarts' roughest characters looked up to the clever Ravenclaw.  Where was that warm sense of paternal love new fathers were supposed to feel? Would he ever feel it?

"Strange how neither of us ever sorted it out," he observed.  "Keep thinking that even though his mother kept it a secret past her death - think one of us might have noticed.  Now, I can see it, but it never occurred to me before.  You don't think anyone's suspected, do you?  Were the two of us alone in our life-long denial?"

Tulojow tipped her head slightly in Knox' direction, relieved the conversation had moved on.  Logically, she knew she was being foolish but, over the years, she'd found it much easier to let the past just remain where it was.  But, few doctors followed their own advice, right?  It was much easier to advise others on their history than to face one's ones.

"I don't think it's strange," Tulojow admitted.  "It's much easier to see what you know to look for.  I'm not sure anyone could fairly expect you to look out on that sea of young faces and pick one, randomly, that may resemble you."  Similarities between father and son were to be expected.  How many of these could be attributed to something beyond the basic similarities between fellow humans one could only guess.

Not to mention - "And, I have a hard time imagining young Devlin going looking for it himself."  Devlin probably had spent a chunk of his time identifying the differences between himself and his educators. 

"Give yourself time, Knox," Tulojow advised, setting her glass down and resting a hand on top Knox' hand.  "Fathers usually have a good nine months to adjust to the idea of fatherhood.  It got dropped on you without warning.  It'll take time for both of you."

Knox was relieved Tulojow let the silence stand for a moment.  Being so close to the Forbidden Forest, and the cabin being a great deal less stalwart than the castle, in the space between their discourse he could hear birds and wind and trees.  And in that not-quite-silence he realized how deeply he missed Hogwarts.  Perhaps that was really why he'd chosen to drop in on Tulojow for council instead of sending an owl.  Instead of turning to Meredith or Jason. 

"Terrible about Darcy and Olivia," he said, his tone light and curious.  "Are things really that bad now?  Snark's mad, that's for sure, but surely she intends to do right by whatever foul principles she maintains.  The gears are still moving along? You're all fairing well?"

Knox couldn't help but feel guilty that he hadn't been able to leave the school in better hands.  Despite his near-hatred for Snark, Knox knew that if she were so inclined she'd do well at Hogwarts.  But her prideful selfishness and reckless ambition clouded any usefulness she had as a teacher.  Another wasted talent from Slytherin.  But he also know that the school wasn't only made by the Head - the students and professors were really the ones in control of the culture.  Surely things weren't as bad as all this?

"A pointless waste," Tulojow muttered under her breath, shaking her head.  The denied education - the efforts wasted.  For what purpose?  To further a personal political agenda? To proves one mettle?  Surely, Snark couldn't actually believe she'd made the students safer by sending away a werewolf?  A werewolf who'd been in the school for years before without incident?  "Darcy should have ... it's a shame." 

She took a long, slow breath off her pipe, letting the sweet, musky smoke linger in her lungs a few moments before exhaling slowly.  Slowly, she shook her head.  "I'm, honestly, not sure," she admitted.  It was the disadvantage of remaining down here in the new hospital facility.  It kept her out from under Snark's nose but Tulojow didn't, exactly, have her thumb to the main artery of the school.  She was certain she heard more candid news from those that visited her but she was dependent on those visitors to know what was, really, going on. 

"I haven't figured out what Snark wants here.  She's never taught - I'm not sure she even likes kids.  I just haven't figured her out.  I wish I could."  Tulojow took another long smoke.  "The gears are moving along.  We're fairing well enough, I suppose.  She seems to be holding a grudge towards certain students - she punished that Schlagenweit kid again at the beginning of the year.  I'm sure you saw the Prophet article on Monday.  I don't really know what's going on there - he never seemed like a troublemaker." 

Knox settled back in his chair and let his eyes follow Tulojow's scrolling smokework while his ears took in talk of Sasha, Snark and the future of Hogwarts.

His heart ached for Sasha.  That article by Skeeter - it had come completely from left field and had been disdainfully unfair.  And Knox knew what kind of reception it'd have among the crueler of his former students.  That and as shy as Sasha was, he had chosen to stand up to Snark at the End of Term feast.

"Poor Sasha.  Talk about starting off on the wrong side.  Not that I can fault him - bold as Gryffindor to stand up like that! Can't say I'm not proud.  Just, the hexes he's bringing upon himself.  No good deed goes unpunished."

"I spoke with Minister Annwyl and Madam Gertrudis earlier this month - they're investigating if Olivia's expulsion was legal.  I don't know if anyone means to attempt to unseat Snark, but the Ministry has its eye on Hogwarts once again. And for good intentions or bad - that's frankly never gone well for us."

"I don't know much about him," Tulojow admitted, shifting the pipe in her mouth slightly, absentmindedly chewing on the mouthpiece.  "Other than he's quiet and, from what I hear, a strong student.  I kept expecting to hear some response from his parents after that article, but so far that doesn't seem to have happened.  Had he been my child, I'd have been all over any school who'd hex my child publicly." 

As school healer, Tulojow was definitely on the receiving end of a different perspective of the student body than she'd been back as a gamekeeper.  She'd never been one for gossip - it seemed pointless and, often, meant to be malicious.  But, rumors drifted down with the patients.  "He seems to get his share of bullying as well.  Given he's been down here once already this year." 

Tulojow shook her head.  As far as she was concerned, the Ministry's presence at the school wasn't bound to be a good thing.  "And, Darcy?  Are they really going to press charges?  Expelling her is bad enough - and foolish if you ask me - but to mar her record more than that."  Yes, the fire had been bad.  But, no one had been hurt.  It had been a prank that had gotten out of hand.  Nothing more.

"His parents are muggles," Knox said blandly.  "And from what he says, they're fingers-to-eardrums about him being a wizard.  Lad was dead set in staying in the castle over the summer.  Fat chance they'll ever see a Daily Prophet, let alone a Skeeter article." 

Knox shouldn't have been as surprised as he was at Tulojow's merciful reaction to Darcy's conflagration.  Not only had she nearly irreparably marred the beloved castle, but with Fiendfyre no less!  The danger she might have caused her fellow students to say something about Olivia's mistreatment, it was grossly over the top.  But on the other hand - Tulojow was right.  From what he'd heard she and Snark had done their due diligence and contained it with some very well-cast magic. But then, you couldn't go wrong with an ex-Auror and the former Head of the Department of Mysteries fighting a fire.  Knox, not much of an accomplished wandswizard himself, would have paid to have seen that display. 

He communicated this mostly with a slow nod.  "Darcy will end up being made an example of if Snark behaves as we all expect her to.  I'm not at all looking forward to seeing her down on the floor of that courtroom.   They ask us to attempt to use our consciences, the wisdom of our experience and knowledge of the law to rule at the Wizengamot - but not our personal biases and feelings? The distinction is fuzzy with our Hufflepuffs."

He took it upon himself to refresh his goblet of berry wine.