Getting into Diagon Alley without a wand might be a challenge, but it hadn't taken Jonas long to work out the basic rules.

1) Choose a table facing the door: the front, not the back. 

2) Bring a book that could be stowed quickly.  Newspapers, though far more interesting and usually equipped with crossword puzzles, were much more of a hassle to fold up in a hurry. 

3) Be deliberate in what one ordered.  While drinks could be abandoned without fanfare, walking out in the middle of a meal tended to get him strange looks from the other patrons.  Since the fact of the matter was that he couldn't actually access Diagon Alley without following someone else in, Jonas didn't particularly want to raise unnecessary suspicions. 

And 4) Having exact change was, of course, imperative.  The one time he'd forgotten and brought bank notes instead of galleons or sickles, he'd gotten stuck waiting so long for the barman to exchange it that he'd missed at least three possible entries and gotten overcharged besides.

The morning's effort had started out promising.  The Leaky Cauldron had already been bustling with activity by the time he had arrived on Saturday morning, but most of the traffic seemed to be leaving the pub, not going back into it.  Jonas had sighed and chosen his usual table, keeping an eye on the door for likely targets (elderly wizards; harried-looking witches with small children; even the usual eccentrics who looked as though they couldn't remember which pocket they'd used to stow their wand) who might provide him with inauspicious entry into the Alley.

Today, though, his luck seemed to be failing.  The morning stretched on and there were still no likely looking targets in sight.

Jonas had finally given up on the safe approach.  There were only so many times he could re-read the same two pages of his book (one of the few that Lexus had left behind; its prose hadn't gotten any better upon repeat readings), and with no one going back into the Alley, he might as well wait to catch someone leaving it.  As long as he got his wand up in time, he could always pretend that he was in the process of counting three up and two across - it would just appear to be happenstance that someone came through from the other direction in the middle of it.

Stowing his book, he left change for the cheque on the table, grabbed his satchel, and headed out back.

The alleyway behind the Leaky Cauldron was as empty as he'd ever seen it.  There was no one in sight, and the brick wall looked to be as solid and brick-like as ever.  Making a face, Jonas eyed his nemesis from behind his dark glasses.  Why the bloody hell hadn't wizards ever progressed enough to install automatic doors on their magical entrances?

Whatever the reason, glaring at the extremely solid, extremely inoperable non-door was not going to solve his problem.  Letting out a sigh, the red-haired man settled back against the opposite wall, digging into his pocket for his phone.  If he was going to be stuck waiting in the bloody alleyway until someone decided to make a convenient magical transverse, at least he could make an electronic community of tiny digital islanders completely miserable as he tarried.

Typically Ackerly apparated from place to place- but he had just come from his ex-wife's home (she needed help putting something together, and apparently Mr. Wonderful was not very handy with tools) so Ackerly thought he'd just walk to the Leaky Cauldron and head into Diagon that way. He was feeling a little more leisurely than usual- taking half a day to himself (because Isabel had demanded his help)- so he was in no hurry to find his way back to Level Two. He practically lived there these days. Ackerly wasn't even sure why he continued paying rent on a flat he never used.

He was surprised, when he came out the back (cup of coffee in hand) to see Jonas Trevelyan sitting against the brick wall behind the little pub, playing on his... call phone, Ackerly thought it was. To have lived so much in the muggle world, Ackerly had picked up surprisingly little of their lingo and their ways.

"Forget your wand, Trevelyan?" he asked with an arched brow. "Or do you just enjoy sitting against brick walls to play with your muggle toys?" Ackerly grinned a little as he said it. The good mood meant he didn't feel like barking at people. (Naturally the good mood had nothing to do with spending the morning with his ex-wife who was wearing scanty pajamas, not at all.) "Leave it at the office and follow somebody out?" he continued, pulling his own and counting the proper bricks, displaying the entry way into Diagon.

Jonas had been engrossed enough in the process of flicking tiny islanders into the distant volcano that the other man's approach took him by surprise.  He glanced up at the sound of his name, eyes flickering quickly over the other wizard as he straightened carefully, shifting the weight back to his bad leg.

Ackerly Fox had been a year ahead of him when he'd been training to be an Auror.   Fox was brash, self-confident, and very sure that he knew what he was doing - all traits that could make an individual extremely difficult to get along with, and also all traits that Jonas was fairly certain that he had shared with the other man.  Needless to say, with so many personality quirks in common, interactions occasionally had a habit of getting a bit explosive.

While they may not have been friends in their youth, Fox had been perfectly polite since he had rejoined the Ministry a few weeks before.  Jonas hadn't spoken to him much, but he was vaguely aware that the more experienced Senior Auror had run into some trouble regarding his work on werewolf cases several weeks back.  Adon had mentioned, too, that Fox was working the possession case on Dreogan, which meant that his new partner would be dealing with the man in the near future.  That was reason enough to stay friendly.

"I mostly just enjoy playing with Muggle toys, to be honest," Jonas replied, flashing the other man a crooked smile as he held down the button to turn off his phone.  "Alright then, Fox?  Nice for a Saturday, innit?"

Returning to the magical world wasn't as simple as just picking up a bicycle and starting to ride again.  Reacquainting himself with the vocabulary, finding his way about Diagon and Hogsmeade, remembering bits and pieces about the Ministry - those were all bits and pieces that had been lost in his memory, but were slowly returning with time.  Some habits, though, were taking much more time to get used to again.  He still felt entirely too self-conscious every time he even considered wearing a robe, and the fact that he couldn't use his cellular phone to play games or instantly text Anna while he was at the Ministry left him in a bad mood most of the afternoon.

"You know," he remarked cheerfully, slipping the phone back into the pocket of his trousers.  He'd learned early on that keeping it turned on while in Diagon or at the office was asking for trouble; areas of concentrated magic never had any mercy for electronics.  "You're welcome to give it a try if you want to see what all the fuss is about, mate.  Eleor and I were planning to go to lunch on Monday.  You want to tag along too, we could see who can feed the most villagers to the shark."

Ackerly's brow arched higher at Jonas' response. He never understood the attraction of technology. His son was fascinated by it, it was his favorite part of living with his mother- or so Baxter had said on multiple occasions. "My son is the same way," he commented. "His mother is always buying him things, I never have any idea what they're on about." He got even more confused if Baxter spoke of games- Ackerly wasn't familiar with video games, he had no intention to grow familiar with them.

"Nice enough," he agreed. Things could be a lot nicer if he hadn't gotten into hot water and been yanked from field work of some of his cases. And now he'd had to pick up new ones, and he wasn't sure yet how he felt about it. Ackerly also had a sneaking suspicion some of the other aurors were feeling pretty smug about the whole situation. Perfect Ackerly Fox getting into hot water was unexpected.

He stepped through the opening of Diagon, shaking his head. "Feeding villagers to a shark doesn't sound particularly interesting to me, Trevelyan. Besides, I usually do lunch at the office unless I'm going with Char- Malone." He tried not to make it overly obvious that he liked Charlene more than the rest of the aurors. First name basis wasn't something he treated lightly among his colleagues, but he often called his former trainee by her given name instead of her last. "Though I guess now she's got a beau that our lunch dates will be less often, eh?" he elbowed Jonas with a waggle of his brows. He was accustomed to men feeling threatened by him. Not that Ackerly could blame them. But he really only had eyes for one woman- the one who didn't want him.

"Have a lot going on in your cases?" he asked. A lot of aurors didn't make it a point to be around on the weekends. Especially on Saturdays. They tried to balance their lives outside of the office with their lives inside. Not everyone could be as dedicated to the force as Ackerly was, after all. "Or some other reason bring you to Diagon on a Saturday?"

The mental file that Jonas had started to keep on his new coworkers was growing by leaps and bounds even during this short interaction.  So Fox had a son - with a Muggleborn or a Muggle for a mother by the sound of it, if he liked Muggle gadgets.  The 'his mother' description was telling, too.  Even during the worst days of his estrangement with Anna, Jonas's ex-wife had never been simplified to such a distant description; even if their marriage had failed, he still thought of her in terms of their relationship and not solely in the role that she played for their children.  Perhaps Fox was similarly divorced or perhaps he had never been married - or possibly, perhaps he was just that cold.  It was quite a lot to read into one word, but it was something to hold on to for the future.

Fox's lack of interest in virtual world domination was disappointing; his friendship with Charlene Malone, another of the Aurors that Jonas had met but not yet gotten to know, less so.  The red-haired man was quickly drawing mental lines between colleagues in the office, connecting friends and allies to each other in an effort to make sense of the complex relationships on Level Two.  Getting a sense of the already-established social dynamics was essential if he wanted to last at the Ministry.

"Yeah, the cases are busy enough," he agreed easily, following the taller man into Diagon.  Jonas was certain that Edward Pratt was already spreading the word that he was lazy and incompetent idiot, which in fairness he had really not done anything to counter, but he held out hope that the others wouldn't fall into the trap.  If they did, it was his own fault for rising to the bait.  "And I'm still getting me feet under me a bit.

"I'm not working today, though," he added, sparing the other man a look.  That seem to beg an explanation, lest he rise to Pratt's opinion of him, so he hurried on.  "Just running a couple of errands, and then I was going to floo up to Scotland to visit with me niece.  To be honest, I've got two kids meself and they're both still at home," he said with a shrug.  "I know the trap of working seven days straight will come eventually, but I'd like to put it off for as long as I can.  I've missed out on enough with them already."