February 17, 2009
8:34 am

As a junior Elder on the Wizengamot, Knox Greyfriar was not out of place on Level Two.  He was privvy to certain details of cases that he'd be presiding over, and he was often called upon to sign warrents and authorize other legal actions.  But something was off. 

He didn't look properly dressed for work - a man who normally presented in full wizards' robes, professional, traditional attire.  But this morning he walked through the Headquarters in his vest and shirtsleeves, looking as if he hadn't slept.  He didn't have his usual short cap on that bore the family rune, his dark hair wild, matted and ragged around his bearded face.   His eyes were bloodshot and he looked haggard.  And though he'd attempted to remove any trace, a spot of blood could be seen on his breast.

He walked past all the Aurors he'd normally greet cheerfully and went straight to the office of Tamis Raynor, interim Head of the Department. 

"Madam Raynor!"  he hissed, calling for her in an urgent whisper.  "I need to speak with you.  Now."

“… and we will be keeping our wands out of our back pockets in the future,” the Head Auror was concluding in a reproving tone when the bearlike and hairy (extra, of late) Knox Greyfriar strode into the middle of her office. The trainee who had been receiving the lecture startled in his seat in front of the large oak desk while Tamis Raynor lifted her gaze to meet the newcomer with much more practiced calm. The flicker of surprise was minute in those gray depths, but it was there.

Wizengamot Elders floated through her domain often enough, their dark blue flowing robes patriotically mingled among the vibrant red of the Auror uniforms. She was not used to being barged in on by one so… unkempt. Raynor took in various features at once – the sweat matted hair, the blood red of his eyes, the overall disheveled attire. The stain in his voice which was both a plea and a command at once. Not many people gave Tamis Raynor such a direct order; not without proper cause. She had seen men with the look before – most had been in Azkaban or were well on their way to heading there.

“I expect you promptly and punctually on Monday,” she concluded, still calmly, to the trainee. “Your leave is extended until then.” The trainee was only half listening, still gapping at Greyfriar, unconvinced if it was the same man he had seen regularly around Level Two, looking from him to Raynor. A warning eyebrow sent him on his way and he ducked out of the office, covering his rear with an issue of the Daily Prophet as he went.

The door to office closed of its own accord on his heels, trapping the obviously emotional man and the diminutive woman together alone in the small space. Feeling smaller than she already was seated when faced with the untamed Greyfriar, Raynor rose to her feet, keeping her palms pressed against the edges of her desk – and away from the instinctual reaction for one of them to start edging toward the wand on holstered on her hip.

“Speak then,” she told him, hiding her concern.

Knox would have been ashamed of himself to have noticed that Tamis Raynor was on her guard - he wasn't out to bully or frighten anyone.  He hadn't barged in here to intimidate.  Lucky for him, he wasn't looking at her.  He'd sank into the chair the trainee had vacated and stared at the desk between them.  He didn't know how to begin.

"My boy.  He's been hurt.  He's- ...Devlin, he-,"  Knox said, his normally strong, booming baritone a confused, stunted stammer.

"I think someone tried to kill him.  I don't know what to do."  The anguish was spelled out on face.  Saying out loud was admitting some failure, and opening up his shoddy little family for even more trouble.  But there wasn't anything to be done about it - the Aurors had to know what had happened to Devlin so they could protect him, stop the creature who'd hurt him.  Knox knew his responsibility and he took it very seriously.  To serve his people he had to be planted firmly on the right side of the law.  He'd already compromised his integrity by failing to report Devlin missing.  He couldn't hide more from Level Two.

He shook his head, opened his mouth, and shut it again.  Devlin was home right now, in bed.  Knox had cast all the protective charms on the little stone house that he knew, had laid healing runes on his son, and had paced for forty-five minutes around his snow-covered stoop, debating whether to go to the Aurors.  Debating when would be the right time.  But it couldn't be hidden - he had no idea if the devils would want to finish the job.

The Head Auror lowered herself back into her chair with some care, partly due to her still healing pains from the… mishap… in January, but mostly out uncertainty of how to handle Knox Greyfriar in such a grief-ridden state. She could deal with the man being stubborn. She usually handled him roaring and bellowing. She could tolerate him and most other occasions. But she had never seen him so distraught.

The English in her wanted to make a situation-diffusing sarcastic comment -- or slip out the door to allow him to have his moment and then return. The Auror in her knew both would be ill-advised.

Devlin. Meaning Devlin Matthews. The name caught her attention immediately. The boy was a small thorn in her foot among an infestation of other thorns. She knew as well as Zora Roh did that the adolescent was guilty, proving it was another issue entirely, especially with the Gibson case so fresh in the memory of the Public and the Wizengamot. She waited with the patience of a saint, without offering comfort for Greyfriar’s frazzled state. He had come for condolence from Tamis Raynor (few would), he had come to tell the Head Auror something.

A brief silence.  She could only be so patient.

“You ‘think’ someone tried to kill him?” She repeated. ‘Think’ meant that it had not happened in front of Greyfriar or that would have been a more definitive statement. Which meant it was probable it had not happened at the man’s home. Had Matthews broken his house arrest? They would get to that. “Is the boy hurt?” She doubted the Junior Elder was this out of sorts simply because someone had made an attempt on the boy’s life and failed. Kingstreet was the second most wanted Witch in the country for a reason. “How bad is he?” A heartbeat. “Where is he?”

The last thing she needed was to lose another seventeen year old suspect to fatality.

Knox hadn't thought so far ahead as to have anticipated how Raynor would react.  But as soon as she spoke, the memories of their past interactions, his knowledge of her professionals, came back and he remembered why she was a witch to be regarded carefully.  She was very powerful.  And very much an Auror.  And he realized he wasn't sure that he could trust her, only that he had to .  He didn't move his heavy head, but slowly raised his gaze to look at her. 

His face began to answer his questions before his voice, as he sat stock still.  Any tinge of movement might give way to some wave of emotion he might not be able to control - best to remain still. 

"He's at home," he confirmed, knowing it was a half truth.  He's at home now, would be more to the point. 

"Someone's hurt him very badly," he said, still looking levelly at her face.  "I don't know that he was meant to survive it.   I ... needed to report it.  I thought you should know..."  he was trying to come up with the real reason he was here, but couldn't place it.  "I need help to keep him safe.  I don't know if... they'll realize he's alive or if they'll try again."

Strangely, a smile just touched the corners of his mouth, as he looked down at his hands.  They were clenched tightly together as if holding back the dam.  "He's bad, Tamis."

Sometimes to be the good guy, you had to be the bad guy. Emotional displays were common from the seat Knox Greyfriar was currently occupying. The Head Auror had dealt with weeping spouses, raging mothers, frightened children – strained fathers, barely controlling their inner panic.  A part of you wanted to reach out and offer condolences. But someone had to get the facts and even if Greyfriar was offering those readily, she had to remain objective; the law always was.

No matter how detached Raynor remained, the responses of the man in front of her, not quite shock but not quite not shock, were still disconcerting.

Home. Grievously injured. Not sure if the perpetrator knew their presumed goal had not been accomplished. There was a certain irony in receiving a request to aide an individual who had conspired against the very people the help was being appealed from.  He struggled with the words; Tamis just stared at him patiently. Whether it was the patience of a comrade or a predator was difficult to discern.

Her gaze followed his to his hands to the white of his tightly clenched knuckles. She bowed her head for a moment, counted to ten, and looked up again. Knowing objectivity was required, and being good at it, did not make it easy.

“He would be safer here, Knox,” she even went as far as to use his given name, trying to drill the point home.  Her tone was nothing if not dutiful, but it was the least she could do. “Keeping him in custody is as much for his protection as our liability.” Which was true. But Raynor could not help but feel Greyfriar felt duty-bound as the absentee father to his son. A son who was guilty, even if they could not prove it. It made the bear-like man’s standing as a Wizengamot Elder troublesome. Elders were not appointed lightly and while they were not a direct authority over her department, it was a give and take relationship. That made dancing with a Wizengamot Elder dangerous, even a Junior one. “It would afford him proper medical assistance.”

Raynor paused long and hard and Knox watched her as she thought of her next move.  What she would suggest, if she would make demands.  He'd gone over it a thousand times - reporting the attack on Devlin was inextricably the same thing as reporting the violation of his custody.  And they'd made it clear that he had zero warnings on that front; he stayed put or it would be the dungeons for the duration. 

When she finally spoke it was with merciful, deliberate word choice.  Very few people called him 'Knox' - he was known by his titles and former titles or merely Greyfriar.  Her nomenclature did not go unnotice.  Her words were not quite an imperative, but it certainly wasn't something she was proposing as an option.   The corners of his mouth turned down, and for the first time since he arrived, he saw, for the slightest moment, Raynor as something coming between him and his son.  As a threat.  His chest rose and fell, his heightened state of tension visible.  He worked hard to restrain himself.

"He's fine with me; I can Heal him," he said, but offered no explanation or elaboration of his skill or how he came by it.  "I'm reporting a crime, not turning in my son.  Put a watch on the house, send a guard, but don't ask me to give him up."  His own tone was as level as he could make it, but it was slowly rising in intensity and tempo.   It was not wise to give orders to Tamis Raynor, so he could not bare his teeth just yet.

A large, angry man with superhuman strength was not particularly a man Tamis Raynor wanted to face. She had a healthy dose of that the month prior. And was still feeling it in the chest. She did not fear Greyfriar, heat and hostility were emotions she was far more comfortable with. But she was not his enemy. They fought on the same side of the law. He would not be here today, in essence selling out his son, if that were false. 

She did not want rash choices of a cornered father to make them enemies.

As much as she might refuse to acknowledge it a part of her felt like she owed Greyfriar for Kyle Gibson. They had been on the same side then, too, but she had not been able to properly convey that. One her eyebrows rose as he stated, with much confidence, his healing abilities. But she said nothing. There were many shadows in the former Headmaster’s history and she did not want to be the one to reveal them.

The fire in his statement, a plea in wording only, likewise did not go unnoticed. In the end, Knox Greyfriar understood his own chains to the law. And those chains were knotting with the bonds of parenthood. The clemency he was asking for was not permanent. All he was buying was time, but she was sure they both knew that.

Standing slowly as to exhibit her intentions as nonthreatening, Tamis Raynor opened the draw of her desk and produced a form printed on clear, crisp parchment. She laid it out in front of him and slid an inkwell and quill next to it. “I will need a thorough account. A complete account,” she told him finally, looking away from the generic crime report form and giving him one last consideration. “We cannot help if we are ignorant.” The air between them had grown hostile, as it had a tendency to do and she had no intention to linger in it while he wrote. “You can leave it on my desk when you are done.”

Vacating her own office was not a privilege granted to many, and she hoped he did not see it as such. It was not her intention. She paused in the doorway without looking back at the man, whose emotions were so fragile,

“You are going to have to give him up eventually,” she told him. The kindness to the phrase might have been imaginary.

Leaving the threshold open, the Head Auror went in search of a needed cup of tea, considering her debt repaid.

Raynor didn't shrink, and Knox wouldn't have called it relenting.  But it was a kindness, and they both knew it.  Even though Knox wouldn't have mentioned it, he was an Elder and his cohorts granted the Aurors their authority.  It would have been a vulgar abuse of power, but that didn't mean it wasn't done, and hadn't been done thousands of times over the years.  The Wizengamot was not people with saints, and privilege weakened resolve of even the most law-loving.  So he hadn't said it.  But his mere presence implied it.  How that he was Elder Greyfriar, he could never unbe it.  As surely as he could never not be Headmaster Greyfriar to a generation of witches and wizards.

So she did not relent, but instead granted his intended purpose the attention it deserved - paperwork.  The due process of a crime committed.  But for Raynor, Greyfriar and Matthews, it was a treaty.  A cease-fire.  Just a stay of sentence.  The fates might wait, but they never strayed from their intent.  Devlin would answer for what he'd done, but not for a few days at least.

She left him there with what could have gone unsaid.  He'd have preferred that, but to be clear: Raynor had not relented.  The Aurors would come.  Just not yet.

---

Information Knox Greyfriar provided to the MLE.  It is as complete as he could make it.

I found him left for dead in Knockturn Ally around 2am.  He was unconscious, bleeding and cold.  I Apparated him home immediately.

I discovered him missing from home in the evening of the 16th.  I had gone out, and when I returned he was not there.  I searched his room and found a note indicating he was meeting someone in Knockturn Ally.