Around 2pm.

It had been an odd letter; a worrisome one, too. Despite his reply, Tapendra did have some cases he was worried he'd have to answer to. But he couldn't narrow it down. Was it his friendship with Ignan - had they caught up to the old man? Was it his...controversial attitudes? Or, worse...

His thoughts shot to the Headmistress's office. He couldn't leave that box in there, now that Dumbledore was gone, not with an ally of Prideaux sitting on the damn thing. If Vedir knew he couldn't access it anymore, he was...well. He was dead. If he was lucky Vedir ight spare Cyhirae and Georgiana. But he doubted it.

At least Snark didn't know it was there - that was one boon. Prideaux didn't know where he'd hidden the thing.

He'd spent the last few days biting his nails, again. So far March was not his favorite month goto by, this year. Even January and February had been better, god rest poor Grosvenor. They'd been bad, yes, but March had made him bite his nails so much he was surprised he had any left - figuratively speaking, anyhow. His usual physical tactic was to pace and crack the music up.

Ignan would have hit him, had he been present. He'd dressed up somewhat for Jonas's arrival, then spent the day pacing the tower, gotten annoyed with the restricting fit, and had finally given up. His lunch was largely forgotten, having gotten cold on his desk an hour ago - but the record player blared Queen. They could probably hear it at the base of the tower. Part of him was surprised the new Divination professor hadn't complained.

In an effort to distract himself, he'd set to work on some of the D&D club's business; he sat with character sheets and books spread about him. It had actually worked - he was much calmer when the knock came, though he barely heard it over the music. He hurried to the door, taking the short flight of steps down to open it for the auror.

He felt both worse and better - Jonas's clothes weren't much more appropriate than his own.

"Trevelyan," he said, smiling brightly. "Come on in. Sorry - the classroom's a bit of a mess - let me turn that off-" he darted across the circular classroom to the player, turning it off.

It was the second time in two months that he'd been back to Hogwarts.  Jonas had gotten used to the constant, nagging feeling that he'd left the door unlocked or forgotten a dentist appointment, but there was still something disconcerting about walking its familiar halls once more.  He had checked in with Dean Bailey, the current Auror on duty, at the gate; although he hadn't come dressed in scarlet robes, he still needed his badge while on the campus.

Once inside, he'd managed to remember the way to the Astronomy Tower even though he hadn't taken the class past his fifth year.  He'd written to Tapendra Trishna, the biological son of their captured assassin, even before he'd visited Vedir Prideaux, but the Hogwarts Governor's comments about the astronomy professor had only galvanized his interest. 

Trishna had been a few years behind him at school, but Jonas barely remembered him; back then, he'd stayed clear of the Ravenclaw table with a vengeance in hopes of avoiding a certain sixth year's wrath, and it was only the younger student's ridiculous height and coloring that made him stand out.  Although he hadn't really had much in Level Two's records, Jonas had dug up the file on his wife -- a former Auror whom he'd overlapped with for barely a year before the war.  He'd also managed to dig up a couple of the other man's books, though he'd been too pressed for time to read beyond the introductions.  From what he could gather, despite his status as a halfblood -- almost pureblood? -- the astronomer seemed decidedly pro-Muggle.  Coming in with full robes, flashing his badge, parading the full might of the Ministry --  he doubted that that would get him what he wanted out of Tapendra Trishna. 

And so he'd gone the other route.  Dressed down.  Played up the Muggleness.  Questioning suspects or getting into full-fledged duels in the middle of London might be Adon's forte, but there were some things that Jonas still felt perfectly competent at.  As a private investigator, he'd had to rely on his interpersonal skills in lieu of any sort of inherent power or intimidation.  When it came to dealing with witnesses, he knew how to act the part.

Trishna greeted him upon his knock.  Jonas glanced him over in an instant -- the height, the smile, the Muggle t-shirt.

"Believe it or not, the office is messier," he replied with a lopsided smile.  At ease.  Relaxed.  None of the Auror authority or attitude.  "Or at least, me desk is.  I'll feel a lot more at home with some clutter about."

He took the other man's quick dart back up the stairs as an invitation to enter.  Jonas followed behind him, limping slightly as he made his way up the short stairwell, and took a quick glance around the room.  The astronomy classroom looked nothing like he remembered it; most of the windows looked to have been covered up, and a large model of Mars was rotating in the center of the room.  And, of course, the music -- before Trishna scurried over and shut it off, it made the room feel more like a Muggle pub than a magical classroom.

"Thanks again for taking the time to chat, Professor," he added amicably, flashing the astronomer a polite smile.    "With any luck, I'm hoping this won't take up too much of your afternoon.  You planning to sub in for Muggle Studies sometime soon?" he asked, giving the record player a bemused look.  "I always reckoned Hogwarts was the sort of place for bombastic choir music, not the Greatest Hits of the 1970s."

"Not an issue, sir, my hours are very open," he said, returning the record player to its drawer in the alcove he'd converted into a semi-office.


The comment on Muggle Studies earned Jonas a brief smile as Tapendra walked around. "Sometimes I wonder if I'd be better at it that this, but no. Professor Frasier performs his duties admirably, I understand..."


He was fussing with things in the classroom, cleaning up - though he was partially aware it was mostly so he wouldn't have to look at the Auror much. Her was nervous again; the shuffling of papers kept his shaking hands and darting eyes occupied. And he had the excuse, since they were all over the floor.


"Was helping with a student club," he explained as he gathered the rulebooks and sheets together, categorizing them with the practiced hand of a man who kept his files in three types - important, ignoring and finished.


"Have a seat wherever you like!" He added suddenly, realizing he hadn't said that. He stood with  the large pile of books in his arms, heading to his own alcove again.


"You, ah, needed me for something?" He asked, his back to Jonas. He wasn't much good at hiding his worry; his mother would have hit him and silenced him, had she been present.

Upon reflection, it was probably lucky he hadn't decided to go for Full Auror Effect.  Even though he'd come dressed in Muggle clothes, he'd apparently startled Trishna into a nervous wreck.  Papers went flying, and the Astronomy professor practically fell over himself to collect them, looking everywhere but at Jonas.

The red-haired man raised his eyebrows, and then eased himself carefully onto one of the desks, letting his messenger bag drop onto the floor beside him.

"Yeah," he agreed, frowning slightly as he studied the fidgeting astronomer's back.  There were two ways he could go about this conversation: questioning Trishna until he broke, or trying to ease the other man into  telling him what he knew.  If it were up to Jonas, he'd much prefer the second, with the first reserved only for an occasion or two.  Bullied sources rarely went out of their way to volunteer information.  Those that wanted to be helpful did.

"Look, Professor," he said, in as frank a tone as he could manage.  "You're not in any trouble, and even if you were, I wouldn't try to trap you into anything."  Not entirely true, but it sounded reasonable enough for now.  Jonas plowed on.  "All I need is your help with background for a case.  I've been running into dead ends, and I reckon you might be able to help me clear things up.  If you'd rather not talk to me, I can leave," he offered, his forehead creasing.  "I'm not here to try and bully you into anything."

"I-" He looked confused for a moment, then paused by his desk. He offered Jonas a weak smile. "I apologize. If you need my help, I'll try to provide it." Truthful words, though spoken with an edge of caution.  He sighed, shoulders slumping, then smiled brightly again.


"People don't...they're not exactly eager about my approach, you see. I've gotten letters, so..." he shrugged, and shook his head dismissively.


"I'd just rather not loose my job, you see." Better to leave the fact he had suspected - late at night, usually, and after a few whiskeys - that Snark might have put Trevelyan up to it. The rest of the time he panicked over the actually plausible reasons.


"I suppose the next thing I should ask is - what's this all about? If you're looking for help with poor Schlagenweit, he hasn't told me much more than anyone else, I'm afraid..."

"Nobody's job is at stake over this," Jonas said reassuringly, flashing him a quick smile.  "Except maybe mine.  But I wouldn't worry, Professor.  I know you're doing me a favor with this," he pointed out reasonably.  "You want to stay on background or just talk off the record, then your name won't come up again.  If you can even point me in the proper direction, I'd be right grateful."

He couldn't guess whether or not that was the true reason for Trishna's jumpiness, but he would have wagered against it.  Men who were worried about losing their job didn't agree to meet in the heart of their employment; they suggested other times and places, well away from scrying eyes.  But something had to be making the Professor nervous.  If Prideaux sat on the Hogwarts Board, that could well be it; perhaps Trishna's concerns about his job came from a very specific source.

"Naw, not Schlagenweit," Jonas said, shaking his head.  He paused for a brief moment, feeling out the words on the tip of his tongue.  "Like I said, I'm working on an investigation," he began thoughtfully.  "I can't speak too closely as to the heart of it, but the entire thing stretches back over fifteen years.  Been a bit like chasing ghosts to get to the beginning of it, and the further we get into this, the worse it gets."

He leaned back on the desk, resting his weight on his hands behind him even as he kept a nonchalant eye on Trishna for his reaction.  Better, then, not to start with Prideaux, even though that was what he was really curious about now.  If the Governor had Trishna running scared, he'd have to find a roundabout approach to the subject. 

"When was the last time that you heard from your mother?"

He'd been leaning against his desk, one hand hooked in the front pocket of his jeans - but he jolted at the question, wishing he'd been facing the other way. His face showed his surprise and confusion before he managed to settle into just pensive.

"My mother?" She was dead - why did they ask questions now? Had someone at the Italian Ministry blabbed?

His thoughts shot to Ignan - if they'd blabbed - Ignan hadn't gotten a letter from the Aurors. If he had, he hadn't told Tapendra about it. But they wouldn't contact him right away, would they? And Ignan's name had been cleared, admittedly probably wrongly, but-

His gaze shot to Jonas. "I - not for 16 years," he said, which was the truth. "She had a - a breakdown, of sorts, when I was 17." He swallowed, trying to remain in control of his reason; don't ask to many questions in return. Short, simple answers - she'd taught him that, just in case. "Left - overseas."

Jonas watched the other man thoughtfully, forehead creasing as he took in Trishna's reaction, his change in posture, which way his eyes went.  The astronomer still seemed to be expecting some sort of trap; just as soon as soon as the surprise flooded through him, he tried to force it back again. 

Sixteen years matched up neatly with what the records showed and with what Prideaux had said.  It also matched up all too well with Tait's murder, with the Runespoor imports coming to an abrupt end and with an 18-year-old Trishna himself leaving Prideaux's home and seemingly falling into quite the pile of money.  But that was all, right now, supposition.  He didn't need to jump to any conclusions, not just yet.  What he needed was for Trishna to either trust him or feel cornered enough to trust him; to get something out of this conversation beyond verifying what he already knew.

"Where did she go once she left?" he asked the other man with a slight frown.  That was less hairy for the moment than pressing him about Prideaux, and 'overseas' accounted for the rest of the civilized world when one lived on an island.  "You've heard news of her since then, yeah?"

"Not directly," he said. This question was considerably easier to answer since it was simple truths. "I assume she went to Egypt at some point, when - or after - her family got killed. She claimed the fortune legally, you see. But after that..." He shrugged.

"I tried to contact her and never got anything back - sometimes the letters were returned, sometimes not. But after the Kanikas were dead, there wasn't anything I could trace to her."

He smiled ruefully for just an instant. "So for where she went - with the Kanika fortune and her powers? Just about anywhere she liked, I'd imagine."

It hadn't taken Trishna long to regain control.  He'd shifted from broken, short sentences to the same smooth manner that he'd greeted Jonas with upon the Auror's arrival.  The astronomy professor hadn't come into this meeting expecting any sort of questions about his mother -- which was good.  That meant that word still hadn't leaked out, which meant in turn that Groust was keeping her end of the bargain.

Jonas didn't believe the answer for a second, though.  If he'd been able to fumble through this much after only a couple of days, he was certain that the other man had put together at least a hazy picture with fifteen years to work through it.  Metamorphmagus or not, magic left plenty of ways to track someone, and the magical community was far more closely knit than concurrent Muggle ones.  Considering the rumors he'd happened upon, it was difficult to believe that Atalana Kanika's son had no idea what had happened to his mother.

"Have you heard anything indirectly, then?" he asked Trishna with a friendly curiosity.  "I mean, family's got to be a stronger motivator than just simple curiosity," he added, giving the other man an easy smile.  "I'm sure you've kept an ear to the ground about her.  What have you heard?"

He eyed Jonas suspiciously - fairly certain, now, that the man knew about Italy. He'd have to be careful when this interview was over, figure out how to warn Ignan - rushing to Ignan's classroom right afterwards wouldn't be a good idea. He'd likely be being watched.

How was it he always seemed to get mixed up in nasty business even when he tried to avoid it? If he got arrested for letting Ignan run...he couldn't get arrested. Not with the girls to care for.

"I haven't heard much," he said. "The only people who might have known don't talk to me - the Kanika's clan - and when she didn't reply after all my attempts to contact her..."

He shrugged, hopelessly, and sat at his desk, rubbing his forehead. "I assumed she didn't want to associate with me anymore. So I let her go. That's likely what she wanted, anyhow." He took off his glasses, rubbing the bridge of his nose. "I sometimes wondered if any criminals were her, but that was it. I had - and have - my own life to worry about, now."

"Of course," Jonas said, his forehead creasing.  "Got a kid, too, yeah?  I remember your wife a bit," he offered, after pausing awkwardly for a beat.  "We overlapped for about a year in the office.  I was sorry to hear that she's gone."

Death was easily just as awkward as divorce, and that wasn't a button that he particularly wanted to push.  Bringing up the Professor's family at all left a bad taste in his mouth.  It was one thing to pressure a possible witness into talking; it was another to use family as leverage, especially when he knew just how vulnerable that felt.  They needed to get answers, needed to put a stop to this smuggling ring once and for all.

This line of questioning wasn't going to get him very far anyway; even if he would have liked to know who in the Kanika's clan Trishna had tried to contact, that was information he might be able to glean through another source.  If there was a link between Prideaux and the Kanikas, between either and the Runespoor traders, it dated to before Atalana Kanika had left.  Whatever Trishna knew about her life after that probably didn't matter, unless he was living a double life as the heir apparent to a vast smuggling empire.  What he really needed was to get the astronomer talking about Prideaux.

"Look," Jonas said simply, glancing back at Trishna.  "Like I said, I'm not here to make trouble for you.  Anything your mother's been up to in the past fifteen years, I can run down for meself, and with any luck, you and your family won't hear a word about it."  He shrugged, giving the other man a tight smile as he shifted position, stretching his bad leg out in front of him.  "What I'm really interested in is why she left in the first place.  '93, yeah?" he asked, raising his eyebrows.  "You said she had a breakdown?"

"Yes," Tapendra said, nodding to the kid question. "And my sister, as well."  He smiled slightly when Jonas mentioned Judy - just a faint one. "Thank you," he said, voice quiet, nodding his head in thanks.

He'd hoped that Jonas wouldn't ask him too much about Judy; his mother and his wife were both subjects he didn't really like talking about, though Judy didn't have much to do with this investigation, so he was likely in the clear there - unless she really hadn't told him much about her life in the Aurors. But she had, right? She and Ackerly had discussed a lot of things with him in earshot. Runespoors hadn't been one of them.

"If - if you find out what she's been up to-" he started, about to ask Jonas to left him know about his mother  regardless - both out of a twisted curiosity and a caution, a need to know if Ignan was in trouble. But he cut off when Jonas mentioned '93, his blue eyes going wide for just a moment before he quickly fell silent, watching Jonas carefully.

His expression was different from what he'd been doing before; he was clearly cautious, but his narrowed eyes attested to a moment of anger.

It was gone quickly. "Yes. She had some kind of breakdown and left, shortly after Georgiana was born," he said, folding his hands in front of him on the desk. "I was at school at the time, so I don't know the minute details."

He dismissed the thanks with an easy shrug, breezed by any expression of Trishna's gratitude.  Returning to the Auror office had become a fascinating examination of the sort of man he'd become.  The past week had been uncomfortably difficult -- wrestling with how seriously Adon had been hurt, Dreogan's disappointment and lack of trust, Tamis and Charisma, dealing with Kanika, fencing with Groust, jousting with Prideaux, and then trying to ignore his own frustration with his magic.  But there was something comforting in the fact that he wouldn't use Trishna's family against the man.  He needed to know that there were lines he wouldn't cross.

Jonas kept on past Trishna's request for news of his mother.  That bit, he wasn't quite ready to divulge yet.  It was one thing for the other man to give him information on Vedir Prideaux while Atalana Kanika was somewhere lost to the winds of the world.  It was likely another to ask him to do the same with the possibility of a trial on the horizon.

Either way, it was convenient how Trishna was not personally familiar with any of the events he was inquiring after.  But this time, the door was left slightly ajar.  The slight flicker across the astronomer's expression made Jonas pause, even as he kept his expression carefully schooled.  The man might not know the minute details, but...

"You know the general ones?" he asked easily.

He chewed his lip for a moment. The details he did in fact know were...well, dangerous. There were things he'd agreed to never speak of - he'd been payed quite a bit not to do so, and only a little black box kept him safe now.

"She...my sister and I have different fathers," he said, as if that wouldn't have been obvious to anyone looking at the two. "My mother was kind of..she, ah..." How do you even say that? He'd hated the fact about her, knew it'd be trouble - but it had also bought them house and home more often than not.

"My mother was a very, ah, flirty woman," he said finally. "She had a lot of relationships, you see, but didn't take many of them very seriously - usually with married men. Forbidden fruit, or something, but it was always a fling. She always thought she deserved 'better'," he made finger quotes. "Growing up like a princess does that to you, I suppose. But she took one relationship very seriously." He kept the pain of that fact from his face. Ignan had offered him one reassurance, even if he hadn't told the man - the real reason he'd thanked Ignan for loving his mother like he had was it had been nice to know someone had returned those feelings for once in her life. She'd brushed aside all of his warnings about Prideaux, even when he'd been risking his own skin to try and tell her...

"She was convinced the baby would make everything work, make him keep her," he said sadly, smiling at Jonas. "It didn't. I don't know exactly what was said, but that triggered her breakdown. Two children out of wedlock in the pureblood world? I told you I wasn't surprised she'd turn to murder, Trevelyan, and that's why. She spent so much of her life trying to impress people she hated, and she ruined herself doing it."