Jonas Trevelyan was quite possibly the most frustrating person Maggie had ever met, and she hadn't met him yet. He'd evaded her owls. He'd evaded her calls. He was never at his office in London, and his former assistant hadn't seen him for months.

Time to meet him on his level-- Level Two of the Ministry. Maggie had caught word in early March that Trevelyan had switched up professions and returned to the corps. Which worked well for her, she told herself, because he had to be on that floor of the Ministry at some point during the day. That day was today. She had things, very important things, to talk to him about! News to report! Assassins to pester!

Once cleared, she strode through the jungle of cubicles just to be waylaid by an extremely friendly redhead who was definitely not Trevelyan. Barney? Barnum? Maggie pointed at one of the interns, told the man she thought someone was calling him, and kept walking.

Aha! There he was, hiding behind his desk. Shuffling papers. Sipping coffee. The nerve.

Maggie made a beeline for him, standing in front of his desk and fixing him with a stare until he looked up.

"Auror Trevelyan. Do you have a few minutes?" That was a question, technically, but she didn't wait for him to respond.

"I'm Maggie Groust, with the Daily Prophet. I've already talked to your partner at St. Mungo's, and he's very chatty when he's doped up on potions," she raised her eyebrows, hoping that would get his attention.

"I can see you're busy," she glanced at his desk, wondering if her letters were buried under the towers of paper. "I don't have too many questions."

Without waiting for an invitation, Maggie took a seat and gave him a smile that said 'you're not getting out of this one'.

To say that it hadn't been a good week was something of an understatement.  Adon was in the hospital; it felt as if practically everyone else he knew were all furious with him; and if he got stuck working past the time when he was usually fast asleep for a fourth night in a row, Jonas felt confident that either his sanity or his patience were going to give.  It felt as if the world began and ended in Adon's cubicle, where he fumbled through leads, reviewed endless reports, and forced his way through volume after volume of completely irrelevant information, searching for the barest glimmer of hope that something out there might be somehow relevant to his case.

He had been huddled down between the looming piles of paper when the interruption had come.  Jonas couldn't take it anymore -- he'd shoved the tattered pieces of the Runespoor casefile aside and had picked up the research he'd promised to Lexus, just to get his mind off of leering assassins and deadly snakes for five minutes.  The only thing he had to look forward to was that Bailey had promised to reconnoiter Level Five on his lunch break, making certain that the elder of the Eleors was occupied so that Jonas could slip away to the hospital and finally visit Adon that afternoon.

All he wanted to do was get through the morning without snapping at anyone -- except for possibly Pratt, who was always fair game -- but the world did not seem to have that in the plans.  The young woman who cut in didn't even give him a chance to look up; before he could run a hand over his face and put the folder down, she'd already launched into her introduction and had claimed the chair next to him as if it were her Merlin-given right for an interview.

Jonas blinked.  The hard-hitting, direct approach was something that he could normally sympathize with; he'd spent years playing the game with people in power, and waltzing in and acting as if you hadn't a care in the world was usually the best way to get answers.  Under more usual circumstances, it was even something that he could appreciably cooperate with.  But not today.

He stared back at her, his gaze hardening as her words registered.  'Your partner...' It was all he could do to very firmly shut his mouth.

"There's a blessing," he said after a beat, his voice cutting through the space between them.  Only sheer willpower kept him from gritting his teeth; if this was Thursby's idea of trading in on the favor he owed her, then she could pull the one with bells on.  "Know any lawyers?"

Well, someone was in a mood, and for once it wasn't her. Trevelyan looked tired. His desk was a disaster. And apparently, he was incapable of replying to his mail. So, perhaps the bloke needed a break. She shrugged off his comment, raised her eyebrows, and took a moment to look more closely at his cubicle.

A familiar Witch Weekly article was pinned on the wall behind him, featuring Adon's grinning face. Maggie stifled a snicker, then glanced curiously at the folders he'd just pulled.

Lawyer? Maggie looked confused for a moment. Well, that was one way to distract her. But it wasn't going to work!

"Not really. Why? Is Miss Stab-Happy asking for one?"

Her tone was light and casual as her foot bobbed impatiently underneath the chair.

"No, but you will be," Jonas fired off as he started to his feet.  "You're under arrest for obstructing a Ministry investigation and perverting the course of justice.  Let's go."

Even with his bad knee, the element of surprise made hauling her upright much less of a struggle than it could have been.  Ignoring the flurry of swears that accompanied her capture, Jonas grabbed her by the arm, none-so-gently steering the young reporter out of the Auror Office and down the hall. 

The interrogation rooms had become the unofficial meeting areas for Level Two.  The charmed walls afforded some measure of privacy, and at the moment, plenty of potential for intimidation.  Jonas forcefully directed the girl into the same room where he'd spoken to Charisma two days before.  He didn't exactly slam the door behind him, but the forceful closure left the walls rattling all the same.

"Sit," he told her brusquely, nodding to one of the chairs.  He vehemently yanked the other back, the legs letting out an ear-piercing grating noise as they scraped across the floor.  Lowering himself into it, Jonas leveled a look at the young woman, regarding her coldly across the table.

"Now," he said bitingly, letting each word hang in the air like an icy threat.  "Start over.  You want to tell me again how you dragged classified information out of me partner while he was drugged up in the hospital, Miss...?"

Maggie's eyes widened as the Auror hauled her to her feet.

"You have got to be kidding me!" Maggie stared at him, a stunned expression on her face that was quickly morphing to pissed off and grumpy. Her embarrassment showed in the flush on her cheeks as he dragged her off to one of the interrogation rooms. The man could move fast, even with the limp. She kept up a steady stream of curses under her breath until Auror Treveylan ordered her to sit. Which she did. Sulkily.

Had Niobe ever had to deal with this? Had she ever been arrested? Maggie was keenly feeling her 23-years here. Which did not make her happy. Apparently she had crossed the wrong Auror. And apparently her approach had been way too aggressive.

Maggie crossed her arms and returned his cold look with a heated glare, hoping it hid the fact that she was freaking out about his attitude, this room, this whole 'arrest' situation. Perverting the course of justice? What the hell did that even mean?

"It's Groust. I didn't drag anything out of him," she began. "I already know him. We're friends. I was visiting. He dropped her name. That's about it. So, rather than pester him for details, I decided to pester you, but you never answer your damn owls!"

Maggie had lost her cool and her sense of professionalism, but she was right offended, and she didn't like feeling like the bad guy in this mess.

Groust.  A faint memory stirred in the back of Jonas's mind.  A pile of letters that he'd never gotten around to opening, a mention scrawled in Adon's handwriting inside the Runespoor casefile.  He didn't care.  He kept his gaze locked on the girl, his face coolly expressionless, the only hint of tension showing in how tightly he clenched his jaw.

"So you went to visit your friend," he said slowly, dragging out each word.  "He says something whilst he's drugged up that you know he never would've let slip if he were alert, so you run off to the Ministry so you can corner me with confidential information that could completely impede an investigation if it gets out?  I get all of that right, did I?"

She couldn't be more than twenty, twenty-five years old.  Certainly not any older than Lexus.  Suddenly, the cold fury that was burning inside him gave way to something a bit more helpless.  It would take two hands to tick off all the names he knew of people who had died because of this investigation; a few more seconds, an inch or two further in, and Adon could have very well been added to the list.  And this bloody stupid kid came racing in, rattling off her list of demands  like she was placing a dinner order and expecting him to just capitulate to whatever she said.  Finally, for a brief, flickering moment, he could almost understand why Tamis had been so furious that he'd said anything to Charisma Aldridge.

But it was only brief.  He didn't need to feel anything close to guilt right now.  Jonas seized on, focused on the fury.

"Well, Miss Groust, now you've got me attention," he said with a glacial edge.  "What, exactly, did you want to pester me about?  Obviously it's far more paramount than anything else I might be working on, yeah?  Because let me tell you," he added sarcastically, ice tingling each word, "there's not a single bloody thing in this office that could come close to the importance of answering your questions."

Holy shite. How had she gotten herself into this? As the Auror described the hospital visit from his point of view, she was left feeling like a guilty, foolish arse, and she just wanted to hit the reset button and pester Trevelyan on some other day when he was less inclined to bite her head off. Or wait until Adon was fully healed, avoiding Trevelyan entirely. Or, you know, not do this at all.

But she was bull-headed, and she didn't give up that easy. He piled on the sarcasm and the icy glares, and she knew she had to attempt to fix this somehow, even if that just meant avoiding a night behind bars. Maggie swallowed a bit of her pride and took a deep breath.

"Look. I'm not trying to make enemies." Irritation tinged her voice as she stared at him, wondering if he was going to twist those words around too.

"I've been trying to get a hold of you for months. So yeah, maybe I went about it the wrong way. I came to you because I didn't want to muck up what you and Adon have been working on. I'm not going to run off and print everything I know, with no thought to anyone else. Can you at least work with me, here?"

Jonas squinted at her across the table.  Even in his anger, the phrase 'for months' registered with striking clarity.  They hadn't been at this phase of the investigation for months.  He hadn't even been an Auror for months.  Suddenly, that pile of unopened letters that was still sitting abandoned somewhere in his office seemed slightly more urgent than they had moments before.

"And so your definition of not mucking up is to corner me and then announce to our entire office that Auror Eleor told you something he shouldn't have?" he asked deliberately, and then let out a quick breath.  He didn't want to deal with this.  If he were being honest, he didn't want to deal with any of this, but now he was stuck in the middle of it and there were very few sensible ways out again.  Jonas rubbed both hands tiredly over his face.  Unfortunately, bullying a twenty-something reporter was the first step to none of them, as much of a relief as it was to finally take things out on somebody.

But he knew he couldn't do that.  Jonas sighed and rested his elbows on the table, pressing his fingers against his temples as he took his head in his hands.

"You have three minutes," he informed her without looking up.  "At which point I will decide whether or not you are a  threat to impede this investigation, Miss Groust.  What do you want?"

Maggie shrugged and made a frustrated gesture. What else could she say? She got it. Finding him in his office and throwing classified information at him in an attempt to get his attention clearly wasn't going to make her any friends. She wouldn't call it 'announcing' or 'cornering', but fussing over semantics would just piss him off and waste more time. Time he didn't seem to have, judging by his exhausted expression. If he expected her to grovel, she wasn't doing that. So they were at a loss. This whole visit had been a big fecking disaster.

But then he told her she had three minutes. Three minutes to ask him questions. Maggie perked up, then hesitated for a second. She only had a few minutes, and who knew when she'd get to talk to him again. Part of her really wanted to ask about the cursed dagger and the mummies and everything Lexus had told her.

However, she had a strong feeling that any mention of 'hur hur, how's that lack of magic going', would cause him to revert to Mr. Hyde and kill her where she sat. He'd just stopped snarling at her. So, now was the time to focus on the assassination attempt in front of the Ministry.

She muttered an absent-minded thank you as she whipped out her notepad and quill.

"So, I'm guessing Hyskos didn't come back to England for our lovely weather." It was sleeting today. Focus, Maggie.

"And that poisoning Adon with Runespoor venom wasn't something she did just for funsies."

She watched his expression, trying to gauge if she was on the right track. "You and Adon have been watching Mulogo for a while now, making sure the unhappy people in the Runespoor smuggling business don't off him for turning in one of their own. Hyskos is just crazy enough to go for it anyway."

She paused. "So why is Adon in the hospital, and not Mulogo?" Mags didn't mean it in a judgmental way, though it might have sounded like it. "How did she get close enough to pull a stunt like that? Was Mulogo ever really in danger?"

It barely took a second for the quill and paper to come out.  Jonas schooled his expression enough to hide his grimace, cupping his chin in his hands.  The fired statements, one after the other, were enough to make his head hurt.

The kid's line of reasoning was all sound enough.  Either she'd done her homework or Adon had given her more than just a name.  That was one problem that Jonas didn't particularly want to think about.  He was well overdue on visiting his friend in the hospital, and having to broach the subject of confidentiality was not going to make it a pleasant trip.  He'd much rather find a way to sweep this entire conversation under a rug, and bring it up with Adon at a far later time.

But reasonable assumptions or not, there was no bloody way in hell he was going to be able to answer her.  She had a quill in hand.  There'd been no discussion of how far this information was going to go, no promise of only on background or being entirely off the record.  After the disagreement over how he had handled Charisma Aldridge, Jonas had no doubt that having his name show up in the Daily Prophet was as good as presenting his neck on the Tower green. 

"You're asking me questions about an active MLE investigation," he pointed out, not bothering to stop the worn, tired note from creeping into his voice.  The rest of it could be left unsaid.  "You want me to spell out 'No comment' for you, or have you got enough practice at writing it out by now?"

Maggie repressed a grumble and leveled a look at him. He'd given her three minutes. Lots of comments popped up in her head to his delightful 'no comment', but she bit them back.

Maggie assumed that the only thing keeping this Auror from either kicking her out or throwing her in a holding cell was the concern that she'd go find someone else to get information from, and then proceed to muck things up more than she already had. She was relying on his expertise to advance her career; he was relying on her not to do something stupid that would wreck his. As things stood now, there was no payoff for him. They didn't know each other, or trust each other. And Maggie was doing a grand job of pissing off the person who had the information she wanted.

"Would a friendly neighborhood Auror be able to make some kind of comment?" Maggie wondered dryly, swallowing her pride a second time. "I don't have to name you specifically."

That had been her plan, with Adon at least. Extending that to Trevelyan made sense.

"I don't have to point fingers at Hyskos immediately, either," Maggie added, keeping the quill in her hand but setting the pad of paper down on the table. She'd go off the record if she had to, depending on Trevelyan's response, and how long she could make those three minutes stretch.

The red-haired man raised his eyebrows, studying her from across the table. 

"That friendly neighborhood Auror's likely to get rattled as soon as his boss sees the byline on the article," he pointed out, though the dryness in his voice was starting to edge out the frustration.  "Next time you want to speak indiscreetly, find a place to approach someone that's not at the Ministry, yeah?  Now everyone in the office has reason to link us together."

He sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose as he straightened in the chair and considered his options.  The most useful advantage that the current case had going for it was that they'd immediately managed to clamp down on any information.  The element of surprise was a necessary ally in any investigation; in something as long-running as this, it was crucial.  If Groust was willing to wait for a week, that would probably give him enough time to run down anything critical.  Besides, as long as no one made the connection between Hyskos and Prideaux, it likely wouldn't jeopardize his current angle, and working with her meant he could indiscreetly steer her away from that until he was ready.

"Hold off on going to print until the case gets turned over to the Wizengamot," he said slowly, feeling along the words.  That was far longer than he or the case needed, but he might as well see how far he could push Groust and besides, it gave him something to back off of.  If she was going to cooperate, it would help if she left feeling like she'd gotten some victory out of this.  "I'll answer what questions I can then, as long as it's nothing that will jeopardize the investigation. 

"But," he added warily, slanting her a dry look, "anything I give you is on background, and you attribute it to sources in the Ministry or in the MLE.  There's to be no mention of the Aurors."

Maggie resisted pointing out that she doubted he would be talking to her at all if she hadn't found him at the Ministry and butted into his business. What else was she going to do? Corner him in a muggle pub on his work break?

She looked both relieved and a bit frustrated, however, when he said she'd have to hold off on printing until the case went to the Wizengamot. That could take months. Some cases got sent through right away, but with something as high profile as this, she had a feeling it would be a crawler. Ugh.

At least he was talking to her, though! Maggie would ask if she was still arrested later. Priorities.

"On background," she agreed. "I'll attribute it to the shoemaker elves on Level Four." Maggie waited for him to facepalm, or make a response of some sort, before diving back into things.

"So. Hyskos. Did she use one of her metamorphmagus tricks to get past you? Must have been pretty elaborate." Though Hyskos' metamorphmagus ability wasn't well known to the general public, Maggie had spent the past few days looking into her crimes, and felt confident that the woman's disguises went well beyond slapping on a mustache and a bowler hat.

She was relentless, that was for certain.  For all her youth and apparent inexperience, Groust had launched onto the investigation like a terrier, and was still worrying it viciously even after he'd threatened her with a newspaper.  Sighing in spite of himself, Jonas gave her a faint, bemused smile, leaning his elbows on the table as he rubbed his temples.

It wasn't the easiest question to answer.  Admitting that Kanika had approached the Ministry as Dreogan Eleor meant admitting that she'd done a fair bit of reconnaissance on both Jonas and Adon.  Watching the watchmen, after a sort.  The fact that she'd walked into the assassination knowing full well that they were there, who they were -- knowing that if she'd really wanted to, she could have walked up behind both of them in the pub and finished them there and then -- was somewhat disconcerting.  Jonas didn't like admitting how lucky they'd gotten, even if it was only to himself.  He certainly didn't want that fact to be published in the paper for all of the magical world to see.

"None of this is even hinted at in the papers until this goes to trial, mind," he repeated, glancing up at her.  "She appeared to be a Ministry official from the DIMC that we recognized.  We thought it was strange that she was just standing there, so Adon approached her.  She got a knife into him before either of us knew what was about."

Was that a tiny smile? Well, it was something. Maggie tried to settle comfortably into the hard chair, ignoring the fact that she was in an interrogation room and nothing here was meant to set her at ease.

A Ministry official from the DIMC? Maggie had to give Hyskos points for ingenuity. Trevor Reid had been in the DIMC before his arrest. There were several people that could have raised eyebrows from the Aurors if they saw them lagging about by the Visitor's entrance.

She nodded in agreement when he reminded her that none of this should even be hinted at until it went to trial. Too bad he hadn't given her a specific name. But she supposed it was enough to know that Hyskos had gotten close. Spooked them. For the first time since she'd barged onto Level Two, something like worry flickered across her face as he mentioned Adon getting stabbed.

"And then all hell broke loose," she grinned, and the moment was gone. "So much for slipping quietly into the night. If it isn't an actual Runespoor crashing through Diagon, or venom exploding in Knockturn, it's Hyskos and the Aurors rooting up the visitor's entrance. At least this case never lacks for excitement."

She paused, getting her thoughts together.

"Someone likely called Hyskos here to kill Mulogo, and gave her enough information so she knew which Ministry official to play dress-up with. Maybe she has ties with the ring that go beyond just an assassination attempt. Has anyone tried to contact her, or is anyone pushing to get her off the hook?"