Things had developed since Tapendra informed Ignan about Vedir Prideaux and his dealings with smuggling and the darker underworld in Britain while Tapendra had been practically his step-son. At the start of the month, the subject of the box of papers that Tapendra had left in Albus Dumbledore's care came up again while the two of them were discussing things before the Easter holidays.

Unfortunately said holiday and developments with Tapendra gaining another old friend as a colleague had set them back rather. Ignan had posed to speak with Landis, but unsure of what the box looked like, he had to wait to enlist Tapendra's help.

Landis had been most helpful, scouring the records of the inventory of the castle with staggering accuracy, as he had when Ignan had procured a pensieve for the occlumency lessons. However, they were not even sure if the papers would have been listed, or listed under the correct name to protect their contents, so as yet the search of records had been fruitless. It didn't help that the three of them had been caught up in staff preparations for the careers fair on the Friday night, and then he'd promised to teach Georgiana, Tapendra's sister at nine. Saturday had been engaged with the careers fair, visitors and their presence had again been requested.

Finally, Sunday, the three of them stood before the gargoyle on the second floor which guarded Analiza's office. Being Sunday, it was relatively quiet - students engaged elsewhere, their colleagues out or preparing for the week ahead which focused on the older students and their careers, so the three of them stood looking at the gargoyle, side by side, were unnoticed by the majority of the castle's inhabitants (the exceptions being the gargoyle, the portraits and armour around them who watched with curiosity.)

"So, it could be up there." Ignan spoke for the three of them, slipping his hands into his robe pockets, gaze resting on the gargoyle's head. He glanced to Landis and Tapendra,
"Only it could be somewhere else too, we don't know." He gave a shrug.

"But we reckon this would be a logical place it would have been left..." He asked the two rhetorically, and then puffed out his cheeks.
"Well then. After you Landis."

When Ignan had approached him about the box of papers, Landis had been happy to help. Such a tiny thing to find, in a whole castle full of nooks and crannies. It had served as a suitable distraction, after the events of the recent kidnapping. He may have thrown himself into the task with more gusto than it truly deserved. And it was intriguing, too, that Ignan cared so much about whatever the contents were...

Trishna's stake in the matter was a bit of a surprise. Shouldn't have been, considering how close the two had become - and of course, he and Landis had had a very civil conversation the other day... so standing here now, flanked on one side by Trishna and the other by Ignan, Landis did not question the other man's presence.

What he didn't quite understand was why he was included in the mission to search Analiza's office. Or why he was apparently to go first.

He flicked a startled glance over to Ignan, pale eyes narrowing. "I think not," he said archly. "This is your mission more than mine." He raised an eyebrow at Trishna and, slowly, smiled. It was not a particularly nice expression. "After you."

Tapendra wasn't sure exactly why Landis was here, either, but he was trusting Ignan's judgement on this one and doing his best to hide the minor, subconscious panic that had been rising over the last few days as the box continued to elude them. If it wasn't found - if Prideaux found out he didn't have it - it was over, literally. He'd be sprayed across his office like red spray paint or worse. At best he'd have to retreat into hiding in the Australian outback or something and he didn't like the ideas of finding spiders in his pants, and then having to eat them. And there were giant rats and god knows what else there. He could put up with Koalas, though. Maybe he could just go live like one of them. Hopefully they didn't eat spiders.

Landis's grin therefore caught him by surprise as he was caught up in staring at the floor wondering how you cooked spiders, exactly. Chocolate coating didn't seem the way to go. Breading, perhaps?

"What?" He said, and it came out more as a chirp even with his deep voice. He looked between the two. "Are you kidding - there's, the portraits up there.." He trailed off and calmed himself. The books on meditation had certainly helped with that, at least.

"It makes more sense for Ignan to go first," he pointed out, his arms crossed and hip cocked. "He's the one who needs things in there for his classes, after all..."

He adjusted his glasses pointedly. "After you, Ignan."

Landis and Tapendra seemed to believe Ignan was the one who should approach the gargoyle, ascend into Analiza's domain while she was out and root through the files and paperwork up there. He was all for leading, but he didn't know what he was looking for, and like Tapendra said, the portraits, and the potential that they'd be seen to be thieves was a large stumbling point.

"How kind of you both," Ignan retorted sarcastically, "But ladies first." He patted Tapendra heavily on the back of shoulder as a comedic gesture to encourage his friend to take a step forward.

The three of them didn't shift.

"I'd love to lead the way of course, but I don't know the password. Only a head of house might be privvy to such a phrase." He tapped his foot on the corridor floor. "I best go fetch Myrni then..."

"I'd love to lead the way of course, but I don't know the password. Only a head of house might be privvy to such a phrase."

Landis shot him a very unamused look. He may be the Slytherin Head, but he was not suicidal. Landis' cautious nature had served him too well this far to throw it away for the sake of some mysterious papers. Particularly papers that would not benefit him personally.

"You forget that Analiza was my previous employer as well. I've had more time to ruminate on her potential - " Landis sought for a word to properly describe the consequences of angering a woman such as Analiza Snark - "wrath." She was an intimidating woman. An admirable woman. And Landis already had one woman furious at him without adding her equally indomitable cousin to the mix.

He turned his head, and sneered at the gargoyle. If he hadn't known better, he'd swear it sneered back.

But while that was a disgustingly usual state of affairs fascinating display of the semi-sentiment nature of Hogwarts, it wasn't getting them anywhere. It would be even worse if Analiza happened to come down and see them all shifting about like school boys sent to the Headmistress -

The minutes passed.

"You know," Landis said in a careful, considering tone, "The library's storage room is quite large. Disorganized. It's entirely possible that the records don't match to the physical inventory...."

"And she'd fire me," Tapendra said, and meant it - if Landis used a word like 'wrath' then, well, what would she do to him? To Ignan. "Out of a cannon. Into the sun," he added, as a sullen mutter.

He sighed, and rubbed his forehead. "Landis might be right. It'd be better to exhaust our other options first and then try to extreme one only as a final recourse." Looking at the far-distant window, his pressed his lips into a line. "Especially if it turns out to just be in storage the whole time. It's not exactly an ornate box - it could have just gotten filed as 'etc' or 'administrative stuff'."

Looking to the two of them, he eyed the statue - and the paintings - rather pointedly, glad they'd used a muffling charm to shield their voices before they'd talked. "We really should argue about this somewhere else. That's not full of talking paintings who try to listen in," he said, with a pointed look at the dogs playing poker, who hurriedly got back to their game. "Or people who'd care. Signature, for example."

"You know, the library's storage room is quite large. Disorganized. It's entirely possible that the records don't match to the physical inventory...."

"True," Ignan agreed, "But one does always assume as librarian, Landis, you were on top of that disorganisation." He remarked with a hint of disapproval only to keep the façade up.

"Landis might be right. It'd be better to exhaust our other options first and then try to extreme one only as a final recourse. Especially if it turns out to just be in storage the whole time. It's not exactly an ornate box - it could have just gotten filed as 'etc' or 'administrative stuff'." Tapendra echoed.

Ignan pressed his mouth into a thin line, considering. It might be just stalling to look through the archives in the library if it was up here all along, but it was best to rule out the low risk options before the high risk... and when it came to it, Ignan would have to do the high risk alone - perhaps after persuading Tapendra to give up the memory of the box handover to Dumbledore so he could identify it without Tapendra.

The three of the remained stood side by side a moment, unaware they were all giving the gargoyle much the same look of disapproval for existing.

"We really should argue about this somewhere else. That's not full of talking paintings who try to listen in, or people who'd care. Signature, for example."

Ignan took a defiant step forward to the gargoyle and cleared his throat - to all purposes it appeared he was about to address it with a password but he turned on his heel and swung round to look at his two colleagues.

"Pub?" He proposed, hands back in his pockets. Tapendra had just proposed it, just in a more long-winded fashion. The thought was infinitely better than the prospect of Snark's office.

Irritation colored Landis' tone, hinting at long afternoons spent finding items previously arranged down three shelves and two over from where he'd left them. "This particular room remains stubbornly as it wishes." AKA, in the battle of naturally meticulous librarian and somewhat-sentient Hogwarts... Hogwarts was winning. Landis sounded annoyed at having to admit this. He'd only been here 7 months - but he would have it whipped into shape soon. Soon-ish. One day.

"Pub?"

He considered this. "Yes," he said decisively, with one last look at the gargoyle. Landis was prideful, certainly... but he also had some very healthy survival instincts.

"Pub," Tapendra echoed in agreement, and was more than happy to be the first one to head off down the hall. It wasn't a retreat, exactly, it was a...reconsideration of their options. Yes. That made it better sounding than 'retreat'.

"The archive room, if you've been in it. How many boxes does it have?" He asked both of them, turning so he was walking backwards. "It's rather nondescript, my box. Just enchanted to hell and back..." He was going to have to review his memory to make sure he knew what it looked like, in fact. It wasn't decorated - he remembered it as brown, with a simple outside lock and then a devilishly difficult locking mechanism and spells on the inside. But on the outside it was..brown. Leather. Some metal bits.

It wasn't eye catching, in other words.

"Very well." Ignan replied to them both, as if they'd requested to go rather than he had suggested.

"The archive room, if you've been in it. How many boxes does it have? It's rather nondescript, my box. Just enchanted to hell and back..." Tapendra asked.

"A lot." Ignan suggested, "You'll know what you're looking for, but neither of us will." The three of them reached the top of the steps and began to descend.
"It'll take time to look through for sure. Your memory of it is intact, isn't it, Tapendra?" The stairs began to move as they were halfway, and the three of them paused, grabbing a hand onto the stone bannisters until they made the decision on where they were moving to.
"Why, these things have to move." Ignan grumbled, the stairs coming to a bump allowing them to continue their descent, this time to a different point on the floor than originally. 

"Over two dozen," Landis answered at the same time as Ignan. He paused to let the other man speak, then segued smoothly onto the end of his response to Trishna. "They tend to move around, makes it difficult to count. But if you know what yours looks like, then you could find it."

If it knew it was wanted, the box might even come to him. Landis had developed a rather nontraditional way of dealing with the back room's brand of mischief: if he turned his back on it and announced what it was he was looking for, sometimes when he turned around again - voila. It was silly, and he would be terribly embarrassed to be caught at it, but Landis had taken a pragmatic approach to the castle's moods. Of course, if he was just trying to do inventory then Merlin help him, and if it was feeling difficult the store room wouldn't let him find anything at all.

It reminded him a bit of trying to deal with a small child or, alternatively, Juliette.

He braced himself without conscious thought as the staircase suddenly ground into motion, depositing them neatly at the head of the next staircase; Landis took the steps before they decided to move too, head towards the entrance and the path down to Hogsmeade, where they could pick a pub or Apparate. The three of them gained the hall and were out the doors quickly enough. It would be better, perhaps, to wait until they had started drinking to question the other two, but as Landis couldn't be sure they'd even drink enough to make a difference... his head turned, deceptively casual, as he sought out Trishna's gaze.

"It would make it easier for me to find, though, if I knew what was in this mysterious box."

Like Landis, the moving stairs' sudden jolts were something of a memorized event for Tappy, though they sure as hell still got him lost every now and then, and certainly had made him late to class more than once. Annoying or no, he smirked in response to Ignan's mutter.

"I see," he said, sighing as he trailed the two two down the halls towards the outside. Landis's question, however, threw him off guard. He paused, carefully looking ahead and doing his level best to keep the appearance of a man going down a mental list rather than one desperately trying to think of a reasonable excuse. His pause lagged him behind and he caught up in a few long strides.

"Paperwork," he said finally. "Legal stuff - birth certificate, Hogwarts paperwork, the like. I had to leave it here in my 7th year due to outside circumstances." He said the last two words in such a way they may as well have been an anagram of none of your business. "They were in Dumbledore's care, officially, which is what's presenting the issue in getting them back..."

"It would make it easier for me to find, though, if I knew what was in this mysterious box." Landis asked. Tapendra clearly hadn't expected the question, despite it being fairly logical - Ignan was thinking the same question.

"Paperwork, legal stuff - birth certificate, Hogwarts paperwork, the like. I had to leave it here in my 7th year due to outside circumstances. They were in Dumbledore's care, officially, which is what's presenting the issue in getting them back…"

His young friend finally answered, a little frosty about being asked. The three of them were making good progress out of the front doors of the castle and into the grounds.

"Which pub?" Ignan asked, trying to deflect interest from the contents of the box. "I'd say the Hogs Head only it does tend to look suspicious when three Hogwarts employees spend an evening in there talking about finding boxes or searching the Headmistress's office. It sort of reinforces we might be up to something."