It was late, even for the Auror Office. The term had become quite relative recently, even the least dedicated of the Corps rarely retired from their cubicles before eight o’clock. The strain was quite palatable. With lanterns extinguished and the enchanted windows quiet, there was an inescapable chill masking Level Two – and not all of it had to do with being underground. Tamis Raynor was accustomed to it, often working into the early hours completing the paperwork that the day had not left her time to finish but that the next morning depended on. What she was not accustomed to was having company.

There was little that happened on Level Two that she was unaware of. Some said she had the office rigged with expertly concealed extendable ears. Others went as far as to accuse her of having stolen a Time Turner so she could go back in time and make sure the Headquarters was acoustically designed so that all noise led back to her doorway. Others still were resolutely certain that she clandestinely was a Legilimens, rather than just an Occlumens, and could – truly – read their minds. Whatever her secret, she was not sharing.

So for the past several days, the Head Auror’s door had remained dark and deserted after ten; and seemingly oblivious of the faint glow of wandlight that shifted between Edward Pratt’s and Samuel Harcroft’s cubicle.

Six levels away from the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, the petite woman sat nestled away and forgotten at a small café table, the abandoned atrium even more disturbingly eerie than the familiarity of the Auror Office. She remained unperturbed, working by the flickering light of a single candle and occasionally glancing at her pocket watch left open on the wooden surface. Signing her name with the grace and precision of repetition, her gray eyes drifted to the ticking face once more.  A little after midnight. Pratt still had not appeared from the lifts.

Grimly, the Head Auror shuffled the rest of the documents together.  Most of the Office was giving the man a silent crutch to lean on, none of them – not even him – admitting that it was there. Even Raynor herself in the most subtle of ways. Loss was a creature she understood, understood to the point that she threatened to become desensitized by it.  But there was Understanding and there was allowing the opportunity for people, most of all Edward Pratt, to get further hurt. His method of coping was too similar to hers. And that was what she was afraid of.

She was not sure if she had turned a blind eye for this long out of kindness or a weariness for the impending confrontation.

Stuffing the watch back in her pocket, the candle snuffed itself out in a wisp of gray smoke as she headed back for the lifts. Her feet navigated the shadowed Auror’s Office with nearly two decades of muscle memory until they led her to Pratt’s cubicle. She leaned casually in the entryway, studying the hunched and concentrated man critically for several brief seconds.

“The more sensitive documents are in Archer’s desk, you know,” she commented, wondering if he had figured out the Senior Auror-In-Charge’s combination yet.

“Reckon he’s got an Eddie Pratt repellent spell on his cubicle, by now.” The heavily accented voice was croaky with tiredness as the auror quietly responded to his boss. “Bet ye I canne so much as cross the threshold without being hexed.” Ignoring the true meaning behind Tamis Raynor’s comment had been Edward Pratt’s quick decision as soon as he heard her voice behind him. He made no effort to turn and reward her with his attention and instead pretended to take her comment seriously before dipping the well worn quill in the ink pot and continuing to scribble on the parchment in his infamous, barely legible scrawl.

The notes on the parchment spread in excess of 30 inches. They were scribbled ideas, possible leads and facts he already knew or how found out through ransacking a certain desk and the minds of colleagues. They were notes that Eddie wasn’t willing to share with the witch stood in the entrance of his cubicle. Therefore, when he didn’t hear her move away to go torture some...owl, Pratt put his quill on the desk before him, allowing it to start dripping a small puddle of black ink onto the hard wood surface. He ignored this forming puddle and instead busied his hands with folding the parchment in half and half again to seal it from prying, miniature grey dragon eyes.

With the folded parchment presently being smoothed down, Eddie allowed himself to consider why this mildly unbearable witch had graced the entrance to his practically permanently inhabited cubicle. She only ever did that if she had a bone to pick with him. It was never to bring good news. Tamis Raynor didn’t seem to know what good news was and if she did she hid it well. It was also never to stop for a friendly chat. Tamis Raynor didn’t know how to chat and show a genuine interest in one’s well being other than to question their ability to work to the best of their abilities. Ed certainly didn’t want to know why she had decided to visit his little end of the world at midnight on a Thursday evening. He especially didn’t want to consider that she knew of his attempted ransacking of Harcroft’s cubicle for any helpful information a few evenings back.

“Most people,” Ed finally span around in his chair to look through thickly framed glasses to see his boss leaning against the cubicle wall as if it were a pole she were about to swing her growth stunted body around, “tend to start a conversation with a greetin’. You dive in head first only to find the water’s too deep for yer short stature and ye start having to tread it like a nervous child.” Arms, hairy forearms bare with the sleeves of his blue shirt scruffily rolled up, folded themselves over his chest as the man leaned back in his chair, trying to seem at ease regardless of the rise in tension he was presently experiencing.

“Start treadin’, then.”

“Reckon you are right,” she told his back. There was nothing to her tone except polite patience. Her facial expression did not alter as she studied the shadowed man hunched behind his desk. The uneven scratch of his quill strokes hung in the silence between them like a petulant child defiantly smashing a cookie into his mouth after being caught with his hand in the jar. Shifting her stance, the Head Auror rested her back more fully on the edge of the wall divider and crossed her arms. She would wait. Tamis Raynor was a very patient woman.

Edward Pratt was exhausted. It was in the edge of his voice, the slump of his shoulders. He had likely been exhausted for days. Since the deaths of his parents she had kept her distance to avoid the very tension that was building between them now. She made standard, sarcastic comments when they had crossed paths during normal operations but had avoided anything more serious and the questions he would be expecting. Was he all right? Did he need time off? Did she have to send him to a Legilimens or a Seer? She had not asked them then and she would not ask them now.  They were not going to help.

He had not objected to policy, if fact he had quite gracefully conceded to not being allowed to work on the Dugan Attacks. A little too gracefully. Peering over his shoulder, she watched him as he folded the piece of parchment he had been scribbling frantically across. He almost made a show of it, as if making a silent point, matching the ends up neatly and then – firmly compressed the document and its fresh wet ink.  The Head Auror refrained from wincing. That was not going to be a pretty sight when he unfolded it.

When he finally turned, the petite woman blinked hard assaulted not by his words – but the thick black spectacles perched haphazardly on his nose. It must have been a qualification to be an Auror – you had to secretly be blind. Archer had them, too. Similar styles even. Compressing her lips she recovered her composure with an expert’s grace, swallowing the humor in her throat. She was here for Serious Business, after all.

Diving in too deep – was he really criticizing or was he projecting himself onto her? In either case, she shrugged one of her shoulders as casually as Tamis Raynor and her stiff posture could manage in response to his crossed arms. “I know how to swim,” she smirked. The usual patronizing motion of her lips did not have its usual mirth, it seemed strangely muted – as if she really was treading, treading as carefully as he was.

 “That will have smudged,” she pointed with her chin to the carefully creased parchment. She decided he would not see the humor in noting that it would have been illegible anyway.  Her grey eyes lingered on it for a moment, not for the want to take it from him but for the curiosity of what it contained. Edward Pratt had a habit of bring unique angles into prospective and those angles were often useful. After a moment her gaze lifted back to meet his, the intensity of their green coloration visible even in the low lighting. Or maybe they just seemed that way because she was expecting them to.

She lapsed into silence again, as if she had all the time in the world, waiting for him to make the first move before she said anything further.

“Everyone thinks they know.” A plain response was delivered practically devoid of emotion as Eddie looked up at his boss. She was visibly trying to seem at ease. That was as inconspicuous as a hippogriff trying to fit in with a herd of tiny, excited owls inside the vibrating foam in his trouser pocket. It was quite obvious Ed was tired and irritated with Raynor’s presence, he hadn’t smirked at the comparison in his head. He just glared up at her, awaiting the questions, the comments, the judgements and the foreseeable, unavoidable disagreement.

Raynor’s next comment received an irritated roll of the eyes from the dark blond auror before he scowled up at the miniature dragon. “Well it’s obvious why they made you head auror.” The sarcastic comment was spoken with little to no regard for her possible reaction because right then, the grumpy auror didn’t care.  He didn’t want Raynor there and he didn’t want to have to speak to anyone right then. He wanted to be alone, to focus on his work, his revenge. They only times Raynor came to his cubicle were to badger him, to pick some fault in his work, to bring something up that neither wished to discuss.

Edward Pratt was not in the mood to ‘discuss’.

Now, despite the fact that the Head Auror had come of her own accord to the wizard’s work space, she didn’t endeavour to explain herself. Instead she glanced at the now folded parchment before back at her subject. She said nothing and instead let the silence hang between the couple. Was this supposed to be putting Pratt on edge, making him feel uncomfortable?

In one swift motion, Ed’s green eyes travelled from her head to her toes and back to meet her grey gaze. She was not carrying any folders. She didn’t look like she was mad at him. If she was she’d had let him know as soon as she arrived at the entrance to his tiny cubicle. No, this was a talk. Ed decided right then that as soon as she asked if he was alright, he was going to take a running jump off the top of St Mungo’s Hospital.

“I’m busy, what do you want?”

“I suppose it is,” she conceded to his speculation on why she had been promoted rather than became offended by it. Since he did not seem inclined to smirk at his usually well played jabs at her nonexistent humanoid emotions, she did it for him. But it had the same subdued nature as the previous one.

The hostility was evident and clearly not a ruse. It oozed from his pores the way acne infested a teenager. There was a bite to his words that was not usually present in their past disagreements, she knew, there were many previous engagements to reflect on. Hot Tempered Edward Pratt at the end of his tolerance. The wise would have turned and left him be. Well, it would not be the first time someone had rightfully accused her of having a touch of Gryffindor stupidity. She blamed it on having dated one for so long. It was what underlined the anger that kept her rooted in the threshold; he was defensive.

Silently weathering his once-over, she just stared back at him with the impassiveness of a rock. Edward Pratt was one of the auror’s whose careers she had bared witness to from the beginning. When Daniel Pratt had his sanity stripped from him, the year after his younger brother joined the Corps and around the same time Raynor herself became a full auror. When he had trouble with the and was saved from a Flying Under the Influence by Raynor’s own good graces[1].  And now. When his parents died brutally at the hands of a criminal, for no other reason than that they had been the parents of an Auror. Each time it was the same bubbling anger, the same overly compelling devotion to the job; the same defensiveness. 

She noticed. Noticed because it was chillingly familiar.

“I can see that,” she said, taking the cordial response as an invitation to step further into the small cubicle. She stopped at the far corner of the desk, leaning on it in place of the divider. It was the furthest away from him she could be but still be “in” the workspace. “Late hour to be busy at,” she reflected would-be-casual, ignoring his question. “As long as you remember I cannot pay you for the overtime.”  It was less meant as a joke and more of an excuse to get to a point, “But this job is not about the money, is it?” She shook her head, “a lot of Aurors working overtime lately,” and crossed her arms again, “a case has not been this personal for the Corps in some time – the Second War excluded of course, that was personal for everyone.”

Tamis Raynor was not necessarily rambling. As per usual, her words were as precise as they were concise and carefully thought out in advance. But she did not usually throw this many of them together at once. “The last time I can recall was some… fifteen years? Ago. When an investigator died on the Runespoor case, but that was several years before you joined, was it not?” She did not wait for his answer, adding contemplatively, “that investigation has been drawing some attention recently as well, odd enough. Know anything about it?”

A rock really would have been easier to read than her visage.

1.	Let the Game Begin

The new proximity to his boss only served to further the awkward uncomfortable feeling in the situation. Ed’s tone, his body language and his facial expression hadn’t been inviting. He wanted Tamis Raynor perched on the end of his desk as much as he wanted to be bitten on the arse by a poisonous snake. Alas here she was, less than a metre away from him, 15 inch wand up her bum and all. Despite the uncomfortable closeness, Ed didn’t move. He indignantly remained where he was, legs spread out in front of him as he surveyed her suspiciously.

Raynor’s first words were insulting. The idiotic need to point out the lack of extra pay he would receive had obviously swelled inside her cold, stone and unused heart and she’d happily reminded him of the fact that this case, the manhunt for MacDuff, Ed presumed, was the most personal they had dealt with in a while. Pratt didn’t need informing of this fact; the images of his mum and dad’s corpses on the rug in their living room were enough to remind him of that. He was still sorting out aspects of their will and still damn well trying to defeat the stages of grief with pure lack of thought on the subject.

The dragon continued to speak and an unhealthy realisation dawned on the grumpy auror in the swivel chair. He'd heart bits from that case. He used to read the paper. Green eyes stared at their target before he was overcome with laughter. It was a harsh, emotionless laugh and he sat forward in the chair, unfolding his arms.

“You’re kiddin’ righ’?” The auror shook his head, sitting up straighter as his expression darkened. “I know what investigator. I did a bit of extra-curricular readin’ a few years back.” The harshness in Edward’s tone only served to highlight his building anger. “Besides, no one could miss yer slangin’ match wi’yer boyfriend’s mam.”

Ed took a deep calming breath and twisted in his chair, picking up his coffee mug and scowling into it. Nothing. Empty. He grunted and put it back down on the table, the porcelain clattering forcefully against the wooden desk. He knew why Raynor was here. She didn’t want to discuss her own issue in reality. She wanted to criticise this auror’s coping methods.

“And I know someone that would have known, Raynor.” The auror pushed himself out of his chair quickly and moved to the further end of his cubicle, putting some much needed distance between himself and the head auror. “Ye could have had a heart to heart wi’im,” He turned on his heel to make eye contact with her “or stone to heart wi’im, but unfortunately he’s rockin’ back and forth in St Mungo’s right now, tryin’ to forget all the memories me mam and dad helped him remember again. He’s a bit busy, see, like me.”

A chill ran down her spine at the abrupt, haughty laugh. Cruel might have been a more accurate word to describe it. Or bitter. Whatever adjective used to describe it, it was a far cry from the younger Auror’s poetically sarcastic charm. Her words had been carefully articulated. Each phrase vigilantly designed. He had taken a deeper breath when she mentioned pay rolls and case sensitivities; it had struck a nerve and as well as it should have.

Raynor did not budge when he leaned forward so that she could see his face clearer in the shadowed office. There was an intense distaste there, but there was also something else entirely. Even mentioning Tait Aldridge indirectly was painful, she never willingly brought up the topic on her own. She had no intentions of confining such an intimate topic in Edward Pratt even if he was not teetering on his own little emotional edge without needing her emotional baggage to shift him off balance.

But she knew where this road lead, suppressing grief and throwing one’s entire being into their career – a coward’s path carefully masqueraded as heroic vengeance. It felt good at first; it felt easier not having to deal with it. But the longer that pain was ignored the more the fear of confronting it grew. Until one was sure they would break what was left of oneself if it did. Edward Pratt had too much propensity to dead-end on that path.

The admittance of having overheard what would have been an impossible to ignore… exchange of words between Charisma Aldridge and herself hit her like a physical slap to the face. Her boyfriend’s mother. She was not the only one that could brandy words. Her jaw set but she swallowed the defensive retort of her own, watching him warily as the cup clattered to the floor and he escaped to the furthest corner of the cubicle. She shifted as well – blocking the doorway and effectively caging the auror in the small space. Aurors did not like exits being taken from them, especially when it was the only escape route.

Tamis had spent so much of her time pushing everyone away from her of breaking those ties with what little family she had, sanctioning herself away in her own little mental quarantine thinking it would be the best for everyone. Five years down the road Pratt would wish he had not stayed here, at this office this late so habitually when he could have been elsewhere.

Busy, he said. Like Pratt. He made the two sound mutually exclusive.

She nodded.  “It would make more sense to be busy together, would it not?” She asked, just as ruthlessly. “Or are you hoping you are one of the things he forgets?” It was more accusation than question.

The words, sharper than a freshly cut dagger sliced into the auror’s chest.

Darkness swept through Edward Pratt’s body instantaneously, shrouding his whole entity in a confusing mix of fury and hurt. It gripped his organs, his skin, his joints and his mind. The auror’s body tensed, exhausted muscles hardening and redefining themselves as his flooded mind searched for the control over his body he so desperately required at that moment. The fingers of his left hand balled up tightly into a fist in an attempt to subdue the instinctual response to handle his wand and stop the vicious torrent of words from flowing.  To stop anymore hurtful contention from forming on those harsh, cold lips.

Green eyes took on darkness uncharacteristic to the usually outwardly jovial auror. He could frequently hide his inner turmoil directly. He had the expert ability to put on a smile, make jokes and act even more arrogant while restraining the rage or hurtful damage building up inside. Indirectly people knew. Paperwork was handed in with punctual eagerness and he was one of the latest to remain in the office after hours. Eddie Pratt gave signs of underlying personal issue issues. He was mildly aware of that. Now, though, he couldn’t hide the emotion within. Bright white teeth grinded against each other mercilessly as all colour drained from the blonde auror’s stubbly features.

“How...” The first word came out harsh, controlled as Ed eyed the woman stood blocking the exit to his cubicle, his own work space that she was violating so blatantly, thoughtlessly. “dare you.” A murderous look shot through the bright green of his irises as Eddie Pratt took a step forward.

“Have you ever met my brother, Raynor?” Her name was spoken with disgust as if it were the name of Lord Voldemort himself. “My new brother. Part of the old Dan died, ye see.” The bright green became glossy despite the control Ed was attempting to assert over himself. “But I go and see him almost every damn day because he is convinced he is going to be left alone to rot in that lunatic ward.”

A droplet escaped. It formed in the corner of Ed’s eye and began to fall slowly down his left cheek. “I did that.” The previously controlled voice was shaky, his vocal power fading croakily. “I killed our parents and I made him convinced he were gonna’ be abandoned.” The auror took another step forward in the small cubicle, his much larger form towering over his now insignificant boss. “Where the hell do you get off thinkin’ ye can comment on something you know nothin’ about?”

The anger was vivid and legitimate and the Head Auror contemplated if she would need the wand still holstered at her hip. Her surname was foreign on his lips and was uttered like a curse. She had known Daniel Pratt – the same year of Tait and Jonas if she recalled correctly – and had gone through Auror Training with them as well. But no, she did not know the ‘new’ brother. It was a humbling point. Part of the old Dan died. That she could relate to, albeit differently.

Tamis Raynor had a talent for provoking big, strong men. It always seemed like a good idea; right up until she found herself nose-to-chest with all that brawn. And it certainly was not the romantic atmosphere that had Edward Pratt breathing heavy.

The Auror held her ground, still not relinquishing the doorway and too proud to step back from the uncomfortable closeness. Edward Pratt was not as tall as some of the other Aurors, but the difference was mere inches. His build was leaner but, as she could still quite distinctly recall, the man was all muscle and not exactly small, either. Unperturbed, Raynor looked up her nose at him. It was only due to the close proximity that she saw the tear budding at the corner of his eye stain his face.

It shocked her. She had seen the man angry, more than most – and that was saying something. But she had never seen him cry. It occurred to Raynor then that, perhaps, she had not thought this through well enough. But it was far too late for that.

He did, he blamed himself. Aurors were all cut from the same tree, it seemed. Jaw tightening, but not in anger, Tamis looked down at her still crossed arms. Something that she knew nothing about, he said. What the hell was she thinking?

“No,” the single syllable was firm; negating but calm. “Dugan MacDuff killed your parents.” She stressed the name. “Dugan MacDuff murdered your parents. A real lunatic on a terroristic warpath. His wand. Not yours.”

Something she knew nothing about. She did not have a brother in the mental ward. Nor could she claim to fully understand Pratt’s carefully concealed life. He was a man that was as private as she was. But…

“If you do not come to terms with that, fifteen years down the road you are going to find yourself arguing in a hallway with the closest thing you had to a mother. The first time in fifteen years you have spoken because you could not bear to face the woman whose son died because of you.”

It was the most she had ever said on this topic to date. Edward Pratt had not been on the top of her list to ever admit it to and it was still with a measure of great reluctance. But he needed to hear it. This was not about her. “The ‘what ifs’ come first. ‘What if he had not picked me up?’ ‘What if he had been engaged to someone else?’ ‘What if I had actually listened when he tried to teach me to defend myself?’” There was a long hard and difficult pause. She felt immeasurably uncomfortable standing there. “Eventually you stop questioning; you just know. Blaming yourself makes it bearable; the guilt holds the grief at bay. Until one day you wake up, having fallen asleep working at your desk, and realize you are alone. That all you have left is your job.”

 “Is that who you want to be in fifteen years?” She asked him and then actually looked up. Her eyes were as dry as the Sahara but there was emotion there. Merlin there was emotion there. “Do I look like a happy person?”

Ed didn’t know what reaction Tamis Raynor expected of him. In a normal circumstance, one less emotionally charged, Ed would have listened to her. He would have pitied her and told her it wasn’t her fault, all the things expected in that situation when one spoke of such poignant circumstance.

“Damn it Raynor! This ‘ent the same!” An accusatory finger was jabbed in the direction of the Head Auror. “You push people away! I will never do that.” But he had. He had pushed his own wife away and was trying damn hard not to lose his children as well. “I have kids, a brother, cousins and damn bloody good friends.” Eddie stepped forward again, encroaching on the personal space of his extremely private and stiff boss. He didn’t care that she looked upset. He didn’t care about the emotion brewing behind her eyes or the hurt she obviously felt over what had happened to her. Ed was furious she had compared them to each other. He was furious she thought he would end up like that, obsessed with work, cold and alone.

“I will never wake up alone, Tamis. I care about my family too damn much! This job ‘ent me life. Me family is and that is why I do this. To protect them.” The final words broke, leaving the wizard’s voice once more weaker. He wasn’t protecting his family. This job had caused his parents’ murder. It had forced his ex-wife and children into hiding.

“If I can’t do that then I don’t know what I can do.” Suddenly Eddie felt very sick. He stepped back from Raynor and dropped into his chair, the anger ebbing away almost as quickly as it had appeared. Eddie was a live wire. Anger was easily come by but as easily pushed away.

His eyes settled on Tamis as a wave of realised emotion struck him. A hand moved to his mouth as his eyes filled up more and a few tears started to escape down his stubbly cheek. He lifted a hand to his spectacles and pulled them off, closing them in his palm. “And right now I’m failin’.”