The newest Weird Sisters record had been stuck in Rita's head all morning. Stood at the corner of a London street at midday singing horrifically out of tune in a far-from-quiet manner, the ageing witch stood out like a house elf with no clothes on. She was wearing her usual acid-green robes, clashing pillar-box red nail polish and lipstick, her hair was fantastically puffed up and platinum blonde, and she was nibbling on the end of a bright green quill.

A small boy stopped in his tracks, an enormous lolly-pop being engulfed by his large mouth, scruffy marks spattered across his face and tears in his trousers and tee-shirt. Rita stopped singing immediately as the boy stared at her, sucking on his lolly. Rita grimaced slightly and shuffled backwards. She held a loathing for small children that was - she was positive - not so different to the loathing Voldemort held for Harry Potter.

Rita looked up and down the street uneasily. She could see the public toilets where Ministry of Magic officials accessed the floo network, but there wasn't a lot of action going on in the street. The kid was seriously starting to infringe on her personal space, and he was making her feel a little queasy.

"Shoo!"

He didn't move. Instead, he used the flat of his tongue to lick the full length of the lolly-pop, as though inviting Rita to tell him off. Instead of using words, however, the reporter thought it might be more prudent to use her power to scare the urchin. Pulling her wand from her bag slowly, she made a show of keeping it hidden. The little boy snorted as if to say 'Wow, a stick'. Red sparks shot from the end of the wand and fizzled out onto the floor as Rita adopted a smug smile. The boy's eyes widened, and it didn't take long for him to run off, dropping his lolly-pop in the process.

"Wingardium Leviosa." The lolly was saved from a fate worse than floor, and as it hovered in the air patiently, Rita fumbled around in her bag and procured a tissue. With a slight twist of her expression as though she'd smelled something vile, she used her fingers wrapped in the tissue to pick the lolly up by its wooden stick. The lolly was almost whole, the colours perhaps a little worse-for-wear on one side, and a nibble out of the top here and there, but all-in-all it was a lolly-pop.

They'd broken early for lunch that morning, with Adon off to Level Five for a 'meeting' with his brother.  That had given Jonas reason enough to come up with an awkward excuse to escape the Ministry.  Things were still tense between him and the elder of the Eleor brothers, and he and Adon both preferred to Not Talk about it.  It was easiest when Jonas simply had an excuse not to be present.

By the time he'd washed his hands and left the loo (even though it wasn't an actual loo, the thought of departing a public toilet facility without doing so was a little too disconcerting), Jonas had just enough time to grab lunch and make it back again.  Escaping to the streets had become something of a routine.  He still felt like there were days when there was only so much Ministry strangeness that he could take; in contrast to the magical weirdness that lurked in the corridors below, the busy traffic of London's streets were as close to gritty reality as he could get on a regular lunchtime basis.

His mobile phone was in his hand as soon as he hit the pavement.  In some ways, the last few days had been considerably less stressful for him than they had been for some of his colleagues.  The idea that his family might be in danger was nothing new; he and Adon and Dreogan had started laying the groundwork to protect them back in January, and the Eleors had helped strengthen the spells more recently when Macduff and Tawse had made their intentions clearly known.  There had been no scrambling to put new ones in place, no frantic debate over what to do.  They'd made life changes, certainly, but they were the product of careful analysis, not panicked reaction thrown together in a rush.  Short of him quitting the Ministry, Anna and the kids were as safe as he could possibly make them.  There was little else that he could do.

Even so, it was something of a relief when he could finally turn his phone on and check the messages.  The first was from Anna, checking in about picking up the kids from Hestia's that evening -- as furious as it had made Gwenna, they'd finally resigned to the inevitable and had pulled both out of school.  The second, slightly longer, was from his brother-in-law.  The initial sound of the older man's voice made Jonas twitch slightly -- with his sister on a serious decline, they were all waiting uncomfortably for that call, but this time Melor was just checking in.  Everything was fine.

Jonas let out the breath he hadn't been holding and tapped through the phone menus so that he could text Anna back.  Being back on the streets of Muggle London left him feeling more comfortable than he knew he really should, especially considering how adept some of the Ministry's enemies had proven at moving unseen.  But these were the streets directly above the Ministry; no one but Atalana Kanika would be bold enough to attack here. 

He swept his gaze briefly over the passerby, barely registered a woman in lime green robes who appeared to be delicately handling some sort of sweet -- they got all sorts at the Ministry, and most were never discreet -- and set off down the pavement, head ducking automatically as he went back to concentrating on his mobile phone.

A figure with a bright head of hair ascended the steps from the Ministry toilets up to the main street, his head bowed low over...something or other that he seemed to be completely engrossed in. Rita's eyes narrowed as she tried to decipher whether this person was worth her attention. Standing inconspicuously against the wall, (or as inconspicuously as one could, wearing lime green robes and holding a giant multi-coloured lollypop), Rita chanced a glance at the man as he walked past, and half-smirked to herself. Auror Trevelyan. Perfect.

Rita flexed the fingers of her left hand as Trevelyan carried on along the road. Ensuring she had everything she needed with her, she carried on after him, tottering on her heels at a safe distance behind him. After a couple of minutes he disappeared into a sandwich bar, still paying all of his attention to the device in his hand. Probably something to warn him of evil the witch thought to herself bemused at just how paranoid all the aurors seemed to be.

Heaving a sigh she carried on after him, crossing a busy road (and being oblivious to nearly getting hit by two cars as she inspected her nails) before pushing her way past a queue of people waiting for sandwiches at the counter. "Out of my way, important woman on important official Prophet business." The people in the queue looked at her in disgust as she shoved her way through, a few making note of her strange dress sense, and more making hushed queries as to what the Prophet was.

Then she landed in front of the auror sat at a table. He didn't look up as she stood in front of him, impatiently waiting for him to offer her a seat. "Fine," she stated abruptly, "I'll just help myself, shall I?" She yanked a chair out and sat down next to him, plonking her bag down on the floor and plastering her reporter smile on her heavily made-up face. "Rita Skeeter, Daily Prophet."

Jonas had paid for a sandwich and a newspaper, and then had managed to snag a small table near the wall.  He was used to multitasking while he ate, but switching between the phone (whenever Anna replied) and the Guardian took up all of his attention.  He was in the middle of hitting the send key and trying to find his place in the article he'd been reading (some girl from Tottenham who had gone missing had reappeared shaken and claiming no memory of where she had been) when someone yanked out the chair in front of him and took a seat.

The Auror blinked and looked up, his forehead creasing as he took stock of his new lunch partner.  Between her puffed up hair and her acid green robes, there was no mistaking the woman in front of him for anything but a witch.  She hadn't made even the slightest effort to blend in with the Muggles; two young kids at the next table over were already shooting looks in their direction and whispering.

"Jonas Trevelyan," he said, looking completely perplexed.  "I, ah..."

Apparently passing on information to Niobe Thursby had opened the veritable floodgates.  Jonas wasn't sure if Niobe had given his name to her sister reporters -- somehow he doubted that, since she didn't seem the sort to share her sources -- or if there was something about him that screamed 'willing to talk' to every employee at the Prophet.  First Thursby, then Foley, then Groust...now Skeeter, whose name struck a cautious chord from the old days.  If he wasn't careful, word was going to spread that he was leaking information, and something told him that Cameron Rosier would be much less forgiving than Tamis might be.

"You, ah, need something, Madam Skeeter?" he asked in a vaguely wary tone, tapping the button on the top of his phone to turn the screen off.  He left the newspaper where it was, opened to the article about the reappeared girl and some kind of new computer browser.  "I'm on me lunch break.  If you've an official question, you ought to submit it to someone at the Ministry."

Rita flashed a daring smile as she noticed Jonas sizing her up. Though to him he was simply ascertaining whether she was from muggle or magical stock, she was assuming he liked what he saw, and as always she wanted to play up to it. The gold teeth flashed daringly in the beams of sunlight that danced through the grimy windows.

The gentleman introduced himself, and Rita nodded, scratching away at a piece of parchment with her quill. "Auror...Jonas...Trolleyman." Accentuating a full stop after his name, she smiled back at him. "Excellent, Auror Trolleyman. I thank you for agreeing to see me." Not that there had been much agreeing at all.

"You, ah, need something, Madam Skeeter?"

Rita chuckled and fluffed up her hair. "Sugarplum, you make me sound so old! Please, no 'Madam' - just call me Rita. And since you're offering," she looked over to a spotty young boy standing behind the counter, and - casting him a stern look - snapped her fingers at him. "Garçon!" Twitching her finger in her direction, the boy looked around confused before dragging his feet over to where Rita and Jonas sat. "He's paying," she started, jerking her head towards Jonas. "I'll have a large coffee-" she leaned towards Jonas as though sharing a secret "-we could be here a while, Auror Trolleyman,"

"Um...it's not waiter service in--"

The boy was cut off by Rita's loud voice, "And if you could put a dash of something a little stronger in it, I'd be ever-so-grateful." The boy was about to argue that they didn't serve alcohol, when Rita pressed two knuts into his hand. "There you go, sweet-pea. Don't spend it all at once." The boy walked off staring at the money with confusion, and muttered something about 'bloody monopoly money'.

"I'm on me lunch break.  If you've an official question, you ought to submit it to someone at the Ministry."

Rita looked down at Jonas' sandwich and nodded as though in understanding. "I'll take one of those, too!" she called to the boy who looked across in irritation before setting to making up another sandwich. Rita leaned back in her chair slightly, making herself comfortable for the long-haul, and clasped her hands in front of her. "If I had an official question, Auror Trolleyman, I would indeed submit it to the Ministry. This, however, is not an official visit. I thought maybe we could try a...you scratch my back, I do anything you want?" She looked down at her hands coyly before raising her eyes and looking at him seductively through her long, well-mascaraed lashes. Her foot crept towards his like a tentacle of the Giant Squid of Hogwarts, her assurance that she really did mean anything.