Tamis Raynor was desensitized.  Even amongst those who knew her well she had seemed withdrawn, almost aggravatingly nonchalant in the face of political and criminal upheaval.  She carefully delegated, still hounded the Aurors for their reports at the end of the month, sorted through the preliminaries of Trainee applications. By all appearances it was business as usual for the Head Auror. As if aurors were not handing over badges. As if murders were not making a comeback in the Daily Prophet. As if she was not currently in an unofficial power struggle with her Department Head. Or that a certain percentage of her Office was not-so-subtly staring a coup. She was five feet of impenetrable rock. Because that was what the Aurors needed her to be.

But everyone had their Achilles Heel. And hers was quite consistent. 

And it was that fatal weakness that had her standing in front of the used bookstore storefront, the faded letters of “Reed and Wright” catching the lamplight overhead the second story now a familiar sight. She even managed to ignore the electrical hum of the before mentioned streetlamp, or find the artificial fluorescent glow still illuminating the second floor windows this late at night too unnerving.  At least not in the traditional Pureblood Witch sense.

The second of June was never easy, if more bearable than the twenty first of December[1]. Tait Aldridge would have been thirty six years old today. She could have been married to him for over a decade now. Maybe ever might have had children, with at least one nearing Hogwarts age. The moment-that-would-never-be was so very clear in her mind. Of little feet rushing into the bedroom, carrying in the dreaded Birthday Breakfast they had so proudly made without House Elf assistance. And Tait with all the grace and charisma of a well-seasoned father would have proudly eaten it. But he was not going to be thirty six this year. He would never be much older than twenty.

Jonas Trevelyan was holding up remarkably well in comparison to the rest of the Aurors, regrettably Tamis admitted that she had leaned heavily professionally on that resilience these past couple of months.  He knew what day it was as well as she. When he had uncharacteristically left the Office near on-time that evening, she had suspected. The lights still burning bright in the former private investigator’s office simply confirmed it.

Even now, she was not entirely sure why she was here. A sense of obligation? Guilt over the unresolved issues between them? Genuine concern? Perhaps it was a bit of all these things. Or perhaps it was the realization that Jonas Trevelyan was the closest thing she had to an actual friend.

It was a simple matter of plugging in the required security codes and bypassing the additional measures once inside. The doorknob at the top of the stairs turned willingly. Jonas had his picture box on, the glass canvas displaying moving images of one of his shows, all though the room itself was deserted. Easing the door closed, the petite Auror proceeded cautiously into the next room. Unsurprisingly, there the red headed man sat hunched over several documents, the parchment and hard written case files a stark contrast to the muggle comforts of the desk. His brows were knitted, furrowed with such deep concentration that Raynor wondered if even the very expensive security system would have caught his attention.

It would require something more subtle then.

Nearly waltzing, Tamis moved around Jonas’ and clasped her hands behind her back, moving in until she nearly flanked him.  Craning her neck further than a more well-proportioned individual would have, she peered over his shoulder to see what he was working on – though she could have guessed. No matter how many times she saw it, she never would quite get used to seeing her own, much younger face blink up at her from a case file[2].

“You really might want to consider better security arrangements,” she told him casually from her current position. The words identical from their first such encounter[3], albeit the irony was much more satisfying the second time around.

1.	The Adventure of the Veiled Lodger
2.	[url=http://absitomen.com/index.php?topic=3576.msg22463#msg22463]Runespoor Case File
3.	The Adventure of the Illustrious Client

Removing himself from his normal evening engagements had occurred with startling ease.  Jonas had texted Anna at lunch that it looked as though he and Adon would be working late that night.  Long hours at the Ministry -- or at Archer's flat -- had become a relatively normal occurrence in recent weeks, and as long as he made an effort to be home some evenings, she didn't question the others.  He'd excused himself from an evening of work or drinks with his still-broody partner the same way; all it had taken was an apologetic comment about needing family time, and Adon had dropped the subject before it had even been raised.

He'd have considered owling Charisma or Ryan -- it would take several pints that he wasn't planning on drinking before he'd ever send word to Taryn -- but somehow, contacting his best mate's family hadn't felt right.  Tait Aldridge had been gone from the world for so long that the circle of close friends and family that had once surrounded him had drifted apart.  They'd all developed their own way to cope with the harder days, one birthday or anniversary rolling into the next as the years surged mercilessly onward.  Interrupting any of their well-practiced strategies because this one felt harder than most would have drawn more attention than he'd wanted.

The hectic activity of the past few weeks had not been easy on his knee, which was in a near-constant state of aching now, but Jonas had walked back to his old office anyhow.  He'd picked up food on the way, bolted the door behind him and turned on the security system.  It wasn't as if anyone would think to stop in, but considering how many different individuals were potentially murderous toward the Aurors at the moment, the last thing he needed was to turn himself into an easy target.

Usually on a night like this, he'd let the hours past by turning on the television and letting its flickering lights and overdramatic stories lure him into a barely-conscious haze, but he couldn't focus tonight.  Pacing lasted until the dull ache became physical pain.  Supper, now cold, sat abandoned on the lone wooden table. 

He'd finally resigned himself to pulling out the casefile.

Jonas knew better than to expect that he was suddenly going to have some sort of brilliant, blinding breakthrough.  He and Adon had gone over the papers dozens of times, as had a litany of Aurors before them.  Most of the time, he could ignore it, set aside the incessant need to know by telling himself that the truth would only come out with practiced patience and deliberate determination.  But for one night, he could afford to let go of the constant control.  If Tait hadn't been murdered, he would have been thirty-six today.  The answer, any answer, had to be in there somewhere, buried by the years upon years of unanswered questions and time wasted.

He sat alone at his desk, holding his head in both hands, shifting position only to turn to another page.  Most of them, he felt as if he nearly knew by heart by now.  Suspects questioned.  Evidence collected.  The sudden, brutal finality with which the case was finally closed.  He'd tossed his badge -- Tait's badge -- carelessly on the desk nearby, doing his best to ignore it even when it glinted in the lamplight.

All of the sounds from the street outside, the fuzzy static from the television in the next room as some police inspector or another solved a horrendously complicated mystery, faded dimly into the background.  Jonas never noticed the sounds of the security system being disarmed, of the footfalls on the stairs or the subtle approach behind him.  The words, even if he'd heard them once before, came out of nowhere.  For all that he was expecting them, they might as well have been a cannon shot.

Jonas jumped out of his chair so quickly that he managed to slam his knee into the bottom of the desk.  With a fluent string of profanity, he nearly toppled over, grabbing for the nearest thing to a weapon as he attempted to both confront his attacker and maintain his balance.

"What the bloody hell?!" he shouted.  His heart still felt as if it had stopped and not restarted; it was all he could do to gape at the woman behind him.  His mouth worked several times, not a sound coming out as he put a shaky hand to the table to steady himself. 

"I -- ... You -- ..."  Sputtering was not helping the situation, so Jonas clamped his mouth shut again.  Awareness of his surroundings was slowly seeping in.  The lamp on his desk, which was flickering, suddenly shorted out, plunging them into near-darkness; he must have knocked it with his elbow, which at least explained the sharp pain in that appendage.  It occurred to him in a sudden flash that he was cradling his stapler like a cosh, as if he could use it to beat his attacker over the head.  Sheepishly, he set it down quickly on the desk.

"You --... don't you knock?" he demanded, refusing to meet Raynor's eyes as he turned quickly to gather the casefile.  He could feel his face burning bright red, and his heart was beating so loudly that it could probably drown out Big Ben all the way at Westminster.  "What the hell?  I had the bloody alarm on!" he protested, shooting a nasty look over his shoulder as he began to shovel up the papers.  If his hands were shaking, there was no way in hell he'd ever admit it.  "How the bloody hell did you get in?!"

Perhaps that had been a touch too subtle. Those instincts of his might be rusty but they still had a sense of self preservation. The chair he had formally occupied flew backward as he leaped from it and Raynor had to do some quick stepping of her own to avoid becoming entangled with it. A flurry of motion (and a Cornish commentary she had no intentions of repeating) later she found herself confronted with a hunched over Jonas Trevelyan, face as red as his hair – and apparently attempting to accost her with a strange, strictly muggle looking rectangular object.

Asides from the sharp rising of an eyebrow, the petite woman did not react further. It was cruel to have snuck up on him so, especially in light of recent events. But in many ways, that was the reason she had done so. It was dangerous times to drop ones guard so heavily. The lamp on his table flickered and then shorted out on its own accord and Raynor cast it a quick and incredulous look, not admitting that she might have taken a step or two in the opposite direction. Yet another reason to trust candles over such artificial… and precarious… lighting.

Her attention returned quickly to her less visible, would-be defender – who had thankfully decided he no longer needed the strange paperweight. She was content to pretend to be as oblivious about his shaken state as he was.

“Are you certain I did not?” She returned cheekily when he accused her of not knocking. Which she hadn’t. A banshee could have been shrieking downstairs and she doubted the man would have heard it. She knew that as well as she knew his anger was defensive more than it was offensive, so she continued to shrug it off.

“Through the front door,” she replied again, her grey eyes began to adjust to the darkness as she watched him quickly gather up the Runespoor files. “I did have the thing,” -- she meant the security system --, “installed.” Her gaze had not left his hands or the documents.

In many ways, that was why she was here, was it not? Memory pained her. It was not just her greeting that was familiar about this visit. Not too many months ago she had brought those same files to this office for the very first time, cornering the private investigator with his sentimental values and curiosity to help her. In laymen’s terms, she had used him.

Had she really ever stopped using him? It was a dry and unpleasant thought. Without her, Jonas Trevelyan would not be on the Runespoor Smuggler’s most wanted list. Without her, he would not have rejoined the Auror Ranks – he would not have had his family threatened by a psychopathic direwolf. She wondered if he resented her for it; if he would rather still be a PI tracking down lost objects or unfaithful husbands, mostly oblivious to the very aspects of the Wizarding World that had scared him away in the first place. It was a question she did have the courage to ask him.

Instead she moved around to the front of his desk and slid down casually into the chair there, half obscured by their reduced lighting. She lifted her chin at the case files, “I know what they are as well as you do.”

It was difficult to read his shadowed expression, particularly when he was pointedly not looking at her. But that was really why she was here, was it not? She would be a fool to believe she was the only one feeling Tait’s absence today, it had not been too horribly difficult to surmise what Jonas would be doing. Normally, she would have stayed away as far as possible. On the last such instance Trevelyan had nearly had to stake out in her hallway. They had not talked about it. They had talked very little in general since she gave him the memory of Tait Aldridge’s murder and offered him his job back. And she knew why – the same reason she had tried to conceal the truth for so long and the reason he was not looking at her now. Tait’s death was her fault, a fact she could never change or ever repair. But she owed him. Owed Charisma Aldridge as well.

It was the reason she had risked so much to save his life at the beginning of the Second War. And the reason why guilt had overrode her to check in on him tonight, whether he wanted her there or not.

The reasonable explanation for the intrusion barely registered as Jonas fiercely shoveled the rest of the papers into the folder.  He yanked his bottom drawer open and dropped the case file inside, shoving it shut so savagely that the entire desk shuddered.  Now that the shock of the sudden interruption was wearing off, he was just angry -- furious with Tamis, even more angry at himself, more so for being caught with his emotional guard down than for letting someone slip through his defenses.

It occurred to him, as he yanked his chair upright and dropped to sit in it once more, that she very well could be an plant.  They knew that Tawse was using Polyjuice to stage his attacks, disguising himself to slip through defenses and ambush his prey.  But if this were Tawse -- even if this was Tawse come for another chat and not to outright kill him -- there were so many other, better forms that he could have chosen.  Adon.  Archer.  Lexus.  Even Rosier.  For the most part, Jonas stayed well clear of Raynor in the office; he might support her quietly, but she'd made it clear that anything beyond business was not welcome.

But her next statement confirmed her identity beyond a doubt.  The words cut.  Jonas reeled.  They both knew what the papers were; they knew what this day meant.  There was no question what he'd been doing, and being suddenly called out on it felt like getting caught with a hand in the emotional cookie jar.  Tawse could never penetrate his defenses so thoroughly.  Only Raynor, with her knowledge of the things that he kept hidden as much as she, could wield the English language in attack and leave him feeling so exposed.

"Yeah, and what?" he demanded defensively.  It wasn't often that he let his guard down completely, but there was no hint of it now; the raw pain showed in his expression, brimmed in the undercurrents of his speech as he glared back, as if daring her to call him on it.  "What the hell does it matter what they are?  I'm allowed to bloody well look at them!  It isn't --"

His voice cracked.  The red-haired Auror broke off, staring up at the ceiling as he visibly fought to slow his breathing, to regain control.  After a moment, he reached up to pinch the bridge of his nose, letting out a shuddering breath as he rubbed both hands over his face.

This wasn't the conversation that he wanted to have tonight.  There was a point where turnabout was fair play, but even when he'd shown up at her flat on the anniversary of Tait's death, he'd never cornered her.  They'd talked around the issue, barely mentioned his name; hell, Jonas had never even brought up her bloody goddamned bunny slippers again, and that bit of knowledge would have been golden in the office.  He'd let her keep the illusion of control; when she'd asked, he'd stopped pushing.  He'd hardly broken in to what was obviously her private space, snuck up behind her, and directly called her out on what she knew she shouldn't be doing, although the current circumstances were starting to make him wish that he had, if only so that she would have left him alone now.

Emotion was a luxury that Aurors couldn't afford.  He'd spent the last few weeks as a bastion -- for Pratt, who would have gone to pieces even sooner if he hadn't had his colleagues at his side.  For Adon, who underneath it all was still terrified that he was fated to die.  Jonas had held it together through Macduff's threats, the attack on their new boss; he'd helped direct the undercurrent of frustration and turn it into something that would hopefully end with the direwolf's arrest or death.  In the office, in the field, they all had to be unflappable.  The only place he could let his guard down was with Anna.

But he couldn't do it tonight.  For once, just once, he'd been intentionally giving up control, abandoning the evening to the aching sentimentality that he couldn't afford otherwise.  Tamis ought to understand that better than anyone; she'd spent her entire life since Tait's death locking her emotions away, curled up in a ball on the floor with tattered bunny slippers and plaintive letters that she wouldn't let herself respond to.  Now she'd taken even that away from him.

"Tamis, what do you want?"  The words came out resigned and plaintive, the emotion still raw, but he didn't care.  Jonas lifted his chin to look back at her, setting his jaw as he met her gaze unashamedly.  Like hell he was going to let her back him down on this. 

"It's been a run of bloody exhausting weeks," he said tightly, deliberately.  The words caught in his throat even as he tried to keep them steady, but if she was going to ignore the fact that she'd scared the piss out of him, then she could bloody well ignore that too.  "If this is about work, why can't it keep until tomorrow?"

Tamis Raynor realized too late that she had erred. Since his rather abrupt return into her life, Jonas had been an irritatingly cheeky and annoyingly nonchalant presence.  The competitive determination of her old rival had certainly not faded with the years, but that emotion driven arrogance and temper that fueled his youth had. So accustomed she had become, that a reaction that would not have caused her to beat an eyelash completely unnerved the Witch. Apparently Tamis had not lost her talent for bringing out the best of Jonas Trevelyan, either.

Sliding into the chair in front of his desk and commenting indifferently on the paperwork she had intended to be non-confrontational. Give him space as he gathered the parchment hurried and… let him know that he did not have to hide them from her. She had often done the same thing since becoming Head Auror – when the files were no longer restricted from her.  The information did not change the hundredth time one read it, but the act was comforting. Wondering if there was one, small seemingly insignificant detail that had been overlooked the first ninety-nine times.

His reaction was explosive, contorting his face. The equally inexpressive Raynor actually slightly cringed as the emotion filtered across his face. She had grossly underestimated the state of this Man she had known since her adolescence. What was more disheartening was that she could not tell if it was stress or her worse fear realized. The reason she had avoided him on this personal level like he had dragon pox since he saw the Truth of Tait Aldridge’s death. That the defensiveness was derived from anger with her rather than stress.

And then, very suddenly, Raynor realized that she could not do this.  Emotion was not an Auror strong point. And it was a quality where she truly was Queen.  What did she want?

Raynor sat there, rooted to the spot, her expression unmoved and carved from stone despite her start a few minutes ago, grey eyes meeting blue just as unwavering, though the longer they stared back into his the more tinged with uncertainty they became. That was not a question she could answer.

“This… was a mistake,” she said quietly, reclaiming her feet. Tamis Raynor never apologized, but if someone listened carefully, they could be convinced that one lingered in her trailing tone. The petite woman made it as far as the threshold to the other room before she brought herself up short -- and just stood there with her back to him like an ill-placed figurine. She owed him, she reminded herself, grey eyes briefly closing in the safety of knowing he could not see them do so.

Weakness was not a fault the Auror enjoyed showing. Avoided it at all cost. And ever since December of Nineteen Ninety Four, she counted Caring as one of them. 

She considered lying, even then. Of still taking her leave as abruptly as she had arrived. But she was not in the mood to play games. Not today of all days. Not when he seemed every bit at the end of his limits.  And not after everything that had happened the past year and especially in recent months. For despite how much she tried to convince even herself, Raynor was just not as coldhearted as she strove to be. But that certainly did not make this easy.

Finally she turned back and shrugged her shoulders in a defeatist manner, wariness touching her eyes.  She was about to admit something she never admitted to anyone. Not even Archer. It was what a muggle might equate to what getting a root canal felt like. “I was worried about you, if you must know.”