"Are you ready?" asked Harry, looking carefully at me.

"Yes."

"Are you sure?" he pressed.

"She's fine, Dad," James cut in. "She can do it."

Harry hesitated before nodding. He smiled ruefully at me. "There's a reason why James is your handler."

The three of us were standing outside Shell Cottage, going over the final details. The wind was blowing around us – it would soon be the beginning of autumn. The air was crisp and clear.

"I'll be in your ear the entire time," said James. "And if we need to contact each other?"

"I have the knut with the Protean Charm on it," I answered. "Thanks to Hermione."

"She learned it in our fifth year," said Harry proudly.

"I know," I said. "I actually paid attention in History of Magic."

Harry opened his mouth to say something, but James cut him off again. "We can talk about the genius of Aunt Hermione later. We have to make sure that Cressida gets to the estate by dinner."

I looked down at my watch which told me it was nearly 5:00. "I should get going."

James started walking to the apparition point that was beyond the wards. Harry and I followed a few steps behind.

"If something goes wrong, you get out of there right away and come here," said James when we had reached the apparition point.

I was silent for a moment and looked back at Shell Cottage which had disappeared thanks to the wards. I stared at the vast ocean and took it in. It was very peaceful and I had enjoyed the calm of the last few days.

Finally, I turned back to James and grinned at him. "But if nothing goes wrong, where's the fun in that?"

And with that, a soft pop, and the feeling of being squeezed, I disappeared from the tranquil coastal scene and appeared outside an imposing gate. I took a deep breath and placed my left palm against the keyhole. The gate creaked open and I started making my way up the gravelly path.

It was quite misty and chilly as I was walking and I shivered slightly, whether because of the ambiance or because of my nerves. The ambiance certainly didn't hurt. Sometimes I thought that Uncle Calliban had placed a curse on the estate to make everyone miserable.

There was a turn in the path and I caught my first glimpse of the mansion. Even before I realized how fucked up and awful my family was, I had thought it imposing. The exterior was made of a dark paneling that in the light looked purple, but at night looked black. Although it was only three stories high, there were a few turrets and some high gables that made the mansion look bigger.

After pausing briefly to survey the mansion, I continued briskly on the path. It was cold and I was hungry.

When I reached the house, I walked up the steps and onto the veranda. I noticed that there were some new plants along the railing and I couldn't help but smile. Mother always fancied herself a bit of a gardener and was constantly changing the plant decor. It drove our house elf mad.

I pushed the door open and entered the foyer. It was silent inside like I had suspected. Everyone must have gone straight through to dinner and not mingled for drinks like they sometimes did.

Before I made my way to the dining room, I glanced down at the elegant black dress I was wearing. Harry had brought it from his house and I wondered if it belonged to his wife. I should have asked.

I walked purposefully to the dining room door and opened it. Everyone was sitting down making light conversation, but they all looked up to see who had entered.

"Ah, Cressida!" said a fairly portly man at the end of the table. "We weren't expecting you!"

"I do apologize, Father," I said formally. "I cut my time in London short and only just got back."

"No matter," said a woman sitting to his right. She was tall and pale with shoulder length black hair that was perfectly straight. "There's an empty setting next to Deirdre. Calliban was called away on urgent business."

I inclined my head toward my mother respectfully and sat down next to another pale woman. Her hair was a bit longer and more unkempt than my mother, but the family resemblance was clear. Both Aunt Deirdre and my mother had the same perfect skin and dark eyes. Their irises were such a dark brown that they were almost black. I was always thankful that I had inherited my father's blue eyes.

As the light conversation picked up again, Aunt Deidre began talking to me with her soft Irish lilt. Having grown up in London, she did not have the strong Irish accent that my grandparents had. If that side of the family didn't have such a love for Irish literature and mythology, you probably couldn't have guessed that she and mother were Irish because of their appearance and accents. Mother's accent was even less pronounced, though I always thought she purposefully masked it.

"Did you enjoy London?" she was asking me.

"I did," I answered. "It was nice being at the penthouse alone for a bit. I haven't really had a holiday since I graduated."

That was the story we had decided upon to explain my disappearance. The family owned a penthouse in muggle London and Harry had put some of his people on surveillance to see if anyone had been using it. It wasn't connected to the floo network and there were apparition wards so one would have to enter the building from the exterior. Surveillance plus the questionable acquisition of a muggle security camera feed told us that the penthouse had been empty. Besides me, of course.

"After I graduated, I did a tour of the continent," said Deirdre. "It's a shame you never went on a trip the summer after you graduated."

I shrugged as I poured myself a glass of wine. "What's in the past is in the past."

She nodded in what I assumed was supposed to be a wise manner and turned her attention to her other side where her son Aquila was sitting. I had always liked Aquila. We had been the same year at Hogwarts and since he was involved with the more legitimate businesses of the family, he always gave off more normal vibes.

He turned to face his mother as she began to speak to him. Deirdre was nagging him about something or other and he winked at me when he saw me looking over at them.

I grinned into my wine glass and looked around the table. Mother and father were ignoring each other per usual. Orlagh and Aodhan, Deirdre's other two children, were down by my parents and they were fast in conversation. Orlagh wasn't that bad and neither was Aodhan, but they had always been a bit more gung ho about the syndicate than Aqulia and I were. It had always been the two of us and the two of them. I had another two cousins on the Hadrian side of the family, but they lived in Turkey where the family was trying to make some inroads since Uncle Mordred had married Aunt Yasmine, the eldest daughter of a wealthy and prominent family.

Gayelord was at the other head of the table. He was silent and his eyes unreadable, though when he saw me looking at him, his face broke into a wide smile.

I smiled back and raised my glass to him in a silent toast. He nodded and went back to surveying the rest of the table.

On my other side, Grandmother Scarlett was deep in conversation with Grandmother Aoife. What they had to talk about was beyond me. They were both miserable old crones.

Across from us, Grandfather Adonijah and Grandfather Naohman were also in deep conversation. Since Adonijah had given up the reigns of the syndicate to my father, he and my mother's father had formed a deep connection. They had always been friendly – having arranged the marriage of my parents to solidify their alliance, but lately they were rarely seen outside of each other's company. I couldn't be sure what had brought them together recently. Maybe old, evil men just gravitated toward each other.

I was pulled out of my musings by the serving of our first course. Several of our house elves approached the table holding up trays of soup. One of them, Tabby, came between Deirdre and myself.

"What kind of soup today?" I asked.

"Chestnut bisque, Missus," squeaked Tabby.

I nodded appreciatively as Tabby carefully took one of the bowls and placed it in front of me. Once everyone had been served, I eagerly dug in. I had been craving good food after subsiding on eggs and sandwiches for the last few days. Plus, house-elf cooking was much better than the cooking of three clueless aurors and one depressed soon-to-be family pariah.

The rest of dinner went by fairly quickly. I made small talk with those sitting around me, but nothing really interesting happened. It would have been disappointing, but I had figured as much. It's not like I would be undercover for five minutes before the family spilled every dark secret.

After the house-elves cleared desert – a delicious coffee crème brûlée – from the table, the conversation turned to the Wizengamot. Both Gayelord and Adonijah sat on the council where they could easily sway wizarding law and, of course, deflect investigation into the family.

"There's going to be a vote next week on international trade tariffs," said Adonijah. "It's a perfect opportunity for us to continue to make strides in France."

I perked up, but tried not to convey my strong interest to the rest of the family. Would I hear more about the Babineaux Deal?

Father nodded. "If the tariffs decrease, our profits will double from the Babineaux deal."

I felt a burning on my left thigh. For a moment, I was confused, but remembered the knut in my pocket. James. He was sending me a message. The burning subsided and I tried to quell my curiosity. I couldn't whip out the knut at the table and I didn't want to excuse myself and miss something important.

"Is everything set for the vote?" asked Naohman in his raspy Irish brogue.

Gayelord snickered slightly from where he was sitting. "What do you think?"

The rest of the family joined in with the laughter and I added in a chuckle. I smiled for good measure too.

Once the laughter subsided, Father stood up. "Let's go through to the parlor."

He made his way to the door and we all followed him. When we were in the corridor though, I made my excuses, saying I was tired from all the walking and apparating I had done while on my holiday. They bought it and I walked up the stairs to my bedroom.

I entered and let out a content sigh. My bedroom was one of the few places I felt comfortable. My dormitory in Hogwarts had been one of those places. In the couple of months before she had disappeared so had Addison's flat.

The room was decorated with lilac wallpaper and some landscape paintings adorned the walls. I had a desk underneath one window and I unconsciously walked toward it after shutting the door behind me. I flicked my wand at the door to lock it as I walked to the desk.

I tapped my wand to one of the drawers and it opened. I pulled out a tin box and layed down on my plush four-poster bed atop the duvet. I repositioned the pillows behind me and opened the box.

Inside there was a stack of photographs. The one on top was of Addison and I from our fifth-year. She looked so young. There were no lines under her eyes. She hadn't looked old necessarily when I last saw her, but she had looked weary and almost haunted.

I quickly closed the tin box, pushing those thoughts away. Instead, I reached into my pocket and pulled out the knut. I tapped my wand to it and it glowed for a moment before words appeared. "Find out more about Wizengamot. That will be our angle."

"Got your message, Seven," I said aloud with a faint smile. Seven had been his Quidditch number at Hogwarts and he had chosen it as his code name. Mine was Shakespeare which I had not found very original, but Albus had insisted, thinking it was the funniest thing ever. He was a weird one.

I stood up from my bed and went to the attached bathroom to brush my teeth and put on pajamas. I absentmindedly thought about James's message as I went about my pre-bedtime routine. It made a lot of sense. If we could prove that the Hadrians were bribing and threatening people on the Wizengamot, we could possibly force out Gayelord and Adonijah. With them off the council, Harry and Hermione could go through the proper channels and investigate the family.

I came back into my room and flicked my wand at the lights to turn them off. I felt my way to the bed and pulled the duvet back to lay down. After covering myself back up, I rolled over to my side and closed me eyes.

As I fell asleep, I thought of Addison and the way she had looked when were reunited. What had she been through since Hogwarts?