Disclaimer: I'm not J.K. Rowling; I'm only visiting her universe for nonprofit fun and edification. (No profit is being made and no copyright infringement is intended).

ooo

Mary is surprised that this outing happened at all, because of what she had said, in the waiting room.

When she recognized that emblem, the ugly skull and snake, her stomach lurched at the sudden vision of it glowing green in the night sky above an ordinary eighteenth-century square in London, the sidewalks gleaming with rain and throwing back that deathly glow along with the neon.

She dreams it, she flashes on it in daylight, these last three days: darkness and rain-slicked pavement and a malevolent leering dead face over the rooftops, death itself with a living serpent for a tongue, the sort of thing someone might invent who was in love with death, or who feared it enough to kill others in order to feel immortal…

All through it ripples high inhuman laughter—

It's nightmare or else waking reality and she is not sure which horrifies her more.

Thirty seconds went missing—complete blackness—and then she was staring into the stricken face of that skinny blond boy, and he was hissing to McConnell, his sharp white teeth showing and his thin lips pulled back in a feral grimace: "Are you satisfied, you utter ghoul?"

Then brisk sensible Granger was stepping in, and handing him the cufflinks.

His hands shook so badly that he dropped them; Mary heard them ring on the floor. Granger stooped and picked them up, and then with the precision and gentleness of a surgeon, she took hold of his left wrist and rolled down the crisp white sleeve—as if the skin beneath were sunburnt and she might cause pain if cloth were to touch it—and fastened the cuff for him, fumbling a little with the cufflinks.

This time he did not flinch at her touch, but stood there with the passivity of a child being dressed by its mother.

She said, "I'll take care of this." There was a little cry; the baby had woken. "Go see to her; it's all right. I'll sort it."

Then Granger said to McConnell, "You know this is going straight to Kingsley."

Mary has heard voices that calm once or twice in her life; on one occasion, that sensible, arctic stillness was the prelude to attempted murder.

McConnell said something about loose cannons and the chain of command, and Granger replied, "I don't have a chain of command. I don't belong to your world, McConnell. They can give me all the medals they like, but I remember who was first in line for torture."

McConnell said, "Your parents are still alive. Both of them."

Granger's eyes narrowed, as if she were a cat testing its balance for a lethal pounce; in a cold, reasonable voice she said, "No thanks to any of your lot, so if I were you, I wouldn't raise the subject."

McConnell said, "His bloody father…" and then faltered, her voice uncharacteristically thick.

Oddly, Granger relaxed a little, and in a much gentler tone (a tone Mary recognized as that of Dr. Rosencrantz) she said, "You know, you can still be put on the list if you like."

By then Mary had come back to herself; she said, "She's right. I don't think you want to play this out by bullying little boys." She added, "It demeans the dignity of your profession." And then, "In any event, you will not bully my patients."

She knows what is in those files: that boy's mother, the Black Widow, is still clinically depressed, apathetic, scarcely able to care for her child; she still has nightmares from the period of her captivity and she's wracked by guilt because her husband is in prison for twenty years and she escaped with probation. Though from the outline in the notes it's the usual story: he had ambitions, dragged her in over both their heads…

… and the son, of course, is a pitiable case, because he never had a chance. An arrogant swaggering schoolyard bully, and then a child soldier, and after that a hostage, and now... the little man, the boy too young to be a head of family, gamely taking on the role of father to his baby sister.

What's odd, of course, which Mary doesn't think about until later, is that McConnell was armed—is armed even now—and could have done who knows what… except that Mary has always been in charge in that waiting room, and that is not going to change now. If someone chooses to strike her dead for it, then she will die in the performance of her duty.

What she should have been thinking then, what she should be thinking now: this woman is a witch. She could kill me as we stand here. We'll never be equals.

Yet, oddly, she doesn't.

McConnell backed down, and frowned, and looked shamefaced at the boy sitting in the uncomfortable plastic chair and rocking his little sister. Finally she said to Granger, "All right, then."

And to Mary she said, "It won't happen again."

ooo

McConnell—is she McConnell or is she Addie?—looks at the pictures of Jackie, and the posters, looks out the window at the glorious sunshine, accepts a glass of wine.

Her expression is wistful, as she says, "I felt sorry for her, you know. But if they hadn't given me that assignment I never would have crossed the border. We don't, you know, most of us. We keep to our own."

She takes a sip of the wine and smiles in approval. Mary's pleased; it's a respectable vintage, not too expensive, of course.

"I felt sorry for her, because after all she was a Squib. And then… I realized she was living in a larger world than I was."

Mary asks the question again, "So how many of you are there?"

This time she evades it in a different way. "Everyone you see in that waiting room is related—well, all but a few." She outlines the family trees, how the Black Widow is related by blood to the Red-Headed League, and to the Rock Star, and to Granger's boyfriend … who's second cousin once removed (if she recalls aright) to the girl that Mary took for the Widow's daughter, but who was actually imprisoned in the Widow's house during the war. Even the Rock Star and his red-headed girlfriend are cousins of some sort.

It's complex enough to give an untrained listener a headache, but Mary has years of practice with this sort of thing, with medical histories and other matters. It's a small, complicated, ingrown world, quite similar, in its way, to the artificial family of a regiment, or for that matter, a medical specialty.

"So who isn't related?"

She frowns. "Well, Finnegan's mother was one of us, and Thomas's father; Granger, I think, is the only one… no, there's Finch-Fletchley, and Goldstein. And that would be it. All the rest of them are ours."

"So you're related to all of them as well?"

Addie nods. Yes, she's definitely Addie. "I'm sure you don't want to hear the details, but yes."

"Even that boy you were bullying."

"We're all related, all the old families. My great-grandmother was a Lestrange."

Mary frowns; the name means nothing.

"I'm related to the man who murdered Jackie."