Hello hello hello. I left you all with a bit of a cliffhanger, didn't I? Oh, the things I do for reviews...Just kidding. I like the intensity of a cliffie. When I'm writing it.

Alicia had been expecting a small woman, cowering in a corner, filthy and possibly hissing and spitting. Instead she found a small woman who was relatively clean, sitting on her cot, knitting the muggle way.

"Mrs. Nochiviscoff?" Alicia started, stepping deeper into the dank cell.

"Please, call me Kelene." the woman responded, her voice was surprisingly pleasant as she looked up from her scarf and gave a warm smile. She was already more inviting than Mrs. Bell.

"Do you mind if I come in? I have a few questions about your daughter."

"Katerina? Oh, do come in."

Alicia took a step forward, into the cell and soon realized she didn't have room to move anymore. Kelene indicated that she wanted her to sit on the cot too, so Alicia did, mainly because the walls and floor were so filthy she was afraid to touch either one much longer.

"I haven't seen Katerina in about ten years now, how is she?"

"She's--she's good." Alicia decided against not lying to the woman. Even though she was well aware of all the things that Kelene had done, and even though she could see the Dark Mark under the tattered sleeves of her rags, Alicia felt sorry for the woman.

"How's the baby?"

It took Alicia's mind a moment to catch up to that question, trying to remember who 'the baby' was exactly.

"Oh, she's wonderful. Won't be long before she's going to Hogwarts herself." Alicia acted as if she knew all of this for sure, despite the fact that she didn't even know if Kamryn had any magical abilities whatsoever.

"I hope she's in Slytherin! Just like the Dark Lord! Wouldn't that be lovely?" Kelene cooed, like any doting grandmother would, and inwardly, Alicia winced.

"Yes, lovely." Alicia couldn't look her in the eye. At all.

"So, tell me about Katie when she was little." Alicia instructed, trying to change the subject.

"Well, as you probably know, I didn't have Katerina for long. Then filthy mudblood lovers took her away. They put her in foster care! My baby! Where muggles trash lived! Isn't that just tragic?" Alicia had obviously struck a nerve. She sat nervously on the edge of the cot, becoming increasingly aware of how unstable this woman was.

"Yes, tragic." Alicia muttered in a dazed voice.

"I tried to teach her everything right immediately, she almost had the killing curse down, but then the mudblood lovers came and took her away. She could have been able to stop them if they had just come a few weeks later! Everything would be better. She's powerful, my girl. The Dark Lord would have no problem winning if she were allowed to go to him like she really wants."

This woman didn't know anything about anything. She obviously didn't know or just didn't accept that the Dark Lord was long gone. She also didn't seem to know that Katie had no hatred towards anyone. At least, she wasn't when she was at Hogwarts.

Another pause came as Alicia tried to figure out a way to escape this dingy place while not offending the woman, who she did not want angry.

"So, any news on Kosey? Which cell is he in?" Kelene casually asked, still knitting away.

Kosey? Who's--oooooh...No one must have told her that Kosey died...Alicia's mind figured out.

"He's good, he's in a cell six rows down." Six feet under, six rows down. It was all the same in the tiny box of a world.

"Katie, er, Katerina, brought her baby here?" Alicia didn't want to lie anymore than she had to. Plus, the idea of Katie telling anyone about the mystery baby caught her interest.

"Yes! It was such a nice day. That baby was so small, only about a week old...She cried a lot." Kelene started out enthusiastic, but her voice gradually became more thought filled.

"Katerina or the baby?"
"The baby...and then Katerina started crying after I told her a story."
"What story?"
"The story of my mother, and her mother."
"What's so sad about that?"

Kelene paused for a moment, putting her knitting down for the first time. She turned to Alicia, and after a deep breath, opened her mouth and began to speak.

"My mother had seven children. I was the third, and the oldest girl. So, when mother slowly drank herself to death, Daddy made sure that I ran the house properly. That's why I was such a good mother. And my grandmother, my mother's mother, just flat out left my mother when she was a little girl." Kelene's voice didn't sound like a woman confessing the wretched fates that haunted her family, but as if she were just talking about what she had just bought at the grocery store.

"Oh..." was the only sound Alicia could manage. What exactly could she say? "Yes, that's the story without the details. I don't have all day like I did when Katerina came to visit." What the woman could have had planned was beyond Alicia, but she went along with it.

Kelene went back to her knitting, quite content and humming a tune that she seemed to be making up as she went. Alicia sat on the edge of the cot, as still as she could be, trying to muster the strength to make a run for the cell door. Luckily, or unluckily, a guard walked by the door, whistling a tune that if Alicia had known better, she would have recognized as a theme song from a very popular muggle television show.

Before the tune even ended, Kelene was off the cot, her knitting on the floor with her face pressed up to the door as she screamed: "FILTHY MUDBLOOD! GET OUT! GET OUT!" among other things that Alicia would never be able to bring herself ot utter.

Once the older woman finished her screams, Gus calmly swung open the door to release Alicia.

"G'bye, dear!" Kelene called as she left.

"'Bye." Alicia muttered back.

"Did yah 'ave a s'essful visit?" Gus asked as he lead her to the exit, feeling just as calm and happy as when he dropped her off.

"I guess I did," Alicia answered thoughtfully while keeping her eyes firmly plantedon her feet as she walked. "but I'm not exactly sure what I was looking for when I came here anymore."

"Well, tha's how yah fine what yer really lookin' fer. Me mum taught me that." Gus wisely replied, politely giving a small, comical bow as he dropped Alicia off at the door that was to bring her back to the same office that she had gone through back at the Ministry to get there to begin with.

"Thank you." Alicia took her eyes off her shoes and looked Gus in the eye as she said that. He grinned as she disappeared through the door back to a safe place where the insanity wasn't quite as noticable.