Part Two, Chapter Twenty
When Martijn arrived back at his and Sander's rented apartment that evening he was quite shocked to find his brother sitting at the kitchen table with an uncharacteristically miserable and defeated expression on his face. Standing in the kitchen doorway as he hung his brown overcoat on the coat rack, Martijn watched his brother carefully. Sander appeared to be engrossed in reading a piece of parchment, a frown etched onto his features, and he didn't even seem to have noticed that Martijn had arrived home. Entering the kitchen, Martijn tried a casual greeting. "Hi."
Sander glanced up briefly. "Hi."
His tone was flat, and Martijn was immediately concerned. This wasn't like the usual Sander at all. Martijn had been looking forward to telling his brother that he'd gotten to meet Gwen today, but he thought that right now it was more important to find out what was wrong. Sitting down opposite his brother, Martijn decided to try the direct approach, "San, what's the matter?"
His brother sighed and tossed the piece of paper he was reading over to Martijn. "We've had an owl from Arien. He wasn't able to convince Dad to stay in Arnhem. The old fool's going to be arriving at Heathrow tomorrow morning."
Skimming over the letter, Martijn began to get a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach, and he rested his elbow on the table and put a hand to his forehead as he let the implications of Sander's words sink in. But he knew there was nothing he could do about it. "Well, it was only a matter of time, I suppose," he said, his tone resigned, "It isn't up to us what he chooses to do."
"Tijn, you know the only way he could use a wand would be to try and poke somebody's eye out. He's going to get himself killed."
Sander was understandably worried, but it made sense to Martijn why their father had done this. "Dad's a muggle, San, not an idiot."
"Well, he's certainly acting like one."
"He wants justice for what happened to Mum and Anneke as badly as we do, and just because he's not a wizard it isn't fair for us to try and stop him doing what he feels he ought to."
"Well, he's not much use if he's dead is he!" Sander snapped. It was so uncharacteristic of him, and Martijn knew his brother must be extremely upset to be acting like this. "That's supposed to be why he's got us. We promised we'd find the dark wizards who did it. Why does he think he has to get involved now?"
"I'm sure he has his reasons."
Sander gave an exasperated sigh. "Uncle Arien hasn't exactly helped," he said, gesturing at the letter, "Says he's given him Grandad's old assault rifle."
Now that did come as a shock to Martijn. For someone who was supposedly opposed to their father getting involved, that wasn't a very discouraging thing to do. "How the fuck is he going to get that through customs?"
"Oh, Arien's only gone and given him a magical trunk to keep it in as well," Sander said, "Not to mention he's charmed that old Colt revolver of his to never run out of ammo."
Realising the scope of Sander's anger towards their uncle, Martijn tried to play the diplomat. "Well, if he realised Dad was going to go ahead and do it anyway, perhaps he thought to try and make him as best prepared for it as possible."
"I get the impression that the limitless Colt rounds was what convinced Dad to get the first plane from Amsterdam in the morning."
Martijn sighed again. "Well, maybe Dad does have a point. Wizards aren't familiar with guns. The Death Eaters won't know how to deal with them, so perhaps he will have an advantage."
Sander raised a sceptical eyebrow, "You ever seen a bullet deflect an Unforgivable Curse?"
Sander had a point, but it wasn't going to make much difference. "Well, we're not going to be able to change his mind. I think the best we can do is to try and deal with things once he's arrived and make sure he doesn't get himself into trouble."
Sander just gave a frustrated grunt and buried his head in his hands, but didn't say anything.
Even though Martijn could understand what his brother was feeling, it was true that they weren't going to be able to change their father's mind. Jeroen Westerbeck was more stubborn than both his sons put together.
Martijn thought the best thing he could do right now was to try and take Sander's mind off things. "Anyway, I know something that will cheer you up," he said, looking at Sander who had his head down on the table. He got a raised head and a mildly curious expression in response.
"I got to meet Gwen Coulthard today."
Sander suddenly sat up. "Really? How come?"
"Well, she almost got eaten by a snake."
Sander's eyes widened and his curious expression became one of horror. "What?"
Maybe I could have phrased that a bit better, Martijn thought. "Oh, don't worry, she's fine. She just ran into one of the wizards that's currently on the wanted list and he tried to set a snake on her, but me and the others got there first. She's perfectly alright."
Sander didn't look convinced, and was already getting up out of his seat. "But is she though?" he said, "I mean, sure, she didn't get eaten, but come on. Wouldn't you be a little shaken if you almost got eaten by a snake?"
"Well…" Martijn began, realising too late that his attempts to stop Sander worrying had actually had the reverse effect.
"How big was it?" Sander said, crossing to the coat rack and taking a navy blue jacket off of one of the pegs.
There was no point lying. He'd already implied it was big enough to eat someone. "Big."
"Well, I'm gonna go see her."
Martijn sighed. Sander always had been the impulsive one: giving up his place on the Arnhem Adelaars Quidditch team to enrol for auror training on a whim, then deciding that actually he wanted to be a businessman instead. And now he'd decided he was going to spontaneously go and see one of his work clients without giving her any prior warning. Martijn didn't think it was the best idea in the world, but like with their father he doubted he'd be able to stop him. "Sander, you don't even know where she lives."
"Well, you enchanted all our stock with anti-theft charms, right?" the younger Dutchman replied as he shrugged on the jacket.
"Yes…" Martijn said, wondering where this was going.
"Well, I can use the locator on it then. I gave her one of our auroscopes, remember."
Martijn gave an exasperated sigh. "So, you're just going to show up at her house at this time in the evening, and when she wants to know how you found where she lives you're going to tell her 'Oh, you know that auroscope I gave you? It's actually a tracking device.' That is ever so slightly stalkerish, Sander.
"I don't think she'll mind, she knows me well enough. In fact she's probably too busy thinking about the snake that tried to eat her to worry about that."
Martijn tried one last attempt to change his mind, even though it was a bit of a long shot. "You know if you activate the anti-theft charm to use the locator you'll deactivate the device. If you really want to make sure she's safe from dark magic then it might be an idea to leave that it working order and not go spontaneously checking up on her."
"Well, it obviously didn't do much to help on this occasion, did it?" Sander retorted, "Besides, I'd rather know she's alright now and I can always reactivate it later."
Realising his brother wouldn't be dissuaded, Martijn sighed. "Yes, I suppose. Alright, if you really must go, but I assure you she's fine."
"I just want to check."
"Yeah, and while you're there…" Martijn was going to finish his sentence but Sander was already out the door. With a shake of his head, Martijn turned back into the kitchen and gave the kettle a poke with his wand. He'd discovered that English tea was actually a great thing to relax with after a hard day's hunting dark wizards, and after today he thought he particularly needed it.
A/N: A bit more of Sander and Martijn for you there. I do love these two :) They're my joint second favourite characters in this after Barty.
'Adelaars' is a Dutch word meaning 'Eagles', which I got from the name of my sister's boyfriend's basketball team and translated it into Dutch. I think it goes quite well with Arnhem as the name of a Quidditch team.