Part Two, Chapter Twenty-Five

When the pair of them finally left after the meeting Gwen couldn't help but feel relieved. Even though there was still a lot she needed to talk about with Sander she really didn't want to discuss it right now. Despite what she'd told him about things being fine between her and Barty, they really weren't. She hadn't actually spoken to him since that evening, and she was seriously worried about how upset he might be with her. Her reaction to the argument probably hadn't been fair on him, and Sander had probably deserved her to get mad at him just as much as Barty had. But after what had happened with Barty she just didn't have the energy to be angry at Sander as well. She was sure he'd only meant well, but his attitude towards Barty was still troubling her. What had he been talking about earlier, saying he thought Barty had done something to the auroscope? At first that hadn't made sense to her, but the more she thought about it the more it worried her. The auroscope had gone off around Barty before, and even though he'd provided a perfectly good explanation for it she was growing less and less convinced. Was it possible he actually had actually done something to stop Sander reactivating the auroscope? If he had, then that meant he hadn't been honest with her, and she was getting incredibly worried about what the real reason was. As much as she wanted to put all of Sander's suspicions down to jealousy, it wasn't that simple. Sander and Barty didn't like each other, that much was obvious, but Sander manufactured dark detectors for a living and if he had concerns then she probably shouldn't write him off. But then again, Barty worked in the Department for Magical Law Enforcement, for Merlin's sake. What was she supposed to think?

Gwen remembered back to the evening of the argument, trying to make more sense of it. Immediately after Barty had stormed out she'd been left feeling completely bewildered and upset, but she'd later found out more from her father. When John had come home to find her crying on the sofa he'd immediately wanted to know what was wrong, and she'd told him part of the story, not wanting to go into all the details of what had happened between Sander and Barty. His initial response had been to tell her that Barty was acting like an idiot and it wasn't worth getting upset over, which had made her feel ever so slightly better, but then he'd told her about the conversation he'd had with Barty's father earlier that day and that had only made her feel even worse.

So Barty had moved away from home. That must be pretty stressful for him, and it kind of explained why he'd been so desperate to leave, but why hadn't he told her? He'd had plenty of opportunity to say something, but he hadn't so much as mentioned it. It was possible that he was only doing it because he didn't want her to worry, but she was his girlfriend; she was supposed to worry about him. Finding out like this had only given her more to stress out about, and this way she didn't even know where to send an owl to if she wanted to contact him. What was he trying to hide? As much as it pained her to think it, she was worried Sander might be at least partly right. Barty was up to something, but she didn't know how bad that something might be. Every time she tried to imagine the worst of him it never seemed to work; it was like her brain couldn't process it. He'd never been anything but perfectly nice to her. Well, maybe a bit abrupt with her on occasion, but that was just the way he was. He wasn't downright bad.

But yet Sander seemed to think there was something off about him, and if there was one thing she was sure of it was that Sander was wholly well intentioned. Damn it, why was it so difficult to know which of them to believe? It would be so much easier if the pair of them could just get on, but the animosity between them just seemed too strong for that. She suspected a large part of it was down to jealousy. Barty seemed to be jealous that Sander got so much of her attention at work, whereas Sander…well, she wasn't entirely sure what the deal was with Sander. Did he like her in that sense? It was hard to tell, what with him being the way he was. He could behave that way with every girl he met, for all she knew. At that thought she was surprised to find herself feeling a little jealous that maybe Sander treated other people the way he treated her. The relationship she had with him did seem special in a way, but it just wasn't the same as what she felt towards Barty.

And what did she feel towards Barty, exactly?

Oh, bugger. She really shouldn't be thinking about this, she needed to concentrate on work. It wasn't easy though, and she realised she was still distracted even when the knock fell on the door twenty minutes later. "Come in," she called out, glad of something else to take her mind off things, but she felt a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach as the door opened and she saw Martijn standing on the other side. She looked at him in puzzlement for a few seconds. "Did we forget something?"

He shook his head apologetically. "No, but I think we probably ought to talk. About Sander. Is it alright if I come in?"

"Oh," Gwen said, not really sure if she liked the sound of this, but she couldn't turn him away. "Um, sure. Take a seat."

Martijn came in and sat back down in the seat he'd occupied earlier. She watched him expectantly and he drew in a deep breath and exhaled slowly before beginning. "Look, I'm sorry if Sander's behaviour seems a bit…excessive. He's not really told me everything that happened, but I get the impression he's been interfering quite a lot. I know you're probably a little pissed off with him, but I promise you it's not malicious."

Gwen just stared at him, a little perplexed as to where all this had come from. The thought that they'd been discussing what had happened with each other made her a little uncomfortable. "I know he means well, but still," she said, feeling slightly uncomfortable as she looked at Martijn, "I do just wish he'd back off a little."

Martijn gave a sigh. "I get that he's probably sticking his nose in a bit more than you'd like, but the thing is he worries a lot. He worries about you."

Gwen looked at him earnestly. "Martijn, I honestly think that's really nice of him, but when it comes to Barty please tell him he doesn't have to worry. I'm fine." She wasn't exactly fine, but the thing was Sander seemed to be a large part of the problem. She needed him to stop interfering.

Martijn was looking at her with a thoughtful expression. "He's not told you, has he?"

Gwen was confused. "Told me what?"

"About what happened to our mum and sister."

She stared at him in silence for a few seconds. Sander hadn't told her that. He'd only ever mentioned their mother in passing and Gwen hadn't even realised they had a sister. She shook her head, intrigued. "No."

Martijn didn't respond straight away, looking as if he was choosing his words carefully. "Well, I think it might be about time you were made aware of it. We used to have a younger sister called Anneke."

Gwen was growing more uncomfortable, noting his use of the past tense, but she said nothing and allowed him to carry on.

"She had this friend, at Wievens – that's like Hogwarts in the Netherlands – called Robert de Koning," Martijn continued, looking a little uncomfortable about what he was about to tell her, "He and Anneke were really close; they'd known each other since they were twelve. Robert's dad, Henryk, worked at the Dutch Ministry as Chief Secretary of the Department of Secrecy. I always found Henryk's policies a bit too right-wing, to be honest, but Robert was a nice enough guy. Or at least that was the way it seemed at first. I liked him, San liked him, Mum and Dad liked him. But the thing is, Robert's dad had his eye set on becoming Secretary of State for Magic, and so did our uncle Arien. San may have told you about him; he got us the license to mine in Valkenburg aan de Geul. He had a pretty high standing in the Ministry himself: Chief Secretary of the International Affairs Office. The year Anneke was due to graduate was the same year the Secretary of State was supposed to retire. Henryk de Koning and Arien were both in the running to take up the position, but then there was, well…some people have said it was a smear campaign, but after what happened I wouldn't be surprised if there was any truth in it. The press reported Henryk de Koning had taken bribes from followers of You-Know-Who to overlook a breach of secrecy pertaining to muggle baiting in Rotterdam. Even Arien thought it was crazy. Henryk may have been conservative, but he wasn't a blood supremacist, or so we thought. Honestly, he and Robert were the last people you would ever have expected to be involved in dark magic. None of us believed it was true, but de Koning made out it was Arien who had orchestrated the smear campaign. The whole thing practically obliterated his chances of ever taking the post of Secretary of State and he tried to stir up a backlash.

"Arien started taking a lot of flak too that damaged his chances of getting the position, so he arranged a press conference to publicly deny all of the allegations against him. But it didn't exactly go smoothly. I'd just completed auror training and Sander was only half way through the course; we were both there to help out with the security but things kicked off. We managed to get everything under control eventually, but when we got back home afterwards it turned out the house had been raided while we were gone. It looked like de Koning had the support of the Death Eaters after all: they'd tried to get back at Arien by killing his sister, and it just so happened that Anneke was at home as well. Dad had been with us, but when we got back we found they'd both been killed.

"De Koning staunchly denied having anything to do with it, claiming that it was You-Know-Who's supporters who had been acting in his name. He tried to say they were militant extremists and he had no affiliation with them whatsoever, but none of us believed him. Or at least we didn't believe him until he ended up dead, the day after publicly disowning the Death Eater cause. And in the meantime his son had disappeared. Some people thought the Death Eaters must have organised the whole thing and killed the Department Secretary and his son, but that never made sense. Most people didn't get to see what had happened to Mum and Anneke. Whoever had come to the house that night and killed them had been let in willingly. They knew whoever it was, they trusted him, and it didn't look like they'd put up a fight until they realised what was happening at the very last minute. And there was never any reason for the Death Eaters to go after Henryk's son. Politically, they would have had more to gain by letting him live. It had to have been Robert who did it.

"None of us saw it coming. We couldn't possibly have known the truth about him; looking back I can't think of anything that might have led us to work it out. But San still thinks we should have done. He's still convinced that if we'd been able to work it out sooner we could have stopped it, but there's no way we could have known. And that's what I think this is with you, Gwen. He's terrified of anything like that happening again, and with you it may be that he's just latching onto anything he sees as a threat and making it into something worse than it is. I know you could probably do without him sticking his nose in so much, but he's only doing this because he cares about you, Gwen."

Once Martijn had finished Gwen simply sat staring at him for a few moments. She'd been completely captivated by the whole explanation, listening in silently to the whole story. She'd had no idea. Sander had never so much as mentioned any of that, and she felt a sudden rush of protectiveness towards him. Everything suddenly made sense, and she felt rather bad about the way she'd treated him. Why hadn't he told her? The same reason Barty didn't tell me he'd moved out, she thought. "I had no idea," she said, staring at Martijn in shock. "He never told me that."

"Well, he doesn't really like talking about it much," Martijn responded, still looking rather sombre as if he didn't much like discussing it himself, "But I thought that since it seems to be affecting you, perhaps you ought to know. I'm not entirely sure why he's so suspicious of Barty, he's probably drawing parallels where there are none, but try not to get too angry with him over it. I'll tell him to tone it down a bit, but the thing is he cares about you a lot, Gwen."

Gwen looked at him. "I know," she said quietly. Oh, Sander. Why didn't you just tell me? She was touched by his concern for her, but finding all this out now only complicated things even further. There was more she wanted to ask about Sander being in auror training and what happened to Arien, but Martijn had stood up and seemed to be ready to leave again.

"Well, now you know what happened," he said with a brief nod of his head, "I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to go again. I told San I was going back to work. They won't miss me too much if I'm not gone very long, but we've just found Pettigrew's finger and there's going to be a lot of paperwork to fill in regarding what happened to the rest of him."

Gwen grimaced. She wasn't entirely sure who Pettigrew was, but that sounded nasty. "A finger?"

He noticed the squeamish look on her face and gave an uneasy smile. "Try not to think about it," he said, "And, um, don't tell Sander I told you. Not yet, at any rate. I don't mean keep it secret, but just wait for me to have a word with him, if that's alright."

She nodded, still slightly in shock at his revelation. "Of course."

"Alright, well I'll see you later, Gwen," he said, offering her a brief handshake before leaving the office.

"Um, see you, Martijn," she said as she watched the door close behind him. So that was why Sander was acting the way he was. Overprotectiveness.

Or was it though?

Even though what Martijn had just told her explained Sander's behaviour in many ways, she still couldn't quite shake the sense of unease she felt. Barty had set the auroscope off more than once. He'd given her an explanation for it, but was it any more valid than Henryk de Koning denying his involvement with the Death Eaters? But had de Koning actually been involved with the Death Eaters? she wondered. He may have ended up dead, but was that because he'd always been an enemy or was he just no longer useful to them?

Wait, no. She shouldn't be thinking about this in the context of Barty. She didn't care what Martijn told her about Robert de Koning, Barty wasn't like that. He'd always been lovely to her (or lovely in his own strange little way) and she thought she knew him well enough to know he wouldn't do something like that. He wouldn't kill somebody.

Is that what Anneke thought about Robert?

Dammit, she didn't want to be thinking like this. It wasn't fair. Barty may have his moments of being a complete git but he wasn't like that. If she was seriously considering these things about him then she wasn't exactly much of a girlfriend. She was supposed to trust him.

But despite telling herself that the doubts continued to plague her. She managed to keep herself distracted for most of the rest of the day, but the moment she finished her shift and headed down to the floo grates in the foyer everything she'd found out flooded into her head again. She had no idea what to think, and was desperately trying to make sense of it.

She was so wrapped up in her own thoughts she didn't even notice the footsteps that were following her across the marble floor, and was taken completely by surprise when somebody grabbed her from behind.