DISCLAIMER: Neither the TV show 'NCIS' nor the 'Harry Potter' book series belong to me.

Gibbs' attention digressed now that it wasn't focused on his interrogation - and he noticed that, somehow, during the whole talk, everyone had somehow been pushed around the room, close to the walls, like casual observers in an interesting event. Jenny was sitting at her desk, but other than that, it was as if Gibbs and the newcomers had been providing the entertainment in the middle of the room. His hands were still poised on the chair DiNozzo had been sat on, and there was an empty one next to him where Ginny had been. He straightened, and his back protested because of the end of the continuing, uncomfortable position.

Now that the four self-proclaimed wizards had left, no one was sure what to say. The room had been dipped into silence and no one seemed about to end it.

Finally, once he'd been able to snap out of his shock-induced stupor, McGee reached the conclusion that there would be nothing to do left. He took the lead, opening the door and slipping out with Abby on his heels. Everyone else followed without hesitation, but Gibbs stayed behind. Jenny looked anything but surprised by that.

One look and they'd reached the decision not to address their elephant in the room. Instead, she decided to discuss someone else's undealt with problem.

"Do you think sending her home with DiNozzo in her emotional state was the best idea, Gibbs?" He'd be idiotic to ask who she was referring to.

He went for the diplomatic answer. "Ziva won't do anything she doesn't want to."

"Exactly."

Gibbs' lips twitched. "They're responsible adults. I'm done playing babysitter."

Jenny raised an eyebrow. "I thought you had a rule against that. Number twelve, I believe?" Jenny's voice was too casual for her not to have put a lot more thought into that particular thought than she was letting on.

Gibbs glanced at her briefly, suddenly not keen on keeping his eyes on his director for longer than strictly necessary.

"Like I said – I'm done playing babysitter. It's becoming too much of a thankless task to try to keep them separate."

Jenny was amused. "It's been a task, has it?" She asked, eyes shining.

He shrugged. "It didn't use to take much – a comment here and there, and they'd come up with a bunch of excuses to keep five feet between them. Lately it's been a lot harder. I'm pretty sure they've been making excuses for the opposite."

Jenny laughed – she couldn't help it. Gibbs' tone was one of a parent talking fondly about his children. Even if he didn't realize it – and even if it was only with her that he allowed his expression and voice to show any kind of honest emotion. "Well, I'm sure they're just at that age." She grinned, unable to resist the comment and leaning back in her chair. She relaxed to a more informal position now that it was only Gibbs in the room.

He rolled his eyes, pulling a chair and sitting down on it backwards. "DiNozzo is at a slightly different age than David, Jen. They can't be both at 'that age'." He humored her, playing along with her joke for the time being.

"We were at a slightly different age from each other, Jethro." And suddenly the mood was serious again, the silence oppressive. Memories – thankfully, not the erased kind ones – flooded both their minds, until the feelings they triggered were impossible to handle.

"Still are." He said lightly, redirecting their thoughts toward safer waters.

It was a subtle warning that she chose to ignore. "Never stopped anyone."

Her lips twitched, correctly interpreting his answering silence.

His eyes narrowed slightly. "It's also not the only thing that can stop people."

Jenny shrugged, giving up with a nostalgic smile. "No, it isn't." She agreed.

And Gibbs had so hopefully thought they'd successfully and safely avoided this conversation topic in favor of Tony and Ziva's issues.

Meanwhile, a distraught Ducky was relaying everything he'd heard in the director's office back to a dumbfounded Jimmy, who was feeling even more lost than usual as he drank in every word the older man said. "Goodness forbid they even ask permission, no – they decide what's best for you." His angry, mocking tone became worried at the next sentence. "And Ziva – I wish I had taken another, proper, look at her. I don't know what that young, inexperienced girl could have possibly done. She looked terrible, the poor dear!" He fussed, angrily remembering the immensely dark bags underneath Ziva's red eyes.

Palmer, leaning over an autopsy table, had been listening intently and watching as his mentor, distressed, paced around the room for fifteen minutes now. It was late, and the young intern had very much wanted the doctor to hurry with his visit upstairs so that he could leave. But that feeling had faded as soon as the unusually venting figure of Ducky had entered Autopsy again.

Now he eagerly wanted to hear what the older man had to say, but all he'd been able to gather was that someone had, somehow, tampered with all of their memories and that Ziva had been hurt, which had completely stumped him. The doctor, who was speaking non-stop and inconsistently, was not providing any explanation that might ease his confusion. "Even Abby couldn't find anything to say to the director's speech!" He continued, eyes flashing with an anger Palmer had hardly ever seen Ducky express.

That comment, Jimmy could understand. He smiled at the irony, but before he could open his mouth to make an inappropriate comment on how Ducky had taken over Abby's ranting abilities, he'd started again. "Honestly, Jenny knew what had happened, and she neither said nor did anything-" He stopped in his tracks, as if something had suddenly come to his mind. "Well, now that I think about it, she was rather depressed-looking a few months ago…" Ducky frowned, pausing in the center of the room thoughtfully. Then he shook his head. "Regardless!" He exclaimed. "We are her friends, aren't we? She should have explained what'd happened!" And he was off again.

"But- Doctor-" Jimmy attempted to interrupt, so that he could get some semblance of an explanation, but Ducky just waved him off.

"No, Mr. Palmer, I can assure you she did not say a thing." He told him in earnest conviction. Jimmy closed his mouth again in defeat. "Yes, she kept a very large secret very well." And then his whole demeanor changed, his shoulders slumped, and he sighed. "But I suppose I can't really blame her – I'm just trying to find someone to be angry with. For instance, that Weasley young woman, trying to pass for a physicist," He scowled, eyes flaring up again. "I didn't even get a chance to examine Ziva before she left with Anthony – and she showed every sign of a concussion! But by the time they took off I was too stunned to do a thing."

Eventually, Jimmy managed to understand – partially – what had gone down. And, though he couldn't say that he particularly happy that he had missed a part of his life – far from it – his eyes gained a permanent glazed over aspect, his mind whirling with the possibility of the existence of magic. He kept making clumsy comments, but Ducky was so distracted that he didn't seem to notice.

Right when Ducky had begun to direct his anger to the 'black-haired, overly calm young lad', Abby stormed into Autopsy. McGee followed, looking harassed, as if he'd been trying to contain the forensic scientist and had had no particular luck with it. "No, Tim!" She instructed, and McGee grimaced at her tone. "It will not be fine."

She glared at Ducky and Palmer, as if daring them to contradict her. Ducky had even stopped talking at her imposing stance. "Abby-" McGee tried – his tone indicated that this was not the first time he'd tried to interrupt her, and that he didn't expect it to be the last.

"No!" She demanded. "Do not try to explain, defend, or protect the Director. It is not fine. It is not okay, or alright. She lied, Timmy!" She said – her voice was hurt and there were unshed tears in her eyes. "I want my memories back, and it is not okay that someone took them away from me, and that Director Shepard didn't say a thing."

McGee winced, as if physically hurt by her tone. "Abby, I'm not saying that it's okay, I'm saying that-" He never got to finish that sentence as Abby slammed to fists into his chest and his breath left him in a huff. Then she opened her arms with her eyes even more teary than before, and McGee obliged by dutifully pulling her against him with an embarrassed grimace to the other two men in the room.

"Abigail," Ducky began softly with an understanding tone, his own anger at Jenny vanishing the minute Abby was in need of reassurance. "I'm sure that the Director wanted nothing more than to tell us – but you did hear Mr. Potter, didn't you?" Abby sniffed in response, pulling out of McGee to turn to the older man. "Apparently," Ducky kept his voice carefully neutral and controlled, not wanting to upset Abby even worse. "it is against the law for them to tell us. If she had, Jenny might as well been betraying national, high-clearance secrets to any passerby, and I don't think that would have been taken very lightly."

She threw her arms in the air, anger replacing the tears in her eyes for a moment. The metal in her boots slammed into the ground with a loud noise as she punished the floor for her helplessness. "But we're not any passerby, Ducky!" Abby cried in frustration. "We're family. And keeping secrets from each other has never ended well in the past!"

"That's true." Jimmy acknowledged. For once, no one glared at his comment.

"See? Even Jimmy agrees!" She snarled. Ah, there were the glares – he guessed they just needed a scape goat, and Abby didn't provide a very good one. "I don't care how many laws she would break, she had no right!" Her eyes were wide and irrational – she was finally cracking under the weight of Ziva's break-down, her missing memories and a magical world she had apparently never heard about, even though it'd always been right under her nose. "Ziva was hurt! And Hermione" Trust Abby to address someone she'd met by sight once on first name terms. "said that it'd happen again. She said our memories would be modified again." She crossed her tensed arms, looking ready to burst into tears again at any moment. "I won't let that happen." Her eyes hardened and her tone became defiant. "I made a video, talking all about this, and I hid it really well in my computer. No one but me will be able to find it, but I'll come across it first thing in the morning."

McGee hesitated, obviously struggling to say something. "Abby- I'm not sure- I'm not sure it's that easy." He took her hand for support when she turned to him with helpless eyes. "If people could just secretly make a video before her memories were erased, this would be public knowledge already, don't you think? And besides," He hated the desperate look he was putting on her face, but he was on a roll now, and he didn't want her to have false hopes about her plan. "I'm pretty sure you would have had that idea the first time this happened."

"What if I didn't have time? They said that the time they stayed here was an exception, that under normal circumstances they would have been gone hours ago." She was grasping at straws, and even she knew it. She broke into sobs and fell onto McGee's chest again when he gave her a melancholic silence as an answer.

On his end, McGee's own anger was flaring rapidly, even if he was better at hiding and controlling it than Abby was. She was seriously hurt by Director Shepard's behavior – and that didn't sit well with him. He'd guess that the moment Gibbs saw her, any truce he had with Jenny would have to be renewed from scratch, and that tempted him to go pay him a visit, Abby in tow.

But he didn't really hate Jenny that much, and Abby was a little irrational from seeing Ziva literally almost lose her mind.

Instead, he rubbed comforting circles on her back and attempted to focus on her breathing instead of his thoughts. He glanced down at her black hair, and suddenly understood why Gibbs kept giving her friendly kisses. If he took the 'friendly' out of the equation, he had the same urge. He tightened his arms as she shuddered. Abby was in no shape to speak for a while, he knew, and she'd only be irritated to be moved, so he began a conversation with Ducky to keep his mind on less dangerous sails.

"Do you know if Gibbs left the Director's office already?" He asked the older man, who was frowning in concern at Abby. Ducky shook his head.

"I came straight down here after that rather… stimulating" McGee had a feeling that wasn't the word he wanted to use. "conversation, and it seemed to me as though Jethro stayed behind."

"Yeah, me too. That's why I was asking. I wanted to take Abby home." He glanced down briefly to gauge her reaction, but if she had one, it was hidden by his shirt. "I don't think she's in a very good shape right now, and I want her to get some sleep." This time she showed her displeasure by stepping on his foot with her heavy boot. He winced, but didn't back down. "It's true, Abs." She muttered something unintelligible in response.

Ducky sighed. "Yes, I suppose we'd all better get some sleep." Then he scowled again as he made for his coat. Jimmy hastened to mimic him, reaching for his jacket himself. "I do think, however, I will keep my weapon out for any friendly fellows wanting to play with my recollections." And he stormed out of the room, three people hurrying behind as he closed the lights and activated the usual security procedures.

They rode the elevator to the bullpen's floor, and Abby, despite having brought her overcoat with her from the lab, was still shivering against his side. Ducky and Jimmy bid their goodbyes as they made for the exit, and McGee hovered uncertainly next to the bullpen. His eyes hesitated on the Director's door, and Abby wasn't helping him making any decisions, huddled in silence next to him.

"Go home, McGee." Gibbs' head suddenly outside Jenny's office might have been his imagination, since it was gone the same second it had appeared.

Well, hallucination or not, he now had a direct order, and he was only too happy to follow it. Urging Abby toward the elevator again, he led her to his car, figuring he'd pick her up in the morning. She didn't offer any resistance as she sat down on the passenger seat and strapped in her seatbelt. With a sigh against her silence, he made his way to the other side of the car.

The ride was short – Abby didn't live very far from the Navy Yard, and it was so late he didn't even want to look at the clock. She stared out the window the whole time, an unblinking stare on her face. She could have been analyzing the stars or staring at the inside of her skull, since her eyes were completely blank and devoid of emotion. He didn't like that – the Abby he knew was expressive and overbearing at times. She'd really been terrified by what had happened that day.

He stole glances occasionally, but mostly his eyes were on the road. He'd killed the radio the moment they'd entered the car, since neither of them had been in the mood for any music of any sort. There were hardly any cars on the road, so, besides the silence, all they heard were the tires sliding through the asphalt. McGee liked driving at night; he didn't know why, but he found the empty roads and the free reign soothing him along with the quiet. He appreciated it best when he wasn't driving and was allowed to let his mind wander more, though the hands on the wheel had become second nature - he was carelessly lazy, and not necessarily focused.

He parked in an empty spot right in front of her building's front door, and then turned the engine off. Before he had a chance to leave, however, she stirred. She'd been motionlessly leaning against the mirror, her head on her arm. "Timmy?" She mumbled, shivering for good measure. "Will you stay at my place tonight?"

His first instinct was to say no – spending a night at Abby's, no matter what angle he analyzed it from, sounded bad. And then she looked at him. And his answer changed so fast and so much he was confused for a second. "Of course." He stammered, shaking his head to get rid of the fogginess. "C'mon." He prodded, getting out of the car and pulling her along when she did as well. He locked the doors.

"McGee?" Abby murmured once they reached her door. She was wiggling with the hem of her jacket, her teeth sinking on her teeth. "Why do you think Gibbs sent us all home instead of keeping us in the office? I mean," She hastened to continue, trying to convey her confusion in the best way possible. "wouldn't we be safer there? I'd think Gibbs would want to keep us all under his watch, and I'm pretty sure it wouldn't have been too hard to find somewhere Ziva could rest comfortably." She glanced at him for reassurance that the detail her mind was stuck in didn't make her crazy.

He paused, holding the door open for her to enter as he considered that. "I guess…" He mumbled. The scent of her perfume reached him through the rush of air she picked up as she passed him. He cleared his throat in concentration, closing the door behind him as he followed her. "I suppose Gibbs is either giving them a sense of normalcy, or- or, you know, he's thinking that it's probably pointless to resist." He refrained from commenting that normalcy didn't usually involve Gibbs' team going home in pairs.

"So… It's Gibbs' way of giving up?"

McGee sharply turned his head to her in alarm. He didn't have an answer to that.

Gibbs was annoyed. Somehow, in the middle of their innocent conversation, besides being the last ones at HQ at an ungodly hour of the morning, they'd gone from reading between each other's lines to arguing about how just it was that Jenny had kept things from them all.

He hadn't moved much, except to make sure that Abby didn't spend the night alone. He was still sitting in the same chair, and Jenny was still glaring at him from the other side of the desk. He wasn't really sure why he was still there – maybe it was the same reason that had made him switch the subject from their not-so-subtle hints to the first argument that had come to mind.

"I'm starting to think you have some kind of hearing condition. Did you not listen to them say 'it's against the law'?" Jenny snapped. Her defiance, though, however big, still wasn't enough to make her look up at the grey-haired man. Instead she observed her hands – which she had come to know very well over the course of the time Gibbs had been in her office.

"I did, actually, Jen. I also heard them talking about how you know all about it." Gibbs retorted, raising that point for about the hundredth time.

"Yes, Jethro, I do." She replied with a pinched expression, tight with suppressed exasperation. "And, again, I've told you – I'm the Director of a federal agency – I am read in on a number of matters which you are not." She repeated – she was rather sure that Gibbs was only pounding on the same button over and over again so that they stayed in her office, possibly for the rest of the night. And while the lack of sleep didn't really bother her, she knew that he was doing that so that he felt that she was 'protected', which did bother her. She could take care of herself and he knew it.

Honestly, the man didn't really have to do much for her to spend the night with him, and, of all the ways he could do that, he chose to argue?

Maybe she ought to leave that train of thought in the far back of her mind.

"You still should have told us." He commented, easily switching from annoyed to provocative. He could do things like that, and it pissed her off to no end. And he knew it too. "'Course, since you knew our memories were gonna be erased, maybe you did things you might not want us to remember."

For a second, her heartbeat faltered and the color drained from her face. Had he remembered? Or maybe Ziva had and told him without her noticing? To entertain herself while having these thoughts, a sheet of paper lost its life by being shredded in her hands. She desperately tried to keep a composed expression.

And then it hit her how ridiculous she was being. Both Ziva and Gibbs had been in her sight the whole time since she'd remembered, and neither possibility was reasonable.

Unless… Unless Gibbs had remembered before and told no one. As soon as the though occurred, she dismissed it. No, he'd been sufficiently shocked at her revelations. That wasn't possible either. And the smirk on his face reassured her that he was bluffing. He didn't know a thing.

She should have been relieved. Him remembering what she'd done to shock him into staying still for the Obliviators to do their jobs would be bad, confusing and all kinds of awkward for the both of them. Though, honestly, it wasn't as if she'd committed a capital crime. She'd just pecked him on the lips for him to shut up and stop reaching for his gun.

It'd all been in the name of the Wizarding Law. No personal interests involved.

She wasn't feeling anything anywhere near relief, and denial wasn't just a river in Egypt. At least she could acknowledge that.

"To your surprise, Jethro," She began, her throat dry, though her voice miraculously not breaking. "not everyone keeps secrets."

That would have been a great answer. He would have bought it too. The only problem was that she was silent one second too long before giving it.

His eyebrows slowly rose into his hairline. "Something you're refraining from telling me, Director?" Deliberately formal.

She gave him a brief glare that probably only confirmed his suspicions. "No, Gibbs." Deliberately informal. She sunk into the chair like a child with a tantrum.

Thankfully, he seemed to realize he wasn't getting a word from her, and he dropped it.

Before he could get another word in, however, she cut him off. "What are you still doing here, Jethro? I get that you run on coffee, but you need at least a couple of hours of sleep a day to be able to survive, don't you?" She asked, half actually curious, half wondering if he'd admit that he was there just so that she wouldn't be alone at home.

"Well," He started again. She couldn't contain the groan as she recognized the tone of voice. "I was just wondering why you spent months without telling us about this magic and our erased memories."

She made the chair fall back like a bed, and stared at the ceiling with pleading eyes, suddenly feeling as though sleep wouldn't be bothersome at all. She wasn't very sure who she was pleading to.