Thursday, 16 June 1994
"I have the impression that Mrs Beresford doesn't want me to talk to Jon in private anymore," Gwen whispered to Isabelle. It was half past twelve and the Cenaculum was jammed. They cut their way through the crowd, looking for two empty seats.
"What's the matter today?" Isabelle wondered, looking around and balancing her tray, laden with Greek salad and a grilled chicken drumstick. "Seems everyone decided to lunch at the same time today. Alors, and what gives you this impression?"
"Look there!" Gwen pointed to two empty seats directly in front of the windows which today showed the impressing panorama of the Austrian Alps.
"Merveilleux, this is the Grossglockner, I've been there with my ex-husband and children when we.. Well, I know it," Isabelle interrupted herself reminiscing, while pointing at the snow-covered mountains.
The slender, white-haired Alex Campbell from the Death Chamber got up, lifting his tray with a hovering spell: "If you want to look at the mountains, I'd be glad to offer you my seat. I'm finished with my lunch." He was followed by his colleague Mercia Borthwick, who nodded friendly to the newcomers.
Gwen smiled and put her tray on the brilliant white table. Today she had opted for a tuna fish salad and some French baguette Isabelle had recommended.
"You were saying…?" Isabelle tried to take up the thread of conversation.
"I haven't seen him alone ever since we met in Hogsmeade."
"Do you miss him?" Isabelle gave an innocent smile.
Gwen ignored her question. "She's always with him. Keeping him busy all the time." She pouted. "I suppose she distrusts me. She interrogated me, and pointed out that I am always right in the middle of things. But that's not my fault…"
"Speak of the troll," Isabelle whispered suddenly, clearing her throat.
Gwen looked around. Mrs Beresford and Jon, both carrying a tray with food, were looking for a place to sit down. When Jon caught her eye, she waved at him. The Aurors sat down at a table nearby.
"You could slip him a piece of parchment," Isabelle suggested, still looking pointedly innocent, when Gwen turned back to continue her meal.
"I've got no parchment with me," she grumbled. Behaving like Hogwarts students. She shook her head.
Isabelle rummaged in her handbag and handed her some parchment and a quill, looking expectantly. Gwen rolled her eyes, scribbled something on it, refusing to let Isabelle see what she had written, and rolled it up into a small roll. Isabelle giggled.
When they left the Cenaculum, they passed the table where the two Aurors were sitting. Gwen said hello to both, asking some polite and – as she thought – rather stupid questions, while Isabelle used her wand, hidden in her sleeve, to inconspicuously get the paper into Jon's bag. Mrs Beresford didn't notice the little manoeuvre, Jonathan smiled.
When they were outside in the Circular room they clapped each other's hand, now both of them in high spirits.
"Thank you, Isabelle," Gwen finally gasped, "I'm glad something worked today."
"What do you mean?"
"You remember the book I found in the library the other day?"
Isabelle frowned. "Rekindling Memories of the Dead?"
"The very one." Gwen looked gloomy again. "It contains some interesting spells, but they are really complicated. Even Crow had to admit that one needs time to accomplish them."
~ooOOooOOooOOooOOoo~
The sight was breath-taking. Gwen was sitting cross-legged on her favourite rock on a large brown sheep skin, smoking a cigarette and looking at the sea waves. The sun was in the West and dyed the ocean gold, scarlet, crimson, and purple. She inhaled deeply. The salty air was wonderful. A cool breeze was blowing, but the last sunrays were warm on her face and arms.
She didn't turn around when she heard the sudden popping sound of Apparition. Jon had obviously found and read the message she had written in the Cenaculum.
"How are you?" she asked. She took a last drag from her cigarette and extinguished it.
"Bit tired," he said, sitting down at her side, "but this is wonderful." He pointed at the sea. "And how're you?"
"Bit hopeless," she said, thinking of her vain attempts to elicit more memories from Archie's brain. "I'm not making any progress with the brain, you know. I've found some new interesting spells, which I hope I can use instead of our own wonderful new extracting method, but they are somewhat old-fashioned and … er… very complex."
"You wanted to talk to me in private?" Jon's eyes glittered.
"Well, I've got the impression that Mrs Beresford is trying to prevent exactly that. Don't you think so?"
Jon laughed: "Yes, it's true, she's really suspicious, but the entire Auror force is nervous and edgy at the moment, and Black's renewed escape was a staggering blow." He fidgeted a little. "It seems he used a hippogriff, because there is one missing at Hogwarts?"
The last was meant as a question and he looked into Gwen's eyes. She blinked uneasily.
"Oh, that's interesting," she said in a rather high-pitched voice.
"You and your colleague, too, arrived on a hippogriff."
"Well, but that was Roberta's hippogriff, Amber Dancer…"
"I know," Jon grinned, "but why on earth did your colleague want to go to Hogwarts?"
"She wanted to bring her niece a book, and she wanted to attend the appeal to save a hippogriff." I must tell him that, he surely knows about the appeal, and that Roberta wanted to be there.
"See? She knew about the hippogriff."
"Ye-es, but they didn't let her take part. She told me she had a conversation with Professor Sprout and …" Now Gwen went into a tailspin. What had Roberta told Mrs Beresford when she had interrogated her? She didn't know.
Jon leant forward: "And what?"
His face was very close. His brown eyes were indeed nice. She blinked again. His eyes got softer. She waited.
"You don't really know, do you?" he said softly. "You only know what she told you; you were with me during the whole afternoon. She said she had gone to the Forbidden Forest looking for bowtruckles and other forest beings."
"But that's true," Gwen defended Roberta. Jon withdrew and Gwen felt a bit dizzy.
What was that? she thought. She took a deep breath and pointed to the wicker basket she had brought. "Do you want a butterbeer?"
When he nodded she extraced two bottles, on which she had placed a Cooling charm, and opened them. He took a deep gulp.
"Ahhh, that's good." He wiped some butterbeer from his lips.
"I've also brought some sandwiches."
"Oh, a picnic." He beamed and sat a bit closer to her. She noticed that she didn't mind it.
"Chicken or ham?"
They both started with chicken. Wookey had outdone herself again.
"And what news have you got?" Gwen asked boldly, knowing perfectly well that she hadn't told him any news at all. "You interrogated Macnair. What did he tell you?"
Jon was munching on his sandwich. "Hem, excellent! Macnair – I think we're on the right track there! I'm not sure whether he helped Black to escape, but he has definitely no alibi for the morning of Dusk's murder."
"But," Gwen interrupted, "how could he have entered the Department?" She took a sip of butterbeer.
"He must have had help. We tried to winkle more information out of him. We asked him about Manisha Cullen, but he says he just knows her by sight. And that she was a tasty girl." Jon's lips curled. "Sorry, but those were his words. However he admitted to having known Dusk, when we confronted him with the conversation we had seen in the memory you extracted. He claimed that he had lent him gold. A lot of galleons."
"And?"
"Nothing more. He says he got his money back."
"Do you believe him?"
"We continue observing him."
"Eleanor doesn't even know him."
"We know. How come you know?"
"I asked her. After all, you wanted me to get you some inside information."
Jonathan smiled: "I see what you're getting at. It's strange that she doesn't know Macnair, or about her husband borrowing a lot of money from him. We've asked her again. They seem to have done almost everything together. I think Macnair is not telling us the whole truth, or he would have told us earlier that he knew Dusk."
Gwen shivered. The breeze had become somewhat colder. The sun was nearly gone, tinging the sky and the sea deep red.
Jonathan sat a bit closer still and put his arm around her shoulder.
Her head started to spin, her heart gave a funny little drum roll, and she didn't dare to move. At the same time she enjoyed his warmth, his closeness and the beautiful panorama.
"On the other hand Macnair told us," Jon continued as if nothing out of the extraordinary had happened, while a slight trembling in his voice gave him away, "that Dusk was a pure-blood, and that's why he wouldn't even touch him."
Gwen turned her head slightly and looked directly into his brown eyes. Then they talked no more.
~ooOOooOOooOOooOOoo~