May 13th, 1998
Dawn broke pale and weak on Westminster Bridge. Only a trickle of tourists were walking west towards Big Ben, still outnumbered by the civil servants coming from Waterloo and Lambeth North. Sally-Anne braced herself against the wind gusting down the Thames.
She was almost halfway across the river before she saw him. He was looking north, his hands braced on the bridge's railing. She stopped a couple of feet away, trying to adjust her backpack over her jacket with one hand while holding onto her coffee with the other.
"Thanks for meeting me."
Sam didn't look at her, just took a swallow from his silver thermos. After a minute of having her eyeballs water in the wind she turned around to face north as well. He was watching the construction of the Millennium Wheel with unconcealed distaste. His thick black hair was cropped close; for the first time she noticed the grey in it.
"So you got away with it. I suppose I should say congratulations."
Her only answer was to offer him her coffee cup. He did look at her, then, out of the corner of his eye, before taking it and handing her his thermos. He popped the lid, sniffed the cup, and took a sip.
Sally-Anne unscrewed his thermos and sloshed the amber liquid around for a moment, before bringing it up to her nose. Jasmine tea. Not what she would have guessed. Had his wife made it for him fresh that morning, looking out at a dark city? They swapped back.
"It was justice. Besides, he had me at wand point. I didn't have the time to think of a nice bloodless solution."
"One reason is reassuring. Two is not." He started to walk towards Waterloo, but slowly. "Not like anyone even noticed, did they. Alice eats out of your hand now and the rest can't be bothered."
Sally-Anne noticed the bitterness. She took a double step to pull slightly ahead of him. "It's safer to meet here, but not ideal. How are you at Concealment or Disillusionment?"
"No thank you. Nothing draws attention like showing you've something to hide." He indicated the thickening clusters of tourists pushing past them. "Safer just to talk normally. No one cares, unless you create a scene. You picked a good spot." He said it grudgingly.
"Glad to see you're not completely stupid, despite all those years sitting at a desk." She tried to make the gibe light-hearted and gave him a half grin as his head swung around. He didn't return it, but he didn't say anything, either.
For a disorienting moment, she managed to see things from his point of view. A middle-aged man, decades at the same job, still reporting to Ms. Hopkirk. Stuck in a sub-department no one respected while Quidditch organizers got the glory. Passed over for promotion. Forced to share an office with a jumped-up teenager benefiting from nepotism and shining with the foolish certainty of youth. What could she know of his frustrations, his failures, his dreams deferred? What could she know of his demons and what they cost him? Sally-Anne shriveled a little. Maybe she should tone down the snark a bit.
"Sam, you deal with underage improper use of magic. Help me understand that; do most kids even have wands?"
"Purebloods do," he said bluntly. "I got one on my third birthday. Some kids get them passed down by older siblings. Although that tends to happen when a wand's been damaged." He looked at her again. "Your father may be a Muggle — yes, everyone knows — but considering your mother... When did you get yours?"
The week before Hogwarts. But she didn't say it.
"And Ollivander just dishes them out and the Muggleborns end up years behind." It wasn't an accusation, quite.
"I keep forgetting how young you are." Sam looked almost amused. "That's not how it works. Pureblood children aren't getting them from Ollivander. At least, not officially. Maybe he's culpable occasionally, say for a Wizengamot member. Good luck trying to prove it, though. No, they get heirloom wands, passed down from great-grandparents or dead relatives. Plenty of those to go around, lately. Ollivander turns a blind eye; that's standard operating procedure. They practice with those until they're about to be first years and then they make the pilgrimage to Diagon Alley." He sipped his tea. "But yes, the Muggleborns get a raw deal. Although it's more politic to say every pureblood kid's a wunderkind."
"So what's the point of the Trace, then? Muggleborns don't have wands and purebloods are practicing magic in the middle of a magical family, so you can't be certain you're blaming the right person. They'll just hide the wand, blame an adult, and Wand Screening never finds out."
Sam stopped. They'd reached the end of the bridge.
"Look, don't think I don't enjoy waking up before dawn to tell the facts of life to a classic case of privilege. Nothing gives me more joy. But what are you getting at? And why are you asking me rather than, say, your mom? Or Mafalda? Oh wait, your mom's been 'sick' for almost a year. Ever since things started to get really bad. How nice for her. Maybe I should be asking you the questions, Ms. Moral When-It's-Convenient Perks.
"You're not polyjuiced and I didn't taste Veritaserum. Congratulations. You could still be out here on a little errand for Mafalda, trying to get me to put my foot in it. Is this why you wanted to meet away from the Ministry? Are you wired?" Sally-Anne's eyes widened only briefly, but he caught it and grinned wolfishly at her.
"So you know what that is. Glad to see you're not completely stupid, despite all those years not spent at Hogwarts."
He seemed to relax a bit, having taken her off guard, and started walking back towards the office again amidst the increasingly loud crush of tourists. "Let's put it this way. Some laws are meant to be broken. And others are meant to be perceived as being enforced. Understand?"
Sally-Anne was struggling now to keep up, but she did. Understand, that is. Not just why Sam never seemed to be doing much, but also why he didn't like her.
"Not that I tried to meet him halfway," she told herself ruefully. That had to change. She was going to need him if she was going to beat whoever it was, and not just in the role of Mr. Exposition. She wished she'd been nicer to him over the last year. She looked down at his wedding ring. I don't even know his wife's name, she realized with a surge of guilt. Or if they have children.
Sally-Anne reached out and grabbed his arm, bringing him to an abrupt stop. The group of tourists behind them laughed, but good-naturedly, and obligingly split in two to go around.
"My mother died last spring."
Sam looked at her incredulously, then laughed.
"Bollocks."
"It's true. Under Veritaserum, it's true. She'd been… angry with me, for various reasons. I'd just transitioned to full time at the Ministry. Working too much, she thought. Not paying enough attention to her. I think she decided to scare me a little. Got a Muggle prescription for painkillers, saved them up for a few months. She'd never taken drugs before; I don't think she understood the doses. Anyway, the plan must have been for me to come home and find her, passed out on my bed. Save her, you know, only it would be my fault. Except…"
Sally-Anne's voice was relaxed, even detached. There are some tears you can only cry so many times.
"Except I ended up working late. Most nights I'd be home by six, you see. So by the time I got there..." She swallowed and stopped. She could see the darkness of the hallway, the light spilling out of her bedroom. When she'd opened the door, she'd been angry, seeing her mother on her bed. Always invading her privacy. Not letting her feel safe anywhere.
Sam toed one of the paving stones on the bridge. "My condolences."
"Yeah." She composed herself. "So, no, I'm not going to ask my mother. And Mafalda, you know her better than I do. But you were there." Sally-Anne grimaced and started to tear little pieces off of her now-empty coffee cup.
"When the rest of us were trying to do as little as possible, barely showing up for work, she was awfully chummy with Yaxley. I don't trust her." Sally-Anne decided not to mention that she'd viewed Sam as rather too close to Mafalda at the time.
"I don't either." Somehow, he made it seem like a full Catholic confession.
"My question, the reason I asked you out here, is, do you trust me?" She made a real effort not to let her voice rise at the end.
He walked over and sat on the low ledge on the side of the bridge.
"Not really. Not yet." He shook his head. "This whole year, it's been such a mess. Spies. Imperiuses. Having to come in and lie every day. On top of everything else. When they installed the Thief's Downfall it was supposed to be over. Work would go back to normal. But now, with Rookwood loose and Macnair, I don't know what to think." He looked up at her.
"My job wasn't such a sinecure under Yaxley, you know. Underage wizards don't have a monopoly on the Trace. We were starting to put it on Muggleborns. There were rumors of plans to extend it to half-bloods."
She hadn't known that. Some of her contempt for him, for how all he ever seemed to do was send out letters, for how little risk his job required, for how the worst he had to deal with was some drunk fifteen year-old, and, if she were honest, for how he was a pureblood in a society that even after Voldemort's downfall still looked at her suspiciously, began to fade.
"You do know there's something going on. I mean, bigger than a couple escaped Death Eaters."
"You'd have to be willingly half-blind not to," he replied. "So we're probably the only ones who do." He stood up and tucked his thermos into his jacket. "Don't think this means I'm on your side, Sally-Anne. I don't like your methods. You're too cavalier, too ready to reach for your wand. I know you think you're the hero, but it's more often the villain who has good intentions. Think about that the next time you're about to murder someone you're certain deserves it."
It was a start. Sam was more clever than she'd expected, but he was wrong about one thing. She was the hero. She was the hero because she knew what the world was supposed to look like and because she was willing to do what it took to make that world a reality.
She smiled grimly and corrected herself. A simulated reality.
"If anyone asks," Sam said, as they passed the Churchill statue, "you were giving me the benefit of a woman's point of view about a personal problem."
She'd almost forgotten the wedding ring.
"Vagueness is my watchword." Sally-Anne gave him a mock salute. "Do you have children?"
"Sometimes." He laughed, perhaps at himself.
But she was already heading towards St. James Park and didn't hear.
"Where are you going?" he shouted after her.
She turned around and skipped backwards. Suddenly, she felt absurdly happy. Her hand closed tighter around the white envelope in her zipped jacket pocket as she yelled back to him.
"I have to protect the world!"
Diagon Alley was as packed and noisy as ever, but Sally-Anne stepped out of the Leaky Cauldron with a light step and a smile. There was nothing so invigorating as purpose.
Looking around, at the animated displays outside Quality Quidditch Supplies, at the purple robes with cauldrons maneuvering around green robes with Flourish & Blott's bags, at the house elf chasing after a child who was in turn following a goblin in a Gringotts uniform, the knowledge that this reality, down to the quantum level, was being run on some immense corps or farm of computers somewhere — she pictured an endless room of iMacs — struck her again and, for a moment, she could feel only wonder and awe at what Omega had created.
She stood still for a moment, letting the crowds roll around her.
She tried to imagine computing the collisions in a sandstorm, slicing space into Planck lengths and time into slivers of an attosecond, storing and processing the synaptic connections of six billion brains. And all of it running, from their perspective, for billions of years. With a laugh and a shiver of euphoria, she realized that she had become a deist.
There was no sense of claustrophobia, or of feeling trapped in the simulation. Her forebrain might understand it was the truth, but the rest of her mind, adapted by evolution to efficiently see only what was relevant, just went on experiencing the world as it always had.
Which meant her mind forced her, reluctantly but by necessity, to stop communing with the ineffable and focus on how to deal with the goblins.
She needed to put the sticker somewhere safe and a Gringotts vault seemed like the obvious place. She had enough silver saved for an entry level two-key vault. Well, key-and-goblin. Nice and inconspicuous. Her backpack also contained a small plastic bag of items she'd purchased after leaving Sam, plus a couple secondary trinkets from home that could easily have been nostalgic, and a stack of personal financial documents, mostly expired, that she hoped would be both plausible and curiosity-killingly dull.
"Play it straight," she told herself. Nervous, a little out of your depth, and certainly not holding a piece of sticky paper that makes the global stock of nuclear weapons look like poppers on Guy Fawkes Day.
She stepped aside as an elderly witch shepherded along a pallet piled high with cardboard boxes and plastic milk crates. On her way to Florean's, probably.
Inside Gringott's, she was impressed with how smoothly she was handled. The goblin she'd drawn, Guardgrind, had just the right balance of engaged politeness and disinterested professionalism to put both her real self and her presented self at ease. She wondered how the goblins decided which of them would work at the bank, and in which roles. She'd never heard of any underlying hierarchical structure in goblin society. Were senior positions assigned by age, or out of a hat? Did experience have the same meaning to them?
They passed through the familiar Thief's Downfall but descended only a single level into the caverns before their cart halted abruptly. Sally-Anne followed Guardgrind down several corridors before he stopped at a seemingly random location quite close to one of the wall-bracketed torches that provided the only illumination. The goblin produced a key from... somewhere.
A nice trick, that, she thought, but didn't inquire. Actual magic or mere sleight-of-hand, she was certain if she brought it up he would politely decline to answer "for security purposes". She often asked questions she already knew the answer to, but never questions when she knew the response but not the answer.
The goblin inserted the key directly into the rough wall, apparently at random; if there was a keyhole, she couldn't see it. An empty cubbyhole appeared, perhaps a meter deep. He handed her the key.
"Don't lose this. No copies." Guardgrind then went several paces down the corridor and made a show of turning his back on whatever she was planning on doing with the vault. Her vault.
She unslung the backpack and, without undue haste, took out the small plastic bag. Inside was the small sheaf of stickers she'd purchased earlier at Poundland. Most of them were on sheets, but she'd torn twenty or so off as stand-alones. It looked like the saddest collection anyone had ever put into a safety deposit box, anywhere, ever. Perfect.
She slowly pulled out Omega's white envelope and let the Hello Kitty sticker tumble into the bag with its brethren. The bag went into the vault, the papers went under the bag, and the bric-a-brac, placed haphazardly, completed the jumble. If it wasn't the purloined letter, it was as close as she was going to get on short notice. Although the key was an issue.
She closed the door, trying to place exactly where it was in the corridor, and put the key, which appeared to have been cut from a standard house key blank, into a jacket pocket. She zipped the pocket, then stage coughed for Guardgrind's benefit. He returned to her with the air of a Victorian butler coming to clear away the tea service. The vault door had vanished.
"Thank you, Guardgrind. Your service is exemplary."
"We are pleased when our efforts are appreciated, Ms. Perks." The goblin bowed, slightly.
"They are. I must admit, this is my first time at Gringotts. Before coming here, I was curious why there were no other banks in magical Britain. But your institution makes them redundant." She laughed, to frame her question as a joke. "Have any been foolish enough to try?"
"We have the only charter. Mr. Cresswell at the Goblin Liaison Office would have further details."
"Dirk was killed in March by a group of Snatchers organized by Voldemort. I met with Mr. Shacklebolt yesterday. Kingsley hasn't selected a replacement yet, has he."
"No, Ms. Perks. Yet Gringotts continues to function smoothly. As you can see."
"Exemplary, you may be sure." Let him wonder if the vault was simply cover for an inspection, she thought.
"Although I have noticed one peculiarity, a sign of my own ignorance, most likely. I was hoping you could clarify for me."
Guardgrind inclined his head again politely and began to retrace their footsteps back to the cart.
"Precious metal extraction is also the exclusive domain of the goblins. Goblins outsource or pay in specie for the discovery and recovery of treasure. Goblins guard the precious metals of wizards, along with items of personal value, in exchange for gold and silver. And goblins loan specie to wizards at interest."
"Yes."
"At some point, doesn't that mean that goblins will control all gold and silver?"
"Yes." Guardgrind seemed to view this as perfectly obvious and of little note.
"But the economy of magical Britain is based on gold and silver."
"Mr. Cresswell — the Ministry is aware of this. It will take us many generations to reclaim our birthright. Furthermore, the economy is not so dynamic that it requires significant hard capital. And there are other means of storing wealth, besides precious metals and treasure. House elves, for instance."
"And the goblins, forgive my naivete, do not spend this money."
Guardgrind winced at this and Sally-Anne wondered how bad a faux pas it was to imply goblins could voluntarily part with precious metals.
"That is correct, Ms. Perks. We provide services in exchange for what is rightfully ours. We do not interfere in the affairs of wizards. That is all you need concern yourself about."
"But you could," she pressed. "Interfere. I can't speak for Kingsley at present, but if aid were required and the compensation substantial…"
"Only a human could think of such perversions." Guardgrind had stopped and his tone was now sharp. "We do not interfere, not out of self-interest, but because doing so would be an anathema."
That was Flitwick's strange word, she noticed, coming out of the mouth of another goblin. Coincidence? And Guardgrind hadn't referred her to a superior goblin. How tightly organized was their species? She realized she had never seen one other than on Gringott's business.
"If you wish to understand goblin behavior, do not anthropomorphize us." He made it sound degrading, which, Sally-Anne supposed, it was from his point of view. "We understand what you value. You understand what we value. There is no overlap; you use specie out of convenience only. By the time it is fully recovered I am certain a substitute will be available."
He spoke with a note of finality and began to walk again. Sally-Anne decided not to press it, but she wondered if goblins were working to recover the gold and silver possessed by Muggles as well. How patient were they?
But that was a tangent, she realized, as they arrived back at the cart and began the journey to the surface. Flitwick had told the truth; the goblins couldn't be co-opted, neither by her nor the enemy. That was an idea that had failed. But perhaps not.
The way to fill a power vacuum was with power. Goblins had power that few seemed to notice, but they refused to wield it in the human realm. A setback, but where did that idea lead next? She tried to think as rock and air rushed past.
Work backwards; I'm the hero. That means I found a solution. Who else had power that she could use? Wizards from other countries? Too risky. Who knew if international organizations would try to seize power for themselves. Right now, the Ministry had at least the pretence of control. If it failed, she realized, magical Britain itself might be in danger of invasion.
That was a vertigo-inducing conclusion. It meant she would have to act very carefully, so that from the outside changes would appear ordinary, organic. Change the Ministry without altering its facade. Good grief. She felt like a contractor working on a listed building.
What about giants? Macnair had recruited them once and Arthur was clearly worried he was trying to reestablish the connection. That was an easy option to scratch; giants were worse than Death Eaters.
The cart gave a final lurch and stopped as they re-emerged into the light. Ahead, Sally-Anne could see the main hall of the bank. Guardgrind politely helped her out; she'd hardly realized how short he was. His authority and power had given him stature. From this angle, he reminded her physically of a house elf.
Wait. House elves.
She said goodbye to Guardgrind and began to make her way through the hall to the exit. She had no personal experience with house elves, of course. Her mother's family had been far too poor and obscure to own one and Sally-Anne hadn't been at Hogwarts long enough to get to know the school's. But she'd heard rumors of their abilities. To get places that wizards couldn't.
How could she learn more? Aberforth had been mentioned in connection with house elves in the Ministry scuttlebutt, but he was dead. She couldn't very well traipse into Hogwarts and ask Minerva to trot out a house elf. It could raise suspicion later. So who else could she ask about them?
The answer came to her just as she stepped outside of Gringotts. She knocked her head against one of the bank's marble columns several times. Then several more times. Gently, of course, although she knew she deserved worse.
Sam. Sam had been at the Underage Sorcery desk for years. Certainly long enough to have been there when the golden boy, Harry miracle-worker Potter himself, had gotten a letter from the Ministry for magic that was subsequently — and certainly conveniently — blamed on a house elf. Natural scapegoats, they were.
For the love of Merlin. She'd just cracked her office mate's antisocial armor and now she'd have to go back to the well. She wondered if Omega was laughing at her.
The man waited grimly for his coffee. He wore a shirt that didn't fit, a pair of trousers that didn't go with the shirt, and old boots that wouldn't have gone with anything. Once his drink was called, he took it over to one of the two open stools at the window as though the plastic cup were too heavy to carry any further. He sat down awkwardly and scrunched around a bit, trying to find his balance. He scowled.
Another rather shabbily-dressed man, on the seat next to his, gave a start of recognition.
"Hello, Arnie. Fancy running into you here."
Just as Arnold Peasegood had gotten himself settled properly, the unexpected greeting instinctively wrenched him around. He put a leg down sharply to keep from falling off the stool.
Arthur was amused by this.
"Arthur! Good to see you," Arnold lied.
"Good, maybe. Surprised, certainly." Arthur laughed and gestured at the commuters making for the Green Park tube stop, just out of site from the Caffe Nero. "Pretty rare to run into someone in the wild, as it were."
"Well, I'm sure it was a coincidence," said Arnie, in a disbelieving tone.
"Not quite. Glad I caught you, actually, was hoping for a quick chat. Hard to find time to catch my breath, lately. You know how it is."
Apparently, Arnie didn't.
"I don't get out here much," continued Arthur blithely. "Shock, I know, considering my department. But whenever I do, for a case or just for fun, I'm always reminded how dirty it is." He wrinkled his nose conspiratorially. "But perhaps you're used to it, dealing with Muggles all the time."
Arnie chuckled sourly. "Who could get used to this? I can't imagine visiting voluntarily." He looked around with barely concealed disgust.
So that angle worked, Arthur noted. Let's see. Past his prime and past due for a promotion, especially given the thin ranks, but hasn't gotten it. Competent, but unpleasant to work with, by most accounts. Refusal to acknowledge is holding him back. Thin-skinned. Can't take criticism. Thinks he deserves better.
Arthur smiled to himself. Fish. Barrel.
It was sloppy of Kingsley, thought Arthur, not to know about this dissatisfaction, about the wounded egos in his Ministry. Discontent was dry rot: in a family, in an organization, in a country. And that meant weakness, instability.
Thank goodness that he, a man of principle, would be the one to channel this frustration, and not some lunatic with impractical dreams and no stomach for the road. He would use the affronted pride of this Obliviator — and those like him — to build something better: a stronger Ministry, a united magical Britain, a future that would be safe because it would be safely controlled.
"Agreed. These Muggles have no self-respect. They just keep making the world filthier." Arthur pointed at a man on a cell-phone who was flipping away his cigarette butt.
"You don't even know. I have to come out here and clean up their messes. Stumbling upon some wizard trying to make a living, getting injured because of their own stupidity, crying about it, and of course the Ministry panics and sends me to clean the memories of the poor little dears." Arnold glanced over at Arthur resentfully. "Been awhile since it was you needed my help, but you've seen it. Them, playing with things they've got no right to, that they don't understand. Then blaming someone else. Just like children."
"You're right. You always did a good job, too. I remember. Surprised the Ministry hasn't noticed, moved you up."
"Well, it's been a crazy couple years. Been a bit surprised myself, between us, but it'll happen. Bound to." He sniffed. "Is that what you wanted to chat about?"
"Right in one." Arthur leaned in, sotto voce. "This is strictly off the record, Arnie. I know you can be trusted, but it's why I was glad to catch you outside the Ministry. Too many ears there. Kingsley brought it up the other day. He sees the problem. How inefficient we've been, squandering talent like yours on mopping up problems when you should be out in the field, preventing the problems from happening in the first place." Arthur leaned back. "I told him you need to be promoted."
"To Auror?" said Arnie slowly.
"The Ministry needs to evolve. Stop getting dirt under our nails trying to address the symptom and start being proactive, going after the disease. Trouble makers, Arnie. Slap them down right at the start. Before the idiot Muggles get in their way and start whining. Before you have to scramble to control the situation and follow all those subclauses in the Statute of Secrecy. Wasting all that time."
"Dueling Death Eaters?" Arnold shook his head doubtfully. "Not sure that's my cup of tea, Arthur."
"Death Eaters? Who's talking about Death Eaters?" Arthur made a face. "Anyway, they're all dead, or locked up. No, I mean the law-breakers, Arnie, the wizards who are making a nuisance of themselves. The kind who can't keep their head down and before you know it, you're working unpaid overtime. I'm talking about stopping them before they even start. Three-man squads. Hit wizards reporting directly to you. No paperwork, no wand screenings. Just the power to get results."
"Stopping wizards who are going to break the law." He seemed to be getting it now.
"Arresting dark wizards, Arnie."
"Is that the same thing?"
"Let me worry about that. The boring, complicated stuff. We'll push some new regulations through if we have to. General stuff, without having to crawl to the Wizengamot." Arthur looked at him earnestly, in the eye.
"The important thing is making sure you have the authority you deserve. Can the Ministry count on you, Arnie?"
The slovenly-dressed man looked out the window again, at the trash, at the air he could practically taste, at the rude and ignorant people pushing past each other on the sidewalk. He didn't deserve having to deal with these animals, having to treat their memories with kid gloves or get told off and threatened by some junior minister. He'd always known he was intended for something better, for a role with real respect and the power to make others take notice.
"Aye, Arthur."
"There must have been something suspicious in three months of data."
"How about the absence of evidence? Does that count?"
"Nothing, not even by coincidence? Come on, we see patterns that aren't even there!"
They were at a small table in the barroom at Boisdale in Canary Wharf: Sally-Anne, Sam, Arun, and Zhu. It felt wrong to Sally-Anne; she was used to seeing them at the tiny office in the Ministry, but meeting there to discuss anything more pertinent than the weather would have been aggressively foolhardy. No unforced errors. So she'd picked a place in the middle of nowhere, an anonymous watering hole at the end of a long warren full of people too self-important to eavesdrop on a fourspot as disreputable looking at they were. No Ferragamo or Hermes meant no attention.
She was grateful that Sam had even shown up; she'd told Arun to ask him as obsequiously as possible and it had worked. Sort of. He was here, but hadn't said much. Right now, they were both watching Zhu and Arun argue over whose dead end was more relevant. She was glad she'd disobeyed Kingsley and filled them in on the mission specifics; sharing the secret had helped to bind them to her.
"Look, I did the work. You want to double-check, knock yourself out. There's nothing there. Of course. We already knew the attack was mundane. We can fight about ghost wands all you want, but Macnair's wand was never recovered, so placeholder hypothesis should be whoever's guilty is using it." Zhu thought for a moment about what that implied. "They must be going to a lot of effort not to be noticed. Especially since you say the grapevine is useless on this as well."
That was an understatement, Sally-Anne thought. Arun, usually so disarmingly loquacious and good at getting people to say more than they should, had come up with nothing. No sign of Macnair. No sign of Death Eater activity. Percy Weasley was now helping Aurors Savage and Williamson guard Yaxley, Rowle, Travers, and Dolohov, but all three of them had the same, incredibly boring story of model prisoners: silent, hangdog, and obedient.
The only good news was that Mafalda had confirmed that Kingsley had actually followed through for once and gotten the Wizengamot to give the Ministry more freedom in the field. After such a bloody period, everyone was taking it as a win. Even Robert Savage had been seen looking less than completely exhausted and Philip had mentioned that potential Auror candidates were starting to trickle in. With Dawlish still at St. Mungo's, new blood was desperately needed.
But none of this got them any closer to their target. Sally-Anne took off her glasses for a moment and rubbed the bridge of her nose.
"All right, troops. I get it. Bubkis. Which itself should be able to tell us something. We don't have to see the whale to know where it is. We don't even need to see its wake. Where's the water deep enough? For now — for now, Arun — I'm scratching the captive Death Eaters. Motive, yes. But neither means nor opportunity. If they didn't have help, how? If they had help, who? And if it was them, why still playing possum? So who else?"
"My money's on Kingsley. Looking to take over."
Arun rolled his eyes. "Zhu, he's already Minister of Magic. And now he's Chief Warlock as well. What would he gain? Now Dawlish..."
"Oh, you mean the guy who, if he's lucky, will get upgraded from coma to fugue state any day now. Just because he's alive doesn't make him the man behind the curtain. Kingsley's wrangling power. From the Wizengamot. With new recruits. I know he seems in over his head, but what if that's just a clever ruse? Sally-Anne?" She appealed to her boss.
"Sam, you're the expert here." Sally-Anne spoke slowly and quietly. "If anyone can see a pattern, it's you. We've worked together, so we trust you to point out our mistakes. What's your advice? Who fits the data we have?"
"Are you recruiting?"
"What?" She leaned back in her chair.
"Aurors are recruiting. I know Mafalda isn't paying attention, but are you?"
Sally-Anne didn't look at Arun. "We may be putting some feelers out. It would be nice to have a bit of help right now. But nothing definite yet."
"Who else is recruiting?"
That was a good question. It sat there for a moment while around them swirled the not-quite-satisfied intoxication of people who think they deserve just a little bit more.
"Other than the Aurors?" Arun was thinking out loud. "No one, really. I mean, the departments just got the go ahead yesterday and they don't move quickly at the best of times." He grimaced. "Let's see. Kingsley's supposedly desperate for a new assistant."
"I saw his office; he needs one."
"And Perkins is talking about getting a trainee. Keeps muttering about retirement, how he's too old."
"That old crank who works with Arthur Weasley? Hmmm." Sam stirred his untouched Coke with a cocktail straw.
Zhu rolled her eyes. "Perkins can barely remember where his office is. C'mon. We're not getting anywhere. We need to be more aggressive. Are we allowed to use Legilimency? Or Veritaserum?"
"If word of that got around, we're sussed," Arun protested. "Fair odds we're looking for someone we work with, or for. Isn't that why we're meeting out here in Muggle land?"
"Are you serious?" Sally-Anne pressed Sam. "Based on that you think we should start watching Perkins?"
"He's not a likely candidate, I know. But you don't have any likely candidates. Arthur Weasley's a family man obsessed with Muggle knick-knacks. But," Sam started listing points on his fingers, "that means he would probably know how to use Muggle weapons better than the average bear. And he lost a child at the Battle of Hogwarts. That can change a man."
"That's a good point." No, it wasn't. It was laughable. But she needed Sam on her side. "We'll add him to the list." She hesitated.
"This is kind of random, but any of you have experience with house elves?"
"Why?" Zhu crossed her arms. She was wearing a silk blouse today, Sally-Anne noticed, with the neck bare.
"They serve a mean breakfast." Arun patted his stomach. "My mom is a great cook, but not a lot of variety, if you know what I mean. But, oh man, I miss those Hogwarts feasts."
"What about you, Sam? Any dealings with them over the years?"
He rubbed the stubble of his hair and gave her a hard look. Sally-Anne winced inwardly. So much for subtlety, she thought. Man, he was quick. But he didn't call her out.
"Once or twice, maybe. What do you want to know?"
"Well, what I really need is to talk to one. But it's not my birthday, so you guys can relax. Ha. Anyway, I know they're bred to be loyal. Disturbingly loyal. That they're like family heirlooms, passed down from one generation to the next. But, as Arun says, they, or at least those at Hogwarts, have their own magic. But what kind? Are they magical creatures? Or do they use magic?" She stopped for breath.
"I don't know much more than you do," Sam admitted. "No one really knows much about them, or even how many there are, since their owners tend to keep them extremely private." He gripped his glass with both hands.
"Two things, however. First, they do seem to get their noses into things and places I wouldn't expect. Second, most wizards, and definitely purebloods, don't even notice them." He sounded almost angry. "They're just possessions, you see. Furniture that moves. Useful, sure, but without agency."
"Happy slaves." Arun looked uncharacteristically cynical.
"What?"
"You said they were bred to be loyal. That's a nice spin, the standard Ministry line. Let's be more accurate. They were bred to obey. To want to obey. To lose their minds if they don't."
"That's… messed up," said Sally-Anne slowly. She watched her hopes of co-opting house elves' potential power crumble and fade, a castle in the air.
She supposed wizards classified them as magical creatures. Would have made the whole eugenics thing easier if they weren't considered human. She tried not to think about how her father, with his Muggle background, would interpret what wizards had done to them.
"Um… something else about house elves… I own one."
They all looked at Zhu. She was drawing invisible characters on the table with the tip of her finger.
"You own one?" Sally-Anne repeated.
"My parents got it — got him — right after we moved to England. We don't have them back in China. I don't think they really knew what house elves were. It was just a status symbol to them. I think."
"Have you considered freeing it?" Arun asked, looking faintly nauseous, but Zhu shook her head vehemently at that.
"You can't. You can't. They can't handle freedom. They don't have goals like we do, or a sense of purpose other than serving their family. There are horrible stories of what happens." She still hadn't looked up. "It would be cruel."
They all took a beat.
"I know it's a lot to ask, Zhu, but can I talk to him?" asked Sally-Anne tentatively.
"Yeah. Sure." She flipped her long hair back and smiled. "If you think it will help. Just, don't upset it — him — OK?"
"OK." Sally-Anne made a show of checking the clock over the bar. "I need to get back to the office before someone starts asking questions." She looked at Sam, who nodded. He stood up and walked over the bar to settle up. Sally-Anne turned back crisply to her staff.
"Arun. Dawlish is your call. Keep babysitting. If anyone visits, I want to know. And if he's faking, I need to know. If he's guilty, dollars to donuts Kingsley's our man. Also, Arthur Weasley." She let her voice drop. "Personally, I don't think this is a lead worth chasing, but Sam does. Just get me disconfirming evidence and we'll move on. Zhu, I'm giving you Ollivander. There are just too many ways he could be involved, even unwittingly. Stake out his shop. It's the offseason, so anyone going in I hear about it, I don't care if it's an owl."
She rose and reached for her jacket. "As for the other matter, I'll stop by first thing tomorrow."
Arun pulled her aside just outside the bar. He waited for Zhu and Sam to pass.
"I know you don't like the idea that we're looking for a free Death Eater, but is that based on evidence or a feeling?"
Sally-Anne thought for a minute. Had her prejudices, formed before Macnair's escape, persuaded her more than she realized? Had she forgotten to update her beliefs based on the new evidence? She clenched her jaw; even simple problems became unwieldy given enough variables. But Arun was right; she had been too hasty in dismissing the hypothesis. She walked to the stairwell and looked down; the others were almost at ground level.
"I'll look into it. But don't mention it to Sam. Or Zhu, all right?" But the harder question was which dragon to beard.