What Lynn had seen that fall had much to do with Lydia Norris and even more to do with the special ministry guest at the school.

The palace had echoed with excited whispers about Dominic Thomsky's arrival for weeks, the visit of a ministry head of the Department of Internal Affairs probably the most exciting thing to happen at the school in decades. It had been a topic of conversation at every mealtime for the past two weeks, to the point where Dani had taken to rolling her eyes every time it came up, bored of the same stale anticipation.

Neither Lynn nor Aimee had been particularly excited about it either, neither being remotely interested in working at the ministry, but Lydia Norris seemed visibly buoyed by the news. She seemed to attempt to contain it, but failed miserably, and as a result anyone within a few yards of her at any free moment got an earful about the man's "crucial role" in British and European wizarding politics.

Lynn would hardly have cared had she not been up early one morning and out in the hallways of the Main School an hour before breakfast.

The hallways were empty that far before breakfast, students generally preferring their beauty sleep to early morning wanderings, but Lynn had been hoping to get to the library to turn in a book before her British Muggle Literature class and traversed the halls in a silence that for whatever reason made her unreasonably uncomfortable.

Silence, at least, until she reached just outside West Hall, where the guest was staying.

"Thank you, sir, thank you, thank you…"

The voice was familiar - a girl's, almost positively one of the students, though no one should have been up that early.

Lynn slowed as she got closer. She had to pass the hallway to get into the Sapphire Atrium, where the library was, but an icy trail had trickled down her spine and stilled her feet to behind the wall.

"I just had to- I didn't know who else to- Thank you…"

Lynn caught the first few words of each sentence and little more, before she heard the second voice.

"Thank you for bringing this matter to my attention," said the oddly nasal Dominic Thomsky.

He said something else about dealing with the matter as soon as possible, and Lynn was still puzzling about what it could be when she heard his door close, signaling his return to his quarters, and was passed by a figure in blue. Even at her quickened pace, it was easy to see it was Lydia, looking a bit manic with her hair out of the uniform ponytail, having grown wilder each day with her excitement at the guest's arrival.

She didn't see Lynn as she passed, but she was grinning in a great, relieved way, like a prisoner allowed free.

Aimee Hollyntov was no idiot. She may have been a little eccentric – and more than little bit childish – but not stupid.

In no way had the scene in the hallway fooled her. She knew her friends far too well for that - Lynn's hands had been shaking so much that halfway through the scene she clasped them hastily behind her back. Aimee hadn't missed her visible flinching at every inch Pierre floated toward her, the nervous curl of her fingertips, tightness in the corners of her eyes. She had been standing rod straight, like she was cemented to the ground. It was as though she had been terrified even to breathe.

Aimee may have been a fiendish prankster, but she was nothing if not observant.

She had pieced together enough of the business of Mr. Wench simply from paying attention, and being small enough to escape detection. Unfortunately, despite all of the details she had scrapped together, she had yet to string it all into a coherent storyline. Lynn had a missing piece that she didn't, and whatever it was, it was dangerous enough to have established her new position in the cross-hairs of the murky evil of the higher-ups.

The stone walls of Aimee's least favorite classroom seemed to shift and rearrange themselves as she stared blankly at the wall, trying to riddle out the mystery of the missing piece. Professor Snape, who had taken great pleasure in giving her detention for throwing porcupine quills in class, had yet to arrive for what she was sure would be a beautifully bonding punishment session. It was really Fred who had thrown the first quill, but she had been rendered unable to defend herself by her current muted state.

Madame had placed a Silencing Charm on her the day before when she'd caught her enthusiastically explaining Quidditch to some of Madame's ladies, and it had yet to be removed. So for the past day, she had resorted to kicking, pinching, and throwing things to get her friends' attention. It was actually rather entertaining, and so even though detention was an undeniable setback in the days' pranking schedule, it didn't really bother her all that much.

There were footsteps echoing in the corridor just outside the classroom, and Aimee readied herself for the onslaught of delightfully snide comments she was sure Snape would send her way. It was his usual method, and she normally adored finding witty comebacks with which to annoy him. There was an unusual comfort for her in being reprimanded. Just as she expected for the usual black cloak to whip by though, she was taken aback to see pale blue robes and a long silver beard sweep into the room instead. She cocked her head to the side quizzically as Professor Dumbledore strode to the front of the room, nodding to her agreeably.

"Professor Snape has been detained," he answered to her blank stare. "There seems to have been a rather large explosion of dungbombs in the East Wing that have garnered his attention."

Aimee grinned brightly, knowing full well that this was the work of Fred and George, who had been raring to use their enormous stash of dungbombs for weeks.

"Ahhh, the dungeons," Dumbledore continued, ignoring Aimee's reaction. "A bit of a dreary place for a classroom, I suppose, but fitting."

He picked his way slowly around the room, examining the numerous pickled animals the lined the walls in jars of varying sizes. He stopped and spent almost a full minute staring at something the color of olive oil floating in a jar before looking up, as though just remembering Aimee was still there.

"Severus is quite at home here," he said thoughtfully. "I myself have grown far too attached to the Muggles' fairytales to appreciate the beauty of dungeons, I'm afraid."

Aimee leaned back in her chair, taking the blue pointed hat off her head and tossing it to the table aside her. She liked Dumbledore, who seemed as varied in his eccentricities as she was, and far too accomplished for anyone to question him. There was something commendable about the twinkle in his eye when an entire stock of chocolates from the kitchens went missing and Fred and George went unpunished.

Dumbledore had moved on from the foggy-looking jars and was examining a vial of violet liquid on Snape's desk curiously.

"I'm always quite sadly expecting to see a kidnapped princess or two wandering about in them," he said suddenly, and Aimee realized he was still talking about dungeons. "Otherwise strong young women detained by the evils of a power out of their control, always completely at the mercy of their rescuer."

Something about his choice of topic was off. Aimee had heard about Dumbledore's veiled way of communicating from Harry, and wondered what message he meant for her to glean from his nonsensical chatter about dungeons. Dungeons and Muggle fairytales. The latter were no stranger to Aimee, as her mother had worked for years in a Muggle bookshop, fascinated by the limitless imagination in the stories.

"It's so delightfully strange how Muggles think it is always the dashing fellow in armor who saves the damsel in distress," said Dumbledore.

There was something about the way he said "damsel in distress", lingering too long on the one phrase. Was that meant to be a clue? And to what? Who did Aimee know who was remotely like a damsel?

Her mind jumped to Lynn, face tight and eyes scared, Pierre Simon hovering about her like a greedy vulture.

It was possible...although this was all assuming Dumbledore knew what was going on.

"After all," he was saying, a little loudly, as though he knew her attention had drifted. "It is Cinderella who unlocks the door to escape the tower in the end, is it not?"

He knew.

He let the end of the question linger, eyes gazing into the distance almost dreamily, as though transfixed by his own thoughts. He snapped from them suddenly with a smile on his face.

"Ah musings," he said happily, looking at Aimee with a twinkle in his eye. "I suppose I'm not being a very responsible detainer, rattling on while you can't speak."

Aimee shrugged, somehow unsurprised that he knew she had been dubbed mute when he already seemed to know so much.

"An interesting spot of magic though, is casting spells without words…"

And he trailed off with the air of a joyful lecturer, Aimee following his every word with rapt attention for the rest of her detention hour.