It had been almost three months since they'd found Jackson. Nearly four since they'd found Duncan.

And there was no sign of Raquel O'Leary.

Kingsley and Ron came to debrief with Parvati, to sync up their respective investigations. Parvati felt confident things were being shared but the tenebris ones were beginning to get antsy again. Hermione couldn't blame them. A big sit-down to hash things out would help everyone.

Parvati's former undercover partner Trevor made an appearance, back in the UK at last. James was not pleased.

Trevor happened to be extremely handsome, with dark wavy hair and broad shoulders. He wore his facial hair in a scruffy sort of way, giving him a rugged look. His eyes were the colour of chocolate and even Hermione had to admit he was good-looking.

Draco was plagued by self-doubt he tried to hide from her. She didn't like the beard bit, did she? He thought his own looked ridiculous when he tried to grow one. Too blonde. It made him look even paler. Malfoys were not 'rugged,' anyway. His hair was wavy, though, when it was longer - unlike his father's, which was always ramrod straight. But he could grow it out a bit, and -

Hermione put these thoughts to rest at once. His hair made no difference to her as long as she could run her fingers through it. And no, she wanted his face smooth when he was between her legs. Which she hoped he'd do later.

James practically quivered with jealousy, seeing the man at long last. Hermione was sure - and Draco confirmed from a wizard's point of view - that James was envisioning all the times when Parvati and Trevor must have gotten a little too intimate when sharing assignments.

But Hermione could detect no latent shyness or awkwardness in Parvati, any indication of meeting with a former lover. She hugged him with one arm to say hello and introduced him to everyone easily. Trevor did a double-take at James, but whether it was from his red eyes, wolfy features, or the crushing handshake James subjected him to was unclear.

When it broke off Trevor tried to hide a quick shake of his wrist to loosen his fingers back up.

Even Blaise was eyeing Padma with a spot of concern over her opinion of the new arrival. Amused, Hermione noticed Padma twist her mouth at Blaise, as if to say, 'don't be stupid.'

"Right," Kingsley cleared his throat. "Let's get started. Trevor, did you find O'Leary's first husband?"

"I did. He'd remarried. I spoke to him and then his wife actually reached out separately."

This piqued Hermione's interest and she could tell she wasn't the only one.

"Start with the husband. What did he say?"

"He was older than she was by a good bit. That was common, by the way, across all three husbands. Shouldn't be surprising, since she kept marrying into wealth, but I can't remember if I've mentioned it. Anyway, she was young, barely into her twenties. He saw her at some fancy party, he couldn't recall what for. He couldn't recall anything about the night at all except for her. Completely star-struck."

Hermione saw Parvati roll her eyes. She wondered if this sort of description is what prompted the wife to reach out later. Probably so.

"He married her two months later."

"Why did it end?" Ron asked, his arms folded across his chest.

"He viewed it as growing apart. She was young and didn't know what she wanted. He tried to be anything she wanted but it never seemed like she was really happy. Finally when she wanted to leave, he let her. It clearly broke his heart," Trevor said with a knowing expression, eyebrows slightly lifted.

"Any kids? Any fights?" Hermione queried, too impatient to space them out.

"No kids," Trevor confirmed. "But in this case, it seemed mutual. He'd had two from a prior marriage and was content with it. He was always surprised that she didn't seem to push the issue. He expected her to want them, but before too much longer, they were splitting up."

"And the fights? Did they row?" Padma asked again.

"Not significantly, to hear him tell it. He said it was like any relationship, ups and downs. The pains of such an age gap when one half of the equation is still figuring out life. Mostly, she seemed disengaged to him. Didn't seem to care enough to row much."

Interesting, Hermione thought. But the impression they'd gotten from the other two was that she'd primarily seemed bored. Whatever she was looking for, none of them had it.

"How long was the marriage?"

"Not quite two years."

They all considered this before Kingsley asked, "and his wife? What did she have to say?"

Trevor smirked. "Loads. Much of it was the same, though. It was as if she needed to get it off her chest." He rifled through his notebook on the table in front of him. "Her husband was still in love with the woman, without a doubt. He still talked about her, about things they did together. Places he took her. The red dress she'd worn the night he first saw her."

Ugh. Hermione recoiled. She'd hate that. Who would do that to their current partner? Draco soothed her down the thread. He promised never to talk about Pansy Parkinson again. She gave him a light mental swat. Hush, you.

"She said she actually wished they'd get word that O'Leary had died, because then maybe her husband could have moved on. She'd been hopeful that was what I'd come to inform them of. But then she backtracked again, saying she'd never have been able to compete with a ghost, either - this spectre of the most amazing, gorgeous wife looming over their marriage forever."

"Poor thing," Padma murmured. "I think I'd leave, wouldn't you?"

The question was rhetorical but several heads bobbed up and down in response.

Something struck Hermione. "Were his kids young? The ones from his previous wife?"

Trevor looked at her directly. "I don't know. I didn't ask. Didn't think it mattered."

"What are you thinking?" Rose piped up from her right, then immediately looked horrified at having spoken in front of everyone. She turned bright red but Hermione held her gaze as if it were just the two of them talking.

"I was wondering… if they were young, if they ever had injuries. Things that might point back to O'Leary. I don't know, don't listen to me."

It was silly now that she said it out loud. They thought O'Leary had probably lashed out at her sister because Bridget was magical and she wasn't. It had been personal and spiteful. But Rose looked deep in thought.

"Be interesting to know, wouldn't it? It's possible that she could have been motivated to do something if she were bored enough. Find small ways to torment the children that her husband wouldn't detect."

"Merlin, what a monster," Padma said.

"Well, we don't know that she did anything like that," Parvati said firmly. "We shouldn't speculate. Let's stick to things we've actually got evidence of, even if it's circumstantial."

Kingsley concurred and they got back on track.

Rose gave Hermione a wry look and curled the corner of her mouth. Speculation wasn't helpful, Hermione knew, but the psychology of the woman was fascinating to her on every level. She couldn't wait until their next Quidditch chat when she and Rose could speculate away in private.

"Is there anything left to investigate in the States?" Blaise asked Trevor.

"I'm hitting dead ends all around. I don't think she's in America."

"What about the forensic accounting?" Draco chimed in.

"Very interesting, but not illuminating. Yet. She did have her own accounts squirrelling away money all along, under her maiden name. She never merged them with her respective marriages. But none of them have had any activity in months."

"She must have had some under other names, then," Blaise mused. "Were there any large transfers to outside accounts before they went dormant?"

Trevor looked vexed. "Yes, but there's a catch. All her accounts are with Muggle banks, of course. Different countries have different regulations for privacy and she has things all over. I can see transfers here and there but I can't see where they went. For all we know, she could have been paying her collaborators, sending money into their own accounts."

Mm. Hermione considered the possibility and discarded it. "I don't think any of them were in it for the money."

"No," Parvati agreed, "but the experiments did dominate almost ten years of their lives. The militaries were paying their active duty soldiers in Gareth and Jackson and neither of them had families or other expenses. But Duncan might not have had any other source of income for a decade."

"And someone was paying Dubh, too, let's not forget," said Felix from the far end of the table.

Trevor and Parvati were both taking notes. "I'll try to backtrack Duncan's and Dubh's accounts. I agree those seem the most likely. But even if we confirm that she was paying them for their contributions, it doesn't help us figure out where she is now."

"No properties anywhere that she owns?"

"No, there are," Parvati said. "There's at least one that she got in one of the divorces. It's a beach house on the Gulf coast of the southern US. But it's been vacant, looks like it has been for a while. She'd be expecting us to find those."

"Others could be under the same name as her accounts. It would make the transactions clean," Draco said.

"How about your contact in Ireland, Trevor?" Kingsley asked next. "He finding anything else?"

"Oh, yes," Trevor grinned broadly. "Big Willy is having quite the time in Ireland."

Snorts and laughter from around the table. "Big Willy?"

"Aye," Trevor said with a chuckle, giving Hermione a quick look that Draco didn't care for. "Didn't find the girl you recommended he look for. Katy. The one who was visiting for a time. But he met the sister, Bridget."

"What?" Hermione gasped, sitting up straight and cutting through the general hilarity at Big Willy's name. "I thought he hardly ever talked to people directly. How'd he manage getting to Bridget?"

"He made a rare trip into Oranmore himself, just curious. And as he hadn't been there before, he wouldn't be suspicious - not like if he kept going back." To clarify at the puzzled looks around the table, Trevor added, "Bloke's enormous. Hard to miss."

"Tell us about Bridget," Hermione urged, impatient.

"Lovely girl. He was asking a local shopkeeper about the family, and she approached him. Said her parents weren't well and didn't want visitors, but she'd be happy to talk with him and answer what she could."

Questions erupted, some about Bridget, some about Raquel.

"Did she remember being hurt?"

"What happened to her?"

"Did anything else ever happen when she was a child?"

"Have they seen her?"

Trevor raised a hand. "Hang on. Hang on. Bridget knew what people around the village said about her sister. She'd heard the rumours plenty of times. She confirmed Raquel is a squib, but we didn't really need the confirmation. As for being hurt before they sent Raquel away, she was on the fence."

"How?"

"She was very young when it happened. She said she was climbing a tall bookcase to get something off a high shelf and it toppled over on her."

Hermione considered this. That would have caused myriad injuries, especially to a young girl. "Was Raquel around when it happened?"

"Aye. But Bridget says her parents were always very insistent to her that Raquel did not hurt her. The rumours were nothing more than that: rumours. They didn't want her to be afraid of her big sister. It was very important to them."

"What about why Raquel was sent away, if not for harming Bridget?"

"Bridget started out with the same story Declan, the brother, told. Raquel became pregnant and was sent off to have the baby and put it up for adoption. She left afterwards, never came home."

"But we know -" Padma began and Trevor stopped her.

"Big Willy pressed her on it. Said he knew Raquel had been sent away when she was eleven. Now, it's possible to have a pregnant eleven-year-old -"

Hermione winced but knew it was true.

"- but Willy pushed anyway. Bridget caved and said it was because her family was ashamed that Raquel was a squib. She was very embarrassed about that decision, herself. She hated that her parents were so closed-minded. She and her sister weren't close because of their age gap, but she still missed her. Hasn't spoken to her since. Her sister never looked back."

Rose spoke up again, timid. "But nothing else that indicated the family was afraid of Raquel?"

"Not from Bridget. But she may have just been trying to maintain as much of the family's privacy as she could. Understandable. She reiterated that her parents weren't well. She requested that he please not try to speak with them about Raquel - it would only upset them and she couldn't see what good it would do."

So much of this fit but so much still didn't. Hermione was quite cross with it, the more she turned it over in her mind. How had the rumours got started, then? That the parents were afraid of the child, even if they were insistent that their other children not be?

"Is Big Willy going to keep digging around in the town?"

"If we want him to," Trevor said with a shrug.

"I think he should," said Parvati definitively and Hermione nodded her agreement. "We still don't know anything for certain. Everybody had something slightly different to say."

"I want to hear from someone who knew the family back then," Hermione declared. "Someone who had a front-row seat, if there ever was one. Surely the parents had a close friend or two who saw the children interact."

"If they'd be willing to talk about it," Jacob said with a scowl.

"Who knows? Maybe somebody will just like to gossip." Padma gave a bright smile, always the optimist.

"What did she look like?" Parvati asked Trevor curiously.

"The way Big Willy described her seems like there's probably a strong family resemblance. Reading over what Jackson had said about her physical description, it fits closely. Reddish-brown hair, light blue eyes. Shorter stature. Nothing unusual, nothing to stand out."

"Pretty?" Hermione said shrewdly.

Trevor coughed out a laugh. "Aye. Big Willy was quite taken with her. Lovely girl. I don't think he'll mind sticking around for a bit, even if he'll be too obvious in Oranmore itself."

"Maybe you should make a trip up there to see for yourself," James muttered and Parvati openly swatted him.

"Maybe I will," Trevor said with a roguish wink.

ooo

Kingsley confirmed there had been no suspicious activity at the detention centre where Duncan and Jackson were being held. Auror Potter was diligently on duty.

"Gareth wasn't killed until after he went back to the military," Caleb pointed out.

"We don't even know precisely why he was killed," Kingsley said stiffly. "He'd been obliviated. He couldn't tell us anything else. It's that fact alone that's making the American President look at us with such suspicion. We're the only ones who would care that he'd essentially got off."

"So they still don't believe us?" Ronan snapped, his palm hitting the table. Hermione flinched in reflex.

Kingsley sighed. "He believes you didn't do it. He doesn't believe we, as a whole, had nothing to do with it. We pitched the idea that O'Leary was responsible somehow, and all the President would say is that it's still our job to apprehend her. In his eyes, he has a dead military Colonel and no one has been brought to justice."

"Imagine how that feels," James said under his breath, and Hermione heard agreeing mutters around him.

Hermione remembered the President saying that the kidnapping of a high-ranking officer and breaching of a military fort amounted to an act of war. Well, Gareth had been living on base so that had clearly been breached, and he was dead. The President must be livid. She sighed. No wonder their last two blood shipments were light and getting lighter.

"Is it… going to impact the Muggle governments' intent to cooperate on the financial settlement?" Parvati asked, brow furrowed.

"I'm not involved in those discussions," Kingsley clarified. "But I know you have another meeting with the Wizengamot on Wednesday. I expect they'll bring it up. Don't be surprised if that's the exact news you hear."

"Merlin's bloody bollocks, we were so close to that!" James burst out, pressed beyond endurance. "People want to move out of here. We want to help them."

Kingsley shifts his weight, a little awkward. "It's not my area, but your choices may be a smaller settlement sooner, or a larger one later after all the dust finally settles. You may want to discuss it amongst yourselves, what people want versus what they need."

James was furious, his red eyes locked on the Auror. Hermione leaned away, back into her chair. "Everybody needs different things, Shacklebolt. It's not up to me, or to you, to tell them what they should accept as fair recompense for what they went through. What we all went through."

Hermione heard a lot of grumbling from around the table, side conversations, complaints. The temperature in the room was starting to rise and abruptly, half of them fell silent. She saw one or two cringes and knew James had commanded them to stop. He'd handle this.

The other half, the vampires, continued to mutter. But there were fewer of them now. Four had moved out. Hermione wasn't sure of each one's exact circumstances, though. Aidan had a family to stay with. Stuart had no one and would need a job. She had no idea if he'd found one. As for the other two, she didn't know.

Blaise spoke up calmly. "We need that settlement. We'll discuss whether it's better to settle now or to hold out, but we can't make that decision until we know what those numbers would look like. We won't even discuss it until then. We will bring it up with the Wizengamot."

ooo

Draco nailed a Bludger in Ronan's general direction and Hermione cringed. To her untrained eyes, it looked like it was probably a perfectly legitimate hit. And Ronan dodged it, swooping to catch the Quaffle passed to him by Jacob. Hermione just couldn't help being nervous about the two men playing on opposite sides in Quidditch. She kept expecting a row to break out.

Lending credence to this possibility was Draco playing Beater. He didn't always but he was tonight, and tonight Ronan was on the other team. They didn't have set teams because it depended on who wanted to play and when. Sometimes they didn't have enough people for seven on each side and when that happened, it was usually the Seeker position that was dropped.

Beaters were never dropped, solely because of the priority of keeping the Bludgers away from the witches. Draco was more than happy to fill in. He and James made quite a good team, in fact, when James wasn't in London. Draco enjoyed pairing up with the werewolf, who was an excellent Beater.

Hermione and Rose were splitting some wine in the grass. She saw Padma wandering over from the other side of the Manor and readied a third glass for her as well.

Hermione was excited about rampant speculation, good old fashioned gossipping. It wasn't really gossipping when she had no idea what was true, but she was enthused to get to it anyway.

"I expected her to be older than her early thirties," Rose was saying as Padma sat down.

"It's not much older than we are," Hermione agreed. "Well, Padma and I, anyway." Rose was a couple of years older than they were.

"She's the youngest of the lot. Gareth was probably the oldest; he was older than Jackson, wasn't he?" Padma asked, getting comfortable in the grass.

Hermione nodded. "And Duncan looked maybe forty-five, but it was hard to tell."

"I pegged her closer to forty, but it doesn't really matter. Still older than O'Leary," said Rose.

"What's mental is that she was cooking up the idea for the gene splicing when she was married to her first husband, if the timing is what we think it is. The labs went on for ten years. It took planning time long before that. Ten years ago, we think O'Leary was married for the first time.

"Might have accounted for her distraction during the marriages. They thought she seemed bored or disengaged. She was just working on something completely different the whole time." Rose reached for the bottle of wine.

"We haven't found a single person who knew her between her being sent to the States at eleven and re-emerging at some gala to see who would become her first husband, two months after they met. I wonder what she was doing all that time. It's ten or eleven years unaccounted for," Padma mused.

"We don't even know who took her in, do we?" Hermione asked Padma. "Did Trevor find a family for her?"

"I -" Padma stopped. "You know, Vati hasn't said. I'll have to ask. Seems like something he'd have been trying to find out, doesn't it?"

Rose see-sawed a hand. "He was working on finding information about her current whereabouts. The primary goal is to find her. He may not have dug back any further than the husbands."

This seemed extremely likely to Hermione.

"Was Trevor going to head to Ireland?" she asked with a smirk. "Or could he go back to America?"

Padma let out a short laugh. "Who knows? I'm sure Parvati does, but I don't."

"Did they ever date?" Rose asked slyly.

"Not that I know of," Padma hedged. "That's not to say nothing ever happened, though."

Quite true. Hermione hid a small smile.

"How does her bond with James work? Can they hear each other through it like Draco and I can? Like Rose and Ronan?"

Padma shook her head. "It's more like mine with Blaise, I think. We feel each other, but it's not actual thoughts. It's not a dialogue back and forth."

Interesting. Hermione thought if Parvati wanted to keep prior indiscretions with Trevor a secret, she probably could.

Something else had been bugging her, though. A little flag in the back of her mind had perked up during their group meeting earlier and she hadn't been able to pin down what it meant. She thought she was getting close to the heart of it now.

"We're heard so many different stories," she started slowly. "Bridget said a bookcase fell on her and her sister didn't do it. She wasn't afraid of her sister. She missed her after she left."

Rose and Padma both nodded.

"Katy didn't mention the injury at all and it didn't sound like she and Bridget were afraid of Raquel. She said Bridget stopped talking about her after she was sent away."

More nodding.

"But if Bridget missed her so badly, hated the reasoning behind Raquel's disownment, doesn't it seem like she'd have talked about her sister more? The way Katy made it sound, Bridget was just as indifferent to having her gone."

Padma leaned her head to one side, considering. "Maybe missing her sister took the form of not speaking about her. Maybe talking about Raquel made Bridget miss her more."

That made sense. Padma would know better than Hermione anyway, having a sister - a twin.

"And what about the brother? What was his name? Declan?" Rose inquired curiously. "He was between the two girls in age. What did he say about it?"

They'd heard about Declan from Big Willy himself, in Ireland. Hermione tried to think back. "He didn't mention the injury. He gave the unwanted-pregnancy story for why Raquel was sent away."

"Didn't get much out of him, did he?" Padma said, vexed. "Wish we could talk to him again."

They might have gotten more but Hermione had been somewhat sidetracked by the mention of the Magdalene Laundries. Come to think of it, Willy had detailed two stories he'd heard about how the injury to Bridget happened. One might have come from Declan; Willy hadn't specified.

She laid out this train of thought to the other two witches. "One story was about Bridget using her mum's wand and something falling on her. The other was an equestrian accident. If one of those came from Declan, why bother with the lie? Bridget told Big Willy herself what happened."

"Maybe Declan didn't say either one," Rose shrugged, not much fussed by the discrepancy. Padma was still snickering about the continued use of 'Big Willy.'

"Ooh, I wish we could talk to someone who knew the family personally!" Hermione cried out, frustrated. Draco felt it and gave her a hard nudge. Was everything alright?

Yes, yes, she sent back, still cross. She could see him paused in mid-air, looking down at them. It's nothing. Go play.

"Wait," Padma cut in suddenly. "Doesn't Aidan's family know them personally? Didn't he say they did? He referenced rumours in the village about the O'Learys being afraid of Raquel, but I thought he also mentioned that his parents knew them."

Hermione racked her brain. She thought Padma was right. Rose must have thought so too, excitement spreading across her face.

"The family must have been afraid of her. Otherwise, how would the rumours even get started? Who thinks to start a rumour about parents scared of their child? It's so off the wall, it must be true. We need someone to confirm it."

"Do we?" Padma asked sceptically. "We don't need to know for sure. It's all in the past."

This was true but Hermione's intense curiosity wouldn't let it rest.

Rose was on the same page. "I want to know if there were more incidents," the Veela said. "Things that happened when Bridget and Declan were even younger. The animals Raquel would trap and kill - how many? Were they family pets? Strays? Wild animals?"

"No, we don't need to know," Hermione admitted. "I just want to understand what could make someone do what she did. What kind of person did it take to come up with something so twisted? Yes, we know she did it. I just want to know what came before. I can't help it."

Padma, being a Ravenclaw at heart, could see the point.

"And I really want to know how she kept herself busy for the ten years between her disownment and her first marriage," Rose continued. "It can't all have been planning the gene splicing."

Hermione had a pretty good idea it had been, or at least a large chunk of it. "What interests me is how she was educated and raised in America. She was able to be at that fancy party - what was it for? Was it a charity she was already involved in? Something different? She got herself placed high up, very young."

"Her marriages escalated her status," Rose nodded. "I'm sure that was part of the attraction, separate from the wealth."

"Do you think that's why she got married at all? They had to provide something she needed or she wouldn't have done it."

"You think?" said Padma.

Before anyone could answer, a Bludger came zooming towards them. Hermione's wand was in her hand and she refreshed their shield charm, a pure reflex. Long in motion to head it off, Draco and Ronan nearly collided in front of them. Ronan caught the Bludger by hand and Hermione saw Padma's jaw drop.

He flung it away as Draco snarled, "Watch it."

"Do your job and I'm happy to," Ronan returned in a growl. Hermione and Rose both flinched as the two Veelas flew away

Hermione felt Draco's hot anger, sizzling and sharp. She wanted to send something calming his way but he wouldn't have it. He was in the game. Hermione sighed and sipped her wine instead, exchanging a dry look with Rose.

The blonde shook her head ruefully. Padma cleared her throat. "How's Ronan doing?"

"He's… alright," Rose hedged, eyes darting around. "He wants his wand back, though. He wants to toe the line so he can get it back."

Hermione had forgotten about that, in fact. She couldn't stop a measure of relief that there was still something to keep Ronan's behaviour in check without the Auror detail. Of course, Ronan could use Rose's wand if he really needed to, but Hermione would hold to the fact that Ronan still wanted his own. Maybe it gave drastically different results for him than Rose's did.

Hermione decided to talk about something else. Not Ronan, not O'Leary.

"What do you and Blaise want to do next, Padma?"

Padma looked startled, as if she hadn't considered it. "Blaise has talked about trying to find any extended Zabini relatives in Italy. Given that it seems best if we all spread out after this, that's probably where we'll end up."

"What about Parvati and James?"

"Doesn't he need to stay close to the Manor, as the designated transformation zone?" Rose chimed in curiously.

Padma shook her head. "Not necessarily. I think it'll be better if they scatter, too; at least, as much as they can. They can Apparate here or portkey once a month, if it's too far to Apparate. I don't know what James wants to do specifically, though. Vati hasn't said, but he does like the legislative thing. I think there's a chance he goes into politics."

Oh, that would be interesting. James Rosier, the ongoing spokesman for the tenebris seminio. Hermione was taken aback.

"And you want to go back to France," she said to Rose, who nodded over sipping her wine.

"I've been a little surprised that so many of them want to leave without having closure on the investigation," Rose confessed.

Hermione had been, too, but Padma spoke up. "We've been at the Manor nine months now. I think a lot of them just want to move on, even if it means they get news second or third-hand."

"As long as it isn't because they don't trust the Ministry to get the job done," said Hermione warily. "As long as none of them are planning to do anything on their own." She noticed Rose looked slightly gratified that someone other than Ronan could be under suspicion or considered untrustworthy.

"Blaise feels comfortable with the ones who have moved out," Padma emphasised. "And James can actively command the wolf pack when that time comes."

That was true and not a little reassuring. All three witches fell into a companionable silence, leaning back on their hands to watch the Quidditch in the last of the dimming sunset.