Not This Again

Lee was angry--as angry as Michael was but from a totally different position than Michael had expected him to take.

"You've got nothing!" Lee was hissing at Michael softly. "It's a completely unfounded conjecture on your part. I am not moving forward until you get me proof. You get me something to go on, and I'll do something. Until then, we follow normal procedure. Do you understand me?"

Michael was tempted to try to warn Lee again. However, Jack's voice came in, and it gave him a way to take a deep breath and walk away from Lee.

"Come with me," he told Jack softly. He motioned her to follow him, and he walked a long distance away from where the crowd was growing, away from the train and the noise. He stepped behind a pillar out of sight, took a cigarette out and lit it, and took a moment, taking a puff or two to calm himself.

"This would be better done over a firewhiskey," Michael said quietly, still looking to be sure he wasn't going to be heard. "You're too young to know some of the old history this involves, but its important you know because I might well be on my own in this for a bit.

"Robert's wife, Kate, has a sister who is 6 and a half years older than Kate. And--know this. Her sister is a strong, dyed-in-the-wool Slytherin. The only one in Kate's family so far as Kate knows. Her name is Gwen. They haven't spoken since around the time Khaat was born.

"And you need to know why. Gwen's hatred of all people, all creatures not pureblood wizard, goes wide and deep. Their parents were Gryffindors. Actually, its a long line of Gryffindors. Gwen was an anomaly in that.

"She hated Kate almost as long as Kate can remember. Kate was taller, thinner, prettier, and well, you can about guess. Sibling rivalry that there just was no patch for.

"It didn't get better when Kate met Robert, me, Sirius, James, and of course Remus. Gwen's hatred of Kate and Robert and Remus seemed to just explode. When she found out that Kate was dating Remus, Gwen just about came unglued. So far as Gwen was concerned, Kate was dating a filthy animal. It didn't get any better when she started dating Robert because Gwen always had it in her head that Robert had tainted blood too and was the same as his brother. She was sure they were both sub par wizards with less than adequate intelligence. Kate was never going to change that in Gwen.

"When Kate married Robert and got pregnant, Gwen was sure Kate had married, basically, pure scum. Her words weren't that kind, though. I won't bother repeating them. When Kate got pregnant, Gwen wanted her to abort Khaat because she was sure the any children Kate bore through Robert were going to be animals, and completely beneath the family status. In fact, Robert said she had said some confusing mess that made him think she believed that Robert really isn't Khaat's father. Gwen seemed to be thinking some weirdness about Remus being the real father.

"Gwen has never ever seen Khaat, which was Robert and Remus's decision. To my knowledge, Khaat doesn't know that Gwen exists. Robert, Remus and Gwen had a mammoth falling out. Robert kept Kate out of it to protect her and her unborn child. Gwen believes to this day, so far as I know, that they wheedled their way into Kate's life to take advantage of her and ruin their family. Mind you, they weren't exorbitantly wealthy, so I don't know what the hell Gwen thought Robert was going to get out of it.

"Anyway, Gwen promised to break up Kate's unhealthy attachment to 'those filthy dogs and get rid of them all' if it took Gwen her last breath to do it.

"Gwen Fawcett is one shifty, bitter old crone. She looks like everybody's favorite granny, but don't you believe it. She was accomplished at dark arts then. And I'm betting she's even better now. She's been working on the continent in the Ministry diplomatic corps, so she hasn't been on English soil in decades.

"She's the one I saw in the park. I'd know her anywhere. I'm sure of it. There is absolutely no healthy reason for her to be in England right now. And, here's the icing on it for me..."

He took a deep breath before he finished. "I just found out she's the current headmistress of Ilvermorny. Lee hired her b/c the dossier and resume he got on her was glowing, and because, as sister in law of Robert, he believed he could trust her. She was all smiles and glowing during her interview with them, spoke highly of how close she was to her family. Right. Over thirty years without a syllable? Sure. She outright lied to secure the job.

"She's in this business with the train and the kids up to her eyeballs. You can bet Gringotts on it. She can get in and out of England any time she wants because of that new portal between Ilvermorny and Hogwarts.

"I don't know if anyone else is involved or not, but you can bet she's got a huge role in all this. And, she's only got one end in mind. She intends to destroy Robert, Kate, Khaat, all the grandkids, everything--in whatever way she can. Her hatred of werewolves knows no bounds, so I honestly can't promise it will stop with the Lupins if she manages to do it.

"You heard what Lee said. He thinks I'm full of shit. I know what I know because I lived it with them. I have to tell Robert and Kate, but I need to follow this wherever it goes. It makes entirely too much sense, and it makes every instinct I have kick into gear. Jack, I'm as sure of this as I've been of anything. Gwen Fawcett needs to be put under a microscope until further notice, however I can do it.

"I can't promise that all the werewolves won't be on her elimination list. I just don't know. This may well be beyond me to do by myself, though. And, Robert is going to need to have personal security. He's never allowed it before. I don't know Bishop enough to know if I can trust her to ask her to put a guard on him, but I might have to risk asking her."

He sighed, angry and frustrated and kicked at one of the brick pillars with the toe of his shoe. "Damnit! We should have known someday she'd come back. We should have been ready for her."

((Sorry that was longer than I expected. Got thrown for a weird loop tonight))

Her eyes moved sharply from man to man, gaze heavy upon their face. She caught only the tail end of Lee's speech to Michael, something about him having nothing. Jack was predisposed to side with Michael, of course, but she also had heard good things about Lee from Bishop, so she was not going to discount him so easily. Still, Michael was probably right.

She followed Michael silently, eyes still moving slowly but alertly across the crowd, exuding calm despite her intimidating gaze.

She had never seen Michael smoke. Her hand twitched at the mention of Firewhiskey. Habit. Ever since that Christmas with Max where she went full AWOL, she abandoned her practice of keeping a flask on her person at all times. Now, she waited out the long day for the safe release of a drink at the end of night. Alcoholic tendencies were best kept at home. She was an adult now, after all.

So that explained the park. She found her brain scrambling to file this new information, assuming it was going to put some pieces together and give her the chance to figure out the next step, to move forward. But though the file was valid in and of itself, it did not seem to fit with all of the other information. She ran it again but still it did not fit.

"Michael," she began, her head shaking, expression pulled together. "I believe that this woman probably has an issue with Robert and certainly it's not a coincidence that she's involved with this school that has all these issues but... think about the logic. A woman has a personal issue with Robert... so she kidnaps an entire private school worth of children? That's kind of a huge leap. I have to agree with Lee... It sounds like pure conjecture. There's not an ounce of evidence that isn't coincidental, if even that. It would make more sense to be Blood, if he was smart enough. He was actively recruiting youth... But still." She heaved a shrug. "Gwen doesn't seem to be a fit."

She paused. "But there's gotta be something to Ilvermorny. How is it that the school is basically on a random forced quarantine and all of the Hogwarts students disappear. There's got to be some correlation. That's more than coincidental."

(ooc. need to head to bed. work tomorrow. but i'll be home in the afternoon. feel free to godmod michael if you need to for some reason.)

"And how? How do you do it?" Michael asked. "It's one thing to make a feather or a teacup disappear. It's totally different to make a train disappear. Portals are difficult at best to create. Not for amateurs. Can't be apparating. Doesn't cover the distance..." his thoughts trailed off.

"But, if Gwen was here, and the kids were there..." he frowned. "Does that also mean she has a way in and a way out at will? Like Hogwarts' headmaster? And what was she doing here anyway if the kids were coming there? Good intentions or not, I find it hard to believe she'd be here at the time this all happened.  She'd have had no way of knowing she'd run into someone who might recognize her...." His voice trailed again. His thoughts were racing and scattered, but Jack had mentioned Blood. He tried to refocus again.

"James? I don't know. There would be advantages, definitely. But he's not the brightest bloke with a wand. Remember his style is more about blowing up the bloody train like he tried before. He's a lot of brawn, but not always a lot of gray matter. I can't see him doing this without help.  

"Suppose there is even the most remote chance that there's a portal opening somewhere along the track to the school? Suppose there's any reason for us to actually get a couple of brooms and fly it? Just for kicks and giggles?" he asked her.

((Cool cool. Again, sorry for the wait!)

She supposed Michael had been dedicated to the cause of protecting the Lupins for so long that it would be hard for him to investigate under the assumption that it wasn't Gwen. Fine. She would, and that was fine. If he was right, he was good enough at his job that she wouldn't get far. And if it was Gwen, something would lead her that way.

"Portkeys, portals, some mega-summoning spell," she muttered, listing off the first possible avenues of investigation.

She agreed. It sounded too intelligent for Blood, too sophisticated. "Probably not Death Eaters, in case whatever happened messed up their heirs. Unless they can sort later." Not a total loss.

She liked the idea of searching the tracks and moved to agree, but her face fell into thought. "A portal that delivers only the students. That's a sophisticated portal. That requires very specific magic..."

She paused. "Sounds like something you'd find in Gringotts."

(not a problem. no worries. )

"Portkey or portal certainly makes more sense, but think about it. In order to create it, powerful enough to take an entire train and all its occupants, and without the Ministry detecting it, it would have taken some bloody sophisticated and powerful magic. I would certainly think that would eliminate quite a number of witches and wizards. I mean, think about it a second."

She had brought up Gringotts. That made sense. Gringotts was where anything not a governmental secret was kept because it was so secure. There were a great many mysteries and fortunes laid there.

"Gringotts. Makes sense. I can do Gringotts, if we need to," he said. He wasn't going to give her a direct answer about whether he had or hadn't gone there before, but he knew his noncommittal was just as loud an answer as any. Of course the Goblins themselves is the strongest defense they've got. They're tricky little buggars." However, he did enjoy some of the "adventures" he did with Jack. It brought a mischievous smile to his face. "You know, its been awhile since we've had to actually take matters into our own hands," he said. "It would be a shame if we had to resort to some of that, wouldn't it?"

He looked around the pillar, back towards the others and saw that Rookwood and Krum, of course, were gone already. Why were they never where they were needed?

"Gone already? What the hell? Hopefully someone has asked Rookwood how the hell this portal or porting is supposed to work it the first place, who created it, and who had access to both schools besides the headmasters. If not, then we need to find Rookwood and ask him a few questions. I'm not accusing the man, but he has information that, at this point, we need and he's nowhere to be found.

"There is something we can chase down in our own department is who authorized the use of that sort of level of magic at the Ministry. That should be on file in our own department. It might well have been Robert for all I know, but then, it might be that he or Lee has some idea, about who has that sort of skill in the first place to be trusted to make it possible for the schools to be linked in the way it was intended to go.

"Second, I need to find out what I can on Gwen's background. Why would she leave her lucrative salary in our various embassies to go work at some school in the States? They can't possibly be matching or besting what she made in the diplomatic corps. From what I knew of her, that would never have been Gwen's cup of tea. Not to mention that I need to talk to Robert."

He sighed, taking a long deep drag off the cigarette and exhaled the smoke slowly, watching it rise and disappear off into the distance. He needed to let all the swirling in his brain settle.

"As I see it, we've got a lot of possible moves here. What do you think our next move is?"

Jack personally felt like her next step was assembling her team. This seemed like the sort of puzzle that would titillate him, would get him excited about the world again. Gabby could be persuaded, she was sure, to do something as well. He needed an excuse to get out. Then there was Fred and Albus, whose combined talents she would wager could unravel this mystery if they were only given the time and resources. And Oliver! Merlin, Oliver had to know. The thought fizzled the moment she realized Kieran had been there – certainly his business partner had already let him know.

“I think the better question,” she said, “is who had access to the trains and influence at both schools.” Certainly something was happening at Ilvermorny, but she felt that it was rather telling that no strange occurrences happened at Hogwarts, only on the train. “I’ve heard word that the train was heavily warded. Whatever ward wasn’t on the train but was on the school might be the key as well.”

He continued to think aloud and she tacked on “if it was ever documented” a little unhelpfully as he considered looking into magical authorization. Her own job led her to lots of undocumented events that certainly merited some filing. She hated filing, too, but if she buckled down and did it, then she knew the only reason someone did it was because they didn’t want the paper trail. This was exactly the sort of thing that would go “forgotten”.

Michael wanted to know their next move. She followed the train of thought. She wanted to get to the kids and rescue them. She had to know where they had gone. So she either needed to know who had done it, or how they had done it. There was no definitive path for those two problems. They could look their lists and rattle every bad guy they knew, they could go chase thoughts at Gringotts, could go to Hogwarts, could go to Ilvermorny, could go down the tracks.

She shook her head. “It’s a scary place when there are this many options and none seem more promising than the other.” She gazed across the platform. “Bishop should be compiling a missing person’s list and sweeping the tracks, I think that’s covered. I think we…” she growled a bit at their wide, unfiltered amount of options. “Need to either reach out to the Order or talk with Rookwood.”

(ooc--didn't want to presume that jack went back with him to talk to robert but, yeah, robert's on the same page with jack.)

Michael saw his cigarette had mostly burned out with him getting only a couple of useful drags off it. He opened up his cigarette case and used his old cigarette to light a new one. Then he tossed the old one to the ground and crushed it under his foot. He glanced to the train and saw Robert getting off.

"One moment. Maybe we can get a couple answers before we buggar off somewhere else," Michael said. He walked down to Robert who frowned deeply, seeing Michael coming.

Robert met him partway. "What's going on with you?" Robert asked. He took Michael's cigarette, took a puff off it and handed it back. "Thank you. Now, what's going on?"

"You're going to want more than that one hit off my cigarette, Mate," Michael said. "I think I know something you don't."

"Good. I'm glad somebody knows something," Robert seemed relieved.

"This isn't good news," Michael tried to brace him. "Guess who the headmaster of Ilvermorny is."

"Is this a quiz? I don't know. Who?"

"Gwen Fawcett," Michael said quietly, watching the expression in Robert's face. He'd been blindsided entirely. It rendered him speechless for a moment.

"How do you know that?" Robert asked, old anger from the past already flaring up for Robert.

"Because I saw the old biddy in the park today myself," Michael replied. "She's back, and that can't be for anything good."

"Michael," Robert said in a hushed tone, "What makes you think the kids are at Ilvermorny? It wasn't supposed to be the stinking train. The portal from Hogwarts is a ferry at the Black Lake. There should be no connection to the train."

"Yeah, well,..." Michael began.

"You don't have any evidence that the kids went to Ilvermorny. You don't know that Gwen was involved at all," Robert hissed. "And Gwen isn't capable of that level of magic, not the kind to create that. That takes a bloody big spell to do that."

"Why isn't Lee checking the Ilvermorny grounds?" Michael was irked.

"Because we didn't have any inking the kids might actually go there. They were to go to Hogwarts at Fall Term and then take the ferry to Ilvermorny," Robert said. "Seems silly to hijack kids that were headed there anyway this fall."

"Depends on your motivation for doing it," Michael pointed out. "Either way, you and your family are most likely Gwen's target now that you know..."

"I can take care of myself and my family," Robert said. "These parents waiting here for their kids for summer are in crisis. Their kids are missing. Mine aren't."

"Aren't they? Where's Andrew?"

"Andrew," Robert remembered. Andrew was supposed to be on that same train home to him and Kate for the summer. How could he have forgotten? He hadn't needed to meet the almost-16 year old wizard because the young man knew how to make his way to either St. Mungos, the Ministry, or to the Leaky. Andrew was to bring Poppy Levski-Belby with him and then meet Kate today, and that wasn't going to happen.

"Who signed the authorization for the portal?" Michael asked.

"I did, but for the ferry. I signed nothing for a train," Robert said.

"And no anomalies in magic usage?" he asked.

"I don't know," Robert bristled. "Someone in the Department of Mysteries might be able to tell you that," he said pointedly. "Look, I'll ask Lee to check and see if he can access the school. If not, then I suggest you find Theodore Rookwood because he's supposed to be able to port between the schools, the same way that the Ilvermorny headmaster is supposed to be able to."

"You mean Gwen."

"Yes, I mean Gwen."

"That much access to her is exceptionally dangerous, and you know it," Michael said.

"Yeah, well, the barn door is open and the horse is already gone, Michael," Robert said. "Work with what you have, not with what you don't. If I find out that this was Gwen's idea, I'll take care of her more permanently this time. In the meantime, perhaps you should start with Rookwood, unless you and Jack have a better plan."

((Figured Jack would follow.))

Jack watched Michael quietly, her own mind working, but deferring to the fact that Michael did have an insight into the Minister of Magic's mind. Not that that was much anymore, there were so many things happening outside of Ministry control that it was entirely possible that being outside of the Lupin Loop might be more helpful. She saw the degradation, she knew the petty criminals, and she didn't have all the political Cant's and Won'ts to limit her imagination.

Jack opened her mouth to speak a few times, but found no room. And she could wait. She could.

The word Mysteries made her chin turn and her hand raised, a fun little wave wriggling through her finger bones. "Hello, Jack Dyllan, Department of Mysteries, here," she said, almost a bit sardonically. "You know, a riddle crossed my desk recently. You have an island, and a castle. A group of kids try to leave the island, but cannot. A group of kids leave the castle, but disappear. Do you know what we call this?" She looked around, as though waiting for the answer. "Well, we don't call it a coincidence."

She shook her head. "Sorry, Robert, I know he's a friend, but why exactly didn't he look into it when a Hogwarts student, mind you, reminded us all that the Hogwarts students attending classes there never came back? And stopped answering letters? Do we have any leads on that? That might help us with this."

Did they have a better plan? No. She crossed her arms. "I want to know what happened to the kids at Ilvermorny too. What happened?"

"Actually, the Americans did look into it. How accurate their intel is, is questionable, and I've asked Lee to look deeper into that. Touchy business when you tell a foreign leader that his intel isn't worth shit. But, their reports said that the school reassured them that there was no mishaps on their end and gave them documentation that the students had elected to stay on for further and deeper study into Indigenous Magic, and that there were no missing students. Blamed the letters on the post. And that was the end of their investigation. Sounded to me like complete stonewalling. I have told Lee that we want better than that, even if we have to send our own folks in there. Ilvermorny has yet to reply to my request to let our investigators into the school. We may need to try to infiltrate on our own. Lee might be a friend, but I won't let our friendship stand in the way of finding our kids.

"I don't know that Lee is covering anything. I honestly think he's hit some sort of a snag, and I think he's having trouble getting the school to open up to anyone for us to see what the heck is going on there."

"Then," Michael said, "Maybe Rookwood needs to get us a ferry boat. Maybe Jack and I need to go there ourselves."

"You're certainly welcome to try," Robert said. "If you can find Rookwood. He's not the most social animal. Perhaps, if you can't find him, you can find Eli, and he can get you to Rookwood."

"Yeah, but it's not just extended stays and post gone missing," Jack said, this time impatient to have her say. "Did no one read the letter from that the Longbottom girl sent us? It wasn't even sent to me - she showed it to me after the fact. They don't have food. And if those are kids at a school, it's going to be worse for kids stolen from a school."

This is why Jack gave up on the Order, why she gave up on the Department of Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures. The Department of Mysteries was like being contracted by the Ministry to run the country behind the scenes, and even so, bureaucratic nonsense had rattled her from being able to be useful.

Jack wanted to go. But she knew she couldn't do all of this without a friend.

"Let me send a Patronus and let's do this."