Hunting the Hunter

"That ought to take him awhile, even if he does find it," Kate said. "Depends on how Robert's mind was working. If his thoughts were coming faster than his words, he's liable to find nothing but hieroglyphs, I'm afraid. The only person I've found who could read them, without a hell of a lot of work, is Michael. Not saying that scribble stuff can't be worked out. It certainly can. When we were kids, Michael saw that gibberish and read it straight off. I've never understood how he could do that."

She sat making her drawing of the addition to the house. She shaped the room as an octagonal two story addition, with the meditation room on the ground floor, done in light natural woods and colors, with windows on almost all sides. It would be big enough for a few people to do tai chi in together if they wanted and would have natural plants and colors and elements.

The room right above would be the seers' room, with a natural beam log ceiling and glass inserts between the beams to let in natural light, day or night. She wanted fabric shades to be able to darken the room for seer's purposes, if it were needed. She wanted it to be comfortable for anyone who used it.

Angus was upstairs working on reading and signing his will and dropped his pen, which rolled under the bed. Unable to retrieve it, he managed to get up and decided to head over to Robert's bedroom to borrow one from the several he knew Robert kept in his nightstand.

He saw Brant in the hallway, and he seemed to be looking for something.

"Okay. I'll play," Angus said, leaning on the doorjamb for support. "I'm hunting for a pen. Let me know if you see one. What are you looking for? Maybe I can help you find it."

Jess chuckled and watched Kate draw " looks good Kate" she said " can't wait to see it for real" she smiled as she listened to her talk about Roberts writing then laughed " oh that would be interesting to see if he could read it and work it out." she said .

Brant turned to see Angus "Hey, your supposed to be resting?" He said " and I'm looking for Roberts potion book, hes got a potion on the stove but hes sound a sleep, sorely needed I might add, look you get back in bed, I don't want Jess having ago at you, I have a pen in my bag." he said and took out one from his pouch at his hip.

"I am resting," Angus said. "I'm just re-reading my new will and my new bank accounts and the trust fund I set up for Rose. And my blasted pen rolled under the bed. I figured it was easier to not have to crawl under the bed to get it." He took the pen from Brant. "Thanks."

"Potions book?" Angus frowned. "Um...he's been keeping his bag in my room. Well, our room...Um...Bella's and mine...I guess I'm not used to who the heck the room belongs to now, am I?"' he shook his head, laughing slightly at himself. "Anyway, there's usually a pocket potions notebook in there. Or I think that's what it is. It's all some sort of odd code made of doodles. Looks a lot like the crap he wrote on my chart this morning. I have no idea what it says, though, but its in both places. I suppose you're welcome to see if there's a book in the bag, if you want."

Brant smiled as he let Angus take the pen. " nice " he said " and I really should make one too, I need to make sure Chocola is taken care of if anything happens to me, we're dating." he said and smiled " I know its not like you being married an all." when Angus mentioned the bag in his room Brant's eyes went wide " oh nice, come on mate lets get you back in that bed." He moved to help him back to bed.

Once done he looked around the room seeing the bag Angus mentioned he walked over to it. " This one?" He asked holding it up so he could see it clearly.

"Doesn't matter," Angus said. "Still want to protect the one you love. Bella wants to learn to fight, and I want her to. I need to know that, if I'm not home, she can handle herself."

He let Brant help him back to bed. He saw Brant find the bag. "Yeah. That's the one. There's an old little black book in there.  Has a lot of nonsense in it. Looks a lot like this stuff."

He picked up the chart and laid it on the bed, showing Brant the top page where Robert had scribbled the odd little doodles in red ink over the black quill medical documentation. He had started the scribbles easily enough, in the margins, and then, as he seemed to be refining the whole bit in his head, the red ink flowed over top of the black quill markings when he'd run out of room.  To Angus, it all looked like a bit of phrenetic mess.

"Looks like utter madness to me," Angus said about the red scrawlings.

Brant nodded his head as Angus spoke about wanting Bella to protect herself and he thought of Chocola. " yeah, makes sense you would like I would with Cho." he said his voice was soft as if he had realized he didn't know if Cho could protect herself now he made a note to ask her and if she couldn't he would teach her some spells that would stop any attacker dead in their tracks.

Brant chuckled as Angus said the writings looked like utter madness to him." yeah some do that to keep their spells hidden given time I can decipher it it was kinda a natural talent of mine at school " he said and chuckled " that and it helps with traveling to foreign countries what with hieroglyphic's and ancient Arabic to contend with." He opened the book and rubbed his chin " hum looks like this could take some time."

"Bella wants to partner with me," Angus said. "I just want to know she can defend herself before I put her back out in that sort of fire again. I don't mind her doing that, but I need to know she can handle it.

"As for that stuff, I think its some sort of shorthand he uses when he's working on a potion and his mind runs faster than he can write. He said once that he takes it out of shorthand when he puts it in his big potions books. I think he does that once he feels confident he's gotten it all right.

"As far as a real code goes, I didn't see many pieces of a real coded document until I started working for Robert. And even then, the only person I saw ever really break a code was Michael. He seems to be a man of many talents when it comes to any sort of hidden thing."

Brant chuckled and nodded "Yeah, I've seen it only once he wrote a note for me but seeing I couldn't read it he rewrote it." Brant said flipping a page to try and understand it more. He heard Angus mention about there being no real code for it and he nodded his head in understanding.

"I guess I have my work cut out then decoding this." He said with a chuckle " can't rely on asking Robert all the time, wouldn't be fare." he said flipping the same page back so he was on the first again. "Oh and maybe its a good thing to have a partner who can have your back when needed, being a petitioner I work kinda on my own." he said cursing as he found a different character that he'd missed.

"I'm sure you're right," Angus agreed. He finished signing the paperwork that he needed to send in to Gringotts and the Ministry to finalize making all the new arrangements about his finances and his will and establishing a trust for Rose. He packaged them up for Archangel to deliver for him.

"I think that does it," he said. "I've got to start working on preparations for birthdays for the kids. Abbey is going to be 5 in a couple of weeks, and we missed Daniel's and Benjamin's birthdays at the end of March with everything going on. They just turned 2. I figured I'd put them together in one dinner celebration as soon as I can get up to do it. As long as I'm laying here with nothing to do, I might as well plan a dinner and a dessert."

He looked up from the note book at Angus talking again and noted all the paper work neat and wrapped up " oh , you want me to send those on for you so you can rest?" he asked slipping a piece of paper into the page and closing the book. He chuckled and nodded at the mention of the children's birthdays " yeah they did kinda get lost in the mix there didn't they " he said rubbing the back of his neck gently at the memories.

"I swear we need a spar room here , my neck is killing me from reading all those books earlier on." he sighed " the dinner sounds perfect , with balloons and a banner and hey we could even get the kids helping with the banner with out them knowing, I'll let Kate and Jess know they will love this idea, and anything we need I'll get it the book can wait a bit."