Spectacular Timing, Really.

Adrienne wasn't thoroughly pleased about the arrangement, but she was far too curious to turn it down. Still, meeting at Hogwarts of all places was not necessarily ideal. It was just lucky that she hadn't run into Keiran or Selwyn on the way to his office. Kaiden's, that is. Apparently he had spoken to his family about what had happened. Which was great, in the worst possible way, because she had just started to wonder if she even wanted to know.

Why shouldn't she just change direction and go to the Deputy Headmaster's office and apologize, saying that she'll drop it? Some sense of obligation was lingering, clearly, and her feet kept going despite the urge to do the opposite.

She really just needed to know if she had been played for a fool twice, instead of just once, and if it was something that could be dealt with and put away. So she refused to let herself feel guilty about it, and made her way to Kaiden's office, knocking twice before dropping her hands to her sides and glancing down the hallway.

Perhaps, if things were figured out quickly enough, she could stop by Selwyn's office anyway. She wasn't sure when he had classes, but it was worth stopping by to see.


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Addie hadn't run into Selwyn on the way to Kaiden's office, that much was true. But that didn't mean he didn't know that she was on her way to his office.

Okay, that was a lie. He didn't know. Not until they got to the Charms Corridor. When you catch a glimpse of your girlfriend - the woman who's supposed to be your girlfriend, the woman you want to be your girlfriend... This was the whole issue, wasn't it? Shylock may have been messed up in every other way, but Selwyn knew where he stood with him. When it came to Addie, he was all at sea.

So when he caught a glimpse of her walking through the school, he followed. It wasn't like he was spying. He had to keep telling himself that because it felt very much like he was spying. But he was the Deputy Headmaster. These children's safety was his responsibility.

Addie knocked on Kaiden's door and the scene suddenly took a turn for the surreal. Selwyn had expected to be angry, or jealous. When he'd first heard about Kaiden he'd been angry. It wasn't like he was immune to that. But Addie's posture as she looked down the corridor was so ordinary, it made the scene feel like something from a book and Selwyn was surprised by how little shock he felt.

Nevertheless, he couldn't just let this go on. It was his school (no matter that Keiran was running it) and he was responsible for what went on within its walls. Or something. It was a flimsy excuse but Selwyn would use whatever excuse he could find.

This situation may have thrown him into confusion, but Selwyn was still convinced that Addie was too credible to be speaking to any of the Poliakoffs alone.

He ran his fingers through his hair, both in frustration and to mess it up a little more, before striding down the hallway towards her.

"Fancy seeing you here."

He wondered if he should've waited. Maybe just a little longer.

The information that had been poured into him was a little more than he had been expecting to be given and it was hard to swallow it all. His brother, twin brother to be exact, had been pretending to be him the entire time he was missing. So that explained why no one searched for him "too long" as his parents had put it.

What Adrienne had told him also made a lot more sense now...

If anything, he should have had his brother show up at the school as well as Adrienne to make things all the more believable. Because at this point, even he wouldn't believe everything that was going on if he wasn't smack in the middle of it. Why did this even have to happen to him?

He knew he's told her to come to Hogwarts to meet him, but the knocks on his door still came as a surprise and hesitated to open the door, staring at it from where he stood in front of his desk. His stomach hurt and it didn't make it any better when he heard a voice that didn't belong to Adrienne.

Looks like he waited too long to open.

"Dammit."

He sighed and walked toward the door, waiting a moment to open it. This complicated everything, why'd he have to show up? Kaiden opened the door, a worried expression on his face, (not from what was going on now, believe it or not, but from the entire situation including his family) murmured, "Hello." and he stepped aside to allow them to enter.

Adrienne had glanced down at her feet, wondering if he was even in his office or not, but then she looked down the hallway again. Oh. Great. Not that she wasn't pleased to see him on her own time, without the person on the other side of the door. But this just... it wasn't ideal, was it?

"I had a few people to see," she replied, her voice timid as she looked up at him. "This, um, this was my first stop, so-"

The door opened and she turned her head far too quickly, probably looking even more uncomfortable than she felt - which was saying something. She couldn't bring herself to respond to Kaiden's greeting before he stepped out of the way, and Adrienne realized that he hadn't told Selwyn to go away.

Confused, she turned to look back at the deputy headmaster as she walked into the office. Had they talked or- or made peace or something? It felt like she was the one out of the loop now, when really Selwyn was the worst off. And Kaiden held all of the face cards.

She was just somewhere in the middle, really, and it wasn't a particularly pleasant feeling.

"Um. So, you wanted to see me?" She asked, directing her attention towards Kaiden. There was no easy way to point out that she hadn't invited Selwyn along, so she just acted like it was supposed to happen the way it had. Like it wasn't bizarre or unexpected. Still, she stood behind a chair rather than sitting, waiting for some kind of sign that their talk would still happen.

Instead of trying to calm Adrienne and tell her it was all right, Selwyn let her speak. It must have been clear to her that it wasn't all right, or she'd not be trying to apologise.

He barely noticed when Kaiden opened the door. Kaiden was the last thing on his mind right now. But he caught Addie's attention as though he had her on a line.

Distantly, Selwyn knew he found this irritating, but all of his emotions felt too dim to really be important. It was as though someone had erected a shield charm between him and the rest of the world. He wasn't sure whether Addie was in his world or the other one.

She looked utterly confused as she entered Kaiden's office, which made Selwyn smugly satisfied. She hated not being the one in control.

Unlike Addie, he immediately pulled out a chair to sprawl in.

"Oh? Can we summon you now?" He asked. "I didn't know you were a house elf, although it does explain some things."

As much as he would have loved to tell the Deputy Headmaster to go away when he'd opened the door, the very reason he didn't was because of the title he held. Kaiden didn't know how petty Selwyn could be, if he even could be, but the last thing he needed was for him to go to the Headmaster and say something, anything, that could get him fired.

Believe it or not (Kaiden couldn't believe it himself), he liked being back at Hogwarts as a professor. At first it had been something to help with his memory and while it had helped, though only a tiny bit, he'd actually grown close to a few of the students and he didn't want to leave because of something stupid. But, if he thought about it, the situation he was in right now probably was stupid. It was stupidity on his part, having Adrienne come to Hogwarts to talk to him, because now they had an extra person in the conversation; one he would have preferred stay out of it, for now at least.

"Yeah-," he stopped when Selwyn spoke. He'd wanted to ignore him for as long as possible, he'd hoped that he was maybe not going to say anything during the conversation.. He was wrong. The twenty year old felt his eyes narrow and his hands curl as Selwyn basically insulted Adrienne and he struggled to keep his composure so he wouldn't lash out.

He wanted to talk, not fight.

Clearing his throat, Kaiden continued, "I.. spoke to my family." he said awkwardly, his eyes darting from Selwyn to Adrienne. "I managed to get something out of them, I don't think it's the whole story but it makes sense. At least, some of it does.. I, thought you'd want to know." He didn't think he was going to be able to handle this, he didn't feel comfortable at all and it was making it hard to explain himself.

Selwyn seemed so relaxed that Adrienne was starting to actually believe her theory that they had somehow started getting along. That is, until Kaiden reacted so sharply to the other professor's comment. Perhaps it was because the chiding was directed at her, but she didn't think - and rightly so - that anything had actually been solved.

All his comment actually did was draw out a terse, almost blank expression as she turned away from him and let her gaze drift to the ceiling. Brilliant. This whole thing was a bloody disaster. Luckily, Kaiden started to explain again, allowing her to pretend she hadn't been offended. Because, of course she knew what Selwyn meant. He'd gotten mad at her about it before. She wasn't interested in rehashing that.

At least Kaiden had done what he said he would. That was more than she could probably claim most of the time.

To be fair, his lead-up wasn't particularly helpful. So she decided to try and make the room less awkward. Walking around the chair, she sank into it, offering an encouraging nod. "It's a start. I'd like to know what, exactly, they thought was going to happen, if what you've said is true."

Which, of course, she wasn't convinced it was. Particularly if the part about his losing his memories was even remotely accurate.

Intent on Adrienne, Selwyn never even noticed Kaiden's reaction. Kaiden might have lost his memories, or been obliviated, or whatever his family had done but he had still treated Addie abominably.  Why should he care what Selwyn said about her?

As her gaze slid over him, Selwyn couldn't help but smile at her, satisfied he'd made his point.

He continued watching her as Kaiden explained that he'd spoken to his family.  Well, obviously. If Addie had turned up here for some other reason, Selwyn would have been doing more than baiting her.

"You're right," he finally turned to Kaiden. "We do want to know. I want to know exactly what they've told you."

His interest in Kaiden was purely cursory.  He wanted to help the boy, assuming he needed help, so Adrienne would stop thinking she was obliged to do it.

He could feel his body still tensing with the atmosphere they were in, but he tried his hardest to calm himself down. He didn't remember exactly what he had been like before everything had happened but apparently, after graduating he'd been a much more calm person. Unlike during his Hogwarts years, where he'd always lash out for almost no reason. He didn't want to end up doing that, he had to stay calm.

Kaiden didn't think Selwyn was saying things to try to bother him, maybe Adrienne, but just hearing him speak irked him. The way he thought he was entitled to know everything that was going on, well, frankly pissed him off. But Kaiden had to watch himself, for more reasons than one.

"I don't see why you have to know anything, but whatever." The sentence came out of his mouth before he could stop himself, but he continued anyways. "Anyways, I don't know how well you knew my family." Hell, even I don't know them that well, anymore. Kaiden returned his attention to Adrienne. "But my brother, Oliver, was the reason it seemed like I was still here when I wasn't. He's the one who you lived with up until you left. Not me." It sounded outrageous, even to him but it was the truth.

"My parents said a Pureblood household couldn't lose their heir, so he stood in my place. They said he was prepared to stay in my place for as long as necessary. Which I don't understand." He muttered the last bit to himself, mostly. It angered him that instead of looking for him when he disappeared, their solution was to have his twin brother stand in for him. Their solution was to act as though he had never gone missing, and probably that Oliver had never really existed. Just Kaiden.

He didn't believe it that much, though. That Oliver would just sit by and pretend to be him without a word of complaint. But he hadn't gotten the chance to talk to his brother, he barely even got to see him when he was talking to their parents. But he couldn't just believe that his brother wouldn't have some sort of negative opinion on the whole matter. "My parents were the ones who wanted you gone, and I guess they told Oliver to do whatever necessary to make you want to leave.. And I guess he did it."

He cleared his throat after the last bit, feeling his breath catch in his throat. It.. kind of hurt to say all of that, why wouldn't it, he was basically betrayed by his entire family. He couldn't help but wonder, though, how they - no, how she would take what he said. It was hard to believe, if he wasn't in the middle of it he probably wouldn't believe it either. It scared him, that she wouldn't believe him. If she didn't, he didn't know what he would do.

He regretted not following through, not talking to Oliver when he had the chance.

This was rapidly coming to some kind of territorial contest, and Adrienne was not interested in the least. Selwyn had a right, really, to know what was going on, even if she didn't particularly appreciate the way he said so. When Kaiden began to sass the other professor - no, the Deputy Headmaster - she held up a hand without hesitation. That would more likely get him fired than anything else, and that certainly wouldn't help anything.

Of course, once Kaiden brought himself back to task and explained things properly, she shrank back into her chair. Surely she would have noticed. And if she hadn't, what did that mean about the feelings she'd believed she felt for Kaiden before he left? Or, equally - how dangerous did that make Oliver, particularly for her?

"Well that doesn't sound quite right," she said finally, once he had attempted to come to a conclusion about it all. "They didn't seem to want me to sign off on the annulment."

The word brought a bitter taste to her mouth, though she supposed she would have been vastly more disturbed had the annulment not been an option, considering this new information. Looking to Selwyn, she frowned deeply. "Maybe they didn't want me digging around, so they made it so I wanted nothing more than to be separated from them. By the time it was settled, .... I had zero intention of going back there."

Of course, there was a blatant level of doubt lingering behind her eyes now that she had drawn them away from Kaiden. She did want to believe that he could be honest with her, but at the same time - if his parents were so bafflingly callous, who knows what they could have done? Maybe they had made things worse when he went to speak to them.