chapter 4

December had the shortest days of the year, Lin thought. It was not five in the afternoon yet, but the street lamps already enveloped the roads in their light. Lin was both apprehensive and mystified when objects became lost in the darkness, or changed their appearance, seeming to be what they were not. It was her job to reveal them to be what they were, sometimes beautiful, but more often ugly. The snow crunched under her feet. It sparkled in the colourful lights of Christmas decorations. She was returning to the Ministry having visited everyone Mr Snape had mentioned and concluded that he had an alibi. The request of her boss was fulfilled, and she could carry on with her investigation the way she wanted.

She turned into a dim alley, barely noticeable from the street that had a dead end. Lin walked right through the wall without a pause. She had used this exit earlier with Jenni. The profile of Ansel Inwood interested her a lot more than that of Severus Snape. Her suspicion that getting Inwood’s file would be considered classified information, due to his rank, was correct. Unfortunately, she had to speak with the new head of the curse breaking department to get it. He should have given a copy to her earlier. Did he really expect to slow down her investigation? Lin hurried to get to his office before five, before all the departments began closing by the standard official Ministry working day although a few would stay working overtime. Lin was not going to ask for the file as if it was a privilege, it was her right. She was aware that the higher stations could give her official and meaningless abracadabra for excuses why the files were not ready. If getting it straight away did not work, Lin had an item to trade. Ardall suspected the potions master, and he was interested in her investigation of this day.

Lin received the clearance to enter the floor and proceed to the head office. A secretary was there managing the correspondence. “What can I do for you?” the wizard asked, looking alert when Lin entered. His desk was beside the door that led to Ardall’s office. A loyal type, weakness for authority, dull but he imagines himself to be important, Lin decided.

“I am Auror Snow. Mr Ardall should have a folder for me, Mr Inwood’s case.”

The secretary pushed his large glasses up his nose and searched his records. “I am sorry, but Mr Ardall left an order to prepare the documentation for you tomorrow.”

“Then he made a mistake.” Before the secretary became stubborn and blocked her way, Lin swiftly walked right past him through the next door.

“Madam, you cannot go in there!” He tried to follow and grab her hand, but Lin was already greeting the Auror behind the door.

If Ardall was surprised, he did not show it. “Auror Snow, what can I do for you?” he asked, dismissing the secretary.

“I have a report about my meeting with Mr Snape. Since we work on the same case, I decided to file it today.”

Ardall nodded, eyeing her like he was trying to decide where the item he was interested in was. Lin on purpose left the documents hidden in her pocket. “Your quick work is admirable,” he agreed, discovering nothing. “I am surprised how fast you found him. Mr Snape is a highly elusive subject. Last time our agent needed three days to contact him, although Mr Snape was not purposely hiding from us. Not to mention another week to make sense of his testimony. I absolutely despise working with the subjects who answer like they are under Veritaserum: very precisely, leaving all the important details out, but without lying. Don’t you hate having only part of the information?” He alluded to the folder she had mentioned but not handed over.

“Mr Snape wasted none of my time,” Lin hinted as well. The knowledge that the potions master had cooperated so well with her deeply satisfied her. It proved that her methods were better than those on Ardall’s team. “Speaking of time, I’m about to head home. I would like to take Inwood’s file with me. I would like to make the trade quickly, if you don’t mind.” If he told her that he did not have it, she would pretend to have forgotten Snape’s file in her office.

Ardall budged first. “I wish I could do the same,” he said far too mildly to be genuine. “My wife is preparing old country soup today, and I will be staying here another hour.”

She thought he only shared this information with her so she might pass it on to Shacklebolt. Lin, however, was not planning to support Ardall when he tried to show off what a diligent worker he was. She did not offer her empathy while they exchanged the folders. Lin was glad to be satisfied with her lot in life which had mostly flexible work hours. She could leave ten minutes early, before all the office doors opened with the witches and wizards filling the corridors and elevators in a hurry to get home. There was no line for the Floo network either. Lin threw a handful of powder and vanished in the green flames.

Knowing how many break-ins had occurred in recent years at the Ministry, she had no intention of connecting it to her home. Instead, she chose a pub two blocks away. She lived in a townhouse, in a Muggle part of the city. She had no car, but her neighbours had seen her walking during business days and assumed that she worked nearby. They were not curious or overly friendly. Lin made sure it was so before she rented the place. It was a small home, set in a row of terrace houses. Inside there was a corridor with a bathroom to the left, past it, a living room and then a kitchen. Two rooms were upstairs, her bedroom and her office. The place was clean, but it looked like it was hardly lived in, which was fairly true.

Lin tapped the heater, and it began to rumble after nearly two days of inactivity. It was Tuesday, which meant the soup she cooked on Sunday was finished.

Lin set the potatoes to peel themselves and placed a piece of chicken into the frying pan, after adding a few basic spices to it.

She studied the files, meanwhile the food hissed quietly in the pan. The last six months of Inwood’s service was a basic routine, even awfully boring for a curse breaker. A chronological line of various incidents was laid out neatly and perfectly. Lin impatiently flipped to memorable cases which distinguished his work, such as the one when he was given an order of Merlin, second class. Nonsense, she decided. Or was it? The hissing and the blue flames on the stove were distracting. Lin was reluctant to work on this case.

This situation reminded her of Russia seven years ago, when there was no cooperation either. Everything ended in a disaster back then. There was no point in leaving the country just to encounter the same situation elsewhere, more so alone, without a lieutenant who had dark blue eyes. She tried not to think about him.

Michael was alive less than seven years ago. He was an optimist. He firmly believed that when faced with danger all the opposing factions would come together for the greater good. They merely needed an example of selflessness. Lin did not believe him, but he meant a lot to her, more so than her job or even her family. She had long accepted that Michael was gone and rarely thought about him, but the memory of him was like ice covered by a thin blanket of snow. Sometimes, his absence made her imagine that her heart was an ice palace, lost in the wind among arctic snows – far from the world and empty.