Well the rain let up

And the sun came out

And we were getting dry

"And It Stoned Me," Van Morrison

---

July 2018

When James stepped out onto Raigan's back porch on Sunday late afternoon, she took one look at him and just started laughing.

"What?" he asked, baffled by this odd behavior.

She just shook her head and shut her eyes to get herself together. When she opened them again, she smiled and said, "I take it it went well then?"

James hesitated. "Yeah," he said. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"I just haven't seen that 'I've got a new girl' face in a long time," she said. "Brings back memories."

"I don't have a face like that," said James. She just raised an eyebrow. "And anyway," he said, taking a seat in the porch chair. "I don't have a new girl."

"Alright, not a new one then. But she is a girl," said Raigan. "And it's been a long time."

"It has," agreed James, trying to keep the smile off his face. He didn't want to prove Raigan right.

Raigan crossed her legs and put down the document she'd been scanning. More for her upcoming conference attendance. "So," she said. "Tell me all about it. I need details."

James glanced at her and regretted it because she gave him this look like he'd just proven her point after all.

"I don't know," he said, crossing his arms. "I took her to dinner and it was kinda weird, but then we went back to the- to her house and just talked and stuff and it was a lot better."

"You just talked and stuff," she repeated.

"Yeah," said James. "I mean not just talked. But mostly. It was really nice actually."

Raigan's smile this time was a little more genuine, albeit still amused.

James was surprised to find he felt a little embarrassed.

"What'd you talk about?" she asked, tucking a piece of hair behind her ear.

"I don't know," said James. "Just whatever came up. Nothing serious." He chose not to mention the ring, because it was one of many things he had never told Raigan about. His intention to propose to her hadn't really been public knowledge. The only person who had known, actually, had been Dawson, because James had asked him once how he had managed not to make it awkward. James had been dreading the idea of getting down on one knee and he sort of thought Elise would hate it too. Of course, Dawson had been no help at all, because he was full of good old-fashioned American traditionalism. He'd asked Raigan's dad for permission and everything. Planned a whole event of it. James didn't think he could do any of that.

"And you stayed again?" she asked. "Overnight?"

James nodded. "We didn't like- do anything though."

She laughed a little. "I didn't say you did."

"I know," said James. "I'm just- I'm just saying I'm not trying to rush it."

She smiled again in a way that made James irrationally angry. She always knew what he was going to say before he said it. How he'd ever kept any of what happened a secret he did not know. He wondered how much she had guessed at. He would've liked to ask her, but then she would make him confirm or deny everything she had assumed.

"So you're thinking..." she prompted.

"I really like her," he said shortly. "If that's what you're looking for." He was getting a little tired of the interrogation. But Raigan didn't push it this time.

She reached over, gave his hand a brief squeeze, and said, "I know. I'm happy for you."

James sighed out the tension he'd let himself build up. "Thanks Rai. For your advice before and stuff."

She shrugged. "Don't worry about it."

---

"Morning," said James, knocking on the wall outside Elise's office door. He felt very, very nervous about seeing her all the sudden. She stood in the middle of the room, arms crossed in contemplation, with photographs spread all over the floor around her so it would have been almost impossible to walk from the door to the desk without stepping on something. "Whatcha doin?"

The photos all looked similar - business headshots in front of a gray background. The subjects inside grinned at the camera, their eyes occasionally flicking to the edges of the shot as if they were saying "Did you take it yet?"

Elise didn't look up right away. She frowned down at the pictures nearest her and then consulted the paper in her hand. "Morning," she said. Her eyes slid up to his for a second and then back to the paper.

She didn't volunteer anything else at first and James started to think she hadn't even realized who it was. He knew how difficult it could be to break her out of her thoughts when she was focused on something.

He took a step back, figuring he had better check in with Gillespie anyway and see what he was supposed to be doing that day, but then Elise finally spoke.

"Finster finally got back a pretty good list of the higher ups at Cleansweep," she said. There was something distant about her voice. "I'm trying to figure out the hierarchy, but it's not particularly straight-forward."

James saw now that the pictures weren't spread out randomly, as he had first thought, but in a sort of pyramid structure, the rows growing longer and longer as they reached the door. In several places, however, she had stacked or fanned out the images where she must not have been sure who belonged where.

"You know who the CEO is though?" he asked. He couldn't see much of the picture at the top from his angle, but the triangle clearly had a point.

Again, Elise waited for a longer pause than the average conversation before she answered, a slow and distracted, "Yes."

Then Regina appeared behind James at the door and said, "Just checking in."

Elise's eyes slid back into focus and she looked at Regina first, then at James, and finally back to Regina. "You mind tracking someone down for me?" she asked.

James stepped aside so that Regina could tiptoe across the room to get her assignment. She accidentally trod on the edge of one of the pictures and it's occupant let out a loud and precise, "Ouch. You idiot," and reached up to rub his shoulder. With one last glance at Elise, James decided she was busy enough and that he'd better get his own assignment anyway, so he retreated down the hall to Gillespie's office.

But when James knocked on the door, no one answered, and when he tried turn the knob, he found it locked. A quick glance under the crack told him the light was off. James stepped back, confused. Gillespie wasn't the most organized person he had ever met by a long stretch, but he was, for the most part, timely. He had not yet sorted out what to do when Regina strode back down the hall, giving him a look of confusion on her way. James stood there until she'd exited the department before he decided to head back to Elise and see if she knew where he'd gone. It wasn't the worst excuse to talk to her he'd ever come up with.

Standing in front of her open door again, he found her standing behind her desk, crossing something off a list. She looked up at him and he opened his mouth to speak, but Elise immediately snapped her fingers and said, "Oh. Shoot. Sorry. Gillespie's out sick today. Didn't send in any assignment, either, as per usual. So- I don't know. Did you ever go back and check out that storeroom?"

He shook his head. "No, I was planning on it, but we got sort of caught up in the trial and everything last week."

Elise took a few steps around the edge of the desk, careful to avoid her photo configuration.

"Okay," she said, taking one large but cautious step across three rows at once and into a minimally larger gap in front of him. "Why don't you do that and then- if it's nothing, it's nothing, but if it's not..." She looked away from him, frowning. "I don't know. Come back here first. It depends what you find I suppose."

"Right," said James. "Okay, got it."

He felt sort of odd about the way she was acting. He got that she was distracted, but he'd sort of expected more of a reaction to seeing him. A smile at least. He hadn't been able to stop thinking about her since he'd left her house.

"If you get a chance to listen in on anything too..." she said.

"Sure," James said. "I'll see what's going on."

"Good," she nodded once and he got the feeling the conversation was over so he turned to go. With an awkward wave of his hand in goodbye, he headed back down the hall, but he'd only just begun to round the corner when she said, "Hang on. James."

He turned around, a little embarrassed by the eager way his heart had begun pounding.

"I'm sorry," she said. "Good morning."

"Oh," James laughed, hoping it covered how oddly nervous he felt all of the sudden. "It's fine. You were busy."

"Come here a sec," she said. James took a few steps back to her until he was standing in the frame of her office door for the third time.

He watched her eyes flick down the hall for a brief moment and then she closed the space between them, kissed him lightly on the lips, and stepped back again, rolling her lips together.

"Thanks for this weekend," she said.

"Yeah," said James. He almost started to say goodbye again, but thought better of it. "I was thinking we could get a drink on our way out some night this week," he said. "If you wanted."

Elise cracked a smile. "Okay," she said. She reached up to tighten her ponytail. James remembered this action so well. It was her go-to when she didn't know what else to do or when she was taken off-guard by something. He didn't really know what to do either, but he pretended he had it together more than he actually felt and took a step towards her - careful of the photo nearest him - to kiss her on the cheek.

"I'll uhm- I'll let you know how this goes," he said, sticking his thumbs in his pockets.

"Great," she said. She glanced down and back up.

"Okay. See you later?"

"Yeah," she nodded.

James stepped back out but he turned one last time before he left. "Wednesday?" he asked. "After work?"

Elise opened her mouth, inhaled slowly as she processed his words and finally repeated, "Wednesday."

"Okay," said James.

"Okay." She smiled again and though it made hardly any difference on her lips, it was everything in her eyes.

---

James arrived around the back of the Cleansweep Dealership he had visited the previous week still feeling jittery and nervous. He had forgotten how private Elise was. Her little double check down the hall had reminded him. On their own she had been very physical with him, always close, but around the office, in front of their friends, she had been careful. It wasn't as though anyone hadn't known back then, but she had still never held his hand, never kissed him, never done much of anything but maybe talk a little closer than she might have with someone else.

Knowing this made the fact that she had stepped back from her business presence at all mean much more than a simple good morning and a very brief kiss might otherwise have done.

James felt sickened by his own thoughts. He did not know when he'd become such an over-analyzer. He decided to blame it on his frequent proximity to large quantities of teenage girls.

With his mind pre-occupied, James took a stroll around the perimeter of the building, hoping to find some sort of signage that would confirm he'd landed himself on the outside of the storeroom and not just someone's office. He had only a vague mental blueprint of the building based on his brief visit, and was not sure what sort of complications might exist beyond the door Briggs had come in and out of with James' purchase.

About twenty yards from where he'd originally landed, James found a window low enough to peer into. Most of his view was blocked by a large shelf, but he was able to make out a bit of the room along the edge: all shelving units, filled to bursting with long, thin boxes like the one James had carried out the previous week. This had to be it. He pulled the little blue cube he had borrowed from Elise out of his pocket to see whether his hunch was actually something they might be interested in exploring.

Security Sensors had been a relatively new invention when James had been an auror. He had never owned one himself - they were very expensive - but he had used one that had belonged to the department at large once or twice. It had been very basic. The glass side of the cube was activated with the touch of a wand and then the pane would fill with color to indicate the level of security. The higher the color rose, the more you were dealing with.

The mechanics of this one were the same, but James was very surprised to see, when he first pressed the tip of his wand to the glass side, that it also registered the specific enchantments working nearby with an image of the wand-motion used to cast it. As long as he recognized the spell - not too difficult a task as James had been trained in most protective enchantments as an auror - he'd know not only the overall level of intensity, but what actually needed to be dismantled.

Color shot up the glass side till it was nearly full of blue. Only a small sliver remained translucent. James watched a swirling white figure draw itself in the shape of a simple locking charm, but James knew there must be something much more powerful than a locked door keeping him out or the sensor certainly wouldn't be reacting the way it had. He paced around the general area and occasionally got flashes of other spells - nothing out of the ordinary, but also fairly secure. There would be no apparating in or out of the room, and several shields had been put in place, as well as protection against eavesdroppers. The windows were sealed with a permanent sticking charm.

Still, James got the feeling something much bigger was beyond the reach of the sensor, which couldn't help but pick up the nearest spells.

Maybe, he thought, the most powerful one was not on the perimeter, but nearer to wherever the potentially secret information was held.

Then the cube did something very odd. The color drained out and the wisping image of a shield charm dissipated halfway through drawing itself. James thought he must have removed his wand for a second, but it was still pressed firmly against the glass side.

Several seconds later, the color returned. James, blinked at it, dumbfound. Surely it wouldn't have stopped registering the defenses in that time. This thing had to cost at least a hundred galleons - maybe more given it was Elise's, and she could be counted on to have the top of the line merchandise in her position. He tried taking his wand off and on, but there was no delay in its reaction and it had been minutes before the color had come back. Even if James had accidentally removed his wand, it would have begun working again when he checked to make sure he hadn't moved his hand.

Unless he'd broken it somehow. James hoped this was not the case. He had, after all, been in possession of it for nearly a week now.

That was when it happened again. This time James knew he hadn't removed his wand, because he'd been staring right at it, applying deliberate pressure. It had been maybe three minutes since the first debacle now and just as before, only a few seconds passed before the color sprang back up as though it had never been interrupted.

James began to panic. If he'd somehow managed to mess with the functionality of Elise's very useful, very expensive device...

A few more minutes passed, but there was no repeat incident. James wanted to think it was a fluke, but it had happened twice. He couldn't explain it.

His only option, really, was to go back and tell Elise what he had found and ask if perhaps something had gone wrong with her Security Sensor. He could only hope she'd been noticing it acting up lately.

---

The ministry was much quieter mid-morning than it had been when he'd first arrived. Not so many people roamed the halls and those who did had a quick, purposeful approach to their walk, heading to their next meeting with sharp discipline in their posture but a look of sleepy disinterest on their faces.

James headed down the hall of the auror's department, waved hello to Carston who was working something out in his office, and continued past the mostly closed and locked doors of the other aurors until he reached the end of the hall. Potter was in, for once, and James heard Elise's voice coming through his door. Elise had left her door open so he stepped just inside, so as to try not to intrude. She had mostly picked up her pyramid of photographs; they resided now in smaller piles lined up along the back wall, most with notes attached.

James looked around the room while he waited. He'd been in here a decent number of times now, but hadn't paid much attention to anything but her. Her desk was as cluttered as Gillespie's but looked pristine in comparison, everything stacked or filed, labeled and arranged just so. In front of her chair lay her current notebook. James remembered the way she'd used to go through them in a month or less. She wrote everything down.

There were far fewer personal touches to the room than there had been in the little closet she'd had before. All three of the large bulletin boards on the walls were covered in information regarding one thread of investigation or another rather than old photos of her friends.

In fact, the only personal items he could find were one jar of beach glass, considerably smaller than any of the ones in her house, and two framed photographs standing on the back end of her desk. Unable to help his curiosity, James turned them around one at a time to see. The first was a group shot of all the current aurors. Elise and Gillespie stood on either side of Potter with the rest of the department clumped around them. She held her wand in her hand and her ponytail looked even a little shorter than it was now. He wondered how recently she had cut her hair short.

James didn't know who was in the second photograph, but he definitely knew where it had been taken. Elise stood knee deep in the sea directly outside the cottage, facing away from the camera. She had a toddler on her hip and three other kids splashed through the water around her. Something about it hit him hard. He turned the frames back around just as Elise came back in.

"Oh-" she said.

"Sorry," James said quickly, swiveling around to face her. She had one hand on the door frame and she looked startled. "I heard you with Potter and didn't want to interrupt."

"It's fine," said Elise. She took another step inside and ran one hand down her opposite arm from shoulder to wrist. "Just didn't expect you."

"Whose kids are these?" asked James, glancing back at the pictures. He couldn't help it.

"Juliet's," she said. "She's pregnant again. Just announced it last month."

"Five kids?" asked James. "Wow."

James had never gotten along particularly well with Elise's sister Juliet. She was chatty and gossipy and had openly disliked James for reasons he never quite understood. She and Elise could not have been more different in demeanor, but they were spitting images of each other, except that Juliet's hair was dark. She was two years younger than Elise but had gotten engaged during her seventh year (a fact which had horrified James who had in no way been thinking about marriage at seventeen), and by the looks of it, things were going well.

"Yeah," said Elise. "They're all entitled brats and she can't control them, but... I don't know. I like being an aunt. They're coming over on Saturday."

"They like the beach?" he asked. She nodded. "Don't blame them," said James. Even though it was usually overcast in Ireland and not much like a destination beach escape, there was something about the sand and the water that it was hard not to like. Even if the sky began drizzling on you.

"Olivia's the only girl. She's the oldest. I've got her into collecting glass," she said.

James smiled. "How old is she?"

"Eleven," she said. "She's starting at Hogwarts this year."

"I'll meet her then," he said.

She nodded. "She's a little bit less of a brat than the rest of them are." James laughed. "So what did you find out?" she asked.

"What?" asked James.

"Cleansweep," she said. "You're back."

"Oh." He shook his head a little. "Right. Yeah. Got distracted. Uhm... actually. Have you ever noticed your security sensor acting up? Like does it ever malfunction?"

Elise frowned. "No," she said. "Why, do you think it did?"

"Well... I don't really know what happened. It was working fine. It showed pretty high security, saw a couple shield charms and stuff and then it- I was looking at it and then the color just went away for a couple seconds and then it came back. It happened twice."

"You probably just moved your wand," she said with a shrug. "I'm sure it's fine."

He shook his head. "That's what I thought, but the second time I'm absolutely sure I didn't and it still happened."

Elise considered him a while, her eyes slightly narrowed. "Hm," she said. "Let me see it."

James took the little cube out of his pocket and handed it to her to examine. She pulled out her wand and pressed the tip against the glass. The blue swept up to the top of the cube in an instant and the white wisps began etching out the various protective spells that protected all the sensitive and confidential information held in the department.

"Seems like it's working fine," she said.

"It happened after a couple minutes," James said. "I don't know, though. Maybe it was just a fluke."

She shook her head. "I doubt it." She took her wand off the cube and frowned at it, deep in thought.

"Give me one moment," said Elise. She handed back the security sensor and went around the back of her desk. James watched her reach for a scrap of parchment, dip a blue-feathered quill into a bottle of ink and write out a note explaining that she would be absent for several hours and that if anyone had reports, they should slide them into her mailbox. On a second slip of parchment, she jotted a note to Regina that their one o'clock meeting was cancelled, folded it up, and tapped it with her wand. It went fluttering out the door to deliver itself.

Elise handed him her note and a piece of spell-o-tape. "Will you hang that on the outside of the door for me?"

"Sure," James nodded, stepping into the hall. He tacked it up and returned to find her standing in the middle of the room with her arms crossed in thought, two fingers raised to her mouth.

"Just in case," she muttered to herself. She preceded James into the hall, locked the door behind him, and then knocked on Potter's door again. When he opened it, she asked, "Hey. You wouldn't happen to have your cloak around would you?"

---

They arrived back at the dealership several minutes later, Elise with the invisibility cloak folded over her arm. "Alright, show me what happened," she said.

James pulled the security sensor out of his pocket and pressed the tip of his wand into it. As expected the color sprang up properly. "It didn't happen right away," he said, beginning to get nervous. How stupid was he going to look if it didn't happen again?

"Alright, let's hang out a minute then," she said. They stood in silence and watched the white wisps announce the protective enchantments blocking people out of the building. Five minutes later it still hadn't happened.

"I don't know," he said. "Maybe I did move my wand."

Elise shook her head. "Just keep waiting. It hasn't been long."

So James waited, feeling sweat creeping up around his hairline. He stared into the blue cube hard as if by willing it to stop working it would. Then, after what felt like an eternity, the color evaporated from the glass again.

"I didn't move it," said James quickly.

He looked at Elise, who wore a very slight frown. She said, "I know," and pressed her lips together. After several seconds, the color returned. "Don't move it," she said.

James tried very hard to keep his hand still, but he was so relieved that he hadn't invented the sensor's apparent malfunction that he found it very difficult.

They waited an impossibly long three and a half minutes at James' estimate (he had been counting seconds) and all the while Elise watched the cube, hardly even blinking. She said absolutely nothing.

When it happened again, Elise relaxed her posture, staring past him at the back of the building. "Hm," she said. "How far apart was it last time?"

"I don't know," said James. "A couple minutes? Not long."

"You have a watch on you?"

James shook back the sleeve of his robes to show her.

"Good," she said. "If it happens again, make a mental note of the time, alright? I have an idea."

"What's the idea?" asked James, working hard to keep up with her. He wished he were a more skilled Legilimens, but he'd never really gotten the hang of it. With Elise around it would have come in handy. Probably would've saved him a lot of trouble when everything had happened, too.

"Just a minute," she said. "Can you hang on to this?" she asked. She held out the invisibility cloak and James took it from her. "Thanks," she said, and she turned to go.

"You know how many times I've busted Potter's kid for having this at school?" he asked. Elise didn't stop walking, but she turned around to smile, taking a few backward steps.

"Probably not as many times as you've missed him in it," she said. James laughed, and then she was gone. He leaned against the wall of the building and put the tip of his wand back against the cube to wait.

By the time it happened again, his arm was getting sore from holding still for so long. He almost forgot to check his watch, but remembered just in time. Eleven thirteen. Knowing it had so far happened twice consecutively, he continued to watch, repeating eleven thirteen in his head so he wouldn't forget it. At eleven fifteen, the color returned. Five minutes, later, Elise rounded the corner into the alley.

"What times?" she asked.

"Eleven thirteen and eleven fifteen," he said. "How'd you know it even happened."

"Figured it out," she said. "The security goes down whenever someone who's authorized to enter opens the door. Starts up again when the door's shut. At eleven thirteen, someone went into the storeroom to get this for me," she said, holding up a tiny tub of broomstick handle polish. "At eleven fifteen, they came out again. I was watching the time too."

"How do you-" said James, stunned. Elise really should have been a Ravenclaw if you asked him, the way she put together ideas like that. She could take two seemingly disparate clues and in a matter of minutes she'd have figured out exactly why and how they were related.

"Nothing happens randomly," said Elise. "I knew there was a correlation and I knew what room the security was aimed at. Beyond that it was just double checking. Anyway. The next thing we need to do is figure out if we can both fit under this cloak, which I'm skeptical about because you're pretty tall."

"Why do we need the cloak?" asked James.

"To go inside," she said. "I just told you the security shuts down every time someone who's authorized opens the door, so all we need to do is go in at the same time from a different door ,and luckily," she paused, motioning to the security sensor, "we have this."

She reached for the cloak and shook it out. "Come're," she said. "Let's check how bad this is going to be." James stepped closer to her and she threw it over their shoulders. James helped her straighten it out, but their feet and ankles were definitely exposed.

"Maybe if I just bend my knees," said James.

"But how long can you keep that up for?" she asked, looking up at him. She was very close and it was very distracting.

"Good point," he said.

"I guess we could probably take it off once the worker's left..." she said. She lowered her hand and it brushed against his arm. "We need to find the backdoor," she said.

"This way," said James. "I found it earlier."

Moving a little slower than usual so as to reveal as little as possible of themselves under the cloak, James led her to the employee entrance. He held out the sensor once more as they slowed and put his wand back to it, thinking someone had better come up with a way to eliminate that step from the operation.

"I have no idea how long it'll be till someone else goes in there," she said.

"Me neither," he said. He met her eye and got distracted all over again. It was very difficult to keep himself staring at a little blue cube when she was there, especially when barely twenty four hours ago he had spent the entire morning laying in her bed, arms around her, talking about nothing.

It was a good thing that Elise's focus was better than James', because she caught what he almost missed: the cube had drained of color again, much sooner than expected. She dove for the door handle, grabbed his wrist, and tugged him inside. When the door had shut, she let go of him and reached for the sensor. She pressed her wand to it once more and they waited, hardly breathing for it to go out again and register that someone had left the room. James crouched down in the hopes of hiding their feet more thoroughly.

He looked around the room. It was not very well-lit thanks to the accordion blinds that covered almost every window. Under the dim fluorescents overhead, he could see row after row of tall shelves. They towered all the way to the high ceilings, each packed with boxed broomsticks. Labels on the end of each row marked what sort of broom they held. Directly in front of him, a sign read "Pro-Grade Model 1100-7954, Size 2-8."

He began to wonder if maybe he had over thought this after all. The products in this room had to be worth more galleons than James had ever seen in his life, let alone possessed.

Somewhere ahead and to the right he could hear someone moving around, but they didn't seem to be looking for any merchandise. Then James heard a gruff voice ask, "What time is it?"

"Eleven twenty two," said another voice, more nasal. He glanced at Elise. He hadn't realized more than one person was here. "Still got a few minutes."

"Someone come in the back?" asked the gruff voice.

"The back?" asked the other.

"Thought I heard something."

Elise, whose wand was still pressed to the security sensor, her eyes glued on it, shifted slightly. "Disillusion me," she breathed.

"What?" whispered James. She gifted him one very brief glance with hard eyes.

"Our feet," she said. "Use a disillusionment charm. I can't." She nodded at her already occupied wand.

James worked his wand out of his pocket slowly, trying to make as little noise in his adjustment as possible. He tapped her on the shoulder and muttered the incantation, watched as her substance faded into the background, and then repeated the charm on himself. He felt a cool, trickling sensation run down from the top of his head, to his spine, and finally into his feet.

The cube flickered out again, but it was clear no one had left. Instead, two more pairs of footsteps entered and joined the others. They all greeted each other and asked after those yet to arrive. "Briggs'll be here in two. Just finishing up responding to an inquiry," said a cool voiced woman.

"Alright. Then we'll just need Harv, right?" said a man. James recognized the voice but couldn't remember to whom it belonged.

"And Pauley," said the woman.

Elise jumped and grabbed at James' hand, fumbling a bit because they could not see each other so well under the guise of the disillusionment charm. He had to look hard to find her outline. "That's the CEO," she whispered, her voice as low as it could possibly be. "Emmerson Pauley."

Stepping very carefully, she led him between rows of shelves and towards the voices.

The door opened again and James knew who had entered the moment he heard the speaker's voice. "Look who I found!" roared Briggs, guffawing at his own joke. "Not every day the big boss comes down to sales now is it? Get this fellow a cup of tea, will you Cynthia?"

"Oh yes, sir," said the weak, high voice of the woman whom James had spoken to on his first visit to the dealership.

Elise stopped walking when the voices sounded like they were on the other side of the shelf they stood behind. Luckily, the shelves were so packed with boxes it was highly unlikely that anyone would notice them, cloak or no cloak. Unluckily, they had achieved no better view of the conversation than they had had before they moved.

Beyond the shelf, a deep, professional sounding voice that James had to guess belonged to Pauley was busy greeting all his employees and asking after their families with false interest.

There were clinking sounds as cups of tea were passed around and then Pauley said, "Now we'll keep this brief. Just want to be sure everyone's on the same page as far as the timeline for the next few days goes. The commercial is set to air tomorrow morning and we'll have merchandise delivered by Thursday afternoon. Billboards are already up. You all have been hired..." he paused here and James heard a lot of shuffling like he was passing out papers, "at various shops all around the country in which, obviously, your job is to attract as many muggle mothers towards the brooms as possible.

"I don't care what means you use. Just get the products in their homes. You've got a quota of at least thirty five per day. This has got to be widespread quickly if we're going to make it impossible to eradicate the evidence. You know the ministry'll be after us in days, but if we make it through Friday and Saturday, which are probably the biggest shopping days, and every one of our salespeople whose been placed in a muggle shop ends up meeting their quota, then that's seventy brooms times a hundred and fifty people equals 10,500 flying broomsticks found in muggle homes and it won't be long before they start to realize something's up. From there, our work is done. No one can clean up that mess."

"Muggles love to gossip," chortled Briggs.

"Exactly," said Pauley. "And with muggle technology, word spreads fast."

Elise gripped James' hand tighter. He didn't need to see her face to know she was furious.

---

"I can't believe we're only just starting to dig into this," said Elise snappily when they had arrived at the ministry again. She headed straight for the elevators.

"Do you think we'll be able to do something in time to stop them?" asked James, following her through the glass doors.

"Well we can do one thing," said Elise, jabbing the button for the fourth floor - not the floor for the aurors department and the rest of Magical Law Enforcement, but where Misuse of Muggle Artifacts, Muggle Relations, and the Obliviators offices were held. "We can get those commercials off the air."

"And the billboards," said James.

"And the billboards," she agreed.

After the employee meeting had finished and they were sure everyone had left the room, Elise had made a beeline for the place of their discussion - a small but cozy lounge area which must have served as the break room - and found an absolute gold mine of information. Hanging on the wall were proofs of their posters and flyers, all of which she copied with the Geminio charm to take with them as proof. The brooms they were attempting to sell, it turned out, were the low-flying toddler brooms. Though he hadn't expected this, James was impressed by the thought that had gone into this completely illegal and inappropriate marketing campaign. Selling flying brooms disguised as regular brooms for sweeping probably wouldn't have garnered all that much hype, but selling toy brooms marketed as "Real flying broom! So realistic, kids will think it's magic!" was a whole different story. Kids would see that commercial and lose sleep over how badly they wanted it.

Along with the posters, they had found a tall stack of these same flyers on a nearby end table, likely meant to be hung up or passed out in muggle businesses and schools, or even stuffed into mailboxes. James, in a moment of sheer genius, had thought to charm them all to be invisible to muggles. That way, even hung up they would not draw any attention, but they didn't have to gamble with anyone from Cleansweep noticing that several hundred flyers had gone missing a few minutes after their big meeting.

There were lists too: one of all the television channels which would play the commercial and one of all the towns and highways in which the billboards had been hung. The only thing they were missing - and James was quite sure this information resided in whatever papers Pauley had handed out to the employees - was what shops the merchandise and sales associates would be located at come Thursday.

James could hardly complain about that setback, though. They had discovered a lot more than he had hoped thanks to an impossibly lucky bit of timing.

On a more selfish note, he couldn't help but think that as reckless as it probably was to say things felt normal between them, the afternoon's excursion had left him feeling secure and confident in his place in her life. He felt guilty for feeling so happy when the safety of the entire Wizarding World was at stake, but he couldn't help it. He felt almost giddy.

When the elevator stopped, Elise headed down the hall and into the second door on the right which held the small, but growing Misuse of Muggle Artifacts Office. "You ready for this, Orla?" asked Elise. A small red-headed woman with rectangular glasses swiveled around in her chair.

"What is it this time?" she asked.