Potter Professions

Maybe it had been the air inside the tent, which accumulated the heat more than a room. Or maybe it had been the stressful work of lying there, exchanging foolish remarks, and giggling about such nonsense - whatever the reason, Esmeralda as well as her three friends had fallen asleep.

Esmeralda came awake with a jolt because someone was playing a banjo in their dormitory. After a second of disorientation, she corrected a few mistakes in her impression: they weren't in their dormitory, rather they were in a tent, and the banjo player wasn't inside, which solved the puzzle how he might have come past Bolo. She hadn't known how incredibly loud a banjo could be when heard through the thin layer of tent fabric.

Putting her head outside, she startled again because Bolo was nowhere seen. About to jump out and search for him, she remembered just in time that Carlos had taken the dog for a walk - and that it might be advisable to put on her jeans again before letting the rest of her body follow the head outside. While testing the new equipment and fooling around with sleeping bags and air mattresses, they'd taken off the heavier pieces of their clothes.

Hastily, she went into her jeans and her shoes, then climbed out of the tent.

The banjo player - a young man wearing civilian clothes rather than the MiraLuc costume - had stopped his play and his walk, and now was shouting the message that in ten minutes' time the big meeting would start - right in the middle of the place that was formed by the tent islands at all sides. Then he started playing again and walked toward the islands closer to the forest.

A town crier ... Esmeralda had read about such people once, hadn't fully understood the purpose then. Here in the camp, suddenly it seemed the most natural way of communication.

She saw her brother and his girl return from their walk, Bolo with them. The dog closed the last fifty yards in running; when he'd reached her, she could feel that his fur was dry again.

Dominique, Natalie, and Odile had left the tent, fully dressed again. They hurried for the closest set of toilets - small cabins they'd seen before only at construction sites or roads under work, with a half-height fence around that was made of canvas and hung at eye level, just enough to keep the people anonymous who had to visit the toilets.

After having returned the dog, Carlos and Chloé hurried off in different directions. It seemed as if, at least for the first official meeting, they felt it mandatory to join their own tent groups.

Thinking it over, Esmeralda decided to leave the dog at the tent. After their unauthorized transit through the portkey arc, she wasn't sure to which degree Bolo's presence was a breach of rules, and had no intention to stress the issue or provoke a reaction.

"All right, Bolo," she said, pointing at a spot in the entrance, "you watch this tent, hear me, my boy? Guard it well! We'll be back in a while."

Bolo wasn't excited to be left alone, although the guarding job seemed a lot of compensation. Esmeralda followed her friends to find a place on the meeting ground.

They hadn't reached their place long when a man stepped into the middle. After a moment, he was joined by a woman. Both of them wore the MiraLuc costumes, and both looked younger than most teachers, definitely younger than Esmeralda's own father.

The man introduced himself as Alain, not bothering with a family name, and said he was one of two camp managers. He had increased his voice with a Sonorus charm, which told everyone in the audience that he was a wizard.

Then the woman introduced herself as Juliette, the other camp manager. She continued by welcoming everybody and expressing the hope they'd have a great time in the next three days. There were only a few rules, she said, but one of them was about swimming in the river: it wasn't allowed for security reasons, which shouldn't be a problem because there was a pool - actually an artificial extension of the river - in the opposite direction of the buildings, and this pool would be open all day, with a MiraLuc pool guard for the students' safety.

They had a programme for the three days, Juliette said then, but not too much; the next item after their meeting would be the first meal, and the same tent which had served as a store would serve as a canteen then, while the students might pick their own choice of spots, seats, or tables when eating.

Then Alain took over and said that today's evening was dedicated to learning to know each other, that this worked best when sitting around a campfire, and with music. For this reaaon, they had prepared three circles. Each of them would offer a fire and one or two people with a guitar or banjo, who knew a lot of songs and the students would learn a new song in no time when it was sung at such an occasion.

---

The announcement had reminded Esmeralda that she was the younger sister of a band leader. When Alain paused for a moment, she said to her friends, "We ought to pick the circle with the banjo player."

Odile grinned. "Was he that cute?"

Esmeralda snorted. "I didn't see him that well, but a banjo's just too loud; the other circles with guitars will have trouble."

Before Odile could reply to that, Juliette started another announcement. The buildings, she said, belonged to the Castle MiraLuc, which would offer building-based faculties as the need might arise, for example if someone got hurt. Aside from that, the students were entitled to a sightseeing tour through the castle, which had more things to offer than old furniture and dusty paintings.

Waiting out the wave of laughter, Juliette finished, "There are guides who will escort you inside. The guides will take only one tent group at a time, so this sightseeing will probably run from today till the end of the camp. There's a list in the big white tent where you can book a time slot for your own tent - whenever you think it suitable. But don't miss to visit our Castle MiraLuc! ... And that's it for now. The canteen service will start in the white tent any minute now, while Alain and I will be here to answer your questions."

Into the growing murmurs around, Natalie said, "A castle! Who needs a castle? I bet it's just more advertisements of MiraLuc stuff."

Odile said, "Only one tent group at a time, what's that supposed to mean? Okay, not all students at once, but - "

"Whatever," interrupted Dominique. "Let's have something to eat first - I'm starving, the fresh air raises my hunger so much, you won't believe."

Esmeralda would. First food and then music, and the dubious castle could wait forever.

Her phony buzzed.

She took it out and looked at the display. Looking up again, meeting the expectant stares of the other three girls, she said, "It's my - erm, I mean, our sports teacher." Only then did she press the answering button.

"Yes?"

She listened and, fully aware of her audience, pouted after a few seconds as the only hint on the conversation. Then she asked, "Where are you?"

She listened again and then breathed noisily, unaware of a remarkable resemblance with her dog in moments of serious dislike, for example when someone apparated off right before the dog's eyes.

"Can we eat first? We're hungry."

Esmeralda nodded and said, "Yes, okay, we'll take the earliest shift we can find, after supper. See you ... Yes, we will." She closed the connection, for an instant smiling despite herself.

"What does he want us to do?"

"Did he agree? Can we eat first?"

"Where is he?"

Esmeralda decided to answer the last question first. "Somewhere around here - he could listen to that speech just like we did. He says we should sign for the earliest visit in the castle we can catch, but" - she looked at Dominique - "we can eat first; he doesn't think the time slots start that early, and besides, you're not the only one who's starving."

She stood up. "Let's go getting food - I don't want to miss the campfire, so the sooner we're done with that bloody castle visit, the better."

"Why so early?" asked Natalie. "What does he think is better now than later? And why at all? I could have done without that visit."

Before Esmeralda could answer, Odile snorted and gave Natalie the kind of contemptous glance she always used when someone was slower in grasping a fact she considered obvious, something of which she was in no risk of losing practice.

Natalie took the wordless remark with equally practised composure.

"He thinks it's fishy," answered Esmeralda. "He doesn't trust them farther than he can kick them, and that's why ..."

She glanced around to make sure that only the three girls would listen to her next words, with the effect that the three heads came as close as possible while they were walking toward the white tent.

"... that's why he wants us to go inside, find a good place, and call him with a bracelet. He wasn't sure whether he would be able to follow us under his Invisibility Cloak, but at least it would give him a place he knows, so he can apparate inside by himself."

Dominique giggled. "The girls' toilets are not a good place for that."

"Oh, really?"

Esmeralda stared at Dominique, her mind searching for a remark that would let Odile's replies pale in comparison. Next moment, she realized that the girl had confused her summoning routine which, until a few days ago, had taken place in the toilets of the St.-Nazaire building, with her father's visit in the same building.

"He apparated into the hall when he visited us," she snarled. "And he wants us to find something similar - a dark corner or whatever; he said that shouldn't be a problem in such a castle."

They stopped the discussion about this topic because they had reached the white tent, and other students kept pushing too close.

---

The fresh air's impact on appetite was apparently the same for all hundred-and-twenty students, so they had to stand in line for a little while. However, the desk service worked so fast that there was hardly a moment at which the line would reach a stand-still.

Arriving at the top, they saw one reason why the MiraLuc people could manage at such a speed: the food they received - baguette, cheese, sausage, butter, etc. - came in packed junks rather than in slices ready to be put on a sandwich. Here again, MiraLuc emphasized the prospect of camping life and the need for doing things by yourself.

Odile stared at a large chunk of cheese in Esmeralda's hand. "By the time we're finished with the supper, there'll be a dozen fingers cut off in the camp."

"Then they'll sew them back on," replied Esmeralda unimpressed. "My father says, only a knife that isn't sharp is dangerous; if it's sharp enough it won't slip."

"So, says he? Seems as if he's got a reply on every question, eh? Or does it just appear that way when you're quoting him?"

Into Esmeralda's gasp, Dominique said, "A reply on every question isn't the worst. I know someone who has a reply to everything even though nobody had asked a question."

"Strange people you know, by all means."

Odile had given the response, reason enough for Esmeralda to lose her outrage at once and to chuckle. And besides, the smell from the food in their hands started to make their mouths watering.

Bolo's reaction was pretty much the same, but before they could start cutting pieces off the chunks of bread, cheese, or salami they had to invest a few more minutes into another visit to the white tent, and a few more yellow tags into camping furniture and tableware.

It was a feast for Bolo. Never before had the other three girls had the opportunity to feed the dog right during supper, and they took turns to let small - and not so small - pieces of food disappear in the dog's large mouth. Bolo could hardly cope with looking for the next tidbit, but at least he knew that expecting it from Esmeralda was a waste of time, because her donation would come at the end of the meal. She didn't stop the other girls; there was little risk that the bad habits from an open air supper on a campsite would swap into daily routine.

Right into her second baguette sandwich, she became aware that they hadn't signed a castle visit yet - when leaving the white tent, their minds had been too preoccupied with the food. After a moment in which a bad conscience was fighting greed and laziness, she stood up for another walk to the "mess tent," a name no one would use during the few days.

Bolo didn't even ask whether he could accompany her, a fact she registered with amused contempt.

She was too late for signing the first slot, as she noticed with slight surprise and a not-so-slight sting of guilt, in particular as the team who had signed first was neither the number twenty-one - her brother's tent - nor seventeen, which would have meant Chloé and her roommates.

She entered the number eleven in the second slot, which started a full hour after the first. Checking the time, she saw that the first shift was alredy running, and that the one she'd signed would give them enough time to finish their supper leisurely and then start a digestion walk to the castle. With this schedule, their participation in the campfire circle would not be at risk.

The signing trip to the white tent wasn't Esmeralda's last: when storing the food away, she noticed that they were short of a large, dog-proof box. Bolo had good manners and a good education, but certain temptations were just too much, among them sausage that was only protected by paper. Since it was her dog, Esmeralda was considered the natural candidate to march down again and trade another yellow tag for something better.

This settled, they told the dog to be a good boy and guard the tent until their return, then they wandered to the castle.

---

Being located in a river valley, the Castle MiraLuc had not been built as a natural stronghold, not like Carron Lough, for example, but the current owners had extended the former architecture by a moat that went around the entire complex, with just two drawbridges, a narrow one for pedestrians and a large one that looked strong enough to carry trucks. Cardboard signs in vivid colours directed the visitors from the camp across the large bridge into a castle yard and to a side entrance.

Entering a room that looked almost like a waiting room in a doctor's office, the girls found another sign telling them to wait until their guide would arrive. According to the scheduled time, this would be in less than five minutes.

Odile used the time to learn that the door which led inside was locked.

Less than a minute later, the door was opened from the other side, and a women entered the room. She wore the same MiraLuc dress as all the other people in the camp, and a tag on her bosom revealed her name - Simone. Esmeralda guessed her at a few years younger than her parents.

"Hello, mesdemoiselles, my name is Simone, and I'm your guide in the next hour on your tour through the Castle MiraLuc. Please follow me inside."

They did. The woman locked the door behind them and guided them across a hall into another room.

Looking around, Esmeralda was reminded of a dressing room in a theater: there were four seats in front of four large mirrors, each of them illuminated by a modern replica of candlelights around the borderline of the mirror. On four desks before the mirrors were four piles of clothes.

"We want to do it in style," said the woman, "and this includes dressing the way young ladies in the seventeenth century would have been dressed" - she smiled - "except that these clothes match today's standards of hygiene, which means they're freshly cleaned."

Esmeralda stepped to one of the four desks and examined the pile more closely. She found a bulky dress in bottle green, a white shirt with a lace collar - and some more garments that could only be underwear, although of a style totally unfamiliar to Esmeralda.

"If you need a helping hand with these clothes - "

"No thanks," interrupted Odile coolly and to Esmeralda's deep relief. "We'll manage by ourselves."

"Then I'll expect you in five minutes' time outside." The woman stepped out and closed the door behind her.

"Blue? I'm not going to wear a blue dress!" Odile held up a piece from her own pile. "Who wants blue and can trade something that goes with my hair?"

Odile had freckles and a reddish hue in her hair, so her remark was understandable. But still more significant was a dramatic tone in her voice, and the fact that her behaviour didn't match her complaint, because she quickly hurried to the door and pressed her ear to it.

Looking around, Esmeralda noticed that the other two dresses were pink and cream-coloured. Probably the green one was best suited for Odile, and the blue one best matched Dominique's blonde hair, while her own dark hair would go along with nearly everything.

Odile looked up. "Sounds as if she's gone, but I don't trust these mirrors. Let's call him now - this room isn't a dark corner for sure, but who knows whether there's another chance soon, and besides ..."

Esmeralda stared at the mirrors. Yes, she'd heard about mirrors which looked like tinted but otherwise transparent glass panes from the other side. And this was a dressing room, and the garments on the desk made clear what they were expected to do.

She reached to her ankle, under her socks, and pressed the button.

For a few seconds, nothing happened. Then, while Esmeralda expected any instant to see the familiar figure of her father, her phony buzzed.

She fetched it. "Yes?"

It was her father. "Esmeralda," he said, "the castle is protected against apparition, probably by one of our own Groucho devices. That means, I can't reach you just so. Where are you?"

"We're in a dressing room. There are clothes like in old times, and ..." Esmeralda explained what they were supposed to do, and then described the path they'd taken to that room.

She was still talking when the door opened and Simone, their guide, came in.

"Contemporary technology is of course off limits on our tour." The woman smiled. "This includes cellular phones of all kinds. Please finish your call and leave the thing here. And would you please now get dressed for the tour?"

* * *

When Harry pressed the button for the activated alarm on his new porty without getting any effect, it took him only an instant to figure out why. Not for a moment did he think Ray's manufacturing had failed, and this left just one possible explanation: an apparition lock from Groucho Transports and Security.

The irony of the situation never reached his conscious mind. He wasted a few precious seconds on bitter frustration - about himself, not having foreseen this effect. Now, staring at a building whose massive doors were locked for him like for anyone else, he wondered how he could have forgotten such a possibility. He should have expected this kind of protection. He'd messed up again.

Then he came awake from the short reverie in missed opportunities and realized that he was fighting a battle, and that the enemy had scored a hit. It was all his instincts had needed to take over control.

He apparated home to Carron Lough from where he stood, hidden under his Invisibility Cloak. Reaching the storage room with his combat broomstick, the Steel Wing, took him another ten seconds. He wouldn't be able to cover himself and the full length of that broomstick with his Invisibility Cloak, but the light-eating surface of the broomstick's tail end was hard to notice, and could easily be confused with a bird.

He apparated back to the same spot from where he could watch the entrance through which the girls had entered the building. Then, with his voice fully under control and himself ready to jump in any direction, he called Esmeralda and told her why he was still outside.

He heard the MiraLuc woman's remark about contemporary technology, just before the connection was cancelled. Her voice had sounded friendly but determined, and in a different context, Harry would have smiled about this costume obsession driven to the extreme. In the current situation, though, and thanks to his newly acquisited experience as a Sports teacher, the words "Get dressed" reached his mind as a message that said, "Get undressed first."

For a moment, he considered breaking in through the same door the girls had used; opening the lock should not be a problem for him - what he lacked in practice would be more than compensated by the glow of rage inside him. Then he saw a way how to do it without the risk of being detected instantly.

He accelerated the Steel Wing for the short flight to the windows in the building front, about as high on the wall as would fit a first floor in a more modern building. Peeking in, it took him a moment to accomodate his eyes to the dim light inside, then he felt pretty sure that the hall he saw was just the one the girls had crossed on their way from the waiting room to the dressing room.

Balancing on his Steel Wing, keeping the unhidden tail to the building wall so that it would look like armouring, he had to wait. How long did it take a few girls to get into dresses of the seventeenth century?

It took long ... too long, he was watching the wrong spot inside. He decided to give it thirty more seconds and started to count down. There were twelve counts left when the right of the two doors in his view opened.

The girls came out first, followed by the woman. She closed and locked the door, then said something to the girls, and finally marched toward a staircase with the girls in her trail.

Harry could watch them climb the first steps before they disappeared from his view. Their clothes looked splendid and matched the environment, yes, but the movements he'd seen were still those of young girls from the twentieth century, slightly subdued by the unfamiliar surroundings.

He had to give them sufficient time to walk out of earshot; opening a lock with mental power wasn't as noiseless as he wished, not with his lack of practice. He used the time to touch down, dismount, and hide his Steel Wing by simply let it sink into the moat's muddy water. A single Accio spell would bring it back, and Harry felt grateful for the hourly roster, which had rendered this spot deserted now, at the beginning of the girls' tour.

Then, impatience getting the better over careful measuring of seconds, he went to the door and concentrated on the lock. It was state of the art, which meant there were only a few grams of metal to move, and the faint Click an instant later told him that he could enter.

Should he lock the door after him? He decided against it - in case of an emergency, the time required to open it again might make the difference between escape and detection.

---

In the hall, he listened for a moment. From somewhere upstairs, a voice could be heard. Then a sound from a door closing, and then it was quiet.

While waiting outside, Harry had already decided against following the group of girls plus guide while hiding under his Invisibility Cloak. He didn't consider them in immediate danger of being assaulted, and in addition, an Invisibility Cloak was a tricky tool not really suited for a pursuit under these conditions: an enemy who used apparition locks might as well use infrared detectors, and for them, body heat was the same with or without an Invisibility Cloak.

So he was more interested in an investigation of the room where the girls had changed clothes. The woman had locked it, but probably just for the girls' ease of mind, since they had to leave their belongings there. Opening this lock wasn't any different from opening the previous one.

About to pull down the handle, Harry stopped. If the room was what he expected it to be, there was a camera inside, and this camera would record the picture of a door opening and closing without someone coming into view. For anyone with magical skill, this picture would scream "Invisibility Cloak" too loud to be missed.

He went to the second door he'd seen while floating outside the window. An adjacent room might reveal a bit more. A short check at mental and acoustic level told him that there was no living soul inside. The door was locked as well, yet by now he felt truly fluent in the mental art of breaking locks. The fact that this lock also was state of the art struck him as a promising sign: who would waste money for that on a storage room?

It was pitch black inside. Just in time, Harry suppressed his initial impulse to feel for the switch on the wall to light the room. He wasn't used to what he was doing here, he was no burglar, should leave such tasks to people like Sirius ...

"Lumos."

He'd whispered the spell, creating hardly more glow at the tip of his wand than from lighting a match, except that it was steady. He inched forward.

A tripod came into view. Stepping closer, moving his wand tip back and forth, Harry could recognize a box-like thing on top of the tripod. He made another step, then he saw the thinner tube with the lens at the end.

A camera.

In the first instant, it still looked as though the camera had been deposited there, in particular because the objective was directed toward a wall. A moment later, having examined a bit more of the room, Harry knew that this wall was made of glass and that the camera was one of several - in the dim light from his wand, he could recognize the outlines of two more tripods.

Then he detected the cable that went from the closest camera to the wall. Examining the plug, he knew - these cameras were connected to a computer-based network, what was called LAN for Local Area Network, and this meant that they transmitted their signal, rather than recording it inside the camera box.

And he'd made light in the coverage of these lenses. Either he didn't have to worry, because the signal was not recorded between visits to the adjacent dressing room, or his intruding was irrevocably recorded on some disk somewhere in this chateau.

Or, just like in the MABEL seminars, the signal was transmitted to a monitor, and someone was sitting there ...

The cameras wouldn't tell him. Suddenly, speed was all that mattered.

Harry went out of the room, back to the other door, and opened it. Sensing on the wall for a second or two, he found the switch and lighted the room. Then, with hardly more than a short glance at the dressing tables in front of mirrors, and the small piles of girls' clothes, he stepped back to the camera room, where he could see the same from the perspective and under the conditions of the cameras.

The glass wall had changed to a large pane of tinted glass. The room that was visible through it, now that he'd switched on the lights, looked a bit bluish, but otherwise clear and nearly undimmed. The view was unremarkable - until you remembered that the desk-like shapes in the foreground were dressing tables, and until you imagined the room full of girls undressing and donning costumes from a time when camcorders were not even imaginable.

Quite in contrast to one-way mirrors. The concept of Peeping Toms wasn't particularly new.

Harry fought a wave of nausea at the thought of the cameras and their purpose. In his Sports classes, three times a day he could have watched what they'd been recording; in a way it was harmless enough - until you remembered the intention.

Agnès' remark about the meat exhibition crossed his mind. Here, before his eyes was proof that she'd been right.

---

What else did it prove?

Was it enough? What would happen if he took his phony out and called the police to report a case of child pornography?

They'd arrest himself in first place, and charge him for burglary. In the course of this investigation, all traces of child pornography would disappear, get lost, never having existed except in the fantasy of an unlawful intruder. Harry remembered too well how scandals with a seemingly waterproof collection of evidence and witnesses faded - first from the press, then from the public memory, and finally from the agenda of courts and prosecutors.

And besides, it didn't explain the suicides.

But he'd be damned if he just tiptoed out of the door he'd opened so unlawfully. These camcorders had recorded their last pictures, as far as he was concerned.

He pointed his wand at the innermost camera in the small room, sent a heating spell, and kept it working while he moved his wand up and down to hit all four cameras simultaneously. If there was really someone sitting at a monitor, the failure had to hit all devices at once.

The smell of burning plastics was the first sign. Shortly afterwards, smoke curled up, then small flames appeared on the cables that went into the cameras, while droplets of melting metal and cable fell to the floor, instantly raising more spots of smouldering fire.

The smell was almost unbearable. But it was the smoke that chased Harry out of the room. After a last glance to what minutes before had been masterpieces of microelectronics craftmanship, he closed the door. After all, the girls should be able to use the room next door once more, and the smell in the hall was enough to raise alarm - if someone passed by, that was.

Nobody came downstairs. So the imagined person in front of a monitor didn't exist.

Harry wasn't electronics expert enough to estimate whether the damage he'd caused could have been the result of normal technical failure. He didn't think so, and even if it was possible, he didn't think the people in charge would believe that all four cameras had suffered from the same fault. This left ... what? Sabotage from outside?

The idea seemed equally unlikely, but perhaps only in Harry's eyes. And who knew, wasn't it possible that these still faceless people counted an accident with a teacher in a tree and an accident with pornographic equipment as two and two?

As long as they only suspected competition, Harry's own investigation was safe from being uncovered. He went outside without bothering to lock the door again.

A moment later, though, he returned to the outer door and locked it. It was a minor detail, but it would direct the suspicion toward the staff in the chateau - an effect that might be helpful in the next three days, during which he would guard the camp - more precisely, the chateau - as tightly as he could.

He got his Steel Wing out of the moat. Then he retreated to the tree line to watch the next events hidden as before, and to take action in the unlikely event that the fire he'd ignited would start spreading.

* * *

Cho leaned back in the fauteuil and let the brandy swirl in the balloon glass. It was no cognac, no armagnac either. It was a local product of which her hostess had said it could stand any competition except for the fame, and she'd been right.

The armchair in which Cho sat, her shoes stripped off and her short legs curled under herself, stood in the library of the wing in the Chateau Saumur that served as MABEL residence. Local, therefore, meant Saumur, a wine region not as famous as Beaujolais or Bordeaux but not totally unknown either. Well, and all you needed to cross the distance from wine to brandy was a distillery.

Her hostess knew one. This came as no surprise from a person known as Marie-Claire Comtesse de Varanier, the resort manager of the Saumur seminar in the MABEL organisation. At the beginning of their acquaintance, Cho had tried to address her as "Comtesse," only to receive a reply like "Madame le Directeur General." Since then, they called each other by first names.

Marie-Claire was an ex-Muggle, a nouveau-Magical. Although not an alumnus of a MABEL seminar, had she nonetheless been converted by the same force as any successful seminar member: the High Priestess. It was better that way for a MABEL resort manager.

She had achieved this position almost by coincidence, driven by an ambition not unlike that of Reuben Timball, except that in her case the goal had been the location rather than the purpose. The story had taken place in the early days of the MABEL organization.

Cho, at that time in search of places not quite as secluded as in later years but in any case separated, had seen pictures of the Chateau Saumur. The impressive building struck a chord in her, and she investigated a bit in that direction, only to learn that the chateau was public property and used for a few small museums. This wasn't exactly what she'd been looking for, and so it seemed as if the idea could be checked off the list.

However, in the course of her investigation, Cho had come in touch with a Comtesse de Varanier, for whom the Chateau Saumur was not an idea but an obsession. Coming from a considerably smaller chateau, the comtesse had dreamed of reigning the once most luxurious chateau in France, owned by the Ducs d'Anjou. Part of her dream had been the rebuilding of the wings that had collapsed centuries ago, with the effect that the former owners abandoned the chateau to let it rot away and be used in the remaining part as prison, barracks, fortress, and finally as a tourist attraction that held a museum for decorative arts and another one for horsemanship in its walls.

The two women, comparable in age, had met. The comtesse - a title which translated to countess in English - had told Cho a bit about her dreams, speaking lightly and with enough self-mockery to make such ridiculous ideas entertaining. This changed abruptly when Cho offered her the reign of a freshly built and financed wing, perhaps not quite as big as what had collapsed in the seventeenth century, but large enough to accomodate a MABEL seminar. In return, the comtesse had to get the permission - for the rebuilding as well as for the ownership being kept in the hands of the MABEL organization.

The house of Varanier had connections, no question. Even so, Comtesse Marie-Claire had to stress them and bribe a few people before she came back to Cho with the best she could offer: an agreement under the condition that the ruling power in the new walls had to be a French person. And besides, these new walls had to match the style and material of the old ones as much as feasible, which would make the project about three times as expensive as estimated.

What were a few millions, seen in the light of the Great Plot? Cho didn't ask the question aloud, and someone as obsessed as Marie-Claire wouldn't waste a second on a closer examination of Cho's motives.

Within the record time of two years, the first step in the rebuilding project delivered a habitable building. Currently the project went through its third step - at a lower pace than before, but as far as the Comtesse de Varanier was concerned, it could go on until the complete north-east wing was rebuilt to its original state. The chateau had been originally built as a fortress in the Hundred Years' War, so in her eyes there was nothing wrong in rebuilding it for another hundred years - this time with the former enemy, the English, as the financier.

---

"... didn't know him before he'd earned his de in front of the family name. I'm pretty sure he got his title the same way we got our permission for this building here - with the right amount of money to the right amount of people."

Marie-Claire, Comtesse de Varanier, laughed at her words, while her face showed an expression only high nobility could manage: light self-mockery, for the need to use such questionable methods, disrespect for ordinary people who'd managed to accumulate money, and utter contempt for those who spent said money on buying into the lower ranks of aristocracy.

"His father was a small merchant - ran a shop for something or other, as I've heard. Lucien showed a sense for business, very much so, actually; just look at how he used his own name for the company. So it's first-generation wealth, and they still have way to go before they'll manage the most important quality of a pure-blood French aristocrat, which is wasting money in large quantities ..."

Marie-Claire smiled at these words, at the same time not leaving any doubt that this was exactly her own goal in life.

"... but he's truly noveau-riche, showing bad taste whenever you offer him an opportunity ... Agreed, not in his company's collection, and not in his personal appearance either, so much I'll grant him, but in other details. This moat around their residence, for example, I mean, really!"

What Marie-Claire called residence was otherwise known as the Chateau MiraLuc, and the man she was talking about was publicly known as Lucien de Mirault, head of the Mirault family, founder of MiraLuc, and baron since recently.

"So you've met him?" asked Cho.

"It's unavoidable." Marie-Claire wrinkled her delicate nose. "Several times a year there are public events where you have no other choice than to appear and sing your song. But to give you another example of his attitude - when he was awarded his title, he celebrated the appellation with a glamourous ball, and he really had the cheek to send me an invitation."

A chuckle came from the armchair with the third person present in the room. It was Remus Lupin, currently human and basically waiting for his guard shift at the Chateau MiraLuc, which he would start later in the night and in his wolf shape.

Marie-Claire turned to him. In a totally different tone, as if confessing a silliness, she explained, "I would have liked to come, really; I'm not quite the snob I try to present. But there are certain traditions and certain rules that ought to be kept. In his case," she added at noticing Remus' questioning look, "he should have sent a letter from his maître d'affaires to my maître d'affaires, asking whether it was advisable to send such an invitation."

"I wouldn't dream of inviting you, but even less I'd dare ignoring you," said Remus in mock quotation.

"Exactly." Marie-Claire sent him a smile of seemingly borderless admiration for having found such a short expression for such a complex issue.

"What's your impression of him personally?" asked Cho, who knew from experience that she had to put conversations with the comtesse on a short leash, unless she had all day long for digressing in any direction.

"Not my taste," replied Marie-Claire. Men, as she had explained to Cho at a previous occasion, could well have a place in her bed though not in her life. "But then," she added as if in an afterthought, "he wasn't interested anyway, so we parted in mutual disregard."

"Is he gay?"

The question had come from Remus, in a tone as though hinting that there could hardly be any other explanation. To some degree, it was the continuation of the noncommittal flirtplay from some moments ago, but his question bore a nucleus of truth: while the comtesse wasn't as generously gifted with genuine beauty as Cho, she could play her cards extremely well, and she had something to make Cho envious any time of the day: longer legs.

"He isn't your run-of-the-mill fairy for sure. But I wouldn't exclude it altogether - if you aren't older than sixteen, you have his full attention, and I couldn't figure out to which side he's inclined more, neither from hearsay nor from my own observations."

When arriving in the Chateau Saumur, Cho hadn't explained her issue in words as clear as those. On the other hand, she had told Marie-Claire that it had to do with the school in Brest and the camp in the Loire valley, so the topic hadn't been touched out of the blue. Still, hearing Marie-Claire's description, Cho inhaled audibly, and from Remus' chair came a similar sound of confirmed suspicion.

"Yes," said Marie-Claire into the moment of silence, "he's a pedophile no doubt, but here again he's not the average pederast - and there are a few in French aristocracy, so trust my judgement." She grimaced briefly. "He's obsessed ... the annual camp for the newcomers in the Brest school is the best example. He does everything for them - yes, of course it's good advertising for his outdoor stuff, but you should listen to the children's tales afterwards, then you know that it's more than a marketing gag. In his case - "

Cho interrupted her, driven by the question as much as by the bad habit. "Is he a pederast at all?"

Marie-Claire arched her perfectly painted eyebrows. "How should I know? I'd guess so, but only because it's what you have to expect in such a case. Although, in his case there's this special element which might change the common habit to anything you can imagine, or nothing at all. You could ask psychoanalysts, but they'd tell you the same, only in more words and worse truisms, which I try to avoid."

Cho had spent a lot of energy in the past seconds to hold her temper, fully aware that this was Marie-Claire's revenge for having been interrupted in mid-sentence. Now, noticing the break in the tale - a signal that the punishment had been short - Cho didn't waste any time on being grateful.

"What special element?"

"Didn't I tell you?" Marie-Claire's smiled in mock surprise. "Lucien Mirault had two children, a boy and a girl. At the age of sixteen or so, the boy cut off from home, never to be seen again." She paused, giving the opportunity for comments, or waiting for the obvious question.

Remus asked it. "And the girl?"

"The world collapsed for her, or so they said. Maybe she got a letter from her brother - at any rate, some weeks afterwards, when it was clear that he wouldn't return, she committed suicide ... An overdose of sleeping pills, and that was that."