Almost

Chapter 12: Folefetter's Formals

Katherine was stifling a yawn when she stood at the gates to the school, Lee by her side. She'd managed to get a few hours of sleep after Crawley had woken up early to get some work done and she'd slipped up to the nest with her tempering. It was almost taunting her now from her backpack, begging for her to sneak away and put it on. It was competing with the undeniable tug to the castle. Both had to take a backseat as she watched Fred and Roxy walking towards them with McGonagall.

"Mr. Ollivander, Ms. Waine—good to see you back so soon."

"Good to see you too, Headmistress. Thank you for letting Fred and Roxy come with us."

The woman smiled thinly at Katherine. "A Weasley wedding is always quite the affair. Just let me know when you have arrived back in Hogsmeade and I will come to collect them."

"I'll try not to keep them too late," Katherine assured her, conjuring the door to the Nest and ushering them all inside.

Roxy and Fred both looked around at the cabin intrigued. They time they had spent together was all at the Burrow or George and Angelina's house—they hadn't been to Idaho before.

"Crawley," she called upstairs, "we're back! Do you guys want anything to drink? Tea or coffee or water or I think we might have some lemonade around here..."

"How will we get to New York?" Fred asked, leaning carefully against the couch and folding his arms.

"I think Crawley is going to drive us. He has a MACUSA car, and Picquery is meeting us in the Seattle garage just so we have another auror for the trip."

Katherine looked down at her phone as it buzzed, then pointed to the living room. Corliss was snoozing in her cage, but Smithwick was jumping around in front of the fire. "Just a second, guys—I'm just have to take this outside. Feel free to make yourself comfortable, I'm sure Smithwick would love someone to play with."

Roxy hurried over to the kitten, much smaller than her own cat, Poppy. Lee started talking to Fred about something to do with his wand.

"Hey," Katherine said quietly as she walked onto the back porch. "I can't talk long; we're heading out soon."

"I don't need long. I think we'll want to go to MACUSA around 8pm—that's when they'll have the fewest guards. I don't want you travelling there on your own, so you'll have to let me into the cabin before that—I think half an hour before, at least. I'll bring my invisibility cloak. How do you feel about making yourself to look like Hollinghunt?"

Katherine bit her cheek. "I'll practice and see what I can do. I've been working on making myself invisible, too—just taking my cloaking ward and making it smaller."

"Whatever you choose, just make sure you can maintain it. The last thing we need is to have you pop out of thin air. The other thing we need is a map or a directory, some way to know where it is exactly they are keeping her."

"I can get us to Crawley's office, Hollinghunt's is just next door. She'll have to have something."

"Have you said anything to him about this?" Harry asked quietly.

"Nothing concrete," she answered with a sigh. "He knows we're doing something and said he'd help if things get out of hand, but I want to keep him out of it as much as possible."

"Sounds like me and Hermione. I think she suspects I'm digging, but she's got too much on the line. I did manage to catch a glimpse at her papers the other day, though. MACUSA has some red tape they have to work through before they can take too many more steps, so we have a little time. Not much, but a little."

"If we get caught, we're taking a lot of people down with us, aren't we?"

"So, we don't get caught. Not until we have what we need. We get in, find the lead, and get out."