Post by Casimir Elias Karkaroff on Feb 13, 2021 13:19:47 GMT -7
Today was the day – the climax of the plan, the moment they had been building towards for over a month. The Heist.
It was December 29th. The day had been carefully chosen for being in the middle of the holidays, not too soon after Christmas but not too close to New Year’s. Most Ministry employees were on their Christmas break, home with their families or abroad for the holidays. There was only a skeleton support staff present in the Ministry headquarters, and most of these workers sought to do only the minimum work possible during their shifts until they could go home. The day was already late afternoon, starting to darken into the evening hours. Most shift workers would be gone by this point, and only a few lingering employees would have remained – shut in their offices or slowly filing their way out. It was the perfect balance -- there were enough remaining employees for Leo and Ana not to appear too conspicuous, but the atmosphere of the Ministry was still slow and lazy with the aftermath of the holidays. Nobody would be paying attention.
Every moving piece was in place. Cas waited patiently in the safe house he and Titus had set up, the only members who had access being him, Ti, and Ana as their Secret Keeper. Cas had an incredible amount of experience with protective enchantments, first from his time breaking through them as a curse-breaker, then as an employee and owner of a storefront in Knockturn Alley with a reputation for discretion and avoiding Ministry scrutiny. Cas had thrown every spell he knew at the safe house for over a month, and had obfuscated its ownership as the locale had changed ownership many times through many unknown, fake individuals. He had carefully analyzed the role every enchantment played in keeping the safe house secret and secure, the perfect place to store the magic dampener after its retrieval. At this moment, Ana and Leo would be in their respective offices at the Ministry, ready to communicate with each other as it became necessary to implement the next step of the plan through their shared mirror set. Leo was undoubtedly sitting in front of his computer, ready to handle the electronic trail at a moment’s notice while Ana must be getting ready to call an intern.
[ Anastasia ]
Well, it was the day. Ana didn’t feel nervous. She didn’t feel apprehensive. The plan was solid, and despite her doubts about their assistance in the IT department, Ana knew that Cas would not have trusted just anybody regardless of how useful they were or what skills they had. She had sent an email when she’d first arrived for one of her trainees to retrieve the item in question. The Case number she had given Leo, I1407, was written as the email subject, and he was to retrieve the evidence items for that case. In the meantime, she kept herself busy with her usual agenda. Since it was a slower time of the year, it gave her plenty of opportunities to catch up on case notes and things of that nature. It was also essential to work with the trainees when things were slow. Some aspects of the job could not be taught in the field or required more of a classroom environment. Walker was a good trainee, an American, but as one might assume that Ana would be picky about who she trained or even associated with, she wasn’t the type. All that nonsense of one Witch or Wizard being ‘better’ than another was not something she subscribed to. In her mind, she cared about one’s worth, ethic and capability regardless of origin.
She had long ago accepted that people were going to think what they wanted and say whatever popped in her head, though it was more likely to be the former as she rarely had the privilege anymore of dealing with someone saying such thoughts to her face. It was a shame if only because her dueling practice was left to the Ministry training areas, and she found them somewhat lacking. All the busy work helped with the passing of time. Ana finished up her notes on several cases involving fugitives that had crossed from France. Their crimes ranged from theft, assault, and even murder. Though as she repeatedly clicked the down arrow key on her laptop keyboard, she found there wasn’t much in terms of gruesome case photos that phased her anymore. Not that much had bothered her in the beginning. She’d seen and experienced enough growing up in her family along with the antics of Durmstrang to be a little bit immune. Ana worked with Zeke, and another trainee Eli on interrogation techniques, more the theory versus the practice. She even organized her desk drawers—careful to leave the one half of the two-way mirror in its safe compact in the bottom left-hand drawer.
It was a typical day. It had to appear normal. Staffing was low, so as the lunch hour passed and she meandered to the coffee station closest to her desk, no usual two or three individuals were chatting away on their fifth break of the day. Ana instinctively looked down, smoothing the bottom of her blouse—a habit. But she recalled her mother’s horrified look when her clothes ended up wrinkled—all she’d wanted to do was go outside for a few minutes. Ana stood, a bit like a posted sentry, as she observed the desks in various states of disarray. Some with files stacked ten high and at risk of toppling over with a slight breeze. Maintenance workers were always in the offices as well fixing new equipment damaged by an impatient Wizard. She recognized the desk that the worker was crouched in front of, though from her perspective, she looked like she was simply wrapping herself in various cables of all different colors. Ana didn’t know what they all were for, but she also didn’t particularly care as long as it didn’t get in the way of her work.
She sipped the last of her lukewarm coffee. It tasted burnt. Somehow the magical community could not even get coffee right with the full advantage of Magic. Perhaps more of them needed advanced Potions. Discarding the styrofoam cup in a nearby waste bin, she glanced around for her trainee, Zeke. Now that it was the afternoon—it was time. She found him as he was coming back from his lunch break, and she approached—her usual stoic impression on her face. They should have been used to it by now, she didn’t smile all that often, but it wasn’t necessarily bad. They would know when she wasn’t pleased with them or angry, and that expression was much different than this. "Zeke, can you retrieve the items from the case I emailed you about this morning?" He nodded and replied that he would. "Thank you. Just leave it on my desk when you find it." She spoke—turning and walking away at the same time. While she waited for him, she opened the lid of her laptop and busied herself with emails.
[ Zeke ]
As strange as it was not to be on winter break for the first time in his life (at least since he had started school) at that time of year, Zeke couldn't say that he had really minded having to go to work on December 29th. He knew that he really couldn't complain about the fact that he was in training over the holidays; he wouldn't exactly have the luxury of getting holidays off once he was actually working for Magical Interpol, either, and he was sure that he would be criticized if he were to bring up the fact that his training had kept him from being able to go back home to Atlanta for the first time in ages. No, Zeke knew very well not to get on the bad side of any of his superiors. He wasn't a doormat, but he knew that he didn't have the authority to challenge them or their decisions, for the most part.
He didn't think very much of it, therefore, that he arrived to the Ministry that morning to find that he had been sent an email by Anastasia Karkaroff, one of the members of the International Crime Task Force, that instructed him to retrieve some item associated with a specific case from storage at a specific time.
Zeke wasn't technically an intern, but he knew that the non-trainees had better things to do than to run around the Ministry to grab stuff, and it wasn't as though she had asked him to go and get her coffee. He confirmed that he could go and grab whatever it was that she needed and sent her a reply, making note of the case number (I1407) and the specific item (E46058) before he went off that afternoon to look for it.
Getting into storage was hardly an issue. It wasn't exactly top-secret clearance or the Department of Mysteries, so he made his way past the room's security (and the bored-looking wizard responsible for guarding everything) without any problems. Should he have run into any issues, he had the e-mail from Anastasia Karkaroff that he could have pulled up, though Zeke did find himself staring down a bunch of files and boxes with no idea where to begin. Figuring out the way in which the evidence was organized didn't take too long, really, nor had Zeke wanted to waste Karkaroff's time by dawdling while she was waiting for him to collect something for her. He wasn't looking to get a slap on the wrist, so he hurried as much as he could, checking the case number over multiple times and making sure that the item of note—E46058—was listed as being in the evidence box. It was all good, as far as he could tell without opening it and risking accidentally tampering with anything, which meant that he just needed to get it back to Karkaroff's desk for her.
The box itself looked heavy to him, so Zeke was fairly sure that that was why Karkaroff had enlisted him to get it. Not that she wasn't strong, of course, but he had the build for it. When he picked it up, it wasn't actually as heavy as he had anticipated it would be, though, so that was good. It made it much easier to carry the box back with him out of the storage facility—signing out electronically, as he had upon his entrance—and back through to Magical Interpol.
[ Leo ]
Leo typed away at his keyboard, it was an important day, but it didn't mean his regular work didn't stop. IT and Maintenance issues never stopped, and he knew that at least Maintenance's workload had increased dramatically with the introduction of tech. Luckily, IT played a supportive role for them, but it really came down to long days, random hours, and many weekends spent at the office. Leo had built up an impressive stash of energy drinks at his desk. Occasionally he'd let Romy take one when she got called into the office at three in the morning due to an explosive ink cartridge. The worst part for him had been the training. Wizards thought that wireless mice could connect to just any machine when they could typically be paired only to one. Even with magic, it was a limitation, and the Ministry wasn't willing to pay the expense for the more expensive mice and keyboards that could connect to multiple devices. The timeline he had gotten for the start of his tasks had been roughly in the hours after the lunch hour. He'd worked through lunch to get some of his more immediate tasks done and final preparation completed. In the center drawer of his desk, he had his phone—Android, of course. Next to it was the small mirror that Ana had lent him.
For a moment, Leo had lost track of time. Starting at about two in the afternoon, he'd started checking the mirror every ten minutes, and he went to recheck it around two-thirty—seeing a pair of impatient brown eyes glaring at him. She nodded, a simple gesture but one that told him it was time to move. Leo took out the phone and slide the drawer closed. The metal was old and scraped against the sides, making a slight noise. But nobody looked, it was just the sounds of the office. Noises that over time became almost comforting to hear. The scraping of metal against the metal of the old drawers, the creaking of the chairs when you leaned back, and the slow rumble of uneven desk drawers that opened on their own—no magic involved. Leo's home away from home. Most weeks, he spent more time here than he did in his own small flat, but he was accustomed to it. When he was busy, he wasn't stuck in his own head thinking about the topics he'd trained himself to push aside. Occlumency helped, of course.
Powering the phone, he waited until the screen was illuminated entirely, and he swiped his thumb across the three by three matrix of dots that were a password. It wasn't his favorite—but easier and faster than typing in a twenty digit random assortment of letters and symbols. The phone didn't have many apps. It had a secure messaging app that used end-to-end encryption but mainly focused on two applications as he swiped left to find their icons. The first app, Pyroid, Leo used to write quick python scripts. Or he could write them on his personal laptop and transfer them onto the file system of the device. The second app was the critical one he needed today. Termux, an app that mimicked a terminal on a computer. This would allow him to execute what he needed. Leo opened the Termux app, typed in a command to clear what history remained there, and typed the command that would kick this whole thing off. ‘cat operation.py | ssh leo@192.168.1.101’. He paused a moment and glanced around. Maybe if you had asked him ten years ago, he would have felt selfish for causing such stress on his department, friends, and coworkers, but he kept to his word and his beliefs.
Leo's thumb moved to the bottom right corner of the screen and clicked the enter key. The cursor on the screen blinked for a few moments. The rectangle repeatedly shifting from white to black, white to black until text began to appear on the screen. The last line told him it was successful. ’SCRIPT EXECUTION COMPLETE’. Leo stood and slipped the phone in his pocket. He took the opportunity to stretch, feeling and even hearing his back crack in a few places. Maybe it was his age, but he'd been slumped over his keyboard since about five that morning when he'd been called in to help with some work. Mostly it was typing up incident reports for the past six weeks, they'd fallen behind, and since it was nearing the end of the year, they had to be completed. Leo glanced around but turned when he heard someone in the corner exclaim in a tone of severe annoyance. ' Bloody system crashed, I can't log into anything!' Another Maintenance employee went to his desk and looked at his screen and confirmed that he could not log in.
Slowly but surely, but not unexpectedly, pairs of eyes began to look at him. Leo was the IT guy, the IT guy. He glanced around and made an expression that said he understood. "I'll take care of it." He sat back down and moved his mouse, the screensaver shifted to the login screen, and he quickly typed away an assortment of letters and symbols that comprised his password. People were often amazed at how fast he typed, but then he just reminded them of his no-maj origins and that he'd grown up with similar technology. He opened the Remote Desktop window and attempted to log into the server. He could see the status that way, but (just as he expected) it would not connect. Before he left his desk, he opened the email application, and from a folder, he took an existing email (from the last time the systems had crashed), changed a few words around, and sent it out to all Ministry Employees. He had put a time of about an hour on there, mostly to give himself some breathing room in case something came up but also to provide Ana with time to complete her tasks—whatever they were. He locked his computer and grabbed his wand, and headed to the server room.
It wasn't a far walk, but he could hear the disgruntled employees' comments as he walked by, but they all gave him a knowing look. Leo always fixed it. Sometimes it was fifteen minutes because it was just a simple server reboot, and other times it was hours because a firmware or software patch had to be rolled back. He just never knew. In this case, the crash had been his plan all along—the script he'd executed from his phone via a remote login designed to isolate a single server. When the applications could not 'talk' to one another, the number of piled exceptions caused the system to crash. The system crashing was a security measure in a way. Too much in the memory stack at once put the system at risk for buffer overflows, which were easy security holes for hackers to get into. Some of his colleagues' faces when he explained that canary values had nothing to do with birds had been expected. The Ministry was the perfect target for a hacker, as many of the Wizarding World's significant institutions would be. Leo approached the door to the server room, muttered the spells he needed to get in. As a former Curse Breaker, he had helped design some of the security, but his training in that area had been limited by the short amount of time, and other Curse Breakers had been consulted.
He pulled open the door and walked inside. Even though a few of the enchantments had been lifted, it would only allow individual employees in. Truthfully most stayed away. The large hardware of stacked computers at least a foot over Leo's head with various blinking lights intimidated some people. It was better that way. Leo didn't need any of them transfiguring Ethernet cables into actual pythons. He walked to the back corner of the server room. It was the only place where Leo could access a terminal and have his back facing a wall—maybe he was paranoid, but he disliked the idea of somebody watching or hover regardless of what his current task was. Unlatching the server enclosure's metal side, he also pulled down a keyboard—as if it was a built-in laptop. ”Okay…” He muttered to himself as he logged in. His first task would be to switch back the evidence item descriptions in the database. Opening a terminal window, he began with a simple command ’sqlcmd -S 192.168.1.101 -U Leo -D Evidence -Q “SELECT TOP 10 ID, Desc FROM dbo.Items”’. The query returned ten rows, and Leo was satisfied that he hadn’t accidentally stopped the database service.
The cursor blinked at him, much as it had done on the app on his phone. From his pocket, he pulled out his regular cell phone. The case was old, blue, and scuffed, but it was still recognizable to a few in the magical world as the Tardis from the no-maj science fiction show Dr. Who. Leo had grown up watching this show, and it had helped garner his love and attention towards technology. Holding the phone in his other hand, he pulled out a small slip of parchment from his pocket that contained the id numbers he needed to swap back. Really, he had memorized them at this point, but it didn’t hurt to have. Putting his fingers back on the keys, he typed additional ‘sqlcmd’ statements into the terminal. ’UPDATE dbo.Items SET desc=”Fake Time Turners” WHERE ID= ‘E46058’’. The cursor blinked twice and returned (1 row updated). He subsequently updated E31426 to belong to the Magic Dampener. Finally, he ended with another SELECT query to ensure that everything was back in working order. The first part was done, and overall it had taken him about ten minutes, which left him with another fifty.
Leo glanced around. All he could hear was the soft hum of the server machines and the keys as he typed away at them. It was peaceful, though, in this atmosphere, it was easy to hear his heartbeat in his ears when he focused on his anxiety. Hacking was not something new to Leo, and he was always relatively calm about it, but this was the first time he’d ever participated in that activity at work. Leo cleared the terminal window so he could have a new screen to work with for the next update, but then he was startled by the sound of his phone buzzing against the open metal enclosure door he had temporarily placed it on. It was loud, and he grabbed the phone and saw the name of some Department Head. Leo really did not want to speak to him, but he answered and put on his best customer service voice. ”This is Leo.” She asked about the systems being offline, and Leo rubbed his eyes with his free hand and pinched the bridge of his nose. ”Yes, I’m working on getting them back up now. I-I understand it's an inconvenient time. I’m working as fast as I can.” Leo always received these calls, as if interrupting him somehow made the troubleshooting process faster.
”Yes I—Yes…there will be an email when it's back up and running.” She seemed satisfied with his answer for now, but he knew it was likely not going to be the last call, and after he hung up, he put the phone back in his pocket. Leo let out a breath and took a moment. He needed to focus and ensure he wasn’t skipping steps. It didn’t hurt to be too careful, not in this case. Leo entered another command but to different tables. The Evidence system held the item information but also the item status. Were they assigned to active cases? Were the items destroyed, disposed or lost? Were the items checked out by an individual or department? The sip of paper with the evidence numbers was still in front of him and he entered commands that updated the database to indicate the fake Time Turners had been disposed of. The Magic Dampener was now checked out to the Department of Mysteries. As a sanity check, he executed another SELECT command, and everything looked as it was intended to be. Those simple terminal commands would have a significant impact, at least to his goal and what he was helping Cas with. The reason for it? He didn’t actually know, but Cas’ reasoning that something so potentially powerful was not safe in a place that could not even protect its own leader. There was still one last step through—the logs.
Leo changed directories to where he knew the logs were located. Part of his earlier python script had been to make a copy of the log file, and he recognized it as the one that had a DateTime stamp. It had been about forty-five minutes since he’d come down here, and he was surprised he hadn’t gotten more phone calls. Then again, much of the Ministry was on holiday breaks or supposed they might have just gone home since the system crash happened so late in the day. Leo deleted the current file and renamed the copy, removing the date time stamp. The last entry would show the system disconnected from the network and not any of his other changes. With that, he went into the system services via the terminal window and restarted the ones he had intentionally stopped to close off the network connections. With that, he knew he was in the clear. Checking his watch, he saw it was just past three-thirty. He hoped Ana could do what she needed to do because he was done with his task now. Leo then typed his last command ’sudo reboot’.
The screen turned black, and Leo replaced the keyboard and the enclosure door with the latch. He returned the parchment slip to his pocket and made sure he wasn’t leaving his wand or phones behind. He walked out of the server room and replace the enchantments that were the security measures to the sensitive equipment here. He made his way back to his desk, knowing the server reboot would be complete by the time he got there. Sitting down, he moved his mouse to clear the screensaver again and logged in. From his end, everything was a green light, and he opened his email to inform the rest of the Ministry that it was too.
[ Anastasia ]
Ana did not type very fast. The concept of using this device to write out messages had become more manageable, but her eyes continually glanced down to see where to place her fingers and back up to ensure that the message she’d typed was correct. However, very often, between the slow clicking noises, one would hear the ‘backspace’ key’s heavy clicking sound. If she’d had her way, she would still be handwriting memos with a quill and sending them on her way—a handful still did, but there was the push from above to be entirely electronic. However, it was still a slow day, so she could afford the time to type slowly. It was good practice, anyway. Maybe in this field, at least she would have something over her older brother, aside from dueling, of course—not that he would ever admit that out loud. She heard footsteps approaching and glancing up. She saw Zeke holding a medium sized box. It was an innocuous box with minimal labeling comprising an evidence item number tag and some tape that sealed it close—no indication of its actual contents. Zeke approached her desk, and Ana closed her laptop and pushed it aside to make space, standing up after.
”Thank you Zeke.” She spoke, giving the trainee a small but quick smile. He nodded and walked back to his desk. Ana had left a stack of files that needed to be double-checked for any missing entries on his desk. It would keep him busy for some time. Ana glanced around. Zeke was hidden behind that stack of files, and fortunately, her desk wasn’t in the center of the room and far enough that she wouldn’t be disturbed. Retrieving her wand, she unsealed the top of the box and pushed back one of the flaps on top, only enough to glance inside and ensure that she had the right item. She supposed she was still surprised. The plan had worked so far though she was still vigilant about her own items and tasks. That still a few things to do—she had to transfigure the item. Sitting back down, she figured she could transfigure the box as well. The purse she planned to transform it into would be larger than intended, but she could account for that easily.
Ana sat back down and opened the bottom left-hand drawer of her desk, grabbing the file she had stored in there almost a month ago. Opening it, she held it in her lap and acted as though she was skimming a file, but instead, she was activating the mirror inside. At first, she only saw the ceiling of an office, and she wondered where Leo was. Was he paying attention? Had Leo left the mirror out? If he wasn’t paying attention and was careless enough to act like this, she would need to add hexing him while she found another way out. However, a few moments later, there were a pair of large blue eyes blinking at her. Finally, she nodded. They didn’t need to speak or indicate anything else. Plus, speaking into a file might have only brought unwanted scrutiny to her behavior. Ana closed the file and placed it on top of her closed laptop—she would still need to grab the mirror shortly. She stood up and lifted the box, it was a bit heavy, but Ana was undoubtedly not the type that would ask for help unless absolutely necessary. She managed to get it to the ground next to her chair.
Soon she felt her phone buzz in her pocket. She pulled out the device and unlocked it. There was an email notification. ’ Emergency Server Downtime’ and a smile appeared across her face. Glancing background, she saw the few remaining employees scrambling and asking one another in urgent tones if they knew what was happening. Zeke approached her desk. The stack of files on his desk could not be processed while the system was down. She turned in her chair to face him, the box behind her on the floor. He opened his mouth to speak, but Ana cut him off. ”Go home Zeke. They always take forever to get the system back up.” She sounded annoyed—though it wasn’t that hard to fake. It wouldn’t have been the first time almost the entire system had gone down and left them all twiddling her thumbs. It was less of a hassle during the holiday season when fewer employees were here. ”You will just have a long day tomorrow. Those need to be completed before the end of the year.” Merlin forbid anyone mistook her as the benevolent type. ”I’ll see you tomorrow.” She nodded and shuffled some papers on her desk to add to the ‘annoyed’ employee look.
It seemed more than one had the same idea. It was almost three in a mostly empty office—not a lot of employees would stick around to wait and see how long the systems would be down. Ana waited until she saw Zeke and a few more trainees and agents walkout, turning in her chair again to deal with the box and the item. The faster she got this transfiguration done, the quicker she could get out of here. Even she had to admit that the closer they inched toward their goal, the more she felt something would happen—but she knew their planning had been meticulous. In the back of her mind, however, she had filed away the truth of the matter. She was putting herself at significant risk here, but Leo was taking an even bigger one. Right now, he was the center of attention, systems were down, and he was the man to fix it. Nobody was going to bother with an Interpol agent. Ana opened all the flaps of the box and looked inside. It was broken but intact, she made the decision to leave it in the box. Retrieving her wand, she took a breath and focused on the transfiguration and spells.
The result was a bag, more a medium to large-sized purse. Not bad, Ana gave herself a mental pat on the back and double-checked that she was still more or less alone in the offices. Fortunately, she was, and she stood up and placed the bag on her chair. It was a plain black color, the inside a felt-like material that was a faded red. It made her grimace, such an awful combination, but it would have to make do for now. She grabbed her laptop from the desk and placed it vertically inside, so a small part of the edge was still visible. She also put the file with the two-way mirror inside and a handful of other documents and things. There wasn’t a lot of space, but enough to make it seem like she was taking work home with her due to the system being down. One could work offline, though it was a slower process overall. Ana paused, took another breath. She still had one more thing left to do, and then all she had to do was walk out of that Atrium and back to the safe-house of which she was the secret keeper. Ana had visited her brother and his good friend Titus to make all the arrangements earlier in the month.
Ana grabbed both of the straps and placed them over her shoulder to keep it close, but on the side that did not have her wand holstered. She never wanted to be unprepared. She walked casually out of the Interpol offices and down the hall toward the evidence storage. Just one more thing to do. She could hear the sound of her footsteps echo slightly with the emptiness of the hallway, and it only made the journey seem that much longer. She had to stop herself from continually scoping out where she was and act like she, in fact, worked there. Finally, she turned a corner, and she had arrived. It was a secure area but hardly had the same security level as the Minister of Magic’s office. There was a lone employee, and he gave her a quick smile and stood as if to off her assistance. Ana’s facial expression shifted to that of a friendly employee. Her eyes softened, and she smiled warmly. ”Good afternoon, I was wondering if you could help me find an item. I just can’t remember the number. Do you think you can look it up for me? Actually---I think it’s that box right there, that number looks familiar?” The employee turned to see if he could spot what Ana was referring to, and while his back was turned, her face returned to her regular sober expression, and she pointed her wand at him.
”Obliviate.” She spoke simply as she cast the memory charm on this unsuspecting man. There wasn’t a need to yell it, but there was always intent needed, and the intent was that he essentially forgot the entire workday. He stumbled as though he had been knocked in the head or walked into a room and forgotten why he came here. Turning, he startled at the sight of Ana, who had resumed her friendly smile once again. ”Oh, I see to—um….i’m sorry, did you need help finding something?” Ana shook her head. ”Oh, well, I was looking for something, but I’ll return tomorrow. The systems are down currently.” She explained, an almost apologetic look on her face as she gripped the straps of the purse to her side. The man was still a bit befuddled, and he muttered something about wondering what day of the week it was, and he sat back down. Her last task was complete. It was time to go. So far, everything had gone to plan. She glanced at her wristwatch and noted the time: three twenty-seven, plenty of time to spare.
Ana walked back down the hallway but took a left at the end toward the Atrium instead of a right, her shoes still making a lone echo across the freshly polished floors as she smiled and greeted employees that were still lingering and occasionally moved entirely out of the way of rushing Maintenance employees who seemed to have a recurring problem with printer cartridges and the mess they appeared to cause. She was soon out of the Ministry building, it was rare to walk outside, and the sun still be out these days, but she turned a corner following some employees she recognized and apparated.
[ Casimir ]
The day was just edging into the evening when Cas arrived at the safe house. Unfortunately, he couldn’t spend the entire day waiting for news from Ana or Leo – he had business at Borgin and Burke’s and a prolonged absence would be noted. But he often left the store to complete various pieces of his business – a meeting with a contractor, offering his services in a home visit for his more prestigious clients, or because he was pursuing a special acquisition. His assistants had learned not to question him too extensively on his comings and goings, or risk receiving the worst sorts of assignments from him.
He waited patiently at the table, fingers toying with his wand idly as he waited for Ana to return. He was certain everything must have gone smoothly, or he would have received a special signal from his sister. In the meantime, he waited. Eventually, he heard the sound of a door and ceased all movement as Ana came through the door. She had a new bag on her arm, one that she hadn’t left with this morning, and Cas’s serious expression changed into one of satisfaction at the sight. “It’s done, then?” he asked, although really there was no need for words. Ana stopped and gave her brother a look. "As if I'd ever actually own a purse this hideous." She commented, placing the bag in front of him and removing her laptop and other items. He examined the Transfigured bag carefully as it was placed onto the table. Now his real work would begin – utilizing every bit of his training from Gringotts and Knockturn to examine the item and learn everything he could from it. Its origin, its intended use, its level of disrepair, and how that situation could possibly be rectified.
Yes, the magic dampener had finally been liberated from the insecure and worthless grasp of the Ministry. Here, it would be secure while Cas and Jasper learned all its secrets – and how it could best serve Ouroboros.
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