All his carefully constructed world had shattered once again. He had tried--Merlin knew he tried, damnit!--to rebuild after the war was over, and he had a home, Lucy, and a good career to show for that. But the blood revolution wasn't through with him. Now this awful reminder, delivered to him by the wraith-like Jayden man that Ivy and Lucy knew somehow, had upset the balance in his life. His baby sister. His darling firecracker of a baby sister was in jail, and beaten, and impregnated, and abused...

Derry gripped the back of Lucy's chair so hard it felt as if it would shatter into toothpicks at any moment. When Jayden delivered the news there had been a brief period of disbelief, then fury (first at Ivy, then Bram, then Garrow, then himself). He dimly recalled Lucy's attempts to calm him down, and contacting the Irish government, before he broke down. Out of the wreckage that his sister's lies had caused, he discovered that his path had been made very plain. He was going to help Ivy. Then he was going to take his family back to Ireland as soon as magically possible. He was going to fix things there. It didn't matter how he fixed it. He just wouldn't sweep the problems under the rug again. Ireland was his home and no sister-beating English politician was going to ruin it.

Will it ever feel better? Will it ever heal? he had asked Ivy after the Council Blood Bath, as they sat together back-to-back and broken in the Irish countryside. She told him No. Never. You'll bleed forever. He hadn't expected her to answer at all.

The meeting would begin shortly. Derry originally expected a mediocre turnout, but any fear of Ministry interruption proved weaker than anger at the state of the government. The Leaky was stuffed. Many witches and wizards remained in their cloaks despite the dim lighting. Outside the night was clear and chill, and inside the air was smoky and uncomfortably warm. He tugged at his collar, rolled up his sleeves, and tapped his foot against the worn wooden floor while he waited for the clock to tick to nine. Ten minutes. Why did ten minutes have to be so damn long?

"Derriere Ballantine. Sweet Maeve, you look old and haggard."

A gangly bearded Irishman close to Derry's age walked up to him and placed a hand on his shoulder.

"Keany Sheehy. You're the same arse ye were seven years ago."

"That's what I got for moving out of the country. Less scars and an excuse to be selfish."

"Thank you for coming back. How are things out west?"

"Better than here by the sounds of it. I should move for the work, eh? I'm sorry about your family, Dermot. They bore the brunt of it. And your sister--"

"I'm sorry too."

"But you're a stubborn lot. You have Kennedy's blood in you. You'll turn things right."

"With your help I hope we will. Have you met my wife? She wasn't in school with you. Lucy, this is Kean, he's an old friend that works in Magical Law in the states..."

And suddenly it was ten past nine and the guests at the Leaky were getting restless, conversing noisily among themselves and looking around the room, waiting for a leader to emerge. Finally Derry stood up on a table and whistled. A newspaper was in his hand. The noise crescendoed and fell away.

"Well, we all know why we're here. We're here for answers. But I suppose you'd like to know the person that organized this meeting. My name is Dermot Ballantine. I work on Level 5. My sister, Ivy Ballantine, is the hit witch that 'attacked' Edward Garrow and was imprisoned." The word attacked he spoke with bitter sarcasm. A dozen patrons, all those without cloaks to hide their faces and bearing the look of the rubbernecker, shifted uncomfortably in their seats and glanced at the door. He flipped the paper open; the front page bore a large photo of Edward Garrow in St. Mungo's.

"This is a personal matter to me. If ye just came to feel self-righteous or get a little free entertainment you can leave. I'm not interested in fecking about with uninformed English bigots who think they've seen a lot of pain because their government can't tell its arse from its face and darling Harry Potter isn't here to shepherd them. If you're a genuinely concerned citizen of the wizarding world, I invite you to stay. If you're a spy for Garrow or a bored associate from the Syndicate, I welcome you to take a drink with my friends." He gestured around the room, to a dozen burly cloaked figures with their arms crossed and wands drawn.

"And if you have information about Edward Garrow or this fourth unforgivable of his, I hope that you will be patient and wait while the Irish-hating jacka**es leave. Because this isn't what you expected, right? You expected someone English in ministry robes to soothe and pet away your worries with pretty words like a Knockturn alley pimp ********* *** **** to a couple *** *** **** ********* whores. No, but the truth of it is that you're all just a bunch of **** ******* yourselves, am I right? Because I'm Irish I can't possibly know anything of your ********* government or ***** **** weather much less the trials you are currently experiencing. I'm just a ranting raving potato harvesting bloodthirsty son of Eireann to ye, and probably mudblood to boot."

He continued until the casual listeners had stormed out, leaving behind many figures in cloaks with crossed arms. Kean, his legs propped on top of a table, waved to the departing patrons cheerfully. "I'll drink to that!" he chirped, and took a swallow of Derry's drink. Derry followed with a drink, rubbed his hands together, and with a maniacal glint in his eye that was eerily similar to the look his grandfather once got during duels, he said, "Well. Sorry about that. Can't trust the masses. How many of you have information about Garrow?"

He counted the hands and glasses that raised. It was a dismally small number of hands, at least those that were willing to raise them. "Does anyone know where he was or what he was doing on the night of September 28th?"

Constance sat in the back of the tavern with her hood still up, frowning darkly and listening to the chatter around her. Some of it was comprised of animated complaints against the government ("They raised the tax on armadillo spleen six Knuts!"), but most of it wasn't related at all. In fact, the only people who seemed to be concerned with the issue that had brought them all to the tavern were those sitting in the corner farthest from her. One of them she recognized as Ivy's brother Dermot, who stood behind an apprehensive-looking blonde. She'd never formally met him, but she supposed now was as good a time as any.

But before she had made up her mind to stand and go to him, he jumped onto a table and started to speak. She smirked to herself when he spat out the word "attacked" like it was slander. Maybe he hadn't seen what she'd done to Garrow. No, there was no disputing that Ivy had attacked Garrow; what was being questioned was the circumstances and the reasons. Insanity? Jealousy? Obsession, as Garrow claimed? Or had it been self-preservation? Had Ivy's confession just been self-preservation?

Constance thought so.

Ye're bein' foolish, a part of her said. Ye just don't want to believe that Ivy is what he says she is. Well, that was true. Why? She didn't want to think about it, because she knew exactly why she was so keen on proving Garrow wrong about her colleague. It wasn't just because they worked together. Constance looked up to Ivy, respected her. To some degree, Con wished she could be more like the Irishwoman--a little friendlier, a little less gloomy. If it turned out that Ivy was some raving criminal, what then? What good was Constance's trust in her?

Derry began to rant and Constance found those dismal thoughts dashed from her mind by the hilarity. He knew almost as many expletives as she did and before long she was clapping and hollering with the Irish corner as people stomped out, muttering curses on the Irish. Finally, we can get down to business. She didn't raise her hand when Derry asked how many people had information. She had to wait for her moment.

"Does anyone know where he was or what he was doing on the night of September 28th?"

"Oh, aye," she said, standing and putting her hood back. "I know where he was an' what he was doin'. I was there. I'm the Auror who arrested Ivy."

There was a clamor as several people got up, growling menacingly at her. Constance held her hands up in a gesture of peace and waved them away.

"Shush now, hold yer bleedin' horses. Let me finish, will ye?" she said. "Me name is Constance Fallon, an' Ivy's damn well the closest friend I have. I dinna know it was her when I got the owl, and even when I got there I dinna quite believe it. When I arrived, Garrow had her on the ground, bleedin' and broken all over.

"I took her to St. Mungo's. While she was asleep, Garrow came an' insisted on givin' me his statement. He told me she'd been stalkin' him fer years and was come tryin' t' take his wee daughter away. Ivy confessed t' the same," Constance said, frowning.

"I dinna believe either of them," she said. "He beat Ivy far too badly fer it t' have been a simple matter of intrusion. I believe there's a history there an' both o' them are lyin' fer some reason I canna imagine. And d'ye know what the child was wailin' when I got there?" She paused, turning to Derry and looking him in the eyes.

"Máthair. Garrow's not married, and a lass of five is old enough to recognize her mam." She sighed and shook her head, going to a table and sitting on top of it. She folded her arms over her chest.

"Things jus' aren't addin' up, and I'm here hopin' to find the missin' pieces and get the woman out of jail," she said.

Artemis sat quietly by herself at a little table and watched the proceedings without comment. It was strange, she thought that the last time she met the young Ballantine couple they had been so light-hearted. Having a good time as Apollo pulled out outfit and outfit for their silly makeover. The Derry Ballantine that stood before her now ranting about Edward Garrow, and demanding justice (or perhaps revenge she couldn't quite tell) was nothing like the jovial man she had first met.

He was followed shortly by a scottish auror that she hadn't met before. Appearently, she had arrested the sister. Artemis shook her head, they were all so focused on this Ivy. She supposed she could understand if someone attacked Apollo, she'd be pretty focused on that too. But what about Darien? What about the curse that could rip your soul out of your body, that could control you more completely than any potion, spell, or enchantment ever before designed? Surely an evil as great as that should be their primary concern! To make sure that the producer of this grand scheme could not be allowed to wander around unchecked.

When Constance finally concluded her speech, which in Arty's opinion was more a declaration of loyalty to the Ballantine cause than proof of Garrow's evil, she cleared her throat.

"I saw him earlier that night." She said quietly.

Artemis pulled her cloak more tightly around her as if it might offer her some protection from the dozens of eyes that were suddenly trained on her. She didn't want to be here, at all. she wanted to forget everything that had happened that night at the ministry, to go home and pretend it was all a rather unfortunate dream. The last thing she needed was her ex-boyfriend's crazy boss showing up at her apartment in the middle of the night AK-ing her and Apollo.

But since the events of that evening, she had been keeping a sharp eye out. Her concious could not allow her to just let this go. No matter how untrue, she couldn't help but feel that her friendship with Logan had helped percipitate matters. She worried constantly that whatever trivial bits of wisdom she might have imparted to him had been twisted and used to create that monsterous curse. Sometimes she even worried that what he said was true. That he had tried to escape Garrow's malicious grasp, but he had stayed for her sake. (She tried to ignore this last bit as much as possible. It was much easier to hate him that way.)

"I-I don't know anything about your sister. Or what Garrow did or didn't do to her but-- I was at the ministry that night and I saw terrible things. I saw what happened to Darien Holywell. He tried to attack us and the unspeakable who developed the curse..."

She trailed off not really wanting to go on.

"Look, I don't want to be involved. I was dragged into this mess without my knowledge and I'd just as soon go home and forget everything I saw in the Department of Mysteries. But the others who were there either can't or won't speak. And he can't get away with this. He'll just go on hurting people. I don't want me or my family to be next."