The vaulted ceiling of the Ministry of Magic Atrium was absurdly high.
Those arched ribs cast in gold reflected a blinding radiance under the magical light sources.
The entire atrium was rendered in a warm golden hue that sat somewhere between solemn and gaudy.
Directly beneath the dome, the Fountain of Magical Brethren continued to spout endless jets of water.
The sound of splashing water mixed with the footsteps flooding in from all directions, the chatter, and the "boom" of the Floo powder activating in the fireplaces.
It formed a cacophony that never seemed to cease.
Catherine stepped out from Fireplace Number Six.
She wore a sharply tailored, dark gray intern's uniform skirt.
The bronze button at her collar was fastened to the very top, and her sleeves were neatly folded twice.
Her chestnut hair was tied into a low ponytail at the back of her head, with a few stray strands hanging by her ears.
Her skirt swayed the moment she stepped out of the fireplace.
The amplitude of that sway was larger than a normal walking stride.
Because there was something moving beneath the fabric.
Catherine's tail—the one grown from the fusion of the Cursed Kitten bloodline, covered in a layer of exceptionally soft, light chestnut fur...
Right now, it was curled tightly against the inside of her right thigh.
The tip of the tail was restlessly tapping against the skin behind her knee.
She did not like the Ministry of Magic.
Too many people.
Too many gazes.
Too much of that suffocating pressure built from power and regulations.
But she had come anyway.
Catherine bypassed the fountain, walking toward the elevators leading to the Minister's office area.
Her pace was not slow.
In a place like the Ministry, walking too slowly made one look like a lost newcomer, while walking too fast would draw the attention of security wizards.
She chose a rhythm that was just right, one that said, "I know exactly where I am going."
She didn't make it to the elevator.
"Stand still."
A female voice cut in from the right.
Catherine's footsteps halted.
The tail beneath her skirt puffed up instantly.
That stress response to a sudden threat caused the tail's volume to nearly double within half a second.
It went from a submissive state against her thigh to a stiff, bristling rod.
It poked straight against the inner lining of her skirt, creating an unnatural bulge.
Catherine forced herself to take a deep breath, using her willpower to press the tail flat again.
Then she turned her head.
Five people.
Five wizards wearing the standard Auror Department uniforms stood in a semi-circle on the right passage.
The uniforms were deep red, with a golden badge of crossed wands sewn onto the chest.
Each had at least two backup wands and an emergency Portkey hanging from their belts.
The leader was a woman.
Mia.
Catherine recognized her.
The second-in-command of the Auror Department, Selina's most capable deputy.
Her wand was not in her hand, but the posture of her right hand...
Fingers slightly curved, keeping an angle between her thumb and index finger just right for a split-second grip...
It indicated she could draw her wand in less than 0.3 seconds.
"Catherine!"
"Routine inspection. Please present your internship permit and Ministry registration documents."
Catherine's feline pupils narrowed slightly.
"I submitted all the documents to the Administrative Office three days ago."
"The stamped copy is in your Auror Department's filing cabinet, serial number A-337."
"Documents in the filing cabinet need verification. Before that is complete, please come with us."
Mia's tone sounded strictly professional, but her body language betrayed her.
Her center of gravity was slightly forward, her shoulders tensed.
In her pupils was that focus bordering on paranoid sharpness seen only when a hound locks onto its prey.
This was no routine inspection.
Catherine knew it.
Mia knew that Catherine knew it.
"Verification?"
The corner of Catherine's mouth twitched, her expression carrying that lazy, disdainful air of a feline.
"Document A-337 has the Administrative Office Director's personal signature and the magical authentication of the Ministry seal."
"Are you questioning the Administrative Office's audit process, Captain Mia?"
Mia's eyelid twitched.
"I am merely executing the duties of the Auror Department."
"What duties? Intercepting a student coming for an internship?"
Catherine's voice wasn't loud, but under the resonance of the Atrium, it was enough for everyone within three meters to hear clearly.
Several passing clerks slowed their pace, pretending to organize their files while their ears perked up.
Mia's jaw tightened slightly.
She took a step forward.
"Catherine, I am officially notifying you... the Auror Department is placing you under temporary detention for questioning."
"The reason is that you are suspected of participating in an illegal detention case involving a high-ranking Ministry official."
Catherine's tail puffed up again beneath her skirt.
This time, she didn't bother to suppress it.
"Illegal detention?" Her cat-like pupils contracted into two thin vertical lines. "Do you have a warrant?"
"Temporary detention for questioning does not require a warrant. According to Clause 3 of Article 42 of the Magical Law Enforcement Regulations..."
"Clause 3 of Article 42 applies to situations where 'there is reasonable evidence that the suspect poses an immediate flight risk'."
Catherine's voice turned cold.
"I am here for an internship, not to flee. Your legal basis is invalid."
Mia's lip curled.
"Whether the legal basis is valid is not for you to judge."
She raised her right hand.
The four Aurors behind her simultaneously placed their hands on the wands at their waists.
The air in the Atrium suddenly grew heavy.
The clerks who had been pretending to pass by quickly sped up, scattering away from the area.
The sound of the fountain water became jarring in the tense atmosphere.
Catherine's hand moved as well.
Her right hand slowly reached for the wand tucked into her belt.
A slender body made of poplar and a cursed cat-whisker core, two inches shorter than a standard wand.
"I advise you not to move."
Mia's voice dropped low.
"Five against one. Even if you have trump cards, you cannot handle five Aurors at once in the Atrium."
"If you draw your wand, 'temporary detention' becomes 'forcible arrest following resistance'."
"By then, you won't just be sitting in an interrogation room."
Catherine's fingers paused on the handle of her wand.
She didn't pull it out.
But she didn't let go either.
The tail beneath her skirt had expanded to its limit.
The bristling fur even pierced the thin inner lining, forming a ring of hedgehog-like protrusions on her skirt.
Her feline eyes switched rapidly between two extremes...
The vertical slits of combat mode and the round pupils of a normal state.
The frequency of the switch exposed the violent struggle within her.
To fight or not to fight.
If she fought, even if she could deal with the five people before her, the crime of using force in the Atrium would give the Aurors a formal reason to arrest her.
If she didn't, and went to the interrogation room, God knows how long she would be held.
She did indeed know about Selina's situation... Jerry had kidnapped that woman and still had her locked in the workshop basement.
If the Aurors used any form of Veritaserum or potion-based interrogation...
"Move."
A voice came from behind Catherine.
It wasn't very loud.
One could even call it soft.
But the moment that voice hit the air of the Atrium, all the surrounding noise...
The footsteps, the chatter, the fountain, the roar of the fireplaces...
All of it seemed to have the mute button pressed, dropping several decibels instantly.
It wasn't magic.
It was presence.
Catherine's tail instantly switched from bristling to submissively sleek.
Not out of fear, but because her feline instincts automatically judged the newcomer's aura as "safe."
Mia's expression changed.
That hound-like sharpness was covered by a layer of thin ice within half a second.
Amelia Bones walked out from the corridor corner behind Catherine.
She wore a meticulously tailored, deep burgundy maternity robe.
The fabric was a high-grade wool blend with a silky luster, embroidered with extremely low-key silver patterns at the collar and cuffs.
The robe had been specially enlarged at the abdomen to accommodate her heavily rounded pregnant belly.
Her left hand rested on top of her stomach, her fingers carelessly drawing small circles on the fabric.
Her right hand held a cup of steaming black tea.
Her gait was incredibly lazy.
Every step was slow, heel hitting the ground first, then the entire sole rolling out.
It was as if she were measuring the dimensions of every brick on the floor.
That gait formed an absurd contrast with the oppression she was radiating.
She clearly looked like a pregnant woman out for a post-lunch stroll, but every Auror present felt their spine growing cold inch by inch.
Amelia walked up to Catherine's side.
She didn't look at Mia.
She looked at Catherine first.
"Kitten."
She called her that.
Then her left hand moved from her own belly, naturally reaching behind Catherine.
She reached directly inside the waistband of Catherine's skirt.
Catherine's body stiffened.
"Meow..."
An extremely faint, almost inaudible cat sound escaped Catherine's throat involuntarily.
Because Amelia's fingers had accurately found the base of her tail pressed against her inner thigh.
And then, she gripped it without hesitation.
Amelia's fingers stroked upward from the base of the short fur.
Catherine's knees went weak for a moment.
That was the instinctive reaction of the feline bloodline to stimulation at the base of the tail.
The density of nerve endings there was thirty times that of normal skin; any touch triggered an electric current of numbness through the spine.
"The fur is well-groomed today."
Amelia said it in a tone as if evaluating the weather, her fingers still stroking that furry tail rhythmically inside Catherine's skirt.
Then she finally lifted her head.
Those deep brown eyes landed on Mia's face.
"Captain Mia."
Amelia took a sip of her black tea.
"Blocking my intern on her very first day of reporting... has the Auror Department's hospitality changed, or is this your personal idea?"
Mia's lips moved.
"Madam Bones, this is an official Auror..."
"Temporary detention for questioning, Article 42, Clause 3, immediate flight risk."
Amelia finished the sentence for her, her tone lazy, like reading a boring document she'd seen a hundred times.
"I heard everything in the corridor just now. You made three errors in your legal citation. Shall I correct them for you?"
Mia's face paled.
"First," Amelia took another sip of tea, "the subject of Clause 3 of Article 42 is 'criminal suspects suspected of endangering the safety of the magical world'."
"Catherine's current status is a registered intern of the Ministry's Administrative Office, not a criminal suspect."
"You haven't even started a case file. What clause are you using to detain her?"
Amelia's fingers changed angle inside Catherine's skirt.
Sliding from the base to the mid-section, she lightly pinched the soft flesh of the tail with her thumb and index finger, slowly kneading it.
Catherine bit her lower lip.
Her feline pupils involuntarily dilated into circles because of the kneading.
Her entire aggressive posture dissolved bit by bit under Amelia's fingers.
"Second," Amelia continued, "even if you were to initiate a temporary detention, you need written authorization from the Director or Deputy Director of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement before execution."
"Your Auror Director, Selina, is currently... as far as I know... on 'leave'."
She placed an extremely subtle emphasis on the word "leave."
"Therefore, the one who should have signed the authorization is you. Please present it."
Mia's fingers tightened and then released.
She had no authorization.
Because this whole thing hadn't followed proper procedure from the start.
It was an ambush taking advantage of Catherine appearing alone at the Ministry.
Detain her while Amelia wasn't in the Atrium, create a fait accompli, and then fix the paperwork later.
But Amelia had appeared.
She had appeared too fast.
Fast enough that Mia had reason to suspect certain walls in this building had eyes and ears.
"Third."
Amelia switched her tea cup to her left hand—the same side as the hand currently feeling the tail inside Catherine's skirt.
This forced her to temporarily release the tail, freeing her right hand to hold the cup.
The moment it lost Amelia's fingers, Catherine's tail followed them involuntarily.
The tip of the tail rubbed against Amelia's wrist inside the skirt.
Like a cat interrupted during a petting session, using its head to nudge its master's hand.
Amelia felt the touch, the corner of her mouth turning up slightly.
Then she withdrew her right hand from Catherine's skirt.
Lifting the hand that still had a few light chestnut cat hairs clinging to it, she made a casual, fly-swatting gesture toward Mia and the four Aurors.
"In the public atrium of the Ministry, in broad daylight, you intercept a legally documented intern with a five-man armed squad."
"Have you thought about what this scene will look like in tomorrow's Daily Prophet?"
Amelia tilted her head with a lazy curiosity, as if truly waiting for Mia to answer.
"'Auror Department Leaderless During Director's Absence; Distinguished First Captain Harasses Intern via Illegal Means'... do you think that headline is eye-catching enough?"
Mia's face had turned from iron-blue to ashen pale.
The four Aurors behind her looked at each other.
One of the youngest had already quietly lowered his hand from his wand.
"Madam Bones!" Mia made one last struggle, her voice losing its edge, "Director Selina has been missing for over two weeks. We have reason to suspect..."
"Suspect what?"
Amelia turned her body slightly, facing Mia with her round pregnant belly.
"Regarding Director Selina's whereabouts, the Administrative Office initiated a formal internal investigation last week."
"Until the results are out, any unilateral enforcement action is an abuse of power."
Amelia took another sip of tea.
"And..."
She placed the teacup on the folder of a clerk who happened to be passing by.
The clerk froze, but seeing it was Amelia, he immediately stood there holding the tea obediently, not daring to move.
Amelia's free hand reached back into the rear of Catherine's skirt.
This time, she didn't just feel for the tail.
She hauled the entire tail out from inside the skirt.
"Meow-oo...!"
Catherine let out a cry, her face flushing a deep crimson instantly.
The light chestnut cat tail was exposed to the air...
About sixty centimeters long, the fur sleek, the tip slightly curled.
Right now, because of the sudden yank, it puffed into a ball of fur, looking exactly like an out-of-control feather duster.
"Amelia...! What are you doing...!"
Catherine reached out to tuck the tail back into her skirt, but Amelia was already holding it.
She pinched the mid-section with her thumb and index finger, waving it back and forth like a cat teaser.
"Don't hide it. It's not like no one knows."
Amelia's tone was lazy to the extreme.
She toyed with Catherine's tail—her fingertips smoothing over the grain of the fur again and again.
Every now and then, she gave the fluffiest part at the tip a firm squeeze.
Then she looked back at the now-silenced Mia.
"And, Captain Mia, let me give you a friendly reminder."
Amelia's voice took a turn on the word "friendly."
The way it turned made those words sound more dangerous than any threat.
"This intern you are intercepting—I personally signed her recommendation letter."
"In other words, she is mine."
Amelia pressed Catherine's tail against her own cheek, rubbing against it.
The soft, light chestnut fur brushed gently against her fair skin, a few hairs sticking near the corner of her mouth.
"Moving against my person is moving against me."
She moved the tail away from her face, her gaze crossing Mia's shoulder toward the corridor leading to the Minister's office deep in the Atrium.
"It is moving against the entire Minister's Office. Are you sure you want to do that?"
The Atrium went silent for five seconds.
In those five seconds, only the sound of the Fountain of Magical Brethren echoed under the empty dome.
Mia took a deep breath.
Her hand moved completely away from her waist.
"...Forgive the intrusion, Madam Bones."
She turned around, making a signal to the four Aurors to withdraw.
Five deep-red figures turned and left the way they came.
Mia walked at the front, her back ramrod straight, but her pace was much faster than when she arrived.
That speed wasn't urgency; it was escape.
Catherine watched their silhouettes disappear at the end of the corridor and let out a long, heavy breath.
The tail outside her skirt finally returned to normal from its puffed state.
It became a sleek, lustrous, beautiful cat tail once more.
It swayed twice in the air and then hung down submissively.
"Amelia... thank you."
Catherine whispered, her feline eyes blinking.
Amelia was still holding her tail.
She showed no intention of letting go.
She held the tail up before her, using her index finger to wrap around the tuft at the tip, over and over, like winding a ball of yarn.
"Don't thank me. Just have Jerry treat me to dinner later."
Amelia gave an extremely elegant yawn, her other hand covering her protruding pregnant belly.
The child inside seemed to sense something, kicking beneath her palm.
Amelia looked down at her stomach.
"You're hungry too?"
She said to her belly, then pulled Catherine by the tail, strolling leisurely toward the elevator.
Catherine was led away by her tail, feeling as awkward as a cat on a leash.
Her steps were stumbling, her cheeks burning red.
Her feline eyes shrank into two round golden marbles out of shame and helplessness.
"Can you not pull my tail while walking... it's embarrassing...!"
"I cannot."
Amelia didn't look back.
"The texture is too good. I don't want to let go."
When the elevator doors opened, Catherine thought she had stepped onto the wrong floor.
She remembered Amelia's office was on the fourth floor of the Ministry.
It should have been a standard administrative suite with floor-to-ceiling windows and an oak desk.
The last time she visited, the room was about thirty square meters with two filing cabinets and a guest sofa.
It was already considered a high-spec setup in this building.
But what appeared before her now was not an office.
It was a library.
A library of absurd proportions.
Bookshelves.
Bookshelves everywhere.
Deep brown oak shelves started from the doorway, extending row after row into the depths.
The spacing between each row was just enough for two adults to pass side-by-side.
The shelves were at least four meters high.
The books on the top levels required sliding ladders on rails to reach.
Catherine stood at the entrance, looking left...
The shelves extended to some blurred vanishing point at the end of her vision; she couldn't see a wall.
She looked right...
Equally borderless.
She looked up...
The ceiling was impossibly high.
Floating magical light orbs, like a swarm of bioluminescent jellyfish, drifted slowly in the shadows atop the shelves.
They shed a warm yellow light onto the densely packed spines.
The air was thick with a unique scent—a mixture of fresh ink and aged parchment.
Underneath was that crisp, dry, slightly ozone-like quality unique to the operation of a library dehumidification spell.
Catherine's tail poked out from beneath her skirt, standing straight in the air.
It was the instinctive alert response of her feline blood to an unknown space.
"Did your office get bigger again?"
Amelia had already walked ahead.
Her lazy gait seemed exceptionally small in this massive library.
The hem of her deep burgundy maternity robe dragged on the floor, making a soft swish sound.
"Mmh, I expanded it again last week."
She spoke without looking back, one hand on her belly, the other casually brushing the spines of the shelves as she passed.
"Seventeen layers of Undetectable Extension Charms. Currently, the internal area of this office is about... the size of the Hogwarts Forbidden Forest."
"From the outside, it's still that same wooden door. You just push it open and find this."
Catherine jogged a few steps to catch up.
Her feline eyes involuntarily widened with every shelf she passed.
The number of books was staggering.
Every level was packed to the brim.
The text on the spines covered at least a dozen different languages, some not even human.
Then she noticed something even stranger.
On the nearest shelf, a thick, leather-bound book was flipping its own pages.
The original text on the paper was dissolving at a visible rate.
The black letters faded away like they were being washed by an invisible solvent, leaving the pages blank.
Then, new text seeped out from the depths of the paper fibers.
Re-aligning row by row, the handwriting neat and the ink fresh.
Catherine leaned in for a closer look.
The content that had just refreshed on the page was a report on grain production fluctuations in the Seventh District of the Nordic Magical Federation.
It was precise down to every farm in every county.
The book next to it was also flipping pages automatically.
The content was population flow data for a wizarding settlement in the Balkans.
It listed specific dates of every household moving in or out last month.
Further down the shelf, an entire row of books was undergoing this self-refreshment simultaneously.
The flip-flip-flip of pages rose and fell like a forest made of information was breathing.
Amelia walked to an open area deep within the library.
A wide sofa upholstered in dark leather sat there.
On a low table beside it was a silver tea set and a plate of still-steaming scones.
A maternity pillow embroidered with gold patterns had been tossed carelessly into a corner of the sofa.
Amelia plopped down.
The act of sitting carried that cautious heaviness unique to a pregnant belly.
She braced herself on the sofa armrest with one hand, slowly bending her knees to let her hips meet the cushion first.
Only then did she lean her entire upper body back.
The belly became even more prominent after she sat, stretching the fabric of her robe tight over her abdomen.
She patted the spot next to her, signaling Catherine to sit.
Catherine sat down beside her.
Her tail automatically curled onto her thigh, the tip swaying gently over her knee.
Amelia's hand reached out immediately.
"Again..." Catherine muttered softly, but she didn't dodge.
Amelia's fingers accurately pinched the middle of that light chestnut tail and began to stroke the fur rhythmically. That movement was extremely natural, like someone who had kept cats for years subconsciously petting the cat on their lap while watching TV, not needing the cooperation of their eyes at all.
"The content of every single bookshelf here," Amelia began while petting the tail, her tone lazy, "refreshes automatically."
She gestured with her chin toward the surrounding bookshelves, which were still flipping pages with a whirring sound.
"Every world, every jurisdiction, every settlement ruled by the entire European Ministry of Magic... everything, no matter how trivial, will be recorded by the corresponding magical cores and then synchronized to these books. Population changes, material flow, magical fluctuations, even if two wizards get into a quarrel in a remote town in some resource world... as long as it happens, there will be a record here."
Catherine's feline pupils shrank into two golden beads.
"All... everything?"
"Everything."
Amelia picked up a scone from the low table and took a bite, crumbs falling onto her bulging belly. She looked at the crumbs, didn't bother to brush them off, and continued speaking.
"This system was designed by a certain Minister for Magic three hundred years ago; the prototype was a small-scale information mirroring spell. After expansion and improvement by over a dozen generations of people, it has now become the neural center of the entire European magical administrative system. Theoretically, a person sitting in this office can, without leaving the sofa, grasp everything happening within the jurisdiction of the European Ministry of Magic."
She took another bite of the scone.
"Of course, too much information is useless. No one can finish reading all the books here. So the true value lies not in 'what is recorded,' but in 'knowing where to look to find what you need.'"
Catherine digested this information for a moment, then asked the question she had been wanting to ask since she was in the Atrium.
"Wasn't the Auror Office your direct subordinate before?"
Amelia's hand paused on Catherine's tail.
Then she shook her head.
"The Auror Office is the Ministry of Magic's Auror Office."
Her tone here became a tiny bit more serious than just now... just a tiny bit, but for someone like Amelia, who almost always maintained a lazy state, this tiny change was equivalent to an ordinary person sitting bolt upright.
"It is an institution directly under the Ministry of Magic, the only department in the entire administrative system that possesses legal violent armament. It is loyal to no one."
She extended a finger and drew a circle in the air.
"Not loyal to the Minister, not loyal to the Deputy Minister, not loyal to the head or deputy head of any department. It is only loyal to the abstract concept of 'The Ministry of Magic' itself... which means, it only obeys orders that have passed through legal procedures and are issued in the name of the Ministry of Magic."
She put the half-eaten scone back on the plate and wiped the crumbs from the corner of her mouth with her thumb.
"My current position is Director of the Administrative Office. On the administrative level, I can issue administrative coordination directives to the Auror Office... tasks like allocating logistics, approving budgets, designating contact persons, and the like. But I cannot order them 'who to catch' or 'who not to catch.' Those belong to law enforcement authority; only two kinds of people can mobilize them."
She held up two fingers.
"First, the Minister for Magic personally. Second..."
Her gaze turned to Catherine.
"A wizard who can beat the entire Auror Office combined."
Catherine blinked.
"Like Dumbledore?"
"Like Dumbledore."
Amelia nodded. "The reason the Auror Office never dares to act out of line in front of Dumbledore is not because Dumbledore has any administrative power... as a Headmaster, he doesn't even have a staff position in the organizational structure of the Ministry of Magic. It's purely because he alone can press the entire Auror Office to the ground and beat them. It's a violent institution; at the end of the day, it only respects the fist."
She resumed kneading Catherine's tail, her thumb gently rubbing that most sensitive patch of fluff at the base of the tail.
"Meow..."
Catherine reflexively shrank her waist, her face blushing again.
"So, I cannot control the Auror Office."
Amelia's fingers showed no intention of stopping. "Unless, I become the Minister for Magic, and have a wizard stronger than Dumbledore under my command."
When she said this sentence, the corners of her mouth curled up slightly.
That arc was deeply meaningful.
Catherine naturally understood.
A wizard stronger than Dumbledore.
Jerry.
The tail outside her skirt wagged happily twice because of this thought, the fur radiating a layer of soft, bright luster under the illumination of the light orbs.
Amelia looked at that wagging tail and smiled... that smile carried a bit of "as I expected" understanding.
Then her expression switched.
Not that deliberate, politician-like switch. But a more natural, slight frequency tuning, transitioning from "chatting mode" to "work mode." Her eyes went from lazy to focused, her sitting posture went from slumped in the sofa to leaning slightly forward, and the hand resting on her belly went from an unconscious caress to stillness.
"To business. For your internship this time, I am giving you two choices."
Amelia held up one finger.
"First, stay here and be my secretary. The job content is to help me organize the information on these bookshelves, draft documents, and arrange schedules. The work isn't heavy but it's very tedious; the benefit is that you can come into contact with the core intelligence of the entire European Ministry of Magic, gaining resources for your further promotion in the future."
She held up a second finger.
"Second, go do field work. Go on missions with the Administrative Office's investigation team... intelligence verification, on-site visits, sometimes you might run into scenes where you need to draw your wand. High risk, tiring, and you often have to go on business trips, gone for days or even months at a time!"
Amelia put both fingers down, picked up the teacup from the low table, and took a sip.
"Think clearly before..."
"Field work."
Catherine didn't hesitate for even half a second.
The speed at which that answer popped out of her mouth was so fast that even her own tail couldn't react in time... the tip of the tail still maintained the arc of its leisurely swaying from the previous second, but Catherine's feline pupils had already contracted into two sharp vertical slits, her entire aura switching instantly from that obedient cat having its tail petted just now, into a small feline predator primed and ready to strike.
Amelia held her teacup and looked at her for two seconds.
"Reason?"
"I want to become Jerry's right-hand woman."
Catherine's voice was flat and unquestionable.
"Not his secretary, not his logistics, not some career bureaucrat sitting in an office helping him organize documents. I want to stand beside him, and face everything together with him."
She paused for a moment.
"The things he is doing now are getting more and more dangerous. I cannot just be someone protected by him in the rear. I need to have my own strength and experience, otherwise sooner or later I will become his weakness."
Her tail shot straight up abruptly when she said the word "weakness," the fur bristling slightly, and then rapidly returning to smooth... that was an instantaneous emotional fluctuation produced by unwillingness and fear regarding herself possibly becoming a burden.
Amelia put down the teacup.
She reached out her hand; this time she didn't go to pet the tail.
She placed her palm over the back of Catherine's hand.
That hand was warm, dry, the knuckles slightly rough due to long-term writing and gripping a wand, but the palm was soft.
"Good."
One word.
The corners of Amelia's mouth floated into that lazy smile, the kind that only appeared when she saw something that satisfied her.
"The field team assembles tomorrow morning at seven o'clock in Basement Level Two. The team leader is an old man named Thompson; his temper is very foul, he dislikes newcomers, and dislikes newcomers with backing even more."
She withdrew her hand and leaned back deep into the sofa again.
"If you can handle him, you can consider yourself formally in the business."
Catherine stood up.
Her tail drew a beautiful arc behind her, then obediently coiled back under her skirt, hiding itself away again.
The feline pupils returned to a gentle round shape, but a faint aftertaste of that sharpness that flashed just now remained in their depths.
"I'll go prepare a bit."
She took two steps toward the door, then stopped, and turned back around.
"Amelia."
"Mmh?"
"...Thank you."
Amelia picked up the scone crumbs that had fallen onto her belly one by one and stuffed them into her mouth, mumbling indistinctly:
"Don't thank me. Go back and tell Jerry he owes me two meals now."
Catherine couldn't help but smile.
That smile, in this library composed of endless information and as vast as the universe, was brief and bright, like a tiny spot of light falling between the pages of a book.
Then she pushed open the door and walked out.
The door closed behind her.
The library returned to silence.
Only the books on those shelves were still tirelessly self-refreshing... the whirring sound of flipping pages was even and continuous, like the pulse of this world itself.
Amelia leaned in the sofa, one hand resting on her belly.
The child in her belly kicked again.
"You also think she's not bad?"
She lowered her head and said a sentence to her belly, her voice so soft that only she and that unborn little life could hear...
Rita Skeeter's office was on the top floor of the Daily Prophet building.
When Offina pushed open that wooden door plastered with old newspaper clippings, the smell that hit her face was an olfactory disaster: aged ink, cheap perfume, parrot feed, and the cloying sweetness of some spicy candy of unknown origin—four scents entangled in the air into a dizzying olfactory mud pit.
The floor was almost invisible.
There was paper everywhere.
Sample copies of old Daily Prophet issues overflowed from the desktop, piled into several small mountains on the floor. Those yellowed newspapers had various headlines and paragraphs circled in red ink, with messy annotations crowding the margins.
Some annotations said "Trash... rewrite," some said "Add a paragraph on his wife's reaction," and some were just a massive exclamation point, angrily piercing the paper.
Only one corner of the desk was visible.
Piled on the desk were at least thirty centimeters high of documents, photos, and various oddly-shaped small objects... a Quick-Quotes Quill, constantly writing automatically, was stuck in an ink bottle, its tip drawing meaningless arcs in the air, seeming ready at any moment to pounce on any writable paper surface.
The walls were even livelier.
The entire north wall had been transformed by Rita into a giant investigation board... dozens of wizarding photos of different sizes were pinned to the wall with thumbtacks, the figures in the photos performing repetitive actions within their respective tiny spaces.
Red woolen threads were pulled from this photo to that photo, weaving a spiderweb-like relationship chart on the wall.
Some woolen threads were knotted, and some had a small piece of paper covered in writing taped in the middle.
And right in the center of this chaos... on the only small patch of empty floor between the desk and the window... Rita Skeeter was currently squatting on the floor, fighting with a parrot.
That parrot was not small in size, at least forty centimeters long from the tip of its beak to its tail feathers, covered entirely in a layer of bright emerald-green feathers, the tips of its wings fading into sapphire blue, and a tuft of golden crest feathers standing up on the top of its head.
It was currently standing on a makeshift perch temporarily built from old wands, tilting its head, staring at Rita squatting in front of it with a round, black, beady eye.
Rita's attire was as flamboyant as ever.
She wore a bright green tight-fitting suit; the saturation of that green was so high it made one suspect the dye workers had poured the entire bucket of pigment into it.
The tailoring of the suit was extremely form-fitting, completely outlining that figure of a woman in her thirties, maintained at "lean but having it where it counts" due to staying up late writing drafts long-term.
Large gold-framed glasses sat crookedly on the bridge of her nose; the several fake gemstones inlaid on the frames flickered with a cheap light in the rays shining in through the window.
Her nails were painted scarlet, the length enough to be used as weapons... currently, those nails were pinching a cracker, waving it back and forth in front of the parrot's beak.
"Come here... come here... open your mouth... you ungrateful flat-haired beast..."
The parrot tilted its head.
Then it lunged and pecked.
"Ah...!"
Rita's fingers shrank back. The cracker wasn't snatched away; instead, a clear beak-mark was added to her index finger painted with scarlet nail polish.
"You...!"
Rita raised her finger and waved it at the parrot twice; that action seemed to be threatening it, but the effect was roughly equal to zero.
The parrot flapped its wings twice, its golden crest quivering, and let out a sharp squawk.
Then it spoke.
"Trash...! Rewrite...!"
The voice was extremely grating, and the enunciation was uncomfortably clear... evidently learned from Rita's usual verbal tics.
Rita's expression became spectacular.
Right at this moment, the door was pushed open.
Offina stood in the doorway.
Her first reaction was... was this office just searched?
Her second reaction was... Rita's squatting posture on the floor seemed a bit unladylike; that tight suit, in a squatting posture, sharply outlined the contours of her buttocks.
"Sister Rita!"
Offina's voice was so sweet it could pull threads.
She wore a smartly tailored dark blue short jacket, a white shirt underneath, and for the lower half, a pair of dark gray cropped trousers and flat leather shoes.
A neat, chestnut short haircut reached only the jawline; her bangs were pinned behind her ear with a dark silver hair clip, revealing a face with regular features and bright lines.
Unlike Catherine's exquisite cat-like beauty, Offina's aura leaned more towards "cool and dashing"... the refreshing feel brought by the short hair, paired with those deep brown eyes that always carried a bit of a smile, and the slightly upturned arc of the corners of her mouth when she spoke, made her look like the handsome upperclassman most popular among the girls in some school drama.
Rita bounced up from the floor.
That speed was astonishingly fast... the squatting posture changed into standing within zero point five seconds, simultaneously using her hand to smooth out the wrinkled skirt and adjusting the crooked gold glasses.
"Coming, coming, coming...! Little Offina...!"
She kicked her high heels across that floor covered in old newspapers, charging over, crossing three mountains of documents and a flattened roll of film in two steps.
Then she grabbed Offina's shoulders.
Those hands painted with scarlet nail polish pinched the shoulder seams on both sides of Offina's jacket, the force neither light nor heavy, as if inspecting a finished product just delivered from the tailor shop.
"Let big sister take a look..."
Rita turned Offina's body a half-circle, scanning her from head to toe.
"Mmh... not bad, not bad, dressed quite sharply. Look much more spirited than the last time we met. Lost weight? Your chin is a bit pointier. Have you eaten? This hair clip looks nice, where did you buy it?"
A string of questions spewed out of Rita's mouth like a rapid-fire cannon, giving absolutely no gap for answers.
Offina smiled and let her pose her, the arc at the corners of her mouth perfectly locked into that golden position between "obedient" and "endearing."
"I've eaten! The hair clip was bought at that newly opened silver jewelry shop in Diagon Alley, only two Galleons. Sister Rita, your dress looks so nice today, this green really suits you..."
"Is that so, is that so?"
Rita's hands slid from Offina's shoulders to her arms, stroking down along the fabric of the sleeves once.
That action seemed both like smoothing out wrinkles on clothes and like confirming whether this person actually existed.
"Such a sweet little mouth. Exactly the same temperament as Jerry."
Rita let go, turned around, and kicked her high heels back to the desk.
She plopped down on the edge of the desk... that thirty-centimeter-high stack of documents wobbled under the impact of her sitting, but was steadied when she reached out to casually support it... crossed her legs, dug out a box of sour lemon drops from the pile of candy wrappers on the desk, and tossed one into her mouth.
Crack.
The sound of the candy shell shattering.
"Seriously," Rita spoke with the candy in her mouth, her speech carrying a blurriness caused by having something stuffed in her mouth, "if it weren't for giving face to that boy Jerry, I wouldn't take you even if you knelt at this door."
She pointed her index finger at the doorway.
"Rita Skeeter never takes apprentices. Ne... ver... takes."
She poked her index finger at Offina with every word she said.
"Because apprentices are the easiest loopholes to leak sources. The lifeblood of this industry is information disparity... I know things that others don't, this is the capital I eat on. Taking an apprentice is equivalent to opening a window in the wall of your own vault."
The parrot on the perch flapped its wings, appropriately adding a sentence: "Vault...! Vault...!"
Rita waved her hand in the direction of the parrot; that gesture was full of the fury of "shut up you flat-haired thing."
Then she looked back at Offina, the look behind the gold glasses changing from teasing to serious.
"But... that boy Jerry told me to my face, you are worth it."
She picked up a photo from the desk and waved it at Offina.
"So... today's first lesson, field combat."
Offina's eyes lit up.
Rita accurately pulled out a kraft paper envelope from the pile of documents on the desktop... the precision of that extraction showed her familiarity with this chaos far exceeded what met the eye... pried open the seal with her scarlet nail, and poured out three photos and a handwritten note from inside.
She lined the photos up in a row on the desktop, tapping the first one with her fingertip.
That was a wizarding photo of a middle-aged man. The man wore a well-tailored gray robe, had a ruddy complexion, a stout figure, and a neatly trimmed goatee on his chin.
In the photo, he was constantly wiping sweat from his forehead with a handkerchief... even in the looping static environment of this photo, he looked extremely nervous.
"Philip Constantine." Rita said while chewing the candy. "The general manager of the Quidditch World Cup stadium construction project. An old-timer in the Ministry of Magic's Department of Games and Sports, been doing this for fifteen years. Last year when bidding for the construction rights of the World Cup stadium, his quote was a full forty percent lower than the other three competitors... forty percent, Little Offina, think about what that means?"
Offina walked over to the desk, bending down to look at those photos.
"Compressing costs. Using inferior materials to replace standard materials."
"Smart." Rita's index finger flicked Offina's forehead.
"Ouch..." Offina covered her forehead, but didn't dodge.
Rita's finger took the opportunity to slide from Offina's forehead to her hairline, stroking that short hair pinned with the dark silver hair clip.
"Second picture."
She tapped the middle photo.
That was another man. A bit younger than the first, about early forties, wearing an artisan-style leather apron, with a gaunt face, high cheekbones, and sunken eye sockets, looking like someone who worked near mines and furnaces long-term. In the photo, he was looking down to inspect a dark gray metal plate, his expression serious.
"Gregor Wien. Boss of Wien Magical Building Materials Company. Specializes in enhanced stone slabs and anti-magical corrosion steel for magical architecture... over sixty percent of magical public buildings in all of Europe use his family's materials. His reputation has always been good, but..."
Rita pushed the third photo in front of Offina.
The angle of that photo was very tricky, like it was secretly taken from the gap of a certain window. The image was blurry, but two silhouettes could still be discerned... one was the stout Constantine from just now, the other was the gaunt Wien.
They were sitting in a seemingly extremely remote small tavern, two glasses of firewhisky on the table; Wien was pushing a bulging leather bag toward Constantine.
"Taken by my informant three days ago." Rita tapped the image of that leather bag with her nail. "Inside are gold Galleons. The exact amount is uncertain, but judging from the volume of the leather bag and the magical rune fluctuations of the Extension Charm, it won't be less than two thousand."
She stood up, her high heels tapping two crisp sounds on the floor, and walked to the investigation board on the north wall.
She yanked a piece of red woolen thread off the board, pressing one end of the woolen thread onto Constantine's photo, and pulling the other end to Wien's photo.
"The story goes roughly like this... Constantine got the construction rights for the World Cup stadium, but he pushed his quote too low, and it simply couldn't be done using normal-priced materials. So he needed a supplier willing to provide low-priced materials."
Rita turned to face Offina, hands resting on her waist, her scarlet nails exceptionally conspicuous against the fabric of that bright green suit.
"Wien is that supplier. He supplies Constantine at thirty percent of the market price; the saved difference is split proportionally between the two men. That leather bag..." she tilted her chin towards the direction of the photo, "...is the first cut Wien got after delivering the goods."
"But materials at thirty percent of the price..." Offina frowned.
"Exactly." Rita grinned widely, revealing a mouthful of white teeth; that smile carried a chilling excitement belonging to a hunter seeing prey expose a flaw. "The enhanced stone slabs and anti-magical corrosion steel bought at thirty percent of the price have less than half the strength of standard materials. The World Cup stadium... do you know how many spectators it has to hold? One hundred thousand. One hundred thousand wizards sitting in stands built with inferior materials to watch Quidditch."
She crossed her arms in front of her chest.
"If a problem occurs with the quality of the materials..."
"The stands collapse." Offina's voice sank low.
"It's nothing to say hundreds of people die." Rita finished the sentence, her tone so light and brisk it formed an eerie contrast with the content she was speaking.
The parrot fluttered its wings in the corner, not speaking.
Rita dug out two items from a drawer next to the investigation board... a palm-sized miniature camera made of brass and crystal, and a flesh-colored small ball that looked like an ordinary earring.
She tossed the miniature camera to Offina.
Offina caught it. That camera was heavier than she imagined; the metal casing was densely carved with miniature runes, the lens was only the size of a fingernail, but looking through the lens, one could see a miniature image with an extremely high-magnification, magically enhanced optical system.
"This is a modified hidden camera." Rita held up that earring-like small ball and gestured next to her earlobe. "This is an invisible listening device; after wearing it, it will automatically match your skin color, making it almost invisible to the naked eye. Effective sound reception radius is twenty meters; it can penetrate a standard thickness brick wall."
She tossed the listening device to Offina as well.
"Today at three o'clock in the afternoon, Constantine and Wien will meet in a private room on the third floor of the Leaky Cauldron outside Hogsmeade village. My informant says this time it isn't just splitting the loot... Wien is bringing a batch of new samples for Constantine to inspect. If we can capture the inspection process, and record their conversation discussing prices and cuts ratios..."
Rita extended her hands, making a neck-wringing gesture.
"This report is their death warrant."
Offina put the miniature camera and the listening device into the inner pockets of her jacket respectively.
"What am I responsible for?"
Rita tilted her head, the gold glasses sliding a bit on the bridge of her nose.
"You are responsible for getting in."
"Getting in?"
"Constantine is an old fox. His meeting spot... the private room on the third floor of the Leaky Cauldron... has two anti-eavesdropping barriers and an anti-Transfiguration screen. My beetle form can't get in."
Rita's finger traced from the tip of Offina's nose to her cheek, gently patting twice with the back of her finger.
"But a good-looking young girl, who looks like she came to Hogsmeade for shopping..."
Rita took a step back, looking Offina up and down, the look behind the gold glasses like an instrument performing precise calculations.
"Walking into the Leaky Cauldron, sitting on the second floor, drinking a glass of Butterbeer, no one will suspect a thing. The wall-penetrating sound reception function of the listening device can just barely cover the third-floor private room."
Offina blinked.
"What about the camera? You can't capture the situation inside the third-floor private room from the second floor, right?"
Rita smiled.
That smile carried a smugness of "I was just waiting for you to ask this."
She turned and walked to the windowsill, opening the window. Outside the window was the branch road of Diagon Alley where the Daily Prophet building was located; a few owls were passing by mid-delivery.
She put two fingers into her mouth and blew a shrill whistle.
Three seconds later, a small gray owl flew over from the roof opposite, landing steadily on the windowsill.
Tied to its right leg was a miniature brass-and-crystal camera exactly the same as the one in Offina's hand.
"This is Gertrude," Rita introduced, scratching the top of the owl's head twice with her fingertip. "She will capture all the footage we need from the crack of the window in the private room on the third floor of the Leaky Cauldron."
The owl hooted twice and tilted its head; those round orange eyes flashed with a professional paparazzi glint exactly identical to Rita's.
The parrot jumped down from its perch, flapping its wings and flying onto Rita's shoulder.
"Death warrant...! Death warrant...!"
Rita reached out and flicked the parrot's beak.
"Shut up, Bernard."
She turned to face Offina, hands resting on her waist, the scarlet nails against the bright green skirt forming an extremely Rita-esque, garish-to-the-extreme-yet-justified color combination.
"Ready?"
Offina patted the positions of that miniature camera and listening device in her jacket's inner pockets, the corners of her mouth turning up an angle.
"When do we leave?"
Rita grabbed another handful of sour lemon drops from the candy box on the table and stuffed them into her pocket, then extended that index finger bitten by the parrot in front of Offina.
"First, help me put on a band-aid. This flat-haired beast bit too hard."
Offina looked down at the red mark left by the parrot's beak on that finger... the skin wasn't even broken, not even a spot of blood.
She still obediently dug out a spare magical band-aid from her pocket, unwrapped it, and carefully stuck it onto Rita's index finger.
Rita contentedly held up the band-aid-clad finger in front of her eyes to look at it, then used that finger to lightly poke Offina's forehead.
"Good girl. Let's go."
She kicked her high heels, stepping across the mountains of documents on the floor, grabbed a bright yellow trench coat hanging on the coat rack behind the door, and draped it over her shoulders... that trench coat, paired with the bright green suit she was wearing, made her look like a giant parrot rushing on a journey.
The parrot Bernard stood on her shoulder, his golden crest quivering.
The owl Gertrude took off from the windowsill.