Chapter 26: What the Extraction Initiative Was Really For

The Aurors put Pemberton in the staff room.

It was, Holmes reflected, surveying it from the doorway, an environment that suited him — comfortable chairs, the smell of burnt tea and institutional propriety, portraits of former faculty who had the decency to pretend sleep. The staff room said: *nothing consequential happens here*. Pemberton sat in a chair near the window with his hands folded in his lap and looked precisely like a man waiting for a misunderstanding to resolve itself.

The two Aurors stood at the door. McGonagall had requested, in a tone that did not invite discussion, that she be permitted to attend the formal interview. The Ministry representative — a young man named Frobisher who had arrived via fireplace at quarter to eight and clearly wished he had not — had agreed because McGonagall's tone was the sort that made agreement feel like one's own idea.