We Will Shine {Book 6 in the Star of Gryffindor Series}

Chapter 31 - Think of the Children!

Colette sat back in her seat, her brow furrowed. After a moment, she glanced up. "Yeah. There were."

"We were looking into those, right? Did those people ever get found?"

"A few bodies were," Colette said. "That's why it's all been written off as meaningless."

"Do you think there's similarities?" Albus asked, eyes wide.

"I don't know." She slowly closed the magazine, her expression one of deep thought. "I think... I think we need to go back through all those missing persons cases and see. Be more thorough this time."

"What if there's a reason?" I asked. "What if Stillens has some agenda?"

"The bodies they found might have just been to throw the aurors off their trail," Colette agreed.

"But what would Stillens want with two primary school kids?" Albus asked.

"I don't know," Colette said. "If he does want something, though, it can't be good."

"Should we talk to Wren?"

All three of us paused to glance down the table. At that moment, Wren, James, Mackenzie, and Colin were laughing together about who knew what. I pursed my lips and shook my head. "No. She probably doesn't want to listen us right now. James, too."

Colette nodded. "If we find anything, we will. But this is just an idea. Not a big deal. I mean, what are the odds we're right?"

"Yeah," Albus said, slowly nodding as well. "I don't think everyone could have missed something like this, surely."

"Surely," I echoed. I was still watching Wren, who was taking absolutely no notice of us. I really wanted to talk to her about this. She would want to look into it from the other side. She would want to help. But in order for us to ask her to help, we would have to accept her idiotic choices, which I was not prepared to do.

All this would all work itself out eventually, I was sure. At some point, someone would be crying, and someone else would be comforting them, and then all would be right in the world. No need to get messy with apologies that might not be accepted or anger that might not be abated.

We planned to start going through the library's archive of the Quibbler and the Prophet after class that day, compile as much information as we could. The most time consuming part would be finding the articles, according to Colette; we didn't know the dates, because Wren had all the research we'd done before. None of us much felt like asking for it.

Wren hadn't been sitting with us in class. She sat with Rose and Scorpius in some classes, and by herself in others. The frustrating thing was that she didn't seem to mind, and I couldn't tell if she was just acting or not. Maybe she really didn't mind. Maybe she didn't need us as much as we needed her. As much as I needed her.

Today, though, she kept glancing back at us during Charms. Subtly (glancing away when we made eye contact) but I still noticed. It almost made me want to point it out to Albus and Colette, and ask if they thought we should talk to her after class. Almost, and then Haverna gave me detention for not paying attention, and I remembered why we weren't talking to her in the first place.

Turned out I didn't even need to mention it, because Wren caught up to us in the hallway. "Hey, can we talk?"

"I don't know," Colette snapped, turning around. "Are you still being a git?"

Wren winced. She hesitated for a moment, glancing between the three of us. "We just... This is getting a little ridiculous, don't you think?"

"Choosing Haverna as your secretkeeper was ridiculous," Albus pointed out. "We're reacting pretty rationally to that."