There was no way to sugar-coat the news. He had taken his time in getting here – travelling on the Knight Bus because he had been unable to bring himself to apparate, the thought of vanishing into thin air at the moment left him chilled to the bone and he would rather have this conversation than ride a broomstick – and in all the time he had been travelling it had not occurred to him how to begin.

He had volunteered for this though. It had felt important that Ari should be told sooner rather than later – at least it had to Konstantin, however, now he had to consider whether he had instead simply wanted the time to himself, where he didn’t have to do anything or be anything and if he cried on the Knight Bus then it was no one’s business but his and the driver’s. (He was quite convinced the driver was blind, anyway.)

“There has been a- well, we are not quite sure what it is in fact. But a mist appeared, Merlin knows where from, and all the people it touched seemed to have…vanished.”

Was it worth talking about the rescue effort? About the Ministry’s response to another crisis being one of their best to date in terms of time-scale and lives lost? Did it matter?

“Katia…” He couldn’t stop himself from emitting a single, desperate sob, and that was his undoing. He couldn’t speak again, the words lost in his throat, as he pressed a fist to his mouth and tried to stifle the emotions that threatened to erupt.