Tiberius had been more or less living in his study since his failure to perform the Animagus transformation several months prior. He believed he had finished the necessary preparations — he would be truly ready this time, and he would complete it or he would die in the attempt. He'd missed two lightning storms while waiting out the full moons required to rebrew the potion, and had been chanting his incantation ever since, but the winter sky had remained stubbornly clear. He grew more frustrated every passing day, and what he had once seen as a convenience (the daily absence of his wife) he had become irritated by. She was out there, prowling their property as a cat out of spite. She was lurking in the woods, laughing at his failure.

So, he'd told a friend of his (friend was perhaps a strong word for someone he knew only through their connection to the black market) that there were predators on his land he wouldn't mind being rid of. Something killing the owls. She wasn't, actually, but it had seemed a reasonable excuse, and it was all the other man — who had experience as a poacher — needed to act. Tiberius wasn't sure he'd actually intended for her to get caught or only inconvenienced by the presence of a hunter on the property, but he supposed he hadn't been surprised when she'd been trapped. Maybe a few days in a cage would teach her some humility, the saucy bitch.

He had been surprised to hear she was in America. It had seemed unlikely she would be able to effect a return on her own, with no money or even, to the best of his knowledge, her wand. He'd been pondering how best to stage her death without a body, which was terribly inconvenient, but decidedly less inconvenient than actually trying to track her down on another continent.

And then she was outside his study door. He knew it was her immediately, though he told himself he could have been mistaken. None of the servants would have knocked in that manner, though, nor would a visiting family member, if they had somehow arrived without alerting anyone who would have announced them. Only Antigone would feel she had some sort of right to his time, particularly in this room. It turned out his initial feeling was correct. He raised an eyebrow at his dissheleved wife, but did not move to open the door any wider than the ten inches or so necessary for him to gaze out.

"You found your way home," he said impassively. "Impressive."