Damn it, Jo. Alfred still hadn't really worked out how he felt about seeing her in London, but he wasn't going to stop and untangle it all now. He had more important problems to deal with, and right now she was an obstacle to his making any progress towards finding Zelda, figuring out what had happened that morning, or fixing it.

Maybe it would be better to just let her refuse to help him and leave, and find someone else with a wand he could bully into letting him into Diagon Alley. If he hung around the door long enough, someone was bound to come by eventually. Maybe that would be easier than trying to come up with some explanation for why he'd recognized her. He was starting to think there was nothing she'd believe — and with good reason, probably. Interactions with vampires would be memorable enough for her to have remembered.

(He'd had the words we shared a few drinks together once on the tip of his tongue before remembering that vampires, at least to his knowledge, didn't drink pints of beer).

"A snapped wand would still open the brick wall," he said (he did not actually know if this was true, but bravado seemed to be the only possible route through this conversation). "So be my guest."

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