The airliner hung in the air with little sensation of movement. The flight was, in fact, dull and without incident. The processes of having her airline ticket checked and processed, having her bag searched, and showing her passport and visa were completely foreign to Daphne. The muggle staff did not seem to mind explaining every step. They weren’t rude and officious; her fellow travellers also didn’t show impatience with her when she didn’t know the simplest thing about air travel.
The only time she had any sense of stress was when the airliner was rolling along the wide roadways. The sound of the engines started to rise. The speed increased. The airliner made a turn onto a wider roadway. The engines roared, the seat pushed her in the back, hard. Her palms were suddenly sweaty. The pressure on her back continued. Then the airliner leaped into the air, the climb was steep. There were motor sounds from underneath the floor. Then there were thumps from below as the climb continued. Daphne could feel the tension flowing from the other passengers. The airliner started to level off. The engine noise softened, replaced by the sound of air rushing past the windows. Then everyone calmed down. The sweaty palms stopped. Much to Daphne’s shock, a screen came to life in the back of the seat in front of her and a muggle movie started, and the cabin crew started serving drinks and food.
The only time Daphne felt what must have been the pilot flying the airliner, was in the last seconds before landing in Chicago. The airliner moved up and down; left and right and then bumped down onto the ground. The engines roared again as the airliner slowed down, then subsided. The process of entering the United States was slower and more complex than leaving Britain. Daphne was careful to state that her only purpose in coming to the USA was for a holiday.
A young couple, two of her father’s former partners who had fled Britain during the Wizarding War, met her at the airport and took her to an older house in the suburbs. She had asked them to keep her visit confidential. She trusted her hosts and gave them all the details of what she planned to do.
Astoria regularly searched for the family name in the hope of finding something. She had found an item in an internet search which gave Daphne the only information she had about her father’s killers. A man had been arrested in Chicago for committing a series of petty crimes. In an answer to a question in court he had claimed to be the loyal servant of the Dark Lord, and that he had executed the blood traitor Greengrass. The muggle judge detained him for psychiatric assessment. It wasn’t clear how this came to be published on the internet.
Daphne lined up with the public who were allowed to observe court cases. She found the judge who had dealt with the prisoner who had claimed to have served the Dark Lord. All she had to do was focus on his thoughts and in a second, Legilimens gave her the name and location of the killer. He had been returned to another state which had another criminal charge to make against him. Daphne had to travel on to California.
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