Oh yes it's lady's night....
Date: March 26, 2000
Time: Starts at 11 a.m. and goes until well after midnight
Character(s) Involved: Luna Lovegood, Nymphadora Tonks
Location: Luna's house and the Wizarding community at large
Complete or Incomplete: Complete
Rating: G
( Allowing herself to sleep so soundly after the gala had not been a good idea. )
Time: Starts at 11 a.m. and goes until well after midnight
Character(s) Involved: Luna Lovegood, Nymphadora Tonks
Location: Luna's house and the Wizarding community at large
Complete or Incomplete: Complete
Rating: G
( Allowing herself to sleep so soundly after the gala had not been a good idea. )
She quickly walked to the sheets that were to the side, a quite large stack, and instantly plucked a handful up to look at them.
“Luna- these look amazing! Truly! I cannot believe this is our….our work!” She exclaimed as she moved away from the printer and toward a cleaner area of the workshop. She immediately sat down and started to fold the papers, making a stack of folded and un folded, then thought better of her action and plucked out her wand. She pointed at the unfolded stack, and swished her wrist, making the stack come alive and levitate off the floor- the many papers she had collected separating themselves from one another. Then she leaned back and attempted a simple folding spell that her mother had taught her one too many times, on the papers. Each one was folded into thirds and moved into a separate pile. She went at this idly, as she looked at the machine that was still spilling out papers. Hopefully this wouldn’t be a long night.
Once she had a good stack made, of folded papers, Tonks stopped her spell work and directed her attention on the stack that was ready for delivering. She stood up, and concentrated on the stack- shrinking it down to a small size, about the size of a deck of cards. Then she put the stack into her large black bag and pulled out the various articles of clothing that had been in there. Once the bag was packed of the shrunken stack- she went back and folded more pamphlets. This process went on for a good long while until Tonks had about a thousand pamphlets in her bag- all shrunken down for easy traveling.
Now it was time for her work to begin. She regarded Luna with a smile as she changed her attire. Tonks threw on a large gray turtleneck, over her blue and white t-shirt, and then found a black scarf to wrap around her head, like a headband. Then she gathered up one of her dark cloaks- a black one- and clasped it to her shoulders. She picked up her black bag, strung it over her shoulder and onto her torso diagonally, and prepped her clothes with a finally run through. Then she concentrated, closing her eyes and clearing her mind of any thoughts except the vision in her head. Her hair started to grown longer- changing from its brown natural color into a frizzy mess of gray and white. Her face began to mold and crease, where wrinkles grew and skin turned flabby. And out of all the wrinkles came a large beak-like nose that had an ugly point at the end. When Tonks was finished- she looked like an elderly, crazed witch, who had no care for appearances.
“Ok- I’m off for Diagon Alley first- they’ll be the slowest… and the Leaky Cauldron.”
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Time wore on and Luna interspersed her management of the press with helping Tonks to fold... though, upon seeing that convenient spell Tonks was using, she was eager to learn it in order to help move the process along quicker. As long as the press didn't jam or break, and pending how long it took Tonks to distribute the pamphlets, they could have this business over and done with in a few hours. Plenty of time to get a decent amount of sleep, though perhaps not a full night.
Luna stared in fascination at Tonks's transformation... that was a better disguise than even Luna could have hoped for! She smiled and waved Tonks off... and quickly added, "Be careful." She would not anticipate any problems tonight... things like that often happened when you dwelled on them too much. Though she couldn't deny there were pixies in her stomach, and they were being extra mischievous.
With Tonks gone Luna continued her work, the press churning out another thousand sheets in the woman's absence. Luna set to work folding these as quickly as she could so that they'd be ready when Tonks returned. They were almost out of parchment, she realized... she had just loaded up the last roll. There was nothing for it, they couldn't conjure parchment out of thin air... well perhaps Tonks could, Luna suspected her Transfiguration skills were the sharpest of the two.
No, they'd simply work with the stock they had. And Luna was keeping close tabs on how much they used. Their number would probably fall somewhere short of 3,000. But that should definitely be enough to raise some eyebrows.
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Her adventures through Diagon Alley started first- and she made her way from the very end of the streets, unshrinking pamphlets and sticking them into places they could go, with a cautious maneuvers. She made sure that any who were wandering around at this hour of night did not watch her go about her tasks, waiting for people to walk by- or stuffing pamphlets in places not seen in obvious light. She went to each business and stuffed papers in door mail slots, under handles, and scattered about as slow and careful as she could.
One point in her adventures turned quite sour, as she attempted to put some papers on a business stand outside. She had stepped on a box to reach the height required to tuck in papers where the owner had not draped cloth over the structure, and broke the box with her foot. This caused a chain reaction of her falling, dragging a long cloth down with her, and smashing the box on her foot to pieces. It created a bit of a stir- so she decided that’d be the end of that, with the exception of littering the Leaky Cauldron on her way out of Diagon Alley.
She appeared back into Luna’s basement a good hour after she had left, having focused quite hard to apparate back to Ottery St. Catchpole, and sneaking back inside the residence without bothering Mr. Lovegood any. When she was back into the work area- she went about the process of shrinking more pamphlets and stuffing more into her bag. Once she had a good plenty more- she concentrated again on a disguise, and made herself look like a primped man, of middle age, with graying streaks on the sides of his clean cut brown hair and a square jaw. Then it was off to Hogsmeade- and she went without much of a word to Luna, wishing to hurriedly finish their task at a decent hour.
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She allowed Tonks to take every last pamphlet, and the test sheets she gathered up to burn. If her father found a pamphlet on the street, she couldn't help that. But she would not let him find them in his house.
Luna finished cleaning and waited until Tonks returned to bombard her with questions. "Did you distribute them all, then? Did it go all right?"
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“Oh- yes.. I had a slight mishap at the pub- some estranged witch thought I looked like her intended groom to be- or something of that nonsense. Really… It was hard to keep my mouth shut, and scare her off with my lovely girly voice. I did manage to slip papers here and there however, when she finally lost sight of me.” And the middle aged man, Tonks, winked.
“Diagon Alley was easier actually- which is quite a surprise. Do you- do you want to know something really funny? I stuck one up on the ‘Daily Prophet’ office door.”
The man that sounded like Tonks made a pretend lick of his palm, and them went about pretending to stick- what he pretended to lick- to an invisible wall, all of a charade to make the point. “I’ve got it stuck on there ok-a few good cracks and they’ll get it down… unfortunately.” Tonks said and chuckled. “Got some in St. Mungo’s too- dashed over to that part real quick before I got back this time. Figured you’d wait up.”
Tonks beamed with her manly smile, crossed her/his arms and nodded. “We’ve done alright- Partner!”
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...It was also a bit freaky to think this friend--who was a woman, incidentally--made a rather fetching middle-aged man.
Luna decided not to dwell on that last thought as she listened intently to Tonks's report. And she couldn't help but snort and laugh at the thought of one of those pamphlets stuck in front of The Daily Prophet!
"Absolutely brilliant, Tonks!" Luna said once she had calmed herself. She never would have thought of that!
She beamed back... and again thought Tonks the distinguished gentleman was rather handsome. "Indeed!"
A bit too early to hail it as "the perfect crime"... but needless to say, Luna was feeling quite confident... and even a bit proud of herself.
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“T’was nothing! I figured it’d give the Prophet something to read before they spread some more irritating stories. Make them think twice about it…well one can hope!” Tonks grinned from ear to ear…the wrinkles on her, well his manly features creased around the eyes.
“Well- I should get back home as quick as I can… I told Mum I was going to visit you- but considering the time-she’ll be suspiciously waiting for an answer…. I’ll just tell her uh… that I- uh…” Tonks thought a second of what a good cover would be, and then the light bulb hit.
“I’ll tell her we were up all night discussing our time at the Gala and lost track of time.. Ahaha she won’t care- she was happy I went!”
Tonks gathered up her things, stuffing clothes and stuff into the bag- then finally remembered that she was still looking like a man. With a laugh, she screwed her eyes up into her head and worked her talents to replace the manly features back to her own.
“Good night Mr. Buttson!” She said with her normal smile and a wink- before she apparated home.
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