[NTLJ] 8. How Could I Have Been So Stupid?
Chapter Summary: In which Tonks finds she's been a little too clever for her own good and gets into a sticky situation.
Length: 9,150 words
8. How Could I Have Been So Stupid?
Monday August 17th 1994
The wizard in the scarf seemed positively insouciant as he sauntered along the street with Tonks. He looked down at her and said casually, "I heard some gossip from Finley that a couple of people he didn't know had been poking around his place, and funnily enough they both kept tripping over things. Bit suspicious that, I thought. Something to bear in mind."
He laughed in a rather unpleasant way as Tonks looked up at him dully, and continued talking in a careless manner as he walked her down the street.
"You fooled me completely when you turned up as that Easton woman. Assuming you aren't her? If you are, I'm sorry, love, but I bet you're not. You tripped when you left, you see, and that started me thinking. Then I realised that you had seemed a bit more forward, which gave me rather a surprise. I was quite glad I'd made sure to give myself time to investigate you a little before I sold you any of the good stuff. Bad technique on your part, you really should have worked on your sense of balance before going undercover. Got to admit you're good at disguise though!"
They moved slowly along Diagon Alley past the rows of familiar shops, practically all of which were closed at this time on a Monday night. He kept a tight grip on her arm. There were only a few people around, and none of them were paying much attention to a man and a woman looking for all the world as if they were a couple out for an evening stroll
He glanced at her again. "Who are you anyway?"
"My name's ... name is ..." She hesitated.
"Yes?"
"T ... T ... Tonks," she said eventually, in a thick voice.
"Not Easton then." He sniggered. "Didn't think it would be, not after I was told you Flooed straight over to the Ministry after our last meeting instead of going off home like a good little girl. You should have realised someone was following you. Tonks, eh? Isn't that a funny name for a woman?"
"No. Well ... family ... name."
He looked at her appraisingly. "Fighting against it, eh? Don't worry, give it half an hour, you won't be. Effects will have fully kicked in by then. First name?"
"Ny -- no."
"Sorry?"
"N -- no."
"No? You are fighting it, aren't you? Your first name, Miss Tonks. Now."
"Ny -- Ny -- Nymphadora."
He laughed. "That's better. I'd be reluctant to tell people that, too." They were walking past the entrance to the Leaky Cauldron now, towards the quieter parts of the wizarding business area. "So what does Nymphadora Tonks do for a living? Tell me."
Tonks stopped walking for a moment, half-heartedly trying to pull away from his grip on her arm, but then started again as he tugged impatiently at her elbow. She looked at him glassy-eyed, with a horrified expression as if she couldn't quite believe what she was doing.
"Again. What do you do?"
"I'm ... an ... an ... an Auror," she said, in a dazed manner.
He stopped walking for a moment, but caught himself and moved on immediately. "Well, what a surprise. I don't think. I presume that old idiot they threw out the pub was with you?"
"He's not." She had a shifty look as she said this; the wizard looked at her sharply and glanced at his watch.
"Hmm, another few minutes yet." Although most of his face was concealed, his eyes seemed gleeful. "You think you can stop this, Nymphadora? You can't. It's very powerful stuff. I've used it before. I didn't oversell it to your friend Easton -- or was it you the whole time?" He shrugged when Tonks stuttered incomprehensibly at him, "Never mind. I'll find out soon. You'll do whatever I tell you." He sniggered again. "Now then, he's not what?"
"He's not an idiot."
"Ah." He chuckled. "But he was with you? Yes?"
"Y ... ye ... yes." There was a little sob in her voice as she said it, something he seemed to find highly amusing.
"Excellent. Well, my mates should have headed him off once we came out the pub, so if there's still a bit of you thinking he's going to get you out of this, dream on. So, how long has Nymphadora Tonks been an Auror, then?"
"Er, yeah. A month. About a month."
"A month?" He actually laughed out loud. "And they send you out doing something like this straight away! Bleeding hell, I knew the Ministry were having trouble finding them, but they must be getting desperate. In over your head, girl. You're not very good at this, are you?"
"I am." This was said with a hint of mulishness.
"Yeah? What are you working on?"
"Not supposed ... to tell you."
"I'm sure you're not. What are you working on?"
"A case."
"Of course you are. What are you working on? Details please."
"Case with potion ... illegal. Not common in this country. Nobody knows ... much about it. Where it comes from. What it does. Who sells it. Who buys it."
"Don't they now," he said with great amusement. "Well, you may just be getting a little bit of an idea by now. I did say I should be restocking soon --" he reached into her handbag and pulled out the bottle he'd sold her, tucking it into his pocket "-- starting right now, in fact, because if you're not that Easton woman you won't be needing this. Of course, I also said you might like what it did to you, but I lied."
They had reached an alleyway that led her into a small yard now and Tonks tensed up slightly. She looked around her with an unfocused air, but there was no-one else around.
"What ... are you doing?"
"Just taking you to a convenient little place we can confer in private," he said merrily. "This way. We wouldn't want anyone else to overhear our conversation, would we? I sure we have lots of interesting things to discuss."
He entered the yard, which was bigger than it had seemed it would be from the alleyway, turned to the door and touched his fingers to a panel on the side. He chuckled once more as the door sprang open.
"Not that you'll ever be telling anyone what we talked about."
"Want to bet?"
The wizard turned around sharply to see Tonks grinning at him, with her wand pointing at his heart. His eyes were wide, registering utter shock.
"I hadn't realised that you'd spotted me, actually," she said cheerfully, "but did you really think I'd be stupid enough to drink that stuff? Or go in that room and let you get a wand on me?"
The wizard looked at her. "But ... how ..." he spluttered, obviously struggling to work out what had gone wrong.
"That drunken clown created quite a nice diversion when he had a go at my partner," she said, enjoying the moment. Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, eh? "While you were watching the floor show, it gave me enough time to Transfigure the glass of stuff you gave me into a bottle, slip it in my pocket, then Conjure something that looked like it. Standard practice. I'm rather good at the more advanced Transfiguration techniques," she added conversationally.
The wizard made a twitching movement, and then looked, if anything, even more horrified. Tonks' grin widened. "Oh, and I also cast Remansio on you while I was there for good measure. You really should have been listening more carefully to what I was muttering. Wouldn't want you going anywhere without me, would we?"
She raised her wand to point at the wizard's face. "Let's see who you are then." She flicked it slightly and the scarf twitched, but stayed in place. "Fixed so only you can move it?" she said. "Fair enough. Does this work? Finite Incantatem." She flicked her wand again, but with the same lack of result. "Oh," she said with slight disappointment. "Never mind. I seem to remember that there is a counter-charm for this, but they'll have to remind me of what it is back at the office. Most interesting what you were saying to me just now. You were being very suspicious pushing that special Firewhisky. I thought you might be a bit more communicative if I kidded you along a bit, hence my little charade. Good, wasn't it?"
Tonks grinned again; in her pleasure at having turned the tables, she almost missed the noise behind her -- but not quite. She'd been too well trained for that.
Crack!
Tonks jumped back out of the way just in time as a jet of red light hit the wall next to her head, scattering shards of stone that scraped her face painfully as they went past. Out of the corner of her eye she could see the wizard who had cast the spell running down the alleyway towards the entrance to the little yard. Behind him were two more men with wands drawn.
Instinctively, she pressed the Panic Button on her robes with her free hand. The wizard next to her took the opportunity of the distraction offered by his friends to go for his wand, but before he could bring it to bear she pointed her own at him and cried "Expelliarmus!" The force of the spell at such short range not only sent his wand spinning away, it blasted him back into the wall of the building on the far side of the yard. He gave one short yell of pain at the impact, then slid down it and lay slumped at the bottom, a trickle of blood staining the scarf that covered his face.
Tonks' heart was thumping at twice the usual rate. Practice duels were all very well, as were the occasional small-scale magical punch-ups she'd found herself in the middle of in her time. This, however, was the first occasion that she'd been in a real fight with no quarter expected. And the odds weren't good, despite the advantage of her training. Come on, Don, Arnie, she thought fleetingly. Get your arses in gear. I need help here! She didn't even have time to worry about what might have happened to Cassius.
The other three wizards had now reached the entrance to the yard, close enough to fire spells at her at short range, but she managed to deflect the first salvo easily enough with a Shield Charm. Her opponents evidently had only moderate skill, in that they had to aim carefully and shout the incantations, giving her ample time to react. She knew, however, that she didn't dare let this go on too long and risk being hit.
The wizards spread out, obviously trying to hem her in, and Tonks smiled. Not a chance, lads. Time for an outflanking manoeuvre. She blocked one more Stunner and then Disapparated into the middle of the alleyway they had just come from, ready to attack them from behind.
It was a bold plan, and it almost worked. They looked around wildly as she disappeared -- the tactic apparently hadn't occurred to them either. Unfortunately, the rushed Apparition had left her off-balance; she stumbled over the hem of her robes on landing and clattered into a door, and the noise it made alerted them to what she'd done. Two more Stunners shot past her, and she began to get seriously flustered.
You moron, why didn't you just get right out of the way? She blocked another hex as one of the wizards, taking a leaf from her book, Disapparated away, reappearing at the end of the alleyway.
She didn't have time to concentrate long enough for another Disapparation of her own as she desperately fended off their spells. A return Stunner of her own was blocked, but a quick Impediment Jinx to the legs got past the defences of one of the wizards still in the yard and knocked him over, taking her out of his line of fire for the time being.
Come ON, you Irish git! she thought desperately. What's keeping you? In the chaos, it didn't occur to her that it had been barely a minute since the first spell was cast.
There were only two wizards left on the attack, but they were working together now, approaching from opposite ends of the alley and firing spells in relay. The narrowness of the passageway into the yard allowed little room for evasion, and the concentration required to defend against two assaults from directions 180 degrees apart meant that she couldn't risk taking a second or two out to fix an Apparation destination in her mind. Twice her blocks came only just in time, the residual force of the spells hitting into her like a punch, and once a stray spell singed her arm, causing a nasty burn. There was still no sign of her backup, and Tonks realised that she needed something to change the situation as quickly as possible. Right, then. Just about now would be the time to mix it up with something beyond the simple stuff.
Taking advantage of a momentary lull in their attack, she swung her wand in a wide arc, remembering one of the Really Neat Uses Of Transfiguration for combat purposes that Robards had demonstrated. Mercifully, it worked; the cobblestones of the alleyway morphed and sprang up into a thin circular wall that surrounded her, acted as a shield, and most importantly, temporarily hid her from view. She'd been one of the pupils who had managed to use Robards' suggestions effectively. The wall wasn't going to last more than a few minutes, but then it didn't need to.
Her two attackers hesitated for a moment before casting another spell, evidently taken by surprise, and that gave her the chance to focus her mind and Disapparate (which had turned out to be a lot harder to do under the stress of real combat than it had been in training). She chose as her target the roof of one of the nearby buildings, behind a chimney and out of sight of the alley below; as she landed, she heard two cracks and the sound of her wall collapsing under the combined effects of her opponents' hexes.
Wait a minute. Two cracks? Is that ...? The noise below intensified into what was clearly a duel, and she heard an Irish voice shouting "Tonks! Where the hell are ye?"
"On my way, mate!" She focused, chose her destination carefully, and this time Apparated down to the end of the alley to head off anyone trying to leave that way -- only to be knocked flying by one of her erstwhile attackers, running as fast as he could away from the scene.
Winded and momentarily breathless, it took a few seconds before the fact that he was running rather than Apparating registered with her. She pulled herself into a half-sitting position and pointed her wand at him: "Vestigare!" He stumbled slightly as he raced round the corner along Diagon Alley, which gave her hope that the spell had hit home. With any luck, he was too far away to have heard what it was.
The sounds from the fight were dying down now, but before she could rejoin O'Gregan and Cornworthy, there was another pop and Cassius appeared in front of her. He was looking rather dishevelled.
"Tonks!" he cried, spotting her on the ground and extending a hand to pull her up. "Are you all right? I saw you signal as you came out the pub to let you work on him, but when I followed some ... lowlife hit me in the back with a Stunner. It was lucky that one of the Magical Law Enforcement Patrol came along and woke me up. He thought I was drunk until I showed him my identification." He looked around him wildly. "This is where I followed that man the other day, isn't it? What happened?"
"I don't know, let's go and see." She nodded towards the alleyway just in time to see her last two attackers Disapparate, to the accompaniment of loud swearing from the other two Aurors.
"Tonks! Cassius!" shouted Cornworthy, spotting them. "What happened?" It seemed to be a popular question at the moment. "Did you get the one who ran away? I managed to hit him with Remansio, but we had our hands full with the other two. They caught us off-balance when we arrived."
"No, although I think I got a Tracking Spell on him," she said urgently, "but what happened the bloke I met? He was lying against the wall in the yard!" Seeing their blank looks, she raced down the alleyway, wand at the ready, hoping that he was still out cold. Her luck was out; she was just in time to see the man limp painfully through the door he'd opened earlier and slam it behind him. She shot a Stunner at him, but found that she had the same problem as her assailant a few minutes earlier -- trying to cast the spell while running threw her aim off, and it hit the doorframe instead.
She skidded to a halt, somehow managed not to trip over, and cast Alohamora at the door. The lock clicked, but then clicked back in place.
"Hang on, Tonks!" cried O'Gregan, panting, appearing next to her. "Wait for your backup! Has he put Colloportus on that door?"
Tonks gulped as she realised her own rashness but kept her voice steady. "I think so."
"Right." The other two Aurors had arrived, and he quickly added, "Line up. I run the knife over it, you three jinx him, OK?"
They nodded in assent, and he fished out one of K's gadgets, ran it quickly over the door frame, and flicked the door open. This was followed immediately by cries of Stupefy! from the others.
Unfortunately, the room inside was empty.
Well, not quite empty. On the far side was a fireplace, the presence of which clearly hadn't been obvious to Cassius looking in from outside when the room was dark. It wasn't dark now, however; the flames were giving the room an eerie green glow, and O'Gregan, on seeing this, began to turn the air blue instead. Tonks felt much the same. Her wonderful investigative coup was suddenly starting to fall apart in her hands.
Cassius was the quickest to react, reaching for his mirror phone. "Hang on, we might be able to trace him," he said urgently. He spoke into the mirror: "Floo Network office, monitoring liaison. Urgent." His face showed relief as someone answered immediately.
"Mary, nice to see you again. We're in a small hall in a yard off Diagon Alley, a suspect just went through the Floo. Can you trace where he went?" He listened carefully, then turned to the others. "She needs a specific person to go through to a known destination so she can pinpoint the fire of origin. Can one of you step through to the Ministry?"
"I'll go," said Cornworthy unhappily. "I have to get back anyway. I was just finishing a report when she called." He stepped into the flames and vanished.
"Arnold Cornworthy went through," said Cassius to the woman from the Floo office. "He's an Auror, you'll have his imprint on file."
They stood around watching each other as they waited for her to get back to them. Tonks couldn't quite manage to look the others in the eye. "Who was that on the other end?" she asked, just to be saying something.
"Mary Edgecombe from the monitoring group," Cassius said tensely. "Donnacha, when she calls, would you keep an eye on things here while we go after him? Come on, Mary ..." There was a ringing sound from the mirror phone and he answered it immediately. "Yes? Oh. Very well. Thank you, Mary." He looked up, his disappointment showing clearly on his face. "All right, Tonks, he popped out at the Leaky Cauldron. Let's go."
They quickly Apparated into the back yard of the pub and raced into the bar, but the scarved wizard was nowhere to be seen. Tonks realised, as she looked around, that travelling here was probably the smartest move he could have made. It would have been a very quick journey, giving him plenty of time to get away before anyone could trace him; it was a public place, so the destination hadn't given anything away; and it provided an immediate means of escape.
With a gloomy feeling she followed Cassius over to the bar, where Tom, the bald-headed barman, readily told them about the man who had appeared in the fire, then immediately rushed through the pub and out of the front door into the Muggle street on the other side. A customer who had been entering from the main street at the time, and who had nearly been flattened by the man as he dashed out, informed them that he had jumped into a Muggle black cab and been driven away.
Cassius thanked him, and turned back to Tonks disconsolately. "Bugger."
She raised her eyebrows in surprise. It wasn't as if he'd chosen a particularly bad swear word, but coming from Cassius, it was the equivalent of a four-letter tirade from anyone else. It certainly showed how frustrated he was.
"Can't we trace the taxi?" she said desperately. "They're all numbered, aren't they? Do we have any kind of contact with the Muggle police?"
Cassius snorted. "For something like this? We could send a memo via the Muggle Relations people. We might get an answer back before the World Cup if we're very lucky. Anyway, he only needed to go far enough to get out of sight of the Leaky Cauldron. If that taxi driver's still got any memory of meeting him left, I'm Merlin's long-lost brother. And you're our little sister." He scowled. "Come on."
Tonks followed him quietly out into the small walled courtyard at the back of the pub, where he tapped his wand on the brick that let them back into Diagon Alley. Both of them seemed to tacitly agree that they'd prefer to walk back and calm down rather than Apparate again. That reminded Tonks of something.
"Hang on!" she said, stopping dead. "The Tracking Spell I cast! I'm sure I hit that bloke who knocked me over. Let's see if we're warm." With a sudden rush of excitement, she placed her wand on the tips of her fingers, and murmured "Find my quarry."
The wand spun quickly round to point in the general direction of the end of Diagon Alley, but nevertheless her shoulders slumped in disappointment. There was no hint of warmth to the touch at all, which meant that the wizard, wherever he might be along the direction her wand was pointing, was now a long way from London. She wasn't going to be able to track him down by following the wand as it got steadily warmer.
"Stone cold," she said despondently, storing her wand back in the holder that had proved so useful in the pub. That reminded her that she was still in disguise, and with a small grimace she resumed her usual appearance. She hoped she hadn't done anything to ruin Beatrice Easton's reputation, but at that point she really didn't care.
Quietly, to herself, she echoed Cassius' curse in the Leaky Cauldron. All of her bright ideas seemed to be going wrong tonight.
*****
The Ministry was practically deserted by the time they returned after clearing up in the yard, well past eleven o'clock. Even Cornworthy had finished his report and gone home. They waved tiredly at the few Aurors still in the office on the night shift and dropped into their chairs, exhausted.
Neither of them spoke for a moment. Then Tonks said nervously, in an attempt to lighten the gloom, "I don't think Don was too pleased at being called up like that."
Cassius gave her a weary smile. "Well, I can understand that. He said he had to leave a nice little candlelit dinner with Rhiannon Davies. Lucky they weren't in a Muggle restaurant, I suppose."
"Oh." That attempt didn't work, then. Another thing I have to apologise for.
As she turned to her desk, she suddenly remembered something. "At least we've got a sample of spiked Firewhisky we can get analysed," she said, a note of optimism returning to her voice. "That'll prove the stuff was used, won't it?"
She reached into her pocket eagerly and pulled out the Transfigured bottle, which promptly slipped out of her fingers and flew across the floor.
"Unk." The sound came out halfway between a squeak and a sob. The bottle rolled to a stop ten feet away and remained mercifully intact. Tonks started to breathe again, her heart rate slowly returning to normal as Cassius walked over and picked up the bottle.
"I think maybe I'd better look after this," he said gently. "It seems to be officially Not Your Night."
Tonks looked away, and then, as frustration welled up in her, smashed her fist on the desk. "I don't believe how I screwed this up!" she yelled. "I just had to play the heroine and try to get him to talk freely, didn't I? All I had to do was arrest him as soon as we came out the pub. Or at any time as we walked down the Alley. I was so sure I had everything under control that I even told him who I was!"
Cassius' face fell. "You did what?"
"I know," she gabbled. "I didn't know what to do when he asked, but I didn't lie just in case he actually knew, and wouldn't fall for the bluff if I didn't give him the right answer. I expected to be arresting him a few minutes later so I didn't think it would matter ..." The extent of her foolishness was starting to strike home. "I should never have done it. I should never have gone into that yard with him when I'd heard him say he had people watching his back. And I should never have tried to stick around and fight four of them at once!"
She buried her head in her hands. The phrase she'd used before, when she'd merely thought that she'd screwed up, leapt to mind again. "How could I have been so stupid?" she wailed.
"Inexperience, Tonks!" said Cassius, in a strained voice. He seemed to realise he was being snappish and made a visible effort to calm down and joke about it. "Maybe when you're a hundred and five you'll have changed, eh?"
"If they keep me on the job that long," said Tonks miserably.
Cassius shrugged his shoulders. "Look, none of us go very long on the job without messing something up, in some way. It happens all the time. You have to get used to it. I would probably have done exactly the same as you when I started out. I might even have done it tonight if it had been me working undercover. Beat yourself up over it, yes, that's how you learn, but don't do it too much. You'd never have made it as an Auror unless you had confidence in your own ability. We're supposed to be the elite, after all."
Confidence. Elite. Yeah, right. "OK, Cassius," she said tiredly. Another thought suddenly struck her and sent a chill down her spine. "We're going to have to report this to Scrimgeour, aren't we? He's going to spit fire, isn't he?"
Cassius hesitated. "Well ... yes, I'm afraid so," he said, in an apologetic tone. He attempted to joke again. "But no further than a Welsh Green. And he doesn't usually turn you into a frog for a first mistake."
As far as Tonks was concerned, it didn't work. "Great. That's going to be about as much fun as the first time I met him, then." She reached bleakly for a roll of parchment to start drafting the hapless apologia that was going to be her report. Cassius looked at her with what was -- finally -- pure sympathy.
"Listen, Tonks, to be fair, you did play with the odds," he said quietly. "The direction of the Snitch simply went against you. We've still got other leads to work on, and this chap won't be able to show himself in public to do business for a while. And no-one got killed because of it."
She looked up at him with despondent eyes. "Yet." She shook herself. "All right, mate, points taken. I'm just going to write my report, then go home and torture myself for this, OK? Then come back in tomorrow morning and try to pretend I'm not too embarrassed while everyone takes the mickey out of me. After all, I would."
She dipped her quill in the ink and started to write. "Oh, that reminds me -- thanks for talking to Shacklebolt for me. I don't need him looking down his nose at me as well."
"Kingsley?" said Cassius with a bemused look. "I haven't said more than 'hello' to him for the last couple of weeks."
"Oh?" She looked up for a moment, puzzled, then shrugged. "Well, never mind. I'd better get started on this if I want to get any sleep tonight."
*****
Tuesday August 18th 1994
Tonks was woken from an uneasy doze by a ringing sound, which turned out to be the Auror mirror phone that she'd left on the bedside table next to her. She looked at the clock and groaned; she hadn't got to bed until gone two in the morning, and she really hadn't wanted to be woken for at least another couple of hours. She reached for the phone and mumbled "Hello?"
"Tonks?" It was Cassius, sounding excited.
"Cassius? What on earth ... it's five o'clock in the morning! What's up?"
"Remind me if I saw what I seem to remember I saw. When you did the Tracking Spell last night, I'm sure I saw your wand spin straight round and point in a definite direction, correct? It didn't just spin round and round aimlessly?"
Tonks blinked. "Yeah, it did point," she said blearily. "But so what? The wand was stone cold."
"But it pointed. It means he hadn't cast a counter-charm on himself. I knew it! He probably doesn't realise what you hit him with. That means we have about twenty-four hours to pin him down. Try it again for me, will you?"
"But ..." Tonks was finding this hard to take in on less than three hours sleep. "Oh, all right."
She picked up her wand from the bedside table and tried the incantation again; the wand repeated its previous performance, but was as cold as ever.
"OK, it did it," she reported. "But how does that help? If the wand's cold, doesn't that mean he could be anywhere on a straight line from here to France? What are we supposed to do, Apparate every quarter of a mile and try not to wander off line while we're doing it?"
Cassius sounded disgustingly cheerful for this time in the morning. "If necessary. But we're really only supposed to use the official Apparition points. I know a little trick that might narrow it down a lot, though. Throw some Muggle clothes on, Tonks, and get yourself up to the office ASAP."
*****
Tonks managed to wake herself up sufficiently to arrive at her desk half an hour later, dressed in an old T-shirt and jeans. Cassius was already there, looking positively fresh, and she seriously considered the possibility of hating him. "OK, Cassius," she said wearily. "What do I do?"
"You follow me," he said composedly, getting up from his chair and taking a large folded piece of parchment off his desk. "We'll need an nice large open space, and I'd think the combat hall will be free at this early hour, wouldn't you?"
Tonks didn't argue. She followed him down the corridor, trying to shake herself fully awake. Bright morning sunshine was coming in through the enchanted windows, which helped a little; she reasoned that it must mean that the Magical Maintenance staff had finally got their pay rise. Well, bully for them, she thought sourly.
The combat hall was indeed empty, and when they entered Cassius began to behave in a very strange way.
First he spread the piece of parchment he was carrying out on the floor. He then retreated to the edge of the room and pointed his wand at it, muttering incantations: "Iaceo" -- the creases of the parchment snapped out and it lay perfectly flat; "Engorgio" -- that was familiar, it grew and grew until it filled most of the available space; "Cartographia orientum aquilo" -- it spun round through about a quarter turn; "Depacto" -- another familiar one, a Fixing Spell to hold it in place.
None of this made much sense to Tonks, whose brain was still working sluggishly. She thought about trying to seem intelligent by looking as she understood what all this was for, but abandoned the idea as impracticable under the circumstances. "Um, Cassius, what are you doing exactly?"
He grinned. "Take a closer look at the parchment."
Tonks did. It turned out to be a map of Great Britain, and greatly expanded as it now was, she could see that it was no ordinary Muggle map. It was extremely detailed, and appeared to show almost every significantly sized road in the country, with all major magical buildings highlighted as red blocks. When she looked more closely still, she could see that place-names hovered over most concentrations of streets. There were occasional flashes of movement which suggested that minor things were being updated as she looked.
"Where did you get this from, mate?" she asked curiously.
"I borrowed it from K's department when I came in," he said cheerfully. "It's enchanted, obviously; it automatically updates itself to match major changes in the physical world. You know, like the security maps the Ministry watchwizards have."
"Oh, those?" said Tonks, nodding, but still feeling somewhat fogged as to how this would help. "Right."
His eyes twinkled. "Or at least, they're supposed to watch them sometimes -- I suspect they spend most of their time reading the paper and talking about next week's Quidditch matches."
"You mean this will show the bloke I hit?" asked Tonks with disbelief.
"Not as such," said Cassius with obvious regret. "This one doesn't show people. It does fill in more detail as you enlarge it, which is nice, but you can't enchant a single piece of parchment too far, can you? It would probably catch fire." He shrugged at Tonks' disappointed look. "Unfortunately, I understand that if you want to show people you're normally limited to something like a single building -- maybe a very small village at a pinch. But this is an up to date scale map of the country. Are you getting my drift now?"
Tonks thought she was, but didn't want to make herself look any sillier than she already did after the events of the previous day. "Er -- maybe you'd better continue snowing," she said in a feeble attempt at a joke.
"Right," he said, smiling patiently. "I've turned it so north on the map lines up exactly with geographical north. So if you place your wand at the point on the map that corresponds to where you're standing right now, and do the tracking spell incantation ..."
"... it will show what's along the line of search? Narrow it down? Excellent!" said Tonks in sudden realisation. "I never thought of that!"
"Another old Auror trick. One of the advantages of being an old Auror." His occasional 'see, I know things you young whippersnappers don't' smirk was back on his face again. "I understand why they don't emphasise Tracking Spells much nowadays, because they're not always terribly helpful when somebody moves via some method of long-distance travel. But we always used to find this a good way to get around that, even if it is a trifle inconvenient. Now, then, tap the map with your wand and say Ubi sum."
Tonks did. A small golden dot appeared in the middle of the dense concentration of roadways that marked London on the map. She looked closer; it was placed over the street that lay above the Ministry of Magic. The red block denoting the Ministry showed underneath it.
Cassius waved his wand and the lights in the room dimmed slightly. "Very good, that's where you currently are. Now then, put your wand on the dot and do the Tracking Spell. Light the wand first. Narrow beam."
Tonks obediently placed her wand over the golden dot and muttered "Lumos. Find my quarry." It spun round once under her finger and pointed across the map. It was still cold -- wherever the wizard she'd hit was, he wasn't anywhere close at hand -- but the path of the beam of light from its tip now showed in which direction he might be found.
Cassius, moving gently, walked across the map, following the beam, which was pointing towards the south coast. "Now, if your wand is absolutely cold, he can't be closer than about fifteen miles," he said. "Are you sure there isn't even a slight tingle?"
Tonks felt the wand very carefully, but couldn't detect any change from the normal temperature. "Afraid not."
"Right. That takes him out of London then. We'll assume for the moment that he isn't camped out in the middle of a road or a field, either. In which case ... well now, that's interesting ..."
"What is?" said Tonks curiously.
"We may just be in luck, because that beam doesn't cross anywhere much until it gets to the coast. It passes through a few places on the map -- Smallfield, Balcombe, Burgess Hill -- but until it hits Brighton, none of them are really that big. Remember I said that you get a fair few wizards along the south coast?" He looked up. "I'd say that should be our first port of call. There's an Apparition point at the back of Wizard's Row -- we can try elsewhere if we don't have any luck. Does that seem fair?"
It did. Tonks suddenly felt a lot more cheerful at the prospect of being able to make up for her earlier mistakes. "Sounds good to me, mate. There isn't any way we can narrow it down though, is there?"
Cassius hesitated. "Well obviously, if we can go somewhere else and repeat this procedure with the map, we can pinpoint him by triangulation." It took Tonks a confused moment or two to remember her school Astronomy lessons; it had never been her strongest subject. "It's just a question of whether we have time."
"How long do we need?"
He glanced at the clock on the wall -- Tonks followed his gaze and saw with a wince that it was still only a quarter to six -- and stood for a moment lost in thought. "Well, we have several hours' time left on your spell, and I think we can expect the man to still be in bed. Yes, let's try it. I think I know where we can go." He traced his wand along the line of light on the map, and it drew a pale line showing the path. He glanced up at Tonks again with an annoying grin. "Well? What are we waiting for?"
*****
By the time they arrived in Brighton, Tonks had finally shaken herself fully awake. Cassius' plan had involved Apparating to Anglesey, where he had talked his way into the Holyhead Harpies training ground by flashing his Auror identification at the night watchwitch, and dropping the name of somebody he'd known ever since his schooldays, who was apparently a close personal friend of Gwenog Jones. The second line on the map had, as they'd expected, intersected the first at Brighton, and Tonks had felt a sudden thrill at the thought that her spell had worked.
Wizard's Row turned out to be a few undistinguished-looking small shops along a back street, although Tonks, used as she was to hidden magical areas, didn't fail to spot the disguised entrances in the walled and enclosed back alley behind the shops that served as the main Brighton Apparition point. She guessed that once you got inside, each shop was probably a lot bigger and more impressive than its drab exterior. That was the way it usually worked.
There was a slight early morning breeze off the sea that chilled the air, and she shivered slightly as she took the opportunity afforded by being hidden from Muggle sight to mutter the Tracking Spell test again. When she did, she forgot all about the weather. The day might be cold -- but this time, the wand in her hand was definitely warm.
She looked at Cassius with shining eyes. "It's there," she said, whispering to prevent her words being overheard by the one or two people already in the shops, who were looking out at them suspiciously. "He's not too close, but he's in town. Can we get a map?"
Cassius raised his eyebrows and produced K's map, now shrunk back to its original size. "We already have one, remember?" he said, opening it up and placing his wand on the parchment. "Well, at least until K asks for it back. But he usually has a few tricks up his sleeve -- like this, for example. Ubi sum. Focus." A golden dot appeared, marking the place where Cassius was standing; on this occasion though, the map shifted around it, showing the streets of Brighton in much more detail than before.
"Cool," said Tonks, impressed.
They squinted at the map; the trace mark Cassius had made showed up on the map as a broad stripe, and indicated that their target was probably some way from Wizards' Row. Tonks didn't mind too much. A brisk morning walk sounded like just the ticket to wake her up.
As they stepped out of the alley through a small gateway, Cassius indicated a main road that ran in the approximate direction her wand had pointed. They strolled along, stopping every now and again to consult the map and try the spell. As the time drew closer to eight o'clock, it got steadily more difficult to do this without being seen by any of the people arriving early for work, and Tonks had to work carefully as Cassius shielded her from view. Fortunately, her wand became steadily warmer as they passed through the centre of Brighton and out into a residential district. She was slightly alarmed to note that Cassius was puffing a bit at the long walk, but he still seemed fit enough to manage it. Once they were away from the main shopping areas, places to stop and check were easier to find, and the wand gradually led them into a housing estate where (apart from a few curious looks from children playing in the street) no-one paid them much attention.
"I think it's close now," she muttered as the wand swung yet again, towards the next street along. She hastily concealed it as a boy on a bicycle glanced at them as he rode by. "It's starting to get uncomfortably warm, in fact. Doesn't it glow when you get within fifty yards or so?"
"As I remember," said Cassius. Seeing Tonks' look of surprise, he said defensively, "Well, I haven't used this spell for a while!"
"Great. Now you tell me." Actually, she wasn't too worried. If Cassius remembered it that way, then that was probably how it was; she was beginning to realise just how much she had come to respect his judgment. They moved casually down the new road and stopped about halfway along, where there was a convenient bus shelter to hide in. Tonks tried the wand again, not expecting anything out of the ordinary, and almost dropped it as it pulsed with bright yellow light, pointing at a house just across the street.
"Ow!" She shook her hand with annoyance. "That's too hot!"
"Ssh!" Cassius looked over the road cautiously. There didn't seem to be any signs of activity in the house. "If he's there, I think we just grab him and go. Tonks, are you fully aware of the standard procedures for arresting suspects living in Muggle-inhabited areas?"
"Er ... I think so," said Tonks, crossing her fingers surreptitiously, and trying to recite the list she'd had to learn. "Quietly block all forms of magical exit, seal or cover the physical exits, cast Muggle-repelling spells around the place to discourage anyone from taking an interest, keep wands hidden as far as possible until you're inside the house. Does that sound right?"
"Good enough." Cassius said. "Very well, first things first. I'll contact the Floo office, you secure the rest of the place." He pulled out his mirror phone to call the monitoring liaison again, motioning to Tonks to approach the house.
She looked around cautiously and crossed the road, her wand half-concealed in her sleeve holder again. She grinned to herself as she thought about the source of that gadget. Whatever the current generations of Blackstocks might be up to, at least the source of their fortune had come up with something genuinely useful.
She let the end of her wand drift into her hand -- just far enough to use, but with little actually showing where it might be spotted by a passer-by -- and pointed it at the house and garden. Concentrating hard, she muttered "Remansionis edificium e hortus." She waved her arm around a few times, muttering the Muggle-repelling spells as she did so, and hoping that she merely looked like a woman doing a few stretching exercises while waiting for her grandfather to finish his phone call.
There was no sign of anything happening inside the house, and nothing to indicate that the wizard inside had noticed her. She didn't dare try the Tracking Spell again so close to the windows, but she did make doubly sure to check for the presence of a wizard with K's locator compass. It pointed straight at the building, which she took as a good sign.
At that point, she remembered that the knife gadget he'd given her had a feature for testing if you could Apparate into a building, and after a little experimentation, she managed to find it among the numerous attachments it contained, and tried it. The end glowed slightly, indicating that the house was protected against incursions from outside from anyone who hadn't been given specific permission to enter. She shrugged. It wasn't an unexpected security precaution -- most wizard dwellings had it in some form -- but it was still a little annoying.
Tonks looked over to see what Cassius had to offer; he'd finished with the Floo regulators, and gave her a quick thumbs-up as he crossed the street to confer. Tonks, looking around, noticed a short alleyway between two houses a few doors along the street, which appeared to lead to a lane running behind the back gardens of the houses. She pointed it out to Cassius, who looked pleased.
"Good!" he said. "We can get round to the rear of the premises without having to risk wandering through one of the gardens. I take it we can't just Apparate inside?" Tonks shook her head and Cassius gazed around casually, taking in the terrain while he formulated a strategy. He looked back at her. "The main thing we need to watch for is to make absolutely sure he can't get away this time," he said sternly. Tonks gave a meek sort of nod; she wasn't really in any position to argue.
"We can't break in without tipping him off, so one of us will have to try to get him to the front door, and the other stand guard out the back in case he makes a run for it.. If he spots us, he'll probably try to Disapparate first if he knows how, so it'll put him on his guard when he finds he can't." He looked at her thoughtfully. "Or he may try to blast his way out, in which case we have no choice to fight back and hope no Muggles are watching."
"What do we do if they are?" asked Tonks nervously.
Cassius shrugged. "We can't let him get away. If we get into too much trouble, we'll just have to call in the Obliviators."
"What do you reckon would be a good approach, then?"
"I'm not sure. Perhaps I'd better take the fr ..." He trailed off at the sight of a man in a blue shirt with a bag slung over his shoulder, who was working his way down the street. "Uh-oh, the Muggle post is just arriving. We'd better keep out of the way until he's gone."
The two Aurors leant against the wall of the next house along the street, chatting casually about the weather as the postman worked his way along the row of houses, pushing letters through the doors. He surprised them by stopping to deliver a handful of envelopes at their quarry's house, which gave Cassius an idea.
"Do you think you could mimic that fellow?" he asked in an undertone. "I'm sure we could temporarily Transfigure your clothes into something that looks like his uniform."
Tonks blinked, but turned to study the man carefully as he passed by. "I could, more or less," she replied, equally quietly, "but what for? Won't it look suspicious if I knock on the door? Their postmen aren't like owls, are they? They don't wait for replies, they just put the letters through those holes in the door and go."
"Sometimes they stop, Tonks, if there's money to pay or something to sign for," Cassius informed her. He looked slightly surprised that she hadn't known that, and she blushed. She received very few letters that weren't delivered by owl, and she'd never paid much attention to Muggle Studies at school -- she'd always assumed that she could find out anything she really needed to know by asking her father. But it suddenly struck her that her dad had spent most of his life -- and all his adult life -- in the wizarding world; despite his enthusiasm for films and football, his knowledge was probably almost as rusty as her own. Obviously she really did need to have a better knowledge of the Muggle world to do her job efficiently.
"So what do I do?" she asked, anxious not to make any more mistakes.
"Knock on the door and say there's a letter for him with money to pay," he said. Tonks nodded. "With a bit of luck he'll 'recognise' you, and even if he doesn't he shouldn't be suspicious. And he won't dare carry his wand when he opens the door. As soon as he does ... well, if he makes any hint of an offensive move, Stun him and get him inside. Don't take any chances, Tonks, I don't want you to get hurt. I'll cover the back door."
Tonks wasn't too sure about this plan, but after the previous night's debacle she wasn't prepared to offer up any alternatives. At any rate, she slipped down the alleyway between the houses to transform herself and her clothes away from the gaze of any watching locals, Conjured a bag and threw it over her shoulder, and strolled insouciantly up the path, whistling an indistinguishable tune. Cassius, who had carefully sealed all the windows and doors, was now somewhere round the back, presumably with wand at the ready.
She knocked on the door with a lot more apparent confidence than she really had and waited. And continued to wait. There was no response from within the house.
She checked her watch; to her surprise, it was just gone nine o'clock, and he really should have been up and about by now. Maybe he was expecting a call from the law after the previous night's escapades, and was lying low? Perhaps he was watching her cautiously from inside, trying to decide if she was really who she seemed to be? Or he could just have slept late and didn't hear me knock, she thought as she suddenly spotted a doorbell. She jabbed at it a few times, trying to make it sound like a ring from a postman annoyed at being delayed while waiting for a tardy householder to answer. Her heart rate increased slightly as this finally produced results; someone could be heard stumbling down the stairs and approaching the front door.
Tonks glanced around nervously. When she'd tried arrest at wandpoint last night, it hadn't been too successful. Still, this time she couldn't see anyone around who might interfere.
"Who is it?" came a rough voice from inside, heavy with sleep. It sounded vaguely familiar, but she couldn't quite place it.
"Postman," she called as casually as possible. "You've got money to pay on a letter, sir."
"Mug -- er, how much money?" came the voice again, sounding irritated. There were sounds of things being moved around inside, and Tonks gripped her wand tightly inside its holder. He was probably just making sure that there were no telltale signs of wizardry in view before opening the door to a Muggle -- but he might also be preparing an attack, and she couldn't risk being caught unawares again.
She suddenly realised that she had no idea how much money a postman might be requesting in this situation, and was forced to take a wild guess. "Seven pounds twenty, sir," she said brightly, but with crossed fingers.
"HOW much? Bloody hell!" The door was yanked open with no further pause for deliberation on the part of the householder, and Tonks gave a huge grin as she saw who it was. Before he had a chance to react, she raised her wand and fired a Stunner into his chest. She wasn't taking any chances this time.
He collapsed backwards into the hall, and Tonks, moving around to hide the events from view in case any passing Muggle managed to resist the Repelling Charms, followed and slammed the door. "Cassius! I've got him!" she yelled. She checked one last time with the Tracking Spell, and her wand turned to point straight at the man on the floor, glowing with light and heat.
Cassius came in through the back door, and also grinned widely as he looked at the unconscious wizard in front of them.
"Well, well," he said with a touch of amusement. "If it isn't the fellow who didn't like me slumming it at the Transfigured Toad last night. I almost feel sorry for him, having such an undesirable as me in his house without an invitation."
He caught Tonks' eye and chuckled. She laughed along with him, a laugh that also contained a considerable amount of relief. At long last something had gone right.
7. Have A Drink On Me
Table of Contents
9. Clearing the Decks
Length: 9,150 words
8. How Could I Have Been So Stupid?
Monday August 17th 1994
The wizard in the scarf seemed positively insouciant as he sauntered along the street with Tonks. He looked down at her and said casually, "I heard some gossip from Finley that a couple of people he didn't know had been poking around his place, and funnily enough they both kept tripping over things. Bit suspicious that, I thought. Something to bear in mind."
He laughed in a rather unpleasant way as Tonks looked up at him dully, and continued talking in a careless manner as he walked her down the street.
"You fooled me completely when you turned up as that Easton woman. Assuming you aren't her? If you are, I'm sorry, love, but I bet you're not. You tripped when you left, you see, and that started me thinking. Then I realised that you had seemed a bit more forward, which gave me rather a surprise. I was quite glad I'd made sure to give myself time to investigate you a little before I sold you any of the good stuff. Bad technique on your part, you really should have worked on your sense of balance before going undercover. Got to admit you're good at disguise though!"
They moved slowly along Diagon Alley past the rows of familiar shops, practically all of which were closed at this time on a Monday night. He kept a tight grip on her arm. There were only a few people around, and none of them were paying much attention to a man and a woman looking for all the world as if they were a couple out for an evening stroll
He glanced at her again. "Who are you anyway?"
"My name's ... name is ..." She hesitated.
"Yes?"
"T ... T ... Tonks," she said eventually, in a thick voice.
"Not Easton then." He sniggered. "Didn't think it would be, not after I was told you Flooed straight over to the Ministry after our last meeting instead of going off home like a good little girl. You should have realised someone was following you. Tonks, eh? Isn't that a funny name for a woman?"
"No. Well ... family ... name."
He looked at her appraisingly. "Fighting against it, eh? Don't worry, give it half an hour, you won't be. Effects will have fully kicked in by then. First name?"
"Ny -- no."
"Sorry?"
"N -- no."
"No? You are fighting it, aren't you? Your first name, Miss Tonks. Now."
"Ny -- Ny -- Nymphadora."
He laughed. "That's better. I'd be reluctant to tell people that, too." They were walking past the entrance to the Leaky Cauldron now, towards the quieter parts of the wizarding business area. "So what does Nymphadora Tonks do for a living? Tell me."
Tonks stopped walking for a moment, half-heartedly trying to pull away from his grip on her arm, but then started again as he tugged impatiently at her elbow. She looked at him glassy-eyed, with a horrified expression as if she couldn't quite believe what she was doing.
"Again. What do you do?"
"I'm ... an ... an ... an Auror," she said, in a dazed manner.
He stopped walking for a moment, but caught himself and moved on immediately. "Well, what a surprise. I don't think. I presume that old idiot they threw out the pub was with you?"
"He's not." She had a shifty look as she said this; the wizard looked at her sharply and glanced at his watch.
"Hmm, another few minutes yet." Although most of his face was concealed, his eyes seemed gleeful. "You think you can stop this, Nymphadora? You can't. It's very powerful stuff. I've used it before. I didn't oversell it to your friend Easton -- or was it you the whole time?" He shrugged when Tonks stuttered incomprehensibly at him, "Never mind. I'll find out soon. You'll do whatever I tell you." He sniggered again. "Now then, he's not what?"
"He's not an idiot."
"Ah." He chuckled. "But he was with you? Yes?"
"Y ... ye ... yes." There was a little sob in her voice as she said it, something he seemed to find highly amusing.
"Excellent. Well, my mates should have headed him off once we came out the pub, so if there's still a bit of you thinking he's going to get you out of this, dream on. So, how long has Nymphadora Tonks been an Auror, then?"
"Er, yeah. A month. About a month."
"A month?" He actually laughed out loud. "And they send you out doing something like this straight away! Bleeding hell, I knew the Ministry were having trouble finding them, but they must be getting desperate. In over your head, girl. You're not very good at this, are you?"
"I am." This was said with a hint of mulishness.
"Yeah? What are you working on?"
"Not supposed ... to tell you."
"I'm sure you're not. What are you working on?"
"A case."
"Of course you are. What are you working on? Details please."
"Case with potion ... illegal. Not common in this country. Nobody knows ... much about it. Where it comes from. What it does. Who sells it. Who buys it."
"Don't they now," he said with great amusement. "Well, you may just be getting a little bit of an idea by now. I did say I should be restocking soon --" he reached into her handbag and pulled out the bottle he'd sold her, tucking it into his pocket "-- starting right now, in fact, because if you're not that Easton woman you won't be needing this. Of course, I also said you might like what it did to you, but I lied."
They had reached an alleyway that led her into a small yard now and Tonks tensed up slightly. She looked around her with an unfocused air, but there was no-one else around.
"What ... are you doing?"
"Just taking you to a convenient little place we can confer in private," he said merrily. "This way. We wouldn't want anyone else to overhear our conversation, would we? I sure we have lots of interesting things to discuss."
He entered the yard, which was bigger than it had seemed it would be from the alleyway, turned to the door and touched his fingers to a panel on the side. He chuckled once more as the door sprang open.
"Not that you'll ever be telling anyone what we talked about."
"Want to bet?"
The wizard turned around sharply to see Tonks grinning at him, with her wand pointing at his heart. His eyes were wide, registering utter shock.
"I hadn't realised that you'd spotted me, actually," she said cheerfully, "but did you really think I'd be stupid enough to drink that stuff? Or go in that room and let you get a wand on me?"
The wizard looked at her. "But ... how ..." he spluttered, obviously struggling to work out what had gone wrong.
"That drunken clown created quite a nice diversion when he had a go at my partner," she said, enjoying the moment. Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, eh? "While you were watching the floor show, it gave me enough time to Transfigure the glass of stuff you gave me into a bottle, slip it in my pocket, then Conjure something that looked like it. Standard practice. I'm rather good at the more advanced Transfiguration techniques," she added conversationally.
The wizard made a twitching movement, and then looked, if anything, even more horrified. Tonks' grin widened. "Oh, and I also cast Remansio on you while I was there for good measure. You really should have been listening more carefully to what I was muttering. Wouldn't want you going anywhere without me, would we?"
She raised her wand to point at the wizard's face. "Let's see who you are then." She flicked it slightly and the scarf twitched, but stayed in place. "Fixed so only you can move it?" she said. "Fair enough. Does this work? Finite Incantatem." She flicked her wand again, but with the same lack of result. "Oh," she said with slight disappointment. "Never mind. I seem to remember that there is a counter-charm for this, but they'll have to remind me of what it is back at the office. Most interesting what you were saying to me just now. You were being very suspicious pushing that special Firewhisky. I thought you might be a bit more communicative if I kidded you along a bit, hence my little charade. Good, wasn't it?"
Tonks grinned again; in her pleasure at having turned the tables, she almost missed the noise behind her -- but not quite. She'd been too well trained for that.
Crack!
Tonks jumped back out of the way just in time as a jet of red light hit the wall next to her head, scattering shards of stone that scraped her face painfully as they went past. Out of the corner of her eye she could see the wizard who had cast the spell running down the alleyway towards the entrance to the little yard. Behind him were two more men with wands drawn.
Instinctively, she pressed the Panic Button on her robes with her free hand. The wizard next to her took the opportunity of the distraction offered by his friends to go for his wand, but before he could bring it to bear she pointed her own at him and cried "Expelliarmus!" The force of the spell at such short range not only sent his wand spinning away, it blasted him back into the wall of the building on the far side of the yard. He gave one short yell of pain at the impact, then slid down it and lay slumped at the bottom, a trickle of blood staining the scarf that covered his face.
Tonks' heart was thumping at twice the usual rate. Practice duels were all very well, as were the occasional small-scale magical punch-ups she'd found herself in the middle of in her time. This, however, was the first occasion that she'd been in a real fight with no quarter expected. And the odds weren't good, despite the advantage of her training. Come on, Don, Arnie, she thought fleetingly. Get your arses in gear. I need help here! She didn't even have time to worry about what might have happened to Cassius.
The other three wizards had now reached the entrance to the yard, close enough to fire spells at her at short range, but she managed to deflect the first salvo easily enough with a Shield Charm. Her opponents evidently had only moderate skill, in that they had to aim carefully and shout the incantations, giving her ample time to react. She knew, however, that she didn't dare let this go on too long and risk being hit.
The wizards spread out, obviously trying to hem her in, and Tonks smiled. Not a chance, lads. Time for an outflanking manoeuvre. She blocked one more Stunner and then Disapparated into the middle of the alleyway they had just come from, ready to attack them from behind.
It was a bold plan, and it almost worked. They looked around wildly as she disappeared -- the tactic apparently hadn't occurred to them either. Unfortunately, the rushed Apparition had left her off-balance; she stumbled over the hem of her robes on landing and clattered into a door, and the noise it made alerted them to what she'd done. Two more Stunners shot past her, and she began to get seriously flustered.
You moron, why didn't you just get right out of the way? She blocked another hex as one of the wizards, taking a leaf from her book, Disapparated away, reappearing at the end of the alleyway.
She didn't have time to concentrate long enough for another Disapparation of her own as she desperately fended off their spells. A return Stunner of her own was blocked, but a quick Impediment Jinx to the legs got past the defences of one of the wizards still in the yard and knocked him over, taking her out of his line of fire for the time being.
Come ON, you Irish git! she thought desperately. What's keeping you? In the chaos, it didn't occur to her that it had been barely a minute since the first spell was cast.
There were only two wizards left on the attack, but they were working together now, approaching from opposite ends of the alley and firing spells in relay. The narrowness of the passageway into the yard allowed little room for evasion, and the concentration required to defend against two assaults from directions 180 degrees apart meant that she couldn't risk taking a second or two out to fix an Apparation destination in her mind. Twice her blocks came only just in time, the residual force of the spells hitting into her like a punch, and once a stray spell singed her arm, causing a nasty burn. There was still no sign of her backup, and Tonks realised that she needed something to change the situation as quickly as possible. Right, then. Just about now would be the time to mix it up with something beyond the simple stuff.
Taking advantage of a momentary lull in their attack, she swung her wand in a wide arc, remembering one of the Really Neat Uses Of Transfiguration for combat purposes that Robards had demonstrated. Mercifully, it worked; the cobblestones of the alleyway morphed and sprang up into a thin circular wall that surrounded her, acted as a shield, and most importantly, temporarily hid her from view. She'd been one of the pupils who had managed to use Robards' suggestions effectively. The wall wasn't going to last more than a few minutes, but then it didn't need to.
Her two attackers hesitated for a moment before casting another spell, evidently taken by surprise, and that gave her the chance to focus her mind and Disapparate (which had turned out to be a lot harder to do under the stress of real combat than it had been in training). She chose as her target the roof of one of the nearby buildings, behind a chimney and out of sight of the alley below; as she landed, she heard two cracks and the sound of her wall collapsing under the combined effects of her opponents' hexes.
Wait a minute. Two cracks? Is that ...? The noise below intensified into what was clearly a duel, and she heard an Irish voice shouting "Tonks! Where the hell are ye?"
"On my way, mate!" She focused, chose her destination carefully, and this time Apparated down to the end of the alley to head off anyone trying to leave that way -- only to be knocked flying by one of her erstwhile attackers, running as fast as he could away from the scene.
Winded and momentarily breathless, it took a few seconds before the fact that he was running rather than Apparating registered with her. She pulled herself into a half-sitting position and pointed her wand at him: "Vestigare!" He stumbled slightly as he raced round the corner along Diagon Alley, which gave her hope that the spell had hit home. With any luck, he was too far away to have heard what it was.
The sounds from the fight were dying down now, but before she could rejoin O'Gregan and Cornworthy, there was another pop and Cassius appeared in front of her. He was looking rather dishevelled.
"Tonks!" he cried, spotting her on the ground and extending a hand to pull her up. "Are you all right? I saw you signal as you came out the pub to let you work on him, but when I followed some ... lowlife hit me in the back with a Stunner. It was lucky that one of the Magical Law Enforcement Patrol came along and woke me up. He thought I was drunk until I showed him my identification." He looked around him wildly. "This is where I followed that man the other day, isn't it? What happened?"
"I don't know, let's go and see." She nodded towards the alleyway just in time to see her last two attackers Disapparate, to the accompaniment of loud swearing from the other two Aurors.
"Tonks! Cassius!" shouted Cornworthy, spotting them. "What happened?" It seemed to be a popular question at the moment. "Did you get the one who ran away? I managed to hit him with Remansio, but we had our hands full with the other two. They caught us off-balance when we arrived."
"No, although I think I got a Tracking Spell on him," she said urgently, "but what happened the bloke I met? He was lying against the wall in the yard!" Seeing their blank looks, she raced down the alleyway, wand at the ready, hoping that he was still out cold. Her luck was out; she was just in time to see the man limp painfully through the door he'd opened earlier and slam it behind him. She shot a Stunner at him, but found that she had the same problem as her assailant a few minutes earlier -- trying to cast the spell while running threw her aim off, and it hit the doorframe instead.
She skidded to a halt, somehow managed not to trip over, and cast Alohamora at the door. The lock clicked, but then clicked back in place.
"Hang on, Tonks!" cried O'Gregan, panting, appearing next to her. "Wait for your backup! Has he put Colloportus on that door?"
Tonks gulped as she realised her own rashness but kept her voice steady. "I think so."
"Right." The other two Aurors had arrived, and he quickly added, "Line up. I run the knife over it, you three jinx him, OK?"
They nodded in assent, and he fished out one of K's gadgets, ran it quickly over the door frame, and flicked the door open. This was followed immediately by cries of Stupefy! from the others.
Unfortunately, the room inside was empty.
Well, not quite empty. On the far side was a fireplace, the presence of which clearly hadn't been obvious to Cassius looking in from outside when the room was dark. It wasn't dark now, however; the flames were giving the room an eerie green glow, and O'Gregan, on seeing this, began to turn the air blue instead. Tonks felt much the same. Her wonderful investigative coup was suddenly starting to fall apart in her hands.
Cassius was the quickest to react, reaching for his mirror phone. "Hang on, we might be able to trace him," he said urgently. He spoke into the mirror: "Floo Network office, monitoring liaison. Urgent." His face showed relief as someone answered immediately.
"Mary, nice to see you again. We're in a small hall in a yard off Diagon Alley, a suspect just went through the Floo. Can you trace where he went?" He listened carefully, then turned to the others. "She needs a specific person to go through to a known destination so she can pinpoint the fire of origin. Can one of you step through to the Ministry?"
"I'll go," said Cornworthy unhappily. "I have to get back anyway. I was just finishing a report when she called." He stepped into the flames and vanished.
"Arnold Cornworthy went through," said Cassius to the woman from the Floo office. "He's an Auror, you'll have his imprint on file."
They stood around watching each other as they waited for her to get back to them. Tonks couldn't quite manage to look the others in the eye. "Who was that on the other end?" she asked, just to be saying something.
"Mary Edgecombe from the monitoring group," Cassius said tensely. "Donnacha, when she calls, would you keep an eye on things here while we go after him? Come on, Mary ..." There was a ringing sound from the mirror phone and he answered it immediately. "Yes? Oh. Very well. Thank you, Mary." He looked up, his disappointment showing clearly on his face. "All right, Tonks, he popped out at the Leaky Cauldron. Let's go."
They quickly Apparated into the back yard of the pub and raced into the bar, but the scarved wizard was nowhere to be seen. Tonks realised, as she looked around, that travelling here was probably the smartest move he could have made. It would have been a very quick journey, giving him plenty of time to get away before anyone could trace him; it was a public place, so the destination hadn't given anything away; and it provided an immediate means of escape.
With a gloomy feeling she followed Cassius over to the bar, where Tom, the bald-headed barman, readily told them about the man who had appeared in the fire, then immediately rushed through the pub and out of the front door into the Muggle street on the other side. A customer who had been entering from the main street at the time, and who had nearly been flattened by the man as he dashed out, informed them that he had jumped into a Muggle black cab and been driven away.
Cassius thanked him, and turned back to Tonks disconsolately. "Bugger."
She raised her eyebrows in surprise. It wasn't as if he'd chosen a particularly bad swear word, but coming from Cassius, it was the equivalent of a four-letter tirade from anyone else. It certainly showed how frustrated he was.
"Can't we trace the taxi?" she said desperately. "They're all numbered, aren't they? Do we have any kind of contact with the Muggle police?"
Cassius snorted. "For something like this? We could send a memo via the Muggle Relations people. We might get an answer back before the World Cup if we're very lucky. Anyway, he only needed to go far enough to get out of sight of the Leaky Cauldron. If that taxi driver's still got any memory of meeting him left, I'm Merlin's long-lost brother. And you're our little sister." He scowled. "Come on."
Tonks followed him quietly out into the small walled courtyard at the back of the pub, where he tapped his wand on the brick that let them back into Diagon Alley. Both of them seemed to tacitly agree that they'd prefer to walk back and calm down rather than Apparate again. That reminded Tonks of something.
"Hang on!" she said, stopping dead. "The Tracking Spell I cast! I'm sure I hit that bloke who knocked me over. Let's see if we're warm." With a sudden rush of excitement, she placed her wand on the tips of her fingers, and murmured "Find my quarry."
The wand spun quickly round to point in the general direction of the end of Diagon Alley, but nevertheless her shoulders slumped in disappointment. There was no hint of warmth to the touch at all, which meant that the wizard, wherever he might be along the direction her wand was pointing, was now a long way from London. She wasn't going to be able to track him down by following the wand as it got steadily warmer.
"Stone cold," she said despondently, storing her wand back in the holder that had proved so useful in the pub. That reminded her that she was still in disguise, and with a small grimace she resumed her usual appearance. She hoped she hadn't done anything to ruin Beatrice Easton's reputation, but at that point she really didn't care.
Quietly, to herself, she echoed Cassius' curse in the Leaky Cauldron. All of her bright ideas seemed to be going wrong tonight.
*****
The Ministry was practically deserted by the time they returned after clearing up in the yard, well past eleven o'clock. Even Cornworthy had finished his report and gone home. They waved tiredly at the few Aurors still in the office on the night shift and dropped into their chairs, exhausted.
Neither of them spoke for a moment. Then Tonks said nervously, in an attempt to lighten the gloom, "I don't think Don was too pleased at being called up like that."
Cassius gave her a weary smile. "Well, I can understand that. He said he had to leave a nice little candlelit dinner with Rhiannon Davies. Lucky they weren't in a Muggle restaurant, I suppose."
"Oh." That attempt didn't work, then. Another thing I have to apologise for.
As she turned to her desk, she suddenly remembered something. "At least we've got a sample of spiked Firewhisky we can get analysed," she said, a note of optimism returning to her voice. "That'll prove the stuff was used, won't it?"
She reached into her pocket eagerly and pulled out the Transfigured bottle, which promptly slipped out of her fingers and flew across the floor.
"Unk." The sound came out halfway between a squeak and a sob. The bottle rolled to a stop ten feet away and remained mercifully intact. Tonks started to breathe again, her heart rate slowly returning to normal as Cassius walked over and picked up the bottle.
"I think maybe I'd better look after this," he said gently. "It seems to be officially Not Your Night."
Tonks looked away, and then, as frustration welled up in her, smashed her fist on the desk. "I don't believe how I screwed this up!" she yelled. "I just had to play the heroine and try to get him to talk freely, didn't I? All I had to do was arrest him as soon as we came out the pub. Or at any time as we walked down the Alley. I was so sure I had everything under control that I even told him who I was!"
Cassius' face fell. "You did what?"
"I know," she gabbled. "I didn't know what to do when he asked, but I didn't lie just in case he actually knew, and wouldn't fall for the bluff if I didn't give him the right answer. I expected to be arresting him a few minutes later so I didn't think it would matter ..." The extent of her foolishness was starting to strike home. "I should never have done it. I should never have gone into that yard with him when I'd heard him say he had people watching his back. And I should never have tried to stick around and fight four of them at once!"
She buried her head in her hands. The phrase she'd used before, when she'd merely thought that she'd screwed up, leapt to mind again. "How could I have been so stupid?" she wailed.
"Inexperience, Tonks!" said Cassius, in a strained voice. He seemed to realise he was being snappish and made a visible effort to calm down and joke about it. "Maybe when you're a hundred and five you'll have changed, eh?"
"If they keep me on the job that long," said Tonks miserably.
Cassius shrugged his shoulders. "Look, none of us go very long on the job without messing something up, in some way. It happens all the time. You have to get used to it. I would probably have done exactly the same as you when I started out. I might even have done it tonight if it had been me working undercover. Beat yourself up over it, yes, that's how you learn, but don't do it too much. You'd never have made it as an Auror unless you had confidence in your own ability. We're supposed to be the elite, after all."
Confidence. Elite. Yeah, right. "OK, Cassius," she said tiredly. Another thought suddenly struck her and sent a chill down her spine. "We're going to have to report this to Scrimgeour, aren't we? He's going to spit fire, isn't he?"
Cassius hesitated. "Well ... yes, I'm afraid so," he said, in an apologetic tone. He attempted to joke again. "But no further than a Welsh Green. And he doesn't usually turn you into a frog for a first mistake."
As far as Tonks was concerned, it didn't work. "Great. That's going to be about as much fun as the first time I met him, then." She reached bleakly for a roll of parchment to start drafting the hapless apologia that was going to be her report. Cassius looked at her with what was -- finally -- pure sympathy.
"Listen, Tonks, to be fair, you did play with the odds," he said quietly. "The direction of the Snitch simply went against you. We've still got other leads to work on, and this chap won't be able to show himself in public to do business for a while. And no-one got killed because of it."
She looked up at him with despondent eyes. "Yet." She shook herself. "All right, mate, points taken. I'm just going to write my report, then go home and torture myself for this, OK? Then come back in tomorrow morning and try to pretend I'm not too embarrassed while everyone takes the mickey out of me. After all, I would."
She dipped her quill in the ink and started to write. "Oh, that reminds me -- thanks for talking to Shacklebolt for me. I don't need him looking down his nose at me as well."
"Kingsley?" said Cassius with a bemused look. "I haven't said more than 'hello' to him for the last couple of weeks."
"Oh?" She looked up for a moment, puzzled, then shrugged. "Well, never mind. I'd better get started on this if I want to get any sleep tonight."
*****
Tuesday August 18th 1994
Tonks was woken from an uneasy doze by a ringing sound, which turned out to be the Auror mirror phone that she'd left on the bedside table next to her. She looked at the clock and groaned; she hadn't got to bed until gone two in the morning, and she really hadn't wanted to be woken for at least another couple of hours. She reached for the phone and mumbled "Hello?"
"Tonks?" It was Cassius, sounding excited.
"Cassius? What on earth ... it's five o'clock in the morning! What's up?"
"Remind me if I saw what I seem to remember I saw. When you did the Tracking Spell last night, I'm sure I saw your wand spin straight round and point in a definite direction, correct? It didn't just spin round and round aimlessly?"
Tonks blinked. "Yeah, it did point," she said blearily. "But so what? The wand was stone cold."
"But it pointed. It means he hadn't cast a counter-charm on himself. I knew it! He probably doesn't realise what you hit him with. That means we have about twenty-four hours to pin him down. Try it again for me, will you?"
"But ..." Tonks was finding this hard to take in on less than three hours sleep. "Oh, all right."
She picked up her wand from the bedside table and tried the incantation again; the wand repeated its previous performance, but was as cold as ever.
"OK, it did it," she reported. "But how does that help? If the wand's cold, doesn't that mean he could be anywhere on a straight line from here to France? What are we supposed to do, Apparate every quarter of a mile and try not to wander off line while we're doing it?"
Cassius sounded disgustingly cheerful for this time in the morning. "If necessary. But we're really only supposed to use the official Apparition points. I know a little trick that might narrow it down a lot, though. Throw some Muggle clothes on, Tonks, and get yourself up to the office ASAP."
*****
Tonks managed to wake herself up sufficiently to arrive at her desk half an hour later, dressed in an old T-shirt and jeans. Cassius was already there, looking positively fresh, and she seriously considered the possibility of hating him. "OK, Cassius," she said wearily. "What do I do?"
"You follow me," he said composedly, getting up from his chair and taking a large folded piece of parchment off his desk. "We'll need an nice large open space, and I'd think the combat hall will be free at this early hour, wouldn't you?"
Tonks didn't argue. She followed him down the corridor, trying to shake herself fully awake. Bright morning sunshine was coming in through the enchanted windows, which helped a little; she reasoned that it must mean that the Magical Maintenance staff had finally got their pay rise. Well, bully for them, she thought sourly.
The combat hall was indeed empty, and when they entered Cassius began to behave in a very strange way.
First he spread the piece of parchment he was carrying out on the floor. He then retreated to the edge of the room and pointed his wand at it, muttering incantations: "Iaceo" -- the creases of the parchment snapped out and it lay perfectly flat; "Engorgio" -- that was familiar, it grew and grew until it filled most of the available space; "Cartographia orientum aquilo" -- it spun round through about a quarter turn; "Depacto" -- another familiar one, a Fixing Spell to hold it in place.
None of this made much sense to Tonks, whose brain was still working sluggishly. She thought about trying to seem intelligent by looking as she understood what all this was for, but abandoned the idea as impracticable under the circumstances. "Um, Cassius, what are you doing exactly?"
He grinned. "Take a closer look at the parchment."
Tonks did. It turned out to be a map of Great Britain, and greatly expanded as it now was, she could see that it was no ordinary Muggle map. It was extremely detailed, and appeared to show almost every significantly sized road in the country, with all major magical buildings highlighted as red blocks. When she looked more closely still, she could see that place-names hovered over most concentrations of streets. There were occasional flashes of movement which suggested that minor things were being updated as she looked.
"Where did you get this from, mate?" she asked curiously.
"I borrowed it from K's department when I came in," he said cheerfully. "It's enchanted, obviously; it automatically updates itself to match major changes in the physical world. You know, like the security maps the Ministry watchwizards have."
"Oh, those?" said Tonks, nodding, but still feeling somewhat fogged as to how this would help. "Right."
His eyes twinkled. "Or at least, they're supposed to watch them sometimes -- I suspect they spend most of their time reading the paper and talking about next week's Quidditch matches."
"You mean this will show the bloke I hit?" asked Tonks with disbelief.
"Not as such," said Cassius with obvious regret. "This one doesn't show people. It does fill in more detail as you enlarge it, which is nice, but you can't enchant a single piece of parchment too far, can you? It would probably catch fire." He shrugged at Tonks' disappointed look. "Unfortunately, I understand that if you want to show people you're normally limited to something like a single building -- maybe a very small village at a pinch. But this is an up to date scale map of the country. Are you getting my drift now?"
Tonks thought she was, but didn't want to make herself look any sillier than she already did after the events of the previous day. "Er -- maybe you'd better continue snowing," she said in a feeble attempt at a joke.
"Right," he said, smiling patiently. "I've turned it so north on the map lines up exactly with geographical north. So if you place your wand at the point on the map that corresponds to where you're standing right now, and do the tracking spell incantation ..."
"... it will show what's along the line of search? Narrow it down? Excellent!" said Tonks in sudden realisation. "I never thought of that!"
"Another old Auror trick. One of the advantages of being an old Auror." His occasional 'see, I know things you young whippersnappers don't' smirk was back on his face again. "I understand why they don't emphasise Tracking Spells much nowadays, because they're not always terribly helpful when somebody moves via some method of long-distance travel. But we always used to find this a good way to get around that, even if it is a trifle inconvenient. Now, then, tap the map with your wand and say Ubi sum."
Tonks did. A small golden dot appeared in the middle of the dense concentration of roadways that marked London on the map. She looked closer; it was placed over the street that lay above the Ministry of Magic. The red block denoting the Ministry showed underneath it.
Cassius waved his wand and the lights in the room dimmed slightly. "Very good, that's where you currently are. Now then, put your wand on the dot and do the Tracking Spell. Light the wand first. Narrow beam."
Tonks obediently placed her wand over the golden dot and muttered "Lumos. Find my quarry." It spun round once under her finger and pointed across the map. It was still cold -- wherever the wizard she'd hit was, he wasn't anywhere close at hand -- but the path of the beam of light from its tip now showed in which direction he might be found.
Cassius, moving gently, walked across the map, following the beam, which was pointing towards the south coast. "Now, if your wand is absolutely cold, he can't be closer than about fifteen miles," he said. "Are you sure there isn't even a slight tingle?"
Tonks felt the wand very carefully, but couldn't detect any change from the normal temperature. "Afraid not."
"Right. That takes him out of London then. We'll assume for the moment that he isn't camped out in the middle of a road or a field, either. In which case ... well now, that's interesting ..."
"What is?" said Tonks curiously.
"We may just be in luck, because that beam doesn't cross anywhere much until it gets to the coast. It passes through a few places on the map -- Smallfield, Balcombe, Burgess Hill -- but until it hits Brighton, none of them are really that big. Remember I said that you get a fair few wizards along the south coast?" He looked up. "I'd say that should be our first port of call. There's an Apparition point at the back of Wizard's Row -- we can try elsewhere if we don't have any luck. Does that seem fair?"
It did. Tonks suddenly felt a lot more cheerful at the prospect of being able to make up for her earlier mistakes. "Sounds good to me, mate. There isn't any way we can narrow it down though, is there?"
Cassius hesitated. "Well obviously, if we can go somewhere else and repeat this procedure with the map, we can pinpoint him by triangulation." It took Tonks a confused moment or two to remember her school Astronomy lessons; it had never been her strongest subject. "It's just a question of whether we have time."
"How long do we need?"
He glanced at the clock on the wall -- Tonks followed his gaze and saw with a wince that it was still only a quarter to six -- and stood for a moment lost in thought. "Well, we have several hours' time left on your spell, and I think we can expect the man to still be in bed. Yes, let's try it. I think I know where we can go." He traced his wand along the line of light on the map, and it drew a pale line showing the path. He glanced up at Tonks again with an annoying grin. "Well? What are we waiting for?"
*****
By the time they arrived in Brighton, Tonks had finally shaken herself fully awake. Cassius' plan had involved Apparating to Anglesey, where he had talked his way into the Holyhead Harpies training ground by flashing his Auror identification at the night watchwitch, and dropping the name of somebody he'd known ever since his schooldays, who was apparently a close personal friend of Gwenog Jones. The second line on the map had, as they'd expected, intersected the first at Brighton, and Tonks had felt a sudden thrill at the thought that her spell had worked.
Wizard's Row turned out to be a few undistinguished-looking small shops along a back street, although Tonks, used as she was to hidden magical areas, didn't fail to spot the disguised entrances in the walled and enclosed back alley behind the shops that served as the main Brighton Apparition point. She guessed that once you got inside, each shop was probably a lot bigger and more impressive than its drab exterior. That was the way it usually worked.
There was a slight early morning breeze off the sea that chilled the air, and she shivered slightly as she took the opportunity afforded by being hidden from Muggle sight to mutter the Tracking Spell test again. When she did, she forgot all about the weather. The day might be cold -- but this time, the wand in her hand was definitely warm.
She looked at Cassius with shining eyes. "It's there," she said, whispering to prevent her words being overheard by the one or two people already in the shops, who were looking out at them suspiciously. "He's not too close, but he's in town. Can we get a map?"
Cassius raised his eyebrows and produced K's map, now shrunk back to its original size. "We already have one, remember?" he said, opening it up and placing his wand on the parchment. "Well, at least until K asks for it back. But he usually has a few tricks up his sleeve -- like this, for example. Ubi sum. Focus." A golden dot appeared, marking the place where Cassius was standing; on this occasion though, the map shifted around it, showing the streets of Brighton in much more detail than before.
"Cool," said Tonks, impressed.
They squinted at the map; the trace mark Cassius had made showed up on the map as a broad stripe, and indicated that their target was probably some way from Wizards' Row. Tonks didn't mind too much. A brisk morning walk sounded like just the ticket to wake her up.
As they stepped out of the alley through a small gateway, Cassius indicated a main road that ran in the approximate direction her wand had pointed. They strolled along, stopping every now and again to consult the map and try the spell. As the time drew closer to eight o'clock, it got steadily more difficult to do this without being seen by any of the people arriving early for work, and Tonks had to work carefully as Cassius shielded her from view. Fortunately, her wand became steadily warmer as they passed through the centre of Brighton and out into a residential district. She was slightly alarmed to note that Cassius was puffing a bit at the long walk, but he still seemed fit enough to manage it. Once they were away from the main shopping areas, places to stop and check were easier to find, and the wand gradually led them into a housing estate where (apart from a few curious looks from children playing in the street) no-one paid them much attention.
"I think it's close now," she muttered as the wand swung yet again, towards the next street along. She hastily concealed it as a boy on a bicycle glanced at them as he rode by. "It's starting to get uncomfortably warm, in fact. Doesn't it glow when you get within fifty yards or so?"
"As I remember," said Cassius. Seeing Tonks' look of surprise, he said defensively, "Well, I haven't used this spell for a while!"
"Great. Now you tell me." Actually, she wasn't too worried. If Cassius remembered it that way, then that was probably how it was; she was beginning to realise just how much she had come to respect his judgment. They moved casually down the new road and stopped about halfway along, where there was a convenient bus shelter to hide in. Tonks tried the wand again, not expecting anything out of the ordinary, and almost dropped it as it pulsed with bright yellow light, pointing at a house just across the street.
"Ow!" She shook her hand with annoyance. "That's too hot!"
"Ssh!" Cassius looked over the road cautiously. There didn't seem to be any signs of activity in the house. "If he's there, I think we just grab him and go. Tonks, are you fully aware of the standard procedures for arresting suspects living in Muggle-inhabited areas?"
"Er ... I think so," said Tonks, crossing her fingers surreptitiously, and trying to recite the list she'd had to learn. "Quietly block all forms of magical exit, seal or cover the physical exits, cast Muggle-repelling spells around the place to discourage anyone from taking an interest, keep wands hidden as far as possible until you're inside the house. Does that sound right?"
"Good enough." Cassius said. "Very well, first things first. I'll contact the Floo office, you secure the rest of the place." He pulled out his mirror phone to call the monitoring liaison again, motioning to Tonks to approach the house.
She looked around cautiously and crossed the road, her wand half-concealed in her sleeve holder again. She grinned to herself as she thought about the source of that gadget. Whatever the current generations of Blackstocks might be up to, at least the source of their fortune had come up with something genuinely useful.
She let the end of her wand drift into her hand -- just far enough to use, but with little actually showing where it might be spotted by a passer-by -- and pointed it at the house and garden. Concentrating hard, she muttered "Remansionis edificium e hortus." She waved her arm around a few times, muttering the Muggle-repelling spells as she did so, and hoping that she merely looked like a woman doing a few stretching exercises while waiting for her grandfather to finish his phone call.
There was no sign of anything happening inside the house, and nothing to indicate that the wizard inside had noticed her. She didn't dare try the Tracking Spell again so close to the windows, but she did make doubly sure to check for the presence of a wizard with K's locator compass. It pointed straight at the building, which she took as a good sign.
At that point, she remembered that the knife gadget he'd given her had a feature for testing if you could Apparate into a building, and after a little experimentation, she managed to find it among the numerous attachments it contained, and tried it. The end glowed slightly, indicating that the house was protected against incursions from outside from anyone who hadn't been given specific permission to enter. She shrugged. It wasn't an unexpected security precaution -- most wizard dwellings had it in some form -- but it was still a little annoying.
Tonks looked over to see what Cassius had to offer; he'd finished with the Floo regulators, and gave her a quick thumbs-up as he crossed the street to confer. Tonks, looking around, noticed a short alleyway between two houses a few doors along the street, which appeared to lead to a lane running behind the back gardens of the houses. She pointed it out to Cassius, who looked pleased.
"Good!" he said. "We can get round to the rear of the premises without having to risk wandering through one of the gardens. I take it we can't just Apparate inside?" Tonks shook her head and Cassius gazed around casually, taking in the terrain while he formulated a strategy. He looked back at her. "The main thing we need to watch for is to make absolutely sure he can't get away this time," he said sternly. Tonks gave a meek sort of nod; she wasn't really in any position to argue.
"We can't break in without tipping him off, so one of us will have to try to get him to the front door, and the other stand guard out the back in case he makes a run for it.. If he spots us, he'll probably try to Disapparate first if he knows how, so it'll put him on his guard when he finds he can't." He looked at her thoughtfully. "Or he may try to blast his way out, in which case we have no choice to fight back and hope no Muggles are watching."
"What do we do if they are?" asked Tonks nervously.
Cassius shrugged. "We can't let him get away. If we get into too much trouble, we'll just have to call in the Obliviators."
"What do you reckon would be a good approach, then?"
"I'm not sure. Perhaps I'd better take the fr ..." He trailed off at the sight of a man in a blue shirt with a bag slung over his shoulder, who was working his way down the street. "Uh-oh, the Muggle post is just arriving. We'd better keep out of the way until he's gone."
The two Aurors leant against the wall of the next house along the street, chatting casually about the weather as the postman worked his way along the row of houses, pushing letters through the doors. He surprised them by stopping to deliver a handful of envelopes at their quarry's house, which gave Cassius an idea.
"Do you think you could mimic that fellow?" he asked in an undertone. "I'm sure we could temporarily Transfigure your clothes into something that looks like his uniform."
Tonks blinked, but turned to study the man carefully as he passed by. "I could, more or less," she replied, equally quietly, "but what for? Won't it look suspicious if I knock on the door? Their postmen aren't like owls, are they? They don't wait for replies, they just put the letters through those holes in the door and go."
"Sometimes they stop, Tonks, if there's money to pay or something to sign for," Cassius informed her. He looked slightly surprised that she hadn't known that, and she blushed. She received very few letters that weren't delivered by owl, and she'd never paid much attention to Muggle Studies at school -- she'd always assumed that she could find out anything she really needed to know by asking her father. But it suddenly struck her that her dad had spent most of his life -- and all his adult life -- in the wizarding world; despite his enthusiasm for films and football, his knowledge was probably almost as rusty as her own. Obviously she really did need to have a better knowledge of the Muggle world to do her job efficiently.
"So what do I do?" she asked, anxious not to make any more mistakes.
"Knock on the door and say there's a letter for him with money to pay," he said. Tonks nodded. "With a bit of luck he'll 'recognise' you, and even if he doesn't he shouldn't be suspicious. And he won't dare carry his wand when he opens the door. As soon as he does ... well, if he makes any hint of an offensive move, Stun him and get him inside. Don't take any chances, Tonks, I don't want you to get hurt. I'll cover the back door."
Tonks wasn't too sure about this plan, but after the previous night's debacle she wasn't prepared to offer up any alternatives. At any rate, she slipped down the alleyway between the houses to transform herself and her clothes away from the gaze of any watching locals, Conjured a bag and threw it over her shoulder, and strolled insouciantly up the path, whistling an indistinguishable tune. Cassius, who had carefully sealed all the windows and doors, was now somewhere round the back, presumably with wand at the ready.
She knocked on the door with a lot more apparent confidence than she really had and waited. And continued to wait. There was no response from within the house.
She checked her watch; to her surprise, it was just gone nine o'clock, and he really should have been up and about by now. Maybe he was expecting a call from the law after the previous night's escapades, and was lying low? Perhaps he was watching her cautiously from inside, trying to decide if she was really who she seemed to be? Or he could just have slept late and didn't hear me knock, she thought as she suddenly spotted a doorbell. She jabbed at it a few times, trying to make it sound like a ring from a postman annoyed at being delayed while waiting for a tardy householder to answer. Her heart rate increased slightly as this finally produced results; someone could be heard stumbling down the stairs and approaching the front door.
Tonks glanced around nervously. When she'd tried arrest at wandpoint last night, it hadn't been too successful. Still, this time she couldn't see anyone around who might interfere.
"Who is it?" came a rough voice from inside, heavy with sleep. It sounded vaguely familiar, but she couldn't quite place it.
"Postman," she called as casually as possible. "You've got money to pay on a letter, sir."
"Mug -- er, how much money?" came the voice again, sounding irritated. There were sounds of things being moved around inside, and Tonks gripped her wand tightly inside its holder. He was probably just making sure that there were no telltale signs of wizardry in view before opening the door to a Muggle -- but he might also be preparing an attack, and she couldn't risk being caught unawares again.
She suddenly realised that she had no idea how much money a postman might be requesting in this situation, and was forced to take a wild guess. "Seven pounds twenty, sir," she said brightly, but with crossed fingers.
"HOW much? Bloody hell!" The door was yanked open with no further pause for deliberation on the part of the householder, and Tonks gave a huge grin as she saw who it was. Before he had a chance to react, she raised her wand and fired a Stunner into his chest. She wasn't taking any chances this time.
He collapsed backwards into the hall, and Tonks, moving around to hide the events from view in case any passing Muggle managed to resist the Repelling Charms, followed and slammed the door. "Cassius! I've got him!" she yelled. She checked one last time with the Tracking Spell, and her wand turned to point straight at the man on the floor, glowing with light and heat.
Cassius came in through the back door, and also grinned widely as he looked at the unconscious wizard in front of them.
"Well, well," he said with a touch of amusement. "If it isn't the fellow who didn't like me slumming it at the Transfigured Toad last night. I almost feel sorry for him, having such an undesirable as me in his house without an invitation."
He caught Tonks' eye and chuckled. She laughed along with him, a laugh that also contained a considerable amount of relief. At long last something had gone right.
7. Have A Drink On Me
Table of Contents
9. Clearing the Decks