Work Text:
"Don't pinch the good silver, Dung. Don't drink through the meeting, Dung. Don't sell Dark potions to Muggles, Dung."
It's this last one—is why we're here, in Yorkshire, trudging through a field on a freezing morning, not even a proper sleep behind us and it's ready to go? and come on, what's keeping you? The ground's not thawed yet, so it's hard and frosted over, and the whole scenario is pretty bleak, just the three of us, heading toward the country house with our breath comin' out in little clouds. The only thing with color is her bloody hair, so pink that it gives me a headache. She's being a true nightmare about this affair, interrogatin' me on every detail like I'm some sort of sponge, just soaking up all the tiny bits of the day.
"What did he look like, when you talked to him?" she'd asked me, leaning forward in her chair. "Did he seem like he was under a curse?"
As if I'd known. I should have just kept my fuckin' mouth shut. If I had, I'd be sleeping in a warm bed, not out here with these two, being dragged along like someone's misbehaving brat.
I'd had a splash of gin and got to talking, that's where I went wrong. Told 'em about Gaz Montague and how I'd sold him another 'artifact' for his collection. Funny old codger, Gaz is. Got loads of books on magic and the like, always sitting with a cup of tea and reading about things like divination and enchantments, the whole parade—all the things that Muggles find interesting and make up their stories about.
I've known him for going on half a year now, I reckon. Met him in Croydon in a pub, because Muggles serve their liquor cheap, and that's how you get your knut's worth. He smokes a pipe too, Gaz does, so we got to chatting about the weather and the state of things, and eventually he starts tellin' me how he reckons there's something strange going on throughout the country, perhaps even the world, and as I'm listening to him and workin' my way through a pint, I realize he's talking about magic, and I've got to stop myself laughing, cause he's so fuckin' set on what he's saying but doesn't want me to think he's just another drunk bastard spinning yarns. And he's wrong about most of it, but damned right about some of it, so after I 'scuse myself for a piss, I come back and tell him I suppose he must be on to somethin' and that I've seen some 'ticularly odd things myself, and would he like to have a look at some of my findings, being a curious sort of man.
So, that was that. I started sellin' him little things, not really letting on how much I knew about magic and whatnot, and he paid well, which is all I was int'rested in. Sometimes I'd bring him shite and sometimes not, depending on what I came into, and most of the time I'd make up a story to go with whatever object I gave him that made it sound a lot better or more dangerous than it was. And he'd put these trinkets in a case and thank me and I'd be on my way. So, when I saw him time before last, I didn't think much of the fact that he asked me about potions, cause he was always keen on something or other, and I says to him, "Reckon I can look into it," and I did, didn't I? Had a bit of a raid just the week before, so I thought to myself, "What timing, Dung. Here's a chance to unload your pockets."
We'd got wind of this old fella making potions for the Death Eaters, real nasty stuff, the sort that'd make for a pretty unpleasant time if you mistook it for fancy liqueur, if you understand me. Most of it was gotten rid of, except for a few things nobody would miss, so when Gaz mentioned the potion thing, I figured he weren't no harm, since all he does is lock the shite away and look at it. The whole operation went smoothly as you like. I delivered the vial, he paid me, and then he said it. The thing that's got me out here in fucking February, shivering so hard my bollocks might drop off. He said, "They'll be so pleased." And at the time, I didn't think much of it, ‘cause I had a fistful of Muggle currency and was still a smidge hungover from the previous night, so I chalked it up to Gaz being a barmy old fuck and went on my merry way.
And if you want to know the total truth, it was my charitable nature what really did me in, ‘cause I used some of that money to buy a bottle of gin and stopped by headquarters to see who might be hangin' around, and there they were in the kitchen, Lupin and Tonks, and they didn't look pleased to see me. So I thought, "That's ‘cause he's only just done his changing, hasn't he?" cause you can always tell when he has, but I should have turned on the spot and gone and enjoyed myself, since as soon as I was deep enough in my cups I brought up the thing with Gaz Montague and how fuckin' strange it was, what he'd said, and then she was off like a bloody racehorse, asking me all sorts of questions, treatin’ me as if I'd gone and hexed an old lady in front of her.
"No smoke coming from the chimney," Lupin says, when we get closer to the house. It's a big old place, wood-paneling and kept real nice inside, but he lives alone, so I figure he's got no reason to heat every room. Probably in bed right now, dreaming like regular folk do, of a morning. Or gone to London, as he does. Strikes me that if we wanted to run into Gaz Montague, we might have stayed put, and I'm not tickled by the idea.
"You both make me come out here, and he might not even be home," I reply.
"I'd say that's optimistic, Dung," says Tonks, still walking, and when she notices I've stopped she turns and looks at me, real irritated, like some sort of mad-as-hell doll, what with her candyfloss hair and her cheeks red from the chill.
"Look, love, it's business, all right? I ain't his mother. I don't look after him. I don't ask questions." I shrug, and she raises her eyebrows way up.
"But you do break statutes, and you do put lives at risk for a few quid," she says, "which is pretty counterproductive to our efforts, don't you think?"
"How many laws and regulations do you break every day, eh? No, go on, give it a good think. Funny time to turn selective, innit? He's a big lad, Gaz. Can make decisions for himself, what he wants and who he wants to buy it from."
"Not when the person informing his decisions is a bloody pickpocket who brings confiscated materials to high-bidding Muggles in the middle of a fucking war," she says, out of breath by the end of it and moving closer to me, and I'm about to tell her that she can fully fuck right off, when I notice that Lupin's watching me, as if he's waiting for me to step out of line, somehow.
He's got these real light blue eyes, Remus does, and the fact that they're bloodshot and it's so cold and grey out and he's a werewolf gives me the fuckin' willies, and swear on my life, I really wonder if he'd ever just snap and start killing, crazy like, cause he's always so calm and it's the calm ones that trouble me. So I don't say anything. I just raise my palms up, no harm done, and we keep walking to the house, quiet the rest of the way.
When we get to the door, I give it a knock, and wait, listening for footsteps. It's got wood floors, so you can hear when someone's coming towards the door, but I don't hear no footsteps, and I got good ears, so I raise my shoulders and ask, "Well?"
Lupin looks at Tonks, and then he reaches for the doorknob and it turns easily in his hand, so I tell him that's criminal, what he's doing, and hasn't this been an eye-opening morning, since it's just fine, apparently, for him and her to break laws but when I do it, I'm counterproductive.
"I'll be sure to apologize for trespassing, Dung, after you've explained that we're going to have to erase his memory," he says.
When we get inside, it's quiet, except that Gaz's got this giant bastard of a grandfather clock in the entry hall and it ticks loud enough that you can hear it just about anywhere on the ground floor. Havin' a thing like that'd drive me mad. Wouldn't mind all the good furniture and paintings though. Reckon they'd fetch a very respectable price, if you found a buyer who was into that sort of thing: dogs, fields, waterways and such. Art like that has always seemed to me like a fuckin' expensive way of saying, "Look 'ere, I bought this bloody picture of some farmland, right, so that you know I don't ever have to go out into it. I can just look at it here, 'angin on my wall."
They both have their wands out, like they're about to run into Voldemort himself, and I walk behind them with my hands in my pockets. It is cold in here, though. Not much better than outside, really. Should have brought something to warm the bones, but Gaz's well-stocked, so I'm not too worried.
They’re moving quiet enough that I doubt he’d be woken up, wherever it is he sleeps, and I can tell she’s concentratin’ on not banging into anything. She does that a lot, Tonks. I don’t know how in Merlin’s arse she convinced ‘em at the Ministry to make her an Auror, on account of the knock and drop routine.
“What do you think?” she asks him. She does that a lot, too. Talks to him like I’m not there, like I’m invisible or something, like he’s privy to some secret fuckin’ knowledge.
“Door was unlocked. Doubtful he would leave it like that overnight, even in the country,” he replies, and now he’s doing it, and I’m not having this game of Ignore Mundungus Fletcher, amusing as it might be for the two of ‘em, so I clear my throat, real loud, so’s they know I’m still here, still Dung, standing behind ‘em.
“Reckon he might be having a lie-in,” I suggest, “as it’s a Sunday, day of rest and all.”
Neither of them pay me much mind, and then there’s a funny sort of thunk down the hallway, and they go still, but I figure he’s in his library and readyin’ himself for a home invasion, so I call out, “Oi, Gaz,” but I get no answer.
Lupin moves down towards the door, pausing outside it, and I suspect I’m ‘bout to witness Gaz take a powerful swing at him with a fire poker or some shite, but he just pushes the door open, real smooth and without any noise, and he says, looking into the room, “Christ.”
She gets there faster than me, but I see her eyes get wide, and then she’s through the doorway, and by the time I reach it, I can hear Gaz in there muttering, not really saying anything, just sort of makin’ sounds and noises. Lupin’s stood in the door, and I crowd in beside him, having a look at the scene, which is frankly not what I’d signed on for, because Gaz Montague is sat on the rug beside his desk, rockin’ ‘imself back and forth, and he’s pulled out a good bit of his hair, not that he had too much to work with, and Tonks is kneelin’ to the side of him, trying to calm him a bit, tryin’ to get him to talk, really talk, not whatever it is he’s doing.
He looks at her, and if he was a nutter before, surely havin’ her great load of pink hair in his face isn’t doing him any favors now, which I tell her, and she shoots me a terrible look, but then she turns back to Gaz. She passes her wand over him and he seems to go kind of limp, eyes all glassy and mouth hanging down, and she asks him, gentle—like you would with a kid—“What happened?” but everyone in the room knows it’s got Death Eater written all over it, what’s been done to him, ‘cause that’s what they do when they don’t murder you. They turn your head inside out.
“They promised me,” Gaz says, and it sounds like a whisper, garbled ‘cause his mouth is drooping and open. “They promised me they would show me magic.”
Tonks looks at Lupin, and it’s silent so that you can hear that grandfather clock ticking away for a minute, and then Gaz rolls his head toward her and says, “I helped them.”
“I don’t understand,” she says. “Helped them how?”
“They wanted it, so I gave it to them,” he mutters, and then he keeps on repeating it, eyes big and wild like an animal, and somewhere in there he starts saying, “They want him,” and I’m developing a tight sort of feelin’ in my jaw, like this is about to go badly soon, and Lupin’s picked up on it too, ‘cause he says, real terse, “We need to go.”
She shakes her head at him, as if to say that she’s too busy with the lump of a man huddled beside her, and Lupin responds, “Dora, we need to go,” and somehow, that makes me more nervous than anything. It’s like he’s spoken out loud a spell that springs her to action, cause she stands and looks at him with this concerned expression, like she’s waiting on something, but it’s started already, the crack of bodies Apparating outside.
“Fuck me,” I say, and back into the hallway.
I make to run and Apparate, right, and she fucking tackles me, and on my life, you'd never believe she's as scrawny as she is because I go down, mate, right onto the floor, and the whole time she's saying, "Are you kidding me, Dung, are you fucking serious right now?" like being ambushed by Death Eaters is a bleedin’ comedy hour and I should be doin’ some little jig of excitement rather than making a quick exit.
“Fuck’s sake, woman,” I’m saying, wriggling around and trying to scramble up, “you heard the man. He says we need to go, we need to go.”
“It sounded like three,” Lupin says, and he’s not making any bloody attempt to help me in this situation, and I reckon if it weren’t a life or death circumstance, he’d be laughing his arse off, watching this wretched little bird wrangle me on some posh twat’s floor.
“And?” I say.
“If it’s three, we can likely take them,” he says, and I have just about had it with this day, between the not sleeping and the being reprimanded and having Tonks throwing ‘erself at me, and not in the good way, mind. It’s stunned me so much that I’ve forgotten that she can’t really stop me, so I think she’s just done it out of spite and the desire to catch me unawares, and when she finally lets me go I climb to my feet, out of breath, glaring at her.
“If we leave now, we let them go,” she hisses. “This is your fault, Dung. What happened to that man is your fault.”
“What happened to Gaz is not my bloody fault,” I tell her. “He did a deal with the wrong crowd.”
And I reckon they must’ve figured out a way to detect us, must’ve been planning on luring the unsuspecting, enterprisin’ salesman—me—the whole time, so’s they can see who’s been giving Muggles their fancy items, and they probably wove up some really good yarn about how they was going to show him all the magic of the Wizarding World and its delights or some shite, and maybe, I think, maybe they’ve sorted out who I am and what I do, and made some connections I’d rather they didn’t make. Fuckin’ Gaz, spouting off to anyone who’ll listen. I bet he was real entertainin’ to 'em.
But I don’t have time to say any of this, because the door’s just been blown off its hinges, and there’s a lot of curses flying, so I duck behind a doorway. A vase explodes beside me and I watch the pieces go skittering across the floor. Thing was probably worth a fortune.
It’s four, actually, not three, so Lupin was wrong about something, and one of ‘em must’ve just been quieter than the others, but I suppose it don’t matter, him being wrong, given that we’re all gonna die here, in a fancy Yorkshire country house, without even having breakfast.
I could leave them here, really. I could just Apparate and leave them, but I think if they managed to survive it, they’d hunt me down and string me up, and the whole time it would be, “Jab him just a bit harder, Dora,” and that seems about as bad as dying here.
So I enter the fray, and I promptly get knocked the fuck out.
When I come to, I’m not dead, which is a good start, but Lupin’s looking down at me with his eyebrows raised, and says, as though he isn’t too interested, “He’s awake.” I fuckin’ hate him, truth be told. I know Sirius thinks he’s made of golden rays, practically, and won’t hear a word against him, but he’s a bastard, Lupin is, and he doesn’t even help me up, just leaves me on the floor, my ears ringin’ and havin’ just had a near-death experience.
I sit up, and Tonks is knelt down over some recently unconscious or recently deceased Death Eater, holding up his arm like a ragdoll, and she says, almost like she’s put out with him, “They’re just initiates, Remus. They’ve not even got marks.”
“Good,” says Lupin. “Then we weren’t important.”
“The fuck you on about?” I ask them, blinking hard, and I swear on Merlin’s grave, if they exchange one more sodding look like I’m just an idiot child in the corner, I’m going to go to the nearest Death Eater membership meeting and sign my bloody name in the registry.
“Consider yourself lucky, Dung,” he says. “Whichever of these individuals took a notion to investigate your dealings clearly didn’t have much to go on.”
“How’s that?”
“None of them are of any consequence. I’d be surprised if you were anything more than someone’s attempt to curry favor with the higher-ups,” he replies. He’s not smug about it, just real matter-of-fact, and I’d almost rather the smugness, strangely.
“Conservatively ambitious, this lot,” Tonks adds. “Torture a Muggle, capture a troublesome wizard, pick up some lost stock. Low-level things. And that’s good, because if they’d linked you to the potions raid we did awhile back, that’d be rather bad for you.” She stands up. “I figure, for all they know, you stumbled across the place after, took what you could, and did what pickpockets and swindlers do naturally. That man in there didn’t know, when he was selling you out, that you had any real value.”
“You ever get told you talk a lot?” I ask. She lets out a little breath and smiles.
“Here’s some talk that I think you’ll want to have a listen to, Dung,” she says, coming over and kneeling beside me. She looks like her fuckin’ cousin right now, real haughty and the like, and she looks at me and says, with no small amount of threat in her voice, “Unless you start taking seriously your role in the Order, we’ll have no choice but to see you out of it. And we’ll have to do a lot of revisions to your mental state, obviously, to make sure you don’t go spilling secrets.”
“I’m loyal to the Order,” I say, rubbin’ my head. “You know that.” I laugh a little, and say again, “You fucking know that.”
She rises to her feet, no longer bothering with me, and there’s going to be a lot of bloody clean-up work here, and I’ve no clue what we’re going to do with Gaz, poor back-stabbing bastard, but I do spot a bottle of good whisky—the expensive shite—that’s not gotten hit in the scuffle, first pleasing thing of the morning, a blessing in this otherwise miserable day, and I look between them, now that our lives aren’t hanging in the balance, and ask, loudly, in the otherwise quiet room: “So…you two fuckin’ each other or what?”