Success and the Squib

It was a warm September morning in London, very early so the city was barely awake. It was restaurant owner and chef Bert Hawley's favourite time of day, when he could go to the big markets and poke around the fresh fish in one, the crisp vegetables and herbs in another, the meat in a third. He'd actually placed all his orders with his suppliers, and was heading to the restaurant to begin the day's work. He got in before all the assistant chefs and kitchen hands - he liked to have a few things waiting for them for breakfast.

"Simply magic," was how a restaurant critic for the Telegraph had described The Herbalist's cuisine. Bert had highlighted that line in the review and sent it home to his parents, who'd found it extremely funny. By the age of 31, Bert owned one of the most fashionable restaurants in the city.

He stopped off at Marino's Deli on the way to the Herbalist, collecting fresh bread and sampling a new cheese that they'd started importing from northern Italy. Although the staff would make bread for the restaurant later, he liked to have some of Marino's to start the day, spread with fresh butter and raspberry jam. The loaf was still warm, and the scent of it chased away the smell of traffic fumes and London streets.

He reached the building and nipped down the side alley to the staff entrance. Bert groaned. A pair of women was waiting outside the back door of his restaurant. One of them he knew. The other, with a shock of unruly pink hair, looked like the sort of girl his mother thought he shouldn't know, but who he'd very much like to talk to - in a club or pub, though, not first thing in the morning.

"Hullo Bert," his twin sister Ethelina grinned.

"What brings you out here?" Bert asked.

"Let's go inside," Eth said mysteriously. "This is Tonks, Nymphadora Tonks."

"008, I presume?" Bert quipped. The pink-haired girl looked blankly at him. Bert groaned inwardly - how would a witch understand that sort of joke? He unlocked the door and ushered them in. "I'll make a cuppa, and then we might as well sit at one of the tables."

Nymphadora (there was a name almost as bad as Byrtnoth, he thought) looked around the kitchen. She poked at one of the sieves hanging from a hook above a gleaming work surface. It wobbled precariously. Ethelina looked worried, and put out a hand to steady it. Her friend grinned. "It's perfectly safe, Eth."

"Stay away from the knives," Ethelina ordered. She sounded just like scary Grandma Hawley, although Bert could tell Nymphadora wasn't paying attention. Bert put the kettle on. Both witches looked curiously at it. "It runs on electricity," Ethelina told her friend. "I could spend all day in this place watching the staff do things. You wouldn't believe what they can do with just their hands."

"Oh, I would. My Muggle grandparents live on tea and biscuits. I don't think I've ever seen them when they haven't been using a kettle, not that I'm ever allowed near it!" Nymphadora laughed. Bert was intrigued. So, she was used to Muggles. She turned to him. "So you really are a..." her voice tailed off. "Sod. That was tactless."

"Yup, a full-blown proper Squib. All the longevity of a wizard, but next to no magic." Bert shrugged. "It's not a problem for me. The problem is usually with wizards."

"I didn't mean to be rude. It's just that there aren't many of you. And all the other ones I've ever met have been working for Ethelina."

Bert busied himself with pouring boiling water into the teapot, avoiding looking at them. "I went to St Jude's Academy. A school for Squibs." St Jude's had been a beautiful place, a happy place where young Squibs learned Muggle skills like cooking and cleaning as well as non-magical wizarding skills like caring for magical creatures and growing herbs. Bert had excelled there, while Ethelina had gone to Hogwarts and just about endured it - it was funny how life turned out; everyone had thought he'd have the worse time at school.

"Ethelina told me about your school, and about what happened. I'm an Auror; I know the history, but she talked about the people."

Bert placed the teapot and mugs on a tray and led the women through to the restaurant. He remembered how he had missed the Portkey to school after the Easter term of his final year. He'd left his revision notes at home and hurried back for them, and the Portkey went without him.

Bert was the only person to pass his exams that year. He was the only person to take exams, as it turned out. No one else was left to take them.

He put the mugs out on the table. "I don't mix with magic types any more," he said bluntly. "Family aside."

"That's why I'm here to ask for your help," Nymphadora told him. She looked him right in the eyes. "I need someone who knows about us, knows wizard society, but who no-one thinks about."

"Please, Bert," Ethelina begged. "Help Tonks."

He shook his head. "Wizard society didn't want me when they realised what I was. Kids were dreadful, and their parents patronised mine." He nodded at his sister. "Even Eth got trouble for it."

"Not after a few years," Ethelina muttered. "Nobody picks on a Slytherin without paying for it in the end."

"Anyway," Bert finished, "You've got younger Squibs, right?" Some strange pity had taken one of the Death Eaters, and instead of the youngest children being killed, they merely appeared to have been killed. In the dreadful time between arriving at school and making contact with the Ministry (easier said than done without magic), seventeen-year-old Bert had woken all the eleven-year-olds and shut them in the catering fridge in the basement, where they learned Muggle Domestics. He remembered hoping no Death Eaters would come back, hoping none of them knew how big a catering fridge was. The fridge could be opened from the inside; there was no danger of suffocation.

"Their families kept them close, to keep them safe. They're well known. And they live within wizarding society." Tonks looked appealingly at him.

Ethelina slammed her mug down. "Dammit, Bert, you're going to do what she asks. And if you won't do as Tonks asks, you'll do it for me."

"Or?"

He could see the determination rise in her eyes. "Or I'll hex this place so badly, every pint of milk and cream you bring in will curdle within five minutes, and all your soufflés will fall flat." She spoiled it all by smiling. Bert knew she probably wouldn't do it.

He grinned. "You're horrible." He looked at the other young woman. "So, what do you want me to do? Climb a mountain? Infiltrate the Ministry?"

"You have a private dining room, don't you?"

"Ye-e-e-s..." Bert's private dining room was one of the hottest tables in town; even a big celebrity would have to book a couple of months ahead like everyone else. It was prestigious, it was well known and it made Bert a nice income.

"I'd like somewhere to store things and talk to people."

Bert groaned. "Can't you do that at my flat? I don't spend any time there!"

Ethelina sat back. "That's a yes. I knew he'd do it. Bert, this is really important. The Death Eaters are active again."

Despite the restaurant's carefully maintained temperature, Bert felt chilled. "But their leader's dead. He died the year I left school."

Tonks shook her head. "Not dead, just vanquished. Even so, remember the incident at the Quidditch World Cup?"

Bert looked blankly at her.

"No good, Tonks, all Bert watches is Muggle sports. If it's not football or cricket, he's not interested," Eth pointed out. Her friend looked bemused.

Despite his rejection of all things magical, Bert was keenly interested. "Did something happen?"

Tonks filled him in. "The Death Eaters caused trouble... nothing serious, but we're sure they're up to something. They're hosting the Triwizard Cup at Hogwarts over this academic year and Dumbledore's sure something's going to happen. Harry Potter's there now. You do remember him, don't you?"

Bert frowned. "If you need my help against the Death Eaters, you've got it." He remembered turning over the body of Cassius de Lacey, his best friend. Cassius had struggled with his family's attitude towards him for years, and once told Bert that his father would've drowned him if he'd realised his son was a Squib before introducing him to the world. Cassius started school with a limp, officially the result of years of 'clumsiness'. He had been the bravest person Bert knew. Honey Johnson, the first Squib - the treasured Squib - from a long and distinguished family of Caribbean witches had lain nearby. He'd heard her mother had cursed the person who killed Honey. Whoever it was, he knew Mrs Johnson's curse would find them one day, and it wouldn't be pleasant, but it would be deserved. He wouldn't see any more people killed by those monsters, not if he could help it.

Tonks looked slightly bothered. "You do know it might be dangerous?"

"I've cleared up bodies too, and I did it with my own two hands." Good hands, Squib hands, hands that made things and shaped things and grew things. Hands that arranged dead children so their parents would find them straight and tidy, not in their last painful disarray.

"You might be needed to grow potion ingredients too," Ethelina said.

"I don't do magic," Bert pointed out.

"Don't talk rot," his sister told him, as Tonks was about to tell him not to worry. "I know you can't make a potion out of them, but you still learned how to look after plants."

"Surely the Ministry can get anything it wants. You can get anything you want." Bert was inwardly cursing Grandma Hawley for having passed on so many genes to Ethelina.

"Yes, and then it goes on the paperwork. Use your brain. You can grow things that would otherwise be really strictly monitored, if not banned outright."

He sighed. "So, you want my private dining room and my green fingers. Anything else?" With the memories flooding back, he knew that he'd try to help the women in any way he could, because some things that went on in the past should never be repeated.

Tonks grinned. "Some of that bread you had earlier would be nice..."