Success and the Squib

The phone call came on a Saturday evening at 9pm, just as Bert was trying to shout at one of his chefs for messing up the pasta for the crab ravioli and simultaneously cover for a sick pastry chef. He finished yelling at Chris, the pasta disaster master, and went to take the call. He hadn't wanted to, but apparently the caller kept ringing back.

"Yes? What? Who is this?" Bert snapped.

"Good lord, I thought Ethelina was the stern one in your family," an amused voice replied. "It's Tonks. I was wondering if I could use your private dining room."

Tonks... Tonks... Ah yes, the girl with the appalling name and appealing hair. Clearly she preferred her surname, sensible girl. "You can - but in about three months' time. It's booked up until then," Bert replied testily. He was itching to get back to his kitchen; he wanted to glare at Chris and watch him make the pasta this time. While normally a placid man, Bert could not abide things made wrongly.

"Oh, no problem, I can sort that out," Tonks replied. "I need it tonight."

Bert's Muggle head waiter, Carlos, was watching him. "Don't..." ...use magic, Bert thought, but couldn't say. Don't chase away the incredibly important and influential supermodel who is probably going to be snapped by a dozen paparazzi as she leaves here. "Don't you think you should wait for a day when we're free?" 'Private dining room', he mouthed at Carlos.

Carlos scribbled something on a piece of paper. 'Is cancelled. Laura Bouvier has short-notice job in Marrakech.'

Bert started. "Ah, Miss Tonks... we appear to have a vacancy anyway. You're very lucky."

"You," she replied "are clearly a good-luck charm. See you later!"

He put the phone down. "We've got a special guest coming in later," Bert told Carlos. "Very colourful hair. She's got the private dining room booked, and I'll take the food through myself." Carlos raised one eyebrow. Any guest getting the red-carpet treatment at such short notice was clearly a very important person indeed.

Bert was grinning from ear to ear as he returned to the kitchen, and even happier when he saw that everything had managed to go well in the short while he'd been out of it. "Chris, my pal," he said, "we are going to cook the meal of a lifetime."

*******

Everybody looked as the couple entered the building. Carlos, skilled in the art of being discreetly nosy, steered the young woman and her companion off to the private dining room and tried to listen in on their conversation, but it was clearly some bizarre British slang he'd yet to pick up, all talk of Muggles and Floo. He approved of the young lady's elegant black dress, if not the chunky boots beneath it. Her companion was dressed in a rather exotic, if somehow appropriate manner.

"Do you see that," one fashionable diner muttered to her friends as Tonks and Shacklebolt were whisked past. "A cloak! How horribly Lord of the Rings."

Another smiled "I was looking at what was in it. He can wave his wand at me any day of the week."

"I know her, you know," a third said.

"You do not! You don't know anyone who looks like that!"

"Well... not her, but of her. She's... she's a musician. Very talented. Erm... he's a designer, but only really known by those in the know."

The other two women looked at their friend. Could she know the intriguing pink-haired girl? It was so hard to keep up with the latest fads and trends. "Are you sure?"

The third woman nodded. "You don't get to dine privately here unless you're someone very special. And I sneaked a look at the booking register; they bumped Laura Bouvier to fit her in. They had her name crossed out." This caused a drawing of breath. The other two watched, almost open-mouthed, as Bert Hawley, most fashionable chef in London, carted up several dishes with his own hands. Behind them, a gossip columnist for one of the capital's classier newspapers jotted a couple of lines down in his notebook.

Bert, meanwhile, was happily dishing up some of his finest foods to his two guests. He had realised he wasn't going to be paid for the meal, so he indulged his own creativity. It was good to be able to test out new dishes on unsuspecting diners.

The private dining room was a plush little room, and could hold ten people. The walls were sage green, the floor and furniture highly-polished dark oak, and all the pot plants were herbs: bronze fennel, purple basil, variegated sage. Bert placed the dishes on the table. "Byrtnoth Hawley, Kingsley Shacklebolt. Kingsley, Bert." Tonks made the introductions.

"Ah, Ethelina's brother," Kingsley said. "Most people don't even remember she's got one - and those that do assume you're dead."

"As far as wizards go, that's the way I prefer it," Bert said.

"Well, pull up a seat," Tonks gestured. "If we're going to take up your time and energy, you may as well know what for."

Kingsley looked at her, but Bert asked the question. "How do you know I can be trusted?"

Tonks grinned. "Because Ethelina would pound seven bells out of you if you talked."

Kingsley laughed. "That is one lady no-one gets on the wrong side of!" He tucked into the dish of canapés for a bit. "But beautiful. I was below her at school, in Ravenclaw. Half the boys in the year were madly in love with her, but the Slytherins were terrified of her..."

"She had a hard time when she started," Bert explained. That was putting it lightly. "One Muggle great-grandparent was a blot as far as her housemates were concerned, but to have a Squib twin too... She got into a lot of fights in her own house."

"She fights for the right things," Kingsley reminded him.

"It runs in the family, right?" Tonks asked.

Bert shrugged. "Squibs aren't raised to be successful. We win just by surviving... anyway, enough about Squibs. What's to be discussed?"

Kingsley spread some documents and maps on the table. "There've been some reports of trouble in eastern Europe. It's an area where there are always rumours and stories. A Ministry witch went missing there quite recently. Our friends over there sent someone in to investigate, but just before they arrived, things stopped. It's all back to normal."

"What's the problem," Bert asked.

Tonks winced. "We think You Know Who is still alive. We had our suspicions about that area, especially as an investigative journalist was also interested in events there. Viola Beanacre's never more than a step behind a story. Now it's suspiciously normal."

"Someone knew what we were looking for," Shacklebolt said, "and didn't want us to find it. We think You Know Who is back in Britain. We need to find out if he is, and where he is, without attracting attention to ourselves."

"Maybe he's with Sirius Black," Bert said. His mother had passed on the news of Black's escape to him a year previously. The two Aurors looked at one another.

"It's a possibility," Tonks admitted through a mouthful of anchovy canapé. "Trouble is, one of the best Aurors ever is at Hogwarts this year. He's retired, but it would have been good to call on him... It's one thing to search houses for evidence of Dark Magic, but finding You Know Who is going to take specialist knowledge, and most of us don't have the experience he's got. So I want you to keep an eye on the Muggle press for us. Note any major accidents or incidents, unexplained deaths... anything out of the ordinary.

Bert sighed. He'd done this for Ethelina in the past. "You only mix with the Muggles in your family, don't you? Have you any idea how good Muggles are at having accidents and killing one another? They die of things wizards can put right in days. They take months to heal things you lot heal overnight. I'll try to do it, but unless something big happens, it might not make the national press... right, I'll take these dishes and get your next course."

As the door closed behind Bert, Kingsley turned to Tonks. "He's a bit prickly, isn't he?"

Tonks shrugged. "Very few wizards have done anything for him or anyone like him. He's got no reason to be grateful to us and every reason to be suspicious."

"He could work with his sister, couldn't he?"

"He owns a share in the business, so technically he still does, but he turned his back on it when he left wizarding society. Eth reckons he doesn't even collect the money it earns him."

Kingsley whistled. "He's got to be sitting on a fortune!"

"Well, no, Eth took a load and spent it for him. Said there was no point in the gold going to waste. She paid for the Interspecies Research Library at Lampeter University." Lampeter, Britain's smallest and most rural university, gave wizards a place to study amid assorted travellers, hippies, drunkards and roleplayers. There, anyone claiming to be a wizard was seen as just another oddball.

"That sounds like her!"

"You know what she's like..."

Shacklebolt nodded. "Well, here are the areas of the country where You Know Who has historic associations." He stabbed his finger on several places on a map. "Ethelina's sending her people down to Wiltshire for Halloween; there's always a market for things harvested then, and they can do their job without raising suspicion."

Bert came in at this point and caught the tail end of the conversation. His sister's company was one of the biggest suppliers of herbs and other potion ingredients in Britain, growing and harvesting British ones for export and importing foreign ones for exotic spells and potions. Her workforce was almost entirely Squib or part-human, her products of the highest quality and her prices dirt-cheap. Only the most snobbish wizards refused to use her products. He put down the soup bowls and looked at the map.

"Wiltshire... she'll be doing the white horse and stone circle trail down there, right? And collecting mooncalf dung from around the crop circle sites. We did that as kids; made mum drive us out to Avebury in the middle of the night. Dorset..." He looked up. "What's she going to be doing in Dorset?"

"Officially, her staff will be looking for a large supply of fossilised sea-lilies along the south coast. Unofficially, they're going to be scouting round Lacey Magna." Kingsley smiled. Bert stared at him, white-faced.

"Lacey Magna?"

A horrible realisation dawned on Tonks. "This was where your friend lived, wasn't it."

Kingsley was less shocked by the information and more keen to use it. "Have you been there? What do you know of the family?"

"Eat your soup," Bert ordered. He closed his eyes. "Lacey Magna, family seat of the de Laceys, a Norman family who also married into Saxon and Cornish wizarding families early on. The house, Magna Hall, is mostly Elizabethan."

"We know this," Shacklebolt grumbled through a mouthful of lobster laksa. "What do you know of the family?"

"Paterfamilias, Crispin de Lacey. Probably well over 90 by now. Lived through most of the 20th century, tried to ignore it. Three of his children live at home, Jasper, who's my friend Cassius' father, Purity and Fidelma. Purity was married but moved back home when her husband died. Jasper married Silvana Frost, four children, Crispin named after his grandfather, Livia, Tertius and Cassius. Cassius is dead."

"Ethelina told me Cassius was badly treated?" Tonks made the statement a question.

"One of his legs had been broken five times by the time he started at St Jude's. It had never been properly set or mended. There were other things too, but his leg was the worst." He looked at them both. "People who know about me think Eth started Herbs by Floo because of me. She didn't, she did it for Cassius, even though he was dead by the time she left school. She reckoned he was the best grower of herbs she ever met. He had to be. Herbology and Care of Magical Creatures may not seem too flashy to wizards, but as it was as close to proper magic as he'd get, he had to excel. Whatever else he did badly at, his father would have beaten him every day for a month if he'd messed those up."

Tonks looked sad. Kingsley frowned. Bert continued. "See, they never told anyone he was a Squib. Couldn't handle the shame. All that pure blood and they still had a Squib. The plan was to get him doing something only wizards did, but that didn't require magic. If he'd survived, he'd be farming hippogriffs by now. Then he got killed and spared them the trouble." He smiled wryly. "Ethelina would've given him what his family were offering - but as an equal. She'd have enjoyed their reaction."

"Did you meet the family," Shacklebolt asked.

Bert laughed. "They wouldn't have dreamed of coming anywhere near Cassius' school friends. Eth knew Crispin the brother; he helped her, but only because he'd told everyone his brother had gone to Durmstrang. She kept his secret; he stopped the others from putting her in the hospital wing. Not friendship. Usefulness."

"Fidelma's the worst. Old Crispin, he saw Cassius as an embarrassment but one that could be hidden. He actually used to send Cass babyish presents; accompanied by the sort of simple note you'd send a five-year-old. Purity ignored him. Silvana was more interested in having affairs and didn't bother much with any of the kids. Jasper was terrified Cass would damage his career and social life and was determined to beat as much conformity into him as he could. But Fidelma... she blamed him for the way he was."

"Interesting..."Kingsley made a note.

"Jasper hit Cassius when he couldn't manage to keep up with things like Herbology. Fidelma beat him because he couldn't do magic. That's the difference. The others were cruel with high expectations, but she expected the impossible."

"Think she could be a Death Eater?" Tonks asked. "We can send a squad fossil-hunting there, with Ethelina."

"I'd lay money on it." Bert took a deep breath. This was his chance to see Cassius' final resting place. "I don't get out of London much, and a trip to the south coast would do me good... I reckon I'll join Eth's plant pickers for a fortnight."