Success and the Squib

"Get UP!"

Bert blinked. "Wha... It's four in the morning!"

Ethelina, already fully kitted out in Muggle rambling gear, started kicking at people's sleeping bags. "Come on, everyone up! Breakfast will be ready in five minutes and I want us all out by 4:30."

Willy Orr started hauling himself out of his nylon cocoon. "Do as she says, Bert, or it'll be all the worse for you."

Bert dragged himself into a sitting position. "Is she always this bad? And is she always this perky on three flaming hours' sleep?" The pickers and Ethelina had been collecting deadly nightshade from the nearby site of a Romano-British temple to a goddess of the underworld - as yet unknown to Muggle archaeologists - at midnight and had had very little rest. They'd got a large quantity of the stuff. Most wizards could grow it, but the fact that it was on a temple gave it an extra kick; it had something to do with the amount of energy people had expended on the site. Bert had expected the picking expedition to be a change of pace from his hectic life at the restaurant - wrongly, it turned out.

"This is a GOOD day for her."

"Don't know how you put up with it," Bert mumbled.

Willy looked serious. "We're professionals, doing a professional job. And we all get a percentage of the profits..." he sniffed the air. "Something's burning. Bacon."

The need to do a job properly suddenly hit Bert, as he shout out of his sleeping bag and he raced, pyjama-clad, through to the kitchen. Willy chuckled as he listened to the usually passive Bert laying into his sister for her inability to prepare a decent breakfast.

--------

Within half an hour the six of them (one wizard, three Squibs, a part-Brownie and a part-hag) were traipsing along the cliff path, stomachs full of sausage, eggs, fried bread, mushrooms and bacon cooked by Bert. Below them they could hear the sea hissing as it ran up the shore and back.

"I bet the view is amazing by day," Cassandra Smith said.

"And Muggles never see it," Bert told her. He'd seen this area on Kingsley Shacklebolt's map. The whole place was littered with charms to make Muggles walk in slightly different directions so they'd never come near to Magna Hall - assuming they were stupid or lawless enough to venture onto private property in the first place. "Hopefully the de Laceys won't be looking for us because they never expect to see anyone."

"If they do see us," Willy muttered, "I'm the leader." Willy was a known Squib; he could be seen to have got past the Charms in the pursuit of herbs without actually realising what he'd done. With any luck the de Laceys would be annoyed, possibly even offended, but would not think anything suspicious was going on.

Rose, the rather optimistically named half-hag, sniffed the air through her large hooked nose. "There's marsh up here," she said.

"It's the remnants of a magical one," Bert said, pulling his foot out of a boggy patch. "Well, there's not supposed to be a marsh up here nowadays, it's completely out of keeping with the area and people would get suspicious... They used Hinkypunks to lure people over the cliffs years ago."

"Nice," said Ethelina, brushing back the hair that had fallen out of her ponytail on the hike up from the beach. "Let's start heading inland towards the house." It was early autumn, and the sun and birds were up before most people, be they wizard or Muggle. The little group moved away from the cliff edge.

"Ooh!" Willy bounced up and down with excitement, distracting them. "Is this what I think it is?" The others gathered round. Bert wondered why they were so interested in what looked like a buttercup. He liked herbs, in their place - that place being the kitchen. If you couldn't cook with it, it wasn't a lot of use to him.

"Adder's tongue spearwort!" Cassandra exclaimed. She looked at Ethelina. "He gets a finder's bonus for that, doesn't he?"

Bert vaguely remembered it, if only because it was one of those plants that had to be registered with the Ministry of Magic; unless you found supplies of the rare plant for yourself and told no-one about the location, the only way to get it was to sign all sorts of papers and be willing to have your workroom inspected. He wasn't sure what Ethelina would say about the location, but the parts she took would be declared to the Ministry inspectors when they next looked round her warehouse. Willy carefully picked some of the larger leaves off the plant, leaving enough for it to survive and carry on growing. Cassandra took some mature seeds too. As the party moved off, while no one was looking, Ethelina plucked the top off the plant - still not enough to kill it - and shoved it in her pocket.

As they carried on the remnants of the marsh petered out. Rose was the person to make the next lucky find: early spider orchid. Only a few leaves betrayed the presence of the tubers; the rare orchids would flower in the spring. There was a reasonable clump of them. The de Laceys' taste for privacy had clearly given all sorts of plants time to flourish without being picked by humans or grazed by animals.

"Spade, Willy," Ethelina demanded.

"If you get caught with that, the Muggles will lock you up," Cassandra warned, but in such a routine way Bert suspected she'd given the same warning many times in the past.

Ethelina carefully dug up a single tuber, tapped it with her wand and uttered a preservative spell, then put it in a plastic tub in her knapsack. "They'll have to work out what it is first," she replied. "And I've yet to meet a please-man who knew one plant from another."

Bert looked quizzically at Willy. "Eth carries all the illegal stuff," Willy said. "Because she's the one who'll find it easiest to get away from the Muggles."

"It's rare," Bert grumbled. "You're not supposed to touch them."

Willy chuckled. "It's not going to be killed. We'll plant it back at the nursery and raise more of them. We're saving the species. Unless a plant has to be got from a certain location we do that... like military orchid, it's only any good if you pick it on a battlefield on the anniversary of the fight, and there are so few around they're really valuable. I saw Eth get into a duel over the harvestable bits of one of those."

Bert looked shocked. "A duel? Who won?"

Willy started at him like he was stupid and stamped on. His voice drifted back "The proceeds from it paid for our Christmas party that year..."

The house glowed, yellow sandstone walls reflecting the dawn light in the distance. Bert was left to walk beside his sister. "You know, Eth, I think you're a lot more ruthless than I realised." They hadn't spent much time together since leaving school, and Bert was shocked at the change in his twin. Even when they'd been teenagers, though, he'd watched her harden as Hogwarts toughened her up.

She shrugged. "I'm a true Slytherin."

"I never did get all that house business," he said. "St Jude's was too small for houses. Seems a bit odd, telling you who you are. It stops you being who you could be."

"It gives me the chance to do the things I need to. I wouldn't be able to get where I want if I hadn't worn a green scarf for seven years."

Bert felt chilled. "Eth, are you doing dangerous stuff? More... more than this?"

She looked away. "Something bad is coming again, Bert, and I won't let people hurt my friends. Not like last time. I couldn't stop what happened to Cassius, but I can stop it happening to my friends now. I want the right people to trust me. If I have to shake people's hands to stop those same hands killing people I love, I'll do it."

He didn't know his twin at all, did he? "There's no point saving your friends if other innocent people have to die."

She shrugged again. "You can't choose my life for me." She pulled the plant top she'd taken earlier from her pocket. "See this? I could get two months in Azkaban for having this and not declaring it. For a first offence, anyway. But with it, I can brew a potion that'll enable me to speak Parseltongue for an hour, and that will make me very popular with some very dodgy people... it's worth the two months, if I'm ever caught."

"Eth, you're too close to some very dangerous people. Leave the investigating to Tonks. She's trained for it, and paid to do it."

"Tonks has to play by the rules. I don't. And more importantly, I don't want to either." Ever since another Slytherin had described social interaction as a game, Ethelina had seen it that way. And whereas most people saw laws and social rules as defining the borders of the game, Eth viewed them as an extra set of challenges and pieces to be moved around and played with. If you were a good enough player, you didn't lose. Azkaban was for losers. Eth was determined to win.

They were close enough to the house now to have to stop in case they were seen. It was an old manor house, with many-paned windows and interesting gables, yet didn't have the mellow look of most period homes. It was a tense, clammed-up place.

"Now what?" Bert asked. No-one had told him how they were going to get the information they'd come for, and judging by the looks the team were giving each other, they didn't know either. Somehow, they'd just all had faith that the plan to scout around Magna Hall would work. Willy looked confused, and Cassandra was frowning.

Ethelina straightened her back. "I'm friends with the right people now, and my Squib brother's been dead for years. I'm acceptable... chaps, I'm going to visit an old housemate."

Rose snorted. "You're having a laugh! You're going to walk straight in and say 'Hi, I was in the neighbourhood?'"

"Exactly that," Eth said. "There's nothing to say there was more than one person out here picking herbs. If I'm not back by nightfall, head back to the cottage but sleep round the back out of sight. And if I'm not back tomorrow morning, get the hell back to the warehouse and, Willy, get in touch with Nymphadora Tonks." Without saying another word, and without looking at any of the team, she trudged off.

"Aren't you going to stop her?" Bert asked, flabbergasted.

Willy shook his head. "I wouldn't even try."

*******

Perkins the half-brownie whipped the tea-making equipment out of his backpack and started brewing up. Bert was too distracted to notice much, but it did occur to him that brownies were very efficient and good cooks, and perhaps he should see if Perkins had any unemployed siblings. Full-blooded ones had special magic of their own for such things - but unlike house elves, brownies worked for love and could never be owned. Perhaps Perkins had a little of the magic too.

Even so, Bert kept looking over into the distance at the house. Eth's orange weatherproof coat had disappeared inside a couple of hours previously. Despite its location high up, only about a kilometre from the edge of the cliff and surrounded by sunshine and breezes the house managed to look dark and airless, as though it was holding its breath to avoid taking anything from outside within its walls. Instead of looking golden like most yellow limestone buildings, Magna Hall looked jaundiced.

"Did you know she was going all the way up there?" he asked Willy.

"I wasn't sure... The plan we agreed on was that I'd say I was the leader if we bumped into anyone." Willy frowned. "I did wonder how we'd get evidence on the family. You know Eth, though, she rarely tells anyone everything. I thought she'd have a more sensible plan than this, I must admit."

"And you all know what's going on? Why we're here at this house? Not much of a secret mission, is it?"

The other pickers looked at each other. "Cassandra's too young to have been there, but I remember you pushing me into the fridge at school," Willy muttered. "Still, she's heard the stories. Rose and Perkins have been mistreated all their lives. We all know things are going to get much, much worse for all of us if You-Know-Who returns. We can be trusted.

"You weren't there for the attacks," Willy continued. "After Miss Marvell got killed, Cassius and Honey tried to keep us safe, but Honey got hit by something and Cassius wouldn't leave her. He was trying to stop the bleeding, talking to her..."

"I wasn't there," Bert admitted. He still felt guilty - and lucky - about it.

"Ah, you couldn't have done anything. No one could. I don't know why I'm still here, to be honest. I saw Honey and Cassius die... but whoever was doing the hexing couldn't kill us. Why kill them and not me? I've never understood it."

"The Death Eaters are just scum," Rose said. "Probably thought they'd get caught and the courts would go easier on them for not killing the littlest ones."

Lost in a whole barrage of gloomy thoughts, they sat back, sipping their tea and hoping they'd soon hear Ethelina's steady tramp across the wild cliff top. The noise never came, and with heavy hearts the five walkers trudged back to their rented cottage.

Bert was very worried, and his face was glum.

"Cheer up," Willy told him. "Your sister's sure to be fine. Maybe she's been invited to dinner."

Looking at the others in their little party, Bert felt sure that Willy was the only person with any optimism. He seemed convinced that Ethelina could do anything she set her mind to. Bert kept walking, glad that the Hinkypunks of yore were long gone.

Back at the cottage they went through what seemed to be a regular procedure: note all the day's finds in a logbook, pack them away carefully, then pack up the rest of their camping gear. Moving out into the little garden behind the cottage was obviously a novelty. Perkins somehow managed to whip up more tea, and Cassandra shared several bars of energy-boosting Honeyduke's chocolate. Bert brought out Kendall Mint Cake; the Muggle sweet was received well, but no one was able to muster much in the way of enthusiasm.

"I can't see how being behind the cottage instead of in it is going to help if we do get chased by Death Eaters," Rose groused.

"We can split up," Cassandra told her.

For once Willy was serious. "You never, ever want to be stuck in a building if you can help it. Not one with only two doors out... Eth'll get here soon, I know she will."

They waited.