Rumrunner

Rumrunner

**Prologue: Reminisce**

Tommy guns had been the best part of his life.

Some people might disagree with an inanimate object being the best part of someone's life, and, more likely than not, the people who made Tommy guns the best part of his life would disagree with Tommy guns being the best part of anything, but he frankly didn't give a damn.

There had been no feeling in the world quite like gripping the gun, and bracing himself, and pulling the trigger to let loose a hail fire of death and destruction. There had been other weapons and guns and things too, but the Tommy gun just summed up the entire experience much better than anything else.

He missed it.

He missed his whole life from before, in fact. From when he hadn't spent all day cleaning up after the little miscreants who graced the hallowed halls of this incredibly dusty castle. From when he had been allowed to punish and hurt and make people scream. From when he had been a whole person, not looked down on as less than a man because of circumstances beyond his control. He had been respected back then, and that had been what was most important.

He was no longer respected, and no one even cared.

He saw the faculty members tiptoe around that slimy kid Snape, because he had been a minion of an evil wizard. So what? He was reformed now, wasn't he? Working around the snivelling brats voluntarily, running to Dumbledore with every morsel of news that reached his ears about the comings and goings of You-Know-Who. Filch thought it was a little pathetic.

He didn't have much of a choice in being here, after all. Not many job openings for Squibs, after all. Either the jobs needed magic to get done or the ones offering the jobs didn't want him around. Magic users weren't comfortable around what might have been, after all. Being around a Squib on a daily basis might make them wonder about their own pathetic existence and how it might have been worse if they hadn't been born lucky.

He couldn't go back to the Muggle world, though. He was pretty sure there were still outstanding warrants on his head. Besides, he wasn't as young as he used to be, and getting a job in his speciality would be near impossible. Times had changed, and the crime world was no longer as dignified as it had been during his golden day. Back then, the criminals- the bootleggers, the mob bosses, even the pimps- had been respected amongst the rich and powerful, and more often than not had been the rich and powerful.

It just wasn't the same as it had been back then.

Police work, he knew, was much better now. He still read about Muggle things, and he knew that now, they traced people through the tiniest clues. A strand of hair, a drop of blood would lead to an arrest. He was more than a little glad that it hadn't been like that when he had lived with the Muggles. But, sixty years would change things in the fast moving Muggle world.

He had loved working with the gangsters. The Prohibition, so intent on creating better morals through the banning of that most indecent of substances, alcohol, had instead created a network of crime and smuggling and an underworld that put earlier outlaws to shame. He now knew that the bootlegging that he had participated in had earned millions, and had provided jobs for countless thousands.

All he had known at the time was that it was a profitable business, and it being outside of the law had given him lots of room for interpretation of what, exactly, his job entailed. He had helped out with enforcing part of the underground crime scene. Meaning, he was one of the ones who made the other bosses afraid to try and rise in power, he was one of the ones who made the people afraid to go to the cops and he was one of the ones that made protection necessary for all the business owners.

Also, it had mostly just been plain thrilling. Just a total excitement of the mind and body. The money was nice, the girls and liqueur nicer. The thrill of the chase, the anticipation of gunfire, the knowledge of death creeping its cold hands ever closer to his neck even better.

He had been a bad, bad man, and he had revelled in it. The wizarding world just didn't know what they were missing out on. Muggles might be backwards, they might be ignorant, but they made damn fine criminals. Forget trying to become an undisputed leader of the wizarding world like You-Know-Who, forget being a dignified villain like the Malfoys strove to be, especially forget any delusions that the good side is the best one to be on. Muggle gangsters had led the best lives.

Argus Filch had arrived in Michigan at the age of nineteen.

When he left just over a decade later, he had changed irreparably into a less bitter version of the man he was today. He had learned many things about himself in that golden era of his life, things that most people never learned. What it felt like to kill. What it felt like to love. What it felt like to be feared. Argus had been sent to America mainly because his family was ashamed of him. After all, the Filches were a respectable line, and having a Squib born into their ranks had been a traumatic event indeed for his dainty mother. He had become something there that might indeed have caused his mother to be ashamed, but she never knew the extent of his sins.

None of them did, really, except the one whom he had shared his secrets with. He supposed that he loved Sibyll, in a way. It was not the lust driven love he had experienced in his youth, but instead more of a companionship that had a little more depth of emotion that what he shared with, say, his cat, beloved though she might be.

Of course, that didn't stop him from realising that Sibyll was nuttier than peanut butter. But she saw beyond his admittedly rough exterior, just as he saw past her veils and incense. She hadn't been exactly supportive of his past, hadn't understood the appeal that such things had held for him. But then, most people wouldn't. She had, however, accepted it. Accepted it in a way that no one else would have, because she understood that what he had been was still a part of him.

Part of him was still Manacle: the inquisitor, the businessman, the terrifying figure that no one really wanted to get on the wrong side of. Part of him still craved the way illegal liqueur had tasted- so much better than even the most expensive wine. Part of him was still in love with that blue-eyed Italian girl. Part of him remained in the past, in a different place, in a whole different world from here. Part of him would never change.

But Sibyll had accepted that, and didn't try to contradict him when he told her of the joys he had experienced. He repaid this by accepting her Sight as real, despite evidence to the contrary, and he patiently listened to her reminisce about things she had Seen and foretold.

They were both outsiders amongst the faculty and staff of Hogwarts, but that only served to forge a greater bridge between the two. However, even with this companionship, this love of sorts that he shared with Sibyll, his life before, with Tommy guns and things of that nature, had been the best part of his existence.

There was no doubt about that.