Rumrunner

**Chapter One: Rumination**

Arethusa Filch was a delicate woman, and Argus's birth had nearly killed her. The doctors all said that she would never carry another child to term again, and they had proven right, despite Arethusa's continuous tries to prove them wrong. She had suffered countless miscarriages, and had only given in to the doctor's prognosis after almost bleeding to death after a particularly nasty miscarriage in the fourth month of her umpteenth pregnancy.

She coddled and doted on her only son. He was, after all, the only one she would ever have. So, young Argus's childhood was filled with toys, treats, and traveling. Argus never wanted for anything, because his mother gave him everything. They were a respectable family, after all, and he was the only heir. It was only fitting that he should be treated like a young prince during his formative years.

Arethusa made sure that her young son was well educated. Ignorance would only reflect badly on the family. Argus was therefore well versed in both the basics and the more intricate details of history and languages, magical and Muggle alike, as well as more knowledge about spells than most youngsters. Arethusa dedicated a large portion of her life during those years to the education of her only child.

Therefore, when her only child had not received a letter to Hogwarts at the age of eleven she had been devastated. At first, Arethusa had ignored the possibility that he did not possess magic. She came up with half-remembered examples of things that could, possibly, have been magical outbursts during his childhood. None of them panned out to be more than coincidences.

When that failed, she moved onto family legends. She had insisted that her sister hadn't shown magic until almost the day she had left for Hogwarts. She also mentioned her dear cousin Arlington who hadn't received his Hogwarts letter until he had turned twelve.

Argus had just nodded in agreement, and had not tried to argue with his headstrong mother. He had a sneaking suspicion that she was wrong. He had never really felt completely comfortable with the idea that he was a late bloomer, and, due to his realistic outlook, had realized that there was the possibility that he had no magic at all. It did happen, after all. Every wizarding family had a cousin or uncle whom no one spoke of that had no magic.

He had hoped that he had magic, but as he watched his childhood friends leave for Hogwarts while he didn't, he had to wonder. That year had been horribly long, waiting and watching for an owl apologizing for missing his name from the student roster that year, and also waiting and hoping for something magical to happen to him.

Nothing did.

He turned twelve, and still no letter from Hogwarts had arrived. His mother fretted, and he just sullenly went to his room, where he had a wand hidden. He had found the wand in the attic, in an old trunk filled with elaborate dress robes. He had snuck the wand back to his room, and had been trying to perform any sort of spell ever since.

None had worked.

He was aware that the Ministry of Magic monitored the use of underage magic, but as long as he got some magic to happen he would happily take any punishment the Ministry would dole out for him. However, punishment no longer even crossed his mind as he remained unsuccessful at getting anything to happen with the wand. Not even faint sparks or a failed spell had happened.

As much as he didn't want it to be true, it seemed the rumours and whispers he'd heard from his older cousins was true. He had no magic. He was a Squib.

He figured it out for sure that afternoon at the age of twelve. His mother finally accepted the idea as a possibility a year later. She had sighed dramatically at the dinner table, and had announced, "Argus, dear, I believe that the ladies may be correct."

Argus had been utterly flummoxed by the statement. He had been eating his stew, and suddenly his mother had come up with an off-the-wall proclamation. He looked at his father, who was snoozing lightly, his chin resting on his chest. His father was an older man, who never took much an interest in anything except sleeping and scotch. No help there. No one else was present in the room, so Argus finally just said, "Come again?"

"The ladies," his mother replied in an I-can't-believe-you-don't-know-what-I'm-talking-about tone. "They think you don't have any magic, and I'm inclined to believe them."

The ladies were his mother's circle of socialite friends. All were from pureblood and high-ranking families, and they met at each other's homes for tea and gossiping several times a week. As a group, they were snippy, back-stabbing, and utterly inseparable.

Argus could not come up with a proper response, so he just said, "I thought I said that was a possibility a while back."

"Well, that was just your opinion," his mother replied with a huff. "But now the ladies have all come to the same conclusion."

Argus looked back at his father, hoping vainly for some assistance. He knew that he would say something completely disrespectful it there wasn't an interruption soon. And, lo and behold, an interruption occurred.

His father let out a loud snort, opened his eyes, clutched at his chest, and said, "Pass the potatoes."

Then he fell over dead.

Argus stared.

His mother stared.

His father stared, only because he had opened his eyes immediately before dying.

"Is- is he dead?" Argus asked, staring at his father.

"I believe so," replied his mother, not getting up. They both stared at the body some more. Argus had never seen a corpse before, much less one at the dinner table. It wasn't quite as fascinating as he would have supposed. All his father's body was doing was, well, sitting there. He was kind of tilted to one side, from falling over dead, but he was still mostly upright in his chair. He looked the same as he had pretty much all of Argus's life, with the exception that in death, his eyes were actually open.

"Imagine that," said his mother. "I was married to that man for fifteen years, and now he decides to fall over dead. Right in the middle of dinner!" She sat there, musing on the situation for a minute. "Well, at least the ladies weren't here. That would have been dreadfully embarrassing."

Argus just nodded dumbly, and set his fork down. He really wasn't hungry any longer.

There was a nice funeral for his father. Argus thought that having the coffin in the parlour with the top open wide to reveal the body of his father was a little creepy. He hoped his father wouldn't come back to haunt the house, but that didn't seem like a very likely possibility. His father hadn't really been attached to anything in the material world, and there were probably many more places to sleep undisturbed in the ethereal world.

After his father's death, not much changed around the Filch household. Some of the relatives on the Filch side stopped coming by to visit, and the ladies were over much more often, but no major lifestyle changes came about from the death of the man of the house. In fact, the biggest lifestyle change involved Arethusa's acceptance of the fact that her only child was, indeed, a Squib.

She began to make him perform household tasks that she had done effortlessly with magic for years by himself, as 'preparation' for the real world. He spent countless hours scrubbing floors, dishes, windows- anything and everything. He also found himself polishing the silver, despite the anti-tarnish charms that were on them, as well as doing laborious chores around the property.

The next six years were spent pretty much in the same manner as the first thirteen of his life, except, of course, more work. His mother met with the ladies and gossiped, he did chores and worked.

He also began to spend more time with the Muggle boys from the town, especially during the school year. He learned a lot of things from them about the Muggle way of life, which was the reason he had told his mother that he spent time with them. In reality, he liked being around the Muggle boys because they didn't treat him as though he were something inferior like his wizard 'friends' did. He also had more in common with the Muggles now, both magically and socially. The young wizards were full of stories about Hogwarts, jokes about people he had never met, and wild tales of the things they had discovered over the school year. Argus couldn't keep up with all the names that they flung around so casually.

The only other real change in his life was that every now and again, his mother would bring up a topic of conversation that made him a little nervous.

"I hear that there are lots of jobs in America. All you've got to do is go over there, and you can find a way to make a living straight away."

Argus would nod, or grunt in response. He didn't want to go to America. It surely couldn't be all that great, if any idiot off the street could do whatever they wanted. And, besides, America was a long ways away-namely, there was a pretty big ocean between there and here. An ocean that would have to be crossed in order to get to America. And what crossed oceans? Boats.

He hated boats.

He blamed the hatred on an incident when he had been nine, where he and a few of the other area wizarding family's children took a rowboat out on a lake, not knowing that a giant squid lived there. They had been rowing merrily along when suddenly the boat had lurched. Argus had gripped the sides securely, knowing that he wasn't a very strong swimmer. He'd never had to be, because he wasn't the son of a fisherman and his friends weren't normally the type to explore aquatic areas.

However, they had decided this afternoon that going rowing would be a perfect adventure. Argus had been forced to go along, because it wouldn't do to be known as the sissy boy. So, when the boat began to toss back and forth, he had been terrified. He didn't show it, of course, but his knuckles did turn a translucent shade of white as they gripped the side of the boat.

When the tentacle had reached out of the water, and smashed into the side of the rowboat, Argus had screamed. The other three boys did, too. The tentacle just lay across the boat, glistening dark in the sun, pale underside and suckers visible from young Argus's vantage point.

The tentacle slid off the boat slowly, making it tilt alarmingly to one side. Then, another tentacle, or maybe it was the same one, came bursting through the surface of the water, and hit the boat again. The boat rocked violently, and before it could settle back into the water yet another tentacle emerged. This one hit even harder, and caused the boat to finally flip right over.

Argus gasped as he hit the surprisingly frigid water. It had looked warm and inviting from above, but now he could feel winter still had a hold on the dark waters below. He didn't completely recall later what happened next. He remembered splashing frantically, and cold water splashing into his mouth and choking him, and trying desperately to keep his head above the water.

He supposed that somebody pulled him out, due to him not being dead, but he honestly couldn't remember. But what memory remained of that awful, helpless time floundering in the lake had made him avoid boats ever since.

And that was a good enough reason for him to not want to go to America. The way he figured it, if some random lake could have a giant squid living in it, then there were all sorts of even bigger things that were probably living in the ocean. Not to mention what would happen if the whole boat going over sunk.

Look at the Titanic. It had gone down, and it had been supposedly unsinkable. He'd been young, but he remembered hearing about some wizards being arrested and sent to Azkaban because their anti-sinking charms on the massive liner had never actually been applied. It had been one of those rare Muggle-magic cooperative business ventures, and a reminder of why they were so rare.

From what he'd heard about the event, it had been somewhat of a scam from the beginning. Muggle entrepreneurs had proposed to the Ministry of Magic their plan- an unsinkable ship. The Ministry, seeing the opportunity to gain lots of money from a no-fail venture, had immediately agreed. They had hired a freelance crew of expert charmers to charm the ship. Apparently, the crew had pretended to put the right charms on the ship.

They had thought that there was really no reason to do the exhausting charm work because the ship looked pretty darn sturdy. Unfortunately, the thought that the ship would run headlong into an iceberg failed to cross any of their minds. Now, they were sadly without those minds because of that minor overlook. Azkaban was a nasty place.

The Ministry had been put under close investigation over their hiring practices, but none of the allegations had panned out. The Ministry therefore retained its right to hire whomever it wished for nearly any position.

He'd also heard about a few of the wizards on board the ill-fated shop that had tried to Apparate off. They had become panicked due to all the screaming Muggles around them, and had gotten splinched. Their heads had reportedly appeared at the bottom of the ocean. Messy business, according to the story about it he had read from the squads sent out to fix it, to the best of their abilities.

Argus didn't have any magic at all, so he wouldn't even have to worry about a botched Apparition. No, he would have to try to get onto a lifeboat with a bunch of ignorant Muggles, and try his chances that way. He wouldn't do it. He refused to die in the middle of an ocean.

So, therefore, he would not under any circumstances go to America.