Rumrunner

**Chapter Two: Relocate**

Four months later, Argus found himself on a boat headed to America.

He cursed fate the entire time, stayed in his room for the duration of the voyage, and managed to drink enough for several men. Staying sloshed was the only real way that he knew to make the boat's constant rocking seem normal. He hated boats. He had gone up on the deck exactly once on this damnable excursion, and he had high-tailed it back below deck to his room as quickly as possible. Seeing nothing but the rolling ocean in any direction was disheartening, at best.

It was a terrifying thought that all that kept him from endlessly deep water was something made by Muggles. Muggles, for the love of Aphrodite. They were an incompetent bunch of fools who just happened to outbreed the wizarding world. Muggles were as good at breeding as rabbits, from the number of them. Too bad their life span was a bit longer than the average bunny.

Everything would be a lot simpler if Muggles were just mindless animals like many of the pureblood wizards believed. Some thought that they were just like wizards without magic, but Argus didn't like to think of it like that. Argus thought that even though Muggles weren't the most intelligent creatures, but they did try their best to work with what was given to them. Like building this boat, which he was hoping would make it to America.

They might manage to work around their lack of magic, but it didn't do them a whole lot of good. They still couldn't accomplish half of what wizards had.

He suddenly realized that since the Muggles had built this ship without using magic, none at all, that he too was capable of at least doing that well. There was no reason that he would have to go off on half-cocked missions to regain something he hadn't lost in the first place, even though he certainly missed it. He could do stuff without magic, after all. He could become a shop owner, or be a bartender, or something. There was something out there for him to do. And, he thought wryly, his mother was convinced that he would find that something, along with a perfect life, in America.

He didn't quite hate his mother, but he had some strong feelings for her that couldn't be classified as affectionate. She had been the one to insist that he go to America in the first place. She insisted that there was a magical specialist there who worked with Squibs. The specialist supposedly helped Squibs find their magical potential.

Argus thought that sounded like a big pile of horse hokey, but his mother's incessant nettling had finally worn him down to the point that he had boarded the boat to America of his own somewhat free will. Well, his free will and a large sum of money that his mother had foisted on him to spend how he wished. His mother could be very convincing when she felt that she needed to be, he had discovered.

Filch sat on the bed that was bolted to the floor in one corner of his small suite, swirling the last bit of whiskey left in the bottle around morosely. The boat was chugging along as quickly as it could, but it wasn't fast enough for him. He tipped the bottle back, and took another swig, then dropped the empty bottle to the floor. It was going to be a long trip.

He was pretty sure that he wasn't supposed to bring his own whiskey on board the ship, but he hadn't wanted to survive the trip without something from home to comfort him. Since the manor itself would most definitely not fit on the boat, he had chosen a few of his late father's finest bottles from the cellar. Of course, it wasn't like the quality of the liqueur mattered to him- he thought that as long as it didn't taste like week-old goat piss it was decent enough.

However, it made him feel more dignified to be getting flat on the face drunk from some of the finest drinks money could buy. Like he was a wayward prince on a journey of exile...

Argus shook his head. He knew it was time to go to sleep when he started to compare himself to a prince. He slipped under the covers, and shoved the pillow over his head. Hopefully they'd be there by tomorrow.

*

Argus ventured out onto the deck on the supposed last day of his imprisonment on the wretched hellhole they called a boat. He looked over the railing, watching as the water swept by and churned around the sides of the boat as it cut its way across the ocean. He tried to not think about the sheer quantities of water that lay beneath the boat, or of the creatures that undoubtedly lurked in the water's darkest depths.

He looked at the horizon, and squinted. There was something there... He looked at it for a few more minutes before he realized what it was. Land! They were approaching land! He could soon set his feet down on nice, firm earth, without fear of sinking or drowning or creatures with tentacles or any of the other things that made oceans horrid.

He had never thought that he would actually be glad to see America's shores. Maybe that was how it had gotten its reputation-everyone was so happy to see land, any land at all, when they arrived, that it just had to be a wonderful place. It was like standing next to the ugliest person you could find to make yourself look better, he mused.

As Argus actually set foot and the land, he stumbled and almost fell to the ground.

"Got to get your land legs back," smirked a nearby man. Argus scowled at him, but then a huge grin formed on his face. He was no longer on a boat! He was standing on land, which meant that the odds of suddenly sinking into the ocean were nearly nil. He swung his bag of belongings merrily as he slunk out of the harbor, avoiding the lines of immigrants waiting to be welcomed into America's loving embrace at all costs.

He ended up climbing over a fence to avoid detection be any of the men roaming making sure that no one entered the country without being accounted for. Being as he didn't legally exist in the Muggle world, he thought it would only be for the best if he avoided their authorities.

However, after getting over the initial giddy happiness of being on solid ground again, and after trying to make his way to the train station, Argus began to wonder why anyone liked this wretched land at all again. So far, he had gotten lost three times, jostled countless times, nearly hit by a car once, nearly hit by a piece of lumber once, and nearly hit by a fist once while he tried to navigate the overcrowded streets of New York City.

He was not amused by the situation. Everyone was bustling along the street like they knew where they were going and no one would stop and give directions. To top it all off, everyone was in too much of a hurry to bother waiting for someone to get out of the way, rather, they elbowed their way through the crowds.

Finally, he stepped into an alleyway to catch his breath. He was a small town boy, and unaccustomed to the hustle of big city life. He was watching the steady stream of people pass by the alley without even glancing in it when he was startled by the sound of somebody coughing nearby.

"Gotta penny?" came a voice rusty from disuse.

He looked over, and saw no one. He then looked down, and saw a man. He was an obvious derelict, and was dressed in the rattiest clothing Argus had ever seen on a human being. Holes and grime adorned the sleeves of his moth-eaten overcoat, and the cuffs of his trousers were nearly to his knees. The man's hair, or what of it Argus could see from below the battered hat he wore, was an unwashed and greasy brown color. A definite stench came from the man, and he was missing several teeth.

"Erm, no, I don't," Argus replied. The derelict made him nervous. He'd heard stories told about pickpockets and murderers who looked like derelicts. His mother had even whispered of some of the stories of men who looked like vagabonds so that they wouldn't be recognized as murderers. She had said that one of the ladies' cousin's neighbour had once had a run-in with a derelict, and he had attempted to do unmentionable things to her. Derelicts were the scum on the bottom of the barrel, and Argus had never had reason to speak to one before.

"Shame," said the derelict.

"Yeah," agreed Argus quickly, wondering if the derelict could read his thoughts. He backed up a step.

"Where're you off to in such a hurry?" The derelict smiled widely, showing off the gap where a front tooth might once have been. It was impossible to tell if the tooth had rotted out or been knocked out.

"The train station," replied Argus, figuring that his destination wasn't vital information for anyone.

"Really? Cuz that's in the other direction, you know."

Argus flushed, and said stiffly, "I was getting there."

"Of course," said the derelict merrily. "I'd just take the other direction for a couple of blocks before turning left, then going along 'til you see the station."

Argus, affronted, just quickly mumbled his thanks before following the derelict's directions. He reached the train station, and bought a ticket to Detroit. He stared out the window for nearly the entire time he was aboard the train, lost in thought. Would this supposed specialist really be able to help him? Would he want the kind of help the specialist might offer? Would he really want to have magic?

Well, of course he wanted magic. He was a Filch, part of a long line of wizards. He was supposed to be a wizard; this was just a particularly nasty turn of fate. He would give his right arm to have the ability to do magic. Though, thinking about it, that might be an exaggeration, because he would need his right arm in order to do magic. So, he would give his left big toe for the ability to do magic.

He pulled the crumpled letter out of his pocket. He'd read it several times on the horrendous trip across that godforsaken ocean, but he now re-read the instructions on how to get to the offices of the specialist. He was supposed to find his way to the office by himself, something he had been confident he could do back home. Now, however, after his bewilderment in New York, he was unsure that he could manage to find the place. Yes, there were street names and everything, but still. Somebody ought to be sent to meet him, and ensure that he was safe on his journey across Detroit.

After all, he'd heard all sorts of things about Americans from the boys back home, and that derelict had proven that they had been right. The whole bunch of them sounded like an unsavoury lot, and now he was going to be in the midst of them day and night until he could get back home. And getting back home would entail going back across that damn ocean.

He allowed himself to imagine ways to get home without spending forever on a boat. His most plausible idea was to go all the way across America and up into the northern territories, and crossing from the wintry wasteland of Alaska into the wintry wasteland of Russia, and then crossing all of Asia...

Maybe if he just stayed drunk the entire way back, the ocean wouldn't seem so bad. Of course, that idea hadn't worked on the way over, but that was beside the point. The point was, he was stuck in the middle of America without any clue of how to get to where he was supposed to be.

He spent the rest of the trip in somewhat of a daze, either sleeping or fantasizing what was to occur once he got to Detroit, the so-called promise land. Magical assistance and becoming a true wizard, at best. Looking like a fool at the worst. Either way, he was away from his mother, and maybe he could find a niche somewhere here. There had to be something that he could do, even if it was as a Muggle, that would be better than the menial jobs his mother had mentioned before finding out about the specialist.

He ate a meal that tasted as though it had been waiting to be consumed for months, and stared out the window of the train for the remainder of the trip in a rather mechanical fashion. He was just coming out of his introspective daze when the train whistle blew, signifying that they were approaching a station. He glanced out the window, and was a little startled to realise they were in Detroit. He could barely remember switching trains, or the long period of time that he had spent on the train.

He exited the train with the stream of other passengers, clutching his satchel in his sweaty palms nervously. He remembered all too well the would-be thieves in New York that had tried to pull his bag away from him, depriving him of his only worldly possessions this side of the Atlantic. He was smart enough to have his money and important papers put in his innermost pocket, where pickpockets would hopefully be unable to retrieve it. But it still wouldn't do to be stuck here without a change of clothing.

He made his way out of the moderately busy station, then stood on the street, looking around. It was late at night, or early in the morning, depending on how you looked at it. The streets were mostly empty, so he didn't really have to worry as much about getting lost in the crowds like he had in New York.

He looked at the street sign, then set off. Here goes nothing.