Nymphadora Tonks and the Liquor of Jacmel

2. The Oldest Newcomer In The Business

Tonks couldn't help but feel a certain natural trepidation at the thought of meeting Claymore again. This time, he was the only person in the room on the other side of the door; she wasn't sure if that made her feel relieved or not. His eyebrows rose when he saw who it was, and he gestured to her to take a seat.

"Good morning, Miss Tonks," he said shortly. "I wasn't expecting you until later, but I'm glad to see you're here early. So what do you think of the place?"

"Er - pretty much what I thought it would be, sir." She hesitated, wondering what to say next. Claymore and his office were rather intimidating for a novice. He looked at her with a shrewd expression.

"I suppose you're wondering what I think of you, aren't you? After all, you've probably only seen me ... what, once?"

"Yes, sir. My initial interview. Well, I saw you in passing at the graduation ceremony, but that was the only time we ... talked."

He studied her for a moment, then his face broke into a very slight smile. Although it looked like an expression that didn't get much use, it was at least slightly reassuring. "Yes, Miss Tonks, I was a little harsh with you at that interview. I had to be. It's nothing personal, we're like that with everyone who wants the job. The first and most important thing we need to find out about an applicant is what they're like. See how they react, get a feel for how they think, how they behave. Especially when, as in your case, they have something worrying in their background." He sat back. "Truth be told, I was quite impressed by the way you came back at us."

"Oh." Tonks was caught slightly off-guard. "I didn't really think, I suppose you ... just touched a raw nerve, I guess. I thought I might have blown it actually," she added nervously.

Claymore gave her a measured look. "Yes, you might have done - if that interview had been at the end of your training, rather than before it started. To begin with, we're more interested in your attitude than your self-control. But I'll do you the credit of assuming you learned how to deal with pressure fairly well during the last three years. Believe me, if you hadn't, you wouldn't be standing here."

"No, sir." Claymore looked at her appraisingly.

"I think you'll do, Miss Tonks. I've had good reports of you from the instructors."

"Oh. Thank you." That was a pleasant surprise.

"Indeed. Now, I'm not a man who believes in letting new recruits drift around for a couple of weeks, 'getting the feel of the place' or some such nonsense. Wastes their time and mine. You'll go straight into an investigation. Better be something you can learn from as you go ..." Claymore glanced around his desk, then reached for a piece of parchment lying on top of a pile. "Hmm, yes, why not?"

He picked up his wand and tapped on a small framed mirror on the desk, saying "Cassius Scrimgeour" into it in a carefully enunciated voice.

There was a short pause, then the mirror unfolded to about eighteen inches square and a voice came from it: "Yes sir?"

"Cassius, I've just read your latest report. Good news - I think you may be right. I'm going to give you what you asked for." A voiced from the mirror said something Tonks couldn't quite catch, and Claymore shook his head. "Sorry, no. We're too short-staffed at the moment, what with the bloody World Cup and this Black case on top." He glanced up at Tonks as he said this, and she felt her eyes widen as she realised what he was talking about.

"... Actually, it's her first day, so you'll have to show her the ropes, but according to Bruno she knows how to hold her wand. And she's got interesting talents of her own that I think you'll like. Come in here and I'll brief you while she's getting kitted out downstairs."

"Kitted out?" said Tonks curiously, as Claymore tapped the mirror with his wand again and turned to her.

"Yes, Miss Tonks, kitted out. Now you've joined us, you'll need the right tools for the job. We don't send you out on the streets with just your wand, you know." He shook his head at Tonks' enquiring look. "You've got paperwork to fill in before you can start, though. Get that sorted, then go and talk to the Enchanted Instrumentation people. When you're finished there, come back here and see old Scrimgeour for details of what we want you to do. We'll get you a cubicle next to him. Off you go."

Claymore sat back, clearly considering the conversation over. Tonks nodded, muttered something noncommittal and went back out into the main office, breathing a silent sigh of relief. Once again, that could have been a lot worse. Williamson popped his head out of a cubicle as she walked past, winked and gave her a thumbs-up, and Davies leapt up to meet her.

"How did it go?" she asked excitedly.

"Oh ... fine I think," said Tonks. "Is he always that abrupt?"

"Pretty much, I'm afraid. What's he got you doing?"

"I don't know yet. He spoke to somebody called Cassius through a mirror. Is he one of your team?" she asked hopefully.

"Cassius?" Davies looked taken aback. "No, not really, he's pretty much a sort of roving law unto himself. I'm surprised Claymore assigned you to him actually. Don't worry," she added hastily, as what must have been a look of alarm crossed Tonks' face. "He's a really nice bloke, you'll get along fine. Honest. I'm not entirely sure what he wants you to do, but one of the things he was banging on about seems to have worked out and it's ... well, anyway if it's what I think it is, he'll be very happy to tell you all about it himself. Looks like he's convinced Claymore, anyway."

"It sounded that way." Tonks suddenly remembered where she was supposed to be going first. "Do you know where I go for the paperwork? Apparently I have some forms to fill in, and then I have to go find the 'enchanted instrumentation department', wherever that is?"

Davies giggled. "Oh, of course, yes. K, our resident genius. You'll get writer's cramp from the forms, I'm afraid, Nymphadora." She noticed Tonks wince. "What's the matter?"

"Just Tonks, yeah?" she replied pleadingly. "I've been trying to live that first name down ever since I was a kid."

"Oh, all right," said Rhiannon, grinning. "You'll have to put it on the forms though. You have to sign all sorts of things to say who you are and where you live and what your wand's made of ... and that you've read and understood all the regulations."

"I am?" said Tonks uncertainly.

"Yeah, for form's sake. I mean, right, like anybody has. Well, Claymore maybe." She looked at Tonks with a touch of sympathy. "Come on, I'll show you to the admin offices, they're only a few doors down the corridor on the right. They'll tell you how to get to K's lot when you've finished."

*****

Rhiannon Davies hadn't been kidding about the writer's cramp. Tonks had spent all of the morning and a good part of the afternoon filling in endless rolls of parchment, recording everything from her Floo network address to her next of kin. Eventually, she'd escaped to find the Enchanted Instrumentation Department, which sounded much more interesting. It turned out to be in the basement of the building, along a dimly lit corridor that the lift didn't even go down to. For the third time that day, she found herself hesitating outside a door.

She knocked on it a couple of times. There was no sign that anyone within had heard her. She tried again, and a third time, with the same result. She paused for a moment or two, irresolute, then with a shrug, tentatively opened the door and stepped in, half-expecting to be shouted at. Most of the people working there, however, appeared to be no more than mildly interested that they had a visitor at all.

Tonks looked around her in slight confusion. She didn't quite know what she'd expected the place to look like, but subconsciously, she'd imagined there would be some sort of counter at which she would have to apply. Whatever she'd thought, it wasn't anything like the scene that faced her.

The instrument enchanters appeared to prefer working in messy surroundings. Benches and tables covered in curious-looking objects were arranged higgledy-piggledy around the room. A wizard with rolled-up sleeves and a truly impressive bushy grey moustache looked up from one of the tables, caught her eye, and smiled. "Can I help you?" he asked politely.

Tonks grinned back at him in relief. "Hope so. I'm Tonks, I just joined the Department. I'm supposed to pick up some stuff I need here? Hang on ..." She dug out the small ID scroll she'd been given downstairs and tapped it with her wand; it unfurled to show her photograph and Auror credentials.

"Ah, excellent, excellent!" said the man. "We haven't had any new people for a couple of years. Welcome aboard! I'm in charge of this lot, by the way. Quentin Kraft's the name, but you can call me K, everyone round here does." He waved a hand in the general direction of the other wizards and witches in the room, who looked up briefly and nodded to Tonks, before returning to whatever it was they were working on. It was obviously much more interesting to them than a new recruit.

K fussed about, glancing around the tables. "Now let me see, you'll be wanting the standard issue stuff. Just a couple of essential things really, though you can always ask if you need something special. Some of your lot cart around so much stuff I'm surprised they can fit it all in their robes."

He moved some sheets of parchment on which little dots were moving, found what looked like a small multi-blade pocket knife, and handed it to her. "Here you go. This little thingamabob has a number of useful functions - this blade opens locks, you see, and this one doors, even if they've had something stronger than Colloportus cast on them. Run it around the edge, quite easy. This little pointy thing here, jab it in food or drink and it'll turn red if it's been tampered with, spots most of the well-known hexes, potions, and venoms. It's not infallible, I'm afraid, it's a bit too small, but quite handy. Then - oh never mind," he said, spotting Tonks' slightly glazed look as she tried to memorise this information. "There's an instruction scroll here, why not take it away with you and you can see what's what when you've got a bit more time."

He turned to rummage through the piles of equipment while Tonks skimmed through the instructions. The knife had a number of interesting-looking attachments, even if some of them were rather quaint (such as a tool for charming stones out of a Hippogriff's hooves, which didn't seem likely to prove all that useful).

K threw a small rod at her - "here you are, my dear, you might as well take a few odds and ends while you're here, that's a Secrecy Sensor," a packet of buttons - "panic buttons to sew on your robes, just press hard on them and it'll alert your team," and a small circular gadget with a needle - "locator compass, sensitive to wizards and witches, just tap it with your wand and it'll point at the nearest one of our people to you. Useful for spotting them in a crowd of muggles." Tonks raised her eyebrows at this, but forbore to point out that doing anything with a wand in a crowd of muggles was likely to cause a lot more trouble than it was worth.

"Ah yes, the main thing you'll need, communications!" K pulled something out from underneath a pile of small unidentifiable silvery gadgets. "Very important. This is our latest little toy. Experimental issue for Aurors only." He pushed a small object across the table at her with pride.

Tonks picked it up in disbelief. "A mobile phone? Um, K, is this some sort of mingle-with-the-Muggles thing?"

"Yes, indeed!" His enthusiasm was obvious. "My own invention! We used to supply Aurors with two-way mirrors that you could talk into" - like Claymore's, realised Tonks - "but they were a bit hard to explain away if a Muggle saw you using one. These work on the same principle, but they're built into a Muggle telling-fone, so they don't look suspicious at all!"

"Good. Terrific. Er, how do they work?"

"Oh, they're very easy to use. All you have to do is speak the name of the Auror you want to contact into it, theirs will make a sort of ringing sound, and you can talk."

"Like a sort of private Floo network, you mean?"

"Exactly!" He seemed pleased that she'd grasped the principle so quickly. "You'll see who it is in the mirror - oh yes, forgot to mention, that little square part at the top expands into a mirror when you're talking to somebody. It's enchanted so only you can see it, so don't worry about the Muggles getting curious." A thought suddenly seemed to occur to him. "Er, if you're using it in a Muggle street, you might want to press a few buttons first so it looks like what they expect."

"Right." Tonks was grinning now. "I don't suppose you can still actually use it as a mobile phone then?"

"Talk to Muggles, you mean?" said K with more than a little pride in his voice. "Oh yes, it - what's their word - inthefaces with their system, so you can call to them or they can call to you and it'll link up quite nicely. Had to charm it to do that, of course - the other spells scramble its innards, unfortunately. Really tricky one, took me ages to get right during the development phase. I kept getting suspicious comments from their operationals who wanted to know what network I was on." He slapped his forehead. "Great Merlin, that reminds me - don't let a Muggle touch it, it's enchanted to stop working completely if they do."

"Huh?" said Tonks, nonplussed. K shook his head sadly.

"No choice, my dear. Official rules. My prototypes didn't do that, but unfortunately somebody left one behind in a pub, and a Muggle picked it up and started using it. Well, you can imagine what happened. Caused a huge row when somebody called it - the mirror popped out, of course, and the fellow on the other end blithely started discussing dark wizards and curses without looking to see who he was talking to. That Misuse of Muggle Artefacts chap Weasley wrote a very critical report. Went all the way up to the Minister's office, I believe, and the only way Amelia Bones was able to calm them all down was to say they would just go completely kaput if they got into the hands of a Muggle."

"Oh. Um, so is there any way I can fix it if, say, I trip and drop it and a Muggle picks it up?" Tonks crossed her fingers behind her back, hoping K wouldn't realise she was asking because this was just exactly the sort of thing she might do.

"Not by yourself, I'm afraid. If that happens, take it in to Magical Maintenance and they'll reset it for you." Tonks breathed a silent sigh of relief. "You'll have to put up with it if they start complaining. Please don't actually lose it though, they're very difficult to make with all those fiddly charms on them. Since nobody else has bothered to learn how to do it, I get lumbered! That's why we're only issuing them to Aurors at the moment."

"Right you are, K." Tonks kept her fingers crossed. "Is that it, then? You don't supply invisibility cloaks or anything like that?"

K's eyebrows shot upwards. "Invisibility cloaks? Merlin's hat, no, far too expensive for general issue. If you really need anything unusual like that for an investigation you can put a requisition in, of course." He looked around vaguely at the tables, but obviously didn't spot anything that reminded him of something the needed to be mentioned. "Anyway, that's all you actually have to have, I think. But let us know if you need anything in particular and we'll see what we can do."

"Thanks!" Tonks waved to the instrument enchanters on the way out, but only one or two of them looked up, briefly, before returning to their work. She shrugged and closed the door gently. Best not interrupt them if the work is so absorbing ...

She looked at the "mobile" curiously, then on impulse spoke into it: "Cassius Scrimgeour."

It buzzed a couple of times, and then a small mirror, about six inches square, opened out. "Yes?"

The man in the mirror had a kindly face, which was beginning to go wrinkled, and a shock of very white hair. He looked vaguely familiar, but Tonks couldn't quite place him. He smiled at her. "Don't tell me, let me guess - Nymphadora Tonks?" Tonks nodded. "Very well, come on up then. I've been hearing a lot about you."

***

Cassius Scrimgeour's cubicle turned out to be on the other side of the partition from the ones where Tonks had met Williamson and the others on her way in that morning. He sprang to his feet as she arrived and pulled out a chair, waiting for her to sit down before returning to his seat.

"Good morning, Miss Tonks," he said with a friendly-looking smile. "I do hope you won't feel you've drawn the short straw working with me. I'm Cassius Scrimgeour, but of course you knew that. Please do call me Cassius, won't you?" He had a courtly, old-world manner and a mellow tone of voice that Tonks found slightly amusing.

"Thanks, Cassius," she said. "I'm Nymphadora Tonks - but you knew that as well, obviously. Call me Tonks."

"Oh, certainly." Scrimgeour raised his eyebrows slightly, giving the impression of a man who was surprised, but too polite to ask for details. It took a second or two for Tonks to realise why. "Oh, sorry!" she said, mortified. "That sounds horribly rude, doesn't it? It's just ... I've always hated my first name. You don't really mind calling me by my surname, do you?"

"Of course not, if you prefer." His eyes twinkled. "To be honest, I suppose my own first name is a bit unusual, too, but it's a family tradition with the Scrimgeours to give the children classical names."

Tonks chuckled in relief. "OK by me. My mother didn't even have the excuse of using a family tradition, she just took it from a character in some old book she liked as a kid."

"Would that be The Adventure Club stories?" asked Scrimgeour with interest. "I read those when I was at school. I used to read them to my daughter, as well, although I'm not sure she enjoyed it as much as I did." His eyes twinkled again, in a way that suggested this came quite naturally to him.

Tonks raised her eyebrows in turn. She'd never come across anyone other than her mother who'd admitted to actually reading the books. "I think so. Sounds like the right title, anyway. I never fancied reading them, to be honest."

Scrimgeour shook his head. "You missed out on a treat then, if I may say so. It really is a classic wizarding children's series - uh, well, it was in my day, anyway." He looked slightly embarrassed. "They're all about this group of children who run around at school having adventures under the noses of their teachers, and defeating plots by dark wizards. Nymphadora Norville was one of the heroines. You'd probably actually quite like being named after her."

Tonks shrugged. She didn't think it would have made much difference, personally - a funny name is a funny name, especially when you're being teased about it - but she didn't want to upset her new partner right off the bat. "Oh well, maybe if I have kids to read to one day I'll look them up. Come to think of it, odd names run in mum's family, so I suppose Nymphadora seemed relatively normal to her." She sighed. "I just wish she'd given me a decent middle name at least. I could have used that."

"Why, what is it?" asked Scrimgeour curiously.

Tonks went through a brief internal struggle. "Promise you won't tell anyone? I hated having to write it down on the forms this morning."

He grinned. "Auror's honour. How's that, er - Tonks?"

Tonks grinned back. "Fine then. It's, um ..." - her voice dropped slightly - "Diaphanta."

Comprehension appeared on Scrimgeour's face. He chuckled at her. "Oh, I see. Most appropriate. I suppose you wouldn't know, but Diaphanta Dennison is the other heroine of the stories."

A great light dawned on Tonks. Although she really, really wished her mother had grown up with a different selection of reading material ... at least her choice of names had made some kind of sense. Still, she'd have been much happier with her father's preference of "Katherine" (a name he still sometimes used for her when her mother wasn't listening).

Her attention snapped back as she realised that Cassius was still speaking.

"... to use one of my middle names, too, but they happen to be Septimus Cato, so I suppose you could say Cassius was the best of a bad job. Anyway, enough about our unfortunate names," he said slightly guiltily. "I should be telling you what I want you to work on, Tonks. Did Claymore tell you anything?"

"No." That seemed like a safe answer, and had the merit of being entirely true.

"Ah." Scrimgeour reached into a desk drawer and riffled through some pieces of parchment, then frowned.

"Bother," he said. "I thought I had my notes here, but I must have left them at home after I wrote my report last night. You'll need to read through them later, Tonks, but the one-sentence summary is: I think we have a problem with a dangerous potion that seems to have appeared on the black market in some quantity recently. It's taken me quite a while to assemble information on possible uses. I haven't been able to find out very much - well, anything at all to be honest - about where it's coming from, so I suggested we needed someone to do some. er, undercover work."

He visibly hesitated. "I must admit, though, I really don't like the idea of throwing you in at the deep end like this. But Claymore was dropping mysterious hints that I should ask you about the special skills at disguise you have?" His voice rose slightly in mild inquiry.

Tonks nodded. "Yeah, well, sort of anyway. I'm a Metamorphmagus - do you know what I mean by that?"

This time, his eyebrows didn't rise so much as shoot up towards his hairline. "Good grief. You mean ... you can ... you don't need ...". He stopped, obviously at a loss for words. Tonks smiled at him.

"Here, let me demonstrate." The familiar strained expression appeared on Tonks' face several times, as she changed her appearance successively into a tall grey-haired woman, a short, plump teenage girl with long wavy tresses, as close a likeness of Madam Bones as she could manage from memory, a middle-aged black woman with close curls, Celestina Warbeck the Singing Sorceress, and then back to her normal appearance.

Scrimgeour hitched his jaw up from where it had fallen and actually applauded. "Amazing. Truly impressive. Did you learn that or is it a gift?"

"No, I was born that way. Useful though."

"I'll say." Scrimgeour gazed at her with real respect. "It was a lot better than I could do with a wand, and I've had decades of practice at it."

"Decades?" asked Tonks. She was annoyed to find she felt slightly overawed by that. "How long have you been an Auror, Cassius?"

He looked thoughtful. "I suppose it depends on how you count it, really. I retired from the Department after You-Know-Who fell - I thought I'd done my bit by then. But when - well, when my wife died a couple of years ago I asked to come back." A bleak look crossed his face briefly, but then he smiled again. "So you can think of me as the wise old head of the Department or the oldest newcomer in the business. Whichever you prefer."

"How does everyone else think of you?" The question slipped out before Tonks could stifle it. She bit her lip.

A rather sad smile played across Scrimgeour's face this time. "They don't quite know what to do with me, Tonks. I'm sure they think I'm hopelessly old-fashioned, but since I was fighting dark wizards before most of them were even born, they can't really say too much. So ... I'm tolerated. They let me see the stuff coming in and investigate things I think deserve a closer look, and they attach me to cases on an ad hoc basis when they think my experience might come in useful. It's still better than sitting at home brooding." He raised his eyebrows again. "And I really don't know why I'm boring you with all this. My apologies." He gave her a little bow.

Tonks smiled. It seemed she'd struck lucky with her new partner - he really was a decent sort. "Cassius, I don't mind at all. Honest. Old-fashioned is fine by me." Her smile widened into a grin. "Even if you do talk a bit like an Edwardian gentleman, you old rogue."

"Well, I was an Edwardian gentleman." Seeing the puzzled expression on Tonks' face, he added, "I joined the Department back in ... just a moment, it must have been ... good grief, 1909. Time flies, seems like yesterday sometimes."

She had to ask. "Cassius, how old are you?"

"One hundred and five." He grinned again.

Tonks knew that she must look astonished, but she couldn't do anything about that. "You don't look it," she said finally. "Even for a wizard."

"Still in my prime, I like to think, but a trifle late to be starting a career, is it not?"

"Um." There wasn't really a good answer to that. Cassius wasn't old exactly, not for a wizard, but as far as she knew (which, admittedly, wasn't very far) it was definitely rather unusual for anyone to come back as an Auror after a decade's retirement. He must have had to really work hard to bring his skills back to the required level.

With that thought, it suddenly dawned on her where she'd seen him before. He'd dropped into a few of their training classes, sitting right at the back of the lecture hall and taking notes. Everyone had just assumed he was some kind of Ministry assessor checking on the lecturers.

He was still chatting pleasantly: "We were quite the genteel family back then. Actually, my parents weren't too pleased with me when I joined up; they thought the job rather unbecoming for a Scrimgeour. You had to start in the ordinary Magical Law Enforcement Patrol in those days and work your way up, you see, but by the time I made it to Auror they'd become used to the idea. Once I started to do well for myself, one or two of the younger ones in the family were persuaded to follow me into the Department and make a career of it." There was a twinkle in his eye again. "In fact, it's quite disconcerting to see how far they've progressed in the time I was away. My great-nephew Rufus is actually senior to me now - he's at Claymore's level, head of the Northern Division up in Edinburgh. It would have been rather embarrassing if I'd been assigned there, especially as we haven't always got along that well, frankly. And he might have agreed with you about 'rogue'. Bit of an all-round black sheep of the family, that's me."

Tonks smiled again, but only to herself. She couldn't help taking that with a large grain of salt. In her experience (which was definitely more extensive than on the details of Auror career paths) it was the gentlemanly types like Cassius who always liked to think of themselves as being terrible rascals, despite all evidence to the contrary. On the other hand, she liked him, so she wasn't going to hurt his feelings by saying so.

"Well, I'll have to bear that in mind then. Anyway, er, shouldn't I be reading up about something? I don't want to get into trouble on my first day here."

"Oh of course!" Cassius consulted his watch - a very Edwardian-looking one on a chain, rather than a wristwatch - then shook his head.. "Actually, it's half-past four already, so it can wait until tomorrow now. I'll bring in my notes and you can go through them in the morning. I have to go and talk to a couple of people about the case anyway. Just settle in and put your stuff away." With another small bow, he strolled round the corner of the row of cubicles and out of sight.

Tonks sat down and looked around at her new cubicle. It was made of polished oak, with an adequate amount of working surface, a row of pigeonholes, and a few drawers under the desk part. It seemed a bit bare next to Scrimgeour's (which was covered with wizarding photographs, apparently of his family) but she had plenty of time to fix that. She grinned; it was finally starting to sink in what she'd achieved.

Auror Tonks, she thought happily. You made it girl. You finally made it.