Nymphadora Tonks and the Liquor of Jacmel

13. Getting To Know You

The Ministry foyer was more or less deserted the following afternoon when Tonks Apparated in shortly after lunch. One or two weekend workers were making their way to the lifts, presumably heading for their offices, but otherwise the place was quieter than Tonks had ever seen it at the time of day.

A quick glance at her watch told her that she was early, and she took the time to have a real look around. When the main hall was crowded, as it usually was, it wasn't easy to properly appreciate the décor, but today she found herself marvelling at the ever-changing golden runes on the ceiling, the intricate likenesses of the Fountain of Magical Brethren, and the play of light on polished wood and gilded fireplace from the soft glow of the Floo fires. A small party of official-looking visitors passed through, escorted by a smartly-dressed witch; they all seemed highly impressed, pointing to the sights and chattering to each other in Slavic accents.

A bored-looking security wizard carefully scrutinised her identification and registered her wand, apparently merely in order to give himself something to do.

"Auror, eh?" he said, clearly trying not to seem impressed. "Bit young for it, aren't you?"

"Sorry. I daresay I'll get older eventually, though?" Tonks kept her face as straight as possible while saying this, and resisted the temptation to age her appearance by fifty years by morphing. It seemed likely to result merely in far too many tedious questions of the kind everybody seemed to ask when they found out what she could do.

"Oh yeah, I suppose you will." He grinned at her, seemingly pleased to have found something to break the monotony. "In on the weekend on a case, then?"

"Nah, just a practice session for the World Cup security," said Tonks. "Are you in on that?"

"I got tickets, love," he said smugly. "Not the best in the house, mind, but I got them, and I don't have to work while I'm there."

"You don't seem to be working much while you're here," joked Tonks. "What do you do when it gets busy? You don't check everyone in, do you?"

"Well, I only really have to do the ones who come in the visitors' entrance," he confessed. "There's a bell which sounds when the lift's on the way down. Normally I just watch what's happening on the map in the control room." He jerked a thumb in the general direction of a door discreetly set in the wall behind him.

"Map?" said Tonks curiously.

"Yeah, wanna take a look?" He brightened at the prospect of doing something different. "I'm not normally supposed to take people in there, but you being an Auror an' all ..."

Tonks looked around; there was no sign of any of her team. "Go on then."

She followed him into the small room behind the door and gazed around with interest. The walls were devoted to a number of large sheets of parchment on which maps of the building were drawn. They seemed to be slightly fuzzy, and it wasn't until she looked more closely that she noticed that there were little marked dots moving around on them.

"Hey, that's me!" she said, pointing to a dot marked Nymphadora Tonks. She rather wished it didn't show her full name. And you're - Eric Stubbs, yeah?"

"That's me. Anyone in the building shows up on the map - well, mostly, anyway. We've got practically the whole Ministry here. Bit useful, innit?"

"I'll say. I've never heard of anything like these before." Tonks followed the dots around with fascination. Auror HQ and its surrounding rooms seemed fairly empty - she could see Williamson and Benny Goldstein and that irritating bugger Shacklebolt, but no-one else she knew especially well. She spotted Ludo Bagman up in his office, accompanied by a number of people with unpronounceable names, possibly the ones she'd seen pass through. Presumably all the World Cup organisers were having to work weekends this close to the event, because Barty Crouch was in the building too, with his assistant Weasley - hang on, I thought he called him Weatherby at the meeting? Oh well, I guess I must have remembered his name wrong.

Something Eric had said nagged at her for a moment until she got it. "Did you say this doesn't show the whole Ministry?" she asked, and when he nodded, continued "Why not?"

Eric Stubbs grinned. "Well, old Fudgie didn't like the idea of being spied on, did he? Insisted on being left off when that K bloke down in the bowels of the building made 'em up. A few others felt the same. Mind you, our Quentin was one of 'em. He 'conveniently' left off the lower floors and told Fudge it was to keep the Department of Mysteries - well, mysterious. Couldn't argue with that, could he?"

"No, I guess not." Tonks mentally filed away this piece of information. You never know, might be useful to know someday. She glanced idly at the section showing the foyer and noticed a new dot suddenly appear out of nowhere, which, when she looked more closely, was labelled Rhiannon Davies. "Hey, that's my cue, Eric," she said, casting a last regretful look around at the maps. "Thanks for showing me around."

"Any time, love," he said. "Beats trying to do the Daily Prophet crossword, anyway. Can't even get the 'easy' clues half the time ..."

*****

Rhiannon Davies was looking slightly anxious when Tonks joined her. "I really hope this works out ..." she murmured, but didn't have time to expand upon the point as the other two members of her team appeared at the far end of the hall. Tonks waved in their direction and they strolled over to meet them, looking at Rhiannon inquiringly.

"Right then, Mr Thompson, Mr Poppleford," she said bracingly. "Look, can we all just call each other by our first names? I'm Rhiannon, this is Nym ... er, OK, maybe not all of us then; this is Tonks." The two men looked surprised, then comprehension dawned on Thompson's face. "Oh, right. Not keen on the name 'Nymphadora'?"

"Not much," said Tonks, with a fixed sort of grin.

He chuckled. "Fair enough. I'll save it in case I ever want to tease you then. I don't know about Mr Poppleford here, but you can call me Chesney, or Ches if you like."

"Will's fine by me," said Poppleford with a shrug.

"Ah, good." Rhiannon shuffled her feet a bit; Tonks had a growing suspicion that she really hadn't planned this out properly. "Right, er, Ches, Will, I think we'd better decide how we're going to split the duties, and then go over the plans for the day? I ought to see how good you chaps are with your wands." Chesney Thompson bit his lip, obviously struggling hard to keep a straight face; Rhiannon scowled in embarrassed realisation, but ploughed on regardless. "If we do have any trouble we need to know how well you can cope with it. Anyway, er, yes, OK. Let's not hang around here, then. We'll sort something out up in Auror headquarters."

"Auror HQ, eh?" Thompson said to them with interest as they rode up to the second floor in the lift. "I don't think I've ever been in there. You won't have to hide any super-secret stuff then?"

Tonks snorted. "Yeah, right, we'll have to keep you away from the daily bulletins. They're our secret weapon. We threaten to give them to suspects and bore them to death." Rhiannon looked at her with a sudden frown as she said this, as if she'd only just realised that security might actually be a problem. Tonks lost her grin as it dawned on her too that there probably were a lot of things lying around on desks that weren't supposed to be seen by outsiders, not even other Ministry employees.

"Maybe we should find somewhere with a bit of space if we're going to practice anything?" she said brightly, attempting to recover her slip. Thinking of their first meeting with Thompson and Poppleford reminded her of one possible venue, which had looked more or less empty on the map. "Tell you what, the combat training hall should have plenty of free space today? I don't remember it ever gets used much at weekends, except for a few people tuning up their advanced spellwork."

"Combat training?" asked Thompson with interest, glancing at the other man. "I could do with some of that. We spend most of our time developing new stuff, not going over things we know. Well, that and trying to work out how to stop people growing horns as a side-effect."

Tonks glanced at the other wizard, who shrugged again. "All of us in RCMC have to train in basic combat spells, in case we need to deal with anything dangerous. I'm probably rusty, though. Last six months, I've been stuck behind a desk in the Goblin Liaison Office, trying to keep the little buggers sweet."

"Combat hall it is then," said Rhiannon with a quick smile at Tonks. She led them down the corridor and into the wide open space of the hall. Their luck was in; apart from a couple of wizards practicing in one corner, apparently working on trying to cast Stunners accurately without looking directly at the target, the room was empty.

"OK," said Thompson, rubbing his hands. "Where do we start?"

Tonks and Rhiannon exchanged glances, and Tonks got an evil gleam in her eye as she remembered her own basic training. "Let's just do a quick test run to see how you shape up, shall we?" she said. "We won't do anything out of the ordinary - just Stunners, shield charms and the like. You can do ... well, anything you like, really, short of Dark Magic."

Rhiannon caught her mood. "Will, you're with me," she said innocently. "Ches, you and Tonks step over that way a bit, give yourselves a bit of room to manoeuvre, that's right. On a count of three then: one, two, three!"

Tonks was already casting a silent Shield Charm as Chesney Thompson brought his wand to bear. She'd never quite got the hang of casting hexes without at least muttering the incantation, but she was quite proud of her spell blocks. He cried "Lingua Nodare!" - an interesting choice - but the spell just bounced straight back at him, and he hastily dodged out of the way. Tonks' return-spell of Stupefy was also dodged - she had to admit that she was quite impressed by his agility - but a Stunner of his own was easily deflected away.

Out of the corner of her eye, Tonks saw that Rhiannon had already disarmed Will Poppleford, who clearly hadn't been wrong when he described his technique as rusty. She mentally kicked herself for allowing herself to be distracted as Chesney shouted Abigo! at her. She still managed to block most of the effects, which prevented her from being thrown across the room, but it knocked her slightly off balance; and she had to duck and block a couple of spells before forcing him back onto the defensive with an Impediment Jinx. He got enough deflection on it to prevent it taking full effect, but it did trip him up; and with a mental sigh of relief - good, it would be highly embarrassing to lose this by not paying attention - she closed in for the kill. She could hear Rhiannon and Will laughing in the background.

"Gravitari praepostere!" He waved his wand with a slightly desperate air, and a peculiar-looking golden mist erupted from it. Caught slightly by surprise, Tonks attempted another block, but some of the mist leaked around her shield and touched her arms. With a dizzying sensation, she felt the world seem to invert itself. Almost by instinct, rather than on any particular calculation, she crouched down on the ceiling - no, the floor, what the ...? - in order to duck whatever the next spell heading her way was, then Apparated away with a twitch before she had to deal with another one.

Chesney didn't seem to have anticipated this manoeuvre, and mercifully, as he turned wildly this way and that to look for her, it gave her a chance to quickly get to her feet and allow her head to stop spinning. As he spotted her, she pointed her wand at him and spat out the incantations for a rapid-fire series of Stunners - no more messing about, Ches - and this simple tactic proved effective. He ducked a couple, and blocked one, but the fourth hit him squarely in the chest and sent him crashing to the floor, out cold.

Tonks approached him, breathing a silent sigh of relief. She picked up his wand, then pointed her own at him. "Enervate," she said casually, as if she'd never once had an awkward moment during the fight. She was uneasily aware that she actually felt extremely annoyed with herself for going easy at first and giving him a chance.

Chesney blinked a couple of times and looked up at her with a rueful expression.

"Too fast for me," he said, clambering to his feet gingerly and taking his wand from Tonks' outstretched hand. "Did my best, though. Hope we don't have to take on anyone as well trained as you two! I thought I might get you with something unusual, but I guess you learn how to cope with all that quite easily?"

"Yeah, they always told us in training to keep it simple most of the time," replied Tonks, making very sure that her face didn't give anything away. She glanced at Rhiannon. "What was the theory, again?"

"Er - you should be able to tell these gentlemen, Tonks," she said with slight alarm in her eyes. "You can't have forgotten your training this quickly?"

Cheers, Leader. "The basic idea is that the ... well, basics give you fallback techniques for coping with anything," she told him, racking her brains to remember the way Dawlish had phrased it. "You can't always tell what someone is going to cast at you, so you don't want to be wasting time thinking about the proper counter. Just get out of the way - Apparate if necessary - or put up a Shield Charm. That will block most incoming spells, at least partially, and the better you are at casting it, the more effective it is."

She realised that she was reciting, and slowed her voice down a bit: "Concentrate on a few offensive spells you know well to maximise your casting speed and power. They still have to be defended against. I was practically gabbling Stupefy at you back there, because most of the effort and focus was mental. Reserve complex spellwork for mixing things up a bit to keep your opponent guessing - all right, I think you've probably already grasped that part - or for when you need to achieve some specific effect." Like conjuring a physical shield if someone casts the Killing Curse at you, she thought to herself, but didn't mention it. No point in alarming them.

"Ah," said Chesney with chagrin. "That makes sense. No fancy moves, then?"

"Not until you're a real expert. I mean, I've never seen that spell you cast before, but the basic stuff they drilled into us in training gave me a way to defend against it, even if there is a specific counter-spell somewhere as well." If you actually become a real expert, you can pretty much do what you like, though, she added mentally, because the complex stuff will come just as naturally to you as anything else. Dawlish had demonstrated some really neat uses of Transfiguration for combat purposes, although most of the class hadn't been able to use them half as successfully as he had.

She looked at him, curiosity fighting against a desire to project superiority. Curiosity won. "OK, Ches, I can understand the idea behind a tongue-tying jinx, at least, and Banishing was fine too, that's a good basic spell that works well in combat" - she looked at him appraisingly - "but what the hell was that mist thing?"

Chesney sniggered. "Oh that. Just a little something we Experimental Charmers have been working on. The Committee were asked if they could develop it for use later this year. Couldn't resist trying it. To be honest, I've never actually cast the spell myself before. Did it work?" he asked eagerly.

"I don't know. Was it meant to turn everything upside down?"

"Yes!" He pumped his fist, then looked slightly embarrassed as he realised what he was doing. "I mean, yes, that was the general idea."

"Cool." Tonks turned and looked at Rhiannon pointedly; er, who's supposed to be running this session, Rhi? She caught the hint and said hastily, "Right, well, suppose we spend a bit of time going over your Shield Charms and basic hexes, then? You never know, you might need to break up a fight if the Irish and Bulgarians get drunk and have at go at each other. Come to think of it, a bit of practice in Finite Incantatem might not go amiss as well."

The next couple of hours were spent enjoyably in trying to bring their team up to speed. Chesney turned out to be quite useful, and even managed to successfully Stun or disarm each of the Aurors once. Will Poppleford was unquestionably out of condition; but by the end of the session, his training was clearly starting to come back to him, and he wasn't as easy a mark as he'd been the first time they'd tried.

"Right, team," called Rhiannon eventually, exhausted but pleased. "That'll do for today. A bit more practice over the next week would come in handy for both of you fellows, but you'll do fine, I think. Send me a memo if you'd like me to book the Hall for you." She looked around. "Ches, have you really not done any duelling before?"

He grinned. "Honest? I used to belong to a club when I was younger, but I let it slip. Never seem to find the spare time now."

She took a deep breath. "Oh, I see. Right, just a few notices before I forget. We're supposed to patrol in pairs when we get there - based on today, I think we'll go for you and me, Will, and Tonks and Chesney? We're on first rota inside the stadium, so with a bit of luck we'll get to see the whole of the match - er, that's when we're not keeping an eye on the crowd, of course."

She moved on hastily as the others grinned at her. "The Ministry will be providing accommodation starting from the weekend before the match - so no problem for us if it goes on a long time. There'll be an area set aside for tents for the security staff; I've had a look at them already, and they'll do fine. Not luxurious, but they've got beds, a kitchen and a bathroom, all we'll really need for a few days camping out. Tonks, I'll share with you, obviously; er, you're OK to tell these two what to do if I need to disappear from time to time? Check orders and stuff?"

"Yeah, no problem, Rhi," said Tonks. Stuff like visiting Donnacha in the posh tent that came with his ticket package, maybe? she thought, but she didn't say it in front of the others. Solidarity and all that.

"Great. Right, I think we deserve a drink after all that," said Rhiannon with relief. "Any suggestions for a venue?"

*****

"You know, Chesh ... Ches, I'm not entirely sh ... sure this is a good idea?"

"Oh, don't be such a wuss, Nymphadora! Last one to Hogsmeade buys the next round!"

Tonks couldn't quite remember when the concept of turning the evening into a Round Britain Pub Crawl had cropped up. She was having a little trouble with her memory at this point, not to mention her sense of balance (always precarious at the best of times). She was pretty sure it couldn't have been earlier than the fourth round of drinks, though.

It didn't help that they were touring the country's wizard-aware pubs via the Floo network, which always had a tendency to exacerbate any incipient queasiness felt by the traveller. Chesney's suggestion that the Aurors use their Portkey-creation privileges had met with short shrift from Rhiannon, who had also firmly squashed the idea of Apparation, after their first movement from the Leaky Cauldron in Diagon Alley to a small pub on the outskirts of Oxford had resulted in a twenty minute delay while they found each other again. Tonks had clinched the matter by remarking that in any case, she didn't want to end up leaving half her internal organs behind in a drunken Disapparation, nor clean up after anyone else who did.

Their grand tour had taken in Cardiff (at Rhiannon's insistence), Birmingham's Magical Market, a complete dive in Doncaster that Poppleford remembered from his younger days, and a small well-hidden village pub outside Ripon that had seemed relieved to get rid of them. Tonks vaguely recalled getting out at the wrong grate at couple of times, so there could well have been others.

Hogsmeade had seemed like the natural choice to round off the evening, but meant the longest and most stomach-churning trip yet. Still, Tonks bristled at Chesney's challenge, threw yet another handful of powder into a fire, and somehow managed to emerge upright in the fireplace of the Three Broomsticks. It didn't last long, as Will Poppleford appeared immediately afterwards and sent her flying, but it was better than she had any right ro expect in her current condition.

Chesney Thompson and the two Aurors found themselves a table as Poppleford weaved towards the bar to place an order. For a moment, Tonks couldn't quite work out who the hairy man waving at them from one corner in cheery recognition was, until the fact that he was about five feet taller than anyone else in the pub registered with her. She winced; if she'd managed to overlook the Hogwarts gamekeeper, she really must have had too much to drink.

Chesney looked over at him blearily and gave him an uncertain wave in return. "Isn't that ... er, whatshisname? Haggard, from up at the school?"

"Must be," said Tonks, firmly ordering herself to get a grip on things despite the trouble was having trying to focus. "Who else is that size?"

"A troll, maybe?" said Rhiannon with a giggle. "Hey, did you hear the one about the troll, the hag, and the leprechaun who all go into a bar ..."

"Drinks!" interrupted Chesney, as Poppleford staggered to a halt at the table bearing a tray. Tonks reached out to collect hers, and realised dimly that the glasses and their contents must have been charmed to stay in place. Surely there was no way that he could be carrying them upside-down like that otherwise?

"Did I hear you mention that giant bloke?" said Poppleford thickly. "Saw him last year, came up to the office with a vicious Hippogriff. Well, hard to miss, isn't he?"

The others laughed. It wasn't really a particularly great joke, but after the tenth round such things always seem a lot funnier. "Yeah, pretty much," said Chesney. "Sort of thing he'd like, didn't he have a ... have a fixture ... a thing about monsters?"

Will Poppleford snorted. "Heard he asked if he could get" - he paused to say the next word very slowly and carefully - "chimaera eggs at one point. I should coco. Nobody in their right mind wants a ... one of those things. Not even Nathan bloody Arkwright far as I know. Though I wouldn't be supissed ... surprised. He was never right in the head neither."

"Nathan who?" said Tonks. She was sure she knew the name, but couldn't remember from where. Another few of these, I won't remember my own name, she thought hazily.

"Cartwright. No, Arkwright. Er, I think. Sorry. One or the other. Had a private zoo, you see. Got his fingers burnt."

"You busted him, you mean?" asked Chesney.

Will giggled. "Nah. His pet busted out. Dragon. Put it in this rubbish cage, it melted the bars and got loose. Nearly ate him. Good riddance. Silly sod."

"You did charge him though?" said Rhiannon. Her face had a puzzled expression, as if she could almost remember something important, but not quite.

"Yeah, we charged him." He grinned vacantly. "Beaut of a case that, Depar ... dep ... er, legend where I work. Boys went round to look, scared the crap out of them. Bloody great monsters, shoddy little cages, bunny rabbit could have bitten through them I reckon. Swore the bloke who sold 'em said they were top-rated stuff, he did. Swore at our blokes a lot too, when we carted his pets off. Swore he'd get back at everybody who'd crossed him as well. Never did though. All mouth and no wand. Daft sod."

Rhiannon exchanged a bleary glance with Tonks, who dimly understood it to mean that all this had come up in her case somewhere, and that Poppleford had just said something that might potentially be interesting to her. She sighed, pulled out her wand, and pointed it unsteadily at her head: "Nil temulentum." It helped a little - but only a little. The major problem with the Sobriety Spell was that casting it effectively required that you be sober enough to concentrate on what you were doing, which rather defeated the object.

She closed her eyes for a moment to think, then came to with a start a few seconds later, realising that she must have nodded off for a second or two. She grabbed a napkin and quill and tried to focus long enough to write down what Will had just said, but the details were already slipping through her mind, as if she were trying to carry water in her hands.

Oh sod it. She glanced at the clock on the wall; Only half past ten? Not too late. With a bit of luck, he should still be up. She surreptitiously slid round on the chair and pulled out her mirror phone, murmuring into it "Cassius Scrimgeour". To her considerable relief, after a few seconds the mirror opened out to show Cassius, whose eyebrows shot up as he saw who it was.

"Tonks?" he said uncertainly.

"Listen mate," she said rapidly. "I'm almost out of it, don't know if I'll remember this tomorrow. Make a note to look up that Arkwright bloke, yeah? The zoo one? Just heard some gossip. Sounds like he made some" - she took a deep breath and finished carefully - "some threats towards old Ashface or whatever his name was. Make a note, yeah?"

"Oh, all right." He looked at her with amusement. "Good evening, then?"

"Terrific. See you, mate." She pushed the off button, and pressed her fingers to her temples for a moment, swaying slightly.

"Rosmerta my love! Same again over here, please!" As Chesney's voice called out for another round, Tonks groaned and let her head sink into her hands; then with a sigh, decided to simply abandon the idea of trying to do any real investigative work tonight.

It just so wasn't going to happen.