Vanilla-Scented Smoke

Vanilla-Scented Smoke

Chapter Ten: The Exhilarating Escapade

In which Fudge gets wet, Fudge gets angry, Fudge gets insulted, Fudge gets jostled, Fudge gets foiled, and Spot is finally important.

"All right?"

"Good morning, Minister," replied the secretary, startled. "And yes, everything here is fine."

"No suspicious-looking criminals?"

"Not that I could see, Sir."

Fudge scanned the room, determined to catch the receptionist at a fault. "What's she doing?"

"I believe she is going to Brazil, Sir."

"Right. And what about..." his gaze fell over two tall men dressed in black. "Who are those men over there?"

"Over where?"

"On the stairs."

"The ones in black?"

"Them."

"I'm sure they're just tourists, Sir."

But Cornelius, graced for the first time in his life with a vague inkling of leader's intuition, was already frantically propelling his bulk towards the entrance of the main Floo ports, hailing a guard as he went.

"See those two men over there?" he huffed, running up.

The guard's head snapped up and he yawned blearily. "Ah. Good morning, Minister," he said, stretching.

"Listen to me, you idiot!" cried Fudge, becoming more and more anxious. "Remember the memo about Sirius Black's escape?"

The guard yawned again. Now that Fudge mentioned it, wasn't there a watch starting today for a couple of blokes who... wasn't there a memo? It didn't matter to him; he had been asleep and hadn't seen anyone. "What about Black?" he asked. "Didja catch him?"

"What about him?! He's trying to escape, that's what!"

Before the guard could reply, Fudge was already hurrying off towards the other side of the arched entranceway. After being jostled by crowds of tourists and a large group of school children heading on their way to Scotland, he arrived at the guard's station in a considerably worse mood.

It took some amount of yelling to jerk the wizard's attention away from the magazine he was reading, the one with the Travelling Werldwide cover that was obviously the product of a hasty illusionment charm. The guard glanced rather sheepishly at Fudge over the top of his magazine as the Minister began yelling at him, and yelped as a well aimed slap from Fudge sent the magazine falling to the ground; a very smug-looking and even more naked-looking blonde witch occupying the double page. She smiled seductively at Fudge, but his attention had already been drawn to the back wall, from which a loud and attention-grabbing thud had just originated.

---

"You idiot, Lupin, if I hadn't kicked you, you would have said your real name," Snape accused, only half-joking.

"The man wouldn't have cared, I doubt if he was even listening--"

"And why did you insist on taking off the disguises before we got inside?"

"Come on, Snape, one guard was sleeping and the other was looking at porn. And it's not like there's a watch for us, anyhow." Lupin turned to look at his friend as he talked, and promptly tripped on the steep skeleton stairs between the third and fourth levels. The resulting reverberations echoed across the room, drawing the attention of a young witch with a pink handbag on the flight above them, a family departing from a fireplace a few feet away, and, forebodingly, Fudge.

---

Fudge swore. "That's them!"

"Sir?"

"That's them, you moron!"

"Shall I go catch them, Sir?" the guard asked bravely.

"Just turn on the alarm!" Fudge gesticulated, setting off at a run across the wide floor to the staircase on the opposite wall. Seconds later loud sirens began wailing from each corner of the establishment, and the lights on the wall flickered dangerously. What followed fits every criterion of widespread panic; it featured screaming civilians, crying babies, shouting guards, and all-around excessive noise. People were running everywhere and in every direction, and it seemed as if very few of them actually knew where the hell they were going. In general, people seemed to think the safest place to go was out - but when there is Widespread Panic, people forget how, exactly, to leave. The lights continued flickering, and the scene was made more eerie by the fact that the hundreds of fireplaces in the walls were the main source of light, and that most of the coloring in the room was dim in magnitude and orange and green in color. It was almost possible to feel the Flood of human activity creeping along each walkway. The acrid smells of smoke and exploding Floo Powder were magnified in the increased awareness, and the common smells of people - makeup, sweat, cologne, paper, dust, laundry soap - were moving quickly around.

---

"Merlin! They've caught us!" Lupin said anxiously, reaching into his pocket and checking that Spot was still there.

"Obviously they haven't yet, or we wouldn't still be moving along of our own accord," Snape replied, huffing and puffing his way up the fifth flight of stairs.

"The alarms turn off the Floo!"

"No, they don't. The Floos are a separate switch."

Lupin stopped walking, puzzled. "Why?" he asked, knowing full well it was the most inane question he could ask at a time like this.

"Because what if it was a fire alarm or another such emergency?" Snape explained patronizingly. "They'd leave the Floo open so people could escape."

"But... they could escape through that fire," Lupin countered.

"It wouldn't be on any network."

"But... how do you know this?" Remus said desperately, patience gone.

"Common sense, Lupin," Snape sneered, still at the height of calm. "Now hurry, they are coming. We could go through this fireplace."

"We'd end up in Australia." Lupin stroked the kneazle's head distractedly.

"From which hellhole we could escape."

"We only have enough Floo powder for one trip, and we'd end up being trapped in Australia as well," Lupin explained slowly.

Snape looked at Lupin for a moment, calculating. "Fine. Up we go, then."

---

"Turn off the Floo!" Fudge howled at the top of his lungs amidst the pandemonium that now reigned in the London Floo Hub.

The message was instantly relayed from him to the nearest guard, who sent it to a technician, who transmitted it wirelessly to the operations booth on the eleventh floor, which was dark, locked -- and empty.

---

Fudge was visibly surprised when nothing happened. He looked around him; the fires hadn't burned out, there had been no loud crash or hiss, and the building had not shaken on its foundations. In effect, the Floo lines were still in full operation.

"You!" he called up to the Ops Booth, failing to notice its lack of occupants, and for that matter, the fact that there was no way anybody up there would have been able to hear him, even under the best of conditions. When absolutely nothing continued to happen, he turned around to face the office from which he had emerged minutes before and repeated, "You in there! Turn on the Floo alarm!"

By some happy game of fate, the man inside quite distinctly heard Fudge tell him to set off the fire alarm. He did so with great urgency, and aside from the sound of a second siren being added to the mayhem, the primary effect was that the streams of water in the fountain increased in strength and height and spilled now onto the floor.

What happens next is entirely predictable; it is wholly inevitable that Fudge, who was backing up towards the far wall and red in the face from trying to pass his instructions along to the multiple imbeciles who worked at the Floo Hub, sporting an outraged expression made all the more comical by his situation, would encounter that unfortunate yet imperative incident in which he takes another step backwards and trips spectacularly into the deep marble pool in the middle of the floor. He did so with exaggerated, cartoonish gusto that cannot be done justice by paper and words; Fudge seemed to move through the air in slow motion, beautifying the episode with wildly flailing arms and a tremendous splash and everything else that is supposed to happen when the fat and stupid villain improves a narrative by taking a clichéd tumble backwards into an perfectly positioned, waiting fountain.

The entire incident was topped off rather nicely by a thick, gurgling spout of water depositing itself continually and nonchalantly on Fudge's already dripping head.

---

"Did you SEE that?"

"Shut up, Lupin, and let's move."

"But Fudge just fell into the fountain!"

"Just hurry along, please. I don't fancy spending a sentence in Azkaban."

"I'm coming. Let's go," Lupin drew himself away, then frowned. "Wait a minute. Where's Spot?"

Snape stopped. "Who?"

"The kneazle. Spot. I thought he was in my pocket."

"That pocket?"

"It's a big pocket."

Snape looked around for the somewhat familiar spotted head and lion-like tail, but came up blank.

"Kneazles don't just disappear," said Lupin, sounding upset. "They're supposed to be incredibly loyal."

"Look, I'm sorry, Lupin, but we'll have to go without him," Snape said irritably. "In case you haven't noticed, there are guards swarming out of every doorway in this hall and they're all after us."

"But where'd he go?"

Snape tugged at his sleeve. "Come on."

---

Each man was right. Extra security guards were flooding all the walkways and making their inefficient ways towards the fair with formidable expressions, being led by even more formidable-looking boarhounds. Spot had effectively disappeared. In fact, he was able to scurry up the stairs faster than either wizard and was two or three flights above them.

During the protagonists' dialogue, a dripping Fudge had, by some miracle, made a conveniently-placed technician understand that the transport lines needed to be shut off because, "Those bloody stupid criminals are bloody escaping!"

Within a few seconds he had learned that this would not be possible. "I'm sorry, Sir," explained the technician, "but the Ops guy is in New York."

"WHERE?"

As a leader, Fudge may have been a lot of things, but he certainly wasn't intimidating when angry. The technician only shrugged. "His niece is getting married, he has to be there."

"His niece?"

"Rose. Lovely girl. I met her at a luncheon a few years ago; I can see how Marlow would want to be there. And he says Parker is such a nice bloke and..."

The man looked up into Fudge's glaring face and finished lamely, "And Marlow couldn't miss it."

"Can't you have someone else turn it off?"

"It's not an easy security system to breath, Sir. Marlow is the only one who knows how to get through that door."

"Not an easy system to breach?!" Fudge nearly shrieked, sporting in his outrage an unnaturally sweaty brow and his extra-disheveled trademark lime-green bowler hat, and inwardly cursing whoever's idea it had been for Rose and Parker to meet. "Listen, you imbecile, there are two escaped criminals trying to leave the country! They walked in here right under your nose and none of your pathetic security guards batted an eyelash! This could be the biggest arrest of the year if you'd get your act together and those idiots could manage to subdue two people!" He gestured angrily at the walkway where Snape and Lupin had met with roughly fifteen tough-looking wizards, upon whom our attention will refocus momentarily. If Fudge had had something solid on which to pound, he would have been sending hairline fractures through it with every word of his final sentence: "Catch-them-or-you-dangle-upside-down-from-that-walkway-for-a-WEEK!"

The technician favored the ceiling with a glance that said, "Why do these things always happen to me?" to which the ceiling didn't respond.

"Diggory?" he turned, calling into the office tentatively.

"What?"

"Could you go and break into the Ops booth and turn off all the Floo channels, please?"

Diggory's head emerged, a faint expression of annoyance evident on a bland face. He took one long look at the technician, and another one at Fudge, before muttering "Sure thing" and was drawing his wand while he headed off to the single employee lift behind the public reception desk.

---

Severus and Remus, upon reaching the seventh level, had immediately run into a company of security wizards. Now they were trying desperately to fight their way through the mob to the very end of the walkway, where the appropriate fire was located.

"Hurry, Lupin, before they shut the Floo!"

"I know. Watch behind you!"

Snape whirled and narrowly missed a beefy, solid-looking fist. Wand already in hand, he backed up to the railing and barely leapt out of the way as one enemy approached him from either side. He jumped up over the railing and stood on one rung, precariously gripping the other as the two wizards ran into each other head on. He jumped back over and safely landed on the other side.

Lupin was having less luck; the complicated Protego charm he put up grew weaker with every hex that bounced off it. He was kicking his way through the strong line of the Aurors' defense, casting difficult-looking spells and hexes as he went. In his rush, few of them hit their target.

---

It was decidedly quieter near the Ops booth. Diggory could clearly see the activity on the seventh level, but none of the noise reached his ears. It was a fantastic array of flying objects and swirling beams of light, sharp punches and well-timed feints, but the poings of the hexes, the thuds of skin hitting skin, and the clangs of heavy footsteps, all escaped his hearing.

The silent performance was interesting, of course, but he was quite busy trying to disarm the security on the door: six locks with keys he didn't have, and six anti-Alohomora charms he didn't have the counters for.

The switch was right in front of him through the door, but before he could activate it, he would have to employ some fancy Arithmancy tricks and complicated double-dimensional space/time-transport charms to get through.

"Impleus Dixicant Alohomora Swiltfinn Morticant..." he began.

---

A large boarhound grabbed the cuff of Snape's trousers in his teeth and growled menacingly. The hound tugged the cloth violently, and Snape lurched, tripping over the dog, and landing loudly on the ground and the handler grinned and started in on him.

"Stupefy!" hit the back of his head, and now it was the officer who fell over, knocking his head on the rail as he went.

---

"Got it!" Diggory stood, a proud expression on his face. He pushed the door open and, unbeknownst to him, a small kneazle followed him in. Diggory spared a moment to look at the scene going on below him: it was a very nice fight, he thought to himself, but he was glad he wasn't a part of it.

After only a few seconds' pause - he knew there was no time to lose - he concentrated again on the control panel and was shocked to find a spotted kneazle sitting soundly on top of it. "What are you doing in here, little guy?" he asked it kindly.

---

"Almost... there..." Snape ground out as he dug himself out from under the man and boarhound that had fallen on top of him. "Just--"

"Expelliarmus!" A wand went flying over Severus's head, and he turned around in alarm to see the man who had been holding it seconds ago. With a sly grin, Lupin dropped it over the railing, and like a shot, the wizard was trailing down the stairs after it. Before the grin had faded from his face, however, he was grabbed from behind by one of the two remaining Aurors; Lupin was seized in a tight headlock and nearly toppled to the ground.

Snape, who had managed to right himself, kicked deftly at the guard who was holding his friend, but his foot was grabbed by the last man there, and he fell hard on the metal floor, his entire body flying into the air before he flopped to the ground with a painful thud. He was dragged up immediately and found that the man's wand was pressed firmly to his temple. He had no choice except to allow himself to be dragged along toward the stairs, with Lupin and his captor following close behind. Remus winked at him when he managed a glance over his shoulder; Snape could only assume he had some sort of a plan, although he had no idea what it might be.

To the surprise of them both, they were led not to the staircase they had come up, but all the way along the wall, around the corner, and onto another walkway. Each soon saw why: a stray hex had hit the staircase, and a patch of five or so rungs was ripped off of the railing. It would have been safe for neither Auror nor criminal even to try to get past them. Instead, they were being led to an adjoining wall, whose staircase was still functioning, although, in the tight, busy atmosphere, not enchanted to move.

They marched solemnly along, and now that Fudge had been handed a towel and had stopped screaming quite so loudly, most of the patrons left in the establishment were watching them. Remus and Severus had walked at least two hundred yards and were approaching the staircase before the complacent Lupin put their plan into action. Without making any noise, without any warning other than the quick flash in his eyes, he put one foot on the rail and balanced on it while he whirled around and kicked his captor soundly in the knee. The Auror yelped in pain and loosened his grip for a fraction of a second, which was plenty of time for Remus's canine reflexes. He wrenched out of the man's grip and rushed a few feet ahead, planting another punch on the back of the man holding Severus. He reached out with his hands and wrapped them threateningly around his neck, only long enough for Snape, too, to squirm out of his grasp, evade his reaching arm, and retreat back the way they had come. The entire incident happened in the blink of an eye.

---

"Listen, little fella, do you think you could move? I need to push that button there," Diggory asked the kneazle conversationally. It only growled in return. He frowned at it, and then put out a hand. "Come on, move, and I'll give you some... um..." Diggory searched his memory. What did kneazles eat? "Um, some food."

It only growled louder.

"Right. That's it." Diggory smacked the animal - hard - and it took the opportunity to jump onto his sleeve, run up his arm, and perch on his shoulder.

"Oh, isn't that sweet," he said sarcastically. The kneazle peered down Diggory's front and put out its forepaws to steady itself. Deliberately, one might say, it began to slip down his body, poking small but painful holes first through his shirt and then his skin.

"That TICKLES!" said Diggory angrily, too distracted to think of a better word. "Get off me, you dumb animal!"

The kneazle, of course, didn't like that at all, and only grabbed on harder to the front of his shirt and miraculously, managed to stay there.

Diggory batted at it.

It didn't budge.

"Right." Diggory resigned himself, temporarily, to having an animal stuck to his person, and made to move to the front of the room, where the switchboard was. This, it turned out, was a bad idea. As soon as he took a step, Spot sank his teeth into Diggory's sensitive stomach. "Hey!" he cried, and with good reason: two rows of tiny red dots had appeared just above his belly button. He reached out a hand to the panel, if he could just reach it without moving, then - " Owww!" another row of red appeared, and he gulped, realizing with a surge of panic that if he didn't change his tactics, his stomach would begin to look like a lattice of thin streaks of blood.

---

The Aurors recovered quickly from their respective hindrances, and in a few moments were again after the other two men. In a dead silence, their audience could hear eight nearly identical thuds of feet as each ran along the walkway, four rasping breaths as they sprinted around the walls of the room. Every single person in the building looked on in amazement and with growing tension.

---

Every person, that is, except for Diggory, who, panic rising in his chest, was trying to remove a stubborn kneazle from his front without doing himself any bodily harm.

It hissed as it touched him.

"I know, kitty, I'm being gentle--"

"Snarl."

"Ouch!"

He put a bloody finger in his mouth, and as he did so, he happened to glance up. The scene that met his eyes was the dream of every movie producer: a high-speed chase along a dangerously narrow walkway a hundred feet above the ground, determined-looking law enforcement officers and dark-looking criminals, a captivated audience, and a definite shrinking time slot for whoever was supposed to cut off the escape from the other side.

With a start, he realized that this person was him. He tugged harder on Spot, opening yet another row of wounds in his stomach, but too nervous to care. "Come on," he muttered, more to himself than to the kneazle.

---

The only sounds Snape could hear were the thud of his feet hitting the floor, his loud breaths in his ears, and the identical noises coming from Lupin. It was impossible to tell how far behind them the Aurors were, but he knew with certainty that it wasn't much of a distance.

---

With a yelp of pain, Diggory wrenched the claws of the kneazle out of the soft skin of his belly and threw it bodily across the room. He leapt for the control panel and threw the switch. He tapped his foot desperately while he waited for the light to go off. A recording counted the seconds as the network slowly shut down.

---

The Aurors behind Lupin and Snape were highly trained in complicated offensive and defensive magic, but not in physical endurance. Neither dared draw their wands; there was no time. Each ran as fast as he could in the hopes of catching the would-be convicts and looking heroic in the process. They had long rounded the corner - they were coming up on the disabled staircase - the men were within 50 meters of the fireplace at the end,

now 40,

and now they were reaching into their pockets and pulling out identical packets of Floo powder,

and now the guards were ten meters behind them,

they were twenty meters from the fireplace,

they were ten,

they were out of breath,

they were...

---

Eight...

---

Snape panted heavily as he finally heard two more sets of footsteps gaining on him and Lupin.

---

Seven...

---

The Auror who had been holding Remus reached out a hand and snatched wildly.

---

Six...

---

The huge crowd of spectators gazed up, breath bated, none of them blinking.

---

Five...

---

As one, Remus and Severus tossed the packets into the fire and called "New York Floo Hub!"

---

Four...

---

Fudge looked up, his face an unreadable mix of anxiety and suspense.

---

Three...

---

The flames flared green.

---

Two...

---

Severus Snape and Remus Lupin stepped into the fireplace and were whisked away into oblivion.

---

One...

The recorded voice announced obliviously to Mr. Diggory that every Floo channel had been successfully closed.