Percy Weasley and the Great Cauldron-Bottom Caper

PERCY WEASLEY and the GREAT CAULDRON-BOTTOM CAPER

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Chapter Two: Hocused

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Today

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'Harry?'

'Hullo, Percy.'

'Look - d'you have a moment? I want to talk to you.'

'Er. Is it absolutely urgent? Only, I'm slated to take the whole young intake, every blessed one of 'em, to the seaside. If it can't wait, of course -'

'No. No, that's all right. I mean, it can wait a day or so, I suppose.'

'Oh, super. Thank you, Percy. I don't know what I'd say to Hermione and Fleur and Molly and Andromeda - well, you take the point.'

'Yes, of course. Have you seen Malfoy lately?'

'As a matter of fact, I believe he's up in Hogsmeade today. Jawing at Nev about potions ingredients, I rather think.'

Damn, thought Percy. That means Nev's not available either.

'Look here, Percy, are you certain this can wait? Because -'

'No, no, it's fine. I'll leave you to it.'

'If you're quite certain? Right, then. I think I'm short a spade and bucket, damn it. Oh, well, if we find that we are when we get settled, I can always transfigure one.... Let's see ... ginger-beer? Right. Chocolate digestives? Hmm....'

Percy left him to it, and went to find Ron.

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'Well, Dinadan?'

'All craic, Aurelian.'

'Convey my thanks to the appropriate quarters. The little shoemakers have done well.'

'They have that. And is it today then that young Bors is to join us?'

'Dinadan. For the third time, yes. Don't fidget, man. It's two hours yet wanting his arrival.'

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'Hullo, Ron. Busy?'

'Just on my way out the door, Perce. Me old dutch wants me sharpish.'

Percy sighed. 'I'd be a fool to stand in your way. Is everything all right, then?'

'Dunno, but Hermione wasn't any more insistent than commonly, so I'm assuming the little buggers haven't caused a crisis yet today. Floo over for dinner tomorrow if you like - sorry, I'm damned late already -'

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'Selwyn. You have information, yes?'

The group were gathered in a dank cellarage in Wizarding London's subterranean Docklands, in a warren of alleys that debouched, eventually, upon Indus Street, on the Isle of Crups in the Fleet Basin, in the shadow of Crutchedfriars Bridge.

'I might have.'

Dolohov glared icily at him. 'You do or you do not. Which is it?'

'I have what might be information. Might be duff gen. That, by the way, is an English term meaning -'

'I am wearisomely familiar with your mongrel language, Selwyn. Please to cease this foolishment and give your report.'

'For what it's worth.' Selwyn did not bother to mask his insubordination. 'There may be another group after the - fool's gold, shall we say? - in addition to the Old Firm that believe themselves to be smuggling it in.'

'Ministry poking around?' It was Rowle who grunted the question.

'No idea, old man.' Selwyn was contemptuously casual and indifferent.

'Not even Potter and his band of birdwatchers can long ignore. This is excellent news, if true. I do not wish to invoke the Crummles woman yet to make a stench.'

'Who?'

Dolohov grimaced. The elder Crabbe was even less intelligent than his late and very much unlamented son, and that was saying something.

Travers sniggered, whilst Yaxley answered the question with brisk impatience. 'That bleeding Aussie cow of a journo, you halfwit. The one who makes Skeeter look like old Sprout, writes rubbishing goss about old Lovegood's daughter being involved with Scamander's lad and how that Squib of a Longbottom is shagging the Abbott wench.'

'Oh. Her. Why would she be -'

'Don't ask questions, Crabbe, you will do yourself an injury. If I must use her to direct the attention of those fool Aurors, you will be told. But we wander from our items.' Dolohov was growing increasingly brusque. 'Crabbe, Rowle, you will come with me, I may require brawn. Selwyn, find better informations. Travers, Yaxley, you will prepare to raise an Inferius.'

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The rump of the Death Eaters had departed, Disillusioned, scattered to the surrounding alleys whence they had Apparated away. Had they remained, they would have taken no account of the almost inaudible whirr that seemed to emanate from a scrap of metal rubbish in the cellars where they had met. Certainly it would never have occurred to them that something inspired by Muggle technology and born of the scribbled notes left behind by the late Fred Weasley - something they could not have warded against and against which they would never have thought to ward themselves - would constitute any threat to them and their plans.

But then, they were hardly as clever as they believed themselves to be, or they would not have chosen to meet down the docks. For the Docklands were the manor of the Aurors-turned-MLE-coppers Michael Corner and Eddie Carmichael; and they were the very ornaments of the Old Bill.

Within a quarter hour of the departure of Dolohov and his gang, Corner and Carmichael - the former being himself an Unspeakable seconded to the DMLE - had copied the whole of the conversation the Dark Wizards had had, transcribed it, and given both auditory copy and transcript to the Chief Unspeakable and a select few old members of the Order of the Phoenix. It was all in the day's work.

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A few hours later, a still motlier group were meeting in a Knockturn Alley knocking-shop. The brothel in question, if it could be dignified with that name, occupied the back of the upper storeys of a Diagon Alley junkshop, one that occupied a corner formed by the two streets; the whorehouse had its own entrance and front on Knockturn, an alley of appropriately ill repute. As a disorderly house, it wasn't much: not even disorderly, in fact, as its inhabitants were almost pathologically shy of attracting any public or official interest. And most of the business transacted there was less carnal than criminally commercial: it was the most secure thieves's rookery and fence's paradise in Knockturn. The selling of insipid sex with insipid drabs was at best a mere sideline: 'Honest Willy' Wagstaff's auntie, who owned the junk shop, a betting parlour, and the knocking-shop, had always had an eye to the main chance.

'Honest Willy' Wagstaff was himself seated at the foul and noisome deal table with the rest of them: one of Mr Borgin's more dispensable agents; the disgraced former Auror, Dawlish; Arkie Philpott; Buckley Cooper; Ivor Dillonsby; Warty Harris; and old Willy Widdershins. With them also were two small but fearsome figures, one rather older than the other, as best Wizarding eyes could tell: the goblins Griphook, whose career had been a casualty of the war and the post-War concordat, and Hodrod the Horny-Handed, pickled in the old radicalism of the Brotherhood of Goblins, a veteran of the Chipping Clodbury riots and many another episode of street-fighting, conspiracy, and insurrection.

To his discernible irritation, Wagstaff was not seated at the head of the table: that place awaited the king of Knockturn, Dung Fletcher. The Wagstaffs were an ancient family of poachers and ne'er-do-wells from King's Newnham, Warks, who had gravitated to the Smoke a few generations before in search of a wider scope for their inborn criminality, and Honest Willy was of the opinion that the headship of the shady parts of Wizarding London was no more than his due; but Mundungus Fletcher, with the splendour of his latest conviction upon him - admittedly, it was for impersonating an Inferius during an attempted burglary, yet there remained no little respect down Knockturn for a man who'd conned Dumbledore, stolen Sirius Black's silver, and done porridge under every ministry yet - Dung, in all the glamour of his last stretch, was the baron of Knockturn and the acknowledged leader of the old lags of Wizard-dom.

And here he was, odorous and shabby as ever, their chief by acclamation and prime mover in their latest scam.

Yet - and this worried Honest Willy, rather, although it did not worry him sufficiently, his greed having overcome his caution - this was not Old Dung's game. Fletcher might take the chair tonight, as every night, but it was vice his unnamed and unknown principal, the 'Guvnor' to whom even Dung referred with wary respect. And it was from the Guvnor that Dung took his information and passed on their orders.

Dung peered at them and stroked his chin: doing a George, as they would have put it, asking if the coast were clear. No one responded with an ear-tug or a nose-tweak, a Tom, and he nodded once, fumbled his way to his chair, and sat down with a thump. 'Guvnor says,' began Dung, as he always did, 'there's news. 'Nother mob. Nobs. Gentlemen. Planning on letting us do the work then coming in and doing us the dirty. Guvnor says. And Guvnor says as he finds anyone grassed, and that includes dry-grassing, Gawd help you.'

'I don't like this,' said Dawlish.

'Arrh. You're one of them gentlemen yourself, aintcha. A nob down on his uppers. Who've you been talking to, then, eh?'

'Me? You think I'd cock this up? For them? Those buggers cost me everything.'

'And I'd rather you had you a better reason than hate and revenge to be in on this, cocky. You wants too much. And if they'd take you back, maybe, that would be the score you wanted out of this, and leave us to stand the beef. Guvnor says. I've me eye on you, Dawlish, and the Guvnor has his eye on you, which is a damned sight more. You damned well hope you're not the grass, even accidental-like, mate, and you dummy up and keep schtum here on out'ards, or the Guvnor won't be best pleased. And when the Guvnor's not pleased.... You hold your mud, Dawlish, or the best you can hope for's to do your stretch - and the rest of your life, short as it'll be - as a ding. You're a cell soldier, Dawlish, I can tell, all wind until you get the wind up, and then you're on the leg with any screw who'll give you the time of day. You bring us a heat wave, sunshine, and you'll hope you live long enough to check-in and hide. Guvnor says.

'Now, then. What about them blamed Gringotts goblins, eh? You two: you been talking where you didn't ought to've done?'

'Watch your tongue, human.'

Griphook put a restraining hand on Hodrod's forearm. When he spoke, however, he was clearly no less affronted. 'You cannot do this without us, Wizard. Mind your language.'

'Can't do it without a goblin or two, right enough. Doesn't mean it has to be the two of you. Merlin! Give me a convict, an old lag who knows the code, who's done bird. You lot haven't never been banged up. You don't know the ropes. Square Johns, the both of you, and political with it. Drinking and singing songs about the coming dawn and smashing shop-windows. Pfft. Just you see to it you watch them wide mouths of yours, right? Right? Guvnor says.

'Guvnor says we go on. Guvnor'll deal with the nobs as want to get in the car. So, we goes on. Now. What do I tell my Guvnor, then? We got enough to be going on with?'

'Two more shipments in, and the last lot to be swapsed out for them old cauldrons what has real bottoms, and we will do.'

'How long?'

'Month, maybe.'

'Guvnor says fortnight. Best not make him unhappy. Well? Don't stand there with your gobs gaping! Get stuck in! Out, all of yer! Time's wasting, and the Guvnor's not a patient man....'

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Violet Crummles, the Witch - she was certainly no lady - who had dethroned Rita Skeeter as the queen of the gutter tabloids within a month of her arrival from Oz, was a brassy creature whose whispers alone would have sufficed to drown out Brian Blessed in full spate. This was unfortunate, for her, as it caused her not to hear other whispers, the whispers that journalists, even mud-lark journalists, listen for. She would not realise until it was too late that this habit of hers had caused her to miss what would have been the scoop of a lifetime - which was just as well.

At the other end of the saloon bar, Percy Weasley was finally getting the chance he had hoped for: someone to speak with. Someone who was willing to listen. And listen she did, without blinking (it was one of her many unnerving habits, after all).

'I shouldn't worry about it, Percy,' said Luna. 'Unless you've suffered an infestation of - well, never mind, I see you haven't, one of the side-effects is an inability to roll one's eyes like that - in that event, Parsifal, no one who meant you harm could have passed the wards darling William and dear Harry placed on your office and that charming little place you and Penny have. Give her my love, won't you? Now I'm afraid I simply must be off, our lobby correspondent is out ill and I very much want to cover the current sitting myself. It may yet expose the Rotfang conspiracy in the Opposition front bench!'

As she turned to leave, she stopped, and without turning 'round, added, 'And, Percy, if I'm wrong and something gruesome does happen to you, I'll make sure to tell everyone what you were working on and where I last saw you. Unless they eliminate me as well, of course. Toodles!'

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In the Year of the Great Victory

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It would serve Percy in good stead, in later years, that he had spent some months trying to draw George out of his funk, by taking on much of the role Fred had once played. If nothing else, once George began, haltingly, to become interested once more in living - and, George being George, in coming up with dangerous items that combined the mad genius of Heath Robinson with the danger, and sometimes the lethality, of the gadgets that Ian Fleming had dreamt up for Q to furnish James Bond with, that being a large part of what George called living - Percy had at least perforce acquired a familiarity with some of the coming tools of espionage and a thorough understanding of how picking locks, for example, might be superior to a simple (and often ineffective, once George was back on form) Alohomora. (George had developed a range of proprietary spells and devices that acted as re-lockers when an Unlocking Charm was attempted.)

It was to benefit Percy greatly in the days ahead.

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Today

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'He never done,' said Dung, flatly. 'You elmses. Even a bent elm thinks like an elm - or don't think, more like.'

Dawlish bridled at this: there was no telling whether it was at the insult to his wits or at being called crooked or at being referred to, dismissively, as an 'elm', the Knockturn old lag's backformation from MLE, comparable to the canting 'slop' for the Muggle police.

'Guvnor says,' said Dung.

'Damn your guvnor,' spat Dawlish. 'I don't like this! A mysterious guvnor we never see and of whom we know nothing -'

'Arrh, "of whom", is it? Flash talk and posh airs'll do you no favours here, Mr Nobby Dawlish, the bent and cashiered Auror! You'll do as guvnor says, sunshine, or Gawdelpyer - or what's left of yer. The Guvnor's the guvnor, see, and that's an end of it.'

'And I suppose we're to take all this on trust, because, no doubt, he meets your thieves's code, your standard for trust as being an old lag who's done bird -'

'The Guvnor? Guvnor's too downy fer that. Never been sussed, let alone banged up, hasn't the Guvnor. He's a highly-placed gentleman, you dirty bugger. Now. Are you in or are you out? Because if it's out, it's your funeral, and that's no mere saying. Well?'

Dawlish shot him a look of pure hatred. 'In, if that's the way of it. But I warn you, Fletcher, if this goes tits-up, I'll make sure of you.'

'You was always one to talk big, Dawlish. It didn't mean nothing when you was a redrobe, and it don't mean a pinch of owl-shit now. Just you sit schtum, you bleeder, and do as you're told. Nowathen, time's drawing on. Are you lot making any way?'

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'Ah. Sir Bors. You have elected to answer our ... invitation.'

Percy looked sourly at the man the others called 'Aurelian', and spoke very dryly indeed. 'I was advised to do so in rather compelling terms.'

'Yes. Wise of you to take advice - and then to take it. You'll not regret it. Nor, speaking of - shall we say, "outside advice" - will any harm befall the former Miss Lovegood. Or of course your family.'

Percy just managed not to startle visibly.

'Do be seated, Bors. I don't know if you are aware of it, but old Hodrod was picked up in Knockturn the other evening by Aurors. Of course, there wasn't a charge to hold him on, and the Concordat is rather stringent in its terms. He did, we are told, say something rather interesting, when jawed at about his Brotherhood activities, to the effect that BOG - I cannot resist that too-apt acronym - is a non-violent organisation, standing for traditional Goblin rights and All That. Given some of the traditional Goblin rights in question, including feud and vengeance, the Aurors and the DMLE are beginning to wonder, not for the first time, what the devil he's playing at.'

Percy made a noncommittal sort of noise in his throat.

'I see that you are wondering just whence we obtained this information. Suffice it to say that not a few of us at this table have worn the scarlet and the buff, or DMLE blue, or indeed -' and here Aurelian smiled - 'the purple. Come, come: there's no little precedent for groups that are in-but-not-of the Ministry, dear boy. We're not Dark, after all.

'But let us return to business, shall we? From another source, we are well aware that Hodrod and Griphook are hand in glove with some of Knockturn's less upstanding subjects. Willy Wagstaff and his Auntie Annis, who runs the junk shop ... interesting place, that. One can find anything there, really, or put in for it. For a fee, Annis can put her hand to anything, from the address at which Voldemort's third cousin lives to a live Erumpent with erysipelas. I've even known her to sell second-hand books.'

Percy, recalling a certain volume entitled Prefects Who Gained Power, was silent.

'And of course Dawlish. Yes, I see you remember that bugger. The Old Firm, really, Harris and Widdershins, some agent of Borgin's, Philpott, Dillonsby, Cooper, and of course Dung Fletcher. I believe you may have been adverted to what precisely is being smuggled into the country in cauldron bottoms? Yes. Gold. Alchemical gold, one gathers. Now, why is it, I wonder, that a gang of thieves and smugglers dealing in alchemical gold, would want to be in with two disgraced Goblins?'

Percy winced. 'They're planning to counterfeit Galleons, aren't they. Don't they realise that this would destabilise the economy, debase the currency, and quite likely provoke a war with the Goblins?'

'Two points to - your old house. I rather think, though, my dear Bors, that they don't particularly mind the consequences. Certainly I can't imagine that Hodrod and Griphook wish for anything less than a new Goblin rebellion.'

'But this is -'

'I'll thank you not to interrupt, Bors. We mean to have that gold. Think of it as a public service: it's much better that we have it than they. Indeed, by rights, the Ministry ought give us glowing citations - I don't think. Now: I will let Lamorak, Aglovale, Caius, and Yvain instruct you in your duties in all this. And Gareth, naturally: you'll be working most closely with him. Gentlemen? If you would? Thank you.'

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Dolohov was once more meeting with Travers, Avery, the elder Crabbe, Yaxley, Rowle, and Selwyn, this time in a disused warehouse near the Erumpent and Castle, yet still, like the Docklands, in Q Division, in Carmichael's and Corner's manor: a very rash choice, as it happened.

'Is Potter yet aware of the smuggling?'

'No telling, Ant,' drawled Selwyn. 'Shall I take another Anton-dekko?'

Dolohov's wand hand twitched, but he restrained himself. 'When we are done, you will be paid in full, Selwyn. Know that. But our mission is too important now. Must I then use the Crummles woman, or the Skeeter woman, to make stink? Will nothing less attract the attention of these gov'nuk Aurors?'

'Still dunno why it matters to us,' grumbled Crabbe. 'Long as they don't come after us.'

Dolohov bit his thin and bloodless lip and wished for patience. 'It is imperative that they be distracted until the end. So. Yaxley; Travers. You are prepared to raise an Inferius?'

'With the lashings of potions muck and whatnot you've had us acquire? We could raise an army of the damned things.'

'We need raise only one. Because of who he is, it will all that you have require, and all our powers.'

'I thought that we were going to raise the Dark Lord again using -'

'You? Thought? No. In order to obtain what will allow us to raise Our Lord in his glorious and incorruptible resurrection, we must obtain what we seek, and to gain that it is that we must raise the Inferius who guards it.'

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The next ten days were trying ones for Percy. What little tradecraft he had learnt in the last days of the War and the first of the peace, or from assisting George in his more military inventions, or had had drilled into him by Agent Argos and the others, was as nothing to that now dinned into his head by these dubious persons who called themselves the Round Table. Dead-drops and codes, disinformation and intelligence gathering, and the use of one-time parchments - he had worked on early versions of those with George just after the War, but such things had evidently come far from their origins, and now incorporated the same interacting and communicating magic that had been used in Tom Riddle's damnable diary - all these and more he learnt, quickly or painfully, and used under strict orders. The professionalism involved - particularly in the new one-time parchments, which Aurelian laughingly called 'Lupin Ars', in tribute to the late hero of the Wars and the Map of which he'd heard George and Harry speak - left Percy reluctantly impressed, and hoping that this group also was in some way legitimate and in the Ministry's confidence.

Even so, it didn't do to dwell on such hopes, upon the heartfelt wish that his infiltration of the Round Table was merely part of a bureaucratic struggle between two sets of Unspeakables. He had not dared approach Luna or even Penny with his news; and Bill and Nev and Harry and Ron and even his father remained frustratingly avoidant of him. By the eighth day, after an incredibly disobliging Argos had grilled him on all he knew, he had resorted to writing things down, at the peril of his life, and trying to slip it through the Floo to his mum.

She dropped it, and it blazed into fine ash immediately. 'Oh, Percy, dear! I'm so sorry! Ever since Harry and Bill did some work on the wards.... Shall I have your father Floo you, then, in place of a note?'

'No,' said Percy, dully. 'It's not that urgent, Mum. We'll see you for dinner on Sunday if we can get away.'

By that point, Percy would have unburdened himself even to that bugger Malfoy, in hopes that, despicable as he had been even when staying out of the War, his odd, ill-concealed, post-War hero-worship of Harry might even now put him on the side of the angels.

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'Well, Argos?'

'He's keeping faith, is Percy,' said Draco Malfoy, contriving to seem contemptuously surprised by the fact. 'His reports are complete and accurate, and reflect precisely what he knows or can be expected to know as "Sir Bors", so far as that goes.'

'Excellent,' said Agent Mycenæ. 'Dismissed - Sir Gareth.'

Draco gave an exaggerated parody of a salute, said, in parade-ground tones, 'Sah!', executed a smart about-face, and square-bashed his way out of Mycenæ's office.

'Little sod,' said Mycenæ, almost affectionately.

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Time was running out, and Percy had yet to make contact with anyone whom he could trust to help him. Once again, in conformity to standing orders, he had Apparated successively to the two Apparition Points that had been the third and fifth moves of that week's game of 'Grimmauld Place' - the WWN answer to 'Mornington Crescent' - in that week's WWN programme of I'm Sorry, I'm Not on the Floo.

He found himself in Wales, in Powys, in the wind-whipped countryside around Cwm Gellitalgarth; and found there the waiting portkey that would take him to his final destination, whatever it might be today, where the Lupin Ars, the one-time parchment, awaited his report. He took the portkey in his hand, and found himself in his own study at home.

Worse still, the Round Table members were waiting for him, be-glamoured, unidentifiable, and ominous: young Galahad, the leaders Ambrose and Aurelian, the women Coventina and Gwen - how it hurt to think that his sister and this woman very nearly shared a name - Gareth, Lamorak, Caius, Palomides, Aglovale, Lucan, Yvain, and Dinadan.

'Tomorrow,' said Ambrose, with a politeness that Percy could only find sinister, 'we are scheduled to seize the smuggled gold. Mind you, not all of us will be there for that.'

Percy, as slowly and unobtrusively as he could manage, began to edge his hand towards his wand.

'Because, of course, that's a diversion at best, although serious. The rest of us will be dropping in unexpectedly on a few remnant Death Eaters.'

'Don't move any further, Bors,' said Aurelian, with a kindness that could only be mockery. 'Or think of reporting in to Argos or that lot ... "Agent Ithaca" - or ought I to say, Percy?'

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