THE FLAMEL ENIGMA

PART 1

Lord Voldemort sat at his desk one evening with a dip in his plucked brows. He was looking at a list of recent recruits, just not pleased with the lot. He needed to talk to somebody, so he opened his minion-book and pressed his finger hard against Magot's name. Magot came running through the double doors, clutching his burning arm.

"Maggot," Voldemort greeted him.

"My Lord," Magot moaned.

Voldemort stopped pressing the name. He watched Magot collapse on the floor and turned around in his chair, looking out at the bad weather.

He felt so dissatisfied.

"It's like," he began, still looking for the words. "I've been looking at the recent recruits. It just bores me that they're all so same-y!"

"Same-y, oh Darkest of Lords?"

Lord Voldemort spun back to the list on his desk.

"80 % are Slytherins or former Slytherins or some equivalent. 10 % are bored with their wives or husbands and are looking for excitement. 7 % want to get away from their kids."

He put the list away.

"I mean, where's the diversity?"

Magot scrambled back up on his feet. Often had he felt this confused.

"Di...versity, oh Vilest of Serpents?"

"Exactly."
"Well, there's Raj Mahal. There's Esteban Xavier Barriga de Lobo. I consider ourselves to be very diverse compared to some other evil organisations."
"You misunderstand me, Maggot. I meant diversity in here."

Lord Voldemort put a finger to his head.

"I don't follow you, oh most Putrid of Kings," said Magot.

When The Dark lord arose, he feared he had offended him and he began to sweat intensely.

"You all think the same! You all say the same things! You always agree all the time!"

"Yes! Yes we definitely do!"
"What I really need is some fresh input! Don't do it, Maggot!"

"You know I don't do 'that's what she said' jokes. I have to confess I am very confused. Don't you want us to agree with you?"

"Yes, but ideologically! You have to agree that muggles suck but beyond that I'm open for ideas!"

"Oh ok. Good to know."

Magot could hear crickets. So he stomped them DEAD! He wanted to go back to Tojours Fromage.

The Dark Lord then changed the subject completely. He opened a scroll and used an inkwell and paperweight to keep it from rolling together like baking barchment. Magot could just make out from the lines that it was some kind of map.

"For ages I have searched for it..," the Dark Lord mumbled.

"Searched for what, oh most Chiselled of Scorpions?"

"The Philosopher's Stone."

"You search, therefor you are?" Magot chuckled.

"Shut up. It will be my ticket to immortality, if I ever find it. But I've just never been good at finding things. I just don't understand how some people do it!"

"Neither do I! " said Magot. "Every other day I miss the bus because I can't remember where I put my keys. All of my aquaintances are the same. But once in a blue moon you come across a person who seems to have a sixth sense, devoted just to finding. I went to school with one such chap. His name was Bustopher Jones and he was not skin and bones."

"Why do you bore me, Maggot?"

"I do apologise, oh Darkest of Well Toned of Torsos. It's just that he was such a sniffer dog! Found everything, he did."

Lord Voldemort took that list of recent recruits from his drawer and skimmed it for Jones's. But he didn't have a single minion called Jones. Baddies weren't called 'Jones'.

"I went to school with a chap called Jones," he recalled. "Candidus Jones. Hufflepuff. More frightened of me than a mouse."

"To be fair, oh Delicious One, mice aren't particularily scary-"

"I meant that a mouse would be less frightened of me!"
"That is odd, considering you use them as pet food."

"Maggot! Stop digressing!"

"Sorry."

"I'm reminiscing!"

"Please go on."

"Well, everybody feared me, even then. It's when I knew I wanted to be the Dark Lord..."

The pause that followed went on for so long that Magot saw it fit to pose a question for he was sure there was a point to all this.

"And what was so remarkable about this Candidus Jones?"

"The bloody idiot found my di-journal! He used it for his flower prints! I had pollen in my brain for months and I'm very allergic as it happens."

"That must have been so difficult, oh Waftiest of Dark Winds."

"It was."

The Dark Lord made another pause. This time he used it to look Magot up and down.

"You look like you have kids ages 12-15, Maggot."

Magot suffered a very sudden and very aggressive fit of coughs.

"I assure you, I am as childless as..." COUGH! COUGH!

"So your Bustopher Jones could well have children that age."

"I know his sister does."

"Do you?"

"Yes. I met her several years ago up in Oldshed. I tried to pretend I hadn't seen her, but some people just don't return the favour. As I recall she was out with two small children and another one on the way as well as ten or so cats. Whatever became of her brother Bustopher I don't know."

"Do you know the name of her children?"

"Oh yes. They are names you can't forget. Now what were they...? Oh yes. The girl was called Trinket. The girl she was expecting was going to be called Filigree, named after her very third cat. The boy was oldest and his name was Mundungus. Fletcher, I might add."

It struck the Dark Lord that he had heard that name before! It so happened he had a recent issue of The Hogsmead Local in one of the drawers. He found it, opened the ad page and there he saw the ad:

Mundungus Fletcher

Finder extraordinaire.

Finds everything.

There was even an interview with him since Hogsmead was apparently short on real celebrities and had to make do with interviewing fat and dirty Hogwarts students.

This, the Dark Lord thought, this was the sort of Death Eater he needed; one who could find things. This was going to be his key to the Philosopher's Stone!