"John McGinty?"

Albus Dumbledore shook his head slowly. "That name does not ring a bell, I'm afraid."

"That's to be expected," Remus replied. "He's a Muggle."

"And he's been missing?"

"Apparently. He seems to be a loner," Remus ignored the fact that he could be described thus as well and went on. "The only way I know this is because his Muggle landlady reported to the police that he had failed to pay her three months in a row, and that there has been no sign of him ever since."

"How do you know this?"

"Keeping an eye on missing notices. McGinty seems to be just a regular man, and there might be millions of different explanations on why did he go and where he might be. Only… well, his mother was a squib."

Dumbledore's eyes widened. "Is that so?"

"Her maiden name was Clearwater."

With a loud sigh, Rufus Scrimgeour sat heavily behind his desk.

He had been partially amused at the beginning, although he had succeeded on not letting it show. After half an hour of hearing Fudge's arguments, though, he was just plainly annoyed.

John McGinty, the hastily scribbled name seemed to mock him from the piece of parchment on his hand. Just two words, a name, a person. Add to that a whole lot of paranoia and two nutters and now he, Scrimgeour, had been ordered to task an Auror into what seems nothing but a wild-goose chase.

"The old man is plotting something," Fudge had said, his face reddening by the second and his hands in fists. "Ever since that accident during the Tournament it's just plain what he's after."

As a reply Scrimgeour just raised his eyebrows in what he hoped looked like polite interest.

"The Ministry, of course," Fudge declared.

This was hardly the first time Scrimgeour had heard something like this. And truth to be told, he had been hoping for Fudge to see sense after the fuss of Diggory's death had passed. He had been quite mistaken.

And just after a week, Dumbledore had proved half the wizarding community that something was wrong. In Scrimgeour's opinion, it was just the case of a very old man going senile. Many members of the community seemed to agree with that statement. After all, declaring that He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named was back, and that Harry Potter, of all people, had fought him and returned undamaged was ridicule. But while most of the people the head of the Auror Ofice had talked to, agreed that Dumbledore was losing his touch, to put it politely – although "loony" seemed to be the word of the week –, Fudge and a few others had taken a very different, quite paranoid approach.

"I need you to look into that, Scrimgeour." Fudge was saying. "I very much suspect it is all a manoeuvre to make us lose our time, or even to distract us from the search Sirius Black-"

In that speech, Dumbledore had asked Fudge to take seriously look into some strange recent disappearances. At the time, the Minister for Magic had snorted quite audible and right afterwards he had tried to make several jokes out of the statement. In private, though, he was taking an entirely different approach.

"But Minister," this time Scrimgeour could not stop himself from pointing out the obvious. "If that's what Dumbledore's after… making us lose our time by looking into so-called disappearances that probably mean nothing, wouldn't we be doing exactly what he wants, by tasking an Auror to look into what he had told us to-?"

"I want to be sure!" Fudge banged the desk with his fist. "I know it's nothing! I'm sure it's nothing! But we can't take risks now, can we?"

And with that, Scrimgeour had been dismissed with a name on a piece of parchment and the announcement that the Minister would expect a full report on the matter.

Alone in his office, the Auror let out another loud groan. So Dumbledore had named those missing people that might had been targets of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named… proven that he really was back, which he was sure was not the case. The law enforcement squad had been tasked with the wizards and witches of that list, and then… there had been McGinty. The only Muggle of the lot. And therefore, complex enough to go to the Aurors instead.

Apparently, he was missing too.

And that meant nothing to Scrimgeour. He suspected Muggles disappeared all the time, and that's why they had something called "police". He had more than enough with Wizarding problems, thank you very much. But… if Dumbledore had to be trusted, sudden inexplicable disappearances, even amongst Muggles, could be a sign of something much more sinister gaining power.

Or maybe Scrimgeour was just the casualty of two nutters and their battle of wills.

Whatever the case, now he had to ask an Auror to stop doing whatever important, real task they were doing, in order to follow pure paranoia. And right now, as always, their hands were more than full with real issues!

He would not task somebody important, and he would most definitely not take away anybody from Shackelbolt's team. He needed somebody that could do a passable work and a readable report, while not being a loss for the department. Somebody that would accept the task without reading much into it. Somebody able enough, but not indispensable.

"Maggy," he called his assistant, whose head appeared on the threshold a moment later. "Please, get me Tonks."

AN: It's been such a long time I'd almost forgotten how to post a new story. This story is not related to anything I've published before. It's just that RL and NT are such great characters, I love to play with them and put them in different scenarios.

Of course, this is all JK Rowling's and I'm very thankful she allows us to borrow her stuff.