Pt. 2
The London Zoo was quiet at 2am. A few animal handlers went about feeding the nocturnal animals while a few rent-a-bobbies patrolled the perimeter.
No one saw as a pink mist entered the Komodo Dragon's cage. No one saw as the eight foot long lizard started to sway. Security cameras caught the Komodo disappearing as the security radioed about a gunshot.
Not even the cameras caught my disillusioned form as it repeated the same procedure in the Gorilla and Tiger enclosures. I was glad to confirm that even animals obeyed the Imperious curse.
I caught an international portkey to Belgium and repeated the actions, at the Antwerp Zoo, the same way I did in London.
After taking a portkey from Belgium to France, I made my last stop at the Paris Zoo.
-000-
"I'm not selling," the stubborn fool refused again. He recognized as I walked in from the 'muggle-side' door. As the only bar in Diagon Alley, it was very important to acquire this place.
"I know. You've refused my generous offers twice now." I grinned at him. "So I'm here to offer you something else."
I slid a small wizard's photo across the bar to Tom. "Thats your wife, isn't it?"
Tom went white as he saw the moving photo of his wife in a compromising position with three gorillas. His face went from white to red. A vein in his temple throbbed as purple and blue took over as the dominant colors in his face.
"What did you-" A silencing charm shut him up before he attracted the attention of the table of aurors on the other side of the room.
"You had your chance to talk and negotiate price, and now you don't. Your wife is under the fidelious charm. Nod, if you know what that is." I whispered to the glaring barkeep.
He nodded. "Well, theres no escape from my wards. Shes' alone, scared, and being ravished by animals as we speak. Now you have two choices, you can quietly follow me out of this dining area and into room twelve upstairs. Or... I apperate away and go join the fun with your wife."
Tom's eyes bulged out out of their sockets in his rage. My skill at the mind arts was moderate, but even then, I could still see he was about to jump across the bar and take decision #2.
"Think about how your wife is feeling right now" I pushed another photo across the bar, this time with tigers. Tom started to tremble with the urge to throttle me.
"Think about your daughter," I slid a new photo across the bar.
I had to follow the barkeep up to room twelve in his haste.
Lesson learned:
Hold a man's wife hostage... you piss him off.
Hold a man's daughter... You got him by the balls.
Especially easy, when you only have to transfigure some house-elf to look like his daughter.
I actually took his wife though. I don't think she wanted to go back to Tom. I think my gorilla 'security system' took a liking to her, too.
-000-
After forcing the inn-keeper into an unbreakable vow, I had some business with a death-eater I had to take care of.
I picked my favorite place to eat as the meeting place. By the time a glamored Greyback sat opposite me, I was on my third ice-cream sundae. He started to sniff in my direction.
"You reek of mudblood." He growled lowly, to not draw attention.
"And you smell like wet dog." Returning insults came as reflex at this point.
Greyback scowled, "talk quick, mudblood. I'm losing my patience."
I finished off the sundae with a burp and just outright told him. "I have a list here of prominent muggle-borns and half-bloods." I tossed a list of ten names across the table.
"So?"
"Take their heads for a hundred galleons, each." I whispered. "Bring them to room three in the Leaky Cauldron and the house-elves will hand over the gold."
"Why would a mudblood want to kill other mudbloods?"
"Does it matter?"
"I don't work for mudbloods."
"You are turning the offer down?"
"Fuck you mubdlood." Greyback spat in my face.
After wiping my cheek with a napkin, I flicked my wand under the table. A tracking charm clung to his boot-laces. "You are going to regret this decision." I spoke.
"The Dark Lord has risen again, everyone knows it," Greyback waved his arm at the hooded and scared people walking through the alley like cows walking through a dragon reserve. "What do you think a mudblood like you can do about it?"
I didn't answer as I rose and dropped a few sickles on the table and turned on the spot, disapperating away.
-000-
Here is what you don't know about Re'em's. Importing them without paying the import tax is a capital crime according to the ministry of magic.
Luckily, a few of the clerks in the 'exceptionally large' tax office were newly graduated from Hogwarts. With low wages and little hope of promotion, they were ever so obliging to filing a few documents for me.
I looked at my watch then glanced around my warehouse. Any moment now.
The roof was enchanted to let daylight to shine through the steel roof. On the outside, my warehouse was a small 4ftx4ft galvanized steel box, with no openings. I was the size of an American football field on the inside. With a layer of dirt and grass on the ground, and sprinklers on the ceiling, it only needed an air freshening charm every couple of days or so to be a self contained environment.
My 'cousin', across the pond, works at a re'em ranch in Texas and may have put a few small stickers on a few re'em's ear-tags.
As re'em started appearing in my expanded warehouse, I began to fire Imperious curses into all ten re'ems. After everything was settled, I portkeyed a fat sack of gold back across the pond. The answer came as a Mexican witch portkeyed in from central America.
"My favorite mal-hombre!" she exclaimed as she saw me. With eyes as black as her heart and long and silky black hair, she was the image of Aztec perfection. Covered in gold and turquoise, you could tell her social status.
"Dona Juana," I smiled. "Good to see you again." I bowed at the waist.
After sharing some gossip, we got down to business.
"So, why do you need help from my cartel? Hmm? These Islanders have always been weak." She asked. After the British wizards tried to pull a 'Cortez' on the Aztec Wizarding world in the early 1600s, American wizards lost all respect for white wizards.
How can you respect the wizards that only made it two steps into the jungle before... Well there are worse things than cannibals on the Amazon river.
"There's no sicarios, here." I explained. "Even the werewolves are following this Voldemort fad. It's interrupting business at every level. Alcohol sales are at an all time high, but thats chump-change compared to the earnings I could be making."
She nodded. "I can understand that. Every enterprise needs sicarios. How many do you need?"
"Your men?" She nodded again.
"If they are yours, fifty should do it." Her eyebrows raised at my statement.
"So few?"
"These aren't Americans I'm dealing with."
"True"
-000-
