Chapter 2: Visitors and Offers
"I really need to quit drinking," mumbled Tonks as she sat down to her coffee, her head pounding with a blinding headache from the previous nights stupor. She had managed to finish off the bottle of Odgen's and managed to get a relatively dreamless 5 hours of sleep before the beginnings of another nightmare woke her up.
She was suffering from Post Traumatic War Syndrome, she knew it. She had resigned from the Auror Corps shortly after the Second War, and holed herself up at Grimmauld Place. While she was getting better emotionally as time went by, she was still slowly wasting away, and if it were not for what little fighting and exercise she got from fighting and doing Order business and her metamorphmagus abilities, she'd be in a lot worse shape than she was. She was dangerously thin, very little appetite for anything other than liquor, coffee, and chocolate ice-cream. She tried to force herself to eat more, but wound up vomiting whatever else she managed to shove down her unwilling throat. Over the last 3 years, she had started to get better, slowly moving on with her life. She started associating with her old co-workers again, and started going out a little more often, but still tended to spend a lot of time by herself.
Her nightmares were starting to get better, she had to admit. It had been 10 years since her family had been ripped from her. Remus and Teddy had been caught in the cross-fire while they were seeking shelter, blindsided by the storming Death Eaters on their way to the Great Hall. She remembered it almost vividly, Voldemort and his consorts approaching them, Hagrid having been forced to follow carrying the body of her friend Harry.
She heard the fire in her fireplace flare for a second before she heard a familiar voice. "Tonks?! Tonks you there?!"
She got up sluggishly, pulled her robes closer to her and went to see who it was. When she caught sight of her face, her eyes popped wide at the state that she was in and immediately responded. "Wotcher 'Mione, what happened?"
"The Manor was attacked. We managed to get away but we lost everything. We're at Hogwarts at the moment and... well... I was kinda wondering..."
Tonks gave her a sad smile. "Come on over Hermione, you know you and the family are welcome here whenever you want. The guest rooms are yours for as long as you want them."
"Thanks Tonks, we'll be right over," she said with a grateful, yet worn smile before her head disappeared. Tonks sighed. "Kreature!"
The house-elf Kreature popped up in front of her and bowed down. "Mistress Tonksy calls on Kreature?"
"Prepare the guest rooms, we're going to have guests staying over for a while. Don't know how long they're going to be staying, but safe to say, it'll be for the foreseeable future. Also, make sure that breakfast is ready in a bit, they'll probably be hungry."
"Yes Mistress, it will be done," he said before disappearing with a pop.
The fire flared once again as Hermione came over. "Sorry for the inconvenience Tonks, but the other properties aren't suitable yet to live in, lucky for us Winky managed to survive the Manor's destruction."
The fire flared behind her as her 8 year old son Franklin made it through, followed closely by her friend and love, Neville, who promptly stumbled but was able to catch himself before he toppled over. "At least I'm getting better at Flooing..." he grumbled.
"Wotcher Franky, Neville, have a seat guys, what happened?" asked Tonks, as she herself.
"Death Eaters," responded Neville, nursing his just-fixed ankle. "About 20 of them stormed the Manner. Dunno how they managed to get passed the wards so quickly, they must have had several Wards expert with them. Longbottom Manor is pretty well protected. I was notified of the wards failing and managed to send Winky off to Hogwarts and got 'Mione and Frank through the Floo to the Headmistress' Office before they broke in. I was barely able to get through the Floo myself before it went down."
"How long will it take to rebuild?" she asked.
"Not too long, fortunately. We have a copy of the Manor blueprints in the Longbottom vault at Gringotts, so reconstruction should be pretty quick, all things considering. We got Winky currently in an old plantation home in Scotland fixing it up since it's fallen into disrepair. It's been in our family for about 200 years and we never once used it. Honestly dunno why none of the former Heads never sold it, but I'm glad it's there," he said with a smile on his face. Hermione nodded before Frank tugged on the sleeve of her top. "Mommy, can I play on Aunties computer for a while?"
She looked to Tonks, who nodded. "Sure Franky, just remember to turn it off when you're done."
"YAY!" he cheered as he rushed off to the basement, which had been converted to a "Muggle Entertainment Room" for her own use. It was the only room in the manor that allowed muggle electronics to work without them becoming fried by the ambient magic of Black Manor.
"Well, go and get settled in, Kreature should be making breakfast right about now."
"Thanks Tonks, we really appreciate this," said Hermione, smiling gratefully.
"Not a problem. Now up you get," she said, grinning as she shooed them upstairs.
She went into the kitchen to sit down only to notice an eagle owl perched on the back of one of the chairs at the table.
'Odd, who could be writing to me? I don't recognize the owl,' she thought as she took the letter off of the owl's leg. The handwriting was familiar, but she still couldn't make out who it was. Finally, she opened it and started to read:
Dear Cousin,
I know that I'm the last person in the world that you're expecting to hear from, but I'm in need of help, as is the rest of the wizarding world. If you're willing to listen, I have a proposition for you...
-
'What a dump,' he thought as he walked into the visitors cubicle at Alcatraz Prison. He sat down on the chair, waiting for the inmate that he was visiting to come in on the other side of the window pane as he allowed himself to get lost in thought. Draco Malfoy had entered the Unreal Tournament the previous year and had dominated the European bracket. Having won 40 of his 50 Deathmatches, he had been given an invitation to join the International Singles Division for the Tournament which had taken place last month in Alaska at an undisclosed location. It was there that he was reunited with him.
From the research that he did as soon as he was annihilated, he found that his opponent was only known as the Enforcer, aptly named after the weapon that he seemed to favor. He was highly amused to find that he had earned the title Unfraggable in the American bracket, but was amazed to see that the title was well earned. He had not lost a singles match in over 3 years and held the longest ongoing Tournament Killing Spree record in Tournament history. He had known right then and there that he had to talk to him. He tried to find out why it was that he was imprisoned to begin with, but no one, not even his 'old associates' were able to provide answers. It took some deep digging in Ministry files to find out what had happened, and even then it took a lot of conjecturing to reach the point to where he was able to reason it out.
He was startled out of his thoughts as the door on the other side opened and a guard came in escorting the prisoner he was to see. He saw the guard escort tell him what his own escort had told him before leaving the two to talk - "You have 15 minutes."
They stared at each other for about 10 seconds, gray eyes meeting jade eyes, narrow, calculating, before he took a seat and picked up the phone on the wall, getting ready for what promised to be an interesting 15 minutes. Draco picked up his own phone and started. "Well well well, of all the places I imagined to find you, THIS was the last place on the planet I'd expect to see you in."
He smirked at Draco, making him shiver. The look he was receiving was one a predator gave it's prey before going in for the kill. "There are a lot of things that can happen in 10 years Malfoy. Not all of us stay the same with the flow of time."
"Indeed," he replied, before getting down to business. "I imagine you recognized me from last month?"
"Yeah, you were the newbie that was invited to the ISD. My first opponent if I recall," he said. "You didn't do half bad, and I expect you'd had made it further if you were lucky enough to had wound up with a different opponent to start the division with. Though I have to admit... it IS odd to see you consorting with muggles," he said, his smirk turning into a grin.
"Pffft, please, I got over my blood purity issues a while back. Bad for business, you know, being a bigoted pig."
"I see... so you just all of a sudden decided to join an underground blood sport because it would be 'good for business'?" he responded, enjoying the annoyed look on Draco's face.
"Now I remember why I never liked you as kids..." he responded with a smirk of his own.
"Sorry to disappoint, but I never swung that way myself. I'll take that as a compliment though."
"Oy!"
The enigma known as the Enforcer cackled before saying "Relax Malfoy, I'm just pulling the mickey out of ya. So seriously, why come half way across the world just to see little old me? I doubt I can be of any help to ya stuck in here, much less be a 'profitable partner' in whatever you're scheming."
Draco sobered up at this, remembering what he came in here for. "You can actually. I'm here on behalf of the Unspeakables over at the Ministry. The reason I entered the tournament is to look for potential help back home. Things are bad, probably worse than they were before the Dark Lord was killed."
Enforcer just looked at him before a chuckle developed. The chuckle soon turned into full blown-out laughter. He scowled as Enforcer tried to regain his composure and picked up the phone that he dropped in his fit. "Are you bloody well kidding me?! You think after everything that I've been through that I'd even step a foot into England again, much less your wizarding World?! Give me ONE good reason that I should help you Malfoy, seriously, and it had better be a good one, otherwise you're just wasting my time."
"Bellatrix Lestrange", he replied. That shut him up. Enforcer looked at him now with a sceptical look in his eyes.
"Lestrange? Didn't she die at Hogwarts?"
"Nope", he replied. "She managed to escape, using the death of your former lady love and your duel with the Dark Lord as cover to get lost in the chaos.
He cursed, flexing his hand into a fist, trying to relieve some of the tension that this bit of news. "What about Lestrange?"
"She took the Dark Lord's place. She's in command of what was left of his army and has been expanding into the mainland. The bitch is a certified psycho, and is a lot more direct in her attacks, and a lot more brutal in her tactics. She's waging a full, blown-out war against wizarding Britain, and the intensity of the war is coming to the point where even the muggles are starting to notice us. I'd say in about 3 months, we'll be fully exposed and if the attacks continue as they are, we may be fighting a war on 3 fronts instead of 2."
He leaned back before continuing. "You were never supposed to be here Enforcer. From what we can figure in the DoM, your incarceration was a last ditch effort at revenge from the Death Eaters before they were cleaned out of the Ministry. Things were messed up for the first year, and it's taken over 5 years to correct most of the mayhem that has taken place. You were lucky I managed to find you when I did, you've been declared dead for the past 5 year. There was a massive man-hunt for you all over Britain before we gave you up for dead 5 years ago."
Enforcer cursed again. "Shit Malfoy, you don't kid around when you drop bombs, do you?" he said in a sarcastic tone before he started to think. "What do you need from me? What kind of help are you looking for in the Tournament?"
"Originally I was thinking about buying off some of the lower bracket teams and a bunch of weapons and respawners and taking the fight to the Death Eaters, but I first needed to scout out potential teams that might be willing to partake in the action. Then I found you and thought it would be the perfect shot. You'd be able to choose and lead the teams better than I'd ever be able to. From what I can tell you have quite the reputation here, as well as the respect of the other teams that comes with it."
Enforcer smirked at the compliment. "Sounds tempting," he said. "What would I get out of it?"
"A championship shot, which would earn your freedom from this dump," replied the Head of the Malfoy clan. "After that, you'd be able to choose what teams you want and I'll buy them off, pulling whatever strings I'd have to to ensure their participation in the war. You'd get your own headquarters, protected by the Fidelius charm with myself as Secret Keeper. You'd get an arsenal of Unreal weaponry and respawners to fight with, and your own rights as a wizard reinstated."
He sat back, thinking on Draco's offer, and took a good 5 minutes before he said "I want this same offer to be extended to my teammates."
"I dunno if I can do that will be -" "It WILL be, or else you get no deal."
Draco looked at him incredulously. "You'd doom the wizarding World for a couple of people?"
Enforcer's smirk curled up even more. "You bet your arse I would. Bombshell, Chikujin and I have been through more shite in the last 2 years as a team than my previous friends did 10 years ago. You KNOW what the Tournament is like Malfoy. You know the kind of shite that goes on down in the Pits, the chances of death, the brutality that we go through every match. Do you REALLY think my former friends would be able to last a day in the Pit without me there to hold their hands?"
Draco didn't have to ponder long on this before he caved in. "Fine, you and your teammates will get the championship shot, and they'll have earned their wizarding rights as well. Are they wizards?"
"One of them, the other grew up a muggle, though I've taught her how to tap into her own core."
He raised an eye brow at that. Enforcer grinned at him. "Anyone can tap into their core Malfoy, wizard OR muggle. You honestly think that adrenaline alone is what makes humans do extraordinary things in extraordinary circumstances?"
"Point taken. So THAT's your little secret then? How you managed to..."
"Yup. That's all it takes. Anyone can do it, I'm just the first to use it in it's... more practical benefit."
"Any chance you'd be able to teach me to do that?" asked Draco with a grin.
"What, and risk you trying to usurp my killing spree?"
"Afraid of competition are you?"
Enforcer was about to respond when his door opened and the armed escort came in. "Times up Enforcer. Time to hit the lockers, you and your team got a Capture the Flag match in an hour."
Enforcer looked at him pointedly. Draco sighed and said "Fine, your entire team, including the muggle. Expect to be out of here by the end of the month."
Enforcer smirked. "See you on the other side then Malfoy." He hung up the phone and got up, thanked the guard and went on his way.
Malfoy lingered for a few seconds, his own armed escort waiting on him.
"Till next time... Potter," he whispered to himself, and in a sweep of his cloak, he exited the cubicle. 5 minutes later, he portkeyed back to Malfoy Manor to start the paperwork for what he hoped would be the turning point of the Third War.
I realize that Malfoy is a bit out of character. This is intentional, and will be explained later on in the story. That's it for that, again, expect the next one to be out in a couple of weeks. Still looking for a Beta reader! Feel free to contact me if interested.