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Remus Lupin P.I. Part 14: Business as Unusual

By Larry Huss

Time, tide, and crime wait for no man. While high wizardry was being conducted to eliminate one of the few remaining anchors of Lord Voldemort to this mortal world (and incidentally lessening his very quantum of being, and compounding the effects of soul-loss), the normal nastiness, malice, and greed of the daily grind went on. Which was all to the good, as far as Remus Lupin was concerned. After all, that was what he made his living at. Sometimes he dragged criminals in, kicking and screaming to the Police or the Aurors as the case might be. Sometimes he helped spring the innocent. The latter was usually more difficult, but he found it more emotionally rewarding.

It all started in the November of 1993 with some malicious mischief… well, actually it all started longer ago than that, but making judgments about whether Salazar Slytherin had been right to be really, really, pissed off by Godric Gryffindor's enchanting the Sorting Hat one year to send only Muggle-borns to Slytherin House is not really productive at this late date. So let's just say that it all started when a small group of Youthful Offenders (previously cunning enough to be uncaught) from a nearby town decided that the Gaunt Shack (of ill repute) in Little Hangleton might offer some useful looting without even having to tie up any current residents. Being thoroughly confident, and scornful of local traditions ("That place is cursed, I tell you!") they broke in through a window and entered with wrecking bars in hand.

Shortly thereafter the two still ambulatory were dragging their insensible friends to their stolen auto, and then to the nearest emergency clinic for treatment. While modern anti-venoms and resuscitation equipment battled with stale Venomous Tentacula poison and curses weak after decades of non-renewal, those young thugs still hale drank heavily in their transport and finally decided on vengeance for their friends' pain and damage.

That night, they attempted to burn the place down with petrol bombs, and discovered that whatever long ago Gaunt ancestor who had built the place had not stinted on his spells of fire resistance; a wise move considering the many wizards and witches he had argued with over the years. The modern day arsonists didn't know why they were having so much trouble, but were of the stern British Bulldog Breed that refused to let an initial setback turn them from their course. Two nights later, having just left the wake of the friend the talented medics couldn't save, they broke into a school and acquired the materials they needed.

Even Millibank Gaunt's (1) spells proved unable to handle home-made Napalm and thermite bombs, and soon the old place was burning… well, not exactly merrily, but certainly briskly. The two young arsonists were standing outside, drinking and tossing their empty bottles in through the broken window or against the exterior wall, depending on how good their aim was at any moment. They had the misfortune to be well within the radius of some of the many spells released when the fabric of the building was no longer capable of containing magic. Many of those spells were not even curses, exactly. But for an unprotected Muggle the net result was much the same, and when the Little Hangleton fire brigade responded to a blaze soaring above the tree tops they found two catatonic young men with looks of extreme pain on their faces.

The destruction of the Gaunt Shack registered at the Ministry of Magic as incredibly powerful bursts of Accidental Magic, and produced a swift response. The area was sealed off by new anti-Muggle charms, and the owners had a warrant put out for careless storage of Dark Materials. Exactly who the owners were was uncertain, and required considerable genealogical research. At the end of three weeks the results came in. Through the provisions of Gaunt family inheritance customs, as registered in the Archives of the Wizengamot, the ultimate (in generations, not years) male descendent of the Gaunt family was either Harry James Potter (whereabouts currently "uncertain") or William Arthur Weasley. As Weasley was easier to find, fine, and was in the hereditary bad books of the powerful Mr. Lucius Malfoy, the Ministry decision was in "favor" of Mr. Weasley. He had no hope in the world of paying the arbitrarily high fine, and would accordingly be spending time in the clink for Abuse of Muggles, ignoring a legal decision, and associated penalties. He naturally appealed, and the case headed to the Wizengamot for a hearing.

Say what you will about Goblins, they do have a sense of loyalty, which even extends to those employees who are Wizards. Accordingly, the Head of the Gringotts Bank Curse Breaker Division, Grippinghand, engaged the services of Remus Lupin, LLC, to see if there was anything that could be done toward keeping one of the Bank's most promising young employees free and profitable.

Lupin tried several approaches to this difficult problem; since the bloodline ran through the Prewett family and through Molly Weasley nee Prewett to William Arthur Weasley he looked to see if that chain of inheritance could be broken by showing the Matriarch of the Weasleys was adopted. When that failed to be provable, Mrs. Weasley offered to testify she was illegitimate. That gracious (and untrue) offer was refused by Lupin as too easy to be disproved. Deeper research was needed.

It wasn't until Lupin was almost driven to advise Bill Weasley that his best hope was to start running to somewhere that didn't have an extradition treaty with the British Ministry of Magic that a better idea struck him. There was an unaccounted for Gaunt daughter, Merope, that might prove a lead.

It did, including a marriage and a child: Thomas Marvolo Riddle. It was a name not completely unfamiliar to those who had had recent dealings with certain Dark Objects and Forbidden Topics. Lupin might have had to deal with political interference, if anyone at the Ministry either knew or would officially admit that He Who Must Not Be Named actually had a name and a presence in the current world. On the other hand, those who were eager to revive the cause for which T.M.R. had given his final, partial measure saw an opportunity in the case. When they were apprised of the connection, and found out about Quirrell's Leap and the face on the back of his head (including the bit about someone's spiritual essence observed to have fled) they eagerly rushed to have survival of the Gaunt line against all odds officially confirmed. This led to several weeks of deadlock with considerable political maneuvering around a case still to have its day at the Wizengamot, for confirmation of the decision.

The final result went in the Weasley boy's favor when Ted Nott persuaded Lucius Malfoy to give up his petty feud with the Weasleys and join those wishing to affirm that Tom Marvolo Riddle had been a descendent of Salazar Slytherin (as all admitted the Gaunts had been) and was still active (even if temporarily short a body) in the world. It wasn't quite, yet, an announcement to the world that Voldemort was back, but it served the current purposes of those who once were (and hoped to be again) Death Eaters. None bothered to ask why Albus Dumbledore was so cooperative with this fairly quiet legal proceeding in their favor, rather than trying to pick up brownie points with the Administration. Well, Malfoy did, but in the end he just put it down to Dumbledore's irrational preference for the ginger lot, rather than deciding things in a sane manner. That is, where the greatest wealth and advantage could be had.

Dumbledore's gratitude to Lupin for aiding a family with three members already in the reconstituted Order of the Phoenix was real, if not quite enough to make up for his disappointment in Lupin's lack of enthusiasm in restarting the Potter Hunt. In fact, the Headmaster was hard put to find anyone in the new Order that had nearly enough enthusiasm for the search. Perhaps if he had told them of a certain prophesy of inevitable conflict between Potter and Voldemort it would have been different, but that would have needed a different Dumbledore. At least Tom was now officially alive again, even if incorporeal (these things happened, after all). At the right time the connection would be brought out, and the Ministry would have to acknowledge that Lord Voldemort was back. So one could see that this was one of those rare occasions where everyone wins.

?

Cesar had gotten a silver frame for the photo of Harry and his harem… at least that was how Cesar named them… ignoring Remus' comments that they really hadn't gotten even nearly there yet. While Cesar hadn't sunk so low as to actually get a regular job (nor did he need to, after liquidating the main Black properties), he managed to pick up a fair bit of change here and there doing things like writing up Remus' busting of phony mediums for the press, and his own winning the top prize on that year's "Britain's Got Talent." His juggling was, literally, impossible for anyone else (who was not using wandless, voiceless levitation spells).

He was slowly making peace with his personal ghosts. He could almost forgive his parents for being insensitive, bigoted fools, and he had slowly developed a working relationship with Kreacher, after the elf saw him at Regulus Black's gravesite make a heartfelt apology for his many mistakes in judging his brother. Cesar was becoming completely content to live his life of being a playboy and gallant lecher about town until he finally laid himself in his grave; the last of the cursed blood of the Blacks.

It was when he mentioned this to Phyllidia that he received further evidence of why she had made her reputation as a merciless cross-examiner in court before she was thirty.

First she protested that she had no particular stake in the affair; she wasn't going to be doing any of that friendly busy-body matchmaking that she herself had suffered from those of her friends who had married before her. She would merely rip every one of his arguments to pieces as a purely intellectual exercise.

She agreed, without even knowing them, that his parents had been everything he claimed about them. Yet what had they produced, with their cursed and inbreed marriage? Not one, but two sons who had rejected the call to be arrogant, vicious prats. Sure, Regulus had flirted with the dark side, but in his own way so had Sirius (when that person was alive), and both of them had in the end decided to come out fighting for the right cause. If anything, that spoke of good heredity overcoming bad upbringing.

As for the other main-line Blacks… Andromeda was, from all accounts, a normal enough woman who was happily married to a Muggle-born Wizard and had a child. Narcissa was a slightly boring upper-crust matron who was guilty of nothing much more evil than being a socially prominent snob, whatever her husband's activities. Bellatrix sounded like a real piece of work, but one disaster out three wasn't bad… and if you count up that whole generation of Blacks it was one out of five.

Phyllidia assured Cesar that she wouldn't try to set up any of her friends with him, but only because they were friends, and she had no idea of what he would be when he grew up, not because of any hereditary taint. She only rolled her eyes when Cesar whined and protested that he was all grown up; he even had all his permanent teeth!

Still, he thought about Phyllidia's analysis, especially on the day when he sat in the Visitor's Gallery of the Wizengamot as a correspondent for the Saptamanal Wizard World(2) and watched his cousin Andromeda and her Auror-in-Training daughter invested with the titles and honors of the Black family. They would now be taking over, though perhaps not living in, the purged and cleaned up 12 Grimmauld Place and had Kreacher (who had come to terms with working for them) to help handle any high-society entertaining they might be doing. They certainly seemed sane enough, with Dora concentrating so hard at maintaining one set of features that she was more than usually clumsy. Perhaps he didn't have to condemn himself to bachelorhood for the good of humanity.

?

It was a good thing that Ravenclaw was the least Quidditch-enthusiastic of the Hogwarts Houses, or the attention some of the Houses' young students were giving to the Hufflepuffs' athletic mainstays might have turned to serious and perhaps even brutal retaliation, especially after the 340 to 80 beating the Badgers had handed the Eagles. Not only was the Ravenclaw Seeker obviously setting her eye on Diggory, but Harry Timmons was toying with the affections of the three highest achieving 'Claws in the Second and Third Years! Even though the girls themselves seemed to handle the situation without jealousy there was an undercurrent of resentment among the 'Claws. Only Timmons' academic standing (fifth in rank for the Fourth Years) allowed him to escape unscathed, scholarly achievement allowing him a certain respect in the House that loved wit.

Harry Timmons didn't ignore these subtle undercurrents so much as never notice them. He was far too busy with his Monitoring duties, school work, and above all in his public life… Quidditch!

Not only was Harry involved with the regular practices for the team and designing new plays, but he was also (somewhat to his bewilderment) the official coach and trainer for the Reserve Team.

Bright as he was, he never figured out that the last part was CD's plan for the future of the Hufflepuff team. Next year would be CD's last year, and as he had NEWTS coming up he would not be able to devote nearly as much time to the team. So far he had seen no one in the lower years with half of Harry's potential to be an effective field leader. So this year Timmons was getting trained to take over the Badgers, and lead them to victories in his Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh Years. What Cedric Diggory didn't know was that powerful forces were slowly becoming aware of his machinations, and were preparing to do their best to upset his carefully laid plans for the future.

From their cozy window seat in Raven's Nest, Hermione Granger looked out over the Quidditch Pitch at Harry Timmons patiently flying about and marshalling the neophytes of the Reserve Team into their proper positions for the next drill. By any normal standards of optics, architecture, or geometry that should have been impossible from the side of the castle the Nest was on, but… it was Hogwarts, after all. She had just completed her latest assignment for Arithmancy and was having Padma check it over. Not that the equations were likely to be incorrect, but Hermione had a tendency to get so carried away when writing an assignment that she would either turn a 12 inch essay into a two yard long treatise, or else jump over essential steps connecting one sequence to another ("Simply too obvious to need explication.") leading to her work being marked down for lack of focus or clarity. Padma provided a vital proofreading function: Was Hermione's work understandable by the average very-intelligent person?

Despite her best efforts to resist her hormones, Hermione had become increasingly unsatisfied with Phase One. Perhaps reading (and sharing) a sex manual so enthusiastic about widening the reader's range of experiences was not the wisest thing to do in the pressure cooker environment of a school so isolated and full of potential mates. One very specific potential mate in particular.

Padma finished reading over the assignment, and had red-quilled only a few passages for amendment. She looked up from the paper and noticed where her friend's gaze was directed. Still, she felt it best not to lead the conversation too directly to the missing element for their afternoon's contentment.

"Well, 'Mione, I can mostly understand it, so I guess the Professor will too. I don't see how you'll tie it in to the Chautisa Yantra Kabala(3), but I'm only a lowly beginner at Arithmancy and haven't read the texts through Sixth Year, like some people I know. Then again, I haven't been having migraines and nightmares about equations nibbling off my toes, either. "

Hermione acknowledged defeat in a long-running debate they'd been having. "Well, I'm laying off of any more advanced stuff for a while. You were right; a person can get mental indigestion! Score another one for the wisdom of the Mysterious East. "

They both looked out onto the increasingly-shadowed Pitch, and the no-doubt freezing students doing passing drills as they maneuvered in three dimensions with increasing speed on each iteration. Padma broke the silence.

"Not really fair for him, is it?"

"Not too bloody fair for us either! The Plan was supposed to get us what we wanted, not leave us in frustration for at least three more aching years!"

Padma gave a little chuckle, 'Mione was in pretty much the same situation she was in. "So, cold showers all around, and keep up the silencing charms around the bed all night is striking you as a little… frustrating, also?"

Hermione looked shamefaced at her friend. "I didn't want to suggest any speeding up, after pushing you to start things this year. I just didn't know it was going to turn out this good, and how much that could be bad."

"Do you think that the Lieutenant could stand up to Phase Two, 'Mione? Or will it be too much for his delicate male mind in its current underdeveloped state?"

"Well, now that he's had a taste, if we keep things too slow it might push him toward someone unworthy of his attentions. We just didn't think things through enough; everything we do with him is… doing things to us too." Hermione had an almost pleading look on her face, having just discovered the romantic equivalent of one of Newton's Laws of Motion; affecting someone, affects you also.

Padma considered their options; they had all but said that Phase Two was in operation. They both knew how dangerous that was. Phase Two was, after all, only a button or two away from Phase Three; where the danger to the girls started to become serious. She felt that they should now start to deal with the larger problems than merely snaring Harry Timmons, things like parents' agreement to what would (hopefully) end up as an unusual domestic arrangement in the future.

"So: Mum, Dad, meet Mr. Timmons. He's our… guy. Oh, he comes from a … Hermione, exactly what do we know about Harry? Aside from that he's brave, smart, a natural leader, cute, and… he does end up in a lot of trouble, doesn't he?"

"Actually, Padma, he seems to solve a lot of trouble. I don't think he's been caught at anything and put on Detention that I can remember at all. Probably 'cause he trained under the Detective and knows how to be all quiet and hidey until he springs his trap!

"Anyway, he's tight with the Diggorys and Longbottoms and the Abbots and all the Weasleys (except for the Bottomless Pit). So he's got good connections. Though who he is remains a mystery. I don't remember any Timmons on any of those genealogies we drew up. Perhaps before we bring him up to the parents we should do a little more research.

"He isn't attending as someone on a charity scholarship, anyway. Their stuff always looks a bit third-hand and shopworn. Harry's stuff is always in good shape, and they say his broom isn't just good, it's been customized!"

Padma was surprised Hermione was tightly enough connected to the gossip grapevine to have been able to put all this together off the top of her head. The bit about the broom was especially good; she had heard that nothing impresses parents in a negative way quite as much as introducing someone as, "my boyfriend, the pauper."

?

Lupin arranged for an easy payment plan for the Weasleys. There was no point in trying to squeeze blood from a Mandrake; they just scream louder. Arthur Weasley, the family head, had a decent enough post and income, but the large number of children he had to raise had put a definite crimp on his ability to handle sudden expenses, such as a three thousand Galleon fee for the work that kept his first born free and with a clean record. The Matriarch of the family was a bit more ambivalent about it; not the result, but paying the fee without some sort of protest. She declared Lupin's bill as highway robbery and a crime against justice. Lupin merely smiled and suggested that losing a court case and having to pay the fee andall costs and damages would probably be even more unpleasant. He had learned long ago that letting himself get haggled down, or allowing emotional blackmail to affect his cash intake, was bad business practice in both the short and the long term. Especially as now he felt it essential to start building up a good cash reserve; the twins would be born in a few months and Phyllidia was planning to take at least six months off to care for them. How having a family would affect her career in the long term was still uncertain.

?

Marcia McCartny was seriously considering starting a course of psychological therapy. It wasn't quite that she had paranoia; she admitted that she had been brought in as a fully rated PI, and the company even had a continuing education plan that helped her gain useful skills. She was working in much the same tasks as others, and there was no trouble about pay or benefits at all. No complaints there, at least.

Her secondary problem was getting closer to invasion of privacy, sexual harassment, and stalking. Not that pig Evans (who had learned early not to get on her bad side), and certainly the others in the firm who were a more than decent bunch. Her problem was that Marcia McCartny was on the verge of stalking, et. al., Remus John Lupin.

His marriage very obviously agreed with him, and when She came in to visit her cheerfulness and glorying in her baby bump was positively sickening. Marcia had never been so envious of someone before. Just hanging around the Courts, and listening to the barristers' gossip among themselves, had (finally) convinced Marcia that Phyllidia Lupin had had no possible monetary or career motive for marriage the Old Man; it must have been genuine affection. That had robbed Marcia of any reasonable reason to hate the woman.

Which meant that Marcia was being unfair, bordering on mad, to keep on thinking that there was some strange and deep secret, some plot or conspiracy going on. That was the big thing; that was what had her keeping notes of Mr. Lupin's days off, of when he met with Mr. Romanescu, when he worked the strangest hours or when the strangest people came to visit. Like that battered old man who seemed to have lost too many miscellaneous pieces, and had the oddest case of roaming eye Marcia had ever seen. Or the one or two who came in to see the Old Man each week, almost always during the evenings, always wearing clothes that appeared looted from a random group of rag bins and carnival outfitters. Then there had been the old lady who had come in one afternoon. She had insisted that she had to see Mr. Lupin, and he had come in from a day off to attend to her. That Grande Dame was dressed like… Angelica Huston from the "Addams Family" movie, or "The Witches", except for the bloody great vulture on her hat! Marcia had been in the office that day, and was still uncertain how the woman had actually pulled off that look.

Surely an actual paranoid would think that the secret, or plot, or whatever, was aimed against herself. Marcia didn't get that vibration at all. The odd folk were usually slightly timid, and seemed lost, like immigrants new to the country. Who were they, and how did he find such people? Or rather, why were they coming to him? Marcia talked enough shop with other Investigators to know that odd clientele were common, but not ones as odd as her firm was so often handling.

The Old Man treated her well, as he treated all his other employees. Mrs. Lupin wasn't even catty, not even in the oh-so-friendly ways that marked the master manipulators of female society. Therefore, it was obvious that Marcia's obsession was completely irrational and wrong, and likely to get her fired. Mr. Lupin had been very clear on that night years ago, and he had certainlykept his side of the bargain, never bringing it up or holding anything against her. And still… and still… there she was keeping a diary of his doings, estimating his finances ("always follow the money"), and barely restraining herself from actively tailing him. Marcia McCartny was becoming increasingly sure that she was sick… very sick.

Author's Notes:

1- (1502-1625) - The last Gaunt to send his children to Hogwarts.

2- Saptamamal Wizard World- Weekly Wizard World, Bucharest's most prestigious Wizarding publication, and one of the "must-reads" for anyone who wishes to keep track of the doings of the top rank Wizarding families. (Taken from Google translate.)

3- Complex classical Indian magic squares using Kabalistic number/symbological substitutions. If Ms. Granger hadn't had access (through the friendly accounting firm her parents used) to a state-of-the-art minicomputer over her vacations to do the number bashing, it is unlikely she would have been dealing with such topics for several more years.