Chapter 24 – Hints and Stirrings
Leaving Angelinus secured and safe in her charmed sleep, Remus took stock of his resources, a pair of board shorts, a pair of sandals, a pair of sunglasses still stuck to the top of his head, and his wand. 'So well equipped for a rescue,' he mocked himself silently and Apparated back to the public road leading to the cottage's private access. Easing away from the trodden path, Remus thought carefully then cast a very old but very familiar charm over himself. The chameleon spell did not make the wearer invisible but it did allow them to blend with the background. If used properly it was even more effective than a 'no-see-me'.
Gliding off through the sand-hills, Remus worked his way downwind of the cottage and anyone else that might be there. His superb nose, hearing and eyesight gave him a distinct advantage over any other wizard in the neighbourhood, and he used all three enhanced senses to the utmost as he located the first of the intruders by scent. He was ensconced in a fold in the sand, commanding a good view of the cottage's rear and side windows as well as a stretch of the private beach. Remus drifted to a position slightly above and behind him and picked up a small rock tossing it lightly off to the left and in front. A wave of the hand and the lookout thought he saw movement, craning his head up to get a better look. Dropping onto his back, Remus clubbed him insensible and only just stopped himself from breaking his neck as a permanent solution. This was not war, although he wasn't entirely sure what is was, and making corpses was probably not a good idea at this point. A quick pat down brought to light a grubby, empty wallet, a wand of some sort of hawthorn, which broke satisfyingly over Remus' knee and a Muggle device for contacting people, a radio.
Cursing silently, Remus carefully filled the device with sand and hoped he remembered correctly. He knew water would have been better but he didn't want to use magic if he could help it. If it were he setting up this ambush, he would have put out wards to detect any use of hostile magic in the area. Taking stock, Remus scented the breeze again and found another faint trace coming from further around the bay where logically another lookout could watch the other side of the cottage. A third trace came from the seaward side and even as Remus watched a guard moved into view on the beach itself, eyes turned to the sea.
Narrowing his eyes for better acuity, Remus watched the guard patrol then turned to look at the back windows of the cottage. There was no movement but even from here he could feel Severus in there, feel the odd spark of intensity in his chest. Merlin, this was so like old times, it wasn't funny, but it did get the adrenalin popping, Remus acknowledged ruefully as he slid over the dunes on his way to take out the second guard.
This one was more nervous and wary than the first, his head moving, and his eyes never still. Remus lay concealed behind a straggly bush and observed him for a few moments, not liking the strange weapon slung over his shoulder. Remus was no expert but the contraption looked like a Muggle rifle, one of the ones that shot out lots of bits of lead very fast. He had occasionally come up against one when he had been a security guard in Muggle London quite some years ago. Questing for a spell, Remus blinked when he realised the idiot was a Muggle, but he didn't lose his caution. He was not as contemptuous of Muggle thugs as many of his counterparts, and knew just how dangerous and indeed inventive Muggles could be when it came to this sort of situation. A row of thorn bushes gave Remus an idea and he carefully picked up one of the spiky seedpods that had dropped onto the sand. By using a tiny trickle of magic, he animated the pod and set it off in the Muggle's direction. By tiny finger flicks, he had the pod work its way up the man's leg and under his t-shirt. The man jumped and scratched at the spiky thing, making the radio at his side crackle a query.
"Nah, nothing, just laid on a bloody burr that's all, out!" he muttered into the handset then spent a few seconds picking the burr out of his shirt. They were his last few seconds of consciousness, Remus' chokehold on his throat and Remus' bared teeth in his face were his last sensations for quite some hours.
The third man wandered along the edge of the water where the sea lapped the sand. He turned at the end of their tiny cove and propped a foot on a rock while he seemed to imitate a dragon for a couple of seconds. Remus settled to wait with all the patience of a predator stalking his prey while the man ignored his duty to cater to his addiction. After a few more moments, the man tossed his cigarette butt into the water and turned to wander back toward the opposite side of the cove where Remus lurked in the sand dunes. He waited, although he was almost driven to nail chewing while the stupid guard idled his way to the end of his beat and turned with a sloppy glance at his surroundings before began to dig in his pocket. Remus could wait no longer as the man pulled a radio from the tight olive green jeans. He leaped out of his cover and landed on the guard's back using his knee to drive the unsuspecting man's face into the hard-packed dry sand. Before Remus could stop himself, he grabbed the man's chin from behind and ripped his head around. The sickening crack of breaking vertebrae satisfied the wolf but made Remus shiver as the man shuddered and twitched into stillness. Cursing his inner wolf silently, Remus clenched his teeth but didn't have time to worry about the guard's death; he could feel Severus' pain as if it was his own and it was driving him insane.
Lookouts taken care of, Remus drifted down to the cottage wall and listened carefully. He could hear movement in the kitchen as well as movement in the parlour, making both rooms unsuitable for entry. Looking up, he smiled grimly when he saw the bedroom window was still open. Even in human form, Remus was a werewolf and made the jump easily, landing lightly on the windowsill with superb balance and little noise. Ghosting into the room, he glanced around sniffing and found nothing had been disturbed. Obviously the searchers hadn't been through the cottage very thoroughly. So far, so good.
Moving silently across the hall, he entered Angelinus' bedroom, which was directly above the kitchen and knelt on the floor. Taking his wand, he very slowly and carefully built a spell to cut a hole in the floor. He had hoped to cut through near the light fixture - which he did - but it constricted his field of view. Looking around vaguely, his eyes fell on one of Angelinus' toys, a cardboard periscope, and he grinned. The Muggle device was crude, primitive and non-magical, perfect in fact.
Pinpointing the lookout in the room below, Remus was slightly outraged that the thug was eating his sandwiches. By angling his wand just so, Remus cast a perfect Stupefy, the man slumping deeper into the chair without a sound. Baring his teeth in a feral grin, Remus moved back into their room, taking the useful little carnival souvenir with him.
His luck was not quite as brilliant this time, two men standing facing a third with Severus strung up by his thumbs between them. The reporter was off to their left, still tied to his chair and looking horror stricken as the man behind Severus threw another short, sharp right into his kidneys. Remus knew he couldn't take too much of that, having been badly injured in the war. They had obviously found that cutting Severus just made him more stubborn if the myriad of bleeding lines on his chest and belly were to be believed. It struck Remus that these boys were only using Muggle methods of interrogation and he quickly murmured Acclaro with a magical detection suffix.
Both the reporter and Severus were wizards, but the three intruders were Muggles. They had potions with them, both wizards showing signs of Veritaserum although both slightly different. One of the men showed up traces of the Imperio curse so they weren't completely in ignorance of magic, probably. Decision made, Remus moved off to the far corner of the room and dissolved a section of the ceiling away, leaving a hole big enough for him to slide through head first. Before he moved, Remus bared his teeth and cast a glamour charm over himself. Now he looked like a wolf as well as felt like a wolf.
Sliding head first through the hole, Remus took his weight on his hands on top of the solid wooden cabinet against the wall. He ended up crouched on the narrow shelf while he surveyed the situation silently then flowed down behind a wing-backed chair. Moving as silently as his wolf counterpart, he waited in ambush until he had a clear shot at all three men, his spells firmly in mind. Silently apologising to Severus, he sent the first spell over his shoulder and took the man behind him in the head with a conjured bludger. The other two saw the ball fly past and yelped but it was too late, even as they turned the stockier of the two caught Petrificus Totalus in the chest and fell over backwards. The third screamed as a huge grey wolf flew at his chest, and turned into a narrow eyed, vicious human with his hands around his throat.
"Give me one good reason why I shouldn't rip your head off?" Remus growled in his face.
"Because we need to ask him some questions," Severus muttered from above, his smoky voice penetrating Remus' killing rage and cooling it instantly.
"Oh Merlin, Sev, are you alright?"
Severus snorted, allowing the Veritaserum in his system to do its work. "I'll be pissing blood for a week unless there is some fancy spell work done on my kidneys but apart from that, no real damage. Get me down now! I do not appreciate being left hanging around in the altogether while you are playing with your food!"
Remus swallowed a snort of slightly hysterical laugher as he obligingly finished the spells holding his bond mate up and caught him as he slumped limply. "Hold still; let me cast an analgesic charm. Where are your potions? Here, drink this. How big a dose of Veritaserum did they give you?"
"Nothing outstanding, it was a poorly brewed batch of the old style anyway, far too heavy on the loqulia syrup and too light on the jackoman."
"Only you would dissect the poison as you drank it," Remus muttered, as he helped Severus into a chair. "What do you want done with this lot?"
"I don't think the one you hit with the bludger is good for anything and the petrified one can stay that way. So, that just leaves him. Give him a three drop dose of this," Severus handed Remus a vial and the werewolf made very sure his captive had maximum pain as he swallowed the dose. "What is your name?"
"John Maddox."
"Well, John Maddox, tell me exactly why you came after us, who hired you and why you want to know about Malfoy Industries, and any other matters you might feel are related."
The man swallowed hard but the truth serum was of Severus' own brewing and quite irresistible. "Two guys came to see the boss, they wanted us to come out here and find you two. They wanted to know what part you played in uncovering the cartel that was feeding the drugs into the British population. They wanted the recipe for the anti-Direstium drug so they could manufacture a nullifying potion and they wanted to know why Malfoy Industries was muscling in on the action; how much of a cut they were willing to settle for and how much they were willing to invest to get a share of the new distribution of wealth."
"Who are your employers?"
"I don't know. The men who came looked to be Mediterranean types but then they changed and looked like Scandinavians then they changed into Africans so no-one knew who they were."
"Accents?"
"They had English accents but the 'not posh' sort, but not Scottish."
"Who are your masters?"
"I don't know. We never see anyone; we just leave a message on a newsgroup and another newsgroup sends back a reply within twenty-four hours. It's all computers these days, no really honest work for a bunch of fives and not to mention the death of tailing skills. One tiny electronic bug and that's the end of that, it's all done by satellites. Waste of a perfectly good family tradition, if you ask me. I remember when I was a lad and me old dad used to…" The man called John Maddox began to ramble.
Remus looked at Severus, who shrugged with an air of faint embarrassment and sighed. "I can't seem to stop that happening as the damned stuff wears off. You never know what will set them off on their personal rant, but off they go, spilling their disgruntlement with the world as if they are owed an audience. I really must work on that. So, they use a newsgroup. John Maddox, what newsgroup?"
The man barely paused for breath as he rattled off the URL then continued to lament the loss of perfectly good thugging skills to random acts of electronics. If it hadn't been so serious, Remus would have been fascinated.
"What shall we do now, Sev? I knocked out two of the guys outside, killed the third, I'm afraid. Two of them were Muggles too, only one wizard and not a very powerful one at that. I broke his wand too, serves him right!"
Severus considered the reporter carefully before rising stiffly to his feet. "Obliviate the lot of them and let's get out of here," he said, carefully keeping an eye on the reporter who made a half-hearted protest against the sentence. Both men had a fair idea that he had some sort of recording device about his person so even if they obliviated him, he would still get his story. For a few moments, Severus considered finding and destroying the device but then he stopped. Perhaps it would work to their advantage for the events in the cottage to get out into the public eye. After all, the small coincidence that had poisoned his children seemed to be taking on a greater and more far reaching life than they had ever expected when they found their child had been accidentally targeted.
While Remus packed and miniaturised their belongings, Severus worked on the thugs, noting various observations into his personal remember-crystal before performing the Obliviate spell on each man. Finally, he returned to the reporter's side and sat down opposite him, crossing his legs comfortably. "I'm still not sure of your motives, Mr de Santos, but I think I will take a chance on them being purely journalistic. I am going to say this to you and you are not going to remember this until the right time." Severus leaned forward and put his lips close to the journalist's ear, speaking in a low, almost silent manner that would not be picked up by even the most sensitive charm.
Once he had given all the information he planned to, he sat back and smiled at the reporter who shivered in fear. What he had just learned hit at the very roots of his soul, resurrecting ghosts of the SVW that had almost destroyed the British wizarding world and spread its infection to Europe and beyond. "Do you truly think it may come to that?" he asked fearfully.
"Oh yes, all too easily. I saw Tom Riddle's plans from his first ascension, when he was a reasonably sane and charismatic leader. What he said made a seductive sense, still does to a certain type of mind. Believe me, if he had not have gone mad in the interim, I have no doubt he would have won the war and we would all now be hip deep in Muggle blood and bombs. Magic is all very well but in comparison to these so-called inferior beasts, we are nothing, merely amateurs playing at being bad guys. It only takes a short flick through a Muggle encyclopaedia to verify that and try a history book for the really shocking stories of atrocities. Try the Second Muggle World War as a starting point and then go on to Korea, Viet Nam and Cambodia if you really want to kill sleep forever."
"Sev, are you ready? We have to get Angelinus, don't forget," Remus called from the hallway.
Rising, Severus pulled his robes around his thin frame and looked down at the reporter with a quizzical expression. "If you want to know about the Malfoy connection, just remember that his wife is a so-called 'Mudblood' and they have children too. Obliviate!"