Chapter Sixty-Nine: In the Stocks
"And you came to me, Cousin?" Catherine glanced up from the black, glowing Muggle contraption on her desk and smiled at Lord Andrew. "I'll be with you in a moment. Just let me check a few things."
A few taps on her laptop's keyboard and Catherine knew all she needed. She had called up an email from an old friend, Caitlin Pierce, detailing the latest adventures of the 112th under the command of the illustrious and eccentric Colonel Tyler. There was even a picture of the entire squad in full uniform. With digital photo editing software, Caitlin had circled the face of Mel Watling and typed in the bizarre message:
'Friend of yours?'
Catherine knew her old friend Elena instantly. She also knew what Andrew had done to his daughter, and that she was assumed dead. The Australian Pierce was even more clever than most people realized, but more importantly, she was a member of an underground organization even more covert than the Death Eaters, even more benevolent than the Tyler brothers, and seven times as mischievous as the fabled Marauders of Hogwarts: the Train Guards. Strictly speaking, the Train Guards were a small cadre within the much larger and older Order of Friar Tuck, a long-standing society of secretive do-gooders and 'Merry Men,' named after the only wizard of Robin Hood's company. Their history, however, was even more fascinating.
In 1856, a cracksman, or lockbreaker, named Edward Pierce, together with screwsman, or key specialist Robert Agar, had contrived to rob the South Eastern Railway's London to Folkestone express train of over twenty thousand pounds in gold. It was an audacious plan, requiring over a year of planning and various preliminary thefts, or 'lays'. They had paid off the guard, a man called Burgess, whose young son was ill and in desperate need of an expensive doctor's care. They succeeded in the plan and were all eventually caught, but Pierce escaped and Agar was merely transported to Australia. Poor Burgess died of smallpox in prison a few months later, yet his children and widow were mysteriously aided, as if by unseen fairy godmothers. Pierce was an honest thief, if nothing else, and so was his mistress. Burgess' ill son grew strong and eventually became a shopkeeper, married a girl called Elizabeth Finch, and had three equally mischievous children, all of whom got mysterious letters near their eleventh birthdays, inviting them to a strange school called Hogwarts.
There was no small irony in the fact that Richard Ian Burgess, age fifty-six, was a professor at the Agar Academy, which had, naturally, been founded by the son of his great-great grandfather's old cohort in crime. The greater irony was that his only granddaughter and star pupil was descended not only from Robert Agar also on her grandmother's side, but that her father was the great-great-great grandson of Edward Pierce. Richard Ian loved little Caitlin to distraction, and was excruciatingly proud when she robbed a corrupt conglomerate company in America of seventeen million dollars by hacking and clever use of derailleur viruses to send the money directly and untraceably to a host of well-deserving charities. She was twelve. Richard Ian was the current leader of the Train Guards, who were named for his unfortunate ancestor, and who were personally more or less responsible for 'just about everything bad that happened to someone bad' in the financial world. Catherine Macnair was another prize pupil, his former apprentice, and a fellow Guard.
Consequently, when Caitlin Pierce sent an email informing her old friend and former babysitter Cathy that she was thinking the author of 'Smut Goes To Rome' and the infamous ex-hooker Mel Watling might make splendid additions to the Train Guards, Catherine was inclined to listen.
And of course, when the distant cousin who had abused her old friend Elena Marie, who had therefore become the infamous Mel Watling, arrived, asking Catherine to contribute to the vengeful torture of the author of 'Smut Goes To Rome,' Catherine was inclined to tell him to fuck off.
This she did with a flourish, calling the guards to haul him out. It was so lovely being rich.
And besides, she had rather liked the Alleghenys' book.
For her own part, Mel Watling was having a splendid time. She'd gotten a screwdriver and some other tools from the house-elves and was quite happily helping Caitlin Pierce build a treehouse.
"A treehouse?" Ron had inquired, when they had asked him to help carry the lumber they had bought at a Muggle shop and Apparated with. "Er…why?"
"Because there's going to be little kids here, Ron. The little Tyler one'd like a treehouse, eh?"
"Yeah, but the baby's not even born yet…"
"No, but Little Donaghan and that cute little Southern boy are, and there are other kids on the way, like your brothers' kids. Besides, I'm bored and I want to build a treehouse."
"Mel?" Ron looked at the taller, giggling female.
"Well, you've got to admit, she does make it sound like fun."
"I was thinking we'd put it up that big tree over there, and have a rope ladder and a zip line to the window, so the kids can get from the one bedroom right to it. See?"
"That's got to be thirty feet up… Are you mad?" Ron squinted up through the sun-filled trees and then realized Caiti was grinning.
"Precisely why I made this," she explained, unrolling a huge, nylon net with leaves and such cleverly knotted into it. "It's called jungle net. If the kids were to fall, it would catch them, but since it's very hard to see, they wouldn't know that and would therefore hang on tighter. I've drawn quite a lot of plans." She handed the rolled-up drawings to Ron, who unfurled them just as Ginny, Harry, and Luna appeared. "Hallo, guys."
"I've got the nails and screws," Ginny explained.
"What exactly are we doing?" Luna asked.
"Treehouse," Ginny explained. "Caitlin designed it and I'm in charge of extraneous faculties –that is the term, right?"
"Ginny's in charge of the fancy stuff," Mel clarified, "Like the telegraph and the lights and stuff."
"Telegraph?" Harry grinned. "Sounds like a pretty serious treehouse."
"Listen, mates, it 'ent just a treehouse. It's also an aerial defensive post, but it's designed-" Caitlin thumped the plans, "to look like a treehouse."
"What's it defending from?" Ron inquired.
"It doesn't ruddy matter what it's defending from, just so's it can defend," Pierce was beginning to look ticked. "Look, every auxiliary Aurory battery has got to have an aerial defensive post. It's code."
"Since when is the Shrieking Shack a…an auxiliary whatsit?"
"Since last week, when the UC declared that every Aurory or national fortress, or every building housing more than three hundred wizard children, must have an auxiliary battery within four hundred yards. The residence of a consenting officer will do in peacetime, so we're fixing up the Tylers' house just in case. But none of you heard that! We are building a treehouse."
"Righty-day," Luna replied cheerfully, picking up the plans. "So…may I use the saw?"
Within nine hours, one of which didn't count because the builders spent it eating sandwiches, the basic framework of an impressive, if indistinguishable treehouse had taken shape. It was indistinguishable because Caitlin insisted on building it at precisely thirty-seven and one-quarter feet up, and in those thirty-seven feet there were many leafy branches to obscure the Aerial Defensive Treehouse from ground view. There were also no less than six webs of jungle net, as Mel was a bit acrophobic in trees, and also four capture drops. Capture drops, for those who have never had the memorable experience of visiting or attempting to attack an Aerial Defensive Treehouse, are squarish bits of jungle net with weights at the edges and corners, suspended from cables that disengage on command with the flick of a switchy-thing. Their job is to drop on enemies and capture them, hence the name.
The only problem with installing the capture drops in advance was that Ginny and Luna really couldn't be trusted, and Ron and Harry were each captured when they went down for more sandwiches. The walls of the treehouse were pre-assembled on the ground at Mel's direction to Caiti's specifications, and then tugged up with a system of pulleys that had been the first hardware installed, and secured to the floor platform with screws. The battery-powered electric drill Ginny borrowed from the Shack's garage was rather a lot of help with the screws, but the jokes Ginny made about 'screwing' to Harry so violently reddened Ron that Caitlin threatened to let Luna use the nail gun. Of course, everyone wanted a turn with the nail gun, so that quieted Ginny and Harry up, except for one unfortunate and inadvertent 'nailing' pun that caused Ron to laugh at an inopportune moment, fall from the tree, and spend three minutes suspended upside-down by his foot while the others tried to get him down.
The nailing of the roof
-We, the editors, do apologize for any unfortunate mental pictures suffered from that phrase. It was not nice of us.
The process by which the nail gun was used to secure the roof took about an hour. First Ron and Harry held the flattest boards in place, then Ginny and Luna took turns nailing them down with the gun, while underneath, Mel tacked up the waterproofing and insulation. In the midst of all this furor, Caitlin wired the overhead light fixture and installed it. As soon as the insulation and inner paneling (this was one hell of an Aerial Defense Treehouse,) were in, she and Ginny did the rest of the wiring while Ron and Harry installed the windows. Mel had to show them how and direct a bit, of course, which wasn't really surprising when she explained that at her previous residence the denizens had all helped with repairs, and of course, brothels do occasionally need new windows.
The locks for the side and trap doors were spelled very interestingly. Whenever anyone recited a specific, five-line password, the closest door would open. Or, if any blood relative of John and Cass Tyler (the spell took a drop of blood from each, which Ginny got by means of a clandestine eyedropper from Hermione and Severus' Wolfsbane experiments,) used the words 'What is that?' while in the bedroom to which the zip line was connected, the door would pop open and the handlebars would thump up against the window of the house. It was really quite convenient.
The Aerial Defense Treehouse had a lot of extra stuff that an ordinary treehouse wouldn't. Electric lighting, floor and ceiling trapdoors, rope ladders, a crow's nest at the very peak of the tree, some fifty-nine feet above the ground, air-raid siren, water reservoir and a steel box of emergency rations were all standard to the Aurory's requirements. The small-caliber machine-gun emplacement, the telegraph, the Morse light, the Rausschnell strobe, the collapsible escape broom in the green steel cabinet, the capture drops, the rappelling equipment, the Omniocular Telescope and Periscope visual reconnaissance system, the arsenal of small-arms and ballistic launch weapons, the perish-proof Instant Feast magical ration fridge, and, of course, the Really Rather Splendid Company's latest selection of charmingly realistic squirt guns, were all the result of Caitlin Pierce's considerable siege training and even fiercer case of 'look what I can do' syndrome. After all, she had a nearly unlimited budget. When Cass Tyler had agreed to let Caitlin build a treehouse, she had somewhat stupidly handed over the Gringotts key that guarded 'Smut Goes To Rome' revenues from sale in Asian countries and said "Live it up." It really was the treehouse that lust and madness built.
The whole shebang was painted a dull, flat shade of dark blackish-brown that matched the tree's bark, so that even in winter the damn thing was hard to see. In addition, the jungle net was the enchanted kind that the false leaves of which turned to match the season. There were even quite a few camouflaging spells on it. Finally, the treehouse was enchanted to maintain stasis even at a distance of years, so that no matter what, no matter when, whenever it was needed, the UC Aurory Auxiliary ADB (Aerial Defense Battery) number Two-twenty-one, codenamed the Tyler-Pierce Shrieking Shack ADB (or, more candidly by Harry, the 'Treehouse of the Lost Ark,') would be ready.
And when John Tyler saw it, he laughed his werewolf head off.
"Was this Cassie's idea?"
"No. The Aurory requires…" Caitlin recited her whole rationalization speech yet again and concluded with: "So we did."
"And the machine-gun emplacement is there…why?"
"Just in case."
"So you gave his kid an Uzi, Cait. Nice." Mel rolled her eyes.
"Don't be stupid, ya slutty bint. The clashy won't even work 'thout the password."
"Clashy?" Ron asked.
"Kalashnikov." Caitlin looked around at the blank faces. "AK-50. It's the kind of gun!"
"Well, the treehouse is very nice, but…I really would feel better without a machine-gun up there. If you can't take it off, could you just…not load it?"
"No prob, General," Caitlin sighed, bending the tiny, twiglike branch at the bottom that dropped down the rope ladder. "Be back in a snap."
As soon as she was out of sight, John looked at the others who had helped. They looked at him, and at each other, and then started laughing their heads off again. From high up in the trees, an Australian-accented voice was heard:
"I can still hear you lot!"