Chapter 53: Extra Special
Draco Malfoy was very, very drunk.
He was also very, very bewitched.
Somewhere in his office, a fly was buzzing in slow, lazy circles.
He sat very still, elbows on his desk, and gazed at a bottle of Ogden's Extra Special sitting at arm's length from his nose. A spark of light glowed from the surface of the liquid within. It was absolutely entrancing. Unusually and unrealistically so, which is how he knew he was bewitched, but knowing wasn't helping him do anything about it.
It beckoned him to have a drink, with an almost overpowering urgency above and beyond the general desire that came naturally to him. For the last two hours, he had been trapped in a downward spiral of repeatedly resisting, not very successfully, for some number of minutes and then succumbing to temptation and filling his glass again. Part of the difficulty was he actually did want to. The only reason not to was because of the enchantment. Obviously whoever had cast that meant him harm. By giving in he was just falling farther into the trap whoever-it-was had set. This made it a particularly devious trap. Malfoy was impressed. Also bewitched. And drunk, it went without saying.
With an effort, he hauled his eyes away from the mesmerizing sparkle and redirected them to the far end of his office. On the corner of the last window sill, barely illuminated by the light from inside, sat Covert Ops' Fallen Hawk, asleep with his silly pigeon head under his wing.
That was the first difference Malfoy had noticed when he'd come back from speaking to Poopsie in the outer office: the fact that his Cov Ops tail had gone to sleep. In retrospect he probably should have found that a lot more alarming. Clearly somebody had not wanted any witnesses - somebody who both could identify Covert Ops agents and was powerful enough to put one under.
Somewhere in the office, the fly buzzed slowly through the air, then stopped briefly, then started up again.
One potential witness put to sleep, another left awake.
That was odd, on balance, unless of course whoever had entrapped him didn't know about the fly that had been following him around lately. That was quite possible. It had taken Malfoy a while to figure out about the fly himself and he liked to think of himself as more aware of these things than most.
Which thought then led naturally to Hermione Weasley.
She had appeared right out of midair where the fly had been today in Hogsmeade. Weasley might have unintentionally Apparated between the fly and Malfoy, blocking his view of it. But there was also the possibility that the fly had become her.
It had all happened so fast, and his memories of the event were a bit scrambled. During moments of combat action his mind moved so fast his Memoralias Charm received only chopped up impressions, and in moments of sheer panic it sometimes didn't record at all. But most people had no practical reason to learn soft Apparitions, and and this appearance of Weasley's had definitely been silent. And wouldn't being able to turn into a fly neatly explain the mystery of how she had "Disapparated" from inside St. Mungo's wards?
With annoyance, he realized he had the Ogden's bottle in his hand and was in the middle of filling the glass again.
Draco Malfoy would be the first to admit he wasn't a born businessman.
In a perfect world, and if he'd been free to run his life however he liked, his days would be spent in flying sport, leisurely afternoons with friends and family, and potions research.
But the Death Eaters had seized hold of him so early in life that such a perfect world had never had a chance. By the time of what business magazines erroneously referred to as his "earliest investment activities" – when he'd lent money to friends he knew could never pay him back in return for shares he didn't want and had promptly forgotten about – he'd already experienced enough horror and terror at the hands of the Death Eaters to last a lifetime.
By the time he really did start investing, years later, he'd been on so many raids that they all blurred together into one long nightmare. He'd committed so many atrocities for the sake of his own survival that only his oldest friends - and the ignorant - would have anything to do with him. Pansy was gone. The long line of remarriages and divorces had begun, engineered by the Inner Circle to strip him of any available assets for the cash-hungry Death Eater machine.
He'd learned the hard way that they could find a way to force him to do anything they wanted. Anything at all.
Even, as it turned out, try his hand at business.
Draco Malfoy had a small checklist he used as a matter of procedure whenever he woke up completely confused and having no idea what had just happened.
Things had, of course, progressed beyond the point where he could have simply avoided such situations.
Checklist Item #1. Where the hell am I?
After some consideration of the feeling of papers pressed against his face and the chair he was in, he decided he had woken up completely confused at his office at Batwing. That fit with a nagging sensation of having weeks if not months of work piled up and no way to really ever stop falling behind or even fully comprehend his task.
The person shaking him, therefore, was probably Poopsie.
Safe enough, he supposed, with the half-asleep logic that would allow a person to decide they didn't care whether the building was on fire or any alarms raised had just been a dream.
He descended back towards the welcoming arms of unconsciousness.
Checklist Item #2. Am I under attack?
Whack! Whack! Poopsie began to beat him about the head and shoulders with a sheaf of papers.
"Master Draco! Master Draco! Is you all right Master Draco?"
"Nnn," he mumbled, unmoving.
Checklist Item #3. Am I hurt?
He had various bumps and bruises from some altercation that had probably happened earlier in the day - nothing unusual there, sadly - and the usual aches and pains, as well as being stiff from staying still for too long. These wouldn't really hit until he started to move, though, which was a fine vote against doing that.
As he unwillingly became more awake, he noticed he was growing increasingly nauseated. Also the room was spinning in great loops despite his eyes being closed. Yes, he was definitely very drunk. But otherwise OK. Being otherwise OK was nice for a change. A rarity, one might say.
"Master Draco? Maybe yous should be going home?"
Now if only Poopsie would just leave him alone and come back in the morning.
Checklist Item #4. Am I disabled?
It would, of course, be difficult to answer this question without trying to move or open his eyes, and he wasn't sure either of those would be a good idea.
Checklist Item #5. Have my memories been tampered with?
It did not feel like it.
Checklist Item #6. Do I remember what happened to me?
No, he did not. He thought about performing a check of his Memoralias Charm, but it seemed like a lot of trouble. Plus, per Healer orders he was supposed to work diligently to raise his own memories first, as a hedge against the debilitating effects of Memoralias Charm overuse, which was way too much trouble indeed. Besides, it was fairly obvious what had happened, wasn't it? Lots of drinking had happened, not for the first time and certainly not for the last. It was truly refreshing to have such a routine type of confused awakening that he could be 100% sure that nothing was wrong.
"Okies," said Poopsie finally, dropping her sheaf of papers on the desk. "Poopsie sorry, not bother Master anymore. Poopsie assume OK to stay all night tonight and take good care of Master Draco since you's not feeling well."
"No!" blurted Malfoy hoarsely, starting up in alarm. He immediately regretted it. "Ugh."
"Poopsie will be happy to stay and give Master Draco the best of care," the elf enthused, nearly beside herself with anticipation. She patted him on the back protectively.
"The work hours laws," Malfoy enunciated valiantly, "prohibit –"
"Not as employee," Poopsie said firmly. "As friend."
Malfoy groaned. How many overnights in Azkaban had he served because of the Freed-elf's so-called friendship? Three? Or had it been four now? "But I'll get arrested," he complained.
Poopsie's ears lowered. "Only if they find out again," she said contritely.
"Of course they'll find out," growled Malfoy. "I half-expect it's you that's been telling them."
Poopsie gasped in shock. "Poopsie not tell Master's business to bad Aurors! Poopsie cannot believe Poopsie's ears! How can Master even think Poopsie do such an awful thing!"
Malfoy drew a deep breath, then immediately regretted that too. "Erk... fine... look... just go home. Forget I said that."
"But Master needs – "
"Go home Poopsie!" he barked sternly.
"Yes Master," said Poopsie in reflexive obedience. A moment later, she had vanished with a loud BANG.
Malfoy dropped his elbows to his desk and his head into his hands.
A bottle of Ogden's sat directly in front of him on the desk.
After a long, long moment, he noticed that the green liquid within was winking at him.
From his point of view, Draco Malfoy's first intentional foray into business investment could best be described as very surreal from beginning to end.
At the time, he'd only known two things about this type of investing: it was a way to generate massive amounts of wealth, and it was a good idea to hire an expert rather than dabbling oneself.
And so he did his research and hired the best Investment Wizards available, then instructed them to do whatever they did, in such a way as to keep the Inner Circle's rapacious support demands satisfied. The Investment Wizards assured him that they would handle everything. True to their word, they did not trouble him again, functioning quite independantly and leaving him to get on with his other responsibilities.
Here is what they were doing, unbeknownst to him: First they quietly hired their own Investment Wizards, all over the world, and those Investment Wizards hired their own – some of whom were not wizards at all, but their Muggle equivalents.
Then they all began to merrily hide money away in private equity funds, in government bonds, in foreign investments, and in the Muggle world. Agents Malfoy had no idea he was connected with created entity after entity, disguising the ownership of all but the particular assets the Inner Circle were meant to harvest under layers of holding companies owning other holding companies. Holding companies took out insurance on the stock performance of other holding companies. Insurance companies took out insurance on the stock performance of other insurance companies.
Stock market money, which everybody cheerfully assured Malfoy was purely theoretical money unbacked by gold or land or anything else for that matter, was generated in ludicrous quantities that far outstripped his initial investment. An equally perplexing amount of this stock market money was duly stripped from him every few years by divorce. None of it was visible to, or spendable by, Malfoy himself. None of it was even in his name.
His family's long term lawyers and personal accountants were quite comfortable with all of this, particularly those younger ones conversant with both the Muggle and Wizarding worlds, although they were never able to explain it to him in a way he could understand – which Malfoy had a creeping suspicion meant they didn't actually understand it themselves. The whole thing felt like a group hallucination everybody could see except for him.
When the government finally closed in on him, and he was hauled before the Wizengamot for "Muggle economic monopoly building" – whatever in Merlin's flaming red bollocks that was – he had the unique experience of being accused of a crime no pureblooded witch or wizard had ever heard of, against make believe entities and using make believe money, even though he'd done none of it himself, knew nothing about it, and was separated from it by layers of Investment Wizards so deep it'd take a Gringotts mine cart to access them all.
Most surreal of all, nearly everybody in the Wizarding world now thought of him primarily as a businessman. After all the terrible things he'd done, the supposed crime of having erected a "Muggle economic monopoly building" was what the youngest generation believed him infamous for.
Draco Malfoy's checklist was stored on a minute Knowitall Ball that Sibyll Trelawney had thoughtfully installed for him among the sapphires on his neck chain. No larger than a bead, it couldn't hold much, but it would always be there and the six tiny reminders it contained had repeatedly proved invaluable.
Checklist Item #1. Where the hell am I?
Malfoy was in his office at Batwing. He was slumped against his desk with his head in his hands, braced with his elbows. He had the idea that he had just got done dropping his head on the desk and picking himself up again in a drunken half-daze.
Checklist Item #2. Am I under attack?
"Stupefy!" a witch's voice hissed from directly behind him. At the distance she couldn't miss. He collapsed solidly against the desk. After a moment, he tilted sideways and slumped out of his chair, dragging most of what was on the corner of the desk to land on the floor with a loud crash. His vision flashed white as the bone-jarring impact sent agony through imperfectly-healed ribs.
Checklist Item #3. Am I hurt?
Surprise, adrenaline, and last night's combat drugs struck him all at once like a blow to the gut. Malfoy's mind reeled, and his heart began to pound fearfully hard, each breath like an ice pick in his side. He struggled to focus on the scuffs and movements behind him, tried to identify his attacker or at least her position and what she was doing.
Item #4. Am I disabled?
One Stupefy hasn't made sure of this fellow in years, Nesbitt had said.
For God's sake, thought Malfoy. Leave it at one!
Item #5. Have my memories been tampered with?
It did not feel like it.
Item #6. Do I remember what happened to me?
Now that he was properly motivated, it was the work of moments to check the Memoralias Charm and rediscover what had happened thus far: the bewitched liquor, the sleeping Cov Ops Agent his knowing he was in a trap. Then there was the awakening by Poopsie, the sending home of Poopsie – conveniently getting rid of another potential witness – and his failing to check his Memoralias Charm thus not realizing he was in the middle of falling into a trap. Apparently, said trap was now fully sprung. While he was more conscious than she knew, the combination of alcohol and Stupefy wasn't going to let him do anything to stop the witch.
Technically, Malfoy was supposed to try to recover these things from his own memory first. And he would, he vowed, as soon as he got a chance. Right at the moment, however, he had bigger issues to worry about.
His attacker had quickly knelt beside him and started feeling around his right shoulder then down his arm. He was lying on the arm, and when she tried to lift him she was unable to do so. Partly because he was perfectly limp, but also, Malfoy knew, because everybody routinely expected him to be more of a lightweight than he really was.
He heard the whisper of cloth on wood as she drew her wand again, perhaps to try to levitate him. But then, she froze as someone's voice sounded distinctly from down the hall.
"What was that?"
It was Gina White. He'd given her a choice between Beverly Shortwater's job at the front desk or a promotion to work on the second floor, and told Human Resources to handle it. Apparently she'd chosen the latter.
"I think it came from Malfoy's office," said a second voice now. This was Mrs. Chatworth, who'd been Emmerich Batton's administrative assistant. That dragon-lady had been commanding the second floor for years, but had fought Malfoy's running of the company tooth and nail. He'd been forced to install Poopsie as a buffer between them just to get some breathing room. "I'll go check on him," decided Chatworth. She didn't sound too thrilled about having volunteered, but a short time later there came a sound of high-heels clicking on the hallway floor. Malfoy felt his attacker's hands leave him. A moment later, he heard a fly buzz up from behind him and away into the back of the room.
The fly, he realized, and his attacker were one and the same.
That eliminated Covert Ops as the identity of the fly, he should think. Unless their protocols now included procedures for knocking each other out and leaving each other unconscious on high window sills.
Mrs. Chatworth arrived in the room and stopped. "Oh, for the love of –" she began. He pictured her surveying the scene, middle-aged and starchy with an expression of severe disapproval. She'd hated him on sight when they first met years ago, and even more now that he owned the company.
Help, he thought.
Mrs. Chatworth click-clacked closer and stood directly over him. "Of all the –" she said. He heard her pick up the bottle of Ogden's Extra Special, sigh in disgust, then replace it on the desk. Then she crouched down beside him, knees no doubt pressed primly together, and lips pressed together even harder. She was the type who would find dealing with this situation both a supreme imposition and also her duty.
"Mister Malfoy sir," she said, giving his shoulder a little shake. She waited a moment, then tried again.
Then, she rose and click-clacked out of the office again.
The fly buzzed back down again.
A pause.
Then his attacker's hands were back, grabbing at him, pushed him hard, yanking repeatedly on his trapped arm until his hand was freed.
Animagus, he decided. There were, after all, only a few Auror transfigurators who were cleared to use insect forms, and none of those could switch back and forth multiple times as fast as this witch was doing. And no civilian could outdo them. He hadn't known if there were for sure any other insect animagi in the world besides Rita Skeeter, but obviously there was at least one. He wondered if that ruled out Hermione Weasley. He would have believed her capable of fancy transfigurations, but it was a little more difficult to see five kids like hers successfully keeping an Animagus mother a secret.
He tried to decide if his vague idea that she had appeared in Hogsmeade without a wand initially in hand was legitimate, or an artifact of the broken up quality of the Memoralias recording of those moments.
"He's passed out," Malfoy heard Mrs. Chatworth saying in the other room. "It looks like he'd been drinking."
"Well is he all right?" asked Gina White.
"I'm not sure… but he shouldn't be on the floor at any rate. Can you conjure a couch?"
"Maybe. Haven't had to do it since my college days but they say it's like riding a bicycle."
"You can never forget how?"
"Er… no, the wand motion. Like this… "
"Ahh… I see."
Stress or the need for haste was making his attacker's fingers clumsy. The hands groped around his freed wrist and at first he thought they were going for his wand. But they felt past his wand sheath and found the Time Turner instead, trying to untangle its fine chain even as two pairs of high heels sounded out in the hallway, Chatworth and White coming nearer. His assailant gave up subtlety and jerked hard on the chain, trying to snap it, but it had been charmed against breakage.
As the two office ladies walked back in, the Animagus shifted into fly form and darted away in the nick of time, landing somewhere very nearby. He tried to guess where by the sound and the angle. The legwell of the desk perhaps, hidden in the shadows where his employees would never see her.
His wrist stung where the sawing chain had gnawed at his flesh. He could feel a cold line forming where a tiny bit of blood beaded, exposed to the night air.
"Omigod," said Gina White.
"Indeed," said Mrs. Chatworth.
They clattered around the desk and stood over him, their presence the only thing between him and whatever-it-was the witch who'd trapped him had planned. He supposed it was possible she was only after the Time Turner, but he wasn't the sort of person common thieves attempted to roll for his valuables, even the magical ones. He was pretty sure he'd learn her full intentions sooner than he wanted to in any case.
"Ahem," said Gina White, clearing her throat. And then: "Bouncy jouncy, lumpy bumpy, couchy wouch all schlumpy dumpy!"
There came a new and large presence in the room, a subtle thump and change in pressure.
There was a long, long silence.
"Well, it won't win any beauty contests," said Mrs. Chatworth.
There was a second pause.
"It's pretty bad, isn't it," admitted Gina White. "But I don't think he will notice, at least not right away. And if he doesn't like it, he can magic it away himself when he's ready to."
"If it doesn't vanish and dump him on the floor long before he wakes," added Mrs. Chatworth, who probably would have been secretly happy to see that happen.
Malfoy felt himself levitated up and then lowered onto the newly created couch. It was, indeed, lumpy and bumpy. The wand was put away, and then they busied themselves for some moments arranging him into the safe position for drunks.
His back itched where the Stupefy had marked him. It wouldn't be visible through his robes, though, or White and Chatworth might have noticed.
He let out a mental sigh.
It had taken two years for the legions of his Investment Wizards to finish the orderly dismemberment of Hartford Strategic Group, the business entity whose creation had precipitated the "Muggle economic monpoly building" debacle.
First it had to be divided into portions small enough to satisfy the Muggle authorities, the Ministry, and the Wizengamot. Then, all but one of the "baby Hartfords" had to be sold off. The Inner Circle, for their part, demanded that each be sold to a Death Eater affiliated family, with which instruction Malfoy duly complied. It caused a good deal of wailing among his many Investment Wizards, since they could have gotten more fake money for the parts if they'd been able to pick from all available buyers.
During that process, Malfoy enjoyed two years of much-needed relief from the soul-sucking emotional drain of unwanted marriages. He still had to go through the motions of "courting" the potential future brides, when and as ordered, but at least the Inner Circle had not yet insisted upon another committment.
Although the courts had permitted Malfoy to retain one part of the broken-up company, this too ended up being sold in order to cover the eye-poppingly large legal expenses he'd incurred with Blitzkreig & Ramhomme in the course of his defense. Malfoy naturally assumed this brought him back to square one investments-wise.
It was with considerable suspicion, not to mention confusion, that Malfoy greeted his Investment Wizards' claim that the majority of his holdings had not, in fact, been affected by the "Muggle economic monopoly building" disaster at all. Hartford Strategic Group had encompassed only those holdings which the Death Eaters were to know about and draw upon. The rest had been untouched, and indeed, unnoticed by the governments of both worlds. The Investment Wizards explained that this was excellent news, and meant he'd hardly lost anything at all, though they weren't able to explain exactly why this was so, or indeed where all this money was, since it didn't really exist.
Around that same time, Malfoy's son Salazar presented him with a tiny red plastic house, which he had on good authority from a 5th year Ravenclaw was an actual "Muggle monopoly building". He, too, had been wondering what one was. It turned out such a building was simply a token used to represent wealth when Muggles played games regarding finances.
In other words, Malfoy was given to understand, in addition to being accused of a crime no pureblooded witch or wizard had ever heard of, against make believe entities and using make believe money, none of which he'd done himself or known about, and then being punished by being made to give up a small portion of these non-existent companies and monies, which everybody considered a terrible blow to him, and took very seriously, the whole thing had actually been part of an elaborate game.
This was more than moderately annoying, but if it was what the Inner Circle wanted of him, there was nothing he could do about it. And since the little red house was the only physical evidence he had to show for what the last of his portable wealth had bought, and besides Salazar had gone to the trouble of casting a Luck charm on it for him, he placed it in a drawer for safekeeping.
On the subject of the stock market itself, and the rest of business investing for that matter, Malfoy simply gave up trying to understand.
Item #1. Where the hell am I?
Item #2. Am I under attack?
Item #3. Am I hurt?
Item #4. Am I disabled?
Malfoy jolted conscious with the horrible feeling of fresh adrenaline and decaying, hours-old combat drugs slamming into him.
With a gasp he tried to leap up, to seize his wand, but he was completely immobilized! Pain shot through his torso as he tried to writhe, but found himself pinned in place like a bug. Panic, his lifelong nemesis, struck at him.
And now something was sliding over his skin, something powerful and sinuous like a snake, or twining vines. There was a burning spot on his back that might have been the mark of a not-so-new, but still active Stupefy. His breath hissed shallowly in and out and he concentrated desperately on not hyperventilating as he felt coils forming around his neck, his wrists, something very like thorns digging in. Vines, then. And still he could not move. Nor could he open his eyes.
Item #5. Have my memories been tampered with?
It didn't feel like it.
Item #6. Do I remember what happened to me?
As the vines compressed him firmly against a lumpy surface, he clawed through the contents of his Memoralias Charm and found something recent and possibly relevant about having been Stupefied by an unknown fly animagus witch trying to steal his Time Turner. With a supreme effort, he forced himself to slow down and analyze the contents of the Charm's most recent recordings, refreshing his memory regarding details such as Cov Ops Agent Fallen Hawk asleep on the window sill, and the enchantment on the Ogden's Extra Special.
For some reason, none of this was making not-panicking any easier.
And then hands touched him.
He froze, scarcely daring to even breathe. An agony of seconds ticked by as fingers patted slowly over his arm. They found the Time Turner's minute golden chain and untwined it from around his wrist, chain sliding roughly over a scabbed cut. The witch was much more relaxed, now, taking her time and being methodical. She must have accounted for anybody else who could witness. He wondered if Gina White and Mrs. Chatworth had been disabled also, or if they had gone home. He wondered how much time had passed.
Next, the witch's fingers slid the Wanmaker wand out of his wrist sheath. They moved up to his chest holster and fiddled with that until found the trigger that made his daughter's wand leap out of it. He heard the wands being placed on the floor nearby.
With some effort, he forced himself to breathe evenly. Whatever this witch had in mind, it clearly involved more than just the Time Turner. He listened to her rummaging through what sounded like a purse or sack of some sort.
Then the eye-wateringly pungent stench of an elephant-piss Pensieve.
"Ah, there it is," said the witch.
With a shock, he recognized Hermione Weasley's voice.
Item #1. Where the hell am I?
He was trapped, tightly bound against an unrecognizeable and very oddly textured surface. He had just awakened from a... faint?
Item #2. Am I under attack?
Someone was sitting beside him and unbuttoning his robe, feeling around in a manner that suggested a search for the Memoralias Charm. Elephant Piss assailed his nostrils, suggesting that a short-order Pensieve was nearby, the sort that only records the crudest of details but can be thrown together in less than a day by someone with sufficient skill. A reasonable assumption would be that he was, indeed, under attack. Years of experience with memory thefts made him throttle his emotions, instinctively divorcing his mind from them in preparation for an Occlumency defense.
Item #3. Am I hurt?
No more than usual.
Item #4. Am I disabled?
Most assuredly.
Item #5. Have my memories been tampered with?
Not yet.
Item #6. Do I remember what happened to me?
Malfoy connected furtively with the Memoralias Charm, ready to shy away the moment whoever-it-was made skin contact with the device. In a few brief moments, he discovered that his attacker was Hermione Weasley, and that she'd already taken his Time Turner. He took precious seconds to study the details of how she'd gotten the better of him tonight, then checked back to their encounter earlier in the day.
Instantly he realized what must have happened: Fearing he must have seen her transform from a fly at Hogsmeade, since she'd done it right in front of him, she had devised this plan to rob him of any proof of her Animagus form. It wouldn't matter that her quick-and-dirty Pensieve lacked the fidelity to play the stolen memories back accurately – the important thing is that they'd no longer be his.
Not for the first time, Malfoy felt undeniable respect for her magical abilities mix stomach-turningly with disgust at her insistence on identifying as a mudblood. He appreciated the strategic thinking that had prevented her being outed as an animagus for all these years, and her clever entrapment of him, but was disgusted by the pointlessness of her mostly-wasted life.
She got the robe unbuttoned enough to find the Memoralias Charm's chain and pull it up and out into the air. As she tugged, he instinctively withdrew from the device, severing his connection to it so that whatever she did to the Charm should not affect his own memories also.
What Weasley probably didn't understand was that erasing the proof in someone's memories did not erase the beliefs that had formed because of those experiences. It did not even erase one's knowledge that one should have remembered whatever-it-was that was missing. And after years of having the nightly raids stripped out of his Memoralias Charm by the Inner Circle shortly after each one occurred, he was an old hand at simply believing what he believed and to the devil with proof.
Of course, she could still create a good deal of havoc in and do a good deal of damage to the Charm, and he could only guess at what she even planned. Fortunately, he was more than Occlumens enough to protect his own memories, and conscious enough to do so. As an additional precaution, as her wand clicked onto the crystal surface of the Charm, he carefully stopped acknowledging what was being done. He did not acknowledge whether that something would have been wanted or unwanted, or indeed, who he'd observed doing it.
He thought, in fact, very carefully of nothing at all.