Harry was sitting at a wrought iron table under an awning on the sidewalk in front of a Korean restaurant in Chinatown, red-faced and sweating from the hot barbeque that he was eating.

"Potter! There you are."

A terribly scarred man with an eyepatch, dressed almost exactly like him, slid into the seat across from him.

"I'm Alastor Moody of the Aurors office. Lots of people are looking for you, young man, and I've been sent to find you by a variety of interested parties, chiefly Dumbledore and Madame Bones."

Harry swallowed, drank more Pepsi, wiped at his streaming nose and eyes with a paper napkin and then gasped out, "It's so hot! I think it may be burning my taste buds off, but it's too good to stop eating!"

Alastor started to grin and then frowned suspiciously, his hand passing through the gun flap of his coat to grip the hidden wand. "What happened to your scar, Potter?" His voice roughened with suspicion. "Who are you?"

"Still just me." Harry wiped his hands and pushed his hair back to show off his now-completely- normal forehead, with only a lighter patch to denote the brand new skin. "I had that stupid scar off at Gringotts. Their infirmary is great." He looked closely at the man's brutally scarred face.

"That was a curse scar. Those can't be healed." Moody was still suspicious, but he wasn't pulling the wand.

Harry grinned, delighted to be able to help a fellow curse victim. "They can't be healed with magic. Curse breakers and goblins go to real doctors that know how to use more than just magic. Healer McTavish said that cursed wounds only get worse when you put more magic on or near them. They use a ritual to transfer the curse to something else, then just get rid of the residue. He used a scalpel to cut away the cursed skin of my scar and milled away the layer of cursed bone that was under it with a little electric drill motor and a knurled bit."

Moody was interested. "It makes sense, but I can't see how the healing worked. Magical healing works by aura-following, and the curse damages the aura pattern."

Harry nodded. "The muggles call it plastic surgery, but the healer said that when you add magic it's even better. The aura follows the physical pattern, and once the cursed bits are gone, fixing the looks will fix the aura. They filled in the bone-divot in my skull with a paste made of conjured bone powder and skelegrow. The skin on my forehead was grown in from the edges until there was enough to pull over and glue together. I don't really understand why, but once it looked normal the aura went back to normal and then the damage could be magically healed. You really ought to see about asking Healer McTavish if he can help you, Mister Moody."

Moody rubbed at his chin, one of his few unscarred areas. Saint Mungo's had done what they could for him, but there just weren't that many dedicated magical healers. Every one of them was a pureblood, selected for apprenticeship through the Healers Guild and would know nothing of an electric tool. He had never thought that there might be anyone better. "Maybe I'll talk to Gringotts. Sounds a mite dangerous walking about with a hole in your head though. What if someone hits you with a finite?"

Harry shrugged. "It's not all the way through and it's already partially replaced, so it wouldn't be so bad. We could have used straight skelegrow, and had it done already but the healer said that it would be good as new without the itching by tomorrow. Want to try some barbecue?" Harry's tongue was no longer on fire so he wanted to go back to his eating.

"Not a chance. It even looks like petrified hellfire, but don't let me stop you in your folly." Chuckling, Moody signaled the waitress and ordered tea, ignoring the menu. "Now that I've found you, are you ready to go back to Hogwarts?"

Harry started to sweat again. He took another drink of his Pepsi. "No. I have something scheduled for tomorrow and Ragnok wants to see me after."

Dumbledore had stressed the danger that the boy was in and the necessity of returning him to Hogwarts, but Moody had bumped into Arthur Weasley at the Ministry canteen and gotten more of the story. He wasn't about to try and argue about the proper treatment for a basilisk bite. "In that case, do you mind a bodyguard? I'm sure that Madame Bones would insist."

Harry considered this. "Malfoy is dead, Tom is worse than dead, so why would anyone be worrying about me right now? I don't think that I need one."

"Lucius Malfoy?" Moody leaned forward hungrily at Harry's nod, his remaining eye narrowing. "What makes you think that Malfoy is dead?"

Harry chewed determinedly, not willing for his good barbeque to get cold over the likes of Malfoy. Swallowing, he sucked in air, chugged Pepsi and wiped at the sweat. "Some goblins told me that he was dead. They keep a ledger that tells them when the vault key goes inactive."

Moody leaned back, shocked that the goblins had shared information. He accepted his tea from the pretty waitress, declined any food and thought furiously through the ramifications.

If true, this news presented a grand opportunity to take down the organized crime that had funded Voldemort and flourished in his absence with the connivance of certain Wizengamot members. Without their delaying tactics and Malfoy's hired proxies to mobilize a political defense, Auror Command could burn the whole infection out at once. With any luck the scum could be played so hard that they would be induced to turn on each other. With no higher-ups to stiffen their cowardly spines it could be done, getting things back to a long-forgotten normal. The greater scum in the Wizengamot that had been on Malfoy's payroll could then be picked apart one at a time, with no one at hand to rescue them.

Fixing the boy with his eye, Moody demanded, "Who is this 'Tom?"

"Voldemort. His real name is 'Tom Marvolo Riddle,' or it was when he was properly alive. It's a jumble for 'I am Lord Voldemort.' He's just a horcrux now and I killed another piece of him down in the chamber along with the snake." Stolidly, Harry continued eating, determined not to let hate for the pillock ruin his meal.

Moody found himself laboring to control a monumental flash of rage, not allowing it to show on his face. Dumbledore was at it again, the same useless bumbling do-good shit that he had pulled on them during the last go-round, letting everyone stumble about in the dark and get themselves killed while the Great Leader hoarded vital intelligence and dithered ineffectually over his Secret Master Plan. Dumbledore was a very powerful wizard and amazing at transfiguration, but he was also a dyed in the wool pacifist, which made him an awful leader.

Controlling his voice, Moody nodded. "Fair enough, but you never know what goes on in a Death Eater's head when something significant happens. Several families were attacked immediately after your mother saw Voldemort off. Better safe than sorry, lad."

Harry, slowly masticating his last sweet and burning hot chunk of spicy Korean heaven, shrugged unenthusiastically. He had money in his pocket and no one standing over him to tell him 'no' for the first time ever and he desperately wanted to run wild in London. This was Harry's chance to forget about Dursleys, snakes, Tom Riddle and the whole rotten horcrux mess without this cyclopean horror stumping along after him, scaring everyone with his evil glare.

Moody read the dubious look and chuckled. "Don't worry, lad, I don't mean me. I've work to do. No, a young lady is the only thing for a proper evening on the town."

Harry swallowed, finished his Pepsi, burped and winced as the vicious Korean spices blew out of his nose. Snorting air, he gasped, sneezed into his napkin and spread the fiery miasma throughout his sinus cavity, multiplying the pain until he knew for a fact that it hurt worse than a basilisk bite. Blinking back spicy burning tears, he swallowed a sob. "What young lady?"

"You'll see." Moody pulled out a long thin notepad, flipped it open, laid it on the table and scribbled something on it.

Harry blanched through his suddenly-cold sweat when the writing seemed to be absorbed by the page, and what seemed to be an answer appeared. "What is that?" His wand was in his hand by itself.

"An auror's notepad. My trainee has one just like it. The Protean Charm causes my writing to appear in her pad and hers on mine. Why do you ask?" Moody's magical eye, hidden behind its patch, hadn't missed the wand under the table.

"Riddle's horcrux was a diary. It acted just like that whenever someone wrote in it. It would write back, just like that, but then it would possess the writer, eat their magic and try to resurrect itself as Voldemort." Harry put his wand away.

"You don't say." Moody glowered uneasily at the notepad. "The hair is fine, much less noticeable, but we'd better get something to hide your face."

lf

Harry was a little surprised when Moody led him back to the Leaky Cauldron, but was too distracted admiring the spiffy fedora hat that Moody had transfigured from a paper cup to worry about it. His glasses had been transfigured into black wraparounds that hid his eyes and it all looked very cool with the coat reflected in the windows, awesomely secret agent-ish. Following the old man through the door, he saw that the bar traffic had picked up considerably. They were immediately noticed and there was a general laugh.

"Oy, Moody! I didn't know that ye had a sprog!"

"Piss off!" Moody sent a malevolent glare the barman's way.

Harry couldn't help his giggle. The old man was fiercely paranoid, but his idea of a muggle disguise had become rather dated. He did look a bit like a shrunken Moody. Sort of a mini 1955 era Special Branch inspector.

Moody led Harry into a small private dining chamber where a pretty young woman waited in nondescript brown robes. "Potter, this is Auror Trainee Nymphadora Tonks. Tonks, meet Harry Potter."

"Hello, Harry." Tonks stood smiling at him. "I saw you sorted. I was a seventh year."

"Hello. I remember you in Hufflepuff, but with bright pink hair." Harry blinked as the woman's hair instantly turned pink. "How do you do that?"

"I'm a metamorphamagnus." She wrinkled her nose and the hair grew out longer. "I can change my body any way that I want."

"Wicked!" Harry immediately thought of his own hair, wondering again if it would grow out overnight. "Can just anyone learn how to do that?"

"It's quite a rare talent." Tonks grinned. "It's usually associated with the Black family. Mum was a Black."

"So was my Grand-Mum! Her name was Astrid." Harry gave her a shy smile, happy to finally be able to claim a grandmother. Petunia had never mentioned her mother or father in his hearing and there were no pictures of them in the Dursley household. He had never felt connected to anyone, anywhere.

Tonks nodded. "I know. I'm your second cousin, once removed."

"Really?" Harry hadn't ever thought that he might have any magical relatives.

"You two can get acquainted out in London," interrupted Moody. "Get on with it, Tonks."

Tonks nodded, then stepped into the attached loo, closing the door.

After a moment Harry asked, "So what's the plan?" He rather wished that he'd declined Moody's offer but suspected that would have had him back to Hogwarts.

Moody flicked a glance toward the door. "Wait."

Harry turned his head to look just as the door opened. A girl that he didn't recognize stepped out, about thirteen, half a head taller than him and gangly, but dressed completely muggle. It took him a second to place the younger features. "Is that you?"

She grinned at him. "You can never be sure."

"Best you two be out of here before the barflies start to speculate," interrupted Moody. "It wouldn't do to have someone hit on the truth by accident. I'll leave the room first. Give me a five count or until I start shouting and then step out. You'll turn toward the door at once, Potter, and hold your hat like you're just putting it on. Try to keep anyone from getting a good look at your face. Do NOT look toward the bar, no matter what you hear. Tonks will be right behind you, walking so that she obstructs the view of any interested parties. Got that?" Moody was in a hurry, but this had to be done right.

Harry nodded. He was well used to sneaking about Little Whinging, taking pains to not be noticed.

"What are you going to do?" Moody was watching the entrance area through the wall with his magical eye.

"Keep my face concealed and turned away from the bar while walking quickly out of the door. Not be seen. Let you and N-

"Call me Tonks," she interrupted.

"Tonks,' make a diversion and keep me screened." Harry wondered why Moody hadn't just had her meet them outside somewhere. He would have to bet that the old man had cast something on him. Too bad for Moody that it would come off when he visited Ragnok tomorrow.

"Right then, let's go." Moody gave them a sharp look and then stepped out.

The old auror stepped out and Harry heard him start shouting at someone named 'Fletcher.' Holding his hat to cover the profile facing the bar, Harry strode quickly out.

lf

"So where did you want to go on our date?" Tonks was impressed with Harry Potter so far. He seemed to be quick and mentally flexible, executing the plan flawlessly. Most wizards attempting stealth would have made their exit sputtering and casting multiple wide eyed stares at the bar, while running into the walls, tripping over their own feet and generally making an atrocious spectacle of themselves.

Harry shrugged. "Dunno. I'm not really doing anything, just walking about and taking a day off from magic. I've already got new clothes and a watch, so that part's done. Been buying presents for my friends and exploring."

Tonks took his arm to better blend in. "Sounds divine. Have you been to Soho? The record shops are brilliant!"

"I don't have a record player." He thought about it. "I suppose that I could get one. Maybe something with a radio." In fact he could get a telly if he really wanted one, but he had nowhere to put it.

"They have cassette tapes too." Tonks was a little surprised that he didn't already have these common items. Harry didn't come off as one of those sad medievalists raised by the delusional sort of pureblood that tried to ignore the greater world around them.

"You should get yourself a Walkman! They're brilliant! I can show you some runes that you can put on the batteries to keep them working around magic. It charges them up so they last forever! Hogwarts wards will keep a radio from working and Dumbledore put a ward up to silence electrically amplified voices, but earphones work. CD players skip about and the digital microprocessors can get wonky around magic, but cassette tapes are brilliant for running, enduring Binns and the like." She grinned at him. "The shops have listening booths! I used to go in the summer and listen half the day!" She hadn't been able to get away to revisit any of her haunts since beginning her training and so she was rather keen on some time off from magic too.

"I'd like that." Harry allowed himself to be pulled along in an enthusiastic rush and realized that Moody was right. A young lady was just the thing for an evening on the town.

lf

It was rather dark by the time they left the theatre district.

"Oh, Harry. The show was so romantic." Tonks stared soulfully into his eyes, took his arm and wet her lips as she leaned in slowly, romantically and then treacherously bit a large piece out of his much-savored soft pretzel.

Harry goggled for an unbelieving split second and then laughed until he staggered on weak legs and she had to hold him up. "Moody was right. I wouldn't have had half the fun without you dragging me into places like that."

Tonks swallowed and grinned merrily at him. "Me neither. You're a right good date, Harry, best I've had in months even if you do look a bit nineteen fifties."

Harry shrugged. "Well you're a pretzel snatching cow that can look any way she likes and nineteen fifties is better than third century. You'd think in a world with dragons that they would want to wear something that they can run in, but no, let's all wear dresses! This coat has a flap for reaching through for my wand! If I can find some thread and a needle, I'll sew in a wand pocket and maybe get a spare. I wonder if I can get away with wearing it at Hogwarts?"

"You really are a mini-Moody. You know how to sew by hand?" Tonks was surprised by this.

"I do all right." Harry lost some of his good cheer at the thought of how he'd learned, which led to his relatives and the fact that he would soon be stuck at Number Four playing house-elf for intolerable muggles. "I taught myself with some old mending kits that the Dursleys binned." It had given him something to do in the cupboard and he had learned to do it well, but he'd never had a proper thimble or a decent pair of scissors and matching thread was very hard to come by.

"There are all kinds of mending spells you know. Who are these Dursleys?" Tonks had been repeatedly told that he had grown up with his family.

Harry knew those spells and didn't trust them since the Thief's Downfall had washed them away so easily. He had to wonder if that wasn't why the wizards stubbornly kept to their sack-like robes. They wouldn't want to be left standing there bare-assed when the dodgy spells on their magical trousers inevitably came apart.

"The Dursleys are my mum's sister and her family." Harry frowned. "They are very normal muggles and we never got on."

Woken from his day of fun to cruel reality, he looked at his new watch, cheered a little by the bright tritium glow. "Probably can't expect to stay in Gringott's infirmary tonight, so I suppose that I should try to find someplace to sleep. Do you think that a hotel would rent me a room for cash?" It would be much cheaper to pay somewhere in sterling than spending good hard galleons at the Cauldron like a fool.

Troubled by what he'd said, Tonks spun him to face her. "You don't need a room! I'm supposed to guard you, Harry, and it will be much easier to do that if you just stay the night in my flat."

"You have a flat?" Harry thought that she seemed curiously thrilled to make the offer. It was hard to keep in mind that she wasn't really just another kid out on a lark. "Thank you, Tonks."

"It's in Mayfair. I just got it furnished, but with Moody as my training officer there hasn't been time to sleep there yet. You'll be the first visitor that I've had over besides Mum and Dad helping with the furniture and the wards." Tonks scowled ferociously. "And that bloody old man, tracking me down on my one day off and attacking while I'm on the toilet! I've decent wards now, Harry."

Harry bit off a guffaw. "Sounds posh."

"It is posh for a single muggle girl, but not for a witch." Tonks took his arm again and started walking. "You see, Harry, for all that you get the mad old shut-ins going about wearing top-hats and boiler suits, there really isn't that much to the British 'magical world.' There are only a few thousand of us in the isles that take any notice of the rest. The alleys, Hogsmeade, Godric's Hollow and a few other tiny remote villages and city enclaves are the only magical communities. The rest live wherever, most within wards that no one else knows about."

"I had no idea." Harry frowned. "So the Ministry doesn't actually control everything?"

Tonks shrugged. "We try, but there are plenty of magical folk, some on the 'iffy' side of human, that care nothing for the Ministry. So long as they don't carry wands or draw attention they're left alone. Wands are expensive and so is Hogwarts and many, especially in Wales, don't trust 'English' wizards. They pass down their family magic and prefer to live as so-called 'muggles,' carrying on as they have for centuries."

Harry nodded thoughtfully. "And they can't make wands? It's a stick and a feather. There have to be more wand makers than Olivander."

Tonks smiled. "There is a little more to it than that, but a wand maker can't publicly sell without a license, only give them away and each wand has to be registered. Most of the Ministry's job is to keep the secret by controlling wand makers. Poor old Ollivander can't take a vacation without being watched all the way."

Harry shook his head. "So why Mayfair? Why not Hogsmeade or someplace like that? I would think that someone would set up a block of flats and with the flue distance doesn't really matter."

"It's a fine thing to live in a recognized magical village, but only if you're lucky enough to inherit a home like you did. Renting from a magical person can bind you in servitude or if you're significantly more powerful than the landlord it can transfer the wards and thus the property to you from the landlord. Not a good thing for either party." Tonks laughed.

"The house is still there?" Harry was very interested. If he had a place to go then he could just forget about the Dursleys.

"The Potter cottage has stood in Godric's Hollow for centuries. The Ministry's put up a tacky monument and the ruin has been magically preserved from the weather and looters, but it's going to need half a roof and part of the back wall for starters. I think that the Potters may have had a country house somewhere too, but I'm not sure." Tonks laid a hand on his shoulder. "I can ask my Mum or Mad Eye, if you'd like."

Harry gave her a grateful nod. "Yes, please, I'd like that very much, but how exactly could renting an apartment bind you in servitude?" Here was another common hazard, like magical diseases, that he was just now hearing about.

"Magic isn't very precise and magical contracts are almost alive. Getting caught up in one can be terrifying. A contract can turn your own magic against you if you fulfill the conditions of consent and that's dead easy to do by accident. Ward schema and runic magical constructs are slightly less dangerous, but they are enough like magical contracts that they can catch you up if you're not bloody careful. Even if you are, they can and will go wrong. Their definitions constitute a sort of variable contract, one that can be invoked by anyone incautious enough to blunder into their area of effect and accidentally feed it a little of their magic or fulfill a condition. Aurors aren't curse breakers, but we have to learn enough to recognize the hazard." She bit her lip at the thought of the upcoming training that she would have to endure.

"Can't it just be a regular non-magical rental contract like normal people have?" Harry had his doubts about wizards, but it seemed an easy fix.

She shook her head. "You make the magic, Harry. Any contract that a wizard is a party to and willingly agrees with will become at least a little bit magical. That's why old wizards waffle as they do, speaking in circles and not wanting to even appear to make any kind of promise. Breaking your given word has consequences."

"I have to tell Hermione about this." Internally, Harry fumed a bit at being left so badly in the dark. These dangers should all be laid out right away, on day one, before anything else was taught. "When does Hogwarts teach all that?"

"You would usually have picked it up at home from the standard primers as you were learning to read, but they go into it a bit in the third year introduction to Ancient Runes." She gave him a troubled look, having never considered the possible effect of the curriculum on the muggleborn.

"Convenient, that. How does it work?" Harry wondered how fast the average muggleborn ended up under some bastard's contract.

Tonks gave a helpless shrug. "As to how it works, let's say that poor dumb Auror Tonks, blind to her own magic, rents a room in Harry Potter's magical pad. Harry Potter's ancient family wards see a girl that's not a family member, not a guest, not an intruder and not a servant. Who is to say what their definitions will make of her?"

"Do wards have rules?" Harry had never gone for the idea of magic being intelligent. He'd always thought that the intelligence that sometimes seemed to exist had to be something like a computer program at some level.

Tonks nodded. "Sort of. Back in the tenth century some warder set the ward definitions and unless someone's been conscientiously doing the proper maintenance, which precisely no-one ever does until something goes wrong, they've been changing right along with the language. It's possible that old wards like that could still consider me a vassal if your ancestors were that sort, but it's much more likely that I would be considered a Lady Potter. By voluntarily staying in your home long enough after the wards had classified me, I would knowingly or not have given my consent to be bound by my magic as a wife." She smirked. "After you banged me up in the harem with the other wives you could put the 'for rent' sign back out for the next Lady Potter."

Harry blushed. "How can you tell if some ward is sizing you up like that? I like you and all, Tonksey, but I don't get enough pretzels to keep you about all the time. I'd rather just be pals, like with Hermione."

Tonks grinned and inflated her bosom slightly. "Pals it is, Harry."

He swallowed, suddenly unsure about the whole 'pals' thing. Wasn't he supposed to be properly teen aged for this? "Could that ward problem happen from staying at your flat? Because there's always the Cauldron."

She laughed and shook her head. "It's good that you understand that a pretty face is often after your pretzel, but my wards are brand new and quite basic, so no worries. Besides, even if they were ancient war wards, it takes a good deal of time in proximity for magic to entangle you that way. As to being able to tell if some ward or enchantment is trying to get a hold on you, the only really reliable way is to meditate every day and work at picking out the feel of your own magic from the magic around you until you absolutely know it well enough to detect foreign magic prodding at you. If you feel it happening then you can just tell it to piss off, because it can't bind you without you letting it. They call it 'occulmancy,' and get all mysterious about it, but it's just about listening to your magic. It's not hard to learn."

"Occlumancy. I need to get a proper notepad and write this kind of stuff down so that I don't forget. How do we get there?" He finished the pretzel, swallowing the last of it.

"Taxis are a bore, so I usually just apparate about." She eyed him speculatively. "There's a warded apparation point in the nook over there beside that stationary shop. You can get a notepad or diary and some proper pens and we'll be on the way. Want to give side-along a try?"

"No diaries ever. What's 'apparation?" Harry wasn't exactly worried, but it was hard to take a thirteen year old girl seriously. Even when you knew that she was really eighteen or nineteen.

"Like the 'transporter' on Star Trek, but magical." She led him into the shop, going straight to a well-known shelf to pick out a bundle of flip top black police style notepads and a packet of rainproof pens. "It feels like being squeezed all over."

"What's 'Star Trek?" Looking at the notepads, he recognized them as the same ones that Moody used. Finally noticing her shocked expression, Harry paid the clerk for the packet, realizing that he'd made some sort of giant faux pas for the magical world.

lf

"Ugh. That's not what I did before." Harry hunched over with his hands on his knees, swallowing and discreetly checking himself over for missing parts.

Tonks steadied him. "You'll soon get over it. What do you mean?"

"Dudley and his gang were after me and I teleported to the roof of the school. There was no pop or bang and no squeezing. I finally decided that the wind had carried me up, like a warm breeze." Harry finally unbent and looked around at the large flat, with its luxurious furniture. "Posh, Tonks. The Ministry must pay well."

Tonks was frowning, but she had to laugh at that. "An actual Auror is well paid, but never a trainee like me. The thing is, Harry, being a fully magical witch or a wizard with a wand means being quite rich in muggle terms. Even if you don't draw unlimited pounds from the Ministry like I do, once you master 'repairo' and a bit of the higher transfiguration, sterling is just dead easy to come by."

She hung up her coat. "Mum is a healer and Dad has a law practice, but he repairs and 'flips' rotten old ruins that he picks up at auction. He could make millions, have as much muggle wealth as he wants, but aside from food and our house, there just isn't much that my parents want. They live quietly in a nice home, but being muggle super-rich is a lot of unnecessary bother for a wizard, what with all the taxes and paperwork. The Ministry and the ICW are very strict about untraceable wealth and the special accounting services that we have to use are charged in galleons, so being super rich in sterling is just not worth it unless you earn it all the muggle way."

"I knew that the exchange rate had to be high, but what is it really?" Harry was curious, now understanding Ragnok's amusement at his request for sterling.

Tonks shrugged. "There isn't one, per se. The Ministry lets the muggle paper that it acquires pile up until they need to buy something useful, but they often just hand it out. The value varies too much due to the haphazard way that it's handled for muggle paper to ever be called 'convertible.' Unless you're a muggle-born getting set up for Hogwarts under the ICW subsidy it's something like fifty pounds to the knut."

Harry thought of the knuts thrown in the flue powder jar at St. Mungos. It seemed that flue travel was quite expensive. "That much?"

Tonks nodded. "I make a galleon, eight sickles and twenty one knuts a month as a trainee and the Ministry hands me ten thousand pounds without bothering with any deductions, just because that's what I wrote on the requisition form. They don't even bother keeping the muggle notes in a vault. If I wanted more they would just point at the file cabinet without bothering to account for it even if I simply stuffed a pillowcase. We're not allowed to conjure it lest we threaten the secret, but muggle money is inherently too worthless for a wizard to bother stealing."

"Huh." Harry was a little bit distressed that he no longer felt rich from his fat roll of notes. "The muggles make lots of nice things. I couldn't make a coat like this with what I know of stitching spells. It would take longer than doing it by hand!"

"The muggles have their uses, no argument there, but we're parasites, Harry, not an integral part of the economy. Gold can be obtained magically, summoned from a mine or traded for with the mermen rather cheaply and sold like anything else, but don't try that with a galleon."

"Why?" Harry sort of understood.

"First, it would be crazy, like trading gold for its weight in old bricks and second the goblins consider everything that they sell to be a lease and that includes the coins. When the last legal human heirs die, every galleon ever minted will be the property of the coiner and his heirs, so destroying their work is a form of theft. Besides, the coins are rune locked to keep them out of muggle hands and bloody difficult to destroy."

"I had no idea." Harry wondered what other common things that he was equating with muggle goods had secrets like that.

Tonks nodded. "There are those that are sure that the goblins gain magical power through the circulation of their coins. It's been well documented that lost galleons will eventually make their way back to Gringotts, so trying to hide them in a hole somewhere just means that you gave them back to the goblins if your heir doesn't know. Why don't you hang that coat up and settle?" Tonks pointed at a doorway. "Go and sit. I'll order us some takeout."

Harry hung his coat in the closet by the front door, walked into a living room containing a substantially larger telly than Vernon's and sat on the couch, grateful to be off of his feet. Presently he noticed Tonks scowling and pushing futilely at the buttons on her wireless phone. "What's the matter?"

"It's stopped working." She punched buttons, listened, miffed, and drew her wand. "The thing's jinxed. The lights and telly still work, so ambient magic shouldn't have gotten to it."

"Did you pay the bill?" Harry smirked at her rueful expression. "Magical things work on magic, Tonks, but BTE works for the money."

She laughed and holstered the wand. "I really wanted to dine in and enjoy my place, but I guess we'll have to walk down the street. There's not a bean in the kitchen and I could murder a vindaloo."

"No need. Dobby!" Harry smiled when the eager house elf appeared, resplendent in 17th century livery. He wore a white wig, a white vest, white knee length breeches, white knee socks and highly polished black shoes with big square buckles that shown like gold. Over it he wore a scarlet tailcoat with plenty of gold frogging, epaulets and brass buttons. He was under a pyramid of shopping bags, which he sat down in a sort of avalanche.

Tonks felt her jaw drop, recognizing her shopping. She knew that Harry had an elf collecting the bags, but she had never seen such a gaudy one. It had also come straight through her 'good' wards without the slightest difficulty.

"Master calls for Dobby?"

"Hi, Dobby. My but that's a smart uniform!" Harry grinned as the elf puffed out his chest. "This is Cousin Tonks. She's an auror and my bodyguard while I'm out of Hogwarts. I'm staying here as her guest tonight. Tonks, this is Dobby. He used to work for Lucius Malfoy, but he got the sock. Now he works for me!"

Dobby bowed to her, his formal dress lending him great dignity. "Dobby be very pleased to meet the Cousin Tonksey."

"Welcome to my flat, Dobby." Tonks frowned. "Harry, why does your elf's uniform have Grindelwald's symbol on the buttons?"

"That's the Potter crest. I don't know anything about Grindelwald." Harry didn't care one bit about Grindelwald and furthermore didn't want to hear a single thing about any Dark Arse that didn't directly threaten him. "Dobby, can elves buy from muggles without breaking the Statute of Secrecy?"

"We's can, Master Harry! Muggleses sees only the muggltey things if Dobby makes it so!"

"Great!" Harry gestured at Tonks. "If we give you a menu and some money, can you buy food for us and bring it here without scaring them?"

"Dobby do! Dobby does this many, many times for the Bad Malfoy."

"Good to know that he's a hypocrite." Tonks held out the menu. "I thought a couple of orders of the Vindaloo Special."

Dobby flicked a disdainful eye over it. "Dobby knows of much better places."

"Go wherever you think best, Dobby." Harry began hauling out his money bag, but Dobby vanished.

Harry shrugged and tucked the pouch back in. "He forgot the money."

"He probably has some. How did you get Lucius Malfoy's house elf?" Tonks was no admirer of her 'uncle.'

Harry was tired of talking about it and just shrugged. "Right place at the right time with a right sock, Cousin Tonksey. Do you smell that?"

"That's vindaloo!" They went to the dining room to find the table set and loaded with a veritable takeout feast tastefully arranged and set out on the apartment's posh new crockery, all of it under warming charms. Tonks shook her head. "Lucius must be completely barmy. House Elves are brilliant!"

"He was probably out of his head from rituals." Harry frowned. "He tried to hit me with a killing curse after I tricked him into freeing Dobby. He had no more self-control than Dud- than a three year old."

Tonks gasped. "He did what?"

Noticing her agitation, Harry silently cursed his loose tongue and then clumsily tried to retrieve the situation. "He's dead now, so there's really no point in making a fuss."

Taken aback, she gave him a sharp look. "How did he die?"

"Hey! I didn't kill him! All I know is the goblins laughed about him being dead when I showed them. I already told Mister Moody." He winced as the sharp look turned into a penetrating stare.

Tonks suddenly laughed. "I know you didn't kill him, Harry. You're way too cute to be the killer type."

Harry could only manage a weak smile at that.