Fabian was about to leave for home when he thought he should stop by his desk to file some documents. His inbox was overstuffed with paper airplanes, relentless departmental memos about some thing or the other that he had no time to look at.
He dug out some case files and added his findings to them. He had gone through the missing or damaged items inventory and had a hunch that some of the items were missing for good reason. The hospital's medical records showed no sign of being tampered with, but the apothecary had some extremely rare items missing. He had narrowed down the list of concoctions these missing items could be used for, and they were going to have to make preparations to limit the effect of these potions, if put to use on a mass scale.
It was fairly late, and Fabian wondered if he could swing by Tony's place for the night. He had asked Alice to put in a personal records search for "Anton" and "USSR" but turned up nothing, no record of immigration or even of entry into the country. Alice said that this made Russian Tony an even bigger intrigue, but Fabian wondered if Tony was simply having him on and was actually born and bred in Romford or thereabouts and harboured quintessentially English parents.
He made a note to coax more personal information out of this mysterious man, and, putting away the last of his work, decided there was no harm in opportunistically looking to stay the night.
As he was on his way out, a group of Hitwizards dashed into the lift with him. Trouble afoot! He heard them murmur.
Fabian had a bad feeling about this.
The Hitwizards rushed out of the lift and off to their intended destination, and Fabian decided to trail them on the sly, ready to offer advanced help if needed. They ended up at the detention centre, which was in chaos, as all the detainees had been set loose and were running amok. Hitwizards and Hitwitches were struggling to put the low-level criminals back in their places, and Fabian pulled on his Auror disguise and sprang into action to help.
He noted with horror that the detainees, who were mostly in here for petty crimes, were being brutally rounded up by the Hit Squad, who seemed to enjoy the opportunity to deliver strong blows on hapless victims. He tried to stop them, but some Hitwizard brought a roughed-up man with a bulbous, bruised eye to him and said he was the one the Aurors had been looking for, the person responsible for peddling vampiric pornography that resulted in multiple victim deaths.
Fabian cautioned for the need to process this case via proper legal proceedings, and said that they should not resort to vigilante justice no matter how much they wished for it. A Hitwitch mentioned that she saw a snake escape through the vents, and something clicked in Fabian's mind. This was where snake lady was held! When her sari was burned it seemed that she had lost all transformative power. Was the loss of power perhaps transitory and she had somehow managed to recuperate in her few days here?
Fabian sped off in the direction where witnesses said they saw the snake, casting Reveal Charms at bins and hiding corners to uncover her trail of escape.
...
It was supposed to be a simple rescue mission but halfway through their escape the rescuee decided she had forgot something important and returned to fetch her things, which ate up precious time. Had they not turned back, they would be beyond detection by now, but they were not yet out of range if someone chose to exact a very well-placed Reveal Charm.
Lo and fucking behold, some meddlesome Auror was actually on the scene. This was supposed to be a low-level prison riot! Aurors didn't show up for things like these, unless they had some suspicion of particularly sinister activity afoot, which they might have, if they were at the point where they connected the symbol of the snake to their radical acts of citizen action and thought this snake somehow related, which she wasn't before, but she was now. It was his cursed luck to be stuck with Parselmouths everywhere, for the Dark Lord has sent Nagini on this trip with him and all she did was speak Parseltongue to the detention centre escapee, who seemed incapable of speaking any other language.
Nagini slipped off, leaving him to fend for himself, and the escapee—he was under strict orders to keep her alive. The Auror began to engage him in a duel, which was extremely pointless, because he wasn't in an Auror-killing mood today, just a do-as-the-Dark-Lord-said mood.
This Auror was surprisingly agile, and light on his or her feet, with an airiness to the way he/she/it cast magic. There was no telling if these Aurors were male or female or in between or neither under their anonymous robes of scarlet, and Antonin was not the sort to make assumptions.
His modus operandi was to end this as swiftly as possible without betraying much of his duelling style or other distinctive features. He was still some way away from the non-apparating boundary, and there was not much in the environment he could use as means of a diversion.
He flung open a manhole, heaving the cover in the Auror's direction, who deftly ducked and pounced on him. In a flash his limbs grew floppy, and he steeled his will to resist the strength-sapping charm, and hit out at the Auror with a powerful blast, which sent the Auror flying through the air and onto the road, where this Auror was hit by an oncoming muggle Routemaster, which pinned the Auror under the wheels and dragged the body around like a ragdoll.
Seizing the moment to escape, Antonin took the detention centre rescuee with him and brought her to the Dark Lord. Nagini was already back by time he reached, and he flared with an indignant huff thinking about how she abandoned them. Knowing full well this would be an exclusive Parselmouth extravaganza he slipped away quietly and left for home. On his way he stopped by the kitchen, but found the plate disposed of tuna.