A manilla folder landed on Tonks's desk with a 'whoomp.' "Hit Wizards just brought in an interesting one," Mad-Eye Moody said. "Altercation on Diagon."

"Altercation between who?" Tonks asked.

"Contestant number 1: Agatha Dawkins from Magical Item Recovery."

"Oh Merlin, not her again. Is this actually interesting, or are they just too short on women to deal with her?" Agatha was part veela or siren or something like that. She denied it, but anything she asked a man for, they had an overwhelming urge to provide.

"That depends on what you find out about contestant number 2: preteen boy who's keeping awfully tight-lipped."

"Did you just say 'boy'?" Moody nodded. "Does Agatha have an age limit?"

"Don't know, but it'd be good to find out. I'll leave you to it. Come talk to me before you let either one go or do anything irreversible. And remember—"

"Constant vigilance," Tonks said with him

The folder didn't have much more information on the 'altercation' itself, but the list of the boy's personal effects caught her eye. Only three items: a denim jacket, a shark's tooth pendant on a leather cord, and a wand. Agatha's thievery was infamous. She worked for Magical Item Recovery because she liked getting paid for it, but stealing from Muggles didn't always scratch her itch. It wouldn't be the first time she'd stolen from a kid who had annoyed her.

Tonks flipped to Agatha's list and looked for things a young boy would carry. Agatha's handbag was always chock full of pages' worth of items, but the only thing that struck Tonks was a mokeskin bag. Agatha despised mokeskin and often bragged about how easy it was for her to empty the supposedly "thief-proof" pouches.

Tonks pulled the bin of Agatha's things from the holding area and dug out the mokeskin bag. She looked it over and turned it inside-out, and as she'd suspected, found a bloodstain on the inside. A Thief's Pouch. That did make things interesting.

Tonks entered Agatha's holding cell first. The older woman looked up from her seat at the table in the middle of the room with a smile, which vanished when she identified the young Auror. "Oh, it's you, Miss Tonks."

"Mrs. Dawkins," Tonks said, sitting across the table from her. "Do you want to tell me what happened this afternoon?"

"I was on Diagon, having a bit of a shop, when this little yob runs up and tries to take off with my handbag. Of course, you know I'm a professional. I'm not going to lose my bag to any cheap tricks like that. So I caught hold of him—just to make him let go, you understand. I was even going to give him a bit of professional advice, when he kicked me right in the shin! Look at that bruise!" She lifted the hem of her skirt to show a blue-black splotch rimmed with green.

"Mrs. Dawkins, that bruise is several days old."

Agatha missed a beat, but only one. "So you can imagine how much it hurt to be kicked in it."

"Uh huh. What did you take from the boy?"

"Absolutely nothing. I'm offended you asked."

"When did you get over your hatred of mokeskin?"

"I still think it's ridiculously overpriced and over-regarded," Agatha said, "but I came across a bargain at a rummage sale, and it does have its uses."

"How did that bag get a bloodstain in it?"

Agatha's forehead wrinkled, then her eyebrows raised, and a smile bloomed across her face before she swallowed it down. "I'm sure I wouldn't know. It must have come that way."

Tonks took a transcribing quill out of her pocket and opened the case file. "All right, Agatha. You've had your fun. I haven't written anything down, so you're not in any trouble yet." She touched the tip of the quill to her tongue, then placed it on point on the report form in the folder. "Now, for the record, please tell me in your own words what happened this afternoon."

Agatha watched the quill perfectly copy down Tonks's statement.

"Mrs. Dawkins?" Tonks prompted. The quill added that.

On the record, Agatha dropped her claim that the boy had kicked her, and admitted to taking a Galleon and three Sickles from him, although she still insisted he had started it along with a girl who was with him and who ran off when the Hit Wizards showed up. With enough poking and prodding, Tonks drug a statement out of Agatha that was both reasonable and believable. Whether it was also true, who knew?

"If it's all the same to you," Agatha said as Tonks put away the transcribing quill, "I'd just as soon drop the charges. I'm sure the lad has learned his lesson."

"We'll see what he says about this afternoon."

As Tonks put her hand on the doorknob, Agatha said, "Miss Tonks, you don't suppose that little mokeskin bag is a Thief's Pouch, do you? Because I've always wanted one."

"We'll see, Mrs. Dawkins. Although getting a Thief's Pouch from a rummage sale wouldn't do you any good. If you haven't stolen it, it's just mokeskin."

"Pity," Agatha said with a Cheshire cat grin.

Before going into the second holding cell, Tonks took a moment to make herself look younger and less intimidating and brightened her bubblegum pink hair. The boy looked up when she came in, and she gave a start. His eyes shone orange. He glanced away as she sat at the table, and when he looked back, she saw it was a trick of the light. His eyes were light brown, although they did have an orangish tint.

His hair was off, too. It was medium brown, but with darker and lighter strands sprinkled throughout. If he'd been a girl, she would think it was badly dyed highlights, but it wasn't, and it wasn't sun-bleaching. The dark strands were on top, and the lighter underneath. Wolf-like eyes, hair with pelt-like shading. He was sitting on his hands to keep from fidgeting.

"Wotcher. I'm Tonks. Could you put your hands where I can see them, please?"

With an exaggerated sigh, he clasped his hands together and put them on the table. He was trying to disguise it with the position, but his ring fingers were longer than his middles. Werewolf. And he wasn't being treated for the symptoms.

"Thank you," she said, sitting down. "What's your name?"

"Christavious Corbin."

"Do you go by Chris?" He gave a tiny nod without realizing it. "What happened this afternoon, Chris?"

"I'm only 12 years old. I want my parents."

"You're braver than me. My mum and dad would have thrown a strop if they'd had to get me from Law Enforcement." The boy said nothing, and his expression didn't change. "Let me let you in on a little secret, Chris. You're not in trouble. The lady you had a row with, we've had trouble with her before. I don't think you started anything; I think she did. I just need to know what she stole from you. Then I can get it back and you can go home."

Chris studied her for a long time. "I want my parents."

"Wouldn't you rather just help me and be done with this? We'll have to wait for an owl to find them."

He stayed silent, watching her.

"Well, I'll do what I can." Tonks took out a quill. "What are your parents' names?"

He paused like he had to think about it. "Cole and Nina. Corbin."

"And how do you spell 'Christavious'?" He spelled it out for her. "Was anyone with you this afternoon?"

The boy stared at her without a word.

"Were you on Diagon alone?" Still no answer. "I just need to know if there's anyone else I should send an owl to. Anyone who might be worried about you."

"I want my parents," he said again, very deliberately.

Tonks sighed. "All right, maybe your parents can tell me. Make yourself comfortable, and I'll try to get hold of them."

She left him in the holding room and went to Mad-Eye Moody's desk.

"What'd you find out?" he asked. He didn't look up from his paperwork, but she was sure his false eye was looking at her through the side of his skull.

"Room 1 is just Agatha being Agatha. In Room 2, I've got a 12-year-old werewolf who's not getting treatment, who's been coached on what to say if he's arrested, and who was carrying a Thief's Pouch. That's one of Greyback's until proven otherwise."

Moody smiled. "Good catch. What's your next step?"

"Well, protocol is to get the Werewolf Capture Unit involved, but they'll come in like a niffler in a jewelry shop and muck everything up."

"Dawkins wants to press charges?"

"No, she wants to sweep it under the rug. I think she wants to keep that Thief's Pouch she stole from him."

"The boy ask to press charges?"

"He won't say anything except his name, age, and that he wants his parents."

"So what's the crime? As far as you know, he looks like that because his parents are hippies. No crime, no Hunters."

A smile spread across Tonks's face. "No crime, no Hunters. Then I suppose my next step is to find out if his parents are hippies. I could pull Greyback's case file, but if he's on the victim's list, I'd have to get the Hunters involved. Or I could go to Family Services and see if there's a missing child report on him."

Moody gave one brisk nod. "If Holden's not at his desk, Stroede'll help you out. She's got a soft spot for the werewolf kids."

The Office of Missing Children was less The Office and more The Desk, and its occupant was missing when Tonks arrived. As she looked around, a woman sitting in the neighboring Child Protection section looked over her cubical wall. "Kevin just popped out. I'm June Stroede. Can I help you?"

"Yeah, I wanted to check if there was a missing child file on a boy named Christavious Corbin."

June's eyes grew wide. "Oh Merlin, did someone finally find the body?"

Tonks sputtered. "The body? What? No, he's sitting in our office right now."

Somehow, June's eyes grew even wider. "You mean he's alive? I thought for sure his parents had killed him."

"Whoa, I am clearly coming in the middle of something."

June went to the Missing Children Office's filing cabinet and pulled out a file. "Here it is, Christavious Corbin." She spread the contents across the desk. "Child Protection already had an investigation open because he had lycanthropy, and when his parents took him to St. Mungo's for his first transformation, he was so weak that the Healers weren't sure he'd survive. Our investigation concluded that it was an experimental lycanthropy treatment. There was nothing we could do except warn them about poachers. We were about to close the case when Chris's aunt filed a report that he was missing."

"His aunt?" Tonks asked. "Not his parents?"

"Exactly. Chris's brother saw someone take Chris away during the night, but, well, he was five. He couldn't really explain what he'd seen. He just said it was a shadowy man. Of course, there was an investigation. Your department probably has the files on the criminal part. We took the other two children out of the house while it was going on. In the end, though, there was no body and no evidence, so the case was closed and the other kids returned."

"You thought the parents had killed Chris, though. Why is that?"

"They've never brought in a missing child poster, and if you talk to them… Well, you can go to Magical Games and Sports and talk to Cole Corbin yourself. He talks like a man who knows his son is never coming home, and he's fine with that."

"Was Fenrir Greyback ever a suspect for this?"

June's face darkened. "Missing werewolf kid, Greyback's always on the list. There was no evidence for or against."

Tonks thanked her and went to the Department of Magical Games and Sports. She had to ask a few different people before she found Cole Corbin, but as soon as she did, she knew that was Chris's father. He looked just like the boy with the werewolf traits removed and 25 years added.

"Excuse me," she said, walking up to his desk. "I'm Tonks, with Law Enforcement. We have your son up in our office."

"Oh no, what did Max do?" Cole asked. "Or, it wasn't Lex, was it?"

"No, we have your son Chris."

"Chris? Oh." Cole looked like he'd just been slapped by a ghost and had a bucket of cold water poured down his back by a poltergeist. "What did he do?"

"He didn't do anything. His pocket was picked by a lady we've had trouble with before."

"So he's free to go?"

"Well, we'd like to hand him off to someone."

"Are you sure you can't just let him leave?" Cole asked. "He knows his way home."

"You don't want to see your son?"

"I've got a lot of paperwork here to finish," Cole said with a vague gesture to his desk, "and he's a bright kid. He doesn't need me to hold his hand."

"All right. I'll see what I can do."

Tonks went back to Law Enforcement. She was still walking towards Moody's desk when he drew up a chair and asked, "What happened?" She sat and told him what she had learned and about the conversation with Cole Corbin. He watched her patiently, his artificial eye making fewer swivels around the room than usual. When she finished, he asked, "What's your next step?"

"Besides walking back to Magical Games and Sports and slapping some sense into Cole Corbin?"

"I actually wouldn't recommend that."

"He hasn't seen his kid in six years!"

"And if it was Stroede's girl, you wouldn't be able to keep her out of our office. I know." Moody sighed. "Every Auror's got to hear this talk sometime. Apparently, today is your day. You're here to enforce the law, Tonks. You're not here to judge; that's what the Wizengamot's for. There will be times when you agree with the other guy. Hell, a lot of the Greyback kids have a sad story behind them, but being a crap parent isn't illegal. Kidnapping two dozen kids and murdering poachers is. You can sympathize with suspects all you want at home. Say whatever you like over beers off duty. But when you're on the clock, you enforce the law, even when you think the law's rubbish."

"Does it ever get any easier?" Tonks asked.

"If it does, it's time to retire," Moody said. "Now, what's your next step?"

With Moody's agreement, Tonks cast tracking charms on Chris's jacket and shark tooth pendant and returned them along with the Galleon and three Sickles Agatha claimed to have taken from him. Chris slid the coins into his jacket pocket without argument, and Tonks escorted him to the departure Floos in the atrium. She heard him say 'Cley Hill', but the tracking spell showed that he immediately turned around and went to the Leaky Cauldron.

Tonks didn't make too much of him staying there at first. He'd been in a holding room for a while and was probably hungry, so maybe he got a meal. After an hour, she got suspicious. After two, she was sure something had gone wrong, but Moody insisted they wait. "Last Auror who rushed a tracker on a Greyback kid got bitten. Give it time."

Finally, after four hours, he agreed they could go. Tonks looked around the dining room as they stepped out of the Floo, but Chris was nowhere to be seen. The tracking spell was still in the Leaky Cauldron, though. She went to the counter and asked Old Tom, "Did anything get added to your Lost and Found today?"

"Some kid left his jacket," Tom said, pulling out the Lost and Found box and putting it on the counter. "I thought he'd be back for it by now, but it's been a few hours."

Tonks pulled Chris's denim jacket out of the Lost and Found box. The shark tooth necklace was in one of the pockets. With a soft curse, she asked, "How did he know about the spell?"

Moody reached into the jacket's sleeve and pulled out a wand. "He didn't. He abandoned everything that had been out of his sight. Clever kid. Vigilant."

Tonks sighed. "The Hunters are going to be pissed off when they hear about this."

"Eh, that's their natural state. It was a good idea." He patted her arm and gestured to the Floo. "Don't let it get you down. There's a reason Greyback's been at large 20-some years."

"Yeah," Tonks said, following him. "I guess Corbin was right. Chris did know how to get home."