In Egypt 8/15
Title: In Egypt 7/15, Mister Moustachioed Manwhistle
Characters: Tonks, Fleur, others
Rating: PG-13 (slight violence at end)
Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6
Thanks to the giant beta in the sky! schemingreader
Part Eight- Mister Moustachioed Manwhistle
“Tonks? Awright Tonks, is that really you? With all those big claws and that funny blue skin?”
“Urrrgh,” replied Tonks.
“Why are your legs so weird and stunty? What have you been doing to yourself, my girl?”
Tonks, on trying to open her eyes, found that some pesky goblins had glued them shut with their crusty magical saliva. But she knew that voice, those born-again East End wide-boy vowels, that cocky ‘I bring home the Galleons’ twang.
“Bill? Bill Weasley?”
“The one and only.”
“Wotcher, Bill. Have you got any food? Real food?” Tonks pleaded weakly.
“Lets have a looksee.” Bag-opening-rustling noises came from somewhere near her head. Something pastry-like was pushed into her hand. Almost immediately the result was happy-grateful-eating noises emanating from Tonks.
“I’ve got a bone to pick with you, my girl,” said Bill. Tonks could make him out now, indistinctly. He had a green aura on one side of his head and a pink aura on the other, but Tonks knew to ignore that from experience.
“Where exactly do you think you come off, zapping my girlfriend? She says that you took her to a cave and cast petrify on her. Then you left her lying there and just sat, happy as Larry, having a picnic from off bits of your robe. What do you think you’re bleeding playing at?”
Tonks opened her pastry-dry mouth and closed it again. This was going to be complicated.
“So, how long have you been seeing Fleur, then?” she tried, for a starter.
“Since the Triwizard Championships, and don’t you dare try to change the subject.”
Why did she have to be the one to wise him up about his stupid girlfriend?
“Bill, get your wand ready. Fleur put a glamour on Kingsley back in London and she’s been trying her best to steal some Dark Object from us ever since. I think you might have to accept that she’s working for the other side.”
There. She’d said it. Now, where was that cup? Where she didn’t have pie coating the roof of her mouth, there seemed to be large amounts of sand dune. Most unpleasant. Gritty.
Charming tinkling laughter floated towards Tonks from the direction of Bill’s chiselled, casually stubbled face. Tonks squinted in his direction. That couldn’t be right, surely? Her old schoolmate drew back to reveal a highly amused Fleur standing behind him, one hand resting on a slinky hip.
“Come here, my little Death Eater,” said Bill, reaching over towards Fleur.
Tonks watched the back of his head, his long dark red hair held back in a flashy knot of chameleonhide leather, as he bent down towards the ice perfect features of Fleur. The other woman stopped laughing contemptuously at Tonks only long enough to gaze rapturously into Bill’s eyes; then her face was swallowed up in his kiss, long and intense. It seemed to Tonks like a couple of hours before they had finally finished with one another.
“Tonks, you complete muppet,” said Bill eventually, still holding onto his girlfriend’s hand and grinning handsomely all the way to his sharp fanged earring. “I told Fleur to keep an eye out for people acting suspiciously or anything dodgy coming her way. You’ve been on the same bloody side the whole time, you effing tool! Now, stop mucking about. Hurry up and change out of that fancy dress palaver you’ve got on.”
Clenching her teeth involuntarily, Tonks began to remember why she had always preferred Bill’s warmer hearted, animal-hugging younger brother. She spotted the transfigured cup still entangled in her robe, replenished it with water and drained it fully down before gracing Bill with a response. Make him wait a bit - it’d be good for him.
“No,” she replied at last. “I’m sorry, Bill, but no, I’m just not buying it. It doesn’t stack up.”
Her other hand fumbled and found her own wand, wedged between the sand and her left buttock. She grasped it surreptitiously but firmly.
“If Fleur really is working for us, why did she just chase me around Gringotts with a dragoon of trolls and Mister Moustachioed Manwhistle, or whatever his name is.”
“Entwhistle,” corrected Bill, undaunted.
“Yeah, and try to pass off a forged note from Kingsley as the real thing. How did she explain that to you?”
Bill’s eyebrows scrunched together briefly. He sought an answer from Fleur, who shrugged in response.
“I do not know anything about this.”
“Oh, really?” asked Tonks, with heavy sarcasm. “Then Fleur wouldn’t have the slightest idea why the Death Eaters seem so incredibly keen to get their hands on this glass lotus?”
“Glass lotus?” said Bill.
“Yes, with a Hathor symbol on the base,” said Fleur.
“What?” shouted Bill, his laidback tone suddenly flipped sideways and his voice almost stuttering into a shriek. “Where is it, where is it? Show me this lotus!”
Tonks had a premonition; that this was a really bad idea. Yet it was unthinkable that Bill was untrustworthy, despite his execrable taste in girlfriends, despite his strange behaviour. It was Bill all right, not some polyjuiced impostor - her metamorphagus senses told her so. Just like her, he was a member of the secret Phoenix order - more than that; his entire, sprawling, red-haired family were wound into its backbone. Fleur was now looking at Bill with some kind of sickening worshipful expression, as if he were a dozen ginger unicorns rolled into one; that explained why she had been unnaturally quiet for so long. Anyway, if Fleur tried anything, the two of them would surely be able to take her out, no problem, and Bill would then see what a untrustworthy cow she was.
“Alright, Bill, but you have to promise not to touch it,” she warned, forcibly reminding herself of what Kingsley had said to her only that morning. Thinking about that didn’t make her feel any better, either. “I’m serious. It’s some type of rickety, half-arsed Portkey. Merlin knows where it’ll take you. Splinched halfway between Cairo and Addis Ababa, probably.”
Using her clumsy claws, Tonks drew out the bag from between her belly and her t-shirt, where knobbly goblin legs started to fuse into her blue torso. Bill reached his hands out eagerly to take it from her and Tonks nearly handed it over, but then snatched it back at the last minute.
“You haven’t got any more food, have you Bill?”
“Tonks!” said Bill, exasperated.
He rooted hurriedly in his bag again and tossed her three oranges. “That’s all I’ve got left. Going to and let me see the lotus now and stop pulling my plonker?”
“Sheesh, Bill, have a little patience.”
Tonks placed the bag on the sand and carefully unrolled it so that the opaque glass petals stood upright and glistening. Then she applied herself to scrabbing her claws through the peel and pith of the oranges, unpeeling them without disembowelling them completely - all the time keeping one eye on Fleur, of course. Juice dripped in dark spots onto the sand below.
Bill - well, Tonks couldn’t remember ever seeing him look so uncool. His mouth was hanging open and he was circling the lotus like an overexcited child, bouncing slightly from foot to foot. It was as if he hoped that the lotus was the best present ever yet he didn’t dare unwrap it quite yet in case it turned out to be just another pair of woolly socks from Uncle Nick.
Eventually Bill dared to move in a bit closer. As Tonks held her breath, he gently toppled the lotus with the pointed toe of one of his fancy dragonhide boots and studied the inscription underneath. He even got down on his stomach in the sand, nose to hieroglyph, and positively shivered with euphoria.
“I think this is it!” he breathed, first to himself and then again to a bewildered Fleur and Tonks.
“I think I’ve found the legendary Hathor Lotus!”
Hey, thought Tonks, what do you mean, you found it?
“All we have to do now is take it to the Temple of Hathor to confirm it against the wall carvings there.”
What? thought Tonks. The Temple of Hathor? Next to that place with the vicious, giant, oncoming trolls and, according to Mundungus, the many excellent opportunities for getting your soul sucked? I don’t think so, mate.
But Bill was already stuffing the lotus back into its covering and towering down impatiently at Tonks.
Tonks felt a nostalgic pang of guilt for all those years she’d bossed Bill’s younger brother around at school, taking advantage of his pre-browbeaten status. Especially since it was now obviously payback time.
Okay, she seemed to have recovered enough - time to get her normal body back and knock some sense into the proceedings. Well, perhaps she might add a few inches onto her height to stop that damn Weasley boy doing his current Quidditch-tower impression over her.
Where was it that they’d apparated to, anyway? Ah, they were at Bill’s dig site, where Fleur had taken them to before. That made sense. With only a residual buzz still tingling through her fingertips and gums she stood up, transformation to ‘Auror Tonks’ managed. Here she was again, fighting fit and ready to do her job.
“Hey, Bill Weasley, that Lotus is Auror property,” she began. “Got it? You appear to have forgotten, but I’m the only…”
CRACK!
All of a sudden, the air around them fractured hideously, as if lightning had cracked the bones of the sky open - the distinctive sound of multiple and simultaneous apparition. A dozen or so figures hooded and masked figures exploded in from nowhere, menacing and closing in fast. Tonks, Fleur and Bill wheeled around, trying to get into a good defence position. One bareheaded, portly gentleman with a grey moustache was pushed harshly down onto the ground in front of the swarming witches and wizards. He was trembling after his most recent Cruciaticus, the pain still eating him up from the inside like a thousand swallowed needles.
“I’m sorry!” wailed Ahmed Entwhistle from his hands and knees, through a veil of snot and tears. “Bill, Fleur, I’m so, so sorry!”
Characters: Tonks, Fleur, others
Rating: PG-13 (slight violence at end)
Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6
Thanks to the giant beta in the sky! schemingreader
Part Eight- Mister Moustachioed Manwhistle
“Tonks? Awright Tonks, is that really you? With all those big claws and that funny blue skin?”
“Urrrgh,” replied Tonks.
“Why are your legs so weird and stunty? What have you been doing to yourself, my girl?”
Tonks, on trying to open her eyes, found that some pesky goblins had glued them shut with their crusty magical saliva. But she knew that voice, those born-again East End wide-boy vowels, that cocky ‘I bring home the Galleons’ twang.
“Bill? Bill Weasley?”
“The one and only.”
“Wotcher, Bill. Have you got any food? Real food?” Tonks pleaded weakly.
“Lets have a looksee.” Bag-opening-rustling noises came from somewhere near her head. Something pastry-like was pushed into her hand. Almost immediately the result was happy-grateful-eating noises emanating from Tonks.
“I’ve got a bone to pick with you, my girl,” said Bill. Tonks could make him out now, indistinctly. He had a green aura on one side of his head and a pink aura on the other, but Tonks knew to ignore that from experience.
“Where exactly do you think you come off, zapping my girlfriend? She says that you took her to a cave and cast petrify on her. Then you left her lying there and just sat, happy as Larry, having a picnic from off bits of your robe. What do you think you’re bleeding playing at?”
Tonks opened her pastry-dry mouth and closed it again. This was going to be complicated.
“So, how long have you been seeing Fleur, then?” she tried, for a starter.
“Since the Triwizard Championships, and don’t you dare try to change the subject.”
Why did she have to be the one to wise him up about his stupid girlfriend?
“Bill, get your wand ready. Fleur put a glamour on Kingsley back in London and she’s been trying her best to steal some Dark Object from us ever since. I think you might have to accept that she’s working for the other side.”
There. She’d said it. Now, where was that cup? Where she didn’t have pie coating the roof of her mouth, there seemed to be large amounts of sand dune. Most unpleasant. Gritty.
Charming tinkling laughter floated towards Tonks from the direction of Bill’s chiselled, casually stubbled face. Tonks squinted in his direction. That couldn’t be right, surely? Her old schoolmate drew back to reveal a highly amused Fleur standing behind him, one hand resting on a slinky hip.
“Come here, my little Death Eater,” said Bill, reaching over towards Fleur.
Tonks watched the back of his head, his long dark red hair held back in a flashy knot of chameleonhide leather, as he bent down towards the ice perfect features of Fleur. The other woman stopped laughing contemptuously at Tonks only long enough to gaze rapturously into Bill’s eyes; then her face was swallowed up in his kiss, long and intense. It seemed to Tonks like a couple of hours before they had finally finished with one another.
“Tonks, you complete muppet,” said Bill eventually, still holding onto his girlfriend’s hand and grinning handsomely all the way to his sharp fanged earring. “I told Fleur to keep an eye out for people acting suspiciously or anything dodgy coming her way. You’ve been on the same bloody side the whole time, you effing tool! Now, stop mucking about. Hurry up and change out of that fancy dress palaver you’ve got on.”
Clenching her teeth involuntarily, Tonks began to remember why she had always preferred Bill’s warmer hearted, animal-hugging younger brother. She spotted the transfigured cup still entangled in her robe, replenished it with water and drained it fully down before gracing Bill with a response. Make him wait a bit - it’d be good for him.
“No,” she replied at last. “I’m sorry, Bill, but no, I’m just not buying it. It doesn’t stack up.”
Her other hand fumbled and found her own wand, wedged between the sand and her left buttock. She grasped it surreptitiously but firmly.
“If Fleur really is working for us, why did she just chase me around Gringotts with a dragoon of trolls and Mister Moustachioed Manwhistle, or whatever his name is.”
“Entwhistle,” corrected Bill, undaunted.
“Yeah, and try to pass off a forged note from Kingsley as the real thing. How did she explain that to you?”
Bill’s eyebrows scrunched together briefly. He sought an answer from Fleur, who shrugged in response.
“I do not know anything about this.”
“Oh, really?” asked Tonks, with heavy sarcasm. “Then Fleur wouldn’t have the slightest idea why the Death Eaters seem so incredibly keen to get their hands on this glass lotus?”
“Glass lotus?” said Bill.
“Yes, with a Hathor symbol on the base,” said Fleur.
“What?” shouted Bill, his laidback tone suddenly flipped sideways and his voice almost stuttering into a shriek. “Where is it, where is it? Show me this lotus!”
Tonks had a premonition; that this was a really bad idea. Yet it was unthinkable that Bill was untrustworthy, despite his execrable taste in girlfriends, despite his strange behaviour. It was Bill all right, not some polyjuiced impostor - her metamorphagus senses told her so. Just like her, he was a member of the secret Phoenix order - more than that; his entire, sprawling, red-haired family were wound into its backbone. Fleur was now looking at Bill with some kind of sickening worshipful expression, as if he were a dozen ginger unicorns rolled into one; that explained why she had been unnaturally quiet for so long. Anyway, if Fleur tried anything, the two of them would surely be able to take her out, no problem, and Bill would then see what a untrustworthy cow she was.
“Alright, Bill, but you have to promise not to touch it,” she warned, forcibly reminding herself of what Kingsley had said to her only that morning. Thinking about that didn’t make her feel any better, either. “I’m serious. It’s some type of rickety, half-arsed Portkey. Merlin knows where it’ll take you. Splinched halfway between Cairo and Addis Ababa, probably.”
Using her clumsy claws, Tonks drew out the bag from between her belly and her t-shirt, where knobbly goblin legs started to fuse into her blue torso. Bill reached his hands out eagerly to take it from her and Tonks nearly handed it over, but then snatched it back at the last minute.
“You haven’t got any more food, have you Bill?”
“Tonks!” said Bill, exasperated.
He rooted hurriedly in his bag again and tossed her three oranges. “That’s all I’ve got left. Going to and let me see the lotus now and stop pulling my plonker?”
“Sheesh, Bill, have a little patience.”
Tonks placed the bag on the sand and carefully unrolled it so that the opaque glass petals stood upright and glistening. Then she applied herself to scrabbing her claws through the peel and pith of the oranges, unpeeling them without disembowelling them completely - all the time keeping one eye on Fleur, of course. Juice dripped in dark spots onto the sand below.
Bill - well, Tonks couldn’t remember ever seeing him look so uncool. His mouth was hanging open and he was circling the lotus like an overexcited child, bouncing slightly from foot to foot. It was as if he hoped that the lotus was the best present ever yet he didn’t dare unwrap it quite yet in case it turned out to be just another pair of woolly socks from Uncle Nick.
Eventually Bill dared to move in a bit closer. As Tonks held her breath, he gently toppled the lotus with the pointed toe of one of his fancy dragonhide boots and studied the inscription underneath. He even got down on his stomach in the sand, nose to hieroglyph, and positively shivered with euphoria.
“I think this is it!” he breathed, first to himself and then again to a bewildered Fleur and Tonks.
“I think I’ve found the legendary Hathor Lotus!”
Hey, thought Tonks, what do you mean, you found it?
“All we have to do now is take it to the Temple of Hathor to confirm it against the wall carvings there.”
What? thought Tonks. The Temple of Hathor? Next to that place with the vicious, giant, oncoming trolls and, according to Mundungus, the many excellent opportunities for getting your soul sucked? I don’t think so, mate.
But Bill was already stuffing the lotus back into its covering and towering down impatiently at Tonks.
Tonks felt a nostalgic pang of guilt for all those years she’d bossed Bill’s younger brother around at school, taking advantage of his pre-browbeaten status. Especially since it was now obviously payback time.
Okay, she seemed to have recovered enough - time to get her normal body back and knock some sense into the proceedings. Well, perhaps she might add a few inches onto her height to stop that damn Weasley boy doing his current Quidditch-tower impression over her.
Where was it that they’d apparated to, anyway? Ah, they were at Bill’s dig site, where Fleur had taken them to before. That made sense. With only a residual buzz still tingling through her fingertips and gums she stood up, transformation to ‘Auror Tonks’ managed. Here she was again, fighting fit and ready to do her job.
“Hey, Bill Weasley, that Lotus is Auror property,” she began. “Got it? You appear to have forgotten, but I’m the only…”
CRACK!
All of a sudden, the air around them fractured hideously, as if lightning had cracked the bones of the sky open - the distinctive sound of multiple and simultaneous apparition. A dozen or so figures hooded and masked figures exploded in from nowhere, menacing and closing in fast. Tonks, Fleur and Bill wheeled around, trying to get into a good defence position. One bareheaded, portly gentleman with a grey moustache was pushed harshly down onto the ground in front of the swarming witches and wizards. He was trembling after his most recent Cruciaticus, the pain still eating him up from the inside like a thousand swallowed needles.
“I’m sorry!” wailed Ahmed Entwhistle from his hands and knees, through a veil of snot and tears. “Bill, Fleur, I’m so, so sorry!”