Of Wolves and Ravens
by FenrisWolf
AUTHOR'S NOTE - This is a sequel to my story, 'Cupidity', and trust me, if you haven't read that one, you'll have a hard time figuring out what's going on. Please be patient, I really hadn't planned on this, but the characters had other ideas. I have no clue what they're going to get up to…
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Chapter One
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The mood in the room was somber to the point of clinical depression. Black bunting was draped on every portrait, the candles floating above the tables had been replaced with thick, ebony pillars that burned fitfully, and all the shades on the gas jets had been changed to glass the color of freshly shed blood. The incense that was burning was laced heavily with musk and myrrh, and suggested embalmers and Egyptian tombs. The background music was a dirge that resonated in the lower registers, more felt than heard, an organ piece played from the grave. Even the weather outside the room seemed to share the atmosphere, as thick, black clouds wept a slow, steady downpour that chilled the air.
The occupants of the room seemed to soak up the atmosphere like a comforting balm. Dressed universally in mourning garb, unflattering robes and Victorian style dresses in shades of black and grey, they sat hunched in their chairs, neither offering nor receiving comfort. Here and there muffled weeping could be heard, but for the most part they were silent.
A door opened and closed, and a final member of the congregation made her way to the front of the room, coming to a halt behind the black-draped podium centered there. She raised the gavel and rapped three times, calling everyone's attention to her words. "This emergency session of the Unofficial Harry Potter Fan Club is now in order…"
~~~~~
"Muther, I can't believe you're going out with that…that…person again!" the nasal voice whined.
"What was that, dear?" Narcissa replied absently as she tried another pair of earrings, determined to find the perfect pair to go with her new robes. They were her one weakness, her secret vice; she had literally thousands of pairs, from knut-to-the-dozen plastic ones to ornate, solid gold pieces looted from a Scythian tomb. She'd started collecting them when just a child, and to the best of her knowledge still owned every single pair she'd ever purchased, borrowed, received as a gift or stolen. She preferred drop earrings, ones with a bit of flash to attract the eye, but even simple studs were fine, so long as the stones in them were of high enough quality - say for instance, like the three carat Marquise cut Alexandrite gems that shifted from purple to green and back again with the changing light…
Thinking of those caused her to finger them briefly, but she set them aside with a sigh. Too dressy by far, especially since Remus had told her to keep her wardrobe restricted to something that was 'casually elegant'. Well, maybe another time. If things continued going so well, there would be many opportunities in the future to display her collection.
Privately, Narcissa didn't really think her choice of obsessions was all that frivolous. It wasn't like she collected hundreds of pairs of shoes like that silly Muggle, what was her name, Marcos? I mean, with robes, how often did a witch get to show off her feet, and how many wizards were foot fetishists anyway? She personally could only think of one, and he sort of had an excuse. What else was someone as short as Flitwick going to fixate on, a woman's kneecaps?
Earrings, though, they made sense, especially when the witch was someone like herself, with a slender, graceful neck and delicate, shell-like ears just screaming to have attention drawn to them. And then there was the genteel art of playing with one's earrings as one talked to a wizard, a very subtle way of directing his attention to just how delectable her ears were, and how the column of her neck swept down to her shoulders, and the décolletage beyond…
"Mu-ther! Are you listening to me?" Draco sputtered, drawing Narcissa out of her daydream. He stood just outside the door to her chambers (the wards she'd put in place wouldn't allow him to enter) and glared at her, his balled fists braced against his hips in what he thought was a manly gesture. Actually it made him look like a pompous git, but as he was a pompous git, the look worked for him.
Finally settling a pair of seventeenth-century French earrings comprised of cages of 18k gold filigree surrounding iridescent pink Baroque pearls from the West Indies, she allowed her attention to return to less pressing matters. "Yes, Draco, was there something you wanted?"
"Yes! I wanted to know if you were going out with him again!" her son demanded, his pasty complexion actually taking on a hint of color as his blood pressure rose. "You are, aren't you?"
"Not that it is any business of yours, but yes, I am going out to supper with Professor Lupin," Narcissa replied calmly, though inwardly she sighed. These little confrontations were becoming tiresome, and her hopes that her son would grow used to the idea of her having a social life again post-Poppa, as slight as they were, were proving fruitless. If anything he seemed to grow more incensed every time she went out with Remus, not less. Of course that might have had something to do with the last time he had barged into her bedroom (prior to her erecting the wards) to find her in the middle of a pre-breakfast shag with her old schoolmate. Being a lycanthrope seemed to do wonders for one's stamina…
That little incident seemed to be in the forefront of her son's mind as well. "I won't have it, I say! You're making us a laughingstock, trailing around after that werewolf like…like…like a bitch in heat!"
"Woof, woof," she replied, a wicked gleam in her eyes.
"MOTHER!"
"Do try and get used to the idea, Draco," she said airily, picking up her cloak before heading off to the mansion's Apparation room. "I enjoy Remus's company a great deal, and surprising as it might seem to you, he enjoys mine. I have every intention of continuing our relationship, and there is nothing you or anyone else has to say on the matter. Now, if you will excuse me, I do not wish to keep my date waiting." With that she breezed past her son and down the stairs, idly humming the tune to the Muggle song, "Werewolves of London".
Draco glared at his mother's receding back and muttered to himself, "We'll just see about that, Mother dear. Yes, indeed we will…"
~~~~~
Harry looked up from his desk as his extremely aggravated subordinate burst through the door, with the unfortunately all too common as of late sound of his secretary's protests following him. "What's the problem, Q?" he asked, though he was afraid he already knew the answer.
"Chief, you have got to do something about her!" the excitable head of the research department blustered. "I think I've been awfully patient about this (well, he hadn't, but that was actually irrelevant), but this time she's gone too far!"
Harry sighed. When had things become so complicated? Oh, right, when he found True Love and settled down to live Happily Ever After. Idly he speculated as to the possibilities of resurrecting the Brothers Grimm just so he could kill them for writing those damned fairy tales. If the head of the Unspeakables couldn't indulge in a little Necromancy for his own amusement, who could?
But back to the matter at hand. "What is it this time?" he asked. "Is she making suggestions for performance enhancing improvements again?"
"Worse! She just walked in on a meeting with two of my senior researchers and told them the project they've spent two years and around a hundred thousand Galleons on is a dead end, and will never work! Rosencrantz and Gildenstern are livid! They're not used to having their work questioned, and she didn't even go through channels to do it. Now they say they won't continue without some sort of apology. I'm at my wit's end over there!"
"What was the project?" Harry asked, curious as to what could cause such a fuss.
"I can't tell you," Q said, his tone miffed. "Need to know, and all that; you understand."
Harry was puzzled. "If it's that hush-hush, how did she find out?"
"I have no idea," Q admitted, his hands pulling at his already untidy hair. "Security on the project was supposed to be airtight; even I don't get updates, just funding requests."
"So did you ask her how she found out about it?" Harry pressed.
Mumble-mumble.
"What? I didn't quite get that last bit."
"She said she couldn't tell me her sources," Q admitted, his tone decidedly put out. "Said it was 'need to know'."
Harry smothered a snort of laughter, knowing his subordinate wouldn't appreciate the irony of the situation. "All right then, next question: was she right?"
"It's not a matter of being right, it's a matter of following channels, of working within system!" Q replied, his tone defensive even to his own ears.
"So, she was right?" Harry asked again.
"All right, yes, she was spot on, when isn't she spot on when she pulls one of these stunts? But, Chief, she's got to stop stepping on people's toes. The way feelings are running, if she's not careful she's going to punch one button too many, and it won't be pretty…" Q's voice tapered off as Harry's amused expression vanished, and the face that had made life a living hell for the members of T.I.C.K.L.E. surfaced.
"I am quite certain you did not just suggest to me that someone in your department might represent a threat to her," he said, his voice cold. "I am equally certain you did not mean to suggest that if such a threat did exist, you would not defuse the situation, especially since, regardless of the feathers she has ruffled, EVERY such intervention she has performed has been for the good of the staff and the Department as a whole. And I am absolutely positive that, if such a situation evolved and you did not feel capable of handling it, you would bring it to my attention so that I could deal with it."
Oddly, Harry's terse warning seemed to brace Q's resolve. "That's what I just did, Chief. I've smoothed things over as much as I can, but I'm only one person. I won't be held responsible if things keep going on the way they have."
Harry mentally backed up and examined the situation and Q's attitude, and finally sighed. "All right, I'll talk to her. I don't know how much good it will do; she can be incredibly stubborn when she gets the bit in her teeth and she knows she's right."
"If anyone can do it, you can, Chief," Q said encouragingly. "You did get her to say yes, didn't you?"
Harry just snickered. "I don't know if I convinced her to say yes, or she convinced me to pop the question; then again, which of us do? I'll talk to her, but don't expect miracles." After all, he hadn't been able to really win an argument with Hermione since they were in first year, why should now be any different?
~~~~~
At the sound of someone knocking at his office door, Big Bad stuffed the latest pile of reports into one of his desk drawers, glanced around to make sure that no signs of his currently distracted nature were evident, and then called, "Come!"
The door swung inward and S.U.C.K.R. slunk into the room, his posture a clear warning of his news. "No luck, yet?" Big Bad asked anyway; the forms must be observed, after all.
"Not sure," his intelligence officer admitted. "I hadn't realized how much we'd come to depend on the Ravenclaw Sisterhood, and now that Granger has been invited to be an honorary member, she's off limits. We've even lost our agent inside Potter's office as a result." At his superior's quirked eyebrow he elaborated, "She was rewarded for her earlier work with a sponsorship. I'm assuming she's still reporting to them, but we've been cut off." He looked at the supreme commander of T.I.C.K.L.E. expectantly. "I'm guessing your efforts with Narcissa went no better?"
Big Bad sighed. "You guess correctly. All she would say was that with Potter happy and Granger grateful, her reasons for getting involved were eliminated. She also suggested we make do as best we can and return to business as usual."
"And are we? Going back to 'business as usual'?" his spy asked, eliciting a snort from his superior.
"Of course not; we're Dark wizards, it's against our charter to behave ourselves. Now, what about a subcontractor? Any progress there?"
S.U.C.K.R. shrugged, not meeting Big Bad's eyes. "No more than we expected, at least at first. All the homegrown teams passed, and a few were downright offensive about it. Steed, for example, was extremely rude in an old-school sort of way, and I think Mrs. Peel was considering sharpening the claws of her catsuit - on me. Hyde said he had to wait for his partner to make a decision, and then of course Jekyl said he had to wait until Hyde was there to respond. And Moriarty said he had too much of his own work to do, and suggested I try a seven per cent solution, whatever that is." He glanced through the rest of the report, and then tossed the whole thing in the dustbin, which munched away quite happily. "It's the same all across Britain, B.B. None of the local talent wants to disrupt the current status quo; even those who know the peace is only temporary prefer it to the alternatives."
Big Bad had picked up on the qualifier. "You said, 'at first'?"
"Well, when all the domestic options tapped out, I sent out feelers to our affiliates on the Continent. For a while it looked like we were going to draw a blank there, too; cunning masterminds seem to be like aurors, never one around when you want one. However, we finally received word back from the Venice organization. Seems they have a freelancer who's done some good work for them in the past, and he's available, for the right price."
"Money's no object, if he does the job. What's the bloke's name?"
"Scarabus, Doctor Niccolo Scarabus."
~~~~~
All righty, there's intro. As I said, don't expect chapters to come out at the rate they did for Mindgames. That was the result of a rabid plot bunny; this is my way of relaxing when writer's block keeps me away from my other project. If you like it, keep an eye out and I'll update every week or so, faster if the mood strikes. With the great response to Cupidity, this one has a lot to live up to…TTFN!
Fenris
P.S. - I have become a review junkie, feel free to support my habit…