Inked Dragons

Various Kinds of Scenarios

Barnabas Cuffe rushed away to finish his piece on the dastardly Twarmer 'allegedly' paying off other candidates in the race for Supreme Mugwump of the International Confederation of Wizards and write his second article on meeting the very affable and newly-promoted and delightful Harry Potter (in his leather trousers and fitted but rumpled Auror coat). Barnabas had been distinctly told in no uncertain terms not to write anything about Rita Skeeter being kidnapped in case it put her life in danger and he respected that. Besides, there would be plenty of mileage in it afterwards to make a week's worth of news, especially if it was connected to all this business with Arum Twarmer.

Barnabas Cuffe narrowed his eyes slightly, tightened the belt on his smoking jacket and readjusted his tasselled cap with a look of fixed of determination on his face. The thing with some journalists is that you don't piss them off, if you do, you're like to bring down the wrath of the newspaper gods on your head. And because Barnabas Cuffe was convinced Arum Twarmer was behind the kidnapping of his favourite journalist, Barnabas Cuffe was about to make Twarmer's life very uncomfortable. He was determined to dig out every last ounce of sleaze and dirt on the man. The hate campaign had begun. If Arum Twarmer thought one article was a witch hunt then he was sorely mistaken and about to be educated.

At the same time that Barnabas Cuffe was stewing about Arum Twarmer and the multitudes of ways he could make the man's life a misery, just with paper and ink, Harry pulled together a meeting with his Elite Corps (which had not been disbanded in his absence despite the attempts by Twarmer, Hawkwort, and Robards).

'Alright, boss,' grinned Angelina. 'I'm glad you're back, you do pick the shittiest of weeks to go away.'

'Purposely,' teased Harry. 'How's everyone holding up?'

'Better now I know I've got a job on Monday,' said Mara. 'What's going down now?'

'More trouble,' predicted Lee, 'seeing as you've called us in on a Saturday evening.'

'Rita Skeeter has gone missing, suspected kidnapping,' Harry supplied.

Angelina snorted, 'it's not surprising she's got herself in trouble with that bloody QuikQuil of hers.'

'But kidnapping...' said Alex.

'Yeah, that's taking your grudges a bit bloody far,' Angelina agreed. 'I assume you have more than that,' she said to Harry.

'Yep. Last seen about 11.10 this morning on Tottenham Court Road, outside the Luchino Caffe, near the offices for the Prophet. The Muggle waitress in the café saw a man grabbing her arm before they disappeared "very quickly", leaving behind a grey wisp of smoke.'

His team looked at him with that look.

'Yeah, obliviated now. I suspect the man is Greg Goyle, she gave a very good description of him and noticed the Dark Mark tattoo on his forearm. I know I said that Greg's needs bringing in for questioning regarding the murders of Elias Bergstrom and Fernando Condori but I don't want him arrested yet. We need to find him, track him until he hopefully leads us to Rita. I'm interested in where else he leads us to. I particularly want to know if he leads us to Twarmer, I suspect he will.'

'Did Goyle take the Dark Mark?' asked Mara.

'It's not confirmed, several contacts seem to think he was never taken into Voldemort's inner circle but not everyone was present at those ceremonies. I have information that it's a tattoo inked after he was released from Azkaban.'

The team did not seem surprised that Harry had contacts in all sorts of places but it came with the job, plus people had a habit of wanting to tell their boss their deepest, darkest secrets and fears. He had that ability somehow. Most of them put it down to the scruffy appearance that meant he didn't come across as threatening or as overtly powerful. That was their mistake. Those who were closest to him knew it didn't pay to underestimate Harry Potter; when he wasn't losing his temper with the idiots who ran the Ministry, he was quietly getting on with bringing down their empires. That was more apparent recently but the team watched in silence. They were good at that but that was why they were the Auror's Elite Corps. They saw much more than they let on and all of them trusted Harry with their lives and were deeply loyal to him as their boss without even taking the whole 'Saviour-thing' into consideration.