Curse you Albus if I ever do anything else for you, the woman, Miranda, thought. But she'd thought that the last...two... three hundred times as well?
She rubbed her side, where a jinx had caught her last night, as some lackeys chased her out of an inn. Idiots.
Miranda was not a beautiful or gentle woman. Neither was she polite. Bloody woman was as subtle as a hippogriff trying to pass for a show pony.
But she was very resourceful. And she knew resourceful people. Other difficult people like her. Should Dumbledore try to convince everyone separately to help, he could maybe manage it in five months. She managed it in roughly five days. Old connections die hard.
Miranda lost count of the number of times she'd called Dumbledore a hypocrite. Especially in her years as a student at Hogwarts. Old man always letting other people do the work that was beneath him! Why not let others dirty their hands, and keep yours stinking clean? Easy that! She'd come to understand she was wrong. Being in charge isn't always about doing everything yourself or telling other people what to do. Sometimes, it's about knowing when to step out of the way of people who knew better what they were doing.
And here was another conundrum: what is a hypocrite if not just someone in the process of changing?
Besides, complain as she might, she didn't know where she'd be, were it not for Albus Dumbledore.
Yes, you do. Dead after she'd flung herself off a building at the best. Crazy in Azkaban at the worst.
Albus Dumbledore managed his network of reputable sources of information quite well. Across half the Ministry Officials in the world, and all the well renowned wizards like Flamel, he'd cultivated trust and respect. For the underbelly of Europe's Wizarding World, he had Miranda.
In the last ten years, Miranda had put together what was now an organization called the Hidden Court.
It was a web of spies, informants and researchers. Miscreants who had been discarded by the "civilized" world, and found themselves at the edge of society. One thing and one thing only managed to unite these people, the hope that Albus Dumbledore gave them. A bunch of hooligans that somehow grew to be trustworthy.
You can't change your past, but you can change your future. You can still do a lot more good that you did harm, he'd say.
Old man was just too damn convincing! He got you to do things you'd never think you would. And at the end, it all left you feeling that you were a better person than when you started. Dumbledore took all sorts of delinquents under his wings. Granted, he made use of their skills sometimes, but damn it, somehow they were better people afterwards! At least Miranda liked to think that... compared to her days as a Death Eater.
Miranda pulled her long coat tighter around her. The weather was getting quite chilly. This day was particularly dark and cloudy, with a stubborn drizzle that seemed more of a sorry excuse for snow than anything. She wore all black - coat, blouse, trousers, utilitarian boots and leather gloves. Her coat had a wide belt at the waist. And naturally, she had her satchel with her, strewn across her shoulder. Her hair had been curly once. A lush auburn and shiny thing it used to be. Now it was streaked with grey even though she was only in her thirties, and it was so dry that it didn't curl properly - it only stood up in all wrong directions. She had styled it by simply shoving it in the hood of her coat.
Soft wrinkles lined her face, which was hawkish and angular, with a scar across her chin. Her black eyes and hard features suggested that she'd seen a lot in her thirty years. She walked with a confident gait as she approached her old friend.
He was lounging on a bench. His wide brimmed hat shadowed his eyes. Tam really knew how to make himself invisible without any spells when he wanted to. Blend in, look unimportant - that was one of his talents. No one glanced at him as they walked through the park.
