The Grants Artefacts

11 The Insult

The Insult

Arundel stayed with her sister the next day, they went sightseeing the way muggles do, with dark glasses on their faces, dressed in ridiculous muggle clothing. They walked along the Nile, and they visited the museums where the muggles had a number of magical artefacts lying dormant that they had no understanding of. They ate suggered sweets by a fountain, whilst watching camels being driven past, and listened to the call to Mecca without really understanding what it was. It was nice to just be with family. Amber doted on her but Arun knew the whole time she was with her sister Amber was constantly fretting about the time wasted from her purpose. At lunchtime Arun realised their shopping trip was more than just a waste of time, especially when Amber stopped by an ancient pillar and ran her hands across the stonework then compared it to a symbol in the notebook in her pocket. "You should go," she told her an hour or two later. "It's not that I don't want you here but-" the words were left unspoken. Their jobs conflicted. "I'll send correspondence to Hogwarts and if the Americans turn up I'll come to you. You're right you know."

"About what?" Arun asked.

"It is one of the safest places in Britain."

Arun nodded and smiled at her sister. "Will you be ok?"

"I have friends," she said. "As do you."

Arun disapperated soon after, but she wasn't ready to go back to Hogwarts and face Snape and teaching and the Artifacts. She had a flat in Berlin, more like a safe house, a room in a muggle squat above an awful bar called the Red where Neo Nazi's came to dance with machetes down their trousers, just in case they wanted to start trouble. The people who lived above were a mix of addicts and whores. Too addled to remember a girl who came and went without regularity and who made things float. Who occasionally protected them if one of the skinheads below wanted to assert his dominance in the most depraved and easily accessible way he could. They thought they hallucinated, she thought they were a useful kind of warning system. She kept some clothes and some books here. And her wand too, not that she ever used it any more. Not since it had utterly turned on her in her third year at Hogwarts. Perhaps for the best; she was more powerful now than she had ever thought it possible to be. Wands were crutches and made a person weak.

The charms she had used to lock her door were still intact when she picked her way through the filthy emancipated bodies of the junkies she resided with, her room was a grey matrice on the floor, and a bedside table salvaged from a skip. Clothes were hung on a bit of stolen scaffolding pipe and her books were in a trunk. If her sister saw this place she would vomit. The single window looked out over the smoking area of the bar below and she sat in the window seat and looked down.

Fenrir Greyback looked back up.

"Shit."

He raised a hand and waggled his fingers at her, a grin spread across his pointed teeth. She changed her clothes into something a bit more inconspicuous, a purple and black jumper, ripped jeans and a leather coat, and she met the werewolf in the smoking area. He passed her a cigarette and looked quite pleased with himself.

"Why are you here?"

"Heard you're working at Hogwarts?"

"Who told you that?" Arun asked with a frown.

"So it's true then?" Fenrir growled.

"Who told you?" Arun rounded on him, poking her finger into his chest.

"Oh," Fenrir's grin widened even more as he looked down at her, "How I would like to bite that off your slender little hand," and he gnashed at her.