Chapter 6

Undisguised, Polyxena followed her cohort along the path to Hogsmeade, kicking at the gravel with her slightly scuffed, secondhand boots. Her cloak was dusty, but she didn't care. It had been an awkward morning to be sure, full of eye-avoiding (not an easy thing with that magical eye) and little conversation, and there had been no repeat performance in the early hours, just a quick scramble for her nightgown before she scuttled off to the bath.

Aren't you brilliant, Polyxena Ollivander, she upbraided herself. Some creepy bloke acts all sentimental for about five minutes, and you jump his bones. Not only that, but you still have a mystery to solve together. Perhaps this is why Nancy Drew and Ned Nickerson never went all the way. She couldn't deny, of course, how fucking good it had felt and that it had been she who'd started it in the first place, talking about her crap sex life and kissing him and whipping off her damn nightie.

"All right?" he growled, glancing back at her with his magical eye.

"Fine," she replied faintly with a prickle of dread that their witty banter had been replaced by scintillating conversation such as this. "You?"

Moody's answer was merely a grunt as he led them past the Three Broomsticks and into the heart of the Wizarding village. They were off to the Hog's Head at the other end of town to meet Mundungus Fletcher, that loathsome Lothario of hags. Dung, Moody had informed her while they were still speaking, was not technically allowed to enter the pub on account of his having been thrown out for good about twenty years before, but that didn't stop him from frequenting the place dressed in drag. Though he was a member of the Order, Dung was a notorious small-time thief, con artist, and Merlin only knew what else, and therefore, he was in a prime position to pass on information about Avery Harz, assuming the man even existed.

Good for him. The only thing Polyxena could focus on was the fact that she had inherited two things from her mother: glossy dark hair and very unusual taste in men. Her grandmother had married Asclepius Smethwyk, a Healer with a secret passion for Augureys; her mother had, however briefly, married the crazy, old wandmaker, Ollivander; and now Polyxena was busily fucking the life out of Mad-Eye Moody. Well, perhaps not 'fucking the life out of' him, she amended hastily. Alastor, she duly noted as he ushered her into the Hog's Head, appeared to be very much alive.

"Hello, Sugar Quill," she managed wearily as she sat heavily in a seat across from Mundungus, taking care to use the man's 'drag name.'

"'lo there, P'lyx'na," he mumbled, squinting into his glass of Ogden's. "Heard y' were at 'Ogwarts last night."

"No! I mean, yes, we were." She blushed furiously. "But it's not like we were 'at Hogwarts,' were just... staying at Hogwarts."

"'S what I said." For the first time, he raised his stubbly face and bloodshot eyes to hers.

"Concealment and Disguise," Moody hissed into her ear.

Polyxena brought her foot down onto his toes with a satisfying amount of savagery. Unfortunately, they turned out to be the wooden, clawlike toes at the end of his prosthesis, and so she winced.

Smirking, Mad-Eye turned to Sugar Quill. "Avery Harz," he began gravely. "We'd like some information on Avery Harz, and by 'some information,' I mean everything about him you can possibly recall."

"Why's that?" inquired Dung suspiciously, taking a long drink of his Firewhisky. "Can't see a pretty girl like her an' an acclaimed Dark wizard catcher like yourself gettin' mixed up with the likes of Avery Harz."

Moody's magical eye fixed on him appraisingly. "It's to do with you-know-who."

"You-Know-Who?" gasped Mundungus.

"No, lower case," growled Moody with impatience and leaned forward to mutter, "Ollivander's was leased to one of Polyxena here's clients by Harz. What do you mean, 'the likes of Avery Harz'?"

Dung laughed a wheezy sort of laugh that ended in a coughing fit. Lighting his smelly pipe, he croaked, "Avery Harz is a motherfuckin' cocksucker's what I mean. I never done no business transactions with that lot. Sure, I've got a living to earn m' self, an' so some cauldrons fall off the back of a broom, no one asks questions, know what I mean? But Harz an' them, that's diff'rnt, what with the killin' and the embezzlin' at the Ministry like."

"I beg your pardon?" Polyxena gave him a measured stare. "So this Avery Harz bloke is like the Keyser Söze of the Wizarding world? Do you think my father was mixed up with him? That seems a tad far-fetched, and besides, where do Nott and the Death Eaters figure into all this? Embezzling at the Ministry?"

"'S all a rich tapestry," grunted Sugar Quill with the pipe still between his teeth. "But Harz is no friend t' You-Know-Who on account of You-Know-Who's in his way. Harz is no friend t' anyone, come to that. 'S like You-Know-Who, kill y' as soon as look at y', but Harz's in it for the Galleons."

"Still, that's a bit cheerier than being in it for the complete world domination," remarked Polyxena. "So, let me get this straight: the Dark Lord is out to take over the Wizarding world and kill Harry Potter, but the Order of the Phoenix is trying to stop him. Avery Harz is out to steal a good number of Galleons and control the biggest crime ring in the Wizarding world, but the Dark Lord wants to be the head of the criminal industry. Ergo, this creates a problem because... because this plot got really complicated all of a sudden? And what has any of this to do with my father? The whole 'severing the wand connection' thing made much more sense than the 'criminal underworld' thing."

Moody nodded, but he had to concede: "The severed finger makes a bit more sense coming from Harz, though. You were right at the beginning; it's just not You-Know-Who's style."

"But my father did a respectable trade in wands. Our family has done it for centuries." Polyxena's head was beginning to throb. "I need a Firewhisky."

Passing her the flask, Moody assented, "I agree, it doesn't add up. One thing I have to say though is that he's probably in with one of the two. My best guess is the Death Eaters."

"The greater of two evils," grumbled Polyxena, swallowing a hearty sip of brandy. "Though," she continued grudgingly, "it does make the most sense. 'Terrible, but great' this and 'Magick Moste Evile' that. Bloody hell."

Dung nodded his shaggy, ginger head. "I 'gree with P'lyx'na. Harz isn' one to go 'round puttin' the Imperius on everyone. He'd just drag him off and run 'im through with a knife like a Muggle."

* * *

"He could be under the Imperius Curse, you know," said Polyxena haughtily. "Some Death Eater, Nott perhaps, could have come up behind him and been like 'Imperio!' and then said, 'Okay, Ollivander, close up your shop and come with us to Death Eater Headquarters.'"

"I'm aware of how the Imperius works," growled Moody as gave the Dark detectors a final check and removed his wooden leg. "What the bloody hell are you doing?"

Polyxena had slung her legs over the arm of an upright wooden chair and taken one of the pillows from the bed in the room Madam Rosmerta had rented to them. "Reading my book before I go to sleep. Why? Did you want to sleep in the chair? Because you should really have the bed with your poor leg."

"Mobilicorpus!"

Polyxena squealed as she, the book, and the pillow drifted across the room and crash landed on the bed. Her hand darted to her wand, but she found herself in the Full Body Bind before she had gotten two inches.

Moody reached across her and took the wand, placing it on his bedside table before he performed the countercurse. "We make love, and you're still on about this bed nonsense?"

"It's not nonsense," she replied huffily, turning back to her book. "And 'make love'? What are you, a girl? We fucked, we did it, we... we got the friction on. We didn't 'make love.'"

"Right," grumbled Mad-Eye, a slight pink tinge coloring his scarred features. With one deft movement, he had plucked the book from her long fingers and scanned the text with his normal eye. He fixed the magical eye on her. "His Muggle Bride? Looks very edifying, but of course, Aphrodite Cusan usually is."

"How would you know?"

Ignoring her, he flipped the book over and read, "'When beautiful Muggle Becca Robertson walks into the Leaky Cauldron, Tiberius Wentworth is immediately suspicious. How did a Muggle find a magical site on her own? And why does she seem so keen to find out about the murder of wealthy, pureblood, Sebastian Fortunata by the Death Eaters years ere? Tiberius is in for a shock when the Muggle he desires turns out to be Fortunata's daughter, Celestina... "

"Give me the bloody book!" Polyxena's cheeks were aflame as she grabbed for the tome, held just out of reach by Moody. "Alastor, you're insufferable!"

"Just like Tiberius." He gave her a lopsided grin.

"What?"

"'You're insufferable, Tiberius!' cried Celestina, as he trapped her against the stone wall'," read Moody in an amused growl. "'Yes,' he assented rakishly, 'but you can't get enough of it.' With that, Tiberius lowered his mouth to explore her petal-soft, rosy lips while his strong hands roved over her alabaster mounds... ' Merlin's beard, Polyxena, get another hobby! '... she wrapped her long legs tightly around his sleekly muscled form, feeling his wand of desire throb against the secrets of her womanhood." Moody chuckled heartily. "Nice. Very comprehensive. Let's see what happens next. 'He felt the barrier of her innocence straining against his throbbing manhood, taunting him with the exquisite delights within her... '"

"I want my book back!" Desperately, she reached for the novel that Moody was now holding aloft, stretching across him until she nearly toppled off the bed.

He caught her with one arm and thrust the book back into her hands. "Here. Only having a laugh."

"You really shouldn't have magicked me over here," she began severely. "Now you're reading erotica out loud, and I'm sitting in your lap, and this whole situation is just... bad. It's like we're sitting around waiting to be jinxed."

Grabbing for his wand, Moody checked the Foe Glass. "Jinxed?" His magical eye began to whirl. "Why, what have you seen?"

"It's just an expression," she bit off in exasperation. "I just meant the whole 'bed sharing' thing isn't doing us any favors because neither of us is willing to exercise any self-control."

"Self-control," muttered Alastor. "What's this about, girl? Granted, I'm not Tiberius Wentworth, Muggle seducer extraordinaire, but I thought we... "

"It was brilliant," she assured him softly, brushing a lock of his hair aside. "But I think we've gone a bit fast. We're trying to solve this bizarre kidnapping thing, and all the sexual tension makes me lose my focus. I know that if we both stay in this damn bed, we're going to have sex. Again. And I'm really going to like it. Again."

His mouth twisted into a smile. "Agreed. But the tension will be there whether we, er... " He glanced at the still open book. "... 'surrender to desire's fiery lash' or not. In fact," he said, closing a hand over her cotton-covered breast, "it might even be worse if we ignore it."

Polyxena gave a small sigh of pleasure. "Well, when you put it like that, this is probably safer." She met his lips, hungry and demanding, and greedily arched against his hand. As he impatiently tore at the buttons on her nightdress, she moved her mouth lower, scraping the edges of her teeth along his earlobe, nipping at it before she inched down to his neck. Vaguely, she realized that she'd been stripped nude, so she grabbed her wand from the table and gave Alastor's robe a tap. "Despolia!"

He watched his clothes fall in a crumpled heap on the floor. "I'll have to remember that one." Her hand pushed him firmly back onto the bed, and before he knew it, she was astride him, gliding her clit against the slick tip of his erection while she leaned over him. "Gods, Polyxena." Her hair tickled his face as she bent to kiss him before sliding back up to sheathe him slowly inside her. His hips bucked wildly as he clutched tightly at her thighs and whimpered incoherently.

When she came she felt him slam into her with his final thrust and explode with the warm, thick seed of an orgasm that left him shuddering. "Merlin," she gasped, keeping their bodies locked together. "I think that time, we might have made love. That definitely wasn't just 'fucking.'" Reluctantly and with a hazy, far from vigilant mind, she bent her head to kiss him again.

Moody jerked, sitting bolt upright so fast that she fell to the floor. "The Foe Glass!" he cried suddenly and reached for his wand. He fixed his magical eye on the door. "Get under the bed."

She tried to reach for her nightie. "I don't want the Death Eaters to see me naked!"

"It's not a Death Eater, and GET UNDER THE BED!" he roared just as the door burst into splinters. Moody leapt from bed with Polyxena's nightgown tied around his waist.

"Stupefy!" A bolt of red light narrowly missed Mad-Eye and shattered the lamp behind him.

"Crucio!" Wearing a bedsheet as a toga, Polyxena sprang up in front of Moody and jabbed her wand at the intruder.

He went down, writhing in pain, screaming with the unbearable agony.

"Expelliarmus!" she added almost as an afterthought, grabbing the wand as it sailed through the air. "See, Alastor, Unforgivables aren't so bad if you're the one using them."

"Unforgivables are a one-way ticket to Azkaban."

"Going to turn me in, are you?" She smirked, giving him a haughty look that reminded him uncomfortably of Bellatrix Lestrange as she bent to bind the intruder's hands and feet with cords from her wand. "He was attacking us, and I stopped him."

"He tried to Stun me. You used the most painful Torturing Curse known to wizardkind on him."

"Because he tried to Stun you," repeated Polyxena patiently, as though it made perfect sense. "Well, anyway, here he is, all tied up and submissive. Damn. I didn't mean to make that sound so sexual."

Alastor grunted and busied himself by dragging the captive wizard into the only chair in the room.

Polyxena jabbed her wand at the intruder's throat. "Who the fuck are you?" His reply was a beady-eyed glower, so she sank the wand a few more inches into his flesh. "Don't make me do this the hard way," she sneered. "There's plenty more Cruciatus where that came from. Did you know people have gone insane from the Cruciatus?"

"Polyxena!" Moody jostled her impatiently aside and turned to their erstwhile attacker. "Who sent you?" he growled, holding his own wand inches from the other wizard's nose. "Ever seen what a well-placed Curse of the Bogies can to do a nice nose like yours?"

"Alastor!" Polyxena summoned his wand before he had a chance to react. "I thought you used to be an Auror."

"I was. Caught more Dark wizards than any... "

"Then why are you so crap at interrogations?" she demanded.

"What?"

"I'm supposed to be the bad cop! The good cop has to say things like 'Don't listen to her, Captive Bloke' and 'Easy, Polyxena, you just got your badge back!'"

Moody gave her a wary, befuddled stare. "Badge? Aurors don't do interrogations. We find scum, catch scum, and deliver said scum to Azkaban."

"So you've never heard of good cop/bad cop? Like on Aurors?"

Moody shook his head.

"CSI: Diagon Alley?" When he responded with a confused look, she pressed, "Do you even own a Wizarding wireless? I thought not. Well, last week on Aurors, Stubby Boardman's character finds this bloke who he thinks might be Death Eater, so he takes him to Auror Headquarters, and he and that witch who was on Sex and Hogsmeade have to question him, and Boardman is like 'Fuck you,' and so that witch tells him off."

"I see," replied Moody dubiously. "Well, clearly that won't work because he's been listening to you all this time."

"Good point. I say we torture him a bit!" She raised her wand threateningly.

"Wait, why do you get to be the bad cop?" he growled.

"Because I started out as the bad one until you went on your 'Curse of the Bogies' tangent. Look, we're getting nowhere with this. I have some Veritaserum in my handbag."

"Why didn't you just say so?" grumbled Moody, taking the crystal phial from her outstretched hand and pouring the liquid into the wizard's throat. He waved three gnarled fingers before his face. "How many fingers am I holding up?"

"Five," he replied truculently.

"Oh, sorry, that was just water," Polyxena apologized and held out an Evian bottle. "This is the Veritaserum." At Moody's quizzical glance, she replied sheepishly, "Constant vigilance." Unceremoniously, she dumped the bottle's contents into their victim's sneering mouth. "What's your name?"

"Tiberius Wentworth," he said in a dull, flat monotone.

Polyxena started. "Really?"

"Yes."

"Why did you attack us?" growled Moody.

"I had orders. Orders from the boss."

"Harz? Why did he order the attack?" Moody asked shrewdly.

"Yes, Harz. He wanted to stop the girl interfering. He told me to kill the girl and the old Auror. He promised me sixty Galleons."

Snorting, Polyxena murmured, "I like to think our lives are worth more than thirty Galleons apiece. Why did he tell you to kill us?"

"I don't know."

"Yes you do!" she exclaimed, drawing her wand.

"He doesn't," growled Mad-Eye. "Harz and You-Know-Who have that in common. They never tell their followers all their plans in case of situations like this. Does Harz have Ollivander, the wandmaker?"

"I don't know."

"Motherfucker," swore Polyxena so viciously that a few red sparks shot out of her wand. "So what are we going to do with him? Take him to Azkaban?"

"I'll Floo Headquarters." Moody strode toward the fireplace. "Hopefully Tonks or Kingsley will be on the night shift."

"That sounds like dialogue from Aurors," laughed Polyxena. "By the way, Alastor, you might want to change first. You're still wearing my nightie as a skirt." Handing him his thick traveling cloak, she said, "That could lead to all sorts of questions."

Moody took a pinch of Floo powder and summoned the mopey witch called Tonks while Polyxena, still in her bedsheet toga, glowered menacingly at their captive.

I borrowed the following phrase from the Friends episode, 'The One Where Rachel is Late.'

"And 'make love'? What are you, a girl?"