Room 73 on the 7th Floor of the Shodding Arms Hotel at 333 Knockturn Ally
Monday, 2am

Warm night, and Nate Briggs had one of the man-sized windows open.  A warm, damp wind drifted in.  His feet were up on the wide sill and he smoked a blue-smoked cigar.  The Wizarding Wireless was on, what some would call boring talk radio.  It was an interview with an old Runes scholar who'd been a part of the coven who'd decoded Mayan magical heiroglyphics.  The old witch had a thick Eastern European accent.  The interviewer's voice was a warm and damp as the summer air.

The lights were off and the only light came from a melty jumble of lit candle stumps on the table. 

Nate had dropped out of Hogwarts as soon as he was able, and got to work being the master of his own life.  Succeed or fail, he would know that it all came about because of his own resourcefulness or lack of it.  Never again did he have to follow someone else's script or play some game for made up standards like O.W.L.s and N.E.W.T.s.   Nate wasn't an idiot and he knew it.  Smug as shit, he was.  He was resourceful, knowledgable, and socially able.  But he'd put his prowess to the test, choosing to live a very difficult life.  The life of a straight arrow on a very crooked alley.

Nate's story is long and not worth re-telling, but the lesson learned from that strange parable is this:  Nate was no longer popular and was loosing friends quickly.  And he didn't yet have a plan to set his ship right with his neighbors. 

He ashed the cigar and cracked a smile. 

Nate had left his window open.  In the shadows of early morning, the jet black magpie was almost invisible.

A warm updraft caught on the edges of the magpie's inky flight feathers and he drifted up easily through an open window in the building's hallway.  The air currents changed drastically once he was inside the stuffy room but the last six months had given him ample opportunities to get used to the feel of his wings and the ins and outs of flight.  His shoulder muscles twitched and his wings moved quietly against the dense air as his feet touched ground in a dark corner of the room.

A moment later and the massive form of Cinaed Tawse stood shadows of the empty hall where the bird had settled.  He wore a simple long black hooded cloak.  It was the only article of clothing he'd found that readily survived the transition from human to bird and back. 

His knuckles rapped three times against the heavy door and then he waited in silence. 

The knock at his door made Nate start and he coughed mid pull.  Plumes of grey-blue smoke puffed out of his nose and mouth as he set his feet on the ground and quieted himself as quickly as he could.  His heart had started - he hadn't seen anyone come towards the building out the window, and he hadn't heard footfalls on the creaky-ass stairs of the Sodding Arms.  He hadn't even heard the tell-tale crack of an Apparition.  So who the hell was at his door?

He set the cigar down on the sill, the burning end hanging over, stood up from his chair and padded across the room.  His bare feet were silent on the overlapping rugs that covered the splitting, knotty hardwood floors.  He avoided the creaky spot and slunk to the red door.

This door, it had seen better days, it certainly had.  It had been blown off its hinges and set to right, but it still bore the scars of its amputation from the jamb.  The seven locks though, they were all fast and home.  Solid as can be. 

"Shit."

Despite the need for stealth, Nate verbalized the unhappy greeting.  It was Cinaed Tawse.  And weren't they just the best of friends.

Frankly, he'd been expecting the visit sooner.  But then what with getting the Chimaera shut down and becoming the Ministry's Favorite Lad, maybe Tawse had been busy.

But in any case, it was now officially time to leave Knockturn.  Not a word to his guest beyond the threshold, Nate made all haste about the room.  He began threw clothes and books and bottles into a backpack, and after about 30 seconds of that hurried nonsense he went into the bathroom to get his toothbrush.

Though muffled, Nate's voice through the crack at the bottom of the door.  So, the little weasel was home.  But, there was no sliding of locks and no grating of doorknobs.  Not surprising, Nate wasn't planning on inviting him in.  There was no one in the hallway so Cinaed took a few steps down the hall and shifted forms.  A few seconds later, just as Nate slipped into the bathroom, the magpie winged silently into the shadows of a corner along the same wall as the bathroom and grew, once more, into the big, hulky form of Cinaed Tawse. 

Cinaed crossed the room towards the windowsill and retrieved the still burning cigar.  His drawn wand in one hand, Nate's cigar propped casually in the corner of his mouth, Cinaed settled himself in an old musky seat facing the door. 

"Such a pleasant evening, don't you think?" Cinaed asked, conversationally.  "Almost whispers of a hot summer though, doesn't it?" 

He took a draw off the cigar and waited patiently for Nate to emerge from the bathroom.  Hopefully, the little rat wasn't going to try to wiggle through a window in there. 

Nate almost swooned like a Regency gentlewoman when Cinaed's voice sounded so calm, so near, and so not from behind their hefty, much-abused front door.   He froze in the bathroom for a second, tooth brush in hand.  His blast wand was out on the rickety table - there'd be no Apparition without it.  Confused as all get-out, Nate poked his head out the bathroom.

The great hulk of a wizard was sitting in him and Dazmond's best chair, blue smoke curling around his big, blonde head.  And of course the lousy rule-flouter had a wand. 

His eyes darted to the door.  It was intact and locked up tight.  Nate hadn't heard the crack of an Apparition, either.  He was damned baffled.  Cinaed was rough-and-tumbled but not really nimble enough, in Nate's opinion, to climb up to the seventh floor and enter through an open window. 

"What you want?" he demanded, ignoring the small talk.  "Haven't you heard about my new friends on Level Two?  They love dropping in unexpectedly."

Cinaed rolled his head back to look in Nate's direction over his shoulder, his lips drawn back in a large, toothy grin.  An expression made all the more comical (or sinister, depending on one's perspective) by the gap between his teeth from the cigar held between them.  The other man's attempt at leading the show was endearing.  It really was.  Shame it wouldn't work.  The runts rarely claimed the role of Alpha.

"Well, now," Cinaed said, feigning offense at the ignored chitchat. 

The chair's aged, ragged feet scrapped against the floor as Cinaed swiveled himself away from the window to face Nate, all without getting up.  "I'd heard Raynor's mercenaries were inviting themselves over for tea but I hadn't heard anything about you selling out." 

He assumed Nate hadn't sold out; surely Daz would have mentioned something.  Assuming she knew.  But, as squirrelly and flighty as Nate might be, Cinaed couldn't believe Nat would put Daz at risk that way.  Of course, Cinaed wasn't as in on the Knockturn gossip as he had been in the past.  "I appreciate your concern.  If any of Raynor's mercs stop by, I'll be sure to get myself out safely.  But, we have some unfinished business. 

"You owe me, Briggs."  He pulled a square of parchment out of his pocket and flattened it out.  "Two hundred and seventy three galleons.  That's what the damages to the Chimaera set me back.  Given current circumstances, times have gotten a bit tough.  I can't exactly walk into my vault at Gringott's.  I'm sure you understand if I've come to request payment."  While payment in pure, golden galleons were his first choice, they could negotiate other payments. 

Nate coughed out a laugh of contempt and dread.  The sound of the other shoe falling.  Payment.  Owing Cinaed Tawse was a place he never wanted to be.  Owing anyone, for that matter.  It was just so close to danger and general discomfort. 

"Lovely," he muttered, and tipped to lean against the doorframe to the bathroom - keeping his distance.  At least Cinaed didn't seem to be in on Nate Brigg's dirty little secret.  Why he was a free wizard and Sellaphix was doing ten in Azkaban.  Frying pan or fryer, really, though. 

Two hundred and seventy-three galleons. Nate almost didn't internalize the amount.  It didn't matter; he didn't have it.  He didn't have two sickles, and he'd never had enough gold to even have a vault at Gringotts.   

The scruffy, tired-looking wizard Briggs looked over at the grinning invader.  He didn't like this.  When collectors came calling, you paid; paying was the least painful of your options.

"Don't be thick.  You know I'm not going to pay you," he said from across the room.  "No offense."

Too bold for his position, but there'd be plenty of time to grovel later, he supposed grimly.

A lungful of smoke billowed out of Cinaed's mouth around the cigar as the man nodded his head.  He'd been expecting as much; given Daz' recent scare, he wasn't surprised the money wasn't there.  And, Cinaed wasn't looking to make things difficult for Nate just for the sake of being difficult.  These were challenging times; Cinaed didn't have the luxury of being generous. 

"Unfortunately," Cinaed said, setting the cigar back down on the window ledge and pushing himself to his feet.  "Lately, I don't have the luxury of picking and choosing what debts I collect on.  Nothing against you personally, mate.  Desperate times, you know?" 

Nate was ratty and squirrelly, yes, but Cinaed was quite capable of recognizing that this was a case of the Ministry being the real enemy.  What Nate was most guilty of was lacking the constitution to stand up to the Ministry and there was only so much Cinaed could expect of him.  There was nothing personal about this; Cinaed wasn't out to get Nate. 

But, no one had warned him that toddlers were so financially demanding. 

He was looking to come across as accommodating, though.  Not desperate. 

"I am a reasonable man.  If you can't pay, arrangements can be made.  You can make payments.  Or, work it off.  I know you're in a bit of a tight spot.  I can help you out."

Briggs watched every movement Cinaed Tawse made without blinking: carefully replacing his cigar back on the window ledge, standing to full height, filling the small hotel room with beard.  Nate stood his ground in the door-frame, still really wishing he had his wand.  So far Tawse was being neighborly and genteel as a murdering, debt-collecting, ex-Azzie could be, but Nate knew his own ability to heat people up - he'd be needing that wand before the sun came up.

"Tight spot...?" Nate echoed with that same derisive, disbelieving scoff.  He was the pariah of Knockturn Ally and now working for knuts at Calaveras.  The Aurors were breathing down his neck.  And Dazmond - well, she was off her nut of late.  In his dirty sleeveless shirt, the raised scars all down his arm and across his chest and neck were easy to see.  Runespoor venom burns just didn't heal very prettily. 

"Must forgive me, Tawse - but I keep getting the distinct premonition that you're going to punctuate this request with something shiny and painful," he said scratching his stubbly neck and eye-balling the ex-Azzie. 

"I can't pay.  You knew as much.  I feel like I'd be insulting your intelligence if I didn't assume you had arrangements already in mind."

"Tight spot...?"

Cinaed's bark of a laugh filled the darkened room.  The laughter stopped just as quickly as it started.  Hopefully, Auror's weren't staking out Briggs' place from next door - they likely would have heard it.  "Something like that."

Obtaining an Ollivander wand had, obviously, been out of the question.  Cinaed's mug had been posted on their 'do not sell' list since the day he stepped off that rock in the Northern Sea.  And, they were careful.  It would have taken more than an imperioused minion or dose of polyjuice to deceive the wandmaker there.  They made a living by matching personalities to wands; the wandmaker there would have likely pegged Cinaed the moment he picked up a wand - regardless of Cinaed's appearance at the time.

The wand in his hand was no where near as smooth and refined as his first Ollivander wand had been.  The grain of the wood abraded against Cinaed's fingers, slightly, as his thumb brushed across the wood. 

"You aren't my enemy," Cinaed stated, simply.  "Unless, of course, you want to make yourself one.  I didn't come here to hurt you.  I'm not the villain the Ministry and Prophet make me out to be.  And, yes, there are ways you could help.  And, pay off your debts.  I'm more than aware of your skills in procuring items knavishly.  If you're willing to make yourself available for a few errands, I'll consider them payment towards your debt."

Color Nate skeptical.  Such was the openly unimpressed expression Nate showed to Cinaed Tawse.  He still didn't budge - not from his doorway, not from his current red alert.  Part of his mind was still committed to getting out of the hotel and out of Knockturn, permanently.

"Not your enemy..." he muttered, again echoing the strange and absurd things coming out of his guest's mouth. 

He shook his head in the silence that followed Tawse's proposal.  Offer.  Request. Threat.  Whatever this was.  He fidgeted for a moment, giving himself time to think.

"Damned if I do..." he resolved to himself, in that same barely audible utterance. 

He took a breath, and all at once straightened up from the doorway and seemed to become cheerful.

Nate left his bathroom doorway and on his way to sit at the table, he passed the fireplace mantle.  As he walked by, he deftly picked out a bottle, without even looking, knowing by heart which ones were killer and which were slow-killers.  He dropped down into one of the table's mismatched chairs and undid the cork on a bottle of Templeton Rye whiskey.  A dollop each into a pair of probably dirty coffee mugs already sitting on the table.

"I can't fault you for coming to me," he said, cordially now.  "I am smarter and prettier than everyone else.  Knavish too, seems like you've seen my resume already.  Good.  You already know that I don't use the Unforgivable Curses - blame my up-bringing - and that I don't work weekends."

The sudden change of attitude was like a kelpie changing its colors.  Whatever Cinaed's game was, if indeed there was any, the result was the same.  Nate would do what he was asked, one way or another.  At least, agreeing to whatever Cinaed Tawse wanted would be enough to get the great lout out of his flat so he could collect his things and go to Brazil.  Or whatever plan he came up with.  He was also very much aware that whatever Cinaed wanted, well, it might not be so bad.  In comparison to Brazil, that is.