Standing next to the street sign for Privet Drive, the old man looked up at the early morning sun and adjusted his bowler hat to cover one eye more fully. Some distance behind him, wishing he knew more about what that eye of Alastor's could do, Lester tapped his wand to pink fuzzy muggle slippers and waved it over the bushes in front of him so he could move silently through the undergrowth.
It would be just like the man to stick something in his skull that could see through solid walls, look in every direction at once, and fire Killing Curses when he was mad - which would make sneaking up on him nigh impossible, and deadly… though it was also like him to let you think it could do all that just to throw you off.
As the man in front of him reached into his jacket to check his watch again Lester finally moved. Stepping lively, the suburban shrubbery moving silently around his purple bathrobe, he darted forward and pegged his wand to the man's back.
"Gotcha," he said, gruffly triumphant.
As the trapped man slowly turned, his face and body started to shift and Lester knew he'd been tricked. He felt the tip of a wand in his back just before he heard his old friend speak.
"Constant vigilance," his old auror trainer said from behind him as a heart-faced girl with pink hair smiled benignly at him, completely unconcerned at the wand he had pointed at her.
"I didn't know you'd be bringing Pinky," Lichfield said, pocketing his wand as he turned to see his friend suddenly appear from beneath an invisibility cloak. "Well now, that's just cheating," he gestured to the silvery material of the cloak as Alastor stuffed it into a pocket of his tweed jacket.
"Says the man who lost," the spiky-haired girl said with a grin.
"At least you didn't trip yourself this time," Lester said with a look. "Why'd you bring her?" he asked his friend.
"The sooner I get her trained, the sooner I retire," Alastor said, plucking his bowler off Pinky's head and sticking it on his, lowering it over his artificial eye. "And where else is she going to see an old family bailiff in action?" he asked, taking out a single piece of folded paper and handing it to him.
He grunted in response as he briefly scanned the document. It was concise and by-the-book, hallmarks of Hammerhand's work, and the signatures were right at first glance - though it only gave glimmers as to how all this had gone so horribly wrong.
"So what have you got for me?" Alastor asked glancing at the pocket of his bathrobe.
Out of the pocket Lester drew a vial filled with a swirling silvery substance.
"You'll want to look into that," he said, giving the old auror the vial and pocketing the paper, "discretely."
Moody grunted and stowed the vial away for later.
"So where are we?" the girl asked, transfiguring her robes into a pair of ripped jeans and a tee-shirt, which he took to be more fitting for the environment. "And what are we doing in a muggle area anyway?"
"You didn't tell her what's going on?" Lester asked the old auror.
"They don't pay me to hold someone's hand," Moody rumbled back at him. "Let her figure it out for herself. Which one of these is it?" he asked squinting at the surrounding homes with his exposed eye.
"It's down here, number four," Lester gestured as he lead the strange procession through the unsuspecting suburb, Moody stumping along behind with a limp.
"This place is spooky," the pink-haired girl said as Lester stooped to pick up the newspaper in front of number four. "They're all exactly the same. It's not natural."
"Thought you had muggle in you," Moody said to the girl.
"Just because my dad's muggleborn doesn't mean I lived there. You could have dressed a bit more naturally though," she said, giving Lester an appraising look.
"I'll have you know my neighbor dresses just like this when he gets his paper every morning," he replied, shaking the Dursleys' newspaper at her like a wand.
The girl was in mid eye-roll when her attention snapped back to him. "What do you mean, 'just like this'?"
"Too late!" Lester said quickly, ringing the doorbell.
Alastor glanced around and moved to flank Pinky with him as footfalls approached the door. "You doing the talking?"
"Nope," Lester replied, handing the paper to the girl, "Let Pinky do it." Her eyes quickly became the size of a house-elf's.
The front door opened before the girl could respond and the horse-faced housewife looked at them all like they were door-to-door dung salesmen. Remembering the bland girl he once had the misfortune to meet, Lester could only conclude life had not been kind to Petunia Evans. If anything, she looked even more plain and uninteresting than she did before.
"Yes?" she asked, scrutinizing them closely. "What do you want?"
"Wotcher," the suddenly chipper Pinky said with a smile, "I'm Dora Tonks with the Crazy Codgers' Convalescent Cottage, and I'm here with the couple of curmudgeonly coots you signed up to babysit today."
"What are you talking about?" Petunia sneered. "I never signed up for anything. Now get out of here before I call the police," she said, starting to close the door.
Lichfield's hand darted out and slammed against the door, holding it in place.
.....
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