Chapter Ten.

In which I am brutally assaulted and Weasley is right.

 
I woke up the following morning to discover that Weasley is a snuggler. I was lying on my side and he was spooned up behind me with one arm draped across my torso; I could feel his breath moving against the back of my head. Under other circumstances it might've actually been a comfortable position—such as Iceland in January—but as it was I was sweating terribly and that crystal necklace was digging into of my neck. I tried to throw his arm off. It came directly back, and he started to stir.

"Mmmm...."

"Could you get off?" I asked.

"...mmm?"

"Only I'm rather uncomfortable here."

Weasley's hand performed a quick tactile inventory of my chest, arm, stomach and hip, and then he exhaled sharply. "Shit."

I sat up as he rolled away and started hobbling stiffly around the room; my own body wasn't too pleased with yesterday's workouts, either. "Do I get a 'good morning'?" I asked.

"Shit." Weasley located his trousers and tossed them on the end of the bed.

"How about a 'thanks for the brilliant shag,' then?"

"Fuck off, Malfoy."

I folded my arms across my chest. "If this is how you go about all your mornings after, it's a miracle they're not queuing up around the block for a night with you."

He paused, and leaned dramatically against the wall. "Malfoy, do you have any idea what a bad idea this was?"

"Why, wasn't it good for you?"

He flushed even redder than his sunburn. "It's nothing to do with—look, I'm supposed to protect you, not—you—this is against every regulation in the book!"

"Regulations?" I asked, and laughed. "Weasley, you don't seem to have a firm handle on the situation. Regulations and assignments don't matter terribly much when your employer is trying to kill you."

"They still matter to me," he said mulishly.

"Then you are an idiot, not that we didn't know that before."

He growled. "You're completely missing the point."

"Then enlighten me, O wise one."

"I don't even like you!"

I snorted. "As if that's a prerequisite for sex."

Weasley apparently gave up on finding his y-fronts—I vaguely hoped that Millicent would feed them to an alligator—and shoved his legs into his trousers. "Whatever. Look. Let's just forget this ever happened and never speak of it again to anyone."

"I think," I said, "that I'm getting a bit offended here."

"What? Why?"

"Why are you being such a drama queen about this?" He flinched on the word queen; I filed that away for future reference. "We're two grown men who shared and ill-timed and irrational fuck. The sky is, I am relatively certain, staying up."

"You don't understand," he said. "This is wrong on so many levels. I'm going to take a shower."

"Gee, thanks," I said to the door as it shut, then flopped back into the sheets. I hadn't expected a marriage proposal, especially given the context, but I'd at least hoped Weasley would be rational about it. It was a one-time incident. An extremely good one-time incident, but...it wasn't like it was going to happen ever again, right? I'd indulged my inner schoolboy. We had more important things to be doing. There was no need to get hysterical. And even if it did happen again, it still wouldn't mean anything because there wasn't anything for it to mean, except that Weasley had issues with his sexual identity and self-control.

Besides, he'd seemed to be enjoying it at the time.

I dressed and shuffled into the kitchen, where Goyle and Millicent were demolishing huge piles of fried eggs and sausage. "Good morning," I said. Millicent poured me a cup of coffee with one hand while shoveling down eggs with the other. "Thank you. Er, where's Crabbe?"

Goyle, thankfully, paused to swallow. "Mobile. Arranging some things."

"Ah. Er, good."

After a few minutes, though, Goyle wiped his mouth and looked up at me. "You didn't say you and Weasley were fucking."

I sprayed coffee all over the table.

"Woulda been nicer to him if you had."

"Weasley and I aren't fucking," I said.

"We heard you—"

"That was...an exception." I wiped the coffee off my face. "Trust me, it will never happen again."

He and Millicent looked at each other, and Millicent smirked, but didn't say anything.

"You," I told them, "are jumping to conclusions."

Weasley came in with his hair still dripping and sat as far away from me as physically possible. Millicent poured him a cup of coffee and served us both plates. We all concentrated on eating for a few moments. Then Weasley said quietly, "Basil."

I looked up at him, but he was staring intensely at the spice jars. "What about him?"

"He's got to be connected to Greenplate," Weasley sipped his coffee and kept staring. In case you haven't yet noticed, he is the sort of person whose brain doesn't work properly unless he's talking to himself; if he was going to do his thinking at the table, I resigned myself to the role of interlocutor.

"Why," I asked, "must he be connected to Greenplate?"

"Because if Greenplate really was murdered, only someone like O'Guin could've done it—someone with access and authority, someone the Healers and the Enforcers wouldn't think twice about letting in to see a prisoner on suicide watch."

"And if he wasn't murdered?"

Weasley drummed his knuckles on the tabletop. "It still comes back to Greenplate, doesn't it? You were reporting on Greenplate to the Confederation. O'Guin was in charge of the investigation. He'd been working on smuggling crimes for his whole career, as far as I know....maybe Basil was in business with Greenplate, too?"

"There is more than one import-export company in America, Weasley."

"I know that, but how else would you have gotten mixed up with him?"

I rolled back over to face the wall. "Perhaps I was really reporting on Basil's illicit activities and O'Guin diverted the investigation to Dies to protect himself."

For the first time all meal Weasley met my eyes. "There is one way to find out..."

Bloody hell, not this again. "You just don't give up, do you?" I asked.

"Not when we need to know."

"My answer is still 'no,' Weasley."

"Think of it as a favor."

I raised my eyebrow at him; his ears went red, but he didn't look away. "I seem to recall you whining last night because you already owe me something."

"You didn't seem eager to call in the debt," he replied.

I threw my fork down. "I already said no."

"Malfoy, I wouldn't even suggest it if I thought I was going to kill you."

"I lack your confidence."

"Don't you want to know? Aren't you the littlest bit curious?"

"Of course I'm 'a bit curious'," I snapped. "It's my mind that's been tampered with!"

"So why don't you do something about it?"

"Because I like my brain the way it functions now!"

I wiped my mouth with my napkin and leapt to my feet; Weasley stood, too, arms folded across his chest. "You know what, Malfoy?" he said. "I think you're scared."

"Of getting killed?" I asked. "Of course I am."

"I mean you're scared of remembering."

"What an absurd—"

I tried to leave; he slid around the table and grabbed my arm. "You're scared of what you might remember because you don't want to admit that you were cooperating with the Confederation. You don't really want to know what you did to piss of Dies or why Basil is after you, because then you wouldn't be the poor innocent victim who's gotten dragged into this against his will by the big bad Weasel."

"Don't flatter yourself," I snapped, and shook him off. Weasley took a step to the side and blocked the door. "Get out of my way."

"We need to know what was really happening at Greenplate and Company," he said. "We need to know who Basil is and whether anything O'Guin told me is true."

"We can find out another way," I said.

"What other way?"

"Find one!"

I left the kitchen by the other door, and Weasley wasn't quite quick enough to catch me. "Where are you going?" he demanded.

"To pet the alligators."

Goyle frowned, and called after me, "You really shouldn't do that..."

I went outside and stood on the end of the dock that formed their front porch. Even this early in the morning, the heat and humidity were already oppressive. My train of thought at that point was rather jumbled and kept flitting to things I'd like to do to Weasley, pleasurable and not, but somehow I kept circling back to the same damn sticking point again and again. There was information to be gained by breaking the charm. Perhaps, if we ever agreed on where we were going, I could hold out for a proper Obliviator to break the charm—assuming we could even find one without getting caught by the Confederation, of course.

But Weasley was set on going to Britain and probably wouldn't change his mind unless I could prove to him that it was a horrible idea—since clearly my outstanding warrants and the sheer obviousness of such a plan weren't going to impede him. And, despite the intense security on the farm, I felt it was only a matter of time before O'Guin thought to look here. The longer we stayed in any one place, the more danger we were in, and the more danger we were putting Crabbe, Goyle and Bulstrode in. We couldn't waste time investigating Basil from here, we couldn't waste time arguing about where to run to, and meanwhile all the answers—well, most of the answers—were locked up inside my brain, under the charm...

I really fucking hate it when Weasley's right.

Crabbe and the self-rowing boat came gliding through the trees just then, and I stood back while he climbed onto the dock. For some reason he had a very damp, outraged-looking gray cat under his arm; he smiled and held it out to me, where it writhed violently. "Found her near the water," he said. "Thought Millie would like her. 'Sides, I didn't want a gator to get her, it might get sick."

"That's...sweet of you," I said. "Did you make the arrangements for us to leave?"

He shrugged. "Got to know where you're going to go first, don't I?"

I thought about saying Australia, but I didn't particularly want to incite another fight on the subject with Weasley; there was no guarantee it would lead to such pleasurable results a second time. "We'll work on that."

I stepped into the kitchen ahead of Crabbe and had a split second to register the end of Weasley's wand pointed at my face before he shouted, "Memento memini!" Crabbe, thankfully, caught me before I hit the floor.

I blacked out for a bit.

When I came to, I was lying on a couch in the living room, while the other four talked quietly around me, and I had what was likely the worst headache of my life. Weasley was the first to notice that I was awake and leaned over me. "All right, Malfoy?"

"I don't know," I said, "how many fingers am I holding up?"

"That's rude."

I struggled into a sitting position. "So is assault."

Weasley looked at Goyle and Millicent, who shrugged. "Sorry, but you were out-voted. It's just too important."

"Remind me to maim you all later." My face felt about as fine as can be expected, so I assumed he hadn't left a mark, but bloody hell, my head was pounding....

Everyone stared at me for several minutes, then Weasley asked, "Well?"

"Well, what?"

"Did it work?"

"How am I supposed to know?" I asked. I didn't feel any different; no flash bulbs were going off in my brain. Perhaps Weasley had fouled up the charm or something.

He leaned in closer to me. "Where did you first meet O'Guin?"

"In a park," I said, and I was as surprised as anyone, because I actually knew. "I met him in a park in Boston, after I sent the first set of invoices." It was all right there, in my head, as if I'd never forgotten it: I could even remember the miserable damp of the day, and O'Guin's smooth assurances that everything would be taken care of...bastard.

Weasley grinned like an idiot and pumped his fist in the air. "Right, so what happened at Greenplate's company? How did you find out about Dies?"

I tried to think back; not all my memories were as sharp and clear as that first meeting with O'Guin, and there were still a few blank spots—Weasley hadn't lifted the charm cleanly. But I thought I could remember enough. "Kidd," I said. "I was looking into delinquent accounts and she explained Greenplate's arrangement, the dummy company and such. She said she was too scared to go to the authorities herself..."

"Who's Kidd?" Goyle asked.

"The cinnamon bottle." Weasley leaned forward eagerly. "Right. So you kept meeting with O'Guin? Delivering invoices?"

"Right, right, all on Dies...they sent him to me when the first set turned out to be accurate..." The headache made it difficult to think clearly. "When was the last meeting?"

"June fourth, according to O'Guin."

I tried to remember what I was doing on June fourth. I bought new dress robes for the Stiffles' party, I called my accountant..."I met him in Baltimore that day," I said, as the details resolved themselves. "I had...something to tell him. Something important."

"Did it involve Kidd?"

"Yes, yes it did..." But all the details were lost in a fuzzy haze—this was presumably the day he'd Obliviated me. "What did he tell you I said?"

"O'Guin said that you demanded money from the Confederation and then huffed off when he said you weren't getting any."

Crabbe snorted. "You mean they weren't even paying you?"

"Of course they were paying me," I said. "Just not in anything so crude as cash."

And there, as clear and bright as day, was the reason I'd gone to the Confederation in the first place—the reason I'd been wondering about for a week. It was so obviously I wanted to kick myself.

"How were they paying you if they weren't using money?" Goyle asked.

I cleared my throat. "O'Guin promised...that if I cooperated fully...the Confederation would lean on the Ministry to rescind the warrants. And I could return to Britain."

Three pairs of eyes stared at me with something like envy, and I thought about how very far from home we all were. After a few moments, Weasley coughed nervously. "Kidd's remains were found two days before that last meeting," he said quickly. "So you knew that Dies had killed her when you saw O'Guin."

I started to say yes and stopped again. I remembered being agitated waiting for the meeting, I remembered that there was something about Kidd...but something wasn't fitting into place. "I remember talking about Kidd, yes, but...Dies didn't kill her."

"What?"

"Dies didn't kill Kidd," I said again. "I'm quite certain."

"So who did kill Kidd?" he asked dumbly

"How the hell should I know?" I snapped. "I don't know how I even know Dies didn't kill her, she wasn't exactly a friend."

"But she had to be helping you get the invoices on Dies," Weasley said. "Maybe Basil killed her?"

"It's awfully easy to ascribe a crime to an individual we know nothing about," I said tartly. "I can't remember anyone who might be Basil, so we still don't know what his role is in this except sending O'Guin to kill us."

Weasley looked thoughtful for a moment. "Maybe Kidd found out something about Basil the same way she found out about Dies. She might've told you before she was killed and asked you to take it to the Confederation."

I considered this; it certainly sounded plausible, but there was a lingering bit of wrongness about it, something that seemed off. "I don't know," I finally said. "I just remember that Dies didn't kill Kidd...but I talked about her with O'Guin the day he Obliviated me."

There was a moment of thoughtful silence. Weasley rolled his wand between his fingers. "It probably wouldn't help to cast the charm again..."

"If you point that at me, I'll kill you."

He sighed. "Well, at least we're sure of our situation now. The next step..."

Weasley stared at me and I sighed. There was nowhere to go that was not within reach of the Confederation, except for a few piddling little countries in the most primitive reaches of Asia where they hadn't even heard of bathing. I had contacts in a few countries but could not trust any of them to the degree I trusted Crabbe and Goyle. I was, frankly, running out of options.

But Weasley had connections in England, not the least of which included a small army of relatives and Harry fucking Potter himself. If we could get to them without my being descended upon by a horde of Aurors. If we could evade the small army of Enforcers and Confederation agents who were probably combing the country for us. If we could get into the country in the first place without getting caught by either the American or British authorities who were doubtlessly already searching for us.

Weasley had been...well, not precisely right about the Memory Charm, but it hadn't killed me. And the best place to hide was often the first place someone would look.

Damn it.

"How do we get to Britain from here?" I asked Goyle.

Weasley's eyes came very close to rolling out of his face.

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