He looked at the bottle, just looked at it.
“I want a drink. What’s one little drink?"
He did not take it. He was not going to take it. He hadn’t had one in a month, not drinking was beginning to be a habit...
He could go to Grimmauld place. Molly Weasley would be there, cooking, or maybe Remus Lupin. Lupin would understand. It wasn’t so easy for Lupin to get work, to get himself settled. Bit of a good deal Remus had there, living in Grimmauld place, even if the place was a mausoleum, and even if there was a ward on it that kept him from liberating any more of the movables… They were just sitting there, going to waste. Dumbledore had made him return what he’d taken “ well, most of it. There were a few bits that couldn’t be found, but… And the commercial value of the odds and ends in the house didn’t interest Remus Lupin anyway.
“He’s twice the man I’ll ever be. That’s why he’ll understand” he thought.
He did not have the courage to go to Lupin, to ask for help. He was too ashamed. He needed “
He shouldn’t need anything. This was what he was. This was what he’d always been. He was a thief, he was useful because he was a thief, he had to stay useful, the Order…what else did he have connecting him to even a semblance of decency but the Order?
Oh, Dung, who cares about bein’ respectable?. Ye make a living. A man’s got to live “ he’s got a right to live. And some of these laws are right dodgy themselves.
But he knew it was not merely the dodgy laws he’d been flouting all his life. He was a petty thief “ a thief, and not even a great thief “ a fence, really, and a sneak thief “ he’d stolen from Harry, he’d abandoned Harry for those cauldrons, which he had made very little profit on, in the long run, come to think “ he’d given up an opportunity to be someone that night, and how many opportunities like that did he get?
The Order was his last little toehold in decency. He wasn’t honest, he wasn’t trustworthy, and he wasn’t even clean. He didn’t even know if he cared, or if he cared, why he cared, and yet he must, or he would not be staring at that bottle “ it would be empty. It would not be alone, either.
Still, he didn’t drink. He’d have thought if anything would have made him drink, it would have been Dumbledore’s death, and yet “ he didn’t drink. He couldn’t. He could not say why. He did not know that on some level Dumbledore’s belief in him had kept him from the last little slide in to total depravity, and that with Dumbledore gone it was a choice “ he could go down the last quarter inch, or he could go up.
He could not let himself slip any lower. So he stole “ a man had to eat. So he lied “ a man had to protect himself. So he made a profit “ well, people wanted what he sold them, wanted it at the price he sold it for, or they would not have bought the merchandise.
Any lower, and he’d be where Snape was now. Big secret “ he knew this big secret. He had the invisibility cloak Podmore’d had the night they caught him “ it had slipped to the floor. No point in letting it go to waste. Maybe he’d even give to back to Moody one of these days. Not that he’d appreciate it. Moody had no time for him, none at all.
Neither did anyone else, really.
“Well, Dung, you’re not all that likeable. You lie, you steal, and you smell bad. Not much there to like.”
He couldn’t say Dumbledore had liked him. Maybe he had. He’d trusted him, though. And he was probably the last person left alive who knew his real name. Well, not left alive now.
He looked at the bottle again, the dusty bottle, and thought of his night’s duty in Little Whinging. With a crack, then, he was gone, and the smell of his tobacco settled itself in the bed-sit he left, the rays of afternoon sunshine barely penetrating the dirt on the window, the snake plant even he could not kill languishing on the windowsill.
He appeared in Arabella Figg’s kitchen with a sharp crack, and watched as she tensed and grabbed a butcher knife off the little table next to her. She hadn’t a wand. Much good it would have done her anyway. It seemed she intended to go down fighting, although why she thought he’d be fighting her…
“Hullo, Figgy.”
She started. “Mundungus?” she squeaked. “You’re early. What flower do I most abhor?
“Agapanthus. Especially in pink.”
Dung wandered over to where she was standing and gently took the knife out of her hands. She stared at him.
“Got any soap?” He had the nerve to say, casually. “ My "Scourgify’s " a bit rusty.”
She looked at him suspiciously. “I just want a shower, Figgy. Ye don’ have to scrub my back. Though if ye’d like…”
“Who are you and what have ye done with that skiving sneak thief, Mundungus Fletcher?”
“’ts me, Figgy.”
“You can’t be Fletcher. Ye don’t smell bad enough. Not that ye don’t smell. Ye just don’t smell bad enough… Tell me something only Mundungus would know.”
“Ye were only able to go help Harry with them Dementors cause ye had Mr. Tibbles watching under the car,” he tried, wondering what was getting her back up.
“Everyone who was at Harry’s hearing at the Ministry would know that. It’s hardly a secret.”
“Ye din’t tell everyone I’d gone off for a load of cauldrons. Ye din’t tell them I got meself tight on Muggle beer afterwards and woke up on the bathroom floor in there two days later. Ye didn’t say I was only wearing me boxers when I woke up.”
She was still suspicious, if a tad less so. “That Barty Crouch fooled Dumbledore. How do I know you haven’t got Mundungus "Imperioused" somewhere and aren’t just repeating things you’ve tortured out of him?”
“Fair enough. What would convince you?”
“Veritaserum. Only I haven’t got any.”
Quick on his feet, he countered with, “Well ye sat next to me at the big Order meeting after “ afterwards, an’ Arthur was driving us both mad drummin’ his fingers on the table. He was hummin’, too. I never heard it before. Ye thought it was from that Muggle war “ the one before Grindelwald. An I pinched ye.”
Her eyes narrowed. “I’m telling Lupin you aren’t yourself.”
“Go right ahead, Figgy. Go right ahead. Only can I have the soap first? An mebbe a towel.”
“Ye haven’t got plumbing at your place, then?”
“No, well, it never bothered me. Only sober I’m noticing I’d rather be standing upwind of meself.”
He could see her contemplating him with narrowed eyes. “And why should I waste a clean towel on you? I’ve got to carry those to the Laundry and carry them back to get them clean, you know.”
“I’ll buy you another one, Figgy.”
She made up her mind. “Well, if you’re not Mundungus the cat’s among the pixies and no mistake. I don’t suppose your taking a shower is going to make anything worse. Only don’t think I’m sleeping tonight.”
“Towel, Figgy. Towel..”
“AND I expect my towel back, and nothing missing from my bath.”
“YOUR bath? Getting lathered with me, then, Arabella?”
She threw him a sour look. Then she slapped off towards the back of the house, muttering to herself. The muttering and the sound of her slippers got lower and lower as she went, stopped for a moment, and then increased in volume as she returned. She handed him a hideous orange and brown towel. She even had a washcloth.
“Here ye go then, Don’t use all the soap on one spot. It’s upstairs and left, right.”
“Thanks, Figgy.”
He threw the towel over his right shoulder and slunk up the stairs.
As he disappeared she sprang, suddenly into action. There was not only no safety, there was no longer even an illusion of safety “ not at Hogwarts, not here, behind her lace curtains and imitation silk drapes, and absolutely not for her, the wandless wonder.
She ran to her ancient refrigerator, her carpet slippers sliding on the floor, her housecoat flapping around her knees, and yanked it open. The third drinks can from the left… She pulled it out muttering to herself.
A pencil and a bit of paper. "Come immediately!" She underlined “Immediately,” which she had written in uppercase letters “And Stun imposter Mundungus Fletcher.” Her hands trembled as she unscrewed the bottom of the can and thrust the message inside, screwing it back on again. The she held it in front of her and grabbed the tab. “I hope your magic outlived you, Dumbledore” she muttered.
The can disappeared with a pop. What to do next? His wand. Her father had always put his in the toothbrush holder while he showered…
There was a naked man in her shower. Well, a naked Death Eater. Weren’t most of them men? “Get out of the house, Arabella.” She could hear her father’s voice in her head. “Get out of the house. I’ll take care of this.”
She had never seen him alive again, and how she had seen him… to this day it gave her nightmares. Well, no one’ll have nightmares or cry over me. Lupin’ll bring adults, and none of them will cry over me.
She didn’t want to go unarmed. You’ve never hurt anyone in your life, you old fool. What makes you think you can do it now? Maybe if she’d thought ahead… well, she hadn’t. Fine then, stealth. She slipped her slippers off her feet and headed for the stairs.
She’d climbed these stairs for 16 years now, slowly wearing a strip down the middle of the Harvest Gold pile. The third squeaked if you stepped in the middle, the seventh if you stepped on the right end. She didn’t.
The water was running in there. She stopped by the door, her heart pounding, the skin on her face and the back of her neck burning, on her arms, ice cold. She pushed open the door.
Well I wouldn’t a thought Mundungus would like a steamy shower. Not that that’s Mundungus in there, using my lavender flower shampoo and singing, if you could call that caterwauling singing…” His robes lay on the pale blue tile of the floor in a rancid heap. No such luck that he’d put the wand anywhere she could see it. She’d have to touch them.
“It was a loooooovely Viii-IIIII-oh-ho-let.” It sounded like he might be stopping.
She leaned down and started rummaging in the pile of brown material.
Had it always been brown? Was it brown now, or a very very dusty black, and how could anyone stand to live like that?
There, I’ve got it. I just can’t get it out of the pocket. Should I just...
“Figgy?” He sounded surprised.
She didn’t move, didn’t breathe. There were wandless spells, and Merlin knew what he could do to her, or if he could get the wand away from her…
He stuck his sodden head around he edge of the flowered shower curtain, shocked. He looked down at her. “What ye doin’, Figgy?”
She looked up at him, petrified. She opened her mouth once, closed it, opened it again. Her mind was an absolute blank. His ginger hair was covered with bright purple and hot pink soap bubbles. He was naked “ well of course he was naked, his clothes were on the floor, weren’t they?
She grabbed and ran. Her bare feet skidded on the moist bathroom floor, she almost landed on her bottom, but she was up and halfway out the door before a hand closed around her arm. She yipped like a small dog, twisted and almost broke free, until a second hand grabbed her by the other arm and turned her around.
“Where ye goin’ with my clothes, ye old bat? He crowded her against the bathroom door, closing it and confining them in the steamy room. “Why you sneakin’ orf with my things?”
She stood her ground, terrified though she was, and he read her terror in her eyes. “Ye can’still be on about me bein’ a Death Eater, ye daft ole…”
She brought her knee up sharply, but inexpertly, and hit him a glancing blow. Even so, he howled “ but had enough presence of mind to lean harder against her, rather than collapse.
He was tall, and naked, and she was a tiny woman unaccustomed to being in close proximity to naked men. “Yer not Mundungus, I know it. Mundungus is drunk all the time, he doesn’t bathe, and he never asks for any thing, he just takes it, so what have you done with him?”
It seemed stupid to be talking, even stupider to be talking to an enraged wet man with purple and pink bubbles in his hair but she was hoping to keep him talking until the Order got there. What was taking them? Or did Lupin not know about the soda can?
Of course he doesn’t know, you old idiot, who would have told him? It was Dumbledore’s idea, after all.
She had just decided that help was not coming when the distinctive “pop” of apparition was heard three times.
“Marvelous. Up here, Lads, I’m trapped with a crazy woman in the loo!”
Good. Let him think it’s Death Eaters, I’ll bet Lupin figured it out.
She took advantage of his distraction to poke him deeply in the ribs with the wand, still tangled in his robes, which she hadn’t dropped when he grabbed her.
He was surprisingly tough. “Ye’ll have to do better than that, Figgy.” He growled with an odd smile on his face. “Grew up in the streets, I did, and you’re not a patch on a street tough. Give it yer best shot.”
“ Reducto!" The door powdered behind her, and Arabella Fig found her self falling into…
“Lupin! Wot brings you here, mate? Figgy and I were jes’ having a bit of a brangle.”
“I’m going to have to ask you to step out of here, Dung, and into one of the bedrooms… Where are your robes?”
“Figgy’s got ‘em, and me wand. Snuck in here while I was taking a bit of a bath an’ pinched ‘em.” He seemed amused by this. “Din’ think she was up to it. I underestimated you.” He nodded at her. Turning back to Lupin, he went on “She’s got some daft idea that I’m a Death Eater impersonating me. Well, I’ve been here a bit, you going to watch me for the rest of the hour?”
“Better start from now, Remus. I’ve got no way of knowing he didn’t take a nip of potion while I was…”
“Ooglin me from behind the shower curtain. I won’ hold it against ye, Figg. Livin here by yerself, ye don’ get all that much opportunity to feast yer eyes on a speciman such as meself.”
She opened her mouth in outrage, only to look down for the first time and realize that he obviously found the situation…intriguing. She went a funny shade of green.
“Well if an argument in my bathroom does THAT to you I doubt you get many opportunities yourself. Whoever you are.”
“Come on downstairs with me, Arabella, and we’ll have a nice cup of while Bill and Remus watch Dung here. You got his wand, that’s clever of you. Could you tell me how you did it? There’s Aurors I trained with who couldn’t have managed it…”
Tonks put her am around Mrs. Figg and led her away and downstairs. “And I’ll Scourgify that robe while we’re at it, that or burn it, what d'you think?”