TBAY: Avery/Rita. No, not like that. Please. Contains itty-bitty OOP reference.

[derannimer]

No: HPFGUIDX 55904

Derannimer pushes open the old oak doors to the Royal George and 
looks around.

The place is largely empty today--most of the captains are preparing 
for the hurricane. Darn. She'd been hoping to find someone who'd buy 
her a drink, as she's already spent her own ridiculously small week's 
wages.

George is standing behind the bar, polishing glasses and casting the 
occasional dark look towards a small table in one corner. 

Who. . . ?

Oh. Avery.

Well, his money is presumably as good as the next guy's. 

Derannimer walks into the Tavern, letting the door swing shut behind 
her. She realizes that she's never actually met Avery--which might 
make it a little harder to get a drink out of him--but it might be it 
might be interesting to have a talk with him. He is, after all, 
practically a legend. 

Funny. She wouldn't have expected a legend to shrink so into the 
woodwork at the approach of a harmless theorist. 

She has approached the table now. 

"Mr Avery?" Derannimer tries very hard to sound her most 
harmless. "Would you please--that, is, do you mind if I. . . " it's 
very hard to prise a drink out of someone whose eyes begin nervously 
sweeping around the room the minute you start talking. It just makes 
you lose heart, somehow. It isn't like she wasn't going to pay him 
*back.* 

Derannimer abruptly changes her plans. The poor thing just looks 
terrified. It would be very interesting to know why. "D'you mind if I 
sit here with you?" As Avery is still simply staring at her in stark 
horror, she doesn't bother waiting for an answer, but simply sits 
across the table from him. "I've been wanting to have a talk with you 
for ever so," she adds, and feels a little horrified herself to 
realise that she is cooing. She never *coos.* Also lying, apparently, 
as she had initially just wanted to wangle a drink out of him.

But maybe cooing at him will make him a little less apprehensive. 
Right now he seems to be staring at her. . . baseball cap?. . . in a 
state of the utmost fear.

Right then. Coo away.

"You see, I've heard *so *much** about you, and when it turned out 
that--Avery," she says, giving up. "Is there something wrong? Because 
you seem to be a little distressed." 

Avery takes a quick swig at his drink, sets the glass back down on 
the table top--a little too hard--shudders slightly, and fixes her 
with his eye again, in a manner that suggests that he truly fears 
looking at her but truly fears *not* looking at her even more than 
that.

And he is definitely staring at her baseball cap. 

At this moment Derannimer remembers three things. 

She has never seen Avery without Elkins before. 

Avery lives in mortal fear of Captain Cindy. Understandably, given 
that she's always trying to drown him. 

And her baseball cap has "BANG!" written across it in bright red 
letters.

"Oh," she says, realising. "Oh, Avery, I'm sorry." She takes her cap 
off and sets it on the floor. "I'm sorry. I'm not here to try and k--
do you any harm, or anything like that." Avery appears to relax very 
slightly. Derannimer really feels quite guilty. "As a matter of 
fact," she says, 'fessing up, "I wanted to see if you'd stand me a 
drink. That's why I came over. I'll pay you back," she adds quickly, 
but there apparently isn't any need for that. Avery--doubtless 
relieved to discover that she isn't some crewman sent to assassinate 
him on the Captain's orders--has already reached into his pocket and 
fished out a couple of Sickles. Derannimer takes one of them--a glass 
of milk doesn't cost much here--smiles gratefully, and walks over to 
the bar.

George appears before her almost instantly. 

"Derannimer! The usual?"

"Yes please." She slides the Sickle onto the highly polished counter. 
Silver reflects in bright mahogany. "Not very busy today, are you?"

"No," says George, sounding a little down. "No, everyone's taking 
care of their ships." He hands her the glass of milk, and several 
Knuts. "Can't say that I blame them, mind. They say that the storm 
should hit in fifty-nine days now." 

Derannimer feels slightly shocked. "Fifty-nine days," she says 
aloud. "That's not very long."

"No." George looks a trifle awkward. He drops his voice. "Er, 
Derannimer, when you say things like "that's not very long," try and 
say them really *quietly.*"

"What? I--"

"Especially with guys like that around." George quirks an eyebrow 
ever so slightly in Avery's direction. 

"Oh. Is he--" she remembers, and speaks quietly herself. "Is he 
concerned about the storm?"

"Well, aren't we all. But yeah, Avery's been in a bad way since the 
first clear forecast. He's been coming in here almost every day, just 
sitting at that one table all day long."

"Getting horribly drunk?" asks Derannimer with frank interest, and 
some disapproval.

"Oh, no! Just. . . *sitting* there. In the corner. With his back 
against the corner. And his wand right under the table. Sometimes he 
starts muttering things to himself--largely indecipherable things, 
although I have caught a couple of words once or twice. Something 
about 'being ready.' It's dreadful for business," he adds, scowling.

"Oh." 

Derannimer sips at her rather frothy glass of milk for a minute. Then 
she slowly--and, she hopes, unobtrusively--turns around to look at 
Avery. 

He is looking right back at her, with an expression that suggests 
that he's *been* looking at her ever since she walked up to the bar. 
She wants to blink just looking at him. And George was right--one 
hand is under the table. His right hand. His wand hand.

She turns back to George, who has resumed polishing glasses with the 
air of one who has decided not to comment. 

"What's he so scared of?" she asks quietly. 

George drops the air and begins to comment. "DEs, for one thing," he 
says. "And Snape. And Dumbledore's crowd." He thinks for a 
minute. "And Captain Cindy, of course." He casts one very discreet 
glance over at Avery, still staring at Derannimer. "And now you, 
apparently."

"But why me?" hisses Derannimer interogatively. "I don't want to do 
anything to him."

George shrugs. "Avery's always been nervy, and he's worse now, with 
the hurricane coming." He lowers his voice further, if possible, and 
says: "And between you and me, Derannimer, Avery's never been on the 
soundest footing canonically, anyway."

"What?" Derannimer forgets to lower her voice; George gives the 
slightest of starts and frowns at her. 

"Sorry," she positively whispers. "But really, why shouldn't he have 
been the. . . you know. I don't see any objections to it."

"Well, for one thing, there's the evidence from Fudge."

"The. . . ?"

George sets down his glass and leans forward towards Derannimer, 
elbows on the counter. "'You are merely repeating the names of those 
who were acquitted of being Death Eaters thirteen years ago!'" He 
looks at Derannimer in the kind of way usually described 
as "significant." 

"*Thirteen,*" he repeats.

"Oh." Derannimer thinks about it for a minute. "And?" she asks.

George looks confused. "And? Derannimer, look at the time-line."

"No, no, I know that," she explains hastily. "I just meant, well. . . 
how is that a problem?"

George still looks confused, so Derannimer continues. "Harry had just 
named a whole *bunch* of DE's. What was Fudge supposed to say? 'You 
are merely repeating the names of those who were acquitted of being 
Death Eaters thirteen years ago, and oh yeah, that guy Avery, who was 
acquitted of being a Death Eater thirteen years ago but was then also 
subsequently pardoned ten years ago?' Sentence kind of loses its 
punch, doesn't it? What Fudge says doesn't contradict Avery as the 
Fourth Man; and what he *doesn't* say doesn't contradict anything at 
*all,* as far as I can see, because it would be really *clumsy* for 
him to have mentioned Avery's later pardon, as he--Fudge, I mean--was 
talking about *all* the DE's Harry had named. Malfoy et al as well as 
the last four named right before Fudge says the line in question.  
And it would be especially clumsy to specifically address Avery's 
later pardon given that Avery's name was the *first* in that batch 
that Harry had just mentioned. So what's the threat to Avery in that?"

George is about to reply, but the double doors of the tavern suddenly 
Bang open to reveal Captain Cindy. 

"Ah, Derannimer!" she calls out, upon observing her crewman there. 
George gives her a disapproving look, straightens, and resumes 
polishing glasses. The Captain walks up to the bar, and takes a 
minute to return the look before turning to Derannimer. "Sailor?" she 
says rather hopefully, "could you buy me a drink? I seem to have left 
my money on the Big Bang."

Derannimer can't help but feel that this request is in some way 
Nerve. Also possibly Gall, although she's not sure. "No," she says, a 
little shortly. "I can't buy you a drink, because I don't have any 
money. 

"I *could* buy you a drink if I happened to have a bigger salary," 
she adds, none too subtly. Captain Cindy just laughs. "No, no, that's 
fine. Don't feel bad about it! George, just put it on my tab."

George looks like he would like to say something, but apparently 
decides not to. He hands Cindy a Black Russian, and constrains 
himself to a sneer.

The Captain downs it in one. "Derannimer," she says, settling onto a 
bar stool and turning to face the young woman. "There's something 
I've been meaning to talk to you about."

"Oh?" 

"Yeah. I had a talk with Faith a while ago, and I want to ask you: 
what do you think about Rita Skeeter?"

Derannimer blinks. "Rita Skeeter? Oh, I guess she's okay."

"I told Faith she was just doing her job. We fed the question into a 
Virtue Meter, actually. 

Derannimer decides to stick to the bit of this remark that she 
actually understands, and leave the Virtue Meter alone. "Well, she's 
going to be doing her job in the near future, anyway."

The Captain blinks. "Come again?"

Derannimer looks slightly embarrassed. "Oh, well, it's nothing. Just 
a theory. Not so much a theory as a hunch really."

"About Rita Skeeter?"

"Well, it just seems to me that she's going to wind up writing the 
truth about Voldemort's return for Dumbledore in the next book."

"*What?!*"

"Well," says Derannimer defensively, "*someone's* got to, because the 
Daily Prophet's sure not gonna. And Rita is the only journalist we 
really know. And Hermione could blackmail her into it. And we know 
that Rita dislikes the Ministry. And we can guess, from the OOP 
summary, that Ministry plotlines figure heavily in OOP. And Harry 
said of Fudge: 'He'll never keep Rita quiet. Not on a story like 
this,' so it's even got *fore-shadowing.*" 

"*And,*" she adds, after a moment's thought. "It would be a *great* 
boost for her career. 'Disgraced ex-Minister of Magic, Cornelius 
Fudge.' Snappy start to a sentence, yes?"



********

Derannimer