Marlene Lupin is plotting her revenge (on_the_wall) wrote in blurred_lines, @ 2008-12-31 03:26:00 |
|
|||
Entry tags: | ! [1979-12] december, caradoc dearborn, hestia jones, marlene lupin (née mckinnon) |
Who: Caradoc, Marlene, and Hestia
When: January 30th, late at night
Where: The Muggleborn Clinic
What: Breakin' in!
Rating: PG
Status: Partially Posted, In Progress
Leaving Meaghan had become a trial for Caradoc, who valiantly attempted to disguise his anxieties with a flip smile and a kiss to her forehead as he Disapparated from the house in Ireland and strode through the wards at the Order safehouse (with all necessary accoutrement in his pockets) to wait for Marlene and Hestia on the front step.
Slipping a small, moleskine notebook from his breast pocket, he wet the tip of a pen on his tongue and began to compose a rough outline of the evening's escapades. While he was sure that the Foundation would have detection charms of some sort, he was more concerned about any physical barriers that might be put in place.
Like dogs. Or razor wire. Which is why he had thoughtfully packed rat poison and wire snips into a satchel, along with three sets of gloves and ski masks, a length of rope and a case to place their samples in.
Marlene was almost a little nervous over how excited she was to break into the muggleborn clinic. It'd been so long since it seemed like they'd actually gotten anything legit on those creeps, and it seemed like if there were going to be shady dealings anywhere, it'd be at the random-as-hell clinic that had suddenly popped up so that the purists could "help" muggleborns. Luckily for her, at least, the nervousness about her excitement was providing a pleasant distraction from how nervous she was that something could go terribly wrong. They hadn't had the best of luck in Hogsmeade related activities over the last year, and the damn clinic was right across from the Lestrange Library. Marlene doubted that they'd have wards up like what had made Benjy go all to pieces, but one never could be too sure. And the damn place was headed by Narcissa Malfoy: What if she had it guarded by her stupid peacocks?
Nonchalantly shrugging off any hesitation or fear as she said goodbye to Remus -- because she would be back, and in just a few hours, and everything was going to go fantastically -- she apparated to the safehouse to meet up with Caradoc and Hestia, a camera (that was probably too large to be lugging around with her, but it was all she had) and two of the listening devices in her bag. Ideally she'd just be able to plant them somewhere in the clinic so that they could keep tabs on what they did during the day when the place was open, but she supposed that if the break in took a turn for the worse, Remus would, at least, be able to hear what had happened from back at the house. ...Not that that was something she wanted to think about, either, nor did she have any intention of putting that thought into her husband's head.
Spotting that Caradoc had arrived first, Marlene plopped down on the step next to him, setting her bag down at her feet. "So about how many times, give or take a few, have people greeted you with "What's up, Doc?" before?" Marlene asked him, forgoing any sort of traditional greeting as they waited for Hestia to arrive.
Hestia, of course, was already in the safehouse, still sipping at what little sherry she had left and looking sadly at the barely-there remains of her ice cream in its carton. This was supposed to be a happy and fun night...a night when she and Marlene and Caradoc went out full of optimism and good cheer, not full of "oh my god the scary lady is going to chop off my limbs." She was only slightly tipsy, but it was enough that her nervousness about Bellatrix Lestrange was now translating into giggles and macabre songs about osteology. "The foot-bone's connected to the leeeeeeeg bone...the leg bone's connected to the hiiiiiiip bone...the hip bone's connected to the baaaaaack bone...hic!" she sang to herself, bored and impatient. Being drunk, even slightly, was not as much fun alone and under house arrest.
Her cheer increased significantly when she heard voices outside on the front steps. That had to be Caradoc and Marlene...at least she thought. With her luck, it was probably Dumbledore and Alice coming to Obliviate her for being a bad liar to Kingsley. Hestia still stood, a bit unsteadily, with her medical kit in hand and wobbled over to the door. A grin lit up her face when she saw that it was Marlene and Caradoc and not impending doom. She knocked on the door and smiled at them through the glass. "Looking for me?" she asked cheerily.
With a response to Marlene's quip on the tip of his tongue (he'd have to save it for later), he turned his head as Hestia stumbled out of the door and gave her an appraising glance masked with a smile.
"Just the dame we needed. It'll probably be best to get this over as quickly as possible so, yes. Let us go to."
And with that, he stood and began to dole out the ski-masks and gloves from his satchel.
"You're looking better!" Marlene said lightly, taking the accessories from Caradoc and sliding on the gloves, not wanting to reflect too much on the events from earlier in the day until after this was done with. They needed to stay focused and alert on the situation at hand.
Hestia looked a little bit... too at ease, though, all things considered. "...Hestia, you weren't supposed to start drinking until afterwards..." Marlene laughed a little nervously, worried that she was going to splinch herself before they'd even gotten started.
"I haven't been drinking much, really," Hestia stated apologetically. And technically, she hadn't. One bottle of sherry over, what was it, twenty-four hours? That wasn't drinking much. Drinking much would be more like seven bottles of sherry. And some scotch. And maybe...Hestia shook her head and took her ski mask. As she tugged it on, she continued speaking, her words becoming muffled by the mask, "Anyway, you're prolly right...you might want to give me a sobering charm or look for some sobering potion in my bag. I don't know -hic!- that I'd be able to do it right about now."
After a moment, she added, "By 'it,' I mean the charm, of course."
"Still and yet," Caradoc reasoned, pulling the black ski-mask over his face, "you should Side-Along with one of us. To be safe, of course. Safety first."
"I'll do it. I think I owe you a Hogsmeade side-along apparation anyway," Marlene nodded, already digging through Hestia's bag for the sobering potion she was talking about.
"Okay kids," she stated upon returning to her feet and looking up at the two older Order members as she passed the potion off to Hestia. "What's our gameplan for getting in there?"
The part of Hestia that was still mostly sober kind of wished for the sobering charm, since that worked faster, and the potion might take up to half an hour to start working...and she worried that she'd start singing again once they got to the clinics. Still, she uncorked the flask and downed the potion in one gulp, making a face as she did. "Do we have any idea of what kind of -hic!- wards they have up?" she asked, her face still crumpled in disgust at the taste of the potion. "And yes, side-along would be good, thank you."
Caradoc, deciding it would be better to leave nothing to chance, took Marlene's wrist in one hand and Hestia's shoulder in another, efficiently Apparating all three of them into a blind alley on the west side of the clinic. As with all things he was involved with, there was a fair amount of Muggle ingenuity paired with simple wizarding know-how.
With his wand poised lightly in the tips of his fingers, he managed to unweave (and maintain, for as long as they needed) a point of entry in the wards in relatively short-order. He guessed that regular people wouldn't dream of breaking into a clinic, as benevolent and innocuous as such things seemed.
A shrug. It didn't put him off his guard, however, as he began to walk around the building, looking for an accessible side door - there! He decided to try the simple Alohoroma first, before resorting to any kind of unnecessary violence that might alert them to intruders.
It worked.
Turning to Hestia and Marlene, he tapped his face just below his eyes with index and middle finger, silently encouraging them to keep an eye out as they entered the building. Nothing seemed amiss in the foyer and so with a whispered "Lumos", he began to search through the reception area.
Marlene followed Caradoc in through the side door of the clinic, lurking just through the doorframe as she peeked back outside, just to be sure that they hadn't been spotted or followed or set off any traps to alert angry rabid dogs. The coast appeared to be clear, and Marlene definitely hoped that it remained that way.
Casting an unspoken silencing spell on the door hinges (the place might've been new, but you never could be too careful when it came to things squeaking at inopportune times) Marlene quietly shut it behind her, making sure to disable the door so that it didn't lock behind them in case they needed to make a quick escape.
"Where do you think they'd keep the potions at?" Marlene asked quietly, stealing a glance down the hallway before going digging in one of the drawers with the tip of her wand, searching for any files that looked fishy.
"If they're at all legit, they'll be keeping their potions in a temperature-controlled -hic!- environment," Hestia answered Marlene's question in a bit of a stage whisper. The sobering potion was slowly beginning to take effect, but she was still feeling a little bit woozy and so chose to stay by Marlene's side for the time being. The last thing she wanted to do was endanger this mission with the results of her day of boredom and loneliness.
Still, she kept alert, looking for any of the "red-flag" signs she remembered from her training: broken bottles, potions left sitting out with nothing controlling the temperatures, ingredients being mixed and matched, even leaflets that would blatantly scream unsavoury things. She began to frown a bit as they looked, pointing her illuminated wand this way and that. Everything was, so far, looking so...normal. It was a bit disappointing.
Caradoc frowned, sweeping his wand back and forth in front of them until it caught the glint of a large metallic chest in the outer room. Striding toward it, he opened the door and wrinkled his nose at the cool, medicinal air that wafted in this face. Small vials were stacked in uniformity, their labels facing him.
Jackpot.
With a jerk of his chin over his shoulder, he called his young compatriots to him and stepped aside to let Hestia's trained eyes survey the frosty tableau before them.
Marlene could have skipped over to where Caradoc had found the vaccine, she was so excited to find something potentially fishy. It would not do good things for her morale at all if it turned out that they actually had been over-reacting, and that the purists were plotting genocide under the guise of publicity and helping one's fellow man.
She didn't know much about Healing or medicine though, beyond the few things she'd picked up from her mother's constant Healery nagging when she was little, and was well aware that she wouldn't be able to tell a thing about if there was something wrong with the vaccine simply by looking at it. Wandering a little ways away from the canister so that Hestia would have space to observe and pilfer and do her Healer thing, Marlene surveyed the back room, trying to decide where the best place to stash the listening device she'd brought along with her would be.
Hestia, meanwhile, stood closest to the canister, trying to determine what was in the vials on sight alone. Of course, that was impossible, but she was at least able to gauge that they were apparently stored properly, in a cool and dry environment, and with nothing else around that could contaminate them. They were all correctly sealed and didn't seem to be in a place where they could easily be confused for something else or knocked over and spilled. "Looks like they're doing this right, at least..." Hestia commented, half to herself.
She began to reach for one of the vials, but hesitated. "Do we know if these are protected by anything?" she asked over her shoulder, visions of her fingers falling off dancing in her head.
Shrugging, Caradoc reached in and simply plucked the two nearest vials from the collection. After a pause, he saw nothing happen and gave them both a crooked smile.
"Seems not."
Marlene laughed a little nervously at Caradoc's response, sighing in relief over the fact that nothing had exploded and that rabid peacocks hadn't been released upon the removal of the vials. It was starting to become very apparent that the purists didn't seem to give a shit if things got destroyed or stolen from this clinic, considering how they typically kept every nicknack within their homes warded against those without pure blood.
After securing one of the listening devices back in the store room, Marlene whispered "I'll be right back; I'm going to go stick one of these in a check-up room." Lighting her way with her wand as she snuck down the hallway, almost reminiscent of a spy from a bad action film, she tapped open one of the doors midway down the hall and cast lumos. It took everything in Marlene not to scream at the sight of what she found.
There was no reason that there ever needed to be a portrait of the Malfoys that was that big, especially not where people were coming to supposedly get better. If the muggleborns weren't sick before they came in, they probably would be after taking a gander at that creepy portrait.