[HP AU]

[mnt_raph]

"An' you're sure this is the right address?" Raph asks again, for what Mike thinks might be the millionth time.

"Yes, I'm sure Raph. For like the millionth times. I told you," the smaller boy says sighing. "I read the map. I followed Donnie's instructions to the letter. Just...be still, look tough, and try not talk so much. Your accent kind of a dead give away that we're tourists, okay?"

"Bite me, Mikey."

"You'd probably like that too much," he says with a waggle of his eyebrows as he presses the doorbell of the Montoya's East London home.

Comments

[interrogoiterum]

"I just wanted one," Renee says, holding her hand out. "Largest New York City possible?"

She also now looks over her shoulder at Leo and Raph.

She wasn't expecting it to take this long.

[mnt_mike]

"But they were on sale," he says grinning his most innocuous grin. "And I thought it'd be kind of fishy if a random stranger in a map store just up and bought a really big map of New York City right before a group of overly-ambitious young men decided to descend upon it for the purposes of wreaking havoc and fucking things up."

Don even looks up at this, raising a single eyebrow.

"What? You don't have to look so surprised that thought of that."

[interrogoiterum]

"It's a muggle store. Tourists go to New York all the time."

She opens up the map, flicking between Brooklyn and Manhattan.

"Alright, give me your wands."

She holds the book in one hand, and holds out her own wand hand to the boys.

[mnt_mike]

"Aren't you going to buy us dinner first?"

Don rolls his eyes. "Might I ask why?"

[interrogoiterum]

"Cause they're the best things to mark you onto the map with," Renee says. "you can have them back in a second."

[mnt_mike]

Mike looks to Don.
Don looks to Mike.

"Just give us a second."

Both of them reach for their wands and whisper a spell in a language that is most certainly not Vagueness and Latin.

Why yes, they have booby trapped their wands. Why do you ask?

[interrogoiterum]

Renee rolls her eyes at both of them, and takes the wands, and hers in the same hand. Mutters something that is vagueness and Latin and jabs the ends onto the page of the map.

Three question marks: silver, orange and purple, appear where she made the marks, and then disappear in showers of sparks.

Then she hands the wands back.

"Pumpkinbrains."

[mnt_don]

"One can never be too careful," Don says, easily brushing off the insult.

Mike merely shrugs.
"I just like messing with people."

Don's attention has been diverted to the map itself, or rather where the question marks once were."What level of accuracy can be we expect with regards to the map. I'm assuming that was a tracking charm of some sort."

[interrogoiterum]

"Yep," Renee says, "but I dunno, I never used it before. I guess we'll find out."

She glances over her shoulder again. She hasn't heard from Raph in a while and this worries her.

[mnt_mike]

"That's the spirit," Mike says beaming broadly, before following Renee's gaze.

"Don't worry, they're fine. If the weren't Raph would have put Leo through a wall by now or something. Raph doesn't handle human emotions well." His smirk is audible by this point.

[interrogoiterum]

"Dinah and Leo," Renee says thoughtfully.

"Did you know?"

[mnt_mike]

Don looks up and over at Mike...who sighs.

"Yeah, kinda," he says running a hand through his hair.

Don cuts in, "He assured us it was merely training, but apparently not," he says with a gesture towards the note.

[interrogoiterum]

"Apparently it is possible to keep a secret in that school."

She could learn from it. Mike, too, come to think of it.

"She always did like the bad boys."

[mnt_mike]

Mike just kind of blinks.

"The idea of Leo being a bad boy? Kind of hurts my brain."

Don nods, and then returns to his notes.

"I mean...I get up to waaaaay more trouble than he does. How does Leo get to be the bad boy? It's because he doesn't talk unless spoken to, isn't it?"

[interrogoiterum]

"I'm not denying that," Renee points out. "Are you saying that you're having problems getting laid?"

[mnt_mike]

"Well there was a dry spell for a while there, but...thanks to my girlfriend?" Here he leans up and gives Renee a smooch on the cheek.

"I'm sitting right here, you know," Don says without looking up.

[interrogoiterum]

"Yeah, yeah."

Renee squeezes Mike's hip in acknowledgment of what an excellent boyfriend and certified Bad Boy he really is.

"What are you working on, now?"

[mnt_don]

"A magical dampening array. Or...something like it," Don says adjusting some of the arithmancy written in the margins of the parchment.

"Don's kind of afraid that the moment Leo touches that portkey all the bells and whistles attached to Him and Magic are going to off at once," Mike explains.

"I don't want to be dead in the water before we even get on the boat."

"Which, you know...good plan all around."

[interrogoiterum]

"Well, how do the bells and whistles work?" Renee asks. "Are they stronger than the usual alarms that watch out for underage magic?"

[mnt_don]

"Thaaaat's kind of part of the problem. We don't know," Mike says with a deflating sigh.

"Figuring that out wasn't really high on our list of priorities given our time frame and the nature of our plan."

[interrogoiterum]

"So instead of trying to figure that out, you're trying to minimise the magic of the portkey?"

Just so she knows what page they're on.

[mnt_mike]

"We're hoping it doesn't come to that," Don admits, though...his theory isn't as sound as he'd like it to be.

"The idea is that it's just Leo that'll get dampened, and the rest of us will pull him through...somehow.

...

Don't look at me. My job is making the tracker and being adorable," says Mike, his hands go up in a surrender.

"Some additional warning about this would have been appreciated."

[interrogoiterum]

Dryly, "you think she should've notified you before getting into trouble?"

[mnt_mike]

"I don't think it's Dinah Don's talking about," Mike says mildly.

"Professor Ross handed a portkey to a teenaged lovesick boy with authority problems and a history of making rash decisions when emotionally compromised.

And I'm not even going anywhere near the fact that Leo's been lying to us with regards to his relationship with Dinah. Especially the fact that he had a hunch something was wrong when he hadn't heard from her recently."

[interrogoiterum]

"Right."

Renee leans back onto Mike's shoulder.

"Yeah, I want to know what the hell is up with Professor Ross, too. How does an ex Quidditch player even get that stuff?"