Peter Guillam

A man named Mundt goes missing. He's Dolohov's sister's fiancee, and loyal, though not particularly bright. News never comes of his arrest or his murder, and in the current political climate, a victory on that front would certainly have been publicized. No one in the Order even seems to know about it, from the snatches that come through to Voldemort's growing camp.

It bears investigation, is the ultimate verdict, investigation but not outright alarm or panic, so dear, reliable, young Severus is dispatched to see what could possibly have happened.

Mundt, it transpires, had been from West Berlin initially and keeping temporary rooms on the outskirts of town. He'd been a cruel and stupid man, and had murdered his landlady and then failed to keep up any paperwork for the abode, and there had been a string of other attacks on muggles in his surrounding neighbourhood besides. He'd had a nasty habit of breaking into a home, killing the inhabitants messily and for sport, at his leisure. Muggle authorities had ascribed the work to a vicious serial killer in the area, and had been somewhat distressed when the killings had stopped cold several weeks ago. Relieved, certainly, because no deaths were good news, but afraid that the man may have gone dormant, slipped their grasp, perhaps even left the country...

He hadn't even had the good sense to really be afraid of the gun, and Peter's bullet, got off between curses, had taken him square between the eyes.

With no magic, they certainly have no ability to follow the man's trail to a lovely little home on the outskirts of the same outskirt where Mundt had been living, or to the young gentleman who spends that Sunday morning laying a lovely new bed of petunias out front. Peter isn't much of a gardener under normal circumstances, as evidenced by the trousers he's wearing, the rolled up shirt sleeves, the clean fingernails and the rather shiny and new look of the trowel he's wielding, but it's a lovely excuse to dig a hole that is good and deep.

Normally he'd hide the body a lot further afield, but after the trouble he had with this one he half expects him to come back to life. It isn't an anxiety he can explain to his coworkers, who would normally be the ones to take care of something like this for him, and anyways, he wants to be the very first one to know if reanimation occurs.

And then one day at around noon, Tony gets a sudden call from a number Peter sometimes uses.

Only it's Arthur's voice that bites out;

"He needs a jet. He's in Hong Kong."

There's a lot of change in power structure. Less so recently, under M, but Peter Guillam remembers the days where they went from leader to leader like trying on different hats. The latest one topples, there's talk of a mole, and suddenly all of MI6 is paralyzed for four weeks while every single file is gone over with a fine toothed comb, every single personnel examined and interviewed systematically.

The purges are dramatic. Massive, in fact. And Peter Guillam feels, these days, something like an executioner. By the time Q is finally called in to his little office, maintenance is already there, sweeping up glass. Someone put a chair through a window.

Peter is at his desk, unperturbed, going over papers. He glances up at the sound of footsteps.

He's gone for a month, and then he's back again, sitting on Tony's balcony, lighting one cigarette off the next, eyes closed.

Peter Guillam does not rattle easily.

He has, however, read the reports on Bruce Banner, so treats him the same way he treats every terrifying man who could kill him in a split second. He smiles politely and offers him tea.

Which is where they will be when Tony comes home.

Following this.

Peter makes good on his promise, and is back the next morning, in another suit with a more sedate, appropriate tie. Still polished and posh, every inch of him.

He uses the morning to poke about while Tony sleeps, as much as JARVIS will allow. The bodyguard cover is a good one; he's beautifully alert.