I woke to find myself on the floor ten feet away from the tub, hacking and gagging water. There was a severed and dismembered arm that looked rather familiar. It was a child's arm, and it was female.
My hands were still shaking from adrenaline, so it couldn't have been that long since I had fallen unconscious.
There was a pool of blood spreading out on the floor by the bathtub. An ever growing swarm of insects was covering what should have been a body; however, in the few gaps that existed in the cover, there was nothing there.
What had happened? The last thing I remembered was being held under the water, needing desperately to get away.
Was it my accidental magic again? Or had someone saved me while I was out?
The insects couldn't tell me; I couldn't delve into their memories, only their senses right now. There were no footprints in the water that now covered the floor other than those of my attacker, and there was no evidence that I'd been dragged out of the water. It looked as though I'd been there, and then suddenly I was here, along with a good bit of the water in the tub and part of my attacker.
Was this apparation? I thought that didn't work in Hogawarts.
Maybe it was some other kind of movement, or maybe accidental magic wasn't covered by the wards. I'd heard that House elves could teleport here, presumably by using some kind of more primal magic.
As I staggered to my feet, I had my bugs check the body; it seemed to be growing cold, and there was no sign of a heartbeat or breathing. Along with the blood loss from being dismembered, there was all the poison flowing through her veins.
She was as small as me, at least in height, although her hands had been as strong as an adult man.
I staggered over to the mirror, and there was a line of bruises around my throat, bruises that were going to be hard to conceal without muggle makeup.
Glancing back at the body, I saw that it was shimmering. I called the insects back, and I stared at the remains in front of me.
Mildre....no....Millicent was lying on the floor, her eyes staring upward sightlessly.
I felt my stomach drop.
I'd saved her from bullies, and in return she'd been one of my supporters through all of this. This wasn't something she'd done on her own; whatever strange smell she was exusing was probably because of a potion of some sort.
Someone had turned my own min...serv....friend against me, and they'd done it deliberately. They'd wanted me to kill my own ally to send me a message; they could get to me at any time, and if they couldn't they'd be able to reach my friends.
A vein in my forehead throbbed, and my fists tightened. They'd tried to kill me for no other reason than because I was alive, and now they'd killed someone I valued. There had been a lot of times in the pat where I'd channeled fear into anger, at least according to Doctor Yamada, but this time felt justified.
They needed to die.
It had always been on the horizon, something that I'd tried not to think about, but ultimately I'd always known that eventually I was going to have to kill Voldemort and all the Death Eaters. It had never been a question of if, but of when.
That when had just gotten a lot shorter.
As my senses expanded, I noticed something strange.
My bug senses had expended by a factor of two again, and there were two people lying in bed in our bedroom. One of them was almost certainly Millie.
So who was this?
The form shimmered and grew longer, into a form that was almost as recognizable.
Filch, the janitor. His sightless dead eyes were staring up at me, accusingly, almost as though he'd expected some other outcome from his attempted murder.
He was a Squib, and he wouldn't have had any defense against mind control. He'd have had access to the lists, but probably not much more than a glance. He'd have been able to enter and leave the castle even after Dumbledore improved the defenses.
Why take the form of Millie?
The stairs....most likely Snape had limited access to the girl's stairs and he hadn't been on the list. Someone had put him under the invisibility and silence spells and then commanded him to drink the potion before coming up here to murder me.
Those potions weren't any joke to make; they took at least a month to brew and some part of the person to be turned into...usually hair. As janitor, Filch would have had access to stray hairs from all over the school; it might have been random chance that he'd gotten hairs from Millie.
Or it might have been deliberate. Whoever had done this may have wanted me to think that I'd been betrayed and that I was going to die alone.
A quick sniff showed that he still smelled of alcohol, along with the inevitable smells of death. I couldn't detect the other, strange smell, but my bugs could. Most likely it was something about the polyjuice potion itself that they were cluing in on.
Had Filch left for Hogsmeade last night to celebrate Halloween? It would explain the alcohol smell, and it would have given his master a chance to give him his orders.
There was only one suspect that made any sense for all of this.
Avery.
He was one of the Death Eaters who'd murdered my family, and he was the uncle of the boy I'd put in the hospital. I'd done it in the bathtub, and so killing me in the bathtub would not only be poetic justice, it would send a message to the non-purebloods in school that no one would get away with hurting a pureblood.
If it was done in a way that looked like an accident, then all the better. After all, I'd gotten away with dousing his nephew in the boil potion, so that would prove that even the aurors couldn't protect them. They'd probably spread word to the Slytherins in some kind of low key way.
The time to brew the potion was probably the only reason he'd waited this long. He might have been waiting for Filch on the grounds; when he saw me he'd taken his chance. Undoubtedly he'd been disillusioned already during the attack. He'd been too afraid of Dumbledore to enter the castle, at least for very long. It might not have been him on the grounds, but it had likely been someone sent by him.
It was possible that he'd gotten a look at me and recognized me as the girl who should be dead; that might have been the reason he'd attacked me impulsively on the grounds, and then once he couldn't get in, he'd have sent his lackey after me.
Filch had been a nasty character, but he'd deserved better than to be killed. As far as I was concerned Avery was responsible for his death, and that was one more on his tally.
Having him attack me was a win-win. Either I died, or I killed Filch or seriously injured him. If I survived, they could send the aurors after me. That was the last thing I needed; after all the manner of death would reveal that insects were involved. That would eliminate my main advantage against my enemies; once they knew what I could do, there were likely countermeasures they could take.
I might be able to get out of this, but likely there would be a trial, and the Death Eaters had people in the Ministry. I could easily be killed on the way to the trial, or they could pad the jury with their own people... assuming Wizards actually used juries. I hadn't studied their judicial system all that much.
I glanced back at Filch. His body already smelled, and the odds were that it was only going to get worse.
Using my bugs to eat the body would be the ideal solution, but it would take time, time that I simply didn't have. Filch had to weight a hundred and sixty or a hundred and eighty pounds, and it would take days for the bugs to eat him normally, maybe weeks. I could probably cut that time down to a tenth, but even if I could do it by morning, there was no guarantee that one of the girls wouldn't get up to go to the bathroom and see the mess I'd made.
Still, I had to try.
The bugs surrounded Filch and began eating as rapidly as they could. I had them work in shifts; when one got full it was replaced by its mate.
In the meantime I began to clean the bathroom as well as I could. I tossed the dismembered and now hairy arm to land next to the rest of the body.
"Sorry Filch," I said. "I'll avenge you."
My next task was to clean up the blood and gore all over the floor. My clothes had fortunately been left on the counter, which meant they were clean. As such, I was going to have to do the cleaning in the nude.
"Wingardium Leviosa," I murmured, focusing as much as I could on the bloody water on the floor. I managed to levitate a patch of it, which I put into the bathtub, after levitating the stopper and draining out the water.
Over and over again I had to do it, and when I was done, I wasn't sure that the floor was actually clean. I couldn't use my towels because having the house elves see bloody towels coming from a prepubescent girl's room was going to be a clear sign that something was wrong.
This was why I ended up on my hands and knees scrubbing the floor with toilet paper, wrapped around and around my hands. I could toss that in the toilet and wash the evidence away. I'd checked my hands, and there weren't any cuts on my skin, and there weren't any on my knees either.
In all, it took me over two hours to get every single piece of blood off the grout. I could have done it almost immediately with the cleaning spell, but I hadn't thought it to be worth the bother to learn, and I was now paying the price.
The only good thing was that if they checked my wand they'd see that I didn't get anything other than one severing charm off, and that one I could explain.
Grimacing, I looked at the body.
If I had caustic soda I'd be able to melt the body into a liquid that I could flush, but that would take heat and almost a full day.
Drain cleaner containing sodium hydroxide and a different drain cleaner containing sulfuric acid could be mixed together to melt the body too. It too would take time that I didn't have, and the smell would be a dead giveaway.
There was only one way that was going to work.
I pulled my secondary wand from my fanny pack, and I began to cast.
"Diffindo....Diffindo.....Diffindo....Diffindo."
As I dismembered the body in clean cuts, more and more blood pooled on the tile. In retrospect, I should have waited on the cleaning until this part of it was done.
I had the largest spiders grab the parts and start carrying them up the wall toward the vent. I'd move them as far from my room as they could and then I'd set the bugs to devouring them as quickly as possible.
The increased food supply would probably increase their numbers exponentially, but that was all right.
Moving the whole body took more than another hour, and then cleaning what was left took even more time. By the time everything was said and done, I barely had time to slip into bed before the House Elves showed up and began to clean the bathroom that I had just vacated.
They seemed to notice some of the lingering smell, but they seemed to ignore it. From their muttered comments, apparently some of the Witches had cosmetic components that smelled foul to them, and they assumed this was just more of the same.
I fell into a dreamless sleep.
In the morning I was the last of the girls to get up, but I managed to pull myself to breakfast. The last thing I could afford was to stand out. I waited until the girls were in the bathroom to pull on the shirt that covered my neck as best I could.
There was a healing spell I could use to repair the bruises; I needed to learn it quickly, but I was a little leery of using it on myself without some practice. Miscast spells could cause all sorts of problems, such as a severed arm on the floor.
Although, in this one case it was less of a mistake than a feature.
Most of the day went by in a haze. My new body required a lot more sleep than my old one had, and I hadn't gotten enough even for an adult. My neck hurt, and it hurt to talk, and so I ended up looking sullen and taciturn all day.
I let Hermione chat away at me, and I didn't say much. When I did, she noticed my voice and tried to tell me to go to Madam Pomfrey.
As though that wouldn't raise some questions. Mr. Filch vanishes and the schools resident bad girl has unexplained bruises the next day.
I'd have aurors knocking on my door within three days.
My only option was to try the Episkey spell until I mastered it, and I'd have to start by practicing it on bugs.
I ended up spending my afternoon huddled in a secret passage, one of those that I had figured out the way to get inside. I reached out to my bug minions, and there were dozens or hundreds of them that were injured from skirmishes with each other, or with the rats in the walls.
I was glad I practiced; my first attempts ended up with scattered bugs. It was more than an hour before I wasn't killing the bugs, and two before I actually did them any good.
It was three before I got to the point where I was willing to try it on myself, and even then I was nervous. The neck had some pretty important arteries, and a mistake there could kill me just as easily as Filch.
As I was leaving the secret passage, I froze as I saw Mrs. Norris. She was staring up at me accusingly.
For a moment I considered killing her. It was possible that she could smell some of her master's blood on me, or that she had some sort of supernatural sense. Still, as far as I knew, Wizards couldn't talk to cats. Speaking to snakes was possible, but it was apparently a rare and lost art.
Guilt filled my mind. As disagreeable as Filch and Mrs. Norris had been to the students, they'd loved each other, and I'd taken that away from her. I hadn't become a hero.... or even a villain to hurt people. I wasn't sure that Mrs. Norris counted as people, but the last thing I needed to do was to make it even worse by killing her.
I left her alone. I hadn't meant to kill her master, and killing his cat would have been throwing insult after injury.
Doing the healing in my own bathroom was my only option to be safe. The girls tended to be heavy sleepers, but in the day, if I fell over, it was possible they might hear me.
Staring in the mirror, I unbuttoned the neck of my shirt and pulled it away from my neck. I pointed my wand at my neck, and then I said in a low voice, "Episky."
I'd worried that pointing it at myself would change the wand movements to the point that it could;'t be used, but the moment I cast it, I felt a warmth on my neck, and suddenly some of the pain was gone. So was some of the bruising.
"Episky, Episky, Episky," I said quickly.
I soon found that there were spots on the back of my neck that I could not reach. Twisting my arms back there made moving the wand in the right way impossible. It was going to have to do; I'd just have to make an excuse if someone noticed.
At least it no longer looked like a pair of identifiable hand prints.
Those parts of the weekend that weren't spent in training and learning the cleaning spell, I spent reading up on Wizarding Law. I suspected that I knew what was coming next, and I wanted to be prepared for it.
I made sure that no one paid attention to the books I was reading; I didn't check the law books out and only pulled them from the shelves when no one was looking. I carefully kept the books face up on the table so that no one would notice the book covers.
On Monday, the aurors showed up for Hogwarts.1703ShayneTMay 20, 2019View discussionThreadmarks Interlude: AurorsView contentShayneTMay 23, 2019#11,288"I think we're on a wild nargle hunt," Millner said. "Going after a missing squib when aurors are vanishing?"
"It's Filch," Fawley said. "We know him."
"Hated him, more like. He's pretty much made an enemy of every British Wizard that went to school in the last twenty years."
"He's a squib...who would bother to off him once they got out of school?"
"Which is why the anonymous tip that it was a student at the school has to be taken seriously."
Fawley shook his head. "We don't even know that something happened to him. You know he liked to drink... hell, if I was a squib and had to deal with a school full of obnoxious brats, I'd probably drink myself to death."
"Maybe he did if we're lucky," Millner said. "The last thing we need is to find out that You-Know-Who is targeting Hogwarts staff. The parents would go mental and that's the last thing anybody needs right now."
"Well, we know that he went to Hogsmeade on Halloween night to celebrate away from the kids. He was drinking heavily according to several of the regulars, and he left late."
"Maybe he died on the way back...got so drunk that he went off in the wrong direction?"
"Flying over the area on broomsticks didn't show anything, and the last thing I want to do is go combing through the underbrush if we don't have to."
"Well, maybe we can find out something at the castle that'll give us something to go on," Millner said.
As they landed outside the gate, Millner tried to open the door, and he found it locked. He frowned. "What the hell?"
A hulking monstrosity of the man came lumbering up to them from the grounds.
"I s'pose you lot are the aurors that're tryin to find Filch?" The man was puffing with the effort of moving quickly up the slope toward them.
"Yes...why can't we get into the castle?"
"Security precautions by Dumbledore himself. We had a student attacked on the grounds a week ago," the man said. He reached out and touched the gate and it slid open easily. "Come on in. I'll take you to the headmaster."
The man stayed behind them, Fawley noticed, and he had a hand on his umbrella. There was something cold about his expression that belied his friendly expression.
It was possible that Moody was rubbing off on him. The man was a paranoid crank, but sometimes he was right, which was the unfortunate thing. Especially given the disappearances, every auror had to look out for himself these days.
Looking around, Fawley felt a strong sense of deja vu. It was as though the last ten years hadn't happened, as though he was back in Hogwarts all over again. It was a strange, bittersweet feeling, and the halls looked somehow smaller than he had remembered them, even though everything was demonstrably the same.
Reaching the Headmaster's office, they were quickly admitted.
"Dumbledore," Millner said.
"Mr. Millner, Mr. Fawley... how has adulthood treated you?"
"We're aurors now," Fawley said. He forced himself to stand up straight and look stern. Dumbledore was the most powerful wizard in all of Britain, the man who'd bested Grindlewald in single combat. There was no question that he could kill Fawley and his partner in an instant if he so chose, and he had enough political influence that he could probably get away with it. That wasn't a comfortable feeling.
"We've come to investigate Filch's disappearance."
"Poor Argus," Dumbledore said. "He always was a tortured soul. I'm surprised that the aurors would send someone to investigate his disappearance. He's only been missing for three days."
"There have been reports that one of your students might be responsible for his disappearance," Millner said. "A muggleborn."
"Miss Hebert," Dumbledore said. He sighed. "She's made enemies, and I wouldn't be surprised if some of them have not made unfair accusations in an attempt to cause he problems."
"She didn't have problems with Filch?" Fawley asked.
"Less than other students, actually. She always had a sixth sense about when he was around, and she was very careful not to offend him."
"There have been rumors about her," Millner began.
"Miss Hebert has a rather enthusiastic view of what self defense entails," Dumbledore said. "And she is more than capable of defending herself."
"There are rumors that she has hospitalized several boys," Millner said. "Pureblood boys."
"Boys who were bypassing the defenses on the girl's dormitory with the intention of abusing her," Dumbledore said. "She has assured us that they were injured through their own incompetence."
"And the boy who was doused in boil potion?"
"He was preparing it to use on her, and he had an unfortunate accident."
Fawley glanced at his partner. Unfortunate accidents? Once, maybe, but multiple times indicated a pattern.
"And did she really kill a troupe of trolls with a knife?"
"She did dispatch one troll," Dumbledore said. "Defending other students while they distracted it with spells. It was a heroic act, really."
"So you have a muggleborn who has been involved in multiple incidents of violence, directed toward purebloods... why is she still here?" Millner demanded.
"Should I have expelled you after your incident in sixth year?" Dumbledore asked mildly.
Millner's face went red. Fawley couldn't help but wonder about the incident in question. Millner didn't like to talk about his time in school very much, and he was ten years older, so they hadn't shared any of the same classmates in common.
"We'd like to question the house elves and the portraits," Fawley said. "And any students that might be able to shed some light on the situation."
"Some of the students may be biased," Dumbledore said. "Either for or against her."
"We''re professionals," Millner said confidently.
************
"She's mental," the Parkinson girl said. "I keep expecting her to stab me every morning at breakfast. Did you know she hexes me almost every day? And nobody does anything about it?"
"Did you ever see her interact with Mr. Filch?" Fawley asked.
"He kept trying to catch her at things, but he never could. They say that she's a Seer... she always seems to know a lot more than she should."
"Tell me more," Millner said.
"It's like she's got eyes in the back of her head. Nobody has ever been able to surprise her...not that anybody tries much anymore, since she's so mental that she'd probably beat you to a pulp."
"Has she threatened other students?"
"She held a Gryffindor boy out over a balcony and threatened to drop him," Parkinson said. "And she beat three Slytherins with a sock until it was bloody."
"That was the boys who were trying to get in her room?"
"Oh, that's the story that Dumbledore likes to put out, but everybody knows that she really did it because she's jealous because they're purebloods."
***********
"She saved out lives," Bletchley said. "Moved like she'd been fighting all of her life."
"Oh," Millner asked. "She was good with a knife?"
"She killed a troll," Bletchly said flatly. "If you'd seen how small she is, you'd know how impressive that is."
"So you'd say she's good at killing?" Millner asked.
"I wouldn't want to go against her... but she's never really bothered anybody that didn't go after her first. She's tough, but after people stopped being idiots around her, things started getting back to normal."
"Being idiots?"
"Trying to hurt her or her friends," he said. "She's perfectly nice except when that happens, and really, can you blame her? I think it's every Wizard and Witches' right to protect themselves."
"But not to kill someone," Millner said.
The other interviews were much the same. Those who did not like her were absolutely sure that she'd killed Filch, and that furthermore she likely had all sorts of other skeletons in her closet. Those who were on her side defended her, and were convinced that she only did the things she did in self defense.
They spent more than an hour interviewing schoolchildren. Most of them seemed anxious when talking to them, which was as it should be. Even the Malfoy heir seemed nervous, and his family had the political clout to ignore most accusations.
The portraits hadn't seen anything, despite having been tasked to watch out for intruders, and the House elves were similarly unhelpful. There was not any convenient bloody clothes or anything in the laundry. The staff had already searched the school for Filch, and there had been no sign of him.
He'd apparently had a relationship once with the librarian, but everyone agreed that it had been over for years, without any evidence of ill will between the two of them. No one could recall anyone having more than the usual disagreements with Filch, which meant that he'd had a dozen conflicts with students on the day before his disappearance alone.
"We're not getting anywhere," Millner said. "We might as well talk to the mudblood."
Millner had a tendency to slip in how he talked about muggleborns when he was irritated.
Fawley didn't think he meant anything by it; Millner was just a member of the older generations, and old prejudices died hard. He at least tried to be civil, which was more than some members of the department did.
They summoned Taylor Hebert to meet with them in a classroom as far away from active classes as they could. They'd chosen a dungeon room with no windows and they'd moved everything out of the room except three chairs.
Then they'd put her in the room and they'd let her stew for a while. Most children her age had the attention span of gnats, and even adults started to crack if they were left alone long enough. That sense of isolation was often enough on its own to get suspects to talking.
As they entered the room, the first thing Fawley noticed was how tiny she was. She was smaller than the Parkinson girl, who had already been small. It was hard to believe that a girl this small and harmless looking could have killed a troll. There wasn't anything different about how she looked compared to a hundred other first years they'd seen in the halls.
However, as she looked up at them, Fawley felt a chill.
Every other student they'd talked to had been a little nervous; some more than others. They'd had to pull answers out of them to get them talking, to overcome their fear of just what the aurors represented. The ordinary witnesses hadn't even been made to wait.
Hebert didn't look nervous at all. She didn't even look bored. There was something unnatural and off putting about the way she sat, though, her neck turned at an unnatural angle and her arms and legs sprawled out like those of a praying mantis.
Instead, she looked as though she was interviewing someone for a job, as though they were the ones who were going to be questioned. That kind of confidence was unnatural in a child that small; Fawley had interrogated Death Eaters who looked more nervous.
"Hello," she said.
She leaned backward in her chair against one of the desks; it took Fawley a moment to realize that she had her hand on her wand.
"You won't need that," Millner said sternly.
"I've got Death Eaters who want to kill me," she said. "And the aurors' office has been compromised. I think I'll make my own decisions about that."
Fawley glanced at Millner, who shrugged. Fawley suspected that Millner didn't see the girl as a threat, because how could a first year witch be any kind of threat to two trained aurors, especially a muggleborn, who rumor said weren't all that good with magic anyway.
The fact that they weren't allowed to do magic during the summers while Purebloods and half-bloods were probably contributed to that perception, but Fawley wasn't likely to get anywhere arguing with Millner about it.
If it let the girl feel safe enough to talk, then it was all right. After all, Dumbledore himself assured them that she only attacked those who attacked her.
"What do you know about the aurors' office?" Fawley asked.
"It's obvious, isn't it?" she said. "Aurors go missing, it's because someone knew where they would be. Who else would know that except someone in the department?"
Fawley frowned. That was a conclusion that the higher ups had only recently come to, and they were taking steps to try to address it. He didn't know what those steps were, presumably because they weren't sure he wasn't a Death Eater.
"Did someone tell you that?"
She shook her head contemptuously. "I read the paper; I can read between the lines. Anybody with two brain cells to rub together would come to the same conclusion."
Fawley winced; Millner wasn't going to like that from a mudblood.
"It's unusual to have a Yank in Hogwarts," Fawley said carefully. It was important to establish a rapport with the criminal so that they would be more likely to slip up and incriminate themselves. However, he'd never really understood teenage girls and preteen girls were even worse.
"Is that what we're here to discuss?" the girl asked evenly. "How an orphan girl with no family ended up in a British school instead of an American one? I wasn't aware that was a crime."
"So is there a crime you're involved in?" Millner asked.
Falkner barely stopped himself from grimacing. Apparently the girl had annoyed Millner enough that he was going to skip the entire introductions phase and get right to it.
He stepped forward quickly until he was looming over her. "We know you murdered Argus Filch. I just want to understand why."
He used his intimidating voice, deep and angry. Millner was a large man, which shouldn't have mattered in the Wizarding world, but it still aroused a sort of primal fear in the average Wizard.
Hebert looked as though he'd asked her about the weather.
"I didn't," Hebert said calmly. "And assuming he's actually dead, I don't know who did."
"You're lying!" Millner shouted.
"Because I'm a mudblood?" Hebert asked. "I've heard about how the Wizarding justice system works. So if I was a rich pureblood who had a daddy with deep pockets, would we even be having this conversation?"
Millner's face flushed red and he looked like he wanted to slap the girl.
"Learn your place, girl! We've got evidence that you did it... do you think that the house elves aren't always watching? The paintings! This is Hogwarts...the walls have ears!"
"Maybe it was an accident," Fawley said softly. "Self defense, even. An old man like that, a young girl like you....but we won't know unless we hear your side of the story."
"Which night do you think he disappeared?" Hebert asked.
"Thursday," Millner snapped.
"I went to class, then I went to the Halloween Feast. They had the Dancing Skeletons, which was fun. I went to the Ghost Afterparty, took a bath and then I went to bed. I didn't go anywhere else," Hebert said. "The next day was pretty much the same thing without the parties."
"I've heard about you," Millner said. "You've put boys in the hospital. They say you killed a troll, although I'm not sure I believe that."
He waited for a moment, as though waiting for her to brag, but she just shrugged as though it didn't matter what she believed.
"Let me see your wand," he said.
She looked at him skeptically. "Two men I do not know put me in a room and demand that I disarm myself. They claim to come from an agency that I suspect is overrun with the exact kind of people who have been trying to kill me and other people like me. If it was you, what you you do?"
"We could just make you," Millner growled.
"Could you?" she asked mildly.
"Millner," Fawley said uneasily. When the older man turned toward him, Fawley gestured downward.
Her wand was pointed directly at Millner's crotch. Considering the way that she had supposedly killed the troll, the implication was clear.
He quickly stepped back and grabbed for his own wand. She was out of her seat so quickly that Fawley was reminded of Moody or some of the aurors who were known for being lightning fast.
"You can go to Azkaban for threatening an auror, girl!" Millner said.
"I'm not threatening you," she said carefully. "I'm just being cautious. Two strange men in a room with a little girl doesn't look good. In muggle America children aren't interrogated without an adult advocate in the room."
"Wait, what?"
"An auror attacks an eleven year old mudblood... you think the Ministry isn't going to start wondering if you're the one who's working with You-Know-Who? Even if you aren't, what's the implication going to do to your career?"
Fawley relaxed a little, although Millner looked like he was going to have an apoplectic fit. At least she wasn't threatening to cry rape.
"Or you can just call Professor Snape into the room, and then I'll happily hand my wand over to be checked."
Fawley glanced at Millner, who looked as though she wanted to hex the girl to death. She was right, though; attacking a muggleborn right now would be political suicide, and they weren't even investigating a murder, just a missing person.
"Fine," Millner said. "But you'll pay for this eventually."
The girl smiled at him sweetly, and they both left the room, shuddering.
While they might not be able to prove it, there was something seriously wrong with the girl, and Fawley wondered if they were going to be the ones to investigate it, or if it needed to be kicked upstairs.1872ShayneTMay 23, 2019View discussionThreadmarks InterrogationView contentShayneTJun 1, 2019#11,619"Cutting charms and healing... you've cast a lot of those recently," Millner said.
He was staring at me with undisguised loathing. I probably shouldn't have threatened to emasculate him, but hearing some of the comments he'd made when he thought no one was listening had irritated me. There was a casual sort of racism in what he said that told me I would never have gotten a fair hearing from him anyway.
The thought that my irritability might have something to do with guilt over Filch's death occurred to me, but I put it out of my mind as quickly as I could.
"I'm a muggleborn in Slytherin," I said. "Wouldn't it make sense that those would be the spells I would need the most on a day to day basis?"
Snape was sitting in the back of the room. He hadn't said anything; he'd just stared at all of us with an inscrutable look. He hadn't mentioned my second wand, though, which I took to be an encouraging sign.
"So you've been attacking purebloods, then," Millner said.
"You'd have heard about it if I'd attacked anyone recently," I said. I lifted my hands. "I'm an ordinary student trying to make my way through school without being attacked."
He was still holding my wand in his hands. I carefully kept my hands away from my fanny pack, but I did begin to pull the most dangerous insects I could from the bowels of the castle. Some of them were surprisingly vicious for a school setting, although Winslow had had more of them.
There were bugs clinging to the inside of my robes, too, waiting to come out. Stingers to the eyes and the ears and the genitals would distract them enough for me to go for my wand. Cuts to the inside of their arms and wand waving would become difficult.
"You don't like being attacked, do you?" Millner said. "I've heard it makes you go all mental. Is that because something happened with you? Maybe your Da did something to you?"
He was trying to get under my skin.
I smiled sweetly. "Did yours?"
His face flushed, and he lunged forward.
"Five points from Slytherin," Snape drawled. "You will speak to the aurors with respect."
Millner stopped abruptly, as though he'd forgotten that Snape was in the room. Maybe he had. He was still flushed, though, and his breathing was rapid. He was an angry man, and angry men were easy to manipulate.
"Everyone knew Filch was a little creepy," his partner said. "Maybe he came on to you?"
I'd been trained in basic police interrogation techniques, even though that really hadn't been my job. Fawley was pretending to be sympathetic; most people wanted to tell their story, to explain how it wasn't really their fault.
By the time they realized they'd incriminated themselves, they were on their way to jail.
There was an implication to his question, and I wasn't certain how to answer it. His question implied that I knew what he meant; in 2011 with the Internet there was a good chance that an eleven year old might have at least some idea. In 1991 though?
I hadn't heard any of my same age classmates talking about sex, but whether that was because they were genuinely innocent of the implications, or because it was a British thing not to talk about sensitive subjects I couldn't be sure.
Even the older children didn't talk that much about it, and when they did they tended to use euphemisms. Maybe it was the fact that there were portraits everywhere listening to what they said.
My best bet was to pretend that I didn't know what they were saying and to ignore the whole thing.
"I barely interacted with him," I said, shrugging. "I can't say I even knew much about him, except that he had a cat and liked to harass the other kids."
"So if he'd attacked you, what would you have done?" Fawley asked. He looked sympathetic, and my overall impression of him was that he was the more sympathetic of the two men. However, his job was to find the culprit, and since I was in fact guilty, I now had to lie.
"I'd have screamed and gotten some help," I lied.
There was a small change in Snape's expression that showed that he knew I was lying; however, the others didn't notice as he was standing behind them and they were staring at me.
"You're capable of killing by all accounts," Millner said. "Took down a full sized troll with a knife, or at least they say."
"I had some help then," I said. "And I try to be law abiding. If I started killing off staff, who would be left to teach me magic? No...I'd just get him fired."
That touched a nerve with both of them. Had my threat from earlier spooked them? What were the politics in the Ministry right now? Losing so many aurors would make it harder to get rid of the ones they had left; yet it was possible that Voldemort's minions in the Ministry were putting the heat on the good aurors. Threatening to fire them would keep them anxious and on edge, and while that would make them more alert for a little while, long term it would exhaust them.
Some of them might quit on their own, given the right kind of pressure.
"Is there anyone who can confirm your whereabouts?" Fawley asked.
"Ever since I was attacked, the castle has been on an increased alert," I said. "The portraits are sleeping in shifts, which means that they would have seen if I had left the Slytherin dorms once I went to bed."
Unlike the Gryffindor dorms, the door to Slytherin wasn't guarded by a painting, which meant that no one had noticed the door opening when Filch had entered.
"A disillusionment charm," Millner began.
"Do you think that Miss Hebert has mastered a disillusionment charm at her age?" Snape asked. "And as a muggleborn orphan she does not have the means to purchase an invisibility cloak... nor have there been any reports of any invisibility cloaks going missing in the school."
"Are there any such cloaks in this school?" Millner asked Snape, staring at him challeningly.
"Not to my knowledge," Snape said. "And I would confiscate any that I discovered. Allowing such items would allow children to circumscribe a number of rules as well as getr into... mischief."
"We know you aren't a bad person," Fawley said. "But everyone can do things in the heat of the moment that they regret."
"That's true," I said. "If they don't think things through and plan ahead."
"So you're saying that you planned to murder Filch," Millner said. I could see that he was getting frustrated.
Real police investigations could take hours. Wearing a suspect down enough would get almost anyone to confess to almost anything. Some people would confess to murder just to get to go home.
Their initial approach hadn't been good either. They should have started with ordinary questions; questions about my life, about school. It would have helped them establish a baseline about what I looked like when I was telling the truth so they'd have something to compare it to when I lied.
Keeping them off balance had been part of the plan, though. I could tell from the moment they walked in that they weren't real professionals. The fact that they'd been assigned to a missing Squib case when actual aurors were going missing meant that they were likely the equivalent to rookie beat cops.
They probably spent their time investigating the Wizarding equivalent of noise complaints.
Something of my disdain must have slipped out in my expression, because Snape's lips quirked. My own might have followed suit, even though I wasn't sure whether they had or not.
"You think this is funny?" Millner snapped. "A man is missing and possibly dead, and you're smirking at us?"
"Mr. Filch was a known alcoholic," I said. "People talked about smelling it on him sometimes. Are you sure that he didn't just wander off somewhere to die in a ditch? He didn't look at all well the last time I saw him."
"Maybe you did it for the attention," Millner said, ignoring what I'd just said. "You want to prove that a mudblood is just as good as any pureblood. People do keep saying that you aren't as good at magic."
Snape shifted uneasily at the epithet. This entire interrogation was putting him in a difficult situation; if he advocated too hard for me, it would look like he was favoring the mudblood. That would put his position as a spy in jeopardy.
If he failed to protect me, it would damage his relationship with the Headmaster, and maybe with me. The use of the epithet was a borderline case.
"That would require that I actually care about what anyone thinks of me," I said calmly. "Pureblood, mudblood... those are just made up words. Power is power, and results speak for themselves. If you and I point our wands at each other and I'm the one that walks away, then doesn't that make me the better Wizard?"
"Witch," Fawley said. "And maybe you're just luckier."
"Isn't that a power in it's own right?" I asked. "I understand that one of the most coveted potions in the Wizarding world grants luck."
"There's something wrong with you," Millner said. "Anybody can see it. All of your classmates can see it; they think you are creepy and dangerous. Maybe it finally got to you, and you took it out on the one person in the entire castle who couldn't fight back."
I shrugged. "You can think what you want, but I've already told you what happened. I went to the party, I took a bath, and then I went to bed. What more do you want me to say?"
I probably should have tried to act like a distressed eleven year old, but I wasn't sure that my acting skills were up to it. Snape would be certain that I'd done it in that case, which would be a bigger problem for me in the long term than these two bozos.
Even as the interview went on, I was having my bugs move the pieces of Filch deeper and deeper into the bowels of the castle. They'd already finished with the flesh, but there wasn't a lot they could do with the splinters of bone I had left other than scatter them in parts of the castle where no one ever went.
There were animals that ate bones; tortoises, cattle, bears... but as there weren't any of those animals anywhere within my sensory radius, the best I could do was the equivalent of flushing the bone fragments down the toilet and hope that no one ever noticed in whatever cesspit the toilets washed out to.
"Even if I'd had a reason to kill Mr. Filch, which I didn't, how would I have done it in a way that no one would see anything? You've seen my wand, so it obviously wasn't magic, and I'm too small to carry someone of Filch's size, which means I'd have had to leave him whereever I killed him. The castle has been searched, and no one has found anything, and there is a lot of evidence that I was exactly where I said I was."
For the first time I saw some uncertainty on Fawley's face, although Millner still had a stubborn set to his jaw.
"Isn't it more likely that Filch was taken before he even reached the castle?" I said. "Aurors are going missing every day. You think that maybe a squib that everybody hated might go missing the same way, maybe just because he irritated someone as a kid who is now dangerous?"
There was an implication to what I had just said. I could see the moment that Fawley got it, but Millner was oblivious. I grinned at Fawley, who looked distinctly uncomfortable.
Of course, it was the truth within a lie. I was already dangerous, but the more I learned the more dangerous I was going to get. I had a long memory too, although I had chosen to ignore past transgressions more than once.
I wasn't feeling particularly forgiving at the moment, though.
"You're trying to confuse us," Millner spat.
"I'm an eleven year old girl, and you are professional aurors," I said. "If I'm able to confuse you, what does that say about full grown criminals?"
Millner looked like he wanted to hit me, but he glanced back at Snape.
"If you really have any evidence that I did anything, you should charge me and take me in," I continued. "But bringing me in without any evidence might be...unwise."
"And why is that?" Miller asked, his face flushing a little.
"There are those who favor muggleborns over purebloods," I said. "And some of them are highly placed. Put an eleven year old girl in Azkaban for a crime she didn't commit...probably couldn't commit would be seen as a terrible injustice. Even people who don't care about mudbloods get upset when people threaten children because they fear it might be their child next."
"Miss Hebert," Snape drawled. "Kindly refrain from using epithets or I will be forced to assign punishments."
"It's our word," I said. "I know what I am, and I don't care what anybody thinks about it."
Fawley sighed.
"She's right," he said. "We're not getting anywhere here."
Millner scowled, but finally he nodded. "This isn't over. I know you did it, and I'll find out how."
"The question you should be asking yourself is who tipped you off," I said."I've made plenty of enemies, but schoolchildren wouldn't have known that Filch wasn't just off on holiday. That means that whoever informed you knew he was missing, maybe even before the staff did. Now who would possibly know that a man had been kidnapped or murdered faster than the people who'd done the deed themselves?"
"Pointing the finger at someone else is a common tactic for criminals," Millner said. "It doesn't change the facts."
"The fact is that you don't have anything on me, and you won't, because I'm innocent," I said.
That was apparently that. Both men rose, nodded toward Snape. Millner dropped my wand in Snape's hand and they both left the room.
"May I see your second wand, Miss Hebert?" Snape asked when they were far enough out of the room to be outside of hearing range.
I shrugged and pulled it from my fanny pack. Handing it to him, I waited as he checked the spells on it.
He eventually handed both of my wands back to me.
"You are unwise to antagonize them," he said. "Aurors have more discretion in our world than they do in the muggle world... there are fewer rules and they have much more power to make trouble for those they have taken a dislike to."
"Do you think I don't know that?" I asked. "But one of them was ready to throw me in the slammer and forget where he left the key."
"I warned you that certain behaviors could lead to Azkaban," he said. "Perhaps you will be more circumspect in the future."
"I try to stay out of trouble," I said. "But trouble keeps coming after me."
"Did you kill Mr. Filch?" he asked after a long moment, as though he was afraid of whatever answer I was going to give him.
"Killing him would have just caused me a lot of problems," I said. "And I had no reason to kill him. Do you think I would just randomly start murdering staff members?"
"I am not entirely certain what you would do," he said. "But I do not believe you are randomly malicious. Everything you do serves a purpose."
"So there you go," I said. "Killing Filch would make my life worse, not better, so why would I do it?
"And if we asked for a pensieve of the night in question?"
"Do you really want to see a boring memory of me taking a bath?" I asked, with one eyebrow raised. "Other than that, it was pretty much just the parties and the Feast like I said. There were people around me at all times throughout the night. What would be the point?"
"I will take you at your word," he said after a moment. "But you should listen to mine. Adult wizards have decided that the world would benefit from your absence. They are capable of making that happen."
"I'm learning as fast as I can," I said. "Picking up every spell, learning to fight. In the end it might not be enough, but I plan to go down fighting. What else can I do?"
"Accept help from others," he said. "Despite your unconventional methods, you are still a child, and as such are not expected to take on the entire world."
"I'll take on the entire universe, if that's what it takes," I said. "And how can I accept help when everyone seems like they want to either kill or imprison me?"
"Have you considered that it might be your personality?" Snape asked dryly.
I carefully resisted giving him the finger. I could see that he knew I wanted to, though, and there was a little smirk as he walked out of the room.1932ShayneTJun 1, 2019View discussionThreadmarks CaretakerView contentShayneTJun 3, 2019#11,813For a week I thought I was in the clear. There was no further inquiries from the aurors, and I didn't receive any summons from the Ministry. Filch's bones were all in the sewer system now, with nothing left to incriminate me in the vents.
Overall, I'd gotten away with murder, but I didn't feel good about it. I'd told Snape I hadn't had anything against Filch and it was true. He'd been unpleasant, but he hadn't directed any special attention toward me; if anything, he'd been a little more nasty towards the Purebloods. Maybe it had been their obvious disdain toward him.
Rumors were all over school about what had happened to him. The prevailing theory was that he had been murdered by Voldemort, or possibly a student that he'd annoyed one too many times. People knew I'd been questioned about it, but they seemed to take the fact that I was still at school as proof I hadn't done it.
It was a surprisingly progressive attitude, one that would have been more reassuring if I didn't suspect they'd have been just as sure that I had done it if I'd been hauled away. They seemed amazingly credulous, believing everything they read in the papers.
I had to keep reminding myself that they existed in a pre-Internet world. Content was regulated, and every other provider wasn't lying or attempting to manipulate them in some way. In some ways it was a more innocent time, and I suspect that even the muggles would be a little more gullible.
"Did you hear that they've given up on the search for Filch?" Hermione asked.
"Oh?" I asked, as casually as I could.
We were in the library again, and I was studying the human revealing spell. It was a more advanced version of the Revelio charm, which was considered hard for a second year. It was wickedly useful though; it would reveal secret passages, invisible things, secret messages and even to reveal the true appearance of someone who had changed their appearance by a spell.
There was a third spell that would reveal the presence of spells cast on objects or potions. All three spells were ones I desperately wanted, for obvious reasons. When I'd mastered them, I was going to be casting them every time I took a bath or was in the toilet.
"They've already hired his replacement. He should be coming to school today!"
Why she would be so peppy about a new school caretaker I couldn't be sure. I'd always thought of Filch as a janitor, but the House Elves had done most of the cleaning. Was he their supervisor, or was he just an extra set of eyes for the staff?
"What have you heard about him?" I asked.
"Some people are saying he's a criminal!" Hermione said. She sounded breathless. "That the only reason he's here as caretaker is because it was a choice between this and Azkaban!"
"What did he do?"
"They say he deals in stolen goods..." Hermione said. She stared at me. "Why are you looking so cheerful all of a sudden?"
"It's good to know people who have connections on the outside," I said. "They're watching the owls now, so it's not like I could get anything good through Mail Order."
"What could you possibly want to buy that you couldn't get here or through the twins?"
"Snape has a standing order that he is to be informed about anything that I bring into the school. He's got this weird idea that I'm going to blow up the school or something."
More like he'd gotten even more cautious since Filch's disappearance, but I didn't mention that to Hermione. I was touched that she'd never even bothered asking me if I'd killed him or not. There had been other students who hadn't been as careful, although I'd simply told them that I didn't know what they were talking about; clearly the aurors had been asking witnesses at the school what had happened and I'd just been one more witness.
I coughed as I detected someone walking toward the gates. I'd been more cautious about watching what was going on outside since I'd been attacked. I'd also gotten a lot more messy in the bathroom. I made sure to splash water all over the floor and then to keep bugs watching for disturbances in the water.
I had them paying more attention to smell and hearing as well. I had an idea for detecting someone who was silenced by listening for the absence of sound in a particular spot. I hadn't quite managed it yet, partially because I needed a silenced target to practice with. That was one more spell I needed to work on.
"He's just arrived, I think," I said to Hermione.
She stared at me, but didn't ask how I knew. I hated to lead her on and make her believe something that wasn't true, but telling anyone was a good way to get myself killed. In this world, every adult Cape was capable of being a Master, which meant that no one could be trusted with any secrets.
There were apparently high level spells that would keep them from spilling secrets, but it would be years before I was skilled enough to use them.
The man walking toward the gate had a familiar look to him; he looked shifty. He was short, with bowed legs and straggly red hair. He was unshaven, and his eyes were baggy and bloodshot. The bugs nearest to him smelled alcohol and tobacco.
Most of the most dangerous people I'd met had a way of looking at people in a way that was familiar. It was as though they were assessing everything around them for how threatening they were. They wouldn't dismiss anyone, not even a Kindergarten student, because inn our world, even that child could have strange and dangerous powers.
They might not even be a child at all; there were Strangers and Changers who could look like someone else after all.
This man scanned everything in a similar way, but what he was looking at was different. It was as though he was looking at everything and trying to assess how valuable it was, as though he was planning to drive a U-Haul up to the castle, use an expansion charm on it, and then steal the entire castle blind.
I understood people like him, even if I didn't always like them. It was possible that I might even be able to use him.
The man was led into the castle by Snape himself, who sneered. Snape waited until he was inside the Headmaster's office before he left, as though he didn't trust the man to be alone in the halls.
"Love what ye've done to the place," the man said as he walked into the office.
"This isn't a social call, Mundungus," Dumbledore said quietly. "Someone has done away with Argus Filch and there was an attack on one of the students."
"Heard about that... it's the crazy one, right, the Yank?"
"Miss Hebert is a complicated person," Dumbledore said. "Which does not please certain parties, who prefer to keep things simple."
"Don't like her out-Slytherin their kids," the man said. He grinned. "Sounds like it'll be good for the little snots."
"More importanly, I need to know if these incidents are specifically directed toward her, or if they are the beginning of a slow assault on Hogwarts itself. I wouldn't have thought it of Tom, but he has been much more subtle lately than he has been in the past."
"Killing the muggleborn kids isn't exactly his style," the man said. "Some of the people workin for him, though..."
"Whether it is his decision, or simply acts carried out by those in his employ, I need to find out more. To that end, I need you to take over the role of caretaker."
"Spy on the kiddies?" the man asked. "Sounds safer than being out there, right now. It's not just aurors that are going missing. There's been dealers in questionable items going missing too..."
"Why would he eliminate dealers in stolen goods?" Dumbledore asked.
"They were muggleborns," the man said. "Making a tidy profit trading things with the muggles and selling them to purebloods who wouldn't be caught dead in a muggle shop. It's an underground market, because the Ministry wants us to keep our distance from the muggle world. It's not exactly illegal; but the aurors are likely to make their unhappiness known about it."
I'd suspected that there had to be a certain amount of trade with the muggle world. At the very least food couldn't be created; the small population of wizards wouldn't need that much food in the scheme of things, but it was probably more cost effective to buy it from the non-magical world than to set up Wizarding farms.
The Ministry probably had official methods of making those deals, though, and they wouldn't look kindly on outsiders horning in on their turf. Governments tended to be very protective of their power.
"Anything to isolate us even further from the outside world," Dumbledore said. "They refuse to believe that muggles have anything to teach."
The man chuckled. "Some of the best fences I know are muggles. You don't have to talk me into thinking they've got brains."
"Nevertheless, the job as caretaker here will not be entirely without danger," Dumbledore said. "There has been some measure of suspicion in Mr. Filch's disappearance on Miss Hebert. Severus doesn't believe that she would act maliciously, but..."
"Somebody who can kill a troll isn't somebody to underestimate. I'm not stupid."
"I wish I could say as much for half of Slytherin," Dumbledore sighed. "I'd hoped that she would lead them to understand that their prejudices against the muggles and muggleborns were unfounded, but instead she seems to have convinced them that they are incredibly dangerous."
"Might not be the worst message for them to get, if it makes them back off."
"Fear and respect are two different things," Dumbledore said. "Fear of what the muggleborn represent is what is fueling Voldemort's rise. Making it worse will only drive them to join him."
I felt someone shaking my arm, and I looked at Hermione.
"Are you all right?" she asked.
"I was just lost in thought," I said. "How are you coming with the Revelio charm?"
"It's fascinating!" she said. "There are different versions for the different major species. There's one for humans, for goblins, for centaurs..."
"And they are better than the general charm why?"
"Because they are easier to cast," Hermione said. "Quicker, even though they are more limited in scope. Some people can even cast them silently and wandlessly."
"So we should probably focus on the human revealing charm, and maybe pick up the House elf charm later," I said. "The Death Eaters wouldn't stoop to using Goblins or Centaurs."
Hermione thought I was studying the spells because of the invisible attack on the school lawn. In a way she was right, even though the attack in the bathroom had been more immediate.
"You need to learn these things too," I said. "Because even if you and your family go to Europe for your summer break, I doubt dentists can afford to spend three months away from their practice."
Hermione scowled. "You know, when I start talking about what my parents do, the purebloods start looking at me like I'm...well, you?"
I considered that for a moment. Dentists pried people's mouths opened, then forced a drill inside. They sometimes yanked teeth forcibly out of someone's head. Just looking at dentist's tools was like looking at something out of a horror movie.
"Maybe you shouldn't bother," I said. "Or just give them the abbreviated version. Just imagine what they'd think about a surgeon!"
Cutting people open with a knife, cracking their ribs to expose their still beating heart...it also sounded terrible in the right kind of light.
Her eyes rounded.
"And what about plastic surgeons?" Hermione said. "I saw a special about them on the telly once, and it looked barbaric even to me."
Ripping people's faces off and then pulling it back behind their head so that it wasn't wrinkled any more, but leaving them looking like some kind of strange mummy?
"The Wizarding world is kind of innocent about some things," I said. "And maybe we shouldn't be the ones to enlighten them."
The purebloods were already afraid enough of the muggles, although I supposed that there might be some use to be made in those images. It wasn't like Wizarding medicine couldn't be used for torture.
There were spells that would vanish bones, that would grow teeth to the point that they would crack the skull and kill someone if allowed to continue long enough. A simple episky spell would allow mundane torture to continue long past the time that muggle torturers would have had to quit.
Transmute someone's head into that of a shark and leave them in the open air, and they'd begin to suffocate. It would make waterboarding look amateurish, although speaking might be a problem.
I sensed someone coming toward us at a high rate of speed. It was Neville, and he seemed to be agitated.
Looking up, I saw him walking rapidly toward me. My hand went for my wand, but I didn't lift it. Still I was startled as he lunged toward me and hugged me tightly.
"What's going on?" I asked slowly.
He held onto me tightly enough that I was having trouble breathing.
"You did it. You did it!"
"What did I do?" I asked, pushing him away from me.
I hadn't been hugged in... a long time. It had been years and I had largely forgotten what it felt like. The fact that it felt nice wasn't enough to keep me from feeling uncomfortable with it, especially as it kept my wand arm pinned.
"My mother is awake," Neville said. He was crying.
It took us more than ten minutes to get the story from him. Apparently Neville's parents had been tortured under the Cruciatus for long enough that they'd basically been driven into a catatonic state. They'd been unable to respond to anyone, and Neville had never really gotten to know them.
Madam Pomfrey had used the scans she'd gotten of my own brain to help with their case. Apparently I had a similar pattern in my head, but I'd gotten better, which wasn't something that had ever happened before.
She'd told me that there was some evidence of brain damage, but since I seemed to be functioning perfectly fine not to worry about it.
Wizarding magic wasn't as advanced on the psychiatric front as in other areas, so this was considered groundbreaking.
Furthermore, Dumbledore had suggested using a pensieve... pulling the memories of the torture from their mind over and over. Obliviation didn't really destroy memories; it covered them up. Pensieve memories grew weaker and weaker each time the original was taken without replacing it, like a piece of paper being written on and erased overt and over again. Eventually the paper just grew thinner and thinner.
Dumbledore had been kind enough to give me the credit for that idea, probably as a way of promoting his muggleborn agenda.
"She's still not... normal," Neville admitted. "I went to see her and she has to take calming potions and other stuff, and she still has lapses. But she was able to recognize me, and she talked to me!"
He seemed excited, so I didn't say anything to burst his bubble. I glanced at Hermione, and saw that she was thinking the same thing I was.
It was great that she was having moments of lucidity, but it was possible that where she was now was as good as she was ever going to get. It might even be that she would revert to her former state.
Or she might get all the way better. There was no way to know, but seeing the beaming look on Neville's face, I couldn't think of disabusing him of the hope that his family might one day be back together again.
"It didn't work on my Da," he said, looking suddenly dejected. "Probably because they tortured him longer, or maybe because he's a male and male brains are different than female."
"You could always turn him into a woman," I joked weakly.
He stared at me. "Do you think that would work?"
"Probably....not?" I said. "You could always mention it to the mediwitches and see what they say, but I wouldn't get my hopes up."
The last thing I needed was to be the one who broke Neville's heart. He'd been loyal to me when he hadn't had to, despite a lot of peer pressure to reject me. That was a sign of inner courage.
He reminded me a little of Theo sometimes. He hadn't been raised by Nazis, but he had turned against his own people's native prejudices to look for a better way.
I hesitated.
While puncturing Neville's enthusiasm might cause him pain now, it would save him pain later. If I was actually his friend, I'd need to be truthful with him.
"You know this might be as good as it gets, right?" I asked slowly.
He stopped and stared at me.
"She might keep getting better.... but she might not," I said. "But either way, you should treasure the time you have with her. It's a little like she's risen from the dead..."
For a moment he looked offended, but that look was soon replaced by a thoughtful one.
"After my mother died, there were times that I'd give the whole world just for one more hour with her," I said. "Now you've got that chance. If it doesn't get any better than this, then you should enjoy the time you have with her. If it does...then that's the icing on the cake."
He nodded after a moment, and then he and Hermione started talking excitedly about the things he was going to tell his mother.
As I watched them, it felt nice that there was at least a little good news. I had a curious sense of foreboding, though.
The universe didn't seem to like letting me have nice things, not without taking twice as much away. Or maybe I was just as paranoid as people seemed to think I was.
I wasn't even sure which was worse.1779ShayneTJun 3, 2019View discussionThreadmarks TrollView contentShayneTJun 5, 2019#11,972"They want what?" I asked.
"The Daily Prophet wants to interview you," Dumbledore said. "The Cruciatus Cure is an amazing breakthrough, and the idea that an eleven year old girl was the one to inspire it has inflamed the imaginations of the readership."
I stared at him. I understood what his motive was behind all of this; by reminding the world that a muggleborn had handed a cure to them, he hoped to change hearts and minds. However, the last place I needed to be was in the forefront of everyone's minds.
As far as I could tell, I was being targeted by a single Death Eater. Avery had reason to hate me, considering my blood status and the fact that I'd harmed his nephew. But the other Death Eaters didn't seem to be targeting me specifically; they were simply after all muggleborn and I'd been caught up in their net.
Putting myself out in the public eye might change that. Avery had presumably seen me when he'd attacked me invisibly, but it was possible that he'd just sent a proxy. Even if that was so, the proxy had to know what I looked like. Did he know that I was an imposer already, or would having a picture in front of him jog his memory?
His partner might see it too, and then they'd see that I was a liability. That might make the attacks on me more desperate, and more likely to succeed.
After all, how many resources had Avery really expended on me? He'd cast a few spells on a helpless squib, and he'd taken some potshots at me when the opportunity had presented itself. The polyjuice potion had presumably been to get him up the stairs, in case invisibility and Filch's status as caretaker wasn't enough. He'd whispered in some auror's ears.
Blank polyjuice potions were available for sale in Knockturn Alley. I'd heard some of the upperclassmen sniggering about it. Adding a person's hair at the end, and there was an instant change. As to why they were sold so casually, I couldn't be sure.
I chose not to think about the perversions of adult Wizards.
If the Protectorate had been running the Wizarding world, Polyjuice would have been illegal, or maybe restricted to aurors. Here it was taught to everyone as part of their core classes, essentially giving every Wizard a stranger rating.
It was grueling to make, but I suspected that I'd be able to make it in a couple of years. Most likely I'd buy some if I ever found a dealer; I wasn't sure how expensive it was. Knowing that would help me to understand how much Avery wanted me dead.
"Do you think that flaunting my presence is going to help my position any?" I asked. "It's going to be hard enough to escape once the summer comes without them all knowing what I look like. Also, the last thing I need is anything that will make the rest of the kids jealous of me."
"You? Afraid of bullies?" Dumbledore asked, one eyebrow raised. "I'd have thought you cherished the challenge."
"Not being afraid of them doesn't mean that I enjoy being taunted behind my back, when they know that I can hear them," I said. "And I can tell that it bothers Hermione to hear them say things too."
"And yet if no one does anything to change hearts and minds, it will always be like this," he said gently. "The world is full of injustice, and most people learn to live with it. It's not until that first brave person steps forward that anything changes. Wasn't it only recently that a young woman refused to give up her seat on a bus in your nation simply because of the color of her skin?"
Even here in the past, it had been something like thirty six years since Rosa Parks had been thrown off the bus. Dumbledore considered that recent?
It was like the Wizarding World was a fly trapped in amber, stuck in time. Wizards tended to remember the parts of the muggle world that had existed the last time they'd interacted with it; for most that was when they had been in school. Given the fact that Wizards tended to live twice as long as muggles, and that meant that to someone like Dumbledore, horseless carriages were probably still astonishing.
"You aren't seriously comparing me to Rosa Parks," I said. "Posing for some pictures isn't like starting a movement."
"She likely didn't think she was starting a movement either," he said. "She simply stood up for what is right. Despite your rather.... complicated history, I believe that you too have a strong sense of how the world should be."
He didn't say I had a strong sense of right and wrong. Was that a subtle insult?
"It just seems like it's asking for trouble, just when things are starting to die down," I said. "Why would I want to do this?"
"I could appeal toward your more mercenary side," Dumbledore said. "There are people who this cure will help that will be grateful to you if you let them know who you are."
"How many people could there possibly be that this happened to?" I asked. "Didn't the Death Eaters kill the people they tortured when they were done?"
Dumbledore shook his head. "They made examples of some people; it was part of their campaign to spread fear in the last war. Death is simple, but being forced to care for an ailing relative for the rest of your life; that is fearful. Given the way our community is so closely related, that means that almost everyone has a relative who is affected, however distant."
"I haven't heard about a lot of families dealing with something like that," I said slowly.
"How long did it take young Mr. Longbottom to share what had happened with you?" he asked. "Most families prefer to take care of their invalids in-house, hiding them away from the world as though it is shameful what they have become."
Would it really earn me that much political goodwill? What Dumbledore wasn't saying was that if I ever had to go to trial, having people on my side might make the difference between freedom and Azkaban... or even being Kissed.
I couldn't keep coasting on my being a child forever; in just a few years I'd be old enough that I'd be just another adult, and if I didn't make friends with those in power I'd be screwed.
The thought of getting some political backing was attractive, but was it worth the risk of inflaming Avery and his partner?
Screw them. I couldn't keep living my life on the defensive. I needed to go on the attack, and this might be something constructive that I could do.
"Fine," I said. "But I'd prefer not to have any pictures."
"I am sure they will press for them," Dumbledore said. "But we will try to keep your picture off the front page at least."
"I don't like being manipulated," I said, grimacing as I rose to my feet. "When is this going to happen?"
"Within the hour,' Dumbledore said.
"And if I'd said no?" I asked. He'd simply assumed that I'd agree, which was more than irritating. It was almost enough to put him on my to-do list.
The list was fairly short at the moment. Avery, the Death Eaters, Voldemort and the Hat.
I turned to glare at the hat, which simply sat there as though it was a simple piece of felt. I hadn't forgotten what it had done, but figuring out an appropriate response was difficult.
I could destroy the hat easily enough; there were more than enough cloth eating bugs in the castle that I could probably take care of it in a single night, assuming that it wasn't somehow magically protected.
But the hat served an important purpose in the school, and destroying the hat would probably make everyone who'd ever gone to school angry. I couldn't afford that, not right now.
Yet there wasn't any other leverage to deal with the hat. As far as I could tell it didn't have friends. It didn't eat, or drink, or do much of anything. It didn't have knees you could break, and the thought of torturing a hat was ludicrous.
Dropping it in the sewer might work, but would a hat even care about getting dirty? It didn't have human fears, which made judging what it would find unpleasant difficult. It didn't seem to want anything at all other than to shove kids into Houses. It was like trying to intimidate a laptop.
Getting it to speak about the others who had been reincarnated was on my list too. I didn't have anything to offer the hat.... maybe a cleaning?
"How do I know this isn't going to be an excuse to attack me?" I asked. "Physically or to my reputation?"
"I think it would be best if Miss Skeeter survived her encounter with you," Dumbledore said.
I forced myself not to stiffen, and I carefully kept my eyes averted from him. I pushed my emotions into my bugs, and I hoped that no one would notice how agitated they were. Did he know what I had done? What did he plan to do about it?
"She is not a troll, although some people might disagree."
"Fine," I said. "Where do I meet her?"
"I've arranged for you to meet her in the charms classroom," he said. "In light of previous difficulties, I think having a teacher present would be prudent."
"Who are you trying to protect? Her or me?"
"The welfare of everyone on the premises is my responsibility," he said smoothly. "Now perhaps you would like to freshen up."
I scowled, then nodded. First impressions were important.
I'd had the classes with Glenn Chambers, even though I hadn't really bothered to pay that much attention. At the time I'd been worried about saving the universe; making a good impression with the press hadn't been high on my list.
Still, some of the pieces of advice had stuck with me. Being prepared was important. Thinking before you spoke was important; ums and uhs made you sound stupid. Avoiding jargon was important; you were speaking to the general public, not members of the Protectorate.
Keeping answers simple and succinct. The press tended to prefer sound bites anyway, and they were likely to cut what you said down into something the audience could understand anyway.
I found my best robe, and I made an effort to make my hair look presentable. Tracey had shown me a spell that made that easy, and I saw no reason not to use it, even though part of me wondered whether I was going to end up bald when I was older because of overusing it.
Finding my way to the classroom before the reporter wasn't that difficult. I was following her progress through the castle, after all.
She had blonde hair set in elaborate curls. Her spectacles were set with rhinestones. Her jaw was thick and her fingers were even thicker, and the long, red painted nails on them looked a little like claws. She had a handbag that looked like it was made of crocodile skin.
There was something about her that tickled at the back of my mind. Did I recognize her from somewhere? It made me a little uneasy, so I resolved to be on my guard.
She was being escorted by Professor Flitwick.
"She's been one of my best students," he was saying in his squeaky voice. He was moving quickly to keep up with her. "Both of my best students this year are muggleborns."
"That's unusual, isn't it?" she asked.
"The muggleborn lack some of the advantages pureblood children have," he said. "Including the ability to practice magic during the summers."
"You aren't criticizing that policy, are you?" she asked. Her head snapped toward him. "The Ministry thinks that children can't be trusted not to use magic around muggles, and that it would be a nightmare for the obliviators.
"Ahh...no," Flitwick said hurriedly. "I was just saying that the common refrain that muggleborn aren't good at magic isn't true at all in my experience."
"A couple of magical prodigies isn't indicative of a trend," she said reprovingly. "Perhaps if you had some proof, the Prophet might be interested in looking over your findings."
Her tone suggested that she was just being polite, and that they weren't likely to print anything of the sort.
I waited calmly until they entered the room.
"Hello! You must be Taylor!"
Her voice was higher in pitch, the sound sweet and cloying. It was the kind of speech used to speak to a small child.
I nodded, and she reached out to shake my hand. I twisted my wrist slightly so that my hand was on top, and I squeezed tightly. It was a domination display, and I could see in her eyes that she knew it.
Without blinking I stared at her. It was also dominant body language, and I'd found that it unnerved people coming from a girl my age. Girls were socialized to be more submissive, even in Wizarding culture, especially in their body language. Going against that was sending a message.
She pulled her hand away.
"What do you want to know?" I asked.
"You don't mind if I use my magical quill?" she asked. She pulled it out of her bag and set it on one of the tables. I used my bugs to keep an eye on what it was writing.
I was standing with my legs slightly spread. I watched her quietly and didn't say anything. Often people would feel compelled to fill the silence and they'd say a lot more than they meant to.
Staring at me for a moment, she said, "How did you come up with the idea for the Cruciatus Cure?"
"It seemed obvious to me," I said. "When I researched what pen sieves did, it seemed like it would be better at thinning memories that obliviation, which just covers them up. That's not the only part of the process; the rest was the result of efforts by a team of gifted and dedicated mediwizards, starting with Hogwarts own Madam Pomfrey."
"They used the results of your own brain scans, didn't they?" she asked. "Which means that you've been through something unspeakable."
"You can understand why I wouldn't want to talk about that," I said. "And why I'm determined that something like that isn't going to happen to me again, or to anyone else."
"Is that why you have a certain... reputation?"
"Reputation?" I asked. I knew what she was going for, but I was going to make her say it.
"For violence, dear," she said. "It's said that you've murdered at least one troll, and that you have injured several of your classmates. There are people who are questioning why you are even allowed to continue at this school."
"Surely you don't believe that," I said. "Look at me; do I look like I could kill a troll?"
She faltered; it was as though she was seeing me for the first time.
"And besides, if you really believed that I was some kind of psychopath, someone who killed anyone who caused her pain, you doubtlessly wouldn't have your quill writing what's going on that paper over there."
I hadn't even looked at it, but I could see what it was writing, and it wasn't flattering.
"What do you mean, dear?" she asked.
"You aren't afraid of me at all," I said. "Which means you don't believe any of that claptrap you are writing. Is this supposed to be a piece about a new medical technique, or are you just trying to write another piece talking about how dangerous the muggleborn are?"
"It doesn't matter what I believe," she said. "What matters is what the readers will believe."
"I think it would be better if you wrote something a little more balanced," I said. I took a small step toward her.
"Are you threatening me?" she asked, sounding almost delighted.
"Certainly not!" I said, making an effort to sound shocked. "I was just wondering if...certain people had sympathies with enemies of the Ministry. You know who I'm talking about, of course."
For the first time, she looked actually startled.
"What are you talking about?"
"Everyone knows what his agenda is," I said. "And there may come a point where people are going to have to choose sides. If you choose too soon, it might be something you regret."
"I'm not on You-Know-Who's side," she said quickly.
Strangely enough, I believed her.
"Didn't you just say that it didn't matter what the truth is?" I asked. "It's what people perceive it to be. If people think that you are on the side of Vold-"
"Don't say it!" she said.
"Of him, aren't you going to lose half your readers?"
"But people aren't really interested in this," she said, gesturing around us. "They want to know the real scoop, about the dangerous muggleborn."
"If I'm dangerous now, how much more dangerous am I going to be in the future?"
"I deal with dangerous people all the time," she said dismissively. She stood up, seemingly regaining her composure. "So you don't want to talk about being Cruciated. What about the mystery of your background? No one seems to know anything about you?"
"I'm an orphan," I said. "What else is there to know?"
"Oh, why there is no record of your parents being murdered," she said. "And why there are no muggle records of a Hebert family emigrating to Britain over the past year. Where did you come from, and who are you, really? I'm going to publish something, so wouldn't it be better to give us your side of the story?"
I glanced back at Flitwick, and I felt like grimacing. The last thing I needed was for staff members to be asking those questions. If she put them in the papers, I was in deep trouble.