Chapter Text
Theodore Nott was barely recognisable, the way his face had been beaten into a bloody pulp before his throat had been slashed several times. There were rope marks around his wrists. A murder as premediated as they came.
This was hardly the worst crime scene Harry had ever attended. During their last year of training, Ron and he had had to hunt for the missing body parts of an unfortunate soul in the rubble of a potions lab. Their victim’s wife had deliberately exchanged the contents of a vial, causing her cheating husband’s cauldron to explode. They had never found two of the fingers. Meanwhile, the wife had been laughing uncontrollably in the living room upstairs as she was interrogated by their colleagues. Harry still remembered that shrill tone that had made his stomach churn with anger and nausea.
Nott’s death had been bloody and painful, and anything but quick but … at least his body was intact for his family to bury something. Yet this crime scene felt so much worse.
Harry turned his head away. He didn’t want to remember Nott this broken like a doll whose strings had been cut.
Somebody had tortured the man for hours. Had forced him into this alley, had made him kneel. And then … discarded of him with three slashes.
They had never talked at Hogwarts. At least, Harry could not remember what kind of voice the boy in his memory had had. Nott had been thin and pale. A small, timid thing scuttling after Malfoy.
An average nobody.
They had had Potions together. And Defence. And Flying lessons. Care of Magical Creatures.
Yet Harry could not remember a thing about him other than … Slytherin.
“Good morning. Time of death?” he asked.
The Mediwitch from St. Mungo’s was bent over the body. Her white coat dragged across the dirt of the alley behind Borgin & Burkes. Her wand tip glowed as it touched Nott’s torso that was bare and full of tiny, round burn marks. “Exactly at midnight.”
Seven hours ago. Their killer was long gone.
Harry held out his hand to help her up. There was blood all over the alley walls. Two other Aurors from his shift were casting their standard set of spells to identify magical traces. Meanwhile, the photographer took pictures from all angles.
“This is the third this month, isn’t it?” the Mediwitch asked. “All found with their tongue cut out.”
She was glancing around nervously. A crowd had gathered behind the Auror barrier. The shop owners had been told to close their businesses for the day, but instead of draining Knockturn Alley, it had driven spectators their way. Some were protesting the magical barrier, others were surveying their every move. Especially in these circles, Aurors weren’t trusted. It didn’t help that recently, Slytherins had been dropping dead like flies. There was no panic yet. But some of the faces in the crowd were rather alarmed.
“I can neither confirm nor deny this,” Harry replied. “Please owl the lab results to the department asap. Tox screen, foreign tissue under his cuticles, whatever. Tell your people to find something. Anything.”
“Of course, Sir.”
The Mediwitch grabbed what was left of Nott’s mangled body – then she apparated off to St. Mungo’s.
The man-like shape on the ground was eerily bereft of blood splatter.
“Excuse me, Mr. Potter. I need to –“
“Oh. Sorry.” He stepped aside, letting the crime scene photographer take a picture of the single word that had been painted in Nott’s blood on the stone wall.
Traitor.
***
“Sorry that I am late.” Harry hurried across the living room of the Burrow to take his seat next to Ginny for brunch. There were far too many chairs and people – but that’s what happened when seven kids started their own families. A blessing, Molly often called it. Arthur though liked to grumble about the food expenses, especially since Percy had moved back in with his wife and two children to save on the rent while they were busy building their own house a village over. Even without Charlie and George and Fleur and Victoire, the Burrow was exploding with people. “You know how it is. Duty often calls when you need it the least.”
There was a murmur of greetings, but everybody soon fell back into their conversations about upcoming vacations (Hermione and Ron would visit her parents in Australia), and work-related stories, misbehaving children and –
He couldn’t keep track. This cacophony of voices and topics still overwhelmed him whenever they visited the Burrow.
Ginny squeezed his hand in a welcome – while Albus had nothing but a soft babble to give from his high chair.
“Where’s James?”
“Off in the garden to play with his toy broom.”
“He’ll go too high –“
“Sit,” Ginny commanded, grabbing his knee as Harry was about to rise again from his chair. “He'll be fine. A bloody nose hasn't killed anyone yet.”
Well, that was easy for her to say. She was used to children running around unsupervised. Aunt Petunia had been much more hands-on. Not with him, okay, but with Dudley. And all guidance books Harry had read stated that good parenting meant actually knowing where your child was.
“I just think I should have a look –“
“Harry. Eat some eggs.” She slid the pan to him.
He sighed. There just were never the right words in his mouth to express his anxiety. He saw so much of the worst of humanity each day. Was it so wrong to want his children in sight?
You cannot control the world, Ginny would argue with him. They often argued. Mostly after they had switched off the lights in their bedroom. Stop, Harry. Just stop.
Harry’s gaze wandered towards the window. At least Albus always stayed by his side, even when he was allowed to explore. He would never stray too much. James, though … James had always gone places.
He didn’t like it.
When people wandered off, they ended up dead in an alley like Nott.
“I heard they found another one. It was on the radio.”
Ron was looking at Harry quite intently.
“Ron,” Hermione reprimanded him. “You know he can’t talk about work with us.”
“Well, I am not people. That’s different.”
“In which way?” Hermione was glowering at Ron. At the same time, she bit her lip. There was tension in her body, and Ron was just as riled up as her. His best friend didn’t like it when he was reminded of his injury. Working for George in the shop was not the same as being an Auror.
“We don’t know much,” Harry replied, ready to compromise at least some of his confidentiality to prevent his friends from fighting. Their marriage was wholesome. Harry wished Ginny and he could be more like them. There were only two topics that would make Ron and Hermione fall out. Ron's paralysed wand arm … and their miscarriages.
Officially, he did not know about the second one. Ron had sworn him to secrecy.
“So there is a third body like you figured there would be?” Ron sounded so eager for news from the office. It was pitiful, really.
“What are you talking about?” Bill leaned over. It was still strange to see him without the ring. France just had not been his thing. Fleur and him had that weird thing where they would co-parent and actually floo-talk each evening. Friends, probably even with benefits, but Bill was too restless to stay in one place.
Molly had been shocked.
Even more so since he was semi-dating none other than Pansy Parkinson right now. Having her around for meals was a pain. Like today, she would only talk to Bill and look at her plate.
It wasn’t anything serious, Bill had claimed when Molly had grilled him after he had brought over Parkinson for the first time.
That’s even worse, Molly had cried out. I love you. I always will. But don’t destroy your life over a mid-life crisis!
Parkinson wasn’t funny or pretty or courageous. Harry really didn’t see why Bill had picked her as Fleur’s successor. Maybe it was the dark hair and dark eyes. She was Fleur’s opposite, if anything. No strings, no kids, no nothing. They were not even exclusive.
“There’s a serial killer on the loose,” Ron informed his brother. “You should be careful, Parkinson. You could be next.”
She threw him a disgusted look.
“Ron!” Hermione kicked him against the shin under the table. “Excuse him. His jokes can be really tasteless.”
“It’s fine.” Parkinson sipped from her glass of water. “I don’t fit the profile anyway.”
Why, because you stood with Voldemort through and through? I guess you’d not be marked a traitor.
Harry didn’t say it. Not a syllable of it.
Ginny would skin him alive. And so would Molly if he treated a guest like this at her table. Even a guest that she herself would rather uninvite.
Parkinson wasn’t so bad, actually. She was working at the ministry department for Magical Creatures, and in her spare time, she volunteered at a beast shelter. It’s how she had met Charlie who had applied for a dragon egg transfer permit. Charlie, with whom she had had a fling first. It had never been explicitly stated, but everybody sort of knew. And through Charlie, she had gotten to know Bill.
Family was messy. That’s another lesson the Weasleys had taught him. Family was messy and loud and full of love and forgiveness.
He wouldn’t have it any other way.
Even if Ginny and him could barely go through a day without arguing.
He probably shouldn’t judge Parkinson for something she had said and done as a 17-year-old kid. But it was hard to break out of old habits.
“I didn’t hear of this before.” Bill frowned. “Anybody dead that I’d know?”
Ron was quick to answer: “Millicent Bulstrode, she was in our year, actually. And Terence Higgs, the former Slytherin seeker. You might remember him?”
“Higgs does ring a bell.” Bill looked at Parkinson, who seemed to avoid his gaze. “They were both Slytherins. What do think, is that a coincidence?”
“Must you talk about murder at the table,” Molly complained. “The children are listening.”
“Albus barely understands his own name.” Ginny rolled her eyes. “It’s not like James is in here.”
Molly visibly didn’t approve, so she began packing some lunchboxes from the leftovers. Percy and his family were busy at their building site, probably to meet some workers.
“The third one you probably know, too,” Harry said. The eyes of the others rested on him – except Parkinson's. He found himself focussing on her. There was something strange about her reaction before. Something he wanted to test. “Theodore Nott was found dead in Knockturn Alley this morning. He had been severely tortured and his throat slashed.”
“HARRY!” Molly yelled, but he accepted the rebuke.
Seeing Parkinson’s lips turn down had been worth it.
This was disgust.
Not sorrow.
“Do you know of a reason why somebody would want those three dead, Pansy?” he asked.
“No clue. That’s your job, isn’t it? To find that out.”
“I don’t remember whether Nott was a Death Eater.” Ron mhhed as he was trying to remember. “Higgs definitely wasn’t.”
“It’s terrible either way,” Hermione cut in. “Whether he was or wasn’t, it doesn’t change a thing. It’s barbaric that somebody would hurt another person like this. Cutting their tongues out -!”
“The message’s clear, isn’t it?” Ron put his elbows on the table. “They didn’t talk when they were asked a question. Makes sense to me. Maybe somebody wanted them to apologize.”
“Nott wasn’t a Death Eater!” Parkinson’s voice was harsh. Her hands were balled into fists. “Stop talking trash about things you don’t understand!”
“His dad was,” Ron contradicted. “I know the names of all convicted Death Eaters. You never know when you need the knowledge.”
“Oh, so you can judge a person by their name, but when I judge somebody by their blood, that’s racist?” Parkinson had stood up from her seat so quickly that her chair toppled over. It was Bill who grabbed her arm to prevent her from leaving.
“That’s not what my brother meant. You know how –“
“It’s exactly what I meant.” Ron put his chin forward. “I know what you think of my wife. What you think of all of us at this table, Pansy.”
That brought a deafening silence. Even Albus seemed to realise that something dangerous lay in the air as he stopped babbling and put the head of his stuffed teddybear in his mouth.
“I think,” Parkinson said slowly and quietly as she shook off Bill’s hand, “that I am done with you lot. I tried. I can’t say the same for you.”
“Pansy, wait!” Bill exclaimed, but she had already stormed outside.
“That’s your fault!” Bill twisted around, hitting his fist against the wall. “You were horrible to her from Day One, Ron! What has she done to you?”
“What has she done to me?” Ron also tried to stand up so that he wouldn’t be talked down to, but once again, his brain forgot that his right arm would ignore any and all orders. So he didn’t get the support he needed, almost crashing into the table. “Your FRIEND is a home-wrecker and blood fanatic–“
Harry bolted.
“Harry?” Ginny cried, but he ignored her as time was of the essence. Over the commotion between the two brothers, his disappearance went unnoticed otherwise.
“Pansy!” Harry hurried after her as she made her way down the path that would lead outside the no-apparition-barrier that the Weasleys had set up after the Burrow had been hounded by Death Eaters during Bill’s wedding. “Wait, please!”
“Get lost, Potter!”
He grabbed her arm, holding on as she slapped at him to let her go. Somewhere to the side, Harry could see James on his toy broom. Was he seeing their violent exchange? He hoped not, but this was too important to let it slide.
“Why did you say that you don’t fit the profile?” he demanded to know. “You are Slytherin, they were Slytherin. Bulstrode was killed, too. It’s not just men. You know something. What is it? What is this sick bastard’s motive?”
“I don’t know.” Parkinson sneered.
“You do! You do know!”
She stared into his eyes. In the back, the door of the house was opened, and Bill was calling out to Pansy, rushing after her. She took a step back nervously.
“Please.” Harry grabbed the sleeve of her jacket even more tightly. “There will be another dead Slytherin in a week if we don’t stop him.”
“Then do your job and stop him, Potter.”
Parkinson tore herself free and Harry could tell she was about to apparate –
“What do you know, Pansy?”
Her eyes were cool and condescending as her body whirled around herself, leaving nothing but questions and an upset Bill.