He'd had strange cases, ones that were unusual. He'd dealt with narcissists, psychopaths, and sociopaths. But Spencer Reid had never had a case like this one.
"Alicia Wallace, 23." said Garcia, pressing a button on her remote. A picture popped up on the screen of a pretty brunette girl, smiling happily. "First year law student at Harvard. Her body was dumped in an alley a mile from her apartment." Another photo popped up of the girl, this time no longer smiling. Instead, she had a look of sheer terror on her face. "Three other students were found in exactly the same way up and down the east coast." More photos appeared of young women in similar positions. They all looked terrified.
The profilers all looked at their tablets with varying degrees of confusion. "What was the cause of death?" Hotch asked
Garcia made a face. "Well, thats the doosie. We don't know"
This statement caused the team to look up in confusion. "What do you mean we...don't know?" Reid asked. A twenty-three year old didn't just drop dead of her own accord. There had to be a reason. It didn't make any sense.
"I mean...we really don't know. This chick is like, perfectly healthy. Her autopsy showed that everything was normal except for the fact she's, you know, dead."
Hotch grabbed his tablet and stood "Wheels up in thirty."
Hermione Granger, Head of Magical Law Enforcement.
She knew it was silly, but Hermione loved to look at her desk's name tag. To her it was a reminder of how hard she had worked. She was the youngest HMLE ever by ten years, at age twenty-five. It hadn't been easy, but she had done it. It had involved a lot of energy potions and sleepless nights, to say the least.
Life at the Ministry had been rather slow lately. Cases only came by the Head (or as her co-workers called her, the Brain) when they were quite serious and the wizarding world seemed to be behaving as of late. So, Hermione resigned herself to filing papers and keeping her staff in line. In fact, she had been expecting to have a perfectly boring day alone in her office when her assistant burst through the door.
"Miss Granger, we have an emergency." she said, rushing to her desk. Her assistant was a dramatic, twitchy young thing just graduated from Hogwarts. "There's a wizard using the Killing curse in America, against Muggles." she said, placing a file on Hermione's desk."
"Shouldn't the American Office handle this, Wendy?" Hermione asked, picking up the file. While the Ministry of Magic was in charge of the entire wizarding world, in each country there was a branch to handle things there unless it became too serious. While what was happening was certainly awful, it didn't seem necessary to call them in. They had a perfectly competent Department of Magical Law Enforcement in the states.
"Yes, miss." said Wendy, "But we didn't hear about the murders until the Muggle Police had already gotten the case. It's all over the American news. They're requesting you to Apparate there today to help handle the case."
Hermione sighed, "Very well. I'll just review the file and I'll be off." Wendy left the office and Hermione opened the file to a picture of a young woman, unmistakably a killing curse victim. Her hair was moving in the wind but otherwise she was perfectly still.
Hermione sighed and left her office to apparate to the U.S.A