I do not own Harry Potter.
Okay NY, this is me dedicating a story to you. Enjoy (I hope).
I am going to add a Lily/Scorpius romance in the next couple of chapters, so bear with me all you match addicts, I'm getting there.
The light was glaring and it bore down heavily upon us as we worked. It was a grizzly scene and the obscene heat only served to heighten the festering sense of evil that hung in the air like a foul stench. The body was that of a young woman, blond, probably pretty before death had turned her tanned skin to a sallow shade of unearthly blue-grey. The smell of dead flesh rose bile in my throat but I had seen this too many times for it to upset my stomach like it used to. I joined the Aurors shortly after the Battle of Hogwarts. They were only too glad to enlist Harry Potter to their cause. For about five years, things were reasonably quiet. Then the villains came out of hiding. Since then, I have seen more unsavoury deaths than I care to comment on. It ages you quickly, being around death, makes you realise how fragile your tie to this earth really is, how fleeting and how easily it can be severed.
This murder however, set the hairs on the back of my neck standing up and gave me an ill feeling that usually escapes me. This girl was unmarked, her death undoubtedly the product of the killing curse. There was only one blemish on her skin but it was so unsettling, so familiar that it frightened me. I saw that mark in the mirror every day; a lightning bolt, cut precisely into her forehead. I turned to Hermione, who was looking grim. She had not always intended to become an Auror but it turned out that she had the stomach for it. It had hardened her too, changed her irrevocably.
"What do you think?" she asked me quietly.
I sighed and leaned back against the wall, turning my head away from the corpse and it's unnaturally sprawled limbs. Somehow, you could always tell when someone was dead. No living person could ever take on that position of artlessly spread disarray, like a doll with cut strings, left to rot on the floor.
"I don't know," I said quietly, "It feels like a threat,"
"It isn't a copy cat killer," Hermione said, "This was never Voldemort's style,"
Another one of the crew hissed at the sound of the name. Even now, so long after I killed the man, people fear him still. Hermione rolled her eyes.
"He's dead. Now get a grip, will you?"
The crew came to take away the body and I watched the veiled gurney roll by. It worried me slightly that I was so jaded to these things that this death had no particular impact on me. The day that I had stopped being outraged by murders and become resigned to them instead was the day that I truly began to change. It is costing me Ginny but there isn't much I can do to stop it. I'll lose her soon, just like I let my horror at death slip away, water between spread fingers.
My owl, Daisy, so named by my daughter, landed heavily on a street sign nearby. Her chest heaved and her breath came in fast little pants, her feathers were ruffled. Frowning and feeling a growing sense of alarm, I took the letter from her leg and read.
Potter,
I hope you have enjoyed the surprise I left you. While you were preoccupied, I took the opportunity to visit your family. You have a lovely daughter.
Regards,
V
A chill ran down my spine and dread squeezed my heart with spindly fingers.
"Lily," I whispered.
I disapperated but deep in the pit of my stomach, I knew that I was too late.
