The Justice Within

Part I

At first glance, the case they had been given was hardly unusual.

The magical world, while somewhat more contained than the Muggle one, had its fair share of homicides, and it made Teddy sick. Things like that were the reason he had decided to become an Auror in the first place. To keep people safe, stop crime and violence, and bring the perpetrators to justice. It wasn't as if he fancied himself some kind of… vigilante or something, but his work afforded him with the opportunity to put bad guys away and that allowed him some peace of mind when he locked his doors at night.

The man in question had been found lying in an alleyway near Knockturn Alley, the report said, and had been long dead before he had been discovered. Teddy scanned the autopsy. No sign that the Killing Curse had been used, rather the coroner surmised that the victim had died due to the trauma from a chest wound, which had occurred when the man's heart had been –

Teddy paused and reread the sentence over a few times to be sure.

"Owen, have you read this?" he said to his partner.

Owen looked up from the sports section of the Prophet that he'd been reading. "You mean the report?"

"No, the autopsy."

"Yeah."

"Did you see – "

"About the guy's heart? I saw. Is that twisted or what? My guess is it had to be still beating when it – "

"I think I may throw up if you finish that sentence."

Owen smirked at him. "What, you can read about it, but you can't hear it? That weak stomach is going to get you into trouble some day."

"I'm not the one that got sick last weekend after too much Firewhiskey," Teddy teased, standing up and grabbing his robes off the back of his chair. "Come on, let's go look at the crime scene while there still might be a chance of finding something."

"I thought you said you were having dinner with Victoire tonight? Isn't it your anniversary or something?"

Teddy thought fleetingly of the plans they had made to celebrate and shrugged Owen's concern off. "She'll understand. A murderer on the loose is more important than some dinner."

"Hey, she's your girlfriend."

They passed by his Uncle Harry's secretary, Charlotte on their way out, and she flashed them both a smile.

"Hey Char," Teddy said and cleared his throat. Charlotte always seemed to make him nervous somehow.

She looked extremely pretty that day, the light purple of her robes bringing out her dark eyes and her hair fell around her face in long chocolate ringlets. "How are you?"

"Busy." She gathered several huge stacks of files into her arms and Teddy resisted the urge to carry them for her. "I've actually got to run to a meeting, but I'll see you both later!"

He watched her walk off down the hallway and shook his head as if to clear it.

Teddy thought he loved Victoire. Really. Sometimes he was so sure that he nearly told her so. But there were definitely times where she could be a bit rough around the edges.

Teddy had once had a distant curiosity about whether that sharpness might have come from her father, a reckless, thrill-seeking Cursebreaker if there ever was one, or from her mother and her Veela background. He told himself that it was Uncle Bill's bluntness that she had inherited, mostly because the idea that she was descended from a creature that could transform into an enormous bird, beak and talons poised to strike, kind of freaked him out.

But even if that was true, he found could take her verbal barbs in stride and weather her tempestuous rages, because while there may have been tinges of the animal, it was wrapped tightly, securely, almost invisibly, inside pure, beautiful, incandescent Victoire.

Sometimes though, whenever he and Victoire had a particularly vicious fight, it was hard not to admire Charlotte's slim wrists as she shuffled parchment around her desk, or the soft tones she spoke in. While Victoire often said things in kitschy, vibrant primary colors, Charlotte's words seemed to be tinted in misty pastels.

Still, Teddy told himself, she could never measure up. Like her words, she was just a pale imitation of the woman he was with. No one could ever replace Victoire, with her perfection, her imperfection. She was a shining beacon of everything he ever wanted. Charlotte was just a passing fancy – a tiny emotional affair.

Nothing to feel any guilt over.

And each time Teddy had to tell himself that, he tried to believe it a little more.

The flat was dark when Teddy came back from scoping out the alleyway crime scene with Owen late that night. He fumbled for his wand for a moment, casting a quick Lumos and nearly jumped out of his skin when the light reflected off Victoire's hair and eyes from her place in the chair nearby.

"Jesus Christ, Victoire! You nearly gave me heart failure." He clutched at his chest and tried to slow the frantic beating of his heart. "Why are you sitting in the dark?"

"What's the new case?"

Teddy blinked. "What?"

The silver light of his spell made her eyes look eerily lamp-like and it shone against her white teeth as she said, "You obviously worked late. What's the case?"

"Oh. Of course." The blood had finally stopped pulsing in his ears and he fiddled with the clasp of his cloak, trying to take it off. "Owen and I were given a murder case earlier and we went to go look at the crime scene while it was still fresh. You wouldn't believe what happened to – "

Hanging the cloak up on its peg by the door, he flipped on the light as Victoire bit through his explanation.

"You stood me up on our anniversary for a crime scene." Her voice was flat and cold like a sliver of ice and Teddy was surprised the temperature of the room didn't go down to match it.

Oh. The dinner. The dinner for their anniversary. He had completely forgotten in his eagerness to solve this new case.

"What? No! It wasn't like that. This was really important to the case. If we'd left it till morning – "

She stood up, agitated. Victoire was tall, height fairly even with his, and her eyes were piercing, blisteringly blue with ice-cold fire. "It's always something isn't it? An alleyway you need to see, an interrogation you have to do, alligators loose in London sewers that need to be captured, a body you have to talk to the coroner about – "

"Those were all important too! And this isn't just any case, Victoire. It's a homicide! There's a murderer running free that needs to be brought to justice before he has a chance to kill again."

Victoire's anger had always been sort of brutal, filled with hard edges and executed in almost perfect savageness, always going straight for the jugular. Like a wild animal, she didn't fight just to injure. Her goal was to totally incapacitate her opponent.

"I thought things might be different after we moved in together, but they aren't. You'll never stop putting your obsession with justice over me, will you?"

"I don't – it's not like that, Victoire. I swear."

When he was younger, Teddy had often wondered that someone as beautiful and delicate-looking as Victoire could be so untamed and raw sometimes. In the end though, that was what fascinated him:

Her wildness, and the way it could melt into her beauty so quickly that it sometimes it was almost frightening.

"Look, you have this Friday off, don't you? Why don't I get off work early that day and we can have dinner and some 'us' time until you have to work the next evening? How does that sound? Good?"

He gathered her into his chest and for a moment, she was stiff and still, like a furious doll that had been fashioned out of iron. Then she nodded into his shoulder, her anger seeming to drift away like feathers in a breeze, and murmured, "That sounds really good. I just miss you when you're at work all the time, Teddy. With our schedules, it's hard to see you as it is..."

"I know, I know. I'm sorry. I just want to push as hard as I can to show people I really deserve this and that Uncle Harry didn't just hand the job to me."

"I understand. I want you to do well too." She was still snuffling into his shirt but when she tilted her head back to look at him, her eyes were dry. "I love you, Teddy. So much. I hope you know that."

Threading his fingers into her hair, Teddy rested his chin on top of Victoire's head. She always fit in his arms so perfectly, as if she had always been meant for him to hold.

Teddy had always known he and Victoire would end up together.

"I do."

The coroner's office was a dingy little place on the lowest floor of St. Mungo's. Teddy had been there on several occasions and it was the same as ever as he and Owen walked in, the air almost thick with detection charms and it had a staleness he had attributed to the preservation spells that had to be used to prevent decay. He tried to breathe through his nose. There had always been a kind of antiseptic smell in here and it never failed to give him a headache.

"Hey, Earl," Owen said to the old man who was bent over a tiny desk, almost completely hidden behind towers of paperwork. "How you holding up these days?"

Earl, the coroner, grumbled as he extricated himself from behind the desk. "You ask that every time you come in and I still don't think you want a real answer. "

Owen looked scandalized and hurt. "Earl, mate! I'm hurt you would think that of me!"

Earl was a little midget of a man who wore white work robes that brought out the last wisps of hair still clinging to the base of his scalp and a tiny pair of spectacles was perched on his pinched, wrinkled nose.

He scowled at them, his face pinching and wrinkling even more than before.

"Well if you must know, the rheumatism in my knees is particularly bad today and when I told my wife this morning she said it was what I got for being so -"

Teddy cut in, realizing they'd be there all afternoon unless he said something. "We're actually here for a case, Earl."

Earl sent him a dirty look through his glasses and muttered, "Knew it wasn't a social call." Shuffling through the nearest pile he pulled out a folder. "You're here about the alleyway murder?"

Owen nodded good-naturedly. Sometimes Teddy wondered if there was anything that could make Owen unhappy

"That's one of Carl's cases. I'll get him for you."

Still grumbling, Earl tottered off to the back room as Teddy's stomach turned. Carl was the assistant coroner, having been brought on as a future replacement for Earl as he prepared to retire, and he gave Teddy the creeps.

Carl followed Earl back into the room and Teddy hated how eerily silent his footsteps were. While almost anyone could tower over Earl, Carl even dwarfed Owen, who was as tall and wirey as a Norse beanstalk. A man that size shouldn't have been able to move so quietly. He had a sort of ageless face – Teddy could have pegged him for anywhere between twenty-five and sixty – and deep-set, beetle black eyes, all topped by a scalp of scraggly brown hair that was streaked with gray in a way that made it look like someone had dumped a dustpan over it.

He nodded in greeting, motioning them back, and Owen, who had no reservations where Carl was concerned, grinned and followed.

Carl's desk was crammed into a small corner of the next room and it was littered with knickknacks: mysterious rock paperweights held stacks of documents in place, tribal masks hung on the wall staring out with empty eyes, and the ornate teacup and pot that sat on his desk, still steaming, looked practically ancient and of some east Asian origin. Clearly, Carl had been places that Teddy could only dream of.

He flicked his wand and a large tray slid out of the hole that appeared in the wall, the telltale shapes of feet and a nose visible from beneath the sterile-looking sheet.

"There wasn't really much to do with him. The detection spells showed the residue of at least one binding enchantment but no other magic." Carl slid on some disposable rubber gloves. "The interesting thing – well, I'm sure you read it in the autopsy. Want to take a look?"

Remembering what he'd read in the report this morning, Teddy shook his head in distaste and motioned for Owen to go instead.

Lifting the sheet, Owen hmmm-ed agreeably as Carl pointed things out to him. "It's just like the report said, clean cuts, nothing left behind." He let the sheet fall back into place and asked, "And there wasn't anything left in the alleyway with him?"

Taking his latex gloves off with a sickening snap, Carl shook his head. "No. It seems after they cut it out, they took it with them."

"Who on earth would want anything to do with a human heart?" Owen mused out loud. "I mean, one that isn't currently pumping blood around their own body. What that's for is kind of obvious."

Carl rubbed at his stubbling beard, coal eyes glittering with interest. "I saw something like this once. "

"Really? Where? When?"

He waved Owen's questions off with a spidery hand. "It was a long time ago. You wouldn't believe me if I told you."

Not for the first time, Teddy tried and failed to place Carl's accent. His words had strange lilts and curves that made him suspect he wasn't originally from England and Teddy added that mystery to the growing pile.

He leaned back against the desk and crossed his arms. "Try us."

"When I was in Asia, I heard of a legend about a woman that would seduce men and eat their livers."

Owen made a face, mouthing the word 'livers?' with distaste and Teddy shrugged at him.

"The story goes that she wasn't a woman at all, but a shape shifter, who could take the form of an animal – usually a magical fox they call a gumiho."

"Yeah, but you said that's just a legend – " Owen started, sounding disturbed.

"That's what I thought when I heard it, but while I was working in Japan, there was a case like this. I was ready to just call it your typical homicidal oddity, but then, looking closer, I saw it: the cutting hadn't been done by a blade; it had been done with claws."

A chill coursed up and down Teddy's spine as he imagined a fox's teeth trying to tear at his chest, chewing at his ribcage.

"Of course, it was never proven," Carl amended, probably seeing their horrified expressions. "But most cultures have a story like that – vicious animals masquerading as women to catch their prey.

He counted them on his fingers. "There's the kitsune and hone-ona of Japan, the Hungarian liderc,Lamia of Greek mythology. Even our ancient traditions refer to succubi and nixies." He replaced the sheet, smoothing down the edges of it until they lay flat over the body. "Of course, all of those disappeared long ago, as far as we know, but the one that's still around today is the Veela."

"But a Veela would never tear someone's heart out," Teddy said quickly, thinking of Victoire's pretty hands tracing patterns into the soft skin of his belly as they lay in bed together. She didn't even let her fingernails grow very long, which made the idea of her having talons even more repulsive.

"Of course not," Carl agreed easily, flicking his wand to send the body back into the hole in the wall. "Funny that they should have the power to turn themselves into something with claws and yet they never seem to use them."

Teddy didn't think funny so much as it was a ridiculous thought. Victoire's great-great-grandmother had been a Veela, had been human enough to have normal children. He'd seen pictures of her beautiful face, so like Victoire's in its shape and planes and angles. There was no way she could have been a vicious monster.

He grunted a farewell to Carl and tapped his foot impatiently as Owen cheerfully chatted with Earl on their way out. This was a human crime, and Teddy pushed any doubts he had about that out of his mind.