Seven men and women sat at a polished wooden table, equally spaced around the circular surface. The room was dark around the edges as the only light was a bare light bulb hung directly above the table's center. Several of the meeting's members continually glanced up at it, their curiosity apparent on their faces. It was obvious that none were familiar with the contraption. The rest were simply too focused on the matter before them to spare it any further thought. The room itself was bare concrete with no further furnishing and no decoration. The Ministry could hardly be expected to provide an official room for such a specialized, impromptu and decidedly unsavory taskforce.
Daryl Ranfield absently tucked her dark auburn hair behind her ears as she flipped open the file and scanned the report for the tenth time in twice as many minutes. It was hard to get more politically sensitive than the murder of a beautiful, young, pureblood bride on the night before her wedding, especially considering the current political climate, but the killer had certainly managed. The body was completely drained of blood and there were the bite marks of a large, wolfish creature high on the left thigh and nearly severing the left foot. The heart had been neatly, almost surgically, removed. The head and neck were also yet to be found -- as were the young woman's clothes. She had last been seen alive at Malfoy Manor, sixteen minutes past ten. Her body was found the following day in a London alley. By a Muggle.
Two seats to Daryl's left, Detective Pollux Lupin stirred. Lupin had been chosen for the taskforce specifically because of the bite marks. His great-grandfather, as well as his active personal support of Equal Rights for Lycanthropes, made him one of the very few investigators believed sufficiently motivated to grant lycanthropes an unbiased treatment by the law. "I was wondering," he began in his usual ponderous voice. "Is our assumption that the culprit is a rogue werewolf or a violent werewolf hater?"
Don't we all hate violent werewolves? Daryl repressed the thought. Now was neither the time nor the place. "On the record," she answered coolly, "this is obviously an insane bigot's response to the commendable efforts of the ERL. Off of it, you all know how I feel." Lupin nodded as his gaze drifted downwards.
"Vampire?" Detective Susan Varga said. All eyes turned towards the little Hungarian woman. "We all know how they get about the wolves sometimes and it's a bit difficult to explain the lack of blood otherwise."
Detective John Carson shook his head. "Vampires are much more cunning than this. They wouldn't take the blood if they wanted us to suspect werewolves, and besides, the ERL have really started to get results, but this is going to hit them hard. Any progress they make for werewolves helps the vampires too."
Varga scoffed. "What makes you think they want progress? My ears hear things yours never will, Mr. Uppercrust, and there's a powerful movement 'back to the blood.' Why would they want to coexist when everyone knows that your Ministry couldn't spare the strength to arrest a single one of the unicorn blood conspirators just last summer? We may claim that it's an unsolved case, but there isn't a man on the street who doesn't know that every single one was named and nailed by Detective Ranfield herself and that every single one is walking free. Equal Rights for Lycanthropes has just as many enemies on that side as one this. There are even several werewolf packs who prefer a life on the wild side."
Daryl nodded slowly. As good of a place to begin as any. Varga was a sharp one and her contacts were certainly reliable though notoriously anonymous. Aside from Daryl's personal dislike for the woman's down-and-dirty investigation style, as well as that irritating habit of referring to 'your' Ministry, she was sure to be an asset to the force. She was wrong about Carson though. John could do a lot more than mingle with high society and it wasn't his fault that those were the cases usually assigned to him. The Ministry was short on charismatic purebloods from respectable families. Daryl was often grateful that her own mother was a Muggleborn as her father's side would undoubtedly have landed her in the same position.
"So then," Daryl said. "We have a few options. Personally, I vote for the obvious one. We've all heard of werepyre teams before." It said something about the group that they all had. A newly changed vampire and young werewolf teaming up together was something of a rising trend in the more disorganized dark arts gangs these days, but not many other investigators, not to mention witches and wizards in general, would have known about it, nor would they have even guessed at the dramatic increase in reckless, pointless, near-insane violence that occurred whene'er the twain did meet.
"She was kidnapped from Malfoy Manor," Mary-Beth Wainwright argued. The blond, attractive detective had been Daryl's sworn enemy back at Hogwarts, but the two were moving towards a tentative friendship, the closeness of which was directly proportional to the rate at which Mary-Beth learned that a beautiful woman didn't really need to act feather-brained in order to be accepted. "No werepyre team is clever or powerful enough to breach even one of its defenses."
"We don't know that for a fact," Daryl pointed out. "That's only where we last have a witness. Maybe she chickened out of the marriage. Decided that now was a good time for an unannounced visit to her aunt in France or wherever. Stepped out of the front gate and got snapped right up." She shrugged. "Regardless, if you don't like that one, there's plenty more to choose from. An anti-ERL vampire with a device to simulate werewolf bites. An anti-ERL human, again with a biting device and also with a blood draining device." Alright, so it wasn't politically correct to refer to non-werewolves as humans, but it was so much simpler. "An anti-vampire werewolf trying to make themselves look framed, causing us to crack down on their opposers due to public outcry. The ERL themselves, for much the same reasons." Lupin's mouth dropped open in pure shock. Daryl swept onwards. "Some demented and devilishly convoluted dark artist covering up his theft of the heart for some undoubtedly demonic purpose. Perhaps even an equally convoluted personal enemy. The groom. The groom's mother."
She sighed. "Ladies. Gentlemen. We have no end of suspects. Evidence is not quite so plentiful. The blood is gone, but so is the entire neck, so we can't examine any hypothetical bites that would be there, and the family won't let us examine the wolf ones until their personal grieving is over." Regulation was one thing. Money still talked which made the Malfoys rather chatty and the Ministry didn't need any more publicity. "The clothing is missing, but the victim's mother described the only thing missing from her wardrobe as a pale blue silk nightgown extending to halfway down the lower leg with a deeper blue rose pattern and ribbons and lace about the neck."
John raised an eyebrow. "Very involved mother. I don't think my wife could identify more than three things in my daughter's closet and she's even younger. Fifteen."
Lupin shrugged. "They're Malfoys. Wardrobe is important."
"Surprisingly," Daryl continued, "there is no sign of a struggle on her part. Except for the fact that we've confirmed the bites and blood loss occurred pre-mortem, you'd think she died quite peacefully. The decapitation definitely occurred after death, however, but the heart was taken before she died, or just as she did. There is one other interesting detail." She paused and glanced around the table. To her immediate left was Mary-Beth, twiddling with her hair, then Lupin, his eyes eternally concerned, then John, who leaned forward in his seat, all of his Gryffindor instincts eager for a clear-cut contest between good and evil. Things were always clear-cut with John.
To her right sat Varga, the dark-haired terror's familiar grin temporarily banished by the seriousness of the case. Next to her was Detective Marcus Laine, the silent, kindly strongman with a far quicker mind and much more developed social skills than most gave him credit for. And almost directly across from Daryl was where she fixed her steely gaze now.
"In the victim's mouth and under her nails we found significant traces of bloodroot juice."
Specialist Twitchell Leroux burst into high-pitched laughter and a wave of significant glances swept around the table. Leroux was the youngest one present, three years younger than Daryl herself, but even she had heard of him at Hogwarts, had been forced to work with him at the Auror Academy. No one she'd known at either school had ever liked him and not a single one of the reasons for that dislike had changed.
"That's it?" he cried. "That's the big evil magic I was called in for? Do you have any idea what bloodroot is?" When nobody answered, he simply answered for them. "It's a flower. Muggles know it, they just don't know how to pick it. I mean, sure it's sold on Knockturn Alley. It's used in a potion here or there, but nothing serious. "
"What sort of potions?" Marcus finally spoke.
"Beauty," Leroux promptly listed. "Especially the Brant variety. Those are the ones," he added in an educational aside that no one else really cared about, "that mothers sometimes give to their daughters to ensure that when they are grown, they won't need the potions. Love, of the sort that focuses on merely physical attraction." He shrugged. "Nothing surprising in a young bride's mouth. It was an arranged marriage, you know."
"Anything else?" Daryl asked. She comforted herself with the fact that if Leroux wasn't needed, she wouldn't have to work with him, assuming that the higher-ups decided not to be asses.
Leroux thought for a moment. "Hypnotists sometimes use it in a brew to calm down difficult patients. And every so often you get an irresponsible mother giving it to her young children."
"Maybe they used a lot of it," Mary-Beth suggested, "and hypnotized her so she wouldn't fight."
Leroux shrugged. "Don't see why they would bother, and first they'd have to get her to drink it, but I guess that could work."
Daryl's hopes were raised once more. "A place to start," she said firmly. "That's all we need. Varga, get your people moving on bloodroot and hypnotism. Carson, you keep talking up the family. Lupin, you keep both eyes on the ERL and use your influence to keep the noise on this down to a minimum. Mary-Beth and I can look for possible connections with other reports and Marcus can handle the official end." The press seemed to love him even more than John. He was the perfect beat policeman image. "Leroux, I don't even want to know what it is that you do. Just show up when we call another meeting." Or not. Personally Daryl was rooting for not.
Leroux gave a sardonic half-smile. Daryl supposed that he was used to everything up to outright hatred, not only from the regular Aurors, but from his fellow dark obsessors as well. She couldn't imagine why he stayed.
Mary-Beth stopped and turned around just a few blocks away from the Muggle building whose basement they had been borrowing. About five feet away stood Twitchell Leroux, his sharp teeth showing in what was possibly meant to be a friendly grin. "Oh, come along," she snapped and grabbed his forearm. The two hurried onwards, ducked into a deserted alley and Apparated away to Mary-Beth's living room.
Twitchell immediately seated himself on the couch and looked around with interest. It was a cozy little cottage home but Twitchell made its quaintness seem pathetic and absurd, just by being a part of the picture. Mary-Beth frostily excused herself and stepped into the kitchen.
It was to Mary-Beth's blame -- or credit -- that Twitchell was a part of the case. Her idea, her bureaucratic machinations. Her offer of a date if he accepted. Well, she hadn't offered a date exactly. Her words had been 'a supper at my place.' Just between colleagues. And it hadn't been an offer in return exactly either. More like, there's this case we're working on, and by the way, how about dinner? But he'd known what she meant. Otherwise, why would he be here, and on the case?
Mary-Beth glanced into the living room where Twitchell was examining a snow globe that Daryl had given her last Christmas and felt a deep shame rising from the pit of her stomach. She made a resolution to throw it away tomorrow and steeled herself for a very long evening and a soon-to-be-empty house. Ah, well. Her mother knew the Malfoys and consequentially, Mary-Beth knew a bit more about the case than she did officially. Twitchell would be needed if that poor girl's killer was ever to be caught and if this was the price of a consultation, then it would be paid.
Besides. He actually was a bit of a looker, once you got past the constant dark arts trivia.
A/N: 'Vanitas' is an art term referring to a still life meant to represent the futility and emptiness of all life's pleasures and the certainty of death. Ooh. That sounds significant. Anyway, as far as reviews go... do I really have to say how reviews go? Send 'em here, baby. Send 'em here. But I actually did want to say that if you have any ideas about whodunnit later on (or even now if you're feeling ambitious) I'd love to hear them. Of course, I already know whodunnit, but it'll be interesting to see what direction people are thinking.