The Crafty Case of the Corpses That Weren't Corpses
In Which Murder Appears…?
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"What would you say, Snape, to a trip to the Tower of London?" Magistra Hermione Granger, draped lazily over a large, comfortably plush armchair, looked innocently over at her companion. "Not today, certainly; it's miserable out. But soon."
"I would say, Granger," he replied, glancing over briefly before returning his eyes to Alchimie Tö Daeg he was perusing, "that I have already seen the Crown Jewels, and that ravens are extremely dull conversationalists. If you have a desire to play tourist at home, I suggest you choose a more intriguing setting, such as Heathrow Airport." Magister Severus Snape, late of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, was sufficiently experienced to understand that innocent looks nearly always implied the opposite, and was also quite aware that Magistra Granger would reveal her intentions without any interference from him. It was simply a matter of applying his maddening habit of patience and silence. He turned a page.
The two, witch and wizard, were—quite surprisingly, to most observers—amiably ensconced within the walls of the library of Magister Snape's home at Spinner's End. The room itself had developed remarkably since our introduction to the location—as, indeed, had the rest of the house. What was once small, dark, cramped, and uncomfortable for anyone except possibly the owner, had become pleasantly airy and reasonably lit. The books, scrolls, and other paraphernalia that are the life's blood of the bibliophile were tidied away in a truly logical fashion—meaning that one could actually find what one wanted, as opposed to trying to deduce the logic one used when one last put the item away—and the chairs had been refurbished to the point of looking presentable while still fitting all of one's kinks. The odour was that most enjoyable combination of slightly musty books, tea, and the ghost of a wood fire. It was still small—there is only so much that can be done without unsettling a certain portion of any magical library or, indeed, the house's owner and occupant—but it was a much more pleasant place to be in than it had been.
The wizard had not even finished the new page when his companion gave a small sigh and folded her copy of The Daily Prophet. By this, he knew that she considered the matter serious; in little things, Magistra Granger had the habit of trying to wait him out, all the while brewing her temper to positively shrewish heights, a process which Magister Snape found quite amusing. In this instance, however, he paid heed to the signals and laid his journal down. "What is the problem this time?" She might consider the matter serious, but his opinion rarely matched hers—in his observation.
She did not rise to the bait, and Magister Snape made note of this as well. "The Aurors," she replied, looking quite serious and sober, "have arrested Dennis Creevey. For murder."
It was almost certainly the worst possible reaction, but from his point of view, it was the only possible reaction. He laughed.
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• • • • •
It took some time, and quite a bit of the patience Magister Snape hadn't believe she possessed, for the wizard to calm down enough to be talked at. At the sound of the first hoot of laughter, Umber poked his head in, for which he might be forgiven; his master's hilarity was wholly improbable, if not impossible, and had a tinge of something that might be interpreted as hysteria. The Brownie's orders had been to stay out of the way for the afternoon, but Magistra Granger simply gave a tiny shrug and mimed a cup of tea. Umber nodded—a smooth, deep movement—and vanished again. Magister Snape was himself again by the time the Brownie returned to the library. He quirked an eyebrow at Magistra Granger and accepted the cup Umber proffered. "Thank you, Umber."
Magistra Granger smiled and offered her thanks when he poured her cup. "I think you may as well remain, Umber," she said.
Umber turned briefly to his master, who shrugged minutely. "Very well, Magistra." He retreated slightly, taking up a suitably deferential position. It was an instinct with him, one which his master did not always appreciate and which his master's… colleague had initially condemned—quite loudly and at great length. She had required a very long, detailed recitation upon the nature of Brownies—and of their degenerate, distant cousins, the house-elves—to begin to understand that she could no more ask him to stop being what she considered a 'slave' than she could ask a fish to swim backwards against a strong current. Umber was still not sure that she entirely understood, but she had, at least, ceased to pester him in the kitchen and subject Magister Snape to her well-meaning, but tiresome, lectures. Magistra Granger accepted his presence and, thankfully, his intelligent sentience. Umber was not human—though he possessed that general shape, his form appeared as though he had been stretched beyond human proportions by a mediaeval rack or a modern taffy puller—but his mind was fully formed and informed through several centuries of serving the best men and women the human race could produce, interspersed with decades of serving no one at all. Umber folded his fingers before him and fixed wholly black eyes upon the lady witch.
She recounted the article she had read, though her narrative was often interrupted by Magister Snape's comments and continued sniggers. Dennis Creevey, following the War, had chosen to honour his brother's memory by following the Arts, and lacking any inclination (perhaps even harbouring an aversion) to photography, he had chosen sculpture as a form of expression. He had been granted a fair amount of success; his fruition as an artist came just at the time when the Wizarding world had entered its mania for memorial statues, and he had, as a participant, been called on to produce the majority of them. (Magister Snape, in a rare moment of condescension and magnanimity, commented that he had actually found young Mister Creevey's representation of Magistra Granger relatively tolerable, though her hair, naturally, was all wrong. The magistra replied tartly that he had never yet seen his own statue, for which he should be grateful.) As a result, Dennis Creevey was well-monied and well thought of, and he could afford the following period of experimentation. He had then revealed that he had discovered an entirely new sculptural process, that would allow for the casting of metal statues that would, when complete, move around freely and naturally within the confines of their pedestals. They would not, however, possess the same autonomy and intelligence as their portrait counterparts. The young sculptor received an immediate barrage of requests, for he was decidedly in fashion, and began to produce his masterpieces.
He began, but could not finish. The first three of his clients had all vanished, suddenly and mysteriously, on the eve of their statues' completion. At first, this had gone unremarked upon; magical folk were notoriously vague in the matters of time and appointments, and their families had all believed that the missing people were involved in nothing more sinister than their own projects. A classic case, The Daily Prophet pointed out, was the wizard Owain Tardif, who in 1492 had popped over to the Continent to fetch some wine for a potion and only returned fifty years later. When pressed, he replied that he had been trying to help a fellow who had apparently gotten lost and ended up thoroughly turned around himself. Wherever he had been, it had involved a lot of sea water and a very hot sun. Tardif had, however, brought home some very interesting magical plants, which his wife later used to develop magically medicinal chocolate. She had been quoted at the time as saying that such a gift had inclined her to forgive Tardif for his protracted absence. And so, it was only when Dennis called on the families of the missing in a effort to locate them that the connection was remarked upon, and suspicion began to grow. After all, the Muggle-born wizard had come up with a process that no one had ever had an inkling of before. Further, he had not taken it to the Ministry to be properly registered and regulated, nor had he shared it with anyone, even though there were other magical artists clamouring for the secret. What else could be assumed but that there was some Dark secret to his new technique, one that kept him from sharing it and must somehow cause these disappearances?
Snape rolled his eyes. "Dennis. Creevey," he said meaningfully.
"I agree with you," Granger replied. "People change, certainly, and the War certainly changed all of us, but Dennis really only sobered a bit. Somehow, he's still the same irrepressible little boy he was at Hogwarts. I don't see how anyone could take him seriously as a murderer, or even a kidnapper. It's possible, I know, but pretty bloody far-fetched, if you ask me."
"Assumptions, Magistra Granger."
She sighed. "I know. Assumptions will get you killed."
"If I may, Magistra," Umber interjected quietly, "who are the missing wizards, and what other connection might they have?"
"That's the troubling bit," the witch admitted. "Whatever other connection they might have is… improbable, at best. I've been cudgelling my brain and so far come up empty. The first was Cornelius Fudge."
"I imagine a majority of the Wizarding world would be queuing up to perform that service to humanity," Snape quipped sotto voce.
"The second," she continued, giving Magister Snape a hard look, "was Apolline delaCour."
That brought the wizard upright. "Who the devil would want to kill her? At least, here in England. Being half-Veela, I should imagine there are quite a few women in France who might want her out of the way, but she doesn't spend enough time here for that."
"If I thought for one minute," Hermione remarked sweetly, "that you were… looking in that direction, my first target would be you, not her." Snape bowed his head in mocking acquiescence. "Her only connection here that I know of would be her daughters and their families. I've never heard of any liaisons, or even of any real flirtations, from Ginny, and she would know. Between Molly and the Harpies' locker room, she hears every shred of gossip worth knowing—and a lot that isn't. I think she knew of your refusal two milliseconds after I had popped the question—the first time, I mean."
"It was very nicely done, Magistra," Umber inserted politely, "if I may say so." The Brownie had an appreciation for events that were well-planned and -executed, the more so if the effort was put forth in his master's favour.
"Thank you, Umber," she replied. She added, favouring her companion with a mock glare, "He still said no."
"A regrettable and hopefully impermanent lapse of judgment on his part, Magistra."
"Are you quite certain you still work for me, Umber?" Snape interjected smoothly.
The Brownie, undeterred, continued. "I shall endeavour to anticipate your next appeal, Magistra. As, if I may be so forward, will Mrs. Potter. I am afraid she is not what I would call a lady. I have several times been forced into less than aboveboard methods in order to prevent her entry or her introduction of surveillance devices into this house. I suspect her, Magistra, of gathering information for the benefit of the papers." The last was expressed with the fastidious disgust of a Kneazle finding a Mißchen in his path, and Hermione nearly laughed before his words made their true impression upon her understanding.
Both witch and wizard bolted upright in their chairs at the admission, and Magister Snape roared his fury, both at the effrontery of Mrs. Potter and the duplicitous silence of his butler. Nothing would please him short of a full accounting of the facts of the attempts, and this derailed the conversation from its initial intent for some time. In fact, the sun had long since set, and it was far too late to even contemplate a trip to London town, had they been inclined to. Magistra Granger did manage to bring matters back to the third and final disappearance: Lavender Brown. Like the other two, she had vanished around the time of her final sitting with young Creevey. Unlike the others, she had been missed almost immediately, having had, the previous evening, a magnificent row with her current beau, Ronald Weasley, which The Daily Prophet had taken great glee in reporting. They had parted ways at the restaurant—with young Auror Weasley footing the bill—but he had called round to her flat early the next day, hoping, as he said, to patch things up before her witch-friends got hold of her. He had let himself in, being possessed of a key, and found that she had never even been home. Being an Auror—and famous and a friend of the even more famous Boy-Who-Lived—he was able to call in the department immediately. "Further investigation," Hermione quoted from The Prophet, "introduced the gravest concern for Miss Brown's whereabouts," and later uncovered Mme. delaCour's apparent vanishing into thin air. (A self-inflicted condition that was considered and disproved, though both Snape and Hermione refused to take The Prophet's word for it. Or, indeed, for anything.) Mr. Fudge had been missed some time before, but had been rather neglected through the placement of his case in the hands of two neophyte Aurors with their safe-training spells barely removed. This situation was rectified immediately upon the discovery of The Creevey Connection, and the young man was brought in immediately upon no stronger evidence than that each missing person had noted an appointment with him in their diaries, though he did admit that he had sculpted all three—sculptures left unfinished in their final, animative spell casting. The Prophet asserted confidently that a search warrant would be forthcoming, adding with equal certainty that the dastardly criminal would undoubtedly be unmasked in the process and brought to swift, unerring justice—trademark rhetoric of the magical tabloid.
"What they don't seem to have thought through," Hermione added upon finishing, "is that if Dennis did have some nefarious necessity to finish the animation spells, the figures would be completed by now—Fudge and Apolline, anyway; he might not have had time for Lavender."
"Logic," Magister Snape said dryly, "is not their long suit. In fact, it is a trait that very few wizards—or witches—possess." The implied compliment was clear to one who had spent as much time in Snape's company as she had, and Hermione, to her embarrassment, blushed.
"You still won't marry me, will you?" she asked, busying her hands and eyes with her evening coffee.
"Certainly not," Snape answered equably, stirring his own.
"But you will come with me tomorrow?"
"Of course."
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• • • • •
For most wizards, a trip to London was a simple apparition from anywhere in Britain, but it particularly suited Magister Snape to approach the Establishment in such a way that no one was aware of his arrival until he was standing before them—and sometimes not even then. And so the two wizards popped into a generally disused corner of the venerable Victoria and Albert Museum, took a few moments to appreciate the tapestries, and proceeded in a deliberate fashion down to the Underground station below. They both found the trains an amusing means of transportation that had the added benefit of being completely free of people whom they did not wish to see.
A short time later, they were walking onto the grounds of the Tower of London. In the heart of the ancient City, the Tower was its war crown, giving the impression of both delicacy and endurance, as well as a certain aloofness; it did not mingle with more common structures. In seeing it, Hermione imagined that if the worst ever came, the Tower (like Hogwarts, in its way) would be the site of Britain's last stand, its defenders waving the two-fingered salute in defiance of whatever barbarians the universe had thrown at them. She dismissed the image as pure whimsy, and continued on across the yard. She should very much have liked to take Severus's arm, but did not like the thought—and knew he would feel the same—of impeding one or the other's wand hand.
A small door set into the outer wall was rather ignored by everyone who came to see the Tower, and was even fairly neglected by the men whose business it was to secure the ancient fortress. The two passed through—Severus at the lead as it improved his humour—and nodded to the wizard who lounged just inside, feet propped atop a heavy desk. He was an odd chap—not always there, though his job seemed to be to look after the door—and none of the regular Aurors ever seemed to have a fair idea of who he might be, though they never worried over him much, either. He often liked to talk nonsense, and today, he flashed a broad grin and confided to Hermione, "I hate pears."
"Bananas." She liked him and took his nonsense in stride. Snape rolled his eyes.
"Shame," the chap fit in before they passed and waggled a trainer-clad foot.
The Aurory-Under-Tower was a labyrinthine sort of place, and Snape sent out a magicked ball of twine in search of their quarry. Narrow halls were peppered with narrow doors, which gave way to narrow rooms. The room meant to hold not-yet-criminal wizards was no better, and the addition of even a single witch to its standard population of one not-yet-criminal and a half-dozen Aurors made it resemble the final stages of a parlour game of Sardines. Dennis Creevey sat uncomfortably sandwiched between two brawny Aurors with sufficient muscles to fill the cell all by themselves. His brown hair hung limp and his eyes drooped: a cheerful beagle transformed into a mournful basset hound. Snape waited for him to howl, but was disappointed. "Out," he ordered peremptorily. A slim girl who had been leaning against the wall shrugged and slipped through the door. Three more, arranged deliberately around and on a desk equipped with any number of arcane law-enforcement potions and apparati, levered themselves up and fingered their wands, all the while glaring suspiciously at the magister. He glared back with far better success; they, too, evacuated the tiny room in favour of the hall. The Muscles remained. Hermione took a seat at the desk; Snape leaned against it.
In all his time as her schoolmate, Dennis had always struck Hermione as extraordinarily young, a gambolling puppy even amongst the half-grown ones that surrounded her. And now that he was grown, that didn't seem to have changed. He wore large glasses that magnified earnest eyes, and while he might be a bit low, his essential honesty and eagerness stood out all over him in knobs. She exchanged a glance with Magister Snape and knew they concurred in their opinion of the boy.
"You," Magister Snape intoned, "are a positive nuisance to the community."
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• • • • •
A grapevine, magical or mundane, is the swiftest form of communication known to the universe, so it was hardly a surprise to the current head of the Aurory, Kingsley Shacklebolt, when two old comrades came to visit him from further down the hall. Nor did it surprise either Hermione or Snape that Kingsley was expecting them. They accepted his hospitality gracefully, feeling much better now that they could move their elbows more than half an inch away from their torsos, and endured his smugly knowing expression.
"I find it hard to swallow myself," Shacklebolt admitted when all were seated and had their cup of tea. "That kid, of all people. But we had to secure the studio, if for no other reason than to keep the rest of the populace from buggering up our investigation. Most wizards still don't understand the problems presented by manufacturing evidence; they see it as 'helping us out.' Merlin forbid that any witch or wizard pronounced guilty by The Prophet have the effrontery to be innocent." He paused to accommodate Snape's roll of the eyes and Hermione's spluttered expostulations. "They also have trouble with the concept that lynch mobs are immoral—and might also be wrong. I feel better with Dennis in here, where I can keep an eye on him and where his worst injuries will be a pair of bruised elbows.
"Has he explained his 'process' to you?" he asked suddenly.
Hermione acquired her own, suitably muted, smug expression. "He trusts us," she said primly. "And as far as we can determine without testing it ourselves, it is a perfectly legitimate system of dependent spells and charms based on the Kalibos animative limning codification with suitable adjustments made for the differences introduced by the use of different materials and three-dimensional media. It does not involve necromancy or animancy in any of the forms delineated by Price's Compendium of the Morbid and Moribund."
"I'm sorry, Hermione; did you just imply that you've read the Compendium?"
"Certainly I have. Severus gave it to me for my last birthday but one."
Kingsley caught a terribly unsubtle smirk upon the magister's face and decided he had better move on. "Well, then. That's good to know. Creevey wouldn't share it with us, naturally, but the pair of you have better credentials than we do.
"Now, to be blunt, we can't find any evidence to implicate Creevey in these disappearances. We've searched his studio, his flat, even his parents' house and found precisely nothing. We have impounded the statues as they are and I'm having them brought here. You two can take a look when they come in; I'm sure Severus's expertise in Dark magic will be quite valuable in their evaluation—not to mention more trustworthy when it's written up in the papers. Otherwise, his movements are generally accounted for, his actions consistent. There's no creditable motive that we can discover, unless he's simply a psychopath—which isn't impossible. We may have to resort to Veritaserum, but that's very unsatisfactory."
"And unreliable in the mentally unstable," Magister Snape pointed out. "If Creevey is a psychopath, the results would be buggered from here to Cathay and back."
"There must be some other connection," Hermione interjected. She frowned in a way that reminded Snape uncomfortably of the classroom. "Fudge. Mme. delaCour. Lavender. Is there some cause that they're all a part of? Did they meet with any common person besides Dennis? Why did they all decide to have their statues made?"
Kingsley leaned back in his chair to an alarming degree. "Brown and Fudge were on a few post-war committees; Fudge's absence from grandstanding had been noticed, but with relief more than anything else. The French witch's only interests here were her two daughters and their families; according to Fleur and Gabrielle, she had little opinion of anything else in Britain—and that's saying it nicely. She met with Auror Weasley briefly in the course of visiting, but only ever in company, and he goes to great pains to avoid Fudge; he has since the end of the war."
"I do think he loves her," Hermione added softly. "Ron and Lavender, I mean. He told me a little while back that he was planning to propose."
Snape snorted. "I hope he was planning to do a better job of it than last time." Weasley had made an announcement in front of the gathered Weasley clan—without bothering to ask Magistra Granger beforehand. Her reply had made the headlines back then—and had been quoted verbatim without any improvement by a Quick-Quotes Quill.
The lady smiled. "He asked for advice this time. I'm female enough to have valuable information on the mysteries of witches."
"They did have a fight," Kingsley reminded them.
"They always fight," Hermione countered. "I've known them to have one every day for two weeks straight. I think they enjoy it. Ron's impressed that she'll stand up to him, and Lavender likes the abject apologies afterwards. And you haven't answered my third question."
"Why…" Kingsley tilted his head back to look at the dingy ceiling. High above, it had been carved with fantastical monsters and painted with a variety of celestial themes; the resulting confusion was so crowded that he might very well be able to pick out the answers to universal mysteries in its expanse. "There I have to take Creevey's interpretation. He didn't ask, but I asked him and their relatives what they knew on that score.
"Cornelius Fudge is an egotistical old sod who should have been confined to his house for the safety of the community," Magister Snape put in, with a drawling sneer.
"He was thinking of re-entering the Ministry," Kingsley added, to the outrage of witch and wizard, both of whom began spluttering violently. He continued, "Mrs. Fudge was quite certain on that point, including his dreams of becoming Minister of Magic again. The statue was to be part of his public campaign."
"The man was self-centred and egotistical to the point of insanity!" expostulated Hermione.
"It is more surprising that some charitable soul hasn't done away with him long since," Snape agreed.
"I rather think Creevey agrees with you—and with myself." The large Auror smiled. "I saw the statues in studio; the thing is supposed to show Fudge reaching for the future, and all I saw was a small, selfish, little man clutching at whatever he could get." Kingsley sobered. "It wouldn't be surprising if there had been an altercation between Fudge and Creevey when the man got a look at his likeness. Self-absorption coming up slap-bang against artistic temperament. Might even have been an accident."
"That still doesn't explain the others," Hermione said. "They can't all have objected to their portrayal."
"You wouldn't think so. And I'd doubt it. Mme. delaCour's is lovely, naturally, though it doesn't have the magnetism of the original."
Magister Snape smiled thinly. "A Veela's power is rooted in her being, which is just as well, or we'd have piles of wizards in front of a portrait, dying from dehydration as they drooled."
Hermione's eyebrows lifted. "Are you immune, then?" she asked.
Magister Snape looked smugly back. "My attention has always been… elsewhere." Magistra Granger turned away, and it was Kingsley's observation that she was biting her lip rather severely. He wisely said nothing, but turned the conversation back.
"Mme. delaCour would realise that," he said. "She would not fault the sculptor for not capturing the impossible. And Miss Brown's is a fair likeness, insofar as I know her. Creevey said that his impression was that she was planning it as a gift rather than a possession."
"She's vain, but not that vain, I don't think. A few magical scars do that to a person," Magistra Granger said evenly. "I'd guess it was a present for her parents… or for Ron."
"Still," Snape meditated, "we have three people with sufficient egotism to have statues made of themselves. I imagine it's something we should remember."
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• • • • •
Kingsley took them down to the White Room, where possibly criminal objects were stored. It was, as the name suggested, a massive room painted a stark, unrelenting white that made Magistra Granger wish for sunglasses or protective goggles.
"Just movin' 'em in now, sir," rumbled a heavy-shouldered, plain-robed wizard. He looked as though he had been carved of the grey stones that constructed the Tower. "They's in the Grey Room. That's th' room they's apparated into," he added, for the benefit of the green-as-grass companions of the Chief. "Ah, 'ere they come." The three silvery statues bobbed along between the wands of two lanky apprentices. One statue wobbled. "Careful, y' flobber-brains!" he called and dashed over to help. "Them's evvy-dense!" But he was too late, and Magisters Snape and Granger watched as the figure of Lavender Brown, still stationary on her pedestal, swayed alarming to and fro before toppling with a sense of inevitability. The elbow smacked down on the stone floor with a nasty combination of clanging and snapping, then skidded away.
Hermione, for all her modern sensibilities and professional detachment, couldn't help it; she screamed, a single, loud, piercing shriek that echoed through the mostly empty room, and her hands flew to her mouth in a futile attempt to stifle further sounds. Snape laid heavy hands along her shoulders and pulled her back against him, though he did not try to block her vision of the grisly relic that lay but a few feet away.
From inside the hollow metal of the statue's arm protruded a browning, yellow-white bone: a human arm-bone, complete with the joint and entirely devoid of flesh.
Lavender Brown's arm bone.
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• • • • •
It was a long, horrid, grotesque process that followed. While the Aurors and medi-wizard were the ones who did the actual work and were both careful and skilled, the extraction of the desiccated skeletons from their silver skin was uncomfortably akin to an autopsy. Magistra Granger was quite green by the time they finished their task and laid the bones out along tables. Magister Snape characteristically silent and uncharacteristically thoughtful, conjured a bottomless basin for her to use and made no objection when she gripped his hand or leaned heavily against him. They watched the Aurors conduct a battery of tests, and when they were over, it was quite certain that the bodies of Cornelius Fudge, Apolline delaCour, and Lavender Brown lay on the tables before them.
After the awful business was completed, Head Auror Shacklebolt showed Magisters Snape and Granger into a room that appeared to belong to someone's very ancient great-aunt. Cabbage roses were ubiquitous in the textile patterns, and the scent of lavender hung heavily in the air. It was a room that seemed to Hermione to be wildly incongruous with the rest of the Under-Tower facilities, until she noticed a distinct absence of the more intrusive forms of wizardry—things along the lines of magic mirrors and talking portraits—and remembered the soothing properties of the all-too-appropriate herbal scent. She listened for a moment and realised that the room was not deafeningly silent, either, though she could not precisely place the nature of the ambient noise. It, too, was calming, 'home-like', a balm to senses that had just been violently assaulted.
Kingsley gestured for them to have a seat. Tea appeared on a table, three lightly steaming cups in pleasantly worn china. The Auror took a swig and gazed at it in surprise. "Huh. Better than the usual dishwater." (Even house-elves cannot surpass such set traditions as the quality of institutional tea.) Snape and Granger tried their own; he detected mint, ginger, lavender, and lemon—amongst other things—and exchanged a glance with Magistra Granger. Both detected the fine hand of Umber behind this little luxury; he was no doubt behind the scenes somewhere, bullying his way into the Aurory elves' domain. Hermione allowed herself a moment to settle back into the settee and let the tea do its work on her still-roiling stomach and raw-edged nerves.
"The families will arrive shortly," Kingsley said finally. "They'll have to be told and allowed to make arrangement for the bodies. I can't— Under the circumstances, it must be Dennis, but I can't quite make myself believe it. But he's said himself that there is no one else who could have tampered with the— the statues."
"It's horrible. It's sick!" Hermione set her cup down in its saucer with a heavy clink. "I knew Lavender; she would've been so pleased with her statue, so excited to think of giving it to— to Ron, probably, and making up with him and having him admire it and then gushing about it and their make-up sex all the day after. She— she could be such a child sometimes, and somewhere in all that— that giddy joy, she had this done to her. It's obscene! And a waste. Such an awful, awful waste!" Long fingers delicately removed her cup from white-knuckled fingers. Half-ashamed of her outburst, Hermione leapt from the couch and began pacing the room.
"You did not say, 'He killed her,'" Snape put in, eyes following her back-and-forth, something that was not overlooked by the Auror. "You don't believe it was Creevey, either, do you?"
"I don't want to!" she exclaimed. "But it's all there; all the evidence is there! And silver-plated, to boot!" she added with a slightly hysterical laugh. "Oh, hell!" Her fist pounded the wall, and she hunched against it. "I should be used to this," her muffled voice emerged. "Violent death. Murder. Betrayal. I've seen it before. Why the hell should I care? Why can't I just skip blithely away and leave it where it belongs, in Kingsley's lap?"
"Because you're Hermione bloody Granger. And you will sit down and drink your tea, Granger. It's gone cold." Snape's sharp tones cut with precision. Hermione did not sit down, but she snatched up her cup and bolted it down.
A knock, meant to be discreet but delivered by a fist that believed a right hook to be subtle, rattled the door. Kingsley shouted his permission to enter.
"'Scuse me, Chief," the beefy sergeant poked his head in, after the manner of a wizard expecting to need a shield from a deliberate and malicious hex. "But Auror Mageworthy's informed the families, Chief, and that Mrs. Fudge's gone in to see her husband, Chief, 'cept she says it ain't her husband, Chief, and never was her husband, Chief, and we'd better have a 'damned, bloody good excuse,' beggin' yer pardon, Chief, or she's gonna 'have all yer arses on toast,' beggin' yer pardon again, Chief."
"What in the name of Mordred is that supposed to mean?" Shacklebolt surged up from his chair.
The sergeant ducked back behind the open door. "Dunno, Chief. Not my department, Chief. But the corpus folk says he is, Chief, and she says he ain't, Chief. Sommat 'bout his teeth, Chief, near as I can make out, Chief."
Shacklebolt said something very brief and extremely pungent, and the sergeant took that as his cue to vanish. Snape and Hermione exchanged glances and followed the Head Auror as he strode out of the room.
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A/Ns: This was written for the 2014 SSHG Promptfest, the first exchange I've ever written for, and was a response to hopelesliehermn's prompt for a Dorothy Sayers (Peter Wimsey/Harriet Vane) inspired fic. The Aurory-Under-Tower was inspired by Doctor Who, because if UNIT can appropriate it, then so can I. (For that matter, kudos if you noticed the cameo there.) More complete A/Ns & disclaimers due at the end of the fic, lest I inadvertently give something away.