Chapter 3: Enter Figg

"Didn't ask her before, should have asked her," Arabella Figg muttered to herself "Bally women knows something."

That shrewish fucking woman knows what happened to my Mr. Mittens

Arabella trotted up the paved path to Privet Drive determined to get an answer to what happened to her cat. Arabella knew that the only reason Petunia pretended to care a jot about her was so she could dump Harriet on her doorstep whenever she wanted to go out, under the guise of neighborly friendship, of course.

Arabella also knew that Petunia hated her cats and couldn't stop wrinkling her nose when she came by. Having tea was an ordeal when her guest couldn't stop flinching at the slightest brush of cat hair and when she sat so stiffly you could mistake the bloody women for a wooden plank.

So when something happened to Mittens, her favorite cat, and Petunias most hated. Arabella immediately knew Petunia would have something to do with it.

She stood at the front door of the lovely house and knocked on the door sharply. Nothing, there was no sound of movement inside, no murmur of voices or squeak of floor boards under the weight of the Dursley's mammoth child.

Odd, Arabella thought as she surveyed the expensive car still in the driveway and the pink floral curtains still drawn in the sitting room window.

Perhaps they went out for an early morning walk.

Arabella doubted Petunia could get her whale of a husband out for a walk let alone her son. The fuss they put up would not be worth the effort of getting them out.

But this still didn't answer why no one was answering the door. Petunia Dursley was many things, but impolite was not one of them. She was a social climber and lived in fear of being rejected by the neighborhood women's society. So she was unflinchingly proper, and being proper meant answering the door when you were at home on a Saturday morning.

Arabella was not someone who gave up easily especially if it concerned one of her beloved cats, so she gave the door another sharp knock. She then carefully scanned every window and every front garden to see if anyone was watching what she was about to do. The street was quiet and serene, with not a curtain open and a soul about.

Satisfied that she wasn't being watched Arabella carefully reached into her pockets of her old brown coat and pulled out an old cigarette case. She then opened it with a careful hand to reveal a tiny white key.

It was a very strange looking key, mostly because it looked too delicate to be of any use. The body of the key was as fragile as bird's bones and the teeth on the head were so small they looked like they were carved by insects. Arabella carefully inserted the key into the lock and gave the slightest of twists. With a barely audible click the door unlocked.

She carefully replaced the key in the cigarette case, and with a final look around, she stepped inside.

The house looked exactly the same this day as it did every other time Arabella had been invited over; the soft salmon walls, framed photos, and rigorously cleaned carpets. Everything looked normal and as Arabella stepped further into the house, she could even faintly smell bacon and eggs. The only thing that was wrong with this scene was the deafening silence.

Arabella walked softly through the front hall, ears straining for a sound and eyes scanning the carpet for any trace of cat hair. She continued on searching, every inch of the carpet until noticed a part of the carpet that wasn't perfectly clean, in fact, it was stained a bright red, like wine.

This struck her as even more odd as Petunia never left a stain, every spilled drink, and a bit of mud brought in was cleaned straight away. So the fact this hadn't been cleaned was stranger than the unnerving silence.

As Arabella moved closer, to get a better look at the stain she noticed that it had been dragged faintly from the sitting room to the kitchen. She moved closer to the entrance of the sitting room, with a sinking feeling in her gut.

Arabella had owned many Tomcats over the years and was no stranger to violence and blood, in fact so was always patching up some stray or another. Because of this Arabella was very aware of what blood looked like and she was also very aware of wine looked like.

As she got closer to the door, the more certain she was that the red patch on the carpet was not wine.

It was with an uneasy feeling that she crossed through the corridor and past the cupboard under the stairs, to peak into the sitting room.

The smell of raw meat and shit hit her like a fist and Arabella had to turn away as she retched quietly into her closed fist before she could focus her eyes back on the scene in the sitting room.

Petunia Dursley was crumpled on her back in the muted brightness of the living room in a red pool of blood, her eyes glassy and unseeing, her blonde hair still neat but spattered in her own blood. If you just looked at her face, it was like she would start speaking to Arabella at any moment, to tell her off perhaps, for being in her home uninvited.

But Arabella couldn't just look at her face, her eyes had immediately been drawn to her neck, which gaped open like a dress split at the seams, and had soaked most of the carpet in blood. That wasn't the worst done to her body, though, someone had sliced through her dress, through the skin, muscle, and fat if her abdomen, to pull her entrails out of her body and to display them in delicate loops around her body.

The low-level panic that Arabella had felt since she first saw that blood stain, reared and consumed her, causing her breath heave from her chest in large gulps and her limbs to shake, her vision began to tilt, and she had to scrabble at the walls to keep herself from falling over.

What, how, why!?

She couldn't even think clearly all she could do was breathe, to try and get herself under control. It took long minutes before she was able to straighten herself up and for the panic she felt too quiet.

But once the panic settled, a bone-numbing terror took its place.

"Who could've done this," she thought to herself shrilly, her heart pounding wildly while running through a list of people who may have wanted to do Petunia harm. While there were many, like Mrs. Leadbetter, who would have loved to inflict a thousand little tortures on Petunia, none would stoop to murder.

It doesn't matter who did it, get out of the house!Call the police, the Aurors, Dumbledore, anyone but just get out! The killer could still be here!

Arabella's rarely heard inner voice of self-preservation caused her to freeze and her blood to chill, as one thought gripped her mind in a fist.

The killer could still be in this house

Arabella was not a brave woman, not when she was a young woman, and certainly not now. But she was a woman of her word and when she promised to do something she did it to the best of her abilities.

And almost twelve years ago she promised Albus Dumbledore to keep an eye on Harriet Potter for him. That promise was the only thing keeping her from running out of the house. She owed it to both herself and Dumbledore to at least check and see what had happened to the remaining Dursleys and Harriet.

It also occurred to her that Harriet and the Dursley's may still be alright and in need of help, although Arabella privately doubted them still being alive. The thought of them needing help was what decided her to move forward.

With that decision made Arabella swallowed the combination of bile and saliva that pooled in her throat, and looked around for a weapon.

Petunia didn't clutter her house, and so there was nothing besides the framed photos, a few delicate figurines on the mantle and a small lamp. Arabella selected a large frame with a picture of a smiling Dudley eating an ice cream in it and held up the sharp corner in front of her. She once again caught sight of the browning blood stain and began following it to the kitchen.

She took a shallow breath and angled the frame up higher, and began to walk towards the kitchen as quietly as possible, being careful not to tread in the browning congealing mess. She winced at every creak the floorboards under the carpet made, and every breath she took seemed louder.

The light was slightly dimmer in the corridor to the kitchen, and for a moment there was complete silence, but as she got nearer and nearer to the kitchen door, she heard a faint squelching sound. It was like someone had filled a bag with jelly and was running and squishing it on the floor. It was a bizarre sound to hear, so much so that Arabella lowered the photo frame a fraction as she pushed open the kitchen door.

But all it did was give her an uninterrupted view of the second scene of carnage she would see and allowed Arabella Figg to see with perfect clarity the monster that had killed three people in cold blood.

The monster was rolling, and hitting meat on the table and had the cloven hoofs of a goat poking from the hems of tattered trousers, sharp monstrous claws tipping the small delicate hands of the young girl. The two long horns that curved gracefully from her forehead were smooth and shiny. As the creature looked up from smashing the meat of her victims on the breakfast table, Arabella saw with horror that she recognised the green eyes.

The monster was Harriet

Arabella screamed, and this time there was no minutes of shock and frozen fear, this time Arabella's Flight or Fight response demanded she run. She didn't even register dropping the frame or hear the shriek that broke through Harriet's throat, all she knew was the instinct to run; to put as much space between her and the monster as possible.

Arabella tore through the house she had tried so hard to keep undistributed, not caring that she slipped in blood while trying to run as far as possible. Or the noise that the door made when it slammed shut behind her.

She was heedless of the scene she would have caused if anyone had been awake to see her. Between panting breaths and her hobbling run, flashes of that awful scene would overtake her mind, so she pushed her body faster, hoping the physical pain would drive the metal away.

After only a few minutes of running, she reached her ivy-covered home quickly.

For once was not pleased to see the many cats skulking around her front door and front garden, as they meowed at her pleadingly and wound their bodies around her as she tried to make her way up the stone footpath and to the door as fast as possible.

Arabella was shaking so badly that she couldn't get her key in the lock; she kept brushing it, so by the time she managed to wrench the door open she was covered in small paint chips.

She was still shaking hard as she slammed the door behind her; unfortunately, the momentary pause allowed her to remember in shattering detail the scene she had witnessed. A part of the fear Arabella now felt was that she would never forget what she saw.

The piercing brightness from the un-curtained windows showed every detail of the two corpses and their killer. Whereas Petunias body had almost been neatly defiled, the bodies of her husband and son had not been.

Harriet had ripped into their bodies with such force that the blood spatter had covered every wall of the kitchen But Arabella barely even registered that detail, her eyes were glued to the bodies. Even to her untrained eye, it was clear that Dudley had barely looked up from his breakfast before he was struck down with the same slash to the jugular that killed his mother.

Vernon had tried to help his son before he was killed; his body was still angled protectively near Dudley. But whereas Petunia and her son both had had clean deaths, with simple throat slashes, Vernon had not died so peacefully. His throat was a savaged mess, the dark red muscle of his neck was on display, which made the white bone that poked through it stand out like blood on snow.

Arabella forcibly pulled herself out of the memory, knowing if she lingered she would likely dissolve into tears at best, and mad shrieking at worst. Even so, the bile that had lingered in her throat threatened to flood her mouth, and she had to swallow several times to keep from spewing her breakfast on the floor.

The terror she felt upon seeing Harriet still ruled her without mercy, as she quickly ran to her own sitting room, past the framed photos of cats and peeling floral wallpaper that lined her hallway.

Arabella threw herself into the sitting room at breakneck speed and hastened towards the fireplace, quickly noting the fire in her fireplace was low. She began to carefully but quickly move the picture frames on the mantle. While she tried to be careful, her hands were still shaking so much that at least three of her beloved photographs' fell to the floor, after that she abandoned all care and pushed and shoved until she came across a small wooden box.

The box contained one of the few magical substances Arabella possessed: Floo powder. As a squib, Arabella couldn't use a great many magical objects, and it was often painful to even have them around her; they were a constant reminder of what she could never have.

She carefully tried to pry open the box, but it took a few tries before she could actually remove the lid. By this time Arabella had tears streaming down her face in frustration and fear, and so it was with slightly wet hands that she pinched a bit of Floo powder and was about to throw it into the fireplace to call the Aurors when she paused.

Should she call the Aurors first or was Dumbledore better?

Arabella knew that if she called Dumbledore, Harriet would be secreted away in Hogwarts until he could use his influence to get her cleared of all charges. There would be no consequences for her, no punishment for her murders and, knowing Dumbledore, he would twist this all to his advantage, ensuring that the girl remained completely in his power and likely grateful enough to forgive him anything, including placing her with her Aunt and Uncle.

Arabella was no fool; she knew that Dumbledore suspected that He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named wasn't really dead, why else would he put her with relatives who openly despised everything she was, and ask her to report on Harriet? No, Dumbledore wanted Harriet to be scarred and vulnerable, desperate to remain at Hogwarts and away from her relatives. All the better to mould and influence her into his biddable soldier.

Arabella didn't agree with most of what Dumbledore did, but if it weren't for him fighting against He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, thousands of witches and wizards would have been killed before Harriet somehow defeated him as a baby.

It's the right thing to call Dumbledore.

Right for who? She asked herself. Right for Dumbledore, and his little schemes that always got people killed, all for a threat that was over nearly twelve years ago.

Was it right for the Dursley's who, if she called Dumbledore, would never get justice for their deaths.

That's what decided her, the knowledge that if she called Dumbledore, there would never be justice, even though the Dursleys where the worst sort of Muggles, they didn't deserve to die like that. They didn't deserve the Ministry cleaning everything up so that no one remembered them so no one would mourn their loss.

No one deserved that.

So with that last thought, she threw her pinch of Floo Powder into the fireplace and shouted "Aurors' Department."