Harry pushed her prescription lens sunglasses up farther on her face groggily as she stumbled down the crowded streets to a little café shop at the end of the road. She was hungover, her head was pounding like a bass player and her stomach was doing acrobats, but she had no other option but to head out today whether she wanted to be safely wrapped in blankets or not. Far away from the searing sunlight that burned her shaded eyes and made her head pound to an even harsher tempo. She was meeting the witness today and this she couldn't miss, not if she wanted to get anywhere in this case.

She had stayed up too late last night, trading mundane talk with Jessica over glasses of whiskey before they both called it quits and Harry walked, more like staggered, to her apartment. She had not even made it to the bed, instead she passed out on the sofa like a starfish.

Harry hadn't gotten anything out of the woman regarding anything suspicious in Hells Kitchen, but she did make the first fragile tendril of a connection to her. Of course it was going to be a long road till full fledged friendship, both Jessica's and Harry's personalities requiring such, but at least she had taken the first baby steps onto it. In all fairness, so had Jessica.

Coming to a stop at the small but quaint café, Harry scanned the outdoor tables with weary eyes. Most of the people frequenting the shop were segregated off in pairings, only one well dressed woman was sitting by herself at an outside metal table. By the way her eyes fluttered around, how stiffly she was perched in her chair and how alien she looked in such a common setting, this was the witch Harry was looking for.

Arielle Blackwood from an old American wizarding family that had migrated from Ireland. Thirty-seven, prim and proper, working for the line trackers, or in muggle terms, she was a Genealogist that tracked family lines as far back as they would go. After all in the glorious world Harry lived in, you were only worth how far your family line could be traced.

Harry strolled over, pulled a chair out and flopped on to it none too gracefully, too tired to act anything other than how she was feeling. The woman opposite her had the gall to crinkle her nose up in distaste at her behaviour or lack of manners. Harry didn't give a fuck. She had put up with the Malfoy's for years, this woman had nothing on them. Excluding Narcissa, Harry actually liked that woman.

"Are you Harry Potter?"

Nodding briskly, but wincing when her head thumped harder, Harry picked up the laminated menu, waved a waiter over with a flick of her wrist and ordered a gin and tonic. Hair of the dog as the Irish said, surely Arielle would appreciate that. By the up turned face and twist of her brow, she didn't and was more than slightly offended that Harry hadn't spoken to her yet.

"Look, I'm sure you have better things to do, I do too. So we'll keep this as brief as possible, I'll get your statement and then we can both be on our merry way. Deal?"

Arielle gave a sharp nod, more of a jilt of the head than anything else and crossed her arms over her well pressed designer shirt. At least they both wanted the same thing, to get away from each other as soon as possible. The waiter came back and dropped Harry's drink in front of her, the lime slice almost fell off as the liquid sloshed up the side, but didn't quite make it out of the tall glass. Glancing up, Harry gave a polite smile as thanks and then set to work in pulling a note pad and pen from her messenger bag as the waiter left to get back to his job. After everything had been set up for note taking, Harry took a fair size gulp of her drink.

"Start from the beginning, the very beginning. Where you were when this happened, what you were doing there. Everything, no matter how small. It might be the thing that leads us to this case being closed."

Harry wandlessly placed a muffling and disillusion charm around them for safety and secrecy. Merlin forbid the muggle's surrounding them heard anything they were about to talk about. No, it was best they weren't heard and weren't taken notice of. Picking up her ball point pen, a quill being too ostentatious for bringing out in general public, Harry tapped it against her cheep notepad as Arielle straightened in her seat, gaining a far away look in her eyes.

"I had just left the Salem's institute of records. I was working on a job for a client that's family had been involved in the Salem's witch trials when it happened. I was too tired for apparition and the floo network doesn't link up to Hells Kitchen, so I had to take the subway home. Ghastly thing if you ask me, nothing but sweaty bodies pressing up against one another, muggle's everywhere talking nonsense-"

Harry gave the woman a harsh cough to cut her off from her tirade. Not only did Harry not want to hear another pureblood prattle on about their poorly hidden contempt for muggle's, but the woman was also getting off track. Thankfully the woman snapped to, giving her a look as if noticing who she was talking to for the first time and actually managed to looked sheepish at being caught out. But she recovered all too quickly and was back on spinning her tale.

"As I was saying, I was on the subway and had just left when I bumped into a man. He's the one you're looking for. He told me-"

"What did he look like?"

Harry stopped the tedious tapping of her pen and got ready to jot down notes. Not all creatures had obvious signs of their species printed on their skin, but more did then didn't. Scars often led to werewolves. A shine to the skin, like a light coat of glitter that looked like a make-up artist or a toddler had gone crazy often hinted at a Fae descendant. Gnarled features or warts spoke of a relation to trolls. Obviously this man, who had walked through a subway was none of the major, or fully blooded creatures. If she was dealing with anything at all, her best guess was a half-breed of some sort.

Pixies, Inferi or Mermaids couldn't exactly get around inconspicuously without outing themselves and the magical world. So that whittled it down to about... 120 different cross species. Harry rubbed her forehead, her fingers dancing across her scar. An old habit she had never been able to kick.

"He looked... Muggle. Normal even. He was tall, slender, around thirty-five. English accent, brown hair, brown eyes. Impeccably dressed I must say. The suit he was wearing was from that muggle designer, what's its name... Armani! That's it Armani! Say what you want about muggle's, but some know how to dress."

This was going to be a long, long day, Harry could tell. If Arielle kept getting diverted off track, she and Harry would get no where. At least Harry knew why A.U.P.C had called in for P.A.W. The suspect was English, due to international wizarding law, the retribution and arrest of this man fell onto their shoulders. You guys made him, you guys fix it sort of deal.

"Did he have any scars? Did his skin look glittery? Ashen, like a dead body warmed over? Warts? Anything distinguishing?"

Arielle frowned deeply, almost confused by Harry's question. Harry wouldn't be surprised if the woman had only taken note of his dress sense, or thought his looks didn't matter if she could detail his suit in memorizing clarity. If only her job was as easy as this woman in front of her believed it to be.

"No, none. He looked normal. Handsome even."

This was getting nowhere fast. How the hell was Harry meant to hunt this bastard down if she couldn't point him out from the crowd? And why was she even looking into this if the man looked muggle? Was this a prank from the higher ups in division five, a sort of initiation process? A fake case before a real one would come her way, a practice of some sorts?

"Tell me what happened."

"Well, I bumped into him. He asked me my name and I told him. He asked me what I did for a living and I... I told him."

Harry flung her pen down, watching as it bounced a little on the padding of the her paper. She was here because this woman had a crush on a muggle? Then something tweaked in Harry's brain. Arielle had told him what she did for a living? Did she tell him a cover or what she actually did? Surely she couldn't be so stupid, so easily fooled?

"What did you tell him Misses Blackwood?"

Arielle got red in the face, the colour mottling her peach and slightly tanned skin. Her fingers clasped in her lap tightly and she swallowed deeply, looking down at her hands in what Harry could pin as guilt. With the more time that was passing, the more Harry believed this whole thing to be a joke on her. No one, not even Goyle would out the secret so simply, despite his only one working brain cell.

"I told him the truth. I said I track pureblood wizarding families. Honestly, I swear on my life I didn't mean to. He just asked and before I could think, it was out there. I didn't want to say it, but I did anyway. It was like he cast a spell on me! It wasn't my fault!"

Now this is where things got interesting and infinitely more difficult to untangle. As snobbish and judgemental as Arielle seemed to be, she didn't seem the type to be an air head. She ran a successful business, researched for a living, managed her parents estates. Harry doubted she would slip so easily, no matter the suit the man was wearing. How had he wrangled it out of her then?

"You just told him? He didn't cast a spell? He didn't make eye contact? He just asked and you told him. You outed the big secret just like that?"

The red in her face transformed from embarrassment to down right anger as she scowled at Harry. Her fingers now clenching in restraint rather than nerves. Harry could only look on at the woman in wonder.

"No, I would know if the fucker had cast a spell on me. And he was looking behind me when he asked me. It doesn't matter, he didn't believe me. He actually laughed... Laughed at me of all people!"

Harry huffed tiredly, flopping backwards into her seat. What was that muggle nursery rhyme she had heard aunt Petunia singing to Dudley once from her cupboard? Here we go round the mulberry bush, the mulberry bush, the mulberry, here we go round the mulberry bush, so early in the morning.

The woman had obviously left something out. The A.U.P.C wouldn't get involved in something as simple as this. They would have sent division two in, obliviated the muggle and called it a day. So Harry decided to cut the bullshit and ask the woman straight out what had caused her to come all this way for something as straight forward as this.

"What did you do Misses Blackwood? We both know I wouldn't be here if something else hadn't of gone down."

"Well, he laughed and told me to disappear. I had hardly had any magic left, I was exhausted. Apparition would have been impossible for me to do at that time. But, like when he asked me what I did for a living, it just happened. I apparated in front of him. I ended up in the hospital for three weeks due to my magical core being fractured due to over use. I'm still not fully able to use my magic because of this... Because some muggle gave me an order! Even the staff at the hospital said it should have been impossible. I should NOT have been able to do it. It was like he forced me to. He made me do it! But he wasn't a wizard, he had no wand and I would have known if he cast a spell on me. But there's no other explanation other then he Im-"

"Imperiused you."

Fucking hell. This... This was a shit storm. A seemingly muggle man being able to Imperio people? That didn't make a lick of sense. It shouldn't be possible. However from the tears glistening in Arielle's eyes and the frantic tone her voice had taken on, Harry believed every word she had spewed. Harry had been lied to enough in her life to be able to spot a liar, unfortunately Arielle wasn't one. This was deeper than Harry had originally believed.

"Was there anything... Anything at all that seemed odd, different about the man?"

There had to be something. Muggle people couldn't tap into their kind of magic. But if he was a wizard, he would have been registered or on file somewhere, he would have been found by now. He would have been found before he could have left the bloody subway system.

"The smell. He smelled of roses, cotton and freshly pressed money. His face, the whole exchange is a bit blurry, but I remember that smell more than anything."

Harry's mind stalled for a second before it geared back up into a frantic swirl of thoughts and theories. Smell, that was a useful hint. That crossed off a lot of names on her mental species list. Something else clicked in her brain. The smell Arielle had described was very self representative.

Arielle was wearing a rather thick smog of rose perfume, the type that clogged in the back of your throat that you were be able to taste hours later. She was also wearing cotton, designer, but still a basic fabric. And from the shiny Italian leather kitten heals to her shark skin bag, the woman loved money. The smell was to her liking, pieced together for immediate pleasing to Arielle herself. She smelled what she wanted to, what she liked to smell. Just one more question and Harry thought she might have figured out what she was dealing with.

"Have you ever brewed Amortentia Misses Blackwood?"

"Yes in my school years. What does that have to do with anything?"

Arielle answered her in confused jagged words. Her pitch escalating in height to an indignant level by the time she had finished. Harry kept on pushing however, she needed to know this answer. If she was right, not only was she in deeper shit than she thought, but she would have to pay a visit to an old friend as soon as she could. Someone who knew intimately about this species Harry had an inkling she was dealing with.

"What did it smell like when you brewed the Amortentia?"

"Well... Well damn. Roses, cotton and freshly pressed money. What does this mean?"

Harry ignored Arielle and got up from her seat, cramming her pen and notepad back into the blackness of her own tatty bag. She was working against time here and she needed to apparate back to England to visit someone to get the full details. She may know what species she was dealing with, but with how secretive, rare and allusive as they were, she knew nothing other than the name and the fact they naturally exuded pheromones that take on the properties of smelling Amortentia.

"It means I have my work cut out for me. Thanks for taking the time to speak to me, but I have to get to work. Goodbye and I hope you heal soon Misses Blackwood."

Harry reached over and downed the rest of her gin and tonic, needing the liquid courage and for the pounding in her head to subside. Then she was off back down the busy street, leaving a flustered and confused Arielle Blackwood behind. When the crowds of roaming Hells Kitchen inhabitants thinned out, Harry took a sharp left down an empty alley way and darted behind the big wheeler bin pushed up against a brick wall. With one last glance around her, seeing if she was truly alone, Harry was gone with a tug to the stomach, a swirl of colours and nothing left in her wake.

Her feet landed on soft sand with a muted thud. Harry immediately regretted apparating when her stomach churned violently. Hangovers and apparition did not mix at all. Luckily, she managed to reign in the feeling and keep her stomach contents where they belonged. Inside of her.

Once the world stopped spinning, Harry set off to the little trail leading to a slightly lopsided house and through the picket fence that led to Shell cottage. Coming to the door, harry rapped her knuckled on the light blue painted wood and waited. After a muffled 'hold on' coming from inside, the door creaked open after a few moments wait and Harry was met with a bed haggled Fleur Delacour. Harry had totally forgotten about the time difference, but she couldn't wait, not with this. So she spoke, not waiting for Fleur to even utter a sleepy hello.

"Tell me everything you know on Veela's."


"So, why do you want to know about Veela's?"

Harry was sat on a driftwood chair that was pushed up to a breakfast bar in Shell Cottage, Fleur was adjacent to her, putting together what was needed for a good cup of tea. Harry had to give it to the French woman, had someone in the state Harry had been in come knocking to her door in the middle of the night, sprouting nonsense, she wouldn't have calmly led them into her house and offered a warm drink.

"The case I'm working on, the one in the states? I think it involves a Veela."

Fleur hummed as she swirled a silver spoon around in her mug of steaming tea, eyes glancing out the window behind them at the glittering stars and full moon. Bill was likely out for a jog, although he didn't turn on a full moon, he couldn't sleep or sit still either. He also had a penchant for rare steak.

"Muggle or Wizardry descended?"

Harry looked up from her own amber coloured drink, eyeing Fleur wearily. She had no idea there was different types, let alone that the types had trickled into anything other than the wizarding world and its population. She shouldn't have been surprised. The Veela's that were out about their heritage never spoke about what it actually meant to be one. The only things taught about them where their smell, pheromones they produced when in search of their mate and when angered how vicious they could be.

"Does it matter?"

"Of course it matters! As odd as this sounds Zarri, muggle descended Veela are so much more dangerous than their wizarding counterparts."

Although Fleur's English had come a long way over the years, the blonde still had extreme trouble wrapping her tongue around Harry's name. Instead she bastardized it into something that sounded some-what similar, Zarri. Harry didn't mind it, in fact she quite liked it. Fleur was the first person to ever give her a nickname. In a way, especially the months following the war, it made her feel more normal, more human rather than a weapon to be picked up and used and then discarded when no longer needed.

"How? Surely the wizarding kind with magic on their side would be the more dangerous of the two?"

Fleur tutted at her with a shake of her blonde curls, the gold dancing and glinting in the dim light of the kitchen lamp.

"Oh Zarri, you do not know what you have fallen in do you? Veela's are not human, well at least they weren't a couple of thousand years ago. Back then, for whatever reason, they bread into other species, creating half-breeds, or what we call and know today as Veela. Most half-breeds died out, the weaker breeds likely. All apart from the muggle and wizardry lines. Wizarding Veela are at least tempered, their already magical blood binding the Veela's instincts. With muggle Veela? They have no magic to hold it back, the Veela nature has no holds barred. In short it has free reign."

Well that sounded a lot darker than what Harry had believed Veela's to be. Normally when one thought of the darker species of magical creatures, werewolves, trolls and Inferi were the first to cross ones mind. Veela normally came bottom, if thought of at all.

"I thought Veela were all about never ending love. Mates and all that jazz?"

Fleur's delicate nose crinkled up as if she had tasted something vile, her head shaking left to right more violently then it did earlier.

"Merlin no. Wizarding Veela don't even have a mate, only the muggle ones do. And even then it has nothing to do with love. Mon Dieu, I blame all those tacky witches romance novels."

"Then why do the muggle Veela have one at all if the wizarding ones don't?"

Fleur took a sip from her mug and gently placed it on the table, turning to give Harry her full attention. Harry felt like a thirteen year old again sitting in potions, with robes to large for her small frame, getting ready for a lecture from professor Snape.

"Because all Veela, no matter their ancestry have what we call a calling. In wizarding Veela's it's easily blended with their magical nature, it will show out as an exceptional talent in a subject. Mine for instance is transfiguration, it comes naturally to me, almost like breathing. Muggle Veela's have the same gift. A seemingly magical ability that would be uncannily like a spell from a witch or wizard, but no wand or magic necessary. Though unlike Wizardry Veela's, they have no magical core to ground it, to gain control of it. You'll find almost, no, every muggle Veela will have a witch or wizard as a link... A mate. They need it as a kind of..."

"Conduit. Something to link their calling to, to ground it like you said. So really it's not mates at all, more of a parasitic or symbiotic relationship?"

Fleur smiled at her brightly, clicking her fingers as if to say bingo.

"Yes, exactly. It has nothing to do with romance or love. It's more along the lines of self preservation."

"Self preservation?"

Harry understood the whole linking thing, even about their powers needing to be grounded. But self preservation? What had that got to do with anything? Did they explode after too long? A ticking time bomb?

"Because left unlinked, or un-mated as people call it, the calling grows too strong in them. Forcing them to try and link to someone, anyone. Most likely someone who resembles their mate. This of course only leads to further disintegration of their sanity."

"But if it's just a connection they need, why not link to any witch or wizard they cross paths with?"

If this whole thing was broken down to the simplest of terms, then all this was about was survival. The chance of survival was ten times greater if the Veela had more options of linking instead of the one in a billion chance of running into the 'perfect match' that seemed to be what Fleur was talking about.

"No ones really sure. The best guess I've heard is like all magic, like choosing your wand, there needs to be a near perfect harmony between the calling and the magical core of the mate. To slot together, they need to be the right peg to the right hole so to say."

Harry sighed gently, lifted her own mug, blew and took a sip. She could feel a headache coming on, but if she was going to put a full stop on this case she needed all the information she could get her hands on. With Fleur being part Veela herself, no matter how small the fraction of Veela blood cursing through her veins, she was the best source to get that information from.

"So all I need to do is find this Veela's mate and he should settle?"

"It really depends. How old is he?"

Not being able to pick the number off the top of her head, Harry dived a hand blindly into her bag, fingers fishing for her notepad. When her finger tips brushed the sleek cover, she plucked it out and turned it to the right page, rattling off the details she had written there in chicken scrawl that even she had difficulty in reading.

"Eye witness said around thirty-five."

Fleur's shock was instantaneous as she coughed and spluttered her hot tea down her chin, frantically wiping at the dribble once the cough subsided. Her clear blue eyes had grown large, almost comically so on her small face.

"What? And he hasn't self destructed yet?! He hasn't taken people down with him? Are you completely sure he has no mate? No Veela ever in our long history has survived that long without being linked."

"Yes, I'm sure. It was the thing that made me think of Veela's in the first place. He's producing pheromones Fleur. The witness practically handed me that info on a silver platter. I may not know much about Veela's but I do know they stop producing those pheromones after they have mated, or linked as you like to call it."

Then the colour drained from Fleur's face, her shock turning to deadly seriousness as she levelled Harry with such a heavy look that Harry could feel it pressing down on her shoulders and chest. Fleur's voice was clipped when she spoke, words short but full of concealed meaning, her French accent twanging at the edges of her voice. That was never a good sign when Fleur's accent coloured her words. She was either angry or extremely worried. Neither boded well for Harry and this case.

"Tell me Zarri, what can he do? What is his calling?"

Harry searched Fleur's guarded eyes, trying to find the sudden reason for her abrupt change of attitude towards this conversation. One moment she felt like she was in a classroom, now it felt more like the hangman's noose tightening for her bared neck. The change in atmosphere was jarring.

"From what the eye witness had said, something resembling a Imperio."

Fleur's eyes crunched up tight for a moment before she was back at staring at Harry with perfect aim, almost frighteningly still if Harry couldn't see from her seat Fleur's chest rising and falling.

"Get out of there. Don't go back. Quit if you have to, just don't get involved in this."

Now it was Harry's time to splutter and be for a loss of words. Fleur couldn't mean that surely? Harry had trained for years for this job, jumped through countless hoops, put up with a lot of stick from other people to call it quits before the ball really started rolling.

"What? Why?"

"Because sweet Zarri like with everything else to do with magic, it goes back to a persons emotions, their personality. A Veela with the gift of... Of a unforgivable of all things is not someone to poke a stick at. Not someone to venture near. Veela's are unpredictable at the best of times, this man, whoever he may be is not someone you should face, especially not on your own."

But what other choice did Harry have? It was either do this or end up jobless and without meaning. No purpose to her life to speak of. That's what she thought she hated most after the war, the no sense of direction she had felt. There was no longer anyone telling her what she should or needed to do. No bodies to fight past. Nothing but an eerie silence that haunted her more than any of the dead bodies that littered Hogwarts flooring. Including Remus's and Tonk's horrific ones.

And if she did leave her job, then the silence would be back full force, smoking around her, choking the life out of her like a weed. She knew it would, and if it was in her power to stop that from happening, she sure as hell would give it a go. Moving, running, doing anything at all was the only thing to keep the nightmares at bay, the voice that sounded suspiciously like Voldemort from entering her dreams. She had put everything she had into her job, and so far it was working, it was keeping her mind from wondering. She couldn't give that up.

"But if we get his mate to him then he will settle won't he?"

"At thirty-five the insanity is already too deeply rooted. He's already likely tried to link to someone, another muggle I would guess. Became obsessed as well. Would you really link some poor soul to that? Because once eye contact is made, there's no going back. there's no reversal to this, once happened that is it. Because of the... Tangled but deep power of the connection, they will be able to pick up on each others memories given time. When one gets a paper cut, the other will also in the exact same place, no matter if that person was near paper or not. When one dies, the other will follow within the second. The only upside, if you can call it that at all, is this man's calling wont work on them. You of all people Zarri know what it's like to have a maniac run rampant through your mind. Would you really damn a person to the same fate as that, only this time permanently?"

Harry winced, and winced hard at Voldemort's temporary inhabitance of her mind being brought up. Of course she couldn't do that, the thought alone made her want to retch. But at the same time, she couldn't back out from this. She needed to do something. So if there was only one option left, as much as she didn't want to take it, as much as her body and mind rebelled against the idea, she was left with no other choice. Harry almost laughed then, not in humour but in quietly hidden despair. Even after so many years since the passing of the war, her options were still so limited, so boxed in.

"No, no I wouldn't. You know that and I don't appreciate you throwing that in my face. But I still need to go back. Someone needs to finish this. To... Neutralize the Veela. This is my job."

Harry's last sentence held more meaning then she meant for it to. It was more of herself trying to convince herself of a lie. Tell it to yourself often enough and you should start believing it. A re-stated fact she could not run from. This was the path she chose and she would follow it. But for once, just once, she wished it didn't have to end in death.

Fleur got up from her seat and walked around the breakfast bar to Harry, wrapping her night gown closer tighter around her, as if trying to stave off an imaginary chill.

"Just be careful Zarri. If you are right and this man has a calling of an unforgivable, it speaks a lot about the type of person he is. And please don't become a stranger again, it's been too long since I saw you last. I know Bill and the Weasley's miss you greatly."

Harry dejectedly nodded. Biting her lip, Harry got up from her seat and gave Fleur a quick hug. How could she tell them that the reason she didn't visit often, couldn't bring herself to, is because they all looked so happy? So at peace with their lives. It felt like a slap in the face to Harry, something she could never reach, but its shadow was always just there at her finger tips.

"I wont. Thanks for helping me out Fleur. I'll see you soon, give Bill my love for me will you?"

With a nod from Fleur and a worried glance to take home with her, Harry was off back to America in a pop of sound, feeling like she was going to a funeral. In a way she was, either hers or this Veela's. Because at the end of the day, only one of them would be coming out of this. It was her job after all.


Harry pushed the door of her apartment building door open mindlessly, her mind churning over the new information Fleur had given her. As she walked to the lift with heavy footsteps, Harry tried to reconcile with what she had to do. Killing in a battle field was easy, easier to push back to the farthest edges of your mind and blame the situation. In a battlefield it was either you or them. But this? This was a whole new board game.

She would have to hunt this person down and put them out of their misery. It was animalistic, a predator hunting the prey. It tore away her humanity and made her nothing better than a dog let off the leash. Was that why they had sent her? Was she really just a mindless animal to use when they needed? A rabid animal to shove into the cage when the times called for peace?

Fleur's words echoed in the recess of her mind and Harry had to reconsider. Was she really the predator here? If she did run into this Veela, this unstable individual with the power of Imperio, was she really going to be the one coming out with a heart beat? Because he would fight, they all did... She did when deatheaters and Voldemort had come knocking at the door for her head.

Then again, Harry had enough near brush's with death under her already. You didn't get the moniker of 'Mistress of death' for any old thing. Especially not by pureblood's who simultaneously hated her guts but were also the ones to bequeath her with said title.

As a fifteen year old she hadn't understood, not fully anyway. When the war was raging, she was the bad guy in the eyes of many. She was the phantom that lurked in the shadows. She was their Voldemort, come to tear their castles and families down to tatters around her dainty feet.

She didn't know if the title was a jab at her character, a permanent reminder of what she was to them, a harbinger of death, or a compliment. It didn't matter either way, it is what it is and Harry couldn't change that. She couldn't change the war, she couldn't change the countless deaths that built up around her, and worst of all, she couldn't change her role in it. No matter how many 'what ifs' or 'should haves' that circled around her mind when she tried to grasp the ever slippery slope of sleep.

This job was just another role to play. This was just another instance where in the eyes of a few she would be the villain, and in the eyes of others a hero. Unfortunately Harry knew the truth of herself fell in the greyer area. In real life there was no heroes or villains, just people. And that was the most terrifying fact of them all.

When you finally realized that it wasn't this mythically untouchable construct you had created in your mind that had done a certain thing, but a living breathing person. Humans, be it magical or muggle, were, or should be, on the darkest shade of creatures. There was no other creature or animal that created so much bloodshed, so much horror, than a human could and often did. And it was always over something so... Inconsequential in the grand scheme of things.

Sighing and scowling to herself, Harry reached over and slammed the lift button again. She was tired once again, even if night had only just started to fall on Hells Kitchen, and she refused to haul herself up the many flights of stairs if the lift was a viable option. She idly wondered if Jessica was home and would mind if she pilfered her Jack Daniels.

When no lift came, Harry grew fed up and repeatedly hit the button in hopes of the fifth, sixth or seventh time would work in opening the thick metal doors. Then just as the doors where opening, something stocky came barrelling into her side from the corner of the stairwell, knocking her a few feet to the side, but thankfully not making her sprawl out on the ground.

Looking up and to her side, Harry saw Jessica frantic and breathing heavily. She watched as the lift doors opened, and was shocked frozen to her spot. A blonde girl, maybe a year or two younger than Harry was standing in the middle of the lift, revolver clicking empty barrels at some bloody heap on the floor. Then, as if in a daze, something deep and familiar to Harry fogging over her eyes, she looked up and over to Jessica, a smile that didn't belong on her face, tainting it.

"Smile Jessica..."

Jessica stumbled backwards, hand clamping over her mouth as she shook so slightly, unnoticeable to the un-observant. Jessica turned away from the grizzly scene laid out before them and stumbled to a wall. Then the girl was screaming at the top of her lungs as she seemed to snap out of her daze, scrambling back to the corner of the lift as if to get as far away from the mass on the floor as possible. Harry reacted, jumping into the lift and over to the bodies.

A man and a woman, married by the looks of it, were bloody chested, numerous gun shot wounds to both. The man was partially laying over the woman, likely a last ditch effort to protect her from the gunfire, pooling blood seeping out around them in a maroon pool.

Harry skirted the blood and leant over to the man and woman, knowing by now it was pointless, but she still had to see. Checking the pulse of both victims, she found what she knew to be true. They were both dead.

Harry slowly edged back from the bodies, unsure of what to do in such a muggle situation when she noticed the blonde had stopped screaming and was staring dead-panned at her presumably murdered parents, muttering under her breath. It wasn't the blood that stalled Harry, wasn't the fact that it was likely the daughter or niece who had done this, it wasn't Jessica's reaction, it was the words the blonde was muttering that made her refreeze before she jolted over to the blonde, grabbed her by the shoulders and forced her to look her in the eye.

"What did you just say? What did you say?!"

The blonde was twitching, her eyes glazed over in horror and a sort of resignation. Then, through cracked and pale lips, she spoke the words louder.

"He told me to do it. I did it. He told me to do it. I did it."

The blondes eyes started drifting back to her parents dead bodies, but Harry couldn't let that happen, she needed more. She needed to know that she was right, that this wasn't just a coincidence. So she spoke louder than she should have, shaking the blonde by the shoulders.

"Who? Who told you to do this?!"

Then the horror shining in her eyes was gone, replaced with a void of nothingness and Harry's insides clenched at the look. She had seen that expression before, in the bowels of Malfoy manor, when the prisoners were too far broken to be brought back to their former self.

"The man with the English accent."

Harry pulled away from the blonde like she had burned her, stumbling away from her. The Veela... The Veela had did this? Fleur was right, he was too far gone. He... He had made a girl shoot her own family? For what reason? Then the blondes earlier words sank in and Harry found herself slowly turning to Jessica who was leant against a glossed but yellowing wall. There was a crowd now, gathering people like flies to an un-attended dessert. But that didn't stop the two brunettes from making eye contact. Without much control, Harry's feet carried her over to a hunched over Jessica, and once her feet had come to a stop only a few inches away, Harry's tongue was in movement.

"You know who did this."

Jessica pushed herself up and off the wall, the iron that Harry knew that ran in Jessica's veins became solid as she stood up tall. A humourless laugh creeping out of her. Harry had never been given such a look before, one that just shouted of plain hatred, for the blonde, for the situation, for Harry and for herself. When she spoke, there was an ironic twist to her lips.

"And apparently so do you."


A.N- There we go, I know there wasn't much from the actual show playing out, but this chapter was needed for some ground work to be laid out. Next chapter we get into the actual plot and the nitty gritty!

I just wanted to let you readers know that while I am messing around with the whole Veela trope, this will be nothing like other Veela stories. The Veela's I've written and are writing about are a lot more darker, in this there will be no love attached to the creature. No love at first sight like a lot of other Veela stories. But I do need this for the upcoming plot to be able to play out properly. So please don't expect lovey dovey stuff or fluff, it wont come for a long time, if at all. Kilgrave is just not a character you can attach that label to and still make it seem like Kilgrave. And trust me, Kilgrave will be Kilgrave in this story, as much as I am able to keep him in character anyway.

As for those who reviewed, followed or favourited, THANK YOU! I really am happy that some people seem to actually enjoy the madness that my mind conjures up sometimes. And I hope you guys will enjoy the following Chapters.

As always, please drop a review, they make my day! :)