Chapter Seven: Working the Case

Life is full of cross-roads. It's a cliché, but it's true. There are times when you realise that everything you know might change. And there are times you have no idea until you wake up months later only to realise that you've already changed. You've already taken a step down that road that your life has become.

This was not one of those times. When I left Azkaban, I knew that I had a choice. Until then I had been dabbling as a detective, just giving a sounding board to Harry's suspicions.

After seeing Wedgewood, I had to make a choice. And for all my hesitancy, there was only ever going to be one outcome.

Taken from Chapter Four of The Chronicles of Harry Potter, written by Daphne Greengrass

oOo

They sailed back to the shore in silence. This time there was no stories about the Blacks to distract Daphne from the turmoil taking place in her stomach. Instead, Harry just sat there, staring into the distance. It was like she could see his brain working at top speed, connecting the various dots that she doubted she even knew about yet. That was the thing with working with Harry. He was always so many steps ahead.

Working with?

Was that what she was doing now?

She had a job, a real job. Yet all Daphne had been thinking about the last few days-hell, the last few weeks-was the time that she got to spend with Harry. It wasn't that she hated her actual job, not really. It was just that she didn't exactly like it either. It was just there. Something that she did because, well, it was what she'd always wanted to do and had always done. Working with Harry though, that was different. Better.

"So, what's the plan?" Daphne asked once they had disembarked and headed away from the boat.

"The plan?"

"Yeah, what are we doing now?"

"We?"

"You know," she said, "for a smart guy you ask a lot of questions."

"Only an idiot doesn't ask questions," Harry commented. "Besides, I presumed that you would have somewhere to be."

"I booked the day off," Daphne said.

It wasn't a total lie. She hadn't exactly booked it, per se. Instead, she'd said that she was working in tandem with an official auror-sanctioned investigation and wasn't sure when she would be returning. Her boss knew about Harry, so he'd just gone along with it. Daphne was only praying they wouldn't ask for proof when she got back.

Harry arched an eyebrow, but said nothing.

He bloody knows, Daphne thought bitterly. He knows I'm lying and he's not going to say anything.

She dreaded to think what it must be like to date him, and then idly wondered if anyone had ever tried. Somehow, she doubted it.

"So, we do have a plan, right?"

"I have a plan, yes," Harry nodded. "If my suspicions are correct, which I believe that they are, then it is essential to discover this killer's pattern. The whole point of taking trophies is for the killer to able to differentiate between victims. The more one kills, the more difficult it becomes to discern which is which. The psychology of psychosis, if you would."

"That's what it is then? Trophies?"

"Is it?" Harry asked, leading them away from the small jetty and back towards the small town which was slowly blinking into life like a student around mid-afternoon.

"Well, that's what you said," Daphne started slowly.

Harry didn't answer.

She felt this was some kind of test. "But I suppose, it might not be. I know they never put it in the papers, but didn't Voldemort use those horcrux things? My dad told me about them, they're really old and dark magic but they can keep you alive."

"I would not call it a life," Harry muttered darkly, "but yes, that is the designated purpose."

"Don't you have to… kill to do that?"

"It isn't simply a murder, there's more to it than that. It's a ritual. The murder itself has to be pre-meditated and purely in cold blood. Then there are certain steps to follow, spells to cast. A murder causes a wound in the very soul. These spells further exacerbate this wound in order to rip the soul apart. At least...that is the theory. I have never attempted it myself. You are correct, though, these trophies could be more than they seem."

He paused, coming to a halt so suddenly that Daphne nearly walked into him.

"Before I, or perhaps we, continue, I must ask: what exactly is it you wish to gain from this?"

"What do you mean?"

"Our first case together was accidental and our further consultations purely theoretical. I suspected that you, as I do, have a certain feel for this line of work. Yet, if we continue on our current trajectory I must inquire as to what your exact intentions are. Is this simply a hobby? A way for you to distract yourself from the monotony of your work."

"Are you saying I don't like my job?"

"I am saying that you detest it. I cannot blame you, but this is no game."

"I know, I'm not stupid. I realise it's difficult for you to understand this sometimes, but not everybody's thick."

"No," Harry agreed, his voice gaining a small sense of… something, "they are not. You still haven't answered my question."

Daphne didn't answer for a moment. What was it that she wanted from all of this? Up to this point, she'd just been going along with it. Yes, she enjoyed it, but she'd never really wondered why or if it was going somewhere. She'd just known that it was better than what she already had, and she'd be damned if she was just going to walk away.

"I don't know," Daphne said eventually. It wasn't much of an answer, but it was the truth. "I honestly don't. This has been one of the biggest surprises of my life. Everything else I've ever done has been part of a huge plan to help me get where I wanted to be. Only problem is... now that I'm there, I'm not really sure that's what I want. You're right. I do hate my job, and this is just… better. What you do is…" she paused, unable to find a right word. But then it came to her, and she couldn't help but smile. "Magical."

Not so much as crease cracked over his ever-passive face. Merlin, did he ever smile?

Harry didn't say anything, he didn't have to. He just held out a hand and when Daphne took it, they vanished. A moment later and a few hundred miles away, they reappeared. Gone was the tiny village and instead, it was replaced with the bustling streets of muggle London. Daphne gasped, expecting there to be cries of surprise at two people appearing out of nowhere. But there was nothing. No screams. No-one running.

"How did they not notice?"

"As you said," Harry answered, letting go of her hand and side-stepping a large man who was more preoccupied with a small box of light in his hand than where he was going, "people are 'thick.'"

"I said not everyone's thick," Daphne scowled, dodging a woman who was blabbering on into a similar slim box as the man who Harry had just avoided. "What are they doing anyway?"

"Welcome to the modern world," Harry said dryly. "You have letters, owls, patronuses, muggles have phones. They are a means by which everyone can stay in contact within an instant. You would be surprised how much they have managed to shrink the globe without magic."

"Okay, but why aren't they looking where they're – Ow!" Daphne staggered back as a hulking man in a beige coat bounced off her. "Hey! Do you mind?"

"The only issue with living without magic is that transport is a little more limited."

"Should you be talking about it so loudly? Won't anyone notice?"

"No-one's listening," Harry shrugged, "and even if they were, most people would simply assume that we were discussing popular culture. Muggles have a certain fascination with fictional magic, I suppose it is logical to miss what one cannot have. Interestingly, the first reference to magic within a popular medium was not by muggle, but a squib. His wishful thinking has simply been perpetuated over the centuries."

"Yeah, fascinating," Daphne muttered bitterly as she rubbed her arm. The worst part was that it actually was. But intriguing trivia wasn't what she wanted. All she wanted was to be away from the hubbub of non-magical life. How they coped, she had no idea. "Can we get out of here?"

"Certainly," Harry obliged and led the way down the packed street. They weren't walking for very long, though it was long enough for Daphne to develop passive dislikes of at least ten people who stormed past her. Harry had led her away from the packed high street with its many glass fronted shops and their bizarre interiors that Daphne was not entirely sure she understood. The road they stopped on was still busy, but nowhere near as busy.

"Is that it?" Daphne asked, trying not to let her scepticism creep into her voice. It didn't seem very Harry. It looked exactly like all the other houses on the street. A black door was laid into a wall of brown brick. A large window allowed light to pool into what Daphne assumed was the living room, the curtains were pulled shut. It looked normal and ordinary. The very words that didn't describe Harry, at all.

"Appearances, you should know, are sometimes deceiving," Harry said as he fished out a set of key from his pocket and walked towards the door. "I used to live on the other side of the city, on Baker Street, but it was a little too… Victorian, for my tastes." He slipped the key into the door, there was a click and then he pushed it open. "After you."

Daphne let him guide her into what had no right to be such a spacious hallway. No, it wasn't a hallway, it was an open-plan room. To her right was a large sofa in front of a huge fireplace. There was a low coffee table made of light pine wood. Another wing-backed arm chair sat by the window, a mismatched dark leather brown poof in front of it. A t-shirt had been discarded on top of it. Bookshelves lined the walls, filled to the brim with tomes of various sizes and titles that Daphne knew would astound her. And though the curtains had looked closed on the outside, light flooded into the living room.

Almost immediately in front of her, a set of stairs led the way to the first floor, where Daphne assumed Harry's room was. If he slept, that is. He never seemed to.

A small archway made a small divide to the kitchen which was a complete mess. The sink overflowed with pans and plates and all sorts of kitchen utensils. The kitchen table itself was piled high with glass equipment, flasks and jars and a bunch of things that Daphne didn't recognise. A large cauldron was bubbling in the corner by the stove, bluebell flames underneath it burning brightly.

"This is your house?" Daphne asked when Harry had entered and removed his jacket, placing it on a hook by the door.

"Yes," Harry said in a bored voice, taking his wand from the waistband of his trousers where he'd stored it after their cross-country trip and causing the logs in the fireplace to burst into flames. They burnt merrily behind the glass front.

"It's a mess."

"Cleaning is boring," Harry explained, "besides, I had other things to do. Or have you already forgotten the trip down lunatic lane?"

He gave his wand another flick and Daphne had to quickly side-step a couple of large brown boxes that came flying their way from the kitchen. They were guided onto the coffee table, which was already littered with various other bits of paper.

"They're not lunatics."

"I'd hardly call them sane," Harry argued, "but, debating the details of an archaic and flawed justice system are for another time. I have files to sort through."

"We."

"I," Harry corrected.

"Then what am I here for?"

"I'll need someone to talk through the finer points of the case with once I've been able to eliminate other cases that do not fit the M.O. of our killer."

"Then I'll look at the one we already have, see if there are points you should be looking out for."

"Kitchen," Harry said abruptly.

"I'm sorry?"

"That case file, it's in the kitchen, under the kneazle eyes."

"Please tell me you're joking," Daphne grimaced.

"They're in a dish," Harry said flatly as if that made it okay. "It helped solve the double murder of twins and the theft of a priceless ornamental eagle if that eases your concern."

Daphne privately swore that it didn't, but made her way into the kitchen anyway. It took her a minute to find what Harry meant, and then a little longer to muster up the courage to actually move anything.

The case file didn't reveal too much more than Daphne already knew.. Joseph Wedgewood had been arrested on suspicion of the murder of his wife Rebecca Wedgewood. She'd been killed with a rather nasty cutting curse that must have caught her carotid artery. The photographs didn't make for pretty viewing, the pool of blood that had been left underneath her body on the hardwood floor of their living room would haunt Daphne for days.

She had been pretty though, small, dark haired, with a dimple on her left cheek when she smiled. She'd been about five foot and four inches tall, slim too. Certainly made for an easy type to find.

Daphne gave up on that and began looking at the evidence that landed her husband in jail. As far as she could tell, the aurors had had very little. The interviews with friends and family had illuminated a small spat between the couple, but what couple didn't fight? It had been something to do with his work. Apparently he'd been spending a lot of time at the office and Rebecca had been a little suspicious. But proof of anything happening had been non-existent. It was just rumour. Joseph's wand had yielded no evidence either.

The interview made for grim reading. The lead auror had been so determined to prove that Joseph had done it that he'd used all sorts of techniques to make him crumble-intimidation, kindness, 'logic' twisted to suit his version of the truth, anything and everything. And it had worked.

Merlin, how had aurors been able to get away with this? Before the rise of Voldemort, the first time, procedure had been lax, to say the least. Daphne wouldn't have been surprised if they're cursed Joseph a few times when his barrister hadn't been there just to show him who was boss.

"How's it going?"

"If you're referring to the narrowing down of candidates for possible serial murder victims," Harry said, from his position on the floor surrounded by open cases files and discarded snack wrappers. "Utterly inconclusive. There are fifty-three murders in which the victim was female, aged twenty to twenty-five and of roughly the same height and build of Rebecca Wedgewood in the last forty years. Twelve of which have been 'solved.' If we weren't already on the hunt for one criminal, I'd suggest it was the aurors behind these statistics. They are appalling. I've solved almost all of them already."

"And how does that help us?"

"It doesn't," Harry snapped irritably.

"Maybe it's not the women," Daphne suggested, "maybe it's the trophy itself. You know, the thing you said the killer took to differentiate. That could've been the prize all along and the killing was part of getting it?"

"No," Harry said dismissively, "that doesn't fit into any recognised –" He stopped, frowning and pulling at an open file. "Not the women."

"Sorry?"

"It's not the women!" Harry shouted triumphantly, "it's the men."

He snatched up one of the files on the floor and started flicking through it hurriedly. Then, he dived towards the discarded box which he and Daphne had sorted through earlier, and started pulling out more.

"We've been looking at this the wrong way. Serial killers usually focus on their victims, make the ritual about them. But this isn't. If I am right, this is about the people they leave behind."

He practically ran back to the coffee table and spread out the various files. Daphne could see seven different women, all of varying look, height, age. They had literally nothing in common with their case at first glance, except for one.

"Who is Diana Riley?" Daphne asked, frowning at the woman who Daphne would swear-if she didn't otherwise-was related to Rebecca Wedgewood.

"She ran a small potioneering business in Diagon Alley with her husband, Jacob. He was later accused but never convicted. Interestingly their family heirloom, a priceless ring, was stolen. Riley reported it missing as it was also his wife's engagement ring. Neither the killer, nor the ring were ever found."

"Look at the way she was killed," Harry flicked open the file and presented Daphne with the crime scene photos.

"It's just like Wedgewood," Daphne breathed.

"Precisely," Harry nodded, "the same can be said for all of these other women. Charlotte Finnigan, Maria Walters, Anne Clark, Stephanie Dunbar, who interestingly was killed on a train, Pippa Barrington and Alice Steadman, as well as Diana Riley and Rebecca Wedgewood. All of them were murdered using the same method, had items taken from their body and had prominent articles in various different newspapers."

"How do you know all that?"

"I have a photographic memory," Harry shrugged, "I can remember every single thing I've ever read and I can assure you that these women were all murdered and reported on with vigour. That is what the killer is looking for. He doesn't care for the act itself, he enjoys the spectacle, watching as their husbands are left helpless to do anything. This killer is obsessed with taking power from the powerful. Except for?"

"Diana Riley, her husband just owned a shop."

"I would hypothesise that that is where our killer started, likely as an employee or someone else whom Jacob had power over. Then it spread, each of our victims were married to influential men throughout the magical world."

"That's a lot of inferring from pretty much nothing. We've got no actual proof."

"We have circumstance, clear motive, and a similar modus operandi. Most of these are over twenty years old. It was unlikely that we would find anything else."

"Why'd they stop?"

"Presumably because our killer could no longer kill. Serial killers are not the type to have a change of heart."

"What stopped them, then?"

"Jail, death, a move to Barbados, who can say? Without having a pool of people to suspect, it is rather difficult to speculate as to why they would stop. It appears that Jacob Riley is worth talking to, wouldn't you agree? He still owns his shop. If we go now we might be able to get there before it closes."

Daphne opened her mouth to agree, but then another thought which had lain dormant for the entire day at the back of her mind suddenly kicked into life. She groaned. She'd forgotten, she'd bloody forgotten. He was going to kill her. Metaphorically.

"Shit, I can't. I said I'd meet Alex at the Leaky Cauldron."

"Who?" Harry asked. He had already summoned his coat and was slipping into it. Daphne noticed that he had also gotten her robe.

"My boyfriend. How can you not remember, you've met him."

He looked like he wanted to say something, but settled eventually on, "So I have. My mistake. It appears then that we will at least make the journey together. So, shall we?"

He held out a long thin arm, gesturing towards the door. His back was ramrod straight and his expression, expressionless. She'd thought he might be happy, or excited or something. But Daphne was greeted with nothing. Had her mind not been so focused on hurriedly getting into her robes, or desperately trying to remember what time she said she would meet Alex, then maybe she would have given it some thought.

As it was, she didn't, and instead simply led the way out of the house.