**Disclaimer: The characters and situations of Harry Potter depicted in this story are the legal property of J. K. Rowling, Bloomsbury, and AOL Time Warner, and have been used without permission. No copyright infringement is intended, and no profit is being made.

"And the streets they're lined with lamplights,
And there's one for every door.
The gates ain't even padlocked
And the windows are open wide,
And the drapes they're pulled completely
For what they have to hide."
Suzi Quatro
"Official Suburban Superman" (1973)

Chapter 10: The Windows are Open Wide

"This is some kiddie table shit right here," Sirius grumbled.

"If it makes you feel any better—"

"It doesn't," he cut Remus off.

James wasn't happy about their mission either, but there was no use complaining. Playing lookout was better than not getting to play at all. He motioned the waitress over and requested another coffee.

"This isn't really what I had in mind when I signed up to fight Death Eaters," Padfoot continued his grousing as soon as she was out of earshot. "What makes bloody Frank and this Dearborn wanker more qualified to break and enter than us?"

Remus didn't mince words. "Auror training. Years of it." He yawned in an exhausted fashion—it was after midnight, after all—then continued. "Besides, it's not just breaking in. It's also casting all the right tracking charms and planting the surveillance jobberknoll. You've never done either of those things."

"I learn quick," Sirius retorted. "Even Pete gets to do more than us tonight."

"I told you that our lack of job experience was a liability," James said bitterly. "We have no marketable life skills."

"Speak for yourself," Sirius snapped. "I can brush my own teeth. Planting a jobberknoll can't possibly be harder than that. Besides, if they were planning to develop our skills at all, Gibbon would be good target to use to break us in. Blighter if there ever was one. The only reason we know he's a Death Eater in the first place is his own incompetence—left orders in pubs all over town. Idiot wouldn't notice an entire person hiding in his broom cupboard."

Remus looked skeptical, but did not challenge his friend. "Be that as it may, this is our assignment.

"Advanced coffee drinking at all-night cafés," Sirius' sarcasm was in full form. "Thank Merlin they had the three of us on call, else they might have to use monkeys."

James thought it prudent to change the subject, and he did so by bringing up something that had been eating at him for weeks. "Am I crap at giving gifts?"

Sirius and Remus each paused, a light, night breeze buffeting their hair as they sat around the little outdoor table. A look of discomfort passed between them, with the former in particular appearing as though he were bracing himself for a maelstrom of bollocks, but James was undeterred.

"Don't roll your eyes, I'm not joking," he snapped.

"We know," Sirius said. "That's why we're rolling our eyes."

Remus ignored him. "Where is this coming from?"

James raked his fingers through the hair at his temples. "Something Lily said."

"What did she say?"

"That I always give her jewelry."

Sirius was wastefully dropping cube after cube of sugar in his long-abandoned, cold coffee. "You do always give her jewelry."

"Was she complaining?" Remus asked neutrally, spreading some butter on bit of toast. He was the only one of them to have ordered food.

"No," James admitted. "She said she's fine with it."

"And yet we're having this conversation," Sirius muttered.

"Last night, she gave me Quaffle signed by Drusilla Waters." James sipped his own coffee as he recalled opening the gift. Honestly, he'd been floored. Waters was a record-holding Chaser for the Falcons, his favorite team. She'd played for England! Never mind that Lily had exploited Fenwick's connections to get it, James had been impressed and touched.

"That sort of thing is wont to happen on birthdays," Remus said dryly.

"Yes, but it got me thinking. Lily never gives me what I'm expecting. I just…. I want to make sure that my gifts are on her level. I don't want her to ever think I'm taking her for granted or something."

Sirius interrupted his own mime of vomiting to get affronted. "Wait. So this is really all about Lily? All that matters is that she gets spiffy special gifts?" He nudged Remus beside him and said, "We're not even an afterthought anymore mate. That brain of his is just all Lily, all the time, with no room for us and our own predictable gifts."

James paused, lowering his mug, eyes widening at his friends. "Wait, you lot hate your gifts, too?"

Remus glared at Sirius. "Of course not, Prongs. No one has said they dislike your gifts—not even Lily." He took a sip of his hot chocolate and James noted that he chose his next words carefully. "All that has been said is that you tend to find something that works and stick with it."

"Puzzles," Sirius said pointing to himself, then to Remus. "Books."

Remus nodded. "Peter always gets Gobstones, and it seems with Lily you've focused on jewelry."

"Not a bad choice when you're shagging a girl," Sirius said around some bacon he had nicked off Moony's plate.

Remus seemed to agree, but James was unconvinced.

"You two really don't mind that you always get the same thing?"

Sirius seemed to be considering taking the piss a little longer, but finally shrugged and shook his head.

"I've never received a book from you that I didn't want to read," Remus reassured.

James was slightly mollified, but he couldn't stop himself from asking his next question. Turning to Sirius he asked, "What kind of gifts do you get Lily?"

"Whoa," Sirius said as he pushed his chair back from the table. "I'm out." He stood and reached for his jacket.

Eyes wide in alarm, Remus snapped, "Sit down, Padfoot! Are you out of your mind? We can't leave—we're mid-mission."

Sirius scoffed and didn't even bother to keep his voice down when he said, "It's just surveillance." He even turned and pointed to the stoop with the dead plant and the blinking streetlight across the way. "Are you two telling me that you can't watch that door without me for another fifteen minutes?"

James and Remus reached out, almost in unison, and jerked Sirius back into his seat.

"Merlin's knickers, Padfoot. Grow up," James scolded.

His eyes rolled as he lifted another piece of bacon of his friend's plate. Remus acted as though he didn't even notice.

"Don't compare what you give Lily to what I give Lily. That's not even the same Quidditch Pitch, not to mention that it's none of your business—and it doesn't matter. Stick with the jewelry, mate. It's working. She didn't shut up about that bracelet you gave her for weeks. Trust me, she's happy."

Remus cleared his throat and waited to speak until all eyes were on him. "If the consensus is that we don't want to be stuck doing surveillance missions going forward, the best way to get more training and then better assignments would be to execute this one well."

"Always have to be the voice of reason, don't you Moony?" Sirius griped. "Fine. We'll watch that damned door. We'll watch it better than it's ever been watched before."

"We're up and running," Sturgis announced.

"How can you tell?" Peter asked curiously.

With one of his wide, blunt fingers, Sturgis pointed. "You see that little glowing wand that just appeared, the purple one?"

Peter's eyes searched the oversized map of the city of Manchester, the one covering most of the wall in the pitch dark room that served as a Tracking Hub for the Department of Transportation. Tiny parchment lanterns dotted the cityscape, as well as little blue, heatless flames and assortment of miniature wands. The blue flames represented fireplaces connected to the floo network, the lanterns stood for registered Portkeys, their routes and destinations glowing softly in pulses. The diminutive wands represented witches and wizards registered to Apparate, and these were moving. There were some thirty or so wands meandering over Manchester, sometimes disappearing and reappearing, though it only signified a small portion of the wizarding population of the city.

"Most people aren't tracked," Sturgis had explained. "Just people with visas, high ranking officials, people under government protection or investigation—things like that." And to track a person's Apparition required physical contact, a task that had been given to Alice earlier tonight. It seemed she had been successful in tagging Gibbon.

The map was humming with activity, though Sturgis had assured Peter that it was much busier during the day. "This is right quiet, actually," he'd said as it was nearing half of one in the morning.

"There it is!" Peter couldn't help but blurt when his eyes finally found it.

Sturgis raised his brows, but refrained from mocking and merely nodded.

"What do we do now?" Peter asked.

"You're going to head down to your department and make sure the connections between Gibbon and the designated augury and wupple are equally strong. Then we wait."

Slightly nervous and a little embarrassed, Peter nodded and went to do his part.

The silvery vixen bounded through the open window and landed on the shop floor between two dismantled cars.

Lily cried out before she could catch herself, but the fox was just a wisp of herself, no substance to speak of. Marlene rose from where she had been crouching, reaching for a shop rag to wipe her hands.

The animal opened its muzzle and spoke in a feminine voice that arrestingly strong. "All hands are needed. Travis Gibbon has Apparated into an unknown area and we don't know what we are walking into."

Lily's eyes flew to the clock on the wall. It was just after three in the morning, and they had only begun their surveillance of Gibbon tonight. Surely they were not going to pull the trigger on the operation so quickly?

The vixen gave coordinates for a rendezvous spot and then left the way she came.

Marlene sighed, then walked over to her workbench and grabbed up her wand and her cigarettes. Her hand flicked a button on her stereo, effectively silencing the Beatles. She turned to face Lily, her voice oddly uneven.

"You ready to do this?" she asked. "Really do this?"

Lily had been feeling slightly frightened a moment ago, but seeing her friend tremble caused her courage to return in force. She nodded confidently.

Marlene lit a cigarette and took a drag or two before she Disapparated with Lily, following the coordinates they had been given.

The crack rang in Lily's ears and the air was pressed from her for an uncomfortable instant, but then she found herself in a cold and dark forest. Marlene was beside her after a moment. In the clearing with them were two very large men with ruddy skin and ginger hair. Lily remembered them from the meeting as Gideon and Fabian Prewett. Also with them was a wheezy old man called Elphias Doge, sitting on a weathered stump.

"Is this it?" one of the red-haired men asked Lily. "Anyone else coming with you?"

She shook her head, her wand at her side, but the fingers that held it thrumming with energy. "It was just the two of us when the message came through."

His twin shrugged and said, "It's just as well. Everyone will meet us at cottage."

"What cottage?" Marlene asked, some of the anxiety having left her voice.

He gestured westward. "Gibbon Apparated hereabouts, with a woman he kidnapped this night, then trekked roughly a mile to a cottage. There's anti-Apparition and -Disapparition charms all around it. Frankie and Caradoc followed him when Sturgis sent out the word. Apparently hooded men have been arriving all night. Caradoc reckons there's a good seven or so of the bastards in the cottage."

"Looks to be a Death Eater outpost—our very first." The other Prewett's teeth flashed in the sparse moonlight.

Doge nodded. "Dumbledore has given orders. He wants us to take the cottage and rescue the civilian."

Then the old man gave some instruction on how to approach the cottage without being detected, but he was more than once interrupted or contradicted by the Prewett brothers, and Lily privately thought that they were probably the more knowledgeable parties. Neither of the brothers looked as though they even slept indoors.

"We will join with the rest before converging on the cottage," Doge concluded.

"How many are we tonight?" Marlene asked.

The man who had a moment before been addressed as Gideon by his brother answered rather than Doge. "Moody's back in in the country, so he's leading the operation. Frankie, Alice, and Caradoc led their group here first. They have Potter, Black, and Lupin with them. Gwythyr, Hagrid, and Dorcas are also on their way. That's all we could scrape together tonight without drawing attention."

Fabian shrugged. "We outnumber them and we have the element of surprise. Should be fun."

Lily secretly felt grateful for the update on James' whereabouts.

The Prewett brothers cast spells on the group to keep their footsteps and voices silent to anyone but those within a few feet before they set off. Lily stayed close to Marlene.

"You all right?"

After a moment of consideration, Marlene nodded. "Look at you," she said affectionately. "So calm and cool."

Lily smiled and wrapped her arm around her friend, giving a comforting squeeze. She wasn't as collected as her outward appearance might indicate, but there was nothing to be gained in telling Marlene that she was scared, too. Instead she changed the subject.

"I wonder when they'll teach us to cast a Patronus so that we can send messages, too," she said as they walked.

Marlene shrugged, "Soon, most likely. Never was able to do it at school—just little smoke trails from my wand. They say your Patronus is supposed to be a reflection of yourself, of what makes you feel safe and strong."

"I wonder what mine will look like," Lily mused aloud, though privately she had a few theories. "That fox was beautiful."

Marlene glanced her way. She was silent for a moment as though she were deciding whether or not to volunteer information, then seemed to decide in favor of divulging. "It was Dorcas."

Lily hesitated. James had shared with her what he had discovered at the first meeting of the Order of the Phoenix. She had not been able to help seeing her boss in a different, more repugnant, light after hearing the gossip, but she had been too shy to ask Marlene about it. It was none of Lily's business after all.

But then, if Marlene was going to just bring it up…. Lily checked and their companions were just out of the radius set by the spell and would not hear their conversation.

"I heard you used to be friends."

Marlene nodded. "Oh yes, through all of Hogwarts. We ruled Hufflepuff, she and I. We did everything together—Quidditch, skiving off class, even dating Ravenclaw boys. We both had a weakness, you see. Smart men—there's nothing better. Of course, in retrospect, maybe Dorcas should have stuck to her own house. A nice Gryffindor mightn't have been so bad, either."

Lily looked at her in confusion.

"Loyalty is very important to Dor, and Ben…well, I gather you heard the story?"

She nodded.

"Benjy fucked that one up royally. Blew up his entire life because he was thinking with his blasted cock."

"So it's all true?" Lily had been hoping there was another side to it, or that it was just silly, fictitious blather.

Marlene inclined her head. "Mostly, I guess. Not sure what you've heard specifically, but it's probably true. Benjy was brewing with some illegal substances, sleeping with a young and stupid girl, and the Exploding Snap tower went down and fire-balled right in his face. Dor made sure he paid for it."

"Is that why you aren't friends anymore?"

"Right after it happened," Marlene said carefully, "all I could think about was Dor—was she all right? I was there for her. But she took it too far, she got too mean. She snitched that he had non-tradable substances in his lab and had him arrested. She told his donor that Ben had been sleeping with his wife—which actually wasn't true—got his funding pulled, and she campaigned to have all of his work discredited. Incidentally, that funding and that work was also Fin's—they were working together. The work was valid and important, whatever she testified in that hearing. Fin was able to crack the child protection component for common household potions because of the work he and Benjy had done together. She didn't care. She just wanted Benjy to suffer. It got to a point where I just…couldn't relate to her anymore."

Lily absorbed that for a moment, let the new information fill in blanks. Tentatively, she pressed. "Weren't you angry with Fenwick?"

Marlene nodded, stepping over a fallen log. "Furious. He broke my best friend's heart, killed it dead…permanently, it seems. He put my husband's career in jeopardy, and I was pregnant at the time. It was a long time before I forgave him."

"But you're friends with Fenwick again now."

"Didn't speak to him for more than a year." Marlene shrugged. "He's an idiot. Smart men can also be the stupidest. He lost everything and he learned his lesson."

Lily pictured the state of the art potions lab he had now. "Seems to have gotten it back."

Marlene smiled a little evilly and she shook her head. "Not the thing he wants most. He'll never get Dorcas back, doesn't matter how hard he tries. All his gifts and letters will be returned unopened, she'll always have him thrown out of her offices. The irises he has delivered on her birthdays go straight into the fire. Even if he's one day able to convince her that his remorse is real and that he still actually loves her, she will never take him back."

"What about you?" Lily asked, lifting a branch out of the way so that it would not hit her face. "Would she take you back?"

"I doubt it," Marlene said honestly. "Dor is not a very nice person these days. Damned good prosecutor, but…the girl I knew at Hogwarts, the one who was my best friend for so long, she's just gone. I've accepted that."

"As I have told you before," Severus said through clenched teeth, "the potions you are requesting take a fortnight to prepare. I cannot rush them if you wish for their effects to be fully mature."

The old man before him glared downward superciliously. He had evidently taken a dislike to Severus during the unexpectedly truthful Death Eater dinner party, and Lucius wished Severus would stop rising to the bait.

The Mulcibers were not to be trifled with. The patriarch was flanked by each of his sons: Robin, who was glaring malevolently, and Geraint, the elder of the two, who looked bored. His eyes wandered to Lucius, who immediately found an excuse to look away. Geraint had always made his skin crawl, even at Hogwarts.

Wendell Jugson and Travis Gibbon were messing about with some chicken feet behind the intimidating old man and Lucius fought the urge to roll his eyes. The Dark Lord must be recruiting all comers for these two morons to have snuck through. He caught McNair's eyes and indicated wordlessly that something should be done. McNair strode forward and ripped the chicken feet out of the outstretched hands of the snickering younger men.

"I was told you would cooperate, Snape. I was also told that you were the most skilled potion maker to which we have access. Was the Dark Lord mistaken in that?" Mulicber's voice was sharp and forbidding.

"I received nine N.E.W.T.s in my final year of Hogwarts," Severus said coldly. "Yet I am afraid I never mastered the ability to speed up the lunar cycle, and I have never heard of a Potions Master who can."

Lucius felt the tension in the room rising to a boiling point, and he stepped between his friend and the old man. "Of course, the instant the potions are finished, we shall Apparate them to you immediately. You shall not have to wait a moment longer. We live to serve, sir."

Lucius almost choked on the words, but saying them was preferable to being choked to death in reality. Severus made a noise of disgust behind him, but Lucius ignored that and continued to goddamned simper, staring up into those baggy, jaundiced, old eyes.

Mulciber did not appear convinced or impressed, but Lucius did not have to endure the coming tongue-lashing, because there were some frantic footsteps on the wooden stairs leading up to the ground floor.

"There's movement in the trees!" Igor Karkaroff shouted down the stairs.

A thrill of fear shot through the room.

Lucius whipped around to face McNair. "Are we expecting anyone else tonight?"

McNair slowly shook his head, his eyes wide. "Just one subject for interrogation. That was our only delivery."

Mulciber walked, the cane he leaned into taking nothing away from the menace he was capable of instilling, up to the cowering form of Travis Gibbon. "Imbecile, were you followed?"

Gibbon was vigorously shaking his head. "No! No, of course not!"

"It could be an unscheduled drop-off," Geraint suggested with a shrug. The gaunt young man was the only person in the room that seemed unconcerned by this turn of events. "Perhaps there was an unexpected capture."

"Karkaroff!" McNair shouted up the stairwell. "Is it one of ours?"

Instead of replying in kind, the footfalls on the stairs returned, this time joined by another set of feet. Karkaroff and Yaxley were soon joining them in the crowded cellar.

"I doubt it," Heath Yaxley's voice was almost shrill. "Ours wouldn't sneak through the undergrowth."

"Aurors!" Karkaroff hissed.

McNair smacked him on the back of the head. "It is not Aurors. It would have to be an official investigation for it to be Aurors, and we have too many eyes in the Ministry. We'd know before the ink on the warrant dried."

He had hardly finished speaking when a godawful shriek ripped through the air.

"The Caterwauling Charm!" Karkaroff was already speeding to the door of the secret passage exit behind the bookcase on the far wall, the one leading to the underground tunnels beneath the forest.

"What about our captive?" Yaxley asked in a panic.

McNair shook his head. "Leave her—there's no time. She's been under a Blinding Charm the entire time. She didn't see any of our faces."

The men were clamoring for the secret passage exit when they heard the windows break above. The only person who wasn't rushing to escape was Severus. Lucius was in the tunnel before he realized that his friend was not with him. Closing his eyes and cursing silently, Lucius turned back.

"Severus! What are you doing? We need to get out of here!"

Black eyes flashed in Lucius' direction. "I'm not leaving my work to be found." Severus was stuffing scrolls of parchment in his pockets and then grabbed up his recipe book and hurled it into the fire.

There were voices upstairs now, and the sound of the door in the entrance way being blasted apart with a bang.

Lucius seized the scruff of Severus' robes and dragged him bodily to the secret tunnel. The younger man struggled, but Lucius just lifted him off the ground, and when a parchment scroll dropped, he did not allow Severus to retrieve it. As soon as they were safely inside the tunnel, Lucius triggered the door closed.

"What's that cindering in the fire?"

Lily leaned closer before she answered. The pages were largely obliterated as the book had landed with its covers butterflied in the flames, but the title was still readable: Moste Potente Potions.

"It's a potions book," she announced.

Remus was beside her. "A Dark one," he amended.

"Goes without saying," Frank said. He was checking the contents of a cauldron simmering over a portable flame.

Sirius and James made rude and mocking gestures behind his back. Lily pretended not to notice.

"We searched the forest, but they're gone," Dorcas Meadowes was telling Senior Auror Alastor Moody, who was examining the bookshelf against the far wall.

"Little wonder," he tugged on a book and the shelf slid aside to reveal an unlit tunnel. "They rabbited through here. Long gone by now."

Moody was an intimidating man, with cold dark eyes and scarring lining a face that had never been handsome. Lily was instantly frightened of him.

Alice Longbottom provided her report next. "Dearborn, Doge, and I took the woman we found upstairs to Dumbledore. She's safe."

"She have a name?" Moody asked without looking at his subordinate, still examining the mechanism of the secret door.

"Arabella Figg," Alice said readily. "It's unclear why the Death Eaters had such an interest in her. According to her, she's a Squib."

Moody grunted as though he were unconvinced. "We'll see about that." Something seemed to catch his eye, and the man stooped. When he straightened there was a scroll of parchment clutched in his hand that had rolled under a nearby stuffed chair. "What's this then?" he asked before unfurling it.

Alice and Dorcas, who were nearest to him, leaned in.

"It's a recipe," Dorcas said flatly, her freckled nose wrinkling almost as an involuntary impulse. "Potion brewer's shorthand."

"Can you read it?"

Dorcas shook her head.

"Any brewers here?" Moody demanded.

After a heavy swallow, Lily raised her hand.

He motioned impatiently to her, and Lily jerkily approached. She took the offered scroll, and her eyes scanned the scribbling. It wasn't just any shorthand: it was coded. And Lily recognized it instantly.

Even, heavy steps clomped down the stairway before Lily was asked to translate.

"Moody," Gwythyr Hash said from the landing, "you're going to want to come see this."

Even though it was only Moody that had been summoned, the cellar emptied out of curiosity and followed the two men up to ground level.

Hash led them behind the cottage to a garden patch that had been destroyed, completely dug up. The large man called Hagrid stood beside the hole, a spade in his hand and mud on his clothes. Marlene sat on a nearby stump, face grim, the Prewett twins beside her.

Lily advanced toward the recently excavated soil, and she felt James' arm move around her shoulders. When at last she was near enough to see down inside the hole, she gasped and her left hand came up to cover her mouth. The roll of parchment clenched in her right crumpled as she clenched it into a fist.

A man and a woman, stained and smeared with soil, faces screwed up and frozen, flesh rotting and sagging, occupied the pit. It was a grave.

James stopped in the doorway, eyes fixed upon his wife. His hair was still dripping from the shower, chest bare and ready for bed in his flannel pajama bottoms. She was seated upon the hearthstone and had removed her cauldron from the hook over the spitting fire. Her shoes were piled on the nearby rug. A shoebox full of parchment was open on her lap. She wasn't moving.

"Lily? Love, are you all right?"

When she turned, he was dismayed to find her face streaked with tears. Heart pounding, he went to her immediately. The shoebox was briefly crushed between them while he knelt to embrace her.

"He was there," Lily whispered against James' ear. "At that awful place. I recognized his handwriting."

His brows knit. "Who?"

Her voice was so soft he almost didn't catch her answer. "Severus."

James froze, at once stiff. Then he pulled back.

Lily's eyes were wide, wet, and begging him not to be angry or jealous.

He swallowed, indecisive of how to react, studying her face. His gaze dropped to the collection of parchment she clutched in her lap. Letters, James realized. From him.

"I've kept these," she confessed the obvious. "They're from before, so I thought…" Her hands were trembling and fat tears were landing in the shoebox. "These are happy memories, from…from my best friend. It seemed okay—I'm mean, really, what harm was it? I told myself that our history was complicated, and that made it okay to feel nostalgic, to miss him sometimes."

Sobs were wracking her dainty shoulders, and without thought, James took her hands in his to steady her.

Her halting voice continued. "But it's not okay."

"Because it's not complicated," James supplied. "It's simple."

She shook her head. "No, it is complicated. It's always complicated when a good person stops being a good person," she insisted. "But it doesn't matter that it's complicated." Lily bit her lip. "There are things, things so awful…that it just stops mattering that it's complicated. His side of the story, his justifications, who he was before…it doesn't matter."

Something hard had crept into her features, and James had to move his arm out of the way because she had extricated one of her hands from his and lifted the shoebox. In one motion, the whole thing was dropped into the fire.

There was a long moment before James could react. He rubbed his hands against his face and then raked his fingers through his hair. Shock was vibrating through him, because the sight that had just presented itself was one he would have sworn he'd never get to see. He had long resigned himself that a soft spot for Severus Snape was simply part of Lily. Sirius had even made the argument that this was a good thing, that it spoke to hopeful and good-hearted parts of her nature, and James had reluctantly made his peace. But that wasn't what was happening in this room now.

James' Lily, his sweet, resilient, endlessly forgiving Lily, had just given up on someone she loved.

Author's Note: To all the Snape haters who have been asking for this scene in reviews and PMs for years, I just have one little word of caution: don't celebrate too hard. Everything in moderation, people. Tomorrow's a weekday and you have work/school. Party responsibly. ; )

It's weird to think of Moody with both eyes, but he has them in the photo he shows Harry in OotP, so there's that.

According to Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, a jobberknoll is a little bird that makes no sound until the moment of its death, and then it lets out a long scream consisting of all the sounds it has ever heard. I thought it might be interesting if Aurors used these as surveillance tools—raise them in isolation in a soundproof room, plant them in an area they need bugged, then kill them to harvest information. Super dick move, but it was the '70s. I like to think of this as something that modern Aurors would never dream of doing, a practice that has since been outlawed as inhumane.