A/N: Here's the next chapter, I'm updating a day early because the rest of my week is going to be a bit busy so I thought I'd get this out before I ran out of time.
Disclaimer: I do not own any of this, it all belongs to J. Rowling.
Enjoy!
Investigations
To say that Kingsley Shacklebolt was pissed would be an understatement. He was utterly and completely livid. He paced through the corridors of Hogwarts School rather quickly seeing as he was fueled by his anger. Two minutes and fourteen seconds ago, Kingsley had been contacted via floo, by Minerva McGonagall. She had said that Ted Lupin and Kurt Williamson had just entered her office with a much-disheveled looking Victoire Weasley and had told her that something serious had happened. McGonagall wouldn't tell Kingsley anything else because she needed him to be there soon, and because she knew that, he would prefer to hear all of the details from the kids themselves.
Once Kingsley had made it to the gargoyle outside of Headmistress McGonagall's office, he growled out the password to it and ran up the stairs. He whipped open the office door and stopped where he was when he took in the scene before him.
Victoire was sitting on a wooden chair near Professor McGonagall's office, in a red ball dress. Her hair was dishevelled, her eyes and face were red, and she was crying. Ted was kneeling in front of her chair and was rubbing her back gently as she cried into his chest. McGonagall wasn't sitting behind her desk like he had expected; instead, she was standing away from it, whispering to Kurt Williamson. Both of them had their backs to the two near the chair, giving them a little semblance of privacy as Victoire broke down further and sobbed even louder.
Kingsley cleared his throat loudly. Professor McGonagall and Kurt looked up to where Kingsley stood in the doorway.
McGonagall stepped forward, "Kingsley . . ."
Kingsley nodded to her but moved to go past her. He needed to get to Victoire, to console her. McGonagall placed a stern hand onto his arm and looked at him firmly, "You can't. This is now an investigation and you're not allowed to affect her. You have to be professional."
"But-" Kingsley began.
McGonagall stared him down, "No. Ted's taking care of it. Give him a few minutes; he'll get her to talk eventually."
Kingsley sighed, "Fine. But while we're waiting I want to know what you know."
McGonagall nodded, "Wait a few minutes. Harry, Ron, and Bill are on their way."
Kingsley narrowed his eyes slightly, "You called her parents? I know they need to know, but if Fleur gets here it's probably going to be hysteria."
McGonagall nodded again, "That's why I contacted Bill only and specifically asked him not to tell Fleur the particulars until we found them out for ourselves."
At that moment, the fireplace in the room lit up with green flames and Bill Weasley appeared. He quickly jumped out of the fireplace, and right behind him Harry and Ron arrived. The three of them looked at Victoire as she was being comforted by Teddy, and then to where McGonagall stood with Kingsley.
"What's going on?" Harry asked cautiously. He and Ron were looking at Kingsley for a response, but his hand was holding tightly onto Bill's forearm. He understood that his brother-in-law wanted to go and physically comfort his daughter, but he knew that the procedure for any serious incident was to question the victim when the family wasn't in the room. Since that seemed almost impossible seeing as Victoire seemed to be related to half of the Auror department, keeping Bill where he was, was a close second to following the rules.
Kingsley shrugged his shoulders, "I have no idea."
Harry looked confused, "Minerva didn't tell you anything specifically about the assault?"
Kingsley's eyes narrowed irately, "Assault? This was an assault!"
Harry's eyes widened in shock and he looked at McGonagall, "Oops?"
Professor McGonagall raised an eyebrow at Harry, "Thank-you very much Mr Potter."
Harry looked properly shamed before Professor McGonagall turned to Kingsley and Bill, "Calm down, the both of you. Mr Williamson over here will explain what he knows, and by that time Victoire will probably be able to talk again."
Kurt swallowed thickly and began, "Ted and I were patrolling outside, in Professor Longbottom's winter labyrinth. We noticed some odd blue flames above one of the hedges close to the centre. I saw them first and pointed them out to Ted when I noticed that they weren't causing anything else to catch on fire. Ted seemed to recognize them right away as well, not normal 'magical fire' I heard him mutter. He took off running towards them and I followed. I guess that even from that distance he was able to recognize that they were Veela fire. I was a few feet behind him so he turned the corner of the hedge first. We saw a student in dark-blue dress robes pressed up against Miss Weasley who was in turn pressed against the hedge. He had two of her hands incapacitated in one of his hands, and the other was holding his wand, which was loosely beside him. Ted used the revulsion jinx to get the man away from her. The suspect got up as soon as he could, he fired a few stunning spells, and then ran off through the labyrinth. Ted and I moved to dodge the stunners, than split up. He told me to go after the culprit because I was closest, and he went to see if Miss Weasley was all right. I chased him a good distance through the labyrinth until I had almost caught up with him. I was certain that I'd be able to overpower him and cut him off. He had a moving shield charm around him so I couldn't send a spell at him. When I was about to get him, he turned on spot and disapparated. I was shocked because I thought that it was impossible to disapparate within Hogwarts grounds. I searched the area he had disappeared from, found nothing, and then left to go find Ted again. I found him sitting on the bench in the middle of the labyrinth with Miss Weasley; he was trying to get her to explain what had happened. After I told him about the culprit disappearing, he decided that we should contact Professor McGonagall, Shacklebolt, and everyone else."
Kingsley nodded. Kurt gave him the facts, and only the facts; that was good. He was trying to separate himself from the incident and explain in an unbiased way. Kingsley knew that he'd have to do that himself to find the underlying cause of the incident, "Thank-you Auror Williamson."
Kingsley looked at McGonagall, "We need to speak to Victoire now."
McGonagall nodded and they turned to look where Victoire and Ted were sitting. It seemed that Teddy had calmed Victoire down quite a bit. There were tearstains on her face, but her eyes were no longer leaking. He had her face cupped in his hands, but she wasn't hiding into his chest anymore, and she was looking him in the eye. He asked her something quietly and she nodded her head slowly. He nodded back and moved his lips to her forehead. He kissed her skin tenderly and then whispered something even more quietly into her skin. He kissed her forehead once more and then let go of her face and stood up. He held out his hand to her and she took it, and stood up. He let go of her hand and placed it at the small of her back. They walked over to where everyone else was standing.
Kingsley watched as Harry let go of Bill's arm to allow him to walk over to his daughter. He placed an arm over her shoulder, brought her close to him, and kissed her temple. Victoire was now bookended by Ted and her father. She looked to Harry and Kingsley and asked, "What do you want to know?"
Kingsley watched her face intently, "What happened in the labyrinth?"
She took a deep breath, "I got sick about an hour and a bit ago. I was feeling like crap, so I said goodnight to my friends and told them that I was going to go to bed. Ally suggested that I find Teddy out in the courtyard before going to bed -I think she was worried that I was feeling worse than I let on and thought that I'd tell him about it. I was halfway through the labyrinth when I heard a twig being stepped on. I turned around and saw him."
"Who was it?" Kingsley asked emotionlessly.
"He looked like Austin Pennington," Victoire said.
Kingsley and Harry shared a look, "He looked like him?"
Victoire nodded and crossed her arms stubbornly across her chest. Kingsley knew that look. She wasn't going to explain, so he looked at Teddy.
Teddy sighed, "I was convinced that it was Pennington. At the beginning, she was convinced that it was he too, but a little ways through she wasn't so sure. Just get her to continue with the story and she'll explain."
Kingsley nodded he looked at Victoire, "Continue."
"I asked him to go away because I wasn't in the mood to deal with him at the moment. He hadn't said anything to me upon meeting me, but I still didn't want to talk to him. He kept walking closer and closer to me. I backed up until I hit the hedge. He came closer to me and pressed against me. He ended up grabbing my wrists and pressing them up against the hedge above my head. He did that after he taunted me about not having a wand-"
"You didn't have your wand?" Kingsley asked shocked. He definitely taught her better than that.
Victoire frowned and gestured to the tight red dress she was still wearing, "Where do you expect me to keep a wand in this outfit?"
Kingsley rolled his eyes, "Fine, we'll argue about the fact that you didn't have your wand on you later. Please go on."
"I'm not sure how he knew about my not having a wand, but I'm just going to guess that it was common sense. So he taunted me a bit and then said stuff to me and I didn't really understand where he was coming from. He said something about how what he was doing had nothing to do with a commonplace physical attraction; it was confusing. I tried to reason with him and tell him to let me go, but he said that that's not how they operate. He used the plural, which was also puzzling. He put his hand over my mouth to shut me up. I bit him so that he'd get his hand off my face. He swore out and then cast a spell that would muffle any sounds I made. He let my mouth go and I asked him what the hell was wrong with him. He slapped me then and-"
"WHAT!"
Victoire didn't know where to turn; both her father and Kingsley had yelled out in disbelief. Bill was closer so he grabbed his daughter's chin and moved her face until he could see her cheek properly. Kingsley could see the red marks from where he stood. When he'd first gotten there, he thought that Victoire's face was only red because she was so upset. Now that she wasn't hiding her face in Teddy's chest, he could see the distinct angry finger-shaped marks that adorned her cheek. Parts of which seemed to be turning bluish with bruising.
"He slapped me across the cheek, but that wasn't the weird part. I started to swear at him, and after a particularly long sequence of French swear words he answered back in French."
Teddy gave Victoire a look of surprise, "I didn't know that Pennington knew French."
"That's the thing I'm sure that Austin doesn't. But whoever hit me sure knew what I was calling him."
Kingsley nodded as he digested the information, "Is there more?"
Victoire nodded, "He began to say some more things that didn't make much sense, but I tuned him out when I realized that my hands were trapped, but my fingertips were above the hedge. I knew that I couldn't yell, or use my wand but I thought that if I got my hands to light up with my Veela magic, that I'd be able signal someone. I closed my eyes to concentrate but I guess he didn't like that, because he slapped me again on the same cheek and told me look and listen to him when he spoke to me. His slap gave me the anger boost I needed to jump-start my Veela powers. I closed my eyes again, felt his body go flying off me, and then Teddy was there trying to get me to stop crying."
Kingsley thought through what Victoire had told him before asking, "So what makes you think that it wasn't actually Mr Pennington?"
"Okay, I will be the first to admit that he's a creep, and that we don't get along, and that he usually says extremely inappropriate things to me, but he wouldn't assault me like that. Try to force me to kiss him, maybe; slap me multiple times just because I wasn't listening to him, no. I mean I've broken his nose at least two times over the past few years and he's never raised his wand or hand at me. He can't take no for an answer but he wouldn't do something like this. Besides, what he was saying made no sense, he used the plural term 'we'; he would never actually share me if he had me. He understood what I was saying to him in French, and I've cussed him out in French before and he hasn't understood a word of it. Also, there is no way that Austin would have the power to break through Hogwarts' charms and to disparate on the grounds . . . plus there was something else, I just can't remember it right now . . ." Victoire said trying to think back to the night; it was kind of hazy now that she was trying to come up with specifics.
"Victoire," Harry began slowly. He shared a look with Kingsley before continuing, "What you're saying, while it is a good recall, I just don't think that we can call this evidence. They're just things that you're saying-"
"Wait! I remember the weird thing now!" Victoire announced suddenly, "After he slapped me for the second time, his face started to, well it looked like it was rippling."
"Rippling?" Ron asked Victoire confusedly.
"You know how the surface of the water looks when you throw a rock into it? How it ripples yet it still looks similar and it will go back to the same? That's what his face did, his facial features rippled, then went back to normal," Victoire tried to explain.
"So would it look like someone was using polyjuice potion?" McGonagall couldn't help but ask.
Kingsley shook his head a second before Victoire did; he let her answer, "No. With polyjuice potion, the change would be a gradual fade. Besides I didn't see anything underneath it, it was almost as if the face was blank underneath the ripple. Plus he didn't drink anything that would be the potion taking affect; the ripple itself was only about a second long. I would say that it was a trick of the light, only there was hardly any light that could flicker. The closest thing I could think of to make it look like the face was rippling would be metamorphmagus powers, but I've seem Teddy morph hundreds of thousands of times and he's never done anything even close to what I saw. It takes effort to morph even the smallest part of the body and the ripple seemed to happen unconsciously."
Teddy nodded along with what Victoire was saying and echoed her words, "She told me a few minutes ago, and I tried to copy the effect she told me about. I've practiced with my morphing all my life and I know that it takes too much effort to morph than to accomplish what Victoire described to me."
Kingsley considered everything, "It could have always been an appearance charm or another potion of some sort but those would take forever to put on beforehand, and there are so many of them that it would take forever to try to go through all of them and test to see if they would make the same rippling effect."
"If you don't think that the person that apparated away was actually Pennington, then where is the actual Austin Pennington?" Ron asked.
Teddy answered, "I had the Marauder's Map on me, so when we left to come up here I gave it to Jilly Donaldson and asked her to look at it, find Austin Pennington, and then bring him in here because we needed to speak to him."
Almost as if they'd planned it, there was a knock on the door, and after McGonagall announced that the person could 'come in', Jilly Donaldson walked into the room with a confused looking Austin Pennington behind her.
McGonagall shared a look with Kingsley and Harry, she pretty much told them not to say a word and that she'd handle it, and then looked at Austin.
"It seems that we have a little problem here Mr Pennington. I need to know where you have been the past few hours."
Austin looked shocked at her question but answered readily, "Myself and some friends were at the Ball until about an hour ago. We got bored but some of them aren't Ravenclaws, so we thought that we'd go to the Room of Requirement to hang for a bit. We all decided to go leave about fifteen minutes ago."
"Which friends Mr Pennington?" Kingsley asked calmly.
"Alfred Hershey and Martha Chase of Ravenclaw, and Francis Crick and James Watson of Hufflepuff. Why? What is this about?" Austin answered eyeing everyone specifically.
"Can anyone account for your whereabouts for the last fifteen minutes?" Ron asked next.
Austin smirked lightly, "Um, you can talk to Dominique if you want. I just spent the last fifteen minutes lecturing her and another fifth-year about snogging in the hallways."
Kingsley didn't respond visually, but if the situation weren't so severe, he would have chuckled at the picture of Pennington berating Dominique for her flirtatious attitudes. He didn't know exactly what to ask next; so it was a good thing that Victoire took the next step.
She walked up to Austin Pennington crossed her arms over her chest, and frowned at him. She didn't say anything, but she didn't need to.
"What happened to your face Weasley? Did you walk into something? Your cheek's the same colour as your dress, and while that dress looks awesome on you, the red on your face isn't really doing you any favours," Austin said eyeing her skin. He hadn't looked close enough to realize that the mark was actually in the shape of a handprint, or that it was starting to bruise.
Victoire looked Austin up and down before moving forward and slapping him across the face. Everyone else in the room gasped quietly. However, Kingsley did see the corners of Teddy's lips curl up as he watched the shocked look on Pennington's face.
Austin blinked and then raised his hand to his cheek, "Okay, I guess I deserved that. And you know what you've slapped me so many times over the year that I don't even really feel it anymore."
Victoire rolled her eyes, "What, do you expect me to apologize or something?"
Austin shook his head, "If you apologized to me I would be really worried. If you want though, you could always kiss it better."
He moved his cheek in Victoire's direction.
Victoire pushed him lightly, "Il suffit de laisser votre secousse."
Austin winked at her, "I have no idea what you said. But man I love it when you speak French, so I'll just take it as a compliment."
"I told you to leave."
He sighed dramatically but then placed both if his hands on Victoire's shoulders, "Just remember when you're done playing hard to get, you'll know where to find me."
Victoire looked down at his hands on her shoulders and said in a monotone voice, "You have girl hands."
Austin moved his hands quickly away from Victoire's shoulders and put them in his pockets, "They are not girly . . . my fingers are just smaller and more . . . compact . . . wait, why am I arguing with you? I'm leaving."
He looked at McGonagall and left the room when she nodded at him. When he was gone all of the Aurors in the room looked at Victoire. Kurt was the first person to ask the question that was on all of their minds.
"What the heck was that about?"
Victoire rolled her eyes at him, "Assuming that you'll check with everyone he named and that you're still suspicious, I slapped him and he just laughed. I purposely provoked him and he didn't lay a hand on me. If he had really assaulted me, my random lash-out would have surprised him and his anger would have taken over. He wouldn't have had a reason not to hit me, even if you all weren't in the room, because I already saw him and could blame him for the attack. Second, I insulted him in French, and he really had no idea what I said to him. I was watching him closely, no spark of recognition even thought to enter his eyes; he wasn't faking that. And third, I looked at his hands when he put them on my shoulders; they were tiny in size. Whoever attacked me had big enough hands that he could incapacitate both of my wrists in one, and that he could cover my mouth with one hand. I'm ninety-seven percent sure that those girly hands wouldn't have been able to do that. Plus, I bit my attacker's hands. There was not even so much as a mark where my teeth would have been on his hands."
"So we can also rule out that whoever attacked you didn't use a polyjuice potion, because if they had -and they used Pennington's DNA- their hands would have taken on his small hand size," Teddy reasoned.
Victoire nodded, "Exactly. I know you still need to check his alibi, but I'm certain that it wasn't Austin. It had to have been someone who was using some other form of magic to look like him, so that he wouldn't look about of place. And also maybe so that I'd underestimate him at first."
"If it even was a 'he'," Ron added.
Victoire shook her head, "It was definitely a guy. The voice, now that I think about it, was different from Austin's also. It was deeper and gruffer, but not in a charm-your-voice-a-decibel-level-deeper kind of way, if you know what I mean. Plus, he was talking down at me rather arrogantly and was calling me pet names such as Honey and Little girl. Oh, and he also sarcastically called me Princess too."
Kingsley frowned angrily. Not only did some guy think that he could try to assault Victoire and get away with it, he also taunted her with his own special pet name for her.
"So we're basically back to square one?" Ron asked.
Harry sighed, "Not completely. There can only be so many ways that someone would actually be able to break through Hogwarts' protection charms -or most likely more than one someone. We can have people research any magical means that would make it even remotely possible, and maybe by then we'll have more evidence. We can also check with the Department of Magical Transportation to see if they noticed anyone apparating through Hogwarts' anti-apparation charms."
Bill frowned and spoke for the first time, "There isn't any way that you could find more evidence after what happened. Unless you're suggesting that we wait for another incident like this to happen to her."
Kingsley didn't like it either but it seemed to be the only option, "That's the best we can do right now Bill. I hate it to but that's all we can do, we can't get any more evidence from what we have. Hopefully this was a onetime occurrence and it won't happen to Victoire again."
McGonagall looked at Kingsley, Harry, and Ron, "Do you think that this incident has any connection to what happened with the Manticore?"
Kingsley closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose, "I hadn't, and I'd rather not. The MO's look too different. This assault was specifically on Victoire, yet the Manticore attack couldn't have been for Victoire specifically, because there was no way to know if she was going to be in the forest and that she would be attacked. That was probably a case of wrong-place-wrong-time. Besides, the Manticore attack almost killed her or could have seriously injured her. This assault only got physical when he slapped her, he actually wanted something out of her -whatever that may be- instead of just trying to incapacitate her."
Harry nodded, "They seem to be unconnected. This one was mostly just threats it seems, unless of course there is something else that happened to Victoire that she hasn't said yet."
Kingsley turned to look at Victoire. Her eyes widened and she turned her head to look at Teddy. They shared a look and Kingsley was about to open his mouth to ask them 'what the Hell was going on' when he saw her face turn slightly green. Her eyes bugged out of her head a bit and automatically Teddy whipped out his wand and conjured up a rubbish basket. Victoire snatched it out of his hands, turned her back on everyone, and walked a few paces away before getting sick into it.
Both Bill and Teddy stepped forward to check up on Victoire. While they were taking care of her Harry and Ron looked at Kingsley, "It's late. It's Christmas Eve and Victoire said that she wasn't feeling very well before, and she definitely doesn't now. We can't go very much farther at all; I say we call it a night."
Kingsley nodded. When Victoire was finished getting sick; she, Bill, and Teddy joined then circle again.
"Can you guys promise not to tell anyone else about this? Tomorrow's Christmas and I really don't want everyone to worry. I don't want this to ruin the holidays. We don't have anything, and I highly doubt we will. The Department of Magical Transportation will be closed tomorrow and running on minimum people for the rest of the week because of the Christmas holidays, so you can't investigate there until they're all back. So, can we please just pretend like this never happened," Victoire asked Kingsley specifically.
Kingsley groaned, "Victoire we can't just pretend that this never happened. This was a serious occurrence."
"I didn't mean it like that Kingsley. It's just; this investigation is probably not going to go anywhere. I don't mean that we should just forget about it, I meant that nothing else . . . has happened so we should just not worry about it," Victoire responded.
"If anything else does happen, then you have to start taking more precautions," Kingsley said.
"So you're really just going to ignore this?" Victoire asked hopefully.
Kingsley frowned, "We're not going to ignore this. But I do agree that we can put this on a back burner while we celebrate the holidays. You were right, most of the Ministry will be running on few people during the holidays, and most of the Auror Department has it off also. Even the ones stationed in the Castle have holidays booked, and we don't have the manpower to run an investigation, and make sure that there are enough people doing their patrols at the same time. If this was a one-time thing like we guess we won't come up with anything anyways."
He turned to Teddy when he finished, "Make sure that she gets to her dorm safely."
Victoire sighed, crossed her arms, and spoke to her godfather, "Yeah, just go ahead and talk about me like I'm not in the room. Just one favour please? Please don't go supper crazy about my safety again, I'm being followed enough as it is right now."
"Yet you were still assaulted," Kingsley said matching her posture.
Victoire looked down at her feet, "So bedtime?"
The corner of Kingsley's mouth curled briefly. The innocent look on her face that she put on when she changed the subject made him want to chuckle, "Yes. Bedtime. Goodnight, and happy Christmas."
Victoire smiled and gave Kingsley a big hug, before hugging both of her uncles and her father. When she was finished, she left McGonagall's office, with Teddy trailing close behind her.
McGonagall wanted Kingsley to stay so that they could quickly go through the protection wards on the Castle to make sure that they were all in order, before he left for the night. She was worried that someone else would be able to apparate away from, or into the Castle grounds. Kingsley thought that while her fear was admirable, it was also unfounded. He still felt the power of the protective wards when he came into the school, and he knew that it would take someone with a lot of power either to break through them, or to destroy them completely.
However, Kingsley listened quietly while Minerva spoke to him. As he listened, a stray yet important concern about Victoire came into his mind; what in the name of Merlin am I going to do with that girl?
Hope that you liked!
A/N: I mentioned last week that I'm going through some of my earlier chappies and editing them. So far I've done up to chapter 3, and I'll do some more if I've got time. If you'd like to re-read them without the mistakes (all the ones I could find that is) feel free to.
Next Week: It's Christmas day and you all get to read about a Weasley tradition . . . :)
Thanks to everyone who reviewed / followed / favourited / read / and enjoyed!
An especially big thanks to everyone who reviewed! It means so much to me!
trustxbelieve, RoLouG, As the Robin Flies, TedandVic4ever, Diamondgirl3, AzNeRd, RoonilFreakin'Wazlib, nifflerstorm17008 (twice ;), LiveLovePotter, Aurordreamer, wish right now x, MuggleCreator, marmar8089, darling-everythingsonfire-x, brilliant incandescence, PotterLover25, xSuperNovax, Annaminadara, confusednikki24-7, YukiLovestoWrite, amortenTIANA, HarryPotterNut94, and istillwishiwasaweasley.
A big big thanks to YukiLovestoWrite, I kow that I haven't answered your last review and I'm sorry. I typed everything out, then before I could send the internet crashed and I'm just too lazy to re-write everythign again ;P. I did read it though, several times so thank you.
oh, and P.S. fifthly is a word, but you don't need the 'ly' on it or any of the others even firstly or secondly. You can write it just as first, second, thrid, fourth, fifth, and sixth and it works the same grammatically :)
