Chapter 13:
Interrogations
Lily stared at the large, blonde man in front of her. She didn't know him, and he hadn't bothered introducing himself when he burst into the room and ordered her to give up her wand. There was a cruel set to his mouth, and his blue eyes were cold and fierce. His hair was cropped short to his skull, and while he wore the purple robes of the Magical Law enforcement, they fit oddly, pulling at his massive shoulders. She was still in St. Mungos. The Ministry's Magical Law Enforcement set up a temporary base on the second floor after the attack, and she'd been sequestered in one of the old patient rooms for hours. At first, they ushered her into the room saying it was for her to write a witness statement. But after they collected it, they ignored her questions about Dorcas and about the Director of St. Mungos, and left her alone to watch the sunlight gradually leak out of the small, grimy window in the room.
"Tell me what happened from the beginning."
"I've already written my statement; I don't see why I need to—"
"Ms. Evans," Lily noticed he didn't call her by her official title, "St. Mungos's defenses were breached. Two men have died, and one of our own nearly died. Your little statement hardly clears your name. So start talking before I have to use more... aggressive methods to find out what I need to know," he fingered her wand, rolling it back and forth on the table while he waited for her to begin.
"For the first half of my shift, everything was normal." Lily said, reluctantly.
"Define normal."
Lily explained about the woman with the backfired beauty spell, the paperwork, Edith's research, and going on rounds—purposefully editing out anything related to the Order. It all felt like talking about someone else's life.
"Nothing out of the ordinary happened before you went on rounds?" The blonde man asked.
"No," Lily said. The man grinned at her answer, but it wasn't the fake smile people use to put others at ease. It was the expression of a rabid animal: all bared teeth and hard eyes.
"Really? Because Auror Peterson claims to have seen you at 11:30pm. He said that you and Auror Meadows went into the second floor laboratory." Lily tried to keep her face blank, unsurprised, but inside she felt a spike of panic. She stupidly thought that only she and Dorcas had been out in the halls. Had they talked about anything specific when they left the lab?
"Oh, that's right. I forgot all about that with the attack. It didn't seem important with everything that happened," Lily waved her hand vaguely in front of her.
"You don't think so? Even though just three hours later, the laboratory was blasted apart, killing Healer Erwood?" He leaned forward.
"You think I blew it up, then? That I'm a murderer? " Lily asked, dropping her innocent, airhead act.
"There's reports that you and Healer Erwood had a recent confrontation where you damaged his property."
"We disagreed about how to manage a patient, and I spilled his lunch. That's all! I wasn't even on the second floor during the attack. I was evacuating my floor, the third floor. Do you want proof of that? I've got ten witnesses—my patients—to prove that," She said, trying to master her anger, to think calmly. This accusation explained why she'd been locked in a room for hours, why no one would tell her about Dorcas, why they refused to allow her to go and help with the clean up and start retrieving patients.
"Your intern was. Maybe she was acting on your orders," He said the theory casually, studying the length of her wand. Lily snapped.
"You're ridiculous! If she was acting on my orders, why would she attack me?"
"That's a fair point," He said, "But, you were one of the few people to speak to Erwood before he died. What did you talk about? And before you try and tell me more shit like you forgot, just remember that you're walking a fine line here. One false move," He twirled her wand again, and then pinched the ends of it with each hand, "and it will snap." His tone remained breezy, but he didn't release her wand.
"We didn't talk about anything special. Dorcas is my roommate. I don't know if you heard that. But, for the past week, I'd been complaining about how I couldn't brew the pain dampening potion right, and I didn't know what I was doing wrong. She kept telling me to ask my coworkers for help, but I was too stubborn. So tonight—I guess she had enough of me nattering on and on—she forced me to go and ask Erwood for help. He walked me through the steps of brewing it. It turns out I've been forgetting to put in grundy root each time," Lily finished the lie, leaning into the panic she felt, the fear that this man wanted to see in her. It wasn't enough. He still held her wand.
"You didn't see anything he was working on?" He asked, rolling the ends of the wand between his fingers.
"Of course not. That's the Ministry's business," she answered stiffly.
"So you knew, then, that he was working with the Ministry on a project?"
"That's not a secret. He's been bragging about it to anyone who would listen." He stared at her searchingly, and Lily felt her heart race. She'd never been that good of a liar, but after a moment, he leaned back in his chair, and moved on to his next question.
"When you returned from your tête-à-tête with Erwood, what happened next?"
"I left to go on rounds, and Edith stayed behind. She wanted to finish her research, and promised to catch up later."
"Did you think there was anything unusual about that?"
"No, that's normal for Edith. She's a perfectionist."
"How long till she caught up with you?"
"About twenty minutes or so? I was halfway through checking the vitals of our first patient—"
"Does it normally take you that long to work with each patient?" He raised an eyebrow, but he had let go of one end of her wand and started twirling it around his fingers again. Lily followed his movements.
"Well, this one was a special case. Both of his arms were hit with a severing curse, so yes, it took some time to go through the usual motions with him. But, everything seemed normal as we continued with rounds. I had Edith try out a counter charm for the patient she'd been researching for—a woman who was stuck speaking Troll—but the counter failed. Edith was obviously upset, and when we went back to the break room, I suggested that she leave off with the research for a while, and get some fresh air. You can confirm all of this by looking at the paperwork in my office."
"How did she seem as she left?"
"She seemed tired and frustrated, but nothing extreme."
"Does she do that a lot? Take breaks and leave for an extended period of time?"
"No, I always have to order her to stop working."
He continued to ask questions about Edith's background, blood status, family, personality—but he didn't seem all that interested in Lily's answers. Finally, he asked about the attack. Lily carefully edited out her breathless, panicked race up to Frank and the comatose Phoenixes from her story, and instead focused on describing the evacuations of her patients and her decision to cut through the protective barrier.
"What did you see when you came to the second floor?" Lily closed her eyes as she spoke, remembering the empty canvases, the soft sound of someone crying, a man pointing his wand at a curled up figure on the ground—the source of the crying. She didn't hesitate. Once she had a clear shot, she stunned the man, and scanned the rest of the hallway: empty. Leaving the stunned man on the floor, Lily had turned to the person still curled up against the wall. In the red light, she couldn't tell the exact shade of their robes—if they were a healer or a patient. She knew it couldn't be Dorcas—their hair was much too light. She crouched down and touched the shoulder of their robes; it was splattered in something wet and warm. And it was Edith who looked up, her blue eyes blank, tears glazing her face. For one wonderful moment, as Lily brushed the ash and dust out of Edith's hair and quickly checked for any visible injury, she thought that everything was going to be okay. Edith seemed shell shocked, but whole. And if Edith was okay, then maybe Dorcas would be okay. Maybe Jonathan Wells was safely evacuated. Maybe Lily had made it just in time.
But, the moment did not last: recognition eventually flickered in Edith's eyes, and she lunged for Lily, her fingernails scratching down Lily's face to her neck, her fingers wrapping around her throat, squeezing. The sudden lack of air made Lily react instinctively. She scrambled to pry off the crushing fingers around her neck, tried to wrestle with Edith to loosen the grip, and in the chaos, her hand bumped a thin stick of wood, and Lily remembered she was a witch, and managed to stun Edith with a nonverbal spell. She tried to tell this part unemotionally, welcoming the dissociation that plagued her since she began this interview. But by the end, she was feeling the phantom pain of her newly healed injury: the crushed trachea, the blinding headache, the nausea.
"When Edith was subdued, I reneverated the man I'd stunned (which turned out to be Auror Peterson), and he helped me find Dorcas," Lily opened her eyes, trying to banish the image which floated to her mind, of Dorcas's tall figure crumpled against a wall, the back of her head bashed in, blood pooling around her. Her interrogator's rough voice brought her back to the present:
"And then you sent for Dumbledore," She flinched, jerking back from him.
"What? I-I didn't! Dumbledore's here?" Lily's shock was not forced now: how had he known? Had anyone seen her cast the patronuses? There was some noise coming from the hall now, a voice yelling. The blonde heard it too, and leaned forward, his putrid breath hot against her face as he spoke faster:
"You can stop pretending. I know who you are; I know what you are. You've been caught, Mudblood." Her wand lay on the table between them—he'd stopped toying with it. She met his fierce gaze, and resisted the urge to glance down to see if his hand was still on it. Her mind raced: should she keep playing dumb, or should she attack? Would it catch him off guard, or was her lashing out part of his plan? She twitched her fingers on the table experimentally and saw him tense.
But then the door burst open, and in the momentary confusion, Lily snatched her wand from the table, and slipped it up the sleeve of her robes.
"Rowle," James Potter growled, "I knew it was you! You're the only one dung-brained enough to waste time interrogating the victim instead of the perpetrator."
"Potter," Rowle said James's name like a curse, "this isn't under your jurisdiction. Scrimengeour gave me authority over this case—"
"Don't give me that shit! I've just been called in. You're the one who's not supposed to be here. Scrimengeour benched your ass after you used excessive force on a muggle last week. And you've already cocked this up: not only have you imprisoned a Healer with a level three containment charm, you've barely used any wards on the actual murder's room. This doesn't look good for you. Leave before I decide to make it my personal mission to guarantee that your suspension is permanent." For the first time since he returned, James seemed fully alive. He normally held himself so much in check, so careful and cautious, so that when he was upset, it was a cold, desperate kind of anger that slowly leaked through the cracks in his constructed persona. This was different: fury boiled off of him, almost crackling the air around him, causing an endless spray of sparks from his wand—and so even though he was a full head shorter than Rowle, even though James held no real authority over him, the man retreated.
James waited, eyes trained on the door, making sure Rowle really left. With a swish of his wand, he sealed the door shut again, before turning to face Lily. She found herself standing.
"Alright, Evans?" He asked. His eyes swept her figure, lingering on the bruising around her neck. His hand tightened on his wand. It wasn't shaking. Lily felt dumb. There were so many questions, so many things she needed to know. She couldn't seem to sort out any type of answer. James took a step toward her, "Evans?" It all tumbled out of her:
"He called me mudblood. I was about to duel him. He knows, somehow, he knows. He took my wand and Dorcas! Dumbledore? Have you seen her? Or him? Is she—"
"She's okay. They said she was stable enough for them to move her. I saw Dumbledore when I came in. He's doing his own interrogation. What does Rowle know? Did he hurt you?" James took another step closer.
"No, he didn't hurt me. But he knows I contacted Dumbledore. He knows that I know what Erwood was working on," Lily could feel her panic rising, "he took my wand, James!" The table was the only thing in between them now.
"Does he still have it?"
"No, no, I managed to get it back right when you came in. But, something's wrong with him. I think he must be working for them. The Death Eaters. I lied, but he didn't buy it. You can't let him go—"
"It's too late to catch him; he's probably apparated by now. He has to know that what he's done has put his status in jeopardy. But we'll find him. I'll talk to Scrimengeour and will make sure he's put on a watch list," James said grimly, " I'm sorry it took me so long to get here. I had to convince Scrimengeour to let me on the case. I told him Dorcas alerted me. When I got here, I heard what happened to you, but no one would tell me where you were," He came closer to her, his voice softening, "Are you okay?" James brushed the side of her neck with his thumb, tracing just the edge of the dark red bruising. It twinged, and she must have winced, because he pulled away quickly. The contact lasted just a second, but it was warm and gentle. His touch made it more real: it had been Edith who hurt her. Edith who laughed with her over tea, who talked her out of raging against Erwood, who cheerfully cleaned up buckets of vomit, whose parents took them both out to dinner when Edith got accepted into the program and asked Lily to watch out for her. Her eyes started burning; her throat constricted. She tried to rub her eyes surreptitiously, but he must have seen, because he started rambling: "Obviously you're not okay. That was a stupid question. Here," He waved his wand and conjured a frilly handkerchief. Lily took it and smiled weakly at the Gryffindor Lion in the center. James moved to peer out the lone window, letting her pull herself together.
It was a couple beats before Lily cleared her throat and asked: "Have you seen Edith?"
"Just briefly. She's conscious now. Calm. Dumbledore was in her cell when I arrived. I think he's planning on using Legilimency. It's strange: she left Auror Peterson fairly unharmed compared to you and Dorcas, even though he also tried to defend Wells. Could he be in on it?" James said, musing more to himself, than to Lily.
"Rowle said that Peterson told him about Dorcas and I going into the laboratory last night," Lily said.
"Wait, you did? Why? Had Erwood cracked it?" James spun around from the window in excitement.
"Not exactly," Lily explained the details, wondering, too late, if she should wait, if their room was sufficiently secure. James had started pacing during her explanation once she got to the part about the poison's transformation under moonlight. It hurt, talking about it, the old excitement from last night feeling like an echo. She had thought that this information would change everything. That they would finally have real, significant progress.
"So the poison samples—" James said, after she had finished.
"Probably destroyed," Lily answered. He nodded and rubbed his face, stopping in the middle of the room.
"Right. Well, maybe one survived. Maybe we can salvage something from the wreckage," He started moving back to the door, talking once more to himself.
"Wait," Lily called out. He turned back, nearly to the door, eyebrows raised, "Did it work? What Hestia did. Are you," she groped around for the right word, "better?"
"I don't know. I feel a bit different, so that's something at least. But, I need to go. I've definitely spent too much time here already. I just needed to know—" He cut himself off, something flickered over his face, but then he continued before Lily could identify it: "You should get out of here too. Get some rest, yeah? We'll talk later." He didn't wait for her answer, but Lily saw him straighten his back, and heard his shouts for some of the purple robed wizards to help him dig out the laboratory.
She found herself walking back up to the third floor, away from the chaos, and back into the break room. Painfully, it looked just like she and Edith had left it: there was a pile of paperwork on her desk, a pile of textbooks on Edith's. Lily passed the desks and laid down on the camp bed in the back of the room. Soon, she'd find out where they put Dorcas and oversee the healing herself. Soon, she'd find the director of St. Mungos, and ask to be put to work. But for now, James was right: she needed sleep. The exhaustion that her adrenaline had kept at bay washed over her. She was too tired to worry about Peterson or Rowle, to analyze what James didn't say, to care that she couldn't remember when she last showered or ate something. It was all she could do to cast a protective barrier at the entrance to the room, sealing it against anyone else. As she closed her eyes, she held onto her wand tightly. The next time she saw Rowle, she wouldn't give it up again so easily.
A/N: This chapter was a harder one to write! I had about three different versions of it and a totally different ending planned, but I liked how it turned out. I hope you did too! Thank you so much to my reviewer! Your comment really motivated me to press on and work through this chapter. Also, I wanted to give you all a heads up: I am going to be traveling a lot this next month, so I will probably only update this once in July.