Standard disclaimer

—

Bored with her kill, she comes, a black shadow growing in the firelight. A whip of a wand hand. Dissolving bars. She sings my name in rounds with the rolling echoes, and I launch from the wall, reach for the silhouette at the dungeon's threshold, take it in my arms.

Bellatrix is a length of fever-heat in the dark. Wrappings of old lace over rubber bones. A wet sponge of a tongue and crumbling teeth. She sucks my fingers to the second knuckle, and I thrust once against the swell of her arse, snap her neck, guide the empty husk to the stones so as not to split its stinking, rotten skin.

Salt in my throat. Iron. Still, dead quiet above. It is too late, far too late. I try to lift my legs, to move to the place Hermione last screamed. But I am rage and murder, and the Manor recognizes one of its own. The foundation fuses to my bones.

Try to run. Scratch at the stones with filthy hands.

Whispers from the walls. Hisses. Jeers.

…no rest for the filth that followed you here…no coins for those pretty eyes...

I bellow something wild, wrench to the side. Shake and fumble for the light. The leather is cool and real, and I flip toward the back but can't find the next blank page. The pen slips through my spit-slick fingers, cartwheels off the bed then disappears in the shadow on the floor.

No. Not spit.

Tears.

But no matter, and just as well.

The doctor wants notes on how it feels right after waking, but I know no words for this.

...

"Healer Arkwright has a few conditions," the medi-witch says, glancing up and over her shoulder, "a few rules for interaction, if you will."

We're both trundling along behind her, but she speaks, flicks her lashes, toward Benoit. We've a strict appointment time and this basement corridor is the longest at St. Mungo's, but the stroll to Gwen Jolly's room is languid today, the pace of a slow turn about a manorial garden.

"These last procedures...well, she's proven to be keenly sensitive to magic," this medi-witch, 'Roisin' her tag reads, intones in a hospital voice, licks her lips. The sway of her hips is wide enough to see beneath the loose pleats of her robes. "Silencing charms, environmental controls — any time we've attempted anything like she becomes quite agitated."

The lower ward has the same sanitized smell as the loo at the Burrow, but Roisin's ponytail before us whiffs of pears and fizz. Long, dark hair and dove grey eyes, a quill-point beauty mark just above her punch pink lips. I look at her, but I listen for Benoit, leave a space wide open for him to fill.

Nothing. Silence. Slow footsteps on tile.

"Such being the case," Roisin says into the void, "we try to limit the number of persons at once in her room. Healer Arkwright asks that you both enter directly behind him then stand silently by the door. The less of an audience she perceives, the better." We stop in front of the darkened observation window of Gwen Jolly's chamber. Roisin lowers the clipboard she's had clasped to her chest, straightens her shoulders, makes a final attempt to land the batting lashes. Posture. Presentation. A thousand micro adjustments meant to entice. Her ponytail swings subtly. Pears and fizz.

"Any questions?"

Look at her, look at her lips, I psychically beam into Benoit's reflection in the window. Glance at her tits, her legs, something...

"I don't think so." Benoit drawls over her head to his own image. "No magic and be quiet. I think we've got it. You got it, Potter?"

Roisin's gaze slides to mine, lists off to something over my shoulder. This didn't go how either of us wanted .

"Yeah," I say, "I've got it "

...

Gwen Jolly grasps the pencil like a child readying to destroy a wall with a stub of crayon. She sags, wingless, crownless, over her blankets, face a white rubber mask, a medi-witch arranging a pad of yellowing paper in her free hand. The skin of her knuckles is stretched tight, the pencil jutting from her fist like a nasty, fat stinger.

Healer Arkwright coos soft encouragement, takes his seat by the bed. Benoit shifts silently by his side of the door. Roisin is stiff, unsmiling in the corner.

The healer glances at our list of questions. "We'll start with a description. Any detail, smells, sounds..." he says, "nothing is insignificant..."

The pencil tip digs into the pad as Gwen Jolly writes, her forearm sawing back and forth. She starts out rigid, slow, and then quick. Quicker. I watch the eraser, a pearl of coral pink tossing in a white sea, zigging, zagging, then swiftly, mechanically arcing over her head, plunging down. Her guttural shriek hits me in the knees. Blood sprays, speckles the wall, the sheet, the yellowed pad. A flash of topaz light. Gwen Jolly slumps limp against the wall. Roisin's clipboard clatters to the floor. Healer Arkwright moves much faster than I assumed he could. His fingers drip red as he works over the wound in Gwen Jolly's wrist.

Three more medi-witches rush in, two to assist and an Aunt Petunia clone to dispatch rapid-fire questions about Benoit's spell. Immense uproar. Benoit is unflappable in his corner. Yes, it's safe. Yes, it's protocol. Reports must be filed. Of course he's available now.

All other hands occupied, I cross the room. I get one glance at Gwen Jolly through the commotion, Roisin pushing the wild, white hair back off the fresh scars of her forehead, the bloody smudge over the pulse point of her neck. The pencil dislodges from the bedcovers as Healer Arkwright takes a step back, makes an insignificant *tic* as it hits the tiles. I approach the foot of the bed, pick up the yellow pad buried in the stained blankets.

TAKE ME BACK TAKE ME BAC TO HIM

Her letters are overlapping spikes carved through, escaping the edges of the paper .

TAK ME BACK TAKE ME BACK TAKE ME BA

...

Benoit probes his breast pocket, fixes his eyes on the half moon floor counter as the lift doors seal shut. He taps a couple cigarettes from the pack he's extracted, tucks one behind his ear, holds the other out to me. I take it as the lift shudders upward.

"Did you see her head?" he says. "Butchered."

"It's better she rest comfortably than look nice, I suppose."

They took the crown last week, after the bones began to fracture in her sleep, the shards pushing through the thinning skin. I lean my own whole skull against the lift wall, ponder impossible circumstances and inevitable outcomes. It's terrible to know we can flee, are fleeing, but this hospital is it for Gwen Jolly. She'll drink all her meals and wear what she's given and only feel the touch of strangers she can never really know, and the unstable magic that altered her body will continue its unpredictable break down until... no one knows, really. She has to be able lay her head on a pillow, at least.

The bell for the ground floor dings and Benoit bolts from the lift like a bronco breaking from a stall. I follow him through the entrance window into the drizzle blowing sideways under the awning outside. He sucks down half his fag before I have mine lit, props his boot against the red brick.

"This is so much worse than we thought," he says. His cheeks hollow as he inhales. "He didn't just let her go, Potter, he put her out."

This is what Benoit does. Grunts out the one thing I'd rather not hear, lets it hang, dripping.

Draw forth all the grim details. Four previous known victims in the States, all female. All drained of bodily pigments and physically altered to varying degrees. Common injuries: a missing tongue, and worn, flaking skin about the wrists. All found naked and deceased, arranged as if sleeping, atop a relative's grave. Women suddenly alone in the world. No ties, No protection. Easy targets. Ripe marks. Benoit Portkeyed into town after victim five turned up in Tower Hamlets, curled like a white cat around three cross bundles at the base of her great-grandmother's tombstone.

And now there's Gwen Jolly, shattering every theory of motive and mens rea.

"What are we looking at with her wrists? Why bind her to let her go?"

Benoit squints into the street, flattens his lip against his bottom teeth, knuckles an itch on his chin.

"I've been thinking about that. You ever tie anyone up?" He says, flicks ash from his cigarette. "Someone who was into it? Who wanted it? Lotta people out there just waiting for someone else to take control.'"

"No one wants this." I gesture at the ground, toward the under hole where Gwen Jolly now lives.

The corner of his mouth twists in and up. "Every soured relationship starts out nice and lovey. Hell," he tilts his chin quick toward the building, "she'd rather die than be without him, now. "

"So, they go willingly, and now you're convinced they stay willingly..."

"It's not Enchantment as we know it, is what I'm saying. He draws from deeper wells. Wildcat magic."

This fag tastes awful and my empty stomach clenches, then rolls. Definitely the cigarette making me ill and not the depraved complexities of whatever holds Gwen Jolly in place. I look at the burning tip, blow into it, watch it flare orange and red, then drop it, crush it under my boot.

"We're never going to catch him out on the front end," Benoit says, "and with victims like this, we'll never get him on the back, either." He smashes the cigarette butt against the brick, flicks it under the tires of a passing black BMW, begins to walk. "I don't see any way around canvassing on foot, now. He could have her anywhere, any vacant nook or cranny in this city. We'll need as many bodies as we can get. "

It's the day before Christmas Eve. Half the force is on holiday for the next two weeks and then the other half, staggering on into January. It's the very worst time of year to be a victim of a dark wizard. Even worse if you're a Muggle with no family checking in, making noise. Even worse when the dark wizard isn't really a wizard, but an eclectic magician, a root-work enchanter who leaves no magically discernible trace.

The grind of it all. Impossible. Inevitable.

I step behind Benoit, give way for a young woman pushing a pram. Benoit gives a polite nod and she tries to hold his glance, smiles the same little smile I last saw Hermione smile, weeks ago in the fourth floor corridor.

My stomach clenches, then rolls.

The impossible, the inevitable.

It can't be good that the moments I feel anything at all anymore, all feel exactly the same.

...

Joan Scarlet is alarmed at my appearance, her eyes and mouth arranging themselves into the same shapes I saw working over Gwen Jolly's bed this morning. She offers me a seat, something to drink, thanks me quietly when I place my black book in her hands.

I lean back, count pages turned, remember the last time I sat in this same chair. Joan Scarlet is a careful reader, a recorder of copious notes. I stare at the ceiling, try to focus on the sound of her scrolling pen instead of the bad buzz in my head. I try to recover the drowsy ennui of those blank days, to sink toward the velvet instead of this new thrumming, nameless dread.

"Well," Joan Scarlet finallly says, closing my book around her fingertip, "here we are, again."

I nod, look at her hand covering my black book. She never mentions missed appointments, just catches up with my scribblings, lets the three weeks of unasked questions hang like wet washing in the air.

"And how are you feeling today, Harry?"

I think about it a moment, decide not to answer, look up into the lamp's reflection in her glasses, instead. "Can I ask a question, first?"

"Of course," she says.

"You sit facing the aquarium. Wouldn't it be more soothing for the patient to be able to see?"

She tilts her head, smiles. "I know it's rather cliche, but a great majority of my patients actually do prefer to avail themselves of the sofa, here." She gestures beside her. "The aquarium came second and is situated to that end. Perhaps a better question is: Why do you prefer that chair?"

Because I'm not a lost little lad who needs a lie down. Because one's easier to gut when they're supine.

"I don't want to get too comfortable," I say.

"Indeed," she says. "I imagine it serves you well in your profession, constant vigilance." The turn of phrase clangs in my head, the bordering on weary way she says it, a reminder this woman's husband died in the same war as my parents. "All the same," she says, reopening my book, "I wouldn't be doing my job if I didn't attempt to 'breach the defenses,' so to speak."

"I'm an open book." I say. "Right there at your fingertips."

"That's an interesting way to put it." She smiles, unthwarted. "Have you ever re-read what you've written here?"

"No, thank you. Writing it out in ink is quite enough."

"I ask because there are themes, you see." Her voice slips into the slow cadence, the calm, hypnotique blue. "Ever emerging from the very beginning. The patterns were evident your last visit, but now they're undeniable and, frankly, judging from what I can assess of your physical state, I'd be entirely professionally remiss if I failed to address them, and one in particular." Her smile has faded. She looks at the place her finger holds.

"Harry, I think you know what I'm going to say..."

The aquarium hums and burbles. The usual cool smell of her office today has a hint of forest pine. I can still taste the cigarette from earlier in the back of my throat when I swallow, and I think how nice it would be to have a double shot of Ogden's to finally wash it away.

"I'd like to talk about Hermione. I'd like to try to understand where she fits as a person in your life."

My pulse in my fingertips, bad buzzing in my head. "I've told you before, she's a friend. There's really nothing to talk about."

"Nothing? Nothing at all in this 'open book'..." Joan Scarlet flips through the filled pages fast, like a child making a stick man drop, hang, and swing.

"Look, you already know about the war, and she was a huge part of...of all that," I say. "It makes sense she'd be a...a symbol..."

"A symbol? Of what?"

"Of that time. Those days. I don't know"

"Interesting. Do you believe you often dream in symbols?"

"Not often, no."

She glances down at my book, then back up. I walked right into that one and now I see no way to back out. I close my eyes and breathe deep. Metallic carrot and Christmas wreath. My pulse in my fingertips. I hear the familiar manipulation of leather book cover.

"Harry..."

I don't open my eyes. I can feel my brows making a vee.

"It's no great mystery, alright? She was right next to me the whole bloody time, always there. At the worst of everything. Why shouldn't she be in my nightmares?"

I stand, go to the fish tank. They dart at my approach, hide in dark enclaves, vibrant finned discs. The tank's water is crystalline, glittering.

"She was a good friend in hard times?" Joan Scarlet says.

"Yes."

"When did you first meet?"

"When we were eleven, on the first train ride to school."

Her pen scrolls across the yellow pad.

"And when did you become friends?"

"A couple of months after."

"And she was your friend throughout school?"

"Yes."

"And all throughout the war?"

"Yes."

"She was immediately present with you throughout the war?"

"Yes, I've said..."

"Would you say you're still friends, now?"

Her face in the fourth floor corridor. The way her eyes slipped from mine. What must I have looked like to make her look to him.

"I don't know. Maybe."

"Was there a falling out?"

"No," I say, picking up the cylinder of fish food, turning it over in my hand.

Joan Scarlet lets the silence unwind. Two of the finned discs float, undulating blue and purple, behind a chunk of rock. They've stopped their darting, look intent on listening, on hearing this sad story.

"I don't think I ever told you - because why would it have mattered - but she and Ron were engaged. Were. He broke it off, and I haven't...haven't really talked to her since." It sounds every bit as stupid said aloud as I thought it would.

"When did they break their engagement?"

"Six, seven weeks ago..."

"Do you feel she did something wrong?"

I pop the flip top of the fish food with my thumbnail. Close it with my pointer finger.

"No."

"Is there a reason you can't speak with her?"

Yes.

"No. Not really."

Open, close. Open, close.

"Do you feel it would be inappropriate, in light of your friendship with Ron?"

Certainly.

"No, that's not it."

The flipping of pages. The scrolling of a pen on yellow pad. One of the finned disks floats close to, almost breaks, the water's surface.

"How would you describe your friendship with Hermione before these dreams began?"

I snort, quick, mirthless. "'The platonic ideal.' Not my phrase, but I suppose it's close enough."

"Whose phrase is it?"

"Everyone's. Professors, colleagues, friends."

Open, close. Open, close.

"But you don't necessarily agree?"

"She's like a sister to me."

"What does that mean to you, 'a sister'?"

It doesn't mean anything, anymore. It's just something I say.

"I guess... we're like family, with all the good and bad that implies," I set the fish food back on the table, turn to lean against the edge.

Joan Scarlet makes a brief note, looks up at me and takes off her glasses, makes sure I can see the whole of her very earnest face.

"Harry, I want to reiterate there's no need for rote answers, here. You don't have to present as always feeling the proper, or noble, or acceptable thing. Often, we suppress feelings we believe are at odds with who we desire others to perceive us to be. It's my job to not judge you that way,"

"I don't know what you mean," I say.

"I mean, neutral feelings don't typically manifest chronic nightmares of increasing violence and peril, and yet," she taps my book with one finger, "you hear Hermione run, fight, or die nearly every night in your dreams."

Bad buzzing in my head. She didn't ask a question, so I stare at the chevron rug, don't bother forming a reply.

"I say 'hear,' because not once do you describe her as if being 'seen.' Why do you think that is?"

"It's just the way it comes together in my mind..."

There's something too close to honest about this, a chip in the black glass box, and I can't talk about Hermione, anymore. Joan Scarlet cocks her head, about to press deeper, but I'm way ahead, toss my biggest spanner in the works.

"I think maybe it's stemming from the job, and this last victim hidden away, and how horrible it is to witness..." I begin, then rattle on and on, a steady stream of low-grade bollocks jamming up the gears, running out the clock. And she's too smart to not know what I'm doing, but Joan Scarlet is a consummate professional, and there's no way she'll interrupt me until my time is up.

...

I've missed the big, noon clear out, and the Ministry is deserted, cavernous, the Atrium awash in disordered human artifacts - sticky patches and smudged surfaces, half-fallen decorations and overflowing bins.

I pluck an abandoned Prophet from the top of the tallest trash heap on my way into the lift, look for Sports, but get hung up in Society. Ginny's face in the picture glances over her shoulder then forward on a loop, her pupils huge, cutting inside kohl rimmed lids. Italy's Finest Seeker's hand rests low on her stomach, hitching the short, sequined dress an extra inch up her hard thigh. She looks thin these days, hunted and hungry in a wild way, and, as the bell for the second floor dings, I wonder if Marco Giordano has pushed those sequins up over her arse like I did in that club loo in Kensington, or if he unzips her proper, lets her shed her shiny skin like a lady.

It's too charged a thought to ponder long, and I stuff the Prophet in the nearest bin, make my way back to the open conference room Benoit uses for planning. The second-floor lamps are low, the cubicle maze still but for the weak flash of faerie lights, forgotten somewhere deep in the middle, blinking a half note out of sync with an endless loop of Jingle Bells tooting from what sounds like a penny whistle.

I imagine I smell Benoit just before I see him. Damp forest floor, musk. This room holds odd pockets of his scent even when he's gone, and it's not unusual to see one or another female Auror in here sometimes, perusing the things he's posted to the walls. He lounges against the edge of the table, legs before him, arms crossed, staring at a Muggle map of the city divided into quadrants overlaid with concentric circles.

"Pendleton's given us three teams beside ourselves," he says. "Honestly, more than I'd hoped for this late in the game."

I look at the map, the ramshackle mess of streets and lanes. We'd need ten teams to handle this in a timely manner, but Benoit seems intent on being satisfied with what he's given, which means nothing less than eighteen hour days over the next month, if we're lucky.

"I guess we'll take the holiday and convene here Boxing Day. No pressure from a family, so...Pendleton sees no need to trample all over anyone else's plans," he says.

Plans. Christmas Eve at the Weasley's, and then Christmas Day with Teddy and Andromeda. How would Victoria Pettit have spent her holiday if she hadn't been lured by Prosper Roque? Sat in her flat watching telly? Gone out for a curry and then to the cinema? Twenty-seven years old. No family. Mother left when she was a child, then died in a traffic accident. Father had cancer, deceased five years. No close friends. No traceable romantic relationships. No one to raise an alarm except co-workers and a manager extremely concerned about when she could retrieve the office key from Pettit's keychain. No one and nothing. Not so much as a goldfish waiting to be fed at home.

Benoit has said this is how he chooses them, and it's why they go - the ties to the life they're living are worn too thin to hold.

"You and I could get started, now," I say, looking at the map. "Hit several places tonight, pick off a few more tomorrow morning, then a few more on Christmas afternoon. We could eliminate this entire centre region before the other teams even begin."

I've managed to dull the manic edge of the words and they come out reasonably disinterested, selfless. I just want to find Victoria Pettit, after all, just want to spare her as much damage as possible. This is it, one hundred percent. Nothing to do with keeping Benoit completely occupied. Nothing to do with making sure he's well busy and directly within my line of sight.

"I admire your dedication, Potter, but maybe we split Christmas Day, if you're game. My engagements start around the time yours are winding down, but, I agree, it'd be a shame to waste the hours..."

"Fair enough," I say. And it is. Very fair. And it's the last thing I wanted.

Roughly eighteen hours he'll be on his own, left to his own considerable devices.

Bad buzzing in my head. The feeling I can't seem to shake.

It could be just anyone, but it's not, I know...

Her smile in the corridor. The way he has ignored every other woman in our path since.

The impossible. The inevitable.

There might not be 'plans' as such, but they are going to intercept. I can't say how he'll make it so, but it will happen, as if by magic. I've known it, have felt his intent growing like a botfly under my skin, since the day he caught her parchment in my office.

We have work to do, and this can't get in the way. She's a grown woman, and it's none of my business.

Old mantras. The worn-out seal on the black glass box. No match for the thrumming dread.

"No point in dallying about here, then," I say. "Let's bloody get on with it."

So, it's, uh, been a while...