Chapter One: Feed The Fear.
Hemlock Potter's P.O.V
The Corringham's lived in a happy little two storey house on the fringes of Coventry. Neat, tidy, but well lived in. It was the kind of home to drink warm milk in on summer nights, by the gentle flames of the living room hearth, laughing over folly while sipping from teacups. In this home, you pulled up a chair and you simply belonged.
The paint on the walls was thick, newly coated a lively lilac, the very same hue of spring forget-me-nots in morning light, always shifting on the mood of the mother. There were grooves in the carpet, trodden in, from the rearranging of furniture, lifting and adjusting monthly, a house always in transformation, a home never quite finished.
On the settee sat Mr Corringham wringing the spindly hands in his lap, rationalizing away with that fever that could only come from the devotedly blind. Mrs Corringham was beside him, locked down and out, a whole sea away in her mind, almost resigned. She refused to look in any direction that would allow her a glimpse of Mr Corringham.
Their marriage would be over in seven months, Hemlock thought.
Three, if Mrs Corringham kept fiddling with her wedding ring as she was, mindlessly, twisting, rolling, readying to take it off and hurl as far away from herself as possible.
"Emily could have gone off by herself. She's a very independent girl, my Em. She didn't like the dorms in Hogwarts. She always wrote home about them. No privacy. Too loud. Maybe… Maybe this whole magic business got too much for her. Maybe she… Maybe she… Left and she's in Scotland. She liked nature. She could be visiting the Highlands. Have you checked the Highlands? You can do that, can't you? With your… Your magic. You can check the Highlands and find my Em."
Lupin sat opposite the married-couple-who-wouldn't-be-married-for-much-longer. He was everything he should be here, kind and nice and thoughtful, graciously drinking from the kitten teacup Mr Corringham had handed him as soon as he sloped through the door.
Decidedly everything Hemlock wasn't.
Hemlock stuck to the wall, separated and removed from the homely scene. Circling like a shark watching a shoal of fish, just waiting for that deviation, a slip, the drop of blood in the ocean so she could strike. Or run.
She might run.
She didn't like this cosy, rustic home. She didn't like the welcoming air. She didn't like the warm and so very ordinary ambience. It was everything she never had, and it made her skin itch like someone had plunged her into anthrax.
Hemlock shouldn't be here.
She wasn't the type of Auror one sent to the grieving families. On the Contrary, she was the one kept away, lurking in the behind the scenes, where no one could see or hear her. She always said the wrong thing, came off as unfeeling, aloof, especially in a time of emotional need, and was the last thing anybody distraught needed to deal with.
And yet, here she was, thanks to Lupin dragging her here from his office this morning.
She hadn't even had a coffee yet.
Mrs Corringham cut in, voice as dead as her daughter.
"She looks just like those other girls. The ones who… The ones who…"
There was a folded Daily Prophet on the coffee table between Lupin and the couple. Muggleborn parents constantly bought the subscription to try and keep up in a world they would never fully grasp. All for the sake of their children. She would guess most of them didn't understand ninety percent of what the paper held.
Usually.
Hemlock supposed the front-page story peeking among the crease, headlining the abduction of seven girls from Hogwarts, magical photo's all lined in a pretty little row, the startling similarities between them and the Corringham's also missing daughter, and Lupin and her own appearance at their door this morn, was something they could add together and get four.
Lupin was lucky news had not leaked of the eighth, Emily, before they could visit the parents.
Merlin knew what hysterics they could have walked in on otherwise.
Morgana, Hemlock wasn't good at these… Things.
What was she supposed to say?
I'm sorry your daughters dead. Oh yes, she's dead. The only reason we keep calling this a missing persons case is because one; we have no body yet, and two; the higher ups believe it will ease your panic and let you answer all our questions in a timely manner. Got to keep to the schedule, you know. Good news, you can now, as you've been thinking about, convert her old bedroom into a study. Bad news, you can now convert her old bedroom into a study because your daughter died horrifically. Every cloud, aye?
Thankfully, small mercies and all that corny jazz, Lupin had, smartly, taken the lead in talking.
"She does fit the profile, yes."
A soft yes, to keep the hopes up but not outrightly lie. A good choice. The only choice really, as Mr Corringham blinked rapidly, grasping onto that slight slither of fervent faith, voice quivering, frantically holding on.
"Could Emily still be alive?"
Lupin chose his words deliberately, picking the very best of a poor lot.
"We cannot give a definitive answer currently. However, we are doing everything we can to-"
Hemlock cut him off.
"How's the cat?"
Mrs Corringham frowned at her, gaze finally focusing on more than some distant, imaginary wall. Hemlock could feel the heat of it steal over the back of her neck, another unpleasant itch on top of numerous aches, faced away from the trio. They had a rocking chair hovering in the corner of the living room, wooden, velvet, flower embellished cushion strapped to the wicker seat. Fur, mottled brown and black, clung to the tiny golden tassels.
A favourite batting toy.
"Excuse me?"
In the depths of the house, almost as if it wanted to punctuate Hemlock's question, a cat meowed and-
A scratching noise.
Emily's familiar.
Kneazle, by the photograph on the mantle of a grinning eleven-year-old clutching at her cat for the first time.
"How is the cat? It's a kneazle, isn't it? Smart creatures. Smarter than most give them credit for. Curious too. They normally swamp new visitors, feeling out friend or foe for their owner. So, where is it now? How is the cat?"
The Corringhams didn't seem to know how to answer her questions, odd and seemingly irrelevant to the topic of the day. But it was relevant, and it was important. Hemlock may not be able to ease their grief or sooth their fear, but she could do one thing.
Bring their child's killer to justice.
As no one had for her parents.
That had to count for something, right?
Mr Corringham coughed into a tight fist, regaining his baring.
"I didn't notice… But, yes. Athena-… The cat, she's been upstairs all morning. I can't stop her from scratching at Emily's door. She just keeps-"
Hemlock canted her head in Lupin's general direction.
"The father and boyfriend were right. Hogwarts and O.W.L's were getting too much, so she snuck off during the Hogsmeade trip and came home to visit her parents to clear her head. Whatever her housemates saw that evening, going to bed, it wasn't her. They weren't home, You both work nights, correct?"
Dazedly they nod.
Shit.
"He took her from here."
Lupin didn't hesitate to free his wand and cast a Patronus at Hemlock's declaration, already speaking as the glowing ball crooked to a proud looking wolf.
"The Corringham's house is a crime scene. I need a Response unit here immediately. Tonks, Lovegood, Thomas, and Finnigan."
The Corringhams were trying to wrap their heads around the quick flurry of action, as the Patronus bounded through the wall, carrying Lupin's orders, puffing into a wisp of quickly disseminating gleaming smoke.
"Can I see your daughter's room?"
Mrs Corringham jittered and stumbled at Hemlock's question, a spider clawing at ceramic, struggling not to be washed down the drain.
"Auror's were up there only this morning. Just six hours ago to-"
"Please."
Mr Corringham nodded.
The snap of dragon-hide gloves echoed in the narrow upstairs hallway. Along the wall, a hundred memories smiled back from lovely glass frames. Hemlock declined looking too long at any single one. Recollections were like honey, tacky and tempting and tricking.
The scales were cool and crisp on her hands, chilling, protective of most dark magic should Hemlock find some and accidentally touch. They found the kneazle skulking at the end of the murky hallway, at the very last room, prowling, circling, scratching at door, eager to get inside.
Desperate.
Hemlock prevented Mr Corringham from reaching for the door handle by jutting out her arm, blockading, never touching, just warning.
"I'll get that. Could you put your hands in your pockets and, whatever you do, don't touch anything in that room."
Even outside, Hemlock could feel the magic emanating from the closed bedroom. Eerie. Faint and faded, but gliding. Illusions floating in the air. The killer was good with magic. Good and conceited, and bold.
There was no attempt to conceal it.
None whatsoever.
That could mean only one thing.
It wasn't here six hours ago, when the Auror's came snooping for clues. They would have felt it too. They would have searched.
He came back.
Somewhere between now and six hours ago, perhaps while the Corringham's were downstairs or in the kitchen, the killer was right here, in their child's bedroom. Perhaps in the very room he had taken her from.
Mr Corringham shook his head, out of depth, windless with the effort to stay afloat.
"We've been in and out all day. I was only in there an hour ago to-"
Hemlock didn't tell him that, quite possibly, his dead daughter was in there, and due to the magic, an hour ago, he could have walked right on past her without batting an eye. He could have traipsed through her blood. He could have kicked her corpse. He could have-
He could have ruined all the evidence.
Hemlock violently shook her head at the wasp of a thought.
That wasn't her.
That wasn't her.
Merlin, he was already there, in, mould, oozing, soaking in her neurons. Taking, seizing, snatching-
Hemlock gestured down to the kneazle at their feet.
"You can hold Athena, if it's easier?"
Mr Corringham picked the kneazle up as instructed, the beast of fur meowing and restless in his arms. Hemlock draped a gloved hand around the knob, and with one last settling breath, opened the bedroom door.
The light from the hallway streaked across the floor in a golden stripe, up the wall, bloating and ballooning. Her footsteps creaked on the floorboards, coming to a halt just inside the door, the wrong side of right.
Instantly, she saw the open window, sheer curtains fluttering in the breeze.
Blindly, she patted the wall beside her, found the switch, and flicked.
The bed.
A shimmer.
The disillusionment charm came silently, wandlessly.
It fell gracefully, effortlessly, like the sheer curtains fluttering and flapping.
The killer had wanted it down, or he would have chosen a tougher spell to break. He wanted the girl found, right here, right now and-
Emily laid on her bed, above the covers, clasped hands resting at her breathless bosom. She was still in her pajamas, as if she had just gone to sleep. The grey pallor of her skin and the rupture wounds ripping through her chest and dress gave the artifice of slumber away.
Sleeping beauty torn to shreds, don't you want to get out of bed? See the morning, feel the sun, come to play and-
Sadly, Mr Corringham only saw his baby girl, rushing forward.
"Emily?"
Mr Corringham was delighted, ecstatic, and it lasted all of two seconds before he saw what Hemlock did. Only once, even here, even now, it was all she could stomach, Hemlock touched him, arm snapping out, hand on shoulder, tight, yanking back.
"I need you to leave the room now, Mr Corringham."
Realizing the worst, Mr Corringham abruptly dropped the kneazle.
Lupin inched up to Hemlock's side, his shadow devouring her own on the floor. She wanted to laugh. Still, here, even her shadow was no longer her own. Consumed.
From the corner of her eye, she watched him reach for her shoulder, then hesitate, hand dropping back to his side lankly, swinging like a pendulum. No touch. Fragile. Break. She wasn't fucking glass. However, he did stand close. Too close. She could smell his cologne, something with sandalwood and musk.
It irritated her.
"We'll be just outside. Come get us when you feel ready. Take all the time you need. We'll only come in when you say so, alright?"
Hemlock could only nod.
She was itchy and tight and everything wrong. Empty. This was the worst part. The hollowing. Making room for the other to take space, guzzle and gobble and gargle on the husk she became.
She shouldn't do this.
She always took something back with her in the end.
A shade.
A taint.
A voice.
Despite all this, or worryingly, because of it, Hemlock nodded, staring at not-slumbering-Emily on her bed. It wasn't for Lupin's sake. Nor anyone in the Ministry. Not even for the Corringhams. It was for Emily, and for Hemlock too, for the little girl locked in a cupboard who never got an answer as to how she ended up there.
Hemlock had no doubt Lupin and his team would catch the killer, unlike those on her parents case. Eventually. They were the best Aurors and Unspeakables in the business. But no one could do it faster than Hemlock. Perhaps, if the winds blew in their favour, she might even nab him before the ninth girl went missing. So she nods.
Only nods.
And breaks a little inside.
Hemlock couldn't hear much. Noise was dulled here, as if she was sinking underwater. Down, down, down, down, until, right there, a raw hum, a throbbing, the beat of her heart echoing in her ear. And she stared, and she sank, and she sank, and she stared.
Luna Lovegood, all blond strands, airy and dreamy, snapped a few pictures. Dean Thomas, solid, built like a beater, was scanning the window for traces of magic. Nymphadora Tonks, bright eyed with her bubblegum pink hair, was by the rug, checking for footprints and flint. Seamus Finnigan was on his belly, wand tipped with a Lumos, peering underneath the fourposter bed. The cold light caught the shadow of a cracked bed board.
One by one, they abandoned their arduous tasks, Lupin herding them out the room, despite a few protests from Finnigan and Tonks and, suddenly, Hemlock was alone.
Alone and tumbling.
The cool water lapped at the plains of her face, cooling smouldering skin. Gingerly, fingers quivering, Hemlock turned off the facet of the ensuite bathroom, bracing hands on sink, leaning heavily.
Sagging, in truth.
Shaking.
She was always shaking, blurring, melting-
Hemlock sank her hand into her jeans back pocket, plucking free a small glass vial. With a flick of her thumb, the cork popped free and bounced into the sink with a patter and a plop. She downed the lot. The taste of pale pine leaves, peppermint and something old like cobwebs haunting her tongue. The thrumming at her temple dimmed to a stinging hum.
Merlin bless whoever invented the Calming Draught.
With a wave of her hand, the bottle and cork vanished.
She could do this.
She would do this.
One look.
Just one.
Using the tail end of her shirt, Hemlock dried off her face and squared her shoulders.
Hemlock was on the roof, hunched by Emily's window, which led to a small porch roof. She sat on the gritty shingles, hugged her knees to her chest, her damp shirt pressing cold across her belly. She breathed in the night air, cleansing the smell of Emily's death from her nose.
High up, hidden by the chimney, Hemlock could see Aurors on the lawn, healers with a small tent, treating a traumatized Mr and Mrs Corringham. She thought she could hear the former's sobs from all the way up here. She took one last breath, exhaled in a cloud, and closed eyes.
A flash of hideous green, the wail of a woman's dying scream. Hollow.
Hemlock's eyes flickered open. She was crouching outside Emily's window, merging into the shadow of the chimney. It was easy to get up here. The killer was quick and nimble and clever, and these are muggles. Poor muggles. They didn't even have a ward up.
The neighbourhood was quiet and empty at this time of night. No roving cars. No visitors or travellers. Nothing but the stars and wind.
It was just him and Emily.
He watched through the window of her bedroom, limbs and joints growing stiff and stony. It was painful, but he didn't feel it. This was not a chore. This was…
Ecstasy.
Undulating and never ending.
Emily was sleeping soundly in her bed. He was pleased. She was peaceful and calm, and everything he ever wanted for her. Not a care in the world. Not a fear to be found. Serene in the lands of her dreams.
He reached out.
The window clicked as it cracked open.
Emily wanted him here. She knows. She must. Otherwise, she would have locked her window. He doesn't think, he can't, it isn't in him to think she was too muggle for wards, and too wizarding for locks.
He finds the open window, and it was all the invitation he needed.
A splinter of a feeling in his gut, a shard of malformed pity. Emily. Poor Emily. A girl trapped between worlds, one foot in one, the other balancing in the next, stretching her too thinly. You can never last in two worlds for long. It would eat you up and split you open like ripe fruit left to rot. One day, she would have to choose as his dear-
He was here to save her from that. Save her from the hatred and fear. He can understand her. Better than her muggle parents, better than her pureblood friends.
He knows.
And he'll save her, because he loved her.
That was what this was. This wasn't hatred. This wasn't anger. It used to be, when he was a boy. He loved one before, a girl like her, and she scorned him, and it spoiled his insides, wrenched his organs up to bloody knots and loops. He used to despise her kind. Despise them so much. Loathed them with every fibre of his being.
Scum.
Vermin.
But then he saw her, so different but achingly familiar to the one of his boyhood, the golden egg, and suddenly, he saw the wonder and beauty all over again. The veil was lifted.
Yet, he can't touch her.
Can't…
Can't.
So he filled the fissures with Emily's and Dawn's and Margery's. Close, but never close enough.
Never her.
This isn't hatred.
This is a love letter.
His gaze swept the body on the bed, still sleeping, still dreaming, bending over her flesh like the lines of a love poem that wraps up a tongue in ties.
It was Emily or her.
He chose Emily.
He loomed over a slumbering Emily Corringham. Once More, he watched her for a long while. Counted her breaths with his, a shared air and a shared heart. There were tears in his eyes, cresting on lashes until it obscured his vision.
This wasn't for pleasure.
It was a need.
And it's sad, and it's tragic, and it burns.
But he has to. He has to and-
It happened suddenly, on an ephemeral urge.
He bore down on Emily's chest with a knee. He was tall and heavy, though willowed with a condensed sort of strength. Bare branches in winter. Emily never stood a chance. He felt her ribs cracking below his knee, as, concurrently, his long-fingered hands, piano hands his mother would call them, were swaddled around Emily's dainty, spun glass throat.
Wringing and coiling.
It's sudden, and it's terrible, and it's violent.
And there was nothing more beautiful.
Emily startled awake, dropping from dreams into dread untold. She battled beneath him, below his deft hands and heavy knee, face swelling with pressure, capillaries in her skin wrinkling and bursting, breaking to red flecks and specks, the white of her eyes bleeding red as everything, everything, inside her struggled for air.
He was crying now, openly, tears streaming down his cheeks as if his face was a map being cleaved by running rivers. Emily cries too. They both cry, and they both fight, and only one wins.
Emily tried to scream, call for help, beg for mercy, but she couldn't get so much as a wheeze out her enclosed throat, encapsulated by his hands.
He holds her life in his palms, holds it and crushes.
With one final shove, one last heave over, the bed board beneath breaks, Emily's ribs shatter and crack, a lung is pieced and the neck snapped.
She went limp in his hold.
Emily was dead, but the work had only just begun.
He needed to take her home and-
"Are you Hemlock Potter?"
Hemlock viciously hurtled back into her body with a whirl, a wave, and a well-hidden gag. Nymphadora Tonks stood in the bedroom, opposite the bed, the door wide open, blinking at her, head cocked curiously. When Hemlock responded, it was barely a gust of wind from voice box, hoarse and husky.
"You're not supposed to be in here."
She was standing over Emily's body, Hemlock noted. Thankful she was not touching her, heaving over, baring down and-
Hemlock didn't know when she had come through the window, or how long she had been standing there, but, again, she never knew.
"You wrote the bloody book on Vampiric behaviours in murder. If it wasn't for your work, so many werewolves would still be rotting in Azkaban, paying for the crimes of vampires."
Instead of leaving it at that, letting Hemlock catch her breath, gain her footing, rub away the fog still clouding her pounding head, Tonks brandished her wand, pointing to the sprawling space between them.
"I found velvet in two of the wounds… You're not a real Unspeakable, are you?"
Most wizards and witches in the EVU were Aurors only on record, but Unspeakables in truth. They needed the cover for the extreme cases they faced. Hemlock hardened.
"I am an Auror. I teach at the department."
Tonks's head slanted to the other side, resembling an overgrown puppy.
"You've never been an Unspeakable?"
Hemlock's eye fled to the floor.
"Strict vetting processes."
Tonks beamed at that, as bright and cheery as her hair.
"Yeah, detects instability. Are you unstable, Potter?"
Lupin chose that moment to come thundering into the room, glaring at Tonks. The woman only smiled wider, found it all the funnier. In Spite of bluntness and brashness and, plainly put, goading attitude, Hemlock found something… Refreshing about this woman.
She didn't treat Hemlock like she needed kiddy gloves.
"You're not supposed to be in here."
Lupin barked, unintentionally repeating what Hemlock had said. Or was it Hemlock who unknowingly mirrored Lupin? Heads or tails.
Tonks shrugged, with the carelessness only a Black could ever show.
"I peeped in and she wasn't here. So I thought I would get a jump start on the shitload of work we have on our hands. I found antler velvet in two of the wounds. I was looking for velvet in the other wounds when Potter came prowling through the window and just stood there… Staring."
Hemlock winced hard and hobbled back until her spine aligned with wall, shoving her hands deep into her jacket pocket. Before Lupin could say whatever was about to come babbling out his open mouth, Thomas popped his head through the door, before he too scuttled in. Now that Tonks and Lupin were in the room, it was apparently a free for all.
"Deer and elk pin their prey. They put all their weight on the antlers and try to suffocate the opposition. That's how they kill foxes and coyotes."
Lupin sighed, connecting dots.
"Emily Corringham was strangled and suffocated. The preliminary diagnosis spells show her ribs are broken."
Finnigan joined the chorus of voices, and, in the mess, Hemlock heard the other.
Poor Emily. He would save her.
"So, this is some sort of animal psyche adoption? A person who acts like a deer? Perhaps an Animagus? It doesn't make sense. All the victims are female, and it's not rutting season, if that is what this killer is after."
Hemlock's voice seeped with sardonic sorrow.
"The wounds are post-mortem. He killed her here, took her somewhere, and brought her back. Antler velvet is rich in nutrients. It fosters healing. It's one of the main ingredients in Skele-Gro. The killer may have put it there on purpose."
Lupin scrutinized her, and Hemlock coiled further into herself.
"You think he wanted to heal her?"
Hemlock squinted out the window. The darkening sky was overcast. It would rain later.
Blood splattering on the wall like rain on a tin roof.
She swallowed down the bile.
"No. It's… Damage control, emotional wise. He was trying to undo as much as he could, given she was already dead."
Lupin scratched at his stubbled chin.
"He put her back where he found her. Where he knew someone would find her."
Hemlock sighed.
"Whatever he did to the others, wherever they are… He couldn't do the same to Emily."
Lupin leapt on the hope and promise, and landed on his arse.
"Is this his golden egg?"
Hemlock shook her head.
If only anything was so easy or simple.
"This is an apology."
It snagged in her tender throat, hitching on the L, the y hanging in the air. She snatched her glasses off her nose, and scrubbed at her eyes with the heal of her palm, vigorously, until she saw white spots on the back of her eyelids and not bursting, scared eyes, feel the snap of a neck between her fingers, the crack of rib-
Her hand fell and she blearily looked at the faces around her.
None of them in focus.
"Does anyone have any pain relief potion?"
NEXT CHAPTER: Hemlock struggles to keep the nightmares at bay as she begins to unravel, while Lupin extracts some help from an unyielding, and quite pissed, Draco Malfoy, and Tonks finds a clue to the identity of the killer as he closes in on his ninth victim…
Woo or Boo?
A.N: So, guess whose country is slowly but surely falling into a complete lockdown? That's right, mine! With school shut, work shut, and absolutely nothing to do without losing my mind from going stir crazy, it looks like a lot of my fics are going to get updated quickly lol.
In complete honesty, I know these times are tough for everyone, and I hope, if you're like me and your facing some troubling times through this pandemic, I hope this chapter, even if it was only for a second or two, took your mind off from the stress. And, by the looks of things, I will be updating my fics quite a lot over the upcoming weeks, especially this one, as I already have a lot of it written out that only needs tweaking.
On a note about this fic, A lot of the Hannibal script is used currently, some dialogue completely unchanged, though I have fiddled with most of it. This will be the same for quite a few chapters yet, there will be big deviations, but it will follow the structure of the show for a while. HOWEVER, we will deviate from the script soon, as I don't want to do just a line by line of the show with a Harry Potter skin over the top.
A huge thank you to everyone! Silent readers, followers, favourite-ers, reviewers, if I could, I would give you all a hug, but I'm afraid my thanks will have to do.
As always, please drop a review if you have a moment, they keep the muses chattering.