Chapter 3. In the middle of the night the monsters loom
9 March 2003
Agilbert Fontaine clasped his hand on Juliette's shoulder as they entered the office of MACUSA's Head of Aurors. The magical congress seemed calm, mainly.
Jules had spent a good fraction of her life there because of her mother. Something didn't click though; that particular day the skies didn't seem so blue, the pumpkin juice was bland, and the place she'd aspired to work at since she was a little girl scared her.
Jules was terrified.
The white wide ceiling was daunting, and from the young witch's perspective it felt as if she was about to be swallowed. Never before had she feared the creatures, the unknown, but those days it was all she could feel.
Red rage and blue despair.
The happiness that had come over her during her time in Brazil in August being the last spark of hope in her life.
Juliette Scamander lived the last few months, the last year, with her heart in her mouth. She still had nights in the infirmary at Ilvermorny to keep the wound from reopening, and she hadn't been able to fully recover her memories.
Perhaps she had been called for something related to the case, knowing it was an option.
The aurors and others had seemed a little surprised when Jules had appeared with Fontaine in January at MACUSA and explained her journey as if it were a fairy tale and not the worst of her nightmares. Several people had looked at her as if she was a potential danger, as if it wasn't her family and MACUSA was turning a blind eye to them.
In the UK, wizards and witches were under another inquisition, magical society was being burned to the ground, and instead of helping them the US government had left them to die as martyrs for a madman's cause of blood.
And Juliette was angry. She was a spitfire.
She was thinking about how to plead her case one more time that day. Dressed in Ilvermorny's uniform, wand clipped to her blazer pocket and peered curiously out. Thorfin probably turned invisible somewhere near in order to keep an eye on her.
The office was pretty much empty except for the man sitting behind his desk and a few lower-ranking aurors who stood with their arms folded waiting for something. All three turned to look at them as the older and younger one entered the room. Completely serious faces that were a direct crucio to her.
Jules knew none of this was good. It took her a moment, however, to see the bags at the side of the room, and suddenly she understood as if she had been men were looking at her like they were gazing at a stray animal, grief overflowing in the air.
And perhaps Chief Auror Hopkins had grown a little fond of her after all, for he gave Fontaine a knowing look.
"No," Juliette tried to break free of her headmaster's grip, but the man carefully picked her up and forced her to walk over to one of the chairs to sit down. But with every second she turned into a beast. "Who are they? Who are they? Please tell me it's not them" Jules threw herself at one of the aurors, pushing Headmaster Fontaine out of the way, and grabbing the man by the collar of his uniform, shaking him. "Who are they?"
The crossfire had hit her squarely.
"Miss Scamander."
"Miss Scamander. Calm yourself. Calm down."
"We're sorry about your parents, but we need to-
She woke up suddenly with the fire alarm pouring water on her to douse the fire that had consumed a portion of her sheet and pyjamas, and with Aodh perched on top of her sobbing softly as he licked her hand.
The pain that hit her was almost agonising as she registered it, first seeing the scab that took up half of her hand and was forming under the bulgae's tender attention to Jules. New tears began to form at her corner eyes from the pain.
"It's okay, it's okay," the witch stroked the creature's head, soothing him, feeling her own skin tighten and chafe, the water falling from the sky in the room barely helping. Juliette didn't know if it was the smoke from the burning skin or what it was that had set off the alarms.
She lay there in sheer agony for a few minutes, the bulgae tirelessly licking her wounded skin and bits of her normal skin as a way of helping her. However Jules knew her best option was to see if there were some burn-healing paste left in the house and use it immediately on the wounds.
It took her at least ten minutes to muster the courage to get out of bed. The sadness from the dream hung on her shoulder like a stone.
Aodh followed her all the way to the bathroom, where Jules found a badly mangled version of herself. Part of her right eyebrow had been burned off, the rest of it barely having a few singed hairs, and the loose bang on that side was also hanging down, the ends bent inwards and ashen in colour.
Her hand had begun to heal, with a sufficient-looking scab, but part of her pyjamas had burned away and the flames had touched her skin, leaving patches of wounded skin behind. Aodh watched her seated by the door, black ears down.
Juliette wondered how long she had been screaming for the creature to conjure enough flames to make such a mess, and why it had taken so long for it to finally wake her up. Usually the heat was enough.
Maybe she shouldn't sleep with him anymore, and just block the door until she could talk with a healer about her sleep-problems.
Jules opened the white emergency cabinet in her bathroom. There were some banal potions for hair straightening and even one vial of blemish blitzer, yet nowhere did she spot the orange paste needed; no calming draught, no essence of murtlap either. It was time for a trip to the apothecary it seemed, and not just for work.
After washing her face and applying a few simple spells that didn't do much good, Jules simply bent down on her balcony and chopped up a few leaves of dittany to apply onto her skin and washed a couple of others before consuming them raw. The taste was not exactly pleasant.
She didn't sleep for the rest of the night. Instead, it was spent cleaning up the mess that had been left behind until the sun came up.
Dudhald had sent her the night before the necessary papers to request assistance from the ministry. However, Jules barely had time to look up who was suitable for the job.
Going inside the suitcase to deal with the creatures she was capable of forgetting the world. It was early and she had nothing else to arrange in the flat, and thoughts of her parents were impossible to ignore while standing still.
Juliette could see them behind her eyelids when she closed her eyes, and that distressed her as much as it made her mad. Therefore, she spent her time caring for the animals instead of thinking, chatting with the bowtruckle who woke up to see what she was doing, and giving the jobberknoll hatchlings some water with a dropper to make sure they drank.
She was applying medicine to the occamy when the animal seemed to become upset. Jules gently patted its back, the wand tucked into her own hair in case of emergency.
"Miss Scamander!" she felt the creature slip through her fingers, and watched the Occamy stir around her, growing larger at the sudden cry. The creature made a low rumbling noise and Jules rose on her tiptoes to see Rolf and Dudhald heading in their direction. What time was it for them to have gone to look for her there?
Jules looked at her wristwatch, which read five thirty-seven in the morning. Her brother was dressed in what were probably pyjamas, and Dudhald had bags under his eyes, which she noticed when the men came within a few feet of her.
The Occami shrieked before flying back to where its eggs were, suddenly alert to the arrival of strangers. The rest of the creatures seemed to become wary as well, and Jules suddenly smelled fire before seeing Aodh leap in front of her before emitting a warning growl at the person he didn't know.
"You can't scream when there are a lot of sleeping animals, do you have a suicidal urge?" asked Jules directly to Dudhald. "Aodh, friends" she leaned over the beast to stroke the fur over his snout. The creature approached to sniff the men carefully, cautiously moving away from Juliette, allowing Rolf to scratch his head in greeting.
"Is it me or does your dog throw fire?"
"It's not a dog, it's a bulgae, and it doesn't throw fire. What are you doing here?" Juliette glanced at her older brother, clearly complaining about the intrusion. She didn't enjoy people getting into the suitcase without her permission, especially as it upset the more volatile creatures, such as the occamies, the porlock and the small community of seahorses.
"What happened to your face and hand?" Rolf asked.
Juliette rolled her eyes, crossing her arms and moving a little closer to the men.
"Nothing, I ran out of burn-healing paste and had to improvise."
Dudhald raised his hand, drawing the siblings' attention in his direction. Juliette moved her gaze to the man, meeting a face that went from shock at the bulgae to a seriousness she knew like the back of her hand.
"There was another murder."
"So soon?"
"Yes, and if you want to analyse everything first hand we have to go now."
A crime scene. Right, she could do it.
"Okey" not wanting to lose her cool, the witch decided to act quickly. "Let's go."
She was dressed a bit ridiculously and was aware of it, with the long boots and tracksuit bottoms. But there was no time to change or do anything else. Enough distraction, she decided, she'd finish the case and get back to her creatures and nothing else.
I want to help, anyone would want to help. Jules quickly led her brother and Dudhald out of the case, grabbing her extended satchel bag from her office desk.
"Aodh, check here until I get back."
What she definitely wasn't expecting was to find the front door completely off its hinges and lying on the floor.
Juliette looked at her brother.
"Couldn't you open it like a normal wizard?"
"I was worried, you didn't answer."
"You're exaggerating. How much did you try to knock? You could have called me."
"If you had a phone."
"I didn't throw it in the water on purpose."
"I didn't throw it in the water on purpose," he mimicked, waving his wand as he spoke.
For a man in his late thirties Rolf was rather predictable and childish. With his blond hair inherited from his mother and dark brown eyes, at the moment, he looked like a scolded puppy. Sometimes Jules felt that the seven-year distance to his older brother was unbridgeable, too wide.
When he had started Hogwarts she had barely begun to be able to say the whole alphabet. Juliette had been at school while he fought in a war.
But I was the one who saw Mum and Dad dead, she thought bitterly.
And later, with Christine, Jules thought she understood Rolf's love for her. But then she and Christine now had the side-effects of distance between them, and those were insurmountable.
"You could have castt an alohomora or something instead of de-arming it."
His brother raised his hands in the air, blond hair contrasting against the light of the room. The man looked at Dudhald and waved his hand in Jules' direction.
"Very well. Here you go, Dudhald, I'm going back to sleep like a normal person."
Juliette glanced at her co-worker.
"Where do we have to go?"
"Wiltshire."
"My fireplace isn't connected to the floo network yet."
That was one of the many things she had to do. She'd put it off for the two days she'd been in town, forgetting about it.
"We can appear.I went to the scene with Potter before I came looking for you, he's there so no-one touches anything."
At the mention of the apparition Jules' stomach flipped. She avoided it as much as she could, but at the moment there was no valid excuse and no other option for transport.
"Okay," Jules held out her hand for him to take.
Juliette experienced the tugging and pressure throughout her body for what felt like the blink of an eye, as she began to spin around. Appearing always came with the extra feeling of dizziness, and at that time of the morning it wasn't a good idea.
"Are you all right?" Jules steadied herself and nodded carefully. She pulled the dittany poultice from her face and hand, then muttered a cleaning spell before following Dudhald to the house where the crime took place.
"Who is the victim?"
"Robert Higgs, middle-aged. He's the first non-maj to be killed."
"Was he a non-maj?" Juliette was suddenly confused. This was a boundary she thought was almost uncrossable, like two worlds that were impossible to converge but were collapsing against each other.
"A squib, actually."
Well, that made more sense.
"Don't you think it's strange? Is this to do with blood again?"
Juliette, raised mostly under American blood beliefs, was totally ignorant of the motives or reasons why it would matter. But she wasn't an idiot either, and something that had been the cause of a massacre once could be the cause of a massacre twice.
"I hope not. "
Jules looked around as she followed him down the street, lit only by streetlights. They were in a neighbourhood, magical or not, she had no idea. They walked together into one of the small houses, which looked like the inside had been hit by a hurricane that had knocked over several pieces of furniture and photographs.
Harry Potter was perfectly dressed in his Auror robes. Even if his black hair was wildly spraying everywhere and he was probably as tired as everyone else, at least judging by the yawn she saw him let out as Dudhald and her approached. An Emergency Healer was talking to him, arms folded with the first aid kit slung over his shoulder as he explained something. There was a familiarity between the two men that was clearly fraught.
"Potter, good morning," Juliette decided she wanted to solve the case, as soon as possible. "Where's the body?"
"What happened to your face?" Potter asked, clearly confused by her appearance "Are you f-?
"Yes, it was a little accident with fire, I ran out of potions, and then Dudhald showed up to escort me here. And now I want to see the corpse and the scene, have you found any sign that the perpetrator is a magical creature?"
"Not outside the visible disaster, no, there are no marks on the body. Higgs is over there."
It was a particularly difficult day for her to go over a dead body. Jules could see her parents' faces in her head, ashen faces. And she felt particularly sorry for Mr. Higgs even though she didn't know him at all. More collateral damage from the magical world.
"Can I ask you a question first?"
"Sure."
"Which is the best apothecary around here?"
Potter exchanged a glance with the healer, and to Jules' surprise it was the strange man who answered.
"In Diagon Alley, The Black Daffodil, it's the same supplier that St. Mungo's Hospital uses."
"Thank you," she scribbled it in invisible ink and looked up at Harry. "Who should I give my report to when I'm done?"
"I suppose you can owl it to Kingsley or Hermione."
"Very good. Thank you."
Nodding to both of them, she walked over to the body several feet away, between the coffee table and the sofa.
"Scamander," Juliette motioned over her head to show Dudhald where she was.
The man was almost disfigured, and she had to cover her nose and mouth to keep from throwing up. Someone had been particularly vicious with him, whatever that implied for the case, but she was sure the attacker couldn't be a magical beast.
At least Jules could not accept that as a plausible theory.
"Man" muttered Dudhald when he finally saw Mr. Higgs, just as she did, he looked like he was going to decompose because he turned around and walked away from the body quickly.
"Throw up outside," Jules demanded, with less gentleness than she intended.
Juliette put her gloves on so that she could touch the body, knowing that the last thing she wanted to do was compromise the scene even though Potter had probably already lifted all the important stuff.
She was sure that with the body practically fresh any wounds would be more visible and not mere bruises. However the victim's face was only smashed, Jules had the impression that someone had applied downward pressure, breaking first the nose and then the skin around it. His throat had the same cut as the two previous victims.
Juliette looked for some kind of incision, creature teeth or light scratches from claws that would mark.
She had to swallow her bitterness when she felt the coldness of the body under her hand. Jules looked at every inch of skin that was exposed on the man with the intention of finding something, anything that would give her a clue.
Scribbling in her notebook what little was evident, aside from the colour of the blood on the outside, the witch was disoriented in what may have happened. It was rusty red, a totally different shade from the blood on the corpses Jules had seen the day before. She wondered what would happen if they drew some right then and there, if it would match Flint's, or if it would match the bloody sheet that covered the floor and the man's skin.
"Is it legal to extract blood from him now?"
She waited for Dudhald to speak to her, but when she received only silence Juliette turned around to find that the man was not near her but on the other side of the room. Granger had arrived on the scene, and for the first time Jules became aware of the woman's condition.
She was pregnant as hell. Even with the thick jacket to ward off the cold, Juliette could see the obvious bulging belly that she had missed the first day, probably being at the end of her second trimester by the way Granger was putting her hand on her hip.
The three of them, Granger, Potter and Dudhald seemed to be arguing heatedly, and rather than making her want to join in, the argument was scaring Jules away. So she decided to squat down next to the corpse.
"Miss Scamander."
He looked up to see the wizard, who held a vial with orange contents inside.
"Just who I needed," she said, an idea coming to her. Is it possible to extract his blood now?
The man looked bemused at her request.
"I suppose if Potter or Granger give permission it can be done" he was a handsome man in the faint light of the dim floor lamp in the gloomy room. Jules nodded to herself, glancing around at the team meeting that had been set up between the three of them. "This is for you, you should apply it now, and then a little bit of dittany."
Juliette looked at the vial as if the man was giving her an alien. She took it though, since no one would poison another person so openly, and she definitely wanted to believe not a wizard.
"Thank you, Mr…"
"Theodore Nott."