17. Peripatetic Peripeteia

Headmaster Dumbledore was as blatantly amused by our insistence that a Dementor was somehow hidden within the castle as he was subtly appalled by our Patronus animation of Lestrange's body. As genial as ever, his long, dark glances towards Lestrange revealed as much of his true feelings as one could ever hope to know. Though, as unsettled as I already was, I'd have preferred being able to take his hospitality and calm presence at crinkly face value.

Thanks to the Aurors, we were allowed to search the castle, under heavy guard and led by Lestrange, whose ambling seemed more purposeful indoors. Now, we were only delayed by the thin Auror's repeated visits to just about every bathroom we passed. He wasn't feeling well. In various ways, none of us were. Except maybe Henry.

We went up and around, curious students scuttling out of our way, until Lestrange walked into an empty room and stopped. Though there was nothing there, it was clear from her stance that she had reached her destination. When Henry asked her where the Dementor was, she just gave him a long, quizzical look. The podgy Auror snorted and reminded Henry, very haughtily, that the latter had asked the Thing to lead us to an empty vessel. Well, the room was empty, wasn'it? Who could say how that Thing defined vessel, anyway?

It struck me that the room was, in fact, curiously empty, but when I asked the Headmaster about it, he replied that it made itself useful, and left it at that. I didn't press the matter. What mattered was the lack of a Dementor at the end of our trail. And the Aurors were not at all happy about that. Muttering threats about legal action, they left in a huff, leading Lestrange hurriedly across the Hogwarts lawns. They were eager to leave (and the thin one eager to heave, it seemed) and knew as well as anyone that they could not Disapparate on the Hogwarts grounds. I was in no hurry to get back to a possible arrest and chose to stay with Henry who had, completely unembarrassed, asked Dumbledore's permission to do some research in the Restricted Section of the Hogwarts Library. And it was among those dusty shelves, with Henry pouring over some ancient tome and me gazing out the open window, that we heard the shrill screams rising up from the garden.

When we arrived at the oak where the Auror's had, apparently, taken a break (for the thin one to retch, no doubt), Dumbledore already stood in its shade, shaking his head sadly. All other witnesses had moved off and turned away, slumping down on the grass, standing still as statues, or emptying their stomachs in the nearby bushes. I, on the other hand, couldn't stop staring, however much I longed to.

The scene was like something out of a gothic horror story, thrust into a flowery pastoral. The podgy Auror lay crumpled on the ground, eyes wide, a tuft of grass clenched in his hand, flies already gathering on the clotting blood that filled his mouth and dyed the grass below him crimson, a large fir cone firmly lodged in his swollen throat. His death had been slow, choking as much on the blood pouring from the gashes torn by the cone as on the cone itself. He had been trying to retch up the alien object while Lestrange had dealt the second Auror a much swifter death.

That the point she had devised to drive her stick into the fir cone's heart would work just as well on a much softer heart, none of us had imagined. It had only been the innocent play of a newborn Patronus. As had her incessant tasting of weeds and flowers.

Or so we thought. The skinny Auror sat with his back against the tree, his face white and drawn, eyes straining out of their sockets. When she had snapped his neck, he had already been half dead, perhaps making a futile attempt to save his colleagues. On his head lay Lestrange's crown of weeds. They were the very same weeds she had tasted, the very same weeds that had made her retch and borrow the Auror's water bottle. Later analyses at the Auror headquarters revealed them to be the ingredients of The Maiden's Poison, a slow-acting, tasteless venom native to Scotland. According to almost forgotten legend, Scottish maidens who wished to get rid of irritating suitors, or prevent nightly rapes, kept the flowers and herbs under their pillows, ready to be chewed and administered to the unwitting bed-partner through a deadly kiss. Though untested, the theory is that the poison is counteracted by female oestrogen to the extent that death could be avoided simply through cleansing one's mouth and retching up any remnants of poison that had slipped into the gastric system.

The Maiden's Poison had also been favoured by female assassins and spies during times of war. It was eventually outlawed – by men, of course – and is now as good as forgotten by the Wizarding world. If it weren't for Henry's being asked to conclusively verify the ingredients of the archaic poison, I would never have known about it. Poisons that anyone with a decent herbal can chew up in a matter of minutes are something the Ministry would rather have stay forgotten. The official story was that Lestrange snapped the Auror's neck, no poison involved.

But the scene was more complex than that. The body of the stabbed Auror had been draped across the poisoned one's legs, its robes stripped off. Using the widened heart-wound as an inkbottle, Lestrange had left a message scrawled across the Auror's ribcage:

"Le Roi mourra, Vive la Reine" – The King will die; long live the Queen.

'Well,' said Henry, 'the lady's got a certain style, at least.'

I murmured half-hearted agreement, but kept to myself the unnerving fact that Lestrange's style seemed to be Henry's. I had, as always, done my research thoroughly. I knew that Lestrange's educational prowess had been erratic at best. And she had never studied French.

That was one of the many things I worried about, sitting alone on a large stone on the outskirts of the Hogwarts gardens, when the expected Howler from the Prophet arrived, sacking me at 40wpm and 100dB. It howled at me what I already knew: My career was as dead as a Demented doornail. I knew I would make headlines the following day, and every day thereafter for quite some time. The Prophet would vilify me as much as it could to salvage its own reputation. I was no longer a quirky oddity but an anti-social, over-ambitious, notorious nutcase who had been kept on the payroll out of pity.

As I sat on that stone, wallowing in the subdued woe I'd perfected over the years, some Muggle hikers appeared at the main gates, gazing up at the castle, pointing and chatting. I waved a despondent greeting – I even ventured a smile – but though I was straight in their line of vision, they looked right through me, as if I was nothing but an empty patch of air. Just as the Howler had told me: I was Nothing. I lay back, closed my eyes, and suffered a painful sunburn the following day, plodding through Henry's family estate in my nightgown. He had offered me room, in his bed. The house was out of paparazzi reach, and I probably wouldn't be able to afford my flat in any case.

My life, for what little it had been worth, was over. I felt as empty as Lestrange no longer was, thanks to me, and no matter how much I ate, I never felt any fuller.

Then, when I would have grabbed any second-hand chance, the phone rang, and I squelched out a hurried Yes.