Chapter Six: Revelation Principle
No. 12 Grimmauld Place
13th December 2009, 7.44pm
After another round of shouting, this time about Malfoy, and then another two cups of tea and three more mince pies, Ron had finally left Grimmauld Place, muttering something about needing to face the music at home. Hermione didn't think he'd forgiven them just yet, but she'd certainly seen him take things worse.
Once he'd gone, she and Harry had wasted no time before pulling out the old Haringey files and starting to sift through them, looking for anything that might provide a clue as to why the same person who had gone on a week-long killing spree two years ago might have now decided to rob a bank. Over the past couple of years Harry had managed to accumulate plenty of material in addition to his and Ogden's handwritten notes: there were reports from the DMLE and the police; stills from CCTV footage; newspaper clippings; even minutes from closed sessions of the Wizengamot that Kingsley had somehow 'acquired'.
The lack of coherent organisation was enough to make Hermione want to scream, but instead she had simply cast a cross-referencing charm that she had developed while she was studying for her LPC. Watching the Self-Writing Quill jotting down a neat index, however, she got the feeling that whatever they were looking for was going to prove rather more esoteric than anything the charm was likely to turn up.
As they had worked, the sky outside the windows had gradually deepened from twilight blue to the deep brown-black of the city night. Inside, the study was cosy and warm, bathed in the glow of never-melting candles. Hermione stifled a yawn, and scrubbed at her eyes with one hand.
"Don't tell me Hermione Granger is getting bored of studying." She looked up to see that Harry was smiling at her: that small, soft smile that he never seemed to direct at anyone else.
"I must have been over all of this at least ten times before," she sighed. "And your handwriting never fails to give me a headache."
"Sorry about that," Harry sounded far more amused than apologetic, and Hermione watched as he frowned slightly, turned back a page in Ogden's notebook, and then scribbled something down on the tatty bit of parchment in front of him.
"Found anything new?" she asked, pulling the sleeves of her jumper over her hands, more out of habit than because she was cold. The jumper was an old one of Harry's (the Hungarian Horntail design on the front was one of Molly's more ambitious efforts) and it smelled quite strongly of broom polish, in a way that Hermione found immensely comforting.
"Same old, really," Harry sighed. "From what Ron said, the injuries are consistent enough for them to consider the two linked, but beyond that I'm not seeing anything else that might suggest it's the same perp."
"How soon do you reckon they'll know if anything's been stolen?"
Harry grimaced. "It depends if it's something the goblins are ready to admit was there in the first place."
"God." Hermione sat back in her chair and rolled her shoulders. "And people wonder why I say improved Beings rights would make things easier for everyone."
"Ah," Harry said. "You're forgetting that, as a Muggle-born, you can't possibly be expected to understand the intricacies of the situ- ow," he grinned, rubbing at his shoulder where the balled-up piece of parchment that Hermione had thrown at him had bounced harmlessly away. "See how quickly you resort to mindless acts of violence?"
"Must be my inherently savage nature," Hermione said blithely. "You can take the girl from the Muggles -"
"But you can't take the Muggle from the girl," Harry agreed. "I did think you might murder Malfoy when he said that."
"So did I, for a second," Hermione nodded. She'd threatened to break his nose again instead, and had been delighted to see Draco's customary sangfroid waver, just for a single, thoroughly gratifying, moment.
From Malfoy, her thoughts skipped to the interview with Pansy that had been scheduled for tomorrow morning. Theo had replied quickly to Hermione's owl earlier, confirming that 'his client' (as he insisted on referring to her) was now safely installed at Malfoy Manor, and that the elves had been given strict instructions that she wasn't to be allowed out of their sight. He'd also returned Harry's coat, since Pansy had apparently rejected the Muggle clothes that Sahra had offered her, which was just so bloody typical that Hermione could have -
"You know," she said thoughtfully. "I still don't understand why Pansy felt the need to be naked." Her hair had finally worked itself free of the french twist she had wrestled it into earlier, and as she spoke she gathered it up and wound it into a bun, using her wand like a giant hairpin in a quirk that she had regrettably picked up from Luna.
"Just to fuck with us, wasn't it?" Harry said, without looking up from the incident report that he was now reading. "Dudley didn't know what to do with himself."
"Maybe," Hermione nodded. Something was nagging at her, though she couldn't say what, precisely. She recalled Pansy's raised eyebrow, the careful consideration in her gaze.
That would qualify as a more interesting question.
She was missing something, Hermione knew, and it was going to drive her mad if she didn't figure out what it was. Grimacing, she shoved the stack of Haringey files to one side, reaching instead for the folder that Dudley had passed her before they'd left the police station. There was a transcript of the interview, photographs from the crime scene, and the mugshots that had been taken of Pansy when she'd first been processed by the police, which Hermione drew out and laid on the desk in front of her.
It was strange to see a photograph of someone from the Wizarding World that wasn't moving. Pansy's dark blue eyes stared opaquely out from the paper, her face managing to be both coolly neutral and ever-so-slightly smug. Hermione had hated Pansy at school - really, viscerally hated her, in the way that you can only truly hate a bully - but the woman she had seen today, for all her posturing, had seemed oddly vulnerable.
She kept thinking of the look on Pansy's face when she'd heard the word Gringotts. It had meant something to her, that much was obvious. Hermione didn't know her well enough to be sure, but she'd seen similar expressions on the faces of clients over the years, so if she had to guess, she would have felt reasonably confident in saying that Pansy was scared.
Hermione considered this as she thumbed the photograph in her hand, noting the square neckline of the dress; the way the heavy fabric lay smoothly against Pansy's collarbone.
"This looks expensive," she said thoughtfully. "Why would she vanish an expensive dress? What purpose would that serve?"
"No idea," Harry sighed, sitting back and stretching his arms upwards in a way that told Hermione his ribs were finally fully healed. "Maybe she didn't want to get Muggle germs on it."
"Maybe there was something on it already," Hermione said absently, and then blinked as she played her own words back to herself, looking up to see that Harry had frozen with his hands still reaching towards the ceiling.
"Fuck me," he muttered. "You don't think -"
"That she was disposing of evidence?" Hermione could have smacked herself for not realising sooner. "That -" she bit back the word.
"But why the hell would she draw attention to it?" Harry asked, pushing himself up from his chair to start pacing around the study. "She wanted me to ask her, remember?" Hermione watched as he ran his hands through his hair, a familiar gesture of frustration that transformed it from disorderly to utterly wild.
"A lot of this doesn't make sense," she sighed, frowning as she rose from her chair too, before folding her arms and leaning her weight against the edge of the gigantic desk. "Dudley said the police found Goyle's body after an anonymous tip, right?"
"Right," Harry nodded. "And Pansy maintains that Goyle had asked her to visit him that morning."
"How does she know it was him?" Hermione wondered aloud. "What if it was someone else - someone who wanted -"
"Another set up?" Harry asked sharply, turning to stare at her. "Surely it can't all be the same -"
"You didn't see her face when Ron brought up Gringotts," Hermione said, watching Harry's eyebrows rise.
"What are the chances this whole thing with Goyle is a sideshow?" he asked softly, and Hermione shook her head, unsure how to answer him. Harry bit his lip, looking down at something on the table, then slid back into his chair as he picked up one of the pieces of paper he had been studying. "Dudley said one of the first officers on the scene has disappeared," he said slowly.
"Disappeared?" Hermione asked, uncrossing her arms and coming round the desk to peer at the paper in Harry's hand.
PC Martha Fitzgibbons - 27 - currently unaccounted for -
"Dudley's sure he saw her in the doorway when he arrived?" Hermione asked, skimming the report over Harry's shoulder.
"I reckon so. He mentioned that the other PC - Marshall?" Harry frowned, squinting at his cousin's handwriting. "Marshall, yeah. Dudley said he seemed confused - couldn't remember that he'd been with anyone else when he responded to the call."
"A Confundus?" Hermione suggested. "Or Obliviation maybe? Look - it says here the DCI didn't remember there being anyone else there either."
"Bloody hell," Harry said. "But why not Obliviate Dudley and Sahra too? Surely if she wanted to -"
"How long's she been on the beat?" Hermione asked, and Harry shook his head, reaching for his phone.
"I'll ask Dudley, he'll be able to look it up," he said. "But if she's a plant, that's a lot of effort to go to."
"Ask him if he can send a picture as well," Hermione said absently, still reading. "It says here he didn't notice she'd gone until he'd already got hold of Pansy. What if that's what Fitzgibbons was waiting to confirm?"
"Yeah," Harry scratched at his cheek in a way that told Hermione he was deep in thought. "That's a fairly simple command to follow, right? Wait until this person appears, then report back before -" his voice trailed away, and Hermione looked down to see him gripping the edge of the desk tightly.
"Yes," she agreed. "Oh - Harry - yes you're right." She wrapped her arms around him from behind, resting her chin in the angle of his neck.
"Well, at least it looks like there might be a link after all," Harry sighed unhappily. He transferred his grip from the desk to Hermione's arms.
She'd arrived at Grimmauld Place barely thirty seconds after receiving Harry's patronus on that awful evening, almost two years ago now. Hermione could still remember the hollowness in his voice when he described how Ogden had met his eyes as he'd walked backwards to the edge of the roof; the look of resigned horror on his face as Harry had begged him to try - to throw it off, the way they'd been trained; how Emilius had simply said, "Too strong," before he took another step back, this time into empty air.
Harry dropped his chin so that his mouth was resting against her forearm, and Hermione felt gooseflesh rise across her skin as he exhaled heavily.
"'M ok," he mumbled, and she nodded, feeling his stubble scrape against her cheek as she did so.
"I know," she whispered, squeezing his shoulders a little tighter for a moment before she let go and straightened. Harry turned in his seat to look up at her, the candlelight playing across the angles of his face and reflecting in the lenses of his glasses so that his gaze seemed to literally burn.
"I want to get this bastard," he said. "Whoever's behind this, I want to get them, and I want them put away before they can hurt anyone else."
"Let's do that then," Hermione replied quietly.
A/N: Sorry I missed a day yesterday! I'm away with family for the weekend and it's messing with my editing schedule...