Facsimile
fac· sim· i· le | \ fak-ˈsi-mə-lē
: an exact copy.
He's quick, quiet and precise when he slices his wand through the air with the ease of a practiced hand. A flash of green, a thud on the ground, a murmured transfiguration spell and—crack—he's gone. A ghost in the night. No lingering footprints in the mud, no dodgy spell work to leave a mark after he exacts his revenge. Muted. A heavy veil of terrible silence so thick not even the early morning birds dared to chirp, lest they disturbed the wispy memory of him.
She stepped over the twisting roots that dug beneath the earth, the treads of her worn out boots begging for purchase against the damp ground, slipping to withstand the storm that he was. He brought them here, always here, and left just as expeditiously as he came. In and out, twenty seconds flat. No trail of bodies to follow, no missing person's report—barely even a clue to miss.
Hermione never missed it.
The connections between the victims were clear and bright as an August day. Death Eaters. Specifically, Death Eaters who had never paid for their crimes. Those who escaped the gnarled, poisonous hands of Azkaban to hide underground and acclimate to a life on the Ministry's Most Wanted List.
No one breathed a word when they began to turn up. Appearing as nothing more than a transfigured bone and broken wand shoved haphazardly in a cloth bag and owled to the DMLE from some unknown sender. A 'waste of resources' it had been called, to look into the disappearances and murders of Death Eaters. A blessing. A blessing to be rid of one more Dark wizard, one more sympathizer, one more fucking nightmare of a human who wanted to see her 'kind' flayed before them.
It hadn't been the people being killed that captured her attention so raptly. It was the puzzle behind it. The jigsaw of ambiguity held no interest to those whose jobs were made easier by the absence of cruelty. But for a reporter who was discontented by the forced articles of gossip and the dwindling crime report, the draw to uncover the truth was thrumming within her chest. A steady pitter-patter of offbeat drums at the mention of another Death Eater wand uncovered, another bag of bones sent unsigned.
"Homenum Revelio," she murmured softly into the breaking dawn, ignoring the squelch of her boots in mud as she circled the area, searching for a trace she knew would not be there. Her wand spit out a soft sphere, illuminating the miniscule clearing before it faded out. The only one in the forest, the only one to witness, the only breathing homosapien walking amongst the thick copse of trees.
Picked off one by one, the Department of Magical Law Enforcement had a stock of thirteen wands now. Thirteen bodies turned bone sent in just as many months. Like clockwork. It had taken six of those months to find the pattern, six more to connect it to a location. His pattern was his downfall, and the only saviour on his side was the abject disinterest of the head of the department and an overall ignorance to the lunar cycles. Hermione looked up.
Waxing crescent, fifty-two hours before the rise of the full moon.
March was a month, in Hermione's opinion, that left much to be desired. The sharp grip of winter's chill had made way for the blustery winds of early spring, but the frozen ground had yet to notice that the trees would soon bud. She cast another warming charm over her person, tugging her thick, hooded cloak tighter around her shoulders as she waited.
She hated Wales.
While the people were fine—mostly friendly with an air of slow moving comfort about them—the land smelled of manure, exacerbated by the rain, and left her senses to drown in a stomach-churning cocktail of deliberate irritation. This was the last known connection he had to a place; where his mother was violently killed for her crime of being a Muggle with an afflicted son.
Hermione shook back her cloak and looked at her watch—nearly time.
Her palms dug into the bark of the tree behind her as she pushed up from the ground, the hour begging her to rest but the taste of success was too close. She had no power to apprehend him, she knew. Nor did she want to. Not really. She had given up the concern of capture months ago. Now, all that was left was to revel in a completed project. To see all the pieces as they clicked together and to know that she, alone, was the person who had uncovered the truth.
Three forty three in the morning, the snap of apparition sounded in the clearing. The tip of her wand tapped her head, the feeling of raw egg slickening her back as a Disillusionment Charm enveloped her.
"Please! I-I have a family! I have money! I can—"
"You have nothing that I want."
His voice was firm and smooth—a slight rasp that sounded as sweet as cigar smoke smelled, with a gravelly hitch of disuse and the promise of an ephemeral death to assuage the pleading.
"My daughter! Please! She'll be worried, she'll call the Aurors!"
At that, a strange almost-laugh quirked past his lips and ended in a sigh of contempt. His wand cut through the air on the end of a Killing Curse.
Green light.
Thud of a body.
Murmured transfiguration spell.
"Remus."
She stepped out of the shadows, allowing the camouflage to dissipate into the air around her. The bottom of her cloak licked at her ankles as the movement jostled the wool.
He whirled—wand held steady between long, thin fingers—and his eyes landed on hers. An infinitesimal widening of recognition broke the otherwise rigid mask of stoic indifference.
"Hermione."
Her name sounded like a warning on his lips—or, perhaps, a dare. An invitation to exceed the already pushed boundaries of her existence in this place and to step forward. She accepted, her boot steady on the wet earth, her wand gripped tightly, but hanging to the side. She had no intentions of hurting this man, only to unearth the answers to the questions that burned holes into her mind as she begged for sleep to come.
Her feet remained sunk into the muck of earth beneath her as her gaze flickered over his frame. The hollows of his cheeks and shadows beneath his eyes told her more of how he'd spent the last five years than any amount of words could.
"If you're going to arrest me—"
"I don't work for the Aurors," she interrupted, her voice softer than she had meant for it to come out.
At this, a vague air of interest swirled through the ribbons of reflective gold in his eyes. He took a step forward, bone and stolen wand in hand, his own wand faltering slightly to drop it's point to somewhere around her middle.
"You don't?"
She kept him pinned with a stare, pouring her desperation for knowledge into the gaze. "I work for The Prophet."
At this, he snorted. A vicious, sarcastic sound that grated against her nerve. "That's worse then, isn't it?"
"Is it?" She pressed, wanting to keep him here, keep him talking weaved into the two syllables.
A scoff and then, "You know better than most what damage gossip articles can do."
"More damage than being arrested for fourteen murders?"
"Is it murder when they're terrorists?"
Hermione's fingers tightened around her wand, her chin raising slightly. "You're taking human lives without trial. You're playing God."
"It doesn't count if you aren't fully human, and I don't believe in God."
The venom that dripped from his words was caustic. He had been cynical, at best, in the time she knew him before. But, this was more than the bitterness of a broken man. This was the sharp tang of revenge—dripping like corrosive acid and burning through his words. A combustible sort of rage that teetered the razor thin line of volatility.
Hermione felt her head tilt of its own accord, interest piqued. She had discovered the pieces of the puzzle, considered herself nearly complete with its carefully planned structure—a picture of Remus Lupin playing vigilante in a forest in Wales. But, seeing it in front of her, assembled and pressed together and all but ready to be laminated and hung on her wall, she realized she was missing a piece.
It didn't matter how fastidious she had been in her observation of his patterns in the last several months. She had forgotten a key point—the motive.
"I'm not going to turn you in," she voiced.
"You never did know what was good for you, did you?" His retort came on the end of sarcastic laughter, his wand finally going limp at his side.
She didn't know what to make of it.
Her eyes lingered on the cypress wood that hung lax at his side, wondering if the heavy tick-tick-ticking beat of her heart was a coincidence or something more. A pulsing tune of adrenaline that should have died by now and instead, it thundered on.
"Why here?" She found herself asking.
It didn't matter. The longer she stood—knees locked, eyes trained on his movements—the less she cared about the answers. Now, she asked simply to keep him rooted. To keep the swirl of robes from disapparation at bay. The inevitability of his departure sinking its claws into the back of her mind as she screamed he can't leave yet in her head.
"It doesn't matter."
The seconds of dropped guard he had displayed only moments ago had vanished. His walls slammed back in place, face schooled under a blank mask of indifference.
"Dolohov was the first you killed," Hermione said. "He's the one who fired the curse that killed Tonks, isn't he?"
"Don't," his face slipped again, a ripple of pain, "say her name."
She stepped forward slowly in an attempt to engage and prove she was no threat to him. Her eyes finally moved from the hold of his golden gaze and slowly traced across his face, lingering on the smooth, silver scars across his knuckles and the tattered, too-thin robes hanging off his frame. In looks, he was exactly as she remembered. Intimidatingly tall with long limbs, and a lean, wiry frame that spoke of malnourishment. His hair was longer now, honey coloured waves and curls that brushed the ends of his ears, scruff on his square jaw that hadn't been there years before. A gnarled twist of a deep, pink scar that tore across his nose, ending in a sliver at his hairline beneath his left eye.
His eyes were different now.
Gone was the congenial, observational stare of a mentor with knowledge he had learned far too young. In its place, a dissident, fierce glare that bordered on callous. The golden-green eyes she once thought of as comforting—sun on the moss—had been replaced with the raw, untameable gold of Fiendfyre.
"It's been over five years, Remus," she offered the information as if it were not carved into his memory. She knew he counted every single day since Tonks' death. The same way she counted every single day since she could sleep soundly. Every day since the end of the battle that loudly marked the end of her childhood.
"I know how long it's been," he hissed.
Another step forward and his eyes darted to her feet and back to her face, his knuckles whitening around the grip of his wand.
"You waited nearly four before you began killing them. Why?"
His chin raised slightly, his eyes flickering over her face, searching for something. She wondered if he found it.
"Why did you begin working for The Prophet?" He asked, shifting the topic from himself.
The clench of Hermione's jaw loosened ever so slightly, the corner of her mouth tugging upward. "I've always been partial to collecting information over dueling for my life."
Remus' lips slid into a smirk and she took another step forward.
"I was tired of fighting," she continued, a sad attempt to extend an olive branch—a thin twig of trust. "I'd been fighting for so long. I didn't realize it at the time, but I had been fighting Voldemort since I was twelve. It began in first year for us and I was just...exhausted. Surely, you understand what that's like?"
He ignored her question. "So, you joined Rita Skeeter and her band of unreliable sources?"
"Rita doesn't work for The Prophet anymore. She hasn't since the fall of the Ministry. After the war, she was ostracized for slander against Dumbledore. She admitted to using unsavoury methods to collect her information and was blacklisted. No one has seen much of her since."
Hermione shuddered as the wind kicked up around them, catching in the hood of her cloak and slipping it off her head. Remus watched her intently, his face stoic.
"I began working for The Prophet as part of the crimes division after I got my NEWTS. Slowly, crime dwindled and I've been given assignments to write about hair potions and doing reviews on new types of ink. And then, a little over a year ago, a bag showed up on Harry's desk."
Remus' jaw tightened.
"But, you know all about that, already. Antonin Dolohov—transfigured into nothing more than a femur, his broken wand to confirm his identity. No note. No return address. Nothing."
"It sparked your interest." It was not a question.
Hermione grazed her teeth over her bottom lip, "It sparked everyone's interest."
"Why are you here, Hermione?" Remus asked, his thin patience evident in his tone. "You've got it all figured out. You know what I've done, where I'm doing it, how it's being done. Case solved, isn't it?"
Hermione let a puff of laughter slip through her lips and she shook her head, "No. No, I don't think it is. Because the question still remains, Remus, why?"
His mouth pulled in a saccharine smile. Too sweet, too innocent, for the fierceness of his eyes. Wolfish. "If you haven't figured it out yet, you're overthinking it."
A heartbeat passed and in a blur of ragged patchwork and a startling crack, Remus was gone.
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a/n: Pre-written. Updates every saturday. Please leave a review?
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