Chapter 10

A day after Zinnia let George and Charlie steal her scarecrow for what she suspected were esoteric and possibly nefarious purposes, (she might not have any inkling why they wanted the manky thing, but she could tell that the two of them had been pretty freaked out by something, she wasn't blind,) Zinnia was interrupted from sorting out yet another box of her great-aunt's things by a knock at the door.

Ichabod yowled in the door's general direction and proceeded to stalk away towards the back door, tail waving disdainfully.

Having now lived in Ottery St Catchpole for the better part of a fortnight, Zinnia thought that her cat had a point. Most of the encounters had ended well enough, she supposed, few of them had exactly been what anyone would call relaxing.

Nonetheless, she stood up from where she had been picking through what seemed to mostly be a box of books and crystals and strode over to open the front door.

Standing before it were a man and a woman in identical robes. Something about the stiffness of their posture and the gold braid across their shoulders suggested that they were wearing some sort of official uniform. If Zinnia had not figured out that magic was apparently a thing, she might have assumed that the local freemasons' guild had decided to channel the Jehovah's Witness playbook and do evangelical housecalls to recruit.

Instead, her instincts were shouting at her that before her stood the magical equivalent of cops.

Fantastic. Just what her day needed.

"G'day," Zinnia greeted the two of them a little warily, standing in the doorway and not offering her name.

"Miss Fawcett I presume?" the male cop asked perfunctorily, looking down his Roman nose at her.

Zinnia tilted her head to one side. "It's Ms Derwent actually. Ms," she emphasized the pronunciation 'miz' just like Aunty Rosie would have insisted on, "Fawcett was my great aunt."

The cops exchanged a speaking glance, and the female cop pulled out a scroll of paper and a feather quill from an improbably small-seeming pocket and made a note.

"Apologies, Ms Derwent," the female cop said. "Our information simply said that the Death Eater was found in the garden of the Old Fawcett House, and our records are still a mess from the war."

Zinnia frowned. She had heard the term 'Death Eater' a few times now, and always in the same tone that people back home said 'Neo-Nazi'. She had heard enough that she felt safe in assuming that the Death Eaters were not very nice people. But hold the phone…

The only humanoid thing that had been removed from her garden in recent times had been that scarecrow.

And come to think of it, hadn't George said something about the scarecrow reminding them of a Death Eater they used to know- oh god.

A horrifying idea had occurred to Zinnia and she hoped against hope that she was wrong.

"Please tell me you don't mean that scarecrow," she begged. "Please tell me that there wasn't a man trapped as a scarecrow in the pumpkin patch."

The cops exchanged another look. The female cop, who had threads of silver in her close-cropped black hair, jerked her head at the younger male cop.

He cleared his throat uncomfortably. "I'm afraid that we can do no such thing, Ms Derwent. After the Weasley brothers Charlie and George brought in the scarecrow for checking from our resident transfiguration specialists, it turned out that allegedly your great aunt responded to a home invasion during the war by one Axton Goyle by turning him into a scarecrow." He pasted on a smile. "If this story is true, (Goyle is not the most reliable of witnesses,) Ms Fawcett is to be commended for the power of that transfiguration and the Befuddlement Hex she cast upon her attacker."

Zinnia abruptly found herself leaning against the doorframe. She shook her head disbelievingly.

"Commended? She turned a man inanimate and stuck him out in the elements indefinitely." Zinnia wrapped her arms around herself and shuddered.

The male cop frowned. "You're joking right? Goyle's a Death Eater. If Ms Fawcett hadn't defended herself then he would have tortured and killed her. Her wife after all was well known to be a muggleborn." The female cop nodded slightly in agreement, regarding Zinnia with a sceptical eye.

Oh. So that was why 'Death Eater' was always said in that particular tone of loathing. Apparently 'Death Eater' really did mean something like 'Neo-Nazi'.

And huh. They knew about Auntie Acacia? Zinnia had never met the woman, she had died shortly after Zinnia was born, but around the time that Zinnia had started crushing awkwardly and obviously on Kylie Govinda from her class, her parents had pulled her aside and showed her the pictures they had of her great-aunts so that she knew that she wasn't the first in their family.

So on the one hand, it was kinda cool to hear that apparently her great-aunts had been actually married in magical society. Nice.

On the other hand, Zinnia was starting to get a pretty clear idea of what had been happening in more recent history, and the more she learned, the less she liked.

"I hardly fault Auntie Rosie for defending herself," Zinnia quickly clarified, to combat the offended bewilderment on the cops' faces, "but surely there were options other than just leaving him there like that." She looked the cops in the eye. "Was he aware while he was trapped like that? I always felt like the scarecrow was watching me. Made my skin crawl, if I'm honest, but not as much as the thought of a fellow human being subjected to locked-in syndrome without food or water on an indefinite basis."

The female cop grimaced. "We are unsure to what degree Goyle was aware during his captivity, but I can assure you Ms Derwent that he survived the transfiguration reversal intact, meaning that he will be in perfect health for his trial," she said, completely missing what Zinnia was getting at.

Zinnia sagged against the doorframe, and wondered if there was any point to arguing ethics with a pair of badges.

"Well that's something," she said finally, shaking her head again. "I just wish Aunty Rose had left me a note, or I don't know, some kind of indication that she had a garden sculpture made out of a terrorist! What if the spell had worn off, or…"

The expressions on the cops' faces became a bit more sympathetic, but Zinnia had a sneaking suspicion that it was more about the threat to her personal safety than anything else.

"Ms Derwent…" the female cop said carefully, "what do you know about how your great aunt died?"

Zinnia blinked. "Mum told me the person who called her explained that she'd had a heart attack…"

The female cop's expression went blank, and the male cop winced.

Zinnia looked from one to the other.

Well shit.

"It one of these Death Eater people, wasn't it," she said, rather than asked.

"It happened quickly," the male cop assured her. "Ms Fawcett was buying food at the market for some muggleborns who were in hiding. Juniper Montague spotted her, and threw a killing curse at her back." He shook his head. "I'm sorry, if your parents live muggle, it is likely that whoever it was tasked to make the Announcement of Bereavement made assumptions. The killing curse is very like a heart attack, so…" he trailed off as Zinnia's eyes filled with tears.

'Killing curse' was definitely an unambiguous description of what a spell did, Zinnia thought to herself as she dropped her face in her hands and let out a string of muffled swearwords.

After a minute, she looked back up, red-eyed, and saw the two cops looking distinctly uncomfortable.

"Is this, what did you call her, Juniper, is she in prison now?" Zinnia demanded a little thickly.

The female cop nodded. "A nearby Order member saw the whole thing and stunned Montague before she could get away or hurt anyone else." Her expression hardened with something like satisfaction. "Montague is rotting in Azkaban Prison with the rest of her ilk."

Zinnia thought that Alakazam was a weird name for a prison, but she supposed at least that was more humane than execution. It was good to hear that magical society was not entirely barbaric.

There was a protracted and uncomfortable silence.

"Well uh," fumbled the male cop, "if you think of anything else you wish to add to your account Ms Derwent, then please feel free to Owl the Auror Department, care of Aurors Brent Grenwich and Clytemnestra Wickham."

Zinnia guessed 'Auras' must be what they called magical cops then. Good to know.

She cleared her throat, and agreed to call on them if she thought of anything, but suspected from their expressions that there would be little surprise on their end if she didn't.

Just as well, she thought. It wasn't like she had an owl.

The Auras were turning away when suddenly there was a weird cracking sound and Charlie Weasley stood not three feet from her front steps.

The Auras whirled and pointed sticks at him, but managed to restrain themselves from whatever ingrained reflex they were following.

Charlie also had a stick out, and had thrown up some sort of shimmery shield-looking thing, which he promptly dropped once he saw that the Auras had stopped before attacking.

"Shite, sorry," Charlie said, after a pause. "War reflexes, eh?"

The Auras lowered their sticks slowly, and Wickham snorted. "You're lucky you Weasleys look distinctive," she said. "I probably would have taken your head off elsewise."

Charlie scratched the back of his head and grinned ruefully. "Had to eventually be at least one upside to being ginger," he joked weakly. "Don't mind me mates, I just wanted to check on Zinnia here, make sure she was alright." He looked at her more closely and saw her reddened eyes. "Oh Merlin, what happened?" he stepped forward and gently touched Zinnia on the arm, as though unsure of his welcome, but Zinnia was so happy to see someone she was starting to see as a friend that she glommed onto him and buried her face in his woolly jumper.

Grenwich grimaced. "Unfortunately Ms Derwent had not been informed as to the uh, particulars of her great aunt's death, and we had to uh, elucidate them," he admitted awkwardly. "But if you have the uh, situation in hand here…?"

"We must be going," Wickham said more concisely, but nonetheless in an apologetic tone. "There's a lot of backlog. My condolences for your loss Ms Derwent, and remember to owl or floo if you see anything else suspicious. We'll be going now."

And with two cracking sounds, suddenly Zinnia and Charlie were alone.

"Sorry," Zinnia sniffled, realising that she had made Charlie's jumper damp and that maybe they weren't actually at the hugging part of knowing each other.

"No, no," Charlie said, patting her awkwardly on one shoulder. "It's alright. Feel free to use my shoulder but uh… would you like me to make you some tea? I wanted to give you a warning before the Aurors showed up, but they were too quick."

Zinnia nodded, but didn't move for a moment, enjoying the security of two brawny arms wrapped around her.

Then Ichabod yowled from the open doorway, and the two of them startled apart.

Charlie cleared his throat. "Tea? Yeah, tea. I'll get right on that," he said, and stepped warily past Ichabod towards the kitchen.

Zinnia took a moment to roll her eyes at Ichabod before she followed. "He was just trying to comfort me," she muttered to her cat. "You don't have to play chaperone."

Ichabod glared distainfully at her, before promenading down the steps to twine around her ankles and rub cat fur into her sparkly leggings.

Zinnia reached down to pet him between the ears.

"Yeah, yeah, you'll always be the number one male in my life," she teased as he angled himself for better head scritches.

Ichabod let out a smug mrrp sound, and then went back inside.

Zinnia restrained the slightly hysterical giggle welling up in response to her cat's antics, and followed.