"I think we're on a wild nargle hunt," Millner said. "Going after a missing squib when aurors are vanishing?"

"It's Filch," Fawley said. "We know him."

"Hated him, more like. He's pretty much made an enemy of every British Wizard that went to school in the last twenty years."

"He's a squib...who would bother to off him once they got out of school?"

"Which is why the anonymous tip that it was a student at the school has to be taken seriously."

Fawley shook his head. "We don't even know that something happened to him. You know he liked to drink... hell, if I was a squib and had to deal with a school full of obnoxious brats, I'd probably drink myself to death."

"Maybe he did if we're lucky," Millner said. "The last thing we need is to find out that You-Know-Who is targeting Hogwarts staff. The parents would go mental and that's the last thing anybody needs right now."

"Well, we know that he went to Hogsmeade on Halloween night to celebrate away from the kids. He was drinking heavily according to several of the regulars, and he left late."

"Maybe he died on the way back...got so drunk that he went off in the wrong direction?"

"Flying over the area on broomsticks didn't show anything, and the last thing I want to do is go combing through the underbrush if we don't have to."

"Well, maybe we can find out something at the castle that'll give us something to go on," Millner said.

As they landed outside the gate, Millner tried to open the door, and he found it locked. He frowned. "What the hell?"

A hulking monstrosity of the man came lumbering up to them from the grounds.

"I s'pose you lot are the aurors that're tryin to find Filch?" The man was puffing with the effort of moving quickly up the slope toward them.

"Yes...why can't we get into the castle?"

"Security precautions by Dumbledore himself. We had a student attacked on the grounds a week ago," the man said. He reached out and touched the gate and it slid open easily. "Come on in. I'll take you to the headmaster."

The man stayed behind them, Fawley noticed, and he had a hand on his umbrella. There was something cold about his expression that belied his friendly expression.

It was possible that Moody was rubbing off on him. The man was a paranoid crank, but sometimes he was right, which was the unfortunate thing. Especially given the disappearances, every auror had to look out for himself these days.

Looking around, Fawley felt a strong sense of deja vu. It was as though the last ten years hadn't happened, as though he was back in Hogwarts all over again. It was a strange, bittersweet feeling, and the halls looked somehow smaller than he had remembered them, even though everything was demonstrably the same.

Reaching the Headmaster's office, they were quickly admitted.

"Dumbledore," Millner said.

"Mr. Millner, Mr. Fawley... how has adulthood treated you?"

"We're aurors now," Fawley said. He forced himself to stand up straight and look stern. Dumbledore was the most powerful wizard in all of Britain, the man who'd bested Grindlewald in single combat. There was no question that he could kill Fawley and his partner in an instant if he so chose, and he had enough political influence that he could probably get away with it. That wasn't a comfortable feeling.

"We've come to investigate Filch's disappearance."

"Poor Argus," Dumbledore said. "He always was a tortured soul. I'm surprised that the aurors would send someone to investigate his disappearance. He's only been missing for three days."

"There have been reports that one of your students might be responsible for his disappearance," Millner said. "A muggleborn."

"Miss Hebert," Dumbledore said. He sighed. "She's made enemies, and I wouldn't be surprised if some of them have not made unfair accusations in an attempt to cause he problems."

"She didn't have problems with Filch?" Fawley asked.

"Less than other students, actually. She always had a sixth sense about when he was around, and she was very careful not to offend him."

"There have been rumors about her," Millner began.

"Miss Hebert has a rather enthusiastic view of what self defense entails," Dumbledore said. "And she is more than capable of defending herself."

"There are rumors that she has hospitalized several boys," Millner said. "Pureblood boys."

"Boys who were bypassing the defenses on the girl's dormitory with the intention of abusing her," Dumbledore said. "She has assured us that they were injured through their own incompetence."

"And the boy who was doused in boil potion?"

"He was preparing it to use on her, and he had an unfortunate accident."

Fawley glanced at his partner. Unfortunate accidents? Once, maybe, but multiple times indicated a pattern.

"And did she really kill a troupe of trolls with a knife?"

"She did dispatch one troll," Dumbledore said. "Defending other students while they distracted it with spells. It was a heroic act, really."

"So you have a muggleborn who has been involved in multiple incidents of violence, directed toward purebloods... why is she still here?" Millner demanded.

"Should I have expelled you after your incident in sixth year?" Dumbledore asked mildly.

Millner's face went red. Fawley couldn't help but wonder about the incident in question. Millner didn't like to talk about his time in school very much, and he was ten years older, so they hadn't shared any of the same classmates in common.

"We'd like to question the house elves and the portraits," Fawley said. "And any students that might be able to shed some light on the situation."

"Some of the students may be biased," Dumbledore said. "Either for or against her."

"We''re professionals," Millner said confidently.

"She's mental," the Parkinson girl said. "I keep expecting her to stab me every morning at breakfast. Did you know she hexes me almost every day? And nobody does anything about it?"

"Did you ever see her interact with Mr. Filch?" Fawley asked.

"He kept trying to catch her at things, but he never could. They say that she's a Seer... she always seems to know a lot more than she should."

"Tell me more," Millner said.

"It's like she's got eyes in the back of her head. Nobody has ever been able to surprise her...not that anybody tries much anymore, since she's so mental that she'd probably beat you to a pulp."

"Has she threatened other students?"

"She held a Gryffindor boy out over a balcony and threatened to drop him," Parkinson said. "And she beat three Slytherins with a sock until it was bloody."

"That was the boys who were trying to get in her room?"

"Oh, that's the story that Dumbledore likes to put out, but everybody knows that she really did it because she's jealous because they're purebloods."

"She saved out lives," Bletchley said. "Moved like she'd been fighting all of her life."

"Oh," Millner asked. "She was good with a knife?"

"She killed a troll," Bletchly said flatly. "If you'd seen how small she is, you'd know how impressive that is."

"So you'd say she's good at killing?" Millner asked.

"I wouldn't want to go against her... but she's never really bothered anybody that didn't go after her first. She's tough, but after people stopped being idiots around her, things started getting back to normal."

"Being idiots?"

"Trying to hurt her or her friends," he said. "She's perfectly nice except when that happens, and really, can you blame her? I think it's every Wizard and Witches' right to protect themselves."

"But not to kill someone," Millner said.

The other interviews were much the same. Those who did not like her were absolutely sure that she'd killed Filch, and that furthermore she likely had all sorts of other skeletons in her closet. Those who were on her side defended her, and were convinced that she only did the things she did in self defense.

They spent more than an hour interviewing schoolchildren. Most of them seemed anxious when talking to them, which was as it should be. Even the Malfoy heir seemed nervous, and his family had the political clout to ignore most accusations.

The portraits hadn't seen anything, despite having been tasked to watch out for intruders, and the House elves were similarly unhelpful. There was not any convenient bloody clothes or anything in the laundry. The staff had already searched the school for Filch, and there had been no sign of him.

He'd apparently had a relationship once with the librarian, but everyone agreed that it had been over for years, without any evidence of ill will between the two of them. No one could recall anyone having more than the usual disagreements with Filch, which meant that he'd had a dozen conflicts with students on the day before his disappearance alone.

"We're not getting anywhere," Millner said. "We might as well talk to the mudblood."

Millner had a tendency to slip in how he talked about muggleborns when he was irritated.

Fawley didn't think he meant anything by it; Millner was just a member of the older generations, and old prejudices died hard. He at least tried to be civil, which was more than some members of the department did.

They summoned Taylor Hebert to meet with them in a classroom as far away from active classes as they could. They'd chosen a dungeon room with no windows and they'd moved everything out of the room except three chairs.

Then they'd put her in the room and they'd let her stew for a while. Most children her age had the attention span of gnats, and even adults started to crack if they were left alone long enough. That sense of isolation was often enough on its own to get suspects to talking.

As they entered the room, the first thing Fawley noticed was how tiny she was. She was smaller than the Parkinson girl, who had already been small. It was hard to believe that a girl this small and harmless looking could have killed a troll. There wasn't anything different about how she looked compared to a hundred other first years they'd seen in the halls.

However, as she looked up at them, Fawley felt a chill.

Every other student they'd talked to had been a little nervous; some more than others. They'd had to pull answers out of them to get them talking, to overcome their fear of just what the aurors represented. The ordinary witnesses hadn't even been made to wait.

Hebert didn't look nervous at all. She didn't even look bored. There was something unnatural and off putting about the way she sat, though, her neck turned at an unnatural angle and her arms and legs sprawled out like those of a praying mantis.

Instead, she looked as though she was interviewing someone for a job, as though they were the ones who were going to be questioned. That kind of confidence was unnatural in a child that small; Fawley had interrogated Death Eaters who looked more nervous.

"Hello," she said.

She leaned backward in her chair against one of the desks; it took Fawley a moment to realize that she had her hand on her wand.

"You won't need that," Millner said sternly.

"I've got Death Eaters who want to kill me," she said. "And the aurors' office has been compromised. I think I'll make my own decisions about that."

Fawley glanced at Millner, who shrugged. Fawley suspected that Millner didn't see the girl as a threat, because how could a first year witch be any kind of threat to two trained aurors, especially a muggleborn, who rumor said weren't all that good with magic anyway.

The fact that they weren't allowed to do magic during the summers while Purebloods and half-bloods were probably contributed to that perception, but Fawley wasn't likely to get anywhere arguing with Millner about it.

If it let the girl feel safe enough to talk, then it was all right. After all, Dumbledore himself assured them that she only attacked those who attacked her.

"What do you know about the aurors' office?" Fawley asked.

"It's obvious, isn't it?" she said. "Aurors go missing, it's because someone knew where they would be. Who else would know that except someone in the department?"

Fawley frowned. That was a conclusion that the higher ups had only recently come to, and they were taking steps to try to address it. He didn't know what those steps were, presumably because they weren't sure he wasn't a Death Eater.

"Did someone tell you that?"

She shook her head contemptuously. "I read the paper; I can read between the lines. Anybody with two brain cells to rub together would come to the same conclusion."

Fawley winced; Millner wasn't going to like that from a mudblood.

"It's unusual to have a Yank in Hogwarts," Fawley said carefully. It was important to establish a rapport with the criminal so that they would be more likely to slip up and incriminate themselves. However, he'd never really understood teenage girls and preteen girls were even worse.

"Is that what we're here to discuss?" the girl asked evenly. "How an orphan girl with no family ended up in a British school instead of an American one? I wasn't aware that was a crime."

"So is there a crime you're involved in?" Millner asked.

Falkner barely stopped himself from grimacing. Apparently the girl had annoyed Millner enough that he was going to skip the entire introductions phase and get right to it.

He stepped forward quickly until he was looming over her. "We know you murdered Argus Filch. I just want to understand why."

He used his intimidating voice, deep and angry. Millner was a large man, which shouldn't have mattered in the Wizarding world, but it still aroused a sort of primal fear in the average Wizard.

Hebert looked as though he'd asked her about the weather.

"I didn't," Hebert said calmly. "And assuming he's actually dead, I don't know who did."

"You're lying!" Millner shouted.

"Because I'm a mudblood?" Hebert asked. "I've heard about how the Wizarding justice system works. So if I was a rich pureblood who had a daddy with deep pockets, would we even be having this conversation?"

Millner's face flushed red and he looked like he wanted to slap the girl.

"Learn your place, girl! We've got evidence that you did it... do you think that the house elves aren't always watching? The paintings! This is Hogwarts...the walls have ears!"

"Maybe it was an accident," Fawley said softly. "Self defense, even. An old man like that, a young girl like you...but we won't know unless we hear your side of the story."

"Which night do you think he disappeared?" Hebert asked.

"Thursday," Millner snapped.

"I went to class, then I went to the Halloween Feast. They had the Dancing Skeletons, which was fun. I went to the Ghost Afterparty, took a bath and then I went to bed. I didn't go anywhere else," Hebert said. "The next day was pretty much the same thing without the parties."

"I've heard about you," Millner said. "You've put boys in the hospital. They say you killed a troll, although I'm not sure I believe that."

He waited for a moment, as though waiting for her to brag, but she just shrugged as though it didn't matter what she believed.

"Let me see your wand," he said.

She looked at him skeptically. "Two men I do not know put me in a room and demand that I disarm myself. They claim to come from an agency that I suspect is overrun with the exact kind of people who have been trying to kill me and other people like me. If it was you, what you you do?"

"We could just make you," Millner growled.

"Could you?" she asked mildly.

"Millner," Fawley said uneasily. When the older man turned toward him, Fawley gestured downward.

Her wand was pointed directly at Millner's crotch. Considering the way that she had supposedly killed the troll, the implication was clear.

He quickly stepped back and grabbed for his own wand. She was out of her seat so quickly that Fawley was reminded of Moody or some of the aurors who were known for being lightning fast.

"You can go to Azkaban for threatening an auror, girl!" Millner said.

"I'm not threatening you," she said carefully. "I'm just being cautious. Two strange men in a room with a little girl doesn't look good. In muggle America children aren't interrogated without an adult advocate in the room."

"Wait, what?"

"An auror attacks an eleven year old mudblood... you think the Ministry isn't going to start wondering if you're the one who's working with You-Know-Who? Even if you aren't, what's the implication going to do to your career?"

Fawley relaxed a little, although Millner looked like he was going to have an apoplectic fit. At least she wasn't threatening to cry rape.

"Or you can just call Professor Snape into the room, and then I'll happily hand my wand over to be checked."

Fawley glanced at Millner, who looked as though she wanted to hex the girl to death. She was right, though; attacking a muggleborn right now would be political suicide, and they weren't even investigating a murder, just a missing person.

"Fine," Millner said. "But you'll pay for this eventually."

The girl smiled at him sweetly, and they both left the room, shuddering.

While they might not be able to prove it, there was something seriously wrong with the girl, and Fawley wondered if they were going to be the ones to investigate it, or if it needed to be kicked upstairs.