"Cutting charms and healing... you've cast a lot of those recently," Millner said.
He was staring at me with undisguised loathing. I probably shouldn't have threatened to emasculate him, but hearing some of the comments he'd made when he thought no one was listening had irritated me. There was a casual sort of racism in what he said that told me I would never have gotten a fair hearing from him anyway.
The thought that my irritability might have something to do with guilt over Filch's death occurred to me, but I put it out of my mind as quickly as I could.
"I'm a muggleborn in Slytherin," I said. "Wouldn't it make sense that those would be the spells I would need the most on a day to day basis?"
Snape was sitting in the back of the room. He hadn't said anything; he'd just stared at all of us with an inscrutable look. He hadn't mentioned my second wand, though, which I took to be an encouraging sign.
"So you've been attacking purebloods, then," Millner said.
"You'd have heard about it if I'd attacked anyone recently," I said. I lifted my hands. "I'm an ordinary student trying to make my way through school without being attacked."
He was still holding my wand in his hands. I carefully kept my hands away from my fanny pack, but I did begin to pull the most dangerous insects I could from the bowels of the castle. Some of them were surprisingly vicious for a school setting, although Winslow had had more of them.
There were bugs clinging to the inside of my robes, too, waiting to come out. Stingers to the eyes and the ears and the genitals would distract them enough for me to go for my wand. Cuts to the inside of their arms and wand waving would become difficult.
"You don't like being attacked, do you?" Millner said. "I've heard it makes you go all mental. Is that because something happened with you? Maybe your Da did something to you?"
He was trying to get under my skin.
I smiled sweetly. "Did yours?"
His face flushed, and he lunged forward.
"Five points from Slytherin," Snape drawled. "You will speak to the aurors with respect."
Millner stopped abruptly, as though he'd forgotten that Snape was in the room. Maybe he had. He was still flushed, though, and his breathing was rapid. He was an angry man, and angry men were easy to manipulate.
"Everyone knew Filch was a little creepy," his partner said. "Maybe he came on to you?"
I'd been trained in basic police interrogation techniques, even though that really hadn't been my job. Fawley was pretending to be sympathetic; most people wanted to tell their story, to explain how it wasn't really their fault.
By the time they realized they'd incriminated themselves, they were on their way to jail.
There was an implication to his question, and I wasn't certain how to answer it. His question implied that I knew what he meant; in 2011 with the Internet there was a good chance that an eleven year old might have at least some idea. In 1991 though?
I hadn't heard any of my same age classmates talking about sex, but whether that was because they were genuinely innocent of the implications, or because it was a British thing not to talk about sensitive subjects I couldn't be sure.
Even the older children didn't talk that much about it, and when they did they tended to use euphemisms. Maybe it was the fact that there were portraits everywhere listening to what they said.
My best bet was to pretend that I didn't know what they were saying and to ignore the whole thing.
"I barely interacted with him," I said, shrugging. "I can't say I even knew much about him, except that he had a cat and liked to harass the other kids."
"So if he'd attacked you, what would you have done?" Fawley asked. He looked sympathetic, and my overall impression of him was that he was the more sympathetic of the two men. However, his job was to find the culprit, and since I was in fact guilty, I now had to lie.
"I'd have screamed and gotten some help," I lied.
There was a small change in Snape's expression that showed that he knew I was lying; however, the others didn't notice as he was standing behind them and they were staring at me.
"You're capable of killing by all accounts," Millner said. "Took down a full sized troll with a knife, or at least they say."
"I had some help then," I said. "And I try to be law abiding. If I started killing off staff, who would be left to teach me magic? No...I'd just get him fired."
That touched a nerve with both of them. Had my threat from earlier spooked them? What were the politics in the Ministry right now? Losing so many aurors would make it harder to get rid of the ones they had left; yet it was possible that Voldemort's minions in the Ministry were putting the heat on the good aurors. Threatening to fire them would keep them anxious and on edge, and while that would make them more alert for a little while, long term it would exhaust them.
Some of them might quit on their own, given the right kind of pressure.
"Is there anyone who can confirm your whereabouts?" Fawley asked.
"Ever since I was attacked, the castle has been on an increased alert," I said. "The portraits are sleeping in shifts, which means that they would have seen if I had left the Slytherin dorms once I went to bed."
Unlike the Gryffindor dorms, the door to Slytherin wasn't guarded by a painting, which meant that no one had noticed the door opening when Filch had entered.
"A disillusionment charm," Millner began.
"Do you think that Miss Hebert has mastered a disillusionment charm at her age?" Snape asked. "And as a muggleborn orphan she does not have the means to purchase an invisibility cloak... nor have there been any reports of any invisibility cloaks going missing in the school."
"Are there any such cloaks in this school?" Millner asked Snape, staring at him challengingly.
"Not to my knowledge," Snape said. "And I would confiscate any that I discovered. Allowing such items would allow children to circumscribe a number of rules as well as get into... mischief."
"We know you aren't a bad person," Fawley said. "But everyone can do things in the heat of the moment that they regret."
"That's true," I said. "If they don't think things through and plan ahead."
"So you're saying that you planned to murder Filch," Millner said. I could see that he was getting frustrated.
Real police investigations could take hours. Wearing a suspect down enough would get almost anyone to confess to almost anything. Some people would confess to murder just to get to go home.
Their initial approach hadn't been good either. They should have started with ordinary questions; questions about my life, about school. It would have helped them establish a baseline about what I looked like when I was telling the truth so they'd have something to compare it to when I lied.
Keeping them off balance had been part of the plan, though. I could tell from the moment they walked in that they weren't real professionals. The fact that they'd been assigned to a missing Squib case when actual aurors were going missing meant that they were likely the equivalent to rookie beat cops.
They probably spent their time investigating the Wizarding equivalent of noise complaints.
Something of my disdain must have slipped out in my expression, because Snape's lips quirked. My own might have followed suit, even though I wasn't sure whether they had or not.
"You think this is funny?" Millner snapped. "A man is missing and possibly dead, and you're smirking at us?"
"Mr. Filch was a known alcoholic," I said. "People talked about smelling it on him sometimes. Are you sure that he didn't just wander off somewhere to die in a ditch? He didn't look at all well the last time I saw him."
"Maybe you did it for the attention," Millner said, ignoring what I'd just said. "You want to prove that a mudblood is just as good as any pureblood. People do keep saying that you aren't as good at magic."
Snape shifted uneasily at the epithet. This entire interrogation was putting him in a difficult situation; if he advocated too hard for me, it would look like he was favoring the mudblood. That would put his position as a spy in jeopardy.
If he failed to protect me, it would damage his relationship with the Headmaster, and maybe with me. The use of the epithet was a borderline case.
"That would require that I actually care about what anyone thinks of me," I said calmly. "Pureblood, mudblood... those are just made up words. Power is power, and results speak for themselves. If you and I point our wands at each other and I'm the one that walks away, then doesn't that make me the better Wizard?"
"Witch," Fawley said. "And maybe you're just luckier."
"Isn't that a power in it's own right?" I asked. "I understand that one of the most coveted potions in the Wizarding world grants luck."
"There's something wrong with you," Millner said. "Anybody can see it. All of your classmates can see it; they think you are creepy and dangerous. Maybe it finally got to you, and you took it out on the one person in the entire castle who couldn't fight back."
I shrugged. "You can think what you want, but I've already told you what happened. I went to the party, I took a bath, and then I went to bed. What more do you want me to say?"
I probably should have tried to act like a distressed eleven year old, but I wasn't sure that my acting skills were up to it. Snape would be certain that I'd done it in that case, which would be a bigger problem for me in the long term than these two bozos.
Even as the interview went on, I was having my bugs move the pieces of Filch deeper and deeper into the bowels of the castle. They'd already finished with the flesh, but there wasn't a lot they could do with the splinters of bone I had left other than scatter them in parts of the castle where no one ever went.
There were animals that ate bones; tortoises, cattle, bears... but as there weren't any of those animals anywhere within my sensory radius, the best I could do was the equivalent of flushing the bone fragments down the toilet and hope that no one ever noticed in whatever cesspit the toilets washed out to.
"Even if I'd had a reason to kill Mr. Filch, which I didn't, how would I have done it in a way that no one would see anything? You've seen my wand, so it obviously wasn't magic, and I'm too small to carry someone of Filch's size, which means I'd have had to leave him wherever I killed him. The castle has been searched, and no one has found anything, and there is a lot of evidence that I was exactly where I said I was."
For the first time I saw some uncertainty on Fawley's face, although Millner still had a stubborn set to his jaw.
"Isn't it more likely that Filch was taken before he even reached the castle?" I said. "Aurors are going missing every day. You think that maybe a squib that everybody hated might go missing the same way, maybe just because he irritated someone as a kid who is now dangerous?"
There was an implication to what I had just said. I could see the moment that Fawley got it, but Millner was oblivious. I grinned at Fawley, who looked distinctly uncomfortable.
Of course, it was the truth within a lie. I was already dangerous, but the more I learned the more dangerous I was going to get. I had a long memory too, although I had chosen to ignore past transgressions more than once.
I wasn't feeling particularly forgiving at the moment, though.
"You're trying to confuse us," Millner spat.
"I'm an eleven year old girl, and you are professional aurors," I said. "If I'm able to confuse you, what does that say about full grown criminals?"
Millner looked like he wanted to hit me, but he glanced back at Snape.
"If you really have any evidence that I did anything, you should charge me and take me in," I continued. "But bringing me in without any evidence might be...unwise."
"And why is that?" Miller asked, his face flushing a little.
"There are those who favor muggleborns over purebloods," I said. "And some of them are highly placed. Put an eleven year old girl in Azkaban for a crime she didn't commit...probably couldn't commit would be seen as a terrible injustice. Even people who don't care about mudbloods get upset when people threaten children because they fear it might be their child next."
"Miss Hebert," Snape drawled. "Kindly refrain from using epithets or I will be forced to assign punishments."
"It's our word," I said. "I know what I am, and I don't care what anybody thinks about it."
Fawley sighed.
"She's right," he said. "We're not getting anywhere here."
Millner scowled, but finally he nodded. "This isn't over. I know you did it, and I'll find out how."
"The question you should be asking yourself is who tipped you off," I said."I've made plenty of enemies, but schoolchildren wouldn't have known that Filch wasn't just off on holiday. That means that whoever informed you knew he was missing, maybe even before the staff did. Now who would possibly know that a man had been kidnapped or murdered faster than the people who'd done the deed themselves?"
"Pointing the finger at someone else is a common tactic for criminals," Millner said. "It doesn't change the facts."
"The fact is that you don't have anything on me, and you won't, because I'm innocent," I said.
That was apparently that. Both men rose, nodded toward Snape. Millner dropped my wand in Snape's hand and they both left the room.
"May I see your second wand, Miss Hebert?" Snape asked when they were far enough out of the room to be outside of hearing range.
I shrugged and pulled it from my fanny pack. Handing it to him, I waited as he checked the spells on it.
He eventually handed both of my wands back to me.
"You are unwise to antagonize them," he said. "Aurors have more discretion in our world than they do in the muggle world... there are fewer rules and they have much more power to make trouble for those they have taken a dislike to."
"Do you think I don't know that?" I asked. "But one of them was ready to throw me in the slammer and forget where he left the key."
"I warned you that certain behaviors could lead to Azkaban," he said. "Perhaps you will be more circumspect in the future."
"I try to stay out of trouble," I said. "But trouble keeps coming after me."
"Did you kill Mr. Filch?" he asked after a long moment, as though he was afraid of whatever answer I was going to give him.
"Killing him would have just caused me a lot of problems," I said. "And I had no reason to kill him. Do you think I would just randomly start murdering staff members?"
"I am not entirely certain what you would do," he said. "But I do not believe you are randomly malicious. Everything you do serves a purpose."
"So there you go," I said. "Killing Filch would make my life worse, not better, so why would I do it?"
"And if we asked for a pensieve of the night in question?"
"Do you really want to see a boring memory of me taking a bath?" I asked, with one eyebrow raised. "Other than that, it was pretty much just the parties and the Feast like I said. There were people around me at all times throughout the night. What would be the point?"
"I will take you at your word," he said after a moment. "But you should listen to mine. Adult wizards have decided that the world would benefit from your absence. They are capable of making that happen."
"I'm learning as fast as I can," I said. "Picking up every spell, learning to fight. In the end it might not be enough, but I plan to go down fighting. What else can I do?"
"Accept help from others," he said. "Despite your unconventional methods, you are still a child, and as such are not expected to take on the entire world."
"I'll take on the entire universe, if that's what it takes," I said. "And how can I accept help when everyone seems like they want to either kill or imprison me?"
"Have you considered that it might be your personality?" Snape asked dryly.
I carefully resisted giving him the finger. I could see that he knew I wanted to, though, and there was a little smirk as he walked out of the room.