He was a deadringer for the man everyone else thought had gone rogue.
Except it wasn't him.
Even with Dann's wand stuck up his nose, he didn't look at her. His eyes darted around from the ticket counter to the prehistoric tiger display case, everywhere except at her.
This wasn't the Matt that she knew.
"What have you done with Matt?" she demanded. If this wasn't him, then someone was using magic to create a likeness of him. They'd kept a picture, or a piece of him to transform... her blood ran cold.
"Is there anything left of him besides his hair, or a fingernail, or..." she stifled a sob. Regardless of what he had or hadn't done, she wanted Matt back whole and alive. And if she broke down in the middle of the Natural History Museum, in a building full of Muggles, the first lead she'd gotten on her partner's disappearance would slip away. She couldn't let that happen.
His breath smelled like clams. The skin around his cheekbones was starting to discolor. All clear signs of Polyjuice Potion. There was only one way a spell like this could work.
Somewhere, Matt was still alive.
Dann pushed her wand further up his nose and forced him backwards across the atrium. They ducked down an empty hallway just before a crowd of tourists entered the main exhibit area.
There was a restroom sign, one of those single-room, any-gender signs. Perfect. She hauled them both through the door and flicked the lock. "Tell me where he is," she demanded. "Or you're a dead man." She couldn't help it. She sounded too desperate, but what else was she supposed to do? She couldn't lose her partner a second time.
The man in front of her blinked a few times, and then he began to laugh, a trickle of blood running down where her wand still jabbed his nose. "I'm dead anyway," he said, still laughing.
She didn't see what was so funny.
"You interrupted my heist. That was the only way I was going to get out of this alive. I don't know this Matt. They left me a note and a pill and told me if I got caught, I was dead. That's all I know, I swear."
She was so stunned that she forgot to react when he removed her wand from her hand in a single motion. Suddenly, her bloody wand was pointed back on her.
"You know what?" the man said, like it was just a casual conversation that any man and woman locked in a public restroom would have together, "Now that I've been interrupted, you're likely dead as well. So why don't you tell me who the hell I'm supposed to be, and why this Matt fellow," he gestured at himself with his free hand, "is the perfect person to steal the Basilisk Tooth from that case out there, because maybe that's the only chance either of us have of getting out of this alive."
