"YAAAAAAAAAH!"

"Oh, my," said Mr. Waterford, frowning slightly. "What was that all about?"

Kenzie's head jerked upward, her wand aloft. "Toby," she whispered, then sprinted back up the stairs leading to the trapdoor. She wrapped her fingers around the handle of the hatch and pulled.

It did not budge.

"Mr. Waterford, how do you open this door?" she asked.

"Ah, it only opens for me, you see," said Mr. Waterford with a thin smile.

Kenzie whirled around and jabbed her wand at Mr. Waterford's throat. "Mr. Waterford, open the door, please."

"Yes, yes, all right," he said, eyeing Kenzie's wand looking slightly alarmed. He reached over Kenzie's shoulder and pulled on the hatch.

It did not budge.

"It's not working," Mr. Waterford said, rather unnecessarily.

"Mr. Waterford, move aside, please," Kenzie said, directing her wand at the hatch. He did not need to be told twice; raising his arms in the air, he backed up a few steps on the stairs. "Expulso!"

The force of Kenzie's curse blasted a meter-wide crater through the ceiling. Mr. Waterford was blown off of his feet and tumbled down to the bottom of the stairs; Kenzie, who had had the foresight to grab onto the railing, barely managed to keep her footing before clambering up the steps out of the basement.

For a moment she blinked, dazed at the sudden light. Then, once her eyes focused, she blinked again, dazed at the sight before her.

The burly man was tugging on a thick and rusty iron chain, one of four matching chains that was attached to each of Tobias's limbs, suspending him in the shape of an X across the wall.

"Stupefy!" Kenzie shouted. With a flash of red light, the large man crumpled to the ground, his body barely missing the edge of the hole.

Tobias struggled and squirmed, tugging at his bindings. "K-Kenzie! Thank god!"

Kenzie rushed over to the wall against which Tobias was chained and slashed her wand over the iron links. "Relashio!"

The chains did not give way. They remained firmly shackled around Tobias's wrists and ankles.

Kenzie tried again. "Reducto!"

The spell merely ricocheted off of the chains and onto the floor, a patch of which crumbled to dust, widening the gaping chasm to the basement. Kenzie grabbed onto one of the chains to steady herself.

"Diffindo! Reducio! Defodio!"

"I—GAAAAAAAH!"

Kenzie leapt back. The chains had suddenly shortened, retracting into the walls and pulling Tobias's arms and legs ever more taut. Tobias writhed and screamed, straining to pull free, his chest heaving as glistening beads of sweat trailed down the sides of his face.

Kenzie leaned in and patted Tobias gently on the knee. "Toby. Toby, look at me."

Tobias's breath slowed. He squeezed his eyes shut and opened them again, glancing down at Kenzie. "Y-yes, all right…"

"Do you know how I can get these chains off of you?" Kenzie said.

Tobias groaned and shook his head, his jaw clenched in agony. "These are…no ordinary…chains…"

Kenzie looked up at Tobias's haggard face, keeping her eyes locked on his in reassurance. "It's okay, Toby, you don't have to talk. Just listen."

Tobias nodded. Kenzie frowned at the smooth stone wall behind him, rapping her knuckles against it uncertainly. Maybe she could simply detach the whole thing? She pictured herself hauling a wall over to the Ministry with Toby still attached to it; absurd, yes, but it just might work.

As she touched the tip of her wand to the wall, however, she could tell that it would be a fruitless endeavour. The chains had been attached to the wall with what Kenzie recognised as a Permanent Sticking Charm, and the wall itself seemed to be actively resisting the wand's touch.

Then another idea occurred to her. Biting the corner of her lip, she gazed up at Toby once more.

"Toby," she said gently, "I'm going to cut off your hands and feet."

"What?"

"I'll figure out a way to reattach them afterwards," Kenzie spoke rapidly, her eyes darting to the spot where one of the chains was gradually retracting into the corner of the room. "Trust me, I've amputated loads of limbs before."

"On corpses!" Tobias pointed out. "You never made it past Healer training!"

"Fair point," Kenzie said, pointing at Tobias's ankles with her wand. "Hold your breath, then."

Tobias let out something between a curse and whimper. "Go on, then."

A puff of wispy orange vapour burst out the tip of Kenzie's wand and cloaked Tobias's shoes in a shimmering bubble. "Local anaesthetic," she explained. "Still, it wouldn't hurt to brace yourself."

Tobias squeezed his eyes shut and balled his hands into fists. Kenzie sliced her wand through the air.

With a clatter, Tobias's left foot fell towards the floor, dangling from the end of the chain. Kenzie repeated the process on the right foot.

"Is it done?" Tobias asked a little while later.

"Yes, but keep your eyes shut," Kenzie said, watching as blood seeped out of the stumps at the ends of Tobias's legs along the bottom of the wall and dripped onto the floor. "Incendio!"

A jet of fire burst out the tip of Kenzie's wand and licked the ends of Tobias's legs, cauterising the wounds. Kenzie flicked her wand again, and the flames vanished as quickly as they had appeared.

Now for the hands. Only now did Kenzie realise that the chains had dragged Tobias too far up the wall for her to make a clean cut. If her aim was off, she might very well chop off his head instead.

A tall wooden stool sprouted out of the end of Kenzie's wand—a bit rickety, but it would have to do. Kenzie climbed on top of it and stood on her tip-toes, reaching for Tobias's wrists.

The stool did not do.

Kenzie had forgotten about the massive hole behind her. As she tipped forward, the stool tipped back; one of its legs slipped over the edge of the abyss, and the rest of her stool—and her body—tumbled after it.

Scarlett leaned over the railing at the far end of the Auror Office, watching windows that overlooked a rainy scene. She'd been assured (not that it had been particularly reassuring) that the windows were enchanted, which was why they could witness the weather despite being very deep underground.

"You good?"

Scarlett noticed Nellie standing just behind her in the window's reflection and nodded without turning around. "Yeah. Yeah, of course."

"All right," said Nellie, joining Scarlett at the railing and letting silence hang over them.

Sometimes, Scarlett felt, the less you wanted to talk about something, the more you wished someone would ask you about it. It was, after all, the principle by which she squeezed out most of the information she sought. She was less grateful for the phenomenon, however, when the one asking the questions wasn't her.

"Why do you ask?" Scarlett blurted out.

"Well, you did kill a man a week ago," Nellie pointed out.

That, Scarlett felt, was putting it nicely. "I had to."

"I know you had to," Nellie said. "I'm not here to criticise, Scarlett, I'm here to listen."

Scarlett slowly nodded, giving Nellie a wry smile. "Right, then. Sorry in advance if I fuck this up. I'm not used to having listeners."

"Well, you do work alone," Nellie said.

"Occupational hazard," Scarlett said, absently rubbing her thumb back and forth on the edge of the railing. "You have to work alone when you're dancing around the fringes of a world nobody's supposed to know exists."

"And does that bother you? Having to work alone?"

Scarlett shrugged. "Maybe a bit. It's a little overwhelming, knowing there's this whole other world hiding inside yours. I mean, I've been doing this for years, but all of this, it's just one surprise after another. Still, working with you and Howard—I feel a lot more steady. Like I can take on anything." Then she rolled her eyes. "Damn, that was soppy."

Nellie smiled. "I appreciate working with you as well. You've been a great addition to our team."

Scarlett nodded again in silence, but in truth, she was pleased.

"But it's also my job to make sure everyone on my team is in good shape," Nellie continued. "So if there's anything that's bothering you, don't be afraid to share."

Scarlett swallowed before she decided to answer. "I'm not saying the man deserved what he got," she said, choosing her words carefully, "but he definitely would have killed me if I hadn't taken him out first. So I don't regret killing him."

"But?"

"But nothing," Scarlett said, throwing her hands up into the air. "No questions, nothing on the news, no follow-up, no police knocking in my door…nothing. No repercussions. Not even a slap on the wrist."

"We're very good at cleaning up after ourselves."

"No kidding."

"I didn't say it was a good thing."

Scarlett glanced back towards the window. "You people can make it rain underground, for crying out loud. You make a problem go away and paint a pretty picture in its place. But how do you make sure nothing slips by unnoticed? How do you keep people accountable if they can just cover up their problems?"

"We try our best," Nellie said. "Of course the system is flawed. Our legal system is outdated. Our economy is in the hands of goblins digging up gold who threaten to revolt every five years. Half our population has to work for the government just to keep the magical society up and running and hidden away.

"But we try our best. It's what we have to do to keep the world from falling apart."

"Kenzie! KENZIE!"

The sound of metal on stone echoed through the air as Tobias twisted and turned beneath his bindings, his fingers numb as the cold iron chains cut off circulation to his hands through his wrists, his elbows trembling, goosebumps climbing up his arms.

Calm down, he told himself. Calm. Down.

Kenzie never panicked. She was cool as a cucumber, level-headed and ready for anything that came her way. Tobias didn't know how she did it.

He forced himself to open his eyes and look downwards. Though he worked with dead bodies daily, the sight of his detached feet lying on the floor made his stomach churn.

Focus. His official job title in the Auror Department was Experimenter: an expert in general magical theory and investigative techniques with a knack for charmwork that allowed him to offer whatever wisdom that was required of him. Screaming for Kenzie had been of no use; the fall had no doubt knocked her out. If anything was going to get him out his predicament, it would be his wits alone.

Or would it? Tobias glanced down at the Stunned man, who, unlike Kenzie and Mr. Waterford, was not on the basement floor and was easily visible. Though it had all happened so quickly, Tobias had a sneaking suspicion that Kenzie had misconstrued the man's actions. It had been very painful when the man had yanked against the chain on his leg, but perhaps that had merely been the man's attempt to release Tobias from its grasp?

If Tobias was right, then maybe the man could help him. And if he was wrong…well, he would worry about that later.

The least of his problems was that the man had been Stunned, and Tobias's wand was in the pocket of his trousers—inaccessible with his hands chained up. Tobias shoved back against the wall and swung his body forward, attempting to strike the man with his stump of a leg. He missed by inches, managing only to collide painfully back against the stone wall.

Heaving, he tried again, thrusting his hip back against the wall to give himself an extra push. For a hopeful moment he found himself hovering just above the man's prone body, only to realise that no matter how far he could stretch, there was no way Tobias could reach the man with his ankles alone.

The chains were now steadily shrinking. He felt less of a pull now that his legs were unattached, but he thought that there was a serious chance of his arms being ripped out of their sockets within the hour—if he didn't get help first.

Tobias shoved back against the wall again, this time at an angle; he swung right, then left, like a pendulum in front of the wall, the chains clattering like the ticking of a grandfather clock. Stretching out his legs, he attempted to widen the arc of his swing as he reached for the fallen chains with his legs.

Tobias cringed as his stumps brushed against metal. The local anaesthetic Kenzie had applied was wearing off, leaving his ankles feeling raw and sore as he attempted to catch the chain between his legs.

Tobias missed and tried again, heaving and hurling himself harder in the direction of the metal chains. He managed to catch one around his left ankle, kicking it across the room with a loud crash.

Tobias glanced hopefully at the inert form of the burly man, but the sound had not awoken him. To Tobias's further dismay, the chain was now entirely out of reach.

"Wake up!" Tobias begged of the unconscious man. "Rennervate!"

It was pointless, of course; his wand was still in his pocket, while his sweaty palms were suspended two yards out of reach.

Out of sudden insight or out of sheer desperation, he did not know, but at that moment Tobias let out a loud, hacking cough and propelled a glob of spit directly at the man's forehead.

The burly man's eyes fluttered open.

"Help me," Tobias panted, the pain in his cauterised ankles shooting up the sides of his legs. "Please help…"

Tobias's eyes rolled back in his head. The last thing he saw was the man's gaze before the darkness engulfed him.

By the time Freda had read through what had seemed like the millionth newspaper clipping, it felt like her eyeballs were threatening to pop out of her head. If they did, then maybe she'd eat them.

I'm going mad, she thought, though she comforted herself with the fact that the idea had not originated from her own head. There had been a story somewhere between four and five thousand clippings ago that had actually been titled "WOMAN POPS OUT OWN EYEBALLS AND EATS THEM," which had apparently caused quite a stir among the magical community in Suffolk some four years prior.

Freda was on paper duty that evening—which made it sound like paper duty was something that was cycled amongst the members of the Auror Department, Homicide Division, even though it always seemed to Freda that she was the one stuck with it every night.

From a practical standpoint, it made sense. Freda was quick reader with a sharp memory and a decent resistance against headaches that suited her to the role of sifting through documents for relevant data.

This time, Freda was acting upon Howard's suggestion. Now that they had some idea of what the Skull Smasher was looking for in the victim selection process, perhaps they could find some crime in the past that was similar in character to the Smasher slayings.

"After all," Howard had noted, "serial killers tend to take time to develop their craft. They'll often begin their careers with a bit of experimentation, perhaps not quite fitting in with their current M.O.'s, but with similar intents."

"And they would have been sloppier back then," Freda added thoughtfully. "More likely to have slipped up, and easier for us to catch." She had been eager to start.

That conversation now seemed like a year ago. Out of the (probably much more accurately) estimated three hundred or so cases of murder as well as half as many attempted murder, assault, and battery cases that she had read through, she had set aside about one in ten in which the victim had seemed capable of being an intimidating boss at work—which, apparently, was what the first and third Smasher victims had had in common. Freda thought of her own boss, human sledgehammer Carter Fusman, and for an odd, fleeting moment felt a little sympathy for the unknown target of her investigation, who had probably been so badly abused by a superior at work to the point of blowing up into a psychopathic nutjob.

Well, it was Freda's job to lock that nutjob up in Azkaban.

She checked her watch—eighteen minutes past seven. She was voluntarily working overtime and Howard had promised to be back by seven o'clock so that they could talk over anything she'd found. Letting out a groan of annoyance at her colleague's tardiness, she turned to her stack of potential early Smasher victims—smaller than the pile of clippings she'd dismissed, downright puny compared to the heap of clippings she had yet to go through.

There was a cranky old amulet merchant whose son had had enough, charming one of those amulets to force itself down his father's throat until he choked to death. There was a young Quidditch captain whose Beaters purportedly bashed her head in after a particularly gruelling post-match guilt trip. There was a strangled troll wrangler, a drowned apothecary proprietor, a perfume maker who was found Transfigured into one of her own products and sold to an old Finnish lady who was very disturbed to find her scent bottle shattered as bits of dead flesh splattered out. Then there was, of course, the infamous case of Robin Rhodes, the domineering innkeeper from Suffolk who was put under the Imperius Curse and forced to eat her own eyeballs.

Gross, thought Freda, and then Howard appeared with a pop, his robes particularly disheveled.

"Just…got back from…St. Mungo's," Howard said, distinctly out of breath. "Kenzie and Tobias—they've been attacked."

"Are they okay?" Freda said, bolting up from her seat and instinctively grabbing her cloak.

"Kenzie had a nasty fall, Tobias had his hands and feet amputated, but they put him back together," Howard said. "Healers say there shouldn't be any lasting damage. But it gets better—they found a witness. Big fellow by the name of Rudy Fiscelli, assistant at Ward & Waterford's. Nellie and Tristan are questioning him as we speak."

"Talk to us, Fiscelli," Tristan said, taking a seat across from the burly man from the gambling shop. "Walk us through what happened."

Rudy Fiscelli glanced up at Tristan. Tristan met his gaze, staring back. Nellie watched them both.

Then Fiscelli shook his head. "Can't," he muttered.

"Mr. Fiscelli, this conversation is strictly confidential," Nellie assured him. "You can talk to us."

Fiscelli turned to Nellie and shot her a solemn look. "It doesn't work like that."

"Then tell us how it works, Mr. Fiscelli," Nellie said. "We're here to help."

Fiscelli pressed his lips together into a thin line, his hands clutched together in consternation. He remained silent.

Tristan was beginning to fidget in his seat in impatience. Nellie gave him a sharp look before turning back to their witness. "Mr. Fiscelli?" she repeated gently.

Fiscelli arose from his chair. He turned around, slipped the robes off his shoulders and began to unbutton his shirt.

Nellie gasped; Tristan leaned back in his chair, his expression fierce. Rudy Fiscelli's back was covered in a criss-crossed mesh of jagged red scars.

As Fiscelli turned back to the Aurors and returned to his seat, Nellie thought back to the scene Tobias had described. "Did your boss do that to you?" Nellie asked.

Fiscelli nodded.

"Sylvester Waterford?" Tristan asked.

Fiscelli shook his head. "Mr. Waterford is an odd character, it is true. But he has always been good to me."

"It was Ward, then?" said Nellie.

Fiscelli nodded fervently but remained quiet. Tristan frowned. "Why can't you talk about it?" he asked. "Did he put some sort of curse on you?"

Fiscelli nodded once again.

"Is that what happened to our colleague?" Nellie said. "The man you brought to the hospital?"

"I tried to help him," Fiscelli said.

"You did help him," Tristan said. "You saved his life. He thanks you for that. We all do."

"I was the one," Fiscelli continued, as if he had not heard Tristan's words, "who put him in danger in the first place."

Fiscelli took a deep breath, his eyes darting around the room. Nellie waited patiently for him to continue.

"I thought it would be all right, now that Ward was dead," Fiscelli finally said. "I thought it was safe, now, to tell someone what he had done to me. The man said he was from the Ministry, like you, so I thought it was safe. But the moment I tried to tell him, the walls…the walls consumed him."

"The chains?" Nellie asked. Fiscelli nodded once more.

"The walls aren't here now," Tristan said, gesturing to the room. "You can talk to us. You're safe here."

Fiscelli swallowed before beginning to speak. "I needed the money. Ward offered me a job, a comfortable salary. I accepted. Then I realised what he really was. But by then it was too late.

"He kept me. He kept me as a slave to his own sadistic pleasures. He showed me what would happen if I told anyone what he was doing to me, so I never did.

"I lived under the shop. I could not leave. Ward made sure of that. But one day, he forgot to lock me up. So I ran, got the hell out of there, ran down Knockturn Alley.

"It was the middle of the night. I didn't know what to do. I thought he might come after me. I went to a pub to clear my head, and then I…met someone. I found myself…telling someone everything. How Ward was treating me. How I'd escaped.

"The person got angry, I think. Said something about how bullies rule the world—superiors bullying their subordinates, bosses bullying their employees, teachers bullying their students. How they needed to be put in their place, crushed like the little ants that they were."

Nellie and Tristan were suddenly sitting up much straighter in their seats.

Fiscelli continued. "Then I must have blacked out or something. The next thing I knew, I woke up, and I was back in the shop, as if nothing had happened. I could barely remember what had happened myself.

"But something had happened. Mr. Waterford told me that Ward had disappeared. Later it turned out he had been killed."

"Who was the person in the pub?" Tristan asked. "Do you remember anything? Gender, hair colour, eye colour, distinguishing features, that sort of thing?"

Fiscelli said, "No. Must have…done something to my memory. I just remember the words like…like they were my own. But I know they weren't. Does that make sense?"

He looked almost desperately at the pair of Aurors, both of whom nodded pensively.

"Were you glad Ward was dead?" Tristan asked quietly.

Fiscelli looked up, his eyes grim. "Of course I was. At first, at least. I thought I was free. Hal Ward deserved the death he died—every bit of it.

"But then I realised I still couldn't leave. The curse had merely grown stronger. Even beyond the grave Ward was still chaining me there. You can kill the harmer. But you cannot kill the pain."

"So this person he was talking to in the pub—that was actually the Skull Smasher?" Freda asked. Tristan and Nellie had just finished relating the details of their conversation with Rudy Fiscelli.

"It certainly seems that way," Nellie said. "Crushing people like ants—sound familiar? Then that very night Ward gets murdered."

"Where's Fiscelli now?" Howard asked.

"Fusman had him taken to A & C," Tristan replied. "See if they can't get his memories back."

"'A & C'?" Scarlett repeated.

"Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes," Howard explained.

"Ah," Scarlett said, chuckling a little at Howard. "Sounds like a fun place to work."

"It's where my boss was planning on sending you if I hadn't put a word in," Howard said, smiling back.

"Well, that's enough magic for my brain to process for a day," Scarlett said, rising from her seat in the Homicide Division cubicle. "I'm heading out. I'll see you all tomorrow."

A chorus of goodbyes resounded as Scarlett left the office. Freda gave Howard a look.

"What?" Howard said.

"Nothing," Freda said, turning away with a little smirk.

"So, what else have we got?" Nellie asked. Freda pointed at her desk, a newspaper-adorned mess.

"Been looking through these," Freda said, and she explained some of the highlights of her search.

"That'll give us somewhere we can start looking after we get a description out of Fiscelli," Nellie said. "Good work. Now—"

There was a knock on the side of the cubicle. Director of Homicide Robbie Tresillian poked his head in.

"Rob," Nellie said, a little surprised. "What—"

"You'd better come see," said Tresillian, beckoning them to follow.

The four Aurors filed out of the cubicle after Tresillian, following him to Fusman's office. Expecting the worst, Freda was surprised to find that Fusman was not there.

Instead, Marion Wolle, Fusman's secretary, was standing against Fusman's desk, sobbing softly into her hands.

"I thought Fusman sent you to escort Fiscelli to A & C," Tristan said, looking just as surprised as Freda was. Marion nodded mid-sob, letting out an impressively high-pitched whimper.

"It's okay, Marion," Robbie said, placing a gentle hand on her shoulder. "Nobody here blames you. Just tell them what happened."

"He was real scared," Marion said, looking up at them out of one eye while she furiously wiped the other with the back of her hand. "Muttering, even. He told me the walls were watching. They were watching him. He said nobody was safe around him. And then he—he just—vanished. Poof." She made a little motion with her hands for emphasis.

"He Disapparated?" Nellie asked. Marion nodded.

"Why would he do that?" Howard asked.

"I don't know!" Marion shrieked, making Howard jump.

"Er—maybe we should talk outside?" Freda suggested. Howard nodded, looking a little embarrassed as they exited the office.

"Why would he do that?" Howard asked again, looking at Nellie and Tristan. "You said he was cooperative."

"Not at first," Nellie pointed out. "It took him a while for him to open up, actually, he was so scared of Ward's curse. Maybe he got cold feet and made a run for it."

"Or maybe he was lying," Tristan added.

"Do you think so?" Freda asked. Tristan shrugged.

"Could've been. Maybe he killed Ward. Maybe he's the Smasher. Maybe he's another copycat. Or maybe not. Point is, if he's gone, we've no way to tell."

"Teachers," Howard said.

"Hmm?" said Nellie.

"You told us Fiscelli told you the Smasher told him something about teachers," Howard said, leaning back against the wall and crossing his arms, his brow furrowed in thought.

"Sorry, what does this have to do with Fiscelli disappearing?" Tristan asked.

"No—nothing—I was just thinking about how much Fiscelli knew, what he heard the Smasher say," Howard said. "The Smasher mentioned bosses and employees, that's what we've seen so far, but also teachers and students, right? Maybe one of the next targets is going to be a teacher."

"Like a Hogwarts professor?" Freda asked.

"What other teachers are there?" Howard said.

"But Hogwarts is the safest place in the nation," Freda pointed out. "The Skull Smasher would have to break in there to get to any teacher."

"It's been done before," said Tristan.

"Freda has a point, though," Nellie said. "It'd be incredibly daring of the Smasher to target someone at Hogwarts."

"Didn't a professor die over the summer?" said Howard. "It was in the Prophet."

"Professor Jacob Brody, I think it was," Nellie said. "He died in a Fiendfyre accident, though; I don't see how the Smasher would have had anything to do with that."

"Okay, so if the Smasher hasn't killed a teacher already, a teacher might very well be the next victim," Howard said. "Sure, Hogwarts is probably impenetrable, but the professors don't stay in the school all the time. If they're out in, say, Hogsmeade—"

"Saturday's the first Hogsmeade weekend of the year for the students," Tristan said. "Teachers tend to go out then as well. If I were the Smasher, that's when I'd strike. Much easier to blend in when the streets are packed, and casting the Imperius Curse on an unsuspecting teacher would be a piece of cake."

"We need to warn the Hogwarts staff," said Freda.

"We'll contact Mark," said Nellie.

Professor Peterson loved to make lists.

He was making one now with a Self-Inking Quill and a napkin, lingering at the staff table in the Great Hall after most of his colleagues had filed off—and before most of the students sleeping in on a lazy Saturday morning had shown up for breakfast. On that list were the names of every member of the Hogwarts staff.

Except his own, of course. He had decided it was altogether unlikely that the Skull Smasher would target someone who had been a teacher for barely a week.

Still, Professor Peterson had written down the names of several teachers despite their relative unlikelihood of being the intended Smasher victim, if only for the sake of completeness. He simply struck their names out afterwards.

If his analysis of the Skull Smasher's motives was correct, the victims were those who preyed on the weak, who abused their positions of power to belittle their inferiors. The professors who were not like that could be removed from the list.

Then there was the fact that the Skull Smasher had not struck over summer vacation, as Mark himself had done with Professor Brody, but had instead elected to wait until the school year had begun. Unless the Smasher was patient enough to wait until Christmas vacation, which was doubtful, the intended victim must not have been as easily accessible during the summer as Brody had been. Armed with this information, Mark dropped a few more names from his list.

He crossed out one name because that professor had taken ill two days prior; another because she never went to Hogsmeade when the students did. Now only three names remained.

For a moment, he stared at them. If I were the Skull Smasher, who would I murder?

Mark drew a circle around a name. Then he crumpled up the napkin and left the Great Hall.