Harry frowned as read through the Healer's report on the woman.

It had been nearly six in the evening by the time Usman decided he'd seen enough at the 'crime scene', and in that time he had nearly ran out of ways to avoid watching the man waste his time. He'd been tired, hungry, and irritated, but he could have at least gotten to work.

Except, of course, that this old bag of bones Healer – a Healer that was, in the man's own words, not a Pathologian - had been at dinner. And worse, while they'd been waiting for the geezer to grace them with his presence, he'd been sucked into helping out in an emergency tent. Usman had kindly offered to sort out the problem – at the mess tent - which had apparently taken another two hours.

All of which meant that it was now half past nine, he hadn't eaten since before noon, he'd spent most of his day with Kife fucking Usman, and all he really wanted to do was find a sandwich, take a shower, and maybe, if he was really lucky, see Gabrielle for a bit before falling into an eight hour coma.

But that wouldn't be happening. No, none of that was in the cards for him, because the file he'd been given was, without a doubt, the single most pathetically half-arsed bullshit excuse for an autopsy report he or any other Healer in the history of magical medicine had ever been forced to read.

If it had been a better day, or if he'd been a better man, Harry might have managed to maintain the appropriate air of decorum. As it was, he barely avoided profanity.

"Are you certain this is the correct report?"

Usman and the Healer stopped talking. They'd been making small talk as Harry took a moment to review the report, but both were staring at him now.

"Excuse me?" the Healer replied. His accent was American, though from which part of that country was not entirely clear. Harry mentally dubbed him Useless.

"Are you certain. That this. Is the correct. Report?"

"Last I checked."

Harry took a breath. "I see. Pull the body for me."

Useless bristled. "Now see here…"

"Pull the fucking body. Now."

Useless blinked. Usman frowned.

"Easy Potter," the latter warned, just before the former replied, "Excuse me?!"

"No, I don't think I will. Quite frankly I doubt any competent Healer would. This," he shook the file, "is either a terrible joke or a flaming pile of shit. Which raises the question: Are you really this incredibly stupid, or did you just decide that it would be fun to not do your job today?"

"I am a senior member of staff at the most respected magical hospital in all of North America! I've been a Healer for half a century, and I will not be…"

"Lazy then," Harry interrupted. "That's somehow worse if I'm honest. If you were just incompetent, you'd have at least had an excuse."

"I don't have to take this," Useless snarled. "You have no right to…"

"To call you out on your incredible inability to perform even basic documentation? To demand even the bare minimum of functional charting? I've seen orderlies keep better records than this, and you'd have me believe that you, a senior member of staff at the most respected magical hospital in all of North America…"

Harry took a breath. "Just pull the body. Show me what you did."

For a moment, the man looked like he was going to argue further. His grey-green eyes narrowed, he clenched one gnarled, liver spotted fist; his jaw tightened and his nostrils flared. In the end, though, he let out a tremendous sigh and admit defeat.

"Fine," he said, "but I'm going to need some more goddamn coffee."

"I can do that," Usman cut in.

Harry took the opportunity presented by the momentary pause in the conversation to rein in his anger somewhat. Even that small concession to decorum was difficult, but it had been a rough day. Useless summoned a wheeled cart from across the room with a practiced flick that transitioned smoothly into an almost acceptable swish. There was a loud click, and a single metal door opened; cool air billowed out in a misty cloud. The tray slid out into the room without a sound and then, with a soft thunk, transferred itself onto the cart.

At least the other Healer was good at something.

"Alright, let's get this over with," Useless griped.

Harry shook his head, but managed to hold his tongue.

"November 4th, Twenty-ten, 2153 hours," Useless began, having found the will to cross the room and stand next to the body. A charmed pen scribbled as he spoke. "Re-examination of Case 731, Jane Doe, at the request of MO2 Potter. Diagnostics and reporting performed by Chief Medical Officer Paul Diener."

Paul Diener.

Shit.

Paul Diener.

Harry's felt his heart stop. He'd criticized Paul Diener.

The man was a legend, an absolute pillar of modern magical medicine, one of the world's leading experts on diagnostic charms. He'd literally written the book on…well quite a few subjects, actually. Most relevantly in this case though was the eight volume collection that took up a shelf in literally every Healer's bookcase, Clinical Diagnostics.

And he'd called the man lazy. And incompetent. And useless.

Shit.

Paul Diener continued. "Subject presents as female." A light flick and a faint pinkish-red shimmer later, he added, "presentation confirmed via Sex Determination Charm, unmodified, as per standard procedure. Initial visual assessment of age somewhere in her late twenties…"

Another flick, an unfocused look in the man's eye.

"Age Determination Charm, unmodified, as per standard procedure, indicates the woman was 28 years of age at the time of death. Height…"

"Wait," Harry blurted out, before he could stop himself, logic not quite half-formed. Diener stopped, eyes hard, and he almost lost his nerve. It was far too late for that though, and so, in for a knut in for a galleon, he forged ahead.

"Can you run that ADC through a point two impedance modulation?"

"Age Determination Charm, modified with 0.2 Beck impedance factor modulus, at MO2 Potter's request, against standard procedure, indicates…expected result of 28.56 years."

"And a point four?"

"Age Determination Charm, modified with 0.4 Beck impedance factor modulus, at MO2 Potter's request, against standard procedure, indicates…expected result of 29.12 years."

The numbers were right…maybe too right. He hadn't practiced this particular charm much in recent years because his patients usually just told him how old they were, but the diagnostics he did run never gave such predictable results.

Diener took the silence to mean he could continue. "Height," he said, with a tiny twist of his wand, "161 centimeters. Weight 60 kilograms."

Who was exactly 60 kilos? Or 161 centimeters, for that matter? Harry made to interrupt again, but realized before he could speak that he might as well start clearing his throat if he was going to go around acting like Dolores Umbridge. In what world was he seriously going to criticize Paul Diener for a bit of rounding?

"Hair appears blonde, though presence of contaminants – particularly what looks to be significant quantities of blood – may alter perceived shade significantly. Diagnostic indicates…"

Again, Diener gave a small swish, and a warm yellow light formed at the tip of his wand. It just about matched the shade Harry would have expected beneath the dried blood and grime. And yet, something didn't feel quite right. Looking at the woman's hair he was reminded of another blonde, not the one that had been occupying his thoughts almost constantly since Teddy and Victoire's Going-Back-To-Hogwarts get together, but her sister.

The shade was completely wrong, of course – he'd never seen anyone with quite the same brilliantly gleaming silver hair as Fleur…wait, yes, he had. Gabrielle, once, in the lake, and another time at Bill and Fleur's wedding. She'd looked like a miniature version of her sister then, but her hair was darker now…

And completely unlike this woman on the table's. This woman's hair was darker than either of the Delacour sisters had ever been, a sort of warm cornsilk blonde that was closer to Hannah Abbot's really, but when he saw it, he was still reminded of Fleur.

Why was he reminded of Fleur?

He didn't think about Fleur in terms of her looks much, at least not since before she'd been more or less his sister-in-law, so why now? If not the shade, then…

Harry shook his head. Diener moved on.

"Subject appears to lack eyes, likely due to removal by animal scavengers, the presence of which is evident from damage to lips and tongue consistent with avian consumption. Diagnostics indicate eye color to be…medium brown."

The examination went on from there, with Harry doing his best to watch for any discrepancies as Diener carried out the process he had more or less single-handedly defined. Everything was by the book, unsurprisingly, and the longer it went on, the more Harry regretted his earlier attitude.

What the hell had he been thinking? It had been a long day, a hard one, but that didn't give him an excuse to treat someone the way he had. Yes, the report had looked sloppy, but what had he been expecting?

Usman arrived with coffee about the time Harry had decided to apologize, just as Diener was in the process of flipping the woman onto her stomach to finish up the preliminary assessments.

There was the burn, or scar, or whatever it was. It dominated her back, oddly shining, a repulsive swathe of utter wrongness that drew the eye and tied Harry's stomach in knots. Usman asked some question, Diener answered. Their voices were distant and muffled, drowned out by the rising sound of blood in his ears and the thundering thud-thump of his heart.

The hairs at the back of his neck stood on end, and chill raced down his spine; he felt his wand hand twitch and found his mouth suddenly dry.

Thud-thump.

The acrid, electric smell of ozone filled his nose, too strong and too close, overwhelming, so powerful that he could almost taste it, all char and despair.

Thud-Thump.

The burn seemed to writhe, ropy scar tissue squirming like a mass of undulating worms.

Thud-Thump. Thud-Thump. Thud-Thump.

Something stirred in his chest, something rancid and rotten and foul, cancerous, wriggling.

Thud-Thump, Thud-Thump, Thud-Thump, Thud-Thump

"Potter!"

Harry nearly jumped out of his skin at the sound of Usman's voice. The thin man was looking at him with a degree of concern he wouldn't have thought possible even a few moments before.

"I'm fine," he said. It was obvious he wasn't – his heart raced, his breath was shallow, he could feel the cold sweat trickling down the back of his shirt. When he looked away we found that his hand was only an inch from the woman's horrid, puckered flesh. When had he moved?

"Good," Diener replied. The man's voice was softer than it had been before, gentler.

Harry swallowed. Cleared his throat. Tried again.

"I'm fine," he said again.

"That's good," Usman agreed. "It is an unpleasant injury."

"It is," said Diener. "My initial assessment would be that we are looking at a severe chemical burn of some sort…"

One step back, two; Harry closed his eyes and tried to calm his breathing. He was overtired, overstressed, and clearly needed to focus. He was a Healer, for Merlin's sake, a Healer – a professional. This was part of the job. He just needed to focus.

"…surface shows no indication of significant salt residues as would be found with the most common acidic irritants…"

He opened his eyes and looked again. A chemical burn made sense but didn't feel right. The burn was too uniform for that, too neat and tidy. Especially at the…

"The margins are wrong for that," he said quietly. Diener stopped and leaned in a bit closer. A chemical burn meant the body had to come in contact with some sort of liquid, usually. The most common injury morphology would be splotchy then, from droplets, or maybe a continuous patch with a rough edge if there was immersion involved. The edge of the woman's injury was clean, almost sharp. That sort of edge came from something solid.

"The color is wrong for a zermal burn," Usman replied. "Electrical?"
"No directionality," said Diener. "I'll admit, this is strange…"

Directionality. The word caught in Harry's ear, a tiny hook reaching back through the years to catch against a long-forgotten lecture at St. Mungo's. It hadn't been about electrical burns though…he could remember Neville looking sick, and the loud buzzing of the projector bulb, and knew that it had concerned directionality. But what had the lecture been about. Third year, one day, he and Neville had decided to take the extra shift after it was done so that they could have a day off on Thursday, which meant that it had to have been before that business with Quentin Bly…

"Hm, I wonder…"

Diener flicked his wand just as the pieces fell into place.

"Wait!" Harry cried, but it was already far too late. The man was an expert at diagnostic charms, and every one of his non-verbal incantations was a masterclass in precision. A faint purple spark formed at the tip of his wand, and then…

Nothing.

Harry let out a shaky sigh. Usman and Diener were both staring at him like he'd lost his mind. "Her ears," he panted, "check her ears for evidence of hemorrhaging."

Diener did so. Frowned. Did so again. Checked the other side.

"Significant evidence of hemorrhage in the inner ear."

Harry nodded. "And the eyes – can we take a closer look at those again?"

Diener flipped the woman back over. Both Healers looked closer.

It had seemed logical that the birds, the roaches, or the rats would have taken them, but now that he looked…

There was no tearing, no bone shards or flesh chunks. It was all far too clean for it to be the work of animals, wasn't it? In fact…

Harry shone a light into one of the empty eye sockets. He hadn't been sure before, but now the dull white of exposed bone practically glowed amidst the red-brown carnage of long dried blood. Such a thing could have easily been explained at the back of the eye socket – roaches or rats might have stripped the flesh clean quite easily with enough time – but the light here was reflecting off the orbital surface of the zygoma. To get there an animal would have had to reach into the skull and work outwards.

Scavengers might be picky, but that seemed to be a lot of extra effort, especially when the same flesh had been ignored at the rear of the eye. But if not an animal, what had caused this injury?

"There," Diener announced, "along the exposed zygomatic bone, look at the margin of the tissue."

Harry did so on the socket he had claimed. The border between muscle and bone was surprisingly smooth, and he could see a slight distortion to the tissue, rather like the edge of a piece of meat that'd been over-tenderized. And there, at the extreme limit of the margin, a strange sheen.

It was small and difficult to see, but it was definitely there. Just to make sure, he took a moment to conjure a glass. He'd have preferred to use his normal set from home – the trio of enchanted loups could be used to do more than just magnify – but this would have to do.

The bone had been polished. Not stripped, not struck, but polished, as though by a stream of high-pressure water. No, not water…steam. The inside of the bone that defined the front of the eye socket had been cleaned like an old cauldron, which could only mean one thing.

The eye had to have boiled and burst. He said as much, and Diener agreed, but neither Healer had anything past that. Superheating of the vitreous humor did happen sometimes, but for that to have occurred the head would have needed to have been exposed to a massive amount of heat. That sort of heat would have left significant physical evidence of the sort that just wasn't present. Not even the burn on the woman's back could speak to an appropriately hot environment, because that injury was pale rather than charred as it would have been in the case of a thermal burn.

Even more telling than that was the fact that the eyes had apparently burst outwards – if they'd been heated via external means they'd have like vented in every direction equally, or potentially away from the heat source, but certainly not towards it.

So that meant that the woman had to have been subjected to a huge amount of heat, but from the inside. There was no way something like that could have happened naturally, but there was one way he knew of magically.

"A Blood-Boiling curse?"

"Possibly," Diener agreed. "But I'm not entirely convinced. How would you explain the inner ear trauma, or the absence of the characteristic petechial hemorrhaging in the anterior chest?"

"There is a Malagasy variant that can cause similar signs," Usman replied, "It is a favorite of South African aurors wishing to…encourage…groups to disperse relatively peacefully. It only sometimes kills though."

"Would it explain the burn on her back?" asked Harry.

"Not at all," Usman replied. "And it is relatively obscure compared to the Recognized variants, at least outside of Africa."

"Unlikely then," said Diener. He made another comment as well, but Harry was not listening because Usman's mention of the Recognized variants of the Blood-Boiling curse had caught his attention. There were four or five, he knew, though to be fair he was no expert on the ICW's classification schemes and he'd only spent one rotation in the curse damage wards at St Mungo's during his residency. Other variants did exist, of course, like Usman's strange Malagasy version of the curse, but the reason the ICW classified all of them together was that they shared a fundamental resonance magically – a unique signature upon which modifications had been made to change specific properties – and there was a way to look for that fundamental resonance.

The method wasn't considered appropriate, really, and there were much more accurate ways of doing things these days – largely due to the considerable efforts of the man across the table from him. The problem with specialized diagnostic charms like the ones Paul Diener had developed though was that they needed very particular circumstances to function properly. The old fashioned way was less of a scalpel, and more of a machete.

Sometimes, though, you just needed to hack your way through some brush.

Mind made up, Harry reached a finger into the gaping crater that had once held the woman's eye. He felt along the hard ridge of the exposed zygomatic bone, eyes closed and every shred of focus zeroed in on the slight oiliness of gristle and blood beneath the sensitive pad of the digit until, at last, he found the very edge of the region that had been blasted clean.

He took a breath. Gently shifted the tip of his wand to the place where finger and bone met. Let out a long gentle sigh and thought the incantation of the Blood-Boiling curse.

Magic always left traces of its presence, if one knew where and how to look. Had this woman been subjected to a Blood-Boiling curse, any variant of it, those residual traces should have reacted to his incantation, even if wasn't actually casting the spell properly. Just the buildup should have made the bone vibrate and heat in sympathy, and yet neither occurred.

The empty eye socket remained cold and still, and Harry frowned.

"Not a Blood-Boiling Curse then," Diener sighed.

It wasn't just not a Blood-Boiling Curse, though, was it? The signs were all there, but the details were wrong. Harry couldn't help but think that he was missing something, something obvious, something that he knew and just couldn't quite catch hold of.

Not a Blood-Boiling Curse.

Then what? What acted like a Blood-Boiling Curse but wasn't a Blood-Boiling Curse? The Fulminaris Curse? Tempestis?

Neither resonated. What could it be? Diener was mirroring his tests now, trying various spells as Usman suggested them. The other men were having no more success than he was, even as their efforts became increasingly esoteric. Harry could feel that they were going about this the wrong way, but just wasn't sure how else to go about finding the answer.

All he really knew was that the woman had not been killed by a…

Harry blinked. Did they really know that she hadn't been killed by a Blood-Boiling Curse?

With a quick flick of his wand he conjured another lens, smaller than before but substantially thicker. It was difficult to squeeze the glass into position, even more so to hold it in place while still maintaining clean contact with the exposed bone as he adjusted the angle of his wand.

If the woman hadn't been killed by a Blood-Boiling Curse, the use of a reversal medium would mean that the bone should resonate with the inversion of the curse. He'd been so caught up in looking for the right answer that he hadn't thought to check if his first indications hadn't been wrong.

The tip of his wand lit. There was no reaction from the bone.

He tried again, pouring a bit more into the spell. Still nothing.

A third time, enough that the strange black-red light of the curse began to seep out into the morgue. No reaction.

It made no sense. The woman both had and hadn't been subjected to a Blood-Boiling Curse. What the hell was going on? What was he missing? Hermione would have told him that if the answers don't make sense, then the problem might be with the question…but what was wrong with the question?

Was the woman hit with a Blood-Boiling Curse? Yes and No. Nonsensical answer. Harry willed himself to take a step back.

What curse was the woman hit with? Too many to work through. Impractical answer. Wrong question. He let out a frustrated sigh.

Was the woman hit by a curse? It seemed obvious that she had – there was no evidence of a natural cause…but no visible evidence didn't mean that there wasn't any. And he could check to see if the injury was magical in nature.

Harry conjured another lens. Square and almost black, it was not the sort of thing often used in healing, for a negation medium stripped all characteristic resonance from a spell. Any spell, no matter which – from the Killing Curse to a Tickling Charm, the lens would render them into meaningless uniformity. Power without purpose, utterly useless for diagnostic or therapeutic work.

Bill had taught him one rainy Thursday evening the summer of his second year in training. Not for any real reason, but simply because they were together. Bill had enjoyed teaching, and he had enjoyed learning.

Harry aligned his wand with the lens and thought Lumos.

The bone stayed perfectly still. The woman hadn't been subjected to magic.

Except she had. He and Diener had been saturating her empty eye sockets with magic for the last twenty minutes. Even dead, the residual effects of so many diagnostic spells should have been more than enough to cause a bit of a tremor.

So there had to be magic present, but there wasn't. But there absolutely was, because he'd put it there. So if the answer was wrong…how could he change the question?

There was an obvious solution, but it was so ridiculous he wasn't sure why anyone would even try it. Still, nothing else made sense, and didn't have a better idea, so Harry conjured another reversal medium.

"Help me line these up, Usman," he said, knowing that it would be next to impossible to do so himself. The thin man nodded, and with only a little direction managed to find the proper position. It was a tight fit, but eventually they managed to stack the small dark cube atop the larger reversal medium.

"What are you looking for," asked Diener.

Harry looked up and met the man's eyes. He looked genuinely fascinated, and despite the frustration of the day, there was no denying the thrill of pride that came from showing Paul Diener something new.

This was the man that had developed specific diagnostic criteria for the Silesian strain of Dragon Pox in 1978, the man who had first isolated the markers for long term exposure to mood altering spells in the early 1990s. His research had saved countless lives and his expertise had foiled assassinations, and here he was, surprised by Harry Potter.

"Not magic," Harry replied.

The tip of his wand flared. The magic flowed cleanly into the negation medium and was scraped clean, then carried on through to the other lens. Pure magic went in the reversal medium; pure not magic came out.

For an instant there was no reaction, and then, as though surfacing from some great depth, there came a soft vibration. The sound quickly grew, and beneath his fingertip Harry felt brittle cold ease as the exposed zygomatic bone began to heat.

"Well, shit," Diener muttered, "not magic it is, Potter."

Harry nodded. They had an answer of some sort, now he just needed to figure out what the hell it meant.