With trembling hands, she ran her fingers over the elegant cursive script of the killers penmanship on the copy of the letter he had sent the Berlin victim before she was murdered. From one line she had concluded what had occurred in the life of this poor witch before she was slaughtered with the Sectumsempra. Something had troubled her deeply from the start about the Black Notices and had been gnawing away at her from the moment they had first read the letters.

There was something she had been overlooking, that had a strange sense of familiarity for her. A vagueness that only troubled her in a tantalisingly abstract manner. It was something about seeing the victim's body that had triggered her cogitation making it all the more real for her.

When she read the line back in the hotel room, her perspective shifted slightly and she realised with a sense of overwhelming grief what had occurred and it disturbed her to her core. Malfoy followed her gaze to her fingers to see what she was unable to articulate in that moment as she struggled to come to terms with the realisation.

I will make it as though you never existed.

He had assumed the killer meant this as an indication of the fact that he was going to kill her but even Malfoy now saw that wasn't what the killer was trying to convey. There was more to it. Concerned about the mental state of the witch who was coming emotionally undone before him, he placed a reassuring hand over her trembling one and gently squeezed her fingers.

"Tell me what you know" he said, softly, eyes imploring.

"He obliviated every single person who had ever know her. That's why no one is reporting these women missing and why they are unidentified. That's why we have been pulled in with Black Notices each time, because no one knows who they are: because he has obliviated every single person who knew them as though they never existed in the first place." she cried, unable to hold back the torrent of emotion, her hands coming to her face as she shook with unrelenting sobs. Pulling himself up from where he knelt beside her to the couch, he reached for her and gently lay back into the corner, holding her as she cried.

His head tried to process what she told him and his perspective on the case shifted slightly. This was far more sinister than what they had originally thought. His instinct had been that there was dark magic involved but he had never considered it was as simple as a memory charm that was employed by the killer. Somehow the idea of a murderous Gilderoy Lockhart sort was far more disturbing than a notion of a random executioner casting a Sectumsempra on an unsuspecting witch. This implied stalking of their lives as they systematically erased them from history, before casting a Sectumsempra and leaving them to bleed out where they lay, broken and contorted like forgotten rag dolls.

Malfoy quietly contemplated the fact that the last two had most certainly been left on display and the implications unsettled him. He hadn't verbalised his concerns to Hermione yet, unsure of how she would react to overt overtures of his ruminations. The killer had chosen the Sectumsempra for a reason. After all, if it was just a case of murdering the victims, he could have cast an Avada. No. This was about blood. They were muggle-born witches. Seeing the body, so close to the water today had triggered repressed memories and he had his own moment of clarity as he stood over Granger examining the body. His mind's eye flashed as though stood above Snape kneeling in the water, stopping him from bleeding to death, the memory unsettling him causing his reality to distort between past and present, and he felt a wave of nausea that seemed to settle in his throat as he bit back the rising bile. That's when it struck him that the killer wanted to literally drain the life and blood out of his victims. Drain them of their life force, and their magic that flowed through their veins with their blood. Their dirty blood. As he stroked the arm that he held, he felt the pad of his thumb graze over her scar, his heart aching for the trauma she would experience when she realised this too.

After what seemed like hours, her lamentation abated slightly, and her tears stopped flowing. His shirt was sodden but he paid it no mind as he soothingly stroked her hair. Sensing her slight movement, he sat them both up and she pulled back to look at him, unspoken gratitude in her eyes. He reached into his trouser pocket and took out a small pack of tissues he had with him, handing one to her which she accepted with a small smile of thanks.

Her tears dried, her demeanor a little calmer now, she took a deep breath.

"I did the same" she whispered forlornly, staring at her hands.

"What do you mean" he quietly replied, stroking her back in comfort.

"During the war" she began, not looking him in the eye as she felt him tense "we knew anyone connected to us was in danger."

He shifted, slightly uncomfortable, as memories of a troubled time came flooding in. He felt a sudden sense of foreboding as pieces started clicking together as she made her confession.

"It was the only way I could protect them from certain torture and death" she whispered, her emotion raw.

His mind flashed to her writhing helpless on the floor of the East Wing Drawing Room, her cacophonous screams reverberating around the darkened room and his protective grip tightened on her.

"I systematically removed a person from the lives of two people" she whispered, her voice breaking as tears threatened once more.

"Who?" he asked her, confusion etched across his brow as he tried to slot the last piece into place.

Turning to him, she finally met his gaze

"Me"