Bill inhaled the salt air, thinking that Fleur would have called it a perfect picnic day. The surf was low, with the wind just light enough to rock the sea oats back and forth. He hadn't been to Shell Cottage since his world had shattered, but the path from the apparition point to the house was still free of weeds, which meant that the landscaping spells were still in place.

It was nice to know that something of Fleur's had survived.

The last few hours had been a mixed blessing. He'd eaten, but if anyone asked him what it was, he couldn't remember anything other than Tonks telling him he wasn't leaving the Ministry building until it was gone. The guilt had subsided, replaced by a slow rage that steadily grew within him. If he hadn't killed Fleur, then someone else had. He'd spent a year paying for her death, and the guilty party was going to have to stand up and face the consequences.

Tonks had given him the option of coming out to Shell Cottage later, after he'd had some rest, but what was the point? Just like the blood test, it needed to be done. He probably wasn't going to sleep if they made him go back to his flat. Lying awake in his bed to avoid the nightmares would only be replaced with lying awake and visualizing what would happen to those responsible for Fleur's murder if he ever got his hands on them. The sooner he got this over with, the sooner he could let it all go.

They walked together down the path, through the sand, and up to the cottage that used to be his favorite place in the world. He stared for a few minutes at the front door, torn between remembering and forgetting. His feet wouldn't budge.

"I… I don't know if I can do it again."

But that was exactly why they had come. Tonks reached out and took his hand. She'd been with him when he'd signed the statement and she was right. It was important to go through everything at the scene – to see if the surroundings would trigger the memory of a detail he'd missed.

The unknown details made him sick to his stomach.

Bill swallowed. Her hand was comforting… reassuring… confident. "I'll try."

Tonks led him back down the path to the apparition point. "Okay, let's start from the beginning. I assume you arrived here."

"Yes. It was already dark. I'd expected Fleur to be getting ready for bed – she was a morning person, but the porch light was off. All the inside lights were on. I remember thinking how odd that was."

"Do you remember opening the door?" Tonks asked gently.

"I don't know." He rubbed his face and groaned. This was stupid. He distinctly remembered standing on the porch. He remembered everything about the lights. Why couldn't he remember opening the damned door?

And then something came to him. He could almost feel it.

"Bill?" Tonks said from beside him. "Bill, you've gone white as a ghost. Are you alright?

He hadn't remembered this back at the Ministry, but now it hit him like a ton of bricks.

"I… I remember feeling hot. My head hurt like hell, and I couldn't see straight."

"Was that before you opened the door?"

"Yeah," he said. He didn't just remember it. He could feel it, like it was happening all over again.

"I think I'm gonna…" and then he was. Sick over the side of the porch rail into the bushes.

Tonks' wand was out in a heartbeat. "Get off the porch, Bill."

Bill staggered back and felt Tonks pull him all the way off the porch and back onto the path. Immediately, the sick feeling disappeared and his head cleared.

"It's a Memory Modification Ward," he said, and pointed his wand at the porch, but Tonks beat him to it.

"Revealio," she chanted.

Nothing happened.

"They must have checked already. It would have been too obvious to miss."

"Unless it isn't a spell." Bill flicked his wand over the area.

"What are you doing?" Tonks asked.

"Checking for residual magic."

She nodded and started checking too. "There." She pointed her wand at a small frog statue, no bigger than his fist, which was perched on a shelf above the door jamb.

"I'd forgotten about that thing." Bill squinted at the small clay animal, one of Fleur's whimsical touches. It pulsed mildly, making it difficult to focus on.

"You have a good eye," he said to Tonks. "I can barely see it."

"It doesn't want to be seen. I had to look at it sideways," she said.

Bill took a step forward to retrieve the thing, and immediately felt the nausea kick in. He backed off the porch and rummaged in his robe for a small silver pouch and tossed it to Tonks. "I can't go up there. Put it in that."

Tonks reached up, and with the tip of her wand, prodded the frog statue off the ledge. She caught it deftly inside the bag.

"Why didn't it react to the Reveal Spell?" she asked.

"It only affected me," Bill said. "That means they were after me the whole time, and Fleur was simply in the way."

The guilt had seeped back in, a cold, clammy sensation. After Tonks closed the silver bag, he sat down on the steps and put his head between his knees. She sat down beside him, tucking the silver bag away.

"So, you just walk around with an extra hex canceling bag in your pocket all the time?"

"Comes with the job."

"That explains why you blacked out last year, and why no one found this thing afterwards."

That made Bill wonder what else they would find inside. He reluctantly got up and faced the door.

"Do you need another minute?" Tonks asked.

"I've had a year. Let's get this over with. Alohomora."

The door swung slowly open, but Bill's feet were still firmly planted on the mat.

"I'll give you a bit. The perimeter needs checking." Tonks patted his shoulder and headed around the house, poking her wand into the bushes as she circled around to the back.

Bill watched her go, and then stepped into his past.

The little house was mostly the same. All the furniture was still in place, but everything that had made it his and Fleur's had been removed. The throw on the couch, the plants by the window, the smell of fresh lemon balm and lavender sachets, that was gone. It was just a place now. Bill flicked his wand at the bay window, which opened to freshen the stale air. A patch of short, blue hair bobbed past and around to the front. Tonks came up the front steps and wiped the sand from her boots onto the mat.

Tonks swished her wand, and the sand swirled in a miniature eddy and then floated out the door. "Sorry for the mess. It's beautiful."

Caught up in the moment, Bill remembered why his wife had loved this place so much. Fleur always kept everything clean, but she never minded a bit of sand. She'd always believed that sand was a natural consequence of choosing to live by the shore and was happy to pay the price for the tranquil scenery.

"Yeah," he said. Then he shook himself out of the memory, realizing that Tonks had been talking to him and he hadn't caught a word of it. "What were you saying?"

"Your mother. Have you talked to her?" Tonks looked at him pointedly.

"No, I haven't… not since… Fleur."

"She's worried about you," Tonks said. "Not that I've spoken to her since the funeral, but I know her well enough to know that she worries. Now that you're clear…"

"I'll put that on my calendar," Bill said curtly.

"Fine," Tonks said, letting the matter drop. "Alright, we're here. Talk me through it."

He pointed to a spot on the floor right between the kitchen and the living area. "There." He closed his eyes as the room started slowly spinning. Steady, he reminded himself.

Tonks took out a small file from her robe and flipped through photographs of the crime scene. "I'm sorry, but this is going to be graphic. You don't have to watch if you don't want to."

"No, it's okay. I'm okay," he said. He wasn't, but it was too late to put this off any longer.

The magical schematics from the case file sprang to life in the form of a grainy, three-dimensional overlay. It shimmered, making it easy to determine what was real in the space and what had been photographed a year ago. She grimaced and swiped the image of the body away, leaving only an outline on the floor. "Someone attacked her from behind," Tonks said without emotion, taking on the role of her job. "She fell forward, facing the door."

Bill tried his best to be helpful. That was why they'd come all this way. "If I had transformed, and was thinking strategically, I'd have left through the window. There's a small path that leads through the woods all the way to the Village. When it's dark, no one can see you coming or going.

"We used to the path a lot. Fleur liked to walk to the village for groceries."

He felt the pain surge up and let it come to the surface this time, needing to feel something. "But the Wizengamot held me later than I expected. If I've been there earlier, I could have…"

"The Wizengamot," Tonks interrupted. "Why were you there?"

"For Greyback's hearing," Bill said, swallowing the lump that had formed in his throat. "I testified against Greyback that day. I didn't go to work. It took all day."

"That's why the date was so familiar," she said. "That was the night that Greyback disappeared."

"What do you mean, 'disappeared'?" Bill said slowly. "I saw him in custody that afternoon. I made statements against him, along with a whole group of people that he'd hurt. There's no way he… "

But he'd been so caught up in his grief and guilt, too broken to follow the news reports. His coworkers had never mentioned anything, knowing better than to bring up anything connected with his wife's death.

"What happened with Greyback after I left?" he asked flatly.

"They called it a security glitch. He was gone for maybe ten minutes, and then he was back. The Ministry kept it quiet, and nothing about it was documented in the file. I was called in for extra security that afternoon when it happened. That's how I know about it."

"Where is Greyback now?" he growled out the name.

"Easy there. He's still in Azkaban. If he wasn't, we'd have heard something."

"I want to see for myself. If there's any chance…"

Tonks nodded. She checked her watch. "It's late afternoon, but they still accept visitors for another hour. We can make it if we leave now."

Of course she'd know Azkaban's timetable. Maybe Fate hadn't dumped a load of manure on him after all. It was nice to have an Auror on his side, someone who wanted to find Fleur's killer as badly as he did.

Tonks' expression suddenly turned wistful. "It's a nice place. I'm sure you were both very happy here."

It had been, he agreed. This place held the happiest memories of his life. And the worst.

Over the past year, Bill had slowly gotten himself together, but returning to this place had been too risky while he was in hiding. Now that he could reclaim his property, he wasn't sure that he wanted to. He'd always remember Fleur, but he couldn't walk into this kitchen or sit down in the living room without her last moments constantly flashing before his eyes. Returning to the front porch, he felt the pain surge up again, fresh and hot, like an old wound ripping open. Everything that had made him love this place was dead and gone.

"I should put it up for sale," he said, and locked the door.