From the playlist:

While My Guitar Gently Weeps - Martin Luther McCoy

listen before i go - Billie Eilish

Ch. 42 - The Shattered H

May 12th

Emmeline sucked in a deep breath before entering Dorcas' flat.

"As far as we know, you were the last person to see her," Alice explained as she stepped over chunks of broken furniture littering the entryway. "Crouch was hoping you could shed some light on...well...see for yourself…"

She led her into the main room where three other Ministry Aurors were conducting their investigation, but the level of destruction made Emmeline shudder. Everything was blown to bits, from the surface of the walls to the kitchen appliances. If this was how the flat looked, then wherever Dorcas was, she certainly wasn't in much better shape.

"Lord Almighty," Emmeline muttered under her breath, trying to remain calm.

Alice got started on her list of questions like it was business as usual; as if it were any other investigation. "What was the purpose of your meeting two days ago?"

Emmeline had never encountered Alice in the context of her work for the Auror Department before, and from the outside, she seemed to be maintaining her composure masterfully. Though she'd always looked up to Alice, Emmeline could not fathom what restraint it must have taken for her to remain so entirely professional in a situation like this. Alice and Doe were close as could be.

Before she responded, Emmeline had to swallow a few times to return some moisture to her mouth. "…There wasn't really a purpose, we just got together for lunch. Remus is out of town again, so she invited me over."

"Did she mention anything out of the ordinary happening to her?"

Emmeline thought back on that afternoon, combing through the memory to recall if anything stuck out. "Er...At one point, she did start talking about some strange things…"

"Strange things?"

"Alice, did-…Did the Death Eaters kidnap her from her home?" Emmeline questioned, wholly distracted by the wreckage around her.

"...We're looking into all the possibilities," Alice answered in a generic, non-panic-inducing manner.

"I thought the Ministry's records-..." Emmeline stopped herself, realizing she was in earshot of the other Aurors.

Alice looked around, then pulled Emmeline into the hallway. "Changing the records was only going to put them off for so long...we suspect there are quite a few...sympathizers within the Ministry. Internal investigations have been a nightmare. Anyway; you mentioned Doe discussed something odd with you?"

"But have you ever seen anything like this from them before? A planned attack on one person, for no reason other than-?"

"Emmeline, I know she's our friend, but I'm supposed to ask you questions, please…" For a moment, Emmeline thought she saw her facade crack.

"...Right, sorry. I'll try to be helpful."

Alice led her further into the hallway. "Tell me more about your strange discussion."

"Dorcas thought the whole ordeal at the port was weird. She was trying to sort out whatever Voldemort said to us like it was some cipher."

As she spoke, she caught sight of a small pool of blood on the bathroom window sill that was gradually dripping onto the floor. Her eyes lingered there, and she forgot the rest of what she was going to say.

Alice noticed. "Might not be hers, we don't know yet."

It was hard for Emmeline to believe that they all bled the same.

Continuing with the tour of the crime scene, Alice led Emmeline into Dorcas' bedroom. This portion of the flat was not in any better condition than the last - the bed was completely torn apart on its splintering wooden frame. Alice directed Emmeline's attention towards the wall facing the bed, which appeared to have several papers attached to its surface. There was only one problem: whoever broke in had deliberately charred it so that the papers were unreadable.

"I'm assuming you tried a mending charm."

Alice sighed disappointedly, then lifted her wand. "Papyrus Reparo."

The char marks began to lift from the paper, but when the pages were restored, they appeared blank.

"Ah."

She waved her wand again, and the char marks reappeared. "They wanted to make sure nobody found what was on these papers. We were hoping you could help us with that."

Emmeline thought about their conversation again, wondering if there was something obvious she'd missed. "I'm sorry, I don't think I can. I didn't come into her bedroom, so I never saw these." She moved towards the burned wall to examine it up close.

"Any insight you have from your conversation could be useful. Venture a guess?"

Emmeline pondered. She'd known since Hogwarts that Dorcas always had a deeply analytical mind. If she was still obsessing over the message, she must have been on to something. Then, it hit her. "Doe said she'd been reading up on dark magic, stuff we never would've learned in school. I'm willing to bet these pages had something to do with that…"

"Did she give you any specifics?"

"No. When I spoke with her, she still hadn't reached any sort of conclusion. But she must have found something, otherwise they wouldn't have taken the time to destroy whatever was on the wall...Perhaps we could look through the books she has in the house."

"That was my first thought, too. I flipped through nearly every one of them and didn't find anything out of the ordinary - no notes in the margins or torn pages. Lots of Dark Arts books, but like you said, she'd been doing research."

Emmeline turned to examine the wall again. "...What about a notebook? Did anybody find a journal of some kind?"

"Hey," Alice called out to the main room. "Did anybody pick up a journal or a notebook?"

"Not yet," the nearest Auror responded.

"There has to be one around here somewhere," Emmeline insisted, scanning the room. "Unless they took it."

"They very well may have."

She began to open still-intact drawers and rifle through their contents. The bedroom seemed to turn up empty, so she started moving back to the main room when-

Crrreeeeaaaak.

Emmeline peered down at the floorboard which had made the noise. Shaking her foot a bit, she determined it was loose and bent down to pry it up.

"Blimey Em," Alice remarked as she extracted a leather-bound journal from under the board. "Hang the bookshop; You ought to enroll in Auror training."

"Maybe one of these days, I'll bring Mad-Eye a resume," she joked unenthusiastically, handing the journal off.

Alice opened it and began thumbing through, but unfortunately, it was full of mostly blank pages. There were a few sporadic scribbles in what appeared to be Greek, but it was clear that the important pages had gone up on the wall.

"...Here, look at this." Alice said, reaching the final page. "Does this mean anything to you?"

Emmeline took the notebook in her hands. The very last page had a sketch of a large letter H, but the bits of the letter were fragmented into pieces - like the letter itself had been split or torn apart.

"...No, I've never seen that before…Why would she hide a drawing rather than the pages on the wall?"

"Dunno. Maybe it was just a doodle."

"Maybe…" She handed the journal back to Alice, who set it aside.

"...Alice…you don't think she's already…"

"...We're doing everything we can."

…

Early that afternoon, miles away in London, the sun was high over Diagon Alley. Vendors had begun to stock their summer goods, witches and wizards strolled about, and the Leaky Cauldron was buzzing with customers from the lunch rush.

Hardly anyone noticed the figure shrouded in a hooded black cloak standing atop Gringotts bank. Not until he had levitated a woman out over the ledge.

The woman's cries began to attract the attention of the bystanders, who expressed their horror with screams of their own. Some pointed their wands up toward her, attempting to counter the cloaked spellcaster, but were unsuccessful. They watched on helplessly.

Producing his gnarled yew wand, the man in the black cloak flicked it downward and thrust the woman to the ground screaming. He made sure to hit her with a Killing Curse just before she hit the cobblestones. In the event that she survived the fall, he couldn't have her talking.

The terrified onlookers shrieked as the woman plunged toward the earth, but somehow their screams could not drown out the audible crack of her body slamming onto the street. Triumphantly, the cloaked man removed his hood, bringing the screams to an abrupt halt. He wanted to make sure the crowd knew exactly who had carried out such a task. The Dark Lord wanted recognition for this public execution.

He was sending a message, after all. He had to make an example of those who defied him so blatantly.

Dorcas Meadowes, mangled and bleeding in the street, simply served as a warning to the rest of them.