Defrost Only at room temperature
It wasn't till Harry was crossing the Atrium with two awkwardly sized and shaped bundles covered in sheets that he had misgivings.
Well, that part of the plan was clearly going to be bad, but he had other, earlier misgivings.
"Hermione?" he asked "How'd you know it wasn't the real people, and just homonculi?"
"No navels, no thought processes, and scars. Susan got scarred at the Battle of Hogwarts… that Susan-alike was scar-free." said Hermione, perfectly confident.
"And Greengrass?" asked Ron, and Harry could hear the unstated question. Did you bother checking because she was a Slytherin.
"No acne," said Hermione spitefully. "Greengrass was in Arithmancy with me for years. Puberty scarred her cheeks. Serves her right anyway."
"Right" said Ron, clearly not picking a fight with Hermione.
"Served her right for?" asked Harry.
"She's tall and blonde and… apart from acne scars that makeup can mostly hide… she made a lot of girls feel very plain," said Hermione.
Harry's hands knew what she meant. Puberty had perhaps scarred Daphne Greengrass, but on the other four handfuls… it had left great… roundness in it's place. And Harry's mind didn't even remind him that Ginny was beautiful and funny and sarcastic and good at Quidditch and could float down the stairs in a summer dress like an angel. No, it didn't, because Harry was fine.
Of course, once Harry wasn't worried about Hermione having accidentally murdered a couple of witches he went to school with, he noticed the cameraman setting up by the security checkpoint. It was Bozo, of course.
This, thought Harry, will make a really hard to explain front page photo.
But Ron and Harry helped Hermione get her creepy loads all the way to DRCMC, where they were booked into DRCMC's vastly inferior evidence room, and Hermione's boss, the sour old Mrs Forhtright, cast a freezing charm on both dead Homonculi.
Harry and Ron went to work, like normal hard-working Aurors.
It wasn't till nearly twelve that the first howlers arrived.
From Ron's mum, of course telling Ron he was a "DISGRACE TO THE FAMILY." Ron cursed the howler into confetti before everyone went deaf.
Harry's one came a minute later, and said he was "IMAGINE HOW YOUR MOTHER WOULD HAVE FELT." Harry rather imagined mum would have gone round to the Burrow and hexed Mrs Weasley's face in for being an idiot, but that wasn't something he was going to say. And dad, or at least Sirius, would probably have asked if he took photos.
And the thought arrived, unwantedly, uncomfortably that if Daphne Greengrass was to sprawl over a motorbike in a bikini, that Harry might very well say very stupid things. Like "Marry me!" or "You're the most beautiful witch alive," which wasn't true. He'd seen photos' of Mrs Zabini, and she was mind-boggling, let alone Fleur, who technically didn't really count as a woman. Seventy-five percent gorgeous French witch, twenty-five percent inhumanly perfect goddess. Bill totally deserved her. Also, the way her eyes went dark and beady sometimes when she got agitated, scared the jimmies out of him. Harry was quite confident that given his terrible dating record, Gabbie Delacour, who was obviously going to end up looking much like Fleur, only not married to Bill, would, if Harry was involved, be turning into an angry bird-woman hybrid and throwing fireballs at him. Or at the very least saying mean things in French. He had the feeling he could probably deal with Daphne Greengrass… though he'd never met her, he had a firm… uncomfortably firm idea of her good points. And Arithmancy was nerdy, so she was probably fairly clever. Ginny had done quite well in Arithmancy, come to think of it.
But it was all okay, because they got assigned the case from the Auror end, and got to check out the animal breeder, and the secret room themselves.
Which had dozens of huge alchemical retorts, masses of glassware, and potions ingredients. And from what Harry's detection charm said, loads of dark magic cast here recently.
Mrs Forthright explained dismissively that "We used killing curses on the Homonculi, of course. It was swift and Humane."
And Harry wanted to be very ill. Ron kept giving Hermione serious side-eye, to the point where Harry wondered if Ron would give himself eye-strain.
And of course they used fiendfyre to incinerate the corpses, because of course they did.
"We didn't want any reside remaining that could be used in a dark potion" said Mrs Forthright.
Harry appreciated her thoroughness, but wished he'd … got a job making ice-cream or something.
Hermione hissed out some quite derogatory things to Harry, about Aurors who didn't have the stomach for hard work.
The actual human being charged was already in DMLE cells, and wasn't going to be subject to the tender mercies of DRCMC. The Aurors would get him. In other words, he and Ron got to miss lunch to question David Fortescue. And the name made Harry want to go and hide. The nice old man that made ice-cream till he was brutally murdered by a death squad didn't have an evil relative making homunculi of girls for nefarious purposes. Only, apparently he did.
Fortescue the evil, seemed, for such an evil person, quite calm, not very evil and fairly disappointed the homonculi had been killed then incinerated.
"I can prove we weren't doing this for immoral purposes, you know," he said. Ron looked up at that.
"Well, I'll need to talk to our customers first, of course" he said.
And that had Harry and Ron spending the afternoon playing good cop/ bad cop trying to find out who "we" was, and who the customers were. But apparently he'd taken unbreakable vows not to say, so refused to say, because he thought Azkaban might be better than dead, Harry supposed.
It was a very frustrating day.
The next morning, Harry opened the freezer, to find a horses head in the freezer.
"Ron?" asked Harry. "Horses head in the freezer, thought you ought to know."
"Oh right," said Ron "Not entire horse?"
"Just a head."
"Right," said Ron. "Wait for Hermione."
"Wait for Hermione. Fancy some scrambled eggs?"
"I'll try that," said Ron. "Looked in the Prophet?"
"Scared to," said Harry.
"Yah, I think leave it a week," said Ron.
Hermione could apparently smell scrambled eggs from three floors away. She arrived and claimed a share. He should have cooked more, he realized.
"There's a horses head in the freezer," said Ron, in time for Hermione to spit tea all over the table.
"What?" she said loudly.
Ron went and opened the freezer door, and levitated it out. Brown horse, thought Harry.
"I have no idea how that happened," said Hermione.
"It wasn't me," said Ron.
"And it wasn't me." said Harry. "KREACHER!"
Kreacher appeared with a pop.
"Kreacher serves the house of Black," croaked Kreacher, with a bandage over one eye.
"Horses head?" asked Harry.
"The strange house-elf wanted it in Master's bed. Kreacher did not agree." said Kreacher.
"Right" said Harry.
"Oh like in The Godfather. Sending you a message" said Hermione too quickly for Harry to understand. Or maybe he didn't watch a lot of films as a child.
When he was confronted by a non-dead Daphne Greengrass in the Atrium – not wearing boring brown robes, but also not happy, he simply said "Got the horses head you sent. Please don't."
And she stared at Harry like he'd gone mad.
"A Horses head?" she asked. She sounded a bit posh, actually.
"House elf wanted to put it in my bed." said Harry. "Mine stopped yours."
"I would NEVER hurt a horse, or use a dead one's head like that!" she said, wound her arm backwards and slapped Harry in the face. It was everything he should have expected from a tall, fairly athletic witch. His head snapped around and he felt dizzy. Fortunately Ron held him upright.
"You… meddling…. Meddlers!" she said, and stormed off. Harry was pretty groggy, but that was certainly a surprise.
"Wonder what that was about?" asked Ron.
"Well she probably likes horses" said Hermione, "boys, honestly!"
Susan Bones coming to the Auror office and turning Ron's ears into leeks was a surprise too. Harry ducked, and got shallots for hair instead. They did, he noticed in the bathroom mirror, sit more tidily than his actual hair. And that felt like a personal insult.
Harry also had no idea why either witch he'd man-handled a dead homonculus of would want to hurt him. Well, a simple idea, that they assumed he'd taken liberties. He'd not been as awful as he could, so he brushed his shallots (which resisted being transfigured back) and went back to work.
Ron couldn't hear, so he had to go to St Mungo's.