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May. 24th, 2005 04:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
clumsy_aurorIt was still dark when the alert woke her.
Nymphadora rolled over, confused, and then caught sight of her wand on the bedside table. It glowed bright red, and emitted an insistent beeping. She reached for it, muttering the incantation to stop the noise before it could wake Bernard.
She dressed quickly, not bothering to shower, and left a note on the bedside table. No breakfast; it was too early, and her nerves too unsettled by the alarm. A brief kiss to Bernard's cheek, a quick check on Sunny, and she was out the door. Halfway down the staff corridor, the Ministry owl met her, and she read the basics of the situation as she strode through the nearly-empty bar.
Once outside, she ducked into an alley and Disapparated.
As soon as Nymphadora blinked back into existence on the tidy Yorkshire street, she saw it. The Dark Mark hung, sickly green, in the pre-dawn sky.
The posture and pace of the people on the front lawn told her all she needed to know. There was no urgency, just grim mechanical collection of data. No need to rush; the dead would keep.
Campbell stood by the hydrangeas, taking notes as a woman in a dressing gown told him what she had heard from her own home; she would be Obliviated later. Pickering was constructing muggle deflection wards around the lot that would allow them to continue their work once the sun had risen. As she climbed the few steps to the front door, Kingsley came out of the house, a cardboard box in his large hands.
"It's bad," he said quietly, and she nodded.
"Where does Allbright want me?"
The wizard shifted the box in his arms. "Whole place is covered in magical residue and material evidence. I've got the physical samples. You get the spell readings."
"Yeah. Okay."
Nymphadora stepped past him into the house, wand drawn.
The house, she could tell, was ordinarily a tidy affair; there was no trace of dust on the shelf of carefully arranged knick-knacks in the front hall. She check the door itself, and found remnants of wards, and the dark spells necessary to break them. The foyer itself was undisturbed, save for the mirror shattered in its frame on the wall opposite the door.
She found the first body in the sitting room. Patrick Haverton -- she knew his name from Allbright's summons -- was probably unrecognizable to anyone who had known him in life. The wizard lay face-down on the carpet, which was green-stained-red with blood from innumerable lacerations, stabs, and burns. His mutilated body was curled in a state of agony, his hands still clenched in the carpet. Nymphadora looked around the room. It was a shambles.
He'd fought.
Taking a short breath, she went to work, cataloging the sickening host of spells that lingered in the room, slicking everything with an oily residue. Slowly, methodically, Nymphadora recorded every trace, and identified two, perhaps three different wand-signatures aside from Haverton's. His wand, marked with an evidence flag, lay snapped in two beneath the piano bench.
Room by room she went through the downstairs, following the trail of the wizard's attempt to defend his home. She encountered Patrick's muggle wife, Alice, on the stairs. Nymphadora closed her eyes briefly at the dead woman's contorted features, at her bloodied hands, broken by heavy boots.
She had to force herself the rest of the way upstairs.
The children weren't in their rooms. Those were eerily undisturbed, save for the blackened remnants of what Nymphadora recognized as a Ravenclaw banner -- Patrick's house, probably -- in the older girl's room. She was nine.
The two girls were huddled together at the bottom of what had been their mother's closet.
They had been burned.
Nymphadora took her readings, finished her work, and reported to Allbright. He sent her back to the Ministry to write up her findings. She did so with a strange amount of detachment, as though she were watching herself fill out the forms, detail the crime ("not a single trace of Avada Kedavra in the house"), choke down a bowl of soup from the cafeteria.
It was only after she'd filed her report, walked back through muggle London, and neared the alley-way she'd Disapparated from that morning that she felt it well up.
She ducked inside the alley just in time, retching as the scenes of the house and the family resurfaced. She didn't know what the girls had looked like, had been unable to tell, but they wore the face of Susan Delgado as she squeezed her eyes shut, doubled over against the grimy brick wall. Her stomach heaved until there was nothing left, and then a little longer.
Finally she straightened, wiped her mouth and dried her eyes, and walked the rest of the way home.
Nymphadora rolled over, confused, and then caught sight of her wand on the bedside table. It glowed bright red, and emitted an insistent beeping. She reached for it, muttering the incantation to stop the noise before it could wake Bernard.
She dressed quickly, not bothering to shower, and left a note on the bedside table. No breakfast; it was too early, and her nerves too unsettled by the alarm. A brief kiss to Bernard's cheek, a quick check on Sunny, and she was out the door. Halfway down the staff corridor, the Ministry owl met her, and she read the basics of the situation as she strode through the nearly-empty bar.
Once outside, she ducked into an alley and Disapparated.
As soon as Nymphadora blinked back into existence on the tidy Yorkshire street, she saw it. The Dark Mark hung, sickly green, in the pre-dawn sky.
The posture and pace of the people on the front lawn told her all she needed to know. There was no urgency, just grim mechanical collection of data. No need to rush; the dead would keep.
Campbell stood by the hydrangeas, taking notes as a woman in a dressing gown told him what she had heard from her own home; she would be Obliviated later. Pickering was constructing muggle deflection wards around the lot that would allow them to continue their work once the sun had risen. As she climbed the few steps to the front door, Kingsley came out of the house, a cardboard box in his large hands.
"It's bad," he said quietly, and she nodded.
"Where does Allbright want me?"
The wizard shifted the box in his arms. "Whole place is covered in magical residue and material evidence. I've got the physical samples. You get the spell readings."
"Yeah. Okay."
Nymphadora stepped past him into the house, wand drawn.
The house, she could tell, was ordinarily a tidy affair; there was no trace of dust on the shelf of carefully arranged knick-knacks in the front hall. She check the door itself, and found remnants of wards, and the dark spells necessary to break them. The foyer itself was undisturbed, save for the mirror shattered in its frame on the wall opposite the door.
She found the first body in the sitting room. Patrick Haverton -- she knew his name from Allbright's summons -- was probably unrecognizable to anyone who had known him in life. The wizard lay face-down on the carpet, which was green-stained-red with blood from innumerable lacerations, stabs, and burns. His mutilated body was curled in a state of agony, his hands still clenched in the carpet. Nymphadora looked around the room. It was a shambles.
He'd fought.
Taking a short breath, she went to work, cataloging the sickening host of spells that lingered in the room, slicking everything with an oily residue. Slowly, methodically, Nymphadora recorded every trace, and identified two, perhaps three different wand-signatures aside from Haverton's. His wand, marked with an evidence flag, lay snapped in two beneath the piano bench.
Room by room she went through the downstairs, following the trail of the wizard's attempt to defend his home. She encountered Patrick's muggle wife, Alice, on the stairs. Nymphadora closed her eyes briefly at the dead woman's contorted features, at her bloodied hands, broken by heavy boots.
She had to force herself the rest of the way upstairs.
The children weren't in their rooms. Those were eerily undisturbed, save for the blackened remnants of what Nymphadora recognized as a Ravenclaw banner -- Patrick's house, probably -- in the older girl's room. She was nine.
The two girls were huddled together at the bottom of what had been their mother's closet.
They had been burned.
Nymphadora took her readings, finished her work, and reported to Allbright. He sent her back to the Ministry to write up her findings. She did so with a strange amount of detachment, as though she were watching herself fill out the forms, detail the crime ("not a single trace of Avada Kedavra in the house"), choke down a bowl of soup from the cafeteria.
It was only after she'd filed her report, walked back through muggle London, and neared the alley-way she'd Disapparated from that morning that she felt it well up.
She ducked inside the alley just in time, retching as the scenes of the house and the family resurfaced. She didn't know what the girls had looked like, had been unable to tell, but they wore the face of Susan Delgado as she squeezed her eyes shut, doubled over against the grimy brick wall. Her stomach heaved until there was nothing left, and then a little longer.
Finally she straightened, wiped her mouth and dried her eyes, and walked the rest of the way home.
