Sherlock Holmes and the Thief Of Souls
Mar. 28th, 2022 10:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bungakertasUnlike the Harry Potter who had come to their flat, a charming, unassuming, and slightly apologetic man, this was clearly Harry Potter in his element. He was wearing the same voluminous clothing everyone else here seemed to favour (thankfully, in an unremarkable dark blue) and was thoroughly comfortable having an argument with two men (related, probably father and son) who were wearing a version of the greatcoat/bathrobe arrangement in a much finer fabric and much neater tailoring than anyone else here. Money, then. Lots of it. No doubt made regular donations to this government and felt themselves qualified to run it as a result.
"—And we're certainly not going to get anything done with the two of you strolling in and demanding progress reports every five minutes," Potter snapped, temper only recently lost if the colour in his cheeks was an indication.
Potter's desk was nearly buried under various papers, most of which had been haphazardly stacked to the side. Information, photographs (which, detrimentally to their usefulness in documenting the crimes, were moving just like the cover of the book had), leads, and notes on the current case were neatly arranged in the centre portion and on the wall of his cubicle was an enormous map of Great Britain with push-pins stabbed into it here and there.
Sherlock ignored the arguing group and went straight for the map. The push-pins were numbered and labeled and instantly demolished the idea that the killer was going back and forth between male and female victims. It hadn't been a serious consideration in any case.
The much more serious consideration was the number of names on the map.
"There are ten victims here!" Sherlock burst out in shock. "What have you people been doing this whole time?"
"Precisely the point," one of the blond men agreed before he froze and said, "Dear Merlin, did I just agree with a muggle?"
Sherlock eyed him oddly. The man glanced reflexively at his left arm, and Sherlock couldn't help a slightly triumphant smile. "You're on the list of targets. Explain the significance of the tattoos."
"It's not a tattoo, you mindless insect," the other blond man sneered.
"Oh, forgive me," Sherlock said with a slight, utterly flawless bow, too polite to be anything but mockery. "Of course I should have realised that something which looks exactly like a tattoo and responds to forensic tests exactly like a tattoo and is totally permanent like a tattoo would naturally never actually be a tattoo."
Potter smothered a laugh at this and even Donovan seemed to crack a smile.
"Yes, do explain," Hermione broke in with a honeyed sweetness that sounded very pointed indeed. "Explain to the consultants who have agreed to share the results of their investigation with us what the marks on your arms mean. Do be thorough. Every detail is important."
Both men scowled at her in irritation. Finally, with clipped syllables, the older blond man bit out a story about a "Dark Lord" who branded his followers with his mark.
"Oh, that's hardly all of it," Ron said, leaning back and appearing to thoroughly enjoy himself. "Tell them the rest."
"He believed, as did those of us who followed him, that witches and wizards who were born from families in your world were dangerous to people in ours," the older blond man continued.
John rolled his eyes, but did not speak.
"So dangerous, in fact," Potter broke in, "that they started rounding up muggle-born witches and wizards and snapping their wands. Or imprisoning them, even."
"And we probably shouldn't get started on what they would do to muggles," Ron said.
Sherlock turned to John. "See, boring. They have magic and their prejudices are still entirely dull." He turned to the man. "Much more interesting is that if you all hated 'muggles' so much, how did four people with that tattoo end up living in muggle flats and working muggle jobs where they were guaranteed to be surrounded by muggles day in and day out?"
Ron seemed to remember something at this, and left.
"I'm sure I have no idea," the younger blond man sniffed.
"Because they escaped prison," Hermione put in. She frowned and said, "At the end of the war, there were somewhere in the neighborhood of fifty Death Eaters—"
"You voluntarily joined a group calling themselves the 'Death Eaters' thinking that they would do anything good for any world, let alone your own?" John asked the Malfoys in disdain. They replied with angry looks.
"—many of whom died in the final conflict," Hermione continued, before the two Malfoys could interject. "Most of the rest were captured and spent at least some time in prison, including both the Malfoys here," and here she waved her hand in the general direction of the pair. "However, while we had overwhelming evidence on some Death Eaters, others we didn't have enough on to convict. Or in three very irritating cases, we had plenty but a very clever defense counsel argued that they had joined under coercion and couldn't get out afterwards for fear of their life. But there were a few, the Lestrange brothers, for example, that we never caught. They vanished that night and we never saw them again."
"You think they left the magic life behind entirely, then?" Lestrade put in. "Made out like they were normal and never interacted with anyone from their old life again."
"Exactly," Hermione nodded.
"And if they used magic a little bit—in their homes, say—you couldn't trace it?" Sherlock asked.
"No," Potter put in, frowning. "It would've made fighting Voldemort much easier if magic could be tracked like that—well, shorter, anyway, since he might've used it against us after all—but once a person is seventeen, it's literally impossible."
"Why seventeen?" Donovan asked.
"A number of reasons, all of which involve more magical theory than I imagine you'd care to hear," Hermione said. "We just can't. In any case, no Death Eaters who are in prison have been targeted. But William Goyle actually did spend some time in Azkaban before being released and he was one of the first victims."
"So he's a housekeeper," Sherlock nodded.
"A what?" Hermione asked.
"He feels like he's cleaning up society by killing those who don't deserve to live. In this case, Death Eaters who are not in prison," Sherlock informed her in a bored tone.
"Right," Lestrade said. He pointed to the Malfoys. "Who else has one of those tattoos?"
"Everyone who was a Death Eater—" the older man started to say.
"Yes, obviously that is the case. What are their names?" Sherlock demanded.
"Why on earth should you want to know that?" the younger one asked him.
"Because we're going to be able to track down any of them who are hiding among normal people better than you can," Donovan snapped. "It is remarkably difficult to put someone in protective custody if you don't know how to find them to do it."
"We'll also need to interview every Death Eater still living," Sherlock said. "It's obvious the killer is someone with close ties, possibly even a Death Eater himself."
"These two have already been interviewed," Potter said. "And they've told us the names of every Death Eater they can remember, but we already have all those names and everyone we can account for is in protective custody already."
"Excellent, then, I'm sure you both were just leaving and I would so hate to think I'd had any part in holding you up," Sherlock said with another mocking bow.
The two exchanged dark looks and swept out.
"There is something else," Ron announced, returning to the group with another man in tow. "This is David Letheed. He's an Obliviator and I've asked him if he would restore the memories you've all had removed."
"You can do that?" John asked, sounded surprised. Sherlock also felt his own eyebrows rising at this intelligence.
"A simple matter of restoring your ability to access them," Letheed said, pulling out his wand. "Won't take but a second."
John's jaw dropped at this and Sherlock felt his own tighten in anger. John, as a doctor, would be well aware of how memory functioned. Sherlock, himself, knew that even memories or information he "deleted" was still stored in his long-term memory. He had disassociated it his mental hard-drive, but it was still there. But while he had to concentrate more on recalling "deleted" information, and it was prone to fading, as memories do, there was no way whatsoever to destroy things you knew once you knew them. No way but brain-damage. And even that didn't always permanently prevent the brain from creating a new way to access whatever it had been blocked off from. The brain was a remarkably adaptable organ.
Therefore, the only conclusion on hearing Letheed say "restoring their ability to access" their memories was that this spell actually had caused them brain damage. Serious brain damage, if everyone was so certain that they'd never get these memories back otherwise. For the first time, Sherlock really understood John's anger and fear of these people. Even those who were supposedly less bad than the Death Eaters didn't seem to think casual brain injury was a bad thing.
Letheed point his wand at them and waved it once.
Memories flooded back. His eyeball experiment, and Jugson's flat. And all those boring but informative interviews. Rosier's flat and the books embedded into the wall.
"The fights were…spell-fights, then?" Lestrade said slowly.
"Duels, we usually call them," Potter answered helpfully.
"But why do they die?" John asked in bafflement. "Why don't they move once they've lost the fight? Why don't they save themselves?"
"Because they can't," Ron said. "Their souls have been removed."
John looked astonished. "Their whats?"
"There's a creature called a dementor. If it kisses you, it can steal your soul," Ron explained.
"What happens then?" Sherlock asked curiously.
"It consumes the soul," Hermione told them flatly.
Sherlock had no idea what to say to that.
"Though, it's an awfully unusual dementor, this one," Ron commented into the ensuing silence.
"How so?" John asked.
"Dementors have this…aura around them. Muggles can't see a dementor, but you'd feel it for sure," Ron said. "They make you remember the most horrible parts of your life. They make you feel like you'll never be happy again."
"And no one reported feeling this at any of your crime scenes?" Sherlock said.
"No one," Potter replied. "Nor reported seeing a dementor anywhere near the crime scenes."
"No one reported anything like that on our end," Donovan said.
Hermione looked at her watch, an odd affair with not a single number on it that Sherlock could see, and said, "I need to go before Nott sets my office alight. Or Umbridge starts in with more memos. Good luck to all of you."
With that, she swept out.
"Who's Umbridge?" Lestrade asked.
"Dolores Umbridge is a woman who works in spell research—administratively, she's rubbish at magic—and is fantastically unpleasant. If you're all fortunate, you'll never meet her in your life," Potter supplied.
There was a quiet until Ron finally broke it. "A dementor that doesn't act like a dementor."
"There aren't meant to be any in Britain anymore," Potter said.
"Why not?" Sherlock asked.
Potter reached over to his desk and said, "We're all going to have to play catch-up on each other's sides of the story, so I've done some summing up. Do you want the background on Death Eaters and dementors first or the case files?"
"We'll have the case files first," Lestrade said before Sherlock could ask for them.
Potter offered Lestrade and Donovan one folder—an ordinary manila folder, except that it was purple—and handed a second to himself and John. Sherlock idly noted that everything in both purple folders was typewritten or handwritten, and the pictures of all the Death Eaters moved. Lestrade gave Potter a copy of their case file and they all settled down to study the various bits of information.
Over the next several minutes, Sherlock and John learned briefly about the first and second Voldemort Wars and who the Death Eaters had been. Why dementors were now banished but still occasionally turned up in Britain was summarised in a paragraph at the end. Then they swapped folders with Lestrade and Donovan to learn about the other victims. Gregory Goyle had been the first death, followed by his father William. He scanned down the list of victims, following the order.
He flipped to the interviews with the Malfoys and then scowled at what he read. "No one has a complete list of Death Eaters?" he asked.
"They were an illegal society of killers," Weasley said. "They weren't going to go handing out the roster to anyone who asked."
"They all tattooed their arm for anyone who looked," Sherlock shot back.
"So they didn't avoid all the obvious stupidity," Potter said with a shrug. "They still didn't keep a list of all their members. Voldemort would've known, obviously. The only other person who might have is Snape and both of them are dead. Which is good news, in a way. The killer probably doesn't have a complete list, either."
"Snape being Severus Snape, who spied for you?" John asked, but it was clarification in his voice, so Sherlock relaxed. If John were starting to trust these people, even a little, then they couldn't be entirely bad.
"That's the one," Weasley said. "What's a DNA?"
In unison, the two police officers, John, and Sherlock all stared at him.
"We don't have forensics the way you do," Potter said.
"Clearly," Sherlock said, going back to his folder. John, being the doctor, was silently elected to explain and he briefly summarised deoxyribonucleic acid and its uses in crime-solving.
When Sherlock finished he set the file down, looked at the push-pin map, the files before him, the two men who were now talking to Donovan about trying to track down the Lestrange brothers outside of the magical community, and could only think of one question. It was John that asked it, though.
"Why now?"
Potter looked at him blankly.
"It's been years since this Voldemort character was killed. Your society has moved on. The aftermath is over, the dust is settled, and the recovery is apparently finished. Why is he killing them now?" John demanded.
"We don't know," Weasley said to this. "He doesn't seem to be working off of any particular pattern in terms of dates or locations."
"No, it's clear he is opportunistic in his killing," Sherlock agreed, "Something obviously held him back until now."
"How do you figure that?" John asked.
"He kills his victims as he locates them," Sherlock said. "He stays only long enough to incapacitate them and then…take their soul. While he has a signature, it's one of practicality, not of any sort of personal or psychological significance. He doesn't feel emotionally attached to his work, but he is committed to it. So he feels it's necessary and right that he do this. In his mind, not to act would be wrong.
"Therefore, the only thing that would have caused him to wait until now is if he were unable to carry out the task until recently. Something changed that enabled him to act now."
"What?" Potter asked.
"That is the question you should've been asking all along," Sherlock said.
Potter and Weasley exchanged a look and then Weasley actually turned to John and said, "Is he always like this?"
Sherlock hated this. Hated trying to figure out how to talk to people when they were all reading the same book as he was but ten pages behind. He'd tried explaining to John countless times that nothing he did actually seemed extraordinary to him. Every time he did something and it sounded brilliant to someone else, it seemed totally obvious to him. And the constant frustration of his thoughts sprinting while everyone else's seemed to be struggling to run whilst submerged in custard made him snappish and rude. John seemed to understand, and so he took it in stride, but not everyone would. Not everyone cared to be insulted all the time, even if felt to Sherlock like they deserved it.
"Always," John answered. "Try not to take it personally."
Weasley turned appraising eyes onto Sherlock. After a few moments he shrugged. "All right. Then here's the problem we keep running into. The only thing we've ever been aware of that can remove a person's soul is a dementor. Nothing else can do it. But this dementor isn't draining the happiness out of everyone around it and that's not something a dementor can help doing. Plus, it's not really in a dementor's nature to only go for ex-Death Eaters or to patiently wait until the winds are right before it starts making its moves."
"Someone is helping it, then," Lestrade nodded.
"Helping or using," Sherlock put in. "If these actions are so contrary to its own nature, it is most likely under someone's control. It would be unusual for a creature to come up with a plan that required it to behave in such a bizarre fashion for itself."
"You're supposing a human partner, then," John said.
Sherlock nodded.
"Whatever the Freak thinks," Donovan said, "it's past time for us to start looking for some of these people you haven't accounted for yet." She pulled out her mobile.
Sherlock rolled his eyes. They were at least two storeys underground. There was no reception to be had down here.
Lestrade informed her as much and she said, "It wouldn't matter anyway. The batteries are flat."
"No, it just won't work here," Potter informed her. "All the magic keeps electronics from functioning properly."
Sherlock scowled. That tallied with what he'd noted from the technologically unsophisticated case files, but he'd been hoping he was wrong about that.
"So there's no point in asking you to borrow your email, then?" Donovan said faintly.
"You can always borrow an owl," Weasley said.
"Owl?" demanded Donovan, Lestrade, and John in unison.
Potter just shook his head.
A purple paper aeroplane landed on Weasley's desk and made a small ping! noise. Weasley snatched it up and said, "New victim. Diagon Alley."
"Can you side-along two people?" Potter asked Weasley.
"I can, but you know the regulations. Hermione will have to help. And…Dad for the other."
Hermione was summoned with one purple plane. Another was dispatched to a "Mr. Weasley" who apparently worked for the Misuse of Muggle Artifacts department (a title that both Sherlock and John tried very hard not to succumb to undignified giggles over). They both arrived in short order and Weasley and Potter explained that they were apparating to Diagon Alley and need their escort for the consultants. Hermione instantly agreed.
"Wait…are you…muggles?" Mr. Weasley asked. His whole face lit up with undeniable glee in a cross between the way that Sherlock usually associated with people seeing an interesting new journal article in their field and the way someone just seeing a friend they hadn't spoken to in a long time might look.
"That's what they're telling us," John said.
"Every other sentence, they're telling us," Donovan snarled.
"I'm sorry," Mr. Weasley said, looking genuinely distressed. "I hope no one's made you feel at all unwelcome."
His obviously sincere glee and open manner soothed even Donovan's ruffled feathers.
"We'll have to have the rest of this conversation later," Ron Weasley said. He strode up to Lestrade. "You'll need to grab my arm and hold tight as you can. Outside George's should do, Dad." He turned, and for a second Lestrade seemed to wrap around him before the two of them disappeared with a pop.
Potter approached Sherlock and Mr. Weasley moved to John. Potter offered his arm. "This feels absolutely terrible, but it's the fastest way to travel."
Sherlock took Potter's hand without hesitation and Potter turned on the spot. Sherlock felt himself dragged into the spin and then horribly squeezed, as if he were being forced through a long, thin, much-tinier-than-should-fit-a-human-being passageway before suddenly everything seemed to reverse itself and they spun to a stop with another pop in front of a fantastic-looking shop labeled Weasleys' Wizarding Wheezes. Lestrade was leaning with one hand against the brick building taking deep breaths of air. Sherlock had to take an extra step to stop himself from falling over. Two more pops signaled the arrival of John and Donovan, neither of whom looked remotely pleased at this method of travel.
"That was terrible," Donovan breathed, apparently about to sick up and trying to prevent it.
"Nobody ever likes their first time apparating," Hermione said, in what seemed to be intended as a soothing manner.
"Where," Sherlock said, hating the faint note his voice had taken on, "is the latest murder?" He took a deep breath of air, trying to reorient himself to the world.
"This way," Ron said.
Hermione and Mr. Weasley briefly took their leave of them before the two aurors, two police officers, one consulting detective and one doctor set off down the street. And Sherlock didn't bother to try and stop himself from trying to look at everything at once. It was the most fascinating street he'd ever seen. There were shops that seemed to sell everything he'd ever heard might be magic, including flying broomsticks. They strode up the street past apothecaries that sold powdered unicorn horn and a pet store that seemed to trade in nothing but owls. Their journey ended as they entered into a bookshop called Flourish & Blotts, which Sherlock's love of wordplay had him strongly in approval of.
The inside of the shop was in thorough disarray. It looked like their murderer and his intended victim had battled up and down the entire place. Books were scattered, in pieces, here or there. Two shelves near the door had been completely demolished. Some of the books were verbally protesting this abuse in various ways—one of them was cursing in very colourful Latin—and a few seemed to be trying, under their own power, to re-collect all their own pages. One set of books was rather ominously leaking ink like blood and bore the title Darke Potiones.
A young woman wearing a badge came bustling up to them. "The new victim is just there," she informed them.
They followed her around a shelf of books that had managed to remain standing to find a young woman who was still breathing. A colourful set of bruises decorated her face and she seemed to have collapsed just as she was trying to throw one of the many books that were lying around her. Next to her lay a wand.
"Victim's name is Alicia Mulciber," the badge-wearing woman told them, and Sherlock realized she was the magical version of a uniformed constable. "She joined Voldemort the second time around. Her grandfather, Theobald Mulciber, was one of the original Death Eaters."
"She's still breathing," John said.
"And when we're done with the crime scene," Ron told him, "she will continue to be alive. But she'll never speak again. Never in her life. Never move. She won't drink when she's thirsty, eat when she's hungry, laugh, cry, get angry, sad, or anything. The only thing that's left here are the involuntary functions."
"And you're just satisfied to leave her like this?" Donovan demanded, temper showing.
"Use it to catch the killer, Donovan," Lestrade snapped. He hadn't approached the body in any way, apparently hesitant to touch anything without gloves for fear of contaminating it. Donovan seemed similarly reticent. John walked right up and briefly checked Mulciber's vitals with a disgusted expression at Weasley. Weasley and Potter walked up and knelt down right beside the victim, not hesitating to move either her or things in her vicinity.
"He's gotten bold to attack someone in Diagon Alley," Weasley said. "Who saw the fight?"
"We're interviewing witnesses outside right now, but all of them so far have said that all they saw was someone dressed as a Death Eater dueling with her," the young woman told them.
"He's attacking Death Eaters dressed as one?" Potter asked in surprise. "Well, I suppose we can hardly fault his sense of irony."
"What about security cameras?" Lestrade asked.
"What good would a camera be for security?" Weasley replied, looking at Lestrade with a baffled expression. "Do you mean if you enchanted it to take pictures on its own?"
"I suppose that answers my question," Lestrade said with a sigh.
"You saw the casefile," Sherlock said, not having moved from his position at the end of the shelf. "It's obvious that this society is quite thoroughly pre-Industrial Revolution."
Weasley and Potter both shot him a glare at this.
"How do you figure that, freak?" Donovan sneered.
"Everything in that file was entirely handwritten or typed using a typewriter. There's a quill and an inkwell over near the register in this shop—a non-electric register, no less—and both Potter and Weasley have several quills near inkwells on their desks. The condition of all of these quills suggests their purpose is functional, not decorative, and I have yet to see any paper anywhere that was not parchment paper, except in a bound book. Then there's the way that magic seems to negate electricity, plus the fact that this society apparently uses carrier birds to send messages," Sherlock said, faintly astonished that he seemed to be the only one who had comprehended the depth of technological backwardness they were facing. "There are no computers, no electricity, no email, no video cameras. None of it. There may not even be a fingerprint database. This society apparently stopped progressing, for the most part, about two hundred years ago. Everything that usually makes your jobs so mind-numbingly simple is gone here."
Lestrade turned to Potter. "Is that true?"
"It's true that the wizarding world changes more slowly than muggle society," Potter replied slowly. "Generally speaking, if something isn't done with magic, it's handmade. The fact that it's impossible to use electricity around too much magic means that all the machines that make things more simple for muggles aren't generally helpful for wizards. I suppose that, from a certain perspective, you could say he's correct." He glared at Sherlock. "Though I wouldn't have phrased it like that."
"I have no doubt you wouldn't," Sherlock sneered at him. "By the same token, I doubt you would say in so many words that the murderer is clearly a much better detective than you are."
"What can you possibly mean by that?" Weasley snarled standing to his feet and squaring off with Sherlock.
"It's quite obvious from your victim," Sherlock said.
"What is?" Lestrade demanded.
"Alicia Mulciber," Sherlock said. "You gave us a list Death Eaters in your case file. She wasn't on it."
"—And we're certainly not going to get anything done with the two of you strolling in and demanding progress reports every five minutes," Potter snapped, temper only recently lost if the colour in his cheeks was an indication.
Potter's desk was nearly buried under various papers, most of which had been haphazardly stacked to the side. Information, photographs (which, detrimentally to their usefulness in documenting the crimes, were moving just like the cover of the book had), leads, and notes on the current case were neatly arranged in the centre portion and on the wall of his cubicle was an enormous map of Great Britain with push-pins stabbed into it here and there.
Sherlock ignored the arguing group and went straight for the map. The push-pins were numbered and labeled and instantly demolished the idea that the killer was going back and forth between male and female victims. It hadn't been a serious consideration in any case.
The much more serious consideration was the number of names on the map.
"There are ten victims here!" Sherlock burst out in shock. "What have you people been doing this whole time?"
"Precisely the point," one of the blond men agreed before he froze and said, "Dear Merlin, did I just agree with a muggle?"
Sherlock eyed him oddly. The man glanced reflexively at his left arm, and Sherlock couldn't help a slightly triumphant smile. "You're on the list of targets. Explain the significance of the tattoos."
"It's not a tattoo, you mindless insect," the other blond man sneered.
"Oh, forgive me," Sherlock said with a slight, utterly flawless bow, too polite to be anything but mockery. "Of course I should have realised that something which looks exactly like a tattoo and responds to forensic tests exactly like a tattoo and is totally permanent like a tattoo would naturally never actually be a tattoo."
Potter smothered a laugh at this and even Donovan seemed to crack a smile.
"Yes, do explain," Hermione broke in with a honeyed sweetness that sounded very pointed indeed. "Explain to the consultants who have agreed to share the results of their investigation with us what the marks on your arms mean. Do be thorough. Every detail is important."
Both men scowled at her in irritation. Finally, with clipped syllables, the older blond man bit out a story about a "Dark Lord" who branded his followers with his mark.
"Oh, that's hardly all of it," Ron said, leaning back and appearing to thoroughly enjoy himself. "Tell them the rest."
"He believed, as did those of us who followed him, that witches and wizards who were born from families in your world were dangerous to people in ours," the older blond man continued.
John rolled his eyes, but did not speak.
"So dangerous, in fact," Potter broke in, "that they started rounding up muggle-born witches and wizards and snapping their wands. Or imprisoning them, even."
"And we probably shouldn't get started on what they would do to muggles," Ron said.
Sherlock turned to John. "See, boring. They have magic and their prejudices are still entirely dull." He turned to the man. "Much more interesting is that if you all hated 'muggles' so much, how did four people with that tattoo end up living in muggle flats and working muggle jobs where they were guaranteed to be surrounded by muggles day in and day out?"
Ron seemed to remember something at this, and left.
"I'm sure I have no idea," the younger blond man sniffed.
"Because they escaped prison," Hermione put in. She frowned and said, "At the end of the war, there were somewhere in the neighborhood of fifty Death Eaters—"
"You voluntarily joined a group calling themselves the 'Death Eaters' thinking that they would do anything good for any world, let alone your own?" John asked the Malfoys in disdain. They replied with angry looks.
"—many of whom died in the final conflict," Hermione continued, before the two Malfoys could interject. "Most of the rest were captured and spent at least some time in prison, including both the Malfoys here," and here she waved her hand in the general direction of the pair. "However, while we had overwhelming evidence on some Death Eaters, others we didn't have enough on to convict. Or in three very irritating cases, we had plenty but a very clever defense counsel argued that they had joined under coercion and couldn't get out afterwards for fear of their life. But there were a few, the Lestrange brothers, for example, that we never caught. They vanished that night and we never saw them again."
"You think they left the magic life behind entirely, then?" Lestrade put in. "Made out like they were normal and never interacted with anyone from their old life again."
"Exactly," Hermione nodded.
"And if they used magic a little bit—in their homes, say—you couldn't trace it?" Sherlock asked.
"No," Potter put in, frowning. "It would've made fighting Voldemort much easier if magic could be tracked like that—well, shorter, anyway, since he might've used it against us after all—but once a person is seventeen, it's literally impossible."
"Why seventeen?" Donovan asked.
"A number of reasons, all of which involve more magical theory than I imagine you'd care to hear," Hermione said. "We just can't. In any case, no Death Eaters who are in prison have been targeted. But William Goyle actually did spend some time in Azkaban before being released and he was one of the first victims."
"So he's a housekeeper," Sherlock nodded.
"A what?" Hermione asked.
"He feels like he's cleaning up society by killing those who don't deserve to live. In this case, Death Eaters who are not in prison," Sherlock informed her in a bored tone.
"Right," Lestrade said. He pointed to the Malfoys. "Who else has one of those tattoos?"
"Everyone who was a Death Eater—" the older man started to say.
"Yes, obviously that is the case. What are their names?" Sherlock demanded.
"Why on earth should you want to know that?" the younger one asked him.
"Because we're going to be able to track down any of them who are hiding among normal people better than you can," Donovan snapped. "It is remarkably difficult to put someone in protective custody if you don't know how to find them to do it."
"We'll also need to interview every Death Eater still living," Sherlock said. "It's obvious the killer is someone with close ties, possibly even a Death Eater himself."
"These two have already been interviewed," Potter said. "And they've told us the names of every Death Eater they can remember, but we already have all those names and everyone we can account for is in protective custody already."
"Excellent, then, I'm sure you both were just leaving and I would so hate to think I'd had any part in holding you up," Sherlock said with another mocking bow.
The two exchanged dark looks and swept out.
"There is something else," Ron announced, returning to the group with another man in tow. "This is David Letheed. He's an Obliviator and I've asked him if he would restore the memories you've all had removed."
"You can do that?" John asked, sounded surprised. Sherlock also felt his own eyebrows rising at this intelligence.
"A simple matter of restoring your ability to access them," Letheed said, pulling out his wand. "Won't take but a second."
John's jaw dropped at this and Sherlock felt his own tighten in anger. John, as a doctor, would be well aware of how memory functioned. Sherlock, himself, knew that even memories or information he "deleted" was still stored in his long-term memory. He had disassociated it his mental hard-drive, but it was still there. But while he had to concentrate more on recalling "deleted" information, and it was prone to fading, as memories do, there was no way whatsoever to destroy things you knew once you knew them. No way but brain-damage. And even that didn't always permanently prevent the brain from creating a new way to access whatever it had been blocked off from. The brain was a remarkably adaptable organ.
Therefore, the only conclusion on hearing Letheed say "restoring their ability to access" their memories was that this spell actually had caused them brain damage. Serious brain damage, if everyone was so certain that they'd never get these memories back otherwise. For the first time, Sherlock really understood John's anger and fear of these people. Even those who were supposedly less bad than the Death Eaters didn't seem to think casual brain injury was a bad thing.
Letheed point his wand at them and waved it once.
Memories flooded back. His eyeball experiment, and Jugson's flat. And all those boring but informative interviews. Rosier's flat and the books embedded into the wall.
"The fights were…spell-fights, then?" Lestrade said slowly.
"Duels, we usually call them," Potter answered helpfully.
"But why do they die?" John asked in bafflement. "Why don't they move once they've lost the fight? Why don't they save themselves?"
"Because they can't," Ron said. "Their souls have been removed."
John looked astonished. "Their whats?"
"There's a creature called a dementor. If it kisses you, it can steal your soul," Ron explained.
"What happens then?" Sherlock asked curiously.
"It consumes the soul," Hermione told them flatly.
Sherlock had no idea what to say to that.
"Though, it's an awfully unusual dementor, this one," Ron commented into the ensuing silence.
"How so?" John asked.
"Dementors have this…aura around them. Muggles can't see a dementor, but you'd feel it for sure," Ron said. "They make you remember the most horrible parts of your life. They make you feel like you'll never be happy again."
"And no one reported feeling this at any of your crime scenes?" Sherlock said.
"No one," Potter replied. "Nor reported seeing a dementor anywhere near the crime scenes."
"No one reported anything like that on our end," Donovan said.
Hermione looked at her watch, an odd affair with not a single number on it that Sherlock could see, and said, "I need to go before Nott sets my office alight. Or Umbridge starts in with more memos. Good luck to all of you."
With that, she swept out.
"Who's Umbridge?" Lestrade asked.
"Dolores Umbridge is a woman who works in spell research—administratively, she's rubbish at magic—and is fantastically unpleasant. If you're all fortunate, you'll never meet her in your life," Potter supplied.
There was a quiet until Ron finally broke it. "A dementor that doesn't act like a dementor."
"There aren't meant to be any in Britain anymore," Potter said.
"Why not?" Sherlock asked.
Potter reached over to his desk and said, "We're all going to have to play catch-up on each other's sides of the story, so I've done some summing up. Do you want the background on Death Eaters and dementors first or the case files?"
"We'll have the case files first," Lestrade said before Sherlock could ask for them.
Potter offered Lestrade and Donovan one folder—an ordinary manila folder, except that it was purple—and handed a second to himself and John. Sherlock idly noted that everything in both purple folders was typewritten or handwritten, and the pictures of all the Death Eaters moved. Lestrade gave Potter a copy of their case file and they all settled down to study the various bits of information.
Over the next several minutes, Sherlock and John learned briefly about the first and second Voldemort Wars and who the Death Eaters had been. Why dementors were now banished but still occasionally turned up in Britain was summarised in a paragraph at the end. Then they swapped folders with Lestrade and Donovan to learn about the other victims. Gregory Goyle had been the first death, followed by his father William. He scanned down the list of victims, following the order.
He flipped to the interviews with the Malfoys and then scowled at what he read. "No one has a complete list of Death Eaters?" he asked.
"They were an illegal society of killers," Weasley said. "They weren't going to go handing out the roster to anyone who asked."
"They all tattooed their arm for anyone who looked," Sherlock shot back.
"So they didn't avoid all the obvious stupidity," Potter said with a shrug. "They still didn't keep a list of all their members. Voldemort would've known, obviously. The only other person who might have is Snape and both of them are dead. Which is good news, in a way. The killer probably doesn't have a complete list, either."
"Snape being Severus Snape, who spied for you?" John asked, but it was clarification in his voice, so Sherlock relaxed. If John were starting to trust these people, even a little, then they couldn't be entirely bad.
"That's the one," Weasley said. "What's a DNA?"
In unison, the two police officers, John, and Sherlock all stared at him.
"We don't have forensics the way you do," Potter said.
"Clearly," Sherlock said, going back to his folder. John, being the doctor, was silently elected to explain and he briefly summarised deoxyribonucleic acid and its uses in crime-solving.
When Sherlock finished he set the file down, looked at the push-pin map, the files before him, the two men who were now talking to Donovan about trying to track down the Lestrange brothers outside of the magical community, and could only think of one question. It was John that asked it, though.
"Why now?"
Potter looked at him blankly.
"It's been years since this Voldemort character was killed. Your society has moved on. The aftermath is over, the dust is settled, and the recovery is apparently finished. Why is he killing them now?" John demanded.
"We don't know," Weasley said to this. "He doesn't seem to be working off of any particular pattern in terms of dates or locations."
"No, it's clear he is opportunistic in his killing," Sherlock agreed, "Something obviously held him back until now."
"How do you figure that?" John asked.
"He kills his victims as he locates them," Sherlock said. "He stays only long enough to incapacitate them and then…take their soul. While he has a signature, it's one of practicality, not of any sort of personal or psychological significance. He doesn't feel emotionally attached to his work, but he is committed to it. So he feels it's necessary and right that he do this. In his mind, not to act would be wrong.
"Therefore, the only thing that would have caused him to wait until now is if he were unable to carry out the task until recently. Something changed that enabled him to act now."
"What?" Potter asked.
"That is the question you should've been asking all along," Sherlock said.
Potter and Weasley exchanged a look and then Weasley actually turned to John and said, "Is he always like this?"
Sherlock hated this. Hated trying to figure out how to talk to people when they were all reading the same book as he was but ten pages behind. He'd tried explaining to John countless times that nothing he did actually seemed extraordinary to him. Every time he did something and it sounded brilliant to someone else, it seemed totally obvious to him. And the constant frustration of his thoughts sprinting while everyone else's seemed to be struggling to run whilst submerged in custard made him snappish and rude. John seemed to understand, and so he took it in stride, but not everyone would. Not everyone cared to be insulted all the time, even if felt to Sherlock like they deserved it.
"Always," John answered. "Try not to take it personally."
Weasley turned appraising eyes onto Sherlock. After a few moments he shrugged. "All right. Then here's the problem we keep running into. The only thing we've ever been aware of that can remove a person's soul is a dementor. Nothing else can do it. But this dementor isn't draining the happiness out of everyone around it and that's not something a dementor can help doing. Plus, it's not really in a dementor's nature to only go for ex-Death Eaters or to patiently wait until the winds are right before it starts making its moves."
"Someone is helping it, then," Lestrade nodded.
"Helping or using," Sherlock put in. "If these actions are so contrary to its own nature, it is most likely under someone's control. It would be unusual for a creature to come up with a plan that required it to behave in such a bizarre fashion for itself."
"You're supposing a human partner, then," John said.
Sherlock nodded.
"Whatever the Freak thinks," Donovan said, "it's past time for us to start looking for some of these people you haven't accounted for yet." She pulled out her mobile.
Sherlock rolled his eyes. They were at least two storeys underground. There was no reception to be had down here.
Lestrade informed her as much and she said, "It wouldn't matter anyway. The batteries are flat."
"No, it just won't work here," Potter informed her. "All the magic keeps electronics from functioning properly."
Sherlock scowled. That tallied with what he'd noted from the technologically unsophisticated case files, but he'd been hoping he was wrong about that.
"So there's no point in asking you to borrow your email, then?" Donovan said faintly.
"You can always borrow an owl," Weasley said.
"Owl?" demanded Donovan, Lestrade, and John in unison.
Potter just shook his head.
A purple paper aeroplane landed on Weasley's desk and made a small ping! noise. Weasley snatched it up and said, "New victim. Diagon Alley."
"Can you side-along two people?" Potter asked Weasley.
"I can, but you know the regulations. Hermione will have to help. And…Dad for the other."
Hermione was summoned with one purple plane. Another was dispatched to a "Mr. Weasley" who apparently worked for the Misuse of Muggle Artifacts department (a title that both Sherlock and John tried very hard not to succumb to undignified giggles over). They both arrived in short order and Weasley and Potter explained that they were apparating to Diagon Alley and need their escort for the consultants. Hermione instantly agreed.
"Wait…are you…muggles?" Mr. Weasley asked. His whole face lit up with undeniable glee in a cross between the way that Sherlock usually associated with people seeing an interesting new journal article in their field and the way someone just seeing a friend they hadn't spoken to in a long time might look.
"That's what they're telling us," John said.
"Every other sentence, they're telling us," Donovan snarled.
"I'm sorry," Mr. Weasley said, looking genuinely distressed. "I hope no one's made you feel at all unwelcome."
His obviously sincere glee and open manner soothed even Donovan's ruffled feathers.
"We'll have to have the rest of this conversation later," Ron Weasley said. He strode up to Lestrade. "You'll need to grab my arm and hold tight as you can. Outside George's should do, Dad." He turned, and for a second Lestrade seemed to wrap around him before the two of them disappeared with a pop.
Potter approached Sherlock and Mr. Weasley moved to John. Potter offered his arm. "This feels absolutely terrible, but it's the fastest way to travel."
Sherlock took Potter's hand without hesitation and Potter turned on the spot. Sherlock felt himself dragged into the spin and then horribly squeezed, as if he were being forced through a long, thin, much-tinier-than-should-fit-a-human-being passageway before suddenly everything seemed to reverse itself and they spun to a stop with another pop in front of a fantastic-looking shop labeled Weasleys' Wizarding Wheezes. Lestrade was leaning with one hand against the brick building taking deep breaths of air. Sherlock had to take an extra step to stop himself from falling over. Two more pops signaled the arrival of John and Donovan, neither of whom looked remotely pleased at this method of travel.
"That was terrible," Donovan breathed, apparently about to sick up and trying to prevent it.
"Nobody ever likes their first time apparating," Hermione said, in what seemed to be intended as a soothing manner.
"Where," Sherlock said, hating the faint note his voice had taken on, "is the latest murder?" He took a deep breath of air, trying to reorient himself to the world.
"This way," Ron said.
Hermione and Mr. Weasley briefly took their leave of them before the two aurors, two police officers, one consulting detective and one doctor set off down the street. And Sherlock didn't bother to try and stop himself from trying to look at everything at once. It was the most fascinating street he'd ever seen. There were shops that seemed to sell everything he'd ever heard might be magic, including flying broomsticks. They strode up the street past apothecaries that sold powdered unicorn horn and a pet store that seemed to trade in nothing but owls. Their journey ended as they entered into a bookshop called Flourish & Blotts, which Sherlock's love of wordplay had him strongly in approval of.
The inside of the shop was in thorough disarray. It looked like their murderer and his intended victim had battled up and down the entire place. Books were scattered, in pieces, here or there. Two shelves near the door had been completely demolished. Some of the books were verbally protesting this abuse in various ways—one of them was cursing in very colourful Latin—and a few seemed to be trying, under their own power, to re-collect all their own pages. One set of books was rather ominously leaking ink like blood and bore the title Darke Potiones.
A young woman wearing a badge came bustling up to them. "The new victim is just there," she informed them.
They followed her around a shelf of books that had managed to remain standing to find a young woman who was still breathing. A colourful set of bruises decorated her face and she seemed to have collapsed just as she was trying to throw one of the many books that were lying around her. Next to her lay a wand.
"Victim's name is Alicia Mulciber," the badge-wearing woman told them, and Sherlock realized she was the magical version of a uniformed constable. "She joined Voldemort the second time around. Her grandfather, Theobald Mulciber, was one of the original Death Eaters."
"She's still breathing," John said.
"And when we're done with the crime scene," Ron told him, "she will continue to be alive. But she'll never speak again. Never in her life. Never move. She won't drink when she's thirsty, eat when she's hungry, laugh, cry, get angry, sad, or anything. The only thing that's left here are the involuntary functions."
"And you're just satisfied to leave her like this?" Donovan demanded, temper showing.
"Use it to catch the killer, Donovan," Lestrade snapped. He hadn't approached the body in any way, apparently hesitant to touch anything without gloves for fear of contaminating it. Donovan seemed similarly reticent. John walked right up and briefly checked Mulciber's vitals with a disgusted expression at Weasley. Weasley and Potter walked up and knelt down right beside the victim, not hesitating to move either her or things in her vicinity.
"He's gotten bold to attack someone in Diagon Alley," Weasley said. "Who saw the fight?"
"We're interviewing witnesses outside right now, but all of them so far have said that all they saw was someone dressed as a Death Eater dueling with her," the young woman told them.
"He's attacking Death Eaters dressed as one?" Potter asked in surprise. "Well, I suppose we can hardly fault his sense of irony."
"What about security cameras?" Lestrade asked.
"What good would a camera be for security?" Weasley replied, looking at Lestrade with a baffled expression. "Do you mean if you enchanted it to take pictures on its own?"
"I suppose that answers my question," Lestrade said with a sigh.
"You saw the casefile," Sherlock said, not having moved from his position at the end of the shelf. "It's obvious that this society is quite thoroughly pre-Industrial Revolution."
Weasley and Potter both shot him a glare at this.
"How do you figure that, freak?" Donovan sneered.
"Everything in that file was entirely handwritten or typed using a typewriter. There's a quill and an inkwell over near the register in this shop—a non-electric register, no less—and both Potter and Weasley have several quills near inkwells on their desks. The condition of all of these quills suggests their purpose is functional, not decorative, and I have yet to see any paper anywhere that was not parchment paper, except in a bound book. Then there's the way that magic seems to negate electricity, plus the fact that this society apparently uses carrier birds to send messages," Sherlock said, faintly astonished that he seemed to be the only one who had comprehended the depth of technological backwardness they were facing. "There are no computers, no electricity, no email, no video cameras. None of it. There may not even be a fingerprint database. This society apparently stopped progressing, for the most part, about two hundred years ago. Everything that usually makes your jobs so mind-numbingly simple is gone here."
Lestrade turned to Potter. "Is that true?"
"It's true that the wizarding world changes more slowly than muggle society," Potter replied slowly. "Generally speaking, if something isn't done with magic, it's handmade. The fact that it's impossible to use electricity around too much magic means that all the machines that make things more simple for muggles aren't generally helpful for wizards. I suppose that, from a certain perspective, you could say he's correct." He glared at Sherlock. "Though I wouldn't have phrased it like that."
"I have no doubt you wouldn't," Sherlock sneered at him. "By the same token, I doubt you would say in so many words that the murderer is clearly a much better detective than you are."
"What can you possibly mean by that?" Weasley snarled standing to his feet and squaring off with Sherlock.
"It's quite obvious from your victim," Sherlock said.
"What is?" Lestrade demanded.
"Alicia Mulciber," Sherlock said. "You gave us a list Death Eaters in your case file. She wasn't on it."
