The tingle that still coated Rue’s lips following Katie’s kiss coupled with the sting on the backs of her knuckles from backhanding the chained-up bitch across the face sent a pleasant pulse of adrenaline through Rue’s body; in all her years of running with street gangs in London, Rue had never been the most physically intimidating person to scrap with, but what she lacked in brute strength she made up for tenfold in sheer and vicious grit.
But Rue was not a trained interrogator like Katie, schooled in keeping a level head in the face of outright insult; Rue’s blood ran hot, her temper prone to boiling up fast and forceful. Her hands clenched into fists, her lip curling up into a snarl the more Inez taunted her about Yvonne’s grisly fate, until finally she snapped, “You’re clapped if you think I won’t rip out your tongue an’ watch you choke on her name you EVIL FUCKING SLAG—!”
She launched herself at Inez, the woman’s detestable laugh echoing against the stone walls and causing Rue’s vision to cloud over with murderous red—but Katie’s arms around her middle, hauling her back and away prevented Rue from making good on her threat. Yet.
She shrugged the other woman off and then threw her coat into an angry heap at her feet, allowing the bitter ocean-chilled wind that whipped in from the gaping open-air wall to cool the adrenaline that pulsed hot and fiery through Rue’s body like magma. She shook out her shaking fists at her sides, brushing off the auror’s hushed mutterings regarding whether she could go through with their plan; yes she was alright, yes she could handle this. A calloused hand squeezed over the ink that adorned Rue’s bicep, and then the other woman trailed back to have her own crack at their captive, while Rue took in deep lungfuls of briny air that burned her lungs, in and out.
She’d been thinking about this day—dreaming about having one of the Daughters within throttling distance of Rue’s fists for too many gods-damn years just to cock it all up now. And it wasn’t just about getting justice for Yvonne—though every fiber of the pyromancer’s being ached to make someone suffer for what had been done to her lover. But the fact was the mutual massacre that the Daughters and the former glory of FTB had delivered upon each other had decimated the coven—the only semblance of a real family that an orphan like Rue, unwanted by her inbred wix relations and their unimpeachable ancestral magical bloodlines and too volatile for the safe and flammable Muggle world in which her luckless mother had attempted to hide her, had ever known.
And Rue, like a comet blazing across the sky, had always been cursed and admonished and feared, for causing a catching fire of disaster and destruction, an inferno of misfortune and woe, wherever she went. A firestarter was anathema in almost every circle there was.
But now, that cursed fire that lived within her had purpose. And Rue resolved herself that she would not squander it today.
She rejoined Katie, meeting her eyes and nodding a silent I’m all good to the other woman before crossing her arms across her chest and watching the auror at work. Under Rue’s smoldering gaze, Katie amped up the show—as if torturing a cunt that they both wanted dead was all a bit of foreplay, a burlesque performance for the unhinged and bloodthirsty beasts that embodied their darkest desires.
And Rue had to admit—watching as that venomous smirk was literally peeled from said cunt’s once-beautiful face did help to get her into character.
“Gladly…” she said, cracking her knuckles as she moved to stand in front of Inez, Katie moving aside to give her the floor. She had every intention of ignoring Inez’s incoherent gargling and the pinkish blood and saliva spilling over the ruins of her jaw, down her neck and chest before drip drip dripping on the stone floor. But then a few distinct sounds strung together gave Rue pause.
“Hold up—” Rue stiffened, leaning closer to Inez as she hissed, “—the fuck did you just say?” And she knew she was giving the snake exactly what she wanted, but still—Rue could never forgive herself if she let even the barest scrap of real, actual intel slip away.
She lifted up her hands and did a basic mending tut—ironically, it was perhaps Yvonne’s most lasting contribution to FTB, a spell that every Free Trader knew. Rue didn’t like to do it; it clawed at her heart to allow her fingers to shift into each position by muscle memory. The result was shoddy, sloppy, and surely still incredibly painful for Inez—which suited Rue just fine as she watched the woman twitch and squirm while threads of fine flesh on Inez’s gaping cheek tore apart and stretched to haphazardly cover the wound. It was a temporary fix, no replacement for real healing, and so thin and fragile that it would tear open and repeat every time Inez spoke.
But Rue didn’t care about that. She loomed over Inez and demanded, “Say that again.”
“I said…” snarled Inez, her blood-soaked chest heaving, red coating the inside of her mouth and her teeth as her lips pulled back despite the gruesome sight of her face splitting open and patching itself over and over and over again. “…that I’m disappointed by you, Prudence—” She spat out Rue’s full name with a French-Creole affectation that made the hedge’s stomach twist in revulsion. “—after all the talk of you and your vengeance, your endless burning, Ogoun given mortal form. That you’d allow this colonizer bitch to hold your leash…” The vodouiste spat a glob of red on the ground in disgust, then leaned up toward Rue as much as her chains would allow, until their faces were inches apart and she could whisper, soft and vicious: “…I guess licking out that pale slut’s koko santi is more important than laying to rest your poor, sweet Yvonne.”
Embers flared in Rue’s green eyes as she studied Inez, not flinching, not taking the bait, this time. But the doubt burned her from the inside out; was it possible there was still something left of Yvonne to bury, or was the cunt just full of shit?
Rue straightened slowly, a draconian smile stretching across her face. If there was information Inez was holding on to, she’d just have to smoke it out of her.
“You wanna know the interestin’ thing about tryin’ to immolate yourself when fire won’t harm ya?” Rue drawled, loud enough for Katie to hear as she prowled around behind Inez and placed her hands over the woman's eyes, as if she were about to be handed a Christmas gift. “You learn intimately, every worst fuckin’ way to burn.” Then she let flames lick along the creases of her palms, holding tight to Inez’s face as the woman jerked and thrashed until her lashes had burned clean off, until the blood vessels in her eyes had blistered and popped, turning her sclera an angry violet hue inside cracked, blackened lids.
She made tiny crackling fires under each and every nail bed, pain so acute and unreachable that it had Inez howling in minutes as she clawed at her own skin.
And finally, Rue crouched low to the ground until she could grip the heavy chains, allowing heat like the inside of a forge to seep slowly into the thick links of iron until they blazed a bright white-orange, one after the other, crawling closer and closer to Inez while she scrambled frantically in her seat like a caged animal. But it was in vain; there was nowhere to go, and when the chains that bound her seared her skin they burned deep, sunken welts into her flesh, melting and molding until woman and iron had merged into one.
Her wails of rage and agony rattled through Rue’s skull as she rose and turned to find Katie, grinning with vindication and approval. Rue didn’t think; she reached out and grabbed Katie by the jaw, her hands feeling simply sun-warmed after pouring nearly all the fire within her into those scalding chains. Her fingers sizzled and smoked as they cooled, and Rue threaded them back into the hair at Katie’s nape as she pulled the auror in for a proper kiss, angling their bodies together.
She was breathless by the time she pulled back, just an inch, her dark skin glistening with sweat as she rested her forehead against Katie’s and said against the other woman’s mouth, “Finish it.”
For a moment, (just a moment, she swore to her loa) Inez did not want to die. She feared the great expanse, the darkness and nothing that dragged her down.
It was selfish, and she would have chastised herself for it, if she had the strength. She’d signed up for this. To suffer, to die, to commit her spirit, forced vengeful and tortured, to the service of her Sisters.
She’d been proud of the opportunity, gloated about being chosen, considered herself a higher rank than those around her. In the world, but not of it. Of something higher. Better.
It didn’t make it any easier.
The pain was beyond description. Her vision, seared away through dark crimson blotches. Her skin, melted and twisted, exposing raw bone and sinew against forged iron. Even screaming hurt, as her skin was forced to tear, and heal, and tear, and heal, and tear, and heal…
“Samedi,” She sobbed, she begged. Her desire not to die was overtaken only by her pain. She begged her loa, the bringer of death, to free her. Release her from mortal chains so she could rest.
Sweet relief, when Inez heard instructions muttered between the thieves: Finish it. Her chest sagged, consciousness fading as Samedi beckoned her ever-closer.
Katie was slick with sweat, and it dripped down her spine, cooling as it pooled along the dimples above her buttocks. The world around her was aflame. But inside her chest was filled with ice, lighting up her synapses in a way that could only be found on a battlefield, in her laboratory, mind working a thousand paces a second. Rue's touch grounded her oddly enough, the heat in her chest swamping the cold knot in her stomach as the slick cold dark magic gathered in her veins, wounds once again weeping after years of being cauterized shut.
She'd always been a being of puss and poorly stitched together wounds, some better healed than others. Some healed better with others' touch. Max, a soothing, burning, ever-steady hearthfire - that heat pooled under her shoulder blades and down her spine, giving her strength and a mooring. Cassidy existed like kindling in her veins, crackling in the back of her brain, poorly caged thoughts that wiggled their way to the forefront - never judgmental, always caring, ever living in her blood, a fever she'd never really sweat out. Rue, however, dug under her skin, clogging her throat with smoke, filling her belly with a wildfire. These lips pressed to her own, the hands in her sweat-soaked curls, the fingertips dragging down over her neck.
No, Katie could never let those she loved go, and Rue's touch on her neck would be scorched until the great thereafter. She would exist in this moment and forever, a perfect imprint. As they parted, Katie hummed low in her throat, almost a whimper.
She'd do anything anyone asked of her, as long as they gave her an iota of love.
Katie had been witness to many deaths in the course of her life, dignified silences as murderers were Kissed into a living afterlife, curses spilled from bloodied maws across a battlefield, whimpers for mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters. But most sang for their Gods, for their Saints, for those in the afterlife who could grant them mercy for the great hereafter.
Katie had never been a particularly religious woman herself; her parents were quite firm in their belief that church and religion were bastions of a bygone era - they were the New Age. Katie doesn't remember if her parents had called for a God, for mercy; she liked to believe the last words on their lips were her name. But truth was muddled, they were gone nearly twenty years now, and Katie still wasn't sure if God existed.
Katie crouched to watch in fascination as Inez struggled, death coming for her swiftly. Like a yellowjacket caught between a glass pane, buzzing for its comrades, memorizing her scent, her blood, her face, preparing for retribution and revenge should it survive the ordeal.
"You'll survive," Katie said finally, as Inez gasped around the pain, "Did you really think I'd let you die? Death is a release; you aren't going anywhere."
Katie twitched her wand, and three crystals gathered before her. Each was perfectly sized, lab-grown, and symmetrical. One was white, another black, and the last was gold.
Soul splitting was tiresome work. The kind of work that lab rat aurors and wizard dungeon mutes had spent years picking apart. Katie had run the simulations before, experimenting with poltergeists and Kissed prisoners with a few other lab rats for fun, inter-departmental experimentation state secrets. Her findings were always the same - a soul must be broken into parts, only a body or a ghost could contain a whole. Horcruxes were a crude way of doing this, splintering the soul in jagged, worn edges, easy to break, easier to find, simple to do. A horcrux wasn't the answer to their problems. Rather, it was something simpler than that.
"Equalvilant exchange." The soul and the body were, of course, linked, but ghosts were proof that a severed link could still live. Magic could exist long after a caster died. All she had to do was offer the body, soul, and magic, and it would surely separate. God, it was so stupidly simple, yet painfully complex. Likely because it was simple and therefore more easily fucked by less brilliant magicians. "All this pain will go away, but you will never know real death, real peace, you'll never see your god, never see your family, your sisters ever again. You will not die, you will be used as you have used others."
Inez was being pulled from the brink, the magic powering up around them like tangible energy, but she was fading quickly. Katie pulled her from her stupor—she needed to be alive.
Katie cracked the gold crystal, forming powder light on her fingertips. She drew the powder in the air, sigils forming around Inez's twisting body. She blew gently, and it began to contract slowly around the pair. This was a risky spell; the caster had to be stronger than the victim, or it would backfire. It required that Katie be precise in her actions. It required that both parties be bleeding. The Gryffindor sliced open her palm with the requisite silver potioneering blade she'd always kept on her person, and smeared her blood over the back of her hands.
"In vita tenebras invenimus, in morte cum luce. Hanc animam ligare iubeo, hanc magiam, aeterno ligare; si indignum est, me morti notare. Ita dico, semel, bis ter! Ligare!"
Katie had creatred spells before, but not one this complicated, nor one with so many commands easily fucked up. She was sure it would work; she was sure in her power over Inez, sure in her strength. Katie wasn't allowed to be unsure. The black crystal and white crystal spun in the air. Should Katie find herself unable to match this sudden weight of wills and magic between herself and Inez, then Katie would maybe die, or she'd get bound up to the crystal - the simulations she ran were always fifty-fifty on that half. But if it did work, the black crystal was shatter, and Inez for lack of a better picture would get soul sucked like a slupree into the other, now free to be manipulated like any other magical item out there on the black market.
Katie watched with growing anticipation as both crystals hummed.
"You will not win," Katie stared down at Inez, unsure if the woman had caught onto Katie's plan, to the magic she'd created, the binding, the alchemical formulas she'd slaved away at. "I will live! I will live on forever with my sisters! You cannot take me away from them!"
"Inez," Katie whispered, "you will never touch a single soul again. I am going to take everything away from you, and you will know the name of your binder for eternity. I am Katherine Elizabeth Thorne, Master Alchemist, and you should have never crossed my path, you goddamn rat!"
The black crystal shattered, and with a tug from Katie's navel magic burst from her skin like lava, pooling around Inez like a cloak, smothering, then leeching beneath her skin, stripping it back. The flames of Katie's magic - dark orange, malevolent, dancing - peeled Inez and began to extract and separate her bit by bit. Katie cocked her head in fascination as the husk of the body fell, and the once clear crystal became muddied with orange and black sparkles, the body being eaten away to dust and bone. The soul bound, the magic, bound.
Katie hit the floor with her knees, the now orange-black tiger-striped crystal clinking softly into the pile of ash that was once Inez.
Being pulled into consciousness was startling, because Inez had not realised she had been unconscious in the first place. She blinked, head lolling as she tried to focus. The toddler-sized magic thief was on some kind of spiel, and Inez did her best to look provocative, as if their intentions to torture and murder her were anything other than the Daughters' own meticulously crafted plan. She ought to have been an actress, truly; the way Inez pulled at the heavy, iron-laden chains that shackled her to a chair would have told anyone that she was trying to escape.
She shifted where she sat, pulling the chains until she sat in a position that was more comfortable- one leg folded over the other, both hands resting on the arms of her chair. It was as if she was perched on a Throne of the Spirit World, rather than an object of her death.
Her snake eyes racked over the form of the other magic thief, the one that Inez knew by name. She smiled. "We don't need intoductions, thankfully. I know you. Well- I knew your plaything. Yvonne? She spoke about you at great length."
The thief made an attempt to speak as she walked forward, but Inez cut her off- "Shame, what happened to her," She clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth, "Though inevitable, with a constitution like hers-"
It was Rue's turn to cut Inez off then, with a sharp backhand that snapped Inez's face to the left. Already, Inez could taste blood on her lip where it had split. Inez laughed, a girlish giggle turned bloodthirsty.
"All of us have heard the stories about how pathetically she screamed and cried while getting what she deserved. Her Spirit proved useless, we sent it away, but her body continues to provide. In fact," She cocked her head, feigning a strain to remember, before her eyes settled on the smaller thief, who hovered on the edge of the barrier, "I think it was Yvonne's spleen, that made that bitch cop dissolve. So it's her you should be thanking, really."
Katie tilted her head to the side, peering over Inez, who still seemed cozy. The chains were overkill - dramatics. Katie had no belief that the voodoo girl could get out of her magical matrix. But it was best to keep her somewhat immobile. Inez giggled, laughed, and quipped at them, but Katie knew one thing that she didn't - Inez was well and thoroughly trapped. The Auror prowled around the edge of the Alchemist's Foundry, whistling softly, adjusting her pitch as she watched Rue take point.
Criminals were not all alike, as Katie learned over the years - some turn into slobbering cowards afraid of their own footfalls. Others cried for mercy or peace or forgiveness. The ones Katie respected held firm to their own beliefs. Others tried to run, chewing off limbs and cutting their own proverbial airways with lies and attempted entrapments of enchantments to attempt to escape justice. Katie had seen many of such villains in the walls of the Interrogation Rooms, of which she'd taken classes, though she did not enjoy nor excel in such circles. Others had dug their graves deeper, their pain sharper, their existence becoming less and less of an option.
"You don't really see people as much more than ingredients, do you? Parts of your grand plans. Mounds of flesh and magic and bone and soul to copy and paste where your cult needs."
Inez talked about souls and body parts like they were part of a special from the chip shop down the road - to be used, eaten, and discarded at a whim. It wasn't an unusual phenomenon among many serial killers, and even among potioneers and alchemists of Katie's caliber and above - at some point, the world around you is a pantry of options for magic. Human souls, human bodies, human magic - it was all quite delicious what you could do with all that power. Her Serial Killer certainly believed this about being folk. The Voodoo bitches did as well about certain bloodlines. If only Katie had more time, had the Department at her beck-and-call... the stories they could find in Inez's bones and blood would make them famous.
But Katie came here for vengeance, not another research paper. Priorities were set.
"I'll not sit here and waffle about, casting blame upon a victim of your schemes and chaos." Katie tottered forward, cracking her neck side to side. "Unluckily for you, I also see you as a mound of flesh and bone to play with at my disposal until I decide to send you away. Do you wanna see an interesting trick I learned from some Cajun wix who did a winter in England three years ago?"
Katie nudged Rue out of the way. The heat of her body made Katie sweat as she leaned over Inez's cheek, pursing her lips as if to kiss it.
Then whistled.
The squirt of blood in her eye made her curse, but Inez let out a short howl as the tender flesh of her face was skinned off, leaving a heaving exposed mass of bone and fat.
"Damn, Henri did it so much more neatly," Katie whined, wiping off the blood with a sigh. "You're so silly, Inez. All this chatter between us is just the appetizer. You're aching to soil our dinner! PopQuiz! Did you know that you're not the only one here who fiddled with souls and death?" Katie's free hand touched Inez's cheek where she'd flayed the skin, "I was once the budding necromancer when I was 16, then my Commander gave me purpose, made me better, made me someone worth knowing. You took her from me."
Katie entwined their hands and knelt down in front of Inez, smiling as her thumb soothed the back of the Voodoo cultist's hand. "You're going to be my masterpiece in alchemy, and it's such a shame I won't be able to show off my prize to the world. Just know that your existence has been meaningless until you choose to cross my path. But I will give you purpose -- I will fix you, make you better. I'm your divine retribution, and I hate you." Katie smiled and looked up at Rue.
Everyone thought it would be the Boy. Or the tronpe, if the Spirits demanded a daughter. But when the shaken bones were scattered on the floor, revealing Inez’s name, she wasn’t surprised.
Inez knew she was destined for greatness. She knew she was powerful, more-so than the others. She was more clever, more attractive, more skilled.
She’d chosen Rozalie to prepare her, aiding in the deceiver’s debasement. While she bathed in milk, the other witch poured salts and petals into the tub, scrubbed her arms, and hand-fed her fruits so ripe, the juice spilled down her chin. Roz had a natural cotton robe for her to don when she left the bath, and it was that robe she was wearing as her Sisters, the Lost Daughter and the Boy left for home, leaving Inez behind in the space they had deliberately created for this event.
Mambo had left her a chair, which was delightful, as after many hours of meditating, Inez's knees began to ache. The magic-thieves truly were taking their sweet time to find her, despite the obvious trails they had left behind. She entertained herself by singing, an old tune that she'd learned as a child. Something about the Spirits guiding their hands. How poignant that years since learning the song, she would become one of its subjects.
Mid-lyric, Inez paused, feeling the familiar warmth in her chest that indicated her guiding Spirits were telling her something. A warning. I'll be home soon, Sisters. The door to the warehouse swung open, and Inez smiled, sitting up in her chair.
Despite all of the predictions, they looked different than Inez had anticipated. The short one was ghostly pale, a tiny wisp of a thing. The taller one had tanned skin, a thing of beauty, a waste in this forsaken country. Inez opened her mouth to greet them, toying with her prey, but the shorter one raised her conduit, and there was barely a flash before she felt a pulling lurch in her stomach, and all three were whisked away.
Three days for Katie to smuggle out materials from her lab at the Ministry of Magic, for her to fill up pages upon blank pages with magical equations and alchemical calculations, for her to nearly burn her flat down molding a rune-etched round vessel out of glass while Rue blasted it with a scorching beam of dazzling blue-white flame, Chickadee tittering at her ankles in delight.
Three days for Rue to track down an old contact from her street heist days, a hedge witch broker who peddled in objects meant for hasty getaways—discarded and used portkeys that were refurbished and sold for unsanctioned travel across short, one-way distances.
And three days for Oz to work up the nerve to dial a number he never thought he would call again.
They spent the final night passing a bottle of liquor between them, going over every detail of their intricate plan over and over and over again until they could all recite it in their sleep—not that any of them got a wink of it.
Then the day arrived before any of them could stop and really think about the insanity of all of it. How unlikely their chances at success were.
They bid each other a brief goodbye before going their separate ways—Rue and Katie to the warehouse to which they’d tracked Inez using a pair of the voodoo witch’s earrings, and Oz to make sure everything was set up for their arrival in an hour’s time.
An Tiaract, a tiny island steep with rocks among the uninhabited Blasket Islands off the Western coast of Ireland, was a harsh place that Oz unfortunately knew quite well. Nestled atop the rocky precipice of a seaside cliff was a decrepit, abandoned lighthouse that Morrigan had long ago fashioned into a holding cell, of sorts. The room at the top was built into the cliffside itself, with a metal chair bolted to the ground and heavy chains attached to the floor, the stone walls, the ceiling—an interrogation chamber, Oz had witnessed it used as before. Or a place for those who disobeyed Morrigan to be taught a lesson.
Oz’s travel token was literally that—a rusty token from an arcade that had closed years ago, and he grasped it with trembling fingers before he was dumped unceremoniously at the coordinates the magic had been assigned to deliver him. The brand mark that still adorned his wrist flared up with heat in a way Oz hadn’t felt in many years as he pressed a hand against the front door of the lighthouse and pushed it open with a low, groaning creak. It was dark inside, and quiet, and bitterly cold—a layer of dust coated the interior, as if the building had stood empty for some time, and that fact alone calmed Oz’s wildly racing pulse just a smidge as he climbed the stairs up, and up, and up.
But his reprieve from terror was short-lived; Oz opened the door to the holding cell at the top of the lighthouse and found there was indeed someone there, smiling like a cat would to a cornered canary. Waiting for him.
“Hiya, Morrigan.”
“Ozzie…” she purred, studying him, trailing closer to him like a vulture to a carcass. “…thought you'da known better ’n ta come crawlin’ back here…Still gettin’ into trouble?”
Oz swallowed, and aimed for a flippant shrug that more closely resembled a wince. “Oh, ya know me, Mor—trouble always seems ta follow me around…”
Morrigan grinned knowingly at that, and raised a hand that slammed the door behind Oz shut. She didn’t stop moving until she’d stopped right inside Oz’s space, her pixie face flickering gruesomely in the room’s dim lighting. Oz drew in a breath, and Morrigan chuckled, reaching out to drag her nails lightly along the edge of his curly hair, down his neck, dipping toward the center of his chest to halt precisely at the tip of the tattoo that adorned his abdomen, hidden beneath his clothes. Morrigan’s ministrations caused an involuntary shiver to travel up his whole body, all the way from his toes. “You haven't changed a bit, have ya? Still the same needy boy…” Oz was too familiar, intimately familiar with this tone; Morrigan wasn’t asking for an answer and he didn’t give her one.
Her hand closed around his left wrist and flipped it over, drawing it toward her to examine. She ran her fingertips lightly, almost lovingly, over the faded brand mark that was still etched onto Oz’s skin. He shivered again.
Then Morrigan’s expression darkened in an instant, and she dug her thumbnail into the center of the mark. Her magic pulsed through him, lighting up all his nerves with a relentless current, a rapid oscillation between pain and pleasure that shifted too frequently between the two to allow him to feel either. This, too, was magic Oz knew well—magic he still dreamt about sometimes, and woke up gasping in a pool of cold sweat.
His teeth ground together and he squirmed at the onslaught of overstimulation until his uncontrolled trembling knocked him to his knees. “Please—” he panted over the deafening roar of his own blood in his ears.
Morrigan released him and Oz crumbled downward, catching himself with his palms pressed down in the dirt so that he cowered before Morrigan on his hands and knees, like a dog that had been kicked. She gripped one hand in the back of his hair and sneered, in that voice that was affection and ownership and wrath all wrapped up in one, “Cé leis a mbaineann tú?”
“You–!” Oz choked out desperately, a strangled sort of sob, “–i gcónaí, please, I swear–”
“Agus nach mbeidh tú thréigean arís mé?” Morrigan demanded, but before Oz was forced to give her any sort of answer, there was a suctioning sound of air in the middle of the room, followed by the sound of feet landing hard onto stone. Oz heard Rue give a nauseated groan, and Katie muttered something about a spell not holding her for long before there were grunts of effort, a body being dragged, chains rattling as they were fastened into place.
Morrigan dropped her hold on Oz’s hair with a slight hiss of annoyance and Oz slumped in relief, but didn’t look up. “And these must be the friends Ozzie spoke so highly of…?” Morrigan mocked, her attention momentarily drifting from the heap that was Oz on the floor as she walked leisurely toward her interrogation chair, to better examine their prisoner.
Oz managed to push himself up to a shaky crouch and look up in time to see Rue and Katie backing away from a chained-up, unconscious Inez while Morrigan got closer—Rue with her hands raised in a defensive tut-ready position, and Katie with her wand held out in front of her—though thankfully they’d both heeded Oz’s precautionary earlier warnings about Morrigan’s many and powerful magical enhancements that protected her from most minor offensive spells made against her, and neither tried to cast anything at her just yet.
Katie met his eyes, questioning and impatient, and Oz shook his head at her frantically—if he could just draw Morrigan’s attention back on him, convince her it was him alone she wanted to unleash her fury on, maybe it would give the women a chance to—
Oz’s mouth fell open in shock as Morrigan’s body tumbled unconscious to the ground with a heavy thud, a fucking baseball bat pulled from gods-knew where raised aloft and triumphant in Rue’s hands. Katie cackled at the brutal yet—Oz had to admit, effective—simplicity of it, while Rue just shrugged and said, “Ya said no magic, innit.”
They made quick work of dragging Morrigan to a corner of the room, and though Rue encircled her with a ring of flames as a temporary precaution, they all agreed the ruthless coven leader would be pissed as all the seven hells when she woke up, so they needed to work fast.
And so, from the magically enchanted backpack from which Rue had, presumably, stashed the baseball bat, Katie reached inside and retrieved the glass bottle wrapped in cloth and carefully handed it over to Oz. It would need to be charged up with a fucktonne of ambient magic, and they didn’t have much time—and so Oz’s job now was to find and siphon the entire stash of ambient-imbued magical batteries that Morrigan had squirreled away in this place for a rainy day, while the girls kept Inez…occupied, for as long as they were able to give him.
The baseball bat was ingenious, a bit of a muggle touch and Katie felt absolutely high off watching that creepy bitch hit the ground. Her Oz had a quake in his skin that she misliked, and faintly wondered if she ought to add another kill this night. But a rattled moan beside them ensured Katie had no choice but to hurry things along.
Not a soul blinked an eye as Katie filtched an assortment of goodies from the laboratories. Even before being raised to Captain the young Auror was trusted enough with their enormous stock, and the inventory cycle counts - not as a punishment but because Katie was exact. It was a hard thing to picture, Katherine Elizabeth Thorne was not known for her exacting nature, but it was true. When it came to the important things Katie knew each thread she pulled, every microgram accounted for - and everyone who worked the labs knew it too. If Katie said a single hippogriff feather was out of place in their inventory she was well believed.Granted this was much more than a hippogriff feather, but she'd likely be returning most of these items in a short spell. Only a few were going to be destroyed in use, and Katie had backdoor favors to call for replacements so the Captain was reassured that her black bag of goodies crossed across her chest wasn't going to be noticed.
Katie flicked her fingers in a trick she learned that first week of Hogwarts. Bluebell flames formed at the edge of her fingertips and she blew into them until the fireballs grew, then they scattered to form the points of a pentagram.
“I was known as a bit of a Pyro too,” Katie hummed to Rue and Oz, face crinkled with manic mirth, her heart beating wildly in her chest, “made fireworks, made fire dragons...” the easy days, the days where she may have gotten the living shit kicked out of her for three months but it was worth the nine months of magical bliss. Katie didn't continue her memory lane, and instead pulled from her black bag of goodies two red velvet baggies.
Rue asked to help but Katie shook her head.
“This requires an expert touch... and speed.” The Auror tilted the bag into her hand and Rue's eyes widened as the silvery sand hovered above her skin, moving like water - “Demetors have such interesting properties when you banish them properly, of course it's rarely done and very difficult. But the essence they leave behind the way it can be infused is marvelous.” Dementor Sand was particularly vicious in interrogation circles, all the dangers of the victim being trapped in the room with a Dementor and none of the danger to the proponents of the torture. Though Katie could hear her Uncle’s voice in her ears, faintly she wondered when her personal boogeyman wouldn't be her father's twin, his fists dripping with her blood, hissing her failures. The downfalls of this magical property, until she could clean it off, her personal boogeyman would remain a ghostly reckoning in the back of her skull. It was going to be worth it though, she'd take all the reminders of that man to impart justice. After all - Katie learned from his feet and fists how to make a bruise break someone down.
Katie moved quickly, making the barrier and carving runes into the floor with her wand. Katie had raw power in spades and as long as she breathed the barrier would keep anything inside.
“Are we sure it's gonna hold her here?” Rue hissed, Inez was rousing softly, “These voodoo bitches are real slippery--”
“Yes.” Without so much as a by your leave she grabbed Rue by the jaw and pulled her down, their lips locking, Katie's tongue snuck into her mouth. Oz shrieked something between a hoot and a cackle at the display. Then she pulled away, their spit intermixing into a glob on her tongue, careful not to swallow she fumbled for the vial in her bag.
That disgusting thread of magic she’d found at the crime scene, bottled up and kept. Katie poured it over Inez's unconscious face, watching as it sunk back into her skin, then dripped down over the chair and into the rune itself, knotting her body to the alchemy shed drawn. Rue was gaping but Katie tilted her head back and with a disgusting sound hacked a loogie into one of her floating flames which then spun from blue to purple then faded out.
“What the fu--” Oz started as the tempature dropped.
Then there was a shockwave under their feet, as Inez was forcibly pulled from unconsciousness - may cause some brain damange but who gave a fuck. A mix of Katie's magic and Inez’s threading into Inez's skin, the rune glowing and it knotted around her body and magic. The flames burned brighter then faded. Inez was awake and Katie strolled up to the barrier and waved.
“Good Morning sunshine!” Katie began brightly, “It's nice to meet you, I'm Katherine Thorne and you killed my Commander, prepare to die! I do hope you're excited to see what I'm going to do with you.” Katie walked around the alchemical barrier and teasingly put her foot through it. “Please, try to leave!” The woman was staring, nose wrinkling to snarl, and Katie felt a pull of Inez's magic being used then very quickly, fading and being eaten by her own stores. She burped, loudly.
“Siphoning alchemy is sooo tricky,” Katie felt a rush in her skin and Rue probably did too judging by the way her pretty face wrinkled. “But it's easy if you make the right cables and links. You can't hurt us. You can't leave this barrier. You can't use your magic. In other words, you're marvelously fucked and in my perfect personal creation - The Alchemist's Foundry.” Katie grinned. “So let's play a game, it's called how many screams can I make you scrum?”
Katie stepped back and motioned for Rue, “I'm going to let her get in on you first! Go on darling, make it hurt.”
The smell—which was sharp and sterile like rubbing alcohol and not at all something that Rue was used to, the streets and safehouses she inhabited rarely being haunts that saw any sort of regular, deep cleaning—tingled as it passed under Rue’s nose, and she promptly sneezed. She laughed, and then said delightedly, “You’re just full’a nifty tricks, eh boss?”
Sharing her ex’s work, the last tangible proof on this earth of Yvonne’s brilliance and complexity outside the memories of a scant few, with another person for the first time made Rue feel all restless and twitchy. But she didn’t want Katie to feel as if she were breathing down her neck, so in an effort not to hover Rue sat as far back into the corner of the couch as she could, propping up her feet on the slim few centimeters of empty space atop the cluttered coffee table, and massaged some heat out of her fingers and palms with her thumbs.
“A raven’s-what now?” Rue asked, head cocking to one side at the funny-sounding word. Which, in Rue’s limited experience, usually meant it was a wizard’s word. “That one a them ‘houses’ from your wizard school? Reckon I’ve heard a Pinnock mention it before—told me too that my more proper-bred blood belonged to the slithering one, bare Mickey Mouse shit still…which one’re you?” She raised a curious eye to look at Katie, dark green glinting.
And her curiosity and amusement only increased as she watched Katie experiment noncommittally with a few tuts—some complex-looking ones that Rue didn’t immediately recognize, and others as rote to Rue as basic Popper’s. For all that their individual disciplines were ingrained within them, a natural extension and magical manifestation of who they were, the hand and body movements that all hedges used to harness ambient magic and perform spells were not intuitive; learning magic in a safehouse for the average hedge witch mostly was a labor of intensive drilling and memorization of phrases in forgotten languages and arbitrary and extremely precise finger positioning, until they became muscle memory. Unless you were the rare sort with a brain wired to see the bigger picture, to connect concepts, to theorize…
Like Yvonne had been. And like Katie was, evidently.
It took her a few tries and some rookie mistakes, but the auror captain picked up on the unfamiliar magic she was reading about with incredible speed, and seemed to just take it all at face value—which was refreshing, coming from a non-hedge. It flickered to life an almost-optimistic feeling within Rue’s belly that she hadn’t felt in a long, long time. She also couldn’t help but to notice that Katie was surprisingly dexterous, for a wand-trained witch. Good with her hands, submitted a sly and rather thirsty voice in the back of Rue’s mind, and she tucked away the observation for later.
She grinned and sat forward, pleased for the opportunity to brag on Yvonne to someone who didn’t know her and wouldn’t roll their eyes at Rue’s obvious and embarrassing mooning, or else someone who knew of her and would fix on Rue that unbearably sad and pitying look; poor little pyromancer, lost her only shot at love and can’t let it go. Fuckin’ hell, was Rue sick to death of that.
“Before we had Howie to do our interpreting, the higher-ups at our old safehouse used to have to just watch us, and test us, and…guess, really,” Rue explained. “Some of us were an easy read, innit…” She summoned a bouncing little yellow flame upon her open palm with a playful smirk, as an example, then banished it by closing her fingers around it. “…and then there were some, like Yvonne, who had more power ’n they were given their due credit for. They squeezed her right into this fuckin’ bare little box because that was the bait team move, that’s what the coven needed…’round that time, the Free Traders were in need of a healer, so that’s mostly what Yvonne did. They called it 'mending,' officially…but what she could do, what she could really do? It wasn’t nothin’ close to just puttin’ broken things back together—she could shape the essence a things, she could create, she could…”
Realizing that she was getting carried away, Rue trailed off, scratching at the short, tight curls at the back of her neck sheepishly. “…anyhow, I reckon you get it.” She was glad for a change in subject, her expression darkening as she said of the Daughters, “Spirits a the dead, if you can buy that noise. From what I know, all the swamp twots pull their magic from some fresh hell where they keep the ones they sacrifice. S’why they’re real big on ancestry, and usin’ it to ‘claim’ what they think’s theirs—including people.”
Katie had almost forgotten how refreshing it was to be around folk who didn't attend Hogwarts. There were a handful within the Department who attended other legacy institutions such as Durmstrang or Beauxbatons. Thus, they didn't exactly follow House Politics and also knew nothing of Katie during her years at Hogwarts.
It was nice to not be immediately spotted as the Gryffindor with more detentions than sense and could avoid the scrutiny of her previous reputation. It made it easier for Rue to simply trust that Katie knew what she was doing (she did), without being questioned of her intelligence or ability for having not been a Ravenclaw or Slytherin (the Hat offered Slytherin - she didn't look good in green). So as Katie clocked Rue's questions and comments, she wasn't expected to look up from the notebook in hand to answer, as if Katie had to try and multitask - her brain was hardwired to move fast, and she got bored if she had to do things one at a time, it's why class at Hogwarts was numbing.
"Gryffindor - brave, bold, and exceedingly reckless."
Ashworth could see through the veneer Katie had positioned around her and challenged her in those early days of mentorship to keep her mind sharp and moving, her hands working, her mouth on a constant stream. Three tasks at once, fighting and painting runes, brewing and plotting an attack on the blackboard, and paperwork while also writing alchemy papers and keeping a conversation going. All things that mattered in the field, in the laboratories, all the things that had moved Katie from lowly lab rat to dangerous Captain.
So, as she flicked through Yvonne's work, her fingers still making signs, and occasionally stopping to paint a rune in the air between herself and Rue, Katie could listen to how the Hedges worked and figure out their magic.
"...molecular manipulation, a regular scanning at work; it's too bad I never saw it in action. I'll bet it was something - energy and magic manipulation on this kind of level with a brain rivaling my own," Katie closed the journal with a smile, "I would have been terrified of her abilities."
Spirits - goddamn, it always came back to the dead with Katie, didn't it? Always came back around to those who fuck around with the River Styx, and Katie had dipped her toes in and was yanked out fasted than a tick on a July Tuesday. Blood Magic. Spirit Magic. Necromancy. Blood bonds. Katie knew this magic; she'd dabbled, studied, and knifed it in the cradle of a few dark magicians in her career. But Voodoo was a different breed.
"Anyone can be killed - no one is immortal, and Spirit Work is delicate but also incredibly strange. There are tales of souls being bottled into jars, genies in lamps using their magic to grant wishes to muggles, of trapping spirits in gems and locking them into caverns until their final resting place is forgotten and they are kept on the mortal plane." Katie could think of no worse fate than an eternity trapped in anonymity, used like a battery cell, fated to never truly die until the heat death of the universe or until the main character of a manga needs your power to reach their goals for Love and Friendship.
"Voodoo Smoodoo," Katie crowned, kicking up her feet, "I can trap a soul better than these swamp fucks - cut them off from the sacrificial lambs they used as a battery, and they'll cook."
Dimensional pockets, Genie Lamps, soul renting, and Spirit Trapping—it wasn't easy magical working, but then again, Katie hated being bored.
"We just need a place where we can't get... interrupted."
"Hell no - sorry but I spent a year preparing to apply for the Aurors. Ashworth was seeing me weekly to practice dueling and going over the tests, it was kind of a pain in the ass if I'm being honest. I worked full-time, lived independently, then trained just to get into training. So no, Kyrie darling, you're so not ready for this shit."
Which member of your Squad will step into your role when you retire?
"In an ideal world, my Squad will also be moving up the ranks, so eventually, my squad will disband. Of course, I will be the Commander of my Division, which I was properly trained and primed for by Ashworth. I suspect the rest of my squad will at the very least be Majors, none of them are slouches. But when the time comes, we won't be a proper team anymore - which is fine! Things go that way sometimes, but I will always be fond and bonded to them - yes even Ryland."
So where does your loyalty really lie - with the Auror Department, or with that bad egg troublemaking little friend of yours, Maeko Burke? Are you going to help the DMLE with their case against her, or help her continue to evade justice like you always do?
"Bad egg? What is this first year? Send an owl when you can string together a real grown-up insult. Or better yet - Report me! Yeah, go ahead and fucking report me for your silly little inferences! I'd like you to walk into Seren's Office and ask to chat about me and see how well that goes for both of us. I think she'd be open to hearing about your petty grievances when we've got auror killers running amok. I dare you; it'll be a laugh to see her reaction to having to listen about gripe on and on and on. Honestly, my patience is thin these days, and I've never been known particularly for being patient or kind when my temper is fraying. So maybe give me a laugh when Seren decides to tear several new orifices in your body to bother her, then Max, then me, all the way down the chain of command cause some people are obsessed with the fact that I share a house and friendship with someone you're all sooo hung up on. Newsflash! - it's a small fuckin' island and I've probably railed your sister and your mum, can't throw a rock without hitting someone you know from Hogwarts."
You get 5 minutes alone in a room with the witch who killed Ashworth. What do you do?
"The better question is, who would stop me from doing what I want to do once your silly little time limit ends. The answer is that there are maybe two people who could stop me without getting killed in the process, and believe me, if it's not either of them, you'd have to start throwing unforgivables around, and I'm a tough one to kill; people have tried."
Oz, who was laying horizontal on top of Katie’s haphazardly-made bed, whistled as he took in the ensemble that Katie hastily tugged on. “On the rebound, my liege?” he drawled, waggling his eyebrows suggestively.
Katie shot him an exasperated look, taking in the patterned silk scarf that was draped around Oz’s neck and bare chest. It belonged to the uptight blonde auror that Katie had only recently stopped fucking, the one that held a deep, unshakeable grudge against Mae that Oz couldn’t begin to understand, who had dropped by Borgin and Burkes often to sniff around and look at Maeko and Oz with pity and disappointment and disdain—and something else shining through that was terrible and tragic and raw.
The auror, Max Squint, had dropped off a bag of Katie’s things several nights prior, and as Katie threw the woman’s belongings into a box to send off in return, Oz had insisted in a whispered fervor on keeping the scarf.
Katie opened her mouth to say something, but the knock at the door saved them both from it, and Katie reminded Oz again to please for the love of Merlin stay out of the way today as she shut her bedroom door and went to receive her caller.
Rue stepped over the threshold, the staticky brush of the ward magic familiar; it was similar to the one Katie had crafted to protect the safehouse, but even more deftly woven, this one. “Well that’s ace, bruv—cause you’re gonna haveta rush to eat this ‘fore it melts all over your spiffy wood floors,” Rue said with a cheeky grin, apologetically holding up a cone that had streaks of brightly-colored cream dripping down the sides and all over Rue’s fingers.
Clearly, Rue’s skin was far too hot to handle anything frozen, even in the bloody-frigid air of mid-December in England. She’d had to shove the entirety of her own frosted treat into her mouth in one go on the climb up to Katie’s apartment, and she could still feel the cold pressure sizzling along the roof of her mouth and the front of her skull, crystalline sugar tingling on her tongue.
Rue handed over the melting treat and popped into the kitchen to wash her hands, where she noted a pot of stew and a cauldron of some unknown but fragrant potion bubbling side-by-side on the stove. The whole place smelled like coffee and cedarwood, with a hint of vanilla.
Or maybe that was the ice cream.
The controlled chaos of the apartment was comforting for Rue, in the way the safehouse was; it was untidy, maybe, but not messy like the abandoned buildings Rue had spent her youth squatting in. It was loved, and lived in. A home.
Rue dried her hands on her flannel and made her way back to the living room, tossing the rucksack she never went anywhere without onto the floor and rifling through it until she could carefully, reverently withdraw Yvonne’s journal; it was wrapped up in a grocery sack that was stuffed with pilfered oven mitts and pot holders, like the worst-wrapped Christmas present you’d ever seen.
“I’ve been holdin’ onto that for years, probably the last thing a hers I got left—can’t make any sense a what’s in it though, all that theory stuff makes my head spin…” Rue explained, handing the old battered book to Katie. “…but Eve was brainy, like you, so maybe you’ll have better luck of it.”
Oz's ring of 'rebound' rang in Katie's skull. It was a damning statement, but Katie didn't make any visible face at him, choosing to ignore both him and the idea that crushing on Rue was wrong. She and Max had made no particular vows to each other, no exclusive contract or talk. Katie had just ... stopped fucking around, literally. No more bar nights or quickies after her shifts. No more making eyes with the pretty secretaries of other departments and flashing dangerous scars to get beneath tights and on her knees in the broom closet for lunch. It all ended quietly, and Katie didn't even notice. But they hadn't made any promises, not explicitly. Besides, they were on a break, or breaking up, or fucking broken, Katie couldn't tell.
Katie didn't know much of anything these days; it was as if her compass had fallen apart when Ashworth died. Her blood felt like it was at a constant rolling boil, and her mind was splintering the more she thought of the Voodoo House and her mentor's ashes. It seemed like the only things that made any kind of sense were her laboratories and carefully constructed ideas on how to fuck up a voodoo witch who didn't realize what an enemy she'd made of Katie. The Gryffindor accepted the melting ice cream, frantically licking it as it had melted down due to Rue's constant hot hands.
Katie was a messy eater, licking off the treat from the corner of her lips and wiping her hands surreptitiously on the back of her pants while Rue peered at her blackboard setup. When Rue handed off the journal, Katie didn't take it at first, her hands still sticky and she couldn't bring herself to disrespect one of the last things Rue had. She wrinkled her nose, the scent of alcohol floating between them.
"Sanitizing spell," Katie answered Rue's voiceless question, "when you work in laboratories and crime scenes, you end up getting very good at those." She took the journal with carefully sanitized fingers, sat on the edge of the couch, and flipped open the cracked spine on her coffee table. The pages were yellowing on the edges, dog-eared, with the familiar scrawl of someone who didn't expect their work to be shared with another. Katie's personal journals and notes were the same - intelligible only to her or someone who was an expert in a similar discipline.
"Now, this is a proper Ravenclaw at work. We've got the same taste in women, Rue, no wonder I like you so much." Katie commented, her nails tapping on a particular equation for a spell, her fingers itching for a pencil to make additions to stabilize the creation. Katie didn't realize she was mumbling the incantation, brows knitting together, as her hands began to weave the complicated hand signs. Katie coughed when green sparked between her palms, then a foul smell of sour, rotting skin erupted between them. "Oh, she was close... your girl was a genius proper, huh? Might've given me a proper scare I think, with a brain like this."
Katie leaned back, her fingers still idly forming the hand signs, but she didn't conduct any magic, letting the signs become familiar.
"What was her specialty for magic?" Katie bluntly inquired, "Discipline, I suppose, for you Hedge's," She couldn't admit to understanding the Hedges, at least not really; she was a witch through-and-through. Taught at their schools, and as much as Katie teased the threshold of magical workings, the Hedge's magic often didn't follow the laws as she understood them. But Katie had always understood one thing - sometimes laws were begging to be broken. It was a wonder Lydia ever decided to pluck her from Hogwarts and shove her into an Auror Coat, and hand her a badge.
"What do you know of the Voodoo girl's magic as well? I'm afraid those files are currently ... sealed to me," it would be easy to lift them from Max's offices. They used to be Ashworth's office; the secretary wouldn't even blink if she entered, her relationship with both Commanders known and messy. But that felt dirty in a way that made Katie's stomach squirm.
"Don't tell me you're bringing the toad," Holly Lockwood-Sidewinder stared at Roland, who fixed his tie in the mirror of the foyer. Ash was sitting on the small shelf beside the mirror, his familiar glaring up at his Aunt and ripping out a large croak of dissatisfaction. Aunt Holly nearly snarled at the magical amphibian.
"Steady on Auntie, Ash isn't going to be coming; he wouldn't like the spinning on the dancefloor."
Holly turned Roland around, fingers going to fix his tie before pinning it with the crossed lance and wizard's staff representing the Sidewinder family. "Best behavior, boy; we're here to make connections tonight and maybe find you a wife. You're well past the age for marriage." She tugged at his curls, tutting, "Enough with the whores and pitter-pattering around the Auror Offices, get your ass in gear, get some children, and a promotion."
So here Roland was, wanting a wife, wanting a new step in his Auror career, sipping on his third flute of champagne and wishing desperately that he had brought the damned toad. Ash was better company than half of the fuckers in the room. He'd already been forced into several over-perfumed arms and had washed his cheeks of their lipstick. None of them cared about Roland. They wanted the rich, pureblood Auror Captain. None of them knew they'd likely bury half the kids they bore him. Would likely bury him six feet under only a few years into their marriage. None of them knew he'd keep them knocked up and pregnant within seconds of giving birth.
Being a Sidewinder wasn't some gift; it was a death wish, and sometimes Roland wishes he was the squib between himself and Axel.
There was a rumpus beside the dance floor, some flouncy French wizard with his dress robes splashed with the fizzy champagne and soaking under his feet.
"You stupid cunt!" Roland almost turned away until he saw the dark curls and those damning blue eyes and moved through the crowd, which parted for him. "Do you even know how much these robes cost me, you trollop, you whore --"
"You're done," Roland grabbed the back of his neck with a grin. Finally, the night was getting interesting, "Also, your shoes are knockoffs anyway, Arragio Leathers only uses hippocampus scales on their boots, and anyone who took Care of Magical Creatures can tell that's grindylow scales. Honestly, your Family ought to be ashamed by your conduct. Now apologize to my flower before I decide to expel you and your frilly accent from my country."
Maeko looked ready to expel him off the planet, and Roland winked at her.
"What is your wish Mistress Burke. Shall I duel him in your honor or perhaps arrest him for unseemly conduct. Mayhaps you'd like him to bow and kiss your feet. Your wish is my command." He kept hold of the man, and wandlessly accioed another flute of champagne to his hand, taking a lazy sip.
Katie was frantically cleaning the living room, or at least what passed for a living room these days. Unlike her laboratory, and more like her office, it was strewn with papers - tacked to the walls, between couch cushions, and lying flat on the coffee table. Though she kept them clear of the non-functioning fireplace that Chickadee used for a den as the salamander had a tendency to spray ashes over her work papers. Ashworth used to reem her for the grey-tinged folders, not fondly either; the woman abhorred dirt and grime outside of a crime scene. Katie lived with everything carefully coordinated, even if it seemed as if a hurricane had blown through. Her housemates used to threaten to curse Katie during Exam Season, with her corner of the Tower pasted with parchment and their mini fridge (courtesy of Katie and Fiona's charmwork) filled with neatly labeled vials. Now, there were labeled vials in Max's fridge, her laboratory, and dusting the interior of the mini-fridge that Katie had hauled out of the Seventh Year dorms while Maeko flung popcorn at her while she waddled it down the steps.
The Auror brushed the final folders into a rarely-used file cabinet just as the doorbell rang, more like buzzed. The ice cream shop Katie lived above had a separate entrance for the apartments abovehead, down a side alley that also functioned as a discrete Appiriton point with a shed that the magical could pop in and out. The shop being owned by the squib side of the Fortesqeue Family - kind, generous, Hufflepuff-like family who were not above yelling at Katie for her explosions - and thus kept muggles clear from the side alley and upper property.
Katie grabbed at the intercom, slamming on the red button that creaked under the force of her palm, "I'm buzzing you up darlin', top floor 4C--"
A cheery laugh and distinct accent came through the intercom that made Katie's toes curl, confirming the room and commenting that she'd also bought ice cream. The auror practically tripped into her bedroom throwing on a lacey bra and cropped tee proclaiming Terminal Review and shoved her skinny scarred legs through loose jeans with more tears than fabric, each inch of said denim clung to the muscle of her body.
As Katie shoved her combat boots on a knock came. Tossing her messy shag out from her eyes, she slid to the door, opening it with a bright grin.
"Rue, welcome to mi casa!" The Spanish fell clunky off her tongue, not in the least sexy, but most folks liked Katie at her silliest and grinning. "Come on in," Katie waved her palm, letting the wards in her house flex, noting and allowing Rue's magical signature to be added to the Yes Fly List. But even that shard of magic sent a spasm of pain up her arm, "It's a bit of a mess, but I tried to clean up, and I set up some stuff..." There was a chalkboard, chalk in various colors, her alchemy kit set up, and a bottle of whiskey, which she gestured to with wide arms, "Everything we need to plan a murder," she clapped her hands together with a grin, "and you bought us ice cream, even better, I always work best on a sugar rush!"
Rue snickered a laugh, warming immediately in the presence of Katie’s flippant attitude and ability to make light of the circumstances, even if others may have found their humor inappropriate; Rue loved the Free Traders with all her heart, but they could be so fucking serious, sometimes. “Mandem your fam, huh? You’re jokes, Cap…”
She gave a shrug and a smirk at the implication that it was dangerous for a hedge witch, here; it was generally believed within the hedge community that the only place any of them were truly safe was at their safehouse. Rue tucked her hands into her pockets and leaned toward Katie to say conspiratorially, “Reckon if I’ve been doin’ magic all these years without one’a them fancy wand licenses then I don’t need one to kill, neither.” And then she grinned evasively at the auror’s gentle probing, until Katie wisened up and did things the hedge way—playing a card from her hand to get one played in return, like a game of Push; the exchange of carefully measured give-and-take that defined their culture and guided their lives.
Rue whistled, impressed; she stepped forward and crouched down to examine the glowing thread that Katie held taut. She was about to say something cheeky when Katie revealed another piece of information, one that was arguably even more valuable, at least to Rue; so this was personal for Katie, too, was it? From where she was crouched, Rue tilted her face up toward the auror, the sharpness in her bright green eyes softening into something that resembled compassion. “I’m sorry for that…” she said with sincerity that was rarely seen on Rue, “…they took someone of mine, too—the one, rather. She was—” But it felt wrong, to muck up Yvonne’s memory by sharing what was left of her light with this dark, wretched place.
Rue swallowed the lump in her throat, glancing down and then shoving back up to standing by pushing her hands against her thighs. She put on a lopsided smile and said with a shrug that was slightly more forced, “…the Swamp Twots wiped out most of the Free Traders, about half a decade ago. Nasty turf war, the sorta thing that don’t make it into your papers…” That was when she noticed that the strand of magic Katie was holding suspended in the air was stretched in Rue’s direction, pulling like the lead of a dog who’d caught a scent, like it was magnetically attracted to something on her person.
Her brows pulled together and she said rhetorically, “‘Ello, whot’s this then?” Rue—who’d been minted a career pickpocket since before puberty and tended to nick things almost compulsively—had been pocketing little trinkets the entire time she’d been in the house. She pulled pilfered items out of various stash spots on her body until one—a single gold earring—caused the magical thread to pull tight, straining against Katie’s hold, and pulse with iridescence. Rue’s eyes lit up with interest. “Gotcha. And who might you belong to, my lover…”
Now they had a solid lead. Rue kicked at some debris to clear a small space on the floor before setting the earring down on it. To Katie, she said, “Stand back a beat, would ya? Don’t want a chung ting like you in the line’a fire now, do we?” She gave a rakish wink, then cracked her knuckles and performed a complicated tut that ended in her blowing a stream of air over her upturned palm down toward the earring. A ring of fire in shades of seafoam and turquoise ignited around the object on the ground, crackling for a moment before shooting off in a splintered trail, out of the room and down the hall, leaving a scorch-marked trail of ash on the linoleum. Rue grinned, and jerked her chin at Katie in indication to follow.
She whistled a jaunty tune that sounded like ‘follow the Yellow Brick Road…’ as they walked on either side of the burn trail, dull greenish embers smoldering here and there as the fire extinguished. The path led them into one of the bedrooms and disappeared beneath one bare bed. Without thinking twice about it, Rue laid down on her stomach and peered beneath the bed, then swiped an arm underneath it and withdrew the other earring’s match. Not entirely necessary, but having both would make it easier to scry for their owner, if it came to that.
And finally, Rue pulled her own phone out of her pocket, and found the screenshot she’d saved of Ralph’s posthumous Instagram photo with Inez. She zoomed in on the latter, held up the earring for comparison, and sure enough—it matched exactly the ones that were dangling from the ears of the Daughter in the photo. Rue held out both the earring and the phone screen for Katie to look at and said, “Think we might be lookin’ for the same bitch, innit.”
...
“Still an Auror Rue,” Katie offered with a sharp toothed smile, “best not to talk to me about unsanctioned killing and murders. I like you but I can’t condone all that, at least without knowing a way to get you out of it.” Rue was the only one ever willing to crack a joke or beer with Katie when she came ‘round the Safehouse, the rest of them eying Katie’s boots and shiny badge with trepedation as if she hadn’t just meal prepped their starving asses. “Course us Aurors can always give a little... leeway to informants and deputies even if they are made improper and in the field.” So many wizards and witches during the Wars had kill counts, sanctioned by the Aurors would couldn’t keep up with fights and battles and skirmishes and flatout murders on suburban magical streets.
Katie listened carefully to Rue’s own story, and the way she said could say her name -- Katie sucked in a sharp breath through her nose and let the wave of empathy course through her veins. Sharing grief, trauma-bonding as the younger Aurors said, was sacred. Rue lost her love, Katie lost her Mum (again), and both deaths had left their lateral scars through their chests.
“They’ll pay,” Katie hissed, “these people aren’t allowed to fuck with our lives like this.” She didn’t know about Rue but losing Lydia had left a fucking crater - in the Division, the Department, her fucking relationship, and Katie’s own fucking head. These stupid fucking Daughters thought they’d get away with it all, Max investigated them for years she knew, blew that right up as well. Katie couldn’t fix anything for Max, couldn’t bring Lydia back from the dead, couldn’t get Seren’s howls of grief from her skull, nor shake the feeling of Athena’s hand on her should as she apologized for Lydia’s death. Katie only had her wand, her rage, and a brain hardwired to find a solution - that’s all she had to offer anyone her entire life.
Katie only had two speeds - create and destroy. Hunching over the vein of magic with Rue, a smile grew over her face as she plucked the earring from Rue’s palm. Why not both? She tapped the earring with her wand - skin, blood, hair follicles - more than even a shit potioneer needed to scry and find. It was a veritable sack of gold for an alchemist and potioneer of Katie’s caliber which was leagues above a silly little Mastery at this point.
“Do you know her name?” Names held power, and Katie knew more than a few spells that could tie the girl up in knots until they found her. For shits and giggles. “I’d like to know the name of the woman who decided that stealing from us was a good idea.” Katie hooked her chin over Rue’s shoulder, grinning sharply. “Look at that cute little face...” the Gryffindor cooed, “I want to see it melt... or be crushed... ohh! or maybe even burn.” her head was pounding, blood thrumming, and a sharp tingle grew in her nose as she stared at the woman’s face, etching her smile and eyes into her brain. “Oh Rue, darling we’re going to make her hurt so good for us.”
Oz, who had not actually been intending on entering the coffee shop, but instead just using the building’s shadowy entryway to shield himself from view and peer warily around at his surroundings until the coast was clear, fully and immediately beamed at the sight of Katie and noticeably relaxed.
He stepped out of the shadows and took in Katie’s vibrant hands and hair, brazenly reaching out to twirl a shamrock strand between his fingers. Oz grinned. “Are ya kiddin’, Captain—the colours a my home country look right as rain on ya…”
Oz’s eyes darted around where they were stood, again, and he shifted closer to Katie, almost even standing behind the woman—what frightful little good that would do, with how much shorter she was than him. In a tone that was trying a bit too hard to be flippant, Oz added, “And speakin’ of, ah—aurors…you didn’t happen ta see any a your lovely comrades in arms up round this way, did ya Katie? I just ducked our good friend in leather a few streets that-a way…” He jerked his head in the direction of Knockturn Alley.
Oz was never one to complain, but it was getting just a tad tedious, being a constant target for harassment by law enforcement in the area—particularly one persistent Nest auror named Isaac Pierce—as they attempted to gradually wear down Maeko’s patience and resilience. Oz had been dragged into the Ministry and detained without cause at a frequency that had increased to almost every other day, over the past few weeks, and it was always the same—they’d shake him up, try ineffectually to rattle him, and then leave him in a dark room to sit for hours until Katie or someone sympathetic from her squadron came to release him.
So even if Oz wasn’t exactly welcome on this side of the alley, he figured that getting looked down upon and side-eyed by uppity Diagon Alley residents and patrons was better than getting slammed into a brick wall and indecently, gratuitously frisked in Knockturn by Pierce…again. “Ya need a hand, maybe an escort—anything?” He made an admirable, but not entirely effective attempt to disguise the slight hint of pleading in his tone as sounding playful.
...
“I’ve always been told I’d look fetching in green.” Katie drawled, her grin splitting across her face like a crack in the sky, Oz had that same feeling that Mae did, that light shadowy sparkle - they crackled with a joyous electicity Katie soaked in. Katie always thrived off of love - platonic, romantic, complicated. She was lustful for connection, catching it with her hands and wringing them tight not unlike a child unaware of their own strength with a beloved pet they didn’t know could die. “Didja know that the Sorting Hat was a hung jury on where I’d go? Slytherin or Gryffindor, stayed on my head longer than anyone in my year. So long I think my classmates worried they’d gotten a muggle inside our stone walls or Minnie had otherwise fucked up. That lump of fabric has hated me ever since.”
‘Vindictive. Self-serving. Ambitious. Starving.’
The Gryffindor tilted her head to the side, green locks falling in front of her eyes, fingers tingling and curling as if ready to start throwing punches as the next man in leather straps. “That comrade got his ass thrashed by me Sunday last,” she sniffed, flicking her hair away, “broke his cheekbone with my heel. His master wasn’t pleased with his showing, I’m surprised he’s been allowed off her short leash. “ Seren had given Ashworth a compliment on Katie’s skill, even if she had fallen to some bitch in the Combat Department. But the bruises were kissed better by Max which always made a loss feel like a proper war won.
“Between you and me,” Katie pulled Oz down, cupping his ear as if to tell a secret, “I do need a bit of help. Always good to keep my street liaisons fresh even if I don’t do much street walking these days.” Not that she ran many patrols when she was a young officers, sequestered in morgues and laboratories. Taught to pick apart a brain with a scalpel and wand while their criminal breathed. Learned how to taste the magic in the air, sealed into blood and bone, find the scars of murder on a shattered soul-heart. Patrols and streetwork was beneath Ashworth’s girl.
“How about you and me talk a walk around Mr. Pryce, and you tell me what the latest gossip is within the Alley... I can make it worth your while of course, all official and the like.” Her voice lilted up, making obvious who was under her banner. With her name and titles and face all over the news in recent days it wouldn’t be hard for the rumor to spread Katie was Hunting on the cobblestone. Their Media Liaison was going to have a whole litter of hippogriffs over the matter - just the rating boost the Aurors needed with the killings and attacks and bodies piling higher than several Katie’s standing atop each other.
Out of all the hedges in the FTB safehouse, Rue had spent the most aggregate time in the company of Zombie Ralph.
It took some trial and error, but eventually they figured out that even though Ralph wasn’t an Inferius, he still wouldn’t fuck with fire.
Which made Rue the optimal candidate for little chats with the monster. She’d sit inside the upstairs closet, surrounded by a ring of fire as a barrier, for hours and hours on end—especially after Seth was exiled.
It wasn’t that Rue didn’t agree with Nate’s decision to kick Seth out of the safehouse, after what they’d done. It’s just that Seth had been Rue’s last tie to their lives before; they’d grounded her, balanced her out.
So with Seth gone, Rue was going rogue.
This Ralph was different, Rue soon discovered, from the one they all knew and loved. He was sarcastic, and bitter, and oftentimes outright aggressive. Most of the time, it was like talking to a monster that was simply wearing Ralph’s face and eyes.
But every now and then, there’d be a flash of the real Ralph hiding inside the monster, just out of reach; a downward tug of his eyebrows, the way one cheek would dimple within the creature’s grotesque grimace that made it almost seem to echo Ralph’s dreamy, gentle smile.
Painstakingly, Rue started to gather information. With effort, and patience, she was able to get Zombie Ralph talking more readily. Ralph told Rue that he remembered every minute of being cremated, that he could still feel the flames licking at his skin. After that story, Rue took care to temper the flames that shielded her in his presence.
Ralph told Rue that he remembered being remade—his body, his essence being woven together again, thread by thread.
“What’d you see, while you were gone?” Rue asked, and what she meant was, did you see loved ones again, on the Other Side? Did you meet Yvonne?
But Ralph told her his soul, his shade, his lifeforce—whatever it was, it was no longer with him. Only the barest ghostly trace of it existed within the thing that he was now—remnants of it, like a handprint on fogged glass.
He knew, somehow, that the rest of it had not been destroyed. But he didn’t know where it had gone.
Ralph remembered the Daughter who had lured him in, manipulated him before planting that overdose curse on him like a venomous kiss. Inez, she was called; the one from the Instagram photo.
And most importantly, Ralph told Rue where to go looking for her.
The exterior of the Daughters’ safehouse was a run-down secondhand shop. The front door had been blown clean off, and everything in the front room had been destroyed or looted. Fragments of glass littered the floor, crunching beneath Rue’s boots like sand as she walked through the ravaged, abandoned place.
A curtain of hanging beads clacked together as Rue parted them and was led into a long hallway, with floors made of dated linoleum. To the left was a sitting room—or at least the empty carcass of one, left to rot. Bits of broken ‘70s furniture were toppled and strewn about, bleeding out stuffing, with upholstery bearing the scorch-marks of magic.
To the right were bedrooms, all minimally furnished save for some orange-brown shag carpeting and bare beds. Some of the nightstand drawers had been left ajar, clearly emptied. It was all too eerie to look lived in; someone had made a hasty run for it.
Adjacent to the last bedroom, there was a big open room with a kitchenette and dining table. This room looked to have suffered the worst, with dried blood and gore staining the floor and the walls, the windows all blown out. Rue skipped this room, for the moment, in favor of a tiny sliver of light that was coming from a crease in the wall at the end of the dead-end hallway. Rue held up her palm and summoned a bouncing little flame to hover there, casting light around Rue like a torch. She studied the wall, and then shoved against it; it gave way with a groan, revealing a hidden staircase, made of black iron and spiraling upwards.
She crept up the stairs, cradling her fireball, feeling like someone from Scooby Doo. As if just around the next corner, a demonic beast with slobbering black fangs would jump out to fight her.
But the upstairs room—though clearly nicer, and not demolished as the rest of the house was—was, again, empty. This room stank of magic—thick stuff that stung your nose and scratched at your throat, like a perfumed apothecary perched at the mouth of hell, battered with brimstone gone stale. Yellowed skulls and bones lay on low tables, and vials of all sorts of colors and shapes and sizes lined hexagonal shelves on the walls. Upon closer inspection, Rue gleaned that every vial was full of thick, viscous blood—bright red in some vials, and so dark it was almost black in others.
“Yeugh…” Rue muttered in disgust, before a hissing sound behind her made Rue stumble as she whirled around, dropping the vial in her hand to shatter at her feet and toppling others on the shelf. “What the—”
Stretching down, suspended from the rafters, was an absolutely massive, gargantuan snake, as thick as Rue’s arm. “No, nope. Fuckin’ fuuuuuck that…” she said to the snake, who was still hissing at her menacingly, before scampering back down the stairs.
She’d barely set both feet back on the ground floor when Rue heard another presence in the house.
Immediately, she flattened herself again the wall, disappearing into shadows as she held her breath. There was someone moving into that big room, the one with the kitchen. Rue scaled along the wall of the hallway on silent feet, falling easily back into the muscle memory; in her old life, before she’d joined up with the Free Traders, Rue had commonly been a runner for her old gang, tasked with casing potential houses to steal from and squat in, to route exit strategies and carry out petty theft operations to provide herself a few days’ worth of food and shelter.
She peered around the corner and saw a small-statured woman in uniform, doing—something. The longer she watched, the harder it was for Rue to make sense of what she was seeing. The woman was muttering to herself, ambling around in drunken paths along the stained linoleum, occasionally shuddering and emitting unhinged bursts of laughter like the certified neighborhood crackhead.
And Rue was about to leave the nitty to it—what did she care who doped themselves into insanity in this funhouse of blood and decay?—when the woman stepped into a patch of light, and turned, and Rue recognized her—despite the fact that half her face looked like it was puddling off like some melted gelato.
“Oh Captain my Captain…” Rue acknowledged, striding into the room without a single trace of fear or apprehension. She flashed Katie her hedge witch ranking tattoos, black stars that climbed up Rue’s forearms, merely out of habit, many years ingrained with the particulars of safehouse courtesies and etiquette. “…I got unfinished business with these bitches, we go way back. Seems like they split, though…say, bruv, are you gonna be a’right? Don’t take this the wrong way, but it looks like Satan herself chewed you up and shat you dead out, innit.”
@katiethxrne
.
The Eyebright was half working now, Katie blinking sunspots from her eyes even as she tracked the magic as it faded from her sight. When the eyebright had fallen ebbed, the pain washed over her, and the Captain hissed restraining herself from clapping a hand over an exposed wound.
Lydia had given them all horror stories about Eyebright showed them in carefully plastered up posters what it could do to a body if they relied on it - if they didn’t dose right. LaPlante supposedly lost a chunk of her arm to it but no one wanted the old bitch to strip and show the marks of it. But Katie, for all her magical fuckups and continuous embarrassment to both the badge and Lydia, knew how to dose herself. She knew when the addiction of a pain or dreamless sleep took hold and carefully weaned herself off. Katie could measure a teaspoon of sugar down to the granule, could make most of her potions in her repository in her sleep. Where others struggled with Polyjuice Potion, Katie waved away any thought of fucking up something she considered remedial.
So as the Eyebright faded, and Katie hungered for the next hit to further her investigation she was swayed by a single piece of advice any professor had given her - never let yourself be consumed. So the Captain stood, and uncapped a medical potion from the interior linings of her peacoat. Micah was good about keeping them stocked, he strengthen the healing magic in Katie’s brews the pair making a fine charmer-potioneering team when they didn’t bicker.
“Satan is a brother to me,” Katie answered, throwing back the potion like a shot, a flutter of light emitting from her melted cheek like when a child put a flashlight to a blanket, “we have Sunday dinners and chat about his boyfriend Judas, wonderful dancer, terrible chef and friend.” She continued with her flippancy, but scanned Rue for any amount of emotion. But she found the other woman wonderfully blank and frankly it relaxed Katie. No one came here guarded unless they had enemies in the building. “I’ll not worry you with the semantics, I’m just doing some high level investigating of the crime scene,” highly illegal and frankly stupid, but that was Katie MO - it’s what Lydia had hired her for, “ “But I’m a seasoned Auror Captain with a badge and license to kill, so it’s safe for me here, but not for you.”
Though... the Hedges were enemies of the Daughters, the true extent Katie didn’t know. She acted as a den mother somedays, but feeding someone and strengthening their wards didn’t mean you washed their panties. That said, she couldn’t imagine them coming to do an investigation, they wouldn’t really know where to start Katie thought. The art of tracking, tracing, detecting and picking apart a magical crime scene was the work of doing the Gordian Knot without the sword and bluster - it required finesse and spellwork to make the seams unravel and find the real shape beneath the threads.
“Unfinished business huh, you’re going to have to give me more than that Rue. I know you. You’re not stupid you know this is a highly active crime scene and you’ve read the papers,” with Lydia’s face plastered all over, talking about arrest rates and kill counts, nothing about her love for ice-cream nor taste for dumplings.
But, tit-for-tat, Rue wouldn’t say shit unless Katie offered her something. So she grasped that little thread of magic, that knotted golden thing that had destroyed Ashworth from the inside out. Tethered to her magical core, a little heartbeat she knotted around her pinky, “filum magicae lux apparent,” the little trick to making magic visible and Katie held it aloft, glowing and pulsing, razor thin not unlike a heartstring. “That Commander they killed was mine, and I don’t intend to simply cry about it.”
‘Lydia’s vicious stupid daughter.’ Fuck Seren but she knew one thing - Katie was a vicious scrap of a thing. Gryffindor’s motto was fuck around and find out, and whoever owned this thread of magic had never fucked with a woman like Captain Katherine Thorne before.
i refuse to kneel or pray
i won’t remember you that way.
Every first Sunday of the month, Mr. Campbell goes about his morning – first eggs and toast with water. Next, the dogs, let outside and fed. Then the pants, and shirt, the button up and the thick work coat lined with fleece, the wool mittens with leather palms for winter, the leather ones for summer, boots for all weather, two pairs of socks, extra in the coat. Then the pail, sponge, scraper and bristle brush that was just outside the door kept and beside a flowerpot with the fake housekey above the loose stone with the real housekey. As with most mornings, Bristol Southern Cemetery was layered up with fog inches deep, thick cold in the air clotting up Mr. Campbell’s throat and stinging even through his clothes and thick beard. Somedays so cold that Mr. Campbell entertained the idea of returning to bed, to his fireplace, to his wolfhounds, threatening to not pass the threshold of his groundskeeper cottage.
But one Misses Katherine wired him 300 pounds to keep Mr. and Mrs. Thorne’s headstone cleaned, flowers patted, grass trimmed, and stone buffed. So, he had his routine, once a month to tend to these 2 stones lain up in the ground nearly two decades ago.
However, unlike every other first Sunday of the month there was a latter taped up to his front door. There was a new plaque beside Mr. and Mrs. Thorne, a Cmdr. Lydia Ashworth who Misses Katherine had placed just beside Mrs. Thorne. It was a handsome plaque the letter had provided, black stone with real silver lettering, stamped with snakes and lions and oddly ice cream cones. The letter detailed that Mr. Campbell would be asked to clean this stone as well, equally cared for by his employer with an additional 150 pound to the sum totaling 450 pound for the once a month job.
“Tha girl suffers from a type of curse I am sure,” Mr. Campbell mused before folding the letter up thrice and sticking it into his right pocket. He knelt to add another sponge to the pail, before locking the cabin behind him.
liturgy ii
thick skull never did (nothing for me)
same lesson again (come, give it to me)
There wasn’t any lint on her coat, nor the edge of her dress, nor tights, her heels were strapped snug enough to race down an alleyway. Lydia always said to never have an off foot, just two steady ones, but Katie still cocked her hip to the left, and did so in the mirror tilting her jaw this way and that - hair loose and didn’t need anymore attention then it already had, skin breaking out but a few mumbled charms cleared her up, wand holstered on her hip, and thin black gloves hid her scars and blackhole hands.
There wasn’t anything else for Katie to do but exit the office, the Auror funeral hall was in the furthest corner of the department, neutral ground, the corridor walls lined with names or initials of the dead. Katie had been to several Auror funerals, though rare in Crimes & Forensics. She’d been told the funeral wouldn’t begin without her, per tradition as the Speaker for the Dead.
But she had to leave her office sometime, already the shuffle of feet through the hallways had gone quiet, only the most essential Aurors left in the Division. Katie was the last one left, bumbling around in her office as if she could walk out this door and find Lydia leaned up against the wall grinning and chewing on that terrible red-hot gum she imported from America.
Lydia wouldn’t be there. The Commander’s office was empty of her presence, and Katie was once again so terribly alone. Silently falling beneath the waves, not even fighting for air.
Katie couldn’t, however, allow herself to fail Lydia’s last wishes, not go to the funeral. She couldn’t stand the idea of LaPlante or Seren or godforbid Max coming down her to frogmarch her up the podium to fulfill her duties. So she exited and closed the door behind her, and as the door shut her spine locked up, and she began the walk.
Her heels made a clack on the stone that the woman refused to flinch from, though each solitary sound reminded her that she was making this walk alone. She’d always been accompanied to funerals with another person, someone by her side, someone to pat her shoulder, wipe her tears, scrape lint off her dress. She rubbed her hands down the front again, but it was as smooth and clean as it had been before this death march.
The doors were manned, two faceless Aurors, eyes and mouths covered with a gold mask, the crossed wands and sword stamped into the metal of the cheeks.
Paul and Ramon, judging by their size and the scars on their exposed flesh. Neither from Crime and Forensics. But she knew them, General Operations, the average sod who walked their routes through the wizarding villages and didn’t do anything but take orders. She’d worked with them each, and their magic was distinctive for being so bland it made any good Forensics Auror groan at the sheer boringness they exuded.
Honor and Sacrifice. Those were their names today, the only ones who were allowed their wands within the Hall. Too many Auror funerals in the past had turned into bloody coups for power within the Department, and too many Auror funerals turned into suicide pacts kept over the coffins of their superiors or lovers.
She surrendered her wand, Honor-Paul took it and rubbed an oil on the front, it glowed pink then magenta. No Polyjuice, no Transfiguration.
She handed her left hand, the wand hand to Ramon, who tugged the glove to her wrist and rubbed a similar oil, which also glowed pink then magenta. No Polyjuice, no Transfiguration.
Her wand disappeared, and Katie bit her tongue at the sheer flash of horror she felt to see it zap out of existence. But this had happened before and would happen again.
Then both nodded, and Katie entered the hall built to hold the entire department, both a last-stand stronghold and a last send off. It was created to withstand a siege of 99 days, with water tankards built into the walls, wood grown around ward-woven steel, refrigeration units held beneath the podium and raised dais, which pulled from caches of food storages held around the country and refilled at random. No, the Aurors were never going to get caught off-guard on their home turf again. It had been Tonk’s idea supposedly, but with input from Professor Longbottom due to his experiences during the Sieges at Hogwarts during the War.
For today the walls were lined with white banners edged in Slytherin green, they hung limp. The left was civilian and family, the right Auror and Ministry. The podium was occupied by the Minister for Magic, debonair in his silk black suit and carefully slicked hair. Katie strode forward, the last to enter the hall while Honor-Paul and Sacrifice-Ramon shut the doors behind them, they would stand outside until they were opened again at the end. They’d die at that post if need be, rather than interrupt the funeral for anything less than a revolution or assassination.
Katie stopped short of the final row. Seren just one over and the first seat at the very edge left empty.
Her seat.
Her name wasn’t on it, but then again, her name hadn’t been on the seat at her parent’s funeral. They’d just waited like this, quiet and solemn for the child to hobble into her chair. Waited for her to bury the bodies into the ground. Waited for Katie to start screaming or hollering or sobbing. Waited for the six-year-old to break.
They waited now, for Katie to sit, to holler, to cry, to show any emotion. But instead, she nodded at Seren and sat ramrod. From the corner of her eye, she could see Max behind her, just the row and three diagonal, close enough as the recent Commander, she wasn’t going to jump any lines since Ashworth’s Majors and the Riptide Squad still lived, but she was there and close and breathing.
Katie didn’t mean to time her breaths to Max’s, but she did, as she waited in silence for the Minister to begin his speech. Filled with a biography, filled with sorrow, filled with hopes, filled with tales of honor and duty and sacrifice and glory and love and a time spent on this Earth for the Aurors, for the Ministry, for the People. All the good, glorious things that a Minister could never really understand. Things Katie sometimes believed she didn’t understand either.
But as a low soft tap began. She understood this.
The rumble began, a gentle stomp of heel that took up arms through each pew as the Minister sweated through the speech. Each word that came out was responded to with a stomp as it grew deeper through the pews, sweeping like a west wind. The civilians shifted nervously, the few that included Ashworth’s sister and nephews. Katie could see Matthew, a 5th year Hufflepuff watching the performance with a sharpness in his eye. It was glee – he’d grown on stories of the Aurors, he was promised to Crime & Forensics, he was promised to Katie when the time came. The Captain knew that Matthew mourned his aunt, but his hero had fallen in battle, her casket imprinted with medals, her Department willing to follow her to grave if need be. It was all the things he’d been told Lydia wanted. It was all the things Katie had believed she wanted.
To die by the sword, to die in a blaze, to become the hero of stories, the name they pointed to at the wall as being worth something.
She wanted ice-cream, and a callosed palm guiding her knife cuts, and a slap to the back of her head when she winked at Max after kissing her stupid in the dueling hall.
Katie felt each stomp jarring up her spine, it threatened to pop her from the pew with the strength of the vibration. But she stayed seated as the stomping turned to a din as the Minister stepped down. The coffin, empty and sitting there. Empty and not yet lowered. Empty and not yet given to the family. Empty, and not yet paid respect.
The stomping went on.
Seren turned, eyes boring holes into her skull.
Katie couldn’t stand, her feet were cemented to the ground while LaPlante leaned forward. The crowd had both feet striking the ground now, the entire hall quiet except for the frantic stamping like a heartbeat growing its own life. The white banners shaking, and Katie throat closing closing closing.
“How long are you going to be weak?”
Barry had asked her, that first time he struck her, body still mangled, arm still in cast, her body still freezing cold. From that first stike on Katie always knew it was safest to run hot.
“You aren’t worth his life.”
Katie looked at Max, out of the corner of her eye, right foot slamming the ground in the steady procession, but the woman didn’t look at her. Like all of them, her eyes were on the coffin.
“You aren’t worth the shit of a beetle.”
Lydia hadn’t ever said that, had always steered Katie on the right back, the just path, helped her mind her steps. When she stumbled and skidded her knee Lydia jerked her back up and frogmarched to the right time. Lydia always kept Katie as straight as she could. Believed in Katie more than Katie ever thought anyone could.
“You’re a wasted girl – all that talent, all that rage, all that brilliance fucking wasted.”
The Auror Captain stood, and the stamping stopped. The Auror Captain stepped out of the pew, and walked to the front dais, and like her Sorting, she ascended the steps alone and stood before the crowd, the officers, the captains, the majors, the commanders – in front of everyone who ever cared around Ashworth. They sat beholding the person Ashworth held above them all, and Katie peered down the broken ridge of her nose and gripped the podium with her hands, the wood creaking up her hands.
“Who comes to honor to the dead?” She called into the crowd, the echo of their stamping still ringing in her skull. For a second the hall sat silent before a pimply boy stood, a recent trainee, hands still soft and unbloodied.
“I, Tyrone Gates, come to honor the dead.” He called back, striding down the middle aisle and stood before the coffin, then like he was taught first day of Auror courses, pounded his chest three times, hard enough to bruise, hard enough to bring tears, hard enough that when he showed his trainer later, they’d stand prideful over the pain he’d given himself and slap his back. Pain that they all felt when one of their own died, pain they’d inflict to honor one of their own, pain they’d know when they fell.
Katie nodded to the pimply fresh boy and called again.
Then again, until each pew had come forth. The rhythmic tones, the beating of the breasts, each a hammer strike into the growing migraine in Katie’s skull. It was all such a fucking waste. Each second, she stood her dolling out her duties, a fucking waste of time. This whole production the antithesis of Lydia who pursued Justice like a bloodhound – relentless in her scope of lawful revenge. Katie was sinking into herself, staring into the bloodless crowd of faces she’d known her whole adult life, and yet not even one inspired anything but the same mindless thump of a heartbeat in her brain.
“Who comes to give honor to the dead?” Katie’s voice was hoarse, each call ripping from deep in her chest.
“I, Max Squint, come to honor the dead.” She exited the pew, head straight, back like iron, hand already fist, a vision of grace and power. The suit fit her well and cut neat lines across her shoulders and arms. The pin of a Commander on her lapel, it shined as if freshly polished and likely was. She stood before the coffin, and pounded her chest, hard and strong, their eyes met, and Katie felt a rush of pain lance through her side, cracking through her ribs and digging into her spine to gnaw on her vertebrae. It threatened to double her over.
But she’d memorized everything in the Will of the Dead that had been passed into her hands, and she spoke. “Max Squint – ” the Aurors looked to her in union, as if she were a pastor, or a priest, in a way she was, the Speaker of the Dead.
The highest honor one could receive at an Auror funeral, the one who was expected to receive the mourning of the living and pass along these wishes to the dead. Bequethed to her by the Will of the Dead, outlined with that which Lydia wanted to say to her loved ones or even nothing at all. The Will of the Dead filled out and seen by no one until an Auror died and the Speaker’s name burned on the top of the parchment. The one who spoke to them in place of the dead, giving their Last Words, Last Wishes, Last Thoughts. The one who knew them best, who was their right hand, a ventricle of their heart, a shard of their skull, a whisp of their patronus. An honor, a damnation. “You have been given trust.”
Katie didn’t nod, she didn’t speak, she watched as Max stood then turned back to sit.
The Majors came next, each with their own words left within the Will of Death, the funeral directive they all filled out thrice a year. Katie would have to change her Speaker of the Dead after today. Then the remnants of Ripcurl, each left with deceptive single words – Goon. Insouciance. Pumpkin. Thimble. Goat – none that made sense to the crowd but left Lydia’s comrades in various shades of withheld tears. Their mouths and faces twisted into vestiges of humanity as they took their seats and sobbed openly into their hands. Only after they gave honor could any Auror show their scars, that selfish pit they had to disguise until the end. In the past Aurors had fainted from their deluge of emotions, their magic rippling from their hands while their wails had to be smothered.
Seren did none of these things, she came forward already sobbing – hard. Katie called her forth, but the woman didn’t move from her seat, nails digging into her knees. From directly behind her Cadmus shifted uncomfortably.
Katie called it again, and eyes were on Seren, on this apparent show of weakness… or more likely disrespect for Lydia.
“Who,” Katie called, one last time, a shine of her temper coming through, her teeth gnashing on the consonant, “comes to honor the fucking dead.”
Seren’s head snapped up and if Katie was younger, or weaker, or frankly felt anything she might’ve pissed herself at the sheer hatred in Seren’s bloodshot eyes.
“I, Seren Reese, comes to give honor to the dead.”
Seren slammed her chest, hard enough Katie though she was reaching for her own heart, about to gouge herself before the entire congress and hold it aloft and laugh. But she didn’t, and she stood and waited a beat, but Katie said nothing. Why should she give her anything? Her Mother had been Seren’s sworn enemy. Seren had spat on Lydia at every fucking turn, at every meeting, at every occasion. Seren didn’t deserve the words that Lydia would leave her, the closure she might get from this façade of grief. Seren waited another moment longer, her face twisted into something terrible and overwhelmingly sad and childish – like a girl who’d lost a playground game or been denied another moment to pet the puppy. Then she turned to leave, but as she did so her heel weakened, her knees shook, shoulders falling.
Katie was the Speaker, she shouldn’t…
“Seren Reese,” it came out softer than before, Katie sucked on her tongue as she watched Seren swing back around, a shine of hope in those clear blue eyes, likely the only humanity Katie had ever seen in her eyes, “Wait, and visit.”
Then Seren nodded, and sat, and let out a howl so long and loud that those around her let out their own sobbing shrieks in response. There were no tears, only terrible shrieks, almost like laughter, almost like happiness, but certainly it was a type of grief Katie had never witnessed before let alone from a woman like Seren. But the crowd feed from the sudden emotion pouring from Seren’s mouth, and the pounding of feet grew as their voices rose into the rafters, the civilians swept into the feeling began their own sobs and shaking, holding, and clinging to each other while the storm raged beside them, rocking the hall and banners while the Auror Captain stood above them all.
Then Katie turned away and approached the coffin, carried forth on the wings of their sorrows, caught in the tides of tears and touched the empty wooden thing. The terrible empty thing, so easily set aflame, so cold, so easily destroyed. This terrible empty casket that Katie felt tiny beside.
“We came and gave honor to the dead. Go in glory, Lydia S. Ashworth. Go in honor, Lydia S. Ashworth. Go in peace, Lydia S. Ashworth.” Katie said, soft and gentle.
Katie pulled her hand back, and with a hissed incantation plunged her fist into the wood and set it aflames.
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, leave no body behind for your enemies to steal your secrets. Even if you were safe in the holiest of places for the Aurors, even if your body was already spread among the winds, it was tradition.
Katie burned her glove off, the blackhole expanding to ring around her thumb like a band of iron as the casket caught flame and began to burn. The doors at the end of the hall slammed open as Honor and Sacrifice held it open.
The doors behind them creaked open, and into the hall they all spilled, a mass of roiling grief. Most running for the dueling halls, many more for the solace of the battlefield, several to fuck their grief in empty offices and storage units. But Katie didn’t follow them out. She stood, at the burning casket until the room was nearly empty and turned only to find Max at the back of hall one foot out the other in, and Seren behind her a hand hovering.
Goddamn her how did she look so suddenly put together and clean.
“You did well, Thorne.” The hand landed in her hair, long nails curling against her scalp, before falling to her side. “She was a good woman, foolish and terrible. She couldn’t help but fight with me, couldn’t help but run into a fight. Couldn’t help handing out her precious second chances. But she was good, and she was mine.” Katie wondered if she even should hear this. Katie wondered if Seren’s scream was an act. Katie wondered if Max was still waiting for her. “I was hers; I suppose that’s the problem with a rivalry that lasts decade. We didn’t know how to stop putting hooks into each other—”
“And now you’re too poked full of holes to fill.” Katie interrupted, “You don’t know how to be anything but acidic – right?”
“Don’t psychoanalyze me Thorne,” Seren snapped, “here I am bearing my girlish heart, yet you snipe at me.”
“You must think me a fool if you think I’ll falling for this act of yours. You never loved her let alone have some soft girlish heart,” Katie snarled, “not once in your entire life did you love her. Not like how I loved her.”
“Like a mother, we all know. Everyone knows. Lydia’s girl. Lydia’s precious little girl.” Seren laughed. “Lydia’s stupid vicious daughter, now set loose in this world without a friend left.” She nodded to the door where Max had fled, and Katie felt the lost second fleeing from her as sand. Seren clapped a hand onto her shoulder, nails digging into the skin there. “Me and Lydia knew how to raise our girls right. I should hope Athena does half as good when my time comes.”
“Quickly I hope.”
Seren smiled, “Merlin, you’re her spitting image.” The Commander’s nails raked over her cheeks. “You’re going to become just like us if you live long enough,” it felt like a promise, it felt like fate, “I wonder what sort of monsters you’ll raise to replace you. I wonder if Max is your Lydia. I wonder about a lot of things, worry too I suppose. I worry about my girl. I’m sure Lydia was worried for you in those last moment, I would have if I left my girl so unprepared.” Seren leaned forward and pressed a kiss to her forehead, and her red painted lips smudged across Katie’s pale skin, “How about this for your Last Words – You can trust yourself kid. Take it from me, I was her Speaker longer than you’ve been alive.”
Then like a flash of lightning, fleeting and shocking, Seren left Katie standing at the dais, and in her hand was her wand. Returned to her by the magic of the doors opening and pointed at Seren’s retreating figure. It’d be easy, it’d be a coup, it’d save them all the pain and misery and horror and Katie would be buried right here in this fucking burned out empty casket. They spread her traitorous ashes to coil around whatever dust bunnies and shrapnel they’d exhumed from that fucking house and Katie could finally get released into the arms of her parents. It would take a single shot wouldn’t it – to end it all now, to bring the world crashing around her ears.
What was the point of all this?
What was the point of any of this?
What was the point of a twice-made orphan?
What was the point of Katie being here without Lydia?
Katie sat on the stairs of the dais, wand dangling from her fingertips. From the hallway a figure strode forward, he came down the center aisle and marched up the stairs to find Katie’s arm. She looked at the hand that pulled her up and to her feet.
“Get up Thorne,” Roland ground out, his face made of steel, face free of sweat or grief, he wasn’t wearing Auror blacks, the pink of his shirt hurting Katie’s eyes who’d been staring at a sea of black for the last two hours, “pull your goddamn self together, it’s just an Auror funeral. There is work to be done.”
“Sidewinder—”
He grabbed her cheeks with a single hand, squeezing them together, so hard his nails left half moon imprints into her cheeks, teeth grinding together.
“Stand up straight when you leave, that’s the only way they’ll remember you. Don’t cry. Don’t speak. Walk quiet. Walk slow.” Roland released her, dusted the lint off the front of her dress and didn’t offer his arm, simply walked just ahead of her, nodding to Honor-Paul and Sacrifice-Ramon. The doors shut behind them and Katie walked.
litury iii –
i’ve been running against the wind
and i can hear the angels calling
the madness has been pulling me
Max ordered her out of the house three days past Lydia’s funeral, with those steady eyes and blunt mouth.
There was some non-combantant Aurors with a face so pretty it made Katie’s head hurt lurking around her people, around Lydia’s department.
Evangeline had called her cell phone. There were several letters unopened on her kitchen table Hogwarts friends. There was a concerned message in her work inbox she’d immediately ignored upon seeing the handwriting. There was a photo of her exiting the Funeral Hall splashed on the front page paper:
CMDR. SQUINT ANSWERS BLISTERING QUESTIONS ABOUT DEATH OF BELOVED CMDR. ASHWORTH
CAPT. THORNE ON THE CASE! NEW DETAILS FROM CLOSE SOURCES SAYING THE CAPT. HAS NOT TAKEN A SINGLE DAY OF BEREVEMENT.
All staring at her, morning, noon, and night. Lydia’s profile. Katie’s profile. Max’s profile. A rotating triad splattered through the pages intertwined with images of Seren.
CMDR. REESE’S MOURNING RISE TO DEPARTMENT HEAD.
EXTRA! CMDR. REESE AND CMDR. ASHWORTH’S ENEMITY…AND ILLICIT? AFFAIR?
Katie burned that, watched the Daily Prophet single the edge of her loose white shirt, the cursemark growing daily as Katie expended more magic to continue to comb the forensic scene. Her squad back home running after Killer leaders. Her Majors back on their jobs. Her Max in the office dealing with attacks from all sides that Katie was still split on whether or not she deserved.
All of Katie’s attention was here, on the ground, kicking at literal rocks and shuffling through invisible strands of magic. She reached into her jacket pulling from it a flask that was filled with Wide-Eye potion and took a long glug from it, feeling it fill her brain, as if she’d washed her eyes out with peppermint. Momentarily Katie was sure she could see the spells in the air –
Eyebright, Katie thrust her hand into her coat pocket and opened a pack and began to shuffle through. She had to have at least a gram of it… she hadn’t ever used it in the last year of fieldwork. It was too expensive for the Department to allot in their yearly supplies, too expensive for even most security firms to get a hold of, nearly impossible to find on the street. The ground up bones of a Dhampir, the dried blood of a Changeling, and lastly the most damning ingredient the brain matter of a Hippocampus calf only 30 days old and slaughtered.
The going rate for a gram of Eyebright was 10,000 galleons.
The perks of being a Crime and Forensics Investigator included the raids. Katie was no Roland Sidewinder with his shiny Silver Raider badge, but she had her sleight-of-hand and when a gram of Eyebright popped up in the field two years ago any Auror in her Department would have snatched it up. No question they’d all lifted one or two of the rarer ingredients from their crime scenes once it’d been cleared as not being part of the gruesome murder before her. Katie knew for a fact that LaPlante sported Werewolf Fang blades that she kept straped to her wrists, Jansen had managed to pillage a dozen half-born giants one year (which had lead to internal review but still he managed to keep them), what was a gram of Eyebright?
With a triumphant smirk Katie pulled the clothe-of-gold from her pack, and set the pouch onto a table, carefully undoing the string and letting it come open.
The powder was iridescent, it shimmered over the clothe-of-gold, lighter than air it began to hover above the fabric and Katie hovered her fingers over it.
Eyebright did what nothing else could it made faded magic visible, it make the unseeable noticeable and it caused a type of blinding pain that only someone who desperately wanted it could use. Lydia admitted to using Eyebright during the War in her most desperate time, the ability to see spelled traps, shaded alchemy, the cause of potions, view the true shape of transfiguration – Wix were not supposed to do that. The strain of it had landed it’s prolific users in St. Mungos, and it’s stupider ones being driven made to see the thousands of layers of magic within the community.
Katie pressed her three fingers into the powder smearing it until it stuck to the grooves of her fingerprints, stuck against her sweat and closed her eyebrows.
Ashworth would have never allowed a Hunt to go unfinished.
She smeared the powder over her eyelids, the left, then the right, and waited with baited breath for the world to snap into place. But she greeted only darkness, and for a split second Katie feared opening her eyes.
Lydia would have told her to fight the fear, was she a Gryffindor or not?
When the Captain’s eyes opened the entire house was blinding – the scars of magic left bright traces in the floor, blood magic hanging like stains, Katie stared as she found traces of spells that had never been recorded used that night. Then carefully began to step around a crime scene so carefully plotted that Katie could recite it back to her trainers like a trail.
But instead, she was greeted with Magic she didn’t know existed, at least not in practice.
“Voodoo huh…” Katie leaned down to examine a working table that had been thrown to the ground, finding strange magic she didn’t recognize, the use of blood wards and something most called ‘deity’ magic. A type of magic that worked in dedication to a greater magical being. Salazar had practiced this so-called deity magic to Basilisks it was rumored. The earliest of dragon-tamers had started as worshippers. From every corner of the world Wix had used their magic as power and prayer, though prayer and devotional causes of Magic had fallen aside. Though, Penny recalled, the Hawkins wolves and other Clans referred to the Moon as a God of some kind. It wasn’t often studied, but Katie had seen the laboratories of wizards attempting to call on the Beyond for necromancy, seeking out what muggles would call demons or monsters who existed in the Underworld.
It was all a bit too existential for Katie, even when she studied necromancy and practiced it quietly to herself.
“Now what have you fuckers been up too…” Katie knelt beside the fallen alter and followed the traces of magic, the thicker strands of obviously a powerful Witch… some of those traces exited the property and didn’t double back. In each strand an essence of magic fluttered, whether it was a particular scent or gloss to the thread.
This thread was knotted and gold, it wrapped and snaked through the doors like a great serpent, a cobra striking out and where the magic left the cord it splintered and crackled around like lightning.
Katie’s skin was buzzing, with the interest of a scientist Katie proded the meat of her inner arm and found it bleeding under the lightest of pressure. The skin around her face was growing tight, it felt as if it were melting and when Katie reached to touch her cheekbone she found muscle and bone waiting, skin acting like wax and the Gryffindor let out a hazy sort of giggle.
Too much Eyebright then.
Nothing to do for it now, not when this magic was sprouting like a seed before her, flowering, each layer like the ring of a cut tree. Katie’s head was pounded, the beat of war drums in her head as she followed each strand, her body swaying and sweating blood and viscus. Eyebright always went for the face and arms first, then the back, the stomach, thighs, calves and feet for last. It ate you up, using your body and energy and magic to allow you to do the impossible, acted in sacrifice to the magic you called upon.
Katie could pay Lydia her body a thousand times and still do it again with an apolgy for not being better.
The Gryffindor found the room, where the girl and boy had witnessed Lydia’s death. Where Athena had watched Ashworth fade into a nothingness that no-one knew the true outcome of. The cord was splintered like roots, sinking into the place where they’d staked the form of Lydia’s both, all rigid muscle and a tight spine.
The coffin contained a half-gram of the body, Athena had managed to retrieve a gram and turn it over. The only thing Katie would ever thank her for, even as she promised quietly to bright hell around her ears. The other half-gram was tucked into a vial, and it had hung from Katie’s beltloop for the last week and a half, taken from the mortuary she’d slipped into and been allowed privacy. The last link to her Commander, the last aspect of her body.
The last aspect of magic that could tell them how it happened.
Katie knelt, knees creaking and opened the vial.
It pulsed with the same knotted magic; it was intertwined so deeply in the purple of what Katie knew to be Lydia that it seemed like it was consuming it. Swallowing the essence whole, stealing and storing its power – her power, her magic, her lifeforce.
Katie reached for the clothe-of-gold and took off the last of the Eyebright, clenching the packet her hand as the pain wreaked havoc through her body.
But the golden knotted magic remained in her Mind’s Eye, as if seared, as it burn. Katie flicked her tongue out into the air as a serpent might, tasting it, the muddy clean that belonged to soaked mud and storm air. In that fleeting second as the Eyebright finally faded, Katie knew she’d always have the taste of Lydia’s murderer in her mouth.
The door behind her creaked open, and Katie, a bloodied mess of a woman, half the skin of her face slouching off, eyes shot through with broken blood vessels, blood flowing freely from her nose, ears and the corner of her mouth turned. Her entire left arm, from the tips of her finger to her elbow covered in black, searing deeply into her skin, smoking and consuming her inch by inch.
“Now, what the fuck do you think you’re doing here?”
liturgy iv
mom, i want you to know
i’m letting everything you taught me
guide me home
“What’s your favorite flavor of ice-cream?”
Katie looked up from her potions text, brows squished together as she peered up at the woman in all black, sheer as a blade, and arms folded across a chest decorated with so many medals Katie was sure one was for being up her own ass.
“Prefer chocolate, with cherries and a layer of fudge.”
“Well that’s far too complicated, how about just a scoop.”
“Well I said that I prefer chocolate, with cherries and a layer of fudge if you’re paying and offering.”
The woman dropped to her haunches before Katie who, for the first time, stared down into the eyes of an obviously powerful adult. Some part of her stomach twisted and her brain short circuited as the woman looked her over, as if she were buying a prize pureblood puppy from the pound. As if she liked what she saw. Cassidy was the only one who really looked at her like that.
“You’re a wasted girl – all that talent, all that rage, all that brilliance fucking wasted.” The woman hissed shaking her head with a type of vehemence Katie was used to being directed her, from the front of a classroom, from the corridors of Hogwarts, the center of the room while she cowered in a corner waiting for the next blow.
“Mine to waste,” Katie quipped back, hands fisted over her potions book, her lips turning into a cruel smile. “all this fucking brilliance can kick your goddamn ass,” a total lie but Katie wasn’t going to running off with some stranger for ice-cream, nor for thinly veiled insults.
The woman blinked, then let out the softest giggle Katie couldn’t imagine from a battle-hardened Auror (for surely that’s all she could be) who stood up.
“Commander Lydia Ashworth for the Division of Crime and Forensics, and I’d like you to come work for me, Kathrine Thorne.” The Gryffindor blinked. “Now come along kid, I got the Headmistress to clear your afternoon classes so we can chat about your future with the DMLE and with me.” Lydia hoisted up Katie’s schoolbag, storing away the notes in a neat pile, grabbing up her folded leather jacket and looped it all over her shoulder and held out a hand. “Come with me.”
Katie reached out, linking their hands together, and a ring on Lydia’s chest bloomed brilliant blue and the pair popped out of existence, Katie’s eagle feathered quill falling in the wake of their magic, crushed grass from their shoes, and a single head ducking behind a pillar before snaking into their pocket pulling out a notepad.
“Thorne – recruited.”
Seren exited the building, stalking to where Athena waited, practice a charming smile in a bit of polished window.
