“The end of a melody is not its goal: but nonetheless, had the melody not reached its end it would not have reached its goal either. A parable.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
As Doug McKinnon knocked a middle-aged man to his knees, Gawain Robards followed quickly through a door that had been locked from the inside moments previously.
“GET HIM DOWN!” Gawain yelled over a string of profanity and hexes, Alice Longbottom’s much shorter frame already shielding Francis Aubrey from harm as the man held his own, ushering his last spells as Alice pressed him backward. Downstairs, he meant, and he was grateful for the woman’s apt and rapid understanding.
Her hair was the first thing he noticed.
He had seen Annaliese in front of the mirror countless times, brushing her curls, bouncing them against product after product in robes of silk that just dusted the tile beneath painted toes. He had watched her toss them over her shoulder the first day he noticed her. He had secretly thought it was cute, when she pulled them out of her face. He had laughed at the mess they were in after their son was born. He had watched her twirl them as she flirted with men twice less than him in bars, only to try making him a jealous he knew he didn’t have to be. He had silently appreciated the way they layered in natural shades of blonde as he lay her against his four poster at Hogwarts, and he had not-so-silently appreciated the way they uncoiled themselves as her back arched off of similarly coloured sheets, over and over again, year after year that suddenly seemed as if they had dragged on forever.
Tossed in loose ringlets over her shoulder, out of her face, in a mess, twirled, layered and uncoiled on the floor, lit in fluorescent and lifeless against old, stark carpet was a sight enough to drain the blood from his face.
Even now, as his eyes connected to blue irises that could no longer be mirrored for the glassiness of death, he had no time to pay attention to them. To her. And as his blue turned away from his wife, Gawain’s stomach turned at the sight of the face next to her on the floor; a face he knew well, a name he knew better. For a split-second he could feel the names of Annaliese Robards and Tessa Bradley being hand-typed in black ink; simple, certain letters tattooed together in a string of permanence on the morning paper’s parchment. In the months to come, the only mirror that would show his reflection rest in the grey-green of his best friend.
He stepped over the body of a woman he only knew by name, and then Tessa, and finally, Anna, chest tight, face as alert as ever. Wand outstretched and back to the wall to cover himself he searched, ordering a still breathing, final man and woman to stay down. By the time he choked the word clear, Doug had a final man he also knew by name pinned against the south wall, arms tied in place.
“How could you, you son of a bitch,” Gawain turned, taking two wide steps to Doug’s side and turning the Death Eater to meet his face. A large hand wrapped around a sheet white neck, and Gawain took pleasure in the sound of a covered skull hitting wood. A second pointed wand of fir upward, harshly digging into Eric Diehl’s jaw.
“Why? What have you done?”
A sickly, deliberate grin was all he got in return.
“Gawain,” came a voice that never failed to loosen his grip, and after a suspended moment, Gawain shoved the man against the door for good measure, letting go with grit teeth as he handed over his control.
* * *
People. Aurors, Mediwizards and all alike filtered in around them. Gawain stood stationary with one hand against the wall, head bowed. No one bothered to speak to him, knowing better than to tell him to go home.
“Sir?”
Alice had returned, with hesitance in her interruption and a list of the meeting’s occupants in her hand. A list he had not asked for. No one unaccounted for.
“You are quick on your feet, are you not?”
“Gawain, I’m–”
“Doug’s name goes for capture on the report,” he interrupted, not wanting to hear it, “His name is Eric Diehl, though it is possible that is an alias. He did not attend Hogwarts. Those two are well, take their statements. They were discussing safety regulations today. I want to know everything Diehl knows by the end of the day, do you understand? I would fight to question him myself but I do not have the control or the time for the bullshit.”
“Of course.”
With a final look at Doug, Gawain strode from the room toward the DMLE. And though his composure threatened to betray him, he knew it was simply that. A threat. One that he would be allowed to crush instantaneously, but would use instead. He would transfer grief to anger, and he would not think beyond his direct line of fire. Nothing would change.
“Get your shit,” he barked harshly at Marnie, not stopping to wait for her.
“What--”
“Go stay with Philip.”
“Gawain!”
“I need you to stay with Philip,” he snipped as she caught up, thinking of the woman who currently held his son in her care, far past her usual time. "Either stay or tell her I will be late, see if she will stay.”
“Anna--”
“ANNA IS DEAD, DAVIS,” he spat, finally, spinning on his heels to face her, anger settling in. “Annaliese is gone.”
