Details for The Wand did Nothing in the Nightime! |
Summary: | In which Hugh gains some information about the Willis case and why Shelley isn't active as an Auror, and formulates a theory he hopes to disprove |
Date: | 1939-02-03 |
Location: | Leaky Cauldron |
Related: | Succeeded by 'I've got a Theory' |
Characters |
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Shelley is paying very little attention to the room as she makes her way to the bar. "/Water/," she commands. "And something… food. Toast or something. Eggs. I dunno."
"Yes, ma'am," the girl behind the bar responds, trying (and failing) to keep all of the amusement from her voice as she turns away from the counter to fill the order.
Hugh removes his pipe from his lips, "Why, Prewett, as I live and breathe!" There's amusement there too. And a booming voice, "Do join me!"
Shelley winces at the sound of the booming voice, turning to look at Hugh. "Carruthers," she greets him. She eyes the man with his pipe and his moustache - then lets out a sigh, and nods. She regrets nodding a moment later, of course, as it only makes her head hurt more.
Leaving the bar behind her, she goes to Hugh's table, and sits, folding her arms on top of the table and resting her face in them.
Hugh gesticulates with the pipe, "You should take more water with it! I gather the game is afoot!" Okay, so quoting Sherlock Holmes whilst smoking a pipe is a bit corny, but at least he knows it. "Or am I attributing to Bacchus what should be more accurately gifted to Venus?"
"What?" Shelley mumbles into her arms. She lifts her head to frown at Hugh, her mind churning over his words for a moment. "Oh. Bacchus. Bacchus," she confirms, before putting her head down again.
Definately Bacchus.
Hugh leans forward to rumple the red hair, "Right! So. What's the business of the day?"
The friendly rumple gets a rather dramatic reaction. She sits up abruptly, puling her head away from Hugh's touch in the process, and shoving the table roughly towards him with a glare in her eyes. She has never been a touchy feely sort - something that has grown far more pronounced since the death of her friend Alis a year ago. "/Don't/ do that."
Hugh chuckles, his eyes twinkling. "Well, don't render yourself in such a state that I can. Point?"
Shelley doesn't seem to think there is a point - or at the very least, she isn't willing to conceed it. She glares at Hugh for a moment longer, then pushes herself to her feet, to move a few tables over.
Hugh puffs away, "Were you thinking of actually doing some work? Or is that why they hauled me back from Berlin?"
"I'm off active duty," Shelley says tersely, picking up her water when it is brought to her. Her gaze remains locked on Hugh, her expression unfriendly.
"Eggs and toast'll just be a few minutes more, Miss Prewett," the server offers before retreating.
Hugh removes the pipe, and gives the woman a look, "I hadn't heard. I'm sorry. What happened?"
Shelley continues to watch Hugh with a wary expression, but after a few moments thought, she nods her head to the seat across from her - inviting him wordlessly to join /her/ this time. Then she starts taking cautious sips from her water glass.
Hugh uncrosses his long legs, and gets up, calling to the bar, "More coffee please. And do you know, I _will_ take you up on that full English. Extra bacon. Mushrooms. Black pudding too if you have it! And sausages and fried bread naturally." And he slides over into the indicated seat.
"The short version?" Shelley offers Hugh when he's seated across from her, and is done with his order. She keeps her voice low, and her hand grips tightly to the glass in her hand. She /might/ as well tell him herself. He's going to find out from someone.
"Alis and I were ambushed." Shelley and Alis had been inseperable since school - best friends, practically sisters. They'd become aurors together, got a place together - there'd been plenty of folks who'd whispered they were /more/ than friends. "Alis was killed, and I was cursed. I'm not allowed out on field work until the curse is cleared up." If it's cleared up.
Hugh says slowly, "I heard something about Alis in Berlin." He drains his coffee, before the next arrives, and then questions, "What curse? I assume it's something exotic, or it'd be broken by now."
"It affects my mind, and my memory," Shelley responds with her voice carefully even, before taking another drink of her glass. "Under certain kinds of pressure, or if I think too hard about what happened - try to remember it - I forget where I am, what I was doing…" And usually, she forgets that she's even an auror.
Hugh pauses, "Hence the attempts to crawl into a bottle of an evening?" He gesticulates with his empty cup towards the bar. "Perhaps you should look at a job at Hogwarts. Defense against the Dark Arts, or something."
"It's crossed my mind," Shelley admits. "But it's only been a year. I want back in the field - I want to do my /job/." She takes another drink of water - her glass half empty now, as her eggs and toast are brought.
"Thank you," she adds towards the server.
Hugh accepts a refill, and suggests, "Well, have you worked out who did it? Why? I mean, probably not you, but the department."
"No. We hadn't thought to pursue that angle," Shelley responds in a dry voice, before sighing and shrugging her shoulders. "We don't have the answers yet. Still working it."
You say, "Well, clearly there's one major problem you've had until now. I was in Germany. Still, now all will become clear, won't it?"
Shelley lets out a snort. "My /savior/?" she asks, her voice still dry. "Go for it, Carruthers. See if you can sort it out." Despite her doubting tone - well. She'd definitely be grateful if he could.
Hugh parks his pipe, and starts on the massive fried breakfast that's delivered to him, "You know the thing about you, Prewett, is you always underestimate anyone who's not a part of your little clubs."
"The Auror's Office's been working this for a year - and you think, now yer back, it's good as solved?" Shelley counters, as her own food arrives with Hugh's. She tears off a small piece of toast and begins to nibble cautiously.
Hugh chops into the black pudding, and takes an appreciative munch, "Well, maybe not _quite_ as good as solved. But closer to it, at least." The woman is given a cheerful smile, "Trust me. I'm an Auror."
Shelley snorts. Because she /isn't/? She frowns at her plate, and tears off another small piece of bread. "Well. You'll certainly be needed. We can all see the storm coming," she remarks, before popping that piece of bread into her mouth.
Hugh nods, "Absolutely. Germany is… not awfully nice right now. If anything the debate is nastier over there, I'm afraid. But from what I hear it's coming here too."
"It's been playing out in the media - especially since that thing at the Sykes Gala," Shelley agrees. She frowns - she'd been /there/, too. And she'd lost control that time, as well. "That was a damned mess," she mutters.
Hugh pauses, sausage impaled on a fork half way to his mouth. "I wouldn't have been invited, of course. But I do wonder if that was the final straw for bringing me back?"
"May've been," Shelley responds. "We need everyone here." She smiles wryly, adding, "For all that I hate Grindelwald - I /was/ invited. It wasn't pretty. We were lucky so few died."
Hugh admits, "I've read the file. Sounds pretty bad stuff. And some murders too? "
"Since that?" Shelley asks. "Yeah. The Willis family - the lot of them slaughtered. Rena Lee was there when Abram Willis was killed, at St. Mungo's." That was deeply problematic on its own, of course. A murder in the hospital?
"And I happened to be passing by the Willis Manor when the rest of them got killed." Her features remain a carefully controlled mask on this admission. "Didn't manage to save any of them. But at least it gives us a better picture of what /did/ happen. It's our highest priority case right now."
Hugh puts one foot up on a chair opposite him. As it happens it thumps onto the side of your chair, right next to your thigh. "Right. Well, tell me more, Watson. Spare no details."
Shelley lets out a frustrated sigh. It's all /in the report/. She went over that damned report ad nausem, every detail she could recall. "I was flying my broom past the house, when I saw a worrying flash of green," of a shade that can be associated with some very troublesome spells. "So I peeked through a second story window, and saw a woman speaking to a girl. Nothing she said was concrete - she wanted the girl to show her her father's study. But I thought I heard a cry of pain, and the door looked blasted in… So I went inside." She nibbles another piece of bread before continuing.
"That's when I found the body on the stairs - a man. Their retainer, we think, with his chest crushed in, probably by the cannon curse." Her expression is tight as she adds, "Which is exactly how Alis died. Which, unfortunately, was enough to get me rather… confused. But at least I still believed I was an auror this time." At the Sykes Gala she ended up convinced she was a student.
Hugh addresses himself to some bacon, slicing it up, "Cannon curse doesn't usually fire green."
"I don't imagine it's the cannon curse I saw. That must have happened earlier, before I was close enough to see anything. No, I think the flash of green may have been the Killing Curse - when we went through the the ruins of the home, after it was burned down, there was a body in the room I saw the flash of green from," Shelley explains.
Hugh gives a nod. "So, that was the primary target, and everyone else was collateral damage? Is that what we're saying?"
"No, they seemed to have it out for the whole family," Shelley says with a sigh. "The girl - she was just a teen - they killed her with the Killing Curse, too. Wasn't a mark on her. She'd been stupefied, and I'd gotten her out of the burning building… She was /unconscious/." Shelley scratches her nose, adding, "and so was I, only a dozen feet away. Killed her, left me there."
If they were tied with Alis' death - that's twice now the same people could have killed her - and apparantly /chose/ not to.
Hugh ponders a moment, "And you had a funny turn, you say?" It's very mildly put, as he slices through fried bread.
"I… grew convinced that Alis was still alive - but injured, and inside the burning building. I confused and merged what was happening - with what /had/ happened a year ago," Shelley explains in a lowered voice. "That's how it seems, at least."
There's another little slice of his knife, and he says, "As a matter of analysis, has your own wand been looked at for what spells it cast?"
"Of course. During this incident, and a year ago. Alis' wand," which she still has, "was checked as well. Nothing cast you would expect," Shelley explains.
Hugh gives a nod, absently, as if he hadn't just enquired whether you might have cast a killing curse. Looks like he'll be checking that factoid himself- your statement against the files. "So, we have someone with a motive to keep you alive, with a motive to kill this whole family, and _every_ other witness."
"I can't pretend to make any sense of it," Shelley responds, though she looks less than pleased at Hugh's implications. She finishes off her bread, and starts in cautiously at the egg.
She can't entirely blame him, though. It was strange and suspicious. Plus, she was a little bit crazy.
You say, "Alright. So, then we look at the victims, and at the non-victim. You draw a link between the death of your partner." Ah, what a delicate word, "And this most recent incident?"
"Possibly," Shelley remarks, stabbing at her eggs with a little more force than necessary. Can anyone really blame her? It's a difficult subject. "Alis - and this man on the stairs - were both hit in the chest with the cannon curse. Not the most common way around to-" dispose of, "kill someone. Then again, not unheard of, either. It could be a signature, it could be a coincidence."
Hugh considers this, "Not the hardest spell to cast, if you want to kill someone. And the chest is centre of mass." He then ponders, "But the most suggestive evidence is that you were left alive twice, when a sensible man would have killed you. You can only be sent to Azkhaban once, so they lose nothing by removing you also."
"That, too," Shelley agrees wryly. "I honestly don't know why I'm still alive. I shouldn't be." She's not entirely sure she feels lucky about it, either.
You say, "However, assuming that it's not a manman, they must have a motive for leaving you alive." He takes the last bit of black pudding, munching thoughtfully, "Alis may have been killed because she wasn't 'pure'. But would this apply to the most recent case? If it did, it gives us a field of suspects. And it would explain you being spared." Now it's the last of the sausage. "Or it could be you being _you_. Got any homicidal relations, who'd balk at killing a relative?"
"No homicidal relations that I'm aware of," Shelley responds in a dry voice. "But I've always thought my mother to be tightly wound." She says this in a joking tone - and only because she's /extremely/ hung over. The moment she says it, she lets out an annoyed sound at herself. "A bad joke, sorry. I didn't recognize the witch."
You say, "Have you had her sketched? Although of course, if she was a Metamorphomagus, or using Polyjuice, that might not get us much further."
"She's been sketched," Shelley confirms, finishing her egg. "Shame it weren't Alis there and not me," Alis having been a rather accomplished artist. She had always made her own sketches after incidents.
She shifts in her seat, stretching as she adds, "I should get home - Ebony needs to be fed." Ebony had been Alis' cat.
Hugh places the cutlery neatly, "Walk you there?" He puts some coins on the table. Enough for her breakfast as well as his own.
Shelley shakes her head - carefully. "I'll take the floo. Welcome back, Carruthers." She rises to her feet, and starts towards the fireplace.
You say, "You too. And look, be careful for a bit, alright?"
"When am I not?" When is she ever? And with that, Shelley steps into the floo, and disappears.
Hugh drains his cup of coffee, "Right. To the Files, I suppose. Check. Check. Double Check."
Hugh is seated at one of the tables, a couple of empty breakfast plates before him, and is in the process of picking up his pipe to start puffing away at it with a thoughtful air.
Graham arrives with a *crack* apparating here the way he prefers to travel when it's possible. He's not been to work today and wears his normal suit though dressed down a bit more as he's had a lazy day for the most part. He glances about to see if he knows anyone here before giving a small shrug and moving towards the bar to order his usual food and drink.
Hugh looks over to the newcomer, and removes his pipe from his mouth, "Cohen. Are you involved in this Willis thing?"
The young man takes his cider no shot in this first one at least and his chips giving thanks before he turns back to find a seat. Graham looks as he's spoken to recognizing the other from the office and taking a few steps towards them. "That's more Rena Lee's investigation, but I did visit the second crime scene when Shelley had come back to the office."
Hugh gestures to the chair opposite him, as he puffs a haze of blue smoke from his pipe, "Do join me, Cohen."
"Sure thing." the auror says, and will plop down lightly into a chair and takes a drink setting his mug down on the table as well as the chips. "Hows all going about the office?" Graham will ask once he's settled in.
You say, "Still catching up, since my arrival." He puffs a bit more smoke into the air, "Prewett. Has someone examined her wands?"
Graham nods "That can take a bit of time, things are always changing never know what you'll run into.. yesterday I had a record player which made me angry and they were all brawling." he shakes his head at the thought. The question from the other gets a raised eyebrow from him. "Examined her wand? Why would we have?" he seems simply curious at the question.
Hugh gives a shrug, "Well, sole survivor of _two_ massacres, when she _could_ have been killed… and indeed where it would have made _sense_ for her to be removed as a potential witness? I think the question should be asked."
He never wants to suspect others in his office but after being attacked by an auror it's not impossible as he once thought but this is different. "Her best friend, near enough to a sister died and she wasn't left unharmed." Graham will say looking to the other. "Not all darkwizards, but some don't wish to bring more heat down from doing that to an auror." he will say "I wont stop you, but Shelley Prewett has my full confidence."
Hugh says mildly, "She just told me both her wands had been checked. And 'not dead' in this context counts as unscathed. She _should_ be dead."
Graham watches the other "Hm, i'm sure she was checked." he will take a bite to eat and a drink listening still to the others words. He frowns a moment but shakes it setting the drink down "Perhaps she could have died yes, but i'm glad she did not." he will say over to the other he sighs slightly "I've personally experienced being turned on by another auror, it's an ugly thing. I wouldnt go down that road unless there's hard proof."
Hugh says softly, "Twice. I don't think it will show a killing curse. But I was curious as to what she would say." He puffs away, "Of course, if I get murdered before I get to the Ministry, I take it you'll consider the theory with more credulity!" He lifts his empty coffee cup towards the bar, "But no. I actually suspect it's someone with a motive to _not_ kill her, rather than her herself."
"I certainly hope that doesn't happen." Graham says though he takes another drink . "Yes, I will certainly look into things though were it to." he shakes his head slightly to the thoughts and the way the conversation has turned. "Do you mean like an accomplice of some sort in the affair?" he will ask still curious though wishing he knew where all this had come from.
Hugh shakes his head, "No. Either her blood status was enough to keep her alive. Or they were a relative, or someone else with some motive to leave her alive which was more important to them than the risk of Azkhaban involved in leaving a witness alive."
Graham eats a chip or two while he listens to the other "Hmm that's possible, but if she knew who they were she'd turn them in just as quick." He seems rather certain on this point he wont budge much. "I trust her with my life." he says sincerely
Hugh nods, "Me too." He stands, having finished his coffee. "Because I asked the question before I checked the wand records. But you know. Does no harm to check everything."