Chapter Text
SEVENTH VICTIM FOUND IN STRING OF MYSTERIOUS DEATHS
IS IT DEATH EATERS?
WILL WE ALL BE MURDERED IN OUR BEDS??
Ministry remains silent as yet another body is found.
DAILY PROPHET EXCLUSIVE
by Rita Skeeter
My dearest readers, you are no doubt all wondering what on earth I’m going on about, but that’s just what the Ministry would want you to believe. I, Rita Skeeter, investigatrice extraordinaire, a crusader for truth and bestselling author---but I digress.
Members of Magical Law Enforcement found the body of Hildegard Brown yesterday morning in her London flat. The cause of death is as yet undetermined.
Miss Brown, 42, was a plain-looking, mousy witch who worked as a bookkeeper for Odds and Bodkins, a secondhand shop near Knockturn Alley.
“Kept to herself, never friendly,” sniffs Gladys Llewellen, neighbor of the deceased. “Thought she was a bit above us, like. And after I’d brought over me nan’s own recipe for cauldron cakes. After that, I told my Hubert, well, I shan’t be darkening her door again. And I didn’t exchange more than five words with her after, not in ten years.”
Why should you, my dear readers, care about this Miss Brown, an unfriendly, unattractive, and not particularly interesting person? Because it is my pleasure to reveal that she is clearly the seventh in a series of unexplained deaths the Ministry would rather you not know about.
Auror Lestrade, chief investigator on this case, was unavailable for comment. Possibly he’s ashamed of having let seven unexplained deaths remain unexplained. Miss Brown was only one among a number of bodies found since the defeat of the Dark Lord who shall not be named. There’s only one connection between these deaths--discovered, of course, by yours truly--that each and every one of them either was or was known to consort with a known Death Eater.
So, what have we got here, dear readers? The Ministry assures us that the Dark Lord is dead, but they thought so before, didn’t they? Who’s to say what this might mean? Even if the Ministry knows, they certainly aren’t telling.
But rest assured, dear readers, I, Rita Skeeter, will stay on the case, and you shall be the first to know when an eighth body inevitably turns up.
***
He met with Michael a few more times after that, always in the gardens. John knew Mike must have had access to his records, if he’d wanted to look, and could have visited him in his room, but appreciated the courtesy of meeting outside, where they could pretend they were just old friends and not healer and semi-invalid.
“So what’s next for you, John?” Mike asked one Wednesday, after John had mentioned being well enough to finally leave St. Mungo’s. (He wasn’t healed, exactly, but he’d reached the point where the hospital couldn’t fix any more, and there must be others that needed the bed space.)
John fought the urge to shrug, a movement that did his shoulder no favours. “I’d like to stay in London... But flat prices are mad here. I’ve even checked the Muggle papers, though the exchange rate’s gone to hell.”
“Maybe a flatshare?”
“Who’d want to live with me?” he wanted to add “a useless, crippled ex-soldier with nightmares and a very small Ministry pension,” but that was self-pity, and he doled that out as carefully as the healers doled out the more addictive painkillers.
Mike stared at him for a minute, opened his mouth, closed it, and continued staring. John was just beginning to worry that Sorrel was about to do something very stupid and awkward, like offer to let him move in with them, when the other man spoke.
“Do you know, you’re the second person I’ve heard that from in as many days?”
“Really?” John was as wary of hope as self-pity, but he really didn’t want to leave the city. Besides, after everything else he’d been through, he was hard-pressed to imagine someone so horrible he couldn’t handle living them. “Who was the first?”
***
Most of the staff at St. Mungo’s knew that underneath the main floors were several floors of basements. A few of the staff knew there were under basements. No one, apparently, had known about the sub-sub-sub-basements until Sherlock Holmes had waltzed in one day, pointed them out, and then proceeded to set up his own potions labs down there.
“....and they just let him?” John asked, incredulous, as Mike led him down stairways that looked as though they hadn’t been used since the hospital’s founding.
Mike chuckled. “He’d just worked out which of the nurses had been stealing the powdered dragons’ scales. The administration was so happy he’d found the thief and was willing to not tell the ministry about the thefts they’d have been happy to give him a pile of Galleons. But he asked for the space instead.”
The narrow, twisting stairs were killing John’s leg and he kept knocking his cane against the damp stone walls. “He sounds...interesting.”
“You’ve no idea.”
***
John was reminded rather uncomfortably of the Potions classroom in the dungeons of Hogwarts, right down to the angular, dark-haired figure darting back and forth at the far end of the subbasement. He’d never admit to having had the occasional nightmare about his former Potions professor Snape. Any Hogwarts student with half a brain, as far as he could tell, had just those kinds of nightmares. Now his nightmares were rather more full of deserts and those soldiers he hadn’t been able to save, and suddenly he envied a younger self whose greatest worry had been an unpleasant professor.
“You’ve interrupted me at a very delicate moment. If this turns green, it means a man’s life.” Holmes’ slowly added three drops to a glass container full of blue-coloured liquids heated by a small fire.
“Now,” he said, finally turning to face them, and John had a first impression of a thin, pale face, all planes and angles, almost floating in the darkness between the black of his hair and his robes.
“I see you’ve brought me a potential flatmate, Michael,” he announced, and proceeded to stare at John much in the same fashion that he recalled from Occlumency training. On instinct, his mental wall sprang up. Some things, you didn’t forget.
From Mike’s lack of reaction to his abrupt manner, John assumed that this was normal behaviour for Holmes. “Ah, yes, Sherlock, allow me to introduce my old Healer friend John Watson, lately...”
“Yes, yes, recently returned from fighting in the Middle East...embedded with the Muggle military, no less, interesting... I play the violin at all hours and sometimes go days without talking...and while I’ve my potions lab here, I have been known to take some experiments home, though I generally don’t bring back anything too likely to explode. Will that be a problem?” Most of the last statement was addressed to John.
Before John could answer, he added “I feel flatmates should really know the worst of each other in advance.”
John’s jaw wasn’t on the floor, although it desperately wanted to be. “How exactly did you...?”
“Slightly fading tan, you certainly didn’t get that in London. It stops at your cuffs and neckline, so work, not holiday, kept you there. Your stance is Muggle military, as is your haircut and your boots, very distinctive, but Michael called you a healer and you’re clearly a wizard, especially with your wand stored where you can pull it at a moment’s notice, a trait you usually find in Aurors and other trained fighters.”
John’s gaze flicked downward to where his wand rested in a holster at his belt. “Old habits die hard.”
Sherlock smiled. It wasn’t a safe smile. “There are worse habits to keep. I think you’ll find, John Watson, that in coming to London you’ve only exchanged one battlefield for another.”
“What do you mean? I’d heard the last of the Death Eaters has been rounded up ages ago.”
Sherlock appeared about to say more when a loud noise behind him made them all look to see the potion had indeed turned a glowing emerald green. With an exclamation of excitement, Sherlock rushed back to the lab table and once again began doing... something... with all of the potions.
“Two-twenty one B, in Baker Street, I’ll meet you there tomorrow at half past eleven.”
John opened his mouth to reply but Sherlock seemed to have already forgotten they were there.
“We may as well head back, there’s no talking to him when he’s like this,” Mike confirmed.
Just as they’d reached the beginning steps of the spiral stairs, a voice called out “If you continue to your left, then the corridor to the right, there’s a rather ancient but functional dumbwaiter, I think Healer Watson should find that easier on his leg than the stairs.”
“As you can see, John, he’s... a bit peculiar,” Mike said apologetically. “I’d quite understand if you didn’t want to room with him. As it happens I’ve just remembered a friend of my wife’s second cousin’s...”
“No,” John said. Rather to his own surprise, he was smiling. “I think this one will do.”