Dark Gods In The Blood
Chapter Twenty-Two
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A/N: None for this
chapter. Thanks for reading!
Summary: A wandering
student comes home, a broken man pays his penance, and a gruesome murder is
both more and less than it seems. Some
paths to self-discovery have more twists and turns than others.
Rating: R, for
intermittent dark themes, violence, and language
Disclaimer: Nothing
you read here (save the plot and bits of the text itself) belongs to me.
property of JK Rowling and Warner Bros. (and someone else, probably, but not
me). All chapter headings are properly
credited to their sources.
Dark Gods in the Blood
by: Hayseed (
Chapter Twenty-Two
Believe
me or not, his intelligence warfecrfectly clear --
horrible intensity,
... But his soul was mad. Being alone
in the
wilderness,
it had looked within itself and, by heavens! I tell
you, it had
gone mad.
Heart of Darkness
“I can’t believe I’m
actually listening to this,” Kingsley sighed.
Ron tried to smile and
propped his feet casually on the top of his desk, leaning back in his
chair. “That’ll teach you to try to
filch paper clips from my desk.”
“Not helpful, Weasley,” he
snapped. “And as for you
She accepted the mild
rebuke with a nod. “With all due
respect, Auror Shacklebolt,” Hermione said meekly -- Ron didn’t believe her act
for so much as a second. Ah ... here it
came. Her face hardened.
have not been properly --”
Kingsley was mad.
and he’d attended the meeting when Byungki Lee had actually admitted to
dragging a vampire out into daylight and staking him on the sidewalk outside
Harrod’s in front of no less than five hundred Muggles.
motions, and Ron rather thought he might be envisioning Hermione’s neck between
them. A vein was pulsing in his temple.
“Granger,” Kingsley said
quietly, evenly, clenching his jaw. “Do
not tell me how to do my job.”
She flinched as he spat
at her but managed to hold her ground, proving to Ron that the Gryffindor line
between bravery and stupidity was thin, indeed. “I don’t mean to --”
“Bullshit!” he exploded,
finally losing his careful composure.
“You’re suggesting that you, Hermione Granger, whose credentials,
incidentally, come to a screeching halt at the unimpressive age of seventeen
trained investigators.
“Just think about it,
Hermione,” Ron said cheerfully, able to bear Kingsley’s wrath as long as it
remained safely directed at someone else.
“You and Snape could have matching straitjackets.”
Sourly, he glowered at
Ron. “Weasley!” Kingsley barked.
He stiffened in his
chair, removing his feet from the desk as if burnt. “Dead and buried, sir!” he said, resisting the urge to salute
Kingsley in a remarkable show of self-preservation. He wasn’t really in the mood to be hexed today.
And Hermione leapt back
into the fray -- Ron wondered if maybe she really did
Shacklebolt,” she said primly. Ron had a
dizzying flashback to an adolescent Hermione, hands neatly arranged on the
tabletop in front of her, as she recited the correct answer to whatever
question their professor had posed with that self-satisfied look in her eyes.
“I must
he shouted. “There’s not a single shred
of evidence to support what you’re telling me.
It makes about as much sense as trying to tell me that You-Know-Who has
managed to come back from the dead somehow and killed those two poor --”
She cleared her throat.
His glare deepened.
don’t we?”
“Look,” she began
sternly. “I’m willing to admit that I
don’t know for certain whether or not either Weaver or Cooke were also victims
of the same killer, although the circumstantial evidence is rather --”
“Granger!”
She frowned at Kingsley,
who was, by this time, almost literally quivering with rage.
again until this matter was settled one way or another unless he had no
choice. “My point
fluidly, “is that you have no way of knowing how many victims there have
actually been since St. Mungo’s does not notify you of potential
incidents. If the Aurory is not
contacted, how are you to account for this?”
Eyebrows lifting as if of
their own accord, Kingsley appeared to genuinely give it some thought before he
answered. “We are always notified about
deaths involving prominent --”
Ron couldn’t help it --
after all, he’d been a Gryffindor himself all those years ago.
the Minister’s secretary is the one who sent the owl on that one, after his
mother herself contacted Fudge.”
“You see!” Hermione cried
triumphantly -- Kingsley’s glare was pure poison.
After a long pause,
however, he sighed and threw his hands up in the air. “All right,” he said. “So
... big surprise -- the system’s not foolproof. That doesn’t mean your
serial killer idea isn’t anything but damned nonsense.”
“But it’s possible
“So’s a Galleon landing
face-up a thousand tosses in a row,” Kingsley retorted, calming visibly now
that he was regaining the upper hand.
“But you don’t see me taking bets, do you?”
Her brow furrowed.
“It’s far more likely
that Potter and Bones were targeted by some fledgling movement -- maybe even a
Death Eater offshoot. Oh, don’t give me
that look, Granger,” he said witheringly, passing a hand tiredly over his bald
head. “I know it couldn’t have been a
Death Eater -- I’ve known that for a good while. It’s young Ronald over there that’s needed so much convincing.”
Ron found himself
blushing hotly as Hermione gave him a querying sort of look.
Anger now nearly
completely dissipated, Kingsley chuckled lightly. "> “But,” he began, stressing
the single syllable. “We’ve been
getting reports over the past -- oh, I don’t know -- five years or so.
Hogwarts common rooms, graffiti on Ministry buildings, that sort of thing.
I highly suspect we’ve been dealing with a series of small-time organizations,
put together by mostly youths. Maybe
even the children of some of the old Death Eaters. Some of them were stripped of their fortunes, you know, and all
Azkaban. At least a few of their kids
have got to resent that. I personally
think that one of these groups got off its feet well enough to go for our
victims.”
Keeping his expression
carefully neutral, Ron tried to gauge Hermione’s reaction.
up with. He also thought it rather
bright of Kingsley to present it to her as a personal theory rather than the
official hypothesis -- it was far more likely that Hermione could consider it
objectively if it came from Kingsley himself.
While Ron knew all about psychological tactics, he was generally too
distracted to bother with applying them.
He had caused more than one suspect to clam up in the interrogation room
by inadvertently blurting out some of the cards that the more skilled interviewers
generally preferred to keep close to the chest.
And indeed, Hermione was
quiet, studious looking. After a few
moments, a question dawned in her eyes.
“Why haven’t they come forward?”
Kingsley blinked.
“It’s been more than two months,”
she said thoughtfully. “Wouldn’t you
think that if Harry’s death had been politically motivated, someone would have
tried to use it as a rallying point? So
... why hasn’t your mystery organization stepped up and taken the credit?”
“Public sentiment,” Ron
said in a bland voice. “Think of the
cry of outrage that would rise up if a group announced that they’d had a hand
in eliminating the savior of the wizarding world.”
“And that’s another
thing,” she said, turning to him. “If
you’re both right and it’s some little group that I’ve never heard of jockeying
for power, then the order doesn’t make sense.”
It was Ron’s turn to be
confused, but Kingsley’s to answer. “I
don’t follow, Granger.”
“Harry first and then
She shook her head minutely.
“Bones seems to be a sort of secondary target in your scenario, possibly
even a simple personal vendetta. So why
not take care of him first? Harry’s
death will raise eyebrows no matter what, so why risk the authorities seeing
the connection? I seriously doubt, if
Bones had died first and Harry second, that you’d be treating the cases as
one. No one would have noticed the
similarities in the deaths.”
“She’s right,” Ron
grudgingly conceded. “The cases would
have been given completely different priorities and assigned to different
Aurors. We probably never would have
found a link between them.”
Kingsley scratched at the
back of his neck. “I don’t like it,” he
said. “I just don’t.”
“Please, Auror
Shacklebolt,” Hermione said. “I’m not
asking you to drop everything else -- just to consider this as a possibility.”
He scowled.
She smiled up at him
gratefully. “That’s all I can ask,
sir. Good morning.
“Bye, Butterfly!” he
called as she walked out of his office and down the hall.
He and Kingsley studied
each other for a moment. “Well ...”
Kingsley eventually said. “What do you
With a sigh, Ron
shrugged. “Hermione’s always had this
uncanny, obnoxious way of mostly being right.
When she’s wrong, it’s usually only becauherehere was some extra factor
that she had no way of knowing about. I
don’t know if I agree with her or not, but I’d keep an eye out all the same.”
Kingsley looked utterly
defeated. Covering his face with a
hand, his voice was muffled as he spoke.
“Weasley, go away.”
“But, sir,” Ron protested
good-naturedly. “This is my
>
-- -- -- -:p><:p>
“Come on!” Ron called
down the hallway. “Bedtime for sleepy
little girls!”
A little voice floated to
his ears. “Not tired.”
“Oh, I bet you are,” he
replied cheerfully. “And I intend to
put you to bed whether you want it or not.”
The voice was
plaintive. “Five more minutes, Unca
Ron?”
He laughed at the
attempt. “Not even five more seconds
Creeping through the hall, he saw her long before she saw him, sitting
in the doorway of Nicholas’ bedroom and failing miserably at stifling a yawn.
Shrieking as she found
herself swept into his embrace, Alice pounded at his shoulder with her little
fists. “No fair, Unca Ron!
“I hate to tell you this,
little girl,” he said with a grin, “but nothing in this life is fair. Not even
the things you think ought to be.
the most unfair of all.”
Through his speech, he
was walking back to Alice’s room. Alice
was apparently too confused by his uncharacteristically adult discourse on the
nature of jce tce to protest the journey much.
Upon reaching her door, however, she did put up a few token struggles,
prodding again at his arms with something like hope in her eyes.
He smirked down at
her. “We already did that.
Nicholas squirted toothpaste on your shirt.”
“Oh ...”
she allowed Ron to place her in her crib.
Actually, Alice was almost too big for a crib, but Ron rather suspected
that Françoise would prefer to prolong the inevitable and keep her little girl
a baby as long as she could. “Story,
Unca Ron?”
“I shouldn’t,” he told
her teasingly. “You’ve got to be
exhausted. Your mum said you two spent
the whole afternoon at the park, running around.”
“Not tired,” she
pouted. “Story!”
Sighing exaggeratedly,
Ron pretended to concede the point as if he hadn’t intended to tell her a story
all along. “Well, all right.
girl and promise not to interrupt me.
Okay?”
With a grin and a nod, Alice
plopped down and pulled her little blanket obediently up to her chin, blue eyes
sparkling up at him. “Okay.”
Ron seated himself in a
large rocking chair near her crib and put his hands behind his head, lacing his
fingers together as he thought. “Well
then ... a story for Alice. What sort
of story would you like to hear? A
funny story, or a scary story, or maybe a good, old-fashioned adventure t
...
...”
“Story,” she agreed.
He laughed again.
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> Maybe ... a fairy tale of sorts?
stories about us when we were kids, but I doubt you’d be interested in the
sorts of stories that Nicholas likes.
How’s this, then? Once upon a
time, there was a castle. And in this
castle, there lived a prince. He wasn’t
your typical prince, you know -- he wore glasses and he wasn’t particularly
dashing, but who is when they’re eleven anyway? And he wasn’t the only prince living in the castle, but he was
the most loved. How’m I doing so far,
little girl?”
Yawning, she gave him a
sweet smile.
“I’ll take that as a good
sign. Anyway ... the prince had many
friends, since he was so beloved, but his closest companion was his
squire. The prince and the squire had
many adventures together in the castle, especially given that they were so
young. And one day I’ll tell you about
all of them, but tonight I’d like to tell you about one in particular.
“There was a very
dangerous man living at the castle with the prince and his squire -- he used to
be a king, you see -- a very cruel one at that. But one day many, many years ago, when the prince was just a
baby, he worked a magic spell and took away the evil king’s crown.”
to scarr, ar, after all -- and tried to keep his voice as quiet and soothing as
possible. “And so the cruel king was
very angry -- he went into exile for many years -- and when he found his way
back to the castle, he decided that he needed to hurt the prince, to pay him
back for what he’d done as a small child.
“So he convinced his
set tot to do something very bad. He
let a troll into the castle. Do you
know what a troll is, Alice?”
Alice shook her head and
stuck her thumb in her mouth. “No, Unca
Ron. What that?” she asked around her
thumb.
Gently, Ron reached in
between the bars and pulled her hand away.
“Don’t do that, Alice -- it’s a bad habit.” She blew a soft raspberry up at him and he grinned.
A troll is a creature that lives in the woods, mostly.
they’re very good at hurting people without meaning to.
castle, it became very angry and confused, which meant that it did not care who
it hurt.
“Even though the prince
and his squire were still young boys, they knew they couldn’t just sit idly by
and watch the troll wreak havoc in the castle.
So as soon as their nurse’s attention wavered, they slipped away,
through the halls, to find the troll.
The squire was armed only with a stout staff, and the prince only had
his little dagger.
“And sure enough, they
found the troll. It did not take long
-- trolls are very loud creatures, and it was very put out, indeed.
and so ide ade a lot of noise as it tried to escape. I know for a fact that the little squire was terrified as he
approached the little room. But the
prince tried to reassure him. ‘Don’t be
afraid, my squire,’ the prince said.
‘Surely, the just will prevail.’
“So the squire steeled
his heart and walked into the little room ahead of his prince, holding his
staff very tightly out in front of him, wishing that he had a better weapon.”
Alice’s eyelids
fluttered, signaling that she was very near sleep indeed, but Ron was interested
enough in his own tale that he continued anyway.
“The troll had made a
great mess of things. There was water
spilt all over the room and chunks of rock from where he had taken his gigantic
club to the walls in his frustration. The
squire actually found himself feeling pity for the poor beast.
clenched his dagger all the more tightly and said, ‘There -- look!
“For undeniably, there
was a wet figure, hunched at the troll’s feet, obviously as terrified as anyone
else. Her long hair, ragged and
unkempt, told her to be a girl.
‘Please!’ she begged the troll.
‘Please, don’t hurt me!’
“’We’ll help you,’ the
prince cried, brandishing his knife.
The squire held his pole up in the air and gave a loud shout, charging
at the troll with all his might. And
then --”
But Ron’s tale was
interrupted as another voice floated into the room. “She’s dead asleep, Ron,” Françoise whispered.
“I like the sound of my
own voice,” he replied with a smile.
“But I’d hate to talk her awake again.”
As he stood, he brushed a gentle hand over Alice’s forehead, smoothing
back her blonde curls. “Sleep well,
little Looking-Glass girl.”
Françoise closed the door
carefully as he exited. “I overheard parts
of your bedtime story,” she said.
He tried not to
blush. “I was speaking off the cuff
...”
“I wonder, Ron,” she
said, giving him a calculating sort of look, “why on Earth did you cast
yourself as a squire?”
“It seemed to fit,” he
said uncomfortably.
“It would have worked
just as well to tell a story about two princes, you know,” she replied quietly.
Shrugging, he walked down
the hallway, toward the stairs.
“Stories work better when there’s only one hero.”
He felt Françoise’s eyes
on the back of his head as he descended the staircase but did not turn around,
not wanting to see the pity he knew he would read in her gaze.
-- -- -- --
“You should have seen
them,” Ron said with a small chuckle, “glowering at each other.
to shout at Kingsley Shacklebolt.”
She returned his
laugh. “You do.”
“Not when there’s any
danger of him yelling back,” he replied ruefully.
The moment had passed and
they were now seated comfortably in the den -- Françoise in one of her wing
chairs with a glass of something primly on her knee, and Ron splayed
comfortably on the sofa, one foot hanging over the opposite arm and the other
propped lazily on the coffee table.
She’d frowned at his socked foot sitting on her neatly polished table
but said nothing in the end, probably correctly deciding that it would only egg
him on if she did.
“So what was the outcome,
then?” she asked, taking a sip of her drink.
He shrugged.
‘round to Hermione’s way of thinking, but wild hippogriffs couldn’t drag it out
of him.” He folded his hands under his
head as he spoke. “I don’t know.
wrong. It’s just that she’s not wrong
often.”
“That was a long time
ago, Ron,” Françoise told him in a calm voice.
“I imagine Hermione has changed a lot.”
“Not as much as you’d
think,” he replied. “At least, I don’t
see it. I look at her and I see the
same fresh-faced girl from school. All
curiosity and innocence. She makes me
wish for things, you see.”
Françoise’s face split
into a wide grin. “Why, Ronald Weasley,
I do believe that was the closest thing to a profession of love I’ve ever heard
come out of your mouth.”
Grimacing, he stared up
at the ceiling, the featureless white plaster a perfect mirror for his
thoughts. “Nah,” he said
dismissively. “Once, when we were kids,
I fancied myself in love with Hermione, but only for a moment, when I thought I
had to either be in love with her or lose her entirely.
with anyone.”
There was a rustle as she
apparently shifted in her seat. “Oh,
Ron,” she sighed. “That might be the
saddest thing I’ve ever heard.”
“You poor, sheltered
little thing,” Ron said playfully.
“What? When would I have fallen
passionately in love, Françoise?”
“Well, you should, then,”
she said decisively, ice rattling in her glass. “At your earliest opportunity.”
He laughed.
And they fell silent,
each lost in their own thoughts. Ron
was beginning to debate whether or not he should go on ahead up to his room for
the night when the fire flared up, signaling an incoming Floo.
“What the ...?” Françoise
trailed off. “It’s past midnight.
“I don’t know,” he
began. “It could be ... oh ...” he
sighed as a head appeared in the fireplace.
“Good evening, Kingsley. Couldn’t
sleep, could you?”
“Very funny, Ron,”
Kingsley’s head said expressionlessly.
“I’m laughing on the inside, I assure you.”
Françoise looked
distinctly uncomfortable. “Erm ...
should I ...?”
“Don’t bother,” Kingsley
sighed. “I’m just calling to tell
Weasley there to get his skinny ass over here pronto.”
“There are small children
running around here somewhere who don’t need to be subjected to such vulgarity,
Shacklebolt,” Ron said testily.
Reaching over to slap his
arm lightly, Françoise smiled up at him.
“Don’t be such a hypocrite, Ron.”
“I can tell when I’m not
wanted,” he groused, struggling to rise from the sofa and only managing to bang
his knee against the coffee table twice as he stood. “All right, Shacklebolt.
Get your head out of Françoise’s fireplace and I’ll come through.”
As soon as Kingsley’s
head disappeared, Ron gathered up a handful of Floo powder and turned to
Françoise with an apologetic look. “I’m
sorry, Françoise, but you’ve got to --”
“I know,” she said
briskly. “Secret Auror codes and
whatnot. I’ll just go check on the kids
one last time before I turn in, then, shall I?”
His smile was sad.
“’Night, Ron.”
-- -- -- --
The first person Ron ran
into as he stepped out of his office, still slightly dizzy from the Floo, came
as a complete surprise. “Dad?” he said
incredulously. “What are you doing all
the way over here?”
Arthur Weasley gave his
son a somber smile. “Kingsley needed to
see me. Actually, I was just on my way
out, but I’m glad I ran into you. It’s
been a good while since I’ve seen you, you know.”
“I’ve been meaning to
drop by,” he said, feeling only slightly guilty, “but with everything ...”
“I know, son,” Arthur
said with a small shrug. “But your mother
and I would like to see you every now and again. Not too often, mind. But
I swear, I’ve spent more time around Nicholas and Alice Potter lately than
you.”
“I’ll come by soon, Dad,”
Ron told him. “I promise.”
Smiling again, Arthur
continued down the hall. “I might just
hold you to that.”
“Weasley!” came an errant
shout from the opposite direction as Ron watched his father leave the Aurory.
Sighing, he followed the
sound into Kingsley’s office. “And how
are you this fine evening, Shacklebolt?”
With only a slight roll
of the eyes, Kingsley motioned for him to sit.
“Shut up, Weasley.”
Ron sat down, then,
obediently holding his tongue and waiting for his boss to speak.
It did not take
long. “There’s been another one,” he
said without preamble. “Marcus Desmond,
aged twenty-four. Happily married
father -- single daughter, two years old.
St. Mungo’s sent us an owl not twelve hours ago.”
Trying to connect the
name to someone important in his mind, Ron failed miserably.
“That’s because it
shouldn’t,” Kingsley replied, impatience only a slight edge in his voice.
entry-level stuff. He doesn’t appear to
be related to anyone in any particular position of authority.”
“Then why --” he began,
confused.
Kingsley’s face
shuttered. “I thought about what
Hermione Granger said this morning. And
while most of it’s utter shit, she did
have a point about St. Mungo’s. So I
sent them an owl, asking them to notify us concerning any untoward cases, with
a specific notation about the M.O. we’re looking for. Imagine my surprise to get a case file by return owl ...” he said
dryly.
“So what do we do --?“
Again, he interrupted
him. “I called Arthur in to ask him a
favor. He knows a few people in the
Muggle government and I was hoping he could arrange for an autopsy to be
performed.”
“An autopsy?” he asked
with raised eyebrows.
“Damn it, Weasley,”
Kingsley growled. “You and I both know that
these deaths are not through any traceable magical means, so we need some other
way of gathering evidence. And unless
you’d like to train a team of Aurors in the finer points of Muggle crime scene
analysis, I suggest we simply find a few trustworthy Muggles and leave it to
them. Hopefully, an autopsy will be
sufficient. I doubt the crime scene is
still uncontaminated by this point.”
Ron laughed bitterly.
“What?” he asked icily.
“A while back, Hermione
asked me if Aurors used any Muggle methods in their investigations,” Ron
admitted. “And I told her that it
wasn’t necessary for us. I’m going to
hate telling her that she was right after all.”
Kingsley studied him for
a moment. “Hey ... Weasley?”
“Yeah?” he grunted.
“You know ...” he began
slowly. “There’s no way I can bring
Granger in in any sort of official capacity, and I still don’t think she’s
entirely right about the killer, but I don’t see any harm in giving her access
to the files. Limited, of course.
pursue her ridiculous serial killer theory without us having to waste our
resources on it.”
xt2>With a snort, Ron gave
Kingsley a dubious look. “So you want
me to bring Hermione up to speed, then?”
“It couldn’t hurt,” he
said painfully. “And especially if what
you told me is true and she’s passing information on to Severus Snape.
would talk to me, I’d try to bring him
in officially.”
< sty style='font-style:normal'>
Shaking his head, he stood
to leave. “You do realize that there’ll
be no living with her after this?”
“That, Weasley,” Kingsley
said in a decidedly more cheerful tone, “is, thankfully, none of my concern.”
-- --
-- --