Alternatives

John from Records had been an all around help to Ivan and Vlad. Not only did he answer questions about the odd story of the Potters, he also helped them greatly in understanding wizarding culture and history and through the regular interactions with the brothers, helped the rest of the department come to see them as mostly harmless. He also saw potential for them as Site Recorders and made arrangements for them to get into the field as such.

As it turns out, Judith Schneider was not shooting fearful looks at the pair because she was afraid of them, but because she found them quite hansom and was afraid of embarrassing herself in front of them. After John in Records calmly clarified that they wouldn’t know what to do with a woman if they had one, she had been most disappointed, but with the stress of wanting to make a good impression on them gone, she was able to consider them professionally instead. With her specialization being in wizard/being crimes, having Recorders with more then average knowledge of wizards was a major advantage, but since the wizarding world was considered shady and to be avoided, qualified personal had been rare.

Now she had access to a pair who for whatever reason had taken to looking up any and every resource they could find on them. From what John had told her, if they didn’t know it already, they knew where to look when it came to that odd society of humans. To make the deal even sweeter, not only were they keeping up with ‘The Daily Prophet’, they already knew how to read between the lines of the rag that the British wizarding world called a news paper.

Only one problem remained to keep her from taking them under her wing. They were too good to be true. She had to check with a Truth-a-Scope to make sure they weren’t wizarding nationals or Dumbledore loyalists. Either could be cataclysmic if they were left to have free time in R.H.D. and she was a bit surprised the whole lot of human newbies hadn’t already been checked BEFORE they were trained. Not that it mattered, because she was about to fix that oversight starting with the Angelus brothers.

And so Judith found them sitting next to the new espresso maker with the mirrors out as they tended to be lately. She sat down and began the inquisition. “Do you work for Dumbledore?” in response the pair fell over laughing. ‘Ok, so that was terribly blunt.’ she thought to herself as she ran her fingers through her short cropped dirty blond hair in minor frustration while the two tried repeatedly to compose themselves. Finally the dreamy blond man with the inky blue eyes succeeded enough to answer.

Ivan whipped the tears from his eye to address the slim woman in front of him as seriously as he could after such a question. “Well, if by ‘working for’ you mean “plotting to bring down and kill in the slowest and most painfully manner possible’ then sure, we work for him alright. We work really hard for him every day.” he said between giggles.

The darker brother smacked him on the arm in objection “Ivan shut it. She may believe you and I’m pretty sure assassinating important public figures is still a crime.”

“Not if you can justify it first Vlad. We just have to make sure we have proof and time it right. This is what I’ve been telling you all along, research first, and then strike. And it’s not like anyone here likes him. You’ve seen the file in Records too.”

So far the Truth-a-Scope had no reaction. They really meant to kill the biggest thorn in R.H.D.’s side in over a century. Though she doubted they would succeed, she at least knew where they stood. “Ok, so you don’t support him, but do you support the ministry of magic, or wizards superiority over other beings?” she asked coolly with a stern look in her pale green eyes.

“Wait,” Vlad said “We are still talking about the same group that thinks a toddler took down a man so scary that they won’t even write his name in the paper, right? The same people who call a paper that reports what has happened already ‘The Daily Prophet’? The very group that has a major shopping district in a shady London neighborhood but never bothered to put in security measures in place to prevent people from bringing in guns?”

“Yes,” Judith said “that’s the one. Sorry but I had to make sure before I brought you on the team.” The two men shared a hopeful look. They had been getting a bit antsy lately and this looked like a good fix for it. “You’ll be working on sensitive cases where wizarding crime has overlapped into being crime and I need to know I can trust you not to hide facts that make the wizarding world look as bad as it is.”

Ivan raised one of his pale brows “How sensitive are we talking? Do you mean ‘don’t tell random strangers on the street’ sensitive or ‘don’t even talk about this in the common areas of H.Q.’ sensitive?”

Judith sighed. “A bit of both really. Sometimes when we get to a site after the Aurors have, they make us take an oath not to disclose info to anyone other then direct superiors. You’ll be working in an area where the jurisdiction was never very clear to begin with and it’s generally complicated in the extreme. To make it a bit easier, you will both be expected to always have your recording gear, witch I will issue you today, ready. You must also be prepared to leave on a moments notice, even if you thought you were sleeping or off for a day. Rapid response time is often the only way we can keep their government from hiding crimes from ours.”

“Wow.” Vlad muttered “I am so grateful I wasn’t born a wizard. The more I know about them, the less I like them.”

“Try to remember that most of the blame for their ignorance lies in the government.” Judith scolded. “Not that it makes them easier to deal with, but consider your viewpoint if you had grown up with 7 years of Dumbledore’s propaganda directly, and proceeded into a world where a corrupted system controls what you see and hear.”

“Quite a valid point,” Ivan offered solemnly “and if we intend to be effective, that is exactly the point of view we will need to learn to think from. You can not out maneuver an enemy you do not understand.”

“I’m glad we understand each other.” Judith said as she stood “Now let’s get your gear.”

The following day was the first case for the brothers. In yesterday’s briefing, the found that in a multi-jurisdiction case, the body would not be removed from the site, so Ivan was to perform all of the C.C. testing on site rather then in the lab while Vlad documented, collected and photographed all relevant evidence in the rest of the site. Since time was of the essence, the Clairvoyant, Annette, a petit and curvy woman, was to take the readings while they worked and would not transfer the memory of it to a pensive till they retuned to headquarters, where all the information would be analyzed.

Annette, Vlad, and Ivan arrived with in seconds of the call in front of a small but imposing gothic style home of dreary grey stone. Whatever had been in the garden had shriveled up and was actively in the process of rotting, as was the remnants of what may have been a trellis at one time that appeared to lead to the back yard. Most interestingly, the grass was also quite dead in spite of the warm humid summer that had most homeowners in the area cursing the extra mowing that year, and seemed to be that way from the intense dark magic field coming off the house in a visible lack of light.

“Are you guys sure this is really a house and not something we dreamed after reading too many scary stories before bed?” Annette asked with trepidation and a wary look in her light hazel eyes as a chilled breeze tousled her short black bob.

“Naw” Vlad answered, “I would have totally dreamed in a moat. Yep, definitely a moat with a sea monster. We better get this over with cause the sooner we leave, the happier we’ll be.”

Inside the house was even darker then outside, and the barren and apparently solid stone walls kept it frigid even on the sweltering summer day. Annette started reading the entry way as the brothers worked their way close to the room where the action had happened. What the found was far from pretty.

“About time you guys got here.” Judith said, looking every bit as happy as the house. “Watch yourselves, we have a dark ritual gone tits up, and they can go off a few more times after the initial fuck up induced disaster. If those runes get disrupted, or if they start glowing, grab Annie and run like hell.”

The runes in question were densely painted in a circle on the stone floor of the dinning room about 3 feet wide, with a bare center circle in the center of about 10 feet across. The deceased were on the dinner-table-turned-alter in the center and surrounded by thick red candled that were melted in such a way that it appeared to be caused by the bodies. The dead themselves were stacked as if intimate before death, blackened and smelled of cooked flesh, and the upper body had its charred hand on an open book.

As Vlad photographed everything and picked up the few relevant looking items and bagged them, Ivan began stating his findings. “Well, the one on top is a male, the other is female, and both are part veela. the male’s penis is still inside the female, so I’m gonna go out on a limb and list the cause of death for both as a sex magic ritual gone wrong. Both bodies were burned severely, so more specifically, magic fire caused by a sex magic ritual gone wrong. On the bright side, the book it came out of is still here and opened to the right page to tell us more. Vlad, would you be so kind as to bag that for us?”

“And hurry it up” Judith said. “Annie just finished and we’ll have wizards here any moment. They won’t let us look at the book if they can help it,” she mentioned as Vlad crossed over the runes with care. “Some bull about removing ritual items from the alter setting off the magic.” and the runes turned the loveliest shade of glowing lavender, illuminating the unnaturally dark room. “SHIT! Run, run, run!”

Vlad scooped up Annette and Ivan threw Judith over his shoulder and proceeded to use their remarkably long legs for everything they were worth. Just as they had crossed the threshold, an intense purple shock wave threw them across the street and into the next yard. The depressingly grey home ignited and exploded around the same time, dropping flaming stones on the nearby homes.

The pop of apparating Aurors could be heard at the end of the block, so Judith brought out her emergency Portal Jems (P.J.s) to bring the crew back to H.Q. They landed unceremoniously, sooty, cranky, and slightly battered in a coffee hutch, much to the displeasure of fellow staff members.

“You know, one of these years, the Tech Department will figure out how to control WHERE in the department we land with those things.” Annette snarled from the lap of a stocky brunette woman.

Vlad managed a grin. “Look on the bright side,” Annette huffed skeptically at him. “I still have the book.” he finished triumphantly.