CHAPTER THREE:

To Catch A Breath.

Hemlock Potter's P.O.V

Hemlock rocked under the lashing water, so hot it blistered her skin a shiny pink, letting it blur her vision, wash her spotless, burn away the things she had seen. The things she had felt. The bathroom was full of steam, the water shrill in a way that reminded her of Petunia shouting.

Clean.

She needed to get clean.

The open window fluttered the shower curtain.

The forest was dark outside her shower stall, dark and dim and rolling with fog.

It's not real. Don't look. Keep your gaze dead ahead, and it will fade away. Don't look. Don't look.

She looked, because that's what she always did.

Look into the darkness.

She turned, slowly, fearfully, and-

There it was. The shadow lurking in the treeline.

A proud black stag made of smoke and soot.

It slunk through the fog, mist curling from nostrils, closer it crept, closer and-

The shower curtain flapped closed, and Hemlock, wet, alone, snapped back into her body.

It stung.

The sudden drop back into reality.

Her hand trembled cruelly as she reached to cut the water off, scampering out the stall, snatching at the towel waiting for her on the railing. Her bathroom was only a bathroom now, unsoiled and unblemished and sparse.

She pretended she didn't hear the clatter of hooves following her.

Her flat was empty and dark, just how she liked it.

Hemlock tossed on the top covers of her bed, a moonlit cast tree branch stretching shadows along the far wall of her bedroom and across the ceiling.

Cracks in reality.

Cracks in the mind.

A sleepy sigh joined her own in the silent night.

She was calm, in her bed, huddled as she was on her side, curled into something fetal, as her green eye slipped open.

The splintered shadows on the wall greeted her, like roads on a map.

She held her breath.

The sigh carried on.

Don't look. Don't turn. Don't, don't, don't-

She rolled over, craning her neck to check the empty side of her bed.

She knew what she was going to see long before Emily came into vision.

Emily was as she had been in her own bed, perched on top of the covers, hands folded over her bloodstained nightie.

She's in Hemlock's bed.

She's in Hemlocks thoughts.

She's in Hemlock's mind.

And so is He.

Her killer.

Hemlock can, as she always did, despite how peaceful Emily looked here, resting beside her in eternal sleep, still feel her fear, her desperation for breath as she struggled and fought and-

And Hemlock could feel how good He felt, stealing that breath, enfolding, giving and taking love through his fingers, and that orgasm, bursting fourth in his groin like a hot star when the crack of ribs recoiled underneath his knee.

Against her will, Hemlock's hand rose, stretching, reaching, and just as she was about to touch cool skin, the shadows on the wall malformed, corporeal, antlers made of shadow and smoke.

They pierced through Emily, impaling her, lifting, dragging, taking her back to the dark room in Hemlock's mind, the dark room that was constantly developing images she would rather forget, the dark room where He was waiting for her.

The shadows ate her.

Devoured her.

Emily was gone.

A shadow dipped from the wall, breaking through her dark room, wrung itself around Hemlock's neck, burning her, branding her down to the wick, fingernails penetrating tender flesh and-

She jolted awake in her bed, alone, cold, still wrapped in her towel in only a pair of knickers and a tank top, soaking wet with perspiration, hair limp and clinging to her clammy forehead, chest heaving in futile breaths Hemlock couldn't catch.

It was only a dream.

It was only ever a dream.

Just a dream.

She wasn't him, she didn't feel the rush, she didn't-

She wasn't him.

Shirking off her damp towel, peeling of her tank and knickers, wet and heavy like a used bathing suit, and hearing them slap onto the hardwood floor of her scant bedroom sounded like the pounding of her own heart.

A quick cleansing spell washed away her sweat, but didn't rinse away the nightmare.

It never did.

She glanced to the clock on her bedside table after changing the sheets, the muggle way, because it gave her something to do, something to focus on.

4 am.

She left her room. She couldn't stomach staying there any longer. She would only wait if she stayed, wait and watch for the shadows dancing on her wall, expecting them to leave the confines of 2D life and reach for her.

Coffee.

Hemlock needed coffee.

And an obliviate.

Hemlock snatched a paper towel from the sink in the men's bathroom of the Ministry Of Magic, dabbing away the water she had splashed her face with.

On the back of her eyelids, she saw the black stag pouncing.

She shook her head and bent back down, gargling some water before spitting it back into the sink, washing away the putrid taste of fear and excitement, and, of course, the cloying taste of nicotine from the seven smokes she had inhaled in the last hour alone.

She could still taste it.

She still felt dirty.

That feeling, she supposed, would never leave.

Once you touched evil, it touched you back.

That was a stain not easily removed, and never with something as simple as water and peroxide.

Remus Lupin, impatient from searching the Ministry Halls for Hemlock in the last hour, found her there, hunched over the sink, staring at her reflection with lilac bruises lining her tired, startling eyes. Her hair was a mess, but then again, it always was, hanging to her shoulders in frizzy, untamed coils.

She was her father's daughter, all but the eyes.

"What are you doing in here?"

I knew this would be the last place you, or anybody, would look for me.

Hemlock didn't say any of that, she simply snorted and turned around, cocking back against the porcelain sink digging into her lower back.

"I rather enjoy the décor, and the odd attempt here and there to try peeing standing up."

Remus didn't take the bait, he took none of her shit, as he merely raised a contrary brow at her and cut the chase.

"Me too. Let's talk."

A Ministry worker moseyed in, some poor fellow who looked like a desk jockey from Law management, and Lupin was on them immediately, sharply pointing back to the door he came in with a sweep of his arm.

"Use the ladies room. Now."

The man startled, spotted the werewolf glaring at him, and abruptly twisted and scampered off, the men's room door clicking shut behind him.

Poor fellow, indeed.

He never stood a chance.

Neither did Hemlock, by the bite in Lupin's voice.

She wasn't getting out this bloody room without a conversation taking place.

Balls.

"I know you may not like me, Hemlock. Don't glare at me like that. I'm not inconsiderate. I suspect you hardly like anyone. However, I would hope you respect my judgement. Do you?"

Her jaw rolled.

Begrudging.

"Yes."

Lupin nodded and came to a towering stand before her, hands locked in the pockets of his slacks. He tried valiantly to meet her gaze.

She didn't let it happen.

Instead, she gazed over his shoulder, to the other mirrors lining the sinks. With her glasses off, and contacts not in, she looked to be nothing but an ink smear on silver.

She felt like that too.

A smudge some unfortunate janitor couldn't quite scrub off.

Lupin sighed.

"We have a better chance of catching this killer if you're entirely on your broom."

What a polite way of telling her Lupin thought she was unstable.

Problem was, she was sure this, this inky, sleepless, coffee infused mess was the most stable she could be.

"I am on my broom. I just don't know where I'm flying. I don't know this kind of psychopath. He's not in any lecture or textbook. He's nothing like anything I've come across before. I don't even know if he is a psychopath. He's… Sensitive. Caring. He's not emotionally shallow."

Lupin soaked it in and churned it over slowly, methodically.

"You wouldn't have said what he did to Emily was an… Apology if you couldn't see him in some shape, Hemlock. So, what is he saying sorry for?"

Her finger's clenched on the rim of the sink behind her, tingling.

Tingling like His fingers would have as he wrapped them around Emily's throat.

"There was no honour in that death. He feels bad. He feels as if he's… Tarnished her."

Lupin chuckled, confused. He would be. Most would be. Hemlock wished she were too. If you couldn't feel the killer, see how they see, their world was an abstract mess.

"Guilt negates the psychopathic tendencies, does it not?"

She only nodded.

"Then what kind of crazy is he, Hemlock?"

The worst kind.

The crazy that was love.

"He couldn't show Emily he loved her. Not the way he wanted to. Something… Stopped him. Something went wrong in that room. Not Emily. Not how she fought back. He was used to that. People get shy in love, or at least he reasons. No… He couldn't love her like he should have, and so he took her back to the one place he knew she would find that kind of love. Her home. To her family. That, Lupin, is the kind of crazy we're dealing with."

Hemlock couldn't stand that word.

Crazy.

No one, not really, not ever, was crazy.

Reality, as with all things, was subjective.

Crazies just walked in a different world.

A world sometimes Hemlock found herself dumped in.

Anew, Lupin took it in and held it gently, trying to wrap his head around the concept.

"You think he loves these girls?"

Hemlock rubbed at the bridge of her nose.

"He loves one of them. The rest are just… Mirror reflections. He can't love that one the way he wants to, so he writes love letters with her ghosts. It's either her or them, and he will always choose them… Until he has no other choice. So, yes, he loves them, but only in fraternity to the one he feels like he can't. His precious golden egg."

The rebuke was quick.

"There was no sign of rape. No semen or saliva. Emily Corringham died a virgin, and her corpse kept that promise."

And Hemlock's rebuke came quicker.

"That's not how he loves them. That's… Debauched, to him. He wouldn't disrespect them that way. He kills them quickly, with, in his mind, kindness."

Lupin scoffed, but he couldn't argue.

"The sensitive psychopath. He took a risk today, to tuck Emily back into bed. He'll take a bigger risk soon."

Not soon enough.

Not before he nabbed the ninth.

Of that, Hemlock was sure.

"He has to take the next girl soon. We're no longer looking at one a month. He knows he's going to get caught, especially after putting Emily back. That wasn't part of the plan, Lupin. He knows it's coming, and he'll want to… Finish before it comes. One way or another. Looks like his golden egg has run out of time."

No One's P.O.V

Nymphadora Tonks worked in a small, enclosed, sparkling room. A sterile metal table before her, lit by the strongest of spells. The bloodstained nightie spread like an offering on an altar. In the air, through the magic radio, Queen played at an almost ear bursting tempo.

Every now and again, her head bobbed to the tune.

Deliberately, fixed over the nightie, she levitated some powder caught in the lace hem, grey, glistening.

Asphodel.

A Potion ingredient.

A rare Potion ingredient.

Her grin was keen in the bright light, as her hair switched to a shockingly lurid yellow.

"Got you."

No One's P.O.V

The Asphodel slid into the little vial, the pop of a cork capping its crown. A blotch of it got on his thumb, turning the skin grey, but the man paid no mind.

He was busy restocking the Potion ingredients in the bottom store cupboard of Saint Mungo's apothecary.

The door creaked open.

A woman, heels clacking, came tumbling in, curly brown hair and firewhisky eyes bright in the candlelight.

She was the same height and weight as Emily Corringham.

And the seven girls before her.

She didn't know that, however.

No.

Hermione Granger was blissfully unaware of the chaos coming, the newest Healer trainee of Saint Mungo's teaching program.

She smiled as she came into the room.

Smiled right at him, the man with Asphodel on his thumb.

She waved and said hello.

She knew him.

He waved back, slow and languid.

Her would-be-killer.

Remus Lupin's P.O.V

Lupin strolled down the winding hall of the Auror Academy next to an impeccably dressed man, pale and beautiful in the low light.

He was a legilimency specialist.

Draco Malfoy, his name tag read.

"Hemlock likes you, as much as she likes anyone. She doesn't think you would run any mind games on her."

Draco had grown into his pointed features that had taunted him as a child.

Yet, still, his answering smile could only ever be called spiked.

It would have cut Lupin, if he wasn't an already hardened man.

"Because I won't. I'm as honest with her as I would be with any patient. Lying is pointless when it comes to Hemlock. She smells a fib a mile off, and an ulterior motive even further."

The pair stalled next to the door to the office, Malfoy's office, as Lupin took a sweeping scan of the young man.

"From what I understand, you teach the trainees with her at the Academy?"

Draco scoffed, and even that sounded graceful.

"I've known her longer than the Academy. We were in the same year at Hogwarts, the same House too."

Lupin winced.

Draco grinned like an Acromantula who had the strings of its web pulled by some poor, lost soul.

"You didn't know she was a Slytherin?"

Lupin shook his head, and now it was Draco's turn to examine the man before him.

That was the thing with Slytherins, even years out of their Hogwarts House colours.

It was always tit for tat.

One sniff of weakness, unsure footing, and they went in for the kill.

"I have to admit, I am curious. From what I understand, you were close to her parents and yet…"

Draco's pale gaze glinted like a knife flashing in the dark.

That burned.

It hurt.

Sirius used to have the same-

"You never sent a letter. Not one. Not on her House acceptance. Not on her birthdays or Yule. Not even when she graduated. None of her parents so called 'friends' ever reached out. That says a lot about you Gryffindors, doesn't it. So, why?"

Why?

Because it was his fault she was an Orphan.

Because he should have been there, for James, for Lily, all those years ago when they first began being tracked by a serial killer.

He should have seen Sirius Black falling, and instead he-

Instead, he was on a mission, off in Bulgaria, and-

He should have been there.

As he should have been there throughout the years. He wrote letters. He never posted them. He planned to visit. He never went on the day. He-

Lupin saw her once.

Waiting at the train station, heading off to be a first year.

He had wanted to introduce himself. Perhaps get to know the child. But then… Then.

He saw her and he was hit with… She looked so much like her father, and she had her mother's eyes, and he had-

He had walked away.

Circe, he had ran.

His greatest failure reflected back from the innocence of a child and-

His fault.

He had ran away and never looked back, and he would never, never, forgive himself for that.

Grief and anguish had made him a coward.

Of course, Lupin uttered none of this and swiftly diverted course.

This wasn't a social visit.

Lupin had work to do.

"Have you spent a lot of time around Hemlock? How well do you know her as her friend?"

Draco shuffled and crammed his hands into his pockets, looking down his nose at Lupin.

"Better than you, I suspect. However, that is not much in the grand scheme. You've met her now, haven't you? You know what Hemlock is like. She doesn't do friends. She never has and I highly doubt she ever will."

Draco let that linger in the air before he carried on.

"Even in Hogwarts she was always… On the outside looking in. I think it was for the best. Even then, she had trouble with her empathy. Mordred knew what messes she saw surrounded by hormonal teenagers. And after that ordeal with Professor Quirrell… She stopped him; you know? She was the one to realize he was touching the girls. A twelve-year-old did what the other teachers and adults could never do. They owe her a bloody Order of Merlin for all the shit she put a stop to and-"

Draco swallowed deeply, collecting himself.

"We hardly got on, after she beat me to the Seeker position in Quidditch in second year. And Merlin knew how she infuriated my father by always nabbing the top spot in our academic skirmishes. She stuck to herself a lot. If you wish to weasel out information on Hemlock, your best source would be Theodore Nott. They studied together in Hogwarts, sat the same Auror exams, and, I dare say, he would be the closest thing she has to a friend. I, however, have never been alone with her."

Lupin regarded him shrewdly, picking up the things he refused to say.

Surely as Malfoy picked up on the things Lupin refused to voice.

"I'm surprised you haven't taken the time to write a report on Hemlock, given how you did the same to… Pansy, wasn't it?"

Draco's smile drained of all humour.

"Anything scholarly on Potter will not be coming from me."

Remus crossed his arms over his chest.

"Why aren't you ever alone with her?"

Draco shook his head, exasperated, as if he was dealing with a trainee and not seasoned Unspeakable.

"Because I have a curiosity. Hemlock's mind is a fuckin' candy-land to specialists like me. An untapped dragon horde. The things we could learn if we just-… I wouldn't be able to help myself, and that is the last thing she needs right now. I do have some dignity and sympathy, Lupin."

The barb was there, skulking, biting.

Unlike you.

And would you look at that.

A Slytherin with a bigger heart.

For shame.

"If Hemlock caught you peeking, she'd snatch down the shades?"

Draco sighed, obviously coming to the end of what little compassion he had for Lupin's plight.

And he had a far share of it.

He knew Hemlock.

He knew how knotted and tangled things could become around her.

"Normally, I would never do what I am about to. However, you're as bull-headed as any other Gryffindor, and so, here's a tip. What do you think it is that drives Hemlock to do what she does, though she, outwardly, appears to abhor it?"

Lupin frowned as he thought.

"Compassion?"

Draco sneered, and it was a sad little thing of twisted brambles.

"Fear. Hemlock deals with huge amounts of fear. Her own, the victims, even in some shade, the killers. It comes with her imagination, her ability to empathize with those other's find impossible to see. In them, as with all empathy, in some way, she finds herself reflected back, and it terrifies her. And still… She will always continue to look because she thinks it's the right thing to do. The only thing bigger than her empathy, Lupin, is her martyr complex. She will continue to reconstruct and rebuild. She doesn't need to be picked apart, Lupin. She needs someone who will look into the darkness with her and hold her hand without judgement. I am not convinced this is you. The man who didn't send a single letter."

The insult was hot and heavy and achingly true.

And, with all heartbroken certainties, Lupin's first instinct was to fight it.

"I wouldn't put her out there if I couldn't cover her."

At Draco's sardonic look, he revised his statement.

"If I couldn't cover her eighty percent."

Malfoy shook his head.

"I wouldn't put her out there at all. None of you see, do you? None of you, just as Albus did, realize the price she has to pay for her gift. Or worse, you do bloody see and none of you care. To reconstruct and rebuild, she has to first tear herself apart limb by limb, and each time, a little of her is… Lost. Each time she... She brings something back. One day, a stranger is going to stand before you, a Frankenstein stranger you can't stand to look at, and it's on your own head."

Lupin heckled.

"Well, she is out there. And we all need her out there. No one can do what she does, and if we aren't there, she would go running headfirst into it herself. Alone. I wouldn't be doing this if I had any other choice. I just need you to make sure she isn't left out there."

There was a pompous snarl to Malfoy's mouth.

"Trust me on this, Lupin. You really do not wish for me to be the one commenting on this in any official compacity. It will not end well for you."

Lupin heaved a frustrated breath through is flared nostrils, held it deep in his lungs until it burned.

It almost burned as must as what Malfoy had told him.

Almost.

Silence settled around them outside the office for a long while before, softly, Malfoy broke it.

"However… I may know of someone. Best in the field. No one better, even myself. He was my legilimency Professor back in training. I'll talk to him, see if he will… Consider meeting Hemlock. Don't hold out hope. He's as picky with his patients as Hemlock is with her friends. Yet, you have to promise me something, Lupin. Don't let her get too close. Don't let her bring something back that she can't shake off."

There was iron speared through Lupin's voice.

Thick and inexorable, and uniquely brittle.

"She won't get too close. I can promise you that."

Hemlock Potter's P.O.V

Tonks and Finnigan hovered over the examination table of the mortuary in the Auror department, promptly joined by Thomas who gestured to the body laying prone on top.

Emily Corringham looked peaceful here too.

"There's nothing on the body. However, we did get a hand spread off her neck. By size and shape, it was a robust assailant. A right tall bastard."

Tonks viewed the body with a astute eye.

"Did you lift any powdered Asphodel?"

It was Finnigan who responded.

"None. The body was… Meticulously prepared. There isn't any blood underneath her fingernails. She didn't even get to scratch him."

Tonks hummed.

"A smear on a nightie is all we've got then."

She grinned over to the fourth and final inhabitant of the close quarter room, standing vigil in the corner.

Separated off into her own little invisible box.

Hemlock didn't reply, and neither did she find anything to smile about.

She wasn't even looking at them, focused on the body, gaze a little far away, as absent as her voice, as if she were going through the motions of a play learned by heart.

"We should first look at apothecaries. Perhaps Potioniers. Healers at Saint Mungo's, those who deal with restocking their stores of ingredients."

Thomas leant over the body, pointing out the cleaned wounds with the tip of his wand.

"The injuries to the chest and abdomen were inflicted post-mortem, as Hemlock said. Emily wasn't gored. She died of suffocation and trauma to her rib cage and neck. Very… Muggle. If I had to give a guess, I would say it was deer antlers."

Hemlock knew that already.

She'd dreamt it that morning.

Yet, what did that mean?

An insult?

Killing a Muggleborn the muggle way to prove how unworthy they were of their magic?

No.

Magic, in some form or other, always distorted the body. Left a trace, scared something, took something.

He wanted the victim to be as pure and… Whole as possible.

Once more, Hemlock's disconnected voice drifted along the frigid chamber.

"She was mounted on them like meat hooks. She may have been bled too."

Deer's and stags…

Her family animal.

Her father's Animagus.

Her own Patronus.

Nevertheless, before she could look too much into that unsettling titbit, an unseen connection not explored, Finnigan stopped his poking around in the abdominal wound, misshapen by an antler.

"Her liver was removed. He took it out and… And… He bloody put it back in. See?"

Hemlock stayed outside the circle, even as other's dipped in to see the reattached liver. Thomas's voice was incredulous.

"Why take it out in the first place if he was going to shove it right back in? Look… Stitches. Muggle, again. If he used magic, it would have been harder to find-"

Thomas's voice bled away as Emily had been bled. In a gurgle and a trickle, until nothing but a pale husk remained. Background noise. Hemlock's face went slack as the neurons fired in all directions, linking, connecting, joining.

Tonks was the only one to notice, as she shot a look at the younger woman.

Hemlock flinched.

"Something's wrong with the meat."

Finnigan's gaze, wide eyed, rounded on Hemlock.

"She had dragon pox. She was being treated at Saint Mungo's. Her parents wanted to keep it hushed because of the remaining stigma of those infected."

Saint Mungo's.

That's where he was finding his victims.

That was where he was finding his… Meals.

Merlin, Hemlock knew all along.

The dream.

The way the shadows had consumed Emily's ghost.

She did say meat hooks, had she not?

Bled as a calf was wrung for steak.

She laughed then. Laughter that eerily died in her throat like a howl.

"He's eating them."

What better way to love someone than ensure they became a part of you? Could never leave you? Parts of them digested in a gut, transferred to fat and energy that mixed with your own?

He was fuckin' eating them.

Hemlock could taste copper on her tongue.

No One's P.O.V

The trilling strains of Goldberg Variations by Bach glided in the office, gold dust in the air. A man sat at his immense desk, beside the beautiful black marbled fireplace, scratching away at parchment with a raven quill.

He appeared to be in his early thirties, but he was pushing into his late forties, early fifties in truth. Graced with the gift of slower aging as their kind was. He was a tall man, naturally a head above others. Lithe too.

Broad shouldered and long limbed, he, like his fireplace, was cut from marble. There was something wicked in the way he moved, a drive and pace too prowling, too easy, a glide some would call it, effortless others, that was at odds with his crisp Savile Row costume.

Predators were never meant to look so offhand and tranquil.

He was a man, much like the Variations playing, of severe angles and quavers. Aristocratic down to his perfectly lined teeth behind cupids bowed lips, blue eyes cold and luminous, the shade that could only be matched by the underbelly of glaciers in the arctic sea. Yet, they were not dead eyes. Far from it.

There was fire in the ice if you could imagine such a thing. Fervour rapt in a snowstorm. The hottest fires, the saying went, always burned blue.

His quill stalled as the hearth activated, flashing green on an incoming floo.

"Come through."

If his eyes were cold, his voice was frostbitten.

Draco Malfoy came through the fire.

"Dr Riddle, if I may have a moment of your time?"

Doctor Tom Riddle smiled politely, calmly placing his quill down beside his parchment to gesture for the man to take a seat before him.

NEXT CHAPTER: Tom Riddle enters stage right, and everything goes to hell.

Thoughts?