This is set following the events of GOF. It is AU. Some Canons are killed off, and some OCs are added. However, I am striving to keep things as realistic as possible (or as realistic as things can be in the world of Fanfic).

This will start as a Muggle (OC) perspective with inserted Magical POV, but will steadily move into Magical with inserted Muggle POV. The first 2 chapters are dedicated to the main OC's character development to ensure a well-rounded character. I appreciate your patience in advance.

A big thank you to my new beta Dances With Vampires, who has graciously offered to take over following Ikrona's early retirement from fanfiction due to time constraints.

Chapter 1: Case 19

If Hedwig hadn't made a ruckus trying to fly back in, Harry would never have noticed the sinister cloud forming at eye level, several houses down the street. He knew who lived in that house, and that he would never see Mrs. Figg again. He wanted so badly to go there, or to tell someone that the little old lady was dead.

But the Muggles didn't see the Dark Mark, didn't know what it meant. Even if only to call the police, Harry would receive a thorough ear-bashing from his aunt and uncle for touching the phone. The police would never believe anything was wrong either, and if they did, it would draw too much attention to him anyway.

So he sat by the window and watched… waited for the next thing to happen, wand ready to defend himself if tonight was indeed the night.

-.-.-

Eliza made her way down the stairs faster than advisable in heels. She paused next to the door, and glanced at the mirror to make sure she was presentable. The wedge on the solid heels made her almost average height; no makeup; her dark brown curls were pulled back neatly into a ponytail; her purple long-sleeved blouse was fancy enough to be fun and practical enough to be work attire, even if mostly hidden under the white lab coat.

She sighed as she opened one of the drawers under the mirror, pulling out her identification badge and clipping it next to her pager.

"Maddie," she called through to the lounge room, where her little sister was watching late night horrors in her PJ's and happily devouring a bowl of popcorn. "Are you sure you'll be all right on your own?"

"I'm fifteen years old, and Troy will be home when the sun's up – I'm sure I'll be fine for the next few hours. Honestly, Eliza," Madeline scoffed.

Eliza sighed again. Her brother Troy usually worked the day shift, but as the other security manager was on holiday, the casino had him working double shifts almost constantly. And the reason that Maddie was now living with them and not their mother was part of Eliza's reluctance to leave her home alone. She pursed her lips, wondering if she should call work and let them know that she would be late.

"If I find out that you had Dick-"

"Rick," Maddie automatically corrected.

"Rick. Whatever his name is. If he comes over without you telling us, you know your brother and I will have to-"

"He won't be coming, I promise. Would you get going before you get your knickers in a twist at the thought of being late?"

Eliza frowned at the underlying insult. It was true - work had, for the past several years, taken priority. And she was struggling to make the changes to put Maddie first. Troy said she needed to start trusting her more… but that was easier said than done.

"All right, but don't stay up watching that rubbish all the night. I'll see you tomorrow." She grabbed her bag and left, locking the door behind her and silently praying that Maddie would behave herself.

-.-.-

The flashing lights lit the street and led her to the crime scene. As she approached, a constable waved her over. She was ready.

"Doctor Eliza Raveien, Medical Examiner," she identified herself, presenting the badge and was waved through. Neighbours were gathered behind the yellow tape in their PJ's, craning their necks for a look at what was left of the home. The press was not far behind, accosting the approaching detectives.

Firefighters wandered around, checking for the safety of the building - and it was no wonder: there were holes blasted in more than half the walls, and splintered wood and glass lay everywhere. It barely resembled the other little weatherboard houses along the street.

"Oh my God. . ." Eliza breathed. She'd worked at bomb sites before, but this was completely different. No scorch marks, no burns, no severed body parts - no nothing. The damage was completely contained within the property bounds, without a shred of debris in the neighbouring gardens or on the sidewalk. This was completely different.

The night sky was clear, except for some strange mist hovering above the house. No one else seemed to notice it or care about it, so Eliza dismissed it as dust and other airborne debris from the resulting damage.

Eliza quickly recognized the person who would be working this case with her. Detective Janice Huston was a senior homicide detective, not far from breaking into her late forties. She was stern-looking most of the time, but quick enough to share a laugh and happy to be considered 'one of the guys'. More than that though, she was the closest thing to a friend she had.

Janice already had control of things, gathering as much information as she could from the first on-scene officer, whilst her partner Lloyd discussed logistics with the Fire Chief and the Detective Chief Inspector.

It didn't look like Lloyd and the Detective Chief Inspector would finish their discussion quickly from the amount of animated pointing, so Eliza set her kit on the ground with the other forensic investigators and waited.

"Pretty impressive, don't you think?" a female voice said, coming up next to her.

Eliza snorted. "I really hope they declare it unsafe… I would rather deal with the extra work than get caught under there myself." She said, turning to Janice.

"Come now, 'Liza, don't be a coward," Janice laughed, poking her in the ribs. "So what are you expecting?" She asked seriously, focused on the job at hand.

"Honestly, looking at the condition of the house…" She trailed off, glancing behind her. Small pieces of debris littered the front garden where they all stood, but someone seemed to have taken the time to sweep the foot path. "No idea – but I don't have a good feeling about it," she admitted. She remembered there were too many things already present that weren't normal – and enough things to make her nervous.

So far in the past few months, they had had eighteen unexplained deaths with no apparent links or connections - and that was only for their region, the number increasing at an alarming rate weekly across the country. It was as though they had all simply dropped dead - no causes. They suspected that there were more, that the number had been tainted by sloppy reports or assumptions. The other crime scenes had also been pristine. No, not pristine, that implied they had been cleaned; there was the usual amount of day-to-day mess, there was just nothing useful in it. The victims had all simply dropped dead.

-.-.-

The body was in the middle of what was probably once a hallway; nearly all of the interior walls were destroyed. Eliza handed her assistant the camera. "Take photos of the body at every angle, and anything near it." Firefighters had set up temporary support struts to keep the house standing long enough to be processed. Eliza pulled out her voice recorder and started work, trying to ignore the tell-tale stare of fear in the victim's eyes.

"Victim is suspected to be widowed resident, Arabella Figg. Age and stature supports this. Confirmation will be made back at the lab. Victim is short, approximately five-four, and appears to have fallen backwards upon expiring. The body has signs of attempted CPR." She clipped the recorder to her top so she had use of her hands, and opened her box of trade tools, applied gloves, and pulled out a thermometer with a long spike at the end, pushing it into the victim's liver. The body was still warm to the touch.

"Approximate time of death is. . .one-thirty a.m.," she informed the detective standing over her.

"How does someone not notice this for half an hour before calling it in?" Detective Sergeant Lloyd asked, clearly shocked.

"It's a work night, quiet street like this. . .only reason why we heard about this before sun-up is because the guy across the road just got back from the airport and couldn't resuscitate her," Janice answered. "I just don't get how no one heard all of this. Even if they were using a sledge hammer, someone was bound to hear the destruction." She ducked into a different room to look for clues.

"Nothing more I'm going to be able to tell you here. All the superficial injuries appear to be post-mortem, nothing that attributes to cause of death. I might know something when I open her up." Eliza stood, packing away her kit and knowing full well that she wasn't going to find anything of the sort.

"'Liza." Janice poked her head through a space that had once been a wall. "More casualties; cats."

Moving out of the way of the gurney, Eliza followed to investigate. Maybe this wasn't as hopeless as they all thought - after all, people didn't usually kill animals without a reason. . .She chased that thought out of her head as quickly as it came.

"These guys are bigger than my mum's Maine Coon - hell, I've seen smaller bob cats are the zoo," Lloyd exclaimed.

Two of the cats she knew were dead only at a glance. The third was curled up and, if it weren't for the fact that it was under a piece of ceiling, could have easily been mistaken for sleeping.

"I'll arrange for a necropsy back at the lab." Photos were taken. Still with gloves on, she lifted one of the limp cats by the scruff, carefully looking at the claws. "Doesn't look like any pre-mortem injuries, but we do have a donor," she commented at the small traces of blood flecking the claws. "Might just be from an old fight, though."

"With some luck, it's the sick bastard who came here in the first place." Lloyd held out an evidence bag large enough to fit the cat in.

"How many did the neighbour say she had?" Eliza glanced around the room, wondering if maybe one had gotten out of this mess alive. She put the other two cats in bags.

"Couldn't give a fixed number - apparently, she didn't like them roaming around," Janice replied, searching behind and under furniture and debris. "We'll call in the Animal Warden, but I doubt - hang on, got another. Must be a kitten, it's tiny compared to these guys."

Eliza reached under the couch and grabbed a tail; the cat attached to it shrieked. Sharp claws sliced through her glove. "Shit, it's alive," she hissed, cradling her hand. A cloth was offered and accepted.

Lloyd motioned for one of the CSU Techs to move the couch. They positioned themselves to catch the animal, but it didn't flee, and probably couldn't have if it wanted to.

"She's injured," Eliza said, taking a closer look. There was a deep laceration down its side, and it hissed threateningly as they approached, extending one unsheathed front paw in warning. "Call in an Animal Warden; I'll collect any evidence at their clinic."

-.-.-

Back at the comfort of her lab, Eliza meticulously collected any and all evidence, preparing the body for autopsy. She had no illusions of some grand breakthrough, of a mysterious puzzle piece slipping into place. She glanced through the glass window which offered a view of her office and the stack of yellow files on top of her filing cabinet. She knew where Mrs. Figg's file would go: with the other eighteen already there. Deaths with no reason, no cause, and the only link being the oddity and mystery surrounding them. Eighteen cases, and lying on the slab before her was number nineteen.

"Well, that tabby of yours made it," Eliza said, forcing a smile. "The vets say she should be back on her feet in a few days, and with luck one of your other kids caught a bit of who did this to you." She pulled down the clear protective visor, and turned on the microphone hanging from the ceiling, and held a scalpel at the ready. "July Second, autopsy of Arabella Figg, declared dead at. . . ."

-.-.-

At six a.m., her brother left her a reassuring message that the house was still standing and Maddie found asleep on the couch when he arrived. This took some of the edge out of her nerves, which had only been intensified by several cups of C-grade coffee as she sorted through the evidence collected and dispatched it to the appropriate departments. There would be no word about any of it until lunchtime, so she committed her time to the necropsies.

Eliza frowned at the test results, taking off her glasses and rubbing her eyes. She should have been prepared for this, being the nineteenth case she thought it was, but what frustrated her now was that there were so many other things so close to killing her. Her heart and kidneys were failing, her lungs had fluid in them, and she had a few malignant cancer spots, as well as a small tumour at the base of her spine. She wouldn't have lasted another year, but someone had gone to the very thorough trouble of killing her and making a statement out of her house and cats.

And the giant cats... After doing a necropsy on the first, it was clear that there was something quite different about them, and she took them to the RSPCA for further investigation. It wasn't that they weren't cats - they just weren't. . .normal; they had slightly different bone structures, different bone densities, even some of the organs were in different places. This case was doing her head in.

"That's not a promising look." Janice and Lloyd walked in, looking no more optimistic than she did.

"You guessed right. Nineteen in five months. . ." Eliza handed the results over. "Mind you, they could have just waited a few months and she would have been here anyway. The way her body was deteriorating – though I won't be able to track down medical records until later today, but she wasn't being medicated or getting any form of treatment - near as I can tell, I'm the first ever to have seen her."

"Neighbours couldn't tell us much either," Janice said. "A few wanted to blame a supposed 'juvenile delinquent' - kid by the name of Harry she used to sit for - but it seems the only people who know any of his criminal history are those who heard rumours. Other than that, there was some fat kid who uses his fists more than his head, but he couldn't have pulled off something like this."

"No evidence of fists or bruising. This one is going with the other eighteen."

"DCI's not like that - the newspapers are already running wild with this one, and the Home Office wants answers. With the state the house is in, there is going to be no denying any sort of foul play. Don't you have anything for us? What about the DNA?" Janice had a slightly desperate edge to her voice.

"All we came back with so far is Male, AB Neg. It's running through the database now, shouldn't take too long thanks to the blood type – though I doubt we will find a match."

"Well, it narrows it down if nothing else." Lloyd looked a little more optimistic. "Isn't it something like, 2% of the population are AB?"

"Less than 1%. Most of the victims are either or with an AB blood type relative, and Mrs. Figg was AB positive – which still supports my theory. But it seems unlikely - a serial killer hunting blood types? At this point I think there's still something else linking them."

"What if it's a toxin that only affects rare blood types?" Lloyd suggested.

"I've been trying to work on that theory for a while," Eliza replied. "It's getting hard to ignore this many. But I'll keep you informed if anything further comes of it. For now. . .the DCI is going to have to stone-wall this one until something bigger hits the news. I've had no luck tracking down a next-of-kin, so this should be forgotten soon like the rest of them."

It was a sad truth that so far, tracking down any next of kin in these cases had been as much of a headache as solving the murders themselves. In the few cases where they did track someone down, they seemed to want as little to do with the victim as possible, and to leave it to the council to take care of the arrangements. The few who did acknowledge anything could say very little about the victim in general, knowing even less than what they had been able to find out. It was like these people didn't really exist, living in the shadows of society and incredibly private.

"What about the tabby?"

"Well, I went back over the photos. There is a very small blood streak from where she was hit when she crawled under the couch, but no trace evidence. The vet and I couldn't even determine what kind of weapon may have been used. The blood samples are being run for posterity against the cats just in case."

A knock at the glass door behind her caught their attention. A young man in a lab coat entered.

"Sorry for the intrusion, but this really couldn't wait. We've run this blood three times," he said uneasily. "It's not cat - it's human."

"Let me see those." Eliza examined the paperwork and samples. "This one definitely came from the cat, the vet took the sample while I was there." She frowned at the second sample coding and results. "This one was from the smear. Did it match the victim's?"

The man bit his lip and shook his head. "Matches the one that you said was from the cat, though."

Eliza sighed. "Thank you. I'll go down to RSPCA and collect another sample." She continued to read. "Inspectors, I will let you know if anything further comes up, thank you for stopping by." She dismissed them in order to further analyze the reports.

"There's more. We tested the hair from the tabby, we figured the blood was contaminated, but this is where it gets really strange." He said handing her the report. "The hair is definitely cat – there's no way its human, but the DNA from the root is – and it's a match for the blood."

Eliza read through the report, brow furrowed. "This is some sort of joke?" she chuckled sceptically.

"No joke – I can't explain it – but that's the results, we ran the test three times to be sure,"

Eliza frowned. "I think I need to do some tests of my own with this cat…" Lab techs making errors wasn't unheard of, but it was rare, and with results like this she wasn't prepared to believe it until she had ruled out every possibility and done the tests herself.

Later in her car, while she drove to the RSPCA, Eliza could still see the report in her mind, taunting her. How did a cat end up with AB negative human blood and DNA?

-.-.-

The RSPCA was full of sounds from dogs, cats, and birds alike. She'd been in the waiting room for thirty minutes, waiting for an available vet to supervise the sample collection. But something had changed in the past ten minutes: the attendants seemed more than a little anxious, and there was a lot of door-slamming and feet shuffling behind the Staff Only door. It was another ten minutes before a very uneasy veterinarian approached her.

"Did the cat die?" Eliza asked, not entirely sure what to make of the man's expression.

The vet opened and closed his mouth a few times, as though searching for the right words.

"We don't know," he finally settled on. "She's missing. When we checked on her this morning she was recovering nicely, and seemed as though she would be suitable to go into a foster program in a week or so, there was no reason for anyone to take her out of her cage until later today. But she's not there. In fact, it wasn't even until you arrived that we even realized she was gone... No others are missing, that's what we can't understand - if it was some animal rights nutter, more would be missing, and they would be the ones scheduled to be euthanized. I really don't know what to make of this. . ." He rubbed the back of his neck.

Someone was working very hard to make sure whatever secrets this cat held would remain hidden.

"What about the cat? A breed, or something? Did you happen to take any blood samples?"

"A couple, though most haven't been run yet; it's been a busy morning. Near as we could tell, she was just your garden variety Tabby."

"That's fine. I'll need those samples to compare to another sample taken from the crime scene. Also, those other cats I brought in for a necropsy, do you have a report on those yet?"

The man paled. "You want them now?"

"Is there a problem?"

"We. . ." He struggled, not wanting to admit that there was another thing he couldn't answer. "Don't know," he surrendered. "In all honesty - I mean, you have to understand, we thought it was simply a case of you not knowing cats, but. . ."

"But you couldn't explain the differences either?"

"The thing is, you look at them, and they're cats. Very large cats, but cats. You open them up, and. . .well, it's all there. . .it's just different. We looked her up to see if she was a registered breeder, or experimenting with breeds, but there's nothing, no vet history, no registrations. We thought she was a possible home breeder who was ill-informed, and the cats were the result of inbreeding - but the mutations are too uniform across all three cats, and would take probably hundreds of generations to be the norm, as these mutations seem to be with them." He looked stumped. "There wasn't anything to suggest where she may have acquired them? Weird or not, they are beautiful cats - I would love to know what their temperament would have been, and-"

"So you have nothing?"

The veterinarian stopped his excited ramble and cleared his throat. "No," he answered, disheartened. "But I can tell you this, as a cat lover myself: when people have more than one cat of the same breed, it's because there is something unique about them that they love. I don't know if this is relevant, but people like that don't just get a common domestic shorthair to add to the group. Especially one that is so dissimilar. It's possible she was taking care of the missing tabby for a friend, or it was a stray who adopted her."

Eliza sighed. "I'll take your word for it and let the detectives know. Thank you for your help."

-.-.-

Harry caught a glimpse of the news, and the destruction wrought upon Mrs. Figg's home, and none of it made sense. There was no cover story, no supposed gas explosion, or anything close to a cover-up of what really happened. The Muggles reached the body first and floundered for an explanation. Something was very wrong.

The only message he received had been a hastily written note from Sirius, ordering him to stay put and under no circumstances leave the house. Harry sighed and flopped on his bed. Something was very wrong, and it had something to do with last night.

-.-.-

Thank you for reading. Please give a short message telling what you think, and if you have any suggestions for improvement or plots that you would like to see.