Chapter Text
Chapter 1 - An Incident
October 8th 2003
Auror Ronald Bilius Weasely sometimes thought, when he was feeling very charitable, that perhaps being born sixth of seven siblings had made him a sort of natural team player. He just wasn’t meant to run operations on his own, he thought on those days, but rather to follow along in groups of three to five people and point out when everyone else was being ridiculous. That was what he was good at. That’s where he excelled.
The expedition to Azkaban had seemed like a good idea that afternoon. Lewis, his grey, middle-aged partner, hadn’t agreed, of course, but Lewis was very stiff and formal, and seemed only ever to be passionate about paperwork, so that hadn’t been very surprising. It had continued to seem like a good idea as he apparated to Desmond Point, broom in hand, and even as he flew through the building autumn storm over the North Sea, he’d still rather liked it.
Taking a portkey would have meant a lot of forms and questioning clerks, and so Ron had arrived on the prison island very damp, yet continuously quite convinced of the validity of his plan. Walking through the prison itself though, he had started to question.
Even with a patronus up, the place was, to put it mildly - worthy of pause.
On its own, the castle was ancient and crumbling. Damp and dark. Beaten by the ocean and the skies. The smell of salt not quite covering something old and faintly like rot. Even forgoing its wardens, it was quite clear in every drip of water off the algae covered walls, and ever howling of wind through slit shaped windows, that no living creature was meant to reside here. And there was no forgoing the wardens.
At least the chamber they’d placed Ron in was fairly insulated. Not to say that it was warm, but the thick stone walls kept out the wind, and the screams it called from the stone. As well as the regular old human screams.
He pulled his watch from his pocket and checked it. It’d been thirty minutes.
It wasn’t like they were incredibly busy with queues of other Aurors looking to speak with the inmates. Nobody ever came out to the island unless strictly necessary.
Ron was beginning to think this trip wasn’t quite that.
He felt something against his leg and nearly jumped out of his skin, before realising that it was only Jackie who had bumped her head against it. The little Jack Russell patronus had been filled with her usual enthusiasm when he summoned her after landing on the island, running this way and that to investigate every new scent and sound, but as they ventured deeper into the prison, she became increasingly subdued. By the time they reached their current location, she’d been keeping firmly to her master’s side, barely glancing around the chamber before planting herself by his feet.
To be fair, the space was rather disconcerting. Though the insulation was appreciated, the lack of windows, not to speak of the way the walls seemed spaced much too far apart for the low ceiling, left an incredible claustrophobic feeling. This, despite the fact that the chamber was in fact large enough that Jackie's light had yet to penetrate into the corners on the far end. Was there anything out there?
Almost certainly not - but it would have been nice to actually know.
Ron shifted uncomfortably on his metal chair. The cold of it melting through his robes. There were two chairs in the room, identical, and placed on either side of a table, also metal. There was no other furniture.
He’d wait another fifteen minutes, and then he’d give the whole thing up as a waste of time. Potentially he should really leave already. Hermione had explained the sunk cost fallacy once, which he thought applied here. Sinking more time into a failed plan wouldn’t make it better, it would only waste more time.
Usually, he tried not to think about Hermione. He wondered if it was the prison’s doing, or if he was just having that sort of day. He wondered idly what time it was in Australia. It was probably nice and warm down there.
Just then, the scraping of metal interrupted his thoughts. The hinges on the door on the opposite wall were loudly announcing its opening.
A pair of Dementors entered and then promptly left again, frightened away by the glowing Jack Russell terrier at Ron’s feet, leaving behind their quarry. Shadows at the edge of the room obscured the figure, but Ron could make out striped prisoners’ garb, chains, and long, blond hair. The Death Eater Ron had come to see almost stumbled as he made his way toward the centre of the room, but managed to right himself and hobble his way to the second chair.
Light finally caught the other’s features as he sat across from him, but Ron almost didn’t recognise him anyway. It had, of course, been years, but Ron didn’t think he himself had changed very much. He’d tried to grow a beard, for a while, after he’d ended up alone, but the tragic, wispy red whiskers he’d managed had been bad enough that even his dad - who had never expressed an opinion on his appearance in his entire life - had asked him to shave it. Malfoy though?
He’d known that Narcissa Malfoy had been born a Black, of course, but he’d never before thought that her son looked anything like Sirius. The hollowed out cheeks, clothes hanging off the skeletal frame, hair long and unkempt, eyes sunken into their sockets. Ron had long thought the memories of his thirteen year old self exaggerated, but no. If anything, this was worse than that. At least Sirius had had a sort of burning energy to him, a manic fire in his eyes. Draco Malfoy only looked dead.
Ron found himself staring, and had to blink a few times to get back on track.
“Mr Draco Malfoy?” he checked. Step one. There was procedure to follow for these sorts of things.
For the longest moment, the skeleton on the other side of the table didn’t respond, or give any indication that he’d even noticed being addressed. Then, just when Ron was about to clear his throat, or perhaps repeat the question, the other inclined his head in the slightest of nods. Good enough.
“Ronald Weasley, Auror,” he wasn’t sure if he needed to introduce himself, having failed to grow a beard and all, but he did anyway, since following the script felt simplest, “Here on behalf of the Department for Magical Law Enforcement to request your aid in an ongoing investigation. As the investigation is ongoing, I can only reveal so many details, and in turn you are under no obligation to answer any of my questions. Your help would however be most appreciated and could be crucial for the department in its work protecting all of Wizarding Britain.”
That last part felt sort of odd and pointed when directed at the prisoner - as if anyone thought that Draco Malfoy cared about ‘protecting all of Wizarding Britain’ - but it was very difficult to change these official-sounding speeches on the fly, especially after having spent hours drilling them into his mind in the first place. Either way there was nothing for it now. Might as well ignore that and move on to the relevant bit.
Leaning down to where he had placed it next to his chair, Ron opened the backpack he had brought with him - he hadn’t been about to try and fly a broom through a storm with the fancy leather briefcase he’d been issued as part of the Auror uniform - and pulled out a thin folder. Placing the folder on the cold metal table, he pulled out a single photograph.
“This,” he gestured to the photograph, where a girl of maybe eight, with a million freckles and brown hair in tousled braids, waved at the camera, “Is Sara Coleman. This Saturday evening, that is the 4th, she disappeared from her home in Norwich. Her parents contacted the D.M.L.E around midnight, having seen her to bed only about four hours earlier. The entire department mobilised and responded immediately - because of this.”
Ron slid a second photograph out onto the table. This one was black and white, hastily cut out of the front page of a newspaper - because of course the Daily Prophet had gotten the better picture. The reporters had looked so damn smug when they left the scene. Like they didn’t care what havoc those photographs would cause. Like they welcomed it. King especially. Though Ron was pretty sure Basira King always looked smug.
At least their photo was usable. On the cheap paper was printed the outline of a row of connected houses, comfortable but affordable family homes, the hill behind them and the sky above. In the sky, covering the majority of the image and standing out sharply against the starry night, was the shape of a skull. The serpent dangling out its mouth seemed almost to laugh at the camera.
“No,” since entering, Malfoy had been looking at him, in so much as that his eyes had been aimed in his general direction, but he hadn’t really seemed to be seeing him at all. Now his gaze was focused, completely, on the black and white image on the table in front of him. There was still no proper expression on his face, but the horror in the single syllable he’d managed to rasp out rather summed up the situation.
“No, “ Ron agreed, “Those aren’t supposed to be around anymore.”
He waited, to see if the other might have some further insight, but Malfoy simply kept staring at the photograph. Ron didn’t even see him blink, much less move to speak, and so he soldiered on.
“That was taken four days ago. By a reporter, because that’s just what we needed, and since then, everyone has been completely-” he searched for a more diplomatic expression, but couldn’t seem to find one, ”Off their heads. Nevermind the missing kid - people are crying Third Wizarding War and looking for dark wizards under their beds. And it’s certainly not helping matters that we haven’t got a single lead to be going off. Department’s brought in everyone with the slightest connection to anything dark. Spent bloody six hours yesterday questioning Nathaniel Borgin - as if that sly old man would be involved in something this obvious -”
Ron trailed off. He was rambling. At least Malfoy had finally looked up from the table. His eyes still wouldn’t fully meet Ron’s, but he was at least looking in the direction of his face, and seemed to have finally fully taken in that he was there.
“That said,” Ron forced himself back on track. “It would be a big help if we at least knew if this mark was the real deal, or the work of a copycat. Could calm people down a bit at least.”
This was the grand total and entire extent of Ron’s brilliant plan. They - here being the literal, entire D.M.L.E - had spent four days finding absolutely nothing, and so, Ron had thought, he might as well spend an evening flying out to Azkaban to check directly with the source. It really wasn’t as though he had anything better to do.
Given Malfoy had yet to do anything but stare at him so far, the chances of this turning out to be the fantastic break in the case he’d imagined were dwindling.
“So, what do you think - is it real?” he prompted, hoping, possibly rather against the odds, that all Malfoy needed was a little nudge.
“Can’t tell,” the rasping, disused voice managed, effectively crushing whatever little hope Ron had managed to hold on to - it felt vaguely nostalgic.
“Do you think somebody else in here could?” Ron ventured, not quite willing to give up just yet.
Out of everyone locked in the prison, Ron had decided to talk to Malfoy because he and his mother had been the most forthcoming during the trials, giving up names left and right. If he was honest, the fact that Malfoy was the least scary Death Eater of all time had also contributed to the choice. For that to work though, Ron had been banking on the idea that information about the Mark would be basic stuff, the sort of thing they taught in Evil 101. If it wasn’t, he was willing to dig deeper - even talk to one of the properly creepy ones.
“No-one could tell,” Malfoy reiterated, once again grinding Ron’s hopes and dreams to dust. He even almost managed to sound sort of haughty about it. “Not from a photograph. Would have had to have been there. Felt it.”
Ron let his head drop backwards, slumping down in the chair and shifting his eyes up to the ceiling. Still dark and damp, by the way. He thought Kingsley might have said something to that effect, but he’d sort of ignored it in favour of holding on to some semblance of a plan.
A not so brilliant one after all. Lewis was going to be unbearable.
He wasn’t a terrible partner, Samuel Lewis. A bit stiff and formal, traditional, always snippy about the way things used to be done, but not terrible. It was just that, for most of his life, Ron had had a partner, two of them in fact, who were absolutely amazing. Being stuck with acceptable after having - what was it the Prophet called them? - the Golden Trio, was a bitter pill to swallow. Ron wished, well.
He wished for a lot of things.
It was time to head back. At least everyone was sleeping at the office at the moment, so his avoiding his empty little flat wouldn’t stand out so much.
On the other side of the table, Malfoy spoke up again, snapping Ron rudely out of his wallowing. “You should have felt it too, taking it down.”
Ron flipped his head back up, giving the wizard on the other side of the table his best questionmark-look. The one that always got Hermione to slow down and repeat what she’d been saying in regular old English.
“ Morsmordre ,” Malfoy said, hoarse voice echoing off the stone around them. It made Ron’s skin crawl. It must hurt, for it to sound like that. “Can only be cast by the Marked. There is a little of him in it, and it fights, when you try to take it down. You feel it.”
They had been six Aurors together, taking it down. Ron, Lewis and four others. It hadn’t been procedure, but they had been the first to get there, and they had all agreed they needed it gone. The Mark had fought them, violently.
It had felt a lot like the locket, weaker, but the same stomach churning anger and loathing. Like claws slipping into the soft parts of your mind.
“Problem is, how do we know a copycat couldn’t make a spell that would also fight back?”
Malfoy shrugged. Or at least moved his shoulders up and down minutely. Ron thought it counted as a shrug. “Magic leaves traces, signatures. Someone who had taken down a Mark before would recognise it.”
Lewis had never been anywhere near a Mark before, and Ron certainly hadn’t taken one down before this one. He might ask the others, but he didn’t think it would turn up anything - they were young, like him. They’d only lived through the second war, and in that one, there had been only hiding - nobody would have dared take down a Mark.
“Well, that’s not very helpful,” the Auror grabbed his folder and pushed himself out of his chair. That was probably a rude parting remark. Did it matter if he was rude? “I mean- Thank you for your cooperation, it's just well - it doesn’t really help since the people who took this Mark down hadn’t done it before.”
Still seated, Malfoy did that shoulder thing that was probably a shrug again. If Ron had turned a second faster, he would have missed the mumbled reply. As it was, he only heard the ending “- next time.”
Ron stared at Malfoy, who in turn gave no indication of any intention to explain that horrifying statement. “The hell do you mean ‘next time’?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” It could have been smug. Should have been smug. Ron remembered the faces of King and the other reporters. Of Slytherins from school. Instead, there was only the dead-eyed prisoner, rattling out facts. “Two options. Either you missed someone high enough in the Circle to carry a Mark, or somebody managed to create a fake one good enough to have the entire country in a panic.”
Malfoy paused, presumably waiting for some sort of reply, so Ron nodded.
“In that case, either there is a Death Eater on the loose who just declared themselves to the world, and if they are anything like the ones I know, they aren’t going to be able to stop at just one performance. If not, there is instead someone out there who put a substantial amount of effort into creating a rather impressive spell replica, and they wouldn’t have done that just for one kid - they will have more planned.”
“That’s-” Ron managed.
‘Return of the Dark Lord’ had been the Prophet headline. Even if they were wrong, even if this was only some low-ranking goon, or, better yet, a copy-cat - this was not a one-and-done crime. Whatever else this was, first and foremost, it was an announcement. A declaration of intent. Whoever was behind this, they had something spectacular planned, and they wanted all of Britain watching.
This was what the higher-ups spoke about in hushed voices, while Ron tuned them out to focus only on the one missing child.
Ron was a follower, he thought, when he was feeling charitable. He wasn’t a hero. A hero would be in Australia. A hero would be in a joke-shop in a secret alley in London. A hero would be uniting Wizarding Britain in its time of need.
The hero had died in the forbidden forest half a decade ago.
All Ron could do - could make himself do - was focus on the eight year old girl with the bright smile and the million freckles.
He turned about again, and walked out.