Edgar has retired his stilettos. FOR NOW. (goodoldbones) wrote in find_horcruxes, @ 2009-10-28 00:37:00 |
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Since Gavin Avery's death, the Auror office had been a whirlwind of investigations. Ed had dibs the most important of those immediately, grabbing the casefile on the suspected leak before anyone else could get their hands on it. He'd been sharing the information with Alastor (though the other man was certainly keeping himself busy), and with Sturgis, but he'd named Frank the second on it. The Avery investigation had perhaps ended badly, but the research itself had gone smoothly and efficiently. Frank was an asset. The younger man was on his way up the ladder within the department and Ed was happy to provide every opportunity he could to keep Frank on that track. They'd been conducting interviews on the floor since shortly after it all happened (after they'd both had the opportunity to calm down, Ed supposed). Going on Marlene McKinnon's input regarding King's Cross, they'd made Barty Crouch's son their main subject. Up until today the evidence they'd compiled hadn't been decisive one way or another. But this morning Edgar had overheard two other interns speculating as to the young man's health, commenting on how he'd looked peaky since he'd been sick on the day Gavin Avery died. Having been missing for, as far as Ed and Frank could pinpoint, roughly thirty to forty minutes all told, Barty Junior being sick all day could have ruled out his being responsible. But the young lady, a Miss Melvina Burroughs, had said that he'd been the most ill after they'd found Gavin's body. So then he'd sent a memo to Frank. They needed to cross reference their testimonies again. Backtrack. Frank was ready for a break. People - civilians, mostly - expected that the Aurors would be able to solve cases and figure everything out overnight, not really understanding just how much they had to do to get anywhere at all. Cases took time and this wasn't just any case. A leak in the department that was supposed to be protecting everyone? That was a damn big deal and while that meant that it should be solved even faster than normal, that made it even more delicate. They couldn't fuck it up. Which was why Frank had been cheered up by the memo that he received from Edgar. Anything that might mean that they were going to figure something out seemed fan-fucking-tastic to him. So, right on time, he knocked once on the door to Edgar's office before letting himself in. He was expected, after all, so he thought that would be all right. "Afternoon," he greeted with a nod, the door coming to a close behind him. "Frank," Ed nodded in greeting, gesturing to the empty seat across from him before launching right into it. "Talked to one of the interns this morning. She says that Crouch was throwing up all over the place after we found Avery. I couldn't find where we had him MIA," he added, rustling through the pile of papers on his desk again for the eighth time. "You talked to the secretary, she was the one who said she figured he must of went straight to Columbia for his coffee run?" "That's right," Frank agreed with a nod, taking the seat and following Edgar's lead in getting right down to business. His brow furrowed just a bit on his forehead and his arms crossed in front of him. "Can't quite see him doing that if he was busy throwing up all over the loo - or wherever they found him getting sick." "I'm thinking that that was after," Edgar said thoughtfully, pushing forward the notes he'd taken that morning so Frank could read them. "I'd say that first he went on his 'coffee run', right after we'd brought Avery in and got him situated, once word got around. Things got crazy fast. He showed up again before we found the body, disappeared again, then next we hear, he's getting sick. Why." Frank slouched back into his chair, his hands folding over his stomach as he thought that one over. The only rational reason that he could think of was food poisoning from a bad coffee, but he knew full well that wasn't the case. There were too many coincidental disappearances for it to be something as simple as that. While a part of him was still having a hard time fathoming Barty Crouch Jr as being the leak, he was having a harder time not finding him completely innocent. "I don't know," he finally admitted, reaching up to push his fingers through his hair. "It's all too fucking coincidental. There's gotta be more that we're not seeing." "Yeah. Makes it more suspicious rather than ruling out the possibility completely," Edgar agreed. "All right. Let's think like he's the leak. He's in the office. He hears or sees that Avery's being brought in. If he's a death eater, he'll know one way or another whether Avery was one for sure. He goes and leaks the information, as is his fucking specialty. Someone on his side says, I don't know. Get rid of him. So Barty Junior needs to devise a quick plan. Kill Avery, don't get caught." Frank nodded, his fingertips coming to meet in front of him. A good question was just how he had leaked said information, but that wasn't the biggest concern at that very second. Instead, he suggested, "Memory charms on those that saw him? No, that just wouldn't work unless he managed everyone in the damn Ministry." He paused, then pointed out, "Y'know, if he's getting himself all sick after it all happened, there could have been some kind of potion involved." Edgar cocked his head to the side. "Now that's a thought. If he's trying not to associate himself with the death, chances are he'd take any measure to ensure that no one can go 'hey, you know who I saw in that hallway?' or what have you. Though really, in that case it's only polyjuice, and he was seen again immediately after. He wouldn't have had time to let it wear off on its own." "That's right," Frank replied slowly, nodding. He tapped his fingers together a few times. "He'd probably have some of it stored up anyway if he's been doing this for a while. Or he'd be able to get hold of some through his death eating buddies." "Right. So he takes a swig to become Mr DMLE Anonymous, then takes it again to become himself while he's still someone else," Edgar surmised. "Thus, vomiting. On four or five occasions, according to Miss Burroughs, who apparently thinks that young Barty is quite the dashing specimen indeed. Even when he's green." Edgar paused, screwing up his face. "All right. So Junior's double-dipping in the cauldron. He kills Avery, gets back to himself, feels the aftereffects of overdosing on potent potions... how do we feasibly connect this back to him? Was there anything left in the holding cell or was that stripped bare? Might have to relinquish that report and double-check, though I don't remember anything noteworthy." "I can't remember anything, no," Frank replied, pinching the bridge of his nose as he breathed out a sigh. Sometimes he couldn't help but think that it really was too bad that they could just point fingers and had to show evidence against someone in order for them to bring them in. "I think it's worth double-checking the report, though. Something might look different from this view." Edgar nodded, reading for a sheet of his department stationary. "Right. I'll file the request now and hopefully the file will be sitting in my inbox in the morning, or someone's getting yelled at." He scribbled his request down and then tapped it with his wand, watching as it folded itself up into a paper plane before taking off and heading out the pulled back window above Edgar's door. "I'm going to try and scribble out a timeline. You want to go have a chat with some more of the interns, see if they remember anything unusual about that day beyond the obvious, Junior or otherwise?" "Will do," Frank agreed with a nod, sitting up again in the chair with his elbows resting on his knees. "I'll see if I can get anything more out of Miss Burroughs, too, but I can't promise I won't turn green myself if she starts talking about how dashing he is." "I wouldn't hold it against you," Edgar said with a bit of a wry smile. "He might be all right on the surface, but if this shit we've just talked about has any grain of truth to it--fucking hell, what did Crouch do to him as a child? You've got to be in a weird fucking place to sell out the Department of Magical Law Enforcement when your father's the head of the damn thing." "My theory is that he didn't get enough hugs," Frank replied, matching Edgar's wry smile with one of his own. It might not have been right to joke about something like that, but it really couldn't be helped. Besides, it was Edgar - he could get away with that sort of shite with Edgar. "Either that or Crouch never let him have sweets. I think that they're both nice and likely." "'Be stingy on the hugs and your kid will become a Death Eater,'" Edgar recited with amusement. "That needs to be on a poster somewhere, for the greater good and all that. Really explains why the purists are so keen on You Know Who's vision for the world. Not enough hugs. Someone should hug You Know Who himself and then we wouldn't have anything to deal with." "Really, all You-Know-Who needs is a bit of chocolate and a nice, strong Cheering Charm and this whole mess would be done and over with," Frank replied, unable to keep from grinning. "You know, if someone could get close enough to him to cast said cheering." "That is the challenge..." Edgar said, unable to stop a mental image of Frank chasing after some great lump of billowing black cloak, shouting the incantation for cheering charms with vehemence. He laughed then. "Sweet Circe, Frank. I can't help but be glad that part of the reason my wife married me was become I'm a little bit loony. Otherwise I don't know that I wouldn't walk around with a stick jammed up my arse." Frank laughed, sitting up in his chair. "Yeah, Alice has been damn aware of the fact that I'm as loony as they come since I was seventeen, so I reckon that we'll be just fine. And, you know, she pretends she's all sane, but she's as they come." That might have been stretching it just a bit. Really, it didn't take a lot of figuring to realize who the nutter in their relationship was. As he was laughing at Frank's remark, Edgar caught the clock on the wall. 2:50. He had another bleeding meeting about the guard detail (what in fuck now, pray tell) with McKinnon and Crouch at quarter past and he really ought to figure out where he left the damn case log. "Fuck. I've got more masquerade bullshit to deal with in a bit here, Frank. I hate to kick you out, but come back in the morning when I've got the paperwork on the holding cell and we'll run over this clusterfuck again?" "I've got things I oughta be doing anyway," Frank replied nonchalantly, flashing a smirk at Edgar as he pulled himself to his feet. "Y'know, like painting my nails and all that shite. Real important." That was the sort of thing he really ought to just leave for Sturgis to make up about him, but Frank figured that it worked well. Everyone needed a laugh now and again, especially with all the fucked up shite that they had to deal with. "So you have yourself a fun meeting." "Oh you know, tea and crumpets with the muggle queen," Edgar said sarcastically, the expression on his face suggesting he'd almost rather drown himself than sit through another discussion about tactics on something that had been covered eight-hundred times already. He wanted to be thorough on the detail too, but going over it obsessively wasn't going to do anything but make them more uneasy about the whole thing. "Do purple. It'll bring out the blue in your eyes." "Got it," Frank agreed with a grin, giving one more nod before slipping out of the office. He paused a moment to think about how nice it really would be if all he had to do was go and paint his nails - not that that was something he actually wanted to do. Instead, he breathed out a sigh. It was time to talk to some interns. |