Aurors: The Fist of Mars

The Calendar

It was very uncomfortable for Brynja to go about her investigation alongside a man she suspected of murder, but not strange. Actually, there was a comforting familiarity about holding a secret, oddly mixed with the tinge of anxiety that at any moment that secret would be snatched from her and exposed.

Was Proudfoot the hunter? Did they have much proof? He had access to the list, if he went snooping on her desk. He had motive, but so did many others. Greyback had done a lot of damage across the United Kingdom. Surely her partner wasn't the only one who could be driven to murder. Still, with Gray and Robards, she didn't trust that an auror must be above that motive.

Proudfoot had brought a cup of tea for the watch wizard placed on the door to Bracken Attaway's home. Attaway, the potion master, wasn't speaking since his arrest on Friday night.

"Today is house-tossing day," Proudfoot said, cheerfully. "Toss Gray's house. Toss Attaway's house. When at loss for where to look, turn up the drawers and cut open the mattress."

"You enjoy this?" Brynja asked, picking up a stack of letters by the window. "Rummaging through suspects' things?"

Proudfoot shrugged. "It's like an Easter egg hunt. Find the clues!"

Brynja set the letters down and crossed to Attaway's desk. It was piled with potion books and a quarterly journal featuring academic writings about new uses for ingredients. Brynja found a half-finished letter there, and she scanned the writing with a scowl.

"Why so down, Dunstan?" Proudfoot asked as he pulled up the sofa cushions.

"This man didn't write the letter to the newspaper. He's smart, but not a wordsmith. 'I hope to see you Sunday. We must have breakfast. I do miss your scotch eggs. I have been dreaming about them.' It's so... stilted. All simple sentences. He didn't write the manifesto."

Proudfoot dropped the cushion and came to read the letter. "Yup," he said with a nod. "Guy is certainly not a poet. Not that the manifesto was Shakespeare, but... this is rubbish."

"Attaway couldn't pull that off," Brynja said, looking for any other samples of his writing. "To make that garbage about justice seem like reason."

"You didn't find any reason in it?" Proudfoot asked.

"Shacklebolt is cleaning things up. Calling in a... well a witch hunt..."

Proudfoot laughed at the phrasing. "How muggle of you, Dunstan."

"What they propose won't work. No mercy, no justice."

"You're okay with making deal with death eaters?"

Brynja thought about that for a moment while Proudfoot set to searching the desk for hidden caches. There were a few people she certainly wanted to stay behind bars, but... "If a fisherman catches a fingerling, it won't make a very good meal. But if he uses it as bait, he might catch something bigger."

"You think there are bigger fish to fry than Lucius Malfoy?"

"Perhaps not in the first war, but by the time Voldemort came to power this time," she said, hesitating, having almost said 'The Dark Lord' as a habit from her days under cover. "By the time he came to power, he already was very displeased with Lucius. The Malfoys were kept around like pets, constantly living in terror. He probably would have killed them as an example if it wouldn't have been bad politics to kill the baby sister of his most devote follower.

"But Lucius would have been top brass if he could have," Proudfoot said.

"Perhaps, but we can't have a justice system built on intention, can we?" Brynja said. And with her final word, Proudfoot popped loose a panel on the back of a drawer.

"Boom! Pay day."

Proudfoot pulled a little black book from the drawer and flipped it open to the middle. "It's a day planner."

"A hidden day planner? What's upcoming?"

"Nothing this week—ah here. Halloween we have an engagement. Symbol for Mars. Eight o'clock. Puddlemere. And a street address. Why are criminals so stupid?"

"The nephew of Damocles Belby rather thought he was a genius."

"Maybe at brewing, but not at crime." He snapped the book shut. "Excellent. We have them! Granted they don't change their meeting."

Brynja looked at the address. "Either way, we've got their host. That address is residential."

"You know it?"

Brynja nodded. "It's two houses down from my friend, Oliver."

"Hmm, then we have the homeowner." Proudfoot scowled. "Let's hope he sings."