Chapter 57.1- Doom Days

XXXXXXXXXXX- NYMPHADORA TONKS

It was all she could do not to throw up as she walked into the house. All around her there were aurors, hit-wizards, and forensic specialists. It made the cramped quarters of the home the Boy-who-lived had grown up in all the more stifling. She chuckled into her mouth. To think she had believed like so many others that Harry Potter had grown up in a castle in Scotland built by the Founders close to Hogwarts, being taught by their ancient portraits magic that would make him fulfill his destiny as the next Merlin. What a joke. Instead, the Boy-Who-Lived had grown up in Surrey, with muggles of all things— people. Muggles were people she silently affirmed, trying not to allow the prevailing sentiment within the department get to her.

She heard the sound of wooden cane and flinched before he even called her name. “Tonks! Situation. What happened here?” He asked. He knew she had read the preliminary report as well as he had. They were far from the first aurors on the scene. In fact, the scene was near a day old at this point, kept fresh by stasis enchantments crucial to the department’s work.

“Some sort of message, Sir. Someone killed them, nailed them up like this and then shot up the Dark Mark. I think at least six or seven magical from how much magic was in the residue from initial scans.” She said, giving the information from the report and then her own prognosis. Mad-eye chuckled, his eponymous eye flickering this way and that.

“Too young to know this, I guess, but that is no excuse. Powerful dark wizards can leave traces that make it seem like there were more of them. So it could be six or seven wizards or it could be one extremely powerful one”

“You-know-who?” She asked, even feeling silly for saying the name. She trusted Dumbledore, of course she did. But this idea that you-know-who had somehow come back and only Harry Potter had seen him. She knew Potter as well as most who went to school with him did, he didn’t seem the sort to lie but then again why hadn’t he said anything in the immediate aftermath and allowed the Headmaster to bring it up during a vote that was apparently slated to not go in his favour? It was all too stinky.

“Precisely. I’d recognise this particular flavor of violence anywhere. Recognise anything about the positions of the dead muggles?”

“One on each end of the room and the third on the ceiling?” She asked. What was notable about that? Considering just what had been done to them, there wasn’t much real estate for placing them if the goal was to send a message.

“I wouldn’t expect young Nymphadora to notice such a thing, Alastor, In fact, I remember that you didn’t know about it until I told you about it back in— was it ’69?”

“’68. The murder of Bartholomew Abbott”