Chp 9: A Moonlit Walk

Location: London, Bank 

Date: November 2nd, 1990

Trainee auror Nymphadora Tonks walked past a muggle newspaper booth and nonchalantly for no particular reason decided to purchase one, flicking 50 pence to the newspaper man on her way to the ministry, Placing the newspaper awkwardly under her arm as she crunched into an apple with the other hand. Once she was done eating she threw the apple into the bin taking out the newspaper from under her arm, before looking at the front page, of that days edition of the Times newspaper it said:

"Conservatives Vote, Will it be success or ruin for John Major", thumbing through the articles as she walked, strangely page 7 caught her attention, "10 men reported missing in Wiltshire, suspected animal attack". Not ominous at all she thought.

Not quite knowing why she was so drawn to the article she forcibly put it out of her mind as she turned off the square near Bank tube station and walked into an empty side alley.

Coming onto a lonely red phone booth shadowed by the Bank of England, she entered, turned the phone dial to three then again to three and to three once more each time hearing as the dial slid back with a clatter.

Then with a loud click, on the third turn, the inside of the booth began to descend.

Thirty seconds later opening up to the grand green-tiled atrium of the Ministry of Magic. As she strode towards security nodding at them as they indicated for her to have her wand checked.

'Whack - fuck' she said as a staff rapped painfully against her knees, 'What the hell was that for'. She turned, seeing Moody grinning at her. 

'That's for not paying attention you clutz' said Moody with a smile, his magic eye spinning with it's usual paranoia in its socket. 

'Follow me' said Moody

Turning faster than an old handicapped man should had any right to, walking briskly away, towards the nearest flew, limping as little as he went.

'Two nights ago, there was a strange magical fluctuation reported by the Misuse of Magic Department. The rumour is that a sensor none of them had ever seen before went off. Apparently, they even had to rifle through all the boxes in the department's storeroom before they found it to shut it off, no one had seen it before, but after checking it they told us to check around Wiltshire, they seemed to think it was a false positive, as none of the other active sensors noticed anything outside the normal, but we still need to check to make sure'.

'Wait' said Tonks 'there was some animal attack reported in Wiltshire last night, you think that might be related?' 

'That's not good news hopefully it's not some magical beast I don't want to tangle with a nundu or a dragon wondering around the woods ' Moody said, 'But you might be onto something, I was wishing this was just more ministry incompetence'.

They both threw their flew powder stepping through.

----

Appearing in a bellow of green flame from an overgrown flew covered in muggle-repelling wards, in a secluded part of Devises, Moody, and Tonks apparated to a police station near to Savernake Forest. 

It took most of the day to catch a police officer on his own, but after they did they interrogated the man in one of the observation rooms, finding out two key pieces of information.

One there was in fact a survivor of the supposed animal attack and two, the polices investigation had been put on hold due to storm Delilah which was moving through the valley forcing them to delay recovery of more bodies and a more detailed search of the area. 

'Obliviate' said Moody his wand pointed at the police officer's head. 

 'You don't feel bad taking someone's memories' asked Tonks. 

'Not for a while' Moody replied 'I would have to come back every day for a week for him to end up stupid.'

'Thats not the point' said Tonks, but Moody ignored her walking away from the man.

'Now that's dealt with we have some investigating to do, Tonks if you want to have a look around the forest, I'm going to go check on the survivor in hospital'.

'In a storm, seriously' said Tonks visibly peeved off and pouting as she looked out at the pouring rain, hair flashing to the colour red. 

'You want an old, crippled man to walk through a forest at night. When you are my age you can make a wide-eyed trainee walk through a forest for you, but until then, hop to', he said gruffly. 

Tonks shook her head somewhat used to Moody's aggravating personality and thus decided it was best not to push the issue further.

She stepped quickly out from the cover of the police station door, before apparating to the boundary of the woods to begin her search.

----

'Point me dead bodies' she intoned huddled under her cloak as the rain bit at her, holding her wand out in the palm of her hand. She watched as it swivelled around, left then right before finally spinning to a stop, pointing towards the east wobbling as if it was attached to a tensioned line. Having found her heading she tightened her cloak as the wind picked up looking longingly at the horizon as the last rays of an orange sunset disappeared.

Biting the bullet she unshrunk her auror-issued "clean sweep" broom, which she then mounted, kicking off and started to gain speed on as she rose into the air skimming just over the treetops.

She flew for a few minutes before the wand in her hand swivelled to the reverse. Circling around carefully she slowly descended between the thick foliage which made up the forest ceiling.

The descent unfortunately for Tonks wasn't especially graceful as she swallowed half the leaves in the way down spitting the pine needles out of her mouth.

'ppppphhhh'.

Acquired in the process of going through the branches. She drew her wand back using it to push the final branch beneath her out the way, struggling to make out anything in the gloom.

Even aided as she was by the occasional lightning strike which barely registered through the thick canopy.

'Lumos Maxima' she softly spoke.

Light poured from the tip of her wand stripping away the darkness.

Exposing the scene.

'Squuiiiiccckkk'

Letting out a girly scream she dodged away on her broom from a long rope of guts that had begun to sway toward her broom. Stabilizing she stated horrified below at a scene beyond any horror movie ever made, even with two days of rain pushing the majority of blood and viscera into nearby streams and most of the bodies having already been removed by police.

Landing she threw up in her mouth, staring at the nearby headless corpse fallen by the foot of a massive yew tree some way from the main concentration of a settled blood tornado. 

Pushing down her vomit, she examined the scene. It looks like a freight train went through here she thought; what animal could have done? Tonks observed that body parts and bloody remains stretched out in a line across the clearing. They were running away from something. 

Looking at the broken trees off to one side she trudged carefully toward it through the clearing making a special effort to step in the least bloody spots.

Reaching it she looked up at the tree which was missing it's too half half, it didn't snap the middle section was pulvirised into splinters.

A dragon she thought but even then it still wouldn't splinter like that and there'd be more obvious signs of fire damage. 

A degree of fear setting in she followed the tracks back, ending up by a set of weirdly colourful deck chairs with a few candles' half submerged in the muddied ground, near the waterlogged remains of a record player covered in a thick layer of leaves.

Talking to herself out loud, as she picked over the only chair left standing, 'So a meeting in the woods gone wrong, but what happened by the amount of chairs there were at least five to ten of them'. 

Visually the scene offered no more information to her so turning to her magic'.

'Appare Vestigium' she intoned her wand aloft straight, before drawing it around her body in a circle, casting a modified tracking spell. 

Around her traces of magic appeared to her eyes showing up in faint golden streams denoting a large body of people converging here, which then seemed to stream away like a fast-flowing river out of sight. Even muggles produced some magic trace though if it wasn't enough to use magical tools like a wand or broom. But what was curious was the void or absence of magic which still hadn't returned to the space above. It's shadow traceable over the tree line and towards the location of the massacre. 

Looking the other way she identified the direction where it seemed to have initially come from.

Following it's path from the ground she saw the shadowy path in the magic come to the ground in front of her as she strode through the thick tree trunks lining the holloway. 

Passing through some bushes, her breath hitched in her throat, because straight ahead of her was a tall pyramid of bones. Stumbling back, she took a moment to look at the pile. 

There must be hundreds of skulls here, she thought dear Merlin, we're going to have to get the unspeakables on this

Turning quickly away as the hairs on the back of her neck stood on end she decided it was high time to leave, walking quickly away from the horrid art installation and back towards her broom which she had leaned up against a nearby tree in the new clearing she had found the pile.

As she swung one leg over, she saw one of the skulls shifting before tumbling with a loud clatter to the ground. 

'WHO did that, is anyone there' she said looking around her voice strained trying to hide the uncomfortable feeling nagging at her.

'…' 

Another skull rolled down 'oh no' she thought something's in there.

But before she thought to get out of there another skull fell revealing a muddied mass of brown hair.

'Holy is someone alive' she said casting 'Hominum Revelo'.

The now exposed head lit up indicating to her shock that the person was alive, but the colour was off, something she didn't pay attention to as she rushed forward to help the person.

'Wingardium Leviosa' with a swish and a flick the skulls rose around the figure now clearly the mangled form of a mud and blood-soaked child'.

'Expecto patronunum'

She summoned a modified version of her jack rabbit patronus before turning and speaking to it.

'Moody I've got a child here he looks injured, I'll be bringing him in to St Mungos so tell them to prepare a bed, unfortunately he's unconscious so I'm going to have make a number of jumps to get there; off you go' she said to her patronus which ran off into the night through the air towards Moody five miles to the south.