At the end of the fair

The careers fair had been a hubbub of activity with plenty of traffic back and forth from students and the wide variety of strange visitors and their 'respectable' careers.

The students would have to grow up a few more years before they could contemplate coming back to teach, so between a patrol of the common rooms and nearby classrooms, and the fair, Professor Storm had hounded any reluctant attendees in. He had given a homework to all the fifth, sixth and seventh years he taught, to attend and write two feet on their visits to the stalls that involved use of defensive magic.

Now the end of the day was nigh, and there were really only a few students lingering to talk to some of the stands and to see if there were any freebies left. Some of the stalls had already begun to pack up their things, talking amongst their little groups and with neighbouring businesses about the day.

He found his route around the room led him to the MLE booth, which he'd entered a little earlier in the day but not engaged with much owing to the number of students who had been pouring over a body in the middle of it, trying to diagnose the cause of death.

"Successful day?" He addressed two rather familiar faces, Trevelyan and Radley, before looking down at the corpse with mild interest. He had no real wish to make a suggestion on the cause of death, it looked somewhat fictitious and flamboyant in comparison to the usual deaths, exempting the one he knew a far bit about now.

The remaining students in and around the booth scuttled on seeing him, and also due to the look he fixed on them. They had now overstayed their welcome, and he didn't want an audience.

"Do you have a little time before you leave?" He asked them both, looking back at them again, satisfied the students were gone. "I believe you've had the lion's share of the visitors today, but your time will be worthwhile."

Archer was glad the career fair was winding down.  It was like an unending stream of students for whole day, which wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it was like everyone and their cousin wanted to be an auror.  It was a highly selective program, not everyone could do it, but it was hard to throw a bucket of water on the flame of hope some kids. 

There were, of course, a couple promising looking ones, but Archer was fully aware sometimes the unassuming ones could be a complete surprise.  Eyes had been that way, and he had a considerable liking for the kid and no one would have anticipated that coming into the corps. 

Putting his hands on his lower back, Archer stretched a little and was about to suggest they return the false corpse back to its original training state (the training bodies were so useful) when he noticed a flurry of movement away from the booth and then the slow, but steady approach of a figure that didn’t necessarily surprise the auror.  His stoic expression was even expected.

Shrugging at his question, Archer moved his hands from his back to his pockets and mulled his mouth.  “Drew in an impressive crowd.  Just waiting for the welcoming committee to give us our check for winning biggest draw of the day,” he smirked, but somehow, despite a lack of shift in Storm’s facial expression, things got a little more serious. 

For some reason, it instantly clicked what the man was referring to and he looked to Jonas.  “I think we’ve got a bit of time,” he shifted his eyes to look at another one of the DMLE members that was milling about the booth.  “Think you can handle this?” he told more than asked, but still put the inflection in his voice enough that maybe made it a question.  But, thankfully the minion got the idea and started to pack things up.

“I’m assuming this isn’t the place though,” Archer raised his eyebrows and strolled out of the booth, despite wanting to march out as quickly as possible to see what he was talking about.   

"Probably not, no." The Professor agreed, pleased the two aurors instinctively latched on to what he wished to discuss.

"Would you mind if we went up to my office?" In comparison to how he had initially greeted the aurors when they had asked for his assistance on their earlier visit, he was being perfectly pleasant to them.

Together he led the way through the crowd, the only discussion between them was in regards to the careers fair, so as not to draw too much undue attention. The exchanges were short, and to the point - talking casually with aurors would arouse just as much attention.

Students chattered enough as he led them up the staircases and down the corridors to the classroom, and through to his office.

"Take a seat." He uttered, and prodded the little kettle in the corner with his wand before crouching behind his desk to release the bottom drawer of his desk which was warded to protect the contents of the research from the weeks previous.

"Forgive the time it has taken, gentlemen, I was as thorough as I could be in ruling out other possibilities and scenarios. Unfortunately teaching does rather get in the way of productive research and the slaughtering of animals." The kettle whistled, and his wand lifted once more to bring it to the desk where it began to fill the teapot.

"I believe I have as accurately as possible recreated the spells required to invert a living being, as per your corpses." He turned round the notes so they could see, and a set of wizard photographs fell out of various sheep and cow carcasses on grass, mostly taken in the dark, or what seemed like early morning light. Each were dated on the back with a brief note in the Professor's jagged handwriting. As the dates became closer to present day the results were far more refined, some of the earlier attempts had burst open or torn.

"There is one matter troubling me," He added as the teapot finished self-stirring and the aurors were engaged in studying the photographs.

"I'm not entirely convinced there was something else at work, that was not wand magic. Also, why haven't you found a pattern of attempts, much like I have had to perform?" He wondered if the strange reports had got back to MLE from the surrounding area of Godric's Hollow, or that his use of magic up in the farmers' fields had been spotted[1].



Edit:

There were many questions, but they fell to Archer and Jonas as the aurors with the authority to investigate. As much as the research and the request had intrigued Ignan, he did after all have his own concerns what with a castle full of teenagers, oddball staff, a foreign tournament and matters of his own blood to take care of. He was not as young as he had been when he had played this game.

So as he explained his findings and discussed further with the aurors, as much as he felt like he was returning to old habits and even daresay, enjoying himself, he was somewhat glad that the responsibility for the resolution did not fall to him.


End

1.	It is Madness for Sheep to Talk Peace with a Wolf