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Three figures -- two red-robed, one in a black uniform -- apparated to the grounds in front of the Lilly Lakehouse, a name that conjured images of a holiday cottage tucked by a placid lake.

Fauna looked up, and up, and further up still, eyes widening at the gray, gloomy manor that jutted into the cloudy sky and sprawled out like an acromantula, its spires sharp as angled legs. Its many eyes were the blown out windows, its body the crumbling, blackened walls of stone. Scorched stones and bricks flattened the grass at the base of the manor. The owlery loomed tall and massive from the center of the house, but it had suffered the worst of the damage, its windows expanded and gouged out from within. That was the head. The head of the spider, wearing a spire of a hat that tilted to one side.

She'd seen a photo and had an idea of what to expect. Facing it in person, with the rain drizzling on her head and the wind whipping her hair, she felt as small as the hoof prints churning the earth near her feet.

Fauna took a breath, and slowly turned, scanning the land around them. Trees framed the wide lake to the west. Squinting, Fauna could just make out the large island Abby Reid had mentioned Lori apparating to and from.

To the north, the woods curved around the grounds, shadowed and quiet, and Fauna caught a whiff of pine and moss underneath the burnt smell of the house.They didn't need to lock us up, Abby had said more than once, and Fauna had read the words in the report and felt badly for the squib. She felt how true they were now, turning back to face the manor. 

Though clouds darkened the sky, Fauna saw no trace of fog, or as she understood it since Thursday, pentrals[1]. IDREAD had driven away the dementors and broken through the two thick magical barriers cutting through the woods. Once on the grounds, the initial response teams had battled a magical, blazing fire engulfing the house. Unlike the rest of the teams chasing the dementors across the countryside, they'd faced more danger from the leaping flames and billowing smoke. When they cleared the smoke and snuffed out the last flame, they discovered the slaughter. Several horses and unicorns scattering the grounds. Dozens of owls, as if struck from the sky. And the boy, Abby's friend, found inside.

Inside, reports suggested that they'd find a foyer with a double grand staircase leading to two upper stories, and more stairs leading to the owlery above. Around the foyer clustered a pair of parlors, several sitting rooms, and a formal living room. The back of the manor had the kitchens and a walled garden courtyard. To the east, a ballroom, and a sealed tower filled with potions. To the west, the windowless gallery, where they'd found the Lilly's adopted son, Calix.

The massive front doors creaked in the wind, the wood splintered and blackened, the round owl knocker singed. Not it, Fauna thought, resisting a shudder. She glanced at Trevelyan and Gamp beside her, still grateful that they'd invited her to tag along, and trying to swallow her unease. Trainees were a bit like baby vultures, an Auror had told her once. They swooped in fast, then startled at the gruesomeness of death, retreating to huddle under the red wings of their elders.

But it was just a house. Houses were made of brick and mortar and stone, not blood and bone.

"Trainees first?" Fauna stepped forward with her wand out, offering the old, tired joke like a limp handshake.

1.

On Hand

This was a world that had ended in fire.  Even now, days after the cataclysm that had brought the Lillys' reign to a sudden end, the smell of burned wood and ash still wafted through the air, made stronger when a burst of wind struck from the right direction.  The rain pattered around them, beating a light pattern against their cloaks that grew steadily stronger.

Although Jonas felt like he knew the grounds by now, after several days trying to put the pieces together and hours spent pouring over the maps and records recreated by the IDREAD team, it was his first visit to the manor itself.  They'd come here to learn more about the mysteries that surrounded the two Lilly siblings.  Although the Ministry had some meager records of Lori Lilly, what few references Jonas could find seemed to imply that she had likely been a Squib.  She'd never attended Hogwarts; never purchased a wand.  Up until a few years prior, her few neighbors had known her as a reclusive, private woman who had lived alone.  But then Lori's brother Lee had come out of the woodwork -- another figure with no real record and no evidence that he had attended Hogwarts -- and the two Lillys had filed to adopt Calix, the Squib boy who'd become Abby's friend during her captivity.

Somehow, over the years, the two mysterious Lilly siblings had begun to dabble in capturing what Lawrence Musgrave had referred to as pentrals, souls or spirits seemingly torn from the body.  They'd held them captive in glass cages, pictures and mirrors, until Abby and Calix had unknowingly wreaked their revenge.  Now, the pentrals had scattered across the countryside, creating a headache that was luckily Level Nine's to deal with as they seemed to latch on to unsuspecting wixes, infiltrating their beings.

They'd braved the rain and come today, he and Gamp and Blake, to see if they could find out more.  Even with their manor destroyed, there had yet to be any sign of the Lillys.  He had no intention of letting them disappear to the winds, like a pentral escaping from its imprisonment.

He inclined his head to Blake as she offered to go first, his attention more on the looming building before them than on the trainee.  Eager and willing, she certainly was. 

"Be careful," he cautioned her.  "Just because IDREAD hasn't tripped anything doesn't mean there's not still some sort of dark magic still about."

Andromeda Gamp was a bit of an unknown quality, even after the two years that he'd been back at Level Two.  They hadn't had cause to partner together much, and he still wasn't sure how he felt about the Auror whose parents had wreaked such atrocities on the kidnapped Hogwarts students back in February.  Jonas glanced at her, eyebrow raised, as if to check her opinion on what to do next.

"Let's head up to the portrait gallery first, unless you lot have another idea?" he proposed to them both.  "I'd like to take a look at the remains of the magic there."

The photos had prepared them. This hellish scene reminded Andromeda of February. It was greater. The smell and the sight worse in person. At least dementors were gone. This place was black enough. They boy squib lived his last here. Calix. When the fire was out they found him and all the dead owls. A lot of stuff did not properly add up. Nothing ever did. They needed more data. Andromeda was alert. She could hear mice.

"Agreed." Auror Gamp said. The portrait gallery was on the west and where Calix was found. It was a source of magic Abby Reid said. It would help them work out what they needed to find. 

"We should also look carefully at their personal quarters." Andie suggested. "I would split up and begin but traps..." Andromeda looked around them. They had been burned and worse this year. The Almasy raid would be cautionary tale for the rest of her career.

Wands drawn they walked through the foyer. Everything was smoke damaged. It smelled. Andie had a map in her robes. She had attempted to memorize the layout. If something happened they could get out fast. "It is through the drawing rooms here." She pointed. She lit her wand using Lumos Maxima. She led the way.

They passed through gilded doors. The soot made them dull. Their feet left footprints in the dirt. The long gallery was a wreck. Frames were at wild angles. Some on the floor. Glass crunched under Andie's boots from the broken mirrors. It sparkled in the bright light from her wand. She sent it upwards.

Fauna understood and appreciated the caution of the other Aurors. She would not be surprised if a creepy house like this held traps, or hid things that went bump in the patter of the rain. Fauna gladly followed Gamp past the drawing rooms and the library, agreeing in a murmur that it would be best to stick together.

She'd try not to step on their heels.

Through the gilded gallery doors, Fauna encountered their first traps, though they were broken, scattered frames not meant for humans. A few unlit sconces dotted their way. The light of Gamp's wand illuminated the wide halls, the gray stone floors, and the walls, dusted in soot and ash. A curled, coiled pattern swept up the walls in rows, and it took Fauna a moment to realize that underneath the damage of the fire, the walls and ceiling were papered in a black damask.

"Lumos," Fauna lit her own wand, letting out a sigh of relief at the simple presence of light. As she raised her wand, she heard an echo of a sigh.

She paused. She held a hand up to her mouth, feeling her warm breath on her fingers.

Trailing after the two Aurors, Fauna's wand shifted light onto the destroyed portraits, highlighting pieces here and there. Out of the corner of her eye, a torn flap of canvas rippled on the floor. A piece of glass cracked near her boots.

She paused again, inadvertently lowering her wand. The noises stopped. Glancing at the Aurors, Fauna opened her mouth, then shut it. She was hearing her own breath bouncing off the walls, and her own boots, crunching glass. The canvas had moved because mice infested the house, taking shelter wherever they could find it.

Hold it together, Fauna.

Her hand grazed the splintered wooden frame around a photograph. A flimsy thing. How had it captured such dark magic?

Peering closer at the ripped image, she spotted the faintest traces of a sepia stain. The long grasses and flowers of the landscape swayed to one side, still as a muggle photo. There was no sun, no clouds, no birds or pests. The side of a cottage hung on the ripped edge of the photo, the most solid thing left behind.

In the center, a hazy white outline hovered, its curves similar to the damask pattern on the walls.

But no, that was the figure of a person. Wasn't it?

Hearing the Aurors' footsteps ahead, Fauna hurried to catch up, looking at the more intact portraits as she passed. There, the bleached outline of a figure leaned against a shop in a dark alley. In another, a mirror held a chalky stain.

Fauna cleared her throat so as not to startle Gamp and Trevelyan.

"It looks like there are traces of figures in the portraits," she said in a hushed voice. "Blotted white."

She pointed at a canvas hanging off the wall, the light of her wand making her face ghostly, and her hair dark as the walls.

Here they stood in the midst of it, in the middle of destruction wrought by two desperate, hopeless teens. 

Children, almost-Aileen had called them, reflecting on the rampage that had freed her from her glass prison.  They were destroying things, like children do.

Standing in the remains of the portrait gallery, he could imagine the event more clearly.  Laughing and loud, but angry.  After their long imprisonment, Abby and Calix had been convinced that they would die that day, once Lori Lilly returned to the Lakehouse.  It had been the boy's seventeenth birthday, the day that the protective charm would finally release him from its watchful guard.  And so the teens had come to this place, to destroy the one thing that they knew mattered to their captors. 

To make a statement.  To shout to the world that they were there. 

They'd gone after the portraits and mirrors, to cause pain where they could.  In doing so, they'd broken through the glass and enchantments that held the pentrals as prisoners.  The spirits had come swarming out of their glass cages, forming a living, shrieking fog.  Somehow the fire had started, and Lee Lilly had apparated in to confront the teens.

It made fury rise like a fire inside him, the thought of the two teenagers kept captive and helpless for so long.  Of all the souls held prisoner inside glass boxes, as Lori Lilly went by laughing and her brother passed by solemnly with flowers.  He held on to that anger, let it burn steadily, even as he kept the flame bounded inside him. 

Part of being a good Auror was never forgetting to be angry at the injustice of the world.  The rest was not letting that anger burn out of control.

They left footprints on the stone floor behind them, a ghostly trail through the ash.  The portraits that still hung held brief glimpses of static worlds, rendered in dull colors and sepia tones.  Each one had been a prison, a box made out of glass.  He wondered how many of the prisoners held here had been personally murdered by Lori and Lee Lilly.  The thought that it might be so many, that Abby's captors could wreak this pain for so long and never be caught, made him furious.

Blake had fallen behind them.  She cleared her throat, and Jonas looked back, eyebrows raising as he listened to her speak.  He glanced for a moment at Gamp, and then stepped over to see what the Auror Trainee was pointing out.  Sure enough, in the light of her wand, he could just make out a ghostly figure.

Raising his own wand, Jonas murmured, "Goleya."

His vision shimmered as the Aramaic spell took effect.  The shape that Blake had pointed out seemed to glow a little brighter now, like an afterimage seared against one's retina after staring too long at the light.  The glass, too, seemed to harbor the remains of a long-standing enchantment; a web of tiny, colored threads, dulled blues and purples and reds, arced across it, faint but still possible to make out.

"Good observation, Blake," he said, glancing down the length of the portrait gallery.  Under the auspices of the spell, he could see the same dulled web of light across the glass of other smashed frames nearby.

"We ought to get a count on all of these."  Jonas kept his voice even, but there was a hardness under his words.  Each a glass prison, housing a pentral.  When they found the Lillys, he wanted to be able to account for every death they'd caused.  "We should send someone back through to collect all the frames and catalogue them."

Taking a deep breath, he looked back at the gallery itself.  The walls and ceiling sparkled with the remains of what he recognized as some sort of containment spell, although the pattern was broken and uneven -- it didn't look expertly cast.  Behind the sparkling husk of the containment spell, the walls looked an even duller, deeper black, almost as if they were pulling all light into them.  Possibly another enchantment there, although he didn't know enough about what different spells looked like under Goleya to recognize what it might be. 

Near the end of the gallery, as if reflecting out from a doorway or nook, he could see some other faint shimmer of light.

Frowning, Jonas jerked his wand to end the charm he'd cast. 

"I don't recognize the exact spell, but there's some sort of protective ward over this whole place," he relayed, blinking as his vision returned to normal.  "The glass on each portrait looks like it was warded, too.  I could see something else down near the end of the gallery -- it looks like there might have been some other enchantment down there."

"Nothing in these pictures move." Neville said softly as he held a mostly intact frame. He turned it from side to side looking at the shimmer of where a figure had been.

He had arrived shortly after the other three. The large looming house was intimidating enough on it's own. Knowing what he'd find inside made it harder for him to approach. He had taken his time, glancing around the grounds before entering. The fire that had devastated the house had destroyed much of the plant life surrounding the manor as well. Though he could tell there had been shrubs, hedges and elaborate gardens. There had even been ivy crawling up the outer walls. Now though, they looked like dead fingers clawing at the blackened stone.

The Manor itself was nestled in a large wooded area which offered obvious protection even before you started accounting for the spells that had been put in place. As he looked to the surrounding woods he could have sworn he had seen a bed of flowers growing in the distance. His herbological instincts told him it wasn't natural, those flowers wouldn't grow in such a place and would have been put purposely. He wanted to get a closer look but his duty pulled him away. He needed to find the others.

It wasn't hard to follow them to the portrait gallery. Their boots had left marks in the ash covered floors. As he moved through the rooms he was reminded of being a child, in his days before Hogwarts when he was forced to visit the other purebloods families for some occasion or another. So many of them had manors like this one, parading their status. He wouldn't be surprised if the Lillys had been a part of one of those families.

He had been quiet when he joined the others although he probably should have announced his presence before speaking his mind, "sorry if I startled." He added before looking at the frame in his hand again, "I've never seen a witch or wizard keep a painting or picture that didn't move. Must have been torture for the souls trapped inside." By that he meant pureblood witches and wizards, the ones he associated with such wealth and grandeur. Nothing about the place suggested that the Lillys had been Halfblood or less which made the static pictures draw his eye more. He made a note to look into whether or not it had been done purposely as a way to further strengthen the enchantment on the Pentrals.

Fauna nodded gratefully at Trevelyan acknowledgement, understanding the hardness in his voice was not directed at her, and that it sounded rougher in contrast to Longbottom's soft tone and quiet footfalls.

"There are so many," she shook her head, glancing around their feet at the heaps of glass and shredded canvas, and above their heads at the few frames hanging skewed on the walls, draped by a faint web of enchantment revealed by Trevelyan's spell. If people had really been killed and trapped inside those photos and paintings, the sheer number made her stomach churn.

She thought of the grass in the photo, swept to one side, and the white afterimage of the figures within.

"Maybe the pictures moved before, but then turned still and immobile after the pentrals got out?"

Fauna thought out loud, glancing at Longbottom, aware that she might be influenced by her own hope that the worlds within the frames had felt the slightest bit real. The Auror sent to catalogue the portraits might gain a better understanding.

They continued through the gallery until reaching the end of the hall.

A thick door stood open, crooked on its hinges. Fauna stepped inside the small room attached to the gallery, and let out a shiver. The air felt cooler. The walls and floor were made of stone, and blackened with soot.

"This must be the 'altar room', where a fire started," she glanced at Gamp for confirmation, since the Auror had studied the maps better than anyone.

In the back of the room against the wall, a stone altar held the remains of candles. Below it, blackened, crumbling flakes and coiling stems caught in the grooves of the stone floor. Fauna glanced curiously at the pile, noticing a white petal preserved and peeking out under the ash. She pointed it out to Auror Longbottom and moved aside in case he wanted to take a closer look.

Fauna stared at the burnt portrait fixed to the wall above the altar, the largest painting they'd seen yet. Specks of gold still glimmered here and there on the blackened, ornate frame. The canvas curled up in inky waves, and Fauna raised her lit wand, unable to decipher the image through the damage. She saw greenery and a spot of dull gray paint that looked like stone or sky. In the center, a waxy outline of a figure gleamed, and something spun out from it, like a long braid. Or a hand.

She stepped closer, inspecting a strange slash on the lower corner. A hole cut through the canvas and splintered the back of the frame.

"This picture was slashed like several others," Fauna told the Aurors. "Though more, um, enthusiastically."

From the reports, Fauna couldn't recall Abby mentioning anything about damage to this canvas, though she'd described slashing at other pictures on their stampede through the gallery. Reid had said she and Calix had made it to this room, Lee apparated to them, and then everything after had felt like a blur. The squib's memory of those moments remained fragmented.

I let go of the knife, Abby had repeated. I let go of it, and I don't know why. If I hadn't...

Her lit wand still pointed at the canvas, Fauna glanced near the entrance where less soot coated the stone floor, and pinpricks of red light hovered in the air, marking where IDREAD had found Calix's body.

She was about to cast Revoficus or another revealing spell to help determine what had happened before Calix's death, when something sounded in her ear.

A whisper of a voice, a sliver of a song, drifted from the frame.

Oooo ahhh

Fauna jumped back several feet, lowering her wand a little as she held it in a tight grip.

"Did anyone else hear that?"

She glanced at the other Aurors, eyes wide. Fauna stared at the portrait. She lifted her wand again. Silence now, though she could have sworn that a new fold and wrinkle marred the canvas.

"It sounded sort of like a song? Like an echo of one. Very faint. From the painting."

She swallowed, gaze resting on the melted candles. The room, when it had been intact, held no other source of light. No windows, no wall sconces. Someone, likely Lee, had lit the candles below the portrait when he'd visited.

Fauna glanced at her lit wand, her brow furrowing. She'd heard a sigh or a whisper in the halls as they'd passed by, their lit wands bobbing. The gallery felt like a tomb, and they, the caretakers illuminating the gravestones. In every muggle tale she'd grown up with, light banished shades and spirits.

"It can't be the light, can it?"

Her voice bounced off the walls softly, but the light of her wand seemed to do the opposite, absorbed by the stone of the dark walls.

Ohhhhh ahhhh

The ethereal sound drifted over them again, as if someone very small was singing from very far away.  Jonas stayed still as he listened, his forehead creasing.  Was it the ghost of something that had once been prisoner here?  Or was there another pentral, or something else, still trapped somewhere within these haunted walls?

The fire had burned fiercely here, judging by the blackened, sooty walls and floor.  Still, underfoot, there was at least one white flower petal half-buried under the ash.

Her brother would pass by as well, but quietly, almost-Aileen had said.

Melted wax from the candles on the ashy stone floor.  The ornate, burnt picture frame in the center of the wall.  Despite the blackened walls and sooty air, it reminded him of some kind of cosmic opposite of a chapel, with these rendered offerings left behind to whomever had once been housed here.

He was holding...flowers?

This was a place that Lee Lilly had cared about.  In their very young investigation, the male Lilly sibling seemed to be shaping up to be even more of a mystery than his sister.  They hadn't yet managed to find any records of him, aside from accounts from neighbors.  He seemed to be less strikingly cruel than his sister, at least according to the Reid sisters, and yet he'd played the role of Abby's captor as well.

"What do you mean, Blake?" he asked, glancing sidelong at her as he finally illuminated the tip of his wand.  "About the light?"

He leaned closer to the frame, holding his glowing wand close below it as he carefully examined along the wood -- but it would be too handy for a name to be carved here.  There was nothing that he could see that might denote who had been held captive inside the painting.

They looked at the canvas. Then they approached a door at the end. It was where the fire started. It reminded Andromeda of the cellar at home. Gamp House Black and charred. Magical fire. It brought back bad memories. Andie went back to the door at the noise. She heard it too. She cast Homenum Revelio. Then Creatura Revelio. Before Phasma Revelio. "I will sweep the area again." Andromeda said to the others.

"Maybe the pictures moved before, but then turned still and immobile after the pentrals got out?"

Neville gave Blake a small weak smile, "We can hope." He wasn't entirely optimistic about it, though. Nothing about the case so far, what little they knew about the Lillys, suggested that they were anything but cruel. He didn't expect these painted prisons to be any less. Blake was still young, still a trainee, he didn't want to completely crush her innocent hope.

He remained quiet as they moved into the altar room. The dark and blackened room seemed to be an epicenter for the fire though it was clear that it hadn't been caused by the candles that stood like a shrine. Magically induced it would seem, though that wasn't his area of expertise. That would be plants, which Blake thankfully pointed out. Neville bent low as she pointed out the flower petal to him. He gently moved the ash and removed his wand. He lifted the petal without touching it and with an added swish a clear case formed around it, preserving the specimen until he could examine it properly.

He had still been kneeling when the song sounded and he nearly feel over. He quickly recovered and stood up taking the preserved flower petal with him and tucking it into his Crimson Robes. The hair on his neck stood on end and he felt goosebumps cover his arms when Gamp cast spell after spell and nothing was revealed. At this point they had confirmed that they all had heard the voice but if there was nothing to reveal, where had it come from?

"I will sweep the area again."

"Yeah, good idea." He then looked to Trevelyan and Blake, squinting his eyes at the light from Blake's wandtip. He wasn't sure what the Trainee had meant either but then again he had been completely absorbed by the flower until the voice had thrown them all off.

Fauna hesitated, doubting herself as Longbottom squinted up at her and Gamp's spells swirled in the air.

"I thought I heard a breath or a sigh as we passed the pictures in the hall, when I raised my wand to get a better look." Standing back a few feet, she watched Trevelyan study the portrait. The waxy outline of the hand had twisted further outward, around the hole in the canvas.

Was the house alive? No.

"Maybe something left behind is reacting to the light? Or wand movements, or spells in general. Or us," she thought out loud.

Jonas frowned, his forehead creasing.  He glanced at Blake for a moment, and then refocused his attention on the painting itself, inside the frame.  It was dark in the room, so it was hard to tell, but there did seem to be more of a faint shadow when he moved his wand closer, and then pulled it farther back.

He paused for a moment, not quite glancing at the other two wixes, and then extinguished the light at the end of his wand.  Slipping it into his pocket, he pulled out his cell phone instead, holding down the button long enough to turn it on.

"This gets fried, the Ministry's going to owe me a new one," he muttered, waiting a moment for it to boot up.  As the screen finally flared to life, he flicked the menu upwards with his finger, and then touched the icon to turn on the flashlight.

The small light sprung brightly to life.  Jonas held it up to the painting again, moving it closer, and then pulling it slightly farther away.

"Yeah, I see what you mean," he said after a moment, his attention still focused on the pale, faint figure inside the canvas.  "Seems like it's a bit clearer when the light's close to it, yeah?  Wand light or otherwise." 

The ghostly singing also seemed to get a little stronger as he moved the light closer to the painting.  Jonas glanced over his shoulder, listening warily, as he held down the button again to turn his phone off.  Gamp had done a thorough search of the small room via magic.  There didn't seem to be anything else hidden here.

"We'll have to enlist Level Nine to come through and take a look at all this.  Think we're ready to move on?" he asked the others, as he exchanged the phone for his wand once more.  "Reckon we ought to walk through the living chambers."

Neville felt almost queasy as he watched Jonas experiment with the light. Each time it moved closer to the frame the singing sound got louder and everything in Neville told him to run. He wasn't used to feeling like this. He didn't like the way this room made him feel though he didn't want to being it up to the others. He chalked it up to nerves about being on a real case again. Being a Herbology expert, he mostly dealt with smuggling or intentional poisonings. This was way outside of his wheelhouse.

He had looked curiously on at Jonas' cellphone. He had caught of few students with one during his brief time as a Professor (though they didn't work properly in the castle) He latched onto that curiosity and used it to move past his nervous nausea.

"Aye. I could do with getting out of here."

The Aurors swept through the levels of the mansion, moving up each flight of stairs with quiet purpose. The rooms smelled clearer of smoke the further up they went, but in its place, dust clung to their cloaks, their shoes, and hair. A layer of grit settled on Fauna's skin.

One house elf had cared for the entire estate. Jeeny, now missing. Fauna fixed the name in her mind.

In one tower, they found the potions laboratory and stores of crushed herbs, and they set aside a records book as potential evidence, as it contained strange symbols written next to dates that went back to the early 1990s. They inspected the living room where Abby had escaped through the floo, stepping around shattered windows and light blue walls damaged by moisture and frost. The clocks chimed brokenly all throughout the house when the hour passed, making Fauna grip the stair railing as they moved up. She sent the Auror behind her a wide-eyed, apologetic look.

In the bedrooms, they found Calix's array of string instruments, dusted and clean. Runes of protection had been carved on the frame of Abby's door, and a few on Calix's, lifeless without magic.

Though the dementors had not appeared to reach Lori Lilly's room, the storm that was Lori had careened through it, leaving dozens of robes and cloaks strewn over chairs, a magpie's collection of antiques and jewelry piled on nightstands and vanities, and more collectibles tucked in locked drawers and chests. Most of the things seemed expensive, at least to Fauna, though there was no style or common theme to any of it, and one could find a cufflink or pocketwatch tangled with a necklace of pearls. The window drapes were closed and dusty. Mice had nibbled at the snacks Lori had stashed and forgotten in hidden nooks and cupboards.

Lee's room held towers of books, gear for creatures, and a dried, green holiday wreath kept in a frame above his fireplace. On the mantle rested an eagle crest ring, next to a photo of a small figure in a field of flowers. The figure walked further into the field upon Fauna's curious inspection, pulling a hood up over her face and wrapping her blue cloak tight around her.

At last, the Aurors climbed the set of stairs to the owlery at the top of the house. Rain blew in from the crumbling archways framing the tower. In the rows of hollowed stone, feathers rustled, and more feathers and spots of blood dotted the floor. Pinpricks of red light hovered in the air like angry stars, marking where the first response teams had found the dozens of dead owls, some killed by physical injury and panic, others that had appeared to drop dead.

This time, when Fauna and the Aurors casted their revealing spells, a web of spells shimmered.

Warding spells she didn't recognize, on all the open windows. Haphazard, amateurish, and yet forceful.

Expecto Patronum, casted again and again and again, fainter and fainter each time.

Several layers of Apparition spells.

The sickly green sheen of Avada Kedavra, casted on several of the spots where the owls had died. Fauna shook her head, picturing the poor creatures dropping dead in a way she hadn't let herself imagine upon seeing the altar room where Calix had died. She noted the number of them, and her gaze flicked to another corner, noticing a few more pinpricks of red light.

Another owl?

She moved closer. No, it was the red, hazy light of a Rennervate spell.

Fauna turned to the Aurors and pointed at the spell, her brow furrowed. "Someone tried to revive someone else here. Looks like Rennervate."

Layered over it, one of the stronger apparition spells shined.

Andromeda had barely spoken. She was trying to concentrate. Build up a picture. Things did not all add up. They rarely did. She crouched beside the owls on the floor. Why have so many owls? Who could possibly need to send so many letters? The Ministry had hundreds but it was the Ministry. She looked at their beaks. At their claws. Why kill owls? They were not attacking. No blood no hair No cloth here.

"Is this the only place you could apparate from?" Andromeda asked. "Dementors came here for people. They did not go to the bedrooms." She frowned. "They would not come here for owls."