Out of the corner of her eye, Aileen spotted Bagnold gritting his teeth over the articles she'd handed him. She had to assume that his motivation in all of this was personal, though she had no idea what he was looking for beyond their general attempts to find something related to the rune in the ledger, the mysterious Grimshaw family, and the ossuary itself.

They had enough reason to work together, for now.

Still, her eyebrows spiked at his defensive reaction.

"We don't know," she lifted her shoulder. "It's entirely possible that neither deaths are related to the ossuary or the ledger or the runes. I'm just pointing out what jumps out at me. So far, I'd say that the bloodless corpse and the heartless one are disturbing enough to note," she continued wryly. "There's twenty-eight years between those deaths, however, and their bodies were found. The bones in the ossuary were there for I don't know how long, and kept hidden."

Most of the time, when teenagers weren't tripping over them. Were the bodies in the ossuary mutilated or no? Aileen didn't really want to think about that. She could crack languages and find her way out of tombs, but murder cases were not her forte.

"It's also entirely possible that I'm missing some important detail," she turned her attention to the next article. "Pick a few and have a look," she gestured at the floating red stack of articles. Bagnold could keep using that Ministry expertise of his.

She glanced at the article in hand. In 1953, a criminal duo had been arrested for selling unicorn blood. That caught her attention, until she read that they'd created some fake miracle elixir enchanted to gleam silver. They'd been operating on a street close to Grimshaw's.

She found very few articles from the 1940s, and rifled through the pile a bit, wondering if she'd missed them. No, the papers would have focused on Grindelwald at the time, she reasoned. Knockturn crimes had likely fallen off the radar.

1928, Back Alley Beheading gave her pause. "Clementine Calvares," she read aloud. "Eighteen years old. Found headless in a rubbish bin."

Wasn't that lovely? She gave the article a faint look of disgust and passed it along to Bagnold. A dumping ground, indeed.

It felt like something was burning in the back of his throat, and now Aileen Reid was making it worse by sounding like she was humoring him.  Kurby set his jaw, avoiding eye contact as he immersed himself in paging through the articles that were glowing red.

Logically, he knew that she was right.  Even for a shopfront that was located in Knockturn, it seemed as though there had been an awful lot of horrible things that had happened in conjunction to Grimshaw's.  And he'd been there with Nemo that night: he'd seen how the shop had tried to lure them both in, how it had set him up with the ledger, how the kid had fallen down into the ossuary packed to the brim with grinning skulls.  Instinct said that nothing good could come of such an obvious trap.

But still...

Letting himself linger on it wasn't productive.  Kurby pushed the thought out of his head and refocused on the collection of clippings and news articles in front of them.  Whatever the warm, honeysuckle-scented breeze and the too-close whispers had wanted from them, he knew in his gut that it couldn't be good.

Reid had found another clipping.  "Clementine Calvares," she started to read aloud.

Kurby glanced up.  All of the strange deaths they'd found were girls right around Nemo's age.

"Here's another," he said, trading it with her.  "Back in January 1900.  Some Muggleborn kid found with her eyes clawed out.  The Ministry blamed purists."

He hesitated, glancing at Reid, dark eyes meeting her gaze.  "You notice that a lot of these are teenaged girls?" he asked warily.  Brows knitting, he glanced down at the article she'd passed him, the one about the beheading.  "I don't recognize any of the family names on any of 'em, either.  They must all be Muggleborn or half-blood kids."

The types of young people, he thought uneasily, that magical society would be less likely to make a fuss about if they went missing.

"1900?" She repeated distractedly. 1900, 1928, 19... what had been the third one?

Aileen glanced up from the 1900s article and met Bagnold's wary gaze. Had she noticed that all of the victims were young witches? Why yes, Bagnold. What had taken him so long.

The pattern in names had completely escaped her, however, and she gave him a nod of acknowledgment. "Most likely, or their family line has died out since then." 

She read over the article in her hand again, only processing a few sentences here and there. Aileen wasn't as worried about Abby anymore, but Abby had dozens of friends who could be at risk, and one in particular that Bagnold had met once. A few long moments passed before she chose to voice it. They hadn't snapped at each other yet, not really. Bagnold was gritting his teeth and she was holding her tongue, which counted for something.

"I was concerned, at first, that Abby had told me about this entire mess because she herself was involved and didn't want me to lecture her," she admitted, with a quick glance at his expression. Did he have young sisters? Did he have any idea?

"But this Nemo," she hesitated over the strange nickname, glancing at the small stack of murder articles. Nemo, no last name. "Does she understand to stay away?"

Her tone was distant, the question rhetorical. She couldn't help but think about Lucy Wold, and how vulnerable the young woman had been with her muggle name and little means to get by.

Aileen would have to pester her sister for more details about Nemo, she supposed, once the dust had settled. Once her sister was fully herself again.

"28 years," she said suddenly, flipping through the articles. 1900, 1928, 1956, 1984... "Bagnold, there are 28 years between these murders. Exactly. All the way up to 1984."

He thought of the little musician, of the pixie-nosed American kid who had invited herself for supper and was subletting a room from someone who’d gone back to Taiwan.  Kurby knew that she was friends with Abigail Reid, and he assumed that she must have a handful of other connections here too, but how many people would really notice if the kid disappeared from London’s streets?  He wouldn’t have, if it hadn’t been for their mutual encounter at the tailor shop.

“She bleedin’ well will once I get through explainin’ it to her,” he said darkly, looking back down at the last article that Reid had passed him.

It could all be a coincidence, but it felt too much like something was preying on the weaker edges of magical society.  The thought made him feel uneasy, but something about it still felt off.  What the hell did dead teenaged girls have to do with an underground ossuary?  None of the Daily Prophet clippings mentioned bones or skulls that were missing, save for the one where the girl had been missing her head.  It also felt wrong trying to relate the warm, sweet-smelling breeze and the distant whispers to some sort of cyclical ritualistic murder.

Reid spoke up suddenly, and Kurby glanced up at her, the line of his jaw tight.  Twenty-eight years.  It took him a moment to do the math.  He sighed and glanced away again, rubbing tiredly at his face.

There was only one obvious conclusion to reach, but something inside him was still protesting against it.  His jaw set, the werewolf hunter looked back at the strange machine-like contraption that took up most of the room.

“Uh,” he said, taking a step towards it.  He glanced down at the article that Reid had passed to him.  Clementine Calvares.  There wasn’t even a photograph to accompany the announcement of the girl’s death; just a bland two-paragraph blurb in the Daily Prophet.

“United Kingdom,” Kurby said, trying to remember how Reid had phrased it.  “Uh, 1900 to 1930?  Calvares, or Clementine Calvares.”

In front of him, the printing press began to churn once more.

Taking his strong reaction to her mention of Nemo in stride, Aileen adjusted the dials for those dates, and stepped back as the press churned. It churned, it churned. It churned out two small slips of parchment.

Aileen kept one article and gave Bagnold the other, glancing at it quickly as she handed it off. An obituary notice. She couldn't imagine it would have much to say about someone who had only lived for eighteen years before being cruelly murdered, and shook her head. What a waste.

She skimmed the article in her hand.

Students Win Musical Contest at Woodcroft Festival!

August of 1926...

At the three Broomsticks...

A quartet of Hogwarts students won against several established musical groups in a battle of medieval melodies...

Winners spent the afternoon with legend Musidora Barkwith. Her daughter, Allegra, looked thrilled!

She looked at the grainy black and white moving photograph below the headline. A grinning woman stood in the middle, her arm around an embarrassed girl who resembled her, two teenage boys stood smiling on the other side, and then slightly off to the corner was a dark-haired girl hiding behind a glass of butterbeer, her flute case on the table.

Below the photo, in tiny print:

R. Boothby - tambourine, G. Evermonde - mandolin, A. Barkwith - dulcimer, and C. Calvares - flute.

Aileen let out a scoff under her breath, raising her eyebrows at the article. Could it be coincidence?

"Bagnold, you won't believe this," she showed him the article. "She was a flautist."

Even though the machinery churned and churned, the run of news clippings had been much shorter this time.  The life of Clementine Calvares had been both short and seemingly unremarkable, with the magical printing press sharing only two other articles. 

Reid handed him the first, and he carefully read through it.  It was a funeral notice.  Clementine Calvares had been from Stoke-on-Trent, dead at eighteen.  She was survived by her parents and one younger brother.  A funeral was to take place in Godric's Hollow, in what appeared to be a few days after the notice had been printed. 

Kurby paused, brows knitting as he re-read the short notice a second time.  Born in Stoke-on-Trent, and whatever Reid had said about families dying out, he'd never heard of a pureblooded family by the name of Calvares before.  And after she'd died, she'd been buried...

"Bagnold," Reid cut in, causing the werewolf hunter to glance up sharply.

He took the clipping from her, shifting uneasily as he read over it.  There, for the first time, they'd found a picture of one of their victims, the young witch who'd ended up beheaded in Knockturn Alley only a couple of years after the photograph had been taken.  It was hard to make out her features; even as the rest of the group smiled and mugged for the camera, Clementine seemed intent on hiding behind her glass of butterbeer, staying mostly out of sight.

Kurby swallowed and looked at the onetime Cursebreaker, his expression pained.

Werewolves were easy.  He knew what to expect with them; generally, he even knew what kind of action he needed to take.  But the situation with Grimshaw's, which seemed infused through with dark magic, left him feeling like he was stumbling in the dark.  What the hell was he supposed to do?  Report Nemo to the Ministry and get her shipped back to America where she'd be safe?  Burn the goddamned shop to the ground?  Short of literally starting a fire, he had no idea what to do next.

In his mind's eye, he could picture the storefront of Grimshaw Tailoring and Alterations just as it had been that night.  Its windows glowed with a soft, friendly light and the ornate metal sign on the front door read Open fore Busineff.  That was always an option: to go back, to look for answers there.  He could almost imagine the warm breeze urging him along, smelling of honeysuckle and the faintest hint of cinnamon.

Shaking his head sharply to clear it, Kurby turned back towards the table, where Reid had been sorting the articles into neat thematic stacks. 

"So what the hell do we do?" he asked, as he reached for the pile of clippings that was glowing a faint green.  Absently, he began paging through it.  "Why the hell would someone want to murder a kid like that every twenty-eight years in the same place?"

Aileen took a moment to read the obituary notice, feeling a slight pang of regret for this girl who had long ago been dead and buried. Clementine had only been known for a few things, and had gotten to become just a few things in her short life. Student. Daughter. Sister. Flautist.

She set the article down quickly, taking a small step back. The pentral who had once inhabited her had only been known for a few things, too. Wife, mother, muggleborn. They were two separate crimes, two different eras, no connection between them, but some truths never changed. Aileen had spent most of her life ignoring the misfortune of those less fortunate than her. To be faced with a choice, the ability to do something, felt overwhelming.

Aileen caught Bagnold's pained expression and glanced away, taking a breath. What could they do? Aileen would warn Abby, tell her to warn her friends. Bagnold would warn Nemo. Beyond that, what could they do?

"I don't know," Aileen lifted a shoulder, cool and removed as if they hadn't just uncovered a bizarre mystery together.

"We could do nothing, and then deal with the guilt when another girl is found dead near the shop," she continued caustically, avoiding his gaze. Nothing was always an option. She was used to looking out for herself and her own first.

Her mouth turned downward at one corner, and her eyebrows drew together slightly. Not so removed.

1956, 1984...

"We could inform the Ministry," she gestured at the stacks of articles, daring to bring up the 'M' word. "Send them a tip that an ancient necromancer has been piecing together body parts for the past century."

Her tone turned dry again. Anything seemed possible? It was just so bizarre. A murder every 28 years.

She went still, understanding slowly sinking in.

1956, 1984...

2012.

Aileen glanced up to meet Bagnold's gaze. If they were right, the next murder was set to happen in 2012.

Reid was a charming personality, and it made him feel better knowing that she and Oz had once been sentenced to stand each other.  Kurby paused from sorting through the stack of articles long enough to roll his eyes.  Doing nothing about this sounded about as appealing as stepping back and allowing Cinaed Tawse to go on a merry romp around England with his dire wolves, and he wasn't about to take this to Level Two.  If the reports of crime were any indication, clearly the Ministry had known off-and-on about Grimshaw Tailoring's inclinations for decades, and still nothing had been done about it.

The Grimshaw family seemed to have engaged in some charitable work, mostly before the turn of the century.  There were a couple of modest donations to St. Mungo's and Hogwarts, mentions of them sponsoring fundraisers for magical orphans and Squibs, and then the oldest article in the stack, which described a donation to the church in Godric's Hollow back in 1648.

Kurby paused, fingering the article for a moment, silently debating.  He could keep his mouth shut and plan his next move on his own; let Reid go run off and inform the Ministry, or turn her back on this and tell herself the whole thing wasn't any of her business.  Maybe he could even curate what he shared with Nemo, shower her with the articles about young girls getting murdered in hopes of scaring her away. 

"The Ministry's known about the goddamned deaths for years," he said grimly.  "They haven't done anything to stop it."

He could do this alone, or he could try to ask for help.  This was a much easier decision when all he was worried about was the next full moon:  he knew what he needed to do then, knew exactly what assistance might come from a team.  But here and now, debating over a different sort of danger that he still didn't understand, and with a potential teammate who wasn't likely to simply fall in line and follow orders, it was a different kind of question.

Kurby pressed his mouth shut for a long moment, and then set the article from 1648 down on the table next to Clementine Calavares's obituary.

"So Clementine Calavares was from Staffordshire, got murdered in London, and then was buried down south in Godric's Hollow?" he asked, eyebrows raising as he looked directly at Reid.  "Seems perfectly reasonable, aye?"

2012. If they did nothing, and the Ministry did nothing, another girl would turn up dead in the new year, and she would have to live with that. The knowing, the inaction.

Aileen pursed her mouth and held back a sigh as Bagnold deliberated for a few long moments.

She could easily believe that the Ministry would sit on something like this for decades, especially when the dead girls didn't have family to fight for them and had been left in Knockturn where it was assumed bad things happened. Still, did anyone know about the 28-year gap between the deaths specifically? Had they had cause to sift through these articles like she and Bagnold had?

It would take very little effort to send a note to Trevelyan, or another Auror who had a conscience and the resources to handle these grim matters. She could do it without mentioning Bagnold. She could do it without Bagnold's approval. As he'd said, she hadn't worked at the Ministry in a long time.

When Bagnold set the old article on the table, Aileen shook her head of her thoughts and moved forward to read it over. Faustina Grimshaw. In 1648, Faustina had made a donation in her family's name to the church in Godric's Hollow. Bagnold made the connection: Clementine had been born elsewhere, found dead in Knockturn, and then buried in Godric's Hollow, according to her obituary.

"Who paid for and arranged the burial?" Aileen wondered aloud in a murmur, still comparing the articles. Why would a muggle family bury their murdered daughter in a small town primarily populated by wixes, unless they'd moved there? Godric's Hollow had not been well known before the 1980s, either.

Bagnold stood grim but unwavering. When faced with a series of strange, ritualistic murders, he wanted to do more than most people would. Though she hardly matched his resolve, she had some stake in this. The Hunt siblings had frequented Grimshaw's and they might do so again.

And she didn't want any other girls to die.

Aileen moved the sheet of runes to rest beside the other two articles. At exactly this time last winter she'd narrowly escaped her own death, but she'd been in a unique position to help then, just like now.

"It seems like our next step is Godric's Hollow," she suggested with a careful nod. "It's a long shot, but it's the only correlation we have so far other than Grimshaw's tailoring."

She tapped her finger on the page of runes. "If we're lucky, we'll find a rune or clue or both in town. Carved on a church pew, or a tombstone. Or the welcome sign," she added with a slight smirk.

We. They could gather more information, then choose what to do with it. Did they have a plan? She met his eyes and arched an eyebrow.

Questions hung in the air between them.  Some of the answers likely lay underground in Grimshaw Tailoring, down the corridor lined from floor to ceiling with grinning skulls, where a warm, daring wind that smelled of sweetness and cinnamon had dared him and Nemo to venture further.  But exploring those depths seemed too carelessly final, even when he could still see the scene vividly in his mind's eye.

Reid stood in front of the articles that he'd laid out, deliberating much as he had.  Finally, she set the strange sheet of runes -- the first page that the magical press had printed for them -- next to his pairing. 

Our next step.  Eyebrows raising, Kurby met her gaze, the faintest hint of bemusement crossing his expression.  Apparently, it wasn't just his problem anymore.

"You've got a funny idea of luck," he retorted, as he glanced over the articles again.  Carefully, he began to gather them up in their colored stacks -- the clippings about the girls' murders went on top. 

"If we're goin' to poke around the church, we need to do it soon," he said matter-of-factly, glancing at Reid again as he straightened the pages into a neat stack.  "The next full moon starts on the seventh."  And if he were going to have to go toe-to-toe with Cinaed Tawse's lot and risk joining Clementine Calvares and all the Grimshaw family on the other side of the Veil, then he wanted this goddamned mess resolved sooner rather than later.

Aileen gave him a long look. If that was Bagnold's timeline, she'd better follow it. Wouldn't want to inconvenience him. Wouldn't want to forget that he was calling the shots.

Still, she nodded. Any full moon troubles that Abby might have alluded to stayed at the very back of her mind. She could only think about tomorrow. The solstice, and Abby's exorcism on Level Nine.

"I'll have time to meet after Christmas. Early in the new year would be prudent."

2012.

She'd owl him, or he'd owl her. It was so strange to even think about willingly working with one of Oz's relatives, but here she was, making plans to help.

Aileen collected her books from the table, and glanced over as Bagnold collected the articles.

"May I have copies of those copies," she extended a hand, a trace of amusement in her voice.

She bundled the extra copies together with a flick of her wand and tucked them into her cloak pocket. For some reason, she then reached over and turned the dial on the machine to a different date.

"Bagnold," Aileen paused, looking around the room for anything they'd left. The printing press slumbered, still and silent.

"When you speak to Nemo, tell her that 2012 is the year of the next murder."

Had he realized? It would happen in 2012 unless someone stopped it.

Her icy blue eyes met his, a flicker of unease in her gaze. She would tell Abby if - she would tell Abby, after tomorrow.

After Christmas.  For a brief moment, it occurred to Kurby that if his cousin Oscar had any idea that he was engaged in a civil discussion with the other wizard's ex-wife, let alone planning to rope her into snooping around Godric's Hollow, he was unlikely to survive the family holiday, let alone make it through the next full moon.  Oz had finally moved on and remarried, but some grudges would never die.

 If it wasn't for everything else happening at work this week, he would have tried to stay longer, to look up more of the girls on the magical printing press, to see if he could get any more hints of how they'd lived and died.  But the last thing he wanted to do right now was have to explain to Bruce Ballentyne why he'd disappeared for several hours in the middle of the day.  Better to pause his search now with what they had.

They duplicated the articles, and Reid paused to tidy up the space.  And then she stopped, looking back at him.

"When you speak to Nemo, tell her that 2012 is the year of the next murder."

Kurby met her gaze, dark eyes cool.  One more reason not to look forward to January.

Silently, he turned to go.  Somewhere amongst the quiet of the library, he could almost make out a faint murmuring, as if there were a hushed conversation a few aisles over that he couldn't quite hear.