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Wednesday, 4th Jan, approx 9pm. 7 Moonstone Mews.



The record player was going full blast[1]. The owner of this lovely home had left for work once the sun had fully set behind the horizon. His tenant was meanwhile auditioning possible last minute tracks to debut on her radio show.

Cass Motley graced the Wizarding Wireless Network airwaves in the small hours of the morning on Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. As a Wednesday evening, that meant she was only a couple of hours away from setting off to the station to prepare to go on air.

There was a stack of opened letters and parcels on the kitchen table, atop of which was a green-inked letter from a young Rigel Acrux well met in a tailor’s shop before Christmas. Cass had been stuck in bat form for the very first time when they had met. It had taken a lot of resistance not to sink her teeth into his carotid arteries while he was in a state of undress.

Now, only a week or two post Christmas the new moon, the blush of a good feed was lessening, and Cass was already feeling the pangs of blood hunger. She didn’t understand why. She fed more than enough at new moon, but it never sated her for long enough. Rigel’s offer to visit Hogwarts for dinner was an invite she was more than tempted to take up. Just a little nibble… consensual.

There was a knock at the front door. Cass wrinkled her nose and looked at the time. It was probably one of the bloody neighbours, wasn’t it? Complaining about the noise again. She ignored it, but it came again. With a huff, she turned the volume down a click, and got up from her pile of records spread on the living room floor to answer it.

As her long heeled boots made their way down the hall, she curled her lips, letting her fangs free (all the better to intimidate whoever wanted to interrupt), and flicked her blonde hair over her shoulder with all the swagger of a vampire expecting a shrinking violet behind the door.

“Look, if it’s about the music, I’ll be done in an hour…”

1.	Something like, anyhow

Zora Roh was a good Auror to call when something needed to be done without a mess. In her younger days this hadn't exactly been the case. Then she'd been out to prove a few points. She'd come out of it all a string duelist and sporting a reputation as a wild wand, but the effort to blast through glass ceilings and brick walls was as effective as yelling into a hole. So she'd settled in. She did the job, she did it well, and she was fine doing it alone.

     "You know the vamp on Four? Vallaincourt?" they'd asked.

"No," she'd answered.

     "Well, Motley and him are flatmates so subtlety's the word."

The file on Motley was detailed. It included details of relationship with the Beings Division and here on Level Two. Normally, she'd expect a briefing from the vampire liaison, but well, he was meant to be out of the loop. Instead, her crash course in vampire management had come from a hobbyist member of the Magical Law Patrol.

---

Zora set out at nightfall and spent some time on a rooftop casing the flat in the posh little close, with its nice shingling and well-groomed gardens. The music coming from number seven was out of place, but pretext enough to get a door answered from an Auror's knock.

Around seven, Zora lit down and got things started. It took a couple tries for Motly to answer, and she did with gusto, fangs blared the music spilling out even louder. Despite herself, Zora's face registered a mild surprise - Motley was expecting a confrontation, likely from a neighbor which wasn't a good start. They were starting off escalated. The last thing Zora wanted was to be chasing some tiny bat all over town, or end up at St. Mungo's with a couple holes in the neck.

The red robes were enough to ID Zora as an Auror, but she flashed her badge anyway.

"Auror Zora Roh," she announced herself with her characteristic level of frankness. "Are you Cassandra Motley?"

 

An auror on their doorstep? Not even a fit male one at that? The neighbours had really stepped up their threats. They’d sent some proper hot ones round to the station when she’d got sent a stake in the post. That had been cool, she’d felt important. Aurors coming round because someone had sent her nasty hate mail. Made them seem like they cared, which was more than Tristan suggested that happened. He’d put a complaint in about some aurors. Oh shit hopefully this wasn’t one of them.

“Are you Cassandra Motley?”

“Yeah, but I said, if it’s about the music I’ll be done in an hour. I’m not a dark wizard,” she flashed her teeth, not that she needed to. “They don’t need to send an auror,” Cass maintained, on a one track mind, given her preparation for her show. “I’m on the wireless, you know. Be on the air in a few hours. This is last minute preparation.” The music continued to blare out from the living room beyond the front hallway.

“Hang on - this is the best bit.” Cass thumbed behind herself and nodded along with her head, eyes half closed. “No?” She asked, examining the auror’s unimpressed expression. “Ok, look, I’ll turn it down a bit, sign you an autograph, give you a shout out on the show tonight, Auror… Woe?” Cass bargained, completely botching Roh’s surname. “You got a quill and parchment? One of those little auror notebook thingies?”

Zora didn't know what she expected. Perhaps a being of some macabre aires and piercing gaze, an aura of the enigmatic and ancient. But Cass Motly was a new vampire; maybe she hadn't earned the riddle of eternity. All that aside, she had the bursting personality of an entertainer, someone who loved the sound of their own voice. Zora was already tired of it.

"Roh," Zora corrected, not that it mattered. Her title and surname were a mouthful together - not her fault. No, she didn't want an autograph, no this wasn't about the music, no, no, and no.

"It's not about the music. Will you step outside please," she said and moved a few feet to the left to leave space for the vampire to comply. She took her wand out and held it at her side, a small but obvious indication this was not a request.

“It’s not about the music. Will you step outside please,”

Auror Woe Roh had got her wand out, and it wasn’t over the music.

Cass could hear the auror breathing, the throb of her heart and the blood travelling her arteries and veins beneath her skin. The more she focused she could smell the strains of what the auror preferred to bathe with over the familiar petrichor of the Mews.

As a vampire who had only just begun to master turning into a bat, Cass quickly weighed up the possibility of her resisting the Auror. Resistance or fleeing would insinuate she had something to be guilty about. Tristan had gone to work some time before after sundown and she was all alone. It wasn’t like she wasn’t making enough noise with the door open that one of their neighbours might not be peeking out their curtains. But there were few neighbours who really wanted to help vampires. Especially vampires with auror callers. Auror callers with wands drawn.

“Why?” Cass asked, frowning, “can’t I just invite you in, turn the music down and you can ask what you want to ask?” She thumbed backwards, folding her arms over her chest defensively. “I’ve got a radio show to finalise, so can we get to the point?” She blinked several times, eyebrows drawing together.

A tension stretched taught between the Auror and the vampire, like a thread pulled ready to snap. Motley was instantly wary and indisposed to follow instructions. Questions first, compliance second. Zora couldn't fault anyone for that; she'd raised her own kid to keep her own head. It was, however, an impediment to a quiet arrest. The MLE knew everything it needed to know at the moment, everything it needed to be confident in brining the vampire into custody. The wand was a match, the bite marks consistent with a new vampire - it was enough.

Motley hadn't got the picture. Time to spell it out.

"We'll have questions aplenty for you down at the Ministry," Zora said. "You're under arrest on suspicion of the murder of a muggle."

She shrugged a little. "Among other things. Shake a leg, Motley."

Zora flicked her wand in a gesture that Motley get a move on.

“You’re under arrest on suspicion of the murder of a muggle”

If Cass had blood, it might have drained from her face at that very moment. Instead she gaped, jaw slack and fangs a plenty, at the auror.

“… shake a leg, Motley.”

“You have got to be kidding me!” Cass screeched, joining the cacophony of the record still blasting from the open front door. “Murder of a muggle?! MURDER?!” With any luck her neighbours might hear this and those twitching curtains might bring out one of the rare allies. That weird loud jumper-wearing beanpole, that sort of chap.

“I can’t leave here - I’m on air in a few hours. What is this, vampire persecution?!” In her anger she flashed her teeth at Auror Roh, and turned on her heel, fists clasped, shoulders stiff.

Her mind whirled with possibilities of what to do with the auror. Whether she could turn into a bat and flee, whether she could reach Tristan or a coven and hide before the auror got her. Whether she could bite her neck and make her forget about it all…

“Let me turn this record off for Merlin’s sake!” Cass snapped, gesturing into the house, resolutely walking in the opposite direction to the one stipulated…

"Motley!" Zora barked.

The Auror followed after Motley, wand first. The vampire was showing her nature more and more, with the fangs and the eyes and that strange way of moving. The pounding of the music in the close quarters of the flat seemed to suck Zora in. The expansive night was now a confined space. As she moved after Motley, she took a small moment to wonder what vampires did with kitchens.

There was clarity in bringing in a suspect quietly. You didn't become an Auror unless you were keen for a fray, and Zora had been plenty keen for a fray when she was younger. Now, she liked clarity. She'd been clear with Motley about what this was, and Motley was being clear in her intentions to be anything but quiet. Anyone less than a murder suspect might have deserved a second warning, but not a vampire who'd drained the life out of some poor chap on Christmas Eve night.

"Incarcerous!" As soon as Zora had a good shot at the middle of the vampire's back, she snapped off a spell. Ropes and binding materialized and reached out for the vampire to tangle wrists, ankles, necks, elbows, and the rest.

She didn’t reach the record player. Instead the hair metal continued to blast from the next room. Had ropes not snaked up her torso, she might have felt the vibrations through the floor, but as it was, she was distracted. She instinctively struggled against the bindings, fairing better than the average wix due to her turned species, but still succumbing to the auror’s spell.

“You just had to ask nicely!” Cass protested, red-faced, from the floor, her head and feet the only bits visible beyond the rope cocoon she was now ensconced in. How rude! In her own home! Tristan wouldn’t have stood for this. The moment she got to the Ministry she would insist someone fetch him of this ridiculous situation. “I’ll have you reported for wrongful arrest!” She gave a wriggle, just for good measure, and accepted she was stuck. “Well don’t just leave me like some flobberworm! Get the music off and get me up!”

Now that she had Motley, Zora could conjure some peace and quiet. At least that they agreed on. In another situation with another suspect, Zora might've started out with the music, but not a vampire and not for murder. She strode past the incapacitated vampire to the record player. With a quick silencing charm the record player went mute, although the record still spun round and round under the needle.

Then she knelt down next to Motley's head and said in a typically steady affect, "I'm not nice."

Understandably, Motley was irate. People had all kinds of reactions to being bound up but most often rage and tears. Zora didn't revel in doing it, but it made a complicated situation rapidly more simple, and this had to go smoothly.

"Now. We can do this in one of two ways," Zora said. "I loosen those up and you can walk out of here with me, nice and calm. Or you can remain a flobberworm and levitate you all the way back to the Ministry."

Zora tapped her wand in her palm, and waited for a response. This close, Motley shouting and her fangs easy to see, Zora couldn't help but imagine the possibility that this was the last sight of that slain muggle in the park. Maybe Motley did it, maybe another blood-drinking vampire. It seemed like a horrible way to go.

As she knelt down, Cass could smell the auror. She could hear the rush of blood, the raise of heart rate despite the cool exterior. There was no new moon that month, but a vampire’s cravings never left. To hear a heart throbbing within a rib cage, so close, was delicious temptation.

Not-nice-auror-woe gave options. It was like Cass remembered Hogwarts teachers doing. The illusion of choice where both outcomes favoured the one who posed the options. Either way, if the auror had their way, there would be no radio show tonight. This made Motley livid, but she contained it, bound up. Wouldn’t do to explode. They’d paint her a criminal before she’d even arrived.

“You’ll let me walk.” Cass hissed quietly. “Then they’ll all think you brave at the office. Bringing in an alleged muggle murderer.” She’d have added air quotes, but her arms were tied to her sides. She did her best with her eyebrows. “I present a radio show, I’m the bloody poster girl for the hospital blood bank. I can walk into the Ministry.”

"I'm sure everyone will be happy to see you."

Satisfied, Zora rose to standing and cast a spell. The vines and bonds, the majority of them, begin to recede and dissolve into nowhere, freeing up Motley's feet, then legs, then neck, then midsection. Those that wrapped Motley's arms to her front remained. Zora stepped back just enough to give space to Motley to get to her feet. As she did, Zora started in on the official situation.

"Cassandra Motley, you are under arrest by order of the Ministry of Magic with the approval of the Wizengamot. You don't have to say anything and anything you say may be used as evidence against you."

Silence would actually be nice. Motley still had opportunity to bollocks this up (for the Aurors as well as herself), so Zora kept her wand at the ready.

"Let's go." Zora would guide Motley out the front door where she'd Apparate them down to the Atrium at the Ministry. Then paperwork. Then more paperwork. And a long rest of the night for Cassandra Motley, vampire and accused killer.