One could quite assuredly state that Dr. Bombay was working on an interesting case by simply standing in the hallway that linked the auror office to the autopsy laboratory. The smell alone gave it away. No corpse could be left in the sea for a few months and not develop a stench to make even experienced examiners and aurors want to hurl.

Even the Doctor herself had experienced a minute case of the weak stomach when first alone in the room with the decomposing remains of Kyle Gibson. The rotting of the flesh had progressed quickly in the environment the corpse had been found. Large sections of flesh had been feasted on by all sorts of the life that habituated the bottom of the ocean.  Bones were beginning to show through as the flesh was gnawed away, leaving very little of the boy’s facial features in tact. This wasn’t a young 18 year old boy. This was a corpse. A healthily decomposing corpse.

The aurors had been certain this was Gibson. Hannah had not been so certain. Science and facts told, not someone’s gut feeling. Therefore she’d already spent time with this corpse while collecting her samples in order to determine the exact identity.

And the results were in.

Hannah had placed the samples together. The potion had turned the correct shade of blue and the corpse waiting patiently for her on the slab at this very moment was officially the body of the boy whom the papers were calling the Remembering Day Murderer.

Dr. Bombay placed the quill down on the desk, lips pursed as she studied what she’d just written. Now the metaphorical shit would hit the not so metaphorical fan. Eyes scanned to the clock on the wall and Hannah slipped her feet back into her overpriced white and black high heeled shoes and stood up, leaving the tiny office and heading into the open bright autopsy lab.

“You’re not going to like this, Tamis,” Hannah began, her eyes still settled on the parchment in her tight grasp. “One suspected murderer murdered. The Prophet’s going to love you.”

It was then that Hannah looked up to what she had expected to be the faces of 2 aurors and Tamis Raynor. Instead, stood in front of her were the two females she’s expected, Auror Malone and Tamis, and an older man propped up by a walking stick.

Eyebrows raised, the ME walked past them to the sink, on the way handing Tamis her written results and glancing sidewards at her friend and colleague. “I must have missed the memo about the ministry offering experience days for pensioners. Why is there an old wizard in my lab?” ‘And why did he look like he was staying for the duration?’

Bright eyes glanced across at the man. “Am I supposed to offer him popcorn and a comfortable arm chair?”

It was a rare thing that could draw Jason MacDonell from the arms of his family on Christmas Eve, but a personal request from Tamis Raynor did the trick. But he had not come in with sunshine and Cheering Charms. Wearing all black, from his shining dragonhide boots to his heavy winter robes, black leather gloves on both hands, the only splash of color the silver on his belt buckle and the head of his cane, he had Apparated into the middle of the Ministry Atrium just as the few stragglers stuck inside the day before the holiday were leaving. The watchwizard had examined his wand with a confused look, but the hard set of the former Auror's jaw and the slightly unsettling gleam in his emerald eyes had belayed any questions.

Gibson. Raynor had told him only that there was a suspicious death on which she wanted his immediate counsel, and he had dutifully come, wondering if yet another body had been found branded with that strange mark Radley had brought to his attention. But when he arrived and heard that the corpse belonged to Kyle Gibson, he had experienced a brief, savage pleasure. The boy was lucky he had died before the Aurors caught him, since he had murdered one of their own. The Wizengamot would surely have sent him to Azkaban forever...perhaps even tried to find a Dementor to meet the boy's boat en route...

Shaking his head, he refocused on the present. Raynor was there, of course, looking coolly stoic about the whole affair. And at her right hand, a respectful step behind, Charlene Malone. He wasn't sure how the young Auror tied into the whole scenario yet, though he was willing to lay odds that she had been on the investigation...perhaps even dredged Gibson's body from wherever they'd found it.

He had glanced at the decayed remains, staring briefly into those hollow-out eyed sockets, but there was little he could say for certain; the body was far too corroded for a usual Auror's evaluation. Gibson hadn't suffered the Transmogrifian Torture, at least, but apart from that, he could have died of anything from arsenic to the Killing Curse.

Leaning on a wall behind Raynor's left side to take some of the weight off his bad leg as they stood waiting, Jason shifted his cane into his magical hand, twisting the shaft with his right as if it was some unfortunate's neck. Raynor had given him vaguely to understand that they had an expert analyzing the remains, but she sure seemed to be taking her time...

"You’re not going to like this, Tamis. One suspected murderer murdered. The Prophet’s going to love you."

MacDonell raised an eyebrow, a bit caught off guard by everything about the woman. Her fancy shoes seemed out of place on Level Two, and her casual use of Raynor's first name even more so. MacDonell himself had never tolerated that from anyone but his own Aurors, nor could any Head Auror he remembered, and Raynor was acting Department Head to boot.

And the unpleasantly analytic look the woman was suddenly shooting his way hardly helped.

"I must have missed the memo about the Ministry offering experience days for pensioners. Why is there an old wizard in my lab?"

The emerald eyes narrowed, and Jason took his cane back in a normal grip in his left hand, right kept free in case he needed his wand. He glanced at Raynor, then back to her 'expert'. "A better question," he said, his Scottish brogue seeming to add to the bite in his tone, "is why a child is speaking about me as if I'm nay here."

"Am I supposed to offer him popcorn and a comfortable arm chair?"

"Thank you, I'll stand," MacDonell said icily, stepping forward with two clicks of his cane before he stood again before the body. His look at it was unfazed; it was disgusting, certainly, but he had seen far worse effects from curses at the height of the First War. Pressing Gibson's jaw with the head of his cane to twist it sideways -- and ignoring the rubbery, squelching sound that accompanied the movement of the boy's waterlogged flesh -- he added, "More useful would be knowing what killed the little slime."

Gray eyes stared impassively at the hypotonic body lying prone on the examination table, distant and withdrawn despite her close physical proximity to the other two individuals in the room. She was quiet. Abnormally so. Even for a woman as concisely verbose as she. The apathetic set to her jaw left little indication to her thoughts but one who knew her well (and had many years of trial and error in the interpretation of Tamis Raynor) could tell she was troubled. The extra rigor of her posture. The arms crossed defensively before her. The level of tension to her compressed lips. Only one of the two was equipped with the expertise. If he noticed he had been wise enough not to inquire.

Unlike her companions, the Head Auror did not fidget during the long wait. Just stared.

The features of the corpse were well beyond the point of recognition. There was not much left to the half-eaten, swollen flesh. Of the corpse. Raynor stressed that in her mind; corpse. Whoever he might have been before, this was not Kyle Gibson now. The dead did not suffer their human remains. Tamis may not believe in the existence of a higher power but she could surmise that much. It did little to ease her anxiety.

Even if the boy had been innocent she had acted in full capacity of her job. He had run. He had been a prime suspect. What choice had there been but not to pursue? The slight woman could tell herself that but she doubted the explanation would be good enough for Kyle Gibson. She knew it would not be for the rest of the wizarding world.

The Auror had almost had him at Kings Cross Station. Should have had him. There had been facts about the case that had not lined up from the very beginning. Witness reports, friends of the suspect. The motive had been lacking. It had been enough to drive her into searching for the Gryffindor student personally. She had exhausted her resources and even sabotaged her positive relations with Knox Greyfriar to find him. But Cináed Tawse had interfered.  She was going to figure out why. Gibson was very likely dead, whether this corpse or another, and there was justice to be had for that.

The appearance of Hannah Bombay interrupted her thoughts. “Perhaps the Prophet will start sending a ‘thank you’ card with their annual fruit basket,” she replied dryly to the younger woman’s comment, despite the disheartening words. Her fingers closed around the slip of parchment.

She was not impervious to the tensions rising between the youngest and oldest members of the room. It was hard not to when one was thrown metaphorically into the middle of the verbal melee. Tamis Raynor did not make a good social buffer. “Jason MacDonell this is Hannah Bombay, our chief medical examiner. McCallum retired a couple of months ago.” She offered, eyes not deviating from the report neatly written on the parchment. “Jason MacDonell is my predecessor and a Warlock serving the Wizengamot.” Which was exactly why he was there. Not that she had said as much yet.

The words were clear, crisp, and undeniable. That truly was a Wizard on the table. And that wizard was Kyle Gibson.

She finally looked up in time to hear the squelching of saturated flesh as MacDonell played with Gibson’s jaw with his cane. A stab of disapproval hit her at the blatant disrespect for the dead, but he did not yet know what she did. She, however, recognized the arrogant provocation tightening his features, just as she knew Hannah would be blustering and successfully provoked. The irritation that flashed across her face was for both of them. 

“That is enough children,” she scolded, asking Hannah, “It would be too much to hope this was a suicide?” She was not a fool but a self-induced death would be marginally better to present to the Prophet. It was a shame the woman had never been much of an optimist.

She reached out to tap Jason’s extended cane, shaking her head slightly. Hannah started this sparing match and Tamis was not going to bail her out of it. She was thankful that MacDonell had come tonight at her request, realizing how much she had been asking. But she morally could not let it be taken out on the deceased.

One would have thought that this would have been her partner's shining moment.  Edward Pratt had, after all, finally managed to bring this particular aspect of the case to a resolution, even if he had to strain to do so with all his might and questionable Muggle investigative techniques. 

But once the results had finally come in, Pratt had come down with a suddenly suspicious desire to immerse himself in paperwork.  Charlene suspected that his newfound enthusiasm for filling out forms had less to do with perfecting his handwriting technique and more to do with his desire not to go anywhere near the decomposing body or Doctor Bombay, but she let him off the hook without too many pointed comments.  Anything that motivated her partner to put in his fair share of filling out forms was perfectly fine in her book.

She hated to admit it - mostly because it involved giving Pratt credit for being right - but Charlene was buying in to the insane theory that Gibson hadn't been the murderer on Remembering Day after all.  The new facts added up too neatly: someone had used Polyjuice potion to turn into the boy on the stage, he had been terrified and gone on the run, and then someone had helped him to escape from the Ministry's clutches, only to murder the one remaining person who could shed light on the original case.  It matched up too well, and furthermore, it fell into the pattern that had already been established on several other cases.  It fit the mode of operation of their new batch of purist conspirators.

Raynor had brought Jason MacDonell along to the lab, which surprised but didn't entirely confound Charlene.  MacDonell had been the Head of the Auror Office when she'd first been recruited, and he sat on the Wizengamot now.  If he was invited to this private session, there had to be more of a link, something to warrant it - he obviously hadn't been included for his wit and personal charm.

Charm was obviously on display now, as first Bombay and then MacDonell had sniped back and forth at each other.  Charlene refrained from visibly reacting; Raynor, she trusted, would reign them both in.  Instead, she glanced at her boss, and then stepped forward, examining the corpse that she'd already looked upon once.

The smell was horrendous.  In this small room, it was even worse than it had been in the harbor.  At once, Charlene could understand why Pratt wanted nothing to do with this part of his case.  Maybe if she threatened him with having to visit Bombay more often, he'd keep up on his share of the paperwork.

MacDonell reached out with his cane to move the jaw of the body, and Charlene shot a look back over her shoulder at him.  'Slime' was not the descriptive word that she would have chosen at the moment.

"And you're certain of the identity, Doctor?" she asked, glancing back at Bombay.  Thoughts of Muggle potion ingredients and suspect investigative techniques danced through her mind.  Even if her partner was right, his hunch wouldn't be worth anything to them unless they could prove it.  "It will hold up before the Wizengamot?"

Hannah Bombay could deal with being referred to as a child by a man who was simply waiting for Merlin’s goblins to package him up and carry him away to wherever dead souls were taken to roam, depressed, forever. She could put up with the icy tone delivered by the haggis devouring prying old fool.

What the magical examiner was not prepared to settle with was allowing the ignorant moron to quite literally poke her corpse with a stick. The woman’s face paled as her body stiffened, eyes boring into grey haired troll stood in her lab. He had just poked a corpse with a walking stick. While Hannah couldn’t comprehend the disrespect involved with such an act, she found herself having to control herself from biting back more comments, telling him forcefully to leave her laboratory, hitting him with a cauldron.

Tamis spoke once more and lips pursed, Dr. Bombay gave the woman a stern look , silently informing the Head Auror that she now owed her friend and colleague a big favour.
“I’d rather not jump to conclusions.” The magical examiner responded. Raynor and every other auror in the department knew damn well that Hannah Bombay never jumped to conclusions. The aurors wanted quick answers, Bombay was never willing to supply them. She liked evidence, magical evidence. One didn’t get that from rushing things.

Was she certain? “Positive. Before I even considered executing Auror Pratt’s...” Hannah paused, obviously disapproving of all these muggle techniques this auror was asking her to utilise. “plan, I confirmed his identity via real method.” The magical, well trusted method. The method that would never go wrong. She glanced at their visiting member of the wizengambot, lips pursed. “I have no doubt it will hold up in front of the wizengambot.”

Without further pause, Hannah pointed the tip of her wand at the slime covered top that retained the dignity of the decomposing corpse lying on her table. She muttered a charm under her breath and the wand tip began to cut through the shirt, leaving the corpse’s decaying chest bare for the inhabitants of the room to see. The sight was appalling for someone unaccustomed to such horrific displays. But the onlookers in this room had seen them before. Or at least she presumed in the case of Grandpa Ignorant.

The doctor’s eyes fell on the large mouldy and wrinkled wound on the boy’s stomach and she frowned. “It wasn’t magic that killed your victim.”

Jason watched Hannah glare for a moment, but she was not enough to hold his attention for long. He saw her dismay at his casual treatment of Gibson's corpse, and caught a glimpse of the same emotion on Malone's face before the Auror controlled it. But what did any of them owe to someone like this, who had committed this kind of crime? They hadn't exactly laid Voldemort and Lestrange to rest with proper funeral rites after Hogwarts...

"Jason MacDonell this is Hannah Bombay, our chief medical examiner. McCallum retired a couple of months ago. Jason MacDonell is my predecessor and a Warlock serving the Wizengamot.”

"I'm sorry to hear that, McCallum was a good wizard," Jason mused, before looking up at the new model of medical examiner again. He nodded slightly, offering only, "Miss Bombay."

"That is enough children. It would be too much to hope this was a suicide?"

Despite his lingering contempt for Gibson and his newfound distaste for Hannah Bombay, Jason felt the corner of his mouth twitch upward before he controlled what would have become his usual smirk. That chiding maternal tone of Raynor's had only become more pronounced now that she was actually in command herself, but it had been well-polished years before -- he and Belisario had both been on the receiving end of it.

He listened to them speculating about the cause of death, but when Raynor gently pulled his cane away from Gibson's jaw, MacDonell met her gaze for a long moment before shifting the walking stick back in his grip, frowning.

"I have no doubt it will hold up in front of the Wizengamot."

"Good," Jason said firmly, as if that wrapped things up. He cast Gibson another sneer before adding, "So finish the proper logs and throw the little bastard back in the river."

"He murdered an Auror," he continued, and though his tone was calm and controlled, it was also icy cold and dripping with hatred. For a brief moment, an unpleasant light played about his emerald eyes. They had not lost an Auror since Azkaban, until Gibson's crime. "He deserves nothing better."

"It wasn't magic that killed your victim."

Looking down at the decayed body impassively, Jason frowned as Bombay shared that revelation. He looked at Malone, then Raynor, his expression silently inquiring whether this was as much news to them as to him. Then he turned back down, analyzing the stomach wound with new interest.