What Do A Lion And A Wolf Share?

More Questions Than Answers

"We need to talk about these," Hermione said, throwing the files onto the desk. They landed with a thud.

"What are they?" Theo asked, his dark brows furrowed as he glanced between her and the files. "Is this about Flint?"

"Just open it," Hermione prompted, gesturing at the file. He picked up the folder tentatively and flipped the cover open. His eyes scanned back and forth before they froze and scanned again.

"This - this is my mother's case file...I - how did you get this?" Theo asked, confused, eyes never leaving the file. "Did Potter give you this? Are they going to close her case?" He sounded hopeful, ignorant of Hermione's growing anger. When Harry handed over the file that morning, she'd read it cover to cover, twice. She'd had time to stew.

Originally, she'd been surprised that Theo had never shared anything about his mother's case before. They'd been living together for months, and he never said a word. The file hadn't included the name of her murderer, which caught her interes, but most of her attention was focused on the rest of the packet.

"I saw that they didn't close it. No suspect named."

"Not officially. I've been trying..." Theo finally looked back up at her as he spoke, his usually warm face unreadable. "I go down to the DMLE once a month. They always tell me that they'll look into it, but they never do." As he spoke, most of Hermione's anger evaporated.

"Why didn't you tell me?" Hermione asked softly. "That wasn't in the file."

"I wasn't sure how you'd feel about me working to have our father being named a murderer." Theo was staring at her, his lips twisted into a frown.

"I know who he was," she whispered. "Or did you forget he tried to kill me and my friends as teenagers?" As she spoke, Theo huffed out an amused breath. "But that wasn't actually what I wanted you to look at. Could you look at the form after that?" Theo shuffled the papers and Hermione closed the distance between them by walking around the desk. He pulled out the report that had sent her flying home.

"Why do you have this?" Theo asked calmly, in the same tone he had used with Draco that day in the kitchen. She knew he was bubbling underneath, an explosion possible without Luna. "What could have possessed you to get Father's DMLE file instead of talking to me?"

"Why is there no information about his death on file?" Hermione countered, keeping her tone even.

"Why did you get these?" Theo asked, holding up the papers. "Why not just ask me? I am yo-"

"I went to get the autopsy," she said loudly, talking over him. "He died from internal bleeding. That's all it says." Theo whitened. "Don't you think that's strange? No additional details, just 'internal bleeding.' Normally the Aurors have to put the cause of death, especially if it was a spell."

"He died during the battle."

"And the other files of those who fell in that battle include the curses that were used."

"Did someone tell you to look into this?" Theo glared at her. Hermione thought about Draco's slip-up, his insistence that she not tell Theo what he had said about Theo's "handling" of their father, though he refused to give her details. She wondered how he would feel about the fallout of this conversation.

"Actually, no," Hermione said after a moment. "I got very good at figuring out when things needed to be researched while we were in school. I followed a hunch."

"And where did your hunch come from?" At his question, Hermione bit her bottom lip, chewing it as she studied her brother.

"You wouldn't talk about our father! I just wanted to know more without upsetting you," Hermione lied, though she wasn't entirely sure why she didn't just name Draco. "But when I started looking into it, I figured out it was the same curse on the page that was marked by the mystery rune that we found." Theo looked as though he was going to be sick. "I found an awful, Dark curse that ruptures the victim's internal organs, makes them internally bleed to death. I was going to share it with you, but we've been busy."