#brrtie

Sawyer had spent a week on the verge of collapse, jumping at every sound creeping into his house. The dog paced restlessly and moaned catatonically as Sawyer dragged it around the block twice a day. The ocean’s crashing felt more ominous than cheery, as did the sounds of children being let out from school. Receiving the letter from the DMLE has been the first concrete experience in days, shaking Sawyer, but somehow grounding him at the same time. There was a course of action at least, an activity to plan his day around, even if it almost guaranteed bad news. Of course there was always the alternative- maybe it was some other relative, one of his cousins he didn’t like, or a coworker, a classmate, he hope for anyone other than Danielle.

Sawyer grimaced as he considered these possibilities, she’d gotten herself in trouble, possibly hurt, while he had been fucking around in Poland. He signed his letter to Bertie and sent the owl on its merry way. He wasn’t going to be able to sleep that night and he knew it, imagining Danielle somewhere cold and dark and miserable. So he flipped on all the lights in the house and untangled the last two weeks of papers. Sawyer spent the rest of the night reading every paper cover to cover, until finally the birds came out again and the stars slipped away. He was agitated and loopy, he cracked four eggs straight into the trash before giving up on food entirely. Not quite sure he could be trusted to apparate or floo Sawyer took the Knight Bus to the Ministry’s visitors entrance, trying desperately to block out all the noises around him.

He’d brought only his wallet, his wand, and a photo of Danielle. It must have been taken while she was still at Hogwarts, but it was the only picture of her Sawyer had been able to find, and he clung to it desperately as he wove through the atrium. He met Bertie there, and together they made their way to the lifts, and to the second floor, where they found a dark muscular man waiting. After a moment of introductions Xander confirmed every nightmare Sawyer had had over the past weeks.

“First of all, we do think we have a body here and that it is Danielle Peakes. We need you to identify that body and confirm it’s her.”

The sense of direction Sawyer had felt a few hours earlier was completely gone. His stomach dropped and his hands began to shake, his ears were ringing, he only caught snippets of Xander’s monologue.

“Tattoo shop…It’s not whole…gruesome and gory…” Sawyer raked his fingernails through his hair, scraping his scalp and centering his mind. Xander kept talking, and Sawyer tried to listen. “And after that, if you do confirm her identity, we’d like to talk to you. Ask you a few questions about Ms. Peakes and her usual activities. If there were any people in particular who would have wanted to see her dead. The nature of this crime suggests something more than simple Death Eater activity.”

More than simple Death Eater activity- what was “simple Death Eater activity”? The time they’d tortured her a year ago? If he had pressed that- if he had made her talk to the DMLE then- but there wasn’t time for ‘ifs’ right now. He was going to have to talk to Millie Elwyn, a name he recognized but couldn’t quite place, not at that moment. First though, first he was going to enter the examination room and look at a body.

Over the table stood a thin, gaunt looking man, nervously looking at Sawyer and Bertie. There was no sense of suspense as he went to draw back the sheet, uncovering what remained of the body. Xander had been speaking in definites, no one in the room was questioning who lay on that table, Sawyer was only there to take the body. Even so, as he stepped closer to see the face he couldn’t help but hope that it wouldn’t be his cousin, that any other person in the world would by lying there.

Of course it was her. The sunken eyes and sallow skin couldn’t mask the girl he’d come to consider as close as a sister. Tears started welling up in his eyes, and it was moments before they were streaming down his cheeks, burning his eyes as he tried to wipe them away. If anyone else in the room moved or spoke Sawyer wouldn’t have noticed, and he wouldn’t have cared. Her body and head were mutilated, bloody, any signs of life she’d once carried had been stripped away. Her lips and eyes were flat, there was nothing there- Sawyer had never seen them that empty in twenty-one years. That made sense though, seeing as she was-

“Dead. She’s dead,” Sawyer said, looking around the room, not trying to make eye contact. He couldn’t have anyway, his eyes were blurred over, everything was swimming in front of him. “It’s her, it’s her, it’s her, it’s her, she’s dead, she’s dead, she’s dead,” as soon as he started he couldn’t stop. The words were rattling out of him, faster than he could think or breathe. Suddenly he was turning, tripping out of the room and slamming his body into the wall outside. He slid to the ground, pulling at his hair, unable to stop whispering “she’s dead, she’s dead, she’s dead.”