~ blood washes away sin ~

I've seen the looks they're giving me. Let's just hope we don't need the blood magic expert tonight. Normally I'd disagree - I take pride in my work - but the only reason they'd need me tonight would be to find a lost and injured child. So they've left me alone, which gives me the perfect opportunity to carry out my assignment.

Joachim Piccard. He seems ordinary enough, but then so do I. I work at it, of course; I have to. I haven't seen enough of him to know if he works at it or not.

So far I've only seen him at work. You can tell a lot about a person by what he loves to do and how he does it. From what I've seen, he's like me - he takes pride in his work. Neat, precise, detailed. Everything I strive for in my own work.

And he's doing something of which I thoroughly approve - attempting to save a castle full of children. And my sister, of course. I would miss her if a castle fell on her.

If it happens, it won't be because of Piccard. He wouldn't sabotage his own work. He might disrupt someone else's, but never his own. Kyteler wants me to watch him, and now that I've seen him, I do too. But whatever he's worried about, it won't happen tonight.

Seems I missed a bit of excitement - an incubus attempted a blood magick ritual just down the hall from my room. That could have been interesting, but it was stopped before it got that far.

I've found more victims; boys who went missing for several hours and swore afterwards that they'd been watching their sheep all day. My opponent tried to cover his tracks, but an unskilled memory charm leaves traces; not enough to recover any of the memories, but enough to know that damage has been done.

Now, there could be perfectly valid - though not innocent - reasons why an inexperienced wizard might wipe the memory of a young mundane. Both of them in the wrong place at the wrong time, the wizard doing something he could get in trouble for allowing a mundane to see - but the dead boys change that. One could be an accident, of course, but three?

I could be wrong, of course, but that could very well mean that he's mine.

I'm not surprised that none of the investigators noted that each of the boys disappeared while watching sheep in a field crossed by a ley line; it's usually the nodes that are of interest, not the line itself. No trace of unusual magick at the sites themselves, but there wouldn't have to be, not if whoever took those boys followed a locating charm from where he cast it.

That could be done from anywhere, but I'm betting it happened near Hogsmeade, as that's the closest magickal community of any size. A charm to follow the ley line and find someone suitable along it would not be beyond the capabilities of the average wizard. One to find a place where such a person might have been at an unknown time in the past would be rather more difficult.

I do so enjoy a challenge.

Three children have gone missing around Hogsmeade over the past year.

I don't think anyone has connected the cases yet; three is barely enough to establish a pattern and they happened in widely separated locations. The Muggles won't - the Aurors did their usual job. Show up, determine that the children haven't strayed onto our lands, obliviate anyone who wants to look in the wrong places, and be done with it. It doesn't matter to them what happens to Muggles.

It doesn't even matter to me what happens to wizards, but these are children. That's different.