Hermione Granger could scarcely recall a time she'd been more intense about her work. Guilt over her fallen friend motivated her, and a motivated Hermione Granger was capable of anything within the realm of wizarding science.
In the hours since Harry'd assigned her this task, Hermione had completed thorough examinations on all of the original five bodies brought to her lab. They were all male, all aged between twenty-five and thirty years of age, all reasonably fit, and all were completely healthy before their deaths.
Using a technique she'd developed long ago, Hermione used a variant of a specific medical brain-scan spell to trace the most recent paths of thought used to perform magic in the past twenty-four hours; thankfully she'd been able to perform the analysis before the traces were completely absent from their inactive minds. While nothing out of the ordinary jumped out at her, Hermione was able to confirm that the spell that killed them was not one they had cast themselves.
With that knowledge, Hermione was able to do a full-body and mind autopsy to determine the cause of death, which had been from aneurysm, as she'd previously assumed, although somehow the wizards had been cognitive of the aneurysm and it had not been instant, as was usually the case.
Aneurysms could be caused by a litany of hereditary conditions, undiscovered tumors, epilepsy, among many other things, all of which Hermione was able to rule out as unlikely. There were very few spells that could cause an aneurysm, and after an hour of agonizingly precise and complicated testing, she was frustrated to find that none of these spells had been cast on the wizards.
Knowing the source of the aneurysms to have likely come from the application of Seamus' binding curse, Hermione immediately went about testing that very curse upon each of the corpses, with a full bio-metric scan recording the data. Infuriatingly enough, the results proved inconclusive; there was nothing in their systems that responded to the binding spell. Although their brain activity, heartbeat, circulatory systems, and all other bodily functions had stopped, magic still allowed her to test biorhythms and as such if the curse had been the cause of death it would have shown up in her results.
"Shit." Hermione rarely cursed, and when she did it was usually because of something profound. Not only had she gotten nowhere in more than six hours of research, but she'd actually taken a step backwards; if Seamus' hex didn't kill them then what in the name of Merlin did?
***
Despite the urging of his friends and permission of his manager, Dean found himself on the training grounds early in the morning the day after Luna's death. As he'd explained to them, the pitch was his one true home, where he could leave everything behind and focus on nothing but the ball and those preventing him from putting it in the net.
"Line! Line! Line!" Without even lifting his head to see where he was playing the ball, Dean placed a deft chip over the last defender and towards the corner for John's overlapping run, and immediately broke inside towards the penalty area.
He feigned a run to the penalty spot and then streaked towards the near post, pulling two defenders with him. When Spector's cross came in it went back towards the far post, but with two defenders on Dean and the goalkeeper forced to cheat to the near side, Carlton had nothing but glorious white netting to shoot at as he out jumped his marker and slammed a header into the back of the net.
"Good work boys!" Yelled the gaffer, blowing his whistle to signal the end of the drill. "That's what we need more of; overlapping runs from midfield and late crashes of the box on the far side. Thomas; great job distributing and pulling the defense on you, and nice finish on the end Cole. And a solid cross Johnny Boy, I may have to make a midfielder out of you yet."
John laughed, jogging towards the middle of the pitch with the rest of the boys. "That was a one in ten cross boss, normally I put that one in row z."
Everyone laughed, as was the training-ground humor and the always enjoyable joke about the defender who couldn't hit the ocean from a port; they were there for defense, after all. Not everyone could be Roberto Carlos.
"Alright lads, that is enough for one day I'd say. We'll meet in the tactical room at seven o'clock sharp tonight, don't be late." Glancing at Dean, he continued. "Also, on a more somber note, as you all know Dean lost one of his closest friends in a terrible accident just last night, so please keep her and her family in your thoughts and prayers."
A few of the guys offered him pats on the back and words of condolence, all of which he accepted with a heavy heart.
After showering up and pulling out of the training facilities Dean drove to the nearest bookstore and purchased everything he could find about the Roman Empire. His car was filled with the volumes of Cassius Dio, Suetonius, Pliny the Elder, and countless others who'd actually lived and written during the reign of the Caesars; it was going to be a long night.
Gaius Julius Caesar, Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus, Tiberius Julius Caesar Augustus, Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus (Caligula), Tiberius Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus…
Well, if he'd learned anything about the Caesars so far, it was that they weren't very original when it came to names. After the original Julius Caesar, who Dean realized embarrassingly was not an emperor of Rome, there was Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, and Nero. And that was just the first five. Caesar was a term used by Roman Emperors for centuries. In fact, by the rough timeline Dean had worked out, Julius Caesar came to power in about 49 BC, was killed astonishingly only five years later in 44 BC, and the Roman Republic itself essentially became the Roman Empire in 27 BC when his adopted son Augustus was given exactly that name and proclaimed a consul for life.
Shakespeare may have made Julius famous, but from just an hour's reading Dean realized that Augustus was the man. He was younger than Dean was now when he came to power, then he essentially forced his way to the top, destroyed his rivals through civil war and brought forty years of peace to his people. Julius may have been the popular figure in literature, but Augustus was the one who actually accomplished something great.
It will probably never be concretely agreed upon when the Empire fell, but remnants of it survived at far as the eventual fall of Constantinople in 1453! If Dean considered that the fall of the Empire, and the origin of Rome being with Romulus who founded the city itself in about 753 BD, that was a time span of more than 2000 years of civilization, most of that time being spent as the absolute power of the Mediterranean!
Although not a history buff by any means, the information enthralled him; he had to continually remind himself that his research was of the Caesars and only that, not the entirety of the Empire. But the enormity of the use of the Caesar name by Roman Emperors made the task of researching all of them an enormous endeavor, one that would take him months, years even to complete. Entire historical biographies, novels, plays, movies, poems, everything he could imagine had been written about dozens of the Caesars.
But there was one phrase that caught his eye during his fourth or fifth hour of research, just before he had to return to the training grounds for tactical. It was by Suetonius, and called 'The Twelve Caesars,' referring to the first twelve Caesars of Rome. Book-marking it, Dean rushed off for tactical hoping he'd stumbled upon something significant.
***
Dean bustled his way out the door just as Ginny was apparating in; she was sad she'd only gotten to see her boy for a few minutes time but knew she'd be better off studying without the distraction. Dean's study was filled with endless volumes of Ancient Roman History, and Ginny smiled at the sight, even living as a muggle, Dean was still one of them.
If it were possible, the books Ginny spread all across the crimson sheets and carpet of her and Dean's bedroom probably numbered higher than the endless volume of text in the study. Wizards had developed a lot of unusual spells over the years. Fortunately, she was looking for a very specific curse. Unfortunately, she had to wade through a swamp of bullshit to find a fragment of what she was looking for, then repeat the process as many times as it took to find out how they killed Luna.
She'd sorted her books into three piles; Developmental Hexes, Curses, and Spells, Biographies of Controversial and Ingenious Wizards and Witches, and Breakthroughs in Spell Creation. Then she cross-referenced and poured over the data for hours deep into the night, well after Dean returned and mumbled something about 'The Twelve Caesars' before getting to sleep early due to an early-morning practice he'd be having.
By two in the morning London time, she'd written nearly a novel in notes, read more material than she ever had in years of studying at Hogwarts, drank more of Dean's muggle energy drinks than she thought could possibly be healthy for her and could find nothing in her research that resembled anything even remotely close to what she needed to know.
Like Hermione had said, theories of latent magic curses only activated by certain triggers had existed for decades, but in practice nobody had ever been recorded as having any success in their endeavors. She was missing something. Something huge. They all were…something smelled afoul about this entire situation, and Ginny feared if they could not grasp what it was about this whole mess that eluded them, Luna's death would not be the last she mourned among her friends before this was all over.
***
Neville watched Hermione's frustration, and it did nothing but compound his own. Here he was, in a room with the world's most brilliant witch, surrounded by bodies, and neither of them could conjure up anything resembling a rational cause for their deaths. Oh they'd had aneurysms, or at least some kind of wizarding version of them, but deciphering what it was that caused those aneurysms was an exercise in futility. They were stumped.
"I'm letting her down," Hermione sobbed, her cheeks stained with tears as she sulked into a corner as far away from the bodies as she was able. "someone murdered my friend right under my nose and there is nothing I can do to catch them."
She began sobbing even harder, her shoulders shaking heavily and her cries audible for anyone within the vicinity to hear. Neville rushed to her side on the cold, marble, floor and wrapped his arms around her, trying to console her as best he could. She resisted at first but quickly relented, wrapping her arms around his broad shoulders and sobbing into his chest in an uncontrollable fit.
It took him a few seconds before he noticed it. Her arms were shivering. "Hermione, are you…" he let his words trail off as the bushy-haired witch violently wrenched herself away from him and vomited on the floor between them, crying even as vomit dripped from her lips, and it was only now Neville noticed her knees quivering, her chest shaking back and forth, her eyes flitting in and out of focus.
At first, his heart stopped. He thought they'd managed to get to her, and that she was dying in front of him. But soon thereafter his medical instinct kicked in and he realized exactly what was happening.
"Hermione! Mione, look at me!" He pleaded with her, as her breaths became rapid and harsh, whilst she still spit vomit from her lips and cried uncontrollably. "Hermione, you're having a panic attack! You need to calm down, please Hermione just -- shit!"
He cursed as Hermione retched again all over the floor, splashing vomit up onto Neville's robes, and he immediately grabbed her and apparated to Mungo's, praying she could snap out of it. If not, then the wizarding world had just lost their two brightest minds in the span of 36 hours.
***
"Report."
"I'm here to ask permission to interrupt interrogation of the prisoners sir," A senior auror, probably in his mid-thirties, with short dark hair and high cheekbones, asked the head of his division.
"What interrogation?" Kingsley Shacklebolt responded, suddenly alert and aware that something may be very wrong.
The tall, lean auror looked decidedly confused. "Of the two captured dark wizards from tonight's battle in Asheville, sir. Harry Potter himself told me the interrogation would be administered at headquarters."
Slamming a fist on his desk, Kingsley was up in a heartbeat. "Dammit Potter!" He exclaimed, furious at what he knew must be going on at this precise moment. "Get a team together Giggs, and meet me in Asheville in ten minutes time, we need to trace their apparition."
"Sir?"
"He is abandoning protocol," Kingsley explained, furious even in his understanding of Potter's actions. "he is interrogating the prisoners away from the facility, if he'd brought them here I would have known. I'm sure he is using a few…unique tactics in interrogation."
The pieces finally fell into place in the head of Kris Giggs, a well-respected and powerful auror who worked directly under the Master. Harry Potter wasn't just interrogating the prisoners…he was torturing them. Immediately he fled the room and went about assembling a team of his most trusted aurors, praying that this situation would not escalate any further.
Back in his office, Kingsley Shacklebolt stared across the room at his powerful but aging form in a full-body mirror that lay juxtaposed to a few moving pictures of past Master Aurors. Rubbing his black and balding forehead, he shook his head before apparating away and muttering, "I'm getting too old for this shit."