August 28th, 1888 — Muggle London on the way back from The Museum of Magical Miscellany
Scenario Challenge: Witness a Crime

With a worried glance at the darkening sky, Archer quickened his pace. He had remained at the museum far longer than he had expected! He was meant to return before it was dark, and he was most definitely pushing it. In his hurry, he turned down an alley shortcut that was typically safe, in the day, that is. Oh his family was sure to be angry with him!

Rounding a corner, he found himself suddenly backpedaling at the sight of two men fighting. With a startled yelp, the boy toppled behind a bit of overturned junk and hid while the larger of the two took out a long bit of rope and coiled it around the other's skinny neck. Unable to watch, the boy clamped his arms over his ears, while the smaller man gasped for breath and collapsed to the ground with a deafening thud.

Convinced he was next, Archie peeked out at the now motionless man and his attacker who stumbled about as if drunk.

  

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MJ is the best!

The first task that had rolled in following his advertisement was hardly a glamorous one, but Lou didn't mind. His life for the past few years hadn't been exactly glamorous itself, and the job paid, which was the main thing. Having a reliable source of income would put him on the road to independence from his father. Once he was able to take control of things financially and no longer rely on the older man's assistance for monthly allowances of food and other supplies, he could decide where he wanted to go from there — without needing his father's buy-off on anything. He had already gone to his father once before with demands for more freedom, and that hadn't exactly worked out the way either of them had intended — and given the catastrophe of his first attempt to reclaim his life, it was doubtful that the healer would elect to give Lou a second chance. If he wanted to do anything at all for the rest of his life, then, it was up to Lou to make it happen. If the first step was following around some drunk to see whether or not he was cheating at cards — well, fine. It was just a job, and it paid, and it was simple enough.

It was simple, at any rate, until the person he was supposed to be following died. Lou hadn't been involved in the man's life long enough to recognize the one who'd attacked him, but the encounter seemed to fit the general format of a drunken argument which had gotten out of hand. Ironically — or perhaps predictably? — the argument started over a poker hand, in which the now-dead man had won a considerable amount from his attacker. Lou had intended to see how the argument played out, without intervening, but it had escalated too quickly. By the time he'd decided that he ought to step in and do something, the man was already motionless on the ground.

"Merlin," Lou swore as he removed the cheap invisibility cloak he'd been wearing to follow the man down the alley. He supposed he should check that the victim was actually dead, and not still breathing — but he also didn't want to disturb anything, for when the aurors inevitably arrived. A private detective and the formal law enforcement officers never had the best of working relationships, but in Lou's case he was particularly keen on avoiding any potential overlap, given how many of the current aurors might still recognize him from his days among their number.

Before he could approach the body, however, a flash of motion caught his eye in the shadows — a child.

"Hey!" he called, quietly enough not to draw attention from the street but his tone commanding all the same. "What are you doing there?"

  

Oh no. Oh no. Oh no.

The man most definitely still wasn't moving. Archer supposed he was likely dead, or at least close to it. So far, the attacker hadn't realized he had an audience, so the boy was relatively safe from ending up being the next victim. Not knowing the argument had been over cards, had his imagination momentarily kicking his usually rational brain to the wayside. What if he had just witnessed the work of a serial murderer? What if he was the type to make sure no witnesses survived? What if he had to change his name and flee to some uninhabited jungle?

He'd never seen someone die before. He had never even seen a dead body, not to mention someone's life forcefully ripped from them. Archer turned to try and figure out his best escape route, but the voice of another who had most definitely not been there to begin with startled him out of his thoughts.

"Hiding." Archer hissed out, honestly, immediately answering in response to Lou's commanding tone. It was clear by how much he resembled a petrified rabbit that the boy did not want to be where he was.

  

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MJ is the best!

The lifting of the fog had meant that Thaddeus could return to the normalcy of spending most of his time in his office at the museum cataloging items and catching up on the work that had ground to a standstill due to his being trapped in Hogsmeade. He had even taken to lurking about the various exhibits to listen to the tour guides when his hands cramped from too much writing, ostensibly to make certain that the guides were giving the best (most historically accurate!) tours possible. It was a difficult job, but he enjoyed it far too much, and a small part of him took great pleasure in watching the younger visitors to the museum delight in the various stories--though he would never admit to such sentimentality unless pressed.

Thaddeus had left the museum and was headed out to find supper when a yelp made him pause. Was that a child? It could have just as easily been one of the mutts that straggled about and hung around for scraps, but it had sounded far too human. He turned down the alley, the scuffling noises making the hair raise on the back of his neck; the expedition had made him far too cautious, and his hand groped for his wand on reflex, though it would not do him much good in Muggle London.

The scuffling stopped, and as Thaddeus drew closer, he caught sight of the crumpled body. "Oh Merlin..." And then caught sight of the boy, who looked vaguely familiar... Forgetting the body altogether (and not really noticing Lupus), Thaddeus made a bee line for the boy, frowning in concern. "That man did not hurt you, did he?" He jerked his head toward the body,  Why else would a boy of such an age be in an alley -- London was certainly not safe for children to go anywhere alone, in Thaddeus's opinion.

It was only then that he seemed to notice the other occupant of the alley. "Did you... dispatch of this miscreant?" Thaddeus was perhaps jumping to many a conclusion, but he only had what was in front of him to go on: a body, a young boy, and a dark alley. It was difficult to tell if Lupus was a savior or a participant in whatever nefarious scheme, but it was very much unlikely that a perpetrator would have stayed put instead of running.

  

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Lou was on the verge of telling the child to run away and have that be the end of it — the boy likely wouldn't tell anyone what he'd seen, if he was as scared as he looked, and even then it was unlikely he'd be able to give a good description of Lou to anyone who would matter. The arrival of another adult in the alley complicated matters significantly, and Lou drew back into the shadows, though he wasn't quick enough to slip his cloak back on before the other man saw him. The way that he'd made a beeline for the child suggested, at least to Lou, that perhaps he knew the boy, and that complicated matters, too.

He contemplated just apparating away, but if he did then the other man would think he had had something to do with the death, and being chased for a murder he hadn't committed was hardly how Lou had pictured starting out his career as a detective. "Of course not," he said quickly. "I only saw it happen."

  

When a second adult appeared and seemed to head toward him, Archer recoiled. What if he were one of the strangler's accomplices set to murder him for daring to witness such a crime? However, Thaddeus's question had such thoughts halting in his brain, "N-no. Someone else hurt him!" He whispered his answer, loud enough for both men to hear.

It was much too dark, and Archer was far too distracted by all that seemed to be happening to realize he might recognize Thaddeus from the museum. His guard remained up as he glanced between the two. His gaze settled on Lou once more who insisted he only saw what happened. The boy wasn't exactly sure if he could be lying, but he certainly hadn't been the one who had possibly killed the man laying on the ground. "He wasn't the one who did it." He wasn't quite defending Lou, but he wasn't about to allow the poor man to be blamed for a crime he didn't commit.

  

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MJ is the best!

Thaddeus eyeballed Lou suspiciously, not quite sure he believed him. The gentleman looked a little too bedraggled for that - maybe he had known the dead man? His mind was flicking along a path (a darkened alley, a business deal gone awry or too much to drink...) and Thaddeus was only brought back by the boy's insistence that Lou didn't have anything to do with the business at hand.

Perhaps I've been reading too many Gothic novels, Thaddeus mused. There hadn't been much else to do in his fog-imposed exile, after all, and Thaddeus enjoyed the melodrama - it was a welcome change to the academic texts he was used to reading. "I see," he said to the pair of them, retrieving his wand and casting Lumos.

He stepped closer to the body, hesitating over it like he wasn't sure he really wanted to get up close and personal with a corpse. "We should get the Aurors involved," Thaddeus said to Lou, expression solemn. "Let them sort this out."

  

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Lou was relieved that the boy vouched for his innocence, and that the other man seemed to take that at face value — but his relief was short-lived as the man mentioned the aurors. He should have been expecting that, of course, because that was the only logical response when a law-abiding citizen discovered a dead body. Lou wasn't a law-abiding citizen, however, and hadn't been for over a decade. He was also dead, as far as the aurors knew, and he had no desire to disillusion them tonight. There was a chance, of course, that whichever aurors summoned to the scene would be of a younger generation than the ones that Lou had worked with in his former life, but he wasn't willing to gamble his life (literally) on that chance. He was only in his thirties, after all, and while aurors did have a fair amount of injury-related turnover, it wasn't at all unreasonable to assume most of those he'd trained with prior to his death would still be actively employed.

What could he say to excuse himself, though, without drawing suspicion? He could just disapparate, since neither the child nor the man knew his name, but that would almost certainly result in the aurors trying to track him down as the potential murderer. Anything he said to try and get away from the scene before they arrived would likely just increase the amount of suspicion the other man placed on him, and he had already demonstrated that he was more than willing to believe that Lou was the culprit in the just-completed crime.

"Of course," Lou agreed hollowly, his mind still racing to try and figure a way out of this predicament. With a glance at the child, he suggested hesitantly, "Perhaps one of us could wait here for them, and one could see the boy safely home?" Lou didn't care which he was — if the other man went off with the child, he could just leave the scene before the aurors arrived. It wasn't ideal, but it also didn't seem certain to guarantee his untimely death, as waiting for them to arrive would.

  

At the mention of aurors, Archer gasped, due to the fact that he hadn't fully realized, in his panic-stricken brain, that the situation would call for them to appear on scene. It made sense, of course, but his usual, quick thinking often tanked when faced with his irrational anxiety. If the two men hadn't appeared, Archer likely would have just fled the scene and perhaps never spoke of it again.

When Lou came up with his plan, Archer glanced warily from one man to the other. He wasn't so sure he wanted either of them to walk him home. What if one of them were some sort of accomplice, and he would be the sudden, next victim? Then again, he wasn't so sure he wanted to be wandering about alone after what he had just seen.

Either way, he hesitantly murmured, [b]"I...I can get myself home."[/b"

  

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MJ is the best!

Thaddeus nodded and glanced at the boy, a disapproving look crossing his face. In the wand light, he could see that the boy looked vaguely familiar... had he been at the museum earlier in the day? "Young man, you will have a lot of explaining to do to your poor mother." He sighed, and looked to Lou wearily.

"I can take the boy home. We'll invent some story about him being at the museum until closing--and I'll know that he gets home safely. Muggle London is not safe after dark, as we can see here." Truthfully dealing with a potentially hysterical mother was the last thing Thaddeus wanted to do, but he did feel required to make sure the boy got home safe. It was the right thing to do, and he wouldn't hear of letting the boy run home by himself and potentially having him end up in more danger.

  

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Lou let out a small sigh of relief as his suggestion was agreed upon by the other man. The protestations of the child were inconsequential; it didn't matter much to Lou if the boy ran off the moment he was out of the alleyway, or whether he allowed himself to be escorted home, so long as the two of them left him alone. He didn't even really mind waiting for the aurors, so long as he could take some measure to appropriately disguise himself before he met one of them, just in case it was someone he might recognize (though he would have trouble talking to his younger brother with a straight face, disguised or not — hopefully someone else came to the call).

"I'll duck in to the pub there and ask them to call the aurors," Lou said, gesturing to the establishment the two men had left a few moments before their tussle. "It's a magical one."

  

Archer paled when Thaddeus mentioned how he'd have a lot to explain to his mother. That was the last thing he wanted to do. He was fairly sure she would be very displeased. For someone who wasn't a mischief-maker, trouble sure knew how to find him.

"Y-yes. That might be a better to tell mother instead of--" He waved his arms at the scene in front of them, not particularly wanting to glance at the dead man either way. It would be a more believable story, too. It also wasn't quite a lie. He had remained at the museum far longer than he had intended before wandering into the wrong part of town.

He glanced to Lou who seemed to be agreeable with contacting the aurors, a task he was glad he wouldn't be a part of. He hoped they wouldn't jump to the same conclusions Thaddeus had that the poor guy had somehow been involved.

  

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MJ is the best!

Thaddeus was incredibly glad that the boy agreed to be escorted home. Though they were virtually strangers, he did feel obligated to make sure the boy made it home safely; no doubt the child was in shock, and needed to get home with as few questions as possible from the adults in his life. It was really the least Thaddeus could do, and he nodded at Lou, gaze flicking briefly in the direction of the wizarding establishment before returning to Lou.

"Best of luck, sir -- I suspect you will need it," he said solemnly, touching his hat brim as he turned to the boy. "Come on, then. We should get you home."

  

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