At first the thefts were barely noticeable. Small things would go missing here and there, and nobody ever knew where they really ended up. Tom Aberworth found that his pocket watch was missing, the day before he planned to take it in for a valuation. Marla Fielding couldn’t find the crystal earrings she had put aside for her daughter’s wedding, and Whitney Court couldn’t find her vintage silk scarf for a night out at the theatre.
None of these people knew each other and because these thefts were viewed by most as small and insignificant, none of them were reported to the police. No one thought these things had been stolen, simplymisplaced or moved by a family member. No one ever dreamed that these losses were thefts, or that they were all closely related.
Truth is, they were just practice.
The thefts continued, and six months after they started, they began to get bigger. Dianne McLain lost a diamond necklace. Sam Anderson misplaced an antique statuette of the goddess Aphrodite. Maddison Swift’s engagement ring disappeared. A collection of Roman coins vanished from their display cabinet in the Hadrian’s Wall Museum.
All of these mysterious disappearances were reported to the police, but they had no leads. No forensics were found, no forced entry and no fingerprints. None of these cases were linked together. Why would they be? The victims lived in different cities; some lived by themselves, some had young families. Some had sophisticated alarm systems; some had no security at all.
The Thief was careful. And he didn’t care that his thefts were now being reported.
He was getting more confident. More successful. More practiced.
But he wasn’t done yet.
~~~
Nina Georgeson woke early. This was unusual for her, as Nina was one of those people who always managed to be on time for everything. She was never too early, never too late. She had a perfect body clock, that always made sure she was up at the exact right time.
This was nothing but heartache for her best friend, Cleo. Cleo was the opposite of Nina in terms of waking up in the morning. Given the chance, (as she often was on weekends) Cleo would sleep until well into the afternoon. Nina, however, always got Cleo up at the exact right time to enable Cleo to shower and get dressed before first lesson started. Cleo didn’t see what was so wrong with being late sometimes.
There were two other Gryffindor girls who shared the girls’ fifth year dormitory, Suzi and Julia. Suzi was tall and dark haired, whereas Julia was smaller and had short, curly, blonde hair. All four girls got on well and were close friends. Cleo often used their late-night talks as the reason why she couldn’t get up when Nina woke her.
On the morning when Nina woke unusually early, she lay still in her bed, staring up at the ceiling. Her deep red bed covers tangled around her feet and she shuffled to free herself. The clock next to her bed told her that it was 4.40am. She still had hours until she needed to drag Cleo out of bed. With nothing better to do, and safe in the knowledge that she wouldn’t be getting anymore sleep that morning, Nina began to run through the day ahead.
First, she had Transfiguration. Professor Ashfield had assigned his class four feet on the transfiguration from birds to fish, which Nina had only just finished late the night before (and not without help from Cleo’s roughly scrawled class notes). Just as Nina was getting round to remembering where she had left her Defence Against the Dark Arts textbook, she heard a noise on the other side of her drapes.
“Cleo?” she whispered, “is that you?”
“Nina? Yeah it’s me. Why are you up?”
“I don’t know. Couldn't get back to sleep. Why are you up?”
“I’m hungry.”
“Hmm, I am too now you mention it.”
Nina heard Cleo’s bedclothes rustling. Sitting up in bed, Nina pulled back her curtains to reveal her best friend kneeling on the floor across from her. Cleo had her head stuck under her bed and was searching for something.
“What are you doing?”
“I said I was hungry.”
“Yes, so?”
“Well…” Cleo paused then slid out from under the bed in triumph. “I was looking for this.”
From what Nina could tell, ‘this’ was a battered old tin of Dr Filibuster's fireworks.
“Is four in the morning really the right time for fireworks?”
Cleo glared at her but, as she opened the box, he face switched to a triumphant smile. Once Cleo saw the contents of the box, however, her face fell dramatically.
“There was supposed to be food in there, wasn’t there?” Nina asked, smiling at the crestfallen look on the other girl’s face.
Cleo nodded. “I must have eaten it all last night.” Sighing, she closed the box and dropped it onto her bed.
The girls sat for a few seconds in silence.
“You want to go to the kitchens?” Nina asked.
“Yup,” grinned Cleo, grabbing the box from her bed. “I’ll refill this for tomorrow.”
“Do you do this every night?”
“Pretty much.”
“How have we shared a room for five years without me noticing?”
At that moment, Julia groaned and rolled over in her bed. Cleo grinned and tiptoed quickly to the door, grabbing her robes and wand as she went.
~~~
Cleo had never been sure about the rules when it came to sneaking around in the early morning. Obviously after lights out, you could get into serious trouble for being outside of your dormitory, but when was an acceptable time to get up? No one seemed to have made a definitive rule, so the students made it up and hoped for the best.
This wasn’t Cleo and Nina’s first trip to the kitchens. The year before, Cleo had been going out with a boy named Anthony. Anthony was two years above the girls, and a Hufflepuf. It had been he who had first introduced Nina and Cleo to the kitchens and the house elves who worked in them. Since then, the kitchen had been a regular jaunt for the two best friends, as well as the scene of many dates between Cleo and Anthony. Cleo has broken up with Anthony after she found out that, at last year’s Christmas ball, he had tried to kiss Nina, mistaking her for Cleo. When the relationship ended, the best thing to come out of it was the knowledge of the school kitchens.
Despite there being no concrete rule about the time in the morning they were allowed out of their dormitories, Cleo and Nina didn’t exactly want to draw attention to themselves. Instead of using the direct route down the main stairs and through the most frequently used corridors, the girls had opted for the road less travelled, in the way of abandoned and disused corridors filled with storage cupboards and old portraits. The early October morning wasn’t shedding much light through the narrow windows which lined these dark corridors, so both girls lit their wands as they snuck down towards the kitchen. Cleo loved wandering around the castle in the dark; it was so different to walking through it during the day with the hundreds of other Hogwarts students.
The silence of the sleeping castle was cut short when a mighty crash echoed from a room to Cleo’s left. Both girls jumped to their right and Nina hurled open a nearby door and dived inside.
Silence descended on the castle again. The only noise Cleo could hear now was the sound of her and Nina’s heavy breathing as they pressed their backs against the door in shock.
“What the hell was that?” Cleo whispered.
“I have no idea… shh, I think someone’s coming.”
Cleo pressed her ear against the door straining to hear the sounds of the new arrival.
“What in the name of Merlin are you doing Jefwin?” The new voice was low and angry.
“It’s gone.” Another new voice now, probably the person who had caused the crash, Cleo reasoned.
“What’s gone?” The low dangerous voice again.
“It has!”
“What do you mean it’s gone? It can’t be gone. Do you know how valuable that thing is?” The voice sounded scared now.
“Yes! Yes, I do. But it was right here, RIGHT here.” Cleo could almost picture the man (for she was certain that both of the speakers were men) running his hand through his hair in despair.
“And you’re sure it’s gone?”
“YES!”
“Did anyone else know where it was?”
“No…”
“Did anyone know you had it?”
“No.” he paused, “Well… maybe?”
“What do you mean maybe?”
“One of the students might know…”
“ONE OF THE…” The dangerous voice rose significantly in pitch, but then he seemed to remember the situation and finished the sentence in hushed tones: “One of the students? How does one of the students know about it?”
“Well… I sort of had it in my pocket and it fell out.”
Cleo could feel pressure building behind her nose. She turned around to look at the room they were in. A vase of flowers stood behind her to her right. She could feel the pollen tickling her nostrils.
Out in the corridor, the other man sighed angrily. “We shouldn’t be found here. Go to bed and in the morning we’ll ‘accidentally’ discover this store room broken into and I’m sure someone will notice that that great big suit of armour has gone.” Accidently accidentally
“But… The suit of armour hasn’t gone.”
“Not yet it hasn’t. Knightus Perenius.” The wizard paused and Cleo heard the sound of his robes brushing against the floor as he bent to pick something up. “Now go back to bed, I…”
Cleo sneezed. It wasn’t a loud sneeze, but it was loud enough to be head on the other side of the door.
The girls heard two quick footsteps and then the handle of the door began to rattle directly below Nina’s hand.
The Perfect Alibi by Russia Snow
Story Notes:
A Big thankyou to Alex/Welshie (welshdevondragon) for betaing and to Kara for setting this challenge.