Consumption

“Let’s talk about your mother.”

“That’s some lazy psychiatry Dr. Lupin.” Sirius looked down at the man from his place on the upper level of the office. The man had a lot of books, shelves stacked full spanning across the balcony. “She wasn’t the best.”

Lupin leaned back on his desk, skimming over documents. “Understatement?”

“By a mile.” Sirius barked out a laugh, his hand brushing against the spines of books. “She enjoyed the lavish things in life…too busy worrying over her next dinner party to properly care for her children.”

Remus caught the bitter resentment in his tone, and he found that he couldn’t blame him. He despised unfit parents, having had his fair share with them. Why would you bring another life into the world just to hate and ignore it?

“Your father?”

“Business trips and whiskey.” Sirius said simply, turning to climb down the ladder back to the main floor. “Parents are difficult like that.”

“They are.” Dr. Lupin hummed in agreement, his eyes watching Sirius as the man wandered around, never seeming to sit still. “Do you feel responsible?”

Sirius slightly startled at the change in conversation, he was expecting the doctor to dig into his parental problems, but that seemed like the last thing he was interested in.

“Pardon?”

“Do you feel guilty for the deaths of the Shrike girls?”

Sirius stopped walking, looking up from the floor and into Dr. Lupin's eyes. His iris was a shocking golden color. Almost like honey. Sirius wondered how he had never noticed that before. A small scar sliced through his eyebrow and another along the sharp angle of his jaw. Freckles adorned his face, and Sirius couldn’t help but stare as his golden blonde hair caught in the sun.

“Mr. Black?” The man raised one eyebrow in questioning, snapping Sirius out of his daze.

A flush spread across his cheeks as he looked at the older man. It felt rude to lie, like he would be ripping out both of their hearts, leaving them to fall unceremoniously to the ground. “Responsible? No” Yes. “Guilty? Yes.”

The doctor uncrossed his legs, standing up from his position at the desk and moving towards the armchairs once again. “Why? Do you believe you could’ve prevented it?”

“No…” Sirius’ breath caught in his throat, a battle going on in his head as he decided what words to speak next. “Because I felt like I did it.”

“Come on Siri, you need a drink.” James whined, slinging an arm around Sirius’ shoulders as they walked down the street. Peter, Marlene, Dorcas, and Lily walked behind them, chatting about their days. “You’ve been too stressed, soon your luscious locks will fall out of your head.”

“Potter!” Sirius gasped, offended at the idea. “Why would you say something like that, you put it out into the universe! Marlene, tell him why that’s bad.”

Sirius smirked as James groaned, being sucked into a lecture about spirituality and the planets or whatever.

“You are evil Sirius Black!” Lily laughed, looping their arms together. For a brief moment, Sirius’ smile dropped, his thoughts flashing back to crime scenes and the gruesome thoughts that come with them.

“He threatened my hair, Lily! He had it coming.” Sirius’ loud laughter filled up the streets. It was a pretty cold night, but Marlene and James had insisted that they should all go out. The city was surprisingly quiet for the time, and they had so far only passed a few people.

“So… How’s Remus?” Lily questioned, a lilt in her voice like she was expecting an enthralling story.

“Who?”

“Remus?” Sirius looked at her questioningly until she continued. “Dr. Lupin? The man you tell your problems to?”

“Oh! He’s fine, I guess. Odd.” Sirius ran the name Remus through his mind. It somehow fit the man. An odd name for an odd guy.

“Have you actually properly spoken to him?” Lily asked, knowing Sirius he only has spoken a few curt words, not actually allowing the therapy to go anywhere besides basic pleasantries.

“He asked about my parents.” Lily grimaced at that. “But he didn’t seem all that interested, even when I gave him the very brief, non-explicit, run down.”

“Remus is like that; he can tell when you don’t want to talk about something.”

“Isn’t that his whole job? To make you talk about things you’d rather not?” Sirius asked as he sped up his pace slightly to match James who was now excitedly bounding towards a bar.

“Maybe, but that’s rude. And one thing you should know about Remus Lupin is that he despises rude people.”

Sirius arrived at the crime scene with two Aspirin already being washed down his throat with a hearty gulp of coffee.

Dumbledore had called; frantically insisting Sirius make his way to some address in the middle of a construction site. What he didn’t expect was to see a familiar face get out of the car parked next to him.

“Dr. Lupin.” Sirius said politely as they walked up to the scene.

“Mr. Black, I hope you don’t mind that I’m here, Dumbledore called and insisted I help draw up a psychological profile.”

“No not at all, we can always use more hands and brains.”

“Well, I can provide both of those.” Remus cracked a smile, letting out a half laugh at a joke that Sirius seemed to be missing. It didn’t matter however as they got closer to the scene Sirius’ eyes widened slightly, his feet unable to move any further as he took in the scene.

A monument stood in the middle of the construction site. Bodies, or well, parts of bodies, were tied together precariously, forming a barred cage made out of human limbs. Inside of the cage lay at least 6 people, all in various stages of mutilation.

The scene was horrific, but something about it poked at his subconscious, urging it to connect invisible dots.

“Unbelievable.” Dumbledore muttered under his breath as he took in the bodies.

“This is some kind of fucked up jigsaw.” Dorcas spoke to herself, carrying her forensics bag over to where Sirius and Remus were standing.

“Yeah, but where are the corners?” Peter asked.

“What?” Marlene looked at both of them in confusion, glancing between them and the human cage.

“My mom always told me to start a jigsaw with the corners…so where are the corners?”

“I guess the heads.” Dorcas’ eyebrows were raised, her eyes wide as she tried to count the number of bodies.

“We have too many corners.” Sirius sighed, taking one last sip of his coffee before throwing it away and getting closer to the creation. “Any witnesses? It’s a pretty open area.”

“No. How can someone build a whole cage of human bodies without one person seeing?” Dumbledore was obviously stressed; the bureau had been under attack for their struggle to catch The Artist; this was just one more thing to add to their plate. “Dr. Lupin, what do you think?”

“This area used to be a forest, correct?” Remus asked, looking around the barren land.

Peter hummed in agreement. “Yup! Cut it all down. They’re planning on building a shopping mall I believe.”

“It’s a show of activism.” Will had a feeling, deep in his chest, that he just couldn’t place. Something about this scene was familiar. Something about it was grouped into a category he had yet to discover.

“Birds.” Dr. Lupin spoke simply. “They’re caging the birds; he’ll cage the humans.”

“So how do we find him? There are thousands of environmental activists, how do we find the one that would go to this extreme?” Dumbledore pushed for answers, looking around the group of agents.

Sirius’ eyes flashed to the cage, his brain going fuzzy as he got lost in his imagination.

The limbs were lined up perfectly. Tied together into neat lines and positioned into the perfect trap. Though different, I am still me, the cuts of the bodies show that. This is my design.

“It’s The Artist.” Sirius whispered, more so a thought than an actual statement, but it caught the attention of everyone.

“It’s not his signature.” Marlene refuted, looking at the walls made of human arms.

“It’s The Artist. Organs will be missing.” Sirius was positive. Something about these 2 scenes were almost identical. Not identical in how they look, by no means did they even tell the same story, one was artistically beautiful, and the other was passionately gruesome…But they were the same guy, they had to be. “This isn’t part of his sounder.”

“What do you mean? He’s going away from the norm?” The wrinkles in Dumbledore's forehead seemed to deepen at the mere thought that The Artist was evolving.

“No, he’s always been like this. He’s been disguising his murders as someone else.” Sirius’ tongue ran across the inside of his cheek as he was deep in thought. “He never actually stops killing, he just stops showing off. He takes off one of his many masks and puts it to the side before dusting off a brand new one.”

“I agree with Sirius, there is a shockingly similar message behind each killing.” Dr. Lupin pointed out, looking over at Sirius who was still entrapped in his mind.

“And what message is that?”

“This killer…hates the rude.”